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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Morning Reads

Morning Reads

by $8 blue check mistermix|  January 15, 202110:17 am| 89 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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This piece on the defense of the West Terrace of the Capitol is worth reading and keeping bookmarked when the inevitable revisionist history starts up.  Those officers fought for their lives, some were almost killed, and one of the reasons they didn’t use deadly force is that they knew the terrorists were armed and they didn’t know if they’d prevail in a gunfight.

Lauren Boebert acts like the dumbest kid hauled into the Principal’s office and pre-emptively identifies herself as one of the MoCs who led constituent tours prior to the riots.

Also, you guys are smart enough to know this, but I see some discussions in social media where there’s a belief that MoCs are immune from prosecution.  Tell that to Chris Collins.  I’m guessing Boebert is going to face some consequence, hopefully lying to the FBI, because, well, she’s a fucking liar.  That will let her clear the field for Kristi Noem in 2024.

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Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    January 15, 2021 at 10:20 am

    I don’t think the Speech and Debate clause covers conspiracy to engage in insurrection. I’m less sure about whether it covers their straight-up lying about the election.

  2. 2.

    JanieM

    January 15, 2021 at 10:22 am

    That will let her clear the field for Kristi Noem in 2024.

    Does this mean you think Boebert would otherwise run for president in 2024? Pre-Clickbait, I would have said that suggests a self-awareness quotient down near absolute zero. But now — I suppose maybe.

  3. 3.

    randy khan

    January 15, 2021 at 10:25 am

    It is true that you can’t arrest a Senator or Member on the floor or on the way to and from the Capitol for a session.  But of course that means you can arrest them any other time, and also does not immunize them for crimes committed in either chamber or anywhere else in the Capitol.  (If, hypothetically, Bernie Sanders bludgeoned Ted Cruz to death on the Senate floor for being Ted Cruz, he could be prosecuted if you could find any Senator or staffer to testify against Sanders.)

    And, of course, the Speech and Debate clause concerns only statements made on the floor of either house, not actions or anything said anywhere else.

  4. 4.

    debbie

    January 15, 2021 at 10:25 am

    there’s a belief that MoCs are immune from prosecution

    This needs to be tested as soon as possible, if only to put the fear of consequences in every one of those assholes.

  5. 5.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    January 15, 2021 at 10:27 am

    @Baud: It doesn’t cover campaign finance crimes either, Jay Kim was charged, convicted, and had to wear an ankle bracelet during his last few months in Congress.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    January 15, 2021 at 10:27 am

    @randy khan:

    “I didn’t see nothing.”

  7. 7.

    Patricia Kayden

    January 15, 2021 at 10:27 am

    So Pence is staying loyal to the President whose insurrection almost had Pence killed?— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) January 15, 2021

  8. 8.

    danielx

    January 15, 2021 at 10:28 am

    @JanieM:

    After Trump, or for that matter Republican presidential primaries over the last few election cycles, you can’t really blame her for looking in the mirror and seeing presidential timber. It’s already been established that there are substantial numbers of people out there who are willing to vote for total dipshits.

  9. 9.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    January 15, 2021 at 10:30 am

    @Patricia Kayden: Pence is Dence.

  10. 10.

    Sandia Blanca

    January 15, 2021 at 10:32 am

    @randy khan:  Or if you could find any Senators or staffers who had not assisted Sen. Sanders.

  11. 11.

    Gin & Tonic

    January 15, 2021 at 10:32 am

    @Baud: I sometimes mention the case of Ken McElroy of Skidmore, Missouri. Nobody saw anything.

  12. 12.

    danielx

    January 15, 2021 at 10:34 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    As most of his former constituents in his home state would testify. There was a reason he agreed to become Trump’s running mate, that being he knew he’d get his ass handed to him if he ran for governor again.

    But he does have magnificent political hair. There is in fact a school of thought that maintains his hair is the smartest part of him.

  13. 13.

    Sayne

    January 15, 2021 at 10:37 am

    “The greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed. This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the government and people—was not exacted from them.”

