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

[Wildling]

Not this early-election Pre-Blue Shift narrative again. Biden ultimatley did far better with Latinos and Hispanics than Trump did, as well as African-Americans. There's a section of any community and any group that will vote Republican, but what happened in 2020 is Pandemic meant turnout increased for both parties, so that meant the section of red-voting Latinos went up more than before. That's not improvement, that's just a mirage.

I still remember how vomitive this thread was on Election eve to the point I was seeing red (not GOP Red) and avoided posting at all and was comparatively glad I returned to not only see Biden win, but also flip McCain's Arizona and double flip Georgia, on the way to hopefully make as many public Trump supporters as possible felons unable to vote.

[Amadeus Arkham]

I love this.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

For some comedy.

Apparently the horn helmet furry dude, the Q-Shaman is brought to trial in AZ, where he's from.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news...ng/6625619002/

And it's comedy gold.

The Phoenix man who took part in the storming of the U.S. Capitol bare-chested and wearing a fur hat with horns faced his first federal court hearing on Monday and was ordered to be held in Phoenix awaiting charges in Washington, D.C.

Jake Angeli, 33, turned himself in at the Phoenix FBI office on Saturday, as he was aware authorities were looking for him.

Angeli, who had made a habit of making a public spectacle at protests and marches in Phoenix, also attracted attention on Wednesday as a mob of Trump supporters rushed past security at the U.S. Capitol. The melee left five dead, including one Capitol police officer.

Angeli wore his familiar costume of the animal-skin hat topped with horns and had his face painted red, white and blue as he wandered with others through the Capitol building. At one point, he briefly took the dais in the U.S. Senate chamber, holding a six-foot spear in one hand while flexing his other arm.
...
His public defender appointed Monday, Gerald Williams, told the court that Angeli had not eaten since he had been taken into custody. Williams said Angeli had a restricted diet, saying he was not sure whether it was because of religious or health reasons.

Fine told Angeli's attorney to contact the U.S. Marshal's office to resolve the issue.

"Mr. Chansley needs to eat," she said using Angeli's legal name.
Martha Chansley, the mother of Jake Angeli, the Arizona man arrested for his involvement in the raid on the U.S. Capitol, speaks outside of an Arizona federal courthouse in Phoenix, on Jan 11, 2021.

His mother, Martha Chansley, told reporters outside the courthouse that her son needs an organic diet. "He gets very sick if he doesn't eat organic food," she said. "He needs to eat."
...

Angeli declined interview requests with The Republic in the days between the Capitol raid and his arrest.

In an interview with NBC News, Angeli insisted he had done nothing wrong.

"I walked through an open door, dude," Angeli said on Thursday, a day he told NBC he was beginning his return to Arizona.

Angeli's photograph was among those featured in a bulletin authorities sent out looking for the public’s help in identifying people who took part in the raid on the Capitol.

Aware he was being sought, Angeli called the FBI on Thursday and identified himself, according to a sworn statement filed to secure a warrant for his arrest.

He remained in contact with the FBI and turned himself in on Saturday.

Angeli told the FBI he felt compelled to head to D.C. to answer the call from President Trump who had asked so-called patriots to gather, according to the sworn statement filed by a Capitol police agent.
...

In a text message sent to a Republic reporter on Wednesday, Angeli said he was grateful the newspaper's story about his part in the Capitol mob correctly identified him as being a follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory and not a member of the left-wing Antifa movement, as had been rumored online.

The last part makes me sorta grateful in that he's torpedoing the Republican/Trump argument at least.

But man, this guy...you can't really make him up. He eats organic food, yet he poses as a wild frontiersman Norse dude and goes waving a spear inside the Capitol. I genuinely think he needs therapy.

For that matter, so do I, so do we all...for different reasons of course.

[Kirby101]

Does anybody think there will be a political price paid by any of the Republicans that pushed this, who lied and cheered on this sedition?
I don't.

[Panfoot]

Does anybody think there will be a political price paid by any of the Republicans that pushed this, who lied and cheered on this sedition?
I don't.

Agreed, I still don't believe Trump will face consequences anywhere near enough for what he did too.

[Tami]

Thanks. I truly appreciate it.

I'm not looking for sympathy ... just wondering if it's something we need? It seems to be a growing trend.

