In Case You Missed It (v49)

Grab your cuppa and settle down for our review of last week's posts. It was kind of a tough week, I have to tell you, so be warned.

For Sunday School, I took one for the team,  I really did. I mean, Nancy Pelosi. Chuck Schumer. Steve Mnuchin. These three are not great interviews, especially when they are all pushing their agendas. I find it difficult to listen to each of them, much less all three of them in the same classroom session. But I did it, for you.

One of the best lines of the day? Mnuchin, talking about aid to states and municipalities. He of course used the White House talking points about "poorly managed" states and local governments.

But, he said,

We can deal with in January, if there's ongoing issues, we can pass more legislation. This will be the fifth bill. We don't have to get everything done at once. What we should do is get things done for the American public now, come back for another bill afterwards.

Seems he's planning on being around for a while. Anyone up for helping make that not happen?

I tried to find something more palatable for your Extra Credit, and even though I did devote quite a bit of time to Larry 'I Find it Hard to Understand Something Called Systemic Racism Because Lots of White People Voted for Barack Obama' Kudlow trying to do math with Dana Bash (who deserves a medal for putting up with him, I might add), I also spent some time in the Meet the Press classroom (again, taking one for the team) with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL).

Like Mnuchin the day before, Durbin hit the party line, saying that the Dems had dropped a trillion dollars from their plan, so the Rs should add a trillion to theirs - meeting in the middle, as it were.  There was more, too, including scathing remarks about

"this urban legend, which I say is an urban lie, about people sitting at home bingeing on Netflix and eating chocolate-covered cherries," simply is not happening 

And another thing?

Durbin argued that actually "doing something directly about the coronavirus" is more important than unemployment. 

...this notion that you're going to have the same instant results of testing that (the president) does with his White House visitors or Major League Baseball does overnight, that isn't the real world out here. The people are waiting in line for testing, and they're waiting for results from 5-12 days, which makes them almost pointless. That is a priority for us. Testing to deal with coronavirus is key to opening the economy and opening our schools.

Moving on, I believe my inclusion of the information below in my Wondering on Wednesday post may have been the reason why I had so many hits from Russian IP addresses in the second half of the week. We'll see if that's true with this re-post.

Moving on to QAnon - something I honestly NEVER anticipated typing - it seems we'll have an honest to goodness supporter of the conspiracy theorists in the House come January. As noted in this NPR story,

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a construction executive, won 57% of the vote in Georgia's heavily-Republican 14th Congressional District, handily defeating neurosurgeon John Cowan, who had pitched himself as, "All of the conservative, none of the embarrassment."

I did like Cowan's campaign slogan; there are actually loads of Rs who could probably use that, if they were willing to distance themselves from you know who.  And he, of course, was not able to distance himself from Ms. Greene.

President Trump congratulated Greene on Wednesday morning, calling her a "future Republican Star" who is "strong on everything."

Shocked, I amn't.

I was a little shocked, however, by the fervor with which the NRA's Wayne LaPierre tried to woo me over to his side, now that the lobbying organization has been hit with a lawsuit by NY's Attorney General Tish James (something I wasn't thrilled about).

And while LaPierre's love letter was the winner of the coveted Email of the Week, it didn't win me over.  He started out all lovey-dovey, with gentle tugs on my heart-strings, telling me about the "radical fringe of our country."

And here's how it was at the end, all capitalized and throbbing, or something.

This isn’t simply a fight for the continued existence of the NRA. It’s a fight for the continued existence of American freedom as we know it.

This is a fight for the Right-to-Carry permit in your pocket that you’re sure to lose if and when NRA goes out of business.

This is a fight for the guns in your safe that are certain to be banned and confiscated if NRA is forced to shut down.

And this is a fight for your God-given right to protect your life and your loved ones against violent criminals – who will still have their illegal guns long after you hear that knock at your door.

So please, join NRA today. Add your VOICE, your VOTE, and your MEMBERSHIP to our FIGHT.

Yeah, no - but thanks for trying.

And, blissfully, it was TGIF time, even though it wasn't the best week ever.

Now, why would I say something like that? Maybe because we're having to deal with this...

How about the new birther attacks, suggesting that Kamala Harris is not eligible to be Joe Biden's VP because, you know, she was born in the USA.  Does that sound familiar to anyone, maybe from a few years ago? And now, maybe trying to keep another person of color out of the White House? This is a tried and true tactic of the Trump squad; you can hear Tamara Keith's reporting that it's playing out in living color - again from tonight's All Things Considered.

So - your cuppa should be at least cold, if not empty, if checked out all of these posts - but at least you're up-to-date on the full and veritable pastiche from last week.

I'll be back later with Sunday School.  Word has it Jared's making a classroom appearance, and I know you'll not want me to miss that.