    — Union General from Virginia, George Henry Thomas, November 1868

    This quote comes to mind when I think about the inevitable nihilistic, cynical revisionism we can expect from right-wingers.

  14. 14.

    Barbara

    January 15, 2021 at 10:42 am

    IIRC they have immunity for acting in furtherance of official congressional business or something like that.  More than a few members of Congress have been prosecuted while in office.

  15. 15.

    randy khan

    January 15, 2021 at 10:43 am

    @Baud:

    “I don’t know why, but he ran full speed into that brick Bernie was holding – ten times.”

  16. 16.

    Ned F.

    January 15, 2021 at 10:45 am

    Darn it!  “Democracy Dies in Darkness Behind a Paywall”.

  17. 17.

    MJS

    January 15, 2021 at 10:46 am

    Somewhat off topic, but I found myself yelling at Rachel Maddow last night during one of her segments. She was going through a number of recent arrests associated with the insurrection, but was only saying, “This guy…” as in “This guy, wearing the Camp Auschwitz shirt, was arrested for X…” Say their names! Put the names on the screen. Put the hometowns on the screen. If it’s known, put their employers’ names on the screens. The shaming must be explicit, and it must be precise.

  18. 18.

    Omnes Omnibus

    January 15, 2021 at 10:47 am

    @randy khan:  The worst Sanders would face is a hung jury.

  19. 19.

    Ken

    January 15, 2021 at 10:48 am

    @randy khan: “Stabbed twelve times, but the wounds are puzzling. Some shallow and weak, others struck with tremendous force penetrating thick muscle. Some were clearly struck with the left hand, but most with the right.”

    (Christie sometimes cheated, but in most of her stories including that one the reader does get most of the clues before the final revelation.)

  20. 20.

    germy

    January 15, 2021 at 10:49 am

    When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced this week that the federal government would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses held in reserve for second shots, no such reserve existed, according to state and federal officials briefed on distribution plans. The Trump administration had already begun shipping out what was available beginning at the end of December, taking second doses directly off the manufacturing line.

  21. 21.

    Elizabelle

    January 15, 2021 at 10:53 am

    @danielx:   That fly sure liked it.

  22. 22.

    patrick II

    January 15, 2021 at 10:53 am

    There is a guy on CNN right now saying that Trump is interested in having a military-style sendoff.

  23. 23.

    SiubhanDuinne

    January 15, 2021 at 10:54 am

    MSNBC just cited a new Pew poll showing Trump’s approval number is now at the lowest point of his presidency — 29%.

    Getting perilously close to the magic number.

  24. 24.

    Baud

    January 15, 2021 at 10:54 am

    @patrick II: He never got his military parade.

  25. 25.

    Mike in NC

    January 15, 2021 at 10:55 am

    This idiot Boebert appears to be a buck-toothed, third rate clone of Sarah Palin. That’s how far the GOP has fallen since they embraced Fat Bastard as their brain dead god-emperor.

    Haven’t seen much lately about him getting a fucking Nobel Peace Prize. Out of the running, at last?

  26. 26.

    Hoodie

    January 15, 2021 at 10:55 am

    @SiubhanDuinne: Taking in to account margin of error, he’s already there

  27. 27.

    Baud

    January 15, 2021 at 10:56 am

    @SiubhanDuinne: Yep.  It’s been going down steadily since the election. I know these are scary times, but we do ourselves a disservice when we suggest that the public isn’t with us, even as we lament that more of the public isn’t with us.

  28. 28.

    SiubhanDuinne

    January 15, 2021 at 10:57 am

    @patrick II:

    I read that somewhere yesterday. Think I also saw that the Pentagon laughed and pointed respectfully informed him that such a send off would not be possible.

  29. 29.

    Just Chuck

    January 15, 2021 at 10:58 am

    @patrick II: I’m all for giving him the traditional sendoff military dictators receive.

  30. 30.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    January 15, 2021 at 10:59 am

    @Baud: I always think of just how bad things had to get– Iraq, Katrina, what we thought was a total collapse of the economy– for the lumpenmittel to get that Gee Dubya might have seemed like a nice fella, but just maybe there was more to the job than that.

