WideNine

It's sll fun and games when storming our halls of Congress and threatening our elected leaders till those charged with protecting said leaders shoot you. Who could have possibly seen how this mob insurrection could lead to tragic consequences. Truly shocking....not.

It would have been comical if it were not so pathetic seeing Fox and other right-wing media outlets feigning ignorance and pondering just who was behind the insurrection. With pictures like this being broadcast....

Will folks stop with the moronic mantra of "socialist" blah...blah If you send your kids to public school, think its ok for grandpa or that widow to get a social security check, if you are banking on affording your medical bills after you retire leveraging Medicare and Medicaid, then you should realize that this country already has deeply ingrained and widely-supported social welfare policies. Socialism is when our government takes over and runs private industry which is often confused with social welfare and regulation. Just parroting the rhetoric that campaigning GOP folks stick in your mouth is not the smartest move. It is just the way they use certain words to manipulate your emotions and votes. Both parties need better fiscal policies that both invest in our nation's people and future, but demand accountability that those investments are effective. Ouch... Weak.

Yeah........ We have seen what 4 years of that serial lying idiot's rule has brought us. America sure looked great again yesterday in the eyes of the world. Brain washed, Trumptards can't fact-check or read worth a damn. Don't see Don the Con using them as cannon fodder to act out his petty tantrum at losing at the polls. The good news is that there are slightly more intelligent people out there that do read, that do fact check, that can smell an Executive branch power-grab with overt acts of obstruction, intimidation and petty reprisal tactics, and who were chilled to the bone at GOP and DOJ willing subservience to that effort over their constitutional duties. Those true patriots rallied to vote him OUT. Do you really think Biden won with a record number of votes because he is THAT charismatic. Go back to the echo-chamber of the loud and ignorant minority. Shutting off that broken sewer pipe spewing non-stop ***** is indeed a good first step in healing this country. Nothing was stolen from that repugnant moron. He just lost because he sucks moose wang.

They have a really good running back, but I think we are playing well enough on defense to force a punt or two. I hope we see the pad-popping, aggressive Edmunds that made an appearance against Miami. I was really pleased with his form, heads up but kept the pads low, took good angles, and wrapped up till his teammates swarmed to the ball. Our safeties need to be on their toes early and play more disciplined in coverage expecting at least one trick play. Two weeks in a row we allowed a flee-flicker type play where the second player to get the ball behind the LOS lobbed a deep pass on us. Both times those receivers were open and the passes were dropped. That will not go unnoticed by a team that knows getting a lead on us early may help them control the game. Our offense is looking sharp and if they can get on the board early, Indy will have a tough time protecting their QB with their starting LT out.

So reading is the issue. I did not say that riots were ok, simply it does not take much in N. Minneapolis to spark a riot because I know the area that you probably do not. What I did question is your attempt to make an argument that two wrongs make a right.

Don't bother. Just queue the spooky x-files music that goes well with this q-anon deep state nonsense and move along. It is just a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and mutable "facts".

This ***** guy.... cannot even call off his idiots without lacing it with his conspiracy nonsense that got all the idiots riled up to begin with. The landslide election victory went to Biden - those are the facts. He just needs to go away forever.

So your first picture shows a bunch of folks armed with cameras. And the second the overused footage of a building burning from the riots in MN after a white officer basically murdered a guy he had in custody. Having worked in a hospital on the "North-side" of Minneapolis it had a very active ER and violence is not an uncommon thing there - it is a high-crime area and it does not take much of a spark to get a riot going. How does all that translate to some kind of license to storm our nation's capital, trespass on Federal property, destroy Federal property, and use arms to threaten our elected leaders? Is this some kind of tit-for-tat logic? Like it was fine for armed Trump supporters to storm the Michigan capital, and others to try to organize kidnapping the governor of that state. All these malignant violent acts lead back to one agitator in the oval office that either stirs up violence, or meets social unrest and calls for justice with indifference and disdain missing every opportunity to lead in a way that diffuses violence. He needs to go and never step foot in politics again.

I live close enough to Portland to visit several times and I can tell you that the media does like sensationalizing events. It was never as bad as it was made out, but I have never been a fan of the "defund the police rhetoric" and neither are business owners and folks that live in urban areas where protests and riots have become cyclical. They do want effective policing. This does not excuse the many police reforms that are needed, just that the pendulum does not have to swing to polar extremes for sane people to work out progressive, meaningful policies. There were several peaceful protests where folks were playing music and barbecuing like it was a tailgate party, but there were certainly agitators, anarchists, and criminal opportunists - especially at night. So, I am pretty pragmatic in that I support local police AND the idea of transparency and policing reform too. I do not think they are mutually exclusive concepts. If there are more good cops out there than bad ones, they should embrace the ideas of body cameras and less Union leverage keeping poorly performing officers in uniform.

