Update no.1071

 Update from the Sunland

No.1071

18.7.22 – 24.7.22

Blog version:  http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

 

To all,

 

The follow-up news items:

-- Thursday evening, 21.July.2022, in prime time as the television enthusiasts like to say, the United States House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol [1020]{HSCJ6}, held the eighth public hearing of their investigation. This session was focused on the inaction of [the person who shall no longer be named]. There were two in-person witnesses for the 8^th hearing:

-- Matthew Forbes Pottinger, Deputy National Security Advisor to the President

-- Sarah Matthews. Deputy Press Secretary and Special Assistant to the President

Both of them had resigned in disgust with the actions before and inaction during the insurrection. Pottinger, a former Marine officer, answered a question from Representative Luria about his oath of office. He gave a concise and cogent response, and he appropriately cited Richard Nixon’s election concession in 1960 as well as Al Gore’s similar concession in 2000. In fact, Pottinger cited Gore’s concession speech as a model for all future candidates who lose elections. 

At 16:17 [R] EST, Wednesday, 6.January.2022, after 187 minutes of intransigent inaction despite myriad urgent pleas from a broad range of family, friends, advisors, lawyers, legislators, and other politicians, [the person who shall no longer be named] made a video tapes message to the insurrectionist mob occupying and ransacking the Capitol Building. Ignoring his prepared statement and speaking ad lib, the man said:

“I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But, you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There has never been a time like this where such a thing happened when they can take it away from all of us, from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You’ve seen the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. And go home and go home in peace.”

Nearly two hours after the above statement was broadcast, [the person who shall no longer be named] tweeted {before his Twitter account was indefinitely suspended}:

These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!

6:01 PM January 6, 2021

Really? I do not think any of us lived that day will ever forget. After the Capitol Building was cleared and secured, the Senate reconvened circa 20:00, and the House reconvened circa 21:00 to complete the constitutional process of counting the Electoral College votes. The joint session reconvened at 23:32, and the process was finally completed, certified, and Joe Biden was officially the new president-elect. The insurrection failed!

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley testified by video that while [the person who shall no longer be named] remained silent, Vice President Pence (from his secure site inside the Capitol Building) gave Acting Defense Secretary Miller very explicit orders to deploy the DC National Guard to secure the Capitol. It is not clear to me whether Miller acted on the vice president’s instructions, but armed units of the National Guard deployed to the Capitol Building later in the day. What was the POTUS doing during the peak of the insurrectionist attack you ask? The man charged by the Constitution with paramount responsibility for national defense and defending the Constitution—the basis of the country—sat in the President’s Dining Room watching Fox News (of course) for two and a half hours despite repeated attempts by his family, friends, senior White House staff, congressional leaders, and others to call off the attack. He sat there watching Fox News! At 18:27, [the person who shall no longer be named] finally left the dining room and went to the residence for the night. Portions of Representative Kinzinger’s and Vice Chair Representative Cheney’s closing statements on the evening were noteworthy. Kinzinger said in part:

Whatever your politics, whatever you think about the outcome of the election, we as Americans must all agree on this. Donald Trump's conduct on January 6^th was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation.

It is a stain on our history. It is a dishonor to all those who have sacrificed and died in service of our democracy. When we present our full findings, we will recommend changes to laws and policies to guard against another January 6^th. The reason that's imperative is that the forces Donald Trump ignited that day have not gone away.

The militant intolerant ideologies, the militias, the alienation and the disaffection, the weird fantasies and disinformation, they're all still out there ready to go. That's the elephant in the room. But if January 6^th has reminded us of anything, I pray it is reminded us of this, laws are just words on paper.

They mean nothing without public servants dedicated to the rule of law and who are held accountable by a public that believes oath matters — oaths matter more than party tribalism or the cheap thrill of scoring 

political points. We — the people must demand more of our politicians and ourselves. Oaths matter.

Character matters. Truth matters. If we do not renew our faith and commitment to these principles, this great experiment of ours, our shining beacon on a hill, will not endure.

