Continuing saga of how Trump tried to steal his second term, plus Jan. 6 committee reports

Much of the plan is now known, though it actually was fairly open in late 2020. Once the lawsuits failed, Trump hoped somehow to discredit the certified slates of electors and throw the vote into the House. Luttig, a traditional Republican judge, lays out the plan. It didn't work because Mike Pence, as president of the Senate, didn't go along with it. 

Former Attorney General Barr testified that Trump was 'detached from reality' when it came to the election results. 

Since that plan failed, Trumpie Republicans are working on 2.0 of the plan, which involves Republican legislatures ignoring the vote totals in their states and choosing pro-Republican electors. 

The biggest revelations for me (so far) was how hard Trump pushed the DOJ and how hard the DOJ pushed back. But this was somewhat apparent at the time. Enough of it leaked within days. DOJ officials testifying at the Jan. 6 hearings. Transcript of that day's hearings. Reconstruction of that very important day, Jan. 3. Very important: the lying letter that Jeffrey Clark wanted to send out just days before Jan. 6. 

Highlights of Pence Day at the hearings, plus the danger was greater than it appeared. The prospect of 'wild' demonstrations was viewed as leverage. All the evidence that Trump was warned he was doing illegal shit, but he ignored it. 

More to be added as I find it or remember to add it. Publish now, continue adding. 

Image: wttw.com

Extras. Three video summaries of key points in the riots: the role of the Proud Boys, demonstrators breaching line after line, and bodycam footage of police being attacked. 

Truth Social, supposedly the no-censorship twitter platform, has suspended accounts for posting about the Jan. 6 committee reports. 

A group led by the Kraken lady Sidney Powell may be paying for the defense of some OathKeepers. Prosecutors are concerned that they aren't getting informed consent or client-centered representation. Whose goals are the priority? That's worth asking. 

The Jan. 6 committee was very well organized with excellent pacing and focus in their presentations. A critique of how they've done that. 

From the excellent Jan. 6 hearings, a beautiful, smart, serious White House staffer tells a lot of the inside stories of Jan. 6, but certainly not all of them. Trump's support is shaken. A longer piece of how she broke from the Trump circle.

After Elon Musk was forced to follow through and buy twitter, he reinstated Trump's twitter account. Now some of that history is available to see again, but some is strangely gone. The tweet where Trump blasted Mike Pence for cowardice? Gone. 

Here's a list of his Jan. 6 tweets.Two important tweets from Jan. 6. The two final tweets from Jan. 8 that got his account permanently suspended until Musk became owner. Yes, he deserved to be suspended because he was starting on the incitement again. Trump's tweet slamming Pence is gone, but his post on that material is still available on Facebook. The audience is so different between twitter and Facebook. Mostly negative on twitter, mostly supportive with a lot of religious references on Facebook. And a fun look at Junior being clueless about his own father. 

Some of Trump's illegal fake electors still have roles in government or elections.

A bunch of stories based on releases of the final days of the committee. Some in the inner circle were dismayed. A timeline of the 187 minutes that Trump wasn't calling off the riots. Many bits of interest from WaPo folks pouring over the releases. And some bigger ones also. WaPo's view of the 187 minutes. 

Some clarification on what the capitol police leadership were facing. 

Because I don't know where else to put this: the story of a Trump loyalist trying to do major troop withdrawals, but he's only 30 years old and doesn't know how to write up a presidential order. He also doesn't know it takes more than writing it and getting a signature. Lots of top-level officials saying I don't know about this. Do you know about this? FUNNY.

The Georgia indictment.

Can we do anything about school shootings?

Database of shootings. 

Everytown (Bloomberg org) on school shootings. Other tabs have more info, but need to dig. 

Researchers found commonalities in school shooters. Very important. 

More research on what policies work. Fairly important, but not as incisive. 

Another website with data on school shootings. A website on mass shootings. 

Information about the Uvalde shooting at an elementary school. The shooter had a high power AR rifle, so the rounds went through doors and walls. The article also explains the design of the AR, its ammo, and the damage done. 

AR from shooter in the Uvalde school

Image: texastribute. com

Extras. Pew research into mass shootings. A graph there shows the increase in active shooter incidents, but it's still not a significant contributer to the overal murder rate. 

