Apparently, the 1/6 committee has evidence that someone from the White House actually placed a call to one of the rioters on January 6th. The call lasted for nine seconds and while the committee knows who the recipient was, they do not know who in the White House actually placed the call. The call was placed to someone named Anton Lunyk. This is how I envision it going down. Feel free to throw your own scenarios in the comments.

Donald Trump: Hey, Anton are you in yet?

Anton Lunyk: Yes sir, we are about to…

Mark Meadows (to Trump): Use the burner phone dammit….

DT: Click

Of course, we are limited by the relative brevity of the conversation, but I figure there are any number of permutations we could come up with for a nine second conversation. Either way, the idea of using an actual phone in the White House that can be tracked is the criminal equivalent of walking into the bank and your bag has a hole in the bottom. I’ll let everyone else do the heavy lifting from here. Everyone have a great weekend.

The January 6th commission is finally releasing its work. They chose to do it during prime time over the course of several days. We seem to be following this pattern day after day, week after week, and year after year. We know exactly what happened. We’ve always known exactly what happened. Hearing it again is both shocking and familiar. Either you will hear it and nod in agreement or you will think it’s fake news. I’m not sure anyone will actually see their opinion change.

This has all been mentioned before, but here we are. So, let’s add up some things and put it all together to see if we can paint a picture. In the entirety of his life, Donald Trump has successfully done only one thing. He’s cultivated an image that he is a successful and a smart businessman. That’s it. If you look at any success he’s had it is all connected to that one thing. The Apprentice, frauds like Trump University, the presidency, all of this can be traced back to that one thing.

The fact that he’s a failed businessman hasn’t really sunk in with the people that support him. So, when you look at his failures as president, they all get laid at someone else’s feet. They are someone else’s fault or they didn’t happen at all. Naturally, it also manages to seep into the natural defense he is able to use when any of these horribly illegal activities get brought back to his door.

All of the fraud over collusion, the attempting strong arming of the Ukrainian president, the attempted overturning of the 2020 election, and the attempting coup on January 6th all didn’t work. They failed spectacularly. Not only did he not meet his objective, but he failed in such spectacular fashion and did such a horrible job covering it up that it all seems so unbelievable.

How does someone so successful fail so miserably? If he really is that smart and that successful then he must not have done it. There really is no other logical explanation. After all, a smart and successful businessman would have clearly succeeded somewhere along the way because he had done so all those times before when he was making billions of dollars.

Except, that was all a fraud. Any success he may have had he stumbled into. Trump Steaks? Trump Vodka? Trump Airlines? These were all spectacular failures. Not only did those businesses fail, but they failed in spectacular fashion. The reality of Trump is as a failed businessman. It is the reality of a blowhard that really is empty when you get past the bravado.

The reality is that when you attempt to collude with the enemy, attempt to overthrow the government, attempt to circumvent our laws to get dirt on an opponent, attempt to strongarm someone into committing election fraud you have broken the law. The attempt is still breaking the law. The fact that all of these were unsuccessful doesn’t matter.

The defense that a brilliant and successful businessman wouldn’t fail so spectacularly is the fraud. Strip everything down and Trump is the guy that holds up the bank without a mask, a bag with a hole in the bottom, and a carrot in his pocket in place of the gun. It’s stupid to the point of being comical. It’s still a crime. It’s haphazard, laughable, and pathetic, but it’s still a crime. Yet, if the commission’s obvious breakdown of these events don’t lead to arrests and convictions then it will be just another episode of the Keystone Cops. Those that know he’s an idiot will know he’s guilty. Those that think he’s brilliant won’t. Those are the facts of the case and they are undisputed.

“Living is easy with eyes closed Misunderstanding all you see.” — John Lennon

The time of death is fairly easy to report. The patient had been clinging to life on life support, but finally decided to pull its own plug when the RNC decided to censure Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney. That by itself was horrific news for any fan of democracy.

Mind you, the simple act of censuring a politician is almost completely symbolic. It can be loosely defined as an expression of official disapproval. So, what exactly are they disapproving? Kinzinger and Cheney were the lone Republicans to participate in the House January 6th committee.

It wasn’t for lack of effort. One thing Democrats are always guilty of doing is reaching out in the interest of fairness. In a process that took nearly three months, they tried to get more Republicans on board. It was never going to happen. Republicans can only say no at this point. They’ve somehow regressed into the mind of a two year old.

Mind you, the commission itself is not the cause of death. There are dozens of plausible reasons for not participating. Often, these things become more political than useful. The death officially came when the RNC declared that January 6th was legitimate political discourse.

