Trump Charged with “inciting violence”

It really does not make any difference what anyone says about the incitement on January 6. Most Republican senators are not going to vote a guilty verdict. The comments that the Republican Party is now the Trump Party appears accurate. Trump’s inexplicable hold over the GOP is almost 100%.

But just for the discussion what is incitement, exactly? The dictionary definition of “incite,” according to Merriam-Webster, is simple: “to move to action : stir up : spur on : urge on.” Trump clearly did that, when he directed his supporters to march toward Capitol Hill from a rally held under the “Stop the Steal” banner.

But there’s a much more detailed definition in US law, which is:

“…the term ‘to incite a riot’, or ‘to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on a riot”, includes, but is not limited to, urging or instigating other persons to riot, but shall not be deemed to mean the mere oral or written (1) advocacy of ideas or (2) expression of belief, not involving advocacy of any act or acts of violence or assertion of the rightness of, or the right to commit, any such act or acts.”

Federal courts said Trump did not incite a mob back in 2016 when he told supporters to turn on protesters, who later sued the President.

The New York Times has a thorough examination of how courts have looked upon “incitement.” Read that here.

The history of “incitement”: Oliver Wendell Holmes, the First Amendment-protecting Supreme Court justice who pushed the idea that a person can’t shout fire in a crowded theater, built the “clear and present danger” test for speech. He argued Congress could only regulate speech when it represented a “present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about.”

More recently, the Supreme Court has protected all sorts of speech, like flag burning, crude political hyperbole and, importantly in this instance is Brandenburg v. Ohio, which allows advocating crime as long as it doesn’t incite imminent lawlessness.

Trump’s legal team repeatedly cited that case in a legal brief laying out their free speech-focused defense.

Most of this information is from CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf

The Exodus – Can the GOP Survive?

Angry and vindictive, Donald Trump has destroyed the Republican Party. As an independent I want to see at least two functioning political parties. That arrangement ensures that extremists do not pull the nation in a direction that does not reflect the wishes and values of most people. His positions do not reflect the historic conservative views that many Americans appreciate. He used Republican positions when they suited him. He has made the Republican Party a reflection of his opinions. Trump delights in having the support of fringe groups like QAnon and right wing militia groups and anti-Semitic hate groups that support conspiracy theories.

The GOP has been the party of big business and free trade. During the 20th and 21st centuries the party came to be associated with laissez-faire capitalism, low taxes, and conservative social policies. The modern Republican Party supports states’ rights against the power of the federal government in most cases, and it opposes the federal regulation of traditionally state and local matters, such as policing and education. The Republicans advocate reduced taxes as a means of stimulating the economy and advancing individual economic freedom. They tend to oppose extensive government regulation of the economy, government-funded social programs, affirmative action, and policies aimed at strengthening the rights of workers.

“There’s Nothing Left’: Why Thousands of Republicans Are Leaving the Party,” NYT: “An analysis of January voting records by The New York Times found that nearly 140,000 Republicans had quit the party in 25 states that had readily available data (19 states do not have registration by party). Voting experts said the data indicated a stronger-than-usual flight from a political party after a presidential election, as well as the potential start of a damaging period for G.O.P. registrations as voters recoil from the Capitol violence and its fallout.

“The biggest spikes in Republicans leaving the party came in the days after Jan. 6, especially in California, where there were 1,020 Republican changes on Jan. 5 — and then 3,243 on Jan. 7. In Arizona, there were 233 Republican changes in the first five days of January, and 3,317 in the next week. Most of the Republicans in these states and others switched to unaffiliated status” says Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

@RichardHaass: “I changed my registration to ‘no party affiliation’ after 40 years. I worked for Reagan & Bush 41 & 43. But today’s Rep Party no longer embraces the policies & principles that led me to join it. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I didn’t leave the Republican Party; the Party left me.”

Liz Cheney’s Blockbuster Fox News Interview

Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney sat for an interview with “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace in which she made clear that she has no plans of backing off her criticism of former President Donald Trump.

Her unwavering support of the rule of law and her allegiance to the constitution is not a political party issue. Every American should honor that belief. Her refusal to disavow conspiracy theories suggested by QAnon or other conspiracy groups will bring her respect from her political opponents.

