How many news bites can fit in the head of an observer?

Starting with the best news, okay? Thursday’s unemployment numbers showed just 1.3 million people collecting unemployment for the week ending on May 7. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh pointed out it’s the lowest it’s been since Dec. 27, 1969 - more than 52 years.

Rallying NATO, rallying bipartisan support for Ukraine to fight the world’s second strongest nuclear power, getting more people working together than anyone in 52 years, standing up loud and clear against every hater invested in Replacement Poppycock, reducing the deficit and rebuilding our infrastructure sure seems like someone deserves a whole lot more credit than the NY Times and most media outlets are granting.

---

Key takeaway from this story:

NBC News’ most recent polling suggests that about 38 percent of voters across the country still believe the election was stolen.

“The Big Lie is not just spreading, but it’s deepening its hold on the American people,” Benson said. 

Experts say the proliferation of candidates pushing false claims about the previous election raises serious concerns about how they might handle such claims in the future if elected. 

“A lot of elections are close. And when you have close elections, you need to have confidence that someone will count the votes and say, you know what, here’s who won,” said Waldman. “If we can’t have that confidence, it’s very hard to have a real democracy.”

Put another way, Biden won the election with 51.26% of the voters choosing him and 62% now believe Biden won, so that other 10% are Trump voters or third party voters.

Also Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s top election official, isn’t backing down in the face of threats she’s received for standing up for the actual vote count and she should be re-elected for her courage and her stand in defense of democracy. What will Michigan voters do, throw in with the insurrectionists? Not if 62% know Biden won.

---

This rising Dark MAGA should convince everyone of two things:

1) Grown ass adults have gotten so hooked on superhero movies and revenge flicks that they sorely want their personal heroes to have cutting torch laser beam eyes;

2) some of the wealthy 1% are so anti-tax that they’ll fund any group pushing this fear button; and

3) Madison Cawthorn was so idiotically extreme that his own Congressional peers turned against him to cause his loss. And he thinks SuperTrump will avenge his honor and rescue him from this dungeon.

I’m thinking he and the other poor losers who can’t grasp how election contests work also don’t grasp the definition of ‘Dark’ so they’re appealing to the wrong rescuer.

Meanwhile, Washington Post reporters keep digging for the real stuff. From today:

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Arizona lawmakers after the 2020 election to set aside Joe Biden’s popular-vote victory and choose “a clean slate of Electors,” according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.

Say what?

The emails were sent to Russell Bowers, a veteran legislator and speaker of the Arizona House, and Shawnna Bolick, who was first elected to the chamber in 2018 and served on the House elections committee during the 2020 session.

“Article II of the United States Constitution gives you an awesome responsibility: to choose our state’s Electors,” read the Nov. 9 email. “… [P]lease take action to ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen.”

Thomas’s name also appears on an email to the two representatives on Dec. 13, the day before members of the electoral college met to cast their votes and seal Biden’s victory. “Before you choose your state’s Electors ... consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead,” the email said.

So John Eastman, Clarence’s former law clerk, Ginni - his wife, and Rudy Giuliani - Trump’s personal lawyer, were all heavily involved in the effort to get election officials to override the actual popular vote. And Clarence was the sole judge trying to keep Trump’s phone records away from Congressional investigators.

You’re aware there’s no code of conduct for SCOTUS judges, right? And there’s no way to compel any of them if they don’t recuse themselves when they have a conflict of interest?

In the world of justice, advice to law students everywhere: Don’t be a Clarence. Unless you want democracy to fail. When that occurs, even the pretense of judicial neutrality ends and with it goes ‘the shining city on a hill’ and the whole world will look elsewhere for inspiration.

---

You may not be ready for a throat singer and this musical melange but it strikes me as perfect for the third rate dramady the lousy screenwriters on the Extremist Right keep giving us.