Prime time hearings! Has this ever happened before?
Not that I'm aware of, but I'm also not aware of any United States president ever attempting to use mob violence to stay in office.
Maybe if we raise consciousness about this, republicans will do the right thing this time!
I think I'm going to watch for at least a bit.
Re: academics, I appreciated this: https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-season-of-our-professorial-discontent
Prime time hearings! Has this ever happened before?
My dad still remembers working spending several days working on the roof of the house with a portable radio listening to the Watergate hearings.
Was your dad a roofer working after 8/7 Central and Mountain?
Wow, they may actually be dropping bombshells at the hearing, focusing on Trump's direct knowledge and guilt, and that of those around him. I'm reading enough things on Twitter I switched on the live feed on my TV. Last time I did that was probably January 6th.
I am going to need more alcohol to get through this hearing.
They switched to a bunch of footage of the day, with the addition of law enforcement radio recordings which makes it more disturbing.
And bodycam footage that shows how violent they were being, much better than the news footage did. With Trump six months later "These were peaceful people, great people..." superimposed. And a ten minute break.
It is incredibly well-done. Worth watching with or without alcohol. I can't help thinking that big chunks were carefully crafted so that they could be shown over and over again on network news and talk shows, especially the last selection of video clips from Jan 6 itself.
OK, their first two witnesses are a Capitol Police officer and a documentary filmmaker, so both about the events of the day. That might not be as bombshelly for a while.
"Nick Quested" is a bit on the nose for the latter's name.
Proud Boys filmed their own insurrection?
Fox News not only didn't air the first segment, they let Tucker run the full hour with no commercials so there was no risk of viewers briefly changing the channel to see what was actually happening. And on the Fox Business channel that was covering it, instead of showing the montage like every other channel, they just panned out in the room to show all the audience watching the footage. I sometimes wonder how Fox viewers don't realize how little respect the network has for them.
Video clip of McCarthy staffers rushing for the exits:
https://twitter.com/ZTPetrizzo/status/1535065828546138112
In the airport now so I'm definitely appreciating the commentary
EDWARDS: "What I saw was just a war scene. There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up. I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people's blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos."
Video clip of Officer Caroline Edwards being knocked unconscious while trying to hold back rioters:
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1535074360016388098
How the hell are these no-talent ass clowns still kissing up to Trump? What fucking noodles. He nearly gets them killed. Noodles.
Fox News chyron:
JAN 6 COMMITTEE FLOPS IN PRIMETIME
Well, that's not a surprise. You were expecting "If I Did It"? Fuckers.
I thought it looked like wishful thinking on their part.
I'd intended to watch at least part of the first one but that was all. Now I think I will be watching all of them.
Yes. I'm assuming it was written before the committee even began tonight. Still, I will be doing my part to boost viewer numbers for the rest of the segments.
The practical effect this might be designed to prompt, besides proving stuff previously just surmiseable, is if it gives enough detail on people like Kevin McCarthy pushing back against Trump or all the others who tried to wriggle out with testimony etc., they might start going for each other's throats instead of everyone else's.
21: someone on the Twitters observed that Fox only showed the back of Caroline Edwards' head, rather than her face, while she was testifying, presumably because she is blonde and attractive and would therefore otherwise have gained the sympathy of Fox's audience.
26: Wait until I tell you about Ernst Röhm.
I notice Ivanka is now distancing herself from her father. How long before she and Kushner decamp to Israel?
One of the points being focused on, including by me above, is Trump's knowledge that the election was not rigged against him, e.g. he was not simply "lashing out" or whatever. But if anything should not require mens rea, it's fomenting an insurrection! Doing it out of stupidity and pique is just as bad!
35: I don't think that's quite right. I think the committee is distancing Ivanka from her father. The committee has chosen a narrative that this is all Donald Trump. They lumped Eastman with Trump as an accomplice, but co-conspirators like Barr or Ivanka -- the ones who tried to cover their asses -- are being treated like sincere opponents of the insurrection. That seems smart to me, much as I'd like to see Barr behind, uh, bars.
I've given up on wondering, "Will this finally be the thing that moves the needle on public opinion?" I think it's hopeless. But I also feel strongly that we should be defeated the right way, and I think this is the right way. I didn't see the whole thing, but the first hour or so was well done, I think.
(And I've recorded it, so NO SPOILERS! I don't want to know in advance whether it turns out that Trump did it.)
One person on Twitter said they seem to be structuring it like a podcast.
Someone in an otherwise infuriating article pointed out that it worked because Bennie Thompson only let Liz Cheney speak. No grandstanding by endless numbers of Reps trying to get their moment onscreen-- just a steady dispassionate stream of damning facts.
It's always so weird to find out that people like Liz Cheney have strong positive feelings about democracy.
40: Well, no potential grandstanders are on the committee - remember, McCarthy made five picks, Pelosi rejected two for insurrectionism, he petulantly yanked all five, then Pelosi appointed Cheney and Kinzinger.
41:
I follow her on twitter to remind myself that we disagree on just about everything else. She really has been awesome though.
41: Maybe she just has strong feelings about winning the intra-Republican battle? She picked team anti-Trump early, and is one of very who has has stuck with it, so good for her. But team anti-Trump loses unless Trump goes to jail. She is doing what she can to make that happen. If it does, she may be the next president, or the next VP on the Pence ticket, and her interest in democracy will end before the electoral votes for her (or for the Pence/Cheney ticket) are counted.