This is not one of those play on words. I’ve heard these before on the other side. I’ve had people tell me the Democrats are dead in terms of electoral politics. They said this back in the Bush administration. Ironically, Bush have been the only Republican politicians to win a popular vote in the presidential elections since 1988.

Yet, this isn’t some dramatic postmortem that will turn out the other way. Conservatism is not dead. It is alive and well. Patriotism certainly isn’t dead. There are still more than enough people that love their country. The zombie version of the party has managed to rig enough elections to send the undead in the halls of Congress for generations to come. The bodies will be there, but something will definitely be lacking.

Cities perform autopsies when the cause of death is undetermined or material to a criminal case. Countries should do the same when one of the major political parties dies. We should pour over all of the relevant information to determine if a homicide has occurred. It would either be a homicide or a suicide depending on your point of view.

The outlook on that largely depends on whether you believe the forces that took over the party were ever conservative in the first place. They said they were. They still insist they are. Yet, all of the available evidence suggests that they have abandoned every principle they held dear. That is ultimately the cause of death. It was essentially self immolation.

Believing things that are plainly untrue is a sign of mental illness or denial on a galactic level. When you force fealty to that delusion you cease to be a party. You become a cult. The Republican party isn’t a democratic party anymore. It’s a death cult dedicated to the rule of one man minus the law. Democracies don’t die in a blaze of glory. They atrophy when people honor the man over the mission.

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.” — William Shakespeare

If the Texas GOP political delegation were a cast of characters they would almost certainly come from the Wizard of Oz. Louie Gohmert would almost certainly be the scarecrow in search of a brain. Dan Patrick would play the role of the Tin Man searching for a heart. That would place Ted Cruz as the lion searching for courage.

Whether he’s bailing the state when the freeze comes, buckling under to Donald Trump even after Trump insulted his wife and father, or assuming the position with Tucker Carlson, Cruz has long established that he is far from being the king of the jungle.

One could analyze his statements about the insurrectionists and then his overwhelming desire to somehow take it back. Psychologists could analyze the whys and what fors until the cows come home. I think what we know and what we suspect are not all that far away from each other. Cruz was a part of a plan to delay the certification of the election. I’m sure they trusted him with the parliamentarian side of the plot. No one ever accused Cruz of being dumb.

The less you know in a conspiracy the better. I’m willing to guess he didn’t know about the violence before January 6th. Goodness knows what he would have done with that information had he known. Maybe he would have assumed the position. Maybe he would have blown the whistle. My guess is that the human part of him was horrified at what transpired.

That’s the part that came out and called the participants terrorists. It is one thing to steal an election through parlor tricks and slight of hand. It’s another to steal it on the tip of a sword. As per usual, his first words spoke the truth before he forgot who was in charge.

This brings us to the real scary part of this dilemma. The story is not that Cruz was groveling, but who he was groveling to. We would expect him to grovel to Trump. Having him grovel to a prime time talking head is a cross between bizarre and unsettling. How did Carlson get this much power and who exactly is Carlson accountable to?

A number of folks have thought Carlson could make a run for president. I suppose it makes sense. He has money. He has name recognition. He has a brain. He can match being an outsider with his knowledge of the key players on the inside. However, this would involve him getting in the game. He can snipe from the outside and wield much more power. Power and a lack of responsibility is a dangerous combination. No one on the left has this kind of power. It could be about Carlson, but it really isn’t. Democratic politicians don’t grovel to the talking heads. As long as the wizard denies Cruz and others their courage people like Carlson will be in total control.

On January 6, Donald Trump, Jr. sent an urgent text to his dad’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

From the Washington Post:

Trump Jr. to Meadows: “He’s got to condemn this … ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.”

Of course, it isn’t the substance of the text message that is revealing – it’s that Donald Trump Jr. has to go through Mark Meadows to talk to his own father.

That’s really something, isn’t it?

 

 

The January 6th released a 51 page report last night, including references to emails and texts to and from Mark Meadows, who’s likely to be charged with Contempt of Congress today for defying a committee subpoena.  What did one January 5th email say?  It said that the National Guard was on standby to, “Protect Trump people.”  That’s right, apparently Meadows was involved in trying to use the National Guard to help Trump overturn the election.  That explains, more than any other explanation, why the Pentagon and National Guard leadership took hours to respond.  They were on standby to defend the wrong side, and when the violent mob stormed the Capitol Building, someone in leadership likely balked at helping them.

Now let’s think about this.  Just the previous summer Trump used the National Guard to violently clear Lafayette Square for a political stunt that included a photo op while holding and upside down Bible in front of St. John’s church.  Then he wanted to use that same force to overturn the election.  Luckily, he didn’t succeed, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try it again.  The truth will come out.  Tick, Tick, Tick…