Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

The world's most dangerous malignant narcissist needs his adoration fix after getting kicked off social media Friday night, and confident that both Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell will prevent any plan to remove him from office and that the GOP will still do whatever he commands, the plan appears to be taking a victory lap on the media interview circuit and daring Republicans to try to run from the last four years.

According to two sources with knowledge of the matter, the president and several close advisers are now discussing the possibility of Trump sitting for multiple media interviews in the coming days, in an attempt to boast about his time in office, including with one potential interview they're hoping will focus on the Middle East deals he and his son-in-law, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, helped to strike.

However, various current and former Trump officials who don’t think he should resign immediately feel that he should just get out of the picture now before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Asked if the president should resign, Barry Bennett, who served as a senior Trump adviser during the 2016 campaign, said on Saturday, “No. But go to Florida and stay. This is not a time to escalate the boiling anger across the country. Smart leaders will understand that anger on both sides is the real threat to our country. Not Trump. Escalation is not unlike what he did. We can’t afford to go any further down this road…If it’s not too late.”

Apparently this is going to start at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas on Tuesday to brag about his wall, but I honestly hope this is all he does in the next ten days. Feeding his ego so that he doesn't lash out and incite another white supremacist insurrection is probably the best we can hope for since enough of Trump's enablers will remain in power to block any attempts to get rid of him, but at the most this will only occupy him for a day or two. If he mopes around Camp David or Mar-a-Lago for the rest of his term and just golfs and yells at the staff, we'll be lucky to escape with just the colossal damage to the Republic that we've already sustained.

Given the events of the last several days however, anyone who tells you they know for sure what's going to happen is lying to your face. His cultists aren't going away and regardless of what Trump says or does, his enablers in Congress, the hundreds of federal judges and thousands of executive agency loyalists that he's planted like landmines, the 6-3 Supreme Court, and his tens of millions of fanatical followers can still cause massive chaos and misery well into the Biden presidency, and even if we make it through the next ten days we still have a national pandemic that's killing 4,000 people a day and infecting 300,000 to deal with.

We could drag the country across the finish line on January 20th only to get run over by an oncoming truck, for sure. But my real fear is that we get hit by the truck before that date, and it's loaded with nitroglycerine, thermite, and napalm, and when the smoke clears there's not much of a republic left to try to piece together.

Just a blast crater from sea to shining sea.

Going Back To Move Forward

Democrats, to their credit, have now given up on the whole Obama-era "looking forward" plan and the proposed Biden "unity" plan and are finally facing the ugly reality that Trumpists will do whatever it takes to hold power, and that accountability and justice need to happen or that next time the coup will succeed.

 

Whether or not the House pursues impeachment charges against Mr. Trump for his role in inciting his supporters to storm the Capitol on Wednesday, many Democrats say that impeachment is not enough.

Once President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes office on Jan. 20, wide segments of his party are eager to see investigations and prosecutions of an array of Trump aides and allies — an effort, they say, that would bolster the rule of law after a presidency that weakened it and serve as a warning to future presidents that there will be consequences for illegal actions taken while in office.

The rioting at the Capitol has only intensified that desire. More than a dozen Democrats interviewed in recent days said the president’s role in inspiring the mob violence had prompted them to change their positions: They now want the Biden Justice Department to investigate the president and his aides.

“I was not on the investigate-and-prosecute train before yesterday,” Kathleen Sullivan, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said on Thursday. “However, undermining the very foundations of democracy and the Constitution is a crime that can’t be ignored.”

So far, Mr. Biden has not taken a position on impeachment, let alone the broader agenda of launching criminal investigations. He has said he would leave any decisions about it to his Justice Department, which he has promised will return to the pre-Trump norm of maintaining independence from the White House. His choice of Merrick B. Garland, a centrist judge, as his nominee for Attorney General is another indication of his more measured approach to pursuing investigations and indictments.

His stance reflects not only his politics but a natural inclination not to settle scores — much like Mr. Obama, whom Mr. Biden served for eight years as vice-president. Mr. Obama said shortly before his own inauguration that he believed the nation needed “to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

But interviews with more than 50 current and former Democratic elected officials, Democratic National Committee members and party activists found an overwhelming consensus across the party’s ideological spectrum toward holding Mr. Trump personally accountable and launching congressional and Justice Department investigations into him, his family and his top aides — not only for inciting last week’s violent mob at the Capitol but for a host of other actions during his presidency.

The transgressions they cite include collusion with Russia, tax fraud, illegal pressure on state elections officials, using federal offices for political activity and violation of the constitutional provision that prohibits a president from profiting from foreign governments.

A Georgia elections official on Saturday confirmed a third call Mr. Trump made to officials in the state trying to reverse Mr. Biden’s victory. The calls began with one to Gov. Brian Kemp in early December to berate him for certifying the state’s election results. The efforts to change election results could be construed as illegal attempts at election interference or other criminal violations, but legal experts said proving a case could be difficult.

Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader, said Mr. Trump, former Attorney General Bill Barr and others need to be investigated by Mr. Biden’s Justice Department, though he warned that Mr. Biden himself should keep his distance from any prosecutions to avoid the appearance of politicizing them.

“There’s a desire from me to never hear from Trump again, but I don’t think the issue should be ignored,” Mr. Reid said during an interview on Friday.

The push for accountability for Mr. Trump and his allies is starkest in the party’s liberal wing, especially among progressive people of color who have watched the Trump administration direct the use of tear gas against demonstrators for racial justice, and threaten them with long prison terms.

“Absolutely Trump should do jail time,” said Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York. A Justice Department investigation, Mr. Bowman said, “needs to happen on Jan. 20, as soon as possible.”

If Harry Reid, about as much as a Senate Emeritus "elder statesman" centrist that the Dems have, and Jamaal Bowman, the newly-minted Bronx BLM firebrand who kicked Eliot Engel out on his ass after 32 years, are both calling for Justice Department investigations of Trump, his family, and his regime, well that's just about as wide a spectrum on the Democratic side as you can get.

 

And Americans want Trump gone. Now.

A majority of the country believes President Donald Trump should be removed before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20 and two-thirds hold him accountable for the violent insurrection on Capitol Hill, according to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday.

In the new survey, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos' Knowledge Panel, 56% of Americans think the sitting commander-in-chief should be removed from office before the official transfer of power in less than two weeks, while 43% say he should not. Among those who say Trump should not be removed immediately, nearly half (45%) nevertheless say his actions this week were wrong.

Ousting the current president before his term expires splits Americans along partisan lines, with 94% of Democrats and only 13% of Republicans supporting the move. A majority of independents -- 58% -- also back removing him.

Some thoughts, then:

Does Trump pardon himself, and will that hold up or will SCOTUS side with Trump?

Does Pence pardon a January 19th resigning Trump after Trump pardons everyone else (maybe including Pence?)

Since Dems only need 50 votes now (plus VP Kamala Harris) to confirm, what do Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, Kyrsten Sinema etc. want in return for appointing Garland to Justice?

 

Politico's Tim Alberta sums it up:

The stuff I've heard in the last 72 hours—from members of Congress, law enforcement friends, gun shop owners, MAGA devotees—is absolutely chilling.

We need to brace for a wave of violence in this country. Not just over the next couple of weeks, but over the next couple of years.

— Tim Alberta (@TimAlberta) January 10, 2021

 

We'll see just how right he is. As bad as 2020 was, folks...2021 is going to be worse.

