Cassidy is also carefully echoing Rush Limbaugh’s infamous scream about President Obama from 2009: “I HOPE HE FAILS!”

Angry Right Wingers are going to repeat the words “Afghanistan” and “disaster” as many times as they can over the next year before the midterms, and then as much as they can before the 2024 Election. They’re thinking it will be the next “Benghazi” for them. They’re also hoping that nobody notices when the pandemic eases (which will happen after the vaccines are mandated by employers and enough people take the shots to render COVID a non-entity), and that nobody notices the truly rancid actions that angry Right Wingers are taking around the country. (Such as, perhaps, the Texas abortion ban and all the Right Wing state legislatures about to copycat it, or perhaps the many Right Wing state legislatures that have been trying to make it much more difficult for citizens to vote in the next elections…)

The really scary part of this Right Wing effort is that it has a chance to succeed – unless decent people speak up to counter it, and unless active voters show up in 2020 numbers at every election going forward.

It’s been truly unfortunate to watch angry Right Wingers gloating at how the Texas legislature gamed the judicial system and got so vicious of an anti-choice attack onto the books. It’s also been unfortunate to see the behavior of the Supreme Court since the infliction of Amy Coney Barrett into their fold.

We must remember that Roe and Casey and any semblance of reproductive rights for women were doomed the moment that 2-3 million active Dem voters chose to stay home in 2016 and allowed Donald Trump to squeak through the swing states. One wishes they might not have listened to pundits on the Left and Right who insisted that the Republicans would never ACTUALLY overturn Roe and that everyone who insisted the Supreme Court was important in electoral politics was somehow being “hysterical”.

The reality now is that Texas has succeeded in inflicting a law that makes it pretty much impossible for Texas women to have any reproductive choice should they find out their birth control has failed (which does happen) or if they are raped. And since the now Pence-colored Supreme Court has made clear through the 6-3 supermajority the Far Right now enjoys, we now see that anti-choice attacks will be shrugged at and allowed. Which is why so many angry Red states are about to inflict copycat anti-choice laws to mirror what’s happened in Texas.

Angry Right Wingers love to shout the canard that even if Roe were overturned, this would all just “go back to the states” and everything would still be okay. Except that they leave out some key details. In the years before Roe, women with money could indeed exercise some choice by travelling to another area or country where they could receive competent medical attention. Roe was never about women of means or about how wealthy people could choose to deal with their reproductive issues. But Roe was very much about how non-wealthy women in rural areas (such as in Texas, or Arkansas, or Georgia) would deal with a scenario where they were presented with an unplanned and unworkable pregnancy (and even one that could potentially kill the woman). Before Roe, those women wound up dying in significant numbers, due to their only recourse being unsafe remedies in the proverbial back alley. And we’ve now returned to exactly that time, just as angry Right Wingers have long hoped.

John McKee’s question also applies to frantic attention-seekers like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck these days.

It is important that we keep in mind who and what Clay Travis and Buck Sexton are. And Sexton should be included in the discussion since both Travis and Sexton are now working together to try to establish themselves as the successors to unrepentant hater and bigot Rush Limbaugh. The two of them were selected as a joint act to replace Limbaugh’s radio show on AM stations across the country. (Dan Bongino thought he was going to have this for himself but I doubt anyone other than himself really thought that was a possibility. A few stations carry Bongino, but the overwhelming majority were told to carry Travis and Sexton.)

Travis and Sexton were born at the beginning of the 1980s. (Travis in 1979 and Sexton in 1981). Neither is a particularly intelligent person, or even an inquisitive one. But they grew up listening to bigots like Limbaugh and his copycats (given that Limbaugh’s reign as an AM Radio shock jock began when both men were under 10 years old), and they had that cemented when Fox News was inflicted while they were teenagers. They learned from Limbaugh and Fox’s financial success that they just needed to say outrageous things and then play off the notoriety for their own personal profit.

