The VP Debate was Kind of Demure, Very Mindful

 

Moderator: Just to clarify, Springfield’s Haitian migrants have legal status

Vance: The rules were you guys weren't going to fact check pic.twitter.com/zo5W3i9HIt

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 2, 2024

That right there? Was the most contentious the VP debate practically became. Because JD Vance stewed that he got called on the one very Big Lie thing he contributed to, because he can't understand why it is terribly wrong, bad and hurtful, and why he really did need to be checked on that very particular thing. Because he can't accept that the death threats and the bomb threats and the disruption of a whole town's active life can be marked down to his propaganda. 

Is he naïve? Does he not get that there are real-world consequences that follow from such lies, and that people with a conscience would avoid them? 

This debate didn't clue me anymore in on who Vance is, but he does remind me, oleaginously, of those old margarine commercials--it's not nice to fool Mother Nature. 

J. D. Vance: The Pence Replacement

 

Collins: The last time I checked, Joe Biden didn’t approve of the chance to hang his Vice President. Does it give you any pause to be Trump’s Vice President given how he treated Mike Pence?

JD Vance: I'm extremely skeptical that Mike Pence's life was ever in danger

Collins: I… pic.twitter.com/P0WQ8hfKRg

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) July 15, 2024

Well, I feel like this is a theory that may get tested in some way, but Vance is on the record saying he would definitely violate the bejesus out of the Constitution on Trump's say so in the way Pence refused to, which totally explains how Vance (who once described Trump as "Hitler") got picked for the job. 

I mostly savage Vance around this blog for being a yellow-bellied Putin-appeasement monkey, but I also want you to know he's an authoritarian Christofascist fucknut with extreme anti-abortion views who thinks women should stay with abusive husbands "for the children" (yes, a deeply unhealthy POV). He's a climate change denier and a faux-populist--he talks some kind of game about the working class but despises actual working people. 

He's basically what you'd get if you tried to Weird Science-up a VP candidate by feeding a computer the Project 2025 manual and hooking it up to a My Buddy doll. 

Vance Walked into This So Hard

 

KAITLAN COLLINS: So you agree that people who break in and vandalize a building should be prosecuted?

JD VANCE: Yes

COLLINS: Ok, I'm just checking, because you helped raise money for people who did so on January 6 pic.twitter.com/nEztSPrQlC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 2, 2024

It's almost like he somehow did not even see it coming. How is that possible?

I almost titled this "Do you want to see a dead body?" but 1) it's cliched, 2) I'm not sure how much authentic life animates the craven and ambitious husk of J.D. Vance, and 3) regardless, he'll endure, zombie-like and signifying, for some time to come; the rare example of a horror-movie undead ghoul THAT EATS ITS OWN BRAAAAIIIINNN!!!

I get carried away with myself--but not as much as Vance does when he insists Mike Pence was never in danger that day, which really makes me wonder who he's trying to convince. I mean, is he whitewashing the insurrection because it's the MAGA thing to do--or is he trying to convince himself that auditioning to be Trump's running mate has no potential, fatal downside? 

A wise person might very well give that a more serious think than Vance seems to be able to, but I do not actually view him as either wise or serious. This is what, I think, makes him as good a contender as any for Trump's #2.

TWGB: The Only Winning Move

 

The disqualification trial of Fulton County DA Fani Willis saw a decision that enabled the case to continue, as Willis stays on while her top prosecutor, Nathan Wade, leaves the case--but we also learn that the judge in the Trial, Scott McAfee, faced threats and was concerned about getting security for his family. This is appalling, but not an unusual feature of TrumpWorld. McAfee, a conservative, will be treated by MAGA as having been somehow biased (I checked Twitter--they are GRUMBLING) when it is hard to objectively state what was uncovered in the trial more than a mere appearance of impropriety. 

He made as fair a decision as he could. He chided Willis for her conduct. It's not enough. 

