"She would not be out of place working for Pravda or Chinese state television," Luce said. He further reprimanded Trump's media enablers by warning that the Capitol riot "will happen again" unless those accountable face "severe" consequences.>

<A federal judge indicated on Monday that far-right Trump attorneys Sidney Powell, Lin Wood, and others may be sanctioned for bringing a "fantastical" election fraud lawsuit to court, suggesting their affidavits "were submitted in bad faith."

"Plaintiffs ask this court to ignore the orderly statutory scheme established to challenge elections and to ignore the will of millions of voters," U.S. District Judge Linda Parker wrote. "This, the Court cannot, and will not, do."

The case, self-described as the "Kraken" lawsuit, was brought last year by Powell, Wood, and former Department of Housing and Urban Development adviser Julia Haller on behalf of Donald Trump, who has since his 2020 election loss baselessly alleged that President Biden won on account of systematic election fraud. The suit centers on four battleground states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona. Each state lawsuit was shot down in court along with their respective appeals.

On Monday, Parker convened a meeting to discuss whether the Kraken team should be sanctioned or even permanently disbarred over their Michigan suit, for which they introduced a particularly "speculative" affidavit.

Both Wood and lawyer Emily Newman attempted to disavow themselves from the suit, alleging that they did not play a specific part in the lawsuit. Wood claimed that he was unaware his name would be attached to the case and had only promised to "help [Powell] from a trial lawyer standpoint."

Detroit attorney David Fink argued that Wood's claims were "blatantly false," citing evidence that Wood had boasted about his work on the case over social media.

The hearing, which was held via video conference, featured a number of bizarre exchanges that went beyond typical legal decorum.

In one back-and-forth described by Politico, pro-Trump lawyer Donald Campbell took issue with Parker's objection to an affidavit in which a witness described being "perplexed" at the way ballots were being handled out in at the TCF Center in Detroit.

"The word 'perplexed' is what you think is worth the time and effort of all the staff and lawyers ? in this proceeding?" Campbell asked, surprised.

"I would caution you to ? do not question my procedure," Parker responded.

"I am not a potted plant," Campbell clapped back. "I will represent my client."

In another, Parker concluded that she'd "never seen an affidavit that makes so many leaps," adding: "This is really fantastical. So my question to counsel here is: How could any of you as officers of the court present this affidavit?"

At one point, Powell in fact met Parker with a similar level of shock. "I have practiced law for 43 years and have never witnessed a proceeding like this," she said. "I take full responsibility [sic] myself for the pleadings in this case [?] We have practiced law with the highest standards. We would file these same complaints again."

The proceeding comes as part of broader pushback against Trump's baseless election conspiracies. Back in February, the Georgia State Bar sent Wood a 1,600-plus-page complaint proposing that he be disciplined, as Politico reported. Last month, New York state similarly suspended the legal license of ex-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.

Detroit lawyers argued in the hearing that licensed attorneys who have supported Trump's election conspiracy should face professional penalties.>

<Former US vice president Mike Pence warned Wednesday that China was on its way to becoming an "evil empire" posing a greater threat to America than the Cold War-era Soviet Union.

Former US vice president Mike Pence says President Joe Biden should take steps to push back against Beijing on multiple fronts Former president Donald Trump's deputy, believed to be mulling his own 2024 White House bid, also urged current occupant Joe Biden to confront China more forcefully on multiple fronts including the origin of the coronavirus and the Asian giant's "neocolonialism."

"The Chinese Communist Party is the greatest threat to our prosperity, security and values on the face of the Earth," Pence said during a speech at the Heritage Foundation think tank.

"China may not yet be an evil empire, but it's working hard every day to become one," he added.

"In many respects, communist China poses a greater challenge to the United States than the Soviet Union ever did throughout the Cold War."

The comments highlighted the anti-China stance adopted by Pence, who amplified his and Trump's policies toward its economic rival, including imposing trade tariffs and blaming Beijing for Covid.

Trump repeatedly lavished praise on President Xi Jinping in the early days of the pandemic for China's "transparency" and professionalism in its public health response, before pivoting to criticizing Beijing and calling Covid-19 the "China Virus."

Instead of "rolling over" to China, the Biden administration ought to demand that Beijing "come clean about the origins of the coronavirus," Pence said, repeating Trump's line that evidence suggests the coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan lab.

