Jews, non-Christians not 

part of conservative

movement - GOP candidate consultant

(Endorsed by Trump, of course.)

Both Republicans and Democrats have called on Mastriano to withdraw his ad campaign from the Gab social media platform.

Jews and other non-Christians are "not conservative" because it is "an explicitly Christian movement" and because the US "is an explicitly Christian country," said Andrew Torba, the CEO of Gab and reportedly a consultant for state senator Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, in a livestream responding to recent condemnations of Mastriano and Gab.

Manchin

“I’m not getting involved in any election right now.”-State of the Union.

“Whoever is my president, that’s my president, and Joe Biden is my president right now.”-This Week.

Manchin to Sinema: Believe in this bill

Attention Kyrsten Sinema: The deal between Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin reflects your “tremendous input,” doesn’t raise taxes and is altogether an “all-American bill.” That’s, at least, according to Manchin.

She wasn't even in the basement! That was a Big Boy's only power meeting--no girls in their first terms allowed! If Sinema torpedo's this thing Manchin is going to look like Manchump. He'll have to relinquish his title of kingmaker to the queen from Hairy Boner.

He also made sure to credit Sinema with cajoling Democrats into that tax-skeptic position after many in her party weighed surtaxes on high earners and pushed for rate increases. Though Sinema’s stayed quiet since Manchin and Schumer announced the deal on Wednesday, Manchin said that he “would like to think she’d be favorable to it.”

I know that's right!

“Kyrsten Sinema is a friend of mine,

 

 and we work very close together. She has a tremendous, tremendous input in this legislation,” Manchin said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “She basically insisted [on] no tax increases, [we’ve] done that. And she was very, very adamant about that, I agree with her. She was also very instrumental” on prescription drug reform.

...

Manchin and Sinema were aligned for months last year...

Now they are in different places. Manchin negotiated the deal one-on-one with Majority Leader Schumer while Sinema was caught completely off guard by its announcement, particularly the inclusion of a provision narrowing the so-called carried interest loophole, which brings in $14 billion of the bill’s $739 billion in new revenues.

Manchin said he didn’t brief Sinema or anyone else in the Democratic Caucus on his negotiations because of the very real possibility they would fall apart. He said on CNN that when Sinema “looks at the bill and sees the whole spectrum of what we’re doing and all of the energy we’re bringing in, all of the reduction of prices and fighting inflation by bringing prices down, by having more energy, hopefully, she will be positive about it.”

Good luck with that!

Sinema had no new public comments on Sunday...

Manchin declines to say 

if he wants Dems to retain

control

“We’re not working for any party. We’re not working for any political idealism,” he said, bemoaning “bickering over political outcomes and who’s going to be in charge..." 

...

...the West Virginia senator fanned out across all five Sunday shows to make the case for his deal. 

That's what this is about for both Manchin and Sinema, attention. They want to be kingmakers. Manchin has his hand on the title and Sinema is having a hissy fit that she doesn't.

The PAC-(Insert # here (0 is a #))

How do SC and UCLA alumni feel about their schools leaving the prestigious, glamorous, academically sterling, ancient football conference on the West coast for the lucrative, less prestigious, no-glamour, academically solid, ancient football conference clustered around the Great Lakes?

How do the student-athletes at SC and UCLA feel about the effect on their studies, hell, they're student-athlete life, at the Los Angeles schools now that they must travel to Buttfuck. Pennsylvania where boys are buttfucked? to the armpit of America, New Jersey?; to the frozen tundra of Minneapolis-St. Paul?; to Maryland?

The move by the SoCal schools made complete sense for $$ and to the B1G for $$ and for added glamour and enhanced academic prestige. For all other metrics it was bad, bad, bad, and worse, catastrophically, unworkably worse, for the most vulnerable of all the schools' constitutes, the kids. 

The regents of the the gold standard in U.S. higher education, the California System, have said they had no jurisdiction to prevent, or approve, no say at all, in the move. How about the governor? A California institution, the Pacific Conference has just been raped. The governor, Gavin Newsom, has spoken out, saying UCLA owes him an explanation. The governor owes the sole West Coast conference his best efforts to block the moves, by going to court if necessary, by legislation in Sacramento if need be. He owes the academic integrity of the member schools of the conference a fight against the moves. Most of all he owes the student-athletes of the Los Angeles schools his best efforts to stop this dead in its tracks. Can the California legislature pass legislation to stop the move? I don't know the answers to any of these questions but all political powers in the Golden State need to be opposing this with every arrow in their quiver and the threat to obtain and use nuclear arrows, and so far they have responded with quaking. There are too many quakes in California. The state and the conference members need some--bare knuckle, no holds barred--fight.

Biden was likely infected with the BA.5 variant...BA.5 has shown a remarkable ability to escape immune protection afforded by vaccines and prior coronavirus infection.

Maybe it's that the vaccines are unremarkable? 

Sinema indicates she may

want to change Schumer-

Manchin deal

 I'm going to start throwing things, I better stop.

Biden Just Tested Positive Again for COVID

The Crimes of the Russian Anthropoids

A video, of similar inhumanity to the selfie made by a Russian soldier as he sexually abused an infant, was made by Russian soldiers showing one of their number in surgical gloves holding a knife as he castrates a Ukrainian prisoner of war.

The Russian embassy in the United Kingdom tweeted that Ukrainian POW's must suffer "humiliating deaths", shooting was too good for them. Twitter took the tweet down for violating their hate speech rules. (???) That's evidence, Twitter, evidence of crimes against humanity, not hate speech, you twits.

Yeah, I missed last month's "fiery, head-on collision" between "Dutch and American values" (???). I apologize.

Jeff Bezos wanted the city of Rotterdam to temporarily dismantle a portion of an historic bridge so that he could sail his new $417,000,000 yacht down the channel the bridge crossed and out to sea.

The whole process would have taken a day or two and Oceanco [the yacht's manufacturer] would have covered the costs.

Also worth noting: The bridge, [called locally the "Hef"] a lattice of moss-green steel in the shape of a hulking “H,” is not actually used by anyone. 😂 It served as a railroad bridge for decades until it was replaced by a tunnel and decommissioned in the early 1990s. It’s been idle ever since.

In sum, the operation would have been fast, free and disrupted nothing. So why the fuss?
...
The first problem was the astounding wealth of Mr. Bezos.
...
“There’s a principle at stake,” said [Stephan Lewis, former city councilman], a tall, bearded 37-year-old who was leaning against his bike and toggling during an interview between wry humor and indignation. He then framed the principle with a series of questions. “What can you buy if you have unlimited cash? Can you bend every rule? Can you take apart monuments?”

