All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Tendrin]

I tend to agree with those who've suggested that Pence might be holding the 25th as a threat to control Trump.

You'd think they'd have learned that they don't', in fact, have any control over Trump by now.

[Kirby101]

I tend to agree with those who've suggested that Pence might be holding the 25th as a threat to control Trump.

You'd think they'd have learned that they don't', in fact, have any control over Trump by now.

That would only be Putin, and we don't know what he will do.

[Kirby101]

Well, I know NY forgets it, but most of us don't spend a lot of memory capacity on NY.

ETA: having flipped that smartassery, it occurs to me the last time we didn't pay attention to what New Yorkers know, we got Trump 45.

Yeah, we really did try to warn you.

[Gray Lensman]

That would only be Putin, and we don't know what he will do.

Looks like MeinSpace has a very high chance of going down, or at the least will have some kind of service interruption. Amazon (their host) informed Parler that they will be dropping them as soon as possible.

[Tendrin]

Looks like MeinSpace has a very high chance of going down, or at the least will have some kind of service interruption. Amazon (their host) informed Parler that they will be dropping them as soon as possible.

Meinspace XD XD XD

[Revolutionary_Jack]

A story about African-American Capitol Police during Trump's Putsch
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...ice-racism-mob

BuzzFeed News spoke to two Black officers who described a harrowing day in which they were forced to endure racist abuse — including repeatedly being called the n-word — as they tried to do their job of protecting the Capitol building, and by extension the very functioning of American democracy. The officers said they were wrong footed, fighting off an invading force that their managers had downplayed, and not prepared them for. They had all been issued gas masks, for example, but management didn’t tell them to bring them in on the day. Capitol Police did not respond to BuzzFeed News’s request for comment about the allegations made by officers.

While some of the images from that day appeared to show officers standing by to let the mob into the Capitol building, the veteran officer said that they had fought them off for two hours before the attackers eventually gained access. The officer said that many of the widely spread images of smiling marauders, wandering the halls dressed in absurd costumes, had the effect of downplaying how well prepared some of the rioters were to overtake the building, and even to capture and kill Congress members.

“That was a heavily trained group of militia terrorists that attacked us,” said the officer, who has been with the department for more than a decade. “They had radios, we found them, they had two-way communicators and earpieces. They had bear spray. They had flash bangs ... They were prepared. They strategically put two IEDs, pipe bombs in two different locations. These guys were military trained. A lot of them were former military,” the veteran said, referring to two suspected pipe bombs that were found outside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee.

The officer even described coming face to face with police officers from across the country in the mob. He said some of them flashed their badges, telling him to let them through, and trying to explain that this was all part of a movement that was supposed to help.

“You have the nerve to be holding a blue lives matter flag, and you are out there fucking us up,” he told one group of protestors he encountered inside the Capitol. “[One guy] pulled out his badge and he said, ‘we’re doing this for you.’ Another guy had his badge. So I was like, ‘well, you gotta be kidding.’”

...

“We were telling them to back up and get away and stop, and they’re telling us, they are on our side, and they’re doing this for us, and they’re saying this as I’m getting punched in my face by one of them … That happened to a lot of us. We were getting pepper sprayed in the face by those protesters, I'm not going to even call them protestors, by those domestic terrorists,” said the officer.

While it was a hard day for almost every officer at the Capitol, Black officers were in a particularly difficult position, he said, and he drew a stark contrast with how police handled the Black Lives Matter protests this summer.

“There’s quite a big difference when the Black Lives Matter protests come up to the capitol,” he said. “[On Wednesday], some officers were catering to the rioters.”

He said that what upset him the most was when he later saw images of a white colleague taking a selfie with the attackers, seeming to enjoy his time with the insurrectionists who were roaming the US Capitol with confederate flags and other symbols of white supremacy.

“That one hurt me the most because I was on the other side of the Capitol getting my ass kicked,” he said.

...

The older Black officer didn’t think it was a simple case of treating the rioters differently from BLM protesters, but instead part of a bigger issue with how the agency is managed.

“Our chief was nowhere to be found, I didn’t hear him on the radio. One of our other deputy chiefs was not there,” he said. “You don’t think it’s all hands on deck?”

The veteran officer welcomed the resignation of US Capitol Police chief, Steven Sund, but he thinks more needs to change at the agency, which answers to Congress and where security is not as tight as it should be

...

