Like the weather

by liberal japonicus

Jan 6th that is, thinking of the joke about the weather: Everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it.

Which shouldn't be taken as a statement of principle, just an observation.

Anyway text of Biden's speech, and the video

and this analysis should get us started. Point to other stuff in the comments.

Comments

[wj]

Everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it.

And yet, that's not what I see happening here. Granted, the wheels of justice are grinding slowly. But that is hardly unique to this case. And the pawns who are the ones getting tried and convicted so far are, as far as I can see, in a bit of a state of shock that they are being held accountable at all.

As for those who fomented and planned the whole mess, if they aren't starting to panic yet, they should be. Any complex case like this takes time, while the documentation is secured, reviewed, and organized. Especially when there is lots of it. That there is, and seriously incriminating too, can be seen both from what has surfaced already and from the lengths the guilty are going to try and conceal as much as possible.

I would guess that those around Trump are frantically trying to decide how best to minimize the damage to themselves. That is, who to betray and when. Trump himself may be living in the delusion (born, admittedly, of experience) that he will always escape personal accountability. Or perhaps he is banking on stalling until he can steal the next election, and see if the hacks he installed in the Supreme Court will dutifully countenance self-pardon.

[liberal japonicus]

Well, it's a joke. And I think it works because the issue is a lot larger than someone pushing a few buttons. YMMV

[Russell]

The plain facts of the matter are:

Trump lost the election
Trump and his crew made plans to refuse the certification of the results
Trump supporters planned and carried out violent mayhem on Inauguration Day
Trump watched it on TV and did nothing

As far as I’m concerned, a line has been drawn. Trump supporters can either acknowledge that their guy lost in 2020 and move on, or in failing to do so they place themselves outside of the legal and Constitutional fabric that makes it possible for this nation to function.

Their choice.

But I have no further patience - no further fncks to give, as we seem to say these days - if they choose to place themselves outside of that fabric.

Threats and resentment is all they bring to the table. And that, after supporting the single most reprehensible individual to ever hold the office of POTUS in my lifetime or the lifetime of anyone reading this.

I don’t know what the hell is going on in their heads, and I’m not sure I want to know. But they need to get over it.

All of the “economic anxiety” tickets have been punched. All the “but her emails” coupons have expired. Enough of this toxic pernicious bullshit.

I expect and require the DOJ to identify the folks responsible for planning the events of last January 6, as well as the folks responsible for the aborted plans to refuse certification of the Electoral College votes. Identify them, charge them, punish them.

Otherwise we’re kind of done. We may be done anyway, but we’re definitely done if we can’t get at least that far.

I don’t know who the fnck these people think they are.

[Russell]

These people right here:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime/this-county-gop-is-paying-tribute-to-jan-6-the-most-significant-patriot-event-of-2021

They do not occupy the same reality that I do.

They are not patriots. They are the opposite of patriots. They have no regard for the nation, they just want to prevail. They’re happy to shred the legal and Constitutional institutions and processes that allow the nation to function, if it means they get to have their guy in office.

What do I have in common with them? Nothing I can see.

[novakant]

So Dick and Liz Cheney are now the (only) 'decent Republicans'? Good heavens.

[wj]

So Dick and Liz Cheney are now the (only) 'decent Republicans'? Good heavens.

Not even close. They are merely a couple of the more high profile examples of the fact that it is possible to be someone you disagree with about a huge number of issues, while still being a patriot who believes in this country and its institutions. (Unlike the MAGAots, most Congressional Republicans, governors like DeSantis and Abbott, etc.)

We may be down to maybe a quarter of Republicans who qualify as patriotic Americans these days. Which is definitely appalling. But it's still not close to only two.

[novakant]

I hope so, but where were all the others at the tribute then? Only Kinziger seems to have had a valid excuse (baby on the way).

Anyway, my point was if you have to turn to Dick Cheney as a reference point for decency, you're in trouble...

[Donald]

“ They are merely a couple of the more high profile examples of the fact that it is possible to be someone you disagree with about a huge number of issues, while still being a patriot who believes in this country and its institutions”

In that case, why give a damn about the country or its institutions? If Cheney is a patriot, then the country is a moral cesspool anyway.

[Donald]

Btw, I do understand the logic of siding with Stalin to beat Hitler. But maybe one can do so without sentimentalizing about old Joe.

[wj]

If Cheney is a patriot, then the country is a moral cesspool anyway.

