Florida Sends a Home-Grown Insurrectionist to the U.S. Senate

Buck Banks


Professional muckraker Dan Christenson of FloridaBulldog.org offers a look at how Ashley Moody — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ pick to replace Marco Rubio as U.S. senator — aggressively participated in the effort to overturn the 2020 election:

When Ashley Moody takes the oath and becomes Florida’s next U.S. Senator Congress will get yet another politician who played a role in whipping up President Donald Trump’s supporters to march on the Capitol “to stop the steal” on Jan. 6, 2021.

Florida Attorney General Moody – picked Thursday by Gov. Ron DeSantis to succeed Marco Rubio, Trump’s choice for Secretary of State – was a director of a conservative dark money group ironically called the Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF). On Jan. 5, the group sent out robocalls to Trump adherents imploring them to “march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal” and “fight to protect the integrity of our elections.”

The next day, after President Trump instructed rallygoers nearby to descend on the Capitol, violent insurrectionists broke into the building as the nation watched on television. Their assault threatened the peaceful transition of power to Joe Biden, caused the nation’s leaders to flee in panic and left four people dead. A Capitol Police officer who had fought with insurgents died the next day.

Earlier, Moody had tried unsuccessfully in court to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In early December, after the courts had rejected numerous challenges to the vote, Moody signed onto a brief filed by the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit asking the justices to delay Senate certification of presidential electors in four battleground states. Paxton’s lawsuit was bounced out of court three days later

Read the rest here.

Inaugural Resistance: Who Is Skipping Trump’s Swearing in

Jon Ponder
inauguration-crowds
President Barack Obama’s audience on the National Mall in Washington. At right, photo of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Photos courtesy of the National Park Service

The Resistance to the coming fascist state under Donald Trump unofficially kicks off at his inauguration on Monday with the notable absence of key Democratic figures who would normally appear on stage with an incoming president.

Hell Freezes over

Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, is going to be bitterly cold in Washington, D.C. WTOP reports that there is a chance of snow on Sunday and predicts gusty winds on Monday, with a high temperature of just 20 degrees.

Ex-Presidents Out at Lunch

Of course, Pres. Biden and Dr. Jill Biden will be on the podium, as will former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, along with his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and George W. Bush and his wife Laura. However, Michele Obama has opted not to attend.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi will not attend the inauguration, and it is not because she recently broke her hip.

[…]

Special Counsel Report: Trump ‘Resorted to a Series of Criminal Efforts to Retain Power’

On Jan. 6, 2021, he 'direct[ed] an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then leverage rioters' violence to further delay it'

Pensito Editors
Terrorist supporters of President Donald Trump occupy the U.S. Capitol in Washington
Trump-inspired terrorist Kevin Seefried of Delaware carries a Confederate flag during their storming of the U.S. Capitol, January 6, 2021. (REUTERS/Mike Theiler)

Excerpt from the report: As set forth in the original and superseding indictments, when it became clear that Mr. Trump had lost the election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power. This included attempts:

  • to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost;
  • to force Justice Department officials and his own Vice President, Michael R. Pence, to act in contravention of their oaths and to instead advance Mr. Trump’s personal interests; and,
  • on January 6, 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then leverage rioters’ violence to further delay it.

In service of these efforts, Mr. Trump worked with other people to achieve a common plan: to overturn the election results and perpetuate himself in office.

Read the rest of the report, which is widely available online, including at this link [PDF].

Drop These Words from Your Vocab, Period

Pensito Editors

Pensito Illustration

The not-vaunted, totally non–Ivy League Lake Superior State University has dropped its annual list of banished words, and you should 100% exile them from your vocabulary for the duration of this era, period.

First utilized in 1976 as a cringe-worthy publicity stunt to promote the little-known bastion of higher education by its public relations director, W.T. “Bill” Rabe, a Detroit-area PR guru (can we please banish that phrase?!), the list was released “as a safeguard against misuse, overuse, and uselessness of the English language.” The list was a game changer for LSSU, and has netted the university publicity for half a century.

Here’s the 2025 list of banished words:

1. cringe
2. game changer
3. era
4. dropped
5. IYKYK (if you know, you know)
6. sorry not sorry
7. skibidi
8. 100%
9. utilize
10. period

When it comes to this list, IYKYK, and if not, sorry not sorry, so go flush these overused and abused terms down your skibidi toilet and be done with them.

Just Another Day for the Chaos Monkeys in Washington

Buck Banks


Playbook: “The simplest and most important reason for the country’s expected return to a peaceful transfer of presidential power is that Trump actually won this presidential election, unlike the last one. As a result, he and his Republican allies have not mounted a public campaign of lies in an effort to mislead his supporters into thinking that he won, and they haven’t lobbied Republican elected officials to try to get them to throw the election to him anyway, as they did after the 2020 election. (Oh, there will also be much more security tomorrow, too.)”

“But even if tomorrow’s congressional certification goes off without a hitch, there is no question that the events on Jan. 6 four years ago — and the legal system’s response to them — will continue to loom large in American history and politics, and that they will continue to shape our perception and understanding of some major political figures.”

The Tech-Bros at Home

Sung to the tune of 'Old Folks at Home' or 'Suwanee River'

Pensito Editors

Pensito Illustration

(With apologies to Stephen Foster and thanks to Paul Krugman for coining “Muskaswamy”)

Way down upon the Muskaswamy
Far, far away,
That’s where my H-1B visa takes me —
That’s where the tech-bros play.
Outside the techno-libertarian coalition,
MAGAs sadly roam,
Stuck in mediocre stultification,
Far from the tech-bros at home.

(Chorus)

All along the Muskaswamy,
Brilliant immigrants roam,
Oh, MAGAs how your hearts grow weary,
Far from the tech-bros’ new home.

Alabama Can’t Quit Enslaving People

The state profits from leasing prisoners to private companies, including Best Western, Budweiser and Burger King

Pensito Editors
Source: Alabama Political Reporter

AP: No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama. With a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years — including the brutal convict leasing era that replaced slavery — it has constructed a template for the commercialization of mass incarceration.

Best Western, Bama Budweiser and Burger King are among the more than 500 businesses to lease incarcerated workers from one of the most violent, overcrowded and unruly prison systems in the U.S. in the past five years alone, The Associated Press found as part of a two-year investigation into prison labor. The cheap, reliable labor force has generated more than $250 million for the state since 2000 through money garnished from prisoners’ paychecks.

[…]

Poll: Anti-Education Politics Risks Brain Drain from Southern Schools and Universities

Sixty percent of southern academics "could not recommend their state as a desirable place to work"

Pensito Editors

Nature Magazine: A survey of faculty members working in US southern states shows that a significant majority frequently witness or experience political interference that affects morale and is causing many to look for positions in other regions or to leave academia altogether.

The survey, which ran in August 2024, was distributed mostly by the southern regional chapters of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and garnered responses from 2,924 self-selected participants. Of these, 51% identified as female, 17% identified as non-white and more than 60% held tenured positions. The survey found that nearly 60% of respondents could not recommend their state as a desirable place to work. Nearly 50% said that politics and policy changes had reduced the numbers of job applicants to their institutions.

“This is an issue that faculty members are worried about, and that’s going to become a bigger problem for state institutions in large parts of the country,” says Amy Reid, who until August led New College of Florida’s gender-studies programme in Sarasota.