My stomach just did a flip when I read this: “… Peter Navarro’s claim that he, Trump, and Trump loyalist Steve Bannon had a peaceful plan to overturn the election and that the three of them were “the last three people on God’s good Earth who wanted to see violence erupt on Capitol Hill.”
As if having a peaceful plan to overturn the election makes it ok?? My god! And he has all but admitted to the scheme in writing! WTF more is it going to take to lock these guys up?
And as a follow on to my earlier thought about the 3 Supremes....if Trump did call any of them...will they open their judicial robes and recuse themselves from the decision to release his phone records? Of course he wants them to decide. If they did talk directly with Trump or any Trump official about their plan...will we see Supremes being deposed by the Jan 6 committee? Holy cow it would make a great movie.
I try not to be pejorative. Merely, a self-styled support group for the perpetuation of circular thought pretenting to be brilliant, to each other. But I fail sometimes. Evidence be damned, it is our beliefs, well fed by the crackers and cheese of time, that matters, I suggest as their core approach to constitutional and democratic scholarship. Darn, there I go failing again. So, yes.
It may take 50 or more years like it did for all the Nixon garbage to really get out. And there are still people who won’t believe it or - at least - let others believe it.
If Nixon had somehow been returned to power after his resignation, 50 years would not have been nearly enough, and much of the evidence would have been destroyed or accidentally "lost" like the 18 minute Oval Office recording. If Trump or his minions return to the majority in 2022, and especially if he or a successor return to the Presidency in 2024, it's a pretty safe bet that Trump's post-election actions will be fully lost to history.
I know you’re right. These are precarious times. I travel to see relative s and even when they agree with me, few of them are well-informed. It’s mind boggling to see!
I saw an interesting tweet with video this morning that relates to this point. The video features Michael Ravi Sherman, former Assistant United States Attorney, speaking at a podium with the seal of United States Department of Justice behind him. The “Former” in his title is misleading. He is now so, but he held that position until March 2021. So he is speaking officially in this video.
The video is from the week after the January 6 insurrection.
Sherman says, “Just yesterday our office formed a strike force of very senior National Security prosecutors and Public Corruption prosecutors. Their only marching orders from me are to build seditious and corruption charges relating to the most heinous acts that occurred in the Capitol…that have felonies with prison terms of up to twenty years.”
Mr. Sherman was appointed by Trump.
Lawrence Tribe, American legal scholar and Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, questions in a subsequent tweet, “Where ARE these charges of seditious conspiracy?”
There has not been a single charge of that ilk to date. I am a nobody who shoots from the hip in my fairly frequent criticisms of Merrick Garland’s leadership at the DOJ. But I’ll take Lawrence Tribe’s word that something is badly amiss.
Democracy appears to be holding from a single thread - the House Committee. That thread has the look of being made of Kevlar. The Committee has been magnificent, both dogged and strategic.
But they have no power to bring anyone to justice. For that, the “strike force” at the DOJ is needed.
The key is the House Committee has no power, hence the urgency to move things to the DOJ ASAP and then they have to move expeditiously and while working within the rule of law also not take any crap or put up with any unfounded attempts by the criminal cabal to stall. Getting these criminals into a court of law is where the rubber meets the road! And, broadcast the trials!
You’re not a nobody to me, Eric. Like so many many people in this community, you are smart, principled, savvy, with deep insight into these issues. Thank you so much for your participation here.
Thank you for expressing this so well and so succinctly. I had to go back and reread that section to see if I had misunderstood. I can’t process the idea that a “peaceful” undoing of a fair election is being put forward as a defense. Trump, Stone, Bannon and Navarro must be prosecuted.
Here is another stomach turning thought. Peter has basically flat out said that 100 congressman were in on this and agreed to play their part along with Trump and his other advisors. Is it, knowing Trump's lack of shame, unreasonable to think he also made calls to his supreme court appointees to be sure of their support, if this plan actually had succeeded? Clearly they thought they would have it after they had ripped the heart out of democracy as "peacefully" as they were intending. Stone was clearly Trump's back up plan to Pence's refusal to run the play. Stone knew they were going to need to storm the capital and pulled the pin early rather than wait 24 hours - ever eager to be the hero of the GOP.
But. It. Didn't. Work. Everything they did was despicable and criminal. But it didn't work the way they wanted it to. They have demonstrated that have no respect for the Law or the Constitution. For that they need to be held criminally responsible, removed from office, and/or not be allowed to serve in any political office ever again. Then Citizens United needs to be struck down to close that avenue.
Thankfully it didn't work! It is quite plausible that Trump was supportung both sides of the Bannon, Trump, Stone triangle. That Navarro and Bannon hate Stone probably isn't even true and is irrelevant. Trump and his minions plotted a coup PERIOD! I think we are beginning to hear the story we will be told during the public hearings beginning in January. Trump was in charge and okayed the coup. He thought what he watched on TV was really working. He was giving Stone's people time to overcome the police. The Fox TV people got scared because they saw the optics were horrible and CYA texts flew to Meadows. Then it unexpectedly all went sideways. Congress came back and the certification was completed despite all efforts to delay or overturn it. I'd like to know more about how that came about!? I'd like to know if Navarro, former Fox employee, had Hannity, Ingraham, and Carlson queued up to cover the aftermath of the insurrection. Does that make them culpable if they knew about the Bannon and Stone plans? The point of their texts was to make it sound like they were caught by surprise. I doubt that very much. Can the DOJ open an investigation on the Fox organization if they were even tangently involved?
Excellent point. I'm sure this is yet another reason tfg is trying so desperately to keep those records from being turned over. And if this happens to be the case (that he made calls to "his" people on the Stench Bench) would they recuse themselves from deciding whether or not those records of phone calls made TO THEM should be released? Perhaps the SC needs to subpoena the phone records of Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch?
The hearings are essential first-the public needs to know who did what in order to understand the impact of what was done to our Congress. The background is necessary so when the trials happen, the public will know why the charges are being levied and are legitimate.
I cannot imagine that all the information would not appear in the trials And the rebuttals to the lies would be presented along with, as as part of, the information
Robert Hubbell put out in his newsletter yesterday that the public hearings will reach millions while very few would read the written report. He made a comparison to the televised Watergate hearings. The one glitch I see here is where they will be broadcast. For Watergate we had few channels; CBS, ABC, NBC. There was no massive cable network that the people would have to turn specifically to. The country was almost forced to view what was happening. The Fox propaganda machine won’t show these hearings. We’ll have to tune in to c-span and it’s an active choice.
Yes public TRIALS INFORMATION comes out in PUBLIC TRIALS not only in congressional hearings Think of the Nuremberg TRIALS Did they first have to have some legislative body delve and delve and delve . No. they had the trials and the information emerged and the punishments were decided
Exactly. And I don't understand how the "Green Bay Sweep" is in any way evidence of exonerating "Trump and Bannon and throw(ing) responsibility for the violence to others, notably Stone." It smacks of a conspiracy involving ALL of them, including the 100 they were recruiting to play along with their plan. Whether or not there was a "peaceful" plan or a "violent" plan to overturn the election, it was a PLAN to OVERTURN the election.
"WTF more is it going to take..." I'm so with you, its like the Jan 6th gang are throwing pebbles against AR-15ers. What is taking so long, its right in front of our eyes. Arrest them, lock them up and seek justice, our country is slipping away. And Garland, another disappointment. MOVE. NOW.
Especially when all they are trying to do is run out the clock. 45 has done this his whole life, what part of his M.O. are they not getting?! Strategize they way he has his whole life. I fear for our country, its no longer a joke, we are in a dire situation of losing it. But lets all hang in there Linda, I'm also an optimist, without being a Pollyanna. Smile and cheers to 2022!
Distancing themselves from violence is the key to staying out of jail. 18USC 2384 reads:
"If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both."
Notice that in virtually every clause "by force" is an integral element of the offense. It is not clear what Federal law would otherwise have been violated by encouraging various political actors and officeholders to question the election results. We also need to keep in mind that the Constitution--while democratically aspirational in places--was constructed ins significant part to create barriers to "mob rule" . One of these--even after amendments- is the electoral college and its mechanics.
Seeing how our laws might be changed to protect democratic voting mechanisms is one of the strongest LEGISLATIVE reasons underpinning the Jan 6 Commission''s work.
In the end, does it really matter whether a plan to overthrow an election is peaceful or violent? Why is that relevant if the election is found to be free of any fraud that would have changed the results? Navarro doth protest too much. In my personal and business life, I've encountered fast talkers like him. Typically, they think their rapid-fire cavalcade of words makes them superior. In fact, it usually means they're trying to obscure the truth.
"... Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro’s claim that he, Trump, and Trump loyalist Steve Bannon had a peaceful plan to overturn the election ..."
Seems to me that he just said the three of them had a plan to overturn the election.
"See, officer, me and the boys were just looking to take a little money from the bank, nice and peaceful, and then that damn-fool security guard came out of nowhere with a gun and, well, it just got out of hand...."
(And has anyone else discovered that we can NOW EDIT OUR POSTS!!!!???) YAY!
Still searching for the three dots. Do you first have to post something in order to get to the three dots? Yes! You do! Post then edit like I am now doing. Lol
Let me add, with each passing day Trump and his enablers communicate one simple thing in their pronouncements and lawsuits: fear. They know they're losing and somehow think they can BS their way out or run out the clock. Or, with Navarro's ramblings legitimize an attempted coup by saying, in essence, no violence was planned and 100 members of Congress were onboard with it. So hunky dory. Nothing to see here.
What about those 100 congress members who support this coup? Name them all and escort them all out of our government offices, pronto. Same thing with any National Guard and military personnel who support the coup. They can be presumed innocent in front of a jury in a court of law, but their stand against our country is so egregious as to encourage, aid and abet the downfall of our democracy, I say, "Out, damn spot [s]!" And take your criminal electoral college, gerrymandering, filibustering, 5th Amendment and criminal pardonings with you on your way out. Leave your perks like healthcare, salaries and all other benefits at door of our Institutions. And no writing books allowed. If so, all the proceeds from writing and interviews about of their criminal behaviors go into our coffers to pay America back from your terrorist/coup actions against our people. This includes Fox entertainers and owners who aided and abetted as well in their brainwashing propaganda and lies.
It is not at all clear to me that Trump is "losing". As pointed out in the Guardian article post above, 77% of Republicans believe that there was serious fraud in 2020 and that Trump won the election.
Republican legislators are taking over the process of overseeing elections to ensure that they seat a set of electors that will vote for Trump independent of the vote count.
All of this is not losing....it is playing to win big time.
Thank goodness it is 3/4 of less than half of the electorate (that identifies as Republican). Which is why they must twist laws and gerrymander and pander to their ugly base. Clearly we need some new legislation to ensure a safe, fair, and free democratic process. Liz Cheney is looking like a hero because she is putting country before party. When this is over her party will be in tatters but her country will be stronger.
That's 3/4 of less than 30% of the voters, or between 18-22% of the voters. At least 10% of any poll group will support anything you care to state: e.g. Campbell's Soup contains human parts, placed there by space aliens. And just to be clear, I completely made up that statement about the soup. But if you put out a poll, you'd get about 10% thumbs-up.
Do they really believe that or are they just saying it hoping that perpetuating the lie will help them continue to win? Remember 77% of Republicans is not a huge number anymore. Many Republicans have left the party after 1/6, many independents who voted Republican don’t support this and republicans are the minority. It might be 20% of voters saying they believe it. And oddly a huge number of people at the Capitol on 1/6 admit they don’t vote. It’s a lot of noise from very few voters.
Your point is right on. A recent poll showed 40% of Republicans don't want Trump to run for re-election. Another poll shows 59% of independents don't want to see Trump on the ballot in 2024. Can anyone imagine that his support will increase, given all the investigations?
