Except for my comments, all below came from one Harper’s Weekly Review:
At least 10 attendees of the January 6 rally leading up to the riot at the U.S. Capitol were voted into office.
[T]he Federal Election Commission ruled to allow foreign donors to finance referendum campaigns.
This, too, happened. I haven’t figured it out yet. The FEC says referenda are not elections. We need a new law, don’t we?
It was discovered that the winner of a Florida congressional Republican primary was a convicted felon and therefore ineligible to hold political office.
Fascinating, especially since Florida shat on a highly popular Constitutional Amendment supporting ex-felons’ right to vote by inserting, oh, sure, ex-felons can vote..after they pay up all the $thousands in fines and penalties we laid on them. If you can’t afford to pay up, you can’t vote. (What does this remind you of? Poll taxes?)
Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, who in 1967 was imprisoned for seven years for robbing a bank to help fund resistance against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, won reelection after jailing seven rival presidential candidates and dozens of members of the opposition…
Locking em up? Gee, why didn’t anyone in the US think of doing this?
…Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for brokering a peace agreement with Eritrea, said of Tigrayan rebels advancing toward the capital, “We will sacrifice our blood and bone to bury this enemy.”
He won the Nobel Peace Prize. I guess the prize doesn’t explicitly convey infinite requirements on the winner. I mean, do something peaceful, get the prize, then kill some people. I guess that’s kosher.
IRS files showed that at least 18 billionaires received CARES Act stimulus checks in the spring of 2020, after reporting taxable income below the government’s eligibility threshold.
There’s a lot to be said about this. Most rage over it is directed at the Trump’s Treasury Department and Stevie Mnuchin for leaving wide cracks in the disbursement schedule and rules.
Without making any excuse for Trump’s maladministration, big fast government programs will always have waste and mistakes and lots of people being outraged.
My biggest question is, what does it say about the character and integrity of those 18 billionaires, who took money they knew was not meant for them? How terminally sociopathic are these people? They make a good argument against being very very rich: whatever you have of decency and soul will seep out of your apertures with every billion you grab.
Boy, do I loathe the very very rich.