Our Democracy Is Just Fine

Fragile Democracy? Just the opposite. A would-be dictator has been defeated by the voters, the courts, election officials – – and Congress did its job despite a life-threatening mob. Republican cowards in the Senate can’t change that. Our Democracy won!

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Author: craigcrawford

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68 thoughts on “Our Democracy Is Just Fine”

  1. And yet in moves of logical jiu jitsu  they will attempt to co-opt the results of the election, the court cases and electoral vote as evidence that they are the party of responsibility although the MOCs of their party are the only ones who challenged voting methods, voting results, electoral votes and now the impeachment of the president who gathered and directed the mob that invaded our Capitol. 

  2. Happy Lunar New Year!  The year of the metal (vaccine needles) ox (dependable, steady, persistent).   So long, ratty.

  3. Will those Senators hoping to start a conservative, non-tRUMPsky, party actually vote with Dems?

    Because, again, Dems aren’t afraid of the mob; they will vote to convict. So, any Republicans not voting to convict must actually be in favor of domestic terrorism. Made in America, baby!

  8. Again, if Democrats aren’t afraid to vote to convict, it isn’t cowardice that prevents Republicans from doing the same.  Republicans  are siding with the domestic terrorists. 

  11. i imagine some are being pressured by loved ones who are being subject to and are terrified by the death threats they (spouse, children, extended family, themselves) have received

  12. nikki’s shot over the bow to potential competitors for 2024 run

    politico:

    […]

    “But when Charlottesville happened, I was very triggered,” she said, recalling the fatal 2017 rally of white supremacists and the president’s coddling of them. “I know that bad things can happen. And I called [Trump] and I said, ‘You need to realize your words matter and what you say, and you think you’re saying, and what someone else may hear can be very different things. You have to understand that people can take that and hurt people with it.’

    “He said, ‘Nikki, Nikki. This isn’t Charleston, this isn’t Charleston,’” Haley recalled. “I said, ‘I’m not saying this is Charleston. I’m saying that I know that certain people hear your words and will react to that and you have to be careful with that.’”

    She took a breath. “Fast forward, I’m watching the television the morning of the 6th and I see Don Junior get up there,” she said, reciting the president’s son’s calls to action against Republican leaders, closing her eyes as if reimagining the scene. “And then I hear the president get up there and go off on Pence. I literally was so triggered, I had to turn it off. I mean, Jon [Lerner] texted me something and I said, ‘I can’t. I can’t watch it. I can’t watch it,’ because I felt the same thing. Somebody is going to hear that, and bad things will happen.”

    I asked Haley whether she has spoken to Trump since January 6. She shook her head.

    “When I tell you I’m angry, it’s an understatement,” Haley hissed, leaning forward as she spoke. “Mike has been nothing but loyal to that man. He’s been nothing but a good friend of that man. … I am so disappointed in the fact that [despite] the loyalty and friendship he had with Mike Pence, that he would do that to him. Like, I’m disgusted by it.”

    At that moment an article of impeachment was being drafted in Congress. There was even pressure for Trump’s cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. Haley rolled her eyes. “I think it’s a waste of time. And I think impeachment is a waste of time.”

    So, I asked, how should the president be held accountable?

    “I think he’s going to find himself further and further isolated,” Haley said. “I think his business is suffering at this point. I think he’s lost any sort of political viability he was going to have. I think he’s lost his social media, which meant the world to him. I mean, I think he’s lost the things that really could have kept him moving.”

    I reminded her that Trump has been left for dead before; that the base always rallied behind him. I also reminded her that the argument for impeachment—and conviction—is that he would be barred from holding federal office again.

    “He’s not going to run for federal office again,” Haley said.

    But what if he does? Or at least, what if he spends the next four years threatening to? Can the Republican Party heal with Trump in the picture?

    “I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”

    This was the most certainty I’d heard from any Republican in the aftermath of January 6. And Haley wasn’t done.

