Countdown until the maniac is gone

[welch]

https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?iso=20210120T09&p0=900&msg=Inauguration+2021&font=sanserif
https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?iso=20210120T09&p0=900&msg=Inauguration+2021&font=sanserif

[TSherbs]

surprise, he's not going to the inauguration

has GWB indicated whether he and Laura will go?

[welch]

"Hello, world";

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/01/08/mnuching-25th-amendment/


Treasury Secretary Mnuchin involved in discussions about the 25th Amendment, but is unlikely to pursue Trump’s removal
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies before a Congressional Oversight Commission hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Sarah Silbiger/The Washington Post via AP)
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies before a Congressional Oversight Commission hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Sarah Silbiger/The Washington Post via AP)
By
Jeff Stein
Jan. 8, 2021 at 6:18 p.m. EST
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been personally involved in discussions about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office, but is highly unlikely to pursue that extraordinary course of action, according to three people aware of the secretary’s remarks.

Mnuchin, who has long been one of President Trump’s most loyal Cabinet secretaries, publicly condemned the rioters for their siege of the U.S. Capitol building but refrained from openly criticizing the president. In private, however, he has fumed over Trump’s handling of the incident and has been directly critical of him, according to the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk freely about the private conversations.

While Mnuchin is unlikely to pursue the option, the fact that the discussions of the 25th Amendment have reached senior Cabinet officials highlights the extraordinary fallout from the siege of the U.S. Capitol building. Mnuchin’s conversations about the subject went beyond just being asked about it by other people, one of the people said.

A Treasury Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter.

Mnuchin’s loyalty to Trump could end with painful setback as president shreds stimulus deal

The 25th Amendment gives the vice president, plus a majority of the Cabinet, the ability to remove the president from office if they determine he “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Many people at the White House do not expect the effort to move forward, and Mnuchin is also not seen as likely to ultimately support such an effort.

How the 25th Amendment works

The 25th Amendment details the steps to fill the presidency in the event that they are "unable to discharge the powers and duties" of the office. (The Washington Post)
The president’s encouragement of the mob that stormed the Capitol has led to several high-profile resignations, including those of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao; Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; Mick Mulvaney, the U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland; and Tyler Goodspeed, who was the sole member remaining of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Other senior White House officials have also quit in recent days.

[TSherbs]

The 25th is not happening.

Maybe just a House initiation of impeachment. But that is it.

[Chuck Naill]

surprise, he's not going to the inauguration

has GWB indicated whether he and Laura will go?

I would think this was welcomed news. :)

[dneal]

Alan Dershowitz, cancelled by the progressives for not participating in the groupthink, speaks some sense.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkZAoh-x5BM

[welch]

Raging and whimpering.

[kazoolaw]

Raging and whimpering.

A Dem specialty over the past 4 years

[TSherbs]

Here's a peak into the insanity as it continues:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/08/maga-internet-turns-on-trump-456490?cid=apn

[TSherbs]

and for a comedic and entertaining twist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT5kafhG3Qw

[dneal]

Raging and whimpering.

Dershowitz?

He's a benchmark for true liberalism. I disagree with him as often as I agree, but I never question his motive or integrity.

The fact that you characterize his comments as "raging and whimpering" is telling...

[dneal]

and for a comedic and entertaining twist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT5kafhG3Qw

Thus confirming the left can't meme.

[TSherbs]

Raging and whimpering.

Dershowitz?

He's a benchmark for true liberalism. I disagree with him as often as I agree, but I never question his motive or integrity.

The fact that you characterize his comments as "raging and whimpering" is telling...

I don't question Dershowitz's motives, either (other than to make money). He believes what he is saying. But he is not persuasive at times. His banter here is no more persuasive than my neighbor's.

I agree that this is not a case for the 25th.

I disagree that this is not impeachable (inciting a violent riot on the Capitol is, I suppose, a felony).

I agree that some Democrats have been engaging in hyperbole (welcome to Washington).

I disagree that Pelosi and Schumer pose a threat to the Constitution (that is hyperbole, also).

I disagree that "nobody knew" that this riot would occur. That's laughably wrong, including simply the fact that people were requesting additional security support from the DOD (or whomever it was) days and hours ahead of the "march." And on social media, monitored by many security agencies, trying to take over the Capital proceedings was being openly stated as a purpose. Persons said that they would bring guns and bombs. Which they did.

It has now been reported from more than one source that at least a few persons stated that they were there to kidnap Mike Pence and execute them (they apparently had zip ties on them). Dershowitz wrongly suggests that none of this was planned or was foreseen, in an effort to downplay its seriousness relative to other disruptive events. One woman on camera said that she was maced in the face as she joined the crowd entering the building, trying to attempt "the revolution." Now to me, she was stupid and delusional (that has repeatedly been my point), but she seemed very sincere that that was what she thought was happening, and her delusion--and that of thousands of others--does not excuse her culpability in the act and does not mitigate the seriousness of the crime, and it certainly does not mean that "nobody saw this coming." That is either just lazy stupidness on Dershowitz's part, or a bold lie.

Dershowitz usually likes to defend the Constitution and read it narrowly. Fine. I sometimes do, too. But let's also remember that Clinton was impeached because he committed perjury about an affair. What's more of a "threat to the Constitution"? Really neither, right? I don't think that it is too political of me to say that I find inciting protesters who are carrying guns, bombs, and other weapons, and--at least in part--a plan to disrupt the counting of the EC votes, to kidnap the Vice President, to march on the Capital and "show strength" and "take back our country" is a graver threat to the country than lying about an affair.

So, Dershowitz is only partly right. He gets the big picture wrong because he is not informed enough about what actually happened, what was actually planned by some of the people, and what other people were clearly anticipating and worried about before it happened.

Is it worth impeaching at this late date? Probably not. But is the idea of impeachment for this valid? Yes. Is it a "threat to the Constitution" like Dershowitz says? Godsakes no. That's just dramatic bombast for viewer ratings.

[dneal]

I know I give you a hard time, but I appreciate that post even if I don't agree with every point.

The main point I agree with is the danger of "weaponizing" the Constitution. Every time someone sets a new precedent it blows up in everybody's face. It's a partisan example, but the "nuclear option" is a good example. Harry Reid started it, and it was used against Democrats with the appointment of 3 SC justices. Impeaching Clinton is a decent example of Republicans setting a bad precedent.

I wholeheartedly agree that it's no surprise the protest on the 6th turned into what it did, and I've said more than a few times that Trump bears blame. I don't believe he specifically incited violence, and I don't think you could prove it in an actual criminal court with a jury. Impeachment proceedings are a completely different thing - being a political rather than legal proceeding.

Everything is so volatile right now, I think it would just foment even more unrest. I was reading an argument that you often don't know when you've reached a tipping point until after the fact. I'm worried that we're dangerously close. If we're going to heal, it's best to let Trump mope about the whitehouse for the next 10 days or so. No one in the bureaucracy is going to let him do anything stupid, like start a war or launch a nuke (and honestly I think that kind of rhetoric is irresponsible). I think it was Giuliani, who was advocating Trump to "declassify everything", as a more likely example of "doing something stupid". Even if he did, the bureaucracy would just drag their feet until he is gone.

[TSherbs]

I know I give you a hard time, but I appreciate that post even if I don't agree with every point.

The main point I agree with is the danger of "weaponizing" the Constitution. Every time someone sets a new precedent it blows up in everybody's face. It's a partisan example, but the "nuclear option" is a good example. Harry Reid started it, and it was used against Democrats with the appointment of 3 SC justices. Impeaching Clinton is a decent example of Republicans setting a bad precedent.

I wholeheartedly agree that it's no surprise the protest on the 6th turned into what it did, and I've said more than a few times that Trump bears blame. I don't believe he specifically incited violence, and I don't think you could prove it in an actual criminal court with a jury. Impeachment proceedings are a completely different thing - being a political rather than legal proceeding.

Everything is so volatile right now, I think it would just foment even more unrest. I was reading an argument that you often don't know when you've reached a tipping point until after the fact. I'm worried that we're dangerously close. If we're going to heal, it's best to let Trump mope about the whitehouse for the next 10 days or so. No one in the bureaucracy is going to let him do anything stupid, like start a war or launch a nuke (and honestly I think that kind of rhetoric is irresponsible). I think it was Giuliani, who was advocating Trump to "declassify everything", as a more likely example of "doing something stupid". Even if he did, the bureaucracy would just drag their feet until he is gone.

I agree with every point here.

But if Trump does one more crazy thing, I say tie him to a chair. Maybe literally.

And if Maga marches on Washington (or any other capital) again with any signs of hostile intent, bring out the troops. I have never disagreed with troops to "police" demonstrations and keep them to their proscribed borders in their permits.

[welch]

I know I give you a hard time, but I appreciate that post even if I don't agree with every point.

The main point I agree with is the danger of "weaponizing" the Constitution. Every time someone sets a new precedent it blows up in everybody's face. It's a partisan example, but the "nuclear option" is a good example. Harry Reid started it, and it was used against Democrats with the appointment of 3 SC justices. Impeaching Clinton is a decent example of Republicans setting a bad precedent.

I wholeheartedly agree that it's no surprise the protest on the 6th turned into what it did, and I've said more than a few times that Trump bears blame. I don't believe he specifically incited violence, and I don't think you could prove it in an actual criminal court with a jury. Impeachment proceedings are a completely different thing - being a political rather than legal proceeding.

Everything is so volatile right now, I think it would just foment even more unrest. I was reading an argument that you often don't know when you've reached a tipping point until after the fact. I'm worried that we're dangerously close. If we're going to heal, it's best to let Trump mope about the whitehouse for the next 10 days or so. No one in the bureaucracy is going to let him do anything stupid, like start a war or launch a nuke (and honestly I think that kind of rhetoric is irresponsible). I think it was Giuliani, who was advocating Trump to "declassify everything", as a more likely example of "doing something stupid". Even if he did, the bureaucracy would just drag their feet until he is gone.

I agree with every point here.

But if Trump does one more crazy thing, I say tie him to a chair. Maybe literally.

And if Maga marches on Washington (or any other capital) again with any signs of hostile intent, bring out the troops. I have never disagreed with troops to "police" demonstrations and keep them to their proscribed borders in their permits.

Tying Trump top a chair...


Speaker Nancy Pelosi told her House colleagues Friday that she had spoken to the Pentagon’s top general about keeping an “unstable president” from accessing the nuclear codes, as Democrats openly considered impeaching the commander in chief for the second time in just over a year.

The discussion with Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, came after President Trump directed thousands of angry supporters to the Capitol on Wednesday as he refused to concede his election defeat. The crowds broke into the building in an insurrection now linked to the deaths of five people, including a Capitol police officer.

“The situation of this unhinged President could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote in a letter, in which she renewed the threat of impeaching Trump if Vice President Pence did not initiate proceedings for the Cabinet to remove the president under the 25th Amendment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/pelosi-trump-nuclear-codes/2021/01/08/032d95ac-51e0-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html

[TSherbs]

11 days....

[welch]

Here are the people who took the Capitol this week, and why. They believe every lie that the Trump Media -- he calls them that -- have spit into cyber-space. They have no grip on reality, on logic, on evidence. They are oblivious. This guy is the retired airforce officer who went into the Capitol with a fist-full of nylon handcuffs. Did he intend to kidnap a senator or representative?

Tell me again how we can cure psychosis by explaining reality to them?

