Sorry to be all "not even that, but unpreparedness puts it too lightly. (Of course, you also said "deference", so maybe this doesn't make sense.) There's video of cops letting the rioters through the barriers. The problem is too many cops are on the rioters' side.
Also, sorry to not close a quotation mark.
I don't know enough of the relevant facts here, but is it possible that the Capitol police are a largely ceremonial force? They didn't seem dressed or equipped like the highly militarised lot we normally see and who were conspicuously absent from the scene.
I mean, there obviously was collusion at some level of the security, when you consider the lack of preparation for a highly predictable riot. But when I look at that video of the fat black cop with a billy stick retreating up a marble staircase in the face of a guy in a Q T shirt, he just doesn't look to me like one of nature's head crackers. He could have shot a few, I guess, but where was his backup? One of the features of a proper riot police is that they operate in groups.
1: Right - I was trying to say both. They put themselves in a position where they were understaffed and underprepared, and then greeted them with big welcoming arms.
The NYT has a good piece on this.
One apologist for the police more-or-less backs NW's observation:
Some experts defended the police, noting that the Capitol Police deals with protests, both inside and outside the building, legal and illegal, on a regular basis, but they are nothing like this.
"This isn't what happens at the U.S. Capitol," said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a think tank in Washington. "This is completely unprecedented. This is as close to a 9/11 attack as you can think of, in that no one has ever done this before."
Mr. Wexler said legitimate questions would be raised about why more officers were not on hand and why they did not anticipate the threat. But he laid most of the blame on political leaders who legitimize violent groups. "If the president tells his supporters, 'This is what I want you to do,' that could be more valuable than a thousand cops," he said.
On the other hand, DC's former top cop (who I think is reasonably well-regarded) said this:
"How they were not ready for this today, I have no idea," said Charles Ramsey, a former D.C. police chief. "They were overwhelmed, they did not have the resources. You have to be able to protect the Capitol. That is not OK."
Very much wanting to see arrests and sentencing after this, no matter how ridiculous or misguided the offenders.
https://twitter.com/hunterw/status/1346919171595137025?s=20
Fifty-plus arrests, and the police claim they are looking at pictures to find more criminals. We'll see if anything comes of that.
This doesn't look like much collusion is going on.
https://twitter.com/KySportsRadio/status/1347031398176223233
The date on this tweet, that whole thread: https://twitter.com/ariehkovler/status/1341016471795843080
They didn't prepare for two reasons: First, because cops and klan go hand in hand, as it were, and second, because cops are always unwilling to take any personal risk in the name of duty. They're perfectly happy to drag paraplegics out of their chairs or punch a left-wing priest, but when it comes to standing up to a large crowd, especially an armed crowd, well, all that "give us military equipment because terrorists" stuff goes out the window.
Proof? They fell back during the riots this summer. I mean, I'm glad they did and the burning of the 3rd precinct was a deed that will live forever in our hearts, but those were large, trained, armed grown men. If they'd acted with dispatch and courage early in the first night, none of it would have happened - but that would have meant not protecting their precious skins.
They're not cops because they want to protect people and take risks for the greater good; they're cops because they want to bulldoze homeless people's stuff, shoot Black teens with impunity and get paid a fat salary. If they wanted to help people, they'd be EMTs.
~~
On that note, if I were a politician or a staffer in the capitol, I would not feel at all good about being at work, since we've just seen that the cops were basically willing to let congress get massacred. All those loons were looking for permission - if they'd gotten at one staffer or congressperson and someone had started beating them or shooting, there would have been a massacre that no one would have been able to stop.
Seriously, it makes me wish I was a cop, because at least I have some forward planning skills.
Jammies keeps sending me tweets about the massive failure to remotely shut down all the congressional computers during the evacuation and how bad the security breach might be.
8: From your POV, what are the largest failures by the PD that contributed to the shitstorm yesterday?
12: Pretty obvious total lack of planning. Should have had a staging area, mobile arrest teams, a site to immediately take arrested people for processing, bunch of full kitted out public order units to deploy quickly, etc. The minute they started pushing through those barriers there should have been a storm of pepper balls and tear gas.
There is a very big difference between a protest march and a focused attack on a building. It's pretty routine for protestors to march by all sorts of things they might perhaps consider targets - I can't think of a London demo I've been on that didn't go past the Cavalry & Guards Club or the Treasury and take the opportunity to whoop and howl at the inmates - but it's kind of understood they aren't going to actually invade and sack them. Even if the evening is going to finish with a ruckus and a bunch of street furniture being smashed, there's a common language.
If you're dealing with people who are out to literally storm something you need much more density of force to prevent that. Implicitly, that means ceding a lot of public space to them in order to mass enough cops. It also means accepting that you're not going to have the kind of low-key, democratic public space where you can do things like have a protest march, at least temporarily.
The impression I get is that they came to police a demonstration and encountered an assault.
.is it possible that the Capitol police are a largely ceremonial force
Absolutely not. They are numerous (38 cops per acre of jurisdiction) and meet protestors and litterers with casual force all the time.
I also assume the FBI will not be using the numerous photos to arrest people after the fact. Maybe one or two for CYA.
On this point, some video: https://twitter.com/KeejayOV2/status/1346985823422480385
point the one: they are not being "let in" or welcomed here.
point the two: this would have done fine for even a large and moderately rowdy demonstration but it was never going to stop a smallish but compact and determined *assault*.
point the three: was there a counter-demonstration at all?
8: I don't think that anyone is suggesting that collaboration took place at the leadership level, but gensym had a video here that seems to require some explanation.
I'm trying to come up with a narrative where it is appropriate to remove barricades that separate a mob from the Capitol. I am not succeeding.
When, as you can see at the end of the video, the mob has already broken in and is behind you?
There was a massive social media campaign by very, very foolish people to discourage a counter-protest. I feel like I saw some small attempts online but nothing major.
Also, frankly, the cops' "let's you and him fight" attitude and the popular "but anTIfa are the real font of violence" thing has, I think, really exhausted a lot of very good people.
You remember how in Charlottesville the game plan was to rally in the morning and spend the afternoon terrorizing the city, reaving and killing as they went? That was the plan. It was derailed by the massive counter-demonstration. What do you think we'd be looking at now if Charlottesville had gone differently? If it had been a huge recruiting tool for nazis? If it had been proven that a thousand armed white men can terrorize a small city and there is no one stop them?
There too, the mayor knew what was happening. It was all online. But they always give credit to white men and assume things will be fine and then come down really hard on the people who do the actual dangerous work of standing up to them.
If there had been a couple of thousand counter-demonstrators and they'd spent the afternoon standing off the nazis, the media would be full of hatred for antifa and their incivilities and how the peaceful far right get provoked into violence.
The title of this piece has aged, as they say, like vintage milk: https://www.washingtonian.com/2021/01/05/maga-geniuses-plot-takeover-of-us-capitol/
Discouraging a counter-protest seems to have been a great success in terms of how this is being covered and how moderates have reacted to it.
My Twitter feed was losing its mind yesterday, all with the same thought of how stunningly inadequate the response was and how we all know it would have been completely different with any black or leftist group. It's a real last straw I think: if Biden doesn't do something pretty aggressive about the state of policing in America, he will lose the trust of many, many of his supporters.
22: On the other hand, in the absence of either successful police response or a counter protest, the Nazis now have a pretty successful day under their belts, which is the kind of thing that breeds an appetite for more. They can chase Congress out of the Capitol and trash their offices if they want -- do you think they're going to stop wanting to?
20: I don't disagree with that analysis, but I'm not sure what lesson you're drawing from it. As far as political outcomes go, this could not have been a bigger disaster for Trump and his people.
Trump himself has finally acknowledged defeat. He has publicly committed for the first time to a peaceful transition: "Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th."
You're absolutely right that antifa intervention here would have been beneficial politically for Trump. It also might have come out better for Trump if the police had been more effective at the cost of human lives -- if the Capitol had remained secure and a half-dozen fascists were killed.
I'm seeing a lot of tough-on-crime talk about how the failure of the Capitol Police will embolden the fascists. Given how stupid fascists are, that might even be true. But me, I want more victories by fascists if the result is the capitulation of their leaders and their public disgrace.
Alex has it right. The deference herbie mentions is their unpreparedness - the idea that this set of protestors is just going to shout and demonstrate and go home. The reason that was the going assumption is left as an exercise for the reader.
They're already blaming it on antifa anyway. No real Maga thug wearing a civil war t shirt and carrying a gun would ever threaten violence. It's not clear how they camouflaged themselves into middle aged white men but mission impossible probably has the technology worked out.
22: Hah, and what are the moderates going to do? They'll forget in a week and the same thing will happen but worse in a year. Then they'll wring their hands again and keep wringing them as god knows what happens to the rest of the country.
This was a great recruitment moment for nazis. What happens if they decide, eg, to attempt to machine gun members of the Biden administration when they're out in public? What happens if there are five hundred heavily armed nazis at the inauguration and they start shooting? Right now we know that bullshit phony coward cops won't do a goddamn thing - and DOD will haver about sending back-up and the rest of the DC cops will stand back. The cops wouldn't stand up to a relatively lightly-armed group and have no interest in using the internet to plan ahead. Now the nazis know that all they have to do is show up in numbers with guns and they can do as they please.
This was very, very, very bad. If there were going to be really hard-hitting prosecutions of fifty or sixty movement leaders, that might walk things back a little, but we all know - and so do the nazis - that there won't be.
As usual, antifa will spend a tremendous amount of time at some personal risk identifying and doxing these people to try to get them fired and shamed, and as usual everyone will be all "but surely it is wrong to dox a fine white man? Should he really lose his job for being about an inch away from murdering people?"
Contempt for the people who guard us while we sleep indeed.
When there are assassinations and the assassins are allowed to walk away are we going to say, "thank goodness, now the GOP is really embarrassed! This was so bad for the Republicans?"
I agree with 22. The optics would have been worse had their been a significant counterprotest. Overrunning the Capitol Building was a catastrophic success for Trump supporters.
herbie
OMG. I know it's a typo, but how is this the first time I've seen it?
