Recommended soundtrack (and special thanks to the HBO Max series “Hacks” for reminding me that this song exists):
There are more consequential takeaways from last night’s January 6th committee hearing, but here’s a meme that really needs to stick to the pencil-necked poser Josh Hawley:
Former DC cop Michael Fanone had thoughts:
I talked to former D.C. police officer Michael Fanone outside the #Jan6thHearings.
Here is his response to seeing video of Sen. Josh Hawley running away from rioters after fist bumping them earlier in the day on Jan. 6 :"Josh Hawley is a bitch", said Fanone. https://t.co/qgCPHcVh1r pic.twitter.com/rTJoJywgY3
— JC (@JCWhittington_) July 22, 2022
Neither Trump nor his loyalists have ever come out of a January 6th hearing looking good, but last night’s edition seemed designed to skewer them harder than previous episodes — as if the Cheney propensity for shooting people in the face had been adopted as a theme. I was there for it.
Like the humiliating outtakes:
"I don't want to say the election is over," Trump says in outtakes from his speech on Jan. 7. "I just want to say Congress has certified the results." Ivanka Trump, who is not seen but heard in the background, helps him make revisions in real time. pic.twitter.com/cCfnyWKgLo
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) July 22, 2022
Big Bill-O “fuck it — I’ll do it live!” energy at the end.
Open thread.
raven
From Haihira, GA
Run Baby Run – The Newbeats
Betty Cracker
@raven: My grandparents used to live in Hahira!
Kay
Shalimar
Those outtakes are one of the most pathetic things I have ever seen. Why are they revising this speech in front of a camera? It turned out to be 3 minutes long. Sit around a table with the idiot-in-chief until you have a script he agrees to read, then do it in one take. Doing it the way they did makes it obvious he is impossible to work for.
Kay
raven
@Betty Cracker: No!!! I wonder if they knew guys?
… Well, she don’t cook mashed potatoes
She don’t cook T-bone steak
She don’t feed me peanut butter
She knows that I can’t tak
Baud
@Kay:
I hear he plans to.give a speech on masculinity to the Uvalde police force.
Shalimar
@Kay: Even if the hearings sadly accomplish nothing else, that video of Hawley running away will be the end of his career. He’s a national joke from this point forward.
ETtheLibrarian
Speaking of Josh running.
A series of clips of this to different song bits. The Monty Python one is the most appropriate.
Baud
@Shalimar:
Yeah, I doubt that. He still hates the right people.
Shalimar
@Baud: Half the population of Missouri hate the right people. If he were up this year, with a weak challenger already set, he would survive. In 2024, after this has 2 years to marinate, I’m not sure he even makes it past a primary challenge.
Suzanne
@Shalimar: I doubt that the True Believers will ever back off, but it is definitely BWAHAHAHAHAAAAHAAAAAA material.
Sometimes your enemies make themselves ridiculous.
If we (Dems/liberals) are smart, we will meme this shit into the ground. Really withering memes.
Suzanne
I am sucking at linking Twitter this morning, but there is an amazing thread of Josh Hawley running. Try this. I enjoyed.
Shalimar
@Suzanne: The biggest meme-posters around are the Proud Boy/4-chan assholes Hawley ran from. We certainly should help, but they’re going to be the ones who take him down.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: Fetterman (or whoever writes his tweets) could do a workshop on that. He pantses the shit out of his quack opponent every damn day!
Mimi
@Shalimar: The footage could have been from Alex Holder’s documentary. Or the Trumps all believe if its not in tv it didn’t happen.
Cameron
Damn. What a sheltered life this old fart has lived. Only version of “Run Run Run” I know is this one:
https://youtu.be/j4_UHD5GR0o
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Oz does make it easy, but yes.
ETA: From what I’m seeing, Oz isn’t basing his campaign on hate. That’s probably doing more damage to him than Fetterman’s memes.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: Fetterman (his team, really) is good at this. Sometimes we can come off as humorless and overly earnest and scolding, and I think we should recognize that that is somewhat off-putting. I think his tone of low-grade contempt for his opponent is perfect for this time.
