Monday Reads: House Floats and Senate Trials
Posted: February 8, 2021 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Mardi Gras Krewe of House Floats 2021 7 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I was awakened last night by the blast of the emergency system tone really early this morning or late last night. A ten year old girl from New Iberia Parish had gone missing. Some one had seen her get into a car with a man who turned out to be a known sex offender. Fortunately, an alert sanitation worker in the next parish over recognized the car when his crew passed by it early today. The girl is now undergoing a medical examination and the police have the suspect in custody.
I was also greeted by my cat spilling my coffee all over my laptop. So far it appears to be doing okay but we’ll see how long that lasts. I scrambled to get it turn upside down immediately. I also have to finish grading a bunch of things. So, how’s your day going?
Today’s pictures are of the Mardi Gras House floats that have been popping up all over the city. It’s easy to guess which ones are uptown and which are downtown by me! I’m behind on mine because of this class I’ve been teaching and all the assorted headaches. I get my covid-19 vaccine on Wednesday afternoon and I still won’t have a day off until Friday so this week seems absolutely frazzled compared to the last year where sitting at home was de rigueur.
Another Republican Congress Critter has died from covid-19. Not sure if he was of the anti maskers but if not, his colleagues likely killed him with their anti masking antics.
Rep. Ron Wright (R-TX) has died. Wright tested positive for coronavirus several weeks ago. Wright had also battled lung cancer last fall. Wright was 67 years old. Wright succeeded fmr GOP TX Rep Joe Barton in 2019 after Barton retired.
However I have found some interesting tweets including a deathbed crusade to fully open schools. Since the debacle with the empty stockpile, we’ve had quite a few teachers unable to get their vaccines. Anecdotally, I know several who are now home with the virus. UNO is supposed to start opening campus in March. Fortunately, I’m pretty much zoom bound in this class but at least I should have both doses if I have to go back.
https://twitter.com/ApocalypticaNow/status/1358814359963721732
It’s really hard to imagine that Republicans are still pushing free range herd immunity but pictures in Tampa Bay after the Super Bowl seem to show that it’s a different world out there in places with Republicans in charge. Our Mayor is doing everything possible to keep people out of the Quarter including closing bars down. Last night, however there was still a convergence to the bars all over. I watched the parade to bars by young white couples while walking Temple and chatting with my neighbor who already got her double dose as she hit the 70 year mark last year. I just don’t get how anything is more important than keep you and your healthy but I guess I’m officially on old coot now.
The British variant of covid-19 is “Spreading Rapidly in U.S. A new study bolsters the prediction by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the so-called B.1.1.7 variant will dominate Covid-19 cases by March.” This is reported in the NYT.
A more contagious variant of the coronavirus first found in Britain is spreading rapidly in the United States, doubling roughly every 10 days, according to a new study.
Analyzing half a million coronavirus tests and hundreds of genomes, a team of researchers predicted that in a month this variant could become predominant in the United States, potentially bringing a surge of new cases and increased risk of death.
The new research offers the first nationwide look at the history of the variant, known as B.1.1.7, since it arrived in the United States in late 2020. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that B.1.1.7 could become predominant by March if it behaved the way it did in Britain. The new study confirms that projected path.
“Nothing in this paper is surprising, but people need to see it,” said Kristian Andersen, a co-author of the study and a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. “We should probably prepare for this being the predominant lineage in most places in the United States by March.”
So, will we get another huge surge? Dr Fauci did say we need to keep an eye on those variants and some of the vaccines do better than others with them.
Trump’s impeachment trial continues. Politico reports that “POLITICO Playbook: Democratic impeachment managers feeling muzzled”.
Democrats who’ve struggled for years to hold DONALD TRUMP accountable are at a crossroads again: Do they go all out to convict Trump by calling a parade of witnesses to testify to his misdeeds? Or do they concede it’s a lost cause, finish the trial ASAP — and get on with President JOE BIDEN’S agenda?
Several of the House impeachment managers wanted firsthand testimony to help prove their case that Trump incited the Jan. 6 riot, our sources tell us. But Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER, Speaker NANCY PELOSI and Biden administration officials have been eager for the process to move quickly, we’re told.
It’s been a source of frustration for some Democrats privately. Trump, these people have noticed, is already on the rebound politically, at least among Republicans. The GOP base has rallied to his defense, and many Republican lawmakers who witnessed the terror of the Capitol invasion are back in Trump’s corner.
That’s why there had been talk among the managers about calling individuals who could change minds — if not the minds of 17 GOP senators needed to convict, then perhaps a slice of the GOP electorate that still supports Trump. Some of the ideas floated: having Capitol Police officers tell their stories about fighting the mob, or inviting Republican officials in Georgia who were pressured by Trump to overturn the state’s election tally.
There’s also been chatter about bringing in former White House officials who observed Trump on the day of the riots.
Schumer and other Senate Democrats argue, however, that they don’t necessarily need witnesses since Trump’s crimes were in plain sight and documented in videos and tweets. Privately, senior Democrats also note that 45 Senate Republicans have already decided they think the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president, so why bother dragging this out?
Trump’s team continues to argue that the Senate cannot impeach a former President. However, a top Republican lawyer has disagreed publicly. From the NYT: “Breaking With G.O.P., Top Conservative Lawyer Says Trump Can Stand Trial. Charles J. Cooper, a stalwart of the conservative legal establishment, said that Republicans were wrong to assert that it is unconstitutional for a former president to be tried for impeachable offenses.”
Many legal scholars disagree, and the Senate has previously held an impeachment trial of a former official — though never a former president. But 45 Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader who is said to believe that Mr. Trump committed impeachable offenses, voted last month to dismiss the trial as unconstitutional on those grounds.
Mr. Cooper said they were misreading the Constitution.
