Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

No Justins, No Peace

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

We’re not going back!

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

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

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Let’s finish the job.

The revolution will be supervised.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

You are here: Home / Politics / Violent Insurrection at the Capitol / Investigations Into Violent Extremist Attacks / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: The 1/6 Anniversary Approaches

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: The 1/6 Anniversary Approaches

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Per the Washington Post:

… The former president had been planning to speak at his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida on Thursday night.

According to a person familiar with the matter, Trump wanted to make a scene and deride reporters at the event but had been told repeatedly by his advisers that it could be the kind of coverage he doesn’t want. Trump also did not know exactly what he wanted his message to be, and his team was taken aback by how many reporters were planning on attending, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

“It was going to be awful, awful press,” a Trump adviser said. The adviser, who was not authorized to speak publicly about deliberations surrounding the event, said Trump had originally announced the news conference on a lark and without a plan in place.

A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was launched by a mob trying to stop the confirmation of Joe Biden’s electoral college win. It resulted in five deaths and injured about 140 members of law enforcement…

Big points for honesty, there!

Reader Interactions

234Comments

  1. 1.

    Betty Cracker

    I don’t believe the excuses the Trump advisers offered for the cancellation, i.e., that it would generate a lot of attention and awful press and that Trump didn’t have specific talking points. Since when has that ever deterred the buffoon? I suspect his lawyers told him to shut it to avoid legal exposure.

  2. 2.

    Anne Laurie

    @Betty Cracker: On the other hand, at least the ‘insiders’ are now admitting the wheels are coming off TFG’s grift, that it’s turned into a total shitshow, an embarrassment even to the loyalists.

    When Baghdad Mar-A-Lago Bob shrugs Eh, what ya gonna do?… that’s Good News for America!

  3. 3.

    Baud

    The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was launched by a mob Trump trying to stop the confirmation of Joe Biden’s electoral college win

  4. 4.

    Another Scott

    @Betty Cracker:  Tweets I saw last night said he cancelled it because neither FoxNews nor anyone else was going to broadcast it live. That sounds like a possibility.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  8. 8.

    trnc

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t believe the excuses the Trump advisers offered for the cancellation, i.e., that it would generate a lot of attention and awful press and that Trump didn’t have specific talking points. Since when has that ever deterred the buffoon?

    LOL. “Oh, no, too much press for our press conference.”   Attention whoring, press baiting and crimes against reason and language were rock solid requirements for years.

  10. 10.

    JMS

    That Navarro stuff is—weird. Is none of it illegal? He must think not if he’s just saying it openly but that’s sad if so.

  11. 11.

    Betty Cracker

    @Another Scott: Interesting if true. I’d be surprised if outlets like Newsmax, ONAN, etc., wouldn’t carry it live, but if Fox News balked, I could see how Trump might want to avoid an ego bruise.

  12. 12.

    lowtechcyclist

    On the liturgical calendar, tomorrow is the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the Three Wise Men at the cradle of the baby Jesus.

    I suspect it’ll take quite a few years before this liturgical event isn’t overshadowed by the recollection of the arrival of the Idiot Insurrectionist Mob at the U.S. Capitol.

  13. 13.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Ohio man shot dead by police was celebrating new year with rifle, wife says

    The wife of an Ohio man fatally shot by police minutes into the new year has said he had been firing an assault-style rifle to celebrate the arrival of 2022 when an officer opened fire without warning.

    Marquetta Williams told the Repository newspaper her 46-year-old husband, James, was using an AR-15 rifle that belonged to her to fire celebratory shots early on Saturday outside their home in Canton.

    That night, James, a stay-at-home father or stepfather of six girls, was at home with his wife, three of their daughters and two other family members.

    Marquetta Williams said the gunfire was an annual tradition in their neighborhood, with many neighbors also firing shots.

    Could this be the start of a new tradition?

  18. 18.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: First time I’ve ever read of a cop shooting an idiot for this particular New Year offense. In most places people just pray nobody gets hit.

  21. 21.

    hueyplong

    Trying to decide which percentage of Trump’s motivation is criminality and which is ego is a lot less anxiety-ridden now that he’s not the Preznit anymore.

    I used to root for such an awkward presser to go forward in the hopes of seeing a Stillson moment, but it’s fairly obvious that if such a thing were to happen, it would merely become the subject of a McNaughton painting equating Trump to some combo of Jesus and Thor.

  22. 22.

    NotMax

    Repeated for the daytimers.

    History alert.

    Gustavus Vasa Fox of the Union Navy: A Biography by Ari Hoogenboom is on greatly reduced special for Kindle.

    Liked the same author’s* biography of Rutherford B. Hayes.

    *Full disclosure: I was socially – and ONLY socially – well acquainted with his sister.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @hueyplong: trump as Jesus wielding Thor’s mighty hammer to smite his cancel culture foes.

    Thanx for that image. Now where did I leave that bottle of brain bleach.

  24. 24.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Kos has a post up in which MAGA folks opine that the Democrats set up the Jan 6 insurrection.

    I know it’s always easy to nut pick. Nuts are more plentiful than I realized. But these folks stun me. At least they realize something bad happened. They’re just sure Rs could never be the ones to do it.

  26. 26.

    raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: Um

     

    She also said James was behind a 6ft fence, adding: “You can’t see in. You can’t see out.”
    James Williams came back inside the house, his wife said, then decided to go back outside and shoot some more. His wife said he fired four shots into the air and turned to follow her inside, then told her: “I’ve been shot.”

  28. 28.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Not saying it SHOULD happen, but if some group decided to abduct Navarro and video him being beaten to death with a baseball bat, I’d probably watch it several times.

  30. 30.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I think it would have been good for us politically so I wish he had done it. It’s when he fades a little and isn’t everywhere, talking, that people forget what he is and his numbers tick up. It was true all through his presidency. Not for the cultists! They’re unreachable. But for the mush-minded middle who have the attention span of gnats.

  32. 32.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @OzarkHillbilly: 

    He was black with an assault weapon. The cops had two reasons to shoot first and ask questions later. No new traditions here.

    As always, begs the question, if he’d been some white dude brandishing an assault weapon, what would have happened. Oh yeah, nothing.

  33. 33.

    waysel

    You’ll never guess the color of the family whose father the police shot dead, unannounced, through the families backyard wooden fence. Or you probably can guess.@OzarkHillbilly:

  35. 35.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: Yes, I read the article. Firing a weapon willy nilly for no reason at all is stupid and sometimes fatal to others. Was the cop justified? Possibly not. It’s beside my very narrow point that Karma is not a beach in Ohio.

  36. 36.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Betty Cracker:

    Somebody on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show last night—John Heilemann, I think—said that Trump canceled because it was apparent that the big TV networks would not carry it live. He can always spout his bullshit at his rallies and in his “from the desk of” press releases, but he was hoping to get a hit of that sweet mainstream coverage.

  37. 37.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @JMS: Republicans have been rewarded for years (decades?) for presenting their criminal actions openly. They mix in with it their quasi-legal political actions. It normalizes both and we end up with “concerns” about criminalizing regular old political activities. Plus, they get to say later, “If it was illegal, do you think I’d be dumb enough to tell you openly that I did it?”