Look, I really value the people here. You're a terrific group and I've never forgotten the people who helped out materially in the aftermath of the 2008 RNC protests. If you're right, that's great and I will absolutely reconsider my starting points. But I feel like this is tipping over into more of the same "surely this" that we've had for the whole Trump campaign and administration - surely this will be where the line is drawn, except we expected the line to be drawn all the way back when Trump was bragging about sexual assualt. None of this is catastrophic for the far right, because the rise of the far right is structural.
(The 2008 RNC protests! My god, that was a long time ago. )
Much like 9/11 I think this is a one-off. They're not going to be able to do this again. The Capitol Police aren't going to get caught with their pants down twice. Not that I think this kind of thing won't happen again in various state capitals.
I actually agree with 22 too. I think this was an extinction burst event. I think this is a direction-changing event.
supporting frowner, and really really really hoping this conversation doesn't end up alienating frowner from this community as it alas based on past experience seems likely to ...
serious suggestion: do a book club on bring the war home before you continue with this discourse.
This was Trump's Boulanger moment. Boulanger was the leader of a proto-fascist movement in France, and there was a moment where his followers expected him to lead a coup. Instead he dawdled, and ended up fleeing France with his mistress. When they overran the Capitol, Trump had to either try to seize power, or back down. He backed down.
The fantasy that Nazis are going to gun down hundreds of people at the Inauguration, and moderates will just shrug their shoulders is just that... a fantasy. The US has a serious problems, but come on.
Was Boulanger the president of France at the time?
Trump is so petty he's barred Pence's chief of staff from the White House.
They can chase Congress out of the Capitol and trash their offices if they want
IMO a lot depends on subsequent policing. The FBI hasn't gone after right-wing groups; I think that at least factions within the security services are going to start doing that either today or under Garland. Mobs need leadership and political goals.
More significant are the attacks on public health workers all over the place in the US causing resignations.
For the first time it looks like the R nominee in 2024 won't be named Donald Trump.
36: That's nice of you to say, dq.
I will never be alienated from Unfogged! (I mean, absent a real ideological 180 on one of our parts.) People here are well-informed and have reasonable ideas about how society should work. There are many politics threads where I don't comment because I'm reading and learning, not because I'm sitting around frothing with annoyance.
This twitter thread, by the daughter of a former senior capitol hill police officer, might be of interest:
https://twitter.com/eunique/status/1347184094183043074
37: A better way to frame it would be that there is no political channel for moderates to impose moderate policies. People hand-wring and forget is that they're shut out of the political process because of the decay of unions, political clubs, all the pressure methods that middle class moderates might have had a couple of generations ago are weakened or gone. The Democrats had a terrible, terrible bench for a long time (and it's only better because of the left) and their ground game is frequently awful. They are not responsive to average citizens in any way, and this has gotten worse over time.
Moderates have nothing but moral suasion on the internet to try to get moderate policies enacted and I tend to think that fails a lot or else quite a few things in this country wouldn't happen as they do.
But moderates probably know how to use commas and clauses.
I agree with 32. I'm not sure where I am on whether there should have been counter demonstrations yesterday. The risk isn't the PR hit convincing moderates that it was but sides. The risk I see was Trump people shooting large numbers of demonstrators, thus bogging down police and making it easier for Congress to have been taken hostage.
38: No. It's not an exact analogy. But Trump won't be President for much longer, either. His chance for a coup d'etat (no matter how remote) came and went.
A couple thoughts.
- Don Trump's has treated his entire presidency as a reality show, and it ended that way. He recreated the television images of a coup, but didn't lay any groundwork with the military or subvert enough of the local cops to form a separate security force. Everything has always been about image - I'm amazed he never learned that the actual work matters.
- As ugly as this was, a much bigger problem is that other people do learn. This was an excellent organizing and team building exercise - not just the mob, but all of the legal silliness and so on that proceeded it. Like minded folks got what amounted to a trial run to organize. They will not let that go to waste.
On a personal note, I've been casually considering going expat over the last couple years. Pretty sure this is the last big warning to get out - I'm not going to make any predictions, but I don't think any of us would be surprised by a competently executed putsch next go 'round.
I hope 22 and 25 are right but I think it's too early to say. 121 Republican House Representatives voted to challenge the Arizona electoral votes, and 9 Senators. That's the majority of Republicans in Congress. And that's AFTER the "protest" yesterday. The majority of elected Republicans supported an attempted coup. Pence did the right thing at almost literally the last minute and Ted Cruz is talking out both sides of his mouth as of this morning.
Let's see what comes of the apparent split within the Republican party, or if the the impeachment or 25th amendment talk goes anywhere over the next couple days, or how difficult they make things in the early days of the Biden administration.
I think it's wise to prepare for that, but in my case not by leaving.
43: I think you spend all of your time in circles where "the Democrats are helpless" is an article of faith. The US has a seriously flawed system, but the Democrats largely stymied the Republican legislative agenda, and whenever the Republicans were forced to negotiate, the Democrats out-negotiated them. The Republicans got Supreme Court nominees, because they controlled the Senate, and they got some of what they wanted through reconciliation in the first two years, but that's it. It's got to be the most meager set of achievements from complete control of Congress and the Presidency in the history of the Republic.
I find it irritating that in these discussions I always end up defending the Democrats, because I think of them as pretty mediocre. Joe Biden is not my idea of the person for this historical moment. The problem isn't the Democrats -- it's the voters. There are two sides in American politics, but they aren't left and right. Half the country is fascist, or fascist-friendly, and half the country wants to hit the snooze button. This year, the snooze button won. Politics in the US is perfectly responsive to moderates, because moderates don't want anything.
If there are serious legal consequences for the leaders and participants in these insurrections (the US Capitol invasion was the most egregious incident yesterday, but by no means the only one, and they were definitely coordinated), then I might credit that this was a strategic loss for the right-wing paramilitary movement and turning point for the country.
And frankly, it would not be hard. Scores of excellent photos have already circulated with clear, unobscured faces, with several identities already alleged. Trespassing is the easy charge; rioting, felony murder, literal insurrection, conspiracy to commit the same - all could be on the table.
I predict there won't be. Aside from the couple of dozen gimmes at the scene, there will be less than five high profile arrests within six months, prosecutions for which will drag on for a couple more years.
50: Credit the Democrats for holding their caucus together in united opposition, for the most part, but c'mon. The failure of the Republican legislative agenda over the Trump era was mostly driven by the fact that they couldn't agree within their own ranks on what to do. They had trouble passing a tax cut!
38: no, but he *was* minister of war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Ernest_Boulanger
47: the blindside here is that I can remember lots of people being worried about Bush (or indeed Trump) cancelling the elections, but the threat-model they were using was a classic military coup - some general posts tanks around the White House, or the president calls out the National Guard to impose his personal dictatorship. Not "you need the National Guard called out to deal with the president's supporters in the country".
It feels like this is trial and error as fascists slowly put pieces together. They've got police acquiescence, a large bloc of Congressional supporters (including the cowed or cowable) which could easily become a majority in the next ten years, and stochastic rebel bands. Just add to yesterday's mix a cadre of ICE or other federal agents sworn to the cause, and an overt coup would have been completely feasible.
Some of the pieces could fall apart when Trump storms off, but I don't feel confident of that.
Trump banned from Facebook. Another victory for the rioters?
I guess I'm remembering the Militia movement of the nineties, which fizzled after OKC. Perhaps incorrectly, I think that a public fiasco like this will make a difference in how many people with their shit together will keep supporting this stuff.
The book dq mentions looks timely and and like a pretty good read.
47, 49: If I had an easy path to emigration, I might have taken it already, or at least would be laying the groundwork. As it is, I've recently got a car, so my plan if things go bad is to drive for my parent's place in Vermont. I've been very hesitant to say there are any good Republicans, but Vermont's governor is calling for Trump to "resign or be removed from office".
56: Personally I've been expecting things to get worse until a mass murder like that. If instead the turning point is yesterday's attack, I guess we should all be glad that fewer lives would be lost. Of course, again, it's too early to say that will happen.
55: In a word, yes?
The right-wing is engaged in a form of the Gish gallop with their provocations. The fact that it took a literal incitement to riot and foment insurrection to ban Trump from Facebook is itself a damning indictment of their institutional failure to respond to the crises of our time in any way commensurate to the scope of the problem. Hell, respond to? They are, right now, continuing to act as one of the vital agents of transmission for lethally dangerous right-wing memes.
If Facebook were to say, okay, that's it, no more pro-Trump groups, no more Q, no more 2A, no more Confederate, no more right-wing agitprop generally - that'd be something. But they won't, because they can't, because not only could they not afford the moderator capacity, a significant minority of their dedicated user base logs onto their site specifically to obtain that content, that sweet, heady confirmation bias.
Simply banning Trump from Facebook absent any other real action is not just insufficient, it's a martyring action.
121 Republican House Representatives voted to challenge the Arizona electoral votes, and 9 Senators.
Well yeah, sure, but that was the plan pre-riot. Did the riot strengthen the position of these members of Congress? I think it plainly did not.
The only claim I'm making is that yesterday was a bad day for the Trumpists. Trump still owns the Republican Party, and the Republican Party could well come to own America. But Trump and the Republicans are both weaker today than they were on Tuesday.
Perhaps the primary disagreement is on the role of Trump in the right-wing paramilitary movement. If you think he and his political movement are the essential centerpiece, yesterday was a strategic disaster. If you think he was more of an accelerant or a totem, it's more muddled.
14: you need much more density of force to prevent that. Implicitly, that means ceding a lot of public space to them in order to mass enough cops. It also means accepting that you're not going to have the kind of low-key, democratic public space where you can do things like have a protest march, at least temporarily.
I am certainly not an expert, but I do think this is absolutely true in this case. It appears they were trying to defend much too large of a perimeter with too few personnel. And then did not have a true defense in depth setup once the outer perimeter was breached (and per Alex a setup more in keeping with what you do to police a protest "march" rather than an assault). However, per the thread in 9 and there were many, many not-too-hard-to-find sources of information where the potential for just what happened/was attempted* were obvious.
Was interesting to see that in addition to nearly starting Congressional fisticuffs by pointing out Republican liars were lying, Conor Lamb also created some stir by noting "a lot of them walked out free. And everyone watching at home knew why that was, the way they looked."
*I think if a congressperson had been "caught" by the mob it would be a very different narrative today. Less dramatically, but also different if they had seized the electoral college certificates (apparently nearly forgotten in the moment).