  31. 31.

    germy

    January 15, 2021 at 11:01 am

    Just before the end in April 1945, a “purple” faced Hitler reputedly ranted, "Everyone has lied to me. . . .The German people have not fought heroically. They deserve to perish. . . .It is not I who have lost the war, but the German people."

    — Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) January 15, 2021

  32. 32.

    patroclus

    January 15, 2021 at 11:01 am

    @MJS: Naming and shaming is NOT the goal here – the goal is full and fair prosecutions and convictions with the full force of the law.  We want maximum deterrence; not temporary internet joy.  Trump has 5 more days for pardons and we want to preclude that.  In addition, we want the lower level folks who just trespassed to roll on the higher level perps who actually committed violence and planned to assassinate Pence, Pelosi and others.  Maddow, thankfully, realizes this.

  33. 33.

    Elizabelle

    January 15, 2021 at 11:04 am

    @Ned F.:   Here are some articles not behind a paywall. I’ve not read either yet, but will. (And yeah, I did skim the stuff about the “Throuple”, because that was a fast read.)

    ProPublica: The Radicalization of Kevin Greeson

    How one man went from attending President Barack Obama’s inauguration to dying in the mob protesting Donald Trump’s election loss during the Capitol insurrection.

    And another on radicalization of women, no paywall.

    The Conversation: Capitol riots: Ashli Babbitt and the far-right radicalisation of women

    In the wake of the attack on the US Capitol, there has been a lot of discussion of the role of the 35-year-old US Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was one of the five people killed during the violence that day. Right-wing posters on social media platforms took little time to transform the woman from part of a group that the president-elect Joe Biden called “domestic terrorists” to a symbol of American patriotism, a woman who had spent half her life defending her country and was now standing up for her beliefs in direct action.

    What I have been snickering over: it turns out Ashli B was part of a threesome living arrangement, what NY Post calls a “throuple.” She and her husband Aaron allegedly had a young woman living with them as their partner. Consider that, patriots!

    Stories without paywall on that alleged domestic relationship in NY Post and the Daily Mail (that UK gossip rag with more ads than article text). UK paper interviewed both the girlfriend and Ashli’s 21 year old younger brother.

  34. 34.

    leeleeFL

    January 15, 2021 at 11:04 am

    @Baud:  Go for the Texas defense,  ” he needed to get dead, someone just helped him along!”

  35. 35.

    Baud

    January 15, 2021 at 11:04 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: People are constantly shocked by it, but I think we need to learn to accept it so we can deal with it intelligently.  I think we’ve traditionally pretended that the majority of Americans are like us but just need to be “shown the way.”  But we are different from the normies, even the gettable ones.

  36. 36.

    jeffreyw

    January 15, 2021 at 11:05 am

    @patrick II:

    This would be appropriate, I think.

  37. 37.

    MomSense

    January 15, 2021 at 11:05 am

    I’m on pins and needles for the inauguration.  Cant they broadcast it from the secret location Cheney was always holed up in?

  38. 38.

    Baud

    January 15, 2021 at 11:06 am

    @germy:

    Michael Beschloss continues to impress me.  He has really risen to the occasion.

  39. 39.

    NotMax

    January 15, 2021 at 11:10 am

    @SiubhanDuinne

    Plucked from downstairs:

    “Would have thrown a grand shindig but it turns out you took that money for Wall.”

    //

  40. 40.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    January 15, 2021 at 11:10 am

    @Mike in NC:

    This idiot Boebert appears to be a buck-toothed, third rate clone of Sarah Palin.

    Pretty much.  Although Caribou Barbie had to college shop and took forever to get a degree: https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/paper-trail/2008/09/05/sarah-palins-extensive-college-career

    she at least eventually got one.  Crazy Gun Gurl OTOH, got pregnant her senior year (2003-2004) and dropped out.  She did eventually get a GED.  Our local indie paper did a great contrast piece between her and AOC:

    https://www.westword.com/news/aoc-lauren-boebert-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-congress-11845779

  41. 41.

