Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right

[sunstoned]

7 hours ago, why me said:

I don't think that you are correct. I don't think that his politics had much to do with many members at that time at all. I was there, lived in it at that time. Church members became republican because republicanism was conservative on social issues. The democrats were liberal on social issues. Thus, mormons in the US inside the mormon corridor were republicans. ETB was a member of the John Birch Society. Most members had no idea what that was. And the society had little impact in American politics. That being said, many mormons in other parts of the world belonged to the social democrat parties. Others were conservative. And most were just going through life surviving, especially in the USA. The 70s were rough for many members. Church welfare played a huge role in keeping people afloat. Conservatism was defined by Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley of the National Review.

I understand where you are going with this. But you are off base. Now lets talk about the extreme right. What are they and where are they? How many members are there? And where are they now? Such terms are meant to divide people. I see no extreme right in the USA in a major way. If Trump was given a fair chance by the media, there would be no problem today. From the moment Trump won, the democrats were calling for his impeachment the moment he won and Madonna wanted to blow up the white house ( women's march speech) and most of Hollywood said that he was not their president ( Robert DeNiro led the way). Democracy? The call was Impeach, impeach, impeach. I'm not a Trump supporter. But I call it the way I see it.

What are church members suppose to do in the USA? Who to support? Most people are just trying to survive a pandemic and have a roof over their heads. Most are getting along with all colors of human beings. Exteme this and extreme that...forget it.

Trump given a fair chance by the media?  Are you serious.  Every time Trump opens his mouth lies come out.  The big lie about election fraud started before the election.  He built up to it, and continued it after he lost.  Of course we know the out come of this.  The January 6 insurrection.  Trump is a self serving narcissist that has damaged our democracy and he continues to do so. 

[kimpearson]

I would think the best example of the influence of President Benson and many others who pushed church membership on a path that led further to the right than many realized is the number of members who voted for Trump in 2020, an extreme right republican over a moderate democrat by all classical definitions of the terms.  Many of those members including most of my family see themselves and Trump as moderate republicans and Biden as far left.  Many Church members and evangelical christens have created their own definitions as follows; no republicans are extreme right rather they all are moderate right.  They have no definition of a moderate democrat as all democrats are liberal socialists communists.   It confuses the heck out of the rest of the world.  By the way I believe people have the right to be extreme right, moderate right, centrist, moderate left and extreme left.  If some one is honest and holds true to their political views so be it.  I do have a problem with the amount of dishonesty that goes on by all politicians.  l will never vote for a politician that is majorly dishonest in his personal life, business life, community life and political life over a politician that has some instances of dishonesty but also has a demonstrated history of goodness and honesty in many things.  I believe our God gave us the correct measure of politicians in D&C 98:10, honesty and wisdom first, politics second.

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, bsjkki said:

The murderous mob didn’t kill anyone. The cop did. Please just denounce all political violence, I have. I have a hard time knowing the violence you condone in other circumstances. 

They didn’t because one of them got shot.

2 hours ago, Harry T. Clark said:

Why do you think the Justice Dept. won't release all the videos taken that day?

Security concerns. The investigations are still ongoing and there may be more arrests coming and video releases may encourage someone they have not caught yet to flee. Worry that some unreleased videos are a danger in prejudicing potential jurors. Some combination of those would be my guess.

2 hours ago, Harry T. Clark said:

Where were the weapons?    

The Capitol Police weapons? They were deliberately ill-equipped to resist. There were changes in the leadership structure. Compare the USCP on the day of the BLM protest to 1/6. Full riot gear compared to ill-prepared. If you mean the rioter’s firearms those that had them did not fire them thankfully. Some had weapons. The arrest reports cover some being confiscated.

2 hours ago, Harry T. Clark said:

Why wasn't there more security?  What were Pelosi's communications with the police/national guard?  

