<Conservative attorney and media pundit George Conway hit back hard Saturday at Donald Trump's gleeful attack over his reported divorce from the former president's aide Kellyanne Conway.

After a Page Six report Friday that the couple was divorcing, Trump crowed on Truth Social: "Congratulations to Kellyanne Conway on her DIVORCE from her wacko husband, Mr. Kellyanne Conway. Free at last, she has finally gotten rid of the disgusting albatross around her neck."

Conway cooly fired back Saturday: “Looking forward to seeing you in New York at E. Jean's trial next month! Hugs and kisses." Conway was referring to a lawsuit against Trump by writer E. Jean Carroll.

Carroll has accused Trump of raping her in the late 1990s in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store, which Trump has denied. She filed a suit against Trump late last year claiming sexual battery under the recently passed Adult Survivors Act, which temporarily lifts the statute of limitations for a year on civil claims over alleged sexual offenses.

Carroll also sued Trump for defamation in 2019 after he angrily denied her allegations in a White House interview. He claimed that Carroll was not his “type” and that she was just out to get publicity.>

Go to it, <fredthedrip>: report this as 'political'.

<Patrick Snay, 69 -- the former head of Gulliver Preparatory School -- filed an age discrimination complaint when his 2010-11 contract wasn't renewed.

In November 2011, the school and Snay came to an agreement in which Snay would be paid $10,000 in back pay, and an $80,000 settlement. Gulliver Schools also agreed to cut Snay's attorneys a check for $60,000.

But before the ink could dry on the deal, Snay's daughter took to Facebook, boasting, "Mama and Papa Snay won the case against Gulliver. Gulliver is now officially paying for my vacation to Europe this summer. SUCK IT.">

<Michael Steele, the RNC chairman during the Obama era, has heard just about enough of Marjorie Taylor Greene and her calls for a national divorce: The antics of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have likely frequently angered more establishmentarian, Republicans, even if they don’t speak out about it. 5 One former head of the party has, in fact, spoken out. And he is not happy - to say the least.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: All of the Drama

In response to Greene’s recent call for a “national divorce,” Michael Steele, who was chairman of the RNC between 2009 and 2011, ripped Greene in an MSNBC interview. Steele is a political analyst on that network.

Appearing on the network’s “The 11th Hour” show, Steele slammed Greene’s “national divorce” idea, as reported by The Hill.

“She has no clue what the hell she’s talking about,” Steele said on the show.

“Why do we listen to this crazy fool? Marjorie Taylor Greene, please just shut the hell up. Do us all a favor. You are an embarrassment to the Republican Party and to the country as a congresswoman.”

Steele also invoked the Civil War as a reason to oppose a “national divorce.”

“We fought that war,” Steele said.

“A Republican president lost his life over trying to save the union, and this fool wants to split it? So, here we go. This is the kind of crazy that requires a lot of heavy thinking because she isn’t.”

A Note on Steele

Steele is not exactly a Republican in good standing. A former lieutenant governor of Maryland who was the first African-American RNC chairman, Steele has been an outspoken opponent of Donald Trump, and in 2020 he both linked up with the Lincoln Project and endorsed Joe Biden for president.

However, in a 2021 interview, he expressed interest in running again or Maryland lieutenant governor and made clear that he is still a member of the Republican Party.

The former chairman knows a thing or two about people who frequently say outlandish things in public, even outside of his political work. Steele’s sister, Monica Turner, was formerly married to retired boxing champion Mike Tyson.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Tries to Backtrack?

Greene tried to clean up her “civil war” comments in an appearance last week on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, implying that rather than an actual dissolution of the United States, she is calling for a weaker federal government and for the states to have more power to do what they want.

Another “never Trump” conservative, David French, who recently became a New York Times columnist, also criticized Greene this week for the national divorce idea.

“The very idea is absurd. It’s incompatible with the Constitution. It’s dangerous. It’s unworkable. It would destroy the economy, dislocate millions of Americans and destabilize the globe,” French wrote.