Come on dneal. Explain again why they are "middle america" but I am not?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/an-air-force-combat-veteran-breached-the-senate?fbclid=IwAR3jIxrjyGdjJGfrBH9xH4V2yTkgVE90HT XDYEBHRi_9BNpmgYlkWyP7c6s

[dneal]

Here are the people who took the Capitol this week, and why. They believe every lie that the Trump Media -- he calls them that -- have spit into cyber-space. They have no grip on reality, on logic, on evidence. They are oblivious. This guy is the retired airforce officer who went into the Capitol with a fist-full of nylon handcuffs. Did he intend to kidnap a senator or representative?

Tell me again how we can cure psychosis by explaining reality to them?

Come on dneal. Explain again why they are "middle america" but I am not?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/an-air-force-combat-veteran-breached-the-senate?fbclid=IwAR3jIxrjyGdjJGfrBH9xH4V2yTkgVE90HT XDYEBHRi_9BNpmgYlkWyP7c6s

You aren't interested in an explanation, and would ignore any given; so why should I bother?

What's really funny is that a New Yorker wants a middle American to explain why a New Yorker is not a middle American. So let me just turn that around. Please explain why I'm not a New Yorker just because I live in middle America?

[TSherbs]

them?

Come on dneal. Explain again why they are "middle america" but I am not?

This actually has very little relevance to the discussion, nor could dneal or I have any real understanding of what "class" you are from, nor does the term even have any agreed upon meaning.

Never mind that.

[welch]

Here are the people who took the Capitol this week, and why. They believe every lie that the Trump Media -- he calls them that -- have spit into cyber-space. They have no grip on reality, on logic, on evidence. They are oblivious. This guy is the retired airforce officer who went into the Capitol with a fist-full of nylon handcuffs. Did he intend to kidnap a senator or representative?

Tell me again how we can cure psychosis by explaining reality to them?

Come on dneal. Explain again why they are "middle america" but I am not?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/an-air-force-combat-veteran-breached-the-senate?fbclid=IwAR3jIxrjyGdjJGfrBH9xH4V2yTkgVE90HT XDYEBHRi_9BNpmgYlkWyP7c6s

You aren't interested in an explanation, and would ignore any given; so why should I bother?

What's really funny is that a New Yorker wants a middle American to explain why a New Yorker is not a middle American. So let me just turn that around. Please explain why I'm not a New Yorker just because I live in middle America?

Ridiculous that you claim to know "middle america" and that you define it. Just as Trump's neo-nazis declare that any vote for Joe Biden is a fraudulent vote because, because, because, well, it just is.

What makes you, dneal, the person who defines "middle america"? Do you really mean to say that a Real Amurican is someone who believes only what Trump tells him? That there is no observable reality, that humans cannot or should not try to find our way toward some sort of truith? That has been your argument, twisted and "post-modernist", that every neo-nazi fantasy should be taken as seriously even after it cannot be proven. You had all the court cases, all the evidence, all the shameful admissions by Trump lawyers that they had no claims of fraud, yet you repeat again and again that there must be something. Your pseudo evidence reduces itself to crazy people talking to pro-trump legislators at information sessions where, for instance, the Republican legislators refused even to force "witnesses" to swear to tell the truth.

We all remember the drunken woman who rambled pn even as Rudy Giuliani tried to get her to shut up.

You tell us that "voters" -- meaning you -- will never believe that votes were counted honestly. No matter what. The world must bend to your and their fantasy. Georgia election workers stole the election, you claim. The Georgia Secretary of State's staff and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation counted the votes three times. The GBI compared voter signatures. The voting result matched what polling agencies predicted...tossup. Yet hundreds of thousand of votes were stolen.

You claim, most recently, a string of random Real Bad Things, but neglect to provide a reference to anything. Al;l sound like the same complaints that have been evaluated in courts and dismissed. Over and over. The same ones that an Attorney General of Texas attached to the end of his suit, his downright bizarre suit, against Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The Texas AG did not bother to mention where these claims had been considered and what had been decided. The Supreme Court sniffed and dismissed the main legal argument from Texas, and did not need to bother re-hearing all the specific claims. Yet you drag it up, as if Roberts Court somehow cheated the American people by not, for the fiftieth time, examining how an electronic voting machine works.

Trump lost. Lost the election and lost sixty lawsuits based on nothing more than his temper-tantrum claims that "I had big rallies". Tough.

[dneal]

Such hatred for a guy that's going to be gone in 10 days. Why do you let this consume you?

I don't know why you want me to try to convince you of something that you clearly will never believe. Wanna talk delusional? That's delusional my friend.

The only thing you believe is what the Washpost spoon feeds you.

But please explain why I'm not a New Yorker. I won't hold my breath waiting...

[TSherbs]

Such hatred for a guy that's going to be gone in 10 days. Why do you let this consume you?

I think that he's pissed because he keeps asking you for a suggestion of how to persuade these election result deniers (eg, that Trump won in a landslide, but that tens or hundreds of thousands of votes were stolen or forged or whatever). You have claimed insider knowledge of the workings of their thinking. So, why won't you make a suggestion beyond to keep investigating these "theories"? Obviously, you understand that all 50 states have their own quality control process, all 50 states have their own legal process to examine their procedures and their own courts to adjudicate claims about fraud. These processes were invoked in many of these states, even with recounts, hand recounts, and then hand-count random audits. No significant fraud or inaccuracies were found.

What also makes this look just like delusion and/or partisan unwillingness-to-lose is that not one lawsuit was filed by any person to question the voting result for a Republican who won, even on the same ballots and states being questioned in these suits. Not one Republican winner in any of those contested states rejected his or her own victory on the grounds that the vote count was fraudulent or the voting process was unconstitutionally changed. Which, to me, so smacks of bullshit politics that it is craven morally.

So, other than suggesting a legal review process that the Constitution does not support (the Fed govt is not empowered to run or quality-control elections, very purposefully), what can you suggest? And many other persons are reading this thread besides Welch, you, me, and Freddie, so you might give your idea for those lurking dozens of persons.

[dneal]

I've said multiple times what it would take to persuade these election deniers. I don't claim insider knowledge, I just observe. I've peeked into all kinds of scary parts of the interwebz. Their complaints overwhelmingly are:

- Dominion systems rigged. A forensic analysis will clear this up.
- Judges aren't fair. Not a lot you can do about this, but that's why the SC should have heard the Texas case.
- Court cases haven't weighed the merits. They've got a fair point on this. Most were dismissed procedurally.
- States violated their election laws. They've got a good point on this.
- Absentee / Mail-in ballots were fraudulent. I have no idea on this one. There's certainly a good possibility, which is why most western countries don't allow it and why the election commission said we shouldn't do it. The flip side is that places like Oregon seem to have figured it out. The statisticians are just going to sling numbers at each other, which is only convincing to what one wants to believe. An investigation will clear this up.

Left-leaning media and Democrat politicians dismiss and use terms like "baseless claims" and "delusional", it incites and strengthens conspiracy theories (ah ha! what don't they want us to see!!!)
Right-leaning media and Republican politicians reinforce doubt.

Everybody gets a nice steamy cup of "shut the f*ck up" with an investigation.

[TSherbs]

I've said multiple times what it would take to persuade these election deniers. I don't claim insider knowledge, I just observe. I've peeked into all kinds of scary parts of the interwebz. Their complaints overwhelmingly are:

- Dominion systems rigged. A forensic analysis will clear this up.
- Judges aren't fair. Not a lot you can do about this, but that's why the SC should have heard the Texas case.
- Court cases haven't weighed the merits. They've got a fair point on this. Most were dismissed procedurally.
- States violated their election laws. They've got a good point on this.
- Absentee / Mail-in ballots were fraudulent. I have no idea on this one. There's certainly a good possibility, which is why most western countries don't allow it and why the election commission said we shouldn't do it. The flip side is that places like Oregon seem to have figured it out. The statisticians are just going to sling numbers at each other, which is only convincing to what one wants to believe. An investigation will clear this up.

Left-leaning media and Democrat politicians dismiss and use terms like "baseless claims" and "delusional", it incites and strengthens conspiracy theories (ah ha! what don't they want us to see!!!)
Right-leaning media and Republican politicians reinforce doubt.

Everybody gets a nice steamy cup of "shut the f*ck up" with an investigation.

I'll let welch handle these if he is interested. I am done with these, but he may be still interested.

[Empty_of_Clouds]

1. Dominion systems.

Trump based his accusation on a report by OANN that referenced Edison Research, an election monitoring group. The company's president, Larry Rosin, said: "Edison Research has produced no such report and we have no evidence of any voter fraud." OANN did not provide any evidence to back up its claim.

2. Judges aren't fair.
3. Court cases haven't weighed the merits. Most were dismissed procedurally.

Lumping both together. Give some examples of why the judges aren't fair, beyond dismissing cases procedurally. The judges can hardly be held accountable for the lack of coherent argument presented by a plaintiff.

4. States violated their election laws.

As the country was in an extraordinary situation vis a vis the pandemic, it is not surprising that contingencies to allow free and fair elections may not have existed in current State legislation.

5. Absentee / Mail-in ballots were fraudulent.

It's a possibility, though history of the election process shows that it has never been a significant issue. Oh, and 5 States always have mail-in ballots. Incidentally, many Western countries allow mail-in voting, it's not rare, sometime it's for specific circumstances (and the pandemic would certainly qualify as that), and a lot of the time it's just a choice. Mail-in ballot fraud is rare in those countries too.


The overall point is that none of these questions require investigation. They have all been debunked sufficiently to remove doubt from the average rational mind.

The way I see it right now is that Trump supporters are of the mindset that they must have won because they are shouting loudest. Street-side interviews of random supporters kind of bears that out.

[dneal]

You guys keep arguing with me about this (not to mention accusing me of all kinds of stuff) for pointing out that this is what people believe and why they believe it. Then you ask what it would take to convince them otherwise. Then you say it's all bunk and they shouldn't have to have it proven to them. Then you wonder why tens of thousands of them gather at the capitol, with a percentage of them storming it.

How many times do you really want to run around this circular argument? A basic understanding of information operations and influencing civilian populations would benefit you. Clearly you get the notion of "disinformation". What do you do when a large portion of the population succumbs to disinformation? Calling them delusional conspiracy theorists and ignoring them isn't the answer. You present new information to combat the disinformation. They are skeptical, in a paranoid way. The new information would arise from the results of an investigation.

Iraqis were convinced our sunglasses had some x-ray technology that allowed us to see through their womens' clothes. Calling them stupid didn't dispel their belief. Letting them examine the sunglasses did.

This isn't rocket science.

[TSherbs]

That's not an accurate summary of our discussions here, dneal. But I take it to be an indication of how you perceive them.

What you are leaving out is that the examination of the accuracy of the vote counting has already been done. And it is still rejected by that core of disbelievers.

So what then? The disbelievers have not yet shown themselves open to rational persuasion.

The causes of the problem here are not the voting machines or the judges or the lawmakers. The problem is the viral echo chamber of the internet and the goading and legitimization from the President broadcast to his 85 million followers (and more via television).

My remedy suggestion begins not with more examination of voting machines, but with the current POTUS stating that it was a free and fair election. He has been the primary amplifier of the paranoid conspiracy.

The distrust of this voting result is not the result of any actual increase in problems with machines or process. In fact, it went smoother than ever with the greatest turnout ever...and even during a pandemic. The problem began with persons making unsubstantiated claims which then went viral and then were amplified by POTUS. Then lawmakers started repeating the speculation to ride the populist energy. None had any proof at all of anything nefarious or egregious. None. Not a single one. The remedy is for those people to fess up and recant and set the record straight.

