I’m contacting all of my representatives, but I thought this note to Senator Klobuchar was bloggable, so here it is:
Dear Senator Klobuchar,
First, I appreciate the comment you made last night on the RMS, when you turned back an expression of concern about your welfare, noting that you and your colleagues are fine, it is the American people at risk.
What happened in the Capitol was little more than a group of hoodlums egged on by the Hooligan In the White House to act badly. That the bad acting turned into an invasion was a failing of the police and security. The security failed in part because the People’s House has open door and open spaces, which is a feature, not a bug, but also, because (it appears) the police helped them, or at least, did not try to circumvent their plan. That was white privilege, especially obvious in comparison to the way everyone, white, black, or brown, are treated when we stand up to say that Black lives matter.
This was just the tip of an iceberg, but a very problematic iceberg, to say the least. Four years of Trump; decades of a Republican party that chooses to gain power at all costs, and that first forgot how to govern, then forgot how to be ethical, then forgot how to be moral; and centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, and deep and damaging racial bias in all aspects of society.
I write to ask you to engage forcefully in whatever action is necessary to remove Donald Trump and the rest of the Trump crime family from the White House, and from government, and to disqualify Trump from ever running for public office again. He is the disease, you are the immune system. Short term, the Congress must regurgitate (or something) Trump at the nearest curb. Long term, the Congress needs to help our governmental institution’s build immunity to this sort of pathogen in the future.
Cheers,
Greg Laden
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So we learned
1. That the Capitol police let these criminals in he doors and some took selfies with them
2. White guys carrying guns, confederate flags, some on body armor, breaking windows and damaging furniture inside the capitol building are simply peacefully protesting but blm people standing outside with signs are terrorists
3. Attempting to stop the official counting of electoral votes by violent means because your guy lost and your feelings are hurt is being patriotic, but being an athlete and kneeling during the anthem is a serious threat to the United States
That’s the world trump and everyone who supported him (worse, still support him) brought us.
Pretty much, yeah.
If a recent tv account was accurate, even now, after the attack on the Capitol, Trump voters are nearly unanimous in their support of their malignant moron and craven modern Republicans in the Senate and House still voted to register their objections to the votes of certified electors, either pretending or actually believing (Which is worse?) that the election was stolen and enough votes should be thrown out to make the MM somehow the winner of the presidential race. (What about the Republicans elected or re-elected to the Senate and House? Do they get elected or re-elected by Congressional acclimation too?)
As long as the MM’s base stays loyal to him, don’t expect any major change in the Republican Party. They have nowhere else to go now, with 4 years of craven cowardly kowtowing on their resumes.
Dear Greg Laden,
What a day it was to unfold with sedition and insurrection!
Regarding the POTUS’ Twitter and Facebook accounts, some would even argue that they should have been suspended or terminated a long time ago for continually unleashing falsehood, misinformation and mass distrust. Fortunately, he has not (yet) been given free access to software or button(s) with which to launch weapon(s) of mass destruction.
In any case, those who are fair-minded and discerning are not easily swayed by his constant thrashing around and beating in the bush. Speaking of whether “the president really is a very stable genius”, SoundEagle’s adage is that Trump is a fool’s idea of a genius. In addition, the POTUS has long slid from being a “Law and Order” President to a “Flaw and Border” President.
I have given a very stern and stark warning about what the end result will be in the final paragraph of my post entitled “Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic: Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity” at https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/misquotation-pandemic-and-disinformation-polemic-mind-pollution-by-viral-falsity/
I would be delighted if you could kindly submit a comment to my said article, as I am very keen and curious to know what you think or make of it.
By the way, I would like to wish you a very happy New Year. May you find 2021 very much to your liking and highly conducive to your writing, reading, thinking and blogging!
From a story about the republican terrorists storming the Capitol building.
Not stop them, not turn them away, an officer tried to help the republicans trying to stop the democratic process.
I feel your pain. It is very disturbing when the authorities stand by and allow lawlessness.
I felt the same way (I imagine) when our state and city authorities allowed the 3rd precinct to be burned down and stood by allowing riots, looting and arson. I felt the same way (I imagine) about the daily riots, arson and general lawlessness in Portland.
I did notice that the “republican terrorists” didn’t try to burn any buildings down. Although to be fair, I heard they did break a couple of windows and did kill a cop. I hope they catch and prosecute all the lawbreakers, just as I hoped the same for the worse actions which happened in Minnesota and Portland.
