Month: January 2023

Repubs Show Their True Colors

You heard and even may have voted for the GOP because of those lame promises and now there are a few incidents in state legislatures that show the true colors of the policies of the Republicans.

Take Missouri for an example.

Legislators in the Missouri House of Representatives sparred on Wednesday over a Republican amendment to regulate what types of clothing women lawmakers should be permitted to wear while at work.

House Resolution 11 was cleared by the GOP-dominated Consent and House Procedure Committee. And while it has not yet been submitted to the Missouri State Senate, passionate arguments have burbled from assemblymembers on both sides of the political aisle.

State Representative Raychel Proudie (D-53rd District), for example, lambasted the proposal as inherently absurd, overtly sexist, and unworthy of consideration:

I want you all to pay particular attention, because there’s going to be times on this floor where there are things that should not require debate and comment. I contend that these are one of these things. There are times to have your name said, to be recognized, to be called upon. This is not one of those things. There are some very serious things that are in this rule package that I think we should be debating, but instead, we are fighting again for women’s right to choose something. And this time is how she covers herself and the interpretation of someone who has no background in fashion, because – again, this isn’t a shot – it’s inappropriate to wear sequins before five o’clock telling me that I can’t wear a crispy, good St. John sweater if it has too many buttons. I spend $1200 on a suit, and I can’t wear it in the people’s House because someone who doesn’t have the range tells me that it’s inappropriate.

https://www.alternet.org/you-brought-this-floor-lady/

Typical example of the backwards thinking of the GOP.

Let’s move on to North Carolina….

It’s been almost seven years since North Carolina Republican lawmakers and then-Gov. Pat McCrory hastily concocted and enacted House Bill 2 – the infamous “bathroom bill.” It targeted transgender people for ignorant, mean-spirited and altogether absurd discrimination, while simultaneously making the state the target of numerous boycotts and countless late-night TV one-liners.

The bill was later repealed but its legacy – as an embarrassment to be forgotten as quickly as possible for most people, and as a proud rallying point for the state’s religious right fringe (and reactionary culture warriors everywhere), lingers on. Across the country, efforts to make life harder for transgender people, and even to criminalize efforts to provide them medically necessary healthcare, continue apace. North Carolina state Treasurer Dale Folwell has been an especially avid and energetic devotee of this brand of discrimination.

Now, however, one of the chief architects of the HB 2 disaster, state House Speaker Tim Moore, is back with a new and very different – but equally absurd – kind of bathroom bill, or to be more precise, bathroom rule. And this one too appears to have been fueled by the never-sated demands of right-wing social crusaders.

https://www.rawstory.com/north-carolina-bathroom-bill/

More insanity instead of reality….

Then there is the idiot in New Jersey and his view on books….

A freshman lawmaker from Wyoming has already begun efforts to remove LGBTQ+ books for youth from both school and public libraries in the state.

Republican Rep.-elect Jeanette Ward has introduced House Bill 87, which expands the definition of “child pornography” to mean “any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, cartoon, drawing, computer or computer generated image or picture, whether or not made or produced by electronic, mechanical or other means, or any other form of depiction of explicit sexual conduct.”

The bill also repeals a law that gives exemptions for those who “possess or disseminate obscene material” for activities related to schools, universities, colleges, museums, and public libraries.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/01/republican-wants-expand-definition-child-pornography-make-easier-ban-lgbtq-books/

My final report is from Texas (go figure)….

A Texas Republican wants to make foods containing material from aborted human fetuses “clearly and conspicuously labeled” — even though such products do not exist.

The proposed law, authored by state Sen. Bob Hall, says food and medicine would have to be labeled if it contained or was manufactured with human fetal tissue or if it was the product of research that used such tissue. The bill defines human fetal tissue as “tissue, cells, or organs obtained from an aborted unborn child.”

“Unfortunately, many Texans are unknowingly consuming products that either contain human fetal parts or were developed using human fetal parts,” read a statement from Hall’s office. “While some may not be bothered by this, there are many Texans with religious or moral beliefs that would oppose consumption or use of these products.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not allow the sale of foods containing human tissue.

“There are no conditions under which the FDA would consider human fetal tissue to be safe or legal for human or animal consumption,” an agency spokesperson wrote in an email to HuffPost.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-republican-wants-food-made-of-aborted-fetuses-labeled_n_63c7232ae4b07c0c7df8904b

Another one of those lame ass conspiracies that only an idiot would embrace….but then this country is full of those types.

As you can see these have nothing to do with the promises made….and yet they are re-electable….what?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

David Crosby–R.I.P.

One of may favorite groups back in the day was CSN&Y…..sad news from the music world….David Crosby of that same group has died….age 81….

David Crosby, a singer-songwriter and founding member of two hugely influential and successful folk-rock groups—the Byrds and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young—has died. He was 81. His family announced his death Thursday, saying only that it came after a long illness. Crosby had remained active on Twitter up until Wednesday, Variety reports, when he joked about heaven, posting, “I heard the place is overrated… cloudy.” And he’d released an album, Live at the Capitol Theater, last month. Crosby, who contributed to both groups’ intricate and sublime harmonies, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice, once with each band.

Crosby grew up in Los Angeles. His father, Floyd, was an Academy Award-winning cinematographer, per Rolling Stone. He took a brief spin at college, then pursued a music career, starting as a solo act in folk clubs. He joined a band in 1964, when the Beatles had made bands all the rage, that already included Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark. Two incarnations later, the Jet Set were the Byrds, to which Crosby added his signature harmony on such hits as “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” As a songwriter, he was overshadowed by McGuinn and Clark, who fired him in 1967 as tensions in the band escalated. They gave him a list of reasons, including his songwriting, and said he was impossible to work with. “All of which is partly true, I’m sure, sometimes,” Crosby later said, adding, “But it was a drag.”

At Joni Mitchell’s house a few months later, Crosby ran into Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. They sang a song together three times, learning how their voices could best blend in harmony. “When we sang that third time,” Nash later said, “my life changed.” The first Crosby, Stills & Nash album came out in May 1969 with three songs written or co-written by Crosby: “Guinnevere,” “Wooden Ships,” and “Long Time Gone.” The record was a hit, and the group began a tour after adding Neil Young. Their second concert ever was at Woodstock, in front of an audience of almost 500,000. In his memoir, Crosby wrote: “For that one moment we did something that tells you what’s possible with human beings. … Woodstock was a time where were was a prevailing feeling of harmony.”

His voice and his music will be missed….in memory of his music…..

You will be missed….and thank you for great memories.

Today Is The Day!

Hold your breathe for today is going to be interesting….or even comical….either way the theater will be massive…..

Today’s a milestone day for the Treasury Department, though it’s one it had hoped wouldn’t arrive. Thursday marks when the United States is expected to hit its $31.4 trillion debt cap, a borrowing limit set by Congress that means Treasury will now have to get creative with other ways to pay the nation’s bills. Per the New York Times, the development is expected to set off a contentious debt-ceiling fight between Democrats, who want to lift the cap, and Republicans, who say no way unless President Biden OKs significant spending cuts. “At a moment of heightened partisanship and divided government, it is … a warning of the entrenched partisan battles that are set to dominate Washington in the months to come, and that could end in economic shock,” the paper notes. More on what’s ahead:

  • A feud that may ‘cross the Rubicon’: That’s how Axios paints the “fraught and perilous” debate, in which it anticipates neither side will do much negotiating. That’s not good news when the US is perched on the precipice of a recession. The outlet notes it could also be “an avatar of what some have argued is a US democracy that’s become increasingly polarized, ungovernable, incapable of tackling major challenges—and could be on the verge of outright destabilization.”
  • What it means for Americans: CNN notes that “every American could feel the pain” of what’s to come, and USA Today delves further into the ways the debt-ceiling fight could impact our finances, from how it will affect tax refunds and 401(k) accounts to what it means for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
  • What it means for investors: The New York Times offers its take on where to put your money during such turbulent times. One takeaway: Sticking with stocks and bonds over the long haul will probably serve you well.
  • Looking to the past for precedent: CNN takes a look back at other debt standoffs, including in 1995, when the debt was a mere $4.9 trillion. NPR, meanwhile, talks to two key players during the 2011 debt-ceiling impasse—Jason Furman, an economic adviser to then-President Obama, and Rohit Kumar, an adviser to Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican that year—to see if there are lessons to be gleaned.
  • But this isn’t 2011: Participants in a roundtable discussion at the Times note that things are very different than they were a decade ago—including “a worrying trend of edging closer and closer to red lines because lawmakers think there’s political benefit and that there won’t actually be consequences.” In other words, it’s become a high-stakes game of chicken that could have far-reaching repercussions.

Let the games begin!

House GOP will inflict as much pain as they can on Americans…..

Thursday, January 19, 2023 as the day the United States is likely to reach its debt limit, although she has also said that she can keep the federal government open through June by resorting to “extraordinary measures.” Yellen has stressed that the sooner Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House of Republicans can reach some type of agreement on the debt ceiling, the better. But the two major parties appear to be at a stalemate in the House, where Freedom Caucus and Tea Party Republicans are demanding major spending cuts and Democrats are maintaining that vital programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid should not be on the chopping block.

Meanwhile, countless economists are warning that if the U.S. defaults on its debt obligations, the results would be disastrous economically and trigger a painful recession. Liberal economist Paul Krugman, in his New York Times column, has warned that House Republicans are happy to risk a financial calamity in the hope of butchering Social Security and Medicare. And Never Trump conservative Charlie Sykes has argued that House Republicans aren’t being “fiscally conservative” when they play “chicken” with the U.S. economy and risk a default on the United States’ debt obligations — they’re being reckless and irresponsible.

https://www.alternet.org/debt-ceiling-2659280721/

May I suggest that you invest in some Vaseline and just bend over….for the Repubs are coming.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

House Sets It’s Priorities

A new Congress, a new GOP lead House and a new speaker…..and now the majority, GOP, sets its priorities for the new Congress session……

Is it fiscal policies….nope

It mostly centers around the Orange man from Florida….Donald Trump.

Republicans knew better than to make their biggest messaging bill a public display of affection for moneyed criminals. But Trump currently faces both legal and political trouble from his long and storied history of tax fraud. Shortly after the House vote, the Trump Organization’s former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, was sentenced to prison time for his role in Trump’s tax evasion schemes. While Weisselberg’s stiff sentence likely reflects his willingness to take the fall for Trump’s crimes, as Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center lawyer Steven Rosenthal told Mother Jones this week, the Trump tax returns released by House Democrats in December make clear that’s not the only tax trouble Trump still faces. He’s never gotten nailed for any of his likely tax cheating because Trump “overwhelmed” the under-resourced IRS. In other words, the Biden law is designed to catch lawbreakers of precisely the Trump variety. So consider this first bill of the House GOP majority — which will thankfully go nowhere — as a love letter to their favorite crooked ex-president. 

For instance, one of the first changes McCarthy pushed through the House involved a series of rules meant to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent body empowered to investigate complaints about members of Congress. It’s no mystery why this is a top priority for so many Republicans in Congress. Multiple GOP members have been under suspicion for the role they played in the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, and four were referred to the (now also defanged) House Ethics Committee by the Jan. 6 select committee last year. The Office of Congressional Ethics isn’t under Republican control, which means there’s a very real chance it could have found evidence of sedition-related crimes. Now, effectively disempowered, it may not get the chance.

(salon.com)

Then there are those impeachments of Trump and McCarthy has made it known his thoughts.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Thursday that he would consider expunging one or both of former President Trump’s impeachments.

“I would understand why members would want to bring that forward,” McCarthy said in response to a question at a press conference on Thursday, before listing off several other key priorities for House Republicans. 

“But I understand why individuals want to do it, and we’d look at it,” he added.

In the last Congress, a group of more than 30 House Republicans led by Rep. Markwayne Mullin (Okla.) put forward a resolution to expunge Trump’s impeachment in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The resolution was supported by the fourth-ranking Republican in the House, Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (N.Y.).

A smaller group, again led by Mullin, also introduced a resolution to expunge Trump’s December 2019 impeachment for allegedly attempting to withhold military aid from Ukraine in an effort to pressure the country to investigate the business dealings of President Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

The Senate ultimately acquitted Trump in both impeachments, after failing to reach the two-thirds majority required to convict him.

(thehill.com)

Was there any doubt in the direction that McCarthy and the rest of the slugs in the GOP would travel?

Not for me

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–18Jan23

Illinois has become another state in the Union to make history…..they have banned a lethal obsession of its citizens….

Illinois on Tuesday became the latest U.S. state to ban the sale or possession of assault weapons.

Just hours after the legislation’s passage in both chambers of the Illinois General Assembly, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the “Protect Illinois Communities Act” into law during a ceremony at the State Capitol in Springfield. Supporters, some of whom were gun violence survivors, erupted with applause and cheers as the governor presented the signed document.

The new law bans assault weapons, including some semiautomatic firearms, along with high-capacity magazines and rapid-firing devices.

“For a long time now, I and many other leaders in the Illinois General Assembly have prioritized getting the most dangerous weapons off our state’s streets,” Pritzker said in a statement Tuesday. “Today, honoring the commitment we made, we passed one of the strongest assault weapons bans in the nation, one I will be proud to sign.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden “commends the leadership of Illinois … and the numerous advocates, survivors, and elected officials whose tireless efforts turned the pain of Highland Park and other acts of gun violence into meaningful action on behalf of all Illinoisans.”

Nine U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C., now prohibit the sale or possession of military-style weapons, driven largely by deadly mass shootings in their communities.

For Illinois, the ban came six months after a gunman wielding a semiautomatic rifle shot and killed seven people at a 4th of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.

“No Illinoisan, no matter their zip code, should have to go through life fearing their loved one could be the next in an ever-growing list of victims of mass shootings,” the governor said. “However, for too long people have lived in fear of being gunned down in schools, while worshipping, at celebrations or in their own front yards. This legislation will stop the spread of assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and switches and make our state a safer place for all.”

(abc news)

Will this trend continue or will this just be a flash in the pan?

Will SCOTUS intervene?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

And So It Begins

WE have a new GOP controlled House and that means we will hear all about the deficit and the need for a smaller government….they will use the tighten the belt attitude….

So let’s look at the first few days of the Repub controlled House on monetary issues

While the House was deciding to choose a speaker and the drama that came…..money was wasted.

Members of Congress collected more than $800,000 in salary during the chamber’s protracted speaker fight — during a period when they technically were not members.

The pols officially become members of Congress — leaving behind the title of Rep.-Elect — when they are sworn in by the Speaker of the House. The event usually takes place on Jan. 3, the Constitutionally mandated start of each new Congress.

Even re-elected incumbents must be sworn back in every two years for their “member” status to be current.

But because Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) failed to clinch the votes to become Speaker until the early morning hours of Jan. 7 — a delay not seen since before the Civil War — members of Congress swiped four days of payment before they were actually sworn-in as members.

https://nypost.com/2023/01/14/congress-pocketed-813k-during-freedom-caucus-speaker-revolt/

So since they were not officially employed why would they get paid?

Just wondering.

Then there is the ‘secretive’ pay raise…..

In one of their final acts in power, House Democrats secretly passed through a rule change that will see lawmakers in the lower chamber get a $34,000 pay raise. 

The new rule, proposed by Democrats on the House Administration Committee, allows House members to be reimbursed for the cost of lodging, food and travel while on official business in Washington DC.

It was tucked into the House’s internal rules, rather than in annual spending bills, and therefore was not debated on the House floor, according to the New York Times. 

In fact many rank-and-file House members did not even find out about the change until Tuesday, just two weeks after former Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a similar pay raise for House staffers.

Advocates say the new raise is necessary to increase the pool of people who could afford to serve in Congress, but Republicans say the ‘clandestine’ rule should have been up for public debate.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11630687/Secret-rule-change-House-lawmakers-34-000-PAY-BUMP.html

Good start to address the deficit….but not to worry they plan to send even more cash to Ukraine…..

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine less than one year ago, Congress has approved more than $113 billion of aid and military assistance to support the Ukrainian government and allied nations. The Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 omnibus appropriations package included an additional $47.3 billion of emergency funding to provide humanitarian, military, and economic assistance to Ukraine on top of the $65.8 billion of funding already approved in three other emergency funding packages enacted by Congress.

Of the $113 billion approved in 2022, about three-fifths ($67 billion) has been allocated toward defense needs and the remaining two-fifths ($46 billion) to nondefense concerns such as general Ukrainian government aid, economic support, and aid for refugee resettlement. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provided cost estimates of the four funding packages at the time each was passed. In total, CBO estimated that $6.6 billion of the $113 billion would be spent in FY 2022 and another $37.7 billion in FY 2023. Furthermore, CBO estimated more than half of the approved funds would be spent by the end of FY 2024 and more than three-fourths by the end of FY 2026.

To date, the Biden Administration has sent Ukraine roughly $26 billion of direct military aid, mainly in the form of military hardware, training, and supplies.

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/congress-approved-113-billion-aid-ukraine-2022

A good start to help lessen the deficit….a typical start once the GOP has control.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego eergo scribo”

The Resurrection Of “COINTELPRO”

Keeping with the protest angle…..

Back in my younger days I was a victim of the federal government’s master plan, COINTELPRO.

I tried to let my readers know a little of the history of the 1960-70s…..

The program never truly went away…..but is being resurrected to the point of the protests of the past.

Elon Musk has opened the floodgates to expose the FBI’s latest war on Americans’ freedom of speech.  The FBI massively intervened to pressure Twitter to suppress accounts and tweets from individuals the FBI disapproved, including parody accounts.  The FBI and other federal agencies also browbeat Facebook, Instagram, and many other tech companies.

Thus far, most of the American media has ignored or downplayed the story, known as the Twitter Files. Since many of the individuals who the FBI got squelched were pro-Trump, the violation of their rights is a non-issue – or a cause for quiet celebration.  At this point, it is difficult to know whether the scant reaction to the Twitter Files is the result of political bias, collective amnesia, or simply a total ignorance of American history.

The history of the FBI provides perhaps the best guide to the abuses that may be now occurring. From 1956 to 1971, the FBI carried out “a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order,” a 1976 Senate report noted. The FBI’s Operation COINTELPRO involved thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to portray innocent people as government informants, to destroy activists’ marriages, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, black, communist, white racist, and anti-war organizations.  The FBI let no corner of American life escape its vigilance; it even worked to expose and discredit “communists who are secretly operating in legitimate organizations and employments, such as the Young Men’s Christian Association and Boy Scouts.”

While many people are aware of how the FBI hounded Martin Luther King, Jr., and pressured him to commit suicide, that was not even the tip of the iceberg of the FBI’s racial persecution. Almost any black organization could be targeted for illegal wiretaps. One black leader was monitored largely because he had “recommended the possession of firearms by members for their self-protection.” At that time, some southern police departments and sheriffs were notorious for attacking blacks who stood up for their civil rights.

FBI Cointelpro is Back and Worse Than Ever

Keep this in mind when you decide to enter into the world of protests.  Big Brother is watching!

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

MLK: From Vietnam To Ukraine

Yesterday was MLK, Jr Day, a Federal holiday, and I did not post this on his special day because I wanted people to remember him for his stellar work with civil rights and my post is about his antiwar stance.

As an antiwar activist his speeches on the cruelty of war were something I held dear.

In April 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an eloquent and stirring denunciation of the Vietnam war and US militarism. The speech titled “Beyond Vietnam” is relevant to today’s war in Ukraine.

In the speech at Riverside Church, King talked about how the US had supported France in trying to re-colonize Vietnam. He noted, “Before the end of the war we were meeting 80% of the French war costs.”

When France began to despair in the war, “We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war.”

King went on to recall that after the French finally left Vietnam, the United States prevented implementation of the Geneva Accord which would have allowed Ho Chi Minh to unite the divided country. Instead, the US supported its preferred South Vietnamese dictator.

The U.S. has played a similar role in blocking compromise solutions and international agreements to the Ukraine conflict. Following Ukraine protests in February 2014, the European Union negotiated an agreement between President Yanukovich and the opposition to have early new elections. The attitude of lead US official Victoria Nuland was crystallized in her secretly recorded comment, “F*** the EU!.” Despite the agreement, a violent bloody coup led by ultra-nationalist Ukrainians was “midwifed”.

The ultra-nationalist coup government immediately started implementing policies hostile to the Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine. The coup and the new policies provoked the conflicts and resistance which have led to the situation today. The coup and policies were abhorred by a majority of Ukrainians, especially in eastern Ukraine. The Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and re-unify with Russia.

The Minsk Accords of 2014 and 2015 were intended to resolve the conflict by granting some autonomy to the the Russian speaking sections in the eastern Donbass but keeping them within Ukraine. Thanks to the admissions of two prominent former European leaders, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, we know that the West and their Ukrainian government puppet never intended to implement the Minsk Agreement.

Like the 1954 Geneva Accords regarding Vietnam, the 2014 and 2015 Minsk Agreements on Ukraine were never implemented because Washington did not want a compromise.

MLK: Beyond Vietnam to Ukraine

His words were not heeded in the 60s and they

are still falling on deaf ears.

History does have a way of repeating itself.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–16Jan23

Enter the fashion police.