“The provision cuts against their interpretation,” he wrote. He argued that because the Constitution allows the Senate to bar officials convicted of impeachable offenses from holding public office again in the future, “it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders.”
Mr. Cooper’s decision to take on the argument was particularly significant because of his standing in conservative legal circles. He was a close confidant and adviser to Senate Republicans, like Ted Cruz of Texas when he ran for president, and represented House Republicans — including the minority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California — in a lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He is also the lawyer for conservative stalwarts like John R. Bolton and Jeff Sessions, and over his career defended California’s same-sex marriage ban and had been a top outside lawyer for the National Rifle Association.
At this point I do not care who agrees that he can be impeached I just want to see his ass in place where he can never run for public office again. I’d also rather hear from the staffers who saw what he was saying and doing at the time. I never what to see his fat freaky face on TV again nor do I want to hear his icky voice.
The WSJ is reporting that Senate leaders are reaching an agreement on what the next schedule in the Trial will look like.
On Monday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said that in that speech Mr. Trump only used the word “fight” a “little more than a handful of times and each time in the figurative sense,” and noted that he urged supporters to march peacefully and made no explicit mention of rioting. The lawyers said the president was exercising his rights under the First Amendment.
They also argued that news reports that law-enforcement officials had missed warnings about an attack on the Capitol indicated the riot had been planned in advance and “therefore had nothing to do with the president’s speech.”
The Senate trial begins on Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are closing in on an agreement for a resolution that would outline the rules and schedule for the trial, according to the person familiar with the talks.
I can at least report that purging Trumpist policy is still on the Biden/Harris team platter. Chait has never been a favorite of mine but here is a bit of analysis that at least provides some hope.
Chait writes this about the ongoing deficit size fixation Obama inherited compared to Biden who inherits a new situation following Trump. I still personally expect the republicans to suddenly get deficit size religion again but here’s is argument.
The rise of Donald Trump is the largest single cause of the transformation. It was obvious to some of us all along that Republican claims to have a passionate concern for fiscal probity were insincere. Trump has made it impossible to ignore. The beliefs that sincerely animated reporters and officials in Washington during the Obama era — that the Tea Party was a reaction to debt levels, that Republican leaders were willing or able to deal with Obama — were turned into a running joke by a Republican president who won the nomination in part because he never fooled himself into believing any of these things. Trump’s ability to blow out the budget deficit and wantonly pick winners and losers without any shame or meaningful Republican blowback destroyed the whole premise.
Democrats in Congress also learned an important lesson from the Obama era. Many moderate Democrats shared a belief with the mainstream media that bipartisanship was both possible and necessary. Democrats in Congress squandered much of their time pursuing fruitless negotiations with Republicans, chasing a deal they were sure lay just around the corner. Only in retrospect did they realize that Republicans were stringing them along to allow opposition to build while they ran out the clock.
One of the biggest obstacles Obama faced in 2009 was the excessive confidence of his putative congressional allies that they could strike an agreement with Republicans. Biden’s congressional allies have fewer illusions about the incentives of their Republican counterparts.
Economic thinking itself has changed in important ways over the last decade. Economists previously feared that the federal government floating trillions of dollars in additional debt would cause interest rates to rise. (Indeed, this seems like a straightforward application of supply and demand.) Instead, interest rates have failed to budge, eliminating the austerity pressure that exerted such a powerful impact in the 1980s and 1990s.
This is the center piece of my House float. It’s a painting by a friend Rex. She does some nice work. All the people will have surgical masks and the assorted critters will have Mardi Gras masks. You have heard of the Mardi Gras Penguin? Right? Just have to get them all up.
I can say that the entire deficit fixation was more of a political fixation than economic thinking. Most main stream economists have know for some time that a deficit has a place in the policy box and that it’s necessary to run them up in desperate times. What the deficit chicken hawks showed was that even in good times deficits can be run up as long as it’s the name of tax cuts to businesses in the wealthy. This is anathema to any serious student of economics. But then, the proved what we though all along. Deficits are fine with they comport with Republican values like unnecessary. They’re just not to help regular Americans. That’s Roosevelt socialism!
Anyway, I’m off to grade and praying that my little laptop survives Dinah’s leap into my coffee cup disaster.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: Many Americas, Two Realities
Posted: February 5, 2021 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Reality Based Politics 12 Comments
Picasso, Jacqueline with flowers, 1954
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Have you seen a list of headlines in the news lately and realized there are not two Americas, there are really lots of Americas but there do seem to be two sets of realities?
You can read about the struggling economy and lackluster jobs reports, or how the Biden Administration pushed through a budget bill including a Covid-19 rescue plan with the deciding vote caste by Kamala Harris, and just anything that seems regular goings on in a developed nation. That’s a total relief because if your an Indigenous American struggling to survive on a Reservation, or a Farmer in a hard hit middle of the country state, or any number of flavors of people struggling in big cities you can certainly breathe a sigh of relief to see things working in your direction.
You’re also seeing some clean up in aisle Congress and hoping some of this remaining Trump detritus goes away or at least has limited impact on those of us living in the reality of science and the warts of our democracy. This is certainly good news: House votes to remove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from committee assignments.
1914 Man Balcony by Albert Gleizes
Or, you can continue down the rabbit hole and read what Trumpism has left us. It’s not going away. It’s festering and leaving us a group of people with a severe disconnect from the rest of us.
Here’s an interview I read this morning in Politico with an ex Trump National Security person who is also an evangelical Christian on what she sees as the growing radicalization of White Nationalist Evangelical Extremists. It’s a jolt to read this as you realize that the Q cult is spreading like wildfire in many churches. “It’s Time to Talk About Violent Christian Extremism. There’s a “strong authoritarian streak” that runs through parts of American evangelicalism, warns Elizabeth Neumann. What should be done about it? “
In March, even before the shutdowns, I had my staff look at the research we use for developing behavioral indicators of individuals who might mobilize to violence. If we go down this path of having to all stay home, does that increase stress factors? Does it increase risk factors known to be common in people who carry out attacks? The answer was yes.
