Author: clearandpresentdanger

This is so self-evident that most Republicans I know agree personally, despite belonging to a political party whose guiding ethos is to be deliberately unpleasant in hopes of getting a rise out of some liberal somewhere. Even people who think Fox News host Greg Gutfeld is funny have enough sense to know that it sucks to smell like an ashtray sucks. Or at least I thought they did.

With the GOP now in control of the House of Representatives, people are smoking indoors again in the Capitol, or at least the half of it governed by the oh-so-powerful Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Gross! I suppose Republicans can congratulate themselves — what’s next:  maybe by refusing to take regular showers or to wipe their butts after using the bathroom.

But in fairness, this isn’t just about trolling. It’s also about a close cousin to trolling, in the constellation of motivations that make right-wingers such baffling and exhausting people: Toxic masculinity. For about as long as supporters of basic public health have argued for restrictions on tobacco use, conservatives have acted as if any regulations whatsoever on their foul-smelling weed literally amounts to prying the penises off their bodies. Before Rush Limbaugh died of lung cancer, the right-wing radio host who coined the term “feminazi” often portrayed smoking as a wholesome, manly activity that liberals wanted to take away from men purely to emasculate them.

“It’s true that everybody who smokes dies, but so does everyone who eats carrots,” Limbaugh said.

He wasn’t the only one. Former Vice President Mike Pence, when he wasn’t denouncing the Disney film “Mulan” for teaching girls they could have military careers, also wrote a sneering 2001 op-ed portraying anti-tobacco regulations as “back handed big government disguised in do-gooder health care rhetoric” and making the blatantly false declaration that “smoking doesn’t kill.”

Years later, members of the Proud Boys filmed themselves smoking inside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection, a visual fuck-you to those who prefer not to smell like a bar’s trash can. They each got four years in prison, where cigarettes are famously a form of currency, as well as a way to speed up your inevitable demise. But just as House Republicans have made the anti-democratic desires of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists the center of their political vision, this juvenile and offensive gesture of impotent rage at the “nanny state” has gone from the rioters to the offices of members of Congress.

As the Limbaugh and Pence examples show, Republicans have long framed public health measures as a feminizing threat to their snowflake-fragile masculinity. But that rhetoric has gone into overdrive in recent years, as Donald Trump and then the GOP masses made dying of COVID-19 into a marker of partisan identity politics — and almost a noble sacrifice for the cause of so-called freedom. The deep irony of seeing a man behave pathetically while claiming to be “strong” was amply illustrated in Trump’s attempt to deny that he nearly died from COVID by dramatically ripping his face mask off on a White House balcony. He definitely believed he looked confident, but that moment was uncomfortably reminiscent of Trump’s repeated claims that his stubby fingers tell us nothing about what he’s carrying in his pants.

So we’ve been forced to endure nearly two years of Republicans defending their masculine bona fides by claiming they’re not afraid of COVID-19, often by acting very, very afraid of the vaccine. So many manly men running around declaring they will prove their toughness by refusing to get stuck with a little tiny needle! Joe Rogan, current king of the trying-too-hard culture of talk-radio masculinity, has been an avatar of this hilarious un-self-aware paradox of dudes who will thump their chests and claim they’re too much man to be felled by a virus, before squealing like babies at the idea of getting the shot.

I don’t know that the “good health = small dick” mentality has actually gotten dumber over the years, but man, it sure feels that way when you see Republicans like Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana complaining about liberals who carry around “Ziploc bags of kale” and pronounce that “kale tastes to me like I’d rather be fat.” The gender politics of this stuff are never hard to suss out, as Kennedy also complained about “yoga mats” in that same speech, objects generally associated not just with blue-state exercise routines but also with women.

The crowd that witnessed Kennedy’s rant — at a December campaign rally for soon-to-be-defeated Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker — ate it up, evidently never asking themselves how lion-hearted a man is if he’s terrified of a vegetable. Women have long been subject to stereotypes about being afraid of mice and spiders, which supposedly makes us weak. But somehow the epitome of rugged manhood is to flee at the sight of a leafy green.

Almost nothing is funnier than someone with a massive gulf between the way they perceive themselves and the way they look to other people. I’ve witnessed decades of Republicans declaring themselves to be John Wayne heroes while acting like petulant kindergartners making faces because Mom told them to eat their broccoli. It never stops being hilarious. But there are real costs when conservatives seek relief from their yawning insecurities by sacrificing public health to partisan loyalty.

Women have long been subject to stereotypes about being afraid of mice and spiders, which supposedly means they are weak. But somehow it’s the epitome of rugged manliness to flee at the sight of kale.

