Lol…
Yeah, that elevator goes all the way down, IYKWIM.
"what digby sez..."
Month: January 2021
Is there a better way to mark the second impeachment of Donald Trump than with a large heaping bowl of savory oatmeal?
Probably. But what a delicious way to start the day after! I improvised this tasty dish this morning and it came out far better than expected. You might want to throw in some roasted or raw cashews just before serving. For those of you unfamiliar with savory oatmeal dishes, it is a wonderful change up from overly sweet breakfasts.
2 tbsp Canola oil
1 tbsp Mustard Seeds
1 cup steel cut oats
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp ginger, minced
1/2 jalapeno (or more), minced
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp cardamon seeds\
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
4-5 cherry tomatoes, roughly chopped
4 to 6 sun-dried tomatoes, diced
3 Scallions, thinly sliced
1/4 cup or more, shredded coconut
- Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium high heat. When very hot, add mustard seeds. Cover immediately. They will pop like popcorn for about 30 seconds.
- Add oats, garlic, ginger, jalapeño, cumin, cardamon, salt, and pepper. Stir to combine and coat the oats with the oil. Toast for a minute or so.
- Stir in tomatoes and cook for another minute
- Stir in 2 1/4 cups water and bring to a boil. Then lower the heat so that mixture slowly simmers for about 12 minutes, until the water is absorbed.
- Once the oats are moist, but not dry or burnt, cover and remove from heat.
- While oats rest (for a minimum of 10 minutes), heat a small skillet over medium-low heat. Toast the coconut until golden brown, stirring frequently.
- Toss the toasted coconut and scallions into the oats and serve.
That’s funny. But before we laugh too hard, consider this:
A new poll from YouGov found that around 30% of self-identified Republicans have a favorable view of QAnon, the baseless far-right conspiracy theory that claims President Donald Trump is secretly fighting a “deep state” cabal of satanic pedophiles and cannibals.
The poll of 1,500 US citizens found that an overwhelming majority of Americans — around 63% — have a somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable opinion of the conspiracy movement. A plurality of Republicans, 39%, agree.
But according to the survey, 30% of GOP voters who say they have a positive response to the conspiracy theory, which represents a sizable bloc of the party.
The results are also not an outlier. In December 2020, an NPR/Ipsos poll found that 17% of Americans — and 23% of Republicans — believe that a “group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media,” a key tenet of QAnon.
Only 47% of those surveyed, including a majority of Democrats, were confident that the assertion was false. Meanwhile, at least two new Republican members of Congress — Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado — are avowed followers of the “Q” hoax.
It’s tempting to think that the lunacy around Trump is finally coming to an end. (10 Republicans voted for impeachment! Woohoo!) But there are tens of millions of Americans out there who not only believe the election was stolen and that Trump is Jesus but there is a substantial subset who think he’s “fighting a deep state cabal of satanic pedophiles and cannibals.” Our problems are not over.
This is actually good news. The GOP is splitting:
Republicans across the U.S. are siding with President Trump over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — big time — according to a new Axios-Ipsos poll.
A majority of Republicans still think Trump was right to challenge his election loss, support him, don’t blame him for the Capitol mob and want him to be the Republican nominee in 2024.
The survey shows why Trump could run again in 2024 (and possibly win) if he isn’t convicted — or banned from holding federal office — by the Senate. It also shows the peril and opportunity for institutionalists like McConnell trying to reclaim the GOP.
In addition, it helps explain why a majority of House Republicans voted against certifying the election, and against impeachment.
There’s a deep schism in the GOP, with a 56% majority considering themselves “traditional” Republicans and 36% calling themselves Trump Republicans.
The two groups hold widely different views on removing the president from office, contesting the election and the future of the party. But the Trump Republicans behave with far more unity and intensity.
Just 1% of Trump Republicans — versus about one-in-four traditional Republicans — think Trump should be removed from office.
Traditional Republicans are split over whether the party is better because of Trump; 96% of Trump Republicans say it is.
Trump Republicans are more than twice as likely as traditional Republicans to want him as their 2024 nominee and twice as likely to support the protesters.
Traditional Republicans are five times as likely to disapprove of the president’s behavior.
The Trump Republicans are still large enough of a group to either stay and dominate primary politics or walk away if Trump is cast out, which would weaken the GOP’s force posture against Democrats.
“The monopoly Trump’s had on the Republican base for the last four years is a little more frayed than any time in recent history,” said pollster Chris Jackson, senior vice president for Ipsos Public Affairs. “A substantial chunk doesn’t necessarily think their future goes with Donald Trump.
