Message Forum - GENERAL

https://youtu.be/OKiquvDQHcs

By all accounts the loud but lethal shotguns and automatic weapons of the loggers, miners, poachers, and cattle ranchers, unrestrained by Bolsonaro, are laying waste to the indigenous population and their land. Poisoned arrows are quaint but native technology has never stood up to firearms.

******

This just sent to me:

02/09/21 09:37 PM

#14568

Clifford Elgin

Joan --- where were you in France? You're right about great cheeses (and wines) there.

Brazil continues to decimate its indiginous people and rain forest which endangers us all.

When we're posting something can we scroll back to previous posts? If we can, I can't figure out how to do it?

I posted my third blog today. The link is https://channelingthomaspaine.wordpress.com. I can make it a "live" link in gmail but don't know how to do that in a post. Sorry

02/10/21 11:17 AM

#14569

Joanie Bender (Grosfeld)

Cliff, at the bottom of the posts you'll see a page number and a prior page notation.. You can keep going back to previous posts that way, arrowing back.
Love, joanie

02/10/21 01:46 PM

#14570

Clifford Elgin

Thanks Joanie.

I am told in regards to my posts it is better if you add /blog/ to the end of the link as in https://channelingthomaspaine.wordpress.com/blog/

02/10/21 01:49 PM

#14571

As Joanie says, Kip. You can't go back and forth from the page with all the messages to an "add a response" page without opening a tab for each. If you start a response, then try to do a < to return to the messages you'll lose whatever you had written in response.

10 degrees at the nest this morning. And Tasca wanted her picture taken too.

02/10/21 05:11 PM

#14572

Glen Hirose

Finally got my vaccination. Just by luck I found out RMHS was giving out shots so at 3:00 I went to see if they might have some leftover doses. I lucked out and got the Moderna vaccine. I feel like I just graduated "Anchorman" at the Academy! The Jamesons will be especially good tonight...

02/12/21 04:15 AM

#14573

Joan Ruggles (Young)

Kip, we're still in France till Feb. 20th. We're in an area called the Luberon Valley. It's about 20 miles east of Avignon. Lots of lovely hilltop villages, lots of great hiking trails and of course lots of small production cheese and the best rosé in the world!

I would like to brag a little about one of my sons. In 2017 he was working at the State Department in the office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change. He was lucky enough to be in Paris for and have a small part in writing the Paris Accord. Three days after Trump was inaugurated, he was fired. Within two months the office no longer existed. He's been working on climate issues at Oxfam ever since. This week he begins work back at the State Department to work in John Kerry's climate office as an expert senior advisor. I am deliriously happy for him!!!

02/12/21 07:59 AM

#14574

Good for your son, Joan! Tell him to give John my regards. If John needs a memory prompt, your son can tell him I'm the vet who stole the cases of booze from Sen. Phil Hart at the fund raiser he threw for VVAW in 1971!

Sunday. Pandemic Valentine's Day--Deb and I get to spend it romantically working a vaccination clinic together!

02/12/21 08:02 AM

#14575

We Lost the Line”: Trump Is on the Brink of Yet Another Senate Acquittal

Republican senators ran for their lives, but they will not run from the former President.

By Susan B. Glasser

The New Yorker

A few hours into the presentation of the House managers’ case against Donald Trump, for inciting the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6th, Representative Eric Swalwell, of California, played senators an extraordinary new clip of themselves on that awful day. The previously undisclosed security-camera footage was short. There was no sound. It simply showed senators running down a long corridor, to escape from the mob. This was no calm, orderly evacuation. These were members of Congress running for their lives. Swalwell said that he went back and checked to see how close the rioters had come to the senators. The answer was fifty-eight steps. “We all know that awful day could have been so much worse,” he said.

A few minutes later, Swalwell—the son and brother of cops, he noted—played a series of increasingly frantic radio transmissions by members of the D.C. Metropolitan Police, as they tried and failed to contain the riot that ultimately injured dozens of officers. “We lost the line. We’ve lost the line,” an officer shouts. “All M.P.D., pull back,” he screams. “Pull back.”

This was the horrible moment when the Capitol was breached. But it was so much more than that, too—a before-and-after moment in our democracy, when Trump’s months-long campaign to undermine the legitimacy of an American election culminated in a deadly but failed attempt to stop Congress from certifying the results. Had Trump finally gone too far, even for his Republican Party to follow? Had he gone too far for the members of the U.S. Senate who were themselves targets of the mob? This week’s impeachment trial will answer those questions, and in so doing offer one last clarifying, horrifying coda to the Trump Presidency.

