50 State Protests Fizzle + Biden

“The next four years, I am quite sure, will be very unpleasant, and not particularly better than the last four years.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Are we about to enter into an age of sheer utopia? Of course not. But we no longer have an utter madman with his finger on the nuclear button, and we DO have a guy who will not go HAM on putting kids in cages.

When you’re right, you’re so right.. But when you’re off-base, you’re off the damn map.

Shit Ian, if you are going to listen to VOX and let EZ-Rah Klien make a fool out of you, you might as well sell out and make the money they do. I live in a 75/25 percentile Trump area, nobody here and I mean nobody thought of replicating Hillary/DNC’s effed up shit. They are pissed and rightfully so, but unless D’s send in the ATF/FBI to violate the 2nd amendment* there will be no replication of the mob-like behavior that created this protracted coup of the last four years.

Now, I don’t know that Ezra Klein, Josh Marshal et al ever really sold out, as, in retrospect, I’m not sure they had a soul to sell in the first place. But Ian, it seems pointless to support their efforts 80% of the time at your pay grade; go all in and get paid real dinero to herald the ever changing dogma to the liberal class and to propagandize to the proles into silence. The days of making a living writing truth are long past, back in the time of FDRism. Spare yourself, listen to your most rabid neoD commenters and echo their voices, go all in with the neoDs!

*You want to confiscate rifles, fine, do it legally, amend the US Constitution. Can’t do it, fine, then all your talk is tribal bullshit. Again, only 2% or less of firearm homicides involve a rifle in any manner and yet 98% of the effort to ban firearms revolve around weapons that account for about 1% of firearm deaths.

“kIdS iN cAgEs!!!!!!!!!!”

If you have not seen them, here are some farewell songs that came out in the past 48 hours:
😂 🤣 😂

💃 With A Song In Her Heart, Melania Trump Returns To New York:
🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmk_PjQCZco&t=3m52s

⌛ ‘One Day More’ of President Trump:
🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4aTjeCP0Lo

The most amazing thing about the second song is, if you google the names of some of the singers, you will find out they are actually James Corden’s staff members! 😲

It’s a relief to have a president again who is presidential. Hopefully Biden stays at home most of the time and works rather than traveling all over Timbuktu holding comical Nurembergesque rallies and spreading COVFEFE-45 far and wide.

You really do have the dumbest commentariat on the internet, Ian.

I don’t like saying this about our first woman and first woman of color VP, but Harris does not deserve to be where she is today. Not at all. She should not be VP, definitely not POTUS, and it has nothing to do with her being a woman of color because I would vote for Nina Turner or the Squad members for higher office. Harris really lucked into this role and she’ll be even luckier if she is handed the presidency should Biden die or become incapacitated before 2024.

I am happy to hear about the Keystone XL pipeline and extending student loan moratoriums until September. I also hope that he gets COVID-19 under control. Biden will be better for the USA than Trump, but he won’t do enough to keep the country from going off a cliff once all the moratoriums end. My prediction is that Americans will be in for a world of hurt toward the end of 2021 into 2022.

Q Nuts Calling
Now don’t look to us
‘Drenochrome mania
Has bitten the dust 😛

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2JrEIdgpw4&t=207s&ab_channel=VivaFrei

A postmortem on how Trump was stabbed to death in the back by his own administration and how Trump proved unable to simply hire and keep the right people.

That said, Big Tech is on the way out. One thing to ban Trump after he left office, doing it while still sitting, nope, Governments need to bring down the hammer and make it clear Big Tech obeys them or die.

Gab.com is the new rising star after Parler was too stupid to use their own proprietary systems to run.

@nnb,

Thank you for your interest in our comments. We are always happy to hear from you. Please let us know if you have any further concerns.

Trump f*cked up by being born. Period. There is no defense for the defenseless. No pity for him. No sympathy. No empathy. Only scorn and shame and damnation. Instead, we’ll get a three day Senate impeachment trial that will exonerate him of all wrongdoing so he can help stoke the next wave of the fascist putsch. That’s what Unity mean, afterall.

Obama was the first prez who put kids in cages.

Nope. That would be George Robinette Washington, or do you think slaves weren’t put in cages or the filthy horrid diseased hulls of ships?

Biden is bringing back all the greatest hits of the Clinton/Bush/Obama years. I’m sure they can rehabilitate most of the Trumpies too, given a year or two for TDS to subside and when they need someone to put down what might look like another genuinely populist effort from the left or right. As long as the stock market keeps going up!

Actually, makeup and style that is not obvious, that looks un-made up, is just more expensive and requires more skill to use. Liz Warren doesn’t look like she’s gone blonde to hide the gray but I assure you she has.

