I have seen people say this is the Capital Building many times, and I just want to point out that it is actually the Lincoln Memorial. Honestly, it makes it worse. This is what they will do to protect a statue, but not to protect the seat of Democracy.

This is an instructive thread breaking down the outright lies of Matt Gaetz on the House floor about how facial recognition identified rioters as Antifa/BLM. The fact that the Washington Times would print this and Gaetz would knowingly lie about it with no repercussions is where the problem sits. As long as there are no consequences, this will continue and we will be powerless to stop it.

JOURNALISTS: Let me help you debunk the lies in the @mattgaetz floor speech about a “facial recognition company” discovering antifa agitators. It all comes from a fake news article from the notorious Washington Times. I will break it all down for you…https://t.co/alc73605Nm

— Respectable Lawyer (@RespectableLaw) January 7, 2021

The other take I am seeing is "it's is a public building, and we were allowed in as citizens of the United States. The police let us in, so it can't be a crime"

Amusingish story. My wife, daughter and I went to DC 2 years ago. We got a private tour from some girl working for a rep out of Iowa, I think.

Long story short, while going through security at the underground tram to get to the Capitol building, I lost my keys. I didn't realize it until we were in the Capitol. So I doubled back to the checkpoint and they weren't there. Turns out my wife had them in a jacket pocket that they must have slipped in.

However, while looking for my wife and kid in the Capitol, I walked all over and into various rooms looking for them without anyone batting an eye like I didn't belong. Evidently I also walked through some secure room where cell phones aren't allowed, even though there weren't signs on the door at the time.

This is a log way of saying I'm not surprised the Capitol police were shit yesterday.

Of course, when protesters damaged buildings in Minneapolis and Portland - those same morons were ok with "light 'em up!" so eff them and their two-facedness.

SI

Someone should tell them that you can still trespass on public property. Weird how ignorance of the law is a free pass to break it when you're a conservative.

Ossoff has broken the .5% lead and is comfortably at .8% and 35615 votes!
No recount can be requested.

Remember when we found out Goetz was living with a boy he was probably fucking and we just ignored it?

You can apparently say fuck on MSNBC.

Also the guy who helped ransack Pelosi's office and has been bragging about it is still not arrested.

Joe Scarborough just went off on the Capitol Police, Trump, Giuliani. Don Jr. and the MAGA terrorists.

Wow...pic.twitter.com/eYonjO9aQM

— Rex Chapman���� (@RexChapman) January 7, 2021

https://t.co/JPygWzI7xL pic.twitter.com/ITBVNg6vMN

— Bill 'Berg (@wiretap804) January 7, 2021

Joe Scarborough's not wrong at all. HE'S 100% FUCKING RIGHT!

The 25th should be invoked at a minimum but Pence has no spine, Mitch wants to maximize his power, and we're just all going to hold our breath's that Trump doesn't do something stupid for the next 2 weeks because he promised not to. And we all know how well he keeps his promises.

We're all going to deserve the shit this leads to

SI

Marco Rubio has out-Marco Rubio'd himself:

Spineless, as always, on two fronts:

1. “Some”

2. Limiting replies to avoid getting ratio’d.

Great work @marcorubio pic.twitter.com/IjkaSXhjxV

— Yashar Ali �� (@yashar) January 7, 2021

As bad as yesterday looked, it's so much worse than most of the media is connecting. There were people in the Capitol prepared to kidnap and restrain people. There were explosives planted at both the RNC and the DNC. There were multiple state capitols closed due to threats. The Governor's mansion in Washington state was stormed.

All of this was connected through the same social media networks. We have a radical para-military force of unknown size loose in the USA, and if we don't do anything about it the attacks wil continue. This isn't going away when Biden is sworn in.

A newly-elected WV state delegate was live streaming on FB as he was part of the group that stormed the Capitol. Unreal.

Great news. I really thought the best Dems could do out of GA was get 1 out of the 2 with Warnock. Very happy to be proven wrong.

