What is stopping Trump from setting the White House on fire?

I mean a literal fire. He’s got minions that will do just about anything for him. What’s to stop them from starting multiple fires in different parts of the building at once?

Or damaging the art, antiques or other artifacts?

How about destroying the plumbing so the place floods?

Or giving away very sensitive information to anyone who Venmo’s to his account?

Will the White House still be habitable by January 20, 2021?

I only ask.

A challenge

The White House has words of caution for those of us Americans who are willing to put aside our party affiliations to get him out of office as soon as possible using any legal means possible in order to protect our government, ensure our national security and reassure our allies that we are a nation of laws:

The White House has put out the following statement opposing impeachment.

It will not, however, say whether the president intends to incite any more violent insurrections to overthrow American democracy in his remaining days in office. pic.twitter.com/CDhGAghDYe

— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) January 8, 2021

The challenge:

Put your best Monty Python quote in the comments that sums up your analysis of this scenario and what should be a proper response. I’ll go first:

Matthias:Look.  I don't think 
it ought to be blasphemy, 
just saying “Jehovah!"
 
(Sensation!!!!  The women gasp.)
 
Women:(high voices) He said it again.
(low voices)  He said it again.

Official: (to Matthias) You're only making 
it worse for yourself.

Matthias: Making it worse?  
How can it be worse? 
Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah.

Cynicism should be met mercilessly with satire.

Have at it.

Pelosi went there

Nancy Pelosi seems like mostly an unflappable type of person. She exudes confidence and faith and strength. So, even though the rest of us are kidding on the square about Trump nuking Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, it looks like Nancy thought this was a real possibility. She took up the issue with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley:

He probably wouldn’t nuke Pittsburgh or Philly but Iran? Yeah, I could see him try to be Mr. Macho and give his base something to get them hard.

Who else does Trump want to set as an example? China? Woah, that would send a message wouldn’t it? Pennsylvania would become a glass parking lot in no time.

So, good to know Pelosi is trying to head it off.

Meanwhile, make sure your bug out bag is ready and you have plenty of iodine tablets.

What the failed coup will cost us

IBW pointed me to this Business Insider article where our NATO allies analyze what happened on Wednesday. First, let’s get this out of the way. It was a coup attempt. I try not to use words that are inaccurate or thrown around in order to excite passions. I can be cold to a fault. But our ALLIES are calling it a coup attempt and they lay out a common scenario that they see dictators in the developing world use all the time. Trump followed this scenario pretty closely.

Secondly, they are convinced that it was an inside job. They say that the federal police organizations in DC failed to react. Those units are under the president’s command. The Capitol police were quickly overwhelmed and there was something odd about the lack of coordination with other federal police.

We are very lucky that the regular armed forces pledged to not interfere on Trump’s behalf a couple of weeks ago.

Third, and this is the part that should scare the crap out of anyone with a 401K, if Trump had succeeded, our NATO allies would have had to impose financial sanctions against the US as punishment. That’s right. It was the Trump loyalists who tried to use force to overturn a free and fair election but the whole country would have been punished to impose hardship on all of us until Trump and his enablers were forced out. That’s how sanctions work. That’s what we do to Iran and Russia.

That would have had a huge impact on the financial stability of the country’s currency which the rest of the world depends on:

“Thank God it didn’t work, because I can’t imagine how hard it would be to sanction the US financial system,” the official said. By sanctions, he means the imposition of the diplomatic, military, and trade blockages that democratic nations usually reserve for dictatorships.

“The broader damage around the world will be extensive in terms of reputation, and that’s why Putin doesn’t mind at all that Trump lost. He’s got to be happy to take his chips and count his winnings, which from the Trump era will be a shockingly quick decline in American prestige and moral high ground.

“Every moment the Americans spend on their own self-inflicted chaos helps China, it helps Putin, and, to a lesser extent, it helps the mini-dictators like [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orban, who breathe cynicism about politics, human rights, and democracy as their air,” the official said. “They won’t miss Trump; they’ll be glad to see his drama leave so they can enjoy the poisoned political climate.”

As far as Putin is concerned, Trump has served his purpose. He can kiss his ass for all Putin cares. The damage to our reputation is incalculable. We have yet to see what smoking ruins are left of our government when Biden gets control.

This is as bad as it could get without actually losing government to Trump and his crazies. The good news is that it failed.

The bad news is he’s got 13 days to try something else.

And we’re still in a pandemic.

Diversions

I was listening to C-Span this morning and a Republican caller from Texas called in irate that the moderator was only reading messages from Republicans that wanted to see Trump impeached or deterred by the 25th amendment. The moderator had to assure him several times that his staff was looking for messages in support of Trump but they were running 90% in the opposite direction. So, you know, maybe the 138 members of the House and 8 members of the Senate will not get a rousing round of applause when they get home.

