Category Archives: History and Politics

Truth and Reconciliation, GOP style

At last, two of the country’s top Republican leaders finally speak the plain truth, after four solid years of partisan lying, sharp practices and covering for each other’s hypocrisy — and shortly after a partisan acquittal, on a shaky technicality, in Trump’s record second impeachment (in little over a year). Sadly, truth does not seem to have resulted in reconciliation.

MITCH McCONNELL:

“January 6th was a disgrace.

“American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like.

“Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President.

“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.

“Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.

“The House accused the former President of, quote, ‘incitement.’ That is a specific term from the criminal law.

“Let me put that to the side for one moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago: There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.

“The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.

“And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.

“The issue is not only the President’s intemperate language on January 6th.

“It is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged ‘trial by combat.’

“It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe; the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now-President.

“I defended the President’s right to bring any complaints to our legal system. The legal system spoke. The Electoral College spoke. As I stood up and said clearly at the time, the election was settled.

“But that reality just opened a new chapter of even wilder and more unfounded claims.

“The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things. [1]

(Of course, the constitution requires, unfortunately, that such an elected official not be held responsible by the Senate, Mitch concludes.)

DONALD J. TRUMP:

“Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again,” Trump said in the statement. “He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country. Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful, and compassionate leadership.”

Then the CLINTON NEWS NETWORK continues:

Trump’s call for compassionate leadership came in a petty statement full of ad hominem attacks, including a jab at McConnell’s family, and after years of some of the most vitriolic political leadership in American history. Despite the potshot at McConnell’s family and the insulting characterization of his personality, Trump wanted to lob harsher personal attacks at McConnell, according to a source familiar with Trump’s desires. Trump adviser Jason Miller said an “earlier (version of the) statement was likely tougher. There was never a consideration to make a personal attack, though.” [2]

biased source

Which is why, of course, Mr. Trump refrained from making it a personal attack on another former close ally.

“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” — Voltaire

(quoted by Representative Jamie Raskin during the impeachment trial)

[1] Here’s the rest of the immoral, chinless fuck’s self-serving remarks:

“Sadly, many politicians sometimes make overheated comments or use metaphors that unhinged listeners might take literally.”This was different.”This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.”The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence began.”Whatever our ex-President claims he thought might happen that day… whatever reaction he says he meant to produce… by that afternoon, he was watching the same live television as the rest of the world.“A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.”It was obvious that only President Trump could end this.”Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the Administration.”But the President did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed, and order restored.”Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election!”Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in danger… even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters… the President sent a further tweet attacking his Vice President.“Predictably and foreseeably under the circumstances, members of the mob seemed to interpret this as further inspiration to lawlessness and violence.”Later, even when the President did halfheartedly begin calling for peace, he did not call right away for the riot to end. He did not tell the mob to depart until even later.”And even then, with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals.”In recent weeks, our ex-President’s associates have tried to use the 74 million Americans who voted to re-elect him as a kind of human shield against criticism.

“Anyone who decries his awful behavior is accused of insulting millions of voters.”That is an absurd deflection.”74 million Americans did not invade the Capitol. Several hundred rioters did.”And 74 million Americans did not engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked it.”One person did.”I have made my view of this episode very plain.”But our system of government gave the Senate a specific task. The Constitution gives us a particular role.“This body is not invited to act as the nation’s overarching moral tribunal.”We are not free to work backward from whether the accused party might personally deserve some kind of punishment.“Justice Joseph Story was our nation’s first great constitutional scholar. As he explained nearly 200 years ago, the process of impeachment and conviction is a narrow tool for a narrow purpose.”Story explained this limited tool exists to “secure the state against gross official misdemeanors.” That is, to protect the country from government officers.”If President Trump were still in office, I would have carefully considered whether the House managers proved their specific charge.”By the strict criminal standard, the President’s speech probably was not incitement.”However, in the context of impeachment, the Senate might have decided this was acceptable shorthand for the reckless actions that preceded the riot.”But in this case, that question is moot. Because former President Trump is constitutionally not eligible for conviction.”There is no doubt this is a very close question. Donald Trump was the President when the House voted, though not when the House chose to deliver the papers.”Brilliant scholars argue both sides of the jurisdictional question. The text is legitimately ambiguous. I respect my colleagues who have reached either conclusion.”But after intense reflection, I believe the best constitutional reading shows that Article II, Section 4 exhausts the set of persons who can legitimately be impeached, tried, or convicted. The President, Vice President, and civil officers.”We have no power to convict and disqualify a former officeholder who is now a private citizen.”Here is Article II, Section 4:”The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.””Now, everyone basically agrees that the second half of that sentence exhausts the legitimate grounds for conviction.”The debates around the Constitution’s framing make that clear. Congress cannot convict for reasons besides those.”It therefore follows that the list of persons in that same sentence is also exhaustive. There is no reason why one list would be exhaustive but the other would not.”Article II, Section 4 must limit both why impeachment and conviction can occur… and to whom.”If this provision does not limit the impeachment and conviction powers, then it has no limits at all.”The House’s ‘sole power of Impeachment’ and the Senate’s ‘sole Power to try all Impeachments’ would create an unlimited circular logic, empowering Congress to ban any private citizen from federal office.”This is an incredible claim. But it is the argument the House Managers seemed to make. One Manager said the House and Senate have ‘absolute, unqualified… jurisdictional power.'”That was very honest. Because there is no limiting principle in the constitutional text that would empower the Senate to convict former officers that would not also let them convict and disqualify any private citizen.”An absurd end result to which no one subscribes.”Article II, Section 4 must have force. It tells us the President, Vice President, and civil officers may be impeached and convicted. Donald Trump is no longer the president.”Likewise, the provision states that officers subject to impeachment and conviction ‘shall be removed from Office’ if convicted.”Shall.”As Justice Story explained, ‘the Senate, [upon] conviction, [is] bound, in all cases, to enter a judgment of removal from office.’ Removal is mandatory upon conviction.”Clearly, he explained, that mandatory sentence cannot be applied to somebody who has left office.”The entire process revolves around removal. If removal becomes impossible, conviction becomes insensible.”In one light, it certainly does seem counterintuitive that an officeholder can elude Senate conviction by resignation or expiration of term.”But this just underscores that impeachment was never meant to be the final forum for American justice.”Impeachment, conviction, and removal are a specific intra-governmental safety valve. It is not the criminal justice system, where individual accountability is the paramount goal.”Indeed, Justice Story specifically reminded that while former officials were not eligible for impeachment or conviction, they were “still liable to be tried and punished in the ordinary tribunals of justice.””We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”I believe the Senate was right not to grab power the Constitution does not give us.”And the Senate was right not to entertain some light-speed sham process to try to outrun the loss of jurisdiction.”It took both sides more than a week just to produce their pre-trial briefs. Speaker Pelosi’s own scheduling decisions conceded what President Biden publicly confirmed: A Senate verdict before Inauguration Day was never possible.”This has been a dispiriting time. But the Senate has done our duty. The framers’ firewall held up again.”On January 6th, we returned to our posts and certified the election, uncowed.”And since then, we resisted the clamor to defy our own constitutional guardrails in hot pursuit of a particular outcome.”We refused to continue a cycle of recklessness by straining our own constitutional boundaries in response.”The Senate’s decision does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day.