    Josie

    January 15, 2021 at 11:10 am

    This tidbit from TPM is kind of interesting.

    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/cruz-contact-info-found-alleged-pro-trump-rioter-truck

  42. 42.

    NotMax

    January 15, 2021 at 11:14 am

    @Mike in NC

    Bargain basement Bachmann.

  43. 43.

    Elizabelle

    January 15, 2021 at 11:15 am

    @MomSense:   I honestly don’t know why they are doing an outdoors inauguration during a pandemic.  With the DC mayor and governors of Virginia and Maryland begging people not to come to DC.

    Saint Reagan’s second inauguration was blisteringly cold.  He was sworn in indoors, and they did a second ceremony — inside the Capitol Rotunda with more guests — the following day.

    Wiki: The second inauguration of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States was held in a small televised ceremony[1] on Sunday, January 20, 1985, at the Grand Foyer of the White House,[2] and was to be repeated the following day, January 21, 1985 at the West Front of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., before being moved to the Capitol’s rotunda.

    Wind chill of minus 25 on Inauguration Day.  That is unusual for DC area.  I laughed, but felt badly for all the kiddos in the marching bands who did not get to march in their parade.  (They did get an event indoors with the President  at the Capitol Center, sports arena in Maryland.)

  44. 44.

    Tony Jay

    January 15, 2021 at 11:15 am

     

    Really super nice of that Dixiefied Dick from Delaware to provide what could well turn out to be the archetypal cover image for every future book about Trumpian America, perfectly illustrating not just how it ended, but how it began and what it all meant.

    A racist Northern prick gets thrust into prominence as part of a rabid horde of pig-ignorant, self-radicalised losers, proudly carrying the banner of White Supremacist Treason into the temples of American Democracy where he proceeds to break things, steal stuff and rub shit all over the walls, never fully realising that his pantomime display of ‘Alpha-Male’ dominance isn’t the point of the exercise, but just useful cover for other, more sinister agents of chaos. Then, when Old Mister Consequences comes a’knock, knock, knocking at his door, he whines like a Chihuahua shitting out a foot-long Ghost Chilli pepper and shows that he’s learnt absolutely nothing from the experience.

    They could call it ‘The Second Time as Farce’ – Donald Trump and the New Lost Cause

  45. 45.

    Elizabelle

    January 15, 2021 at 11:15 am

    Comment in moderation

  46. 46.

    Baud

    January 15, 2021 at 11:17 am

    @Elizabelle:

    You’re not the boss of me. I’ll comment as often as I want.

  47. 47.

    Quinerly

    January 15, 2021 at 11:18 am

    @Elizabelle: that ProPublica piece is must read. Thanks!

  48. 48.

    Elizabelle

    January 15, 2021 at 11:20 am

    @MomSense:   My comment is in moderation, but it was so blisteringly cold (minus 25 degrees wind chill) for Reagan’s second inauguration that they did a Sunday swearing in indoors before a small group, a larger second swearing in on Monday also indoors, at the Capitol Rotunda.

    And they cancelled the parade and put on an indoor celebration with all the marching bands at the Capitol Center, DC’s major sports arena which was actually in Maryland.  (Since torn down.)

    I honestly don’t know why they’re going forward with plans for an outdoor inauguration, during a pandemic, when the DC mayor and governors of VA and MD are begging people to stay away.

    I would bet the inauguration is actually held indoors somewhere, but who knows?  Outdoors is truly not worth the risk.

  49. 49.

    leeleeFL

    January 15, 2021 at 11:20 am

    @Sayne: I have always thought Lincoln made a mistake by saying we should unify without punishing the Rebels. Executing the Commandant of Andersonville, but not Lee, or Davis or Bedford-Forrest left us open to the Lost Cause BS.

    And we should have prosecuted Nixon, knew it then, know it more now.

  50. 50.

    RepubAnon

    January 15, 2021 at 11:22 am

    @Ken: Try reading Randolph Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories – he did an excellent pastiche of Murder on the Orient Express, and also a Nero Wolfe pastiche.