It's cold comfort that some Republicans don't want Trump back in office. That 40% is repulsed by the man, but they are fine with the authoritarian policies. Trumpism will outlast Trump, and one way or another the Rs will replace him with a more savvy politician without the ugly mental issues. One who knows how to play to the Republican base but put a friendlier face out to the rest of the country. Think Big Brother from 1984.
Trust me, there are people who are treating Trump as a social experiment and learning a great deal about how far the American political system can be pushed. Expect a smoother Trump in the future, one who can lead the majority of the credulous American electorate down the authoritarian path with a smile on their faces. It may take a decade or two, but these people are playing the long game.
Once the process is underway, it will be very hard to stop. Now is our time, possibly the only time, to put the country back on the path to democracy.
Losing in the sense that serious charges are headed his way. It could be as early as next week in New York. Whether prosecuting him for tax fraud and other crimes will erode his support among Republicans is hard to say. The hardcore cult won't care. But I'm confident that he will be humiliated and end up behind bars.
I coined the phrase when I was umpiring a great deal of high level fastpitch softball. "Oh, look. Bonus softball." My longest was a 17 inning game to decide a state championship between two teams that met in the opening game and had an 11 inning game that was decided by one run. The losing team made it to the championship game, won that game in extra innings (10 innings as I recall) to take the championship to the "if" game, and eventually was called due to darkness and co-champions were declared. Of those two teams, 20+ of those players went on to play major college softball.
Yes. In the 2000 election, Florida was faced with so many deadlines which would not be extended. Of course a tornado would have extended them. A crisis of democracy was less compelling. Then SCOTUS decided that recounting all the votes would be unfair to their boy. Why we have not rubbed Republican noses in all of it amazes me. (Benghazi! went on and on. Her emails!)
The idea that the 100 Trumpist House members could delay the certification past January 6 by some number of hours and overturn the election that way makes me puke. There must be rules, but there is the intent and spirit of the law. I never heard a Republican explain what’s wrong with the principle of one person, one vote, counting all the votes. Other than they might not win.
Unfortunately, 2022 elections are only 11 months away. If they are doing public hearings in late summer (and for what purpose and end?); time's up for trials. We've been more than patient and I'll cite the Mueller report as an example of patience gone askew! We waited and waited and trusted the "system" and nothing happened. And, left unfettered and emboldened we got January 6th!
It is Congress’s job to protect the outcome of a free and fair election - not undermine it. Maybe the law they need to write has to address the lies told on the floors of the House and Senate that day.
Per the DOJ's District of Columbia on-line memo, "Ten Months Since the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol", "At least, 265 defendants have been charged with corruptly obstructing, ingervening or obstructing an official proceeding or attemlting to do so,". Garland`s DOJ assigned attorneys have litigated the issue in at least 4 cases so far and have won in each case. Onward.
Wait. Navarro??! “Rapid-fire cavalcade of words”? Have you heard this guy? He speaks in the manner of a mealy-mouthed toady given a script he can’t quite make sound convincing. I wonder who ghost-wrote the damn book.
Well, glory hallelujah, Stone has always been proud of his Miami caper and he basically elected W/Dickie to the WH, with James Baker saying blessings all the way. W was an ILLEGITIMATE president. Stone has left no stone unturned in his dirty tricks. He has been picking off competent Dems, one by one (precious little evidence, but our “free press” could prove it if they weren’t chasing the money -for their corporate bosses). BTW, Peter is wrong about one thing; chump has always egged on violence, from day one. He was in his glory during the insurrection. Who doubts that? And he will be again, if the cult isn’t stopped.
Absolutely Trump uses violence to accomplish his agenda. When people say he deplores violence, that only means that he is a big chicken. But he encourages others. That's why he surrounds himself with "doers." It is laughable to say otherwise. And I hope you mean that "from day one" means day one of his life.
This was the 'modus operandi' of organized crime leadership, but they were not cowards, and ultimately willing to 'whack' someone, even if they were hampered by bone spurs. The former president continues to depend on Republicans to act out his violent efforts.
And he tries so hard to be given credit for his past actions, current, not so much. Hated that he was “too young” to go to jail for Nixon. His blurb from “Get Me Roger Stone.”
I’ll tack a comment on to your post, Jeri. I actually wonder what you specifically think about it. Bush got into the WH by way of a coup of sorts. As did the man who, amongst others, pulled the strings of that presidency…former VP Dick Cheney. Needless to say, I find contrast and comparison with that surname. The web of a spider is always woven with attention to expediency as well as precision. I wonder at many things regarding the election of 2020 and resulting war room and insurrection.
I think it well not to question our current Atty General too much and trust that the Executive Branch is weaving a web designed to successfully ensnare as many flies as possible. And that there are many connections that have not come to light yet. I trust HCR not only as a historian, but also as a fine sleuth. She put out today in her letter an amazing array of facts, connections, and a few questions to ponder.
Forces of Light that oppose evil and treason sometimes have strange bedfellows on the “same side”. I hope, in this case, for the right reasons.
I hope you are correct. Benjamin Franklin is quoted as writing that "“I have observed that wrong is always growing more wrong until there is no bearing it anymore. And that right, however opposed, comes right at last.” But he doesn't specify how long we have to wait for "right" to "come at last." We have a chance for that to happen on November 8, 2022
Old Ben was a wise old man, he knew scoundrels well. Love his “we all are born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid” Some have been working on it for a spell…
He has to have a blanket pardon for it to cover all offenses. There may be crimes not covered by his pardon. But I don’t remember exactly what he was pardoned for.
As the media covered the [Brooks Brothers] riot, the canvassing board voted to shut down the recount because of the public perception that the recount was not transparent, and because the interference meant the recount could not be completed before the deadline the court had established. “WE SCARED THE CRAP OUT OF THEM WHEN WE DESCENDED ON THEM,” Blakeman later told Michael E. Miller of the Washington Post. The chair of the county’s Democratic Party noted, “Violence, fear and physical intimidation affected the outcome of a lawful elections process.” Blakeman’s response? “WE GOT SOME BLOWBACK AFTERWARDS, BUT SO WHAT? WE WON.” – Excerpt from today's Letter. Emphasis mine.
So you see, my friends, for the Republican Party, then and now, it's not about the will of the people at all. It's about how succesful they can be using intimidation and force/violence to achieve their goals. Admissions such as the one above lay bare the awful truth about how far the Republican Party is willing to go. Their refusal to condemn the violence and resulting deaths on January 6 simply reinforces the "if neccesary, we will dominate through intimidation and force" strategy that's become baked into their philosophy.
In times gone by they hired goon squads to beat up potential adversaries and their voters or offered jobs, money or free whisky to all those that would vote for them. Progress has been achieved in many walks of life but not essentially in political life it would seem.....and this has been prevalent on both sides of the house....remember Tammany Hall. Time our political system grew up.
The question isn't the need for change but the method of achieving it. With a plurality (38% or so) of eligible voters sitting out, the opportunity is there but recent candidates haven't made such a change part of their campaign platform.
Exactly Jeri. Men are overwhelmingly the sexual predators, yet, A woman will get one of the harshest sentences we’ve seen. Like Martha Stuart going to prison for insider trading while the good ole boys got away with it routinely.
Usually I champion my gender but Ghislane was a really bad predator—I think she kinda had to do it to keep Epstein happy because of his insatiable sex drive but I don’t feel sorry for her at all.
Exactly, and it was not a secret, so why, oh why, were Teddy K and others so eager to kumbaya with the usurpers. I was stunned. Also W/Dickie acted like they had the biggest mandate ever, and plowed right through our lives in every way possible. They showed chump how it was done and nobody slowed down the wrecking ball. Then the “audacity of hope” was derailed at every turn. But Rupert, and Roger, were on the job the whole time. The truth of it all didn’t have a chance. Bingo, here we are…
Indeed, Jeri. And Teddy K should have been held accountable for his actions and was not. (Would Agnew have left office today though?). Trump & Co had decades of slime balls teaching them how to rile up the people and pushing narratives against "the non-white, non-christian, non-heterosexual others", of whom there are many. Their campaign has worked splendidly. And oh yes, they have guns, too, which can be carried and used at will, it seems.
Many people that I thought were “salt of the earth” turned out to be Lot’s wife (just pillars of salt). They are best neighbors ever with “whities,” but a little tan, and they turn evil. It’s just skin people. Republicans have had lasers shined on them, and they still wear the label proudly, while accusing Dems of their sins.
And the texts from media outlets trying to get Trump to stop the riot were all about how it looked for the GOP. (Roughly, "You'll lose all of the progress we've made.")They were not about democracy. Once they figured out that followers would be supportive of the riot, they all change their tune.
Agree. Everything that administration did was based on optics. The fact that people support(ed) the Big Lie followed by the attack on the Capitol showed the Republican machine just how far they could/can push the envelope. Even their half baked response to the Corona Virus was a signal to their base that irresponsible, wreck less behavior was acceptable. It's gotten us where we are today – 465,670 new Covid 19* cases in the US yesterday, continued manipulation of the voting process by state legislators, Trump's ridiculous insistence that he's the victim of a witch hunt and his cronies ignoring subpoenas are all a result of a party going haywire. They are like crazed meth heads on anabolic steroids and his party is loving every minute if it.
Our family is a little undone today. We have our first Covid case in our immediate family. My daughter's partner, who is in Denver, tested positive yesterday morning after feeling out of sorts. He is healthy, 41, is vaxed and boosted but is feeling pretty lousy right now. She was supposed to fly out today so they could spend the remainder of her winter break together.
Holding him and your family in my thoughts. I hope the vaccines and booster work as well as they are supposed to in keeping his illness relatively manageable.
We also had a positive Covid case in our immediate family. Quite unsettling but my daughter is asymptomatic 6 days post-test, thanks to vax/boost. Really messed with her vacation plans!
Hoping he’s already experienced the worst of it. You’re all in my thoughts.
Dang it, Daria. This new variant appears to be more like a nasty flu that is running amok. I’ve talked to a few knowledgeable experts who have urged people, even if they have vax and boost, to get the flu shot. And have also spoken to a “think out of the box” researcher who has done a lot of study with seasonal flu that mentioned blood types to me. And susceptibility of certain types over another. I remember reading a little bit about this at start of Covid when so many theories were being discussed. But then nothing since. When my colleague acquaintance and I were talking about this, a bell sounded a small ding ding in my right brain. Makes me wonder about all the things we might discover along the way.
Well thoughts to your daughter’s partner. Thank goodness he has the protection to sweep the dang thing out of his system.
I recall hearing about blood types as well, and then nothing. Having spent my career as a medical laboratory technologist in major medical centers, I am really a blood geek.
Indeed! There is a lot to do in '22. Yes, I think Omicron may be an excellent learning opportunity for a great many people at all levels! Flu shots are a MUST!
So do I. I've read a few things lately, one of them described how the virus gets into organ tissue and stays there. It reminds me of Lyme disease, and how systemic that disease can be.
How many times do we have to hear that idiot-in-chief scream that all investigations into his bad and wrong behavior are witch hunts? Even his impeachments were witch hunts. The word is now being used widely by Republican/Trumplican staff and friends being investigated.
Daria, you are right and we can go way back in history to confirm that the rethuglicans have used force/violence/intimidation at election times. Think about the KKK.
Pam, yes. There is also a long and alarming history of institutional thuggery in the US supported by the US government. One of the most glaring in my mind is the use of Pinkertons and other goon squads (referenced by Stuart Attewell this day).
Yes, indeed. Imho, their strategy is based on voter disenfranchisement and when that doesn't work, intimidation and force. Here's an excellent expose of what happened in Florida in 2000 and how it created a template for GOP-led voter disenfranchisement--which clearly is now being used for 2022 and 2024. Interesting, some of the same players--notably Roberts--are now more powerful.
And guess who was sent to Florida to "help" with the Bush v. Gore vote recount? Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Conan Barrett. Time to purge the Republican criminals, starting with Robert's Supreme Court.
