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I am shocked, shocked to find that there has been a political riot in the US Biden victory confirmed after deadly attack on Capitol
Note the convenient unidirectionality of the word “deadly” in that BBC report.
A writing challenge for you: how would these events be reported if those who stormed the Capitol had been doing it in support of Black Lives Matter?
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It isn’t just the BBC, I caught the independent radio news this morning and recalled how the BLM riots were always described as “mostly peaceful”, even when there were burning cars and buildings in the background. The allegations of voting fraud were simply described as false.
The police didn’t shoot anyone during the BLM “mostly peaceful protests”. The Capital police shot a woman protestor through a door and killed her. She was an Air Force veteran with 14 years of service. We’ll probably never know who pulled the trigger.
While it is unfortunate that a basically senile mediocrity has been confirmed as the nest leader of the free world, witnessing the protracted temper tantrum of the Trump cultists has been a great personal source of joy in otherwise dark times.
I thoroughly enjoyed last nights episode of America
“Peaceful Protest.”
Looking at American media, it seems that only the left has the right to protest.
Bought and paid for agent of China, I think you mean.
There is no ‘free world’, and while I hope Biden will not attempt to invade another country ( look out Syria! ), if he does, surely to God, he won’t have the Chutzpah to claim to be bringing Democracy to the Syrians?
‘Trump ‘absolutely, completely and utterly responsible’ for BLM attack’
This color revolution malarkey is blowbacking on the US and they don’t like it. It’s okay for foreign capitals to get trashed, but never DC.
https://isthmus.com/news/cover-story/capitol-occupation-walker-protest-house/
There are plenty of sympathetic reports still online describing this event from 2011.
It appears protestors occupying a State capitol building is ok but not a National one, that must be the difference,
Talk, talk, talk. Do you think that matters anymore? Votes clearly don’t matter. Speech doesn’t matter and isn’t allowed in any event. I am now going to be ruled by a regime that will tell me where I can go, who I can see, whether or not I can worship with others, what I can say, and my voice does not matter to that regime nor does it have any power any longer.
Do you think what has happened in the USA will be confined to that once great nation? The Evil that has taken over will now be bolder than ever…by a lot. Do you think this blog or anything like it will be allowed anymore? Do you think that they are only going after others? And once those others are gone and they come for you, who will be left to stand with you? Wake up. Take action. Decisive action. Or do you have words, evidence of real events on the ground, that can effectively refute this position?
I know I am one of the most pessimistic here, but please tell me why I have reason for any optimism at all.
Some reps who complained bitterly whenever police shot last year are now complaining bitterly about the capitol police not preventing her access to the place where they shot her.
Secoriea Turner’s name was swiftly vanished. I suspect Air Force Veteran Ashli Babbit’s name will be kept in the public domain a little longer, though as a hate object who ‘had it comin’ rather than as evidence that the bizarre ratio of military postal ballots in certain key locations for Biden, and the finding of Trump ones in the trash, was suspicious in any way.
One video shows those who entered the Capitol respecting the velvet ropes. (If she’d ignored them, she’d have been less inline with the door, so might still be alive. It gives a sad punning meaning to: “They’ll miss the old rules when they’re gone.”) Another suggests she was smashing the window in the locked door through which she was shot. Time will doubtless tell more.
The website Zero Hedge thinks this is a false flag operation by Antifa and BLM, something which had occurred to me. It seems credible, too: there are some convincing looking pictures of known Antifa people also being present at the Capitol protests.
From the left’s standpoint, this would be a very good move. It supposedly shows Trump supporters really are the violent bigots the left has always portrayed them to be; it also severely damages any chances of Trump making a comeback in 2024.
But, whatever the real reasons for yesterday’s protests, the right has got to get serious, before we’re all swept away. Really, we should have been doing something about this twenty years ago, but we didn’t, so we’re going to have to do it now.
Before my comment, a question:
the BBC says that 4 people died, but does not give details. Does anyone know about the other people who died, if any, in addition to Ashli Babbitt?
“It seems credible, too: there are some convincing looking pictures of known Antifa people also being present at the Capitol protests. ”
Maybe, but the Wacko With Horns is also definitely a QAnon guy.
I think it’s much more like the Nazis And Communists tag* in Germany in ’32 – people who want to run around and yell and march and riot sometimes just … pick whichever thing lying around will let them do that.
(* By which I mean the phenomenon, mentioned in the general histories of the rise of the Nazis, where people would “convert” from being a Communist to being a Nazi or vice versa.
IF there are any “antifa” people who were in Congress yesterday, I suspect much more of THAT than of “a giant planned false flag operation” – because “antifa” sure didn’t plan the giant Trump rally that morphed into it.
My money’s on “giant own-goal by the most wacko QAnon Trump Fringe”.)
Now i’d like to offer some opinions.
First, of course invading the Capitol was wrong — not so much because it was unethical (although it was) but because it was insane. What could possibly have been achieved by that??
Second: having said that, the people who trust American media, or the BBC for that matter, are even more insane than the people who invaded the Capitol. And it saddens me that so many Brits and Americans are insane. And Merkel too, apparently — although in Germany I could be prosecuted for writing that.
I trust that Perry will not dox me.
The Right suspects the Left is governed by Das Kapital (with a second major in Rules for Radicals). The Left is completely sure the Right is governed by Mein Kampf (and wonders where they learned to read). This is two different worlds, and at the moment, neither can understand the other.
Riots at the Capitol may help the Left understand the Right. I suspect they’ll see us, and raise us Tianamen Square. Or maybe, if they’ve been paying attention to record gun and ammunition purchases, they won’t.
Roger Barnes makes a credible case that QAnon is, and always was, a counter intelligence op.
Get your enemy running around chasing along blind alleys and up dead ends.
Sounds as if you are the only sane person in the World.
PS: The main reason why i believe that people trusting Anglo-American media are insane, are the blatant double standards exposed by other commenters (and on Instapundit). One has to be insane not to detect the contradictions.
–In reply to APL:
I do not believe that any of us is really sane, due to the modern Western diet. I know for a fact that I have become significantly less insane after near-elimination of seed oils, refined sugars, and cereal grains from my diet. Significantly less insane, but not completely sane. I have, perhaps, eliminated delusional insanity.
The BBC report in the OP strengthens my belief in the brain-damaging effects of the modern Western diet: without such a belief, the BBC report would not make any sense to me.
I, too, used to trust the BBC and The Economist, and not distrust too deeply the rest of Anglo-American media. What opened my eyes was not a change of diet (which came later) but the Cartoon Jihad of 2006.
PPS: I am not the only person lamenting the insanity of American politics. Far from it. There are many others, but i’d like to call your attention to Insanity Wrap.
I am a devoted reader. Today’s headline seems especially appropriate.
The media whores will, of course, do their best to lay this at Trump’s feet. I hope, at this point, we all realize how the media games the narrative.
Note the convenient unidirectionality of the word “deadly” in that BBC report.
Yup. But it’s not new. I remember a while back a BBC headline along the lines of :
“Two killed in tragic pub attack”
It evoked, of course, a picture of armed thugs bursting into a pub and mercilessly executing two defenceless drinkers. But if you read the story to the bottom, and untangled the weaseling, it emerged that two armed thugs had indeed burst into the pub, intending to execute two defenceless drinkers. But it went wrong :
(a) when they missed, and
(b) their defenceless targets turned out to be armed (it was a gang thing) and
(c) the targets turned out to be better shots
how would these events be reported if those who stormed the Capitol had been doing it in support of Black Lives Matter?
Or if the police had shot someone invading a lecture hall, and trying to disrupt a Charles Murray lecture.
If it’d been BLM, the reports would have (slightly) less blame on Trump, and the coverage would disappear much faster. But the media isn’t so bad that invading Congress would be widely supported. There’d be a few op-eds from the usual idiots, but not that many.
And no, it’s no false flag. Too many people rioted under their own name, and are definite Republicans. Babbitt, of course, but also, we know that a Republican state legislator was involved, and a reporter from The Blaze, who was there posting video from mid-riot, says that blaming it on Antifa is “naive”. There were some who were at both, I’m sure, but not enough that it matters.
And yes, this was stupid and destructive. Bluntly, it was worse than anything any Antifa mob has done yet. Trump’s own staff are resigning in droves over it: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/533048-white-house-aides-head-for-exits-after-chaos-at-capitol
As a generalisation, the right spent too many of the last 20 years wasting their political capital supporting Washington consensus/liberal internationalist foreign policy, fossilised free market cliches and defending the rights of multinationals that have now got fully behind SJW culture.
Trump’s own staff are resigning in droves over it
3 resignations – while I’m sure every official is being squeezed for dear life by the deep state.
Alsadius, we can read MSM BS for ourselves should we choose too; we dont need morons posting it here.
Greg, I’m with you.
4 years of state sanctioned, MSM supported, naked anti-white hatred is imminent.
Buckle up.
Now that Biden has been certified, Ha! ‘Trumps own staff’ have, twelve and a half days to find other employment.
Kamala Harris has made it pretty plain, they won’t get a gig in the
Harris, I mean Biden regime.How many Dem staff resigned when their bosses egged on the destruction of cities? Minneapolis still looks like a war zone.
Defund the DC Police!
For a contrarian view:
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2021/01/07/attention-please/
Sarah Hoyt best exemplifies the kind of Trump supporters that i wish to distance myself from. (Pardon the split infinitive.)
What i mean is, she is dogmatic, rather than skeptical. (In this respect, perhaps more like Maistre than like Burke.)
As a matter of fact, I DID grow up with “the constant-pretend-reality of communist psi-ops”, and I flatter myself that I HAVE “learned to smell it”.
I do not “”condemn”” either of them.
Certainly not Trump.
As for the “rioters”, they are insane — but then, who isn’t??
Alternatively: more like Plato than like Hume, Darwin, and Popper. And you know where my sympathies lie.
So people without weapons not even stones and baseball bats can now invade the Capitol?
If there was a terrorist attack terrorists what would happened?
What happened is that the police let them in. The question is why?
How many police were hurt btw?
hahahahahahaahahahahahahahahah
Imminent? It’s been the whole 21st century so far. Oh, there were a few weeks of ‘pulling together’ after 9/11/2001, but other than that – George W Bush was white, wasn’t he? And racial amity went down the tubes during Obama’s reign. Guess who was the bad guy. When Trump got in, I’ve been told (though not by the mainstream media) that things were getting better for blacks and other minorities (except Asians, they’re too damn smart to allow in college). Most of the loud people did not agree. Loudly. With an incendiary topping.
Now, we are due for naked screaming batshit anti-white hatred, and attempts to destroy the kulaks. I think I’m a kulak.
Andy Ngo says it does not look like an Antifa false-flag operation to him, which counts as evidence to me. The MSM coverage is false – talk of violence played up, as it was played down for the ‘mostly peaceful’ BLM riots – but Ashli Babbit was for real, and my opinion FWIW is that the others who entered the Capitol were at least overwhelmingly the same.
They are, and are being believed by our own PM, Macron, Merkel, etc. (I just watched the BBC’s coverage.) I suspect the beeb thought it an especially deadly blow to Trump to quote the Iranian regime’s criticism, and the Chinese saying that when the Hong Kong parliament was invaded “no-one died” – like the beeb, the CCP know the usefulness of that undirected word, blurring who did the killing and who were killed. Doubtless they also thought it clever of Kamala to compare police treatment of BLM rioters, both Kamala and beeb neglecting to specify what the comparison was.
The Trump-hating beeb Washington correspondent said he did try to engage with some of the protestors. He did not explicitly comment on how very safe that obviously was to do, but he did report that “it was like speaking two different languages” and he did note that there are a lot of Trump voters in the US, that Trump got more votes than he did in 2016, that they feel, as he put it “unrepentant”.
As someone who follows Burke, not de Maistre, I’ll note here that I have time for Sarah Hoyt and think you are unjust. But each to their taste.