And still some fools will stick to the victim-story of a "steal," any way.

Certain people will always see the devil in the night woods, even after daylight has shown nothing to be there. They just make up explanations for that, too.

There's medication that helps. A bit.

[724Seney]

In the interest of providing some balance to this conversation, I think it needs to be acknowledged that not everyone who is angry is solely focused on the voting machines, the absentee ballots or for that matter anything that has to do with the process of the vote.

The simple fact is that much of the mainstream media never got over Hillary's loss in 2016. They spent the next four years doing everything possible to assure Trump did not win the 2020 election. The lies, misrepresentations and censorship, which all followed Trump's 2016 victory, poisoned the minds of many who relied upon the mainstream media's "news" headlines for their information. It is sad, but true, that many too many people never look beyond the headlines for their information.

This, of course, culminated with the media and big tech's outright, reckless suppression of fact-based information which absolutely would have influenced some voters choices. It is irresponsible, if not shameless, that they kept legitimate news, which now even they acknowledge as factual, from the American public...... all in the name of getting their candidate elected. This is just my opinion but I think this is why a lot of people are angry.

[Chuck Naill]

I don't see this as a balanced reply. I've never read or heard anyone saying Trump didn't win. They were shocked that such a person, with a history of failed business ventures and preditory behavior toward miniorities and females could win the election. Of course, I do not know who you consider mainstream media which has become a undefined cliche.

Social media finally understood that their holdings could result in insurrection, distruction, and sadly, death. There is the concept of "greater good" that business ethics demands.

[724Seney]

I don't see this as a balanced reply. I've never read or heard anyone saying Trump didn't win. They were shocked that such a person, with a history of failed business ventures and preditory behavior toward miniorities and females could win the election. Of course, I do not know who you consider mainstream media which has become a undefined cliche.

Social media finally understood that their holdings could result in insurrection, distruction, and sadly, death. There is the concept of "greater good" that business ethics demands.

The word "balance" was utilized to convey that there was more to the anger of > 75 million Americans than just the voting process, itself. Many have accepted that as fair and legitimate yet are still angry with what has transpired.

As for the application of the word "ethics" to the main social media applications (and their respective leadership)............seriously?????

[kazoolaw]

I don't see this as a balanced reply. I've never read or heard anyone saying Trump didn't win. They were shocked that such a person, with a history of failed business ventures and preditory behavior toward miniorities and females could win the election. Of course, I do not know who you consider mainstream media which has become a undefined cliche.

Social media finally understood that their holdings could result in insurrection, distruction, and sadly, death. There is the concept of "greater good" that business ethics demands.

Hillary complaining that she won and that the election was stolen = Trump didn't win.

[Chuck Naill]

I don't see this as a balanced reply. I've never read or heard anyone saying Trump didn't win. They were shocked that such a person, with a history of failed business ventures and preditory behavior toward miniorities and females could win the election. Of course, I do not know who you consider mainstream media which has become a undefined cliche.

Social media finally understood that their holdings could result in insurrection, distruction, and sadly, death. There is the concept of "greater good" that business ethics demands.

The word "balance" was utilized to convey that there was more to the anger of > 75 million Americans than just the voting process, itself. Many have accepted that as fair and legitimate yet are still angry with what has transpired.

As for the application of the word "ethics" to the main social media applications (and their respective leadership)............seriously?????

I do not intuitivily understand your context unless you explain nor do I know that 75 million Americans are any more angry or concerned that those who voted for Clinton in 2016. Not that you implied that comparisen.

Ethics and dogma are liquid as more information comes forward. Do you think the same as you did at 20 years old? People "shit" in the Capital. A person was beaten to death in the capital with a fire extinguisher. If you own a company that allowed the radicalization and carrying out of the exercise of this behavior, yes, a change of focus and philosophy must take place. And, remember, corporations are made up of people just like me and you.

[TSherbs]

...The simple fact is that much of the mainstream media never got over Hillary's loss in 2016. They spent the next four years doing everything possible to assure Trump did not win the 2020 election. The lies, misrepresentations and censorship, which all followed Trump's 2016 victory....

This is hyperbole. Even "mainstream media" doesn't really mean anything. (For example, are you including Fox as a "mainstream" liar biased against Trump? Don't they lead all the TV news networks in viewership, for over 10 years straight? They certainly are not anti-Trump, right?)

What actual media outlet and what censorship, just for starters, do you mean? I am not sure that a media outlet can "censor" anyone. They report, not silence. But perhaps you can tell us what you mean.

I consider the AP and Reuters to be the most reliable of all straight news article outlets. Can you point out any "lies" or "misinformation" or "censorship" that the AP or Reuters has engaged in?

For sure, the media themselves have been in a battle for viewers, browser clicks, and dollars. One has to be mindful while consuming the content. But when Trump himself gave dozens and dozens of interviews only on Fox, the leading cable news organ, it seems inaccurate to simply state that "mainstream media" was against Trump from the start. He LOVED Fox and extolled their virtues. Until he didn't....

[Chuck Naill]

Franklin Graham,
"“If Joe Biden is the president, if that’s what it turns out to be, then we need to do everything we can to support him, where we can,” he told the AP.

Still, critics were quick to call his message of unity hypocritical after repeatedly backing Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud.

In a Dec. 28 tweet, Graham urged his supporters to vote Republican in the Georgia runoff election and warned of the “radical agenda of the left.”

While he is free to express his sentiments and so many sit at his feet (because he had a daddy in the business), does he question the election?

[724Seney]

I don't see this as a balanced reply. I've never read or heard anyone saying Trump didn't win. They were shocked that such a person, with a history of failed business ventures and preditory behavior toward miniorities and females could win the election. Of course, I do not know who you consider mainstream media which has become a undefined cliche.

Social media finally understood that their holdings could result in insurrection, distruction, and sadly, death. There is the concept of "greater good" that business ethics demands.

The word "balance" was utilized to convey that there was more to the anger of > 75 million Americans than just the voting process, itself. Many have accepted that as fair and legitimate yet are still angry with what has transpired.

As for the application of the word "ethics" to the main social media applications (and their respective leadership)............seriously?????

I do not intuitivily understand your context unless you explain nor do I know that 75 million Americans are any more angry or concerned that those who voted for Clinton in 2016. Not that you implied that comparisen.

Ethics and dogma are liquid as more information comes forward. Do you think the same as you did at 20 years old? People "shit" in the Capital. A person was beaten to death in the capital with a fire extinguisher. If you own a company that allowed the radicalization and carrying out of the exercise of this behavior, yes, a change of focus and philosophy must take place. And, remember, corporations are made up of people just like me and you.

I agree 100%. Free speech and the First Amendment only go so far. An activity where people are killed and property is destroyed is to be condemned. Period.
Did they all take the Summer off and are just now back on the job?

[dneal]

That's not an accurate summary of our discussions here, dneal. But I take it to be an indication of how you perceive them.

We'll just have to disagree.


What you are leaving out is that the examination of the accuracy of the vote counting has already been done. And it is still rejected by that core of disbelievers.

So what then? The disbelievers have not yet shown themselves open to rational persuasion.

This is the point I have been making. Yes, a cursory examination has been done by both sides. One says no issue, the other says big issues. The examination of Dominion machines in Michigan led to a report of problems. How accurate it is I do not know. You can't ignore half the argument or disregard the possibility of it having any credibility and then accuse "disbelievers" not being open to rational persuasion. Again, whether it's factually true or not (and I don't think we have absolute proof either way) doesn't matter when someone holds a belief that it's true (or not).


The causes of the problem here are not the voting machines or the judges or the lawmakers. The problem is the viral echo chamber of the internet and the goading and legitimization from the President broadcast to his 85 million followers (and more via television).

I don't disagree about the echo chambers. They exist on both sides though.


My remedy suggestion begins not with more examination of voting machines, but with the current POTUS stating that it was a free and fair election. He has been the primary amplifier of the paranoid conspiracy.

Yes he has been the amplifier (although there are others). He's not going to say it was free and fair anymore than Hillary did. Some republicans like Dan Crenshaw (who seems to be very reasonable with great integrity), along with Trey Gowdy, Chip Roy, etc... have recently published a podcast titled "The truth about Jan 6th". I haven't listened to it yet, but the comments seem to be centered around accusations of lying or covering up. Yes, the conspiracy bent is strong; which is why the counter-narrative has to be tailored to it and compelling. You'll never convince the "Alex Jones" types, but that's ok. You do need to whittle away at the 70M people who do believe it. Not all of them are irrational. They just don't trust anything anymore.


The distrust of this voting result is not the result of any actual increase in problems with machines or process. In fact, it went smoother than ever with the greatest turnout ever...and even during a pandemic. The problem began with persons making unsubstantiated claims which then went viral and then were amplified by POTUS. Then lawmakers started repeating the speculation to ride the populist energy. None had any proof at all of anything nefarious or egregious. None. Not a single one. The remedy is for those people to fess up and recant and set the record straight.

And still some fools will stick to the victim-story of a "steal," any way.

Certain people will always see the devil in the night woods, even after daylight has shown nothing to be there. They just make up explanations for that, too.

There's medication that helps. A bit.

There are a great many people who made claims under penalty of perjury. A few are dingbats like the blonde lady from Michigan. Most are seasoned poll watchers, current or former election officials, etc... I've watched (and posted video of) a great many who appear cogent and credible. They might be mistaken, but no one has demonstrated that - your claims to the contrary notwithstanding.

As 724Seney points out, there are a lot of other factors. I've already pointed it out (only to have it ignored), but "Trumpers" have watched the media lie consistently (from their perspective anyway). Russian Collusion and all the stuff that's part of it. Carter Page and George Papadopolous, Strozk and Page, Comey, Clapper and Brennan. Republicans are on the Steele Dossier like a Jack Russell with a squeaky toy. Biden vs Trump Ukraine inconsistency. Adam Schiff's lies. Biden laptop. The media (and the Democrats) have as much blame in creating and reinforcing distrust as Trump with his tweets.

[Chuck Naill]

"It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense of their own previous choices. Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace. Aware of these risks and others, the framers of the Constitution instituted a system of checks and balances. The point was not simply to ensure that no one branch of government dominated the others but also to anchor in institutions different points of view.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Unless each of us attempts to use some will and energy to find out what actually is, we will repeat the same events again. I am not suggesting we agree. Disagreement can be healthy because we are not all at the same place in time. What might be true for me might not be true for you.

If you don't want to take the COVID-19 vaccine, at least study it.

[TSherbs]

...The media (and the Democrats) have as much blame in creating and reinforcing distrust as Trump with his tweets.

Not the distrust of this election, they don't. This is a singular production, begun in the corners of the internet (Trump's "Many people are saying..."), amplified by the president, and then perpetrated as a con job upon his more gullible and suggestible followers for his own needs.

[Chuck Naill]

Trump has not contacted the family of the officer lethally struck in the head by his sycophants. Pense has made made contact to offer his condolences. Trump would sell anyone out in a second if it helped him.

[Sphere]

Mr.Neal, You don't seem to understand the American justice system. You see, in America you have to prove that someone is guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. You are asking that people involved in the election prove it is innocent. That is totally ill-informed, backwards, and contrary to American juris prudence. Every time Mr. Trump's lawyers were asked, point-blank, in a court of law, if they had any evidence of fraud in the elections, they answered, "No".