Security was deliberately weakened by the administration. The National Guard and FBI forces ready to act were not called in quickly. The President delayed after repeated requests for reinforcements. It appears it was Mike Pence that finally ordered them deployed to DC. By the time they arrived it was largely over. I am not 100% but I am pretty sure it is also technically not legal of the Vice President to give orders to the National Guard without the President authorizing his leadership but I could be wrong on that.

2 hours ago, Harry T. Clark said:

What do you make of the reports that there were federal agents involved, just like with the supposed Whitmer plot?  

I haven’t seen anything credible backing it up. The Whitmer plot was stopped. That is usually what happens in cases where the FBI sets up a sting. If it was like the Whitmer plot the FBI should have swooped in. They didn’t. They also had no reason to incite an attack they couldn’t stop.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/nov/04/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlsons-conspiracy-theory-about-fbi-and-ja/

Furthermore they didn’t need help to organize this from an FBI sting or anything of that sort. It didn’t require specialized equipment and the planning was long in advance. Might there have been one or two federal agents in the loop on the planning to gather intel? Sure. Inciting the whole thing? Nah, I don’t buy it.

2 hours ago, Harry T. Clark said:

I think this is more politics than anything else.  Both sides do it.  Both sides want to outlaw the other side.  The government wasn't in danger.  The military wasn't involved in storming the capitol.  None of the people that entered had weapons.  No one has been charged with insurrection and Trump left office.  He isn't the president any more.  So, perhaps let's view this for what it is, more political nonsense.  

The government was in danger. Senator Romney was only saved by a USCP police officer who directed the senator to flee and then led the insurrectionists to follow him instead of Romney. If they had followed Romney they may have got a number of senators. The attackers were trying to break into the room the House members were holed up. They were chanting about murdering Pence and Pelosi and a bunch of others. Some had equipment to take hostages.

The constantly repeated lie that they were unarmed is tiresome. Firearms were found and many of them had other weapons. You can see them if you watch the videos of the attackers brutally beating police officers. I am guessing you haven’t.

I am not sure insurrection is a chargeable offense. It would be sedition. Also no one has been charged with that yet. The DoJ is working their way up the chain from the lowest level offenses to the highest and getting people to turn on people up the food chain. They have taken care of a lot (but not all) of the low level offenders who didn’t commit violence or vandalism. Now they are getting the violent ones and the leadership. They are also looking at ties between those people and members of Congress and the previous administration.

It is not political nonsense. Causing injuries to dozens of police and threatening the government with the stated aim of changing a decision with the threat of violence is terrorism. Terrorists need to be identified and punished. And no, I am not okay with just forgetting about it for the sake of getting along. Eventually we have to put it behind us but after the facts are dragged out. If, as I suspect happened, some members of Congress were involved and members of the previous administration that should be investigated. If Trump did more than just his speech to organize it he needs to face punishment too. I would argue the speech was enough and was equivalent to screaming “fire” in a theater but whatever.

Also worth noting that Romney, who is one of the calmer senators, blamed Hawley as they were being evacuated saying “You caused this!” Some other members of Congress also reportedly led people on guided tours shortly before the attack and reportedly it was not the usual family. It is quite possible one of more of them let in the equivalent of a recon party in advance. They have denied it but no explanation for who they brought in were given. Add in how desperately and guiltily some people were questioning the DoJ when they mentioned that they were looking into phone communications on the day and demanding specifics as to what they could track and I am guessing there was some level of coordination or preparation. Add in one idiotic member of Congress tweeting out the location of the Speaker in the middle of the attack after they were told to not tell anyone where they were and it looks suspicious. I don’t know how much they were involved but I want those investigating to find out. I also want more details on why the USCP were so unprepared and what orders they were given and from whom.

3 hours ago, Harry T. Clark said:

I'd like to see you expand on the supposed evidence of the nefarious plots/plans you claim existed.  What blueannon sites are you frequenting?  At least give a little back up instead of just making empty statements.  We all know you believe the walls are still closing in. Too bad russiagate was exposed for the Clinton creation is was.    