    “We need to acknowledge he let us down,” she said. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

    [continues]

  14. Nikki Haley is trying to do the above….  bury her head.
    I believed that trump would never get the republican nomination….   I was wrong.  She’s wrong if she thinks that trump won’t try to remain relevant.  Stupid woman!

    no wait…. let me add to that…. stupid republican woman!

  15. also from that very very long cover story, here’s nikki vs fox in the concluding paragraphs:

    Perhaps the greatest threat to Haley is Fox News after dark. There is a reason she went on Laura Ingraham’s show on January 25—a few weeks after blaming Trump for the siege of the Capitol—and said we should “give the man a break.” (This was my latest Haley-induced whiplash; it made, by my count, three distinct stances on Trump in the span of six weeks.) She has never had personal relationships with Fox’s stars the way other Republicans do. When Tucker Carlson went after Haley last summer—responding to her empathetic remarks about George Floyd’s murder by declaring, “What Nikki Haley does best is moral blackmail”—the entire 2024 field took notice. Carlson has clearly taken a disliking to Haley. What happens if he, or Sean Hannity, or some combination of these and other right-wing voices, make it their mission to take her down?

    Haley rolled her eyes when I asked about Carlson. “I’ve dealt with people like him all my life,” she said. Haley didn’t elaborate, but she didn’t need to. She’s dealt with men, white men, race-baiting white men, all her life. This campaign, she implied, wouldn’t be any different.

    But it could be. There is a path of least resistance that Haley could yet pursue. No matter her passion in denouncing the president during our January 12 interview, no matter her certainty that he was crippled and the party was moving on without him, there is still time for Haley to recover. A campaign launch is two years off. She can work to rekindle that warm relationship with Trump, persuading him and his family that she got carried away. She can pretend that Marjorie Taylor Greene is just another harmless GOP backbencher. She can cozy up to the heavyweights at Fox News and convince them to pull their punches. She can pour her time and energy into denouncing those damned socialists in the Democratic Party, carrying forth as the partisan warrior queen, crossing her fingers and hoping that everyone from the redhats to the Republican National Committee members forget her momentary lapse.

    Or she can say what she wants to say. She can cast her lot with Liz Cheney. She can campaign as herself. She can prove—once and for all—that her parents made the right choice by coming to the United States of America.

    Hoping for a hint, I asked Haley on January 12: Does she still consider Trump a friend?

    “Friend,” she answered, “is a loose term.”

  16. what if the GOPers run haley-cheney in 2024?  not likely given the current white supremacism & misogynism rampant in the party, but who knows.  pigs can fly at times.

    look who they ran in 2016 and, unfortunately for u.s. and the rest of the world, won.

  17. The trumpanistas in the rePugnican party will not vote for a ticket that includes Liz Cheney, and those of them who can red and do read the Haley article won’t vote for her, either.  I’m hoping Dumbass believes he will have the same following in 2024 that he had in 2020 and starts a new party to challenge the rePugs and the Dems.  I’ll send a $5 donation to him if that tips the scale.

  19. The correct response about being friends, Nikki, would be no.
    Hayley’s comment about Orange Julius being irrelevant is like Susan Collins saying he had learned his lesson the last time.

    Democrats are surely targets of the ws creeps, but they will vote to convict.  That’s why it seems Republicans are of the same (sick) mind as the domestic terrorists.

  20. Haley has been running for prez for years.  Part of her act is to cover all sides of the greedy q perverts sewer with some words of some kind.  Her main thing is to get her picture out.  She plans on doing the “hot” politician who is “smart” skit (I’m not Palin).  Now that Harris has broken the color barrier on the V-P position Haley can do the “I’m not black like her” speeches to smooth over that she is not lily white like the white supremacists who are the party now.  In one way she is not going around spouting absolute nonsense or worse.  Will she be competitive?  Yes.  the gqp does not have a lot of winners to choose from.  Can she go up against Biden-Harris and win?  No.  Not to predict the future too much, the U.S. will be a lot different in three years.  It will lean very hard left as the Dems get people housed, fed and to some type of job.