I would like to fight it and help people, not knuckle under.

I don't see any support groups online, however I did find these:

4 Keys to Help Someone Climb Out of the QAnon Rabbit Hole

Friends And Family Members Of QAnon Believers Are Going Through A “Surreal Goddamn Nightmare”

The most effective ways to support a loved one who believes in QAnon

Problem with doing an online support or discussion is that it could devolve in unexpected ways. Still, if you feel you need to talk about it you can asks the Mods if it is okay to post a thread about it.

[Mister Mets]

Imagine a group of people who think they have a right to Twitter, but think that there are people who don't have a right to healthcare or food.

Now think of Republicans, because that's them.

I'll note that I believe that Twitter can kick out conservatives, and has been correct to kick out quite a few.

However, the argument would be that conservatives and liberals have the right to pay the same level of access to Twitter or to healthcare or to food. A Bernie Sanders voter and a Trump fan can go with four bucks to a supermarket and buy a gallon of milk.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Does anybody think there will be a political price paid by any of the Republicans that pushed this, who lied and cheered on this sedition?
I don't.

There will be a price of some sort, but it might not be the one that satisfies everyone. I don't think it will be like the Iraq War where the war criminals basically got a slap on the wrist. I think this time it will be significantly more impactful than that.

The Republicans already paid a price for lying about this. They lost Georgia's runoffs because Trump screwed up his messaging and made the GA runoff campaign about his already lost election rather than about the GOP, because it turns out that Trump really does care more for himself than the Republican party. McConnell lost his majority and that's a price, at least for the next 2 years.

I still remember how vomitive this thread was on Election eve to the point I was seeing red (not GOP Red) and avoided posting at all...

The election of November was a real "fog of war" thing because it was historic and everyday you were on the edge of your seat. So a lot of narratives propped up that was instantly proven wrong the next day. And I was basically one of the few voices of calm insisting we wait till all the data came before forming conclusions.

And it's amazing that basically all the narratives people had in the aftermath of the election is punctured now:
-- People kept arguing that the election called for a divided government because GOP did better in the House and got back some of the seats they lost in 2018 (but not all), while picking some vulnerable ones, and they held the senate majority or so it seemed. But now with the runoffs, the Dems have a trifecta...so that means the American people don't in fact want divided government.
-- People said that Dems voted against Trump but not for Biden and that Biden didn't help anyone down-ballot and people like Republicans more than Democrats but hated Trump more and so voted Biden...and yet the GA-Runoffs prove otherwise. Without Trump or Biden on the ballot, Georgians still voted out its senators, including Perdue the incumbent (and it's incredibly hard to take out an incumbent senator). So the Democrat Party and agenda, are popular.

None of the prognostications and conclusions people had then has proven true with new data or holds up today.

...and was comparatively glad I returned to not only see Biden win, but also flip McCain's Arizona and double flip Georgia, on the way to hopefully make as many public Trump supporters as possible felons unable to vote.

It's not McCain's Arizona, it's Arizona's McCain. There's this narrative that Arizonians turned out for Biden because Trump insulted McCain and that turned out a lot of Republican defectors for Joe. But that's not the case. Arizonan Republicans mostly voted for Trump more than Biden and the Republican defection wasn't a significant factor. The significant factor is demographic changes, a lot of CA transplants, the Hispanic community, and the really big crucial one, the Navajos who voted for Biden and Mark Kelly in really big numbers.

The truth is the majority of Americans in blue states and red states, liked Biden more than Trump, and they like the Democrat party more than the GOP. And the Democrat party is the most popular of the two parties on the national level.

[Mister Mets]

There will be a price of some sort, but it might not be the one that satisfies everyone. I don't think it will be like the Iraq War where the war criminals basically got a slap on the wrist. I think this time it will be significantly more impactful than that.

The Republicans already paid a price for lying about this. They lost Georgia's runoffs because Trump screwed up his messaging and made the GA runoff campaign about his already lost election rather than about the GOP, because it turns out that Trump really does care more for himself than the Republican party. McConnell lost his majority and that's a price, at least for the next 2 years.



The election of November was a real "fog of war" thing because it was historic and everyday you were on the edge of your seat. So a lot of narratives propped up that was instantly proven wrong the next day. And I was basically one of the few voices of calm insisting we wait till all the data came before forming conclusions.