I bet you would. I am not posting the screenshots I took of that crap here though. I was on some of the more public stuff. Some people went looking on the deep web. Here is a report on one site I looked at from the media verifying this was being done in advance.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/15/thedonald-capitol-attack-advance-democracy/

It was mostly people talking about how they were going to zip tie up members of Congress and force them to reject swing state ballots and murder Pence if he resisted and rape some of the female members of Congress and whether they should bring guns or focus on close range hand weapons.

Some of the garbage particularly on Twitter was being amplified by Russian bots and other disinformation but the stuff on Twitter was mild by comparison. Those other sites were largely home grown and badly. Some of the far right sites were hacked as well as the company hosting them. I am not a hacker but when someone laid out the security on some of those sites I laughed. It was security 101 NOT to do a lot of the stuff they were doing. I think I could have hacked one of them. It is arguable whether the hack was illegal the data was so easy to access. This got the names of the owners of many far-right sites outed and many lost their jobs after being found out. Some of the more violent posters were also identified and outed with similar results.

Russiagate? You mean the Mueller report? The one where Mueller said if Trump wasn’t President that Trump could be prosecuted for what happened? The witch hunt that generated over a dozen indictments including of specific Russians who attempted to collude with the campaign? The Mueller report that says that Trump tried to collude with Russia? I actually read the whole report. It was long and most of it was boring but parts were interesting if unsurprising. The idea that that was a dead end hoax is one of the greatest propaganda victories of the last few years. The investigation was a success and led to convictions.

That may not be over. Giuliani was involved with two Russian assets from then on and it looks like they played him pretty well. Then suddenly he found the laptop supposedly owned by Hunter that basically has “Russian disinformation plot” painted on it. There are reports that some of the information on it has been authenticated as accurate. I fail to see how that proves it wasn’t planted. It wouldn’t be hard to get some accurate data from any number of sources so that some emails are legit and mix in whatever they want. I admit to having some laughs when Giuliani went on the talk show circuit and started hinting that the laptop had child pornography on it while inviting people to come over and see it. Totally a normal response to child porn. “Want to come over to my place and see the illegal material I have?” There probably wasn’t any porn but sounded damning when he hinted it was there. He hedged though and only said there were pictures of children. So was it normal pictures of Biden’s grandkids?

I give it about a 95% chance that we are going to start seeing indictments against people in Congress and in the previous administration this year. Merrick Garland gave a speech a few days ago talking about why it takes so long. There is also the Select Committee report that may end up with more information to pass on to the DoJ.

[bsjkki]

21 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

They didn’t because one of them got shot.

Security concerns. The investigations are still ongoing and there may be more arrests coming and video releases may encourage someone they have not caught yet to flee. Worry that some unreleased videos are a danger in prejudicing potential jurors. Some combination of those would be my guess.

The Capitol Police weapons? They were deliberately ill-equipped to resist. There were changes in the leadership structure. Compare the USCP on the day of the BLM protest to 1/6. Full riot gear compared to ill-prepared. If you mean the rioter’s firearms those that had them did not fire them thankfully. Some had weapons. The arrest reports cover some being confiscated.

Security was deliberately weakened by the administration. The National Guard and FBI forces ready to act were not called in quickly. The President delayed after repeated requests for reinforcements. It appears it was Mike Pence that finally ordered them deployed to DC. By the time they arrived it was largely over. I am not 100% but I am pretty sure it is also technically not legal of the Vice President to give orders to the National Guard without the President authorizing his leadership but I could be wrong on that.

I haven’t seen anything credible backing it up. The Whitmer plot was stopped. That is usually what happens in cases where the FBI sets up a sting. If it was like the Whitmer plot the FBI should have swooped in. They didn’t. They also had no reason to incite an attack they couldn’t stop.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/nov/04/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlsons-conspiracy-theory-about-fbi-and-ja/

Furthermore they didn’t need help to organize this from an FBI sting or anything of that sort. It didn’t require specialized equipment and the planning was long in advance. Might there have been one or two federal agents in the loop on the planning to gather intel? Sure. Inciting the whole thing? Nah, I don’t buy it.