So, no, we are not moving on. Not yet. Joe Biden has been the President for three weeks now, but the profane spectre of Trump, his unprecedented attack on the election, and the violence that he helped unleash in furtherance of that attack remain the unfinished business of his disastrous Presidency.

The exercise of this week’s Senate impeachment trial might well be the last time that the Trump era is so evocatively re-created: the blustering President and his toxic tweets and rallies, the rampaging thugs whom he urged to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell,” the Republican senators forced to dodge endless shouted questions about Trump and his false claims. At the heart of it is this painful mystery: Did Trump believe the stolen-election lies that he used to call forth the mob? What did he expect would happen when he told them to walk to Congress and stop the certification of the Electoral College results that would put an end to his Presidency?

I’m not sure what, exactly, to call what we have been watching this week: part trial, part documentary film, part constitutional-law seminar, part Facebook video shared by your politics-obsessed cousin. It’s too soon for history, and there are still so many questions unanswered; if there is to be a full investigation of this tragedy, it hasn’t happened yet. Where the House Democratic managers succeeded most brilliantly was in evoking that day’s feeling of violation and betrayal—and in linking the violence back to Trump’s cynical and premeditated provoking of an insurrection in the heart of Washington. Trump was the “inciter-in-chief,” not the commander-in-chief, the Democrats’ lead manager, Representative Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, said. He was a fire chief who set a fire in a crowded theatre and then watched it burn. “Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,” Raskin said, of Trump, channelling Voltaire. This is the third Presidential impeachment trial of my lifetime. I have watched close to every minute of all three. Never have I seen anything as riveting as the dramatization of the Capitol violence—and Trump’s role in it—that the House managers put on this week.

“I cannot imagine how any senator can vote against removal,” Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, one of just ten House Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment, tweeted, during the showing of the videos on Wednesday. On Thursday, many of the strongest denunciations of Trump’s actions in the House managers’ case came from elected Republican officials and Trump Administration advisers, who were shown calling the former President’s actions “disgraceful,” “shameful,” “wrong,” and “one of the darkest chapters in United States history.” After listening to all this, Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, one of the few Senate Republicans who categorically spoke out against Trump on that day, told reporters during one of the trial breaks, “I don’t see how Donald Trump could be reëlected to the Presidency again.” That is up to her colleagues, but all too many of them have already signalled where they stand.

And that, as always in the Trump era, is what it comes back to: Trump alone never could have wreaked such mayhem on our democracy, on our Capitol. His mob is not just the thugs who attacked cops with flagpoles on January 6th; it also includes some of the elected officials inside the besieged building, the ones in suits who advanced and promoted Trump’s election lies, just as they had advanced and promoted so many of his other lies for the previous four years. Of course, they are standing by him now.

After watching the managers’ presentation, Senator Ted Cruz—the Texas Republican whose objection to Arizona’s electoral count was being debated when rioters forced the senators to flee—told reporters that, no matter how horrific the video is, the managers had proved nothing of Trump’s guilt. “I think the end result of this impeachment trial is crystal clear to everybody, which is that Donald Trump will be acquitted,” he said. Senator Roy Blunt, of Missouri, asked if he had changed his mind, changed the subject, telling reporters that congressional Democrats had supported riots in Seattle, Portland, “and other places.” CNN’s Manu Raju reported that, although several Republican senators were “shaken” by the footage, they were not inclined to waver from their votes to acquit. (“Apparently shaken, but not stirred,” the Democrat Doug Jones, who lost his Alabama Senate seat in November, said.) On Wednesday evening, Trump’s chief Senate defender, Lindsey Graham, as if seeking to erase his brief apostasy in voting against Trump’s election lie on the night of the riot, called the managers’ case against Trump “offensive and absurd.” David Schoen, Trump’s combative new lawyer, liked that line so much that he used it himself. The accusations against Trump, he told reporters on Thursday, were not just unproven; they were “offensive.”

Next, it will be Schoen’s turn to present a case. I’m sure he and Trump’s other lawyers will dismiss all that we have seen from the managers about the events of January 6, 2021, as sensationalistic rehashing of the day’s violence, inflammatory, and beside the point. They will portray Trump as a paragon of First Amendment-protected free speech. They will portray Democrats as hypocrites, perfectly willing to unleash a mob when it suits them. The reason I know that they will say this is because they already have. All indicators suggest that this is just the defense that many Republican senators are looking for.