Sunday Long Read: 12 Monkeys' Business

As the movie 12 Monkeys turned 25 last year, this week's Sunday Long Read is Eric Ducker's deep dive at The Ringer into the dystopian pandemic present that Terry Gilliam's film portrayed, and just how much the movie got right about where we were headed even back then.

There is a scene toward the end of 12 Monkeys in which James Cole sits in a 24-hour movie theater watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Cole, played by Bruce Willis, is not entirely certain whether he is a prisoner who “volunteered” to time travel from a future when 99 percent of the world’s population has been killed in a pandemic and the survivors live underground because the surface air is deadly, or whether he is just a man with a serious dissociative disorder. Next to him, applying a fake mustache to his face, is Dr. Kathryn Railly (played by Madeleine Stowe), his once doubtful psychiatrist who has become his coconspirator in investigating a group run by Jeffrey Goines (played by Brad Pitt) called the Army of the 12 Monkeys and their role in unleashing the virus on the planet.

Examining Kim Novak and James Stewart on screen, Cole is confused and agitated, his mind either scrambled by the effects of time travel or just in its natural state. He thinks he’s seen the movie before, maybe on TV when he was a kid, but something about it feels both familiar and unfamiliar. “It’s just like what’s happening with us,” he tells Railly. “Like the past, the movie never changes. It can’t change, but every time you see it, it seems different, because you’re different. You see different things.”

Arriving in select theaters at the end of 1995 before getting a wide release 25 years ago this week, 12 Monkeys was an immediate commercial success. Directed by Terry Gilliam, it was the middle installment of the three movies the iconoclastic filmmaker made for major American studios during the ’90s. But audiences quickly began to see 12 Monkeys differently.

In the midst of a wave of global natural disasters, film critic Elvis Mitchell wrote in a 2002 New York Times essay, “It’s as if the world has finally caught up to the lyric paranoid streaks in the imagination of the filmmaker Terry Gilliam.” In the ensuing decades, authoritarian-minded governments proliferated, environmental catastrophes continued, overpopulation went unabated, and the climate crisis neared the point of no return. More people started to feel like Cole, knowing witnesses to a civilization that seems destined to end during their lifetime. Writing for Vulture in 2018, Abraham Riesman called 12 Monkeys, “[O]ne of the most currently relevant pieces of science fiction ever committed to celluloid.”

And then came the coronavirus pandemic. At the time of this article’s publication, it’s estimated that COVID-19 is directly responsible for more than 1.8 million deaths, and that number is expected to continue to rise across the globe in the coming months, even as vaccines become more widely available. When lockdowns and restrictions were put in place during the first quarter of 2020, viewers started returning to 12 Monkeys or checking it out for the first time. “It had a whole new life,” says Charles Roven, one of the film’s producers. “It holds up really well.”

A TV adaptation of 12 Monkeys debuted at the start of 2015 and ran for four seasons on the Syfy network. Though the show is far different from the movie, it too has become a streaming favorite, even finding an audience for the first time in countries like India. “I certainly don’t love how topical our show has become,” says cocreator Terry Matalas, who estimates he saw Gilliam’s film in the theater three or four times when he was a student at Emerson College.

The movie Outbreak came out several months before 12 Monkeys, and journalist Richard Preston’s 1994 book The Hot Zone about lethal filoviruses was a national bestseller. Still, for most of the world’s population, a massive pandemic had not been a pressing concern since the Spanish Flu killed 50 million people between 1918 and 1920. Now there is a rising feeling that the next one won’t come a century from now. It could arrive much sooner and could be far worse. “I think the very first spoken words that aren’t voice-over in our show are, ‘It’s never been about if. It’s always been when,’” Matalas says. “When you start to really dissect that data, it’s terrifying. Right now we’re on the precipice of a vaccine, but are we truly ready for the next [pandemic]? I don’t think so.”

In 12 Monkeys, Railly has written a book called The Doomsday Syndrome and gives a lecture at a museum about madness and apocalyptic visions. She discusses the Cassandra complex, the idea taken from Greek legend about figures who know the future but whose warnings aren’t heeded, leading to what Railly describes as, “[T]he agony of foreknowledge combined with the impotence to do anything about it.” In the 25 years since its release, 12 Monkeys is increasingly seen as a Cassandra of its own kind.

“We told you so,” Gilliam says.

 

Watching Outbreak and reading The Hot Zone in college scared the crap out of me, but 12 Monkeys is the movie that made me uncomfortable around the idea of a pandemic, not about a virus itself, but how the world would utterly fail to respond to it.  The bad guy in the movie isn't the virus or even the Arm of the 12 Monkeys, but the people who made sure that the pandemic overwhelmed the world, and did it for their own selfish reasons.

And wouldn't you know it.

Here we are 25 years later.

 

You'll find the movie running on Hulu, HBO Max, or Amazon Prime if you have a subscription. It's worth watching again just to see how relevant it remains to today.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Back on Tuesday I noted that US Attorney for Northern Georgia, Byung "BJ" Pak, abruptly resigned for "unforeseen circumstances." Now we know why: Trump crucified him because he couldn't take out his rage on others by firing GOP Gov. Brian Kemp or GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

White House officials pushed Atlanta’s top federal prosecutor to resign before Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs because President Trump was upset he wasn’t doing enough to investigate the president’s allegations of election fraud, people familiar with the matter said.

A senior Justice Department official, at the behest of the White House, called Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak and told him he needed to step down because he wasn’t pursuing vote-fraud allegations to Mr. Trump’s satisfaction, the people said.

Mr. Pak resigned abruptly on Monday—the day before the runoffs—saying in an early morning email to colleagues that his departure was due to “unforeseen circumstances.”

The pressure on Mr. Pak was part of Mr. Trump’s weekslong push to try to alter presidential election results favoring President-elect Joe Biden, which included his win in Georgia. Mr. Trump this week, following the U.S. Capitol riot, said he would leave office on Jan. 20 when Mr. Biden is inaugurated.

Recently departed Attorney General William Barr has said the Justice Department hadn’t found evidence of widespread voter fraud that could reverse Mr. Biden’s victory, including claims of fraud, ballot destruction and voting-machine manipulation.

 

 Surprise, right?

Everyone other than Donald Trump is expendable to Donald Trump. I don't know how much clearer than that I can be.

Trump went after other Georgia election officials to engineer his coup too.

President Trump urged Georgia’s lead elections investigator to “find the fraud” in a lengthy December phone call, saying the official would be a “national hero,” according to an individual familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the conversation.

Trump placed the call to the investigations chief for the Georgia secretary of state’s office shortly before Christmas — while the individual was leading an inquiry into allegations of ballot fraud in Cobb County, in the suburbs of Atlanta, according to people familiar with the episode.

The president’s attempts to intervene in an ongoing investigation could amount to obstruction of justice or other criminal violations, legal experts said, though they cautioned a case could be difficult to prove.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had launched the inquiry following allegations that Cobb election officials had improperly accepted mail ballots with signatures that did not match those on file — claims that state officials ultimately concluded had no merit.

In an interview with The Washington Post on Friday, Raffensperger confirmed that Trump had placed the Dec. 23 call. He said he was not familiar with the specifics of what the president said in the conversation with his chief investigator, but said it was inappropriate for Trump to have tried to intervene in the case.

“That was an ongoing investigation,” Raffensperger said. “I don’t believe that an elected official should be involved in that process.”

The Post is withholding the name of the investigator, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, because of the risk of threats and harassment directed at election officials.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

 

Again, I was willing before Wednesday's events at least to entertain the notion that not making a martyr out of Trump would be better for the country in the long run, and that I still don't think Trump would be even indicted, let alone face actual justice.