For the record, that I defend Sarah is not because I defend everybody who is on-side in their every point. For example, it was always obvious to me that if Mike Pence alone could abort Biden then Biden alone could have aborted Trump four years ago. (Sarah never said that AFAICR, but a Texan rep did and I saw an Epoch article that did not note the flaw, and others that saw what I saw.) Some are over-eager for their particular argument or solution – but in general I fear quite the opposite will be the more common weakness.
Snorri Godhi,
As Joseph de Maistre is my maître à penser, I am rather curious what you mean by this. Care to elaborate? I am vaguely familiar with Sarah Hoyt’s writings on PJ Media after some cursory reading just now. In what sense would you want to distance yourself from “certain” Trump supporters? And in what ways specifically do you mean does this relate to Maistre, who was – as a matter of principle – OPPOSED to popular movements?
My guess is that like most critics of counter-Enlightenment thinkers, you really don’t understand the subject matter, but I’d be open to be proven wrong by you.
Do you realize that Burke would find more in common with all Trump supporters than would Maistre? On so many levels and for so many reasons, this is so. Maistre was against popular movements and democracy as matter of principle, for instance.
I certainly do. Like you, I’m unclear why Snorri thinks Sarah closer to de Maistre.
Just to clarify and expand…
In making a comparison of how people think to Maistre’s dogmatism… Dogmatic support of a political candidate or a President within the context of a democracy or a constitutional republic is ANTITHETICAL to Joseph de Maistre’s entire political philosophy so the comparison is invalid. In matters of political affairs Maistre was, as a diplomat, eminently practical – and, dare I say, far less idealistic than Burke or the likes of almost any Trump supporter, Biden supporter, conservative, libertarian, etc today who participates in the political process.
This attack injured over 50 cops, put several in the hospital, and has now resulted in one cop’s death. https://wgntv.com/news/report-u-s-capitol-police-officer-dies-after-being-hit-in-head-with-fire-extinguisher/ (And yes, I’ll link MSM coverage here – I don’t trust their analysis, or their selection of stories. But when it comes to reporting of basic facts on a given story that they choose to cover, they’re usually fine.)
Even setting aside the issue of this being an attack on the seat of government as it’s trying to ensure the democratic process is followed, I can’t think of any single-day BLM protest with this kind of damage to police. One might exist, but none come to mind. I’m sure Portland or Seattle had a higher total count during the months that their fighting lasted, but on one day in one place?
The trouble with the Trump protesters is that they’re amateurs. Antifa is much better disciplined – they create confrontations, but the violence is at the level of political theater – mostly against property (fires and graffiti) or police in riot gear. Antifa does everything it can to control media access to allow them to spin the confrontations in their favor. What Antifa really wants to provoke is another Kent State – create a few martyrs and a sympathetic backlash against the police “over reaction”. Given the sheer volume of antifa activity, there have been some incidents that generated serious injuries and a few deaths, but those were spread over months not hours. And the worst of those were interactions with counter-protestors, not police, which are easier to justify (from a PR perspective). There have been some severely injured cops, but I don’t know of any actual deaths (BLM is another matter, those protests did spin off some out of control riots with clearly innocent deaths, as well as some actual assassinations of cops pretty obviously inspired by the protests, but this is not the way Antifa operates).
The Trump protests were aimless, and so the whole situation degenerated rapidly into mob action. In full view of the media with cameras everywhere. And mobs are always ugly. And beyond that, they are clearly acting on behalf of Trump in a way that Antifa and BLM are not acting on behalf of the Democrats. I’ve always found Sarah Hoyt interesting, but she’s blind to the difference here, which really matters in how the apolitical part of the public sees the two.
Trump’s great strength as a non-professional politician has been his willingness to challenge conventional thinking and shake things up. But that has failed him miserably here, partly because he couldn’t actually control the situation, but also because there just wasn’t a viable way to turn this situation into anything positive. The pros know this, which is why they are all abandoning him (on the Republican side, the Dems just get to pass the popcorn). This has almost certainly eliminated any chance of Trump holding a position as the leader of the opposition and running again in 2024. He’s finished, and he did it to himself (which at his age is just as well – this country desperately needs to get rid of the geriatric Boomers (or those even older, like Biden) that have dominated the political scene for so long). This may well define his presidency the way Watergate defined Nixon’s – a relatively minor issue in the scheme of things that drives most of his considerable impact on American affairs out of the public mind.
This attack injured over 50 cops, put several in the hospital, and has now resulted in one cop’s death.
This is confirmed Bullshit. Its been denied already.
Flubber: I’d be happy to be wrong about this. Can you give me a link?
Edit: Found it. https://thehill.com/homenews/news/533274-Capitol-Police-say-reports-of-officer%27s-death-are-wrong-
The injuries and hospitalizations are real, but no death. Looks like the union told reporters about a death, but none has happened yet (though there’s some discussion of taking one off life support tomorrow?).
This is good news. I’m glad to be wrong.
1. Property damage
https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a455-4067-b06a-66f9db4cea9c.html
That is a run rate of AT LEAST $71.4 million (and up to $142 million) of property damage per day from May 26 – June 8, 2020.
2. Officers injured
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/10/fact-checking-claim-about-deaths-damage-from-black-lives-matter-protests/113878088/
That’s 50 officers injured per day.
3. Deaths
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/06/08/14-days-of-protests-19-dead/?sh=530455ec4de4
That’s 1.4 people dead per day.
4. Media coverage
What more needs to be said?
5. Reasoning for riots
What more needs to be said?
6. Attempts to peacefully resolve/rectify grievances through peaceful, legal avenues
What more needs to be said?
BLM and antifa are far more destructive to America – and I mean that in every conceivable way.
Admins – I wrote a comment and clicked the “post comment” button (round about 20 mins ago or 30 mins ago?) but it seems to have been lost/vanished. Just wondering if it is in review or lost forever? There were a few links. Thanks
Snorri: First, of course invading the Capitol was wrong — not so much because it was unethical (although it was) but because it was insane. What could possibly have been achieved by that??
That was what occurred to me. What did the crowd think was going to happen? That they would pull Congressmen and women from the building, declare the 2020 election result null and void?
I see there appear to be, among Trump’s various apologists, media commentators and like, various strands of opinion about what happened. Some of the same people are using various types of the following, even though they are contradictory:
The crowd were actually BLM/Antifa in disguise and this is a false flag op;
The crowd were patriots who have vast amounts of evidence that the election was stolen (although strangely, none of the legal challenges mounted have succeeded in proving this, including those of Guiliani)
It was an understandable outburst of rage after all the one-sided coverage of various riots and disorder in the past 12 months (Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, etc) – this is probably the most credible explanation;
A bunch of fools wanted to cause trouble, because they are bored and because of Covid.
phwest: this comment is by far the best so far, in my view, in explaining the problem. Antifa are just a lot, lot smarter in how to do this sort of thing.
I have drafted several posts about the wilful inconsistency and misinformation in the media reporting and public pronouncement by the great and the good when compared to many other cases of violence, lawlessness and indeed death during the year. Previous comments on this threads have more than adequately covered the details.
Instead I find myself sickened by even typing my thoughts. I wonder if others have been brought to a similar state? The atmosphere of apprehension and resentment brought about by restrictions in personal liberties for the past 9 months may be effecting our outlook and ability to cope with other events.
We know that it is easy to look smart if the interviewer is so on your side as to throw softball questions, or agree the questions with you beforehand. We likewise know that it is easy to be made to look stupid when the interviewer hates you, blocks and mangles your points, edits the interview against you, etc.
We should not be surprised that the same is true of protests. Some comments above remark Antifa’s skill in controlling the look of their riots. They have some, but would still have looked very bad if it had suited the MSM to make it so.
Johnathan Pearce,
1. Trump has apologists? What, you mean like Tucker Carlson and Rush Lumbaugh and Mark Levin and Sean Hannity? Apologist is one word for these people. Another word we use on this side of the pond for such folks is conservative.
2. Why do you think the reasons you mention contradictory?
Who cares?
Have you watched the news over the last four years? I am absolutely shocked there have not been MANY physical attacks on journalists and anchors by Trump supporters over the last four years even if only for their intentional, despicable, and unrepentant fabrication and propagation of the Russia Collusion Hoax. As far as I’m concerned, the amount of violence Trump supporters have produced over the last four years, especially including over the last 48 hours, considering the extraordinarily abusive, malicious, biased, demeaning, and intentionally subversive media portrayal of their movement, is a testament to Trump supporters’ incredible restraint, peaceful nature, and civility.
Needless to say I condemn all political violence.
If what has been done to Trump supporters by the media establishment over the last four years had been done to BLM instead, then Washington DC would still be in flames right now, we would be starting construction on a new White House next week, and hundreds of cops would have been murdered by mostly peaceful left wing protesters in DC over the past 48 hours.
2. Why do you think the reasons you mention are* contradictory?
I do very much relate to this. The media is so beyond despicable, it is irredeemably corrupt and actually I think evil.
I fear for the future of western civilization.
Call me a [insert mean word here] but somehow I think Viktor Orban has a better approach than Mitt Romney or Gary Johnson.
“Why do you think the reasons you mention are* contradictory?”
Simple: if the rioters/mob/etc are patriots for OrangemanBad, they cannot also be Antifa at the same time. A is A, as Aristotle and Ayn Rand liked to point out. A pretty big contradiction.
Of course Trump has apologists and defenders (although that number has contracted rapidly over the past 48 hours). It is not necessarily a term of condemnation.
As regards my question of what did the crowd think would happen, you dismiss it with a “who cares?”. Well, you plainly do care, as did soon-to-be former President Donald J Trump.
By the way, Trump is a teetototaller. He is one of those folk whom I think would benefit from developing a whisky habit.
Johnathan Pearce,
It’s not quite that simple, though. It is plausible – even quite likely – that many of the protestors/rioters are patriots for OrangeManBad and some of the protestors/rioters are Antifa. See how that works? They are neither contradictory nor mutually exclusive.
False.
Have you watched the news over the last four years? I am absolutely shocked there have not been MANY physical attacks on journalists and anchors by Trump supporters over the last four years even if only for their intentional, despicable, and unrepentant fabrication and propagation of the Russia Collusion Hoax. As far as I’m concerned, the amount of violence Trump supporters have produced over the last four years, especially including over the last 48 hours, considering the extraordinarily abusive, malicious, biased, demeaning, and intentionally subversive media portrayal of their movement, is a testament to Trump supporters’ incredible restraint, peaceful nature, and civility.
Needless to say I condemn all political violence.
If what has been done to Trump supporters by the media establishment over the last four years had been done to BLM instead, then Washington DC would still be in flames right now, we would be starting construction on a new White House next week, and hundreds of cops would have been murdered by mostly peaceful left wing protesters in DC over the past 48 hours.
The right was letting off some steam – I’m surprised it took so long. As Natalie mentions in the title of the OP sarcastically/sardonically, I’m shocked, shocked that there has been a political riot in the USA. Shocked, I tell you! What on EARTH were they thinking? Gosh, what did the crowd THINK would happen!? An excellent question, since we all know that mobs have an excellent track record historically of thinking critically, right?
The MSM have partly created a monster by being so in the tank for the Establishment over Russiagate. They played with fire, and Hilary Clinton and her cronies are particularly culpable.
It’s not quite that simple, though. It is plausible – even quite likely – that many of the protestors/rioters are patriots for OrangeManBad and some of the protestors/qioters are Antifa. See, how that works? They are neither contradictory nor mutually exclusive.
But the vast majority looked pretty much on the side of Trump to me. The guy in the Buffalo hat (like a frat boy in Animal House) may be more a random nutter.
Have you watched the news over the last four years?
Yes.