Ah, Donald. In a world where so much has changed, it is (I suppose) a relief to know that there are still some of the far left absolutists around like those I knew in college. Totally unchanged.

I always wondered why those who had such a totally dark view of the world didn't just suicide and have done with it. It always seemed like it would be so much less painful.

[bobbyp]

We may be down to maybe a quarter of Republicans who qualify as patriotic Americans these days.

Those 25 percenteers will still most likely vote GOP when the rubber hits the road in election 2022. Without their vote, there is no big rollback of Dem House and Senate seats that everybody seems to have resigned themselves to.

If those folks are anywhere near being true to their word, 2022 shall be a GOP defeat of historic proportions.

I have been wrong before (ayieiii! you didn't mean that, did you bobbyp?), and I hope I am wrong here, but Trump got a lot of votes in 2020. I'm pretty sure you noticed.

[Tony P.]

wj,

Donald can correct me if I'm wrong, but I read him as referring to DICK Cheney. And yes: if DICK Cheney counts as a "patriot", America is full of shit.

--TP

[bobbyp]

wj,

I'm with Tony and Donald. I remain absolutist in my opposition to initiating unjustified wars and torturing people, just like I was way back when.

Times have not changed that much now, have they? Think of your conservative cred!

[wj]

bobbyp, no problem with opposing those things. I might have disagreements about precisely which wars are unjustified, of course -- although I expect we agree that Viet Nam for example was unjustified; and I thought so at the time. But torture is never justified.**

Still, that wasn't the issue. Rather it was Donald's view (as I read him) that everything was totally terrible, and there was minimal prospect of that ever changing. If he actually has some sliver of optimism (or, less likely, sees any time in the past when we as a country were not totally and utterly despicable), he is free to correct me.

** Note that I completely agree that Dick Cheney is despicable for supporting torture. But since the Vice President is not in the chain of command, I don't see him as a war criminal on that count. (Feel free to offer up other war crimes you think he committed.) Engaging in, or ordwring, illegal behavior is a crime; merely saying you support doing, when you have no standing to order it, it is not.

[nous]

Given what we know of the W. administration it’s not unlikely that Cheney and Rumsfeld were the authors of the order and W. merely the legal fiction of a commander (much like Reagan and in sharp contrast to H. W.).

[wj]

Could well be, nous. But as a legal matter, Bush is the guy responsible, regardless of who drafted the order he signed. (Now, if they forged his signature, that would be a different deal.)

[ral]

Indeed, George W. Bush was "the decider." But let's not go back to this. Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, yechh. No nostalgia for me despite the comparison to recent history.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

Remember all of the "conservatives" 'round here, going well into a second decade, whining about the outrageous number of pages in bills emerging as law from Congress.

Well, put yer reading glasses on assholes, because the administrative state charged with carrying out federal law, if not on the verge of being totally destroyed, will have to be told every single jot and tittle in writing how to do everything under the sun by a shitload of corrupt cunt republicans in Congress, if any laws are ever passed again, that is, except emergency orders to fuck 50% of us at all times.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/01/supreme-court-republicans-the-constitution-enacted-mr-alex-berensons-fox-news-hits

Need a catheter up your wazoo after that surgery administered by Medicare?

Ted Cruz didn't specify the details of that procedure and besides, the catheter gets in the way of his fucking, so eat it.

Amy Coney Barrett, a fucking Christian murderer, will let anyone own a weapon and murder us.

Kill the conservative movement.

It's the government's job to protect me from murderers.

Do it. Ruthlessly. Call the smoking ruins a fucking secondary effect.

Burn the subhuman Supreme Court to the ground.

[Donald]

Yeah I meant Dick. Not crazy about the senator daughter either, but the father is actually responsible for the Iraq War and accompanying horrors,,possibly more than anyone else.

“I always wondered why those who had such a totally dark view of the world didn't just suicide”

That’s really dumb and I could reply in a similar vein, but that would also be dumb.

