Pencemegeddon

[NobleHunter]

A story I want to see (given my own track record at finishing stories and my ignorance of several necessary aspects of American history, I probably won't ever be able to write it) is an alternate history where the Confederacy loses the peace as well as the war. So Reconstruction is never abandoned and a real attempt is made to reject white supremacy instead of letting it fester. Though it would be very difficult not to turn it into something blandly utopian.

[msquared]

Well for those who thought Trump was just doing the election fraud as a gimmick, it looks like no, he has really bought into it. So much so that his impeachment legal team all just quit because he did not want to follow the more likely path to victory that you can not impeach a president who has already left office.

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/donald-trumps-entire-legal-team-041610892.html

[LetterRip]

He was impeached before leaving office.  There is ample historical precedent that leaving office doesn't negate an impeachment.  So perhaps he didn't want to go with an argument that is trivial to show is false. 

Making a legal argument isn't his goal - he wants to amplify his support and intimidate Republican politicians into supporting him. I think him making a stolen election claim - however much it is complete BS - likely provides him the best path for accomplishing that.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/people-will-try-to-kill-us-says-gop-lawmaker-on-going-against-trump.html

[DonaldD]

McConnell, Jan 7: hmmm... the president's actions are impeachable, but bringing the senate back on an emergency basis is not warranted - plus we must give him time to prepare a defense.
McConnell, now: I vote not to move forward with the trial, because Trump is no longer president and I question the constitutionality of trying someone who is no longer in office.

[msquared]

So do any of the Trump supporters here buy into the Sovereign Citizen idea that Trump will be sworn in as the 17th (maybe 16th, I forget the exact number) on Mar 4?

[msquared]

Remember all that money Trump raised to Stop the Steal?  And remember how some people were asking that with all these funds available, why had no real evidence of any massive, wide spread fraud been found?

Well maybe they would have found some if they had spent the money on the purpose they had raised it for.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-raked-cash-denying-loss-125839286.html

The other option is that they knew there was no fraud and were committing their own fraud by telling people to donate to them so they could Stop the Steal.

I'll give Trump this. He sure knows how to fleece the grass roots.

[rightleft22]

Myanmar's coup: Why now - and what's next?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55882938

Elections in November saw the NLD win more than 80% of the vote, remaining hugely popular even in the face of allegations of genocide against the country's Rohingya Muslims.

The military-backed opposition immediately began making accusations of fraud after the vote. The allegation was repeated in a signed statement released by the newly-instated acting president to justify the imposition of the year-long state of emergency.

"The UEC [election commission] failed to solve huge voter list irregularities in the multi-party general election which was held on 8 November 2020," Myint Swe, a former general who had been vice-president, said. But there has been little evidence to support the allegation.

"Obviously Aung San Suu Kyi won a resounding election victory," Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Asia, tells the BBC. "There have been allegations of electoral fraud. It is somewhat Trumpian - all these allegations of fraud with no evidence."

And so it begins.

[msquared]

Ok so Trump, who has raised over $170 million from his followers to help "Stop the Steal" does not want to pay his lawyers $3 million to defend him in his impeachment. And he still wants to use the "Election was stolen" defense instead of him being out of office.

Seems like he just wants to keep the money for the next campaign or the next trip.

[msquared]

Here is an interesting take on the impeachment.

Trump is refusing to use the words "Former President". He still insists on being called the 45th President. Like he thinks he is still the legit president and in power.  What does that do to his impeachment defense that they can not impeach him since he is out of office?

[msquared]

Lou Dobbs out at Fox.

[kidv]

I'm pretty sure this is the thread we started talking about confederate monuments and I remember thinking, "How did this thread get going on Confederate monuments?"  I'm sure everyone's amused that there are 3 or 4 more or less grab bag threads that are capturing everything. [Anyway, I think the answer is  the guy waving the confederate flag in the Capitol.]