From what I can tell, the lesson of TrumpWorld is similar to the lesson of playing "tic-tac-toe" in the 1983 movie WarGames--the only winning move is not to play. It means a little something different here though--it's the choice of game. You don't win at appeasing MAGA. You win only by doing your job. In other words--how about a nice came of chess?

Mike Pence knows this one. He just recently explained why he could not endorse Donald Trump, his old running mate, for president. Trump required him to do something illegal and unconstitutional to show his loyalty and he could not. In return, his life was threatened, and Trump to this day considers Pence "disloyal". It seems clear that to Trump's mind, you cannot serve two masters: the Constitution and Trump.  It also stands as a stark warning to other would-be GOP VP nominees--he will not be someone you serve with, just someone you serve. I can only ask what the conscience of a conservative has to say about that.

TWGB: Their Fingers Were Crossed

 

I daresay this is what I had at the time thought to be the case: VP Mike Pence had been thinking of just bailing on the electoral count on 1/6 because he didn't know if he had the stones to do the right thing. 

Or to hear (mostly) him put it:

According to sources, one of Pence's notes obtained by Smith's team shows that, days before Pence was set to preside over Congress certifying the election results on Jan. 6, 2021, he momentarily decided that he would skip the proceedings altogether, writing in the note that there were "too many questions" and it would otherwise be "too hurtful to my friend." But he ultimately concluded he had a duty to show up.

Speaking with Smith's team, Pence insisted his loyalty to President Trump at the time never faltered -- "My only higher loyalty was to God and the Constitution," sources described Pence as telling them.

The part I really like there is "notes". It's in writing. That's like "no takesies-backsies." But the thing where Pence sees doing his constitutional duty as being too hurtful to his friend just kills me. I have made jokes here and there about Mike Pence's Nancy Reagan eyes in Trump's direction and talk of his "broad shoulders"--and the admiration was so wild The Daily Show did a riff on it:

 

 

That Mike Pence considered this their friendship and didn't know it was a one-way street seems improbable. Or I guess, to put it the Trump way: "Sad!" I know, he let his better angels (in the form of former VP Dan Quayle and his own son) persuade him to do the right thing. Eventually. But it seems like a last resort for which he had to know there would be no reconciling with Trump. I think he will be a star witness. I guess his fingers were crossed. 

We Hate Coups, Don't We?

 

So, this was the day I was supposed to talk about the Republican GOP primary debate, but it got overshadowed--not by Trump and Tucker Carlson's little thing, because Trump is a mental case and just recounts the same stories, so Tucker Carlson just looks like he's shepherding Grampy through his one-sided and possibly delusional reminiscences, but by news earlier in the day regarding the slow art of vengeance wrought on the coup-plotter in Russia: Yevgeny Prigozhin.  

No tears here from yours truly, because while Putin was clearly looking for a coup, Prigozhin was nonetheless the guy driving the US election interference that got us Trump.  And that's obviously not something I love. He was a dirty merc war criming SOB. And while it isn't exactly corroborated, this looks like a cowboy job from Putin. A two-months to the day sentence to let us know where it came from, through straight up explosion. It's out there reverberating and sending a message to people who were still in the field for Wagner. 

What else would we suppose is up with that? The DNA says Prigozhin is dead, and so is his very-Nazi looking associate, who looks like he can't even be dead because he was started in a mad scientists' lab. 

So um. Russia showed what can happen to people whose reach got beyond the grasp of an actual strongman. It's worse than a little old surrender to the jailhouse, right? They might not be able to do all the things they used to (lunar landings, invasions), but there's one thing they still are fine at. 

And we just had a debate where a whole US party failed to clean up after the obvious coup guy they should have had in their sights. 

Just saying. 