“The big question is, is having a small-but-committed base going to be more valuable than a large-but-less-committed base?”
I’ve been watching Republicans all over TV today attempting to draw an equivalence between Antifa activity in Portland Oregon or the rare left wing lone wolf murderer and the overwhelming, ongoing threat of right wing extremism and the violent insurrection of last week. It’s lame and stupid. But it’s not as lame and stupid as this bullshit logic, which Jonathan Chait ably disassembles:
The spectacle of a pro-Trump mob sacking the Capitol in an attempt to cancel the election result was so revolting that even the president’s most devoted sycophants felt compelled to denounce it. And yet the continued gravitational pull of the Trump cult requires them to construct justifications for supporting Trump anyway.
The cleverest rationales have sprung from the party’s most elite-trained sophists. Senator Josh Hawley argued yesterday that endorsing Trump’s attempt to reverse the election was actually a way to stand up to the mob. Ben Shapiro, guest-authoring today’s Playbook, has exceeded Hawley and produced an even more breathtaking rationale. After talking to numerous Republicans in Congress, Shapiro reports that they oppose impeachment because it is a ploy “to cudgel them collectively by lumping them in with the Capitol rioters thanks to their support for Trump.” Here’s his full passage:
Opposition to impeachment comes from a deep and abiding conservative belief that members of the opposing political tribe want their destruction, not simply to punish Trump for his behavior. Republicans believe that Democrats and the overwhelmingly liberal media see impeachment as an attempt to cudgel them collectively by lumping them in with the Capitol rioters thanks to their support for Trump.
You read that right. If they come out in opposition to Trump’s incitement and holding him accountable they will be blamed for Trump’s incitement.
Yeah, I know it makes no sense. But I guess it’s the best they can do.
I detect a wee logical flaw. If Republicans are concerned about being lumped in with the rioters, they could vote to impeach the president who incited the riot. That would refute the charge quite effectively.
Instead, they’re refusing, on the grounds that being asked to hold the riot-inciter accountable is a dastardly plan to make them look like they support him. Instead, they’re going to fight back against the scheme to lump them in with the rioters by staking out a pro-riot (or, more precisely, anti-anti-riot) stance.
Last summer, Republicans kept demanding Joe Biden denounce riots that broke out alongside anti-police brutality protests. Joe Biden could have refused on the grounds that the demands were just a ploy to lump him in with the rioters. Instead, he denounced the riots. Because Biden actually opposes rioting.
Refusing to hold your own side accountable for its abuses — on the grounds that your opponents are trying to exploit the shame of those abuses — is a rationale for supporting every terrible thing your side does. Which is exactly the Republican strategy under Trump.
Exactly. They are looking for reasons not to oppose Trump because they don’t want to. And I have just begun to realize that their support for him wasn’t only a cynical strategy to seed the judiciary with right wingers and pass tax cuts. They also see the utility in keeping these lunatics charged up, apparently believing that while they are violent threats — check out those videos of crazy wingnuts chasing Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney in airports — they will also come out to vote, which is apparently their only raison d’etre.
They believe they personally benefit from right wing extremism, even as it poses a threat to them if they deviate. Since they don’t care at all about the country, this is a deal they’re willing to make. Being completely shameless means they have no problem making bullshit excuses as to why they do it.
It’s a bit strange not having Trump’s twitter feed spewing nonsense all day long but there are always leaks:
When Donald Trump on Wednesday became the first president ever impeached twice, he did so as a leader increasingly isolated, sullen and vengeful.
With less than seven days remaining in his presidency, Trump’s inner circle is shrinking, offices in his White House are emptying, and the president is lashing out at some of those who remain. He is angry that his allies have not mounted a more forceful defense of his incitement of the mob that stormed the Capitol last week, advisers and associates said.
Though Trump has been exceptionally furious with Vice President Pence, his relationship with lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of his most steadfast defenders, is also fracturing, according to people with knowledge of the dynamics between the men.
Trump has instructed aides not to pay Giuliani’s legal fees, two officials said, and has demanded that he personally approve any reimbursements for the expenses Giuliani incurred while traveling on the president’s behalf to challenge election results in key states. They said Trump has privately expressed concern with some of Giuliani’s moves and did not appreciate a demand from Giuliani for $20,000 a day in fees for his work attempting to overturn the election.AD
As he watched impeachment quickly gain steam, Trump was upset generally that virtually nobody is defending him — including press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, economic adviser Larry Kudlow, national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, according to a senior administration official.
Perhaps that’s because his actions are indefensible? Even for them?
