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January 6th Committee Hearings Thread of Dominance


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1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

Great post. To be clear on my position, I use Nixon as the lowest example as a president. He abused power horribly. I think he liked yukking it up with J. Edgar Hoover over the compromat the FBI had. He had Hoover's successor hide Watergate evidence in his underwear drawer before burning it in his backyard.

It's shocking to me that we got somebody worse in Trump. Nixon wasn't seeking to undo the republic. He did seek to use the powers granted him by the republic to do terrible things.

The best way I can put the comparison of the two is in villains in TV/cinema. As Nixon was Emperor Palpatine, Trump was a bastard child of the Joker and Ernest T Bass.

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8 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Nixon had no shame. He proved that in the Frost interview when he said l, “When the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.” It wasn’t his shame that forced him out of office, it was the members of his party who still had a spine and a sense of decency and legality. What Geraldo Rivera said to Sean Hannity was true. If Hannity (and Fox News) had been around back then, Nixon never would’ve been forced to leave office. Nixon would’ve adored Fox News. He was calling the press “the enemy” and decrying the “liberal media” 50 years ago.

I don’t believe Nixon ever felt shame. He was probably feeling more bitter and aggrieved, angry and resentful while he wandered the beach alone at San Clemente, like Trump would be now if modern day Republicans had the spine and a sense of decency and legality that their predecessors did.

He had enough shame that he eventually left office of his own accord.  Do you believe any current member of the Republican party would do the same?  

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6 hours ago, hpslugga said:

 

I’m sorry but I have to jump on this.

This seems to be a growing sentiment and I’m not questioning it; I’m denying it entirely.

Richard Nixon had been told repeatedly by Senate Republicans in the wake of all the Watergate exposures and when impeachment proceedings were about to commence that they had enough votes to convict and convict they would. He had no chance to survive.

Now, if you want to credit those Senate Republicans for actually taking a half assed principle (more on that in a minute), ok fine. And yeah even a half assed principle is considerable compared to what these current degenerates have.

In any event, Nixon resigned precisely because he was going to be removed and he was told so. Giving him credit for making that decision is like giving credit to Bob Livingston for “falling on his sword.” No, that man resigned because Larry Flynt had told him he would release all the lurid details of his marital infidelity if he didn’t.

Sure it gives to the general public a facade of integrity and it lets the perpetrator step down with some “dignity,” but in the end it’s all for show. Nixon was a monster. Period. If his party was littered with the kind of degenerates the republicans are known to be today, he serves out his entire second term.

Getting back to the half assed thing, the Watergate indiscretions weren’t even the worst things Nixon did as POTUS. He, like a few of his predecessors, participated in a long-running program by the FBI known as COINTELPRO. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO. When Watergate was becoming public knowledge, so was COINTELPRO. But watergate was all anyone ever heard about. Why? Because when Nixon was involved in COINTELPRO, he was spying on minorities and minority rights leaders. When he was involved in Watergate, he was spying on half of the arm of power in the United States government. The lesson that should be taken is the following:

Spying on the black panther party: Good
Spying on the Democratic Party:  Bad

His tapes are what did Nixon in.

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3 hours ago, Hookah Horns said:

The unselect thing is one of the all-time worst attempts at an insult. Dotard apparently thinks it's a hell of a zinger, because he uses it every time he discusses the committee.

it's like calling him the unpresident.  which is now what we should call him.

the problem is the normal human brain knows thousands of words.  he knows like 75.  so when he needs to go off script, he can only say things like "unselect" or describe phone calls as "perfect".  he just doesn't have the vocabulary for creativity.

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13 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

He had enough shame that he eventually left office of his own accord.  Do you believe any current member of the Republican party would do the same?  

Again, that’s just not true. He left office having no realistic path to maintain his position. He was told that he was going to be removed by members of his own party. That’s not “shame,” that’s taking the least humiliating path that’s available…again just like Bob Livingston. 

And again, the republicans wouldn’t do the same because their party is filled almost entirely with degenerates who would defend them no matter what. No Republican president will ever be told by senate republicans “you’re going to be impeached and we will have a hand in removing you.” And again if Nixon had this current batch in congress, no way does he resign. He gets impeached, is acquitted in a straight party line vote, and serves his term.