But now, well, I have to be wrong, because Trump needs to absolutely be perp-walked into prison somewhere and we have to make it clear that these treason-happy assholes will be shown the door into the nearest jail cell.

Last Call For Looking Black At The Week

Black author and speaker Jim St. Germain sums up the week at Vulture, and nothing accomplishes that more effectively than the photo of this would-be revolutionary from Wednesday's terrorist attack right the hell here.

The picture, taken by Win McNamee of Getty Images, has circulated widely and generated many silly memes. In an Instagram Story by Jamie Foxx, the intruder is saying “Hi, mom! I made it!” I liked that one, but I prefer to think of him saying “Hi, mon,” like a member of the Jamaican bobsled team. Like all great photographs, the image fires the imagination. I believe it should be printed, framed, and hung in the National Portrait Gallery. In the background, you can see an enormous painting of George Washington displayed in a pompous gold frame. That’s the America white people think we live in — a beacon of democracy, a paragon of dignity. But the photograph itself is the America Black people know. An America where ignorant white people walk off with your shit and smile about it, secure in the knowledge that nothing bad will happen to them. An America built on the theft of labor, land, and life.

On Wednesday, Joe Biden insisted that the ridiculous and violent scene playing out at the Capitol was “not who we are.” Maybe that’s his truth, but it isn’t mine. When I was 15, I was arrested for a nonviolent drug offense. Thanks to Biden and the racist crime bill he sponsored back in 1994, the judge was required to take away my freedom. Like most of us, I ended up voting for Biden anyway, because if you’re Black in America, freedom is the right to choose your oppressor. This week, I figured I’d have to endure a day or two of white people talking about how the fabric of our union is strong. Then the barbarians arrived. They knocked over barriers, scaled the walls, put their boots up on Pelosi’s desk, posed for selfies with cops, got blazed in a senator’s office, and smeared their shit — their actual shit — in the hallways. They caused the world’s most powerful people to cower in the basement. They smashed in the windows like the bad guys breaking into Kevin McCallister’s mansion in Home Alone.

A lot of remarkable photographs emerged from the mayhem, but the Getty Image of my homie Getty, as some of us have taken to calling him, is special. If his hat didn’t say “45,” you might think he’d gone to the Capitol because he wanted to witness Biden’s confirmation. He’s got practical Asics. Skinny jeans. Golden surfer hair and a scarf. His smile is friendly, free of worry, content. It isn’t the bitter grimace of those “bad” white people — the deplorables I’m supposed to fear. It’s the carefree smile of the dad at the farmers’ market who doesn’t realize he just ran over my shoes with a stroller. It’s the smile of the dude who moved into my building and says he loves the neighborhood because it’s so culturally vibrant but is unaware that he’s living in an apartment my grandma could no longer afford. It’s Biden telling a group of Black leaders last month that he’s the “only white boy” who has stood up against white supremacy. It’s a face I know well, the face of unearned power, and it belongs to white people in both political parties.

As it turns out, that face has a name: Adam Christian Johnson. Records indicate he was arrested for a nonviolent drug offense when he was a teenager, just like I was, and got locked up again a year later for violating his probation. But things seem to have worked out well for him. He lives in a six-bedroom house on a golf course in southwest Florida with his wife, a family physician. According to the Bradenton Herald, he studied psychology at the University of South Florida and now makes and sells furniture, which may explain why he was so excited about his find. Over 300,000 Americans are dead from the coronavirus, unemployment is soaring, and this guy looks like he just secured a bag on Antiques Roadshow.

As someone who has survived violence, I’m not happy that five people died at the riot. But I can’t deny that this picture of Mr. Johnson gives me life. It reminds me of another classic American image — a white man dressed in blackface, flanked by velvet curtains with fancy gold trim. Do a Google image search for “the original Jim Crow,” and you’ll see it. Note the bugged-out eyes, the mindless grin, the hand held out in a cheerful wave. For years, white people portrayed us as happy, vulgar fools undeserving of the rights and dignity America supposedly represented to the world. Now the greasepaint has been wiped away, and white people are seeing that they are what they’ve always made us out to be. Some are embarrassed. Some are scared. It’s our turn to be entertained.

 

Straight up, Biden was never my first choice, but I never hesitated to vote for him in the primaries and again in the general here in KY this year when it became clear that the opposing choice was an authoritarian white supremacist fascist asshole. 

 

And yes, folks, the face in the picture is the face of white privilege I'm used to seeing, not the asshole rolling coal and flying the traitor confederate flag on the back of his rusted out Ford pickup because I know never to get within 100 feet of them, but the dude in that picture telling me he thinks I'm "surprisingly well-spoken" in the Zoom job interview, the one who has the loud phone conversation about why voting for Trump will help "all of them", the one who is screaming at city council in the viral video about masks violating the First Amendment.

It's not the racist uncle who has gone from FOX News to Newsmax that you've already disavowed that was at this terrorist shindig.  It's the partner at the firm, your brother-in-law you haven't talked to in a while, your youth pastor, your contractor buddy from the softball team, your kid's friend's dad or mom (you know, the one with the pool), it's that guy you went to high school with who has the really, really high number of hunting and fishing photos on Facebook.

So yeah, unmask those guys and have a good laugh at the clowns that they are.

Then help us deal with them.

Mitch's Final Act Of Cowardice

As the book closes on Mitch McConnell's reign as Senate Majority Leader, his final stroke of evil genius is delaying any Senate trial on House impeachment to 1 PM on January 20th, an hour after Trump's term expires, rendering the entire process null and void.

The document, which was first reported by The Washington Post, lays out how the Senate would proceed if the House approves articles of impeachment and transmits them to the upper chamber before or by Jan. 19, when senators are scheduled to resume regular business after the January recess.

McConnell says the most likely scenario if the House impeaches Trump in his final 12 days in office is for the Senate to receive a message from the lower chamber notifying it of the action on Jan. 19. That would then give the Senate the option of ordering the House managers to present those articles on the same day.

Senate Impeachment Rules require that at 1 p.m. on the day after the managers exhibit the articles, the Senate “must proceed to their consideration,” the memo states.

As a result, the Senate trial would not begin until one hour after President-elect Joe Biden takes the oath of office.

“The Senate trial would therefore begin after President Trump’s term has expired – either one hour after its expiration on Jan. 20, or twenty-five hours after its expiration on Jan. 21,” the memo states.

The document was confirmed by a source familiar with its contents.

McConnell’s memo notes that the Senate, which is scheduled to hold pro-forma sessions until Jan. 19, the day before Biden is to take the oath of office, cannot conduct any business during those pro-forma meetings without unanimous consent.

The GOP leader notes that would preclude the Senate from acting on any articles of impeachment received from the House until Biden is president, raising an implicit question about the point of such an exercise.

“It would require the consent of all 100 senators to conduct any business of any kind during the scheduled pro forma sessions prior to January 19, and therefore the consent of all 100 senators to begin acting on any articles of impeachment during those sessions,” the memo states.

The document notes the Senate “can receive a message announcing that the House has impeached the President” while the Senate is in recess, but the Secretary of the Senate wouldn’t notify the chamber of the message until the next regular session, which is scheduled for Jan. 19.

Mitch has won on this and he knows it. Even if there were 67 votes to remove Trump, and prevent him from ever holding office again, the Supreme Court would almost certainly rule that the Senate trial was legally moot and that Trump would remain eligible, especially after he pardons himself. It'll be years of legal wrangling ahead, and the state trials are still not certain, and the wrangling over that could take years too.

