February 7, 2021

Marjorie Taylor Greene isn't here to legislate. She's here to live-stream.

The QAnon movement got to Congress. It has no idea what to do next.

By Simon van Zuylen-Wood

In mid-January, first-term Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was live-streaming herself as she walked through a hallway beneath the U.S. Capitol. Pulled down below her chin was a black mask that read “CENSORED” in white block letters. Monologuing into her phone, she walked by Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), a Black Lives Matter activist-turned-lawmaker also in her first term, who yelled at Greene for not properly wearing the mask. Greene pulled up her mask, told Bush not to yell at her, then yelled at Bush for a bit and resumed her monologue. “That’s how it is, how it is now in America,” she told her viewers. “You’re witnessing exactly what we’re having to live through.” Bush ended up moving her office away from Greene’s; Greene proceeded to call her “the leader of the St. Louis Black Lives Matter terrorist mob.”

Watching later, I was struck by how much the video resembled footage Greene had recorded before she ran for Congress. In 2019, she filmed herself wandering the Capitol looking for Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who are Muslim, to try to make them retake their oaths of office on a Bible instead of a Koran. The next month, she returned to Washington to stalk Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, berating him about a gun-control bill.

Seen in one light, Greene is a troll-activist success story: She leveraged her harassment of congresspeople to become a congresswoman herself. Seen in another light, she is stuck playing the same role she did before achieving any influence or notoriety. Like the dog who catches the car, she got what she wanted, and she isn’t sure what to do next.

Greene is best known for her past promotion of the byzantine QAnon belief system, though her paranoia about establishment subversion isn’t limited to fictional satanic pedophile rings. Before running for office, she pushed theories about false-flag operations, inside jobs, a mass shooting plotted by the gun-control lobby and countless other imagined plots. This probably goes without saying, but she believes that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. Barely one month into her tenure, her colleagues may have reached a breaking point. This past week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called her ideas a “cancer” for the GOP; Greene ended up recanting some of her past positions, forced-confession style. On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted along mostly partisan lines to strip Greene of her committee assignments, a move typically reserved for members charged with a crime (or those who ask why “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” are controversial terms, as Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa did). Though she retains some support from her caucus, Greene has effectively been quarantined from her colleagues, as though to prevent the further spread of her beliefs.

But this lack of legislative influence will probably wind up boosting her brand, which is built on her ability to engage her fans in speculation about the various dark energies she — and they — are up against. Passing laws was never the point.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/marjorie-taylor-greene-isnt-here-to-legislate-shes-here-to-live-stream/2021/02/05/a64c8044-675d-11eb-8c64-9595888caa15_story.html

February 7, 2021

Elon Musk's Ex-Chief Engineer Creates A New Car--And Says It Beats Tesla

The $169,000 Lucid Air is coming this spring, and Peter Rawlinson claims it’ll be the fastest, longest-range electric vehicle on the planet. He should know. A decade ago, he engineered Tesla’s Model S.

Peter Rawlinson has many goals for the Lucid Air. One is that it be hailed as the world’s best electric car. “Nobody believes me, but we’re about to take it to another level,” he says in a pre-Christmas Zoom chat from the 300-year-old Warwickshire, England, farmhouse he calls home when not at Lucid Motors’ Silicon Valley headquarters.

It’s the same feeling he had a decade ago as chief engineer for Tesla’s Model S, the breakthrough all-electric car that took the auto world by storm in 2012. “No one believed me with Model S . . . the hostility to it was shocking. I’ve found the same with (Air). No one believes it.”

The “Dream” edition of the Air certainly seems set to wow. It tops the S with an industry-leading 517 miles per charge, faster recharging and the ability to go from 0 mph to 60 mph in just over 2 seconds. (Tesla is responding late this year with a “Plaid+” Model S that accelerates in just under 2 seconds and can go 520 miles per charge, Elon Musk said in January.) The first Air customers will take delivery this spring.

But Rawlinson’s ambitions go far beyond delighting wealthy drivers with a $169,000 luxury car.

