Monday, February 15, 2021

The Return of Donald Trump (Updated)

It's nice to dream about, but the fact is he is never coming back:

"A central issue in last week’s impeachment trial was whether former President Donald J. Trump deserves a political future, but his acquittal sparked speculation on Sunday about the electoral prospects of another Trump: his daughter-in-law, Lara. Senator Richard M. Burr’s decision to vote for the conviction of Trump incensed many Republicans in his home state of North Carolina, and in doing so reignited talk that Trump, a native of Wilmington, N.C., would seek the Senate seat Burr will vacate in 2022. “My friend Richard Burr just made Lara Trump almost the certain nominee for the Senate seat in North Carolina to replace him if she runs,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said in an interview on Fox News on Sunday. Trump did not respond to a request for comment. One senior Republican official with knowledge of her plans said that the Jan. 6 riot soured her desire to seek office, but that she would decide over the next few months whether to run as part of a coordinated Trump family comeback. If negotiating a post-Donald-Trump world has been a disorienting experience for Republicans around the country, it is especially acute in North Carolina, a state that has become a polarized, and nearly deadlocked, partisan battleground. Burr’s vote, and the torrent of criticism among North Carolina Republicans that came with it, appeared likely to sharpen the differences in the primary to succeed him between staunch Trump loyalists and Republicans who see a need to appeal to educated suburban voters in a state with steadily changing demographics. “The G.O.P. base is getting smaller,” said Paul Shumaker, a veteran party strategist in Raleigh. It was not just Burr’s vote that inflamed the party’s rank and file. While the state’s junior senator, Thom Tillis, who was re-elected last year, voted to acquit the former president, Tillis used his statement after the vote to all but invite prosecutors to indict Trump, saying the former president’s “ultimate accountability is through our criminal justice system.” Trump’s allies predict that such talk would prompt a revolt from the right that would result in the election of more pro-Trump candidates, and, the thinking goes, who could be more pro-Trump than an actual Trump?"

I'm told Trump is alive and well as a Republican party force, but he is out of office and those who think they will win any election are delusional. If they could steal his reelection from him in plain sight, what makes anyone think he will ever win election again.

This stinks to me of controlled opposition and a way to keep patriots passive waiting for their hero on a white horse to come while further dividing the nation. 

As for Burr, Barr blocked any investigation of his dumping stocks just before CV hit, so..... that's why he is talking the money and running (in addition to recognizing Communi$t rule).


"Why Seven Republican Senators Voted to Convict Trump" by Catie Edmondson New York Times, Feb. 14, 2021

WASHINGTON — The seed for Senator Bill Cassidy’s decision to find Donald J. Trump guilty of inciting an insurrection was planted one day last fall, when he received an email from a friend that was full of the then-president’s false claims about a stolen election.

Alarmed that Trump’s lies were gaining credence, Mr. Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, became part of a small minority in his party — and one of only a few officials in the South — to acknowledge President Biden’s victory. Months later, after Trump’s campaign to overturn the election culminated in the Capitol riot, Cassidy was one of only seven Republican senators who voted on Saturday to convict him.

Taken at face value, Cassidy — a conservative, newly re-elected physician with a quirky streak — has little in common with the other six senators who broke with their party and found Trump guilty in the most bipartisan vote for a presidential impeachment conviction in United States history. Most were facing intense backlash on Sunday from Republicans in their states livid about the vote, as have the 10 House Republicans who supported the impeachment last month, but the senators were united by a common thread: Each of them, for their own reasons, was unafraid of political retribution from Trump or his supporters.

Why would they be afraid of those they intend to exterminate?

“Two are retiring, and three are not up until 2026, and who knows what the world will look like five years from now,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster. “It looked pretty different five years ago than it did today. All seven of them have a measure of independence that those who have to run in 2022 in a closed Republican primary just don’t have.”

Well, $ome do and it is anything but normal.

It's also being pushed their by the $elf-$erving pre$$.

For Cassidy, it was a sense of outrage at the former president’s actions, starting long before the assault on Jan. 6, that played the dominant role.

“That anger simmers in the background,” Mr. Cassidy said. “It still angers me,” he continued. “It just angers the heck out of me.”

Looks like he has a problem with anger.

Many Republicans privately shared Cassidy’s rage, but the fact that only seven of them were ultimately willing to find Trump guilty underscored the extraordinary fealty the former president still commands in the party.

Even with Trump out of the White House, Republican lawmakers have been reluctant to cross the former president for fear of invoking his wrath and infuriating the primary voters who still adore him. All but one of the Republicans who voted to convict Trump will not face voters at the ballot box for years — or ever again, in the case of two who are set to retire in 2022. 

