The coup has arrived

[lady_*nix]

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5ffd ... ssion=true

House Democrats Briefed On 3 Terrifying Plots To Overthrow Government
One plot includes surrounding the Capitol and murdering Democrats to allow Republicans to take control of the government.

Well, this is grim as fuck. At least the intelligence and military bureaucracies now seem to be taking it seriously? But I'm still extremely worried about complicity from the Capitol Police, because well... police. Like, is anyone remembering the level of racist vitriol that police unions spewed in support of Trump?

[SciFiFisher]

will no one rid us of this meddlesome president?

Never a well intentioned badly done assassination when you need one.

[SciFiFisher]

What is really interesting is the reports coming from the House that many republicans are afraid to vote for impeachment because they are terrified that the Trump faction of their own party will come terrorize or kill them. Apparently a mild taste of their own medicine tastes really bad.

Also, I see Moscow Mitch suddenly turning on the President as the R team equivalent of a mob rat turning states evidence to save his own skin. Although it is very unlikely that 17 R team Senators will vote to convict Trump we know that MM will not be running the show when the impeachment trial starts. Moscow Mitch however has signaled that he is willing to vote to convict. Which is somewhat historic.

[code monkey]

What is really interesting is the reports coming from the House that many republicans are afraid to vote for impeachment because they are terrified that the Trump faction of their own party will come terrorize or kill them. Apparently a mild taste of their own medicine tastes really bad.

Also, I see Moscow Mitch suddenly turning on the President as the R team equivalent of a mob rat turning states evidence to save his own skin. Although it is very unlikely that 17 R team Senators will vote to convict Trump we know that MM will not be running the show when the impeachment trial starts. Moscow Mitch however has signaled that he is willing to vote to convict. Which is somewhat historic.

it's 2/3 of the senators present. therefore, the more republicans who skip the vote, the likelier conviction is. anyone want to bet on whether he'll give preemptive pardons to last week's hooligans?

[code monkey]

will no one rid us of this meddlesome president?

Never a well intentioned badly done assassination when you need one.

no, not an assassination. that would just make him a martyr and further inspire his backers to even worse acts. and yes, ever worse is possible. i want to see the 25th amendment invoked before he can pardon everyone in sight. I want him convicted in his impeachment trial and all of the federal and state trials that follow. i want to see him in an orange jumpsuit.

what i want most of all is for our country to regain its collective sense and stop eagerly accepting every nutty conspiracy theory that comes along.

[lady_*nix]

@cm

Yes, that, re: assassination. It's not just him, it's him and dozens of cronies; and also turning the national security state even more against the left would be disastrous at this point.

Right now at least we seem to be getting this weird reverse-9/11 thing where social democracy and progressivism (up to a point) are suddenly considered Patriotic and Good For Business, and well... I can't say I'm happy with it exactly (because my ideal is the complete abolition of nation-states and capitalism LOL); but it's a hell of an improvement the post Bush era's "uncontrolled capitalist dystopia-worship is patriotic". But I think it's very, very fragile. If the US left were to commit a major terrorist act or assassinate a public figure, the crimes of the Trump administration and the fascists who stormed the Capitol would be forgotten immediately, and the national security bureaucracy and public opinion would both come down as hard as possible on the left.

(And honestly, I suspect the Trumpists understanding this is part of why they keep trying to blame "antifa" for their own public violence. Like everything they do it's incompetent as fuck, but it doesn't have to be competent; they only need to get it right once, while the left needs to get it right every fucking time.)

Re: conspiracy theories. You might be glad to know that Google workers have a union now, and one of the high prio items on their agenda is forcing the company to do something about propaganda and conspiracy BS on Youtube. I know some people in the union even, they're good folks and good at getting stuff done.

(And this? This is yet another reason anti-union legislation is super dangerous. Workers not being able to organize means much less leverage for forcing companies to act responsibly. And that's been a particularly huge problem in Big Tech, where it's normal for companies like Google to fire people just on the rumor of them organizing outside official company channels.)

@Fisher

I'll believe the Death Turtle isn't lying when he actually votes to convict. Which I'm betting he won't. He's made mouth sounds against Trump plenty of times before and has been happy about his role in the deaths of over 350,000 people in this country; his word means less than nothing.