His bigger goal is leveraging the Air’s 1,080-horsepower propulsion technology—which he claims is the world’s most efficient—to power cheaper electric vehicles. Within five years, Rawlinson wants to be selling hundreds of thousands of mid-$40,000 electric cars and helping big automakers sell $25,000 mass-market EVs–the very same objective that his old boss, Elon Musk, is chasing. If that weren’t enough, Rawlinson wants to build his cars at the first auto plant in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, whose sovereign wealth fund owns two thirds of his company.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2021/02/04/elon-musks-ex-chief-engineer-creates-a-new-car-and-says-it-beats-tesla/

February 7, 2021

Gohmert 'Appealing' $5K Fine For Flouting New Security Screening

Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX) has said he will seek to appeal a $5,000 fine he was assessed for flouting screening by metal detectors before returning to House chamber on Thursday.

“This fine has nothing to do with following the rules and everything to do with furthering the Democrats’ never ending scheme to demonize and punish their political opponents,” Gohmert said in a statement Friday night.

A senior Democratic aide had relayed news of the violation after the House voted in favor of a Democratic-led measure to impose fines that would deduct $5,000 from the salaries of members of Congress who refuse screening by metal detectors outside some doors of the House chamber.

Repeated attempts to circumvent security screening could yield fines of $10,000. Gohmert and Rep. Andrew Clyde (GA) appear to be the first lawmakers to be assessed for the fines following approval of the new rule earlier this week.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/gohmert-appealing-fine-for-flouting-new-security-screening

You knew the rules, Louie. Now go pound sand. Or go for $10k.

February 6, 2021

Defiant Marjorie Taylor Greene Creates Own House Committee on Semitic Aerospace Weaponry

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—After being stripped of her committee assignments, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has created a committee of her own, the House Committee on Semitic Aerospace Weaponry.

Greene said that such a committee was sorely needed, given that “Semitic aerospace weaponry is the second-biggest threat facing this country, right after plane crashes caused by the Clintons.”

“And it’s going to be way better than some dumb old committee about education,” she added.

The Georgia Republican said that she was not at all discouraged that Democrats had shown no interest in joining her committee, despite her advertising on Facebook that there would be a generous array of snacks at every meeting.

“Of course, it’s obvious why Democrats don’t care about snacks,” she said. “Hello? Cannibals?”

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/defiant-marjorie-taylor-greene-creates-own-house-committee-on-semitic-aerospace-weaponry

February 6, 2021

Republicans have been living the big lie for too long

Opinion by Fareed Zakaria

We are all wondering how the Republican Party — the party of Lincoln — got to the point that it has an elected member of Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has called for the execution of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), cast doubt on the events of 9/11 and suggested that a Jewish cabal used lasers to start the California wildfires. The answer is in plain sight: the accommodation of extremism by the party’s leaders. This week, the Republican congressional caucus declined to censure Greene in any way. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) pretended not to even know what QAnon was.

In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has finally drawn the line, describing Greene’s views as “loony.” But it is too little, too late. The party has been encouraging loony views for years. Today we rightly laud Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) for his political courage — but it’s worth recalling that when he was running for president in 2012, he craved Donald Trump’s endorsement. When Romney got it, he gushed, “There are some things that you just can’t imagine happening in your life.” Later that year, he tacitly endorsed Trump’s most noxious lie — birtherism — joking that “no one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate.”

The real big lie at the heart of the modern Republican Party is about public policy, not conspiracy theories. Starting in the 1930s, Republicans promised their voters the repeal of FDR’s New Deal. When the next Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, did nothing of the sort, the modern conservative movement emerged, furiously branding Ike a traitor. When LBJ enacted the Great Society, conservatives pledged that once elected, they would tear it all down — and never did. Ronald Reagan launched his political career by denouncing Medicare as a direct path to socialism. If it passed, he warned, “[We] are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” Of course, as president, Reagan left Medicare largely intact.