“Even in the absence of a civil war — it’s beyond unlikely that vast American armies would clash the way they did from 1861 to 1865 — national separation would almost certainly be a violent mess. There is only one way to describe an actual American divorce: an unmitigated disaster, for America and the world.”

Citing colleague Jamelle Bouie, French noted that “the very idea that red states or blue states represent ideologically coherent communities is completely wrong,” as red states contain many Democratic voters and vice versa.

That applies to French’s home state of Tennessee, which went for Trump by a wide margin but saw Biden win by 30 points in the big cities of Nashville and Memphis. And that also applies to Greene herself, who lives in Georgia, a state that went for Joe Biden in 2020, and in November re-elected two Democratic senators.

But French remains worried about massive disunity in the country.

"Animosity is the enemy of American liberty,” he wrote. “It is hard to muster the will to defend the rights of people you despise. But it’s also the ultimate enemy of American unity. Hatred and fear are the foundation of “unreasoning fury,” and the fury that divided us once before may well do so again.”>

<Legal experts (say) a recent Justice Department memo could open the door to a criminal indictment against former President Donald Trump for his role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Following guidance from the District of Columbia's appellate court, the DOJ last week submitted a legal memo pertaining to a civil lawsuit filed by Capitol police officers injured on January 6, 2021, rejecting Trump's claim of presidential immunity against the complaints.

The department asserted that a president cannot be wholly absolved for a speech on a matter of public concern if the speech is found to have incited violence. Additionally, the department clarified that his inflammatory speech was not protected by his own free speech rights under the First Amendment. "No part of a president's official responsibilities includes the incitement of imminent private violence," the DOJ said in a friend-of-a-court brief.

Former prosecutor Charles Coleman Jr. called the DOJ memo a "blockbuster" that could open the door to a flurry of civil lawsuits against the former president.

"This is a big, big blow to Donald Trump and significant news. Because it opens the proverbial floodgates for lawsuits," Coleman told MSNBC. "Now, the downside to this is, while there may be a significant political strain that comes from this, and also the stain on reputation that does further damage to Donald Trump, I don't necessarily know that a victory in court is going to yield much money in terms of them being able to collect whatever judgment they will ultimately be able to get."

But beyond just potential lawsuits, legal experts say the memo could also help lay the groundwork for a criminal indictment against Trump.

"If they took the position that the president was absolutely immune, then they wouldn't be able to bring a criminal prosecution," a source familiar with the DOJ investigation told The Daily Beast.

"Had DOJ concluded that incitement unprotected by the First Amendment could nevertheless be within the president's official functions, that could conceivably have impacted criminal charging decisions related to the same speech," former federal prosecutor Mary McCord, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, told the outlet.

The DOJ stressed in its memo that it "expresses no view on that conclusion, or on the truth of the allegations in plaintiffs' complaints" but legal experts say the memo leaves Trump defenseless.

"If they're saying it's outside the scope of immunity of civil suits, and outside the scope of protected speech, there really isn't anything else out there protecting Trump," one unnamed attorney told The Daily Beast.

The DOJ memo could also aid Fulton County, Ga. District Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading an investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn his loss in the state. By stating that some actions by a sitting president fall outside of legal behavior, the DOJ memo could help strengthen Willis' case if she indicts Trump.

"It has profound implications for the Georgia case, and they are ominous for Trump," attorney Norm Eisen, who served as Democratic co-counsel during Trump's first impeachment, told The Daily Beast.

"Indeed, the Georgia conduct may be even more outrageous and unrelated to his official duties or his First Amendment rights than giving a speech on the Ellipse," he said. "This brief is going to be utilized by the Fulton County prosecutor because it is so powerfully indicative of the only possible logical conclusion here: that an attempted coup cannot be part of the job description of a president under the United States Constitution.">

<WASHINGTON — Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday released new security footage from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, using video provided exclusively to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to portray the riot as a peaceful gathering.

