Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

“But what about the lurkers?”

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Catching Up On The News

Open Thread: Catching Up On The News

by | 102 Comments

This post is in: 

I decided to check in on how things were going today…

And if you haven’t seen this video…well it awful and I’m not going to embed it. They drag a DC Metro Officer down the stairs and beat him, repeatedly.  With. An. American. Flag.

JFC

I’m going to go eat my feelings now.

Open thread

Reader Interactions

102Comments

  1. 1.

    Mousebumples

    https://apnews.com/article/politics-police-riots-michael-pence-capitol-siege-c3a5973a68c699ff6a57cdd76d675e29

    Apparently the ATF called for backup when they went to check out the bombs on site.

    Benedict was at the bomb scene when Capitol Police captains there told him their officers were being overrun.

    He immediately activated the special response team that was standing by and began to call in every ATF agent who works for him in Washington.

    When they began entering the Capitol complex at 2:40 p.m., the hallways were packed with rioters.

  3. 3.

    piratedan

    I believe those dots were connected and that was the beating of Officer Sicknick caught on video….

  7. 7.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    In a highly unusual move, American diplomats have drafted two cables condemning President Donald Trump’s incitement of the deadly assault on the Capitol and calling for administration officials to possibly support invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.

    Using what is known as the State Department’s “dissent channel,” career foreign and civil service officers said they fear last Wednesday’s siege may badly undermine U.S. credibility to promote and defend democratic values abroad.

    “Failing to publicly hold the president to account would further damage our democracy and our ability to effectively accomplish our foreign policy goals abroad,” according to the second of the two cables, which were circulated among diplomats late last week and then sent to State Department leadership.

    The cable called on Pompeo to support any lawful effort by Vice President Mike Pence and other Cabinet members to protect the country including through “the possible implementation of the procedures provided for in Article 4 of the 25th Amendment, if appropriate.”

     

    h/t https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-foreign-policy-riots-michael-pence-67d0d9312c638a465d7682d08982161a

  8. 8.

    West of the Rockies

    Has the moron with the Confederate traitor flag and beard been ID’d and arrested yet?  Sure are lots of clear photos of the toxic pig.

  9. 9.

    Just Chuck

    JFC it was worse than I thought, and I was already furious. Lock them up. Especially those grinning motherfuckers mugging for the cameras.  Send out the jackboots, and when they wail, then like the chick’s Ugly Christmas Sweater said: Fuck Your Feelings.

  10. 10.

    RSA

    Hey, weird. I posted a pointer to a Parler video and it didn’t appear. Even WordPress may be in on it! Text without the link:

    Apparently Parler is still up, in part; this video was viewable as late as 7pm Eastern.  It’s basically a bunch of Trump rally clips organized with melodramatic music and so forth. It seems to be a call to action on 20 January, and it ends with a QAnon acronym. I don’t know how seriously it should be taken, though.

  11. 11.

    Jerzy Russian

    Ted Cruz can go fuck himself.  As I understand it, everybody hates him, even his friends and family.  Given all that, can his fellow senators throw him out on his ass?

  12. 12.

    LuciaMia

    said they fear last Wednesday’s siege may badly undermine U.S. credibility to promote and defend democratic values abroad.

     

    Gee, Ya THINK!

  18. 18.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I can’t bring myself to watch that video, but apparently that’s what it takes these days to get through to some trump-addled minds

  19. 19.

    Patricia Kayden

    Larry Rendall Brock, a charged U.S. Capitol rioter seen with flexi-cuffs, was ID-ed by ex-wife. "I just know that when I saw this was happening I was afraid he would be there. […] It is such a good picture of him and I recognize his patch," she told FBI, per court doc w/ pics pic.twitter.com/EkMXJag6Iv— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) January 11, 2021

  22. 22.

    Just Chuck

    @piratedan:  I thought the record was that Sicknick was killed with a fire extinguisher, and I didn’t see one in that video. That’s an improvised weapon that one would pick up after they’re already inside. Something like fifty officers were injured (out of a force of what, 200?) so it could have been any one of them.

  26. 26.