As Scientific American reported in July, there’s “a growing gap in mortality rates for residents of Republican and Democratic counties across the U.S.” Even before vaccine refusal led to huge numbers of Republicans pointlessly dying of COVID, the GOP hostility toward routine public health measures already meant that people in more conservative counties are likelier to die of many other causes, including suicide, heart disease, opioid overdoses and obesity-related illness. Some of this is cultural: Republicans are less likely to get enough exercise, for instance. But a lot of it is also due to policy decisions, such as poor access to health care, lax gun laws and inadequate road maintenance.

As nearly all sensible people understand, perfect health is not a realistic goal for any of us. There are always tradeoffs between the best possible health practices and actually living our lives. People are going to take sexual risks, stay up late, drink alcohol, do drugs, skip workouts and eat fattening food. Most of us have decided that the risks of post-vaccination COVID-19 aren’t severe enough to live like shut-ins for the rest of our lives. Despite hysterical right-wing media claims to the contrary, the government is not coming to take away your gas stove. Contrary to right-wing stereotypes that Democrats will deploy secret-police tactics to make us all live like vegetarian monks, progressive health regulations always try to balance improved public health with ordinary people’s understandable desire to decide how they want to live their lives.

When I was a teenager, more than a third of young people smoked. Now it’s less than 9%, and continuing to fall. High cigarette taxes and prohibitions on smoking in most public and commercial spaces have contributed, but it’s much more that people have realized that the temporary high of nicotine isn’t even remotely worth it. You’re risking agonizing disease and an early death for the payoff of smelling like an old shoe. There are just way too many other good times to be had, with nowhere near the danger. You can have non-procreative sex, take your friends a drag show or read a book, for instance — which as you probably noticed, are all things the modern GOP would like to legislate out of existence. Smoking, by comparison, is just a bummer. Republicans’ petty and self-destructive enthusiasm for it is just another reminder that they’ve become a party devoted to being stupid just because they can. 

Owning the libs.

i have no words pic.twitter.com/Pdir8UzdLN

— helena hind (@cynicalzoomer) January 14, 2023

What a load of horseshit.  But, then, it’s Tucker Carlson — that’s all we should expect.

Try herding a bunch of racists, anti-Semites, misogynists, pedophiles, faux-Christians, conspiracy theorists, spineless sycophants, brainless bimbos, corrupt-to-the-bone criminals – not to mention downright lunatics! – into the House, and then expect them to get anything done.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you our current Republican members of the House of Representatives.

Prediction: By the end of this year, George Santos will be elected Speaker on the basis that he’s the most honest man among them.

Former President Donald Trump and his crew are throwing around names for his next running mate, according to sources who spoke with The Daily Beast. All are women so far, and all are folks most of us are loath to hear from on a regular basis.

The Trump campaign has yet to take off, and it’s still early in the game, but according to a couple of GOP insiders, the top three on the shortlist include: proud supporter of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene; Trump apologist and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik; and possible Russian asset and former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. A madcap crew of chaos to be sure.

Others include Kari Lake, the Arizona loon who lost the gubernatorial election but demands that she be appointed governor.  She’s a regular visitor at Mar-A-Lago where no one knows what goes on between Trump and Lake behind closed doors.  Then there’s Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin who will kiss Trump’s ass on 5th Avenue to get the nod.

Doesn’t really matter — Trump will lose in 2024.

Trump’s stunt in which he called the Georgia Secretary of State and urged him to produce phony votes has backfired on him.  A special grand jury has provided its report to a judge who will likely convene a grand jury to charge Trump with multiple felonies.

When Trump is convicted in Georgia, he is NOT eligible for a pardon.  State convictions can not be overturned by a federal pardon.

Trump’s shit is in the street.

We all know that Trump smears tan makeup on his face and neck to make himself appear healthy and tanned.  We also know he lets that hair grow long so he can comb it over and hide the bald spots.

He needs a better make-up person — his true pale skin is showing through at his hairline and around his eyes.  And I count three chins.

This is more like it –old fat retiree living in a Florida motel.

After news broke yesterday that President Joe Biden’s lawyers had found a second batch of documents in his home in Wilmington, Delaware, Attorney General Merrick Garland today appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents. After law school, Hur clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and then served as special assistant to Christopher Wray—then an assistant attorney general, now FBI director—before being appointed by former president Trump as the U.S. attorney in Maryland. Since he left office in February 2021, he has been in private practice.

Accepting the post, Hur said: “I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment. I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service.”

The appointment of a special counsel seemed inevitable considering what Garland called “extraordinary circumstances”—likely a reference to the fact that former president Trump is being criminally investigated for his own handling of documents marked classified—and it serves to reinforce the idea that the Department of Justice treats everyone the same. This is a good thing.

