Politics is Stupid

general
2435

Well… yeah! We outta remember all that stuff. In fact, several of them were taught in history class when I was in school. Those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it. Perhaps you don’t recall, but when bombs were set off in the Capitol, it was marked for years after. I would think the fact that there are metal detectors at the entrance would be enough of a signal that we’ve marked the 1951 attack. The fact that we haven’t allowed the British army to attack the Capitol in over 200 years should be a pretty good indication that we commemorate 1814.

Or, perhaps, you just want it forgotten so that it keeps happening. I would prefer not, but that’s just me. You’re welcome to your own opinion.

So, now we don’t allow British platoons to march into Washington, D. C. much less to the Capitol. We have metal detectors at the door so people don’t try shooting up the chambers. I’m pretty sure every nook and cranny of the Capitol are scanned regularly for bombs. And I suspect that from now on when a mob starts scaling the ramparts and some idiot in a Viking helmet goes strolling toward the building, more drastic steps will be taken to stop it. If you think not, try mounting a new riot. I bet you don’t get far. It’s not an unprecedented reaction to attempt to prevent something from happening again. Unprecedented would be to ignore it.

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2436

throws tuppence into the Pond

So, I didn’t have two cents but… we watched the Insurrection on live television, it was hilarious. My favourite part was when someone was stroking the velvet rope (and I really hope they were quoting Lisa Simpson) and a security guard came to let them through. That moment was later described by the BBC as the point that “all hell broke loose and Insurgents broke into the building”.

As far as I can tell from the outside, the whole thing was a drummed-up setup, sweeping up people who were ignorant of the plan and then culminating in a giant pile of nothing because nobody took the bait. There was no insurrection because nobody took control of anything from the Government and if you watch the videos most people were stopping to look at the fancy things in display cases … and hump the flag, lots of that too :laughing:

If this was an insurrection, then the time that two lesbians abseiled into the BBC News Studio and took control of the 10 o’clock news for a whopping 23 seconds was a more successful one, by 23 whole seconds!

2437

June 2018.

US Capitol Police arrested 575 people at the protest in the Senate building and charged them a $50 citation for unlawfully demonstrating. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash, and actress Susan Sarandon both tweeted they were arrested.

October 2018

By Thursday afternoon, Capitol Police began arresting hundreds of protesters inside the Hart Senate Office Building who raised their fists and loudly started chanting “Kavanaugh has got to go.” Arrests were made after protesters began sitting down in the building’s atrium, refusing to cooperate with law enforcement.
In all, some 302 protesters were arrested and charged with unlawfully demonstrating in Senate office buildings Thursday, police said.

Or any of the dozens of others of Democrat led protests in the Capitol building and its office blocks… Most of them with Democrat Reps and Senators participating. Let into the building and then let to have their say and eventually arrested and slapped on the wrist.

The event that happened a year ago today was treated both as an event like the others above by some police and as an armed attack by others. The event was somewhere in between. Capitol police proved they could stop a riot when BLM came through, but in this case it almost seemed like a honey trap. This horrific violent mob killed went up against the third largest police force in the US and only 1, maybe 2, people were killed by police.

Violent rioters, uncontrolled mob, yes, idiots, most of them. Insurrection, actually getting anywhere near doing something that would change the election or overthrow the government, no. And that’s why they keep not getting charged with insurrection or sedition. Its assault or more often a version of trespassing. But everyone loves calling it an insurrection.

Justifying the bad treatment of one group by pointing at other groups being treated bad isn’t a good way to prove your point. Besides, most prisons are mixed population and many prisons, like DC that are mostly black have mostly black guards as well.

It will happen again, groups get unauthorized access to the Capitol whenever progressive Congressmen want them to. Weird how that keep happening.

2438

Except that’s not what I’m doing. No one should be denied medical treatment if they need it, ever. My point was that no one seemed to care that this was happening in the prison system until now…

2439

And that’s blatantly untrue. White people are just under half the prison population. A few dozen more don’t change it

2440

No kidding? You’re equating what amounts to a couple 70s sit-ins to what happened last year? There was damage both outside and inside the Capitol. There were over 130 police assaulted. Reporters were assaulted and their equipment destroyed. They smeared their own poop on the walls like a bunch of chimps. You honestly believe those are comparable? I assume you have some sort of cogent point you’re trying to make with this. I’m just having fun trying to figure out what it might be.