Bragging on Themselves

 

In NC tonight, Ron Desantis pledges to rename Ft. Liberty back to Ft. Bragg in honor of the incompetent, failed, fired Confederate General who rose up to help lead an insurrection and civil war against the United States. pic.twitter.com/62bVF0TZ8b

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 9, 2023

So, I really had to ask myself, "What in the world does the governor of the Free State of Florida have against the name 'Liberty'?" Because the name went from Ft. Bragg, named after a General whose one notable win was against this nation in a conflict best described as treason in defense of slavery, to "Liberty", a cause I think we all should admire.

Ron DeSantis doesn't hate liberty, does he?

(Well, he's questionable on the First Amendment and it just goes to show, you can lead a person to law school, but you can't make them think the law's a good idea. I mean, he tries. And he tries.)

Maybe he does have a problem with liberty, for some people. It really does feel like a certain kind of signifying for a Florida Governor to back naming a US military base for a Confederate general. The base itself, of course, stays the same, and only the name changes--so why does he care?

It's grievance. Pretending something is lost because it's been re-named is as silly as claiming one's nose has literally been got or that one's face has gone away in a game of Peek-a-Boo.  Trump did the same kind of grievance and still does. If we change anything, we won't even have a country. 

Mike Pence is doing it, too.  It feels like they are trying to support the Confederate cause of states defying federal law, or even seceding, a very strange position for presidential candidates to take. And I could be wrong--they might just be catering to the assumed historical imaginations of Confederate flag-carrying racist whites. For some reason. And it doesn't even really feel like a thing that should be an actual issue--it's a wedge issue.  It's actually kind of a push-poll-like wedge issue, where they are trying to capture and create that audience at the same time.

I don't know why they think they are going to be better at doing this than Trump ever was. He's the Mozart of Malice, the Beethoven of bigotry. And he's liable to actually start a second Civil War--and those posers just wish. 

TWGB: The Target

 

We're on pins and needles, aren't we? I mean, news has come out that Trump's lawyers have received a letter that he's a target in the documents' investigation, and we also hear that the grand jury is considering charges for Trump under the Espionage Act and for obstruction.  We also are finding out that Mark Meadows has accepted a plea to some federal crimes in exchange for his testimony against Trump, which overlaps both the Espionage case and the 1/6 investigation--which has the bonus of so much admissible stuff against so many people he was texting with, like a whole lot of people. 

For what it's worth, even if the Espionage Act stuff (Two grand juries? with Jay Bratt whose deal is Espionage Act? Hmm!) seems like the real damaging stuff (I think it's bad, because it certainly looks bad), I'm not overlooking the possibility that Trump also eventually sees some heat from the 1/6 stuff, especially regarding the gathering of R. Congress people and talking to assorted goons to that fell purpose. (I consider Flynn a goon. Some people wouldn't but that just attributes to his success at creative goonery.) Steve Bannon has been subpoenaed in that matter. 

Am I confident that we're going to see some indictments in these things as early as this week?  Hell if I know. I know in the short term, based on what I see on the MAGA comments on Twitter, if it happens some folks are gonna be shirt-ripping mad, and then their mommas are gonna be mad they ripped their shirts. 

The Jebbening! of Ron DeSantis

 

pic.twitter.com/H7G6q4TtKq

— Secular Talk🎙 (@KyleKulinski) May 25, 2023

You know, I love the sunny optimism of people who want to push the theory that Ron DeSantis will most surely fail because he's a weird fucking glitchy AI trained on Orwell as a handbook and White Christian supremacy as a goal who sort of can't stand like a man who has always had arms and regularly unhinges his mouth when he laughs like he's about to devour a sacrificial goat. I mean, sure, all that is really off-putting, but if one has the backing of enough big money donors and is somehow the largest tool in the shed after the other big tool gets majorly law-hammered (because the conviction of Trump for anything at all and legal removal from the primary pool springs eternal in the minds of those who have engaged in the contest--although they would never, never say something so obvious aloud) who you gonna settle with? 