You started hearing the anti-government conspiracies — which was totally predictable. Anybody who has spent any time in Republican or libertarian politics knows you’re going to have people unhappy about the government. That’s fine; you can predict that. The question then is that if you know that’s going to be a challenge, what can the government do to help individuals understand why it is issuing stay-at-home orders, why it’s necessary, why it’s legal and constitutional? If the government had done a better job at that, we would have seen slightly less anger, slightly less of that victim-persecution complex.
With the pandemic, you had what was perceived to be government overreach; you had social isolation, which is a known risk factor [for extremism]; you had some people with a lot more time on their hands because they were not commuting, not taking kids to ballgames and not going to happy hour after work; you had economic stress — another known risk factor — as people lost jobs or moved to part-time status; you had people who lost loved ones. There was this great sense that people had lost control; our lives as we knew them had been upended.
People who had a strong, healthy sense of self or community were able to mitigate their isolation. But for individuals already on the cusp, this made them vulnerable. We use that word, “vulnerable,” to describe people who are not necessarily radicalized yet, but have factors in their lives that make it easier for them to move on a pathway towards extreme radicalized thought — and then, for a smaller subset, mobilizes them to violence.
That’s what we saw in 2020. We saw any number of people spending more time online looking for answers. You had increases in militia movements. The Moonshot CVE Group, which studies radicalization, said that in states with stay-at-home orders that lasted 10 days or longer, [online] searches for white-supremacist content increased by 21 percent. In states where there either weren’t stay-at-home orders or they lasted nine days or fewer, that increase was only 1 percent. We weren’t sure how it was going to happen, but we predicted that we would see violence in some form or fashion. The militia that attempted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — that was horrible, but not really shocking. The violence at protests? Not surprising. And the fact that you had white-supremacist groups using the protests to commit accelerationist violence was also not surprising — even though the president thought it was Antifa. We knew we were going to see more radicalization and violence.
That’s a fairly scary number of people believing something totally off-the-wall and easily disprovable. It seriously is improvisational reality building as labelled in this NPR interview with Travis View.
The evolving movement has embraced new conspiracies, including that Trump will be sworn into office for a second presidential term on March 4.
View has posted screenshots showing exchanges between QAnon supporters as they discuss their delusional beliefs.
“They come to their conclusion first,” View says. “They decide what makes them feel best and then they construct conspiracy theories that help them convince themselves why that’s true.”
“It’s really kind of like an improvisational reality building,” he continues. “They don’t look to the outside world to try and figure out what is true and what is not, and as a consequence, sometimes have to face harsh truths such as the electoral victory of Joe Biden.
Last year, QAnon spread into the mainstream. As president, Trump repeatedly retweeted accounts tied to QAnon. Newly elected Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have spoken openly in support of QAnon.
John D. Graham, “Head of a Woman,” 1926.
Meanwhile, Trump and his Death Cult are planning to punish any Republicans who dared to question the reality he’s built for himself. Part of it’s playing out in Congress like this article describing the plans for Nebraska’s Senator: “Sen. Ben Sasse slams Nebraska GOP committee’s plans to censure him for criticizing Trump “. This week, they failed to remove Liz Cheney from leadership in the House. Her constituents are going to have the last say though. Here’s a WAPO headline “Rep. Liz Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump prompts a voter rebellion in her home state”.
A star of the Republican Party widely seen as a potential future House speaker, Cheney has suddenly emerged as a vivid example of something completely different — a traditional Republican who may no longer have a home in a party dominated by Trump and the far right.
No matter that she voted with Trump more than 90 percent of the time, or that she occupies the lone Wyoming congressional seat that her father, the former vice president, held for 10 years. Few voters care that as the third-ranking Republican in the House she is well positioned to bring home federal spending.
In this city in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, her reputation has boiled down to a simple question: whether she is for Trump or against Trump. And, as far as many people here are concerned, with her Jan. 13 impeachment vote, Cheney staked her claim.
What is even more frightening is this headline from The Business Insider: “Trump is plotting a campaign revenge tour targeting GOP defectors after Senate impeachment trial.”
Donald Trump is plotting a comeback revenge tour targeting GOP defectors after his Senate impeachment trial. Trump is talking with aides about a road trip to campaign against Republicans who supported his removal.
We may only have to hear about these things but I truly fear that the targets will need lifelong secret service protection should the events happen.
This is from Raw Story.
The former president is planning a nationwide speaking tour intended to target the 10 Republicans who backed his impeachment and any GOP senators who speak out against him at next week’s trial, reported Insider.
“I’m sure he wants to get out a roulette wheel with all their faces on it,” said one Republican who speaks to Trump.
However, the former president is waiting until the trial ends and seems to understand Americans needed a break from his antics.
“Even he recognizes that we have Trump fatigue,” said the Republican source. “Even he knows that you can get overexposed, and he wore the electorate out, and that was part of the problem. He clearly wore the country out with his behavior between the election and the inauguration.”
John D. Graham, “Head of a Woman,” 1944
Is that the understatement of the year or what?
This article from Salon shows that crazy comes in at all income levels. “How one billionaire family bankrolled election lies, white nationalism — and the Capitol riot. Rebekah Mercer is “one of the chief financiers of the fascist movement,” says longtime GOP insider Steve Schmidt ” Igor Derysh is the author.