Not to mention his ludicrous opponent.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: Maybe Florida could borrow him for, I dunno, a dozen years or so? If LOML didn’t live here, I’d move back to Pennsylvania in a heartbeat (that’s not a knock on Florida, BTW – I’m actually trying to convince one of my sisters to move here.)
Baud
@Suzanne:
I’m offended. You should know better.
Kay
They went after Hawley because Hawey announced that he intended to object to the electoral vote count, the first senator to do so and necessary- they need one senator to object- so Hawley bears more responsibility than the others.
p.a.
Looked up some of the tRump vid on utube. Interestingly, none of the top clips were from Fux ‘News’. Insert shocked icon not here.
Geminid
@Kay: Hawley endorsed Rep. Vicky Hartzler in the Missouri Senate race. She has centered culture war issues as a Congresswoman and Senate candidate. The primary contest is looking like a three-person race now, with polls showing Hartzler, Missouri Attorney General Schmitt and disgraced ex-Governor Greitens bunched together and separated from the 4th and 5th place candidates. Now trump has made an anti-endorsement, telling Missouri Republicans to disregard Hartzler.
Republican officeholders and pundits like Hew Hewitt keep trying to warn trump off of Greitens, arguing that he is the only Republican who could lose the seat. Trump is very short term in outlook though, and could still endorse Greitens if it looks like he’ll win the primary and give trump a W.
Baud
Re: Oz. While I’m no fan of Bernie, I’m perplexed at Oz’s decision to try to link Fetterman and Bernie. I would have have thought very few PA voters would be moved by that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Shalimar: I can speak to the tenor of my people: Hate triumphs over all else. If they could vote for trump in 2020, they will have no problem voting for Hawley in ’24. Trust me
The Thin Black Duke
Maybe it’s me, but I’m disturbed by the revisionist history the Republicans are shoving down our throats. Specifically, I hated the false equivalency Liz Cheney was trying to sell by bringing up Al Gore deciding not to challenge the results of the 2000 election. That travesty was a textbook example of a stolen election and Cheney using the hearings to change the narrative of that crime was fucking disgusting.
Kay
I was disappointed by the response of the Secret Service. I don’t really understand “screaming” and what sounds like breaking down in response to exactly the sort of situation they’re trained for.
I don’t know what happened to them as an organization but someone better find out fast. It’s bad enough they seem to be corrupt and radicalized politically but they also managed to get trapped in a room by a bunch of crazed Trump supporters?
Cameron
@Baud: That’s nuts. Outside of his supporters, I doubt anybody in PA even knows who Bernie is. Lizard of Oz is looking to get trashed this fall.
Geminid
@Baud: Oz is trying to exploit negative partisanship. A lot of Senate candidates like Oz, Vance, Johnson, and Budd (NC) will be running against Schumer, Sanders and Warren, or actually a cartoon version of them.
Dave P
Brave Josh Hawley ran away
Bravely ran away, away
When MAGA reared its ugly head
He bravely turned his tail and fled
Yes, brave Josh Hawley turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Swiftly taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat.
Bravest of the brave, Josh Hawley!
Baud
@Geminid:
If the aim is negative partisanship, why wouldn’t they focus on Biden? Schumer and Warren are even more obscure than Bernie.
Baud
@Kay:
Yes, their reputation has taken a nose dive. Something is very wrong with them.
Get them out of DHS.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Kay:
It reminds me of all the people who say they’re being investigated/sued/audited because they’re such good christians and then they turn out to be the biggest sinners.
Baud
@The Thin Black Duke:
I remember that pompous witness doing that. Did Cheney do it too?
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Good point. I’d forgotten Hawley was the first.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I was encouraged to read somewhere yesterday that DHS told the Secret Service to stand down on their internal investigation into the disappeared texts because DHS will handle it and that they’d classified it as a criminal investigation. Sounds like a good opportunity to burn that agency down and start over. Poor Biden admin. They have to reinvent every agency Trump corrupted, which is all of them.