Ah jeez, once you get to "principle", you're fucked.

It was an opportunity to see Dutch and American values in a fiery, head-on collision. The more you know about the Netherlands — with its preference for modesty over extravagance, for the community over the individual, for fitting in rather than standing out — the more it seems as though this kerfuffle was scripted by someone whose goal was to drive people here out of their minds. 😂

I am down with Netherlandish principles, foursquare ag'in the "pursuit of happiness."

In late June, the city’s vice mayor reported that Oceanco had withdrawn its request to dismantle the Hef, a retreat that was portrayed as a victory of the masses over a billionaire...

God damn, Rotterdam, you did it! Ich bin ein Rotterdammer.

 

 

...Mr. Biden has finally caught a series of breaks. Gas prices, which peaked above $5 a gallon, have fallen every day for more than six weeks and are now closer to $4. After a yearlong debate, Democrats and Republicans in Congress passed legislation this past week to invest $280 billion in areas like semiconductor manufacturing and scientific research to bolster competition with China.

And in a surprise turnabout, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a Democrat who had single-handedly held up Mr. Biden’s boldest proposals, agreed to a deal that puts the president in a position to make good on promises to lower drug prices, confront climate change and make corporations pay higher taxes.

...

The magnitude of the Senate deal was received like a splash of icy water across Washington, which had all but written off the possibility that Mr. Biden’s far-reaching ambitions could be revived this year....

... it will move the country to the forefront on addressing the globe’s changing climate and lower drug prices even as it raises money from corporations to lower the federal budget deficit.

The deal would give Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for millions of Americans, extend health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act for three years and require corporations to pay a minimum tax — something many progressive Democrats have been demanding for years.

How dare those birds!

A woman in [in Vicksburg, MS during the Federal siege] reflected that the oddest thing of all was that as far as nature was concerned this was just another spring--birds were singing, building nests, and raising other birds, flower gardens were full of bright blossoms, and the air was all scented with the odor of jasmine and honeysuckle. ...People in besieged cities have talked much this way, probably, since the days of Jericho. Catton, Never Call Retreat, In Letters of Blood, "All or Nothing", 205.


You do hear similar things all the time. I earnestly asked my mother once what it was like living through the Depression. "Oh Benjamin, we were so poor we didn't notice there was a Depression." :) :) :) Our species seems always--"since the days of Jericho,"--to have had the capacity to see beauty amidst ugliness and to feel unalterably that life, any life, is better than the alternative. There is an indestructible kernel of happiness in the deepest depths of humanity's turbulent soul, and a tenacious will to live.

Ted Cruz says Texas should repeal ban on gay sex

He wants the Booty Bandit to bugger him and not get in trouble is why. That’s what this is about, getting his poop-chute rotor-rooted.

"To paraphrase von Clausewitz, it was the continuation of politics by other memes."

I hate people who are clever writers! Why can't I be like them?! :(  That was NYT cultural critic James Poniewozik on July 22 on the Jan. 6 hearings, particularly the Josh Hawley diptych. Isn't that exquisite? A great turn of phrase always gives me a tickle in my stomach. I hate you, James. 😉

Amazing that the climate deal happened

Climate experts experience an odd sensation after

the Manchin budget deal: optimism

 

It was forty-eight years ago, at just about this time, that I met my first love. We always celebrated this day, even more than our wedding eleven months later. Happy anniversary darling Barbara.

Res Ipsa Loquitur

Robert E. Lee never wrote memoirs. Longstreet did, a lot of ex-slavers did. Lee also never wrote a Gettysburg after-action report. Pickett did but it was so “bitter” that Lee requested or ordered that it not be submitted. None of Lee’s principals wrote an after-action report. 

We have to accept this and act accordingly. I apologize that I am going to be losing my temper here: 

-Rosemary Woods erased tapes. The act of covering up is evidence of underlying criminality, too. 

-This was a coup with substantial inside assistance. Secret Service should be disbanded and start over, like Defund the Police, which I still am for. 

-DHS is a relatively new (post-911) agency. Sunset that motherfucker. 

-Without the Jan. 6 Committee we would know none of this.

Trump corrupted everybody and everything he touched. People and institutions that lean fascist anyway get attracted to their like.

Fascist Coup and Coverup: DHS and SS Deeply Involved

Jan. 6 texts missing for Trump Homeland

Security’s Wolf and Cuccinelli

DHS watchdog was alerted in February to unavailable records of top officials, but did nothing to alert or investigate

Text messages for President Donald Trump’s acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli are missing for a key period leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to four people briefed on the matter and internal emails.

This discovery of missing records for the senior-most Homeland Security officials, which has not been previously reported, increases the volume of potential evidence that has vanished regarding the time around the Capitol attack.
...
The Office of Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari did not press the department leadership at that time to explain why they did not preserve these records, nor seek ways to recover the lost data, according to the four people briefed on the watchdog’s actions. Cuffari also failed to alert Congress to the potential destruction of government records.

The revelation comes on the heels of the discovery that text messages of Secret Service agents — critical firsthand witnesses to the events leading up to Jan. 6 — were deleted more than a year ago and may never be recovered.
...
In a nearly identical scenario to that of the DHS leaders’ texts, the Secret Service alerted Cuffari’s office seven months ago, in December 2021, that the agency had deleted thousands of agents’ and employees’ text messages in an agency wide reset of government phones. Cuffari’s office did not notify Congress until mid-July, despite multiple congressional committees’ pending requests for these records.

The telephone and text communications of Wolf and Cuccinelli in the days leading up to Jan. 6 could have shed considerable light on Trump’s actions and plans. In the weeks before the attack on the Capitol, Trump had been pressuring both men to help him claim the 2020 election results were rigged and even to seize voting machines in key swing states to try to “re-run” the election.

“It is extremely troubling that the issue of deleted text messages related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol is not limited to the Secret Service, but also includes Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, who were running DHS at the time,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a statement.
...
On Twitter, Wolf wrote: “I complied with all data retention laws and returned all my equipment fully loaded to the Department. Full stop. DHS has all my texts, emails, phone logs, schedules, etc. Any issues with missing data needs to be addressed to DHS.”
...
On New Year’s Eve of 2020, Trump also called Cuccinelli to pressure him to seize voting machines in swing states and help him block the peaceful transfer of power. Trump falsely told him that the acting attorney general had just said that it was Cuccinelli’s job to seize voting machines “and you’re not doing your job.”

...
...Wolf is among those mentioned this month in an Axios article as someone whom Trump could ask to return to government service if Trump successfully runs for president in 2024.

