I am no Trump fan but this ruling was an abomination. I find the whole Insurrection conversation silly. Where were the guns? Were all of those selfies a threat to democracy?:It was a protest that turned into a riot. Anyone who calls it an Insurrection is a left wing nut job.
My city's courthouse was destroyed in a riot in the 1880s that was FAR worse than what happened in Washington (which was bad -- I'm not saying it wasn't). This constant shrill insistent that it was an "insurrection" is both bizarre and alarming. Bizarre because it obviously was not one, and alarming because either people saying so are lying or are suffering from long-term hysteria that makes them unable to reason. Considering that they include many in the upper echelons of government, both possibilities are alarming, but I'm pretty sure it's the former.
And I am convinced that part of what fueled the January 6 protesters was the failure to react at all to the burning, looting, and violence of the summer of 2020 riots including the partial destruction of the federal courthouse in Portland. I suppose people think it is worse because it is Congress and Nancy Pelosi's office but I disagree.
Absolutely right. IF America ever gains back its sanity (in whole or in part) The Floyd Riots will be seen for what they really were: part of an organized, well funded campaign to destroy the social functioning of America (and other Western nations).
In effect, the first sortie of a soft revolution, which included the Covid lockdowns, the ~9 months of rioting, changes to our voting laws, government-media conspiracies to disseminate propaganda (and prevent the spread of non-propaganda), widespread abdication of duty from public prosecutors, the hamstringing of local police (and the politicization of federal police), etc. Ongoing efforts continue, including mass illegal immigration, Pro-Palestinian protests/riots, continuing crime-enabling policies, expanding the vice economy (drugs, porn, gambling), cementing viewpoint censorship, etc. It’s been quite overwhelming...and yet most people I know haven’t noticed anything “different”...SMH.
...and irony of all irony.....the George Floyd trial will be overturned. Lots of lies and irregularities. See Liz Collin documentary "The Fall of Minneapolis". She scours PUBLIC RECORDS and Police video at the scene....to show you what was not presented at the trial. This scam trial was the beginning of all this.
Have we ever seen such a manipulative group as this iteration of Democrats. And this author does their bidding by voting to impeach Trump.
Go away Mr. Meijer....same name as the wealthy grocery store chain in Michigan. Rich boy going where he shouldn't....again.
Peter Meijer is principled and rational. He stands against the Jan 6 violence and stands against the Colorado supreme courts judicial activism. Rather than attack his arguments you go after who he is, “rich boy…” very weak.
From a hyperbolic point of view, there were a number of illegal moves made in some states regarding mail-in voting, contrary to state constitutions. So in that respect, one could reasonably say the election was rigged, and thus “stolen”. Kind of like the Attorneys General who decided ahead of time that Mr. Trump is guilty.
Rip away, Comprof 2.0. I’m sure some reasonable people will agree with me.
Greg Glassman, founder and CEO of Crossfit, got in trouble for tweeting “Floyd-19”. I thought it was great. He did a lot of unacceptable things, but that certainly was not one of them. He was more or less literally on the money.
The George Flloyd protests were overwhelmingly peaceful. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2021/0708/BLM-and-Floyd-protests-were-largely-peaceful-data-confirms (Google for more supporting articles from a variety of sources). And as I mentioned to Lynne above, the super small minority of protesters or opportunists that became violent, looted, destroyed property should have been arrested and prosecuted, and my very liberal Democratic family would agree.
Apparently we have very, very different definitions of the words “overwhelmingly peaceful”! The Women’s March in 2017 was “overwhelmingly peaceful”, with ~5mln American participants, and nary an incident. No arson, no looting or violence (I’ll bet there was some littering — mostly unintentional, but that’s a lot of people).
If you’re relying on “lies, damned lies, and statistics” for your narrative about the Floyd riots (only a small percentage of people who were present commited criminal acts), then you would have to used the same argument for J6, where it was also true that only a small minority present committed violations.
And it would be truly impossible to imply that the miscreants from both riots were treated equally under law. Floyd rioters were not hunted down ex post facto using their (ample) social media posts, security cameras, etc. Rather, only a very few were arrested at all, and of those, nearly all were immediately released, none were held in solitary confinement far from their families…
Of the 2000 BLM protests, 200 of them turned into violent riots. A record $2B in damages was done, 25 people were killed and 2000 Police Officers were injured. To say that the BLM protests were overwhelmingly peaceful is like saying most of the people in the Twin Towers made it out. There is no comparison of the scale of BLM riots to Jan 6. Jan 6 was ugly but it was not an insurrection and it was nowhere near as bad as BLM riots.
Except when they looted hundreds of businesses, burned down police precincts, and caused billions of dollars worth of damage in every major city in the country. You’re a deeply unserious person.
It was one of the worst outpourings of rioting in American history. Dozens were slaughtered directly and billions were lost in property damage (to mostly minority property owners, of course.)
The most infuriating part was how any time a Republican tried to get the attention of Dems on the issue so that maybe our minority communities could be protected from these riots they would plug their ears. The impression I got was that Democrats had come to believe the BLM/Antifa riots represented some sort of necessary and important reckoning on America’s history of Racism. Looking at it through this lens caused them to perceive Republicans as opposing this reckoning, inevitably because we’re all white supremacists or something, and in fact the real reason Republicans bring up the riots so much is because they want to invalidate and suppress the free expression of an oppressed peoples.
Obviously this is nonsense. Republicans oppose racism. The George Floyd riots were riots and nothing more. The George Floyd protests were peaceful (protests are not riots, riots are not protests). And most importantly, the George Floyd protests had nothing to do with protecting Black Lives and were only about pushing the preferred policies of the progressive left (overwhelmingly composed of rich white people.) If the left actually cared about black lives they would have noticed the murder rate for blacks has increased since police departments were defunded massively across our country.
Lol. Look right past the actual conspiracy, to the "REAL" conspiracy!!!!! So pathetic.
You conspiracy theorists had very little credibility before, but your failure to recognize an actual blatant conspiracy when it was shoved in your face just makes you a laughing stock. Lol.
Face it, your hero tried to derail the peaceful transfer of power that our democracy depends on. For that, he rightfully should never hold office again. End of story.
I’m not in favor of breaking into locked offices and taking things from them, however
I have yet to see the financial costs of repairs to the Capitol building. As far as I could tell from the news photos on J6, a lot of windows were broken and locks breached. I saw photos of the same broken piece of furniture from different angles. I’m interested to know the cost of actual physical damage vs the cost of replacing entire buildings razed by fire and wanton destruction in various cities in 2020 and beyond.
According to what I've read, damage to the Capitol building came to just under $1.5 million. Damage to 20 states during the riots of May-June 2020: between $1 billion and $2 billion.
Your interpretation of my comment is incorrect. Try a second reading. It’s amazing how much space Mr. Trump must occupy in your mind that you quickly jump to such a conclusion about my query.
I agree. Silence was violence but protests were "fiery but mostly peaceful." Rioting was the "language of the oppressed". This was how we were taught to communicate in 2020. what's good for the goose used to be good for the gander. Then we realized DEI is just a euphemism for hypocrisy and contradiction, and the Left got it's "gotcha" moment. Everything went down from there.
Indeed, I believe you have gotten to the heart of the dissatisfaction of a significant portion of those on the right. And, I also believe that there is a nagging unease among those on the left that those on the right might actually be right in these regards.
It certainly is worthy to note, again, that no prosecutor has yet to attempt to indict ANY individual for insurrection.
It is also significant that in the three-plus years that the communications of the then Speaker of the House, the one who carried the policing authority to protect the security of the Washington DC's Capital Building and the safety of the members of
federal Congress, have yet to be released for independent, non-partisan review.
We are offered no way as a voting public to make up our minds, a very undemocratic way of approaching matters of governance.
Can we get real? The "Capitol Police Force" has more than 2,000 members to protect one building. Why didn't they lock all the Capitol doors at 5 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021? Why did the Capitol Police Force provide guided tours to unarmed "insurrectionists" through an empty building?
Traditionally, federal protests take place on the Washington Mall -- why not this one? I don't mind that angry losers will push back -- think HRC's anger at losing to Trump in 2016 or Al Gore's lawyers trying to cancel American military members' votes filed from overseas in Florida to cancel the 2000 presidential election result. This stuff stinks.
I always vote, but I can't stand either party. Am I wrong to wish the Democrats and Republicans gave us better alternatives?
You are not wrong. But I start to ask myself why would an honest, decent, hard-working person run? I agree with your statements regarding events surrounding the protection of the capitol.that day.
Google, to find more. Probably would have caught and prosecuted more if they had taken selfies and posted them on Facebook... ditto for all opportunists that use peaceful protests, Super Bowl victories, etc. to riot and loot. Coming from a very liberal family I know they too would have supported more arrests and prosecutions for those that destroyed property, looted, etc. No excuse for that. Ever.
I was not interested in revisting this but since you insist. As to the first article 18 people were arrested for incidents on 2 days (Two months after the riots started) . 5 for actions on 7/2120 including 1 for assault on a federal officer; creating a disturbance; trespassing; and 2 for failing to comply with a lawful order; 6 for actions on 7/22 for failure to comply with a lawful order; and 7 for actions on 7/22, 1 for wilfully damaging public property, 3 for failure to comply; and 3 for assaulting federal officials. The second article relates to a man sentenced to 15 months followed by 3 years supervision for an act committed at the Multnomah County Justice Center. The last article relates to a man named Ybarra who is one of the arrested identified in the first article. He had arrived by bus from Seattle to turn himself in on an existing warrant for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. But the poor lad could not get in because of the peaceful protests, so he'll why not?he joined the party. He was caught on camera throwing a lit device at the courthouse doors. The device bounced off so he tried again. Then again. He entered a plea for time served after being in custody for 1 year and 7 months. So he was likely sentenced on both cases, or the other one was dismissed as part of the plea bargain. His lawyer says he was drunk at the time and suffers from schizophrenia. But interestingly this last article says "of 96 federal-protest related prosecutions, 70 have been dismissed. Yarra is among about 8 people who pleaded guilty and have been sentenced." The article also says there were "100 consecutive days of unrest". So fewer than one arrest per day of unrest. Most cases dismissed. So you have, inadvertently perhaps, made my case for me regarding disparate treatment. 100 days versus a handful of hours. Fires and extensive property damage versus broken windows and other property damage. The vast majority of the charges dismissed versus long term confinement. A meager number prosecuted versus people hunted for years with all the tools at the disposal of federal law enforcement.
Dozens of police officers were injured, some seriously. One young white man shot and killed another in cold blood because the victim was identified as conservative. The rioters tore down a statue of an elk that had graced an intersection for 120 years, and was beloved by me and many other Portlanders. The base of the statue was damaged beyond repair. A young activist told me they did this because "the artist had something to do with slavery," or so she was told. The art museum had to remove all of their outdoor statuary and store it inside because the rioters were destroying or threatening to destroy it all. Downtown businesses had their windows broken and stores looted so many times that the smaller businesses had to shut down permanently. When Portlanders were surveyed by a local paper, about 30% of them supported the riots, another third "didn't know or care" about them, and a final third was opposed.
It's horrible, but Portland could be burned to the ground and our democracy would remain strong. But the peaceful transfer of power is the weakest point in our democracy, and the Orange Insurrectionist tried to exploit it. He failed, and now people are making excuses for him.
My family's business sustained $750 K in damages in the Portland riot and then were dropped by their insurance company. They struggled to find even terrible coverage. Despite turning in hours of video surveillance, it was only after my husband was interviewed several times on the news and made a point blank appeal to the mayor in a public meeting that police started to investigate. Eventually one person was arrested and had to pay restitution. They received a check for $5.00.
My family's business sustained $750 K in damages in the Portland riot and then were dropped by their insurance company. They struggled to find even terrible coverage. Despite turning in hours of video surveillance, it was only after my husband was interviewed several times on the news and made a point blank appeal to the mayor in a public meeting that police started to investigate. Eventually one person was arrested and had to pay restitution. They received a check for $5.00.
You're probably right. I believe, as a fundamental principle, that emotion drives out reason. All the events you refer to couldn't help but create a groundswell of emotion.
Rioting in the capitol, beating capitol police, threatening legislators with violence (including the VP) is just a perfectly understandable reaction to those other people rioting? So, in your world, two wrongs definitely make a right. Bully for you.
No Nona. Watching an entire summer of "mostly peaceful protests" where people were killed, buildings were burned, looting was rampant, city travel was disrupted, entire sections of major metropolitan areas were "occupied" for extended periods of time, a police precinct building was destroyed and blocks of the adjacent area vandalized beyond repair while law enforcement was ordered to stand down left the impression that such conduct was an acceptable way to air your grievances. Instead we learned that there is a dual standard in existence. Which in a way established what the actual peaceful protesters were saying so that good has come out of it because people who are fed up with unequal treatment appear to be united. And we see clearly which party employs disparate treatment - favorable for some (can you say Hunter Biden?) and harsh for others, up to and including full blown weaponization of law enforcement for political.purposes (can you say Putin's Russia?) And your assessment of events surrounding January 6 is inaccurate. Bully is an interesting chouce of words. Project much? At least I live in the real world not some fantasy dictated by Big Brother.
It's predominantly DEMOCRATS and left wing zealots who insist it was an insurrection. AND LOOK AT THE J6 DEFENDANTS THAT ARE STILL IN PRISON ‼️ how about the violation of their rights. It's disgusting.
You're looking at the wrong election. Remember the primaries/caucuses are held in all 50 states including blue ones. The blue states have lots of GOP delegates - California has the most in the country. Colorado has 37 of the 1,235 needed to win. If Trump got banned from enough blue state primary ballots, he'd go into the Convention without a majority of delegates.
Nope, it was an insurrection alright, but only just barely and the fact that it was a failure does not take away from the fact that Trump tried to overturn an election in a dozen different ways. But the author is correct: firstly Trump must be convicted in a *federal* court, and secondly that even then, it would be much better to let the electorate make the decision: senile, corrupt tool of the woke, or narcissistic criminal -- your choice America.
I understand that the riots at the Portland courthouse went on for between 50 to 90 days. January 6 lasted two to three hours max! Riot yes, insurrection, hardly.
Jan6 was not an insurrection. The ONLY thing the participants wanted was for the certification of the election to be delayed until investigations into voting problems could occur.
Personally, as an independent, I found it suspicious that Democrats did NOT want investigations to occur. If it were me, I would WANT to prove that the election was valid. Instead, Democrat-pressured judges blocked court cases requiring investigations on the grounds of "standing," rather than on their actual merits. It was not a good look for the Democrats.
If you think that possession of the Capitol building (and the riot did not extend to actually declaring possession) is "overturning the government," I think you need to learn a lot more about how our government is structured.
I believe dismantling the police dept..a government job which upholds the laws made by the government..is an attempt to overturn our established government..as the anarchist want more then anything.
Here you go, maybe you memory holed it. It was also called CHOP. People died in this 2 block no-police allowed zone. Protesters holding this area demanded Seattle police budget be cut in half.
I live in Portland. It was longer than that and the city is still not back to normal. Government buildings STILL have plywood over the windows to prevent vandalism. I just saw an article last week where city officials are finally contemplating taking the plywood down to try and draw people back into Portland.
It was about 4 months, but the intimidation by antifa hasn't stopped and the art museum hasn't restored their sculptures to their outdoor locations. There were additional incidents involving antifa violence. In 2020-2021 there was a long-lasting incident involving a house inhabited by a black family that was portrayed by woke radicals as the scene of unjust racist persecution. Armed radicals moved into the neighborhood and posted guards in various places, causing neighbors to complain that they were under a state of armed occupation while the city did nothing. The police did try to intervene, but a crowd of activists counterattacked and the police had to back off.
In May of 2022 a Republican gubernatorial contender named Stan Pulliam held a rally downtown. It was a small group of men, women and children. Pulliam ran on an anti-woke platform. A bunch of antifa thugs marched down the street in black block, menaced the group and threw smoke grenades and paint at the attendees. They injured a man's hand and a woman suffered hearing loss. The rally had to break up and leave, as there was no one there to protect them.
It's easier for me to understand now how the Mafia and similar crime systems got established in environments where the legitimate government was too incompetent or corrupt to protect the public. In the case of Oregon, the main cause of the problem is the ideological extremism in the population and the people they elect.
I was in Portland last spring and asked some folks what it was really like as we only get the news which has dropped the story. They said they grew up going downtown all the time, but will not now.
The sequel to the rioters has been a hoard of addicts moving here to take advantage of the decriminalized fentanyl and heroin. They are all over the streets, on the edges of highways and the waterways, like the scenes of San Francisco. Same deal. Nobody wants to be around them or the toxic garbage dumps they leave every time they move to another campsite or are dislocated by order of the city.
yeah didn't it go on intermittently for months? Like into October even? And from the film clips I saw the rioters had better riot gear than the police!
Yep - they slept/passed out during the day and came back every night for months. Lunch was provided by donors. I live close to downtown and I could hear the nightly happenings and the constant hum of the news helicopters.
Sure. There was no attack on the Capitol, with chants to hang the Vice President. The Jan 6 people had zero chance of winning of course but I think the intention was there to overturn the election. That's insurrection.
The difference is that the riots ... and they were illegal and should have been shut down asap ... did not threaten our democracy. They were populated by a bunch of trouble making lefties not the one person responsible for upholding the constitution. He MUST be held to a higher standard. There is no doubt in my mind that it was insurrection. He should be in jail or worse.
Come on now..these people are doing more damage to our country than 1 president who knew the election was rigged..and encouraged his supporters to “peacefully” go and let their voices be heard..look at the tape..the same rioters from the pussy hat marchers..Madonna wanting to firebomb the White House..to summer 2020...BLM..ANTIFA...TRANSTIFA..now the hateful ANTISEMITES..all funded by and attended by the same people..mostly America hating/self hating rich white kids!
I have to disagree. It was not an "insurrection". If it were then SOMEBODY would have been charged with that and nobody has.
It was a mob that was allowed to get out of control. It happens. In fact it happens a lot. It just happened at the Capital this time.
Nobody brought guns or tried to burn the place down or tried to hang a congress critter.
It was a very large protest mob, that in keeping with all the protest mobs of that summer, got out of control.
More could and should have been done to prevent the crowd from getting that fired up and concentrated. Somebody made a decision to let it escalate. Cuz I work in DC and I know what the city and the capital police can do to control mobs. They have been doing it for decades. This was hardly their first rodeo.
As for Trump? Well, there is a big difference between being an arrogant asshole and being an insurrectionist.
As for his attempts to get various votes recounted or any of the other stuff? Jesus, the democrats have been doing that since at least Ronald Reagan got elected. That crap happens in every election. The difference here is that Trump was more clumsy than a Clinton or a Bush or an Al Gore would be. But at its core? He did pretty much what every loser has done going back to at least the Clinton's.
And, you have to give Trump this, there were a LOT of funky changes and funky things that were done around that election that may have been legal but were questionable. I do not blame him for asking questions and distrusting the system. Heck, what happened in this court case kinda makes you question if maybe he was not right. Apparently there is no rule or norm or standard that the democrats, particularly elite democrats will not go to. Heck, they have said as much.
Solid case there Lemon. I know, one can exaggerate. I'd call it an insurrection but *just barely*. The label doesn't really matter, except as to the current Article 14 stuff -- and there, I think SCOTUS will throw it out. The voters must have their choice.
> the democrats have been doing that since at least Ronald Reagan got elected
No doubt. There are no good guys here. Solid post.
I agree with you Ray, that technically by the definition of insurrection and because they attempted to at least interrupt government proceedings, that it technically *just barely* qualifies as an insurrection. However, if that’s the case, then the pro-Palestine disruption that happened recently also needed to be prosecuted as an insurrection because they also interrupted government proceedings. For Trump though, he can’t be charged with insurrection, but he could (I think) be charged with sedition. The problem with the CO court case is they weren’t operating under sedition for the 14th amendment but insurrection. Which Trump did not do. Trump shouldn’t be charged with insurrection but I think there’s a fair argument for being charged with sedition.
> pro-Palestine disruption that happened recently also needed to be prosecuted as an insurrection because they also interrupted government proceedings
But didn't smash their way into the Capitol to do it. It's always shades of grey isn't it?
Interesting post! Yeah, maybe sedition is closer. Whatever attempting to subvert an election is, that's what he did. First time in your history. Mind ... even that's not black and white -- both parties have cheated before to one degree or another. GOP style is to try to make voting harder, Rat style is to harvest ballots and that kind of thing.
If Trump wins in '24, do you think there will be an election in '28 -- I mean something better than a Venezuelan election? I doubt the GOP would ever let the Rats win again.
I've never been to or witnessed an insurrection, but I have to believe people would comed armed with guns, pitchforks, and torches, not a bunch of senior citizens dressed in Halloween costumes and mothers pushing baby strollers.
I'm sorry 234, but strollers, really? You can't believe that... really? It's not the civil war, but it was certainly more than a straightforward protest. Gimme a break...
Dude, all that I said was that it was more than baby strollers... sorry but I can see that with my eyes so idk what to tell you???
Oh but to answer your question, and this is just a hypothetical, but maybe she didn't call in the national guard because at no point in modern US history has a president ever stood in front of the capital and tried to incite a crowd to stop the certification of an election.