Well, not for all of them:
One of Trump’s few confidants these days is Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who broke with the president last week over attempts to overturn the election only to be welcomed back in the president’s good graces a couple of days later. Graham traveled to Texas on Tuesday in what was Trump’s last scheduled presidential trip, spending hours with Trump aboard Air Force One talking about impeachment and planning how Trump should spend his final days in office.AD
“The president has come to grips with it’s over,” Graham said, referring to the election. “That’s tough. He thinks he was cheated, but nothing’s going to change that.”
Trump asked Graham to lobby fellow senators to acquit him in his eventual impeachment trial, which Graham did from Air Force One as he worked through a list of colleagues to phone. A few senators called Trump aboard the presidential aircraft on Tuesday to notify him of their intent to acquit. During the flight home, Graham said, he tried to calm Trump after Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the No. 3 House GOP leader, announced she would vote to impeach.
“I just told him, ‘Listen, Mr. President, there are some people out there who were upset before and are upset now, but I assure you, most Republicans believe impeachment is bad for the country and not necessary and it would do damage to the institution of the presidency itself,” Graham recalled. He said he told Trump, “The people who are calling on impeachment are not representative of the [Republican] conferences.”
Someday we may come to see that weird relationship as more complex than it appears. But right now it looks for all the world like a man with a very serious daddy-complex. Who will he turn to once Trump is gone?
A former senior administration official in touch with the White House said in describing the staff mind-set: “People are just over it. The 20th couldn’t come soon enough. Sometimes there’s a bunker mentality or us-versus-them or righteous indignation that the Democrats or the media are being unfair, but there’s none of that right now. People are just exhausted and disappointed and angry and ready for all this to be done.”
One of Trump’s only White House defenses came from Jason Miller, a senior political adviser. He did not defend the president’s conduct but rather argued that those who voted to impeach him would pay a political price. Miller sent reporters a two-page polling memo from Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin saying that a majority of voters in presidential battleground states were opposed to impeachment and to “Big Tech censorship,” a reference to Twitter and other social media companies suspending Trump’s accounts.
“It’s a massive miscalculation by the Democrats and the Liz Cheneys of the world who are massively disconnected from the grass roots that votes in primaries,” Miller said.
“The grass roots and the base support is strong for him,” Miller added. “That’s really what matters. Washington is a very fickle town, and President Trump has never staked his strength as being in the nation’s capital. It’s always been out with the real people.”
[…]
Several aides laid blame for the situation not only on Trump but also on Meadows, because the chief of staff indulged Trump’s delusion that the election was rigged and fed him misinformation about alleged voter fraud.
“He is the one who kept bringing kook after kook after kook in there to talk to him,” one adviser said.
[…]
Another former senior administration official, who has been briefed on some of the president’s recent private conversations, said Trump has expressed anger not only with Pence and some of his aides but also with longtime media defenders who have deserted him, including Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel, and others he believes have not fiercely defended him, including Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham.
“He is feeling increasingly alone and isolated and frustrated,” this official said. “One of the metrics by which he’s often judged any number of things is: ‘Who’s out there saying good things about me or fighting on my behalf?’ And he never seemed to think there were enough people doing it strongly enough.”
Weirdly, he doesn’t seem to be too upset about his second impeachment or even the beaten and murdered cops at the Capitol. He sounds as if he’s weirdly distanced from these events as if he’s just floating through the final days. The manic, post-election, whirlwind fantasy of overturning the election results has abruptly stopped and he doesn’t know where to go from here.
It’s hard to see how he comes back from this but I would never bet on it. Not after all we’ve seen.
CNN’s Brian Stelter reports:
Right-wing media has made a shift from “pro-Trump” to “pro-Trump-supporter.” This week the talk shows are all about sympathizing with the voters, who are generally depicted as downcast and discriminated against. “Right now in America it is hard to be a Trump supporter, and it is getting harder, a lot harder,” Newsmax’s Greg Kelly said Tuesday night. His message was that “we have nothing to be ashamed of, and we should be proud.” His colleague Rob Schmitt said “the left wants to rip the soul out of anyone who supported Donald Trump over the last four years.”
On Fox Wednesday night, Tucker Carlson made a similar argument while attacking Mitch McConnell. Carlson said McConnell should not be focused on the future of Trump — who he described on his show as “elderly and retiring” — but instead “the tens of millions” of Trump voters. Carlson claimed Trump voters have been “redefined as domestic terrorists” in the past week. He straight up said he doesn’t care about Trump: “What I care about are his voters.” Later in the evening, Laura Ingraham said impeachment was actually an attempt to “impeach the Americans who support his policies,” which is obviously not true. One of her first guests, Ben Domenech, said that voting for impeachment was akin to telling Trump voters, “CNN’s right about you.” Later in the hour, guest Lara Logan imagined a new “war on terror” targeting Trump supporters.