    It’s worked so far…

  39. 39.

    NotMax

    @OzarkHillbilly

    Have never understood the mindset. There’s this pesky thing called gravity. Do they believe the bullets go up and *poof* disappear? Ascend into Heaven maybe?

    “Honey, I plugged St. Peter in the butt. Again.”

  40. 40.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Agree. I read a piece earlier that reported elected Republicans are relieved about the cancellation. Better for us to have the lunacy on TV. Maybe Trump won’t be able to contain himself during the upcoming hearings, especially if they focus on the dereliction of duty and possible criminal culpability angle as Cheney and Thompson have telegraphed they will.

  41. 41.

    Geminid

    There was controversy over the arrest of a man in a wheelchair at Governor DeSantis’ news conference yesterday (the man was asking questions). The brash Nikki Fried, Florida’s Agriculture Commissioner, chimed in with a tweet:

     Ron DeSantis is doing everything he can to become a dictator. He’s already half of the word there.

    Florida Republicans cried foul, so Fried followed up with a picture of a surly DeSantis superimposed on a bunch of potatoes.

  42. 42.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @JMS: He’s right. Its actually legal according to that fucked up kludge of an organizational document we’ve been lumbering under.

    The problem is that his proposed action, while technically legal, is immoral and completely undermines any legitimacy claimed by the government. You’d literally be inviting leftist violence from the electorally oppressed populations from the densest, most productive areas of the country – something that hasn’t truly been faced since the Depression – and they weren’t “revising” election results then.  Once that cat is out of the bag, we are through the looking glass.

  48. 48.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: That is insane. Don’t they know those bullets have to come down somewhere? I have a co-worker in another department who was gravely injured by a bullet fired in a domestic dispute a block away from his house. He was outside working on his car when it happened. Some idiots act like once the bullet leaves the gun if they aren’t pointing it at someone it’s harmless. Sounds like a tradition that needs to end.

  50. 50.

    Soprano2

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Yep, they believe they are all law-abiding patriots who could never engage in rioting, looting and destruction. The insurrection showed that isn’t true, so they have to change the narrative of what happened.

  51. 51.

    sdhays

    @Kay: I don’t know. I come back to the fact that despite Democratic wins in 2020, Dump got A LOT more votes than he did in 2016. My hope is that his absence and difficulty in getting his message out depresses that surge in deplorables and they go back to not voting.

    Surely the mushy middle can be reminded of how horrible he is by other means then giving him a platform to speak to the masses.

  52. 52.

    Suzanne

    @Betty Cracker: So my birthday is 1/7. Which means that, because the insurrection delayed the procedure, Biden’s victory was certified on my birthday. I GOT A NEW PRESIDENT FOR MY BIRTHDAY, which was truly, absolutely what I wanted.

    I hope 1/7 this year brings similarly great things!

  53. 53.

    Kay

    @sdhays:

    I believed that in the past- deny him a platform- but I don’t think it works. It was true during his presidency even on issues- Trump would so some gross demonization of immigrants and “immigration” would poll better. I think you take him head on.

  56. 56.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @sdhays:

    Surely the mushy middle can be reminded of how horrible he is by other means then giving him a platform to speak to the masses.

    Sounds like you’re suggesting broadcasting their past actions to remind everyone of what their future actions will be. We can’t have that. That would be looking backwards rather than forwards.

    /s

    PS: I think the a dark-money group should pay for commercials and a social media campaign that does nothing but showing kids being ripped from parents, Trump walking up jetway steps with toilet paper stuck to his heel, and the most violent images of the Jan 6th insurrection.

  57. 57.

    numfar

    I’m sad that Fat Boy’s news conference was cancelled.

    I was hoping for a Bud Dwyer moment.

  58. 58.

    Ken

    @germy: I was expecting that to be a picture of a couple of live-human idiots — say, Giuliani standing next to Trump — but it sounds like they might really be bringing the cartoon back.

  59. 59.

    germy

    @numfar:

    Then he’d become a martyr.

    “Look at what the libz made him do!  They were unrelenting!  Kill them!”

    I say let him live a good long time, long enough to witness his slide into irrelevance.

  63. 63.

    germy

    @Ken:

    The last thing I saw from Judge was “Tales From the Tour Bus”  where he animated the real life recollections of musicians.  Everyone from Waylon Jennings to Prince.

  65. 65.

    Suzanne

    @NotMax:

    “Honey, I plugged St. Peter in the butt. Again.”

    This is the kind of content that keeps me coming back to Balloon Juice.

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, …

    In the United States, Norton installs an Ethereum miner for you that *they* control that runs if you a strong enough graphics card.

    You get the currency, but someone takes a 15% coin mining fee.

    Someone is probably Norton.

    For real. https://t.co/YcdHziB5PS

    — Steffen Christensen (@Wikisteff) January 2, 2022

    Grrr…

    (via dsquareddigest)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  70. 70.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    and his team was taken aback by how many reporters were planning on attending, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

    So what does that mean  – too many reporters were planning to attend, too few or the wrong kind, like say the Right Wing media blew Trump off because of his vaccine advocacy?

  71. 71.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Geminid:  He did not have a wheelchair but a mobility scooter.  Not only did the police handcuff him but they took away his mobility scooter and FORCED him to walk to the door after they had cuffed him.  I should imagine the ACLU types are chomping at the bit to get to him, there has to be half a dozen causes of action going on there.

  72. 72.

    Nelle

    @hueyplong: A guy a block away from us, when we lived in Oak Park, IL, ended up planted in a cornfield in Indiana.  That was followed by cars parked around the neighborhood, always with two guys sitting in them and watching everything happening on the street.  And they didn’t look like FBI.

  73. 73.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @OzarkHillbilly: This is exactly what the Ritterhouse verdict signaled – you got the drop on one of the gun humpers kill them because the dumbass will kill you and bunch of other people with his toy.

  74. 74.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud:

    Navarro was butthurt that the media wasn’t going along with the “just asking questions” narrative. It was supposed to be a giant squid cloud of “gosh, we just don’t know who to believe”, and it would be touted as forever “legal” by the Mayberry Macchiavellis.

    It would also have been the last free Federal election in contemporary American history until some supplanting entity would come along as a result of civil unrest and foreign military adventurism.

  77. 77.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Gin & Tonic: Could be that the Charge d’Affairs is doing a perfect job, inasmuch as that person is generally a career FSO.

  79. 79.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @OzarkHillbilly:  trump as Jesus wielding Thor’s mighty hammer to smite his cancel culture foes.

    ,.. after Trump breaks free of the cross Twitter and Cancel Culture nailed Trump too, while in the background Marjorie Taylor Greene and the anti-vaccers are being rescued by proud boys flown blackhawk helicopters from the CDC run concentration camp.  And very small God looks on from the corner, thankfully, with tears in His eyes.

  80. 80.

    Betty Cracker

    In puppy news, the new arrival hasn’t had an indoor toileting incident in a day and a half! (I probably just jinxed myself and he’ll crap all over the place now.)

  81. 81.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @numfar: That would take physical courage, which we know he doesn’t have. I figure the fatass has never been up a ladder, stood at the edge of a steep drop, hiked a canyon, driven a nail, explored a cave, snorkeled deep water, etc.

