I think we’re reluctant to post since we might have to re-do the migration, but here’s a thread to discuss last night’s hearing or anything else you might want to discuss.
Other than brave Josh Hawley running away, perhaps the thing that struck me most was the Secret Service agents on Pence’s detail saying goodbye to their families. How about you?
On The Road – Wag – The Elk Range and Maroon Bells (Part2)
Jeffro
The thing that struck me the most is how hysterically funny it is that Adam Kinzinger is calling Josh Hawley “Fistpump McRunpants” on Twitter.
like, I am crying laughing here =)
Betty Cracker
Trump’s horrible outtakes, especially when he went all Bill O’Reilly at the end there. I was saying in an earlier thread that this hearing in particular featured material that was relevant AND seemed designed to humiliate Trump, Hawley, etc. So of course, I enjoyed it immensely. The witnesses were meh, but I’m not the intended audience.
Baud
Too bad about the redo. I thought the migration was a success.
Jeffro
and now Jamie Harrison is in on it, asking where Hawley is and running a clip of Forest Gump sprinting down the driveway… LMAO
RedDirtGirl
One thought I’ve had about Trump not telling people to go home that day. What if he had told people to go and they hadn’t listened to him? I wonder if that ever occurred to him…it would not have made him look all-powerful.
Gin & Tonic
I think they should get the kind of green corridor they gave Mariupol.
CaseyL
What struck me about the Secret Service agents’ intense fear was juxtaposing that with the erased emails: there appear to be two organizations, one suborned by the pro-insurrectionists, and one not.
Like the Capital Police, where some of the officers fighting for their lives realized the insurrectionists attacking them included some of their own colleagues.
There is a huge schism in the nation’s law enforcement bodies (dating back at least to the FBI sabotaging Hillary Clinton), with half opposing fascist policies and half supporting them. And there doesn’t seem to be a broad recognition this is the case, much less any organized effort to combat it.
StringOnAStick
@RedDirtGirl: As a full blown narcissist who has gotten his way his entire life, it never crossed his mind that they might not obey him.
I’ve got ripe our cherries to pick and can, and once I get that done I can watch yesterday’s hearing, sounds like it was lit.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Scout211
Reposted from downstairs:
Aaron Rupar Twitter
It’s funny how Trump barely knows anyone who worked in the White House.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: I loved (loved? vomited at?) the TFG outtakes.
I thought Kinzinger’s closing speech was excellent, even if it had a few Repug tropes in it. Delivery was fantastic. And Liz was stellar as always.
I loved somebody’s comment last night: “I’m not a fan of Liz Cheney, but I’m a fan of Liz Cheney.”
prostratedragon
zhena gogolia
@Baud: hahaha
gvg
I have only watched half of it because I had to sleep for work the next day. Yes the secret service calling their families struck me as sad and scary.
zhena gogolia
@gvg: The video and audio from the area where the VP was and they were trying to decide how to get him out was terrifying.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I didn’t hear about this. We’re going to be deprived of BJ AGAIN?
ETA: Somehow having BJ to drop in on actually helps me get work done, at least the kind of work I’m doing right now.
Starfish
@Betty Cracker: That clip of Trump bickering with his speechwriters should be posted in reply to anyone saying anything about teleprompters or about Biden’s stutter.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
I think that’s important to remember, too, when we object strenuously to, e.g., Liz Cheney saying something nice about Reagan and Thatcher. She’s not talking to us. We don’t need convincing. But if she can persuade even a small handful of Trumpers by invoking Republican icons as she makes her case, I’m there.
Turgidson
@zhena gogolia:
I’ve been telling people it’s just really nice to have a Cheney on *our* side for a change (stipulating that she’s abominable in most other ways).
They don’t f around.
Burnspbesq
@Gin & Tonic:
And supposedly some sort of grain shipment deal between Ukraine and Turkey is to be signed in Istanbul today.
Good day for the good guys.
Old School
It doesn’t seem fair that we need to wait until September for the next one. (Although it was good to hear that they will keep going.)
MattF
@Scout211: Should bear in mind that Trump was physically prevented from going to the Capitol. That was the turning point, IMO.
MinuteMan
@Gin & Tonic: Inflicting a Dien Bien Phu defeat on the Russians is one of the ways that could bring the conflict to a speedy end rather than waiting for the death-by-a-thousand-cuts scenario which will take years.
Scout211
Has Josh Hawley
shown his face in publicmade a statement yet?ETA: He’s fundraising off of it, of course.
WV Blondie
@CaseyL: That’s been my thought for some time now. I think that same schism exists in most law enforcement organizations in the U.S., it’s just that the consequences of it being in federal agencies is so much greater. (Of course, when it comes to the USSS, I think the “leadership” – including Ornato – had visions of becoming the new Praetorian Guard.
On a different note, has anyone else seen the stories about how if TFG wins a second term, there are plans to gut and replace the federal workforce? Axios broke the story, but I refuse to give them the clicks. Here’s Mother Jones’ version.
prostratedragon
We’d seen the footage of Pence being brought through that door and on toward his safety place already, and we knew that the crowd was close to that area then, but seeing the paired clips was sobering, and gave the phone calls home the right chill.
As for the other thing, well, it is the east and Josh, Haulin’ is the sun.
O. Felix Culpa
@prostratedragon:
Excellent.
Burnspbesq
ICYMI, the judge in Atlanta refused to quash the grand jury subpoenas issued to the fake electors.
Let’s see which one(s)’ lawyers convince him/her/them that Queen for a Day is the way to go.
Gin & Tonic
@Burnspbesq: Right, and as the UA Ambassador to the UN says, all details matter:
RedDirtGirl
@Scout211: I wonder if he’s pulling in the same kind of figures that he was before the hearing …
Redshift
@StringOnAStick:
I’m not an expert, but based on what I’ve read from people who’ve dealt with pathological narcissists, that’s not the case — they do try to avoid situations that will puncture their self-image of being the center of the universe. With TFG, for example, there have been cases where he seemed hesitant to endorse a candidate until he was pretty sure they were going to win.
schrodingers_cat
Apparently, Gasbag Pottinger was a Flynn crony that’s how he rose quickly through the ranks. He was also one of the author of the disastrous tariff based Chinese trade policy.
PPCLI
@Gin & Tonic: Indeed. It is only fair to treat them with the same policy they use for Ukrainians. It would be culturally insensitive not to.
First send them to a filtration camp, where they will be inspected for tattoos. Anyone with a “Z” tattoo will be shot immediately. Then the rest will be shipped to isolated, freezing outposts with no money or means to leave. Since there is no Ukrainian equivalent of deepest Siberia, perhaps the Canadian government will host the prisoners in Moosonee.
NotMax
@RedDirtGirl
“Rioters go in, rioters go out. No one can explain it.”
//
Scout211
A highlight for me last night (by that I mean a lowlight full of ewww!) was Jared. It warranted a cool headline on Business Insider this morning:
Kent
It goes back MUCH MUCH further than 2016.
It is cops rioting against protesters in Chicago 1968
It is southern cops enforcing Jim Crow in the south
It is Fergusson MO
etc.
NotMax
@Scout211
Truth Social is neither.
Jeffro
Hey – did we ever hear anything about that dastardly person who leaked the draft Dobbs decision from SCOTUS? I thought that was like a Most Urgent National Priority and a investigation was underway. Hmm.
