Wagged Dogs

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A once grand old party cowers in a shadow of itself.

From Politico:

Despite his difficulties since he left office, about a third of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters still consider themselves supporters more of Trump than the Republican Party, according to a recent NBC News poll. Many of them aren’t going anywhere. Fully 28 percent of Republican primary voters are so devoted to the former president that they said they’d support him even if he ran as an independent, according to a national survey last month from The Bulwark and longtime Republican pollster Whit Ayres. Indeed, the “Always Trump” component of the party is so pronounced that it’s affecting how Trump’s opponents operate around him.

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30 thoughts on “Wagged Dogs”

  1.  

    Jack Hopkins
     

    @thejackhopkins

     

     

    What happened in Georgia tonight is most likely the result of the immense pressure by the LARGE number of GOP folks slated to be indicted. Yes, Trump is almostcertainly one of them….but a lot of OTHER big name GOP dirt bags are too. This is going to be interesting, folks. I don’t say this very often, and maybe have never said it on Twitter, but this…is a big fucking deal. –Jack Hopkins

  2. The GOP is not the only dog being wagged by its tail (specifically the a**hole beneath that tail in this case).

    Our democracy, a so-called representative government, whether local, state or federal for a long time has been wagged and put into place by a small percentage of voters.  Consider the 2020 general election: census figures show only 67% of all citizens 18 years and older voted which means a smaller percent of the whole actually elected their chosen leader and representatives for the entire country.  Truly another but bigger doggy wagged by its tail. 

  4. The former president laid out a dark vision for America in his speech at a sparsely-attended gathering of conservatives, and Florida’s governor hangs out with a guy who says that the state’s tap water is turning people gay.

  6. have you no sense of decency … have you no shame, sir

    Tucker Carlson Airs Edited Jan. 6 Footage, Calls Rioters ‘Sightseers’ – Rolling Stone

    LAST MONTH, FOXTucker Carlson was granted exclusive access to the trove of more than 44,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. On Monday night Carlson released the first installment of his analysis of the tapes, telling viewers that the vast majority of the protestors who breached the Capitol on  of those found guilty have been sentenced to prison. 
    [continues]

  7. Old Berman addresses Carlson’s last night show.   
    https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-countdown-with-keith-olbe-99705496/

    DID TUCKER CARLSON JUST GET HIMSELF FIRED?
    As he set out to gaslight his Gullibles into believing the January 6th video “proves” there was false flag, with “sight-seers” led astray by a few “hooligans,” what was the ONE thing Tucker Carlson could NOT do? What, as the prospect of a $1,600,000,000 damage judgment against Fox loomed in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case, did he need to avoid at all costs? Say something like “The 2020 election was a grave betrayal of American democracy, given the facts that have since emerged about that election. No honest person can deny it.” He RE-ENACTED FOX’S LIES FROM 2020 as documented in the Dominion depositions and texts. If that weren’t good (bad) enough he also defamed Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. I guess they’ll have to co-own the channel with Dominion.
    Now what?
    Does Rupert Murdoch throw Carlson overboard? Fire him to try to tamp down the Dominion Crisis AND the Cheney/Kinzinger crisis? How did Fox let him put this on? How did Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and the others not strangle Carlson into unconsciousness rather than let him do what he did? Carlson’s shtick was unsurprisingly thin. But at least he added a catchphrase to the lexicon of lying and manipulation: “The Video Proves This.” (NARRATOR: The video didn’t prove this).

  8. wow, somehow the portion quoted from rollingstone article got cropped after i tried editing it.  not only cropped but that last line should have ended with “were not insurrectionists but “orderly and meek” sightseers.”

  9. Just think of how much money Q-Shaman is going to make after his  incarceration. 
    He’ll never have to work again.   Shades of Rupert Pupkin.  

    But then I think he’ll find that having a career of being Q-Shaman will have a lot in common with having “Wooly Bully” as your big hit or appearing at the super bowl and having to do “The Twist” as your act.

