Open Thread 1/14/21: A Message to You, Rudy

Who didn’t see this coming, except everybody? Donald Trump told aides not to pay Rudy Giuliani. This is a surprise on the order of the sun rising in the general vicinity of the East. I’ve noticed something odd about conservatives. They’re suspicious of everyone except the people who are actually ripping them off.

In further Everything Trump Touches Dies news, Harold Bornstein, the doctor who a few years back praised Trump’s extraordinary strength and stamina keeled over dead last week at age 73.

The evidence that the attack on the Capitol was an inside job continues to mount. Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s claim that she saw insurgents being given a tour of the building, apparently by one of the traitorious Republicans in Congress, was seconded by another Democrat. Also, Rep. Ayanna Pressley says the panic button in her office was removed sometime before the assault.

Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project confirms the obvious: Republicans are afraid their own voters will kill them if they vote to convict, or cross Trump in any way. There are other reports of this as well. I haven’t read Mary Shelley in a long time; how much pity am I supposed to feel for Victor Frankenstein again?

Twitter chief Jack Dempsey says banning Trump’s Twitter account set a dangerous precedent. Maybe it wouldn’t have, Goatbeard, if you had made him follow the rules from the start. Might have avoided everything. Motherfucker is only scared now because the MAGAts are now targeting him.

Coup-plotter cancellations continue: Airbnb has canceled all DC bookings for the week starting Monday in anticipation of The Purge expected next Wednesday.

Did you know former Democratic contender for the presidential nomination Andrew Yang is running for mayor of New York City? He’s running on a local version of his basic-income plan, a proposal to give 500,000 New Yorkers living in poverty between $2,000 and $5,000 per year. Unsurprisingly, his two-page plan doesn’t spell out where the $1 billion a year he wants to spend would come from (the 2020 city budget is $92 billion).

County police shot and killed a Bear man on Wilmington’s East Side early Wednesday. The only information police released claimed two officers were investigating a “suspicious vehicle,” its driver fled but hit a dead end, made a U-turn, and drove back at the officers at “a high rate of speed.” Both fired, killing 30-year-old Lymond Moses. There was no explanation of what county officers were doing around 24th and Rosemont — is Operation Safe Streets still in effect? — or what constitutes a “suspicious vehicle” in that neighborhood.

Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was charged with willful neglect of duty for his role in the Flint water crisis. Don’t get alarmed, plutocrat fans — it’s a misdemeanor.

On the other side of the justice system, Trump executed the only woman on the federal death row. Lisa Montgomery, 52, convicted of killing a woman and ripping the unborn baby from her womb, died early Wednesday, morningending a life or nearly unrelenting horrors.

In Covid-19 news, the U.S. set a new record for deaths Tuesday, but researchers are predicting it will ease up by summer. to break its death record daily. The U.K.’s numbers are not just worse, they’re far worse — almost double the U.S. per capita death rate.

A new variant of the virus has been identified in Ohio by researchers at Ohio State — oh, I’m sorry, THE Ohio State University. It has a mutation matching the one presently devastating the U.K. but apparently arose independently of that strain. That’s near Gym Jordan’s district — any chance we can get him to visit the lab without his mask?

From the Amazing Animals file, Patches, a calico cat missing since a mudslide in Montecito, Calif., killed 23 people, including her owner, in January 2018 was found alive, a quarter-mile from the site where her owner’s home once stood.

Joe the Racing Pigeon isn’t so lucky. He turned up in Australia after going missing in a pigeon race in Oregon. After surviving an 8,000-mile flight, Australian authorities announced they will catch and kill the bird because it didn’t undergo quarantine before entering the country. No country on Earth is better at closing the barn door now that all the invasive species are out.