In the early 1990s, House leader Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) doubled down on a rhetoric of radicalism and extremism. He promised revolution and described political opponents as the embodiment of evil, who won only because they lied and cheated. E.J. Dionne Jr. has described the toxic results of this strategy as “the politics of disappointment and betrayal.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-have-been-living-the-big-lie-for-too-long/2021/02/04/223e06fe-6728-11eb-886d-5264d4ceb46d_story.html

February 6, 2021

Auto industry peers into an electric future and sees bumps ahead

GM’s Super Bowl ad turns to Kenan Thompson, Awkwafina and Will Ferrell to sell a new generation of EVs

Will Ferrell has it out for Norway. “Did you know that Norway sells way more electric cars per capita than the U.S.?” he asks before smashing his fist through a plastic globe. In an unlikely and very expensive Super Bowl ad made by the usually-staid General Motors, a disheveled, bearded Ferrell shouts “Well I won’t stand for it!”

During a break in the Super Bowl action, the comedian vows to “crush” Norway and recruits help from Kenan Thompson of “Saturday Night Live” and actress and rapper Awkwafina in a multimillion-dollar promotion for GM’s Ultium battery. At the end, after Ferrell mistakenly winds up in Sweden and Thompson and Awkwafina mistakenly end up in Finland, the ad says “We’re coming, Norway.”

Conquering Norway’s small car market won’t make or break the fate of GM, which has been making cars for more than a century. But the good-humored GM ad — one of two EV ads the company will air — is another sign that the world’s fourth-largest automobile company might be trying to steer its way toward a new era of electric vehicles.

This week, GM’s corporate account tweeted, “Norway is crushing us at EVs. That’s crazy. We have to do better.” GM’s chief executive Mary Barra said in a tweet: “Norway has set the bar high with electric vehicle adoption.” And the company account tweeted again to say: “Did you know 54% of new cars sold in Norway are EVs? We can’t let them show us up.”

It isn’t just GM. The global automobile business is peering into an all-electric future, the industry’s most profound turning point in a century and the most crucial since the 2009 financial crisis that saw GM go in and out of bankruptcy. After spending the past four years encouraging President Donald Trump to weaken fuel efficiency standards, GM’s Barra last week did a U-turn on electric vehicles, declaring that the company’s “aspiration” was to phase out gasoline vehicles and sell only electric versions of passenger cars and light trucks by 2035, eliminating tailpipe emissions.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/02/06/auto-industry-peers-into-an-electric-future-sees-bumps-ahead/

February 6, 2021

These Anti-Vaxxers Are Desperate for COVID Shots

Almost 500,000 deaths later, they see (at least some of) the light—and fear for their lives.

Caitlin Murphy, a 31-year old midwife’s assistant and pre-nursing student, once considered herself a hardcore anti-vaxxer. As a kid, she said, she had a rare, severe reaction to the pertussis, or whooping cough, vaccine. The vaccine that caused her reaction was later pulled from the shelves and replaced by the much safer DTaP vaccine, but the memory of the experience seared itself into Murphy’s brain, and she never got over her fear of inoculation.

When her children were born, she defied a firm consensus among scientists and public-health experts that side effects are vanishingly rare, and vowed not to vaccinate them.

“There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. They wouldn’t be getting any vaccines whatsoever,” Murphy told The Daily Beast.

Murphy’s stance on vaccines was so firm at the time that after becoming pregnant, she said, she had her husband sign an informal agreement that he would never vaccinate their children without her consent.

Due to state vaccination requirements for children entering public school, Murphy, who lives near Albany, New York, did partially vaccinate her own kids, albeit on a delayed schedule. But she refused all vaccines for herself, and continued to refuse to get her kids vaccinated for the flu, chickenpox, and hepatitis B, among others. She still believes vaccine ingredients are inherently dangerous, and that they interfere with “natural” immunity, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines are safe.

The coronavirus pandemic has complicated her worldview, to say the least.

Murphy, who is immunocompromised, recently began to consider what it would mean for her family if she were to get sick with coronavirus and prove unable to fight it off. Now, she’s gearing herself up to do what would have seemed unthinkable even six months ago: getting the coronavirus vaccine.