  10. If Comrade Carlson got himself fired, he has other outlets on TV, radio, and the internet where the “Gullibles” can follow him.

    The thing is, he doesn’t care because time is running out.  He needs to poison the well as much as possible.  Folks can’t un-hear his words; he just needs to say then to anyone who will listen and believe.   He could be long gone, but his words will still be ringing in their ears, because they want then to be true. 

    Orange Adolf to his sparsely-attended CPAC speech: “I am your retribution.” (Once a sociopath, always a sociopath.)
     

    As for low voter turnout, that is by the GOP’s design.  Make it difficult to register, and to access a ballot or polling place. Remove as many as possible from voter rolls if they don’t look right.  Gerrymander. Tamp down education, because an educated electorate is a danger to the GOP.   Finally, take away hope by make sure folks don’t think that their vote matters.

  11. trying again with a segment of that rollingstone piece linked above

    LAST MONTH, FOX Tucker Carlson was granted exclusive access to the trove of more than 44,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. On Monday night Carlson released the first installment of his analysis of the tapes, telling viewers that the vast majority of the protestors who breached the Capitol on <Jan. 6</a> were not insurrectionists but “orderly and meek” sightseers..

    Carlson opened his Monday night monologue by reiterating the network’s claims of 2020 election malfeasance, stating that the “2020 election was a grave betrayal of American democracy given the facts that have since emerged about that election. No honest person can deny it.” 

    From that jumping point, Carlson used cherry picked, time-stamp free clips to paint a picture of peaceful protesters who were being targeted by the Department of Justice and the Democratic party. Carlson’s use of the footage essentially amounted to a declaration that because Fox had identified some images of trespassers milling about, nothing uncouth actually happened in the Capitol on Jan. 6.

    The Fox host and his guests crafted an image of peaceful protesters, who were ushered into the Capitol by police officers and spent their time exploring the complex with an air of “reverence.” Charlie Hurt, appearing as a guest on the show, falsely asserted </a>that there was “no evidence” rioters inside the capitol were armed. <

    Carlson declared that members of the Jan. 6 Committee “lied about what they saw and then hid the evidence from the public, as well as from January 6th criminal defendants and their lawyers.”

    The episode rehashed many of the issues Carlson had previously covered, the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, the suspected affiliation of protester Ray Epps with federal law enforcement, and the death of Ashli Babbitt, who Carlson said his team was unable to obtain footage of. 

    Bizarrely enough, the episode featured plenty of images of rioters battering through police lines, breaking through windows and doors, and fighting with cops. Carlson would use this footage to claim that images of violent rioters were a propaganda tool used to paint all of the rioters as violent, when the majority were simply milling about the Capitol. If one looks at the scope of charges brought against those who unlawfully entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, the narrative crumbles. Only about half of the estimated 2,000 participants have been charged, a majority of those with non-violent offenses including trespassing, disorderly conduct, and obstructing an official proceeding. Relatively few of those found guilty have been sentenced to prison.

    [continues]</p>

  12. It’s easy to disprove Tucker’s fraudulent claims in his heavily edited clips of Jan. 6, but facts don’t matter to his viewers. To his bizarre assertion that this was just tourists, consider:

    Nearly 1,000 people were charged, 140 officers were assaulted, 326 charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees, including 106 assaults that happened with deadly or dangerous weapons. About 60 people pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement. Two pipe bombs were also planted nearby but were not detonated. 518 of those charged have pleaded guilty to various charges related to that day.

  13. hope they add him to the lawsuit they filed in january against loser guy.

    Family of U.S. Capitol Officer Condemns New Footage: ‘Frankly Sick of It’ (msn.com)

    The family of Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who died the day after the January 6, 2021, attack on Congress, has blasted Fox News as “unscrupulous and outright sleazy” after Tucker Carlson claimed the “overwhelming majority” of those who took part were “sightseers.”