"'Underlying' inflation definition: the part of inflation that is hard to get down."-Paul Krugman

Now, it’s much, much too soon to declare victory in the fight against inflation. There have been several false dawns on that front over the course of the past year and a half. And there’s plenty of room to argue about the level of “underlying” inflation — a vaguely defined term, but roughly speaking the part of inflation that is hard to get down once it has become elevated.

                                                                        PAUL-EEEE!!!

LIV and Let Die

 

"Nobody's gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately, and they should have, as to the maniacs that did that horrible thing to our city, to our country, to the world. So nobody's really been there. But I can tell you that there are a lot of really great people that are out here today."

Trump at his Bedminster Golf Club promoting a tournament beginning Friday sponsored by LIV Golf, the Saudi-backed competitor to the PGA Tour.

I do not consider that as feeding the Trump addiction, I consider that extremely damaging to him which permits me (I hold) to segue to the article in NYT yesterday that I deliberately omitted as applying mouth-to-mouth to the corpse, viz. The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and the New York Post, to shorten it we should just say Murdoch Media, have not been supplying O2 to shit-for-brains neither. Fox virtually ignored a speech he gave on Tuesday while devoting 17 mins to a speech Pence gave the same day, and Fox has not been covering his campaign appearances in anywhere near the breathless "this-just-in" manner of past years. Wally and Postie though have gone further, MUCH further. The editorial boards of both newspapers came out against a Trump re-run in 2024. As a true blue Americanoid I am getting a little nervous of our fashion. On the one hand my first preference of course is that Trump DIE. On the whole though I would rather him be LIVing in Bedminster with the Saudis as that keeps him away from Washington, D.C. On the other hand (there's always the other hand with us), if he's not going to die I want him sufficiently weakened that if he re-runs he will die; but not too much that he doesn't run. It's a complex position as we are complex Americanoids, and I'm concerned that this is a little piling on and he might become a pussy-ass little BITCH and not run. I know of NO signs that he might not run so on the whole, keep calm and ,

RE-RUN TRUMP! 😂

Wow. Norman Lear is 100 years old today and still kicking racists

I will have you know that I passed on posting excerpts from another article on 46-1. This is just a lovely essay by Mr. Lear to whom I wish a happiest centennial birthday!

On My 100th Birthday, Reflections on Archie Bunker and Donald Trump

Well, I made it. I am 100 years old today. I wake up every morning grateful to be alive.

Reaching my own personal centennial is cause for a bit of reflection on my first century — and on what the next century will bring for the people and country I love. To be honest, I’m a bit worried that I may be in better shape than our democracy is.

I was deeply troubled by the attack on Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 — by supporters of former President Donald Trump attempting to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Those concerns have only grown with every revelation about just how far Mr. Trump was willing to go to stay in office after being rejected by voters — and about his ongoing efforts to install loyalists in positions with the power to sway future elections.

I don’t take the threat of authoritarianism lightly. As a young man, I dropped out of college when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and joined the U.S. Army Air Forces. I flew more than 50 missions in a B-17 bomber to defeat fascism consuming Europe. I am a flag-waving believer in truth, justice and the American way, and I don’t understand how so many people who call themselves patriots can support efforts to undermine our democracy and our Constitution. It is alarming.
...
Encouraging...conversation was a goal of mine when we began broadcasting “All in the Family” in 1971. The kinds of topics Archie Bunker and his family argued about — issues that were dividing Americans from one another, such as racism, feminism, homosexuality, the Vietnam War and Watergate — were certainly being talked about in homes and families. They just weren’t being acknowledged on television.

For all his faults, Archie loved his country and he loved his family, even when they called him out on his ignorance and bigotries. If Archie had been around 50 years later, he probably would have watched Fox News. He probably would have been a Trump voter. But I think that the sight of the American flag being used to attack Capitol Police would have sickened him. I hope that the resolve shown by Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, and their commitment to exposing the truth, would have won his respect.
...
I often feel disheartened by the direction that our politics, courts and culture are taking. But I do not lose faith in our country or its future. I remind myself how far we have come....

Those closest to me know that I try to stay forward-focused. Two of my favorite words are “over” and “next.” It’s an attitude that has served me well through a long life of ups and downs, along with a deeply felt appreciation for the absurdity of the human condition.
...
This is our century, dear reader, yours and mine. Let us encourage one another with visions of a shared future. And let us bring all the grit and openheartedness and creative spirit we can muster to gather together and build that future.

And with that dear reader, good night.

"It was simply murder."

I must say in any style of writing history that was entirely inadequate by Bruce Catton on Gettysburg. It reads as if Catton cut out material that he had written in draft, or suffered the cuts from the editor. For example, he twice teases another account of Robert E. Lee's military brilliance:

So there was only one card left to play, and it was played so magnificently that it is not always easy to see that it probably was a losing card all along. (187)

Pickett's Charge that is.

But the way it was tried still commands attention. (188)

Then Catton doesn't deliver. I don't know what Catton meant by "was played so magnificently" and "the way it was tried commands attention" and the obvious point is that I don't know what Catton meant because Catton doesn't say what he meant. He had just gotten finished trashing the very idea of Pickett's Charge as Longstreet and every single historian, any rational person, George Picket himself, has. And it was trash, an irrational "forlorn hope." It was not magnificently played. “It was simply murder.” (as a Pennsylvanian said of the similar slaughter against strikingly similar odds at Fredericksburg.). Lee’s non pareil bombardment shattered eardrums but not U.S. emplacements (his cannoneers shot too high). Catton writes that Pickett's men,

perfected their alignment, finally, and when the line began to roll forward it looked irresistible. It was not irresistible. In point of fact it was doomed. (190)

As they made their march they had no gunnery that could even reach the Federals. It was not until they crossed the Emmitsburg Road that they could shoot back! Pause: They. Could. Not. Shoot. Back. Unpause. They had marched hundreds of yards with no, zero, means of defending themselves, no cover, nothing. And half of them never made it back alive. It was not magnificent, it was simply murder.

??

 🎵Almost heaven, West Virginia!🎵

 

Manchin, in Reversal, Agrees to Quick Action

on Climate and Tax Plan

The West Virginia Democrat, a holdout on his party’s domestic agenda, said the package would reduce inflation, a concern he had cited in rejecting it just weeks ago.

Manchin...a key centrist Democrat, announced on Wednesday that he had agreed to include hundreds of billions of dollars for climate and energy programs and tax increases in a package to subsidize health care and lower the cost of prescription drugs, less than two weeks after abruptly upending hopes for such an agreement this summer.

