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1 minute ago, unclevlad said:

But the core point is, ONLY Trump's words will stop these.  That seems completely clear.

 

I wonder, is that even true any more? Has this grown bigger than Trump now? Now that the Mob is assembled, is there anything short of violent opposition that will turn them back?

 

Not that I believe for the merest fraction of a picosecond that Mr. Trump will do anything to stop this, of course.

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US criminal code chapter 115:

§2383. Rebellion or insurrection

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

 

§2384. Seditious conspiracy

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

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24 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

Ivanka and Donald Jr are tweeting pretty strongly against this.

 


But the core point is, ONLY Trump's words will stop these.  That seems completely clear.

 

Trump was exhorting the protestors at a rally in Washington just this morning. He didn't mention violence specifically -- he never does -- but even he can't be so stupid as not to have anticipated how they'll interpret his words.

 

Let's keep in mind, though, that while shocking, so far this aggression is localized. We shouldn't assume it will spread, because that breeds fear, and fear is what Trump uses to manipulate people.

 

https://fox2now.com/news/live-protests-rock-washington-dc-during-congress-meets-to-confirm-bidens-victory/

 

This Fox News story actually called Trump's claims of election fraud "baseless." Did I wake up in an alternate universe? :huh:

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15 minutes ago, tkdguy said:

Let's call it what it truly is: treason. And terrorism. And Trump should be held accountable for inflaming his supporters to this level.

 

 

Our enemies are laughing at us right now.

 

Technically I believe it is sedition.  But we are disagreeing only about the term.

 

Biden is now calling out Trump VERY, VERY harshly.  I think he's got no choice but to do it now;  this has gone on for, what, 90 minutes or so now.  My concern was that, him calling out Trump to come on national TV to tell them to go home (not quite a quote but what Biden called for...national TV, not a stupid lame tweet) may have the opposite effect.

 

I feel now that...well, OK, the objections to accepting the vote were bad enough before.  After this, if any Congressman continues to object once these anarchists are tossed out and the process starts back up, then they should be considered as accepting of the actions of the rioters.  I would completely agree that every single one of them be subject to a recall action, if their state laws support it.

EDIT:

2:17 Mountain, 4:17 Eastern.

Fox News is reporting there is a taped message from the White House.  It is expected to be released in the next 10 minutes.

 

 

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

 

The bastard talks out of both sides of his mouth!!!!!  

 

And it's still freaking TWITTER!!!

 

He calls on them to go home but absolutely asserts the whole thing was stolen.

 

UPDATE:  NY Times projects Ossoff to win!!!!!!  Edit:  so does Fox now.  And the margin is growing so it *may not* go to a recount.

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14 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

 

Technically I believe it is sedition.  But we are disagreeing only about the term.

 

Biden is now calling out Trump VERY, VERY harshly.  I think he's got no choice but to do it now;  this has gone on for, what, 90 minutes or so now.  My concern was that, him calling out Trump to come on national TV to tell them to go home (not quite a quote but what Biden called for...national TV, not a stupid lame tweet) may have the opposite effect.

 

I feel now that...well, OK, the objections to accepting the vote were bad enough before.  After this, if any Congressman continues to object once these anarchists are tossed out and the process starts back up, then they should be considered as accepting of the actions of the rioters.  I would completely agree that every single one of them be subject to a recall action, if their state laws support it.

EDIT:

2:17 Mountain, 4:17 Eastern.

Fox News is reporting there is a taped message from the White House.  It is expected to be released in the next 10 minutes.

 

 

 

I would agree with you about calling this sedition, but I think it has escalated to beyond that point. 

 

Trump has finally spoken and told the rioters to go home, but in the same breath he reiterated the lie about the insurrection being stolen.

 

Edit: I hope that at least some of the members of Congress who have been planning to object to the count withdraw their objections after this, but that may be asking for too much.

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Just now, death tribble said:

So are your allies.........

 

That saddens me, but I'm not surprised. I had hoped they'd be grieving to see what we've become.

