Matt Gaetz Succeeds In Getting Defense Sec To Yell At Him, Great Job Matt Gaetz!
He's just plain evil, is the problem.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), that useless bag of hair and forehead who should've gone to prison for sex trafficking by now, had a fine time grandstanding for rightwing media during a House Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday. As Ukraine called for investigations of Russian war crimes in the murders of hundreds of civilians in Bucha, Gaetz bravely interrogated US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin about the extremely important issue of whether the Pentagon is even capable of having good manly wars anymore since it's drowning in "wokeness."
Gatz eventually managed to provoke Austin into a shouting match, so it was clearly a win for the vacuous troll and his important agenda of being a complete asshole.
Here's video of Gaetz being a smarmy turd, and Austin growing more and more exasperated at his bullshit.
Gaetz began with the nonsensical claim that the Pentagon was becoming a hotbed of "socialism" because the National Defense University hosted a lecture by French economist Thomas Piketty titled "Responding to China: The Case For Global Justice and Democratic Socialism." Gaetz was simply aghast that the Defense University would let some foreigner advocate socialism, instead of teaching something useful like how to kill Chineses and socialists both: "Why should American taxpayers fund lectures at the National Defense University that promote socialism as a strategy to combat China?"
Well for fuckssake, Mr. Gaetz, for the same reason that universities have guest lecturers at all: because Piketty is a respected scholar whose ideas are worth debating.
Austin said that the NDU is an "academic institution," and added that he wasn't familiar with the lecture; Gaetz feigned shock that the Secretary of Defense isn't personally monitoring every guest lecture at the NDU, and then demanded that Austin repudiate Piketty: "Would you agree that embracing socialism is not an effective strategy to combat China?"
Not surprisingly, Austin said no, we're not "embracing socialism," and undoubtedly mentally added, you jackhole.
Gaetz demanded answers, damn it, like why would the Defense Department even "invite people we don't agree with to evangelize views and values that we don't share” when "we should be learning strategy about how to combat our enemies and make assessments that are accurate?"
Again, this is where we point out that this was a single guest lecture, just like lots of universities have, but apparently Gaetz was terribly upset that the NDU didn't do some cancel culture to that filthy French socialist, who probably wears a beret and holds his cigarettes like a girl too.
Gaetz moved on to another absurd attack on the Pentagon, accusing "you guys" at the Defense Department of "blowing a lot of calls lately on matters of strategy."
Gaetz: Mr Secretary, you guys told us that Russia couldn't lose. You told us that the Taliban couldn't immediately win. And so I guess I'm wondering what in the $773 billion that you're requesting today is going to help you make assessments that are accurate in the face of so many blown calls?
Austin said that the defense budget request could "speak for itself," which somehow inspired Gaetz to hare off on a tangent about the US supposedly being "behind" in hypersonic cruise missile technology, which frankly is such a stupid claim that we'll simply link to CNN's discussion of his nattering and move on to Gaetz's subsequent bullshit, in which the great military mind accused the Pentagon of actively ignoring military threats because it's turning into Woke Forest University:
While everyone else in the world seems to be developing capabilities and being more strategic, we got time to embrace critical race theory at West Point, to embrace socialism at the National Defense University, to do mandatory pronoun training.
Gaetz knew he was talking out his ass, and so did Austin, who as a retired four-star general and secretary of Defense knows a fair bit about the military. But the goading got a reaction: Austin replied that the US has "the most capable, the most combat critical force in the world," and that it will continue to be so.
Ah, but Matt was having fun making Austin angry, and knew it would make for a great clip on Fox News, so he jumped in again, insisting "not if we keep going down this path! Not if we embrace socialism!"
Sadly, Austin let Gaetz's taunts get to him, and replied, "The fact that you’re embarrassed by your country, by your military. I’m sorry for that."
Gaetz, who has far more experience being a professional asshole, pretended to be wounded, for the sake of America:
Oh no, I’m embarrassed for your leadership. I'm not embarrassed for my country. I wish we weren't losing to China. That is so disgraceful, that you would sit here and conflate your failures with the failures of the uniformed service members.
Hold on, what failures were those again? Gaetz had a terrific example in mind: The US defense establishment, like pretty much everyone in the world, thought Ukraine would be a goner when Russia invaded.
You guys said that Russia would overrun Ukraine in three to six days. You said that the Taliban would be kept at bay for months. You totally blew those calls. And maybe we would be better at them if the National Defense University worked a little more on strategy and a little less on wokeism!
Fact check: One guest lecture by a French dude does not constitute an embrace of wokeism, socialism, or even poststructuralism.