Bull’s eye, Heather! Thank you for mentioning the “Brooks Brothers riot.” That was indeed when all this madness began, and that was when I dumped my television for good. I cut the cord and took it to an artist friend, who made a squirrel house out of the case. I’ve never looked back. Manipulation of media by instigating violence, and the attitude of “Yeah, there was some blowback, but so what, we won” got us to where we are. There are norms to civilized political behavior, and the GOP has been violating them increasingly in recent (post 1968) elections.
Bullies consider norms their right to violate. Such personalities are usually "cured" in middle school (at least in public school).
However, all these guys went to private school where other students were probably not allowed to beat them into some quality hospital time pondering the reason for their stay.
Back in the day, military schools were filled with unruly, belligerent, and poorly behaved boys. It was a "thing." Some were run by the states and more were private.
The madness began quite a while ago and our downfall is we allow it to continue. That we are still "investigating" and talking about January 6, 2021 outside the context of trials is beyond the pale. I'm too old to leave the country but unlike Heather, I'd move in a heartbeat if I were younger. I always think of pre-Nazi Germany and have told our adult kids, it is better to get out too soon vs. too late . . . unfortunately, they are bumping up against "too late" (hindered also by a worldwide pandemic!)
Where the heck would you go, Janet? The EU is experiencing similar anti-democracy roilings. We can’t all fit on New Zealand or Iceland. And Greenland is melting from beneath. There’s nothing else for it but to STAND STRONG AND FIGHT IT.
SL, All options of "where to go" don't have to be predominantly white & European. I live in Mérida, in the state of Yucatán, México. It is a safe, people-centric state as are other states in México. The areas that are unsafe in México, just as places in the US and around the globe are easily identifiable and avoided.
The white, euro-centric only mindset is part of the overall problem, don't you think?
As an American Abroad you retain your right to vote.
I agree . . . A friend's son just made a "permanent" move to an area outside Mexico City and I have a nephew who moved to S.East Asia 10 years ago. I think a number of non "euro-centric" places would be appealing from a cultural and "people " perspective. However, for me personally, I simply cannot function in hot/humid/tropical environments. New England is in my blood so uprooting and being away from family and friends doesn't make sense at this stage of my life. But, if I were younger . . . . one of my kids is a world traveler and what perspective he has garnered!
I understand completely. (And always remember, places in the tropics at a higher elevation dont have hot, muggy climates. The Alta Plana of México is an example.)
We can't all fit in New Zealand or Iceland but my kids can! Then I can visit 6 months in each place :) Seriously, I get it but the torch for the "stand strong and fight" mantra (which I and others have already carried for decades - I've protested, written/spoken to congress people, served in local politics, volunteered my brains out) needs to be picked up and passed from the Boomers to the generations who are going to live the longest under whatever government arises.
I have seriously considered moving my grandson to Norway. I could send him for college and he could stay if he liked it. As for us, I’m not sure I could leave. We are fortunate to be in California. Of all 11 states I’ve lived in this has been the best.
…”Peter Navarro’s claim that he, Trump, and Trump loyalist Steve Bannon had a peaceful plan to overturn the election…” Because they can’t win without cheating. Planning to overturn a free and fair election because you think you’re going to lose. They make me sick and they are dangerous.
That's politics taken lower, lower, lower than its Lowest Common Denominator, all the way down to the lowest Bolgias of Hell.
And, for millions of wretched human beings, the consequences were, are and for generations will continue to be hell on earth.
How? How? How to get the first, the vaguest notion of responsibility—the vast responsibility, the personal responsibility of every American voter, every citizen, for the immense power that is America's?
An unimaginable challenge.
Unimaginable. And yet for those who are aware, for those who are even half-awake to the task, to the scale of the task, to the obstacles, to the cost—measured in pain, in lives, and as for the cash people worship, that goes without saying—for those who are now awakening to the weight they must shoulder, THERE CAN BE NO CHOICE BUT TO IMAGINE... to take up the cry “I have a dream” that Martin Luther King proclaimed and dare to dream, dare to come together, dare to act together, dare to understand that, before all else, we must put our trust in ourselves, in all that lies deepest in us. THAT is where we shall find Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Yesterday, I watched a short BBC documentary I can recommend to all of you, The Man who Volunteered to be Imprisoned in Auschwitz. It tells of a Pole who did just that, beginning at a time when this was a huge concentration camp for Poles worked to death as slave labor. (When I was a student, I personally knew a man who had grown up in there.) Witold Pilecki let himself be taken to Auschwitz, where he set up a 5-a-cell information network of hundreds to piece together information on Auschwitz and all that was taking place there and to relay it to the Polish resistance. And when the camp was transformed into an extermination center, he reported all the details, begging that the Allies bomb the camp... Which they did not.
Escaping in time to join the resistance in the Warsaw uprising, he survived. Only to be shot by the Communists in 1947, for resisting them.
Readers will remember how the Red Army camped on the other side of the Vistula while the Nazis systematically destroyed Warsaw.
All this spiel now, leading up to the crucial last words of the film:
“Something that we take from the legacy of Pilecki is that he always refers to the organization... that you wouldn't be able to do anything in the organization without the cooperation of many different people, sometimes coming from many different political backgrounds and cultures. And all these people finally could understand, here in this extreme world created by Nazi Germans, that it is important to cooperate.”
In America today, party politics—together with all else—must be subordinated to the main task, that of saving the country. And the world.
No room, no time for hanging back, infighting becomes criminal dereliction of duty.
Ben Franklin said it clearly for us:
“We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
WAKE UP TO THAT REALITY. AND LET US STAY AWAKE, CALM, READY.
President Biden’s line about “democracy has prevailed “ seemed to me and still does seem to be a little off. It is more like democracy has survived for the time being. Mr. Biden was trying to strike a positive hopeful note. The 2020 election was battle in the R’s war against democracy. Tfg is a useful idiot in this war.
So what we won, chump said something similar, paraphrasing a Hitler comment that how you did it didn’t matter if you won. And if you lost, just go away and it won’t matter. Chump couldn’t vision the last part.
Thank you for all of this. I will watch the documentary, and agree about Robert Hubbell. I now share him with all my small circle. Two weeks ago I began a “news” fast and do not plan to end it anytime soon. DrR , Robert Hubbell, that’s it. All the cable networks and even NPR/PBS seem to have become obsessed with perceived profit from a drumbeat of fear and negativity. It may get lots of clicks, but not mine. If I want to know what the Administration did or said I go to whitehouse.gov and listen myself. Or read here, where perspective reigns. And I will send messages to them about why I quit.
“So what?! We won.” That’s a familiar thought. Think of tfg’s impeachments with R senators saying with their votes that trump’s extortion of Ukraine’s president to try to throw an election and the violent 1/6 coup attempt; so what those actions don’t matter. Perception is everything.
We’re still stuck in the limbo of a phony peace in which the President’s holding the bridge against Nazis without swastika armbands for whom politics are the continuation of war by other means. If they cross that bridge, it will be war by the usual means, with America occupied. Is it not for citizens to hold and to use that bridgehead?
Lincoln’s words in 1860 seem to fit the moment:
“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
[Oh, and the boring radical centrism to which I have held for the past 65 years or so, adjusting my stance only to stay upright in our heavily listing ship of State, now makes of me a "radical leftist". Thanks for the unasked-for honor!
Those John Birch Society guys must have been Commies...]
'In moments of crisis, we need only “enough of us to come together to carry all of us forward.” We need not convert every heart or change every mind to heal a broken land. We need only “enough of us to come together.” (Robert Hubbell)
“Something that we take from the legacy of Pilecki is that he always refers to the organization... that you wouldn't be able to do anything in the organization without the cooperation of many different people, sometimes coming from many different political backgrounds and cultures. And all these people finally could understand, here in this extreme world created by Nazi Germans, that it is important to cooperate.” (Peter Burnett, quoting from a BBC documentary, which he saw)
An extraordinary Letter today, Professor Richardson, and given our history with you, something to take to heart.
As with many of the Letters, particularly those following the 2020 election, there is a sense of events of historical portent unveiling before our eyes. In today’s, the anticipation it creates is tangible: this reader feels the precipice just ahead, the shifting wind.
The ongoing Republican coup is both legal and in plain sight. No violence or secrecy required.
From The Guardian.
“And yet, Republicans exercised by the ex-president’s lies about electoral fraud are now systematically targeting elected offices across the US. But not any elected office – specifically positions that have oversight of elections. They are pursuing positions of high office, such as secretary of state, but also lower-ranking county-level offices across the states, from Michigan to Pennsylvania and from Texas to Georgia.
This is an entirely new threat. This is not voting suppression or gerrymandering (though those remain huge democratic obstacles which we continue to report on). What is now taking shape across America is the machinery necessary to steal an election.
Free and fair elections are under threat. Last week, Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, said about Trumpists targeting official positions with electoral oversight: “This is a five-alarm fire. If people in general, leaders and citizens, aren’t taking this as the most important issue of our time and acting accordingly, then we may not be able to ensure democracy prevails again in 2024.”
As the writer and academic Lawrence Douglas wrote recently in the Guardian: “Republican state lawmakers have weaponized the lies about the 2020 election and the 6 January insurrection to gain control over the local administration of elections. By the time Congress tallies the electoral votes on 6 January 2025, the putsch could be complete.”
On the good front, Michigan’s new electoral maps were drawn by a non-partisan group. Meanwhile, here in Ohio, litigation against our new maps has reached the Ohio Supreme Court - where our governor’s son sits, and where he has not recused himself in a case against his father. Great.
I am reading David Pepper’s, “Laboratories of Autocracy” about Ohio politics and the pay-to-play corruption. I assume this happens in all states. Look forward to reading his recommendations to curb it.
Republicans have taken the playbook from Putin. Hold elections because they look good, but stack the process with allies and such that will guarantee a Putin win. And, then change the length of office he is in power. That's why they don't have a platform. They are not representing their constituents any more. They are representing all individuals who wish for absolute power and finance the federal and state governments have to offer.
This has not been a secret, but the MSM ignores in favor of movies, latest Hollywood gossip, and bs of any stripe, unless there is a school shooting, or other lead that can’t be ignored.
Aren't you really criticizing Republicans for using the machinery of democracy? And isn't that what they are supposed to be?
Yes, I understand that their campaign is based on lies, but that is often the case. How many times have Republicans campaigned on the idea that tax cuts for the rich will help everyone? Or that blowing up the budget for such subsidies to the wealthy will reduce the deficit?
Instead of bemoaning what Republicans are doing, Democrats (and independents) need to oppose them politically. (Not saying that when the law is broken there should not be prosecution, but not everything that the other side does is unlawful.)
Absolutely....hand the dumb ReFugLickanz some credible sounding BS for them to have to refute/deny/DISPROVE... :):):))). Waste their time! This tactic might also be seen as fighting fire with fire, although "BS" is hardly "fire". The idea (my idea) includes filling the airwaves using the (Dems) equivalent of a Faux News clone built of nonesense (BS) of the type which will sound so believable as to create discension and more importantly confusion and distrust inside the Repuglickcan ranks. It is obvious to me that the ignorance of people like MTGreeeeen, Kev McSuckarthy, LoBoe, & Sspalin, that it wouldn't be long before Mitch McDitch was concerned that his wife & Hillarry were't in some asian pedophile ring based in Budapest.., or is it Rumania? I forget. Oh.., we could also get GHiSlaine to publish her "List"....ohh baby, the Newsies would go nuts, and not just the Philly Enquirer. LET'S GO NUMBNUTZ!!
Much of our jurisprudence is based on norms, customs and our mutual understanding of the laws that govern us. Congress relays on these norms also and they have been violated to the point of irrelevance. Now what?
We MUST pass the voting rights legislation....NOW! That rethuglicans are maneuvering to take 2022 elections through cheating just points out the need to make sure EVERY vote is properly counter. Come on, Dems, do what's right and create a carve out for the filibuster, damn it!
He probably should have abolished it. He took the small step of removint it as a strategy to block federal judgeships, but not Supreme Court nominees. That provided McConnell the excuse to eliminate it for the SC, too, which he used to hs advantage. Had Reid eliminated it altogether, it would have changed the playing field completely. McConnell has threatened to burn the palce down if the Democrats eliminate it now, but he will probably eliminate it when it is to his advantage should he become majority leader. His threat is likely just a strategy to keep the advantage for himself.
Fascinating, simply fascinating. Stone authored the Brooks Brothers Riot. I did not know that. Thank-you Dr. Cox Richardson. It really is a small cabal of people causing all this enormous trouble.
I was wondering why I did not remember the Brooks Brothers riot. Then I remembered that in 2000 I did not have the internet or even cable TV, had school age kids and was working 2 full time jobs. There are a lot of people like me now, busy lives with limited access to information. People typically under served by their elected officials, public services (I had no garbage pick-up then), health care professionals, etc. I needed protection from the Roger Stones of the world then (still do), just as most people need protecting from Trump's cowardly craven cabal today. This is my animating principle.
I simply do not remember the coverage of that event. I have no good excuse. It is entirely possible that I was not paying attention, a situation which I have remedied of late.
This election chaos somehow reminded me of Dallas after Kennedy was shot, a sense of quite extraordinary incompetence. But then, my very first experience of the USA at Miami airport had been one of remarkable incompetence plus panic and bad manners on the part of the hysterical Cuban-American ground staff who lost me my onward flight to Panama. Never seen anything like it—anywhere! I assumed this was uncharacteristic but, judging by what friends in Florida tell me and the behavior of top dog De Santis, I’m not so sure now.
What did shock me was the unseemly rush by the Supreme Court to cut through the gordian knot of recounts and hand the election to Bush. People complain of the slow grind of the wheels of justice following the public humiliation of the United States on January 6th (me too!) but in 2000 I was expecting proper thoroughness and concern that justice should not only be done but seen to be done. I’m no jurist but I have worked alongside able lawyers, painstakingly methodical and balanced in their approach. To me, this did not look like justice. I simply couldn’t make sense of what had happened.
I could perfectly well have accepted Bush coming out top in the recount if it had been handled correctly, but then it's true, I didn't know about Florida's tradition of tampering with electoral registers to exclude "the wrong kind of voters... The episode left me stunned.
Looking back now, the entire scenario looks like a template for future action, and I cannot for the life of me understand how I and much of the world should be learning of the riot for the first time decades later. Sounds like the mafia has gained some kind of agreed fixers' role in the machinery of misgovernment… Rather like the Yakuza in Japan...
Excellent as always, Prof. Richardson. I'm struck by Blakeman basically acknowledging that GW Bush stole the election in Florida and then GW filing a brief against Trump's efforts to do the same. If there had been justice in 2000 (and during Watergate), we could have avoided DJT altogether.
what a different world we would live in. Why I was as low as I had ever been until chump. Political idiots behind the presidential seal, what could go wrong, and with half of our population thinking they were hunky dory. I didn’t anticipate that but should have. Bill Moyers in Common Dreams “We’ve got to get alternative content out there to people, or this country’s going to die of too many lies.” We’re gasping…
R Dooley and ScannyDo - I hope a precipice is near. Peter Navarro has quite a long history of running for office in capacities here in San Diego but was never successful. When I saw that the former president named him as advisor I was surprised but not surprised. He'd made it to the big time or so it seemed. The surprises are just endless. I don't understand where our government institutions began to NOT hold people responsible for their obvious misdeeds. Michael Bales sums it up for me - "peaceful plan to overthrow an election" ?? Really? How can there be such a thing?
While it is certainly true that Bill Clinton should have said No, the intern in question was 22 years old and quite publicly told us that she initiated.
When things get tough, people with integrity circle the wagons and fight for each other. In this case, we may see the conspirators split off in desperate attempts to save their own butts. Navarro throwing Stone under the bus may be just one example.
I suspect as this plays out, there will be more infighting. We have already seen members of those who were on the ground (Capitol grounds) claiming betrayal from Trump. But they were just the pawns. Now we are watching the knights and bishops turn on each other. Good.
Some of this blame game will be for personal survival - to avoid doing a long stretch in prison. But the egos of the Bannons and Stones will concern themselves with how they are painted in the historical portrait of this treasonous rebellion. Let the squirming begin.
I'm sorry to say, "people of integrity" have not gotten off their arse to put an end to this totally farcical real-life chapter of the Emperors New Clothes. Right now, 50,000,000 people (Mowrons) are convinced the Emperor (who is actually strutting around with his penis in his hand) has a grey casmere suit and red tie on. What have the people of integrity done about it? Welp.., they have said it's against the law. Hah!! The "mowrons" could care less what the "people of integrity" say.., because they (the mowrons) are being told they are right, that the Emp is fully dressed. Plus.., the Supreme Ct is expected to apply the rule that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" should push come to shove as it clearly will. What say ye now, O persons of integrity?
To cement lies in the public mind, Republican officials need not resort to elaborate schemes. They just have to repeat the same lies over and over. They do it all the time, word by word. The Gingrich tactic. This includes Republican court officers.
Theme and variations. Verbatim repetition is in play in Trump lawyer arguments to Trump justices.
Imitation being the greatest form of flattery, in claiming the House has not proved legislative interest in Trump papers, Trump lawyers are betting on a sure thing. The claim comes right out of the Trump Supremes' playbook; it is the through the looking glass, catch 22 tactic they used to deny the House access to Trump's financial records.
The Nuremberg trials spotlighted lawyers and judges who bent German law to bow to Nazi bosses. The Allies wanted to spotlight the essential importance of an independent judiciary.
Younger voters needed to be made aware of the Brooks Brothers Riot and the excruciating time between Election Day 2000 and the Supreme Court installing its choice. Psychology was important in selling the decision in Bush’s favor. We should learn why it was different in 2020. Trump wasn’t branded a sore loser in the same way Al Gore was. Why not?
The big lie works better than small ones. How it’s done, according to James Murphy’s translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf “in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more deeply corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.” The rest of that page is worthy of a read. Lays it all out for future monsters…
Trump lost his court cases alleging voter fraud. Could have been mentioned casually and frequently as Republicans toss around “radical Left Democrats/ Socialists/Communists.”
My stomach just did a flip when I read this: “… Peter Navarro’s claim that he, Trump, and Trump loyalist Steve Bannon had a peaceful plan to overturn the election and that the three of them were “the last three people on God’s good Earth who wanted to see violence erupt on Capitol Hill.”
As if having a peaceful plan to overturn the election makes it ok?? My god! And he has all but admitted to the scheme in writing! WTF more is it going to take to lock these guys up?
And as a follow on to my earlier thought about the 3 Supremes....if Trump did call any of them...will they open their judicial robes and recuse themselves from the decision to release his phone records? Of course he wants them to decide. If they did talk directly with Trump or any Trump official about their plan...will we see Supremes being deposed by the Jan 6 committee? Holy cow it would make a great movie.
"Supremes" is a misnomer when referring to tRump's court appointees. Pardon me while I put on a recording of the real Supremes.
Exactly, Richard. I imagine them saying to the former’s “war room”……Stop, in the name of love. https://youtu.be/JKV0BGjY6Pg
I hope someone at SNL reads this comment. So visual.
Too funny! I enjoyed the song once again.
LOL!!!!!!!
I would only use a small s when referring to the three court acolytes in residence.
Do you by chance refer to the Federalist Society's political hacks?
I try not to be pejorative. Merely, a self-styled support group for the perpetuation of circular thought pretenting to be brilliant, to each other. But I fail sometimes. Evidence be damned, it is our beliefs, well fed by the crackers and cheese of time, that matters, I suggest as their core approach to constitutional and democratic scholarship. Darn, there I go failing again. So, yes.
That’s a good start, Fred. Maybe we should choose a different word for these particular 3 justices, rather than “supremes.”
Like “saps.” or perhaps “sycophants” or “schmucks.”
Ideologues. Appointed to craft a precedents that favor a confederacy with beliefs consisten with 17th century Alabama.
It may take 50 or more years like it did for all the Nixon garbage to really get out. And there are still people who won’t believe it or - at least - let others believe it.
If Nixon had somehow been returned to power after his resignation, 50 years would not have been nearly enough, and much of the evidence would have been destroyed or accidentally "lost" like the 18 minute Oval Office recording. If Trump or his minions return to the majority in 2022, and especially if he or a successor return to the Presidency in 2024, it's a pretty safe bet that Trump's post-election actions will be fully lost to history.
I know you’re right. These are precarious times. I travel to see relative s and even when they agree with me, few of them are well-informed. It’s mind boggling to see!
I saw an interesting tweet with video this morning that relates to this point. The video features Michael Ravi Sherman, former Assistant United States Attorney, speaking at a podium with the seal of United States Department of Justice behind him. The “Former” in his title is misleading. He is now so, but he held that position until March 2021. So he is speaking officially in this video.
The video is from the week after the January 6 insurrection.
Sherman says, “Just yesterday our office formed a strike force of very senior National Security prosecutors and Public Corruption prosecutors. Their only marching orders from me are to build seditious and corruption charges relating to the most heinous acts that occurred in the Capitol…that have felonies with prison terms of up to twenty years.”
Mr. Sherman was appointed by Trump.
Lawrence Tribe, American legal scholar and Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, questions in a subsequent tweet, “Where ARE these charges of seditious conspiracy?”
There has not been a single charge of that ilk to date. I am a nobody who shoots from the hip in my fairly frequent criticisms of Merrick Garland’s leadership at the DOJ. But I’ll take Lawrence Tribe’s word that something is badly amiss.
Democracy appears to be holding from a single thread - the House Committee. That thread has the look of being made of Kevlar. The Committee has been magnificent, both dogged and strategic.
But they have no power to bring anyone to justice. For that, the “strike force” at the DOJ is needed.
It is, at the least, a worry.
The key is the House Committee has no power, hence the urgency to move things to the DOJ ASAP and then they have to move expeditiously and while working within the rule of law also not take any crap or put up with any unfounded attempts by the criminal cabal to stall. Getting these criminals into a court of law is where the rubber meets the road! And, broadcast the trials!
If there is a criminal trial, it definitely should be broadcasted. I for one would watch every minute.
You’re not a nobody to me, Eric. Like so many many people in this community, you are smart, principled, savvy, with deep insight into these issues. Thank you so much for your participation here.
Thank you for expressing this so well and so succinctly. I had to go back and reread that section to see if I had misunderstood. I can’t process the idea that a “peaceful” undoing of a fair election is being put forward as a defense. Trump, Stone, Bannon and Navarro must be prosecuted.
“Trump, Stone, Bannon and Navarro must be prosecuted.”
Here is another stomach turning thought. Peter has basically flat out said that 100 congressman were in on this and agreed to play their part along with Trump and his other advisors. Is it, knowing Trump's lack of shame, unreasonable to think he also made calls to his supreme court appointees to be sure of their support, if this plan actually had succeeded? Clearly they thought they would have it after they had ripped the heart out of democracy as "peacefully" as they were intending. Stone was clearly Trump's back up plan to Pence's refusal to run the play. Stone knew they were going to need to storm the capital and pulled the pin early rather than wait 24 hours - ever eager to be the hero of the GOP.
But. It. Didn't. Work. Everything they did was despicable and criminal. But it didn't work the way they wanted it to. They have demonstrated that have no respect for the Law or the Constitution. For that they need to be held criminally responsible, removed from office, and/or not be allowed to serve in any political office ever again. Then Citizens United needs to be struck down to close that avenue.