“I just have to bite the bullet and do it,” she said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/these-anti-vaxxers-are-desperate-for-covid-19-shots

February 6, 2021

Microsoft suspends donations for politicians who attempted to overturn the 2020 election

Source: The Verge

Members of Congress who voted to overturn the election will receive no money from Microsoft for 2022 races

Microsoft has announced that it will suspend all donations for the upcoming 2022 election cycle for any members of Congress, state officials, and organizations that voted to object to the certification of electors in the 2020 election or supported attempting to overturn the election.

The company temporarily suspended all political contributions after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, with Microsoft taking the time to decide “whether to suspend further donations to individuals who voted against certification of the Electoral College.” Today’s announcement makes that decision a permanent one for the coming election cycle, but only for politicians who attempted to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. (Other politicians will still be eligible for Microsoft’s donations.)

Microsoft also announced a new company program called the Democracy Forward Initiative. It’s designed as an outlet for employees to donate to organizations that look to enact campaign finance reform and protect voting rights instead of supporting politicians.

Lastly, the company also announced a change in the name of its PAC, which was previously known as the Microsoft Political Action Committee (MSPAC). Going forward, the group will be called the Microsoft Corporation Stakeholders Voluntary PAC (MSVPAC) in order to better reflect that the group is “funded exclusively by voluntary donations of Microsoft stakeholders.”

Read more: https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/5/22268610/microsoft-suspends-donations-politicians-overturn-2020-election

---

It's a start.

February 6, 2021

Biden Won't Restore Bar Association's Role in Vetting Judges

Source: New York Times

The decision not to give the American Bar Association names of potential nominees for evaluation came after progressives criticized the group for undercutting a push for diversity.

The Biden administration has told the American Bar Association that it will not restore the group’s quasi-official gatekeeper role in vetting potential judges before the president decides whether to nominate them, according to the legal group’s president, Patricia Lee Refo.

The policy, a first for a Democratic president, echoes that of the last two Republican administrations. The bar association’s role had dated to the Eisenhower administration and served as a way to ensure that judges who have tenure for life are qualified.

“Every White House sets its own rules for judicial nominations,” Ms. Refo said in an interview. “Other White Houses have found it useful to get our confidential evaluation in private. This White House has made a different decision. But the evaluation work that we do will go forward without change.”

The bar association and the Obama administration had recurring tensions over the fact that most of the “not qualified” ratings the bar group’s peer-review system produced were for women or people of color. Against that backdrop, liberal groups greeted the decision as a signal that the White House under President Biden was determined to diversify the federal bench.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/us/politics/biden-american-bar-association-judges.html

February 6, 2021

The GOP is making a very risky bet

Opinion by Paul Waldman

As the GOP struggles to find its way toward a post-Trump future, Republicans are faced with two paths. One is complicated, difficult, labor-intensive and might not yield immediate benefits, even if it’s far more morally defensible. The other is a little uncomfortable but comparatively easy, particularly in the short term.

The first path would mean turning away from their party’s darkest impulses and most repugnant figures in order to fashion an identity with the same substantive beliefs about policy but tethered to reality. The second path would mean trying to keep the extremists in the fold, hoping that they can benefit from the crazy but not let it define them with the broader electorate.

From a purely political standpoint, both paths have dangers. But the latter is the one the GOP is going to follow, even if it runs the risk of alienating moderates and exacerbating its long-term problem of representing a portion of the electorate that gets smaller every year — and only the angriest among them.

At the moment, this concerns Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has gotten far more attention than anyone could have imagined back when she was just another conspiracy-touting social media nitwit. She is now the most famous member of the freshman class of 2021.

But political celebrity is unpredictable; sometimes a figure with remarkable talent bursts into the national consciousness, like Barack Obama did when he gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, and sometimes your crazy aunt winds up in Congress, then the other party makes her into a symbol of her own party’s moral depravity, and she becomes a household name.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/05/gop-is-making-very-risky-bet/