“It simply shows that Senators did what the former President failed to do: we put our constitutional duty first.”

[2]

Trump’s latest Stephen Miller-authored literary turd attacking McConnell and his wife and her family can be found in its noisome entirety here.

Third try at Eliot Widaen’s impeachment post-mortem

I wrote two long versions of this the last two days, assessing the painful one-sided travesty that resulted in a jury that included the 45th president’s co-conspirators (Hawley, Cruz, Graham, Lee, Tubaveale among the most vocal) voting, on a disputed, minority-embraced technicality, to acquit a president they helped to organize and incite an insurrection against the government.

Two things the angry pro-Trump mob chanted during the ransacking of the Capitol that I don’t necessarily disagree with — “Treason!” (yes, it was) and “Hang Mike Pence!” (I’m never in favor of political murder, but if some sacrificial lamb has to go, why not the already soul-dead religious bigot Mr. Pence?) [1].

I realize now, fittingly on Presidents’ Day, that it’s time to look forward, to always frame things in the positive, from our perspective, what we concerned citizens need to do to fix a broken democracy, not from the incendiary and intentionally crippling perspective of modern day Nazis. The immediate future includes criminal conspiracy prosecutions of violent criminals (and ethics investigations of those in Congress who continue — they persist, even now — to shill for the soundly disproven Big Lie about a “stolen” election Trump and his party unsuccessfully tried to rig) and changes to the law to allow actual fair trials in future impeachments and similar Congressional investigations.

First, a palette cleanser, from E. J. Dionne (in an op-ed in yesterday’s Bezos, er, Washington Post) for a bit of perspective:

Don’t waste time mourning the Senate’s failure to convict Donald Trump for crimes so dramatically and painstakingly proven by the House impeachment managers. The cowardice of the vast majority of Republican senators was both predicted and predictable.

Instead, ponder how to build on the genuine achievements.   Led with extraordinary grace by Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a diverse and able group of prosecutors laid out an indelible record not only of what happened on Jan. 6 and why, but also Trump’s irresponsibility throughout his term of office: his courting of the violent far right; his celebration of violence; his habit of privileging himself and his own interests over everything and everyone else, including his unrequitedly loyal vice president.

This record matters. We often like to pretend that we can move on and forget the past. But our judgments about the past inevitably shape our future. Every political era is, in part, a reaction to the failures — perceived and real — of the previous one. The Hoover-Coolidge Republicans loomed large for two generations of Democrats. Ronald Reagan built a thriving movement by calling out what he successfully cast as the sins of liberalism.

By tying themselves to Trump with their votes, most House and Senate Republicans made themselves complicit in his behavior. And Trump will prove to be even more of an albatross than Hoover, who, after all, had a moral core.

Given the chance to cast a vote making clear that what Trump did was reprehensible, only seven Republicans in the Senate and 10 in the House took the opportunity to do so.

You can tell how worried Republicans are that they are now the Trump Party by the contortions of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who aided Trump almost to the end. Rarely has a politician been more blatant in attempting the impossible feat of running with the foxes and hunting with the hounds.

Moments after voting to let Trump off — “on a technicality,” as Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas shrewdly observed about many GOP “not guilty” votes justified by anything and everything but the question of guilt itself — McConnell blistered the inciter in chief in a speech the impeachment managers could have written.

His words told the world who won the argument. They also underscored how wrenching it will be for Republican politicians to appease the GOP’s Trump-supporting majority while pretending to be another party altogether.

The fact that only seven Senate Republicans bolted should end the absurd talk that there is a burden on President Biden to achieve a bipartisan nirvana in Washington. If most Republicans can’t even admit that what Trump did is worthy of impeachment, how can anyone imagine that they would be willing and trustworthy governing partners?

The case for ending the filibuster is now overwhelming. There are not 10 Republican Senate votes to be had on anything that really matters.

source

Say it again, brother:

The case for ending the filibuster is now overwhelming. There are not 10 Republican Senate votes to be had on anything that really matters.

Free speech is our right as Americans, but, at this point, so is shutting off noise that makes free thought and informed debate impossible. We don’t need to endlessly give oxygen to demented theories endlessly repeated by our agitated mass media. No reason to waste energy further debunking the lies of a party that unites behind Big Lies that are shown to be false over and over and over and that have proven to lead to violence and mayhem. Nobody cares, those who drank Trump’s/GOP’s insane kool-aid have shown they will swallow anything. The Jews did it, fine, we did it, now let’s move forward.

If Democrats do the only sane and practical thing and end the filibuster, which has been used (since its creation by slavery advocate John C. Calhoun three decades before the Civil War) overwhelmingly to support slavery (fake, there was never slavery here! LIAR! Jew!) and racism (only Black people and radical Jews perpetuate that lie!!! Anti-lynching laws blocked by filibuster were attempts at COMMUNISM!!!) they can pass laws favored by the vast majority of Americans. Here’s a short list.

Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, making it easier for people to vote, as a right of citizenship, and much harder for Republican state apparatuses to continue violating the Voting Rights Act in the name of suppressing the majority vote, which they frame as a “privilege” only their side is fully entitled to.

Use actual scientific knowledge to fight the pandemic and give financial relief to millions of Americans who are in desperate situations.

Get busy doing everything possible to slow the hastening destruction of the earth.

Nominate five or more “moderate” Supreme Court justices and confirm them with as much bipartisan support as is available.

Stop aiding foreign despots in genocide (our billionaire Saudi “allies” are mass murdering Yemeni people in the poorest country in their region).

Restore faith in the rule of law by enforcing the law against powerful serial scofflaws like several criminal associates pardoned by our criminal former president (“Mr.” Trump must now be prosecuted for leading the well-financed “collusion” to overthrow an election) guys like Roger Stone and the always innocent Mike Flynn, who called for violence and actively participated in the planning and promotion of the riot and (in the case of self-proclaimed rat-fucker Stone) whose phalanx of Oath Keeper bodyguards all took part in breaking into the Capitol (as the NY Times documented yesterday).

Free OJ and exonerate him (sorry, couldn’t help myself… trying to be bipartisan. How did Trump miss this layup? Why is Bill Cosby still languishing in prison? Oh yeah, Trump is the least racist person in the world.)

and so forth.

And here’s an important concrete suggestion, from former federal prosecutor/justice activist Glenn Kirschner — create an Inter-branch Dispute Court [2]. Here is why this idea is a crucial step toward actual justice and enforcing a true democracy-protecting balance of powers, as intended by the sainted Framers. There was, sadly, a strong argument for the seeming resigned, weak-kneed capitulation of Democrats on the issue of calling fact witnesses to disprove transparent lies told by Trump’s defense team about crucial facts that established Trump’s guilt — the interminable delays caused by the slowness of adjudications by federal courts.

When Robert Mueller interviewed former White House Counsel (and weasel-dicked Conservative operative) Don McGahn, McGahn admitted, under penalty of perjury, that Trump asked him first to fire Mueller, and then, after he refused because it could be seen as part of an ongoing pattern of Trump’s obstruction of justice, to write a memorandum for the record falsely stating that Trump had never asked him to fire Mueller. Erring on the side of staying out of prison, McGahn left the White House (after successfully installing Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court) and returned to private practice.

McGahn was subpoenaed by the House to testify to this effect, on live TV, in connection to Trump’s first impeachment. Had McGahn (and others who swore to damning facts in Mueller’s Obstruction of Justice volume II) been allowed to testify, the House surely would have drafted an article for Obstruction of Justice, backed by the eye-witness testimony of those asked by Trump to “collude” in making the Mueller thing go away, as he had tried to make the Flynn/Russia thing go away by firing Comey. It would have been hard, with that sworn, live testimony, for even today’s GOP to unanimously (thanks, Mitt, I didn’t forget your historic guilty vote on one count) acquit their leader, even at the no witness, evidence-free first impeachment trial.

McGahn had the politically unpalatable (for him) option to appear before the Congressional committee, and likely the legal obligation to testify, but McGahn chose to fight the subpoena in court, one of several such decisions by prominent present and former Trump officials to defy/contest subpoenas during the Trump term. McGahn v. Congressional Cucktards was filed in federal court in 2019. The matter has still not been decided.

As angry as I was Saturday that Democrats didn’t pause the trial and get testimony from former Trump aides present with him during his absorption in the riot on live TV, testimony that would have made an airtight case that Trump didn’t care how many police officers and other people had to die when his Stop the Steal riot was going on, I grasp one aspect of their hesitation. While in office Trump ordered subordinates to defy 130 lawful subpoenas, under Barr’s inspired suggestion he assert a ridiculous pre-emptive blanket immunity against anything that could tend to incriminate or compromise the Unitary Executive. His remaining loyalists, like Kevin McCarthy, who had already said he would not testify voluntarily, would certainly fight a subpoena, as his team does now by reflex.

Trump was never held accountable for that open violation of the law under color of Barr’s absurd theory of absolute Executive branch authority. One reason the issue was never decided is is that federal courts are overwhelmed, even essential cases of great public consequence move lethargically. Another reason is that if you manage to run out the two year clock on a Congressional subpoena, as McGahn, John Bolton and other “patriots” did, the question of defying the subpoena expires too, when that Congress ends, the subpoena is no longer valid. The “case” becomes moot, as they say.

When there is a dispute between the Executive Branch, insisting on its Article II supremacy, and Congress, enforcing its legitimate Article I powers, that dispute must go to a court that can immediately rule on the question of vital national concern expeditiously. Glenn Kirschner outlines how this dedicated court would work:

McGahn refuses to testify, based on an asserted presidential privilege. McGahn sends the legal arguments for his refusal to obey a lawful Congressional subpoena to the IDC. The Court gives Congress 72 hours to respond, they file an answer. The court then has 72 hours to make a ruling. Instead of a two-year wait for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to appear as a hostile witness, admit that he had a shouting match with Trump during the riot and that Trump said at one point “Well, Kevin, obviously there are people a lot more upset about this stolen election than you are, bitch…” the wait is less than two weeks. Impeachment trial adjourned for the ruling of the IDC and the inevitable Supreme Court challenge (which would be fast tracked, as in the instant overnight vacating of stays that sought to prevent the execution of federal death row inmates Trump was intent on killing). McCarthy then testifies, under penalty of perjury, and we learn the truth about a matter crucial to all of us, as the rule of law should have it.

Instead, because of the practical impossibility of enforcing Congressional subpoena power, impartial jurors Graham, Cruz and Lee are free to openly strategize with Trump’s defense team on the eve of their (angry, incoherent, false) closing arguments and Lyin’ Ted is free to visit Trump’s legal team during breaks in the trial itself, right up to the acquittal.