The government was in danger. Senator Romney was only saved by a USCP police officer who directed the senator to flee and then led the insurrectionists to follow him instead of Romney. If they had followed Romney they may have got a number of senators. The attackers were trying to break into the room the House members were holed up. They were chanting about murdering Pence and Pelosi and a bunch of others. Some had equipment to take hostages.

The constantly repeated lie that they were unarmed is tiresome. Firearms were found and many of them had other weapons. You can see them if you watch the videos of the attackers brutally beating police officers. I am guessing you haven’t.

I am not sure insurrection is a chargeable offense. It would be sedition. Also no one has been charged with that yet. The DoJ is working their way up the chain from the lowest level offenses to the highest and getting people to turn on people up the food chain. They have taken care of a lot (but not all) of the low level offenders who didn’t commit violence or vandalism. Now they are getting the violent ones and the leadership. They are also looking at ties between those people and members of Congress and the previous administration.

It is not political nonsense. Causing injuries to dozens of police and threatening the government with the stated aim of changing a decision with the threat of violence is terrorism. Terrorists need to be identified and punished. And no, I am not okay with just forgetting about it for the sake of getting along. Eventually we have to put it behind us but after the facts are dragged out. If, as I suspect happened, some members of Congress were involved and members of the previous administration that should be investigated. If Trump did more than just his speech to organize it he needs to face punishment too. I would argue the speech was enough and was equivalent to screaming “fire” in a theater but whatever.

Also worth noting that Romney, who is one of the calmer senators, blamed Hawley as they were being evacuated saying “You caused this!” Some other members of Congress also reportedly led people on guided tours shortly before the attack and reportedly it was not the usual family. It is quite possible one of more of them let in the equivalent of a recon party in advance. They have denied it but no explanation for who they brought in were given. Add in how desperately and guiltily some people were questioning the DoJ when they mentioned that they were looking into phone communications on the day and demanding specifics as to what they could track and I am guessing there was some level of coordination or preparation. Add in one idiotic member of Congress tweeting out the location of the Speaker in the middle of the attack after they were told to not tell anyone where they were and it looks suspicious. I don’t know how much they were involved but I want those investigating to find out. I also want more details on why the USCP were so unprepared and what orders they were given and from whom.

I bet you would. I am not posting the screenshots I took of that crap here though. I was on some of the more public stuff. Some people went looking on the deep web. Here is a report on one site I looked at from the media verifying this was being done in advance.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/15/thedonald-capitol-attack-advance-democracy/

It was mostly people talking about how they were going to zip tie up members of Congress and force them to reject swing state ballots and murder Pence if he resisted and rape some of the female members of Congress and whether they should bring guns or focus on close range hand weapons.

Some of the garbage particularly on Twitter was being amplified by Russian bots and other disinformation but the stuff on Twitter was mild by comparison. Those other sites were largely home grown and badly. Some of the far right sites were hacked as well as the company hosting them. I am not a hacker but when someone laid out the security on some of those sites I laughed. It was security 101 NOT to do a lot of the stuff they were doing. I think I could have hacked one of them. It is arguable whether the hack was illegal the data was so easy to access. This got the names of the owners of many far-right sites outed and many lost their jobs after being found out. Some of the more violent posters were also identified and outed with similar results.

Russiagate? You mean the Mueller report? The one where Mueller said if Trump wasn’t President that Trump could be prosecuted for what happened? The witch hunt that generated over a dozen indictments including of specific Russians who attempted to collude with the campaign? The Mueller report that says that Trump tried to collude with Russia? I actually read the whole report. It was long and most of it was boring but parts were interesting if unsurprising. The idea that that was a dead end hoax is one of the greatest propaganda victories of the last few years. The investigation was a success and led to convictions.

