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The Senate Budget Committee's new chair is an unabashed progressive and self-described democratic socialist prepared to be as "aggressive" as he possibly can with budget tactics to help Democrats and President-elect Joe Biden enact their sweeping agenda.

Under a narrow Democratic majority in the Senate, Bernie Sanders will oversee budget and spending work, including the procedural power of budget reconciliation the majority can use to evade the filibuster and pass massive bills without a single Republican vote.

‘Aggressive’: Bernie Sanders on his big plans as Budget chair

The Jackass has left the building. On the helicopter, which has left.

What I never want to hear from Republicans again:

• "OMG corruption in government!!!" -- bzzzzt. Trump lowered the bar on corruption so low that you never again can invoke that one.
• anything about any future president pardoning anyone. Ever. If you have to pardon a bunch of crooks on your way out, then it is obvious they were crooks helping you with their crookedness to the end, or you would have pardoned them earlier. And if they weren't crooks, and no charges filed (yet), you would have no need to have pardoned them.
• any accusations of sedition, treason, etc. After Jan 6th, Republicans never again get to even use those words against anyone else.
• slurs like Nazis, etc, such as Hillary is a Nazi, etc. Especially when so many of the Trumpers are actually real Nazis, proudly wearing the symbols, uniforms, embracing the ideology, etc.
• similarly any accusations of racism, sexism, misogyny, etc.

Any other items to add to the list?

(And by "Republicans", maybe I really mean Trumpers, eg, Trump Cultists. Not traditional conservatives, if those still exist.)

Updates to list:

• The Deficit or the National Debt. Clinton had balanced the budget. When GW Bush came into office, it soon was deficits as far as the eye could see. Let's not even talk about Trump. You don't get to play the deficit card any more.

Brexit finally got done at 23:00 GMT on 31st December 2020 when the UK's Withdrawal Agreement with the EU finally expired. A "trade deal" between the UK and EU was agreed on 24th December. The Alt-Wrong finally got their prize of freedom, democracy and British sovereignty.

What did they actually win? Chaos at the ports, thousands of tonnes of fish that can't be sold, tariffs, duties, and all sorts of things which were once Project Fear and the undemocratic, treasonous lies of the Liberal Metropolitan Elite, Socialists, Marxists, quislings, traitors, lefties and people who hate their country. Socialism, Marxism, EUSSR, Venezuela, toilet paper!

We are on the third week of this glorious new future of sunlit uplands with no downsides, only upsides with much more to look forward to. And Donald Trump is going to give us a fantastic trade deal with the USA straight away.

Over at the Guardian, Polly Toynbee has an excellent summary entitled Brexiters are waking up to the damage they've done.

As Brexiters turn on each other, Brexit politics move fast. Until now the Tories planned to move on, only reviving “Brexit done” triumphalism to re-arouse the captured red wall at the election: Labour just wanted to bury the whole issue.

The Westminster system has failed us (the UK). We are now looking at Irish Reunification and Scottish Independence. Gibraltar has already got its own deal where it gets to join Schengen.

We have Taken Back Control(TM).

That's quite the approval cliff Trump walked off trying to overthrow the election.

Thankfully, the brainwashing is not entirely complete and a lot of people are seeing it for what it was.

Unadjusted Aggregate
Adjusted Aggregate

U.S. says Capitol rioters meant to 'capture and assassinate' officials - filing

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors offered an ominous new assessment of last week’s siege of the U.S. Capitol by President Donald Trump’s supporters on Thursday, saying in a court filing that rioters intended “to capture and assassinate elected officials.”

Prosecutors offered that view in a filing asking a judge to detain Jacob Chansley, the Arizona man and QAnon conspiracy theorist who was famously photographed wearing horns as he stood at the desk of Vice President Mike Pence in the chamber of the U.S. Senate.

[...] “Strong evidence, including Chansley’s own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government,” prosecutors wrote.

[...] The prosecutors’ assessment comes as prosecutors and federal agents have begun bringing more serious charges tied to violence at the Capitol [...]

[...] The Justice Department has brought more than 80 criminal cases in connection with the violent riots at the U.S. Capitol last week, in which Trump’s supporters stormed the building, ransacked offices and in some cases, attacked police.

[...] Michael Sherwin, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has said that while many of the initial charges may seem minor, he expects much more serious charges to be filed as the Justice Department continues its investigation.

Maybe these people are just now beginning to realize that this is a line that should not have been crossed.

Do they think ahead of anything but their immediate rage?

