ChiGoose

This may come as a surprise to some of the people on this board, but the summer of 2020 and January 6th, 2021 were completely different things experienced by different people in different ways. Comparisons between them are generally just whataboutism crap from people who either don’t understand reality or are acting in bad faith. In any case, roughly 80 officers were injured as they fought off assault for several hours during the January 6th riots. I do not know if you are one of those ACAB people, but personally I do not dismiss the harm that came to the police on that day.

I absolutely believe it, just as the police department and the family of the deceased cops believe it: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna19433 I also have friends who are cops and I think we ask FAR too much of them and put them in bad situations that they may not be able to handle. Jan 6. is no different. Cops are humans. They are not superheroes. They are people trying to do their best at a job that often involves conflict. They were not prepared for the violence on Jan 6 and even those that survived have to deal with trauma. Some of them were unable to do so and took their own lives.

Ashli Babbitt died on the scene, killed by police while while the rioters tried to breach a door. That alone should be enough. There were also a couple of heart attacks and at least one person who died of a stroke. While those may have been underlying conditions, it stands to reason that they may not have died that day had they not been at the scene. Also, more than one police officer died by suicide after experiencing the riot. You cannot handwave Babbit's death away. The heart attack / stroke deaths are debatable. But, I would argue that the riot was the "but-for" cause of the suicides. In any event, people died because of the riots, dozens of police officers were assaulted and the certification of the election was interrupted. It was a stain on our history. However it may have started, it was not a peaceful protest.

@Tiberius You have a golden toilet and bankrupted a bunch of casinos???

They literally breached the Capitol building. Broke into the offices of members of Congress. Interrupted the certification of the election. People died. I get it messes with your worldview, but to handwave this away as basically nothing is irresponsible.

Much of this is completely made up garbage. I'll give you this one. While we can debate how much inflation was created by whom, but Biden is clearly trying to push the blame to Putin, who is responsible for some, but definitely not all, of the inflation. I've seen Republicans claim over and over that the Dems want people to wear masks all of the time forever. This is a garbage straw man claim and when you push them on it, they move the goal posts around by trying to equate their claim to things like masking when there is a spike, or promoting regular vaccines. The whole thing is clearly a disingenuous gambit by hacks. You can have this one too. Moving to electric cars will be a net positive for everyone and we should encourage growth, competition, and development in that market. We literally had slaves. Like for hundreds of years. I'm sure there are some Very Online lefties who make this claim, but is there actually polling or evidence that Democrats as a whole believe we are more racist now than when we literally enslaved people? Or is this just another straw man anecdote pushed by bad faith actors? Absolutely ridiculous claim that can only be believed by people who have so much isolated themselves from reality that they'll believe literally anything that makes them feel good or makes their perceived enemies look bad. Please point to the legislation drafted by the Dems and supported by the party that confiscates all guns. Another garbage take that completely misconstrues the facts. Late term abortions are a hot topic because it sounds really bad until you actually think about it. The claim being made is that someone will carry a baby for 8 months and then suddenly decide they don't want it and get an abortion. This is completely unbelievable to anyone who knows anyone who has been pregnant. When an abortion occurs in the third trimester, it's usually because the baby is wanted but there has been some development that endangers the life of the mother or the baby is no longer viable. In these cases, they probably have a name picked out and a nursery decorated with a crib waiting. Banning abortions in this scenario is to say the government knows better how to handle this than the woman and her doctor. It would seem to me that keeping the government out of this situation would be the small "c" conservative approach, but once again, none of this is about actual policy. It's about putting out bad faith arguments to rile people up. I would critique the GOP platform but... they don't have one. They decided that the GOP line is whatever their God King wants it to be. When the head of the RNSC actually came up with a platform, it was so unpopular that the GOP vocally distanced themselves from it. They have replaced it with... nothing. In reality, the plan is to use bad faith and straw man arguments to rile people up so that they can enact their real goals of transferring wealth from working Americans to their corporate and donor overlords. Which, by the way, is why basically everything they do propose fails a basic root cause analysis (i.e. supply side tax cuts or preventing shootings by having fewer doors).

Don't forget assaulting police officers while waving a Blue Lives Matter flag.

