Hopefully, people will totally ignore this gift wrapping of a totally, fascist, racist, murderous colonialist government whose purpose is to make them look normal. They are simply horrible human beings.
“Xi Jinping also made promises about human rights. What were those?
Back when China bid for the 2008 games, the whole narrative was that the games would open up China to the world and make it a more responsible global citizen. And that didn’t happen. Human rights experts say that things have gotten exponentially worse in China since then. So this time, there has been no narrative around human rights. They haven’t said that these games are going to open up China or improve human rights in the country. Everybody, from the organizers to the IOC, is more or less just trying to ignore that angle of it.”
try not to misunderstand this. i am not disagreeing with you. just offering another perspective that might, might, help.
the boycot of the russia olympics by carter did not do anybody any good, but did spoil the hopes of some athletes who worked hard for the chance to achieve their dreams.
i have no personal doubt about the human rights abuses reported about china, but you have to realize that there is always plenty of room for doubt because propaganda comes from all sides.
i think that if a country is forced to lie about it’s good behavior it will eventually find it easier to just behave better…not that it will be in any hurry. as you have noted yourself America’s record on human rights is not clean, and on-going human rights abuse by government is ongoing in plain sight in this country. not by any means is all of it directed at black people.
so what to do? i don’t know, but I think that “ignoring” the olympics [if that is what your comment is all about] will not help. though I wouldn’t go to China and spend money or appear on TV drinking toasts with their leader.
i am not at all sure it would help, but i like to think if our diplomats had realistic talks with chinese leaders and said “we know what your problems are…but we have had our own experiences and this is how we have managed to draw back from the stink of mass human rights abuse…” even the Chinese, always hyper realists, will begin to see the advantages.
where would the world be today without pollyanna…most of them in history so far having come from the tradition of the religion most people on the Left despise. though of course “the Left” [in other countries, and at least in rhetoric right here in river city] has shown complete willingness to abuse human beings when it come into power in its turn.
ah, hell. i hate it when people put periods to their thinking.
of course you have your own view of monsters which may make not playing with them perfectly reasonable. but i suspect, up to a point, that “playing” with them might unmonsterfy them.
certainly inviting a lot of foreigners in to your country would create a significant possibility some of those foreign ideas might rub off on your own people. it’s a risk they take.
it’s only a movie, but “The Last Emperor” gave me a glimpse of a “reeducation camp” that I had not considered previously.
and, very tangentially, another movie [made for youtube?] but purporting to show the battle of britain did touch on the anger of British people at the German bomber pilots who had to parachute over England…good to remind people of how the Vietnamese might have felt toward John McCain. But an incident involving a Polish pilot…who flew many of the Spitfires that saved England…had to parachute over England himself. And found himself being shot at by a British home guard. He yelled “I’m Polish. Friend!” They kept shooting. Finally they came up to him. “Why did you shoot at me?” he asked. “We shot at your feet to keep you from moving,” they said. “You landed in the middle of a mine field.”
well, it does look like half of us do. the re-education camp in “The Last Emperor” turned out to be remarkably sane, as even the former Emperor admitted.
as far as I know, the movie was not made by communists.
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) announced on Tuesday that he had tested positive for COVID-19 in a breakthrough case of the virus.
“While asymptomatic, I tested positive for COVID-19 this afternoon. I’ve consulted with the Senate Physician and will continue to follow the recommendations of my health care provider,” he said in a statement.
Hoeven’s office noted that the senator is fully vaccinated and also received his booster shot. His quarantine will last through Sunday.
The news comes after Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) office announced on Friday that the senator had tested positive for COVID-19 and would be working remotely. Romney’s office noted that he had also been fully vaccinated and received his booster shot.
The announcement from Hoeven’s office also comes on the same day that Sen. Ben Ray Luján’s (D-N.M.) office announced that the New Mexico senator remained in the hospital after he suffered a stroke last week, though he is expected to recover.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) disclosed Tuesday that he tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the latest member of Congress to contract the virus despite being vaccinated. Hoyer, the second-ranking House Democrat, said in a statement that he is experiencing mild symptoms. He added that he will work and cast votes remotely while the House is in session this week.