Also – what happened to those Secret Service guys who were so eager to come up and testify under oath that Cassidy Hutchinson was a lying little liar? She’s this huge faker, right, so you’d think that would have been taken care of by now. Hmm.
Follow ups = not our snooze media’s forte, I guess.
jonas
@Burnspbesq:
Russia realizes it’s become a complete pariah and needs some better pr. Of course whether they actually abide by this agreement or keep being total war criminals like they’ve been doing remains to be seen…
Immanentize
@Scout211:
But Twitter has the antidote to Hawley’s cup (Show-me Running)
Hungry Joe
On 1/6/21, watching the Capitol-storming live, I had no idea how violent it was; those videos came out later. It was just a huge crowd milling, then surging, then shots of MAGA-dudes wandering the Rotunda/halls — many of them staying behind some DO NOT CROSS tape. Can’t imagine how terrifying it must be to have a for-real mob after you.
Sir Josh knows, though. He’d have done some fast talking if they’d caught him: “No, guys, wait! I’m on your side! I’ll take you to Nancy’s office! … Hey, what’s with the rope? Guys?”
(When you’re semi-retired there’s a lot of time for daydreaming.)
CaseyL
@Kent: I don’t think that’s the same thing. City cops are brutal racists and rapists, and always have been. The schism in non-federal police forces is mostly who is (financially and operationally) corrupt v. who is not.
I’m talking about Federal-level law enforcement conspiring to overturn the US by siding with fascists and attacking their own colleagues.
The Moar You Know
I don’t give a fuck about Hawley because this is what he always was, but the Secret Service is a real problem. Think it’s time we break up DHS and start holding these agencies accountable, rather than allow them to be investigated and exonerated by other branches of DHS.
prostratedragon
@Scout211: In a reply to an AOC tweet where she makes a similar observation about his fundraising:
H.E.Wolf
More chilling than that: my impression from the hearing was that their requests were to their colleagues already on the call with them, asking them to pass along goodbyes to family.
Presumably the Secret Service security guards for the imperiled VP would not pause, mid-flight from the mob of insurrectionists, to call home.
I can imagine the horrible impact of those goodbyes by proxy, if they’d had to be delivered to grieving families.
Redshift
@WV Blondie:
Only headlines and quotes, but it doesn’t surprise me at all. The thing our “savvy” political media never seemed to get is that from the beginning, when TFG talked about “the deep state,” it meant “anyone who tells me I can’t do whatever I want.” Not some secret cabal, but everyone who believed they worked for the country, not for him.
Scott
@Gin & Tonic: As an experiment, they should offer them enlistment in the Ukrainian Army. Add a bonus.
prostratedragon
@CaseyL: And the fear of some might have been driven by their sudden realization that there were things going on about which they might have been deliberately left in the dark — so who knew what else was loaded to go?
Redshift
@Jeffro:
Did they actually say they wanted to testify under oath? I thought it was just lots of Secret Service “sources” claiming she was lying.
Ken
@Gin & Tonic: @PPCLI: I don’t think Ukraine should also be engaging in war crimes.
Jeffro
I saw the Axios story and I’m trying to figure out how “I’m going to replace the people doing the government’s work with my henchmen/cronies!” is a selling point (other than to those who envision themselves as henchmen and cronies, I guess? and even then, MAGA people don’t want to actually *do* the work)
I’d think that President Biden could make short work of this by noting it to audiences, pausing/pondering a moment, then going, “…I don’t get it…replacing millions of hard-working and experienced government workers with political, just for kicks? it sounds like something Putin would do, that’s for sure”
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Are the people trapped in the pocket/Vysokopillya Russian civilians? Or Russian military. The reporting is anything but clear. Soldiers, etc. must surrender. Russian civilians should be allowed to leave.
RaflW
@Gin & Tonic: I definitely feel angry, too. But I’m not quite at eye-for-eye here.
Maybe put them all on trains to the far west of Ukraine and say “you’ve been ‘filtered'” and that they’re free to figure out their way back to Russia. Sort of a mini-deportation as minute payback for million or more Ukrainians sent east.
Mike S
What gets me the most is how all of these Republicans and Secret Service agents were scared for their own lives, watched how Trump did everything he could to put their lives in even more danger but now kneel before their savior like bukake stars begging their lord to cover them in his glory.
This is Jim Jones level loyalty.
brantl
@Scout211: We need one with him running that says: “Show me running away, like a tiny little girl!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This made me chuckle
PPCLI
@Ken: Yes I agree. I regret that I did not make clear that I meant this as a comment on Russia’s evil actions, and not as an endorsement of it for anyone.
Immanentize
@Mike S: I do not think Jim Jones was into bukkake.
cmorenc
Meanwhile, the Fox News website is (surprise, surprise!) exerting their best efforts to bury and trivialize the revealations from last night’s 1/6 hearing. For most of the morning, criticism of the grand jury’s so-far refusal to indict Hunter Biden was several stories above any 1/6 committee news. If the GOP retakes control of the House in November, expect a Hunter Biden investigative committe will try its best to seize media attention tryng to spin shit from nothing. Just like Bengazi and butter emails, except with even less substance than those flimsy matters.
Kent
I’ve been around a lot of Federal law enforcement agencies over the years in my previous career. I think you are mistaken if you believe there is much difference between local and Federal law enforcement. They draw and recruit from the same population and are often the same exact people. Most local cops aren’t bad apples either. Yes, there are generally higher standards in Federal agencies. But the people aren’t that different.
What I think you saw with trump is the politization of the leadership within these agencies. And some of that filtered down in the form of permissiveness for bad behavior. Especially with, for example, the Border Patrol, which wasn’t involved in 1/6. This was more of a failure of leadership. Every rogue secret service agent had supervisors who looked the other way or encouraged that shit.
RaflW
@CaseyL: Absolutely this.
It mirrors the problem in a lot of cities (Minneapolis being an extreme example) where there’s a minority of cops who want to serve the public, and a majority that want to beat the living shit out of /
murdershoot without consequences black and brown folks & sign up for that reason.eta: Failure of leadership is definitely a significant factor. St. Paul is our immediate neighbor, draws from roughly the same base of police candidates, and has far, far less of a white supremacy problem.
Immanentize
@brantl: see my post @40.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic:
I just saw this in WaPo:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/22/russia-ukraine-mi6-intelligence-pause/
Hope he’s right.
zhena gogolia
@Redshift: They claimed they were prepared to testify.
Layer8Problem
@zhena gogolia: Just recommending Hot Fuzz again from the thread below, certainly for the Martin Freeman-Steve Coogan-Bill Nighy and off-to-the-farm-for-the-sea-mine parts.
dww44
The below is the first of 55 items in this mornings AOL news feed:
This is a pattern in AOL news feeds of late. How do I find out what news source they are using and how to contact them? While I’ve long noted their conservative Republican leanings, I just wanted to register my complaints about their biased headlines. Would appreciate some helpful input here.
Immanentize
@zhena gogolia: “They” being anonymous people, who were not even willing to “appear” in news reports.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: He was bragging about that.
Jeffro
@cmorenc: J6? what J6? – Fox News
The live feed is, at the moment, doing a deep dive of Bret Stephens’ latest piece of excrement (where he said he was wrong about/too harsh on trump voters). Yes, Foxies, YES…you are 110% vindicated now, Bret Stephens said so! (eyeroll)
zhena gogolia
@dww44: Oh, I thought no candidates wanted to be seen with him! Which is it, assholes?
Ohio Mom
@RedDirtGirl: But they *did* go home — Trump has them wrapped around his fingers.