That may not be over. Giuliani was involved with two Russian assets from then on and it looks like they played him pretty well. Then suddenly he found the laptop supposedly owned by Hunter that basically has “Russian disinformation plot” painted on it. There are reports that some of the information on it has been authenticated as accurate. I fail to see how that proves it wasn’t planted. It wouldn’t be hard to get some accurate data from any number of sources so that some emails are legit and mix in whatever they want. I admit to having some laughs when Giuliani went on the talk show circuit and started hinting that the laptop had child pornography on it while inviting people to come over and see it. Totally a normal response to child porn. “Want to come over to my place and see the illegal material I have?” There probably wasn’t any porn but sounded damning when he hinted it was there. He hedged though and only said there were pictures of children. So was it normal pictures of Biden’s grandkids?

I give it about a 95% chance that we are going to start seeing indictments against people in Congress and in the previous administration this year. Merrick Garland gave a speech a few days ago talking about why it takes so long. There is also the Select Committee report that may end up with more information to pass on to the DoJ.

Too weary to fact check. All political violence is wrong. Unless you want a civil war. I don’t.

[The Nehor]

1 minute ago, bsjkki said:

Too weary to fact check. All political violence is wrong. Unless you want a civil war. I don’t.

I am going to tell George Washington you said that and I think he will be very hurt.

[bsjkki]

41 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

I am going to tell George Washington you said that and I think he will be very hurt.

George Washington wanted a civil war. I don’t think we are at that point yet. Although I do think our institutions are corrupt…most likely they have been for some time but I’m now more aware. 
 

I wonder if I should even care/pay attention? Maybe it’s better to be happy in blissful ignorance. Love my neighbor/serve others/take care of my family and not really care about hearings/oral arguments/misinformation/investigative transcripts etc…
 

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by bsjkki

[why me]

4 hours ago, sunstoned said:

Trump given a fair chance by the media?  Are you serious.  Every time Trump opens his mouth lies come out.  The big lie about election fraud started before the election.  He built up to it, and continued it after he lost.  Of course we know the out come of this.  The January 6 insurrection.  Trump is a self serving narcissist that has damaged our democracy and he continues to do so. 

And yet, when he was elected, the talk of impeachment began. The democrats immediately wanted to impeach him. From day one, the mainstream media all over the world was against him. What about the millions of supporters who voted for him? They were ignored. Democracy? I don't care about Trump. It's the talk about democracy and extremism. The democrats should not have called for his impeachment before he took office and then when he took office, investigations into his election began (blame Russia collusion). This is what gives birth to extremism as what happened on January 6th.  All presidents have lied. It goes with the job. But with ETB, he had hardly any political impact on the LDS. Many voted according to social issues at that time. The difference between Democrats and Republicans at that time were meager in economic terms. It was all about social issues.

Edited January 9, 2022 by why me

[Hamba Tuhan]

4 hours ago, kimpearson said:

Many Church members and evangelical christens have created their own definitions as follows; no republicans are extreme right rather they all are moderate right.

Seeing oneself as a moderate whilst seeing others as 'extreme' seems to occur equally on both sides of the political spectrum, in my opinion.

[sunstoned]

7 hours ago, why me said:

And yet, when he was elected, the talk of impeachment began. The democrats immediately wanted to impeach him. From day one, the mainstream media all over the world was against him. What about the millions of supporters who voted for him? They were ignored. Democracy? I don't care about Trump. It's the talk about democracy and extremism. The democrats should not have called for his impeachment before he took office and then when he took office, investigations into his election began (blame Russia collusion). This is what gives birth to extremism as what happened on January 6th.  All presidents have lied. It goes with the job. But with ETB, he had hardly any political impact on the LDS. Many voted according to social issues at that time. The difference between Democrats and Republicans at that time were meager in economic terms. It was all about social issues.

CFR on "The democrats should not have called for his impeachment before he took office and then when he took office"  (credible references, not Glen Beck or Tucker Carson).

Where there is smoke there is fire.  Trump was suspect for very good reasons.  

[why me]

4 minutes ago, sunstoned said:

CFR on "The democrats should not have called for his impeachment before he took office and then when he took office"  (credible references, not Glen Beck or Tucker Carson).

Where there is smoke there is fire.  Trump was suspect for very good reasons.  