“Fox News purports to be a news channel, not a right-wing talk network. But Fox opted to stick with its normal programming throughout the day, instead of having its lead political anchors, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, lead a special report. When the House had the votes to impeach Trump, it fell to 4pm anchor Neil Cavuto to deliver the news to the network’s viewers. Less than an hour later, Fox had already moved on, doing a typical ‘The Five’ segment about supposed media bias…”
>> As I pointed out on Twitter, One America News didn’t even cover the vote live…
Many Trump fans are still on board
So what are those voters hearing from their favorite media sources? Well, there’s an increasing amount of 1/6 denialism on the airwaves. At 7pm on Newsmax, Kelly said Wednesday that there’s “overwhelming” evidence that Trump “did nothing wrong” on the day of the attack. At 8pm on OAN, host Dan Ball said the Republicans who spoke out against the “political theater” of impeachment were “brave patriots.” At 9pm on Fox, Sean Hannity bashed the “ten swamp Republicans” that “went along with the stunt.” Oh, and QAnon-promoting congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said on Newsmax that she will file articles of impeachment against Biden on January 21.
My point: Trump’s brand is NOT in tatters on the channels and websites that his die-hard fans trust. Sure, some of the shine is off, but the MAGA media is much closer to Kevin McCarthy‘s position than Liz Cheney‘s. I just heard Mike Huckabee, on Fox, say that “this was a lynching of Donald Trump.” Some Trump voters are embarrassed by the past week’s events, but many are still fully on board the cliched “Trump train.” Don’t underestimate that…
They are fine with what happened because they are determined to convince themselves that attacking a joint session of congress to overturn an election is less threatening than burning a Wendy’s. (Also, many of them are just too ignorant to understand the gravity of an armed insurrection.)
They aren’t going to change as long as they are addicted to this right wing lies, Trump or no Trump. I don’t know how we are going to break that spell. Deplatforming is, at best, an emergency measure and it won’t solve the problem. The real issue is that the Republican Party has several full-fledged propaganda networks, along with various online outlets and talk radio. Social media is just a part of it, and the people who are looking for conspiracy theories will find them, even if they aren’t on Facebook.
I don’t know what to do about this. But this problem lies at the heart of our civic, cultural problem. Trump is just one of the consequences of it.
Jake Tapper of CNN obtained a statement regarding the Jan. 6 insurrectionists from Neal Kirby, son of Captain America co-creator Jack Kirby. Kirby’s son was upset at seeing his father’s legendary character appropriated by rioters engaged in the most un-Captain America behavior of his lifetime.
Kirby wrote:
“My father, Jack Kirby, along with his partner Joe Simon, created Captain America in 1941. Perhaps the most iconic symbol of patriotism since the ‘Spirit of 1776,’ Captain America has stood as a symbol and protector of our democracy and the rule of law for the past 79 years,” Kirby wrote. “He was created by two Jewish guys from New York who hated Nazis and hated bullies. Captain America stood up for the underdog, and, as the story as written, even before he gained his strength and process from Army scientists, always stood for what was righteous, and never backed down.
“At 72, I have a fairly vivid personal memory of every political and cultural upheaval since Castro’s revolution in the mid-1950s. Add to that my father’s stories, and I could probably paint a picture of the battlefields of northern France surrounding the city of Metz in WWII as well. However, the events that transpired at our nations’ Capitol on Jan. 6, an insurrection inspired and fomented by our own president, will be the event that haunts me forever.
“While watching one of the horrific videos of the storming of the Capitol, I thought I noticed someone in a Trump/Capt. America t-shirt! I was appalled and mortified. I believe I even caught a quick glance of someone with a Captain America shield. A quick Google search turned up Trump as Captain America on T-shirts, posters, even a flag! These images are disgusting and disgraceful. Captain America is the absolute antithesis of Donald Trump. Where Captain America is selfless, Trump is self-serving. Where Captain America fights for our country and democracy, Trump fights for personal power and autocracy. Where Captain America stands with the common man, Trump stands with the powerful and privileged. Where Captain America is courageous, Trump is a coward. Captain America and Trump couldn’t be more different.
“My father, Jack Kirby, and Joe Simon, the creators of Captain America and WWII veterans, would be absolutely sickened by these images. These images are an insult to both their memories. If Donald Trump had the qualities and character of Captain America, the White House would be a shining symbol of truth and integrity, not a festering cesspool of lies and hypocrisy. Several of our presidents held the same values as Captain America. Donald Trump is not one of them.”