I am absolutely shocked there have not been MANY physical attacks on journalists and anchors by Trump supporters over the last four years even if only for their intentional, despicable, and unrepentant fabrication and propagation of the Russia Collusion Hoax.
Maybe it is because the vast majority of Americans don’t believe in using violence to get their way, even against the sort of rabble you describe. (And for what it is worth, I agree that the Russiagate issue is a disgrace – have you been following Glenn Greenwald on this?)
If what has been done to Trump supporters by the media establishment over the last four years had been done to BLM instead, then Washington DC would still be in flames right now, we would be starting construction on a new White House next week, and hundreds of cops would have been murdered by mostly peaceful left wing protesters in DC over the past 48 hours.
That is a highly debatable claim. First of all, Trump supporters have largely made their presence known at big rallies wearing those red hats. I don’t recall them being shot by jumpy and incompetent police officers. Your claim that there would have been hundreds of police killed had BLM been targeted like this is unprovable at best.
Needless to say I condemn all political violence.
Rejoice!
I agree that the vast majority of Americans don’t believe in using violence to get their way, but I’m still shocked that there have not been many physical attacks on journalists by Trump supporters over the last four years even if only for their intentional, despicable, and unrepentant fabrication and propagation of the Russia Collusion Hoax.
You seem to be proving my point. The reason cops don’t get jumpy and “incompetent” around Trump supporters and end up shooting them is because Trump supporters have a track record of being as violent as bunny rabbits. When cops are around people who have a history of being as violent as hyenas or tigers they get a bit jumpy and “incompetent”. See how that works?
As I said earlier in the thread, the amount of violence Trump supporters have produced over the last four years, especially including over the last 48 hours, considering the extraordinarily abusive, malicious, biased, demeaning, and intentionally subversive media portrayal of their movement, is a testament to Trump supporters’ incredible restraint, peaceful nature, and civility.
Your question, Johnathan, “What did the crowd think was going to happen?” seems to indicate that you think crowds think. They don’t. Also, the point of this protest/riot was for the right to let off steam – I’m surprised it took so long and while a riot is never “deserved” this was probably the most well deserved protest in American history. Shame it got a bit violent. When BLM protests burned American cities to the ground and did $2 billion in property damage (for much less of any actual reason) the entire MSM quoted MLK and said “A RIOT IS THE LANGUAGE OF THE UNHEARD”, unheard voices lash out, we need to listen to their grievances, etc. I for one say the same thing about the Trump supporters’ violence. A riot is the language of the unheard – in this case, it really actually is. I condemn the violence, but we should listen to their legitimate grievances and claims and take them seriously.
Yes I’ve been following Glenn Greenwald for a number of years.
I agree! Over on this side of the pond, however, the word “all” means something different than the word “majority”, which is why your original claim that the reasons are contradictory remains wrong.
It’s difficult to take the outrage of the US political and media elites seriously. I’m sure they are outraged, but it’s an outrage that is so lacking in self-reflection. They are outraged that they’ve been subjected to rioting. As a class they cheer on when ordinary people are subject to having their homes, livelihoods and communities destroyed by left-wing psychopaths. They definitely cheer on when parliament buildings, courts etc get stormed by rioters and defecting soldiers in countries that have not got with the Washington consensus programme. There’s a photo out there of VP Biden shaking hands with a Ukrainian neo-nazi for example. They are allowed their nazis after all.
Personally hoping the next time Washington tries to organise some color revolution in Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia etc that the targeted regime just play clips of Biden, Pelosi et al. banging on about sedition, treason, domestic terrorism etc to highlight how full of crap liberalism is and that what a two-faced poisonous creed it is.
About Sarah Hoyt: I think that she and yours truly could get along in the same movement, in spite of disagreements. Perhaps the term “distance myself” was excessive. I’d certainly have her as POTUS instead of Biden, for instance.
But how would she take it, if i were to tell her that she is careless about her links at Instapundit?
She seems unwary of confirmation bias.
Shlomo:
Well … you are correct on the latter; but since i am not a critic of counter-enlightenment thinkers, i don’t have to understand the subject.
If there is no dogmatism in Maistre then i retract that remark.
PS: I had a look at Sarah Hoyt’s post and she started on the wrong foot, so i did not read much of it.
However.
If what she wants is that we refuse to blame Trump for the riots, then she is absolutely right. And, as usual, the American media are absolutely wrong.
Alsadius wrote “And yes, this was stupid and destructive. Bluntly, it was worse than anything any Antifa mob has done yet.”
I disagree: BLM/Antifa have burned US cities and small businesses for months and months. Many more people have died in the BLM/Antifa “peaceful protests” than on Tuesday in DC. Not sure what that body count is…5-10? And IIRC, they were mostly innocents, including at least one small child. There is no comparison between that and a DC LEO shooting an unarmed protestor/rioter. Were any shots fired by the rioters on Tuesday? Haven’t heard that reported, but then who actually gathers evidence anymore and reports–they have their report written before they arrive on scene!
But the property attacked apparently matters: you can attack a small business in Portland or Seattle, but not the US Congress! As though that stands for anything any more. The US Constitution? Dead to the Left, so it can’t be that they think it was being attacked. The attack was on their power and that cannot be tolerated. Attacks on ordinary citizens’ property doesn’t even register as a crime with the Leftists condemning the DC riot.
What I don’t think the Left quite get yet is that now that they have taken away any political attack capability (votes no longer matter), only the physical sort remains as an option when push comes to shove.
postscript to all this: look for widespread use of “insurgency” to describe Trump supporters going forward. They are laying the ground work for a massive stomping of 10s of millions of US Citizens.
I don’t know what happened in Washington; I’m willing to wait for the slow roll out of the facts. Meanwhile the usual suspects will jump on the media shills’ bandwagon despite their corrupt track record. Really, at this point, what Normie doesn’t grasp why and how the media would game the narrative. One basis of comparison will be how much the property insurance payouts will be.
I’m skeptical that Trump personally supported and encouraged this, but if he did, than it was an own goal. If true, he should have anticipated that an event like this would be ripe for exploitation by false flag opportunists and agents provocateur. The media will hang this around his neck like they did to Nixon and Watergate.
I agree with previous point regarding the skills and competency of Antifa/BLM agents but also agree that the pimps in media absolutely skew the perception.
Alsadius says “I can’t think of any single-day BLM protest with this kind of damage to police.” Maybe that’s because police in Portland, Seattle, and elsewhere largely did not engage the BLM rioters. “50 cops were injured”…I don’t think 50 cops were even deployed in Portland or Seattle!
Jonathan Pearce says “The crowd were patriots who have vast amounts of evidence that the election was stolen (although strangely, none of the legal challenges mounted have succeeded in proving this, including those of Guiliani)”
I guess I missed it: where was the full evidence presented and adjudicated? No court accepted a lawsuit that would have made this happen. What Guliani presented were summaries of the evidence he claims to have. He attempted to make the case that 1) I have evidence of fraud and 2) it will change the outcome of the election.
Our Chief Justice decided that saving the Republic was not worth the riots threatened by the Left. I suspect judges below him had similar thoughts or were/are some of those who benefit from the current voting system, “the most extensive voter fraud system ever” (J. Biden).
FWIW: More from Aggie, have any of you heard or seen anything like this?
FWIW: Has anyone else seen or heard what Aggie is describing?
Our Chief Justice decided that saving the Republic was not worth the riots threatened by the Left.
Yup all those fabled checks and balances decided collectively it just wasn’t worth the effort.
This is how empires die. With a whimper.
GregWA: “I guessed I missed it”. So it would appear. You will no doubt go to your grave believing the election was stolen; the fact that dozens of complaints, lawsuits and the like did not make the cut will not change your mind. That’s not my problem. And strangely, for an allegedly rigged poll, the Democrats lost seats in the House. Also, does it not occur that the GOP might have benefited from any shenanigans, or is the evil in one camp only? I know that even posing that question will make Trump supporters mad with rage, which sort of proves my point.
This from the Wall Street Journal, not exactly a hotbed of Far Left stupidity: In fact, the violence at the Capitol was different from anything that preceded it, last summer or any other time. People acting in the name of one president, and inspired by him, broke into the Capitol building in an effort to stop the transfer of power to the next president. In doing so, they assaulted a building in which the top three people in the presidential line of succession were in the same room, a move that would be considered an act of war if perpetrated by an outside power. More than 50 police officers were injured, and some are in the hospital with serious injuries. Five people have died as a result of the violence—so far. Arrests and prosecutions are only beginning.
None of this means that mail-in ballots don’t come with potential problems. They do (we have had issues in the UK). But so far, I haven’t seen smoking-gun evidence of it to explain the margin of defeats in the states concerned, and all that Mr Trump has done is fuel the fires. Even before polling day, he was refusing to say whether he would concede if the circumstances required it. He did a few good things as POTUS: but his reputation, such as it is, is in ashes.
Johnathan Pearce,
There is overwhelming evidence of widespread and significant voter fraud in the Nov 2020 Presidential election in the form of hundreds of affidavits, witness testimony, bizarre statistical anomalies, video footage, and more. You deny this exists just like CNN, NYT, and the rest of our ruling class. Whatever.
I don’t mind you being wrong but you being passive aggressive like this is just not constructive.
So what’s weird here is you are bringing up yet another indication (not evidence, but still another indication) that there was widespread and significant voter fraud in the Nov 2020 election for President of the United States.
I personally do believe there are shenanigans that happens on both sides in every election – it’s the scale of the shenanigans on the Democrat side, Johnathan, that appears to have made the November 2020 Presidential election so very special.
More passive aggressive nonsense. “I know that even posing that question will make Trump supporters mad with rage, which sort of proves my point”. Johnathan, as a Trump supporter, I assure you that your childish antics do not make me “mad with rage” but only disappointed that a Samizdatista can sometimes act more like a snide, arrogant Politico/CNN/BBC journalist than a writer for one of the best blogs on the internet.
An update on the question of officer fatalities – the earlier reports were premature, but since the above discussion, an officer has indeed died. The Capitol Police have confirmed it this time, and a murder investigation is now ongoing.
Shlomo: I said one day and in one place. Yes, the nationwide per-day totals for the Floyd riots were pretty bad, but per-city-per-day? Not nearly so bad as Wednesday was. Remember, five people have now died from that riot, which is roughly equal to four days of nationwide Floyd riots. All in one place, on one afternoon.
But yes, the property damage wasn’t as bad. I’ll grant you that, for how little it matters.
It’s because they’re better people than you. Violence isn’t an acceptable response to disagreements. That doesn’t just take you out of the category of “conservative”, it takes you out of the category of “civilization”.
I should be slightly clearer. It’s worse than any single Antifa mob. The sum total of everything they did was arguably worse, but comparing months of unrest to a single attack isn’t a trivial thing to do.
No, votes matter. There’s just a lot of paranoids out there who don’t understand math or electoral processes.
Here’s a summary of all the cases: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia%27s_2020_Election_Help_Desk:_Tracking_election_disputes,_lawsuits,_and_recounts – most of them have links and additional detail, if you want to dig in.
Note that many are listed as “dismissed”, but they were dismissed in ways that involved judges looking at the evidence. For example, Georgia’s “In re: enforcement” case was dismissed because the judge looked at the offered evidence and concluded that there was no evidence for any malfeasance. So it was dismissed for a lack of evidence, which isn’t the same as a lack of standing. Similarly, Pennsylvania’s Trump for President v Boockvar (the second one down) was dismissed because “this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence”.
Trump did win a few of the cases, like the third Trump for President v Boockvar case (about deadlines for getting ID on mail-in votes). But nothing that even came close to overturning any results.
Wasn’t he the guy that once said, there are no political judges?
That can probably be consigned to the dustbin of history.