While Charles Koch and his late brother David have dominated Republican fundraising in recent decades, the Mercers’ recent strategic investments in far-right candidates bought them a disproportionate level of influence in the Republican Party before culminating in an effort to subvert the election that fueled the deadly Capitol siege.
“The Mercers laid the groundwork for the Trump revolution,” Bannon told The New Yorker in 2017. “Irrefutably, when you look at donors during the past four years, they have had the single biggest impact of anybody, including the Kochs.” Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, sees it differently. Rebekah Mercer, he said in an interview with Salon, is the “chief financier or one of the chief financiers of the fascist movement, and that’s what it is.”
Hours after the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, killing five people and injuring dozens of police officers in a futile bid to stop the counting of electoral votes, Hawley joined with top Mercer beneficiaries in objecting to the results to back Trump’s “big lie” that the election was somehow stolen. There was Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, whose super PAC got $13.5 million from the Mercers during the 2016 presidential campaign — before the family dropped another $15.5 million to back Trump. There was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., defending the majority of the GOP House caucus voting to overturn legal election results after his Congressional Leadership Fund received $1.5 million from the Mercers. And there was Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., who received $21,600 from the Mercers before speaking at the rally that preceded the riot and objecting to the results. Brooks was later named by “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander as having helped orchestrate the event, though his office said he has “no recollection communicating in any way with whoever Ali Alexander is.”
Alexander himself may have benefited from the Mercers’ millions while working for the Black Conservative Fund, a small and mysterious group that received $60,000 from Robert Mercer in 2016. Though the group did not raise any money in 2020, it promoted the White House rally to tens of thousands of followers, according to CNBC.
So, that should give the FBI something to chew on for awhile.
Interior artwork from DC Universe Halloween Special 2009 vol. 1, Oct 2009 Art by Ibraim Roberson, pencils and inks, and Giovani Kososki, color
Abraham Lincoln has a lot of quotable phrases but the one that always sticks with me. The powerful warning was given in his House Divided speech and is a turn of phrase in several of the gospels.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
The quote seems appropriate at this time but in a quite abstracted way. The abhorrent institution of slavery and the so-called “southern way of life” stood as the rebel cause then. It was not complete devoid of reality. It was just completely devoid of morality even though it stood firmly on a Bible pointing out all the folks that had slaves back then.
This moment seems like a product of much of the same with the twist of there now being a lot more interactive visuals and playthings for Death Cults with apocalyptical visions. How do you connect reality with bizzaro world?
So, anyway, we can at least breathe when we watch the regular news or catch a glimpse of the headlines for the most part. We have a break. But, we and the FBI and the National Security Department need to be vigilant because it seems we’re going to have an insurgency and eventually, it really will start getting very ugly on Main Streets everywhere.
And with that spirit I leave you with this WAPO Op Ed by Eugene Robinson.
At the state level, the Republican Party is, if anything, even less tethered to reality. The Arizona state GOP actually censured former senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, widow of the late senator John McCain, for failing to blindly support Trump. A few Republican governors, such as Jim Justice of West Virginia, are doing well in the vaccination phase of the pandemic. Others, such as Ron DeSantis of Florida, continue to put politics over public health.
Trump led the GOP’s base deep into the wilderness. Republican leadership in Washington lacks the skills and the guts to lead the party back to reality — and back to constructive participation in addressing the massive challenges we face. Don’t blame “both sides” for ruining the elegant, strategic, productive political competition we’d like to see. One party is trying to move the chess pieces. The other is trying to eat them.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Monday Reads: What Still Works?
Posted: February 1, 2021 Filed under: morning reads 6 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Kate McKinnon did the #SNL cold open as herself doing a news-style talk show asking folks “What Still Works?” in the USA. It’s full of all kinds of topics we discuss a lot here and though it is certainly one of the funniest openers I’ve seen in awhile, it’s also a serious question.
This New York Times headline certainly sums up the situation with the badly broken Republican Party. I mean it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of greedy, power hungry, no-nothings but sheesh, we have a two party system. How does this not break most of our government and it certainly has meaning in states like mine where the leges are basically Camp Run Amok for Right Wing nut jobs.
With no dominant leader other than the deplatformed one-term president, a radical right movement that became emboldened under President Donald J. Trump has been maneuvering for more power, and ascending in different states and congressional districts. More moderate Republicans feel increasingly under attack, but so far have made little progress in galvanizing voters, donors or new recruits for office to push back against extremism.
There’s plenty of examples there to choose from in terms of what’s going on in state Republican Parties as well as the chaos ruling the Republicans in the District.
Damaged windows of an old abandoned factory.
I had to laugh/cry at this headline from New York Magazine and Jonathan Chait. “McConnell: Trump Tricked Me Into Backing His Coup”. Are we seriously expected to believe this?
Needless to say, that explanation looks even worse now. McConnell and his allies are trying to launder their reputations. McConnell’s excuse is contained within a deeply reported New York Times narrative account of Trump’s election challenge. Apparently, McConnell was duped by Trump and his wily son-in-law:
The senator was also under a false impression that the president was only blustering, the officials said. Mr. McConnell had had multiple conversations with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the senator’s top political adviser, Josh Holmes, had spoken with Mr. Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Both West Wing officials had conveyed the same message: They would pursue all potential avenues but recognized that they might come up short. Mr. Trump would eventually bow to reality and accept defeat.
Poor sweet, naïve Mitch McConnell was told that Trump would graciously concede defeat, only to eventually realize Trump had misled him.
Clearly the Republican party is broken and the legislative sausage-making process is in dire shape. Perhaps they need a School House Rocks watch session to remember how it’s all supposed to work?