The package would set aside $369 billion for climate and energy proposals, the most ambitious climate action ever taken by Congress, and raise an estimated $451 billion in new tax revenue over a decade, while cutting federal spending on prescription drugs by $288 billion, according to a summary circulated Wednesday evening.

The product of a deal announced by Mr. Manchin and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, it would reduce the federal deficit by about $300 billion, while seeking to push down the cost of health care, prescription medicines and electricity.

How did this happen? Why did he change so suddenly?

...

...while many details were not immediately available, the announcement suggested that Democrats could move in the coming days to salvage a major piece of their domestic agenda, which only weeks ago appeared doomed given Mr. Manchin’s refusal to quickly sign on.

...

It was not clear what had changed Manchin’s mind since he said not even two weeks ago that he could not support such a package until he saw inflation numbers for July, which are not scheduled to be issued for two more weeks. But quiet negotiations had resumed between Mr. Manchin, Mr. Schumer and their staffs in recent days, according to a person familiar with the talks.

...

...Manchin’s resistance has been the primary obstacle...all along, handing him effective veto power over its contents — and the final say over whether any measure could pass the Senate.

His embrace of the plan did not guarantee it would move forward. Several senators declined to comment on the deal upon hearing of it on Wednesday evening until they learned more about it. That included Senator Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat who has been another holdout on her party’s domestic policy measure. A spokeswoman for her said the senator needed to review the legislation.

🎵Arizona, take off your rainbow shades

Arizona, have another look at the world, my my
Arizona, cut off your Indian braids
Arizona, hey won'tcha go my way🎵

?

From "the Battle of Gettysburg had begun" p181) to "The Battle of Gettysburg had ended (p191) was ten and one-half pages long. The analysis preceding, on the state of mind of the North and the character of Pennsylvanians, was eleven. (?)

1:07 p.m.

Every Pennsylvania boy makes the trip to Gettysburg at least once in his life. It's a pilgrimage. The battle was the largest on land ever fought in North America. The battlefield truly is hallowed ground. My parents took me and my youngest brother when I was about ten, I guess. I remember nothing of it. Then I went back as an adult twelve years ago. Driving into town you see all these signs, this site next right; that one next left. The battlefield is immense. 

The town of Gettysburg lies in flat-ish country.

Despite features with names like Little Round Top, Big Round Top, Cemetery Ridge, etc. you can't go to an overlook and take it all in, the battlefield is too immense for anything of the sort even if there was a vantage point. Nor can you even take any part of it in--as there is no vantage point.

This photograph is captioned by Wikipedia "Gettysburg Battlefield." "Wow, look at that," you go, wondering what the hell you are looking at. It could be Passchendaele on a dry day.

You have to be at ground-level at your favorite part, which for almost everyone of course, is the field of Pickett's Charge on July 3. I looked at that field from our'n position and I looked at that field from their'n position. I stood right at the edge of the woods just as Pickett's Confederates did and walked that whole damned field (everyone does) just as they did, all three-quarters mile of it, and I tell you, no lie, I sobbed. I don't know what Robert E. Lee was smoking to think that any body of troops could survive it. James Longstreet didn't know either. Bruce Catton agreed with Longstreet: "The thing could not be done." Shelby Foote said "Gettysburg was the price the South paid for R. E. Lee." It was a butcher's bill! It reminded me of the field the U.S. troops had to cross to get to the base of Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg (which my great-great grandfather did cross under slave-state fire (he was killed within 20 feet of the crest)). As it did Catton:

Hancock's position actually was almost as strong as the famous Confederate position along Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg...

It occurred to the U.S. gunners also who, as the Rebels began their advance shouted, "Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!" Didn't occur to Gen. Lee though. 

Honestly, I don't know where Lee's head was, it was as if he had a brain transplant from Burnside. It was also as if Lee's brain was transplanted into Gen. George Meade's head for Meade, like Lee with McClellan and Hooker, read Lee's mind the night before. "He's going to hit us right in the center." (Meade deserves the genius medal for that (but he never got it)). Because he had tried the flanks. (?) Because the center was the strongest part of the Federal front. (??). Because the Federal center had its best fighters. (???)  It was like Lee got bored and wanted to play Olympic War with a degree of difficulty built in. He took the silver medal. 

Okay, enough from me. This must have been amazing to see and hear and it started all of a sudden, like a TV show. Here's Catton:

...Lee had assembled an immense rank of guns, 130 of them or more...These guns would pound the Yankee line with the heaviest bombardment ever seen in North America, and after they had softened it the infantry would charge.
...
Somewhere around the middle of the day the noise of battle died and there was a queer, nerve-testing silence. On the far slope of Cemetery Ridge, Meade and some of his officers sat in an open field and had lunch, and Meade got off a quick note to Halleck, carefully timing it at 12:30 P.M.: "At the present moment all is quiet." ...At last, from a fence corner at the edge of the woods, Longstreet wrote a note and gave it to a courier, the courier cantered out to the guns and gave the note to Colonel J.B. Walton, Longstreet's chief of artillery, two shots were fired as a signal...and then the bank of guns exploded in a sudden, enormous blast of fire...

The time was 1:07 p.m. (just after the commercials.)

No one in either army had ever lived through anything like this bombardment. The weight of sound was obliterating...

James McPherson wrote that the sound of the guns was heard in Pittsburgh, 185 miles to the west. Musta been something.

Anyhow, it failed. Similar to the 133rd Pennsylvania at Fredericksburg, a few men making the assault actually touched the stone wall at Gettysburg. That was the High Water Mark of the Confederacy.

Biden Tests Negative

Gettysburg

This, to me, is example of Bruce Catton at his best, narrating. He is so skilled a writer, he uses only two paragraphs here, his cadence, mostly of commas and semi-colons, is nearly a run-on sentence and recreates the maniacal non-stop fighting in the separate battles within the battle on July 2.

Lee's army...struck on this day against strong points and wore itself out. It pounded the Federal left, head-on and heads-down, in a peach orchard and a wheat field and in the craggy ravines of a tumbled rock pile known as Devil's Den...

