January 17, 2021

There's no need to hurry Trump's impeachment trial -- accountability is a dish best served cold

By Doyle McManus

The House of Representatives impeached President Trump in an understandable fury this week after he sent a violent mob of his supporters up Capitol Hill, where they sacked Congress’ workplace and threatened to lynch its leaders.

The next stage is a Senate trial to determine whether Trump should be barred from holding federal office again. But if Democrats seriously hope to convict the president for inciting the insurrection, their best strategy is to slow the process down.

President-elect Joe Biden has raised one reason to delay: Congress has pressing business besides the trial of a president who will be out of the White House by then. Biden wants the Senate to spend the next few weeks confirming his Cabinet nominees and passing his $1.9-trillion economic relief plan. An impeachment trial shouldn’t be allowed to impede progress.

There are good political reasons to let the case cool off a bit, too. Delaying the trial could improve the chances of winning votes for conviction from at least 17 Senate Republicans, the number needed to secure the required two-thirds majority.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-01-16/column-no-need-to-hurry-trumps-impeachment-trial-accountability-is-a-dish-best-served-cold

January 17, 2021

Some in the GOP parrot far-right talk of a coming civil war

Some Republicans are mimicking the rhetoric far-right extremists and white supremacists have used for years.

War-like imagery has begun spreading in Republican circles after the attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters, with some elected officials and party leaders rejecting pleas to tone down rhetoric calling for a second civil war.

In northwestern Wisconsin, the chairman of the St. Croix County Republican Party was forced to resign Friday after refusing for a week after the siege to remove an online post urging followers to “prepare for war.” The incoming chairwoman of the Michigan GOP and her husband, a state lawmaker, have joined a conservative social media site created after the Capitol riot where the possibility of civil war is a topic.

Phil Reynolds, a member of the GOP central committee in California’s Santa Clara County, appeared to urge on insurrectionists on social media during the Jan. 6 attack, declaring on Facebook: “The war has begun. Citizens take arms! Drumroll please….. Civil War or No Civil War?”

The heightened rhetoric mimics language far-right extremists and white supremacists have used for years, and it follows a year of civil unrest over the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer and its links to systemic racism. Some leftists have used similar language, which Republicans have likened to advocating a new civil war.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/nation-world/2021/01/16/some-in-the-gop-parrot-far-right-talk-of-a-coming-civil-war/

Republicans have been agitating for civil war for years, even before American fascist Pat Buchanan brayed “Do not wait for orders from headquarters! Mount up, everybody, and ride to the sound of the guns!”

January 17, 2021

Arrest warrant issued for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones

Source: Tampa Bay Times

The state has issued an arrest warrant for ex-Florida data scientist Rebekah Jones.

Jones announced Saturday on Twitter that she learned of the warrant and plans to turn herself in on Sunday. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement confirmed there is a warrant for Jones’ arrest but said it cannot disclose what charges she faces until she is in custody.

Agency spokesman Gretl Plessinger said in an email to the Tampa Bay Times that “agents have been working with her attorney to have her turn herself in.”

Jones once managed Florida’s COVID-19 dashboard. Then she was fired in May from her position as the geographic information system manager for the Florida Department of Health’s Division of Disease Control and Health Protection.

Read more: https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida/2021/01/16/arrest-warrant-issued-for-ex-florida-data-scientist-rebekah-jones/

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This smells funny.

January 16, 2021

Parler CEO John Matze and family go into hiding after death threats

The CEO of Parler, the conservative social media app, and his family have gone into hiding because of death threats and harassment, according to a new court filing.

The documents, obtained by Fox News, show that John Matze and his family have been targeted by people who published his street address and threatened to come in his front door.

Parler, which is a favorite of Trump supporters, was booted off Apple and Google’s platforms after the Capitol riots and Amazon took it off its cloud hosting service, Amazon Web Services.