Austin shot back, "Has it occurred to you Russia has not overrun Ukraine because of what we’ve done? And what our allies have done?"
But Gaetz was rolling with the standard "Democrats weak" rant, insisting that the "Obama administration tried to destroy our military by starving it of resources, and it seems the Biden administration is trying to destroy our military by force-feeding it wokeism.” His clip for Fox News in the can, Brave Matt Gaetz yielded his time.
Then, later Tuesday, Gaetz joined more than 60 other Republicans in voting against a House resolution expressing support for NATO, just like you'd expect from a good Trump-Putin Republican. But hey, maybe it's because Thomas Piketty, the socialist, is French, and France belongs to NATO, and NATO is therefore too "woke" for Gaetz. Yeah, that's probably it.
[CNN on YouTube / CNN / Independent]
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So Adam Kinzinger Seems Pissed
Fucks left to give: not many.
It sounds like Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican members of the House January 6 Select Committee and one of the very few remaining Republicans in Congress with any legitimate claim to sanity or patriotism, is having a bit of a "through with this shit" moment.
We guess the combination of — deep breath for this run-on sentence! — the terrorist attack Donald Trump incited against America and the fact Trump has yet to face any sort of accountability for it, and the genocide and war crimes Trump's best pal Vladimir Putin is inflicting on innocents in Ukraine, and the way Republicans and their media mouthpieces sound more and more like state-run Putin assets every day, and the fact that Trump is literally begging Putin nowfuckingrightnow to give him dirt on his political enemy, who is the president of the United States, plus how Trump can't seem to find one harsh word to say about how upon Putin's orders Ukrainian bodies are getting cold in Ukrainian mass graves, oh and then there's that one smart-mouthed little troll colleague of his who called Volodymyr Zelenskyy a "thug," and ...
Well yeah, all that might get to a person after a while. (Maybe it gets to them so much that they eventually regret voting against voting rights? One step at a time, we suppose.)
Michigan GOP Rep. Fred Upton, who along with Kinzinger was one of the 10 who voted to impeach Donald Trump for that wee terrorist attack he incited, announced his retirement today. We already knew Kinzinger was quitting after November.
Here's Kinzinger. He mad.
Instead of a tweet thread about the unseriousness of some members of Congress in this serious time, I just decided to tell you on video:pic.twitter.com/TPJfofOKra— Adam Kinzinger (@Adam Kinzinger) 1649169822
KINZINGER: So I'm back in DC, and what a historic time, obviously. You know, I look at this and I — I mean, I'm in here looking at a minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who hasn't really said a word about his members that have shown Putin sympathy. I never could have imagined my party would not just even have somebody that's showing Putin sympathy, but would not vomit them out if they rose their ugly head.
You know, we have people like Tucker Carlson, in essence, "just asking questions," that's his thing, about whether or not the CIA did, you know, frame all these atrocities we're seeing in Ukraine.
And then the latest outrage of the day is some "woke" thing on Disney, or whatever it is, you know, Dr. Seuss we've moved on from.
I gotta tell you, we've got a bunch of children in this job. We've got a bunch of people that sit around — the world order is being challenged for the first time since World War II. And they're sitting around thinking today about how we can win our next election, what the newest outrage is, what's the next thing we can do to get people angry and upset and get their money from them for our re-election.
We are being governed by a bunch of children. By a bunch of people that are not serious about running the United States of America and truly don't understand the threat that's out there from Vladimir Putin, from China, and from some of these actors in the world that want to destroy our place here.
I mean, there is a genocide going on in Ukraine, and the outrage is over what's happening in Walt Disney. You guys deserve way better. I mean, I'm glad I'm leaving here in a year, because I'm just being surrounded by a bunch of children.
So let's grow up. And I hope my party can finally remember where our foundations are and actually say that we're not going to be Putin-sympathetic anymore.
Wishful thinking.
No notes, would watch again.
OPEN THREAD.
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Your Weekly Dose Of GOP Non-Answers And BS, Courtesy Of The Sunday Shows!
We watch so you don't have to.
The Republican Party has long given up on governance or the appearance of even trying. It's so plain that even when they publicly confess that truth, it's met with a shrug rather than any pushback.
Translation: We have no agenda other than obstructing like it's 2008!
It's nevertheless infuriating when the GOP tries to cover its bullshit with a thin veneer of legitimacy.
Roy Blunt on ABC's 'This Week'
A great example of this is GOP Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, who got his own dedicated Wonkette post about this earlier today. Blunt was asked about where he stood on the upcoming vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Blunt decided to pretend he just really wanted to be a part of this historic moment, but just couldn't vote for this particular person:
BLUNT: Really, there are two criteria, I said immediately. One is, is the person qualified for the job? And two is, what's her judicial philosophy?