Long WaPo article on the experience of a mass shooting with AR15 type rifles. Lots of graphic pictures and description. 

Twitter Files: The internal decision-making and journos skewing it

I wasn't a fan of Twitter until Elon Musk threatened to buy it back in March 2022. Then I started thinking of how convenient Twitter is to disseminate brief information or point people in a direction. So I have no interest in writing on Twitter or have a feed to look at or ignore, but I'm very happy to click on a Twitter link and find out the scoop in a limited number of characters and an easy-to-read format. 

So Twitter proved its value to me. I started thinking of it as a compact version of the internet. 

So what should the rules be for a compact version of the internet? We have to consider that Twitter is a private company, not the whole internet. It's here not because a bunch of countries got together and figured out how to do it and finance it, but because someone started up a company, and they are trying to stay in business. There are going to be business considerations, so they can't be as open as the entire internet. I strongly support media companies having standards, and that applies to social media as well. 

So the Twitter files were supposed to show how fucked up Twitter is. That message is favored by Musk, Twitter's new owner who is successfully soliciting adulation from conservatives. It's written by journalists with axes to grind with mainstream media, much of it warranted because mainstream media has got a ton of problems. They use journalistic methods, such as quoting primary sources like text communication between Twitter executives. However, they aren't exactly evenhanded in presenting the situation, particularly the decision to permanently suspend Trump's Twitter account. 

They focus on the internal decision-making, and ignore that Trump rallied thousands of people and got them to surround, break into, and intimidate Congress on the day that Joe Biden's election was to be certified. They seem to have zero problem whatsoever ignoring these extreme circumstances. It's so funny when Bari Weiss points to the words of others leaders and their threats, and leaves it at words. She doesn't mention if those other leaders managed to mass a mob that attacked a seat of government. Wow, just the words are a fair comparison.

That's the shoddiness of the Twitter files. 

Image: twitter.com

Extras: File 1, File 2, File 3, File 4, File 5. 

Twitter did screw up on its blockage of the NY Post article about the discovery of Hunter Biden's laptop, and they have admitted it. I agree it was wrong. Twitter also has left-leaning biases. However, I suspect that most if not all suspended accounts deserved it. Misinformation (lies) are a huge problem in media, and even larger if you do nothing about them but just let them propagate. 

The files misrepresent the reasons for permanently suspending Trump's account. Here is twitter's explanation, which the journalist somehow never link to.

My rant. Here is my stream of consciousness rant about the twitter files. Getting it out of drafts and making it available to all. 

The first big series of the twitter files has finished. I'm going to focus what was written about Trump being permanently banned from twitter after the Jan. 6 riot/insurrection/attempted coup. 

When you read about this in the twitter files, almost the entire focus is on the internal decision-making of twitter execs, and not what was happening on the ground in DC. How is it fair or realistic to isolate those? Twitter is criticized for not following the rules and procedures they had established, but what was happening in DC then? Well, for the first time ever, thousands of Americans surrounded the capitol to intimidate Congress into not doing its legislative and Constitutional duty. Those events were unique, but somehow twitter is supposed to ignore all that and continue with the same rules and procedures it had.

Bari Weiss repeats Trump's tweets of Jan. 8. They are:

“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

Then she focuses for most of the next 27 tweets on the twitter internal deliberations, especially how different work groups and officials in twitter can't find specific rule violations in those two Trump tweets. 

Weiss also goes into the violent rhetoric of leaders of other countries, and how they weren't thrown off of twitter for that rhetoric.

That all sounds logical, doesn't it? And it is logical......EXCEPT that some very major developments are completely ignored in that telling. And it's not logical to ignore major relevant developments unless you want a skewed argument to justify a skewed decision or viewpoint. 

So what are the major relevant developments? 

1. Trump encouraged thousands of his supporters to march to the capitol and intimidate Congress. And they did so with much violence. 

2. Trump did not call his supporters to cease for over 3 hours once the violence started. That is an extremely slow response when Congress was surrounded and violently threatened.

3. Trump did not condemn the violence that day. 

4. Trump made a conciliatory video and released in on the morning of Jan. 8. 

5. Trump backed away from his conciliatory tone with his two tweets, and again began to stoke anger. 

That is why Trump deserved to be permanently suspended. He wasn't ready or willing to give up his angry rhetoric even though it had already incited a high level of violence and threat to the legal processes of government. Twitter gave Trump the chance to back away from that kind of rhetoric, but Trump blew that chance. 