Trump, CNN and the Power of Sufficient Cable

 

The CNN town hall featuring former president Donald Trump and former Daily Caller employee Kaitlan Collins was a shitshow as expected. The network stocked the audience with Trumpists because that's obviously fucking normal. And then he got to saw away at his special hobby horses, which was just fun to watch with little to no pushback when you pause to consider this is a twice-impeached racist sex pest who absolutely fumbled COVID-19 and the economy in his last year in office.

This bitter, lying, indicted, tarnished, twice-impeached, treasonous, shambling reprobate should in no way be considered a viable candidate for office and should, in fact, be made a figure of mockery everywhere his grotesque bulk lurches, and yet, he is also the best shot the GOP has for 2024, so the cable news dickheads are going to try and make him...credible? 

So, what we were treated to, one day after a jury unanimously after but three hours of deliberations awarded E. Jean Carroll damages for his sexual battery and defamation of her (and not rape, because it was uncertain whether she noticed his thimble dick actually penetrating her nor ejaculating, leading us to wonder if his small fingers actually brag on him, not the opposite--which is not intended to be defamatory because I am of a scientific aspect and am merely asking questions of a delicate anatomical nature) was more defamation, and rather gross as well.  And the Trump-friendly studio audience loved it. 

I don't know how that resonated with you, Gentle Reader, but it makes me bloody-minded, and I mean more so than usual. It's one thing to despise Trump heart and soul. It's another to take in the values of his fanclub in full and realize they are complete gutter-dwellers with little to redeem them. Deplorables, by choice. 

But maybe a silver lining exists in the sound bites created by the fact of Trump being given adequate cable (which, like saying "hoist on his own petard" suggests the concept of "enough rope"--which is what I think he definitely wished on 1/6 for his running mate, Mike Pence, not that that gormless SOB appreciates it).  He did admit Mike Pence did something wrong in his mind in this little chat. He said he believed that the Georgia SOS owed him votes. He reiterated that he did take documents to Mar-A-Lago, it was great of him to do that, and definitely had the right to declassify them--although whether he did and how and what he took and why he's so pleased with himself stays a mystery. 

We can wonder whether the fluke of this gasbag becoming president was the fault of outlets like CNN giving him "sufficient cable"--platforming him and taking him "seriously, not literally." The image of CNN cameras focusing on an empty podium where the celebrity candidate had grabbed their attention by its figurative lowest chakra remains a sticking point with me regarding their failure to be serious journalists because they wanted his ratings power. 

But in the course of this shitshow, he delivered several soundbites that would certainly be of interest in at least three of his ongoing criminal investigations and at least one civil complaint. 

Maybe it's possible that this creature could be both raised up and brought low by the quality of sufficient cable. 

TWGB: It's Him. He's the Problem.

 

The thing with Trump is, he doesn't ever stop his dumb mouth. Even though his lawyers probably told him this already, the Judge in the civil defamation/sexual assault trial against Trump needed to comment on Trump's social media commentary. What Trump was trying, and always is about, is making his case to the public. He seems to believe that if you're a really popular guy, maybe the rules don't matter. If you are a star, you get away with things. 

And in Trump's world, he is a supernova. His gravity bends time and space. Why wouldn't his continued invective against the woman who accused him be fine and dandy?

Um, because this is a defamation case, and that shit right there was more defamation? This is where I say a little prayer for all the people who still think Trump is smart and want him to be president, because if you see him do that shit, and still think he is smart--my god. The daily life you lead. The struggles you face. The afterschool special that is you. The entire cautionary tale of your mislead existence. How you don't drown in the pouring rain with your whole mouth agape mystifies me, but go on doing you, I guess. 

Anyway, Alvin Bragg might try to gag his mouth separately and for all the same reasons. Lawyers always remind their clients they can shut the hell up and help their case. Trump has that right but fails to demonstrate the ability. 