I’m having trouble figuring out who you’re classifying as progressive Congressmen from last year. I guess I’m really just confused as to how the violence for January 6 became progressive.

2441

No I’m not, one was a riot… They weren’t 70’s sit ins either.

Frankly, I wish they had repelled them the same way they did the BLM riots. But for some reason the Capitol police and National Guard just weren’t prepared for the riots that the press now say people knew were coming for weeks. But, I firmly believe that this whole deal became political football. If there had been a riot that was squashed we wouldn’t be talking about it any more.

My point is that people that democrats agree with get free access to the capitol apparently on demand. The capitol being invaded is not unusual, and angry crowds filling capitol buildings is not a new thing.

So charge the half of the idiots that were rioting, and fine the other half that were wandering around taking selfies and be done with it. With the amount of video available there is no reason these trials should be taking so long.

Yes, you are confused.

And @CaffeinatedNoms and I are about the closest as we’ve been on just about any subject here.

The current President and Vice President appear to have no idea what is going on or what to do about it and we have spent months talking about the prior one. Trump actually has a chance to win again because Biden has been so bad an awful lot of people are questioning their politics because they voted for him.

2442

Cyber Ninjas, the computer security company that everybody was asking, “Wait, who are these guys and how are they qualified to conduct an election audit?”, announced via text about an hour ago that they are shutting down and everyone has been let go. How did they get to this point? Let’s recap because there’s been a few updates.

Last year, they announced they were done with the audit and would be submitting their first draft shortly. Surprise. There was a delay when three of their employees got COVID one day after being sent a “If you keep obstructing us, we’ll be forced to consider other steps to obtain compliance” letter by the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

They get past that and say they’ll submit the draft on a new day in September. Trump releases a statement at around 11 p.m. Eastern time on what he thinks is the night before, praising the “highly respected auditors” that worked so hard and proved what he was saying all along was true.

Except… Cyber Ninjas turned in their draft about 2-3 hours earlier.

Let’s pause for a moment to look at a hypothetical question I asked back in June:

But let’s say that Logan’s team and/or the CyFIR “team” review the data and no matter how much they want their conclusion to be true, they just can’t say it is. They have to announce that the results of the election are accurate. If that happens, how fast will one or both of the companies be attacked as incompetent, part of the deep state, part of the left-wing conspiracy against Trump, or any other way that can discredit them? How fast will Trump himself turn on them and lead those attacks?

Answer? About eight or nine hours.

Trump wakes up the following morning and learns that Cyber Ninja’s draft stated they removed 261 votes from his count and added 99 to Biden’s. The result is Trump became slightly more of a loser in Arizona than if he hadn’t kept pushing for audits.

Cue Trump attacking the audit and saying that they didn’t look at the “right” data. Before he went to bed, he was all smiles and happy with their work. Now he’s not.

Jump forward a couple of months and the report is finalized and made official. Maricopa County releases a point-by-point breakdown on January 5th, 2022 of problems by Cyber Ninjas, CyFIR and others: 22 misleading claims, 41 inaccurate claims and 13 false claims. Out of 2.1 million ballots, less than 100 were “potentially questionable” . You can download a PDF of their report with it broken down in sixteen sections.

On January 6th, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah imposed a $50,000 daily fine against Cyber Ninjas for not turning over public records used in the audit.

Cyber Ninjas’ response? We’re insolvent, we’ve laid everybody off, including CEO Doug Logan, and can’t afford to sift through our records to find those related to the audit. Judge Hannah points out that turning over its records and letting the Arizona Senate figure out what needs to be released will cost a lot less.

CN’s lawyer, Jack Wilenchik, wants to quit because CN hasn’t paid him. The judge says he can’t until local attorneys are in place to represent CN.

Funny how a company that was being paid a lot more for their work than the Arizona government allocated for the entire audit went from being viable to being insolvent in less than five months. And not only that, it came on the same day a judgment was rendered against them because they still hadn’t turned over required documents. They haven’t been stringing along the mark and are now bailing because they can’t make good on their promises, have they?

2443

You apparently have a very broad definition of riot. As I recall, there weren’t even any injuries, much less any deaths. No damage to the Capitol. No gallows built. If there was any sh@##ing in the halls, it was woefully under reported at the time. Maybe some wrist chafing because there were hundreds of arrests.