 

But I am wondering why this hasn't been shut down already. If this had been a Black Lives Matter protest, it would have. Are the police just waiting for the curfew to take effect?

 

And yes, I will stand firm on my accusation of treason. Misled or not, these people have betrayed the principles of this nation.

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I know that the actual objection to counting the Electoral votes is likely to get overwhelmed in the coverage of the street protests, violence, martial law, Trump declaring himself perpetual ruler of the universe, or whatever.

 

I'd intended on refuting Cruz's speech and his proposed solution point by point but frankly, not one of my better health days. So to shortcut (and ramble a bit).

 

Cruz's speech stated that 46% Republicans, 31% Independents, and 17% of Democrats think that there was significant fraud in the election. He says he doesn't want to put Biden in place without answering those people's concerns.

 

His solution is to do what was done after the 1876 election and have a commission made up of 5 Representatives, 5 Senators, 5 Supreme Court justices to look into the fraud claims and vote on which presidential candidate in each state should get the electoral votes from that state.

 

 

So to give some background on the 1876 election and why they came up with that solution.

 

There were huge numbers of illiterate voters at the time. And the way they chose their ballot was to point at the Republican ballot which had the picture of Lincoln on it or to point at the Democrat ballot which at the time traditionally had a rooster printed on it.

 

But in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, the Democrat parties there came up with the bright idea of putting Lincoln's picture on their ballot as well so they could confuse illiterate voters into voting for them.

 

(I'm not sure how that was supposed to work IRL because illiterate people who wanted to vote Democrat could accidentally vote Republican. But nevertheless, that's what they did.)

 

Each of those states at the time were expected to go Democrat anyway. But all the state governments were run by Republicans due to Reconstruction after the Civil War.

 

So all three states voted Democrat as expected and gave the election to the Democrat presidential candidate. 

 

But after the election, the Republican government in each of those three states disqualified (due to vote fraud, suppression, and confusion) just enough votes to give the election to the Republican candidate.

 

The fairly new federal court system in the reconstructed South were dominated by Republicans and there wasn't any expectation that the courts could get enough honest witnesses and have judges who were honest/unbiased enough to figure out what went on.

 

The congress didn't have a constitutional solution because the constitution wasn't specific enough on what should happen when there were two slates of Electors who each claimed to be the sole legitimate Electors. So they came up with the idea of a commission made up of 5 Representatives, 5 Senators, 5 Supreme Court justices to rule on what should be done. 

 

Of that commission there was to be 7 of them be Democrats and 7 Republicans. The other was to be a certain Supreme Court justice which both sides agreed was an independent.

 

So they passed the law.

 

After they passed the law, that independent Supreme Court justice resigned from the Supreme Court and was replaced with one of the Republican Supreme Court justices.

 

So the commission voted straight party line votes in every dispute and the 8 Republicans on the commission overruled the 7 Democrats each time and gave the election to the Republican presidential candidate (who incidentally lost the popular vote).

 

And after that, the congress passed a lot of laws to make sure that they had procedures in place to deal with accusations of election fraud without resorting to a commission.

 

Now back to the present day (when we have procedures in place to deal with accusations of election fraud without resorting to a commission).

 

We have an unprecedented amount of information available to voters today so that they could follow each of the 60+ court cases, what was presented as "evidence", and exactly why each of those cases were dismissed for lack of evidence.

 

Yeah, there's a lot of people who believe the election was rife with fraud. But that's because they are willfully not informed about the truth when the truth is freely available.

 

Senator Cruz is saying that a 2020 commission would satisfy their disbelief.

 

What would satisfy their disbelief when they already don't accept the truth?

 

Say we have another 15 person commission.

 

We don't have any independents, even in theory. If we appoint 8 Democrats and 7 Republicans, those people will say the commission is rigged and won't accept the results of the commission.

