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.

 

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

As I feared for and warned you about for years, the bloody Trump brownshirt violence is now fully upon us as armed white supremacist terrorists stormed the US Capitol building as VP Pence was evacuated and lawmakers hid in their offices.

Supporters of President Donald Trump have breached the US Capitol as lawmakers count the Electoral College votes certifying President-elect Joe Biden's win. 

Shortly after 1 p.m. ET hundreds of pro-Trump protesters pushed through barriers set up along the perimeter of the Capitol, where they tussled with officers in full riot gear, some calling the officers "traitors" for doing their jobs. About 90 minutes later, police said demonstrators got into the building and the doors to the House and Senate were being locked. Shortly after, the House floor was evacuated by police. 

Vice President Mike Pence was also evacuated from Capitol, where he was to perform his role in the counting of electoral votes. 

Video from inside the Capitol showed Trump supporters marching through Statuary Hall. The US Capitol Police is asking for additional law enforcement for assistance, including federal authorities, per a source familiar. 

The source says there are several suspicious devices outside the Capitol building. 

The Capitol police officer in the House chamber told lawmakers that they may need to duck under their chairs and informed lawmakers that protesters were in the building's Rotunda. 

While the White House refused to comment on the protests, Trump said on Twitter, "Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!" 

The protesters have breached exterior security barriers, and video footage shows protesters gathering and some clashing with police near the Capitol building. CNN's team on the ground saw a number of protestors trying to go up the side of the Capitol building. Several loud flash bangs have been heard. 

Protesters could be seen pushing against metal fences and police using the fences to push protesters back, while other officers reached over the top to club people trying to cross their lines. 

Flash bangs could be heard near the steps of the Capitol as smoke filled the air. In some instances officers could be seen deploying pepper spray. Tear gas has been deployed, but it's not clear whether by protesters or police, and people wiped tears from their eyes while coughing. 

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser just announced a citywide curfew from 6 p.m. ET on Wednesday until 6 a.m. ET Thursday. 

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Chaos.

This is America. 

 

This. Is. What. Trump. Called. For. 

 

This. Is. What. Trump. Wanted. 

 

This. Is. What. Republican. Cowardice. Enabled. 

 

This is America.

The Georgia Gambit, Con't

 We did it.

Republicans, who enabled President Trump with their silence and compliance, are privately furious with him for blowing their Senate majority.

Driving the news: Democrat Raphael Warnock was declared victor over Sen. Kelly Loeffler in one of the twin Georgia runoffs at 2 a.m., and will become the Southern state's first Black senator. Democrat Jon Ossoff is on track to beat former Sen. David Perdue in the other runoff, with most of the outstanding votes in Democratic strongholds.

That second victory would mean Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer becomes effective majority leader, taking power from Mitch McConnell. In a 50-50 Senate, Vice President-elect Harris would break ties.

Why it matters: It's a fitting and predictable end to Trump’s reign. The party has now lost the House, Senate and White House on his watch. He leaves Democrats in full control of Washington's agenda, with only the Supreme Court's conservative majority as a counterweight. 

As a curtain call for Trumpism, approximately a dozen senators and 100+ House Republicans today will publicly support an idea that many of them think is idiotic and doomed to fail, as they protest congressional certification of President-elect Biden's victory.

 

We got the Senate back.

Last Call For The Brawl For It All

The Republican Civil War begins in earnest this week, and while I expect Trump's coup attempt to fail, the Trumpies and the never Trump GOP are going to be at each other's throats, and the trick for the rest of us is not to be caught in the inevitable collateral damage.

 

In the coming days, that MAGA revenge complex could target everyone from low-level members of Congress to Vice President Mike Pence, as Congress meets on Jan. 6 to formally certify Biden’s victory. “Republicans,” Trump warned on Twitter, “NEVER FORGET!” speaking to lawmakers who have said they will not oppose Biden’s certification. And Trump allies are plotting to fund potential pro-MAGA primary challengers to oust those disloyal Republicans.

“We’ll put some money behind” trying to oust these Republicans, said Alex Bruesewitz, one of the organizers of Stop the Steal, an organization linked to high-profile MAGA personalities that is helping organize a major Jan. 6 pro-Trump rally in Washington.

