…how can I put this? [DOT 11/2/21]

…I know I said this round of impeachment stuff might make me lose what little sanity remains to me…& I know in many ways there’s nothing I’m likely to say about it that will come as news to any of you about it…but fair warning…there may be venting ahead

Captured in fragments on cellphone videos and security cameras during the failed insurrection on Jan. 6, these sounds and images are more than a month old now. Many of them had been uploaded and broadcast and retweeted millions of times before House impeachment managers presented them in a 13-minute video compilation Tuesday at the beginning of former president Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial.

By modern standards, the footage is ancient.
[…]
What is it about the Jan. 6 footage that defies the thermodynamic law of the Internet age, that makes it grow more compelling with time?

I suspect it’s because not until Tuesday’s presentation — a simply produced, chronological sequence of stomach-churning sights and sounds — did anyone have a chance to process what the clips showed. Before the video, the footage had existed merely as a jumble of disaggregated clips, dumped onto social media after the attack, then looped endlessly on cable news and phone screens.
[…]
Here was President Trump at his rally near the White House, lighting the fuse for the riot with a lie-filled speech about election theft and taking back the country, promising to march with the mob to the Capitol.

Here was Vice President Pence entering the Senate chamber a couple of miles away at almost the same time, nodding to the lawmakers preparing to certify the election results.

And here was the mob: pounding on doors, breaking through windows. Here was a police officer crushed in a doorway, blood pouring down his face. Here was another officer, Eugene Goodman, bravely making himself into a decoy to lure the rioters away from their targets. And now the gunfire — the moment where an officer shot one of Trump’s true believers, Ashli Babbitt, as she tried to vault through a barricaded window to enter the Speaker’s Lobby just yards away from the lawmakers.

And later — far too late — here was Trump finally telling his insurrectionists to go home, assuring them that he loved them, that they were “very special.” And still later in a tweet, urging them to “Remember this day forever!”

Set down in a straightforward timeline, the cellphone clips began to form something understandable, if not remotely sensible.

And part of what was understood was this: As bad as the attack was, it could easily have turned into a complete bloodbath.
[…]
Some Republican senators tried to avert their gaze. Rand Paul doodled on a pad of lined paper and Rick Scott tried to busy himself with paperwork, The Washington Post reported. Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio, too, turned away from the obvious, irrefutable truth on the screen: that Congress had been attacked by a mob inflamed by the president of the United States.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/impeachment-insurrection-video/2021/02/09/story.html

These politicians are still bowing to their alpha — Trump. In the early days of Trump’s presidency, Republicans in Congress either cozied up to him or sat in silence as his demagogy ensnared and entranced the Republican base.

For years — decades even — the conservative elite had alternately tolerated, recruited or activated racists, white nationalists and white supremacists. The elite have their own versions of these biases, but they thought themselves more erudite and tactical, not brash and brazen. They would use surgical tools of voter suppression, states’ rights campaigns and defense of marriage and the unborn to advance their goals in a way they saw as honorable.

But Trump saw the voters that the elites kept under the stairs, the ones they want to excite only around election time. He saw the resentment and rage in them. He saw that their voices had been muted and their tongues chastened.

He drew them out. He let them vent. He allowed them to see they were indeed the majority of the party. He offered to be their leader, their white knight of white power, and they accepted. They grew loud and strong and he fed them red meat. They rampaged and he basked in the glow of the blaze.

Leader and followers had found each other. Now the traditional Republicans were on the run or on the ropes. Rather than become victims of the mob, they yielded to it. They tried to tap into it. They tried to grab the reins of it.

So, we watch the impeachment trial, with the impressive and clear presentation by the House impeachment managers of evidence that we already knew and some that we didn’t. We are reminded of just how heinous an episode that attempted insurrection was, that people were killed and injured.

We are reminded that there were those in that band of terrorists who wanted to take even more murderous actions, but simply didn’t happen upon the opportunity and targets.