“This afternoon, I tested positive for COVID-19, and I am experiencing mild symptoms. Thankfully, I am fully vaccinated and already received my booster shot,” Hoyer said.
Hoyer is the second member of House Democratic leadership in the past several weeks to test positive for the virus amid the surge in cases from the omicron variant, although caseloads in the Washington, D.C., region have begun declining in recent days.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) also tested positive in December.
At least 54 House members, including Hoyer, have contracted breakthrough cases of COVID-19, along with 12 senators.
More than half of those cases have been since December from the omicron-fueled wave.
Donald Trump said he wanted Mike Pence to overturn the election, dangled pardons for Jan. 6 rioters and called for protests against prosecutors. Now, it turns out, he had discussed having national security agencies seize voting machines. …
A series of new remarks by Donald J. Trump about the aftermath of the 2020 election and new disclosures about his actions in trying to forestall its result — including discussing the use of the national security apparatus to seize voting machines — have stripped away any pretense that the events of Jan. 6, 2021, were anything but the culmination of the former president’s single-minded pursuit of retaining power.
Mr. Trump said on Sunday that Mike Pence “could have overturned the election,” acknowledging for the first time that the aim of the pressure campaign he focused on his vice president had simply been to change the election’s result, not just to buy time to root out supposed fraud, as he had long insisted. Those efforts ended at the Capitol with a violent riot of Trump supporters demanding that Mr. Pence block the Electoral College vote.
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump also dangled, for the first time, that he could issue pardons to anyone facing charges for participating in the Jan. 6 attack if he is elected president again — the latest example of a yearslong flirtation with political violence. …
… The events of Jan. 6 played out so publicly and so brutally — the instigating speech by Mr. Trump, the flag-waving march to the Capitol, the violent clashes with the police, the defiling of the seat of democracy — and have since been so extensively re-examined that at times it can seem as if there were little more to be discovered about what led up to that day.
Then, The New York Times reported this week that Mr. Trump himself had directed his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to ask the Department of Homeland Security whether it could legally seize voting machines in three key swing states. Mr. Trump also raised, in an Oval Office meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr, the possibility of the Justice Department’s seizing the machines.
Both ideas quickly fizzled.
But historians say the episodes and Mr. Trump’s new comments acknowledging his determination to stay in power — and his effective embrace of the Jan. 6 rioters at the Capitol, who he said must be treated “fairly” — have newly underscored the fragility of the nation’s democratic systems.
Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, said voters were understandably desensitized, if not numb, after a year in which Mr. Trump methodically sought to undermine faith in the electoral process.
“I actually think the American public is dramatically underplaying how significant and dangerous this is,” he said, “because we cannot process the basic truth of what we are learning about President Trump’s efforts — which is we’ve never had a president before who fundamentally placed his own personal interests above the nation’s.”
Already, Mr. Trump is gearing up for a potential third run for the White House, announcing on Monday that his political accounts had banked $122 million — a show of financial force as some polls show his support softening among Republicans.
In the year since he left office, he has systematically tried to remove those who were obstacles to him in 2020 and its aftermath: seeking to drive out of office the Republicans who voted to impeach him on charges of inciting the riot, recruiting challengers to Republican officials who certified the 2020 vote, and backing new candidates to serve as election administrators and legislators in key states.
Mr. Trump has made clear he is not necessarily seeking more Republican officials. He wants more election-denying Republican officials. …
Aside from Trump’s admission of guilt, 83 criminals that admittedly participated in a planned and coordinated interstate coup to overthrow the 2020 election and the government of the United States have been known for over a year and have not been arrested or charged with any crimes. This is the most massive coup ever to attempt take over control of the U.S. and DOJ has not acted and the news media have not given it the level of priority and explanation that is certainly warranted.
Laurence Tribe, highly respected professor of constitutional law at Harvard and former federal prosecutor has said, “The evidence points to a massive plot violating 18 USC §§ 371, 1512, 2384 — “defrauding” the United States, “corruptly impeding” an official proceeding, and “seditiously conspiring” against the government. “Inciting insurrection,” 18 USC § 2383, was PlanB” https://www.nbcnews.com/think/amp/ncna1288145
Tribe also said on January 31:
“Mr. Trump’s public confession last night, all but daring the Attorney General to seek a grand jury indictment against him for seditious conspiracy and for giving aid and comfort to an insurrection to “overturn the election,” is the last straw. The Government must call his bluff.”
