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

[WestPhillyPunisher]

McCarthy Meets With Rep. Greene While GOP Faces Cheney Decision

Republicans are wrestling over how to handle a bipartisan outcry against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and how to handle Rep. Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump. With the inmates running the GOP asylum, I doubt McCarthy will be able to do much. Meanwhile....

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GOP Rep: ‘There Are Crazies On Both Sides’ Like Marjorie Taylor Greene

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina likened Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters’ rhetoric to Greene’s. Both sides. Yeah, right.

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Newsmax Host Walks Off Set After MyPillow CEO Interview Goes Off The Rails

Anchor Bob Sellers stopped interviewing Mike Lindell because the political pillow-maker wouldn’t stop spewing false election claims. When Newsmax, just as right wing loopy as Faux News gives up on you, you KNOW you've screwed up.

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Warren To Join Senate Finance Committee, Immediately Introduce Wealth Tax Bill

The progressive senator from Massachusetts wants to levy a two-cent tax on every dollar of individual wealth over $50 million. The worst enemy of the wealthy is hard at work.

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Capitol Police Officer Who Died After Far-Right Riot Lies In Honor

Slain Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died after defending the Capitol on Jan. 6 against the mob that stormed the building. I'm curious if any Congressional Republicans who supported Trump's "Stop The Steal" bullshit which triggered the Capitol insurrection will have the gall to pay respects to Officer Sicknick. Meanwhile....

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Trump’s Impeachment Defense Keeps Pushing Dangerous Election Claims

Former President Donald Trump still denies that he lied when he riled up supporters by claiming the election was stolen. Keep on with those delusions, Donnie, you're STILL in a boatload of trouble.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

My feeling about the kvetching of "the party of Reagan" is basically Comedian's attitude to "The American Dream".

[Tami]

Democrats may only have one chance to stop America from becoming a one-party state

The United States has only lived up to basic standards of democracy for a few decades of its history. In parts of the South, the last scraps of Jim Crow tyranny were only rooted out through massive federal coercion in the mid-1970s. That said, there has almost always been genuine competition for national power between the two parties — the one exception being the Civil War, but even in that case the South attempted to secede from the country rather than conquer the whole thing.

That competition may come to an end very soon. Democrats right now control the presidency and Congress by a very thin margin — just one vote in the Senate. Republicans are plotting to win back control of Congress not by getting more votes, but by cheating. If Democrats do not exercise their power now to pass, at a minimum, protections for voting rights, requirements for fair congressional districts, and statehood for Washington, D.C., Republicans will in all likelihood succeed in turning America into a one-party state.

[Tami]

The Capitol Rioters Aren’t Like Other Extremists

On January 6, a mob of about 800 stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of former President Donald Trump, and many people made quick assumptions regarding who the insurrectionists were. Because a number of the rioters prominently displayed symbols of right-wing militias, for instance, some experts called for a crackdown on such groups. Violence organized and carried out by far-right militant organizations is disturbing, but it at least falls into a category familiar to law enforcement and the general public. However, a closer look at the people suspected of taking part in the Capitol riot suggests a different and potentially far more dangerous problem: a new kind of violent mass movement in which more “normal” Trump supporters—middle-class and, in many cases, middle-aged people without obvious ties to the far right—joined with extremists in an attempt to overturn a presidential election.

To understand the events of January 6 and devise solutions to prevent their recurrence, Americans need a fine-grained comprehension of who attacked the Capitol. Understanding the ideology and beliefs of those who commit political violence is important, but so is knowing what kind of people they are and what their lives are like.

In recent weeks, our team of more than 20 researchers has been reviewing court documents and media coverage for information on the demographics, socioeconomic traits, and militant-group affiliations (if any) of everyone arrested by the FBI, Capitol Police, and Washington, D.C., police for offenses related to the January 6 insurrection. As of late last week, 235 people fell into that category, and the number is expected to grow.