Thankfully it didn't work! It is quite plausible that Trump was supportung both sides of the Bannon, Trump, Stone triangle. That Navarro and Bannon hate Stone probably isn't even true and is irrelevant. Trump and his minions plotted a coup PERIOD! I think we are beginning to hear the story we will be told during the public hearings beginning in January. Trump was in charge and okayed the coup. He thought what he watched on TV was really working. He was giving Stone's people time to overcome the police. The Fox TV people got scared because they saw the optics were horrible and CYA texts flew to Meadows. Then it unexpectedly all went sideways. Congress came back and the certification was completed despite all efforts to delay or overturn it. I'd like to know more about how that came about!? I'd like to know if Navarro, former Fox employee, had Hannity, Ingraham, and Carlson queued up to cover the aftermath of the insurrection. Does that make them culpable if they knew about the Bannon and Stone plans? The point of their texts was to make it sound like they were caught by surprise. I doubt that very much. Can the DOJ open an investigation on the Fox organization if they were even tangently involved?
Excellent point. I'm sure this is yet another reason tfg is trying so desperately to keep those records from being turned over. And if this happens to be the case (that he made calls to "his" people on the Stench Bench) would they recuse themselves from deciding whether or not those records of phone calls made TO THEM should be released? Perhaps the SC needs to subpoena the phone records of Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch?
Stench bench...I really like that name.
Agree . . . then there is this which is infuriating: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/28/politics/january-6-committee-interim-report-summer-2022/index.html
Good lord, we don't need public hearings we need public trials! ENOUGH already!!
The hearings are essential first-the public needs to know who did what in order to understand the impact of what was done to our Congress. The background is necessary so when the trials happen, the public will know why the charges are being levied and are legitimate.
Sorry, Barbara, I wrote my comment before reading your better one.
But we do need public hearings. Trumpies, all millions of them, need to be shown exactly what they're supporting, and why trials are necessary.
Sadly this will have no affect on them whatsoever. Our only hope is that it will energize Democrats to actually vote.
Of course, you're correct, but considering Biden's poor polling, we do need to energize the rest of the sane population.
I cannot imagine that all the information would not appear in the trials And the rebuttals to the lies would be presented along with, as as part of, the information
Robert Hubbell put out in his newsletter yesterday that the public hearings will reach millions while very few would read the written report. He made a comparison to the televised Watergate hearings. The one glitch I see here is where they will be broadcast. For Watergate we had few channels; CBS, ABC, NBC. There was no massive cable network that the people would have to turn specifically to. The country was almost forced to view what was happening. The Fox propaganda machine won’t show these hearings. We’ll have to tune in to c-span and it’s an active choice.
Yes public TRIALS INFORMATION comes out in PUBLIC TRIALS not only in congressional hearings Think of the Nuremberg TRIALS Did they first have to have some legislative body delve and delve and delve . No. they had the trials and the information emerged and the punishments were decided
Exactly. And I don't understand how the "Green Bay Sweep" is in any way evidence of exonerating "Trump and Bannon and throw(ing) responsibility for the violence to others, notably Stone." It smacks of a conspiracy involving ALL of them, including the 100 they were recruiting to play along with their plan. Whether or not there was a "peaceful" plan or a "violent" plan to overturn the election, it was a PLAN to OVERTURN the election.
"WTF more is it going to take..." I'm so with you, its like the Jan 6th gang are throwing pebbles against AR-15ers. What is taking so long, its right in front of our eyes. Arrest them, lock them up and seek justice, our country is slipping away. And Garland, another disappointment. MOVE. NOW.
Kathy, I'm with you. I'm not buying the "justice takes a long time" bullshit anymore.
Especially when all they are trying to do is run out the clock. 45 has done this his whole life, what part of his M.O. are they not getting?! Strategize they way he has his whole life. I fear for our country, its no longer a joke, we are in a dire situation of losing it. But lets all hang in there Linda, I'm also an optimist, without being a Pollyanna. Smile and cheers to 2022!
Hear Hear
Patience, Grasshopper.
Distancing themselves from violence is the key to staying out of jail. 18USC 2384 reads:
"If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both."
Notice that in virtually every clause "by force" is an integral element of the offense. It is not clear what Federal law would otherwise have been violated by encouraging various political actors and officeholders to question the election results. We also need to keep in mind that the Constitution--while democratically aspirational in places--was constructed ins significant part to create barriers to "mob rule" . One of these--even after amendments- is the electoral college and its mechanics.
Seeing how our laws might be changed to protect democratic voting mechanisms is one of the strongest LEGISLATIVE reasons underpinning the Jan 6 Commission''s work.
It will never happen. 2024 is going to be a challenge like no other.
for your lips, Elaine...
Apparently, nothing will get them jailed. NOTHING.
In the end, does it really matter whether a plan to overthrow an election is peaceful or violent? Why is that relevant if the election is found to be free of any fraud that would have changed the results? Navarro doth protest too much. In my personal and business life, I've encountered fast talkers like him. Typically, they think their rapid-fire cavalcade of words makes them superior. In fact, it usually means they're trying to obscure the truth.
I'm trying to parse that, myself.
"... Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro’s claim that he, Trump, and Trump loyalist Steve Bannon had a peaceful plan to overturn the election ..."
Seems to me that he just said the three of them had a plan to overturn the election.
"See, officer, me and the boys were just looking to take a little money from the bank, nice and peaceful, and then that damn-fool security guard came out of nowhere with a gun and, well, it just got out of hand...."
(And has anyone else discovered that we can NOW EDIT OUR POSTS!!!!???) YAY!
YES YES YES! (I never get it right the first time.)
YAY! To your comment Joseph and to editing ability!!
Yup and yay!
Got it! Thanks! It's very subtle indeed.
You have it absolutely right!
I see three dots to the right of my own post's choice to reply and delete. If I hover over the dots, I get an edit choice.
Yup.
Still searching for the three dots. Do you first have to post something in order to get to the three dots? Yes! You do! Post then edit like I am now doing. Lol
Voila!!!
Yes. It shows up when you yourself have posted.
Let me add, with each passing day Trump and his enablers communicate one simple thing in their pronouncements and lawsuits: fear. They know they're losing and somehow think they can BS their way out or run out the clock. Or, with Navarro's ramblings legitimize an attempted coup by saying, in essence, no violence was planned and 100 members of Congress were onboard with it. So hunky dory. Nothing to see here.
What about those 100 congress members who support this coup? Name them all and escort them all out of our government offices, pronto. Same thing with any National Guard and military personnel who support the coup. They can be presumed innocent in front of a jury in a court of law, but their stand against our country is so egregious as to encourage, aid and abet the downfall of our democracy, I say, "Out, damn spot [s]!" And take your criminal electoral college, gerrymandering, filibustering, 5th Amendment and criminal pardonings with you on your way out. Leave your perks like healthcare, salaries and all other benefits at door of our Institutions. And no writing books allowed. If so, all the proceeds from writing and interviews about of their criminal behaviors go into our coffers to pay America back from your terrorist/coup actions against our people. This includes Fox entertainers and owners who aided and abetted as well in their brainwashing propaganda and lies.
I'd be afraid that they would all become martyrs to the lowest of Drump supporters.
I suspect that will be the outcome in any event.
Penelope...those perks Drives me nuts just thinking that we pay them in perpetuity for defying the will of the people who pay those perks
Michael,
It is not at all clear to me that Trump is "losing". As pointed out in the Guardian article post above, 77% of Republicans believe that there was serious fraud in 2020 and that Trump won the election.
Republican legislators are taking over the process of overseeing elections to ensure that they seat a set of electors that will vote for Trump independent of the vote count.
All of this is not losing....it is playing to win big time.
When one candidate’s party “oversees” an election, it is no longer an election.
Really? Tell that to Brian Kemp.
or Brad Raffensperger in Georgia who stood tall against Trump's bombastic lying and put his entire family at risk doing so.
Two out of how many is hardly cause to celebrate or whitewash the severity this action causes.
Brian kemp who was Secretary of State at the same time he was running for governor while also purging voters.
Thank goodness it is 3/4 of less than half of the electorate (that identifies as Republican). Which is why they must twist laws and gerrymander and pander to their ugly base. Clearly we need some new legislation to ensure a safe, fair, and free democratic process. Liz Cheney is looking like a hero because she is putting country before party. When this is over her party will be in tatters but her country will be stronger.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
That's 3/4 of less than 30% of the voters, or between 18-22% of the voters. At least 10% of any poll group will support anything you care to state: e.g. Campbell's Soup contains human parts, placed there by space aliens. And just to be clear, I completely made up that statement about the soup. But if you put out a poll, you'd get about 10% thumbs-up.
It’s no wonder I’ve been avoiding Campbell Soup for the last 30 years or more. There has always been something suspicious about it. 🤨
Frustratingly, the entire Republican party is making these unlawful behaviors the norm because they are allowed to continue and grow.
Do they really believe that or are they just saying it hoping that perpetuating the lie will help them continue to win? Remember 77% of Republicans is not a huge number anymore. Many Republicans have left the party after 1/6, many independents who voted Republican don’t support this and republicans are the minority. It might be 20% of voters saying they believe it. And oddly a huge number of people at the Capitol on 1/6 admit they don’t vote. It’s a lot of noise from very few voters.
Your point is right on. A recent poll showed 40% of Republicans don't want Trump to run for re-election. Another poll shows 59% of independents don't want to see Trump on the ballot in 2024. Can anyone imagine that his support will increase, given all the investigations?
https://www.newsweek.com/more-independent-voters-are-opposed-biden-running-2024-trump-1659653
https://www.marquette.edu/news-center/2021/new-marquette-law-poll-finds-majority-of-republicans-favor-a-trump-run-for-president-in-2024.php
It's cold comfort that some Republicans don't want Trump back in office. That 40% is repulsed by the man, but they are fine with the authoritarian policies. Trumpism will outlast Trump, and one way or another the Rs will replace him with a more savvy politician without the ugly mental issues. One who knows how to play to the Republican base but put a friendlier face out to the rest of the country. Think Big Brother from 1984.
Trust me, there are people who are treating Trump as a social experiment and learning a great deal about how far the American political system can be pushed. Expect a smoother Trump in the future, one who can lead the majority of the credulous American electorate down the authoritarian path with a smile on their faces. It may take a decade or two, but these people are playing the long game.
Once the process is underway, it will be very hard to stop. Now is our time, possibly the only time, to put the country back on the path to democracy.
40%!!!!!!!!! That means 60% DO want him to run We are in twilight zone
Those are certainly some comforting statistics!
Losing in the sense that serious charges are headed his way. It could be as early as next week in New York. Whether prosecuting him for tax fraud and other crimes will erode his support among Republicans is hard to say. The hardcore cult won't care. But I'm confident that he will be humiliated and end up behind bars.
It is frightening for sure.
Running out the clock seems to be the goal. “Americans have no stomach for overtime”. Clock management is crucial to football and basketball
Perhaps that’s why I find baseball so much more satisfying
I always refer to extra innings as "bonus baseball".
I concur. No time clock. Let Baseball take it’s course
My “no stomach for overtime” was pointed at the instant gratification crowd
I coined the phrase when I was umpiring a great deal of high level fastpitch softball. "Oh, look. Bonus softball." My longest was a 17 inning game to decide a state championship between two teams that met in the opening game and had an 11 inning game that was decided by one run. The losing team made it to the championship game, won that game in extra innings (10 innings as I recall) to take the championship to the "if" game, and eventually was called due to darkness and co-champions were declared. Of those two teams, 20+ of those players went on to play major college softball.
Fast pitch softball is underrated. Bet you saw a lot of action.
Yes. In the 2000 election, Florida was faced with so many deadlines which would not be extended. Of course a tornado would have extended them. A crisis of democracy was less compelling. Then SCOTUS decided that recounting all the votes would be unfair to their boy. Why we have not rubbed Republican noses in all of it amazes me. (Benghazi! went on and on. Her emails!)