I wish I could find that video that was played last night (I tried but not very hard). The insurrectionists are crowded outside, word starts spreading that Trump has tweeted them, phones come out, a few fast readers start announcing “He wants us to go home,” faces flash with an emotion best described as,“Gee Ma, do I have to?” And just as they did in their youth, they did what “Ma” told them to do.
It was stunning to me how compliant they were, when the order came from Trump himself.
Ocotillo
Two quick questions:
Has any of the goons that attacked the capital been charged with murder or manslaughter in the deaths of the officers who died defending the capital?
Trump often has African-Americans standing behind him at his rally and we suspect they are plants. Did anyone in all the tapes see any African-Americans attacking the capital?
Immanentize
@zhena gogolia: Check out Pottinger’s father.
oatler
“Hotfoot'” Hawley! Oh you kids! (while I’m typing this there’s a Jim Lamon ad with a Trump impersonator, the kind you hire for events. Other ads by other AZ spawn show cartoons of a limp-wristed- therefore- gay Biden meekly abasing himself to a red-clothed demon with asian eyes.)
zhena gogolia
@Ohio Mom: My comment on that moment was “Sheeple!”
sab
@CaseyL: I think it’s a lot older than that. Back to Reagan era. Guns everywhere are a lot of it. And what with local budget cuts they outsourced a lot of their training, and some really squirrelly people got involved in making money off of training. And as part of budget ciuts they gave up a lot of management control, so now city police departments are run by their unions.
The older officers and the younger officers are living in entirely different worlds. I know older police who have never had to fire their guns except at the gun range, and younger ones who see intergang shootouts almost monthly.
And the older guys work regular daytime hours, while the younger ones are out at night essentially supervising each other. No more old experienced guy riding for years with a succession of rookies.
zhena gogolia
@Immanentize:
He doesn’t look that bad:
brantl
@Ken: If they surrender, then they are stripped of arms, and taken to a POW Camp, nobody’s obliged to let them just LEAVE, for Chrissakes.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: He was insufferable. I wanted to say Pottinger, STFU you worked for the Orange Error, you have lost all rights to lecture anyone about patriotism.
BTW tariffs are a favorite of many on the populist left. The horseshoe is real.
piratedan
@cmorenc: I wonder what they’ll show when the DOJ starts arresting GOP lawmakers for sedition.
Ocotillo
I made a typo in an earlier response of my Nym and in moderation, would someone free me?
prostratedragon
Written synopsis from TPM of the Pence extraction.
MisterForkbeard
@Redshift: It was 1-2 anonymous sources saying that a couple of SS agents said it never happened. They didn’t even say she was lying (that SS agents told her it happened), just that the event wasn’t quite that way. And that they’d probably be prepared to testify.
They were never going to testify, and it definitely happened. Been corroborated now by a few people.
oatler
@sab:
“Do you have anything in your pockets I need to know about?
“No sir.”
“Well alrighty then!”
BAD BOYS BAD BOYS
prostratedragon
He’s moving at a faster pace.
Look out! There goes the master race!
jonas
@dww44:
Biden may be out for the next week or so with Covid, but that’s it, and he’s still working out of the residence, so it’s sort of a stupid question to begin with. Maybe he should stride out on the WH balcony with a menacing look in his eye and rip off his mask to the soaring strains of a Wagner overture or something. That’ll show the press how manly and virile he is!
Elie
@CaseyL:
“There is a huge schism in the nation’s law enforcement bodies (dating back at least to the FBI sabotaging Hillary Clinton), with half opposing fascist policies and half supporting them. And there doesn’t seem to be a broad recognition this is the case, much less any organized effort to combat it.”
I totally agree and am quite concerned that there isn’t more being said to talk about and expose the people driving this — and there are people explicitly driving this IMHO
Immanentize
@zhena gogolia: but he is a huge gas bag, which his son seems to have inherited.
Immanentize
@Ocotillo: Free yourself, it is the only way to enlightenment.
Matt McIrvin
@CaseyL: Is it half and half? I recall some opinions that it was more of a regional and practical thing: the cops in areas where there are a lot of homegrown white supremacists are just as temperamentally fascist as Eastern city ones, but the local white supremacists don’t go away after they’ve stirred up some trouble–they are a bunch of fuckups with poor impulse control, and they stick around and keep doing crimes and causing trouble even for white people. So the cops actually hate them. Whereas the cops in, say, New York City know they’ll probably go home after they do their thing, so all they have to do is protect the fascists from people trying to attack them and the problem will go away. But the Capitol attack was a whole other level of trouble.
Steve in the ATL
@dww44: AOL? Does this mean you have figured out time travel?!
neabinorb
@Baud: “Yesterday” is hard to say when you’re totally focused on ‘two months ago.’
Matt McIrvin
@Layer8Problem: Hot Fuzz is amazing–I love the way it abruptly veers from gentle fish-out-of-water comedy to bloody folk-horror parody to OTT American-action-movie parody. People not prepared for that might find it jarring though.
Bex
@cmorenc: Hunter Biden is a Faux News tell. Whenever they start talking about him you know they got nothin’.
Hardheaded Liberal
@RedDirtGirl: Ah, but as soon as TFG did tweet the 4:17 pm message that the crowd should leave, they left. The clip of the QAnon shaman shouting through a bullhorn (?) To effect that “Trump has asked us to leave, now is time to leave,” was a highlight of the hearing for me.
J6C framed the situation as TFG waiting until the putsch had failed to tell folks to go home. But if the crowd had stayed on, the militias’ armed active reaction forces might have ad libbed an assault with serious firepower before Nat’l Guard was really in place. And police clearly felt their position was still tenuous, because they said they were concerned that the situation could get out of hand if they started arresting people as they were starting to leave – they wanted to clear the building & secure it as fast as they could.
Paul in KY
@Scout211: Anyone who runs against that sad little dweeb needs to have a coffee mug with a cartoon image of his scampering off and ‘Hawley Strong’ on it.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: Didn’t Trump want to do a post-COVID photo op where he ripped off his jacket to reveal a Superman shield?
Layer8Problem
@Layer8Problem:
@zhena gogolia:
Aaand, that should have gone to Miss Bianca. My apologies.
dww44
@Steve in the ATL: Nope. Not at all. I’m just old. I use their email because I like it and it hasn’t yet been hacked. I read this blog and others on Firefox.
Tony Jay
Another reboot? Yoiks. I’d better just drop this here then.
A LETTER FROM BREXITANIA
“Après Flob le Refuse”
“Thermometers cracked as a nation swooned in 40 degrees of foreign heat. A punishing, breathless heat, immodest in its brazen closeness. It was the kind of heat that blurs horizons and puts sharp creases in smart pants. The kind of heat that burns right through half measures. In the shadowy corners of suburban gardens unlit barbecues glowered sullenly while chunks of moon-pale skin stuck like charred pork to the searing rims of plastic pools. Across the country’s bare, scorched patios the tracks of skittering footprints steamed away in moments. Beneath this merciless summer onslaught the people of Britain, long inured to the consequences of their inactions, cradled cans of bath-warm beer in sweaty hands and braced themselves for the worse they knew would come.”
Excerpt from ‘No, Not That AWB – Angry White Blokes and the collapse of Tory Britain 2012-24’ – Published by New Oxford Revolutionary Press
And then there were two.
