DL Open Thread Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023

Anyone who still thinks Jan. 6 wasn’t planned from the top down should take a look at the report from the Inspector General of the Department of Interior. That agency’s investigation turned up memos showing that his “spontaneous” call for a march to the Capitol was planned all along. This was from Kylie Kremer of Women for America First, the group that took out the permit for the rally:

It can also not get out about the march because I will be in trouble with the national park service and all the agencies but the POTUS is going to just call for it ‘unexpectedly.’”

If anyone tells you otherwise, it’s not accurate info. Only myself and [White House liaison] know full story of what is actually happening and we are having to appease many people by saying certain things.”

Now you understand why various actors in the drama, like the Secret Service, purged the records of their phone calls.

ProPublica continues to flesh out the story of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ naked graft, which is rooted, as graft always is, in his naked greed. Seems Clancy was feeling the financial pinch way back at the turn of the century and said he might quit the court because he couldn’t make it on his salary, which translates to about $300,000 a year today. His money troubles eased soon after. Now you understand why they narrowed the definition of bribery so that only direct action in exchange qualifies as illegal.

America’s evangelical Christians get most of the ink, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger bunch of religion-addled assholes than conservative Catholics – new House speaker Mike Johnson is a good example. Like evangelicals, they’re obsessed with the existence of homosexuality, and they’re furious that Pope Francis just said priests can bless same-sex couples, though not their marriages. This is obviously upsetting for the millions of people who think hating on the gays is the entire point of Christianity.

Those are the same people who have worked themselves into a lather over Jill Biden’s Christmas video, which features a bunch of tap dancers performing through the holiday-decorated rooms of the White House to a jazzy rendition of the Nutcracker Suite. As Amanda Marcotte points out, the complaints from their talking heads are oddly vague, but she found a rank-and-file MAGAt who said it out loud: “This is gay as hell.”

George Santos is getting more attention than ever now that he’s been booted from Congress, cashing in on his celebrity in various cheesy ways. He seems to have found the key to modern celebrity: shamelessness. A reporter asked him yesterday, “What can we do to get you to go away?” Santos shot back, “Stop inviting me to your gigs….But you can’t, ’cause people want the content.” He ain’t wrong.

The floor’s yours.