She's certainly qualified. [...] But the judicial philosophy seems to be not the philosophy of looking at what the law says and the Constitution says and applying that, but going through some method that allows you to try to look at the Constitution as a more flexible document, and even the law. And there are cases that show that that’s her view. [...] And I won't be supporting her but I'll be joining others in understanding the importance of this moment.
If only the very qualified Judge Jackson had answered that question about her judicial philosophy. Oh wait. We guess Blunt just missed it during the confirmation hearings or when it was reported by The Wall Street Journal or Slate or The New York Times or Des Moines Register. I'm sure once Sen. Blunt's staff does a quick Google search, he'll get right on confirming Judge Jackson.
Right? Right?
John Cornyn on 'Fox News Sunday'
Speaking of lack of consistency, Texas GOP Senator John Cornyn was asked about Donald Trump doing that thing where he asks Russia to interfere in our elections (again) and asks for dirt on a political opponent (again) in plain sight and on tape. Because crimes done in plain view aren't crimes, we guess.
His answer will not surprise you if you've paid attention or have a longer political memory than a goldfish.
Asked on Fox News Sunday about Trump asking Putin for dirt on the Bidens even as Russia wages war on Ukraine, John Cornyn says "I wouldn't trust Vladimir Putin" but stops short of criticizing Trump or calling his comments unwisepic.twitter.com/jGU0CvbkJS— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1648994648
The acrobatics it takes to be against Russia while your presumptive presidential nominee for 2024 and the leader of your party is kissing Putin's ass is "Flying Graysons" level of difficult.
Ron Johnson and Bill Hagerty on Fox News's 'Sunday Morning Futures'
Some in the GOP, rather than twist themselves into pretzels, just barrel on with their propaganda. So here's noted 4th of July Moscow vacationer and Wisconsin GOP Senator Ron Johnson!
Johnson went to Maria Bartiromo's conspiracy safe space show to spread the same old debunked conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden and the same old lies about Trump/Russia collusion being a hoax.
The cover-up of the Biden\u2019s vast web of foreign financial entanglements by our intelligence agencies is the worst corruption I\u2019ve ever seen in the United States government.pic.twitter.com/sTzP5U8dEY— Senator Ron Johnson (@Senator Ron Johnson) 1649079510
Later on the same show, Tennessee GOP Senator Bill Hagerty didn't have much time for questions about mass graves found in Kyiv, because he was on location to do some fearmongering at the OTHER border Fox News is freaked out about. "I want to talk about what's happening here at the [southern] border," he said.
Cornell Belcher on NBC's "Meet The Press"
We conclude with Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher telling a very plain truth that explains why Hagerty and the GOP want to switch topics to immigration, and more broadly why they don't have solutions to any problems.
BELCHER: Let's get real about immigration reform here, right? There's a reason why that's in almost every Republican ad, right? And look, we've seen this play before, right? This is part of that, more fuel for driving the tribalism that Republicans see as part of their political calculus as how they drive this. [...] Dissatisfaction with immigration has been driven by Republicans and they're feeding this. Not so long ago I remember when a guy named Barack Obama thought he had an immigration deal with the Gang of Eight. But it was in the Republicans’ benefit to not have a deal, comprehensive immigration reform, that included border security, that included a pathway. And by the way, most Americans think that you should pay a penalty, and there should be a pathway. And that's not going to happen. You know why it's not going to happen? Because Republicans in Congress don't want it to happen.
They have no plans or solutions because there's no political consequences for it (yet). They are counting on it for the midterms and beyond.
I hope we can prove them wrong.
Have a week.
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Here's Why President Biden Is Calling Putin A 'War Criminal'
He must answer for the horrors in Bucha, Ukraine.
Saturday, Ukraine declared the town of Bucha free from Russian occupation. However, as Russian troops retreat from areas near Kyiv after a failed attempt to encircle the capital city, accounts of horrific alleged atrocities have emerged. We say “alleged,” but the pictures speak for themselves.
French news agency Agence France-Presse captured images of the lifeless bodies of at least 20 civilian men lining a single street. According to CNN, “the hands of one man are tied behind his back with a piece of white cloth. Another man lies alone, tangled up in a bicycle by a grassy bank. A third man lies in the middle of the road, near the charred remains of a burned-out car.”
Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk revealed that almost 300 people have been buried in mass graves. He told Reuters:
Corpses of executed people still line the Yabluska street in Bucha. Their hands are tied behind their backs with white 'civilian' rags, they were shot in the back of their heads. So you can imagine what kind of lawlessness they perpetrated here.