CNN attorney pundit Elie Honig said about DOJ’s delay in addressing Mark Meadows:
“DOJ has now been considering the Mark Meadows contempt of Congress referral [from the Jan 6 Committee] for 50 days. Yes, it’s more complicated than Bannon. But it’s a paper case; this doesn’t require extensive additional investigation, beyond the public record and legal research. I can’t explain the delay, of course. I do wonder if DOJ is stretching out the clock and hoping the Committee and Meadows come to some sort of mutual face-saving compromise so DOJ won’t have to make a call on prosecution.”
The Midterms are just 9 months away and the public needs to have a full understanding of this conspiracy to take over the U.S. government. We need to stop talking & take action to stop it? The Jan. 6 Committee cannot arrest & prosecute criminals. What are FBI & DOJ doing? We all must ask why the Feds aren’t pursuing this and why the media is not giving it top priority?
DOJ has charged some 700 “outsiders” that participated in the insurrection; but not one of the 83 known Republican fake elector “insiders” have been charged. They are all known and signed their names and submitted fake election documents in a known, coordinated conspiracy to overthrow the election and the government of the U.S. They obviously don’t want to spend years in prison for their blatant stupidity and would squeal like stuck pigs if they were prosecuted. THERE COULD NOT BE A MORE “AIR TIGHT” CASE. No need to know all the ins and outs of Trump & all his demented soldiers. Those details will emerge very quickly if these “low level” nincompoops are arrested and charged with high level crimes as they should be. It would also send a powerful message that the U.S. government is not going to put up with this crap.
It’s also a telling reality of our time when the biggest, known, coordinated, conspiracy, coup attempt to overthrow the United States government can’t get priority media time. The country is “zoned out”.
please try not to misunderstand me. I am not disagreeing with you. I am just pointing something out:Trump’s “overturn the election” might have meant “overturn the fraudulent election.” All of these “meanings” have to be taken in the context of all the other “facts” whihc may or may not be “true.” Trump supporters…includimg possible costs…will not see them the way you (and I) see them.
we have a war on our hands, which we will not win by assuming the other side will play according to the rules we expect. We do need a better public voice, and if the mainscream media will not give us one, we need to find a way to create our own.
oh, and yes, we won’t win by calling racists racists. playing the racism card has worked more or less well for Dems for the past fifty years. now it is counterproductive.
and complicated by the fact that half the population is visibly insane. but you don’t win elections by calling half the electorate insane.
And I am not disagreeing with you. It just occurred to me that we are indeed ‘enjoying’ a Trump-controlled ‘re-education experience’. Furthermore, should he obtain another term two years from this November, he will obviously re-start from where he left off, augmented by getting even with those who turned him out of office.
The reality is that the GOP is very powerful in the US, controlling a majority of states, even though representing less than half the population. That is reality.
One that is understood by the national Dem establishment, no doubt, but not one that they care to dwell on. So far, I have lived about two-thirds of my life residing in the great blue commonwealth of Massachusetts, thank you very much. What goes on in the rest of the good old USA does not impinge upon us here too much, yet. Who knows, maybe we will elect Rachel Maddow as one of our senators soon. Once upon a time I thought that was a bad idea, but no longer. We would certainly do that before casting electoral votes for Donald Trump.
Not so long ago, all of New England was rock-ribbed GOP country.
Now, the sole GOP member of the NE House & Senate delegations is Susan Collins from Maine. The only GOP gov’nah is NH’s Chris Sununu. The rest of the US should follow our lead, obviously.
Oops. I forgot our own GOP guv’nah Charlie Baker. Leaving office this year. A moderate, detested by Donald Trump. We will in all likelihood elect a Dem to replace him, as only Trumpers want to take the seat for the GOP.
… Republicans have long been more likely to portray America as a republic, not a democracy, and to defend our system’s countermajoritarian mechanisms. But today this philosophical tendency is increasingly self-interested, because shifts in party coalitions mean that those mechanisms, the Senate and Electoral College especially, advantage Republicans somewhat more than in the recent past.