And it's amazing that basically all the narratives people had in the aftermath of the election is punctured now:
-- People kept arguing that the election called for a divided government because GOP did better in the House and got back some of the seats they lost in 2018 (but not all), while picking some vulnerable ones, and they held the senate majority or so it seemed. But now with the runoffs, the Dems have a trifecta...so that means the American people don't in fact want divided government.
-- People said that Dems voted against Trump but not for Biden and that Biden didn't help anyone down-ballot and people like Republicans more than Democrats but hated Trump more and so voted Biden...and yet the GA-Runoffs prove otherwise. Without Trump or Biden on the ballot, Georgians still voted out its senators, including Perdue the incumbent (and it's incredibly hard to take out an incumbent senator). So the Democrat Party and agenda, are popular.

None of the prognostications and conclusions people had then has proven true with new data or holds up today.



It's not McCain's Arizona, it's Arizona's McCain. There's this narrative that Arizonians turned out for Biden because Trump insulted McCain and that turned out a lot of Republican defectors for Joe. But that's not the case. Arizonan Republicans mostly voted for Trump more than Biden and the Republican defection wasn't a significant factor. The significant factor is demographic changes, a lot of CA transplants, the Hispanic community, and the really big crucial one, the Navajos who voted for Biden and Mark Kelly in really big numbers.

You're contradicting yourself if you're saying that the conclusions people had in November were proven wrong by the Georgia Senate elections, when those elections came after really stupid behavior by Republicans after the November Elections (both Senators called for the secretary of state to resign.)

At the very least it remains too early to tell that Warnock and Ossoff's win was due to support for Democrats rather than a pushback against Trump and Republicans.

It is an obvious point that people do often forget that in any election in which a candidate wins more than 45 percent (or even 35 percent), the majority of voters in the losing candidate's party supported that candidate. A relatively small percentage of crossovers can still make a big difference.

where were the stories from the marginalized?

transgender folks terrorized by coworkers
black and brown folks dealing with institutional racism?

There has been coverage of that as well.

I suppose it does depend on the news sources.

It is worth noting that Trump voters are a significant enough percentage (between 46-47% of voters) of the population, so some level of coverage is merited.

[Hypestyle]

Trump and Pence Spoke Monday for First Time Since Capitol Riot

I would love to be a fly in the wall during this meeting. What does an anger even sound like with the lifeless robot that is Mike Pence?

the fly would have been on Mr. Pence's head.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Really interesting article at the Intelligencer about one WH official, who off-record goes yes, he is a fascist:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021...a-fascist.html

Advisers have expressed concern and anger over Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, whose actions have been perceived as an effort to secure employment with Trump in his post-presidency, perhaps at the Trump Organization. “Jared has been telling people, ‘Don’t even deal with him anymore,’” one adviser said. “Mark’s responsible for bringing kook after crazy after conniver after Rudy into the West Wing.” (“This is completely false,” Avi Berkowitz, Jared Kushner’s spokesman, said in a tweet responding to this article, “Jared has never said that.”) A former senior White House official said, “Morale plummeted under him, huge mistakes were made — and now he’s scrambling to stick around after. He’s a dishonest ******* who pretends to be this religious Southern gentleman. **** that.”

The senior administration official put it this way: “The only way it gets to this point are a thousand really bad small decisions. The first time Sidney Powell calls the White House switchboard and is allowed to speak to the president, the next thing you know she and others are in the West Wing — these are areas where the chief of staff has unilateral authority to do what he wants to do.” Instead, the official said, Meadows tells Trump what he wants to hear, and often calls whomever Trump has directed him to call, repeats what Trump told him to say, and then apologizes, explaining that he just needs to be able to tell the boss that he followed his orders.
.....

This adviser, who spoke to Trump on Wednesday amid the siege, said Trump watched the events on television intently. CNN reported that he was so excited by the action, it “freaked out” some staffers around him. The adviser told me that Trump expressed disgust on aesthetic grounds over how “low class” his supporters looked. “He doesn’t like low-class things,” the adviser said, explaining that Trump had a similar reaction over the summer to a video of Brad Parscale, his former campaign manager, shirtless and drinking a beer in his driveway during a mental-health emergency in which police tackled him and seized his weapons. “He kept mentioning, ‘Oh, did you see him in his beer shirt?’ He was annoyed. To him, it’s just low class, in other words.”