Why would they fear anyone who no longer has power?

Cassidy won re-election in November, as did two others who voted to convict the former president — Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Ben Sasse of Nebraska — meaning they have five years before their names will appear on a ballot. Two others, Senators Richard M. Burr of North Carolina and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, are retiring. The other two, Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, have long since established their willingness to break with their party, and particularly with Trump.

In my view, the 2020 election was the end of elections in this country.

If Whitney and Lendmen know it was stolen, then everybody does.

Murkowski is the only one of the group facing re-election next year, making her vote the most politically risky of them all.

She famously returned to Washington even after losing a Republican primary in 2010 by defeating both the Republican and Democratic nominees in an audacious write-in campaign, and she has appeared untroubled by the potential political consequences of her vote......

Yeah, they were fixing elections long before 2020.



I'm told the Trump’s acquittal further polarizes factions of GOP when all it really does is clear out the $cum, and it is of no matter anyway when you flip the page:

"Biden Takes Center Stage With Ambitious Agenda as Trump’s Trial Ends" by Michael D. Shear New York Times, Feb. 14, 2021

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s allies say that with the distraction of the impeachment trial of his predecessor now over, he will quickly press for passage of his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan before moving on to an even bigger agenda in Congress that includes infrastructure, immigration, criminal justice reform, climate change and health care.

He has brought back the UnAffordable Care Act as a springboard to health coverage for all, and they forgot the gun grab even though it is as urgent now as ever.

As for the climate:

"A historic Arctic outbreak continues to bring a bone-chilling deep freeze to the central United States, as the coldest air in generations plunges south and is accompanied by snow and ice all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Some cities will see their lowest temperatures in more than a century as high-impact winter storms roll across the country. Temperatures about 50 degrees below average occupy an enormous swath of the central United States, stretching from the Rockies to the Mississippi Valley and the Midwest. At least 15 states could see temperatures of minus-10 or colder, while lows near the US-Canada border flirt with minus-40. More than 50 million people could see temperatures dip below zero during the next several days as the record-setting deep freeze envelops the country. Depending on its effect on agriculture and the broader economy, this cold snap could end up on the list of 2021′s billion-dollar weather events because of its wide scope, duration, and severity. The barrage of storminess and extreme cold can be traced back to an early January disruption of the polar vortex, which allowed lobes of extreme cold to ebb south over North America, Europe, and Asia. A weaker polar vortex has a tougher time bottling up Arctic air at high latitudes. The cold pattern looks to ease late in the week, along with a moderation in temperatures and, perhaps, a slight quieting of the weather pattern....."

That means POWER OUTAGES and FOOD SUPPLY DAMAGE that is a GOOD THING?!

What if he doesn't plant or destroys his crops?

Beyond that, I pray for my Southern sisters and brothers, of whatever color, and their safety.

We know how to handle such weather up here. They don't.

Biden has so far succeeded in pushing his agenda forward even amid the swirl of the impeachment, trial and acquittal of former President Donald J. Trump. House committees are already debating parts of the coronavirus relief legislation he calls the American Rescue Plan. Several of the president’s cabinet members have been confirmed despite the Trump drama, and Biden’s team is pressing lawmakers for quick action when senators return from a weeklong recess.

Not only amid the swirl, but BECAUSE of IT!

That's the distraction, for if the American knew what Biden was doing he would be done now!

That's why the Capitol is empty, too.

Without the spectacle of a constitutional clash, the new president “takes center stage now in a way that the first few weeks didn’t allow,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who served as communications director for President Barack Obama. She said the end of the trial means that “2021 can finally start,” and the 43 “not guilty” votes from Senate Republicans on Saturday cast in sharp relief both the political opportunities and challenges ahead for Biden: a small minority of Republican senators willing to brave the wrath of Trump’s powerful political movement by voting to convict him, while Trump continues to hold sway over most of his party.

The reality is that Trump’s influence with Republicans will be an obstacle for Biden’s priorities even with the former president’s departure from Washington. Even with control of both houses of Congress, Democrats will still need some Republican support on many of Biden’s agenda items to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.

Actually, it is more complicated than that.

“Trump certainly will continue to be a force in the Republican Party. They have to decide whether they are captive to that or not,” said Winnie Stachelberg, an executive vice president at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “President Biden has the well-being of the American people squarely in focus. He is not going to be derailed and distracted from that primary mission, whatever former President Trump is doing as a sideshow.”

Yes, for were he to come back like some say, via military installation after rounding up the criminal cla$$ of which he is a part, this nation would be torn asunder even more than it is right now.