As I predicted earlier this year, I just don't see Trump held accountable in any way. He'll be back to plague us for a long time.

A Tale Of Capitol Offenses

The New Yorker's Zach Helfand records for posterity the harrowing experience of one Pelosi staffer on Wednesday's terrorist assault on the US Capitol.

I’m the floor director for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. My job is to make sure that the House floor runs properly. Any legislative procedure that comes into the chamber falls under my staff’s purview. I came to D.C. after college, in the nineties, and started waiting tables at California Pizza Kitchen while I figured out how to get a job. I remember, when I first started working on the Hill, someone said, “You’ll know when it’s time to leave when you don’t have that tingle when you see the Capitol.” Now I live a mile away, and when I walk to work the sun is behind me, shining on the Capitol, and when I walk out, if I turn around, I see the sun setting over the Capitol. It’s special.

Originally, we’d been planning on spending more than twenty-four hours in the chamber. When the Arizona challenge happened, the Senate paraded out. They took the certified ballots with them in these big, fancy brown boxes that have been used for years.

As the notices came in, I found my old boss, Congressman Jim McGovern, from Massachusetts. I said, “Hey, we might need you up in the chair, just hold tight.” He’s the chairman of the Rules Committee. He knows that sometimes the Speaker just needs a break.

All of a sudden, it hit. They say, “We need to bring the Speaker down.” I asked to not do this so fast that it’s chaotic. Let’s make it look normal. She was not expecting to come down. I said, “Ma’am, we’ve got to go.” We put Mr. McGovern up, she went out the doors, and she was out of my sight. The Majority Leader, the Majority Whip, and the Minority Whip, they were pulled out, too. That was when it really hit people.

It was a weird vibe. Some were calm, some getting agitated, and then you had a machismo from some people. The noise in the chamber picked up. People were really loud, really not listening. I went into the center of the chamber and just yelled, “Everyone sit down, stay calm, let’s get some information!”

Capitol police said, “They’re coming. They’re inside the building.” They told us to pull out escape hoods—the gas masks. They started pointing: “Lock that door, lock that door!” We helped the police move a couple of old, credenza-type bookshelves into place in front of the doors. We become a hermetically sealed room. You’re not supposed to be able to get in. Well, at some point you start hearing: Bang! A couple of members were there. They were going to protect our colleagues, protect our friends, and protect the chamber.

Capitol police decided we’re evacuating. They opened one of the doors into the Speaker’s lobby and started pushing people out. But up in the gallery there’s no easy way out. It’s literally like an obstacle course. I’m pointing and yelling, “Go, go, go! That way! Get through!” The banging on the front door is intensifying. It sounded violent. All of a sudden you hear a crack. It sounded like a gunshot. The police had their guns out. And I just sprinted out of the chamber.

We ran down some stairs, underground into these old, old spaces. Some older folks can’t move all that quickly. It took us a while, but we finally got to, essentially, a holding area.

We looked around the room. We didn’t know what was happening, but we knew the Capitol had been overrun. Someone would say, “We’re missing someone!” The Capitol police would try to find them. And then you have this din, the mechanical filter of a hundred and fifty gas masks—this high-pitched whirring. It sounded like a hundred and fifty kazoos.

It was a weird mix. Remember, this was everyone who’d been on the floor. In one corner, you had all the Republicans who think we stole the election. You can see people looking, thinking, The people outside are here because of what you’re doing. We were also concerned about the fact that many of them don’t wear masks. Some of them were saying they were glad the “protesters” were there. Everybody else, including many Republicans, was figuring out what’s happening, what’s going on with our institution, with our society, with our democracy. And how do we get back? We knew we had to finish that night. It was never a question of if—it was how. That’s part of my job. I can’t really get into this, but we have alternatives to the House chamber, if we need them.

Someone said, “Where are the boxes? Do we still have them?” One of the parliamentarians came over to me and said, “The ballot boxes are safe.” If they’d been stolen or destroyed, to be honest, I don’t know what happens.

I don't know how many times I'll have to say this in the days, months, and years ahead, but this was a planned coup operation. It failed but only just. If the terrorists had gotten their hands on congressional hostages or the boxes with the electoral vote ballots or both, we'd be talking about a very different scenario right now. 

We're going to find out that Trump had shifted executive authority to deploy or not to deploy the DC National Guard under the Pentagon's civilian Defense Policy Board that he stuffed full of loyalists late last year, loyalists like Corey Lewandowski and former 2016 campaign manager David Bossie. I told people then that it seemed like Trump was up to something foul, and five will get you six that the deliberate sabotage of the US Capitol's defense was driven by Trump's people.

They just needed time to get their hands on lawmakers and ballots. They could have forced them to vote for Trump, or destroyed the ballots and forced the issue back to GOP state legislatures, who would have then overturned the election, or forced an electoral vote by the House by state delegation.

Either way, Trump almost ended up winning. We're going to find out just how close we came.

And you know what the worst part is?  This is nowhere near over. Trump still has 10-11 days. The coup failed. Unless Trump fries like bologna in a skillet, the next Republican-led fascist coup will be successful.

There will be a next time, folks.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorist Problem, Con't

There is no remorse for Wednesday's atrocities from the Trumpist terrorist right. There is only the promise of more blood in less than two weeks at the inauguration.

Jalen McAllister said the insurrection "needed to happen." Michel Mullen said lawmakers should be afraid of people like him. And Olivia Durlester is calling for more action against the government.

A day after armed rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol and forced Congress to halt deliberations, participants and attendees at Wednesday's violent occupation of the U.S. Capitol said they still support President Donald Trump and believe they did nothing wrong. They claim they're law-abiding citizens who needed to assault police officers to make their political point.

Racial-justice critics said that unrepentant attitude is just one more example of the white privilege that permitted hundreds of pro-Trump rioters to stream into the Capitol largely unfettered, while Black Lives Matter protesters have been beaten and arrested en masse for far less.

Mullen said he wishes rioters had stayed inside the Capitol longer than a few hours. Mullen, his wife and their three infant daughters drove nearly 3,000 miles in an RV from Washington state to participate. Rinsing tear gas off his fingers on Wednesday evening, Mullen said he wanted to participate to show politicians they should fear the public.

“I think it scares the heck out of some people that on a drop of a hat, we can all show up. It should scare them,” said Mullen, who owns a drain-clearing business. Mullen said authorities allowed rioters into the Capitol building in what he called an effort to temporarily pacify them: "We are having our country stolen from us and we can’t do anything about it."

While the vast majority of participants were peaceful, Wednesday's rally included thousands of people wearing shirts bearing incendiary, anti-government rhetoric, including some that said "MAGA CIVIL WAR" and the date, Jan. 6, 2021. Others carried Confederate flags, nooses and made outright threats of violence toward the nation's elected government, including President-elect Joe Biden.

Many said they hoped their very presence would intimidate lawmakers into altering the course of the 202 presidential election, an effort that failed and even prompted some Republicans to withdraw their objections to the election certification. But other Republicans responded to the pressure: 68 Republicans initially objected to Biden's Arizona win, but that nearby doubled to 127 after rioters left and Congress resumed session, according to media reports.

More violence in the weeks and months ahead is now guaranteed, as I have been warning for months now.

We have a long, hard road ahead, all of us, and we will need to stick together. Trump has to go.

Again, this insurrection was planned. Trump knew it was going to happen, and took advantage of the chaos.