There are ways for people of good will to fix some of the fatal weaknesses Trump’s lawless reign exposed. Now we have to get busy doing it. La lucha continua! Let’s get busy, and be of good cheer!

[1]

And, talk about unfailing, obsequious loyalty, nobody, NOBODY, showed this more than Mike “I’m NOT a Fag!!!” Pence. You can see him standing behind the president every time Trump made an outrageous claim, his face a solemn mask of moral neutrality, conveying a certain zombie-like fealty to his master at the same time. Pence passionately defended his insane boss at every turn. When others quit, went to the media with accounts of Trump’s insanity, Pence made speeches praising Trump. He defended indefensible statements and actions, over and over, proudly. His reward for this doglike fidelity?

An angry crowd, dispatched by Trump, calling to hang him for betraying them by not breaking the law. Learning how Trump actually felt about him and Karen. When Trump learned they hadn’t yet strung up the traitor Pence, he sent another rage tweet (ten minutes later) that was immediately read aloud through a bullhorn, repeating Trump’s opinion that Mike Pence lacked courage, had not stopped the steal and, arguably, deserved whatever happened to the weak fuck.

Trump made it clear to coach/senator Tommy Fucking Tuberville, in their phone call that ended after Pence was hustled out of the Senate, that Pence’s life meant nothing to him. He also told House Minority Leader and expert bootlicker Kevin McCarthy that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the riot, or dead and wounded cops, that Pence was as dead to him as Sessions, Barr, Bolton, Bannon, McMaster, Tillerson, Mulvaney, Liz and Dick Cheney, that the important thing was to continue to Stop the Steal.    Poor Mike Pence!

[2]

[00:59:17]
To deal with, for example, interbranch disputes between Congress and the executive branch, so Congress issues a subpoena for testimony in an impeachment hearing, the executive branch says, nope, you can’t have that witness. Well, you know what you do? You go to the interbranch dispute, caught the eye, BDC and you get 72 hours to file your brief. You get another 72 hours to prepare and conduct your oral argument, and then you’re going to have a court opinion in another 72 hours.

[00:59:52]
Was that nine days? If I can count, I don’t have my calculator. You want to appeal that decision? 72, 72, 72. Now, in less than a month, you’ve got an appellate court opinion and it’s been all but definitively resolved because you could still go to the Supreme Court. But what you have done is you’ve taken out the endless Don Meghann year and a half delay to run out the clock. The interbranch dispute caught folks it’s imminently doable.

[01:00:19]
Donald Trump has opened our eyes to all of the problems, all of the deficiencies, all of the areas for abuse, right where they’ve wiggled into the cracks in our system and they’ve engaged in their abuse in those cracks and they’ve just blown them out into chasms, chasms of abuse and corruption and crime. By Donald Trump and his cabinet members and his family, and they’ve exposed they’ve exposed the weaknesses in our government, in our republic, in our democracy and our institutions.

source

Belief Trumps “facts”

From my father’s “jokes that killed vaudeville” collection — husband of wife who catches him busy in bed with a prostitute — “who are you going to believe, darling, me or your lying eyes?” Our most recent former president mirthlessly cracked the same “joke” when he told his followers: “don’t believe what you see and hear. Believe me, (for I cannot tell a lie.)”

Actually, it was more explicit than that. Trump’s lies were the entire point of the exercise. If you lie enough, consistently, brazenly, steadily, no matter how many times you are caught– well, then you WIN. Lying is not a crime unless you’re stupid enough to take an oath not to commit perjury. The so-called truth is nothing but a thing that weak, stupid losers cling to because they suck!

As every pious Christian knows, if you believe, you go to heaven. If you refuse to believe, it’s hellfire for eternity, sinner.

The most dangerous legacy of Tump is the now common and mainstream elevation of irrational beliefs to irrefutable debate points superior to demonstrable facts. The patriots who spontaneously stormed the Capitol a month ago honestly believed a powerful cabal of corrupt Jews, Blacks, Muslims, Mexican rapists, predatory transsexuals, child molesters, Satanic child cannibals and others had stolen the election to illegally take over the government.

Trump didn’t invent the Big Lie, of course, the Nazis did, and demonstrated its dependable value to politicians willing to use it. We’ve had our American version of it here for decades. In televised debates we had decades of a scientist, representing the overwhelming consensus of virtually every climate scientist vs. a paid public relations spokesperson working for the oil company who did the original research on global warming, promoting “climate skepticism” and so on. Who did better, the pencil necked egghead with his “facts” or the impeccably prepared paid spokesman with his even more compelling focus-group tested “beliefs”? We report, you decide.

Trump didn’t invent the maddening “I know you are but what am I?” technique, but he turned it from n-word laced bar room muttering (and these boys don’t mince that “n-word”, son) into a mainstream springboard for actionable reality. Looking back, the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 was a death knell to fact-based reality — broadcasters no longer need to give equal (or any) time for someone to refute even the most radically insane, inflammatory, lying position expressed at length on commercial media.

Which brings us to Mitch McConnell’s “loony” Republican It-Girl Marjorie Taylor Greene [1], who got a standing ovation from 199 of her fellow-traveler colleagues in the House after she courageously admitted, during a Republicans-only session, that there had been a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 after all and that the dead children at two of our most infamous recent school massacres were not paid crisis actors. The same day she tweeted that she will never back down and claimed to her GOP colleagues she is being “crucified” (like our Lord Himself) for things she may have said or written long ago, things she — well, in her beautiful phrase:

The seamless incoherence of these new American folk heroes is what I love, if I may ironically use that overused l-word. Greene regrets that she was allowed to believe things that weren’t true? Already we have a menacing scapegoat waiting in the wings– WHO allowed her to believe these regrettable things (probably powerful fucking Jews, no?)?

Or did she regret that she “would ask questions about them and talk about them?” Better, after all, to keep a secret conspiracy theory secret until the perpetrators of the vast Satanic child sex cabal are all caught and publicly executed…

She added, to be fair and balanced while expressing her regrets, that the media is just as guilty as Q-Anon of spreading “truth and lies to divide us.”