But then things get complicated, because the modern Republican Party is also the heir to a strong pro-democracy impulse, forged in the years when Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon won crushing presidential-level majorities but conservatives felt themselves constantly balked by unelected powers, bureaucrats and judges especially.
This experience left the right deeply invested in the idea that it represents the true American majority — moral, silent, what have you — while liberalism stands for elite power, anti-democratic forms of government, the bureaucracy and the juristocracy and the Ivy League. …
Donald Trump’s stolen-election narratives should be understood as a way to reconcile the two competing tendencies within conservatism, the intellectual right’s skepticism of mass democracy and comfort with countermajoritarian institutions with the populist right’s small-d democratic self-image. In Trump’s toxic dreampolitik there’s actually no tension there: The right-wing coalition is justified in governing from a minoritarian position because it deserves to be a true electoral majority, and would be if only the liberal enemy weren’t so good at cheating.
So seen from within the right, the challenge of getting out from under Trump’s deceptions isn’t just a simple matter of reviving a conservative commitment to democracy. Trump has succeeded precisely because he has exploited the right’s more democratic impulses, speaking to them and co-opting them and claiming them for himself. …
only thing i could see here, because i am a paranoid conspiracy theorist, is “the Right” now moving from supporting ant-majoritarian constitutional checks and balances to celebrating the right’s more “democratic” impulses. confuses me. is he saying the Right would like to see the Electoral College, not to say the Senate, abolished? wouldn’t surprise me because with a little help from their brown shirted friends they will be happy not to have those checks and balances.
If that is addressed to me, I don’t think either party represents the people. complicated for me because in general i think “representatives” should rise above the propaganda soaked and short sighted self interest of “the people. Instead they stoke it.
What will happen if the political tables are turned and the Republican Party wins the White House in 2024 and the House and Senate along the way?
One clue is that Donald Trump is an Orban worshiper — that’s Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, a case study in the aggressive pursuit of a right-wing populist agenda.
In his Jan. 3 announcement of support for Orban’s re-election, Trump declared: “He is a strong leader and respected by all. He has my Complete support and Endorsement for re-election as Prime Minister!”
What is it about Hungary under Orban that appeals so powerfully to Trump? …
In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Alexander Cooley and Daniel H. Nexon, political scientists at Barnard and Georgetown, argued that Orban has “emerged as a media darling of the American right,” receiving high praise from Tucker Carlson, “arguably the single most influential conservative media personality in the United States.”
The Conservative Political Action Conference, “a major forum of the American right, plans to hold its 2022 annual meeting in Hungary,” Cooley and Nexon wrote. What has Orban done to deserve this attention? …
(Maybe like Hungary under Viktor Orban, greatly admired by Donald Trump.)
What will happen if the political tables are turned and the Republican Party wins the White House in 2024 and the House and Senate along the way?
One clue is that Donald Trump is an Orban worshiper — that’s Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, a case study in the aggressive pursuit of a right-wing populist agenda. …
In “How the American Right Fell in Love With Hungary” in The New York Times Magazine, Elizabeth Zerofsky quoted Rod Dreher, the combative conservative blogger, on Orban’s immigration policies — building a fence on the border to keep Muslims out, for example. “If you could wind back the clock 50 years and show the French, the Belgian and the German people what mass immigration from the Muslim world would do to their countries by 2021, they never, ever would have accepted it,” he remarked. …
In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Alexander Cooley and Daniel H. Nexon, political scientists at Barnard and Georgetown, argued that Orban has “emerged as a media darling of the American right,” receiving high praise from Tucker Carlson, “arguably the single most influential conservative media personality in the United States.”
The Conservative Political Action Conference, “a major forum of the American right, plans to hold its 2022 annual meeting in Hungary,” Cooley and Nexon wrote. What has Orban done to deserve this attention?
The two authors briefly summarized his record: “Orban consolidated power through tactics that were procedurally legal but, in substance, undercut the rule of law. He stacked the courts with partisans and pressured, captured or shut down independent media.”
