After Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama in 2012, an election that Romney and the Republicans thought they would win and were so confident that they were shocked by the result, the party did what they called an ‘autopsy’ about the loss and what they needed to do to win in the future. Their conclusion? The party’s policies were fine but they needed to make a greater effort to get their message out and to be more inclusive.
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I blogged earlier about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s account of hiding in different places during the January 6th insurrection and hearing a man shouting “Where is she? Where is she?”, making her fear for her life. That episode gave rise to this satirical piece from The Onion.

Republicans Accuse Ocasio-Cortez Of Not Being Anywhere Near Place They Told Capitol Mob She Would Be

WASHINGTON—Pointing out the inconsistency in her personal account of the Jan. 6 insurrection, republicans accused New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Thursday of not being anywhere near the place they told the Capitol mob she would be. “She was supposed to be in a room just off the Capitol rotunda, which is where we told the angry white nationalists she’d be hiding, but she wasn’t even there,” said South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, one of the many republicans condemning Ocasio-Cortez for hiding in a completely different building during the insurrection instead of where her colleagues told the violent rioters they should expect to find her. “A quick examination of the Capitol grounds map we gave the insurrectionists will prove that while they stormed the area where we drew the big ‘X’, the representative was actually in a location that was nowhere close to there. We were all upset by the events that transpired that day, but to be in a different place than the one we told those hunting her she’d be is incredibly disappointing.” At press time, republicans were calling upon Ocasio-Cortez to deliver a full apology and vow to always be open about her exact whereabouts at all times to avoid misleading her potential killers in the future.

We can expect to see a slew of books coming out about the truly disastrous Trump presidency, trying to understand how such a manifestly weird and awful person managed to destroy his primary opponents, get elected president, and turn the Republican party into a cult that has some of the most fanatical and dangerous supporters in recent history. As his presidency went on, it became more and more chaotic as those with even a semblance of independence and competence got replaced if they were not totally subservient to him and replaced by even more sycophantic and incompetent people. The end result was predictable, that he would end up getting advice from the looniest of loonies.

Axios has put together a series of articles titled Off the rails, a description of the final days, starting with election night. Trump’s plan had been that when people went to bed on Tuesday night, they would see a sea of red states predicting a landslide victory for Trump based on just the election day votes, the so-called ‘red mirage’ that he had been warned about. Then when the mail-in vote counts were announced much later and if the tide turned against Trump, people would be more susceptible to his fraud narrative. But things went berserk after Fox News, of all networks, became the first news network to call Arizona for Biden as early as 11:20 pm. This shocked and infuriated the Trump camp, who saw it as a betrayal by the most loyal media network, because it blew apart that narrative.
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I am fascinated by cults. What makes people join them and devote themselves so ardently to the cause or the leader that they will even forsake their families and friends?

The Trump cult is going to be studied for some time. A common image of the majority of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol building on January 6th during the insurrection is that they are white men who are going through financial hardship and angry at feeling that they have been ignored and are also members of various armed militant groups. But it appears that a significant number do not fit that profile.
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The war in Yemen is a horrendous catastrophe causing immense suffering for its people and the US has been complicit in it by providing the Saudi Arabian regime with weaponry to prosecute their attacks on Yemen. Joe Biden has now declared that the US will end its support for the Saudi offensives.

Joe Biden has announced an end to US support for Saudi-led offensive operations in Yemen, as part of a broad reshaping of American foreign policy.

In his first foreign policy speech as president, Biden signaled that the US would no longer be an unquestioning ally to the Gulf monarchies, announced a more than eightfold increase in the number of refugees the country would accept, and declared that the days of a US president “rolling over” for Vladimir Putin were over.
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