Of course, it’s possible that the self-proclaimed “worst nightmare” for the unAmerican Democrat [sic] child blood-drinkers is simply lying about her “regrets”. She repeated incendiary lies throughout her campaign, has repeated them since becoming a member of Congress. She expressed “regret” to a standing ovation of a Congressional cohort that insisted in a huge majority (and these players never recant), that Trump had every right to break over two hundred years of precedent to refuse the peaceful transition of power by hotly contesting the certification of a stolen election he had actually won in a landslide.

Her party (with only 11 dissenters) defended her from this attempted crucifixion, after her expression of, eh, regret (not a bone of regret thrown to the fucking Jews who operate that giant, deadly space laser that started the deadly fire in California. Personally, I’m not satisfied with her “explanation” but we rarely are, people like me…).

Meanwhile, Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) who unforgivably stated what is obvious to most Americans:

“On January 6, 2021 a violent mob attacked the United States Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop the counting of presidential electoral votes. This insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most sacred space in our Republic.

“Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.

“I will vote to impeach the President.”

escaped censure, and being stripped of her position in the House, by her party in a secret vote.

Here are a few of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 199 defenders in the House defending the rising Republican star:

…On Thursday, House Republicans rushed to her defense. “We’ve all said things we regret,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) protested the proceedings by forcing a vote to adjourn. “We shouldn’t be wasting the time of this body attacking a member of this body,” he said.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) disowned Greene’s rhetoric, but what he really found “sad” and “unprecedented” was that Democrats weren’t giving her “due process.”

Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) informed Democrats that “today is really about one party single-handedly canceling a member of the other party because of something said before that member was even elected.”

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The beauty of any intractable asshole is their total refusal to ever admit they did anything to make amends about. Greene got into office, and achieved superstar fame, by spouting hate and unapologetically appealing to violent anger. She is currently the Republican party’s victim-in-chief, carrying the heavy cross of her idol, persecuted martyr Donald J. Trump. How did she do at the news conference afterwards?

Republicans defended Greene with absurd parallels. They attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for past anti-Semitic statements — omitting the crucial distinction that Omar, after Democrats roundly condemned her words, said, “Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes. … I unequivocally apologize.”

Greene, by contrast, remained unrepentant. On Friday, she held a celebratory news conference, again refusing to recant, or apologize for, her violent and anti-Jewish words and gestures.

Would she apologize for advocating the execution of Pelosi?

“I don’t have to,” she said, calling for the journalist to apologize instead.

Would she disavow her endorsement of putting “a bullet to the head” of Pelosi?

Accusing the questioner of lying, she replied: “That’s your problem and that’s how we end news conferences.” She walked away.

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Jesus Christ, we Jews and Italians are so fucking unforgiving! Every threatener of gun violence to defend liberty would do the same if she was confronted by a lying journalist. Who among us has not wanted to shoot a nosy enemy reporter in the fucking face? I mean, let he who is without sin fire the first AK-47 burst into a crowd of paid crisis actor kindergarten kids. As for repudiating even our ugliest statements? Not my problem. After all, “we’ve all said things we regret.” Take a cue from Jesus, fuckers.

Here is a fun, fact-filled account (by Crooked Media) of the near unanimous Republican defense of their It-Girl, popular intractable hate-monger Marjorie Taylor Greene.

[1]

Greene has endorsed the killing of numerous high-profile Democrats. She helped moderate a Facebook page featuring death threats against them. Just before the election, she declared that if Democrats won, it would destroy “freedom,” which can only be won back “with the price of blood.” Greene also helped instigate the insurrection, heralding the event as the GOP’s “1776 moment.”

…Greene did condemn the assault after it happened. But, importantly, she has since kept on feeding the ideology that inspired it.

In an extraordinarily deranged Twitter thread, Greene said that the Democratic caucus is “filled with” lawmakers who “cheered on” the destruction of cities, sleep with “our greatest enemy” and are out to “destroy Republicans, your jobs, our economy, your children’s education and lives, steal our freedoms, and erase God’s creation.”

Let’s not mince words: This is a veiled exhortation to supporters to keep up the violent warfare against Democrats. If the threat Democrats represent is as she depicted it, what else could possibly constitute an adequate response?

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Marjorie Taylor Greene’s impressive Gerrymandered victory in November 2020

My first question is, obviously, how the hell did she know about our deadly space laser? Is nothing sacred?

I was curious to find out more about the wide margin of victory Trump’s “future Republican star” enjoyed in becoming a Representative from Georgia’s deep red, eight year-old 14th District. She won in a landslide, it turns out, crushing her opponent by 50 points.

I read a long, sad piece about her idealistic Democratic opponent, 35 year-old political novice Kevin Van Ausdal, which describes how he was literally broken by the onslaught from the fierce Taylor Greene and her militant, threatening supporters [1]. It made me curious about who she wound up running against in November 2020. Wikipedia fills in the details:

Greene finished in first place in the primary election and faced John Cowan in the runoff election.[21] Greene defeated Cowan to win the nomination on August 11. Greene was considered an overwhelming favorite to win the seat in the general election, as the 14th typically votes heavily Republican.[22] The 14th has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+27, making it the 10th most Republican district in the nation and the third most Republican district in the Eastern Time Zone. Among Georgia’s congressional districts, only the neighboring 9th district is more Republican. Since the 14th’s creation in 2012, no Democrat has won more than 30 percent of the vote.[23] Trump carried the 14th with 75 percent of the vote in 2016, his eighth-best performance in the nation.[24] On the day after Greene’s runoff victory, Trump tweeted his support for her, describing Greene as a “future Republican Star” who “is strong on everything and never gives up – a real WINNER!”[25]

Greene was expected to face Democratic IT specialist Kevin Van Ausdal, but he withdrew from the race on September 11, 2020. This left Greene unopposed for the general election, though the district is so heavily Republican that any Democratic challenger would have faced very long odds.[26][27][28]