Travis is a failed lawyer who figured he could use the Limbaugh model to inject his angry Right Wing perspective into sports commentary. Which is why he attempted podcasting and other low-end fringe ideas before he was able to get some money thrown at him for his Right Wing setup of Outkick. I note that Travis repeatedly made a point of saying and doing incredibly bigoted and vicious things on Outkick, as well as on the various media appearances he parlayed along the way. For example, he embarrassed himself in a massive way on CNN in 2017 when he tried to inject a lewd comment into what was supposed to be a serious conversation with Brooke Baldwin and instead got himself tossed off the air.

When it comes to the pandemic, Travis has spent the time repeatedly doubling down on utter falsehoods. It appears that he and Sexton both have gone with the initial Limbaugh party line about how COVID was a hoax, how things were supposedly blown out of proportion “just to hurt Trump”, and about how masks are just “theater”. Travis spent 2020 like many other angry Right Wingers trying to peddle the idea that we should just let everyone get sick and somehow get to herd immunity that way, as well as the various conspiracy theories about Joe Biden. After the Right Wing was humiliated last November, one would think that they would have taken some time to learn their lesson (that an overwhelming majority of the country and the world has had enough of their bad behavior) but it seems that many angry Right Wingers just want to keep doubling down on a losing bet.

Listening to Right Wingers like Travis or Sexton (or O’Reilly or Hannity), one would think they were in a parallel universe, since their presentation of “undisputed facts” is out of a fantasy world. It also appears that Travis and the others simply want the pandemic to continue and worsen so they can blame the Biden/Harris White House for it and try to take Congress and the White House back for themselves. It does not appear that they care about how many people will die because of their conduct here. For someone like Travis, the hope is that he can profit from the carnage, just as Limbaugh made himself a multi-millionaire from his various bigoted stunts.

Once again, angry Right Wing pundits are deliberately misrepresenting the facts and reality.

Biden’s efforts here are not to subvert the Constitution. He’s dealing with the refusal of angry Right Wing Republicans in Congress and the media to acknowledge the suffering they are deliberately inflicting. We went through this a year ago when the Pence White House and Republican Senators made certain that there would be no extension of the COVID relief, including eviction moratoriums and unemployment assistance for tens of millions of people sidelined due to the pandemic. What we see today is angry Right Wingers petulantly demanding that people suffer, if only to punish them for voting for Joe Biden last year. It is the Right Wing’s intention to increase the problems of tens of millions of Americans, and then to try to game the situation so they can present the GOP as the “solution”.

Biden’s actions may not be upheld by angry Right Wing judges (and we can be assured that Republicans will judge shop to make sure that’s who hears their cases), but the actions are intended to help Americans even when Right Wingers are intentionally hurting them.

The actions of Pence’s childish spokesman over the prior four years, on the other hand, were to repeatedly attack parts of the US population and the international community. When Pence’s childish spokesman wanted to announce that he’d funded a “big beautiful” middle finger structure against Mexico, he defunded whole sections of the Defense Department and tried to move the money over to his ego project. There was no actual Defense purpose to that move – just the ego of Pence’s childish spokesman. When principled judges and others opposed the craven moves of the Pence White House, angry Right Wingers cried foul and shouted at them.

Last summer & fall, when the GOP deliberately blocked COVID relief, the Pence White House similarly raided non-related funds to generate a $300 unemployment supplement. Except that the money they raided was the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund, which was allocated by Congress to deal with Americans whose homes are destroyed by our now-inevitable wildfires and floods every fall. So that fund was badly depleted so Pence’s childish spokesman could crow in public that HE had somehow given people more money if they were unemployed. (This is why the COVID Relief bill passed early this year by the Biden White House and Congress included tens of billions for FEMA – they were repaying the money that Pence’s childish spokesman stole.)

It is important for us to remember the facts and intentions here. Biden may make mistakes (and he will) but he’s genuinely trying to clean up the mess made by the Pence White House and he’s genuinely trying to ease the pain that so many Americans have endured. Pence’s childish spokesman, on the other hand, never cared at all what happened to many Americans, and in fact gloated at their problems when it amused him to do so.