[dneal]

Mr.Neal, You don't seem to understand the American justice system. You see, in America you have to prove that someone is guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. You are asking that people involved in the election prove it is innocent. That is totally ill-informed, backwards, and contrary to American juris prudence. Every time Mr. Trump's lawyers were asked, point-blank, in a court of law, if they had any evidence of fraud in the elections, they answered, "No".

I’m pretty sure the state has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal case. In civil cases, preponderance of the evidence is the standard.

Nice try though



See TSherbs?


You guys keep arguing with me about this (not to mention accusing me of all kinds of stuff) for pointing out that this is what people believe and why they believe it. Then you ask what it would take to convince them otherwise. Then you say it's all bunk and they shouldn't have to have it proven to them. Then you wonder why tens of thousands of them gather at the capitol, with a percentage of them storming it.

How many times do you really want to run around this circular argument?

[TSherbs]

yeah, I've given up trying to persuade those who won't accept this election result. Some false beliefs are tenacious. Humans get mental viruses, too, and we are suffering a bit of a pandemic over this election. It will pass.

We can let the police, the FBI, and the military take care of them if necessary to control criminality (depending on the scale) should it develop further.

[dneal]

Russell Brand makes it simple for you.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fhlDA8RcrU

[Freddie]

Arnold makes it simple for youse.....

https://twitter.com/i/status/1348249481284874240

Fred
enjoyin' a hot black coffee with biscotti.....

[Pendragon]

Countdown until the maniac is gone? She lost four years ago, and is long since gone.

[Pendragon]

Not the distrust of this election, they don't. This is a singular production, begun in the corners of the internet (Trump's "Many people are saying..."), amplified by the president, and then perpetrated as a con job upon his more gullible and suggestible followers for his own needs.
Hillary started that, not Trump, by howling endlessly about the 2016 election. How could she possibly lose? It must have been the Russians. Yeah, that's it, the Russians! She went on campaigning even after the election had ended. That set up a very dangerous precedent that an election is only legitimate if one's desired candidate wins. The debate about this election or the one in 2016 has very little to do with democracy. America's two largest political parties are like two warring mafia families, and should be expected to act accordingly.

[dneal]

Arnold makes it simple for youse.....

https://twitter.com/i/status/1348249481284874240

Fred
enjoyin' a hot black coffee with biscotti.....

Reductio ad Hitlerum (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum)

Godwin’s Law (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law)

Thanks for playing, “Arnold”.

[TSherbs]

Not the distrust of this election, they don't. This is a singular production, begun in the corners of the internet (Trump's "Many people are saying..."), amplified by the president, and then perpetrated as a con job upon his more gullible and suggestible followers for his own needs.
Hillary started that, not Trump, by howling endlessly about the 2016 election. How could she possibly lose? It must have been the Russians. Yeah, that's it, the Russians! She went on campaigning even after the election had ended. That set up a very dangerous precedent that an election is only legitimate if one's desired candidate wins. The debate about this election or the one in 2016 has very little to do with democracy. America's two largest political parties are like two warring mafia families, and should be expected to act accordingly.

The ghost of HC is still haunting some people....

I'll repeat, this conspiracy theory of voter fraud and election machine error was begun in the corner of the internet, amplified on social media, reported in the press, and then broadcast and supported by the President to the world hundreds of times up to the hours before they stormed the Capitol.

It was also aided and abetted by the weak-spined GOP members of Congress, especially in the House.

[TSherbs]

"yeah, but Hilary...." Is the start of a weak argument.

[welch]

"yeah, but Hilary...." Is the start of a weak argument.

It is an argument from anyone deluded by three decades of Hillary-hate, compounded by outright stupidity.

Nine days and two hours.

[dneal]

"yeah, but Hilary...." Is the start of a weak argument.

It is an argument from anyone deluded by three decades of Hillary-hate, compounded by outright stupidity.

Nine days and two hours.

The irony is delicious.

[kazoolaw]

"yeah, but Hilary...." Is the start of a weak argument.TS, TS-
I can't give you credit, but I can acknowledge your unceasing comments which both mistate and misunderstand a statement. Not everyone can do that with your consistency.
It's not "but Hillary," it's still Hillary.

[Freddie]

Arnold makes it simple for youse.....

https://twitter.com/i/status/1348249481284874240

Fred
enjoyin' a hot black coffee with biscotti.....

Reductio ad Hitlerum (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum)

Godwin’s Law (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law)

Thanks for playing, “Arnold”.

My pleasure ... Pal ... If youse has a problemo with AS ... contact him.

Your response is your usual interjecting of flotsam.

Fred
who doesn't lean on wiki for answers. He just enjoys the show.

[dneal]

Arnold makes it simple for youse.....

https://twitter.com/i/status/1348249481284874240

Fred
enjoyin' a hot black coffee with biscotti.....

Reductio ad Hitlerum (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum)

Godwin’s Law (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law)

Thanks for playing, “Arnold”.



Your response is your usual interjecting of flotsam.

The irony here is delicious too.

[Roe D Hym]

Yeah, the guy who saved America but lost due to fraud leaves next week and the new regime, the Democrat Party Complex Fascists, take over.

[welch]

Trump speaks, finally, about his crowd's storming of the Capitol as he called for Congress to overthrow the election.


President Trump on Tuesday showed no contrition or regret for instigating the mob that stormed the Capitol and threatened the lives of members of Congress and his vice president, saying that his remarks to a rally beforehand were “totally appropriate” and that the effort by Congress to impeach and convict him was “causing tremendous anger.”

Answering questions from reporters for the first time since the violence at the Capitol on Wednesday, the president sidestepped questions about his culpability in the deadly riot that shook the nation’s long tradition of peaceful transfers of power.

“People thought what I said was totally appropriate,” Mr. Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews, en route to Alamo, Texas, where he was set to visit the border wall. Instead, Mr. Trump claimed that racial justice protests over the summer were “the real problem.”

Note the all-too-usual Trumpism: "People thought what I said was totally appropriate,” as in his typical "people say" [whatever crazy right-wing conspiracy crap he has just heard].

Seven days and 23 hours.

[kazoolaw]

Your response is your usual interjecting of flotsam.

Fred

Freddie, may i call you "Fred?"
This is in contrast, of course, to your responses being jetsam: debris thrown overboard to lighten the load.
Say "hi" to Ah-nold.

[TSherbs]

Seven days and 23 hours.

word

Would that he would go peacefully. There is a chance.

[welch]

The House is debating whether to impeach Trump a second time.


Republicans begin to join impeachment push

By
Mike DeBonis,
Josh Dawsey and
Seung Min Kim

Jan. 12, 2021 at 6:59 p.m. EST

The push for an unprecedented second impeachment of President Trump took a dramatic bipartisan turn Tuesday, as several senior House Republicans joined the Democratic effort to remove Trump for his role in inciting an angry mob to storm the Capitol last week and the White House braced for more defections.

Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the third-ranking House Republican, and Rep. John Katko (N.Y.), the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, both held Trump responsible for Wednesday’s violence. They were joined by Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), a frequent Trump critic.

“The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” Cheney said in a statement, adding, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

Katko’s language was similarly strong. “To allow the president of the United States to incite this attack without consequences is a direct threat to the future of our democracy,” he said.

Kinzinger added, “If these actions . . . are not worthy of impeachment, then what is an impeachable offense?”

A senior administration official said the White House expects at least a dozen House Republicans to support impeachment. The White House is rudderless, unwilling or unable to mount any defense other than saying that Trump will already be leaving next week, two administration officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal dynamics.

Trump, banned from Twitter, for the first time lacks the ability to aim angry tweets at those who oppose him, and White House officials conceded that he has few ways to stem the tide. He has asked Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) to urge fellow Republicans to oppose impeachment, an official said

The Republican statements supporting impeachment — which came after Trump delivered remarks earlier Tuesday expressing no regret for his actions — represented a watershed moment. They signaled high-level GOP concern about the role of Trump and other party leaders in spreading conspiracy theories about the recent election, and reflected how much the political landscape has shifted since Trump was acquitted in his first impeachment trial last February.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been telling associates since the attack that Trump probably committed impeachable offenses, as first reported by the New York Times. McConnell, a close adviser said, has not decided how he will vote on impeachment and wants to hear the case first.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-trump-impeach/2021/01/12/5e873dd0-54ed-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html

[Freddie]

Your response is your usual interjecting of flotsam.

Fred

Freddie, may i call you "Fred?"
This is in contrast, of course, to your responses being jetsam: debris thrown overboard to lighten the load.
Say "hi" to Ah-nold.

Absolutely.

You actually read it. Therefore.. a gold star for you.

And the show goes on. {ThumbsUpThingie}

Fred
Etiam sapientibus cupido gloriae novissima exuitur.
T

[welch]

Trump has been impeached a second time. Ten Republicans voted to impeach.

Lindsay Graham says that he has taken Trump in hand, giving the Trump something to do each of the seven remaining days of his presidency, keeping him busy and, maybe out of trouble.

Roughly six days and eighteen hours.

[dneal]

Trump has been impeached a second time. Ten Republicans voted to impeach.

#StillYourPresident

lmao

[TSherbs]

#bestfirsttermever

[welch]

Five days and seventeen hours, roughly, until Trump is no longer the official President.

[dneal]

Five days and seventeen hours, roughly, Trump is my President.

Fixed that for you.

lol

[Lloyd]

Five days and seventeen hours, roughly, Trump is my President.

Fixed that for you.

lol
Fixed like the 2016 election?

[Chuck Naill]

Five days and seventeen hours, roughly, until Trump is no longer the official President.

It will take longer to get the stains out.

[dneal]

Five days and seventeen hours, roughly, Trump is my President.

Fixed that for you.

lol
Fixed like the 2016 election?

lol, good one!

[pajaro]

I remember seeing desk signs when I was in school: "Think."

[welch]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/opinion/trump-second-impeachment.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR22ZqGpqi6fLdUayirk0D-n-LN-MgvAzCGiPUbWdnJ7PfP8bor-grhv_h0




FINALLY THE
WORLD AGREES THAT
TRUMP IS
EXACTLY THE MAN
HIS FIERCEST
CRITICS SAID HE WAS.
BUT HAS THE
RECKONING COME
TOO LATE?


THE
INEVITABLE

By Michelle Goldberg

The House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment report quotes, at length, the speech that Donald Trump gave to his devotees on Jan. 6 before many of them stormed the Capitol, baying for execution.

“We’ve got to get rid of the weak congresspeople, the ones that aren’t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world, we got to get rid of them,” said President Trump. He urged his minions to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the place where Congress was meeting to certify the election he lost: “Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

A week later, Representative Cheney, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, would vote to get rid of him, joining nine of her fellow Republicans in backing impeachment. “The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” she said in a statement, adding, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

Trump now becomes the first president in American history to be impeached twice. Half of all presidential impeachments since the Republic began have been impeachments of Trump. This latest impeachment is different than the first, and not just because it was bipartisan. It culminates a week in which Trump has finally faced the broad social pariahdom he’s always deserved.

When a mob incited by the president ransacked the Capitol, killing one policeman and pummeling others, it also tore down a veil. Suddenly, all but the most fanatical partisans admitted that Trump was exactly who his fiercest critics have always said he was.

Banks promised to stop lending to him. Major social media companies banned him. One of the Trump Organization’s law firms dropped it as a client. The coach of the New England Patriots rejected the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the P.G.A. pulled its namesake tournament from a Trump golf course. Universities revoked honorary degrees. Some of the country’s biggest corporations, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pledged to withhold donations from congressional enablers of his voter fraud fantasy. Bill de Blasio announced that New York City would end contracts with the Trump Organization to run two ice rinks and other concessions worth millions annually.