And, in the end, you have to ask yourself only one question to convict Trump: Would this attempted insurrection have happened without him? The answer is no.
[…]
Trump refused to accept that his white power presidency was coming to an end, in part because of Black and brown voters in some key states, so he asked his white power patriots to come to his defense, to help overturn a fair election.

They responded, loyally, to the party leader who had truly seen them, who didn’t condemn their bigotries but amplified them. They saw themselves in Trump, and they still do.
[…]
Republicans dare not cross him, even if they know that he is wrong, even if they know that what he did to incite the insurgency is wrong, even if they know that voting to convict him is right.

What Do ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ Mean to the G.O.P.? [NYT]

The House impeachment managers moved efficiently on Wednesday to close off the escape hatches and back doors for Senate Republicans. Quietly but passionately, they put the lie to the sham alibis that weak and cowardly members of the GOP are likely to invoke if they decide to do Donald Trump’s bidding one more time.
[…]
After Tuesday’s powerful and wrenchingly personal presentation by Rep. Jaime B. Raskin (D-Md.) and an extaordinary 13-minute film that was by turns heartbreaking and enraging, the prosecution devoted itself on Wednesday to making it impossible for Trump’s appeasers to offer plausible, narrow rationalizations for a not-guilty verdict.

The key was to show that the obscene and anti-American violence on Jan. 6 was instigated by more than a single disgusting rant. “This was months of cultivating a base of people who were violent,” said Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands).

“This clearly was not just one speech,” said Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.). “It didn’t just happen. It was part of a months-long effort with a specific instruction: Show up on January 6.”

Importantly, the managers showed how Trump’s criminality involved not just whipping up the shameful, quasi-fascist violence (although that alone would justify conviction) but also his attacks on the entire democratic process, an argument carried by Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif). “He had absolutely no support for his claims,” Swalwell said. “But that wasn’t the point. He wanted to make his base angrier and angrier. And to make them angry, he was willing to say anything.”

Added Castro: “His words became their actions.”

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) offered one of the day’s most important observations: The riot was Trump’s last resort after the failure of his threats, lawsuits, lies and tweets to reverse the electoral outcome. “President Donald J. Trump,” he said, “ran out of nonviolent options to maintain power.”

And lest anyone imagine that the day’s violence was an accident, Plaskett pointed to the planning and coordination on pro-Trump, far-right websites that included discussions of D.C.’s gun laws and which police and military forces might be arrayed against the mob.
[…]
This is why we will owe a debt to the House impeachment managers for many years to come. They have created an indisputable record. They catalogued lie after lie about the election’s outcome. They laid out Trump’s long history of promoting political violence, including his praise, shortly before the attack on the Capitol, for Rudolph W. Giuliani, right after his lawyer had called for “trial by combat.”

The punditry says that fewer than 10 Republican senators are likely to vote for Trump’s conviction. This will be an outrage, a sign that a once great party has surrendered to craven opportunism or, worse, brutal authoritarianism. But thanks to the work of the impeachment managers, the country will know how spineless the party has become.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-impeachment-managers-have-sealed-off-republicans-escape-hatches/2021/02/10/story.html

Talk radio is perhaps the most influential and under-chronicled part of right-wing media, where the voices of Mr. Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and other star hosts waft through the homes, workplaces and commutes of tens of millions of listeners. Before the riot, the shows were often unrestrained forums for claims of rigged voting machines and a liberal conspiracy to steal the presidency for Joseph R. Biden Jr.
[…]
The result is something of an id of American conservative thought. Hosts’ intemperate remarks on race, immigration and other subjects lend the shows a renegade feel and keep listeners loyal and emotionally invested.
[…]
Just as Mr. Trump echoed the blunt language of talk radio, its hosts defended the president’s acidic language and frequent falsehoods — even when he claimed, without evidence, that the election had been stolen.
[…]
Mr. Limbaugh’s program is distributed by Premiere Networks, a division of the radio conglomerate iHeartMedia, which is also the force behind Mr. Beck, Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Hannity’s shows. Cumulus Media, another conglomerate, produces Mr. Bongino and Mr. Levin.

