If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky

Laura Clawson of Daily Kos reported on the House Oversight Committee hearings on statehood for Washington, DC. Democrats stuck to the facts, such as there are more residents in DC who don’t have representation in Congress than in the states of Vermont and Wyoming, who do. The GOP didn’t have facts. And some of their reasoning was quite comical. Rep. Jody Hice: DC “would be the only state, the only state, without an airport, without a car dealership, without a capital city, without a landfill.” Rep. Ralph Norman: “They have no source of income. In South Carolina, we have farming. In South Carolina, we have mining. The new state of Washington will have none of that.” Sen. Mike Rounds: “The Founding Fathers never intended for Washington D.C. to be a state. #DCStatehood is really about packing the Senate with Democrats in order to pass a left-wing agenda.” To that last one Jemele Hill responded: “They also never intended for black people to be counted as citizens or human beings, for women to vote and for anyone who wasn’t a White man to own property. Pro tip: Compete for votes with better ideas, instead of creating agendas based on alienation and hatred.” The comments to Clawson’s post have at it. Mother Mags: “Landfill? Have they checked the GOP Senate? Lots of trash there, and not biodegradable.” Joe Buck: “One car dealership, one vote, the way the founding fathers wanted.” Anonymous: If car dealerships is a standard for statehood, then 46 states would not have qualified when they did. The same for airports. Then scroll down to the cartoon about what the Founding Fathers intended. The obvious name for the new state would be Columbia. However, I heard the statehood bill specifies a different name, though I don’t remember what. After pondering it a bit I realized why. Columbia refers, of course, to Christopher Columbus. And he’s not the darling of American history he used to be. Now he’s more of the villain who caused great destruction to the indigenous people. Sidney Powell was one of the nasty guy lawyers who pushed the Big Lie in court. At the time she vowed to “release the Kraken.” Dominion, the company that makes voting systems and was accused of switching votes to Biden (because their system makes it difficult to make black votes disappear), has sued her for $1.3 billion. The reason is her lies cost them business. Darrell Lucus of the Kos community reported that Powell, wanting to dismiss the suit, is now singing a different tune. Her reason for seeking dismissal: “no reasonable person” would believe her claims. My reaction to that comment: Then a great number of unreasonable people did believe her lies and they caused and continue to cause a great deal of damage to our country. That includes several deaths. She needs to be accountable for her comments, reasonable or not. Lucus included tweets from various people responding to Powell’s statement. Some of them: Rep. Ted Lieu:

This shows Sidney Powell views supporters of the former President and @GOP legislators as unreasonable, that only stupid people would have believed her election fraud statements. Problem is, many Republican legislators continue to wrongly believe the election was stolen.

Eve Fairbanks:

This makes me violently angry. My own *mother* believed Sidney Powell. I'm so angry people like Powell claim they are "the patriots." They hate America. This woman thinks her country is a toy--to be played with, snapped in half, and then discarded as soon as it no longer charms.

Kimberly Atkins:

Sooo... she’s admitting to lying in sworn court pleadings, in which case she should be disbarred and sanctioned.

Kathleen Belew tweeted about the grocery store shooting in Boulder, Colorado:

The Boulder suspect was born three days before the Columbine shooting. That's how long we've failed to take action.

Robert Maguire tweeted a video clip of Justice Warren Burger speaking in 1991. Maguire added this text:

Former conservative Chief Justice of Supreme Court Warren Burger: The 2nd Amendment "has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime"

Aysha Qamar of Kos added to the discussion about the way to respect Asians is to learn to pronounce their names correctly. Or at least try. In an attempt to fit in she let others consistently mispronounce her name, frequently “Alisha,” or give her a nickname. She sees this now as a microagression. She learned if fellow students call her by a nickname many times the teachers did too.

For those of you who are wondering, my first name is pronounced Eye-Sh-Ah, and my last Ka-Maar, not Ku-Maar—there’s no U. ... As Orange Is The New Black actress Uzo Aduba eloquently reiterates in her mother’s words: “If they can learn to say Tchaikovsky and Michelangelo and Dostoyevsky, they can learn to say Uzoamaka.”

The comic strip Frazz took on the phrase “the new normal” last Sunday. Caulfield noted “By the time we know something is normal, it won’t be new.”