[SciFiFisher]

Moscow Mitch is considered one of the most astute politicians when compared to a pretty good list of same. IOW when he lets something "leak" it usually serves his own purposes. Compare today to last year. He stated from day one that the impeachment last year was already fixed. That is why I compare what he is doing now to being a mob rat. He only stood by Trump as long as Trump was useful to him. And he didn't give two figs about the damage Trump was causing. He still doesn't.

In truth I agree that assassination and turning Donnie Dorko into a martyr is the last thing we need.

RE: Google, Unions, and democracy. Rachel Maddow did a great piece last night on how the R team has given up on democracy with a small d and had started years ago with the fascism and "we know best" type of governance. She pointed out how the debacle in Flint Michigan and some of the other horror stories that occurred there were a good example of what happens when you become a feudal state. Governor Rick Snyder and the state legislator passed a law that gave them the authority to take over any city or county government in the state and appointment an "emergency manager" who could ignore the wishes of the voters. Now he and seven others are facing a variety of charges. Some including involuntary manslaughter. Michigan's former governor and health director charged in Flint water crisis As far as I am concerned when Reagan declared war on unions it was not going to end well. And it has not.

You know there may be a sea change coming when you are listening to Bloomberg News and one of the business moguls being interviewed is saying that the business world knows that taxes are going to go up and that a lot of them are OK with that as long as the money is spent wisely. Of course, we know that means lots of fighting about what that means. But, the fact that they are actually saying that the current tax system is inherently unfair and they know it has to change is sort of surprising.

The "Antifa did it" excuse is not gaining much traction. One of the folks I was watching today says he monitors the bible belt sermons and etc. He says the evangelicals and such are not abandoning Trump but they are shocked at the attempted coup last week. Apparently some of them are saying "Whoah Nelly! We want to be the privileged white folk but we don't want the sausage to be made that publicly!" Ok, I am paraphrasing a bit. But, it seems that some of them would like to lord it over the liberals and POC a little more genteelly.

[lady_*nix]

@Fisher

I sure hope you're right. After 4 years of nonstop The Worst, it's just hard not to expect more of The Worst.

Meanwhile though:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 88043.html

I am so fucking relieved to see her openly saying this. So fucking relieved. The normalcy bias around all of this has been really killer, including from Democrats, and it's really good to see them finally shaking some of that off - even if it may be too little, too late.

[lady_*nix]

https://twitter.com/EmilyGorcenski/stat ... 3938766852

Stealing Pelosi's laptop and attempting to sell it to Russian foreign intelligence, and thinking she'd get away with it. Incredible. Our insurgents might be dangerous but they're still as dumb as bricks.

[Rommie]

For whatever reason I am strangely fascinated by Lauren Broebart, the crazy new Palin-wannabe Congresswoman from western Colorado, who people now say they saw give tours between Jan 3-6 and was live Tweeting during the thing about the positions of Pelosi et al- https://twitter.com/JesseDamiani/status ... 8987927552

I mean, there's plenty of CCTV in the Capitol so I'm thinking they already know, but probably best to have your ducks in a row and wait to arrest her/ wait until after Jan 20 so she can't be pardoned. But wow that would totally be the shortest serving Congress-person in history barring death, and sure would be tough to run a bar about carrying guns when you can't have them yourself as a convicted felon.

[lady_*nix]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/liv ... 6585550831

Chances that the Senate will convict Donald Trump are very low.

Fifty Democrats and 17 Republicans will have to vote in favor of convicting – and that’s not likely to happen with many Republican senators indicating that they oppose the idea.

Whoops! No Consequences!

[lady_*nix]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/le ... ElsIP8QAeT

In charging papers, the FBI said that during the Capitol riot, Caldwell received Facebook messages from unspecified senders updating him of the location of lawmakers. When he posted a one-word message, “Inside,” he received exhortations and directions describing tunnels, doors and hallways, the FBI said.

Some messages, according to the FBI, included, “Tom all legislators are down in the Tunnels 3floors down,” and “Go through back house chamber doors facing N left down hallway down steps.” Another message read: “All members are in the tunnels under capital seal them in. Turn on gas,” the FBI added.

This whole thing was probably an inside job.

[lady_*nix]

Also notice the very general by center-left Democrats of the issue being "extremism", not specifically "white supremacism" or "far-right extremism".

Watch that space. If we don't push hard enough, they'll go right back to prosecuting BLM activists while ignoring literal fascists.