Biden in May ordered an investigation of Covid's origins.

Pence, stressing he believes China "senses weakness in this new administration," demanded Biden take other steps against Beijing.

He urged the president to "decouple" the US economy from China's regarding industries considered essential to national security; strengthen economic ties with Taiwan; reduce Chinese imports; and demand the 2022 Winter Olympics be moved from Beijing unless it provides truthful Covid origin data and ends persecution of Muslim minority Uyghurs.

He also called for an aggressive US posture to prevent China from building a military base in the Western hemisphere.

"The president must make it clear that the Western hemisphere is off limits to China's neocolonialism," Pence said.>

<New research from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health details the U.S. government's egregious mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, identifies a powerful predictor of COVID-19 deaths, and suggests responses that could still alleviate the pandemic's damage.

The study's damning conclusion: "The evidence suggests that ineffective national policies and responses, especially as compared to those of other wealthy nations or compared to the intricate preparation and planning by previous administrations of both parties, have been driving the terrible toll of COVID-19 and its inequities in the U.S.">

https://fortune.com/2020/11/13/covi...

To still hear some of the schmucks trying to defend Trump, that he did everything he could to stop it.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

<.....the Mar-a-Lago interview provides a cinematic epilogue to the book, evoking the rantings of an exiled King Lear or the delusions of washed-up silent-movie star Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard." But it also serves to underscore what's missing in this kind of "rough draft of history", in addition to self-reflection on the journalistic quid pro quos involved in the genre. That is, any discussion of the larger social forces that made Trump's rise possible: the backlash against America's growing demographic diversity, the working-class resentment of globalism and cultural elitism, and the emotional appeal of nativism and authoritarianism. As the former president prattles this book to its conclusion, one is left with the sense that future historians will find Trumpism a far more consequential subject of study than the petty tyrant himself.>

The outlet did not say how the sources were connected to the investigation. Jennifer Weisselberg's lawyer did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.>

Trump said after Bolton?s departure the U.S. would "be in world war six" if he had stayed on Trump?s team.>

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...

Trump continues to be the ever-reliable imbecile and his tools er supporters continue lavishing praise on his incompetent ass.

Could there be something else out there in the air that makes these people become saliva leaking zombie nincompoops?

How is that possible?

The clear evidence of all his pathological lying, his refusal to accept an electoral verdict, the lies about covid-19, and the brazen attempt to hold on to power via a coup...

(I doubt these shenanigans would be ignored if the president had a (D) next to his name.)

People are even dying from Covid-19 by refusing to take the vaccine (even though Trump took it), it's like seeing lemmings walking off a cliff!

Could this be America's darkest hour?

Where it destroys itself from within as Lincoln warned?

(I doubt these shenanigans would be ignored if the president had a (D) next to his name.)>

Hahahahaha! The Right would have been calling for that hypothetical leader's head in a nannysecond.

<....People are even dying from Covid-19 by refusing to take the vaccine (even though Trump took it), it's like seeing lemmings walking off a cliff!>

(Trump had a 38.8 approval rating after 178 days.)

Not exactly the picture of popularity that Griftie Donnie was hoping for, but rather, more like a case of people holding their noses as a stench riddled septic tank is being emptied of its unpleasantries...

<Everyone at some point realizes that adults aren’t automatically smart. The same goes for politicians. In fact, they often claim to know things they know nothing about. There were two good examples of this on Tuesday. One came when an exasperated Dr. Anthony Fauci schooled Senator Rand Paul, who he told him point blank, about the Wuhan “lab leak” conspiracy theory, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.” The other, no surprise, came from Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Hot off being banned for 12 hours from tweeting due to COVID-19 misinformation, the controversial representative walked into it again. During a press conference, a journalist asked Greene — whose attempt to appeal a $500 fine, issued for not wearing a mask in the House back in May, was met with failure — the million dollar question: Is she, in fact, vaccinated. She pleaded the 5th, sort of, claiming that was a “a violation of my HIPAA rights.”

Greene was referring to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which protects personal information acquired by health officials, such as doctors, from fraud and theft. This poses another question: Does someone, such as a journalist or a potential employer or even the staff at a movie theater, asking about one’s vaccination status violate the HIPAA?

It does not.