Like other hosts who depend on a corporate paycheck, Mr. Limbaugh often hedges before his language goes too far. Later in the Dec. 16 episode, when a caller urged a march on Washington on Jan. 6, Mr. Limbaugh said, “I have mixed emotions about it” and suggested that electoral wins would be more effective.

This type of push-and-pull — stoking listeners’ anger, then pulling back and disavowing the more extreme views voiced by callers — is typical of corporate right-wing radio hosts, whose success relies on provocation but whose multimillion-dollar paychecks depend on staying within the bounds of their publicly traded distributors.
[…]
The most incendiary language surfaced outside the mainstream of conservative talk, on fringier fare that commands listeners despite smaller distribution. In late December, on “The Alex Jones Show” — produced by the conspiracy theory site Infowars and carried by about 85 stations — the pro-Trump commentator Nick Fuentes called for Trump supporters to “occupy the Capitol.”
[…]
Unlike cable TV, talk radio is difficult to monitor — broadcasts often vanish into the ether and transcripts are scarce. A system maintained by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which monitors radio broadcasts, transcribed what was said on leading conservative programs between Nov. 22 and Jan. 5.

A New York Times analysis of those transcripts found that, on “The Sean Hannity Show,” which is carried by more than 600 stations, the election was referred to as fraudulent, rigged, stolen or illegal in 35 out of the 45 episodes transcribed by M.I.T. in that period, including comments from guests and callers. The election was referred to as fraudulent, rigged, stolen or illegal in 32 of 45 episodes of Mr. Limbaugh’s program transcribed in that same time span.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/business/media/conservative-talk-radio-capitol-riots.html

[Trump’s] speeches, tweets and phone calls were replayed incessantly as the House impeachment managers put their case against him. Seldom has an accused been so damned by their own words. In his fiery claims of a stolen election, his exhortations to “fight like hell” and his failure to denounce hate groups such as the Proud Boys, Trump proved the star witness in his own prosecution.

The spectacular irony was that a man who thrived on grabbing attention on TV and social media had left a trail of digital clues that ought to lead all the way to conviction. It was the 21st-century equivalent of a Victorian diary in which the master criminal brags about how he did it.

It helped Jamie Raskin and his fellow House impeachment managers build a case that this incitement did not begin on 6 January, the day of the insurrection at the US Capitol, but over months of spinning election lies and cheering on political violence.

[…]Raskin told the Senate: “He revelled in it and he did nothing to help us as commander-in-chief. Instead he served as the inciter-in-chief, sending tweets that only further incited the rampaging mob. He made statements lauding and sympathising with the insurrectionists.”

Swalwell added: “This was never about one speech. He built this mob over many months with repeated messaging until they believed they had been robbed of their vote and they would do anything to stop the certification. He made them believe that their victory was stolen and incited them so he could use them to steal the election for himself.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/10/trump-impeachment-trial-evidence-video-tweets

Lie After Lie: Listen to How Trump Built His Alternate Reality

[…there’s a couple more video montage efforts the first of which is nigh on 40mins of that kind of drum beating]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/09/us/trump-voter-fraud-election.html

Senators, seated as jurors in the chamber that was the scene of the invasion on 6 January, silently watched and listened as the security videos and police dispatches painted a fuller picture of the afternoon.

In previously unreleased security footage, Mike Pence, the former vice-president, and his family were seen being evacuated from a room near the Senate chamber, nearly 15 minutes after rioters breached the Capitol. Chants of “hang Mike Pence” reverberated through the marbled building, while outside other constructed a makeshift gallows. At one point, the mob came within 100ft of the room where Pence was sheltering, the managers said.