 

[why me]

10 minutes ago, sunstoned said:

CFR on "The democrats should not have called for his impeachment before he took office and then when he took office"  (credible references, not Glen Beck or Tucker Carson).

Where there is smoke there is fire.  Trump was suspect for very good reasons.  

 

Notice the date 2016. Such is democracy.

Edited January 9, 2022 by why me

[why me]

13 minutes ago, sunstoned said:

CFR on "The democrats should not have called for his impeachment before he took office and then when he took office"  (credible references, not Glen Beck or Tucker Carson).

Where there is smoke there is fire.  Trump was suspect for very good reasons.  

 

[why me]

17 minutes ago, sunstoned said:

CFR on "The democrats should not have called for his impeachment before he took office and then when he took office"  (credible references, not Glen Beck or Tucker Carson).

Where there is smoke there is fire.  Trump was suspect for very good reasons.  

 

[why me]

53 minutes ago, sunstoned said:

CFR on "The democrats should not have called for his impeachment before he took office and then when he took office"  (credible references, not Glen Beck or Tucker Carson).

Where there is smoke there is fire.  Trump was suspect for very good reasons.  

I didn't hear the newsmedia nor the democrats condemn such talk and demonstrations as acts of negating democracy. But they did fuel bitterness among those who voted for trump. And if he were still president and the problems that are being experienced today with inflation and covid deaths, he would be impeached and the media would cheer. He would be blamed.

When Pelosi spoke in the last video with Maxine, he was president for one month. Amazing. Notice the date.

Here is an interesting article from Vanity Fair in 2016. '

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/democrats-pave-the-way-to-impeach-donald-trump

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by why me

[sunstoned]

14 minutes ago, why me said:

 

This was one person and this on April 15th.  Four months into Trump's presidency, after he refused to release his tax records.  So lets try this again:

CFR on "The democrats should not have called for his impeachment before he took office and then when he took office"  (credible references, not Glen Beck or Tucker Carson).

Edited January 9, 2022 by sunstoned

[sunstoned]

7 minutes ago, why me said:

 

Look at the signs they are carrying.  They are reacting to Trumps disgusting immoral bragging about how he treats women, and the hateful things he was saying about his political rivals.  Yet the alt right "Christians" including many Mormons didn't let his corrupt, and bankrupt morals stop them from offering cult like support.  

[SteveO]

6 minutes ago, sunstoned said:

This was one person and this on April 15th.  Four months into Trump's presidency, after he refused to release his tax records.  So lets try this again:

CFR on "The democrats should not have called for his impeachment before he took office and then when he took office"  (credible references, not Glen Beck or Tucker Carson).

“Find me one OTHER person besides a sitting member of Congress who said this 3 months or less into his presidency, using sources only I trust and expect to validate my biases”

 

[Calm]

5 minutes ago, SteveO said:

“Find me one OTHER person besides a sitting member of Congress who said this 3 months or less into his presidency, using sources only I trust and expect to validate my biases”

 

The claim was called for impeachment before he took office, how does a statement after he took office or not about impeachment qualify for that?

[SteveO]

10 hours ago, The Nehor said:

They didn’t because one of them got shot.

Security concerns. The investigations are still ongoing and there may be more arrests coming and video releases may encourage someone they have not caught yet to flee. Worry that some unreleased videos are a danger in prejudicing potential jurors. Some combination of those would be my guess.

The Capitol Police weapons? They were deliberately ill-equipped to resist. There were changes in the leadership structure. Compare the USCP on the day of the BLM protest to 1/6. Full riot gear compared to ill-prepared. If you mean the rioter’s firearms those that had them did not fire them thankfully. Some had weapons. The arrest reports cover some being confiscated.

Security was deliberately weakened by the administration. The National Guard and FBI forces ready to act were not called in quickly. The President delayed after repeated requests for reinforcements. It appears it was Mike Pence that finally ordered them deployed to DC. By the time they arrived it was largely over. I am not 100% but I am pretty sure it is also technically not legal of the Vice President to give orders to the National Guard without the President authorizing his leadership but I could be wrong on that.

