2020 Election results

[Sue U]

OK, I'll say it: Ashli Babbit did not deserve to be shot and killed. Although she was clearly part of a violent mob bent on rioting and destruction of government property (at a minimum), she was not posing any danger to the life or limb of anyone at the time of her shooting. Use of deadly force was absolutely unjustified. No one's life should be forfeit -- especially in such a summary manner -- for property crimes. That goes for looters of businesses during the BLM protests as well.

The Capitol Police were wholly unprepared for this onslaught (to the extent they were not outright complicit). That is inexcusable, and is properly the subject of an investigation leading to disciplinary action at all levels.

And Meade, as to your allegations of "some" (but you don't remember who) being "outraged" and raising "a chorus of fie upon your house," you might do well to consult the actual record:

[...] When I see "protestors" burning down businesses, I don't need the conspiracy nutcases to point fingers at "Black Muslim Socialism" (that's quite good) to know where the arrests should be directed. A desire for law'norder is not anti-Contsitutional.

MGM, you and I are in agreement that our priorities include:

building a strong economy with equal opportunity. Police reform. Health care. Engagement with the world. It also requires strength - zero tolerance for rioters, street-occupations and right militias. Much stronger gun control.

How is any of that "wanting America to become a radical left playground"? I have additional priorities, including preserving the habitability of the planet, rehabilitating infrastructure, and expanding access to higher education. Do any of these make America a "radical left playground"? I also think the super-rich and large corporations should actually pay taxes, and in a greater share than do the less well-off and real people who are not legal fictions. Is any of that "radical left"? The fact that such ordinary policy widely implemented in the rest of the civilized world can be characterized as "wanting America to become a radical left playground" is direct evidence of brain-washing by right-wing scum. And BTW, a desire for Lawn Order is precisely what the BLM protestors are expressing: is it too much to ask that police not murder black people with impunity? As for "rioters," they are a tiny contingent -- some of them right-wing provocateurs -- using the cover of mass demonstrations for violence and destruction. I'm against that, too -- regardless of whether I may think that property is theft.

[BoSoxGal]

I’m a bit stunned by that position, Sue.

A violent mob of people, some visibly armed and all the rest indeterminate because they didn’t get any screening by security are attempting to enter the speaker’s lobby which is the last small space between this mob and the Congresspersons and staffers who are in the House chamber with nothing but a few armed Capitol police to protect them - they most certainly posed an imminent danger to the life and limb of those on the other side of that door. Her backpack could’ve been full of explosives or guns or chemical agents, who knows what. I 100% support that use of force, it wasn’t in defense of property, it was in defense of lives.

[Sue U]

The video evidence appears to show she was shot from behind. There appears to be no one on the other side of the doors/window. Whatever may or may not have been in her backpack, she was not attempting to access it nor was she actually menacing anyone. Everyone on the other side of the doorway could (and did) safely retreat from the scene without injury.

Let me be clear: I would have been fine if Ashli Babbitt had been arrested, tried and convicted of sedition and insurrection, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. I am not okay with anyone's summary execution.

[BoSoxGal]

Not true. Have you actually watched the videos? Trying to grasp how you could think she was shot from behind, it’s all plain as day on the videos I’ve watched.

With help from someone who hoisted her up, Babbitt began to step through a portion of the door where the glass had been broken out. An officer on the other side, who was wearing a suit and a surgical mask, immediately shot Babbitt in the neck. She fell to the floor.

Video shows fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt in the Capitol

She was propelling herself through the door and was shot face to face by a Capitol police officer who was protecting numerous duly elected legislators standing mere feet away. Her comrades were shouting ‘gun!’ ‘gun!’ - she was duly warned to back away.

She is no victim, except of her delusions.

[Sue U]

Ok, I was wrong about the direction from which the shot was fired. However, the video clearly shows no one was in actual danger. There were police on the mob side of the doors preventing entry while legislators were evacuated. They then walked away from their post allowing the rioters free access to smash through the doors -- presumably because legislative personnel had been lead to safety. I still do not believe deadly force was justified at that point. No one was reasonably "in fear for his life," as the exculpatory mantra goes.

