Pretty impressive @nytimes headline for a @washingtonpost scoop. https://t.co/MA9kifCFlu
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) January 4, 2021
Trump’s Georgia Phone Tape: Some Early ReactionsPost + Comments (342)
This post is in: 2020 Elections, Republican Venality, Trump Crime Cartel
Pretty impressive @nytimes headline for a @washingtonpost scoop. https://t.co/MA9kifCFlu
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) January 4, 2021
Trump’s Georgia Phone Tape: Some Early ReactionsPost + Comments (342)
This post is in: 2020 Elections, NANCY SMASH!, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat
As we are sworn in today, we accept a responsibility as daunting and demanding as any that previous generations of leadership have faced.
Our most urgent priority will continue to be defeating the coronavirus – and defeat it, we will! #117thCongress pic.twitter.com/HD5w1OUfx3
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) January 4, 2021
Monday Morning Open Thread: Nancy ‘Madame Speaker’ SmashPost + Comments (115)
by WaterGirl| 14 Comments
This post is in: Albatrossity, On The Road, Photo Blogging
In late December 2017 I had an opportunity to visit Big Bend National Park with Elizabeth and another couple who were in the College of Architecture at KSU. We had traveled with them before (to New Zealand), and it sounded like fun. Additionally, I had always wanted to visit that national park, which is huge, diverse, and perched next to Mexico along the Rio Grande in west Texas. The days had long passed since I was tempted to hike the canyons there, but the opportunity for some warmer weather, bird-watching, and time with some good friends sounded great to me!
It is a two day drive from where I live in Kansas to the park entrance, and we also planned to visit Marfa for a day before we got to the park. Marfa is an interesting place in its own right, and the Chamber of Commerce slogan “Tough to Get Here. Tougher to Explain. But Once You Get Here, You Get It” is pretty accurate. There are art galleries galore, but the real reason our architect friends wanted us to see it was the Chinati Foundation, founded by the minimalist artist Donald Judd. I do have pictures of the installations there, but they don’t do it justice. So we’ll go with some birds and scenery instead!
On The Road – Albatrossity – Big Bend National Park – #1Post + Comments (14)
We got to the park at sunset, and were able to stay in some of the rustic cabins near the lodge in Chisos Basin, the administrative center of the park which is nestled in the Chisos Mountains. This was our view of the mountains at dawn the next day.
This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Foreign Affairs
Dr. Anthony Fauci and Surgeon General Jerome Adams disputed a claim by President Trump that federal data on COVID-19 cases and deaths in the U.S. is overblown https://t.co/SOW6l7FQ7y pic.twitter.com/eenyFS9kj6
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 4, 2021
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Sunday/Monday, Jan. 3-4Post + Comments (31)
This post is in: Open Threads, Republican Venality, Trump Crime Cartel, Our Failed Media Experiment
Wikipedia entry, 2050: "The Medal of Freedom was retired in 2020 after U.S. President Donald Trump renamed it the 'Fuck You Medal' and gave it to two congressmen, three colonels in the Russian GRU, the head of the Gambino crime family, a rabid bat, and a toxic dump site." https://t.co/kf20kwsZ6Q
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) January 3, 2021
Politico will love it, of course…
Late Night Open Thread: Medal of DishonorPost + Comments (175)
This post is in: Ammosexuals, Gun Issues
A tragedy occurred in Texas today:
A pastor was killed and two people were injured in a shooting at a Texas church on Sunday…A suspect is in custody, Smith County Sheriff Larry Smith said.
This was a classic story of a good guy with a gun…with a catastrophic rewrite to the ending many gun-advocates imagine for such tales.
The shooting, at Starrville Methodist Church, about 100 miles east of Dallas, occurred just after 9 a.m. when only about four people were in the church, authorities said.
The pastor found the intruder hiding in a bathroom stall and drew his weapon, Smith told reporters. The man lunged at the pastor, disarming him, shooting him and injuring two others, Smith said. Smith declined to name the pastor or other victims, but said at least one of the wounded was hospitalized.
A sane and decent human being would feel sorrow for the pointless loss, regret at the event, compassion for the dead man’s family, and would note the terrible tyranny of the gun. The firearm has no conscience, and does not care who pulls its trigger.
The local sheriff, however, has a different view:
[Smith County Sheriff Larry] Smith said he believed the pastor was correct in arming himself.
