52 thoughts on “Our Republic, Senate Won’t Keep It”

  3. Arendt found Eichmann an ordinary, rather bland, bureaucrat, who in her words, was ‘neither perverted nor sadistic’, but ‘terrifyingly normal’. He acted without any motive other than to diligently advance his career in the Nazi bureaucracy. Eichmann was not an amoral monster, she concluded in her study of the case, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963). Instead, he performed evil deeds without evil intentions, a fact connected to his ‘thoughtlessness’, a disengagement from the reality of his evil acts. Eichmann ‘never realised what he was doing’ due to an ‘inability… to think from the standpoint of somebody else’. Lacking this particular cognitive ability, he ‘commit[ted] crimes under circumstances that made it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he [was] doing wrong’. 
    Arendt dubbed these collective characteristics of Eichmann ‘the banality of evil’: he was not inherently evil, but merely shallow and clueless, a ‘joiner’, in the words of one contemporary interpreter of Arendt’s thesis: he was a man who drifted into the Nazi Party, in search of purpose and direction, not out of deep ideological belief. In Arendt’s telling, Eichmann reminds us of the protagonist in Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger (1942), who randomly and casually kills a man, but then afterwards feels no remorse. There was no particular intention or obvious evil motive: the deed just ‘happened’.

  4. Joey Kato
     @mixcloudjkato36

    What Did Hannah Arendt Really Mean by the Banality of Evil? – Aeon – Pocket

    get-pocket.com

  5. the brouhaha described in wapo’s version of

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/chief-justice-roberts-admonishes-impeachment-lawyers-telling-them-to-remember-where-they-are/2020/01/22/4e5758c0-3cdc-11ea-b90d-5652806c3b3a_story.html

    Nadler delivered an extended statement attacking the president and calling on the Senate to subpoena testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton. Cipollone responded by saying the New York congressman “should be ashamed … for the way you addressed this body.”
    “It’s about time we bring this power trip in for a landing,” Cipollone said, prompting Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to chuckle. “It’s a farce … Mr. Nadler, you owe an apology to the president of the United States and his family, you owe an apology to the Senate, but most of all, you owe an apology to the American people.”
    Sekulow followed Cipollone and went a step further in his words and tone.
    “The Senate is not on trial,” he almost shouted.
    During these remarks, Nadler did not meet Sekulow’s gaze. As the White House counsel concluded, he returned to his table and threw down his papers in disgust.
    The tensions rose further as Nadler responded, calling Cipollone a liar in one case. Cipollone shook his head, along with several Republican senators.

  7. Nadler:  You oughta be ashamed of your deception and cover-up of the Prez’s wrongdoings.
    Republican Ass-Hat:   You’re not the boss of me.  Who died and made you king?
    CJ John Bob:  Forty lashes with a wet noodle.  Let’s remember where we are and play nicely with each other.  We don’t ever talk like that here.
    This is just ludicrous.   Craig, There’s a book or a sitcom a la “Carter Country” somewhere in yesterday’s mess.
     

  8. SFB calls climate changers pessimists (or tries to say it), and Greta directly responds to him when she gives her speech “Don’t be pessimists, they say.” SFB just couldn’t let Greta have the last word at Davos.  Another presser before takeoff.  Jeez.   Also, did you hear him attempt to pronounce the word pessimist?   What is wrong with him?  Medically, I mean.   

  12. Sounds like Nadler is being his usual idiotic self. Screwed the day up, everything had been going so good.
    Jack

  13. I watched some of it…  but I’m not a late nighter.  
     
    Won’t watch much today.  Going to the art museum in Manchester.  There’s a special exhibit of shaker furniture and they have a couple of Edward Hopper paintings on loan.  They leave on Sunday.   

  16. OK, I don’t think Bolton will be the hero of the impeachment trial.  He’s got competing interests – whatever future he’d have as a repug power player versus a desire to sell his book.  That said, here’s what SFB had to say about Bolton testifying:

    At a news conference in Switzerland on Wednesday morning, Trump said that he would like for Bolton to testify but raised several concerns, including that Bolton left the administration on bad terms.
     

