It’s someone else’s fault

I’ve written about how the Senate can have a GOP majority that represents a minority of Americans. Here’s another take on it by Stephen Wolf and Daily Kos Elections. Wolf discussed a spreadsheet the team made showing that since 1990 only one election cycle – those elected in 1996 – did Republican senators represent a majority of the population. The rest of the time there were more Democratic votes for senators, even when the GOP was in the majority in the chamber. It got as high as 58% of voters voting for Democrats yet the GOP has a one vote majority. Wolf discussed some of this history, such as splitting the Dakota Territory into two states back around 1890. He also discussed some ways out of the situation (though he didn’t mention my favorite of separating senate districts from state boundaries). One of them is to admit Washington DC and Puerto Rico as states. All the other ideas (including my favorite) require a change to the Constitution, which the GOP would oppose and could prevent. Dominion is a company that makes vote tabulation machines. The Big Lie accused Dominion machines of switching votes for Biden when they are more secure than their competitor and it was harder to make black votes disappear. Dominion has filed suit against Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, who has urged the nasty guy to overturn the election and claim the win. Laura Clawson of Kos filled in the details of the $1.3 billion suit of voting machines v. pillows that isn’t as strange as it sounds. Dartagnan of the Kos community lists the latest examples of conservatives always declaring it’s someone else’s fault. This from the party that spends so much time talking about personal responsibility. GOP leaders in Texas blamed the Texas freeze and blackout on the Green New Deal (which is not law). The Capitol attack was blamed on Antifa. The nasty guy blamed his election loss on fraud. The lack of federal response to the pandemic through all last year and the current half million dead was blamed on China and the World Health Organization. The sagging economy was blamed on Democratic governors who insisted on lockdowns to protect citizens. Black Lives Matter protests are blamed on black people. And there is so much more. Dartagnan concluded:

Just once, I’d like to hear a conservative say, “Man, we really f*cked up,” or “Totally our fault, folks,” or “We made a big mistake here.” But that may never happen. Because being a member of the “personal responsibility” party means you’re never, ever responsible for anything.

Clawson reported that Biden’s Cabinet nominees who aren’t white men are having a tough time in Congress. That includes some Democrats who have “remaining questions” even though those same senators voted for some despicable nominees from the nasty guy. The nominees being held up are Deb Haaland (native and female) for Interior, Xavier Becerra (Latino) for Health and Human Services, Vanita Gupta (Indian American) for associate attorney general, and Kristen Clarke (black and female) to head the civil rights division at Justice. Mark Sumner of Kos reported that the Supreme Court, whom the nasty guy helped to stack, refused to hear his case to keep his tax returns out of the hands of investigators, such as Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance. The nasty guy is, of course, infuriated and their refusal. He will likely file more suits, though with this refusal he’s less likely to get his way in lower courts. Sumner reviews how much of a crook the nasty guy is and has been. Then he wrote:

So, the Supreme Court allowing this to move forward does seem like the opening day of Justice Season. Only, before visions of Trump wearing clothing even more orange than his bronzer start dancing through anyone’s head, there are a few things to remember. Trump has already been “caught” over and over. See above where Trump was found to have swindled retired couples out of their last dimes, used money that was supposed to go to disabled vets to commission self-portraits, and was convicted of money laundering 106 times. Finding that Donald Trump has committed a crime is the legal equivalent of discovering that there is a “y” in the word “day.” It would be nice to think that Vance, or New York Attorney General Letitia James, were going to grab Trump by his ludicrous comb-over and drag him straight to a cell in some state prison that does not even have a putting green. But it’s extremely unlikely. Because the laws really are set up so that Trump’s 500 legal fictions provide a buffer between his actions and consequences. Should it turn out that Trump Airline’s Moving and Storage Leasing Agency has stolen millions in taxpayer funds by claiming false deductions and purposefully misreporting values of everything from helicopters to helipad-topped skyscrapers, the likely outcome is that one of these fictional entities will pay a fine. Should Trump be charged in connection with the crimes committed by Cohen, expect the worst outcome to be a flood of fundraising emails. “Help me fight off my Democratic enemies in the greatest Political Witch Hunt Ever in the History of …” Etc.

There are a lot of tweets aimed at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Just as Texas was freezing over he was spotted going to Cancún. Lately, he was seen doing things on his phone as the former chief of the Capitol Police testified about the attack. I’ll link to only one such tweet, at the end of this thread, Strangely, Twitter has declared it to be “sensitive.”