Witnesses told The Guardian that Russian soldiers fired on men fleeing the town and killed civilians at will.
According to Bucha resident Taras Schevchenko, quoted in The Guardian, Russian soldiers denied people safe passage through a humanitarian corridor and instead gunned down men as they fled across an open field. He said bodies were "scattered on the pavements” and some of the dead were “squashed by tanks … like animal skin rugs”.
Mass grave discovered in Bucha, outside Kyiv, a CNN team has found.\u00a0\nBodies were first buried in the grave on the grounds of a church in first days of the war, residents told CNN. CNN saw at least a dozen bodies in body bags piled inside. Credit to @fpleitgenCNN & teampic.twitter.com/kkvysGWlND— Jim Sciutto (@Jim Sciutto) 1649003515
Intentionally killing civilians is a war crime, and western leaders have denounced Russia’s vicious slaughter of unarmed people. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lamented the Ukrainian “streets littered with bodies. Bodies buried in makeshift conditions ... women, children and the elderly among the victims.”
Melinda Simmons, the British ambassador to Ukraine, said she believed Russian used rape as a weapon of war: “Women raped in front of their kids, girls in front of their families, as a deliberate act of subjugation. Rape is a war crime.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN’s Dana Bash that the gruesome images of dead Ukrainians were a "punch to the gut,” but he resisted accusing Russian troops of attempted genocide. Instead, he said:
"We will look hard and document everything that we see, put it all together, make sure that the relevant institutions and organizations that are looking at this, including the State Department, have everything they need to assess exactly what took place in Ukraine, who's responsible and what it amounts to."
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t pull any punches, decisively declaring Russia’s actions genocide. On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” he said this is “the elimination of the whole nation, and the people. We are the citizens of Ukraine. We have more than 100 nationalities. This is about the destruction and extermination of all these nationalities.”
Vladimir Putin is on record as denying not just Ukrainian sovereignty, but Ukraine’s actual existence. This viewpoint is reportedly deeply ingrained in the minds of Russian leadership. This isn’t technically the Holocaust, but it’s arguably still a war with ultimate goal of destroying an entire nation and distinct culture.
Russia’s defense ministry, who no one should trust for shit, released a statement Sunday saying it hadn’t killed civilians in Bucha. We apparently shouldn’t believe our own lying eyes. The defense ministry insultingly claims that the video footage and photographs confirming Russia’s barbaric actions are “yet another provocation” by the West. Russia asked the UN Security Council to convene a meeting Monday to discuss the actions of “Ukrainian radicals.” It’s as if these monsters are suggesting innocent people died their hands behind their own backs and somehow shot themselves in those same backs.
\u2026 and the people of Ukraine, that you pull your forces out now. It is still not too late to salvage the kinship felt between the Russian and Ukrainian people, as expressed in this video clip from a Ukrainian soldier.pic.twitter.com/TcS0c0Axq6— Tulsi Gabbard \ud83c\udf3a (@Tulsi Gabbard \ud83c\udf3a) 1648980518
The atrocities in Bucha are so awful that Russia apologist Tulsi Gabbard felt inclined to tweet her own "Dear Mr. President Putin" message:
President Putin, not only is your brutal attack on Ukraine reprehensible, it has been a huge geopolitical error which has already cost Russia dearly. Those costs will get higher every day you remain in Ukraine. So it is in the best interest of the Russian people…
… and the people of Ukraine, that you pull your forces out now. It is still not too late to salvage the kinship felt between the Russian and Ukrainian people, as expressed in this video clip from a Ukrainian soldier.
Just a couple weeks ago, Gabbard was blaming President Joe Biden for Russia’s escalating war of aggression. This attempted heel-face turn is too little, too late, especially considering that Russian state TV frequently shows footage of Gabbard on Tucker Carlson’s white power hour. TV host Vladimir Soloviev recently called this former member of Congress “our girlfriend Tulsi” and immediately replied “yes” when asked if Gabbard’s some kind of Russian agent.
Meanwhile on Russian state TV: Another translated clip of Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard, introduced by state TV host Vladimir Soloviev as "Our girlfriend Tulsi." \n\nAfter the clip plays, one panelist asks: "Is she some sort of a Russian agent?" The host quickly replies: "Yes."pic.twitter.com/VVNGmtjavU— Julia Davis (@Julia Davis) 1648687325
The West is set to impose even tougher sanctions on Russia, and President Biden just told reporters he’s seeking a war crimes trial for Putin.
The dead in Bucha demand justice.
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