As a great writer on this blog once wrote of the mainstream press coverage of orangemanbad’s allegations starting months before any vote had been cast (his name starts with “N” and ends with “iall”) the prophecy is the alibi. “WilL DoNalD tRumP aCcePt tHE ReSulTs oF ThE frEe aND FaIr ElEcTion?” How to know it was a fair and free election months before any vote is cast? Because the Fake News Media is full of all-knowing oracles who can read the future – at least when it portends doom for Donald Trump.
Months before any votes were cast, the Fake News Media was proclaiming in wall to wall coverage that there would be no significant voter fraud. When the allegations were made, they covered them up. When evidence started surfacing that evidence was promptly disappeared from Big Tech platforms. I was there, I saw it first hand. Eventually, there was too much evidence to disappear it all so they started just labeling the evidence as “disputed” and the media did not report the news of massive loads of evidence of voter fraud. As a Samizdatista (whose first name starts with “N” and ends with “atalie” wrote aptly, the media pursued those claims of widespread voter fraud with all the “fearless diligence” they pursued the Hunter Biden email story before the election.
Speak for yourself. In my book, Trump is the best POTUS America has ever had.
Alsadius,
I wonder if you would be saying the same thing if it was your drycleaners burned to the ground. Or if you were a waiter at a restaurant in flames and you have to find a new job now.
Minimizing what BLM and antifa have done is not a trivial thing to do. And that is what you keep doing. Why? Why do you keep trying to minimize the rioting of BLM and antifa?
Rioting is wrong. And rioting on one day in one place is better than rioting in many places across the country on-and-off for months and years. So more blame goes on antifa and BLM, MUCH MORE.
Alsadius,
What is your point exactly?
America killed over 100,000 innocent civilians in a split second when America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. This is more innocent civilians that died than any number of innocent civilians killed by Nazi Germany in any split second.
What is so special about one day? What is so special about one place?
What is the moral confusion in your head, Alsadius, that you keep trying to find a way to minimize the extraordinary damage and destruction to life, liberty, property, culture, and society that has been done by BLM and antifa by comparing those evil movements favorably to the one-day right wing riot in DC?
Amen.
The Left riots out of calculated strategy, to destroy and steal. They do it often, and are better at it.
The Right does it once in a lifetime, out of pent-up rage. But they’re amateurs, unfortunately, and allow events to overwhelm them and become fodder for propoganda.
Where are the libertarians here?
Cui bono?
Not Trump, not Republicans, not conservatives, not common Americans. This incident gains them nothing, and never could have.
“Biden”, Democrats, and the quasi-left Blob (media, academy, Deep State, quangos, Big Tech, Big Business) which has now conquered the political sphere.
This incident is extremely useful and convenient for them.
It also exemplifies a very dangerous condition. Charles Murray and others have commented on negative effects of genuine “meritocracy”. It’s good to have all the genuinely able people running things; it means a lot of stuff gets done right. But it also means that the able people are all inside the “Establishment”. There is no one left outside to lead effective resistance to the Establishment if it goes bad, as it is presently doing. It becomes the Blob.
I would add that to remain “respectable”, one must be “sound” on the received doctrines of the Blob. Thus dissent within the Establishment is silenced.
Mass opposition is reduced to fits of disorganized anger. (The Tea Party, the gilets jaunes.) Those who speak out against some aspect of Establishment madness are often themselves mad on other issues. For instance, people who speak forbidden truths about race and crime, but also defend the Confederacy. Critics of transgenderist abuses, who are religious fundamentalists. Or they don’t know enough to speak effectively – AGW skeptics who have heard (and repeat) garbled science.
The people on the edges of the Blob, who might be persuaded to resist, hear a choir on one side, and discordant yells on the other.
So the Blob keeps growing, there is no effective resistance, and the victims lash out uselessly.
In this incident, I strongly suspect the Trumpists who participated were incited by some “antifa” types. But it will never be known, anymore than how this election was stolen.
(Nobody ever figured out how the chavistas stole the 2004 recall vote in Venezuela; 16 years later, they are still in power.)
Compared to an attack on the democratic process? Yes. It’s much easier to replace a job or business than to replace a nation.
I agree with you regarding rioting. I disagree that I’m minimizing anything. I don’t say “this was worse than the Floyd chaos” to defend those stupid, violent, massively destructive “protests”. I say that as a reference point for how terrible what happened on Wednesday was. I agree with you about the danger posed by the summer’s riot festival. I think that what happened this week is even worse than the worst of those mobs. It’s like me measuring Cuomo’s covid mistakes in 9/11 equivalents – it’s not an effort to minimize 9/11, it’s an effort to slap people across the face with just how big of a catastrophe that was.
1. Just to confirm, by “what happened this week” you mean the one-day right wing riot in DC, right?
2. Why do you that “what happened this week is even worse than the worst of those mobs”? Just because on one day there was more deaths than the one-day average of those mobs? And/or other reason(s)? I’m seeking to understand your position better.
1) Yes. Sorry if the wording was unclear.
2) That’s one big part of it. But the even bigger part is the target they attacked. Attacking random businesses is bad. Attacking the government, for the sin of trying to certify election results that they dislike, is civil war territory. “You elected the wrong guy” was literally the trigger for the last Civil War, after all.
The best I can say about them was that they were generally incompetent, disorganized, and not capable of actually carrying off a true threat to the peace of the nation. But they still managed to fly a Confederate flag in Congress, which Robert E. Lee couldn’t do in four years of pitched battles. And it seems like at least a few of them had the plan of kidnapping Pence and forcing him to overturn the election results under duress. (Those are early reports, so take them with a big grain of salt, but it’s at least imaginable as a goal for a few of the craziest rioters.)
Because he knows of “those mobs” only from the media.
Most of what I know about them comes from Andy Ngo, as it happens.
But I suppose he is technically part of “the media”.
I’d love to have a few here walk with me through South Minneapolis, down Lake Street, maybe talk to a few of my friends who still haven’t been able to re-open and who now seem likely to simply declare BK and walk away, about how it is so much worse that “government” property was invaded for a few short minutes this week. It was “just private property,” after all.
Maybe we could linger in the remains of the burned-down Minneapolis police precinct building that somehow doesn’t represent “government” in their eyes. Burning down the police is somehow less civil-war-ish than temporarily occupying The People’s Chamber?
Several large communities in Minneapolis are still teetering on failure following the riots. But I should be concerned that government staffers felt ill-at-ease?
They are both bad situations. Cooler heads should have prevailed in both, but didn’t. This “oh, but this is so much worse!” handwringing is why liberty declines.
Johnathan:
I am sorry, but if you believe that, in a normal Western country, an election like this would have been dealt with in the same way by the courts, then it is you who is delusional… or so i hope.
(I thought the same after the 2000 election.)
Should it happen that an election like this is not overturned in another Western country, i might consider moving to India or Brazil. Even Russia might be an improvement: at least, there you know that you are in a dictatorship.
Just to clarify:
1. The courts that refused to look at the evidence were not necessarily wrong. I accept that electoral laws, even the Constitution, might have been the problem. The Constitution, after all, does not allow for a special election when there is doubt cast on an election.
2. While the 2000 election in Florida was a disgrace, I seem to remember that Al Gore’s proposed remedy was unreasonable. Besides, it did not address the basic problem, which was the ballot design. That should have been addressed BEFORE the election.
In short, it seems to me that the 2 elections cannot really be compared.
Bobby: Again, none of what I’m saying should be interpreted as a claim that what happened in Minneapolis was okay. But losing the existence of a democracy that’s widely considered legitimate leads to far worse.
Snorri: I’d be hard-pressed to think of any country where it’d be different. I’ve seen Canadian election lawsuits relatively up-close, and they’d have gone the same way. If you want to win court cases, you need to provide solid evidence. Trump just didn’t.
Alsadius
The principal difficulties that I have with this submission are:
1. Mr Trump wasn’t always the plaintiff in the cases.
2. In most cases, the evidence was not considered.
Alsadikus: in normal* countries, there has not been, for a long time, any POSSIBILITY of electoral fraud on the scale that there has been a POSSIBILITY in the US — and not just in this election. So your comparison is daft — unless Canada is not a normal country.
* actually WEIRD countries.
So suitcases full of ballots counted in the wee hours with poll watchers absent…don’t matter? WTF? (means “why that’s fantastic!”)
The Constitution, and law generally, are not suicide pacts. Dems violate the law. Prosecutors refuse to prosecute. Courts refuse to hear evidence. But I’m supposed to follow the law and the Constitution?
The clowns now in power, and they are not the funny kind of clown, more the Stephen King variety, had better listen to the grievances of the 75M who voted for Trump or there will be hell to pay. But I suspect that’s just what they want: an uprising that enables them to ratchet up their police state an order of magnitude.
I’ve already heard the MSM refer to it as an insurgency. Funny, I thought THEY were the insurgents?
I probably need to leave this alone for awhile because I’m so depressed over the situation and our prospects that I’m having thoughts like this:
“The 20th Century set records for people killing people. After the 21st, we will be longing for times as free, and free of death from murder, starvation and disease, as the 20th.”
I need to find some positive energy somewhere!
Mr Ed: See the Ballotpedia link I posted above. Most were dismissed for lack of evidence. And while there were some cases where Trump wasn’t the plaintiff, there were enough where he (or his people, like the organization “Donald J Trump For President”) were the plaintiffs that any allegations he cared to bring were brought.
Snorri: I’ve watched US election news closely, and I’ve been a scrutineer at Canadian polls many times. The potential for fraud doesn’t seem much higher there than it is here. In some ways, it’s lower. For example, did you know that you can vote in a Canadian election without any identification whatsoever? You just need to sign an affidavit that you’re a legal voter, and they give you a ballot. (Very few people ever do this, both because it’s an obscure rule, and because the paperwork to actually do it is annoying. But it’s legal, and I did it myself once.)
GregWA: Those weren’t “suitcases”. They were standard storage bins for ballots, which had been filled up when GOP poll watchers were in attendance. You could suggest that maybe they were counted falsely, but that area has since had a recount, so that can’t affect the results either. You can’t just take a 30-second video clip as ironclad by itself – the Republican Secretary of State checked the hours-long video, and the video as a whole shows no malfeasance. And like I said above, the courts did hear the evidence, there just wasn’t much evidence to review.
Alsadius: face it. What you are claiming is that Canada is a banana republic.
Without the bananas.
No. I’m claiming that rigging an election en masse isn’t just a question of weak-on-paper election laws. There’s a lot more you have to do to make a real impact than that. You think you can just sign many thousands of affidavits and not trigger some scrutiny?
And a lot of fraud can be done with election laws that are perfectly secure, too. For example, we had a case a few years ago where someone sent out robocalls to a bunch of the other party’s supporters on election day, telling them that their voting locations had moved, in an effort to block them from voting. (I know the guy who went to jail over it, actually.)
Electoral security is like any other kind of security – a good security system will be multi-layered, robust, and balance the need for necessary access against the security goal. It’s not a simple binary.
“This from the Wall Street Journal, not exactly a hotbed of Far Left stupidity:”
Well, they show it there. BLM protests supported b Democratic party have +20 deaths in their hands.
Some of the Republican “tweets” were odd – Vice President Pence said that violence lost (the men with firearms actually WON – as they normally do), and that “freedom won” as he nodded through vast election fraud which will end what is left of freedom in the United States.
Senator Rand Paul (the libertarian) said he could not vote against the States – these were the States that had broken their own Election Laws. And that “violence was un American” – Senator Paul has clearly never studied the history or culture of the United States. I could send him some stuff about the history of culture of his own State, Kentucky, but I doubt he would be interested in learning about people such as Cassius Clay (the original one). He was physically attacked by his neighbour (who broke several of his ribs) so I do not see how Senator Paul can think the culture is one of nonviolence – perhaps he was just “tweeting” whatever he is supposed to “tweet” and not really thinking about what he was saying – and how it had no connection whatever with the actual history and culture of the United States. Remember he did not say that he wished to create a peaceful culture at some point in the future – his claim was about the present and the past (so the claim was false).
