Opinion

Over the weekend, the Virginia Republican Party held its convention at which it was supposed to choose its candidates for the off-year election this fall. The three top candidates for governor have been described as "Trumpy, Trumpier and Trumpiest," so you can easily see where Virginia Republicans are positioning themselves in the GOP circular firing squad.

This article was originally published at Salon

Whether the cyber-attacks that shut 5,500 miles of oil pipeline this weekend are coming from private crooks or a state-sanctioned effort is almost beside the point. Somehow our response to this attack, as the big one apparently triggered by what looked like Russian-sponsored hackers on government agencies and companies last month, ought to be generating a lot more urgency.

The idea that a small group of bad guys in a faraway darkened room can control our electric grid, our fuel supplies, our business functions, our very defenses virtually at will should be as frightening as the prospect of powerful bombs in the likes of Iran or North Korea.

It is a compulsion. It may be an addiction. Whatever the cause, it reeks of desperation. Every day the problem is getting worse.

The American news media is obsessed with Liz Cheney. The hope peddlers and other happy pill-sellers have anointed the Wyoming congresswoman, along with Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, as valiant warriors, "responsible" and "traditional" Republicans who will somehow rehabilitate their party from the rise of neofascism and its assault on democracy.

It is a compulsion. It may be an addiction. Whatever the cause, it reeks of desperation. Every day the problem is getting worse.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Only a true supervillain has the gall to turn live TV into a crime involving hostages. The Joker's pulled that move a few times, as has Dr. Evil.

This article originally appeared at Salon.

Most people spend their entire lives trying to avoid coming to a place in their lives where no matter which way they turn there's a place they don't want to be. That's where Liz Cheney, Wyoming's sole member of Congress, finds herself today. She has called this moment, in an op-ed for the Washington Post, a turning point for the Republican Party. But it's not a turning point. It's an end point, the logical conclusion of more than 50 years of delusions and lies. It's not about choosing between Donald Trump and democracy. It's about having gotten yourself into a corner where you are even presented with such a choice.

This article first appeared in Salon.

The right-wing media apparatus, which is global in scale, has lately been making a fetish of something called "critical race theory" (CRT). This has prompted academics to defend it. It's not a radical political ideology, they say. It's merely a form of critical inquiry. It is not the boogeyman it's being made out to be. There's nothing to fear.

This article was originally published at The Editorial Board

Any connoisseur of right-wing nuttiness can attest: It doesn't get any weirder than the conspiracy theory carnival that is the Arizona vote "audit" of the 2020 election being conducted in Maricopa County.

The audit — which was ordered by Republican state senators in order to please their master, Donald Trump — has no legal impact and can't change the results of the election, no matter what Trump likes to insinuate to his followers. Joe Biden won that county by over 45,000 votes, the kind of margin that any legitimate recount effort would never have a chance of closing since recount efforts rarely find more than a handful of ballots that were wrongly counted in the first place.

I had never heard of congresswoman Elise Stefanik, R-NY, until the House of Representatives hearings for Trump's first impeachment. She stormed into the national consciousness by repeatedly whining that Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff was refusing to let her speak and became an overnight sensation. (He was not — she just used the opportunity to rant about how unfair the process was, instantly endearing herself to Republicans all over the country.) Donald Trump was so impressed with her obnoxious behavior that he tweeted: "A new Republican star is born!"

And her star has been rising ever since.

Today's most prominent Republicans almost seem like cartoon villains: They are obvious in their schemes, exaggerated in their evil, sociopathic and antisocial as a group, and mean for the pure joy of it. Yet they somehow are still able to imagine themselves as being noble, misunderstood victims. Donald Trump, the acknowledged master of cartoon villainy, has become a role model of such behavior for the entire Republican Party.

Consider how Republicans reacted to President Biden's speech to Congress last week: It provided a national stage for their cartoon villainy.

That Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is a wimp is not news.

This article originally appeared at Salon.

Something I have learned since taking up national politics as a vocation is that most people won't see what's happening even as what's happening is happening right in front of them. There's just something about the human mind that won't accept what's plainly visible if what's happening does not fit into what's already clearly understood.

This article was originally published at The Editorial Board

Nobody's asking, "Why?"

Just like he did with the Covid rescue bill a few months ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just said that there will not be one single Republican vote in support of President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan.