HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Thanks for that. 
Did Graham ever have dignity?
Plus ca change…
This video is relevant to why he didn’t go:
He also has a video saying exactly what he means by saying what could have happened if Trump had led the charge, but I have trouble remembering the title (and he has a lot of videos). But the general gist was that having Trump with them meant he could order the cops to stand down and let them in from the get go. And even if that would only help by a few minutes, the congressional evacuations were going down to the wire. So him helping could have meant they’d actually get their hostages or be able to have shot their intended targets.
The guy has been right about a lot, and has some expertise in dealing with insurgencies outside the US.
And, surprisingly, he’s a lot more optimistic than a lot of people here, despite being further left than most.
This guy is good. Calm, rational and right on the money. Buddy knows stuff.
Ah, memories of impeachments past. 
I’ve maintained across the decades that Congress should have finished the impeachment process even after Nixon’s resignation. The near-unanimous vote of both houses of Congress (pretty much a given after the ‘smoking gun’ tape was released) would have undercut the whole ‘Nixon was hounded from office’ shit that I heard for decades afterwards.
Not to mention, it would have established the precedent that yes, you can impeach a President, and hold his impeachment trial, after he’s left office, which would be handy right about now. I’m sure the Republican Senators would find some other excuse to acquit him, but it would have deprived them of the ‘what he did doesn’t matter, because the whole proceeding is illegitimate’ fig leaf.
Dammit, I keep reading that and it keeps depressing me.
I mean, a palm-tree-boundaried “Office of the Former President”? If it weren’t for the expressions of marital affection, Doonesbury could practically rerun that.
Your footnote is exactly what I mean. The insurrectionists were mere minutes, if not seconds, from being able to capture legislators. If Trump had caused just a bit of doubt, just turned a few of those on the fence, then those minutes or seconds may have been lost.
Fair, but it does seem as though if a few of them took the stand, and said that they heard Trump tell them explicitly to go attack the Capitol, it may have an effect.
But then, I remember that the Republicans won’t vote to impeach no matter what, so it’s probably a waste.
Not a sane world indeed.
Thank you for sharing. Don’t let his Bubba look and folksie demeanor and accent fool you, he is smart. What he says about Trump is spot on.
I’m not so sure, though, that his projections about Trunp’s base are correct. He is optimistic that as time without Trump in office passes, people will see their friends and family arrested and prosecuted and do time for their acts on Jan. 6. That will cause them to reflect, and will lead to a deprogramming, a return to reality.
I’m not convinced it will be so easy. Trump is responsible for the attack, but he didn’t create his base from scratch. He’s not the only one that lied and twisted and distorted the information feeding the population. He came forward and pulled the levers and allowed the most energized of that mindset a focal point and a justification that they were right and their viewpoint respectable.
I don’t think the sentiments that drove people to follow Trump will fade just because he’s out of office. Having his misdeeds and malfeasances and crimes brought to light for all to see is a necessary step, but it might not be sufficient.
These folks live in a deluded world severed from reality. They still believe the election was rigged. They still believe Biden wants to make the US a socialist country. They still face a reality where demographics are shifting out of their favor, where their privileges are being revoked (slowly), where the demands of social justice and change are threatening to shake up their comfortable world.
The Tea Party people are still there. The people who felt that democracy demanded they fight Congress still feel they were justified, and
punishment won’t disillusion them. They will just feed their persecution complex. They will see it as just politics trying to silence their perspective, yet more tyranny from the left. You know how “Lock Her Up” was still a thing after Ms. Clinton was defeated, and how it felt to see them still hounding her when there was no point because she was a private citizen? That’s the equivalency they have for Trump - a false equivalency, but still their perspective.
Those feelings of persecution will be fed by a right wing media machine, and by a disinformation campaign by Russia and maybe others. They won’t say, “Wow, many Americans think we were wrong, I guess we need to reconsider our beliefs.” They will be saying, “Look at how our freedom of speech is being curtailed, our point of view being silenced by those tyrannical Democrats.”
