Republican Assault on Democracy and March Towards Fascism

[goldenvalley]

Sept 1, 2021 15:37:53 GMT LFC said:

House Republicans are trying to get Trump to vocally support impeachment of President Biden for ... well, anything. For some reason he's held his tongue for once.

As Republicans increasingly show willingness to call for President Joe Biden’s impeachment, there’s one GOP voice that’s notably absent: Donald Trump.

At least, he’s been absent publicly.

When he hasn’t been advocating for the re-invasion of Afghanistan or fundraising off Biden’s troop withdrawal, the ex-president has been fielding phone calls from members of Congress who are trying to gin up support in the U.S. House to remove his successor. In recent weeks, Trump has talked to multiple GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill to discuss their progress—or lack thereof—on moving to impeach Biden over the tumultuous, violent withdrawal from the Afghanistan War, according to two Republican sources with knowledge of the situation.

One of the sources said most of the conversations have been initiated by lawmakers themselves, as they try to recruit Trump to publicly support various legislative attempts to embarrass Biden, either by impeachment of him or members of his administration—or by invoking the 25th Amendment.

And yet, Trump has been somewhat resistant to attach his name to these efforts.

The twice-impeached former president has been prolific in calling for Biden to “RESIGN,” and has repeatedly fundraised off those demands. For now, however, Trump has been less eager to publicly back an impeachment drive on the Hill, or to even acknowledge that his GOP allies in Congress have talked to him about it.

Curious.  Since impeachment is now just another political tool, why would he not want to talk about it?

[LFC]

Steve Bannon is still fully involved in the Republican fascism movement. He should be sitting in prison for stealing millions of dollars but instead he's free and back at his long term goal of tearing down American democracy. Now he's rallying the ignorant, angry, and stupid to become poll workers and other election officials so they can more effectively steal elections. The brown shirts are turning out by the thousands.

When the insurrection failed, Bannon continued his campaign for his former boss by other means. On his “War Room” podcast, which has tens of millions of downloads, Bannon said President Trump lost because the Republican Party sold him out. “This is your call to action,” Bannon said in February, a few weeks after Trump had pardoned him of federal fraud charges.

The solution, Bannon announced, was to seize control of the GOP from the bottom up. Listeners should flood into the lowest rung of the party structure: the precincts. “It’s going to be a fight, but this is a fight that must be won, we don’t have an option,” Bannon said on his show in May. “We’re going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct.”

Precinct officers are the worker bees of political parties, typically responsible for routine tasks like making phone calls or knocking on doors. But collectively, they can influence how elections are run. In some states, they have a say in choosing poll workers, and in others they help pick members of boards that oversee elections.

After Bannon’s endorsement, the “precinct strategy” rocketed across far-right media. Viral posts promoting the plan racked up millions of views on pro-Trump websites, talk radio, fringe social networks and message boards, and programs aligned with the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Suddenly, people who had never before showed interest in party politics started calling the local GOP headquarters or crowding into county conventions, eager to enlist as precinct officers. They showed up in states Trump won and in states he lost, in deep-red rural areas, in swing-voting suburbs and in populous cities.

In Wisconsin, for instance, new GOP recruits are becoming poll workers. County clerks who run elections in the state are required to hire parties’ nominees. The parties once passed on suggesting names, but now hardline Republican county chairs are moving to use those powers.

“We’re signing up election inspectors like crazy right now,” said Outagamie County party chair Matt Albert, using the state’s formal term for poll workers. Albert, who held a “Stop the Steal” rally during Wisconsin’s November recount, said Bannon’s podcast had played a role in the burst of enthusiasm.

ProPublica contacted GOP leaders in 65 key counties, and 41 reported an unusual increase in signups since Bannon’s campaign began. At least 8,500 new Republican precinct officers (or equivalent lowest-level officials) joined those county parties. We also looked at equivalent Democratic posts and found no similar surge.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, people are coming out of the woodwork,” said J.C. Martin, the GOP chairman in Polk County, Florida, who has added 50 new committee members since January. Martin had wanted congressional Republicans to overturn the election on Jan. 6, and he welcomed this wave of like-minded newcomers. “The most recent time we saw this type of thing was the tea party, and this is way beyond it.”

[pnwguy]

youtu.be/qJO-KM27R1M

Sidney Powell demonstrates her detachment from reality.

It sure seems that foreign journalists do a much better job interviewing US politicians who are patently dishonest. They seem better prepared to handle the counter measures and evasion.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 2, 2021 17:13:02 GMT pnwguy said:

youtu.be/qJO-KM27R1M

Sidney Powell demonstrates her detachment from reality.

It sure seems that foreign journalists do a much better job interviewing US politicians who are patently dishonest. They seem better prepared to handle the counter measures and evasion.

Very few media outlets are interested in exploring reality.  They just want a statement that they can quickly put on up their websites. 

[LFC]

Sept 2, 2021 17:13:02 GMT pnwguy said:

youtu.be/qJO-KM27R1M

Sidney Powell demonstrates her detachment from reality.

MAGAts watching the interview...

[goldenvalley]

When the ultimate proof that the election was rigged is the fact that Trump did not win, there is nothing that will dent the confidence of the people who claim fraud was at work.

[LFC]

TDB obtained emails showing more details on the threats and Trumpian meddling in the Georgia election. The choots-pah of this former U.S. Rep from GA is breathtaking (bold mine).

This week, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations told The Daily Beast that it referred the case to the FBI, and one email from an elections investigator shows that the FBI was “actively working on this.” (The FBI field office in Atlanta refused to say whether any arrests were ever made.)

Tricia Raffensperger, the secretary of state’s wife, would later reveal to Reuters that she too received death threats, and that members of the right-wing Oath Keepers militia snuck into the home of their daughter-in-law.

“The death threats come with the territory of being an elected official. I got death threats when I was in Congress constantly,” said Jack Kingston, a former U.S. congressman from Georgia who served as an official Trump surrogate during the last presidency.

Kingston, who said he personally knows several of the aforementioned Georgia GOP officials, said it wasn’t like these Republican officials were “at the tarmac in Kabul a week ago.”

“Fortunately the vast majority of these death threats don’t result in anything,” Kingston said. “Most people don’t give a flip about elected officials whining about death threats.”

“But,” the Trump-aligned former congressman added, “when somebody goes to somebody’s house to threaten them, they need to be arrested.”

“It would be very helpful if [Donald Trump] forgave Brian Kemp, and the other Republicans in Georgia who disappointed him,” Kingston said.

It would be a lot more helpful if you, Trump, and the vast majority of Republicans who are lying, traitorous shitbags told the truth and asked real Americans for our forgiveness.

Death threats to those who refused to do his bidding were, of course, a feature to Trump.

According to a former senior administration official and another source close to the former president, Trump was repeatedly briefed in the White House on the deluge of death threats directed at Georgia’s Republican officials. The 45th U.S. president’s reactions were—predictably—lacking in empathy.

“There was this one time I heard [Trump] suggest they might be exaggerating the kind of threats they were getting. But more often, he’d make fun of them and say they were bad people who were getting what they deserved,” the ex-official recalled.

The person close to Trump said that when the then-president was told about the flood of vulgar or violent threats against officials not cooperating with his anti-democratic efforts, Trump would sometimes remark that if they wanted the threats to stop, all they had to do was what Trump kept demanding of them. The then-president would also praise those issuing threats—“my people”—for harassing and pushing Georgia GOP officials to overturn the state’s legitimate election results in Trump’s favor, this source said, citing firsthand experience.

[goldenvalley]

Given what happened on 1/6 it's clear that death threats should be taken more seriously than the former Congressmember suggests, especially when it comes to right wing "election stealing" and perhaps anti masking and anti Covid vaccine. There are people out there who will act.

[LFC]

More brown shirts who believe that not getting their way is tyranny. They've been primed for violence for decades and now, when the nation should be rallying to defeat a pandemic, it's cropping up more and more.

Fights broke out and at least one person was handcuffed after a Missouri school board voted unanimously to mandate masking in schools amid a surge of coronavirus cases in the area.

The scuffles were just the latest in a wave of backlash around the country as anti-mask parents object to schools tightening COVID protocols, in light of spiking cases and limited options for protecting unvaccinated children during in-person learning.

It’s a scene we’ve watched play out in school board meeting rooms across the country since the beginning of August — and the backlash from anti-vax and anti-mask parents has become increasingly violent in recent weeks as more and more students are forced to quarantine over COVID exposure in mask-optional school districts.

“Several people were throwing fists” after the Pleasant Hill school board approved the mask requirement, local ABC affiliate KMBC reported. Sheriff’s deputies on the scene reportedly broke up the fighting and handcuffed at least one person.

[LFC]

(Alleged) pervert, drug addict, and sex offender Matt Gaetz continues goose stepping for more fascism. It makes sense. He has absolutely nothing going for him other than his daddy and it's the only system where he can truly rise to the top just by saying stupid, insane things.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is already sowing doubt about House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) fitness for leadership as Republicans look ahead to next year’s midterms — and McCarthy’s likely bid for House speaker if the odds tilt in the GOP’s favor.

In an episode of his show “Firebrand With Matt Gaetz” that aired Thursday, the congressman complained about McCarthy’s statement in response to the Jan. 6 committee’s request that telecommunication companies preserve records of people it’s investigating as part of its insurrection probe. Last week, McCarthy suggested that company compliance would not only violate federal law, but that “a Republican majority will not forget.”

Gaetz argued that although McCarthy did “some huffing and puffing,” the House minority leader should’ve also gone after Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Liz Cheney (R-WY), who are the only Republican members of the Jan. 6 committee.

“How can we trust Kevin McCarthy to go beyond talking tough to Nancy Pelosi when he won’t even stand up to Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger?” Gaetz said.

[LFC]

The fascist violent rhetoric designed to spin up the brown shirts is at full tilt with Biden's vaccine mandates.

It is difficult to overstate the degree to which right-wing commentators are slinging venom at Biden, the White House, and public health officials following the speech. I pay close attention to these corners of the media ecosystem and it is as bad as I have ever seen it.

"BIDEN IS AN AUTHORITARIAN," a banner on Fox declared. "BIDEN DECLARES WAR ON MILLIONS OF AMERICANS," yet another Fox banner read. "FULL TOTALITARIAN," Breitbart's homepage splash screamed. The far-right, but mass consumed, Gateway Pundit ripped the "Biden regime" for its "tyrannical mandates." The Federalist described it as a "fascist move." On and on it went...

Yep. Where every accusation is a confession.

And now many people in the sane, reality-based community are sick and tired of waiting for the utter nutters to gain some level of sanity. It ain't happenin' and it endangers our democracy and our nation.

Huge communities of Americans are being lied to and misinformed by bad-faith media personalities and politicians who seek profit and power. And when you understand the nastiness of the rhetoric being spewed to these communities, you also understand that nothing Biden or Dr. Anthony Fauci or any public health official can say will win them over. Nothing.

Which I imagine is the conclusion Biden and his administration have drawn. As Biden said in his speech, "We've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal [to get vaccinated] has cost all of us." Steve Schmidt put it this way on MSNBC: "We live in an age of misinformation and an age of insanity — and enough is enough is enough. Reality is reality and it is time to end the B.S."

[LFC]

DeSatanist's fascist bill empowering him and the police to physically attack political opponents has been blocked.

A federal judge has barred enforcement of one of Gov. Ron DeSantis signature legislative achievements this year — HB 1, his Black Lives Matter-inspired crackdown on protests —ruling that its redefinition of “riot" is vague enough to cover perfectly legal behavior.

In another major courtroom defeat for the governor, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee ruled Thursday that the law's definition of the word is so vague that people can't understand what they'd need to do to avoid arrest if a demonstration gets out of hand.

Additionally, police would be unleashed to apply their own interpretations, chilling First Amendment rights, he said.