Powerful people often abuse their power and Americans ( and others) who don’t suffer the direct consequences of these abuses sometimes take the POV that this is like any other difference of opinion. It isn’t and it shouldn’t make you suicidal to realize this. America is not some fantasyland where powerful people are always decent and incapable of war crimes or other misdeeds However, people who have a lot of power often find it very difficult to face up to the moral seriousness of their actions.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

When we are done hanging Dick Cheney, there will no rest from savage killing violence against the evil murderous subhuman conservative movement, which they crave, so they, the forever victims of every gummint action since the beginning of the Enlightenment, can kill us:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/6/2073114/-Texas-Sen-Ted-Cruz-puzzlingly-sets-his-sights-on-overturning-vaccine-mandates-for-kids-in-D-C

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/7/2073383/-Gorsuch-unmasked-Argues-that-COVID-is-no-big-deal-flu-kills-100s-of-1000s-of-people-every-year

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/01/supreme-court-republicans-the-constitution-enacted-mr-alex-berensons-fox-news-hits

Those cases in the docket coming up soon regarding the drastically loosening of weapons laws which vermin murderous conservative Christian Supreme Court conservatives will permit can't come soon enough.

Time to go as fully automatic as the scum permit us to, and then ignore even their fascist limits on us.

The government is not there to protect us any longer. At any level.

I'm sure vermin Manchin, Collins, and Sinema are deeply concerned.

There will be no rest or sleep for conservatives ever again in America.

[Russell]

Everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it.

My question is - what should be done about it?

Should we all ammo up and take it to the streets, a la noone’s bleakest predictions? I don’t see that ending well, for anyone.

Wait while the legal process grinds its careful and deliberate way toward justice? It’s been a year and so far the principals - the folks who planned and funded it all - have yet to appear in the dock. The creeps like Navarro who were cooking up a coup except without the crapping in the halls of the Capitol and smashing cops in the head with fire extinguishers part are unlikely to face any sanction at all, it’s not clear they broke any laws. Which is amazing in and of itself.

The makeup of Congress is likely to shift somewhat this fall, which may bring the Congressional investigations to an end. We don’t have an especially good track record of holding highly place individuals accountable in the best of circumstances.

Vote and give other types of support to candidates who aren’t Trump boot-lickers? And hope for the best?

Who is supposed to “do something” and what are they supposed to do?

There needs to be a remedy that falls somewhere between open warfare and innocuous Strongly Worded Statements. Maybe Garland’s DOJ will get it done. I have no idea. But there needs to be a remedy.

Who is supposed to “do something”? what are they supposed to do?

[wj]

Wait while the legal process grinds its careful and deliberate way toward justice? It’s been a year and so far the principals - the folks who planned and funded it all - have yet to appear in the dock.

Perhaps the lawyers here can correct me. But my impression is that it routinely takes a year or three between when a big white collar con (which seems like a relevant analogy) comes to light and when the DA has sorted thru all the documents and is ready to file charges. Sure, I'd love it if those who organized the whole thing were at trial already. But I'm not worried because it hasn't happened yet.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

"it’s not clear they broke any laws."

They are proving there is no rule of law for them.

Therefore, no rule of law can be applied to their enemies, no matter what we do.

Everything is on the table. But there is no table.

"I don’t see that ending well, for anyone."

I certainly don't either.

But it will be an end. An end might be the best, especially if the conservative movement is in their graves.

In any other sane country, Navarro would be in hiding and on the run. From a government that would protect us from him and his out-in-the-open plans to overthrow that elected government with violence.

Plans conceived in a fucking building, the White House,for which I fucking pay for the linens he wipes his filthy fascist mouth on after shoving taxpayer food down his Nazi Bolshevik gullet while his accountant figures out for him how not to pay for it.

He's be a shit stain on a Kent State University sidewalk.

He's be a bullet-riddled corpse on a Compton street for running the riots against storefronts.

There is no rule of law.

Ask any Mafia attorney.

What to do?

No one will know, until it's well into the doing, and when someone will think up a narrative, which is all American history is, a narrative chanted by stooges.

[Tony P.]

What to do? How about what to NOT do? Let me repeat my questions from the New Year thread (with typo corrected so wj won't be confused):

Would you shop at a store that has MAGA posters plastered all over? Would you hire a plumber with "TRUMP 2024" bumper stickers on his truck? Would you keep playing golf with somebody who insists the 2020 election was stolen? If you would, then a MAGAt takeover shouldn't bother you much -- it would just be "politics" after all.

I'm asking for real, this time. It seems to me the only way MAGAts figure out that they are, in fact, outnumbered in Real Life(tm) is that they find themselves being shunned everywhere they turn. In Real Life(tm), not on blogs or "social media".

BTW, my advice to sane people and Democrats both (overlapping but not congruent sets) is to just blow past "investigations" and unabashedly talk as if the obvious is undisputed:

He, Trump tried to stage a coup.
The storm troopers who took part in His Capitol Hill Putsch are scum.
The Republicans who incited them are traitors.
(Except Rudi and Mike Pillow, who are just batshit nuts.)
The Tuckers and the Alex Joneses are just Nazi propagandists.
Water runs downhill.
Grass is green.
It gets dark at night.