Shalimar
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t doubt that hate will be the primary motivation in the Republican primary. I just don’t think Hawley will be able to hate as effectively as whoever challenges him. The next 2 years are going to be merciless in portraying him as an Ivy League poser.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: Fetterman makes campaigning entertaining to watch
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: Oh yeah. Cheney managed to mention both St. Ronnie and Maggie Thatcher in the same sentence.
Tony G
@Shalimar: I wish that that were true, but I doubt it. His base is Trump’s base, and Trump’s base chose to make a hero out of an obese, pampered little man, a man who never showed the smallest amount of honesty and courage in his life, a lifelong coward, grifter and failure. If anything, Hawley’s display of cowardice will increase his support. These twisted people are in positions of power because they are supported by equally twisted people.
Kay
@Baud:
If I understood it there were six police holding off some Trumpists very near and this led them to …call their families and say goodbye? If the Trumpists were armed with guns wouldn’t the six police have been dead by then?
“We might have to use deadly force”. No shit. That’s what you’re there for.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Yeah, my reaction to that Bernie stuff was “Is that all you have?” It reminded me of the gratuitous jab Romney took at Jimmy Carter
Baud
@The Thin Black Duke:
Yeah, that was something. This hearing, it seemed to be directed at Trump supporters who may be tired of being duped. She had that thing at the end where she said Trump exploited their love of country. Maybe a last ditch effort to save her seat.
Baud
@Kay:
Perhaps they realized there were no unarmed black teenagers in the mob, which raised all kinds of moral issues.
Too early for cynicism?
Geminid
@Baud: They’ll certainly be focused on Biden also. But he’s harder to depict as a lefty, and the big scary scenario that Republicans will raise is a Senate run by the leftist Sanders and Warren rubberstamping laws passed by the Squad-dominated House. That’s bullshit of course, but the Republicans have so little positive appeal of their own that negative partisanship is one of the only dynamics they have going for them.
Schumer might not seem at all radical to us but he does sound like the New Yawkah he is. And he also sounds Jewish, and while open anti-semitism is frowned upon these days that strain of prejudice still runs deep in some people.
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s the case. Cheney is playing the long game and positioning herself for a 2028 presidential run. Cheney figures that too many Americans really believe in the myth of the “moderate” Republican, and this country will be ready to vote her party back into power after the Democrats clean up the mess. Again.
Baud
@Geminid:
I don’t know if that will work for them, but I do wish that worked for us. The Republican caucus has so many awful people, it’s reason enough to crawl over broken glass to keep the Dems in the majority.
Tony G
@Tony G: I will always remember, a half-century later, when I was a teenager and one of my older distant relatives chose to tell me about his opinion of Nixon. “Nixon is a liar and a crook! But I support him because he keeps the n*gg*rs down.” These people have always been here. Trump just gave them a louder voice.
OzarkHillbilly
@Shalimar: Hawley is an expert at it. There may be somebody who is even more of a virtuoso at it than he, but as of right now I don’t see one (but I’m not looking for them either). Hawley is a snake,* capable of shedding his skin whenever the old one has lost it’s usefulness and Miserians have very short memories. How else is it that Grietens is the GOP front runner for Blunt’s seat?
In some ways we are worse than Texas, we have no shame.
*I know, this is an insult to snakes everywhere
Baud
@Tony G:
It also took many years for the Dems to shed racists from the party. That didn’t happen instantaneously in 1964. What we’re seeing now is the aftereffects of white people realizing that the Democrats aren’t returning to their old ways.
p.a.
@Betty Cracker:
As Atrios points out, the DHS IG is a tRump appointee now investigating the SS IG who is also a tRump appointee. Insert shrug emoji here.
I suppose we have to hope his careerism is enough motivation that he actually does his job.
Kay
@Baud:
I’ve had my doubts since this – 2014- Obama:
The Fence and Plainclothes OfficersThe first breach that occurred came when a team of plainclothes Secret Service agents circulating the perimeter of the white House fence did not spot Gonzalez as he climbed over. That team is in place as an early warning intended to alert the rest of the Secret Service team.
Crash Boxes and Front DoorWhen any officer spots an intruder — which should have been the plainclothes team — agents should hit the red button in the “crash boxes” posted throughout the White House and grounds. That alarm would lock the door to the White House, but since the never went off, the doors were left unlocked.
