Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House January 6 Committee, said on ABC News yesterday that last January’s insurrection at the Capitol wasn’t just a spontaneous riot; it was a “coordinated effort… to undermine the election“:
THOMPSON: Well — well, that it appeared to be a coordinated effort on the part of a number of people to undermine the election of November, last November.
The reason I say that is, it could be people in the executive branch. It could be people in the Department of Defense, some state characters, some nonprofits, and some very wealthy individuals who wanted to try to finance this undermining of our democracy.
And what people saw on January 6 with their own eyes was not just something created at one moment. It was clearly, what we believe, based on the information we have been able to gather, a coordinated activity on the part of a lot of people [Rep. Bennie Thompson, interview with George Stephanopoulus, transcript, ABC: This Week, 2022.01.02].
Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney is also on the January 6 Committee and reviewing the thousands of pages of documents that have come to her and Thompson and their truth-seeking colleagues. She says the evidence shows Donald Trump watched the violence against Congress on TV and waited to see if it would work in his favor:
The committee has firsthand testimony now that he was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office watching the attack on television as the assault on the Capitol occurred.
We know, as you know well, that the briefing room at the White House is just a mere few steps from the Oval Office. The president could have at any moment, walked those very few steps into the briefing room, gone on live television, and told his supporters who were assaulting the Capitol to stop.
He could have told them to stand down. He could have told them to go home — and he failed to do so. It’s hard to imagine a more significant and more serious dereliction of duty than that.
…We know as he was sitting there in the dining room next to the Oval Office, members of his staff were pleading with him to go on television, to tell people to stop. We know Leader McCarthy was pleading with him to do that.
We know members of his family, we know his daughter. We have firsthand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence.
Any man who would not do so, any man who would provoke a violent assault on the Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes, any man who would watch television as police officers were being beaten, as his supporters were invading the Capitol of the United States, is clearly unfit for future office, clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again [Rep. Liz Cheney, transcript, ABC: This Week, 2022.01.02].
Cheney says she agrees with Hillary Clinton that allowing Trump to run again and win the Presidency [Clinton’s words] “could be the end of our democracy.” Cheney lays out the stark choice her party faces: defend the Constitution and real conservatism or bow to the cult of Trump:
But the Republican Party has to make a choice. We can either be loyal to our Constitution or loyal to Donald Trump, but we cannot be both. And the nation needs a Republican Party that is based on substance and values and principles, and — and we’ve got to get back to that if we want to get this nation back on track. But, fundamentally, at the end of the day, we can’t be a party that’s based on lies. We’ve got to be based on a foundation of truth and fidelity to the rule of law. And, in my view, the most conservative of conservative principles is fidelity to the Constitution [Cheney, 2022.01.02].
The Constitution or Trump: which do you choose, Republicans?
The republican party will do exactly what Sarah Isgur did yesterday on the this week powerpanel. She pulled the tried and true both siderist card and said Hillary did the same in ‘16. Most republicans have no soul. They have chosen to hang their spines at trump house entryway.
“This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy—packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it.”
– Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die
There is a strong chance that if (likely when) the fascists win the senate, house, and presidency that the US will become a rightwing dictatorship.
Begin planning your escape.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/03/us-rightwing-dictatorship-2030-trump-canada
Because the GOP/MAGA/Right authoritarianism continues to be profoundly pro-business, it is tough to tell which is the useful idiot in this relationship. Which is the tail and which is the dog. Reversing Citizens United and defining bribery is far more strict terms for those who serve elected office would be great steps in undermining the treasure chests and megaphones of this authoritarianism.
The US Democracy is not working; the only solution left is a true expression of democracy and power of the people: national strikes and the rise of a new, uncorrupted party.
What Liz Cheney said is correct: it’s Trump or the Constitution. Many of us saw this truth back in 2015. But the Republican Party was an embryonic neo-fascist party before Trump kicked it into overdrive. It was just unwilling to face up to it. What’s really telling is that the people engaging in the violence in the Capitol Building were not the lumpen proletariat dipsy doodles we all expected. They were business people, mostly mainstream Republicans from blue or purple areas of the country. This goes along with what happened in Nazi Germany–Nazi violence was mostly done in areas where the center-left held power, not in areas the Nazis held power. These are people who accept democracy only if their party gets the most votes. If the other party wins, it’s automatically “election fraud.” Republicans do not accept real democracy.