They were led away by Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman, who was seen in another extraordinary video leading Senator Mitt Romney away from the rioters, potentially saving his life. In another recording, senators are rushed from the building, narrowly missing the insurrections by just “58 steps”.
[…]
The House Democrats – called impeachment managers during the trial – methodically traced Trump’s months-long campaign to overturn his election defeat to argue that the former president was not an “innocent bystander” swept up in the mayhem of 6 January, but the “inciter in chief”.
[…]
“Trump committed a massive crime against our constitution and our people, and the worst violation of the presidential oath of office in the history of the United States of America,” said Congressman Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager.
[…]
Congressman Joe Neguse, another impeachment manager, dissected Trump’s speech during a 6 January rally, making the case that Trump intended to rile up supporters there to attack the Capitol as electoral votes were being counted and for his supporters to prevnet Biden from being certified the winner of the presidential race.

He noted Trump publicly invited supporters to Washington on that specific day and planned the rally at the exact time Congress was meeting to count electoral votes. When Trump spoke, Neguse said, he encouraged them to “fight” – language that unmistakably signaled to them to attack.

“Those words were carefully chosen. They had a specific meaning to that crowd,” Neguse said. “He didn’t just tell them to fight like hell. He told them how, where and when. He made sure they had advance notice.”

Democrats pointed to months of false statements Trump made about the election being stolen leading up to 6 January. Those lies, they said, represented a deliberate effort to sow distrust of the election that exploded in the attack on the Capitol. They played clips of television interviews and speeches in which Trump repeatedly refused to commit to accepting a peaceful transition of power.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/10/democrats-new-capitol-attack-footage-second-day-trump-impeachment-trial

On their screens, senators sitting in judgment of former president Donald Trump saw the raw savagery that Trump incited on Jan. 6 in his last-ditch attempt to overturn his defeat. They saw it in the pain-contorted face of Officer Daniel Hodges of Washington’s Metropolitan Police, who had been called to the Capitol’s West Front that day to defend the people’s representatives from the terrorists Trump had dispatched to ransack the building.

In the video, Trump’s mob crushes Hodges and other officers against a door, pinning and immobilizing him with a stolen riot shield. They spray bear repellent at the police, they beat Hodges’s head against the door, they violently rip off his gas mask, revealing his bloodied mouth, they taunt him and they take his weapon as a trophy. And through it all, Hodges, unable to move, wails in pain — an excruciating sound interrupted only by the “heave ho” of Trump’s mob stampeding the officers.
[…]
Trump’s apologists seem willing to excuse just about anything, even though the impeachment managers are laying out in minute detail the damning evidence showing how the former president conceived, organized, fomented and refused to call off the murderous invasion of the Capitol by his supporters. Republican senators seem not to care how close the insurrectionists came to assassinating Vice President Mike Pence (who we now know was hiding in the Capitol the entire time of the attack) and killing or taking hostage senators and members of the House.
[…]
As the impeachment managers retold, and showed with newly released security footage, Trump’s terrorists beat police officers with Trump flagpoles, sticks and bullhorns. They dragged them down stairs. They blinded them with bear spray. They gouged their eyes. They tased one officer, triggering a heart attack. The security footage, and the insurrectionists’ own videos, show the savagery. But you can also hear it in the terrified voices on the police radios that day, replayed for senators Wednesday.
[…]
American democracy is sending a 10-33 right now. The impeachment managers, though far from done with their prosecution, have thoroughly documented Trump’s history of instigating violence, his premeditated attempts to overthrow the election, and his mob’s absolute (and accurate) belief that they were doing what he wanted.

The videos, from inside and outside the Capitol, are sickening: MAGA-festooned domestic terrorists, in riot gear, smashing windows and doors, carrying zip ties into the Senate chamber. “Imagine what they could have done with those cuffs,” Swalwell told the senators, whose wrists they were meant for.
[…]
One-hundred forty police officers were hurt in Trump’s failed coup. Three have died. Yet even after his brutal injuries, Hodges said, “If it wasn’t my job, I would have done that for free. It was absolutely my pleasure to crush a white-nationalist insurrection, and we’ll do it as many times as it takes.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/10/you-cant-hear-that-officers-scream-acquit-man-who-caused-it/