I have to admit that those shots of the 'rioters' in the building, walking around quietly looking at the statues -- one can make it sound worse than it was. OTOH there were the folks looking for Pence and Pelozi with the intention to murder them, so ... And I hafta admit that if they'd got Pelozi ...
I hope the guy with the horns gets out early for good behavior. Really.
yes and for a time Jan 6 was a Bloody or fatal insurrection while they glossed over Portland Ore, CHAZ Seattle, the Floy Riot, etc. Biased hyperbole much?
Actually, that seems to be the Democrats' mantra at the moment: "It didn't happen. But if it did, it was justified." Kind of like the response to Oct7.
Trump sits around watching himself on TV and checking his mentions. It's the crazoids he hires only for their loyalty to him, to perform important functions of the government, that I'm afraid of.
On top of that, CO is a blue state. It didn't go for Trump in '16 or '20. And no way it will go for him in '24. Why the CO SC felt it needed to weigh in on something of so little consequence to CO voters is beyond me. This article does shine a nice light on an important difference between the justices.
it kills me. I've lived in CO my whole life and I've been practicing law here for almost 20 years. Even after the cake shop abomination that keeps coming back to haunt the poor guy, I thought there was still hope for my beautiful state. Not so much anymore.
When I was a child, we visited Colorado all the time, because my aunt lived in Canon City. I wanted to live in Colorado when I grew up. And yet something inside always whispered, "No, not a good idea."
I spent my whole career living there. This wasn't the case even 10 years ago. It was a solid red state until liberals from California came to ruin it. No one ever used their car horn. People smiled at you as you passed them by. Now? Arghh.
The big problem with the CO/SC ruling is other states will surely follow. This has to go to out federal SC asap. Will they overturn it????
All younger grads from the ivies on down have been indoctrinated to believe in the moral worth of activism. If you’re not pushing the woke agenda, you’re not doing it right and therefore not worthy of being a human being. James Comey is an older version of this push to activate. It’s creating narcissists and it will get much, much worse.
Activism, Inc.™️. These days I feel like we’re governed by “screamocracy”; the loudest, most fanatical group gets to control everything…and for some reason, we’re letting them.
You're thinking about the wrong election. Remember the primaries/caucuses are held in all 50 states including blue ones. The blue states have lots of GOP delegates - California has the most in the country. Colorado has 37 of the 1,235 needed to win the GOP nomination. If Trump got banned from enough blue state primary ballots, he'd go into the Convention without a majority of delegates.
Anyone who calls J6 an insurrection is a useful idiot for the Dem/MSM narrative that was so obviously launched immediately. This was to draw attention away from all the election malfeasance that went on.
Calling the election into question is NOT the same as insurrection and those confusing the two are obfuscating. The fallout destroying many Americans lives in the process is disgusting. Those promoting the lie should be ashamed of themselves.
Calling the election into question is NOT the same as insurrection
Indeed not. However storming the Capitol, looking for the VP so as to hang him, and doing millions of dollars worth of vandalism in NOT the same as 'calling the election into question' either, is it? Anyone who equates the two is obfuscating. Question away! Did the Rats succeed in stealing a state? No doubt they would if they could, however so far all non-partisan investigations are unanimous that, no, they didn't.
Disenfranchised people tend to riot. Chants made in anger do not (and did not) necessarily result in action. The election was first peacefully called into question and when those in power did not respond this is the logical next result.
Millions were disenfranchised by this last election. If you ask me those who were responsible for the various forms of election manipulation got off easy. Maybe they learned a lesson, maybe not. But all the laws in the world will not protect those that try to take power illegitimately. It’s a dangerous game.
If J6 was your idea of how a democracy works then we'll just have to agree to disagree. I myself consider it to be the most shocking thing I've ever seen. Not the worst, mind, but the most shocking. But for a Trumpist I suppose it was an accurate display of how Trumpists think that one should win/retain power.
> Millions were disenfranchised by this last election.
Except that zero investigations, by Reps, Rats or responsible adults, support your claim. Trumpists repeat it like a mantra, but there is zero evidence that it is true. But I understand -- it's part of your religion and no force in the universe will change your mind. As for me, I quite open to persuasion -- no question the Rats would steal an election if they could get away with it -- but no evidence is forthcoming. I mean evidence that has been reviewed by an adult and found to be sound.
The reason a political class aloof to the privations of its citizens considered what happened on January 6th to be an insurrection and NOT the riots in DC that occurred during 2020 is simple. One group was their constituency and the other were the "Kulaks" of the 21st century America. A simple study of the last names of those indicted will let anyone know that 25% of them are non-White. So, no White Supremacist insurrection there. People that had lost their businesses, were bankrupt, had been fired due to refusing to take the vaccine, people that felt, right or wrong, that their country had been stolen from them went to Washington to make their grievances heard. The perspective of so many of our so-called leaders was that the dirty funny dangerous folk in the middle of the country dared attempt to touch the hem of their garments. I am beginning to despair that perhaps not ENOUGH happened on January 6th.
I dont think it was only J6th that the Justices reviewed. I think they saw a coordinated strategy
Questioning the legitimacy/ produce fake electors / have the VP not certify the results / thereby throwing the decision bake to the state legislatures or house of rep to decide the vote. When all those failed then J6
I still dont know and have not seen a lawyer offer an opinion on if you have to be convicted of insurrection. Anyone ??
Were your courthouse-destroyers trying to disrupt the peaceful transfer of the power of the highest office in the land, which our democracy is utterly dependent on? No?
Then it wasn't worse.
You are in denial. They had a specific plan to have Pence refuse to certify and throw it back to key States where they had fake electors ready. Pence just refused to go along with it.
Americans are better rebels than that. If there'd been anything resembling a true insurrection, we'd still be fighting. What we've seen isn't a rise in insurrectionist sentiment (if anyone's an America-firster it's a MAGA supporter) but in Orwellian language use. 'Patriots' are now 'insurrectionists.'
The riot at the Capitol was intended to cause chaos and delay and give cover to Pence who was supposed to refuse to certify and send it back to the States. They had fake electors lined up in the key ones.
It could have worked if Pence went along with it. He saved us from a much worse crisis.
Have to agree with you there, Mark. But then again, we're bad at a lot of things now.. As the polls report, we're a nation in decline..
I have to say - bringing the faux gallows to the Jan 6 picnic was quite strange. Don't you think they should have snared poor Pence and then brought him to the gallows at a secure location somewhere? Maybe Donald could have met him there.
“Anyone who calls it an Insurrection is a left wing nut job.”
———————————————
You have about 10-15 minutes until a team of female Democrat FBI agents in tactical gear and facial piercings arrive to kick in your door and toss flashbangs at you.
The best thing about how they charged Trump with like 100 different counts is that he won’t be convicted on all counts, because some are intentionally bizarre, and then The State will tell us
“Oh see it’s a fair jury and a fair trial because they didn’t convict on everything. Only on some things. These DC Democrats are moderate centrists!!”
Albert, I think this needs to be assessed in a more broad context. If Trump's participation in the insurrection was limited to his (and the rioters') behavior on Jan 6th then indeed your assessment would be exactly right. Indeed seen through the exclusive lens of Jan 6th the reaction is hysterical, and the Left (especially the woke left) see most thing through extremist lenses and there's almost no sky that isn't falling for them, so their cries of "wolf" need to be taken with extreme skepticism.
That said - Trump went through a huge number of machinations to attempt to stay in office after the election. I assume you don't need me to recount them. The folks at The Bulwark have enumerated them repeatedly. Also - he quips that he'd like to be dictator for a day and yes - he's kidding - but you know the old adage about how every joke is 2% comedy; He's clearly enamored of the way Orban, Putin, Xi, and others of their ilk rule without the pesky interference of any "opposition" or the absurdly messy and unnecessary considerations of the will of the citizenry.
Subsequently, entirely beside his "policies" (which honestly I think are mostly an irrelevant distraction and the nation can certainly weather 4, or more, years of) the existential threat to our democracy in his coming back to power, lining the offices of all the people who actually care to preserve our democracy, and grasp the quintessential reason why liberal democracy - no matter how messy and inefficient - is the only system that can avoid devolving into the imprisonment and assassination of those who have views counter to the ruling party.
Given this - it's really critical not to put all your baskets in the events of Jan 6th but to rather see them as part of the (totally transparent) coup that Trump *almost succeeded in pulling off.
It's easy to look back on it and say "of course Mike Pence was never going to go along with it" but exactly how much of your children's future would you have been willing to stake on that assumption on Jan 5th?
And now that we see how craven and/or oblivious and/or self-interested the people of the GOP are; how unable they are to draw this line in the sand and just sit on Liz Cheney's shoulders and say "yeah! what she said!"... it's clear that the odds of Trump ever leaving office 4 years after he is voted in are definitely not 100% (and I'd put them under 50).
Given that lense - it's easy to see how the Colorado court did what they did because they're panicking - but no amount of panic will save us; indeed panic is one of the worst reactions in a crisis. The American people need the above explained to them such that electing Trump becomes impossible and at the same time (before he's president) all sorts of "norms" need to be codified in laws that no amount of gamesmanship or bad-faith interpretations can supersede. I'm not a lawyer so maybe this last idea is simply a false hope but it feels like that's the kind of work that congress ought to be doing now in preparation for a would-be dictator who is about to take charge of the nation.
Only someone suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome would make such an argument. And look what it gave us: A Commander In Chief who spits on our men and women stationed and under near daily attack in Syria, Iraq, and the waters off Yemen, a welcome invasion of millions across our Southern Border, including tens of thousands of military aged young men from China and the Middle East, more homeless than ever and a sycophant lying media who gaslight us every day. Well done!!
Mike, I'm not sure if you're replying to me but if so then I'd appreciate you refute something specific in my post. Accusing me of suffering from TDS is a really easy way to avoid engaging with the facts on the ground. Also - since we don't know one another - if you say stuff like "Trump actually won the election" or "Trump didn't actually attempt to stay in office after he lost the election" makes it easier for me to simply avoid further discussion given that my derangement (such as it is) is based on the ironclad understanding that Trump lost the election and attempted to stay in office in spite of that loss.
If we can agree on those two points then we're likely to be able to find a lot of common ground on the rest.
Yevgeny, You ignore facts to make your case. The evidence is becoming overwhelming that Trump did not lose the election, instead it was stolen: by the secretaries of state and one state supreme court who changed the way electors are chosen without legislative enactment, which is what the Constitution requires, by fraud in gathering ballots, by 51 former CIA and NSA officials who claimed on the eve of the election that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation, by a media that was willing to do whatever was necessary to ensure Biden was sworn in, and more if you care to look. As for your second point, you ignore the fact that on Jan 21 Biden was sworn in and Trump left Washington as every loser in US history has done. And you do not seem to know that the election is over when the Electoral Congress elects the President and not before, and after that was completed, Trump gave up .
So, all of your doom and gloom about Trump is possible only as long as you continue to wear the blinders that is Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Mike - thanks for making my point for me (and I appreciate you doing it without the normal bombast and disdain that is commonplace on Social Media).
I will grant you that if your concerns are ever validated by voices that I trust, I will apologize a 1000 times. I have said many times that the best defense that the insurrectionists have is that they genuinely believed that the election was stolen and they were defenders of our precious and fragile democracy.
I'm a specialist in state propaganda and am as confident as I can be (without the powers of God) to be sure that Trump lost the election and that many organs of organized disinformation are committed to convincing people like yourself that you're being lied to.
You will see a lot of noise on this subject and if you're already inclined to believe it then you will almost certainly be taken in by this noise and see a lot of signal in it. That's how modern information warfare works.
I do wish you the best and urge you to remember your own views on democracy and free speech (I'm positive I know what they are) and when you see Trump coming for those rights to not allow the sunk cost fallacy of having been wrong to stop you from standing up to him when the time comes. It will be a lot harder to do once he's in the White House but perhaps that's the only way that this particular fever dream is going to break.
Oh, and if I'm wrong? Well... I can't express to you how delighted I'll be to have been so.
Hey Yevgeny, who do you think you are that ANYONE would give a damn about your “1,000 apologies”. The election was stolen on so many levels and this country is “1,000” times the worse for it.
Virtually all actual elected republicans, AND most of Trump's inner circle, believed that Trump did in fact lose the election. Even Wisconsin's infamously pro Trump Johnson - when caught on videotape. Debating with people like you is like debating with people that believe the world is flat, or that vaccines have zero benefit, and so forth. There is no point.
If you're ahead by just 1% with 98% of the votes counted, you have to lose 75% of the remaining votes to lose. Even in the most crooked county in America, Cook, no one gets 75% votes.....no way no how. (Unless the lights are turned out, the polls closed, and truckloads of ballot harvested votes show up.
You guys always trot out “Trump Derangement Syndrome” when someone critiques your dear leader. Please use your eyes, ears, and BRAINS! The man is a con artist, a grifter, he has been one his entire career! Anyone who was in those circles in the 1980s and 90s in NYC saw that. That so many ppl admire him is just astonishing. What do you like? Is it his falsified wealth? His string of Russian mail-order model brides? His connections to dictators? His up-front desire to be a dictator? His barely veiled racism? Wake up! And stop using this fake “syndrome” it makes you look ridiculous.
Your ad hominem attack proves my point. Here is what I like about Mr. Trump.
He gets things done. He fought for and signed into law tax relief for the middle class and prison sentencing reform. He moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem. His son negotiated the Abraham Accords. He withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal, the absurd Paris Climate Deal, and the WHO, none of which serve US interests. He all but stopped the flood of immigrants at the Souther Border. His energy policies made us independent of the fossil fuel monopolists known as OPEC. He implemented regulatory reform that freed the economy. He appointed 3 conservative Supreme Court Justices. And more.
Those who cannot or will not discuss the merits of these policy choices and, instead, resort to personal insults and name calling suffer from TDS. If the shoe fits wear it.
Ha! First please learn what an ad hominem attack actually looks like. The policies you listed are the sum total of his tenure and half of them are horrible, racist, and self serving. The appointment of three Supreme Court justices is not an accomplishment. He did the bidding of the Federalist Society and appointed terrible, and in at least one instance unqualified people. The TDS claim is such a ridiculous made up thing. The guy is a grifter and he is compromised. He is running in order to avoid going to federal prison. He belongs there- he is a traitor to his oath of office. Everyone who supports him needs to check their values against the constitution.
I think you misunderstood Trump and his "dictator for a day" comment. What he proposed to do with his executive authority was to reverse Biden's EAs on oil leasing/drilling and on the completing the border wall. It goes to Biden's declaration when he was running that only dictators use executive orders to make new law. As you know, Biden went on to issue over 100 EAs in the week after his inauguration.
Jeff - I'm a comedian so I want to assure you that if this was a joke(ish) comment made by literally anyone else in the nation I'd have precisely your reaction.
I think that coming from someone who literally tried to steal the last election (which in the parlance of how this normally works in history is described as a "coup") such jokes are very much akin to Jeffrey Dahmer quipping that the next time he hires a prostitute he would only want to eat a pinky and then he'd just have sex with her as expected and then set her free.
I'm in the audience and so I am the one who can judge whether or not a comedian is funny.
It's interesting that you think using the court system is equivalent to "stealing". If that is the case, didn't the Colorado court just steal their resident's ability to vote for their preferred candidate?
I assure you that I don't mean "using the court system" - Are you unfamiliar with the various tactics that were attempted that relied on various grey areas in the law and the various lies that were told to various bodies (and electors) to try and subvert the election?
Liz Cheney's book does a marvelous job of laying out some of the most egregious actions. There are many others.
Of course it's also not inconsequential that Trump continues to insist that he won the election long after all the court actions have ruled decisively against him. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the way propaganda works but having someone with his platform fill the ether with this lie (the "BIG LIE" as it's known) is precisely all the evidence one should need to understand just how dangerous a demagogue this man is.
I honestly am at a loss as to why anyone defends him. Yes - he sticks it to the woke but so do many other people in the modern GOP... and none of them have tried to undermine our democracy... why can't we just nominate one of them? I'd even agree to vote for that person even though I'm confident I disagree with much of their platform and politics.
Why is everyone insisting on throwing their eggs in this particular dictatorial basket?
My guess is that many Americans simply don't understand the actual value of democracy and are exhausted from the party politics and nothing getting done and see a lot of interesting things happening in China that look like competence and have concluded that a strong-man is what the nation needs for the time being to set things straight.
But this is a mirage. The problem with every other form of government is that it resolves to some authority that can't be challenged and that simply has its way. Sometimes that way lines up with what's best for the people... most of the time it does not.
I'm just here cautioning everyone to not mistake the baby for the bathwater or you're likely to end up with all of the latter and none of the former.
I'm not committed to voting for Trump. I voted for Democrats in 2016 (Webb) and 2020 (Gabbard) and really have no intent to vote for Trump in 2024. I certainly liked Trump's policies and would like to see them reinstated. Maybe one or some of the other GOP candidates would do that. I think only DeSantis has the intestinal fortitude to fight for these policies. I'm waiting to see who Trump chooses for his running mate before I make any decision. It's still a long way to 5 November 2024.
My opinion is that the DNC machine is a far greater threat to the republic than Donald Trump. Regarding "The Big Lie", there have been many Big Lies since 2015. The villainous extent that the DNC has gone to, to destroy his candidacy and his administration is unforgivable. Until that generation of Democrats are driven out of D.C., they will not have my support. I see Donald Trump as possibly the only force of nature who can do that.
As a retired reference librarian (with the requisite graduate degree in information science), may I suggest the possibility that one's judgment can only be as reliable as the information in which it is grounded? The fact that you cite The Bulwark as a source tends to confirm this truth.
Mark - I'm the founder of Samizdat Online - an anti-censorship platform whose very purpose is to expose the people living in places like Russia, Belarus, Iran, China etc. to the information that their leaders don't want them to see.
The entire mission is predicated on the idea that information is THE central driver of all subsequent behavior. The Nazis and the members of Hamas aren't genetically different from you and me - they have simply absorbed the wrong information and have built tribes around it. The outcomes are incredibly grim but the driving force is nothing more than bad information.
So - given all this - I promise you that I tread very carefully when I absorb anything as "true" and am always prepared to be wrong since none of us have any magical insight into the near infinite number of factors that we have no direct contact with and rely on good-faith sources to relay to us.
The Bulwark, in my experience (and I am a contributing author there) is a fantastically good-faith organization that is founded by stalwart conservatives and is desperately trying to preserve both conservatism (as it has been understood for generations) as well as democracy in general.
People like Liz Cheney, with whom I share absolutely no ideology or political beliefs, agree with my take on what it means for our democracy to elect Trump (and we're specifically talking about Trump, I'm not painting with a broad brush) or anyone who glorifies the actions and practices of people like Putin. I'm not a child and have the benefit of having started my life in Soviet Russia - so I'm able to see things quite clearly, but part of that clarity is the understanding that everything is nuanced and of course I might be wrong about everything... I'm open to all evidence and curious to know what about The Bulwark you think makes them a less than honest broker in this debate.
I appreciate this, but I'm disturbed by the pretense that your essentially anti-Trump post is rooted in 'fact' alone. Facts are placeholders in hierarchies of meaning, and the same facts can be enrolled in incompatible narratives (creationists and evolutionists both acknowledge the reality of species diversity, for example; they just account for it differently). A locution like, "He's clearly enamored of the way Orban, Putin, Xi, and others of their ilk rule without the pesky interference of any "opposition" or the absurdly messy and unnecessary considerations of the will of the citizenry," clearly can't masquerade itself as a fact. It's a narrative that pretends to construe as "evidence" facts that are just as plausibly interpretable in less politicized ways.
The determination to interpret facts in ways least flattering to one's political opponents (which, notwithstanding your disclaimer, is precisely what ideologically committed sources like The Bulwark and The Washington Post do) owes nothing to disinterested truth pursuit, and everything to the determination of ideologues to hew to paths leading to the conclusions they know in advance they have to reach. Let's not insult each other's intelligence: given the personal background you describe, you can't possibly not know this perfectly well. Please eschew references to facts unless you're willing to acknowledge the subordinate roles they're forced to play in ideological narratives. What's at issue is our ability to make sound judgments, and in this connection it is indeed important to be scrupulous and skeptical when it comes to sources. Try taking a second look at The Bulwark, and see if you can't discern in the site's use of facts something that might tend to arouse a non-partisan skepticism.
Fair enough - and indeed if this was an academic exercise I'd grant precisely everything you just said.
Americans have, for the most part, enjoyed such a carefree reality for the last 50(some odd) years that at this point every conversation feels like a discussion on a college campus in which every permutation of every concept is up for grabs.
I urge you to consider what is presently happening in Ukraine. I defer only to the "facts" of the day-to-day operational warfare that is taking place on Ukrainian soil. We don't have to delve into the facts of history or the facts of geo-politics. We can just focus on the fact that Ukrainians are being slaughtered in their nation and Russian soldiers are being sent to the slaughter by theirs (and committing various atrocities and war crimes when opportunities present themselves).
In such a situation the facts take on a very different operational imperative.
Decisions need to be made in real time. How do we help the Ukrainians (or the Russians, if your assessment of the facts somehow nets out to them being justified in their assault - devil's advocate).
Similarly - it is my firm belief that Trump will attempt to follow-through on his pre-existing coup attempt. Yes - that's a speculation but no I'm not just waxing philosophical - I'm prognosticating based on what he has said and done already.