In the five weeks since the attack on the Capitol, those who unleashed and enabled the rioters had every chance to apologize, to pull back, to offer regrets and make amends. They did not. Trump did not, and neither, it’s sad to say, did almost any of his fellow-Republicans. Many, like Graham, have gone in the other direction. The security-camera footage from the Capitol shows us that these senators ran for their lives. But they did not, and still do not, have the will or the courage to run from Trump and from the lies with which he has enveloped them and their Party.

The unprecedented second impeachment trial of Donald Trump is not yet over, though it soon will be, and the outcome is, once again, not much in doubt. A year ago, when Trump faced his first trial, Mitt Romney was the only Senate Republican to vote for his conviction. This time, despite the trial taking place at the actual scene of the crime, Romney was joined by only five other Republicans in voting to allow the trial to proceed. Whether or not those six ultimately vote to convict, the final number of Republicans is sure to be well below the two-thirds majority required for conviction. We lost the line. We lost the line, indeed.

Joan -- Congratulations on your son's new job working for John Kerry on climate change. He deserves it. Have a safe trip home.....Jay

02/12/21 08:04 AM

#14576

Robert Hall

That's great news for your son--and our country--Joan. Let's hope we can successfully rebuild the climate organization we had four years ago. We've lost a lot of time. Some of our neighbors who work for Labor and State and who have been pretty glum looking the last four years are smiling now when I see them.. A blanket of incompetence is being lifted.

02/12/21 08:48 AM

#14577

The martyrdom of Mike Pence

Sidney Blumenthal

The Guardian

As vice-president, he abased himself and his office. In reward, Donald Trump sent a mob to kill him. Now, as another impeachment trial looms, he is cast out from Republican ranks

After Donald Trump had exhausted all of his claims of voter fraud and could contrive no more conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, and after his revolving menagerie of legal mouthpieces had all of their motions tossed out of every venue up to the supreme court, and after his reliable enabler, Attorney General William Barr, informed him his accusations were false and he had reached the end of the line, and resigned, Trump came as a last resort to rest his slipping hold on power on his most unwavering defender and ceaseless flatterer, who had never let him down: his vice-president, Mike Pence.

Nobody was more responsible for fostering the cult of Trump. The evangelical Pence had been Trump’s rescuer, starting with his forgiveness for the miscreant in the crisis during the 2016 campaign over Trump’s Access Hollywood “grab them by the pussy” tape and then over the disclosure of the “Individual One” hush money payoff to a porn star about a one-night stand to shut her up before election day – AKA “the latest baseless allegations”. Pence was the indispensable retainer who delivered the evangelical base, transforming it through the alchemy of his faith into Trump’s rock of ages. After every malignant episode, from Charlottesville (“I stand with the president”) to coronavirus (“The president took another historic step”), the pious Pence could be counted on to bless Trump for his purity of heart and to shepherd the flock of true believers.

“Trump’s got the populist nationalists,” Stephen Bannon, Trump’s pardoned former senior adviser, remarked. “But Pence is the base. Without Pence, you don’t win.”

Withstanding the howling winds of narcissism, the unshakably self-abasing Pence upheld the cross over Trump. On the evening of 3 May 2017, Trump welcomed his evangelical advisory board for dinner in the Blue Room of the White House.

“I’ve been with [Trump] alone in the room when the decisions are made,” Pence testified to the assembled pastors. “He and I have prayed together. This is somebody who shares our views, shares our values, shares our beliefs.”

Nobody more than Pence had modeled adulation of Trump to become the standard for sycophantic imitation. At the first meeting of members of Trump’s cabinet, on 12 June 2017, the president called on each to offer praise.

“I’m going to start with our vice-president. Where is our vice-president?” Trump asked. “We’ll start with Mike and then we’ll just go around, your name, your position.”

“This is just the greatest privilege of my life,” Pence said, setting the tone for the others.

By August, Pence had mentioned Trump’s “broad shoulders” 17 times, to proclaim his manly strength. At the cabinet meeting of 20 December 2017, Pence praised Trump 14 times in just under three minutes, a commendation every 12.5 seconds, concluding in his last breathless, fawning words: “And we are making America great again.” On 6 June 2018, at a meeting of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Trump suddenly and inexplicably put his water bottle on the floor. Without missing a beat, Pence, seated beside him, put his bottle on the floor too.