“Gov. DeSantis cannot credibly argue that this new definition of 'riot' was not intended to empower law enforcement officers against those who may criticize their legal authority, as he has referred to the proposed legislation that led to HB 1 as 'the strongest anti-rioting, pro-law enforcement piece of legislation in the country, and referred to HB1's critics as 'anti-police'" Walker wrote.

“Gov. DeSantis further promised to have 'a ton of bricks rain down on' those who violate the law when he unveiled HB 1's preceding proposed legislation. Through this new definition of 'riot,' he appears to have done just that, using a threat of selective enforcement as his rain clouds."

Walker added that, if allowed to take effect, the statute could prove a double-edged sword.

“Though plaintiffs claim that they and their members fear that it will be used against them based on the color of their skin or the messages that they express, its vagueness permits those in power to weaponize its enforcement against any group who wishes to express any message that the government disapproves of," he wrote.

[LFC]

Another psychological explanation of the angry, more frequently violent MAGAt brigade. These are the people that will form the GOP's brown shirts.

People who feel deprived and have a heightened level of antisocial tendencies known as the Dark Triad (Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism) tend to be particularly supportive of political violence. The new scientific findings have been published in the journal “The subject is close to the project I work on (The Dialogue about Radicalisation and Equality project), which uses qualitative and quantitative methodology to study radicalization among youth,” said study author Tomislav Pavlović of the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences.

“Also, the subject of my PhD dissertation is related to radicalization. While conducting a systematic review on the relationship between various types of inequality and radicalization with my mentor, Dr. Renata Franc, we came to a conclusion that there’s a deficit of studies exploring the combined effect of multiple characteristics known as risk factors of radicalization..

The authors of the new research were interested in exploring how subjective perceptions of inequality and Dark Triad personality traits were related to the process of political radicalization.

“This deficit leads to less precise models of radicalization and, consequently, less effective deradicalization practices as much remains unknown due to oversimplification of a complex phenomenon. By studying risk factors together, we can observe if their effects are independent or not, which is a step forwards in understanding this complex phenomenon.”

An initial study of 279 student volunteers from Croatian universities found that those with a heightened sense of deprivation and those with more Dark Triad traits tended to be more supportive of using personal threats, vandalism, physical force, and firearms in dealing with politicians.

Those with a heightened sense of deprivation agreed with statements such as “Ordinary people will always be at the bottom, and politicians and their relatives on the top of society” and “I think that ordinary people are in worse position than politicians because politicians restrain them,” while those with Dark Triad traits agreed with statements such as “I tend to manipulate others to get my way,” “I tend to expect special favors from others” and “I tend to be callous or insensitive.”

[LFC]

Will Saturday's event just be a protest or are we looking at the next attack by MAGAt brown shirts? The organizer is as brazen a liar as any among the fascists. Are they spun up enough to become violent again? I guess we'll find out.

Violent insurrection? What violent insurrection? The Jan. 6 Capitol attack was more like “a couple of boomers doing a self-guided tour of a public building.”

At least, that’s according to Matt Braynard, the former director of data and strategy for the 2016 Trump campaign and the organizer behind a protest at the Capitol Saturday on behalf of Jan. 6 “political prisoners.”

Braynard’s event has law enforcement spooked: Capitol Police have resurrected the temporary fencing surrounding Congress and are installing new surveillance cameras nearby. But Braynard, who leads a group called Look Ahead America, thinks it of civilizational importance to retell the riot as a lighter affair.

“What happened on the sixth, by and large, was just an aggressive exercise of First Amendment rights in a public building,” Braynard told the conservative Catholic outlet Church Militant recently.

The Trump campaign alum, who was also cited in several lawsuits alleging election crimes, isn’t just concerned with textbook retellings of that day. Reframing the Capitol attack as fundamentally peaceful is central to his political project.

Beyond the so-called political prisoners, Braynard is trying to convince conservatives that the mainstream media’s depiction of Jan. 6 as a “white supremacist insurrection” threatens to provide the foundation for gun grabs, purges from the military, and even critical race theory.