61.last: I read that certified copies were deposited in the National Archives.
62: Ah , so those are "copies." Still, the symbolic nature would certainly have been something.
I will say that the thing that folks i know from overseas are astonished* at about yesterday was exactly this--the failure to defend the capital given all of the security theater (admittedly a lot of it associated with the presidency and the Secret Service). Its as if the people in Congress are not considered "important,"
60: he's the centerpiece of any intersection they have with elected officials. Without him, they're Bundys and occupying forrestry buildings.
Further to 65 and looking beyond the specific role of the Capitol Police, I do not know what if any arrangements or contingencies were in place with the DC National Guard (or other federally-controlled law enforcement or security organization) but I am sure that fear, uncertainty, and doubt (and in some cases malevolence) of members of the administration and people in those organizations as to how Trump would view any preparations played a part. Also overall command and control in general (who actually directs the Capitol Police--is it really ultimately McConnell as I heard?) played a big part as I think it often does in DC*.
Anyway, this picture of troops at Lincoln Memorial during BLM protests is what I think folks overseas assumed was the norm and would certainly be in place for the Capitol.
*Statehood now... but of course that would have not solved this other than DC National Guard piece I guess.
60: In conclusion, since the dawn of time powerful malevolent fucksticks have incited much fuckstickedness. Although minor fucksticks can do it on their own.
I can't agree he's the centerpiece, in that the whole edifice crumbles if he's removed. I argue he's the emblematic totem, their most potent political figure and will quickly be anointed as a martyr, but Hawley, Cotton, Cruz, dozens of others nationally and hundreds in the state legislatures all give aid and comfort to this movement. And that's to say nothing of how thoroughly they have infiltrated the security forces at all levels - police, sheriffs, CBP, ICE, armed forces.
The notion of bringing politicians to account specifically for failing to uphold their oath to protect the Constitution may be a muchness most times it's invoked, but if Trump refusing to approve the National Guard activation doesn't count, I don't know what does.
66: I thin I have not followed up on was a report that Jim Acosta had that implied the White House was in contact with some of the occupiers and noted some were intending to stay all night. Acosta in typical Washington insider mode buried the lede that the story was that they were in contact, not the "plans" of some members of the mob.
I agree with Frowner and others, I think, about the trajectory here. We're heading generally for a yet darker period. I disagree about counter-demonstrations (predictably, I know) because I think they would only serve as an accelerant of the nazi-recruiting process. The split within Republicans has been an important element in keeping us from full-on fascism, and I think we want to keep that alive.
Our R senator Daines was planning to support the Cruz objections and walked away because of the riots. He was just re-elected, and 2026 is so far away that no price will be paid either way for this. But we want there to be Rs who shrink from the full thing, and the 'concession' of not having counterdemonstrations where decent people get knocked in the head isn't that much of a price.
And I think the optics of these white people just walking away is better PR for BLM than anything that a BLM counter-demonstration could have managed. No one on earth missed it.
D-squared's "Arseholes, considered as a strategic resource" post is of course very relevant here.
This is my advice to any aspiring dictator; early on in your career, identify and inventory all the self-pitying, bullying shitheads your country has to offer. Anyone with a grievance, a beer belly and enough strength to swing a pickaxe handle will do. You don't need to bother with military training or discipline because they're hopefully never going to be used as a proper military force - just concentrate on nuturing their sense that they, despite appearances, are the backbone of the country, and allowing them to understand that although rules are rules, there are some people who just need a slap
Just saw this on twitter:
Congressman Tim Ryan just told reporters that as many as 60 Capitol Police officers were injured, including 15 hospitalized and one in critical condition. Many were hit in the head with lead pipes, he said.
I have no idea whether and to what extent this is true. It's still a good idea to encourage a perception, in flyover country, that the mob was not 'backing the blue,' who winked and nodded at them. While at the same time looking at footage, and quietly moving individual officers out of the force, if they didn't do their jobs.
72.last: Yes. I must say Conor Lamb using that image in his speech made me think he might have a more significant political future than I had heretofore imagined.
69: You're muddling the issue here, or I was misreading you. You said in 60: "If you think he and his political movement are the essential centerpiece ..."
"His political movement" (by my reckoning) includes other politicians -- "Hawley, Cotton, Cruz, dozens of others nationally and hundreds in the state legislatures."
So yes, by my definition, Trump and his political movement are the "essential centerpiece." Randos with rifles -- the Bundys and whatnot -- are insignificant by comparison, and the work of the yesterday's rioters undermines the work of the people I regard as important.
I guess I'm remembering the Militia movement of the nineties, which fizzled after OKC. Perhaps incorrectly, I think that a public fiasco like this will make a difference in how many people with their shit together will keep supporting this stuff.
I agree with Frowner and others, I think, about the trajectory here. We're heading generally for a yet darker period.
I agree with both of these statements. This window between the election and now is depressing. To take one trivial example, I had assumed that Trump would formally concede at some point. Not because he would want to, but because (I believed) someone would eventually convince him that it was in his political interests. That never happened. I expected these considerations to eventually reach Trump:
Dan Eberhart, a prominent donor to Trump and the Republican Party, also sharply criticized the protests and the president.
"If President Trump wants to have any kind of political future within the Republican Party, he needs to condemn the violence at the Capitol and stop claiming the election was stolen," Eberhart told NBC News. "President Trump had his day in court. It's time to concede defeat and think about his political future."
He added, "The desecration of the Capitol is not going to be forgotten. He cost Sen. [Mitch] McConnell his leadership position, and now he's s------g all over the Capitol."
The fact that Trump continues "s------g all over the Capitol" is a sign of both his personal damaged ego and insanity and that he doesn't think he needs to make a symbolic gesture of reconciliation for the sake of his political future. It's not clear that the guardrails are actually meaningful.
That said, the best possible case (knock on wood) is that the right wing activists will end up on the position that Tom Leher described in "Folk Song Army"
Though he may have won all the battles,
We had all the good songs!
I know that far more people than I would expect are moved by their rhetoric, but I think there's a good chance that it does ultimately fizzle.
Brendan Nyhan makes a good point how this can be viewed as the 20-years on escalation of the Brooks Brother riot. Invasion of a government space in attempt to stop the counting of votes.
Omar et al have drafted a bill of impeachment on one count, abuse of power, naming the incitement of insurrection when he spoke yesterday morning, combined with prior efforts including but not limited to the Raffensperger call.
DeLong on twitter linked to an article from Harpers from 1941 about what kind of people could be convinced to become Nazis and under what conditions. I would love to see an updated version.
I screwed up the html and figuring it out on my iPad is a hassle.
https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/
I like that she perfectly predicted Jared.
80: Thanks. led me to look up more on Dorothy Thompson. her description of Hitler (she interviewed him in 1931 and wrote a book) and was apparently the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi German in 1934:
He is formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill poised and insecure. He is the very prototype of the little man.
But here's what Hitler actually did do: Infrastructure Week.
Schumer calls for impeachment or 25th Amendment removal.
||
Guess who has Covid? MEEEEEEEEEE. And my husband. Which, given how fucking careful we both have been, is just brilliant. 2021 so far is not proving to be considerably better than 2020. Fairly sure it came from husband's coworker's kids, they thought it was a 'cold.' I think the NHS/government has done a bit of a disservice to the public by only emphasising three symptoms and de-emphasising congestion, because it allows people to think they just have colds. I have none of the three symptoms they say are mandatory to have in order to receive a test. We were with my father-in-law on the 1st, and I am going to be tense until Monday because he's got issues with his lungs already and just, ugh. But we're mostly fine - sick, but it's within the realms of a cold.
|>
The image that will stick with me the longest is the guy with zip-ties. They wanted to take hostages.
https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1346950694658400257?s=21
86: yep. Some of them at least.
(And wishing Parenthetical good luck, may things remain relatively mild.)
85: Sorry. Ack. Somebody at my husband's work - an employee got it. They had had a contractor. They were last there December 28 which is when most of the company is shut down. Fingers crossed.
85: I hope you both get better soon.
Does anyone understand what a Lindsey Graham's calculus was yesterday?
He's a horrible person determined not to become an abomination unless that is needed to stay in the Senate.
Paren, that sucks & hope you all recover soon.
I just learned that blood clinics around here are looking for plasma from people recovered from COVID as potential therapy to others, if that's an idea that appeals to you once you come out. (It might be specific to trials going on here though.)
91: The Washington Post stream suggested that he sees with Dem Senate control, to get anything he wants through, he will need to switch back to his prior scam of genteel bipartisanship.
Eek, Parenthetical, I hope you feel better (and I'll now feel a little more paranoid on days when I'm a little congested).
Oh no, P, I am so sorry. (And now your neighbors who you share a bedroom wall with will think they've gotten re-exposed!)
85: Ugh. Glad you're riding it out so far. Good luck!
95: Oh, don't worry about a little congestion, it's just that my husband's symptoms exactly align with his bad cold in November, with one massive exception - he lost his sense of taste/smell, which is why we got him tested. The coworkers all thought they just had a cold, but they were coughing. I am no more congested than usual, but extremely achy/brain fog/fatigue.
Thanks for the support. And Minivet, I would happily donate! I will keep my eyes out for something like that around here.
86: That image was indeed incredibly horrifying. The whole thing was, really. I was getting texts from coworkers asking me what the hell was going on - I would prefer to be from a country that does not cause that to happen, really, and yet now both my countries provoke this!
85: I hope you both recover quickly.
I have a sore throat today, so I keep eating twizzlers to be sure my sense of taste is good.
In lighter news, it's almost funny how the First Lady's chief of staff resigned in protest. Like, you're complicit by your presence and salary, but it was so out on the ceremonial fringes of the White House that resigning couldn't do anything either, and you still saved that for the latest possible moment.
Possibly surpassed by Mick Mulvaney, fired from White House roles last March, resigning his position as... special envoy to Northern Ireland.
Oh no, Paren, hoping for a best-case scenario. This makes me feel slightly better about my fun-cancelling overreaction last week due mostly to upper respiratory symptoms.
casually considering going expat over the last couple years. Pretty sure this is the last big warning to get out
Thank you for triggering my obsessions after I'd finally quashed them... sigh. I'm definitely one of the "has predicted 20 out of the past 4 catastrophes" people, and it would be nice to get that ratio down to, say, 2:1, but I don't think I'm temperamentally capable of undershooting.