It goes without out saying that the global climate isn’t in good shape, our immigration system isn’t working, and we dont’ seem to be able to get the economy working for every on or the justice system to work for people of color or the poor. The media is already picking on the Biden Harris administration for their first 10 days which is yet another example of how our media is clearly broken without even mentioning the entire channels dedicated to right wing lies and conspiracy theories. Even the one governor that seemed to have it together on the COVID-19 Pandemic was faking rather than making it. Cuomo’s undercount of nursing home deaths and a flight of experts from his administration has me wondering has every one in this country just trying to blow smoke in our face?
Here’s a good question from The Atlantic which could actual be one of those turning points in urban economics.
As a general rule of human civilization, we’ve lived where we work. More than 90 percent of Americans drive to work, and their average commute is about 27 minutes. This tether between home and office is the basis of urban economics. But remote work weakens it; in many cases, it severs the link entirely, replacing spatial proximity with cloud-based connectivity. What knock-on changes will this new industrial revolution bring?
I’m one of those people with a job that could work from any one and I’ll tell you, that cabin on an island in the Peugeot Sound just keeps calling to me. I’ve been a Zillow traveler for at least 6 years with that project and the Covid-19 thing may have slowed me down along with a friend that needed an escape from a brutal husband but it hasn’t stopped me from searching out where the next place might be. I’ve found there’s a lot to be said about holding up at home and avoiding as much work place drama as possible even when you’ve got an office with a door that closes.
The one thing I might never be able to escape unless we do something is the gun violence even though I am in a place where the sounds of gun shots are quite common. The most threatening thing I’ve seen in awhile are those imagines of angry white militia jerks armed to the teeth. The Rev. Sharon Risher writes this op ed at WAPO: “Guns are white supremacy’s deadliest weapon. We must disarm hate.”
This is no kind of a situation to leave to the kids of America or the World for that matter. We’ve become more of a menace than ever before. And it all seems to be wrapped up in the flags of traitors.
So, I’ll just leave this topic here for you to talk about. I’m not sure what all this means in terms of trusting Joe, Kamala, Nancy, and Chuck to get the job done frankly. There’s a lot at stake and like Kate said, there’s a lot not working right now. There’s a lot of stuff that’s just really broken.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Following Up On Trump’s Attempted Coup
Posted: January 28, 2021 Filed under: morning reads, Republican politics | Tags: attempted coup, Donald Trump, January 6 riot, Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, Roger Stone, Seth Abramson, Suicide, Tommy Tuberville 14 Comments
Good Morning
As you can probably guess from the images, it is snowing here. It snowed Tuesday night into Wednesday and we might get a bigger snowfall over the weekend. It has been a snow-free January so far, but no longer.
As Congressional Republicans once again circle the wagons around Trump, the death and injury toll from the January 6 attempted coup is growing. A second policeman committed suicide and many more cops were injured than preciously known.
CNN: Two police officers died by suicide after responding to Capitol riot.
Acting Metropolitan Police Chief Robert J. Contee told the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that two police officers have died by suicide since responding to the riot at the Capitol on January 6, according to Contee’s opening statement before the committee, which was obtained by CNN.
This is the first time the force has confirmed that two officers took their own lives after the attack.
“Tragically, two officers who were at the Capitol on January 6th, one each from the Capitol Police and MPD, took their own lives in the aftermath of that battle,” Contee said in his statement.
Another Capitol Police officer, Brian D. Sicknick, died the day after the riot “due to injuries sustained while on-duty,” the Capitol Police said in a statement earlier this month.
Eastern Bluebird
And don’t forget that one of the rioters also died by suicide.
The New York Times: The Capitol Police union says nearly 140 officers were injured during the riot.
Nearly 140 police officers from two departments were injured during the Jan. 6 pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol, including officers who suffered brain injuries, smashed spinal discs and one who is likely to lose his eye, the Capitol Police union said on Wednesday.
In a statement, the union’s chairman, Gus Papathanasiou, faulted leadership of the Capitol Police for failing to equip officers with proper equipment ahead of the attack.
He was responding to the closed-door testimony on Tuesday of Yogananda D. Pittman, the acting chief of the Capitol Police, who acknowledged that the department had known there was a “strong potential for violence” that day but failed to take necessary steps to prevent what she described as a “terrorist attack.”
Chief Pittman took the reins of the agency after the siege, replacing Steven Sund, who resigned as police chief under pressure.
“We have one officer who lost his life as a direct result of the insurrection,” Mr. Papathanasiou said. “Another officer has tragically taken his own life. Between U.S.C.P. and our colleagues at the Metropolitan Police Department, we have almost 140 officers injured. I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained brain injuries. One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs. One officer is going to lose his eye, and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake.”
Chief Pittman testified via videoconference before a meeting of the House Appropriations Committee that officers were outmanned during the riot, that internal communications were poor, and that officers lacked sufficient equipment and struggled to carry out orders like locking down the building.
Nevertheless, Congressional Republicans are mostly back in the Trump cult.
Two crows in snow
Stephen Collinson at CNN: In the Republican Party, the post-Trump era lasted a week.
Two roads diverged in American politics, and the Republican Party chose the one traveled by disgraced ex-President Donald Trump and QAnon conspiracy theorists.
While pundits ponder the GOP’s future — and traditionalists hope to change course out of the wreckage left by Trump’s insurrection — Washington’s power players and state activists have already made their choice.
Highlighting the former President’s lightning fast rehabilitation, the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy will visit Trump in Florida on Thursday after repudiating his own criticism of the incitement of the US Capitol riot.
Only a week after Trump left the White House, it’s clear that his party is not ready to let him go. Extremists and Trumpists are on the rise, while lawmakers who condemned his aberrant conduct fight for their political careers. The anti-Trump wing — represented by members of Congress such as Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Mitt Romney of Utah and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger — look like a small and outmaneuvered force.