The Army of Northern Virginia tried to storm Little Round Top, fought in a gloomy valley behind that hill, swept across Emmitsburg Road to touch the crest of Cemetery Ridge, wrecking Dan Sickles' III Corps, mangling the V Corps of George Sykes, beating one division of Hancock's II Corps; and each time it came within an inch of success but had to fall back before that final inch could be gained. It took a long row of guns in the heart of the Federal position but could not hold them, and it fought once in a farm yard against massed artillery...losing at last...A division from Ewell's corps struck the Federal right on Culp's Hill, clambering up steep slopes full of young trees and fallen timber, reaching the Federal trenches, occupying parts of them, falling back down hill when rifle fire was too heavy; hanging on in the darkness, with the sputter of musketry making flickering firefly lights in the dark woods; hanging on to renew the fight at dawn. In the evening Lee's army assaulted the sagging ridge between Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill, broke the XI Corps line in the twilight, got into Howard's artillery, and was driven off after a furious hand-to-hand fight amid the wheels of the guns. Late at night, soldiers from the two armies went to a spring beyond the Federal right to get water, recognized one another in the shaded moonlight as enemies, and fell into a meaningless fight that went on until after midnight and did not but add to the casualty lists.

There was no pattern to any of this...

Ibid, 185-86.

A Living, Breathing Thing

...the Battle of Gettysburg had begun, brought on without choice of Lee or Meade by the fact that the roads that crossed here brought together men possessed by a blind, driving urge to fight.

The flame fed itself.
...
This battle that involved only fractions of the armies grew far beyond its size, and like the war itself it became bigger and more destructive than anyone intended.
...
...this first, unplanned encounter between the two armies had been a smashing victory for General Lee.

But the victory meant little except that it robbed both Lee and Meade of their freedom of action. They had to finish what had been so violently begun...When darkness came on July 1 each commander accepted this fact... 

Catton, Never Call Retreat, Remorseless Revolutionary Struggle, "Encounter at Gettysburg," 181-83.

Good morning-uh Commissioner, madam, and all the little commissioners.

Bruce Catton's Civil War trilogy is a narrative history. It is history from the bird's eye rather than chronological--haven't we enough of that latter? you can hear Catton saying when he accepted this commission. 

It is true we do have enough of the standard chronological, battle-by-battle ant's eye Civil War history. Catton was not going to retell the Battle of Chancellorsville because, he writes in footnote 4, "Chancellorsville has been exhaustively analyzed by highly competent critics" and then recommends four authors who do so. 

But at times Catton's narrative is jumpy. There are a very few instances where one is puzzled that the bird's eye noticed a detail that it did. The analytical power of the bird's eye is sometimes limited, as all pov's are, either too close to the ground or too high up. I have not appreciated some of Catton's analysis, it is too fuzzy. The bird's eye can be, in a word, boring. It has not been recently. I dog-eared three straight leaves from 162-166 in the third volume and four of five. I have also written "Boring" at the top of, I think, three pages. By an overwhelming margin the dog-eared leaves in the three books outnumber the pages with "Boring" at top. 

I do find myself a bit impatient just now. We are on the eve of Gettysburg forgodssake and after a description of Pennsylvania's citizenry that mostly rings true to this son of Pa. Catton on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand's. On the other hand the Army of the Potomac had more units of Pennsylvanians--all volunteers too!--than from any other state, "many of them coming from precisely these farms whose people looked so phlegmatic." One of them was my great-great grandfather. On the one hand there were riots in the anthracite coal fields. On the other, "It was easy to misinterpret" these. "Autocratic bosses" "squalid company towns," etc. The "hated enrollment officer" was "probably" just the pinata at hand. Well, maybe, but on the one hand wasn't the local boss of King Coal closer at hand? Hadn't the national conscription act, "all male citizens between twenty and forty-five," "unquestionably changed the American form of government. The President now had a power no President ever had before--the power to reach directly into the remotest township and exercise the power of life or death over the individual citizen." The quotes are Catton's so the act did. It really seems therefore that the riots in the anthracite fields against the enrollment officers were directed at the intended person. 

On the one hand, I hate when Catton does this, and he does it not infrequently: When writing about the complexities of intention or act, he writes as he does here, "The currents ran both ways at once. If most of the discontent now so visible in the North came from men who had much to lose and wanted to save as much of it as possible, some of it came from men who had little to lose and might welcome a general overturn." On the other hand you have all those volunteer regiments. If you want to take the bird's eye perspective there is this also: Abraham Lincoln won Pennsylvania in 1860 by eighteen points over the trailing Democrat. At the ant's eye level Lincoln carried Cambria County by over fifteen percentage points in 1860. But in 1864 Lincoln damn near lost the commonwealth, prevailing 51.65% to 48.35%, and was swamped in my home county by fifteen points. That's a thirty-point flip in four years--when the war was as good as won! 

Self-evidently sentiment in Pennsylvania had changed dramatically against Lincoln in four years, Catton does not make that point effectively and spends eleven pages not making it--and on the eve of Gettysburg. Deary me. 

Catton is at his best, and when he is at his best he is luminous, when he writes narrative prose. This is a "narrative history", why doesn't he narrate more? Because sometimes he gets lost up there with the birds in the clouds of analysis.

Oh Pennsylvania :(

This was Pennsylvania, Yankee-land incarnate, and on close inspection it seemed to be rich and naked and careless, wide open and ready to be had; confronted now by a lean and sinewy army. ...Pennsylvania had never been touched.

Go ahead, tell me that is not explicit sexual imagery. 

 

Marching into Pennsylvania was like entering a different world.

And marching into Virginia was like entering a different world for Pennsylvanians. They were shocked at southern poverty, ignorance, and brutality toward the slaves.

...It's farms looked incredibly rich...the Confederate soldier now was in a land of plenty. ...

And what comes with languid, bored wealth?

The citizens seemed to be remarkably lukewarm, as a matter of fact. It had been different in western Maryland, where Union sentiment was robust...

In the 1864 presidential election Pennsylvania was the second-closest contested state. Lincoln beat McClellan by 3.5%.

These Pennsylvania farmers appeared to be apathetic and some of them said openly that they did not care much who won as long as they themselves were let alone. The rank and file grew confident. 

These Pennsylvanians were too well-off, too self-centered, too anxious to save what they had; they were not at all war-like, and Federal soldiers as well as Confederates made pointed remarks about their seeming lack of patriotism.

The Pennsylvania farmers, criticized by friend and by foe...could easily have made their own defiant Southern cry: "All we ask is to be let alone."

Indeed, as James Carville says to this day, "Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between"! McClellan won my home, Cambria, County, by fifteen percentage points in 1864. lol

In all of this--in the apathy, the self-interestedness, the comparatively effortless prosperity, the unambition, humility, and non-aggression--we see the influence of the Quaker religious sect that settled Pennsylvania. Pennsylvanians are not pushy! lol. All of these in combination are the reason the only son of Pennsylvania to be president was James Buchanan, and really, no Pennsylvania has made a serious effort in attempt since!