I think it's been easier to predict the many bad things Trump has actually done than to predict the bad things he failed to do, or refrained from doing. The personnel churn has probably been a slightly mitigating factor.... I'm too braindead to spin this out fully, though.
I have a sore throat today, so I keep eating twizzlers to be sure my sense of taste is good.
My husband keeps eating new things and pronouncing them tasteless. It's both hilarious and sad. Plus I'm getting mad when he eats the 'good' stuff - he can't taste, he should leave it for me!
Best wishes for you and your family Parenthetical
74- Curious about the racial breakdown of the injured police. Selfies with the white cops, leads pipes for the Black?
If you're dealing with people who are out to literally storm something you need much more density of force to prevent that. Implicitly, that means ceding a lot of public space to them in order to mass enough cops. It also means accepting that you're not going to have the kind of low-key, democratic public space where you can do things like have a protest march, at least temporarily.
The impression I get is that they came to police a demonstration and encountered an assault.
This twitter thread about why the police abandoned the barricades supports that assessment: https://twitter.com/justinjm1/status/1347174957613199360
We finally made a separate chat group without my father in law who AIHMHB has become pretty MAGA since he started dating a Trump supporter. The last straw was when he messaged this morning saying how terrible this was, just like Kenosha and Portland and Seattle. We said this isn't the same at all, and he said they should all be prosecuted just like the people who burned and rioted this summer. And his more extreme girlfriend posted a Trump meme on FB with Pelosi, Pressley, Harris, Waters photoshopped in front of burning forests (?) with out of context quotes like "protesters should not let up" and "maybe there should be uprisings across the country". The overall caption is "Don't forget who the real party of violence is!"
Best of luck ().
I thought the best line on Graham is that he's a remora, attaching himself to a powerful patron, in a particularly submissive way that reflects his understanding of his powerlessness. Now that it's clear that Trump isn't that guy, he's free to look for a new authority figure. In six months will it be Cruz? I wouldn't be surprised, but I've already spent more time thinking about Graham than I want to.
With Congress in recess, it looks like impeachment isn't really a possibility. Unless something yet scarier happens.
I can see that cabinet members would rather not pull the 25th Amd trigger, and Pence probably wouldn't unless Trump is foaming at the mouth. And maybe not even then.
Pelosi's speaking at 2, so we'll see what she says.
Best wishes to you, parenthentical.
That the Capitol Police didn't expect the event they got is a damning indictment of the seriousness with which they take right-wing paramilitary threats. The basic thrust of the plan has been openly discussed on the Internet for the past month, and that's without even getting into the semi-private organizing fora.
101 -- Given her prior role, she might well be playing a more important part at this dysfunctional WH than her title suggests. Or not.
110 Indeed. If the DOD is continuing to resist the Transition in any way at all, though, she'll need to step up.
Now they're saying they didn't have "intelligence" of a planned incursion. If that's a real part of it rather than an excuse, probably speaks to their intelligence spending all its time collecting data on leftists and Muslims.
111: Not to mention the president of the United States casting doubt on a peaceful transition explicitly and repeatedly over a period of months.
114 I bet this is exactly true, and, like all those white assholes just walking out, is a great visual. "Our" problem has long been that many of the potentially persuadables are folks who need to be shown rather than told about injustices, and white supremacy. The investigation into this is going to show that they were looking in the wrong direction, and that they were doing so because they refused to heed the many warnings about white supremacy.
Pelosi said Trump committed sedition and "unspeakable assault on our nation and our people." Calls on VP to 25th, if not "Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment, that is the overwhelming sentiment of our caucus and the American people."
Also calls for accountability for Republican members of Congress who "abrogated their oath of office". No specifics on that process.
She gives no timeframe on how quickly it might move. She says she "hopes" the VP could act today.
I feel like if she were 100% serious about this, she would be calling the House back into session right now, as a lot of them probably got on planes to their districts this morning.
It's good to remember none of this is past tense. Twitter is full of people openly asking Trump for instructions on the next step.
Parenthetical, I hope you and your husband recover quickly and that your father in law remains unaffected.
117, 119: Yeah, not to be defeatist or anything, but I thought Congress adjourning was bad news. Impeachment and conviction for something like this always would have been easier than invoking the 25th amendment.
("Easier" is vague, but the they already impeached him once, they'd just need 15 or so more Senators to turn their back on him this time. Whereas the 25th amendment would require Pence plus a majority of the Cabinet, who of course are Trump appointees, and that's only until Trump manages to declare in writing that he's still fit to do the job at which point it goes to Congress anyway. Jokes aside, the 25th amendment wasn't meant for situations like this.)
I think it's the easiest reading of the 25th amendment that, when the President sends his written response that he's fit, and the VP and Cabinet have four days to disagree, he doesn't regain his powers immediately, only if four days pass without a rebuttal (or conceivably if the VP and Cabinet formally agree he should).
Good post but John Scalzi. Not the cleanest phrasing, but I think it's a good description (of a dynamic that many other people have written about)
"But what if we... didn't?"
Somewhat more broadly, the Republicans recognized there was a suite of political conventions and traditions that were designed to make it easier for things to get done, and that this suite of conventions and traditions were exploitable by denial. While people in both parties (and the parties themselves) would occasionally use this exploit, it was not done systematically.
That is, until Gingrich saw that practice as a weakness to be attacked. Here's an early version:
"Treat the members of the other political party as colleagues rather than bitter enemies? Okay, but what if we... didn't?"
And it worked! Which is to say that it got attention, raised temperatures and was an effective political cudgel against those who didn't understand (or didn't want to believe) that the political ground was shifting underneath their feet. Gingrich was a political genius (until he wasn't), and he set the pattern of Republican contravening of norms that advanced inexorably over the years.
....
123: Nice to know, but I think the point stands; depending on Trump appointees to stop Trump is not going to go anywhere.
Datum: Elaine Chao is out. In one sense this is good. Rats desert a ship when it's sinking. In another sense, she's one of those people who could vote on the 25th Amendment, and once her resignation is effective, she won't be. (So, there's still room for something to happen between now and Monday, I guess.)
I really doubt there are enough votes in the Senate to remove right now. Might passage of articles provoke a response that changes that? Maybe just talking about articles will provoke that response: his non-concession concession message this morning, if he even wrote it, has to have gone out over his objection. With removal seemingly gaining steam, he'll be turning on the people to argued that he should issue the statement, and trying to find some way to show "strength."
If there was anyone around him that knew anything about the history of our country, they'd tell him how George Washington beat back a palace coup by putting on his glasses before reading his prepared remarks. Trump could give a briefing showing himself to he lucid, and shocked that anyone would think he had wanted anything more that a set of vigorous chants made safely beyond the security perimeter. If only he was lucid.
His audience is Rubio, Cornyn, Graham, McConnell too -- who already feel like they kind of walked the plank once already, and don't want to give the sharks another shot.
Not a thing wrong with having the Senate again reject impeachment. Let's get the fuckers on the record after yesterday's debacle. If Bill Clinton could be impeached, Trump should be impeached at least twice.
Scalzi falls into a common trap here, referring to Gingrich as a "political genius." Gingrich's genius was in his shamelessness -- his willingness to sink as low as necessary to get what he wanted. This is Trump's genius, and Giuliani's genius, and the brilliance of a bunch of other people who are otherwise dumb fucks.
122, 123 - my understanding of the argument for the 25th is that you would never actually bring the matter before congress. It works for now because you only want to keep him from doing anything terrible for the next two weeks, and you can just run the clock out without having to get the 2/3 votes in both houses. Whereas impeachment probably takes a week or so even if everyone is on board with moving as fast as possible because trial, due process, etc.
The impression I get is that they came to police a demonstration and encountered an assault.
The opposite of what usually happens, when the police show up with tanks and look insane because they go based on wild rumors that Moms Against Guns is a front for Soros to bus in MS-13 to leave strategic piles of bricks at construction sites. This time, all the well documented plans discussed on MAGA websites to assault government buildings - who knew those people were serious? What's the harm in humoring them in their hour of disappointment?
Shamelessness is a super-power. It's a characteristic flaw of intellectuals to think that it's a brilliant strategy, when it's a different kind of thing entirely.
Scalzi falls into a common trap here, referring to Gingrich as a "political genius."
I think the best analogy is to sports in which figuring out a key strategy a couple of years before the competition is enough to count as a "genius" (I also take Scalzi's parenthetical "(until he wasn't)" as signaling that his genius was limited to a certain time and context (and perhaps not even then).)
my husband's symptoms exactly align with his bad cold in November, with one massive exception - he lost his sense of taste/smell, which is why we got him tested.
I saw this today.
Olfactory dysfunction -- the reduced or distorted ability to smell, and a common symptom of the novel coronavirus -- was reported in nearly 86 percent of mild COVID cases, as indicated by a patient who shows no evidence of viral pneumonia or loss of oxygen, and is able to recover at home.
...
Meanwhile, the loss of smell was reported in just 4 percent of moderate COVID-19 cases and in nearly 7 percent of severe-to-critical cases, the study said.
Moderate cases of coronavirus involve patients having "clinical signs of pneumonia," such as a cough, fever and difficulty breathing, while critical cases involve severe respiratory distress in the patients, who are typically older and have "hypertension, diabetes, gastric disorders, renal, respiratory, heart, liver and neurological disorders."
In conclusion, "olfactory dysfunction is more prevalent in mild COVID-19 forms than in moderate-to-critical forms," said lead author Jerome R. Lechien of Paris Saclay University. . . .
I don't think Nancy Pelosi, or Joe Biden, or Chuck Schumer are idiots. I think they would have to be not to understand that to leave this treason unpunished will guarantee the fall of the republic in relatively short time.
I hope they do something about it but I have to admit I have my doubts that they will.
What do you propose they do? And if they fail to follow your program, what timetable would you propose for the inevitable fall of the republic?
Multiple European security officials told Insider that President Donald Trump appeared to have tacit support among US federal agencies responsible for securing the Capitol complex in Wednesday's coup attempt.
From this article in wild-eyed left-wing website "Business Insider".