In recent days, senior members of Biden’s team have begun internal meetings at the White House to discuss what the next phase of his agenda will look like and how it will be rolled out, according to two top White House advisers. Some of that could be revealed publicly in March, when Biden is expected to deliver a joint address to Congress, as is traditional in a president’s first year in office.

Administration officials acknowledge that there will now be more public attention on Biden, a reality they plan to capitalize on early this week with the president’s first substantive trip outside Washington. Biden will participate in a CNN town-hall-style event on Tuesday in Milwaukee and will travel to another part of the country on Thursday, officials said.

“There will be more of a spotlight on it than there was last week for understandable reasons,” said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary. “Now it can return to a focus on the president’s agenda of getting relief into the hands of the American people.”

Public polls show the president’s agenda to be broadly popular, even among some Republicans. That has contributed to pressure from Democratic progressives to forgo any compromises with Republicans that could water down Biden’s policy proposals, and Republicans — who are still adjusting to their loss of the Senate and the White House — have not yet coalesced around a consistent substantive attack on the president’s agenda.

That is where they lost me. 

As soon as they lie in an article, that's it!

“He may be able to rally more of the country to his side when it comes to support for the agenda because of the lack of a cohesive Republican argument,” Ms. Palmieri said of Mr. Biden, but with razor-thin margins in Congress, the president’s hopes for swift enactment of an ambitious agenda are more likely if he can count on at least some Republican support, and Trump’s hold on the party looms over the prospect of bipartisan cooperation.

Looks like he has got a handful of them.

For the first 24 days of Biden’s presidency, Trump was a constant presence — not on the Twitter account he is banned from using but as the target of impeachment for inciting an insurrection to prevent his own ouster. Reporters camped out in Palm Beach, Fla., as cable networks broadcast wall-to-wall coverage of the Senate trial that would decide his fate. 

The pre$$ has no problem with the censorship of the President of the United States!

Related:

"As an opinion writer for Florida Today’s editorial board, Isadora Rangel often took officials to task in deep-red Brevard County, where every county commissioner is a Republican. So when Rangel left for her new job at the Miami Herald this week, Brevard County commissioners used their political authority to bid her good riddance. They debated a resolution “honoring” her with sarcastic praise for her writing — and thinly veiled swipes at her background as an immigrant. The “Resolution honoring Florida Today Reporter Isadora Rangel” passed 5 to 0. As the lone opinion writer at Florida Today, Rangel had often criticized the commission. Rangel had already started her new job on the Miami Herald editorial board last week when someone emailed her video of the meeting. “They feel entitled to use that time devoted to county issues for personal issues,” Rangel told The Washington Post. “Is that really what government is about?”

Gave her the old one-finger salute did they?

Biden tried hard to distance himself from the debate over whether to hold Trump accountable for the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, fearing he would lose momentum on his agenda.

That's another lie because Joe mumbled he must held accountable.

Even with the trial over, Trump does not appear to want to lose his grip on the nation’s psyche. Aides to the former president say Mr. Trump plans to hold a news conference from Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home, in the coming days. In a statement immediately after the trial ended, Trump, who has expressed interest in running for president again in 2024, hinted that he has no plans to disappear from television screens or the political lives of Republicans in Congress.

“Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun,” the former president wrote. “In the months ahead I have much to share with you, and I look forward to continuing our incredible journey together to achieve American greatness for all of our people. There has never been anything like it!”

Hollow words when he is no longer in charge of anything after a landslide win, and it looks to me like the only psyche he has a grip of is the political cla$$ as represented by the pre$$.

I have been over the loss for weeks and accept Communist rule under Biden. 

HE ain't going back, hey! 

Time to DEAL WITH IT, Trump turds!

Presidents often continue to refer to their predecessors long after they have given up the world’s biggest bully pulpit.

When Obama took office in 2009, he vowed to end the “cowboy diplomacy” of his predecessor, George W. Bush, and blamed him for the country’s economic woes. In 2017, Trump repeatedly disparaged Obama’s achievements as a way of promoting the change he said was necessary, but perhaps more than any previous president, Biden has used Trump as an effective political foil, constructing his agenda almost completely as a repudiation of Trump’s policies and personal behavior during his four tumultuous years in office.

That it is because he was an impediment to the globali$t order, and Obama did anything but by starting regime change operations in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine, and who benefited?

Biden’s first actions on Day 1 were a blitz of executive orders intended to undo many of Trump’s policies in a single day, and he often casts his broader agenda as the necessary response to actions taken — or not taken — by his predecessor. Late last week, he said again that Trump’s administration had left the government with too few tools to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

“What we thought was available, in terms of everything from vaccine to vaccinators, was not the case,” Mr. Biden told a bipartisan group of mayors and governors.