Bruce Catton, Never Call Retreat, Remorseless Revolutionary Struggle, "Mirage on the Skyline", 167-69.

Oh, Lincoln!

This civilian commander in chief, who never served in arms and never held a national political position before becoming president and commander in chief at a time of war, this man saw the grand military situation as none of the professionals did and he saw it from the beginning. 

In 1861 he had tried to impress on his generals that the point in having superior resources in men and materiel was to combat the Confederates at multiple points at the same time. His logic was infallible but it was not military doctrine and the generals ignored it.

This civilian saw where none of his generals did that the point was to destroy the Confederate armies, not capture its cities. The Confederacy lived because of its armies and if they were killed so would be it.

Hooker...thought he himself ought to march at once for Richmond.

He suggested this to President Lincoln...He told Hook that Lee's army, not Richmond, was the proper objective. (emphasis added)

This tall, ungainly bumpkin saw that Robert E. Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania was an opportunity for the United:

Although Lee did not know it...his real opponent now was Abraham Lincoln, a man not trained for command but nonetheless commanding.

What a mismatch, huh? The greatest general of the war against this callow, Kentucky-twanged, Illinois-resident civilian!

No one on either side saw Lee's advance into Pennsylvania quite as Mr. Lincoln did. He recognized it, of course, as a dire threat, but he also saw it as a limitless opportunity for the Union cause. He had grasped a strategic point of importance: when a Confederate army left its own territory and went north it exposed itself to outright destruction. If could be cut off, forced to fight...and in the end removed from the board; by the mere act of invasion it risked its very existence, and the chief responsibility of a Federal commander was to make sure that what was risked was lost. (This is also the reason Lincoln was furious with General Meade after Gettysburg for not pursuing Lee south and destroying his army.)

It was hard to get generals to see it. McClellan had not seen it...Buell had not...[and] so two armies of invasion had got away. As a civilian Mr. Lincoln could not be entirely certain that he was right [but he was] and that the trained soldiers were wrong. Yet the belief grew on him, and as this invasion month of June passed the President actually seemed to grow more composed. Catton, Never Call Retreat, Remorseless Revolutionary Struggle, "Aftermath of Victory" (Confederate, at Chancellorsville) 162-64.

Everybody underestimated him, his Secretary of War too, but came around, and we did not know what we had and what we lost when Edwin M. Stanton said as the death rattle stopped, "Now he belongs to the ages". Never, ever was there a president the likes of Abraham Lincoln.

Wow From the Wall Street Journal Too!

Biden Isn’t to Blame for Inflation

Rather look to the Federal Reserve’s timidity and, yes, the war in Ukraine.

 

Who has been Biden's worst adviser: Walensky, Garland, or Klain?

 

                                                        I looked away when Delta dawned.

                                              Justice: small, retiring, in the background.

                                               I liked "Inflation is a high-class problem."

MERRICK GARLAND DO YOUR JOB!

 

New video from January 6 committee reveals

Trump crossed out lines in speech condemning

lawbreakers

Sounds from Pillars if Creation

                                                 Sounds like that breaching whale smacking the boat.

A breaching whale came down on a boat in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Larry Summers, Who Predicted Biden's 

Inflation Missteps, Expects Recession

Larry Summers, a former top economic adviser to ex-President Barack Obama, is predicting that economic conditions and the policies of President Joe Biden will soon result in a recession.

Summers previously correctly predicted "inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation" in a February 2021 Washington Post opinion article about Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. In an interview released Friday by Politico's Playbook Deep Dive podcast, Summers said the current combination of a high inflation rate and a low unemployment rate was nearly certain to trigger a recession.

"We have had soft landings because we tightened at moments when the inflation rate was low and the unemployment rate was high," said Summers. "We have not had soft landings for moments when the unemployment was below 4 [percent] and the inflation was well above 4 [percent] ... Never happened in the United States going back 60, 70 years."

Summers said that "the odds are probably better than half that a recession will start next year." He suggested that a recession could begin sooner if crude oil prices were to reach $150 per barrel in the fall due to "the geopolitical situation." Oil prices fell on Friday, landing at less than $95 per barrel...
...
Summers, a Democrat, said factors that helped the economy reach the "overheated" state that caused high inflation included the large stimulus package that Congress passed and Biden signed into law in March 2021.

During a CNN interview last month, Summers said that high inflation and low unemployment "almost always" lead to a recession within two years. He said that it was "more likely than not" that the equation would be no different under Biden.

A report released by the White House on Thursday attempted to downplay fears of a recession, insisting that "recession probabilities are never zero, but trends in the data through the first half of this year used to determine a recession are not indicating a downturn."

Summers said that the forecasts offered by Biden's economic advisers represented "the possible but very optimistic case," while urging the administration to do more to address inflation.

"I wish my friends in the administration would turn their attention to what they can do to reduce inflation rather than clinging to the idea that this is something that's been done to them by the fates," he said.

There has been that: "Oh woe is us! Putin invades Ukraine and there are food shortages and high energy prices. And before that supply chain clogs, Oh woe is us!" And before that there was the "ostrich behavior" that Secretary Summers also talked about: "The American economy is too big now for inflation". Oh REALLY?! Lucky you, huh? NOT. And then there was "Inflation is a rich man's problem." Oh yeah? Ask Joe lunchpail about that. PUT DOWN YOUR CRACK PIPES! IF YOU'RE NOT BIG ENOUGH FOR THIS JOB JOEY, DON'T RUN! You had a golden opportunity: how could Trump's successor be worse? Well, on bread and butter issues and on, like, COVID, you did the impossible, YOU HAVE BEEN WORSE. 

Do you understand the anger, the shock, the humiliation that your presidency has been to Democrats? Do you understand our horror because you have So. Fucked. Things. Up. We may get Trump back and lose our democracy. We my lose our country once and for all time. You saved them both from Trump, or shielded them for four years. They may be back at his mercy again. Because of YOU. What's your case to voters in 2024 for four more years? Beat COVID? Nix. Booming economy? Nix. Can make deals? Nix. What are you going to say?


In March, Summers predicted that gas prices would reach an average of $5 per gallon, which he said would be "disruptive for many people" but "a price that is very much worth paying" to push back against "tyrant" Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.His prediction on gas prices also proved to be correct. The national average gas price peaked at just more than $5 per gallon on June 16, although it had fallen to an average of $4.38 per gallon as of Friday

*

 12:40 pm.

That was ONE. 

*I took down a second one.