"You cannot tell me I don't know what they should have done. I can fly to Washington tomorrow and do that job, just as any police official in Washington can fly to Paris and do mine," the official said. The official directs public security in a central Paris police district filled with government buildings and tourist sites.
"These are not subtle principles" for managing demonstrations, "and they transfer to every situation," the official said.
135: I think you put in the link to the page on how to put in a link.
I wish I could blame my phone. Here we go.
Business Insider does some solid work, but this seems rather hyped up. Basically, they've got some foreign cops watching TV and saying the Americans can't possibly be this incompetent. No American would make that mistake.
133 They're already not doing *nothing.* But the question is what can they each do that is effective. Pence won't do the 25th amendment, and there aren't the votes in the Senate for removal-by-impeachment unless Trump does something that looks medical, not just political. There's nothing Pelosi, Biden, or Schumer can do to make those votes appear. And, indeed, McConnell will still be majority leader until Jan 20. You want them to pursue an impeachment that isn't going to work? OK, but when it fails, it's not the fault of the people flying the kamikaze mission.
After the inauguration, there's a lot that can be done. Arrests and prosecutions, and genuine investigation into the CP, look into how many of the rioters with military and off-duty cops (who should face summary termination), etc. Pelosi and Schumer are going to have to pursue this with the new AG, because Biden is going to have to be, and appear to be, primarily focused on (a) pandemic and (b) economy. Judge Garland played a real role in the Oklahoma City investigation/prosecution, and I expect him the be asked about this a lot in his confirmation hearings. It's a great way to get the particular issue of right wing violence to be front and center.
Well this certainly doesn't look good.
In memos issued on Jan. 4 and 5, the Pentagon prohibited the District's guardsmen from receiving ammunition or riot gear, interacting with protesters unless necessary for self-defense, sharing equipment with local law enforcement or using Guard surveillance and air assets without the defense secretary's explicit sign-off, according to officials familiar with the orders.
141 If Miller, or whoever, really rolls on Trump over that, I could see it being worth 4 or 5 votes in the Senate, but it would have to be really unequivocal, not any of that pseudo mob boss bullshit the President seems to like.
After the inauguration, though, the leaks are going to be biblical.
Capitol Police officer now said to have died.
https://twitter.com/AlexLimonNews/status/1347333264978145281
I wonder what the odds are that the sin of Esper (fired 11/9) and Barr (12/23) was not being helpful enough to Trump in these coup plans.
141: Demilitarize the police! Results may vary.
I think I lost some respect for the Donald with his latest video. Total cuck move.
He was wearing a blue tie instead of a red so it doesn't count.
Blue tie, red tie -- as long as it's used to strangle the last fascist, it's a good tie.
I heard you tell how many fascists a tie can strangle by counting the number of gold threads woven into the lining fabric.
Donald was super inspired by all those cheerleaders urging him to be like Caesar and cross the Rubicon. Today, someone must have told him what happened to Caesar.
146 You're in good company: https://twitter.com/ByMikeBaker/status/1347344271385325568
Hey, who's sorry that S&S has dropped Hawley's book? Answer seems to be just about nobody.
With his new somber tone, today is the day Donald Trump became President.
145: Defending against insurrections is broadly a legitimate function of the actual military.
Weird how you cops who like to play military dress-up at every possible left-leaning gathering completely and utterly dropped the ball on this one. Incompetent, complicit - it's so hard to choose. Why not both?
151.2:. Senator Hawley is outraged! This is a far greater attack on the core values of America than a violent insurrection to nullify the results of a democratic election.
OMG, DeVos has resigned. Whatever shall we do?
152:. Such a pity - if he had only grown up sooner he could have been a fine President. His terrible twos just happened to last all through these four years.
I can't explain it but she was always the cabinet member I hated the most.
155:. I'm glad to she's leaving with her integrity intact.
I hate the people leaving this week even more than I hate the people staying. Just own what you were a part of. But I guess transparent, craven attempts to pretend to be principled are winning moves in this game.
On the plus (?) side, with two cabinet members out, a majority is down to just 7 people instead of 8. (Assuming actings count.)
Didn't Pence say earlier today he wasn't interested in invoking the 25th?
153: Gearing up all the damn time because protesters can't behave is total pain in the ass and you and I apparently have different definitions of complicit.
https://twitter.com/PhilipinDC/status/1347028917685800961
On Hawley: I always feel that the right-wing complaint about censorship isn't quite given its due. I think the idea is that, in a democracy -- which always runs the dangerous risk of behaving like an actual democracy and empowering dispreferred factions -- any ideological consensus represents a consolidation of political power. To the extent that the consensus is reflected in actually (semi-)powerful institutions -- like, oh idk, the Democratic Party, universities in general, the media, the medical establishment, whatever -- it represents a state-adjacent threat. It simply doesn't matter that a publishing house is not state-run in this country, because it can be state-run, which shows that states in general have an interest in restricting publication; it doesn't matter that the Democratic Party (which currently is about to get a federal trifecta) and the private publishing house are not formally linked or affiliated, because if the publishing house isn't against them, it's effectively with them. Furthermore it is always necessary to publish conservative voices, because they are anti-Communist and Communists are censors. Because everyone holds some actual or potential political power in a democracy, individual acts of censorship are both possible and dangerous. All speech should be free, but conservative speech should be the most free, because it is the most free.
The whining is opportunistic and self-promoting. But I think the standard rebuttal that it's a category mistake doesn't get into the layers of deep, deep political thought, "galaxy brain" or otherwise. I wish I knew what would get through.
re the cops - https://twitter.com/sharrowsDC/status/1347198963271618560?s=19
and a note of caution, the feds handling of ruby ridge, waco & the bundys does not inspire any confidence. see also the policy decision to prosecute mcveigh as a "lone wolf," & garland's role as chief prosecutor, prospects are pretty dismal that we'll engage in any useful reckoning.
162: Are you actually presenting that as a legitimate counterpoint? Do you really think that's a meaningful rebuttal? You're an absolute joke.
It's so sad that a US Senator can't get his views out.
I mean, if we want to talk complicit, well, gosh: Pentagon put significant restrictions on D.C. Guard ahead of pro-Trump protests, including the laughable assertion that, "the restrictions on the D.C. Guard were put in place in part because city and Pentagon leadership didn't want a large military presence after Trump ordered a mass military response to racial justice protests in the nation's capital this summer", which if you actually honestly expect anyone to believe is at best insulting.
But if you want to lean into incompetent over complicit, I won't argue. Half a billion a year in budget and they get apparently (apparently!) blindsided by a violent mob who only spent weeks organizing their plans online and literally printing t-shirts. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot dressing in the military LARPer gear is so uncomfortable that you only bother to do it when... leftists need to learn a lesson in behavior, or something.
What a frickin' joke.
164 I hope you're too pessimistic. I think the wheel has turned quite a bit, but we'll see. It's good fodder for confirmation hearings, and I think commitments can be sought from him.
gonna say it again folks! read this book or if you can't be bothered listen to the numerous interviews she's done - https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237698&content=reviews
167: But if you want to lean into incompetent over complicit, I won't argue.
There's nothing to argue. The guy who filmed your supposed example video tells a totally different story.
https://twitter.com/justinjm1/status/1347174957613199360
As to incompetence, no shit. I literally said "obvious total lack of planning" 13 comments in.
Hawley called it "Orwellian". Adam Serwer pointed out that it's not because Orwell found a publisher.
The police complicity discussion in this case seems like a bit of a red herring. Of course some of the cops are sympathizers; there are Nazi cops all over this country. But it was the lack of preparation (some of it deliberate and coming from high levels, some of it due to racism and not seeing white people as scary, some of it regular incompetence) that made the situation what it was. When you're that badly outmanned, it doesn't even help if you start shooting; you're probably going to get murdered. Given that planning, from the videos I saw, it seemed like the cops acted pretty reasonably. They could have killed a few dozen people, but I don't think we'd be better off today if they had; shit there would probably be a bunch of insurrectionists still in the building, and maybe some dead congresspeople. Making it a party was probably the best course, on a primate level.
171 right on! we can be well-informedly alarmed stressed & depressed together!
white power violence is not going away guys, not until we stop ignoring what it really is, what amplifies it (overseas wars, hmmmm have we been engaged in any of those the last couple of decades???), how it operates ...
or you know you could all decscend into bickering over exactly how incompetent these particular cops were this particular time.
carry on, carry on, as you ever and anon were.
When you're that badly outmanned, it doesn't even help if you start shooting
Not necessarily true, and not killing a bunch of them is only better in hindsight. They had no way of knowing what they were going to do once they breached the building.
I'll never read a book that's not a well-plotted mystery again, but Belew did a twitter thread about yesterday's attack.
Not necessarily true
I'm sure you're thinking of the scene in The Gambler when Kenny is outmanned, but asks the threatening crowd who wants to be the first to take a bullet, thereby avoiding violence. But! You think that crowd would have turned back, or gone nuts? I lean toward the latter. I think a bunch of those people had full martyrdom complexes.
170: You'll note I used the word "appears" in my description. I try to be precise in my claims of observation, even as I am admittedly vague and sometimes contradictory in my political assessments.
The total lack of planning, well, here we are again to the part that you seem utterly determined to ignore. Why didn't they know? I knew. Half the commentariat knew. Anyone thinking through the events of the past five years could have predicted it, even if they hadn't been advertising the event. And _that_'s where the _real_ concern about complicity comes in, however much you like to keep flashing that one picture of a few cops wrestling with a barricade.
178: I've been a part of a lot of shooting scenes. People scatter. Didn't look like a lot of trained guys in the crowd, but not none. Scroll down through this thread's pics as to why I think shooting was a viable option.
https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1347282288854360070
where the _real_ concern about complicity comes in
I think these levels of complicity are being conflated. There's "they opened the barricades!" complicity, which I'm mostly arguing against, and "no one in charge planned to stop them" complicity, which I think was the real problem.
why I think shooting was a viable option
I hear you. If there were enough folks with a Michigan-style kidnap and execute plan, maybe you shoot and hope for the best. Luckily, we didn't have to find out (this time).
The Gambler?
Was the scene in a different movie? The only other Rogers movie I've seen is Six Pack.