  21. This Trump “defense” is a festival of laughable and irrelevant whataboutism.

    As if Harris laughing on the set of “Ellen” is just as bad as Trump urging an audience of armed, angry Proud Boys to assault the Capitol less than a mile away.

  22. Poobah, roger that.  God it’s ridiculous.  They impugn speech (that did not even arguably incite violence) by members of congress and say they should be removed but say that Trump’s speech (which arguably did) is protected.

  24. Lest it be forgotten in the excitement over the impeachment, coronavirus still rages.  Now 478000 are dead and while the numbers of infections and deaths are (thankfully) coming down and the Biden administration has done a great job of catching up with the vaccine deficiencies (secured another 200M doses as I understand it). Over teh past week:

    New daily reported cases fell 22.2% 
    New daily reported deaths fell 3.5% 
    Covid-related hospitalizations fell 15.7% 

    Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 6.2%.
    The number of tests reported fell 4.2%

    The death rate is now back to where it was around January 7 or 8 and the case rate is where it was around November 5 or 6.  Some progress – not enough, but some.

  25. Is there anyone who can explain to me how the 75M trump voters would be “cancelled” by a conviction?  I’ve struggled to understand that argument and simply don’t.

  26. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the Brandenburg v. Ohio case was decided this way, per Oyez:

    The Court’s Per Curiam opinion held that the Ohio law violated Brandenburg’s right to free speech. The Court used a two-pronged test to evaluate speech acts: (1) speech can be prohibited if it is “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and (2) it is “likely to incite or produce such action.” The criminal syndicalism act made illegal the advocacy and teaching of doctrines while ignoring whether or not that advocacy and teaching would actually incite imminent lawless action. The failure to make this distinction rendered the law overly broad and in violation of the Constitution.

    Liz Cheney’s analysis of Dumbass’ actions seems to fit the requirements for prohibited speech:

    “There is no question that the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob,” Cheney told the network where she once worked and whose pundits had long supported Trump. “He lit the flame.”
    “The president could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence,” Cheney said in the statement. “He did not.”

    What escaped the lawyers representing Dumbass did not escape Cheney.

  27. Good news the car lot guys got the 2 homeless fellows to the shelter ,  and just in time too.
    We just started  a solid week of below freezing here , and it bottoms out on Monday  morning at -5 degrees with a forecast high of  8 .  
    Ft Worth was lucky with that giant pile up on the I-35W .
    A gasoline tanker  could have been one of those 18 wheelers  driving into that pile. 

  28. Castor just walked into a left hook.  Said “No” to a question from Romney, Collins, et al. whether Dumbass knew Pence had been removed and secreted when he issued his 2:46(?) tweet saying that Pence had failed them.  Dumbest answer of the day.

  30. Tennessee comes up with stupid bill of the day in the state house, letting a man decide to block a woman from having an abortion.  He does not have to prove he is the father, which does not matter anyhow considering how stupid this is.  The idea is that women are breeding stock, just like a cow or a pig, subject to the whims of the owner.  Gotta give the far right vangicals the moxie to try and do this again.  Women and children are chattel, property to be done with as the white male deems fit.

  31. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen whataboutism in response to every question asked of a lawyer before.  Trump did a good job of finding bottom feeders to represent him.  Perhaps they forget that you cant swing a dead cat in the senate with out hitting a lawyer. van der Veen is an utter prick. Perfect pick for Dumbass.

  35. Bill Gates is about a to drop a new book on climate change, Cooper will be interviewing him on 60 Mins. Sunday.
    The Siberian Tundra Is Doing That Exploding Thing Again
     
    https://earther.gizmodo.com/methane-is-blowing-more-holes-in-the-arctic-1846242991
     

    “These craters represent an Earth system process that was previously unknown to scientists,” Sue Natali, Arctic program director at Woodwell Climate Research Center and co-author on the study, said in an emailed statement.
    To learn more about how these holes form, the researchers used satellite data from Siberia’s Yamal and Gydan peninsulas—a combined area of 126,255 square miles (327,000 square kilometers)—to create an artificial intelligence-based model of the region with Google Earth Engine’s cloud computing platform. The model located all seven of the previously-discovered craters, and also indicated that three more of them have formed.