Trumpists often whine about being ostracized — Melania Trump being snubbed by Vogue seems a particular sore point — but watching all these institutions reject the president now is a reminder of how many didn’t do so earlier.

At the beginning of the president’s reign, I expected this moment of widespread repudiation to come quickly. But Trump survived the special counsel investigation. He survived his first impeachment. When he seemed poised to retain his political influence even after losing a presidential election, I despaired of a reckoning ever coming at all. “When this is all over, nobody will admit to ever having supported it,” David Frum tweeted in 2019. Two weeks ago, that seemed like wishful thinking.

There’s a bleak sort of relief in the arrival, after everything, of comeuppance. The question is whether it’s too late, whether the low-grade insurgency that the president has inspired and encouraged will continue to terrorize the country that’s leaving him behind.

“This was an armed violent rebellion at the very seat of government, and the emergency is not over,” Representative Jamie Raskin, the Democrats’ lead impeachment manager, told me. “So we have to use every means at our disposal to reassert the supremacy of constitutional government over chaos and violence.”

The siege of the Capitol wasn’t a departure for Trump, it was an apotheosis. For years, he’s been telling us he wouldn’t accept an election loss. For years, he’s been urging his followers to violence, refusing to condemn their violence, and insinuating that even greater violence was on the way. As he told Breitbart in 2019, in one of his characteristic threats, “I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”


Jan. 6 wasn’t even the first time Trump cheered an armed siege of an American capitol; he did that last spring when gun-toting anti-lockdown activists stormed the Michigan statehouse. Later, after news emerged of a plot to kidnap and publicly execute Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Trump said, “I mean, we’ll have to see if it’s a problem. Right? People are entitled to say maybe it was a problem, maybe it wasn’t.”

It is shocking that Trump didn’t act when Congress could have faced a mass hostage-taking, or worse. It is not surprising.

Throughout his presidency, Republicans pretended not to hear what the president was saying. For the last few months, Republican election officials in Georgia have spoken with mounting desperation of being barraged with death threats as a result of Trump’s ceaseless lies about the election, but national Republicans did little to restrain him. There was no exodus away from the president and his brand when, during the debates, he refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power and told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

The far right took heart from the president’s winks and nods, retweets and outright displays of support. “Donald Trump, ever since his campaign, throughout his four years in office, has done nothing but pander to these people,” Daryl Johnson, a former senior intelligence analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, told me.

Now a private security consultant, Johnson was caught in a political tempest during the Obama administration, when, at D.H.S., he wrote a report warning of a “resurgence in right-wing extremist recruitment and radicalization activity,” including efforts to recruit veterans. Republicans were apoplectic, seeing the report as an effort to brand conservatives as potential terrorists. Johnson’s unit was disbanded and he left government.

Under Trump, political pressure on federal law enforcement to ignore the far right would only grow. After a white supremacist killed 23 people in a Walmart in El Paso in 2019, Dave Gomez, a former F.B.I. supervisor overseeing terrorism cases, told The Washington Post that the agency was “hamstrung” in trying to investigate white nationalists. “There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base,” said Gomez.

The violent far right appears to have been emboldened by the experience of being treated as valued constituents. “The problem existed before him, but it’s really flourished even more under his administration,” Johnson said of Trump.

This is a departure from previous patterns, Johnson said: Right-wing extremist activity usually abates during Republican administrations, when conservatives feel less existentially threatened. But Trump kept the far right’s paranoia and sense of grievance at a constant boil, and gave them permission to act. The people at the Capitol who said they were there because the president wanted them to be weren’t necessarily delusional.

But there’s no reason to believe that the threat will recede when Trump is gone. Johnson believes it’s going to get worse, and he’s not alone. A recent federal intelligence bulletin warns, “Amplified perceptions of fraud surrounding the outcome of the General Election and the change in control of the Presidency and Senate,” along with fear of what the new administration has in store, will “very likely will lead to an increase in DVE violence.” DVE stands for “domestic violent extremists.”

Already, Washington looks like a war zone. Joe Biden’s inauguration next week will be closed to the public. Representative Peter Meijer, one of the 10 Republicans to vote for impeachment, said on MSNBC that he and some of his colleagues are buying body armor: “Our expectation is that someone may try to kill us.”

The end of Trump’s presidency has shaken American stability as even 9/11 did not, and that’s before you factor in around 4,000 people a day dying of Covid-19.

Making Trump face consequences for trying to overturn the election will not, by itself, stop the disorder he’s instigated. But it may be a precondition for making the country governable. “The time to stop tyrants and despots is when you first see them breaking from the demands of law,” said Raskin. Trump, he said, “has been indulged and protected for so long by some of his colleagues that he brought us to the brink of hell in the Capitol of the United States.”

An animating irony of Trumpism — one common among authoritarians — is that it revels in lawlessness while glorifying law and order. “This is the central contradiction-slash-truth of authoritarian regimes,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an N.Y.U. historian and the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.” She cited Mussolini’s definition of fascism as a “revolution of reaction.” Fascism had a radical impulse to overturn the existing order, “to liberate extremism, lawlessness, but it also claims to be a reaction to bring order to society.”

The same is true of Trump’s movement. Central to Trump’s mystique is that he breaks rules and gets away with it. To reassert the rule of law, said Ben-Ghiat, “showing the world that he cannot in fact get away with it” is crucial.

That is part of the work of the second impeachment. This impeachment may be as much a burden for Democrats as for Republicans; a Senate trial would surely postpone some of the urgent business of the Biden administration. It has gone forward because Democrats had no choice if they wanted to defend our increasingly fragile system of government.

The very fact that Raskin will lead the prosecution of Trump in the Senate is a sign of the solemnity with which Democrats are approaching it. As you’ve perhaps read by now, Raskin recently suffered the most gutting loss imaginable. Tormented by depression, his 25-year-old son, “a radiant light in this broken world,” as Raskin and his wife wrote in a eulogy, took his own life on Dec. 31, “the last hellish brutal day of that godawful miserable year of 2020.”

Raskin buried his son on Jan. 5, the day before he went to the Capitol to count the electoral vote. His youngest daughter didn’t want him to go; he felt he had to be there but invited her and his other daughter’s husband to come with him. When the mob breached the building, Raskin was on the House floor, and his daughter and son-in-law were in an office with his chief of staff. “The kids were hiding under a desk,” he said. “They had pushed as much furniture as they could up against the door, but people were banging at the door.”

That day, Raskin began working with his colleagues to draft both an article of impeachment and a resolution calling on Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment.

I asked him why, after all he’s endured, he wanted to lead the effort to bring Trump to trial. “I’ve devoted my life and career to the defense of our democracy and our people,” said Raskin, who was a constitutional law professor before he was a congressman. Then he said: “My son is in my heart, and in my chest I feel him every day. And Tommy was a great lover of human freedom and democracy and he would want me to be doing whatever I’m asked to do to defend democracy against chaos and fascism.”

It is not yet clear who Raskin will be up against. Prominent law firms have refused to represent Trump in his postelection legal fights, and Bloomberg News reports that lawyers who have defended the president in the past don’t want to do so anymore. For four years, as Trump has brought ever more havoc and hatred to this country, many have wondered what it would take to dent his impunity. The answer appears to be twofold: Committing sedition, and losing power.

[Chuck Naill]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/opinion/trump-second-impeachment.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR22ZqGpqi6fLdUayirk0D-n-LN-MgvAzCGiPUbWdnJ7PfP8bor-grhv_h0




FINALLY THE
WORLD AGREES THAT
TRUMP IS
EXACTLY THE MAN
HIS FIERCEST
CRITICS SAID HE WAS.
BUT HAS THE
RECKONING COME
TOO LATE?


THE
INEVITABLE

By Michelle Goldberg

The House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment report quotes, at length, the speech that Donald Trump gave to his devotees on Jan. 6 before many of them stormed the Capitol, baying for execution.

“We’ve got to get rid of the weak congresspeople, the ones that aren’t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world, we got to get rid of them,” said President Trump. He urged his minions to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the place where Congress was meeting to certify the election he lost: “Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

A week later, Representative Cheney, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, would vote to get rid of him, joining nine of her fellow Republicans in backing impeachment. “The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” she said in a statement, adding, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”

Trump now becomes the first president in American history to be impeached twice. Half of all presidential impeachments since the Republic began have been impeachments of Trump. This latest impeachment is different than the first, and not just because it was bipartisan. It culminates a week in which Trump has finally faced the broad social pariahdom he’s always deserved.

When a mob incited by the president ransacked the Capitol, killing one policeman and pummeling others, it also tore down a veil. Suddenly, all but the most fanatical partisans admitted that Trump was exactly who his fiercest critics have always said he was.

Banks promised to stop lending to him. Major social media companies banned him. One of the Trump Organization’s law firms dropped it as a client. The coach of the New England Patriots rejected the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the P.G.A. pulled its namesake tournament from a Trump golf course. Universities revoked honorary degrees. Some of the country’s biggest corporations, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pledged to withhold donations from congressional enablers of his voter fraud fantasy. Bill de Blasio announced that New York City would end contracts with the Trump Organization to run two ice rinks and other concessions worth millions annually.

Trumpists often whine about being ostracized — Melania Trump being snubbed by Vogue seems a particular sore point — but watching all these institutions reject the president now is a reminder of how many didn’t do so earlier.

At the beginning of the president’s reign, I expected this moment of widespread repudiation to come quickly. But Trump survived the special counsel investigation. He survived his first impeachment. When he seemed poised to retain his political influence even after losing a presidential election, I despaired of a reckoning ever coming at all. “When this is all over, nobody will admit to ever having supported it,” David Frum tweeted in 2019. Two weeks ago, that seemed like wishful thinking.

There’s a bleak sort of relief in the arrival, after everything, of comeuppance. The question is whether it’s too late, whether the low-grade insurgency that the president has inspired and encouraged will continue to terrorize the country that’s leaving him behind.

“This was an armed violent rebellion at the very seat of government, and the emergency is not over,” Representative Jamie Raskin, the Democrats’ lead impeachment manager, told me. “So we have to use every means at our disposal to reassert the supremacy of constitutional government over chaos and violence.”

The siege of the Capitol wasn’t a departure for Trump, it was an apotheosis. For years, he’s been telling us he wouldn’t accept an election loss. For years, he’s been urging his followers to violence, refusing to condemn their violence, and insinuating that even greater violence was on the way. As he told Breitbart in 2019, in one of his characteristic threats, “I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”


Jan. 6 wasn’t even the first time Trump cheered an armed siege of an American capitol; he did that last spring when gun-toting anti-lockdown activists stormed the Michigan statehouse. Later, after news emerged of a plot to kidnap and publicly execute Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Trump said, “I mean, we’ll have to see if it’s a problem. Right? People are entitled to say maybe it was a problem, maybe it wasn’t.”

It is shocking that Trump didn’t act when Congress could have faced a mass hostage-taking, or worse. It is not surprising.

Throughout his presidency, Republicans pretended not to hear what the president was saying. For the last few months, Republican election officials in Georgia have spoken with mounting desperation of being barraged with death threats as a result of Trump’s ceaseless lies about the election, but national Republicans did little to restrain him. There was no exodus away from the president and his brand when, during the debates, he refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power and told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

The far right took heart from the president’s winks and nods, retweets and outright displays of support. “Donald Trump, ever since his campaign, throughout his four years in office, has done nothing but pander to these people,” Daryl Johnson, a former senior intelligence analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, told me.

