Karma's A Bitch

Led by GOP Whip Steve Scalise, the skullduggerers in the US House of Representatives have been busily disassembling the rules regarding the sale and ownership of guns.

I'm not celebrating the shooting of Mr Scalise, btw, so you can stuff that one right back in your ditty bag. That said, I'm not surprised this shit finally caught up with 'em; and I'm not surprised they've kept very quiet about it - possibly waiting for the Focus Group results to inform the Image Consultants on how best to respond, in order to keep the votes and the lobby money they use to buy those votes.

I am saying we need to drop the knee-jerk reactions and admit that this might've been averted if we took the Safety thing more seriously - or the Background Check thing - or the Magazine Capacity thing - or the simple fact that adding a random guy's gun to any mix is  always plenty of justification for the good guys' assholes to pucker up.

To be fair (which I don't do lightly cuz the Ammosexuals rarely play fair in turn), they didn't really make it easier for nutballs to buy guns, in spite of what the Leftie Memes often claim. 

But also to be fair: Like I said, the Radical Right continues to pimp the NRA bullshit about guns making us safer.

What makes me think they're wrong?

• Why can't you carry a gun in a police station?
• Why can't you carry a gun on an Army base?
• Why can't you carry a gun into a courtroom?
• Why can't you carry a gun on a commercial aircraft?

Because, for fuck's sake, it's not fucking safe, you fucking morons.

Sounds About Right

Vox:

The gubernatorial primaries in Virginia on Tuesday were supposed to be about the fight over the Democratic Party’s soul.

National profile after national profile of the race (including Vox’s) focused on the battle between Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam and former Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA). Did it represent a Bernie Sanders versus Hillary Clinton rematch? Or a key test run for the populist progressive movement?

Then the election was held, and a different storyline caught the political world off-guard. Northam, with the overwhelming support of Virginia Democratic officials across the state, crushed Perriello by 14 points. What shocked observers instead was the Republican primary, where Corey Stewart — a Confederate sympathizer and onetime campaign official for Donald Trump — came within just 1.2 points of beating former Republican National Committee Chair Ed Gillespie.

Like Jeb Bush in the Republican presidential campaign, Gillespie entered the race with massive advantages in spending, official endorsements, and name recognition. By contrast, Stewart attacked Gillespie online as a “cuckservative,” accused his opponent of treating “Donald Trump like he had typhoid,” and vowed to crackdown on immigrants and protect Confederate monuments if elected. It was quite a comeback: This fall, Stewart was fired from his position as Trump’s Virginia campaign chair after calling the RNC “establishment pukes” on Facebook.

And he almost won...
--and--

The theory didn’t prove to be true that there were thousands and thousands of populist, angry Democrats who would be willing to take a chance on somebody who hadn’t — prior to announcing his campaign for governor in January 2017 — spent more than two years in Virginia elected public life. And who, since then, had been out of the country most of the time.

Perriello’s mistake was that Perriello himself was not enough to win — there needed to be more relationships; there needed to be more connections; he had to know local Democratic committees and local Democratic officials.

At the end of the day, one reason Northam won was because you couldn’t go to any Democratic committee — or any Democratic chair or any elected Democrat in the state — who didn’t know Northam and hadn’t talked to him. At the end of the day, that makes a difference.

Perriello simply didn’t have those kinds of relationships. There was a lot of “energy” behind him, but it really wasn’t enough because Perriello hadn’t been working the Democratic electorate like Northam had been for more than a decade.
It's still the ground game that matters. The spread of the establishment's tendrils in the body politic is wide and deep throughout both national parties (we knew that - nuthin' new there).

The difference remains though:

Dems seem to be voting against their candidates by either staying home or by voicing their strong discontent, which makes it more likely for others to stay home.

Repubs have done the same in the past, but it looks like they've gotten to the point where the Tribal Loyalty thing has recently been strong enough to get them out to vote even when it's obvious to everybody else that voting for "their candidate" is voting against their own best interests.

Now, maybe we're seeing a natural backlash on the GOP side, where people woke up badly hungover and found themselves in bed with nothing but torn condoms and a sore butthole. When the Trump guy craps out in Virginia, it could be a very good sign.  But like the Vox piece says, he came a pretty close second.

Perriello got squashed by 14 points, but he was running on a "Progressive Agenda" that just makes too much sense - people love to squawk about wanting a common sense approach to governing, but when somebody steps into the ring with almost exactly what they say they want, they see it as radical and it scares 'em off (?)  Plus, "Progressive" is a dirty word to "conservatives".

Skipping to the chase - given the concentrated fervor of Radical Right Republicans for almost any kind of Trump-ish insurgency, Stewart losing by less than 2 points could be seen as a blowout in favor of restoring some level of sanity on GOP side.

And Perriello getting blown out by 14 when he has no infrastructure in place and no support from any of the top 10 Virginia Dems (and let's face it - the guy has a charisma rating somewhere between Droopy Dog and day-old guacamole) - that one starts to look a lot closer than the numbers are showing.

It ain't over, kids.

It Bites 'Em In The Ass

.@Judgenap: Why do we have a Second Amendment? It's not to shoot deer. It's to shoot at the government when it becomes tyrannical!

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) June 23, 2016

And this morning, when a "patriot" started shooting at people he apparently thought personified that Gubmint Tyranny, Rand Paul ran away - like a gutless wonder; like a panicky child; like the fucking REMF he is and has always been.

There was no "running toward the trouble" the way Mr Rogers taught us to identify the heroes. Rand Paul ran away, and jumped a fence, and flagged down a car, and left this wounded colleagues in harm's way.

BTW 1: Good guys with guns where in attendance today - and even though they gunned down the bad guy, they were both wounded, along with three others.