Cooley and Nexon demonstrated a parallel between what has taken place in Hungary and current developments in the United States: “Orban’s open assault on academic freedom — including banning gender studies and evicting the Central European University from Hungary — finds analogies in current right-wing efforts in Republican-controlled states to ban the teaching of critical race theory and target liberal and left-wing academics.” …
well, i certainly can’t disagree with any of that. but it is worth remembering that people voted for it. hence my distrust of Leftish “ideas” to solve the problem by ending the Electoral College “advantage” of small states, or otherwise enhancing the power of big city political machines.
we cam amd must find a way to appeal to the values of people in all states…including the racists. because you can’t cure racism by shouting at it, but we might cure pernicious racism by creating decent jobs for even racists where they had to work alongside blacks… or maybe not. but those checks and balances have served us well over two hundred and fifty years and should not be got rid of to solve a temporary problem we are having getting enough people to vote for our values.
i lived in Maasachusetts for a while. People from neighboring states called in Taxachusetts. Me, I think taxes are fine if that’s the best way to pay for what you need.
Trump will start from a little further on than “where he left off.” He will have the infrastructure to win elections regardless of what the people want, and he is predisposed to using brute force to intimidate anyone who disagrees with him. I don’t know about Orban, but smells like Hitler to me.
Maybe without Arbeit Macht Frei, but that was never really necessary, and Modern Politcal Theory can do what it wants without it.
Aside from very high property taxes in the metroBoston area, taxes are relatively low, since MA does not impose ‘progressive’ income taxes. At one time, when I first arrived here, annual auto excise taxes were quite high, but those were eventually reduced, seemingly so that folks would be more likely to purchase new cars more often.
“For tax year 2021, Massachusetts has a 5.0% tax on both earned (salaries, wages, tips, commissions) and unearned (interest, dividends, and capital gains) income. Certain capital gains are taxed at 12%.”
Voters here regularly reject the imposition of graduated income taxes, despite progressives urging us to do so. But ‘Taxachusetts’ is something the minority party here likes to use as a meme.
At least in eastern MA, ‘Taxachusetts’ is most often heard from owah naybahs up in NH, who have no state income taxes at all, lots of fees, and since 1999 a state-wide property (‘propiddy’) tax to support education. They also have local propiddy taxes just as bad as those heah in MA. A lot of MA ex-pats up theyah in NH.
it always seemed to me that the folks in NH were living there to avoid New York taxes, so of course they would want to keep NH taxes low. on the other hand, some people i knew who actually lived there called it a “third world country.” Meanwhile the New York greyhound station refused to sell me a ticket to NH because I would have to change busses in Hartford, including a wait outside the station there after midnight, which New York said would not be safe. Driving through Hartford during morning rush some years later made me think they were probably right. even the drivers in Boston were more law abiding and less angry. (I beat a traffic ticket in Massachusetts by telling the judge, “hey, I was just trying to drive like the locals.”) [as for New York, I was run off by the cops there because I was waiting outside an apartment building for my friend to come home, which looked pretty suspicious to them.]
U.Mass(Amherst) was the only school I went to where the professor treated the students like human beings. but then, graduate students are more like human beings than undergraduates. they did not call UMass Zoo Mass for nothing.
end of todays geography/anthropology lesson.
oh give me a home where the buffalo roam …and the people are not crowded all day
Hopefully, people will totally ignore this gift wrapping of a totally, fascist, racist, murderous colonialist government whose purpose is to make them look normal. They are simply horrible human beings.
“Xi Jinping also made promises about human rights. What were those?
Back when China bid for the 2008 games, the whole narrative was that the games would open up China to the world and make it a more responsible global citizen. And that didn’t happen. Human rights experts say that things have gotten exponentially worse in China since then. So this time, there has been no narrative around human rights. They haven’t said that these games are going to open up China or improve human rights in the country. Everybody, from the organizers to the IOC, is more or less just trying to ignore that angle of it.”
https://slate.com/culture/2022/01/beijing-olympics-boycott-human-rights-violations-covid-fake-snow-disaster.html
EMike
try not to misunderstand this. i am not disagreeing with you. just offering another perspective that might, might, help.
the boycot of the russia olympics by carter did not do anybody any good, but did spoil the hopes of some athletes who worked hard for the chance to achieve their dreams.