Carlson acquired the tapes as part of a deal for McCarthy to win the speaker’s gavel. When McCarthy was struggling to gather the votes to lead the House, Carlson used his program to list two “concessions” he could make to win over far-right Republicans.

“First, release the January 6 files. Not some of the January 6 files and video — all of it,” Carlson, the most-watched host on cable news, said after McCarthy faced three failed votes. “So that the rest of us can finally know what actually happened on January 6, 2021.”

In the two months since McCarthy won the gavel, he has granted both. Carlson announced in late February that McCarthy had given him exclusive access to 44,000 hours of security footage from the deadly riot before unveiling some clips of the footage on his show Monday night.

Carlson focused Monday’s segment on promoting Trump’s narrative by showing footage of his supporters walking calmly around the U.S. Capitol. He asserted that other media accounts lied about the attack, proclaiming that while there were some bad apples, most of the rioters were peaceful, calling them "sightseers," not "insurrectionists."

“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” Carlson told his audience Monday. “Instead it shows police escorting people through the building, including the now infamous ‘QAnon Shaman.’”

He continued: "More than 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from in and around the Capitol have been withheld from the public and once you see the video, you’ll understand why. Taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that Jan. 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim."

Video that Carlson didn’t air shows police and rioters engaged in hours of violent combat that resulted in the injury of hundreds of police officers. Two pipe bombs were also planted nearby but were not detonated.

Nearly 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack. About 140 officers were assaulted that day, and about 326 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees, including 106 assaults that happened with a deadly or dangerous weapon. About 60 people pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement.

Carlson also said on his show Monday that Democrats lied about the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. He played footage that he said showed Sicknick walking around inside the Capitol after he was attacked by the mob. “They knew he was not murdered by the mob, but they claimed it anyway,” he said.

Sicknick died of natural causes on Jan 7, the day after engaging with rioters outside the Capitol. An autopsy report determined that Sicknick died of a stroke at the base of the brain stem caused by a blood clot. Capitol Police have said Sicknick returned to his office the riot and collapsed. Two men have been sentenced to prison for spraying him with a chemical irritant during the melee and Sicknick’s family has contended that the fighting with rioters contributed directly to his stroke.

McCarthy’s controversial decision to hand over Jan. 6 footage to Carlson represents a new twist for one of the most scrutinized events in American history, which has produced countless hours of social media footage, a sweeping Justice Department criminal investigation, a House select committee probe and a bipartisan impeachment of then-President Donald Trump on “incitement of insurrection.”

The video’s release after two years, on Fox News in primetime, highlights the influence of Carlson, who has downplayed and promoted conspiracy theories about Jan. 6, and the far right over the slim new House majority....>

'Peaceful'?

<.....Carlson also said at the top of his show Monday that Fox had checked with Capitol Police before airing any of the footage.

“Their reservations were minor,” he said, saying Fox blurred a door inside the Capitol in response to the agency's request.

NBC News has reached out to the Capitol Police for comment.

Carlson said he plans to air additional footage during his show on Tuesday night.

The episode presents thorny politics for McCarthy who, in releasing the tapes to Carlson, is reigniting a national debate over the failed insurrection that cost his party seats in the midterm election — and looms over the 2024 presidential contest as Trump leads the GOP field in pursuit of a comeback.

“Electorally, it’s not to their advantage to be on the side of insurrectionists. But hasn’t stopped them before,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.

The Republican speaker’s actions have sparked criticism from members of both parties and demands from news outlets, including NBC News, for access to the footage. Some lawmakers say the tapes could be taken out of context to create a false narrative of what happened that day. Others worry they could expose the identities of police officers who defended the Capitol and subject them to harassment. And numerous Republicans say security information should be protected and that all media should have equal access.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said the tapes “should have been reviewed to make sure that they would not be used in a way that could harm law enforcement” before being disclosed to anyone.