[MajGenl.Meade]

And Meade, as to your allegations of "some" (but you don't remember who) being "outraged" and raising "a chorus of fie upon your house," you might do well to consult the actual record etc etc

I'm not sure of your point here. Did you think I meant you? I don't think it was. At any rate, that wasn't the record to which I referred

Some one or more sharply criticizing someone else (maybe not me) for wanting people involved in/attached to/coat-tailing on leftist demos setting fire to property, assaulting police lines and trying to take over Federal property should be shot. I think the theory was that if one is shot for doing that, the others will run away and think twice next time.

I say again, some who think it wrong to pot a violent leftist are revealed here as applauding when it's a violent rightist who goes down to a gun. I tend to think that's hypocritical (and that both may earn it by their actions).

[Econoline]

Well, when an attack occurs in the nation's capitol, *INSIDE* what is arguably the nation's most important government building, while a joint session of Congress is meeting to conclude an important, constitutionally-required, quadrennial responsibility to the republic...
I personally think that that can and should be perceived as way more distressing than breaking some windows in some courthouse in a city with a population of less than a million, located almost 3000 miles away, on the opposite side of the continent. But maybe that's just me.

[ex-khobar Andy]

I don't like it when anyone is shot: but frankly I am surprised that so few died. We've seen police kill people for much much less. I am relieved that 'only' five people died, and at least according to first reports, three of these were medical incidents, not homicide per se. Had there been a massacre - dozens of deaths - the police would have been claiming with some merit that they thought their lives to be in danger and their first and loudest defenders would have been mainly those among the rioters.

The head of the Capitol police and the two Sergeants-at-Arms (House and Senate) have resigned. But for their relative forbearance, this could have been far, far, worse. I don't condemn their actions once the barbarians were at the gate: but of course they never should have been allowed that far.

[Burning Petard]

I don't condemn their actions once the barbarians were at the gate: but of course they never should have been allowed that far.

How were they to be "not allowed"? The guards present were not equipped for a riot. The DC National Guard is under direct command of POTUS. The DC
police are excluded from any jurisdiction at the Capital. There was a massive failure at the management of the capital police, when they chose to NOT prepare for a riot, contrary to the advise of the DC mayor.

snailgate

[Burning Petard]

Personally, I advocate the Capital police be equipped with one of the many short versions of 12ga shotguns, loaded with #7 birdshot and fired at knee level.

snailgate

[Guinevere]

The Pentagon limited the ability of the DC Mayor to respond appropriately and support the Capitol Police.

When Capitol Police requested aid early Wednesday afternoon, the request was denied. Defense officials held back the National Guard for about three hours before sending it to support the Capitol Police. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, tried repeatedly to send his state’s National Guard, but the Pentagon would not authorize it. Virginia’s National Guard was mobilized when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the governor, Ralph Northam, herself

It was ultimately Pence, not Trump, who apparently authorized/ordered DOD to release the Guard.

Trump’s appointees intended for this to happen, the way it did.

There is nothing to be relieved about. Once again, white people were given a privilege that would never have been allowed to happen to brown and black people.

[BoSoxGal]

That’s all true, but also true is that when the Pentagon offered in advance for national guard to be on site to assist Capitol police on the date, the Capitol police refused it. Presently saying they were concerned about optics. No good explanation has been offered for why the Capitol police also rejected the FBI’s offer to send bodies once the insurrection had begun.

Methinks something very stinky is going to be uncovered in the after action on now resigned Capitol police leadership.

[Guinevere]

More details, and more insurrection brewing, per Heather Cox Richardson, yesterday:

January 8, 2021 (Friday)

More information continues to emerge about the events of Wednesday. They point to a broader conspiracy than it first appeared. Calls for Trump’s removal from office are growing. The Republican Party is tearing apart. Power in the nation is shifting almost by the minute.

[Please note that information from the January 6 riot is changing almost hourly, and it is virtually certain that something I have written will be incorrect. I have tried to stay exactly on what we know to be facts, but those could change.]

