Saturday, January 16, 2021

Mary Poppins's Bag

The unpacking of the events of January 6 feels like Mary Poppins's bag. We just keep pulling more and more and more out. 

The Insurrection.
Details about the events on January 6 continue to emerge. Every day comes the headline: "It was worse than we thought and it could've been a lot worse." 

Here's just a few stories that we read this week that illustrate the horrors that our lawmakers and police faced.

It's now clear that Vice President Pence was seconds away from being found by the murderous mob. He was just 100 feet away seconds before Officer Goodman led the mob away from the Senate chamber. Pence was moved from the Senate floor to an office with his wife and daughter, but once there, he refused twice to move to a more secure location. The third time the Secret Service did not ask but whisked him and his family away to a more secure room before the mob could find them.

It's shocking to read how the police held off the mob. This article is upsetting, but it's important to know what happened. Badly outnumbered, the police tried their best to hold off the insurrectionists, at great peril to their own safety. 

Two of the most badly injured were Officer Daniel Hodge and Officer Michael Fanone. Hodge was the one crushed and beaten, stuck between two doors. You remember the mob brutally beating Fanone with sticks and a flagpole outside the building. I hope that someday they and all of the courageous officers can have an official commendation for their service to our nation. 

By the way, suspects in both of those officers assaults have been arrested. Here is information about the thug who assaulted Officer Hodge and here is a story about the scumbag who beat Officer Fanone. Here is another article about the two officers and their colleague Officer Christina Laury.

There is more evidence that the insurrectionists had assistance from the inside. Here is a new video in which they discuss floor plans. One woman who is still outside uses a bullhorn to describe the layout and how to access other parts of the building. She says, "Guys I've been in the other room...."

Suspiciously, it appears that the panic button was removed from Rep. Ayanna Pressley's (D-MA) office. It was found so when Pressley and her staff barricaded themselves into her office. There is an investigation underway.

Another of the squad, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was afraid for her life during the insurrection. She made a video describing her traumatizing experience. She does not describe specifics, but states she and other members were close to being killed. She also states that she did not feel safe being with other members of Congress while they were together in a secure room. Someday we'll hear the details of her trauma. 

The terrorists arrived well-armed. The police have seized a large number and variety of weapons. It was obvious that the mob went to the Capitol to cause violence and injury. It's amazing that there weren't more deaths.

Some of the insurrectionists are hiding under "press" cover. This, along with all the rest of it, is an affront to our orderly society. Give me a break. Their organization is called "Murder the Media." Journalists? Just sickening.

Here is another first-hand account by a (real) journalist, written right after the insurrection.


The Abettors.
Sycophants
Rudy Giuliani had riled up the crowd during the rally by saying, "Let's have a trial by combat!" New York State has launched a disbarment inquiry. I wonder if he'll be disbarred before the impeachment trial? I was sort of hoping to watch the Rudy Clown Counsel Show. Besides disbarment, he needs to be indicted. Rep. Mo Brooks (AL) was also in front of the crowd getting them going.

Members of Congress
We know that many in Congress gave voice to the lies that fueled the insurrection, but it's becoming more apparent that Members of Congress directly helped plan the insurrection. One of the main scum-sucking architects of the insurrection, Ali Alexander, has named three Repug MoC as having aided: Reps. Andy Biggs (AZ), Mo Brooks (AL) and Paul A. Gosar (AZ). Of course, other Representatives need to be investigated as well. There's an investigation underway into Rep. Mikie Shirrell's (D-NJ) observations of suspicious tours being made on January 5. This is such a sad part of the story. It's hard to think that elected representatives would do such a thing. I hope that they are censured and ejected from the House and called to bear consequences by the law. 

Side note: when I was watching the House proceedings that morning, I saw Rep. Gosar declare his objection to Arizona's certification. He was so nervous that he stuttered. It was so apparent to me that in the moment, I even Googled if he is a stutterer. Now I wonder just why he was so nervous. 

Veterans, Active Military, and Police
Also deeply disheartening is that more than a few in the mob were current or former police and military. White supremacy is everywhere. It's angering. Every single one of them took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. They received training in order to fulfill that oath, and they took that training to the Capitol to try to destroy it. They each need to be brought to justice. It's just too much to bear. Here are some articles about them.

The Heroes.
There were many heroes that day. The jounalists covering the debates who kept taking notes as their lives were being threatened; the Members of Congress themselves; the police outside and inside the building. Other heroes are emerging. 

Geeks save the day! A hacker who goes by "donk_enby" worked fast to archive nearly all of Parler's content since it was launched. This included conversations about the insurrection plans, as well as videos and photos during the riots, complete with metadata such as time and GPS coordinates. donk_enby assures us that all the info she gathered was publicly available. Go, donk! A grateful nation thanks you.

Similarly, props to the people behind Sedition Tracker, your one-stop shop for insurrection investigation information. 