44: Huh. In the modern US, is it possible to be excessively cynical? I think it is!
At the time Cheney took her stand, others were doing so. Heck Mitch McConnell every now and then said mean things about Trump. Almost every other Republican in that group has backtracked out of political necessity, or they've resigned or refused to stand for reelection.
Liz Cheney will never, under any circumstances, be on a Republican ticket in a national election. Her political constituency -- Republicans who despise Trump -- is nonexistent, and will never develop. Maybe she's viable in Wyoming (I have no idea) but not elsewhere.
I think she views it as protecting a legacy.
Imagine if someone came to you 10 or 20 years ago and told you that the president would lead a coup to try to hold onto power and Dan Quayle and Liz Cheney would be two crucial figures standing up to protect American democracy.
The Onion got it about right 9.5 years ago now.
I'm not saying it will work. I'm saying that Liz Chaney viewed her performance last night as the opening speech of her 2024 presidential run. The low probability bid depends on (i) Trump being in jail, or at least on trial, or having died while under indictment, or possibly having moved to Saudi Arabia to avoid trial, and (2) Biden running unopposed in his primary, so lots of democrats cross over in the primaries to register approval of Cheney's taking on Trump. If she somehow gets the nomination, she will win.
49: I had the same thought, but 2028.
Hugo Lowell@hugolowell·1h
Wow -- Nielsen reports a whopping 20 million people watched Jan. 6 committee opening hearing last night: ABC with 4.8M, MSNBC with 4.1M, NBC with 3.5M, CBS with 3.3M, CNN with 2.6M.
Jake Sherman says Matt Gaetz is one of those who sought a pardon.
Sarah Palin came in first in the primary for US House! Even got almost as many votes as all the other Republican candidates put together. teo, did you expect this? What's likely in the four-way runoff?
It's a little higher than I think most people expected, but not shocking. She's got about 30% in results so far, which is pretty close to her approval rating in recent polls and probably represents a ceiling for her in the runoff. The results of the first round were pretty much in keeping with the limited polling that's been done and most people's expectations: Palin, Begich, Gross, and one of the Democrats in fourth. I voted for Peltola and it's heartening to see her getting fourth in results so far, but there's still a lot to count and one of the other left-leaning candidates could pass her.
The most likely outcome of the runoff is a Begich victory after two or three rounds of elimination (again, consistent with polling). Gross also has a serious shot. Palin and Peltola or whoever are a lot less likely to win, but it'll depend on how the dynamics of the campaign go. This is a brand new system that's never been used before here or anywhere else, so there are a lot of unknowns.
Interesting. So you feel people who don't rank Palin #1 are unlikely to rank her anywhere at all (or at least above #4), so all the cross-support will perforce push one of the other three candidates up in the runoff?
Yeah, everyone who actually pays attention to Alaska politics across the spectrum hates Palin at this point, so her voters are pretty much all low-information Trump-fan types. The institutional Republican party and the organized right-wing crazies are lined up behind Begich. Some of them will surely rank Palin second, but Begich won't get eliminated early enough for that to matter much. Nobody on the left is going to rank her at all so her upside in the runoff is very limited.
Good thread here by the most prominent local pollster. His track record is uneven (Alaska is hard to poll!) but his polls of this race are looking pretty good so far.
And here's his thread of poll results from early May, including runoff scenarios. Pretty accurate!
I like his positives-negatives summary in the thread here. Thwarting candidates who win pluralities while being hated by a majority is what RCV is best at in my experience.
And if Palin has 59% negative vs Begich 41 and Gross 46, that does seem to validate that Palin has the best shot of the three at being eliminated.
I think this came out last week, but apparently DeVos called around the Cabinet on possibly exercising the 25th Amendment, and told Pence she'd support him if he tried. When he said no, she resigned. At least according to her at this point.
Wait, this is a different Begich?
It's the one who died in the airplane crash.
I rather quickly got to 64, and it was weirdly difficult to then find this guy because I guess he's not notable yet. Anyway, grandson of the guy who died in the plane crash and nephew of the recent Democratic senator.
This Begich is a super-conservative Republican, which makes him notable among Begiches. (Probably also means he's benefitting from some name recognition among low-information Dems in this election.) He has the same first name as his father and grandfather, which is part of why he might be hard to track down.
I did not expect reading about the plane crash to be such an adventure. (I only followed the link from the Nick Begich wikipedia article in the footnote about the mob hitman, maybe other sources are more ordinary and boring and definitive.)
I don't know about the mob hitman angle, but there's definitely nothing definitive about the story in general. They never found the wreckage.
Some local news coverage and analysis of the election and what to expect.
The crash was over the ocean, so more likely a killer whale.
I had a kayak after I ate the kayaker.
69: Sometimes in California there are four elections for the same seat in one year, but having the regular primary election on the same ballot and day as the special election runoff is just silly.
A lot of the decisions seem to be based on what's most administratively convenient for the Division of Elections. From that perspective, I think consolidating the special runoff with the regular primary makes sense.
Oh wait, we did something even more similar for US Senate - two simultaneous elections for the same seat, one to fill the remainder of the term through January, the other for next full term. At last count Padilla received about 7,100 more votes to be a seatwarmer for two months than to be a senator for six years.
I thought I had heard about something like that down there recently. It'll be interesting to see in our case how the special runoff and regular primary vote totals compare for the same candidates.