...and this is where the GOP turning a blind eye and riding on the coat-tails of a populist fascist purveyor of hatred and conspiracies, who openly supports forceful suppression and armed conflict over peaceful democratic processes gets us. When every Trump supporter I debated on this forum said he would never take it this far and I pointed to the psychological profile of a pathological narcissist and asked what makes them think he will gracefully cede power, or will not incite violence? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/moral-landscapes/202008/the-psychology-donald-trump

The case of "collusion" is short hand for the legal case of collusion with a foreign power to receive something of value in an election - that is where the legality or criminality rests. What does the law intend by "value". "What is also exceptional about the Trump case, distinguishing it from other forms of national electioneering, is the absence of any question about intent, or state of mind. In the most recent round of revisions to its rules, the FEC went to some lengths to allow a candidate or political committee to establish that it did not reasonably know about the foreign source of the contribution or expenditure or other value received. (11 C.F.R. § 110.20 (a)(4),(7)). This is no help to the Trump campaign which certainly had every reason to know that, as widely reported and declared officially by the US government, Russia was behind the hacking. Mr. Trump, on the campaign trail, said as much in inviting Russia to release more. At other times he suggested that perhaps Russia was not behind these activities, that no one could know: but, remarkably, he allowed for the possibility that another foreign power, China, might have been responsible. And once again, there are other parts of the public record bearing on intent that will receive close investigative scrutiny, like Trump’s close confidante Roger Stone’s repeated statements about his communications with Wikileaks and Julian Assange." http://www.moresoftmoneyhardlaw.com/2017/06/collusion-foreign-government-becomes-crime/

I am not sold on their amorphous ideologies, but intimidation at voting stations in any form needs to be prevented. If you were a person of color encountering a wall of armed white poll watchers how would you feel? It is not a good look for fair and open US elections, resembles 3rd world intimidation tactics.

Originally Trump fiddled and golfed while Rome burned, and killed every stimulus bill that did not include his provision to prevented social media companies from flagging his lies and misinformation as such. In the end McConnel shived him when Trump acquiesced backing a last ditch effort to appease his base with a separate stim bill by including poison-pill provisions that were sure to make it fail.

Trump-inpired election monitors to keep things "fair".

If you hate radicals who are trying to destroy the country you need to start first with Trump and his divisive rhetoric putting himself on a virtual throne and punishing any one that calls his poor decisions or behavior into question. Republicans have lost their way setting their True-North to Trump simply because he is the best rabble-rouser to solicit funds and votes for them. Then there is their rampant voter-suppression tactics... I have an idea, why not reach out to voters in a meaningful way, with policies they can get behind, and create a broad platform that can pull more urban voters in rather than cheapen our democracy by alienating voters and putting as many barriers as possible in the way of urban voters in red states? In Florida where they hired people to pose as democrat candidates on the tickets who had similar names as the actual democratic candidates - the ones who were seriously running for seats. These "fakes" had no real party affiliation they were just paid with dark money to siphon away votes.... and that is not shady? https://www.local10.com/news/local/2020/11/11/evidence-suggests-several-state-senate-candidates-were-plants-funded-by-dark-money/ The GOP is no longer the party of Lincoln. They are the party of alien autopsies, actual and borderline white supremacists, anarchists, fascists, and nationalist xenophobes. The party needs to be purged and inoculated against all that is Trump.

I read once that you cannot use reason and logical arguments to move someone from a position they attained that is not based on logical or reasoned thought. It is an axiom when it comes to Trump supporters. Despite all the evidence to the contrary they will continue to regurgitate the same false narratives he creates. Conjecture and innuendo are not facts. Every case brought before courts of law fail because they do not have any facts to back up the conspiracy theories they put forward. It is also amazing how much the Trump lawyers back off from all the nonsense they spout in venues that are not court rooms, where spouting baseless lies carry actual legal consequences. Looper is a good handle as your arguments just spin in loops. Theories that support conspiracies that are backed by conjecture supported by falsehoods that are based on theories that are backed by conjecture..... no facts just the same loop of nonsense that has been disproven time and time again.

