Oh he’s so BUTCH.

In case anyone doubted that this was really all about toxic masculinity… https://t.co/io4rl9WmQ7

— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) January 12, 2021

First of all Hogan Gidley looks exactly like Alfred E. Newman, but more to the point – Trump, masculine??? The goldy hair dye? The ridiculous fluffy ferfy flippy wavey twirly hair arrangement? The heavy makeup? The whining? The pouting? The inability to walk a tenth of a mile?

The fear of cats? The endless bullying? The tiny fingers on the tiny hands? The stupid little mincey gestures?

There’s a confusion here. Trump is mean, and rude, and piggy, and a bully, but that doesn’t make him masculine…or feminine, either – it makes him an asshole.… Read the rest

Ok now they’ve gotten to him. Impeachment no big deal, but the PGA? Ouch!

He’s angry about impeachment, people who have spoken to him say. But the reaction to the PGA decision was different order of magnitude.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 11, 2021

That is, a much bigger wound, not a much smaller one. You’d think the other way around, but no. Being president is just for giggles, golf is serious.

What did they do?

"The PGA of America Board of Directors voted tonight to exercise the right to terminate the agreement to play the 2022 PGA Championship at Trump Bedminster." — Jim Richerson, PGA of America President

— PGA of America (@PGA) January 11, 2021

Fore. https://t.co/xkBARjWlQX

He poisons everything.

Florida wildlife officials are appealing to the public for help after a manatee was found with U.S. President Donald Trump’s last name carved into its back.

…

The animal was reported to authorities over the weekend, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told the Citrus County Chronicle. Anyone with information is being asked to contact Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation.

A harassment investigation is underway. A spokesperson for the FWS declined to comment to the Chronicle, citing the ongoing investigation. He added that harassing a manatee is a crime punishable by up to one year in prison and a US$50,000 fine.

It’s not the first time that a Trump tag has appeared on a

It wasn’t ideology, it was jihad. Ohhhh ok then, that’s completely different.

A man who stabbed three people to death in a Reading park believed he was carrying out “an act of religious jihad”, a court has heard.

Khairi Saadallah, 26, stabbed to death James Furlong, 36, David Wails, 49, and Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39, during the attack in Forbury Gardens in June.

As part of his sentencing, a hearing will decide if he was motivated by a religious or ideological cause.

Ok, seriously, what is the difference? One has a god (or gods) involved and the other doesn’t, but is that a distinction that makes any difference? I don’t see it, myself. Theocracy is an ideology, and Islamism is … Read the rest

More insurrection-cheerleading, this time from the woman who is married to Clarence Thomas.

She did the cheerleading before the insurrectionists smashed their way into the Capitol, but that still entailed cheerleading a campaign to overturn an election and hand it to the murderous corrupt criminal who lost. She shares in the evil.

On Wednesday morning, Ginni Thomas—wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—endorsed the rally in Washington demanding that Congress overturn the election. She then sent her “LOVE” to the demonstrators, who violently overtook the Capitol several hours later. Two days later, Thomas amended her post with the addendum: “[Note: written before violence in US Capitol].” By that point, five people involved in the insurrection, including a Capitol

Queen Melania has issued a disgusting “statement” on official White House stationery.

With nearly every experience I have had, I found myself carrying many individual’s [sic] stories home with me in my heart.

Most recently, my heart goes out to: Air Force Veteran, Ashli Babbitt, Benjamin Philips, Kevin Greeson, Roseanne Boyland, and Capitol Police Officers, Brian Sicknick and Howard Liebengood. I pray for their families comfort and strength during this difficult time.

Her “heart goes out” to, first of all, the ex-military woman who tried to climb through the broken window of the door barring entry to the House floor. Legislators were crouched or prone on the floor of that chamber, hoping not to be slaughtered by people … Read the rest

Well we didn’t mean that…

Leaders from the Republican Attorneys General Association face mounting criticism after sending out a robocall that urged supporters of Donald Trump to join the 6 January march on the US Capitol that resulted in a deadly insurrection.

We thought it was going to be a protest! Not an insurrection! Please don’t impeach us.

“At [1pm”] we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal,” a robocall from the Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF), a fundraising arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association, said.

Spot the irony? Good old rule of law, eh? Defend rule of law by forcing your way into the Capitol in hopes of killing … Read the rest

The arrests are up to 20.

Twenty federal criminal defendants related to last week’s deadly pro-Trump riot at the US Capitol have been rounded up across the country since the insurrection, with the allegations showing the danger of the mob.

Some of the defendants are accused of bringing weapons and bombs to Capitol Hill, indicative of the extremism of parts of the crowd. Others were photographed ransacking the building, smiling while posing with congressional items such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lectern or at her staffer’s desk, or publicly bragged about the crowd’s violent and destructive joyride.

The most unsettling of the allegations so far appear to be those against Lonnie Coffman, an Alabama man charged after authorities found

Trump is feeling defiant. It’s all good! Nobody can touch him! He’s going to go on a farewell tour to brag about his “accomplishments.”

Trump is confident Vice President Mike Pence and members of his cabinet won’t attempt to remove him under the 25th Amendment, the people said. Pence is dismissive of the idea of trying to use that authority to drive Trump from office, one person said.

The president and some allies also believe Democrats are overreaching by trying to once again impeach him over Wednesday’s mob at the Capitol, and think Senate conviction would be unlikely in any event.

Oh yes, overreaching, it’s shocking isn’t it, so unlike Trump’s sending his fans to make war on Congress.… Read the rest

A former governor of California, a Republican, says what he thinks of the attempted insurrection or coup the other day.

He grew up in Austria in the wake of WW2. He knows what Kristallnacht was.

It’s surprisingly powerful.

[Updating to add: I forgot to warn about the music. I did mean to. It’s very annoying.]

My message to my fellow Americans and friends around the world following this week's attack on the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/blOy35LWJ5

— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) January 10, 2021

… Read the rest

Foreign Policy posted an interesting conversation during the insurrection, about what exactly the name for it should be.

Naunihal Singh: This is not a military coup because that would involve the president using the military or the Secret Service or some armed branch of the government to get his way. Nor would I argue that it is what some people have called a civilian coup or an executive coup. Even autogolpes involve the threat of military force.

In a sense he was using them if he had arranged for them to do nothing.

…

JT: Let’s talk about that for a second. What we did have is the president inciting protesters, who then went to the Capitol to interfere

Jim Wright aka Stonekettle:

Now that Allied Forces have once again taken Washington, everyone is ashamed of being a Nazi.

I told you.

I did. I told you.

2021 gonna be the year of Republican redemption arcs. Why, I, um, I never liked that guy anyway! It’s true! No, really, I was, uh, RESISTING FROM INSIDE, yeah! That’s it, resisting from inside. Uh, uh, Defund the Police! Yeah! I’m one of you! <takes a knee

We’ll call it The General John F. Kelly Defense

Kelly was mouthing off on MSNBC the other night, as if he were some kind of resistance hero. It’s enough to make you puke.… Read the rest

At least Trump is miserable.

The president is “ballistic,” a senior administration official said after Twitter permanently took down his account, citing the possibility that it would be used in the final 12 days of Trump’s presidency to incite violence. The official said Trump was “scrambling to figure out what his options are.”

There aren’t any. I said this yesterday so sorry for the repetition, but there aren’t any. He can create his own platform blah blah but it won’t be Twitter, and neither will anything else. Parler isn’t Twitter, and if Trump started a new Twitter called Tritter or Ditter it still wouldn’t be Twitter.

In a statement issued by the White House, Trump said he’d been “negotiating

Politico reports that the Pentagon says it did everything right so shut up.

One obvious complication here is that Trump stuffed a lot of his people into the Pentagon in preparation for the coup so it could be Trump’s people now saying don’t be silly of course we didn’t help the coup attempt.

But Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and other top officials noted that in the days leading up to Wednesday, federal and D.C. law enforcement officials requested only 340 unarmed DoD personnel to do specific missions, primarily traffic and crowd control… At the time, officials had a wide range of estimates for the size of the crowds that would descend on Washington for Wednesday’s procedural vote to certify President-elect

This is chilling.

The State Department has condemned foreign coups where strongman regimes kept their armies in barracks while inflicting violence on their political opponents. We correctly call them attacks on the rule of law itself.

THAT is what President Trump wanted, and why he must go.

— Max Burns (@themaxburns) January 9, 2021

It was the Trump people who refused to send in the National Guard. Somehow I didn’t realize that. You’d think the “National” part would be a clue, but I missed it.

Donald Trump decided for his own reasons to test the limits of his power, both official (through his remaining loyalists in the Pentagon) and the unofficial (through the paramilitary he unleashed on the Congress he

Military honor yadda yadda. Ronan Farrow reports:

As insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol this week, a few figures stood out. One man, clad in a combat helmet, body armor, and other tactical gear, was among the group that made it to the inner reaches of the building. Carrying zip-tie handcuffs, he was captured in photographs and videos on the Senate floor and with a group that descended on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office suite…

…A day after the riots, John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, at the University of Toronto’s Munk School, notified the F.B.I. that he suspected the man was retired Lieutenant Colonel Larry Rendall Brock, Jr., a Texas-based Air Force Academy graduate and combat veteran.

A … Read the rest

“Oh,” they cry, “hey gee guess what, it turns out he really is a fascist.”

Of course he really is a fascist. What do you think fascists are? Magic beings with golden horns, and plutonium hair, and the ability to walk on the ceiling? Fascists aren’t special, they’re just fascist. They’re just power-mad and violent and nationalistic and racist and brutal. A dribbling moron like Trump can be one, easily.

On Friday afternoon, 48 hours after the U.S. Capitol was stormed by violent insurrectionists encouraged by Donald Trump in an attempt to overthrow the government in protest of his election loss, a senior member of his administration spoke to me while he was driving to work.

“This is

pic.twitter.com/2VOjppqkdi

— BlueChairss (@BChairss) January 9, 2021

H/t KBPlayer… Read the rest

More arrests.

On Friday, the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced charges against a man accused of bringing guns and molotov cocktails to Washington. Another was reported to have had an assault rifle and ammunition and told friends he planned to shoot Pelosi, the House speaker, or run her over.

In a Saturday lunchtime statement, the US attorney’s office for District of Columbia announced the arrest and charging of three suspects, among them Jacob Anthony Chansley of Arizona, who also goes by the name of Jake Angeli and who was photographed in horned headwear and dressed in fur pelts, in Vice-President Mike Pence’s seat in the Senate chamber.

The 33-year-old self-styled “QAnon shaman”, “entered the Capitol building dressed