On September 3, 2020, Greene shared a meme to her Facebook page depicting herself holding an AR-15 style rifle next to a collage of pictures of Democratic representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Greene claimed that it was time for “strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart”. The caption underneath the images read “Squad‘s worst nightmare.”[29] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the meme as a “dangerous threat of violence,” and Omar demanded that the meme be deleted after claiming it had already triggered death threats.[30] In response to questions from Forbes about whether the meme was a threat, a spokesperson for the Greene campaign called the suggestion “paranoid and ridiculous” and a “conspiracy theory”.[31] Facebook deleted the meme the following day for violating its policies on inciting violence, prompting Greene to claim that Democrats were “trying to cancel me out before I’ve even taken the oath of office”.[32]

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Kevin Van Ausdal, who withdrew as a candidate on September 11th (out of fear of violent extremists and horror at how ugly the campaign had become), got 25% of the vote two months later, from Georgians who simply wanted to vote against Taylor Greene.

So the future Republican star won by a whopping majority, about as large as Trump’s landslide margin in Georgia’s 14th District back in 2016.

On the other hand, she ran unopposed in a beautifully gerrymandered district that had always voted at least 70% Republican since its creation in 2012. America the beautiful, y’all.

[1]

My apologies for this link, which will probably lead to a paywall at uber-capitalist Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post. It was a fine article, but Jeff, who made $70,000,000,000 so far during the pandemic, does not leave a penny on the table, as he proved again by taking the tips of gig workers (“independent subcontractors”) hired to make deliveries for Amazon in their own vehicles, and using the confiscated tips to pay their “salaries”. Cost him $61,000,000 to settle that case, about a dime to Jeff — (plus, not to worry, not a penny came out of his pocket). Leave me a comment if you’re interested and I’ll send you a copy of the article, cut and pasted, subject to not getting a restraining order from the world’s greediest genius/predator...

Here’s a taste, from the link above:

But they all agreed that ignoring Greene was not an option, so they began drafting the statement and emailing versions to Kevin, who kept suggesting revisions that made it softer, thinking he had made it harsher.

“He needs to be ready,” Vinny told Ruth on one of their daily video calls.

“I don’t know what it’s going to take to get him to use the kind of language we need him to use,” Ruth told Vinny. “It’s a very big shift for him.”

“How’s it going?” she said to Kevin on Day 21 of the campaign, trying to sound upbeat as they began to rehearse the draft statement.

Kevin said he had been trying to stay relaxed. He had a cold.

“Okay, I know you’re not feeling well, but the good news is, sometimes when you need to push through a barrier, the best time to do that is when you’re sick, because your defenses are down,” Ruth said. “We’re not going to take you anywhere horrible.”

“We’re good,” Kevin said.

“Okay, I want you to breathe deeply,” Ruth began. “A lot of your tonality will have to go down. There will be times when you’re speaking about what Marjorie has done and you’ll be angry. You’ll need to be angry.”

More often in his life, Kevin could not afford to be angry. His voice tended to swing up, a tone he found helpful in defusing conflicts in his job at a financial services company, which had enabled his first real stability as an adult. He’d only recently bought the tan split-level where he lived with his wife and 1-year-old daughter. Now it had a “Save the American Dream” sign in the flower bed by the mailbox, one of the stories of his rise into the middle class he’d imagined telling voters about when he first started running.

Letting Go of the Past

The idea that it’s necessary to let go of the painful past is very big in the self-help world. “It is never too late to have a happy childhood,” we are told, among other encouragements to let go of the bad things in the past and gratefully embrace the many beautiful things about our present lives. As a general principle, letting go, not constantly reliving the hurts we’ve experienced is healthy, essential to living our best lives and to protecting our loved ones. The devil, as always, is in the details of how we actually do this.

Letting go of hurts of the past is a theme I chew on frequently, having a decent amount in the past to let go of. I feel my daily connection to history, for better or worse, and my personal stories, funny and terrible, which support my view of the world. Seeing the value of these memories, I am reluctant to simply let the past go. I feel like there are lessons in these stories, endlessly repeated; learning we need to extract and digest to move forward. It’s important to view the past in its complexity, considering the terrible things beside the inspiring ones. My once-large family was massacred back in 1943, during dark times in Ukraine and Belarus; pruned down to a very small family that lives and prospers today in the USA and in Israel. Both things are equally true.

I think of this theme of letting the past go in personal terms every time I encounter how hard it has always been for me to accept the the loss of a longtime friend. I understand that certain estrangements are inevitable, and we can see them coming most of the time, but also, a world of associations and shared memories are irretrievably lost each time. Each loss of a longtime friend is a little rehearsal for death.

Although I know the reasons for it, it bothers me each time that I could not find a way to reconcile with a couple of old friends and fond acquaintances in recent years. You could say that our lives are the stories we have lived, have told ourselves are true. People come to different conclusions about what is most important in life. Sadly, sharp differences of opinion (accompanied by drifting apart, taking friendship for granted and fading empathy) can prove insurmountable obstacles to a mutually beneficial relationship.

This leads me to once again consider how personal the political actually is, (political views are based entirely on our personal feelings about the world around us), and how political the personal can be, for the same reason. I hope to work through this “letting go” idea concisely today.

There are at least two ways of letting go of things that hurt us, as true in personal life as in political life. We can forgive and forget, using love to move forward without the need to rehash everything that hurt us in detail. This is a kind of Christian forgiveness, turning the other cheek when we are struck, as Jesus, The Prince of Peace, advised his followers to do [1]. Another way to let things go is to separate ourselves from people who hurt us repeatedly. This second way involves making hard decisions about who is accountable for what and what, realistically, is likely to happen going forward if we simply forgive and forget. Once we have done this, it is easier to let go of that troubled part of the past, though, of course, it is not as simple as that.

The difficulty of letting go of strong feelings is most easily seen in the context of physical violence against us, which is often a criminal matter best dealt with by a court of law. If someone beats us to a pulp and then asks us to please let go of our anger against them for their mistake, are we required by any moral power in the universe to agree to this? In the case of violent physical assault, there is an understandable emotional limit to a human ability to “let go of the past,” no matter how compelling a general case there is to be made for the idea.