Speaking to Church Militant, Braynard laid out the cost of failure.

“The stakes are the future of the country,” he said. “And I believe on the future of this country rests the future of humanity.”

[LFC]

Trump is nervous that his brown shirts will generate bad PR.

Donald Trump has repeatedly leapt to the defense of his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, so it’s odd that he’s had so little to say about Saturday’s planned rally in support of riot defendants. However, The New York Times has an explanation. Citing sources close to the ex-president, the newspaper reports Trump is concerned that the Sept. 18 rally is nothing but a “setup” designed to damage his stellar reputation. The Times states that Trump is fearful that the press will use the rally against him “regardless of the outcome,” so he intends to spent his day far from the event and will attend a golf tournament at his New Jersey resort instead. According to Reuters, workers began rebuilding a fence around the U.S. Capitol late on Wednesday night ahead of Saturday’s protest. Capitol Police leaders have reportedly asked the Pentagon to have National Guard troops on standby to help control the event.

Stupid MAGAts. Your little temper tantrum no longer benefits Dear Leader so he's going golfing rather than support you. How does it feel to be an army of Trumps Chumps?

[LFC]

The headline says it all.

MAGA rioter tells reporter he's 'convinced Trump is coming back to office soon'

[LFC]

This is what they've been told (bold mine). Bunch of spoiled f***ing children.

A rescheduled school board meeting that took place on a high school football field in Oakhurst, California, almost disintegrated into a shouting match, The Fresno Bee reports.

According to parents speaking to the Bee, Yosemite Unified School District's originally scheduled the board meeting for Monday, but the meeting was adjourned after a group of parents against masks and vaccines heckled the board so much it could no longer continue. The meeting was rescheduled for Wednesday on the football field.

According to Superintendent Glenn Billington, the board did not want to start the meeting until everyone inside had a mask on, but things "devolved" when some parents refused.

"They were pretty disruptive about it, so we weren't able to move on (and), after some time, we moved public comment out to the football field," he said.

While the meeting on the football field was much tamer, a man standing below the bleachers started shouting over the speaker.

"I can do whatever I want," a man shouted after being told to quiet down.

"No, you can't," replied a sheriff's deputy who was on hand to keep order.

[LFC]

Trump isn't the only one nervous about the Republican fascist rally scheduled for tomorrow.

The ex-president said that “Our hearts and minds” are with “the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest” and cried “JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL!” in a statement released by his Save America PAC.

• And yet Trump didn’t actually encourage anyone to attend Saturday’s D.C. rally in honor of the people who violently attacked the Capitol: The former president thinks the rally is a setup that the media will use to attack him, according to the New York Times.

• Trump isn’t alone in thinking the “Justice for J6” rally is a trap of some kind. Roger Stone, who’s being sued for his role in the Capitol insurrection, claimed without evidence that people who show up at the event “will all be working for the government,” and encouraged Trump supporters to “​​stay away” from D.C. that day.

• And as we reported earlier this week, far-right groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are similarly paranoid that undercover cops will be at the rally.

Good! The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers need to be scared shitless about going to jail for breaking the law. Anyone involved in sedition, treason, and planning insurrection need to be scared of retribution from patriots who believe in democracy.

[LFC]

Oh look! An insurrection supporter is running for U.S. Senate in Arizona.

An Arizona Senate Candidate Donated To The Insurrectionist Cheerleading Rally Organizer

Jim Lamon, a Republican aiming for Sen. Mark Kelly’s (D-AZ) seat in the 2022 midterms, gave a “generous contribution” to Look Ahead America, the pro-Trump group that organized the upcoming “Justice for J6” rally in D.C. this Saturday.

• Lamon donated to Look Ahead America’s “intensive voter registration and community organizing effort” in Arizona, the group announced in April.

• Lamon has peddled Trump’s fake 2020 election fraud narrative, falsely claiming in July that there were “anomalies” in the election “that deserve to be fully explored.”