The swift move to vengeance offers a preview of how Trump and his MAGA community plan to reshape the GOP in the coming months — creating Trump loyalty tests for Republicans, then working to evict anyone who doesn’t fall in line. The goal is to identify those who are most worthy of inheriting the MAGA base with Trump out of office. But the result may be that no one except Trump can rally the MAGA coalition.

“I think that Trump and his supporters in the base, or his supporters in the Republican Party, are going to continue to be a big part of the party for the foreseeable future, including in 2022,” said Alex Conant, a GOP political consultant and the former communications director for Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. “Most congressmen don't wake up in the morning worried about their general election. They worry about their primary.”

At the moment, Trump is focused on eviscerating Raffensperger, who has rebuffed Trump’s attempts to subvert the Georgia election results — and so, too, is his base.

While Trump’s allies launched a normal fusillade of personal attacks against Raffensperger — former House Speaker and Trump ally Newt Gingrich called him “anti-Republican” — they also called for criminal charges. Some suggested it had been illegal for the call to be recorded, even though Georgia law only requires one party in a conversation to consent to an audio recording. Others went further.

“Traitors in our midst,” tweeted Chanel Rion, White House correspondent at the pro-Trump outlet OAN, along with the hashtag “#InvestigateRaffensperger.”

Next, MAGA attention will focus on Capitol Hill, where Congress will meet on Jan. 6 in a joint session to formally certify November’s presidential election. Pence will oversee the proceedings as vice president. Historically, the gathering is an afterthought, a noncontroversial rubber stamp on an already settled outcome.

But in the Trump era, the president, scores of Republicans and throngs of his supporters are insisting that lawmakers should refuse to sign off on the results, incorrectly arguing that the election was rigged.

Trump-supporting entities are trying to concoct novel constitutional powers that Pence could wield at the last minute from his largely ministerial perch, which mostly involves opening the envelopes with each state’s Electoral College votes, and then handing them to a secretary for recording. Alexander Macris, a video game writer who became known for his role in Gamergate, the online harassment campaign targeting women, suggested in a viral essay that Pence could re-interpret the 1877 Electoral Count Act in a way that would allow him to simply not count the votes.

Edward Foley, the director of the Election Law Project at Ohio State University, flatly rejected the interpretation.

“I mean, it was raised in the 19th century, but it’s never been accepted in the sense that the Supreme Court's never adopted it. It's never even prevailed at Congress,” he said.

That hasn’t stopped pro-Trump outlets like The Gateway Pundit from making tantalizing offers directed at Pence.“Pence can place himself in the history books alongside Thomas Jefferson or he can sign off on the destruction of the United States as we know it,” read an op-ed on the site.

Others have traded carrots for sticks: Prominent conspiratorial-minded figures, such as pro-Trump Georgia lawyer Lin Wood, claimed that Pence could be arrested, tried for treason and executed by firing squad if he did not act on Trump’s behalf. And out in the wilds of the QAnon conspiracy community, the process might not even matter: Pence, some argued, might be a body double, put in place by a Satanic cabal to further its plots.

Lawmakers in Congress, meanwhile, have different concerns on their hands: Many will soon seek reelection. And for a certain brand of politician, going MAGA is the safest bet.

“Most of these people that won during the [2020] primaries, they said, ‘I'm the most like Trump.’ And that's why most of them won their primaries,” said Breusewitz, the Stop the Steal organizer. “And so if they go back, the voters will hold them accountable.” 

 

 

Some 25 years ago, Newt Gingrich took over with his Contract With America. Ten years ago, it was the Tea Party and Birthers who displaced them. Now, the MAGA revenge complex, as Politico's Tina Nguyen puts it in the above article, is running the show. I expect the battle to be brief and bloody. Trump will still be ringmaster of the GOP circus after he's kicked out of the White House and the smoke clears.

The real problem, again, remains the potential for breathtaking violence over the next month.

 

Georgia On Everyone's Mind

Kyle Kondik of Sabato's Crystal Ball gives us the forecast for today's Georgia Senate runoffs, the question being whether the GOP can muster enough turnout today to break the Dems' early voting lead.

With Election Day voting underway in the crucial Senate runoffs in Georgia, we continue to see both races as Toss-ups. But after an early-voting period where Democrats may have performed better than they did in the lead-up to the November election, Republicans may need to follow suit with an impressive day-of-election performance to defend Sens. David Perdue (R-GA) and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) against challengers Jon Ossoff (D) and Raphael Warnock (D), respectively.