Interesting that angry Right Wingers are trying to ignore this story at the exact same moment that they’re trying to really push the one about Andrew Cuomo. It almost could make one think that they really don’t care about harassment…

Cuomo’s behavior was fairly obvious harassment, and frankly should be criticized. I don’t know that what he did rises to the level of a criminal prosecution – it looks like the NY authorities think it at most to be misdemeanor conduct. I agree with Bemused’s take on this. It just sounds like “creepy older man” behavior, and that the most direct response would be for someone to slap him.

The Right Wing of course wants to use this and anything else it can to try to bury Cuomo. Not because they particularly care about harassment (see E. Bolling) or actual assault (see R. Ailes and B. O’Reilly), but because angry Right Wingers are desperate for a scalp in the wake of their humiliation last November. They’re hoping they can chase Cuomo out of office and even into jail, just as they’re hoping to somehow throw Gavin Newsom out in California. This is revenge in the simplest terms.

In reality, it’s more likely that Cuomo will continue to be roundly criticize and will keep his office until the next election, and then step down of his own volition. (Newsom’s situation now depends on whether California Dems are prepared to show up to vote for the nonsensical recall election date. If Dems show up, Newsom will be fine. If they assume he’ll be fine, it’s entirely possible that he’ll be tossed out and angry Right Wingers will get one of their scalps. I note that he’s up for re-election next year anyway, so this nonsense about the recall is just a gigantic waste of time and money in California – fueled simply by the hatred that angry Right Wingers hold for Dem officeholders.)

Regarding the people who died during COVID, Andrew Cuomo did not kill them. He made the best and most responsible calls he could, with the information we had in hand at each moment. This information changed as we learned more about the issues. Angry Right Wingers want to pin the issues on Cuomo rather than admit that he was responding to those issues. I note that angry Right Wingers are suspiciously quiet about the skyrocketing numbers in Florida these days – which are numbers that really can be attributed to the willful negligence of DeSantis. I fervently hope that the residents of Florida will show up to vote in much stronger numbers for the next gubernatorial election, as Florida is in increasingly bad shape under DeSantis.

Lee was a huge fan of the Pence White House and the GOP’s 2017 Tax Transfer. I note that the Transfer not only did not benefit blue collar workers in any meaningful way, but it also punished Middle Class Employees. Because for the Middle Class, the Tax Transfer meant MASSIVE increases in their federal tax burdens. Most people I know saw their tax bill increase in terms of thousands of dollars per year.

Fox News cheered this increase, as anchors like Tucker Carlson openly advocated for increasing the burdens of the “urbanites who voted for Hillary”.

I don’t think the situation here is about angry Right Wingers breaking away from him. It’s more about the fact that O’Reilly and Trump are expecting them to spend hundreds, if not thousands of bucks to attend these propaganda rallies. Before this time, the Trump Rallies were free to attend. O’Reilly wants them to pay over a hundred bucks each to get in the door, and several thousand each for a “VIP” pass and extra goodies. Frankly, this sounds like a major cash grab by O’Reilly, which Trump was only too happy to share in. It also sounds like O’Reilly had figured that they’d just do a few events, given that most of the Trump base would not be able to pay that kind of coin anyway and that they’d have to go with a smaller group of higher income Trumpers to pay for this indulgence.

O’Reilly is now desperately complaining about the coverage on the poor sales. He’s pulled a bizarre number of having already made 7 million dollars in ticket sales. And he’s threatened to sue Politico for their temerity in reporting this. (I thought that O’Reilly had denigrated people for being too litigious in the past…)

My thinking is that if the ticket sales continue to flounder, they’ll drop the base prices and even let some people in for free if they just show up on the day.

But it’s entirely possible they may do the first event, get embarrassed by a poor turnout (as happened to Trump last summer in the midst of COVID), and then cancel the remaining ones.

Perhaps Bolling should make a public statement about how that 50 million dollar lawsuit against Yashar Ali is going for him. And perhaps about how he’s tried to make amends for all the sexual harassment he inflicted while he was a Fox News personality. And then perhaps his comments about people’s consciousness of social issues would have some relevance.