I don't need to know his inner workings. I don't need to understand why he compliments Putin - I just need to know that he does compliment Putin.
And when I see how impotent most American media is at highlighting these realities and instead make a ton of noise about various largely irrelevant attributes of Trump that only serve to annoy those who are predisposed to voting for him, I try to help refocus the conversation on what I believe actually matters - namely - that (for reasons I can't claim to know) he is intent on breaking our democratic system and more importantly ushering us into the Putin-age of imprisoning journalists and silencing his opposition (as all dictators do).
If you're not convinced that this is a real threat then all I can do is say I hope you're right and (as I did on another thread) remind you to please keep your finger on precisely this pulse and be mindful if you start to notice that what I'm predicting here is starting to come to pass and be prepared to acknowledge that maybe you got this one wrong.
Simkin, NATO crept its borders right up to Russia, and then began courting Ukraine entry to this body, historically opposed to Russia. It was a blunder to do so. In 2014, NATO then helped install Ukraine leadership unfriendly to Russia. Russia was provoked, IMO. The West helped (foster) create the mess in Ukraine. I suspect you are a neocon, and war lover/monger. Trump on the other hand is only POTUS in my life not to start any new wars. This is no good for you & yours, who yearn for bloodshed and MIC profits. Trump told the truth on debate stage in SC and totally sunk Jeb, when he said out loud that the War in Iraq was wrong and based on a lie. Neocon Washington has been against him since that day.
I'm not, as your comments on Americans suggest you may have inferred, American but Canadian, and I don't want to be offside with someone who's fighting censorship, a project of which I approve. Nor do I have any intention of contesting, in this forum, your judgments on Trump, Ukraine, or any other matter; I'll simply reiterate what I've said already, that those judgments are the children of your knowledge base and therefore subject to the same limitations. In general, I believe it essential to distinguish between loyalty to principles and loyalty to the insignia: people who confuse the two--who try to define truth and justice nationally, ethnically, racially, religiously, politically and/or ideologically--have done demonstrable harm in history. If you're truly concerned about threats to democracy, you'll oppose them wherever you see them, not just when they emanate from Trump, Iran, Russia, or one particular side of the political spectrum. Otherwise, you're simply masquerading political, ideological or nationalistic, etc., preferences and aversions as something more respectable and less injurious to truth quests.
Someone once said that sound judgment was "the ability to discern the flexible limits within which boundary lines oscillate." Justice moves back and forth, up and down in history: sometimes it's on the side of the revolutionaries; sometimes it's on the side of the king's guards. It's worth taking care not to be sitting complacently on the ground under a politically correct 'justice' banner as the boundary separating truth from falsehood sweeps by overhead, leaving us unwittingly on the wrong side of it.
What’s your take on domestic Big Tech/Govt assault on free speech? Does your work consider the home front? Cause that is what I imagine your work is pumping into former Soviet states. Are you disseminating our disinformation as a replacement for disinformation put out by Putin and the mullahs?
Would be interested to hear your take on Rupa Subramanya’s recent Congressional testimony on what’s up here in North America. You can find it here in this recent Free Press article:
"Cause that is what I imagine your work is pumping into former Soviet states."
A picture is worth a 1000 words so I urge you to just check out what we're doing at https://samizdatonline.org
And if you like it, please donate! :)
The reason that your imagination is failing you (I say that with nothing but good cheer) is that most North Americans simply can't fathom the state of media suppression in places like Russia. Even if you're more tuned in than most (which you clearly are) there's still a cognitive dissonance.
The analogy I usually make is that information is a lot like water. You have some healthy amount and then two ends of a spectrum that are deadly. On the one end you drown and on the other you die of thirst. Pick your poison, as they say; but there are many ways to stave off drowning - but thirst is non-negotiable - you either quench it or you die.
One of my foundational beliefs is that information (and the free-flow thereof) is the lifeblood of a free society. It's not a coincidence that every dictator's inevitable first action is to take full control of the information space and punish people for violating his information rules.
There are multiple wonderful organizations in the West whose principle concern is tackling the "drowning" side of this dichotomy. If you look at the work that my colleagues over at Trust in Media Cooperative, or Ad Fontes are doing - their primary concern is helping average people get as much signal out of the cacophony of noise - but you're right - the job of the average consumer of information in the West of teasing out what is "real" has become pretty difficult.
My personal take on this is that this is inevitable and we shouldn't freak out about it.
1) Things have become much more complicated than they've ever been. Anyone can be an expert in [something] but no one can be an expert in [everything]. I'm sure you've read the research that people who know the least about a subject are the most likely to believe they know a lot more than they do and be more sure of themselves than those who actually know more.
2) As long as there are enough sources, giving us every angle of some subject, and we understand that everyone has their various biases (and indeed it's impossible not to) and we have a good cross-section of both the info and who takes what side of what issue - we'll be able to have a pretty good broad consensus of what's what.
3) nothing's perfect and in the West everything's actually mostly fine and moving in the right direction (taken with a grain of salt).
I did read the article you linked to when it was posted. It's a good article. My favorite aspect of it is that it verifies point 3 above. (how?) Because it shows the contrast between the problem (in this case) in Canada and Russia.
This contrast isn't delved into in the piece so, on its own, the story might seem really bad - but if you know what to compare it to, you realize how "trivial" this is by comparison. AND (more importantly) it shows that even at this level of deviation from what we have come to expect from our freedoms, this is a 2 alarm fire and quickly gaining attention.
It's up to US if we choose to let this get worse (and worse) or to nip it in the bud. We have all the tools to fix this available to us. That's the beauty of OUR system. In Russia people have only one option - violent revolt (or MASS demonstration) if they hope to get any change. All their tools of democratic resistance have been taken away.
So - finally - in answer to your question (sorry - I'm working on pith muscles but they're still pretty flabby) - what Samizdat Online pushes back into Russia and Belarus and Iran and soon China is whatever it is that they have blocked. We the dictators decide what we publish. Whatever it is they deem offensive enough to actually block from access... that's what we publish.
Mostly these are anti regime publications that simply cover what's actually going on in world that these nations don't want their citizens to know because it contradicts their party lines. Putin puts in prison anyone who calls his incursion into Ukraine a "war" (7 - 15 years in prison conditions that make our prisons look like country clubs). These publications aren't saying much of anything controversial - they're just reporting the facts on the ground. The Russians have no clue what kinds of losses they've suffered and their heads are filled with nonsense about how Ukraine has been seized by nazis (with a Jewish leader). There are dozens and dozens of media outlets that operate in exile (Meduza, TV Rain, Mediazona, Euroradio, Astra, Echo of Moscow, Agentura, etc. etc. etc.) the founders of which want to have the same press freedoms that we do and are doing amazing reporting (that you won't find in the Western press because a lot of it is either too inside baseball) and we do what we can to give the Russian (et al) communities to get to it and distribute it.
So - I see my job as simply helping these nations move away from the dying of thirst side of things and if they can move closer to the drowning side of things... well... we'll let my colleagues on that side of the issue worry about that if we should be so lucky as to succeed.
Thanks Yevgeny, I’m 100% in support of unfettered free speech. And yes, I wish that citizens in oppressive countries had access to non-state sponsored speech & views. Outside of the Bible, I hold the 1st & 2nd Amendments as my most valuable possessions. I wish the whole world could have the same.
Now, in regards to Ukraine, this has been the West offering Kiev a fools errand. When Russia invaded I of course hoped the people of Ukraine would resist. But I never thought they could actually win. I still don’t. The demographics show it’s impossible for Ukraine to overcome near endless manpower of Russia. Germany learned this in WW2. By late ‘44, Germany was conscripting the very young and the old. Germany ran out of fighting men, Russia did not, this is fact.
This week we see reports that Ukraine needs another 1/2 million troops and is now calling up its elderly. It’s now only a matter of time. Either for a settled agreement, or the West sends in boots.
It didn’t have to be this way. NED, NATO and the West didn’t need to sow false promises. Just because one hate’s Russia doesn’t mean you kick that hornet’s nest. NATO courting Georgia & Ukraine as future members of NATO while giving Russia the middle finger when they ask to join is provoking an adversary. Play stupid games win stupid prizes sort of thing.
"He's clearly enamored of the way Orban, Putin, Xi, and others of their ilk rule without the pesky interference of any "opposition" or the absurdly messy and unnecessary considerations of the will of the citizenry." It is of grave concern to me. If we, the people, do not wake up to this and keep justifying it, we will get to experience the consequences for our democracy. Liz Cheney's book clearly shows us what Trump is capable of, enabled by his many supporters. How to stop it? By being strategic and careful and bold at the same time. Overreaction and counter-reaction only maintains the status quo.
"...liberal democracy - no matter how messy and inefficient - is the only system that can avoid devolving into the imprisonment and assassination of those who have views counter to the ruling party."
Are you really so blind you cannot see that is exactly what the Democrats are doing now? Imprisonment of their opponents and, yes if that fails, assassination is also on the table.
If you have the names of the people that the Democrats have thrown in prison for their views (based on the laws they changed that made holding those views punishable by imprisonment) - I'd love to see them.
If not I urge you to not conflate bad faith and even unethical behavior (that you can openly criticize and which "the people" have every ability to curtail and an out of control state that imprisons and kills people with impunity.
You can look at how Putin treats his citizens and journalists and observe that this is a leader whom Trump models himself after and exalts.
I'm not defending the Democrats - I'm not a fan of theirs - but they do understand and uphold the rule of law, and you live in a nation where you have a voice and the ability to change those laws if you don't like them.
I don't think any good faith observer could come to the conclusion that this was an imposition on his speech. He committed fraud and deprived people of their ability to vote. I'm curious how you define "harm" but it's obviously not how our legal system defines it.
How can you say this government upholds the rule of law when you compare the treatment of Donald Trump with Hillary Clinton, or of Jan. 6 rioters with the George Floyd rioters of 2020? Clearly, application of the law has become greatly influenced by political alignment.
OMG....that is simply the last hideout for the neocon Never Trumper's. That rag is about the worst piece of propaganda out there. AND that says something given I read VOX.
If you find me a single piece of actual propaganda (I'm not sure that you're actually using the word as it is defined) I'd be very impressed.
Perhaps one of the pieces I've written for them qualifies?
Also - I think you may be pushing too many chips in with your dismissal of "never trump"ers. You should try it on for size with different last names like "Putin" or "Stalin" or "Hitler" and see how easy those go down as obvious brands to organize around.
Isn't it possible that the fact that you fail to see how unique a threat Trump is to our democracy is actually a failure on your part to either be aware of or weigh with the correct concern various things he's done? Or perhaps you might have a view of our system as being a lot more resilient than I do? But it shouldn't be hard to imagine how someone might disagree and note that their concern is a valid one (even if you think it's not entirely realistic).
The Bulwark is nothing more than the last home for the Never Trump retreads that could no longer had credibility either with the New Republic crowd or the average republican voter.
I remember the drama around when it was founded.
Knowing that....and knowing what I do of Bill Kristol.......who needs more?
To me, an "insurrection" implies that there is a "plan". To me, nothing about January 6th suggests to me that any of those people had anything close to resembling a "plan"
Not to mention they are playing into his hand. Trump feeds off of being the victim of the state. Many of those that I know that support him, want to vote for him more as a result of the indictments against him. This is just democratically sponsored fundraising for Trump...
Personally, I find him repugnant, but there is no denying that his "witch hunt" claims are becoming more persuasive.
That is so on point. I detest him as well but no one can get any oxygen running against him and I feel like if I don't vote for him, then those leading the witch hunt are winning
I agree. I have lost friends, including my brother refusing to speak to me, in significant part for saying that Jan 6 was not an insurrection. I studied revolutions and terrorism, and Jan 6th was a tailgate party level protest that got a little out of hand. Most of the getting out of hand was the shooting of a protester.
It just wasn't an insurrection by any stretch. If someone thinks that, they need to get out more. A lot more, and see a real insurrection.
We were saved from a Constitutional Crisis by Mike Pence. He refused to go along with it. They had fake electors lined up and everything. You are in denial.
Even if SCOTUS tosses this case, Trump is going to jail. Deal with it.
There was no need for massive exaggeration and calling it a coup or an insurrection. I voted for Trump and I was apalled that he refused to concede defeat and told a mob of supporters to "go to the Capitol and tell Mike Pence to do the right thing ." This alone was enough for me and many others to turn against Trump permanently.
You will get no argument from me that Trump is an idiot and the hiring of Sydney Powell was a disaster. There is a difference between calling him a cry baby loser and trying to become a dictator. The one is true, the other absurd.
If I asked you to in good-faith describe to me how an aspiring dictator would come to power in the US... not in some silly Hollywood cartoon caricature but in the real world, you would describe Trump's actions to a tee.
Everything he's done and said lays the groundwork for having power handed to the White House and filling the rank and file with yes-men who will rubber stamp everything he wishes. In the first administration there were still people of conscience who impeded his impulses - he's literally said he won't make the mistake of having such people in his second adminstration. He's literally said that he's ready to move to silence the media that he disapproves of. He's literally said that he admires how Putin gets things done.
Let's assume you're mostly right and that it's "unlikely" that he's an aspiring autocrat.
Just how much of your nation's future are you willing to bet on this certainty? Are you 100% sure? 95%?
From my perspective if you agree that he's a "cry-baby loser" (and presumably you think worse than that) then even a 1% chance that he's an aspiring dictator should instantly eliminate him from the running, no?
If I told you that the next bite of your burger is 1% likely to kill you and your family - just how tasty would it need to be for you to go ahead and take that bite anyway?
There is zero percent chance he becoems a dictator. He would be thrown out imprisoned within seconds of attempting to overthrow the government. No chance and I think the people in government now have a higher probability of being a dictator than Trump. If Trump wins, do you think they will give up power?
'Anyone who calls it an Insurrection is a left wing nut job.'
Afraid not, Albert. You may want to learn the names of the following legal scholars: William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas, Michael Luttig., a retired federal judge. Staunch conservatives all who orchestrated and were the originators (among others) of this latest wrinkle to the legal fabric.
Trump brings chaos and drama everywhere he goes, every time he opens his mouth - and his base loves it! Well, let's have more!
But it wasn't an insurrection, that is silly. It was a riot. To say it's anything else is just plain wrong. And the dictator stuff is even more outrageously stupid. But that is for another day.
Many people disagree. In the written opinion of the Colorado Court, they quote Trump publicly ordering his Vice President to disregard state certified election results and stop the count. So it's not just about the 'riot'. Expect the Supreme Court to take this up, because even though Trump's enjoying a quickie jump in poll numbers amongst his base on this, this is an existential threat to Trump's campaign if other states take this mantle up.
And yeah, I don't think Trump is a dictator. But he certainly enjoys their company. And that, of course, is for another day..
But what in any plain reading of any definition of insurrection was that. Biden got 81 million votes and I see no problem with him exhausting every avenue. Sadly, he approved the legalized cheating of mail in ballots so he only had himself to blame
Ultimately once he lost in the courts he had an obligation to accept the result, not demand that Mike Pence refuse to certify the election and send a mob to protest and "convince" him. This is not an insurrection but it is dangerous and unforgivable.
All of these prosecutions are doing nothing but making him stronger and sucking all the oxygen out of his GOP opponents. If he was just running as a candidate, I think they would have a chance. But since there are people going after him from all areas, it's making us us versus them. And that's the only way he can win
Biden has something to do with this? Come on. This is Colorado. Do you think he has their court on speed dial??
As for the 'legalized cheating' of mail in ballots - ask Donald himself which state he won one of his largest margins in. Right, it was Florida - the state with the highest percentage of mail in ballots in the nation.
There is a difference between states that had a process that took years to develop and others that just sent out ballots willy-nilly to people. That was my point. And it's not Biden doing it, it is the whack job leftist intellectuals that are in academia, government and those who are on the courts and see themselves as our masters. The vote for Trump in 2016 was the best one of my life because of the three judges that are on the court right now. If we had the judges that are on the courts in Colorado, then we would have an insurrection, and I would be part of it. Pleasure chatting with you Have a great day
It was all the American flags that got carried on the Self-Guided Tour; the leftists are much happier with the ChiCom flag being paraded around like it was most recently lining the streets in SanFran for Xi's visit.
You probably should look at the facts that were considered by the district court when they decided that Trump aided or abetted an insurrection. They did not rely only or even principally on January 6.
But there are no facts as there was no insurrection. He contested the results of an election and went through with the transfer of power when all of his avenues were exhausted. This was four progressive judges making up a decision out of whole cloth.
The first section of the Fourteenth Amendment states that no one should be deprived of liberty without due process. Trump was never convicted in a court of law. This Democrat usurping of civil rights is nothing short of fascism.
I sure hope so. He’s a menace. He has denigrated the office of President, he instills hate, he is out for retribution. He’s a very clever snake oil salesman taken in by those who want to believe what he says.
Will it ever end! Frankly I’m sick of him and everyone like him.
Well it’s not so much that Trump instills hate but he just instills hate in the wrong way.
You’re supposed to hate the millionaires and billionaires who don’t pay their fair share and the oil corporations who are destroying our future and murdering the climate and the police who are hunting Black Americans and you’re supposed to hate whites and Christians who are xenophobe transphobe racists and the unvaccinated who are killing us all daily with their dirty diseases.
So it’s not really the brand new hate-instilling thing Trump invented that is the problem. He’s just using it wrong.
It's telling that you're accurately comparing Trump to lefty internet trolls and activists rather than to other Presidents.
Face it, he's a professional troll. Not a President. He talks like a troll, acts like a troll. He appeals to the worst in us rather than the best in us. He has degraded the office of President.
Topless dude jiggling his plastic chest balls on the White House lawn while the rest of the freaks Biden invited are background actors, cocaine sniffing on the WH balcony, Senate conference room turned into a porn studio (why not after #1 above), money laundering, selling the office of VP, It's ok Putin if you roll the tanks into Ukraine just a little bit, R. Levine, S. Brinton, the embarrassing army recruiting ad advertising how far we have sunk, alphabet flags flying over US embassies.
Yes, all unfortunate effects of a thriving-yet-always-far-from-perfect democracy. Which you want to replace with a Trump presidency-for-life and a destruction of our democracy. GTFO.
The only real menace are the people behind the puppet president in office now..so compromised by his and his families easily proven corruption that he was chosen so he could be controlled...we are being overrun by illegal immigrants because we have no more borders..while the FBI director tells us what great peril we’re in with the certain to come terrorists attacks..Biden should be impeached for sedition..he has failed to protect this nation
The expression ‘MAGA extremists’ is a Democrat pejorative much like Hillary’s ‘deplorables’. It’s sad and pathetic that Democrats are so power hungry that they would disparage fellow citizens. They are desperate.
No one gives a fuck what you’re sick of lady. He’s gonna win whether he’s convicted of this bullshit or not and your tiny brain is going to finally completely break. 😂
The comment I responded to referenced the due process clause of the 14A. Due process is required when the person is subject to loss of life, liberty, or property. Disqualification under the 14A is not such a loss.
Yes. The life liberty property was in reference to somebody bringing up due process. Running for office is not a right, just like drinking Coke is not a right. AFAIK the Constitution doesn't guarantee as a right everything or anything I want to do.
Sheluyang - The three legal scholars who originated this 14th Amendment Section 3 interpretation were all very conservative and members of the Federalist Society. So, perhaps, 'fascism' is originating in the very place Trump found his three conservative judges he installed on the high court.
Anyone has the right to run for President as long as they are born a citizen, 35 or older, and have no felony convictions (charges are not convictions). Trump meets all those requirements. Thus, denying him the opportunity to run for President violates his rights.
Again. Due process is of law. The right that the law not be uniquely applied (that is likely the challenge to this court's ruling, or at least one of them). Running for office is a liberty as in one has the freedom to run for office.
Not every person is qualified to run for office. Schwarzenegger, for one, is naturalized and ineligible. Per this court's opinion, section 3 applies to Trump and makes him ineligible. No one will claim violation of due process if Schwarzenegger is barred from running due to his naturalized citizenship because we all accept that only natural-born Americans can do so.
IMHO, it's the "Aid and Comfort" part that's the justification. That's why the plaintiffs could sue without the conviction. You could argue that what Trump did wasn't giving aid and comfort to the people breaking in to the Capitol, and that's fair enough. But IMHO those were the grounds.
These opponents you mention were always insane. Trump just illuminated the madness. Today the Biden regime removed the monument of reconciliation from Arlington National Cemetery, signaling that they want to foment more conflict. Why did you or other veterans remain silent about that?
Why are they so dead-set on undoing the things that allowed our country to reconcile? And why are they getting away with doing it so easily? Who stands to benefit?
As the "victims" in the oppressor/oppressed model of life, their victimhood is what sustains them. It brings them sympathy, money and - ultimately - political power.
I’ve seen it. It perpetuates the myth that the south fought for an ideal. They fought, died and killed for slavery. No objection to the study and admiration individual acts of courage of individuals who fought.
What reconciliation? Look up reconstruction, look up abysmal policy pushed by politicians in Congress, blunting or outright ignoring debased behavior of white southerners toward their black neighbors.
The South fought change to their economic system. Their system was based on slavery which in retrospect was evil. Up until that time most societies practiced slavery in some shape or form. Most people at that time didn’t regard slavery as evil.