Booth AgentThe plainsclothes agent failed to spot someone climbing the fence, there is an officer stationed in a guard booth on the North Lawn, The Washington Post reported.
Guard at the Front DeskThe final breach came when Gonzalez ran past the guard inside the North Portico door, through the entrance hallway, down a hall past the staircase that would lead him directly to the First Family’s private residence and into the East Room. It was only there, in the room used for formal state dinners and national security announcements, where Gonzalez was finally taken and physically tackled by an off-duty agent who was leaving for the day, the newspaper reported today.
There’s also an attack dog but they didn’t release the dog because they were afraid it would bite agents.
MagdaInBlack
@The Thin Black Duke: Thank You! I’ve been saying she’s going to run ever since the beginning of these hearings.
Andrew Abshier
It’s truly difficult to make Brave, Brave Sir Marco look like a profile in courage, but Hawley succeeded.
BBSM invented the genre of Senators bravely running away: https://twitter.com/MiamiNewTimes/status/834826409117757440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E834826409117757440%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bustle.com%2Fp%2Fmarco-rubio-keeps-running-away-from-angry-protesters-40272
Betty Cracker
@p.a.: Didn’t know that, ugh! Hopefully the publicity surrounding the case — and the critical nature of the Secret Service’s remit — will discourage shenanigans.
Baud
@Kay:
Major’s dad?
EarthWindFire
@The Thin Black Duke: Agreed. What else does she have to do at this point? She’s burned every other bridge. Unfortunately my ancedata tells me she isn’t wrong. Lots of “President Hogan sounds good” right now. No thought that having tons of Democrats in MD might have constrained his crazy.
Baud
@EarthWindFire:
Who’s talking about Hogan? Like 10 people know who he is.
MagdaInBlack
@EarthWindFire: She has not burned all her bridges. Ms Cheney is hooked up. I’m not worried about her career failing. I’m worried about it’d progression.
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
There are too many Republicans to worry about to spend time worrying about them.
EarthWindFire
@Baud: They apparently are all FB friends with me.
lowtechcyclist
Cheney can try all she wants to set herself up for 2028, but the GOP is a Trumpist party and will be even more of one as time passes. Not Trumpist in the sense of allegiance to Trump himself as to the freedom he gave them to be openly hateful and despicable towards everyone different from them.
Cheney would have to completely disown her work on the January 6th committee and repudiate the very notion of working with Democrats on anything in order for her to be anything less than an apostate in her own party.
Baud
@EarthWindFire:
I’m sorry. Luckily, Hogan doesn’t stand a chance in the GOP primary.
Geminid
@Baud: You’d think negative partisanship would work for Democrats since the Republican version is based on an exagerated, cartoon-like picture of our party whereas we need not exagerate to brand the Republicans as a radical extreme party. But many of their candidates in battleground states and districts this year are in fact radical and extreme so the case can be made on an individual basis at least.
Betty Cracker
Unfortunately, the odds are we will have another Republican president someday. I wish it weren’t so, but it is. Wouldn’t it be preferable for it to be someone like Liz Cheney than Trump-humping garbage people like DeSantis, Hawley, Cotton, etc.?
Geminid
@Baud: Chris Christie’s gonna trample anyone else in the “reasonable-for-a-Republican” lane.
Baud
@Geminid:
Right. But it seems like we don’t push that idea that a vote for X is a vote for McConnell or Cruz.
And maybe that’s because it doesn’t work. Biden won despite them trying to tie him to the Dem left. Oz seems to be flailing. I don’t know.
OzarkHillbilly
UPS had this to say: “We appreciate the concern for our employee and can report that he is fine. UPS drivers are trained to work outdoors and for the effects of hot weather.”
Translation: “No worries Our drivers are disposable. A new one has already taken the place of that older and obsolete model.”
(that video is more than a bit scary).