"U.S. faces a fourth fall of Trump (with a fifth in view)"--NPR

For me this was the most trying headline of this Sunday morning. It's actually the seventh year that he has dominated the headlines and peoples' thoughts, including mine. It is his mother's milk, the nourishment that sustains him, the oxygen he needs to stay alive. And we keep giving it to him. There was only a few month period after the election and into Joe Biden's first term when he didn't dominate. He was kicked off Twitter and what he had to say didn't matter anymore. He was yesterday's news. We gave him $200 million in milk and air in 2015/16 before he was the illegitimate president. We're doing it again. He has us on a string, manipulating us. We now cover every tease that he will run again. Can you imagine the media coverage when he officially announces for 2024? 

The Jan. 6 Committee had to do this, but to what end? Will it prevent him from running again? No. Is it changing any significant number of minds? No and hell no. Will Merrick Garland indict him? Get real. Would an indictment prevent him from running again? NO! The Jan. 6 Committee has supersaturated his oxygen feed, that's to what end. I am going to take down as many of the day's posts on him as I feel comfortable doing.

The GOP Alternative

DeSantis delivered a speech to the same Tampa crowd on Friday.

The Florida Republicans event in Hollywood, Fla. was much smaller than the Turning Point conference and was influenced heavily by DeSantis.

For the first time in the event’s seven-year history, it limited which media could attend, giving inside-the-room access to right-wing outlets that give the governor positive coverage. Traditional party figures were also largely replaced by the conservative social media influencers with massive followings who have recently moved to Florida and become some of DeSantis’ most vocal backers, with conservative commentator Dave Rubin and Fox News personality Lisa Boothe among them.

“We in the state of Florida are not going to allow legacy media outlets to be involved in our primaries,” DeSantis said in remarks opening the Florida GOP event on Saturday. “I’m not going to have a bunch of left-wing media people asking our candidates gotcha questions.”

Extremist groups have also stepped up their activities since the insurrection. Last month, the national chairman of the far-right Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, and several other top leaders were charged with seditious conspiracy. Yet the indictments do not appear to have discouraged the group from audaciously moving to infiltrate the Republicans – more than 10 current or former Proud Boys, for instance, now sit on the Republican party’s executive committee in Miami-Dade, Florida.

"US democracy will not survive long"

A mega poll from UC Davis this week found that one in five adults in the US – which extrapolates to about 50 million people – believe that it can be justified to achieve your political aims through violence.

"US democracy will not survive long"

“The picture that the hearings depict is of a coup leader.”-Steven Levitsky.
...

If Trump’s Latin American-style authoritarianism rang out from the hearings for scholars like Levitsky, a more vexed question is whether it similarly pierced the consciences of the wider American people. It is in their hands...
...
...what about those who went along with it and internalized his lies about the stolen election?
...
The Republicans who played with fire, openly backing the anti-democratic movement, found that they were largely immune to the consequences.

“They learned that if you try to overturn the election you will not be punished by Republican voters, activists or donors. For the most part, you’ll be rewarded for it. ...”

‘US democracy will not survive for long’-The Guardian

“In a two-party system, if one political party is not committed to democratic rules of the game, democracy is not likely to survive for very long. The party has revealed itself, from top to bottom, to be a majority anti-democratic party.”--Steven Levitsky, Harvard political scientist, author How Democracies Die.

Men Are Cockroaches

I've done as much damage as my gender impels me in my life. I'm turning the country over to my daughter, to Caroline Edwards, Cassidy Hutchinson, Sarah Matthews, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stacy Abrams, Liz Cheney, ALL BLACK WOMEN, et al, et al, et al.

In Jan. 6 Hearings, Gender Divide Has Been

Strong Undercurrent

An investigation that has revealed grave threats to democracy, plotted and carried out mostly by men, has a heavily female cast of narrators who have paid a public price for speaking out.

 

WASHINGTON — Before Sarah Matthews, a former deputy White House press secretary, even opened her mouth to testify on Thursday before the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, the House Republican Conference attacked her on Twitter as a “liar” and a “pawn” of Democrats.

The group did not mention the man seated beside her, Matthew Pottinger, the former deputy national security adviser, who was also there to issue a scathing indictment of President Donald J. Trump’s behavior on the day of the riot. Nor did Mr. Trump himself mention Mr. Pottinger when he lashed out hours later with a statement calling Ms. Matthews a fame-seeker who was “clearly lying.”

The contrast highlighted...the gender dynamics that have been a potent undercurrent.

...

Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the panel — a woman who herself has suffered heavy consequences for her insistence on publicly condemning Mr. Trump’s conduct — has been explicit about the role of gender in the proceedings. She has positioned herself as the champion of the women who have agreed to testify in public...

At the committee’s prime-time hearing on Thursday, Ms. Cheney wore a white jacket, the color of the women’s suffrage movement. She invoked Margaret Thatcher, the first woman to serve as prime minister of Britain, and the fight by American women to secure the right to vote as she described the women who had publicly appeared during the panel’s investigation as “an inspiration to American women and American girls.”

She was referring to Ms. Matthews as well as Cassidy Hutchinson, another White House aide who appeared at one of the committee’s hearings; Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who testified about how she was assaulted by the rioters, sustained a concussion and continued to fight them off; and Wandrea Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, election workers from Georgia who told the panel about how they endured harassment and death threats after Mr. Trump named them in a false conspiracy theory about voter fraud.

The result has been that as the... mostly male crowd laying waste to the Capitol in Mr. Trump’s name, with the president looking on supportively from the West Wing — many of the witnesses who have emerged most prominently have been women, with Ms. Cheney as their defender.

It is a notable strategy by Ms. Cheney, a tough and hawkish conservative who throughout her career has worked to avoid being viewed through the lens of gender.

...

It was difficult not to hear some parallels when Ms. Cheney described on Thursday how Ms. Hutchinson, the 26-year-old former White House aide who became a critical public witness, knowingly exposed herself to harsh criticism from former colleagues. Ms. Cheney said that Ms. Hutchinson “knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump and by the 50-, 60- and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege.”

“But like our witnesses today, she has courage and she did it anyway,” Ms. Cheney added.

After Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony, Mr. Trump dismissed her in an interview with Newsmax as “this girl” who was making up stories. “She’s got serious problems, let me put it that way,” he said. “Mental problems.”

 -30-

Bannon Threatens "Real" Jan. 6 Committee

"I would tell the  Jan. 6 staff right now: preserve your documents because there's going to be a real committee, and this is going to be backed by Republican grassroots voters ...

"We have to really govern, and I mean govern on offense. Every committee in the House needs to be an oversight committee. We have to go after the Biden administration, which is illegitimate." 

It's power uber alles to Trump and his low-lifes, including over the law: breaking it, disobeying it, not recognizing it. It doesn't apply to them.