So much for the warp speed vaccine.

Joe Lockhart, who served as press secretary for President Bill Clinton, said that the most important thing Biden can do to advance his broad agenda is to be successful in the fight against the pandemic and the efforts to repair the battered economy.

Going to call it off are they?

“Where he will gain political capital is the comparison of his handling of the pandemic to the disastrous effort by the Trump administration,” Lockhart said. The end of the impeachment trial, he said, “clears the way for people to focus on that.”

The question for Biden is whether he can take advantage of the political breathing room to build support for his proposals, and if he can, will the public pressure be enough to persuade Republicans in Congress to buck Mr. Trump’s influence?

Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a close ally of the president’s, said Biden would continue pressing for bipartisan cooperation on the coronavirus relief bill and other priorities, but he said that he was confident the president would not let opposition from Republicans deter him.

“He is moving forward on relief that has the support of three-quarters of the American people,” Mr. Coons said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, “and from the way he spoke at his inauguration to the actions he’s taken in his first couple of weeks, he is showing us what real presidential leadership looks like, in sharp contrast to his predecessor.”

He comes up below later.


Related:

"In 1898, the US battleship Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana Harbor, killing more than 260 crew members and bringing the United States closer to war with Spain." 

Some say that was the false flag that led to the AmeriKan Empire.

Also see:

"President Joe Biden will speak at a virtual meeting of the world’s major economies on Friday to discuss the coronavirus pandemic and global vaccination distribution, according to the White House. Biden is expected to speak about the need for a global response to the pandemic and to recommit the U.S. to multilateral engagement, a stark contrast from President Donald Trump, who developed an isolationist foreign policy that saw the U.S. withdraw from major global agreements and alliances. Since entering office, Biden has reversed many of Trump’s isolationist moves. During his appearance at the G-7 meeting Friday, Biden will emphasize the need for global coordination on vaccine production, distribution and supplies, as well as global efforts to prepare for and protect against future pandemics, and....."

"President Joe Biden signed an executive order Sunday relaunching a White House office aimed at fostering cooperation between the federal government and faith-based and secular community organizations. The order reestablishes the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, a 20-year-old initiative first put in place by President George W. Bush. The White House said the office’s early goals under Biden will include working to “address the COVID-19 pandemic and boost economic recovery; combat systemic racism; increase opportunity and mobility for historically disadvantaged communities; and strengthen pluralism.” In a statement, Biden suggested that such partnerships are particularly important at a time when the pandemic has created considerable uncertainty and suffering. “This is not a nation that can, or will, simply stand by and watch the suffering around us. That is not who we are. That is not what faith calls us to be,” he said. The office will be led by Melissa Rogers, who served in the same role during President Barack Obama’s second term....."

The truth is, the Biden regime is the third Obama administration, so this is going to really suck.

Whatever happened to separation of church and state anyway?

{@@##$$%%^^&&}

Speaking of State religion:

"Commission may be main option to try to hold Trump accountable for his role in attack" by Emily Cochrane New York Times, February 14, 2021

Following the acquittal of former president Donald Trump, there are growing calls among lawmakers for a bipartisan commission to investigate the administrative and law enforcement failures that failed to stop the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill and recommend changes for how to prevent another siege.

Such a commission appears to be the main remaining option for Congress to try to hold Trump to some accountability for his role in the attack. Top lawmakers have squashed a post-impeachment censure of the former president, and the possibility of barring Trump from holding office again under the 14th Amendment seems remote.

Lawmakers in both parties have called for a commission modeled after the bipartisan panel established after the Sept. 11 attacks, with Representative Madeleine Dean, a Pennsylvania Democrat and an impeachment manager, on Sunday describing it as “an impartial commission, not guided by politics, filled with people who would stand up to the courage of their conviction.”

They have now confirmed the false flag nature of the event.

Former president George W. Bush signed a law establishing the Sept. 11 commission in 2002, mandated to investigate what caused the attack, what might have stopped it, and outline how to prevent a similar attack from occurring. The commission ultimately offered three dozen recommendations for how to reshape intelligence coordination and congressional oversight.

“We need a 9/11 commission to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again, and I want to make sure that the Capitol footprint can be better defended next time,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, on “Fox News Sunday.”

Well, take up the complaint with Nancy and Mitch because they refused Guard help and left Capitol Police overwhelmed -- on purpose, of course, so we could have the last 5+ weeks!

Beyond that, Bush fought the establishment of a commission tooth and nail (for obvious reasons), so....

Democrats, who abruptly dropped what had been a successful demand for witnesses during the final day of the trial, on Sunday framed a possible commission as a way to not only understand the failures that had led to the breach of the Capitol, but also to underscore Trump’s role in the events of the day.

