Key points the 1/6 Committee hearing brought out yesterday

Various sources are summarizing the hearings from yesterday. Much of this has been made public before, but the 1/6 committee did a splendid job of honestly telling the tale of what the ex-president did and what his intent was during a critical three hour period on 1/6.  

A summary of some of the key points could be helpful for context and memory.

• After all of T****’s lawsuits alleging a fraudulent election failed in the courts, he planned an a coup for 1/6 as another attempt to stay in power by simply usurping the election outcome. 
• Republicans in congress initially condemned T**** and his coup attempt, but later defended him and justified the coup attempt in the second impeachment. That is solid evidence of the Republican Party’s moral collapse. I call it moral rot. Prominent Republicans like Kevin McCarthy went from initial anger to sniveling obsequiousness justified by crackpot justifications that would convince no one except hyper-partisans. 
• T**** knowingly refused to call off the mob of traitors. Although he tried to hide, allowing no photos or other means of tracking his behavior during the critical three hours of violent insurrection, the evidence is rock solid that he knew he could have called it off. T**** intentionally and knowingly refused to call the mob off.
• The evidence presented yesterday made it undeniable that T**** intended to subvert the election. Instead of calling the mob off, he was calling Republican senators and asking them to delay certifying the vote. 
• During the coup attempt, T**** posted a couple of Tweets that he knowingly intended to further inflame the mob of traitors to get them to stop the vote certification. He specifically targeted Mike Pence and the mob responded to his incitement once they became aware of it.  
• The evidence presented yesterday made it undeniable that T**** supported the traitors on 1/6, seeing them as justifiably angry and justifiably attacking the capitol because of his lie that the election was stolen.
• Only after it became clear that his coup attempt was going to fail, the ex-president called it off, praising the traitors as people he loved and “patriots.”  T**** undeniably saw his violent coup attempt as justified and patriotic. Once law enforcement was mobilizing to shut the insurrection down, T**** reluctantly and half-heartedly asked the violent mob to leave.
• Republicans in congress refused to seriously investigate the 1/6 coup attempt by an independent commission. That created situation where there would be no serious congressional or Department of Justice[1] investigation. That would have left the evidence forever buried or dribbling out in a complex story that few average people would ever piece together on their own. Democrats wanted an independent commission, but Republicans rejected the idea. That Republican Party refusal left Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) the choice of setting up a bipartisan panel of House members or leaving T**** free to lie about 1/6 without a counter narrative available to the American people.

Sources:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3570067-five-takeaways-from-thursdays-jan-6-hearing/

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3570056-trump-accused-of-dereliction-of-duty-in-dramatic-jan-6-hearing/

https://apnews.com/article/capitol-siege-panel-hearing-3e3dc618ed8cee37147cf6a792c0c0fa

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/21/jan-6-hearing-trump-behavior/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/22/jan-6-hearing-revelations-trump-inaction/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/22/trump-election-is-over/

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/january-6-hearing-trump-actions/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62263279

Footnote: 

1. The evidence I am aware of so far indicates that the House 1/6 Committee investigation and the evidence it is publicly showing prodded the DoJ into maybe taking a more serious look at what happened than it had previously. Before the 1/6 Committee hearings started, it wasn't obvious to me that the DoJ was going to do anything about it. If there was a major DoJ investigation before the committee made T****’s coup attempt impossible to ignore, I am unaware of it.

A comment on incompetent, life-threatening Republican anti-abortion laws

The GOP is mindlessly hell-bent on inflicting major social engineering on American government, society and commerce. It is in a raging frenzy to do it to us. Simple, black and white thinking and policy choices dominate childish Republican thinking in a complex, nuanced adult world of shades of gray. 

That is not only grossly incompetent, it is evil because it predictably will kill some people. Fascist GOP abortion laws exemplify its brainless savagery. The Washington Post writes:

Hospitals and their lawyers are being forced to interpret statutory terms that don’t correspond to medical practice and language. These laws often demand a degree of certainty doctors can’t provide. Katie McHugh, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Indiana, tells me doctors must now tell patients that a given procedure is “what she would medically recommend,” but then inform the patient she can’t receive that treatment in her state. In other words, doctors in some states are becoming travel agents for abortion services.