Of these suspects, 193 have been charged with being inside the Capitol building or with breaking through barriers to enter the Capitol grounds. We focused our research on these 193. We compared our findings on these suspected insurrectionists with demographic data that we had previously compiled on the 108 individuals arrested by the FBI and local law-enforcement agencies around the country for violence related to right-wing political causes from 2015 to 2020. We used the same methodology to analyze both groups: Our team reviewed all court documents related to each arrest—which include criminal complaints, statement of facts, and affidavits—and conducted searches of media coverage of each arrestee. Four findings stand out.

First, the attack on the Capitol was unmistakably an act of political violence, not merely an exercise in vandalism or trespassing amid a disorderly protest that had spiraled out of control. The overwhelming reason for action, cited again and again in court documents, was that arrestees were following Trump’s orders to keep Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the presidential-election winner. Dozens of arrestees, court records indicate, made statements explaining their intentions in detail on social media or in interviews with the FBI. “I am incredibly proud to be a patriot today,” wrote a 37-year-old man from Beverly Hills, California, “to stand up tall in defense of liberty & the Constitution, to support Trump & #MAGAforever, & to send the message: WE ARE NEVER CONCEDING A STOLEN ELECTION.”

Second, a large majority of suspects in the Capitol riot have no connection to existing far-right militias, white-nationalist gangs, or other established violent organizations. We erred on the side of inclusion; we counted an arrestee as affiliated with such an organization if any court documents or news articles describe the person as a member, refer to social-media posts expressing an affinity for a certain group, or attest to patches or apparel that directly indicate support.

Third, the demographic profile of the suspected Capitol rioters is different from that of past right-wing extremists. The average age of the arrestees we studied is 40. Two-thirds are 35 or older, and 40 percent are business owners or hold white-collar jobs. Unlike the stereotypical extremist, many of the alleged participants in the Capitol riot have a lot to lose. They work as CEOs, shop owners, doctors, lawyers, IT specialists, and accountants. Strikingly, court documents indicate that only 9 percent are unemployed. Of the earlier far-right-extremist suspects we studied, 61 percent were under 35, 25 percent were unemployed, and almost none worked in white-collar occupations.

Fourth, most of the insurrectionists do not come from deep-red strongholds. People familiar with America’s political geography might imagine the Capitol rioters as having marinated in places where they are unlikely to encounter anyone from the opposite side of the political spectrum. Yet of those arrested for their role in the Capitol riot, more than half came from counties that Biden won; one-sixth came from counties that Trump won with less than 60 percent of the vote.

[Tami]

Trump Official’s Last-Day Deal With ICE Union Ties Biden’s Hands

WASHINGTON — A whistle-blower complaint filed on Monday said a top Trump homeland security official sought to constrain the Biden administration’s immigration agenda by agreeing to hand policy controls to the pro-Trump union representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The complaint accuses Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II of “gross mismanagement, gross waste of government funds and abuse of authority” over the labor agreements he signed with the immigration agents’ union the day before President Biden’s inauguration.

Mr. Cuccinelli — an immigration hard-liner whose legal legitimacy to serve in senior positions at the Department of Homeland Security was contested — essentially sought to tie Mr. Biden’s hands, according to the complaint.

“This abuse of authority is shocking,” wrote David Z. Seide, a lawyer representing the whistle-blower, whom he described as “a current federal employee who wishes to remain anonymous” and who “possesses information concerning significant acts of misconduct” by Mr. Cuccinelli.

A senior homeland security official confirmed that since Mr. Biden’s inauguration, officials have been meeting to discuss the implications of the ICE labor agreements. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

One clause in the contract requires homeland security leaders to obtain “prior affirmative consent” in writing from the union on changes to policies and functions affecting agents. It also appears to allow the ICE union to argue that it can reject changes such as Mr. Biden’s recent order to focus on violent criminals and not prioritize other undocumented immigrants.

Under a federal law, an agency head has 30 days to cancel such an agreement once it is signed, after which it goes into effect.