Plenty of articles have been published in the last handful of months as vaccine skeptics have tried to float this idea. Here’s one, from no less a source than the HIPAA Journal. All have reached the same conclusion: HIPAA does not protect one from revealing whether or not one is a health threat, including for the highly contagious and transmissible COVID-19. The closest such a question would come to an HIPAA violation is if someone asked her doctor to reveal her status, which is not what happened at this presser.

Some broke down how it really works.

CNN’s crack fact checker Daniel Dale pointed out Greene has done this on multiple occasions yet always seems to miss, somehow, when she’s been debunked.

Others simply roasted her for the confidence with which she revealed she has no idea what she’s talking about.

Others read this as a possible confession that, yes, she has been vaccinated, which would appall her base.

Greene’s vaccine stubbornness comes at a particularly awkward time for her party. A number of prominent conservatives, noticing the fact that the vast majority of new cases and deaths are among the unvaccinated, have had an about-face, and are now imploring their viewers to get dosed already. That even Sean Hannity is doing more to save people than Marjorie Taylor Greene really does say something.>

Enlightenment follows:

<It's gone beyond whitewashing history. Ex-President Donald Trump and his House Republican enablers are now spinning fantastical inversions to hide his crimes against the Constitution on January 6.

Trump insisted that the mob that marched from his rally on that fateful day to invade the US Capitol were a "very loving crowd" in excerpts from audio interviews released on CNN by two Washington Post reporters in a new book on the ex-President's last days in office.

The audio came out on the same day Trump's mouthpiece on Capitol Hill, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans spoke out against authoritarianism and abuses of power -- but they leveled those accusations at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and not the twice-impeached former President.

It was the latest incarnation of a now classic tactic among pro-Trump Republicans and his media propagandists -- an effort to not just excuse the former President's conduct but to comprehensively alter the facts and public perception of the worst attack on Congress in two centuries. The shape-shifting strategy isn't just a political device -- it allows those who promote it to avoid wrestling with the reality of an assault on American democracy.

Trump came across as rambling and wallowing in his own delusions in the tapes released by Carol Leonning and Phil Rucker of their interviews with him for their newly published book "I Alone Can Fix It."

"They were ushered in by the police. The Capitol police were very friendly," Trump told the reporters, referring to the sacking of Congress and assaults on police officers by his supporters.

The latest Washington controversy over the insurrection erupted when Pelosi ejected two of McCarthy's picks for the select committee that will investigate Trump's insurrection. McCarthy responded by announcing a complete boycott of the panel.

The furor played out hours before President Joe Biden took part in a CNN town hall in Ohio. Biden refused to back down from his vow to work with Republicans and to engage their voters -- a position many in his own party believe is naïve. But he drew the line at the deliberate attempt by House Republicans to reinvent the history of the insurrection.

"I don't care if you think I'm Satan reincarnate, the fact is you can't look at that television and say, nothing happened on the 6th," Biden said in Cincinnati.

"You can't listen to people who say, 'This is a peaceful march,'" Biden said.

The President's remarks put the events of Wednesday in a wider context, as much of Washington obsessed over whether Pelosi had committed a tactical error that gave McCarthy an excuse to pull all his choices for the committee and to brand the entire exercise a partisan witch hunt and to ignore its findings. That theory has some merit from a narrow political perspective. The speaker effectively left her rival little option to preserve his own position inside her own party.

But the idea that Pelosi was outmaneuvered relies on the assumption that McCarthy has been acting in good faith in a long tussle about accountability for January 6, when he has repeatedly sought to prevent examinations of the ex-President's conduct. And this is not a minor partisan political spat. America's democratic traditions are on the line.

And the hysterical and hyperbolic reaction by GOP leaders to Pelosi's move also emphasized how the House Republican Party will do anything in its quest to shield Trump from accountability and to prevent Americans -- and ultimately history -- from having a true understanding of what happened on January 6....>

<.....If anyone was guilty of authoritarianism, denying the truth and breaking American political institutions, it was the former President, who refused to accept the will of voters -- the most fundamental principle of the US political system. The show of equivalence also shows how Republicans are using Trump's months of lies and propaganda, which have convinced millions of his voters he was cheated out of power, to advance a self-contained -- and false -- narrative.

The GOP response to Pelosi also reflected McCarthy's willingness to adopt any position seen as favorable to devotees of the ex-President who he hopes will show up on the campaign trail in midterm elections and make him speaker. And a news conference held by lawmakers who will now not sit on the committee underscored yet again how made for TV stunt politics pioneered by Trump have become the standard in the House GOP.