Societies don’t voluntarily change their economic system without a fight. The North forced the south to change and prevailed due to their industrial advantage rather than some moral superiority. Fight that war 100 years earlier and the South wins.
I say all this to point out that both sides are part of bigger forces. They both thought their cause was righteous and we certainly can’t judge it by todays standards. The monument reflects that sentiment. There was a bitter fight, but the country came back together through force. Ultimate healing would come in time which it did.
Something so momentous for our country certainly deserves monuments like this. Wiping them out disrespects the thousands on both sides who died to resolve this issue and help us move forward.
First, I appreciate that you are speaking from conviction, and respectfully. However my understand (it’s a fact, truly) is that by the time of our civil war slavery as an institution had been outlawed in most of the world by then. Not in the Middle East or in Africa, but by all Western governments. Freedom wasn’t limited to white human beings in all so-called civilized European and Mediterranean countries by then.
The fact is that if we are to be one nation there are standards we must not only pay lip service to (equality) but embrace. I mourn any man or woman dying because they were led into an evil cause. Slavery was an evil. I feel no need to be sentimental about that fight, only truly regret the horrendous death toll.
I agree that the American South was late to the party in abolishing slavery. The entire economy was based on it. It is as you say evil. My main point was that it is really hard to make a huge change like that quickly. It usually requires a lot of force. Thus the war.
I think it’s unfair to judge people that grow up with archaic beliefs and then live their life by those beliefs. When the whole belief system comes crashing down like it did in the confederacy it’s truly disastrous for them. I think all that outsiders can do in those situations is try to convince them of the evils and use force as a last resort. I think the American civil war was that force and it ultimately cleansed the nation from the sin of slavery. It takes a lot if generations to digest such a catastrophe, but I don’t think we should ever forget it.
Is that who you think I am? Whoa. You need a deeper dive into history. Try the Roman’s - or the Holy Roman Empire - or British colonialists. Taking apart who was conquered had their icons(statuary) obliterated. Removing symbols of the defeated is standard practice.
I find all this emphasis on tearing down monuments interesting. In New York, a massive bronze or maybe iron statue of Theodore Roosevelt was just carted off. Must have cost millions to remove it. Why not just cross the street and hand out the cash to homeless living in Central Park? People are starving with no access to medical care or a roof over their heads. To spend money on this stuff is very precious and comes at the end of my list.
Let's see. We have monuments to Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Chief Joseph. We have lots of Civil War monuments for the war dead on both sides, like Gettysburg.
Native Americans are another matter. That they defied being slaughtered is not revolution or insurrection.
Yes those warriors were ultimately defeated, but as the indigenous people of this country their status is light years from southerners duped into getting themselves killed by a class of slave holders who convinced them it retaining slaves was worth dying for.
This is based on your pro-native opinion. If somebody had a pro-confederate opinion theyd make a similar argument. So either say “its fine for defeated peoples to have monuments, in any and all cases” or “its not ok in any case at all”. Your pretending your bias is logically consistent but its not. Everybody is biased, but then argue from a place of admitted bias and dont feign consistency
Perhaps I’ve been too close to it, however I’m not denying courage, I’ll mourn the dead sons of mothers whose grief likely broke their hearts, I don’t happen to have your long view - these men left widows and children on both sides. What pity do you have for those they left on the ground and at home?
No I agree that Lincoln did the right thing and pardoned the southern soldiers. Ironically that wasn’t reciprocated. He didn’t keep the Union together for spite. He believed we were one nation. I do too.
There was no reconciliation. There was recidivism and recalcitrance and resentment and revisionism that resulted in those statues being erected many years after the matter was settled. The Sore Losers' Statues.
Remove Biden from the Texas, Florida, and Georgia ballots because he has disqualified himself by egregiously violating US law via his immigration practices. I know, he hasn't even been charged with that, and there is no US or state law that allows such a thing, but it seems that the rules have changed so go for it.
The amendment also explicitly calls out aiding and abetting the enemy.
Seems like the constant money being poured into the terrorist regime in Iran that is currently using that money to attack our ships in the Middle East would be a no brainer to get him disqualified in any red state. You could even throw in leaving billions of dollars in weapons for them to use on us in Afghanistan.
Thank you for writing this. Trump is hardly my first choice for president, but I don't agree with your assessment that he should have been impeached. This overreach by the Colorado Supreme Court is anti-American and does, indeed, tell people that Trump is right about elites in government. What more can one say? QED. He is right.
I'm curious if Trump is wondering if the three conservative elites he placed on the Supreme Court will abide with the constitutional arguments advanced by the Colorado Court, since, after all, they are originalists. He might be worried. Do you think he's on his Rolodex trying to find the number to make the call?
Let’s see what Clarence thinks about it - since his wife was so involved in attempting to get certain states’ electoral results reversed. Maybe he’ll say it was all just nothing. Just the normal democratic process..
Lee, Democrats have declared 3/3 Republican presidential victories of this century illegitimate, tried to overturn the results, and most recently launch a "Resistance" that consisted of lies, conspiracy theories, hatemongering, street violence, and promises to "burn the whole system to the ground" if Trump won.
I remember both Gore and Clinton angry, grimacing and hating every second of losing, but they both conceded. The word concede I don't think Trump can spell.
When Biden wins again and buses another 15 million occupying settlers all over the country, we should change it from ‘E Pluribus Unum’ to ‘E Tourbus Unum’
(NOTE: Democrats are evil communists who hate America)
How unsurprising that the four Colorado State Supreme Court justices that voted to block Trump from the ballot are Ivy League graduates. The Ivies appear to have morphed from world class institutions to progressive DEI clubs that constitute the farm teams for career government officials.
I guess we should expect such moves from institutional alumni that no longer consider plagiarism to be plagiarism, but rather something that needs some corrections here and there... I guess it all depends on "context", right?
The Colorado Supreme Court has upheld the state’s medical marijuana legalization in violation for federal law. Suggest they be indicted for criminal conspiracy to engage in drug trafficking as soon as Trump gets elected. Lawfare works both ways.
State and federal governments are sovereign, so We the People are subject to two entirely legal and sometimes different sets of laws. Weed laws are among them. Colorado Supremes did nothing wrong legalizing marijuana; many states have, and it's not drug trafficking.
Respectfully disagree. See the the supremacy clause of the constitution and the issue of federal preemption generally. Since cannabis trafficking is illegal under federal law, the states may not enact a contrary law.
Agreeing to facilitate the trafficking of cannabis in CO (as by writing a legal opinion) and working in concert with others(plaintiffs, retailers, etc.), and with one of the parties taking an overt action to violate that federal law is engaging in a criminal conspiracy. It’s worth a shot. Lock them up in a federal penitentiary with their pretty black robes. Lol. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371
Today I read RFK Jr.'s opinion, which I think is spot-in: "When a court in another country disqualifies an opposition candidate from running, we say, ‘That’s not a real democracy.’ Now it’s happening here."
Yes, and the DNC is trying to keep RFK Jr himself off the ballots. Biden Admin. is refusing even to give him the courtesy of a Secret Service detail, a standard thing for high profile candidates.
Maybe Trump should have shot someone on Fifth Ave like he bragged he could do, then everyone (I hope) could then agree that he could mercifully be put away somewhere as instructed by a court of law. So we can all relax and get on with our lives. But because no one can agree on what an insurrection looks like, or what trying to change election results with fake electors really means, we will interpret a court decision as a threat. Some will say they're following the law, others will say it's a conspiracy. That is who we are now.
I think he deserves credit for clearly and publicly laying it bare for everyone to see. That he voted to impeach , and then lost his reelection gives him credibility. I don’t like Trump but this is Un American and leading this once great country further into dangerous waters at a time when the world is on fire.
Vivek Ramaswamy also took the immediate right stance of refusing to be on the ballot if Trump is not on it and calling for the other candidate to do the same. Anyone hear from any of them today?
Only Congress in the swamp of DC can use petty partisan politics to make a mockery of the inequitable application of justice, not those rubes on the Supreme Court all the way in Colorado!
The insurrection began in Jan 2017. Any executive branch employee declaring themselves a member of the #Resistance was repudiating the voice of the American people and should have been summarily fired.
"They will do anything, it appears, to spare the country a second Trump term. Anything, that is, but endure the discomfort of replacing their aging and increasingly unelectable incumbent with a candidate who could defeat Donald Trump without judicial intervention."
They drove out RFK Jr. Now, no democrat debate at all. Yet they are always preening and virtue signaling about themselves saving democracy. These people disgust me at this point.
And yet, yer boy, is a corrupt and senile incompetent who will do anything to hold onto power. Fire thousands by fiat who refuse to be injected with a defective, liability free product. Import millions illegally with no plan to house them or vet their history. War pig. Really? Anyone who defends Joe Biden at this point is truly intelligence compromised. The Democrats could easily have replaced him in the upcoming election but they can’t find anyone corrupt enough.
Weirdly, this court case isn't about Biden, but do continue on with your pathetic whattabouting. It demonstrates how much in denial y'all are better than I could.
By Capitol police alternately ushering protesters into the building, while other cops provoked the crowd with pepper spray and rubber bullets. Antifa thugs wearing MAGA caps broke windows and tried to lure people in. There were also unknown numbers of FBI agents or shills (FBI refused to divulge how many, in testimony to Congress) apparently instigating violence.
This information is corroborated by recently released video footage.
It was a mostly peaceful protest, for those of us who remember the 99% of Trump's protestors that didn't enter the Capitol or do anything illegal or violent.
The BLM riots killed two dozen people and destroyed billions in property, while Democrat representatives downplayed the violent extremism in the name of a socialist revolutionary movement.
Democrats spent three years spreading a conspiracy theory they wrote themselves in national airwaves, while openly saying they were a resistance against the government.
Everything Democrats accuse of Trump is what they're doing.
This is bigger than Trump. I'm not a Trump supporter, nor do I support rioting anywhere by anybody. The "progressives" are applying double standards and trashing 200 years of laws, norms and judicial precedents to gain short-term political advantage. What we are "progressing" toward is authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
We're spiraling down towards banana republic status with each passing day. As a kid, I traveled often to Brazil where my family is from. I have witnessed throughout my life the steady, implacable reduction in the gap between the US and Brazil in all the wrong ways. Whether in the realm of law, economics, politics, quality of life metrics, education, or health; It's all going downhill. Forget technology. What really matters for a cohesive society is not whether we can "connect" online with some new gizmo made in a Chinese sweatshop. What matters is for there to be shared tradition, values, heritage, language, borders, beliefs. There is a soft oppression that is becoming harder and less forgiving, pushed on us by an elitist class that truly believes that quote from Klaus Schwab that we will "own nothing and be happy". Add to that "You will believe in nothing and be happy", "You will sell your soul for a meal and thank your oppressors for the scraps".
When the law becomes whatever one interprets it to be, expect gulags in short order.
That's my point. First bend the law to be interpreted in a way that keeps your political opponents off the ballot. Then, use the same laws to imprison them. Nothing to see here folks. We followed the law. Putin also followed the law I'm sure with Navalny. The way karma works, the day will come when the shoe is on the other foot. Expect the media and other social justice warriors to cry foul and claim abuse by a rogue judiciary.
"I was one of ten House Republicans who voted to impeach him following January 6. I stand by that vote, despite the fact that it cost me reelection in Michigan after Democrats boosted my Trump-endorsed primary challenger. (Really.)"
As a former Democrat, that they spent $60 million to boost MAGA candidates after claiming they were extremists and a threat to democracy was corruption at a level I could not fathom. I was no longer a Democrat then but that would have been enough to turn me away.
We need more people like you to speak the truth, regardless of party.
In our rush to fight COVID, we did more harm than good. Here we do the same—rushing to stop a threat to our democratic principles by simply destroying them ourselves before anyone else gets the chance... the stupidity is astonishing.
I am no Trump fan but this ruling was an abomination. I find the whole Insurrection conversation silly. Where were the guns? Were all of those selfies a threat to democracy?:It was a protest that turned into a riot. Anyone who calls it an Insurrection is a left wing nut job.
My city's courthouse was destroyed in a riot in the 1880s that was FAR worse than what happened in Washington (which was bad -- I'm not saying it wasn't). This constant shrill insistent that it was an "insurrection" is both bizarre and alarming. Bizarre because it obviously was not one, and alarming because either people saying so are lying or are suffering from long-term hysteria that makes them unable to reason. Considering that they include many in the upper echelons of government, both possibilities are alarming, but I'm pretty sure it's the former.
And I am convinced that part of what fueled the January 6 protesters was the failure to react at all to the burning, looting, and violence of the summer of 2020 riots including the partial destruction of the federal courthouse in Portland. I suppose people think it is worse because it is Congress and Nancy Pelosi's office but I disagree.
Absolutely right. IF America ever gains back its sanity (in whole or in part) The Floyd Riots will be seen for what they really were: part of an organized, well funded campaign to destroy the social functioning of America (and other Western nations).
In effect, the first sortie of a soft revolution, which included the Covid lockdowns, the ~9 months of rioting, changes to our voting laws, government-media conspiracies to disseminate propaganda (and prevent the spread of non-propaganda), widespread abdication of duty from public prosecutors, the hamstringing of local police (and the politicization of federal police), etc. Ongoing efforts continue, including mass illegal immigration, Pro-Palestinian protests/riots, continuing crime-enabling policies, expanding the vice economy (drugs, porn, gambling), cementing viewpoint censorship, etc. It’s been quite overwhelming...and yet most people I know haven’t noticed anything “different”...SMH.
...and irony of all irony.....the George Floyd trial will be overturned. Lots of lies and irregularities. See Liz Collin documentary "The Fall of Minneapolis". She scours PUBLIC RECORDS and Police video at the scene....to show you what was not presented at the trial. This scam trial was the beginning of all this.
Have we ever seen such a manipulative group as this iteration of Democrats. And this author does their bidding by voting to impeach Trump.
Go away Mr. Meijer....same name as the wealthy grocery store chain in Michigan. Rich boy going where he shouldn't....again.
Peter Meijer is principled and rational. He stands against the Jan 6 violence and stands against the Colorado supreme courts judicial activism. Rather than attack his arguments you go after who he is, “rich boy…” very weak.
Yes we have seen such a manipulative group as this iteration of Democrats: and they are very active on the Free Press, right here in the comments.
Yes, open discourse is the mission of The Free Press and I welcome anyone with a point of view and a civil tongue.
Why would you want the murder of George Flod which we all saw on tape overturned?
Absolutely right?
I thought it happened because the election was stolen.
From a hyperbolic point of view, there were a number of illegal moves made in some states regarding mail-in voting, contrary to state constitutions. So in that respect, one could reasonably say the election was rigged, and thus “stolen”. Kind of like the Attorneys General who decided ahead of time that Mr. Trump is guilty.
Rip away, Comprof 2.0. I’m sure some reasonable people will agree with me.
Right....very reasonable.
Now what were these "illegal moves made in some states?"
I know there have been several GOP led/financed investigations. How many illegal votes, etc. have been discovered?
Did they find out how Dominion etc. managed to steal the election with the help if Venezuela?
Why has this evidence not been made public?
Who are the Attorneys General who have convicted Trump?
Reasonable people do.
absolutely perfect summation of the entire situation. You think it's crazy until you realize - this was the plan. there was always a plan.
No, that's just your brain trying to make sense of nonsense.
God's plan, Shirl. You are going against God's will.
Greg Glassman, founder and CEO of Crossfit, got in trouble for tweeting “Floyd-19”. I thought it was great. He did a lot of unacceptable things, but that certainly was not one of them. He was more or less literally on the money.
Anyone who can’t see that now isnt trying.
The George Flloyd protests were overwhelmingly peaceful. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2021/0708/BLM-and-Floyd-protests-were-largely-peaceful-data-confirms (Google for more supporting articles from a variety of sources). And as I mentioned to Lynne above, the super small minority of protesters or opportunists that became violent, looted, destroyed property should have been arrested and prosecuted, and my very liberal Democratic family would agree.
Apparently we have very, very different definitions of the words “overwhelmingly peaceful”! The Women’s March in 2017 was “overwhelmingly peaceful”, with ~5mln American participants, and nary an incident. No arson, no looting or violence (I’ll bet there was some littering — mostly unintentional, but that’s a lot of people).
If you’re relying on “lies, damned lies, and statistics” for your narrative about the Floyd riots (only a small percentage of people who were present commited criminal acts), then you would have to used the same argument for J6, where it was also true that only a small minority present committed violations.
And it would be truly impossible to imply that the miscreants from both riots were treated equally under law. Floyd rioters were not hunted down ex post facto using their (ample) social media posts, security cameras, etc. Rather, only a very few were arrested at all, and of those, nearly all were immediately released, none were held in solitary confinement far from their families…
Harvey Weinstein was only one person.
But they were not arrested and prosecuted, and THATS the problem.
Correct. Or nominally prosecuted at best.
Of the 2000 BLM protests, 200 of them turned into violent riots. A record $2B in damages was done, 25 people were killed and 2000 Police Officers were injured. To say that the BLM protests were overwhelmingly peaceful is like saying most of the people in the Twin Towers made it out. There is no comparison of the scale of BLM riots to Jan 6. Jan 6 was ugly but it was not an insurrection and it was nowhere near as bad as BLM riots.
Except when they looted hundreds of businesses, burned down police precincts, and caused billions of dollars worth of damage in every major city in the country. You’re a deeply unserious person.
It was one of the worst outpourings of rioting in American history. Dozens were slaughtered directly and billions were lost in property damage (to mostly minority property owners, of course.)
The most infuriating part was how any time a Republican tried to get the attention of Dems on the issue so that maybe our minority communities could be protected from these riots they would plug their ears. The impression I got was that Democrats had come to believe the BLM/Antifa riots represented some sort of necessary and important reckoning on America’s history of Racism. Looking at it through this lens caused them to perceive Republicans as opposing this reckoning, inevitably because we’re all white supremacists or something, and in fact the real reason Republicans bring up the riots so much is because they want to invalidate and suppress the free expression of an oppressed peoples.
Obviously this is nonsense. Republicans oppose racism. The George Floyd riots were riots and nothing more. The George Floyd protests were peaceful (protests are not riots, riots are not protests). And most importantly, the George Floyd protests had nothing to do with protecting Black Lives and were only about pushing the preferred policies of the progressive left (overwhelmingly composed of rich white people.) If the left actually cared about black lives they would have noticed the murder rate for blacks has increased since police departments were defunded massively across our country.
Lol. Look right past the actual conspiracy, to the "REAL" conspiracy!!!!! So pathetic.
You conspiracy theorists had very little credibility before, but your failure to recognize an actual blatant conspiracy when it was shoved in your face just makes you a laughing stock. Lol.
Whereas the Republicans are so unorganized, so underfunded, so poverty stricken, so oppressed. Poor widdle Republicans. Poor widdle Trump.
As I said to my wife at the time, "they saw that rioting was de facto legalized over the summer (of 2020), so can you blame them?"
CHAZ and CHOP were more of an insurrection than the few hours of emoting on J6.
The real coup was by the FBI and its master, the DoJ and those "51 'former' 'intelligence' agents".
Whattaboutawhattabouta what now? Floyd riots?
Face it, your hero tried to derail the peaceful transfer of power that our democracy depends on. For that, he rightfully should never hold office again. End of story.
Yeah.
1. It wassn't.
2. They don't think that deeply.
It wasn't? How many rioters were charged? Did they pay damages for all the destruction they caused?
Some were charged - but virtually all charges were dropped by Democrat DAs.
Yes, it wasn't.
Actually, over 10,000 were arrested.
Well, considering that only 3.7% of protests had any property damage, not sure what "all the destruction" is.
Do others pay damages for all the destruction they cause? No, they do not. So why are you making a demand this time ;)
That is what insurance is for.
I said that exact same thing to my spouse at the time.
I’m not in favor of breaking into locked offices and taking things from them, however
I have yet to see the financial costs of repairs to the Capitol building. As far as I could tell from the news photos on J6, a lot of windows were broken and locks breached. I saw photos of the same broken piece of furniture from different angles. I’m interested to know the cost of actual physical damage vs the cost of replacing entire buildings razed by fire and wanton destruction in various cities in 2020 and beyond.
According to what I've read, damage to the Capitol building came to just under $1.5 million. Damage to 20 states during the riots of May-June 2020: between $1 billion and $2 billion.
Lol, many coups have minimal bloodshed and property destruction. You are desperately and pathetically whattabouting.
Your hero is an un-American insurrectionist who should never hold office again.
Your interpretation of my comment is incorrect. Try a second reading. It’s amazing how much space Mr. Trump must occupy in your mind that you quickly jump to such a conclusion about my query.
Have a nice day!
Have some more Kool-ade Hateful-rah and while you’re at it get your
TDS checked.
I agree. Silence was violence but protests were "fiery but mostly peaceful." Rioting was the "language of the oppressed". This was how we were taught to communicate in 2020. what's good for the goose used to be good for the gander. Then we realized DEI is just a euphemism for hypocrisy and contradiction, and the Left got it's "gotcha" moment. Everything went down from there.
Indeed, I believe you have gotten to the heart of the dissatisfaction of a significant portion of those on the right. And, I also believe that there is a nagging unease among those on the left that those on the right might actually be right in these regards.
It certainly is worthy to note, again, that no prosecutor has yet to attempt to indict ANY individual for insurrection.