The Capitol Building was, of course, left a mess, once the coup failed and the insurrectionists filed out. They had left trash, debris, and human excrement. Who was left to clean up? Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ), for one. After the business of the day, the tally of Electoral College votes, had been completed, Rep. Kim stayed. Trash bag in hand, Rep. Kim picked up trash into the wee hours of the morning. 

A veterans group, disgusted by the news that some of their former brethren had been in the mob, organized a clean up around the Capitol grounds and throughout D.C. 

And of course, the regular custodial staff that keeps the Capitol gleaming day in and day out. Mostly people of color, they bore the burden of washing the blood, sweat, tears, and shit from every surface in that building. There is a movement to write thank-you notes to them. If you write, I encourage postcards vs. letters. Postcards are safer and will be delivered more timely.

I've written numerous times about Officer Eugene Goodman, who used himself as a decoy to draw the mob away from the Senate chamber. Some lawmakers want to award Goodman a Congressional Gold Medal. Well deserved. 


The Fourth Branch of Government: Corporate America. Heroes?!
Putting financial pressure on the wayward Members of Congress may help get the GOP back on track. Money talks and bullshit walks.

Here are a couple reads on how they are doing this. 

Ok, ok, I'll allow Big Business getting into the people's business just this once. Next month, let's reverse Citizens United!


The Aftermath. 
Impeachment trial calendar is still up in the air. It is possible that Speaker Pelosi will send the Article of Impeachment over immediately upon the 117th Senate's convening. It's the best way to do it: try him immediately. It may land on the Majority Leader's desk on Inaguration Day. They are smart people; I bet they can figure out a way to conduct a trial at the same time as they conduct other business. 

Preventing him from running again. If the Impeachment2 doesn't work to convict, then Congress still has something in their back pocket. The 14th Amendment of the Constitution. It states:
No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
It's pretty straightforward, and needs just a simple majority vote. So if the Senate fails to convict him on his impeachment charge, the 14th Amendment could be enacted. Congress should also put it to use for the Members of Congress who participated. 

A man* without a country (I hardly can even call ***** a man). He may have a hard time finding a place to live. Neighbors of his Mar-a-Lago estate, where he plans to go, don't want them there, and they may have him over a legal barrel because of an agreement he signed decades ago. Scotland has said, "Don't come here." He burned his bridges in New York all through the years with his odious behavior, and most recently when he left for Florida and started hating on them. Now, the Mayor of NYC says that ***** is not welcome there. My hope is that New York State and Florida cooperate to get him into cuffs on Day 1 of his civilianhood. There's plenty of room at the Graybar Inn. 

A Day of Reckoning for the Republican Party. It will be interesting to see how they sort themselves out. The old saying about not being able to truly grow until you hit rock bottom may be true here. How rock-bottomer can they get? If they can purge the fringe members and vote to convict, they may start to right their ship. 

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is moaning that if the Senate Republicans vote to convict, a third of the party will leave and destroy the party. And this is bad how.....?



Mike Luckovich


Security Measures forever changed? How long will we have concertina wire around our beloved beacon of freedom? When will it feel safe again? Our government operates openly and publicly. It's important that this tradition continues. How depressing is this photo?

Radio.com



The Investigation.
Here are some of the latest arrests from The Washington Post.

Here is a damn good source. You can follow every arrest, criminal charges, and court proceedings. Follow Sedition Tracker on Twitter or on the web. It's updated frequently. Great stuff! They're coming for you, traitors. “To those of you who took part in the violence, here’s something you should know: Every FBI field office in the country is looking for you,” said Steven M. D’Antuono, head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office. “As a matter of fact, even your friends and family are tipping us off.” (from WaPo)

Four federal departments, the departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Defense, and the Interior, have launched investigations into the security failures. Was it a lack of intelligence? Or a failure to act on the intelligence they had? 

An investigation of the whole set of circumstances is huge. The lead-up and the insurrection itself is a large Fibonacci sequence intertwined with interlinking circles, overlaid by a set of Dali stairs. We know how federal agencies cooperate. They don't. There is a risk of numerous agencies involved in individual investigations not sharing information. I think there needs to be an independent commission to investigate the event in depth and deliver one comprehensive report on how this all came to happen. It was done after the Challenger disaster as well as after 9/11. Both of those tragedies were fairly straight lines compared to this. I'm suggesting this idea to my Members of Congress. 




The Future. In the immediate future, we still face threats against the U.S.Capitol as well as state capitol buildings coast to coast. We're all on edge about the Inaguration ceremony. For the foreseeable future, the National Mall and Capitol grounds have fencing, razor wire (!) and 25,000 National Guard troops milling about. And those troops have authorization to use lethal force if necessary. States also have beefed up security and National Guard troops out in force.

We have a presidential President-elect in the on-deck circle. Biden is laying out plans for COVID response and economic stimulus. He is talking straight-talk to us. It's going to be be fine!

And speaking of presidential. V.P. Pence is acting all presidential the last couple days. He finally called and congratulated Vice President-elect Harris, and also made a surprise visit to the National Guard troops at the Capitol. 