The agreements essentially require the homeland security secretary — currently David Pekoske in an acting capacity — to notify the union in writing about any elements of the agreements that he may disapprove. In each case, that element would be sent back for further negotiations.

But the agreements signed by Mr. Cuccinelli suggest that the union could appeal any such rejection to the Federal Labor Relations Authority. And once the agreements take effect, they purport to “irrevocably” block the government’s ability to challenge anything about the concessions to the ICE union for the next eight years.

[Hypestyle]

Republicans in Georgia keep proving that they are trash. That includes the "hero" Brad Raffensperger, whose office voices no objection to these proposals.

https://www.theroot.com/*********doe...ion-1846183950

White supremacists in Georgia introduced legislation aimed at disenfranchising Black voters by restricting access to the polls. The eight proposed laws would—

Wait. Did you click on this link expecting a whitewashed article euphemizing racial politics?

If that’s what you were expecting, perhaps you should read the CNN story that says: “GOP state senators in Georgia introduced a slate of bills on Monday that seek to roll back voter access in the state, such as “no excuse” absentee voting and automatic voter registration.”

Or maybe you can read this article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that—while serving a majority-Black city—somehow doesn’t include the word “Black.”

The proposals amount to an overhaul of Georgia’s election laws after record turnout resulted in wins for Democrats, including Joe Biden’s run for president and the bids by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock for the U.S. Senate.

If passed, the eight proposed measures — which follow elections where Democrats made historic gains in the state — could considerably reshape Georgia’s electorate and have a significant impact on the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans, echoing a baseless argument frequently made by former President Donald Trump, claim that the measures are necessary to prevent voter fraud, even though no evidence exists that it played a factor in the outcome of the 2020 election.

To abstain from playing “identity politics,” these so-called “news outlets” are willing to sidestep the central issue of this story, therefore intentionally leaving their readers uninformed.

Here are the facts.

In the two elections where more Georgians voted than any other election in the history of the state, 90 percent of Black Georgians voted for a Democratic candidate.
In the same election, 70 percent of white Georgians voted Republican.
Trump lost the state by .24 percentage points while the two Republican senate candidates both lost by 2.04 points or less
Black Georgians were more likely than white voters to vote by absentee ballot and by mail-in ballot in the general election.
Black Georgians were more likely to vote by absentee ballot and by mail-in ballot in the Senate runoff.
Nationwide, white Republicans are more likely than white Democrats to vote early

Senate Bill 67 will require a copy of a voter’s ID when requesting an absentee ballot while SB 68 would ban ballot drop boxes. Other legislative proposals include ending no-excuse absentee voting, required monthly updates on registered voters who died and expanding the number of poll watchers.

And those are the reasonable ones!

There’s a bill to ban voting rights organization from mailing absentee ballot applications to voters. Not the absentee ballots, mind you. They want to stop organizations from helping people apply to vote.

Remember that thing you just read about voter ID? In Georgia, you can automatically register to vote when you get a driver’s license or state ID. But a new bill would end that practice because...I honestly have no idea. The only reasonable explanation for requiring voter identification while simultaneously stopping people from registering to vote (pardon me while I switch to all caps) AT THE VOTER IDENTIFICATION PLACE, is if your goal was to stop people from voting.

If you think that sounds crazy, listen to this one:

They want to cut out that whole “democracy” thing.

If a legally registered resident of the state recently moved to Georgia, Senate Bill 70 wouldn’t allow them to vote for their congressman or senator. But, of course, this new-millennium legislative version of the Confederate “carpetbaggers” laws is aimed at preventing the nonexistent trend of people from moving from state to state to vote in elections, a thing that never happens.

And, because they can’t make it easier for white people to vote, they are making it more difficult for Black people to vote. These laws make it harder for Black-led organizations such as Fair Fight to help voters. They know that voter ID laws disproportionately affect non-white voters. They are aware that poor and non-white people are more likely than whites to relocate.