    The vaunted alphaeist of alpha males doesn’t tie his own shoes, gather up his laundry, fry himself up an egg, change his oil, add air to his tires, etc.

  82. 82.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @NotMax:When the number of reporters surpasses that of attendees….

    ,…And those reporters are from outlets like The Young Turks who clearly won’t be throwing softballs.

  83. 83.

    Gin & Tonic

    Meanwhile, things are going pear-shaped in Kazakhstan.

    All major Kazakh news websites, including local Interfax service, have gone offline. Government websites also not working. Seems to be a major shutdown happening right now.
    — Max Hunder (@Max_Hunder) January 5, 2022

  87. 87.

    mrmoshpotato

    Orange shitstain cancels Jan. 6 news conference at Mar-a-Lago, blames news media and House committee investigating attack on Capitol

    Why? Because the anniversary of a traitorous, deadly event might cause the press to do their jobs and call bullshit to Dump’s fat, orange, fascist face?

    Snowflake.

    “It was going to be awful, awful press,” a Dump adviser said.

    It IS because he’s a snowflake!  Fucking WATB!

  93. 93.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    My daughter is toilet training my grandaughter and I’m enjoying it so much because she’s smart (the baby) and she quickly realized they’re desperate for validation so she’s milking this thing for all its worth.

    She’s toying with them. What she says has absolutely nothing to do with what she has to or intends to do. She just likes to watch all the excitement :)

  98. 98.

    Ken

    @L85NJGT: On one of yesterday’s threads, someone mentioned a Chinese movie titled something like Trump vs. the Illuminati.  Close enough?

  99. 99.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Speaking of the Jan 6 coup attempt, I get the impression there were more people involved in the planning and in that hotel “leading” it than there were people who actually doing the violence. Sure the crowd was huge but it’s clear the vast majority of the crowd were there for the live action show. The whole planning side of it feels like every dork in Washington who read one too many Tom Clancy novels saw this as his moment.

    Maybe this is my bias but “paralyzed by being absurdly over managed” is what I would expect from modern conservatives.

  102. 102.

    Gin & Tonic

    @OzarkHillbilly: I posted a link late last night to an explainer, but I’m on a phone now and can’t look for it. Years of pent-up frustration followed by a sudden increase in fuel prices.

  105. 105.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Kos has a post up in which MAGA folks opine that the Democrats set up the Jan 6 insurrection. 

    Sorry Daily Kos, Jordan Klepper already talks to these nutjobs to bring out their stupidity.  They don’t need to be given voice in a serious publication.

  106. 106.

    Kay

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    I feel like the focus on the riot is a little off, for the public. No one believes that rag tag band of enraged assholes would actually take and hold the country. I mean, I’ll take it, if that’s what the public focuses on its better than nothing but that isn’t the real threat. But maybe it’s a jumping off point? A way they can start thinking about it seriously?

  107. 107.

    Kay

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    I feel like the focus on the riot is a little off, for the public. No one believes that rag tag band of enraged assholes would actually take and hold the country. I mean, I’ll take it, if that’s what the public focuses on its better than nothing but that isn’t the real threat. But maybe it’s a jumping off point? A way they can start thinking about it seriously?

  108. 108.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Haha, puppies are a lot easier than children!

    As a toddler, my kid humiliated me in the grocery store checkout line once by loudly informing the cashier that we were in a hurry because “mama has to POOP!” (I’d mentioned I was going to poop when we got home to model good behavior — one doesn’t just poop in the middle of shopping!)

  110. 110.

    Elizabelle

    @Gin & Tonic:   Good morning.  Rather than blaming the Biden administration, do you know what is the holdup?  Are there any good sources on the actual scoop on why an important foreign service assignment has not been filled?

    FWIW, I always feel rather protective of President Joe.  As do many fellow reader commenters of the Fuck the Fucking New York Times.  Which put up this charmer overnight.  (And:  if you sort the reader comments for most liked you will find dozens of readers laying the blame squarely on Republicans and Joe Manchin.  All of the most liked comments.)

    Not linking, You guys can go find this hot garbage yourself.  What is up with the FTF NY Times editors??

    Biden ‘Over-Promised and Under-Delivered’ on Climate. Now, Trouble Looms in 2022.

    Mounting challenges will make the coming months critical for the president’s environmental agenda, analysts say.

  113. 113.

    L85NJGT

    @Ken:

    The minions want the uncut stuff, but Stone has long since lost his fastball, so I guess it will have to do.

  114. 114.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    It’s funny how easily you transition to “indulgent grandmother role”. I was watching her and I sent my daughter a picture of baby enjoying some delicious clementines (which she loved) and my daughter texted “cut her off- she’ll eat nine if you let her”. Spoilsport. Who invited this authoritarian to the ladies lunch party?

  115. 115.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Some analyst describe the events of January 6 as both a “hard coup” led by the rioters, and a “soft coup” led by people inside and out of the Trump administration who had a scheme to overturn the election beneath a facade of legality. The two efforts were connected, though, and it seems the January 6 Committee is intent on closing the circle between the two.

  117. 117.

    jonas

    @Betty Cracker: I can imagine as well that networks like Newsmax and Fox, which are already facing defamation lawsuits from Dominion and other individuals harmed by the Big Lie firehose of bullshit, didn’t want to have to broadcast an hour of the same and then have their anchors have to sit there and dutifully factcheck and contradict Trump on live TV to cover their asses.

  118. 118.

    Nelle

    @Kay: My granddaughter was told that she has to be done with pull-ups by her next birthday as there is another baby coming.  When  I picked her up recently to spend the day at my house, I turned to her and asked if she wanted to wear big girl panties at my house today.  She immediately said, “It’s not my birthday” in a matter-of-fact tone.  So I guess she will do it on the birthday itself.  A few more weeks of this and she will milk it for all she can.

  121. 121.

    Kay

    @Nelle:

    I think it’s a little early for this one and I trained early, but I try not to correct them. They’ll figure it out and they do a good job with her and I want them to be confident and try to enjoy some of it instead of second guessing. Because it is fun, mostly in hindsight :)

  125. 125.

    Kay

    A closely watched barometer for the job market offered a happy surprise for the new year: The ADP Employment Report was doubly as strong as expected in December.
    Economists had predicted 400,000 private sector jobs were added last month, but the report came in at a whopping 807,000.

    The relentlessly negative media narrative on Biden’s economy has done more to discredit them to me than anything since them promoting Iraq War.

    It simply isn’t true. It doesn’t match the numbers.

  126. 126.

    Another Scott

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Yup.  They were smart enough to make the Constitution amendable, but made it too difficult to do so.

    In the Tuesday batch, I see:

    Eric M. Garcetti, of California, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of India.

    Maybe Cruz’s tantrum and his conspiracy theorizing about Ukraine had something to do with the ambassador delay, but the fact that India doesn’t have an ambassador either would point to some sort of systemic issue.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  127. 127.

    artem1s

    Can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have prime time hearings. Claim back time on the public airwaves time that the networks owe us for. Two hours every night for the rest of eternity. Live feed of the hearings – no comments, talking heads, or misinformation. Fox should have to set aside four hours.  Take over the 3000 shopping channels and reality TV shows on cable for a couple of weeks or more.

