Sunday, January 31, 2021
Saturday, January 30, 2021
Sunday, January 24, 2021
Saturday, January 23, 2021
Thursday, January 21, 2021
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
The Parler Videos
As supporters of President Donald Trump took part in a violent riot at the Capitol, users of the social media service Parler posted videos of themselves and others joining the fray. ProPublica reviewed thousands of videos uploaded publicly to the service that were archived by a programmer before Parler was taken offline by its web host. Below is a collection of more than 500 videos that ProPublica determined were taken during the events of Jan. 6 and were relevant and newsworthy. Taken together, they provide one of the most comprehensive records of a dark event in American history through the eyes of those who took part. Read more: Why We Published Hundreds of Videos Taken by Parler Users of the Capitol Riots | Inside the Capitol Riot: What the Parler Videos Reveal
Videos are ordered by the time they were taken. Scroll down to start watching or click on the timeline to jump to any point in the day.
2021 Inauguration Eve
Today is the last full day of the Trump presidency and the eve of Biden's inauguration. The US Capitol is effectively blanketed by security as we prepare for the changing of the guard -- and for the grim milestone of 400,000 covid-19 deaths (in under a year).
In his inaugural address, Biden is expected to echo his calls for unity, for the turning of the page, and for inclusion, peace, and patience. He may also hit directly at some of the contemporary causes of discord, echoing -- for instance -- Bernice King's (MLK's daughter) comments yesterday:
"This King holiday has not only come at a time of great peril and physical violence, it has also come during a time of violence in our speech — what we say and how we say it...It is frankly out of control and we are causing too much harm to one another."
Biden will be sworn in and assume the presidency at exactly noon.
In place of the normal inaugural crowds, more than 200,000 flags -- made up of a bunch of American flags and some from each of the states -- have been placed on the National Mall. At 5:30pm tonight, before the inaugural events begin in earnest, Biden will host a vigil at the Lincoln Memorial to remember those who have died from covid-19. It is likely that, by the time he is on TV for this event, the US death toll will have crossed 400,000 -- roughly equal to wiping an entire city the size of Minneapolis from the country. Buildings will be illuminated all over the country as part of this ceremony, and church bells will ring in many towns.
At the inauguration itself, just a small number of people will be allowed on the stage with the president-elect, and the ceremony will be built for TV more than the crowd that is present. Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton are expected to be in attendance, as well as Vice President Pence. President Carter's health will keep him from attending, and President Trump has planned a concurrent event. This will be the fourth time an outgoing president has skipped the inaugural ceremonies; the last was when Andrew Johnson snubbed Ulysses S. Grant. John Adams and his son also skipped their successor's inaugurations.
Lady Gaga will sing the national anthem, and Jennifer Lopez and Garth Brooks will also perform. There will be a variety of other components to the ceremony, including poetry readings and salutes from the military bands.
Biden and Harris will then proceed down Pennsylvania Avenue in a parade. There will be 1,391 people in the parade, plus 90 horses and 9 dogs. The parade is *not* to celebrate Biden and Harris. As is traditional, the "pass in review" along the East Front of the Capitol at the start of the parade is meant for the new commander-in-chief to review the armed forces, who have just been (historically) peaceably transferred from one commander-in-chief to another.
Biden, Harris, Obama, Bush, Clinton, and the various First Ladies/Gentleman will also lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknown Solider. Because covid-19 will black out most of the normal festivities, there will be a virtual "Parade Across America," which will include performances and art installations from the 50 states and 6 other US territories. In addition to the state-level performers, the Mall has been lit with 56 pillars of blue light, and a variety of performers in DC -- led by Tony Goldwyn, Jon Stewart, the New Radicals, and others -- will supplement the parade.
At 8:30pm, the will be a prime-time TV special to celebrate American unity. The special will include performances by Bon Jovi, the Foo Fighters, John Legend, Demi Levato, Bruce Springsteen, Justin Timberlake, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kerry Washington, Eva Longoria, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jose Andres, Dolores Huerta, and others. Tom Hanks will host the event, and the new president will speak a second time.
On Thursday morning, an inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral will conclude the inauguration events.
Included here are several photos from the rehearsal of the inauguration that took place yesterday, as well as some imagery of the National Mall last night.
The view of the Capitol from the National Mall.
The view of the state flags lining the Mall.
The National Mall - January 18, 2021
The pillars of light, one for each of the states and territories, above DC January 18, 2021
An art installation in Lawrence, Kansas that will be part of the Parade Across America tomorrow.
Flags for each state and territories
Monday, January 18, 2021
Sunday, January 17, 2021
Animals
The terrorists that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 are animals. Watch how they act, listen to their words. Decent human beings do not act like this.
drumpfism is a cult. How to deprogram his cult members? I don't know. But the animals in this film and others that were there can deprogram in jail. Hopefully for a long time.
As for their sainted Ashli Babbit? Watch her actions that caused her death. She was no saint.
On January 17, 2021, ProPublica released "What Parler Saw During the Attack on the Capitol", a collection of 500 videos taken by Parler members and saved before the right-wing social media was taken down.Wednesday, January 13, 2021
The Backstory to the Insurrection
One of the best investigative journalists around. From @SethAbramson on twitter
The main players in this thread (please note the recurrence of actors from Arizona and Alabama as well as the White House):TrumpGiulianiRep. Biggs (R-AZ)Rep. Gosar (R-AZ)Rep. Brooks (R-AL)Sen. Tuberville (R-AL)Arizona Proud BoysAlabama Attorney General Steve Marshall
The picture I discuss here is an emerging picture. All individuals discussed in this thread are innocent until proven guilty. This thread is a compilation/curation of evidence already publicly reported by major-media—not an attempt to imply a final portrait has been developed.
In addition to the men listed in Tweet #1, the following men are also relevant to this account:▪️ Ali Alexander, far-right activist▪️ Roger Stone, friend and advisor to the president▪️ Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign manager▪️ Donald Trump Jr., son of the president
As I mentioned, all pieces of evidence discussed in this thread were previously posted (with links, images, and videos, as appropriate) on this feed within the last week. Scroll through my feed since January 6 (inclusive) if you wish to find any or all of this key information.
