Pardon me, but can you think of a sleazier, less principled, national politician than South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham? Add to that, can you think of one more smug and superior? I’ll just sit here and wait while you try to.
Sure there may be others who are more extreme or more dangerous, and there are puh-LENTY who are more stupid and/or crazy. I’m just saying, sleaziest, least principled, and smuggest. There’s not one.
And now even the MAGA crowd, who hates nobody more than politicians they THOUGHT were allies but didn’t follow the Dear Leader to the bitter end – traitors like Graham and Vice President “Hang” Mike Pence – know that too.
So welcome to the Lindsey Graham Appreciation Society, MAGAts! And I’m not using the word “appreciation” with cheap sarcasm, I am using it correctly. The word “appreciate” is too commonly misused to connote a positive feeling, but the first two definitions are actually “recognize the full worth of,” and “recognize the full implications of.” On that note, the Trumpies have now joined most of the rest of us in “appreciating” what an evil fuck this Senator is:
There are several videos of the angry “Stop the Steal” MAGA crowd confronting Lindsey at the Ronald Reagan Airport after his refusal to back Trump on overturning the election results. This video above has less of the shrieking, “Traitor!” and “Audit our vote!” but I like it better, because at 1:11 the well-protected Senator looks up briefly from his phone and grins at his tormentors. “You think that’s FUNNY?” the Trumpy responds incredulously. “What’s this, Animal Farm, you think you’re better than us?”
Yes, Trumpy, Lindsey does think this is funny and he’s better than us, welcome to the club. He thought the Tea Party was pretty funny ten years ago. That was back when John McCain was alive, and you really couldn’t tell where John ended and Lindsey began. Using the Arizona maverick as his true north made Lindsey an angry paranoid war-hawk but also relatively honest for a Republican. McCain’s 2018 death left him unmoored, morally anchorless.
He thinks ALL of us are pretty funny when we take him at his word. Remember in early 2016, when Supreme Court Justice Scalia died with a whole year left on Obama’s term, but Senate Majority Leader McConnell refused to fill the vacancy on some brand new invented pretext that one year before a Presidential election was too late. And Lindsey, already the powerful head of the Judicial Committee, was foursquare behind that absurd pretext, but swore to us that he’d be consistent about that in the future if the same thing happened under a Republican president. Lindsey used strong words even:
“Use my words against me,” Lindsey drawled. And “hold the tape.” Even a cynical observer would be forgiven for thinking he meant what he was saying. HA! Four years later he was laughing at ANYONE who believed him in 2016, pushing through Amy Coney Barrett with just a few weeks left in Trump’s term.
Maybe he laughed at us too for taking him seriously in 2016 all the times he savagely derided candidate Trump – it was easy to believe though because it was so accurate:
But by the time McCain died, the rudderless Senator was Trump’s closest golfing confidante and most loyal apologist, even helping the psychotic President spin yarns of a stolen election last November. And he would laugh a lot whenever anyone would bring up his full 180 on Trump.
When would Lindsey change again? On Jan. 6, 2021, when he saw the writing on the wall, that Trump was irretrievably toast. This was just a few hours after the violent occupation of the Capitol that Trump had incited (and later we learned that Lindsey spent that time berating security for not doing a better job.) But that night he improvised an entertaining speech, giving a history of the racist roots of the parliamentary shenanigans the sedition caucus was trying to use. And when he announced he was done being a Trump Dead-Ender, and throughout the speech, he joked and chuckled a lot. No wonder the brain-dead Trumpies hate him as a traitor, even though he was FINALLY doing the right thing:
Who knows what sort of Senator he’ll be for the NEXT six years, to whom he’ll attach himself and model himself on? One bad sign is that now he can’t decry the Jan 6 insurrection without blaming it absurdly on Nancy Pelosi rather than Trump, Cruz and Hawley. I’m glad I sent money to Lindsey’s fine opponent Jaime Harrison, even though I couldn’t really afford it, and I’m sorry Jaime didn’t win. Lindsey Graham’s word means nothing, and he deserves bad things.
At least my own Congressman Lou Correa, whom I criticize a lot, can stand up to these MAGAts at the airport without being surrounded by security. (And then he got Covid.)
I’m glad that Lou won the “minimal Covid symptoms” lottery, but I don’t think that that’s where he got Covid. I think it was more likely when he was maskless during the insurrection, as shown in the photo I’ve republished here where he is staring ahead slack-jawed while holding his phone.
A reported reported Lou’s office’s claim that he was caught maskless in a brief moment during which he was putting on his gas mask. Look at the photo again. His right hand is visible — and no face mask *or* gas mask near him is visible. The image suggests that he was not caught in a hurry after taking off one mask and taking on another — if he had taken off a face mask just a moment before and transferred it to his left hand, one would not expect the phone to be positioned as it is.
To be fair, this was a traumatizing moment and Lou may not even remember whether he was wearing a mask at the time; that’s not what I’m criticizing. What I’m criticizing is that at this time we’re presumably seeing what Lou looked like before things started to get rough — in other words, his normal attitude towards wearing a mask in the House chamber. If that’s what he had been doing, he should just suck it up and admit it, rather than making up a story that suggests that he was wearing a mask beforehand and was caught in a brief moment while changing one for another.
(Is there any video capture of him wearing a mask before that moment? If so, I’ll admit that the highly improbable is true.)
Why is this worth rehashing in such depth? Because we should hate being lied to by our elected officials in a way that hides their misbehavior — for Democrats, this is especially true of Democratic lying about actions for which we bash Republicans for setting a bad example about wearing masks in crowded settings. It looks like Correa was, essentially pulling a Tito prior to this moment.
You’ll also find another image — a screen cap from a video — showing Correa maskless probably after the previously featured photo (given that Rep. Clyburn is not wearing a mask.) A separate image from some time later (judging from changes in the number and positions of others in the room, including Clyburn now wearing a mask) showing Correa wearing a “tent” gas mask is also visible in the video.
You guys in Callie have a lot of time to waste. You ain’t seen nothing yet…,,,
What’re you, in South Caro-linnie? Secession Central? What do you think we’re gonna see?
There’s *always* time for Lou! Plus, it was a historic day — and a revealing one.
Lou did good.
Hate Speech – (definition revised) when someone says something that causes the oligarchs to lose money.
Gotta see if the cash for plasma place down the street is still open.
Nice, we need something on that Reddit revolt, and it’s not exactly my bailiwick.
Well, how about that ? Here’s just the guy !
( And for Greg Diamond – It’s even CLOSED CAPTIONED ! )
Update – Several retail stock brokerages (for us little guys) just changed their policy on Gamestop and a few other stocks to “sell only / no buying” for unexplained reasons ( that just happen to help out the Hedge Funds that trapped themselves by greed, in stupid “naked” short-selling )
. Not received well by the public – here’s a typical response- (sorry no CC)
Are you holding your breath for the SEC ( who slept well for decades as Bernie Madoff built his house of cards) to step in and “protect ” us ? Not me.