Superstar Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin discusses January 6 insurrection

U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin

Last night, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland’s 8th Congressional District appeared on a monthly national call by the advocacy group American Promise. Raskin, former law professor at American University, wrote the book Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy about the extraordinary events after his 2020 re-election to Congress. On December 31, 2020 Raskin lost his son to suicide. One week later, Raskin witnessed the January 6, 2021 Republican terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol while Congress was trying to complete the Electoral College vote count to certify the election victory of President Joe Biden. Rep. Raskin is now a member of the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol. Raskin was also Lead counsel for Donald Trump‘s second impeachment trial for inciting what Raskin calls the January 6 “coup.”

Here are some highlights from the call with Rep. Raskin:

President Biden goes on the offensive against Putin

President Biden: tough on Russia

It has been approximately 49 days since Russia attacked Ukraine at the direction of Vladimir Putin. In recent days, President Joe Biden has changed his approach to the invasion. Specifically, President Biden’s is taking a more aggressive tack towards Russia. Here are three things that Biden is doing and saying that show his new course of action:

Republicans overreach, fall on their faces in Ketanji Brown Jackson Supreme Court confirmation

The U.S. Supreme Court just became more diverse

President Joe Biden‘s historic campaign promise came to fruition yesterday, as the U.S. Senate confirmed Biden’s nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, as the first black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. The final vote was 53-47, including three Republicans. However, Jackson’s confirmation process revealed as much about the Republican Party as it did about the supremely qualified judge. It would be an understatement to say that Senate Republicans in particular made themselves look really bad.

Of course, in any Supreme Court confirmation process of the past 30 years or more, Republican Senators (as well as Democrats to some degree) can be expected to score political points and serve red meat to their respective bases, often with written statements and purported “questions” during the confirmation hearing that read like speeches. These statements frequently are turned into campaign ads and fundraising requests. This time, however, the Republicans took that tactic far into Bizarro Land, and shot themselves in the foot.

A tale of two headlines

Mickey Mouse, caught in another controversy

On Monday, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed a controversial bill dubbed “Don’t Say ‘Gay.'” The bill earned this moniker because, according to the Tampa Bay Times, “it prohibits instruction related to gender identity or sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade and potentially restricts such instruction for older kids.” During the discussion leading up to the bill’s passage, many workers at The Walt Disney Company, a huge presence in Florida with its Walt Disney World theme park and nearby hotels, a shopping mall and other properties, protested Disney’s lack of opposition to the bill, even to the point of walking off the job. Disney has a reputation as a LBGTQ-friendly company, both as to its many employees and to customers, including so-called “Gay Days” at its theme parks. These employees were quite upset, therefore, when Disney did not officially oppose the “Don’t Say Gay” bill as it was being drafted and discussed.

Clarence and Virginia Thomas defrocked as Washington power couple

Pro-seditionist Virginia Thomas

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is missing. But it gets much weirder than that. Thomas was hospitalized a week ago with “flu-like symptoms.” We didn’t hear about that for several days. Since then, there has been no information forthcoming as to Thomas’ condition, or even whether he is still in the hospital. News reports keep referring to “the Supreme Court” saying nothing, but that really means Chief Justice John Roberts, who is in charge of the Court’s administration. Such a wall against information about the health of a top government official is something we might expect from the Kremlin rather than the United States of America. We do know that Thomas missed three Supreme Court oral arguments this week, and did not even participate remotely by video.

Later this week, however, we learned new information that further feeds speculation about Justice Thomas. The Washington Post and CBS News reported yesterday that Thomas’ wife, Virginia, a prominent right-wing activist, “repeatedly pressed [Trump] White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in a series of urgent text exchanges in the critical weeks after the vote.” According to the Post, “the text messages were among 2,320 that Meadows provided to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.” Virginia Thomas even attended the January 6, 2021 rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol. And when Donald Trump‘s phony 2020 election challenges reached the Supreme Court, it rejected hearing the challenges by a vote of 8-1. The lone dissenter was Clarence Thomas.

