DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Who should be held accountable for the attempted coup in DC?

I heard on the radio today that 68 people had been arrested so far.(this was at about noon).

Also read an article sometime this morning that charges of sedition could be forthcoming - I believe max term is 20 years in prison.

I say "good".

I have many other thoughts/questions/theories on much more about this incident, and similar ones from this summer. I won't go into them.

I think Ezra Klein (who had an amazing article today that everybody should read) summed up my issue with this stance very clearly, so I'll just repost these tweets. It is worth clicking and reading the whole thread:

That's a complicated question. If in fact all involved are not held to the fire, it will be an open door for such things to repeat themselves. So at first glance it would indicate all involved should be held to the law.

And when it comes to those who actually stormed the Capital building I can think of no other path to travel.

When it comes to the politicians involved who lit the match and fueled this fire over the past five years, it becomes a little more complicated for me. My gut reaction is to make them pay the same cost as those who actually stormed the capital. For without them none of this would have happened.

Yet at the same time I understand that this may fan the flames even higher. So my only conclusion at the moment is to allow those with the power and knowledge to take the steps they see as what the law demands. Biden announced that Merrick Garland will be the head of the DOJ. I don't believe that Biden should ask him about any plans to investigate the politicians involved. I don't think Biden should give him any advice or opinion on the matter either. The DOJ works for the people and justice, not for a president or political party.

If state and federal investigations, charges or trials result from this, then I would say that I would support that. If none of those things happen I can understand that.

As I said, I consider this a very complicated issue. With everything that happened yesterday I can't say that I've processed it all enough to give you a definitive answer at this time.

Trump, Rudy, and Jr. all roused up that crowd. They should be first to be charged. Then each and every one of the people that breached the capitol building should be hunted down and charged. In an ideal world this is what should happen, but I would settle for the immediate removal of Trump for now. Then we need to figure out how to reach the indoctrinated Trump followers without causing more damage, undo the programming somehow, and restore their faith in America.

OR we can continue to escalate the situation and divides, then eventually fight another civil war on every street in America. I think the correct choice is obvious.

As with the riots this summer, many arrests came after they occurred. In this day and age, with the faces of people all over social media and people simply knowing who they are, it makes it much easier to find and arrest them after the fact.

I expect many more arrests in the coming days.

Yep...100% on trump and his supporters. If you’re still a trump supporter you can’t possibly be considered a patriot. You are a tyrant.

Thank you for posting that and the previous poster who also mentioned it. I did not know.

I just wonder how many of you genius lefties still want to defund the po lice? I didn't see Pelosi and AOC refusing police protection. I don't know if Liberals are idiots or just hypocrites,

Why I Am Resigning After Stabbing 97 People for Donald Trump

Today I stand up and say: No more. I hereby resign my position as deputy assistant undersecretary for stabbing.

https://theintercept.com/2021/01/07/trump-administration-resignations/

And....Is there any doubt trump is a racist?

This.

Again, this is your contribution to this thread?

After being told over and over and over again what that actually means, are you telling me you still don't understand it?

You've been shown how much the police already spend on dealing with the mentally ill. So you think taking the money they already spend on dealing with the mentally ill wouldn't be better spent giving that same money to mental healthcare professionals to deal withe the mentally ill?

The left did a horrible job of labeling this but what it actually means isn't that complicated. Police are spending a lot of money on things they aren't equipped to deal with. Like the homeless and mentally ill. If that same money were given to people trained to deal with it, they wouldn't need that money and the people of the city would be better served.

That's what it means. For like the 50th time now.

j/c

y'all are entering into a debate with a troll expecting honest and forthright debate?

and what else were they planning.
rudy left a message on a phone yesterday for Tommy Tuberville (senator) AFTER what happened at the capitol -but he left the message on the wrong phone-and the message got released today. What else was going to happen. Really trying to pull off a coup?

Senator Tuberville? Or I should say Coach Tuberville. This is Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer. I'm calling you because I want to discuss with you how they're trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you. And I know they're reconvening at 8 tonight, but it ... the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow"ideally until the end of tomorrow.
I know McConnell is doing everything he can to rush it, which is kind of a kick in the head because it's one thing to oppose us, it's another thing not to give us a fair opportunity to contest it. And he wants to try to get it down to only three states that we contest. But there are 10 states that we contest, not three. So if you could object to every state and, along with a congressman, get a hearing for every state, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote, particularly after what McConnell did today. It angered them, because they have written letters asking that you guys adjourn and send them back the questionable ones and they'll fix them up.
So, this phone number, I'm available on all night, and it would be an honor to talk to you. Thank you.

For years, he's needed a clue...
... wrapped around a brick.

That was by far the most presidential speech he’s ever given. It only took him 3 years and 352 days.
Bye don.

I think a certain segment of society wants a person who exhibits very strong and confident leadership. Unfortunately, those people often come in a package of an arrogant and narcissistic person. Trump is that, and then some. It’s also dangerous.

His supporters will actually overlook anything he does, and excuse it, because he tells them he’s fighting for them. The rationalizations are bizarre at this point.

Real leaders do not divide, they unite. They inspire. They do not, ever, incite violence against their own people for political gain.


Please let these two weeks pass quickly, and let people actually look into their hearts and decide what kind of country they want to live in going forward.

He lied within 16 seconds ... is that what you mean?

There was no "immediate" deployment ... and the reports I read after the NG were deployed, was that it was PENCE that deployed them.

Fake. Fake. Fake. You can tell it's fake coz his lips are moving.

I’m just saying, in the grand scheme, it was pretty average. He started out with a lie but he didn’t call himself the greatest president, or call the media fake, or make fun of a physically disabled person... these are wins for this ghoul... er... soon to be ex president.

Now that he is going out he wants unity? We dont need to hear it from him he doesnt know what it means. Biden will provide the unity and doesnt need trump to tell him to do something trump is incapable of. He read that speech, he didnt write it and he doesnt believe most of it for a second. He said what they told him to say. The real trump spoke his thoughts yesterday.

You may have a point.

The counterpoint is now the left wants unity after attacking Trump for over 4 years.

Trump's gone. Let's move on........to unity as 1 side sees it.

I'm now seeing at least one report that the Capitol Hill Police Officer is in critical condition -- but has not died.

Hopefully that is true.

Now see- that was a different set of circumstances. Back then, we needed that show of force to be (read: feel) safe. And we were, because those people were peaceful. All the proof you need- no black or brown people attacked Abraham Lincoln's statue that day (how rich is this irony?).

________________

As for yesterday, it wasn't really a coup. You see, it's only a coup if it comes from the coup d'état region of France.
What you saw yesterday was just sparkling white terrorism.
You know- domestic product.

Big differences here.

Let's try to stay up on the complexities of hypocrisy.

Man you out did yourself!

On Far-Right Websites, Plans To Storm Capitol Were Made In Plain Sight

The mob violence that descended on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday was the culmination of weeks of incendiary rhetoric and increasingly feverish planning – much of which took place openly on websites that cater to far-right conspiracy theorists.

Jared Holt spends a lot of time on those websites. He's a visiting research fellow with the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, where he's been focused on extremist online activity.

Since November's election, Holt has seen websites like Parler, Gab, TheDonald, and MeWe fill with torrents of "conspiracy theories, disinformation and outright lies about the results of the election," he says. "And those lies often came from the top arbiters of power in the Republican Party, notably President Donald Trump himself."

The day's events brought unprecedented traffic to some niche sites. The CEO of Gab, Andrew Torba, said that the site's traffic was up 40% on Wednesday.

More than 80% of the top posts on TheDonald on Wednesday about the Electoral College certification featured calls for violence in the top five responses, according to research from Advance Democracy, Inc., an independent, non-partisan organization.

And it wasn't just fringe websites. On Twitter, ADI found more than 1,480 posts from QAnon-related accounts about Jan. 6 that contained terms of violence since Jan. 1. On TikTok, videos promoting violence garnered hundreds of thousands of views.

On sites both fringe and mainstream, plans for violence

Trump's claims have fueled increasingly heated rhetoric since the election, Holt says – spiking in the last couple of weeks as Trump doubled down on conspiracy theories like the false and unfounded notion that a company that makes electronic voting systems had deleted votes for Trump.

"Then it really, really went nuts," Holt says. After Trump promoted a Jan. 6 protest in D.C., "a lot of his extremist supporters interpreted this as a call to action for them."

Holt and his colleagues saw fringe social media sites fill with messages organizing logistics for that date, as well as activation of anti-government extremists like militia groups, conspiracy theorists, and white nationalist activists "on a scale and volume that we haven't seen at any other point during the electoral process this cycle."

As it became clear over the last week that Vice President Pence was not necessarily going to somehow overturn the results of the election, Holt says the discussion on the right-wing extremist sites turned to taking matters into their own hands.

On forum boards like TheDonald and antigovernment and militia movement group chats, those conversations included plans to surround the Capitol on all sides, alongside maps of the U.S. Capitol complex marked with locations of tunnels and entry points. "And there was discussion specifically of overwhelming police with large crowds and doing that in order to violate laws against carrying weapons and against entering federal buildings," Holt says.

There wasn't a specific time or a formal plan, "but the discussions to do exactly what we saw [Wednesday] ... this was an idea that was fomenting and spreading and shared approvingly between users in these extremist communities that we've been watching."