Anyway, his issues with respect to his legal woes have a lot to do with him--I suspect it was his choice that Tacopina is the guy he wanted to question E. Jean Carroll. The big dude who looks like a mob enforcer. Not one of his lady attorneys. So this big dude is asking a slight older woman why she didn't scream in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. When so many of us women would entirely understand why. The irony that the exact trauma you would want to be saved from is the exact highly degrading position you don't want to be seen in. The shock of being moved on and the adult-think responsibility of thinking this is the thing you, and you alone, have to save yourself from. 

TWGB: April is the Cruelest Month

 

I guess Trump's indictment cherry having been popped, he has no reason to expect the rest of this month to be great, but wow--I don't think it's going to be good for The Donald! For one thing, just this Thursday, he's sitting down again with Leticia James and her crew regarding his NYC civil case over his business practices, and since he repeatedly pled the 5th the first time around, this time isn't going to go any better. See, the thing is, in civil trials there's a thing called adverse inference which means what it says on the label: if someone is pleading the 5th because their testimony might incriminate them, take it at face value that the truth would not set them free. 

He's also facing the E. Jean Carroll civil suit in NYC over his defamation of self-described rape victim E. Jean Carroll. The judge in this case has agreed to anonymity for the jury based on Trump's already egregious behavior regarding judges, prosecutors, witnesses, you name it.  Because he acts like a mafioso. As with the Bragg case in Manhattan, this case highlights how horrific he is to women. 

I really wish people were more aware of this. 

Anyway, there is still the potential for indictments to drop in either the Georgia grand jury case, where racketeering and a broad cast of characters being looked at for indictment figure, and the obviously bad Mar-A-Lago documents case. I am not actually crouching on a case of champagne waiting for those things, but it would be neat, right? 

And then there's the odd thing about Trump filing to block Mike Pence's testimony to the Special Counsel regarding J6--why? Is there a problem with the very honest man Trump had as his Vice-President testifying about what might had led up to that day? And if so why? 

Enquiring minds would like to know. After all, it always has struck me as strange that Trump's impulse is always to obstruct or delay the release of facts about whatever it is he's been up to while he claims he's a pure as the driven snow, and his little fan club hasn't yet caught on and said: "Put up or shut up." 

Anyway, I think it's already been demonstrated that executive privilege appeals are going to fizzle. And with interesting results. I know Trump wants to plead all his cases to the Supreme Court because he picked a third of them, but OTOH, has he offered any really good vacations lately? (I mean really!) 

Anyways, it is starting to look like the season of finding out for Donald Trump, and the season of fucking around is going to have to stop (I know that Trump is loving the idea of courting a gag order re: his running down the DA and judge in his Manhattan case, and I bet his attorneys would LOVE THAT FOR HIM. Also he kinda is earning it.)  

And in other weird news, why hasn't he filed his financial disclosure  yet? (Truth Social is a bit of a struggle-launch, isn't it?)  He's going to be like this the whole election, isn't he? His supporters better start asking the questions that are logically piling up. And just deal with the reality that they don't really know if they are funding a campaign for president, or just the legal fees for a serial criminal. 

Mike Pence is Evaluating Whether to do the Right Thing

 

Mike Pence, in interview tonight, says he’s evaluating the judge’s order. About the grand jury testimony….https://t.co/ts5r8NoMMv

— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) March 29, 2023

I keep saying this, but it really wouldn't take me but one lynch mob to be out on a soap box testifying to everything the next damn day. But Mike Pence and me, we're built differently, and I get that. Maybe someone can ask Dan Quayle to tell him that he has to do the right thing this time, too. And besides, it's not like he won't have a whole lot of company.

TWGB: Glimpses of Daylight

 

I really have to hand it to Mike Pence--it is astonishing to me that he has managed to swallow every ounce of pride a human being could have in fealty to Donald Trump. If you sent one goddamn lynch mob after me, my indignant ass would not wait a single day before I'm telling anyone with a camera, a microphone, a pencil what the hell you did in excruciating detail. But that apparently is not the Mike Pence way. He's fighting a subpoena to testify about what happened 1/6 (and probably leading right up to it) on what he is going to claim are constitutional grounds about how he was doing his congressional duty as president of the Senate and what not.