    “You don’t like people testifying when they didn’t leave on good terms,” Trump said, after arguing that there were also national security reasons to keep Bolton from testifying.

    Yeah, right, he’d like Bolton to testify.  Just like he’d like to testify himself.  Ain’t gonna happen.

  18. trump quote at 

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-brags-about-concealing-impeachment-evidence-e2-80-98we-have-all-the-material-they-don-e2-80-99t-e2-80-99/ar-BBZdJo0

    “So, we’re doing very well. I got to watch [the impeachment trial] enough. I thought our team did a very good job. But honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material.”

     

     

     

    “we have all the material. They don’t have the material” 

    hmmm, isn’t this what article 2 of impeachment is about?

  20. from rollingstone article about IMpotus brag above:

    Usually, the Trump administration either refuses to explain their stonewalling or excuses their lack of cooperation away by bashing the investigation, calling it illegitimate or a witch hunt. But here, rather astonishingly, Trump seems to be flatly admitting to withholding evidence.

  21. Hey- Nadler got admonished for quoting my 5pm-ish post from yesterday.
    Hi, Mr. Nadler!  

    Thank you for calling out the GOP Senators who voted literally 582 times to keep all of us in the dark.

  23. The Senate may acquit, but Schiff is holding this trial in the Court of Public Opinion, and is crushing the Republicans.
     
    Thank you, Rep. Schiff!

  25. Ping! I missed you the other day. Hope you’re enjoying today’s presentation. Seems as if Cong. Schiff is having ‘fair winds and following seas’.

  29. Can someone plz let me know when Republicans finish with their opening obfuscation?  i need a break and that’s the best time for one.

  30. Bink – I think you’ll get your break Monday.  582 times?  Got a cite for that?  I’d love to pass it along.

  32. Ah, ok, thanks CC.
     
    Pogo-
    11 amendments, 53 Rethuglican Senators voted to table them all 11 times, except Susan Collins on the least controversial 10th amendment (regarding scheduling), ergo:
     
    10 x 53 = 530
    530 (plus) 52 = 582

    You can cite me.

  40. Bloomberg’s new ad tonight:   If Senate Republicans won’t remove Trump from office, this November, we will.  

  42. Lindsey Graham flat out said they’ll do whatever they need “to protect Trump.” What about  protecting our democracy, Lindsey?   

  43. …funny how blatantly lying to the American people from the “World’s Most Distinguished Deliberative Body” is acceptable to Chief Justice Roberts, but calling the liars out from it isn’t acceptable.  Makes zero sense.

  46. Bolton could just publicly release whatever relevant info he has.  if the gambit is to get him to testify under oath, it ain’t going to happen, so just break the GOP, i say.
     
    Mitt Romney lost me with his votes, yesterday- he’s just another coward like the rest.

    …this doesn’t end with conviction and/or removal, so manage expectations and goals accordingly.

  48. Message from our Australian contingent Bill Woerlee

    First two weeks of choking smoke, then the hailstorm which damaged heaps of cars, coronavirus from Wuhan, and now the dust storm.  We’ll let your people go, whoever they ar, so long as we don’t get the other six plagues. 

     

  49. FOX not showing trial, instead Tucker  says: “To the mouth breathers on cable television an Adam Schiff speech is like a brainstem massage. Surging waves of ecstasy flood the central nervous system, linear thought ceases. All that’s left are satisfied grunts of pleasure.”

  50. Poor Ozzie. 
    It’s 32F and snowing here in MN. The worst thing happening in MN is happening in D.C. 

  52. Poobah, although I don’t have the luxury of watching this stuff from gavel to gavel, your cloakroom buddy sees the same thing I see. I respect Nadler but give me Schiff, Lofgren and Jeffries and I’ll call it a day. 

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