But that sick feeling in your stomach is the same feeling republican’s felt for most of 2020, as they watched antifa and blm rioting, occupying, burning and killing, while the authorities stood by and watched. Sucks doesn’t it!
rickA, your lies are getting more digusting than ever. I don’t know how stupid you have to be to continue claiming blm and antics are terrorist groups, but you are that stupid. It’s due to your racist core of course, but it’s still appalling. Your implication that the magats who stormed the Capitol building didn’t so anything bad is even worse – but then they were white, so naturally they are the good guys.
I doubt that you’re any different than the scum who tried to overturn the election results and were carrying the confederate flags and wearing “camp Auschwitz” shirts with slogan under the title that said the job wasn’t done. You just pretend to be different in an attempt to fool people. It is t working here.
RickA, you are so utterly deluded and clueless that you live in a parallel universe along with the rest of Trump’s white supremacist death cult and QAnon followers. That you have previously linked to pieces from out-and-out fanatic conspiracy ideation sites like the Gateway Pundit gives a lot away. Also, no need for you to put republican terrorists in quotations. That is exactly what that despicable mob of miscreants are. The big question is how people like you could vote for a deluded, sociopathic narcissist moron who is clearly mentally ill and who is in need of psychiatric treatment if not full institutionalization. This is not only my view – in 2017 twenty seven leading psychiatrists wrote a book in which they said that Donald Trump was clearly deranged, and much of what has transpired was eerily predicted by them. They said that he posed a serious threat to democracy, and in the case that he lost the election he would throw an epic temper tantrum, claim it was rigged, create untold havoc and incite his deluded base to be his army. All of this has come to pass. The media invoked the Goldwater rule to suppress the truth, and have played a role in normalizing this despicable man’s behavior throughout his abominable presidency, one he was clearly unfit to hold. You voted for this atrocity, a man who aimed to take the United States back to the era of Jim Crow, the disenfranchisement of minorities and the embracing of anti-science and absurd conspiracies, a sort of modern day Handmaid’s Tale.
Instead, you write on here with more of your pontificating and false dichotomies. If BLM or Antifa protesters had even attempted to climb the steps of the Capital building or scale the walls, they would have been greeted with a hail of bullets. There would have been utter carnage. They would not have been allowed anywhere near the entrance, let alone permitted to enter the building. In Trump’s America, neo Nazi’s, fascists, white supremacists and other human detritus are ‘patriots’ when they go on the rampage, trying the overthrow a free and fair election to reinstall their demi-God who is actually a demagogue.
Trump has left the republican party in ruins, aided and abetted in no small part by his despicable band of enablers like Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and the other spineless congressmen and senators anxious to co-opt some of the more fanatical part of Trump’s base for their own political ambitions. You obsess over BLM and Antifa who only exist because of a deeply rooted bigoted, racist mentality among the white majority that has been nurtured and incited by Trump over the past 5 years. You are blind to this reality. You seriously need to emerge from your intellectual slumber.
Well said, Jeff.
I don’t know why, but it seems that every time I read a conservative comment, not so much from those who are moderately conservative, but especially those on the far-right, it displays a combination of gullibility, stupidity or dishonesty. Global warming deniers are only a subset of these people; go to any blog where MAGA’s post and you end up either laughing out loud at some of the stupidity or you want to bang your head on the table in frustration if you try to argue with them. For four years they shouted “fake news” every time an article criticized Trump while at the same time they worshipped a pathological liar. Absolutely no self-awareness. Now they’re running with “fraudulent elections” meme even as none of Trump’s lawyers can produce any evidence of it. They’ve lost 60-0, even in front of conservative judges, but hey, if the Dear Leader says there’s fraud then there must be; using your brain is verbotten in the cult.
Here’s some stuff from the Wapo fact-checker exposing the bullshit about Antifa being largely responsible for the looting and violence during the BLM protests.
“A twitter account that claimed to be run by antifa activists and called for violence at the protests was later linked to the white nationalist group Identity Evropa. A viral May 27 tweet, from a popular QAnon account, alleged that the protests were an effort by the “deep state” to “start a race war before the election,” arguing “antifa & BLM are domestic terrorist organizations that need to be STOPPED.” Conservative media outlets and prominent Twitter influencers, including Donald Trump Jr., amplified the theory that antifa was connected to the violence.”
“There has not yet been a single confirmed case in which someone who self-identifies as antifa led violent acts at any of the protests across the country. The president and his administration have placed an outsize burden of blame on antifa, without waiting for arrest data and completed investigations.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-caused-violence-protests-its-not-antifa/
Re “You seriously need to emerge from your intellectual slumber.”