Weiss also didn't bother to quote twitter's explanation for the suspension that was published on Jan. 8.

Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks......

We assessed the two Tweets referenced above under our Glorification of Violence policy, which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Based on this, twitter determined that the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service.

I have to wonder why Weiss didn't bother to quote this readily available explanation in her twitter thread. Biased much? As a journalist, Bari Weiss should have considered this context too, but she didn't, probably because her biased viewpoint was the plan. Ignoring the reasons Trump deserved to be suspended was the plan.

There is also this info from a CNBC report: Twitter said it feared Trump’s most recent tweets were being interpreted as supporting the rioters and that plans for future armed protests had already been proliferating both on and off the platform, including a proposed attack on the U.S. Capitol and state capitol buildings on Jan. 17. 

The journalist writing that installment of the twitter files ignores all this context with a straight face and no apology. Definitely don't distract her with those pressing events----she's a watchdog on whether twitter is staying true to its rules.

Well, too fucking bad. For all the claims that Trump deserved to maintain his access to twitter, we really need to consider what Trump did on Jan. 6 and beyond. And the journalist, Bari Weiss, should have considered it too, but she didn't, probably because her slanted treatment was the plan. Ignoring the reasons Trump deserved to be suspended was the plan.

Is Roe v. Wade about to be overturned?

Yes, I was woefully late posting this. But that makes it more historical, capturing some of the sentiments before the event. 

A draft decision overturning the Roe decision has been leaked---perhaps the first leak of a decision in the history of the Supreme Court. But the leak isn't my focus in the least. There's so much to consider that has much more impact on people's lives. 

If Roe is overturned, it will become much harder to get an abortion in over half the states in the US. And it will stay the same in a lot of states, like mine. 

However it's hard to tell how much impact this will actually have because getting an abortion is much easier than it was back 50 years ago. Now you can take a pill. That pill can be shipped to you or to a friend. You and a group of friends can stock up and resupply as convenient. There's also going to other states, but that's not as easy as taking a pill, so the pills will probably be used more than anything.

Will states try to prevent this? Maybe, probably, but how successful can they be? We have a huge illegal drug issue in the US, and states and federal government haven't put an end to that. This would involve legally available pills and people who want the government to stop dictating to women. So I think flaunting the laws will be widespread. A few people may be imprisoned, and that will seem like an injustice of the most arbitrary kind. And life will go on without a lot of difference except perhaps some people will be more careful about contraceptive use. 

Image: i stock photo

Extras. Dems have been raked over the coals for not passing a national law protecting abortion rights. But they never had the votes in the Senate since the bill certainly would have been filibustered. They had only 54 votes, with 7 Dem senators being pro-life at that time in 2009. 

Annotated copy of the leaked draft opinion. 

The talking points for the Republican senators: stress how compassionate GOPers are and how horrible extremists Dems are. 

Fascinating article about the abortion business in New York City in the 1800s. Abortion was illegal, sort of, so it was advertised as restoring menstrual regularity. 

Fall-out in Ohio. A 10-year-old girl was raped and impregnated. She had to go to Indiana to get the abortion. Big impact on the discussions in states. 

A gallery of day-by-day fetal development. 

Update 4/11/24. Long article about women taking abortion pills in states with abortion bans. They can often get the pills free, but they aren't getting a doctor's care, and that's a huge loss. Many are unsure what is normal and what are the danger signs that they should seek medical care. If they seek medical care, will they be prosecuted or targeted in some ways? There are some volunteer services of doctors on call who will answer questions, but it's not a substitute for physician care in person and in crisis. 

Clown show: The Arizona audit

Running list from the Secretary of State. 

PR/spin from the AZ senate here. 

Made-up numbers in the final report.

Ok, those are the links. Here's the short version and I'll post this very belatedly. The GOP idiots in AZ went with the Trump lies that the election was stolen, and tried to find the evidence of it in their state. Since they don't actually know the safeguards in elections, or they're lying bitches, the GOP state senators voted to confiscate all the ballots from Maricopa Country and recheck them. And since they didn't have a plan about how to forge evidence, they had to report that the numbers from the original count were good--well within the margin of error for counting ballots. 

