It's Retro Day at the Bistro

But don't even think of sitting down here

Take-out orders only this Monday because 419,000+ dead Americans is quite enough. 1 in 13 Americans have been infected (25.1M).

Newt Gingrich wants you to forget that record of neglect, failure and surrender. He’s selling Trump as the victimized assassination survivor challenging Vladimir Putin.

Specifically, his second tweet included: ”With troops in the capitol, cries for exterminating and “reeducating” Republicans, AOC’s fear of being around Republicans, the divisions grow deeper and more bitter.”

How many propaganda dog whistles did you count in that single sentence?

• Extermination (like the Nazis did)

• Reeducating (like the Soviets did)

• Troops in the capitol (as if Biden created the current security conditions)

• AOC’s fear (dismissing her fear and the threats to her life)

• divisions grow (because Biden and the Democrats are attacking a poor victim like Trump)

I’ll have more about that when I present today’s Retro Entree.

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Appetizers

The Pandemic Platter - features four mutant variants of covid-19 in the UK, Brazil, South Africa and California. All four spread faster. The UK one may be deadlier. The South African one may be more resistant to the current vaccines. Served with a basket of three layer masks and idled jets. $8

Josh Muzzles - fried to an extreme, basted with our special cancel sauce, our sour and crunchy gems are served on a bed of his own making. Includes a side of leftists and woke capitalists attacking a First Amendment. $Priceless

Smokey Eyes - a deep dish of huckabees baked till the lies bubble out of all the pieholes. (Only available at our Arkansas outlet.) $2

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• Our Special Retro Day Entree
  
  With the Inauguration over, Vatican Ambassador Gingrich should be home soon, to the chagrin of her husband. Fortunately, some major media outlets are ready to employ the washed up failure infinitely, making him feel potent again.
  
  In 1994, Newt launched the Contract on America, beginning an extreme polarity in Congress that has continued ever since. Per Wikipedia:
  
  ”Gingrich played a key role in several government shutdowns, and impeached President Clinton on a party-line vote in the House. The poor showing by Republicans in the 1998 Congressional elections, a reprimand from the House for Gingrich's ethics violation, pressure from Republican colleagues, and revelations of an extramarital affair with a congressional employee 23 years his junior resulted in Gingrich's resignation from the speakership on November 6, 1998.[4][5] He resigned altogether from the House on January 3, 1999.[6] Political scientists have credited Gingrich with playing a key role in undermining democratic norms in the United States and hastening political polarization and partisanship.”
  
  And now he’s leading the charge to try and save the GOP from its own repeated failures. Why should any of them listen to him at all? He just wants to get out of the house to hit on another sweet young thing.
  
  Some major media outlets just don’t care. They’ll let any washed up failure amplify the grievances of old rich white guys because old rich white guys make all the decisions at those outlets. With better leadership they could provide better news and better analysis than the recycled dimbulbs of a sodden past.
  
  US Senators face greater risks than Newt does. They have 2 choices:

• convict the former prez for instigating a mob to attack, impede and potentially lynch members of Congress and the Vice President

• utilize any excuse to exonerate the former prez. I mean literally any outlandish claim.
  
  In reality, some states are so overwhelmingly Republican that their Senators feel they have to vote to exonerate so they can get re-elected. There is no other ethical principle for them. Like Newt, they’ll make eye-popping claims with zero evidence.
  
  Then there’s those with their eyes on the 2024 presidential race. Cruz, Rubio, and others. They’ll exonerate, hoping to inherent his most outwardly racist base of people haters.
  
  Others, from swing states, won’t get much help from internal polls. They have to make a harder political calculation.
  
  But it’s an easy ethical calculation.
  
  For 20 months, Trump has feared losing to Biden. He and his aides considered him the hardest foe to beat by April 2019. He began attacking Biden’s son, and ultimately withheld $400 million in foreign aid to Ukraine, an act of illegal extortion that demanded the Ukraine president produce a sham investigation to make Hunter Biden look like a crook. He was impeached for that. But his obsession continued.
  
  He spent the early months of the pandemic holding rallies to counter the Democratic primaries. Six weeks after many states had locked down, his eagerness to reopen the campaign rallies pushed several to reopen early which produced several summer covid spikes. Then George Floyd’s murder and nationwide protests caused him to create an anonymous federal force of armed goons from multiple agencies who were kidnapping people off the streets of Portland, Oregon and utilized the military to clear peaceful protesters away from the White House so he could do a photo op.
  
  That’s when some of the military brass, current and retired, pushed back hard.
  
  BLM meant nothing to him. The pandemic was just another nuisance. His rallies resumed and several became superspreader events. He had to continue because Biden was beating him in the polls. Family members, staff members, the Secret Service and ultimately, that president caught covid.
  
  And as states looked forward, they set up a mail-in ballot system to protect their residents from covid. Trump and many in the GOP fought that tooth and nail. He then appointed a Postmaster General who just - coincidentally - started making major changes that slowed down the postal service to a point we’ve never seen before.
  
  In some states the GOP blocked early vote counts of mailed in ballots. Which made it obvious that some states would count for several days. It was designed to rig appearances, to make it seem like the delayed counts were fishy.
  
  For 20 months, his obsession with Biden broke laws, bent the Postal Service, launched a jaw dropping array of empty frivolous lawsuits, then provoked a violent insurrectionist riot. While the pandemic raged, not a word of consolation was spoken by that president.
  
  He’s charged with one count. But there’s a whole long record of his misdeeds and crimes motivated by the same thing: he had to beat Biden and if he couldn’t beat him, he’d overthrow the vote.
  
  Yeah, it’s easy to see the truth, to defend the Constitution and vote ethically, based on the evidence.
  
  It’s only crass political calculation that will stand in the way.
  
  And when one bets on the unethical way, it usually backfires on them. Yet for the next two weeks, before the trial starts, the full court press will be underway as most of the GOP will fill the air with bullshit excuses. Some will become accomplices-after-the-fact.
  
  More of the rioters will be arrested. Worse shocking details will emerge. And then there’s covid.
  
  This is the week where we’ll get an accurate picture of whether the nation’s covid cases are in decline. Some states could be increasing still. We’ve lost more people than were lost in WWII.
  
  Remember them. And remember the crimes. Write your Senators, phone your Senators. The fight for justice and democracy continues. Let them see the light of the resistance. Light up those phones.
  
  We could get another surge in covid. We could get another seditious attempt. Now is not the time to rest or surrender.
  

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  Desserts
  
  
  

  And let’s keep it beautiful.