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1 minute ago, hpslugga said:

Again, that’s just not true. He left office having no realistic path to maintain his position. He was told that he was going to be removed by members of his own party. That’s not “shame,” that’s taking the least humiliating path that’s available…again just like Bob Livingston. 

And again, the republicans wouldn’t do the same because their party is filled almost entirely with degenerates who would defend them no matter what. No Republican president will ever be told by senate republicans “you’re going to be impeached and we will have a hand in removing you.” And again if Nixon had this current batch in congress, no way does he resign. He gets impeached, is acquitted in a straight party line vote, and serves his term.

Today's Republicans would make them throw them out.  I know Nixon was going to be impeached, but he left before that happened.  That's my point.  He did something that no current Republican would do.  Not making excuses for him, he was a piece of shit.

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1 hour ago, C-Man said:

Pretty sure I read this week that Sidney Powell was given notice of disbarment in Texas last week. Not sure what exactly that means, or if she's entitled to a hearing before officially having her law license taken away -- I'll let the Surly lawyers chime in.

She elected, a couple of months ago, to be tried in the district court on the ethics charges against her rather than be subject to the ruling of a private grievance committee.

The bar filed suit, she moved to dismiss.  There is a hearing on the motion to dismiss tomorrow.

All other information appears to be spurious.

I would be pleasantly surprised if she is actually disbarred.  I might guess a few years of suspension, which would probably have a similar effect because you have to reapply for admission, usually, which is not a fait accompli, and she old. 

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7 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

Today's Republicans would make them throw them out.  I know Nixon was going to be impeached, but he left before that happened.  That's my point.  He did something that no current Republican would do.

They wouldn’t do it because they wouldn’t need to. Maintaining their positions would be a realistic option for them. It wasn’t for Nixon and that’s the only reason he resigned. It wasn’t out of “shame,” it wasn’t out of “respect for the office,” it wasn’t out of “love of country.” It was a political calculation. He resigned for the same reason that I don’t attempt to fly off the Empire State Building and survive: the result I would desire is 100% not in the cards. 

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6 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

She elected, a couple of months ago, to be tried in the district court on the ethics charges against her rather than be subject to the ruling of a private grievance committee.

The bar filed suit, she moved to dismiss.  There is a hearing on the motion to dismiss tomorrow.

All other information appears to be spurious.

I would be pleasantly surprised if she is actually disbarred.  I might guess a few years of suspension, which would probably have a similar effect because you have to reapply for admission, usually, which is not a fait accompli, and she old. 

Yeah I would say her legal career is over regardless of whether she’s disbarred based on that almost entirely. She doesn’t have enough time to rebuild her very much damaged reputation.

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9 minutes ago, hpslugga said:

Yeah I would say her legal career is over regardless of whether she’s disbarred based on that almost entirely. She doesn’t have enough time to rebuild her very much damaged reputation.

I'm sure there are plenty of Trumpers who'd hire her to lose their case. 

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6 minutes ago, hpslugga said:

They wouldn’t do it because they wouldn’t need to. Maintaining their positions would be a realistic option for them. It wasn’t for Nixon and that’s the only reason he resigned. It wasn’t out of “shame,” it wasn’t out of “respect for the office,” it wasn’t out of “love of country.” It was a political calculation. He resigned for the same reason that I don’t attempt to fly off the Empire State Building and survive: the result I would desire is 100% not in the cards. 

i believe nixon had the capabilities for shame, something that is noticeably absent now from an entire party.  and it's not just lack of shame, it's going fully the other direction.  it's not confessing it's bragging, etc.  i do think nixon felt shame because i think he honestly loved his country and thought in his own paranoid fantasy of a brain that he was doing what was best for himself, but also for the nation. 

i do agree with you that shame was not the primary factor in his resigning, as you pointed out, he explored several options that would allow him to stay, and there were none.

i'm not a nixon scholar nor am i old enough to have experienced any of it in real time.  but i do have an ounce of respect for the fact that he lost in 1960 as the vp and accepted it.  it's not much, but it's way more than will ever see from the orange clown, also known as unpresident fuckface.

we didn't even know what abuse of power was until we saw what the trump mob was capable of.  i still don't really know the guardrails that exist that would stop him had any of the shit actually been 'allowed' to happen.  it's mystifying.

 

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Nixon I think had a similar lust for power to Trump.  But he was mental in a different way that actually made him somewhat less toxic.  He was also eleventy jillion times smarter than Trump and ultimately understood (that's key) and respected American institutions.