The idea that the 100 Trumpist House members could delay the certification past January 6 by some number of hours and overturn the election that way makes me puke. There must be rules, but there is the intent and spirit of the law. I never heard a Republican explain what’s wrong with the principle of one person, one vote, counting all the votes. Other than they might not win.
All I can say is they are BS their way out and running down the clock. That is what is so frustrating. Why are they not on trial?!
Patience, Janet. All in good time.
Unfortunately, 2022 elections are only 11 months away. If they are doing public hearings in late summer (and for what purpose and end?); time's up for trials. We've been more than patient and I'll cite the Mueller report as an example of patience gone askew! We waited and waited and trusted the "system" and nothing happened. And, left unfettered and emboldened we got January 6th!
The public hearings will start in January. The report won’t come out until late summer.
It is Congress’s job to protect the outcome of a free and fair election - not undermine it. Maybe the law they need to write has to address the lies told on the floors of the House and Senate that day.
Maybe "the people" can write the proposed new law, rather than corporations for a change. Heather?
Great suggestion...try writing it. Rules are tough to write. Un-intended consequences are very difficult to for see.
Not try, do. Yoda.
Per the DOJ's District of Columbia on-line memo, "Ten Months Since the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol", "At least, 265 defendants have been charged with corruptly obstructing, ingervening or obstructing an official proceeding or attemlting to do so,". Garland`s DOJ assigned attorneys have litigated the issue in at least 4 cases so far and have won in each case. Onward.
Yes!
Wait. Navarro??! “Rapid-fire cavalcade of words”? Have you heard this guy? He speaks in the manner of a mealy-mouthed toady given a script he can’t quite make sound convincing. I wonder who ghost-wrote the damn book.
He made himself the imaginary “hero” of his own story. Pathetic.
It's a book not written for the sane of this country. It is to be read to Trumplican supporters.
First question is "How many of them actually take the time to read and Question #2 is "Do they truly understand what they read?"
Such a good point!
Well, glory hallelujah, Stone has always been proud of his Miami caper and he basically elected W/Dickie to the WH, with James Baker saying blessings all the way. W was an ILLEGITIMATE president. Stone has left no stone unturned in his dirty tricks. He has been picking off competent Dems, one by one (precious little evidence, but our “free press” could prove it if they weren’t chasing the money -for their corporate bosses). BTW, Peter is wrong about one thing; chump has always egged on violence, from day one. He was in his glory during the insurrection. Who doubts that? And he will be again, if the cult isn’t stopped.
Absolutely Trump uses violence to accomplish his agenda. When people say he deplores violence, that only means that he is a big chicken. But he encourages others. That's why he surrounds himself with "doers." It is laughable to say otherwise. And I hope you mean that "from day one" means day one of his life.
He is the perfect example of someone who urges others, but does not participate directly. And yes he is a coward.
This was the 'modus operandi' of organized crime leadership, but they were not cowards, and ultimately willing to 'whack' someone, even if they were hampered by bone spurs. The former president continues to depend on Republicans to act out his violent efforts.
I knew a few of those working at jr high. Loved to sit back and watch the chaos without lifting a finger.
The common, crude term is "shit stirrers".
I figured the terrible twos but I could be wrong
Jeri, I have felt since the beginning that Stone's involvement has been minimized by the media.
And he tries so hard to be given credit for his past actions, current, not so much. Hated that he was “too young” to go to jail for Nixon. His blurb from “Get Me Roger Stone.”
Remember, he was tried and convicted but pardoned...
I’ll tack a comment on to your post, Jeri. I actually wonder what you specifically think about it. Bush got into the WH by way of a coup of sorts. As did the man who, amongst others, pulled the strings of that presidency…former VP Dick Cheney. Needless to say, I find contrast and comparison with that surname. The web of a spider is always woven with attention to expediency as well as precision. I wonder at many things regarding the election of 2020 and resulting war room and insurrection.
I think it well not to question our current Atty General too much and trust that the Executive Branch is weaving a web designed to successfully ensnare as many flies as possible. And that there are many connections that have not come to light yet. I trust HCR not only as a historian, but also as a fine sleuth. She put out today in her letter an amazing array of facts, connections, and a few questions to ponder.
Forces of Light that oppose evil and treason sometimes have strange bedfellows on the “same side”. I hope, in this case, for the right reasons.
I hope you are correct. Benjamin Franklin is quoted as writing that "“I have observed that wrong is always growing more wrong until there is no bearing it anymore. And that right, however opposed, comes right at last.” But he doesn't specify how long we have to wait for "right" to "come at last." We have a chance for that to happen on November 8, 2022
Old Ben was a wise old man, he knew scoundrels well. Love his “we all are born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid” Some have been working on it for a spell…
Can Stone's pardon be revoked?
Oh glory, maybe he can go to jail for chump, he’s not too young now…
He has to have a blanket pardon for it to cover all offenses. There may be crimes not covered by his pardon. But I don’t remember exactly what he was pardoned for.
Jack, it doesn't appear it can be at this point.
As the media covered the [Brooks Brothers] riot, the canvassing board voted to shut down the recount because of the public perception that the recount was not transparent, and because the interference meant the recount could not be completed before the deadline the court had established. “WE SCARED THE CRAP OUT OF THEM WHEN WE DESCENDED ON THEM,” Blakeman later told Michael E. Miller of the Washington Post. The chair of the county’s Democratic Party noted, “Violence, fear and physical intimidation affected the outcome of a lawful elections process.” Blakeman’s response? “WE GOT SOME BLOWBACK AFTERWARDS, BUT SO WHAT? WE WON.” – Excerpt from today's Letter. Emphasis mine.
So you see, my friends, for the Republican Party, then and now, it's not about the will of the people at all. It's about how succesful they can be using intimidation and force/violence to achieve their goals. Admissions such as the one above lay bare the awful truth about how far the Republican Party is willing to go. Their refusal to condemn the violence and resulting deaths on January 6 simply reinforces the "if neccesary, we will dominate through intimidation and force" strategy that's become baked into their philosophy.
In times gone by they hired goon squads to beat up potential adversaries and their voters or offered jobs, money or free whisky to all those that would vote for them. Progress has been achieved in many walks of life but not essentially in political life it would seem.....and this has been prevalent on both sides of the house....remember Tammany Hall. Time our political system grew up.
Stuart, you are correct. It is indeed time for a clean sweep and disinfection of our political process.
The question isn't the need for change but the method of achieving it. With a plurality (38% or so) of eligible voters sitting out, the opportunity is there but recent candidates haven't made such a change part of their campaign platform.
Good luck with that....
Yeah, I know, Pam.
Yes…maybe 2022 will be the time…Ghislane is going back to jail.
I was glad to see that verdict, Liz. Every little bit is a step forward. I wonder if she'll name names?
Taxes:Capone. Epstein:Trump?????
Believe it when I see it, although she may be the scapegoat for a host of other evils
Exactly Jeri. Men are overwhelmingly the sexual predators, yet, A woman will get one of the harshest sentences we’ve seen. Like Martha Stuart going to prison for insider trading while the good ole boys got away with it routinely.
Usually I champion my gender but Ghislane was a really bad predator—I think she kinda had to do it to keep Epstein happy because of his insatiable sex drive but I don’t feel sorry for her at all.
I don’t feel sorry for her either, just noting the disparity.
No parity for genders yet, it seems
Oh sure the appeal will probably mitigate her sentence and then it will get somewhat shorter maybe but I think she’ll be in jail for a long time.
Possible book, or “suicide.”
Jeri, I understand that sentiment completely. We can only wait and see.
The Republican new normal isn’t new and it’s a federal crime. So now what?
Liz, we turned a blind eye to it in 2000. I don't expect anything different now. History repeats itself.......
Exactly, and it was not a secret, so why, oh why, were Teddy K and others so eager to kumbaya with the usurpers. I was stunned. Also W/Dickie acted like they had the biggest mandate ever, and plowed right through our lives in every way possible. They showed chump how it was done and nobody slowed down the wrecking ball. Then the “audacity of hope” was derailed at every turn. But Rupert, and Roger, were on the job the whole time. The truth of it all didn’t have a chance. Bingo, here we are…
Indeed, Jeri. And Teddy K should have been held accountable for his actions and was not. (Would Agnew have left office today though?). Trump & Co had decades of slime balls teaching them how to rile up the people and pushing narratives against "the non-white, non-christian, non-heterosexual others", of whom there are many. Their campaign has worked splendidly. And oh yes, they have guns, too, which can be carried and used at will, it seems.
The last is part and parcel of what they want to do to people not like them-White "christian" and male.
Many people that I thought were “salt of the earth” turned out to be Lot’s wife (just pillars of salt). They are best neighbors ever with “whities,” but a little tan, and they turn evil. It’s just skin people. Republicans have had lasers shined on them, and they still wear the label proudly, while accusing Dems of their sins.
And the texts from media outlets trying to get Trump to stop the riot were all about how it looked for the GOP. (Roughly, "You'll lose all of the progress we've made.")They were not about democracy. Once they figured out that followers would be supportive of the riot, they all change their tune.
Agree. Everything that administration did was based on optics. The fact that people support(ed) the Big Lie followed by the attack on the Capitol showed the Republican machine just how far they could/can push the envelope. Even their half baked response to the Corona Virus was a signal to their base that irresponsible, wreck less behavior was acceptable. It's gotten us where we are today – 465,670 new Covid 19* cases in the US yesterday, continued manipulation of the voting process by state legislators, Trump's ridiculous insistence that he's the victim of a witch hunt and his cronies ignoring subpoenas are all a result of a party going haywire. They are like crazed meth heads on anabolic steroids and his party is loving every minute if it.
*https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
daria, Lovely metaphor.
Why, thank you, Charlie!
Side note to your link: I wish the powers that be would take more about long Covid.
Kim, I do too.
Our family is a little undone today. We have our first Covid case in our immediate family. My daughter's partner, who is in Denver, tested positive yesterday morning after feeling out of sorts. He is healthy, 41, is vaxed and boosted but is feeling pretty lousy right now. She was supposed to fly out today so they could spend the remainder of her winter break together.
Holding him and your family in my thoughts. I hope the vaccines and booster work as well as they are supposed to in keeping his illness relatively manageable.
Thanks, Ali. I do too. I appreciate your support.
We also had a positive Covid case in our immediate family. Quite unsettling but my daughter is asymptomatic 6 days post-test, thanks to vax/boost. Really messed with her vacation plans!
Hoping he’s already experienced the worst of it. You’re all in my thoughts.
I'm glad your daughter is asymptomatic. Best wishes to her! G is feeling under the weather but not hideous. Thank you🌷
Dang it, Daria. This new variant appears to be more like a nasty flu that is running amok. I’ve talked to a few knowledgeable experts who have urged people, even if they have vax and boost, to get the flu shot. And have also spoken to a “think out of the box” researcher who has done a lot of study with seasonal flu that mentioned blood types to me. And susceptibility of certain types over another. I remember reading a little bit about this at start of Covid when so many theories were being discussed. But then nothing since. When my colleague acquaintance and I were talking about this, a bell sounded a small ding ding in my right brain. Makes me wonder about all the things we might discover along the way.
Well thoughts to your daughter’s partner. Thank goodness he has the protection to sweep the dang thing out of his system.
A toast for “Lots to do in ‘22”! 🥂
In reference to holes in the brain, I found this Web MD article. It makes sense that this could happen (I'm a retired RN): https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210628/more-proof-covid-affects-brain-study#:~:text=The%20most%20comprehensive%20molecular%20study,virus%20in%20brain%20tissue.
I recall hearing about blood types as well, and then nothing. Having spent my career as a medical laboratory technologist in major medical centers, I am really a blood geek.
Indeed! There is a lot to do in '22. Yes, I think Omicron may be an excellent learning opportunity for a great many people at all levels! Flu shots are a MUST!
So do I. I've read a few things lately, one of them described how the virus gets into organ tissue and stays there. It reminds me of Lyme disease, and how systemic that disease can be.