Georgians have cast roughly 3 million votes so far in the contest through early in-person and mail-in voting. Even without accounting for any Election Day votes, this is an impressive turnout, about 60% of the roughly 5 million votes cast in Georgia’s high-turnout November election.

The last time Georgia had a Senate runoff, in 2008, only 2.1 million votes were cast compared to 3.9 million votes cast for president in the general election. So a dozen years ago, turnout in the runoff was just a little more than half that of the general election, and then-Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) won the runoff by 15 points after leading in the November vote by just three points.

The turnout in these runoffs as a percentage of the general election vote is going to be markedly higher than in 2008. The key question is how much higher.

The votes cast before Election Day in these Senate runoffs may be more Democratic leaning than those cast before the November general election. Perhaps the most encouraging data point for Democrats is that the Black voter share of the pre-Election Day vote is up a few points from the pre-Election Day Black vote in the general election. Given that Black voters overwhelmingly support Democrats, any increase in the Black share of the electorate is very important.

Democrats probably need a better electorate in the runoff than they got in November, because even though Biden narrowly won, Perdue ran a little under two points ahead of Ossoff in his election, and the combined Republican vote outpaced the combined Democratic vote in the jungle primary special election by about a point. In other words, if the two Senate elections held in November had been conventional contests with a single Democrat facing a single Republican with no runoff, Perdue would have been reelected and a Republican very well could have won the other race, too.

In the general election, about 80% of all votes were cast before Election Day. Joe Biden won this chunk of votes by about six points. Donald Trump won the Election Day votes by 23 points, which got him within a few tenths of a percentage point of winning, but he fell short. If Democrats have done better in the pre-Election Day vote this time, then Republicans either need to win the Election Day vote by more than Trump did, or have the Election Day electorate make up a bigger share of the total votes cast (and still vote heavily Republican).

Could this happen? Sure. It may be that some Republicans who voted before Election Day in the general election will switch to day-of voting this time, perhaps in response to President Trump’s endless and unfounded complaints about the integrity of the Georgia election — complaints he reiterated in an Election Eve Georgia rally last night. More broadly, the voting patterns and methods of a post-holiday runoff may be different than those of a general election.

This may be an oversimplification, but our sense is that if total turnout runs north of 4 million, and particularly if it’s clearly more than 4 million, the Republicans probably are getting a large enough Election Day turnout to win. If turnout runs south of 4 million, the Democrats may be in good shape given their likely advantage in the votes already cast, which constitute a healthy chunk of the eventual total. Our uncertainty about what the turnout ultimately will be is why we’ve decided to keep both races as Toss-ups.

Polling hasn’t provided much clarity beyond reinforcing a Toss-up rating: Democrats have led more often than Republicans, but often only by a little, with some polls showing a dead tie. Much has been made of how the president’s efforts to question the legitimacy of the election will affect the behavior of Republican voters in the runoff. Will his complaints motivate Republicans to show up on Election Day, powering Republicans to victory and saving the GOP Senate majority? Or will they depress Republican turnout, either because a crucial number of GOP voters will believe that their votes don’t matter or because the president’s outrageous behavior — as once again demonstrated in a weekend phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) — has turned off even some of his own electorate or pushed some cross-pressured voters to the Democrats. This, too, is a question mark, and it may have bearing on future Republican behavior. If Republicans lose the runoffs, and with them the Senate, it may push Republican leaders to distance themselves from the outgoing president and his rhetoric. If Republicans hold the seats and generate a high turnout, the lesson for Republicans may be that the president’s rage is a powerful electoral motivator even when he isn’t on the ballot himself.

Remember, Democrats need to sweep both races to forge a 50-50 Senate that they would control through Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ (D) tiebreaking vote. Holding just one of the seats would be good enough for Republicans to retain a 51-49 majority (or 52-48 if they hold both). We do expect both races to break toward the same party, although there could be a split decision if both races are very close.

I've already predicted wins by both Ossoff and Warnock last week, not because of wishful thinking, but because Mitch McConnell will block everything if he remains in power and openly continue to sabotage the country otherwise, and people know it.

I think Georgia will surprise the country today. 

Suddenly, Republicans Want Police Stopped

 Because of course enforcing laws on Republicans is tyranny.

Washington, D.C.'s police chief said Monday he intends to reach out to GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert about her intention to carry a Glock handgun in the city, which has strict limits on carrying concealed firearms.