Good luck on that. Like the anti-evolution young-Earth creationists, the more facts are marshalled against their false and loony ideas, the more they double down on upholding them. How you govern a country with a large continent of such people enabled by an internet that allows nearly instant communication of false and even loony ideas and loony planning for civil war is a mystery to me. Because of our sadly lacking response to the pandemic, even if we wanted to say “F this S” and emigrate, no one wants us.
Excellent post, JP. Antifa and BLM are simply responses to the white supremacy death cult that Trump nurtured and invited since 2015. Not only are folks in Trump’s base utterly deluded (many were bleating about the center-right neoliberal Biden and his partially corporate administration being – shock! horror! – socialists or communists) but their lives hinge on every word uttered by a clearly unhinged Trump. They also are unable to do simple math. If one goes through the results of every deep red state, and compare them with 2016, they would find than in at least 8 out of 10 of these states that Biden perfomed better than Clinton. In other words, gaps of i.e. 20% were reduced to 16-18% and so on. Thus, there was a swing of typically between 1 and 5% from deep red states to Biden, even though they were still heavily Republican. Now compare that with the fringe/marginal red states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which Trump won by less than 0.5% in 2016. In keeping with the national swing of 1 to 5% to Biden, this would mean that the fringe red states would become marginal blue states by between 0.5 and 4% or thereabouts. Exactly which is what happened. It is perfectly logical. Despite this, Trump and his cult expect us all to believe that his support waned across most states but that somehow he dramatically increased his majority in the swing states? The only explanation they could posit but never did was that somehow the Democrats and their enablers rigged the voting system in every single state, despite still losing heavily in the deep red ones. The more plausible and of course correct interpretation is that the election was totally free and fair and that Trump is a mentally ill man who has cried wolf throughout his life whenever he has not gotten his own way. This is a clear manifestation of his deeply rooted malignant sociopathic narcissism. It was he himself who initiated the cry of ‘it’s rigged!!!!!!’ the day after the election, and his anti-democratic cult swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Seeing the potential to co-opt Trump’s base, much of the Republican party immediately jumped on board, despite damned well knowing that they lost. The whole lot of these seditionists should be booted out of government along with the hideous orange reptile.
One could see throughout the campaign that Trump did not take the election at all seriously. He was irritable in his first debate with Biden, whom he loathes, and the impression he constantly gave was that the election was a farce because, like a king, he had the divine right to be POTUS. What do we need elections for? His base opined for Trump to be installed as dictator-for-life, and he was egged on by the quasi-fascist media (OANN, Newsmax, with Fox doing its best to keep up).
Trump is a very sick man in his head. The next 10 days are going to be very dangerous ones for the US and for the world unless he can be removed from power asap. The fact that 74 million Americans voted for this monster of a human being is for me the most terrifying thing. By far the worst POTUS in US history, who summarily ravaged and destroyed institutions and federal agencies and whose operatives gutted one humane program after another, these people were still content to give this despicable person another four years. It boggles the mind.
“the election was totally free and fair.”
I wouldn’t go that far. While I’m confident that there was no cheating from the Democrat side (confirmed by the fact that Trump and his team can’t find any evidence of systemic fraud despite all his resources and motivation to do so), I can’t say the same thing for the Republicans. Here’s some interesting stuff from Alternet.org.
“Voting results in three states that saw surprising majorities by vulnerable incumbent Republican senators—Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina—were almost all tabulated on ES&S machines.
Trump and his inept legal team have barely mentioned ES&S, focusing almost exclusively on Dominion Voting Systems.
Team Trump has been so vigorous in going after Dominion that it prompted us to look into how ES&S operates. What we have found so far is far from comforting.
• Owned by a private equity firm, ES&S has been elusive about identifying the people in its ownership.
• A number of ES&S executives and lobbyists have ties to top GOP election officials and politicians.
• The ES&S executive in charge of the security previously worked in the Trump administration as a government executive at Health and Human Services before leaving under a cloud.
• Forty of the 50 states use ES&S to cast & count some of their votes.
Of the 25 states Trump won, all but 3 either partially or fully relied on ES&S machines. The states where Trump won that didn’t use ES&S machines were Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Alaska.”
https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/voting-2020/
What if everyone’s been conned by a classic conman’s sleight of hand? While all the focus has been on the accusations of fraud in the states that he lost and the attendant counts and recounts, and the false accusations against the Dominion voting machines, no one’s paid attention or given any thought, at least from the part of the media (except Alternet), to what went on in the states that Republicans won or scrutinized those ES&S voting machines. I mean, it’s hardly far-fetched to think that he, a totally dishonest character, and his toadies in the GOP would try to cheat if they have the opportunity to do so.