The majority of those who have sworn that oath of office somberly and soberly to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” feel Kinzinger’s words to the core of our souls. Cheney closed the session with these words in part:

There was no evidence of widespread fraud. It didn't matter. Donald Trump was confident he could persuade his supporters to believe whatever he said no matter how outlandish and ultimately that they could be summoned to Washington to help him remain President for another term. As we showed you last week, even President Trump's legal team led by Rudy Giuliani knew they had no actual evidence to demonstrate the election was stolen.

Again, it didn't matter. Here's the worst part. Donald Trump knows that millions of Americans who supported him would stand up and defend our nation were it threatened. They would put their lives and their freedom at stake to protect her. And he is preying on their patriotism. He is preying on their sense of justice.

And on January 6^th, Donald Trump turned their love of country into a weapon against our Capitol and our Constitution. He has purposely created the false impression that America is threatened by a foreign force controlling voting machines or that a wave of tens of millions of false ballots were secretly injected into our election system or that ballot workers have secret thumb drives and are stealing elections with them.

Please reread and compare the words of the former “whatever he used to be” and those words of Representatives Kinzinger and Cheney. Liz Cheney summed up the man’s culpability precisely. [The person who shall no longer be named] created the very conditions necessary for the insurrection—the BIG LIE—that started the whole sequence of events from before the election to the insurrection executed that afternoon of the 6^th of January 2021, and frankly to this very day. The BIG LIE perpetrated by [the person who shall no longer be named] was the very fuel needed for the insurrection. He had NO evidence of election fraud, even remotely close to probable cause . . . set aside beyond a reasonable doubt.

If that had been a military officer of any rank and any service with responsibility for security in a situation even fractionally similar to what happened that day, and s/he watched television during an insurrection, s/he would face a general court-martial and probably spend much of the rest of his/her life in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The conduct of [the person who shall no longer be named] and his delusional minions was bad enough, but they can almost be understood as a consequence of their blind loyalty to a man afflicted with the rabid malignant narcissism of the principal. To me, the monumental disgrace is the conduct of the fBICP senators who blocked what should have been a bicameral investigation and the House minority leader who blocked a more deeply bipartisan HSCJ6. Those fBICP senators and representatives (of which McCarthy is now one) chose to stay true to their party motto – Nescientia super scientia (Ignorance over knowledge!). Like ostrichs, those fBICP leaders in Congress chose to bury their heads rather than know the truth. Thank goodness, the Speaker of the House had the courage and strength to go it without the deniers. And I must say, thank God, Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger for their strength to stand for their commitment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

The long and the short of it all is,  [the person who shall no longer be named] assembled and constructed the bonfire pile of lumber with his BIG LIE before, during, and after the 3.November.2020 election. He added the kindling and substantial accelerant, and then he personally tossed the match into the construct. He could not control the resultant conflagration, but he is solely responsible for the disastrous consequences of his actions. I had forecast a lot of bad things if the man gained the power of the presidency. I must confess that I had no idea he would degrade and degenerate the very fabric of this once grand republic. What he has done is unforgiveable. The HSCJ6 is not finished with their work, but they have given us amble evidence beyond a reasonable doubt for me to say, it is now up to the Attorney General of the United States to prosecute, convict and imprison the true instigator of the insurrection. He should have been convicted and removed from office in 2020. The fBICP senators were successful in preventing his conviction, so in many respects, the fBICP equally culpable for enabling and sustaining that malignant narcissist monster. But hey, as Dennis Miller so succinctly stated, “That’s just my opinion, but I could be wrong.”

-- On Friday, from a trial of a couple of days, a federal court jury took all of three hours to unanimously convict Stephen Kevin ‘Steve’ Bannon, the acolyte, mouthpiece, and arguably the brain of [the person who shall no longer be named]. The House of Representatives passed H.Res.730 [House: 229-202-0-1(3)] [1032] on 21.10.2021, referring two charges to the Justice Department for prosecution and charging Stephen Kevin Bannon with criminal contempt of Congress; he was arraigned on 17.11.2021. He had been indicted, charged and ultimately convicted on both counts—one contempt count involving his refusal to appear for a deposition and another count involving his refusal to produce documents, in defiance of a subpoena from the HSCJ6. Bannon is scheduled to be sentence on 21.October.2022. He faces a 30-day minimum and a one-year maximum sentence in federal prison. Bannon indicated he intends to appeal, which is his right. I hope the judge lets him sit in prison during his appeal.