The phrase "Stop the Steal" was developed by Trump friend and adviser Roger Stone, a convicted criminal and self-described "political dirty trickster" who Trump rewarded with a corrupt presidential pardon during the possible seditious conspiracy described in this thread.
In addition to being an associate of the Proud Boys as well as Trump, Stone was implicated in the Russia scandal—including not just contact with Kremlin cutout WikiLeaks in 2016, but contact with Israeli officials pre-election to get political intel via Trump's Turkish allies.
Stone is a longtime associate of former Trump campaign manager Manafort, who the Mueller Report found colluded with a known Russian intel agent and who was recently rewarded with a corrupt pardon by the president. Trump has told friends Manafort could hurt him if he "flipped."
Ali Alexander, a far-right activist, has confessed that he organized a "Stop the Steal" rally for January 6 as part of a "scheme" to stop Biden's November 2020 election landslide from being certified in Congress. He identifies Biggs, Gosar, and Brooks as his co-conspirators.
After being developed using Stone's tagline ("Stop the Steal"), Alexander's event quickly merged with a "Save America March" being orchestrated by several "dark money" pro-Trump groups. Alexander's event—with a new name—ended up being the event Trump appeared at on January 6.1
One of Alexander's co-conspirators, Brooks, spoke alongside Trump and Jr. at the rally associated with the Save America March. At the rally, Trump, Jr., and Brooks all incited insurrection—Brooks, who'd already promised to challenge Biden's electors, most stridently of all.1
The Save America March got its name from Trump's Save America PAC—which raised $300+ million post-election on the false claim the cash was for "election defense"; instead, it went to (besides the RNC) Trump and Giuliani—and was planned by a Manafort company, Event Strategies.1
So the rally Trump incited insurrection at:▪️ Took its tagline from Roger Stone;▪️ was planned by a company Stone's associate Manafort worked for;▪️ was allegedly part of a plot hatched by Biggs, Gosar, and Brooks;▪️ featured Brooks, Trump, and Jr. inciting insurrection.1
At the January 6 rally, Giuliani told the crowd that Trump desperately needed the January 6 election certification delayed—and not delayed for a few hours, but for *days*. He promised the gathered mob that that delay would lead to *conclusive proof* Trump had won in November.1
If indeed there was a seditious conspiracy on January 6, it involved Trump allies inside the Capitol on January 6 artificially delaying Biden's certification long enough for the mob incited by Trump and his allies outside the Capitol to shut down the joint session completely.15
The key figures inside the Capitol on January 6 were Trump allies Gosar and Biggs, whose job was to object to the certification of Arizona's electors—leading to two hours of useless debate in the House—and Brooks' Alabama peer Sen. Tuberville, who would support the objection.1
While Trump and Giuliani could be sure Gosar and Biggs would—with the aid of Tuberville—force the joint session into a 2-hour debate, less clear was how to ensure the "Save America March" disrupted the joint session as Ali Alexander (and Biggs, Gosar, and Brooks) had planned.17
The alleged conspirators needed militants outside the Capitol who'd "spark" an assault on the Capitol once enough of the mob incited by Trump at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue had arrived at the Capitol. This is where the Proud Boys came to be of great utility to Trump.1
Trump had falsely said at a pre-election debate that he didn't know who the Proud Boys were; he did know, from his friendship with Stone, a major Proud Boys booster and mascot. That's why he told the group to "stand back and stand by"—which soon became the Boys' rallying cry.
On December 12, the leader of the Proud Boys went to the White House, saying in advance of his trip (on social media) he had been "invited" there. Team Trump claimed that he had merely been on a Christmas tour of the White House. The truth of the matter still remains unknown.
7 days after the Proud Boy leader visited the White House by invitation, a Trump rally scheduled by a pro-Trump dark money group was moved to January 6. Within minutes, Trump was promoting it, saying that it'd be "wild." It had Proud Boy ally Stone's "tagline" attached to it
At the time a random Trump rally suddenly became the January 6 "march"—intended to coincidence with Congress' joint session—Trump was looking for a Representative to challenge electors during the session. He found Brooks, who then planned the January 6 rally with Alexander.
At around this time, the Arizona GOP—with two of its most prominent leaders being apparent Alexander co-conspirators Gosar and Biggs—tweeted out one of the most bizarre/horrifying tweets of 2020: the party formally asked readers if they were willing to "die for" Donald Trump
Different states have different "Proud Boy" chapters. As Arizonans Gosar and Biggs were plotting with Trump a rally intended to lead to disruptive violence; and as the Arizona GOP the two men led was asking people to "die for" Trump; the Arizona Proud Boys became *important*.
As noted, Trump and his allies needed a group of militants who'd be willing to spark the invasion of the Capitol. Trump ally Stone was close with the Proud Boys; the Proud Boys advocate using of violence; Trump had told them to "Stand by"; they'd adopted it as a rallying cry.
An hour before the invasion began, a USCP officer now tells Buzzfeed News that he was unnerved by seeing a menacing social media message shown to him by a fellow officer. In the message, the Proud Boys use one of their usual online channels to promise to "breach the Capitol."
According to the WSJ, the attack on the Capitol was launched when a group of men "in blaze orange hats" suddenly attacked a barricade. CNN later identified the use of "blaze orange hats" as connected to the Proud Boys, which the aforementioned Proud Boy leader angrily denied.
Unfortunately for the Proud Boys, they decided to livestream their participation in the events of January 6. The early part of a 100-minute livestream shows Proud Boys in tactical gear with "blaze orange" arm bands and blaze orange strips of duct tape on at least one helmet.
But the most damning moment in the livestream comes nearly an hour in, when the group of Proud Boys doing the filming encounters a group of their fellow Proud Boys on the street—all of whom are wearing blaze orange hats.The men identify themselves as the Arizona Proud Boys.