“I don’t quite know what Speaker McCarthy had in mind,” he said. “I think it’s appropriate to provide information to the public generally and not just to one network.”

McCarthy defended his decision, saying he has accounted for security concerns and that his office had “worked with Capitol Police” to ensure that security concerns were “taken care of.” Carlson also said at the top of his show Monday that Fox had discussed what they planned to air with Capitol Police beforehand.

“He’ll have an exclusive then I’ll give it out to the entire country,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said, adding that Carlson’s team is “not interested” in showing sensitive security footage such as exit routes. “We’re working through that. We worked with the Capitol Police as well. So we’ll make sure security is taken care of.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that McCarthy’s decision “laid bare that this sham is simply about pandering to MAGA election deniers,” accusing Carlson of using “his platform to promote the Big Lie, distort reality, and espouse bogus conspiracy theories about January 6.”....>

<....Some Republicans believe it is a mistake to reopen the Jan. 6 discussion, particularly after Trump-backed election deniers faced midterm defeats up and down the ballot in swing states.

“The 2022 election was a categorical rejection of election denialism. It cost Republicans the Senate and nearly kept them from winning back the House,” said Republican strategist Ken Spain, a former aide on the GOP’s House campaign arm. “With a razor-thin majority, House Republicans can’t waste a minute looking backward.”

Trump’s allies are looking for one thing on those tapes: vindication.

“We heard for two years how incredibly important this Jan. 6 committee was, how important all the evidence they collected was,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who mounted the first Senate objection to 2020 results that forced a vote, turning a sleepy ritual into a rallying point for Trump and his ardent followers. “Let’s see it. Let’s see the whole video.”

Hawley said that among the people at the Capitol, “I think the overwhelming majority were peaceful.” He added: “My friends on the left are melting down about this. ‘We can’t have that!’ Well, why can’t we? I thought it was critical that it all be put out there.”

“What’s on the tapes? I don’t know, but I’m interested to see them,” he said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the Jan. 6 security footage “should be made public or at least congressional oversight” because “that’s a very dramatic thing that happened one day in our country’s history.”

“What’s been investigated would be such a small percentage of it that a lot could be learned,” he said.

The release of some of the Jan. 6 security footage comes two years after the attack, in which Trump supporters violently breached the Capitol in an attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat. Trump has persisted in his fabricated claims that the election was stolen from him, despite failing to produce evidence of substantial fraud. He has also persisted in defending many of the rioters as patriots.

In a recent letter to colleagues, Schumer warned that Carlson would use any clips from the riot to advance his own narrative. “If the past is any indication, Tucker Carlson will select only clips that he can use to twist the facts to sow doubt of what happened on January 6 and feed into the propaganda he’s already put on Fox News’ air, which, based on recent reports, he may not even believe himself,” Schumer wrote.>

<(Reuters) - Fox Corp (FOXA.O) Chairman Rupert Murdoch said that hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham maybe “went too far” in their coverage of voter fraud claims, according to an email in a trove of exhibits in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox unsealed on Tuesday.

Dominion sued Fox News Networks for $1.6 billion in 2021, accusing the cable TV network of amplifying debunked claims that Dominion voting machines were used to rig the election against Republican Donald Trump and in favor of his rival Joe Biden, who won the election.

The reams of documents that became public on Tuesday offer a window into Fox’s internal deliberations as it covered the 2020 presidential election, alienating some viewers by being the first network to project that Biden would win the crucial state of Arizona.>

<Jenna Ellis, an attorney for Donald Trump who helped drive his false claims about the 2020 election results, has admitted in a Colorado disciplinary proceeding that she misrepresented evidence at least 10 times during Trump’s frantic bid to subvert his defeat.

“Respondent made these misrepresentations on Twitter and on various television programs, including Fox Business, MSNBC, Fox News, and Newsmax,” Colorado’s top disciplinary judge Bryon Large wrote in a six-page opinion. “The parties agree that by making these misrepresentations, Respondent violated [a state attorney rule of conduct], which provides that it is professional misconduct for a lawyer to engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.”