President Donald Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani both mistakenly made calls to Republican Sen. Mike Lee as deadly riots were unfolding at the US Capitol earlier this week, a spokesman for the senator confirmed to CNN -- calls that were intended for another GOP senator the White House was frantically trying to convince to delay the counting of Electoral College votes.  

Lee's spokesman said the calls from Trump and his attorney were intended for Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a newly elected Republican from Alabama. 

The effort by the White House to get Tuberville to delay certification of the votes provides insight into the President's thinking and priorities as a mob of his supporters lay siege to the iconic building. As the President worked to convince Tuberville to delay the process, he and other top White House officials did little to check in on Vice President Mike Pence while he and members of his family were inside the breached Capitol, a source close to the vice president told CNN. 

Trump first called the personal cell phone of Lee, a Utah Republican, shortly after 2 p.m. ET. At that time the senators had been evacuated from the Senate floor and were in a temporary holding room, as a pro-Trump mob began breaching the Capitol.  

Lee picked up the phone and Trump identified himself, and it became clear he was looking for Tuberville and had been given the wrong number. Lee, keeping the President on hold, went to find his colleague and handed Tuberville his phone, telling him the President was on the line and had been trying to reach him. 

Tuberville spoke with Trump for less than 10 minutes, with the President trying to convince him to make additional objections to the Electoral College vote in a futile effort to block Congress' certification of President-elect Joe Biden's win, according to a source familiar with the call. The call was cut off because senators were asked to move to a secure location.

 

So after telling his supporters to go to the Capitol, Trump called Mike Lee in order to get a hold of Tommy Tuberville, in order to get Tuberville to object to any counting that was going on in order to specifically buy Trump time for the next part of his coup plan. 

We're going to find out some truly sick things about Trump over the next month or six.

Last Call For Back To Bevinstan

With Republicans in Kentucky now holding a three-fourths majority in both the state House and state Senate, it will be trivial for them to pass anything they want and override any possible veto that Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear may engage in. Beshear's state of the commonwealth address on Thursday was all but him resorting to begging Republicans not to cripple his office as Kentucky's Covid-19 pandemic rages, but Republicans of course will keep schools and businesses open fully, even if it kills us.

Gov. Andy Beshear defended how he has battled the coronavirus pandemic in Thursday night's State of the Commonwealth speech and urged the Republican-run Kentucky legislature to support his plan to help the commonwealth finish and recover from that fight.

"Over the past 10 months, we have been at war," he said. "This evil virus has taken more than 2,700 of our fellow Kentuckians. That toll is heartbreaking; it is greater than the number of Kentuckians lost in Vietnam, Korea, even World War I. And these aren't numbers ... We have lost doctors, teachers, bus drivers, a police chief, pastors and a 15-year-old student."

"Now we are called to look ahead, not with fear, but with courage. To do so, we must move past any remaining denial or rationalizations," he said in his address, which was done through a video because of the pandemic.

"Failure to take this virus seriously at this late date disrespects the memory of those we have lost, disrespects the pain of those who are grieving and disrespects the deep sacrifices so many have made in this war. It also threatens to create much more pain, more death and more disruption, all of which can be avoided."

The state legislature kicked off its annual lawmaking session this week, and leading GOP lawmakers quickly signaled their intention to pass legislation that limits the emergency powers Beshear has used to institute a wide range of restrictions aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus.

For months, key Republican lawmakers have criticized the governor for, among other things, how the capacity limits and temporary closures he required for restaurants and many other businesses have affected the state's economy and workforce.

In Thursday's speech, Beshear said his approach has been based on public health experts' advice and has been effective, with the help of countless Kentuckians who complied with his administration's orders and recommendations.

"My actions have been targeted to have the greatest impact, and they have been limited in both time and scope to avoid undue and unnecessary damage," he said. "You can look at the devastating experiences in states that failed to take the same aggressive actions we did to stop the coronavirus. Adjusted for population, we have suffered less than half the number of deaths as the people of Tennessee and less than one-fourth the number of deaths as the citizens of North and South Dakota."

Beshear stressed that he and state lawmakers should "put aside squabbling and petty partisanship."

"So, let me be clear: Every moment in this short session we spend fighting is a loss for our Kentucky families," he said. "Such fighting will leave us empty-handed and further behind those states that recognize this moment and this opportunity. Our goal should be to act swiftly and with wisdom on behalf of the people of the commonwealth.

 

Republicans don't care and will have bills on Beshear's desk by this weekend, with promises to overrule all vetoes.

With a new 3-to-1 supermajority over Democrats in each chamber of the Kentucky General Assembly, Republicans are wasting no time sprinting eight of their priority bills through the legislature in the first days of the 2021 session.

These bills — several of which target abortion and scale back Gov. Andy Beshear's emergency powers to enact COVID-19 rules — could pass through both chambers and be sent to the governor's desk as early as Saturday, assuming they face no hiccups and legislative leaders add that day to the session's calendar.

The House easily passed all five of its priority bills by a mostly party-line vote in just over two hours Thursday afternoon, while the Senate passed four priority bills later that evening.

The first bill to pass Thursday was House Bill 1, sponsored by Rep. Bart Rowland, R-Tompkinsville, one of the bills reacting to criticism of Beshear's many executive orders restricting businesses and public gatherings to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Rowland's bill seeks to allow a businesses, schools, nonprofits, churches and local governments to remain open as long as long as their policies meet or exceed U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, in order to protect them in case the governor orders a "third shutdown."

Background:Kentucky General Assembly kicks off 2021 session

Rep. Angie Hatton, D-Whitesburg, countered that doing away with specific COVID-19 regulations of the administration for ambiguous and conflicting CDC guidelines could backfire and worsen the pandemic, as "the way to reopen our economy is to defeat COVID-19."

Rep. Steven Rudy, R-Paducah, said businesses have suffered enough through Beshear's orders, saying he has refused to share data to justify his restrictions.

House Bill 2, giving Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron new power to regulate Kentucky abortion clinics, also passed easily, just as it did in last year's session before being vetoed by Beshear.

House Bill 3 — seeking to move legal cases involving the constitution and state government out of Franklin Circuit Court by creating new randomly selected panels of three judges from across the state — passed over the objections of Democrats that it violated the Kentucky Constitution and would be quickly blocked and defeated in the court system.

Also passing easily was House Bill 4, a proposed constitutional amendment to allow the General Assembly to extend the end of legislation session beyond the set days in the spring.

Osborne said the need for HB 4 was shown by Beshear's refusal to consult with the legislature and call it back into session so it could address what Republicans felt were his overreaching and burdensome COVID-19 policies, as they had to wait until the new session in January.

If passed, voters would not be able to vote on the amendment until November 2022.

The chamber also overwhelmingly passed House Bill 5, which would take away a governor's ability to temporarily reorganize state boards and replace its members, as former Gov. Matt Bevin did with the University of Louisville board of trustees and Beshear did with the Kentucky Board of Education just after taking office.

Later Thursday evening, Senate Bill 1, which would limit Beshear's executive orders under a state of emergency to 30 days unless the legislature extended that order, passed through the other chamber after a heated debate.

Republican members continued slamming Beshear's COVID-19 orders as arbitrary and not based on data, while Sen. Morgan McGarvey, D-Louisville, said the governor must be able to act decisively during an emergency.

The Senate also passed Senate Bill 9, which would require doctors to "preserve the life and health of a born-alive infant" during a "failed abortion," Senate Bill 2, which would additional requirements for a governor to enact administrative regulations, and Senate Bill 3, which moves the Kentucky Agriculture Development Fund from the governor’s office to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.