Chief Robert Contee III, when asked during a press conference about the newly elected Colorado lawmaker’s plan to carry a gun to the Capitol, said he wants to ensure that "she is aware of the what the laws of the District of Columbia are."

"That Congresswoman will be subjected to the same penalties as anyone else that’s caught on the D.C. streets carrying a firearm," Contee said.

Boebert has made no secret of her intent to bring a handgun to the Capitol complex, where lawmakers are exempt from otherwise strict prohibitions on firearms, so long as they're stored in the members' offices and transported safely and unloaded. Democrats considered a change to the rules that would have barred even members of Congress from bringing guns to the Capitol, but the rules package introduced by House leaders last week included no change to the policy.

The current guidelines for weapons in the Capitol is set by the Capitol Police Board, which includes the sergeants-at-arms of the House and Senate, the architect of the Capitol and the chief of the Capitol Police. Lawmakers have been exempted by the board from the restrictions for decades.

Boebert drew attention to her plans for carrying a weapon on Sunday, when she posted a video on social media declaring her intention to carry her gun in Congress.

"Government does NOT get to tell me or my constituents how we are allowed to keep our families safe," she said.

 

That's the problem with entirely performative politics, eventually you run across somebody who doesn't give a damn about the performance part and it collides with cold, hard reality.

Now if Boebert wants to spend a few months in jail, it's going to make it hard to vote, especially if she's charged with felonious possession of a firearm.

Should be fun to watch how quickly she backs down.

StupidiNews!

• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a national lockdown to fight a new highly infectious strain of COVID-19, the lockdown is expected to last for at least six weeks.
• The US Attorney for Northern Georgia, Byung "BJ" Pak, has resigned suddenly due to what are only being called "unforeseen circumstances".
• The Trump regime says a "breakthrough" has been achieved in settling a nearly four-year terrorism dispute between Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Bahrain against Qatar.
• Both President-elect Joe Biden and Donald Trump attended in-person rallies in Georgia last night ahead of today's Georgia senate runoffs, some 3 million have already voted early.
  
• Ticketmaster has agreed to a ten million dollar fine as the company admitted in court that it hacked rival Songkick before putting it out of business in 2017.
  

Last Call For A Star, Chamber

With NOLA-area Congressman Cedric Richmond joining the Biden administration, the state is having a special election for his seat this spring and one very notable candidate has thrown his hat into the ring: Black activist Gary Chambers, who breaks out with this spectacular ad.

I know we've seen great introduction ads in the last two years, from AOC, from Jaime Harrison, from Cori Bush and others, (with widely varying levels of success and effectiveness) but I believe Chambers has a real shot at being a winner here. The seat isn't in any danger for the Dems being NOLA's House seat, and we need it filled ASAP. Any Dem would win on the general election ballot, so I'd like to see it filled with someone like Chambers.

We'll see how far he goes.

The Defense Of The Republic

All ten living ex-Secretaries of Defense, including Republicans Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Chuck Hagel, Mark Esper, and Jim Mattis, have signed onto an op-ed warning current acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller that the election is over, and that the US military cannot be used for whatever Trump may be planning in the coup department.

The U.S. presidential election, and the time for questioning its results, are over, all 10 living former secretaries of defense wrote in a forceful op-ed published on Sunday.

"Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted," the 10 men from both Republican and Democratic administrations wrote.

"The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived," they said.

The bipartisan group of leaders published the letter in The Washington Post as President Trump continues to deny his election loss to President-elect Joe Biden. On Saturday, during a one-hour phone call, Trump even pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" votes to overturn his defeat.

Former Secretaries of Defense Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld signed the opinion piece.

Two Pentagon heads who served under Trump — Jim Mattis and Mark Esper — also signed it. Trump removed Esper in November as part of a major shakeup at the Department of Defense.

The op-ed comes as some Republican lawmakers in Congress plan this week to formally object to the certification of the Nov. 3 presidential election results.

Since the vote, Trump and his attorneys have repeatedly asserted false claims of voter fraud and blamed, without evidence, that his loss to Biden was due to widespread irregularities. But his insistence that the election was stolen has led to some speculation he could somehow use the military to remain in office past Biden's Jan. 20 inauguration.

The 10 signatories made it clear that any effort to involve U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take the country "into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory."