From thousands of miles away I kept telling people NOT to do anything – and they replied they had been provoked, and provoked, and provoked for year, after year, after year.
Unarmed Trump supporters had been murdered in the streets of some towns (such as Portland) – and the media had just laughed. To the media, like the education system, the only good Trump supporter is a DEAD Trump supporter – they have made that quite clear over the last few years.
Still I was right and they were wrong – it is easy to be right from thousands of miles away. This jumping about in the Capitol building (which led to FIVE DEATHS – all Trump supporters, for the police officer who died WAS ALSO A TRUMP SUPPORTER) has made the left dance with glee. Now they will have the excuse for the CRACK DOWN they have long planned – it is PERFECT for the establishment left (the FBI and the rest of the “Woke” forces).
“The situation is hopeless – and any resistance will make it WORSE” was my message (an easy one – from thousands of miles away), but some people did not want to hear that there was nothing they could do.
Even though – there was nothing they could do (other than make things WORSE).
Now Freedom of Speech will go – indeed it has basically already gone, with the President of the United States and many others (including the former head of military intelligence – General Flynn) banned from Social Media.
Ordinary people will lose their jobs (even if they were no where near Washington D.C. on the day in question) – anyone who is not “Woke” will be ruthlessly persecuted. Indeed that has been building up for years – with the slightest non “Woke” word leading to persecution by the Corporations and so on, but it will be vastly worse now.
And there is nothing – nothing at all, that can be done about any of this.
Think about it – Trump supporters fighting Trump supporters (for the police officer who died was also a Trump supporter – most people privately are, which is why the election had to be rigged) why would the “Woke” establishment NOT find this funny? From their perspective the deaths of these five people was incredibly amusing – which is yet another good reason NOT to do any of it.
When unarmed Trump supporters were being shot down in the streets of cities such as Portland, the establishment LOVED it – but not nearly as much as they love the idea of Trump supporters KILLING EACH OTHER.
Tragedy or farce? It was both.
There’s always the ammo box.
Let’s see if the right wingers and all the 2nd Amendment proponents live up to their words since it looks like it’ll soon be time to revolt.
One thing that’s not been mentioned so far is the testimony under oath in the Italian court that Arturo D’elio , working for Leonardo SpA, the worlds 8th largest global defence contractor, hacked into US voting machines and switched Trump votes to Biden.
Ah, thats not evidence either I suppose.
I see that I have been anticipated, but the story would read “Mostly peaceful…” And, to add a bit of 1960s lefty spice to the mix, “F**k Hoover”. Ah, those were the days, when lefties were all about free speech and such.
Firstly, I have no problem at all believing that the media would attach the word “deadly” to any attempt to storm a government building which ended in people’s deaths, no matter who was doing the storming.
Secondly, a better hypothetical parallel than BLM would be if in 2016, Clinton supporters had stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Trump’s victory, soon after being egged on by either her or Obama (depending on whether you think losing* candidate or current president makes the better parallel). With some of them armed, some carrying bunches of zip ties, and others building a gallows outside.
Does anyone here truly believe the media would have depicted that in a favourable light?
* Yes, the losing candidate. @Alsadius has the right of it. There have been recounts, checks, audits, and over four dozen failed lawsuits (most of which failed on the evidence, or even by failing to make specific claims about which evidence could be evaluated at all). The so-called statistical blips have been debunked by a stream of mathematicians (the short version being that the “blips” depend on assuming that votes behave exactly like randomly generated numbers). Relevant officials and bodies from both parties have refuted fraud claims; this includes Chris Krebs and even Bill Barr.
And the response? Firings of officials who don’t follow Trump’s line; cries of corruption against those who deny the politically correct narrative of Democratic fraud. Calls for martial law to force elections to be rerun until they yield the right result. Another lawsuit amounting to a claim that elections only count if the incumbent vice president feels like it. And now an attempted Putsch. These are not actions being taken in defence of freedom, or patriotism, or any of the values Trump’s followers like to claim as their own.
Finally, @Paul Marks is mistaken. I hang out in a number of leftist places (probably not a surprise, given what else I’ve written), and none of us are remotely happy that this happened.
Where is America’s precious rule of law when we need it most?
Charles I said in 1649 that there are those who rule and there are those who are ruled. This has always been true, is true, and will forever be true.
Alsadius: if you are satisfied that most people who commit electoral fraud in Canada, go to jail, then you were bullshitting yesterday when you said that Canada is a banana republic. Because, let’s be honest, that is the summary of this statement of yours:
Observers were turned away during the vote counting in the US. Are people going to jail over this? I doubt it, now that mention of voting fraud is forbidden on social media. (Besides, they would not have turned the observers away if they didn’t know that they could get away with it.)
OTOH this suggests that Canada is, in fact, a bit of a banana republic:
This, however, allows what has been described as ‘retail’ fraud, rather than ‘wholesale’ fraud. But even that would be much more difficult in continental Europe.
Where was it when the head of the FBI said that Hillary Clinton was a criminal, but would not be prosecuted — and she still won the popular vote?
[…] – Bobby B […]
Yes, there have been recounts, but the ‘audits’ and ‘checks’ have been superficial at best. Even today there have been no audited signature verification on the mail in ballots.
For some reason the Georgia Secretary of State would do anything but conduct signature verification on the mail in ballots. Fortunately for Raffensperger there won’t be time, in the next ten days for his prosecution, for releasing the telephone conversation with Trump. Which by doing so he has exposed the Trump legal team to reprisals, some of whom have had to resign their positions as a result.
‘Never Trumpers’, a fifth column infiltrated the Republican party to ensure a Democrat Senate majority and a Democrat President. The one thing this has done for Republicans, is ‘out’ all the traitors.
It was probably the same people that co-opted and neutralized the Tea Party.
Flubber,
I am one of the reviled British mainstream journalists, and have worked on “broadsheet” newspapers for more than 20 years. I am not aligned to any party. I look at Samaizdata for the different perspectives of its posters.
I take it that you think the E’Elio story is being supressed or ignored, so I invite you to share your source and to suggest to me how you would verify it. You’d need to begin with details of the case being heard.
It’s evidence, in the sense that it has some impact on my estimate of probabilities. But it’s fairly weak evidence by itself. Pretty much any big controversy will have someone somewhere who’s willing to file an affidavit. Some are genuinely accurate, some are honest but based on severe misunderstandings, some are publicity stunts, and some are outright delusions. One guy halfway around the world is not anything close to proof by himself. Especially when what he suggests sounds more like the plot of a spy thriller than anything that can actually happen in real elections.
Given that he was former IT head for the company that he claims was involved, it’s worthy of some investigation. Bring it to an American court(or an Italian one, for that matter), and look at the evidence. Like I said back in November – Trump has the same right to sue as anyone else, and if he can prove fraud in court, then so be it. I didn’t think it likely, and it seems even less plausible now, but I’m always open to having my mind changed. But you’ll need to show me the evidence, and not just one or two isolated pieces of it.
In Ashli Babbitt’s neck, I believe.
That’s a ridiculous strawman of my position. I don’t think the US is a banana republic, or that Canada is. I think that you just have some unrealistic views on how election security actually works. Even if you were right about the issues with modern elections, elections are still far cleaner today than they were in the 19th century, for example. I don’t think the US was a banana republic because of the chaos of 1876, or the fact that it didn’t have secret ballots anywhere until 1888, or even because of massive black disenfranchisement until the 1960s. Perfection isn’t my standard. I demand a reasonable effort to balance competing interests, in particular ensuring that all legal votes are counted and that all legal votes are counted. But it doesn’t instantly become illegitimate just because there’s a few minor issues. No human system on that scale can achieve perfection.
Assuming the turning-away can be proven, and that it was illegal (i.e., not a case of “There’s 15 of you, and each party is allowed three at this location”), then people should be prosecuted accordingly. I don’t know whether that actually happened – the only allegation of it that I’ve heard didn’t seem to hold up – but that’s my principle. And even if social media has banned discussions of it, take it to a judge.
Why would Raffensperger be prosecuted? Georgia is a one-party-consent state. He can record and release any of his own phone calls, any time he wants to. If Trump staffers wind up resigning in disgrace over it, perhaps that should be treated as a natural consequence of following a President who decides to harangue state officials to change the results of an election.
I’m NeverTrump myself, and I still supported the Republicans in the Senate races. I’d be much happier to have had Biden’s power checked by Romney and Collins than by Manchin and Sinema. But Trump decided to burn it all down on his way out the door, so Georgia’s Senate seats went to the Democrats. Chuck Schumer thanks you for your service.
As for the Tea Party, that was mostly a collapse caused by grifters and the lack of a clear plan to implement an agenda. Some of those grifters went NeverTrump, to be sure – the Project Lincoln greaseballs are the most obvious culprits there. But a lot of it was the same as the Occupy Wall Street or Black Lives Matter collapses – a decentralized movement with a radical(but fuzzy) agenda is very bad at causing concrete changes in the nation’s governance, because they have no structures to organize cohesive action, and often wind up spending more time arguing over what’s the “real” version of the movement than actually doing anything of value. When the best you can accomplish is nominating a candidate who has to run television ads saying “I’m not a witch”, to lose a seat that could very plausibly have been won, it’s no surprise that your movement falls apart.
“I’m NeverTrump myself”
Well good luck with that. The GOP is going to be eviscerated in the next few years and twats like you are the reason.
We all condemn rioting and mob violence and destruction.
We all hold that freedom of expression and the right to protest against injustice is sacred.
So, what happened at the US Capitol?
Was it a sacred and protected protest of was it condemnable mob violence and mayhem and destruction?
A mob was involved, no doubt, but there wasn’t much violence, and the violence that happened was mostly unjustified police shooting. Neither was there much destruction. (at least not by the standards of the last year, 2020). We don’t want an unruly and potentially violent mob – it is dangerous, even if, after the fact, we know that no great harm was done. But it was a mostly peaceful protest.
Of course – what most people (including JP of this blog) found shocking was the attack on the Capitol – the symbol of American democracy.
I, personally, don’t hold the congresscritters to be above all other people or more sacred than ordinary citizens. (which suffered quite a lot in May and June protests).
The aim of protest is to make your point of view heard. Taking a walk through Congress corridors and yelling at congressmen is not a heinous crime, I think.
Any armed resistance will be used as an excuse for an even bigger Crack Down.
The left are allowed to shoot unarmed people dead (as they did many times in 2020) – the right are not, even that 17 year old lad who was attacked by a whole mob (many of whom were carrying firearms and who shot first) is on trial for the “crime” of defending himself.
As I have said so many times in the last few days – the situation is hopeless, WALK AWAY.
Go to the most remote places you can – find some ordinary job, and pray to God the government and the “Woke” Corporations do not notice you.
Yes these are BITTER WORDS (Wormwood) – but they are truth.
There is no hope at this time, any armed resistance will just make things WORSE.
Stay ALIVE – wait for a better time, although it may not ever come.
It might come at some unlooked for time, – and then (and only then) act.
Economic Law will do its slow but sure work – the sick and evil world of the World Economic Forum and the United Nations, the world of “Stakeholder Capitalism” and “Sustainable Development”, Credit Bubble bankers and “Woke” corporations, will fall.
It will NOT fall by a few brave (but very foolish) people waving firearms – the destruction of the system of evil will come by the slow grinding of Economic Law.
I will not live to see it end – but the evil system that is now being built, will end.
As to JP’s claim that there is no proof of election fraud:
Maybe there isn’t, opinions are divided.
But about 40% of US citizens think there was fraud. You can disagree but you cannot deny other people the right to express their opinion, and to march and protest.
I mean: the claim that there was no fraud doesn’t invalidate the right of people to protest against what they perceive as fraud.
You cannot claim that the protest at the Capitol was not justified because you think there was no fraud. People usually protest about things that are disputed and the other side considers ok. If there were no disputes there were no need to protest.
