Clear and Present Danger

LOL: Briahna Joy Gray BREAKS the brain of Rising guest Bethany Mandel by asking her to define "wokeness" pic.twitter.com/uwRSSH0LaM

— The Vanguard (@vanguard_pod) March 14, 2023

An analysis by Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin found that House Republicans are already in jeopardy of failing in their investigation into President Joe Biden’s family.

In her column Tuesday, Rubin observed that Republicans “reached the ‘temper tantrum’ stage of the Hunter Biden’ scandal.'”

“Obviously, there is no legitimate basis for congressional ‘oversight’ of the matter,” Rubin asserted.

Republicans have focused on a statement from about 50 former intelligence officials warning that Hunter Biden’s laptop could be a Russian disinformation operation.

But the letter added: “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

“Nevertheless, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio) sent letters to the signatories, demanding all documents relating to the statement and directing the former officials to appear for transcribed interviews,” Rubin wrote. “If they don’t comply, they have been warned, subpoenas will be forthcoming.”

“And, ironically, it would be an illegitimate and inappropriate use of congressional power — a weaponization of government — if every president’s family members and their associates and defenders could be summoned to testify about a made-up controversy,” she added.

Rubin pointed out that a court ruling could undermine the investigation.

“The last thing these right-wing congressmen likely would want is a court ruling that their three-ring circus lacks any legitimate legislative purpose and, therefore, cannot compel testimony or document production. A legal defeat for MAGA-inspired investigations (which to date have spectacularly flopped) would be the perfect denouement to Republicans’ inept efforts to harness congressional power for political gain,” she said.

“In standing up to congressmen bent on bullying and intimidating witnesses to score political points, the former intelligence officials will have performed a public service: revealing the feckless little men behind the curtain,” Rubin concluded.

In an attempt to highlight his “humor” in advance of his possible 2024 presidential run, former Vice President and former Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) mocked out Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg with several anti-gay quips.

Pence headlined the Gridiron Club dinner in D.C. this past Saturday, and joked that his pronouns are “thou” and “thine.”

Rightwing pundits have launched a coordinated attack on the out Transportation Secretary after he and his husband adopted newborn twins.

Then he said that Buttigieg “took maternity leave” in 2021 when Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten Buttigieg had twins and he made a crack about the country going through postpartum depression as a result.

Politico reports that Pence’s advisers think this speech will highlight Pence’s humor, something that can counteract his reputation as “a humorless conservative scold” who refuses to eat in the same room alone with a woman who isn’t his wife, who he refers to as “mother.”………………

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mike-pence-targets-pete-buttigieg-with-homophobic-insults/ar-AA18zflx?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=2e0864b901d943518686e28dbb0a2930&ei=18

This is what a piece of shit looks like when it’s dressed up.

Danny Lemoi took a daily dose of veterinary-grade ivermectin and told his thousands of followers to give the drug to children. He died of a common side effect of the medication.

Just before 7 am on March 3, Danny Lemoi posted an update in his hugely popular pro-ivermectin Telegram group, Dirt Road Discussions: “HAPPY FRIDAY ALL YOU POISONOUS HORSE PASTE EATING SURVIVORS !!!”

Hours later, Lemoi was dead.

For the last few years, Lemoi had taken a daily dose of veterinary ivermectin, a dewormer designed to be used on large animals like horses and cows. In 2021, as ivermectin became a popular alternative COVID-19 treatment among anti-vaxxers, he launched what became one of the largest Telegram channels dedicated to promotion the use of it, including instructions on how to administer ivermectin to children.

But despite Lemoi’s death, the administrators of his channel plan to continue pushing his misinformation—even as his followers share their own worrying possible side effects from taking ivermectin and some question the safety of the drug.

Lemoi, a heavy equipment operator who lived in Forster, Rhode Island, “passed away unexpectedly” on March 3, according to an online obituary post by his family last week. He was survived by his parents and brother. The obituary gave no details about the cause of his death.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3mb89/ivermectin-danny-lemoi-death?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

IVERMECTIN SIDE EFFECTS

Adverse side effects from taking Ivermectin, which occur 1-10% of the time with standard doses, include rapid heart rate, swelling of face, swelling of feet, low blood pressure, dizziness, diarrhea, nausea, decreased white blood cell counts, and hepatitis.

Donald Trump receives regular briefings about several legal cases that appear to be closing in around him. At Mar-a-Lago, he has taken to griping about the man overseeing two chief federal inquiries, special counsel Jack Smith.