This week’s sorting will have significant implications for the GOP’s positioning as it heads into the 2022 midterm elections, and for President Joe Biden’s hopes of draining the poison from Washington in the name of national unity.
But it will also pose a fundamental question for the Grand Old Party itself. Is yet another doubling down on grassroots fury and the Trump base the best way to win back Americans? Especially those in suburban areas who rejected the ex-President who lost the House, the Senate and the White House in a single four-year term?
Asawin Suebsaeng at The Daily Beast: Republicans Come Crawling Back to Trump Three Weeks After Capitol Riot.
Immediately following the deadly Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill, several leaders and prominent figures in his own party wanted to ditch President Donald Trump, blame him for inciting the mob, or at least move on from him. It took less than a month for almost all of the official GOP to start crawling back to him.
Junco on a branch
GOP bigwigs who were, very briefly, prepared to throw Trump onto the ash heap of history following his primary role in sparking the MAGA riot and for helping the Republican Party lose the presidency and both houses of Congress are now beginning to shield the ex-president, once again, from his liberal foes. Top Republican lawmakers are increasingly signaling that they are ready to let Trump off the hook yet another time, and the former president has been working the phones from his new home base in Florida in an effort to make sure GOP senators vote to acquit him in an upcoming impeachment trial.
Of course Lindsey Graham is leading the pack in their rush back into the Trump orbit.
“He’s very interested in the outcome of the trial and I talked to him yesterday, and I told him the vote yesterday is a sign of things to come,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a close Trump ally, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
Graham was referring to a Tuesday vote for which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sided with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on a measure declaring Senate impeachment proceedings against an ex-president to be unconstitutional. Earlier this month, McConnell had publicly blamed Trump for “provok[ing]” the anti-democratic rioting, and had left open the possibility of voting to convict him in a potential trial.
Minority leader Kevin McCarthy is not far behind.
McCarthy is making nice with the former president—and his family, too. Days after his argument with Donald Trump, McCarthy got on the phone with Donald Trump Jr. Both sides of the conversation walked away believing that they remained on great terms with the other. Trump Jr. is currently planning to do whatever he can to help the GOP take back the House in 2022, according to a person familiar with the matter. “Don wants to see Kevin as speaker of the House,” this source said.
Moreover, multiple news outlets reported on Wednesday that former President Trump and McCarthy are scheduled to meet in person in Florida on Thursday.
Just a short time ago, both of these assholes were denouncing Trump for his attempted coup.
Rose Finch
Yesterday, JJ posted a links to Seth Abraham’s reporting on a suspected planning meeting held on January 5, the day before the Capitol riot. Other news outlets are now reporting on the meeting.
Here’s Abramson’s summary of what is known so far. More Revelations About Secretive January 5 War Council at Trump International Hotel.
Reporting in the Omaha World-Herald, as well as social media screenshots and videos, confirm a January 5 pre-insurrection war council at DC’s Trump International Hotel. Also confirmed by the evidence is a list of the gathering’s (minimum) fifteen attendees.
The first Proof article on this subject can be found here.
The secretive January 5 meeting—which one attendee, Senator Tommy Tuberville, has already been caught lying about, and which another, Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster, has attempted to scrub his social media to conceal—included eight different components of Trump’s political machine:
Family members: Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Kimberly Guilfoyle (current girlfriend of Trump Jr., and a former on-air Fox News personality).
Trump’s legal team: Rudy Giuliani.
United States senators: Tuberville and at least two other senators (see below).
Administration officials: Peter Navarro and Charles Herbster.
January 6 organizers: Ali Alexander, Adam Piper, and Michael Flynn.
Trump campaign officials: Corey Lewandowski (former), David Bossie (former).
Cyberintelligence specialists: Flynn (information operations) and possibly Phil Waldron (self-described—see more below—as skilled in “intelligence analysis”).
Trump donors: Mike Lindell, Daniel Beck, and Herbster.
Due to minimal ongoing coverage of this extraordinary pre-January 6 strategy meeting, questions about the Trump International Hotel gathering remain. This article outlines key questions and reveals the answers to several—all uncovered over the last 24 hours.
Read the rest at the Substack link.
Chickadee
From The Alabama Political Reporter: Trump appointee says Tuberville met with Trump family, advisers on eve of Capitol attack.
Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville through a spokeswoman Tuesday denied meeting with the then-director of the Republican Attorneys General Association and others inside Trump’s private residence at the Trump International Hotel on Jan. 5 — on the eve of the deadly U.S. Capitol attack.
But a photo posted to social media appears to show Tuberville in the hotel’s lobby that day, and a company CEO in a separate post describes meeting with Tuberville and others at the hotel that day and discussing “illegal votes.”
Charles W. Herbster, who was then the national chairman of the Agriculture and Rural Advisory Committee in Trump’s administration, in a Facebook post at 8:33 p.m. on Jan. 5 said that he was standing “in the private residence of the President at Trump International with the following patriots who are joining me in a battle for justice and truth.”
Among the attendees, according to Herbster’s post, were Tuberville, former RAGA director Adam Piper, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, adviser Peter Navarro, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and 2016 deputy campaign manager David Bossie.
More details:
A photo posted to an Instagram user’s account appears to show Tuberville standing in the lobby of the Trump International Hotel on Jan. 5. The user captioned the photo “Newly elected Senator Tommy Tuberville.” In two other separate photos, the person posted images of Flynn and Donald Trump Jr. inside the hotel on Jan. 5. Attempts to reach the person who posted that photo were unsuccessful Tuesday.
Daniel Beck, CEO of an Idaho technology company, in a Facebook post at 10:27 p.m. on Jan. 5 wrote that he’d spent the evening with Tuberville, Trump Jr. and girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, Michael J. Lindell, Navarro and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.