A hair on fire emoji would be most excellent.
How many times do we have to hear that idiot-in-chief scream that all investigations into his bad and wrong behavior are witch hunts? Even his impeachments were witch hunts. The word is now being used widely by Republican/Trumplican staff and friends being investigated.
"Crazed meth heads...loving every minute of it" who have an unlimited and infinite source of money and they still commit crimes to feed their habit.
To be clear, the texts were from Fox liars.
And this, I'm afraid, is just the wind-up. Curve ball pitch in November 2022.
I’m looking for the walk off run and win for the good guys in Nov ‘22.
Touché
Charlie, I'm afraid you are right.
Daria, you are right and we can go way back in history to confirm that the rethuglicans have used force/violence/intimidation at election times. Think about the KKK.
Pam, yes. There is also a long and alarming history of institutional thuggery in the US supported by the US government. One of the most glaring in my mind is the use of Pinkertons and other goon squads (referenced by Stuart Attewell this day).
Probably Dems back the ??
i.e., They got by with it before and they are sure they can get by with it again and they are certainly free to try it.
Yes, indeed. Imho, their strategy is based on voter disenfranchisement and when that doesn't work, intimidation and force. Here's an excellent expose of what happened in Florida in 2000 and how it created a template for GOP-led voter disenfranchisement--which clearly is now being used for 2022 and 2024. Interesting, some of the same players--notably Roberts--are now more powerful.
https://billmoyers.com/2015/07/31/how-the-2000-election-in-florida-new-wave-voter-disenfranchisement/
And guess who was sent to Florida to "help" with the Bush v. Gore vote recount? Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Conan Barrett. Time to purge the Republican criminals, starting with Robert's Supreme Court.
I am using some unprintable words as I read your post
This is unbelievable.
Excellent article and it points out that Chief "Justice" Roberts has been opposed to voters' rights for DECADES.
Bill always knew the truth. He told me
Bull’s eye, Heather! Thank you for mentioning the “Brooks Brothers riot.” That was indeed when all this madness began, and that was when I dumped my television for good. I cut the cord and took it to an artist friend, who made a squirrel house out of the case. I’ve never looked back. Manipulation of media by instigating violence, and the attitude of “Yeah, there was some blowback, but so what, we won” got us to where we are. There are norms to civilized political behavior, and the GOP has been violating them increasingly in recent (post 1968) elections.
Bullies consider norms their right to violate. Such personalities are usually "cured" in middle school (at least in public school).
However, all these guys went to private school where other students were probably not allowed to beat them into some quality hospital time pondering the reason for their stay.
So, here we are.
Interestingly, Drump was entering military/private school for his inability to get along with people in middle school.
Where he became educated in the ways of even more subtle, alarming ways to coerce and manipulate people.
I think most of that training came from the many years he spent with Roy Cohn as a "trainer" in early adulthood.
Nobody was more evil in America than Roy Cohn and Cohn was Trump's mentor.
Stone was also a Roy Cohn protege.
Oh, yes indeedy, Mike. Whatever predisposition he had for thuggishness Cohn helped him home those skills.
amen
Back in the day, military schools were filled with unruly, belligerent, and poorly behaved boys. It was a "thing." Some were run by the states and more were private.
Well, that is the most common reason for boys to transition from public school to private school. Inability to follow rules and staying in trouble.
My kids went to public school just to avoid all the behavior problems in the fancy private schools.
Plus, there is something to be said for learning how to fistfight.
The madness began quite a while ago and our downfall is we allow it to continue. That we are still "investigating" and talking about January 6, 2021 outside the context of trials is beyond the pale. I'm too old to leave the country but unlike Heather, I'd move in a heartbeat if I were younger. I always think of pre-Nazi Germany and have told our adult kids, it is better to get out too soon vs. too late . . . unfortunately, they are bumping up against "too late" (hindered also by a worldwide pandemic!)
Where the heck would you go, Janet? The EU is experiencing similar anti-democracy roilings. We can’t all fit on New Zealand or Iceland. And Greenland is melting from beneath. There’s nothing else for it but to STAND STRONG AND FIGHT IT.
SL, All options of "where to go" don't have to be predominantly white & European. I live in Mérida, in the state of Yucatán, México. It is a safe, people-centric state as are other states in México. The areas that are unsafe in México, just as places in the US and around the globe are easily identifiable and avoided.
The white, euro-centric only mindset is part of the overall problem, don't you think?
As an American Abroad you retain your right to vote.
I agree . . . A friend's son just made a "permanent" move to an area outside Mexico City and I have a nephew who moved to S.East Asia 10 years ago. I think a number of non "euro-centric" places would be appealing from a cultural and "people " perspective. However, for me personally, I simply cannot function in hot/humid/tropical environments. New England is in my blood so uprooting and being away from family and friends doesn't make sense at this stage of my life. But, if I were younger . . . . one of my kids is a world traveler and what perspective he has garnered!
I understand completely. (And always remember, places in the tropics at a higher elevation dont have hot, muggy climates. The Alta Plana of México is an example.)
We can't all fit in New Zealand or Iceland but my kids can! Then I can visit 6 months in each place :) Seriously, I get it but the torch for the "stand strong and fight" mantra (which I and others have already carried for decades - I've protested, written/spoken to congress people, served in local politics, volunteered my brains out) needs to be picked up and passed from the Boomers to the generations who are going to live the longest under whatever government arises.
Janet, please see my response to SL
I have seriously considered moving my grandson to Norway. I could send him for college and he could stay if he liked it. As for us, I’m not sure I could leave. We are fortunate to be in California. Of all 11 states I’ve lived in this has been the best.
A squirrel house.....hmmmmm.
Kinda apt, given that political stories are easily sidelined by other stories. You know-"Squirrel".
…”Peter Navarro’s claim that he, Trump, and Trump loyalist Steve Bannon had a peaceful plan to overturn the election…” Because they can’t win without cheating. Planning to overturn a free and fair election because you think you’re going to lose. They make me sick and they are dangerous.
“So what? We won.”
That's politics taken lower, lower, lower than its Lowest Common Denominator, all the way down to the lowest Bolgias of Hell.
And, for millions of wretched human beings, the consequences were, are and for generations will continue to be hell on earth.
How? How? How to get the first, the vaguest notion of responsibility—the vast responsibility, the personal responsibility of every American voter, every citizen, for the immense power that is America's?
An unimaginable challenge.
Unimaginable. And yet for those who are aware, for those who are even half-awake to the task, to the scale of the task, to the obstacles, to the cost—measured in pain, in lives, and as for the cash people worship, that goes without saying—for those who are now awakening to the weight they must shoulder, THERE CAN BE NO CHOICE BUT TO IMAGINE... to take up the cry “I have a dream” that Martin Luther King proclaimed and dare to dream, dare to come together, dare to act together, dare to understand that, before all else, we must put our trust in ourselves, in all that lies deepest in us. THAT is where we shall find Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Yesterday, I watched a short BBC documentary I can recommend to all of you, The Man who Volunteered to be Imprisoned in Auschwitz. It tells of a Pole who did just that, beginning at a time when this was a huge concentration camp for Poles worked to death as slave labor. (When I was a student, I personally knew a man who had grown up in there.) Witold Pilecki let himself be taken to Auschwitz, where he set up a 5-a-cell information network of hundreds to piece together information on Auschwitz and all that was taking place there and to relay it to the Polish resistance. And when the camp was transformed into an extermination center, he reported all the details, begging that the Allies bomb the camp... Which they did not.
Escaping in time to join the resistance in the Warsaw uprising, he survived. Only to be shot by the Communists in 1947, for resisting them.
Readers will remember how the Red Army camped on the other side of the Vistula while the Nazis systematically destroyed Warsaw.
All this spiel now, leading up to the crucial last words of the film:
“Something that we take from the legacy of Pilecki is that he always refers to the organization... that you wouldn't be able to do anything in the organization without the cooperation of many different people, sometimes coming from many different political backgrounds and cultures. And all these people finally could understand, here in this extreme world created by Nazi Germans, that it is important to cooperate.”
In America today, party politics—together with all else—must be subordinated to the main task, that of saving the country. And the world.
No room, no time for hanging back, infighting becomes criminal dereliction of duty.
Ben Franklin said it clearly for us:
“We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
WAKE UP TO THAT REALITY. AND LET US STAY AWAKE, CALM, READY.
P.S. And do as Ellie Kona urges and read Robert Hubbell, who says it all far better than I could: https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/enough-of-us-have-come-together-to
President Biden’s line about “democracy has prevailed “ seemed to me and still does seem to be a little off. It is more like democracy has survived for the time being. Mr. Biden was trying to strike a positive hopeful note. The 2020 election was battle in the R’s war against democracy. Tfg is a useful idiot in this war.
he is also a serpent
So what we won, chump said something similar, paraphrasing a Hitler comment that how you did it didn’t matter if you won. And if you lost, just go away and it won’t matter. Chump couldn’t vision the last part.
Thank you for all of this. I will watch the documentary, and agree about Robert Hubbell. I now share him with all my small circle. Two weeks ago I began a “news” fast and do not plan to end it anytime soon. DrR , Robert Hubbell, that’s it. All the cable networks and even NPR/PBS seem to have become obsessed with perceived profit from a drumbeat of fear and negativity. It may get lots of clicks, but not mine. If I want to know what the Administration did or said I go to whitehouse.gov and listen myself. Or read here, where perspective reigns. And I will send messages to them about why I quit.
Hubbell today: we have much to be thankful for.
I’m about there, but Rupert has spawned more clones than I could ever imagine.
“So what?! We won.” That’s a familiar thought. Think of tfg’s impeachments with R senators saying with their votes that trump’s extortion of Ukraine’s president to try to throw an election and the violent 1/6 coup attempt; so what those actions don’t matter. Perception is everything.
We’re still stuck in the limbo of a phony peace in which the President’s holding the bridge against Nazis without swastika armbands for whom politics are the continuation of war by other means. If they cross that bridge, it will be war by the usual means, with America occupied. Is it not for citizens to hold and to use that bridgehead?
Lincoln’s words in 1860 seem to fit the moment:
“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
[Oh, and the boring radical centrism to which I have held for the past 65 years or so, adjusting my stance only to stay upright in our heavily listing ship of State, now makes of me a "radical leftist". Thanks for the unasked-for honor!
Those John Birch Society guys must have been Commies...]
A HUGE problem is that the cult base thinks they are doing their duty as they understand it.
And of course they DON'T understand what their duty should be and refuse to learn it.
And that’s Rupert’s area of expertise
Organization and coming together.
'In moments of crisis, we need only “enough of us to come together to carry all of us forward.” We need not convert every heart or change every mind to heal a broken land. We need only “enough of us to come together.” (Robert Hubbell)
“Something that we take from the legacy of Pilecki is that he always refers to the organization... that you wouldn't be able to do anything in the organization without the cooperation of many different people, sometimes coming from many different political backgrounds and cultures. And all these people finally could understand, here in this extreme world created by Nazi Germans, that it is important to cooperate.” (Peter Burnett, quoting from a BBC documentary, which he saw)
Haven't read Hubbell yet but you said it pretty well.
You will be glad you took the time: https://roberthubbell.substack.com/?r=68v5g&utm_campaign=pub&utm_medium=web
I did, I am, I subscribed. Thanks Cathy.
An extraordinary Letter today, Professor Richardson, and given our history with you, something to take to heart.
As with many of the Letters, particularly those following the 2020 election, there is a sense of events of historical portent unveiling before our eyes. In today’s, the anticipation it creates is tangible: this reader feels the precipice just ahead, the shifting wind.
This reader feels that precipice as well.
The ongoing Republican coup is both legal and in plain sight. No violence or secrecy required.
From The Guardian.