…I don’t know how else to put this…I mean sure it might be a mistake to go for wrapping this up quickly rather than exhaustively plastering the copious evidence of culpability all over every last part of the media landscape for weeks on end…along with similarly copious quantities of testimony…but…god-fucking-damn-it…this should be the very definition of an open&shut case…& the fact that it isn’t is itelf a shattering indictment of the state of politics in general & the self-styled party of personal responsibility in particular…voting to acquit their treasonously totalitarian tawdry tinpot tangerine twitter-terrorist tyrannical tantrum of a fatuous fraudulent felonious fallaciously fanatical fetid fascist farce of a feebleminded feckless figurehead

ought

to

be

a

crime

its

fucking

self

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), before voting twice that the trial was unconstitutional, expressed an openness to convicting Trump. He said Trump “provoked” the Capitol rioters.

“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said on the Senate floor nearly two weeks after Jan. 6. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.”

“The call to march down the Capitol — it was inciting,” Cramer said. He also noted that Trump had praised his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had just called for a “trial by combat” at the same rally. “It was pouring fuel on a spark,” Cramer added. “So, no, he does bear some responsibility.”

More from GOP Sen. Cramer: He says Trump’s message was “inciting.”

“It was all really awful” Cramer says “It was pouring fuel on a spark, so no, he does bear some responsibility.”

Cramer goes on to say it isn’t Trump’s fault that people made decisions today to storm the Capitol pic.twitter.com/qSoiDZzwwc

— Christal Hayes (@Journo_Christal) January 7, 2021

“I think it was a tragic day, and he was part of it,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.), the No. 4-ranking Senate Republican.

The Senate GOP’s No. 2, John Thune (S.D.), added that Trump’s rhetoric “sure didn’t help.”

“Certainly encouraging people to go to the Capitol and some of the sort of implied suggestions I think are, you know … they just encourage the wrong behavior,” Thune said.

“If anything he urged, in a very emotional situation, very inappropriate action by people that appear to be his supporters,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.).
[…]
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) also seemed to point a finger at Trump, albeit more indirectly.

“It’s past time for the president to accept the results of the election, quit misleading the American people and repudiate mob violence,” he said on the night of Jan. 6. He also cited “the senators and representatives who fanned the flames by encouraging the president.”
[…]
Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) was perhaps the most direct.

“We witnessed today the damage that can result when men in power and responsibility refuse to acknowledge the truth,” he said on Jan. 6. “We saw bloodshed because a demagogue chose to spread falsehoods and sow distrust of his own fellow Americans. Let’s not abet such deception.”

Of the men listed above, only Toomey voted to proceed with the trial. Some of them could still vote to convict, as Blunt suggested Tuesday. And perhaps some of the others will vote to acquit on procedural grounds (i.e. that the trial is unconstitutional) rather than saying they’re absolving Trump altogether.

But their comments sure make this argument by Trump’s lawyers far less potent.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/10/it-was-inciting-provoked-by-president-what-gop-senators-said-before-about-trumps-culpability-capitol-riot/

Former President Donald Trump’s impeachment legal strategy defies the conventional wisdom that money can buy the best defense. From the pre- and post-election litigation to this week’s Senate impeachment trial, Trump’s legal team has employed strategies that fall somewhere between sanction-worthy and inept.

Castor’s rambling, incoherent, and inaccurate opening speech is a perfect microcosm for this proceeding: The facts, law, and Constitution are all on the House’s side—and none of that’s going to matter because enough Republicans are nevertheless going to let Trump off the hook.

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) February 9, 2021

In the words of Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., Trump’s defense team did a “terrible job.”