GOP blame Pelosi for the insurrection

McCarthy and fellow Trump devotee Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio -- one of the lawmakers blocked by the speaker -- are seeking to blame Pelosi for the insurrection -- rather than the ex-President who called a crowd to Washington and then goaded it with false claims that the election was rigged.

They implicitly argued that a mob waving Trump flags that smashed into the Capitol, beat up police officers and halted the certification of Biden's election win while calling for then-Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged were not at fault. They said Pelosi was culpable for not providing sufficient security to keep lawmakers safe.

Their absurd gambit offered a preview of the circus of distraction that Jordan would have perpetrated had he stayed on the commission.

But most fundamentally, the Republican leadership charges that Pelosi is guilty of the very crimes against the Constitution and American democracy that Trump perpetrated showed how far the GOP has traveled from the spirit of its onetime hero, President Ronald Reagan, who once said that democracy was "the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man."

Earlier, Pelosi dismissed two Republicans -- Jordan and Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana -- from the committee. She did not give specific reasons. But House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California told reporters both men had been selected to be "disruptive and that's not acceptable."

McCarthy didn't waste any time and accused Pelosi of presiding over a "sham" political process.

"It's an egregious abuse of power. ... Pelosi has broken this institution," McCarthy said, in an overwrought news conference no doubt designed to impress Trump, who he visited last week to discuss midterm election strategy.

"I think it's very clear to the American public this is a sham, but we will make sure we get to the real answers," McCarthy said, promising his own probe of an insurrection that was the direct result of Trump's lies about election fraud....>

<....Republicans turned down bipartisan deal on commission

Pelosi, who is rarely above playing politics, should not be immune from criticism. She could have moved more quickly after January 6 to set up a bipartisan probe into the attack. Perhaps if she kept Jordan and Banks on the select committee, she could have preserved a modicum of bipartisan respect for its eventual findings.

Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is now a CNN political commentator, said he would have preferred Pelosi keeping Jordan on the panel to make its eventual findings more credible -- even if he caused disruption. Though he did add that the Republican lawmakers should be ashamed of rhetoric that "bordered on inflammatory."

Republicans say that Pelosi abused her power by refusing to allow the minority to select its own members for an official congressional committee. But Democrats point out that they made repeated concessions to the GOP on the makeup of a bipartisan, independent, commission along the lines of the investigation into the September 11 attacks in 2001.

They had a deal, until Trump told McCarthy and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to kill the idea of a commission with a Senate filibuster.

McCarthy was not the only Republican leader who made political calculations that require covering up Trump's abuses of power. The most searing GOP statement came through the party's No. 3 leader in the House, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who was once seen as a moderate but whose fealty to Trump has rocketed her to GOP stardom.

"Nancy Pelosi is a radical authoritarian speaker of the House," Stefanik said in a statement.

"This commission is an absolute sham and has been a disgrace from the beginning; no amount of drooling excuses from the mainstream media will change that," Stefanik wrote, even adopting the Trumpian vernacular.

"She is afraid of the American people finding out the truth that her failed leadership and the gross mismanagement of the U.S. Capitol led to the tragic events that day," Stefanik, said, transferring Trump's guilt to the speaker.

Stefanik's response underscored why she was able to replace the previous holder of her position, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, whose truth-telling about January 6 and defense of basic democracy made her a pariah in the House GOP.

Cheney was named to the committee by Pelosi, despite her deeply conservative beliefs, and said that she backed the speaker's decision to reject McCarthy's selection of Banks and Jordan. She will now be the sole Republican on the panel.

"She accepted three others. She objected to two. One of whom may be a material witness to events that led to that day, that led to January 6. The other ... disqualified himself by his comments in particular over the last 24 hours, demonstrating he is not taking this seriously," Cheney said.

In recent days, Jordan has described the select committee as purely an excuse to target Trump. And Banks described it after he was picked by the GOP leader as a bid to "malign conservatives and to justify the Left's authoritarian agenda."

Cheney also broadened her breach with McCarthy, suggesting he was not fit to serve as speaker if Republicans win back the House.

"I think that any person who would be third in line to the presidency must demonstrate a commitment to the Constitution and a commitment to the rule of law and Minority leader McCarthy has not done that," Cheney said.>

One man's views below:

<The hard truth.

