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GOP prepares for battle with new archvillain
For institutionalist Republicans weary of litigating Trump's role in the insurrection, the ban — and the sudden silencing of Trump's bullhorn — served as a diversion. And for the base of the party, it offered a rallying point for broader grievances about "cancel culture" and perceived attempts to censor conservative viewpoints. Less than 24 hours after the ban, Republicans were preparing to seize on the issue for the midterm elections and in 2024.
D.C.'s Acting U.S. Attorney Interviewed About the Large Scope of the Investigation
The fact that so many people streamed out of the Capitol afterward, how does that affect your job now in finding people and arresting them?
I don't want to Monday-morning-quarterback what the Capitol Police did when people flooded the Capitol and breached it, destroyed material, stole materials and left. But what I can tell you is, yes, there were very few people that were detained at the time of the incident and hundreds fled without being stopped. So, of course, it makes our job difficult. That's why we have to reengineer what happened through cell site data, social media postings, witness statements, video camera footage. This is a process that's going to take a while. But that's why we've got all hands on deck trying to identify and move very quickly, charging both federal and local charges as soon as possible.
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Some people call this a coup. Some call it a riot. Where do you fall in that?
I don't want this tyranny of labels saying this was sedition, this was a coup. But what I will say is, it was criminal. I'm a prosecutor. I'm not a political scientist. But what happened was criminal, and I'll leave the labels, whatever it was, in terms of a coup or sedition, to the political scientists that I'm sure are going to look at this for decades. But as I sit here as a prosecutor, what we've seen and what we'll prove and what we'll charge is criminal conduct.
Josh Hawley's Lost Book Deal Isn't Orwellian. It's a Consequence
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was right when she called you out yesterday. You are a senator. You have an obligation to uphold democracy and fight for the public good. Instead, you supported Donald Trump in attempting to overturn your country's lawful federal election and further helped incite the violence that led to Wednesday's disturbing insurrection at the Capitol, which, might I add, resulted in at least five deaths. That fist pump photo-op to the domestic terrorists you actively encouraged? Not a good look. What's worse is that according to BBC News, most of the insurrectionists you supported don't even feel any shame in the crimes they've committed. In fact, given the interviews they gave reporters, they seem energized, which means there's a chance such violent confrontations could happen again.
Mortality rate for Black babies is cut dramatically when they're delivered by Black doctors
In an effort to find some of the reasons behind the high death rates, Hardeman, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and three other researchers combed through the records of 1.8 million Florida hospital births between 1992 and 2015 looking for clues.
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"Strikingly, these effects appear to manifest more strongly in more complicated cases," the researchers wrote, "and when hospitals deliver more Black newborns." They found no similar relationship between White doctors and White births. Nor did they find a difference in maternal death rates when the doctor's race was the same as the patient's.
Secret Service making changes to presidential detail amid concerns agents are loyal to Trump
The US Secret Service has been planning to bring back to the White House a group of agents that previously worked with President-elect Joe Biden when he was vice president to fill out his security detail, a law enforcement source confirmed to CNN.
It's not uncommon for the presidential detail to change agents who are familiar with the new president, the source said, but these moves, which have been in place for several weeks, come at a time of considerable political tension as President Donald Trump continues to falsely claim that his second term is being stolen while Biden prepares to take office.
Christopher Hitchens narrates and discusses the 1979 coup of Iraq which put Hussein in power
From the YouTube description:
Archival footage married with part of a Christopher Hitchens speech, showing Saddam Hussein's final purge of the Iraqi Baath Party leadership. You'll notice a couple of small details are different than Hitchens remembers. The audience is larger, and the confessor does not come in wearing chains (metaphorically, perhaps, but not literally.) We don't know exactly how many hundreds of party members were killed in this purge in the whole of Iraq, but of the 68 taken out of this room on July 22, 1979, at least 22 were executed (by their fellow party members). Sadly, the bloodbath for Iraqis and the region was only just beginning.
I think this is a great Twitter thread about what led to Wednesday
In regards to the #CapitolCoup, I’m in a unique position. I monitored forums ahead of time and then was present for the coup itself.