    There’s a hell of a  book in all  this , say  set 10 years from today.  Quasi-fiction. 
    A Russian sailor  lights a cigarette  sailing in the now ice free waters  Northeast of the Yamal , a huge explosion follows . 
    A team is sent out to investigate , they find the Arctic Ocean on fire . 

     
     

  38. Life is pretty strange ,  the topic of climate change  is now more   palatable, than politics or plagues .

  39. So did the trump defense successfully gaslight 7 billion people who heard and saw what happened on Jan. 6?

  42. On CNN right now: @jamiegangel reporting this new exchange from McCarthy’s heated call with Trump during the insurrection: 

    Trump: “Well Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

    McCarthy: “Who the f*** do you think you are talking to?”

  43. As for the current  “trial” , don’t sweat it . His grapes are about to be crushed by his whinery   allies. 
     

    The threat, involving a highly profitable real estate partnership that generates significant cash for the Trump Organization, is ratcheting up pressure on the former president as his real estate and hospitality operations struggle under hefty debt and vastly reduced revenues, largely a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
    The partnership owns two first-class commercial buildings — one on Sixth Avenue in New York City and the other in downtown San Francisco — and it is the single most profitable asset in the Trump empire. The Trump Organization owns a 30 percent stake in the buildings, while its partner, Vornado Realty Trust, a huge public real estate concern in New York City, owns 70 percent.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-s-businesses-struggle-most-profitable-asset-his-real-estate-n1257456
    He’s wounded , and bleeding , that is why Haley  brought out her knife. 
    His head must be spinning like “Beetle Juice”. 
    So many to hate so little time. 
     
     

  45. Defund the Police –

    A program that replaces police officers with health care workers on mental health and substance abuse calls in Denver, Colorado, is showing signs of success, according to a six-month progress report. Despite responding to hundreds of calls, the workers made no arrests, the report said — and the city’s police chief told CBS News on Friday that he believes the program “saves lives.” 

     
    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/denver-health-professionals-replaced-cops-in-handling-hundreds-of-low-level-incidents-for-6-months-and-successfully-did-so-with-no-arrests/

  46. He called them to a rally in DC on 1/6.  He sent them to the Capitol.  He sat on his tiny hands while it happened.  Those tiny hands have blood on them. 

    Weak words from Haley.  Not a knife.  More like a plastic spork. 

  47. Poor, poor,  Mr. Pence. His wife and girl were in that scrum  on the stairs with the “Nuclear Football”. 
    I wonder  if he’s  sharpening his spork?
     
    The press  needs to understand that even if 45 get’s off , this whole can of worms is moving minds  that may not vote now , but will be voting very soon.  Like that  Douchebag Bank in Germany. 
    When a moose dies in the woods , it takes a few days for the ticks to jump-off the carcass.  

  49. Bob Woodward : The story is dry. All we’ve got are pieces. We can’t seem to figure out what the puzzle is supposed to look like. John Mitchell resigns as the head of CREEP, and says that he wants to spend more time with his family. I mean, it sounds like bullshit, we don’t exactly believe that…
    Deep Throat : No, heh, but it’s touching. Forget the myths the media’s created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

  51. Tail Gunner Joeis a 1977television moviedramatizing the life ofU.S. SenatorJoseph R. McCarthy, aWisconsinRepublicanwho claimed knowledge ofcommunistinfiltration of theU.S. government during the 1950s. ………………….. The nickname ‘Tail Gunner Joe’ is a derisive term for the Senator that originated from his false claim to have been a tail gunner on American bombers during World War II.[1]

     
    History does not repeat it’s self , but it sure as Hell rhymes.