“They did everything we would tell them to do; they were carrying,” Smith said of the church. “But the thing about it is, and I don’t want to get off into it, but if you are going to carry a firearm, you got to be willing to use it.
This is blame the victim taken to an odd (read, grotesque) state of perfection: the murdered man is responsible for his fate for failing to be a focused enough killer himself. There’s just this much truth in that, of course: if a gun appears in a situation, the odds that it will be fired go way up, and that’s the prospect the armed person made the moment his weapon cleared its holster. But the key phrase here is Smith’s first thought: the paster “did everything we would tell (him) to do.” Asking citizens to rehearse violence as a regular facet of their daily lives, just to be ready when the bad guy shows up is no way to lead a life, either an individual one, or that of a society. It’s the ultimate surrender to the tyranny of the gun.
And (a) it’s hard for even properly and regularly trained folks to get this right at any random moment when the skill might be needed and, more (b) there’s no way that your preacher, your teacher, your ER charge nurse, your grocery store asst. manager, your whoever, should be expected to do the impossible. What the sheriff said of this situation–”I don’t want to be second-guessing the pastor by any means. You got a much younger person, a much more agile person,” he continued, referring to the suspect–is always going to be true; there is always someone faster, meaner, luckier.
Accepting shit like this as mere collateral damage in the cause of unfettered access to guns is no way to live. And Sheriff Smith is an asshole.
Image: The Moloch Idol, with 7 chambers or chapels (illustration from Johann Lund, Die alten jüdischen Heiligthümer., p. 564
by Adam L Silverman| 140 Comments
This post is in: 2020 Elections, America, Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security
Earlier this evening The Washington Post published a letter, as an op-ed, from all ten living former Secretaries of Defense, warning about the importance of keeping the US military out of any involvement with deciding the outcome of elections, specifically the 2020 election. There is no way this letter is put together and then pushed for publication unless someone senior, most likely either senior uniformed personnel (general officers/flag officers) and/or senior executive service personnel at the Department of Defense or one of the Services unless someone got a message out to one or more of their former bosses. Someone is very worried that the Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, his Chief of Staff Kash Patel (who really works for Devin Nunes and was once thrown out of a Federal courtroom in Texas for being an ass and sanctioned by the judge in the case with an order of ineptitude), the Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Acting as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations & Low Intensity Conflict Ezra Cohen-Watnick (who is the protege of LTG Flynn, Michael Ledeen, and Safra Catz and who has been completely unqualified for every position he’s been appointed to in the Trump administration), the Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Anthony Tata (a noted racist, anti-Semite, Islamophone, homophobe, and all around bigot), and the Special Advisor to the Acting Secretary of Defense Douglas MacGregor (noted extremist kook) are up to something dangerous.
Ashton Carter, Dick Cheney, William Cohen, Mark Esper, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, William Perry and Donald Rumsfeld are the 10 living former U.S. secretaries of defense.
As former secretaries of defense, we hold a common view of the solemn obligations of the U.S. armed forces and the Defense Department. Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party.
American elections and the peaceful transfers of power that result are hallmarks of our democracy. With one singular and tragic exception that cost the lives of more Americans than all of our other wars combined, the United States has had an unbroken record of such transitions since 1789, including in times of partisan strife, war, epidemics and economic depression. This year should be no exception.
Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted. The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived.
As senior Defense Department leaders have noted, “there’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election.” Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory. Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.
Transitions, which all of us have experienced, are a crucial part of the successful transfer of power. They often occur at times of international uncertainty about U.S. national security policy and posture. They can be a moment when the nation is vulnerable to actions by adversaries seeking to take advantage of the situation.
Given these factors, particularly at a time when U.S. forces are engaged in active operations around the world, it is all the more imperative that the transition at the Defense Department be carried out fully, cooperatively and transparently. Acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller and his subordinates — political appointees, officers and civil servants — are each bound by oath, law and precedent to facilitate the entry into office of the incoming administration, and to do so wholeheartedly. They must also refrain from any political actions that undermine the results of the election or hinder the success of the new team.
We call upon them, in the strongest terms, to do as so many generations of Americans have done before them. This final action is in keeping with the highest traditions and professionalism of the U.S. armed forces, and the history of democratic transition in our great country
Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld are not known for their bipartisanship, nor for being squishes. For them to agree to sign on to this means that something has gone very, very, very wrong at the Department of Defense.
A warning flare has been sent up. Whether it has any effect is another matter entirely.
Open thread!