If it Weren't for Double Standards, They'd Have None at All

People seem surprised that almost all Republican Congressmen voted not to pursue charges against Steve Bannon for not obeying a congressional subpoena to testify on the 1/6 Insurrection. After all, it would be a vote recorded against their own investigative powers. Surely they’ll be able to wield it again someday, like 2022 or 2024? So why would they vote to cut off their own powers?

I know why. Because to the modern Republican politician, there is no consistency of principle, other than “Protect the Rich” and be “against whatever Democrats are for.” (Especially when it might cost the rich.)

Forget about the overlying principles, they’re all about the details of the moment.

“Do I want this now? Yes. Will I be willing to vote against this very thought if I need to, like if the opposition should attempt to use it? Absolutely.”

If the Republicans should find themselves in the majority again and want to run their own investigations, I guarantee you’ll see each one of them speechifying about how sacred is the power of the Congressional subpoena. They won’t even manage a blink of embarrassment.

Look what they do already. They pursue every means at their disposal to prevent women from exercising autonomy over their bodies when it comes to reproductive rights. But life-saving vaccine mandates? They have the audacity to claim that no one can force them to violate the autonomy of their bodies.

See? They have no attachment to the principle of bodily autonomy, they pick and choose when it’s applicable.

We’ve seen it with the Supreme Court nominees. When it serves their purpose, they steamroll their own nominees through a couple weeks before a presidential election. But when it’s the opponent trying to install a justice 10 months out from an election, they clog it up because “The People need to weigh in.” They have no stance on judicial timetables, other than “We do what we want and you can piss off.” If TFG had lost in 2016, Mitch McConnell was prepared to stall SCOTUS nominees for the next four years. They literally have zero shame.

They investigated Hillary every which way but loose. Every time they came up empty, they just started a new investigation, eventually culminating in an 11-hour marathon testimony. But do any of their guys cooperate, with say, impeachment and Insurrection investigations? Nope. See those are “biased” and “just Democrats playing politics.” Eleven Benghazi investigations? Nah, those were about National Security.

And when TFG and his family turned out to use their own private email networks, and used unsecured personal smartphones, just like Hillary was accused of doing? That’s just business as usual. Because it’s only a big deal when a Democrat does something. The principle of using secure communications networks? Irrelevant if it’s a Republican, national security crisis if it’s a Democrat.

I hope the current Insurrection Investigation continues to show its teeth. Although if the Justice Department doesn’t, it’ll all be a big waste of time. There has to be a penalty for purposefully creating an unlawful breeching of government walls for the purpose of forcibly changing the result of a lawful election. If there’s not, then we’re in for a Constitutional crisis and Civil War within the next 10 years.

Debunkery

Mice don’t understand the concept of a lot of things, so I wouldn’t make that the lynchpin of a political argument. What the writer doesn’t understand is that we already have a society rife with socialism, mostly for the benefit of the rich. How does changing the focus of the benefits from rich to everyone else make it become something to be avoided? (Actually, I’m sure the writer DOES understand, but his job is to distract people from catching on to the fact that the rich are being catered to at the expense of everyone else.)

You can see Fox “News” is still flogging gas prices as a measure of poor performance by Biden. This shirt is in the same vein.

Whoever voted for Trump owes an apology to the hundreds of thousands unnecessarily dead from COVID. That was the cost of your cheap gas last year.

As I’ve mentioned before, any comparisons to prices of anything last year are vastly misleading. The price of gas cratered in 2020 because of a lack of demand as people were isolating themselves due to The ‘Rona. That’s supply and demand. When there’s no demand, the price drops. When the demand comes back, the price rises.

Who the fuck do these people think they’re kidding? We all remember last year. We saw how when we dared to venture out, traffic was always light.

Can anyone explain to me what actions Biden took that directly affected gas prices? I mean, for all the talk of transition from fossil fuels, nothing has passed Congress yet, so there’s been no tangible activity.

Are they really going to denigrate Biden because he dared to tackle COVID head-on and reduce the risk of serious or fatal infection? I’m sure TFG would have the price of gas under a dollar by now because so many more would be dead or deathly ill. Would that be better?

Actually, to many Republicans, I’m sure it would. “Better that I get cheap gas than millions of others to get sick and suffer or die.”

More Dad Stories

My father passed away in September so I've been concluding my posts with "Dad Stories."

I wrote this up in 2012:

My dad is a nut.  You know… the good kind.

Remember when I posted about Dad picking his first orange from a tree in his yard?  Well, he’s having a go at figs now. 

It’s an Italian thing… our families often have fig trees.  I’ve never been a big fig eater, but I do acknowledge their importance in the making of Fig Newtons.  But my grandpa used to have a fig tree so Dad was brought up to enjoy figgy treats.

Up north, there’s a whole thing where you have to bury them in the winter to save them from the cold.  Then you dig them up again in the spring.  Fortunately for my dad, that’s not necessary in Florida.  So a while back, he went out and bought a fig tree to add to his burgeoning orange grove.

Over the weekend, he sent the following email, in celebration of his first fig harvest:

“After a long hot harvest season, I hired many pickers, helping the unemployment problem and the economy.  Here it is.”

He sent pictures too, of course.

The last one kills me… setting up the place setting for one freakin’ fig.  It’s totally something I would do, so now you know why.

Obviously, I had to respond to the email, so I wrote back, “Glad your crops came in.  Now go fig yourself.”

That’s just a fig-ure of speech.

Then in Comments, Mom told the rest of the story:

"You would have liked his encounter with the Cardinal, which happened one evening as we sipped drinks on the porch.  

"...blahblahbla...whaaa! OH! The bastard is...eating our FIG!!!!" 

He jumps up, runs around the pool, yelling and swatting. Of course, the poor bird fled and Dad returned, smiling, with one fig with a big beak hole. It was delicious."

Actually, I was relieved that when he told me a cardinal stole his fig because I imagined worse: