Bits: COVID vaccine price gouge, etc.

From the ruthless capitalism files: Here it comes again. Unregulated markets running free, wild and butt naked are about to screw us royally. Again. Ars Technica writes:

Moderna CEO: 400% price hike on COVID vaccine 

“consistent with the value”

Lawmakers have already called Pfizer's similar plan “pure and deadly greed”

Moderna is considering raising the price of its COVID-19 vaccine by over 400 percent—from $26 per dose to between $110 and $130 per dose—according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.  

The plan, if realized, would match the previously announced price hike for Pfizer-BioNTech's rival COVID-19 vaccine.  

Until now, the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have been purchased by the government and offered to Americans for free. In the latest federal contract from July, Moderna's updated booster shot cost the government $26 per dose, up from $15–$16 per dose in earlier supply contracts, the Journal notes. Similarly, the government paid a little over $30 per dose for Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine this past summer, up from $19.50 per dose in contracts from 2020.

Note the standard capitalist moral justification here, “consistent with the value.” Nothing is said about cost to make and distribute the vaccine, whose price has already increased once by ~70% for Moderna and ~55% for Pfizer. Even worse, US taxpayers spent at least $1 billion to de-risk the development of Moderna’s COVID vaccine. Now the capitalists return the favor by blowing us all a “consistent with the value” raspberry and jacks the price up again, this time about 4-fold (400%).

We all know how this will play out in congress. Democrats will complain and try too do something, Republicans will block it, claiming they are fighting against socialist tyranny (to most Republicans there is no such thing as price gouging) and us taxpayers will get price gouged as usual. Unregulated capitalism and health care just do not mix.

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The radicalized Republican Party: A WaPo opinion piece continues a wave of analysis what appears to reflect an awakening by some of the mainstream media that the GOP is a radicalized, anti-democratic political power. Jennifer Rubin opines:

There are no moderate House Republicans

Listen to the mainstream media’s coverage of House Republicans, and you might think there is a mass of “normal” Republicans who do not buy into election denial, who are not apologists for former president Donald Trump, and who understand that the party’s crazy talk and election conspiracy theories contributed to its historic underperformance in the 2022 midterms.

The mystery: Where are these people hiding?

Prime suspects would be the 18 Republicans from districts that Joe Biden won in 2020, such as Reps. David Schweikert (Ariz.), Don Bacon (Neb.) and Thomas H. Kean (N.J.). Yet every single one of them voted 15 times to make Kevin McCarthy, an election denier, the speaker of the House.

Every single one of them also voted for the rules package that the House passed this week, which sets up a standoff over the debt limit, creates a committee to “investigate” ongoing criminal cases and hobbles the Office of Congressional Ethics. Nor did they didn’t bat an eye over reports that McCarthy (Calif.) promised to give more seats on the Rules Committee to MAGA radicals. Pretty immoderate behavior.  

Rarely if ever do the media grill these (im)moderate members on their enabling of the far right. Frankly, reporters do a disservice to the voters by characterizing them as somehow more sensible than the Freedom Caucus crazies. With the House as closely divided as it is, it would take only a few of them to defeat radical measures. Yet time and again, they cave.

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Opinion poll on the Supreme Court: A Gallup poll from last august indicates that most Americans believe the court is partisan political. However, the difference in perceptions by Democrats (13% approve) and Republicans (74% approve) is big.

The Hill comments: “Two-thirds of the public support term limits. But Republicans have little incentive to back legislation that, from their perspective, solves a nonexistent problem.”

Since rank and file Republicans like what they see in the current Supreme Court, does that make them as a group authoritarian or fascist, even if most are partly or mostly unaware of what the Christofascist court they approve of is doing?

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Egads!! The debt ceiling problem is upon us right now!: The Ap writes:

The federal government is on track to max out on its $31.4 trillion borrowing authority as soon as this month, starting the clock on an expected standoff between President Joe Biden and the new House Republican majority that will test both parties’ ability to navigate a divided Washington, with the fragile global economy at stake.

Once the government bumps up against the cap — it could happen any time in the next few weeks or longer — the Treasury Department will be unable to issue new debt without congressional action. The department plans to deploy what are known as “extraordinary measures” to keep the government operating. But once those measures run out, probably mid-summer, the government could be at risk of defaulting unless lawmakers and the president agree to lift the limit on the U.S. government’s ability to borrow.

I didn’t realize this nasty issue was coming alive so soon. Let the bickering, slandering and posturing commence. Unleash the Jim (Jordan), the Marjorie (MTG), the Matt (Gaetz) and the Kevin (McCarthy)!!!

The blue-eyed Kevin holding the chains just before he 

unleashes the Jim, Marjorie and Matt hounds

upon us all

We’re in real trouble now ☹️

New House Republican majority prepare for debt limit fight that could cause chaos and recession

The US economy already is on a knife edge, with fears of a looming recession amid a historic effort to tame decades-high inflation.

Now, members of the new House Republican majority have amped up the uncertainty by saying they won’t let the federal government keep borrowing money this year without an agreement to significantly cut spending. A standoff over increasing the $31.4 trillion debt limit when it’s reached later this year could roil financial markets, trigger higher borrowing costs, and push the economy into a recession it might otherwise have avoided, experts said.

The economic fallout would be even worse if, unlike in previous showdowns, Congress doesn’t ultimately raise the limit in time to avoid a first-ever US government default on its bills. The difficulty that the narrow House Republican majority had in electing Kevin McCarthy as speaker last week has amplified the concerns.

“I think the the economy’s going to struggle this year, but we have a fighting chance to avoid a downturn, assuming we don’t make a big mistake, like breaching the debt limit or even threatening to breach the debt limit,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, an economics research and consulting firm. “The dysfunction in Washington is a very, very serious threat to the economy and our ability to avoid a recession in 2023.”

One of the concessions McCarthy made to win the speaker’s gavel was to use the need to raise the debt limit to force Democrats to agree to federal spending cuts. House Republicans have loudly complained about the rising national debt under President Biden, although they were largely silent as it shot up during the Trump administration.

The table is already being set for a high-stakes clash.

“I’ve never voted for a debt ceiling increase, and I won’t unless it’s paired with meaningful reform,” Representative Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican, said last week. Former president Donald Trump egged on Republicans this week, writing on Truth Social that they should be “playing tough in the upcoming debt ceiling negotiations.”

 

That’s got Democrats worried. While there is bipartisan agreement that the rising debt needs to be addressed, the White House has said Biden won’t negotiate over raising the debt limit, which is required to pay for spending already authorized by Congress.

“There will be no hostage-taking,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this week. “The full faith and credit of our country is too important to allow any of that, because to default would be to force extraordinary costs on the American economy and American families.”

Biden knows the damage a debt limit standoff can cause. He was vice president in 2011 when House Republicans under speaker John Boehner, fresh off winning control of the chamber after four years in the minority, balked at increasing the limit until the last minute during the Obama administration.

“It was terrifying, and the terror came from not being sure that Speaker Boehner had the ability to control his caucus,” said Harvard economist Jason Furman, who was a top White House economic official at the time. “The debt limit is just an existential threat to the US economy.”

Boehner had about a 50-seat majority in the House. McCarthy has only a four-seat majority, giving him much less flexibility to make a debt limit deal with Biden and the Democrats.

Fr. Boston Globe 1/11: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/01/11/nation/debt-limit-fight-could-cause-financial-chaos-push-economy-into-recession-experts-warn/?et_rid=1312764944&s_campaign=todayinpolitics:newsletter

Linesperson?

 Are you friggin' kidding me?

So, I was watching a junior hockey game the other night and they were presenting an award to the Linesmen - of which there were two, BOTH MEN, but announce them as Linespersons. 

LINESPERSONS!! When the only two linespersons on the ice were MEN.

Now there is another junior hockey tournament going on between young ladies, and the commentators are always referring to them as "young ladies" and "girls" and on occasion "women". WHY NOT PERSONS?

This is SO politically incorrect to call them by female names when they SHOULD BE called Persons, amirite??

Bad enough postmen are now postal workers and firemen are now fire fighters.

Instead of this… Consider this…

1 Anchorman Anchor

2 Assemblyman Assemblyperson

3 Businessman Businessperson

4 Cameraman Camera Operator

5 Chairman Chair, Chairperson

6 Clergyman Minister, Pastor

7 Congressman Member of Congress

8 Construction Man Construction Worker

9 Councilman Council Member

10 Craftsman Artisan

11 Crewman Crew Member

12 Doorman Door Keeper, Door Attendant

13 Fireman Firefighter

14 Foreman Supervisor, Supervisor, Boss

15 Garbage Man Trash Collector

16 Handyman Maintenance Person, Fixer

17 Longshoreman Stevedore

18 Mailman Postal Worker, Letter/Mail Carrier

19 Maintenance Man Janitor, Caretaker

20 Patrolman Police Officer

21 Pizza Man Pizza Person

22 Policeman Police Officer

23 Salesman Salesperson

24 Stuntman Stuntperson

25 Weatherman Meteorolgist

https://blog.ongig.com/diversity-and-inclusion/gender-neutral-job-titles/

I have a question: WHEN are they going to stop neutering us men?

An analysis of the state of the House GOP

The open question here is to what extent is the anti-democratic radicalism of House Republicans shared by those in the Senate. I suspect it is shared to a large extent. After all, Senate Republicans are the ones who put Christofascism in charge of the Supreme Court. An analysis published by Salon comments:

The battle over the Speakership dreams of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was a cataclysmic event, in terms of the media's increasingly ineffective efforts to convey to news consumers what is actually going on. Most press coverage portrayed the struggle as one between a more moderate faction supporting McCarthy and a far-right splinter group who opposed him. In reality, however, the fight was merely showboating from a small group of trolls who wanted attention, with no real substance to any of the disagreements. Indeed, pro- and anti-McCarthy groups are in fierce agreement on nearly all major policy issues, including the question of whether democracy is a good thing worth protecting. (Both sides believe it is not!)

For proof there's no real daylight between the two factions, look no further than the fact that the biggest Republican troll in the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, was on Kev's side from the get-go. Greene has become one of the most famous — and powerful — Republicans in Capitol Hill by sheer dint of her gleefully unapologetic fascism. She's one of the biggest apologists for Donald Trump's Big Lie and the violent insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow democracy on January 6, 2021. She's a grade-A conspiracy theorist who rode into Washington spouting QAnon nonsense. Once in office, she went straight for the third rail in American politics, showy antisemitism, downplaying the Holocaust and raving about how Jews were setting wildfires with space lasers. She hits all the major stations of the conspiracy theory cross, from dismissing mass shootings as "false flags" to vaccine denialism to, naturally, 9/11 trutherism. She, of course, has also gotten that sweet, sweet attention by calling for the execution of her political opponents. 

But she's all for McCarthy, because he is fine with all this, despite his media image of moderation. Greene, who is a much savvier operator than the liberals constantly dunking on her would like to admit, clearly realizes that being on the always-Kevin side of this fight opened up a golden opportunity: She can now rebrand herself as a mainstream Republican. With her shiny new committee assignments — complete with access to some of the most highly classified information in government — and her role as McCarthy's golden girl, Greene is set to remake herself into a respected figure on Capitol Hill. She'll be just as much a conspiracy theory kook as she ever was, but her new status as an elder statesman in the GOP will put an ennobling gloss on her lies, helping push them through the ever-credulous Beltway press. 

That Greene is consciously rebranding herself became undeniable on Sunday, when she distanced herself from QAnon during a Fox News interview.

"Well, like a lot of people today, I had easily gotten sucked into some things I'd seen on the internet," she said when host Howard Kurtz asked her about QAnon. "But that was dealt with quickly early on. I never campaigned on those things. That was not something I believed in."

I strongly agree with these two points:

• There is not much difference between the holdout extremists and the other Republicans in the House. The GOP has undeniably radicalized into a corrupted, mendacious anti-democracy political force.

• The mainstream media is doing a poor job of explaining what is going on. One can reasonably speculate that the main reasons are some combination of (i) pro-corporate bias due to corporate ownership, (ii) incompetence and too many errors of omission and commission, (iii) much more pressure to sensationalize and trivialize news to make money than to inform the public, and/or (iv) loss of public trust after decades of unfounded attacks, lies and slanders.

Also, Greene is a shameless liar. She knew all along that QAnon was lies, slanders and crackpottery. She was never sucked in, despite her claim to the contrary. She just needed the publicity. The mainstream media gave it to her.

News bits: Tales from Twittwerlandia, etc.

MTG gets booted off Twitter for copyright infringement: A Twitter person got a hold of a letter sent by Dr. Dre’s attorney to the lovely MTG. She used one of Dre’s songs in her online propaganda poison and the good Dr. was not pleased that his music was being used without his permission to support fascism. Yikes! Kerfuffle alert!

The letter contains a couple of interesting comments, quoted below.

“One might expect that, as a member of congress, you would have a passing familiarity with the laws of our country.” Ooh, that was snarky. Naughty lawyer. One seasoned observer commented: “Legal snark is my favorite snark!” Bwaaahahahaha!!!

“It's possible, though, that laws governing intellectual property are a little too arcane and insufficiently populist for you to really have spent much time on.” Ouch, gut punch!

“You are wrongfully exploiting this work through various social media outlets to promote your divisive and hateful political agenda.”  That’s called copyright infringement and, as an added bonus, her political agenda is divisive and hateful.

“We’re writing because we think that an actual lawmaker should be making laws, not breaking laws, especially those embodied in the constitution by the founding fathers.” Another gut punch, but a good point. Protection for copyrighted material is actually in the original constitution. Art. 1, Sec. 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries (that means copyrights and patents are protected)

The Marjorie is not pleased

Dammit, she liked that Dre song!

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From the Filling the Congressional Swamp With Fascists Files: Here we go, gird up you loins boys and girls. Included in its first official action, the House gutted the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE). The Repubs said they were gonna do that and by golly they did! Newsweek optimistically (😵) comments: 

Three of four Democratic-appointed OCE board members will also be removed due to term limits under the changes, leaving Republican-appointed members in nearly full control of the office before Democrats are able to add new members, which may take months.

There was excitement in the Repub House caucus with the elimination of all concerns for ethics and the rule of law as applied to Repubs in the House. George Santos, the spreader of whopper lies is now off the hook for lying his way into congress. He excitedly exclaimed: Fantastic! MAGA!!

OK, he only said Fantastic! I added MAGA!! to tastefully and artistically emphasize Santos’ understandable excitement at his get out of the slammer free card.

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Corruption in the swamp at the Supreme Court: Business Insider writes about the transition of the super obscure Supreme Court Historical Society (SCHS) to a now much less obscure pay-to-play way for donors to get direct access to Supreme Court justices. This is corporate and fascist partisan moral rot to its very core. Funding for the obscure SCHS quietly accelerated after 2000 when it decided to get aggressive about looking for ‘donors’, a/k/a paying players. BI writes:

In 2000, the SCHS decided it would select new trustees for its board of directors largely based on their ability to provide “financial support” for the organization. [than means setting up a pay-to-play cash harvesting operation]

Before Silverman raised the alarm, the society hadn't attracted much attention — or money — from people outside the legal profession, Insider's review of the nonprofit's trustees throughout the 1990s found. Most of its donors were legal-history buffs and aging philanthropists.

But it wasn't long before new faces started showing up at society events and board meetings.

In 2003, the Ohio real-estate developer Don Wright joined the board of trustees. In 2007, so did Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza. By 2010, they were joined by the GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, the son of the real-estate magnate Trammell Crow.

These new members were part of a wave of right-wing ideologues, corporate representatives, and wealthy conservative power brokers who flocked to the Supreme Court Historical Society over the past two decades, Insider's analysis found, using the little-known group to gain unprecedented access to one of the most elusive and secretive judicial bodies on the planet. The donors leveraged relatively small sums of cash into privileged face time with the very Supreme Court justices who were in some instances deciding cases to which their companies or affiliated advocacy organizations were parties.

An analysis of the society's donors published by The New York Times in late December identified at least $6.4 million in donations since 2003 coming from groups or individuals that argued cases before the court. (The Times had previously reported that one donor, the anti-abortion activist Rob Schenck, claimed to have used the society to infiltrate Justice Samuel Alito's inner circle and gain access to information about a pending decision.)

Insider's investigation into nearly three decades' worth of Supreme Court Historical Society records found that the extensive network of donors and trustees with vested interests before the court was rife with right-wing religious activists and corporations. In exchange for as little as a few thousand dollars in contributions to the nonprofit, these people received easy access to events where Supreme Court justices would be.

The Supreme Court has recently been criticized as biased and conflicted due to the donors who get access to the judges through SCHS social events. Chief Justice Roberts vehemently denies that any conflicts of interest exist. Right. And pigs with wings can fly too.

Chief Justice Roberts is either a corrupt liar or corrupt and stupid. Since he is very, very smart, we can eliminate corrupt stupid as a possibility. What does that leave? Hm. Corrupt liar? Yup, that’s what it leaves.

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Did Joe Biden screw the pooch?: The NYT writes:

President Biden’s lawyers discovered “a small number” of classified documents in his former office at a Washington think tank last fall, the White House said on Monday, prompting the Justice Department to scrutinize the situation to determine how to proceed.

The inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter, is a type aimed at helping Attorney General Merrick B. Garland decide whether to appoint a special counsel, like the one investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive documents and failure to return all of them.  

The documents found in Mr. Biden’s former office, which date to his time as vice president, were found by his personal lawyers on Nov. 2, when they were packing files at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, according to the White House. Officials did not describe precisely how many documents were involved, what kind of information they included or their level of classification.

One can just hear the howls of self-righteous faux moral outrage from the Republicans in the House. There will be an investigation or two. There probably will be an impeachment or two of Joe for one or more alleged treasons, crimes and/or horrors. One can only hope that Joe didn’t break any laws.  

News bits: New kind of quantum entanglement discovered, etc.

New kind of entanglement lets scientists see inside atomic nuclei: The Brookhaven National Laboratory writes:

First-ever observation of quantum interference between dissimilar particles offers new approach for mapping distribution of gluons in atomic nuclei—and potentially more

Nuclear physicists have found a new way to use the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a particle collider at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory—to see the shape and details inside atomic nuclei. The method relies on particles of light that surround gold ions as they speed around the collider and a new type of quantum entanglement that’s never been seen before.

Through a series of quantum fluctuations, the particles of light (a.k.a. photons) interact with gluons—gluelike particles that hold quarks together within the protons and neutrons of nuclei. Those interactions produce an intermediate particle that quickly decays into two differently charged “pions” (π). By measuring the velocity and angles at which these π+ and π- particles strike RHIC’s STAR detector, the scientists can backtrack to get crucial information about the photon—and use that to map out the arrangement of gluons within the nucleus with higher precision than ever before.  

“We measure two outgoing particles and clearly their charges are different—they are different particles—but we see interference patterns that indicate these particles are entangled, or in sync with one another, even though they are distinguishable particles,” said Brookhaven physicist and STAR collaborator Zhangbu Xu.  

RHIC operates as a DOE Office of Science user facility where physicists can study the innermost building blocks of nuclear matter—the quarks and gluons that make up protons and neutrons. They do this by smashing together the nuclei of heavy atoms such as gold traveling in opposite directions around the collider at close to the speed of light. The intensity of these collisions between nuclei (also called ions) can “melt” the boundaries between individual protons and neutrons so scientists can study the quarks and gluons as they existed in the very early universe—before protons and neutrons formed.

Nerds Daniel Brandenburg and Zhangbu Xu nerding

around with the STAR detector on the RHIC

Well, looks like 2023 is starting off with a big bang. Keep up the good work nerds -- smash those atoms real hard!

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Commentator tears the Supreme Court a new one: In delightful commentary on Chief Justice Roberts year end report, Dahlia Lithwick writing for Slate is scathing and funny at the same time:

The Chief Justice is burying his head in the sand 

when it comes to the biggest problem with SCOTUS

It’s been eight long months since the unprecedented leak of the draft opinion in the landmark abortion case, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health. When it happened last May, Chief Justice John Roberts described it as a “a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court.” As the nominal head of that Court, it was up to Roberts to investigate the leak, and then presumably do something about it, but in the intervening months, the internal investigation of the leak—as ordered by Roberts—has plodded on without any disclosures to the public about what Harriet the Spy and Inspector Gadget, or whichever crack detective tasked with solving the crime has turned up.

This shocking leak, for which Sen. Ted Cruz once insisted that someone be “fired instantly” and also “prosecuted” and also “serve real jail time,” has already gone the way of the great un-crackable mysteries of our time. .... Justice Clarence Thomas may have once characterized it as “an infidelity” that had profoundly shattered trust among the Justices, but apparently the Court opted to continue operating without the restoration of that trust. So much so, that it need never be discussed again. .... Weird. In a building populated by about 500 employees, almost none of whom would have had access to a near-final draft opinion, the identity of the Dobbs leaker is going the way of the Bermuda Triangle and Amelia Earhart. Though the leak supposedly traumatized the institution and its members, the agreement seems to be that we need never speak of it again.

So perhaps nobody should be surprised that this great Supreme Court mystery—a breach of trust in an order of magnitude previously unheard of—appeared nowhere in the pages of the Chief Justice’s annual year-end report on the federal judiciary. That report, which dropped, as it does, on New Year’s Eve, was widely covered for its lack of references to several important issues that faced the Court this year. These included: the Dobbs leak, the Supreme Court Historical Society’s perplexing role as secret pipeline for SCOTUS access-seekers and their fat wallets, and any references to Justice Clarence Thomas’ continued insistence on ruling on cases that directly affect his own wife (this would seem to violate the ethics rules that bind the Supreme Court, but as we now know, they do not bind the Supreme Court). None of these crises were mentioned in the report. Why? because these controversies all make the court look hinky AF, and Chief Justice Roberts doesn’t want that.

The real mystery, then, isn’t merely how Roberts’ year-end report ended up centering threats to American judges as the most urgent concern of the past calendar year. .... No, the real whodunnit following Roberts’ report, has to be this: Who killed the last vestige of shame down on One First Street? Because Benoit Blanc, call your office. I want to report a murder.

To take on that actual responsibility would demand accepting a leadership role that includes speaking truth to uncheckable power, even if that uncheckable power belongs to the court. The Chief Justice knows well what crises have beset the high court and its reputation this past term. But all he wanted to talk about was how that manifests as threats to judges.

But certainly the expectations of a court reflecting on its own complicity in public’s distrust of it were at zero by the time Samuel Alito was giving triumphal insult-comic speeches about Dobbs in Rome this past summer, and when Ginni Thomas was still insisting that the 2020 election was stolen by Biden in September, as her husband rules on Jan. 6 cases. Indeed, it has become fairly obvious that if you can’t beat the ethical challenges at the court, you can just join them. Or at least cover for them.

And that, it seems, is the play. The Chief Justice continues to doggedly reframe public anger at the court as one of two things: the public’s problem, and also a security risk to the Justices. .... the public is struggling to understand how it can possibly have faith in a court with no braking mechanism on its effort to remake the constitution in two years. In response to that anger, the court put up security fencing. Now imagine if the Chief Justice had spoken candidly about that.

One is left with the dispiriting sense of John Roberts as doubly cursed: Unlike some of his conservative colleagues, he is well aware of the multiple ways in which the Justices themselves are doing violence to the court’s reputation as unbiased and above the fray. However, because there’s nothing he thinks he can do about it, he’s refusing to acknowledge it. He’s taking all the evidence of the shoddy and unethical behavior and sweeping it under the carpet, then pointing at the mound of carpet crap and blaming it on the American public.  

As pregnant Americans attempt to reimagine dealing with their pregnancy losses, their thwarted birth control needs, their new economic realities, and their live saving medical needs thanks to Dobbs, the Chief Justice’s choice to center himself and his colleagues –ensconced in the protections of lifetime tenure – was a choice to blind himself to suffering of which he is well aware. Judges are suffering after the 2022 term. So are millions of others. Refusing to see the connection is the problem, not the solution.

That nicely sums the condescending arrogance and ghastly disingenuousness of Christofascist Republican elites. Roberts is a master of sophisticated propaganda tactics like misdirection, obfuscation, lies of omission and the like. In the immediate future and for the foreseeable future, we can reasonably expect more insulting lies of omission and blatant deceit from arrogant Republican judges like Roberts. 

Q: Although Lithwick claims that judges are suffering, is that true? (seems that would mostly depend on how one defines suffering, e.g., loss of public trust, physical threats, insults by the public, cognitive dissonance, whatever)

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From the Flogging Dead Horses Files: Juan Williams writes in The Hill:

The rotten state of House Republicans

McCarthy has been reduced to a weakling. He will be constantly cringing under fear that a snap vote by the far right will oust him. Such a vote can now be called if even one GOP member asks for it.

They have picked a Speaker but they have no real leader.

And with Trump in decline, there is no national leader of the party going into the 2024 cycle.

Looking back to 2021, President Biden made the right call by not negotiating with hardline House Republicans during his first two years in the White House.

He relied on Speaker Pelosi.

Even with a narrow majority, her expert leadership freed him from the chaos politics of the GOP’s far-right.  

The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page recently described the House radicals’ lack of interest in good governing this way:

Too many of them are “more comfortable in opposition in the minority…which is easier because no hard decisions or compromises are necessary. You can rage against ‘the swamp,’ without having to do anything to change it. This is the fundamental and sorry truth behind the Speaker spectacle and the performative GOP politics of recent years.”

So, another commentator sees chaos, dysfunction and nastiness ahead for the next two years. That seems to be a reasonable prediction. We will find out pretty soon what the House can and cannot do, and just how nasty it is going to be.