Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 88. Sunrise is 5:37 AM and sunset 8:25 PM for 14h 48m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 30.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1990, Greg LeMond, an American road racing cyclist, wins his third Tour de France after leading the majority of the race. It was LeMond’s second consecutive Tour de France victory.
Jennifer Rubin’s fifth and final takeaway from last night’s January 6th Committee hearings is the most significant:
[Committee Chairman Bennie] Thompson said at the beginning of the hearing that “the dam has begun to break.” More witnesses are emerging and new evidence is pouring in, he said, adding that the committee will reassemble in September for more hearings.
Among the issues left to examine is the full-blown scandal concerning the Secret Service’s deletion of texts from Jan. 5 and 6. (To no one’s surprise, the Secret Service agents that promised to refute testimony from [Cassidy] Hutchinson have not shown up. They have retained their own lawyers.)
In any case, the series of Trump advisers and allies expressing disgust at his actions should convince all but the most delusional cultists that Trump should never be trusted with power again. As [Former Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew] Pottinger said, Trump gave America’s enemies ammunition to claim our nation was in “decline” and that democracy doesn’t work.
In an eloquent summation, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) reminded the country that “we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.” Her message was clear: Trump’s return to power would be unimaginable.
Republican Liz Cheney isn’t a model of libertarianism, but she does have a powerful grasp of the dispositive power of attrition. Trump is all about maneuver, moving this way or that on any given day, shifting and lying as he believes the moment requires. He thinks in immediate and personal ways: what to say today, whom to praise or disparage today. Trump looks no farther than the next florid press release, the next rally, etc.
Cheney, by contrast, so clearly sees the power of attrition to erode an adversary so that he becomes impotent and ineffectual of future action. In a case like this, attrition takes a few weapons (claims about Trump’s autocratic ambitions and selfish actions) and uses them to hit, chip, crack, and then shatter an adversary. What’s shattered is thereafter ruined: that dust and that rubble will not reassemble itself.
Trump likely thinks that it matters whether Republicans re-nominate Cheney in Wyoming. Cheney rightly sees that what matters is advancing a confident, consistent, incremental erosion of Trump for all time. Slow, steady, relentless.
Trump maneuvers, but Cheney attrits. Hers is — by far — the more powerful approach. Successful attrition of an adversary will leave nothing of him, save a stack of yellowing press releases and tarnished trinkets.
London to New York in just over 3 hours? That’s the aim of this new net zero supersonic airliner:
It hasn’t taken to the skies yet, but the Overture aircraft is designed to trim hours off long-haul flights and avoid harming the environment by using 100 per cent sustainable aviation fuel.