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Nixon I think had a similar lust for power to Trump.  But he was mental in a different way that actually made him somewhat less toxic.  He was also eleventy jillion times smarter than Trump and ultimately understood (that's key) and respected American institutions.

Nixon also served in the Navy during WWII.
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14 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

i believe nixon had the capabilities for shame, something that is noticeably absent now from an entire party.  and it's not just lack of shame, it's going fully the other direction.  it's not confessing it's bragging, etc.  i do think nixon felt shame because i think he honestly loved his country and thought in his own paranoid fantasy of a brain that he was doing what was best for himself, but also for the nation. 

i do agree with you that shame was not the primary factor in his resigning, as you pointed out, he explored several options that would allow him to stay, and there were none.

i'm not a nixon scholar nor am i old enough to have experienced any of it in real time.  but i do have an ounce of respect for the fact that he lost in 1960 as the vp and accepted it.  it's not much, but it's way more than will ever see from the orange clown, also known as unpresident fuckface.

we didn't even know what abuse of power was until we saw what the trump mob was capable of.  i still don't really know the guardrails that exist that would stop him had any of the shit actually been 'allowed' to happen.  it's mystifying.

 

Right and that’s really my point of that whole thing. Did he have shame? Maybe. Possibly. But was it to such an extent that it made him resign? Fuck no. A shame-triggered resignation means you do it absent the political pressure that put you in that position. In other words, if he was told by those same people “look Dick, you screwed up but we will support you in the impeachment proceedings” and he resigned anyways? Yeah, that’s resigning out of shame. Doing so in response to that amount of pressure? Not so much.

All this does is prove once again that the old saying “power never concedes anything without a demand” is absolutely true.

Edited by hpslugga
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1 hour ago, henrygandorf said:

i believe nixon had the capabilities for shame, something that is noticeably absent now from an entire party.  and it's not just lack of shame, it's going fully the other direction.  it's not confessing it's bragging, etc.  i do think nixon felt shame because i think he honestly loved his country and thought in his own paranoid fantasy of a brain that he was doing what was best for himself, but also for the nation. 

i do agree with you that shame was not the primary factor in his resigning, as you pointed out, he explored several options that would allow him to stay, and there were none.

i'm not a nixon scholar nor am i old enough to have experienced any of it in real time.  but i do have an ounce of respect for the fact that he lost in 1960 as the vp and accepted it.  it's not much, but it's way more than will ever see from the orange clown, also known as unpresident fuckface.

we didn't even know what abuse of power was until we saw what the trump mob was capable of.  i still don't really know the guardrails that exist that would stop him had any of the shit actually been 'allowed' to happen.  it's mystifying.

 

Somewhere on youtube, you'll find Harry Shearer's "Nixon's the One".   It's pretty great. 

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3 hours ago, Chewbacca said:

He had enough shame that he eventually left office of his own accord.  Do you believe any current member of the Republican party would do the same?  

He didn’t leave because of shame. He quit before he could get fired.

Edit: I see hpslugga already has that covered.

Edited by WhatTheBuck
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The thing is Fox news is to News in the US what Izvestia is in Russia.  Izvestia literally translates to "The News" in Russian and is as appropriate a moniker as the News is in Fox News.

18 hours ago, horn4life said:

Just went to the Fox News website. No mention at all  anywhere on the site about the January 6th Committee.  

Too bad Newt Gingrich was such a scumbag that he spearheaded allowing foreign ownership of broadcast TV stations.  Before then foreign ownership was prohibited.  Now we have a foreign controlled (yes I know they became US citizens strictly for tax purposes) that caters to lying to the right wing for money. 

Not one fucking mention at all.  Imagine going through your life terrified of the Truth creeping in?  Must suck to be Republican.  Voting alongside Nazi's, White Nationalists, Proud Boys, as well as a rich assortment of bigots, garden variety white trash racists, and traitors would bother a lot of folks.  

They have a whole social media network called the Truth.  I find it ironic that the Russian newspaper, Pravda, translates quite literally to "Truth" so the signals of it being all propaganda and disinformation are front and center.  Probably a lot of Russian social media manipulators there too.