Recognizing Juan Guaido is the one that made me sick.

You may be right, bruce, but meanwhile you have to think about numero uno because no one else, obviously, will. If it worked for Lindell, it can work for you too and for me.

https://furry.substack.com/p/the-key-to-success

I don’t have to ‘cheer’ to be relieved there might be simething like a coordinated response to Covid-19.

Can’t fight the plutocrats if I’m choking to death in a hospital hallway.

Please, fellow lefties, start thinking strategically and tactically. Moralism is for quietists.

We can be pious idealists or we can win. FFS, choose. If pious moral posturing is your thing, may I suggest a cheaper form of masturbation aid? It’s called amateur porn. It’s just as embarrassing, but it’s cleaner. It has the added benefit of being way less passive than complaining pseudonymously on the internet about the powerful using their power over others.

If you want them to be less powerful, cool. It means taking their stuff and cracking some skulls. It doesn’t come from whining about how morally impure they are, while you wait for a White Hat who is never going to come.

Jesus feck, grow up and get some courage; either that, or you can go watch The Bachelor.

I should say that “The decision to shrink their crowds and disperse them across the states after the one big event (the capital)” was probably not planned by the leaders of these people and it likely came about after their main event (the capital) ended.

I suspect the capital was “the event” and there was no plan of what would come next.

In some ways recent events remind me of the Arab Spring in that the participants didn’t have much of a plan after the main event.

And for all the keyboard cowboys on here opining from their safe leftist bubble enclaves — this is how real change will happen in this country. We’ve Tiebout sorted ourselves into a serious conundrum. We don’t know what are neighbors are up to anymore because we’ve walled ourselves off from one another and only speculate about the ghouls on the other side.

Well, I work with the ghouls every day.

You want to make a difference in this country? Move somewhere rural, and red, then get to work. The leftist insurgents on the ground, actually doing the work, could definitely use your help.

Feral Finster says:

9/11 came and Americans could not give up their civil liberties quickly enough. 9/11 gave the opponents of liberty the excuse they needed to do what they wanted to do all along.

What civil liberties did Americans give up? What civil liberties did you personally lose with the advent of the Patriot Act and its many re-iterations?

(I agree that the Patriot Act was bad legislation and should be repealed. It won’t be, however, unless you can demonstrate actual harm to yourself since its passage.)

“Opponents of liberty” means what? Liberty for whom? Freedom to do what? Again, catch phrases without substance mean nothing in the end. Who are these “opponents of liberty?” What is it they actually oppose, and how does the Patriot Act, or if you prefer, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., President of the United States, interfere with your personal liberty? What can’t you do now that you could do prior to the passage of the Patriot Act and/or the elevation of Old Joe to the White House?

I don’t think Joemala will be significantly more effective in responding to COVID and related fallout. They had no problem encouraging their (older and frailer) voters to go to the polls during the primaries.

After the coup against the Sanderistas, they went into hiding all summer and fall, never bothering to elucidate any vision other than that they’re not Trump.

Trump may have actively worked against COVID containment efforts, but Clinton/Bush/Obama years hollowed out federal agencies and stockpiles agencies and ensured that there cannot be an effective response to a crisis. Look at how Europe’s comparatively much better effort is still not nearly enough.

And remember that the current DNC is responsible for the Obamacare rollout. These are professional gaslighters who think the solution to every problem is more PR and certainly believe hundreds of thousands or millions of victims (abroad and in the US) are acceptable prices for propping up the MIC, pharma, and banks. You think they’re going to change their behavior because you really really really want them to?

And remember that Fauci saw what the Chinese did and then sat on his hands and told the “noble” lie about mask effectiveness.

Democrats didn’t bother campaigning for any kind of expanded financial support in 2020 or Medicare expansion or against the outrageous corporate handouts or even support BLM .
In fact Biden went on record that he’s against it. When 80% of the population wanted more financial support, their mouthpieces were busy denouncing such efforts. They let SCOTUS and federal court go to Federalist Society stooges without a peep. The only time I hear them making a racket is when Trump threatened to withdraw troops from the middleeast.

They indubitably suppressed third party voting in the general. They changed the rules in the primary again and again to favor their peeps and black out Gravel, Yang, Gabbard, Williamson, and Sanders.

And Biden is a known plagarist, fabulist, abuser of women, and out and out corporate whore of 40+ years. His cabinet is full of people with similar records. Why do you think they’re going to change?

If Joemala is the”resistance’s” idea of a solution, then I must regretfully take my ball home, do some organic gardening, and figure out a loophole that let’s me leave the country before it fully implodes.