EarthWindFire
@Geminid: I think a lot of Democrat-leaning voters have an interest in seeing “good” Republicans. Witness my 10 FB friends (thanks Baud) talking up President Hogan. All nominally Dem voters but they want to believe there’s going to be a bipartisan system “the way it used to be”. It’s the Dem form of 50s nostalgia IMO.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I think Republican animus towards Liz Cheney will be so deep and durable that she will never win the Republican nomination. Kinzinger, on the other hand might have a future. He’s been less visible than Cheney in this process, is younger and a military veteran, and he’s a man.
Fester Addams
Presumably it’s the way they worked when he was employed as a talking prop on that TV show. He sits around and says shit, then someone competent edits it into useable product.
Geminid
@Baud: Oz is flailing, basically because he is in fact a weak candidate. We can thank a certain stable genius for Oz’s nomination, as well as for those of Vance and Walker.
Baud
@EarthWindFire:
I think there’s a large contingent of Dems who can’t accept being forced to vote by basic morality for Dems. They really want to be the center that the two parties fight over.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: I agree, though I’m pretty sure Kinzinger wouldn’t be able to overcome the perception of “betrayal” either. My point is any Republican would suck, but it makes sense to root for those who have displayed at least a rudimentary respect for democracy.
Dorothy A. Winsor
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Kay:
Boosing until 5 AM, they were hung over and didn’t react to the first sound of rifle fire 7 hours later.
In a 1950 assassination attempt on Truman, assassins got past two guard houses within steps from Truman. (photo)
lowtechcyclist
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes, this is exactly the sort of thing the Dems could do more of. The best weapon is ridicule.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Geminid: Christie has a history of closing lanes to opponents.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Baud:
Hogan’s no hero, that for sure
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: That’s how I feel.
zhena gogolia
@Fester Addams: That is just what I thought — this was SOP for The Apprentice.
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Baud:
I had no idea Gerald McRaney was in the secret service
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I get your point. If the Republicans get thrashed the next three cycles the radicals may give the steering wheel back to the Chamber of Commerce wing, but they will have “reasonable Republicans” to nominate besides Cheney (Paul Ryan! Glenn Youngkin!). There is a particular animus that will attach to a female renegade like Cheney. A traitor to Patriarchy so to speak.
Kay
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
I did this thing in 2012 where they ask local people to drive when the President visits. It was Obama ’12 and I had done quite a bit of organizing for them so they asked me. You then meet the President and get your picture taken- it was fun. You drive one of those 9 passenger vans with press in it – in my case from the Toledo airport to Bowling Green State University, where he was having a rally. They closed I-80 on his route so they go fast and follow close – they don’t want gaps in the motorcade and the secret service agent in the van barks orders at you, which was a little nerve wracking.
Anyway, they give you this 20 minute lecture prior about how not to alarm the SS with your behavior, the implication being they will have to shoot you. So I was like “they’re a crack team of assassins” – buying the whole thing completely. It’s very disappointing to find out this is a bit of a myth.
cmorenc
@The Thin Black Duke:
That was exactly the point of using the Al Gore 2000 and Nixon 1960 as specimen examples – both Gore and Nixon had vastly stronger grounds to assert stolen election claims and provoke mass rebellion, yet both deliberately declined to do so for the good of the country. Unlike the selfish sociopathic turd Trump.
catclub
@Shalimar:
There has been zero success in mercilessly portraying Ted Cruz as a GOP Ivy league poser. Why do you think it will work this time?
catclub
@Geminid:
Unfortunately, when we tell exactly what is in the GOP plans, the voters say “That could not possibly be what they mean. I will vote for what I think they mean to me.”
David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Fester Addams:
it was worse than that.
Penn Jillette was a contestant on the game show and says it would take 2 1/2 hours to film Dump’s 7 minute segment. Dump wouldn’t watch the show as it was occurring so he would randomly pick someone to fire, then the producers would edit the contests to comport with his selection. It was as corrupt as a 1950 game show.
PAM Dirac
@Baud:
I think that’s true and I think there is a chunk that get a sense of superiority for being so bipartisany and there is also a chunk that need something to help them deny that their refusal to vote for a women or a Black is all about bias.