The Guardian reports that Marvel has issued no statement on the appropriation of Captain America by protesters, nor on the use of the Punisher skull symbol by police and white supremacists:
In an interview with Syfy, Punisher writer Garth Ennis called those who stormed the Capitol “halfwits”.
“The people wearing the logo in this context are kidding themselves, just like the police officers who wore it over the summer,” he said. “What they actually want is to wear an apparently scary symbol on a T-shirt, throw their weight around a bit, then go home to the wife and kids and resume their everyday life. They’ve thought no harder about the Punisher symbol than the halfwits I saw [on Wednesday], the ones waving the stars and stripes while invading the Capitol building.”
“With much respect to Jack (King) Kirby,” writer Jon Wesley Huff (@jonwesleyhuff) parodied the original Captain America cover late Thursday to depict how Steve Rogers might react if he had been present inside the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Particpipants in the Trump Insurrection are patriots in their own minds. The world would have been better off had they just paid their way to Comic-Con instead.
President Donald J. Trump has been impeached a second time in a single term. “Remember my name” goes the song from “Fame.” We will remember. Maybe like Nixon Trump will get his own opera. But a tragedy or a comedy?
Ten House Republicans voted with Democrats on Wednesday to send a single article of impeachment to the Senate for trial. The charge: incitement of insurrection. The vote: 232 to 197.
As expected, Trump’s defenders in their floor speeches Wednesday deflected and whatabouted. Trump’s Jan. 6 rally speech could not have incited the the insurrection and sacking of the Capitol. “[W]e all know this was pre-planned, and it started while the president was speaking,” argued Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), ignoring two months of lies about a stolen election and how many times Trump promoted the event in previous weeks.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump tweeted on Dec. 19. “Be there, will be wild!” It was one of several tweets that day promoting the rally planned for the day of the electoral vote counting in Congress. The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel noted the WiFi password for reporters at Trump’s Georgia rally two days earlier was “SeeYouJan6!”
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third-highest ranking Republican in the caucus, would not let them forget. She issued a statement in favor of impeachment, summarizing Trump’s complicity in the insurrection that put their lives at risk:
The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President.
As for the rally speech itself, “The Rachel Maddow Show” Wednesday evening assembled an unnerving, four-minute highlight reel of Trump’s most inflamatory statements from his “Save America” speech. [timestamp 9:30].
Trump issued a statement during the debate urging no violence, lawbreaking or vandalism, obviously hoping it would help his defenders. It did not. Banned from Twitter and under threat of legal exposure for the riot, Trump later issued a five-minute video statement via the White House Twitter account after the impeachment vote. With rumors of more protests in all 50 states, Trump said, “There must be no violence, no lawbreaking and no vandalism of any kind.”
Trump’ proletarian insurrectionists may not be as “economically anxious” as advertised, but Trump himself must be. His brand is in the toilet, sources of income are evaporating, and he has $340 million in loans to Deutsche Bank coming due in 2023 and 2024. (Deutsche Bank, expect to be stiffed.) On top of that, he now has to worry about criminal indictments, and maybe not just in the city and state of New York.
Constitution, Art. II, Sec. 2, Cl. 1:
The President … shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
As few times as these matters have been adjudicated (and seeing I’m not a constitutional lawyer), Trump now has to worry now that his pardon power can no longer help him or his family.
Corey Brettschneider and Jeffrey K. Tulis write:
We and other legal scholars understand the clause to mean something different — that the president cannot pardon himself or others in matters directly associated with his own impeachment. Under this view, Trump could issue no pardon for himself or the insurrectionists for criminal charges related to the events of last week. Recently, other scholars, including Lawrence Friedman and Kim Wehle, have adopted this view, which we developed at length here and here.
[…]
Congress’s own interpretation of the pardon power may matter greatly, especially since the Supreme Court has never definitively decided the extent of the impeachment exception. Recent news reports indicate that members of Congress also understand impeachment to strip the president of his pardon power. Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), for instance, indicated that he is open to the view that the phrase gives the House the power to strip a president of the powers of pardoning in matters related to the insurrection.
Or to his family? Maybe Trump’s opera will be a tragedy after all.
New polling from CBS:
In general, a sizable 80% of Americans, from across the political spectrum, say the use of force and violence is always unacceptable in pursuit of political goals. It may be of little comfort to them that 20% say it can be acceptable. Few in either party feel that way, but 26% of Republicans say so, 13% of Democrats do, and those who do are more likely to be younger and male.
26% of Republicans say that violence is acceptable. That’s a whole lot of people.