After all the artificial excitement generated by the previous week’s culling of the herd, a couple of evenings of prime-time factional screeching and bitter recrimination televised debate were all that the Tory Party’s most leadery leadership candidates were willing to suffer through in the name of… well.. certainly not any kind of democracy. PR, maybe, of a sort. A paltry two debates isn’t a lot to go on, but it proved to be way more than enough for judgement to weigh in on how absolutely awful every single one of them would be at the job they claimed they all claimed they were uniquely qualified for.
Richboi Sunak, the millionaire homunculus hand-carved from of a block of purest avarice by the master craftsmen of Goldman Sachs only went and got himself labelled a dirty Socialist for throwing scorn on the conservative crezenzas underpinning massive tax cuts alongside equally massive spending promises. As a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, he might not understand much about economics (he’s not a nerd, duh) but he’s stripped more assets than Gypsy Rose Lee and he knows that true conservatism means saving up your tax cuts to use as election bribes and targeting them overwhelmingly at the bank accounts of the already dizzyingly wealthy. Oops, did he say that out loud?
Dizzy Lizzy Truss froze in the spotlight and fell back on her mantra of promising Delivery! Delivery! Delivery! like a demented Tony Blair being restrained outside a maternity ward. I never truly thought the Tories could dig up a product more artificial and clunky than the Theresa Maybot 2016 Series, but in The Trussinator they may well have proven me wrong. If she could only source a better supply of punch cards for her onboard difference engine she might – might – be capable of emitting a coherent sentence, but thanks to Brexit they’re all going to program sewing machines in Armenian sweatshops instead, so she’s shit out of luck and stuck promising to shake the magic money tree so hard that the magic squirrels of non-inflationary tax cuts will rain down upon a grateful nation.
Pretty Penny Mordaunt buckled under the pressure of mildly hostile attention, proving that, far from being the fresh new face of British Exceptionalism, she was just a healthier looking Theresa May and as shallow as a saucer of rancid milk.
Kemi Bad + Enoch, the great whi…ahem hope of the Hard Right Ultra Qonservative faction said all the quiet parts out loud, but her tiki-torch burnt far too brightly for the majority of Tory MPs to be comfortable with. Maybe after next year’s Purges.
Tom Tug-on-That, the Westminster Village’s idea of what a proper military man looks like (a 1970s deputy-Headmaster in a run-down London comprehensive school, apparently) took on the Rory Stewart part with some vigour, but never really committed to the role of ‘seriously okay guy who’s been there, done that, and isn’t afraid to call a spade a spade’ because, let’s be blunt, other than being willing to call Flobalob a liar he’s still a mainstream Tory with a record of mainstream Tory votes and he’d really, really like to be Defence Secretary at some point.
All we learnt was that none of the candidates actually liked each other, in fact some of them actually seemed to properly hate each other, which is about the only point I agree with any of them on, because I hate them all too. They’re Tories, FFS, and even worse than that they’re modern Tories. It’s okay and even required for all ensouled beings to hate them because they are, by nature or by nurture, choice or unintelligent design, really, really hateful people who between them are ultimately responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and the continuing misery of millions. I’m ever so happy that they all decided it would be a good idea to go on television and display the sick rot at the core of their beings to a wider audience, and I’m only surprised it took their advisors and/or the people who actually make the important decisions about who can and cannot lead the Tory Party the better part of a week to conclude that Flobalob had the right idea when he hid away from public view during his election victories.
Leaving aside, for a moment, the easily predictable damage televising this shitshow has done to the reputations of most of the candidates and the necrotic Party they seek to lead, quite why this hunt for Britain’s Next Top Model Prime Minister should have been foisted on the viewing public as a mutant blend of Question Time and Opportunity Knocks is a question I’m sure the well-renumerated chief executives of those networks will never be asked, but they should. There was no ‘public vote’ here. The nation doesn’t get a say in choosing who the new Prime Minister is going to be. The United Kingdom has no specific constitutional method of doing that, and the only de facto one – a General Election – isn’t on offer.
Instead, what we have here is an internal Tory Party selection process where a closed off club of 357 spineless MPs shuffle into and out of an oak lined room to swipe right for whichever ephemeral non-entity they think might best suit their ideological fetishes and/or offer them the best chance of being re-elected and/or promoted to a juicy Government role. In fact, looked at honestly, it’s less Ru Paul’s Drag Race and more like the Oscars, except all of the contenders are mash ups of Battle Royale and Bob Roberts, written by David S. Goyer, directed by Tommy Wiseau, and the final two go into a run-off where the judges have only ever enjoyed two films, both of which were Birth of a Nation. Trying to present this incestuous nonsense under the banner of ‘a nation decides’ is as insulting as it is delusional and merely hammers home how uniformly ‘wired for conservatives’ the entire British News Media Establishment really is.
Anyway, so, with that said, what a fucking marmalade the rest of the voting turned out to be.
Tudendhat was the first out, naturally. Vaguely amiable nobodies with Chiefs of the General Staff (Catering Corps) on speed-dial win the Chairmanships of local Conservative constituency parties, not the Party leadership. Tories always like to have a Tugendhat/Stewart type in the mix so they can pat themselves on the back for allowing ‘insurgent’ candidates who are willing to call out their fellow Tories for their bullshit, but always within limits, and only if they quietly have a voting record as starkly partisan and heartless as every one of their peers. Old Tugger Tom did his bit for the cause, bravely led the Forlorn Hope on its ceremonial march past the cheering boys and girls of our national media, but it was time for him to take his Blighty wound like a man and go bash out some gloomy poems about the folly of war, there’s a good fellow.
Next to go was Badenoch, praise be! A black, female candidate backed by the neo-Nazis of Britain First and the Koch Foundation’s Spiked Online kulturkampfers is, perhaps, not what the Disunited Queendom of Brexitania wants or needs right now. Her role in the race was always to get the Hard Right’s message of Culture War + Fuck the Poor + Fear of a Black Planet up the flagpole with her skin colour and gender acting as shields of steel against ‘Woke backlash’, and insofar as she pushed the permissible narrative further to the Right, she succeeded. Now the next Tory Leader knows that there can be no rowing back from the Tory Party’s deal with that particular devil, who has ditched the Prada in favour of a ‘heritage Hugo Boss’ look.
Finally, Mordaunt was pipped at the post for a place in the Terrible Two, which is partly her own fault, in that she clearly never had a coherent strategy for threading the needle between all of the feuding Tory factions to become (as she obviously intended) the consensus candidate that no one disliked enough to shiv. Her entire ‘brand’ was of a serious politician of proper Tory heritage who wasn’t tainted by Flobalob while also steering clear of bashing his ‘accomplishments’, but numerous easily avoidable missteps in presentation, a certain cowardice when presenting her own views (or what she wanted people to think were her views), and the fusillade of negativity aimed her way for days on end by the Badenoch/Truss coalition of Hard Right and Continuity Flobism via the pages of the Daily Mail eventually sank her battleship. When you want people to think that they simply have to jump on board because you’re inevitable, you really have to have a plan of battle that’s more detailed than “A Better Boris with Boobs and less Booze”. Turns out she didn’t.
So, we’re left with Sunak and Truss, which can only add fuel to the fire of suspicion that House Rishi of the Empire of Rupert loaned a handful of votes to his favoured opponent to ensure that it was her and not Mordaunt who made the final cut by 113 votes to 105. I’ll restate here, now and for the record, that I don’t think the Tory Party’s membership will ever vote to make a brown man their leader. A brown woman, yes, if she were sufficiently ‘womanly’ while also being a blood-drenched Knight Templar eager to hurt the right people (Priti Patel, a slavering mass of genocidal nationalists turn their lonely eyes to you), but they’d never willingly consent to kneel before a brown man, for all kinds of fucked up psycho-sexual reasons to do with race, cultural heritage and not wanting all of their kinks out in the open where everyone and the Vicar can see.