It's time for the Republican Party to begin disconnecting itself from former President Donald Trump.

This doesn’t mean the party should denounce the former president — that won’t happen. He’s too popular with Republican voters. But it does mean quietly removing the GOP from under Trump's thumb.

This conclusion is based on simple math, the kind with which one plus one equals two. Since 2016, the GOP has felt an obligation to Trump. After all, he beat Hillary Clinton. Republicans also felt indebted to him for championing their issues, appointing hundreds of conservative judges, and challenging the Left.

To pay that debt, Republican voters and elected officials showed fealty to Trump throughout four tumultuous years in office and his bumpy reelection campaign. They defended his most erratic behavior, even when it made them uncomfortable. They put their necks on the line to support his claims of a stolen election, even when there was no moderately substantial evidence to back them up. Here’s the bottom line: The Republican Party has paid its debt to Trump. It must now shift focus away from him and the 2020 election, an election they lost, and concentrate on 2022 and 2024, elections they can win.

There is no better proof than the two Senate runoffs in Georgia. Republican incumbents were positioned to win both but got tangled up in Trump’s personal politics and were defeated. The ramifications have been enormous: Senate control went to the Democrats. Sometimes, politics ain’t beanbag.

Republicans have a chance at regaining a U.S. House majority next year and a longer, but possible, shot at taking over the Senate. To do either, the party needs to strengthen its appeal beyond Trump’s base. Specifically, it needs to do better with independents, suburban women, and voters with college degrees. For example, Trump’s negative rating among college-educated white women is 62%, based on a recent YouGov poll. That’s heavy baggage to carry.

While it may be good politics for Republicans in pro-Trump states and districts to run as the "Trump candidate," that strategy is less likely to work in battleground states — from Pennsylvania to Arizona, North Carolina to Michigan, New Hampshire to Wisconsin — where independents can tip the balance.

Let’s not forget that Trump won the White House by beating Clinton among independents by a 4-point margin. Four years later, he lost the White House by losing independents to Joe Biden by 13 points.

If Democrats think they can hold Congress with only the votes of their party’s left-leaning base, that will prove to be as wrong as Republicans who think they can win back Congress with only votes from Trump’s populist-right base. Ultimately, cross-pressured voters who dislike Democrats and Republicans, Biden and Trump, will determine which side wins.

Republicans need to be mindful that some of the candidates Trump will be pushing in the 2022 primaries aren’t always the strongest possible contenders against Democrats in the general election.

To triumph in 2024, the Republican presidential nominee needs to offer new policies built on facts and well-thought-out reform ideas. Trump can’t do that. A new face can. A recent poll conducted by the Republican firm Fabrizio, Lee & Associates finds that 53% of GOP voters have some resistance to renominating Trump in 2024, even though most of them are strongly favorable toward him. Trump led the field of possible Republican candidates by a 47%-40% margin.

If the next elections are about relitigating Trump’s grievances, Republicans lose. Republicans win if the elections are about policies that work to their advantage. With Trump as candidate or kingmaker, he becomes the central issue. That denies conservatives a clean shot on issues important to them, such as border security, crime, spending, taxes, cancel culture, and possibly inflation and foreign policy.

That’s why Republicans, including Trump’s strongest supporters, need to remove their former standard-bearer as a distraction. Of course, it’s easier for me, a political independent with no stake in either party’s success, to make that case than it is for Republicans to actually do it. But if they want to win, they need to start disconnecting now before it’s too late.

And if they don’t? Perhaps these three words — President Kamala Harris — will ring a bell.>

Taken from an Iowa racetrack last week:

<....Prior to a race at the Speedway on July 15, a fill-in announcer, identified as Lon Oelke in multiple reports, went on a rant he called as a "social service" message, first taking issue with athletes and other individuals who take a knee in protest and do not stand for the United States national anthem before accelerating down a racist path.

"If you won't stand for our flag, if you're gonna take a knee, if you're gonna feel you have rights -- you have the right to remain silent for most of the time -- But I got four words for you: Find a different country, if you won't do it," the announcer told the crowd. "Get the hell out of Dodge. A lot of people have sacrificed many things in their lives for us to be able to do these liberties.

"And if you feel that's all right, well, I don't know. You just don't have a right."