Alsadius, since you are NeverTrumper, perhaps it would be easier for you to consider the question of fraud in the Georgia runoffs, in which you voted for the Republicans. As these were state-wide, and lacked any need to focus on presidential candidates, one might expect some of the same techniques to show up there. The point can be debated – arguably too obvious fraud so soon after the election has unwisdom, but there again control of the senate is a strong temptation.
This suggests some of November’s problems reappeared in January. Time will allow both of us to be more informed. (BTW, following the links near the top will get you to video of the Georgia hearing which – unlike ‘standing’, ‘latches’ and ‘not credible’ trial tossing – did involve some consideration of evidence.)
Lyndon Johnston famously remarked, “But we can make the bastard deny it!” about some rather silly allegation. (I do – rather vaguely at this remove – recall the Palin-endorsed candidate you are speaking of.) The Tea Party’s marches were very well behaved, leaving areas cleaner than when they visited. For that, they were mocked and lied about. Their ‘falling apart’ did involve the GoP regaining house and senate during the first half of the decade just ended. It was commented about the Trump phenomenon that when courtesy’s reward is ‘the chump effect’, what follows may be less courteous. The tea party ‘fell apart’ into the Trump phenomenon. What that will ‘fall apart’ into is to be seen – or foreseen, but maybe a NeverTrumper is less able to assess Trump’s strengths and weaknesses.
In my observation, Never Trumpers are mostly the detritus of the Bush era (neocons and other zombie reaganites) and stuck up soi-disant libertarians that are all in favour of cultural leftism etc providing they can have legalised pot and privatised social security. A set of degenerate scumbags basically.
Bendle,
“I am not aligned to any party.”
You have never voted in an election before?
Bendle,
“ I take it that you think the E’Elio story is being supressed or ignored, so I invite you to share your source and to suggest to me how you would verify it.”
What is the E’Elio story?
What Paul said.
Bendle (January 9, 2021 at 12:54 pm), you state you are “one of the reviled British mainstream journalists” then appear to talk as if you could not find the story Flubber mentioned. You will get a lot of hits by entering “Arturo D’elio” and “Leonardo SpA” into a search engine – and if your own search engine fails this test then try another and definitely suspect yours of ‘suppressing’ the story. 🙂 (If of course, your typo – “E’elio” instead of “D’elio” – is the problem then all is explained.)
As regards confirming or discrediting, an obvious first step would be to have him repeat the demonstration (like as was done in the Georgia senate hearing) – have him demonstrate the hacking feat on some observed voting machine.
It was in the New York Times, less than two years ago, that I read that there was “no such thing as an unhackable voting machine”.
Meanwhile, last I heard, Maricopa county election officials were still refusing access to their voting machines for forensic audit, despite a court order demanding they do so. This refusal may or may not have anything whatever to do with possible Italian skullduggery, but I remark (following in the footstep’s of Jacob’s mild remarks above) that it does nothing to weaken the strength of anyone’s suspicion that there was plenty of voter fraud.
Bendle,
“ I take it that you think the E’Elio story is being supressed or ignored, so I invite you to share your source and to suggest to me how you would verify it. You’d need to begin with details of the case being heard.”
Since when is verification a necessary prerequisite for Fake News Media outlets reporting news stories or “news” stories? The Steele Dossier is just one of a million examples where the Fake News Media reported on something without verification (turned out to be a false and fabricated product of a Russian agent paid for by DNC lawyers and the Clinton-affiliated Fusion GPS).
Seems to me that verification is generally necessary prior to publication of news that might help Trump or make his enemies look bad.
Niall, the man’s name would seem to be D’Elia, so apologies for my typo.
I did search for Mr D’Elia and the story Flubber mentioned. Many of the stories linked were about a previous case concerning hacking at Leonardo, which had nothing to do with the election.
The stories I have seen about D’Elia’s supposed confession re the election do not mention any specific case, and I found the affadavit from the lawyer Alfio D’Urso unconvincing because it doesn’t include the sort of detail required on such documents. The stories also refer to a case in the Italian Federal Court, but so far as I know there is no such court in Italy.
But I’m open to persuasion, hence my question.
Shlomo,
1 I have voted in elections, but not always for the same party. I think it’s fairly clear what I meant.
2 The D’Elia story:
https://thebl.com/world-news/italy-used-military-grade-cyberwarfare-to-divert-votes-from-president-trump-to-biden.html
and the previous one, which had nothing to do with the US election:
https://www.reuters.com/article/italy-leonardo-cyber-prosecutor/leonardo-hack-targeted-commercial-military-component-unit-police-officer-idUSL8N2IR4BU
3 Verification is necessary to avoid legal action. In the case of the Steele Dossier, you will recall that it was reported as being unverified at the time. I believe some of the content has in fact now been confirmed by other sources.
I believe some of the content has in fact now been confirmed by other sources.
This is weapons grade bollocks.
All you need to know about the contents of the Steele dossier is that when various Obama officials were put under oath and asked “do you have any knowledge of Trump collusion”, they all said no.
Because unlike the press, they didn’t at that point have the ability to lie without consequence.
https://nypost.com/2021/01/08/video-shows-police-officers-stand-by-as-rioters-charge-into-us-capitol/
Just in case anyone hasn’t already seen it here are the (maskless) Capitol police doing f-all of nothing to prevent protestors casually walking in. Very strange.
Alsadius: there is no point in trying to gaslight me with hot air and bullshit.
Then you are delusionally insane.
The word “minor” proves the insanity.
And who cares about your principle?
Tell me instead whether that ever happened in Canada, without people ending up in jail.
It’s exactly because that has never happened in the US, that the US is a banana republic.
Bendle:
🙂
Just distance yourself from your British colleague, Walter Duranty, and we’ll listen to you.
If you are talking about parties that compete in elections, that’s irrelevant. What matters is whether you are aligned with the Establishment Party or the People’s Party.
That is to say, whether you are writing Establishment propaganda, or facts that the people ought to know.
NB: I am not asking what Party you think you are: I know only too well that people (including people in the Establishment) have an amazing ability to deceive themselves.
I am just telling you that the fact that you (like me) do not vote regularly for the same party, does not prove anything.
Bendle,
Perhaps it was clear to you, but it’s not at all clear to me what you meant. You said “I am not aligned to any party.” What does this mean? How do you define “aligned to a party”?
First of all, many Fake News Media outlets reported on the Steele Dossier but did not report it as being unverified.
Second of all, you are shifting the goal posts: originally, you said that the D’Elio story could be reported as news in the same way the Steele Dossier was but is not. Why? Could it be that verification is generally necessary prior to publication of news that might help Trump or make his enemies look bad while verification of news that makes Trump look bad or helps his enemies is not so necessary at all?
Third of all, the Fake News Media’s non-coverage of the Hunter Biden email story prior to the election is all one needs to see to notice that the Fake News Media is rotten, corrupt to its core. This is not just media bias, this is much more insidious and evil. The behavior of the Fake News Media has for years incited a vitriolic hatred of Trump and his supporters that has torn my country apart. Look at how the Fake News Media tried to destroy the life of Nick Sandmann by intentionally disseminating false, unverified accusations against a Trump supporting boy. Disgusting.
Fourth of all, and as Glenn Greenwald has written, the collusion among Fake News Media, Democrat Party, and the Intelligence Services to push the fake Russia Collusion Hoax on the American People is the intentional dissemination of false and fabricated information that undermined the legitimacy of the duly elected government (sedition) and incited hatred/violence against the duly elected government (sedition). It is for these and other reasons that the Fake News Media is an enemy of the American People – much more malicious, dangerous, and evil than many enemies America has ever faced in her history.
How much do you want to bet that Bendle works with journalists/reporters/anchors/individuals in media who have only ever voted for one party and that Bendle would happily defend their claims of “not being aligned to any party”?
Journalists/reporters/media people do not have a consistent standard by which they are judged as being “not affiliated to any party” and the goal posts by which one might judge any individual journalist/reporter’s independence shift (the goal posts SHIFT) so that it’s impossible for them to admit that they are, effectively, affiliated with the Left in almost every case.
Welcome back, Alisa!
Should say:
Second of all, you are shifting the goal posts: originally, you implied that the D’Elio story could be reported as news in the same way the Steele Dossier was but is not because it is unverified. But the Steele Dossier was not verified at the time so your reasoning is inherently flawed. So why do you think the D’Elio story has not been reported? Could it be that verification is generally necessary prior to publication of news that might help Trump or make his enemies look bad while verification of news that makes Trump look bad or helps his enemies is not so necessary at all?
Those of you who, like Johnathan Pearce and Alsadius :} apparently get the news from people like Bendle :}, might be interested in a summary of evidence for fraud.
Get the PDF before it disappears.
I’d be interested in hearing of debunkings, if any. Not saying that i’d trust them, of course.
“The so-called statistical blips have been debunked by a stream of mathematicians (the short version being that the “blips” depend on assuming that votes behave exactly like randomly generated numbers).”
Bollocks on stilts.
Have you actually looked at the data yourself? Have you tried to replicate the results of these so-called “so-called” statisticals blips? The fact that you think the fraud allegations rest on votes behaving like random numbers suggests strongly to me that you have not.
I, however, have and I can confirm that the methodologies are sound, the results can be replicated and the so-called debunkings by so-called mathematicians are just hand-waving – they do not come close to undermining the results.
I am actually horrified at some of the legerdemain of people who should know better basically pulling the wool over people’s eyes. The tricks used to debunk one particular piece of analysis are subtle, but when you spot them you realise the debunker must KNOW he is lying through his teeth. It’s genuinely horrifying.
The fundamental issue here is as follows:
– there are just so many glaring red flags at so many different levels that cry out for thorough investigation
– many of these were manifestly apparent as the results came in on the night of the 3rd
– on the morning of the 4th, the media were already, universally, using the phrase “no evidence” when anyone reading anything other than enemy media already knew of a whole ton of stuff that was WAAY out of whack. That’s how you could tell it was a coup attempt. We already had a massive long list of things that desperately needed a vigorous media to chase down and they were expressing exactly zero interest in doing so. Willful blindness and negligence bordering on actual malfeasance.
Try these excellent posts for a list of those red flags:
https://monsterhunternation.com/2020/11/05/the-2020-election-fuckery-is-afoot/
https://monsterhunternation.com/2020/11/09/election-2020-the-more-fuckery-update/
https://monsterhunternation.com/2020/11/12/i-asked-one-simple-question-to-people-who-work-with-fraud/
The analogy I use is the murder: I’m pointing at a body, face down on the floor of the library, with his hands tied behind his back and fatal gunshot wound from the back. But when I cannot produce a culprit or a murder weapon, you tell me I’m not looking at a murder scene. It won’t wash.
Snorri, there are 148 sources cited in that report. I can’t see one signed testimony from someone willing to put their name to an allegation of fraud. It is nonsense for the report authors to claim they are witholding names to protect the people testifying, because sworn affadavits would be on the public record.
It may or may not be relevant, but I’ve learned that because footnotes tend to confer credibility on a document, one thing authors making thin cases do is to add lots of them on the assumption that noone will really check them. When it comes to the actual affadvits in this document, there are no links to documents. It would be easy enough to at least quote sections of a testimony.
Shlomo, thank you for your replies, to which I’d like to reply later.
Just for now, can I say that in the UK at least, not all journalists are affiliated with left. For example I freelanced for the Daily Telegraph for about 15 years, and never had a section editor who voted Labour. True, some staff voted for Blair 1997/2001.
I’d say that what happened across most big broadcast and print media was that post 2010, when UKIP began taking chunks of the Tory vote, a lot of centre/right leaning broadcast/print media became worried (probabaly justifiably in my opinion) that they had missed the development of a new kind of right-leaning voter, and began copying the Daily Mail, because that title seemed to have the best understanding of the demographic. At the same time, the traditionally liberal left outlets found they were picking up more hits online from more extreme columnists, so they went the other way, if you see what I mean.
