50 years ago on this date, security guard Frank Wills discovered a door latch taped open in

[mobeau69]

The Watergate.

So it began.

[bucolic_frolic]

1. I always wondered - if they were already inside, why did they need to tape it open?

[mobeau69]

6. I think it was taped open during the day.

[AngryOldDem]

7. Because they were stupid.

Liddy didn’t want them to do that. They did it anyway.

The rest is history.

[mobeau69]

9. Liddy was so nuts Mitchell threw him out of his office.

Liddy was at a Washington cocktail party, he lit a match and held his hand in the flame until the match went out. Somebody asked him “What’s the trick?”. He answered “the trick is not caring.”

[AngryOldDem]

14. Liddy saw himself as a world class spymaster.

James Bond? Col. Flagg from MASH, more like.

He started doing that match shit in military school to “toughen himself up.”

Certifiably insane.

Didn’t stop there. I read Will several years ago and he told a story about a neighbor coming to his house with some kind of complaint. Liddy slowly got up, got a gun, and made a big show of taking it apart and cleaning it in front of the neighbor.

Just nuts.

[BigmanPigman]

17. He also killed and ate a rat

to get over his fear of them. Psycho!!!!!

[AngryOldDem]

20. Forgot about that!

Just like Col. Flagg.

FLAGG: Close your eyes and I’ll be gone like the wind.

(Sound of glass breaking)

HAWKEYE (Looking out a broken window): “The wind” just broke his leg.

That was Liddy.

[BigmanPigman]

22. I watched the mini series Gaslit

and Liddy was a large part of the show. He was so extreme that I did my own research to see how much of the over-the-top story was fiction. It turned out that all the crazy shit really was true and it went beyond the Watergate years. I don't understand why Carter commuted his sentence though.

MASH episodes with Flagg are my favorite ones. That actor was really good.

[Probatim]

24. That scene popped into my head at the mention of Col. Flagg.

Thanks for the reminder.

[IronLionZion]

19. The flame part isn't very hot to the touch

the area above the flame is the hot part that will burn you. My grandmother would use her hands to flip flatbreads on a gas stove.

[BigmanPigman]

23. He held his hand several inches above the flame.

The dude was psycho. He said the room would smell of burning flesh when he did this. I really can't figure out why anyone would have anything to do with him, let alone hire him for an important crime.

[Best_man23]

2. A News Report From Back Then

[bucolic_frolic]

13. lol - Mitchell denying it from the first

[EYESORE 9001]

3. The Frank Willses of today would receive death threats - their families too

Time for the online MAGAts and Q crowd to get their comeuppance where threats of violence are concerned.

[rurallib]

4. Republican criminality that goes on to this day

from Nixon to Reagan to Bush 1 and Bush 2 to Trump and McCarthy.

It is just a long continuous string

[Omnipresent]

12. Don't forget what President Hoover did.

He called out the National guard to burn down a camp city built by veterans in 1932.
All they wanted was to cash in their WW1 bonus certificates early, because they were in need during the Great Depression.

[SheltieLover]

27. Yup

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. Burglars were arrested at Watergate offices of Democratic National Committee fifty years ago today

Burglars were arrested at Watergate offices of Democratic National Committee fifty years ago tomorrow:

Link to tweet

[BigmanPigman]

18. 2 years and 2 months until Nixon resigned.

[Tomconroy]

8. Hands across the decades.

Link to tweet

PS Who dyes their hair gold?

[catbyte]

10. And here we thought that this was the worst it could get.

How naive we all were.

[mobeau69]

11. Yep. That was pud compared to what we're living through now!

[barbtries]

15. yes but i will always wonder

what if nixon had paid the consequences for his crimes
what if reagan had
what if bush had

they all got away with it. trump so far as well. maybe if there were prosecutions then, there wouldn't be a democracy in peril today. We are ostensibly a nation of laws and not men, after all. republicans have been putting the lie to that for decades if not centuries, and they got away with it.

[rurallib]

21. the night that Ford pardoned Nixon, I got a lump on my gut

thinking what the consequences might be. Much worse than I could ever imagine.

If Trump skates, that will be the curtain call for democracies.

[barbtries]

25. i was young then,

and it pissed me off. as long as he lived i would not tune in. it outraged me that he was still respected. i feel the same about reagan and gw, cheney, etc. the list of crimes is long. I can't get away with jaywalking but these fucks got away with so much worse. I agree, our democracy is on the edge. if trump skates or heaven forbid is allowed back in office, it's over.

[mobeau69]

29. If he gets back in office it is over for The Great Experiment.

I’ll be gone before the inauguration so help me God.

[wnylib]

30. If that happens, then Jacob's warning that

we heard yesterday in the hearing, that overturning the 2020 election would have been settled in the streets, will come true.

I am concerned that, no matter which way 2024 goes (and maybe 2022), there will be civil unrest. Don't know how bad it will be, but things seem to point in the direction of open physical confrontations. If Republicans overturn election results, or interfere with votes to get their desired outcome, we will not sit back and accept it. If Dems win, they will not accept it.

Looks like our best bet right now, in addition to GOTV, is to discredit the RW thugs publicly as we are doing in the hearings. And brace ourselves for whatever might happen.

[niyad]

16. One of my poli-sci professors told us that, as impossible as it might seem,

that one day we would have someone worse than nixon. Then we got ray-gun, the bushes, and then the horror of t****.

[love_katz]

28. Exactly.

We need to stop being squeamish about prosecuting these guys. Worrying too much about the scandal seems to prevent us from going after them. No one is supposed to be above the law. It's one of our founding principles. We send the wrong message when we let them skate instead of enacting consequences on them. And, so here we are.

[murielm99]

26. I remember watching his testimony.

We were off. And the rest of the race was exciting and horrifying.

Nixon's men went to jail. I hope TFG's men do, too. And this time, no pardons for the chief culprit!