It is also significant that in the three-plus years that the communications of the then Speaker of the House, the one who carried the policing authority to protect the security of the Washington DC's Capital Building and the safety of the members of
federal Congress, have yet to be released for independent, non-partisan review.
We are offered no way as a voting public to make up our minds, a very undemocratic way of approaching matters of governance.
Yes much is hidden.
How could the Intelligence agencies have allowed any part of Jan 6 to happen, unless absolutely incompetent, or complicit?
My question as well. Plus wasn't Pelosi asked to activate protections but failed to do so? I think it was a photo op.
Can we get real? The "Capitol Police Force" has more than 2,000 members to protect one building. Why didn't they lock all the Capitol doors at 5 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021? Why did the Capitol Police Force provide guided tours to unarmed "insurrectionists" through an empty building?
Traditionally, federal protests take place on the Washington Mall -- why not this one? I don't mind that angry losers will push back -- think HRC's anger at losing to Trump in 2016 or Al Gore's lawyers trying to cancel American military members' votes filed from overseas in Florida to cancel the 2000 presidential election result. This stuff stinks.
I always vote, but I can't stand either party. Am I wrong to wish the Democrats and Republicans gave us better alternatives?
You are not wrong. But I start to ask myself why would an honest, decent, hard-working person run? I agree with your statements regarding events surrounding the protection of the capitol.that day.
"Traditionally, federal protests take place on the Washington Mall -- why not this one?"
Because Trump held his "Stop The Steal" rally at the Ellipse, and then literally directed his riled up mob down the street to the Capitol.
"Because Donald Trump told us to do this" is not a good reason to keep the doors open.
There was a separate scheduled protest at the capitol building that began while Trump was speaking. Six permits were given for J6:
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21059849/leopold-capitol-police-protest-permits-january-6-common-law-release.pdf Thousands were there—many did not attend Trump’s speech.
So what? Can we not agree that allowing demonstrators to breach the Capitol, which had closed for business by that hour, was just a tad unwise?
https://www.justice.gov/usao-or/pr/18-arrested-facing-federal-charges-after-weeknight-protests-federal-courthouse-portland
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-man-federal-prison-protest/283-53839089-8beb-4570-8549-0e3eb43550c6
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/man-sentenced-to-time-served-for-attempted-arson-at-u-s-courthouse-in-portland/
Google, to find more. Probably would have caught and prosecuted more if they had taken selfies and posted them on Facebook... ditto for all opportunists that use peaceful protests, Super Bowl victories, etc. to riot and loot. Coming from a very liberal family I know they too would have supported more arrests and prosecutions for those that destroyed property, looted, etc. No excuse for that. Ever.
I was not interested in revisting this but since you insist. As to the first article 18 people were arrested for incidents on 2 days (Two months after the riots started) . 5 for actions on 7/2120 including 1 for assault on a federal officer; creating a disturbance; trespassing; and 2 for failing to comply with a lawful order; 6 for actions on 7/22 for failure to comply with a lawful order; and 7 for actions on 7/22, 1 for wilfully damaging public property, 3 for failure to comply; and 3 for assaulting federal officials. The second article relates to a man sentenced to 15 months followed by 3 years supervision for an act committed at the Multnomah County Justice Center. The last article relates to a man named Ybarra who is one of the arrested identified in the first article. He had arrived by bus from Seattle to turn himself in on an existing warrant for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. But the poor lad could not get in because of the peaceful protests, so he'll why not?he joined the party. He was caught on camera throwing a lit device at the courthouse doors. The device bounced off so he tried again. Then again. He entered a plea for time served after being in custody for 1 year and 7 months. So he was likely sentenced on both cases, or the other one was dismissed as part of the plea bargain. His lawyer says he was drunk at the time and suffers from schizophrenia. But interestingly this last article says "of 96 federal-protest related prosecutions, 70 have been dismissed. Yarra is among about 8 people who pleaded guilty and have been sentenced." The article also says there were "100 consecutive days of unrest". So fewer than one arrest per day of unrest. Most cases dismissed. So you have, inadvertently perhaps, made my case for me regarding disparate treatment. 100 days versus a handful of hours. Fires and extensive property damage versus broken windows and other property damage. The vast majority of the charges dismissed versus long term confinement. A meager number prosecuted versus people hunted for years with all the tools at the disposal of federal law enforcement.
Dozens of police officers were injured, some seriously. One young white man shot and killed another in cold blood because the victim was identified as conservative. The rioters tore down a statue of an elk that had graced an intersection for 120 years, and was beloved by me and many other Portlanders. The base of the statue was damaged beyond repair. A young activist told me they did this because "the artist had something to do with slavery," or so she was told. The art museum had to remove all of their outdoor statuary and store it inside because the rioters were destroying or threatening to destroy it all. Downtown businesses had their windows broken and stores looted so many times that the smaller businesses had to shut down permanently. When Portlanders were surveyed by a local paper, about 30% of them supported the riots, another third "didn't know or care" about them, and a final third was opposed.
It is and was tragic. I can't imagine living through it. I am near Austin and it was bad there but not like Portland.
It's horrible, but Portland could be burned to the ground and our democracy would remain strong. But the peaceful transfer of power is the weakest point in our democracy, and the Orange Insurrectionist tried to exploit it. He failed, and now people are making excuses for him.
Thank you for taking the time to read all of that and provide us with a summation. We appreciate it! Carry on and stay strong!
Thank you for the kind words and taking the time to read it.. Truth matters.
My family's business sustained $750 K in damages in the Portland riot and then were dropped by their insurance company. They struggled to find even terrible coverage. Despite turning in hours of video surveillance, it was only after my husband was interviewed several times on the news and made a point blank appeal to the mayor in a public meeting that police started to investigate. Eventually one person was arrested and had to pay restitution. They received a check for $5.00.
And since we are linking:
https://www.onenineelms.co.uk/2022/09/27/how-many-federal-buildings-were-damaged-during-blm-protests/
https://www.newsweek.com/businesses-year-after-floyd-1596610
https://minnesotareformer.com/2020/07/15/no-arrests-in-most-destructive-arson-following-death-of-george-floyd/
My family's business sustained $750 K in damages in the Portland riot and then were dropped by their insurance company. They struggled to find even terrible coverage. Despite turning in hours of video surveillance, it was only after my husband was interviewed several times on the news and made a point blank appeal to the mayor in a public meeting that police started to investigate. Eventually one person was arrested and had to pay restitution. They received a check for $5.00.
I thought it was because the election was stolen.
You're probably right. I believe, as a fundamental principle, that emotion drives out reason. All the events you refer to couldn't help but create a groundswell of emotion.
Rioting in the capitol, beating capitol police, threatening legislators with violence (including the VP) is just a perfectly understandable reaction to those other people rioting? So, in your world, two wrongs definitely make a right. Bully for you.
No Nona. Watching an entire summer of "mostly peaceful protests" where people were killed, buildings were burned, looting was rampant, city travel was disrupted, entire sections of major metropolitan areas were "occupied" for extended periods of time, a police precinct building was destroyed and blocks of the adjacent area vandalized beyond repair while law enforcement was ordered to stand down left the impression that such conduct was an acceptable way to air your grievances. Instead we learned that there is a dual standard in existence. Which in a way established what the actual peaceful protesters were saying so that good has come out of it because people who are fed up with unequal treatment appear to be united. And we see clearly which party employs disparate treatment - favorable for some (can you say Hunter Biden?) and harsh for others, up to and including full blown weaponization of law enforcement for political.purposes (can you say Putin's Russia?) And your assessment of events surrounding January 6 is inaccurate. Bully is an interesting chouce of words. Project much? At least I live in the real world not some fantasy dictated by Big Brother.
Try this:
https://www.onenineelms.co.uk/2022/09/27/how-many-federal-buildings-were-damaged-during-blm-protests/
It's predominantly DEMOCRATS and left wing zealots who insist it was an insurrection. AND LOOK AT THE J6 DEFENDANTS THAT ARE STILL IN PRISON ‼️ how about the violation of their rights. It's disgusting.
True. But the people that filed the lawsuit to ban Trump were all republicans. Possible backed by one of Trump's rivals behind the scenes?
Maybe. Lots of RINOS who don't like him.
Unquestionably, DeSantis and Haley like the ruling. It won't have any consequence because CO is a fairly reliable blue state.
You're looking at the wrong election. Remember the primaries/caucuses are held in all 50 states including blue ones. The blue states have lots of GOP delegates - California has the most in the country. Colorado has 37 of the 1,235 needed to win. If Trump got banned from enough blue state primary ballots, he'd go into the Convention without a majority of delegates.
https://ballotpedia.org/Republican_delegate_rules,_2024#Overview_of_pledged_and_unpledged_Republican_delegates_by_state
Yes anything to help their candidacy. Politics is so dirty.
Why are they still in prison?
good question, while perps doing far worse crimes across the nation are let out on OR or small bails by the dozens nation wide.
Hmm....so they are not eligible for bail?
Please share information about these "small bails" that exist for crimes worse than what happened on Jan. 6th.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/zero-dollar-bail-study-felony-violent-crime-arrests/
This one is more recent but characteristic of the problem that is on-going: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rhC-qwhVkc
Criminals go to prison. Surprised?
No. Most criminals do not go to prison.
If they are truly criminals. Lots of innocent people have been sent to prison. Some have even been executed. Surprised?
Who has been executed?
Look it up. I'm not your researcher.
Nope, it was an insurrection alright, but only just barely and the fact that it was a failure does not take away from the fact that Trump tried to overturn an election in a dozen different ways. But the author is correct: firstly Trump must be convicted in a *federal* court, and secondly that even then, it would be much better to let the electorate make the decision: senile, corrupt tool of the woke, or narcissistic criminal -- your choice America.
I understand that the riots at the Portland courthouse went on for between 50 to 90 days. January 6 lasted two to three hours max! Riot yes, insurrection, hardly.
CHAZ, in Seattle, was a *literal* rebellion/insurrection, but no one seemed to have been charged on those grounds.
Nobody rose to the level of attempting to overturn the government. Disgusting riots of course, but not insurrection.
Jan6 was not an insurrection. The ONLY thing the participants wanted was for the certification of the election to be delayed until investigations into voting problems could occur.
Personally, as an independent, I found it suspicious that Democrats did NOT want investigations to occur. If it were me, I would WANT to prove that the election was valid. Instead, Democrat-pressured judges blocked court cases requiring investigations on the grounds of "standing," rather than on their actual merits. It was not a good look for the Democrats.
If you think that possession of the Capitol building (and the riot did not extend to actually declaring possession) is "overturning the government," I think you need to learn a lot more about how our government is structured.
I believe dismantling the police dept..a government job which upholds the laws made by the government..is an attempt to overturn our established government..as the anarchist want more then anything.
What is CHAZ?
memories are so pathetically short - What is CHAZ - really ? And you claim to have a broad perspective on the times?
Here you go, maybe you memory holed it. It was also called CHOP. People died in this 2 block no-police allowed zone. Protesters holding this area demanded Seattle police budget be cut in half.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest
You don't remember the State of Chaz in Seattle?
Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
Isnt it Chers son?
I live in Portland. It was longer than that and the city is still not back to normal. Government buildings STILL have plywood over the windows to prevent vandalism. I just saw an article last week where city officials are finally contemplating taking the plywood down to try and draw people back into Portland.
It was about 4 months, but the intimidation by antifa hasn't stopped and the art museum hasn't restored their sculptures to their outdoor locations. There were additional incidents involving antifa violence. In 2020-2021 there was a long-lasting incident involving a house inhabited by a black family that was portrayed by woke radicals as the scene of unjust racist persecution. Armed radicals moved into the neighborhood and posted guards in various places, causing neighbors to complain that they were under a state of armed occupation while the city did nothing. The police did try to intervene, but a crowd of activists counterattacked and the police had to back off.
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2021/02/north-portlands-red-house-and-surrounding-neighborhood-linger-in-uneasy-limbo-after-tense-standoff.html
In May of 2022 a Republican gubernatorial contender named Stan Pulliam held a rally downtown. It was a small group of men, women and children. Pulliam ran on an anti-woke platform. A bunch of antifa thugs marched down the street in black block, menaced the group and threw smoke grenades and paint at the attendees. They injured a man's hand and a woman suffered hearing loss. The rally had to break up and leave, as there was no one there to protect them.
It's easier for me to understand now how the Mafia and similar crime systems got established in environments where the legitimate government was too incompetent or corrupt to protect the public. In the case of Oregon, the main cause of the problem is the ideological extremism in the population and the people they elect.
Oh yeah I totally forgot about the red house! That was CRAZY. And yes, as to why all the madness perpetuates in Oregon.
I was in Portland last spring and asked some folks what it was really like as we only get the news which has dropped the story. They said they grew up going downtown all the time, but will not now.
The sequel to the rioters has been a hoard of addicts moving here to take advantage of the decriminalized fentanyl and heroin. They are all over the streets, on the edges of highways and the waterways, like the scenes of San Francisco. Same deal. Nobody wants to be around them or the toxic garbage dumps they leave every time they move to another campsite or are dislocated by order of the city.
Yes, most everyone avoids going downtown. City employees don’t even go into the city to work on a regular basis.
yeah didn't it go on intermittently for months? Like into October even? And from the film clips I saw the rioters had better riot gear than the police!
It went on for well over 100 days. It was insane.
Really? There was 50-90 day riot?
No lunch breaks or anything?
Yep - they slept/passed out during the day and came back every night for months. Lunch was provided by donors. I live close to downtown and I could hear the nightly happenings and the constant hum of the news helicopters.
Right....there was a three month riot....that happened every night. Sure, Rachel ;)
The correct answer is "Nope."
ooh you got em there
I did. There was no 50-90 day riot in America anywhere.
Sure. There was no attack on the Capitol, with chants to hang the Vice President. The Jan 6 people had zero chance of winning of course but I think the intention was there to overturn the election. That's insurrection.
I will say this. My immediate thought as the smoke bombs began going off was that this was going to be a Reichstag moment. Sure enough!
The difference is that the riots ... and they were illegal and should have been shut down asap ... did not threaten our democracy. They were populated by a bunch of trouble making lefties not the one person responsible for upholding the constitution. He MUST be held to a higher standard. There is no doubt in my mind that it was insurrection. He should be in jail or worse.
Come on now..these people are doing more damage to our country than 1 president who knew the election was rigged..and encouraged his supporters to “peacefully” go and let their voices be heard..look at the tape..the same rioters from the pussy hat marchers..Madonna wanting to firebomb the White House..to summer 2020...BLM..ANTIFA...TRANSTIFA..now the hateful ANTISEMITES..all funded by and attended by the same people..mostly America hating/self hating rich white kids!
I have to disagree. It was not an "insurrection". If it were then SOMEBODY would have been charged with that and nobody has.
It was a mob that was allowed to get out of control. It happens. In fact it happens a lot. It just happened at the Capital this time.
Nobody brought guns or tried to burn the place down or tried to hang a congress critter.
It was a very large protest mob, that in keeping with all the protest mobs of that summer, got out of control.
More could and should have been done to prevent the crowd from getting that fired up and concentrated. Somebody made a decision to let it escalate. Cuz I work in DC and I know what the city and the capital police can do to control mobs. They have been doing it for decades. This was hardly their first rodeo.
As for Trump? Well, there is a big difference between being an arrogant asshole and being an insurrectionist.
As for his attempts to get various votes recounted or any of the other stuff? Jesus, the democrats have been doing that since at least Ronald Reagan got elected. That crap happens in every election. The difference here is that Trump was more clumsy than a Clinton or a Bush or an Al Gore would be. But at its core? He did pretty much what every loser has done going back to at least the Clinton's.
And, you have to give Trump this, there were a LOT of funky changes and funky things that were done around that election that may have been legal but were questionable. I do not blame him for asking questions and distrusting the system. Heck, what happened in this court case kinda makes you question if maybe he was not right. Apparently there is no rule or norm or standard that the democrats, particularly elite democrats will not go to. Heck, they have said as much.
Solid case there Lemon. I know, one can exaggerate. I'd call it an insurrection but *just barely*. The label doesn't really matter, except as to the current Article 14 stuff -- and there, I think SCOTUS will throw it out. The voters must have their choice.
> the democrats have been doing that since at least Ronald Reagan got elected
No doubt. There are no good guys here. Solid post.
I agree with you Ray, that technically by the definition of insurrection and because they attempted to at least interrupt government proceedings, that it technically *just barely* qualifies as an insurrection. However, if that’s the case, then the pro-Palestine disruption that happened recently also needed to be prosecuted as an insurrection because they also interrupted government proceedings. For Trump though, he can’t be charged with insurrection, but he could (I think) be charged with sedition. The problem with the CO court case is they weren’t operating under sedition for the 14th amendment but insurrection. Which Trump did not do. Trump shouldn’t be charged with insurrection but I think there’s a fair argument for being charged with sedition.
> pro-Palestine disruption that happened recently also needed to be prosecuted as an insurrection because they also interrupted government proceedings
But didn't smash their way into the Capitol to do it. It's always shades of grey isn't it?
Interesting post! Yeah, maybe sedition is closer. Whatever attempting to subvert an election is, that's what he did. First time in your history. Mind ... even that's not black and white -- both parties have cheated before to one degree or another. GOP style is to try to make voting harder, Rat style is to harvest ballots and that kind of thing.
If Trump wins in '24, do you think there will be an election in '28 -- I mean something better than a Venezuelan election? I doubt the GOP would ever let the Rats win again.
Riiiiiight. And only people convicted of murder ever tried to kill someone.
Effing brilliant!
I've never been to or witnessed an insurrection, but I have to believe people would comed armed with guns, pitchforks, and torches, not a bunch of senior citizens dressed in Halloween costumes and mothers pushing baby strollers.
You've been watching too much MSNBC, pal.
Lol. Yes....senior citizens and mothers pushing baby strollers....
That's who was there.
yep and the BLM riots were mostly peaceful. Kumbaya!
If you have 9,000 apples
But 570 of them are rotten
Do you have "mostly good" apples, Shirley?
I'm sorry 234, but strollers, really? You can't believe that... really? It's not the civil war, but it was certainly more than a straightforward protest. Gimme a break...
I'll gladly give you a break once you recognize that Trump told people to peacefully march. And yes, there were Moms pushing baby strollers.
In addition, Nancy Pelosi was in charge of security. Why wasn't the National Guard on notice?
And who instructed the Capital Police to politely escort the protestors around the Capital Building?
And not one 'insurrectionist' was armed? How do you overthrow a government without arms?
This whole J^ fiasco is nothing more than a hit job on Trump.
If you're going to hold him to this standard, you sure as hell better hold Chuck Schumer threatening SC Justices, and Maxine Waters to the same.
Dude, all that I said was that it was more than baby strollers... sorry but I can see that with my eyes so idk what to tell you???
Oh but to answer your question, and this is just a hypothetical, but maybe she didn't call in the national guard because at no point in modern US history has a president ever stood in front of the capital and tried to incite a crowd to stop the certification of an election.
The denial is strong in this one.
I have to admit that those shots of the 'rioters' in the building, walking around quietly looking at the statues -- one can make it sound worse than it was. OTOH there were the folks looking for Pence and Pelozi with the intention to murder them, so ... And I hafta admit that if they'd got Pelozi ...
I hope the guy with the horns gets out early for good behavior. Really.
And you know what their intent was......how?
All the screaming: 'Hang Mike Pence' 'Trump won!' 'Stop the steal!' and so on. Mobs of that sort are pretty honest as to their intentions.
Actually he is out.
Maybe I shouldn't be happy but I am. I don't think he meant anyone any harm and I doubt he did any damage. Let it go.
It was not an insurrection and the election was rife with fraud.
Yet MSM continues to use the word " insurrection ", just as they use the word " migrants."
They labeled it an insurrection immediately for one reason -- to invoke the 14th amendment.
yes and for a time Jan 6 was a Bloody or fatal insurrection while they glossed over Portland Ore, CHAZ Seattle, the Floy Riot, etc. Biased hyperbole much?
Yes always looking to change the narrative.
Such as?
I won't waste my time responding to you Comprof2.0
He is a complete A-hole
Will you respond to me? I have the have question?
"I DIDN'T DO IT.......BUT IF I DID, IT WAS JUSTIFIED!!!"
Great job channeling Trump there.
Actually, that seems to be the Democrats' mantra at the moment: "It didn't happen. But if it did, it was justified." Kind of like the response to Oct7.
Whattabouta what now? Israel?
You're damn right. I'll take him any day over the disaster we have now.
Trump sits around watching himself on TV and checking his mentions. It's the crazoids he hires only for their loyalty to him, to perform important functions of the government, that I'm afraid of.
On top of that, CO is a blue state. It didn't go for Trump in '16 or '20. And no way it will go for him in '24. Why the CO SC felt it needed to weigh in on something of so little consequence to CO voters is beyond me. This article does shine a nice light on an important difference between the justices.
it kills me. I've lived in CO my whole life and I've been practicing law here for almost 20 years. Even after the cake shop abomination that keeps coming back to haunt the poor guy, I thought there was still hope for my beautiful state. Not so much anymore.
When I was a child, we visited Colorado all the time, because my aunt lived in Canon City. I wanted to live in Colorado when I grew up. And yet something inside always whispered, "No, not a good idea."
Now I know why.