Finally, after 61 failed lawsuits challenging the presidential election, Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis told him there was a magic solution. Pence, presiding over the counting of the ballots of the electoral college before a joint session of Congress on 6 January, could overturn results in the key states that had gone against Trump, by deciding himself which votes to certify and which to reject. Rightwing social media was awash with rumorsabout “the Pence card”.

Pence sought the opinions of an array of conservative legal experts, who uniformly stated that he had no such authority. For days, Trump badgered him. On 4 January, campaigning in Georgia for Republican senatorial candidates, Trump said: “If the liberal Democrats take the Senate and the White House, and they’re not going to take the White House, we’re going to fight like hell, I hope Mike Pence comes through for us, I have to tell you … He’s a great guy. Of course, if he doesn’t come through I won’t like him quite as much … He’s a wonderful man, a smart man and a man I like a lot.”

You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a pussy

Donald Trump

On the day before the electoral college votes were to be certified, 5 January, Trump tweeted, “The Vice-President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.” Hours later, Trump cornered Pence in the Oval Office. He had brought along a rightwing law professor, John Eastman, from Chapman University, who argued that Pence had the power to overturn the electoral college. Eastman had written an op-ed asserting that Kamala Harris was ineligible to run for vice-president because she was not a proper US citizen – a new birtherism. Trump told Pence Eastman was “very highly qualified”. For once, Pence stood his ground. His reverence turned into recalcitrance. He rebuffed Trump. There was a line he would not cross.

That night, after the New York Times reported that Pence felt “he would need to balance the president’s misguided beliefs about government with his own years of preaching deference to the constitution”, Trump issued a statement: “The New York Times report regarding comments Vice-President Pence supposedly made to me today is fake news. He never said that. The Vice-President and I are in total agreement that the Vice-President has the power to act.”

Before dawn on 6 January, after it was clear the Republicans had lost both seats in Georgia and with them control of the Senate, Trump frantically engaged in a tweet storm.

“States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”

Then Trump called Pence at the vice-presidential residence, the Naval Observatory, to deliver an ultimatum. “You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a pussy,” Trump said. But Pence spurned him again. He hung up and got into his motorcade. As he drove to the Capitol, Trump mounted the platform at his “Stop the Steal” rally outside the White House, to address thousands of followers.

Trump knew Pence intended to perform his constitutionally prescribed duty to preside over the process that would seal Joe Biden’s election. Pence had repeatedly told Trump that was what he would do. Trump had tried every means to dislodge him from his position, but Pence proved immovable. Trump’s call that morning, threatening him as a “pussy”, was the last desperate gambit. Trump knew the string was played out.

People listen to Trump speak near the White House on 6 January. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

But when he addressed the crowd he had assembled, Trump pretended he did not know what Pence was going to do. Stung by Pence’s emphatic refusal, he knew he was retailing a false narrative. He feigned that Pence had not yet made up his mind – and that the entire decision now depended upon him. Trump built up the dramatic suspense, stoked the crowd’s anger and directed its fixation. Trump turned the entire crisis on to Pence.

Trump referred to Pence 13 times in his speech:

I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election … All Vice-President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to re-certify and we become president and you are the happiest people. And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: ‘Mike, that doesn’t take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage’ … And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our constitution … And Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our constitution and for the good of our country. And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I’m not hearing good stories … They want to re-certify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn’t listen to the Rinos [Republicans In Name Only] and the stupid people that he’s listening to …

Targeting Pence, Trump urged his followers forward. “And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more … So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue”– to the Capitol.

Trump was well aware that the crowd contained violent elements. He knew it was not like one of the festive crowds that attended his campaign rallies, warmed up with singing and dancing. In his 1 October debate with Biden, Trump had given a shoutout to the white supremacist Proud Boys, calling out their name and giving them a slogan: “Stand back and stand by.” On 12 December, Proud Boys led thousands of paramilitary demonstrators to protest against the election result in Washington.

“WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT!!!” Trump tweeted that morning to greet them. That night, the Proud Boys roamed the streets, provoking fights. Four people were stabbed, one shot, a police officer assaulted and 33 people arrested. The Proud Boys’ leader, Enrique Tarrio, was later arrested for burning a “Black Lives Matter” banner at a historic Black church and chargedwith two counts of felony for illegal possession of high-capacity guns.