And the SD delegation’s role in all this? SILENCE and capitulation. Tell me that Thune, Rounds and Opie grew up in a SD that condoned crotch grabbing, conning your neighbors, blackmail, inciting riots… These were NOT the values I was taught, yet these individuals crawl under their desk and wait for the storm to pass. The WY representative has a bigger set of cajones than all 3 put together. Disgusting, to say the least!
Young Ms. Cheney is wise beyond her years and Mr. Trump is insaner than most.
Do you think Cheney will switch to Democrat in 2023?
You’re ignoring important details:
http://plainstribune.com/pdf/trumpwoninalandslide.html
I wrote this for Bruce Whalen’s campaign.
Anyone who believes Liz Cheney will switch parties is delusional. While it’s unlikely she will even bother with the ridiculous Iowa Caucuses the conventional wisdom is that she would do very well in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries and even on Super Tuesday giving Mike Pence real competition.
John Dale, your fraud lies have been asked and answered. Reposting the same disproven lies does not make them new or true. this is not a game of whack-a-mole.
Cheney is a Republican – VERY Republican. She stands for the issues and values of conservatives. The fact that she does not choose to participate in the anti-democratic lie of the Trump/MAGA crowd does not make her any less a Republican (no matter how Wyoming leadership votes on that matter). In fact, the nature of her attacks and you asking that question again only serves to focus on the bigger question of how does the GOP define itself — on what issues does it apply its litmus test. Unfortunately none of those issues are policy issues — the GOP has devolved into authoritarian loyalists waging a theocratic culture war to keep a nation divided. Liz Chaney may be the last Republican left at all concerned with governance.
It doesn’t take balls to be a politician or to stand up to bullies like Trump; it takes a backbone, nerves of steel, an unwavering defense of the rule of law, and human decency.
Well…read “Peril” by Woodward and Costas. I believe Liz Chaney will be the Vice Presidential candidate on A Republican ticket (there may be two or three) representing the Bush wing of the existing Party.
Bruce Whalen cracks me up man, funny guy, not to be taken as serious.
I may not agree with Ms. Cheney’s politics but I surely admire her backbone. And though I despise Republican women in general I can see that she is fearless and determined which are qualities that redeem her in my eyes. She also understands that the saving of our nation goes way beyond the toxic personalities and short term goals.
Well everyone, you have to feel sorry for real Republicans like Cheney, you can’t get more Republican than her. It’s just that they’ve let in the nutcases over the years and they have come home to roost. It’s so funny they thought they needed them and could control them. The Republicans threw them out in the early 60s and developed quite an intellectual side that has been thrown into the wind. The trumpies stand for nothing except pleasing trump, they have no agenda, nothing. Sad.
WillyNilly, I see your point, but has Cheney really done anything that admirable? Bottom line is that she has said a man who acted like a criminal while President ought to be considered disqualified for public office (especially the presidency); she also upheld the results of a fair election. That the rest of the GOP are so low, does not raise her up — only in comparison, and that’s damnation with faint praise. Certainly her GOP peers have shown unprecedented weakness in their go-along-to-get-along cowardice which paints any basic decency as supremely admirable. I also believe holding her up allows the nation to release the well-earned contempt for the deplorable behavior of her party.
O, unfortunately, for today’s Trumpists it may well indeed be “a game of whack-a-mole”:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161026-how-liars-create-the-illusion-of-truth
This principle has been firmly established as a well known and rather effective means of promoting propaganda for the purpose of getting money and power from susceptible individuals. It is a basic tool for leadership in today’s pro-Trump faction of the Republican party. The real question we face is whether those who contiunually repeat such lies are intentionally implementing Goebbel tactics or are unwitting victims of those same tactics.
Lt. Col. Adam Kinzer(R) has also spoken out against trump and the rest of the traitors. Representative Cheney is just higher ranking on the committee. Both have shown backbone which is something sorely lacking with our own Little Dirty Johnson and his cohorts, two balls in the same sack, EB5 Rounds and Stretch Thune. Cheney and Kinzer believe in the Constitution while the rest of these republican knuckleheads, simply don’t.