You know, straight talk like that. Oh, and when pundits of the "centrist" or "moderate" persuasion clutch their pearls and talk about "valid points on both sides", just point at them and laugh.

Shit's gonna get real one way or t'other. Dragging "politics" into Real Life(tm), now, uncomfortable as that may be, is the only way I can see to avoid choosing between submission and bloodshed, later.

--TP

[nous]

I don't believe that anyone who is not a Republican can stop the Republicans from going further down this path.

I think that most people who are Republicans will quickly find themselves declared heretics, and excommunicated, and shunned if they step one bit out of line.

So the only way this stops is if all the people who are trying to save the party from within stage a walk out, give some ground to the left, and join the rest of us in opposing, full stop, the GOP machine.

The Dems can't appease or listen their way to a shift in GOP tactics. The left can't counterbalance GOP militancy as a means of de-escalation, just of resistance once the conflict that the GOP wants becomes inescapable. And that resistance will be necessary and needs to be prepared for, but that preparation will not prevent hostilities.

So all the Dems can do is keep to their principles and hope that enough GOP support dissolves to render them ineffectual.

We have no leverage on their side.

[wj]

Would you shop at a store that has MAGA posters plastered all over? Would you hire a plumber with "TRUMP 2024" bumper stickers on his truck?

I had assumed the question was rhetorical, since the answer is so obviously No. (And I would include Would you deal with someone who chooses to fly a Confederate flag? Flat No.)

when pundits of the "centrist" or "moderate" persuasion clutch their pearls and talk about "valid points on both sides", just point at them and laugh.

When someone speaks of liberals and conservatives, and says "valid points on both sides", they may have a point. But valid points on the MAGAots side? Not in the real world. Those who go that way are, in your formulation, either batshit crazy or traitors/grifters out for nobody and nothing but themselves.

[CharlesWT]

An hour-long interview with Liz Cheney about her experiences on January 6th and its aftermath.

"A year ago today, something big happened in Washington. Was it a coup? Was it an insurrection? Was it “the worst attack on our democracy since the civil war,” as Joe Biden said? Who is responsible? Should the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, face criminal charges?

Few Republican leaders have been clearer in their answers to those questions–and none have paid a higher price–than Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney.

Because of her decision to impeach the president, Rep. Cheney went from being the highest-ranking Republican woman in Congress to being shunned by her own party and stripped of much of her power. Figures on the left that once called Cheney a “warmonger” and worse are now praising her as a hero.

Today, a conversation with Rep. Cheney about why she’s made the choices she’s made, the future of her political career, where the GOP goes from here, and what’s at stake for American democracy."
Investigating January 6th: The Price Liz Cheney Paid (Spotify)

[liberal japonicus]

My question is - what should be done about it?

When you put it that way, you kinda step on the joke…

But I guess the point of the joke is taking the question as what CAN be done? Sure, faster prosecutions, more exposure, ridicule, public scorn. Got no objection to any of that. But to ‘do’ something about it is pretty far removed from my daily life. Other folks can make their own estimations, but I think in the end, there is precious little. In the meantime, FB and twitter comment farms are churning out content. Which again, seems a lot like the weather.

I’m generally cynical, but only lately have I really turned pessimistic. Nous’ point, that there is not anything dems can do is basically ‘the joke’. I realize it’s not so funny, but it’s really all I got.

[cleek]

what you do is vote D, don't miss an opportunity to talk someone else into voting D, and make sure those who vote R know why you think it's a bad idea.

that's how America does politics.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

An addendum to my 9:05pm above regarding the genocidal death cult:

"Ohio's lawyer arguing at the Supreme Court against OSHA vaccine-or-test mandate for workers is arguing remotely today because he tested positive for the virus as part of the Supreme Court's own test mandate for lawyers. Confirmed via
@tomhals"

First thing to do on the Covid front, the Biden Administration should deny the parasitical Texas Republican Party's recent demand that the Federal Government pay some of their Covid bills.

And then demand that foreign country full of dogshit pay back every fucking cent of federal money spent on the pandemic and, what the hell, all the tens of billions of dollars spent on bailing their flooded piece of shit territory during recent decades.

Send Federal troops in to collect the stolen funds.

But let's not just pick on Texas.