So, maybe you’re saying that the January 6 riot actually was authorized. If so, then it wasn’t a riot so much as a very disorderly tour group. You know how little old ladies get when they’re tired.

If not, then how was it progressive? Who were the “progressive Congressmen”? ( your words, my emphasis)

2444

Like I said. You are confused.

The riot happened on Jan 6th. Some of those people were just let in and some were resisted.

The “authorized” protests, were the ones I mentioned in 2018. And the one on the Department of the Interior. And whenever anyone on the left needs a handy mob to disrupt things.

Not to mention 2011 in Wisconsin, the Portland ICE and Federal Courthouse attacks and etc etc… Democracy wasn’t under seige then either.

Maybe I am not being clear enough, and I apologize for that. At best Jan 6th was a protest that got out of control and at worst it was a riot. Insurrection? Nope. Attempted Coup? Nope.

I am trying to be straight and reasonable about this conversation. You have made a couple wrong assumptions about what I said and are continuing to run down that alley getting more and more snarky. I am not playing that game.

I am shelving this conversation until something new happens with it or people bring it up again in a year.

2445

The Prime Minister of Great Boredom and Northern Ire is attempting a draft a law that makes it illegal to criticise… oh yes, the Prime Minister.

The swansong of a failing government.

The funny thing is the us-versus-them mentality isn’t going to work for the next election because the only difference between Labour and the Tories right now is that one is red, one is blue, one has an antisemitism problem, and the other an inbreeding problem.

2446

That’s your opinion, and you’re welcome to it. Mine is somewhat different, and everybody has one. I suspect that none of them are a true representation of the motivations and goals of the participants and instigators.

All I’ve done is expressed what I believe and asked for clarification of what you’ve stated. Sorry if doing that sounds hostile.

2447

Wow, I know free speech isn’t codified there as it is here, but still. I guess it’s a natural outgrowth of carving out language that can’t be used and protecting certain groups from speech, along with “Words are violence”.

Good luck.

2448

I don’t think it’ll pass, a lot of Tory MPs are treating it as their hill to die on — not for freedom of speech of course, but because they want to run against him and if you can’t criticise him then the whole leadership system collapses.

2449

If we’re being honest there are no true progressives in elected office at the federal level. Even folks like AOC and Bernie would be considered barely center-left in any sane country. But what I see a lot of from the right when they get called out for anything is either “but the Dems did X” or “witch hunt”. They say the left needs to be more accountable for their crazies but that works both ways.

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2450

Preach! In an Establishment™ whereupon you must be part of the Establishment™ in order to function within, you cannot act outside what the Establishment™ tells you to do. You cannot by definition be progressive in that environment because you have deliberately abandoned any sense of progressiveness by becoming part of that Establishment™.

TL;DR: the swamp isn’t red and isn’t blue, it’s purple.

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2451

Most of Europe has stricter abortion guidelines, lower minimum wage, less free speech, more racial divides.

Not sure how progressive they really are. Authoritarian, sure.

2452

Ve ar nott auvoritarrian heir, und anyvone who says ve are will get put in ze reëducator uuntil zey agree.

Also, regarding racial division… it doesn’t really work by race here, it works by national and occasional regional stigmatisation based on stereotypes; eg: Southerns are soft, the French are randy, the Greek are oily… I’m just was white as someone from southern England, France, or Greece (latino is white here, we never made that distinction).

Oh and the other obvious divide is religious; Catholics and Protestants and Jews versus the Woke Brigade and the what I like to call Musilms Who Have Never Read The Qu’ran, because I don’t like painting everyone with the same brush.

Except the Dutch. They’re racist as heck.

2453

I don’t care what party does it, this kind of shit isn’t how stuff should work.

Gut one bill that already passed the house to put the stuffing in from another to get it through the Senate.

Not to mention the federalization of elections should be an amendment, not just a bill.

In other news, the Democrats just used the super racist filibuster to stop Cruz from sanctioning Russia over a pipeline…

Which administration was in bed with Russia again?

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2454

There really aren’t any good options, but additional sanctions now may be plausibly read as escalating; they can’t use them as a threat against further invasion if they are already implementing them before an offensive. I’m not sure I agree with the logic, but it is plausible.

I wouldn’t call either administration “in bed with” Russia, but the previous incumbent went out of his way to cozy up to authoritarian strongmen all over the world, especially including Putin. It made for a really incoherent foreign policy–even more than usual, I mean.