We’ll see.

Impeachment proceedings are supposed to start in the middle of next week. Congress members are returning home today for a few days. The feedback is going to be interesting.

Pelosi has to impeach for 2 reasons. 1.) Pence isn’t going to invoke the 25th. He won’t even take her calls. In the meantime, Trump’s cabinet is resigning. First it was Transportatiom Secretary Elaine Chao. Last night, Cruella de Vos resigned. Her Christian values were *finally* offended. It only took 4 years. I guess she got what she set out to accomplish. The schools will be a mess for decades.

At this rate, who will be left? The national security advisor who didn’t give Congress the info it needed to protect itself? The defense Secretary who held back the national guard? Alex Azar *might* be persuadable but I’m guessing he’s like the other cowards who doesn’t want to be the first to speak up.

The second reason she needs to impeach him is so that he can never run for office again. I get the feeling that even many Republicans could get behind this reason.

Sure there are only 13 days left. But it doesn’t take Trump very long to set things in motion. And he will. He’s going to go out with a bang and take us all down with him. Who’s going to stop him?

*******

In other news, the MRI of my head came back and, surprise, surprise, my brain is completely normal. No weird thingy whatsits or anything. This brain is suitable for reanimation purposes, Dr. Fronkensteen. All that’s left if for the ENT specialist to check my ears. But I’m more and more convinced that this is all stress related. So, nobody stress me out. 🤨

On that note, here are two videos for relaxation and levity. Your choice. The first is a pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour by the Royal Ballet. There are few really good contemporary ballet choreographers. Wheeldon is currently the best. BiFF says the music is Vivaldi (arranged by someone else) but to me it sounds like a Scottish fiddle type of music called a Piobaireachd, which I’m not even going to try to pronounce. (This piece by Bonnie Rideout sounds a bit like it) Very relaxing.

The second video is from the 1950s. It’s all about women going to the beauty parlor and is unintentionally hilarious. You’ll see what I mean.

Enjoy.

It was worse than we thought.

The Defense Department restricted the use of the National Guard. It sent orders on Jan 4-5, 2021 limiting the scope of actions to little more than traffic cops. That’ll show Mayor Muriel Bowser, who requested the guard in advance of the electoral college count.

The Defense Department was able to restrict the D.C. Guard because the military force answers to the president rather than the mayor, as the District is not a state. The president’s power over the D.C. Guard is typically delegated to the defense secretary, then the Army secretary, who makes command decisions.

Yep. You read that right. While our representatives were sheltering in place in their offices and Trump nugget maskholes wandered the halls with their zip ties, ransacking offices and posing at Pelosi’s desk, our Congress was unable to get any guard units in DC to come to its rescue. They had to request help from Virginia and Maryland.

Gee, I wonder whose idea that was?

No wonder Pelosi and Shumer are livid and asking for the 25th amendment. Over the last week, Trump seemed way too quiet. Someone should have checked on him in his bedroom to make sure he wasn’t getting into trouble.

I don’t know what he’s going to do next but I have absolutely no doubt that he’s got plans. If he can’t have a second term, he’s going to use every power he has left to destroy what’s left. It will give him smug satisfaction. He’s going to win one way or another. That’s what cluster B personality disorders do.

They get even.

*********

Mary Trump predicted this pretty accurately a few months ago:

Democracy didn’t prevail yesterday, it was knee-capped after 4 long years of being pushed to the breaking point. It will survive only if Donald and his fellow seditionists in Congress are removed from office. Now. Otherwise they’ll try it again—and next time they’ll succeed.

— Mary L Trump (@MaryLTrump) January 7, 2021

Here’s how I see it: if the Taliban stormed the Capitol like the MAGA heads did yesterday, we would have bombed Afghanistan back into the Stone Age like we did after 9/11.

Strong actions require strong consequences. Otherwise, the insurrectionists will think they can keep this up for four years and all they’ll ever get is a slap on the wrist. It’s not enough. I’m not advocating bombing Missouri. But at the very least, Trump has to go and Hawley should be expelled. Cruz too. And every two faced Republican representative from PA who voted to strip all the voters of this state of their rights.

What were they thinking.

Have you seen this picture from yesterday?

https://twitter.com/sethabramson/status/1346977323086729218?s=21

We keep saying the insurrection activity yesterday was unacceptable but this is picture is unfathomable to me.

What was this guy planning to do with ZipTies?? Did we learn nothing from the threats against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer? The conspiracists for that one were planning to kidnap her and if necessary, murder her. And for what? Because she was trying to save her state’s health care system by following public health recommendations to stop the spread of Covid?