“that they had missed the development of a new kind of right-leaning voter”
Yeah hanging round in an establishment echo chamber will do that to you.
Funny. I’d blame it on the guy who just lost an election and lit his party on fire whining about it.
Again, they killed a cop, and put fifteen in the hospital. Watch this video, and tell me that this is surprising. So no, it wasn’t “mostly peaceful”, any more than five riots that don’t burn downtown Minneapolis and one that does count as “mostly peaceful”.
Fully agreed. It was the violence that bothered me, far more so than the allegations of fraud. You’re still allowed to protest even if you’re obviously wrong – I find the wrongness frustrating, but I would never want to limit the ability to peacefully petition for an idea just because that idea is silly.
Quibble: I supported the Republicans in those races, but I didn’t vote for them. (I’m Canadian, so I have no vote in US elections)
Actual response: Remember that results go through several hands before getting to the CNN live feed. They get counted by a polling location, then they get sent to the election agency, then a data feed company collates that all and CNN posts *that* feed. And these are somewhat slipshod processes in some ways, because they don’t get used a lot, and they’re not optimized for instant results. They’re supposed to get to the right results eventually, but not always instantly.
This was a typo being corrected at some stage, I’m almost certain. For example, a precinct gave Trump 555 votes and someone fat-fingered it as 5555 votes. If you had the ability to rig results, you would never do something that blatant – you’d simply under-count them in the first place, to avoid those discrepancies.
As I always say here, feel free to investigate this. If you can find a math error in the final results, or a poll where 5000 votes went missing, then maybe my assumption is wrong. But each polling location has a specific, local count, each one can be compared to November, and most of them will have had a Republican observer in the room where the count happened. Especially for any poll with 5000+ Perdue votes being possible, they’ll be sure to have someone in the room, whose job was to watch the count and then send their results back to the campaign office. If this was fraudulent, it should not be difficult for Perdue’s lawyers to find the affected precinct, show the discrepancy, and challenge the results on that basis.
The latest I can find on this is a December 30th story – http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/30/arizona-senate-demand-maricopa-county-election-material-attorney-general-brnovich/4093613001/ – which says that they’re claiming that the access demanded would be illegal. Also, it wasn’t a court order – it was the state legislature issuing a subpoena, which is generally a process that’s more prone to political interference. No word on any order or verdict by a judge yet, at least not that I can find.
I know of exactly one occasion where a scrutineer was barred from a Canadian polling location, and that was for someone who was flagrantly violating the laws on what a scrutineer is and is not allowed to do. (It was years ago, but from memory, I think he was repeatedly accosting voters.) The party sent a replacement, who behaved legally, and who was accepted at the same polling location later in the day.
As for court cases, Trump’s claims were heard in court some five dozen times in the last two weeks. Again, check my Ballotpedia link above for a listing of some of the more important ones.
I’ve got the PDF loaded up, so it won’t disappear. (Though really, if The Thinking Conservative is taking down your fraud claim PDF, then maybe you should just give up the game).
I’ll take a look at it in more detail later.
Bendle,
Can I just say that in the world not all basketball players are not Jewish. I have watched basketball for about 15 years and I have seen many basketball players play who were Jewish. Omri Casspi, A’Mare Stoudemire, Jordan Farmar are three examples.
Do I really need to pollute Samizdata’s hallowed, elite comment thread with an elementary level explanation of basic statistics for you? I never claimed that all journalists are affiliated with the left. Over here in the States, New York Post, Washington Examiner, and Epoch Times are all solid.
Your anecdotal evidence does not impress me and it’s precisely that sort of cherry picking that the media routinely uses to misrepresent reality to the public. I realize that cherry picked anecdotes have passed muster in news rooms you have worked in as ways to impose fake narratives on the British public (coronavirus hysteria is the latest example of this), but that bullshit approach doesn’t work on me.
I read more international media than domestic American media. I have been reading several different British newspapers on a fairly regular basis for 10+ years. I am well acquainted with the British press – and it’s basically the same crap we have here in the States. And by the way, voting for the Tories does not mean one isn’t part of the Left. Tories (like the GOP) are controlled opposition – and if you haven’t figured that out yet, then you are more lost than even I thought.
Alsadius,
America killed over 100,000 innocent civilians in a split second when America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. This is more innocent civilians that died than any number of innocent civilians killed by Nazi Germany in any split second.
What is so special about one split second? What is so special about one day? What is so special about one place?
What is the moral confusion in your head, Alsadius, that you keep trying to find a way to minimize the extraordinary damage and destruction to life, liberty, property, culture, and society that has been done by BLM and antifa by comparing those evil movements favorably to the one-day right wing riot in DC?
Rioting is wrong. And rioting on one day in one place is better than rioting in many places across the country on-and-off for months and years. So more blame goes on antifa and BLM, MUCH MORE.
Alsadius,
May I suggest you submit this preposterous screed to MSNBC for publication? I think they would be impressed by your lack of perspective and overwrought tone.
There are many excellent points in this article to which Alisa linked in another Samizdata thread.
https://www.steynonline.com/10919/potemkin-parliament-pseudo-legislature
You should read this in full before you continue with your hysterical commentary on the one-day right wing riot because, in comparing a one-day riot to the Confederacy, your remarks have become so deranged that they betray a profound misapprehension of reality for all to see and, honestly dude, it’s really cringe.
British press – it’s basically the same crap.
I completely agree with Shlomo yet still they believe otherwise as much of this thread illustrates.
Alsadius,
You think The Thinking Conservative is big enough to not be bullied by vendors/service providers it relies on? Or, more likely, you just have no fucking clue how the world works?
It’s unlikely the PDF will be taken down. But you should figure out how the world works regardless.
Shlomo, no, in fairness you did not claim that all journalists were affiliated with the Left. You did however say that “almost” all were (“they are, effectively, affiliated with the Left in almost every case.”) But I apologise for the oversight.
I was hardly offering a cherry-picked anecdote, just some personal experience that I felt didn’t match your view of reality, but never mind.
Flubber, I agree re the UK media and the echo chamber. But do you really believe that D’Elia story?
Speaking about election fraud – there was one piece of data that convinced me that fraud happened. The American voting system with acceptance of unlimited mail ballots is not secure, it actually makes fraud easy. And, where fraud is easy, it’s easy to believe it was committed. It is actually necessary to assume that.
The data point is this: In Pennsylvania, about 7 million votes were cast. Of those – 4.5 million were cast in person. Of those Trump won 2/3 – that is 3 million to Biden’s 1.5 million. 2.5 million mail ballots came in. Of those – Biden won 80% (2 million) while Trump only 0.5 million.
These numbers alone, while not definite proof of fraud – are a very strong indication. Like the body found in the library… (comment above).
Alsadius
“This was a typo being corrected at some stage, I’m almost certain. For example, a precinct gave Trump 555 votes and someone fat-fingered it as 5555 votes. If you had the ability to rig results, you would never do something that blatant – you’d simply under-count them in the first place, to avoid those discrepancies.”
I heard that one too. Nothing to see here, it’s all fine and normal move along.
Except….
– all these typos go one way. Hmmm….
– if you look at the feeds, you can’t see the correction for much much much larger Biden outliers.
I had thought that that was about that. Arguable that there could fat fingers. Maybe.
Except…..
In many cases, there is no human intervention in the feed at all, just human couriers of flash cards holding the data.
– voters make their selections and get a printed ballot
– this is scanned onto a flash card
– flash cards are then taken under escort to central tabulating locations where the data is extracted and totalled
– this data is then distributed via Scytl to Edison (and thereby direct to the media) and to the Secretary of State’s office.
There is no step in this process where an operator reads a total off a screen or a piece of paper and enters those totals into another system for onward transmission.
So when you see a “fat finger” or indeed any instance of vote total dropping (i.e. a batch of votes processed has a negative total for a candidate) in Georgia – and there are many instances where this happens – it is cast iron proof of a deliberate human intervention that breaks the chain of custody entirely.
So whilst you may be “almost certain” that this is a purely innocent transcribing error, I am 100% CONVINCED that it is not. It is deliberate fraud in every single case.
Worse, the MSM should know about this custody chain above. Anyone who opines on this and claims to be involved in any way with the election process and who waves it away as you have done is also 100% lying through their teeth.
Ask yourself why you have not seen extensive reporting of the data transfer process that gave rise to the fat finger.
The only thing I simply cannot fathom is why Trump is not using exactly this kind of material. It’s slam dunk territory.
Alsadius:
Thanks for leading me to the link…but i sense that you are again shifting your grounds. By talking about people in jail, I implicitly referred to CRIMINAL cases. And i speculated on whether the cases would be pursued, now that discussion of fraud is insurrection.
Also, have such CRIMINAL cases been pursued in the past, AFTER the losing candidate concedes?
If you, Alsadius, do not care abut that, then you have a banana-republic mentality.
As for the PDF, i offered it w/o endorsement. Good point by Bendle.
It’s not moral confusion, you’re just not reading what I’m writing. But sure, beat the stuffing out of that strawman.
You think someone would take down a whole website because of a PDF that mentions some widely discussed allegations of fraud? And then you accuse me of not knowing how the world works?
Tell me, what are your thoughts on the illuminati? Or are you more of a “lizard people” kind of guy?
In a normal election, yes, that would be extremely suspicious. But remember that this election saw a huge divide in how the campaigns told their supporters to vote. Trump told people to vote in person, while Biden told people to vote by mail. This all ties into covid, as well, where the left is much more worried by it than the right is overall, and so they work harder to avoid in-person contact of any sort. When the campaign strategies differed so much, I’m not surprised that the results also differed.
Also, how would you do that many mail-in ballots fraudulently? Even if you assume that you have an organization big enough to create 1.75 million or so fake ballots(which is what you’d need to give the mail-in ballots a similar partisan skew as the in-person ballots), and none of them talk, you still have to assign those ballots to voters. Where do you find a million voters whose ballots you can cast? This isn’t 1960, so you can’t just use cemeteries – the computerization of records has basically closed that loophole. You can probably find thousands of people who’ll never vote, or who you know moved out of state. But in order to get rid of your skew, that isn’t close to being enough. You’d wind up with at least a couple hundred thousand Pennsylvania voters who went to the polls on November 3rd and got told “Sorry, you’ve already voted”. You don’t think we’d have heard about that by now?
Also, if we take that many votes away from Biden, Trump won about 66% of the votes in Pennsylvania. The last GOP candidate to win Pennsylvania by that kind of margin was Herbert Hoover, in 1928. That’s pretty hard to imagine.
All the typos that get brought to your attention by people talking about how Trump was cheated go one way. Would the sites you’re reading show you a Biden vote drop?
For what it’s worth, I did find an old Twitter thread about this with some links to some relevant source material – https://static01.nyt.com/elections-assets/2020/data/api/2020-11-03/race-page/pennsylvania/president.json, Ctrl-F for “2984468” and compare that timestamp with the next one. It does show a vote alteration of about 18,000 votes, though it isn’t granular enough to be sure why that happened. (But note that this is hosted by the New York Times, and it’s still up, so they’re certainly not engaging in some kind of massive coverup).
Even the guy who flagged it pointed out several reasons to think this is a data quality issue and not actual fraud, though: https://twitter.com/jonst0kes/status/1327086848833953792 (and he’s not exactly a lefty activist). There’s a lot more discussion buried in links off of that, but the short version is that it’s just not a very good data feed, and people are hanging too much weight off of it. (And this flip didn’t change the results – it was two days later that Biden finally took the lead, remember). I agree that there was some garbage in the feed, but I think it’s bad-feed garbage, not fraudulent-election garbage.