Hey he was working as an independent journalist.

Funny, weren't we just calling them a "well regulated militia" the other day?

My favorite thing about the storming of the Capitol was the supporters who Googled wrong Georgia and waved flags of a European country they didn't know existed. pic.twitter.com/zV5dc3iLfu

— DebroDar (@debroDar) January 7, 2021

SI

This thread will continue to grow...

Let's name and shame them! #Capitol #CapitolBuilding #CapitolRiots #MAGATerrorists #Antifa

1) Chester Doles - KKK from Georgia and Neonazi. pic.twitter.com/kPg9w0L9Bl

— Gaglad (@Gagladla) January 7, 2021

I would hope they would be arrested in addition to being outed, Angeli lives here in Arizona and is often at the capitol espousing his rants.

Pelosi announced that the House will adjourn until the inauguration.

I'm sure that this time Trump has learned his lesson.

Facebook extended their ban on Trump "for at least two weeks".

She is worthless as always.

I got a report on thehill.com that Facebook ban is indefinite.

I'm all for sh*t canning the Capitol Police leadership (and others that may have allowed the protestors to waltz by).

They report to Congress. I'd like to know who they report to in Congress and get those sh*t canned too.

Executive Team | United States Capitol Police

GOOGLE IT

Oversight
The United States Capitol Police (USCP) is overseen by the Capitol Police Board and has Congressional oversight by appropriations and authorizing committees from the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. This oversight affords the Department the support and opportunity to continually ensure that the USCP meets the safety and security needs of the Congress, the staff, and the many visitors who come to the United States Capitol each day.


Capitol Police Board
Michael C. Stenger, United States Senate Sergeant at Arms
Paul D. Irving, U.S. House of Representatives Sergeant at Arms (Chairman)
J. Brett Blanton, Architect of the Capitol
Steven A. Sund, Chief of Police (Ex-Officio Member)

Congressional Committees
Appropriations Committees
House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Legislative Branch

Chairman: Tim Ryan (Ohio)
Ranking Member: Jaime Herrera Beutler (Washington)

Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Legislative Branch

Chairman: Cindy Hyde-Smith (Mississippi)
Ranking Member: Christopher Murphy (Connecticut)

Authorizing Committees
Committee on House Administration

Chairman: Zoe Lofgren (California)
Ranking Member: Rodney Davis (Illinois)

Senate Committee on Rules and Administration

Chairman: Roy Blunt (Missouri)
Ranking Member: Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota)

The Capitol Police is compromised and should be disbanded ASAP. The Secret Service can be expanded to handle those duties.

She was also an ardent and hardened Q follower.

A reddit thread tracking the flags flown yesterday. It's an interesting mix.

Footage of today's events at the US Capitol showed many flags. I put some of them together, pretty weird mix. Details in the comments. : vexillology

Pretty interesting.

WTF is the South Korean and Tibet flag doing there?

Radicalization is not confined to the Middle East.

Oooh, Schumer has got some game.

This may get interesting.

This should be ringing alarm bells throughout the Pentagon.

I'm guessing Tibet is a nod to the Tibetan Uprising.

Seriously, why isn't the House issuing articles of impeachment right now? Schumer even said they need to remove him.

I don't think this would be a surprise to anyone. I'd say it's likely this was an incompetent attempt at a coup.


US allies say Trump attempted coup with help from federal law enforcement - Business Insider

Parts of the Capitol police were 100% complicit in this. At the very least they were derelict in their duty to do whatever it takes, including laying down their lives, to protect the heads of state inside. There were likely some heros who saved a lot of lives, including members of the house who have military background. I heard an interview with one this AM who said he was telling all members to remove their pins so they couldn't be identified as house members. Scary stuff.

I agree - I’m struggling with what the endgame was.

It seemed the plan was to exhort his MAGADs to storm the Capitol, but there was no thought/plan for what might happen afterwards, so it appears they did a bit of minor ransacking, milled about a bit and then filed out.