Large issued a public censure of Ellis for her stipulated conduct.

Ellis is the latest Trump attorney involved in the former president’s post-election efforts to face discipline. Rudy Giuliani had his license temporarily suspended and is awaiting a final ruling from a bar discipline proceeding in Washington, D.C. John Eastman is preparing for disciplinary proceedings in California. And Jeffrey Clark has temporarily delayed bar discipline proceedings against him in Washington while attempting to bring the fight into federal court.

But Ellis is the first attorney of the group to acknowledge she misrepresented the evidence of fraud. Among her admitted misrepresentations:

— On Nov 20, 2020, Ellis claimed Trump’s team had evidence of a “coordinated effort in all of these states to transfer votes either from Trump to Biden, to manipulate the ballots, to count them in secret.”

— On Nov. 30, 2020, Ellis said on Fox that Trump “won in a landslide.”

— On Dec. 5, 2020, Ellis claimed the Trump team found 500,000 illegal votes had been cast in Arizona.

Both Ellis’ attorney and the disciplinary attorneys bringing the case against her agreed that there was no precedent for the case against Ellis — an effort to aid a sitting president’s bid to undermine confidence in the American election system.

Large noted that Ellis wasn’t Trump’s counsel of record in any lawsuits challenging the election. But he also noted that Ellis admitted her actions violated “her duty of candor to the public.”

“The parties agree that two aggravators apply — [Ellis] had a selfish motive and she engaged in a pattern of misconduct — while one factor, her lack of prior discipline, mitigates her misconduct,” Large determined.>

Who else was on his legal team? <fredthecabron>?

<Stephen Colbert went through the “damning” private communications of Fox News staffers and TV personalities and came to one stinging conclusion.

“Fox News doesn’t believe a word they say ― and neither should you,” he declared during his Wednesday night monologue.

He saved some of his harshest words for Tucker Carlson, the right-wing host who revealed he “passionately” hates Donald Trump.

“Since the revelation of his vast duplicitous hypocrisy, I don’t know what to even believe about Tucker anymore,” Colbert said. “Does he really tan his testicles? Does he actually want to have sex with the lady M&M or is he just leading her on with his pale, pale testicles?”

Court documents also showed Fox News executives lamenting that they called Arizona early ― saying that if they hadn’t done so, they might’ve had better ratings because “the mystery would have been still hanging out there.”

“That’s right,” Colbert said. “Fox News believes news should be mysterious. They learned their journalism from ‘Scooby-Doo.’”

He even offered up a “Scooby-Doo” clip showing the gang exposing Trump: >

<Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, floated a proposal to change the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare and limit benefits for upper income Americans. But she remained vague about the details, failing to pinpoint a specific age she would set for retirement.

Haley’s proposal comes as the budget wars are heating up, and the more Republicans touch the third rail of entitlement programs, the more Democrats will benefit.

President Joe Biden, showing the power of the bully pulpit to shape the national agenda, has put forth a bold budget proposal that seeks to cut the deficit by increasing taxes on higher income Americans while protecting Medicare and discretionary spending, reducing prescription drug costs for seniors and capping insulin at $35 a month for all Americans.

Following several months of Republicans doubling down on culture war issues that they hope will peel away the support of disaffected Democrats and independents while energizing the Republican base, Biden is hitting back hard on real issues that affect millions of Americans’ daily lives.

Rather than spending time on issues like policing classroom textbooks or stoking fears over transgender Americans, Biden wants to put money where his mouth is. The president is offering a fiscal blueprint steeped in the traditions of his party by ensuring the commitment of the federal government to provide a social safety net — and funding those programs in the most progressive way possible.