Idaho seems a good place for the Biden Adminstration to order the cessation of all Medicare and Medicaid payments and services to their stiff-necked subhuman citizenry.

To really get them reaching for their AR-15s, also triple their Medicare premiums asnd co-payments.

Pick another rogue state full of red pigfuckers and order all federal funds to their hospitals cut to zero unless thay start turning away deliberately unvaxxed conservatives and airhead amateur new age health theorists who show up for Covid treatments.

Supplement the order with volunteer armed liberal militias to protect the medical personnel. Use deadly force.

Find out, like Lincoln did, what sort of whiskey the militais drink and keep them well-supplied, but advise them for the time being to hold off on the scalping.

Just had a conversation with an ICU nurse last night (I'm now out of quarantine after extending by a bunch of days the recommended isolation times; and I'm going back in as of today, except for grocery visits, because I ran into five people who are just over the thing too; it's everywhere).

She (and she was a piece of work her own self, too) said she just had an unvaccinated jackass patient yelling at her about how Anthony Fauci is full of shit as she began fucking carrying out the recommended medical protocols to save his worthless conservative undeserved life.

Is putting a pillow over his face and holding it there recommended?

Why not?

Six Supreme Court death panel judges are going to vote for anarchy.

Didn't we used to jail and kill anarchists who murdered Americans?

I'm looking forward to the very near time when the administrative state is utterly hobbled and the agencies must have every jot and tittle of every law spelled out to them by the likes of murderers Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson, if in fact any law, except those designed to fuck 50% of the population, ever get passed again.

Remember when conservatives here complained, whined about eyestrain because of so many pages in legislation. Well, settle down and read two million pages now of ifs, ands, and buts, ya jaggoffs.

You order a colonoscopy thru Medicare and Ted Cruz is going to be standing right next to your doctor getting all up in there on every detail of your stinking business, while of course he's taking it from behind courtesy of Tucker Carlson.

There are plenty of ways to accelarate the conservative movement's very organized and deliberate spiral into anti-government and anti-expertise violence and anarchy.

And then force can be applied savagely in our pure, fully justified self defense.

Other than all of that, I'm still optimistic.

Vote too. But those books are cooked.

But I'll try it one more time.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

Those federal troops going into Texas?

Dress 'em up in United Nations uniforms.

The sooner conservatives start killing, the sooner they can be killed.

Put yer earplugs in, Charles.

They've already started.

Where's my style book?

[novakant]

I always wondered why those who had such a totally dark view of the world didn't just suicide and have done with it. It always seemed like it would be so much less painful.

I've always wondered how insecure one has to be to require constant drip feeding of a self-serving meta-narrative.

[wj]

But to ‘do’ something about it is pretty far removed from my daily life.

In your situation, probably. But on this side of the Pacific we can help with registration drives (in places which haven't got automatic registration), and funding those who are doing them. Followed, in time, by Get Out The Vote efforts.

There is, after all, a reason making registration hard is such a big enthusiasm in some quarters. Might as well help their worst nightmares come true.

[Girl from the North Country]

Maureen Dowd, on the surrealism of January 6th at the Capitol:

Trump is such an egomaniacal thug that Dick Cheney, christened “a self-aggrandizing criminal” by The Atlantic in 2011, seems saintly by comparison.

No matter, as The Atlantic pointed out, that as vice president, Cheney “advanced a theory of the executive that is at odds with the intentions of the founders, successfully encouraged the federal government to illegally spy on innocent Americans, passed on to the public false information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and became directly complicit in a regime of torture for which he should be in jail.”

Cheney, who had subverted the Constitution at every turn, was greeted as a defender of the Constitution. From Vice to Nice. This is the world we’re in now.

Whatever one thinks of Dowd, one can't argue with this picture of the current looking-glass world, capable of causing ructions even here at ObWi between otherwise reasonable, moderate-ish people...

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

Well, it does have a weather sub-theme:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/7/2073342/-Popular-QAnon-promoter-who-said-vaccines-kill-don-t-get-it-just-died-of-COVID-19

Again, turn these medical care conservative parasites away from the door.

Her horse is feeling better, however.

[Girl from the North Country]

I hope someone or some organisation is keeping a list of the (public) antivaxxers, Covid deniers etc who are dying of Covid and at what age. Although no doubt a small subset of the total, horrifying loss of life, I think it would be a worthwhile document. As we have noted before, to quote JDT's lookalike, instant karma's gonna get you.

[JanieM]

Well, there are the Herman Cain awards.