They wrote, "Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic."

Former Defense Secretary Perry, who served under President Bill Clinton, wrote on Twitter that the idea for the statement originated with Cheney, a Republican who served under President George W. Bush as vice president and President George H.W. Bush as secretary of defense.

"Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party," Perry tweeted, reiterating the op-ed's lines.

 

We're really to this point, folks. 

 

Understand that war criminals like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't be saying a word about this if they didn't believe there was a credible chance that Trump would resort to using the US military in a coup d'etat. To me, that means Trump has certainly called them and asked them about the possibility already, and this is their very public response.

Mark Esper signing this means that he believes the threat is real, because, again, he was almost certainly asked to do this. Same with Mad Dog Mattis. Imagine the phone call recorded Saturday by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and do the math from there.

 

Trump isn't fundraising, guys. He's trying to stay in power through whatever means necessary. Just because the coup attempt is ham-handed and obvious doesn't mean that it's not a serious and dangerous one if enough enablers allow it to happen. 

 

Eric Edelman, a former ambassador to Turkey and undersecretary of Defense for George W. Bush who endorsed Biden for president, said he organized the letter after talking to Cheney.

“I talk periodically to Cheney,” Edelman recalled in an interview Sunday. “This summer, when I was starting to get ready to help organize the national security Republicans who endorsed Biden, along with Sean O'Keefe, who was [Cheney’s] secretary of the Navy … I was talking to him about this on and off and expressing my concerns about Trump, much of which he shared.”

“When the David Ignatius piece came out,” Edelman continued, "that was alarming. It was not inconsistent with conversations I had with Esper after he resigned, in term of concerns about what might be going on with this clown car of people that they’ve got over there around Miller.

“When you are a former senior official, people you know are still there, you hear stuff,” he added. “I'd heard things that were eerily similar to what was in the Ignatius column.”

 

I said last month that Trump was gathering civilian Pentagon officials who wanted him to use the Insurrection Act to overturn the election. It's well past time we start taking that seriously.

 

Deadly seriously. 

Back To The Business Of Giving The Business

Good morning.

We're back to normal as of today.

 

Normal in America also means Donald Trump is expected to hand out two more Presidential Medals of Freedom to his House GOP flunkies.

President Trump on Monday is expected to give Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, according to someone familiar with the plans.

Nunes is a close ally of the president, and one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in his quest to undermine the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

During an interview with “Fox & Friends” in October 2018, Trump criticized the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and praised Nunes, then the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who had repeatedly accused FBI and Justice Department investigators of being biased against Trump. In the Fox News interview, Trump initially — and incorrectly — called for Nunes to receive the Medal of Honor, which is awarded for acts of military valor, before correcting himself and suggesting that Nunes receive the Medal of Freedom.

“What he’s gone through, and his bravery, he should get a very important medal,” Trump said.

Nunes has long supported some of Trump’s more outlandish conspiracy theories, including claiming that the intelligence community improperly “unmasked” the identities of several officials working on Trump’s presidential transition.

Trump — who is using his final days in the White House in part to reward friends and allies with pardons and other decorations — is also expected to give Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), another confidant, the same award next week, although those plans have not yet been finalized.

 

At this point, the Presidential Medal of Freedom should be renamed the "Presidential Medal of Patronage".

 

It's an insult to anyone who received one previously to 2017, and anyone who has gotten one from Trump should send it back to the White House in pieces.

 

 

StupidiNews!

• A suspect now in police custody in the killing of a church pastor in Texas on Sunday had previously eluded a manhunt on Saturday, a second victim remains hospitalized.
• Media interview giant Larry King remains hospitalized in Los Angeles with COVID-19, King was admitted over the weekend for symptoms of the disease.
• The Trump FDA is considering cutting COVID-19 vaccine doses in half for those under 55 in order to immunize twice as many people.
• Nancy Pelosi has been reelected House Speaker by a narrow margin, getting 216 of the 214 vote needed on Sunday, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy received 209 votes.
• The Human Genome Project turned 30 in 2020, scientists took 13 years to map the human genome and revolutionize medicine across the planet.
  

Orange Meltdown, Con't

As the clock ticks away and Donald Trump's regime comes closer to its endgame, we're now seeing Trump openly pushing his GOP enablers to produce a "win" for him, or they will be crucified by his brownshirts.