The announcer then expressed his disdain for the National Football League, which plans to play "Lift Every Voice And Sing" -- dubbed the "Black National Anthem" -- prior to some of its games this upcoming season. In doing so, the announcer's diatribe took on bitter racial tones.

"I've heard about all the stuff going on in the NFL, and now they're going to have another national anthem for those folks. For the -- I guess -- darker-toned skin color ... I'll just say blacks," he continued. "They want a different national anthem and the NFL is thinking about doing it. So I say shut the TVs off and let them play in front of nobody. Yes! That's my announcement."

After the rant began to circulate through social media channels, Kossuth County Speedway released a statement through its Facebook account that they had severed ties with Oelke, who had been working in place of usual track announcer Chad Meyer. Oelke normally works as the track announcer at Fairmont Raceway in Minnesota....

....While Kossuth County Speedway severed ties with Oelke, Fairmont Raceway promoter Jon McCorkell made a statement in support of Oelke, stating in a Facebook post that he agreed "with all of Lon's comments and opinions." The post has since been deleted.

"Can't fix stupid. New candidate for the What an Idiot Hall of Fame," NASCAR spotter Freddie Kraft, who spots for Cup Series driver Bubba Wallace among others, wrote on Twitter about McCorkell's post. "I guess this is one way to 'promote' your race track. Good luck with that."....>

<In a divided US, it’s no surprise some see Simone Biles as a villain

While the reaction to the gymnast’s withdrawal was broadly positive, familiar faultlines also emerged in the aftermath

Two days ago, when it was impossible to imagine Simone Biles would pull out of the Olympics team competition – and then later the all-around – it would have nonetheless been easy to predict the reaction in the United States. And, as with so many things in America, opinion was often divided along political lines.

The immediate reaction was overwhelmingly positive. USA Today called Biles’ decision “important” and a “powerful message”. The New York Times lauded the 24-year-old for putting her “mental health first and the expectations of others, at best, second”. And after Biles spoke about the mental exhaustion endemic to being the best, the Washington Post asked, “What are we doing, breaking our athletes?”

On NBC’s primetime broadcast, swimmer-turned-commentator Michael Phelps, who has been candid about his own mental-health struggles, spoke supportively of Biles, telling viewers her story “broke my heart". He added: “I hope this is an eye-opening experience … an opportunity for us to jump on board, and to even blow this mental health thing even more wide open.”

Phelps knows all too well the pressures of being the GOAT, of extending an Olympic career, of exhausting oneself to remain the best. But that’s only part of Biles’ experience. Last summer was supposed to be her swan song, but the pandemic delayed the 2020 Games and necessitated another year of training, of pushing her body to master gravity-defying stunts that come with perhaps the greatest injury risk of any sport.

On top of that, Biles is a Black woman in a country facing a racial reckoning, where her gender still battles for equality in every arena of public life. She’s also a survivor of abuse, a former patient of Larry Nassar, the disgraced Team USA physician who will spend the rest of his life in prison for crimes related to his sexual abuse of underage gymnasts.

Despite her obvious burden and the fundamental importance of mental health – which Biles, Naomi Osaka and others have spotlighted – some have portrayed Biles’s decision to withdraw not as a brave stand but rather as quitting in the face of adversity. In the media, that dialogue (with the exception of a Piers Morgan column in the Daily Mail that accused Biles of being selfish and unable to withstand the rigor of Olympic competition) has almost entirely come from right-leaning US platforms.

On Fox, a growing cadre of white, male rightwing sports talking heads sharpened their claws, ignoring the racial and gendered nuance of Biles’ experience. On his Fox Sports radio show Doug Gottlieb claimed Biles hasn’t faced criticism in her career. “For years, women have said, all we want to be judged as is equal,” he opined. “Generally, we don’t have any sort of critique for our female sports teams. On one hand you want to be viewed, treated, and compensated the same as the men, but on the other hand whatever you do, just don’t be critical of us.”

Clay Travis has taken over many of the radio slots occupied by Rush Limbaugh since the conservative commentator’s death. On another Fox show, Travis also said that Biles has been held to a different standard and said she should apologize to her fellow gymnasts for quitting. “She wasn’t there for them, and that represents a fundamental breach of the most important aspect of team sports.” And uber-conservative pundit Charlie Kirk went even further on his podcast, calling Biles “selfish”, “immature”, “a shame to the country” and a “sociopath”. He added: “Simone Biles just showed the rest of the nation that when things get tough, you shatter into a million pieces.”