  52. The US Senate’s  page on Joe –

    “Communists in Government Service,” McCarthy Says

    February 9, 1950
    Photo of Senator Joseph McCarthy

    “Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time. And, ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down—they are truly down.”
    On February 9, 1950, the junior senator from Wisconsin thundered this warning in a Lincoln’s birthday address to the Women’s Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia.
    Joseph R. McCarthy had come to the Senate three years earlier after unseating 22-year incumbent Robert La Follette, Jr., who had devoted more energies to passage of his landmark 1946 Legislative Reorganization Act than to that year’s Republican senatorial primary.
    The Saturday Evening Post heralded McCarthy’s arrival with an article entitled, “The Senate’s Remarkable Upstart.” For the next three years, McCarthy searched for an issue that would substantiate his remarkableness. As one of his many biographers has observed, McCarthy’s initial years in the Senate were characterized by his impatient disregard of the body’s rules, customs, and procedures. Another scholar noted the ease with which he rearranged the truth to serve his purposes. “Once he got going, logic and decorum gave way to threats, personal attacks, and multiple distortions.”
    In the Wheeling speech, among the most significant in American political history, McCarthy’s recklessness finally merged with his search for a propelling issue. He explained that homegrown traitors were causing America to lose the cold war. “While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205.” Until his Senate censure four years later, Joseph R. McCarthy would be that body’s most controversial member. In Robert C. Byrd‘s assessment, “There was never quite anyone like McCarthy in the Senate, before or after; nor has this chamber ever gone through a more painful period.”

    https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/communists-in-government-service.htm
     
    What they fail to include , was that “Tailgunner Joe” was  waving  a blank sheet of paper during that speech in Wheeling. 

  53. from that CNN story craig mentioned above:

    The Republican members of Congress said the exchange showed Trump had no intention of calling off the rioters even as lawmakers were pleading with him to intervene. Several said it amounted to a dereliction of his presidential duty.
    “He is not a blameless observer, he was rooting for them,” a Republican member of Congress said. “On January 13, Kevin McCarthy said on the floor of the House that the President bears responsibility and he does.”
    Speaking to the President from inside the besieged Capitol, McCarthy pressed Trump to call off his supporters and engaged in a heated disagreement about who comprised the crowd. Trump’s comment about the would-be insurrectionists caring more about the election results than McCarthy did was first mentioned by Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican from Washington state, in a town hall earlier this week, and was confirmed to CNN by Herrera Beutler and other Republicans briefed on the conversation.
    “You have to look at what he did during the insurrection to confirm where his mind was at,” Herrera Beutler, one of 10 House Republicans who voted last month to impeach Trump, told CNN. “That line right there demonstrates to me that either he didn’t care, which is impeachable, because you cannot allow an attack on your soil, or he wanted it to happen and was OK with it, which makes me so angry.”
    “We should never stand for that, for any reason, under any party flag,” she added, voicing her extreme frustration: “I’m trying really hard not to say the F-word.”
    “I think it speaks to the former President’s mindset,” said Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, an Ohio Republican who also voted to impeach Trump last month. “He was not sorry to see his unyieldingly loyal vice president or the Congress under attack by the mob he inspired. In fact, it seems he was happy about it or at the least enjoyed the scenes that were horrifying to most Americans across the country.”

  54. When Eisenhower  came to power  in 1952 , he never took on Joe head on.  Maybe by that time he knew Joe was doomed. 
    He was serious drunk  in a death spiral by 52′. 

  55. The American Right has had this monster  on the slab for a very long time.  Trying to reanimate a whole host of dead ideas .
    When they finally  shocked it to life in 2016 with the help of the Fucking Russians playing the part of “Igor”, little wonder it ran amuck. 
    When LBJ  signed those civil rights bills.  And re-alined American politics forever. 
    Nixon was there , to kiss the snake of race , and Lincoln rotated is his grave. 