If the plan was to delay the endorsements because by law it had to be the 6th, it was always going to be resumed when safe.

Did he really think GOP Senators and Congressmen would support that course of action, and that was the plan, together they would declare victory and a new term?

So yeah, I think it was an incompetent and incomplete planned coup - essentially the plan was ‘Storm the Capitol and we’ll wing it from there’

No coup attempt.

Trump wanted to show the power he had to rile supporters/people up to show'um. And he did that.

There is dumb.

And there is "wearing your work badge with easily identifiable company logo while you are illegally storming the United States Capitol" dumb.

NEW: A Maryland company has terminated one of its employees after he was apparently captured in a picture during the mob riot in the Capitol yesterday. @wbaltv11 pic.twitter.com/flxRhdmP3P

— Tre Ward (@TreWardWBAL) January 7, 2021

This had been organized on Parler and other places for weeks. Someone on another board I read mentioned "taking back the country" and encouraged people to jump onto "alternative social media" if they wanted to join or support the cause. This stuff is monitored by various federal agencies yet they were caught off guard by what happened yesterday?

I don't know if Trump was aiming for a coup directly (I doubt it), but the group organizing this was and people somewhere in the chain looked the other way.

The quotes I was responding to were:


So (like you) don't believe Trump was going for a coup.

Re: coup attempt by the other (e.g. not Trump himself). They may call it as such, but doubtful IMO. There would be weapons, lots of shooting and a lot more deaths. So if we want to call it a weak-coup-attempt-by-intimidation-and-vandalization, okay but I don't think it comes close to a coup.

Yeah, there was the pic of the guy holding a crap load of ziptie style handcuffs in the chamber

People wearing homemade shirts that said "MAGA Civil War"

But sure, they're just a bunch of knuckleheads that just need their hair tousled and released back into society

If we can’t call it a coup, can we call it a Putsch?

I don't know, I feel like we really gotta get DEEP into the meaning of "coup" before we can really figure out what to call it

Also, while we're playing the hits, who can say what their intent really was? I mean, you can't know their thoughts unless they specifically tell you what they're doing.

That's what I'm thinking. Glad my message is getting through to some of you. Check it out ...

https://qz.com/1953602/is-america-experiencing-a-coup/

Probably most applicable passage for this forum.

tiresomely pedantic to be honest

I have one question.

Why do they wear and wave Chicago Bears colors?

Tiresomely ad hominem

Pelosi to speak shortly.

Starting another articles of impeachment hopefully.

I can see this much more than Pence & cabinet.

I'm with Edward64. Language matters, and as Orwell said, it's destruction has major impacts on society. It's just like the regular tossing around of the word treason to describe actions that aren't treasonous, or the misuse of the word socialism as others on this forum often rightly object to. It colors how events are viewed, and is often a vital concern, not a pedantic one.

The textbook, dictionary, definition of a coup is "a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government." Do we need to parse each and every word in that definition to say what was done yesterday was an attempt at a coup?

You know what is more destructive? Lies becoming "truth".

And yet, there we were last night after four people died at the Capitol with Matt Gaetz and others in the GOP continuing to spout lie after lie.

Well we now know who Pelosi's new 'desk mate' is. And the complete arrogance of this asshat is unbelievable.

Protester with feet on Nancy Pelosi's desk is a Trump supporter from Arkansas

Chao resigns as Transportation Secretary. Explicitly because of "what the President did yesterday."

Throw him in prison with the rest of them that are identified.

This is the overthrow a government equivalent to assistant coaches or boosters keeping the head coach in the dark about recruiting violations.

Maybe not a coup, by definition, but parts of our government were likely complicit in an attempt to negate a presidential election.

Just because it was poorly organized and executed doesn't make it any less of a coup.

You don't think that if they had gotten their hands on the Electoral Vote certificates that those things wouldn't have gone up in smoke? Again, just because they were mostly hillbilly idiots doesn't mean it wasn't a coup attempt.

But not until Biden is sworn in. Don't want Trump giving them pardons, which he will because it's only law and order for certain people.