Oh, I don’t know, freedom from unlawful searches and seizures, freedom of speech, quibbles like that:

Why the Patriot Act’s expansion of records searches is unconstitutional
Section 215 of the Patriot Act violates the Constitution in several ways. It:

Violates the Fourth Amendment, which says the government cannot conduct a search without obtaining a warrant and showing probable cause to believe that the person has committed or will commit a crime.

Violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech by prohibiting the recipients of search orders from telling others about those orders, even where there is no real need for secrecy.

Violates the First Amendment by effectively authorizing the FBI to launch investigations of American citizens in part for exercising their freedom of speech.

Violates the Fourth Amendment by failing to provide notice – even after the fact – to persons whose privacy has been compromised. Notice is also a key element of due process, which is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.

And there’s more – https://www.aclu.org/other/surveillance-under-usapatriot-act#:~:text=Section%20215%20of%20the%20Patriot%20Act%20violates%20the%20Constitution%20in,or%20will%20commit%20a%20crime.

Your solution for winning is to not hold accountable the people who “lost” countless winnable battles and happily ceded grounds to reactionaries for the last 40 years and expect them to change their behavior? And denigrate anyone who might be looking for an alternative solution?

Ian your posts generally seem to be spot on but I’m really surprised you bought into the “protests” in 50 capitals. I live in Indiana which was certainly Trump country and the thought of Trump supporters coming out to protest the inevitable was just dumb. Most of the Trump supporters I know believe the Capital siege was a false flag operation by the Democrats/Socialists/ Antifata to further attack Trump and his supporters. These same people will still show up armed to any BLM protests that come to their community but unless the democrats start banning particular firearms look for the Trump supporters to continue trying to make it in this Neo-liberal made dystopia or go full off grid if they can. Never forget the Oklahoma City bombing does not happen if the fed’s don’t do Ruby Ridge and Branch Divadian raids. Both were done because there were violence seekers in government law enforcement.

Unfortunately, the First and Fourth Amendments were vitiated long, long before the advent of the Patriot Act — as the ACLU well knows. Little or nothing in the Act was novel. It’s still bad legislation, but your rights were probably not directly affected by it. Put another way, your First and Fourth Amendment rights were already curtailed but those curtailments had little or no effect on your life or activities.

Were you rounded up under the Patriot Act? Anyone you know? Have you been unlawfully investigated? Are you familiar with COINTELPRO? There are millions of Americans who have done nothing illegal who nevertheless have FBI files because of First Amendment protected activities that may have been contrary to the wishes of the government.

The government has never been particularly diligent about protecting the rights of those deemed “enemies of the state.” The Patriot Act is bad and should be repealed but it won’t be so long as its primary application is toward those deemed “terrorists,” “terrorist sympathizers,” and other assorted “enemies.”

ACLU’s argument so far has not resulted in more than modest adjustments, and it probably won’t, not so long as government claims it’s under siege by agents of mayhem and chaos. The insurrection at the Capitol was tailor made for extending that claim indefinitely.

Good job, if that was the aim.

It’s a shame about the fizzle. I was hoping to see national guard troops mow down some ignorant white folks for once. Not since Kent State has that happened. I think it was Thomas Robinette Jefferson who said you need to mow down ignorant white folks every twenty years or so if you want to keep the republic.

Last comment went into mod. Basically, if you think the Republicans are crazy and the Democrats are worthless, you might think about starting a new progressive party.

Since 9/11, the Supreme Court has shown more deference to national security exceptions allowing increased limitations on First and Fourth Amendment rights. Mostly internationally, but on “incidental” collection on US citizens, and the types of electronic information that are protected.

There have also been moves like the creation of fusion centers that pool information on you from across the country and give almost anyone in law enforcement access to it.

The surest way to ensure Trump II is to open up the borders and open up the offshoring. There are simply too many powerless people impacted.

With Trump II, Bullshitting Power Hungry Demogogue New and Improved, we risk getting “leftist” abuse, like dropping them out of helicopters and forty years of Franco.

Many of the people I know who buy Chinese and hire Mexican, are “staunch conservatives”. Figure that one out. How do you hold people like that accountable, when they’ve been conditioned to blame everything bad on “socialists”?

Biden-Harris have explicitly said they’ll be a return to and continuation of the ‘normalcy’ of the Obama administration. The Obama administration and its verminous criminal complicity with Wall Street was precisely what brought on Trump’s accession.

I concur with everything Astrid said. In particular: –

“…the current DNC is responsible for the Obamacare rollout. These are professional gaslighters who think … hundreds of thousands or millions of victims (abroad and in the US) are acceptable prices for propping up the MIC, pharma, and banks.”