Hey, Jeff; with your environmental/ecological expertise and interest in corporate malfeasance, I don’t know if you’ve read these two articles but I think they would be right up your alley.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2021/01/06/special-report-explosive-documents-reveal-bp-behind-toxic-mauritius-oil-spill/?sh=7766cb601dda
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/12/21/shipping-gate-why-toxic-vlsfo-fuel-is-such-a-danger-for-global-shipping/?sh=f1416da78fd2
Towards the end of the first article, it say: “The Wakashio is opening the world’s eyes to the extent of industry collusion, human rights abuse and corruption that continues to be prevalent in the oil and shipping industries, and involve some of the most powerful organizations in the world.”
If only that were true. I doubt very much if many people are even aware of the oil spill off Mauritius, let alone the issues surrounding it _ the problems with BP’s VLSFO (very low sulfur fuel oil), the corruption, cover-up, and lack of cooperation on the part of those involved. This scandal needs a 60 Minutes exposé. Everyone’s been pre-occupied with the corona virus and now Trump and his cult’s attempted insurrection, but this has the potential to be huge.
RickA I suggest that you change your information feeds and pay less attention to the sewers of disinformation only by doing so can you rectify your delusions (and stop opining out of your rectum).
Notice how many high profile Republicans are back peddling frantically as they try to rehabilitate their reputations. Your latest guff indicates that you are too far gone to be able to achieve that.
You have been duped into supporting an enemy of the USA, one more treacherous than many of the spies who have been executed and or imprisoned for life. Trump should soon be wearing clothes to match his skin colour. You claim that you support the law and yet have managed to defend the actions of one who has only escaped prosecution because of the office he held and which he has thoroughly besmirched.
How do you manage to look at yourself in the mirror?
How you have been duped:
How Our Info-Ecosystem Was Poisoned
Rush Limbaugh to Tucker Carlson and all of Trump’s men.
RickA’s stance:
Republican outrage at US Capitol breach – cartoon
JP, I stand corrected. Trump and his goons did everything to impede mail-in voting and voting using drop-off boxes, knowing that both methods would garner far more Democrat than Republican votes. Heck, let’s call it what it is: cheating. The Republifascists hate democracy because they are addicted to power. So they cheat. As I said earlier, Trump appeared irritable during the entire election cycle, because he and his cultists thought an election for the divinely self-annointed monarch was unnecessary. In other words, Trump believed that there was no right for anyone to challenge him and that attendance at his infectathon rallies was sufficient to prove his right to be President. It is utterly ridiculous, but I have seen plenty of Trumpists use this argument – or claim that because he had more followers on Twitter than Biden, this proved that he won the election. What next? Sales of MAGA hats? Fuck your feelings t-shirts? These are the Trump cult metrics.
Despite Republican shenanigans, the hideous orange reptile lost and lost decisively. Irrespective as to the scale of his defeat, Trump was ALWAYS going to claim the election was ‘rigged’ if he lost. He has spent his entire life claiming the system was rigged against him whenever he lost. He is not only a sore loser, he is mentally ill. Unhinged. Deranged. Call it whatever. Trump imho needs psychiatric treatment.
In 10 days the national nightmare ends. However, Trump has inflicted such deep damage on federal agencies and institutions that it may take years, even decades, to repair.
Well posted again Jef:
And Raffensperger is far from a champion of democracy given his actions as revealed here by “Greg Palast
Chris Winter your posts are also timely and show how RickA’s claims about antifa and Republican terrorists not burning down buildings, a crafty claim given that fire is not required to cause chaos and damage wrought by such entities and clearly visible in the video posted.
Well posted again Jef:
And Raffensperger is far from a champion of democracy given his actions as revealed here by “Greg Palast
Chris Winter your posts are also timely and show how RickA’s claims about antifa and Republican terrorists not burning down buildings, a crafty claim given that fire is not required to cause the chaos and damage wrought by such entities and clearly visible in the video posted.