I haven’t seen anything credible backing it up. The Whitmer plot was stopped. That is usually what happens in cases where the FBI sets up a sting. If it was like the Whitmer plot the FBI should have swooped in. They didn’t. They also had no reason to incite an attack they couldn’t stop.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/nov/04/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlsons-conspiracy-theory-about-fbi-and-ja/

Furthermore they didn’t need help to organize this from an FBI sting or anything of that sort. It didn’t require specialized equipment and the planning was long in advance. Might there have been one or two federal agents in the loop on the planning to gather intel? Sure. Inciting the whole thing? Nah, I don’t buy it.

The government was in danger. Senator Romney was only saved by a USCP police officer who directed the senator to flee and then led the insurrectionists to follow him instead of Romney. If they had followed Romney they may have got a number of senators. The attackers were trying to break into the room the House members were holed up. They were chanting about murdering Pence and Pelosi and a bunch of others. Some had equipment to take hostages.

The constantly repeated lie that they were unarmed is tiresome. Firearms were found and many of them had other weapons. You can see them if you watch the videos of the attackers brutally beating police officers. I am guessing you haven’t.

I am not sure insurrection is a chargeable offense. It would be sedition. Also no one has been charged with that yet. The DoJ is working their way up the chain from the lowest level offenses to the highest and getting people to turn on people up the food chain. They have taken care of a lot (but not all) of the low level offenders who didn’t commit violence or vandalism. Now they are getting the violent ones and the leadership. They are also looking at ties between those people and members of Congress and the previous administration.

It is not political nonsense. Causing injuries to dozens of police and threatening the government with the stated aim of changing a decision with the threat of violence is terrorism. Terrorists need to be identified and punished. And no, I am not okay with just forgetting about it for the sake of getting along. Eventually we have to put it behind us but after the facts are dragged out. If, as I suspect happened, some members of Congress were involved and members of the previous administration that should be investigated. If Trump did more than just his speech to organize it he needs to face punishment too. I would argue the speech was enough and was equivalent to screaming “fire” in a theater but whatever.

Also worth noting that Romney, who is one of the calmer senators, blamed Hawley as they were being evacuated saying “You caused this!” Some other members of Congress also reportedly led people on guided tours shortly before the attack and reportedly it was not the usual family. It is quite possible one of more of them let in the equivalent of a recon party in advance. They have denied it but no explanation for who they brought in were given. Add in how desperately and guiltily some people were questioning the DoJ when they mentioned that they were looking into phone communications on the day and demanding specifics as to what they could track and I am guessing there was some level of coordination or preparation. Add in one idiotic member of Congress tweeting out the location of the Speaker in the middle of the attack after they were told to not tell anyone where they were and it looks suspicious. I don’t know how much they were involved but I want those investigating to find out. I also want more details on why the USCP were so unprepared and what orders they were given and from whom.

I bet you would. I am not posting the screenshots I took of that crap here though. I was on some of the more public stuff. Some people went looking on the deep web. Here is a report on one site I looked at from the media verifying this was being done in advance.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/15/thedonald-capitol-attack-advance-democracy/

It was mostly people talking about how they were going to zip tie up members of Congress and force them to reject swing state ballots and murder Pence if he resisted and rape some of the female members of Congress and whether they should bring guns or focus on close range hand weapons.

Some of the garbage particularly on Twitter was being amplified by Russian bots and other disinformation but the stuff on Twitter was mild by comparison. Those other sites were largely home grown and badly. Some of the far right sites were hacked as well as the company hosting them. I am not a hacker but when someone laid out the security on some of those sites I laughed. It was security 101 NOT to do a lot of the stuff they were doing. I think I could have hacked one of them. It is arguable whether the hack was illegal the data was so easy to access. This got the names of the owners of many far-right sites outed and many lost their jobs after being found out. Some of the more violent posters were also identified and outed with similar results.