The anti-democratic fire that is driving this has gone way too far. We could have had a hostage crisis and murders in the US Capitol. That’s the kind of thing that happens in places like Iran or Egypt or Somalia. There is no excuse for what happened yesterday. None.

There is no stupid little spiel that Republicans can use to justify this. I don’t want to hear it. I just want to see Mr. ZipTie behind bars.

Four Dead?

That’s what Preet Bharara is asking on Twitter. We know of one woman (she was a veteran but no patriot) who died from a gunshot wound to the chest shortly after she climbed through a window she broke.

One man reputedly died from a heart attack. He may have also been the man who fell from the scaffolding being erected for the inauguration.

The other two are unknown. Does anyone have details?

******

I’m about to have an MRI of my head. I have been having vertigo. My doctor thinks it’s just postural or related to my ears. I think it’s stress from insensitive people at work and delusional people in my country.

We can’t trust Trump to behave for the next two weeks. He still has a lot of tools of power as president and I’m getting the nagging feeling that he thinks that if he goes, he’s going to take the whole country with him.

I want him out, not because I’m a Democrat but because I am an American.

It is time to invoke the 25th.

The Brave

While the confederate flag waving insurrectionists were ransacking the office of the Senate Parliamentarian, the women who are in charge of safeguarding the electoral college votes, calmly carried them to a secure location. Is this what the vandals were looking for?

https://twitter.com/raemargaret61/status/1347069782932205569?s=21

If Biden and Harris are certified winners today, and Donald Trump is forced to pay lip service to an orderly transfer of power, it’s because we have these women to thank for carrying the evidence of our democratic process to safety.

Jeez, I can’t even sleep for a few hours…

My representative, Conor Lamb, gets up to defend my honor and that of millions of other Pennsylvania mail in voters and a fist fight nearly breaks out on the House floor:

Hey, Lamb has a newborn at home. Can Republicans refrain from rioting in the house for a few damn hours until they get their work done?

Here’s the thing: Lamb is being honest with his Republican constituents. The lies that Republican House members are telling about voter fraud are just that -lies. And they serve no useful purpose except to fluff the political careers of those who tell those lies for the purpose of tearing down the government they claim to serve.

I don’t know how these Republicans end up at the place where they hate their government more than they love their fellow citizens. Every one of them have constituents whose votes they are willing to trash for no reason but self interest. But they aren’t satisfied with that. No, they have to reach over to insult and dishonor the constituents of Lamb’s district who used an officially state legislature sanctioned mail in ballot in 2020. They have to insult the voters and of Lamb’s entire state simply because the election result in Pennsylvania defies some pre-conceived notion that Donald Trump, Fox News, Newsmax, and Rush Limbaugh planted in their heads.

How do they get to the place where they actually repeat the delusion with a straight face that Joe Biden is the reincarnation of Hugo Chavez willing to make the US into the next soviet state? How do they get triggered to believe that utter nonsense while they give a pass to the Trump enablers who are tearing down our entire government?

I’m sure there are average Joe Republican Pennsylvanians who know damn well that those millions of mail in ballots were cast in a perfectly legitimate manner. They may have even witnessed it themselves on a cool October day.

That was the day when thousands of us took our families to the drop boxes in our lovely Allegheny County parks and showed our children how to cheerfully and proudly exercise our constitutional right to participate as full citizens in our government.

But the representatives from other states are asking who are you going to believe? Them or your lying eyes?

Personally? I am sick to death of defending myself to people who should know better because they were there. In the end, whether they believe the lie that somehow Pennsylvania mail in ballot voters did something wrong when mail in ballot voters in Washington state and Oregon and Colorado and other mail in ballot states did not, well, it doesn’t make a lick of difference. The process was followed to the tee, it was challenged in court, the challenges in court failed because the Trump Campaign did not produce ANY evidence of fraud, the electors were chosen, the electors voted, the votes were certified and Biden is the next president.

In every election, there are winners and losers and with this past election with so much of a paper trail that wasn’t available to us in 2016, we can be absolutely sure beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump lost. The reason why Trump and his party are so bent out of shape about it is they can’t seem to make these mail in ballots and the mountain of evidence they document go away.

Therefore, they lie.

We should be asking them why they seem to believe that only Republicans are legitimately elected and no Democrat ever is. That’s the root cause of all this turmoil. Why do they hate Democrats so much that they are willing to destroy their governments over it? And whose interest does it serve for them to believe that?

I only regret that I wasn’t there on the House floor a couple hours ago so I could personally deliver the first blow to the kisser of any “gentleman” who dared to perpetuate the lie that somehow what I did in October was criminal.