  51. 51.

    trnc

    January 15, 2021 at 11:23 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I always think of just how bad things had to get– Iraq, Katrina, what we thought was a total collapse of the economy– for the lumpenmittel to get that Gee Dubya might have seemed like a nice fella, but just maybe there was more to the job than that.

    What they got from it was “Let’s elect a total asshole who will better identify with the base.”

  52. 52.

    trnc

    January 15, 2021 at 11:25 am

    @Elizabelle: She and her husband Aaron allegedly had a young woman living with them as their partner. Consider that, patriots!

    I seriously doubt that’s going to make the insurrectionist crowd recoil in horror. It’s probably in the Q by-laws.

  53. 53.

    Ken

    January 15, 2021 at 11:26 am

    @Just Chuck: There’s also the traditional one-gun salute, much used by the British in India.

    (Not that I want that to happen. Let the civil and criminal suits move forward, now that the DOJ won’t be running interference.)

  54. 54.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    January 15, 2021 at 11:28 am

    @leeleeFL:

    I have always thought Lincoln made a mistake by saying we should unify without punishing the Rebels. Executing the Commandant of Andersonville, but not Lee, or Davis or Bedford-Forrest left us open to the Lost Cause BS.

    Adam Silverman said this in a post in May 2020:

    Every single day I am more and more convinced that as soon as Grant accepted Lee’s signed surrender at Appomattox, he should’ve escorted Lee out and forced him to watch every single soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia hanged by the neck until dead for treason and then, when all of his men were dead, forced Lee to watch him free the slaves they’d brought with as servants to that Army, and then hanged Lee.

    The same should’ve been done when Johnson surrendered the Army of Tennessee and with all the other smaller Confederate armies in the rest of the western theater.

  55. 55.

    leeleeFL

    January 15, 2021 at 11:30 am

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: Thanks, nice to know I am in good company.

  56. 56.

    Just Chuck

    January 15, 2021 at 11:33 am

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’m pretty sure executing the entire surrendering party is a war crime.  Somewhat unhelpful in getting others to surrender as well.  We didn’t need Sherman to burn down the entire south, we needed reconstruction to continue and to put the boot down hard on Jim Crow.

  57. 57.

    Elizabelle

    January 15, 2021 at 11:33 am

    @trnc:  And we have seen less formalized, similar behavior among our evangelical fundy “betters.

    People’s private lives are their own business. With Falwell Jr, it wasn’t the behavior but the utter hypocrisy.  Making the students live under rules that the faculty and leadership were excepted from.  Preaching in public and grifting in private.

    I actually had a lot of sympathy for Falwell Jr, who no doubt chafed under the restrictions of his “religion”, but he kept up the charade and grifting.  It’s been quiet on his front, but suspect he’s looking at a prison sentence for self-dealing financially, in months and years to come.

  58. 58.

    Ken

    January 15, 2021 at 11:40 am

    @RepubAnon: Also, Darcy and his assistant Sean have more than a little Holmes-Watson vibe going.

    I love the Darcy stories, as one of the few fantasy-mystery series that actually work as detective novels.  I don’t offhand recall any of the crimes being committed by magic, which is the usual problem in such series as it ruins any chance of the reader solving the mystery on their own.

    Daniel O’Malley’s novel Stilleto has a scene like that. It’s set in a world where some people have supernatural powers. A person at a murder scene thinks,

    If I speculate on why [the victims] couldn’t make any sounds, all my scientific theories will look ridiculous when it turns out the room was temporarily transported to the moon by the dreams of a five-year-old, and in an Italian restaurant in space, no one can hear you scream.

  59. 59.

    Another Scott

    January 15, 2021 at 11:43 am

    @Elizabelle:  OTOH…

    WaPo – January 26, 2016 – Falwell endorses Donnie.

    Yeah, it’s inconvenient to one’s libido to have to keep one’s pants zipped, but being susceptible to blackmail has real consequences.

    Falwell was a big player in giving us Donnie. I have no sympathy at all for him, myself.