Nobody believes this shit. Surely, as some folks think, this has to do with Mike Pence thinking he might take a run at the GOP primary and not wanting to entirely alienate the folks who would be already mad that he didn't hand the election to Trump. 

But you have to know that's stupid, right? They already hate him. He isn't making anything up  to them, not in a race where Trump still exists. Just like with Nikki Haley, he doesn't understand the axiom every single wrestling fan knows by heart: if you want to be the man, you've got to beat the man. (Whoo!)

If Pence wanted to demolish Trump, he has the inside track on everything. Do you think the fake electors thing was a plan if the collaborators didn't suppose they had Pence in the loop? Pence knew what was up--just like he had reason to know what was up when Trump extorted Zelenskyy. See--that's why I don't think Pence's failure to want to run and tell has everything to do with 2024. No normal person is giving Nancy Reagan eyes to Trump and waxing on about his broad shoulders in public where people could hear, gets bodily threatened by a mob Trump encourages, and then just decides not to shaft Trump in return--unless he doesn't really feel like owning his own complicity. 

TWGB: The Laptop Conundrum

 

Somehow, someway, we went in the Trump saga from "But her emails" to a story about how someone scanned a classified document onto a laptop and also had a thumb drive and well, that had to be turned over the feds because if it looks bad, I guess it could be bad. Why is Trumpworld so messy?

I mean, it's not like that entirely looks like docs were being prepped to be shared from a device that was not, conveniently, Trump's own. Or does it? Maybe it exactly looks like someone scanned a document because they had a reason to, because why else was it there?

Why? 

The curiosity of what Trump was doing with the documents he had and how they were handled should very well overshadow what docs were found in President's Biden's or VP Pence's possession, because both of these public servants figured out how to respond--thoroughly transparently, even giving the FBI range over their homes. Trump was not this transparent, and needed a warrant served on his premises. 

More than that, he fought to keep documents and had one of his lawyers draft a document that another lawyer signed attesting that all docs had been handed over when they had not been. Both lawyers, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, have now been called before Jack Smith's grand jury.  And good for them, really. Shriving is good for the soul.

Mike Pence, You Guys

 

"Our staff reviewed all the materials in our office and in our residence to ensure there were no classified materials that left the White House or remained in our possession" -- Mike Pence, earlier this month pic.twitter.com/iluxX6gQh6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 25, 2023

And do you know what happened next?  By now, of course you do. He had docs in his home.  The FBI came to pick them up and all. Now, I'm not saying I think there's anything nefarious about his eventually finding some classified stuff in his house--but I am going to say it's really fun that he's on record being sanctimonious about it because sanctimony is a huge part of his deal. And it does make us now understand that this is a thing that can happen to outgoing Vice-Presidents, why not? 

Also, too, unlike former president Trump, Mike Pence did the right thing, just like President Biden did, of turning the docs over right away, not making a major issue over it, lying about it, pretending they were declassified, making lawyers lie about them, etc. 

Trump's problem is both the volume of docs and the obstruction. He is still a very different case from the other two. 

(Just as a side thing--it isn't gay to moisturize, and Pence severely needs to get some kind of lotion into his day to day. He looks frightful for a man his age. Step your shit up, get some retinols on that and a serum with hyaluronic acid to fill those lines. Or maybe he should just stay his homophobic unself-loved personage the way he is and be withered like some dried apple shrunken head. I'm not criticizing his looks to be mean, I'm being a Helpful Hannah out here explaining that skin care is medicine for a sick face. Also he being a bigot causes lines. So he could stop doing that, too.)

Are You Being Martyred?