I spent my whole career living there. This wasn't the case even 10 years ago. It was a solid red state until liberals from California came to ruin it. No one ever used their car horn. People smiled at you as you passed them by. Now? Arghh.
The big problem with the CO/SC ruling is other states will surely follow. This has to go to out federal SC asap. Will they overturn it????
All younger grads from the ivies on down have been indoctrinated to believe in the moral worth of activism. If you’re not pushing the woke agenda, you’re not doing it right and therefore not worthy of being a human being. James Comey is an older version of this push to activate. It’s creating narcissists and it will get much, much worse.
Activism, Inc.™️. These days I feel like we’re governed by “screamocracy”; the loudest, most fanatical group gets to control everything…and for some reason, we’re letting them.
Yep, it's definitely beyond you.
You're thinking about the wrong election. Remember the primaries/caucuses are held in all 50 states including blue ones. The blue states have lots of GOP delegates - California has the most in the country. Colorado has 37 of the 1,235 needed to win the GOP nomination. If Trump got banned from enough blue state primary ballots, he'd go into the Convention without a majority of delegates.
https://ballotpedia.org/Republican_delegate_rules,_2024#Overview_of_pledged_and_unpledged_Republican_delegates_by_state
Insurrection🤦🏻♂️😆
No, no, and no
I’ll take the one that doesn’t let 3m unvetted mfers a year pour across the border.
Wasn't it David Frum who said that if democrats don't control the border then fascists will?
Idk. Right now it’s being controlled by the cartels.
Anyone who calls J6 an insurrection is a useful idiot for the Dem/MSM narrative that was so obviously launched immediately. This was to draw attention away from all the election malfeasance that went on.
Calling the election into question is NOT the same as insurrection and those confusing the two are obfuscating. The fallout destroying many Americans lives in the process is disgusting. Those promoting the lie should be ashamed of themselves.
Calling the election into question is NOT the same as insurrection
Indeed not. However storming the Capitol, looking for the VP so as to hang him, and doing millions of dollars worth of vandalism in NOT the same as 'calling the election into question' either, is it? Anyone who equates the two is obfuscating. Question away! Did the Rats succeed in stealing a state? No doubt they would if they could, however so far all non-partisan investigations are unanimous that, no, they didn't.
Disenfranchised people tend to riot. Chants made in anger do not (and did not) necessarily result in action. The election was first peacefully called into question and when those in power did not respond this is the logical next result.
Millions were disenfranchised by this last election. If you ask me those who were responsible for the various forms of election manipulation got off easy. Maybe they learned a lesson, maybe not. But all the laws in the world will not protect those that try to take power illegitimately. It’s a dangerous game.
If J6 was your idea of how a democracy works then we'll just have to agree to disagree. I myself consider it to be the most shocking thing I've ever seen. Not the worst, mind, but the most shocking. But for a Trumpist I suppose it was an accurate display of how Trumpists think that one should win/retain power.
> Millions were disenfranchised by this last election.
Except that zero investigations, by Reps, Rats or responsible adults, support your claim. Trumpists repeat it like a mantra, but there is zero evidence that it is true. But I understand -- it's part of your religion and no force in the universe will change your mind. As for me, I quite open to persuasion -- no question the Rats would steal an election if they could get away with it -- but no evidence is forthcoming. I mean evidence that has been reviewed by an adult and found to be sound.
Say something often enough and loud enough and people will believe.
The reason a political class aloof to the privations of its citizens considered what happened on January 6th to be an insurrection and NOT the riots in DC that occurred during 2020 is simple. One group was their constituency and the other were the "Kulaks" of the 21st century America. A simple study of the last names of those indicted will let anyone know that 25% of them are non-White. So, no White Supremacist insurrection there. People that had lost their businesses, were bankrupt, had been fired due to refusing to take the vaccine, people that felt, right or wrong, that their country had been stolen from them went to Washington to make their grievances heard. The perspective of so many of our so-called leaders was that the dirty funny dangerous folk in the middle of the country dared attempt to touch the hem of their garments. I am beginning to despair that perhaps not ENOUGH happened on January 6th.
The 1880s? Really?
I dont think it was only J6th that the Justices reviewed. I think they saw a coordinated strategy
Questioning the legitimacy/ produce fake electors / have the VP not certify the results / thereby throwing the decision bake to the state legislatures or house of rep to decide the vote. When all those failed then J6
I still dont know and have not seen a lawyer offer an opinion on if you have to be convicted of insurrection. Anyone ??
Were your courthouse-destroyers trying to disrupt the peaceful transfer of the power of the highest office in the land, which our democracy is utterly dependent on? No?
Then it wasn't worse.
You are in denial. They had a specific plan to have Pence refuse to certify and throw it back to key States where they had fake electors ready. Pence just refused to go along with it.
If that was an insurrection, the competency of American rebels has declined astonishingly since the 1770s.
On a dark day for our country that made me smile
Americans are better rebels than that. If there'd been anything resembling a true insurrection, we'd still be fighting. What we've seen isn't a rise in insurrectionist sentiment (if anyone's an America-firster it's a MAGA supporter) but in Orwellian language use. 'Patriots' are now 'insurrectionists.'
exactly my thoughts - what an inept bumbling bunch if they seriously contemplated any sort of overthrow! It was a clown show.
Right, a buffalo shaman and someone who sat in Pelosi's chair were big threats to the most powerful military on earth
The riot at the Capitol was intended to cause chaos and delay and give cover to Pence who was supposed to refuse to certify and send it back to the States. They had fake electors lined up in the key ones.
It could have worked if Pence went along with it. He saved us from a much worse crisis.
Yeah, Trump doesn't match up well with the Minutemen for sure.
Have to agree with you there, Mark. But then again, we're bad at a lot of things now.. As the polls report, we're a nation in decline..
I have to say - bringing the faux gallows to the Jan 6 picnic was quite strange. Don't you think they should have snared poor Pence and then brought him to the gallows at a secure location somewhere? Maybe Donald could have met him there.
Poor planning and even worse execution..
“Anyone who calls it an Insurrection is a left wing nut job.”
———————————————
You have about 10-15 minutes until a team of female Democrat FBI agents in tactical gear and facial piercings arrive to kick in your door and toss flashbangs at you.
🙏🙏🙏
Only in the film version do teams of bio-females do that line of work. In real life, they form social-media hit squads.
Their most potent weapon is the one-liner. It's replaced rational argument (with which they're quite unfamiliar).
What’s your source? Stop being a transphobe. The FBI is just seeking a better life.
The best thing about how they charged Trump with like 100 different counts is that he won’t be convicted on all counts, because some are intentionally bizarre, and then The State will tell us
“Oh see it’s a fair jury and a fair trial because they didn’t convict on everything. Only on some things. These DC Democrats are moderate centrists!!”
🤡🤡🤡🤡
You must be on Trump's legal team, with that brilliant, penetrating analysis. It is right up to his standards.
It isn’t legal analysis. I’m explaining how the propaganda will work.
He won’t be convicted on all 91 counts and based on that our State Media will assert fairness and justice.
Albert, I think this needs to be assessed in a more broad context. If Trump's participation in the insurrection was limited to his (and the rioters') behavior on Jan 6th then indeed your assessment would be exactly right. Indeed seen through the exclusive lens of Jan 6th the reaction is hysterical, and the Left (especially the woke left) see most thing through extremist lenses and there's almost no sky that isn't falling for them, so their cries of "wolf" need to be taken with extreme skepticism.
That said - Trump went through a huge number of machinations to attempt to stay in office after the election. I assume you don't need me to recount them. The folks at The Bulwark have enumerated them repeatedly. Also - he quips that he'd like to be dictator for a day and yes - he's kidding - but you know the old adage about how every joke is 2% comedy; He's clearly enamored of the way Orban, Putin, Xi, and others of their ilk rule without the pesky interference of any "opposition" or the absurdly messy and unnecessary considerations of the will of the citizenry.
Subsequently, entirely beside his "policies" (which honestly I think are mostly an irrelevant distraction and the nation can certainly weather 4, or more, years of) the existential threat to our democracy in his coming back to power, lining the offices of all the people who actually care to preserve our democracy, and grasp the quintessential reason why liberal democracy - no matter how messy and inefficient - is the only system that can avoid devolving into the imprisonment and assassination of those who have views counter to the ruling party.
Given this - it's really critical not to put all your baskets in the events of Jan 6th but to rather see them as part of the (totally transparent) coup that Trump *almost succeeded in pulling off.
It's easy to look back on it and say "of course Mike Pence was never going to go along with it" but exactly how much of your children's future would you have been willing to stake on that assumption on Jan 5th?
And now that we see how craven and/or oblivious and/or self-interested the people of the GOP are; how unable they are to draw this line in the sand and just sit on Liz Cheney's shoulders and say "yeah! what she said!"... it's clear that the odds of Trump ever leaving office 4 years after he is voted in are definitely not 100% (and I'd put them under 50).
Given that lense - it's easy to see how the Colorado court did what they did because they're panicking - but no amount of panic will save us; indeed panic is one of the worst reactions in a crisis. The American people need the above explained to them such that electing Trump becomes impossible and at the same time (before he's president) all sorts of "norms" need to be codified in laws that no amount of gamesmanship or bad-faith interpretations can supersede. I'm not a lawyer so maybe this last idea is simply a false hope but it feels like that's the kind of work that congress ought to be doing now in preparation for a would-be dictator who is about to take charge of the nation.
Only someone suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome would make such an argument. And look what it gave us: A Commander In Chief who spits on our men and women stationed and under near daily attack in Syria, Iraq, and the waters off Yemen, a welcome invasion of millions across our Southern Border, including tens of thousands of military aged young men from China and the Middle East, more homeless than ever and a sycophant lying media who gaslight us every day. Well done!!
Mike, I'm not sure if you're replying to me but if so then I'd appreciate you refute something specific in my post. Accusing me of suffering from TDS is a really easy way to avoid engaging with the facts on the ground. Also - since we don't know one another - if you say stuff like "Trump actually won the election" or "Trump didn't actually attempt to stay in office after he lost the election" makes it easier for me to simply avoid further discussion given that my derangement (such as it is) is based on the ironclad understanding that Trump lost the election and attempted to stay in office in spite of that loss.
If we can agree on those two points then we're likely to be able to find a lot of common ground on the rest.
Yevgeny, You ignore facts to make your case. The evidence is becoming overwhelming that Trump did not lose the election, instead it was stolen: by the secretaries of state and one state supreme court who changed the way electors are chosen without legislative enactment, which is what the Constitution requires, by fraud in gathering ballots, by 51 former CIA and NSA officials who claimed on the eve of the election that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation, by a media that was willing to do whatever was necessary to ensure Biden was sworn in, and more if you care to look. As for your second point, you ignore the fact that on Jan 21 Biden was sworn in and Trump left Washington as every loser in US history has done. And you do not seem to know that the election is over when the Electoral Congress elects the President and not before, and after that was completed, Trump gave up .
So, all of your doom and gloom about Trump is possible only as long as you continue to wear the blinders that is Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Thanks for asking.
Mike - thanks for making my point for me (and I appreciate you doing it without the normal bombast and disdain that is commonplace on Social Media).
I will grant you that if your concerns are ever validated by voices that I trust, I will apologize a 1000 times. I have said many times that the best defense that the insurrectionists have is that they genuinely believed that the election was stolen and they were defenders of our precious and fragile democracy.
I'm a specialist in state propaganda and am as confident as I can be (without the powers of God) to be sure that Trump lost the election and that many organs of organized disinformation are committed to convincing people like yourself that you're being lied to.
You will see a lot of noise on this subject and if you're already inclined to believe it then you will almost certainly be taken in by this noise and see a lot of signal in it. That's how modern information warfare works.
I do wish you the best and urge you to remember your own views on democracy and free speech (I'm positive I know what they are) and when you see Trump coming for those rights to not allow the sunk cost fallacy of having been wrong to stop you from standing up to him when the time comes. It will be a lot harder to do once he's in the White House but perhaps that's the only way that this particular fever dream is going to break.
Oh, and if I'm wrong? Well... I can't express to you how delighted I'll be to have been so.
Yevengy, did the whole Twitter File thing pass you by? Did you not see who was suppressing free speech?
Hey Yevgeny, who do you think you are that ANYONE would give a damn about your “1,000 apologies”. The election was stolen on so many levels and this country is “1,000” times the worse for it.
Lol. "He gave up - that means he never tried!" is right up there with "It doesn't count if it didn't work!!"
Just lol. So pathetic.
Virtually all actual elected republicans, AND most of Trump's inner circle, believed that Trump did in fact lose the election. Even Wisconsin's infamously pro Trump Johnson - when caught on videotape. Debating with people like you is like debating with people that believe the world is flat, or that vaccines have zero benefit, and so forth. There is no point.
Here's some simple American math......
If you're ahead by just 1% with 98% of the votes counted, you have to lose 75% of the remaining votes to lose. Even in the most crooked county in America, Cook, no one gets 75% votes.....no way no how. (Unless the lights are turned out, the polls closed, and truckloads of ballot harvested votes show up.
^^^Sore Losers forever. Sad!
You guys always trot out “Trump Derangement Syndrome” when someone critiques your dear leader. Please use your eyes, ears, and BRAINS! The man is a con artist, a grifter, he has been one his entire career! Anyone who was in those circles in the 1980s and 90s in NYC saw that. That so many ppl admire him is just astonishing. What do you like? Is it his falsified wealth? His string of Russian mail-order model brides? His connections to dictators? His up-front desire to be a dictator? His barely veiled racism? Wake up! And stop using this fake “syndrome” it makes you look ridiculous.
Your ad hominem attack proves my point. Here is what I like about Mr. Trump.
He gets things done. He fought for and signed into law tax relief for the middle class and prison sentencing reform. He moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem. His son negotiated the Abraham Accords. He withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal, the absurd Paris Climate Deal, and the WHO, none of which serve US interests. He all but stopped the flood of immigrants at the Souther Border. His energy policies made us independent of the fossil fuel monopolists known as OPEC. He implemented regulatory reform that freed the economy. He appointed 3 conservative Supreme Court Justices. And more.
Those who cannot or will not discuss the merits of these policy choices and, instead, resort to personal insults and name calling suffer from TDS. If the shoe fits wear it.
Ha! First please learn what an ad hominem attack actually looks like. The policies you listed are the sum total of his tenure and half of them are horrible, racist, and self serving. The appointment of three Supreme Court justices is not an accomplishment. He did the bidding of the Federalist Society and appointed terrible, and in at least one instance unqualified people. The TDS claim is such a ridiculous made up thing. The guy is a grifter and he is compromised. He is running in order to avoid going to federal prison. He belongs there- he is a traitor to his oath of office. Everyone who supports him needs to check their values against the constitution.
I think you misunderstood Trump and his "dictator for a day" comment. What he proposed to do with his executive authority was to reverse Biden's EAs on oil leasing/drilling and on the completing the border wall. It goes to Biden's declaration when he was running that only dictators use executive orders to make new law. As you know, Biden went on to issue over 100 EAs in the week after his inauguration.
Jeff - I'm a comedian so I want to assure you that if this was a joke(ish) comment made by literally anyone else in the nation I'd have precisely your reaction.
I think that coming from someone who literally tried to steal the last election (which in the parlance of how this normally works in history is described as a "coup") such jokes are very much akin to Jeffrey Dahmer quipping that the next time he hires a prostitute he would only want to eat a pinky and then he'd just have sex with her as expected and then set her free.
Context is everything.
I'm in the audience and so I am the one who can judge whether or not a comedian is funny.
It's interesting that you think using the court system is equivalent to "stealing". If that is the case, didn't the Colorado court just steal their resident's ability to vote for their preferred candidate?
I assure you that I don't mean "using the court system" - Are you unfamiliar with the various tactics that were attempted that relied on various grey areas in the law and the various lies that were told to various bodies (and electors) to try and subvert the election?
Liz Cheney's book does a marvelous job of laying out some of the most egregious actions. There are many others.
Of course it's also not inconsequential that Trump continues to insist that he won the election long after all the court actions have ruled decisively against him. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the way propaganda works but having someone with his platform fill the ether with this lie (the "BIG LIE" as it's known) is precisely all the evidence one should need to understand just how dangerous a demagogue this man is.
I honestly am at a loss as to why anyone defends him. Yes - he sticks it to the woke but so do many other people in the modern GOP... and none of them have tried to undermine our democracy... why can't we just nominate one of them? I'd even agree to vote for that person even though I'm confident I disagree with much of their platform and politics.
Why is everyone insisting on throwing their eggs in this particular dictatorial basket?
My guess is that many Americans simply don't understand the actual value of democracy and are exhausted from the party politics and nothing getting done and see a lot of interesting things happening in China that look like competence and have concluded that a strong-man is what the nation needs for the time being to set things straight.
But this is a mirage. The problem with every other form of government is that it resolves to some authority that can't be challenged and that simply has its way. Sometimes that way lines up with what's best for the people... most of the time it does not.
I'm just here cautioning everyone to not mistake the baby for the bathwater or you're likely to end up with all of the latter and none of the former.
I'm not committed to voting for Trump. I voted for Democrats in 2016 (Webb) and 2020 (Gabbard) and really have no intent to vote for Trump in 2024. I certainly liked Trump's policies and would like to see them reinstated. Maybe one or some of the other GOP candidates would do that. I think only DeSantis has the intestinal fortitude to fight for these policies. I'm waiting to see who Trump chooses for his running mate before I make any decision. It's still a long way to 5 November 2024.
My opinion is that the DNC machine is a far greater threat to the republic than Donald Trump. Regarding "The Big Lie", there have been many Big Lies since 2015. The villainous extent that the DNC has gone to, to destroy his candidacy and his administration is unforgivable. Until that generation of Democrats are driven out of D.C., they will not have my support. I see Donald Trump as possibly the only force of nature who can do that.
He didn't say that
And if he did, he didn't mean that
And if he did, you didn't understand it.
And if you did, it's not a big deal
And if it is, others have said worse.
As a retired reference librarian (with the requisite graduate degree in information science), may I suggest the possibility that one's judgment can only be as reliable as the information in which it is grounded? The fact that you cite The Bulwark as a source tends to confirm this truth.
Mark - I'm the founder of Samizdat Online - an anti-censorship platform whose very purpose is to expose the people living in places like Russia, Belarus, Iran, China etc. to the information that their leaders don't want them to see.
The entire mission is predicated on the idea that information is THE central driver of all subsequent behavior. The Nazis and the members of Hamas aren't genetically different from you and me - they have simply absorbed the wrong information and have built tribes around it. The outcomes are incredibly grim but the driving force is nothing more than bad information.
So - given all this - I promise you that I tread very carefully when I absorb anything as "true" and am always prepared to be wrong since none of us have any magical insight into the near infinite number of factors that we have no direct contact with and rely on good-faith sources to relay to us.
The Bulwark, in my experience (and I am a contributing author there) is a fantastically good-faith organization that is founded by stalwart conservatives and is desperately trying to preserve both conservatism (as it has been understood for generations) as well as democracy in general.
People like Liz Cheney, with whom I share absolutely no ideology or political beliefs, agree with my take on what it means for our democracy to elect Trump (and we're specifically talking about Trump, I'm not painting with a broad brush) or anyone who glorifies the actions and practices of people like Putin. I'm not a child and have the benefit of having started my life in Soviet Russia - so I'm able to see things quite clearly, but part of that clarity is the understanding that everything is nuanced and of course I might be wrong about everything... I'm open to all evidence and curious to know what about The Bulwark you think makes them a less than honest broker in this debate.
I appreciate this, but I'm disturbed by the pretense that your essentially anti-Trump post is rooted in 'fact' alone. Facts are placeholders in hierarchies of meaning, and the same facts can be enrolled in incompatible narratives (creationists and evolutionists both acknowledge the reality of species diversity, for example; they just account for it differently). A locution like, "He's clearly enamored of the way Orban, Putin, Xi, and others of their ilk rule without the pesky interference of any "opposition" or the absurdly messy and unnecessary considerations of the will of the citizenry," clearly can't masquerade itself as a fact. It's a narrative that pretends to construe as "evidence" facts that are just as plausibly interpretable in less politicized ways.
The determination to interpret facts in ways least flattering to one's political opponents (which, notwithstanding your disclaimer, is precisely what ideologically committed sources like The Bulwark and The Washington Post do) owes nothing to disinterested truth pursuit, and everything to the determination of ideologues to hew to paths leading to the conclusions they know in advance they have to reach. Let's not insult each other's intelligence: given the personal background you describe, you can't possibly not know this perfectly well. Please eschew references to facts unless you're willing to acknowledge the subordinate roles they're forced to play in ideological narratives. What's at issue is our ability to make sound judgments, and in this connection it is indeed important to be scrupulous and skeptical when it comes to sources. Try taking a second look at The Bulwark, and see if you can't discern in the site's use of facts something that might tend to arouse a non-partisan skepticism.
Fair enough - and indeed if this was an academic exercise I'd grant precisely everything you just said.
Americans have, for the most part, enjoyed such a carefree reality for the last 50(some odd) years that at this point every conversation feels like a discussion on a college campus in which every permutation of every concept is up for grabs.
I urge you to consider what is presently happening in Ukraine. I defer only to the "facts" of the day-to-day operational warfare that is taking place on Ukrainian soil. We don't have to delve into the facts of history or the facts of geo-politics. We can just focus on the fact that Ukrainians are being slaughtered in their nation and Russian soldiers are being sent to the slaughter by theirs (and committing various atrocities and war crimes when opportunities present themselves).
