Heather Cox Richardson, June 16, 2022

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD):

“New evidence is breaking every single day now. Suddenly, a lot of people want to tell the truth.”

June 13, 2022

The committee… established that the Trump campaign sent millions of fundraising emails based on the promise to fight to challenge the election results, ultimately raising $250 million from small donors.

But the… so-called Election Defense Fund was never real.

This morning’s post by Heather Cox Richardson is encouraging… the noose is tightening around 45 and others…

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol also has a great deal of information; it has now interviewed more than 800 people. On April 11, Salon columnist Chauncey DeVega published an interview with Hugo Lowell, who has been following the January 6 committee closely for The Guardian. Lowell’s observations support the idea of a conspiracy, although he noted evidence is still coming in. “The evidence so far points to the fact that Donald Trump knew and oversaw what happened on Jan. 6,” Lowell told DeVega. “Trump knew in advance about these different elements that came together to form both the political element of his plan, which was to have Pence throw the election, and the violence that took place on Jan. 6.”

… the J6 committee is openly calling it a coup attempt led by 45…

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the January 6 committee, suggested Lowell’s observation was correct yesterday when he told reporters: “This was a coup organized by the president against the vice president and against the Congress in order to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” Trump’s role in that coup will be the centerpiece of next month’s public committee hearings.

… Marjorie Taylor Green will have to testify about her involvement in the January 06 coup attempt… in a court of law… under oath…

In Georgia, voters are challenging the inclusion of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on the ballot this fall, arguing that she is an insurrectionist disqualified to hold office under the Fourteenth Amendment. Ratified after the Civil War, that amendment says any official who has taken an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and then engages “in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” cannot hold office. Greene took her oath of office on January 3, 2021, three days before the January 6 insurrection, and insisted the election had been stolen. “This is our 1776 moment,” she told Newsmax on January 5, 2021.

Greene promptly sued to get a judge to block the challenge. Yesterday, federal judge Amy Totenberg decided that the case can go forward. Greene will have to testify on Friday, under oath, before a state administrative law judge in Atlanta. She will be the first member of Congress to testify under oath about the events of January 6. After the judge handed down the decision, Greene complained to Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson that “I have to go to court on Friday and actually be questioned about something I’ve never been charged with and something I was completely against.”

… Friday will be an interesting day

20220420.02

226.6 lbs

… five days of weight loss… three while pursuing the No S diet approach… also meals low in refined carbs like pasta…

… it is the one year anniversary of the riot at the Capital Building… the facts available point to it as an insurrection and are beginning to detail a planned overthrow of the government… that planning continues and it is uncertain what, if anything , will be done to counter the efforts happening around the country to suppress the vote and rig the voting system… the most likely action is one flying under the radar screen, mostly… a reform of the Electoral Count Act of 1887… 45’s attempt to seize power in a way that would have the pale varnish of legitimacy was built around weaknesses in the ECA… the lack of clarity on the powers of the VP to certify being one of them… there appear to be bi-partisan efforts to shore it up… the most widely publicized efforts are a number of voting rights bills that have passed the house but are stalled in the Senate with no Republican support… some change in the filibuster rules will be required to pass any voting rights act which, at the present moment, seems unlikely… i have given up hoping on that one… and then there is the work of the January 6 Commission… it appears they will be able to demonstrate conspiracy to overthrow the government but the question is, can they do it compellingly enough to shift the narrative?… and, if so, will it shift enough?… time will tell…

… in all of this, Liz Cheny continues to be my hero for the stand she is taking… she is attempting to take down 45 and his cronies before the rabid conservatives of her state vote her out of office… she appears to be one of the few Republicans with …a spine…

… yesterday i spent much of the day trying to free the castor wheels of my office chair… so much animal and human hair was logged in them that they have become immobile and are scratching the finish of the floor in my studio… i was only able to return three of five to fully spinning order… i found replacement castors on Amazon and ordered a set with rubberized wheels designed for hard floor surfaces… if i had known when i started where i would end, i would have jumped to the end…

… we watched Matrix Resurrection last night… or, rather, H watched it and i slept through the bulk of it… alcohol has been doing me in for the last many nights… slow down on that and i might make it through an evening’s worth of viewing… my sense of it was that it wasn’t as good as the first three…