“There’s still more evidence that the American people need and deserve to hear,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, on ABC’s “This Week,” adding that a commission would “make sure that we secure the Capitol going forward and lay bare the record of just how responsible” Trump was for the attack.

OMG!

Then WHY the RUSHED IMPEACHMENT, 'eh?

What a CLOWN!!

Before the impeachment trial, there had been some discussion of a bipartisan censure resolution in lieu of going forward with a trial, but lawmakers quickly abandoned the idea as the trial moved forward, in part because Democrats had demanded stronger language than what Republicans were comfortable with.

I have some language I would like to let loose right now.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, at a news conference Saturday, declared such a resolution to be “a slap in the face of the Constitution.”

“We censure people for using stationery for the wrong purpose,” she said. “We don’t censure people for inciting insurrection that kills people in the Capitol.”

Nor do they censure or impeachment for war crimes like torture and aggressive invasions based on lies. 


An independent 9/11 style commission, which probably would require legislation to create, would elevate the investigation a step higher, offering a definitive government-backed accounting of events.....

Otherwise known as the "official story" which is usually a pack of outlandish lies.


Also see:


Myanmar's military did what ours should have, but it is too late now.


As predicted, and as if CV wasn't enough:

"Guinea is fighting a new outbreak of Ebola, health officials in the West African nation said Sunday, with at least three deaths in a region that was previously the starting point for the world’s worst epidemic of the disease. “The government reassures the people that all measures are being taken to curb this epidemic as quickly as possible,” Guinea’s Health Ministry said Sunday in a Facebook post. The government asked people to report any further symptoms to health authorities and follow hygiene and prevention measures. It also said it would accelerate delivery of vaccines to the region and open a center to deal with detected cases. Guinea had not seen an Ebola case since 2016, when it came to the end of an epidemic that began in its southeastern region in 2014. That outbreak, the deadliest so far, spread through neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone, eventually infecting more than 28,000 people in 10 countries and killing more than 11,000......"


"In 2020, the US government said Americans who were on board a cruise ship under quarantine in Japan because of the coronavirus would be flown back home on a chartered flight, but that they would face another two-week quarantine; about 380 Americans were aboard the Diamond Princess. China reported 143 new coronavirus deaths, but a dip in the number of new cases; the World Health Organization praised China’s efforts to contain the new disease."

A year ago they were praising China, huh?

{@@##$$%%^^&&}

"Wall Street regulators signal tougher approach to industry after GameStop frenzy" by Tory Newmyer and Matt Zapotosky  Washington Post, Feb. 14, 2021

The Biden administration is sending a clear signal to Wall Street that the industry’s Washington cops are back on the beat. Regulators and federal prosecutors are probing potential misconduct in the GameStop trading frenzy, as the Securities and Exchange Commission moves to restore harsher penalties on wrongdoers.

Attorneys in the Justice Department’s criminal division are conducting a wide-ranging investigation into possible market manipulation from the trading surrounding GameStop, and recently issued a subpoena to Robinhood as part of that, a person familiar with the matter said. The probe, though, appears to be in its early stages.

SEC acting chair Allison Herren Lee in a radio interview earlier this month said the agency already is investigating the matter “from a number of different angles, and they’re very significant.”

Specifically, she indicated the agency is looking into whether brokers such as Robinhood complied with regulations when they limited trading in certain so-called “meme stocks,” and she said the agency is looking for signs of market manipulation amid the trading mania. A Robinhood spokesman declined to comment.

Beyond the GameStop probe, Lee said Thursday that the agency is reversing a policy that shielded financial firms settling charges from further punishment. Under the Trump-era approach, the SEC bundled settlement agreements with waivers that allowed the targeted companies to continue raising money in public markets.

Is that what you thought you were getting under Biden, you fools?

You all threw in with him to back the steal!

Doidn't know you were dealing with Communi$ts, huh?

Of course, I don't expect this to go anywhere other than the continuation of the kickbacks, ;'er, fines of extortion by the government.

I mean, Biden has been a corporate $wamp creature and $ervant for over forty years.

Lee in a statement said the new policy marks a “return to the division’s long-standing practice” and ensures “that the consideration of waivers is forward looking and focused on protecting investors, the market, and market participants from those who fail to comply with the law.”

The question is WHICH ONES?

The same day, the SEC announced it suspended trading in SpectraScience, a defunct company that had seen its stock zoom amid social media chatter. The agency said in a statement that “certain social media accounts may be engaged in a coordinated attempt” to boost the share price of the company, a Minnesota-based business that had not filed any reports since 2017.