Now a private security consultant, Johnson was caught in a political tempest during the Obama administration, when, at D.H.S., he wrote a report warning of a “resurgence in right-wing extremist recruitment and radicalization activity,” including efforts to recruit veterans. Republicans were apoplectic, seeing the report as an effort to brand conservatives as potential terrorists. Johnson’s unit was disbanded and he left government.

Under Trump, political pressure on federal law enforcement to ignore the far right would only grow. After a white supremacist killed 23 people in a Walmart in El Paso in 2019, Dave Gomez, a former F.B.I. supervisor overseeing terrorism cases, told The Washington Post that the agency was “hamstrung” in trying to investigate white nationalists. “There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base,” said Gomez.

The violent far right appears to have been emboldened by the experience of being treated as valued constituents. “The problem existed before him, but it’s really flourished even more under his administration,” Johnson said of Trump.

This is a departure from previous patterns, Johnson said: Right-wing extremist activity usually abates during Republican administrations, when conservatives feel less existentially threatened. But Trump kept the far right’s paranoia and sense of grievance at a constant boil, and gave them permission to act. The people at the Capitol who said they were there because the president wanted them to be weren’t necessarily delusional.

But there’s no reason to believe that the threat will recede when Trump is gone. Johnson believes it’s going to get worse, and he’s not alone. A recent federal intelligence bulletin warns, “Amplified perceptions of fraud surrounding the outcome of the General Election and the change in control of the Presidency and Senate,” along with fear of what the new administration has in store, will “very likely will lead to an increase in DVE violence.” DVE stands for “domestic violent extremists.”

Already, Washington looks like a war zone. Joe Biden’s inauguration next week will be closed to the public. Representative Peter Meijer, one of the 10 Republicans to vote for impeachment, said on MSNBC that he and some of his colleagues are buying body armor: “Our expectation is that someone may try to kill us.”

The end of Trump’s presidency has shaken American stability as even 9/11 did not, and that’s before you factor in around 4,000 people a day dying of Covid-19.

Making Trump face consequences for trying to overturn the election will not, by itself, stop the disorder he’s instigated. But it may be a precondition for making the country governable. “The time to stop tyrants and despots is when you first see them breaking from the demands of law,” said Raskin. Trump, he said, “has been indulged and protected for so long by some of his colleagues that he brought us to the brink of hell in the Capitol of the United States.”

An animating irony of Trumpism — one common among authoritarians — is that it revels in lawlessness while glorifying law and order. “This is the central contradiction-slash-truth of authoritarian regimes,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an N.Y.U. historian and the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.” She cited Mussolini’s definition of fascism as a “revolution of reaction.” Fascism had a radical impulse to overturn the existing order, “to liberate extremism, lawlessness, but it also claims to be a reaction to bring order to society.”

The same is true of Trump’s movement. Central to Trump’s mystique is that he breaks rules and gets away with it. To reassert the rule of law, said Ben-Ghiat, “showing the world that he cannot in fact get away with it” is crucial.

That is part of the work of the second impeachment. This impeachment may be as much a burden for Democrats as for Republicans; a Senate trial would surely postpone some of the urgent business of the Biden administration. It has gone forward because Democrats had no choice if they wanted to defend our increasingly fragile system of government.

The very fact that Raskin will lead the prosecution of Trump in the Senate is a sign of the solemnity with which Democrats are approaching it. As you’ve perhaps read by now, Raskin recently suffered the most gutting loss imaginable. Tormented by depression, his 25-year-old son, “a radiant light in this broken world,” as Raskin and his wife wrote in a eulogy, took his own life on Dec. 31, “the last hellish brutal day of that godawful miserable year of 2020.”

Raskin buried his son on Jan. 5, the day before he went to the Capitol to count the electoral vote. His youngest daughter didn’t want him to go; he felt he had to be there but invited her and his other daughter’s husband to come with him. When the mob breached the building, Raskin was on the House floor, and his daughter and son-in-law were in an office with his chief of staff. “The kids were hiding under a desk,” he said. “They had pushed as much furniture as they could up against the door, but people were banging at the door.”

That day, Raskin began working with his colleagues to draft both an article of impeachment and a resolution calling on Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment.

I asked him why, after all he’s endured, he wanted to lead the effort to bring Trump to trial. “I’ve devoted my life and career to the defense of our democracy and our people,” said Raskin, who was a constitutional law professor before he was a congressman. Then he said: “My son is in my heart, and in my chest I feel him every day. And Tommy was a great lover of human freedom and democracy and he would want me to be doing whatever I’m asked to do to defend democracy against chaos and fascism.”

It is not yet clear who Raskin will be up against. Prominent law firms have refused to represent Trump in his postelection legal fights, and Bloomberg News reports that lawyers who have defended the president in the past don’t want to do so anymore. For four years, as Trump has brought ever more havoc and hatred to this country, many have wondered what it would take to dent his impunity. The answer appears to be twofold: Committing sedition, and losing power.



So, I knew this before he ever ran for office. What does that say? Not sure, but I was against the person during the debates. Mary only confirmed what I already knew.

[dneal]

The same is true of Trump’s movement. Central to Trump’s mystique is that he breaks rules and gets away with it. To reassert the rule of law, said Ben-Ghiat, “showing the world that he cannot in fact get away with it” is crucial.

I spit coffee out of my nose with this one.

Do we really want a list of people who break the law (forget rules) and get away with it?

[Lloyd]

The same is true of Trump’s movement. Central to Trump’s mystique is that he breaks rules and gets away with it. To reassert the rule of law, said Ben-Ghiat, “showing the world that he cannot in fact get away with it” is crucial.

I spit coffee out of my nose with this one.

Do we really want a list of people who break the law (forget rules) and get away with it?

As their modus operandi and leader of a supposedly democratic nation?

[welch]

Many of those in the mob had their sights on Pence — enraged that he had refused President Trump’s demand that he head off the electoral college count that formalized President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

According to the FBI, one man who was charged this week with trespassing and disorderly conduct after making his way into the Senate chamber said in a YouTube video: “Once we found out Pence turned on us and that they had stolen the election, like, officially, the crowd went crazy. I mean, it became a mob.”

AD

At one point, a group of rioters began chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” as they streamed into the main door on the east side of the Capitol.

One man who made his way into the Senate chamber reached Pence’s chair on the Senate dais. Shirtless, wearing face paint and a furry coyote-tail hat and carrying a six-foot-long spear, Jacob A. Chansley of Arizona left a note on the vice president’s desk that read in part, “it’s only a matter of time, justice is coming,” according to court filings.

Chansley — who has been charged with two felonies, including threatening congressional officials — told investigators he was glad to reach Pence’s desk because he believes the vice president is a child-trafficking traitor, but said he did not mean the note as a threat.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pence-rioters-capitol-attack/2021/01/15/ab62e434-567c-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html

[dneal]

The same is true of Trump’s movement. Central to Trump’s mystique is that he breaks rules and gets away with it. To reassert the rule of law, said Ben-Ghiat, “showing the world that he cannot in fact get away with it” is crucial.

I spit coffee out of my nose with this one.

Do we really want a list of people who break the law (forget rules) and get away with it?

As their modus operandi and leader of a supposedly democratic nation?

Whichever has more hyperbole. Something at least to the level of "This was an armed violent rebellion at the very seat of government..."

[kazoolaw]

Fixed like the 2016 election?

Hillary- izzat you?

[Chuck Naill]

Anyone else have the retrospective question to consider had Clinton won? Booming economy and no new global threats. She would have most likely won a second term and surely would have been present in the room re the pandemic.

[Lloyd]

Anyone else have the retrospective question to consider had Clinton won? Booming economy and no new global threats. She would have most likely won a second term and surely would have been present in the room re the pandemic.
While I Thanked you, I hadn't thought about it... Now, I wish I could not think of the likely better world this would have been (WAY fewer lives lost to COVID, better international standing, no pathetic wasting of time & money on a lame wall extension, fewer immigrant tragedies, less risk of the end of the US election process). "What if"s hurt...

[dneal]

In the rush to smear Trump and his supporters, idiot journalists exonerate Trump.

Investigators pursuing signs US Capitol riot was planned (https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/13/politics/capitol-riot-investigation/index.html)

So how exactly did Trump’s speech on the 6th “incite” something that was planned?

The responses will be entertaining.

[welch]

Rush to "smear" Trump and his attempt to overthrow democracy in the United States? That is laughable. You, dneal, must have read many of the decisions in which Trump presented all the evidence he, and his cult, could find that the election was "stolen". Over and over, and in every case, Trump's claims were considered and dismissed. Often, as in the case before Judge Brann in Pennsylvania, Trump's lawyers admitted that they could justify no claim of fraud.

That Trump's campaign filed suit so many times and lost so many times, that he -- Trump -- whined that even "his" judges rejected his suits, indicates the depth of his digging to undermine the United States as a government of, by, and for the people. That Trump's followers continue to claim that the election was stolen is something close to the German "stab-in-the-back" myth from the Weimar days.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/politics/Capitol-conspiracy-theories-blm-antifa.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage


How Republicans Are Warping Reality Around the Capitol Attack
Loyalists to President Trump are increasingly relying on conspiracy theories and misinformation, drawing false equivalence with last summer’s racial protests and blaming outside agitators.

By Astead W. Herndon
Jan. 17, 2021
Updated 9:34 a.m. ET
Immediately after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, all corners of the political spectrum repudiated the mob of President Trump’s supporters. Yet within days, prominent Republicans, party officials, conservative media voices and rank-and-file voters began making a rhetorical shift to try to downplay the group’s violent actions.

In one of the ultimate don’t-believe-your-eyes moments of the Trump era, these Republicans have retreated to the ranks of misinformation, claiming it was Black Lives Matter protesters and far-left groups like Antifa who stormed the Capitol — in spite of the pro-Trump flags and QAnon symbology in the crowd. Others have argued that the attack was no worse than the rioting and looting in cities during the Black Lives Matter movement, often exaggerating the unrest last summer while minimizing a mob’s attempt to overturn an election.

The shift is revealing about how conspiracy theories, deflection and political incentives play off one another in Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. For a brief time, Republican officials seemed perhaps open to grappling with what their party’s leader had wrought — violence in the name of their Electoral College fight. But any window of reflection now seems to be closing as Republicans try to pass blame and to compare last summer’s lawlessness, which was condemned by Democrats, to an attack on Congress, which was inspired by Mr. Trump.

“The violence at the Capitol was shameful,” Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, tweeted at 6:55 a.m. the morning after the attack. “Our movement values respect for law and order and for the police.” But now, in a new video titled “What Really Happened on January 6th?” Mr. Giuliani is among those who are back to emphasizing conspiracy theories.

ADVERTISEMENT

Continue reading the main story

“The riot was preplanned,” said Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City. “This was an attempt to slander Trump.” He added, “The evidence is coming out.”

For months, Republicans have used last summer’s protests as a political catchall, highlighting isolated instances of property destruction and calls to defund the police to motivate their base in November. The tactic proved somewhat effective on Election Day: Democrats lost ground in the House of Representatives, with Republican challengers hammering a message of liberal lawlessness. About nine of every 10 voters said the protests had been a factor in their voting, according to estimates from A.P. VoteCast, a large voter survey conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago. Nearly half of those respondents backed Mr. Trump, with some saying they worried that the unrest could disrupt their communities.

Republicans are now using the looting to try to explain away the Capitol attack. The result, for some Republican voters, ranges from doubt to conspiratorial thinking.