You lost me at the voter fraud cases have merit. Based on their record before courts of law where evidence is required and lies are actual crimes of perjury they have all been proven exactly the opposite. Meritless as in without merit.

Loud rallies do not translate into overwhelming popular vote. All the scanning nonsense shows an ignorance of how voting machines work that borders on the criminal. The voter selects their preferred candidates, the machine prints out a paper copy that has the voter's unique voter registration id and selection. The voter can compare the paper record with their electronic choices. The same goes for mail-in ballots scan and still have an paper audit trail. Now you count what the machines have. If there is any need to audit the electronic records you just count the paper copies and compare those to the machine tallies. It is not complicated. Already explained the jump in Biden votes. No court has found any evidence of any fraud. It is just dumb to spread conjecture and cast unfounded doubt on this election just because you don't like the result.

Oops...bad look much? Too bad about that summer job, but great story.

I am not quite so harsh on this team, as I do not think that any of us would be harder on this team as they would be on themselves if they do not go far this post-season. I cannot look at the ground-work that has been laid, the team that has been assembled, the continuity of FO management that has been invested in and call this season a failure if the bounces do not go our way in the playoffs. Will I be disappointed, sure. But, is there anyone that thinks that this Bill's squad and Allen are one and done for post-season appearances? This team is built to be competitive for a long haul with a generational talent at QB. They just need to get their ticket to the shows, prep and game-plan like they have all year, then focus and execute as they have at a high level. The rest will take care of itself.

And the lawyer on that "innocent" call with Trump where he was trying to pressure Georgia into "finding" more votes for him, well, her law firm felt so comfortable with that call that they had her resign. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/05/politics/cleta-mitchell-resigns-trump-georgia/index.html Geez... queue the never-ending circus music that is part and parcel of this President's dubious tenure in office.

He was not charged mainly because he could hide the activity for years as he could take advantage of laws that shielded LLCs from exposing ownership and financial transactions from public and legal scrutiny. There are particular states that have incredibly lax rules regarding this type of corporate entity that make them ideal shelters for a broad swath of illegal activities. Connecticut happens to be one of them. Want to take a guess where most all of Trump's LLC's have been created - anyone? Yep, that's right. The vast majority are listed in Connecticut. Interesting enough, the recent military defense bill that Trump fought against tooth and nail and vetoed too finally pushed through with a Congressional override. What most folks may not know is that one of the key provisions in that bill was that it included a long-fought for provision to expose LLC ownership and transactions to federal oversight and transparency across the US - no state-specific shelter rules. No more hiding, and all of this is coming together as Trump is exiting his legal safe harbor of the Office of the Presidency - food for thought. My guess is that there are very good reasons for Trump's manic efforts at self-preservation. He is more than willing to try to overturn a fair and well-run democratic election that has stood the test of every baseless legal challenge and requested audit thrown at it, and he is pooping himself at the prospect of having to leave the legal bastion of the presidential office. Time will tell, but I have been pretty good connecting the dots over Trump's term. We will see what happens when he is forced out of office. RE: LLC's and the bill Congress finally pushed through: https://www.rollcall.com/2019/04/29/bill-cracking-down-on-llcs-used-for-tax-evasion-and-money-laundering-faces-obstacles/ https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/lawmaker-news/528117-anonymous-shell-companies-fund-crime-and-terror-its-time-to

Sure daddy Trump gave him seed money, but he lost it over and over hence his well-earned reputation for being serially bankrupt and constantly borrowing money. What Trump has mastered is the art of laundering money through his casinos and his real estate holdings. Don't be shocked when the lawsuits start rolling in after he is no longer able to hide behind the office of the Presidency and the legal shield that has afforded him. Trump works tirelessly for Trump and his inner circle of family and friends - he does not have the capacity for the kind of empathic values you ascribe to him. If he did, he would stop taking the lion's share of the money the duped MAGA folks keep shelling out for lawsuits doomed to fail so he can pump them into his super pac LLCs and fork millions over to his daughter in the form of dubious consulting fees. But keep feeding at the trough of Trump lies and getting scammed. He just wants power and more of your money. I am not a huge Biden fan, but I would have voted for anything not Donald Trump.

Interesting that you feel Biden is the life-long grifter. How much of Trump's legal and financial history are you aware of? He is the epitome of serial carnival-barking grifter....oh wait, you aren't one of those that watched "the Apprentice" and thought that was reality? It's a pity how easily poorly informed and deluded the average US citizen is. Just how many bankrupsies, broken commitments, and lawsuits you think Trump and his over 500 LLCs shell companies have been a part of?