[Newfie]

Everyone is worked up over this fiasco. What the politicians of all stripes, and Trump in spades, did was to create a great divide between Americans. Fanning that divisiveness only promotes their agenda.

I kind of think Ibon has the best path, let him sit in office and stew, dead man walking, for the next 12-13 days. He is very unlikely to do anything to bolster his reputation. Frankly the best inoculation against Trump is probably Trump. No one except a very few fringe folks support him anymore, he has eaten his political capital.

Frankly the way I see it is as watching a man emotionally spin out and collapse in front of our eyes. I had hopes he would rise to the office, any thin vestige of those hopes have evaporated. The chances of him winning another election are zip. He has lost all personal authority. At tuis point I doubt there is much he can effect, his aides will stonewall him. There will always be a reason to not do something stupid. We had tuis with Nixon, he would get tanked up and cranked up and make all kinds of orders his staff just forgot about and let die.

Eberyone needs to take a deep cleansing breath knowing that this will be over very soon. Listen to Juan, as bad as it is (and it is bad) we are simply seeing the end of a phenomenon. He probably is personally responsible for the R loss in Georgia. His magic is gone.

My personal minds eye image is of a flounder in the bottom of a boat, it beats around wildly making great commotion, but eventually suffocates, gasping ever less for fully as it dies.

Our real challenge will he the next crop of nit wits who come into office, what ever stripe. For there will ever be someone out to fleece us and restrict us.

Thanks for listening.

[JuanP]

My worry is that regardless of the course taken to limit his power in these last few days that one or more of the foreign enemies (Russia , China , Iran etc.) will take the opportunity to make a move that with the chaos here we will be unable to respond to properly.

I don't see that happening at all, absolutely not. Almost everyone in the world is waiting for Trump to be gone, including the governments of Russia, China, and Iran, hoping that the next US government will be more predictable, if not necessarily better. Those governments will not do anything to provoke Trump.

[Plantagenet]

.... let him sit in office and stew, dead man walking, for the next 12-13 days. He is very unlikely to do anything to bolster his reputation. Frankly the best inoculation against Trump is probably Trump.

The Ds in the house are going to go ahead and impeach Trump next week. Personally, I support this effort.

I think it would be helpful to make the point that politicians shouldn't go around inciting violence. Trump is being rightfully criticized right now for his role in inciting the storming of the Congress, but just a few months ago it was Kamala Harris and Cuomo and others in the D party were cheering on the rioters and looters and arsonists who were destroying business after business in many of our cities and encouraging them to keep at it.....and there was very little criticism of their irresponsible statements. I'm hoping that if Trump gets impeached for being irresponsible and inciting violence that this might help rein in Trump AND Kamala Harris and Gov. Cuomo and perhaps others as well.

No one except a very few fringe folks support him anymore....

Actually Trump received ca. 75 million votes just two months ago in the last election.

I think that impeaching Trump now would help discredit him in the eyes of these 75 million people who voted for him and may still support him.

Cheers!

[ralfy]

Fix it. Don't crash the democracy we have.

Doesn't that include questioning?

[Pops]

My worry is that regardless of the course taken to limit his power in these last few days that one or more of the foreign enemies (Russia , China , Iran etc.) will take the opportunity to make a move that with the chaos here we will be unable to respond to properly.

TOPLINE Thomas Bossert, President Trump’s former homeland security adviser to writes in an op-ed on the New York Times that Russia maybe peeking into internal communications of the U.S. government and may have the ability to falsify government data and emails, and warns his former boss to stop nursing disappointment over his election loss and take immediate action.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityar ... cae70d42b7

Trump Officials Rush to Keep Him From Sparking Another Conflict—at Home or Abroad
High-ranking national-security officials have spent the last 24 hours scrambling to figure out how to keep their commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, from inciting further violence at home, spilling national secrets, or sparking last-minute confrontations with international foes.

The concerns in the upper echelons of the administration’s national-security community range from fears inside the Pentagon that the president will do or say something that effectively throws the U.S. into a military confrontation with another country to anxieties in the intelligence apparatus that Trump will divulge classified intelligence on his way out, according to four officials who spoke with The Daily Beast about the matter. All requested to remain anonymous in order to speak more openly about the discussions.

“This isn’t a hypothetical anymore,” said one senior administration official. “This is real. What happened yesterday changed the calculus. People are concerned about [the president’s] state of mind.”

WE are the most powerful country with the most powerful military in the history of the world. We can obliterate any country, still.

Pretty sure we are our own greatest threat right now.
.

[aadbrd]

Having him 13 days doing nothing but being exposed as the naked emperor with no clothes as he hemorrhages slowly his remaining support is maybe the best path.

Regardless of the outcome of the impeachment, it needs to be filed as a matter of principle.

Also, his supporters are already planning more events. This has become self-reinforcing even without Trump's bullhorn. Should there be more riots and more loss of life over the rest of Trump's term it will seem incomprehensible that he not be staring down an impeachment regardless of whether the Republicans in the senate block the trial or not. It will also broadcast (further) weakness to the rest of the world that we simply do not have suitable checks and balances or lack the will to wield them.

It has been my opinion for some time that the reason these riots had not occurred until now is that his supporters were clinging to the hope that the election would be overturned. That false hope is what powered Trump's grift. With that no longer in the cards, they are now filled with pent up rage which will now spill out in a way that would have come out in more measured doses after the election had been called. So it would be premature to assume that what happened at the capitol was "peak MAGA". This should be factored in to any justice meted out to Trump.

[Ibon]

Having him 13 days doing nothing but being exposed as the naked emperor with no clothes as he hemorrhages slowly his remaining support is maybe the best path.

Regardless of the outcome of the impeachment, it needs to be filed as a matter of principle.

Also, his supporters are already planning more events. This has become self-reinforcing even without Trump's bullhorn. Should there be more riots and more loss of life over the rest of Trump's term it will seem incomprehensible that he not be staring down an impeachment regardless of whether the Republicans in the senate block the trial or not. It will also broadcast (further) weakness to the rest of the world that we simply do not have suitable checks and balances or lack the will to wield them.

It has been my opinion for some time that the reason these riots had not occurred until now is that his supporters were clinging to the hope that the election would be overturned. That false hope is what powered Trump's grift. With that no longer in the cards, they are now filled with pent up rage which will now spill out in a way that would have come out in more measured doses after the election had been called. So it would be premature to assume that what happened at the capitol was "peak MAGA". This should be factored in to any justice meted out to Trump.

I am in agreement and also in almost total agreement with Pops comments regarding the psychology of trump and his deplorables. The matter of principal to me though is secondary to fully demoralizing and humiliating his supporters back to where they were say 20 years ago when white nationalists and racists where fringe radicals.

Between here and then I have no doubt that we may see riots and death and rage spewing but mostly it is what Pops stated, just a bunch of yahoos who really don't have the organization or intelligence to execute any real coupe. They are deplorable even as revolutionaries! hahaha. So some may die in their trajectory into the gutter. Their images will be hung in the living rooms of trailer homes throughout the heartland as martyrs for awhile but the country will move on.

[Pops]

Their images will be hung in the living rooms of trailer homes throughout the heartland as martyrs

Classic Ibon, LOL

[Outcast_Searcher]

WE are the most powerful country with the most powerful military in the history of the world. We can obliterate any country, still.

Well, we assume that, and yet, our track record with recent wars isn't all that great. Especially if you call success not wiping out LOTS of civilians as collateral damage along the way. (Saying "oops" doesn't make that OK, IMO).

And if "obliterating" means going full nuclear exchange with a serious nuclear power, how does the US getting wiped out in return (except perhaps, for the asshats who started it hiding under a mountain until their supplies run out) count as "winning"?

There's a reason WW II was the last world war we've had. Hopefully the folks in charge manage to remember that.

[aadbrd]

Their images will be hung in the living rooms of trailer homes throughout the heartland as martyrs

Classic Ibon, LOL

Let's call them what they are: Y'all Qaeda.

[jedrider]

So, this latest episode can be considered a combination of domestic terrorism and insurrection, making it rather unique, or maybe it is obvious that all domestic terrorism is insurrectionist, but I'm not sure about that.

It does seem to me that the only way to go after this is to go after the money behind this movement. Individuals can rant all they want, but once money is involved in an organized fashion, doesn't that move it into the realm of conspiracy?

Pro-Trump dark money groups organized the rally that led to deadly Capitol Hill riot
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/09/pro-trump-dark-money-groups-organized-the-rally-that-led-to-deadly-capitol-hill-riot.html

[vtsnowedin]

Actually Trump received ca. 75 million votes just two months ago in the last election.

Yes but a lot (I think two thirds) of those were not votes for Trump as much as they were votes against Biden/Harris just as the 2016 vote was as much anti Clinton as it was pro Trump.
The GOP needs a new competent leader that that majority can vote for and the pure Trump supporters will have no better option but to follow.
This last four years has been chaos and the country needs to move on and the first good chance at that will be the mid terms in 2022.

[Ibon]

This last four years has been chaos and the country needs to move on and the first good chance at that will be the mid terms in 2022.

Why not now?

[jedrider]

It rankles me that Trump may get away, unscathed by legal repercussions, with most of this.

It seems to me that the best way to get at Trump is by denying his power of pardon, or limiting it.