Gutfeld is only the latest angry Right Winger to parrot this tantrum threat about secession. It’s basically a childish taunt about how they’ll take their bat and ball and go home if they don’t get their way, albeit with an extremely violent subtext thrown in for extra sourness.

Let’s not forget that unrepentant vicious bigot Rush Limbaugh gave a public voice to secessionism back in December, roughly a month before the Right Wingers attacked the Capitol. (This was Example #25979 of why the Presidential Medal of Freedom should never have been thrown away on him.)

We also heard talk about Texas seceding during President Obama’s terms (the old “Texit” strategy…).

In the angry Right Wing playbook, there does not seem to be any ability to admit defeat. When Bill Clinton was president, they swore unending opposition to him. When W was able to squeak through in 2000, they immediately demanded everyone obey him and the GOP Congress. When Barack Obama had the temerity to run and win twice, the Right Wing swore to oppose everything he did and never give him a moment’s peace or legitimacy. When Trump squeaked through in 2016, they again reverted to demanding total fealty. And now that Joe Biden has beaten Trump and been President for the past 6 months, they’ve again reverted to their opposition.

Only at this point, they’ve completely committed to a fantasy narrative – that Joe Biden is too old/corrupt/senile/Marxist/weak to have won the presidency or to run the country; that COVID was a hoax; that the Pence White House was brilliant; that everyone was happy when Pence ran the country; that the Election happened. Admitting their wrongness in any of these areas would mean they’d have to acknowledge that they lost, that more Americans disagree with them than agree, and that they’d have to actually grow up rather than continue to sulk in their corner. Their response has been to stomp their foot, fold their arms and turn away with a scowl. It is unfortunate that Fox News, in its desperation to win back some of the extreme haters who abandoned them for Newsmax, is trolling their emotions in this manner.

O’Reilly absolutely feels he is a “victim” here of “evil, bad people trying to destroy me”. Not an iota of remorse for the terrible behavior that he used to attack and demean others. (Just as Roger Ailes and Eric Bolling never showed any remorse for their behaviors.)

I hadn’t tracked O’Reilly’s 9pm slot on WABC. (They put him in safely after prime time in a low attention slot) I tried listening to the latest broadcast. It’s a 4-5 minute intro, and then it segues into the audio of his “No Spin News”. All of which being done from his home studio.

Mackris is correct to note that O’Reilly isn’t completely out of the media, like Bryan Singer or Harvey Weinstein. But he’s also not making much headway anymore, and he’ll never get that “elder statesman” title.

You’re correct to note that Mackris will never have a media position again. Just as Lis Wiehl is no longer involved in this stuff. And neither is Tamara Holder, who wound up out of her media position after confronting an abuser at Fox News over 4 years ago. (Holder continues to practice law and is more outspoken in defending victims of sexual harassment these days. She’s returned to Illinois to run her own private practice and will not likely return to television airwaves anytime soon.)

You’re also correct to note that O’Reilly continues to have the ability to get his face and voice out into the public sphere pretty much when he wants to, if he pushes hard enough. His frantic grandstanding with Trump is the latest example of his attempts to do so. I’m pretty skeptical about his book sales claims, given the propensity of angry Right Wing organizations to buy in bulk to game the “Best Seller List” numbers.

But I also believe that O’Reilly’s legacy will be summed up mostly by his “WE’LL DO IT LIVE!!!!” meltdown and by the vile things he said to Mackris. He’ll be known as a guy who wanted to soar a lot higher than he did, but was always limited by his bad temper and bad behavior. I believe Mackris will be remembered as one of the brave voices who stood up to a bully, and who was not recognized for her bravery in her own time.

It is beyond ridiculous for the childish former spokesman of the Pence White House to continue to bray these lies. And it is beyond shameless that angry Right Wingers have spent so much time trying to blame everyone else for the attempted insurrection they were caught planning and playing.