At least there are some paybacks for these right wing shitstains rickA loves. This guy is one of the terrorists that stormed the Capitol.
https://twitter.com/RayRedacted/status/1348388601118273537?s=01
Some of you will have seen this. It reveals new information about the Capitol breach, and includes some disturbing scenes. The main point is that there were apparently a number of off-duty police and ex-military in the mob.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhjRXO72v1s
Here’s evidence that Antifa was not involved in the Capitol insurrection of 6 January 2021:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/07/no-theres-no-substantive-evidence-that-capitol-riot-was-spurred-by-antifa/
The New York Times reported on a man who traveled to Washington, DC with an assault rifle and other weapons. He had threatened Speaker Pelosi and said he would put “a bullet in her noggin on Live TV.”
He is one of a number of people (more than 50, IIRC) already facing charges from this event. That number is certain to grow.
Many Are Getting Arrested
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/pelosi-cleveland-grover-meredith.html
Lastly, Trump’s worshippers have a nickname for him: GEOTUS — God Emperor of the United States.
Conservapedia confirms this. Check out the picture that goes with the article.
https://www.conservapedia.com/GEOTUS
Aaaah Conservapedia, the place where (“the man” refers to Andy Schlafly, son of the infamous orange-juice tinged anti-gay bigot)
– the man behind it, allegedly an electrical engineer, posted an “argument” that complex numbers weren’t useful and aren’t needed
– the man behind it argued, and may still argue, that proof by contradiction isn’t valid and “no true mathematician uses it”
– tried to argue that relativity was a hoax. His brother attempted a defense but wouldn’t say Einstein’s formulation was correct because “Einstein was a jew”
That isn’t even mentioning the “2008 massacre” in which one of schlafly’s “editors”, Ed Poor, went on a rampage and mutilated most of the already rare accurate discussions of math and physics. The place is designed for the low IQ right wing folk — it’s probably where rickA and mikeN get their information.
I’m not surprised they have an unhinged tribute to the insurrectionist in the White House.
An excellent summation and timeline.
https://billmoyers.com/story/insurrection-timeline-first-the-coup-and-then-the-cover-up-updated/
So today, after inciting the riot and gleefully watching it unfold on TV, Trump released a video that included this great statement:
“But I cannot emphasize that there must be no violence, no lawbreaking, and no vandalism of any kind.”
Right — he cannot emphasize that; it would make him look weak. /sarc
Trump went ahead with rallying his Muppet army in spite of being aware it was illegal.
Insider: White House was Warned March was Illegal
Trump’s Call to March Broke Organizer’s Promise to DC Police
Re “. . . the Metro police were stunned, undermanned and unprepared for Trump’s surprise launch of thousands of his enraged Trump supporters, some armed, on the Capitol.”
Then they must not have been paying attention to the last four years of Trump’s tens of thousands of lies and near constant fomenting of as much division and trouble in the nation as he could. It is more likely that there were/are Trump stooges in place within the command structure that were told to make sure no unsettling warnings circulated and no preparations were made.
I believe that is under investigation now, along with possible aid to the perps provided by active and/or past military and police, and even Republicans in Congress.
Right wing extremism tracked on social media:
Extremism experts warned that the anti-government movement was planning attacks online. Why didn’t Facebook act?
ISTR reading somewhere that Zuckerberg was sympathetic to Trump, and here it is:
Will Zuckerberg dump Trump, or continue to serve him?
Re “. . . it’s hardly far-fetched to think that he, a totally dishonest character, and his toadies in the GOP would try to cheat if they have the opportunity to do so.”
I’m glad you brought that up. Ever since the Malignant Moron still infesting the W. H. has been charging, without real evidence of course, that the election he “won in a landslide” was “stolen from him” I’ve thought that:
(1) If there was any significant amount of fraud involved, it is way more likely to have been Republicans doing it than Democrats. Democrats just need to turn out the vote; the modern Republican Party is a minority party — just look at the racists, neoconfederates, Qanoners, boogalooers, and other wackos who make up the MM’s cheering base these days.
And (2) Trump and Republicans in general do a lot of psychological projection of their thoughts, motivations, and aims on their perceived enemies. It’s been a useful tip-off.
Well, the white trash is out of the White House. The scumbag ex president did weasel in a few more million government dollars for extended Secret Service protection for some of his extended family. We can only hope Biden cancels the parts that aren’t needed.
A couple take-aways.
– I’d always thought that (no particular order here) LBJ, Nixon, and Reagan would be the both the worst people to hold the office and the worst at performing their jobs as president I’d ever see in my life. The last four years have shown how massively ignorant that thought was — the first year of trump’s presidency convinced me of that. He rocketed past those other three
– Today means that G. W. Bush is no longer the worst living former-president