Lies, lies and Lies …
– Here are the Top Ten lies that are attributed to Democrats, by the New York Post, which is a lie in itself and often quoted because MAGA’s think it’s the New York Times.
* It’s NYTimes and WaPost, MAGA’S. The pretenders (NYPost and Washington Times) are published just for you and those who root for the Knicks, Jets, and Cowboys.
https://nypost.com/2021/06/12/my-top-10-media-lies-goodwin/
Democracy here on our honey-drenched continent shall only perish from the good Earth if good people do nothing. I hate to say it because I love staying home but we have to do the work we know is the only thing that actually works. Write letters to elected officials, place phone calls, nag, insist, persuade, cajole, demand, congregate.
Ardent voting is passed on. The earlier kids participate, the better. Encourage your little future voter to get involved young. Nudge them to draft a letter to the governor imploring their right to learn history be returned to their classroom. Even pompous, uppity governors can’t dispute how pupils love to hear stories and act out history lessons. Fondly remembered school days should be full of history they can feel connected to via the land they’re standing on, which game changers such as Sitting Bull and Rain In The Face walked upon before them. Kids won’t forget (which we must promise to never again allow) the sneaky ways governments oppress and subjugate thanks to their historical studies. No better way to love and protect your home than to appreciate it’s history. How empowering to boot.
Come warmer weather, head to the town square or plaza and utilize what these open air grounds are for: the democratic living body. Vax up and carry a hanky like Gramps so we can congregate solely for the survival of this thing The Iroquois League and the Forefathers conceived so many scores ago. I guess I’m not sure what we’ll do in the square. Nominate candidates? Wear togas? Give the grid a collective break for a spell and resist the criminal poisoning of the water?
Assembling also ensures the men and women who depend on our vote get a visceral grasp of the power We The People wield. A little bit of fear is known to influence people to work hard and do right by their constituents.
Democracy is the loving legacy that, if intentionally passed on, will long endure. The conscience can only rest assured when our posterity is guaranteed to inherit clean water and Democracy.
“I’m not saying we all ought to riot. But I think we all ought to look as if we could.” Orson Wells
It was coordinated .. by Nancy Pelosi and corrupt elements of the FBI, but only if you believe the evidence.
Come on, John Dale, that’s a flat lie, with no substantiation. Democrats had no motive tio disrupt the certification of the Electoral College vote and every motive to make sure it happened. People who win elections don’t need to stage coups; they just need to wait to be sworn in under the Constitution.
Hey. Elections get stolen.
But when crimes occur, though, you shouldn’t blame the victim.
80 million Americans had their votes obviated by massive and wide spread verifiable fraud. The evidence is legion, and it will take more than hand waiving to explain it (the truth probably lies somewhere between secret society operation, declining church roles, and pseudo Martial Law).
I’m amused at how many of South Dakota’s hard left love Cheney as a staunch and capable leader. :D
Regarding the election theft and our article, it would be better if you’d address things point by point. Start by explaining the picture included with the article, taken in Philly as votes were being counted, after Republican poll watchers were hoodwinked out of the room (and not let back in). There are signed affidavits detailing physical violence used to usher people out of the counting facilities.
Here is the socio-political mechanism used to send light skinned America-first patriots awry (setup .. and knocked down .. like a bowlin’ pin).
https://intelnews.org/2021/12/24/01-3126/
With enough time and the FBI’s resources, I could manufacture a Black Nationalist movement harboring open disgust for people with light skin that would attack the capitol.
It’s pretty easy to infiltrate and compromise people in a Weimar style pre-economy.
That’s how it’s designed .. sad we can’t figure out a better way without a genocide every century or so.
If John Thune is ready to bail from the Senate Trumpism is why. The Council for National Policy was created by the extreme white wing of the Republican Party. Mike Pence is a member of the CNP as is Ohio Representative Jim Jordan (NAZI-OH) so was the late Foster Friess who gave $500,000 to a gaggle of religionist organizations in South Dakota just before he croaked. Robert Mercer, the blow-it-all-up Cambridge Analytica guy with billions stashed in South Dakota and ties to Faceberg and Maria Butina is a major donor to CNP.