“We won the Presidential Election, by a lot. FIGHT FOR IT. Don’t let them take it away!” Trump tweeted on 18 December. The next day he tweeted: “Big protest on 6 January. Be there, will be wild!”

Arriving at the Capitol that day, taking his place in the Senate chamber at 1pm, Pence issued a statement: “It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”

Trump was just finishing speaking. The spearhead of the mob had already broken through the police perimeter on the west side of the Capitol. Just after 2pm, led by the Proud Boys and other paramilitary groups, the mob poured through smashed windows and doors and rushed into the corridors, chanting: “Hang Mike Pence!”

A protester carries a noose while standing outside the Capitol. Photograph: Mukul Ranjan/Reuters

“Once we found out Pence turned on us and that they had stolen the election, like, officially, the crowd went crazy. I mean, it became a mob,” said one rioter, later arrested, in a video posted on YouTube. Another of those arrested texted: “When we found out Pence fucked us, we all stormed the Capitol building and everyone forced entry and started breaking shit. It was a like a scene out of a movie.”

But many of those assaulting the Capitol had already received Trump’s tinfoil cue to focus on Pence. The FBI charging paper for one arrested rioter, an alleged QAnon militant, quoted a text message two weeks before the attack: “I’m there for the greatest celebration of all time after Pence leads the Senate flip!! OR IM THERE IF TRUMP TELLS US TO STORM THE FUKIN CAPITAL IMA DO THAT THEN! We don’t want any trouble but they are not going to steal this election that I guarantee bro!!”

Secret service agents hustled Pence out of the chamber. “Where’s Mike Pence?” chanted the mob, racing to locate him. They carried a noose, marked with his name. Pence was in an office only about 100ft away. A quick-thinking Capitol police officer steered the rampaging throng to chase him in the opposite direction. At 2.24pm, amid the mayhem, Trump tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”

Dozens of messages immediately appeared on Gab, a social media networking site favored by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, encouraging those inside the Capitol to capture Pence.

“I heard at least three different rioters at the Capitol say that they hoped to find Vice-President Mike Pence and execute him by hanging him from a Capitol Hill tree as a traitor,” reported Jim Bourg, the Reuters picture editor in Washington. “It was a common line being repeated. Many more were just talking about how the VP should be executed.”

At 3.55pm, Pence tweeted: “The violence and destruction taking place at the US Capitol Must Stop and it Must Stop Now.” Nearly five hours later, the Capitol had been cleared, the Senate reconvened and Pence stood at the dais. On the desk, a note had been left for him by the shirtless, horned fur-hatted, face-painted, self-proclaimed “QAnon shaman”, one Jacob Chansley.

“It’s only a matter of time, justice is coming,” it read.

Trump supporters stand by the door to the Senate. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

At 3.34am, in the early hours of 7 January, Pence affirmed that Joe Biden had won the election. Five people, including a Capitol police officer, would die as a result of the riot; 140 police were injured.

Throughout the pandemonium in the Capitol, Trump did not seek to discover whether Pence was safe. He did not call him. He was watching the insurrection on TV at the White House, “excited” and “delighted”, according to the Republican senator Ben Sasse, who told of accounts heard from aides who were with the president. Trump never did call Pence.

“I’ve known Mike Pence for ever,” said a friend, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma. “I’ve never seen Pence as angry … He said, ‘After all the things I’ve done for [Trump].’”

On 8 January, Trump announced he would not attend the inauguration. Pence stated that he would be there, to see Biden take the oath of office.

On the mantle above the fireplace in his library at the vice-president’s residence, Pence placed a framed passage from the Bible’s Book of Jeremiah.

“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

For Pence, the quotation from scripture was a complacent blessing from the gospel of prosperity. (He conveniently did not frame other passages from Jeremiah preceding and following his favorite citation: “Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,” declares the Lord … “You should put any maniac who acts like a prophet into the stocks and neck-irons.”)

Pence did not know God’s plan for him. He was just certain that God had one in mind. Pence did not voice the prophesy. He was no prophet. He was not the oracle. But he knew that he had a divinely ordained destiny. He believed it would unfold with his heavenly ascent to the highest position, becoming president as reward for his faithful humility. He adhered to the evangelical notion of “servant leadership”, Marc Short, his chief of staff and a fellow evangelical, explained to the Atlantic. Pence modeled himself on Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, a model for evangelicals to follow in his example toward Trump: “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave.”

“Servant leadership is biblical,” Short said. “That’s at the heart of it for Mike, and it comes across in his relationship with the president.”