 

I have noticed a funny old thing about the Christian right in the US--even when they have been extraordinarily catered to and cosseted, they will still cry "Martyrdom!" when any resistance to their domineering world view exists. They claimed other people getting gay-married somehow violated their rights. Yeah--and that thought persisted.  And I think they feel exactly the same thing about the claim of people who are not the "right kind" of Christian or maybe not any sort of Christian at all (like, for example, Jewish people) who maintain that abortion should still be a right for people who have no religious barrier to receiving or providing that care. 

How dare you punish real Christians by not following their precepts and thus showing disrespect for their insights into the One True Religion? We've come a long way from Christians being pitched into the Coliseum to confront hungry lions, but you can't stop these whiny folks from vociferously complaining that they are being faced with the worst of martyrdoms--being ignored!

I guess I'm just being hypercritical of things like this New York Post piece where a Christian complains bitterly of being--criticized for being a bigot. She calls it a "punishment" for being a Christian when she doesn't quite seem to grasp is that claiming one is a Christian doesn't actually make you a great person, especially when your "problem" is being exposed to the reality that other people exist. Bisexual people exist in real life, so they can exist in fictional material as well--it isn't harmful. Religious minorities exist who don't need to be coerced into group Christian prayer--the Supreme Court is actually badly wrong and historically off with this decision (it's been a dumb year for the Court, because some of these characters don't belong here). 

It isn't a martyrdom for someone to acknowledge that people who are not like themselves even exist. Coexisting with people who think you are wrong about something isn't an attack on your religion. If she wants to set herself among the saints, she should be made of sterner stuff. 

TWGB: See Something, Say Something

 

Per the senator, a House intern, name unknown, was able to get a packet of information on electors, author unknown, to the chief of staff of a powerful GOP senator. His. Who then nearly delivered it to the Vice President of the United States to consider. pic.twitter.com/dmg9DgkbUb

— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 22, 2022

What was that thing we all learned post 9/11? That if some rando handed you off a dodgy package, you should scream bloody murder. Who the hell is this from? Why the hell give it to me? Who the hell is it for? Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who I helpfully note is stupidly up for re-election this year, is exactly that dumbass. Hrm, Give this unvetted shit from someone I do not know to the VP at our solemn handover of government? Yes, I will be on that shit like enjoying my Fourth of July in Moscow. 

Ron Johnson can fit an entire billiard ball in his mouth--have you seen his mouth? He can do it. I think he should, and keep it in place until forever. Because he lies, and I think his pretense that he doesn't know who gave him the fake elector votes is obviously a lie. 

Now, the people we saw testify today were all people who got death threats. Rusty Bowers had his family threatened. He was only discharging his duty the best he knew how, and the ravening crowd made his personal tragedy harder to deal with. Brad Raffensperger explained the same. But the plight of the Georgia election workers made me exceptionally mad, because they were just regular people doing a good and responsible job.  And were threatened with death because of the lies spread by Trump and Giuliani. The perpetrators of the lie should never know a minute of ease. They need to know accountability for what they provoked against blameless average people. These assholes made election work--the backbone of our democracy--an unsafe thing because wee toddlerbrain Trump was mad he lost.

Maybe someone like Johnson will see accountability, but I can only imagine--not enough. Imagine just casually lying about not knowing who gave him those votes. Like no one would press the matter further. It's the ease of lying that is so galling. The fake votes just magically appeared. He just thought he'd give them to the VP. No big at all. Just stealing an election for Trump. Nothing to see here.

It doesn't sit right with me that people who did the right thing went through hell and people who obviously did the wrong thing are so comfortable.

It's a Confession, if You're Listening

 

Here's a first--I'm linking to Newsmax because they have themselves a scoop even if they don't know it because Trump made a confession:

Trump fired his ire at the committee, and rejected a hearing claim he mocked Pence as "a wimp" for not kicking the Electoral College vote certifying President Joe Biden's election back to the states. 

 "I never called Mike Pence a wimp," Trump said. "I never called him a wimp, Mike Pence. Had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be frankly, historic. 