The Speaker of the House doesn’t need to be an incumbent member of Congress so if the Republicans regain the House of Representatives they could elect Trump as Speaker then assassinate POTUS Biden and VPOTUS Harris and Trump would become Chief Executive. But unless the whole Trump crime fam-damily abdicates to Saudi Arabia or a Black Sea resort Attorney General Merrick Garland is going to make their lives Hell on Earth.
Elections do get stolen.
The Supreme Court of the United States caused 9/11.
Al Gore would have retained Bill Clinton’s security apparatus as the intelligence community was connecting the dots Mossad and IDF were leaving ahead of the event. Angel would not have been in the air that day if the plot had been uncovered. As we circle back to the events of 11 September, 2001 it’s important to remember that had SCOTUS actually heard Bush v. Gore and ruled for Al Gore rather than upholding Jeb’s secretary of state (massive election fraud in Ohio notwithstanding) the entire head-lopping W performed on the chain of command would have been avoided. And, when you’re appointed POTUS by your brother(s) or your father, you lop all the heads of those with whom you do not agree when you come to office because you’re focused on deposing Saddam, the winner of the first Gulf War.
John Dale, with enough time and resources, I could get monkeys to fly out of your butt. But why would I want to do that when (a) I have no desire to do so and (b) I could achieve far more useful and desirable things with such time and resources if I had them?
Your wild assertion reads like saying, “Yeah, the guys running the Weimar Republican wanted to destroy the Weimar Republic so they could all be replaced by the Nazis.” Give it a rest: there is no logical outcome in which Democrats see a neater path to consolidating power through staging a white racist terrorist attack on the Capitol than through peacefully counting the votes and inaugurating President Joe Biden.
Stop projecting: white racist Trumpists tried to stage a coup, destroy the Constitution, kill Mike Pence, and keep Trump as the illegitimate President of the United States.
John Dale: asked and answered. There was not wide-spread election fraud. Stop repeating the big lie. Seriously, even Facebook would band you after this many infractions.
The only votes being “stolen” are by the methodical disenfranchising of black/brown/poor voters by the GOP.
We are living, The Fourth Turning. That book, along with the tome, Generations: The History of America’s Future, by Straus and Howe set the rhythm of generations passing and ascending.
— Also consider these two essays.
“The next US civil war is already here – we just refuse to see it”.
“Nobody wants what’s coming, so nobody wants to see what’s coming.
On the eve of the first civil war, the most intelligent, the most informed, the most dedicated people in the United States could not see it coming. Even when Confederate soldiers began their bombardment of Fort Sumter, nobody believed that conflict was inevitable. The north was so unprepared for the war they had no weapons.
In Washington, in the winter of 1861, Henry Adams, the grandson of John Quincy Adams, declared that “not one man in America wanted the civil war or expected or intended it”.”
“The United States today is, once again, headed for civil war, and, once again, it cannot bear to face it. The political problems are both structural and immediate, the crisis both longstanding and accelerating. ”
“The consequences of the breakdown of the American system is only now beginning to be felt. January 6 wasn’t a wake-up call; it was a rallying cry. ”
“Two things are happening at the same time. Most of the American right have abandoned faith in government as such. Their politics is, increasingly, the politics of the gun. The American left is slower on the uptake, but they are starting to figure out that the system which they give the name of democracy is less deserving of the name every year. An incipient illegitimacy crisis is under way, whoever is elected in 2022, or in 2024.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/04/next-us-civil-war-already-here-we-refuse-to-see-it
“The battle that will define America in 2022 began in 1865”.
“The wildly unhinged (and modern-day redemptionist) attempts to overturn a federal election and to minimize the ongoing threats to our democracy for that purpose are not all of who we are.
The ongoing battle between reconstructionists and redemptionists will shape American politics in 2022 and beyond. Whether they are the backdrop to the anniversary of January 6, the challenges confronting the Biden-Harris administration or the GOP’s anticipated success in the midterm elections, these competing worldviews continue, for better and worse, to forge our national identity. But they do not predetermine our destiny unless we let them.”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/04/opinions/january-6-conflict-started-in-1865-joseph/index.html
—
The model for the trumpians is illiberal democracy via one party rule such as is emerging in Hungary, as it exists in Russia. See, “One-party rule is now the credo of Trump and his followers” by Llyold Greene in the Jan 4 Guardian. In the same edition also note, “The risk of a coup in the next US election is greater now than it ever was under Trump” by Laurence H Tribe.
