WTF do you want? He drew historical parallels with the Battle of the Bulge and the current Ukrainian struggle in the snow. He paralleled their struggle for freedom with ours. He granted that our history has afforded us a comfortable freedom that they don’t have and begged us to support them in achieving a similar comfortable freedom. He came to the Joint Session from the front lines of his struggle and brought a Ukrainian flag signed by the troops in the trenches, and gave it to Congress. Did Churchill?
Given the language difficulties he couldn’t reach Churchill’s stentorian rhetoric, but he equaled or exceeded Churchill in his “butt on the line” bravery.
[Ed:] Perhaps I am in violent agreement with you.
[Ed2:] Oh, yeah, he just made MTG an also ran. Screw her.
I want(ed) him to deliver an effective speech: he did.
I want(ed) him to not screw up: he didn’t.
I want(ed) him to keep it reasonably short so the senate could get back to work tonight: he did. I don’t think any premier/prime minister of Italy/France/England/Spain/Germany would have had the gorm to shut up at 20 minues.
To be described as churchillian he’d have to deliver some lines that will be quoted 50, a 100 years later*. That didn’t happen. But within the limits of his diction and time allotted he did very, very well. And yes, he referenced some churchillian themes, though sensibly stuck mainly to American battle analogies. Kudos to the speechwriter, triple-kudos if Z was the main speechwriter. At one point I was expecting him to segue into “we shall fight on the rivers, we shall fight on the airports, we shall fight in the rasputitsa, we shall never surrender”. But he smartly didn’t go there, not American.
*I do wonder if his delivery of the artillery line, “it is not enough” won’t become a video meme in the near term. It was good.
He came to the Joint Session from the front lines of his struggle and brought a Ukrainian flag signed by the troops in the trenches, and gave it to Congress. Did Churchill?
Realistically, he visited a secured battlefield and reviewed victorious troops and picked up a flag. FYI, Churchill did many long distance plane flights during WWII (Yalta, Tehran, Washington) that exposed him to significant personal risk. We (the US) picked off Yamamoto on one of those category of flights. Transport planes cruised at 250-280 knots those days. You were exposed for a very long time.
(not particularly a fan of churchill, the shit he did in sub-saharan africa was an inspiration to german fascists in the 30s. There’s a reason obama had his bust moved from the white house into storage)
The one guy, the ONE, that I want to see in prison is Roger Stone. That fucker has done more damage to this country since Nixon than I can recount. Please Goddess, grant me this one wish. I’ve never asked you before
I’m older than Roger Stone. It has been my rude fate to know this evil dude’s moves from the get-go. His crimes are legion. At the top of the list is his Brooks Brothers Riot. The Brooks Brothers riot was a demonstration at a meeting of election canvassers in Miami-Dade County, Florida, on November 22, 2000, during a recount of votes made during the 2000 United States presidential election, with the goal of shutting down the recount. That trick worked. Hence Bush-Cheney, Iraq, the whole catastrophe.
If they settle, it should be not only for a pile of money but for a stipulation that the allegations against Fox are accurate and that named Fox personnel did commit the torts in question. Not a “We don’t admit guilt but hand you a pile of money and seal the record” settlement. Only rarely do you see the admission-of-guilt settlements, and only when it’s possible that a trial would be far worse. (I notice that Fox has mostly avoided the kind of behavior that would lead to exemplary/punitive damages on top of actual. That could be real money.)
Don’t be conflicted. My Kroger has had the same employees for the 20 plus years I’ve been going there. No need to patronize the Publix. And even the Walton’s are less awful than the Princess of Publix.
Reading all of this makes me feel a bit hopeless. Even if every single one of these folks is indicted, tried, convicted and imprisoned, it feels like that would just be the tip of the American Fascist Iceberg (AFI).
How many Fancellis are out there, willing to throw millions at what is obviously a coup attempt? How many lawyers willing to use the loopholes of the law to undermine the law itself? How many law enforcement agents at local, state and federal levels are waiting in the wings for the right spark, the right momentum? How many military brass share Flynn’s belief that democracy is a flawed alternative to authoritarianism, the former to be tolerated until the latter can be secured?
How do we change the minds of these people? I suspect we never will. Which means our nation will always be sitting on a precipice, just one charismatic strong man away from the Fourth Reich.
Don’t become the victim of your fears! The American Fascist Iceberg is smaller than you think.
There are some Fancellis out there, and some other knuckleheads in all walks of life.
But most of the American people didn’t vote for Donald Trump, were horrified by the events of January 6, 2021, and remain committed to the American experiment. Thomas Jefferson said that though some might doubt the strength of our form of government, “I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern.”
Look around, not just at the J6 Committee and the Department of Justice, but look at the people you meet and encounter each day. Many of them have a great love of democracy and believe in fair play and justice for all. Don’t lose hope.
The downside of the timing of the final release this week is much of the information will be lost in the holiday shuffle with only reporters poring over the vast amount of information.
After New Years we will get a refresh of the most salient points but it is going to take a collective effort of a group of enterprising reporters and/or House members to rethread the many parts of this report.
With the R’s taking over the House in mid-January they will do everything they can to wave the ‘shiny things’ to distract us with some deep dive of the Hunter Biden hard drive.
It will be up to Jack Smith and Garland to complete the task.
I’m watching Georgia in January for a real headline after New Years.
I’m also a tad older than Roger (by six months!), and I’ve followed that slimy ratfucker since Nixon and his Dirty Tricksters Days, along with his buddy, Paulie Manafort. He was born without the brain capacity to develop a frontal lobe – an embryological gene mutation. Hence, no moral compass. A mutant.
Rhodes is in full victim mode. He thought his moment was J6, it turned out that his moment placed him on the wrong side of history and the law. Now, this dumbass is crying and unwilling to take responsibility for his actions. The Jews were persecuted and killed just for being Jewish, while Rhodes, an Ivy League trained Lawyer, decided to step outside the law, lead an insurrection attempt and is now going to prison, but HE is persecuted. Sorry Elmer, you weren’t persecuted, you were prosecuted. Didn’t you learn the difference in law school???