Imagine a world where breaking into the Capitol building and assaulting cops is dismissed as "taking selfies"

Because the crime of seditious conspiracy does not require guns? This isn't hard. They are charged with a specific crime. If you want to know what that means, look up the law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384 If you want to play media critic and tell people off for how they cover this stuff, go ahead. I'm probably with you on that. But making up some standard that has no basis in the law and then mocking people for not meeting that arbitrary standard is a pretty weak approach to all of this.

Even if that’s what happened, that would not be overturning an election. It would be influencing the voters before the election. Trying to change the results after the election to nullify the voice of the people is a bit different.

Part of the problem with actually charging some of these people is that a lot of the election crimes require mens rea, which is difficult to prove. Evidence that they were asking everyone to work in secret would help with that (why make it secret if you believe it’s legal?) but is by no means dispositive.

Yes, from what I can tell, if they made a material lie, that could constitute fraud and give Musk an out.

It wouldn’t be that hard for him. He could either sell stock or borrow against it. Though he would try to avoid that by claiming Twitter was in breach of the deal. In any case, I believe the billion dollar penalty would be paid to Twitter, not the SEC. Likewise, if Twitter pulls out, they would owe the penalty to Musk.

Did not realize that the Department of Justice was in charge of gas and grocery prices. You learn something every day! Can someone tell Merrick Garland to turn the gas price dial down a bit?

Apparently: https://www.investopedia.com/musk-says-twitter-deal-temporarily-on-hold-5272098

I suppose it’s good that somebody is doing the due diligence since Musk waived that in the deal.

Could be. I would not be surprised at either Lauren Boebert or MTG since they’ve used the 1776 language around Jan 6 before.

From the DoJ:

I would avoid using the word "case" because it implies this is a legal hearing, which it is not. It is not analogous to a judicial proceeding. I do not know who they are going to interview on the hearings. Is there a specific person you wish they would interview?

So you're assuming that the witnesses are all going to lie under oath?

Why there wasn't adequate police present is exactly the kind of question we should expect the committee to address. There was plenty of evidence beforehand that there might be a problem. The committee should address what the failures were here. Why is this controversial? Also, please do not put words in my mouth. I do not think the committee is going to "get" Trump. I have never said I do, and I honestly am doubtful that Trump will ever face consequences for his actions beyond losing his re-election bid. Despite this, I think it's worthwhile to see what the committee has since some of the members are talking a big game, but I'm not going to judge it before I see it. The whole "we finally got him this time!" thing is very tiring and, as I stated multiple, is not even the purpose of the committee. I think it betrays a kind of bad faith to just ignore everything the committee does because of an assumption of political bias, especially since they take testimony under oath and should provide evidence to back their findings (whatever those findings are).

It would be nice if the article actually showed all of the questions and crosstabs. Generally polls will ask respondents which party the identify with and that's how the pollsters do the party breakdown. I would expect CBS did the same here but, while the article shows some of the questions, it does not provide a link to all of them, so we cannot say for certain how CBS came to the partisan breakdown on the questions.

Once again, the purpose of the committee is to get to the bottom of what happened and recommend legislation to prevent this from happening in the future. I do not know what they are going to find. I am not on the committee, so I do not have access to their evidence and testimony. But since we keep rehashing this misunderstanding of what the committee is doing and its importance, I'll give a hypothetical example of something they might find (not saying this is true, just that it could be) that is not criminal but is important to know: They might have evidence that Trump's advisors came to him to tell him the Capitol had been breached and that Mike Pence's life was in danger. They advise him to release a statement to tell people to go home and to also call in the National Guard to secure the Capitol Instead, Trump says that Pence deserves what he gets and refuses to issue the statement or the order for hours None of that is likely criminal. It is not something that the FBI would charge and therefore, we would not even know if they had evidence of the conversation (the FBI typically does not release underlying evidence when declining to indict). But it would probably be good to know if the President of the United States was refusing to take action because he was hoping for harm to come to the Vice President (or at least had a callous disregard for the VP's safety). It would also be a good idea to clarify the authorities around calling the National Guard into DC and who would have the authority to do so if the President refused.

For (I think) the fourth time: The January 6th Committee investigation is NOT a criminal investigation. It is looking for things that would be out of scope for a criminal investigation by an institution like the FBI. I do not understand why this is such a difficult concept to grasp.

Under this logic, there is no point to making any laws because bad people would ignore them. So let's just get rid of all laws then.