 

In other words, Kentucky state Republicans are setting up a permanent regime where the governor is rendered powerless well before he reaches the opportunity to run for a second term.

And that's the point.

 

Tales Of The Trump Depression, Con't

The December 2020 jobs report is in, and under Trump and the GOP the nation's job market is collapsing quickly and taking the economy with it.

U.S. employers shed jobs last month for the first time since April, cutting 140,000 positions, clear evidence that the economy is faltering as the viral pandemic tightens its grip on consumers and businesses.

At the same time, the unemployment rate stayed at 6.7%, the first time it hasn't fallen since April.

Friday’s figures from the Labor Department suggest that employers have rehired roughly all the workers they can afford to after having laid off more than 22 million in the spring — the worst such loss on record. With consumer spending barely growing over the past few months, most companies have little incentive to hire. The economy still has 9.9 million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic sent it sinking into a deep recession nearly a year ago.

The pandemic will likely continue to weaken the economy through the winter and perhaps early spring. But many economists, along with the Federal Reserve’s policymakers, say they think that once the coronavirus vaccines are more widely distributed, a broad recovery should take hold in the second half of the year. The incoming Biden administration, along with a now fully Democratic-controlled House and Senate, is also expected to push rescue aid and spending measures that could accelerate growth.

For now, the renewed surge in virus cases, as well as cold weather, has caused millions of consumers to avoid eating out, shopping and traveling. Re-imposed business restrictions have shut down numerous restaurants, bars, and other venues.

Economists at TD Securities estimate that more than half the states have restricted gatherings to 10 or fewer people, up from about a quarter in September. New York City and California, among others, placed strict new limits on restaurants last month.

In recent months, retailers have been especially hurt by the slump in consumer spending. Debit and credit card data tracked by JPMorgan Chase, based on 30 million accounts, shows that Americans slowed their purchases during the holiday shopping season. Such spending was 6% lower in December compared with a year ago. That was worse than in October, when card spending was down just 2% from the previous year.

Restaurant traffic has also dropped, according to the reservations website OpenTable. Seated dining is down 60% this week compared with a year ago, much worse than two months earlier, when they were down about 35%.

The $900 billion financial aid package that Congress enacted last month should also help propel a recovery, economists say. It will provide a $300-a-week federal jobless benefit on top of an average weekly state benefit of about $320. In addition, millions of Americans stand to receive $600 payments, and the Treasury Department said Thursday that 8 million of those payments were going out this week.

Late Wednesday, Goldman Sachs upgraded its forecast for economic growth this year to a robust 6.4% from its previous estimate of 5.9%. Its upgrade was based in part on the expectation that the Biden administration will implement more stimulus.

Nothing is going to improve unless we get a handle on Covid-19, and as long as Republicans continue to block recovery efforts at the state level, that won't happen. The next six months will be miserable without a massive direct stimulus package, a herculean vaccine distribution effort, and Republicans not blocking it all.

And even then, we're now seeing 280,000 new Covid cases and 4,000 Covid deaths a day, on top of an attempted coup by Trump to remain in power. 

It's coming apart and we have to get it back together. Now.

Our Little White Supremacist Terrorism Problem, Con't

Trump's Defense Department made sure that Capitol police were left high and dry, and had no choice but to let the insurrectionists in, because the Capitol Police rejected any outside help anyway. It was planned from the get-go, folks.

Three days before supporters of President Donald Trump rioted at the Capitol, the Pentagon asked the U.S Capitol Police if it needed National Guard manpower. And as the mob descended on the building Wednesday, Justice Department leaders reached out to offer up FBI agents. The police turned them down both times, according to senior defense officials and two people familiar with the matter.

Despite plenty of warnings of a possible insurrection and ample resources and time to prepare, the Capitol Police planned only for a free speech demonstration.

Still stinging from the uproar over the violent response by law enforcement to protests last June near the White House, officials also were intent on avoiding any appearance that the federal government was deploying active duty or National Guard troops against Americans.

The result is the U.S. Capitol was overrun Wednesday and officers in a law enforcement agency with a large operating budget and experience in high-security events protecting lawmakers were overwhelmed for the world to see. Four protesters died, including one shot inside the building.

The rioting and loss of control has raised serious questions over security at the Capitol for future events. The actions of the day also raise troubling concerns about the treatment of mainly white Trump supporters, who were allowed to roam through the building for hours, while Black and brown protesters who demonstrated last year over police brutality faced more robust and aggressive policing.

“This was a failure of imagination, a failure of leadership,” said Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, whose department responded to several large protests last year following the death of George Floyd. “The Capitol Police must do better and I don’t see how we can get around that.”

Acevedo said he has attended events on the Capitol grounds to honor slain police officers that had higher fences and a stronger security presence than what he saw on video Wednesday.

Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said that as the rioting was underway, it became clear that the Capitol Police were overrun. But he said there was no contingency planning done in advance for what forces could do in case of a problem at the Capitol because Defense Department help was turned down. “They’ve got to ask us, the request has to come to us,” said McCarthy.

Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund was planning to resign, as was the House sergeant-at-arms, the chief security officer for the House of Representatives. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the incoming majority leader, said he will fire the Senate sergeant-at-arms.

“There was a failure of leadership at the top,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said.

I have been warning for years now that the nation's police forces are full of white supremacists and Trump sympathizers, and if you don't believe by now that those two groups are one and the same, well you should probably be reading another blog.

We need a nationwide review of every major police force in the country, starting with Capitol Police.

And to summarize how far America has fallen, our allies are definitely calling this a coup. Mitch Prothero at Business Insider:

Insider spoke with three officials on Thursday morning: a French police official responsible for public security in a key section of central Paris, and two intelligence officials from NATO countries who directly work in counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations involving the US, terrorism, and Russia.

They said the circumstantial evidence available pointed to what would be openly called a coup attempt in any other nation. None were willing to speak on the record because of the dire nature of the subject.

While they did not furnish evidence that federal agency officials facilitated the chaos, Insider is reporting this information because it illustrates the scale and seriousness of Wednesday's events: America's international military and security allies are now willing to give serious credence to the idea that Trump deliberately tried to violently overturn an election and that some federal law-enforcement agents — by omission or otherwise — facilitated the attempt.

'Today I am briefing my government that we believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup'

One NATO source set the stage, using terms more commonly used to describe unrest in developing countries.

"The defeated president gives a speech to a group of supporters where he tells them he was robbed of the election, denounces his own administration's members and party as traitors, and tells his supporters to storm the building where the voting is being held," the NATO intelligence official said.

"The supporters, many dressed in military attire and waving revolutionary-style flags, then storm the building where the federal law-enforcement agencies controlled by the current president do not establish a security cordon, and the protesters quickly overwhelm the last line of police.

"The president then makes a public statement to the supporters attacking the Capitol that he loves them but doesn't really tell them to stop," the official said. "Today I am briefing my government that we believe with a reasonable level of certainty that Donald Trump attempted a coup that failed when the system did not buckle.

"I can't believe this happened."

The French police official said they believed that an investigation would find that someone interfered with the deployment of additional federal law-enforcement officials on the perimeter of the Capitol complex; the official has direct knowledge of the proper procedures for security of the facility.

The security of Congress is entrusted to the US Capitol Police, a federal agency that answers to Congress.

It is routine for the Capitol Police to coordinate with the federal Secret Service and the Park Police and local police in Washington, DC, before large demonstrations. The National Guard, commanded by the Department of Defense, is often on standby too.