    (And the contacts between Falwell and Donnie need to be investigated until we know what was really there and what was just salacious.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  60. 60.

    patroclus

    January 15, 2021 at 11:46 am

    @Just Chuck: Indeed.  Victors amping up the blood lust after winning doesn’t exactly comply with Churchill’s dictum to display magnanimity in triumph.  Lincoln got it right by calling for the better angels of our nature to display malice towards none and charity for all.  The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were the proper response; not a forerunner of the Amritsar Massacre.  In my view, the key mistake was trading federal occupation of the South for Hayes to become President in 1877 and thus ending Reconstruction and enabling Restoration lawfully.  If the Republicans had just been able to accept Tilden as President for a term, Reconstruction might have turned out differently.

  61. 61.

    RSA

    January 15, 2021 at 11:47 am

    @Josie: I saw that, but I think someone who writes down the phone number for Shawn Hannity may not really be an insider.

  62. 62.

    Elizabelle

    January 15, 2021 at 11:47 am

    Agreed re Falwell Jr.  Lock him up!  After a scrupulous investigation and fair trial, of course.

  63. 63.

    Mary Ellen Sandahl

    January 15, 2021 at 11:49 am

    @debbie:

    there’s a belief that MoCs are immune from prosecution

    This needs to be tested as soon as possible…

    Or as the goddess Leslie Jones exclaimed, watching GOT, when Ramsay Bolton says to Sansa that his dogs will never hurt him:

    “Let’s test that theory!”

  64. 64.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    January 15, 2021 at 11:49 am

    @Just Chuck:

    Another quote I probably stole from somebody here:

    Sherman never went through Alabama. I think we can all agree that was a regrettable oversight on his part.

    I think Adam’s point was that the surrendering army in this case represented a treasonous rebellion, not an internationally recognized state wherein the surrendering combatants might fall under recognized treaties (for example, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico outlined rules of war should conflict again break out with Mexico).

    Lincoln and Grant were better human beings than me.  Good thing I wasn’t President or the Union Army commander back in the day.  Do I think the abandonment of Reconstruction in order to resolve the 1876 Presidential election was a massive mistake?  Absolutely.

    I think comments like his and the other one I quote represent the frustration everybody here feels with how the Civil Fucking War still reverberates in modern, US politics.

  65. 65.

    AliceBlue

    January 15, 2021 at 11:50 am

    @Just Chuck: Thank you for this.  I shake my head in disbelief when otherwise intelligent people say “well, if Sherman, Grant, etc. had put down every single Confederate like a rabid dog, everything coming after would have been shits and giggles!”  I’m really astonished at Adam’s statement.  Does he really think that the wives, sons and daughters of those soldiers would have settled down and lived in peace with newly freed slaves?

  66. 66.

    different-church-lady

    January 15, 2021 at 11:58 am

    @SiubhanDuinne: “With five days to go, we don’t have to pretend anymore!”

    Does give credence to the idea that polls only reflect the winds, and only people on the right side of the winds at that moment answer them.

  67. 67.

    Gravenstone

    January 15, 2021 at 12:01 pm

    @patrick II: How about we strap him to a steam catapult (since he seemed so enamored of them) and launch him off the deck of the nearest available carrier thus equipped? Fitting send off, chucking his carcass overboard at 80 mph.

  68. 68.

    Jay C

    January 15, 2021 at 12:10 pm

    @patrick II: 

    There is a guy on CNN right now saying that Trump is interested in having a military-style sendoff.

    You mean like THIS GUY?

  69. 69.

    ET

    January 15, 2021 at 12:15 pm

    Don’t know if anyone has seen it but there is an interview with the DC cops and the one that got beat on says in an TV interview

    “thank you, but fuck you for being there“

  70. 70.

    Captain C

    January 15, 2021 at 12:37 pm

    @Sandia Blanca: “Sorry boss, all 200 of ‘em say he beat himself to death. Most of ‘em say it was the first honorable thing he ever did.”

  71. 71.

    leeleeFL

    January 15, 2021 at 12:58 pm

    @AliceBlue:  I didn’t say to execute them all…BUT the leaders, yes.
    We should have taken the land, given it to the freed slaves who made the economy in the first place, and exiled the rest to start over with properly chastened outlooks. They never admitted to themselves that they lost…see post WW1 Germany. ” We were betrayed!”. Hitler capitalized in that lie, didn’t he?