If Mordaunt had clung onto the 2nd place she’d occupied from the very start of the race, she’d have been odds on to replace Flobby in the Big Seat. At least with Truss on the other side of the SIX WHOLE WEEKS of campaigning still to go in this interminable caravan of banality, Sunak and his team can bank on her woodenness, her inability to lie convincingly, and her astounding level of underlying stupidity to make enough of the Tory Party blue rinse and deck shoes brigade weigh their traditional racism against the unedifying prospect of Liz fucking Truss and her picometre thick sheen of blissful confidence leading the Conservative and Unionist Party into a General Election.
Bear in mind, this is the woman who emoted during the debates about how the focus on ‘social issues’ and lack of aspirational opportunity she witnessed as a schoolgirl convinced her to become a Conservative, only for eleventy billion people online and a smirking Sunak to remind her that, a) when she was at school it was entirely under Tory Education Secretaries, and b) the first thing she did on leaving school was join the Liberal Democrats and give speeches calling for the abolition of the Monarchy. Granted, Sunak is bloody awful and already pretty badly dinged by all of the revelations that came out about his family’s tax-dodging and green-card holding while he was still Flobby’s Chancellor, and that was before the absolutely brutal (while also absolutely accurate) hatchet job Channel 4 news did on his privileged upbringing and dodgy past dealings last night, plus the anger directed at him amongst the membership for ‘betraying’ their beloved ‘BoJo’ is real and intense, but Truss? Truss is a rake-seeking missile launched into a rake factory at the height of International Rake Week, and it’s only going to get worse for her.
Great, isn’t it? A few weeks ago, we were celebrating the humiliating fall of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as his comet-tail of sleaze, scandal and yet more sleaze finally caught up with him, but all that’s done is land us with the prospect of either Sunak or Truss laying down the law for (possibly) two and a half years. In American terms, that’s a choice between peak-twat Paul Ryan a month into the mummification process and a crash-test dummy with a lifesize poster of Thatcher stapled to it. How lucky are we?
And how are the bright young things of NuNew Labour taking advantage of this Blue on Blue Kin-Strife, you might ask?
Oh, that’s got to be whole post of its own. Finding the words to describe those fucked up fucktards and their fuckheaded fuckery will take a stiffer drink than the one before me. The Forde Report is a depth charge that they and their fair-weather friends in the News Media are desperately trying to ignore, but… no. Just no. There will be blood.
Until then, Vaya Con Dios.
Immanentize
@Steve in the ATL: well, I am looking at your postings on MySpace.
Immanentize
Odd posting hiccup of repetition.
Layer8Problem
@Matt McIrvin: Very! My partner has issues with excess whimsy and found it quite off-putting.
Old School
@Matt McIrvin:
rikyrah
David Darmofal (@david_darmofal) tweeted at 9:43 PM on Thu, Jul 21, 2022:
If Republicans win the House in November, you’re going to get hearings featuring people like Dinesh D’Souza making ridiculous claims to try to discredit the January 6th Committee. Trumpism will be in charge of the House.
(https://twitter.com/david_darmofal/status/1550310646545260549?t=YEnT_KZKk6RN-wuZGio6lA&s=03)
Steve in the ATL
@Immanentize: and for the record, I still love Hello Kitty!
rikyrah
Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) tweeted at 4:06 AM on Fri, Jul 22, 2022:
NEWS: After targeting Ron DeSantis in Florida, Gavin Newsom is now running full-page ads in Texas trolling Gov. Greg Abbott on guns and abortion. https://t.co/7fsWbjyWeg
(https://twitter.com/aseitzwald/status/1550406819364872194?t=DgJRKHm4FfUTJSWWHeJHBA&s=03)
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) tweeted at 8:02 PM on Thu, Jul 21, 2022:
Given all the information that has been recovered and exposed, just imagine what was so damning in Trump’s call logs and the Secret Service texts that people felt wiping them was worth the risk if they got caught
(https://twitter.com/paulwaldman1/status/1550285219978158081?t=cRcTRBE5Mz_-dImTgPrEQQ&s=03)
Paul in KY
@Immanentize: That’s better than my idea. Kudos twitter!
rikyrah
YES…
that coward needs to testify
Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) tweeted at 8:03 PM on Thu, Jul 21, 2022:
If Pence was in danger of assassination on January 6, what could now be keeping him from testifying about his near-death experience that day — and about who he thinks was to blame?
(https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1550285477894393858?t=8sbwxqDP8DlQ1Y6coHaMOg&s=03)
Jinchi
@Gin & Tonic: Would that be the Russians sent in to take over control of the government administration? Or pro-Russian Ukrainians?
It seems they must be nominally civilians. Soldiers don’t usually get green corridors.
Edmund Dantes
@MisterForkbeard: no Peter Alexander had a quote that sources say never happened and were ready to testify in front of committee.
Immanentize
@Edmund Dantes: Peter Alexander is the Jason Blair of right wing statements.
Paul in KY
@RaflW: If you really, really want to be a cop…then you shouldn’t be allowed to be a cop.
Scout211
Jeffrey Clark, Trump’s
fall guyman at the DOJ is in trouble with the DC Attorneys’ disciplinary board.mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic:
A green corridor with them all 6 feet under it.
Jinchi
Nothing says Man of Steel like spending 10 days in intensive care after catching a deadly plague.
rikyrah
Eli-Sad-beth![]()
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(@foodsevelt) tweeted at 8:55 PM on Thu, Jul 21, 2022:
Democrats running a committee that has:
-nuked a senators presidential run from orbit
-the House GOP screaming in fear
-federal conspirators in criminal scopes
-garnered a huge audience
-isn’t even done yet
And people say they are bad at politics
(https://twitter.com/foodsevelt/status/1550298450566303746?t=4hWwrYc-2zhSaQeiMnTQ8Q&s=03)
Old School
@Tony Jay:
That was wonderful. And this is brilliant:
oatler
@Tony Jay:
You had me at fucked up fucktards.
Baud
@rikyrah:
If they weren’t bad at politics, people wouldn’t say they were bad at politics. The fact that people are saying it proves that Dems are bad at politics. QED.
Roger Moore
@RedDirtGirl:
Completely apart from this making him look weak, it’s exactly why inciting people to riot is so dangerous. In a lot of ways, a riot is like a wildfire. The person who incites it has some control over where it starts and its initial direction, but it quickly gets out of control and becomes its own thing. You never really know what it is going to turn on and try to destroy next.
JanieM
@Tony Jay:
ROFL, in a rueful sort of way.
different-church-lady
Lemme do a Doug J:
”I was a lifelong Democrat. Then liberals made too much fun of Josh Hawley…”
TheOtherHank
In regards to Pence’s SS guards fearing for their lives. I seem to recall that they were trying to get him to leave and he didn’t trust them and wouldn’t cooperate. My ultra-cynical take is that the SS thought they were going to whisk him off to a secure location (where he couldn’t do his constitutional job) and they would be safe. When he wouldn’t get in the car the SS realized that they were now in actual danger and flipped out. I think Pence’s SS detail was in on it and they panicked.