 "But just like [former Attorney General] Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people — Mike and I say it sadly, because I like them — but Mike did not have the courage to act. Bill Barr was afraid of certain things, and you know what they were: Please don't impeach me. Don't impeach me. 

 "'Bill Barr, please,' I said. 'What's wrong with being impeach? I was impeached twice and my poll numbers went up.'

Of all the dumb things to reject having done, saying he didn't call Pence a "wimp" (or, the word he wouldn't say there, of all places, "pussy") feels really tame against the actual claim that he vilified the man as a traitor in the hopes that an angry mob would dispatch him. Of course he's being stupid about the impeachment claims. Trump was impeached only once before 1/6. Once. He's retconning what he said. Did his numbers go up? Into 2020, the hell year? 

That's just a stupid thing to assert. But he also did state that he told Pence to kick the Electoral College vote to the state legislatures. And the 1/6 committee says they can verify Trump's involvement in the fake elector plot--that is to say, the scheme of what would happen right after Pence did throw the matter back to the state legislators.  This was the reason that people from Giuliani to Ginni Thomas were working state legislatures hard, to get some of them to overturn the will of the people. That's why Rep. Scott Perry and a raft of PA people need to get their asses looked at. And Michigan, too, and Arizona, and Wisconsin. Because Trump's scheme had them lined up for mischief, and it was this scheme Pence said no to: being Mr. Trump's conveyor belt. 

Are They Still Proud?

 

The House 1/6 Committee has shown us the path that Donald Trump--who unquestionably lost the 2020 election--took that led to the events of January 6. They started by demolishing the Big Lie--Donald Trump was told that his weird theories about how the election was rigged against him were bullshit--and by his own Attorney General no less!  They went on to demonstrate how that lie was used to radicalize people to move against the government--even while they called themselves patriots. They demonstrated that the violence that day was not some mild set-to amongst angry tourists, but an actual insurrection attempt, involving known violent shit-stirrers who had stock-piled weapons in the hopes of making whatever horrific display we saw (and it was--if you have the wit to only pay attention) even worse.

We saw a riot. We may have narrowly missed a massacre. 

As it was, Capitol Police recount slipping in the blood of their injured comrades. It was a battlefield more than a regular police effort at crowd control. 

This was Trump's fault (the failure to call in the National Guard was his--was he not President, even if only for the next couple weeks?), but he certainly had every bit of help from the usual suspects, didn't he? Like the GOP congress-creatures who asked for pardons--consciousness of wrong-doing? Like Fox News, who aired their prime-time opinion "talent" without commercials in fear that some enterprising souls might change the channel to discover that the Big Lie was a lie and that the insurrection was an insurrection. 

The US Senators who didn't convict Trump in his second impeachment, because they were complicit?

Trump knew that he lost and he violated the trust that was put in him to uphold the Constitution. Maybe his rabid fan-club didn't understand what that trust meant. Much as I have disagreed with him many times, Vice-President Pence understood it. Rep. Liz Cheney understands it. The failure to have a peaceful hand-over of power in response to the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box was a breach of trust in our institutions; the resulting and engineered national security threat was domestic terror. I would consider it treason--it weakened the United States and revealed a soft underbelly to the watching world. 

Donald Trump planned an assault against the homeland, on US ground we consider nearly holy. 

He belongs the fuck in prison, but I would settle for exile. And the same for his accomplices. Maybe not after the manner of the fictional Lt. Philip Nolan (although Trump himself should live out his life and be interred on a garbage scow), but the kind where they can not touch politics, not to run, to fundraise, to so much as paste up a poster for dog catcher, so long as they live. The kind where they never grace or disgrace the public airwaves again with any lie, big or small. 

I have remained sick at heart for what they tried to do to this country I love--and this hearing touched that part of me again. The scoundrels knew it would be moving and feared it would be persuasive, and so belittled it and warned people away from it as "boring".  The shame is theirs. The disgrace is theirs. They have nothing to be proud of.