I have no doubt Trump will be removed if articles are filed. Enough of the GOP wants him gone not just now, but more importantly for them, ineligible for 2024.

2:00 EST

It was CNN or MSNBC last night that brought up what would have happened if the protestors destroyed the "boxes".

FWIW, a talking head said there would be another way to restart the process albeit delayed. No details though.

No idea if Pelosi will bring up impeachment. But if she did, is there enough time left to impeach?

And then, is there enough time for Senate to confirm (or not) the impeachment?

It may all be symbolic but I really hope she starts the process.

Can't Trump pardon anyone based on future federal charges?

and another one

you love to see it. pic.twitter.com/EP79MdhGVz

— donky from shrek (@donky_fromshrek) January 7, 2021

It was an attempted coup, if we want to really split hairs

And those trying to wiggle around the definitions sound like Sideshow Bob and "Attempted murder? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry?"



SI

Not debating what would've happened if they had gotten their hands on it. The intent was to stop Biden coming to power. I wonder if there's some kind of word to describe that...

Trump could be removed by the morning if Congress wanted to. The House could vote tonight and the Senate could vote without a trial tomorrow.

I think Biden used the word insurrection and not the C-word.

Thanks.

That would be a perfect ending. I can live with Pence for the remaining days.

This asshole got his just desserts as well.

Tennessee-Chattanooga Mocs fire assistant football coach Chris Malone after racist tweet

Accountability.

Biden going off.

Biden is issuing another scathing speech, listing Trump's most egregious actions. I wonder if he's leading up to calling for removal. (Not sure why else he'd need to say more than yesterday.)

And it keeps him from being eligible to run again, which is worth it on its own.

If articles are announced I'd guess it's only happening because Dems feel they have the numbers for removal.

I'd like to think that's true, but you may be giving the Dems too much credit here...

Are you somehow laboring under the impression I'm in favor of lying? It used to be that I would argue in favor of a return to the concept of truth and for literal decades would be told by the left in general that it was an outmoded concept, postmodernism is where it all is, there's no such thing as truth and therefore no such thing as lying, it's all relative etc.

I've got as much skin in the anti-lying, pro-truth game as just about anybody.

I think the odds are better than 50-50 now

Heh...all that to nominate Garland. Never mind...

I'm not suggesting that you are in favor of lying. What I am suggesting is arguing semantics is not as important as arguing basic truth.

Sure politicians bend their words all the time, but we can't have people in power saying the sky is red and living in that reality when it is clear as day not true.

That would be a major downer

just added another "highlight, right click, search google" word to my list.

Odds have gone down to 10% now.

These should have been like 2 different speeches. Garland could wait till Mon or so

https://twitter.com/business/status/...147402752?s=19

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Upon further thought, unless they think he’s going to fire off a nuke or something, why would the Democrats want to remove him at this point? Don’t they want him around screwing up the ‘22 and ‘24 primaries? I’m thinking this is all just posturing and grandstanding.

So, you think we should just let what happened yesterday go without comment or consequence?

Invoking the 25th amendment would still ultimately require a Congressional vote (unless Trump allows it to happen which would be possibly the biggest surprise of his presidency, and that's saying something), and if that happens, then you have a pretty easy impeachment vote directly after, unless none of the Rs defect, and I mean they're going to at least get Romney.

So wait, did Pelosi do her speech the same time as Bidens? Lol.

He can't be allowed to run for President in '24.

There are a bunch of jihadis drinking their hot tea thinking ... damn lost opportunity, is it that easy?

I agree and I go back to feeling Trump's presidency is over. I don't think they're letting him anywhere near a meaningful decision and limiting his public visibility over the next 2 weeks. Pence will effectively run the country and milk the clock out.

If I'm understanding the process correctly, Congress has to rule on the outcome of the 25th amendment petition within 21(?) days. It was a length of time that allowed them to basically run out the clock and not have to do anything until after Jan. 20th.