I just can't remember enough about Kenny Rogers as an actor to say.
dq,og thanks for the links & recs. I'll follow her a while on twitter . . .
174: I'm also just sitting around crossing days off my calendar waiting for Spencer Ackerman's book to come out. If it's not good, I will need weeks to recover from the disappointment, because I really need someone to write the good version of that book.
Charlie I didn't accuse them of doing nothing and if they do what you suggest I'd be at least somewhat satisfied I hope they do.
Political football I'm not rooting for the end even if I find the climax exciting. Heck I'm not even running for office. But if I were a contender in the Republican party I'd be thinking about the fact that the base wants a dictator.
I think Betty DeVos was the most cartoonishly evil of the lot in some ways she was incredibly rich and seemed mainly interested in making the lives of the underprivileged poor children worse.
maybe you shoot and hope for the best
I honestly wonder what non LE perceptions are on this. It's multiple people with military kit and zip ties violently forcing their way into the Capitol. In my mind the police have a responsibility to stop those people by any means necessary. That's what they signed up for.
The "they opened the barricades!" complicity seems to be based on out of context, cropped video of barricades and lines being overrun. They overextended themselves, thinking the fascists were peaceful protesters requiring only a little crowd control, and had no reinforcements because of high level complicity in the coup attempt.
It's multiple people with military kit and zip ties violently forcing their way into the Capitol
I'm all for shooting white people on any pretense, but I'm assuming the cops on the scene didn't see details like that in the moment. In that video you linked, there were what, ten cops, with no body armor and nothing but their sidearms? I'll defer to you on what would happen if they started shooting, but this non-LE perception of that crowd and situation is that a bunch of people would die, including the cops, and the rest would go into the Capitol fully amped on bloodlust.
189: I'm assuming in the heat of the moment they didn't see zip ties (they're not visible anywhere but those photos in the chamber as far as I've seen), and they're out there without body armor for some reason even though these no-talent seditious fucks had t-shirts printed. (I'm starting to find high-level complicity a lot more plausible.) I'm with ogged -- shooting just escalates the 'peaceful protest' and doesn't keep them out.
More here in the WaPo about who authorized or didn't authorize various deployments.
Regardless of whether or not they spotted the zip ties they had to know there were some armed men with bad intentions in that group and letting them roam free inside was courting disaster. If the evacuation had been a little slower, if that woman who was shot had been backed by some of the more militant terrorists, this would've gone really bad. They should've defended entrances and interior chokepoints in the same way the shooter did. But then, I'm more bloodthirsty than your average liberal.
190: Also cops taking selfies, holding doors open, escorting a rioter down the stairs, letting the vast majority leave without being subject to arrest, reportedly giving, or trying to give, one group directions to Senator Schumer's office. Oh, and also that one cop who posted on Facebook that several of the rioters flashed police badges as they entered, apparently hoping for (and getting) friendly treatment. At least one police chief was reportedly among the insurrectionists.
I'm not sure where the no body armor thing is coming from. The two basic standards are soft armor under the uniform shirt or body armor panels in an exterior load bearing vest (LBV). The clips I've seen seem like the rank and file guys aren't using LBV's but I can't assume they don't have regular Kevlar under the uniform shirt.
Sure the situation's not as urgent initially outside but one they're forcing their way into the building? If it was a similar crowd forcing their way into my school I have a responsibility to put them down or die trying.
Apparently the Raffensperger call was not cleared with his counsel, and this is very much Not Done between litigating parties.
Trump's lawyer moved last night to withdraw the suit against Raff., saying there was an out-of-court settlement; defense counsel says that is a lie and there was no settlement of any kind.
45% of Republicans surveyed support the actions of the insurrection, according to this YouGov poll: https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/01/06/US-capitol-trump-poll
I feel like this should temper the enthusiasm of the "this was a clear turning point" crowd, though in the same vein, I should acknowledge that my fears that folk would try to pretend it never happened are not being demonstrated.
195: I'm not saying police don't have a culture problem, and their ties and sympathies with right wing terrorists likely contributed to their lackadaisical planning, but those accusations are so much less serious than TOtB and didn't affect the course of events.
195: I'm not saying police don't have a culture problem, and their ties and sympathies with right wing terrorists likely contributed to their lackadaisical planning, but those accusations are so much less serious than TOtB and didn't affect the course of events.
195: I'm not saying police don't have a culture problem, and their ties and sympathies with right wing terrorists likely contributed to their lackadaisical planning, but those accusations are so much less serious than TOtB and didn't affect the course of events.
To me it depends a lot on the status of Congress itself. Once they're all in a secure location, then it's less important to defend the building itself, so if you're under-armed and outnumbered then regrouping and then moving in is a plausible approach. But before Congress has been evacuated, yes you have to get to the most defensible position and start shooting if attacked.
Looking at things from over here, where we had a long-running serious terrorist insurgency -- Gerry Adams' mob killed a hell of a lot more people than the US right wing yet democracy of a sort survived -- I think the police should have shot when the crowd was entering the building. Most of those in the front would have run, and panic is contagious.
The risk is that you make martyrs. But I think there is an important difference between shooting to disperse a demonstration and shooting to defend one of the sacralised buildings of a democracy.
It is possible -- certainly after Biden takes office -- that the security services will go after everyone in the videos: quietly and systematically arresting them in their homes and in due course imprisoning them for long, unhappy years. That would also be a sane way of coping with the problem without making martyrs.
I wrote "the security services" because I am not sure which force would be responsible - federal or local. And I don't know, either, whether an Arizona jury would convict someone who had travelled from there to DC.
200 Yeah, obviously, we can't tell how this thing is going to play out middle and longer term, but it looks, at this moment, like there's a real split within the Republican coalition between elites, who are horrified by the thing (and seemingly turning on Cruz and Hawley, because everyone knows that their whole objection strategy was a scam) and the Trumpier rank and file who were waiting for the Storm. Rank and file opinion is a big deal when primaries come around in 15 months but between now and then elite opinion makers will have some sway.
206 last -- The conviction rate for federal courts is off the charts. I've always thought this has two causes: they're pursuing slam dunk cases (artisanally hand crafted) and the sentencing guidelines are so harsh for people who go to trial and lose, most defendants go for a plea. People who play for nullification either win the lottery or get fucked.
A DC jury isn't going to be even a little sympathetic to white supremacists from Tennessee who thought they could come to DC and act like entitled assholes.
I saw several accounts of participants in the thing losing their jobs today. I expect there will be quite a bit more of that. What happens to the woman from Midland Texas who owns a flower shop? I guess it kind of depends on who buys flowers . . .
208: You have to be right about the view that a DC jury would take of these guys. I wasn't sure whether that was where they would be tried. But if their choice is DC or federal, things are looking up for justice, and for deterrence.
I do wish ajay were here, though, contributing to the debates that really matter instead of wasting his time on vaccine rollouts. The perspective of someone else who has been trained in crowd control would be great.
200: I get that you are all-in on panicking, but "enthusiasm"? Come on. Of course 45% of the Republicans support it -- a big chunk of the Republican party is fascists. We knew this. My fear before yesterday is that it was 99% of Republicans.
Reading this comment section makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Of course the situation is bad. Democracy is visibly under strain, and the US has an emergent fascist movement. But it's like the only acceptable opinion in the comment section is "We've already lost! Ahhhh!"
[In 1999], the tedium of an Armenian parliamentary question-and-answer session was shattered by shouts and the rattle of gunfire.
Five heavily armed gunmen burst into the chamber, spraying a hail of bullets that left Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsian, parliament speaker Karen Demirchian, and several other leading politicians dead.
RFE/RL correspondent Ruzanna Khachatrian was among the journalists covering parliament that day and her report from the scene captured the unfolding horror.
"A group of young men opened fire on the prime minister and the deputies. We're now hiding under the benches and the firing is still going on," she reported. "The gunmen are shouting that if anyone comes near the parliament building, they will be shot. The firing is coming from the security services office.
"One of the wounded deputies has been carried out. The leader of the gunmen is shouting about how the government has been 'sucking the blood of the people.' "
Could well have been our outcome two days ago.
https://www.rferl.org/a/Ten_Years_Later_Deadly_Shooting_In_Armenian_Parliament_Still_Echoes/1862158.html
This piece by William Arkin is good: https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-homeland-security-white-house-advisers-foresaw-possible-riots-looked-other-way-1559535
(the numerous different authorities involved all tried to push the problem on someone else; Rs weren't going to call the cops on themselves; fear of Trump himself a big factor in the buck-passing. I'd also point out that the special DoJ goon squad showed up for the BLM protest because Trump and Barr ordered it, and Trump was hardly going to call up a special goon squad to disperse his own demo he personally called for was he?)
The most important complicity was the leadership having decided not to prepare to protect the Capitol. But in terms of the individual decision making of the cops -- I don't know if it would have been the right decision tactically to start shooting insurrectionists to back the crowd off. It might have worked, or Ogged might be right that the crowd would have been enraged by it and come through anyway. (My guess is that it would have worked -- that most of the crowd was casual nitwits like Aaron the Brooklyn Shaman, and once they fled the much smaller number of people prepared to be dangerously violent would be easier to deal with because they weren't hiding in a big crowd.)
Whether or not it would have been the right thing to do, though, I bet the reason it didn't happen was that the cops were individually sympathetic to the people in the crowd as people in a way they're not when they're shooting journalists in the face with 'less lethal' munitions. This was a crowd of people appealing to the cops as fellow Patriotic Americans covered in those fucking fascist Thin Blue Line flags, and it worked -- they obviously weren't the kind of people cops shoot, so the cops didn't shoot them.
There are several videos post of the woman getting shot and the rest of them definitely scattered after a single gunshot.
Of course now the wingnuts are all saying it was a cold blooded murder by the secret service, but they had barricaded themselves in a defensible position with someone in the line of succession (probably Pence, maybe Harris or Pelosi.) If you climb the White House fence and run towards the residence you're damn sure getting shot.
A further thought along the same lines is that I wonder if that's why the one person who did get shot was an attractive white woman. It seems possible to me that the insurrectionists were exploiting the police's reluctance to shoot by having her out front when they were breaking into the House chamber. It didn't work in that case, but it would make sense as having been a planned tactic.
