That Was the Week That Was
Quite a week, eh? It’s hard to believe that just last Sunday so much talk was about Trump’s taped talk with Georgia’s secretary of state, while many of us eagerly awaited that state’s Senate elections.
American Carnage – Remove Trump from office now. He’s dangerous.
Some thoughts on what’s going on right now in DC.
Trump is deranged. His refusal to condemn the criminals, the rioters, the terrorists who invaded the Capitol and whom he’s egged on demonstrates that this is a man dangerously out of control. So does his praising the mob… [Continue Reading]
My Chat With a Conspiracist – And why he’s better than his would-be betters in the Senate’s “Sedition Caucus.”
Out in the Street
As I strolled down the main commercial drag of my new hometown of Benicia, California yesterday, a fellow offered me a small slip of paper and asked, “Do you know how the Chinese Communist Party stole the election? Check out the video from this paper.” The slip recommended a “Who’s Stealing America” documentary on the front and supposedly reliable news sources on the back.
The guy had a mask on, kept his social distance and seemed nice enough, so I engaged. Our chat went something like this: [Continue Reading]
But here are 20 big ways in which it wasn’t all bad.
For whatever reason, I still recall a 1997 TV ad tag line for the telecommunications company MCI: “Is this a great time or what?”
No sane person would say that about 2020. The year brought us… [Continue Reading]
Benicia resident Stephen Golub offers excellent perspective on his blog, A Promised Land: Politics. Policy. America as a Developing Country. To access his other posts or subscribe, please go to his blog site, A Promised Land.
By Roger Straw, January 9, 2021
Denver Riggleman, Former Virginia U.S. Rep, Air Force Intelligence, NSA, Network Analysis, Disinfo Hunter, Whiskey Distiller. Author: “Bigfoot…It’s Complicated”
Former Republican U.S. Representative Denver Riggleman appeared tonight on CNN with a shocking and factual analysis of the hate groups behind Wednesday’s capitol riots and armed and deadly siege of the U.S. Congress.
Read the full report below; but here is a brief summary listing of the insurrection leadership:
Hate Organizations involved in the U.S. Capitol Riots per this report:
Proud Boys (White Supremacists)
Oathkeepers (Anti-Government)
NSC131 (Neo-Nazi)
New Jersey European Heritage Association (White Supremacists)
Nick Fuentes and “Groyper Army” (Neo-Nazi)
American Nationalist Party (White Supremacists)
American Guard (White Supremacists)
Summary:
Virtually all violent vanguard elements appeared to come from predominantly far-right fringe groups
Some in the crowd interpreted portions of President Trump’s speech as an instruction to march aggressively to the capitol building directly.
High profile figures associated with the administration were also inciting violent sentiment and cued instructions previous to the event,
Widely subscribed messianic ideology in QAnon, together wth situational cues, created conditions that strongly favored mass enactment of its fantasy of insurrection.
Explicit plans to ‘Occupy the Capitol’ were circulating across social media suggesting that the capitol building was an explicit target of the violent vanguard from the beginning. Evidence suggests some rioters were armed with weapons and zip-ties.
There is no credible evidence that the crowd was infiltrated or led by Antifa activists at this time.
SOURCE: The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) is a politically neutral, multi-disciplinary team of experienced neuroscientists, technology industry leaders, physicists, and machine learning experts from across academia and industry who have developed an integrated technology platform – Contextus – to track and expose the epidemic of virtual deception, manipulation, and hate, as it spreads between social media communities and into the real world.
Trump voters, who had proven immovable throughout his tenure including the tumultuous post-election period, now appear to be fracturing in reaction to the attack on the Capitol Building. New findings from a survey fielded Thursday, January 7, 2021 (n=2,009) by Avalanche Insights show that a quarter of Trump voters agree that action should be taken to immediately remove him from office. Further, 41% of Trump voters believe he has “betrayed the values and interests of the Republican Party.”
This emerging disapproval is not only of Trump, but also of fellow Trump supporters who engage in violence. Two-thirds of Trump voters in the survey oppose the actions of Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol with 44% saying these actions “betrayed American values.” Over half (55%) say they should be prosecuted for their actions and 29% believe they committed treason.
More broadly, 62% of Americans hold Trump responsible for yesterday’s events and say he should be removed by the 25th Amendment or impeachment. This call for immediate action extends well beyond Trump, with 71% of Americans saying the Republican Members of Congress who promoted or supported yesterday’s actions should either resign or be censured. Half agree that Capitol police actions demonstrate preferential treatment to white people. Finally, 75% of Americans want the people who stormed the Capitol building to be prosecuted.