Russiagate? You mean the Mueller report? The one where Mueller said if Trump wasn’t President that Trump could be prosecuted for what happened? The witch hunt that generated over a dozen indictments including of specific Russians who attempted to collude with the campaign? The Mueller report that says that Trump tried to collude with Russia? I actually read the whole report. It was long and most of it was boring but parts were interesting if unsurprising. The idea that that was a dead end hoax is one of the greatest propaganda victories of the last few years. The investigation was a success and led to convictions.

That may not be over. Giuliani was involved with two Russian assets from then on and it looks like they played him pretty well. Then suddenly he found the laptop supposedly owned by Hunter that basically has “Russian disinformation plot” painted on it. There are reports that some of the information on it has been authenticated as accurate. I fail to see how that proves it wasn’t planted. It wouldn’t be hard to get some accurate data from any number of sources so that some emails are legit and mix in whatever they want. I admit to having some laughs when Giuliani went on the talk show circuit and started hinting that the laptop had child pornography on it while inviting people to come over and see it. Totally a normal response to child porn. “Want to come over to my place and see the illegal material I have?” There probably wasn’t any porn but sounded damning when he hinted it was there. He hedged though and only said there were pictures of children. So was it normal pictures of Biden’s grandkids?

I give it about a 95% chance that we are going to start seeing indictments against people in Congress and in the previous administration this year. Merrick Garland gave a speech a few days ago talking about why it takes so long. There is also the Select Committee report that may end up with more information to pass on to the DoJ.

I started reading this, saw how long it was, and thought, “ya know, I probably don’t have to, I’ll just look for ‘Russia’ and get the gist…”

 

[bsjkki]

6 minutes ago, SteveO said:

“Find me one OTHER person besides a sitting member of Congress who said this 3 months or less into his presidency, using sources only I trust and expect to validate my biases”

 

I wonder if he will except ‘before Trump was even nominated’ references? 
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump-2016-impeachment-213817/

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/impeach-trump-article-1.2549541

And we know know the Hillary campaign payed for the dirty dossier and spread it around to spark the whole ‘investigation’.’ She never did accept the results of the election. 

 

 

 

 

[SeekingUnderstanding]

3 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

I wonder if he will except ‘before Trump was even nominated’ references? 
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump-2016-impeachment-213817/

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/impeach-trump-article-1.2549541

And we know know the Hillary campaign payed for the dirty dossier and spread it around to spark the whole ‘investigation’.’ She never did accept the results of the election. 

 

 

 

 

So T**** comes out in favor of killing the families of terrorists, and people then talk about impeachment. That seems extremely appropriate. 

Edited January 9, 2022 by SeekingUnderstanding

[SteveO]

18 minutes ago, sunstoned said:

Look at the signs they are carrying.  They are reacting to Trumps disgusting immoral bragging about how he treats women, and the hateful things he was saying about his political rivals.  Yet the alt right "Christians" including many Mormons didn't let his corrupt, and bankrupt morals stop them from offering cult like support.  

You know, before 2016…Obama dropped so many bombs the Airforce actually ran out of them at one point.  You are not a good person because you didn’t vote for Trump.

[bsjkki]

6 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

So T**** comes out in favor of killing the families of terrorists, and people then talk about impeachment. That seems extremely appropriate. 

So, nice job moving the goal posts. Score!

[SeekingUnderstanding]

Just now, bsjkki said:

So, nice job moving the goal posts. Score!

Not my goal posts. Just making sure we had the facts straight. T**** was not a victim in this thing. When you come out in favor of illegal things, and then people talk about the consequences of illegal acts - that is a very natural thing. People complaining about how T**** was treated are the biggest snowflakes of all IMNSHO. 

[SteveO]

1 minute ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Not my goal posts. Just making sure we had the facts straight. T**** was not a victim in this thing. When you come out in favor of illegal things, and then people talk about the consequences of illegal acts - that is a very natural thing. People complaining about how T**** was treated are the biggest snowflakes of all IMNSHO. 

Not being able to type “Trump” is the biggest snowflake move in this thread