***** has decided he wants a dictator-style military send-off, complete with military band and 21-gun salute, on Wednesday morning. Given that there will be 25,000 armed troops standing around, he will have more attendees than he did at his inauguration. And he gets one more ride in Air Force One! Maybe the flight attendant will let him work the intercom! 

Really? He leaves Washington burning and rides off into the sunset? I hope the Feds are waiting for him at the Palm Beach Airport when he lands. Hmmmm....Sounds like a good movie plot.... Can we cast Kevin Bacon as Christopher Wray? 

For the longer term, we may be able to regain our course when the lies have ended and ***** is gone for good. We made a baby inroad into stopping the lies. The Washington Post reports that since ***** was banned from Twitter, misinformation emanating from the site has dropped a ton. 


Speaking of which....

Corrections and a Cautionary Tale.
I've been proud of my research and dependence on least-biased sources, but lately with the frenzy of information about the January 6 Insurrection, I'm ashamed to say I made errors. I found myself where so many of the actual insurrectionists live. I posted a couple items that I need to correct.

In my last post, I shared a photo of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) that had been miscaptioned as being taken in from of the Capitol the day before the riot. The photo was actually from December 2019 and was taken at the Colorado statehouse, not at the U.S. Capitol. The photo is real, though. And the people are really flashing white supremacy signs. I apologize for failing to fact-check this photo. 

I also failed to research Melania's weird statement five days after the January 6 Insurrection, a statement that she turned around to make it about her. I got lazy in finding out more about her statement about "salacious gossip, unwarranted personal attacks, and false misleading accusations on me." Luckily, I have a good cadre of Sisters Resisters who pointed me to the correct info. Melania had been conducting a photo shoot inside the Whitewash House that day. She couldn't be bothered to pause for an insurrection of all things. CNN reported this fact. Also, Mel was probably steamed by an op/ed from an old pal.

I confess I also shared that video that Donny Jr. posted of a green-room party before the "rally" on January 6. It was miscaptioned as being taken during the riots. I believed the miscaption and shared it on a couple Facebook groups before learning that it was fake news. 

I apologize for feeding misinformation here. The bigger point is that it is easy to get sucked in by provoking, but incorrect, information. If you don't keep skepticism intact and follow-up with a bit of research, misinformation and lies can quickly lead down a dark path. 

We saw a culmination of that 10 days ago. 


The Past.
I was a little Little Sister Resister when I made my one and only visit to the Capitol Building. My mom and I took a trip to Washington D.C. to visit my sister in 1975. Even then, I was honored to be able to visit the House and Senate Chambers. I aim to get back there and observe again. Here are my passes to the White House, Senate, and House.








The more recent past: In my post of October 29, 2020 which was titled, "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" I mentioned a report made by the Transition Integrity Project. The TIP is a bipartisan think tank group. They used gaming theory to predict outcomes after the election. Last summer, they published an extensive report of possible scenarios of a contested election. 

Below is a quote from their report, released on August 2, 2020. (from page 6)
2. A close and contested election may be resolved through the exercise of power, not through the courts.
The scenario exercises developed by TIP were designed to encourage both the Biden and Trump teams to pursue plausible but aggressive actions in order to win. The exercises demonstrated that the very first “move” by each campaign was often decisive; it established a narrative and the overall strategy. In all four of the exercises TIP conducted, Team Trump immediately adopted a strategy of casting doubt on the official election results, even in the one scenario where he later accepted a loss. Team Trump also encouraged chaos and violence in the streets and aimed to provoke Team Biden into subverting norms — even as Team Trump itself sabotaged traditional norms— so that Team Biden could be accused of hypocrisy or illegality.
During the exercises, Team Trump and GOP elected officials took the following steps:
• Calling for recounts in all states in which victory was not already apparent.
• Launching coordinated investigations at the state and federal levels into alleged “voting irregularities” in an effort to undermine public confidence in results that did not go Trump’s way and/or alter the results.
• Attempting to halt the counting of mail-in ballots by filing cases in state court or leaning on Republican leaders to stop vote counting or to certify a result early, without waiting for the certified results from the Secretary of State.
• Turning out their well-organized and committed base to take to the streets in Trump’s favor, in part by disseminating disinformation about the danger posed by pro-Biden demonstrators (e.g., by suggesting likely Antifa violence, etc.).
• Relying on both FOX News and right-wing social media to echo and amplify pro-Trump messages and facilitate the harassment and bullying of election officials, to cause chaos and delay and/or to intimidate officials into taking actions that benefited Team Trump.
• Using federal agencies to justify or support Trump campaign tactics. In one of the more aggressive moves undertaken in one of the TIP exercises, Team Trump had Attorney General Bill Barr order the seizure of mail-in ballots to ensure that vote counting would stop.

And a memory from four years ago:

Facebook reminded me that four years ago today, we were preparing for our own protest. I had posted the above graphic. We, too, felt that an election had been "stolen" from us. ***** had garnered 3,000,000 fewer votes nationally, but was getting ready to occupy the office. But guess what? I was one of 750,000 marchers in Los Angeles, and there was not one. Single. Arrest. 



#ThreeDaysToGo


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