Tony Jay
@Old School:
@oatler:
I really, really, really dislike both groups of people.
I’m just really subtle about it.
trollhattan
@Tony Jay: Thanks!
The apparent Tory eagerness to copy Our Very Own Republicans is truly distressing–evidently they’re only divided by plummy accents and general subject-verb agreement. Yee, I say, yee-haw, sir.
For the final selection, I suggest challenging the two finalists on how many claret bottles they can stuff into a Hermes rollaround in sixty seconds. “Number 10 is yours!”
Gin & Tonic
@Jinchi: I’ll admit I don’t know who the russians in question are. I have a hard time believing that 2,000 russian civilians got themselves encircled in Kherson oblast.
BlueGuitarist
@rikyrah:
maybe some of the deleted texts were about SS taking Pence away from the Capitol, and Pence not wanting to get in the car
O. Felix Culpa
@mrmoshpotato:
Given Russia’s atrocities, these responses are understandable, but don’t we support Ukraine because they’re better than Russia and try to adhere to the rule of law?
trollhattan
@different-church-lady: Heh. Plagiarism I can and do support.
In this Ohio diner, these voters expressed concern about the bad treatment of a Missouri senator they just learned existed.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: I think they feel that Truss sould be sorta like Henry VI was for his courtiers: Completely out of his league & able to be BSed by his minions into giving them carte blanche to do whatever the hell they wanted.
Since, we’re more ‘civilized’ now, they don’t foresee any kind of ending like most all of Henry VI’s crew received.
Tony Jay
@JanieM:
We really did kiss both cheeks of the Good Luck Fairy’s arse, didn’t we?
@trollhattan:
Oh, I can think of somewhere else they can stuff them. All of them. Sideways.
Paul in KY
@TheOtherHank: Interesting theory. Hope it is examined.
mrmoshpotato
@O. Felix Culpa: Yes. I’m not seriously suggesting a war crime.
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: While blindfolded! Would be capital entertainment and also about as good a way to choose between the 2 snivelers as any.
Paul in KY
@O. Felix Culpa: They should certainly have fair trials before being executed. Sorta channeling Judge Roy Bean there.
Edit: Any captured combatant should be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention.
Tony Jay
@Paul in KY:
That’s precisely what DizLiz’s attraction is to the ascendant Hard Right, and why the Tory membership like her so much. She’ll adopt any policy position you tell her to, however awkward or humiliating, if that’s what it takes to get where she wants to be. She’s like Flobalob in that respect, which is exactly what he saw in her too.
No shame. They love it.
Immanentize
@Tony Jay: thanks for this palette cleanser.
I really cannot abide Truss. She is such a Thatcher wanna be without the charm or the looks.
kalakal
The bits that made the strongest impression on me where
The Secret Service guys saying good bye to their familys.
Pottinger – what a sanctimonious blowhard. Even after all that he just doesn’t get it
Trumps out takes . Words fail me.
Overall they made the case really well, Trumps own forced statements where he kept wibbling on how the rioters were justified because of The Steal tm were pure chef’s kiss.
oatler
Norman Mailer said the characters in the world in The Naked Lunch are “divorced from eternity”. They’re ready to make a god out of Trump and celebrate his ugliness. They always say they’re embracing evil because The Left drove them to it. Nihilists are awestruck by the shamelessness.
O. Felix Culpa
@Immanentize:
LOL. ICWYDT.
zhena gogolia
@TheOtherHank: this was before that. These were the ones he trusted
rikyrah
Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) tweeted at 9:32 PM on Thu, Jul 21, 2022:
Here’s what so damning: If Trump had won in 2020, virtually all of these people who’ve testified in these hearings would still be working for him.
(https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom/status/1550307659353653248?t=hYZxUa0x2Cggml2qqwE8QA&s=03)
Tony Jay
@Immanentize:
Absolutely. From the clothes to the photographs to the cadence to the everything. It’s bad cosplay so transparent that her denial just drew open laughter.
You dirty birdie, you!
GoBlueInOak
Pence would be dangerous in 2024 but for the fact that he appears to poll horribly with GOP primary voters, even with Trump removed from the equation.
Paul in KY
@oatler: They are people who are either too chickenshit or ‘constrained by society’ to do gross evil things on their own. Now, if they were ordered to do them….
That’s the kind of hollow people TFG and Fascism in general really attract.
Immanentize
Ok, this made me say, “oh shit” out loud:
Immanentize
@Tony Jay: you didn’t like the “charm” part?
I’m like my grandmother (from the old country) if she gave me two shirts for my birthday, and I wore one the next day, she would say, “what, you don’t like the other one? I can return it.”
Baud
@Immanentize:
The answers to those two questions aren’t unconnected.
emmyelle
@CaseyL: This keeps me awake at night. Seriously.
Tony Jay
@Immanentize:
“Two shirts, Gramma? What am I? A gigolo?”
Ksmiami
@O. Felix Culpa: a green corridor to prison then… they should be taken as POWs and sorted. Those that committed atrocities need to be tried and convicted. The others should be offered a timeshare and salary to fight against Russia.
FelonyGovt
@Tony Jay:
Just needed to see that again.
Tony G
@CaseyL: Serpico — based on real events. Apparently nothing ever gets better.
Immanentize
@Baud: yes. That was the very source of my “oh shit.” Elections have consequences! Sometimes far reaching, dire ones.
gvg
@Redshift: I actually think it was a bunch of bull from people who claimed there were secret service sources who would come forward…not that there ever had been actual SS people saying that. there might have been a few but since it was all anonymous they could claim what they liked. which is the problem with anon sources especially when they become the majority of sources in washington. They should just be the start of a journalists investigation without saying things then, not the whole story, ever.
Immanentize
@Tony Jay: let me not even tell you about the underwear presents at Christmas!
Tony G
@Ksmiami: That’s right. The fact that they are in Ukraine means that they are not civilians. Since when do enemy soldiers get a “green corridor”? Take them prisoner and treat them as POWs under the conditions of the Geneva Conventions. When Russia withdraws from Ukraine send them home.
Aziz, light!
@Kent: In emergency response roles at the Portland federal building, I worked with several members of our Federal Protective Service detail. I found them to be nothing like local cops and would not describe them as anything but highly trained and responsible professionals. Many pronouncements about law enforcement as a whole are way too broad.
Immanentize
@gvg: I would love to see Alexander being forced to do a follow up article on that “report.”
Or is he writing a book about it and we will learn in a few years who said what?
Immanentize
@Tony G: Uh, the Geneva Conventions do not allow any State to take civilians “prisoner.” Unless, I guess, if you are the US and call them “enemy combatants,” which is not really a thing.
Ocotillo
@dww44: Peter Alexander of NBC News (he who breathlessly the day of came on that evening’s news to report SS was refuting the testimony about the beast in the beast) also had to get his minute in the sun yesterday asking about Biden going on camera without a mask. What a waste of carbon.
trollhattan
@Tony Jay: Should be, “What am I, a Bannon?”
Ksmiami
@Immanentize: they are troops from everything I’ve read.
trollhattan
Nobody gives a
shitcowpie about Devin Nunes anymore, but learning he’s having a bad day will always be welcome.Pro tip: never hire a lawyer from the inside back page of a real estate supplement.
patrick II
@Gin & Tonic:
The picture of a guy with a rifle in a tree at the ellipse blew my mind.
Tony Jay
@Immanentize:
“Gramma, who am I, Richard Gere?”