The story the Right Wing is promoting here is one where somehow there were just a bunch of nice, good-hearted loving people who decided to visit the Capitol Building to show their affection, and that somehow the situation turned into a riot because of unseen “antifa” and “BLM” provocateurs, etc. And that Ashlee Babbitt was somehow an innocent victim of a trigger happy stooge of Nancy Pelosi.

It’s frankly odd to see the Right Wing trying to rewrite the history when this insurrection literally only happened 6 months ago. But then they were trying to rewrite the history even during the hours that the Right Wingers were rampaging through the building.

The reality of the attack on the Capitol Building is that it was planned more than a month in advance. Multiple angry Right Wing groups openly planned it and posted about their intentions on social media – even Pence’s childish spokesman tweeted in advance of the day and said the events would be “wild”. And on the day, multiple speakers, including Pence’s childish spokesman, exhorted the angry crowd to go to the Capitol Building and “be tough” on the Congress that was not willing enough to overturn the 2020 Election. The clear intention was for the mob to overrun the building, rush the chamber and then force the gathered Senators, Congresspeople and Mike Pence to do what they were told on pain of violence. The mob was armed with multiple implements, including metal pipes and other implements – and even the ones who didn’t have those items would be a problem for Capitol Security in terms of sheer numbers – ie 200 angry mob vs 10 security men.

As for Babbitt, she was killed in the act of trying to break into the Speaker’s Gallery. The video shows she was trying to climb inside one of the door windows so she could unlock the door from the inside. Had she succeeded, the mob would have rushed the handful of security guards and then likely gotten their hands on multiple politicians. The gunshot that killed her likely stopped a much greater level of mayhem.

One wishes that the Right Wing would stop doubling down on their fantasies about the 2020 Election and their attempts to overturn it. The reality is that they convinced themselves they would win in a landslide and were shocked to find out that they lost. Their behavior since that moment has demonstrated that it isn’t just the former childish spokesman who needs to learn to grow up.

This approach is becoming commonplace among angry Right Wing pundits who are feeling impotent these days. Multiple radio and web pundits, including disgraced former Fox host O’Reilly, are now openly calling for people to “rise up” and “fight back”.

We’ve already seen how this kind of thing ends up. Twelve years ago, O’Reilly’s comments led directly to the killing of George Tiller. Five years ago, angry Right Wing social media comments led to people going to the Comet Pizza location with guns. And just this year, we saw an angry Right Wing mob attack the Capitol.

One has to seriously consider whether angry Right Wingers truly care about the values they keep discussing in their talking points, or if their actual interests are simply in taking and holding power over everyone else.

This nuisance is suit will likely be tossed out of court in short order, for multiple reasons including that the attempted Florida law DeSantis signed was itself tossed for being illegal in itself.

The cupcake interview Ingraham gave here was paralleled by the cupcake interview disgraced Fox personality O’Reilly gave to the childish former spokesman for the Pence White White House. Neither was particularly substantive and both spoke more about the interviewers’ biases than about any useful information.

Carlson’s latest gambit has been to insist that he’s somehow being “targeted” by the NSA. He threw a complete tantrum about this last week, apparently. The NSA then made an official statement that Carlson is again saying falsehoods – that he is not a “target” and they are not trying to supposedly “destroy” him. Carlson and other angry Right Wingers are continuing the ruse. They’re now using a new Axios story on the situation, and hoping that people won’t actually READ the story to learn the truth.

Per the Axios story, what happened here is Carlson tried to get himself a scoop interview with Vladimir Putin, and contacted people who are likely under NSA surveillance as targets themselves. Carlson’s communications with them thus got collected, but were not the focus of the actual investigations. It sounds like someone at NSA became curious about who was engaging in the contact activity and learned it was Carlson, and that’s as far as it goes. Nothing untoward, and certainly not an “operation” to attack him.

Carlson continues to play his game on this, acting as if he were somehow being mistreated and of course trying to repeat the lie that the Trump Campaign was “spied on” back in 2016. (The 2016 investigation was of course targeted at unsavory characters that the Trump people were contacting, and at Trump associates who acted in an openly shady fashion. Trump was never “spied on”.)