So the good guys stopped the bad guy - after he did this shitty bad-guy thing.

BTW 2: "Conservative" boneheads are always quick to jump in and say that while they may (or may not) agree we should be trying to find a way to cut down on the gun violence problem, they just can't get up with Gun Regulation because "it doesn't work".

Fine - maybe you super-geniuses could at least start by acknowledging it really is a fucking problem, and then suggest something you think will work.

Today's Tweet

Emolumentum is Latin for profit or benefit. This is about payoffs from foreign governments which is not a partisan issue

— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) June 14, 2017

--and--

USA Today:



70% - there's an obvious problem with emoluments, and we don't get to know who's paying our president to do what.

The Daddy State can only operate in the dark. When the light goes on, they all skitter back under the dishwasher.

Jeff Sessions: Malignant Leprechaun

I don't know what all was going through Ms Kamala's mind of course, but the look on her face was classic: "You are so full of shit, little man - lie to me again and everybody here will thank me for slapping that smirk all the way around to the back side of your tiny head."

The Virginia Effect

I'm putting up "The Virginia Effect" as a term of art in politics because today's Dem primary could be a harbinger (ya heard it here first)

Vox:

Almost every profile of the Perriello-Northam race has cast Perriello as the progressive, populist outsider insurgent and Northam as the moderate, centrist creature of the establishment.

But in several critical respects, this binary breaks down on closer inspection. Perriello has run as a “Bernie Democrat” determined to get big money out of politics; in reality, his campaign is being backed by Wall Street’s biggest liberal donors.

Perriello has been said to be running against “the establishment,” and, when it comes to Virginia’s Democratic establishment, that’s true. But Perriello received the blessing of national Democrats who certainly have clout, including John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chair.

The two candidates’ voting records also don’t make much of a proxy battle between the party’s left and center-left factions. Both men support a $15-an-hour minimum wage; both have made opposing Trump and defending undocumented immigrants central themes of their campaigns; both have robust plans to expand the state’s community colleges and state infrastructure. “Policy-wise, there really isn’t that much difference,” Kidd said. (The major difference between the two candidates is over the construction of a proposed pipeline through the state; Perriello opposes it, and Northam has drawn ire from environmental groups by refusing to condemn it.)

2 things basically:

First, it'll be a "divided party thing" almost any way it turns out because that's what most of the Press Poodles have been selling.

But second, I'm really just hoping it doesn't degenerate into a re-enactment of 45* vs Hillary, with all the stoopid politically ignorant sniping and tantrum-throwing between the Bernie Bros and the HilBots. Especially if the Dem loses and there's this whole piss-n-moan thing after the fact.

The only thing that bickering does is to sour more people on the whole process.  And guess what - the more people you push out, the easier you make it for the Daddy State.

Grow the fuck up, kids. There's no purity to be had here - this has to be about yanking the "center" away from the far right, and putting it back in the goddamned middle where it belongs.

Today's Tweet Storm

Storified for your convenience

@TheRickWilson I made a #Storify of the rant:

"Fire Mueller. Get it over with." https://t.co/82hO3Msc9l

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) June 13, 2017

Keith

Hookers. And The Steele Dossier. Wait - what?

About Last November

Bloomberg:

Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported.

In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.

39 states - most controlled by Repubs, where state government officials balked at the prospect of taking action to prevent Russia from fucking up the elections because (I think) the results of that fuckery would accrue to the GOP's benefit.

But the really bad news right now is that it worked.  Whether it worked or not, it worked. That's the best kind of political maneuver.

The point of the exercise was to disrupt the American election. And there's a good probability that many will feel somehow vindicated for their decision not to vote in this particular election, and to avoid the whole thing altogether from here on out. 

So it worked.

Waist Deep In Dead Canaries

Today's Tweet

Sometimes it is a joy to be alive. pic.twitter.com/gFaWt2O0qs

— Michael Coren (@michaelcoren) June 11, 2017

Pleading Ignorance

I just wanted to put that up so we start to get an idea where some of the lines are.

45*'s behavior is suspect.  At the very least, he needs to understand that just his tweets can constitute Witness Intimidation, bordering on Tampering - and that can be construed as attempts to Obstruct.

But it seems he doesn't understand any of that, even though his actions indicate that he does understand - he just has no intention of staying between the lines.

Even though his actions make it all appear chaotic, he thinks in terms of absolutes and everything he does is aimed at keeping everybody off balance so he can make the decision to move one way or the other - depending on whatever he thinks benefits him the most or hurts everybody else so it accrues to his benefit anyway.

It bears repeating:

"I may or may not do what your lawyers force my lawyers to try to talk me into doing."

And now:

"I am Trump. Trump can do no wrong."

Theater

HuffPo:

President Donald Trump has set a deadline of July 4 for a shakeup of the White House that could include removing Reince Priebus as his chief of staff, according to two administration officials and three outside advisers familiar with the matter.

While Trump has set deadlines for staff changes before, only to let them pass without pulling the trigger, the president is under more scrutiny than ever regarding the sprawling Russia investigation, which is intensifying the pressure on his White House team.
45* believes his main function is to set up the cliffhanger for whatever fucked up Reality TV show he thinks he's hosting this week.

And as long as we tune in for the shit show instead of concentrating on holding the GOP to account for all this mess, we're complicit.

Get woke

Get together

Get focused

Get shit done

Today's Quote

"I suppose one reason people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."

--James Baldwin

Today's Tweet

FUN FACT: Alpha penguins will push other penguins into icy waters to see if Polar Bears are layin' in wait.https://t.co/7sx0zyzUvX

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) June 11, 2017