Arnold Schwarzenegger releases stunning video for Russian citizens and soldiers

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Yesterday, Arnold Schwarzenegger took to his social media to release a striking 9-minute video intended for the people of Russia, and the soldiers of the Russian armed forces. The video can be viewed here on Arnold’s Twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger/status/1504426844199669762

The Atlantic published the transcript of the video here. The premise of Schwarzenegger’s video is that the Russian people are not being told the truth about Vladimir Putin‘s war on Ukraine.

The “expensive gas is the price of freedom” meme is b.s.

Relevant sign once more

Vladimir Putin‘s Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused oil prices to skyrocket. That has in turn caused gasoline prices at the pump to increase sharply. This was entirely predictable. We are having yet another war over oil. Apparently the world has learned little since both Gulf Wars. Indeed, even Japan’s attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor over 80 years ago was largely over oil.

But some folks are saying that “expensive gas is the price of freedom.” This meme can be seen all over social media. For example:

Joe Biden wants bipartisanship — on his terms

President Biden speaking at the Port of Baltimore, November 2021

In his first State of the Union address on Tuesday night, President Joe Biden talked about national unity, and called for bipartisanship between Democrats and Republicans. Biden has been making such appeals for some time. Indeed, Biden and other leading Democrats routinely call the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which Biden signed into law last November, the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” as Biden did again in his SOTU address, giving credit to Republicans as well as Democrats for its passage.

Given that Republicans generally are so uncooperative that some of them boycotted President Biden’s State of the Union address, and others even heckled Biden, why is Biden calling for bipartisanship? Several reasons come to mind:

Deploy the Liberal Shock Doctrine against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Solar power, a better alternative to fascist Russian gas

The Shock Doctrine is the idea that, when disasters or wars strike, conservatives try to use the events to push their existing agenda, such as privatization of important government functions, in response. Republicans have foisted such policies in places as far-flung as Iraq and New Orleans. We have argued that, in turn, Democrats should institute their policies, i.e. a Liberal Shock Doctrine, when they are in power and disasters and wars occur. That might include, for example, stronger gun safety laws after the shock of a mass shooting, or the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, including government stimulus payments and other federal aid, which Congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden successfully brought about in 2021 after Donald Trump‘s inaction in the face of the COVID pandemic plunged the U.S. into a recession in 2020.

Russia‘s shocking and tragic invasion of Ukraine presents another opportunity for the United States, and countries around the world, to create a liberal version of the Shock Doctrine. First, countries can promote the idea of democracy (which is well-represented by Ukraine) instead of fascist dictatorship, exemplified by Russia and Vladimir Putin. But in addition, there is one specific policy that the U.S. and the world should be pushing right now:

Sarah Palin loses gun scope court case as Republican shoots at Gabby Giffords’ husband in ad

The Palin/violence connection runs deep

As we have mentioned on multiple occasions, one of the lowest points in Republican Death Culture politics was Sarah Palin‘s 2010 ad which placed gun scope crosshairs on nearly a score of U.S. Congressional districts, one of which was Arizona’s 8th district, then served by Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords. Palin introduced the ad to her Twitter followers with the gun analogy “Don’t retreat, instead- RELOAD!” Several months later, Rep. Giffords was shot in the head, six others were killed, and another 12 were wounded at Giffords’ outdoor political event in Tuscon.

While it has not been proven that the Arizona shooter was directly prompted by Palin’s gun scope ad, many people made this connection, and felt that the shooting was a natural result of Palin’s ad. Of the numerous pieces written about this, one was a New York Times editorial which stated that “the link … was clear” between Palin’s gun scope ad and the subsequent shooting of Giffords. Palin sued the New York Times for defamation over the editorial, but on Tuesday, she lost her court case. The jury rendered a verdict in favor of the Times after the judge in the case ruled that Palin had failed to prove that the Times had acted with the required element of “actual malice” towards her.

At the same time, however, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon, who is running this year in Arizona against Gabby Giffords’ husband, Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Kelly, has been airing an ugly, violent TV and social media ad. The ad features Lamon shooting at lookalike actors portraying President Joe Biden, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senator Kelly. The dangers here are obvious and almost too ominous to think about.