This same group—the Arizona Proud Boys—was separately photographed and tweeted about by Will Sommer of THE DAILY BEAST. It's unknown why both the leader of the Proud Boys and its founder falsely claimed on Parler that no Proud Boys were wearing blaze orange hats on January 6.
In order to ensure that the sizable mob from Trump's rally would have an open path to the Capitol, the way had to be opened just before Trump's speech ended. A recent NYT timeline includes a picture of the Arizona Proud Boys—in blaze orange hats—at the Capitol at 11:50AM ET.
Trump's speech at the Ellipse was very, very well attended. One reason it was so well attended is that Brooks' and Tubervillle's peers in the Alabama GOP had apparently been just as busy as Biggs' and Gosar's peers in the Arizona GOP had been. And they had a key role to play.
The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA)—run by the Alabama Attorney General—was secretly running "robocalls" urging people across the country to go to Trump's Save America March. The Alabama Attorney General now claims that he had no idea what his group was up to.
But the two most important Alabama Republicans were—without question—Brooks and Tuberville. The Alabaman Brooks was the first House member to say he'd contest Biden's win, and the Alabaman Tuberville the first senator to say he'd do so. (You need one of each to make it work.)
During a speech at a rally he'd set up with Alexander, Biggs, and Gosar—using Stone's tagline and Manafort's event-planning company—Brooks *explicitly* told the mob to go to the Capitol and "kick ass." His full speech is absolutely terrifying. It is seditious, and incitement.
So Trump and Giuliani had the Arizona Proud Boys at the Capitol barricade at 12, and the Arizona Congressmen inside the Capitol with objections ready; they had Alabama's Mo Brooks inciting insurrection at the rally and Alabama's Tuberville aiding the Arizonans in the Capitol.
The problem was timing. How to time the rally, the march, an invasion of the Capitol, and the objections during the joint session in such a way that each event began at ended—or as the case may be, was violently interrupted—at the right moment. In the end, the timing was off.
We now know that both Giuliani *and* Trump desperately tried to call Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville during the joint session—in each case calling the wrong man by mistake. And Giuliani was stupid enough to leave a *voicemail message* on the phone of Utah senator Mike Lee.
Giuliani, in inciting the crowd at the rally—he demanded "trial by combat!"—had promised them he had up to *five* states he and Team Trump could legitimately challenge. But when he called Tuberville, he said that Trump needed Tuberville to object to a *stunning* "ten" states.
Trump likewise called Tuberville to try to get the joint session extended. Let's be clear: there was *no benefit* legally, politically, or constitutionally to Trump or Giuliani to getting the joint session extended by a few hours unless they believed the *mob* would aid them.
In speaking to Tuberville Giuliani made little sense. Team Trump had never challenged "10" states before—and Giuliani saying that such challenges would give Team Trump time to get "more evidence" was nonsense, as the joint session was going to end on January 6 no matter what.
In the event, the Capitol was breached with substantial assistance—per WSJ—of the men in "blaze orange hats." And of those who breached the Capitol, the ones in tactical gear appear to have been most interested in either (a) accessing the House chamber or (b) taking hostages.
The quickest ways to make it impossible for the joint session to conclude on January 6 would've been 1) for the electoral ballots—which were on the House floor—to be destroyed/stolen; 2) for a member of Congress to be taken hostage—as it'd preclude a full vote on Biden's win.
But a third possibility was simply chaos—chaos that lasted so long the Congress lost the will or the logistics to continue their work on January 6. Team Trump could then set about litigating and lobbying over when Congress would meet to finish its work certifying Biden's win.
Top Trump adviser Peter Navarro had already told Fox News that Trump had the power to "move inauguration day" if events demanded it—as sufficient chaos on January 6 might have done. So evidence of Donald Trump's reaction to the insurrection on that date becomes critical, now.
According to half a dozen major-media reports, Trump's reactions to the insurrection included being "pleased," "excited," "delighted," "borderline enthusiastic," and having no interest in doing anything but "watching the show."He "repeatedly" refused to call out the Guard.
Ali Alexander articulates the plan he and Trump allies Biggs, Gosar and Brooks had in *identical* terms: he wanted the action outside the Capitol to directly and viscerally influence what was happening inside the Capitol, which is clearly what Trump wanted as events unfolded.
The connections—and mutual interests—of the Proud Boys, RAGA, Tuberville, Brooks, Biggs, Gosar, Alexander, Giuliani, Trump, and Don Jr. (whose January 6 speech was the second-most inciting after Brooks') seem to be inarguable. The primary question is what contacts there were.
An investigation must look to any key post-election contacts within Arizona (between Biggs, Gosar, the Arizona Proud Boys, the Arizona GOP and Alexander) and Alabama (Brooks, Tuberville and RAGA) and then if these entities communicated with the White House *or* with Giuliani.
What is inarguable is that all of these men and entities—including Stone and Manafort—present a mass of interconnections, but an identical goal: using an "inside/outside" conspiracy (politicians in the Capitol, inciters outside it) to ensure Biden's win couldn't be certified.
If sufficient additional evidence is developed—see my caveat atop this thread—the picture of a seditious conspiracy begins to emerge. And of course I haven't focused on the Pentagon, USCP or Guard piece much, except to note Trump wanted the end to the siege delayed maximally.
CONCLUSION/ The Trumps and Giuliani are undoubtedly capable of an anti-democratic plot—they did the same with Russia, Ukraine, China, and Trump's Middle East allies. Brooks is a maniac, and Gosar, Biggs, and Tuberville lack principles. So we'll see what the evidence reveals.
PS/ Please consider retweeting the first tweet in this thread (my pinned tweet), if you haven't done so already. Many journalists and politicians follow this feed—thousands, in total—but I'd love for this picture of the current state of the evidence to reach even more folks ASAP.
(UPDATE) Apropos of this thread, Maddow notes that the DC U.S. Attorney says he's using *public corruption* prosecutors—among others—to pursue "seditious conspiracy" charges.This seems to suggest public officials are being criminally investigated. Perhaps ones I mentioned here.
