"Blown away by the massive ordnance penetrators that have phallicized our world, female political stars seem to have disappeared off the map."

"We were promised Mamala and instead we got Mountainhead.... Why is mighty-voiced Michelle Obama relegating herself to that sappy podcast with her brother? Why are we supposed to admire 44-year-old former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern, once idolized for her brave gesture of donning a hijab after a 2019 terrorist attack on a Christchurch mosque, for drippily dropping out in January 2023 because she found politics 'pretty unrelenting.'... And Gretchen 'Big Gretch' Whitmer [has]... now come out from behind the folder, but still… Meanwhile... Liz Cheney... now describes herself on X as 'proud rodeo mom, soccer mom, baseball mom, hockey mom, constitutional conservative'—in that order. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski... gives a full-throated waffle at the suggestion of daylight between her and the rest of her insane party. 'There is some openness to exploring something different than the status quo,' she said. To the barricades!"

Writes Tina Brown.

"Biden pardons Anthony Fauci, Mark Milley and the Jan. 6 committee in an extraordinary use of presidential power against potential Trump 'revenge.'"

AP reports.

“The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense,” Biden said in a statement. “Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.”

It’s customary for a president to grant clemency at the end of his term, but those acts of mercy are usually offered to everyday Americans who have been convicted of crimes. But Biden has used the power in the broadest and most untested way possible: to pardon those who have not even been investigated yet.... 

Among the pardoned is Liz Cheney.

ADDED: Here's Biden's statement.

Liz Cheney looks so uncomfortable receiving this medal from President Biden.

I like the way he gives it to her, then pulls it away, and she lets him and waits for him to get around to handing it back. What is she thinking? Who can know? Perhaps: Is this instead of a pardon or are you coming through with that pardon too?

I presume that everyone can see that a pardon for Liz Cheney — whom Trump said "should go to jail" — would benefit Trump. It must be hard to decide whether (over)protecting Cheney is important enough to be worth forgoing depriving Trump of that benefit.

"Former Representative Liz Cheney colluded with 'star witness' Cassidy Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge."

"Former Representative Liz Cheney should be investigated for potential criminal witness tampering based on the new information about her communication. Cassidy Hutchinson’s most outrageous claims lacked any evidence, and the Select Committee had knowledge that her claims were false when they publicly promoted her. President Trump did not attack his Secret Service Detail at any time on January 6. President Trump did not have intelligence indicating violence on the morning of January 6. Cassidy Hutchinson falsely claimed to have drafted a handwritten note for President Trump on January 6. Representative Cheney and Cassidy Hutchinson baselessly attempted to disbar Hutchinson’s former attorney...."

From "Chairman Loudermilk Releases Second January 6, 2021 Report" released this morning.

Is it too soon to add my "Biden pardons" tag?

"Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming."

"Trump has previously said Cheney 'should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!' Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.... The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions yet, according to people familiar with the deliberations. The conversations were spurred by Trump’s repeated threats and quiet lobbying by congressional Democrats, though not by those seeking pardons themselves. 'The beneficiaries know nothing,' one well-connected Democrat told me about those who could receive pardons...."

From "Biden White House Is Discussing Preemptive Pardons for Those in Trump’s Crosshairs/The nomination of Kash Patel, who has vowed to pursue Trump’s critics, as FBI director has heightened concerns within the president’s inner circle" (Politico).

"She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay?"

"Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face. They’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building, saying, 'Oh gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right in the mouth of the enemy.'"

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump suggests 'war hawk' Liz Cheney should have guns 'trained on her face'/The GOP nominee has long vilified the former congresswoman over her criticism of his role in fomenting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol" (WaPo).

Liz Cheney is, of course, campaigning with Kamala Harris. The Democrats turned into the Republicans and the Republicans turned into the Democrats. Ask Tulsi Gabbard.

AND: Ask Bobby...

 

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"[Howard] Stern predicted that the Republican whom [Kamala] Harris has pledged to place in her cabinet would end up being Liz Cheney..."

"... the former Wyoming congresswoman who last week appeared at a campaign rally with her in Wisconsin. Ms. Harris would not take the bait. 'I gotta win, Howard,' she said. 'I gotta win. I gotta win. And listen, but the thing about Liz Cheney, let me just say, she’s remarkable.'"

From "13 Things We Learned From Harris’s Interview With Howard Stern/In a lengthy sit-down, the veteran radio host extracted an array of new details about Kamala Harris’s life" (NYT).

What were the other 12 things? Let's just say that I chose not to use one of the 10 free links the has NYT empowered me to give to you in the month of October... and that one of the things is she eats Raisin Bran and Special K for breakfast.

2 from Glenn Greenwald.

This is what you will hear from all liberal corporate outlets for the next year: no, this time we mean it! This time Trump *really will be* fascist!