@trollhattan:
Chef’s Kiss. Stealing.
Tony Jay
@FelonyGovt:
I’d forgotten about that one! 8-)
Noskilz
The previously unaired Trump video preparations – they were about what you’d expect, but expecting isn’t the same of actually seeing it.
I also thought the committee did a very good job of showing how he only agreed to make a reluctant, grudging effort to de-escalate the situation when the coup attempt had been essentially shut down by the arrival of additional forces at the Capitol. As long as he thought his minions still had a chance, he thwarted every effort. To anyone with eyes and a pair of brain cells to rub together, the presentation made it clear that the attack on the Capitol was the plan, and not just an unfortunate accident.
Immanentize
@Ksmiami: If they are combat troops, then they should surrender and be held as POWs until the end of the year or until a deal is reached with Russia. The green corridor for Mariupol was only requested for civilians, not fighters.
MisterForkbeard
@Noskilz: The pushback I’m seeing on the right is people screaming “But he totally said ‘stay peaceful’ in his tweet!”
But then, we’re not trying to convince those fucks either.
Immanentize
@Tony Jay: hanging upside down, no less, while Blondie rocks the speakers
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard: As whoever his aide was the next day said to Trump “peaceful? That ship has sailed.”
SiubhanDuinne
@JanieM:
So, RUFL?
mali muso
So frustrated…my mother has yet again forwarded me one of her awful “this PROVES that the covid vaccine is unsafe/CDC is awful/insert anti-vaxx conspiracy theory” emails. I thought I had trained her out of this behavior, having told her multiple times that there is literally nothing she can send me that will make me “see the light” and every time she does this, it puts a strain on my ability to maintain a relationship with her. But she just cannot seem to help herself.
artem1s
I’m rewatching some of the staff testimony today. What self-righteous, privileged assholes these people are. They are so obviously repulsed by the mob when they know their actions will reflect poorly on them. They aren’t morally outraged. They are outraged about being associated with a LOWER class of people and how it will affect their ability to stay associated with the high powered in-crowd in DC. They are there to try to wipe the stink of 45 off their resumes.
SiubhanDuinne
@Immanentize:
Turpentine?
CaseyL
News: Steve Bannon has been convicted on both counts of Contempt of Congress.
ETA: Not sure what happened to my nym. This is CaseyL
edit: fixed your nym. WG
Dorothy A. Winsor
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
👍
CaseyL
Now, the question is what sentence Bannon’ll get. The judge is said to be a Trumper.
Burnspbesq
Sorry for all caps, but I think this is worthy.
BANNON CONVICTED.
JML
That’s Guilty! Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!
https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1973/5/29
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Burnspbesq: woo hoo!
lee
@CaseyL: That is exactly my take on this.
The patriots were worried that the fascists were going to win and they (and Pence) would end up dead.
different-church-lady
@CaseyL: The Supreme Court will just pardon him.
Kent
I guess the Federal Government is incredibly broad. I’ve worked with NOAA law enforcement officers (fish cops who board fishing boats and enforce commercial fishing regulations) and also border control and customs officers. I didn’t find them to be much different than local cops. And I find most local cops to be decent as well. They all recruit from the same basic pool.
Mallard Filmore
BREAKING: Bannon is GUILTY!
Warblewarble
Russian ‘civilians” in Ukraine are either illegal aliens or little gun men. They can be detained as such. TYPO gun for green, same difference.
Scout211
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Yay for Bannon being found guilty. Sentencing not until October 21st though.
ETA: too much time for him to play martyr.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
I’m not sure I buy that argument. Who destroyed evidence vs. who kept it may be as much about their attitude as about how damning that evidence was. People who wanted to have the option of turning on Trump kept evidence so they could use it as a bargaining chip. People who were all-in on Trump destroyed evidence so it couldn’t be used that way.
MisterForkbeard
@Scout211: Why such a long wait on sentencing? That’s three months and just lets him run out the clock even more.
Sentence the fucker and get it over with. It’s not hard – just give him 6 months in jail for each offense and be done with it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Scout211: and he’s going to appeal
Wapiti
2 1/2 hours. I guess the people on the jury wanted to drag it out so they didn’t have to check in at their work on the way home.
Lyrebird
@TheOtherHank:
Yes, as
@zhena gogolia:
said, this was before that. He first had to be moved from one room to a more secure one, and the witness was talking about the lead-up to that… they all left the initial hiding location and got safely to the other location, but apparently it was no sure thing.
The drama with getting in the car or not getting in the car played out later in the more secure room.
Scout211
On CNN.com right now. My question is why does the USSS investigator get to determine what is relevant and what is not?
Lyrebird
@Immanentize:
Yeah when Jason Miller is the voice of reason in the room, a whole lot of good things have sailed…
Kay
Warblewarble
Russian “civilians” are either little green (gun) men or illegal aliens and can be detained.
Wapiti
@Scout211: I could see the judge using the three month delay to see (1) which way the political wind is blowing, (2) to finish the sentencing after the election so the outrage of 30 days doesn’t effect the election, or (3) see if Bannon and his lawyers can get of their dead asses and testify like they claim to want to.
patrick II
@Roger Moore:
It is not just about protecting/not protecting Trump. Secret Service members may want to protect themselves. Prison is not an ideal retirement plan.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tony Jay: What happened to Jeremy Hunt. He seemed vaguely plausible. Or was that his downfall?
Immanentize
@SiubhanDuinne: ! Perfect!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@patrick II: and, short of prison, those retirement plans probably included a pension and did not include very expensive lawyers
Immanentize
@different-church-lady: no they will not.
HumboldtBlue
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and free lunch!
Is that an atypical length of time?
Immanentize
@MisterForkbeard: In federal court, there is always, unless waived, a pre-sentence report. These are really in depth and extensive reports on the individual to be sentenced. They include history of law breaking, financials, everything. They are compiled by the “probation office” which are really just cops hired to evaluate the individual vis a vis the sentencing guidelines.
In Bannon’s case, considering he is such a globe trotting dickhead, flight assessment should be part of the discussion regarding his freedom pending sentencing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Immanentize: Damn. That was cold.
rikyrah
@Immanentize:
kapow
rikyrah
Bannon guilty
BWA HA HA HA HA HA AHAH HA
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No idea. Still silly.
He provided no defense, absolutely did the thing and isn’t sorry about it at all. Just give him a large sentence and move on.
EarthWindFire
@Scout211: You’d think he’d know all those best people, wouldn’t you?
patrick II
@mali muso:
I watched a few minutes of Tucker Carlson last night (as much as I could stand of that fascist asshole). I was curious what his show would be about while the hearing was going on. I like to keep a little in touch with what the opposition is saying. It was about Joe Biden’s covid. He was overjoyed. He laughed and said “they promised us if we were vaccinated we wouldn’t get sick” and went on to say how dangerous the vaccine is according to some medical journal I have never heard of. Supposedly it messes with your DNA and also makes you more likely to catch COVID over time.
His high-pitched shrill voice combined with his near maniacal laughter was not sane, and I think he has that effect on his viewers. Make sure your mom isn’t watching that shitshow.
SiubhanDuinne
@Immanentize:
IANAL, but isn’t it standard procedure to seize the convicted person’s passport(s)?
Matt McIrvin
@patrick II: God, he is a menace. Just actively trying to make people sick now.