This is white supremacy.

These Caucasian cowards might not carry torches and pitchforks like their Confederate predecessors, but their goal is the same—to give Georgia’s white voters a legally enshrined political advantage over its Black electorate. And for those who say it has nothing to do with race, maybe you should know this:

Every single Republican in Georgia’s state House and Senate is white.

[Tami]

Trump aides made a late request to Team Biden to extend their parental leave. They said no.

After four years in the Trump administration, Vanessa Ambrosini was looking forward to three months of parental leave when she and her husband welcomed a baby a week before Christmas. The Commerce Department’s human resources office had given her approval for it. But then she was surprised to find out the benefit was no longer available because of the change in administration.

“I got completely screwed,” she said in an interview. “There were no caveats in that language saying anything about if the administration turns, you get nothing and of course, that happened and so I got nothing.”

Ambrosini is among a number of ex-Trump political officials who lost their parental leave when Joe Biden was sworn into office. It’s a byproduct of the field they’re in: Their boss (the president) may have been the one let go, but his departure has meant that they, too, lose their jobs and benefits. Still, they argue that the Biden administration should have honored their leave by keeping them on payroll until the end of it — a request that, emails reviewed by POLITICO show, the Biden transition did not grant.

The Biden White House declined to speak about the issue on record. Instead, an official noted anonymously that political appointees “do not enjoy the promise of federal employment past the end of the administration in which they choose to serve.” The official blamed the fact that the Trump administration dragged its heels on a quick and orderly transition as a reason why some on his team were caught off guard by the benefits ending.

“We understand that a few Trump appointees, including a handful currently on parental leave, submitted last minute requests to remain on government payroll,” the official said. “Because these requests were received so close to Inauguration Day… there was no way to implement an exception to the rule in a way that is fair to all outgoing appointees, including many who resigned as expected without making requests for extraordinary benefits.”

For Ambrosini and others, those options were not enough to navigate an already difficult situation. Former Trump officials face an uphill climb finding a job in a Washington D.C., where the federal government is run by Democrats. Job searching when you’re at home taking care of an infant is nearly impossible.

[Moon Ronin]

Democrats may only have one chance to stop America from becoming a one-party state
and statehood for Washington, D.C.

D.C. cannot become a state with out a Constitutional amendment. Washington, DC is unique among American cities because it was established by the Constitution of the United States. in Article I, Section 8 grants Congress the right to “exercise exclusive Legislation” over the “District” that is “the Seat of the Government of the United States.” The 23rd amendment further makes this case and do a few supreme court cases. Soooo to make DC a state 34 of the states would also have to be on board which in the political climate is laughable. It's time to lose the pipe dream of D.C. becoming the 51st state as it will most likely won't happen any time soon if ever.

[Hypestyle]

D.C. cannot become a state with out a Constitutional amendment. Washington, DC is unique among American cities because it was established by the Constitution of the United States. in Article I, Section 8 grants Congress the right to “exercise exclusive Legislation” over the “District” that is “the Seat of the Government of the United States.” The 23rd amendment further makes this case and do a few supreme court cases. Soooo to make DC a state 34 of the states would also have to be on board which in the political climate is laughable. It's time to lose the pipe dream of D.C. becoming the 51st state as it will most likely won't happen any time soon if ever.

slavery was considered forever.

things don't change until they do. people are better off advocating for it than not.

[Tami]

D.C. cannot become a state with out a Constitutional amendment. Washington, DC is unique among American cities because it was established by the Constitution of the United States. in Article I, Section 8 grants Congress the right to “exercise exclusive Legislation” over the “District” that is “the Seat of the Government of the United States.” The 23rd amendment further makes this case and do a few supreme court cases. Soooo to make DC a state 34 of the states would also have to be on board which in the political climate is laughable. It's time to lose the pipe dream of D.C. becoming the 51st state as it will most likely won't happen any time soon if ever.

Could D.C. become a state? Explaining the hurdles to statehood.