You can follow @SethAbramson.
Actions Have Consequences
From the "actions have consequences" file:
Well, well, well...
BREAKING:
**Blue Cross Blue Shield Association President and CEO Kim Keck said it was suspending all support to the 147 Republicans who voted "to subvert the results of November’s election by challenging Electoral College results."
** Marriott will stop donating to all the members who voted against certification. They donated $10,000 to Tommy Tuberville last year.
** Commerce Bank has "suspended all support for officials who have impeded the peaceful transfer of power."
** Dow Inc., the massive chemical company, was more definitive. The company states that it will no longer donate to any member of Congress who objected to the certification of the Electoral College for the duration of their term in office.
**Citibank will “not support candidates who do not respect the rule of law” and will pause all PAC activity for three months.
** Mastercard states that it is suspending donations “to members of Congress who voted to object to the certification of the 2020 election.”
**AT&T, the largest corporate contributor to the Republicans will suspend contributions to members who voted to object to the certification of Electoral College votes.”;AT&T’s PAC donated $33,000 to five Senators — $15,000 to Cruz, $10,000 to Marshall, $4,000 to Kennedy, $2,000 to Hawley, and $2,000 to Scott.
** Deloitte will suspend political contributions and “will not support those who undermine the rule of law.” Deloitte’s PAC donated $10,000 to Marshall and $10,000 to Hawley.
** Airbnb will update its framework and withhold support from those who voted against the certification of the presidential election results.” Airbnb’s PAC donated $2200 to Scott.
**Amazon, which donated over $600,000 to the group of Republicans who voted to overturn the election result “has suspended contributions to any member of Congress who voted to override the results of the U.S. presidential election.”
** Verizon, which donated $15,500 to three Senators, will also be “suspending contributions in 2021 to any member of Congress who voted in favor of objecting to the election results.”
** Intel, which donated $2,500 to Cruz, states that it “will not contribute to members of Congress who voted against certification of the Electoral College vote as we feel that action was counter to our company's values.”
**General Electric, which donated $4,000 to three Senators, will also halt donations to the group.
** PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) states that it will suspend contributions to the lawmakers who objected to the results. “The attack on our US Capitol was deeply disturbing and goes against everything we stand for in our democracy. Given this moment in history, the PwC PAC has suspended all political contributions to any member of Congress who voted to object to the certification of electoral votes,” PwC’s PAC donated $10,000 to Marshall.
** Comcast/NBCUniversal, the largest corporate contributor to the Republican Senators who objected to the Electoral College count, will be suspending “all political contributions to those elected officials who voted against certification of the Electoral College votes.” Comcast donated at least $44,500 in the 2020 election cycle to four of the eight Senators who objected to the Election. Hyde-Smith received at least $17,500 from the company.
**Hallmark states that it will be requesting refunds from the Senators it had donated to who had objected to the certification of the results, stating that these Senators’ actions do not reflect the “company’s values.” During the 2020 election cycle, Hallmark’s PAC donated $5,000 to Marshall and $3,000 to Hawley. It requests Sens. Hawley and Marshall to return all HALLPAC campaign contributions.
** Goldman Sachs states that it was freezing donations and plans to conduct a “thorough assessment of how people acted during this period.”
** Dell states it “will suspend all contributions to members of Congress whose statements and activities during the post-election period. It will no longer support the Republican members who objected to the election results.
**American Express will halt all contributions to Republicans who objected to the certification of the election."Last week's attempts by some congressional members to subvert the presidential election results and disrupt the peaceful transition of power do not align with our American Express Values.”
** American Airlines, which donated $5,000 to Cruz, will take “a three-month pause from [political] giving to review contributions.”
** Bank of America, in the next election cycle, will review its decision making criteria in light of the actions that contributed to the appalling violent assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Many other major companies are reviewing their contributions for changes.
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Leaving Behind Haunting Hatred
We Can Make America Anew Only If We're Honest About the Depth of the Ugliness and Hate Today
https://time.com/5928566/u-s-capitol-attacks-eradicating-white-supremacism/?fbclid=IwAR1j6bAvVPEtYxuQeBTDhlUfie03_aOPnOIJhA_RKHG9JIeKPYsx1xd6-jk
BY EDDIE S. GLAUDE JR.
JANUARY 11, 2021 1:48 PM EST
Glaude, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University, is the author of Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul and the New York Times bestselling Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
For a few hours (but it felt like days), I watched mostly white men and women ransack the Congress. They climbed walls. Broke doors and windows. Shouting that they were the true patriots. Someone filmed a police officer in riot gear, holding the hand of an older white woman in a camel-haired coat with a red, white, and blue ribbed pom beanie hat with TRUMP emblazoned on the front, as she carefully walked down the steps. She was one of the many who stormed the Capitol building and who simply walked away from the act.
There were no tanks or militarized weapons. No police in army fatigues. No bullhorn warnings to the assembled crowd. As these white men and women engaged in insurrection, no one shot rubber bullets, few police rushed into the crowds to arrest anyone. It was a glaring example of the different quality of their citizenship: that white lives, at least those who claim to be patriots of this sort, matter more than others.
James Baldwin once said, and it was a statement meant to unsettle the listener, that “for Black people in this country there is no legal code at all. We’re still governed by the slave code.” It is a startling image, which, at once, characterizes a form of policing as well as the thinking behind it. In the United States, Black people are meant to be disciplined, corralled and contained, and the violence of police is all too often the primary mechanism by which they are kept in their place.
The point here is not to suggest that Black people are still slaves and that police are slave catchers; rather, Baldwin captures with the image the logic behind why Black people are treated so. The slave code brings into view a host of assumptions about who is valued and who is not, about who has standing in this country and who can be treated, to echo the sentiment of the Dred Scott case, with a generalized sense of disregard.
To be sure, the bacchanal of grievance and hatred on January 6, 2021 exposed the clear and present danger that Donald Trump represents. The mob made concrete the threat of white nationalism to the nation. President-elect Joe Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and others are right to demand that all of those involved in the insurrection and those who incited it should be held to account.