i have no personal doubt about the human rights abuses reported about china, but you have to realize that there is always plenty of room for doubt because propaganda comes from all sides.
i think that if a country is forced to lie about it’s good behavior it will eventually find it easier to just behave better…not that it will be in any hurry. as you have noted yourself America’s record on human rights is not clean, and on-going human rights abuse by government is ongoing in plain sight in this country. not by any means is all of it directed at black people.
so what to do? i don’t know, but I think that “ignoring” the olympics [if that is what your comment is all about] will not help. though I wouldn’t go to China and spend money or appear on TV drinking toasts with their leader.
i am not at all sure it would help, but i like to think if our diplomats had realistic talks with chinese leaders and said “we know what your problems are…but we have had our own experiences and this is how we have managed to draw back from the stink of mass human rights abuse…” even the Chinese, always hyper realists, will begin to see the advantages.
where would the world be today without pollyanna…most of them in history so far having come from the tradition of the religion most people on the Left despise. though of course “the Left” [in other countries, and at least in rhetoric right here in river city] has shown complete willingness to abuse human beings when it come into power in its turn.
Don’t play with monsters, period.
EMichael
ah, hell. i hate it when people put periods to their thinking.
of course you have your own view of monsters which may make not playing with them perfectly reasonable. but i suspect, up to a point, that “playing” with them might unmonsterfy them.
certainly inviting a lot of foreigners in to your country would create a significant possibility some of those foreign ideas might rub off on your own people. it’s a risk they take.
it’s only a movie, but “The Last Emperor” gave me a glimpse of a “reeducation camp” that I had not considered previously.
and, very tangentially, another movie [made for youtube?] but purporting to show the battle of britain did touch on the anger of British people at the German bomber pilots who had to parachute over England…good to remind people of how the Vietnamese might have felt toward John McCain. But an incident involving a Polish pilot…who flew many of the Spitfires that saved England…had to parachute over England himself. And found himself being shot at by a British home guard. He yelled “I’m Polish. Friend!” They kept shooting. Finally they came up to him. “Why did you shoot at me?” he asked. “We shot at your feet to keep you from moving,” they said. “You landed in the middle of a mine field.”
You never know.
a glimpse of a “reeducation camp” that I had not considered previously
Does it not seem like we currently live in Donald Trump’s Reeducation Camp?
well, it does look like half of us do. the re-education camp in “The Last Emperor” turned out to be remarkably sane, as even the former Emperor admitted.
as far as I know, the movie was not made by communists.
looks like Covid is still going after the congresscritters…
and
Trump’s Words, and Deeds, Reveal Depths of His Drive to Retain Power
NY Times – Feb 1
Aside from Trump’s admission of guilt, 83 criminals that admittedly participated in a planned and coordinated interstate coup to overthrow the 2020 election and the government of the United States have been known for over a year and have not been arrested or charged with any crimes. This is the most massive coup ever to attempt take over control of the U.S. and DOJ has not acted and the news media have not given it the level of priority and explanation that is certainly warranted.
Laurence Tribe, highly respected professor of constitutional law at Harvard and former federal prosecutor has said, “The evidence points to a massive plot violating 18 USC §§ 371, 1512, 2384 — “defrauding” the United States, “corruptly impeding” an official proceeding, and “seditiously conspiring” against the government. “Inciting insurrection,” 18 USC § 2383, was PlanB” https://www.nbcnews.com/think/amp/ncna1288145
Tribe also said on January 31:
“Mr. Trump’s public confession last night, all but daring the Attorney General to seek a grand jury indictment against him for seditious conspiracy and for giving aid and comfort to an insurrection to “overturn the election,” is the last straw. The Government must call his bluff.”
CNN attorney pundit Elie Honig said about DOJ’s delay in addressing Mark Meadows:
“DOJ has now been considering the Mark Meadows contempt of Congress referral [from the Jan 6 Committee] for 50 days. Yes, it’s more complicated than Bannon. But it’s a paper case; this doesn’t require extensive additional investigation, beyond the public record and legal research. I can’t explain the delay, of course. I do wonder if DOJ is stretching out the clock and hoping the Committee and Meadows come to some sort of mutual face-saving compromise so DOJ won’t have to make a call on prosecution.”