The suspension itself was unremarkable. The SEC acted similarly more than 100 times last year, but the agency used the move as an opportunity to remind investors they should “exercise tremendous caution when investing based on social media or a sudden surge of enthusiasm for a particular security, especially where that interest does not appear tied to any news about the company or industry,” Melissa Hodgman, the acting head of the agency’s enforcement division, said in a statement.

OMG, the WHOLE THING was another STAGED EVENT for our con$umption and the u$ual intere$ts!

Taken together, the SEC’s moves “certainly signal a changing of the guard,” said Philip Moustakis, a former senior counsel in the SEC’s enforcement division now with Seward & Kissel, but the matter is poised to get further scrutiny in the coming week, when the House Financial Services Committee convenes a Thursday hearing on it. The panel’s witness list so far includes Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, Melvin Capital CEO Gabriel Plotkin, Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, and Keith Gill, the trader with a huge online following who helped set off the GameStop surge.

Yes, the rebellion has been foiled and a new power has risen, and I've had enough show hearings to last an eternity.


The Globe is so out-of-touch these days it is time to stop and throw things into rever$e.

{@@##$$%%^^&&}

NEXT DAY UPDATES:

"Pelosi says independent commission will examine Capitol attack" by Hope Yen The Associated Press, February 15, 2021

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday that Congress will establish an independent, Sept. 11-style commission to look into the deadly insurrection that took place at the US Capitol.

Pelosi said the commission will “investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the January 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex . . . and relating to the interference with the peaceful transfer of power.”


The Pelosi Commission simply confirms the false flag quality of the staged events, which is why the Capitol police chief’s request for National Guard help was denied ahead of the event.

In a letter to Democratic colleagues, Pelosi said the House will also put forth supplemental spending to boost security at the Capitol.


After former President Trump’s acquittal at his second Senate impeachment trial, bipartisan support appeared to be growing for an independent commission to examine the deadly insurrection.

Investigations into the attack were already planned, with Senate hearings scheduled later this month in the Senate Rules Committee. Pelosi, Democrat from California, asked retired Army Lieutenant General Russel Honoré to lead an immediate review of the Capitol’s security process.

Of Katrina fame, and Pelosi says it is clear from General Honoré’s interim reporting that we must put forth a supplemental appropriation to provide for the safety of Members and the security of the Capitol.

Lawmakers from both parties, speaking on Sunday's news shows, signaled that even more inquiries were likely.

“There should be a complete investigation about what happened,” said Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump. “What was known, who knew it and when they knew, all that, because that builds the basis so this never happens again.” 

Oh, I AGREE!

Cassidy said he was “attempting to hold President Trump accountable,” and added that as Americans hear all the facts, “more folks will move to where I was.” He was censured by his state’s party after the vote. 

It is YOU who should be held to account!

An independent commission along the lines of the one that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks would probably require legislation to create. That would elevate the investigation a step higher, offering a definitive government-backed accounting of events. Still, such a panel would pose risks of sharpening partisan divisions or overshadowing President Biden’s legislative agenda.

I'm sure it will look something like this.

“There’s still more evidence that the American people need and deserve to hear and a 9/11 commission is a way to make sure that we secure the Capitol going forward,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat from Delaware, a Biden ally, “and that we lay bare the record of just how responsible and how abjectly violating of his constitutional oath President Trump really was.” 

Then why the RUSH JOB?!!

House prosecutors who argued for Trump's conviction of inciting the riot said Sunday they had proved their case. They also railed against the Senate’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and others who they said were “trying to have it both ways” in finding the former president not guilty but criticizing him at the same time.

close Trump ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, voted for acquittal but acknowledged that Trump had some culpability for the siege at the Capitol that disrupted lawmakers’ certification of Biden’s White House victory......  


I wonder how long it will take for the real truth to come out, and here is an ad that came with the story (seriously, Globe)?

Also see:


There are millions without power (hmmmmm), and the gas supplies have been cut off, and why are prices rising?

Let's face it, depending on Russia and Saudi Arabia is like bargaining with a family that hates you while trying to “steer a giant oil tanker through a narrow straight far from out of the woods.”

How many metaphors can they mix anyway?

"Like many Trump supporters, conservative donor Fred Eshelman awoke the day after the presidential election with the suspicion that something wasn’t right. His candidate’s apparent lead in key battleground states had evaporated overnight. The next day, the North Carolina financier and his advisers reached out to a small conservative nonprofit group in Texas that was seeking to expose voter fraud. After a 20-minute talk with the group’s president, their first conversation, Eshelman was sold. Over the next 12 days, Eshelman came to regret his donation and to doubt conspiracy theories of rampant illegal voting, according to court records and interviews. Now, he wants his money back. True the Vote was one of several conservative “election integrity” groups that sought to press the case in court. Though its lawsuits drew less attention than those brought by the Trump campaign, True the Vote nonetheless sought to raise more than $7 million for its investigation of the 2020 election. Documents that have surfaced in Eshelman’s litigation, along with interviews, show how True the Vote’s private assurances that it was on the cusp of revealing illegal election schemes repeatedly fizzled as the group’s focus shifted from one allegation to the next......"