President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected his assertions, explaining that Trump is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 12,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

Trump dismissed their arguments.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

Raffensperger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

At another point, Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

The rambling, at times incoherent conversation, offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office.

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, a phrase he repeated again and again on the call. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

Several of his allies were on the line as he spoke, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a prominent GOP lawyer whose involvement with Trump’s efforts had not been previously known.

In a statement, Mitchell said that Raffensperger’s office “has made many statements over the past two months that are simply not correct and everyone involved with the efforts on behalf of the President’s election challenge has said the same thing: show us your records on which you rely to make these statements that our numbers are wrong.” 

The White House, the Trump campaign and Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Raffensperger’s office declined to comment.

 

This isn't the first time Trump has gone after state officials demanding they "find" more votes for him. Hell, this isn't even the first time Trump has personally leaned on Brad Raffensperger of Georgia demanding that he steal the election for him.

 

And yes, Trump made it crystal clear what the consequences will be if Raffensperger doesn't deliver, saying in the call that Raffensperger would "certainly never be elected again".

 

Again, the Washington Post has audio of the entire conference call. At one point Trump suggested that nobody would question Raffensperger if he simply told the world that he just had to "recalculate" the vote totals.

We've got Trump on tape, cold, actually trying to blackmail the Secretary of State in Georgia to steal the election for him. This should be the end of him, 25th Amendment, Mike Pence and the cabinet remove Trump. But it won't be, because every single Republican still remaining in Trump's corner is just as fascist and corrupt as he is, and the ones that haven't left the party yet are just waiting for a more competent white supremacist fascist to follow into a new era of Jim Crow.

And very soon, we'll get that person.

Sunday Long Read: Pandemic, The Sequel

The Atlantic's Ed Yong takes us through the a preview of COVID-19 as the Biden years open, and the short version is that we still have several months of hell ahead of us, and a death toll in 2021 that I've already predicted will greatly surpass 2020's 330,000 dead, if not easily triple it.

The influenza pandemic that began in 1918 killed as many as 100 million people over two years. It was one of the deadliest disasters in history, and the one all subsequent pandemics are now compared with.

At the time, The Atlantic did not cover it. In the immediate aftermath, “it really disappeared from the public consciousness,” says Scott Knowles, a disaster historian at Drexel University. “It was swamped by World War I and then the Great Depression. All of that got crushed into one era.” An immense crisis can be lost amid the rush of history, and Knowles wonders if the fracturing of democratic norms or the economic woes that COVID-19 set off might not subsume the current pandemic. “I think we’re in this liminal moment of collectively deciding what we’re going to remember and what we’re going to forget,” says Martha Lincoln, a medical anthropologist at San Francisco State University.

The coronavirus pandemic ignited at the end of 2019 and blazed across 2020. Many countries repeatedly contained it. The United States did not. At least 19 million Americans have been infected. At least 326,000 have died. The first two surges, in the spring and summer, plateaued but never significantly subsided. The third and worst is still ongoing. In December, an average of 2,379 Americans have died every day of COVID-19—comparable to the 2,403 who died in Pearl Harbor and the 2,977 who died in the 9/11 attacks. The virus now has so much momentum that more infection and death are inevitable as the second full year of the pandemic begins. “There will be a whole lot of pain in the first quarter” of 2021, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told me.

But that pain could soon start to recede. Two vaccines have been developed and approved in less time than many experts predicted, and are more effective than they dared hope. Joe Biden, the incoming president, has promised to push for measures that health specialists have championed in vain for months. He has filled his administration and COVID-19 task force with seasoned scientists and medics. His chief of staff, Ron Klain, coordinated America’s response to the Ebola outbreak of 2014. His pick for CDC director, Rochelle Walensky, is a widely respected infectious-disease doctor and skilled communicator. The winter months will still be abyssally dark, but every day promises to bring a little more light.

On the Fourth of July, Ashish Jha wants to host a barbecue at his house in Newton, Massachusetts. By then, the state expects to have rolled out COVID-19 vaccines to anyone who wants one. The process will be bumpy, but Jha is hopeful. He thinks that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus will still be spreading within the U.S., but at a simmer rather than this winter’s calamitous boil. He expects to keep all his guests outside, where the risk of transmission is substantially lower. If it starts raining, they could come indoors after putting on masks. “It won’t be normal, but it won’t be like Fourth of July 2020,” says Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. “I think that’s when it’ll start to feel like we’re no longer in a pandemic.”