And Mother Jones has info on Roger Stone’s long-term involvement in preparations for the coup:
In the weeks before riled-up Trump supporters looking to overturn the election assembled in Washington, DC, Stone worked to raise money for “private security” and equipment for events there on January 5 and 6 that preceded the storming of the Capitol. But the “Stop the Steal” website where Stone solicited funds was subsequently taken down. Though he now claims to have merely encouraged “peaceful” protests of Congress, he struck a fiery and apocalyptic tone in speeches leading up to the Capitol attack. At a DC rally on December 12, he exhorted his rightwing fans to “fight until the bitter end” to prevent Joe Biden from taking office. Speaking at a rally in Freedom Plaza the night before the Capitol riot, Stone urged the crowd to join an “epic struggle.”
At that event, Stone appeared to be receiving protection from a security detail composed of members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group. And Stone for years has maintained close ties to members of the Proud Boys, whose leaders treat him as a mentor. Members of both groups face criminal charges for their role in the assault on Congress.
There’s much more on Stone’s role at Mother Jones.
One more from Raw Story: Viral video renews interest in report Trump sons held pre-Capitol coup meeting to pressure’ lawmakers.
A clip from a video recorded by the CEO of a text messaging company is going viral after well-known attorney and activist Seth Abramson posted it to Twitter late Tuesday night.
In the original Facebook live video, posted at 11:32 PM the night before the January 6 insurrection, Txtwire CEO Daniel Beck claims to have just finished a meeting with “about 15” people at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., including, he says, Rudy Giuliani, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr., My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, and “several Senators.”
It appears at least one of those Senators has now been identified.
The video itself would be interesting to those investigating the insurrection and Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, but it’s far more interesting given an article in the Omaha World Herald published January 6, that reports a Republican exploring a run for governor of Nebraska, Charles Herbster, appears to have attended that same January 5 meeting.
Read more at Raw Story.
So this could get very interesting. I hope big media will pick up on this story soon. It sure seems significant.
That’s it for me today, but there’s lots more happening. I’ll post more links in the comment thread and I hope you will too.
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: January 16, 2021 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: caturday, conspiracy theories, Donald Trump, impeachment, law enforcement and military involvement ininsurrection, New York prosecutors, Scotland, Trump Organization, Trump Tower 23 Comments
Good Morning!!
It’s raining cats and dogs outside my windows this morning, so I decided to illustrate this post with cats in and out of the rain.
In just four days, Trump will be out of the White House and headed to Florida; and, according to the Wall Street Journal (via Raw Story), even the people working in the White House can’t wait until he’s gone.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the last days of Donald Trump’s tenure as president have found him still looking for any chance of remaining in office as demoralized staffers look forward to Inauguration Day bringing the era to a close.
The Journal notes that the president has asked for information on the Republicans in the House who voted for his impeachment last week and whether they are susceptible to being primaried in 2022 while still fuming about his election loss.
As regarding the ongoing articles of impeachment passed by the House, Trump is still searching for attorneys to defend him if it comes to a trial after White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and attorneys who represented him during his last impeachment have let it be known they won’t take part….
According to one aide close to the president, they just want it to be over.
“It’s complete shellshock,” they explained. “People are praying for the inauguration to come and to get Trump the hell out of there.”
So much winning.
Trump’s future business prospects aren’t looking so good either. Bloomberg: Trump’s Shambolic Empire Faces Long Odds for One More Comeback.
On the day Donald Trump was getting impeached in Washington, the lobby of his New York tower at 40 Wall St. was almost silent. Few footsteps smudged the shiny marble.
But up the dark and golden elevators, trouble was stirring in one of the billionaire’s most valuable properties. Inside one law office, two partners had clashed over whether to keep paying rent to a landlord who encouraged the Capitol’s deadly riot. On the 24th floor, a nonprofit that fights tuberculosis was exploring options for leaving. On the seventh, the Girl Scouts were figuring out how to break their lease.
And in the basement, vintage bank-vault doors that weigh more than 10 tons stood wide open. There, in a club room that Trump renovated, the news was playing on a jumbo television to an audience of empty armchairs just as Congress voted against him….
The Trump Organization, run by sons Eric and Don Jr., was struggling with the devastating consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic even before their father incited a raid on Congress. Efforts to sell his Washington hotel were shelved, his office buildings were losing value amid a glut of space in Manhattan, and his golf courses were facing the reality that younger generations aren’t so interested.
Trump entered office worth $3 billion. Despite soaring stock prices and his own tax cuts, he will leave about $500 million poorer, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
His buildings are saddled with more than $1 billion in debt, most of it coming due in the next three years and more than a third of it personally guaranteed. Refinancing would mean finding lenders and corporations willing to work with history’s only twice-impeached ex-president.
Prosecutors in New York are salivating over the chances to prosecute the disgraced “president.” AP: NY prosecutors interview Michael Cohen about Trump finances.
New York prosecutors conducted an hourslong interview Thursday of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, asking a range of questions about Trump’s business dealings, according to three people familiar with the meeting.
The interview focused in part on Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank, his biggest and longest standing creditor, according to the three people, who weren’t authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
The interview, at least the second of Cohen by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, comes amid a long-running grand jury investigation into Trump’s business dealings. District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. has been waging a protracted legal battle to get access to the president’s tax records.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on Trump’s request for a stay and a further appeal after he leaves office Jan. 20.
The New York investigation is one of several legal entanglements that are likely to intensify as Trump loses power — and any immunity from prosecution he might have as a sitting president — as he departs the White House….
The Republican president also faces a civil investigation, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, into whether Trump’s company lied about the value of its assets to get loans or tax benefits. Cohen also is cooperating with that inquiry.
He previously told Congress that Trump often inflated the value of his assets when dealing with lenders or potential business partners, but deflated them when it benefited him for tax purposes.
