President Biden, Speaker McCarthy both insist that the U.S. will not default on its debts

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Neither very convincingly. Anybody on a fixed income, spend as little as possible right now, and prepare to be scapegoated on an epic scale. A projected seven million workers will lose their jobs, and will also be scapegoated. The country is going straight to Hell. {CNBC 5/17}

Copyright 2023, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 and @FloydEtcetera on TWITTER, and at the same handles on FACEBOOK. MASTODON - @ArthurNewhook@mastodon.world, and POST - @arthurnewhook.

Spineless Speaker Kevin McCarthy still will not call on proven fraud George Santos to resign from the House, even after Santos is indicted on federal charges

Andrew Harnik/AP

Republicans appear poised to stop at nothing in their war with President Biden over the debt ceiling limit. Cutting aid to veterans, and Social Security and Medicare recipients, trumps (pun intended) any ethical considerations. FTA: ‘While an association with Mr. Santos may be a political drag on Republicans, the impact of his resignation would pose a challenge for leadership. With a slim majority in the House and a fight over the debt ceiling looming, Mr. McCarthy cannot afford to lose Mr. Santos’s vote. The speaker only narrowly passed a bill last month to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts, with no Republican votes to spare and Mr. Santos in the “yes” column.’ {NYT 5/10}

Florida: ‘Conservation groups across the Southeast United States are urging Gov. DeSantis to veto a bill that would allow the use of radioactive fertilizer waste in road construction across the state.’ {WFTV 5/08}

Louisville, KY: U.S. Labor Department fines three McDonald’s franchises for child labor violations. {AP 5/03}

Copyright 2023, Arthur Newhook. @Sunking278 and @FloydEtcetera on TWITTER, and at the same handles on FACEBOOK. MASTODON - @ArthurNewhook@mastodon.world, and POST - @arthurnewhook.

Trump using his lackeys to jockey for 2024 positioning, while the House Minority Leader is caught on tape saying that he would ask Trump to resign and that Trump acknowledged ‘some responsibility’ for January 6

Evan Vucci/AP/Shutterstock

NEW YORK TIMES - McCarthy said Trump acknowledged ‘some responsibility’ for Jan. 6: New audio captures what Representative Kevin McCarthy said to Republicans shortly after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol

I do not believe for a second that Trump, even privately, has ever taken responsibility for his obvious, central role in inciting these yahoos to sedition. Kevin McCarthy was likely speaking out of his ass on these tapes, making up a story on the fly that he figured would placate nervous Republicans in the immediate wake of the Capitol Hill riot. God help us if this inept, two-faced slimebag becomes Speaker of the House. McCarthy, in the heat of the moment, may or may not have asked Trump to resign, but there was little point to that as only days remained in Trump’s term. Since then, however, Kevin McCarthy and the majority of House GOP have done nothing but obstruct any efforts to hold Trump and his various cronies and sycophants accountable, while the party becomes more overtly Fascist in their policy and rhetoric. Excerpt -

Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, told G.O.P. lawmakers in the days after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that former President Donald J. Trump acknowledged that he bore “some responsibility” for what happened that day, new audio revealed.

The audio obtained by The New York Times that emerged on Friday is part of a series of new revelations about Republican leaders’ private condemnations of Mr. Trump in the days after his supporters stormed the Capitol as part of an effort to stop the certification of electoral votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“Let me be very clear to all of you, and I have been very clear to the president: he bears responsibilities for his words and actions,” Mr. McCarthy said on the call, which took place on Jan. 11. “No if, ands or buts.”

“I asked him personally today, does he hold responsibility for what happened?” Mr. McCarthy said. “Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened and he’d need to acknowledge that.”

Mr. McCarthy’s assertion is at odds with the former president’s refusal, then and now, to accept responsibility for the deadly attack. It illustrates the vast gulf between the private, derisive tone Republican leaders use about the former president and their public flattery of the de facto leader of their party.

Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. McCarthy was asked in a news conference earlier this year about the call with House Republicans after the attack. He sidestepped the question: “I’m not sure what call you’re talking about.”

The New York Times on Thursday reported that Mr. McCarthy told Republicans he planned to urge Mr. Trump to resign. The reporting is based on the upcoming book “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future.”

Mr. McCarthy disputed that reporting, but in an audio clip obtained by The Times of a different phone call with Republican lawmakers, Mr. McCarthy said he would tell Mr. Trump of the impeachment resolution: “I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign.” (Read more)

Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Jenna Ellis speaks out against DeSantis’ war on Mickey Mouse, offers to defend Disney in court - When even a shameless grifter, and certified cultist thinks you’ve gone too far and there is no benefit to be had, that says something. Likely, it says she is a Trump loyalist, and perhaps Trump is realizing this culture war nonsense may ultimately backfire badly on the GOP. More to the point, he is seeking to neuter any internal opposition prior to 2024, and DeSantis has been making a lot of noise of late. These Republicans are going so far off the deep end that Trump may appear as a relatively reasonable alternative to those on the fence in two years. Which may be how he is going to position himself between now and then, seeing as this is not a sane society and he is not going to prison as he would be if this were a sane place. (Newsweek 4/22)

Copyright 2022, Sunking278. Stay up-to-date: Twitter – @Sunking278 and Facebook – click here. DONATIONS - click here.

The GOP is full of s**t

Photo: NYT

The base - egged-on by cult leader Donald J. Trump - rejected reality and embraced Fascism. So, the GOP did as well. With Putin’s Russia as their role model, there doesn’t appear to be any going back now. The New York Times -

In the hours and days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, rattled Republican lawmakers knew exactly who was to blame: Donald J. Trump. Loyal allies began turning on him. Top Republicans vowed to make a full break from his divisive tactics and dishonesties. Some even discussed removing him from office.

By spring, however, after nearly 200 congressional Republicans had voted to clear Mr. Trump during a second impeachment proceeding, the conservative fringes of the party had already begun to rewrite history, describing the Capitol riot as a peaceful protest and comparing the invading mob to a “normal tourist visit,” as one congressman put it.

This past week, amid the emotional testimony of police officers at the first hearing of a House select committee, Republicans completed their journey through the looking-glass, spinning a new counternarrative of that deadly day. No longer content to absolve Mr. Trump, they concocted a version of events in which those accused of rioting were patriotic political prisoners and Speaker Nancy Pelosi was to blame for the violence.

Their new claims, some voiced from the highest levels of House Republican leadership, amount to a disinformation campaign being promulgated from the steps of the Capitol, aimed at giving cover to their party and intensifying the threats to political accountability.

This rendering of events — together with new evidence that Mr. Trump had counted on allies in Congress to help him use a baseless allegation of corruption to overturn the election — pointed to what some democracy experts see as a dangerous new sign in American politics: Even with Mr. Trump gone from the White House, many Republicans have little intention of abandoning the prevarication that was a hallmark of his presidency.

Rather, as the country struggles with the consequences of Mr. Trump’s assault on the legitimacy of the nation’s elections, leaders of his party — who, unlike the former president, have not lost their political or rhetorical platforms — are signaling their willingness to continue, look past or even expand his assault on the facts for political gain.

The phenomenon is not uniquely American.

Copyright 2021, Sunking278. Stay up-to-date: Twitter – @Sunking278 and Facebook – click here.