  128. 128.

    Roger Moore

    @Another Scott:

    Backlogs for appointments have continued to get worse. I don’t know why, but having the Senate be required to confirm thousands and thousands of people has become increasingly unworkable.

    Just spitballing, but it seems likely that the administration doesn’t bother sending the next batch of appointees until the backlog has been cleared enough to start considering the next.  If the Senate is slow, that would delay even the nominations.

    FWIW, I think we have way too many appointments that require confirmation.  The number of working days on the Senate calendar simply isn’t enough to give that many people a serious vetting within the term of a president, much less within the much shorter time needed for the President to have a functioning administration. And most of those appointees aren’t really chosen by the President anyway; they’re chosen by the people he appoints to the higher level positions.  We should reduce the number of appointments needing confirmation to a handful per department- the cabinet secretary and a few senior assistant secretaries- and fill the rest either with political appointees who don’t need confirmation or career civil servants.

  129. 129.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I agree. It also drives me crazy when they report that 4 million people left their jobs last month without reporting how many of them took new jobs. I was talking to a man last night who’s not a dummy; he thought that meant they just left the job market! I said no, I bet a bunch of them went to new jobs. Somehow people can’t think of that themselves, even though they know people do it all the time. I think it’s part of the narrative that the economy is terrible because we have some inflation and gas prices are higher than last year.

  130. 130.

    Kay

    @Danielx:

    Ha! So true. I was the first to give her ice cream but I asked first. Her face! like “this is GREAT!” She was LUNGING at the bowl.

    I love when they eat. My youngest was a picky eater – he still is, he’s really thin- and I just didn’t get it. Who doesn’t like chocolate milk? He was like a little monk.

  131. 131.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Suzanne: Happy pre-birthday. You have the same birthday as the most intelligent, athletic, kindest person in the world, my daughter

  132. 132.

    Danielx

    @Betty Cracker:

    Could be worse – a friend of mine was once at Kmart with her then four year old son. Was standing in line behind an exceedingly large woman when they did one of those blue light special deals – blue flashing lights, beeping noises over the PA, etc. My friend’s son asked (loudly) “mommy, are those lights and noises because that lady is going to back up?”

    Predictable reaction from the lady in question…

  133. 133.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Cripes, people.  When Trump left you were freaking out that he would be leading the Republican Party forever from Mar-a-lago.  Now the buffoon can’t get enough news coverage to justify a public whine fest, elected Republicans want him to go the fuck away, and you’re upset about it..

  135. 135.

    BC in Illinois

    @lowtechcyclist:

    On the liturgical calendar, tomorrow is the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the Three Wise Men at the cradle of the baby Jesus.

    That’s right. The end of the 12 Days of Christmas. And it’s also the birthday of one of my granddaughters. So, going forward, it will always be for us the day that the Christmas decorations come down and a party is held.

    There will always be people whose birthdays, anniversaries, etc., will be on Dec 7, Sept 11, Jan 6, or the like. They will get through it. (People whose birthdays are on Dec 24 or Dec 25 have to get used to only getting one present, rather than the the proper two presents.)

  136. 136.

    Roger Moore

    @Another Scott:

    Looking at what Norton says, it appears they are incorrect.  It’s true that Norton installs the miner without asking for permission, but they do require the computer owner to take positive steps to turn it on.  It’s still awful and shows there’s very little difference between malware and anti-malware, but it isn’t quite as terrible as described.

  137. 137.

    snoey

    @Another Scott:

    Maybe Cruz’s tantrum and his conspiracy theorizing about Ukraine had something to do with the ambassador delay, but the fact that India doesn’t have an ambassador either would point to some sort of systemic issue.

    I wonder how much of the problem is that the Biden admin hasn’t filled (or has been blocked from filling) all of the vice assistant deputy etc. positions needed to actually take control of the State Department.

    Garland is most likely in a similar situation.

  139. 139.

    Kay

    Brian Beutler
    @brianbeutler
    ·11m
    Meanwhile
    @RubenGallego
    had to plead with colleagues not to board the buses that arrived to evacuate members, fearing that abandoning the Capitol would make certification impossible long enough for Trump to declare emergency and stay in power. Ragtag or not, they came close

    That was important to me that day, that they came back and went forward. Not because I knew what Gallego knew but just because fuck you, this is OUR process and we’re not afraid of you and you’re not going to bully us into submission.

  140. 140.

    Kay

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    I think that was an error in how I thought about him and his cultists- that they would go away- and I just don’t believe it anymore. What he did instead was infect the whole Party.

  141. 141.

    topclimber

    @Kay: ​
     Rest assured that they will cover the quite possible dip that occurs in the next few months as Omicron (hopefully) burns out on its way through the economy.

  143. 143.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Elizabelle: I *am* blaming the Biden administration, because naming Ambassadors is one of their primary responsibilities and they have not done so. This is a country which is engaged in the only active (shooting/dying) war in Europe, and has been for almost 8 years – a country from which our last Ambassador was forced to retreat due to enemy action. This is not Ted Cruz’s responsibility, it is Joe Biden’s and Tony Blinken’s.

  144. 144.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Via commentor Jen over at OTB:

    ‘Real-life Lassie’: Dog leads New Hampshire police to her injured owner following crash

    A Shiloh Shepherd named Tinsley earned some extra treats Monday night after leading authorities to her owner, who was injured after a vehicle crash and in urgent need of help.

    Tinsley caught the attention of New Hampshire State Police when they responded to a call about a loose dog on the Veteran’s Memorial Bridge, which spans the New Hampshire-Vermont border on I-89. Trooper Tom Sandberg and officers from the Lebanon Police Department located a large dog looking skittish and scared, said NHSP Lt. Dan Baldassarre. “They were trying to get the dog off of the highway to keep it safe,” he said.

    Sandberg and the officers tried to get close to the dog but she would run and then stop and look at them, trying to get their attention. “The dog stood at the top of the embankment and looked down,” Baldassarre said.

    The officers noticed a damaged section of guardrail and when they looked down saw a badly damaged pickup truck that had rolled over, NHSP public information officer Amber Lagace said in an email to CNN.
    ………………………………….
    “She’s my guardian angel,” Tinsley’s owner, Cam Laundry, told CNN affiliate WPTZ. “It’s a miracle that she had that kind of intelligence to do what she did.”

    Laundry described Tinsley as his co-pilot and said they regularly travel together in the truck that crashed. Her heroism would be rewarded, he said. “She gets spoiled all the time,” Laundry told WPTZ. “She’ll get some venison, probably burger, tonight and probably some back scratches with it.”

  145. 145.

    germy

    @artem1s:  Claim back time on the public airwaves time that the networks owe us for.

    Yes, and put the hearings on antenna TV.  Not every American has a cable package.

  149. 149.

    gvg

    @OzarkHillbilly: An AR-15? I think that is just asking to be shot. I am surprised more of these idiots don’t get shot really.

    35 years ago when I was delivering pizza’s for a living a woman was found dead in her car. A bullet fired from a long distance away had come through the roof of her car and the car costed to a stop in the late night empty industrial park. No one was charged because there was no way for the police to trace it. They said it appeared someone shot into the air in a populated area a long ways away and the bullet came down far away. The killer would never have know probably.