 

On Tuesday, 19.June.2022, the House of Representatives passed a preemptive legislative action in the wake of the Dobbs ruling [1068] and Justice Thomas’s chilling concurring opinion. The stated purpose of H.R.8404 is “. . . statutory authority for same-sex and interracial marriages.” The bill goes to the Senate now. I must also say, 47 Republicans voted for the bill [too many to list in this humble forum, although I am sorely tempted to do so] to acknowledge their courage, so I suppose there is hope that 10+ Republican senators might vote for passage as well. It is truly sad that we must pass laws to codify what is a private matter between consenting adults. This is what the conservative Supremes have wrought upon We, the People. The Supremes are not done, and neither are We. Yet, to the conservatives among us, we will not go quietly into the good night of regression.

 

Comments and contributions from Update no.1070:

“Thanks Cap-all docked safely this side…currently in a heat wave over here with temperatures expected to reach 40degs C., which I know is somewhat normal for you guys but not us. When are we, the global population, going to take the threat of global warming with some seriousness? I seem to remember a former leader of your nation denying that this is a true and very serious threat to human survival.

“Send him over here to sit on our patio, he wouldn’t last long.

“We have 37 degs C currently with some 5 hrs of solar gain to come.

“Will we, us Brits, need to become accustomed to this? I fear this may become the case.”

My reply:

Our sympathies to you and all our British cousins. We are prepared and equipped for 40°C. Most Britons are not. Hopefully, you can find some evaporative cooling.

Good question. There are far too many deniers; I think they believe that if they deny things, they go away . . . kinda like an ostrich. Exhibit no.1, as you so appropriately note, is [the person who shall no longer be named]. I truly hope the unseasonable heat does not last long, my friend.

 . . . Round two:

“Thanks Cap-been something of a stinker again but you guys have kindly sent a cold front which should arrive here by Wednesday! Agreed we Brits are not conducive with such heat but it may give strength to the Global Warming argument. So some good may come of it.”

 . . . my reply to round two:

I truly hope y’all realize some relief from the heat. We know how stifling it can be. Unfortunately, we have a major political party that prefers ignorance over knowledge. Denial is ignorance. We shall overcome . . . in time . . . but will it be soon enough? We absolutely must wean ourselves off of fossil fuels.

 . . . Round three:

“Just read that you guys are in a heat wave too-so global warming must still be a hot discussion subject. We’ve had 30 degs. C again all, on and off.

“Looking forward to the blog especially as we hear that Steve Bannon is guilty of contempt.

“Can we now expect that the name of ‘he who cannot be mentioned’ to appear under the same charge? Appalling headlines this side, something needs to happen Cap, resolution is required.

“Of course we aren’t without turmoil here. A new PM is waiting in the wings to assume command- all the governing body need to do is select the right one for the job. That shouldn’t be too much of a problem as there’s only two candidates left in the final ‘punch up’. We await with some perplexity as to who will be issued the keys to Number 10 Downing Street.

“Politicians! I don’t know if there are many former service personnel who can tolerate the ‘shenanigans’ of our ‘leaders’. It isn’t the way we were brought up in uniform is it.”

 . . . my reply to round three:

30°C is certainly better than 40°C. Probably in the apropos category, CNN just broadcast a major news segment about the melting Greenland ice sheet. The ignorance-over-knowledge crowd are going to deny reality no matter what evidence is presented. We must vote for knowledge and relegate the ignorance crowd to the dustbin of history.

Yes, Bannon’s long overdue conviction has dishonorable mention in this week’s Update.

The only resolution to [the person who shall no longer be named] situation from my perspective is absolute, undeniable disgrace, i.e., the only president in history to be convicted in court of felonious criminal conduct and to be sent to prison. The damage that man has done to our once grand republic is incalculable. I want him to live long enough to feel the confinement of prison, and then he can die. He occupies far too much of this week’s Update thanks to the January 6^thCommittee investigation.