Here were the key points she made to Wallace as identified by CNN’s Chris Cillizza. Her words provide the justification for finding Donald Trump guilty of the the charge of inciting a riot.

1. “The oath that I took to the Constitution compelled me to vote for impeachment and it doesn’t bend to partisanship, it doesn’t bend to political pressure. It’s the most important oath that we take.”

2. “I think, you know, that people in the party are mistaken. They believe that BLM and Antifa were behind what happened here at the Capitol. It’s just simply not the case, not true and we’re going to have a lot of work we have to do.”

3. “The extent to which the president, President Trump, for months leading up to January 6 spread the notion that the election had been stolen or that the election was rigged was a lie and people need to understand that. We need to make sure that we as Republicans are the party of truth that we are being honest about what really did happen in 2020 so we actually have a chance to win in 2022 and win the White House back in 2024.”

4. “I think this vote and conference made very clear, we are the party of Lincoln, we are not the party of QAnon or anti-Semitism or Holocaust deniers, or white supremacy or conspiracy theories. That’s not who we are.”

5. “People will want to know exactly what the president was doing. They want to know, for example, whether the tweet he sent out calling Vice President Pence a coward while the attack was underway, whether that tweet, for example, was a premeditated effort to provoke violence. There are a lot of questions that have to be answered and there will be many, many criminal investigations looking at every aspect of this and everyone who was involved, as there should be.”

6. “We have never seen that kind of an assault by a president of the United States on another branch of government and that can never happen again.”

7. “What we already know does constitute the gravest violation of his oath of office by any president in the history of the country, and this is not something that we can simply look past or pretend didn’t happen or try to move on. We’ve got to make sure this never happens again.”

8. “So it should not have gotten to the point that it did. I don’t believe the Democrats have any business determining who from the Republicans sit on committees, but we should have dealt with it ourselves.”

9. “Somebody who has provoked an attack on the United States Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral votes, which resulted in five people dying, who refused to stand up immediately when he was asked and stop the violence, that — that is a person who does not have a role as a leader of our party going forward.”

10. “We have to make sure that we are able to convey to the American voters, we are the party of responsibility, we are the party of truth, that we actually can be trusted to handle the challenges this nation faces like Covid, and that’s going to require us to focus on substance and policy and issues going forward but we should not be embracing the former president.”

An Administration of Diversity

We are seeing the destruction of White Christian America as diversity of race, religions and sexual orientation that are being introduced by President Biden. The change won’t be easy for those White Christian’s. Their support of Donald Trump is an exemplar of what is likely to come in the coming years. Richard T. Hughes, a professor emeritus of religion at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles calls the coming change The Dying of Christian America in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece.

Here is a list of some Biden appointments of non-Christian members of his staff. Lots of of Blacks and Jews but many other races and religions.

Biden’s latest appointment of Dr. Rachel Levine as his assistant secretary of health sends a message and this is it. I don’t care anything about your zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. I care about your expertise.

Chief of Staff is Ron Klain, Jewish, attorney, political consultant, and former lobbyist.

Michael S. Regan Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

Gina Raimondo. Secretary of commerce, 75th governor of Rhode Island, Of Italian descent

Lloyd J. Austin III, Black, retired four-star Army general

Miguel Cardona. Secretary of Education, was Connecticut commissioner of education.

Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Born in Sacramento, California, to Mexican parents, Becerra graduated from Stanford University and received his Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School. He previously was a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Downtown Los Angeles in Congress from 1993 to 2017. Attorney General of California since 2017.

Alejandro Mayorkas, , Secretary of Homeland Security, American lawyer and government official. Born in Cuba, he grew up in Los Angeles. Served as U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California.

Marcia L. Fudge, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Black, a lawyer who served more than three decades, beginning with the Cuyahoga County Ohio Prosecutor’s Office.

Deb Haaland, secretary of Interior, a Native American active in tribal management.

Merrick B. Garland, Attorney General, Jewish, serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He has served on that court since 1997.

Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, Jewish, has been active in government served in the State Department and in senior positions on the National Security Council staff. He was also a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (2001–2002)

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation, Gay, former U.S. Navy intelligence officer and mayor of South Bend Indiana.

Janet Yellen, Secretary of Treasury, Jewish, former Chair of the Federal Reserve.