    I am not very sympathetic to people who shoot into the air for fun.

  150. 150.

    Miss Bianca

    @lowtechcyclist: I’m scheduling a Twelfth Night Zoom reading for Twelfth Night (we’re doing the play for our Shakespeare festival this summer) and yeah…that’s been on my mind a lot, how January 6 will mean a different kind of Epiphany Day for me and many others for many years to come.

  151. 151.

    J R in WV

    @NotMax: ​
     

    Have never understood the mindset. There’s this pesky thing called gravity. Do they believe the bullets go up and *poof* disappear?

    We live in the woods, the forested hillsides of the Appalachian lowlands. Yet not that long ago we had a sudden leak in the roof, which turned out to be a bullet hole, almost certainly from a round shot into the air, to land I know not where — wait, wait, on someone’s house!!!

  153. 153.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @lowtechcyclist:

    I still love Epiphany because of the tasty little fried pastries (coated with a honey syrup) that get served in Eastern Orthodox traditions. That, and all the sprinkling of holy water.

    There’s something soothing about meditative ceremony that is about comfort and hope.

  155. 155.

    Kay

    @topclimber:

    I don’t know. It’s been cooking here for quite a while. Delta didn’t dent it at all. But it will cycle back eventually- I think- it’s a weird time. I’m not sure the old rules apply.

  156. 156.

    Betty Cracker

    @Gin & Tonic: It is odd that they haven’t nominated someone. As mentioned in the article you linked above, Biden served as point man on Ukraine when VP. Unlike Trump, he understands that Putin is not his friend, so it can’t be that he underestimates the strategic significance of the role.

  157. 157.

    The Moar You Know

    A bullet fired from a long distance away had come through the roof of her car and the car costed to a stop in the late night empty industrial park. 

    @gvg: Even a decent pellet gun can put a round completely through a car.  All that movie shit you see about people hiding behind a car during shooting battles, you might as well be hiding behind a down pillow

    People who put rounds up into the air are basically playing an involuntary game of Russian Roulette on behalf of their neighbors.  There’s a reason that it’s illegal.

  158. 158.

    Miss Bianca

    @Betty Cracker: I’m following you on Twitter now just for Pete photos. There, I said it. I’m hopelessly in love with your new little guy.

    (OK, the other content is a bonus. But, Pete forever, Ringo never.)

    ETA: Not that Badger isn’t adorable too. But something about Pete just *gets* to me.

  159. 159.

    Leto

    @Gin & Tonic:

    This is not Ted Cruz’s responsibility

    Yet it’s his ability to control the process 100%. Again, a single senator who can derail the entire process. Yes Biden needs to nominate an ambassador, just like he needs scores more for Africa, South America, and Europe. Remember how Biden went to the G-20 summit with zero ambassadors in place? Took him over 9 months just to get those.

    Republicans in the Senate are following the McConnell playbook on everything.

  160. 160.

    topclimber

    @Gin & Tonic: ​
     Not directly to your point, but I remember when Trump was running out of people Congress would ratify for his cabinet that anyone who had previously jumped through the advise and consent process could be named to another permanent Cabinet position without hearings.

    If my recollection is right, I wonder: Does the same thing apply to ambassadors?

  161. 161.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @germy:

    nothings monstered
    @nothingsmonstrd

    Got to laugh to keep from crying.

    If you cry, the toddler can hear you and hunt you down.

  162. 162.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @J R in WV:

    Thanks for sending me down the rabbit hole of (ugh) science. I see that you’re looking at downward velocities of 150-200 mph, depending on wind, shape, arc, etc.

    Of course, some of the force involved includes the mass of the projectile. I was surprised at how lethal falling rounds are.

  163. 163.

    Another Scott

    @Betty Cracker: There’s no ambassador to Germany either (a nomination is in the Tuesday batch).

    It seems to be a systemic issue, rather than Biden’s people not appreciating the importance of Ukraine.

    To be clear, it’s good for G&T to be making noise about it.  Change doesn’t happen unless people push.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  164. 164.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @zeecube:

    There’s something reassuring about simple king cakes.  To me, they say “hangovers and good times and flashed boobage”.

  165. 165.

    louc

    @NotMax: This takes me back to my Florida days when cities issued safety alerts begging people not to fire weapons at midnight on NYE. Cops had instructions to park under interstates as protection because it was so common in Miami.

  167. 167.

    J R in WV

    @Gin & Tonic:

    …the failure to name an Ambassador is a very unwelcome signal.

    Actually, I think President Biden nominated an ambassador, and some Senator has used an arcane Senate rule to prevent the approval of that appointment from being considered.

    I could be wrong, that could be some other appt, but at least consider that the government is currently somewhat broken by Rs and Manchinima…

  168. 168.

    Nicole

    @Kay:Because it is fun, mostly in hindsight :)

    I was unable to chill out and relax at the time- I was so convinced we were eons behind every other kid I knew (Narrator: they were not).  I didn’t force, but man, I tried every bribe under the sun, including promising a dog (I said not before because I could only housetrain one family member at a time).  Months after offering (and forgetting that I’d offered) that bribe, on the 2nd day the kid was out of diapers, he said, “I want my dog.”  So there I was, stuck because I didn’t want a 3-year-old seeing his parent break promises.  On the bright side, the dog we adopted was already housetrained, so that was a pleasant surprise.

  169. 169.

    Gin & Tonic

    @J R in WV: Once again, the administration has not nominated anyone. This is not on Cruz or McConnell, it is on Biden and Blinken. You all are too quick to make excuses.

  170. 170.

    Almost Retired

    @OzarkHillbilly:  Yup, there’s a Trump rally on January 15th in Florence, Arizona. Evidently, he has to go deeper into Goober-land to find his people.  Here’s how Florence is described on Wikipedia:

    Florence is home to multiple state, federal, county and private prisons.

    Perhaps he’s scoping out his eventual retirement home?

  171. 171.

    J R in WV

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Sorry Daily Kos, Jordan Klepper already talks to these nutjobs to bring out their stupidity. They don’t need to be given voice in a serious publication.

    Are you seriously proposing that Daily Kos is a “serious publication”? Only good thing I ever got from the great Orange Satan was a link to a goofy web site called Balloons Juiced, or somefing like dat.

  176. 176.

    Cameron

    @Gin & Tonic: It’s baffling, since the Administration is at least making noises like it takes Ukraine seriously.  Meeting with Putin to discuss affairs directly relevant to a country to which you haven’t even nominated an ambassador isn’t logically very consistent.

  180. 180.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Gin & Tonic:  My admittedly quick search came up with Biden expected to name Bridget Brink – she’s currently ambassador to Slovakia –  as the next ambassador to Ukraine. Why it hasn’t happened yet, I have no idea

  181. 181.

    Nelle

    @Kay: Hmm. Who ordered and paid for those buses? It seems that there was enough prior knowledge in Congress and by Pence to know not to leave the Capitol, yet all the pieces were in place to aid a quick exit.  (And any truth to the matter of Ginny Thomas paying for buses to bring insurrectionist to DC?)