The advice to let go of the pain and forgive can preempt the idea that you have a right not to be violently assaulted by someone who then tells you to get over it. There is a process you have to go through, once you are victimized, to first live with your rightful feelings and then separate yourself from that feeling of helplessness in the face of torment.

When a MAGA mob ransacked the Capitol recently chanting “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!!!” elected officials went into hiding from rioters calling for the execution of one of Trump’s most loyal sidekicks for the crime of not overturning an election he was powerless to overturn. There were also calls to shoot Nancy Pelosi in the head. During the several hours of rioting (as federal troops were told to “stand down and stand by” as Mr. Trump watched it unfold on TV) NY Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez wound up taking shelter in Katie Porter’s office where they barricaded furniture in front of the door to keep the lynch mob out. Ocasio-Cortez recently revealed that she had been a victim of sexual assault in the past. Imagine how extra “triggering” a shouting mob kicking at your door might be if you had been violently assaulted in the past.

As a general principle we might all agree that nobody should ever be placed in the situation of having to barricade themselves into a room to try to protect themselves from a violent lynch mob. We might all agree to that, I think (when I say “we”, obviously I’m not talking about members of the lynch mob and those very fine people who support the mob’s right to violent anger.)

Here is a seemingly subtle thing that seems irrefutable to me now, coming back to the personal. If someone in your life is unsympathetic to your situation once in a while you can (and should) indeed let it go, overlook it, be generous, write it off to their being preoccupied with their own problems. We can’t all be empathetic all the time. It is different, and a sign of trouble, if the person is repeatedly unsympathetic and also quickly turns to blaming you for any challenging situation you find yourself in. If this happens with any regularity you will find yourself in a destructive cul du sac of contentiously conflicting perspectives. In my experience this self-perpetuating conflict can often be irreconcilable, since each party is certain that they are being mistreated by the other. If you can make no progress toward getting the other person to see the harmfulness of their stance, it is time to hop out of that deadly dead end.

It matters little what the other person’s argument is against your feelings, particularly if the argument is aggressive, angry and unyielding. Once you see that the other person will never yield, won’t concede anything to your expressed feelings … it’s time to go. Someone who is capable of empathy, and self-reflection, and who really cares about you, will find a way around their need to be right, in the interest of making a lasting peace and ensuring a mutual future. Again, true friends are very rare, especially when times are toughest. You should try not to fight about things, most things are not worth it. Once the fight takes on an abusive feeling — time to go.

As in personal life, so it is in politics. We are being told that Trump’s refusal to accept the will of the voters, his insistence that, in spite of bipartisan agreement about the fair election, and all of his lost voter-suppression and voter-fraud lawsuits, he won in a “landslide”, his raging lies about a “stolen election” that led to a rampage that could have resulted in the deaths of dozens (“only five” died directly, two Capitol Police officers took their own lives shortly after– three more dead than BENGHAZI… hmm…) including the executions of Pence, Pelosi and others, is something to “get over”. In the name of unity and healing, you understand.

As in politics, so it is in personal life. If someone beats you up, then asks forgiveness, then beats you up again, then asks forgiveness — what is the proper response? An understandably human response is to mercilessly kick the shit out of him next time he raises his hand to you, if you have the power to do so. Another, much more practical, response is walking away from the person, not letting them within punching and kicking distance. In either scenario, you accept the hard truth that this person who claims to love you is a violently angry person who can’t help taking it out on you when he feels up against it all. In no case is it a healthy response to simply get over it, until it happens next time.

Countless spouses and mates stay in these kinds of abusive relationships, being profusely apologized to by someone who will, in time, beat the shit out of them again. People stay in these kind of abusive relationships for many reasons, mostly related to fear and a feeling of not really deserving any better from their mate. Every person who stays convinces themselves of the same thing: my mate loves me, it’s just understandable human weakness that leads to the abuse. “I would be a monster not to forgive, look at those tears… ”

We can, and should, healthily let go of many things from the past that trouble us. Awareness of abuse isn’t one of them. The only thing to learn to do about abuse is to recognize it when it arises (it is not always as obvious as a fist to the face) and take steps to get far away from the perpetrator when it persists. Being out of harm’s way is the first necessary step to letting it go. The rest, friends, is much trickier, but we will never get to it while still in the cycle of endlessly replenished anger.

[1]

How often this Christian turning of the other cheek is done in reality, and how effective it may be if one manages to do it, are separate questions. For one thing, responding to mistreatment with love presumes the presence of the Divine in the person who struck your cheek.

The case against letting Trump off on a technicality in the upcoming impeachment trial

Hardliners like Lindsey Graham have already threatened to drag the upcoming impeachment out into an endless circus if Trump’s critics are too mean to Lindsey’s guy. He threatened to end all other legislative business while extending the unfair trial by unscrupulous means. A real credit to his race, Lindsey.

Rand Paul, who complained (without basis in fact) that all of Trump’s lawsuits (hundreds, literally) related to alleged massive election fraud were thrown out for procedural reasons, like “lack of standing” and that, therefore the merits of the election fraud cases were never reached. Of course, a few were dismissed for procedural reasons, but the bulk of the hundreds of Trump’s election-related lawsuits were dismissed based on their lack of merit as lawsuits. I loved this Trump appointee’s detailed dissection of one federal case brought by Trump’s army of lawyers. [1]

Now Paul, the well-spoken American Republican/Libertarian/Extremist, is standing by his claim that Trump’s impeachment is barred by a procedural hurdle– his colleague Mitch McConnell did not call the Senate back from its break in time after the House impeached Trump. Therefore, says Paul, the impeachment is unconstitutional. End of story, we don’t reach the merits of what Mr. Trump may or may not have done that might disqualify him from ever again abusing the power of his office to foment an anti-democratic riot, because the constitution forbids it. As James Madison and the other Framers surely intended, if you follow the reasoning, political calculation, whatever you want to call Rand Paul’s legalistic canard.