There was also much discussion on such forums about ways to find and attack Black Lives Matter and antifascist protesters, Holt says. But on Wednesday, those groups largely stayed home. That may have shifted Trump supporters' focus to its eventual target, Holt suggests: "Perhaps the lack of a counterprotest to receive the violence that all these supporters were so ready to unleash meant that that energy instead was directed at the federal government."

'Maybe it'll happen — probably not. And then it all happened.'

Holt says that even though he was closely monitoring the conversations happening on fringe right-wing sites, he was still taken aback when the overheated rhetoric turned into violent reality.

"I was surprised," he says. "One of the challenges of doing the line of work that I do is these are extremist communities and the rhetoric is extreme just all the time. It got really, really intense running up to the protest, but oftentimes the ratio of extreme rhetoric to extreme action — there is a little bit of difference there."

But this time, that rhetoric translated into violent action.

Holt says in the preceding days, he had spoken with others about what he was seeing being planned on these extremist sites. "I was like, well, they're talking about doing X, Y, Z. And, you know, maybe it'll happen — probably not. And then it all happened."

So what was different this time — why did the bluster turn into a violent attack?

Holt believes the key factor was the remarks from President Trump and his allies when they addressed the rally on Wednesday.

When Trump told his supporters to head to the Capitol, Holt says, "I think the levee just broke."

"If Trump had not told people to go to the Capitol, I don't know that it would have happened. Because people on the ground were engaged in some pretty extreme rhetoric about coming back with guns if things don't go their way, and stuff like that. But there wasn't any real sort of significant action happening on the ground until Trump finished his speech."

A conspiracy narrative, fomented for years

Whitney Phillips, researches misinformation and disinformation at Syracuse University. On Wednesday, "I saw what I have been expecting to see for the last several months, even several years," she says.

In the march toward the 2020 election, "at every turn Trump and his enablers in Congress and in the media ecosystem were parroting some version of the 'deep state' narrative," she says.

Trump avoided using the term for years while promoting its ideas, laying the groundwork for what is happening now, Phillips says — and when he lost the election, he then used that narrative "as a bludgeon against the American people."

Those who have believed in QAnon or 'deep state' theories have had those ideas reinforced for years by the conspiracy-driven media they consume, as well as elected officials who repeat them.

The result is that now, amid election results contested by Trump, "this is a well-established narrative way of being in the world. It's not even a conspiracy theory — it is an identity," Phillips says.

"So what happened in the Capitol is really the culmination of months and in some cases years of belief in the sort of paradigmatic world in which you have a very clear set of bad guys who are out to get Trump, and you have a very clear set of good guys who are fighting that battle."

A reckoning

In the coming weeks, the niche platforms that have provided safe haven for extremist movements will come under increased scrutiny, Holt predicts. "And these companies, which don't have the same legal defenses or resources or infrastructure that a major site like Facebook or Twitter has, may falter under that pressure. But that remains to be seen."

Holt says Wednesday's events show that the current approach to combating disinformation and extremism online isn't working. That approach is often reactive, rather than proactive.

"Oftentimes, by the time a Facebook or a Twitter cracks down on certain pieces of misinformation, it is far too late to halt its spread," he says. "I think as a society and as a nation, we are beyond the point of overdue for a serious comprehensive examination and discussion about how we're going to fix this problem. Because if we don't, the next time could be worse."

And Phillips says that reckoning must not only concern platform moderation, or only Trump and his enablers – but as rather recognize these events as the culmination of decades-old forces and beliefs.

"What we need to reckon with is not what happened yesterday, but everything that led us to yesterday," she says. "And until we're really willing and able to look back that far and take inventory of what's happened, then we're only ever going to be slapping BandAids on grotesquely broken arms."

https://www.npr.org/sections/congress-el...-in-plain-sight

IMO. Trump was simply a backlash for America voting in a black President slapped across our face by a system polluted with systemic racism.

I doubt that.

The problem is the American media. The media doesn't report news anymore. They make news with endless hours of commentary based on their political leaning.

Call this a wake up call.

Dude - this isn't both sides.... One side of the media has been reporting facts:

1.) Joe Biden won the election
2.) There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the election results.
3.) The role of the House and Senate is ceremonial, and they have no right to change election results that were verified and submitted by the states.
4.) Mike Pence cannot unilaterally reject a states election returns.

How do we know this is reasonable? Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence said all of these things on the senate floor.

The other side of the media told people that you could change the election results on 6 January -- and to do so you needed to protest outside the capitol. They whipped their supporters into a frenzy to get donations and news cycles -- and then they got people killed.

GMAB with your "both sides" BS.

Above is a perfect example of what I am talking about and why there is no hope for this country, as it stands.

Carry on

The media. Lol ..... Anybody with half a brain can filter out BS media.

but you’re right, this is a wake up call. It’s a wake up call for trump supporters to return to reality and join back with the USA and dump trump your confederate flags and your racism or suffer a miserable life without a country.