From Pine View Farm

Republican Hypocrisy category archive

In Translation 0

UNC Law Professor Joseph Kennedy translates from the Latin. A snippet:

“Quid pro quo” is Latin for “one thing for another.” Trump has argued that he did nothing wrong during his phone call with the president of Ukraine last summer because there was no quid pro quo, no explicit request of continued aid for Ukraine for an investigation of Joe Biden, his leading opponent in the next election. A quid pro quo is not essential to a crime or abuse of power, but the president is wrong in any event. No “magic words” are required for a quid pro quo to take place.

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All the News that Fits 0

Man to wife:  The Ukrainians conspired with Bob Mueller to hide Hillary's emails in Area 51,  Wife:  You have got to stop listening to conservative media.

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Snipe Hunt 0

Via Job’s Anger.

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Fellow Travelers 0

At the Las Vegas Sun, Peter Wehner tries to understand why Republicans, who once styled themselves as the party of rectitude, so willingly defend and support Donald Trump, for whom rectitude is a unknown concept. Here’s a bit; follow the link th read the rest.

All of this is tied to the psychology of accommodation. As a conservative-leaning clinical psychologist I know explained to me, when new experiences don’t fit into an existing schema — Trump becoming the leader of the party that insisted on the necessity of good character in the Oval Office when Bill Clinton was president, for example — cognitive accommodation occurs.

When the accommodation involves compromising one’s sense of integrity, the tensions are reduced when others join in the effort. This creates a powerful sense of cohesion, harmony and groupthink. The greater the compromise, the more fierce the justification for it — and the greater the need to denounce those who call them out for their compromise.

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Devolution 0

Frame One:  John Kennedy saying,

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Immunity Impunity 0

E. J. Dionne wonders marvels Trump keeps getting away with stuff and notes that he has accomplices.

A snippet:

When Republicans held Congress during President Barack Obama’s administration, it seemed that a missing box of staples might have been enough to launch 100 subpoenas and months of hearings. Now, the GOP is going along with a president whose lawyers — in a court-filing trying to block the Manhattan district attorney from getting Trump’s tax returns — are asserting that “a sitting President of the United States is not ‘subject to the criminal process’ while he is in office.” It is a sweeping and astonishing assertion that a president is above the law as long as he sits in the White House, no matter which level of government might be investigating him.

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California Schemin’ 0

Paul Krugman looks for the motives behind Donald Trump’s war on California. A snippet:

You see, modern California — once a hotbed of conservatism — has become a very liberal, very Democratic state, in part thanks to rapidly rising Hispanic and Asian populations. And since the early years of this decade, when Democrats won first the governorship, then a supermajority in the state Legislature, liberals have been in a position to pursue their agenda, raising taxes on high incomes and increasing social spending.

Conservatives confidently predicted disaster, declaring that the state was committing “economic suicide.” You might think that the failure of that disaster to materialize, especially combined with the way California has outperformed states like Kansas and North Carolina that turned hard right while it was turning left, might induce them to reconsider their worldview. That is, you might think that if you haven’t been paying any attention to the right-wing mindset.

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USAdammerung 0

Will Bunch is not sanguine.

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Kavanaugh Kover-Ups 0

Thom argues that the Kavanaugh’s goes way beyond drunken frat boy antics.

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Quaff of Queasy 0

Uncle Sam sips cup of water from faucet labeled

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Bellweather 0

Martin Longman wonders whether the North Carolina Republican Party presages the future of the national Republican Party.

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If One Standard Is Good, Two Must Be Better 0

Frame One:  Man reading newspaper with headling,

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Russian Impulses 0

Shaun Mullen reports on the latest developments in the Comey-uppance.

Ben Franklin was prescient.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Facing South takes a deep dive into North Carolina’s gerrymandering and, in particular, how it has affected judicial elections. It seems that North Carolina Republicans have decided that, if you can’t win ’em, gerrymander ’em.

An excerpt:

North Carolina legislators’ desire to change the courts and judicial elections coincided with their repeated losses in voting rights cases, including lawsuits over gerrymandering at all levels of government. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld rulings that North Carolina’s election districts for both Congress and the state legislature were racially gerrymandered.

The effort to redraw judicial election districts began in the spring of 2017, when (Former state Rep. Justin–ed.) Burr introduced a plan to quickly redraw districts for judges and prosecutors around the state. An early map would have placed more than half of the state’s black district court judges in a district with another incumbent, according to NC Policy Watch.

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Suffer the Children 0

It’s a Republican Family Value.

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Responsible Fiscals 0

Frames One through Three:  Republica Elephants stands behind President Obama screaming

Via Job’s Anger.

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Misdirection Play, Firearms of Mass Destruction Dept. 0

The Tampa Bay Times reveals Florida Republicans’ strategy for dealing with concerns about white supremacists and about access to firearms of mass destruction: Blame everybody and everything except guns and the people who fire them.

Full story at the link.

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Misdirection Play, Dance of the Devious Dept. 0

The Portland Press-Herald’s Bill Nemitz searches for straight answers about agitators for armed assaults of assembled Americans, but encounters a veritable vacuum of veracity.

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Misdirection Play, Firearms Fondlers Gun Nut Dept., Reprise 0

Leonard Pitts, Jr., comments on the Republican dance of distraction. An excerpt (emphasis added):

And people asking “Why?” and Republican officials trotting out explanations noteworthy mainly for their uselessness. They blame mental illness, Colin Kaepernick, Barack Obama, video games, drag queens, same-sex marriage, TV zombies, immigrants and recreational marijuana. Everything except the gun, everything except the fact that this is a country where the angry and disaffected can buy weapons of mass destruction more easily and with less regulation than you could buy a car.

Which suggests a cognitive bankruptcy that defies overstatement. Because while Kaepernick and Obama may be singularly American, this is hardly the only country where people play video games. It is not the only country where they watch zombies on television, suffer mental illness or use pot. It’s not even the only country where citizens keep and bear arms. But it is the only country where mass murder is routine. The only one.

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Watch What They Do, Not What They Say 0

Via Job’s Anger.

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