These are the people imprisoning non-violent Jan 6 protesters, prosecuting Trump to win an election, censoring the internet: pic.twitter.com/t4QxWFCYjq

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 4, 2023

Amazing yet so telling that the US politician who is one of the leading proponents of torture, secret CIA black sites, kidnapping, and sending everyone to an endless array of new wars except her own family ended up hated by her own voters but beloved by liberal corporate media. pic.twitter.com/C0IZ2Et6KE

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 5, 2023

"The House Jan. 6 committee voted Monday to recommend the Justice Department pursue a batch of criminal charges against former President Donald Trump..."

 CNN reports the unsurprising news. 

"[T[he committee's co-Chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said... that "among the most shameful" findings of the committee was that Trump sat in the White House watching the violence unfold on TV on Jan. 6, but did nothing, even as advisors and allies begged him to call off the rioters. "This was an utter moral failure," Cheney said of Trump's inaction. "No man who would behave that way, at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again. He is unfit for any office."

"My party has changed a great deal over the last decade.... I can’t tell you how, but I think we’ll have more voices than one at some point."

"But right now one voice, and that’s President Trump’s voice, is the loudest and the strongest and bucking him is something people will do at their peril."

Said Mitt Romney, quoted in "What Mitt Romney says about Liz Cheney possibly running for president" (Deseret News)

Romney clearly doesn't think that Liz Cheney could be the new strong voice to lead the GOP away from Trump:

Liz Cheney "could easily have" won in Wyoming again, she said, acknowledging the landslide against her.

"The path was clear. But it would have required that I go along with President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election. It would have required that I enable his ongoing efforts to unravel our democratic system and attack the foundations of our republic. That was a path I could not and would not take."

I'm reading "Liz Cheney Invokes Lincoln and Grant in Impassioned Concession Speech" (NYT).

Much like the remarks she delivered at the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings, it was a speech that seemed directed not just at Republican voters, but at a wider national audience. 

"You know that Dick Cheney ad would be better without that music in the background"/"Oh, yeah? How much better?"

Overheard at Meadhouse.

“In our nation’s 246 year history there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our Republic than Donald Trump.” Dick Cheney pic.twitter.com/erBPBNy8ah

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) August 4, 2022

I'm seeing that ad this morning, because WaPo dragged me in with a lurid headline: "That Cheney ad speaks volumes about the GOP’s rot." That's a column by Jennifer Rubin. Does she say that Dick Cheney used to be considered the GOP's rot and now he looks like the virtuous one, but it's just a matter of comparison, and that goes to show how rotten the GOP is?

Now, I've read the piece, and the answer to my question is no. Dick Cheney's reputation as the "dark lord" has evanesced. To refresh your memory, here's an Atlantic article that worked hard — back in August 2011 — to refresh the memory of the evil of Cheney: "Remembering Why Americans Loathe Dick Cheney/As the former vice-president releases his memoir, it's useful to recall the many reasons Americans disapproved of his tenure" (by Conor Friedersdorf):

"Former President Donald Trump’s pick to unseat Rep. Liz Cheney in the race for Wyoming’s lone House seat holds a commanding 22-point lead with a month until the primary..."

"... a new Casper Star-Tribune poll shows. Natural resources attorney Harriet Hageman leads Cheney 52% to 30%, the poll shows.... In past elections, Cheney has handily beat her primary opponent. And given that Wyoming is one of the nation’s most conservative states, the Republican House nominee often coasts to victory in the general election. But the Wyoming Republican Party has turned on Cheney, censuring her soon after Trump’s impeachment and voting last fall to no longer recognize her as a member of the GOP...." 

The Casper Star Tribune reports.

"She is our indomitable, irreplaceable, unsinkable Liz."

Effuses Michael Gerson, in the final sentence "History will accept only one Jan. 6 narrative. This committee has it" (WaPo).

I'm reading that only because the headline bothered me so much that I felt that I needed to know how any educated, intelligent person could say such a thing. What a static, impoverished view of history! He seems to have it mixed up with propaganda — specifically, the propaganda of a totalitarian state. 

But I got distracted by the gooey fawning over Cheney. "She was calm, methodical, factual and morally grounded...." 

Anyway... here's what Gerson says about history: "There is only one narrative about Jan. 6 that history will accept: the evidence meticulously gathered and presented by the House select committee." Huh?

We will see what historians will write when they have the long perspective, see a fuller context, and it no longer has to do with the outcome of elections. What is being written now is not history. Not that history itself isn't biased, distorted, and incomplete. But it's got to be far superior to what the "select" committee is piecing together.

"[Ivanka Trump] recalled when [Attorney General] Barr had said publicly on Dec. 1 that there was no evidence of fraud on a scale that would change the outcome of the election."

"When asked how it impacted her, she responded, 'It affected my perspective. I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying.' The opening statement by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) presented this as Ivanka Trump effectively saying she agreed with Barr, though Trump’s words in the excerpt — that Barr’s opinion 'affected' her view and that she 'accepted what he was saying' — were not quite so direct. She certainly indicated that she found Barr’s perspective compelling. Donald Trump said in response that his daughter was just 'trying to be respectful to Bill Barr' and didn’t study the election results herself.... The clips the committee played Thursday night seemed geared toward suggesting that even Trump’s own child...  knew better. But so far, the evidence is piecemeal, with Barr’s testimony being the most compelling, and the committee will have to build upon it."