But I have to say, and America’s history is my witness, that impeaching Donald Trump or invoking the 25th amendment will not get us very far. Nor will prosecuting those who sacked the Capitol address what I saw on January 6th. Both should happen, mind you, but they should be understood as just a beginning of sorts. The expression of that different quality of citizenship by the mob and their treatment by the police—the form of dissent with impunity and without fear of consequence—is rooted in the belief that this country is theirs alone and that only their votes count. (One can imagine this thinking shaped Trump’s conclusion that he won by a landslide. He did among white voters.) In order to uproot this sentiment, which has haunted the nation since its birth, we have to do something much more dramatic and sustained than getting rid of Donald Trump, democratizing who we call “thugs,” and prosecuting the criminals who threatened the Republic.
In January 1871, Congress held hearings and took testimonies about the atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan throughout the south. Reading the transcripts is a horrifying endeavor. The level of cruelty and barbarity in response to black people exercising the right to vote astonishes the reader. But what becomes immediately clear is that Congress had decided that enough was enough. They aimed to destroy the KKK, and with the passage of The Enforcement Acts, which aimed to protect Black people as citizens from white violence, they succeeded for a time. Of course, the nation’s betrayal of radical Reconstruction and its assent to the “Lost Cause” occasioned the return of the Klan and the horrors of the world that sanctioned their existence. But, for a moment, they proved that, in fact, America could be otherwise.
I believe in January 2021 Congress should hold hearings, covered live on cable news, about the threat of white nationalism to this country. These hearings should expose the workings of white supremacy groups, create the conditions for the eradication of organizations like the Proud Boys, and lay the groundwork for legislation that will, once and for all, banish these groups from the body politic. America can no longer afford to coddle these organizations and the people who join them. Political parties and politicians can no longer seek to leverage their resentment and hatreds for their own political gain. I know this will be difficult, because many of these people are your loved ones. We treat them with the gentleness of the officer who helped the white woman down the Capitol steps. But we have to finally put to rest the politics of white resentment that has fueled so much of American life, especially since the mid-twentieth century. The attack on the Capitol showed us what awaits if we don’t.
President-elect Biden should direct his Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland to develop a detailed plan to rid the nation of these groups. That will involve a widespread investigation of the scope and extent of the penetration of white supremacists into law enforcement throughout the country and a plan to purge police departments of these elements. I suspect the failure of the Capitol police may be, in part, that some agreed with the mob and that they did not perceive them as a threat.
In the end, we cannot respond lightly to what has just happened in this country. And we cannot place the blame solely on a small number of rogue individuals, a few power-hungry members of Congress, and on the obvious madness of the President. America faces a crisis that has its roots in what caused the Civil War and what led us to turn our backs on the promise of the Civil Rights Movement. We have never really faced those demons. Our response has been to tinker around the edges, hide our faces beneath the covers when the darkness descends, and continue to make money no matter the costs. Herman Melville comes to mind: “But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul.”
Politicians must step up, but they will inevitably disappoint. We have to act, too. Americans will have to do the hard work of living our way through this crisis and learning how to trust one another. That will involve close to the ground civic action, holding each other accountable—especially in our own families—and tending to the needs of our neighbors, and declaring, once and for all, that no one can claim this place as uniquely their own.
Broken though it may be, America is ours, and together we can make this place anew, if we are finally honest with ourselves about the ugliness that has the country by the throat again. We will need the help of our poets to imagine a new language for a new America. They will need to write about what happened on January 6th. Perform what we saw and what we know to be the root causes of the mayhem. And with that new vision of who we can be, like the voters and organizers in Georgia, we can enact a new America shorn of the haunting hatred of those who refuse to let the old one die.
Monday, January 11, 2021
Eugene Goodman - Hero
So much has been said about the (quote/unquote) “terrified” brother who ran away from the mob last week. He is USCP Officer Eugene Goodman, and I challenge us to give his actions a second look. In the most ironic but very powerful reality, Goodman’s quick thinking may have saved members of the United States Senate from the hands of the insurrectionist mob. Not only did he not deploy his service weapon (which it appears he had on his hip the whole time), a look at the second slide shows that he deceptively lead them away from the entrance to the Senate floor (which is literally just between the wooden chairs he’s glancing at) where members were and up toward the rotunda where there were other officers who arrived just as he lead them up there.
Goodman also served in the US Army, including a deployment overseas in Iraq so he clearly knew how to use deadly force. His quick thinking gave senate members more time to seek cover. We all know if the roles were reversed, things would have been totally different. Let’s give this brother the second look at the situation he deserves.
Worst Revolution Ever
"Worst Revolution Ever"
* Attacking the U.S. Capitol is not an act of patriotism. Obviously. *
By Caitlin Flanagan
Staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Girl Land
January 10, 2021
Here they were, a coalition of the willing: deadbeat dads, YouPorn enthusiasts, slow students, and MMA fans. They had heard the rebel yell, packed up their Confederate flags and Trump banners, and GPS-ed their way to Washington. After a few wrong turns, they had pulled into the swamp with bellies full of beer and Sausage McMuffins, maybe a little high on Adderall, ready to get it done. Like Rush Limbaugh before them, they were in search of their own Presidential Medals of Freedom, and like Donald Trump himself, they were ready to relieve themselves on the withering soul of the nation and the marble floors of the Capitol building. Out of darkness we were born and into darkness we were returning.
If they were animated by any idea, it was that America had somehow gone off track. It had something to do with feminism. It had something to do with Obama-ism. It had something to do with “globalism” and “Marxism.” In other words: It’s the Jews again. Didn’t Trump walk through a cloud of tear gas to hold up a Bible when it was all going down in Washington? Wasn’t he the only one holding the line against the Jews and the Blacks and the satanic pedophiles trying to take over the country?
