CSotD: Playing with the Queen of Hearts

Jimmy Margulies gets the prize for an apt literary reference as we prepare for the alleged trial of the alleged President.

The issue isn’t so much that the Republicans are in lockstep. That’s been obvious for more than a decade.

 

But Kevin Siers points out that we can skip the references to the Wizard of Oz, because the conman is no longer bothering to hide behind a curtain.

And, really how can you be shocked that they will all take the required oath of neutrality with no intention of keeping it?

After all, they all took an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution with ditto.

 

And so Matt Davies is right, but the issue is not that the GOP has gone totally partisan but that their betrayal of the public interest is so blatant.

You would expect them to put on a show of independent thought, but perhaps there is no need. It’s not that nobody expects them to be ethical, it’s that nobody remembers what they heard yesterday, which brings us to our

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Nick Anderson)

 

(Ann Telnaes)

We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

Did you think there was some exaggeration or metaphor at work when Orwell depicted the ease with which people in “1984” forgot what they’d been told yesterday and embraced what they were told today?

The difference is that, for the moment, we have an active minority of people who do remember what the Republicans said when Trump was running for the nomination, and what they said when it was Clinton facing impeachment.

I suppose some of it is a matter of how you’ve curated your Facebook and Twitter accounts, unfriending people whose beliefs do not line up with your own.

Still, social media has been full of “Old Quote/New Quote” comparisons, and you’d think some of it would get through.

But if it is getting posted where they can see it, it’s not having any impact on the True Believers.

To repeat, it’s why Jimmy Carter’s presidency failed and why Obama’s was not as spectacular as we had hoped: Both assumed that, if they explained things, people would support their policies.

And it’s why the Democrats are fools to pin their impeachment on a somewhat vague bit of Constitutional law rather than on bribing concubines and revealing secrets to the Russians and the laundry list of other, less exotic failures to behave like a President.

Now we’re trying to read the minds of the Founders, with the Republicans insisting that, if Trump did shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, you wouldn’t be able to charge him with it until after he leaves office.

It’s worth noting that the concept of impeachment came from the Iroquois Confederacy, and that the clan mothers could strip a chief of his title simply for not behaving himself with dignity.

Even in a less bureaucratic system, the Oglalas demoted Crazy Horse, who had been a “shirt wearer” — a title of respect and authority — after he got into an adulterous situation and scandalized the community.

Which, by the way, the Republicans once thought was grounds for impeachment, but they’ve changed their minds.

I guess it’s a lot harder to scandalize the community than it used to be.

Not for lack of effort.

 

Which, by the way

I’ve griped about cartoonists who are slow to react to news, but Jeff Stahler appears to have gotten caught jumping the gun on this one, since Hallmark has reversed their decision and issued an apology for pulling an ad that featured a same-sex marriage.

Judging, however, by postings on the topic, it’s a bell they can’t unring and the company is taking a serious hit over this.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall at Hallmark HQ in Kansas City when this hit the fan, because I will bet dollars to doughnuts that the original “pull it” decision was made somewhere down the ladder.

When you’re getting complaints for running the ad, you might not want to wait for the next department head meeting to make a decision, but, boy, I’d have run this one up the chain of command.

I’d love to know at what level some fool thought he was high enough in the hierarchy that he didn’t need to check any higher.

The good part being that it’s probably someone who deserves a kick in the ass anyway.

The bad part being that I’ve seen arrogant people make stupid decisions and, while it may mark them as unpromotable, this isn’t Japan and they won’t have to resign.

Obama remarked the other day that, if all countries were run by women for a couple of years, the world would become a better place.

I’d be satisfied if we left the men in the leadership positions but established a system of clan mothers to keep tabs on them.

 

Meanwhile, back at the sausage factory

Matt Wuerker came up with this a few days ago, but it popped immediately to my mind last night when Katy Tur interviewed Craig Whitlock, the lead reporter on the Washington Post’s coverage of the Afghanistan Papers.

The dishonesty in getting us into that endless, futile war is disturbing without being shocking. We’ve been bullshat before.

But Whitlock repeated for Tur a story he had taken from the papers. MSNBC doesn’t have transcripts up yet, but here’s the quote from the original reporting which inspired Wuerker:

One unidentified contractor told government interviewers he was expected to dole out $3 million daily for projects in a single Afghan district roughly the size of a U.S. county. He once asked a visiting congressman whether the lawmaker could responsibly spend that kind of money back home: “He said hell no. ‘Well, sir, that’s what you just obligated us to spend and I’m doing it for communities that live in mud huts with no windows.’”

Oh, but we can’t afford universal health care or free K-16 education in this country.

Trust your leaders, where mistakes are almost never made.