— Melissa (she/her) (@LiteraryMouse) January 9, 2021
These are my observations based on what I saw and the evidence that’s been collected so far. I reserve the right to adjust my analysis as needed.
It wasn't a singularly organized coup, it was a bunch of disparate groups that worked independantly towards the same goal. I think that is something that is often misunderstood by many on the left and is something I have a problem with it being pushed as a core part of the narrative. Yes, Trump's (and others') rhetoric and words pushed it and led to it, but it is not like he was a field general for it. I am not saying this to absolve him of responsibility, he still very much has that, but I think it is an important distinction to understand.
One primary reason it is important, is to hammer home the reality that had it been a centrally planned and organized movement, and had that been met with the same level of defense and security - the results would have been terrifyingly worse and there would be more blood.
Read the Twitter thread, it is worth the time.
Everything pundits are getting wrong about this current moment in content moderation: An ongoing list
Pointed out to me by Cory Doctorow on Twitter, he does a tweet thread to highlight and add to the post.
Watching the Saints vs. Bears on Nickelodeon and... it's not terrible. The main commentator does a great job and the Nickelodeon trappings are entertaining.
Other PJarrett Update - iFlirt-s
This is a feature my Facebook friends and family know well. But my gmail is used by an array of people who mistakenly sign up for things with my email address. Today's entry is that someone in France signed up for iFlirt-s, and sent me their registration email:
Bonjour, [Username - Removed by me]
Mot de passe : [Password - Removed by me]
Merci beaucoup d'avoir créé un compte sur iFlirt-s!
Prenez votre temps et cliquez sur le lien suivant afin de vérifier votre compte.
The email included the user's password in plain text, which is a big security no-no for EXACTLY THIS REASON.
Keith Olbermann tweets about Pelosi's Sunday message about this coming week
BREAKING: The letter from @SpeakerPelosi tonight isn’t just bureaucratic legalese to colleagues.
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) January 11, 2021
She is demanding Donald Trump’s Unconditional Surrender, within 48 hours. She's given Pence cover to invoke the 25th. She's ready to expel GOP House members who aided the Coup: pic.twitter.com/1h5cYeQT11
This is the Pelosi letter from Sunday which Olbermann is discussing:
Here is the 14th Amendment, Section 3:
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.
I am far from a Constitutional scholar, I don't know how much tooth the perceived threat this section of the amendment actually carries, but if Pelosi and others smarter than me think so, then we will see.
Post-Riot, the Capitol Hill IT Staff Faces a Security Mess
"You have to step back and realize that foreign intelligence could have looked at this and said, "Yeah, this is going to be an opportunity," says Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec. "I don't think every office that was entered everything needs to be burned to the ground, but you need to be acknowledging that there's real intelligence value in learning legislators' intentions and plans on policy. This security breach is a big deal."
"The American Abyss" editorial - Well worth a read
Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place.
I also love this particular piece. It excellently how lucky America got that we have this orange pile of dogshit in the White House and not someone who is actually competent:
Social media proved to be a blunt weapon: Trump could announce his intentions on Twitter, and white supremacists could plan their invasion of the Capitol on Facebook or Gab. But the president, for all his lawsuits and entreaties and threats to public officials, could not engineer a situation that ended with the right people doing the wrong thing.
And then this near the end. "Gamers" and "Breakers" is a reference made through the article referring to two types of politicians.
Trump is, for now, the martyr in chief, the high priest of the big lie. He is the leader of the breakers, at least in the minds of his supporters. By now, the gamers do not want Trump around. Discredited in his last weeks, he is useless; shorn of the obligations of the presidency, he will become embarrassing again, much as he was in 2015. Unable to provide cover for their gamesmanship, he will be irrelevant to their daily purposes. But the breakers have an even stronger reason to see Trump disappear: It is impossible to inherit from someone who is still around. Seizing Trump's big lie might appear to be a gesture of support. In fact it expresses a wish for his political death. Transforming the myth from one about Trump to one about the nation will be easier when he is out of the way.