Fired up by the Great Orator, they charged their way into the Capitol building, which turned out to be as heavily fortified as a slice of angel food cake. The proximate aim of the action was to get inside and stop the certification of the Electoral College vote so that Trump could win, the way Marty McFly went back in time to make sure his future parents fell in love so that he could be born. In one widely circulated video, police with riot shields tried to block the entry of one group of rioters, who yelled at them, “Pussies! Pussies!” And that was the first sign of some possible incoherence at the heart of the revolution. What was the cops’ manly option? Shooting the rioters? And more important: Isn’t this the pro-cop group, the party of law and order?
Once inside, they were bent on proving themselves fierce and intimidating—and they were those things. But when they got to the National Statuary Hall, on the second floor, where velvet ropes indicate the path that tourists must take, they immediately sorted themselves into a line and walked through it. In other words, they were biddable. They were men (and, yes, some women) lost in a modern world that no longer assumed they come first. They were looking for someone to tell them what to do. Trump told them what to do. So did the velvet ropes.
It would not be hard for a tyrant to compel men like these into violence. Like the original patriots, they were ready to crack heads and convinced they were paying too much in taxes.
It seems as though they hadn’t expected to gain entrance with such ease—an ease that becomes more suspicious as the hours pass—and once there they didn’t know what to do, exactly. One patriot made it all the way to Nancy Pelosi’s office, where (per his own gleefully repeated description) he sat at her desk, scratched his balls, left a note—“Nancy, Bigo was here, you bitch”—and grabbed a trophy: an envelope stamped with her name. Soon enough he’d trotted back outside to show it off, the victor in a one-man panty raid. He was an envelope guy in an email world, but suddenly he was taking control of his destiny.
A man in a Viking helmet and the kind of face paint not often seen outside sporting venues held a sign reading Hold The Line Patriots, which made you wonder if he was just a misguided New England fan. Who can make sense of the new football schedule? Inside, he ran around issuing guttural cries and climbing the furniture, like someone who had been thawed out from a 1995 Robert Bly retreat. (Bly was part of the movement that coined the term toxic manhood, the toxicity being office work and too much time around bossy women, and the antidote being a return to the original state of dude nature: roaring, beating drums.) This was not a low-T group. This was not a group that had been robbed and diminished by radical feminism. And they proved it by defecating on the floors and tracking their own filth through the hallways. They were dazed by power and limited in their conception of what to do with it. Some rioters left the building in the charged, happy way people exit the Dive Devil ride at Magic Mountain: single file, grinning, and not really sure what just happened. They cried out for beer, they pumped their fists in triumph, they went looking for Mom and money for curly fries.
The Viking guy was frightening, until it turned out that he’s a notorious ham who shows up at lots of Trump events and loves publicity. Last May, in Phoenix, he was pounding his drum and yelling, “Thank you, President Trump!” and “Thank you, Q!” until a reporter approached him to ask for an interview, and in an instant he turned into Beto O’Rourke. “My name is Jake Angeli,” he said smoothly. “That’s J-A-K-E and A-N-G-E-L-I. Angel with an i.”
The comedian Norm MacDonald has observed that the second-worst job in the world is Crack Whore and that the worst job in the world is Assistant Crack Whore. So let us cast our lonely eyes on the specter of Assistant Viking, Aaron Mostofsky, who was dressed in pelts and carried a police riot shield and who—in a rare Viking flourish—was bespectacled. Can you tell us what you’re doing here today? a reporter asked him. “What I’m doing here today is,” he began, but here the words began to fail him. He looked around and then said he was there to “express my opinion as a free American, my beliefs that this election was stolen. Um—we were cheated.” He adjusted one of his pelts and said that certain blue states—“like New York”—had once been red, and “were stolen.”
Where had he gotten the riot shield? “Found it on the floor,” he said in amazement. “I gave it to the cops, because it might be someone’s personal thing.” Envelope Guy hadn’t stolen Pelosi’s letter; he had left a quarter on her desk in payment. Assistant Viking had dutifully brought his shield to the lost and found, but no one had recognized it. These men had lived their lives in the ranks of a society where rules were constantly imposed upon them, and—even in the midst of the chaos they were creating—they reflexively followed a few of them. They brought items to the lost and found; they walked between the velvet ropes. They were cowed schoolboys and vicious adolescents at the same time. They were in the Capitol building because important rules had been broken. Which ones, exactly? The super-complicated, talkety-talkety ones enshrined in our beloved Constitution, of course. Unlike members of the lost generation whose minds are being poisoned by the obscenities of “critical race theory,” they had been edified and uplifted by the kind of “patriotic” education Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos were trying to deliver to all American children.
Outside, a young woman named Elizabeth was weeping and holding a blue terry-cloth towel to her eyes, while a man beside her tried to comfort her. “I made it, like, a foot inside,” she told a reporter, her voice an admixture of misery and grievance, “and they pushed me out and they maced me!” She made it sound like this had happened to her at the Air and Space Museum. When the reporter asked her where she was from, she said, “Knoxville, Tennessee,” in an especially aggrieved tone, as though this was itself part of the outrage. Maced? A person from Knoxville?
Why had she come to Washington? “We’re storming the Capitol!” she whined. “It’s a revolution!” Patty Hearst was more up to speed on the philosophy and goals of the Symbionese Liberation Army before she got out of the trunk. These people were dressed like cartoon characters, they believe that the country is under attack from pedophiles and “globalists,” and they are certain that Donald Trump won the election. In other words, the Founders’ worst fear—that a bunch of dumbasses would elect a tyrant—had come to pass.
This week the reign of Donald Trump reached its natural culmination, the activation of an army of white thugs who could be motivated by the oldest trick in the nationalist playbook: the promise that they operated in service of some grand idea—to be explained at a later date—and that it was going to take some head-cracking and bloodletting to be born. A 42-year-old Capitol Police officer named Brian Sicknick survived deployment in Iraq only to have his head fatally bashed by Americans with a fire extinguisher in the U.S. Capitol.