More footage from inside the attack on the Capitol is coming out and it is horrific. Blood on statues and feces spread through the building are vile; mob attacks on police officers are bone-chilling.

Reuters photographer Jim Bourg, who was inside the building, told reporters he overheard three rioters in “Make America Great Again” caps plotting to find Vice President Mike Pence and hang him as a “traitor”; other insurrectionists were shouting the same. Pictures have emerged of one of the rioters in military gear carrying flex cuffs—handcuffs made of zip ties—suggesting he was planning to take prisoners. Two lawmakers have suggested the rioters knew how to find obscure offices.

New scrutiny of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally before the attack shows Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL), Don Jr., and Trump himself urging the crowd to go to the Capitol and fight. Trump warned that Pence was not doing what he needed to. Trump promised to lead them to the Capitol himself.

There are also questions about law enforcement. While exactly what happened remains unclear, it has emerged that the Pentagon limited the Washington D.C. National Guard to managing traffic. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser requested support before Trump’s rally, but the Department of Defense said that the National Guard could not have ammunition or riot gear, interact with protesters except in self-defense, or otherwise function in a protective capacity without the explicit permission of acting Secretary Christopher Miller, whom Trump put into office shortly after the election after firing Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

When Capitol Police requested aid early Wednesday afternoon, the request was denied. Defense officials held back the National Guard for about three hours before sending it to support the Capitol Police. Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, tried repeatedly to send his state’s National Guard, but the Pentagon would not authorize it. Virginia’s National Guard was mobilized when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the governor, Ralph Northam, herself.

Defense officials said they were sensitive to the criticism they received in June when federal troops cleared Lafayette Square of peaceful protesters so Trump could walk across it. But it sounds like there might be a personal angle: Bowser was harshly critical of Trump then, and it would be like him to take revenge on her by denying help when it was imperative.

Refusing to stop the attack on the Capitol might have been more nefarious, though. A White House adviser told New York Magazine’s Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi that Trump was watching television coverage of the siege and was enthusiastic, although he didn’t like that the rioters looked “low class.” While the insurrectionists were in the Capitol, he tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” Even as lawmakers were under siege, both Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani were making phone calls to brand-new Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) urging him to slow down the electoral count.

After Trump on Wednesday night tweeted that there would be an “orderly” transition of power, on Thursday he began again to urge on his supporters.

With the details and the potential depth of this event becoming clearer over the past two days—Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Virginia, tweeted her support, and state lawmakers as well as Republican attorneys general were actually involved—Americans are recoiling from how bad this attempted coup was… and how much worse it could have been. The crazed rioters were terrifyingly close to our elected representatives, all gathered together on that special day, and they were actively talking about harming the vice president.

By Friday night, 57% of Americans told Reuters they wanted Trump removed from office immediately. Nearly 70% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s actions before the riot. Only 12% of Americans approved of the rioters; 79% of Americans described the rioters as “criminals” or “fools.” Five percent called them “patriots.”

Pelosi tonight said that she hoped the president would resign, but if not, the House of Representatives will move forward with impeachment on Monday, as well as with legislation to enable Congress to remove Trump under the 25th Amendment. The most recent draft of the impeachment resolution has just one article: “incitement of insurrection.” As a privileged resolution, it can go directly to the House without committee approval.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has no interest in further splitting the Republicans over another impeachment, or forcing them onto the record as either for or against it. Timing is on his side: the Senate is not in session for substantive business until January 19, so cannot act on an impeachment resolution without the approval of all senators. It can take up the resolution then, but more likely it will wait until Biden is sworn in, at which point the measure would be managed not by McConnell, but by the new House majority leader, Chuck Schumer (D-NY). A trial can indeed take place after Trump is no longer president, enabling Congress to make sure he can never again hold office.

Whether or not the Senate would convict is unclear, but it’s not impossible. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), for one, is so furious she is talking of switching parties. “I want him out,” she says. Still, Trump supporters are now insisting that it would “further divide the country” to try to remove Trump now, and that we need to unify. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who led the Senate effort to challenge Biden’s election, today tweeted that Biden was not working hard enough to “bring us together or promote healing” and that “vicious partisan rhetoric only tears our country apart.”