“I sat down with one of my buddies, another Black guy, and tears just started streaming down my face,” he said. “I said, ‘what the ****, man? Is this America? What the **** just happened? I’m so sick and tired of this ****.’”

Soon he was screaming, so that everyone in the rotunda, including his white colleagues, could hear what he had just gone through.

“These are racist ass terrorists,” he yelled out.

In the seven years since Black Lives Matter has become a rallying cry, the image of a white cop, deciding how and when to enforce law and order, has become ubiquitous. On Wednesday, Americans saw something different, as Black officers tried to do the same, as they attempted to protect the very heart of American democracy. And instead of being honored by the supporters of a man who likes to call himself the “law and order” president, Black Capitol officers found themselves under attack.

“I got called a [N-Word] 15 times today,” the veteran officer shouted in the rotunda to no one in particular. “Trump did this and we got all of these fucking people in our department that voted for him. How the **** can you support him?”

“I cried for about 15 minutes and I just let it out.”

So much for respecting the police. The Capitol Police by the way is one of the largest police forces in USA, one of the best funded (annual budget nearly half a billion) and is incredibly well staffed and equipped. That's taxpayers at work.

[the green death]

Damn that was a sad article you posted and it paints a very different picture than so much of what I’ve seen. The idea that the attacking terrorists were so prepared just isn’t being reported widely and that’s a problem.

[Emperor-of-Dragons]

There's persistent accusations that the raid on the capital was an inside job of secret service, military and LEOs. Or at least off duty cops and former military.

[babyblob]

I hated reading that article. And yet even after that there are people who say this is not a raical issue. Or that the price were not part of this by helping the terrorists.

The thing that amazes me is that a cop in my area said if there is an investigation and it is found the cops did play a role that it needs to be kept quiet. We don't want the world to know our cops are bad. And if they are punished the other cops resent that and not do thier job in the future.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Jim Clyburn, Pramilla Jayapal, and other House members have said that they think it was an inside job.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-c...was-complicit/

House Majority Whip James Clyburn said Friday that the ease in which rioters were able to get into the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday suggests that someone on the inside of the Capitol was "complicit" in the assault.

"I do believe that something was going on," Clyburn told CBSN anchor Lana Zak. "They knew where to go. I've been told … by some other Congress people that their staff are saying that they saw people being allowed into the building through side doors. Who opened those side doors for these protesters, or I call them these mobsters, to come into the building, not through the main entrance where magnetometers are but through side doors. Yes, somebody on the inside of those buildings were complicit in this."

Supporters of President Trump ransacked the building, forcing the evacuation of lawmakers who were meeting to count the Electoral College votes.

Clyburn suggested his inner office was targeted by the mob because there was "activity outside of my inner office where most people don't know where that is."

"The office with my name on the door was not touched. But the office where I do most of my work in, they were on that floor and outside that door," the South Carolina Democrat said.

Clyburn also said he felt something was "amiss" Wednesday morning when he arrived at the Capitol and "the perimeter had not been established."

"There were no security people on the steps. They were all out in a place which I thought gave low security," he said, adding, "They were not just derelict. You could say they were complicit."

They point out that rioters knew how to navigate the Capitol houses when actual Capitol officers find it hard to navigate the place, they knew to target Clyburn's actual office out of the way (and steal his iPad) as opposed to the ceremonial office which is more accessible.

And Jim Clyburn was the Representative who criticized the progressive wing of the party for the slogan of "defund the police", so he's not someone who jumps at conspiratorial stuff or thinks the worst of law enforcement by default.

Pramila Jayapal says more here:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...ide-job-456725

“Somebody must get to the bottom of how they, with such efficiency and such alacrity, moved themselves in mobs into [Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s] office. Into the whip’s third-floor office,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), one of the dozen or so Democrats who was locked inside the House chamber as rioters attempted to break in.

“We all joke about the fact that it's so hard to find some of these offices, and we work in the building,” Dean said in an interview.

One of the pro-Trump rioters told The New York Times that a Capitol Police officer directed them to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s office.

Democrats have vowed to investigate all aspects of the assault on the Capitol — Clyburn said on the call that it would take a 9/11 Commission-style investigation — including about the actions of Capitol Police captured on video.

