Thursday, January 26, 2023

A Day In The Life

What would such a bill even do? Suspend Medicare payments for in-home Covid tests (so Rick Scott can say Democrats cut Medicare, again?)? Cancel all healthcare for Covid patients? Purely legislative theater? A futile and stupid gesture that probably won’t get beyond a vote on the House floor? Well, that narrative just got more complicated: "Corrupt" = "whatever helps Democrats." Anything that makes it easier for people to vote makes it harder for Republicans to gain control. QED. Yeah, but the Trump story is old and boring. The media needs a new, shiny thing to chase. That’s pretty much how news works. Old gossip is old; new gossip is shiny bright! I wonder if attendance was mandatory? But everyone criticizes journalists, so they must be doing something right! Right? Yeah, but…his documents! Mike Pence is running Florida? Who knew? (Men: no loud suits or loose t-shirts. Women: no exposed limbs or dรฉcolletรฉ. Seems fair.)
As flagged by Daily Mail politics reporter Morgan Philips, Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) this week passed out some grenades to his fellow Republicans along with a note encouraging them to be cooperative and diligent. 
"Welcoming you to a mission-oriented 118th Congress," the letter begins. "I am eager to get to work for the American people, and I look forward to working with you to deliver on this commitment." 
Mills then explained the significance of the grenades he was handing out with the letter. 
"In that spirit, it is my pleasure to give you a 40mm grenade, made for a MK19 grenade launcher," he wrote. "These are manufactured in the Sunshine State and first developed for the Vietnam War."
Maybe we can get Florida to secede? No comment. Bill Barr replaces John Mitchell as the most corrupt USAG in modern history:
Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it. 
Mr. Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued. 
There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known. The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)

The entire endeavor was unethical; in the legal, not just the moral, sense. In a just world Durham and Barr would lose their licenses; at least.

Well, that’s better. A reminder that Nehls last job was as a sheriff, which also has no requirements for employment. Redemption is not a concept the GOP is going to embrace; but it’s still a good concept. Sometimes it’s a good concept. Schadenfreude.

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