 

17 hours ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

 

 

 

And here it is in practice, not to spread The Truth but DJT's "truth"

Edited by TexasEd
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2 hours ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

And, apparently, made a small fortune playing poker.  Another thing dotard is really bad at.

I’m not sure Trump knows how to play poker. But if he does then I’ll bet he’d be the sort of player who thinks he can get away with bluffing on every losing hand. Then when he goes home a loser he’d say, ‘Meh, what do I care? I’m rich!’ And then every once in awhile he’d have a lucky night where he catches a good run of cards and goes home a winner. That’s all he’d remember and in his mind he’s a winning poker player.

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3 hours ago, Chewbacca said:

He had enough shame that he eventually left office of his own accord.  Do you believe any current member of the Republican party would do the same?  

He left because he wanted to avoid the shame of being removed by the Senate in the impeachment process.  It's the equivalent of not arguing with a bouncer when they tell you to leave the club instead of getting them to throw you in the street.

Now a days the bouncers don't bother to enforce anything, they cheer on the assholes trying to grab women by the pussy.

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12 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

So this British documentary film subpoena. This footage was a big secret until just a little while ago and that’s why the subpoena just happened?

I’m looking forward to the footage showing what a two-faced lying cunt Ivanka is.

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21 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

So this British documentary film subpoena. This footage was a big secret until just a little while ago and that’s why the subpoena just happened?

Yes, the committee was not aware of it's existence until they started flipping over rocks and found things writhing in the sun

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The parallels to Watergate are interesting:

Nixon's "White House Plumbers" were a big part of his above-the-law operations, contributing to his downfall.   Some of the Plumbers went to prison.

Trump's White House Plumbers were frequently called in to unclog a rancid mixture of orange, greasy turds and pages of top secret memos that Trump flushed down his shitter.

I am not sure which group of Plumbers had it worse.

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watching coverage today, mostly interviews, reactions, etc to yesterday's hearings.  the overwhelming sentiment is "well thanks to some republican local officials having a backbone, the attempt to subvert the democratic process didn't work."  which while on the surface is ~accurate, i'll offer this as a "however":  
the election workers got threatened.  the sec of states and all other local election board members got threatened.  the intimidation across the board at the behest of trump and his thugs was consistent and relentless.  but now people are saying "thank god it did not work".  yeah, ok.  that's not how threats and intimidation tactics work.
how many of these poll workers are going to be there in 22 and 24?  not many.  how many centrist, moderate, or democratic leaning people who were thinking about working the polls in 22 or 24 are going to volunteer?  not many.  how many gqp, trumpers, redhats, white supremacists (the people who've been making the threats) will try to take these positions?  i would guess a lot. 
that's not a pattern, that's a plan.  that's how intimidation works.  if i scare you today, i don't need to scare you tomorrow, because you're already the fuck outta there, because why deal with it.  it's not worth it to most of these volunteers, civil servants, poll workers, local govt types.  it just isn't.
so to anyone who says "thank god it did not work", they should revise it to say, "thank god it did not work in 2020."  as for 2022 and 2024, it is already working. 
yesterday's testimony from the poll worker was damning and scary.  hearing the threats from the ariz gop guy was scary.  it needs to be heard, but at the same time, it's hurting the cause.  same as cheney, kinzinger, the lot of them.  they're not switching sides and becoming democrats, they're getting the fuck out of dodge. 
the guard rails are being dismantled as we sit here and hope something changes.  something already is.

And add in the fact that the official from Arizona said today he would STILL vote for Trump in 2024 because “Joe Biden” and well ……

We fucked.
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2 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

watching coverage today, mostly interviews, reactions, etc to yesterday's hearings.  the overwhelming sentiment is "well thanks to some republican local officials having a backbone, the attempt to subvert the democratic process didn't work."  which while on the surface is ~accurate, i'll offer this as a "however":  

the election workers got threatened.  the sec of states and all other local election board members got threatened.  the intimidation across the board at the behest of trump and his thugs was consistent and relentless.  but now people are saying "thank god it did not work".  yeah, ok.  that's not how threats and intimidation tactics work.

how many of these poll workers are going to be there in 22 and 24?  not many.  how many centrist, moderate, or democratic leaning people who were thinking about working the polls in 22 or 24 are going to volunteer?  not many.  how many gqp, trumpers, redhats, white supremacists (the people who've been making the threats) will try to take these positions?  i would guess a lot. 