    That is a downside to being old…I want to live long enough to see the truth of things.  (What did happen at Cheney’s secretive oil meetings?  Why were all the traffic control tales from 9/11 shredded?  Was there gold stored beneath the Twin Towers and, if so, what hapoened to it?) Lots of questions get banished by accusing conspiracy theorist!  But looks like the wheels are coming off a conspiracy right in front of us now.

  186. 186.

    J R in WV

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Of course, some of the force involved includes the mass of the projectile. I was surprised at how lethal falling rounds are.

     

    And shape. Of course, bullets are made of the heaviest possible alloy, and pointy to boot. I was dumbfounded to learn from my (late) roofer that bullet holes in roofs are pretty common. And as we see in the rest of this thread, plenty of people get killed by random bullets.

    The night of 12/30 we heard really loud, rolling booms, turns out a next door neighbor ( the only real conservative neighbor, natch! ) has an actual black powder cannon. The weather for 12/31 was forecast to be wet, so black powder guns would be hard to pull off at all, let alone safely.

    Earth shatteringly loud KaBOOM indeed !!

  187. 187.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Nelle:

    Ginny and Clarence are going to turn out to be tremendous villains of the age. I would enjoy seeing her hauled off to a jail cell during my lifetime.

  189. 189.

    topclimber

    @Cameron:  Foreign Policy magazine was saying a month ago that the current ambassador to Slovakia was close to being named to Ukraine post. Maybe a vetting issue arose late in the game?
    ETA: Bridget Brink.​

  190. 190.

    J R in WV

    @Almost Retired:

    Yup, there’s a Trump rally on January 15th in Florence, Arizona. Evidently, he has to go deeper into Goober-land to find his people.  Here’s how Florence is described on Wikipedia:

    Florence is home to multiple state, federal, county and private prisons.

    Interestingly, Florence, CO has a super-max federal prison. Florence, CO is west of Pueblo, where the nearest Trauma Unit ER is located, and so is where interesting federal prisoners are taken for treatment. One of my best friends is a retired ER doc, and has treated many guys chained to the gurney and guarded by Corrections staff with machine guns. The stories he can tell…

     

  191. 191.

    Another Scott

    @Gin & Tonic: Part of the delay, may, may, be related to lingering issues at OPM.

    GovExec:

    The Office of Personnel Management is still coping with the loss of ownership of the background check function for the federal government as a consequence of the devastating 2015 hack that resulted in the theft of more than 20 million personnel records.

    The federal government’s human resources agency is facing budget shortfalls and challenges to ongoing technology modernization efforts as a result of the Defense Department’s Counterintelligence and Security Agency taking on background checks. The challenges will only intensify as DCSA completes building its own IT system for managing the background check process.

    DCSA is currently tapping OPM support services as it builds its replacement for legacy IT systems under a “buyback” program. The buyback fees plus additional appropriations from Congress have thus far kept OPM from running a shortfall.

    An October report from OPM’s Office of Inspector General flagged the situation with OPM’s budget: “the problem remains, and a long term solution is necessary,” it reads. It also pointed to the impact on OPM’s ability to pursue its own IT efforts.

    When the National Background Investigations Bureau was shifted to the Defense Department, OPM’s infrastructure and budget didn’t shrink proportionally, according to a fiscal 2021 budget document. Shortfalls have shrunk since the initial move but remain.

    “Many of OPM’s administrative functions have fixed costs and other requirements that do not scale immediately or proportionately with the transfer of NBIB functions to DoD,” the document states. “Certain contracts and interagency agreements have firm fixed prices to which OPM will continue to be bound in spite of the agency’s new, smaller size,” it continues

    […]

    Another wild card is whether and when full-year appropriations will be enacted. Currently, the government is on temporary stop-gap funding through Feb. 18. A full year continuing resolution without a special provision for OPM would result in a budget shortfall.

    DCSA is paying OPM nearly $49 million for fiscal 2022. Christopher Bentley, media relations chief at DCSA, told FCW that OPM is giving “support to the legacy background investigations systems for network, infrastructure, cyber, and help desk support functions.”

    When DCSA assumed ownership of the OPM legacy systems, it assumed “much of the cost of operating, securing and maintaining them,” Bentley said. DCSA expects those costs to decrease in the future with the transition to the National Background Investigations Services system, he said.

    Currently, DCSA is building the new system, which will replace “a number of legacy IT systems,” Bentley said. The current timeline is for NBIS core capabilities to be deployed through 2023 and the legacy systems to sunset in 2024.

    […]

    OPM has a fee-for-service model, something NAPA urged that the agency move away from. Money brought in by agencies paying for OPM services, which is funneled into a revolving fund, is one of the agency’s largest sources of funding. Background investigations brought in more than $2.24 billion in revenue to OPM in fiscal 2019 alone, according to the IG report, an amount far larger than the agency’s annual congressional appropriation.

    […]

    Everything’s connected.

    More at the link.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  193. 193.

    Brachiator

    @Soprano2:

    I agree. It also drives me crazy when they report that 4 million people left their jobs last month without reporting how many of them took new jobs.

    The JOLT Report and follow-up analyses provides some information. For example, a Forbes report on the ADP study:

    … the ADP Nonfarm Employment report showed strong gains in December. More than twice as many workers as expected found jobs last month, particularly in leisure and hospitality, trade, transportation, and utilities. Much of these gains may have occurred before the Omicron variant really hit the scene so we’ll have to wait and see if they stick.

    Sometimes people complain about “negative” economic stories. There is some of this. But often you need to look at business and financial sites for a more detailed and nuanced analysis. Even the specific business areas of CNN and NBC, etc, provide better stories than the headline news areas.

    NPR programs such as Marketplace and Make Me Smart provide very good stories, with accurate context.

    ETA: JOLT = Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey

  197. 197.

    Brantl

    @OzarkHillbilly: It’s interesting, all these idiots think that bullets are spent when they reach apogee, and that they then fall to earth with no force, never minding the physics that tells them almost all of that potential energy becomes kinetic on the way back down. I’ve heard these idiots argue this repeatedly. I’ve told them, please rig  up a very exact plumb-aligning arrangement under your gun and please stand right under it until the bullet comes down. The problem would fix itself.

  198. 198.

    Mike in NC

    There’s a crappy little shop in our town that tries to sell used appliances. For months it flew a ragged flag that showed Trump standing on a tank and holding an assault rifle. (I swear this is true.) Then one day that flag got replaced by a Confederate battle flag. Most recently the owner decided to put up a regular American stars and stripes.

    Progress, I suppose.

  199. 199.

    Soprano2

    @Brachiator: This is all true. Unfortunately, most people don’t look any further than the story they hear on the radio or the headline they see on a Web site, thus the misunderstanding of what is happening. I don’t know if there’s any way to fix that other than headlines like “4 million people left jobs last month; 3.5 million of them took other jobs”. LOL No one is going to write a headline like that. When someone says to me “4 million people left their jobs last month, the same thing happened in August. Pretty soon no one is going to be working anymore” that tells me something is wrong with the reporting. This is a smart business person who runs his own business, not an ignorant yahoo.

  200. 200.

    Kay

    @geg6:

    Such an odd little boy. “I regret I cannot eat this…slop” was his whole demeanor. He had glasses really young too- he has a bad eye, so that added to his air of seriousness. We felt judged and found wanting.