I’ll be honest, I know the Canadian process – which is very much human-run – much better than the American process. So perhaps this is a genuine difference between the two. But if so, why did this not get brought up in any of the court cases? Any competent lawyer who wanted to win the election for Trump would have looked at this kind of thing and figured out if it was usable in court. So far as I know, none used it. (If it did get taken to court, please give me a case name, or better yet documents, so I can dig a bit).
As I said upthread, I know a man who spent almost a year in jail for election fraud, after his candidate lost. If you want to look it up, it was Michael Sona, convicted of the 2011 robocall scandal in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. (The details aren’t too relevant here, but long story short, his local candidate lost, while the party won nationally, and he spent close to a year in jail.) I’m not sure if he was actually guilty of that one, but I certainly think that the fraud in question was worthy of jail time for the guilty party. Does that sound fair to you?
More bullshitting, Alsadius.
In your replies not only to me, but to others too.
But i’ll deal with your bullshitting addressed to me.
I said that you have a banana-republic mentality if you don’t care whether voter fraud is prosecuted:
* In the US
* In criminal courts
* After the losing party has conceded.
Apparently you do have a banana-republic mentality, because you studiously avoid, again and again, dealing with all 3 points at the same time.
Snorri – Alsadius cannot deal with all 3 points simultaneously because that would mean reckoning with reality, which his Kool Aid addled brain is allergic to. His response to me indicates he can’t process the term “bullying” in a context that would ultimately lead to revision of deeply held unrealities. It really is fascinating watching the hive-mind at work.
I asked him:
What is so special about one split second? What is so special about one day? What is so special about one place?
He cannot answer because there is nothing special about any of those things. But he keeps mentioning. Strange hive-mind.
That is an excellent way of putting it.
Mind you, few people, if any, like reckoning with reality; but some of us accept that it is best in the long term.
Yes, of course I care about that. I have said as much many times. I cited a Canadian case, because it’s one I was relatively close to, but the principle doesn’t stop at the border.
If election fraud has happened, and it can be shown in criminal court to have happened beyond a reasonable doubt, then the perpetrators of that fraud should be punished to the full extent of the law. This is true whether the criminal in question supported the winning candidate, the losing candidate, or no candidate at all. This is true whether the election has been settled, is still being actively contested, or has not yet taken place. This is equally true in the United States, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, or the freaking United Federation of Planets for all I care.
What on earth ever led you to believe otherwise? Seriously, you need to read what I actually say, not some weird knockoff that you made up yourself. Here’s the first thing I said in this thread on the topic, for reference:
That was a discussion of specific claims about the US election, it was written after Trump had conceded, and it very directly advocated criminal prosecution. So in my first mention of the topic, I addressed all three of your points at the same time.
No, Alsadius, you DO NOT care whether criminal inquests will be carried out or not. Saying that they SHOULD be carried out is not the same as saying that you would be outraged if they aren’t. Because they obviously aren’t going to be carried out, and you don’t care.
So we are back to where we started: you have a banana-republic mentality.
“Funny. I’d blame it on the guy who just lost an election and lit his party on fire whining about it.”
Yeah, the guy who just got a national 48% approval rating.
I’m sure all those voters cant wait to vote for Nikki Hailey or any other establishment tool the GOP put forward in 2024.
Dickhead.
How the fuck do you know what I think? Quit pretending like you know me. You don’t have a clue, buddy.
Alsadius,
Snorri is right when he said “You do not care whether criminal inquests will be carried out or not. Saying that they SHOULD be carried out is not the same as saying that you would be outraged if they aren’t. Because they obviously aren’t going to be carried out, and you don’t care.” This is absolutely clear from your series of comments and you are not even denying it.
This has nothing to do with knowing you personally so there’s really no need to feign offense.
You’re making assumptions about how I think that are at direct odds with what I’ve said repeatedly. And you’re doing it because you want to dismiss what I have to say, not because you have any reasonable basis to think that it’s true. You’re just making up lies so you can ignore me.
So you’re right, there’s no particular need to feign offense.
I know it from your constant shifting your ground, changing subject, and giving bullshit answers. If you avoid the central issue, that can only mean that you want to avoid it.
I know your kind, Alsadius.
No, you cited a Canadian case because you don’t know of any American case. Which should have told you that the USA is a banana republic, had you put your mind to it.
“All the typos that get brought to your attention by people talking about how Trump was cheated go one way. Would the sites you’re reading show you a Biden vote drop?”
Yes. Yes they would because they do.
The problem here, I suspect, is that you are taking the MSM on trust that they are doing the hard work and reporting faithfully and without fear or favour, so you end up asking the wrong question.
The correct question is: “Do these sites report their methodology and sources and let you replicate their analysis?”
If the answer to that is “no”, then you have – or may have had – a point. Unfortunately that’s not the case. The sites I’m using ARE showing their sources and methodology. I have all the data and have replicated the analysis and results.
So I can verify for myself that what they say is true – there are ridiculously anomalous spikes and vote swaps and the net effects are absolutely huge.
Until about a day ago, I was 99.9% certain this election was rigged top to bottom. All my analysis pointed in this direction and I had formed a coherent narrative into which I could slot everything I was finding. I could use this to judge whether a debunking held water and I could use it to discard the views of some loons (e.g. drop and roll – the roll element is simply an update that is not big enough to shift the cumulative shares).
Then two days ago – and it is genuinely staggering that I have only just found this – I saw evidence to the GA state senate that showed the data flow processes that makes it clear that there is no point for human intervention in the form required to apply the vote switches seen in clear on live TV on the night.
We are way beyond the stage of talking about “beyond reasonable doubt”. I am genuinely staggered how this has been stolen in broad daylight with everyone gaily tripping along behind. The institutions of the US are universally rotten to the core – it needs a reckoning and will get one, regardless of whether it deserves it.
Pedant-General,
“The sites I’m using ARE showing their sources and methodology. I have all the data and have replicated the analysis and results.”
Can I ask which sites you use?
Pedant-General:
Ah, so you’ve seen examples of Biden losing votes to similar glitches? Good to know – that confirms what I was saying, then.
As for replicating data and analysis, the sites I prefer tend to allow that, yes. I’m not really a MSM guy – I use them to get basic facts on breaking news, or to see what the MSM was saying about an issue at a given time, but not for analysis unless something really funky has happened. Usually, my preference is to just head straight to the primary sources, or do my own analysis of data. (Which is how I caught the error in the “Only four cities saw their Biden vote share go up” claim a couple months back, in another Samizdata comment thread, for example).
Found one of your problems, buddy.
There was indeed a difference and one can measure it across the country and in specific places e.g. California, and then compare it with e.g. Pennsylvania and with specific locales therein, compare absence/presence of time-based trends, etc., thus observe any improbable differences. A proportion of the difference is much less than the numbers you were suggesting. This lower number noted, …
If two Californian activists can fake 8000 votes in 3 months before being caught, how many votes can 1000 activists fake in 4 months? We know they have enough organisation to do the BLM riots. These and other organisation points were discussed earlier.
After the polls close on election day, it is known who has voted and so who on the rolls, even if alive and still resident in the state, has not. In California’s long post-election ballot harvesting phase, gangs can then visit non-voters and say, “Hey man, we see you forgot to vote – let us ‘help’ you.” In the early hours of the day after the election, in a ‘closed’ polling station from which observers have been removed, there is no way to visit such non-voters and collect any actual ballot they were sent, but there are ways to ‘help’ them without that – and various other things one can do.
In pre-election fraud. such clashes are a risk. The two activists I mentioned above stole from populations likely to have a very low voting rate; there are other methods. But of course there will be some clashes – which we indeed have heard of, though far from all because only some of those who arrive and get fobbed off with a provisional ballot (later discarded in favour of the earlier postal one) go public about it.
“If two Californian activists can fake 8000 votes in 3 months before being caught”
Just a point of order, they didn’t fake any votes. It was 8000 registration applications. None were used in an election. In the context of this discussion that seems a significant difference.
https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/14984641/2020/11/BA491333.pdf
“There was indeed a difference and one can measure it across the country and in specific places ”
Quite so. Vote drops of >150k for Biden and <2k for Trump are way outside those variations.
Shlomo: Wait, you think I *should* look at MSM analysis?
Niall: Credit where credit’s due, these are better theories than the ones I often hear. The inter-state comparisons will be limited by the fact that state election laws vary, as do things like election day weather. But an in-depth analysis of this sort could definitely be used to flag possible issues for further investigation – if(for example) swing states had much higher mail-in ratios than both red states and blue states, then that’s certainly noteworthy.
The idea of getting a thousand activists together for a vote-faking operation isn’t practical. Any group that large will have spies – parties spy on each other all the time(at least at the low levels where getting in is easy, but you need to recruit from the low levels to get that kind of manpower). It’ll also have people who have a crisis of conscience over vote rigging.
Assigning fake votes after the polls have closed is actually moderately practical, though. Not in a state like Florida where the results are fully counted on election night. But in California, where you have a couple weeks? That’s getting into the realm where a group that’s small enough to stay secret, but big enough to swing 10k+ votes, is actually doable. (Obviously nobody will bother in California, but other states with equally long timelines could be vulnerable there). Efforts to close loopholes like that would be wise on the GOP’s part.
Pedant-General: Depends on where that happened. For the DC mail-in ballots, that’s about what I’d expect – the city is about 92% D, and mail-in will skew that further. If you saw that in Houston or Phoenix, I’d have a lot more questions.
Both aspects of this sentence are wrong. 🙂
Back in the days of Mayor Daley, the Chicago vote-fraud organisation easily encompassed more than a thousand and lasted for decades (the older ones taught the techniques to recruits). Their failure to evolve as fast as the world around them eventually ran them into some trouble in the early 80s, but the old ways worked well for a long time and, because such fraud is much more work without postal voting, needed numbers just to fix the vote in Chicago.
Today, getting 1000 activists together is child’s play – you surely do not imagine that no BLM riot or woke march or Critical Theory Conference ever surpassed 999, or failed to initiate some fresh attendees each time into the more esoteric forms of not-so-legal protest, or that the staffing organisations funded by the woke 501(c)(3)s that provided the majority of the funding for the key swing-state inner city counting organisations had such recruitment limits. But conversely, today, there is no need to get 1000 together for vote fraud or even to have them hierarchically organised and instructed as Mayor Daley did – for the reasons covered in my older post linked above.
A smaller group could still have spies and/or people with consciences. One woman, testifying under oath near the end of last year, was asked why more had not come forward; she replied by discussing what cancel culture had done to her for doing so. A judge tossed a case instead of hearing the testimony of another woman on the grounds that her sworn statement was ‘not credible’ – the others present denied it.
And of course, if you answered my joke maths question then you will appreciate that no swing state actually needed 1000 activists if the activists achieved the impressive quota of the two who were caught (whose 4000/activist rate might, I very partially concede, be seen as connected with that – but that is the order-of-magnitude ratio you should be thinking of in postal vote fraud, so much more productive is it than in-person).
My quote summarises an actual reported conversation of just such a group in the two post-midterm weeks of 2018 when several new California republicans travelled to Washington DC for induction but were then informed that in fact they had lost, not won, their seats because enough votes to reverse those results had been harvested. Such an actual visit to an actual living resident voter was, of course, doing it the hard way even when the two-week period made it practical. Not bothering the non-voter, or exploiting the dead or moved voters on the rolls (wittingly or maybe accidentally – even in California in 2018, some of them must have appeared in the list of those who did not vote on election day 🙂 ) was easier and arguably even safer – a real voter just might turn difficult.
There being no hope of ‘closing the loophole’ in that state, the 2020 California GoP got into harvesting themselves, as the only game in town (in a less dishonest and intimidating way, so my right-leaning sources inform me – encouraging non-voters at churches and other GoP-friendly gatherings to vote if they hadn’t, etc.).
“if the activists achieved the impressive quota of the two who were caught”
Did they manage to fake any actual votes, though?