Seeking to put Republicans calling for cutbacks in support to Ukraine in a difficult position, he is also asking for increases in military spending so that the United States can continue to support Ukraine in its war against Russia....>

<....As for Haley’s proposal, it is not surprising that Republicans like former President Donald Trump have already attacked fellow GOP candidates for wanting to raise the retirement age or cut Medicare, while others in the party are scrambling to distance themselves from a House Republican Caucus that is pushing for draconian cuts to domestic programs. While the party has backed away from touching Social Security and Medicare, for now, they are instead pushing for massive reductions in other programs such as food assistance and housing programs for lower-income Americans.

With the decision to raise the debt ceiling still unsettled, the House GOP is threatening to send the nation into a financial spiral if the administration does not concede to its demands. It’s not a great look for Republicans, and there is good reason that many Americans don’t trust the GOP’s promises to back off Social Security and Medicare. First of all, House Republicans have shown they are capable of resorting to extreme measures. Secondly, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence, two potential 2024 presidential candidates, have previously endorsed privatizing the programs or making cuts, as have other prominent members of the party.

The problem for Republicans is that these and other domestic programs remain extremely popular. Even Haley’s proposal to increase the retirement age and means test benefits won’t sit well with millions of Americans who count on and support these two universal social insurance programs that have done so much to alleviate the challenges of old age. Other domestic policies also command strong support as polls show that voters want the government to play a major role on a number of issues — including ensuring access to health care and helping people get out of poverty — even when they don’t trust in the government to always do the right thing.

Some Republicans learned these hard lessons with the Affordable Care Act, which has become increasingly popular despite strong opposition from Republicans, who spent years trying to repeal the legislation. That effort culminated in the famous moment in 2017 when Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona gave a dramatic thumbs down on the Senate floor, blowing up Trump’s “skinny repeal” bill. Not surprisingly, Trump is now insisting that the GOP should vow that they won’t touch Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Biden’s plan to raise taxes from 37% to 39.6% on Americans who earn more than $400,000 a year and impose a minimum tax on billionaires is also a winning strategy, since Americans tend to support progressive taxation. The move makes predictable criticisms against the president as a “tax-and-spend” liberal more difficult.

Although the shadow of President Ronald Reagan’s famous line that “government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem,” continues to shape the anti-government rhetoric of the GOP, the reality was that his administration failed to make the draconian cuts to domestic spending that he promised. (While he succeeded in reducing spending in some areas, he failed to dismantle any major domestic programs.)

Indeed, his administration quickly backed off from a plan to curtail Social Security benefits in 1981, after Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill pounced on the White House, saying, “For the first time since 1935 people would suffer because they trusted in the Social Security system. I’m not talking about politics. I’m talking about decency. It is a rotten thing to do. It is a despicable thing.” It was from this battle that the concept of Social Security being a “third rail” in American politics emerged.

As Republicans continue to wade into this issue, they are poised to hand Biden and the Democrats a big win. Biden understands this, as he demonstrated during his State of the Union address, when he backed Republicans into a corner on Social Security and Medicare. It is for this reason that he is forcing Republicans to have a conversation, with specifics, about what they mean when they attack the government and federal spending.

For it is one thing to tell Americans that Washington is broken and another to say they will slash the federal benefits upon which so many of them have come to depend on.>

A new low for her:

https://twitter.com/i/status/163386...

<So enlightening.>

<Yes folks, our esteemed editor is crying, crying, about two words -- "So enlightening." Are we really reading this non-sense?? perhidious is such a creep! There's a mighty big difference between his evil stalking fantasies and FTB's chess posts. perhidious should've been banned years ago!!

<....Of course, FTB was not on vacation. perhidious does not remember FTB, but never hesitates to regurgitate complete fabrications that the sundevil has fantasized about. This vile stalking just goes on and on.>

Your lack of useful commentary on Keres [sic] games over the years shows that you don't know Keres as you pretend.>

For all your low-level pretensions to knowledge of any chess matters, y'all will have to do better, <fredtheputz>.