Lesson 1: It's hard to prove rubbish is true. Or maybe impossible. 

Lesson 2: If you're not willing to totally lie, cheat, and forge evidence, you're going to disappoint the audience that doesn't care about truth and reality. 

Unfortuantely, the GOP in AZ don't seem much smarter for this experience. 

Image: seattletimes.com

History: When the GOP pissed off black voters

Black voters were very loyal to the party of Lincoln, which after all fought to end slavery and insisted on rights for the newly freed Americans. I haven't studied this extensively to know when it started changing, but I do know that black Americans were grateful to FDR, and maybe even more so to Eleanor. Many New Deal programs gave black folks a share, and that wasn't common or expected at that time. FDR was getting around 70% of black votes for president, which is quite impressive. 

In 1948, Truman integrated the military, and got 77% of the black vote and that carried over to 1952. Eisenhower must have been relatively popular with black folks because he raised his take from 24% in 1952 to 39% in 1956. 

But this didn't carry over to Nixon, and here's why. Nixon decided to court the white southern vote instead. Maybe this happened because in 1948, white southern Democrats rebelled and formed their own party, the Dixiecrats. This showed the cracks in their loyalty, and probably Nixon took notice, no doubt along with others. So Nixon hoped to court white southern votes, and he did it at the cost of the hopes for equality of black Americans. Martin Luther King felt betrayed. There's little doubt that others did too. Nixon was calculating, and let southern white folks know that they could run their schools their way. 

Also, Kennedy stepped up to support Martin Luther King when he was jailed in Georgia in October '60, and get him released. Be sure to read these last two links because the stories are more emotional than I can convey. 

Kennedy got 68% of the black vote in 1960. In 1964, that surged to 94% for Johnson, and it hasn't dropped back into the 60s yet. For the complex reasons why, ask black folks and read a lot. But I don't think it's an accident. There are reasons for electoral shifts, and it's wise to pay attention to them. 

Image: mashable.com

Covid updates and articles

Publishing another post that's been sitting around. Good links here. 

The year in covid - 2021. Lots of people got vaccinated. There were a few scares with the vaccines, particularly rare blood clots from the Johnson&Johnson (very rare), and heart inflammation (myocarditis), mostly in younger men (somewhat rare). Summer brought a wave of the delta variant. Vaxxed people had some breakthrough cases, but few hospitalizations or deaths. Stupid red states like Texas had a ton of hospitalizations and deaths. And the anti-vaxxers remained dubious even with all the real-life info. The omicron wave started in November and surged fast, wiping out a lot of Christmas and New Year's plans. It was very contagious, but having a recent booster turned out still be quite protective. My family all got booster by December, so we had no covid cases here. 

Now the links:

An article about how masks protect. 

But the best explanation has come from private communication with an acquaintance with a PhD in molecular biology and decades of experience in pharmaceuticals and drug testing. He writes how masks are very helpful even though viruses are so small, 

A respiratory droplet contains water proteins, glycoproteins, salt, and if someone is infectious, SARS-VoV-2 virus.

When they very rapidly evaporate, what gets left behind is a hydrated particle of proteins, glycoproteins, salt, and virus.

It's not naked virus. It is much larger than the cold virus, although still small enough to remain airborne.

And yes, those droplet nuclei can pass fairly easily through a mask. I pointed that out of my original extended reply to you. That's why masks do a poor job of protecting the person wearing them.

But the point is that masks do quite a good job of trapping large respiratory droplets at the source, before they have a chance to evaporate into airborne droplet nuclei.

That's the point. Respiratory droplets get caught at the source before they have a chance to evaporate into droplet nuclei, which remain suspended in the air, and are quite effective at infecting other people.

The heartache of being a covid doctor. How huge the omicron wave was.  What it was like in Kansas City. 

Excellent resource. The report from the independent panel reviewing the Pfizer vaccine test data. Loads of info, like how many subjects were hospitalized. 

So the big ivermectin guru, Dr. Pierre Kory, got covid even though he was following his preventative protocol. Why he didn't change his advice--bias, of course.

Image: pewtrusts.org