In response, Parler filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. Amazon countersued, saying Parler’s suit had no valid legal basis and claiming Amazon employees had been threatened and harassed, Fox News reported.

https://nypost.com/2021/01/16/parler-ceo-john-matze-goes-into-hiding-after-death-threats/

January 16, 2021

Rand Paul Warns One Third of Republicans Will Leave Party if GOP Senators Back Impeachment

Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) warned Friday that one third of Republican voters could leave the party if GOP senators vote in impeachment proceedings to convict President Trump. Paul made the comments in an interview on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle.

The senator’s remarks come amid an increasing divide between congressional Republicans who oppose impeaching the president, and a smaller number who support the measure following the riots at the Capitol on January 6. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) is reportedly hopeful that Republicans can use impeachment to purge Trump from the GOP, although he would need the support of at least 16 additional Republican senators to vote to convict.

“Look, I didn’t agree with the [Capitol] fight that happened last week, and I voted against overturning the election, but at the same time, the impeachment is a wrongheaded, partisan notion, [and] if Republicans go along with it, it’ll destroy the party,” Paul said during the interview.

“A third of the Republicans will leave the party,” Paul continued. “This isn’t about, anymore, the Electoral College, this is about the future of the party, and whether you’re going to ostracize and excommunicate President Trump from the party. Well, guess what,? Millions of his fans will leave as well.”

https://news.yahoo.com/rand-paul-warns-one-third-175520035.html

January 16, 2021

Post Trump, Republicans Are Headed for a Bitter Internal Showdown

G.O.P. leadership would like to blunt President Trump’s influence over the party. Mr. Trump and his allies want to punish those who have crossed him. A series of clashes looms.

As President Trump prepares to leave office with his party in disarray, Republican leaders including Senator Mitch McConnell are maneuvering to thwart his grip on the G.O.P. in future elections, while forces aligned with Mr. Trump are looking to punish Republican lawmakers and governors who have broken with him.

The bitter infighting underscores the deep divisions Mr. Trump has created in the G.O.P. and all but ensures that the next campaign will represent a pivotal test of the party’s direction, with a series of clashes looming in the months ahead.

The friction is already escalating in several key swing states in the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s incitement of the mob that attacked the Capitol last week. They include Arizona, where Trump-aligned activists are seeking to censure the Republican governor they deem insufficiently loyal to the president, and Georgia, where a hard-right faction wants to defeat the current governor in a primary election.

In Washington, Republicans are particularly concerned about a handful of extreme-right House members who could run for Senate in swing states, potentially tarnishing the party in some of the most politically important areas of the country. Mr. McConnell’s political lieutenants envision a large-scale campaign to block such candidates from winning primaries in crucial states.

But Mr. Trump’s political cohort appears no less determined, and his allies in the states have been laying the groundwork to take on Republican officials who voted to impeach Mr. Trump — or who merely acknowledged the plain reality that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the presidential race.

Republicans on both sides of the conflict are acknowledging openly that they are headed for a showdown.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/us/politics/republicans-trump-leadership.html

January 16, 2021

A pillow salesman apparently has some ideas about declaring martial law

The galaxy of individuals who have orbited President Trump over the past five years is not lacking for unusual characters. Few, though, have had quite the same trajectory as businessman Michael Lindell.

Lindell is the CEO of the company My Pillow, which, as you might expect, makes pillows. His company advertises heavily on Fox News, often with spots featuring Lindell himself. A major Republican donor, he participated in an event centered on manufacturing early in Trump’s administration. Since then, he’s returned to the White House regularly and has touted his close relationship with the president. That includes an effort last August to get Trump to endorse a supposed coronavirus treatment in which Lindell had a financial stake. (Trump did not do so.)

Since Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, Lindell has been a fervent champion of the utterly baseless claim that the election was somehow stolen from Trump. Lindell has repeatedly appeared on far-right “news” programs to insist that he has evidence that Trump actually won the election, a claim for which no credible evidence has ever emerged. As recently as Thursday, he posted on his Facebook page a claim that Trump would be president for “4 more years.”