Washington, D.C.’s founding is enshrined in the Constitution, which provides that the District — “not exceeding 10 Miles square” — would “become the Seat of the Government of the United States.” For a brief period after the city’s creation in 1790, residents enjoyed voting rights and were allowed to cast ballots as residents of Maryland or Virginia. But those rights ended shortly after Congress moved into town and the new Capitol in 1800 and passed the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801. The act stripped D.C. residents of their rights to vote in all federal elections, including for president, and gave Congress oversight of the city.

The District was not afforded presidential electors until the passage of the 23rd Amendment in 1961; its residents didn’t get a nonvoting delegate in the House until 1970.

Those opposed to making D.C. a state have argued that statehood for D.C. can’t happen without a constitutional amendment. They say the founders intended the entire District to serve as the seat of the federal government, not as a state. But legislation put forth by nonvoting Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) every year since 1991 would not eliminate the “seat of government” that the Constitution calls for. Instead, H.R. 51 would shrink the national capital to a small complex of federal buildings, while allowing the rest of the District to become a state.

Proponents of statehood argue that this plan preserves the federal enclave — whose only requirement is that it can’t exceed 10 square miles — and escapes the need for a constitutional amendment.

The federal district would be reduced to a two-square-mile enclave, including the White House, Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court and other federal buildings. The rest of what is now the District would become the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth.

It can be done without a Constitutional Amendment. Though there are some who share you idea that it can't.

Republicans overwhelmingly agree that the only viable path toward statehood is through a constitutional amendment. Some in the GOP have also said that the District, and the people who live there, aren’t the same as the average American in other parts of the country. Republicans have argued the city is too corrupt and too financially dependent on the federal government to be the 51st state — although the former argument does not have any bearing on voting rights elsewhere in the country, and D.C. residents pay the among the most federal income taxes per capita in the nation.

[kidfresh512]

We all know the reason GOP will always be against DC becoming a state. They will make any excuse to not have to deal with all the Black people trying to elect 2 more senators.

If it requires and amendment it will never happen until Democrats are in control of the required amount of states needed to ratify.

[Moon Ronin]

Could D.C. become a state? Explaining the hurdles to statehood.







It can be done without a Constitutional Amendment. Though there are some who share you idea that it can't.

For Eleanor Holmes Norton the question then is why not let them be reabsorbed into the states that they were originally part of as of what happened in the 1840s where areas west of the Potomac that were part of D.C. rejoined Virginia through retrocession. Also the first thing then that would need to be addressed would be be the 23rd amendment as if there is any one residence or arguable a private business in the "district" then that one residence would have 3 electrical college votes. It is a lot more complicated than just cutting a 10 square miles or even 2 out and calling it "the district" and making surrounding the neighbor hoods a state. And because of the 23 amendment something will have to go through the amendment process for any of it to work...

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Jim DeMint, who was trying to abolish the IRS as far back as 2004, warned against same sex marriage in 2008 because of the “prevalence of certain diseases amongst homosexuals”, who he also wanted to ban schools from hiring gay teachers out of sheer homophobia. DeMint also wanted to privatize our Social Security system and let the banks handle it, but a few months after they imploded the American economy in 2007. He also blamed the Shoe Bomber on President Obama’s supposed policies of “appeasement”, and used that example as the crux of an argument against unionizing the TSA, falsely claimed on FOX News that President Obama was increasing taxes on Christmas trees out of disdain for Christians, and on another occasion, predicted that “America would not survive” if Obama was elected to a second term as president. He’s also blatantly told lies about figures on healthcare and immigration, tried to ban discussion of abortion over the internet (because that’s worth throwing out the 1st Amendment), and once claimed the federal government played no role in the freeing of the slaves, and it was the Constitution that did so (ignoring how Abraham Lincoln, the founder of his party, had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation). Since stunning Washington insiders with his resignation in 2013, DeMint has been working for the Heritage Foundation.