    […]

    In response Sicknick’s family released a statement, saying they were “outraged at the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called ‘news’ network of Fox News who will do the bidding of Trump or any of his sycophant followers, no matter what damage is done to the families of the fallen.”

    They continued: “Carlson’s ‘truth’ is to pick and choose footage that supports his delusional views that the Jan 6th insurrection was peaceful and that Ashley Babbit was some kind of martyr…Whilst making a criminal out to be a martyr, he is also downplaying the horrid situation faced by the USCP (United States Capitol Police) and DC Metro Police who were incredibly outnumbered and were literally fighting for their very lives.”

    Babbit, a 36-year-old Trump supporter, was shot dead by a police officer on January 6, inside the Capitol Hill complex. An internal USCP inquiry found the shooting was lawful.

    The statement concluded: “The Sicknick Family would love nothing more than to have Brian back with us and to resume our normal lives. Fictitious news outlets like Fox and its rabid followers will not allow that.

    “Every time the pain of that day seems to have ebbed a bit, organizations like Fox rip our wounds wide open again and we are frankly sick of it.”

    [continues]

  16. Tfucker.  I loved seeing Paul Begala eat his lunch on Crossfire. He’s gained viewers since then but lost ravitas (if that is even possible).
     
    So it sounds like we all need to get ready for Armageddon – the Trumpf/Lake circus may be coming to our towns. Kamala may need one of those riot suits like the officer being crushed in the door in Bink’s sightseers comment is wearing before she squares off with Kari.

  18. OMG!
    patd….  LOVE the picture of “Fat Elvis”!
     
    BTW…  seeing all that snow in California…  I’m hoping that KGC is ok…

  20. Wheat is being separated from chaff in today’s republican party. Thing is, nobody else can tell which is which.

  21. ” Just another chance to showcase how awful and violent it was.”

    craig, that’s the reason.  grabbed tv eyes and ears. suck all the oxygen out of the room so nothing else (specifically nothing positive about biden or anyone other than magaTs) gets discussed.

    sadly, even we have fallen into their trap.

  22. we were warned.

    Trump vs. the media: how Trump makes the press into opposition – Vox

    … boyd was in Austin to tell the media they were getting played. [IMO it’s more accurate to say “being used”]

    “I’m hoping that you can hear what I’m saying,” she told the assembled journalists. “Because our democracy depends on you recognizing that you are being manipulated.”

    The manipulators boyd was talking about were mostly alt-right and alt-light trolls, conspiracy theorists, and provocateurs. They would do or say something offensive or outrageous, bathe in the flood of negative publicity, and use the media’s coverage — particularly its storm of outraged, fact-checking, oppositional coverage — to whip up their base, generate interest in their ideas, and stoke the belief that the MSM was against them.

    [continues]

  23. the hill:

    Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) says Fox News made “a mistake” by depicting Jan. 6, 2021, as a largely peaceful if chaotic protest, a revision of history that the Capitol Police chief criticized as “offensive” and “misleading.”
    McConnell told reporters that he endorsed Police Chief Tom Manger’s criticism that Fox host Tucker Carlson “cherry-picked” calmer moments from the violent day failed to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened in the Capitol.
    “I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol police about what happened on Jan. 6,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday, holding up a copy of the police chief’s statement.
    McConnell said “my concern is how it was depicted” on Carlson’s highly rated show.
    “Clearly the chief of the Capitol Police, in my view, correctly described what most of us witnessed first hand on Jan. 6,” he said.
    “It was a mistake, in my view, [for] Fox News to depict this in a way completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official in the Capitol” described, McConnell said.
    Manger, the police chief, said the commentary in Carlson’s show “was filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the Jan. 6 attack.”
    [continues]

  24. Mitch, remember the loser guy said it out loud in 2018: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

  27. 12 minutes of footage documenting Jan 6 sightseers rioting and kicking in doors of the Capitol, looking for representatives to assault

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