Even in Scotland, people are looking for ways to investigate Trump. Read about it at The Scotsman: Leading QC says Scottish ministers can seek ‘McMafia’ order into Donald Trump’s finances.
Meanwhile, every day we learn more about the violent insurrection that Trump incited last week. One of the most disturbing facts is how many law enforcement and active and former military people were involved. These are brief excerpts; I recommend following the links to read the full articles.
The Washington Post: Conspiracy theories and a call for patriots entice veterans at the Capitol.
A Washington Post analysis of individuals who breached the Capitol or were in the vicinity of the riots identified 21 people with some prior military service background. Of the 72 arrested or charged by state and federal authorities through Thursday morning, 11 have military backgrounds.
The military personnel and veterans involved in the demonstrations and riot at the Capitol range in age from 33 to 62. A handful of the veterans served in combat or with front-line infantry units in the Army and Marine Corps and spoke regularly of a coming revolution or the need for violent action to purge their country of unspecified enemies. Other veterans at the Capitol on Jan. 6 served for only short stints in the military or were focused more on clerical tasks than preparing for combat. Like many at the riots, they were swept up in conspiracy theories that have taken hold among some of Trump’s most fervent supporters and felt called to action by the president’s repeated insistence without evidence that the election had been stolen.
The Pentagon hasn’t said how many active-duty troops or reservists are under investigation for any role in the protest or the riots, but homegrown militants and white supremacist groups have long targeted veterans for recruitment.
And some analysts who track extremist groups warn that the military has been slow to recognize the problem.
“They are behind in having the capacity to investigate these issues,” said Michael Edison Hayden, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. “They don’t have the proper tools to identify symbols and tattoos and that kind of thing, so it has allowed it to fester for a really long time.”
The Los Angeles Times: Why veterans of the military and law enforcement joined the Capitol insurrection.
An Air Force veteran from Southern California and ardent conspiracy theorist bent on war against the government. An Army psychological operations officer at Ft. Bragg, N.C. A decorated, retired Air Force officer of 18 years from Texas who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The deadly riot in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 attracted a variety of far-right extremists who shared a devotion to President Trump and his insistence on a false belief that the November election had been stolen from him through fraud.
Many rioters also had something else in common as they sought to upend the government in an insurrection that bristled with Confederate flags, racist symbols and conspiracy theories: They were ex-members of the military and police or actively employed by the armed services and law enforcement.
“It’s an incredibly disturbing trend,” retired U.S. Army Col. Jeffrey D. McCausland, a professor of national security at Dickinson College and former dean at the U.S. Army War College, said in an interview. “These are people who are supposed to uphold the Constitution and the law, yet they were doing the exact opposite.”
Gizmodo: Leaked Parler Data Points to Users at Police Stations, U.S. Military Bases.
Location data gleaned from thousands of videos posted on the social network Parler and extracted in the days before Amazon restricted access to app this week, reveal its users included police officers around the U.S. and service members stationed on bases at home and abroad.
The presence on Parler of active military and police raises concerns, experts said, about their potential exposure to far-right conspiracy theories and extremist ideologies enabled by the platform’s practically nonexistent moderation and its stated openness to hate speech. Military officials have long considered infiltration and recruitment by white supremacist groups a threat. Groups that endorsed a wide range of racist beliefs appear to have been operating openly on Parler, the experts said, with the de facto permission of its owners. The FBI has likewise raised concerns over law enforcement agents adopting radical views and being recruited—viewing their access to secured buildings, elected officials, and other VIPs as a singular threat.
Slate: Sheriffs Helped Lead This Insurrection.
On Jan. 6, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb made a promise. Delivering a speech in Phoenix during the ongoing mob attack on the nation’s Capitol, Lamb accused former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of unnamed crimes and repeated President Donald Trump’s false claims about election fraud. “Now I’m limited to what I can do as the sheriff, but if you live in Pinal County, I assure you I can fight for your freedom,” he said before exhorting his followers to “be vigilant” and to “fight for the Constitution, freedom, and the American way of life.” (The video has since been deleted from social media.)
In the past week, it’s become clear that many members of law enforcement from across the country participated in the siege on the Capitol. That includes former and current sheriffs and their deputies. Ex–Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway was at the Trump rally but says he didn’t march to the Capitol. He described the crowd as “a cross between tailgating at a football game and a NASCAR race—families, dogs, children. Everyone being nice. I mean, it was like a family reunion without some of the hatefulness you can find at family reunions. It was a very good crowd.”
At least one current sheriff admits he was at the riot: Sheriff Chris West of Canadian County, Oklahoma, says he marched toward the Capitol building but did not enter. But long before Jan. 6, sheriffs have been helping to lay the groundwork for violence by the far-right movement. As political leaders in their communities, they have been sowing dissent at home, encouraging their own armed militias to prepare themselves to take back the government just as Lamb suggested.
Ninety percent of American sheriffs are white men, and in recent years they’ve become strongly affiliated with white supremacist groups. Across the country, sheriffs have declared that they will not enforce laws they deem “unconstitutional,” like COVID-19 public health orders or gun laws limiting weapons possession and permits. Their influence has only grown since the pandemic began, as mask wearing became affiliated with progressive liberals and a bare face was a sign of Trump support.
A few more reads about the Capitol attack:
David Graham at The Atlantic: We’re Just Finding Out How Bad the Riot Really Was.
The New York Times: Capitol Attack Could Fuel Extremist Recruitment For Years, Experts Warn.
Politico: Top FEMA official attended Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’ rally.
NBC News: Online far-right movements fracture in wake of Capitol riot.
That’s all I have for you today. Have a nice long weekend, and please stop by and leave a comment if you have the time and inclination.
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