That's when I knew Trump was in trouble, and never mind the grift that was going on over at the Lincoln Project, 'eh, Globe?

"Okonjo-Iweala is 1st woman, African to lead world trade body" by David McHugh Associated Press  Feb. 15, 2021

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Nigerian economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was appointed Monday to head the World Trade Organization, becoming the first woman and first African to take on the role amid rising protectionism and disagreement over how the body decides cases involving billions in sales and thousands of jobs.

Okonjo-Iweala, 66, was named director-general by representatives of the 164 countries that make up the WTO, which deals with the rules of trade between nations based on negotiated agreements.

She said during an online news conference that she was taking over at a time when the WTO “is facing so many challenges, and it's clear to me that deep and wide-ranging reforms are needed... it cannot be business as usual."

Her first priority would be quickly addressing the economic and health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as by lifting export restrictions on supplies and vaccines and encouraging the manufacturing of vaccines in more countries. Other big tasks include reforming the organization’s dispute resolution process and finding ways for trade rules to deal with change such as digitalization and e-commerce.

She takes over after four turbulent years in which U.S. President Donald Trump used new tariffs, or import taxes, against China and the European Union to push his America first trade agenda.

“It will not be easy because we also have the issue of lack of trust among members which has built up over time, not just among the U.S. and China and the U.S. and the EU ... but also between developing and developed country members, and we need to work through that,” she said.

She said that as the first woman and first African to hold the post, “I absolutely do feel an additional burden, I can't lie about that. Being the first woman and the first African means that one really has to perform.”

“All credit to members for electing me and making that history, but the bottom line is that if I want to really make Africa and women proud I have to produce results, and that's where my mind is at now."

Diver$ity means nothing when it come to globali$t in$titutions, if you know what I mean.

She hopes to break new ground and fix things in a world dominated by white supremacy(?), as they are picked off one by one by one by one, all felled by CV.

The appointment, which takes effect March 1, came after U.S. President Joe Biden endorsed her candidacy, which had been blocked by Trump. Biden's move was a step toward his aim of supporting cooperative approaches to international problems after Trump's go-it-alone approach that launched multiple trade disputes, but unblocking the appointment is only the start in dealing with U.S. concerns about the WTO that date to the Obama administration. The United States had blocked the appointment of new judges to the WTO's appellate body, essentially freezing its ability to resolve extended and complex trade disputes.

The U.S. government has argued that the trade organization is slow-moving and bureaucratic, ill-equipped to handle the problems posed by China's state-dominated economy and unduly restrictive on U.S. attempts to impose sanctions on countries that unfairly subsidize their companies or export at unusually low prices.

Okonjo-Iweala has been Nigeria's finance minister and, briefly, foreign minister, and had a 25-year career at the World Bank as an advocate for economic growth and development in poorer countries. She rose to the No. 2 position of managing director, where she oversaw $81 billion in development financing in Africa, South Asia, Europe and Central Asia. In 2012 she made an unsuccessful bid for the top post with the backing of African and other developing countries, challenging the traditional practice that the World Bank is always headed by an American. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in regional economics and development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

South Korean trade minister Yoo Myung-hee had withdrawn her candidacy, leaving Okonjo-Iweala as the only choice. Her predecessor, Roberto Azevedo, stepped down Aug. 31, a year before his term expired.

Trump repeatedly accused the WTO of unfair treatment of the U.S., started a trade war with China in defiance of the WTO system, and threatened to pull the U.S. out of the trade body altogether. Trump also imposed 25% steel and aluminum tariffs that hit European allies on national security grounds, a justification that went beyond trade measures normally used within the WTO rules framework.

So far, Biden has not said whether the U.S. will unblock the appellate appointments, and he has not withdrawn the steel tariffs either, which are backed by industry and union groups.

Chad P. Bown, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said unblocking Okonjo-Iweala's appointment was “a very good first step” in re-engaging with the WTO, “but that's the easy one. The rest are hard.”

In particular, the WTO faces “a ticking time bomb” in the form of other countries' challenges to Trump's use of national security as a justification for imposing tariffs, a little-used provision in U.S. law rejected by key US trading partners in Europe.

Why not?

It justifies SANCTIONS!