Suzanne Doherty, 67, who traveled from Michigan to be in Washington on Jan. 6 to support Mr. Trump, came away feeling confused and depressed over the invasion of the Capitol and not trusting the images of the mob.

“I heard that on Antifa websites, people were invited to go to the rally and dress up like Trump supporters, but I’m not sure what to believe anymore,” she said. “There were people there only to wreak havoc. All I know is that there was a whole gamut of people there, but the rioters were not us. Maybe they were Antifa. Maybe they were B.L.M. Maybe they were extreme right militants.”

<continued in the linked story>

[dneal]

That is laughable.

That's why I posted it, and many other partisan comments. Surprisingly (or maybe not) you haven't picked up on that it's just a sarcastic demonstration of the laughable partisan nature of your own posts/links.

[Chuck Naill]

I just performed a quick read through of the transcrtipt of the current occupants speech. There should be no mistaken intent if one considers direct quotes. Many times we have direct quotes and are critical of the free press simply providing them. It is because we don't like it.

[Mustang Mars]

So I hear Rudi's not going to get paid his alleged $20K a day.

[Lloyd]

So I hear Rudi's not going to get paid his alleged $20K a day.

He will if Trump gets paid off for all the pardons he's giving out.

[Lloyd]

I think that, once Biden is in, therevs still going to be the hand of Don in things. Kind of like when the head of the mob goes to jail but still rules his organization.

[welch]

Twenty-one hours until the US has a genuine President.

[Chuck Naill]

Twenty-one hours until the US has a genuine President.

The past four years has answered the question of would it not be better to have non politicans running the show. In our state we have an bar owner running the university, an exwrestler for county mayor, and a third generation contractor running the state. Based on their response to the pandemic, I can say without reservation that no it is not better.

[Chrissy]

Congratulations to President Biden. :)

[welch]

Congratulations to President Biden. :)

It was a good inaugural speech, and a good first day of, for instance, rejoining the Paris Climate Accord and applying to rejoin the World Health Organization.

[Mustang Mars]

Congratulations to President Biden. :)
It was a good inaugural speech, and a good first day of, for instance, rejoining the Paris Climate Accord and applying to rejoin the World Health Organization.

Common sense prevails and the world needs the US at these tables

[dneal]

Congratulations to President Biden. :)

It was a good inaugural speech, and a good first day of, for instance, rejoining the Paris Climate Accord and applying to rejoin the World Health Organization.

He should have been more concerned with the lives of 3000+ Americans. I thought he had a plan?

[Chuck Naill]

It is obvious there is both a team and a pan in place.

[dneal]

It is obvious there is both a team and a pan in place.

58577

[Chuck Naill]

Yes, he wasn’t in charge and the experts were muzzled.

[dneal]

But he's in charge now, and Trump left him a vaccine (several, actually).

What are his priorities? Keystone pipeline, Paris accords, letting chicks with dicks compete in women's events, etc...

The pot-shot game is easy. I put up with it for months, basically begging for a rational conversation.

Shoe's on the other foot now, and nobody seems to like it. I'm happy to move on, and I'm happy to keep feeding spoonfuls of the same shit many were gleefully posting.

[Chuck Naill]

But he's in charge now, and Trump left him a vaccine (several, actually).

What are his priorities? Keystone pipeline, Paris accords, letting chicks with dicks compete in women's events, etc...

The pot-shot game is easy. I put up with it for months, basically begging for a rational conversation.

Shoe's on the other foot now, and nobody seems to like it. I'm happy to move on, and I'm happy to keep feeding spoonfuls of the same shit many were gleefully posting.

Pfizer and Moderna developed the vaccine. What the former administration did was take away the financial risk, a good thing.

Not sure a rational conversation can be had with the constant "whataboutthisism".

Yes, the shoe is on the other foot. As a business student and professional, I have been pleased with Biden's approach to team building aka "getting the right people on the bus". He had plans in place or "was able to hit the ground running". This is something Trump was not able to do since he had no previous experience and it soon showed...

Yes, Trump wanted or said he wanted to drain the swamp. There is nothing wrong with a swamp. It is naturally occuring and accumulated the natural habitat for those that live there. What we have discovered is that when a natural catastrophy occurs, you need the infrastructure that only a swamp can address.

As Peter Drucker wrote, "Management is doing things right; leaders do the right things". If you think Trump exemplified this quote, please explain how. If you don't have an opinion, that's also just fine.

[dneal]

Agree the Trump admin removed financial risk. They also removed bureaucratic hurdles. Some of those hurdles are a safety check though.

RE: whataboutism. Either pointing out hypocrisy is valid or it isn't. Hypocrisy isn't a logical fallacy, it's a credibility issue. It shows that arguments are disingenuous. I'll point hypocrisy out, you can keep calling it "whataboutism".

Trump's presidency, the MAGA movement, the swamp, etc... is an interesting but complex topic that is too easily reduced to banality. People here are way too emotional one way or another to do an objective "case study".

[Chuck Naill]

Agree the Trump admin removed financial risk. They also removed bureaucratic hurdles. Some of those hurdles are a safety check though.

RE: whataboutism. Either pointing out hypocrisy is valid or it isn't. Hypocrisy isn't a logical fallacy, it's a credibility issue. It shows that arguments are disingenuous. I'll point hypocrisy out, you can keep calling it "whataboutism".

Trump's presidency, the MAGA movement, the swamp, etc... is an interesting but complex topic that is too easily reduced to banality. People here are way too emotional one way or another to do an objective "case study".

Emotions aside, the Trump administration was such a waste of four years. Can you imagine having the full wealth of American wisdom and knowledge at your disposal and not having the skill set to fully utilize?

I remember him tangling with the Pope, then the Gold Star family. then Fauci, then with anyone who brusied his ego. His opportunity will go down as the ultimate missed opportunity.

Hells bells, I would have a constant parade of the brightest and best rotating through my office. Nothing worse than having talent and not knowing how to utilize.

[Lloyd]

Don't forget that Trump obstructed Biden's ability to hit the ground running by blocking his (and his staff) access to many meetings/briefings. I think Trump hats should read MAW... Make America Worse.

[dneal]

Don't forget that Trump obstructed Biden's ability to hit the ground running by blocking his (and his staff) access to many meetings/briefings. I think Trump hats should read MAW... Make America Worse.

You would think that wouldn’t be a challenge for a politician with almost 5 decades of experience, and his hand picked seasoned staff, pitted against an incompetent orange upstart.

[Lloyd]

Don't forget that Trump obstructed Biden's ability to hit the ground running by blocking his (and his staff) access to many meetings/briefings. I think Trump hats should read MAW... Make America Worse.

You would think that wouldn’t be a challenge for a politician with almost 5 decades of experience, and his hand picked seasoned staff, pitted against an incompetent orange upstart.
Thanks for, not just verifying, but actually being the cause of what a waste of time this subforum is. You should watch the Monty Python skit... You're acting like the John Cleese character.

[dneal]

Don't forget that Trump obstructed Biden's ability to hit the ground running by blocking his (and his staff) access to many meetings/briefings. I think Trump hats should read MAW... Make America Worse.

You would think that wouldn’t be a challenge for a politician with almost 5 decades of experience, and his hand picked seasoned staff, pitted against an incompetent orange upstart.
Thanks for, not just verifying, but actually being the cause of what a waste of time this subforum is. You should watch the Monty Python skit... You're acting like the John Cleese character.

Awww... it's not so fun when the shoe's on the other foot, is it?

[kazoolaw]

Wait, he had a plan when he wasn't in charge, and doesn't now that he's the President?
Yes, he wasn’t in charge and the experts were muzzled.

[Mustang Mars]

Now that the dude has gone, does that mean this thread is now defunct?

[welch]

Now that the dude has gone, does that mean this thread is now defunct?

It means I don't bother to post to it. It's history.

[kazoolaw]

Now that the dude has gone, does that mean this thread is now defunct?

It means I don't bother to post to it.

Apparently you just can't stop yourself.

[Freddie]

Now that the dude has gone, does that mean this thread is now defunct?

It means I don't bother to post to it.

Apparently you just can't stop yourself.

Apparently ... {Freakin'HapppySmileyFaceTimeThingie}

Still your friend and mine ..

Fred

[Freddie]

Don't forget that Trump obstructed Biden's ability to hit the ground running by blocking his (and his staff) access to many meetings/briefings. I think Trump hats should read MAW... Make America Worse.

You would think that wouldn’t be a challenge for a politician with almost 5 decades of experience, and his hand picked seasoned staff, pitted against an incompetent orange upstart.

Apparently the Bravo Sierra keeps piling up ...

Fred

[dneal]

Don't forget that Trump obstructed Biden's ability to hit the ground running by blocking his (and his staff) access to many meetings/briefings. I think Trump hats should read MAW... Make America Worse.

You would think that wouldn’t be a challenge for a politician with almost 5 decades of experience, and his hand picked seasoned staff, pitted against an incompetent orange upstart.

Apparently the Bravo Sierra keeps piling up ...

Fred

You're the expert.

[kazoolaw]

Apparently the Bravo Sierra keeps piling up ...

Fred

Fred & Freddie- how are you both?
Biden campaigned from his basement, announcing he had a plan to save us.
Then he comes out and finds it's not going to end any time soon.
At last we agree: Joe can stack it fast and deep.

[dneal]

He may still be a maniac, and he may be gone; but according to the SC today he wasn't corrupt.

There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but hey... the courts have ruled! Right?

Supreme Court dismisses Trump DC hotel emoluments clause case (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/supreme-court-dismisses-trump-hotel-case?fbclid=IwAR0U9bFNs6nckImmpAIzUFZgokg1prbo_DGl bii70PlS5Mnzc2Bg3FacB0o)

[Empty_of_Clouds]

He may still be a maniac, and he may be gone; but according to the SC today he wasn't corrupt.

There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but hey... the courts have ruled! Right?

Supreme Court dismisses Trump DC hotel emoluments clause case (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/supreme-court-dismisses-trump-hotel-case?fbclid=IwAR0U9bFNs6nckImmpAIzUFZgokg1prbo_DGl bii70PlS5Mnzc2Bg3FacB0o)


The SC did not rule that Trump was not corrupt.

I'm going to quote the article here, to avoid being accused of putting words in other people's mouths:

"The Supreme Court dismissed the case and vacated the lower court ruling against Trump because now that he is no longer president, he doesn't stand to benefit from his hotel's placement near the White House."
by Nicholas Rowan, Staff Writer | January 25, 2021 10:38 AM

Bold emphasis mine. Trump's actions while in office almost certainly contravened the emoluments clause.

[dneal]

He may still be a maniac, and he may be gone; but according to the SC today he wasn't corrupt.

There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but hey... the courts have ruled! Right?

Supreme Court dismisses Trump DC hotel emoluments clause case (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/supreme-court-dismisses-trump-hotel-case?fbclid=IwAR0U9bFNs6nckImmpAIzUFZgokg1prbo_DGl bii70PlS5Mnzc2Bg3FacB0o)


dneal shoots... and misses.

The SC did not rule that Trump was not corrupt.

I'm going to quote the article here, to avoid being accused of putting words in other people's mouths:

"The Supreme Court dismissed the case and vacated the lower court ruling against Trump because now that he is no longer president, he doesn't stand to benefit from his hotel's placement near the White House."
by Nicholas Rowan, Staff Writer | January 25, 2021 10:38 AM

Bold emphasis mine. Trump's actions while in office almost certainly contravened the emoluments clause.