In many states, the substantial risk to mental health (e.g., depression, suicidal ideation) might not “count” as a valid exception to abortion bans. And are the risks associated with traveling long distances for women determined to seek an abortion factored into the calculation? Definitive answers are nonexistent.

Most egregiously, McHugh adds, these laws do not envision chronic conditions. A pregnant woman at risk of liver failure, for example, may face debilitating conditions or even death down the road if she gives birth. But if state law requires imminent risk of death to perform the procedure, she may have to carry the pregnancy to term against her wishes and doctor’s advice. This is barbaric.

The blood of every pregnant woman who needlessly dies from Republican Party incompetence and stupidity is on the hands of all Republicans and their supporters. That includes all who vote for Republicans. They are ice-cold killers. 

Q: Is assigning blame to Republicans and supporters for needless (avoidable) deaths, and seeing them as “ice-cold killers”, reasonable and justifiable? Or, is it impossible to draft laws that more effectively deal with the ambiguities and complexities inherent in this matter, thereby reducing ambiguity and the attendant increased risk of death?

More evidence of Republican radical right anti-democratic authoritarianism and mendacity

Although we all knew it in our guts based on the evidence available at the time, more empirical evidence has come to light to buttress what our guts already knew. Good 'ole guts. Sometimes, they are right.[1] The New York Times writes:

New Findings Detail Trump Plan to Use Census for Partisan Gain

A new trove of memos and emails suggests that the plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census aimed to cause an undercount that would favor Republicans.

A new stash of documents obtained by Congress has confirmed that the Trump administration pushed to add a citizenship question to the census to help Republicans win elections, not to protect people’s voting rights, a House committee report concluded on Wednesday.

The documents provided the most definitive evidence yet that the Trump administration aimed to exclude noncitizens from the count to influence congressional apportionment that would benefit the Republican Party, the report concluded, and that senior officials used a false pretext to build a legal case for asking all residents of the United States whether they were American citizens.

Former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had said in congressional testimony that the government decided to add the question because it required more accurate data on citizenship to enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But the Supreme Court in June 2019 ruled that the rationale “appears to have been contrived,” and a week later the Trump administration abandoned its quest to ask about citizenship in the 2020 census.

“For years, the Trump administration delayed and obstructed the oversight committee’s investigation into the true reason for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, even after the Supreme Court ruled the administration’s efforts were illegal,” said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney of New York, chairwoman of the committee.  

“Today’s committee memo pulls back the curtain on this shameful conduct and shows clearly how the Trump administration secretly tried to manipulate the census for political gain while lying to the public and Congress about their goals,” she said.

Shameful conduct? That’s inexcusable wuss. 

If what Maloney said is true, how about calling it illegal because it is illegal? Why do Democrats not have the guts to call a liar a liar, a lawbreaker a lawbreaker, a criminal a criminal, or a traitor a traitor? WTF is their effing problem with speaking blunt truth? Do Dem elites really think shying away from and softening truth that is inconvenient for fascist Republican thugs and liars going to get some benefit for them or the country? If that is what they are thinking, if one assumes that they are thinking at all, they and their guts are just plain wrong.

Our guts are just fine, but Democratic Party leadership guts are broken.

Footnote: 

1. When it comes to divining the rhetoric and behavior from the always mendacious, fascist Republican Party elites, our guts are right about 97% of the time. Their denials and assertions of innocence are overwhelmingly lies, slanders and bullshit.

An exercise in psychology

I was gonna say “an exercise in futility,” and I know we’ve beaten this dead horse enough times to the point of rigor mortis, even petrification, but I gotta ask one more time…

Why do people still support Trump?

Take a walk on the wild side and put yourself in the mindset of a Trump supporter.  Explain that kind of "Trump loyalty" to me like I’m a five-year-old (a la Denzel Washington in “Philadelphia”).  Because I really don’t get it.  It’s foreign to me.

Thanks for posting and explaining it to me.

Republican climate change demagoguery

The New York Times writes:

Delay as the New Denial: The Latest Republican Tactic to Block Climate Action

But on Capitol Hill this week, Republicans were warning against rash action in response to the burning planet.

“I don’t want to be lectured about what we need to do to destroy our economy in the name of climate change,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

One Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, last week blocked what could have been the country’s most far-reaching American response to climate change. But lost in the recriminations and finger-pointing is the other side of the aisle: All 50 Republicans in the Senate have been as opposed to decisive action to confront planetary warming.

Few Republicans in Congress now outwardly dismiss the scientific evidence that human activities — the burning of oil, gas and coal — have produced gases that are dangerously heating the Earth.

But for many, denial of the cause of global temperature rise has been replaced by an insistence that the solution — replacing fossil fuels over time with wind, solar and other nonpolluting energy sources — will hurt the economy.

On the one hand, it is encouraging that America’s fascist, staunchly pro-pollution, pro-global warming Republican Party no longer outwardly dismisses the scientific evidence that human-generated pollution is causing the planet to burn up. That's a good thing. Progress has been made! Not long ago, they all denied that climate change was real and that humans had little or nothing to do with it. Some very powerful Republicans publicly claimed it was God’s will and humans should not and/or could not interfere with his plans.

But on the other hand, the fascists are hell-bent on not doing a damn thing about it. They will continue to successfully block all efforts to try. There is just too much damn money and power in not doing anything about it.

As usual, fascist Republican demagoguery relies on the same propaganda and lies tactics that got us into this mess. They ignore the cost of not doing anything, an intentional lie of omission. They claim trying to do anything about it will destroy the economy, a lie of commission.

As a reminder this is short blast of blithering nonsense the only thing that fascist Republican elites had to say about climate in the lying crackpot Rick Scott’s 11 point plan to wreck America:

The weather is always changing.[1] We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs.

That’s it. That is literally all the GOP has to say about it. That’s worse than pathetic. It’s evil.

For the pro-pollution party, there is honest seriousness about climate change. The seriousness is about blocking efforts to do anything about it. That would be hysterical. That is exactly what Scott, the rest of the GOP elites, wealthy pro-pollution Republican Party donors and their propagandists are saying to the American people. There is no subtlety about this. The GOP and big polluters are hell bent on turning Earth into literal hell as best they can because they are making a hell of a lot of money doing it. With that money comes serious power.

This is all about money and power for corrupt, callous fascist elites and nothing but money and power.

Footnote: 

1. Weather is not climate. Weather reflects climate. Fascist polluters put that statement in there to con people into a belief that even if it is real, climate change is no big deal. This is called propaganda. It is intended to deceive, distract and confuse the public.

The Republican Party’s anti-democracy cancer is spreading globally

The New York Times writes:

President Jair Bolsonaro elevated his vote-fraud claims from a matter of domestic politics to foreign policy, heightening international fears that he would dispute the coming election.

President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil called dozens of foreign diplomats to the presidential palace on Monday to tell them that he believed the country’s voting systems could be rigged, a potential preview of his strategy for an election that is 75 days away and that polls forecast he will lose in a landslide.

While Mr. Bolsonaro’s presentation was not new — he has repeated those claims for years — his audience was. He had invited officials from most of the embassies in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, elevating his claims from a matter of domestic politics to foreign policy.

Note that the fascist Republican Party’s democracy killing cancer seems to be of a single kind. Unlike over 100 different human cancers, the GOP’s cancer and close variants all have common pathologies. Prominent pathologies of radical right democracy killing cancer include:

• Attacks on, and subversion of, elections based on fabricated claims of voter and/or vote fraud
• Relentless demagoguery, including outrageous lies and slanders about political opposition 
• Tolerance of corruption
• Contempt and disregard for inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning
• Open attacks on the LGBQT community, immigrants, civil liberties and/or democracy, with praise for authoritarian leadership accompanying attacks on democracy 
• Alignment of politicians with wealthy and power elites in business and sometimes religion too

At least the Christian fundamentalists can claim authority from God to destroy democracy and impose his righteous tyranny. What’s the authority the laissez-faire capitalists reply on? Originalism, strict constructionism, deceit, division and opacity are the kinds of things they use to do their dirty work.