Many of the 30 epidemiologists, physicians, immunologists, sociologists, and historians whom I interviewed for this piece are cautiously optimistic that the U.S. is headed for a better summer. But they emphasized that such a world, though plausible, is not inevitable. Its realization hinges on successfully executing the most complicated vaccination program in U.S. history, on persuading a frayed and fractured nation to continue using masks and avoiding indoor crowds, on countering the growing quagmire of misinformation, and on successfully monitoring and countering changes in the virus itself. “Think about next summer as a marker for when we might be able to breathe again,” said Loyce Pace, the executive director of a nonprofit called the Global Health Council and a member of Biden’s COVID-19 task force. “But there’s almost a year’s worth of work that needs to happen in those six months.”

The pandemic will end not with a declaration, but with a long, protracted exhalation. Even if everything goes according to plan, which is a significant if, the horrors of 2020 will leave lasting legacies. A pummeled health-care system will be reeling, short-staffed, and facing new surges of people with long-haul symptoms or mental-health problems. Social gaps that were widened will be further torn apart. Grief will turn into trauma. And a nation that has begun to return to normal will have to decide whether to remember that normal led to this. “We’re trying to get through this with a vaccine without truly exploring our soul,” said Mike Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.

 

The damage from the Trump regime is so great that it will take us months just to dig out of the hole they left us in, and we'll be replacing the space in that hole with hundreds of thousands of American dead.

HoliDaze: Orange Meltdown

The Senate GOP is moving on in a world where Mitch McConnell is in charge of the Republican Party, and not Donald Trump.

The Senate on Friday overrode President Donald Trump's veto of a $741 billion defense policy bill, delivering a rare bipartisan rebuke to the commander in chief in his administration's waning days.

Senators voted 81 to 13 to enact the annual National Defense Authorization Act, well above the two-thirds majority needed to overturn the presidential veto. The House voted to override Trump by a wide margin on Monday.

The override is the first of Trump's term, handing the outgoing president a stinging loss in his showdown with Congress. Lawmakers in both parties banded together to defy the White House despite Republicans' wariness of crossing Trump throughout his term — and with many even supporting his efforts to contest the outcome of the election he lost.

"Today’s vote sent a clear message that Congress will not allow President Trump to stand in the way of that support, and I’m relieved the critical bipartisan priorities we fought for will become law," Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), said in a statement after the vote.

Republicans could have torpedoed the bill if enough GOP senators had switched their votes to side with Trump. But no one changed their vote from when the bill was originally passed three weeks ago. Seven Republicans, five Democrats and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders opposed the measure after also voting against it last month.

Trump vetoed the defense measure, H.R. 6395 (116), because it didn’t include his demand to repeal legal protections for social media companies. His 11th hour demand to repeal the liability shield, known as Section 230, was largely sidestepped by lawmakers because it isn't a national security issue.

Trump also opposes several other major provisions in the bill, including a measure that would force the renaming of military bases that honor former Confederate leaders over a three-year period, authored by progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The White House also opposed provisions that would limit his push to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Europe.

Trump has also argued the bill is a gift to China, contradicting many Republican lawmakers who contend it is toughest defense legislation Congress has passed regarding Beijing in years. The bill, for instance, sets aside $2.2 billion for a new Pacific Deterrence Initiative to boost the U.S. military presence and deter China in the Indo-Pacific region.

Several big things there: 

First, the Senate GOP is hanging Trump out to dry in his final, pitiful days as a wannabe tyrant. He no longer commands the party...well, at least not 100% like he did even a few weeks ago. 

Second, as I said, the Senate GOP will mostly still be here in a Biden administration. We'll see if that means Mitch is the majority leader...or minority leader.

Third, the Trump loyalists in the House and Senate can still make things tough on those who voted to override on January 6th. It's going to be a day of ugly, ugly spectacle on Wednesday.

Finally, there's a specific reason Trump vetoed this bill, and it had nothing to do with any of the reasons he's stated.

An historic anti-corruption measure ending anonymous companies in the United States became law on Friday, capping a more than decade-long campaign by transparency advocates, after both Chambers of Congress voted to override the president’s veto of the annual defense bill. The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, which led the organizing effort, praised the enactment of the Corporate Transparency Act, which was included in the National Defense Authorization Act.