On this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Bill Otto, a former member of the Kansas House of Representatives and self-professed "ham" ” whose political thoughts inspired him to create a Youtube channel, from which he could spread his political views as an amateur comedian on the internet. This, however, did little but to spotlight what a bigoted nutter he truly is. While sometimes he would perform his own covers of “Home on the Range”, where he would alter the lyrics to justify his opposition to climate change and moving to use green energy, by October 2009 Otto’s little corner of the interwebs blew up in his face completely, after he posted a video of himself performing the “Redneck Rap”, a scathing criticism of President Obama, while wearing a hat that said, “Opossum, The Other White Meat”. In that song, he began suggesting Barack Obama take prisoners from Gitmo to the IRS to torture them there, and referred to the first African American president as "the other dark meat". Needless to say, the "Redneck Rap" wasn't exactly the soundtrack to 8 Mile. His creative endeavors were not Bill Otto's only signs of mental instability, as he once pretended to reach for his firearm when encountering a fellow state legislator, then chuckled that he was "only kidding" because he thought he was a different member of the legislature who deserved to be shot. Besides that, Otto had two conspiracy theories he floated on the floor of the Kansas state legislature, the first being the threat of the United Nations Agenda 21 conspiracy, and the other being his belief that based on the number of shots during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Bill Otto failed to be elected in 2012 as well as in 2014, and has faded from all relevance.

On this date in 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published its first profile of Mississippi State Senator Lydia Chassaniol, a close ally of former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who was first elected to office back in the off-year elections in 2007. She has won re-election twice, in both 2011 and 2015, which is amazing because halfway through her first term in office in 2009, she was a keynote speaker at a meeting of the white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens. Of course, when confronted about her membership and appearance at the CCC's conference in 2009 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, she responded by trying to assure them the CCC was a “conservative organization.” She also wrote, “I do not consider myself racist.” Chassaniol's speech back in 2009 had the featured topic of “Cultural Heritage in Mississippi.” where she gave a brief history of the state since 1540, opined that the U.S. was in decline, citing as her evidence tributes to Michael Jackson, a “pedophile who’s being celebrated.” She encouraged members of the CCC present to join Tea Party protests, and warning that the government wanted to “take from those who have and give to those who don’t want to work for it” which sounds a lot like a racial dog whistle from where we're sitting. Chassaniol, after injecting white supremacists directly into the blood stream of the Mississippi Tea Party, continued to praise the movement thereafter.

Chassaniol's path to re-election was hardly a sure thing in 2015 after her CCC connections were dragged back to the fore after Dylann Roof's killing spree. Her district is over 27% African American, after all, and she was linked to a group that around election time, was posting eugenics studies to claim that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites. And, while that should be more than enough to display she was a terrible candidate, in January 2015, Chassaniol also led a failed effort by the Mississippi state legislature to become a shadow government that could conduct business behind closed doors. And yet... she won, mostly on the benefit of two factors... the vote was split between her Democratic and Libertarian opponents, and that she received over four times the amount of donations that her opponents did, usually from such tiny little donors as corporate giant Monsanto. As a legislator, Chassionol has supported GOP voter suppression efforts by supporting stricter Voter ID measures, voted to try and create “covenant marriages” to make it mandatory to take a year of marriage counseling before someone could be granted a divorce, and has repeatedly gone all-in on anti-abortion efforts and anti-LGBTQ legislation. In 2018, she voted for legislation to allow the gas chamber, electric chair, and firing squad to be brought back as potential methods of execution in Mississippi, and while she seems opposed to having the LGBTQ community protected by hate crime legislation, she co-sponsored legislation that would deem targeted attacks on law enforcement as a hate crime.At least she’s consistent about being a terrible bigot. Regrettably, Chassaniol was allowed to run for re-election in 2019 unopposed, and thus gets four more years to be a not-so-subtle part of the GOP’s growing build towards being an outright white nationalist party. Since she hasn’t made any news in the past year and there’s a plethora of nut-jobs we probably should profile in the meantime, we’re going to set aside her profile for at least this year and take a look at another kooky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 958-45, since this was established in July 2014.