But as a flashback to confederate monuments:

"Georgia just took down a Confederate monument, built in 1993, with a "Winston Churchill" quote about the importance of heritage.
But as @LorenCollins points out, he never said this. It's just some old Confederate copypasta slabbed onto granite." [I and others note the Churchill 'quote' has a misspelling as well. Quality historical stuff.]

https://twitter.com/ASFleischman/status/1358788915428220931

[yossarian22c]

Michigan's highest ranking Republican leader was caught on video calling the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol a "hoax" and espousing other conspiracy theories related to the siege.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, in a video posted on YouTube of a meeting with Hillsdale County Republican Party officials, said of the Capitol insurrection in which five people died: "It was all staged."

The most shocking thing about this story isn't that he said it or that it got leaked. Its who leaked it and why.

The video was posted to the YouTube account of Reclaim Our American Republic last week. The video's description, in part, reads "The Hillsdale County Republican Party has had enough of RINO''s," meaning Republicans in Name Only. "We will continue to flush them out of our local party."

A day after this meeting, the county GOP censured Shirkey for backing a ban on firearms at the state Capitol, according to a press release from the organization.

He got outed for not being conservative enough. 

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966207859/michigans-top-republican-calls-u-s-capitol-attack-a-hoax

[Wayward Son]

It looks like the investigation into the Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt is over.  He was formally exonerated in an internal investigation.

The Justice Department announced in April that no charges were being brought against the officer. The exoneration by the Capitol Police wraps up the last remaining investigation into the incident.

[cherrypoptart]

That's interesting how when it's a cop killing an unarmed conservative an internal investigation is sufficient but when it's a different demographic an internal investigation would never be enough. We'll have to see what happens with the civil suit. I don't think in a case like this that an "external" investigation is too much to ask for. Whatever happened to Democrats' calls for transparency?

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/30/jan-6-capitol-riot-jail-time-478440

"Americans outraged by the storming of Capitol Hill are in for a jarring reality check: Many of those who invaded the halls of Congress on Jan. 6 are likely to get little or no jail time...

... There are two main reasons: Although prosecutors have loaded up their charging documents with language about the existential threat of the insurrection to the republic, the actions of many of the individual rioters often boiled down to trespassing."

If she wouldn't have gotten shot to death that's probably what she'd be looking at too, trespassing. She was killed for committing a crime that would have resulted in little to no jail time, a misdemeanor.

Honorably discharged veteran executed in cold blood for trespassing, kind of like when that cop went after Rambo for vagrancy.

She deserves better than that. She deserves a full investigation and her family deserves to have their civil case heard in court. And the officer may still be exonerated and that's fine but this whitewash doesn't cut it and is only good enough for some people because of the color of her skin and her political persuasion.

[Grant]

Honorably discharged veteran executed in cold blood for trespassing, kind of like when that cop went after Rambo for vagrancy.

This place is a comedy haven! 

Ashli Babbit is Rambo, guys. 

Try telling that to anybody in a red state.  Dude breaks into your house and when you shoot them, you're in trouble because they were only trespassing.  LOL.  Man how the standards change. 

That's going to be my family's defense when they shoot me for breaking into Groom Lake.  Good one. 

[TheDrake]

Dude breaks into your house and when you shoot them, you're in trouble because they were only trespassing.  LOL.  Man how the standards change.

I'm not aware of anyone making that complaint. I have seen people say you shouldn't shoot random people walking around your neighborhood, people who walk onto someone's lawn. Shooting someone at a street protest defending property that wasn't yours and that no one attempted to enter. Shooting someone in a parking lot for looking threatening after you yelled at them to turn their music down.

I'll be happy to correct myself if you see someone being criticized for shooting someone for breaking into their house. It certainly doesn't seem widespread.

Now, if Babbit had been on her own I'd clamor for police to be held accountable for shooting a lone unarmed person when non-violent means would have sufficed.

[alai]

Well, MAGA shut down the Senate.  We're a few steps away from being France.

Indeed so.  The sooner you take those improving-direction steps the better!