Jan. 11, 2021
Vol. 10, No. 11
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The Trumpdown: Articles of impeachment against President Trump may be introduced in the House as soon as today, but Democratic leaders are talking about waiting several months before putting Trump on trial in the Senate.
The Republicans still control the Senate and could find Trump not guilty until noon on inauguration day. The Democrats are worried about that, and they don’t want Joe Biden’s cabinet appointments to get gummed up with the impeachment fight.
If convicted in the Senate, Trump could not hold elective office again.
Vice President Mike Pence, although he’s not on speaking terms with the President, does not appear to be moving to use the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office as unfit.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, “Sadly, the person that's running the Executive Branch is a deranged, unhinged, dangerous president of the United States.”
Unknown is how many Republicans in the House and Senate think we should all just move on and allow Trump to go unpunished for inciting the insurrectionist takeover of the Capitol.
Pennsylvania’s Senator Patrick Toomey yesterday became only the second Republican senator to declare that Trump needs to resign. He said on NBC News that the President had “spiraled down into a kind of madness” since the election and had has “disqualified himself” from ever running for office again. “I think the best way for our country,” Toomey told NBC’s Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press “is for the president to resign and go away as soon as possible.”
While Congress contemplates, the real world is beginning to eliminate Trump. The Professional Golfers Assn. announced that it will no longer hold its 2022 championship tournament at trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey resort.
The Roundup: The FBI yesterday arrested two men who photographed in the Senate chamber dressed in combat fatigues and carrying zip tie handcuffs. One of the men is 30-year-old Eric Munchel, arrested Nashville on one count of unlawfully entering a restricted building and violent entry and disorderly conduct. Investigators also recovered several weapons.
Munchel has been identified on Facebook as the former bartender at Doc Ford’s Rum Bar and Grille in Nashville. The second zip tie man is Larry Brock, arrested in Texas on the same charges as Munchel.
The charges so far don’t sound terribly serious considering that a Capitol Police officer was murdered in the assault, but charges can always be added. Also arrested is Douglas Jensen of Des Moines, who could be seen leading the mob racing up the inside steps of the Capitol, chasing a police officer. Jensen was wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with a bald eagle, the Stars and Stripes, and two QAnon slogans; “Trust the Plan” and “Where We Go One We Go All.”
Another QAnon nutjob arrested is Jake Angeli, notable for having attended the riot shirtless and wearing a fur hat with horns. Nicknamed “Q Shaman,” Agneli has been seen at pro-Trump rallies in Arizona since the 2016 election.
And the Philadelphia police department has removed Detective Jennifer Gugger from her position in the department’s Recruit Background Investigations Unit after Internal Affairs received social media posts indicating that she had taken part in the Capitol insurrection.
De-platformed: Amazon and Apple, claiming they are standing up for truth and democracy, have both dropped the uber right wing platform Parler that was used in part to organize the Capitol insurrection. California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes complained that now, “Republicans have no way to communicate.” They might try using their brains.
If it’s any comfort to him, you can still use Amazon to buy QAnon hats, hoodies, and t-shirts.
Viral News: Another 5,400 Americans have died of Cocid-19 since Saturday morning.
With new cases average about 225,000 a day, the worst hit states are Arizona, California, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.
737 Down: Indonesian authorities have located the flight recorders and some wreckage from the Boeing 737-500 airliner that went down in the Java Sea shortly after taking off from Jakarta on Saturday. So far they have no idea why the jet with 62 people on board suddenly plunged.
The Obit Page: Michael Apted, the movie maker who filmed the documentary “Seven Up!,” about 14 British children when they were just seven years old then followed them through their lives, has died at age 79.
As a director Apted also made the commercial films including the James Bond picture “The World Is Not Enough” and the movies “Gorillas in the Mist” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”
The “Up” series became a lifelong project. “7” was followed by 21, 28, and so on. “63 Up” was released in 2019.
Apted had originally intended for the “7” documentary to be a look at the British Class system. He said later, “What I had seen as a significant statement about the English class system was in fact a humanistic document about the real issues of life.”
> Pat Loud, the mother in the groundbreaking 1973 public television series “An American Family,” has died at age 93.
The series was the first reality television show. It followed Pat and Bill Loud and their five children through their lives in Santa Barbara, California. The entire country had an inside look as the couple separated and divorced while one son announced he was gay.
Cover Girl: Kamala Harris isn’t even vice president yet and she’s suffering her first controversy.
She’s featured on the cover of Vogue standing on the billowing tail of a long pink drape dressed like she’s headed to the mall. Harris and her people insisted on dressing her in her own clothes rather than being styled by the magazine staff. She’s wearing a white t-shirt, black jacket, tight black slacks, and black low-cut Chuck Converse style sneakers.
Harris’s fans are outraged that she’s presented like a soccer mom rather than a vice president. But, she made it to Vogue and the fashionable Melania Trump was stuck in the closet.