[wj]

there are the Herman Cain awards

I wonder, is there something parallel for Brexiteers driven into bankruptcy because they got their wish? (It's not quite a Darwin Award thing, but....)

[Donald]

I live in a solidly blue state so can’t say what I’d do if I still lived in the three different red states I’ve lived in. I do have two friends who are or were Trump supporters. One drinks virtually all the Trump kool aid— I am not sure if he even recognizes the contradictions inside the Republican Party if you take their self descriptions seriously. TAC is useful to read because you see them laid out there, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. This guy did a 180 degree switch about Trump in the 2016 primaries. Initially he thought the Republicans “ had a deep bench” and dismissed Trump as a clown, and then did his turnabout when Trump was the clear front runner a few months later. It was interesting to watch.

I’ve yelled at him a few times, called him a Nazi once. He’s very patient with me. Yelling did no good. I’ve also tried not yelling most of the time and that might have had a tiny effect once in awhile.

The other person voted for Trump in 2016– not sure about 2020. Her issue is abortion. She is very Catholic. She despises Trump and she also accepts climate change as a real threat. People are complicated.

“ Trump is such an egomaniacal thug that Dick Cheney, christened “a self-aggrandizing criminal” by The Atlantic in 2011, seems saintly by comparison.“

Dowd’s First World privilege.

[ral]

Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown.
"Ah, Nazi, schmazi" says Wernher von Braun.

[I couldn't resist.]

As for Herman Cain awards, to receive one I would imagine a posthumous tweet is required.

[bobbyp]

Again, turn these medical care conservative parasites away from the door.

They shall be welcomed at my Ivermectin International Hotel Group. The IPO is next month. Free silver colloidal if you make your reservations now.

[wj]

I trust that the IIHG expects the members to make it the beneficiary of their wills. Seems only fair, since it is saving their lives....

[bobbyp]

wj,
We expect no such thing, but donations (tax deductible) are gladly welcome regardless of race, creed, sex, or state of animation.

Donald,
Just finished Spencer Ackerman's Reign of Terror. Good read. Highly recommended.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

Is it too late in the day to know what the subhuman genocidal conservative movement is all about:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1/5/2072831/-Major-GOP-donor-sends-mass-email-tying-Jews-to-a-bonkers-vaccine-genocide-conspiracy

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

The Shinola City On The Hill is a beacon to conservative movement vermin around the globe:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/01/trump-international-election-fraud-hungary-brazil/621185/

Extinguish it everywhere. On every continent.

America's bullshit conservative movement is Mordor.

[bobbyp]

Did tactical extremism take over the conservative movement, or was it the other way around?

[Donald]

Bobbyp—

I’ve been reading Ackerman’s book off and on for a month or so and am a little over halfway through. It is very good.

It’s also depressing. I don’t get suicidal reading about the constant often murderous BS that our government engages in, but it is something I tend to take in small to medium sized doses. I am also very slowly reading several other books on the same subject, including Vince Bevins’ book The Jakarta Method. Also Moyn’s book “ Humane”, though I don’t entirely agree with his thesis as I understand it so far.

Gopal’s book on Afghanistan was very good.

[wj]

noone, you can't really expect much from someone who can't tell the difference between the Scottish Rite Freemasons and the Jews.

But I did like the rhetorical question in the article asking why bother with vaccines when you've got space lasers. It does seem . . . odd.

[wj]

Did tactical extremism take over the conservative movement, or was it the other way around?

I'd have to say that it was a tactical decision (specifically Nixon's "Southern Strategy") which led eventually to extremism taking over the conservative movement. Without that, the Dixiecrats either remain with the Democrats or, perhaps, follow George Wallace into the American Independent Party.

[Russell]

From noone’s Kos link

For 300 years the Jews have been trying to infiltrate the Catholic Church and place a Jew covertly at the top. It happened in 2013 with Pope Francis. I believe the pandemic and systematic extermination of billions of people will lead to an effort to consolidate all the countries in the world under a single flag with totalitarian rule.

Don’t take the brown acid.

I know, it sounds bonkers.

Ya think?

[ral]

Think twice before dropping acid
Hold out for mushrooms instead

[hairshirthedonist]

If I had done each of those countless times, not that I'm saying I did, I would knowledgeably opine on the superiority of psilocybin mushrooms over LSD.

[Hartmut]

But I did like the rhetorical question in the article asking why bother with vaccines when you've got space lasers. It does seem . . . odd.