Barack Obama came into public life declaring that “in no other country in the world is my story even possible.” But by last summer, in his speech at the Democratic National Convention, he had been reduced to pleading with Americans to keep faith in the Constitution itself, a flawed document but still our “North Star.” By the fall, he had begun to gesture toward America with something of a backward glance: “I’m not yet ready to abandon the possibility of America,” he wrote in the preface of his memoir. Imagine it: a former president on the verge of giving up on America. Why wouldn’t he? At that moment the country was being led by someone who hadn’t merely given up on America but wanted to destroy it.
My father was a historian, a leftist, and (in a term he would have detested) a “patriot,” in the sense that the United States government had arranged for him to be delivered from Amherst College to the Battle of Okinawa. Twenty years ago, I got the phone call that he had died in the early morning from a heart attack, and in the time it took me to get from Los Angeles to the Berkeley Hills, his body had already been taken to the Oakland morgue. My mother had died the year before, and walking into my dead parents’ empty house—maybe you have had this experience, and if you have not, you should gird yourself for it—felt ghostly, although I was the ghost. I walked upstairs to look at the bed my father had died in. Open on its spine on one side of the bed was the last book this learned man would ever read—or in this case, reread: volume two of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
All things are born, live, and then die. We can remember who we are, and keep going—maybe even moving forward. Or we can make a mockery of ourselves and die in filth.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/worst-revolution-ever/617623/?fbclid=IwAR3CEmh1nOqD0K2rDGRPU07lZItwIOgWjQh0ohGBDcBwBeBKFX0YI1PWEd8
~Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic
Author of Girl Land
https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Land-Caitlin-Flanagan/dp/0316065994
Sunday, January 10, 2021
January 6, 2021 Fallout
A woman got shot and killed smashing through a Capital window. Three other MAGAs who apparently suffered fatal heart attacks while trying to groan up the Capitol Steps.
All the Rightwing got from yesterday was a horrible optic of wacko cosplayers trashing the Capital Building. That is going to have a long-lasting impact in Middle America suburbia.
Y'know, this just may turn out to be the best-case scenario.
1. Trump is toast. Done. Finished. He stood there in front of that crowd and poured gasoline over his head, and Guiliani tossed on the cigarette. His plans for a shadow government? Gone. His hope of returning to power in 2024? Gone.
2. He took down his idiot spawn with him, too. Junior and Eric both spoke and egged on the mob. Eric I was never worried about. He's too brainless to get elected anywhere but Alabama. Junior I thought might worm his way into the Senate some day. Nope. Not now. Ivanka blew it, too. "Patriots." She won't live THAT down.
3. Sarah Palin was bleating on FoxNews yesterday about a new Patriot Party, just for wackadoodles. That would be MARVELOUS. Fox cut her off quickly. You could almost hear Lachlan's girly shrieks of alarm from the Fox exec suite. "CUT HER OOOOOOOOFFFF!"
4. There's going to be a pitched battle between the Lincoln Project mainstream GOPers and the nutjob Very Fine People and Qanon simpletons that greatly diminishes all of them. The nutjobs will turn on leadership for betraying Dear Leader. It's already happening. See Georgia for proof. A year ago would two Dems have won those seats? Nope. They would have lost by healthy margins.
5. Pence is totally toast. Four years of sucking Trump's dick down the drain! Hated by the Trumpers, a pariah toadie to everyone else. He couldn't win a school board primary now. It's the feelgood story of the day! See also Gym Jordan and Matt Gaetz. They'll hang on to their gerrymandered seats, but share an office with Louis Gohmert in the House sub-basement.
6. Now that Jack and Zuck have made the plunge and shut down Trump, they'll boot him completely soon. Once he loses that pulpit, Trump will shrink rapidly.
Big props for allowing Trump to conjure himself into existence, guys. History will be "kind" to you both.
The Very Fine People btw are already shrieking about Parler being an FBI honeypot, a ruse to database them all and then round them up! Haha.
7. The noxious Ted Cruz can also kiss his presidential aspirations buh-bye. That hurts because he wants it reeeeeeeeeeal bad.
The way Texas is changing demographically, I wouldn't count on him winning another Senate term either. He and that Hawley creep will be forever linked to this debacle. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
8. Four White House staffers immediately resigned yesterday. Rats swan-diving into the sewage-filled water. By the end of the week, it will be Trump alone in a shadow-filled White House. The only sign of life is the sound of a vacuum cleaner in the hallway. His puffy orange face is lit by the glow of his Android as he tries in vain to post to his deleted Twitter account.
The camera pans out as he hits "tweet" again and again and again.