The nuisance suits by the childish former spokesman for Mike Pence are almost certain to be thrown out of court very quickly.

Bill O’Reilly and Hannity are jumping up and down saying these will be “major” suits and that somehow they have standing because Ron DeSantis angrily passed an anti-social media law in Florida. Except that the Florida law was itself tossed out by a Florida judge for its own problems.

This appears to be yet another tantrum from the childish former spokesman, as he rages in his impotence. One year ago, I might have expected him to rage tweet about it, but he’s lost that privilege.

It’s amazing to see the same people who jumped up and down yelling “Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!” and “Emails! Emails! Emails!” for years to smear Clinton are the ones trying to ignore the angry RW insurrection attempt of January 6.

Of course, the same people have also tried to gaslight the whole thing, alternately telling us:

-There was no insurrection, it was just peaceful citizens visiting the Capitol and taking selfies;
-Okay, there was some rioting, but it was actually a bunch of BLM and “antifa” people disguised as Trumpers doing the rioting;
-Okay, there were SOME Trumpers who got a little rowdy, but nobody died except for one poor innocent Trumper who got shot while she was politely climbing through the Speaker’s Gallery door as part of her peaceful visit;
-Okay, there was “bad behavior”, but hey, the FBI and Justice are already investigating and prosecuting people so why does Congress need to do anything?
-And then back to the first position – “There was no insurrection, it was just peaceful citizens visiting the Capitol and taking selfies.”

Rinse and repeat as many times as necessary.

The indictments filed this week with Weisselberg’s perp walk are only the beginning. Based on what they’re discussing, it looks like there will be more coming. Not sure that Pence’s childish spokesman himself will be directly indicted, but a lot of people around him look primed to fall.

In the case of the Trump Organization, there have been real felonies committed, and quite serious ones. Angry Right Wingers’ attempts to gaslight with discussion of Hunter Biden misses the part where Hunter Biden did not commit any crimes. And angry Right Wingers in the same breath will condemn Hunter Biden for taking this or that Board position while sticking up for the Trump kids with no sense of irony.

Regarding vaccinations, I’m waiting to hear the CDC change their classification of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines from “Emergency Authorization” to “General Use”. When we get to a GU designation, employers, public facilities and private businesses should be able to mandate that employees, customers and visitors get their vaccinations. Also, there is a pod of reluctant people who are just waiting for the GU designation to get them off the fence. Once that happens, we should see a fresh wave of people getting the shots and that should get us to Herd Immunity. (I also expect the fall flu shots to include a booster for COVID variants, although Pfizer and Moderna appear to be effective against them already). Once we get to that point, the only people left unvaccinated will be a number of Pence White House supporters, who will be effectively voting themselves off the island without significantly impacting anyone else.

Bolling has been auditioning at Newsmax for a couple of months, usually filling in for their usual hosts on holiday weekends.

I do wish someone would ask him how he’s doing with that 50 million dollar lawsuit he said he was filing against Yashar Ali. As we should all keep in mind, Ali had the temerity to report on Bolling’s downfall at Fox News, with an article that included comments from multiple women who’d been harassed by Bolling. Some of the women were angry enough that they agreed to have their names cited by Ali. Bolling’s response was to threaten his 50 million dollar suit. Ali responded with a promised countersuit, and Ali’s attorney pointedly reminded Bolling that he better be ready to turn over his cellphone and all data for the extensive discovery that would be coming shortly. All of this happened in August/September 2017. For some reason, we haven’t heard anything since about the matter.

Of course, there’s also the note that Bolling’s son died shortly thereafter, which led to Bolling trying to get everyone’s perpetual sympathy as a grieving parent. And while nobody wants to see any parent go through that, it’s a head-scratcher how his son’s death suddenly obviates years of Bolling’s terrible behavior both before and since that event.

I note that Newsmax is happily gobbling up whatever former Fox News faces it can to attract former Fox News viewers into its clutch. But even Newsmax didn’t want Matt Gaetz, who’s now frantically seeking a new position for when the boom comes down on his legal predicament in another month or so…