It's also odd that no less than three shots are necessary to get the microchips in. The third may be just an update but given the powers that these chips are supposed to have why isn't it done remotely?

[wj]

It's also odd that no less than three shots are necessary to get the microchips in.

Maybe only the J&J vaccine has the microchips? Especially since it seems to be the most likely to be available in rural (and other red) areas.

[bobbyp]

For 300 years the Jews have been trying to infiltrate the Catholic Church...

For the life of me I can't come up with anything that would have kickstarted that effort in precisely the year 1713. What could have taken them so long to come up with the idea?.....but aha! Magic mushrooms.

There are good reasons why creosote is a dangerous health hazard.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

I'm so magnitized by my vaccines now that when I walk into a restaurant, for example, silverware from tables as far a way as twenty feet lift up, as if commanded by Carrie's telekinetic powers, and stick flat to me from head to foot.

The odd wristwatch, and a few broaches and earrings sometimes accompany them.

As I walk down the street, my vaccine-activated magnetism causes light poles and traffic signs to bend toward me and parked cars wobble and shift slightly in my direction.

I spend several hours the other with one leg stuck tight to a fire hydrant, until a couple of guys who came along separated my leg and the hydrant.

It must be a rare earth magnetism because when I return home the bottoms of my shoes are wearing an armor of recently minted coins I've picked up on my flaneuring wanderings around the city.

The stainless steel walls othe elevator in my building bulge toward me. The doors of the washers and dryers in the basement open as I pass them, saving me the labor of opening.

I can't throw a steel/tin can away. They won't leave my hand.

Restringing a guitar is like trying to weave a sweater with strands of super glue.

It takes all of my strength.

All of these things are truth, and even truer because I say, and write, and think them as a free American supported by the unerring flaccid language of the Constitution, so help me God.

No doubt an engineer or two, or perhaps Hartmut with his deep fund of arcane facts, here will attempt to refute my claims, but what do they know of the reality of a real believing American endowed by his Creator with utter horseshit and the common sense of a shoehorn, which by the way is now stuck to my heel.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

Manchin negotiates with himself, loses, and ends up with nothing:

https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/manchin-appears-to-back-away-from-even-his-own-build-back-better-offer-51641760080?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts

Torpedos away.

[wj]

As I walk down the street, my vaccine-activated magnetism causes light poles and traffic signs to bend toward me and parked cars wobble and shift slightly in my direction.

Not sure about the cars. But the traffic signs and light poles are obviously just bowing to you. Even they know how to genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!

[bobbyp]

Based on the studies I have found doing my own research on the internet, the vaccine implanted chip enhances sexual prowess and adds 25 years to the average life span.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

Odd, but my magnetism doesn't seem to have attracted increased attention from the opposite contradictory gender.

Maybe if they wear metal braces on their teeth?

[Donald]

I finished the Ackerman book and think he is right— the dishonesty and authoritarianism of the decades of the war on terror helped prepare the way for someone like Trump.

[Hartmut]

The greatest miracle seems to be that that magnetism works on all metals but NOT on the magntic compass.

[hairshirthedonist]

From the NYT via Yahoo, first and last paragraphs excerpted:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pence-jan-6-committee-engage-123502882.html

As the U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol rushes to gather evidence and conduct interviews, how far it will be able to go in holding former President Donald Trump accountable increasingly appears to hinge on one possible witness: former Vice President Mike Pence.

(...)

If Pence rebuffs the panel’s request to testify voluntarily, it will be forced to decide whether to subpoena a former vice president, a move that Congress is believed to have not taken since it subpoenaed John Tyler, a former president and vice president, in 1846.

I guess the fact that Congress hasn't subpoenaed a former vice president since 1846 establishes a norm against doing so. Maybe a bit more "both sides" on the norm-breaking is in order.

[Girl from the North Country]

I'm telling you about the following BBC radio documentary series, even though I haven't listened to it yet, because someone I trust has recommended it. When I said "all about QAnon huh?" she replied "and all the Clinton stuff etc". The official description is:

QAnon and the plot to break reality.

A year on from the Capitol Insurrection in Washington DC on 6 January 2021, Gabriel Gatehouse journeys into the dark undergrowth of modern America. He's looking for the origins of the story that drove the crowds to storm the heart of US democracy. From conspiracy-soaked barrooms in 1990s Arkansas, via spies in hotel rooms in the shadow of the Kremlin, to anarchic chatrooms on the early internet, this is a search for the answer to one big question: did this just happen, or is somebody trying to break reality?