  56. There are a couple of thoughts that SFB may have misunderstood “Pence has been taken out” to mean the mob version of taken out, not the moved out of the way.  After he was told that he sent out the tweet which sounds like he was referencing bobble-head in the  past tense.  Speculation, but a lot is plausible now.

  57. Time to bring back a great old title from this stream of American thinking. 
    ‘The Know Nothings”
    See the Irish famine , and the “Gangs of New York”. 
    Trump’s party is the, “New Know Nothings”. 
    So where did this label come from ?
    When pressed  about their views , these guys said , “I know nothing”.  The New York press tagged them with that title. 
    This is 1846 . And our nativism is in full bloom , we were invading Mexico , driving the first nations west , and shipping slaves down the river to the Delta to feed the birth of “King Cotton”.  
    Most of America thinks that MAGA means the 1950’s ,  not true, it’s  1846 .  When the Mormons were being driven out every place they tried to settle.  Their sin ?  They were sleeping with more than one woman. 
     

  58. Natchez , Miss. had more millionaires in late 1840’s than New York. 
    Drive there ,  their homes still stand. 

  59. In 1829 Mexico abolished slavery, but it granted an exception until 1830 to Texas. That year Mexico made the importation of slaves illegal. Anglo-American immigration to the province slowed at this point, with settlers angry about the changing rules.
     
    This is why Travis was at the Alamo .  Not all that bullshit , about “freedom” .  But extending an economic  system that was making white guys very rich. 

  60. Shelby Foote  in Burn’s masterpiece , quotes this –
    When the constitution was signed , the snake of slavery was curled around the foot of the table. 
    When New York started digging it’s  subway , it was Irishmen.
    When the Union Pacific started building out of Omaha . it was Irishmen.
    When we built the US Capital , it was slaves. 
    When we fought WWII  the Mexicans, picked our food.  

  61. It was the Chinese that scaled the Donner Summit for the Central Pacific , not a bunch of fat white guys.  When that track crew hit the Nevada  flat  land,  they set a world record for laying iron by hand.  
    No one ever came close to their efforts. 

  62. America was always great , and terribly wrong at the same time.  It is not one or the other .
    The world is bi-polar , A or B , Up or Down , Plus or Minus , North and South.
     
    But we live in that  human mess where black guys love Chinese Food. 

  63. Watched Spielberg’s Lincoln tonight. A tour de force performance for Daniel Day Lewis. If you haven’t, you should watch it. A nice switch from the Dumbass show. 

  64. i’m watching “Jojo Rabbit” and waiting for the pay-off, assuming there is one- it’s like a cross between “Borat” and a Wes Anderson movie🤷‍♂️

    (edit: was good👍)

  65. When I drove the lower  48 .  One of my main goals was to see all the places  I had read about.  When I was “stacked” at Fallon I was in the books at their little gem of learning .
    I read the entire Multon edition  of  the journals  of Lewis and Clark.  All seven fat volumes  while I was out of work.
    There I met Pompeii,  Sacagawea’s  son . Who Clark nicknamed , and took under his wing .  They first met her at the Mandan Villages , she was 16 a stolen girl far from home  and pregnant . The wife of a French asshole.  It was 50 below. 
    She , and her son made the entire trip with the Corps of Discovery. 
    Today there only one place that marks their passage , a place on the Yellowstone called “Pompeii’s Pillar” .  Clark carved his passing in the sandstone. 
    Late one night , as I was truckin’ out of Nevada into Southeast  Oregon ,  I saw a marker  pointing to Pompeii’s grave .  I stopped and back tracked.  And there he was .
    In one of the most lonely places in America. 
    And I said,  “Pompeii What Are You Doing Here” ?
    This guy had met some of the crown heads  Europe.  He was famous. 
    He sleeps in the sage in the West  
     
     

  66. The one thing that pisses me off about our age , is the bozo’s  telling us what America is . 
    If they didn’t have their phones , they could have never found the Capital. 

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