  201. 201.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @OzarkHillbilly:  No. In St. Louis, they’ve been shooting in the air for decades. There are people, including children, who end up hospitalized every #%$#^! year because of it. They think firing in the air is harmless, but those bullets come down.. into peoples homes and bodies.

  202. 202.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Kay: , but that’s the thing, it was really violence for the sake of violence. I mean consider even if they had killed the senate there was nothing the Coup Organizers  had in place to stop the Virginia and Maryland National Guard from sweeping in and taking out the whole coup. I think Trump’s goal was/is to simply make the country ungovernable.

  203. 203.

    trollhattan

    In which I heartily endorse MT Greene.

    January 5, 2022 at 12:30 pm EST By Taegan Goddard

    Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) called on Republicans to ditch Twitter after the social media company banned her for spreading Covid-19 misinformation, Insider reports.

    Said Greene: “I’m asking all of my Republican colleagues to leave Twitter. It is a complete waste of time and all they do is try to control our political speech.”

    Don’t do it, Republicans, Twitter really, really needs you to stay in business. Leaving would hurt them so very much!

  205. 205.

    Doc Sardonic

    @J R in WV: A number of years ago, when I was still doing construction related work, I was inspecting a roof and pulled 3 bullets from a 9mm that were embedded in it. The bullets went through the shingle, underlayment layer and were well into the roof decking.

  207. 207.

    Brachiator

    @Soprano2: 

    This is all true. Unfortunately, most people don’t look any further than the story they hear on the radio or the headline they see on a Web site, thus the misunderstanding of what is happening. I don’t know if there’s any way to fix that other than headlines like “4 million people left jobs last month; 3.5 million of them took other jobs”. LOL No one is going to write a headline like that.

    People who base their judgments solely on headlines, pundits and “hot takes” are doomed to remain ignorant.

    But some news media has always been bad with this. Often in reading a newspaper, you would not get nuance or clarification or sometimes outright refutation of the headline until the 10th paragraph of the story.

    And of course, some business and science reporters are just bad, uniformed, incompetent. I have seen instances where business “reporting” is no more than printing a public relations news release verbatim.

    But I accept that many people will not look deeper. However, when Balloon Juice jackals complain about biased business reporting and refuse to read more detailed and reliable business and financial reporting, and claim to be informed, I am a lot less forgiving.

    When someone says to me “4 million people left their jobs last month, the same thing happened in August. Pretty soon no one is going to be working anymore” that tells me something is wrong with the reporting. This is a smart business person who runs his own business, not an ignorant yahoo.

    He knows how to run his business. Critical thinking is tougher. It is easy to be misled even by what tries to be good reporting. And of course, some people interpret news stories to fit their biases.

    ETA: I don’t claim to be perfect. But I try to check my own biases. There is a great BBC podcast called More or Less, about how data and statistics are used in the news media. Some episodes have corrected bad assumptions I have made about some news stories. This series has been very good on Covid related news.

  208. 208.

    Kay

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Don’t agree. The riot was to create a distraction and delay. They wanted to throw one of more of the state results into question to create room to insist some alternate method of deciding the election was necessary. All they needed was one state legislature to go along. Now, would courts have stopped that? Maybe. I guess it depends on which court.

    I think media not going along played a huge role. They did well. If there had been just one mainstream news celeb who said “well, they have a POINT” we would have been off to the races. Big business jumped in too. Coups are bad for business and as it dragged on and on it became a potentially volatile environment with a lot of uncertainty. They don’t like that.

  209. 209.

    Brachiator

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    I think Trump’s goal was/is to simply make the country ungovernable.

    Trump never thinks things through. It’s pretty clear that he never had much of a plan. He ultimately depended on an unreliable and directionless crowd to deliver … something. This was doomed to failure.

    Also, Trump is a coward. He was too chickenshit to try to actually get his hands dirty by trying to organize a coup.

    Also helps that he is lazy.

    I wonder whether another chickenshit Republican like DeSantis thinks he might be able to pull off a coup.

  210. 210.

    smith

    @Kay: Coups are bad for business

    Wish the big corps would reflect on that when they decide where to put their political contribution cash. Somehow low taxes/no regulation wins out over stable government every time.

  211. 211.

    Miss Bianca

    @J R in WV: One of my friends from the theater here used to be fairly high up in the hierarchy of the prison guards at the super max in Florence, CO. Yeah, you bet he had some interesting stories, too!

  212. 212.

    Kay

    @smith:

    It’s a really stable government though, or was. Maybe they’re spoiled and they take it for granted, like they took an endless supply of cheap labor for granted.

    They absolutely, positively benefit from The Rule of Law, the whole adminsitrative state and infrastructure. That they deny it and imagine themselves cowboys or something is just embarrassing. Wait until what they own is thrown into question, or they can’t enforce a contract. They’ll be begging to go back to the bureaucrats. Turn them over to the mob. See how that goes.

  213. 213.

    Brachiator

    @Kay:

    Don’t agree. The riot was to create a distraction and delay. They wanted to throw one of more of the state results into question to create room to insist some alternate method of deciding the election was necessary. All they needed was one state legislature to go along. Now, would courts have stopped that? Maybe. I guess it depends on which court.

    The Constitution provides for handling an election when no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes. But there is no procedure for handling supposed “massive voter fraud.” I am not certain that the courts would be able to rule on anything.

    Trump and his idiot base were ginning themselves up as super special patriots who could use the power of whiteness to magically understand what the Founders wanted, but there is simply no way that they could have used any reading of the Constitution to support a military or mob takeover.

    Their only models were white supremacist takeovers of Southern legislatures as a counter-reaction to Reconstruction.

    Would the Supreme Court ratify that kind of thing?

    Otherwise, there is no guidance anywhere on the legitimacy of using some alternate method of deciding the election.

  214. 214.

    smith

    @Kay: Or maybe they kid themselves that a fascist government would be super-stable and would favor them as well. Watching the lawlessness and unpredictability of the TFG years should have woken them up about that, but I suspect if they contemplate it at all, they think they would retain their favored status regardless of the emperor’s whims. I’m guessing that reporters who unfailingly reflect the POV of oligarchs/Repubs imagine this as well. Reminds me of the Candace Oswenses of the world, thinking that if you’re One of the Good Ones they won’t come for you at the end.

  215. 215.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Another Scott:

    To be clear, it’s good for G&T to be making noise about it. Change doesn’t happen unless people push.

    Bitching about something on a BJ Open Thread will change something in The Real World? Oh man, I’ve been doing this all wrong…

    (NB: Not dinging G&T or AS, just having a chuckle.)

  216. 216.

    Sebastian

    @germy:

    Amazing. I am wondering if we will still have Senators Cruz, Hawley, Tuberville, and Graham six months from now. Perhaps there is a time-window where the Senate has only 96 senators?

  217. 217.

    Kay

    @smith:

    Maybe. I just think they have a really cavalier, entitled view of the benefits they enjoy.

    I don’t think there was a recognition of how much of it rests on “norms” and “consent”. It only works because 99% of people follow the norms and rules by consent. Without being compelled to. There wouldn’t be enough cops or jails to hold them if that went to 90. Shift that number in a country this big and you have real problems.