  72. 72.

    Just Chuck

    January 15, 2021 at 1:03 pm

    I finally gave in and bought a WaPo subscription and read the whole article. Couldn’t make it through watching all the videos though, because my temples throbbed and my vision got blurry … I was literally blinded by rage.

    These people and their entire ideology need to be crushed for good and ever.

  73. 73.

    Uncle Cosmo

    January 15, 2021 at 1:04 pm

    @Elizabelle: What I find more interesting is something I saw last week about Babbit’s business career post-USAF. IIRC she started a pool maintenance business (reasonable in San Diego), set up a website, took out a business loan for $65K and had paid ~$3400 back when – she stopped paying. Again IIRC, the bidniz went bankrupt.

    How many middle-class Trumpistas are “magical thinking” types who start small businesses, sure they’ll be rolling in dough in a few months, a year at most, and then find out that (in most cases) it’s an impoverished slog of years of 90-hour weeks before they turn the corner? The kind of “independent” “self-reliant” types who can’t abide anyone (like a boss) telling them what to do – and then explode in blind fury when they discover that there are all sorts of laws and regulations their business has to obey that cost them most if not all their profits.

    And they become even angrier when they see larger and better-established competitors (who have to obey the same law and regulations) doing better than them:

    They’re cheating! They have cronies in high places to let them off the hook! They bribe the inspectors! Their high-priced lawyers get them a break! Their high-priced tax accountants finagle the books!**

    IMO “magical thinking” + “I’m smarter than everyone else” + “I’ve always been special” + race/class privilege go a long way toward explaining these folks’ eagerness to accept (if not fashion) an alternate reality and their murderous reactions when real reality cracks them in the (metaphorical) back of the head with a (metaphorical) twobyfour.

    ** Just FTR they are not always or entirely wrong in such beliefs: Much late-stage-capitalist “competition” amounts to raising the entry costs to new entrants in your company’s field so high no one not named Bezos or Musk can afford them. In that sense their “populism” approaches the old leftish style ca. 1900, which despised “malefactors of great wealth.” But IMO that’s a small part of the phenomenon. YMMV.

  74. 74.

    Jinchi

    January 15, 2021 at 1:44 pm

    @patrick II: There is a guy on CNN right now saying that Trump is interested in having a military-style sendoff.

    Hmmm. I really don’t think Joe Biden wants a firing squad on inauguration day.

  75. 75.

    Geminid

    January 15, 2021 at 1:47 pm

    @Just Chuck: The idea of a mass execution at Appomattox is an absurd fantasy. Grant would never, ever, have done this. Grant actually was a very humane person who was encouraged by taking confederates prisoner, less so by killing them. He was not a tenth as bloodthirsty as some modern keyboard warriors are. Or think they are. But if Grant had executed Lee’s army, Johnston’s army would not have surrendered, but would rather have scattered and headed for home. And they would have slaughtered every male African American they could on the way. Same with Confederate forces west of the Appalachians.

    People who want to trace our current day problems to the outcome of the Civil War would do better to examine how Reconstruction failed. There was no reason why Southern states had to be given a voice in the 1876 election. The U.S. could have maintained a military occupation for decades if needed, and Federal cavalry could have easily suppressed any diehards who thought differently.

  76. 76.

    TheflipPsyD

    January 15, 2021 at 1:49 pm

    @Tony Jay:  Delaware is definitely a southern state “in lower slower” — which is below the C& D canal. When I first moved here from Philadelphia (to New Castle County which is the northernmost county), I was shocked because attitudes toward race were at least 50 years behind. And as you go further south, it just worsens

  77. 77.

    Tony Jay

    January 15, 2021 at 1:57 pm

    @TheflipPsyD:

    I’ve heard that said a lot, and it’s obviously true, but it’s also true that Delaware didn’t secede with the South, remained in the Union and ‘the North’, and the analogy wouldn’t work without it, so damn it to hell or Florida, a Northern state it remains!