If we burn down the country and find ourselves back in the stone ages with mob rule, will it really have been worth it? Will it be better for their children? Or do they even care?

Amazon's Response to Parler

The first paragraph sums it up so well.

This case is not about suppressing speech or stifling viewpoints. It is not about a conspiracy to restrain trade. Instead, this case is about Parler’s demonstrated unwillingness and inability to remove from the servers of Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) content that threatens the public safety, such as by inciting and planning the rape, torture, and assassination of named public officials and private citizens. There is no legal basis in AWS’s customer agreements or otherwise to compel AWS to host content of this nature. AWS notified Parler repeatedly that its content violated the parties’ agreement, requested removal, and reviewed Parler’s plan to address the problem, only to determine that Parler was both unwilling and unable to do so. AWS suspended Parler’s account as a last resort to prevent further access to such content, including plans for violence to disrupt the impending Presidential transition.

The 2nd paragraph has some goodies:

Despite Parler’s rhetoric, its lawsuit is no more than a meritless claim for breach of contract. But the facts are unequivocal: If there is any breach, it is Parler’s demonstrated failure and inability to identify and remove such content. AWS was well within its rights to suspend Parler immediately for those failures. Parler also cannot hold AWS liable in tort for enforcing the agreement’s express terms. And there is no antitrust claim where, as here, Parler cannot plausibly plead an agreement to cause it harm and the complained-of conduct is undeniably compatible with a legitimate purpose.

The 3rd paragraph:

Compelling AWS to host content that plans, encourages, and incites violence would be unprecedented. [...rest omitted...]

Page 4 of the PDF shows the astonishing, despicable content that Parler wants to force Amazon to host. Something that most decent people would be ashamed of. I won't repeat it here for SN host it. But you can see it for yourself.

Opinion:

If your message is so repugnant to most decent people that you cannot find anyone to host it, maybe you should rethink your message.

Claiming Parler is about free speech is laughable, considering that they were able to ban speech they didn't agree with.

Parler, like Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others, is free to build its own data centers, get its own internet connections, and host whatever it wants. Even make a business of selling hosting servers for such like minded customers. Build in multiple regions and countries to ensure sufficient redundancy for global distribution. Because the US is only 4 % of the world population. Surely the other 96 % of the world would agree with Parler's content instead of being even less tolerant of it than the US.

This stuff needs to be shown in the bright light of day so everyone can see how truly ugly it really is. That is the real cure. This happens when people conspire in secret under cover of dark.

Here is one of my most favoritest court smackdowns. But there are so many to choose from.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

WISCONSIN VOTERS ALLIANCE, et al.,
Plaintiffs,

v.

VICE PRESIDENT MICHAEL R. PENCE, et al.,
Defendants.

Civil Action No. 20-3791 (JEB)

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Plaintiffs’ aims in this election challenge are bold indeed: they ask this Court to declare unconstitutional several decades-old federal statutes governing the appointment of electors and the counting of electoral votes for President of the United States; to invalidate multiple state statutes regulating the certification of Presidential votes; to ignore certain Supreme Court decisions; and, the coup de grace, to enjoin the U.S. Congress from counting the electoral votes on January 6, 2021, and declaring Joseph R. Biden the next President.

Voter groups and individual voters from the states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Arizona have brought this action against Vice President Michael R. Pence, in his official capacity as President of the Senate; both houses of Congress and the Electoral College itself; and various leaders of the five aforementioned states. Simultaneous with the filing of their Complaint, Plaintiffs moved this Court to preliminarily enjoin the certifying of the electors from the five states and the counting of their votes. In addition to being filed on behalf of Plaintiffs without standing and (at least as to the state Defendants) in the wrong court and with no effort to even serve their adversaries, the suit rests on a fundamental and obvious misreading of the Constitution. It would be risible were its target not so grave: the undermining of a democratic election for President of the United States. The Court will deny the Motion.

To say that Plaintiffs’ 116-page Complaint, replete with 310 footnotes, is prolix would be a gross understatement. After explicitly disclaiming any theory of fraud (“This lawsuit is not about voter fraud.”), Plaintiffs spend scores of pages cataloguing every conceivable discrepancy or irregularity in the 2020 vote in the five relevant states, already debunked or not, most of which they nonetheless describe as a species of fraud. ...

In order to provide an equitable briefing and hearing schedule on a very tight timetable, this Court immediately instructed Plaintiffs to file proofs of service on Defendants so that they could proceed on their preliminary-injunction Motion. Twelve days later, Plaintiffs have still not provided proof of notice to any Defendant, let alone filed a single proof of service or explained their inability to do so. ...

