11/29/23
Good morning! It’s Wednesday, November 28th.
National Lemon Cream Pie Day.
I don’t… really have a comment for this one. It sounds nice.
And now, the news.
Akron Police Internal Investigation Results
We start with a story out of Akron Ohio, where an internal investigation by the Akron Police department found that, no surprise here, they believe officers were justified in their actions in June of 2022 when they shot and killed Jayland Walker, whose failure to pull over for a traffic stop led to a foot chase.
Walker was not armed when he was shot and killed, though a gun was found in his car. The car he was not in. However, as he ran police believed Walker looked like he was reaching for a gun. We’ll never truly know what that looked like, though, because the officers didn’t activate their body cameras.
The officers have been back on duty since October, when a special grand jury also declined to press charges.
Workers in India Rescued After 17 Days
-via AP News
After 17 days trapped in a collapsed tunned, all 41 construction workers in India were finally rescued. It was caused by a landslide about 220 yards from the entrance.
Luckily the workers had light in the tunnel and aid workers were able to provide them with food, water, oxygen, and even were able to have doctors at the site monitoring their health.
And it sounds like, although everyone will get a thorough exam, all the workers were in good health when they made it out.
This is a good story. We don’t get that any of them. It’s nice.
Classic GOP
-via Washington Post (Koch donation), CNN (Liz Cheney), ABC News (Pence), and NBC News (Santos)
And now for a collection of stories I’m gonna call… “well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of your actions…”
Like, none of these stories are connected, but they are also very tightly connected by years, some would even say decades, of just letting anyone into your party as long as they didn’t want to do things like have morals. And those chickens, oh… they’re coming home to… do whatever chickens do. Roost?
They’re roostin’ baybee.
First up is the news that the Koch network has endorsed Nikki Haley for president, in hopes of preventing Trump from being the nominee.
Now, first of all – they also tried this in 2015 and failed so this is good news for Haley, but essentially also kind of nothing news. Because who’s to say if it’ll work.
But also… these dudes, and the group they’ve built, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars creating the political world we’re currently in. Trying to right the ship now is way too little way too late. And I’m not saying that means they shouldn’t do anything, but let’s not let this reminder that they don’t like Trump make us forget that we became the country that elected Trump because of people like them.
And speaking of Trump – Liz Cheney! (Sorry Liz, rough segue). Liz Cheney has a new book coming out and listen – I’m on the record saying that when people like Mitt Romney save all their “oh I’m so brave” for when they have nothing to lose and can make millions on a book deal… that’s not impressive to me. But Liz Cheney didn’t do that. She was so brave, politically, when she sat on the House January 6th Committee, and it cost her her job. And she’s continued to speak out about the dangers of Trump, as well as McCarthy and other GOP Always-Trumpers. I’m not saying she’s perfect. I’m not saying there’s a lot we’d argue about. But you know what… I’m probably going to read her book.
Anyway, so she has a book coming out and people are already getting snippets of it. And since we have a standing Bully the Bullies rule here at Here’s What’s Happening, let’s read some of the snippets because she also has a Bully the Bullies rule, apparently. But her style of bullying is just to make public some really embarrassing things people like Trump said post-losing the 2020 election.
She notes that Speaker Johnson “aspired to being anywhere in Trump’s orbit,” which is embarrassing for anyone. But remember – Johnson is a well-documented election denier. And when he tried to get an amicus brief supported to throw out election results from four states Trump lost, she obviously pointed out the legal flaws in that. To which he responded, “We just need to do this one last thing for Trump.” Mortifying.
A House Republican from Tennessee called Trump “Orange Jesus.”
When a picture emerged of Kev McCarthy visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago after Biden was sworn into office, he said he did it because Trump was so depressed that he wasn’t eating. And they thought a visit from Kevin McCarthy would cheer him up.
Imagine Kevin McCarthy cheering anyone up (unless it’s just because they’re reminding themselves that they’re not Kevin McCarthy).
And then of course there’s January 6th stuff. Specifically a moment when former Speaker Paul Ryan texted her saying, about Mike Pence, that he was worried Pence would break and support Trump, even though he said he wouldn’t.
So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about Mike Pence and January 6th.
Because this next little story is about how sources say Pence told Jack Smith, aka Coach Beard, all about how Trump surrounded himself with “crank” attorneys and used “un-American” legal theories to try and bring the country toward a “constitutional crisis.”
The way Pence is soft-launching having almost a spine… because he has said a few things about Trump but my guy – you could say so much more! And yet…
So to tie those three stories together, we’ve got: Koch brothers trying to prevent another Trump presidency, Liz Cheney dropping the tea about how many people knew Trump lost the election but still being totally unable to stand up to him, and the former Vice President almost being brave.
All big players in the Republican party, all trying to tell members that Trump is bad… and yet. That dude is still running away with the primary. Because they’re fine being embarrassed – all they care about it power.
And perhaps there is no better example of embarrassing yourself in exchange for power than George Santos.
So let’s talk about that multi-layered bing bong. And by multi-layered, I’m specifically talking about how he’s always wearing like 15 shirts.
On Tuesday, House Rep Robert Garcia introduced a privileged resolution to make Georgie go buh-buy. Because it’s privileged, it has to be brought to a vote within two legislative days. Now that the House ethics report is out, George’s final days in Congress could be finally, mercifully, behind us.
To sum it all up, and to quote Succession’s Logan Roy: “you are not serious people.”
And that’s it. That’s the news.
I’m proud of… lemon cream pies. I feel like they know where they stand. They’re solid. They just want to be of service to the dessert world and I appreciate that.
But more than lemon cream pies… because you’re not too sour… I’m proud of you.