    Remember after the financial crash when they all started that weeping and keening about “uncertainty”? They needed more certainty! The bold risk takers were pissing their pants because they didn’t know what would HAPPEN and they might LOSE.

    We’ll put the dude with the horns and the face paint in charge. They’ll see some “uncertainty”.

  218. 218.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator: 

    The Constitution provides for handling an election when no candidate gets a majority of electoral votes. But there is no procedure for handling supposed “massive voter fraud.” I am not certain that the courts would be able to rule on anything.

    A pet peeve of mine in the election aftermath was that people seemed to be ginning up all kinds of situations that would supposedly kick the result to a Congressional contingent election even though the relevant constitutional language did not say that.

    It doesn’t go to Congress if they can’t decide on which electors are legitimate. It doesn’t go to Congress if there are too few appointed electors for anyone to get to 270. It only goes to Congress if nobody wins a majority of the appointed electors. Yet even mainstream media writers kept imagining otherwise.

  219. 219.

    Ruckus

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Are you thinking that lardass has been trying to act wealthy so that he can afford to pay someone to do all those things for him because it’s not that he doesn’t want to, it’s that he’s incapable of those simple acts? Sounds like he’s more afraid of the truth than looking like the lardass flob job that he is.

  220. 220.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator:

    I wonder whether another chickenshit Republican like DeSantis thinks he might be able to pull off a coup.

    The states are laying the groundwork to make it stick legally next time. The problem in 2020-21 was that the states didn’t actually have existing laws in place that said “the state legislature can just appoint new electors if they claim there’s been fraud”, but in 2024 some states will, which arguably makes that constitutional loophole real. I think they really could do it unless the political situation changes markedly from here.

  221. 221.

    prostratedragon

    @germy:  Great videos. I learned the same principle doing scut work in a kitchen. After a while you do notice that moving around works better when it’s like a dance. And that guy with loading the dish rack is something! I got to where I could unload like that, but loading is harder/takes longer to learn.

  222. 222.

    Another Scott

    @Brachiator: My understanding was that their genius plan was to:

    1. Get the PBs and 3ers conspiracy mob (and useful idiots) ready and amped up to use violence (roughly “Fight!  If you don’t, you won’t have a country anymore!”)
    2. Have a huge battle at the Capitol against Antifa to necessitate calling in federal troops to put down the violence and invoke the Insurrection Act (and have “his” SCOTUS bless it).  Antifa wasn’t there, and the Pentagon wouldn’t/didn’t go along with sending in federal troops.
    3. Convince Pence to go along with throwing out votes, or getting him out of the building so that Grassley would do it.  Or occupy the building and delay the certification for more than a day to somehow call the proceedings into question (and have “his” SCOTUS throw the results out). That didn’t happen either.

    It was a multi-faceted plan, but there were big missing pieces (kinda like Step 2 in the underpants gnomes plan).

    Here’s hoping that the DOJ and Thompson’s committee get it right and they cut out the cancer successfully.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  223. 223.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The “Green Bay sweep” was NOT legal. The reasoning was that “in such a manner as the legislature thereof may direct” meant literally that the legislature gets to pick electors if they don’t like the election result.

    That is NOT how that line has ever been interpreted before, because it’s ridiculous. What it means is that states get to determine by law, in advance, how the electors are chosen. The states had in fact done that, and the means was a majority vote of the state (except in ME and NE, which have a slightly different rule).

    However, it may work in 2024 or later, if the states actually have laws that say, “the state legislature gets to throw out the result and pick electors if they think, on their own say-so, that there was fraud”.

  224. 224.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Nelle: With mine we knew perfectly well, from observation and day-care reports, that she was able to use the toilet long before she was willing to stop using the pull-up pants. We had a big package of several dozen of the things. Our technique was just to warn her that it was OK for her to use the rest of them, but when the package ran out, that was it and we weren’t getting another one. And this worked with a remarkable minimum of drama. It just took mental preparation.

  225. 225.

    Geoduck

    @Mike in NC:  That Shiatgibbon-On-A-Tank image started as a joke, the guy who created it has done numerous presidents in wildly over-the-top scenes. And of course it got adapted unironically by the MAGA crowd.

  226. 226.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    My understanding was that their genius plan was to

    Yeah, I have seen this. Not much of a plan. Certifying the votes is simply procedural. None of this would have had any effect on the election. By constitutional standards, the votes could not have been thrown out.

    Again, Trump did not think things through and was simply dreaming and hoping that confusion and mob action would do … something.

    None of his dopey advisors have ever advanced any theory of how Trump could halt or invalidate the election process even if Pence had decided to refuse to certify the results.

  227. 227.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The states are laying the groundwork to make it stick legally next time. The problem in 2020-21 was that the states didn’t actually have existing laws in place that said “the state legislature can just appoint new electors if they claim there’s been fraud”, but in 2024 some states will, which arguably makes that constitutional loophole real. I think they really could do it unless the political situation changes markedly from here.

    Yeh, there is a lot of room for mischief here.

    The Constitution presumes an honest election. I don’t know if anyone has the gonads to suggest an amendment to address irregular electoral results.

  228. 228.

    Woodrow/asim

    @smith: Wish the big corps would reflect on that when they decide where to put their political contribution cash.

    A number of them are. I recommend folx follow/subscribe to the Popular Information newsletter; Judd Legum there is doing yeoman’s work tracing exactly this topic. From the last newsletter on this topic:

    […]Popular Information has comprehensively monitored the FEC filings of corporate PACs and published them in the January 6 corporate accountability index. To date, 79 major corporations — including Allstate, Nike, and Walgreens — have kept the commitments they made after January 6. These companies have not donated directly to Republican objectors or to multi-candidate committees that support Republican objectors, like the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC).

    Another 26 companies — including Comcast, Dell, and Google — have not donated to individual Republican objectors but have donated to committees like the NRCC and NRSC. 58 companies — including Eli Lilly, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and American Airlines — have directly violated their pledge by donating directly to Republican objectors.

    Overall, as yesterday’s Popular Information revealed, corporate PAC donations to GOP objectors were down about 60% in 2021 as compared to 2019.

  229. 229.

    smith

    @Woodrow/asim: Thanks for this! It’s good to know that at least some corps have kept their word. I also may want to use it as a guide as to where I want to do business.

  230. 230.

    lowtechcyclist

    @BC in Illinois:

    There will always be people whose birthdays, anniversaries, etc., will be on Dec 7, Sept 11, Jan 6, or the like. They will get through it. (People whose birthdays are on Dec 24 or Dec 25 have to get used to only getting one present, rather than the the proper two presents.)

    By the time I was old enough to be aware of such things, the attack on Pearl Harbor was already two decades in the rearview mirror (and had been sufficiently avenged).  I think it would be kinda cool to have as one’s birthday “a day that will live in infamy.”

    My favorite cousin was born on December 24th, and we always made a special effort to celebrate her birthday separately. Her birthday dinner on the 24th became a family tradition.

  233. 233.

    Eunicecycle

    Late to the thread, but I wonder if some of the problems at State are related to the department being hollowed out by tfg and Pompeo. And the guy before him (Tillerson?). Many career FSOs left or were forced out, and I understand that a program to recruit new FSOs was basically eliminated.

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