Even if the Court had subject-matter and personal jurisdiction, it still could not rule in Plaintiffs’ favor because their central contention is flat-out wrong. “Plaintiffs claim that Article II of the U.S. Constitution provides a voter a constitutional right to the voter’s Presidential vote being certified as part of the state legislature’s post-election certification of Presidential electors. Absence [sic] such certification, the Presidential electors’ votes from that state cannot be counted by the federal Defendants toward the election of President and Vice President.” More specifically, “Plaintiffs [sic] constitutional claims in this lawsuit are principally based on one sentence in Article II of the U.S. Constitution.” That sentence states in relevant part that the President “shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and . . . be elected as follows: [¶] Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors . . . .”

Plaintiffs somehow interpret this straightforward passage to mean that state legislatures alone must certify Presidential votes and Presidential electors after each election, and that Governors or other entities have no constitutionally permitted role. As a result, state statutes that delegate the certification to the Secretary of State or the Governor or anyone else are invalid. That, however, is not at all what Article II says. The above- quoted language makes manifest that a state appoints electors in “such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” So if the legislature directs that the Governor, Secretary of State, or other executive-branch entity shall make the certification, that is entirely constitutional. This is precisely what has happened: in each of the five states, the legislature has passed a statute directing how votes are to be certified and electors selected. ...

Plaintiffs readily acknowledge that their position also means that the Supreme Court’s decisions in Bush v. Gore and Texas v. Pennsylvania “are in constitutional error.” They do not, however, explain how this District Court has authority to disregard Supreme Court precedent. Nor do they ever mention why they have waited until seven weeks after the election to bring this action and seek a preliminary injunction based on purportedly unconstitutional statutes that have existed for decades — since 1948 in the case of the federal ones. It is not a stretch to find a serious lack of good faith here.

Yet even that may be letting Plaintiffs off the hook too lightly. Their failure to make any effort to serve or formally notify any Defendant — even after reminder by the Court in its Minute Order — renders it difficult to believe that the suit is meant seriously. Courts are not instruments through which parties engage in such gamesmanship or symbolic political gestures. As a result, at the conclusion of this litigation, the Court will determine whether to issue an order to show cause why this matter should not be referred to its Committee on Grievances for potential discipline of Plaintiffs’ counsel.

(INTERNAL CITATIONS OMITTED - see the PDF)

Prolix. What a neato word. I would like to create a new programming language named Prolix.

But Trump said . . . the election was stolen! And he has proof! Lots of proof! The facts are on his side. Yet he never produces even the barest shred of evidence of any of this, or anything else he's ever said.

When all the votes are counted this year, Americans should have far more confidence their votes were tallied correctly than in 2016.

After that contest was upended by Russian interference, states vastly increased the number of votes that are cast with paper records that can be audited later. More than 90 percent of votes will have a paper record this year compared with about 80 percent in 2016.

States have also significantly improved how often and how scrupulously they perform post-election audits.

The changes have been especially significant in some of the states ... contested by Trump.

Georgia and Pennsylvania have both shifted from having paper records for few or none of their voters in 2016 to having paper records for all votes cast in their states — a protection security experts say is a bare minimum to ensure votes weren’t altered by hackers or miscounted because of a technology failure.

The Cybersecurity 202: More states now have paper trails to verify votes were correctly counted

First off: Deutsche Bank won't do any more business with Trump

London (CNN Business)Deutsche Bank will no longer do business with President Donald Trump, a move that will cut off his business from a major source of loans that once helped fund his golf courses and hotels.

I am reminded of Trump's 2016 campaign when the smarter of the moron twins said when asked about how no American bank would touch them with a ten foot pole: "we get all our money from Russia." I wonder if that is still true?

On another "front", someone says that the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Canada have offered to send troops to help defend the US Capitol. If this were true, I wonder how such a thing could even be worked out. Amusing, but seems implausible.

Some people are now telling the truth about racism:

“This is not America,” a woman said to a small group, her voice shaking. She was crying, hysterical. “They’re shooting at us. They’re supposed to shoot BLM, but they’re shooting the patriots.”

The most devastating news of all for Trump.
Trump is reportedly 'gutted' about losing PGA Championship

A source close to the White House told Haberman that Trump is "gutted" by the move, and while he's angry about the House moving forward with impeachment (for an unprecedented second time), his reaction to losing the tournament was a "different order of magnitude."

Wow. Something that Trump truly cares about more than he cares about his family, children or anyone else, nevermind you or I.