The photo at the top of the page shows Lindell standing in the Oval Office next to Trump, who’s seated at the Resolute Desk.

On Friday, he may again have had the chance to see that desk. At about 3 p.m., he was escorted into the West Wing where he reportedly met briefly with Trump. The subject of his visit? If notes Lindell was holding while he waited to enter were any indication, he wanted to discuss his thoughts on how Trump might finagle those “4 more years” Lindell had promised his Facebook followers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/15/pillow-salesman-apparently-has-some-ideas-about-declaring-martial-law/

I hope there are some conspiracy and related charges being lined up for Mr. Pillow on the other side of the inauguration.

January 16, 2021

Pushed to the edge by the Capitol riot, people are reporting their family and friends to the FBI

When a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Leslie hoped that this would be her Trump-supporting parents’ wake-up call. She hoped they were watching, maybe feeling ashamed.

Then, a friend called. “Do you know already?” the friend said, and Leslie wondered briefly if someone had died.

The politically liberal 35-year-old cried about the screenshots from her mother’s Facebook page, posts defending the pro-Trump crowds and suggesting that Leslie’s mom made it at least to the Capitol’s steps. Then she reported her mom to the FBI — because “actions,” she said, “should have consequences.”

“I think before I realized she was this far gone … there was a sense that perhaps there was some way to reconcile,” said Leslie. “It felt like a death, honestly.”

Leslie shared screenshots of text messages in which she shared her FBI tip “submission complete” page, and another friend recounted hearing that Leslie had reported her mother.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/16/capitol-riot-family-fbi/

January 16, 2021

Trump imagined himself a modern-day Midas. His touch was anything but golden.

“Pride goeth before destruction,” as they say. I mean, the parable practically writes itself: “There once was a man who lived in a house of gold, in a tower high above a city, a self-regarding huckster who believed he was destined for great things. Lacking temperament or wisdom or shame, he sought to make himself in the eyes of the citizenry — some of them gullible, others horrified — an unchallenged ruler .?.?.”

For four years and more, we watched a disaster coming to a boil, many of us anxiously bingeing on the accumulating outrages, as if we were trapped in a perpetual season of “Homeland.” Those scenes last week on the U.S. Capitol steps of an angry mob, whipped into a frenzy by a seething president, were carried live on television. You felt, as you observed the rampage unfolding in real time, that this riot and all that had come before it had been inscribed in the
country’s calendar since that January day in 2017 when the words “American carnage” echoed on the Mall.

“Everything Trump touches dies” was the phrase that one of the president’s most incendiary antagonists, Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson, made the title of his 2018 book about the catastrophic folly of electing Donald Trump — the only president now to wear eternally the descriptive disgrace of “twice impeached.” That image of a lethal touch stretches back millennia, of course, to Greek mythology and the classical exemplar of arrogant overreach — King Midas.

You recall the curse of the Midas touch? Bizarrely and brazenly, Trump made “Midas touch” the title of a 2011 personal finance book, co-authored by Robert Kiyosaki. What the authors were summoning in that reference was the notion that some people have an ineffable gift for profit and riches. The original myth, though, carries quite a different connotation: Worshiping lucre, Midas is visited by the god Dionysus, who grants his wish that anything within his grasp turns to gold.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/end-of-trump-presidency-impeachment/2021/01/15/7602ec52-5696-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html

January 16, 2021

Electric Cars Are Better for the Planet - and Often Your Budget, Too

Electric vehicles are better for the climate than gas-powered cars, but many Americans are still reluctant to buy them. One reason: The larger upfront cost.

New data published Thursday shows that despite the higher sticker price, electric cars may actually save drivers money in the long-run.

To reach this conclusion, a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculated both the carbon dioxide emissions and full lifetime cost — including purchase price, maintenance and fuel — for nearly every new car model on the market.

They found electric cars were easily more climate friendly than gas-burning ones. Over a lifetime, they were often cheaper, too.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/15/climate/electric-car-cost.html