Interestingly even The Times says this about it:

The BBC’s The Coming Storm (Radio 4 and Sounds) is more interested in the “why”. What spurred that baying mob? Why were they so convinced they were right, that even God was on their side? First, it takes the story back to 1993, and the early days of the world wide web, when Bill and Hillary Clinton became magnets for the (not entirely unwarranted) kind of poisonous slurry of rumour and misinformation that today fuel internet conspiracy theories.

For its presenter, Newsnight’s international editor Gabriel Gatehouse, the seven-part series is also a kind of apologia for his and his mainstream media colleagues’ failure to pay closer attention to fringe figures and beliefs. In 2020 he attended a pro-Trump rally in Arizona, where he met a man draped in furs, wearing horns on his head. Not being the kind of journalist who comes to America to make fun of crazies, he did not give airtime to “Q Shaman” and his unhinged story involving Hillary Clinton and a cabal of satanic paedophiles plotting to steal the 2020 election. When he spotted the same distinctive character rioting in Washington, he wondered if he should have done. When Trump emerged as the Republican presidential nominee, Gatehouse dismissed his chances. We all know how that worked out.

I hope anyone who is interested, even if not in the UK, will be able to find it.

[hairshirthedonist]

I suppose this is the best thread for this.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/06/new-civil-war-about-what-exactly-526603

The Trump years, which it is now evident did not end with his presidency, have awakened a conflict so profound that, as in the 1860s, democracy, constitutional order and union itself are in peril.

A big deal, indeed. But also a puzzle: If this is a 21st century version of 19th century disunion, shouldn’t it be more obvious what the war, at bottom, is all about?

(...)

The more the vitriol has risen the less consensus there is about the origins of anger. To the contrary, there is something closer to an establishment consensus that the search for root cause is folly — the Trump phenomenon defies explanation, and the threat posed by his demagoguery makes speculation about its origins an irrelevant distraction.

Violence at the Capitol is hardly unprecedented. At least the Puerto Rican terrorists who shot five representatives from the House gallery in 1954 had a clear agenda: “Viva Puerto Rico libre!” (Long live free Puerto Rico) shouted one of them. Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in 1856 was the superior of Donald Trump when it comes to vivid insult. Of South Carolina Sen. Andrew Butler, he said, he “touches nothing which he does not disfigure with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact. He cannot open his mouth, but out there flies a blunder.” Butler’s nephew, Rep. Preston Brooks, was clear on why he caned Sumner on the Senate floor, and Sumner was, too. It was because he accused Butler of being in love with a mistress, “I mean the harlot, slavery.” They were arguing over the transcendent issue of their time.

The transcendent issue of this time — no matter the specific raw material of any given news cycle — is the belief that one half of the country suspects the other half is contemptuous of them, and responds with contempt in turn. “Seinfeld” was not really, as was often said, “a show about nothing.” It demonstrated instead that with the right characters and frame of mind, you can make a show about anything that might happen in daily life. Donald Trump has shown that you can use the same approach to create a national crack-up. The violent rabble that crashed the Capitol a year ago showed that crack-ups are fertile ground for crackpots.

ISTM that our national conflict is about an incoherent mish-mash of sheer bullsh*t and relatively trivial and routine disagreements amplified into faux existential threats.

[ral]

GftNC, thanks for the pointer.

Here is one for you, reporting by On the Media on the lead up to the insurrection. The second and third segments of the show recap listening to Zello, a voice chat app used by the rioters. OTM had been listening before the election.

[cleek]

ISTM that our national conflict is about an incoherent mish-mash of sheer bullsh*t and relatively trivial and routine disagreements amplified into faux existential threats.

and the internet is the amplifier.

democracy requires informed voters but the internet misinforms more easily than not.

[nous]

In case you don't have time for the podcast about Zello, here's a link to the Guardian story they mention:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/13/zello-app-us-capitol-attack-far-right

[wj]

As the U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol rushes to gather evidence and conduct interviews, how far it will be able to go in holding former President Donald Trump accountable increasingly appears to hinge on one possible witness: former Vice President Mike Pence.

One hopeful sign (hey, it's me! ;-) is that when push came to shove last January, Pence followed to law. But it probably wouldn't to try to get Dan Quayle to call and remind him that subpoenas must be complied with.

[Girl from the North Country]

FYI, I just saw The Coming Storm is available on the BBC World Service, so anyone interested should be able to find it.