213.2 I doubt that Black cop being chased up the stairs in the Capitol is at all sympathetic to the white supremacists, he (and others) showed remarkable restraint in dealing with the insurrectionists. He would have been completely justified in shooting them but he never even drew his sidearm.
Earlier speculation was the guys that were behind her were armed and she was being used as a human shield which is likely false but I'm not inclined to be terribly charitable to the motivations of insurrectionists.
Earlier speculation was the guys that were behind her were armed and she was being used as a human shield which is likely false but I'm not inclined to be terribly charitable to the motivations of insurrectionists.
Earlier speculation was the guys that were behind her were armed and she was being used as a human shield which is likely false but I'm not inclined to be terribly charitable to the motivations of insurrectionists.
216: I think that was more intelligent self-interested restraint than principled restraint. If he escalated to firearms, they would've too, and he would be dead. Still, kudos to him for handling an awful situation in the best way anyone could. It must have been harrowing.
I was really hoping at some point he'd put his arms across the stairway and yell, "You Shall Not Pass!" Honestly given the composition of the mob it might have made them go away.
221 I'm not so sure about that, he was at the top of the stairs, he could have shot that one guy who was well ahead of the pack but still below him and the rest would have scattered.
Honestly, the whole "shoot one guy, solve the problem" thing seems unlikely to me.
Great Bellingcat investigation of the Capitol shooting. https://twitter.com/bellingcat/status/1347428500530204674
224 It worked with the mob that was with that woman who got shot.
This is pretty great https://twitter.com/thelateempire/status/1347386612041142274
224: I, too, am a little surprised by the emerging liberal consensus on the efficacy of gun violence in a riot.
Like Barry, I am inclined to use the word "restraint" to describe the cops' actions here. (I mean the cops on the ground, not the folks planning the police presence, who were obviously way too "restrained.")
Sometimes people have to be shot, Lord knows, but in this instance, my first guess would be that any shooting would have been more likely the result of panic than strategy. (I don't know anything about the situation of the woman who was shot, though, and I hope 214.2 is right).
I've got a new post up noodling about that.
Details of her background and the specific situation of the shooting here are in the story attached to the tweet in 225. That story says it was capitol police not secret service although it looks like the shooter was plainclothes.
228 read the Bellingcat investigation I linked in 225 (or better yet here: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/01/08/the-journey-of-ashli-babbitt/ ). The woman was clearly trying to climb through a window into Hall of the House of Representatives where the Representatives were taking shelter. The shooting seems clearly justified. I'd say that officer showed restraint too, he fired only once, and once was enough.
A whole post on how Barry was pwned by ogged seems excessive.
What did ogged post the Bellingcat stuff? I must have missed it.
I liked the formatting in Barry's link better so value added.
Well it was funny enough to post twice
210: There's a ton of daylight between "this is a fantastic outcome" and "everybody panic" (I'd call myself cynical or pessimistic, but your take is your take), but if your reaction to an violent, nay, deadly invasion of Congress and its consequent approval by a plurality of Republicans is to shrug and say this is known... please share your secrets or drugs of placidity.
It seems clear to me that the actual outcome was better than a situation in which the House, Senate, press, staff etc. were all safe but a dozen more terrorists got killed. The publicity & recruitment value of martyrdom is very, very real and we do not want to play into that if there's any other choice.
On the other hand, it also seems clear that creating martyrs is better than a situation in which members of congress get killed. Successful assassinations are a powerful incentive for more efforts at the same.
The question to me, then, is how close we got to the second outcome. From the footage of people banging on the doors, it seems pretty close; in which case the Capitol cops made bad choices and just got lucky. But I doubt any of us really have enough info to know at this point.
This isn't a fantastic outcome, because people died, but it's potentially a very ideal nail in the coffin of Trump's widespread influence.
- It finally spooked the politicians*.
- It will be the decisive event in ending the "stop the steal" movement.
- The video footage of the unpreparedness of the police compared to the photos from the police over the summer is worth far more towards advancing the reform movements of police than all the articles written on the topic.
If the police had contained them properly, Trump would have kept his stranglehold on the party, and the party would be unified as anarchist-terrorists. As is, they have a rupture to deal with and no good way to proceed.
I don't think this massively changes the trajectory of the country because Fox News needs to be taken down as Public Enemy #1. But I think it puts us in 2015 territory instead of 2020 territory for the influence of Trump and QAnon, etc.
* If the Justice Dept squanders the opportunity to put people in jail and act decisively, this will unravel everything, of course.
Oh hey, that letter from ten Secretaries of Defense was published... 2pm on January 3rd.
Sure seems like they were trying to head this off (or keep it from being worse), no?
241 If hard evidence emerges of WH people pushing back on the Letter in discussions with the Pentagon, I think there might well be 67 votes. Absent that, last night's hostage video was enough to save his ass, but of course there's no way he can maintain the long awaited pivot for even 2 days.
I guess the one thing I worry about is whether the proponents of Honor Culture would consider impeachment sufficient provocation for whatever response Trump goes with. In this I'm torn between 'fuck those people' and 'well, to get to 67 we're probably going to need some real assholes to sign on.'
238: My reaction is not about placidity, it's about years of heightened alarm. Trump in the White House remains extraordinarily dangerous for democracy. A disorganized mob attacking the Capitol is a very, very bad thing -- but nowhere near as bad as what we've become accustomed to -- what other people have apparently become "placid" about.
When the president of the United States -- officially, persistently, as a matter of policy -- calls the peaceful transfer of power into question, this riot was on the happy side of potential outcomes. If this is as bad as it gets, I'll be relieved.
Here's something from the Washington Post that I'm not placid about: Pelosi says she spoke to nation's top military leader about ensuring Trump doesn't launch a nuclear attack
The thing that bugs me is that no one should be framing this as "if only the police had shot more people" versus "it would have been bad if the police had shot more people". If only the police had effectively cordoned off the capitol building and stopped the mob before there was any shooting at all - that's the real other option.
A prepared, ethical and non-compromised police force could absolutely have done this. It is no secret here that I've seen a whoooooooole bunch of protests over the years, some of them pretty punchy, and a good-sized group of relatively strong cops in riot gear is perfectly capable of beating down a larger and reasonably determined group. It has been challenging for seriously protest-hardened young, strong people to defeat large groups of well-equipped police, as we've seen this summer - and those were people who had spent a lot of time on tactics, coordinated well with each other and tended to have gas masks/face shield/regular shields.
It seems unlikely to me that the MAGAs were prepared to shoot their way in to the capitol, so effectively blocking them outside the capitol was the obvious strategy. The best outcome was the one where there's just a big old brawl and that was perfectly possible.
Right -- the question about when they should ha e started shooting comes well after "why were there so few of them out protecting the Capitol and so poorly equipped?" The primary failure was in management.
Worldwide schadenfreude is at historic highs. Times of India headline reads "Coup Klux Klan: Don Triggers Mob & Rob Bid."
Thirding 245 / 246. I'd also say that I mostly agree with PF in this thread.
The outcome of the events Wednesday was not ideal and lots of things went wrong but, from my perspective, it's easy to imagine ways in which it could have gone _much_ worse.
I think it's worth saying out-loud that the actions of the mob would have justified the use of deadly force by Law Enforcement, worth communicating that there should be consequence (and, again, I'm hoping for arrests and prosecution), but that's not the same thing as saying that things would have unfolded better if the cops had started shooting people. Maybe . . . but not necessarily.
A few threads I would like to see followed up a bit more (as I try to be non-alarmist since I realize i sometimes fall of that side of the tightrope):
Acosta report on WH source saying the protestors were planning to stay all night. Who was the source (this is worthy of a source burn IMO) and how did they know this.
Report of McCarthy having a yelling match with Trump where T refused to send help. More details would be nice. Also who else from the Capitol was able to talk to Trump during that time?
Fiona Hill report re: letter from former Sec Defs an attempt to forestall Trump actually using the military in some manner. (This had been speculation of course when the letter came out, but presumably she has some sources). Will there be any breadcrumbs of this stuff left when Biden gets in?
248: Fortunately they're not aware of the neologism that rhymes with "Klux" that they could have inserted.
It's worth remembering there's an inauguration in less than two weeks. It's still premature to talk about how things "went." Things are going and could easily go to a better armed protest on 1/20.
McCarthy is one I want to know more about. He was at the press conference with Mayor Bowser and the DC chief of police. The Secretary of the Army took it upon himself to stand with Bowser and say the DC Guard is turning out. That's unusual. The head of the DC Guard (the Adjutant General) being there? Sure. The Secretary of the Army? That's signalling.
The cases of the Maryland and Virginia Guards' mobilization are also interesting. We've heard from both governors. Northam in Virginia mobilized VA Guard on request. Hogan tried in Maryland but kept getting blocked by the feds until someone relented. I suspect that VA just didn't bother to ask (or think to ask) for permission from the National Guard Bureau.
245, 246, 247, 249: Agreed. I wouldn't normally bother seconding a comment so many people already seconded, but I've been wondering if I should walk back my very first comment in this thread, and this is as good at time as any. Too many cops in a general sense are on the rioters' side, but if we're looking to blame specific people for what happened Wednesday, I wouldn't aim for the ones who abandoned the barricade.
252: That's true, but I have more confidence in the cops' ability to adjust than the rioters'. We'll see.
I see two sets of doors here including windowless outer doors that open out, 30 cops across the courtyard watching the mob, and five standing back as the crowd flows in. The alarm is going off because they're not supposed to open those doors!
I don't know if this is the same group that then chased that single cop up the stairs, but even if it wasn't there was no reason they should have gotten in at this location. The fewer breaches the better.
I can't believe the police actually didn't know any of this was coming. Obviously Trump wanted them to stand down so he could overthrow the government, but he doesn't control everything.
Maybe I can believe the police expected there to also be a bunch of anti-Trump protesters to show up and them to be fighting amongst themselves. No, and in the absence of that, the mob did what they said they were going to do.
A prepared, ethical and non-compromised police force could absolutely have done this. It is no secret here that I've seen a whoooooooole bunch of protests over the years, some of them pretty punchy, and a good-sized group of relatively strong cops in riot gear is perfectly capable of beating down a larger and reasonably determined group. It has been challenging for seriously protest-hardened young, strong people to defeat large groups of well-equipped police, as we've seen this summer - and those were people who had spent a lot of time on tactics, coordinated well with each other and tended to have gas masks/face shield/regular shields.