Former White House Counsel Bob Bauer wrote an excellent op-ed, The Republican Argument Against Impeaching Trump Is Dangerous, that lays out the thinness of this absurd “constitutional” argument against impeachment. Impeachment, Bauer informs us, was first and always concerned with disqualifying corrupt officeholders who perversely abused their power from ever holding power again. At one time impeachment did not include removal from office at all, it was generally used after a malefactor’s term was over to prevent them from attaining elected office again. Beyond the weak “constitutional” claim, signed on to by 45 of 50 GOP senators, signaling their readiness to let Trump slither through this high-sounding run-out-the-clock procedural loophole, Bauer underscores the danger of letting an unprincipled demagogue provoke insurrection during his last days in power and then finding that his being out of office is punishment enough.

Though this may all seem self-evident, Bauer does an excellent job illuminating the matter, and what’s at stake for our experiment in democracy.

[1] From that decision:

(After analyzing standing, which is based, in part, on having suffered, or being about to suffer, a concrete, cognizable legal injury the court has jurisdiction to address)

Second, even if Plaintiffs had standing, their claims fail on the merits.

Plaintiffs essentially ask this Court to second-guess the judgment of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and election officials, who are experts in creating and implementing an election plan. Perhaps Plaintiffs are right that guards should be placed near drop boxes, signature-analysis experts should examine every mail-in ballot, poll watchers should be able to man any poll regardless of location, and other security improvements should be made.

But the job of an unelected federal judge isn’t to suggest election improvements, especially when those improvements contradict the reasoned judgment of democratically elected officials. See Andino v. Middleton,— S. Ct. —, 2020 WL 5887393, at *1 (Oct. 5, 2020) Case 2:20-cv-00966-NR Document 574 Filed 10/10/20 =- (Kavanaugh, J. concurring) (state legislatures should not be subject to “second-guessing by an unelected federal judiciary,” which is “not accountable to the people”) (cleaned up).

Put differently, “[f]ederal judges can have a lot of power—especially when issuing injunctions. And sometimes we may even have a good idea or two. But the Constitution sets out our sphere of decision-making, and that sphere does not extend to second-guessing and interfering with a State’s reasonable, nondiscriminatory election rules.” New Georgia Project v. Raffensperger, — F.3d —, 2020 WL 5877588, at *4 (11th Cir. Oct. 2, 2020).

Letter from an American antifascist

Knut Wilson was a volunteer in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, part of the international force (speaking 54 languages) that went to Spain to fight the rise of fascism. Wilson, an American Black who would have been eligible to serve in the segregated US army that later fought the racist Hitler regime, was the head mechanic for the international garage that maintained all of the brigade’s fighting vehicles.

Back in 1938 people who fought fascism were seen by many as heroes. A little fact important to remember when our most recent ex-president has tried, in literally every way possible, to be a fascist leader. He endlessly vilified and condemned anti-fascist groups in the US, while supporting violent white supremacist paramilitary groups, hmmmm… To paraphrase a powerful moron, I prefer presidents who condemn fascism.

This section of Knut Wilson’s letter home was read by Robert Evans, one of the best reporters out there, giving some historical perspective on fascist insurrections in a series called Behind the Insurrection. You can hear the most recent segment of it here, the section this quote is taken from begins at 1:05:37. This quote above begins at 1:09:23.

American Blacks and Jews (10% of the Lincoln Brigade were American Jews) intimately understood the relation between fascism and murderous racism. As I keep trying to point out, violent racism IS THE SAME THING EVERYWHERE, throughout history. A tool of the unscrupulous slave-holder types who require masses of people to take their anger, frustration and hatred out on somebody besides them. If the oppressed ever united and got real political power, the slave-holder types would be toast. Fortunately for them, few things stir the blood more than a good appeal to hatred and fear and a wild racial massacre.

Great ending by Heather Cox Richardson

Historian Heather Cox Richardson has been writing a daily newsletter called Letter from an American, since around the time Trump’s perfect call to get dirt on Biden’s son from Ukrainian president Zelensky became public. I highly recommend you subscribe to her free newsletter (there is a tab at the top of this link). It is a well-curated selection of news developments, snappily well-written and placing ongoing events in historical perspective. It comes into your email inbox, virtually every day, at some point during the wee hours of the early morning and is always worth reading.

Last night’s ended with this great analysis, and killer clinching thought, which follows a description of some of the planning that went into the insurrection at the Capitol, including the meeting, the day before the Capitol Riot, at the Trump hotel in D.C., attended by newly-elected Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville (who, with Trump’s help, defeated disgraced traitor Jeff Sessions in the primary), Michael Flynn, Corey Lewandowski, members of the Trump family and so on [1]:


Former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center Robert Grenier noted yesterday in the New York Times that the United States is facing a violent insurgency and should apply the lessons we have learned about counterinsurgency to head off political violence. Grenier notes that the nation must insist on criminal justice, tracking and trying those responsible for crimes. We must also return the nation to a fact-based debate about issues.

Crucially, Grenier noted that it is a national security imperative to convict the former president and bar him from future elective office. “I watched as enraged crowds in the streets of Algiers, as in most Arab capitals, melted away when Saddam Hussein was ignominiously defeated in the Persian Gulf war,” Grenier wrote. “Mass demonstrations in Pakistan in support of Osama bin Laden fell into dull quiescence when he was driven into hiding after Sept. 11. To blunt the extremists, Mr. Trump’s veneer of invincibility must similarly be crushed.”

In all my years of studying U.S. politics, seamy side and all, I never expected to see the name of an American president in the New York Times in a list comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But then, I never expected to see an American president urge a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol to overturn an election, either.

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[1]

News broke yesterday that extremists began planning for an attack on the Capitol in November. The Alabama Political Reporter broke the story on Tuesday that new Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) met on January 5 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., with the then-director of the Republican Attorneys General Association, an organization that backed the January 6 rally, and with members of the Trump family and the family’s advisors, including Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. One of the attendees wrote on Facebook 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.”

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