The political marriage of Pence and Trump was an alliance of opposites, a calibrated balancing act of the pious and the pitiless, the sacred and the profane, the bland Hoosier and the brash New Yorker, the lockstep partisan and the egotist. It was also a team of media celebrities, minor and major, the trusted voice from the heartland leading his true believers to the TV reality show confidence man.

Pence had risen to prominence as a conservative talkshow host in Indiana, “His Mikeness”, self-described as “Rush Limbaugh on decaf”, opening every show: “Greetings across the amber waves of grain.” When local Republicans urged him to run for Congress, his intimate adviser, his wife, Karen, whom he calls “Mother”, interpreted two hawks flying overhead as God’s sign. Pence served six undistinguished terms, ingratiated himself with the Koch brothers’ donor network as its servant, and the party elevated him to the Indiana governor’s chair. His principal accomplishment was to enact a bill discriminating against gay people, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which under widespread criticism and threats of boycott he essentially rescinded. He was uncertain of re-election; then Trump plucked him from obscurity. Another sign.

The relationship was set in stone at the beginning. The Access Hollywood tape was the formative event. Everything followed from Trump’s risky business and Pence’s avid devotion. When the scandal broke, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, organized pressure on Trump to quit and Pence to assume his place, according to Pence’s biographer Tom LoBianco.

“Donald Trump should withdraw and Mike Pence should be our nominee effective immediately,” tweeted Senator John Thune, of South Dakota. Karen Pence was “livid”. But Pence refused to drink from the chalice he was offered, believing it to be poisoned. If he replaced Trump, he would be blamed for destroying him and the inevitable election defeat. Instead, he believed Trump would lose and he, Pence, would be ideally positioned to be the Republican nominee in 2020, to take on President Hillary Clinton. And when Trump survived and went on to win, Pence was the next in line.

Pence was not blind about Trump. Karen Pence confided to one of his aides: “We knew we were signing up for something unique. We knew there would be times he’d say and do things we’d never do. We understood that … Obviously, it’s disappointing, but it doesn’t change the mission.”

Trump was Pence’s cross to bear. Whether Pence respected him was beside the point. Trump only wanted to be worshipped. He obviously thought he had endless use of the simplistic Pence as his tool. But Pence knew that both he and Trump were tools of the Lord, though for different purposes. He wanted to create a worshipful presence for Trump, toward greater ends about which Trump was completely unknowing. Pence had been put into his position for the Lord’s purposes, in an unfolding divine story. He was right with the Lord. He was not only elected; he was among the elect. The Lord blessed his servant. The blessing was a promise of his ever-rising advancement so long as he was steadfast. He stayed the course no matter the tribulations and privations. His destiny had been written. He proved himself worthy by his steadfastness in bearing the desecrations of the unworthy Trump. Every further revelation of Trump’s character confirmed that Pence was being tested for the time beyond Trump. Pence carried his cross for a glorious consummation for the most faithful of the Lord’s chosen, Mike Pence.

Trump and Pence, at prayer in the Oval Office. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/Reuters

If Pence maintained his equanimity, he could keep moving forward. His voice was steady, his manner was steady and when a fly landed on his head in his debate with Kamala Harris, he was steady. He had practice with far greater distractions. This fly didn’t do anything embarrassing, except land on his head. It was not the fly’s fault. Pence could bear everything.

But the more Pence succeeded in achieving his perfection of humility and show of gratitude, the more he persuaded the evangelicals it was Trump who was divinely anointed. Regardless of how Pence saw himself in his inner vision, through his ministrations the evangelicals came to see Trump as the one who made America right with the Lord. Pence made sure the credit went to his lord. He rendered unto Caesar.

Pence did not know that staying the course would be his undoing. His role as president of the Senate in presiding over the counting of the electoral college votes was largely ceremonial and passive. Pence believed he was true to the constitution –under God. He had taken his oath on his Bible. His presence naturally lent the process legitimacy. For Trump, that was the problem. Pence’s faith created a schism not only with Trump, but also with his ambition.

Trump by his lights had not lost the election; it was stolen. Trump could never be a loser. He had won. He was being deprived of his victory. Pence alone could change it. If he did not, he explained Trump’s failure. The fault was displaced on to Pence.