Yes. Where as the tear gas? Where were the phalanxes? Was there any shooting at all of rubber bullets or anything except the one cop who apparently shot someone IN THE HEAD at close range(!)?
The Olive Garden has taken a stand
https://twitter.com/ULTRASLUT/status/1347634116758564866/photo/1
258: A viscous attack? I guess the insurrectionists are kind of thick.
258: "taken part in a viscous attack"? Did it involve alfredo sauce?
Dammit, I don't comment here often enough any more to be practiced in avoiding pwnage, I guess.
I wonder if Olive Garden is going to have to put out a press release denying they have revoked the lifetime pasta pass for Sean Hannity.
You missed the Special Relativity joke I made just for you.
So they can't spell. But they revoked Sean Hannity's Lifetime Pasta Pass!
I think real Olive Garden press releases come from megaslut, not ultraslut.
I missed the news that one of the people arrested only speaks Russian. Somehow that should be bigger news.
266: Ok, maybe this was all a plot by Putin, but in that case wouldn't the agent(s) speak English?
267: Conceivably that agent has unique skills that don't include English language competency. Still seems pretty weird.
The Russians around here are mostly Trump supporters. They aren't Putin plants, but refugees from a dictatorship trying to recreate their culture of birth.
Okay, the video in 256 is evidence of police welcoming them in. Pretty fucking damning.
Even worse, is this angle of the shooting I hadn't yet seen, where the more heavily armed police are just letting the mob batter down the last door. One of them even appears to take aim at his fellow officer after the shot.
206.1:
"ADL ranked 2019 as the sixth-deadliest year on record for extremist-related violence since 1970.
A total of 17 separate incidents were counted last year. The deadliest, by far, was the August white supremacist shooting spree at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, which left 22 people dead and at least 24 more wounded. Including the El Paso attack, white supremacists were behind 81 percent of the domestic extremist-related murders in 2019. Right-wing extremists were responsible for 90 percent of such murders in 2019 and for 330 deaths over the course of the last decade, accounting for 76 percent of all domestic extremist-related murders in that time."
the okc bombing in 1995 killed 168 people including 19 children in the on-site day care center. you can fill in the flavor of the years 2002-2009 using the adl's database here: https://www.adl.org/education-and-resources/resource-knowledge-base/adl-heat-map?s=eyJhcmVhcyI6W10sImlkZW9sb2dpZXMiOlsiUmlnaHQgV2luZyAoQW50aS1Hb3Zlcm5tZW50KSIsIlJpZ2h0IFdpbmcgKE90aGVyKSIsIlJpZ2h0IFdpbmcgKFdoaXRlIFN1cHJlbWFjaXN0KSJdLCJpbmNpZGVudHMiOlsiRXh0cmVtaXN0IE11cmRlciJdLCJ5ZWFyIjpbMjAwMiwyMDA5XSwiemlwY29kZXMiOltdfQ%253D%253D
i believe the adl catalogues anti semitic and anti reproductive rights violence separately, although i'm personally inclined to include it in a broad category of political terror from the cohesive ideological corner over there to your right.
i'll leave it to the rest of you to decide for yourselves whether racist violence during the civil rights struggle and before should count in this dismal competition. chattel slavery ran up something of a death toll, rolling on through the backlash to reconstruction, jim crow, tulsa anyone? when do you draw the line, break up the toll into smaller bits? when ever was the "break"?
some of you reading this in california might spare a passing thought for the modoc and others https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/revealing-the-history-of-genocide-against-californias-native-americans
i don't know the ira's numbers, maybe they "win" in this dismal competition. maybe its hard to keep track when you aren't the target of violence fueled by white supremacy. probably easier to keep track if you happen to be in a category of folks who are threatened by this violence. like this fellow citizen of mine: https://www.thecut.com/2021/01/black-woman-assaulted-by-mob-of-trump-supporters.html
so yeah, our democracy is currently "surviving." yay us?
From what I read, the Russian speaker was the mother of a woman who is head of some Oregon Young Republicans group who was there. So I don't think it's a foreign operative, I think it's just someone who was kind of dragged there by her daughter?
I was premature in my judgement of the video I linked in 270. The police who step aside are not in the same group as those in tactical gear. Their behaviors make more sense if the tactical group is just arriving. Still not great.
The kids always say, "Not great, Bob."
Draft article of impeachment released, includes "disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States."
Does he lose his pension? Office and staff stipend? Secret service protection?
some of you reading this in california might spare a passing thought for the modoc and others
My reading list, which includes that book, has gotten so fucking depressing that it's a family joke. I couldn't pull the trigger on The Jakarta Method, in part because I'm probably not the target audience, but in part because I don't know what happens after the tipping point where I become inured to it and/or spiral into chronic-inflammatory pity and terror. I'd take reading recommendations on Indonesia, though.
I can't decide which rumored death is funnier: the guy that tased himself in the testicles or the woman who got trampled after bringing a Gadsen flag.
When in doubt, go with testicle-injury. That's what the movies do.
Murkowski calls for Trump to leave office.
278: Oh, man. The Gadsden flag thing runs right up to the edge of being too on-the-nose, but I think the writers did a great job there.
We Romans have a god for everything except testicle injury, but I heard that's painfully imminent.
@realdonaldtrump is no more. Anybody know what tweets made them kill it?
Trump "permanently suspended" from Twitter.
Twitter seems to have done it at least in part because Trump's announcement that he won't be at Biden's inauguration is being seen by Trump's followers as a sign that the inauguration is a safe target.
It's common decency the fucker doesn't show his face at a public event.
Apple is going to bar Parler unless they get some moderators. It turns out there's a hidden downside to actively marketing toward those who make threats of violence.
Does he lose his pension? Office and staff stipend? Secret service protection?
I feel like "profit" ought to disqualify him from the first two, but not protection.
Also no library, at least no public funds or ability to hold public documents.
This might be bigger: Apple is threatening to delete Parler from the app store.
Would that mean it disappears from all iPhones?
/r/donaldtrump banned (the_donald was banned last summer)
Just like dq said. Shit moves fast! I assume a Delacroix edit is also up and running.
Backtracking one more time, before y'all condemn the police for not defending that door you should watch the video of the cop getting crushed in another doorway between a forceful police line and a mob that keeps surging forward. Depending on their RoE, the state of the evacuation, and the number of people already inside they may have made the best decision. Maybe not, but maybe.
290: Donald J. Trump Presidential Library (main level) and tomb (lower level)
I got no love for Olive Garden but I think its unseemly for a literal Vanderbilt to be sneering at it.
And the Holiday Inn too. When I was a kid, the Holiday Inn was the classy hotel we never went to if Motel 6 was an option. I always thought Holiday Inn was pretty high class.
We were always Best Western people.
Luxury! We thought we had it made if we got to sleep inside the pickup camper instead of scrunched in the cab.
We did have an pop-up camper, but my mom insisted on a hotel from time to time.
Maybe I should try to figure out my twitter password.
Real profiles in courage on the parts of Facebook and Twitter, banning Trump in the days after Democrats take unified control of the national executive and legislative branches, less than two weeks before his term is set to expire.
There's suggestions this was coordinated between Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter because there were specific additional attacks being planned on the platforms (Twitter's statement says Jan 17) and they might be liable if they don't shut it down. I doubt they talked to each other so quickly so maybe came from the DOJ.
It's a coup and it's still happening.
My dad used to haul around this giant canvas tent that smelled like damp socks. We used to sleep in there, on metal cots. A motel would only be every few nights or so.
There's a little part of me that says "Hey, Americans really will storm the capitol to stand up against tyranny. Didn't know you had it in you, buds!" Sadly, that part has to grapple with the fact that those same people are the dumbest fucks on earth and can't tell the difference between tyranny and ads for gold.
No, they will storm the Capitol for tyranny.
Not surprised that the worst-of-the-worst keeps turning out to be Air Force vets. Starting the Air Force was a huge mistake and we should shut it down and absorb it back into the Army and the Navy, and shut down the Air Force Academy. You can't have an academy in Colorado Springs and not end up with a bunch of far-right white supremacist conspiracy theorists.
Ha, yeah, was coming back to say, on the other hand, like 309 says, there's a group of people who will go full outlaw terrorist with little provocation.
People are calling on the Democrats to seek unity, but I'm not ready to change my Facebook photo from the divisive "Biden Harris" to the bipartisan "Hang Pence" slogan.
I know a few people who have been following* all this stuff at the source (QAnon, Patronus, and just in general on other social media) and they all say that the 6th was the "practice run" for the actual storm of the inauguration, and that when Trump announced he wouldn't go, that is being generally interpreted as a Go signal (boss won't be there, make as much of a mess as you want to). They are definitely talking about killing & dying. The threat of being arrested (or being thrown off Twitter) is not affecting anyone's previous attitude about participating.
(I'm sure there are huge numbers of hangers-on who might or might not be deterred, but they are also not living in the same world we are. They don't see the same news, they don't interpret what they do see the same way, they are not dismayed by having deep logical fallacies in their plans or their core beliefs)
*Following as in, paying attention to and reading the messages from & between. Not as in they themselves are followers of the death cult.
Anyway, Moby's right in 305. Fingers crossed for more competence from planners & security forces in the upcoming 2 weeks than in the previous! And also I think that is the impetus for social media suddenly getting its act together and banning certain presidents.
I do not know why I said "Patronus". Is that the name of anything at all relevant? Is it a Harry Potter spell?
I meant Parler.
I know it's fairly meaningless and in some cases counterproductive, but it's been a long five years and we are crying laughing at this shit.
315: yep, it is a Harry Potter spell where you generate a large, glowing, protective bottle of tequila or something.
It's what you say to make white stuff that is the essence of life shoot out of your wand.
314 The inauguration is going to be a mess, but there are no excuses for law enforcement this time, and there's no longer even a mildly plausible (ie, that can be embraced by Cruz or Hawley) vehicle for Trump to stay on. It's just a question whether there's going to be a military coup or not. And (knocking wood) the test run will have backed the R establishment the fuck off.
Parenthetical, I hope you and your husband recover quickly and that your father in law remains unaffected.
The url has been edited out so all that cleverness is sadly wasted.