Your play is weak (in all senses).>

<Who asked the patZer stone me to die to get involved? FTB's comment was in response to repeated stalking by perhidious on game pages, Kibitzer, Rogoff, and Al's personal forum of ATTACK. All angry Al does is ATTACK other human beings. He doesn't have a leg to stand on, so his lap doggy Z sfod chimes in. Look at the recent posts in this forum: Z sfod has attacked messiah, gw, harry, his cohort missy, and ftb, all while trying to sweet talk Susan again. This manipulating Z punk reeks, has no shame. Why does the sock puppet master get to openly judge members in the forums time and time again? It's a clear violation of posting guidelines but CGs does nothing. patZer sfod is not king of anything but the need for negative attention; an obvious reject in real-life who wants to boss everyone, and I do mean everyone around.

Notice that the self-styled Z-truther had nothing to say about his Al pal's ugly, mischaracterizing comments. These two scoundrels have been harassing members here for decades and have contributed significantly to the website participation decline. Of course, the dastardly duo kisses up to the administration and gets a free pass -- for decades!

Take that, Z legend 0009, who lies about having FTB on ignore.>

More lies from the self-styled supreme truth-giver.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/sav...

<MAGA’s most ardent congressional supporters, Representatives Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, have both (accidentally) hit demagogic leader Donald Trump with friendly fire in recent weeks.

The Boebert Incident

Boebert’s incident occurred during an Oversight Committee hearing on the Office of Personnel Management. Boebert was questioning OPM’s director, Kiran Ahuja, about “more than 25 percent of federal employees not logging into work” while teleworking.

Ahuja pushed back, prompting Boebert to say “it’s in this leaked document, right here, that we just submitted into the record.” Ahuja retorted: “You’re basing that from 2020, which is in the last administration, and I can’t speak to that.”

The last administration, of course, was Donald Trump’s administration.

The document Boebert cited was an internal Department of Health and Human Services document (reportedly leaked) showing that, “on average,” HHS employees were not using their official Office 365 emails from March to December 2020.

“Boebert grew frustrated when Ahuja could not immediately provide more recent data,” Business Insider reported. “The Colorado Republican then tried to point to the Trump-era document as evidence that federal workers are currently abusing remote work policies by “claiming they are teleworking and instead they are spending all day at a swim-up bar in Cabo.”

Boebert’s line of inquiry speaks to the heart of this conservative ethos where everyone needs to work their ass off all the time – and to this conservative perception that the liberal ethos is to slack off persistently while still expecting handouts.

The conservative work ethos, and the perception of the liberal work ethos, have become more relevant during the pandemic and the rise of teleworking, as Boebert’s inquiry suggests. But the same sentiments are lingering beneath the surface of so many political debates, like, what should we do about entitlements, or what should our tax rate be?

Boebert’s line of inquiry is meant to reinforce the idea that conservatives show up to work hard and expect nothing in return, while liberals expect to kind of, maybe telework while collecting a fat government paycheck.

It’s a characterization and her attempt to provide supporting evidence invalidates the characterization – she’s indicting Trump workers, not Biden workers.

In sum, the incident amounts to a minor burn against the Trump administration – but a moderate burn against Boebert herself who has supplied plenty of reasons to question her competence.

The Greene Incident

MTG’s incident doesn’t speak to some greater debate on work-life balance, or anything so profound. Still, it’s a similar example of an attempt to burn the Biden administration resulting in a burn against the Trump administration.

The incident: during a hearing on the deaths of two brothers, who died using fentanyl, Greene blamed the Biden administration. Problem is, the brothers died in July 2020 – when Trump was president.

Biden himself commented on MTG’s mix-up. “Isn’t she amazing,” Biden said. “Whew!”

MTG was no doubt trying to frame Biden, and liberals in general, as soft on drugs, soft on crime, et cetera, et cetera.

But substance abuse is an issue that has transcended party lines, afflicting red states and blue states, Republican administrations, and Democratic administrations.

Regardless, MTG’s attempt to leverage the deaths of two brothers into a partisan political burn blows up in her face.>