“I saw those videos,” Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) told reporters Friday. “You had people fighting their hearts out and getting hit over the head with a lead pipe … and you had people taking selfies with these terrorists. So there are all of these different levels and we will be examining all of the footage.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) chair of the House committee that oversees Capitol security matters, similarly noted that at least some officers may have “taken selfies with these seditionists or even let them in.”

“We need to thoroughly investigate that,” she said.

Democrats are already enraged at the leadership of the Capitol Police for their handling of the security situation. Lofgren said Thursday that the USCP’s chief, Steven Sund, misled her about the resources it had available to protect lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence, who was in the Capitol for the ceremony to count Electoral College votes. Sund resigned from his post Thursday.

Lofgren said she had pressed Sund about the National Guard’s readiness for possible protests and he assured her they were activated should they be needed.

“What they told me about the National Guard was just not true. The Guard was not even activated,” she said.

Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) said an independent oversight board needed to be put in place for the Capitol Police force.

“The Capitol Police are probably the only law enforcement agency I can think of that does not have non-uniform civilian oversight,” Brown, who was sheltering in his office during the breach, said in an interview Friday. “That's a problem.”

[worstblogever]

Jim Clyburn, Pramilla Jayapal, and other House members have said that they think it was an inside job.

Hawley. Cruz. Brooks. Biggs. Gosar.

My prediction is that as details come out to the extent they supported the coup (and in Cruz and Hawley's case, it was to f***ing fundraise for a 2024 campaign, the other three seem to be "true believers" in white supremacy), what I'm thinking is the 140-odd people who voted to not certify the vote results start seeing which way the winds are blowing and start trying to bail out. Because supporting a failed coup past its expiration date openly doesn't seem wise politically. Forcing the resignation or making pariahs out of the worst actors and pretending you didn't know what was going to happen...

Someone's gotta take the fall. I don't think all 140 want to ride this thing all the way down to the bottom of the canyon. Maybe some more are "true believers", your Louie Gohmerts, Lauren Boeberts, Marjorie Taylor Greenes, Madison Cawthorns and the like... but we're at the phase of the GOP death cult where the Kool-Aid is being served. And some folks ain't gonna sip.

[Korath]

Well, it confirm what I knew all along : Police forces everywhere in the western world have been steadily infiltrated by far-right activists and white supremacists. And not just at the grunt level, it goes far higher up the ladder of the institutions. There is no other explanation for what happened at the Capitol. And still, I can tell you guys are somewhat lucky in that your government doesn't depend solely on the Police to endure; for all its flaws, from the outside, it seemes able to survive without it, which isn't the case everywhere. They over-fund them, but at a federal level, the government doesn't seem threatened by the people the way others around the world can be. Still, it may be changing, but funding more the police won't help, as it was clearly seen this weel. I guess a great purge of the insyiyuyion would be needed, but I'm not sure you can do that anymorze already.

For instance, in France, known Far-Right syndicates of police officers, who feel so bold as to threaten Left mayors in their home at night, have basically taken control of the whole Police, with our Government so dependent on them that they can't enforce any fucking regulation, and in fact recently allowed them, with cronies in the highest court, to create lists with informations concerning the religious, syndical and political affiliations of people they stop. Which was forbidden up until now here, because the last time it was allowed, it was under the French State, the fascist vassal state of Nazi Germany...

[PaulBullion]

Trump did terrible things, some where from his policy and his incompetence. He will be responsible for a good portion of the half a million deaths we will see before Covid is done. (...)

Plus a large number of lifelong disabilities, ended careers and other heartbreak.

[PaulBullion]

Some other polls are a bit more reassuring.

Two-thirds of Republicans and Trump voters saw the participants in the riot as either criminals or fools, and a further 17 percent didn't answer. 9% saw them as "concerned citizens" and 5% called them "patriots" which is way too high, but nowhere near a majority.

https://news.trust.org/item/20210108210622-t35pv

A PBS/ Marist poll shows 17 percent of Republicans believing perpetrators shouldn't be prosecuted, and 18 percent approved of the riots, which is too high but not the 45 percent in the YouGov poll.

http://maristpoll.marist.edu/pbs-new....AYe9ptLF.dpbs

I wonder if a difference is that the earlier YouGov poll occurred before many people learned more about what happened.

Considering criminals does not contradict them blaming Biden at all.

[Steel Inquisitor]

Trump went too far, and will be memory holed like Dubya was in no time. Be ready for the narrative that Obama was president between 2000-2020.