That's Immortan Trump sniffing out, "Mediocre".

You're contradicting yourself if you're saying that the conclusions people had in November were proven wrong by the Georgia Senate elections, when those elections came after really stupid behavior by Republicans after the November Elections (both Senators called for the secretary of state to resign.)

It's not a contradiction at all. The Republicans screwing the pooch helped but people still have to like the Dem Candidates to have them cross over.

At the very least it remains too early to tell that Warnock and Ossoff's win was due to support for Democrats rather than a pushback against Trump and Republicans.

That still means the narrative of the election is punctured, that the lessons people formed in the aftermath was premature and no longer sufficient. Pandemic turnout and vote by mail helped greatly but that means the majority of Americans, in the election where more people voted than ever before, prefer the Dems to the Republicans.

[Tami]

Reminder that the FBI is still trying to track down anyone and everyone who was there at the Capitol Building on January 6th and involved in the mobbing, storming and assault. If you know of anyone who may have been there, you can contact the FBI. This is the website that gives information about how.

[JackDaw]

Reminder that the FBI is still trying to track down anyone and everyone who was there at the Capitol Building on January 6th and involved in the mobbing, storming and assault. If you know of anyone who may have been there, you can contact the FBI. This is the website that gives information about how.

Hope they operate to a higher standard of proof than an anonymous tip off.

[Tami]

Hope they operate to a higher standard of proof than an anonymous tip off.

They have to start somewhere.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

There's some mild Pol. Sci. debate by wonks about how to classify Wednesday, is it a coup or an insurrection or an organized riot? This isn't equivocation, it's a legit definition issue.

Fiona Hill, yes the one known from Trumpeachment I: The Ukrainian Hustle, laid out the case for why it's a coup:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...na-hill-457549

Technically, what Trump attempted is what’s known as a “self-coup” and Trump isn’t the first leader to try it. Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of the first Napoleon) pulled one off in France in December 1851 to stay in power beyond his term. Then he declared himself Emperor, Napoleon III. More recently, Nicolas Maduro perpetrated a self-coup in Venezuela after losing the 2017 elections.

The storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6 was the culmination of a series of actions and events taken or instigated by Trump so he could retain the presidency that together amount to an attempt at a self-coup. This was not a one-off or brief episode. Trump declared “election fraud” immediately on November 4 even while the votes were still being counted. He sought to recount and rerun the November 2020 presidential election so that he, not President-elect Joe Biden, was the winner. In Turkey, in 2015, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan successfully did the same thing; he had called elections to strengthen his presidency, but his party lost its majority in the parliament. He challenged the results in the courts, marginalized the opposition, and forced what he blatantly called a “re-run election.” He tried again in the Istanbul mayoral election in 2019 but was thwarted.

There’s a standard coup “checklist” analysts use to evaluate coups. We can evaluate Trump’s moves to prevent the peaceful transfer of executive power against it. To successfully usurp or hold power, you need to control the military and paramilitary units, communications, the judiciary, government institutions, and the legislature; and mobilize popular support.

Let’s see how well this applies to what Trump has done.

The Military: During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Trump drew Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper out of a White House meeting to follow him for a provocative photo op in front of an historic church. Paramilitary forces under the president’s command cleared a passage for his group across Lafayette Square. Trump was testing the military and the Pentagon to see if he could turn the U.S. armed forces into his own “Pretorian Guard.” The blowback from this episode emphasized the non-political position of the U.S. military, but there was sufficient lingering concern that just days before Jan. 6, 10 living former U.S. defense secretaries—including Esper, who had been forced out of his office for insufficient loyalty—felt compelled to issue an unprecedented public letter reminding Defense Department officials of their oath to uphold the Constitution.