We knew we were signing up for something unique

Karen Pence

Pence bestowed on Trump the fatal kiss. Pence was the Judas. He did not ever imagine he was Judas, but always God’s servant. Judas knew he was betraying Jesus, but Pence never thought he was betraying Trump. Pence never knew that all along, this was part of God’s plan.

Upholding his oath, Pence’s hopes turned to ashes. He became something he never anticipated: the fall guy. He never expected he would be Trump’s patsy. It was one thing to be his flunky, but Pence never thought, even after all the other adults in the room had departed in obloquy, he’d be the last patsy standing.

Pence may consider himself one of the most unselfish Christians. The extreme case of humility is when a person gives his all to someone who is completely selfish and has no other purpose. Now loathed by evangelicals, Pence must console himself with the holy paradox invested in martyrs, in which the martyr scorned by his own people suffers for the greater good of the Lord. Only later is the martyr beatified as a saint. Becoming such a martyr might get Pence a stained-glass window in some future crystal cathedral, but it will not get him anywhere in the Republican party.

Pence is reportedly isolated, in a borrowed cabin in Indiana, having arranged to be a “visiting fellow” at the Heritage Foundation.

No evangelical leader has stepped forward to defend his honor. No Republican leader has vouched for his virtue, obligations and higher loyalty. Abandoned and alone, the object of hatred, the target of threats. Pence had taught his flock to worship its lord and cast out heretics. He delivered everything to Trump, and Trump delivered Pence to the mob as a scapegoat. Pence had shown them the way to follow Trump as a true servant. And they did.

“Hang Mike Pence!”

02/12/21 10:27 AM

#14578

https://twitter.com/D1C0MM/status/1359976118795730944

Where’s Mike Pence?

By Dead Center Shacks

If you’re like me, you are probably wondering: “Where’s Mike Pence? – Old Bone Spurs most “unwavering defender and ceaseless flatterer” as Sidney Blumenthal described him in his recent column in The Guardian (posted earlier).

Well, Mike Pence fled town after then President Trump issued his death warrant on Twitter (the VP lacked the “courage” and betrayed his mission) just minutes after the Secret Service was seen by video taking Pence and his family scampering to safety and into hiding on January 6 as Trump’s angry mob of insurrectionists stormed the Capitol yelling, “Hang Mike Pence.”

Pence, according to Blumenthal’s report, is now holed up at a friend’s cabin at an undisclosed cabin in Indiana. The Heritage Foundation – now considered one of the more moderate GOP think tanks (back in my day, the Heritage Foundation was positioned at the far right) – has put him on the payroll as part-time scholar.

To use a golf metaphor, Old Bone Spurs is nearing the very end of Amen Corner and his game has self-destructed. He’s been impeached – not once but twice within a single year. Regardless of the upcoming vote in the Senate, Donald J. Trump will go down in history as our worst, most reckless and most damaging President in the 245-year history of the United States of America.

Today, we will hear from the President’s defense team. It’s likely to be a short presentation because they really don’t have anything to say to dispute the facts and videos presented by the House Impeachment Managers as they brought their case to a close yesterday. It was a masterful job by Rep. Jamie Raskin (believe he represents the congressional district encompassing Bethesda) and his team of House managers.

As Jamie Raskin said in his closing argument: “Is there any political leader in this room who believes that if he is ever allowed by the Senate to get back into the Oval Office, Donald Trump would stop inciting violence to get his way?

“Would you bet the lives of more police officers on that? Would you bet the safety of your family on that? Would you bet the future of your democracy on that? If he gets back into office and it happens again, we have no one to blame but ourselves.”

The evidence presented by Congressman Raskin and his team was compelling and overwhelming – the President planned, orchestrated and incited a mob of his angry followers to storm the Capitol in his outrageous and Putin-like effort to reverse the election results – an election, I might add, that Joe Biden won by a landslide (more than 7 million votes). It was an attack on our democracy – pure and simple. More than 138 Capitol and DC police officers were injured. One Capitol police officer was killed and two others committed suicide days later. To put it bluntly, that makes Donald Trump a “cop killer.”

As I await the arguments of the ex-President’s lawyers starting at noon today, I’m reminded of another golf adage slightly modified for this occasion: “Two things ain’t long for this world: dogs chasin’ cars, and ex-Presidents who don’t pay or listen to their attorneys.”