that's not a pattern, that's a plan.  that's how intimidation works.  if i scare you today, i don't need to scare you tomorrow, because you're already the fuck outta there, because why deal with it.  it's not worth it to most of these volunteers, civil servants, poll workers, local govt types.  it just isn't.

so to anyone who says "thank god it did not work", they should revise it to say, "thank god it did not work in 2020."  as for 2022 and 2024, it is already working. 

yesterday's testimony from the poll worker was damning and scary.  hearing the threats from the ariz gop guy was scary.  it needs to be heard, but at the same time, it's hurting the cause.  same as cheney, kinzinger, the lot of them.  they're not switching sides and becoming democrats, they're getting the fuck out of dodge. 

the guard rails are being dismantled as we sit here and hope something changes.  something already is.

All of this.  I said it earlier, but this isn't about Jan 6, 2021.  It's about every Jan 6 and every election going forward.  I'm afraid not enough people understand this and we are going to lose.

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7 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Nixon I think had a similar lust for power to Trump.  But he was mental in a different way that actually made him somewhat less toxic.  He was also eleventy jillion times smarter than Trump and ultimately understood (that's key) and respected American institutions.

At a minimum, Nixon had policy positions that he actually believed in.

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2 hours ago, Satchel said:

At a minimum, Nixon had policy positions that he actually believed in.

At least he had some vestiges of being an Eisenhower Republican who believed the government could still work. He was pro-science and cared about the environment. He created the EPA and passed the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. And he wasn’t beholden to the religious nuts. Back then the evangelicals weren’t involved in politics. They were free to live their lives as they pleased but they weren’t given the power to impose their beliefs on others.

Reagan turned all of that upside down. Modern Republicans want to get rid of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, deny science, eliminate the EPA, and they are totally in the grip of the evangelicals. 

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Maggie Habberman has seen the new Jan. 6 footage. They have anxiety because what Ivanka said under oath is not true.

 

Haberman, a CNN contributor, went on to say that “what she said under oath is what she actually believed, but what she said in that video was at odds and it was a real reminder of how little people were saying to Donald Trump’s face about what they thought about what he was doing.”

Haberman described the video footage as having included three interviews with Trump including one following Jan. 6. She said that Trump campaign officials were “stunned” when they heard from Politico about the footage.


https://www.mediaite.com/tv/maggie-haberman-reports-trump-family-has-some-anxiety-about-what-they-said-in-new-jan-6-footage 

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58 minutes ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

Maggie Habberman has seen the new Jan. 6 footage. They have anxiety because what Ivanka said under oath is not true.

 

Haberman, a CNN contributor, went on to say that “what she said under oath is what she actually believed, but what she said in that video was at odds and it was a real reminder of how little people were saying to Donald Trump’s face about what they thought about what he was doing.”

Haberman described the video footage as having included three interviews with Trump including one following Jan. 6. She said that Trump campaign officials were “stunned” when they heard from Politico about the footage.


https://www.mediaite.com/tv/maggie-haberman-reports-trump-family-has-some-anxiety-about-what-they-said-in-new-jan-6-footage 

Or what she said in the documentary isn't true. The quote in the article talking about what Haberman said doesn't seem overly damning IF what Ivanka said under oath is the actual truth.

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4 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

Maggie Habberman has seen the new Jan. 6 footage. They have anxiety because what Ivanka said under oath is not true.

 

Haberman, a CNN contributor, went on to say that “what she said under oath is what she actually believed, but what she said in that video was at odds and it was a real reminder of how little people were saying to Donald Trump’s face about what they thought about what he was doing.”

Haberman described the video footage as having included three interviews with Trump including one following Jan. 6. She said that Trump campaign officials were “stunned” when they heard from Politico about the footage.


https://www.mediaite.com/tv/maggie-haberman-reports-trump-family-has-some-anxiety-about-what-they-said-in-new-jan-6-footage 

This is all going to come down to the costanza defense and it’s going to work because we are a dumb society. It’s not a lie if you believe it. 

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3 hours ago, C-Man said:

Or what she said in the documentary isn't true. The quote in the article talking about what Haberman said doesn't seem overly damning IF what Ivanka said under oath is the actual truth.

She’s a Trump. She’s just like her dad. She’s duplicitous and phony and lies like a rug, just like her dad. What she said later in her testimony was just to cover her own ass. 

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