I'm no constitutional scholar, but it seems that there is a problem with pardoning your family and your close colleagues.

[Plantagenet]

It does seem to me that the only way to go after this is to go after the money behind this movement. Individuals can rant all they want, but once money is involved in an organized fashion, doesn't that move it into the realm of conspiracy?

Exactly right.

We need to find out who was funding the criminals who attacked the Congress last week and also find out who was funding the criminals who attacked the White House and Federal Courthouses and private businesses and stores across the nation all last summer.

If we're go to stop mindless political violence then we need to stop all political violence. Stopping R political violence while condoning D political violence isn't going to work.....we need to take steps to stop all political violence.

Cheers!

[Plantagenet]

I'm no constitutional scholar, but it seems that there is a problem with pardoning your family and your close colleagues.

I doubt Joe Biden would support your proposal. His son Hunter and his brother James have been accused of being "bagmen" for bribes......Joe may need to use that pardon power for his own family at some point down the road.

Cheers!

[aadbrd]

For someone that professes not to like Trump you seem just as obsessed with Hunter Biden as he is.

You do realize Trump was impeached trying to pressure Ukraine to frame the Bidens, don't you?

And you do realize that Trump's campaign was basically trolled by Russia with that laptop that just appeared magically out of nowhere, right?

I don't see how your talking points are any different from the stop the steal crowd who stormed the capitol. It's all still based on repeating comforting weaponized lies.

And really, this pattern goes at least as far back as Trump's birtherism, pizzagate, etc...

[Plantagenet]

you seem ... obsessed with Hunter Biden

I wouldn't say obsessed but I do confess to being concerned that the Bidens have been compromised by bribes from China, Russia and the Ukraine. Its pretty common knowledge that Hunter Biden has received millions and millions of dollars from China Russia, and the Ukraine, and Hunter's own emails say he is passing the money on to Joe Biden.

Perhaps you think that is OK, but it concerns me.

I hope Hunter's claim that he is the "bag man" for the Biden crime family is fully investigated. Perhaps Hunter is lying about passing the money on to Joe.....or perhaps he isn't.

you do realize that Trump's campaign was basically trolled by Russia with that laptop that just appeared magically out of nowhere, right?

I'm afraid it is you who has been "trolled." Perhaps you have been misled because a number of former D intelligence people associated with the Biden campaign wrote a letter claiming that Hunter's Laptop from Hell was a Russian plant. However, perhaps you don't know that after the partisan Ds wrote their letter, the current Director of National Intelligence confirmed that the three laptops didn't come from Russia and the incriminating Hunter Biden emails that have been published are not Russian disinformation. That means those three laptops are indeed Hunter Biden's laptops and the emails published by the US press are indeed Hunter Biden's emails.

russian-disinformation-not-behind-biden-emails-dni-ratcliffe-says

AND, Hunter Biden says all kinds of crazy things in his emails on those laptops. He says he is the bagman for Joe Biden, and his job is to pass on to Joe a good proportion of the millions of dollars he has been receiving from China, Ukraine and especially the three million dollars he got from the wife of the mayor of Moscow.....who of course is a trusted Putin oligarch.

Let me ask you two questions.....(1) if Hunter Biden isn't passing the money on to Joe then why are all these foreign oligarch giving Hunter Biden all these millions of dollars, especially when Hunter doesn't seem to know much about anything except how to smoke crack......AND (2) Wouldn't it worry you if Trump's children were being paid millions of dollars for doing nothing by shady foreign oligarchs?

Other curious things on the laptops include Hunter Biden saying he is still smoking crack....along with grodie "selfies" of Hunter Biden smoking crack.

And there's lots more fun stuff too.

And the Director of National Intelligence says its not Russian disinformation.

So what in heck is going on there?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Cheers!

[vtsnowedin]

"Why not now"
I think the Democrats will be emboldened by their victories and overstep public sentiment, creating even more chaos over the next two years. It will take the 2022 election to give at least one house back to the Republicans and place a curb on Democrat excesses.

[JuanP]

"Why not now"
I think the Democrats will be emboldened by their victories and overstep public sentiment, creating even more chaos over the next two years. It will take the 2022 election to give at least one house back to the Republicans and place a curb on Democrat excesses.

I expect the Democrats to shoot their own feet until none of them have any toes left. I'd love to be proven wrong, but all the appointments Biden has made so far point to a terrible government. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they lose control of both the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives in the 2022 elections. That gives them two years to do something. I expect them to spend those two years playing catch up to the COVID pandemic and dealing with the economic crisis. They may pass some bills favoring American billionaires, but I doubt that they'll make anything better for most Americans.

Like I said, I'd love to be proven wrong, but Biden is an inept person and the people he has appointed are mostly rotten to the core.