 

Let's say we appoint 7 Democrats and 8 Republicans...But some of those Republicans belief the truth which has been demonstrated repeatedly in court that there wasn't an election-overthrowing amount of fraud in the election and don't find any during the commission's investigation. Those people will say the commission is rigged and won't accept the results of the commission.

 

Okay, so let's say we appoint 7 Democrats and 8 Republicans but only Republicans who reject reality and who want to give the election to Trump when he actually didn't win. So the commission looks at the evidence and decides to give the election to Trump. Those people will say the commission is great!

 

So the only way to satisfy people who are disconnected from reality is to give them exactly what they want.

 

Cruz's so-called "solution" won't satisfy a significant portion of the protestors and the "Stop the Steal" folks. His demand is just buffing Cruz's image with the lunatic fringe, IMO.

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The protest has accomplished one thing:  I doubt the election will be certified tonight.  If the police want to spend the night checking the building?  Fine with me.  Big building.  2 bombs found already by reports.  It might be declared safe within a few hours, which could leave time.  If so, AND if all the objections and anticipated objections are withdrawn or never entered, then it's possible.

 

Just heard ABC talked to one of the senators planning to object, on the question of continuing...he said he was undecided.

 

EDIT:  some of the protesters...and some of the Congressmen have characterized that there are protesters and inciters...and the protesters are trying to get back in, saying they have a right to be there.

 

Guess what, right now?  You don't.

Also, some of you might've missed that the DC mayor announced a 6 PM to 6 AM curfew.

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40 minutes ago, archer said:

I know that the actual objection to counting the Electoral votes is likely to get overwhelmed in the coverage of the street protests, violence, martial law, Trump declaring himself perpetual ruler of the universe, or whatever.

 

I'd intended on refuting Cruz's speech and his proposed solution point by point but frankly, not one of my better health days. So to shortcut (and ramble a bit).

 

Cruz's speech stated that 46% Republicans, 31% Independents, and 17% of Democrats think that there was significant fraud in the election. He says he doesn't want to put Biden in place without answering those people's concerns.

 

His solution is to do what was done after the 1876 election and have a commission made up of 5 Representatives, 5 Senators, 5 Supreme Court justices to look into the fraud claims and vote on which presidential candidate in each state should get the electoral votes from that state.

 

 

The only reason this many people believe in election fraud, is that Trump and his Republican allies, including Cruz, have been saying for over half a year, without evidence, that there would be/has been fraud. Now Cruz wants to use people having been convinced by their lies, as sole justification for an investigation.

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Unpopular thought that needs to be said:

 

We are seeing the end results of thirty years worth of the politics of disenfranchisement.  We sowed these seeds when we started laughing as politicians belittled "the other guys" and accepted comments like "they cant help it" and "they will never learn" and "you cant teach them" and "they have to stay in the back seat."

 

For thirty years, we have laughed at the defeat of our opponents, and joined in dehumanizing them.

 

This is what we built; this is what we deserve.

 

I sont know if he actually said it, but often-attributed to Franklin:  "a Republic.... If you can keep it."

 

When the going was tough, we pulled together.  When things fot comfortable, we attacked each other.

 

 

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NOTE:  Capitol Sergeant At Arms is declaring the Capitol Building is secure.  Yay!!!  
Also:  FB *took down* the President's video because it started with the false claims, and they say, on balance, they feel it's more likely to incite violence.  The downside is, of course, the alt-right is going to seize on this as more censorship and blatant partisanship.

 

NOT to defend the fraud accusations, or blow my own horn, but...

 

I believe I pointed out earlier this year, that this was likely, as the pandemic was going to require or accelerate changes to voting procedures.  And as such, there would be at least the *appearance* of grounds on which to challenge everything.  

 

I also think that any attempt to impose mask restrictions, or restrict personal and business activity, are conflating that with the election fraud claims.  They want ANY restrictions totally gone as Unholy Infringements!!! and those who support that are clearly on The Side of the Righteous, and anything said by the Righteous Who Defend Their Freedoms!! is good with them.

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