In such a situation the facts take on a very different operational imperative.
Decisions need to be made in real time. How do we help the Ukrainians (or the Russians, if your assessment of the facts somehow nets out to them being justified in their assault - devil's advocate).
Similarly - it is my firm belief that Trump will attempt to follow-through on his pre-existing coup attempt. Yes - that's a speculation but no I'm not just waxing philosophical - I'm prognosticating based on what he has said and done already.
I don't need to know his inner workings. I don't need to understand why he compliments Putin - I just need to know that he does compliment Putin.
And when I see how impotent most American media is at highlighting these realities and instead make a ton of noise about various largely irrelevant attributes of Trump that only serve to annoy those who are predisposed to voting for him, I try to help refocus the conversation on what I believe actually matters - namely - that (for reasons I can't claim to know) he is intent on breaking our democratic system and more importantly ushering us into the Putin-age of imprisoning journalists and silencing his opposition (as all dictators do).
If you're not convinced that this is a real threat then all I can do is say I hope you're right and (as I did on another thread) remind you to please keep your finger on precisely this pulse and be mindful if you start to notice that what I'm predicting here is starting to come to pass and be prepared to acknowledge that maybe you got this one wrong.
Simkin, NATO crept its borders right up to Russia, and then began courting Ukraine entry to this body, historically opposed to Russia. It was a blunder to do so. In 2014, NATO then helped install Ukraine leadership unfriendly to Russia. Russia was provoked, IMO. The West helped (foster) create the mess in Ukraine. I suspect you are a neocon, and war lover/monger. Trump on the other hand is only POTUS in my life not to start any new wars. This is no good for you & yours, who yearn for bloodshed and MIC profits. Trump told the truth on debate stage in SC and totally sunk Jeb, when he said out loud that the War in Iraq was wrong and based on a lie. Neocon Washington has been against him since that day.
I'm not, as your comments on Americans suggest you may have inferred, American but Canadian, and I don't want to be offside with someone who's fighting censorship, a project of which I approve. Nor do I have any intention of contesting, in this forum, your judgments on Trump, Ukraine, or any other matter; I'll simply reiterate what I've said already, that those judgments are the children of your knowledge base and therefore subject to the same limitations. In general, I believe it essential to distinguish between loyalty to principles and loyalty to the insignia: people who confuse the two--who try to define truth and justice nationally, ethnically, racially, religiously, politically and/or ideologically--have done demonstrable harm in history. If you're truly concerned about threats to democracy, you'll oppose them wherever you see them, not just when they emanate from Trump, Iran, Russia, or one particular side of the political spectrum. Otherwise, you're simply masquerading political, ideological or nationalistic, etc., preferences and aversions as something more respectable and less injurious to truth quests.
Someone once said that sound judgment was "the ability to discern the flexible limits within which boundary lines oscillate." Justice moves back and forth, up and down in history: sometimes it's on the side of the revolutionaries; sometimes it's on the side of the king's guards. It's worth taking care not to be sitting complacently on the ground under a politically correct 'justice' banner as the boundary separating truth from falsehood sweeps by overhead, leaving us unwittingly on the wrong side of it.
Yevgeny,
What’s your take on domestic Big Tech/Govt assault on free speech? Does your work consider the home front? Cause that is what I imagine your work is pumping into former Soviet states. Are you disseminating our disinformation as a replacement for disinformation put out by Putin and the mullahs?
Would be interested to hear your take on Rupa Subramanya’s recent Congressional testimony on what’s up here in North America. You can find it here in this recent Free Press article:
https://www.thefp.com/p/free-press-rupa-subramanya-free-speech-testimony
Matt,
"Cause that is what I imagine your work is pumping into former Soviet states."
A picture is worth a 1000 words so I urge you to just check out what we're doing at https://samizdatonline.org
And if you like it, please donate! :)
The reason that your imagination is failing you (I say that with nothing but good cheer) is that most North Americans simply can't fathom the state of media suppression in places like Russia. Even if you're more tuned in than most (which you clearly are) there's still a cognitive dissonance.
The analogy I usually make is that information is a lot like water. You have some healthy amount and then two ends of a spectrum that are deadly. On the one end you drown and on the other you die of thirst. Pick your poison, as they say; but there are many ways to stave off drowning - but thirst is non-negotiable - you either quench it or you die.
One of my foundational beliefs is that information (and the free-flow thereof) is the lifeblood of a free society. It's not a coincidence that every dictator's inevitable first action is to take full control of the information space and punish people for violating his information rules.
There are multiple wonderful organizations in the West whose principle concern is tackling the "drowning" side of this dichotomy. If you look at the work that my colleagues over at Trust in Media Cooperative, or Ad Fontes are doing - their primary concern is helping average people get as much signal out of the cacophony of noise - but you're right - the job of the average consumer of information in the West of teasing out what is "real" has become pretty difficult.
My personal take on this is that this is inevitable and we shouldn't freak out about it.
1) Things have become much more complicated than they've ever been. Anyone can be an expert in [something] but no one can be an expert in [everything]. I'm sure you've read the research that people who know the least about a subject are the most likely to believe they know a lot more than they do and be more sure of themselves than those who actually know more.
2) As long as there are enough sources, giving us every angle of some subject, and we understand that everyone has their various biases (and indeed it's impossible not to) and we have a good cross-section of both the info and who takes what side of what issue - we'll be able to have a pretty good broad consensus of what's what.
3) nothing's perfect and in the West everything's actually mostly fine and moving in the right direction (taken with a grain of salt).
I did read the article you linked to when it was posted. It's a good article. My favorite aspect of it is that it verifies point 3 above. (how?) Because it shows the contrast between the problem (in this case) in Canada and Russia.
This contrast isn't delved into in the piece so, on its own, the story might seem really bad - but if you know what to compare it to, you realize how "trivial" this is by comparison. AND (more importantly) it shows that even at this level of deviation from what we have come to expect from our freedoms, this is a 2 alarm fire and quickly gaining attention.
It's up to US if we choose to let this get worse (and worse) or to nip it in the bud. We have all the tools to fix this available to us. That's the beauty of OUR system. In Russia people have only one option - violent revolt (or MASS demonstration) if they hope to get any change. All their tools of democratic resistance have been taken away.
So - finally - in answer to your question (sorry - I'm working on pith muscles but they're still pretty flabby) - what Samizdat Online pushes back into Russia and Belarus and Iran and soon China is whatever it is that they have blocked. We the dictators decide what we publish. Whatever it is they deem offensive enough to actually block from access... that's what we publish.
Mostly these are anti regime publications that simply cover what's actually going on in world that these nations don't want their citizens to know because it contradicts their party lines. Putin puts in prison anyone who calls his incursion into Ukraine a "war" (7 - 15 years in prison conditions that make our prisons look like country clubs). These publications aren't saying much of anything controversial - they're just reporting the facts on the ground. The Russians have no clue what kinds of losses they've suffered and their heads are filled with nonsense about how Ukraine has been seized by nazis (with a Jewish leader). There are dozens and dozens of media outlets that operate in exile (Meduza, TV Rain, Mediazona, Euroradio, Astra, Echo of Moscow, Agentura, etc. etc. etc.) the founders of which want to have the same press freedoms that we do and are doing amazing reporting (that you won't find in the Western press because a lot of it is either too inside baseball) and we do what we can to give the Russian (et al) communities to get to it and distribute it.
So - I see my job as simply helping these nations move away from the dying of thirst side of things and if they can move closer to the drowning side of things... well... we'll let my colleagues on that side of the issue worry about that if we should be so lucky as to succeed.
Thanks Yevgeny, I’m 100% in support of unfettered free speech. And yes, I wish that citizens in oppressive countries had access to non-state sponsored speech & views. Outside of the Bible, I hold the 1st & 2nd Amendments as my most valuable possessions. I wish the whole world could have the same.
Now, in regards to Ukraine, this has been the West offering Kiev a fools errand. When Russia invaded I of course hoped the people of Ukraine would resist. But I never thought they could actually win. I still don’t. The demographics show it’s impossible for Ukraine to overcome near endless manpower of Russia. Germany learned this in WW2. By late ‘44, Germany was conscripting the very young and the old. Germany ran out of fighting men, Russia did not, this is fact.
This week we see reports that Ukraine needs another 1/2 million troops and is now calling up its elderly. It’s now only a matter of time. Either for a settled agreement, or the West sends in boots.
It didn’t have to be this way. NED, NATO and the West didn’t need to sow false promises. Just because one hate’s Russia doesn’t mean you kick that hornet’s nest. NATO courting Georgia & Ukraine as future members of NATO while giving Russia the middle finger when they ask to join is provoking an adversary. Play stupid games win stupid prizes sort of thing.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67767246
https://www.wsj.com/world/ukraines-front-line-troops-are-getting-older-physically-i-cant-handle-this-46d9b2c7
"He's clearly enamored of the way Orban, Putin, Xi, and others of their ilk rule without the pesky interference of any "opposition" or the absurdly messy and unnecessary considerations of the will of the citizenry." It is of grave concern to me. If we, the people, do not wake up to this and keep justifying it, we will get to experience the consequences for our democracy. Liz Cheney's book clearly shows us what Trump is capable of, enabled by his many supporters. How to stop it? By being strategic and careful and bold at the same time. Overreaction and counter-reaction only maintains the status quo.
Liz Cheney is a LOSER.... literally.
I guess that makes Trump a LOSER too, right?
"...liberal democracy - no matter how messy and inefficient - is the only system that can avoid devolving into the imprisonment and assassination of those who have views counter to the ruling party."
Are you really so blind you cannot see that is exactly what the Democrats are doing now? Imprisonment of their opponents and, yes if that fails, assassination is also on the table.
If you have the names of the people that the Democrats have thrown in prison for their views (based on the laws they changed that made holding those views punishable by imprisonment) - I'd love to see them.
If not I urge you to not conflate bad faith and even unethical behavior (that you can openly criticize and which "the people" have every ability to curtail and an out of control state that imprisons and kills people with impunity.
You can look at how Putin treats his citizens and journalists and observe that this is a leader whom Trump models himself after and exalts.
I'm not defending the Democrats - I'm not a fan of theirs - but they do understand and uphold the rule of law, and you live in a nation where you have a voice and the ability to change those laws if you don't like them.
Doug Mackey - convicted and imprisoned for posting a, literally, harmless, as in it harmed 0 people, meme about Hillary Clinton - https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/social-media-influencer-douglass-mackey-sentenced-after-conviction-election
I don't think any good faith observer could come to the conclusion that this was an imposition on his speech. He committed fraud and deprived people of their ability to vote. I'm curious how you define "harm" but it's obviously not how our legal system defines it.
How can you say this government upholds the rule of law when you compare the treatment of Donald Trump with Hillary Clinton, or of Jan. 6 rioters with the George Floyd rioters of 2020? Clearly, application of the law has become greatly influenced by political alignment.
The Bulwark?
OMG....that is simply the last hideout for the neocon Never Trumper's. That rag is about the worst piece of propaganda out there. AND that says something given I read VOX.
If you find me a single piece of actual propaganda (I'm not sure that you're actually using the word as it is defined) I'd be very impressed.
Perhaps one of the pieces I've written for them qualifies?
Also - I think you may be pushing too many chips in with your dismissal of "never trump"ers. You should try it on for size with different last names like "Putin" or "Stalin" or "Hitler" and see how easy those go down as obvious brands to organize around.
Isn't it possible that the fact that you fail to see how unique a threat Trump is to our democracy is actually a failure on your part to either be aware of or weigh with the correct concern various things he's done? Or perhaps you might have a view of our system as being a lot more resilient than I do? But it shouldn't be hard to imagine how someone might disagree and note that their concern is a valid one (even if you think it's not entirely realistic).
The Bulwark is nothing more than the last home for the Never Trump retreads that could no longer had credibility either with the New Republic crowd or the average republican voter.
I remember the drama around when it was founded.
Knowing that....and knowing what I do of Bill Kristol.......who needs more?
"FAKE NEWS!!!". Trump and Putin send their regards.
Take your meds, get off the internet, and go lay down for a bit.
You will be ok.
Tankie, STFU.
To me, an "insurrection" implies that there is a "plan". To me, nothing about January 6th suggests to me that any of those people had anything close to resembling a "plan"
I believe the plan was for government plants to turn a protest into something they could blame and charge Trump for.
Why was the national guard request canceled by pelosi?
Not to mention they are playing into his hand. Trump feeds off of being the victim of the state. Many of those that I know that support him, want to vote for him more as a result of the indictments against him. This is just democratically sponsored fundraising for Trump...
Personally, I find him repugnant, but there is no denying that his "witch hunt" claims are becoming more persuasive.
That is so on point. I detest him as well but no one can get any oxygen running against him and I feel like if I don't vote for him, then those leading the witch hunt are winning
Again using the rule of law to and for political gain! Shameful on all levels just leading this country down a black hole
I agree. I have lost friends, including my brother refusing to speak to me, in significant part for saying that Jan 6 was not an insurrection. I studied revolutions and terrorism, and Jan 6th was a tailgate party level protest that got a little out of hand. Most of the getting out of hand was the shooting of a protester.
It just wasn't an insurrection by any stretch. If someone thinks that, they need to get out more. A lot more, and see a real insurrection.
Lol, as if you need guns for an insurrection.
We were saved from a Constitutional Crisis by Mike Pence. He refused to go along with it. They had fake electors lined up and everything. You are in denial.
Even if SCOTUS tosses this case, Trump is going to jail. Deal with it.
You should get some help for your TDS. I am in denial of what?
Trump's plan to stay in office. Illegal, that. Definitely insurrection.
There was no need for massive exaggeration and calling it a coup or an insurrection. I voted for Trump and I was apalled that he refused to concede defeat and told a mob of supporters to "go to the Capitol and tell Mike Pence to do the right thing ." This alone was enough for me and many others to turn against Trump permanently.
You will get no argument from me that Trump is an idiot and the hiring of Sydney Powell was a disaster. There is a difference between calling him a cry baby loser and trying to become a dictator. The one is true, the other absurd.
If I asked you to in good-faith describe to me how an aspiring dictator would come to power in the US... not in some silly Hollywood cartoon caricature but in the real world, you would describe Trump's actions to a tee.
Everything he's done and said lays the groundwork for having power handed to the White House and filling the rank and file with yes-men who will rubber stamp everything he wishes. In the first administration there were still people of conscience who impeded his impulses - he's literally said he won't make the mistake of having such people in his second adminstration. He's literally said that he's ready to move to silence the media that he disapproves of. He's literally said that he admires how Putin gets things done.
Let's assume you're mostly right and that it's "unlikely" that he's an aspiring autocrat.
Just how much of your nation's future are you willing to bet on this certainty? Are you 100% sure? 95%?
From my perspective if you agree that he's a "cry-baby loser" (and presumably you think worse than that) then even a 1% chance that he's an aspiring dictator should instantly eliminate him from the running, no?
If I told you that the next bite of your burger is 1% likely to kill you and your family - just how tasty would it need to be for you to go ahead and take that bite anyway?
There is zero percent chance he becoems a dictator. He would be thrown out imprisoned within seconds of attempting to overthrow the government. No chance and I think the people in government now have a higher probability of being a dictator than Trump. If Trump wins, do you think they will give up power?
'Anyone who calls it an Insurrection is a left wing nut job.'
Afraid not, Albert. You may want to learn the names of the following legal scholars: William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas, Michael Luttig., a retired federal judge. Staunch conservatives all who orchestrated and were the originators (among others) of this latest wrinkle to the legal fabric.
Trump brings chaos and drama everywhere he goes, every time he opens his mouth - and his base loves it! Well, let's have more!
But it wasn't an insurrection, that is silly. It was a riot. To say it's anything else is just plain wrong. And the dictator stuff is even more outrageously stupid. But that is for another day.
Many people disagree. In the written opinion of the Colorado Court, they quote Trump publicly ordering his Vice President to disregard state certified election results and stop the count. So it's not just about the 'riot'. Expect the Supreme Court to take this up, because even though Trump's enjoying a quickie jump in poll numbers amongst his base on this, this is an existential threat to Trump's campaign if other states take this mantle up.
And yeah, I don't think Trump is a dictator. But he certainly enjoys their company. And that, of course, is for another day..
But what in any plain reading of any definition of insurrection was that. Biden got 81 million votes and I see no problem with him exhausting every avenue. Sadly, he approved the legalized cheating of mail in ballots so he only had himself to blame
Ultimately once he lost in the courts he had an obligation to accept the result, not demand that Mike Pence refuse to certify the election and send a mob to protest and "convince" him. This is not an insurrection but it is dangerous and unforgivable.
All of these prosecutions are doing nothing but making him stronger and sucking all the oxygen out of his GOP opponents. If he was just running as a candidate, I think they would have a chance. But since there are people going after him from all areas, it's making us us versus them. And that's the only way he can win
Biden has something to do with this? Come on. This is Colorado. Do you think he has their court on speed dial??
As for the 'legalized cheating' of mail in ballots - ask Donald himself which state he won one of his largest margins in. Right, it was Florida - the state with the highest percentage of mail in ballots in the nation.
There is a difference between states that had a process that took years to develop and others that just sent out ballots willy-nilly to people. That was my point. And it's not Biden doing it, it is the whack job leftist intellectuals that are in academia, government and those who are on the courts and see themselves as our masters. The vote for Trump in 2016 was the best one of my life because of the three judges that are on the court right now. If we had the judges that are on the courts in Colorado, then we would have an insurrection, and I would be part of it. Pleasure chatting with you Have a great day
He also turns those who hate him into over the top lunatics lke him.
Like I said, chaos rules. That's what he wants? Let's have it.
It was all the American flags that got carried on the Self-Guided Tour; the leftists are much happier with the ChiCom flag being paraded around like it was most recently lining the streets in SanFran for Xi's visit.
or the co called palestinian flag
The plaintiffs are Republicans
there was one gun. it shot a protester and killed her
You probably should look at the facts that were considered by the district court when they decided that Trump aided or abetted an insurrection. They did not rely only or even principally on January 6.
But there are no facts as there was no insurrection. He contested the results of an election and went through with the transfer of power when all of his avenues were exhausted. This was four progressive judges making up a decision out of whole cloth.
The first section of the Fourteenth Amendment states that no one should be deprived of liberty without due process. Trump was never convicted in a court of law. This Democrat usurping of civil rights is nothing short of fascism.
Oh don’t worry he will be convicted.
I sure hope so. He’s a menace. He has denigrated the office of President, he instills hate, he is out for retribution. He’s a very clever snake oil salesman taken in by those who want to believe what he says.
Will it ever end! Frankly I’m sick of him and everyone like him.
Well it’s not so much that Trump instills hate but he just instills hate in the wrong way.
You’re supposed to hate the millionaires and billionaires who don’t pay their fair share and the oil corporations who are destroying our future and murdering the climate and the police who are hunting Black Americans and you’re supposed to hate whites and Christians who are xenophobe transphobe racists and the unvaccinated who are killing us all daily with their dirty diseases.
So it’s not really the brand new hate-instilling thing Trump invented that is the problem. He’s just using it wrong.
It's telling that you're accurately comparing Trump to lefty internet trolls and activists rather than to other Presidents.
Face it, he's a professional troll. Not a President. He talks like a troll, acts like a troll. He appeals to the worst in us rather than the best in us. He has degraded the office of President.
I’m sorry, are you seriously arguing that hate is good?
Are you seriously arguing that hating people for the size of their bank accounts is rational?
Edit: I realized you were being sarcastic.
Topless dude jiggling his plastic chest balls on the White House lawn while the rest of the freaks Biden invited are background actors, cocaine sniffing on the WH balcony, Senate conference room turned into a porn studio (why not after #1 above), money laundering, selling the office of VP, It's ok Putin if you roll the tanks into Ukraine just a little bit, R. Levine, S. Brinton, the embarrassing army recruiting ad advertising how far we have sunk, alphabet flags flying over US embassies.
Well-said BeadleBlog!
Yes, all unfortunate effects of a thriving-yet-always-far-from-perfect democracy. Which you want to replace with a Trump presidency-for-life and a destruction of our democracy. GTFO.
“Which you want to replace with a Trump presidency-for-life and a destruction of our democracy.”
We have a mind reader! Stand back, everyone, Hazel-rah can’t be fooled, they know our TRUE motivations!
^^^ In case anyone was wondering what pathetic hand-waving in the absence of any actual argument looks like.
Truth hurts, sunny Jim. Your boy thinks he's bigger than the Constitution. NO ONE is bigger than the Constitution.
Best president t we’ve had in the last 40 years or so.
The only real menace are the people behind the puppet president in office now..so compromised by his and his families easily proven corruption that he was chosen so he could be controlled...we are being overrun by illegal immigrants because we have no more borders..while the FBI director tells us what great peril we’re in with the certain to come terrorists attacks..Biden should be impeached for sedition..he has failed to protect this nation
What do you think we should do with Trump and his MAGA extremists?
The expression ‘MAGA extremists’ is a Democrat pejorative much like Hillary’s ‘deplorables’. It’s sad and pathetic that Democrats are so power hungry that they would disparage fellow citizens. They are desperate.