Communications: In the old days, coup plotters would seize the Central Tele-Graph or Post Office, and later, radio and TV towers. Trump put a loyalist in charge of the Post Office. He did not take TV and radio by storm, but he discredited the “mainstream media” who were critical of his actions as the “Enemy of the People” and recruited or pressured FOX news, Newsmax, OAN, and social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook into participants in his efforts to sway public opinion in his favor. Twitter, in essence, was Trump’s equivalent of the TV and radio tower. He directly messaged the 88 million people who “followed” his account. He used social media and cable news to propagate false self-serving narratives, reinforce messages to provide justification for his actions, and mobilize his supporters.

The judiciary: With the help of Republican lawmakers, Trump stacked federal courts with what he kept calling “his judges.” He successfully pushed through the appointments of three new Supreme Court Justices ahead of the presidential election. He made his expectation clear that if the Supreme Court had to settle an election dispute, then “his justices” would tilt the verdict in his favor. Erdogan did the same in Turkey, purging the judiciary and installing loyalists who facilitated his re-run of the 2015 election and sentenced political opponents to long prison terms. Trump frequently called for investigations into his opponents and for courts and law enforcement to “lock them all up!”

Government institutions: As in Turkey, Trump purged cabinet members and career officials who resisted him. He bypassed Congress and installed acting officials in crucial national security positions like the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, and, briefly, the Director of National Intelligence. He made it crystal clear that personal loyalty was the primary factor for candidate selection. He removed Esper after he lost the election. Attorney General William Barr resigned in the same period amidst rumors he would be sacked for failing to declare massive election fraud. Trump wanted officials in place in January 2021 who were entirely beholden to him and likely to support his efforts to stay in power.

The legislature: Finally, Trump usurped the Republican Party. He claimed the more than 74 million who voted for him in November 2020 as his personal base—his popular support. He threatened to destroy the careers of Republican members of Congress who did not favor overturning the election result. At the Jan. 6 rally preceding the storming of the Capitol, Donald Trump Jr. even referred to the GOP as the “Trump Republican Party.” In the end, even after the Capitol was seized by Trump’s violent mob, 147 Republican members of Congress, led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, did endorse some of Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election results and overturn the constitutional order. So did Sens. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and six other politically ambitious senators who wanted to tap into Trump’s popular support. In this way, Trump’s control of the legislature and a significant popular mandate was almost within his reach.

The truth is that for the past four years, Trump has been stress testing the U.S. democratic system to see if anyone will rein him in. Consider how many times he stated that he “deserved” two or even three terms in office because he was treated “unfairly” or “cheated” out of first two years of his presidency by the “Russia hoax,” the Mueller investigation, and the January 2020 impeachment trial. Throughout 2020, when his poll ratings faltered, the president laid the groundwork for what would become the Big Lie that he won the election. He said in advance that the ballot was “rigged” that he could only lose if “they” stole the election. “They” was a domestic enemy that he manufactured in broad strokes for his grassroots base to rise up against: Democrats, liberals, globalists, radical socialists, Communists, Antifa leftists, the Black Lives Matter movement, the mainstream media, George Soros, various other “bogey” men and women, deep state bureaucrats, and even congressional Republicans, who he labeled “RINOs” (“Republicans in Name Only”) and “Never Trumpers.”
...

The good news for the United States is that Trump’s “self-coup” failed. The bad news is that his supporters still believe the false narrative, the Big Lie that he won the election. Trump has not repudiated it, nor have the House and Senate Republicans who voted against the Electoral College results. Millions of people still think the election was stolen. They still support Trump the person, not the Republican Party, and many are prepared to take further action on his behalf.

As in the case of other coup attempts, the president’s actions have put us on the brink of civil war. Trump did not overturn the election results, but, just as he intended, he disrupted the peaceful democratic transition of executive power.

Unless the Big Lie is thoroughly refuted, we can expect more attempts to subvert the constitutional order from Trump’s supporters—and we still have to get through the January 20 Inauguration. The president’s actions and his falsehoods have shattered America’s democratic norms, exacerbated its political divisions, and put people’s lives at risk. Five people died during events surrounding the storming of the Capitol, including a member of the Capitol police force. Many of the members of Congress who backed Trump’s efforts were themselves at risk of injury or death.

If we are to restore democratic norms and make sure this does not happen again, these congressional Republicans will have to take personal responsibility for their actions in support of Trump’s coup attempt. They must tell the truth to their constituents about the election and what the president tried to do in January 2021. They owe it to the people they represent as well as the country they serve.