On Wednesday, however, that coordination was late or absent.
'It's obvious that large parts of any successful plan were just ignored'

"You cannot tell me I don't know what they should have done. I can fly to Washington tomorrow and do that job, just as any police official in Washington can fly to Paris and do mine," the official said. The official directs public security in a central Paris police district filled with government buildings and tourist sites.

"These are not subtle principles" for managing demonstrations, "and they transfer to every situation," the official said. "This is why we train alongside the US federal law enforcement to handle these very matters, and it's obvious that large parts of any successful plan were just ignored."

This was deliberate, folks. And even if you don't believe that, it has to be investigated. We cannot "turn the page" on this.

I guarantee you this was planned. I guarantee you Donald Trump was behind this. And I guarantee you that if heads don't roll now, it will be successful next time it's attempted.

Last Call For Pardon The Destruction, Con't

With Mike Pence now permanently on Trump's naughty list and any Ford pardons Nixon scenario up in flames after Pence refused to steal Trump a second term, Trump is now moving forward on his next phase of lawlessness, a self-pardon and pardons for all who remain loyal to him.

President Trump has suggested to aides he wants to pardon himself in the final days of his presidency, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions, a move that would mark one of the most extraordinary and untested uses of presidential power in American history.

In several conversations since Election Day, Mr. Trump has told advisers that he is considering giving himself a pardon and, in other instances, asked whether he should and what the impact would be on him legally and politically, according to the two people. It was not clear whether he has broached the topic since he incited his supporters on Wednesday to storm the Capitol in a mob attack.

Mr. Trump has shown signs that his level of interest in pardoning himself goes beyond idle musings. He has long maintained he has the power to pardon himself and his polling of aides’ views is typically a sign that he is preparing to follow through on his aims. He has also become increasingly convinced that his perceived enemies will use the levers of law enforcement to target him after he leaves office.

No president has pardoned himself, so the legitimacy of prospective self-clemency has never been tested in the justice system and legal scholars are divided about whether the courts would recognize it. But they agree a presidential self-pardon could create a dangerous new precedent for presidents to unilaterally declare they are above the law and to insulate themselves from being held accountable for any crimes they committed in office.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request comment.

Mr. Trump has considered a range of pre-emptive pardons for family, including his three oldest children — Donald Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump — Ms. Trump’s husband, the senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, and for close associates like the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Trump has expressed concerns to advisers that a Biden Justice Department might investigate all of them.

Mr. Trump, who has told advisers how much he likes having the power to issue clemency, has for weeks solicited aides and allies for suggestions on whom to pardon. He has also offered pre-emptive pardons to advisers and administration officials. Many were taken them aback because they did not believe they were in legal jeopardy and that accepting his offer would be seen as an admission of guilt, according to the two people.

After yesterday, it's clear now that Trump will crucify anyone who doesn't support him until the bloody end and leave them to the tender mercies of Merrick Garland. It's also clear he's going to pardon himself, and that we're going to have this power tested in a Supreme Court that is 6-3 conservative.

If they side with Trump, our country is lost.

It's About Suppression, Con't

Georgia, like other Southern States, is a Black voter suppression state, not a red state. When Black voters are allowed to participate, Democrats win. Of course, the number one priority among Georgia Republicans is to make sure Black voters in the state are never allowed to vote in the number that they did on Tuesday ever again.

Voting was never easier in Georgia than in November’s presidential election. But it might not last.

Republican legislators plan to crack down on voting access after record turnout helped Democrat Joe Biden win Georgia, flipping the state after 24 years of GOP presidential wins.

They blame absentee ballots, used by 1.3 million Georgians who voted from home during the coronavirus pandemic. In all, 5 million people voted in the general election.

That era of widespread absentee voting will quickly come to an end if the Georgia General Assembly passes laws this year to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, ballot drop boxes and unsolicited absentee ballot application mailings, as Republicans have proposed.

When the legislative session begins Monday, Democrats are bracing for a wave of bills from the Republican majority that would make it harder to vote in the name of preventing potential fraud. There’s no credible evidence of absentee ballot fraud in Georgia’s general election besides isolated cases under investigation by the secretary of state’s office, election officials said.

“They lost, and now they want to change the rules to give themselves a competitive advantage,” said House Minority Leader James Beverly, a Democrat from Macon. “The pendulum swings, and people can see through this foolishness in the truest sense of suppression and disenfranchisement.”

Republicans say they need to protect election integrity from the possibility of cheating. Some of the legislators seeking to limit absentee voting also signed onto a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the state of Texas’ failed lawsuit to overturn Georgia’s election results.

State Sen. Burt Jones, a Republican from Jackson, said in-person voting is safer than depositing ballots in the mail or drop boxes.

“When you don’t have a secure chain of custody, particularly with drop boxes, there’s no reason for that to be in the process,” Jones said. “You’ve got three weeks of early voting and Saturday voting. You’ve given ample time and opportunities for people to get the effort to go in to vote.”

For Jones and his colleagues, the threat of illegitimate absentee voting outweighs the benefit of greater participation in democracy.

The popularity of absentee voting exploded last year amid the coronavirus pandemic. The voting method typically used by about 5% of voters rose to 26% in the 2020 presidential election.

More Republicans than Democrats voted absentee as recently as the 2018 primary, when voting by mail was often used by older Georgians. In November’s election, almost twice as many Democrats as Republicans returned absentee ballots after President Donald Trump ridiculed them, even though he himself has voted by mail.

Former Republican U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently wrote that absentee ballot drop boxes “make it harder for Republicans to win,” a claim that Democrats attacked as an acknowledgement that restricting voting is the GOP’s goal rather than fighting fraud.

“Expanding access to voting equals more people voting equals Republicans losing elections,” said state Rep. Bee Nguyen, a Democrat from Atlanta. “It’s the reality in Georgia that for many years we’ve seen more restrictive voting laws get passed, and that means Democrats need to work harder to overcome those restrictive voting laws.”

One of the proposals, backed by the Senate Majority Caucus and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, would end at-will absentee voting. Under a state law passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly in 2005, any registered voter is allowed to cast an absentee ballot.

Sixteen states require voters to provide an excuse if they want to vote outside a polling place, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Those excuses can include age, disability, sickness or travel.

Another restriction under consideration would be banning ballot drop boxes, authorized by rules the State Election Board approved last year to avoid the uncertainty of U.S. Postal Service delivery. In addition, Republican lawmakers say they want to require photo ID for absentee voting, ban early voting buses used in Fulton County, and prevent anyone from mailing absentee ballot request forms to voters, as Raffensperger did before the primary.

“It seems like there’s a coordinated effort to limit access to the ballot, and it’s not something we need after so many gains” in voting options last year, said Aunna Dennis, executive director for Common Cause Georgia, a government accountability organization. “We’re definitely going to be on the defensive.”

 

Republicans now know for sure after 2020 that they can't win elections with huge turnout, or that they can only win them up to a certain, gerrymandered point. Yes, they picked up a dozen House seats, but they lost four Senate seats now and the White House. 

So, never again. Voter suppression in Republican-controlled states are the future, turnout smashed below 50% by the tools of Jim Crow, to keep the last generation of white supremacists in power. And 2022 will prove that they still have a lot of state legislatures and gerrymandering to keep that power for another decade.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The Washington Post editorial board makes it clear that Donald J. Trump needs to go now.

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S refusal to accept his election defeat and his relentless incitement of his supporters led Wednesday to the unthinkable: an assault on the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob that overwhelmed police and drove Congress from its chambers as it was debating the counting of electoral votes. Responsibility for this act of sedition lies squarely with the president, who has shown that his continued tenure in office poses a grave threat to U.S. democracy. He should be removed.