There’ll be the facade of competent governance even as the neoliberal incompetence/indifference to enacting anything other than ‘market solutions’ and ‘public-private partnerships’ that enable further looting continues.

Do people really think Republicans hold their politicians accountable by not voting at all, or voting Dem just to spite them? Really? Where? I mean leaving out the few never-Trump Republicans who are politically better aligned with Biden or noone, where and when have they done this? Republicans rather seem incredibly disciplined voters to vote Republican no matter what, one reason they punch far above their weight, the other being the rigged system. Primarying? Oh the left tries to primary all the fricken time though, it often fails though.

@ Thomas Golladay

A postmortem on how Trump was stabbed to death in the back by his own administration and how Trump proved unable to simply hire and keep the right people.

Thanks SO MUCH for posting this youtube video. This guy Robert Barnes is a real gem. I don’t think I ever heard of him before 3 weeks, ago. Not only does he strike me as totally honest and extremely objective, but he’s very connected, and insightful. Just listening to a small amount of his interview lends a great deal of insight into what often appears as Trump bizarro and infuriating, shoot-himself-in-the-foot, behavior. Contrast that with the near-zero insight you get from years of listening to either Trump lovers and sycophants, like Sean Hannity* and Kayleigh McEnany, or Trump haters like Acosta and similar CNN ‘luminaries’ or, frankly, some of the people that frequently post fanatical comments on this blog, and the difference is stunning. Like night and day.

Having said that, he’s really much more critical of Trump than somebody would guess from your saying that Trump was “unable to simply hire and keep the right people”.

As you have probably heard Barnes for quite a while, can you tell us whether he’s been asked why Trump didn’t fire Wray, say at least as soon as he found out that either a) Wray’s FBI sat on exculpatory evidence that should have freed Flynn from legal jeopardy or b) Wray’s FBI sat on the Hunter Biden laptop revelations?

I have less of a problem with Trump being duped into hiring people for key positions who have it in for him, than of Trump keeping the backstabbers on, instead of firing them, ASAP. I sometimes feel sorry for Trump being surrounded by so many backstabbers, but refuse to feel sorry for him for being such a failure at using the powers that his office conferred. He could have been a much better President, even after we grant that he wasn’t really much of a populist, or in other ways wanting the same things we projected into him.

You might be interested in the research of Lee Stranahan, who apparently doesn’t have close to Barnes’ inside connections, but is similarly honest. (He also tries to be objective, I believe, but once posted nonsense about the progressive coders network, of which I’m a member; I pointed him to the list of projects they’ve worked on, which didn’t support his subversive theories, at all. The only semi-exception was a comment I saw in a slack feed about making a bot that argues with conservatives on their blogs and such, which is meant to just waste their time and energy. So, I don’t think he rises to Barnes level of objectivity, though I think he’s honest enough to want to.) Unfortunately, Stranahan is nowhere near as articulate as Barnes.

Stranahan repeats some of his criticism of Giuliani and Posobiec in a recent interview on the crowdsource the truth youtube channel.

* I ignore the frequent stellar guest of Hannity’s, Greg Jarrett. I’m referring more to Hannity’s own utterances, usually in service of a repetitive, unending “Trump is a Godsend” narrative. Part of Trump’s failure can be laid at the feet of people like Hannity, who refused to press him on his hypocrisies, failures, and apparent bizarreness.

js – In fact, Republican congressmen vote far more often against the policy views held by their districts than Democratic congressmen do, yet they are punished for it less often than Democratic congressmen are. This is because identity politics is much more common among Republicans than it is among Democrats.

Here is a study documenting this phenomenon:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/abs/incongruent-voting-or-symbolic-representation-asymmetrical-representation-in-congress-20082014/6E58DA7D473A50EDD84E636391C35062

Steve of Plainfield.

okla city doesn’t happen without government undercover agents making it so.

For example, maybe middle class workers could agree that Biden dumping Kathleen Kraninger as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a good thing?

She did after all, with zero previous experience in “consumer protection”, try to undermine the agency’s role as a watchdog for the financial sector on behalf of the far-too-busy and/or pandemic stressed little guy.

@mago,

“Masturbation can be fun” is not from Jesus Christ Superstar.

“Masturbation can be fun” is from Hair.

https://www.metrolyrics.com/sodomy-lyrics-hair.html

And here is the official lyrics where you can see it for yourself.

Hair. Not JCS. Hair.

By Che Pasa’s logic, anyone not actually arrested by Nazis or Communists wasn’t directly affected, so that made it OK!

I also note that you fail to provide specifics of what laws, exactly violated the First and Fourth Amendments in the way that the Patriot Act did before the Patriot Act came along.