The Midterms are just 9 months away and the public needs to have a full understanding of this conspiracy to take over the U.S. government. We need to stop talking & take action to stop it? The Jan. 6 Committee cannot arrest & prosecute criminals. What are FBI & DOJ doing? We all must ask why the Feds aren’t pursuing this and why the media is not giving it top priority?
J.P.
my hope is that they are just making sure their case is air tight.
for example, “Trump’s confession” would look very different if you believed that he meant “overturn the fraudulent election.
the media won’t help. they have to be careful they don’t offend the eventual winner.
my guess is that even the Dems are in hock to the people behind Trump.
On the other hand, what are the people doing about it? waiting like I am?
Shouting and carrying signs doesn’t do much. I think a massive strike might. But don’t tell anybody. I don’t want to get on the FBI subversive list.
DOJ has charged some 700 “outsiders” that participated in the insurrection; but not one of the 83 known Republican fake elector “insiders” have been charged. They are all known and signed their names and submitted fake election documents in a known, coordinated conspiracy to overthrow the election and the government of the U.S. They obviously don’t want to spend years in prison for their blatant stupidity and would squeal like stuck pigs if they were prosecuted. THERE COULD NOT BE A MORE “AIR TIGHT” CASE. No need to know all the ins and outs of Trump & all his demented soldiers. Those details will emerge very quickly if these “low level” nincompoops are arrested and charged with high level crimes as they should be. It would also send a powerful message that the U.S. government is not going to put up with this crap.
It’s also a telling reality of our time when the biggest, known, coordinated, conspiracy, coup attempt to overthrow the United States government can’t get priority media time. The country is “zoned out”.
Dobbs
please try not to misunderstand me. I am not disagreeing with you. I am just pointing something out:Trump’s “overturn the election” might have meant “overturn the fraudulent election.” All of these “meanings” have to be taken in the context of all the other “facts” whihc may or may not be “true.” Trump supporters…includimg possible costs…will not see them the way you (and I) see them.
we have a war on our hands, which we will not win by assuming the other side will play according to the rules we expect. We do need a better public voice, and if the mainscream media will not give us one, we need to find a way to create our own.
oh, and yes, we won’t win by calling racists racists. playing the racism card has worked more or less well for Dems for the past fifty years. now it is counterproductive.
and complicated by the fact that half the population is visibly insane. but you don’t win elections by calling half the electorate insane.
not to mention half the Congress.
And I am not disagreeing with you. It just occurred to me that we are indeed ‘enjoying’ a Trump-controlled ‘re-education experience’. Furthermore, should he obtain another term two years from this November, he will obviously re-start from where he left off, augmented by getting even with those who turned him out of office.
The reality is that the GOP is very powerful in the US, controlling a majority of states, even though representing less than half the population. That is reality.
One that is understood by the national Dem establishment, no doubt, but not one that they care to dwell on. So far, I have lived about two-thirds of my life residing in the great blue commonwealth of Massachusetts, thank you very much. What goes on in the rest of the good old USA does not impinge upon us here too much, yet. Who knows, maybe we will elect Rachel Maddow as one of our senators soon. Once upon a time I thought that was a bad idea, but no longer. We would certainly do that before casting electoral votes for Donald Trump.
Not so long ago, all of New England was rock-ribbed GOP country.
Now, the sole GOP member of the NE House & Senate delegations is Susan Collins from Maine. The only GOP gov’nah is NH’s Chris Sununu. The rest of the US should follow our lead, obviously.
Oops. I forgot our own GOP guv’nah Charlie Baker. Leaving office this year. A moderate, detested by Donald Trump. We will in all likelihood elect a Dem to replace him, as only Trumpers want to take the seat for the GOP.
So, You Think the Republican Party No Longer Represents the People
NY Times – Ross Douthat – Feb 2
Reading Douthat is hazardous to your mental health. Strawmen live in his head.