Speaking of Hogan, a question was asked yesterday about whether Hogan would endorse the whacko R nominee for MD governor. The answer is absolutely not. Hogan said Cox was a QAnon whack job and has no chance to win the election. But of course it is all the D’s fault for pointing out to R crazies that Cox was a QAnon whack job. No “sane, sensible” alternative for D voters this election.
gvg
@The Thin Black Duke: Al Gore did lose. I am sorry but that is the fact. Research into recounts did not find that he would have won. Not without some really way out most favorable cherry picking data sets. Mind you the margin always remained darned slim, like 500 votes for the state.
In addition their were state law deadlines that did not allow lawsuits forever for the presidency. Congressional seats are different, the Presidency is in the constitution so the state has to meet certain deadlines.
The Bush campaign did engage in some disgusting stuff to sway things. They probably didn’t need to but that is who they were. Also the SC was already showing corruption.
I think the myth Gore won came from the fact that the SC acted like guilty partisan hacks and that Bush jr turned out to be such a shitty President it added to the need to believe that election was stolen. Evidence is though that it wasn’t. It was just really really close. Factually hard to count.
cmorenc
@Tony G:
True that an overwhelming majority of those who voted for Trump or Hawley will refused to be moved or even consider any even glaringly obvious facts to not vote for them yet again. But it’s not necessary to persuade them – it’s enough to peel off even a high single digits % of them, coupled with persuading another 5-10% of slacker non-affiliated voters that the upcoming election is worth them turning out to prevent such an awful schmuck from winning the next election. That was how Claire McCaskill won a Missouri Senate race.
Ken
@Shalimar: In this case I will defer to experience — Trump’s staff had worked with him before, and may have known that writing the speech ahead of time would end up taking ten times as long as just filming him babbling and stitching together something semi-coherent.
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: Perhaps “worry” was a strong word. I have my eye on her and her plans.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@David 🌈☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: Ha! I see what you did there…good one
Steeplejack
I was hoping someone would put this on the Hawley scamper.
cmorenc
And in yet anothr huge surprise:
– Fox News website has its article about last night’s Jan 6th hearings way down (like 15th item way down), several notches below a story about how Hunter Biden’s story “doesn’t make sense”, and labeled the Jan 6 committee hearing story :
Jan. 6 Committee attempts to show Trump deliberately ignored calls from staff to deescalate riot
…”attempts” ?? as if the hearing was a fake partisan hack job attempt against Trump.
UncleEbeneezer
I LOVED the fact that they shared those horrible out-takes. Anything that makes Trump look like the weak, imbecile that he is, is good, imo. And I love the fact that the Committee was willing to twist the knife.
H.E.Wolf
I’m very late to the thread, but here’s the song “Run, Freedom, Run” from the Broadway production of “Urinetown”. Seems à propos for a piss-ant like Hawley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HtXnuXruXE
UncleEbeneezer
@Cameron: There’s also this.
Elizabelle
Always loved that song. Think it’s a perfect single.
Even attaching it (briefly) to the coward Josh Hawley cannot ruin it.
Citizen Alan
@gvg: To me, all bullshit about the the actual vote in Florida that led to the Bush v Gore opinion is insignificant when compared to the fact that George Bush’s brother was the governor of Florida and he oversaw the elimination of 80000 African American voters from the rolls because their names were similar to those of convicted felons.
gvg
@Baud: More likely they considered the possibility that shooting would start a worse riot that they could not control. That is the reason the capital police didn’t fire when they were so badly out numbered.
gvg
@EarthWindFire: She can’t run for President. Her party hates her. She will need to clean out a bunch of her party and build up a lot more allies within it before she will have enough backing to run. By that time someone else will. That said, I hope she can do that. I don’t trust her vision for a GOP party, but a “cleaned up” version that adhered to the Constitution including accepting losing elections and did something about blocking foreign money and influence would be a big improvement.
Ben Cisco
With apologies to Flavor Flav and the rest of Public Enemy:
It’s all I got on one cup of coffee.
Mike in Pasadena
@Kay: Well, I suppose sprinting is a masculine trait. Especially when it is in the interest of running from danger.