Cecilia Rouse, Economic advisers chair, Black, economist and dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

Michael S. Regan, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Black, Was secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality. He is a former air quality specialist in the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Neera Tanden, Director of office of management and budget, parents were Indian migrants to the United States, graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Yale Law School.

Isabel Guzman, Administrator Small Business Administration

Katherine Tai, Trade Representative and is currently an American attorney who serves as the chief trade counsel for the United States House Committee on Ways and Means.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, UN Ambassador, Black, served as the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the United States Department of State’s Bureau of African Affairs from 2013 to 2017.

Reema Dodin. Deputy Director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, Palestinian Muslim woman.

Our Economically Divided Society

This is obvious. The new Biden administration is inheriting a seriously damaged economy. The decline in payroll employment reflects the recent increase in coronavirus (COVID-19) cases and efforts to contain the pandemic.

The BLS December report said this:
“In December, 15.8 million persons reported that they had been unable to work because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic-that is, they did not work at all or worked fewer hours at some point in the last 4 weeks due to the pandemic.”

“This measure is 1.0 million higher than in November. Among those who reported in December that they were unable to work because of pandemic-related closures or lost business, 12.8 percent received at least some pay from their employer for the hours not worked, little changed from November.”

After trending down to 787,000 new jobless claims from a high of over 6 million at the end of March 2020, the new claims jumped to 965,000 last week.

This situation was obviously driven by the continuing and growing impact of COVID-19.

However as the virus continues to spread car sales have been surging. Home sales have been surging. The stock market set an all time high this month.

These realities reflect on the fact that we have an enormously divided society between the haves and the have-nots.

For the better educated, who hold white collar jobs, their accumulation of wealth has created a whole class of people — at least the top 20% or so of earners — who’ve had to worry little about such things as having a job. And as lockdowns gripped the nation, millions of people, especially those at the upper end of America’s socio-economic ladder, were able to redirect money they would have otherwise spent on things like entertainment, dining and travel toward savings or, better yet, investments. With the rising stock market their wealth has grown significantly.

The continuing pandemic isn’t ending any time soon. According to Biden administration Surgeon General nominee Dr. Vivek Murthy, it may take until late spring to finish vaccinating high-risk populations, if all goes according to plan. If that happens, the general public may be looking at a rough time-frame of the middle summer before widespread vaccine distribution begins. To me that translates to millions not going back to work until the fall of 2021.

Unless Americans are willing to have a nation of massive homelessness the federal government will have to provide funding for rents, food, and education for our youth. Joe Biden will have to convince a majority of both houses of congress that this must be job one.

On the Brink of a Civil War We Will have a New President

A piece of history seems appropriate.
Near dawn February 23, 1861, President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrived secretly by train in Washington, D.C. at 6 a.m. because of a rumored plot to assassinate him as he passed through Baltimore. Lincoln was criticized for and later regretted the furtive manner of his arrival, but his advisors believed the danger was genuine. By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven states had seceded, and the Confederate States of America had been formally established.

Reported on Politico Nightly
Top lawmakers say they are increasingly alarmed by a rash of new threats that could once again endanger their lives. Senators received a briefing today from representatives of the Secret Service, and the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, and a key group of House Democratic chairs separately met with the FBI.

“Based on today’s briefing, we have grave concerns about ongoing and violent threats to our democracy,” that group of Democratic chairs said in a cryptic statement after the meeting today. The briefing included the chairs and other top members of the House Oversight, Judiciary, Homeland Security, Armed Services and Intelligence panels. “It is clear that more must be done to preempt, penetrate, and prevent deadly and seditious assaults by domestic violent extremists in the days ahead,” the statement said.

The lawmakers voiced their concerns moments after a public FBI and Justice Department briefing revealed their belief that the Jan. 6 violence could be part of a much graver, well-organized “seditious conspiracy.” A Justice Department “strike force” is seeking to assemble a sedition case against some of those involved in last week’s riot at the Capitol.

As I posted on January 10 “Trump is not done.” I heard one rioter say he would die if need be to to ensure Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20. January 17 and January 20 are the two days that are anticipated to be the next assaults on the Capitol.

An inauguration inside a secured building viewed by the public on television seems like a likely scenario on January 20 to ensure the safety of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.