We’re warming up this near-noon Friday here in California’s Central Valley — another hot day already, yet it’s become normal for the time. Later this afternoon, triple-digit temps are supposedly scheduled, but since this has been a long hot streak, we’ve used to the heavy air blister, and know to stay inside.
If we had to do without air conditioning this region would probably be uninhabitable.

Anyway, sweet local news aside — tales from off the Jan. 6 episode last night are swirling around the InterWebs with the theme of the primetime session was how T-Rump not only initially incited the insurrection/riot/coup at the US Capitol, but later encouraged the violence, and then gleefully waited three hours to call off his supporters. One incident which revealed a lot of how most horrible the actual Capitol building riot, Mike Pence’s Secret Service agents called home “to say goodbye to family members, so on and so forth” as the unruly, violent crowd was nearby and shit looked like it was about to go bad. And like a lot of other shit nowadays, situations/episodes are turning out to be worse than we first figured.

Also pricked online (and off) from last night was the “political emasculation” of pure-100-percent shitburger, Josh Hawley, whose angry up-raised fist has wondrously returned to snap him hard on the ass.
If you haven’t seen them yet (most-likely you’re all well aware), videos of Hawley running in Congress set to various music, from Bennie Hill’s ‘Yakety Sax,’ to Springsteen’s ‘Born to Run,’ has swarmed social media. A good, decent-sized compilation at LG&M this morning.

However, the truest analysis of Hawley, and in perspective, the entire asshole Republican party came from former DC police officer Michael Fanone, interviewed last night (h/t tweet Daily Kos):

“Josh Hawley is a bitch. And he ran like a bitch….that guy’s a clown…No honor.”

Former police officer with a breathtaking 75 seconds. pic.twitter.com/XLsL4jY1lT

— Stephen Webber (@s_webber) July 22, 2022

When the original video of Hawley running was shown to the hearing audience, there was laughter — Fanone was not amused (the Independent):

Mr Fanone, who retired from the DC police force shortly after he testified in the select committee’s first public hearing last July, said he did not fault people for finding the clip of Mr Hawley humourous, but noted that he did not have the same reaction.

“That pisses me off — that guy is a clown,” he said.
“The way these guys perform in public, and then what they are in reality, you get a lot of that nonsense up here on Capitol Hill with these members of Congress that had become like a caricature in the media, but in reality, they have no character. They have no honour. They have no integrity.”

GOPers as a unit.

Eugene Robinson’s op/ed at The Washington Post last night nailed the ambiance off the hearing:

However outrageous or irresponsible or treasonous you thought President Donald Trump’s behavior might have been on Jan. 6, 2021, it was actually worse. Much worse.

That was the message hammered home by the House select committee’s prime-time hearing on Thursday night. According to testimony presented by the committee, for nearly three long hours, as a violent mob smashed its way into the Capitol and hunted Vice President Mike Pence with homicidal intent, the president sat in his private White House dining room and watched the chaos unfold on a television tuned to Fox News.

He made phone calls, but not to the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security or anyone who could help put down the riot. Instead, he called Republican senators and lobbied then to object to final certification of the electoral college vote.

…

What was the most shocking and disgraceful moment in the White House that day? The committee highlighted the tweet Trump posted at 2:24 p.m., when he knew the mob had already breached the Capitol’s defenses. Instead of trying to calm his followers, he incited them — and put a target on his own vice president’s back.

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump tweeted. “USA demands the truth!”

A witness involved with White House security — whose identity the committee obscured, out of concern for the individual’s safety — testified that members of Pence’s Secret Service detail perceived the situation at the Capitol as so desperate, they feared for their lives and sent goodbye messages to their families.

And once again, the aim for justice of those culpable — Roninson notes the reality of US law:

The question is what happens now.

“There needs to be accountability,” committee chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said tonight in his opening statement, delivered remotely because he had tested positive for the coronavirus.
“Accountability under the law. Accountability to the American people.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland has the authority to seek that accountability — the authority to show that ours is truly a country where no one, not even a former president, is above the law. The nation waits to see what Garland will do.

High, then a downer. Yeah, WTF will Merrick do?

Yet it’s obvious the T-Rump is a huge, lying shithead:

Despite the obvious, once again here we are…

(Illustration out front: Edvard Munch‘s ‘The Scream,’ lithograph version, found here.)