“And yet, Republicans exercised by the ex-president’s lies about electoral fraud are now systematically targeting elected offices across the US. But not any elected office – specifically positions that have oversight of elections. They are pursuing positions of high office, such as secretary of state, but also lower-ranking county-level offices across the states, from Michigan to Pennsylvania and from Texas to Georgia.
This is an entirely new threat. This is not voting suppression or gerrymandering (though those remain huge democratic obstacles which we continue to report on). What is now taking shape across America is the machinery necessary to steal an election.
Free and fair elections are under threat. Last week, Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, said about Trumpists targeting official positions with electoral oversight: “This is a five-alarm fire. If people in general, leaders and citizens, aren’t taking this as the most important issue of our time and acting accordingly, then we may not be able to ensure democracy prevails again in 2024.”
As the writer and academic Lawrence Douglas wrote recently in the Guardian: “Republican state lawmakers have weaponized the lies about the 2020 election and the 6 January insurrection to gain control over the local administration of elections. By the time Congress tallies the electoral votes on 6 January 2025, the putsch could be complete.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/29/america-facing-ballot-box-coup-help-us-sound-alarm-2022
On the good front, Michigan’s new electoral maps were drawn by a non-partisan group. Meanwhile, here in Ohio, litigation against our new maps has reached the Ohio Supreme Court - where our governor’s son sits, and where he has not recused himself in a case against his father. Great.
good luck.
Pubs sure know how to play the game.
They write the rules as they go along.
Just like Adolph did
I am reading David Pepper’s, “Laboratories of Autocracy” about Ohio politics and the pay-to-play corruption. I assume this happens in all states. Look forward to reading his recommendations to curb it.
Damn. From Michigan. Praying our new electoral maps stick.
Republicans have taken the playbook from Putin. Hold elections because they look good, but stack the process with allies and such that will guarantee a Putin win. And, then change the length of office he is in power. That's why they don't have a platform. They are not representing their constituents any more. They are representing all individuals who wish for absolute power and finance the federal and state governments have to offer.
This has not been a secret, but the MSM ignores in favor of movies, latest Hollywood gossip, and bs of any stripe, unless there is a school shooting, or other lead that can’t be ignored.
Yes, I have read about this happening and it is very concerning. Thanks for sharing the article.
Aren't you really criticizing Republicans for using the machinery of democracy? And isn't that what they are supposed to be?
Yes, I understand that their campaign is based on lies, but that is often the case. How many times have Republicans campaigned on the idea that tax cuts for the rich will help everyone? Or that blowing up the budget for such subsidies to the wealthy will reduce the deficit?
Instead of bemoaning what Republicans are doing, Democrats (and independents) need to oppose them politically. (Not saying that when the law is broken there should not be prosecution, but not everything that the other side does is unlawful.)
As we made clear, they are making evil legal, Dems haven’t sunk that low since my age of awareness (long, long ago)
Absolutely....hand the dumb ReFugLickanz some credible sounding BS for them to have to refute/deny/DISPROVE... :):):))). Waste their time! This tactic might also be seen as fighting fire with fire, although "BS" is hardly "fire". The idea (my idea) includes filling the airwaves using the (Dems) equivalent of a Faux News clone built of nonesense (BS) of the type which will sound so believable as to create discension and more importantly confusion and distrust inside the Repuglickcan ranks. It is obvious to me that the ignorance of people like MTGreeeeen, Kev McSuckarthy, LoBoe, & Sspalin, that it wouldn't be long before Mitch McDitch was concerned that his wife & Hillarry were't in some asian pedophile ring based in Budapest.., or is it Rumania? I forget. Oh.., we could also get GHiSlaine to publish her "List"....ohh baby, the Newsies would go nuts, and not just the Philly Enquirer. LET'S GO NUMBNUTZ!!
Much of our jurisprudence is based on norms, customs and our mutual understanding of the laws that govern us. Congress relays on these norms also and they have been violated to the point of irrelevance. Now what?
Time to kick some ass. Legally.
We MUST pass the voting rights legislation....NOW! That rethuglicans are maneuvering to take 2022 elections through cheating just points out the need to make sure EVERY vote is properly counter. Come on, Dems, do what's right and create a carve out for the filibuster, damn it!
Harry Reid would have abolished the fillibuster.
He probably should have abolished it. He took the small step of removint it as a strategy to block federal judgeships, but not Supreme Court nominees. That provided McConnell the excuse to eliminate it for the SC, too, which he used to hs advantage. Had Reid eliminated it altogether, it would have changed the playing field completely. McConnell has threatened to burn the palce down if the Democrats eliminate it now, but he will probably eliminate it when it is to his advantage should he become majority leader. His threat is likely just a strategy to keep the advantage for himself.
We are already ashes from his efforts so far.
Reid supported abolishing it in 2019.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Please pull together to make that happen!!
Fascinating, simply fascinating. Stone authored the Brooks Brothers Riot. I did not know that. Thank-you Dr. Cox Richardson. It really is a small cabal of people causing all this enormous trouble.
I was wondering why I did not remember the Brooks Brothers riot. Then I remembered that in 2000 I did not have the internet or even cable TV, had school age kids and was working 2 full time jobs. There are a lot of people like me now, busy lives with limited access to information. People typically under served by their elected officials, public services (I had no garbage pick-up then), health care professionals, etc. I needed protection from the Roger Stones of the world then (still do), just as most people need protecting from Trump's cowardly craven cabal today. This is my animating principle.
And future Supreme Court Judges Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett were sent to Florida to faciltate the recount. Coincidence? Nope.
All about the cabal of people. https://jennycohn1.medium.com/the-2000-u-s-presidential-election-was-a-harbinger-of-things-to-come-fecb1de53fa8
I simply do not remember the coverage of that event. I have no good excuse. It is entirely possible that I was not paying attention, a situation which I have remedied of late.
This election chaos somehow reminded me of Dallas after Kennedy was shot, a sense of quite extraordinary incompetence. But then, my very first experience of the USA at Miami airport had been one of remarkable incompetence plus panic and bad manners on the part of the hysterical Cuban-American ground staff who lost me my onward flight to Panama. Never seen anything like it—anywhere! I assumed this was uncharacteristic but, judging by what friends in Florida tell me and the behavior of top dog De Santis, I’m not so sure now.
What did shock me was the unseemly rush by the Supreme Court to cut through the gordian knot of recounts and hand the election to Bush. People complain of the slow grind of the wheels of justice following the public humiliation of the United States on January 6th (me too!) but in 2000 I was expecting proper thoroughness and concern that justice should not only be done but seen to be done. I’m no jurist but I have worked alongside able lawyers, painstakingly methodical and balanced in their approach. To me, this did not look like justice. I simply couldn’t make sense of what had happened.
I could perfectly well have accepted Bush coming out top in the recount if it had been handled correctly, but then it's true, I didn't know about Florida's tradition of tampering with electoral registers to exclude "the wrong kind of voters... The episode left me stunned.
Looking back now, the entire scenario looks like a template for future action, and I cannot for the life of me understand how I and much of the world should be learning of the riot for the first time decades later. Sounds like the mafia has gained some kind of agreed fixers' role in the machinery of misgovernment… Rather like the Yakuza in Japan...
Excellent as always, Prof. Richardson. I'm struck by Blakeman basically acknowledging that GW Bush stole the election in Florida and then GW filing a brief against Trump's efforts to do the same. If there had been justice in 2000 (and during Watergate), we could have avoided DJT altogether.
what a different world we would live in. Why I was as low as I had ever been until chump. Political idiots behind the presidential seal, what could go wrong, and with half of our population thinking they were hunky dory. I didn’t anticipate that but should have. Bill Moyers in Common Dreams “We’ve got to get alternative content out there to people, or this country’s going to die of too many lies.” We’re gasping…
Exactly.
R Dooley and ScannyDo - I hope a precipice is near. Peter Navarro has quite a long history of running for office in capacities here in San Diego but was never successful. When I saw that the former president named him as advisor I was surprised but not surprised. He'd made it to the big time or so it seemed. The surprises are just endless. I don't understand where our government institutions began to NOT hold people responsible for their obvious misdeeds. Michael Bales sums it up for me - "peaceful plan to overthrow an election" ?? Really? How can there be such a thing?
Pat, you said – " I don't understand where our government institutions began to NOT hold people responsible for their obvious misdeeds."
I don't either.
Me, either.
They sure tried to hold Bill Clinton accountable, HRC as well. Last ones I remember being on the hot seat
Bill Clinton was never charged with "Abuse of Power" in the case of him subjugating a young girl right in the oval office to perform (well, you know).
Furthermore, he was not convicted of the minimal charge against him in Congress after being impeached and he served out his time as President.
Allowing corrupt, abusive, liars to stay President is sort of normal here in the states.
While it is certainly true that Bill Clinton should have said No, the intern in question was 22 years old and quite publicly told us that she initiated.
Massive inequality of power in that case......responsibility is on the one in greater power.
When things get tough, people with integrity circle the wagons and fight for each other. In this case, we may see the conspirators split off in desperate attempts to save their own butts. Navarro throwing Stone under the bus may be just one example.
I suspect as this plays out, there will be more infighting. We have already seen members of those who were on the ground (Capitol grounds) claiming betrayal from Trump. But they were just the pawns. Now we are watching the knights and bishops turn on each other. Good.
Some of this blame game will be for personal survival - to avoid doing a long stretch in prison. But the egos of the Bannons and Stones will concern themselves with how they are painted in the historical portrait of this treasonous rebellion. Let the squirming begin.
I wonder what gambit Trump will try next. Probably another blunder, and he will be check mated.
Desperate people do tend to make mistakes. And this one can't keep his mouth shut. Karma may conclude his clown act career.
I'm sorry to say, "people of integrity" have not gotten off their arse to put an end to this totally farcical real-life chapter of the Emperors New Clothes. Right now, 50,000,000 people (Mowrons) are convinced the Emperor (who is actually strutting around with his penis in his hand) has a grey casmere suit and red tie on. What have the people of integrity done about it? Welp.., they have said it's against the law. Hah!! The "mowrons" could care less what the "people of integrity" say.., because they (the mowrons) are being told they are right, that the Emp is fully dressed. Plus.., the Supreme Ct is expected to apply the rule that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" should push come to shove as it clearly will. What say ye now, O persons of integrity?
To cement lies in the public mind, Republican officials need not resort to elaborate schemes. They just have to repeat the same lies over and over. They do it all the time, word by word. The Gingrich tactic. This includes Republican court officers.
Theme and variations. Verbatim repetition is in play in Trump lawyer arguments to Trump justices.
Imitation being the greatest form of flattery, in claiming the House has not proved legislative interest in Trump papers, Trump lawyers are betting on a sure thing. The claim comes right out of the Trump Supremes' playbook; it is the through the looking glass, catch 22 tactic they used to deny the House access to Trump's financial records.
The Nuremberg trials spotlighted lawyers and judges who bent German law to bow to Nazi bosses. The Allies wanted to spotlight the essential importance of an independent judiciary.
Do not forget liar master, Karl Rove.
I have never forgotten him, not for a nanosecond since Tx in 1994
Everything Hitler did was legal. Everything
I can’t believe the mass executions were legal.
They made it all legal. What happens when you own the government. However Ike chose to disagree
Younger voters needed to be made aware of the Brooks Brothers Riot and the excruciating time between Election Day 2000 and the Supreme Court installing its choice. Psychology was important in selling the decision in Bush’s favor. We should learn why it was different in 2020. Trump wasn’t branded a sore loser in the same way Al Gore was. Why not?
Because he started well before the election and said it was stolen. Can’t be called a sore loser if it’s been stolen from you
The big lie works better than small ones. How it’s done, according to James Murphy’s translation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf “in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more deeply corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.” The rest of that page is worthy of a read. Lays it all out for future monsters…
Trump lost his court cases alleging voter fraud. Could have been mentioned casually and frequently as Republicans toss around “radical Left Democrats/ Socialists/Communists.”