Derrick Evans

Welcome to what is the 958th profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be briefly profiling Derrick Evans, who won election for the first time in 2020, but was only a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates for about forty days from December 1st, 2020- January 9th, 2021.

How does one end up being forced to resign less than six full weeks into their tenure?

Easy. You wake up on January 6th, 2021, and decide to not just go down to the U.S. Capitol and be a Trump-supporting seditious, fascist ***hole, you just don’t climb through broken windows into the capitol wearing paramilitary fatigues and a helmet, but you film yourself doing it in a live broadcast on social media. Yes, on Facebook Live, just in cast people didn’t realize it was him, he even identified himself, screaming, “We’re in, we’re in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”

That’s exactly the sort of genius that made sure the coup was never going to succeed. And also, managed to be was charged with one count of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; and one count of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol Grounds. Feel free to watch the FBI’s response video, where he’s given his perp walk as his grandmother watches. He wasn’t pardoned by Trump, and could be facing a long, long time behind bars in federal prison.

We will conclude this CSGOPOTD profile by sipping our tea. *sips*

[Tami]

For Eleanor Holmes Norton the question then is why not let them be reabsorbed into the states that they were originally part of as of what happened in the 1840s where areas west of the Potomac that were part of D.C. rejoined Virginia through retrocession. Also the first thing then that would need to be addressed would be be the 23rd amendment as if there is any one residence or arguable a private business in the "district" then that one residence would have 3 electrical college votes. It is a lot more complicated than just cutting a 10 square miles or even 2 out and calling it "the district" and making surrounding the neighbor hoods a state. And because of the 23 amendment something will have to go through the amendment process for any of it to work...

I'm sure that has been considered. I'd have to do research on that to learn more.

[Tami]

Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne describes bluffing his way into Trump’s White House

Bizarre new details are emerging about a meeting between a group of election conspiracy believers — including Patrick Byrne, former CEO of Utah-based Overstock.com — and then-President Donald Trump as they tried to convince him to order troops to intervene in ballot disputes.

The details appear in a new long online post by Byrne giving his version of the meeting, and in a long story by the news site Axios.

Among the most outlandish is that Byrne, along with attorney Sidney Powell, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and attorney Emily Newman bluffed their way into the White House and all the way into the Oval Office without an appointment.

“We had a vague plan regarding how we were going to get through all the rings of Capitol Police [note: they are not posted at the White House], Secret Service, and Marines without any invitation: Sidney and Mike were the center of global attention, and we were going to try to use that to bullshit our way past them all and get to the Oval Office,” Byrne wrote.

So on the night of Friday, Dec. 18, more than a month after the election had been declared for Joe Biden and four days after the Electoral College met in every state to make it official, Byrne’s small group decided to drive to the White House and try to get to the president, offering ways for him to keep fighting.

Byrne wrote that when guards saw and recognized Flynn, a former Army general, they came to sharp attention. Byrne said he himself had called ahead to a friendly White House aide who had promised to give him a personal tour sometime, and he asked to come that night. “I may have been less than clear that there would be some people with me.”

Byrne said that as guards were confused about why the group had no appointment, Byrne’s friend arrived at the gate. That aide was momentarily shocked to see Flynn but flashed his ID and said he would take the group inside — and he helped them to get through security.

Once inside, the group called other aides they knew — and went to visit them in their offices, each a little closer to the Oval Office. From one, they saw Trump — and then walked toward the president and greeted him as if he should be expecting them.

“President Trump’s eyebrows knitted in puzzlement but his face showed he recognized us, and after a moment he beckoned us in,” Byrne wrote. “Within seconds General Flynn, Sydney Powell, and I were all sitting in the Oval Office with President Donald J. Trump, with the door shut behind us. So that happened. Really.”