Mr. Trump encouraged the mob to gather on Wednesday, as Congress was set to convene, and to “be wild.” After repeating a panoply of absurd conspiracy theories about the election, he urged the crowd to march on the Capitol. “We’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you,” he said. “You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.” The president did not follow the mob, but instead passively watched it on television as its members tore down fences around the Capitol and overwhelmed police guarding the building. House members and senators were forced to flee. Shots were fired, and at least one person was struck and killed.

Rather than immediately denouncing the violence and calling on his supporters to stand down, Mr. Trump issued two mild tweets in which he called on them to “remain” or “stay” peaceful. Following appeals from senior Republicans, he finally released a video in which he asked people to go home, but doubled down on the lies fueling the vigilantes. “We love you. You’re very special,” he told his seditious posse. Later, he excused the riot, tweeting that “these are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away.”

The president is unfit to remain in office for the next 14 days. Every second he retains the vast powers of the presidency is a threat to public order and national security. Vice President Pence, who had to be whisked off the Senate floor for his own protection, should immediately gather the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, declaring that Mr. Trump is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Congress, which would be required to ratify the action if Mr. Trump resisted, should do so. Mr. Pence should serve until President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

Failing that, senior Republicans must restrain the president. The insurrection came just as many top Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), were finally denouncing Mr. Trump’s antidemocratic campaign to overturn the election results. A depressing number of GOP legislators — such as Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (La.) — were prepared to support Mr. Trump’s effort, fueling the rage of those the president has duped into believing the election was stolen.

Mr. McConnell, to his lasting credit, was not. “President Trump claims the election was stolen,” he said. But “nothing before us proves illegality anywhere near the massive scale, the massive scale, that would have tipped the entire election. . . . If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral.” He added: “I will not pretend such a vote would be a harmless protest gesture while relying on others to do the right thing.” As if to prove his point, the Trump mob would soon climb up the Capitol walls, and Mr. McConnell and his colleagues would seek refuge in secured locations.

Now that the stakes are viscerally clear, Mr. McConnell and every other Republican, almost all of whom bear some blame for what occurred on Wednesday, have an overriding responsibility to the nation: stopping Mr. Trump and restoring faith in democracy. That began Wednesday night with the resumption of the congressional session and the continuance of the electoral vote count. Some of the lawmakers who sought to benefit from Mr. Trump’s mob-stoking rage suspended their cynical posturing — though they will always bear the stigma of having contributed to the day’s shameful events.

The chaos confirmed once again the voters’ wisdom in rejecting Mr. Trump in favor of Joe Biden. The president-elect rose to the moment. “I call on this mob, now, to pull back and allow the work of democracy to go forward,” Mr. Biden said. “It’s not protest. It’s insurrection.” He concluded: “Today is a reminder, a painful one, that democracy is fragile.”

Mr. Biden is right. Rules, norms, laws, even the Constitution itself are worth something only if people believe in them. Americans put on their seat belts, follow traffic laws, pay taxes and vote because of faith in a system — and that faith makes it work. The highest voice in the land incited people to break that faith, not just in tweets, but by inciting them to action. Mr. Trump is a menace, and as long as he remains in the White House, the country will be in danger.

 

He will go in 13 days. He should absolutely be removed sooner.

 

Last Call For The Coup-Coup Birds Take Flight, Con't

We're in a very scary place right now as a country, as a democracy, as a people. The insurrection today was planned openly, and online, with the goal of making the elector vote counting impossible to complete.

The supporters of President Donald Trump who rioted in the US Capitol building on Wednesday had been openly planning for weeks on both mainstream social media and the pro-Trump internet. On forums like TheDonald, a niche website formed after Reddit banned the subreddit of the same name, they promised violence against lawmakers, police, and journalists if Congress did not reject the results of the 2020 election.

In one interaction four days ago, a person on TheDonald asked, “What if Congress ignores the evidence?”

“Storm the Capitol,” one replied, which received more than 500 upvotes.

“You’re fucking right we do,” another said.

On pro-Trump social media website Parler, chat app Telegram, and other corners of the the far-right internet, people discussed the Capitol Hill rally at which Trump spoke as the catalyst for a violent insurrection. They have been using those forums to plan an uprising in plain sight, one that they executed Wednesday afternoon, forcing Congress to flee its chambers as it met to certify the results of the election.

“Extremists have for weeks repeatedly expressed their intentions to attend the January 6 protests, and unabashedly voiced their desire for chaos and violence online,” said Jared Holt, a visiting research fellow with DFRLab. “What we've witnessed is the manifestation of that violent online rhetoric into real-life danger.”

“The earliest call we got on our radar for today specifically was a militia movement chatroom talking about being ‘ready for blood’ if things didn't start changing for Trump,” Holt said.

Law enforcement, however, appeared unprepared for the scale of the violence on Wednesday. Capitol police were quickly overwhelmed, dramatically outnumbered by Trump supporters. While thousands of National Guard troops were posted throughout Washington, DC, during Black Lives Matter protests, the DC National Guard was not deployed Wednesday until well after the Capitol’s perimeters had been breached.

Hundreds of extremists' posts discussed bringing firearms in violation of Washington, DC, law. Nevertheless, people displayed weapons that they had brought with them.

“All this bullshit about not bringing guns to D.C. needs to stop,” read one post from Tuesday with more than 5,000 upvotes. “This is America. Fuck D.C. it's in the Constitution. Bring your goddamn guns.”


According to Advance Democracy, a nonprofit research organization, all corners of the social web were signaling imminent violence in the days leading up to the riot.

“On TheDonald, more than 50% of the top posts on January 4, 2021, about the January 6th Electoral College certification featured unmoderated calls for violence in the top five responses,” the organization found.

“ARMED WITH RIFLE, HANDGUN, 2 KNIVES AND AS MUCH AMMO AS YOU CAN CARRY,” one post on the website said.

This was also the case on Parler, ADI found. One account, with the name No Trump No Peace #GoTime, posted a GIF with a noose and a caption that said, “Who would you like to see 'dispatched' first? 1) Nancy Pelosi 2) John Roberts 3) Pence 4) other (please name) I was leaning towards Nancy, but it might have to be Pence.” (Two days after that post, a livestream of the violent mob standing outside Congress showed them chanting “Hang Mike Pence.”)

All of this was planned, it was communicated openly, and Capitol Police and the DoD, who would have been in charge of charge of the National Guard on federal grounds, went along with it. The terrorists were allowed to storm the Capitol building. 

 

the police opened the fucking gates. pic.twitter.com/HyDURXfoaB

— katie (@cevansavenger) January 6, 2021

 

They assisted in this mess. The terrorists streamed their "wacky adventures" live from the Capitol.

 

Streamers Nick Fuentes and Baked Alaska vandalizing Nancy Pelosi's office pic.twitter.com/8Rm5FFHeUE

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) January 6, 2021

 

The Capitol Police were taking selfies with the fucking terrorists, guys.

Cops are taking selfies with the terrorists. pic.twitter.com/EjkQ83h1p2

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) January 6, 2021

 

They literally looted the Capitol building, taking documents from House and Senate offices, the House and Senate floor, and other things.

 

Arrest this man. pic.twitter.com/cIYWMOFn6R

— Congressmember Bass (@RepKarenBass) January 6, 2021

 

There must be a cost tonight for those who made this insurrection happen.

 

That cost must be paid, or we are lost as a country.