No, I do not think [the person who shall no longer be named] will face the same charges as Bannon. His charges should be far more serious, e.g., dereliction of duty, incitement of insurrection, conspiracy to defraud We, the People, et cetera. The despicable man deserves to be a guest of the government for the rest of his natural life with no access to Big Mac’s and utter disgrace in the annals of history.

I have detected no indications that Labour may be maneuvering to force elections to break the Conservative grip. Short of new elections, hopefully the Conservatives move quickly to replace Boris. He had some good attributes, but his arrogance and sense of entitlement were too much. We all need a firm, competent hand on the tiller in these troubled times. As we know, the IRI has chosen to renew their membership in the dictator’s club. And, I suspect Xi is sorely tempted to use the turmoil of these times to launch his long-declared intent to assault and subjugate Taiwan—a monumental difference with Hong Kong. We must remain resolute.

Oh my, you are oh so spot on correct. The nonsense of the ignorance-over-knowledge crowd are progressively more difficult to tolerate. We have a primary election next week, and the general mid-term election in November. Everyone must vote; it is our duty as a citizen.

 

Comment to the Blog:

“‘What existed before the Big Bang?’ is as unknowable as ‘Who created God (or the gods or whatever)?’

“Your lists of attendees at those meetings make a good list of American villains. The participation of prominent capitalist Patrick Byrne is no surprise; we need always look at the money behind the drama.

“I don’t see why either the States or the Federal government should have any control over medical care beyond requiring it to be safe and effective. Also, people who study the Bible have pointed out that life began for Adam when he breathed, not when he was conceived or shaped. I know the Founders didn’t intend government by religion, but that’s happening.

“Your other correspondent seems to have confused me (a Green Party member) with the person supporting the Libertarian candidate. The current two-party system has become untenable.”

My response to the Blog:

Of course, you are once again quite correct. We can chalk up my observation to my youthful and naïve wonder. The query still exists in my thoughts.

Indeed! Quite so! Money, money, money!

States have regulated medical care for longer than we have been alive . . . loosely rather than strictly, but regulation, nonetheless. Yes, I agree, religion is exerting more influence in our politics. If religion wants to be a lobbying group, let them pay taxes. Exhibit no.2, behind the Dobbs ruling, is the denial of communion to Nancy Pelosi. That trend must be reversed.

Your comment noted. I cannot speak to the observation. It still comes back to the salient question: how will they govern?

 . . . Round two:

“If the answer to ‘how will they rule’ is ‘less corruptly,’ let's give them a chance.”

 . . . my response to round two:

I appreciate and agree with the sentiment. No one . . . well other than the corrupters . . . wants any corruption of any form at any level of government. However, that sentiment does not get legislation through Congress and under the president’s signature. Sentimentality may be refreshing to our intellect, but it does not get much needed legislation through an intransigent Congress.

 . . . Round three:

“Perhaps ‘sentimentality’ doesn't get legislation through Congress, but the corruption we have doesn't either.”

 . . . my response to round three:

Yes, quite so! I am somewhat of an idealist. I do NOT want any corruption in any form at any level of government. We should continually strive to root out and punish corruption wherever and whenever we find it. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has enabled such corruption with their declaration that dark money is free speech. I also agree, sentimentality does not get necessary legislation done. All that said and agreed to, how will they get necessary laws passed in a two-party dominated Congress?

Oh wait, are you suggesting the invocation of “. . . it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security . . .”?

 . . . Round four:

“I'm not an either/or person these days. The corruption has reached a level where a few players control both parties, and that, as you point out, is only part of the problem. Any time there is as much money as the Federal government controls, there will be some kind of corruption. My point is that it's reached a crisis level.”

 . . . my response to round four:

I think your contention is overstated, but I cannot refute your statement. Yes, agreed, there has always been corrupt individuals in any group with authority to disperse enormous sums of money. We both speak out against such corruption. We vote. We encourage others to vote their conscience. What else are you suggesting or proposing that we do . . . thus my query to “. . . throw off such Government . . . .” We have been at crisis level since before 2010 SCOTUS betrayal.

 

My very best wishes to all.  Take care of yourselves and each other.

Cheers,

Cap                  :-)