From "How damning was the Ivanka Trump and Mark Meadows testimony? The clips of them being informed that Trump’s claims were bogus are worth parsing — as are others featured by the Jan. 6 committee" by Aaron Blake (WaPo).

They should be scrupulous in how they use evidence or they ruin their own credibility. This seems like a blatant example of stretching — of making the evidence fit the conclusion you want to draw.

"You will see that Donald Trump and his advisers knew that he had in fact lost the election. But despite this..."

"... President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information to convince huge portions of the U.S. population that fraud had stolen the election." 

Said Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, quoted in "'Trump Was at the Center': Jan. 6 Hearing Lays Out Case in Vivid Detail" (NYT).

That seems to be the crucial question: Did Trump genuinely know he had lost the election?

Then there's the idea that's built on that: a big conspiracy to take over the government.

As the chair of the committee, Representative Bennie Thompson, put it: "Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy. And ultimately, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, spurred a mob of domestic enemies of the Constitution to march down the Capitol and subvert American democracy."

"As one of the nation’s leading proponents of the insurrection hoax, Liz Cheney has pushed a grotesquely false, fabricated, hysterical partisan narrative. Look at the so-called word insurrection, January 6 – what a lot of crap."

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump calls Capitol attack an ‘insurrection hoax’ as public hearings set to begin/Former president intensifies attacks on Liz Cheney at Wyoming rally and endorses her Republican primary challenger in midterm elections" (The Guardian).

I believe what he was calling a hoax was the "insurrection" characterization. That's why he said "the so-called word insurrection." Now, that's a bit inarticulate. Obviously, "insurrection" is really a word. The point is that entry into the Capitol doesn't fit the definition of an "insurrection," which isn't a surprising assertion. Trump gets back at his accusers by calling the "insurrection" characterization "a grotesquely false, fabricated, hysterical partisan narrative."

Has anyone on the Cheney side ever explained how it could be possible to think that overrunning the building could overthrow the government? I wish people on both sides would use accurate language, but of course, they won't.

"Is there such a thing as 'Trumpism without Trump'?... I understand those who argue that asking for Trumpism without Trump is a bit like asking for sunshine without the sun...."

"I understand the concern about Trump’s vaunted 'divisiveness.' But... [t]he tsunami of hatred and vitriol that washed over Donald Trump since before he assumed office until the present moment was nothing if not 'divisive.'...  We now know that the whole Russia collusion delusion was invented lock-stock-and-barrel in the fetid skunkworks of the Clinton campaign. We know, too, that it was seized upon and pumped up by an irresponsible media and the rancid outposts of the administrative state and its so-called intelligence agencies. Trump was cooked before he set foot in the Oval Office.... I think it likely that, should Trump be the nominee, and should he be reelected in 2024, the forces arrayed against him will suffer a nervous breakdown that will make the anti-Trump hysteria of 2016-2020 look like an Oxford Union debate.... [J]ust a week or so back, [Liz] Cheney said an important goal of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 Capitol protest was to demonstrate that Donald Trump is 'clearly unfit for future office, clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.'... There might be some positive good achieved if the Left and the NeverTrump neither-Left-nor-Right were to suspect that they might themselves be the object of the sort of hysteria they have visited upon their opponents. There might be something salutary in making that sort of intimidation reciprocal."

Writes Roger Kimball in "Trump in 2024? Maybe! What’s certain is not too many Americans will be willing to hand over the honor of choosing the next president to Liz Cheney and her smug, entitled, and repellent confrères" (American Greatness).

Personally, I'd prefer way less craziness — from both sides. But I understand the idea of rejecting unilateral disarmament.

"This is my father. . . . This is dad."

Said Liz Cheney, quoted in "Dick Cheney returns to the House and receives a warm welcome … from Democrats" (WaPo).

Lots of political theater yesterday. At least that was hilarious.

"Defense hawks such as Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, are outspoken about what they see as a precipitous withdrawal and a collapse that can and should be placed at the Biden administration’s feet...."

"But such voices are becoming rarer in a Republican Party that continues to embrace former President Donald J. Trump, who had demanded an even swifter pullout from Afghanistan, and in a war-weary Democratic Party that is largely standing by Mr. Biden — or staying silent. That may reflect the opinion of voters in both parties. But ultimately an end to the U.S. military’s involvement in Afghanistan may prove to be more popular than the weekend chaos proves to be a liability. Representative Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat and Marine Corps veteran of Iraq, wrote on Twitter: 'What I am feeling and thinking about the situation in Afghanistan, I can never fit on Twitter. But one thing that is definitely sticking out is that I haven’t gotten one constituent call about it. And my district has a large Veteran population.'"

From "In Washington, Recriminations Over Afghanistan Emerge Quickly President Biden is finding few outspoken defenders amid the chaotic collapse of the Afghan government. But after 20 years, a war-weary America may still give the president a pass" by Jonathan Weisman (NYT).