Ian Gary, executive director of the FACT Coalition, issued the following statement:

“After more than a decade-long campaign to end the formation of anonymous shell companies that are abused by the criminal and the corrupt, the United States has enacted historic reforms to protect Americans and our financial system from abuse. We applaud Senate and House lawmakers for passing this critical, bipartisan anti-corruption reform by overwhelming margins. We look forward to working with the incoming Biden Administration to ensure the strong and timely implementation of the new law.

“For years, experts routinely ranked anonymous shell companies — where the true, ‘beneficial’ owners are unknown — as the biggest weakness in our anti-money laundering safeguards. Virtually every national security expert, law enforcement official, and human rights advocate that looked at the issue called for an end to anonymous companies. It’s the single most important step we could take to better protect our financial system from abuse.

“For more than a decade, the FACT Coalition and our members have worked tirelessly to assemble a powerful alliance of ideologically-diverse constituencies to back an end to anonymous companies. Supporters of transparency eventually included hundreds of national security experts, police and prosecutors, banks and credit unions, CEOs, the real estate sector, large businesses, small business owners, faith groups, anti-human trafficking groups, human rights organizations, global development NGOs, anti-corruption advocates, labor unions, and conservative and liberal think tanks. The campaign was so successful that the State of Delaware and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — both of which had previously opposed reform — ultimately endorsed transparency.

Now, who do you know who would be massively upset by a new law targeting anonymous shell companies to go after international money-laundering operations in the US, and whose company is already under state investigation for possible tax fraud and financial crimes?

Trump basically has to pardon himself now or he's absolutely going to face the feds hungry to go after him with this new law. He may never be charged by the DoJ (and almost certainly won't be) but it'll expose him as the fraud andster he is to the world, and he can't have that.

Either way though, Trump knows he's in dire trouble and has only days remaining...

HoliDaze: Sedition Edition

House Republicans are apparently planning to make good on their efforts to disrupt the counting of electoral votes on Wednesday, and Senate Republican Josh Hawley of Missouri is going to make his GOP colleagues follow up on it, presenting a gigantic mess for Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence and America.

Two Republican members of the House of Representatives tell CNN that they expect at least 140 of their GOP colleagues in the House to vote against counting the electoral votes on January 6 when Congress is expected to certify President-elect Joe Biden's victory. 

President Donald Trump's Republican allies have virtually zero chance of changing the result, only to delay by a few hours the inevitable affirmation of Biden as the Electoral College winner and the next president. 

There have been no credible allegations of any issues with voting that would have impacted the election, as affirmed by dozens of judges, governors, election officials, the Electoral College, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the US Supreme Court. But Trump is determined to claim he didn't lose -- which he did, significantly -- and many GOP politicians either share his delusion or fear provoking his wrath -- even if that means voting to undermine democracy. 

Both a House member and senator are required to mount an objection when Congress counts the votes. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said Wednesday he will object, which will force lawmakers in both the House and Senate to vote on whether to accept the results of Biden's victory. Other senators -- including incoming ones -- could still join that effort, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has privately urged Republicans not to do. 

Trump has been pushing for Congress to try to overturn the election result as his campaign's attempts to overturn the election through the courts have been repeatedly rejected. 

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse spoke out against that strategy -- and the complicity of some of his GOP colleagues -- in a Facebook post Wednesday night, urging Republicans to "reject" the effort to object to the certification process.

"The president and his allies are playing with fire," he wrote. "They have been asking -- first the courts, then state legislatures, now the Congress -- to overturn the results of a presidential election. They have unsuccessfully called on judges and are now calling on federal officeholders to invalidate millions and millions of votes. If you make big claims, you had better have the evidence. But the president doesn't and neither do the institutional arsonist members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote." 

Let's not forget that these GOP terrorists are aiding and abetting Trump's attempts at sedition and treason, and should be roundly punished as such. The true goal of course is to make Biden's first days and weeks so impossible, with the very real threat of widespread terrorist violence, that for "the good of the nation" Biden asks New York to drop their investigation into Trump, or better yet, to cut Trump a deal that he can immediately blab to the press, guaranteeing a Democratic collapse in 2022 and opening the door to a triumphant Trump "return" in 2024.

It's pretty awful, and there's a very good chance that enough violence will happen that the press will screech at Biden to give in to Trump on everything.

But yeah, that's a topic for next week.