The GOP continues to insert themselves in the lives and choices of women…..and Missouri is the latest crap bill….

It seems that the GOP wants to impose a dress code for women.

Women make up fewer than one-third of the seats in Missouri’s House, per the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but they were the ones speaking the loudest this week after the chamber’s dress code was tweaked to mandate how female lawmakers should cover their arms while at work. The Hill reports that the alteration to the code was an update to the last directive from 2021, which stated women in the House could wear “dresses or skirts or slacks worn with a blazer or sweater and appropriate dress shoes or boots.” The new version suggested by GOP Rep. Ann Kelley would have changed that to “jackets worn with dresses, skirts, or slacks, and dress shoes or boots”—meaning no more sweaters, and emphasizing a requirement that women’s arms remain covered.

The Washington Post notes that House rules in the state can only be debated every two years, at the beginning of the General Assembly. This particular proposal was met with fiery opposition from the Democrats’ side of the aisle. “I spent $1,200 on a suit, and I can’t wear it in the People’s House because someone who doesn’t have the range tells me that it’s inappropriate,” Rep. Raychel Proudie protested on the House floor, per Heartland Signal. Even the guys jumped in to support their female colleagues’ right to choose their own clothing. “The caucus that lost their minds over the suggestion that they should wear masks during a pandemic to respect the safety of others is now spending its time focusing on the fine details of what women have to wear (specifically how to cover their arms),” Rep. Peter Merideth noted.

Kelley and other Republicans in the House are pushing back, saying they’re just trying to keep attire professional, and that the dress code tweak isn’t a substantial one. “All we’re trying to do today is to take the same rules that we have and make them more clear,” Rep. Brenda Shields said, per the Post. Kelley’s eye roll at the controversy: “You would think that all you would have to do is say ‘dress professionally’ and women could handle it.” A modified version of her bill was the one that finally passed, allowing cardigans to join jackets in the “appropriate” coverings column—but women still have to make sure their arms are shielded either way. Men in the state House also have a dress code, but there were no updates to theirs on Wednesday. Their mandate for the chamber: “Proper attire for gentlemen shall be business attire, including coat, tie, dress trousers, and dress shoes or boots.”

Once again the GOP has shown they cannot move into the 21st century….they still want to control all aspects of the women’s lives….to include their attire.

Truly pathetic bunch of old farts!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Seriously? A Bust?

I have been writing about what I think is overkill when it comes to Ukraine. Americans have a blind spot for some reason.

The newest attempt to deify Ukraine’s president is a bit too far….

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) introduced a bill this week that would place a bust of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the House wing of the US Capitol building, an idea that was strongly criticized by more conservative GOP members.

The resolution reads: “Resolved, That the House of Representatives directs the Fine Arts Board to obtain a bust of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for display in a suitable, permanent location in the House of Representatives wing of the United States Capitol.”

On Twitter, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) posted a picture of the resolution and wrote: “Absolutely NOT! We serve AMERICA NOT UKRAINE!”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) wrote on Twitter that he wanted to believe the resolution was “satire” and linked to an article from the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks giving five reasons to oppose the bust.

The five reasons FreedomWorks listed are:

  1. Ukraine is NOT the 51st US State
  2. The US doesn’t own the conflict or is obligated to continue funding it
  3. Further payments would encourage US taxpayer-funded reconstruction of Ukraine
  4. Ukraine is corrupt and this conflict is not about “defending democracy”
  5. Zero oversight of taxpayer aid to Ukraine

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) also ripped the resolution on Twitter. “There is now a House resolution that seeks to put a display of Zelenskyy’s head in the US Capitol. Was the $100+ billion to Ukraine not enough?” he wrote.

While Zelensky mostly received a hero’s welcome when he visited Washington DC and was given many rounds of applause when addressing Congress, only 86 out of 213 House Republicans attended his speech, although some of the absences could be explained by the lawmakers getting a head start on Christmas travel.

For now, GOP leadership is incredibly supportive of arming Ukraine and is critical of President Biden for not sending longer-range and more advanced weapons. But there is opposition to the policy among a small but notable number of Republicans, and that opposition will likely grow as the war drags on.

(antiwar.com)

Just what is it that this person deserves a place of honor in the Capital building other than being another global freeloader with his hand out?

When will the American people wake up to this insanity?

How much further will these warmongers push the limits of acceptance?

This Ukraine thing is a f*cked up mess….period!

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”