[goldenvalley]

Sept 17, 2021 15:27:12 GMT LFC said:

Trump isn't the only one nervous about the Republican fascist rally scheduled for tomorrow.

The ex-president said that “Our hearts and minds” are with “the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest” and cried “JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL!” in a statement released by his Save America PAC.

• And yet Trump didn’t actually encourage anyone to attend Saturday’s D.C. rally in honor of the people who violently attacked the Capitol: The former president thinks the rally is a setup that the media will use to attack him, according to the New York Times.

• Trump isn’t alone in thinking the “Justice for J6” rally is a trap of some kind. Roger Stone, who’s being sued for his role in the Capitol insurrection, claimed without evidence that people who show up at the event “will all be working for the government,” and encouraged Trump supporters to “​​stay away” from D.C. that day.

• And as we reported earlier this week, far-right groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are similarly paranoid that undercover cops will be at the rally.

Good! The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers need to be scared shitless about going to jail for breaking the law. Anyone involved in sedition, treason, and planning insurrection need to be scared of retribution from patriots who believe in democracy.

Roger Stone, the dirty trickster, is being sued? Good, I've always wondered what his role in that was.  A part of me thinks he was the moving force behind it...not a very effective one, but can't you just imagine him hopped up on coke spinning out grand ideas of taking the Capitol building and holding Pelosi and Pence hostage?  With Bannon whispering in his ear?

[LFC]

We continue to see just how fascist Trump and those who support him really are.

Yet another crucial piece of the Trumpian conspiracy to steal a second term in office has been made public.

CNN on Tuesday morning published a copy of the so-called “Eastman Memo,” a two-page document from conservative lawyer John Eastman advising then-President Donald Trump’s legal team on a strategy to overturn the election results from the House floor.

Eastman proposed that, during the Jan. 6 certification of the states’ Electoral College votes, then-Vice President Mike Pence shepherd Congress through a multi-step process, in which he would take the vote-counting process into his own hands by acknowledging “multiple slates” of electors from seven contested states. Pence would then discard those disputed states’ electors before tallying up the final vote. (In reality, no state legislature had sent Congress competing slates of electors.)

In one outcome envisioned by the memo, this partial count would give Trump the win. In another, Democrats objected to the maneuver, at which point each state’s House delegation would be given one vote on the outcome, again giving Trump a slim victory. Eastman also posited that a filibuster from a Senate Republican during the proceedings could create a “stalemate,” allowing state legislatures “more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors.”

“The main thing here,” he wrote, “is that Pence should do this without asking for permission — either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court.”

The memo, first reported by the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their book “Peril,” failed: Pence rejected its logic, as did others including Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).

Crucially, the memo was the culmination of months of work aimed at the Jan. 6 certification date, pulling together Trump’s win-at-any-cost strategy with the then-President’s willing accomplices in Congress. In the end, it represented the last known attempt Team Trump made at peacefully stealing a second term.

After Pence rejected that effort, Trump’s mob went after him and Congress.

And looky who John Eastman worked for. Why am I not surprised.

So Who’s John Eastman?

John Eastman, according to CNN’s description of Woodward and Costa’s book, met with Pence in the midst of this pressure campaign, on Jan. 4.

Then a law professor at Chapman University, a position from which he retired after the Capitol attack, Eastman had previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Prior to Election Day, he’d drawn attention for a Newsweek article in which he questioned then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ qualifications to serve in office — even though Harris was born in Oakland and has always been a natural-born U.S. citizen — because “neither [of her parents] was a naturalized U.S. citizen at the time of Harris’ birth.”

After the election, Eastman represented the Trump campaign in its attempt to intervene in several Republican states’ unsuccessful attempt to have the Supreme Court overturn the election. The court rejected that suit on Dec. 11. The following month, Eastman, Trump and Pence discussed their options.

Eastman also spread lies about the election on January 6. He's a real piece of ... work.

[LFC]

More first-hand accounts of Pence's dalliance with fascism (I guess that makes him fasc-curious?) keep coming out.