"The Darkness, and Jackson, and Fear"

Going west from Fredericksburg in the old days a traveler would follow the Orange Turnpike, which started out through open farming country as pleasant to see in springtime as anything east of the Blue Ridge. Eight or nine miles from Fredericksburg the countryside's mood changed, and the road went down a long slope into a gloomy second-growth forest known as the Wilderness. The Wilderness stretched west for fifteen miles or more, thinly populated with dense timber covering irregular ravines and low hills; a year or two later a Federal soldier referred to this gloomy, shaded country, with reason, as a land of grinning ghosts. Not long after the road entered this woodland it reached an unremarkable crossroad called Chancellorsville, where a family named Chancellor had built a big house.

Chancellorsville was not important, except of course to the Chancellor family [The man's wit...umm]; it was just white pillars and red brickwork at an open clearing in the woods, with country roads converging in front of it. ...but if General Hooker intended to fight General Lee he would have to go through this country to get at him, and sooner or later he would have to come to Chancellorsville. To Chancellorsville he came, at last, and the word has been a scar on the national memory every since.-- Catton, Never Call Retreat, Remorseless Revolutionary Struggle, 144.

Email sent to my daughter this morning and her response:


I believe that man at his best is man at play. What separates us from other mammal species is our brain and within that the capacity for humor and laughter. No matter how awful peoples' positions, they have always been able to have moments of joy. I received an email on July 28, 2010:

Hi, Ben:

You may enjoy reading the attached quotes, for a change from what surrounds us
in this world. Whenever I see ugly things, I always try to remember "the world
is neither so good nor so bad as we think it is." (Guy de Maupassant).

A couple of years ago my son sent me a photograph of one maybe, 10 year-old, pushing his, say, 5 year-old, brother in a shopping cart in the projects. My son was there visiting a client. In that derelict, impoverished and dangerous area kids still played and laughed.

And there is this from Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China:

No country, over the past few centuries, has been free of turmoil and tragedy. It is as if there were a restlessness and a capacity for violence at the center of the human spirit that can never be contained, so that no society can achieve a perfect tranquility. Yet in every country, too, humans have shown a love of beauty. a passion for intellectual adventure, a gentleness, an exuberant sensuality, and a yearning for justice that have cut across the darkness and filled their world with light.

"I wish you enough" is a modern Chinese poem. I wish for you, my daughter, enough passion, enough commitment, enough energy that you may achieve enough happiness.

-Dad

Thank you dad! this was so meaningful, i really appreciate you sharing!

Poll: Over 50 percent of Americans expect a civil war 'in the next few years'

 

I've read this three times:

...the fact that a legislature could, before the election itself, simply allocate electors to the candidate of its choice without any input from the public is an ongoing and ever-present threat to electoral democracy.

I have never heard of such a thing. In the context of Jamelle Bouie's entire column, which lauds the bill present before the Senate now, I am mystified.

...

 The bill would address each part of the scheme. It would require states to choose electors according to the laws that existed before Election Day and prevent state legislatures from overriding the popular vote by declaring a “failed election.”

...

I don’t know whether the bill can actually pass the Senate, but it is a good bill.

Bannon Found Guilty

Run Hawley Run

— Dan Rather (@DanRather) July 22, 2022

 

Running Colors

                                   2016, California. Trump supporters fleeing counter protesters.

                              

            2022, D.C. Sen. Josh Hawley fleeing Trump supporters.

Remember what Marco Rubio said about Trump in the 2016 primaries? Trump had said he wanted to "punch him in the face," a protester during one of Trump's speeches. Rubio read Trump's personality with unique accuracy: "Donald Trump has never punched anybody in the face in his whole life. He's not a tough guy; he's not."

They're manque tough guys, not the real thing. Fakes. Real cowards, fake tough guys. And laughing stocks.

Our president is vulnerable in 2024 and Dems in Congress will loss both majorities in Congress in two and one-half months. Trump will win the GOP nomination and has a good chance of regaining the presidency, which will mean the end of Democracy in America. But there is a significant weakness for Trump: He is a one-horse johnny, the 2020 election, and I truly believe that Dems have a better chance of reelecting Biden or a Democrat in his place with Trump as the GOP candidate. The man has Absolutely. Nothing. To. Say. And so I am once again urging,

                    Run Trump Run!

Chicken Hawk Hawley

 

Chicken Hawk Hawley

"The president is very emotional. He's in a very dark place."-Jan. 7.

"The election is over..." "I don't want to say the election is over."--Trump working on his Jan. 7, 2021 speech.

 






July 21, 2022, 9:02 p.m. ET20 minutes ago20 minutes ago


Maggie Haberman

That members of Pence’s detail were calling to say goodbye to their families is a new, and very disturbing, piece of information.

 





July 21, 2022, 9:05 p.m. ET16 minutes ago16 minutes ago


Alan Feuer

Also to Carl’s point, the Justice Department has sworn statements from Capitol rioters who have been prosecuted saying they were motivated by Trump’s 2:24 tweet about Pence to move forward with the Capitol attack.



July 21, 2022, 9:04 p.m. ET17 minutes ago17 minutes ago


Katie Benner

To Carl’s point, the committee has also shown that Trump’s message telling people to go home dispersed the crowd. The message seems clear: Trump was in control of the rioters from start to finish.



July 21, 2022, 9:03 p.m. ET18 minutes ago18 minutes ago


Maggie Haberman

That tweet was the catalyst for Pottinger putting in his resignation. He is describing that moment.



July 21, 2022, 9:03 p.m. ET18 minutes ago18 minutes ago


Carl Hulse

The 2:24 p.m. tweet from the president attacking Pence has been a primary focus of the special committee’s work, showing that the president not only did not act to end the assault, but intentionally stirred it at a critical moment.

Image

July 21, 2022, 9:11 p.m. ET3 minutes ago

3 minutes ago

Carl Hulse

The committee room burst into laughter at the sight of Hawley sprinting out of danger in the Capitol after riling up the crowd himself earlier in the day with his raised fist gesture.

July 21, 2022, 9:11 p.m. ET4 minutes ago

4 minutes ago

Maggie Haberman

Another twist of the blade: The committee is playing footage of Senator Josh Hawley fleeing the mob. Hawley helped whip up the protests against certifying the electoral college.

 

Sen. Josh Hawley arriving at the Capitol on Jan. 6 expressing solidarity with and inciting the coupsters before the coup d'etat.

The Committee just showed footage of this pussy boy running through the Capitol evacuating a short while later.

                                            Feet don't fail me now. MOMMY!