Adam Kinzinger

Welcome to Thunderdome, or as David Axelrod calls it, Word Salad City. Kamala Harris’s closing argument played out in a CNN town hall last night, and it wasn’t much of an argument at all. On question after question, Harris reverted to talking points that often had little or nothing to do with the query posed to her. On the border? No answer on why the administration took so long to act. On taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal migrants? I was a prosecutor. On a border wall? It’s a dumb idea that I now say is a good idea. On taxes? It’s a very complicated situation. On food inflation? Greedy price gouging grocers. On her weaknesses? They’re actually strengths. On any mistakes she’s made?

Vice President Kamala Harris is spending millions on new ads against Green Party candidate Jill Stein in swing state Wisconsin, warning potential supporters that a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump. The advertisement also attempts to smear Stein by asserting that she has links to KKK leader David Duke and Russian president Vladimir Putin. “You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep,” a voiceover says. “Stein isn’t sorry about swinging the 2016 election to Trump.” The ad was paid for by the Democratic National Committee but approved by the Harris campaign.Why would Harris be using air-time to attack Stein just two weeks out from the election? There are a couple of theories.

Kamala’s first interview as nominee falls flat Vice President Kamala Harris — and CNN — failed to impress in the first sit-down and unscripted interview she has given since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee forty days ago. Harris spoke for just eighteen minutes and opted not to explain how and why her policy positions have changed so drastically in the past four years, instead offering that her “values haven’t changed” and stood by her positive post-debate assessment of President Joe Biden’s cognitive state. Perhaps most confusing was Harris’s insistence that Americans are looking for a “new way forward” and to “bring America into a new decade,” which conveniently left out the fact that she has been in office for at least a third of that decade.

Vice President Kamala Harris is set to unveil her policy platform this week after criticism that she has failed to say what she would actually do as president in the weeks since becoming the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee.The process does not appear to be going well. Harris said her platform will “be focused on the economy and what we need to do to bring down costs,” which is a bit puzzling as she is the number two executive in the Biden administration, which has repeatedly assured us that “Bidenomics” is working to heal the economy post-Covid. Harris will face this conundrum with all of the policies she puts forward; why hasn’t she done it in the past four years? Will she blame a divided Congress? President Joe Biden?

Joe Biden and Bennie Thompson may be laid up with Covid, but the January 6 committee, to borrow a phrase from Donald Trump, was ready to fight like hell on Thursday. “Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued, the dam has begun to break,” declared Representative Liz Cheney at the outset. “He chose not to act,” added Representative Adam Kinzinger, slamming “Trump’s dishonor and dereliction of duty.” Speaking of slamming, it was the footage of Trump smacking the lectern on January 7, as he stumbled through a video intended to display his displeasure with the violence that he fomented, that displayed the real Trump. Vexed, exasperated, distressed. “Yesterday’s a hard word for me,” he announced. “I don’t want to say the election is over.

Are the January 6 hearings over yet? Is this a miniseries or will it be picked up for season two? And does the cast of this ensemble production have anything to say about being snubbed at this year’s Emmys? No matter what final “findings” the democracy-defending committee leaves us with, this saga will rightly go down in history as nothing more than a show trial. It didn’t have to be this way. Last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to allow Republican congressmen Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio to serve on the select committee investigating what Joe Biden describes as the “worst attack on the US since the Civil War.

Cockburn has never been much of a hawk, unless you count his begrudging deficit hawkery over the massive tab he ran up at his local bar. But many elected Republicans are very hawkish on foreign policy, supporting "peace through strength," as Ronald Reagan put it, as well as occasionally war through strength. So how are the GOP's highest-flying hawks handling Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Cockburn was surprised to find them divided. Nearly every Republican lawmaker (and Democrat for that matter) agrees that we need to throttle Russia with economic sanctions. It's on the question of whether the United States should implement a no-fly zone over Ukraine that the cracks begin to show.

For a party that claims it wants to move on, the Republicans are doing a remarkable job of turning the national spotlight back onto one of the worst days in their history. Last week, the GOP returned to its circular firing squad, issuing a statement that censured Representatives Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, the only two Republicans serving on the House January 6 Committee. At the same time, it suggested that the actions of rioters who stormed into the Capitol constituted “legitimate political discourse.” Such a statement from a national political party is unusual. Almost as unusual as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issuing a rebuke of his own party apparatus.

Heavens to Betsy! It seems that Tucker Carlson has gone full truther. Or, if you prefer, disinformer about the tawdry events of January 6, when a motley crew of Trump supporters and Oath Keepers, who often appear to be one and the same, somehow took it into their heads not simply to protest the outcome of the presidential election but to storm the Winter Palace. The trials of the perpetrators are ongoing. A House committee, which includes Liz Cheney as well as Adam Kinzinger, is investigating. And most Republican politicians, at least the ones with their eyes on regaining a congressional majority, are trying to put the episode firmly in the rear-view mirror. Not Tucker.

After whispering a prayer to St Ronald Reagan, Paul Ryan rose to his feet, solemnly kissed his bible, Atlas Shrugged, and gave a speech at the Gipper's presidential library in Simi Valley about the perils of personality cults. Though the former Republican House speaker did not attack Donald Trump directly on Thursday, it was obvious who was on his mind. 'If the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality, or on second-rate imitations, then we're not going anywhere,' Ryan said. And if the conservative movement fails, he warned, 'it will be because we gave too much allegiance to one passing political figure, and weren't loyal enough to our principles'. Ryan also called the audience away from the culture war.