John Dale, go back to bed; don’t ruin everyone else’s New Year with more of your BS. (somewhere an asylum is missing an inmate)…
Johnny Whopper was incognito for quite awhile. I hoped he was getting deprogrammed from drumpf’s cult of liars. Apparently he was firmly ensconced in Q-Anon’s school for indoctrinating mentally impaired magats in conspiracy theory 101. I cannot prove this, but, it appears patently obvious JD has totally lost all familiarity with reality. Seek mental health and come back to DFP and be mentored in truth and reality, stud.
For your consideration.
https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/01/04/data-nearly-half-of-america-believes-fbi-acts-as-joe-bidens-personal-gestapo/
Blow it all to own the libs.
Honestly? Convening a constitutional convention might be the best way to avert the civil war the oligarchs are goading the extreme white wing of the Republican Party towards.
https://apnorc.org/projects/a-year-later-who-is-to-blame-for-the-attack-on-the-capitol/
“This Must Be Your First” — written and published a month BEFORE the coup on Jan 6, 2001.
“But in English, only one widely understood word captures what Donald Trump is trying to do, even though his acts do not meet its technical definition. Trump is attempting to stage some kind of coup, one that is embedded in a broader and ongoing power grab.
And if that’s hard to recognize, this might be your first.”
“What makes this moment deeply alarming—and makes Republicans’ overwhelming silence and tacit approval deeply dangerous, rather than merely an attempt to run out the clock on the president’s clownish behavior—is that Trump’s attempt to steal this election builds on a process that has already entrenched minority rule around the country.”
“What starts as farce may end as tragedy, a lesson that pundits should already have learned from their sneering dismissal of Trump when he first announced his presidential candidacy.”
“But ignoring a near catastrophe that was averted by the buffoonish, half-hearted efforts of its would-be perpetrator invites a real catastrophe brought on by someone more competent and ambitious.”
“It’s not enough to count on our institutions to resist such onslaughts. Our institutions do not operate via magic. They do not gain their power from names, buildings, desks, or even rules. Institutions rely on people collectively agreeing to act in a certain way. Human laws do not simply exert their power like the inexorable pull of gravity. Once people decide that the rules are different, the rules are different. The rules for electoral legitimacy have been under sustained assault, and they’re changing right before our eyes.
We’re being tested, and we’re failing. The next attempt to steal an election may involve a closer election and smarter lawsuits.”
“Alarmism is problematic when it’s sensationalist. Alarmism is essential when conditions make it appropriate.”
Do not confuse luck with strength.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/trumps-farcical-inept-and-deadly-serious-coup-attempt/617309/
Our nation’s founders were astute students of western world history and applied that history when forming our imperfect founding documents and institutions. Those founders clearly knew they lacked all the answers as to how people could, would govern themselves.
“From John Adams. “Remember,” he wrote in December 1814, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.””
The trumpian rightwingnuts set our nation on a course of committing suicide. Congress, especially the senate, and the federal courts are accessories before the fact to our nation’s unrolling national suicide.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/civil-war-in-the-united-states-is-far-more-likely-than-you-think-in-fact-it-may-have-already-begun-11641418149?mod=home-page
Brass boobs for wyo and mouse balls for S.D. Larry mo and curly why did they think it was good to be no shows at the time of silence at our capital they need to be held to a higher standard support the constitution or trump you will be called out when you return home
Two more takes on the coup: an article and embedded video with Kearns Goodwin and Synder.
First coups are rarely successful . . . .
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/08/politics/how-to-save-us-democracy-what-matters/index.html
I strongly recommend Synder’s concise books.
As the nation focused its attention on the one-year anniversary of the attack on the US Capitol, senator Mike Rounds joined ABC’s This Week to dismiss the falsehoods that Mr. Trump and his loyalists within the GOP continue to spread about his defeat. – The Independent