On Wednesday, Boston Celtics star and Team USA member Jayson Tatum retweeted a video of Kirk’s show. “Is it that hard to be supportive and empathetic to what others are going through?” he wrote. “This is someone’s daughter and her health [you’re] referring to. Wonder if he has kids and how he would feel as a parent someone talking about his kids this way. … Simone is a hero!”

To half of America, at least. And the other half, and its rhetoric, make it easy to understand why this hero struggles to shoulder her burden.>

<U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik wants New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to “resign and be arrested immediately.”

The New York Republican is incensed on behalf of the 11 women whom, according to evidence in a report from the state attorney general, he sexually harassed.

“These brave women deserve swift and definitive justice,” Stefanik says.

How rich is that?

Cuomo absolutely should resign, and if authorities deem it appropriate, he should be charged.

This is a mainstream position: A Quinnipiac Poll released Friday found that 70% of New York state voters think he should resign and 55% said he should be charged with a crime.

What’s rich is Stefanik passing judgment on Cuomo when she has sold her political soul to former President Donald Trump and the ethically, morally, legally, constitutionally and sexually compromised mess of a party he leads.

She got her leadership job – No. 3 in the GOP House hierarchy – after Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming was ousted for insufficient fealty to Trump.

Cheney had voted to impeach him over his role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol attack by violent Trump supporters.>

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...

She got her leadership job – No. 3 in the GOP House hierarchy – after Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming was ousted for insufficient fealty to Trump.....>

Hypocrisy in motion, don't you know.

As the character Elkanah Bent said to the laundress in <North and South>:

<Leonard Pitts Jr.: Too stupid to live

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” — Martin Luther King

Dr. King didn’t know the half of it.

Those words, after all, are from 1963. Back then, the idea of U.S. citizens and lawmakers attacking their own democracy would have been unthinkable, flouting precautions in a deadly pandemic unimaginable, ignoring a threat to our very planet inconceivable. Of course, back then, information came through a few reliable conduits: Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, the local paper.

There was no social media. The production and distribution of information had not yet become the province of any and everybody.

Things have changed. The unthinkable, the unimaginable and the inconceivable are hard upon us. We face not one, but three simultaneous existential emergencies, and while each is distinct, it’s time we understood that, ultimately, they are not different threats at all, but rather different manifestations of the same threat. Meaning that the insurrection crisis, the COVID-19 crisis and the climate-change crisis are really, at bottom, just facets of a misinformation crisis.

If you consider how belief in risibly false information ginned up by social media — e.g., Donald Trump won, vaccines magnetize skin, cold snaps disprove global warming — has impeded if not paralyzed our response to these and other issues, the truth of it becomes evident. Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley are long dead, the local paper just a shadow of itself. Social media purport to fill the void and as a direct result, misinformation has reached critical levels.

It’s not that no one saw this coming. Warnings go back at least two decades, including in this very space. But the threat seemed so theoretical. Who knew that it would have such real and profound effects? Who knew it would cleave this country — this planet — like an axe, splitting the informed off so decisively from the proudly misinformed, the adherents to crackpot theories and screwball beliefs that would have been laughed off the public stage in 1963 but that, in 2021, find strength in numbers and validation online? And that now emerge as a clear and present danger.

Just this week, for instance, a United Nations panel issued a report warning that climate change has brought us to the point of catastrophe: “code red for humanity.” It’s a truth underscored by our own eyes, by the hundred-year events that now happen every year: devastating floods, blistering heat, raging fires, rampaging storms. The damage, we are told, is irreversible. We can only mitigate it.

You’d think such a dire prognosis would leave us united on the need for immediate action, but Fox “News” saw little to worry about, bringing on climate denier Marc Morano to assure viewers that the U.N. just wants to take their cars. “You’re being conned,” he said, “if you’re falling for this U.N. report.”

And so it goes.

The need to teach our children well — media literacy and critical thinking, in particular — has never felt more urgent. Indeed, it is not too much to call it a matter of survival. After all, the insurrection crisis threatens our country, the COVID crisis threatens our health and the climate crisis threatens the only planet we’ve got. But the misinformation crisis either caused or exacerbated them all. So the obvious epitaph if we do not survive these challenges would be ignominious, but fair:

Too stupid to live.>