You got it wrong! It is "radical, right wing, ulta-maga extremists"!
🤣🤣🤣 we're back in high school
HINT: “Banks are private companies and they can do what they want these are free markets.”
Not
A
Thing
No one gives a fuck what you’re sick of lady. He’s gonna win whether he’s convicted of this bullshit or not and your tiny brain is going to finally completely break. 😂
He did a good job as president. Solid foreign policy, strong economy, he cut taxes and the left lost it’s mind. It was a good four years.
What kind of person wants to imprison their political opponents?
A fascist.
Why do I think you're secretly hoping he will? Oh, I don't!
Just playing around.
He is not being deprived of life, liberty, or property.
So removal from the ballot is fine as long as the person isn’t deprived of life liberty or property?
That’s a weird argument because you could remove anyone at any time based on that.
Different standards apply for criminal punishment.
Unrelated. We are talking about ballot exclusion.
Your argument is that you can exclude people from the ballot as long as they aren’t denied life liberty or property.
The comment I responded to referenced the due process clause of the 14A. Due process is required when the person is subject to loss of life, liberty, or property. Disqualification under the 14A is not such a loss.
Oh you mean because running for office isn’t on the list of liberties?
Is there other stuff not on the list? We could really exploit this.
Yes. The life liberty property was in reference to somebody bringing up due process. Running for office is not a right, just like drinking Coke is not a right. AFAIK the Constitution doesn't guarantee as a right everything or anything I want to do.
Do you know Neil or is this a work-from-home thing? Did you get to meet George Soros?
No! Go look at the original argument!!! You can’t have it both ways.
Yes
Sheluyang - The three legal scholars who originated this 14th Amendment Section 3 interpretation were all very conservative and members of the Federalist Society. So, perhaps, 'fascism' is originating in the very place Trump found his three conservative judges he installed on the high court.
Am I required to agree with someone simply because they are conservatives too? I don’t understand your argument here.
‘This Democrat usurping of civil rights is nothing short of fascism.’
The above was Sheluyang’s comment. My comment on conservatives was in reference to that..
Trump isn't being denied liberty.
Anyone has the right to run for President as long as they are born a citizen, 35 or older, and have no felony convictions (charges are not convictions). Trump meets all those requirements. Thus, denying him the opportunity to run for President violates his rights.
Show me where in the constitution it says you can’t be a convicted felon isn’t eligible to run for president. You can’t. Be it doesn’t.
You don't understand criminal vs. civil.
“Trump isn't being denied liberty.”
————————————————-
What about when he’s in prison for delaying a ceremony for 3 1/2 hours? Will that be a denial of liberty?
Or will it be a temporary pause of liberty like how Democrats pause the puberty of the kids they are sexually abusing?
Is he not being denied the liberty to run for POTUS?
Running for office is not a right, so due process doesn't apply to it.
No. Due process is the right. The liberty is the freedom to run for office.
Due process is a right allowing other rights: life, liberty, property. Running for office isn't a right.
Rights are not "allowed". Rights are inherent.
Again. Due process is of law. The right that the law not be uniquely applied (that is likely the challenge to this court's ruling, or at least one of them). Running for office is a liberty as in one has the freedom to run for office.
Debatable. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/right-of-candidates-to-run-for-office/
You come off as someone who has already decided their position and is just assembling arguments as needed to arrive there.
Ad hominems are bright as day. Can we make actual arguments?
Back at you.
How so? What arguments have I made in either direction?
Yes.
No. The voters are.
Not every person is qualified to run for office. Schwarzenegger, for one, is naturalized and ineligible. Per this court's opinion, section 3 applies to Trump and makes him ineligible. No one will claim violation of due process if Schwarzenegger is barred from running due to his naturalized citizenship because we all accept that only natural-born Americans can do so.
Art II is explicit that a qualified candidate for POTUS must be born in the United States. Arnold was not born here.
Am 4, Sec 3 is silent on candidates for POTUS and VPOTUS.
Why are you arguing the law with this guy? Even the Never Trumpers admit this one is insane. You’re talking to a mentally ill person.
Zealots like you would do well to reread Martin Niemoeller’s famous poem more carefully.
Nonse
Being removed from a ballot isn't a criminal matter, it's civil. Different standard.
IMHO, it's the "Aid and Comfort" part that's the justification. That's why the plaintiffs could sue without the conviction. You could argue that what Trump did wasn't giving aid and comfort to the people breaking in to the Capitol, and that's fair enough. But IMHO those were the grounds.
It is not his liberty that is in question here! It’s his right to run for office.
The plaintiffs are Republicans.
So? Does that change the fact Trump has had his right’s violated?
In your mind is this some sort of Left vs Right thing?
It certainly is. This decision will land before the SCOTUS sooner rather than later.
Colorado is a cautionary tale as was California before it as to what occurs in a society that permits unfettered leftism to run.
And what about section V. My pocket copy doesn’t mention State Courts.
These opponents you mention were always insane. Trump just illuminated the madness. Today the Biden regime removed the monument of reconciliation from Arlington National Cemetery, signaling that they want to foment more conflict. Why did you or other veterans remain silent about that?
The Democrats are turning into CCP: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/ns-lyons-china-convergence-interview-banger
Why are they so dead-set on undoing the things that allowed our country to reconcile? And why are they getting away with doing it so easily? Who stands to benefit?
As the "victims" in the oppressor/oppressed model of life, their victimhood is what sustains them. It brings them sympathy, money and - ultimately - political power.
Why are people who hate the country trying to destroy it?
Summary: " we have to destroy democracy to protect democracy. "
When in history has a defeated enemy deserved a statue?
Tell me you know nothing about the monument without telling me you know nothing about the monument
I’ve seen it. It perpetuates the myth that the south fought for an ideal. They fought, died and killed for slavery. No objection to the study and admiration individual acts of courage of individuals who fought.
False. The monument memorializes the reconciliation of the states.
What reconciliation? Look up reconstruction, look up abysmal policy pushed by politicians in Congress, blunting or outright ignoring debased behavior of white southerners toward their black neighbors.
Yes, it was hard, but we've come a long way since 1865. What is so necessary about tearing down a memorial to reconciliation of the states?
They fought for state's rights and to secede from the union to form their own country with their own constitution, currency, laws and government.
It wasn't just about slavery.
It was about retaining the wealth invested in human misery = slavery. The states rights argument has been nothing but whitewash.
Yes it was.
99%
The South fought change to their economic system. Their system was based on slavery which in retrospect was evil. Up until that time most societies practiced slavery in some shape or form. Most people at that time didn’t regard slavery as evil.
Societies don’t voluntarily change their economic system without a fight. The North forced the south to change and prevailed due to their industrial advantage rather than some moral superiority. Fight that war 100 years earlier and the South wins.
I say all this to point out that both sides are part of bigger forces. They both thought their cause was righteous and we certainly can’t judge it by todays standards. The monument reflects that sentiment. There was a bitter fight, but the country came back together through force. Ultimate healing would come in time which it did.
Something so momentous for our country certainly deserves monuments like this. Wiping them out disrespects the thousands on both sides who died to resolve this issue and help us move forward.
First, I appreciate that you are speaking from conviction, and respectfully. However my understand (it’s a fact, truly) is that by the time of our civil war slavery as an institution had been outlawed in most of the world by then. Not in the Middle East or in Africa, but by all Western governments. Freedom wasn’t limited to white human beings in all so-called civilized European and Mediterranean countries by then.
The fact is that if we are to be one nation there are standards we must not only pay lip service to (equality) but embrace. I mourn any man or woman dying because they were led into an evil cause. Slavery was an evil. I feel no need to be sentimental about that fight, only truly regret the horrendous death toll.
I agree that the American South was late to the party in abolishing slavery. The entire economy was based on it. It is as you say evil. My main point was that it is really hard to make a huge change like that quickly. It usually requires a lot of force. Thus the war.
I think it’s unfair to judge people that grow up with archaic beliefs and then live their life by those beliefs. When the whole belief system comes crashing down like it did in the confederacy it’s truly disastrous for them. I think all that outsiders can do in those situations is try to convince them of the evils and use force as a last resort. I think the American civil war was that force and it ultimately cleansed the nation from the sin of slavery. It takes a lot if generations to digest such a catastrophe, but I don’t think we should ever forget it.
Communists always tear down the statues. That way they can lie about what happened.
Is that who you think I am? Whoa. You need a deeper dive into history. Try the Roman’s - or the Holy Roman Empire - or British colonialists. Taking apart who was conquered had their icons(statuary) obliterated. Removing symbols of the defeated is standard practice.
Thanks for the 8th grade refresher.
Communists also do it during communist revolutions.
I find all this emphasis on tearing down monuments interesting. In New York, a massive bronze or maybe iron statue of Theodore Roosevelt was just carted off. Must have cost millions to remove it. Why not just cross the street and hand out the cash to homeless living in Central Park? People are starving with no access to medical care or a roof over their heads. To spend money on this stuff is very precious and comes at the end of my list.
Tearing down monuments is one of the highest virtue signals one can send.
Let's tear down MLK's monument in Washington because he was a serial abuser and philanderer! All real women should protest his beatification.
Let's see. We have monuments to Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Chief Joseph. We have lots of Civil War monuments for the war dead on both sides, like Gettysburg.
Native Americans are another matter. That they defied being slaughtered is not revolution or insurrection.
Yes those warriors were ultimately defeated, but as the indigenous people of this country their status is light years from southerners duped into getting themselves killed by a class of slave holders who convinced them it retaining slaves was worth dying for.
That's ridiculous.
You’re wrong
Those are just your feelings. The Sioux Nation was at war with the United States.
This is based on your pro-native opinion. If somebody had a pro-confederate opinion theyd make a similar argument. So either say “its fine for defeated peoples to have monuments, in any and all cases” or “its not ok in any case at all”. Your pretending your bias is logically consistent but its not. Everybody is biased, but then argue from a place of admitted bias and dont feign consistency
You’re* dang it spelling mistake I lose the argument
Your highly subjective, partisan, hateful interpretation of history is precisely why people who believe in honor might build a statue to a fallen foe.
Perhaps I’ve been too close to it, however I’m not denying courage, I’ll mourn the dead sons of mothers whose grief likely broke their hearts, I don’t happen to have your long view - these men left widows and children on both sides. What pity do you have for those they left on the ground and at home?
It was a civil war, a significant distinction.
Yes. Civil wars being the most bloody and brutal of all wars.
When you're trying to reconcile with the other half of your own country. Or maybe you prefer the totalitarians who just want to lock everone up
Reconciliation is mutual.
No I agree that Lincoln did the right thing and pardoned the southern soldiers. Ironically that wasn’t reciprocated. He didn’t keep the Union together for spite. He believed we were one nation. I do too.
There was no reconciliation. There was recidivism and recalcitrance and resentment and revisionism that resulted in those statues being erected many years after the matter was settled. The Sore Losers' Statues.
What the absolute (insert curse word of your choice)? And they call Republicans fascist?
Remove Biden from the Texas, Florida, and Georgia ballots because he has disqualified himself by egregiously violating US law via his immigration practices. I know, he hasn't even been charged with that, and there is no US or state law that allows such a thing, but it seems that the rules have changed so go for it.
The amendment also explicitly calls out aiding and abetting the enemy.
Seems like the constant money being poured into the terrorist regime in Iran that is currently using that money to attack our ships in the Middle East would be a no brainer to get him disqualified in any red state. You could even throw in leaving billions of dollars in weapons for them to use on us in Afghanistan.
If these are the rules now, let’s play.
Thank you for writing this. Trump is hardly my first choice for president, but I don't agree with your assessment that he should have been impeached. This overreach by the Colorado Supreme Court is anti-American and does, indeed, tell people that Trump is right about elites in government. What more can one say? QED. He is right.
I'm curious if Trump is wondering if the three conservative elites he placed on the Supreme Court will abide with the constitutional arguments advanced by the Colorado Court, since, after all, they are originalists. He might be worried. Do you think he's on his Rolodex trying to find the number to make the call?
Newsflash! ALL of the Supremes are elitists to some degree or other!
I would certainly hope so.
Whatever you need to tell yourself!
Trump is certainly taking his time in appealing to the SC. I don’t think his lawyers are convinced it’s a slam dunk.
Calling J6 an insurrection is a lie, and every honest person knows it.
Let’s see what Clarence thinks about it - since his wife was so involved in attempting to get certain states’ electoral results reversed. Maybe he’ll say it was all just nothing. Just the normal democratic process..
Lee, Democrats have declared 3/3 Republican presidential victories of this century illegitimate, tried to overturn the results, and most recently launch a "Resistance" that consisted of lies, conspiracy theories, hatemongering, street violence, and promises to "burn the whole system to the ground" if Trump won.
Trump isn't the problem. You are.
Ah Anthony, how quaint.
I remember both Gore and Clinton angry, grimacing and hating every second of losing, but they both conceded. The word concede I don't think Trump can spell.
But that's ok - we'll just agree to disagree..
You’ve fallen for the anti Clarence Thomas propaganda lmao.
If Ginsburg in her glory had a husband doing the same, you’ll understand.
KD’s Idea of the Day:
When Biden wins again and buses another 15 million occupying settlers all over the country, we should change it from ‘E Pluribus Unum’ to ‘E Tourbus Unum’
(NOTE: Democrats are evil communists who hate America)
Or how about changing it to AL Gore's misstatement about the moto: "Out of one, MANY!" I literally shouted at the tv when he said that.
Alas, your hero is still an insurrectionist who is going to prison.
How unsurprising that the four Colorado State Supreme Court justices that voted to block Trump from the ballot are Ivy League graduates. The Ivies appear to have morphed from world class institutions to progressive DEI clubs that constitute the farm teams for career government officials.
I guess we should expect such moves from institutional alumni that no longer consider plagiarism to be plagiarism, but rather something that needs some corrections here and there... I guess it all depends on "context", right?
Sure does! Too bad only a select few have any say on "context". I'm certainly not one of them.
The Colorado Supreme Court has upheld the state’s medical marijuana legalization in violation for federal law. Suggest they be indicted for criminal conspiracy to engage in drug trafficking as soon as Trump gets elected. Lawfare works both ways.
State and federal governments are sovereign, so We the People are subject to two entirely legal and sometimes different sets of laws. Weed laws are among them. Colorado Supremes did nothing wrong legalizing marijuana; many states have, and it's not drug trafficking.
Respectfully disagree. See the the supremacy clause of the constitution and the issue of federal preemption generally. Since cannabis trafficking is illegal under federal law, the states may not enact a contrary law.
Agreeing to facilitate the trafficking of cannabis in CO (as by writing a legal opinion) and working in concert with others(plaintiffs, retailers, etc.), and with one of the parties taking an overt action to violate that federal law is engaging in a criminal conspiracy. It’s worth a shot. Lock them up in a federal penitentiary with their pretty black robes. Lol. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371
Today I read RFK Jr.'s opinion, which I think is spot-in: "When a court in another country disqualifies an opposition candidate from running, we say, ‘That’s not a real democracy.’ Now it’s happening here."
Yes, and the DNC is trying to keep RFK Jr himself off the ballots. Biden Admin. is refusing even to give him the courtesy of a Secret Service detail, a standard thing for high profile candidates.
Maybe Trump should have shot someone on Fifth Ave like he bragged he could do, then everyone (I hope) could then agree that he could mercifully be put away somewhere as instructed by a court of law. So we can all relax and get on with our lives. But because no one can agree on what an insurrection looks like, or what trying to change election results with fake electors really means, we will interpret a court decision as a threat. Some will say they're following the law, others will say it's a conspiracy. That is who we are now.
Btw, I don't agree with Kennedy.
Respectfully former Congressman, you got played on your impeachment vote.
Thank you for commenting that! Meijer does not impress me with his sudden outrage.
I think he deserves credit for clearly and publicly laying it bare for everyone to see. That he voted to impeach , and then lost his reelection gives him credibility. I don’t like Trump but this is Un American and leading this once great country further into dangerous waters at a time when the world is on fire.
Vivek Ramaswamy also took the immediate right stance of refusing to be on the ballot if Trump is not on it and calling for the other candidate to do the same. Anyone hear from any of them today?
He thought that the dems would help him, after all he did vote for impeachment.
Only Congress in the swamp of DC can use petty partisan politics to make a mockery of the inequitable application of justice, not those rubes on the Supreme Court all the way in Colorado!
The insurrection began in Jan 2017. Any executive branch employee declaring themselves a member of the #Resistance was repudiating the voice of the American people and should have been summarily fired.
Among the biggest blunders Trump made.
"They will do anything, it appears, to spare the country a second Trump term. Anything, that is, but endure the discomfort of replacing their aging and increasingly unelectable incumbent with a candidate who could defeat Donald Trump without judicial intervention."
This says it all.
They drove out RFK Jr. Now, no democrat debate at all. Yet they are always preening and virtue signaling about themselves saving democracy. These people disgust me at this point.
As they like to say, "whatever it takes."
They're more likely to say "By any means necessary."
And yet, yer boy is still an insurrectionist who tried to destroy democracy, and is most likely going to prison.
And yet, yer boy, is a corrupt and senile incompetent who will do anything to hold onto power. Fire thousands by fiat who refuse to be injected with a defective, liability free product. Import millions illegally with no plan to house them or vet their history. War pig. Really? Anyone who defends Joe Biden at this point is truly intelligence compromised. The Democrats could easily have replaced him in the upcoming election but they can’t find anyone corrupt enough.
Weirdly, this court case isn't about Biden, but do continue on with your pathetic whattabouting. It demonstrates how much in denial y'all are better than I could.
Pretty naive. Continue with your own pathetic musings as well.
To mount an insurrection you need an army. Trump didn’t have an army. This was a political protest that degenerated into a riot.
It was instigated into a riot
how ?
By Capitol police alternately ushering protesters into the building, while other cops provoked the crowd with pepper spray and rubber bullets. Antifa thugs wearing MAGA caps broke windows and tried to lure people in. There were also unknown numbers of FBI agents or shills (FBI refused to divulge how many, in testimony to Congress) apparently instigating violence.
This information is corroborated by recently released video footage.
The FBI STILL won't say whether it had agents in that crowd. Translation: "Hell yeah, we had agent there!"
Right! Good point.
Lol. Plenty of coups and coup attempts are bloodless. You are desperate and grasping at straws.
Face it, Trump thinks he's more important than the Constitution.
NO ONE is more important than the Constitution.
It was a mostly peaceful protest, for those of us who remember the 99% of Trump's protestors that didn't enter the Capitol or do anything illegal or violent.
The BLM riots killed two dozen people and destroyed billions in property, while Democrat representatives downplayed the violent extremism in the name of a socialist revolutionary movement.
Democrats spent three years spreading a conspiracy theory they wrote themselves in national airwaves, while openly saying they were a resistance against the government.
Everything Democrats accuse of Trump is what they're doing.
This is bigger than Trump. I'm not a Trump supporter, nor do I support rioting anywhere by anybody. The "progressives" are applying double standards and trashing 200 years of laws, norms and judicial precedents to gain short-term political advantage. What we are "progressing" toward is authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
I know some people want Trump but Biden’s not so bad. Since Biden was elected Thanksgiving dinner has been much cheaper.
(NOTE: it’s cheaper because the vaccine killed several family members)
Oh that is harsh.
But true.
post of the day Kevin. Well done!
We're spiraling down towards banana republic status with each passing day. As a kid, I traveled often to Brazil where my family is from. I have witnessed throughout my life the steady, implacable reduction in the gap between the US and Brazil in all the wrong ways. Whether in the realm of law, economics, politics, quality of life metrics, education, or health; It's all going downhill. Forget technology. What really matters for a cohesive society is not whether we can "connect" online with some new gizmo made in a Chinese sweatshop. What matters is for there to be shared tradition, values, heritage, language, borders, beliefs. There is a soft oppression that is becoming harder and less forgiving, pushed on us by an elitist class that truly believes that quote from Klaus Schwab that we will "own nothing and be happy". Add to that "You will believe in nothing and be happy", "You will sell your soul for a meal and thank your oppressors for the scraps".
When the law becomes whatever one interprets it to be, expect gulags in short order.
However, Brazil has banned Bolsonaro from running for president again for eight years-
That's my point. First bend the law to be interpreted in a way that keeps your political opponents off the ballot. Then, use the same laws to imprison them. Nothing to see here folks. We followed the law. Putin also followed the law I'm sure with Navalny. The way karma works, the day will come when the shoe is on the other foot. Expect the media and other social justice warriors to cry foul and claim abuse by a rogue judiciary.
"I was one of ten House Republicans who voted to impeach him following January 6. I stand by that vote, despite the fact that it cost me reelection in Michigan after Democrats boosted my Trump-endorsed primary challenger. (Really.)"
As a former Democrat, that they spent $60 million to boost MAGA candidates after claiming they were extremists and a threat to democracy was corruption at a level I could not fathom. I was no longer a Democrat then but that would have been enough to turn me away.
We need more people like you to speak the truth, regardless of party.
Republicans crying about dirty tricks is hilarious. They are the Masters in that department.
In our rush to fight COVID, we did more harm than good. Here we do the same—rushing to stop a threat to our democratic principles by simply destroying them ourselves before anyone else gets the chance... the stupidity is astonishing.
I increasingly believe that the Harm Done was that actual point.
You're both increasingly far down the tracks on the crazy train.