Let me be clear, I do want the people who engaged in violence and destruction to be prosecuted fully. But I’m afraid that won’t be enough to change their minds. It will just feed their delusion.
I wish I had a better answer. I hope I’m wrong.
This very morning (Feb 12) I was eating breakfast in a hotel restaurant in Texas with Fox tuned on all the TVs.
The content was 100% about the outrages of the unhinged power-mad Left being perpetrated on the beleaguered but undauntedly patriotic Republicans. The ads were all the same message. The word “outrage” was heard at least once per minute in both content and ads.
My fellow diners were mostly glued to this stuff & lapping it up approvingly.
There will not be a reset in the RW rank and file until that garbage is off the air (and the 'net). And since it won’t ever be off the air, much less the 'net, there won’t be any such reset.
We are sooo screwed. A country destroyed more by RW grifters in search of profit than RW believers in search of purist ideology.
Right, the Republicans built a doomsday machine. Trump just came along and started pushing all the buttons on it.
A lot of his deal is that he thinks Southerners and rednecks are not as bad as many people think. He’s pushing really hard right now on the fact that there are eight times as many Republicans leaving the Republican party than Democrats leaving the Democratic party. He’s pushing the idea that rednecks are inherently antiauthoritarian, and hate the police as much as black people do.
His “folksy charm” is his attempt to break through the automatic reactions that people have to the “liberal elite,” to get past the surface. He used to actually try to hide his accent, his background, etc.
He has more faith in his own people than a lot of people do. I think he has to so he can do what he does.
And I’ve seen glimmers of hope around here, too.
A few weeks ago in a COVID thread I mentioned a CDC public service ad I heard on FM radio.
The announcer was radiating folksy charm. He sounded like the guy who sells Coors. Lots of country-or-something accent. The “ing” words all were missing the “g”. Simple short sentences. The message: “Wear a mask. Do it for your family and your neighbors. They need you.”
This guy is pushing those same buttons and very deliberately so.
Tru dat. But maybe if the Dems send the $1400 checks to everybody who got a $600 check, and keep the minimum wage hike in the final bill, maybe 5-10% of them will decide this ‘socialism’ stuff ain’t so bad after all.
And that’s really all we need: we don’t need to win over all or even most of them, we just need to win over enough of them so we hold Congress next year, and pick up Toomey’s and Ron Johnson’s seats so we can kill the filibuster without needing Manchin’s and Sinema’s votes.
And the rest will say “Keep your government hands off my $1400 cheque that Trump gave us”
Until about a year ago, I traveled a lot on business and sometimes pleasure in the northeast and upper Midwest. My recollections from my nights and mornings at Hampton Inns, Fairfield Inns, Holiday Inn is that most of the travelers were middle age, fairly well off (not flaunting it but doing well), and white. And yes, there was always lots of Fox News to go with that packaged oatmeal, sausage links, crispy bacon, microwavable eggs, burnt coffee, and sugary orange juice.
Nah, less than one out of a hundred will say ‘cheque’. 
I hadn’t thought about Trudeau for a long time, but always respected his intelligent humor. So I checked his Wikipedia page, where I learned about Alpha House — a series he created for Amazon around 2013. It stars John Goodman as one of four Republican senators sharing a D.C. apartment.
It’s available on Amazon Prime; I’ve watched three episodes and it’s good. The first episode has guest shots from Bill Murray and Stephen Colbert. The third episode is set in Afghanistan (apparently Trudeau has been very active in military and veterans issues.)
It’s still timely. At that time the Republican crazies were the Tea Party. McConnell and Graham were party leaders. If you need some pandemic TV give it a try. (It’s mostly a comedy.)
So are we basically to conclude, then, that if there’s a news station on in a tv in a public space somehwere, chances are that it would be more likely to be Fox than any other news station?
Oh.
You must be one of them funny American types.
Sometimes CNN, which used to be considered a ‘safe’ middle of the road TV station until Trump started demonizing it. To be truly safe, turn to ESPN or HGTV.