Old School
@Steeplejack:
The Late Show did. (At the 9:50 mark.)
lowtechcyclist
Palm Beach County’s ‘butterfly ballot’ clearly swindled Gore out of a few thousand votes. (The ‘butterfly effect’ of chaos theory really should have been renamed the ‘butterfly ballot effect’ after the 2000 election.)
In addition, we’ll never know how many votes were invalidated by people following the “vote on every page” instruction in Duval County (Jacksonville) despite the fact that the Presidential ballot went over to a second page, since their ballots were destroyed before there was any opportunity to determine this
ETA: And what Citizen Alan said.
Miss Bianca
@Kay:
Traditional American masculine values like running, not walking, away from the messes you’ve made? Do tell us more, Josh!
@Shalimar: From your mouth to God’s ear.
FastEdD
Run Run Run, great song. Jo Jo Gunne was a project of Jay Ferguson, the piano player, who went on to write theme music for movies and tv shows, like The Terminator, The Office, and NCIS Los Angeles. He has done well for himself.
ian
@Geminid:
Which is why I got so upset when McConnell accused him of poisoning the wells regarding senatorial relationships.
Paul in KY
@Shalimar: God, I hope you’re right! he’s a creepers creeper.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: I think that whenever he appears in public, there should be someone there singing the Monty Python bit about ‘Brave Sir Robin’, with coconuts clopping at all. God, that would be funny!
VOR
They should have put yellow crime scene tape around the entire White House and done a forensic audit on anything TFG even breathed on. You just know every rock turned over will have nasty creepy-crawlies underneath.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
so true
Paul in KY
@Kay: Plus they’re armed (I would hope) with automatic weapons, etc.
VOR
In 2000 the Florida Secretary of State, the person in charge of election administration, was the chair of the George W. Bush campaign in Florida. Seems like an obvious conflict of interest.
Paul in KY
@Dave P: Yes! At every public campaign appearance the POS makes, there should be someone there, dressed up as a minstrel, singing that song ala Monty Python & the Holy Grail.
topclimber
@gvg: As long as we are playing “what if:”
If Cheney manages to keep her Congressional seat it means she can win a Senate seat as well. Remember, with its population equal to that of Disney World on a busy day, both Congress and Senate are state-wide constituencies in Wyoming.
True, there are GOP incumbents in place. But if there is an opening and she can run for Senate she could actually win. Then she might enjoy being the Republicants version of Manchin.
topclimber
@Paul in KY: He clearly is the guy to run from Senate.
Paul in KY
@Baud: It’s never too early for cynicism! Or is that ‘baudism’?
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Agree, Betty. Pres. Liz Cheney (hard to believe I just typed that) would be oooooooooooohhhhhhhhh soooooo much better than any TFG Sucking Putin Dictating Fascist scum
That said, I just can’t see her getting the Repub nom. She’s somehow have to get a Dem nom.
Bill Arnold
No, Mr. Trump – you are supposed to be miserable.
Massively defeated, by over 7 million votes, and defeated in the electoral college. Loser. Liar. Perpetrator of the hugest fraud ever perpetrated on the citizens of the USA, the fraudulent con-man assertion that the election was stolen. The opposite, the theft of the election by Republicans, was very nearly true, but not for lack of Republican trying.
Paul in KY
@catclub: I think in Texas, Cruz benefits by being a Latino & getting votes from Latinos would would never vote for a WASP version of him. Just some 5 cent analysis here.
kindness
Yea but no. Liz Cheney is going to lose her Congressional election badly, in fact she’s going to lose her primary. She represents the 80’s-90’s conservatives. Republican’s beliefs and values are generated by their largest donors and at this moment in time the oligarchs running the Republican Party are a (neo)fascist loving bunch. Cheney won’t ever get the nod. The party has moved on from her point of view.
Geminid
@ian: I often catch news “on the hour” from network radio newscasts. When something important is happening in the Senate, they typically give McConnell and Shumer a 10-20 second soundbite. Both their accents stand out.
Schumer is actually pretty good in this format I think.
Geminid
@kindness: I thought Bush’s fiasco in Iraq undermined the credibility of the old Republican establishment. That made it easier for the tea party types to get the upper hand in the party.