What proof do you have for that wild conspiracy theory? Why can't you accept the results of a court decision?

--edit--

I'll add you to the list of folks that don't get sarcasm...

[Empty_of_Clouds]

Jeez Louise, can't you read? That WAS the court's decision - and I can accept, on one level, that the case is now moot. You do know what that means, yes? It does not mean that the SC considers him innocent of corruption with regards to the emolument clause.

Oh, and zing. I can see you're good at this. ^^

[dneal]

Jeez Louise, can't you read? That WAS the court's decision - the case is moot, Trump is not automatically innocent.

Good god you are dense.

-edit-

Glad you finally got it. ;)

[Empty_of_Clouds]

Just in case anyone gives a monkey's about any of this.


20-330
TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF U.S. V. CREW, ET AL.
The motion of Scholar Seth Barrett Tillman, et al. for leave to file a brief as amici curiae is granted. The motion of Professor Lawrence A. Hamermesh for leave to file a brief as amicus curiae is granted. The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit with instructions to dismiss the case as moot.
See United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U. S. 36 (1950).

20-331
TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF U.S. V. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, ET AL.
The motion of Scholar Seth Barrett Tillman, et al. for leave to file a brief as amici curiae is granted. The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit with instructions to dismiss the case as moot.
See United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U. S. 36 (1950).


Definition of moot (from Merriam Webster 2021)

1a : open to question : debatable
1b : subjected to discussion : disputed
2 : deprived of practical significance : made abstract or purely academic


Definition #2 is the meaning that the SC use in their rulings quoted above.


A case being rendered moot does not mean the accused was innocent of the original charges.

The rulings above are direct quotes from the Order List of the Supreme Court, US.

[dneal]

Now look up "standing" and "laches", two other procedural methods for dismissing cases without considering the merits.

[Freddie]

Apparently the Bravo Sierra keeps piling up ...

Fred

Fred & Freddie- how are you both?
Biden campaigned from his basement, announcing he had a plan to save us.
Then he comes out and finds it's not going to end any time soon.
At last we agree: Joe can stack it fast and deep.


A damaged book seller and a REMF. The Proud ... punks ... whippersnappers ... ... dudes ... boys ... tadpoles

Still a good thing me and the boys were not on security that faithful day.....Tap Tap Tap ...

You boys have a very interestin' hobby....Keep blowin' that Kazoo . Kazoo law.

Still your friend and his,

Fred

[Freddie]

Don't forget that Trump obstructed Biden's ability to hit the ground running by blocking his (and his staff) access to many meetings/briefings. I think Trump hats should read MAW... Make America Worse.

You would think that wouldn’t be a challenge for a politician with almost 5 decades of experience, and his hand picked seasoned staff, pitted against an incompetent orange upstart.

Apparently the Bravo Sierra keeps piling up ...

Fred

You're the expert.

Nah... You have all the experience...therefore I defer to you.

Youse is the master of Bravo Sierra....

Fred

[dneal]

Don't forget that Trump obstructed Biden's ability to hit the ground running by blocking his (and his staff) access to many meetings/briefings. I think Trump hats should read MAW... Make America Worse.

You would think that wouldn’t be a challenge for a politician with almost 5 decades of experience, and his hand picked seasoned staff, pitted against an incompetent orange upstart.

Apparently the Bravo Sierra keeps piling up ...

Fred

You're the expert.

Nah... You have all the experience...therefore I defer to you.

Youse is the master of Bravo Sierra....

Fred

Fred, that post is the equivalent of "neener, neener, no I'm not, you are..."

embarrassing

[Freddie]

Don't forget that Trump obstructed Biden's ability to hit the ground running by blocking his (and his staff) access to many meetings/briefings. I think Trump hats should read MAW... Make America Worse.

You would think that wouldn’t be a challenge for a politician with almost 5 decades of experience, and his hand picked seasoned staff, pitted against an incompetent orange upstart.

Apparently the Bravo Sierra keeps piling up ...

Fred

You're the expert.

Nah... You have all the experience...therefore I defer to you.

Youse is the master of Bravo Sierra....

Fred

Fred, that post is the equivalent of "neener, neener, no I'm not, you are..."

embarrassing

See post 70 https://fpgeeks.com/forum/showthread.php/33292-With-the-Washington-Post-s-history-of-lying-why-do-people-still-read-it?p=316340&viewfull=1#post316340

Adios muchachos..

Fred

[Pendragon]

In the rush to smear Trump and his supporters, idiot journalists exonerate Trump.

Investigators pursuing signs US Capitol riot was planned (https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/13/politics/capitol-riot-investigation/index.html)

So how exactly did Trump’s speech on the 6th “incite” something that was planned?

The responses will be entertaining.
It didn't. Something like 250 people broke into the Capitol building. That is 250 out of the 30,000 strong crowd. If what Trump said incited people, then there would have been a lot more than 250 people storming the Capitol. Calling it an insurrection rather than a riot sounds like yellow journalism to me.

[Pendragon]

Thanks for, not just verifying, but actually being the cause of what a waste of time this subforum is. You should watch the Monty Python skit... You're acting like the John Cleese character.
You call it a waste of time, yet here you are, throwing brickbats at someone with a differing opinion. Just like Antifa and those who broke into the Capitol. Now you know why our country is wracked by violent conflict in so many places. Perhaps reason would trump personal attacks? BTW, "I have an opinion therefore I am right" is not reason, however convenient it may be.

[TSherbs]

The maniac is gone. The countdown is over.

[Chuck Naill]

Long way from over. Don’t let your guard down, ever.

[TSherbs]

He's a pissant grifter, now out of office. He has fooled millions into thinking that he cares about them and this country, I'll give him that. His powers of deception are strong (aided by kooks on the internet and cable evening programs and even some spineless members of Congress). But some of us were never fooled.

[Chuck Naill]

Obviously 70 million were fooled, but not for all the same reasons. Some feel he did some good by moving against immigrants, immigration, and providing cover for white supremacy.

Others like his tax legislation.

Some liked how he talked.

What and who he is was readily available in 2015. So, this was before his election. It’s odd to me anyone was so easily misled. His support might have not been as strong had his opponent not been a Clinton or a female .

[TSherbs]

Study some populist movements, Chuck. Huey Long, Father Coughlin, etc. They milk the "love" of the people with their charisma and falsehoods. Read Day of the Locust by Nathanael West for another look at the frenzy of the dispossessed.

[Chuck Naill]

No need to since Trump’s life is readily available.

[kazoolaw]

The maniac is gone. The countdown is over.

But he's not: he's taken up residence in your head.

[Mustang Mars]

Now that the dude has gone, does that mean this thread is now defunct?

I can’t believe this thread is still alive. Dude’s gone. You are very passionate and hats off for that. Down Under, we just move on. Admittedly, we haven’t had the events you have, and are currently, experiencing. Hope all goes well and wish you the safest best. You could always move here where we don’t give a f**k until someone shits in our yard (not literal, just when they f**k with us personally).

[welch]

Now that the dude has gone, does that mean this thread is now defunct?

I can’t believe this thread is still alive. Dude’s gone. You are very passionate and hats off for that. Down Under, we just move on. Admittedly, we haven’t had the events you have, and are currently, experiencing. Hope all goes well and wish you the safest best. You could always move here where we don’t give a f**k until someone shits in our yard (not literal, just when they f**k with us personally).

He's not entirely gone. His "base", which looks like most Republicans, thinks he is God on earth, or, at least, the one chosen by God to rule forever. They now insist:

- the attack on the Capitol was a "false flag" attack done by "anti-fa" to embarrass Trump's neo-nazi true believers;

- belief that Trump's landslide "perfect" victory was stolen, somehow, and that this belief is required for admission to the Republican Party;

- Marjorie Taylor Greene is the model Republican, and that Greene's claims that 9/11 was another "false flag" job, that the recent California wildfires were caused by a Jewish Space Laser, that the dead children in school shootings were paid actors, and that Hillary Clinton drinks children's blood in a satanic murder ritual all need to be investigated.

[Mustang Mars]

Now that the dude has gone, does that mean this thread is now defunct?

I can’t believe this thread is still alive. Dude’s gone. You are very passionate and hats off for that. Down Under, we just move on. Admittedly, we haven’t had the events you have, and are currently, experiencing. Hope all goes well and wish you the safest best. You could always move here where we don’t give a f**k until someone shits in our yard (not literal, just when they f**k with us personally).

He's not entirely gone. His "base", which looks like most Republicans, thinks he is God on earth, or, at least, the one chosen by God to rule forever. They now insist:

- the attack on the Capitol was a "false flag" attack done by "anti-fa" to embarrass Trump's neo-nazi true believers;

- belief that Trump's landslide "perfect" victory was stolen, somehow, and that this belief is required for admission to the Republican Party;

- Marjorie Taylor Greene is the model Republican, and that Greene's claims that 9/11 was another "false flag" job, that the recent California wildfires were caused by a Jewish Space Laser, that the dead children in school shootings were paid actors, and that Hillary Clinton drinks children's blood in a satanic murder ritual all need to be investigated.
Hmmm. I’m still undecided on 9/11. Working in construction on steel structured high rise, puzzled why 3 (2 x WTO + the other one WTO #8?) went down in their footprint and not sideways. Anyway, not opening up a can of worms here. A lot of people died and it stills remains the darkest day in my life.

[Pendragon]

I can’t believe this thread is still alive. Dude’s gone. You are very passionate and hats off for that. Down Under, we just move on. Admittedly, we haven’t had the events you have, and are currently, experiencing. Hope all goes well and wish you the safest best. You could always move here where we don’t give a f**k until someone shits in our yard (not literal, just when they f**k with us personally).
Americans are divided into two groups of people who hate each other, with a gulf the size of the Grand Canyon between them. Both sides are almost completely intolerant of dissent, and actively seek out confrontation and conflict. People nowadays also have fewer and fewer bounds on their behavior. The result is predictable. That is why you see people ranting and raving here, as well as violent mobs in real life from both the left and the right. People now f### with each other just for the hell of it. Maybe it is something in the water?

[Chuck Naill]

There are more people today than 1950 which means more competition. There was a time when white men could get a decent job just because they were needed. This is behind much of the nonsense. Some white men think that if a black, brown, or female person gets ahead, it means they lost something. Fact is, now days white men need to learn to compete and be able to put a resume together online.

[Pendragon]

There are more people today than 1950 which means more competition. There was a time when white men could get a decent job just because they were needed. This is behind much of the nonsense. Some white men think that if a black, brown, or female person gets ahead, it means they lost something. Fact is, now days white men need to learn to compete and be able to put a resume together online.
Now you are just being silly.

[Chuck Naill]

There are more people today than 1950 which means more competition. There was a time when white men could get a decent job just because they were needed. This is behind much of the nonsense. Some white men think that if a black, brown, or female person gets ahead, it means they lost something. Fact is, now days white men need to learn to compete and be able to put a resume together online.
Now you are just being silly.

What do you know?

[TSherbs]

The maniac is gone, and the detritus left behind is still washing up on the shores of justice:

CNBC: Rudy Giuliani associate Igor Fruman pleads guilty to soliciting foreign campaign contributions.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/10/rudy-giuliani-associate-igor-fruman-set-to-plead-guilty-in-court.html

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

[kazoolaw]

Sorry, a new countdown has started.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIF. E6vEQa2oGxeXGm8EmRse3w%26pid%3DApi&f=1
1148 days from 9/14/20 until 11/5/24

[Chuck Naill]

I’m hopeful for a strong independent party candidate.