  78. 78.

    Southern Goth

    January 15, 2021 at 2:19 pm

    Some of you think seem to think that after decades of pissing away the Midwestern Blue wall by ignoring labor and unions, you can win elections in the purpling South Eastern states like Georgia and North Carolina by bringing up the Civil War every goddamn minute.

    Virginia, in case you haven’t noticed, is already fairly blue.

    Iowa and Ohio both voted for Obama, but went hard for Trump.  Maybe you should be discussing that.

  79. 79.

    Jinchi

    January 15, 2021 at 2:21 pm

    I’m starting to wonder if Trump will forget to give Rudy his pre-emptive pardon before the inauguration.

  80. 80.

    Dave

    January 15, 2021 at 2:37 pm

    I published a novel based on that idea (A Quantum of Mercy) and my wife insisted on a nom de plume for fear of a lynching

  81. 81.

    MisterForkbeard

    January 15, 2021 at 2:43 pm

    @patrick II:

    There is a guy on CNN right now saying that Trump is interested in having a military-style sendoff.

    So like… out of a cannon?

  82. 82.

    catclub

    January 15, 2021 at 3:25 pm

    @Southern Goth: Iowa and Ohio both voted for Obama, but went hard for Trump. Maybe you should be discussing that.

    I disagree with the premise that the Democrats have been ignoring labor unions.  Sherrod Brown, of Ohio, is famously pro-Union. Also, the GOP is fanatically anti-union (police unions excepted.).

    I think Democrats were unable to stop the GOP and business from destroying unions, but since only Democrats have agency, the democrats get blamed for this.

  83. 83.

    ballerat

    January 15, 2021 at 3:35 pm

    @NotMax: Piss Poor Palin

  84. 84.

    Citizen Alan

    January 15, 2021 at 3:42 pm

    @patroclus: I would say that the key mistake was in not impeaching that treasonous fucker Andrew Johnson when they had the chance (he survived by 1 vote). Had he been impeached, he would have been replaced by Senate President pro tempore Benjamin Wade, a Radical Republican who supported equal rights for both blacks and women. Under a Wade administration, the KKK would have been crushed in its infancy, and the Confederate States almost certainly would not have been readmitted in their present form.

  85. 85.

    ballerat

    January 15, 2021 at 3:42 pm

    @trnc: I suspect that crowd is way into hotwifeing based on how we know they project and their use of the word cuck as a favorite insult.

  86. 86.

    Geminid

    January 15, 2021 at 3:49 pm

    @catclub: I think many Democrats  understand the importance of unions, and appreciate the contributions of the SEIU, the UAW, the Teamsters, and the flight attendents, letter carriers, and other unions to Biden’s win and those of other candidates. But not all Democrats do, and I think that is something that holds the party back. Sherrod Brown’s success should serve as a template for future efforts, but he gets relatively little attention. The same with Bob Casey.

  87. 87.

    Matt McIrvin

    January 15, 2021 at 4:09 pm

    @Southern Goth: When I lived in the South I seem to recall it wasn’t the liberals who brought up the Civil War every goddamn minute.

    They’re having their own reckoning about all that now. Being a Northeasterner by migration I tend to emphasize that American racism is very far from a Southern-only thing.

    But I also think you can’t understand US history without talking about Reconstruction, in particular, and it seems to be something of a gap in the national historical education. And the coalition Democrats are using to gain in the South seems to more welcome that new reckoning than shun it.

  88. 88.

    Starboard Tack

    January 15, 2021 at 4:10 pm

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    This. When you start a small business, you often have to do all the frontline work and all the office work yourself. If you get big enough, you can get an accountant and a lawyer. And if you hire someone, your admin costs can double real quick. And even if you do everything right, chances are you eventually end up so far in the red you have to quit.

  89. 89.

    Southern Goth

    January 15, 2021 at 4:44 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I remember Hillary Clinton trying out the rhetoric that maybe Reconstruction wasn’t such a great deal for a lot people. The (professional) left pilloried her for it.

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