FOR ORGANIZERS…
This brand new data shows support, not merely overall, but among Trump’s base for removing him from office. It’s critical to get this information out as widely as possible and your help is needed in amplifying these data points on your channels in social media, coalescing under #RemoveNow. Check out this social media toolkit for some sample content and join a Twitter storm at 3pm ET.
With 24 hours to take a breath, U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson hasn’t wavered. He wants Donald Trump ousted, no matter that the one-term president’s time expires at noon, Jan. 20.
After Wednesday’s siege by an unruly mob at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., the congressman Tweeted that he’s “calling on the Vice President to initiate proceedings under the 25th Amendment to gather the Cabinet and remove the President from office. On this dark day for our nation, we need to stand up and end this immediately. Nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake.”
In a 20-minute phone interview Thursday afternoon, Thompson reiterated that he “absolutely” wants Trump’s reign finished immediately.
“We need to do whatever we can to remove him from this position of power,” Thompson said. “In addition to that, he needs to be impeached for a second time. The articles of impeachment have been drafted and I’ve signed onto that effort. I believe it should be done as quickly as possible.”
There’s no waiting out Trump’s term, Thompson emphasized.
“You saw how much damage he did yesterday — one day. I’m frightened to think about what else he could do,” Thompson said.
Rep. Mike Thompson. (Rich Freedman–Times-Herald)
Trump “is completely off the rails. He’s become an enemy of the state,” said Thompson, believing the president incited the rioters to seize the Capitol building “to try and prevent a peaceful transition of power” to President-elect Joe Biden.
“He set up a coup attempt yesterday (Wednesday), trying to encourage the vice president to steal this election,” Thompson said, calling the siege aftermath “a sad, sad day in this country.”
Trump “encouraged people to break the law, take up laws against their own country and march to the Capitol and stop the peaceful transition. He asked them to march with him, but when they started marching, he went back to the White House,” said Thompson. “That speaks volumes to what kind of person he is.”
Explaining the lack of law enforcement to help thwart the Capitol siege “is the $64 million question,” said Thompson, adding that he sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “asking to do a top-to-bottom review to find out what went wrong and that we ensure it never goes wrong again.”
Thompson said he also sent Pelosi a text Wednesday night requesting the head of the Capitol State Police be terminated.
“Folks that run security should be fired by morning,” Thompson said. “Whomever was in charge not only put our institution of representative government at risk, but put at risk of the lives of every person in that Capitol building, every staff person, every member of the House, every janitor. And they put the life of every cop at risk by putting them out there ill-prepared to do the job they were asked to do.”
Thompson said he was safely in his office when the mob entered the Capitol, though he was evacuated once when “some kind of explosive device” was located and a second time when shots were fired.
“When hooligans broke through security, I was over in the library,” Thompson, managing to quip, “I don’t think they could find a library with a GPS.”
Seriously, added Thompson, “they need to arrest every one” of the infiltrators “and try them for treason.”
“They call themselves ‘patriots’ but they are really traitors,” Thompson said.
Four people died during the siege, including one woman by gunfire.
“I think the president bears full responsibility for what happened,” Thompson said. “He did this. He did this whole thing. He convinced people to participate in a coup. That’s why he needs to be impeached.”
Thompson said Trump will “definitely be impeached by the House, I’m sure of that. I hope the Senate drums up some courage since they didn’t last time.”
Thompson sees a window of opportunity.
“The dam is starting to break. Some Republicans are calling for his removal. I move to convict him,” Thompson said.
Though 9/11 and school shootings “were terrible, this is in a different league,” Thompson said. “It’s armed insurgence with a treasonous effort to topple our government. It’s an attack on the institution, an attack on democracy, an attack on our republic.”
Almost lost in the scuffle — Democrats flipped the Senate earlier this week, thanks to Georgia, with Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff emerging with run-off wins.
“That’s a shining light in all of this,” Thompson said, reflecting on 500-plus bipartisan bills languishing on Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s desk.
With McConnell on the verge of becoming Senate minority leader and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the tie-breaker in a potential 50-Democrat, 50-Republican vote, “it’s now a different story,” said Thompson, awaiting the Inauguration Jan. 20.
“Everybody I know — Democrats, Republicans, Independents — don’t want a revolution. They want a return to normalcy,” Thompson said. “It’ll be a much better world.”
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