Bown said any decision would be a lose-lose dilemma for the WTO. Ruling against Trump's move could provide a rallying cry for WTO skeptics in the U.S., while a ruling in favor could lead to other countries using national security justification as well, and that “opens a giant loophole in the trading system whereby all rules are meaningless,” Bown said. Biden's administration therefore has an incentive to take the dispute off the table before a decision, expected this summer.

“If you're the Biden administration what you want to do is settle this thing, so you don't put the WTO in this awkward position,” Bown said.

Hopefully, they can bring down the regime.


Also see:


Can't leave now, right?

Related:

"In 2001, the United States and Britain staged air strikes against radar stations and air defense command centers in Iraq."

They invited us in and we are still there:

"Parler, a Social Network That Attracted Trump Fans, Returns Online" by Jack Nicas New York Times,     Feb. 15, 2021

SAN FRANCISCO — Parler, the social network that drew millions of Trump supporters before disappearing from the internet, is back online a month after Amazon and other tech giants cut off the company for hosting calls for violence around the time of the Capitol riot.

Getting iced out by the tech giants turned Parler into a cause célèbre for conservatives who complained they were being censored, as well as a test case for the openness of the internet. It was unclear if the social network, which had positioned itself as a free speech and lightly moderated site, could survive after it had been blacklisted by the biggest tech companies.

For weeks, it appeared the answer was no, but on Monday, for the first time since Jan. 10, typing parler.com into a web browser returned a page to log into the social network — a move that had required weeks of work by the small company and that had led to the departure of its chief executive.

Parler executives did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.

After many large web-hosting firms rejected Parler, the site came back online with the help of a small provider near Los Angeles called SkySilk. Kevin Matossian, SkySilk’s chief executive, said in a statement that he was helping Parler to support free speech. For other services required to run a large website, Parler relied on help from a Russian firm that once worked for the Russian government and a Seattle firm that once supported a neo-Nazi site.

How sad is that, huh?

Parler’s return appeared to be a victory for small companies that challenge the dominance of Big Tech. The company had sought to portray its plight about the power of companies like Amazon, which stopped hosting Parler’s website on its computer servers, and Apple and Google, which removed Parler’s mobile app from their app stores.

Parler had become a hub for right-wing conversation over the past year, as millions of people on the far right had flocked to the platform over what they perceiveas censorship of conservative voices by Facebook, Twitter and Google. Much of the content on Parler was benign, but for months ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the site also hosted hate speech, misinformation and calls for violence.

They only perceive that. 

It's not real, according to the New York Slimes, as they call for a way to “govern speech in our country.”

They can start by not telling lies, hmmmmm?!!?

Days after the riot, Amazon, Apple and Google said they had cut off Parler because it showed that it could not consistently enforce its own rules against posts that incited violence. Apple and Google have said they would allow Parler’s app to return if the company could prove it could effectively police its social network.

After Amazon booted Parler from its web-hosting service, Parler sued it, accusing it of antitrust violations and breaking its contract. A federal judge said last month that Amazon’s contract allowed it to terminate service and declined to force the company to keep hosting Parler, as the start-up had requested.

Parler had more than 15 million users when it went offline and was one of the fastest growing apps in the United States. It is largely financed by Rebekah Mercer, one of the Republican Party’s biggest benefactors.

John Matze, a software engineer who was Parler’s co-founder and chief executive, said earlier this month that Mercer had effectively fired him over disagreements on how to run the site. Mercer hired Mark Meckler, a leading voice in the Tea Party movement, to replace Matze.

Before the site’s return on Monday, Parler executives had said they were rejected by multiple web-hosting companies that either feared a public-relations backlash or a cyberattack.

On Monday morning, after Parler suddenly appeared on the web again, data behind its website showed that it was being supported by SkySilk. After it went offline, Parler set up a basic webpage for people trying to visit its social network with simple messages that said the company was working to get back online. That page, which was so simple it could have been hosted from a single laptop, still required cybersecurity protections to stay online, in part because Parler has been under attack from internet vigilantes.

Parler got help from DDoS-Guard, a Russian firm, which raised concerns among some internet researchers that the Russian government could surveil Parler users. Parler also partnered with Epik, a Seattle company, for its domain registration. Epik has helped support other fringe sites that lost their support from other companies, including the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi site.....

No concerns regarding Big Tech and U.S. government surveillance, though, and I perceive the Stormer to be a controlled opposition front like so many others.


The chatter in other places is that Trump will be back in office by March, no, wait, now April (pfft! It will be way too late by then)!!

He is as politically dead as Lincoln, folks, and the hopium is mind-numbing at this stage so it is time to dump this post and ask why has he not been dumped.