Mike E
@mali muso: I feel for you there…my Mom was a lifelong Dem so our political “differences” weren’t that so much but generational attitudes. My big beef had been around capital punishment and I worked hard to get her to see how prosecutors used the death penalty to become DAs, DAs to become AGs, AGs governors and then presidents. I was relentless, heh, but she worked as an admin asst at the city public defender’s office and I felt it was my civic duty to convert her over into the light.
James E Powell
@Kay:
I’m really sick of anonymous sources. I’d like to see more people show up, take the oath, and testify. The truth won’t take but 20 minutes or so.
SiubhanDuinne
@MisterForkbeard:
Due process and all, but yeah. In a similar vein, why is Peter Navarro, on basically the same charge, not going to trial until November?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@MinuteMan: Not mention, at the end of this, thousands of reperated Russian POWs returning home and saying they were treated in a Ukrainian POW camp better than the Russian Army with such luxuries as being feed every day is going to really undermine Putin’s banana Republic
Anyway, 2K soldiers is like 6 Russian battle groups, so what ever the UA does, kill them all or take them prisoner, but don’t let that group go.
MisterForkbeard
@SiubhanDuinne: The difference with Navarro (I think?) is that he was actually a WH employee so he gets some slight deference to ‘executive privilege’ claims, but the whole thing is obvious bullshit.
Yes, Navarro should have had his trial start around now. And Bannon should be sentenced shortly rather than waiting another three months and further allowing these fucks to run out the clock, as several have openly stated they’re doing.
mali muso
@patrick II:
@Mike E:
Thanks for the commiseration. My mom struggles with depression and mental health issues, so logically I know that a big part of this is just her general gullibility and paranoia and I have long since given up on trying to educate or debunk her stupid conspiracy theories because it’s literally impossible. But it makes me sad. I know that she wonders why we are so distant or why we can’t talk about anything but the most mundane things, but I just cannot. I don’t have the mental/emotional bandwidth or the patience. It’s either draw a hard boundary where we don’t touch on religion/politics and I don’t engage with her idiot conspiracies or go no-contact. ugh
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
Turns out they’ve lawyered up. Got their own private attorneys. I guess they’re not so eager to testify under oath after all if it means they might be held accountable for their actions.
Immanentize
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes it is. They probably already did that as a condition of his release initially. Wasn’t he arrested on a yacht near Italy? Or was that for another crime?
JaySinWA
@Immanentize: Bannon was arrested convicted and pardoned for fraud in Build the wall funding.
Immanentize
@Lyrebird: That man is a bad bad man.
Immanentize
@Kay: They are hoping for a very good midterm election for the Republicans. Which, of course, will require polling place violence.
JaySinWA
Could we have some Re-do/Re-don’t open threads if frontpagers are reluctant to post? A quick status update on the progress towards a decision would be nice
And I see one opened up. Thx WG.
Kay
@James E Powell:
Cheney said “the dam was breaking” (or “starting to break”, maybe) – interesting.
The Lodger
@Scout211: Four hours behind the pace here, but I’d buy a mug with a highlighted Hawley high-tailing it across the hallway and the motto “Show Me Scared.”
Immanentize
@mali muso: Ok, I have a counter- insurgency strategy for you. Everytime she sends you one of those, send her in reply some crazy “Trump is an alligator alien from Zardoz” (or less obvious bat-boy, bigfoot or chupacabra) article without further comment or complaint. I predict she will stop.
Ocotillo
@HumboldtBlue:
Noticing that yesterday, I thought to myself this will discourage the MAGAts from hiring women in the future even more so than they do now.
Immanentize
@JaySinWA: In federal sentencing terms, we call that an “enhancement!”
Immanentize
@The Lodger: See comment #40
JaySinWA
@Immanentize: Looks like I misremembered. Apparently Bannon was pardoned before he could be convicted. Two accomplices plead out. https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-associates-build-the-wall-fraud-case-plea-deals-2022-3
The Moar You Know
@mali muso: I went no-contact with both parents for 15 years and am prepared, if they fuck up again, to go until they die. Nobody gets a pass when they are destroying your life, intentionally or otherwise.
geg6
@Scout211:
Show me strongly running away is more like it.
Tony Jay
@Omnes Omnibus: Went out before the first round, I think. Couldn’t even get the 30 votes to join the contest.
I rambled on about it last week.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tony Jay: So the first thing they did was remove anyone remotely human. Got it.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
@Paul in KY: @Scout211: Anyone who runs against that sad little dweeb needs to have a coffee mug with a cartoon image of his scampering off and ‘Hawley Strong’ on it.
I’d go with the cartoon and imprint ‘Hawley Strong?’
Ramona Rosario
@TheOtherHank: Hmmm… You might well be right. Intriguing idea.
Tony Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Basically. He spent so much time trying to set himself up as the King in Exile of Moderate Island that he forgot to check if Tory MPs were vaguely interested in a) moderation, or, b) him as the figurehead of the New Moderate Army.
It’s almost funny.
Anonymous At Work
Two things:
Personally, I think it was to create the grounds to say that the Electoral count from January 6th was now “impossible” to complete and the House had to proceed with the “by state delegation” method.
Oh, and one thing about Cippollone’s testimony that struck me was that he avoided answers based on “Attorney-Client Privilege” but the Crime-Fraud Exception wasn’t raised because this is a voluntary exchange. I imagine that in an actual judicial setting, neither Attorney-Client nor Executive Privileges would apply so generously.
Mike in NC
I need to watch the whole Thursday night hearing again. Maybe twice.
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay:
Oh, dear God. Well, at least I got a LOL in before the screams started welling at the very prospect.
Ben Cisco
@Immanentize:
She’s gonna need some salve for that burn!
Tony Jay
@Miss Bianca:
And the only available alternative (should Santa give us a General Election) is a transparent man-shaped decal so mired in the politics of the early 90s he probably still thinks the Democrats’ only shot at the Presidency is picking a white, Southern male as their candidate.
This is not a good time to be British and conscious.
The Lodger
@Anonymous At Work:
Ladyraxterinok
@schrodingers_cat:
The Wikipedia entry for Portinger:s father is interesting
Check out his wife Yen Duong. She and her family left Vietnam when she was 6 months old. She has a PHD in science and specializes in viruses
Ruckus
@RedDirtGirl:
SFB is always and forever about himself, in any way possible and in many ways absolutely impossible. He never learned anything in school except me, myself and I.
Oh and bullshit. He learned bullshit 101 and 102. His only good point is that he’s incapable of learning bullshit (or anything else) at a higher level than 102.
Niques
Ruckus
@mali muso:
I have negative reactions to a lot of meds and one I need I have to take the very minimum dosage and I once spent 9 days in hospital with a 105 temp after getting vaccinated. My reaction to my first of my 3 doses of Pfizer was about as strong a reaction as I’ve heard from anyone and my 1st Pfizer booster and 2nd Moderna booster had no reaction at all. 3 of the meds my docs have prescribed over the last 4 yrs gave me massive hallucinations. IOW I’m an odd ball medication wise. Neither Pfizer or Moderna gave me any actual dangerous issues, and as I stated many medications over the years have been very bad. My point is that while it is possible of course that some may have bad reactions to covid vaccines, as someone who has had some very bad/strong reactions to many types of medications over my lifetime, the 2 mRNA vaccines have been some of the least offensive medications I’ve taken in my life.
So I can understand if someone might think bad about them but hundreds of millions have taken the various covid vaccines around the world with an extremely small problem ratio. Much smaller than many medications.
But you already know that. This is bad politics, the kind that will and has killed people for no damn reason.