… news, via Heather Cox Richardson, that citizens are revolting in Kazakhstan… Russia and Belarus have agreed to send “peacekeeping” troops to assist… the people are fighting the corruption and poor service of their government, which is authoritarian… there appears to be worry that the protests will spread to Russia and Belarus… the internet has been shut down and there are reports of clashes between government security forces and citizens with casualties…

… ordered a cast iron pot/pan to replace the last non-stick coated pan i have in the kitchen… i am looking forward to its arrival… i am hoping to be able to make Persian rice with Tadigh in it… one needs a good non-stick surface to do that… cast iron can be mostly non-stick, but usually not completely… the advice is to use extra oil when making the tadigh… i used gift card money sent by R to purchase it… i also bought traction devices for my shoes… i had to curtail my walk yesterday because the sidewalks were slick…

… i don’t expect to be encumbered by any household tasks today… hopefully just photo editing, reading, writing then cooking will be the order of the day…

… this morning i lay in bed and tried to count my breaths up to ten… its remarkably hard to do… after about half an hour i managed it and then got out of bed… the usual routine… put water on to boil, grind coffee beans, feed the cat, take meds, let the dogs down and out… because Fiona is a clever and determined escape artist i have been escorting her out into the brisk darkness and watching her closely… i have all the holes in the fence repaired, but we have thought this so many times only to learn she has found and exploited a new weakness apparent to her but not us… it was fun to watch her sniffing along the ground, following the trails of night critters across or under the leaf litter… we all came back in and i gave them treats, which is what they are up for anyway… then they went back to bed and i prepared my coffee and came up to start the writing/reading part of my day…

• Letters from an American, December 13, 2021, Heather Cox Richardson… the January 6 Commission referred Mark Meadows to the House for Contempt of Congress… in doing so they revealed details of information they already had… details that made it clear the 45 knew what was going on and accusing them of “dereliction of duty,” which is military speak for, you are in some serious shit… additionally, it was clear that a number of Fox News personalities not only had close ties to the Whitehouse but called repeatedly on the day of the riot to plead with 45 to say something to calm the situation… that same day they went on air and began making the case to their viewers that 45 had nothing to do with the riot, that it was ANTIFA that infiltrated a peaceful rally and turned it deadly… they were clearly lying to their viewers…

• Booz Allen Sounds the Alarm On China’s Coming Quantum Harvest, Arthur Herman, Hudson Institute… quantum computers are likely within a 10 year time horizon… they will be capable of cracking encryption deployed on most computer systems today in defense and industry… China is likely stealing and warehousing encrypted data in anticipation of that day… efforts to secure systems against quantum computing capabilities need to accelerate…

• Fox Hosts Begged Trump to Stop the January 6 Attack on the Capitol, Amanda Carpenter, The Bulwark… confirms Heather Cox Richardson report that Fox News personalities pleaded with 45 to stop the riot and then went on to spin it as not his fault at all… family members and members of congress too…

• What Did Governor Hochul Say About Religion!?, Josh Blackman, Reason.com… a case is made that injunctive relief should have been provided given the awkward at best statements of Governor Hochul about the religious exemptions being denied…

• Barrett and Kavanaugh Supply Another Majority to Deny Religious-Liberty Exemption… this case is seeming more interesting than i at first thought, or, rather, i thought is was interesting at first, but for the wrong reasons… i am no friend of organized religion, i am somewhere on the spectrum between atheist and agnostic… but the reasoning here seems a bit botched…

  • This time, it was New York’s vaccine mandate, which initially included an exemption for religious objectors. These objectors included some Catholics and other Christians who oppose abortion. The vaccines are derived in part from abortion — specifically, from fetal-cell lines used in vaccine production and testing. Nevertheless, when Kathy Hochul replaced Andrew Cuomo as governor, she stripped the religious exemption from the mandate, making the astonishing acknowledgment that she had done so “intentionally” because those who resisted vaccination “aren’t listening to God and what God wants.”

• January 6 Committee Votes to Recommend Contempt Charges for Mark Meadows, Zachary Evans, National Review… of note to me is the article’s description of the events on January 6th and the calling into question the makeup of the committee:

  • The select committee was formed to investigate the Capitol riot, during which supporters of the former president breached the Capitol, forcing lawmakers to interrupt the certification of the Electoral College results. > > However, Pelosi refused to appoint two lawmakers recommend by House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) to the panel, leading McCarthy and most Republicans to withhold cooperation with the committee. Representatives Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.), both staunch critics of President Trump in relation to the events of January 6, are the only Republicans on the nine-member committee.