A former federal judge on Tuesday night pulled back the curtain on the crucial early January days when Vice President Mike Pence was deciding whether or not to steal Donald Trump a second term.

Pence, in the days before the Jan. 6 certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory, had been pressured by Trump to listen to John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who’d written a memo arguing that Pence could take the counting process into his own hands and simply ignore certain states’ votes, among other options.

But Pence sought out his own advisors as well, reportedly including former Vice President Dan Quayle. He was also advised by Michael Luttig, a former judge who served on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for 15 years, until 2006, Luttig said Tuesday night.

In a Twitter thread, the former judge recalled a blunt piece of advice: He told Pence, he said, that the vice president “had no choice on January 6, 2021, but to accept and count the Electoral College votes as they had been cast and properly certified by the states.”

“I believe(d) that Professor Eastman was incorrect at every turn of the analysis in his January 2 memorandum, beginning with his claim that there were legitimate, competing slates of electors presented from seven states,” Luttig added, saying that he’d been “honored” to advise Pence.

It sounds like Pence sure needed a LOT of people to talk him off the ledge.

[goldenvalley]

Sept 23, 2021 16:29:28 GMT LFC said:

More first-hand accounts of Pence's dalliance with fascism (I guess that makes him fasc-curious?) keep coming out.

A former federal judge on Tuesday night pulled back the curtain on the crucial early January days when Vice President Mike Pence was deciding whether or not to steal Donald Trump a second term.

Pence, in the days before the Jan. 6 certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory, had been pressured by Trump to listen to John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who’d written a memo arguing that Pence could take the counting process into his own hands and simply ignore certain states’ votes, among other options.

But Pence sought out his own advisors as well, reportedly including former Vice President Dan Quayle. He was also advised by Michael Luttig, a former judge who served on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for 15 years, until 2006, Luttig said Tuesday night.

In a Twitter thread, the former judge recalled a blunt piece of advice: He told Pence, he said, that the vice president “had no choice on January 6, 2021, but to accept and count the Electoral College votes as they had been cast and properly certified by the states.”

“I believe(d) that Professor Eastman was incorrect at every turn of the analysis in his January 2 memorandum, beginning with his claim that there were legitimate, competing slates of electors presented from seven states,” Luttig added, saying that he’d been “honored” to advise Pence.

It sounds like Pence sure needed a LOT of people to talk him off the ledge.

From what I've read about Trump, Pence needed all the backup he could get to help him face Trump's pressure and bullying.  I give Pence credit for standing up just this once.  I wish he had done it when it came to the COVID stuff.

[pnwguy]

Sept 23, 2021 16:51:11 GMT goldenvalley said:

 I wish he had done it when it came to the COVID stuff.

He's consistent with the "pro-life" caucus, which is pro- blastocyte/embryo/fetus.  Actual lives aren't really a focus.

[LFC]

You call them fascists, the GOP calls them their base. I call them stupid, ignorant, potentially violent thugs who can't be trusted with a spork.

A recent Washington demonstration supporting those charged with crimes for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol fizzled, with no more than 200 demonstrators showing up. The organizers had promised 700 people would turn out – or more.

But the threat from far-right insurrectionists is not over.

For months, my colleagues and I at the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats have been tracking insurrectionist sentiments in U.S. adults, most recently in surveys in June. We have found that 47 million American adults – nearly 1 in 5 – agree with the statement that “the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.” Of those, 21 million also agree that “use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency.”

Our survey found that many of these 21 million people with insurrectionist sentiments have the capacity for violent mobilization. At least 7 million of them already own a gun, and at least 3 million have served in the U.S. military and so have lethal skills. Of those 21 million, 6 million said they supported right-wing militias and extremist groups, and 1 million said they are themselves or personally know a member of such a group, including the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

Only a small percentage of people who hold extremist views ever actually commit acts of violence, but our findings reveal how many Americans hold views that could turn them toward insurrection.

Read on. The crazy gets more detailed. Be sure to read the section "The Fringe Moving Into the Mainstream." COO-COO!