Betty Cracker
@FastEdD: Good to know! He’s a talented guy.
Betty Cracker
@kindness: I agree, and it’s scary because with Republicans, at least during my lifetime, the next iteration is inevitably worse than the previous.
misterpuff
@FastEdD: Jay Ferguson also had a solo hit “Thunder Island”.
That song is a banger.
kindness
@Betty Cracker: The oligarchs mystify me. I’m a boomer. Back in the 60’s & 70’s stuff like Social Security, Medicare and even Welfare was supported by the right wing 1) so they could publicly act virtuous but really it was 2) a Hooverville of homeless and starving Americans made it more likely that the uber wealthy would be attacked and they wanted the population to be sedentary and stupid. It worked for them. Now I guess the oligarchs think their home security is significantly better because they are doing everything they can to generate a purge and they show no signs of seeing that. I just don’t get it.
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: Plus the 80,000 losers who voted for Nader! Grrrr!!! He was funded by the Repubs. A smart move on their part, in hindsight.
artem1s
@The Thin Black Duke:
Ditto. The more I see of her trying to Whitewash the history of the GOP, the more I’m disgusted. I’m glad she’s losing her carpetbagged seat. But I also suspect she’s using these hearings to imply that Dems, Garland and Biden are weak and ineffective at protecting the Democracy the GOP so clearly hates.
She’s clearly setting up a run for the WH – which is also disgusting. She won’t care if she’s not at the top of the ticket, she knows the country can be run from the VP seat – she saw Poppy and Darth do it in real time.
Geminid
@topclimber: Things look pretty tough for Cheney’s renomination. Another Impeacher, Tom Rice (SC-7) did not come close in his primary and he’d represented his district longer than Cheney’s represented Wyoming. South Carolina has no party registration so crossover voting is friction free there.
But I don’t count Cheney out because of her father. Darth Cheney has clout and is good at working behind the scenes.
artem1s
@Betty Cracker:
They have to reinvent every agency
TrumpW and the Cheney Regency corrupted, which is all of them.the corruption of the DHS did not start with Trump
BretH
When I was a motorcycle messenger in DC in the 80s I was splitting lanes slowly (riding between the two lanes going the same way) as we always did when I passed a motorcade without realizing it. The door to a Suburban opened and a Secret Service guard persuaded me to exit the area with a very short mean looking submachine gun.
A messenger friend who took to riding with a decapitated Barbie on her handlebars once had to cross Connecticut Ave only a motorcade was stuck in traffic (which made the agents more surly than usual I’m sure). She started across, was told to go back, looked right at the agent and said “either shoot me or eat me” and continued on her way.
Good times.
gvg
@lowtechcyclist: The butterfly ballot did cut gores lead but that was on Palm Beach and a democratic leaning area. It was an error not fraud and there was nothing that could legally be done about it except never do that again.
The Duval thing….never heard about it at the time but that area votes republican overall even though it has a significant black minority. Probably didn’t impact the results. Look there were multiple studies done the next few years. I only saw one that thought Gore won and I wasn’t convinced by it. The people who kept saying he won, weren’t the ones who went and did all kinds of careful boring research and counting that got done long after the fuss died down.
artem1s
@kindness:
She absolutely will get the nod. It will be as a running mate to some upward failing white guy like W. The GOP is going to put another woman on the ticket. And they won’t go with another Caribou Barbie. Liz will ready to make the same deal the Raygun made with Poppy Bush and she will run the country from the VP seat while the puppet in the WH boofs his way thru 8 years.
H-Bob
@cmorenc: In 1960, Nixon did not forego his claims for the good of the country. What happened was that on election night, California and another state were called for Kennedy, so contesting Illinois and Texas would not have changed the outcome. Several weeks later, recounts reversed those two states, so then challenges to the Illinois and Texas counts could have changed the election.
brantl
@Betty Cracker: Not really. Torture is monstrous, and she’s a monstrosity.
grubert
Randi Rhodes just made the same Bill OReilly reference in her radio show.
Either she reads BJ, or great minds think alike ;)