A single tear rolls down his porcine cheek
by
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008691630090
Saturday, January 09, 2021
Updates on January 6th-Heather Cox Richardson
More information continues to emerge about the events of Wednesday. They point to a broader conspiracy than it first appeared. Calls for Trump’s removal from office are growing. The Republican Party is tearing apart. Power in the nation is shifting almost by the minute. [Please note that information from the January 6 riot is changing almost hourly, and it is virtually certain that something I have written will be incorrect. I have tried to stay exactly on what we know to be facts, but those could change.] More footage from inside the attack on the Capitol is coming out and it is horrific. Blood on statues and feces spread through the building are vile; mob attacks on police officers are bone-chilling. Reuters photographer Jim Bourg, who was inside the building, told reporters he overheard three rioters in “Make America Great Again” caps plotting to find Vice President Mike Pence and hang him as a “traitor”; other insurrectionists were shouting the same. Pictures have emerged of one of the rioters in military gear carrying flex cuffs—handcuffs made of zip ties—suggesting he was planning to take prisoners. Two lawmakers have suggested the rioters knew how to find obscure offices. New scrutiny of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally before the attack shows Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL), Don Jr., and Trump himself urging the crowd to go to the Capitol and fight. Trump warned that Pence was not doing what he needed to. Trump promised to lead them to the Capitol himself. There are also questions about law enforcement. While exactly what happened remains unclear, it has emerged that the Pentagon limited the Washington D.C. National Guard to managing traffic. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser requested support before Trump’s rally, but the Department of Defense said that the National Guard could not have ammunition or riot gear, interact with protesters except in self-defense, or otherwise function in a protective capacity without the explicit permission of acting Secretary Christopher Miller, whom Trump put into office shortly after the election after firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper. When Capitol Police requested aid early Wednesday afternoon, the request was denied. Defense officials held back the National Guard for about three hours before sending it to support the Capitol Police. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, tried repeatedly to send his state’s National Guard, but the Pentagon would not authorize it. Virginia’s National Guard was mobilized when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the governor, Ralph Northam, herself. Defense officials said they were sensitive to the criticism they received in June when federal troops cleared Lafayette Square of peaceful protesters so Trump could walk across it. But it sounds like there might be a personal angle: Bowser was harshly critical of Trump then, and it would be like him to take revenge on her by denying help when it was imperative. Refusing to stop the attack on the Capitol might have been more nefarious, though. A White House adviser told New York Magazine’s Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi that Trump was watching television coverage of the siege and was enthusiastic, although he didn’t like that the rioters looked “low class.” While the insurrectionists were in the Capitol, he tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” Even as lawmakers were under siege, both Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani were making phone calls to brand-new Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) urging him to slow down the electoral count. After Trump on Wednesday night tweeted that there would be an “orderly” transition of power, on Thursday he began again to urge on his supporters. With the details and the potential depth of this event becoming clearer over the past two days—Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Virginia, tweeted her support, and state lawmakers as well as Republican attorneys general were actually involved—Americans are recoiling from how bad this attempted coup was… and how much worse it could have been. The crazed rioters were terrifyingly close to our elected representatives, all gathered together on that special day, and they were actively talking about harming the vice president. By Friday night, 57% of Americans told Reuters they wanted Trump removed from office immediately. Nearly 70% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s actions before the riot. Only 12% of Americans approved of the rioters; 79% of Americans described the rioters as “criminals” or “fools.” Five percent called them “patriots.” Pelosi tonight said that she hoped the president would resign, but if not, the House of Representatives will move forward with impeachment on Monday, as well as with legislation to enable Congress to remove Trump under the 25th Amendment. The most recent draft of the impeachment resolution has just one article: “incitement of insurrection.” As a privileged resolution, it can go directly to the House without committee approval. In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has no interest in further splitting the Republicans over another impeachment, or forcing them onto the record as either for or against it. Timing is on his side: the Senate is not in session for substantive business until January 19, so cannot act on an impeachment resolution without the approval of all senators. It can take up the resolution then, but more likely it will wait until Biden is sworn in, at which point the measure would be managed not by McConnell, but by the new House majority leader, Chuck Schumer (D-NY). A trial can indeed take place after Trump is no longer president, enabling Congress to make sure he can never again hold office. Whether or not the Senate would convict is unclear, but it’s not impossible. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), for one, is so furious she is talking of switching parties. “I want him out,” she says. Still, Trump supporters are now insisting that it would “further divide the country” to try to remove Trump now, and that we need to unify. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who led the Senate effort to challenge Biden’s election, today tweeted that Biden was not working hard enough to “bring us together or promote healing” and that “vicious partisan rhetoric only tears our country apart.” Trump, meanwhile, has continued to agitate his followers, and today began to call for more resistance, while users on Parler, the new right-wing social media hangout, are talking of another, bigger attack on Washington. Tonight, Twitter banned Trump, stating: “we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” As evidence, it cited both his claim that his supporters would “have a GIANT VOICE long into the future,” and his tweet that he would not be going to Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Twitter says that Trump’s followers see these two new tweets as proof that the election was invalid and that the Inauguration is a good target, since he won’t be there. The Twitter moderators say that “plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.” Twitter also took down popular QAnon accounts, including those of Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his former lawyer Sidney Powell, who is having quite a bad day: the company that makes election machines, Dominion Voting Systems, announced it is suing her for defamation and asking $1.3 billion in damages. After taking down 7,000 QAnon accounts in July, Twitter continued by today taking down the account of the man who hosts the posts from “Q.” While Twitter officials might well be horrified by the insurrection, the ban is also a sign of a changing government. With the election of two Democratic senators from Georgia this week, the majority goes to the Democrats, and McConnell will no longer be Majority Leader, killing bills. Social media giants know regulation of some sort is around the corner, and they are trying to look compliant fast. When Twitter banned Trump, so did Reddit, and Facebook and Instagram already had. Google Play Store removed Parler, warning it to clean up its content moderation. Trump evidently couldn’t stand the Twitter ban, and tried at least five different accounts to get back onto the platform. He and his supporters are howling that he is being silenced by big tech, but of course he has an entire press corps he could use whenever he wished. Losing his access to Twitter simply cuts off his ability to drum up both support and money by lying to his supporters. Another platform that has dumped Trump is one of those that handled his emails. The San Francisco correspondent of the Financial Times, Dave Lee, noted that for more than 48 hours there had been no Trump emails: in the previous six days the president sent out 33. This has been a horrific week. If it has a silver lining, it is that the lines are now clear between our democracy and its enemies. The election in Georgia, which swung the Senate away from the Republicans and opens up some avenues to slow down misinformation, is a momentous victory. —- Notes: Nuzzi: Donald Trump was annoyed by the violent siege on the Capitol Wednesday — which left several dead — because it looked “low class,” according to his adviser. “He doesn’t like low class things.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-transcript-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/2768e0cc-4ddd-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-extremists/u-s-capitol-siege-emboldens-motley-crew-of-extremists-idUSKBN29D2ZY https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/ny-trump-capitol-riot-poopers-20210108-prlsqytyabgdhnexushotl4nam-story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-protests-washington-guard-military/2021/01/07/c5299b56-510e-11eb-b2e8-3339e73d9da2_story.html https://news.trust.org/item/20210108210622-t35pv https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/08/politics/house-democrats-impeachment-plans/index.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-impeachment-trump-mcconnell/2021/01/08/5f650ad0-520d-11eb-b2e8-3339e73d9da2_story.html |
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