EM
I don’t doubt that.
but I don’t really see it in the quoted article.
only thing i could see here, because i am a paranoid conspiracy theorist, is “the Right” now moving from supporting ant-majoritarian constitutional checks and balances to celebrating the right’s more “democratic” impulses. confuses me. is he saying the Right would like to see the Electoral College, not to say the Senate, abolished? wouldn’t surprise me because with a little help from their brown shirted friends they will be happy not to have those checks and balances.
The Senate was created to be a conservative, obstructionist body, has been doing just that for nearly 250 years, and would like to continue doing so.
The GOP represents a lot of people. Just not the majority of them.
Except in a majority of states which are home to less than a majority of Americans.
If that is addressed to me, I don’t think either party represents the people. complicated for me because in general i think “representatives” should rise above the propaganda soaked and short sighted self interest of “the people. Instead they stoke it.
ha. ha. joke’s on me.
What America Would Look Like in 2025 Under Trump
NY Times – Thomas Edsall – Feb 2
What America Would Look Like in 2025 Under Trump
NY Times – Feb 2
(Maybe like Hungary under Viktor Orban, greatly admired by Donald Trump.)
well, i certainly can’t disagree with any of that. but it is worth remembering that people voted for it. hence my distrust of Leftish “ideas” to solve the problem by ending the Electoral College “advantage” of small states, or otherwise enhancing the power of big city political machines.
we cam amd must find a way to appeal to the values of people in all states…including the racists. because you can’t cure racism by shouting at it, but we might cure pernicious racism by creating decent jobs for even racists where they had to work alongside blacks… or maybe not. but those checks and balances have served us well over two hundred and fifty years and should not be got rid of to solve a temporary problem we are having getting enough people to vote for our values.
i lived in Maasachusetts for a while. People from neighboring states called in Taxachusetts. Me, I think taxes are fine if that’s the best way to pay for what you need.
Trump will start from a little further on than “where he left off.” He will have the infrastructure to win elections regardless of what the people want, and he is predisposed to using brute force to intimidate anyone who disagrees with him. I don’t know about Orban, but smells like Hitler to me.
Maybe without Arbeit Macht Frei, but that was never really necessary, and Modern Politcal Theory can do what it wants without it.
Aside from very high property taxes in the metroBoston area, taxes are relatively low, since MA does not impose ‘progressive’ income taxes. At one time, when I first arrived here, annual auto excise taxes were quite high, but those were eventually reduced, seemingly so that folks would be more likely to purchase new cars more often.
“For tax year 2021, Massachusetts has a 5.0% tax on both earned (salaries, wages, tips, commissions) and unearned (interest, dividends, and capital gains) income. Certain capital gains are taxed at 12%.”
Voters here regularly reject the imposition of graduated income taxes, despite progressives urging us to do so. But ‘Taxachusetts’ is something the minority party here likes to use as a meme.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr: “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.”
(Supreme Court Justice and Massachusetts homeboy.)
At least in eastern MA, ‘Taxachusetts’ is most often heard from owah naybahs up in NH, who have no state income taxes at all, lots of fees, and since 1999 a state-wide property (‘propiddy’) tax to support education. They also have local propiddy taxes just as bad as those heah in MA. A lot of MA ex-pats up theyah in NH.
BTW, down heah in Taxachusetts, the state up noath is frequently known as New Hampstah (or New Hampster, as the rest of you might say.)
Fred
it always seemed to me that the folks in NH were living there to avoid New York taxes, so of course they would want to keep NH taxes low. on the other hand, some people i knew who actually lived there called it a “third world country.” Meanwhile the New York greyhound station refused to sell me a ticket to NH because I would have to change busses in Hartford, including a wait outside the station there after midnight, which New York said would not be safe. Driving through Hartford during morning rush some years later made me think they were probably right. even the drivers in Boston were more law abiding and less angry. (I beat a traffic ticket in Massachusetts by telling the judge, “hey, I was just trying to drive like the locals.”) [as for New York, I was run off by the cops there because I was waiting outside an apartment building for my friend to come home, which looked pretty suspicious to them.]
U.Mass(Amherst) was the only school I went to where the professor treated the students like human beings. but then, graduate students are more like human beings than undergraduates. they did not call UMass Zoo Mass for nothing.
end of todays geography/anthropology lesson.
oh give me a home where the buffalo roam …and the people are not crowded all day