    Just Chuck

    @germy: Came from a netflix special called “Death to 2020”.  The whole thing is fucking hilarious and nerve-wracking at the same time.  It’s produced by the same folks as Black Mirror.  Before I found that out, I literally thought it was The Onion.

    I think there’s a corollary to Poe’s Law somewhere in there.

  27. 27.

    germy

    Rep. James Clyburn on CNN: “I have an unmarked office that you have got to know exactly where it is.”

    “For some reason, these [rioters] showed up at that office … They didn’t go to where my name was … That to me indicates that something untoward may have been going on.”

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 10, 2021

  28. 28.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    @germy:  We watched that “Death to 2020” movie Friday night. Funny, yes. Also mentally fucking draining and depressing to rehash the whole year.

  29. 29.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Wyatt Salamanca: Well, Pompeo is out there today sayin that the Left is actually the CCP because Twitter banned the president after he spent months encouraging violent sedition.

    So I don’t think Pompeo is going to be receptive to this.

  30. 30.

    japa21

    @West of the Rockies: You know, it pissed me off to see the flag of treason there until I realized it was perfectly appropriate, considering who was carrying it. What really pissed me off was to see the American flag being carried. These idiots don’t deserve to be near an American flag, much less carry one as if it means something to them.

    You know who knows the real meaning of the flag? Colin Kaepernick.

  36. 36.

    japa21

    @germy: Very well aware.  I figure by sometime tomorrow, I will have cooled down enough to put down my thoughts with some clarity.  I will rant  then.

  37. 37.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Steeplejack: This isn’t going anywhere.

    She basically said “We’re all in the house chambers” and then followed it up with “Nancy Pelosi is no longer in the House Chambers”.

    Now, granted that 5 hours earlier in the day she literally posted “This is 1776!” in support of the future riots, but noting that Pelosi is out of the chamber is pretty close to what official sources were saying: She was in an undisclosed location.

  38. 38.

    Just Chuck

    @japa21: They’ve been desecrating the US flag for decades (which is fine, that’s their right), but what really torques me off was something I read … somewhere.  To paraphrase: That treason flag never made it within sight of the capitol during the Civil War, and now it was being casually walked through the halls of Congress.

    That to me is the travesty.

  42. 42.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    a’Lyin’ Without Twitter

    And his adventures in the White House briefing room generally did not go well and revealed the limits of his grasp of policy or current events. One Trump adviser was blunt, saying that the president did not like most aspects of his job, and that included being asked questions for which he did not know the answers.
    So when Mr. Trump went to the briefing room for weeks in the spring to discuss the coronavirus, advisers said, he liked the visual aspects of his performance but not the reality of having a back and forth that led to him being condemned and ridiculed for his dangerous statements about fighting the virus with bleach and light and his fact-free assertions about everything getting better.

    via Dan Drenzer’s 2,500th trump as a toddler tweet

  43. 43.

    Frank Wilhoit

    Wrt the Robert Reich tweet, the corporations know exactly how this game is played, and Reich (and everyone else) ought to know too.  They make the announcement, they get credit for it, then in 2022 they make the donations exactly as if none of this had ever happened, perhaps with a little extra care to time them against the reporting deadlines.

  46. 46.

    MisterForkbeard

    @TaMara (HFG): I’m waiting for our resident trolls to insist that this is because Pelosi is conservative and wants it to fail, etc.

    This is good. It looks like it’s as fast as they can go, legally.

  47. 47.

    West of the Rockies

    @japa21:

    I REALLY wish the Rams had picked up CK.  It would have tweaked the 49ers and been a good thing for the team and city.

  48. 48.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MisterForkbeard: I agree, if this is all there is, the calls for prosecution seem a bit over the top.

    But if I had to bet, I would bet that there will be a digital trail established between the mob and at least one member of Congress. Boebert, Goehmert, Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Jordan, the Q-Anonner from GA, the Hitler quoter from Illinois….

  49. 49.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @Steeplejack: She is…and it’s probably going to get worse. The press does not like her, but were trying to be fair and balanced and interviewed the shiny new thing. I suspect they are going to enjoy taking her down…

  52. 52.