But it presents a problem for MAGA Republicans. Unable to attack Biden for having documents marked classified in his possession without also faulting Trump, Republicans have tried to suggest that Biden was being treated differently than Trump is. The appointment of a special counsel undermines that. It also takes away from House Republicans the publicity they could get by investigating the issue themselves. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said this morning that he did not “think there needs to be a special prosecutor,” and that Congress should conduct its own investigation. 

This evening, Republicans appear to have settled on the talking point that Hur is tainted by his time at the Department of Justice under Wray—although Wray was appointed to the FBI directorship by Trump—and that his appointment is further evidence of the “political weaponization” of the FBI and the Justice Department.

(Just to be clear: people writing about these cases keep referring to “documents marked classified” rather than “classified documents” because classification status can change, as Trump argued when he said he had declassified the materials found in his possession despite their markings. It’s awkward phrasing, I know, but it marks an important distinction.)

So far, anyway, Biden’s possession of documents marked classified appears very different from Trump’s. Biden’s team offered up to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) the information that Biden had documents in his possession, has apparently been zealous about searching for them, and is apparently cooperating with the Justice Department.

Here’s the story Garland laid out today: On November 2, Biden’s lawyers found a batch of documents from the time of the Obama-Biden administration when they were cleaning out Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, the Washington, D.C., think tank where Biden worked after his time as vice president. They immediately contacted NARA, which took possession of the documents the next morning. On November 4, NARA’s inspector general contacted the Justice Department to notify it of the document exchange, and on November 9 the FBI began to assess whether Biden had illegally mishandled classified information.

According to journalist Matthew Miller, classified documents often get taken from government facilities by accident. Those errors are reported, the documents recovered, and a damage assessment made to determine whether further action needs to be taken, all of which took place here.

On November 14, Garland assigned U.S. Attorney John Lausch, a Trump appointee, to consider whether Garland should appoint a special counsel. Meanwhile, Biden’s team had continued to search for more documents, and on December 20, Biden’s lawyer told Lausch they had found more documents with classification markings at Biden’s Wilmington home. On January 5, Lausch told Garland he thought it was a good idea to appoint a special counsel.

Finally, on January 12, Biden’s lawyer told Lausch that Biden’s lawyers had found one more document, apparently in his personal library, but that a thorough review had turned up nothing else. This afternoon, the White House counsel said: “We have cooperated closely with the Justice Department throughout its review, and we will continue that cooperation with the Special Counsel.”

While there is still a great deal we don’t know about either case, there are obvious and key differences between Biden’s and Trump’s handling of documents.

In Trump’s case, NARA repeatedly asked him simply to return the documents it knew he had. He refused for a year, then let NARA staff recover 15 boxes that included documents marked classified, withholding others. After a subpoena, his lawyers turned over more documents and signed an affidavit saying that was all of them. But of course it wasn’t: the FBI’s August search of Mar-a-Lago recovered still more documents marked classified. Even now, none of Trump’s lawyers will certify that they have turned over all the documents they are required to. 

Trump is apparently being investigated for obstruction and for violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to withhold documents from a government official authorized to take them.

On his social media network today, Trump wrote: “Merrick Garland has to immediately end Special Counsel investigation into anything related to me because I did everything right, and appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Joe Biden who hates Biden as much as Jack Smith hates me.” In a different post, he called Smith an “unfair savage.”

Garland’s appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith came only after Trump declared he was running for president in 2024, an announcement Trump likely made because he thought it would shield him from potential indictments. But news is coming daily that Smith’s subpoenas have been far ranging and widely spread, and that those who have testified before the grand jury found the questioning “intense.”

John Kelly didn’t have high expectations about Donald Trump when he joined the White House as chief of staff, but he was still shocked by what he found after joining the administration.

The retired U.S. Marine Corps general joined the White House halfway through Trump’s first year, and New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” about what Kelly learned about the former president and his abilities.

“So when Kelly came in as chief of staff, he thought that the problem around Trump was that he was not staffed properly and they needed to create a process around him, and that’s what the chaos of the first six months of the administration was about,” Schmidt said. “But when Kelly comes in as chief of staff, what he realizes is that the problem is not just the fact that there’s not a process and that he’s not being staffed as well as he could, but that Trump himself was the problem, that Trump was far dumber and immoral and ignorant and lazy than he ever thought he was.”

“Within a few days, he becomes terrified because here he is, the top staffer to the president of the United States, and he’s realizing that the president of the United States is far more limited and potentially dangerous than he ever thought, and at that point, there was no one else to call,” Schmidt added. “He was — it was just him and Trump, and he basically spends the next 18 months trying to manage Trump as much as he could.”