Castor, who argued first on behalf of Trump, stated flat-out that the team changed its strategy at the very last minute as a result of the strength of the House impeachment managers’ case. This is a puzzling revelation, even for a legal team that was just assembled a week ago after the mass exodus of Trump’s first team. Puzzling because the House managers’ presentation, while forceful and emotionally persuasive, included no surprises. All of the arguments made by Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and company are laid out clearly in their briefs.
[…]
Those senators searching for strong legal or political arguments will find none in the written filings. For example, Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., one of the House’s nine impeachment managers, pointed out that the Trump team’s brief completely misrepresents the precedent set by former Secretary of War William Belknap. Belknap, who resigned just before his impeachment trial in the late 1800s, provides strong evidence for why Trump can be impeached, not the other way around.

In another example, Trump’s legal team repeatedly cited and distorted Michigan State University law professor Brian Kalt’s writings. Kalt described the Trump team’s reliance on his writing as ranging from “sloppy to disingenuous.”

This isn’t the first time Trump’s legal team has engaged in less-than-stellar legal arguments. We need only go back a few weeks, to the very recent history of his post-impeachment litigation. In the weeks after the election, Trump’s legal team peddled lies, falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Its legal “filings” were routinely and roundly dismissed. Trump attorney Lin Wood may face disbarment. An ethics complaint has been filed against former Trump legal adviser Rudy Giuliani. The governor of Michigan has sought the disbarment of another Trump legal team member, Sidney Powell.
[…]
The reality, of course, is that Trump’s impeachment team, in all of its clumsy and possibly inane glory, will likely win this case. Unlike the post-election litigation, which was settled in courtrooms, the outcome of the impeachment case will be determined in a political forum. The senators, not judges or jurors in the conventional sense, will decide whether Trump engaged in impeachable conduct when he sent an angry mob to storm the Capitol. While there is so much uncertainty in this world, the outcome of this case is all but predetermined.

And so the truly depressing part of this story isn’t the bad lawyering — it’s that not even a nakedly incompetent case could sway Republicans’ minds.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-lawyer-castor-s-impeachment-trial-defense-was-inept-but-he-already-told-us-that

“The central weakness of our political system now is the Republican Party,” Daniel Ziblatt, a political scientist at Harvard, said in an interview with Vox on Jan. 13, a week after the storming of the Capitol.

How Long Can Democracy Survive QAnon and Its Allies? [NYT]

I’ve Studied Terrorism for Over 40 Years. Let’s Talk About What Comes Next.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/opinion/capitol-terrorism-right-wing-proud-boys.html

History — and the American people — demand that former President Donald Trump be held accountable by our legal system for his misconduct that incited his followers to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power outlined by the Constitution.

The Democratic-led house, by impeaching Trump on Jan. 13 before his term of office ended, offered Republicans in the Senate one option to do so. But by delaying any possibility of holding a trial until after his term of office was up and then — as 45 of 50 Republican senators voted last month — declaring that convicting him on those charges was unconstitutional, members of his own party have paved the way for the criminal justice system to be the only mechanism to hold him to account.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/how-republicans-defense-trump-over-his-impeachment-trial-hurts-him-in-the-long-run

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/georgia-prosecutors-launch-criminal-probe-into-trump-s-efforts-to-overturn-election-results

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/twitter-to-uphold-permanent-ban-against-trump-even-if-he-were-to-run-for-office-again

…it’s not enough…there need to be not just consequences for these assholes…there need to consequences so grave…& so public…that anything that even smells like the same kind of shit is fucking terminal to any kind of political ambition…& so financially punitive that those dark-money donors weld their damn pockets shut for fear of having them focibly emptied into the public purse

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-impeachment-can-answer-lot-about-capitol-riot-but-not-who-funded-it

…but it’s almost certainly not going to go that way

…so…if like me you need to cling to some sort of antidote just to get your blood-pressure down somewhere in the region of can-stand-up-without-head-exploding

…may I suggest checking out what the scots call their street-salting grit trucks?

Comment from discussion runekn’s comment from discussion "Apparently Scotland names their individual plows and they can be tracked in real time.".

Comment from discussion almightybob1’s comment from discussion "Apparently Scotland names their individual plows and they can be tracked in real time.".

…I mean…what other option is there?