Trump has also been “keeping tabs” on a contingent of aides that have testified in front of two grand juries convened in the inquiries Smith is conducting into Trump’s handling of highly sensitive documents and his attempt to subvert the 2020 election.

Silicon Valley Bank on Friday paid out annual bonuses to eligible U.S. employees, just hours before the bank was seized by the U.S. government, Axios has learned from multiple sources.

They went ahead with collecting their bonuses, just as the run on their bank reached the crisis stage.

State of play: An unknown number of SVB employees were emailed by the FDIC on Friday evening, offering them employment with the remnant organization for the next 45 days.

• The employees would be compensated 1.5x times their normal salaries, while hourly workers would receive 2x their normal wages for overtime.
• An FDIC spokesperson tells Axios: “Without commenting on salaries, it’s our standard practice to ask retain [sic] bank employees to assist with an orderly transition as part of our resolution process.”

Bankster rules: ‘Heads, you lose, Tails, we win’

Kevin McCarthy had long dreamed of being speaker of the House, and in January he finally held the gavel in his hand. Granted, it took 15 humiliating votes (and a near fistfight), making secret deals with Freedom Caucus holdouts, and sucking up to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, not to mention handing over most of the power of the speakership to the most extreme elements of his party … but he did get a really nice chair. And the gavel.

So, what is the result of that very public self-abasement? A gift to Democrats that just keeps giving and giving. Let’s recap some highlights from the first two months with McCarthy at the helm.

Normally when grading a speaker’s leadership, one would start with legislative accomplishments. But we are talking about McCarthy here, so let’s instead begin with the hearings being held by the maniacs he handed plum committee assignments to.

For example, a vital oversight hearing to finally learn why a social media company kept Republicans from seeing pictures of Hunter Biden’s penis, prompting a group of former Twitter executives to be hauled in and accused of pedophilia, all while getting yelled at for having community moderation, not to mention being threatened with prison time for unspecified crimes. Sadly for Republicans, the most memorable moment was when we learned that Donald Trump was really mad about a celebrity being mean to him on Twitter, with this memorable exchange being officially entered into the Congressional Record:

NAVAROLI: Would you like me to give the direct quote?

FROST: Yeah.

NAVAROLI: Please excuse my language. This is a direct quote, but Chrissy Teigen referred to Donald Trump as a “pussy ass bitch.”

A moment in congressional hearing history unmatched since Watergate, when Alexander Butterfield admitted that Richard Nixon had a recording system in the Oval Office.

Republicans promise that there are plenty more hearings coming down the pike. We can only hope.

More recently, perhaps upset that his House colleagues were grabbing all the headlines, McCarthy decided to step into the spotlight … by giving Tucker Carlson “exclusive” access to 41,000 hours of security footage from the Jan. 6 insurrection, never mind the security concerns. When Carlson aired cherry-picked clips and described the rioters as persecuted tourists, the blowback was immediate. And while McCarthy has tried to defend his decision in the name of “transparency,” the only thing he accomplished was putting the violent attack back into front-page news. And as an added bonus, his new best friend, Greene, is promising to lead a congressional delegation to a Washington, D.C., jail to visit Jan. 6 defendants to expose the “human rights abuses” being perpetuated against those poor, innocent victims. So well played, Mr. Speaker.

In all fairness to McCarthy, there have been legislative victories. Granted, they’ll never see the light of day in the Senate, but an A+ for effort. For example, right out of the gate the Republican-controlled House passed a bill to roll back $72 billion in funding from the IRS—a cut the Congressional Budget Office determined would cost more than $114 billion. They followed that up with the passage of the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act”—a bill so extreme that voters in Montana rejected a similar measure last November—as their first step toward the ultimate goal of a national abortion ban. Way to read the room. And coming soon are their plans to burn down the economy, burn down the planet, and if we’re really lucky, a vote to burn us all with a 23% national sales tax. Good times.

When the “red wave” never materialized in the 2022 midterms, McCarthy made a decision to relinquish whatever ethics and morals he had left, preferring to cave to the extremists in his party, all in pursuit of the speaker’s gavel. What he really handed over was a gift to Democrats.

As we approach the 2024 elections, attacks on abortion, human rights, the economy, and the planet (along with endless hearings for the airing of grievances) are the only accomplishments that McCarthy will be able to point to as “accomplishments.” And Democrats will be right there, pointing out those very same things.