Trump, meanwhile, has continued to agitate his followers, and today began to call for more resistance, while users on Parler, the new right-wing social media hangout, are talking of another, bigger attack on Washington.

Tonight, Twitter banned Trump, stating: “we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” As evidence, it cited both his claim that his supporters would “have a GIANT VOICE long into the future,” and his tweet that he would not be going to Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Twitter says that Trump’s followers see these two new tweets as proof that the election was invalid and that the Inauguration is a good target, since he won’t be there. The Twitter moderators say that “plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.”

Twitter also took down popular QAnon accounts, including those of Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his former lawyer Sidney Powell, who is having quite a bad day: the company that makes election machines, Dominion Voting Systems, announced it is suing her for defamation and asking $1.3 billion in damages. After taking down 7,000 QAnon accounts in July, Twitter continued by today taking down the account of the man who hosts the posts from “Q.”

While Twitter officials might well be horrified by the insurrection, the ban is also a sign of a changing government. With the election of two Democratic senators from Georgia this week, the majority goes to the Democrats, and McConnell will no longer be Majority Leader, killing bills. Social media giants know regulation of some sort is around the corner, and they are trying to look compliant fast. When Twitter banned Trump, so did Reddit, and Facebook and Instagram already had. Google Play Store removed Parler, warning it to clean up its content moderation.

Trump evidently couldn’t stand the Twitter ban, and tried at least five different accounts to get back onto the platform. He and his supporters are howling that he is being silenced by big tech, but of course he has an entire press corps he could use whenever he wished. Losing his access to Twitter simply cuts off his ability to drum up both support and money by lying to his supporters. Another platform that has dumped Trump is one of those that handled his emails. The San Francisco correspondent of the Financial Times, Dave Lee, noted that for more than 48 hours there had been no Trump emails: in the previous six days he sent out 33.

This has been a horrific week. If it has a silver lining, it is that the lines are now clear between our democracy and its enemies. The election in Georgia, which swung the Senate away from the Republicans and opens up some avenues to slow down misinformation, is a momentous victory.

[BoSoxGal]

Ok, I was wrong about the direction from which the shot was fired. However, the video clearly shows no one was in actual danger. There were police on the mob side of the doors preventing entry while legislators were evacuated. They then walked away from their post allowing the rioters free access to smash through the doors -- presumably because legislative personnel had been lead to safety. I still do not believe deadly force was justified at that point. No one was reasonably "in fear for his life," as the exculpatory mantra goes.

I count it evidence of my keen intellect that I agree with your positions here 95% of the time, but again on this point I think you are very wrong. I understand that you are largely a pacifist and I respect that, but there are times when lethal force is justified and this was one of those times.

Again, this was a violent mob - all the USCP officers on duty were hearing the radio reports of their colleagues outside and throughout the building who were being stalked, physically assaulted, and hearing the chants of the mob (some visibly armed) to find and kill Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi. This woman, her face contorted in uncontrollable rage, was launching herself through the door with a backpack on her that could have been filled with explosives or firearms or chemical weapons, despite being told over and over and over by the officers behind the door to stand down. She’s clearly irrational and dangerous. Dozens of House members were still trapped just down the short hall in the House chamber while evacuation through the only remaining exit was proceeding - allowing her into the hallway could have resulted in more deaths and destruction if she’d been carrying any such weapons in her pack. Better her dead than any innocents inside who were not engaged in multiple felonies, as she was.

I tend to think that if any one of us had been one of the legislators or staffers trapped at the end of that short hallway, we wouldn’t be second guessing the USCP officer’s decision to neutralize the threat.

[Bicycle Bill]

Personally, I advocate the Capital police be equipped with one of the many short versions of 12ga shotguns, loaded with #7 birdshot and fired at knee level.

snailgate

Maybe something like this??



-"BB"-

[BoSoxGal]

Just to add to the record of what’s coming out about the violent insurrection - and incidents like this were being heard on the radio channels by other USCP, I’m sure - here’s the law and order, blue lives matter MAGAt crowd beating a USCP officer as they storm the Capitol.