    Chris T.

    If I had any artistic skills … well, this might be too graphic, but I’d draw Ted “Coups” Cruz, sawing up Uncle Sam with knife and fork, and eating choice bits, spittle and globs of meat flying as he yells “You’re dividing our country!” at Joe Biden, who’s dressed in PPE and trying to administer a covid vaccine to Uncle Sam.

  54. 54.

    piratedan

    ty for the corrections guys…

    I guess it’s going to be a work in progress as we have reports come in from all sides of the Capitol assault, its pretty apparent that as seemingly “uncoordinated” as the assault was, there were just as many difficulties from the defenders as well.  Apparently, in the middle of a workday, that neither the Capitol Police chief (Sund) nor some of his chief lieutenants could be reached on the radio for direction and coordination.  Obviously that would also have a tremendous impact on what does the cavalry do when they show up, namely if no one is charge, how in the hell do you work out a response.

  55. 55.

    Just Chuck

    @piratedan:  Sounds like unconscionable negligence or, ah, coordinated lack of coordination.

    There were people wearing “MAGA: Civil War” t-shirts with the fucking date printed on them. They might have suspected something was up.

  58. 58.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @bluehill:

    This was very similar to Benghazi in that an enraged mob was a catspaw, whipped up and pointed in a direction for purposes known to nefarious malefactors.

  60. 60.

    Kent

    @germy: Oh, God….that no-fly list melt-down warmed my heart more than any other video I saw today.   Damn straight I don’t want terrorists and insurrectionists on the plane next to me.

  61. 61.

    TaMara (HFG)

    So Trump is going on the road tomorrow? Like, expecting crowds? What’s the over/under every journalist/internet investigator/FBI will be scanning those crowds for patriots seditionists?

  63. 63.

    WaterGirl

    @RSA: Your comments went into spam.  Normally I would release them from spam, but we get 89k sets of eyeballs a month, and I don’t think we want to promote parler at this point.

  65. 65.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    @Hungry Joe:

    Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley will be holding a steel cage match to decide who is the most disliked member of the Republican caucus.

  69. 69.

    trnc

    I caught part of the clip of Colin Powell this morning, and I’m glad his slow exit from the party appears to be complete. Unfortunately, I think he also said that we need to be listening to republican voters. I didn’t hear the context, so I assume he didn’t mean the rioters but I’m still tired of hearing that trope. Hey, Colin, maybe those voters need to start listening to us. We’re promoting responsible govt and not insurrection, and anyone looking in good faith can see that there were very few violent incidents in months of BLM protests by hundreds of thousands of people. Compare the ratio of people/violent incidents between BLM and the DT stormtroopers, and then tell me who should be listening to whom.

  70. 70.

    Scout211

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/10/25-troops-under-investigation-terrorism-related-riot-capitol/6618295002/

    WASHINGTON – At least 25 troops are under investigation for terrorism related to Wednesday’s siege at the Capitol, according to a Defense official and a member of Congress.
    Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat of Colorado and a former Army Ranger, said he spoke with Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy on Sunday and was told that “at least 25 domestic terrorism cases have been opened as a result of the assault on the Capitol.”
    The troops are suspected of taking part in the insurrection that shut down Congress as it formalized President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, said a Defense official, who was not authorized to comment on the law enforcement investigation. Five people died, including a Capitol Hill police officer, after the pro-Trump mob overwhelmed security lines.

  73. 73.

    Kent

    So my wife tells me that while we have been obsessing about politics and insurrection, we missed “Bean Dad” which is what the rest of the world is talking about on twitter.

    Huh?  Bean Dad?

  75. 75.

    bbleh

    Just gotta say, I’m INSPIRED by the example of General St. Powell SIR deciding NOW that he FINALLY does not wish to be associated with the Republican Party.  Man, is he a profile in courage or what?

  76. 76.

    Miss Bianca

    @TaMara (HFG): Count me among the press that does not like her. And I’m in her district. Granted, I’m a very small fish, but I sure as shit intend to write an article about it. And call her office.