Footnotes

Amen Corner refers to holes 11, 12 and 13 at the Augusta National Golf Club where the Masters is played every year. It’s these tough three holes that typically separates the winner from the losers on the Leaderboard during the final Sunday afternoon round at the Masters. It’s worth noting that almost every golf course in America has its own Amen Corner. At my home course (the Oaks course at Twin Lakes, in Clifton, VA), the make or break holes are 13, 14 and 15.

The original golf adage reads this way: “Two things ain’t long for this world: dogs chasin’ cars and pros with putts for par.”

02/12/21 12:53 PM

#14579

Glen Hirose

Jay,

totally unrelated of course, but my favorite is: "If you're caught in the open during a thunder storm hold a 1 iron over your head"...

02/12/21 01:44 PM

#14580

Joan Ruggles (Young)

For anyone who needs a hug.

I love this dog!

02/12/21 03:59 PM

#14581

I assume you guys are watching the impeachment trial. Here are a couple of questions for the President's attorneys:

When did the Trump first learn about the violence on Capitol Hill?

Why didn't Trump condemn the violence when he first learned about it and why didn't he tell mob to stand down and go home, as former New Jersey Governor Chris Christy called on the President to do in a CNN interview about 2 pm? The President, Christy said, started it and he was the only one who could call it off.

02/12/21 06:16 PM

#14582

Stephen Hatchett

Yes, great news about your son, Joan, and great news for our country and maybe much more than that. You done good, gal!

And by Feb 20 California should have most of the kinks worked out of its vaccination "system".

Jack, I'd send pics of roses and rosemary blooming with green grass backgrounds, but -- well there's the flip side of what it may look like in Sept.

02/12/21 08:20 PM

#14583

Glen Hirose

Malinda Regular

02/12/21 08:54 PM

#14584

Trump's impeachment trial is starting to sound a lot like Watergate:

--What did the President know about the violence at the Capitol?

--When did he know it?

--And what did Trump do to protect his Vice President and the United States Capitol?

Hate to pile on, but Rep. Kevin McCarthy's telephone conversation with Donald Trump during the riot and reported by CNN this evening doesn't look good for the former President. Could make tomorrow's closing arguments very interesting.

02/13/21 06:31 PM

#14585

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/13/us/politics/senate-impeachment-live-vote.html?referringSource=articleShare

Hats off to the the few honest and honorable Republicans.

02/13/21 08:40 PM

#14586

Clifford Elgin

Well, the impeachment is over and as predicted. However, Trump's troubles are just beginning. in the end, McConnell, as is his style, took the coward's way out.

Kip

02/14/21 05:14 AM

#14587

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/us/politics/trump-impeachment-acquittal.html?referringSource=articleShare

"An escape, not an exoneration."

02/14/21 01:18 PM

#14588

Marshall Deason

The novel, The New Iberia Blues, by James Lee Burke, contains the following definition:

"Unless you are familiar with the nature of Southern white trash, you will not understand the following: They are a genetically produced breed whose commonality is a state of mind and not related to the social class to which they belong. Economics has nothing to do with their origins or their behavior. You cannot change them. They glory in violence and cruelty and brag on their ignorance, and would have no problem manning the ovens at Auschwitz. That's not hyperbole."

Can the Republican Party extricate itself from its relationshhip with "white trash"? Does it want to?

02/14/21 01:52 PM

#14589

Robert Hall

Though the Covid vaccines may still be in short supply everyone needs to register with their local authority so THEY know you are out there and can contact you directly. We have been using this site to find vaccine locations near us in Maryland.

https://maryland.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/nearby/index.html?appid=0dbfb100676346ed9758be319ab3f40c&find=(20814)%2520MD&sliderDistance=15

Once in the site you can move the distance slider from the 15 mile radius to something wider if you wish.

This link works for Bethesda Maryland, but you can delete the 20814 zip code and insert your own to get a GIS map with your vaccine locations. I have been able to insert zip codes outside of Maryland to check other areas so this may work for you depending on your state's participation. I also inserted the postal and postfach numbers of friends in Europe and their maps came up, but, so far, without vaccine locations--probably because of tighter controls and vaccine shortages.

02/14/21 02:38 PM

#14590

580 (maybe a few more) vaccinated, all on a drop-in basis between 7:30-2:30 today. Massive job, almost flawlessly done. Well done, Manchester VA Medical Center!

********

May not be hyperbole, Marshall, but it's about as racist as a statement could be. Thinking and behavior genetically determined, unchangeable? Could be from the pen of Madison Grant, George Lincoln Rockwell, Lester Maddox!

02/14/21 03:28 PM

#14591