‘Bout Damn Time
Archive for May, 2021
Greeting the Tourists
Georgia Republican Congressvermin Andrew Clyde got plenty of air time over his claim that January 6th was like “a normal tourist day” at the capitol. Someone got a picture of Clyde as the tourists arrived.
https://twitter.com/bryrsmith/status/1394470243544838151
And the he ran downstairs to help block the door so they couldn’t even get to the gift shop.
The Rep. Clyde news reminded me of this:
UNITED STATES – JANUARY 6: Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., second from top left, helps barricade the House chamber door as rioters disrupt the joint session of Congress to certify the Electoral College vote on January 6, 2021. pic.twitter.com/ewizgiuwLn
— Tom Williams (@pennstatetom) May 15, 2021
I think we should make him the official tourist greeter from now on. He’s got lots of practice at it.
War Breaks out in…Arizona
It’s all out war right now in Arizona, specifically Maricopa County, where Republicans have been presiding over an audit shitshow of the 2.1 million ballots from the 2020 election. We’ve talked about the sham that was cooked up by the Arizona State Senate, where they decided that it would be a really good idea to pander to Trump by pretending to count ballots and look for Chinese bamboo in the paper. The Arizona secretary of state has opposed the audit from the beginning, and now the Maricopa Board of Elections has weighed in with an open letter to the senate demanding that the audit be halted immediately. The letter was sent after Karen Fann, president of the senate, accused the board on Twitter of deleting the entire data base from the 2020 election, which, of course, is completely false.
Jack Sellers, the chairman of the elections board, both in public statements and in the letter ripped Fann, senate Republicans, and especially the “auditor”, Cyber Ninjas, for their incompetence. He also has refused to answer any more questions and demands. Here’s a quote from Sellers in that regard:
Jack Sellers, chair of Maricopa county board of supervisors, ends meeting by saying he is not responding to any more requests from state senate on Arizona audit. "Finish your report and be ready to defend it in a court of law," he says.
— Sam Levine (@srl) May 17, 2021
I had the opportunity to read the letter today and it’s a long, but fantastic read. Once choice paragraph I reproduce here:
“Next, let’s consider the County’s two separate forensic audits conducted in February of this year. You suggest that the Dominion proprietary password would have been necessary to conduct those audits. You are correct: it was. The forensic audit firms that the County hired, Pro V & V and SLI Compliance, are both accredited by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission as voting system testing laboratories. Because of that accredited status, signifying that these firms are specialists who have expertise with voting systems and understand how to audit them, Dominion Voting Systems provides Pro V & V and SLI Compliance with the necessary passwords to audit their machines.
Your chosen “auditors,” the Cyber Ninjas, are certainly many things. But “accredited by the EAC” is not one of them. Regardless, we cannot give you a password that we do not possess any more than we can give you the formula for Coca Cola. We do not have it; we have no legal right to acquire it; and so, we cannot give it to you.”
So Republicans are eating their own. Sellers and the Maricopa County Elections Board see the handwriting on the wall. They KNOW there was no material fraud in the election and KNOW that Arizona Republicans are walking straight off The Big Lie cliff in subservience to Trump. They KNOW that this shitshow will most certainly make all Republicans look like idiots, and they’re trying stop it before that happens.
I believe the Dems should take a different strategy. They should demand that the “audit” be completed, then demand that the results be made public and laid down next to the original count and the two recounts. Only then could everyone see what a sham this whole thing was and will show the Republicans for the morons that they really are.
Trump Knew He Lost – Here’s How We Know
Trump, even as late as this weekend, repeated the lie on his blog that the election was stolen from him by non-existent voter fraud. He bragged that 80% of Republicans believed that lie as he desperately tries to keep his iron grip on the party that he wants destroyed. Trump is nothing, if not obsesively vindictive. What’s telling, though, have been his actions. How do we know? Trump tried to wreck as much of the US government as he could on the way out the door. I don’t think he would have done that had he truly believed he won.
On November 9th, John McEtee, aide to Trump, told Douglas Macgregor, new acting defense secretary Chris Miller’s senior advisor, that Trump wanted full military withdrawal, by Inauguration Day, from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, all of Africa, and…wait for it…Germany. Recall that Miller had just taken on the defense job after Trump fired Mark Esper by tweet just a few days earlier. This, as you would imagine, was an impossible task, and worse, it was from out in left field. A written order followed two days later that commanded the Pentagon to withdraw troops from Somalia by December 15th, and Afghanistan bay January 15th. It was personally signed by Trump in his idiotic scribble. The order sent shockwaves through the Pentagon as leaders realized that this was an “off the books” operation with none of the usual planning, table top simulations, or alternatives. This was just Trump being Trump, and luckily the Pentagon held the line, slow walking the order to run out the clock.
At the same time, Trump tried to wreck the CIA and dig dirt on his enemies by installing loyalists at the top of the agency trying to get the director, Gina Haspel, to resign. Mercifully, that effort also failed as Pence and WH counsel Pat Cipollone came to Haspel’s defense. Switching tactics, Trump then installed a Nunes staffer and Trump loyalist, Michael Ellis, to the general counsel position at the NSA, a position difficult to terminate by the new administration. In an appropriate end to his short career, Ellis resigned in April after he had been sidelined by an IG investigation into his role in the handling of classified information and placed on indefinite leave.
It’s now just coming out that Trump’s DOJ tried to get the courts to unmask a Twitter user who had gotten under Devin Nunes skin with a parody account @NunesAlt. Barr’s attorneys sought a grand jury subpoena of Twitter to reveal the user’s actual name, and Twitter had fought the subpoena until the demand was dropped after Biden took office.
These are just a few examples of the lengths to which Trump went in the waning days of his infestation to wreck as much of the government that he could, install loyalists as his spies, and punish his supporters’ enemies. Luckily the actual public servants in these agencies kept their oaths to the Constitution, and repelled Trump’s attacks. Next time (if there is a next time) we might not be so lucky.
Wanna Bid?
The Harris County Democratic Party is having a fundraiser with a virtual silent auction. Beto O’Rourke is kicking off the festivities. They are auctioning off some very cool stuff – some fine art from a local well known gallery, chef’s dinner for two with wine at the Rainbow Lodge, and my personal favorite ….
Click on it to see it full size.
Bidding begins on May 20th and I’ll let you know where to go see it all!
Well, Lindsey Took A Big Ole Slug Of Reality Juice
The Hill quotes Lindsay Graham today.
“I accept the results of the election. … 2020 is over to me, I’m ready to march on and hopefully take back the House and the Senate in 2022,” Graham told reporters in South Carolina.
Trump will hear about it when he gets off the golf course and Lindsey will start backtracking in three … two …