  78. 78.

    debbie

    @Kent:

    Asshole Dad of the Year. Kid says she’s hungry. He hands her a can of beans and a can opener and tells her to figure out how to work it. Then films her for hours trying to get the can open.

  83. 83.

    wuzzat

    @Bill Arnold: Yeah, the childhood trauma of being humiliated by her father in front of the entire world for the sin of asking for food will definitely be a great ice-breaker at her first job interview.

  84. 84.

    Suzanne

    Oh, now they’re finally figuring out that he’s a fascist.

    Fucker was concerned primarily that his supporters are trashy. That was his foremost concern.

    “This adviser, who spoke to Trump on Wednesday amid the siege, said Trump watched the events on television intently. CNN reported that he was so excited by the action, it “freaked out” some staffers around him. The adviser told me that Trump expressed disgust on aesthetic grounds over how “low class” his supporters looked. “He doesn’t like low-class things,” the adviser said, explaining that Trump had a similar reaction over the summer to a video of Brad Parscale, his former campaign manager, shirtless and drinking a beer in his driveway during a mental-health emergency in which police tackled him and seized his weapons. “He kept mentioning, ‘Oh, did you see him in his beer shirt?’ He was annoyed. To him, it’s just low class, in other words.”

  85. 85.

    karen marie

    @Steeplejack:   I do not understand why you – or anyone – provides a link to Raw Story.  Any “story” at Raw Story is a cut-and-paste or summary with a link to the actual story.  I see no upside to giving them the traffic rather than sending the traffic straight to the original source.

  86. 86.

    catclub

    @trnc: I caught part of the clip of Colin Powell this morning, and I’m glad his slow exit from the party appears to be complete.

     

    An INCREDIBLY slow learner.

  88. 88.

    artem1s

    @trnc:

    I think he also said that we need to be listening to republican voters.

    Yellow Ore Colin and August 8th Condi have no business giving advice to anyone  on who should be listening to whom.

  89. 89.

    NotMax

    @artem1s

    Listening is a two-way street.

    We’ve been immersed in variations of the same putrid mewlings since Reagan*. They’ve been willfully deaf to anything else.

    *(Prior to that, I know, but it’s a prominent point of reference a majority living today can recognize right off the bat while not so distant so as to require squinting to make it out on the landscape.)

  90. 90.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    Really sad. At a time of deep national division, President-elect Biden’s choice to call his political opponents literal Nazis does nothing to bring us together or promote healing. This kind of vicious partisan rhetoric only tears our country apart.

    “He reminds me of the man who murdered both his parents and then when sentence was about to be pronounced, pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan”.

  91. 91.

    Aleta

    @japa21: Surely using US flags to hit LE officers on the grounds of the Capital desecrates the flag so that Rs will have to stop calling them Patriots … no?  Or would that be another violation of  “Republicans’ freedom of speech on the internet.”

  92. 92.

    Subsole

    @bbleh: Dude helped sweep My Lai under the rug, didn’t he?

    Sober, unobtrusive chickenshit is still chickenshit.

    And I say that as someone who was bamboozled back in my early 20s.

  93. 93.

    Subsole

    @debbie: And then loses potentially lucrative gigs when it turns out he’s made some…questionable poasts in the past.

    Sousveillance is a hell of a thing.

  94. 94.

    Subsole

    @Suzanne: He wanted his mob to storm the capitol in, what, Savile Row suits?

    Unfuckingbelievable.

    I mean, what Kuiper Belt Object did they scoop this fucking mutant off of???

  99. 99.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Subsole:

     

    He wanted his mob to storm the capitol in, what, Savile Row suits?

    Everyone knows the correct dress code for insurrections is either camo or battledress complete with helmets. Very cool and macho.

    My dear, hoodies and horned headdresses are sooo non U!

  101. 101.

    louc

    @piratedan: Apparently Sund was out of pocket because he was responding to reports of a pipe bomb. That’s classic strategy to divert LE. A part of that crowd was definitely aiming to take down Congressional leadership.

  102. 102.

    Steeplejack

    @karen marie:

    In this case the “original source” was just a collection of tweets, not someone else’s “actual story.” But thank you for your concern.

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