The US Capitol has been Breached [News]

[Doc Reeves 6434]

1 hour ago, Lobo said:

You know if you have evidence that those insurrectionists committing violent acts at our seat of Government, were in fact ANTIFA or false-flag operators, a federal trial with the most 100 powerful Americans as jurors, being broadcast around the world, would be a really good place to casually mention it.  Likewise, if part of your defense is that they were there to overturn the "greatest political crime in American history".........this would also be an excellent time to make mention of it.  Just throwing it out there, I'm no constitutional attorney, but if you're sitting on those two "mountains of evidence" that "everybody knows about", this is literally the time.  Just two cents, keep the change. 

This trial is like a guy who got caught fucking his wifes friend in their bed. They are making sweeping claims of evidence while their hard dick with a condom half off flails back and forth and sometimes does a little loop while they expound their delusional, panicked argument. 

 

[Hate 20103]

This trial is like a guy who got caught fucking his wifes friend in their bed. They are making sweeping claims of evidence while their hard dick with a condom half off flails back and forth and sometimes does a little loop while they expound their delusional, panicked argument. 
 

[wildcat09 29232]

2 hours ago, immortal13 said:

"Some people did some things"

Even after an edit, you still fucked up the quote. Good job on being non-political. 

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

Who would have guessed most of these Patriots were deadbeats?

 

Quote

Yet Ryan, 50, is accused of rushing into the Capitol past broken glass and blaring security alarms and, according to federal prosecutors, shouting: “Fight for freedom! Fight for freedom!”

But in a different way, she fit right in.

Despite her outward signs of success, Ryan had struggled financially for years. She was still paying off a $37,000 lien for unpaid federal taxes when she was arrested. She’d nearly lost her home to foreclosure before that. She filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and faced another IRS tax lien in 2010.

Nearly 60 percent of the people facing charges related to the Capitol riot showed signs of prior money troubles, including bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades, according to a Washington Post analysis of public records for 125 defendants with sufficient information to detail their financial histories.

The group’s bankruptcy rate — 18 percent — was nearly twice as high as that of the American public, The Post found. A quarter of them had been sued for money owed to a creditor. And 1 in 5 of them faced losing their home at one point, according to court filings.

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The financial problems are revealing because they offer potential clues for understanding why so many Trump supporters — many with professional careers and few with violent criminal histories — were willing to participate in an attack egged on by the president’s rhetoric painting him and his supporters as undeserving victims.

While no single factor explains why someone decided to join in, experts say, Donald Trump and his brand of grievance politics tapped into something that resonated with the hundreds of people who descended on the Capitol in a historic burst of violence.

“I think what you’re finding is more than just economic insecurity but a deep-seated feeling of precarity about their personal situation,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a political science professor who helps run the Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab at American University, reacting to The Post’s findings. “And that precarity — combined with a sense of betrayal or anger that someone is taking something away — mobilized a lot of people that day.”.

The financial missteps by defendants in the attempted insurrection ranged from small debts of a few thousand dollars more than a decade ago to unpaid tax bills of $400,000 and homes facing foreclosure in recent years. Some of these people seemed to have regained their financial footing. But many of them once stood close to the edge.

Ryan had nearly lost everything. And the stakes seemed similarly high to her when she came to Washington in early January. She fully believed Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen and that he was going to save the country, she said in an interview with The Post.

Trump’s lie that the election was stolen has cost $519 million (and counting)

But now — facing federal charges and abandoned by people she considered “fellow patriots” — she said she feels betrayed.

“I bought into a lie, and the lie is the lie, and it’s embarrassing,” she said. “I regret everything.”

The FBI has said it found evidence of organized plots by extremist groups. But many of the people who came to the Capitol on Jan. 6 — including Ryan — appeared to have adopted their radical outlooks more informally, consuming conspiracy theories about the election on television, social media and right-wing websites.

The poor and uneducated are not more likely to join extremist movements, according to experts. Two professors a couple of years ago found the opposite in one example: an unexpectedly high number of engineers who became Islamist radicals.

In the Capitol attack, business owners and white-collar workers made up 40 percent of the people accused of taking part, according to a study by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago. Only 9 percent appeared to be unemployed.

The participation of people with middle- and upper-middle-class positions fits with research suggesting that the rise of right-wing extremist groups in the 1950s was fueled by people in the middle of society who felt they were losing status and power, said Pippa Norris, a political science professor at Harvard University who has studied radical political movements.

Miller-Idriss said she was struck by a 2011 study that found household income was not a factor in whether a young person supported the extreme far right in Germany. But a highly significant predictor was whether they had lived through a parent’s unemployment.

“These are people who feel like they’ve lost something,” Miller-Idriss said.

Going through a bankruptcy or falling behind on taxes, even years earlier, could provoke a similar response.

“They know it can be lost. They have that history — and then someone comes along and tells you this election has been stolen,” Miller-Idriss said. “It taps into the same thing.”

Playing on personal pain

Trump’s false claims about election fraud — refuted by elections officials and rejected by judges — seemed tailored to exploit feelings about this precarious status, said Don Haider-Markel, a political science professor at the University of Kansas who studies political extremism.

“It’s hard to ignore with a Trump presidency that message that ‘the America you knew and loved is going away, and I’m going to protect it,’” Haider-Markel said. “They feel, at a minimum, that they’re under threat.”

While some of the financial problems were old, the pandemic’s economic toll appeared to inflict fresh pain for some of the people accused of participating in the attempted insurrection.

A California man filed for bankruptcy one week before allegedly joining the attack, according to public records. A Texas man was charged with entering the Capitol one month after his company was slapped with a nearly $2,000 state tax lien.

Several young people charged in the attack came from families with histories of financial duress.

The parents of Riley June Williams — a 22-year-old who allegedly helped to steal a laptop from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Capitol office — filed for bankruptcy when she was a child, according to public records. A house owned by her mother faced foreclosure when she was a teenager, records show. Recently, a federal judge placed Williams on home confinement with her mother in Harrisburg, Pa. Her federal public defender did not respond to a request for comment.

People with professional careers such as respiratory therapist, nurse and lawyer were also accused of joining in.

One of them was William McCall Calhoun, 57, a well-known lawyer in Americus, Ga., 130 miles south of Atlanta, who was hit with a $26,000 federal tax lien in 2019, according to public records. A woman who knows Calhoun, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly, said he started to show strong support for Trump only in the past year. An attorney for Calhoun declined to comment.

Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police when she tried to leap through a door’s broken window inside the Capitol, had struggled to run a pool-service company outside San Diego and was saddled with a $23,000 judgment from a lender in 2017, according to court records.

'The storm is here': Ashli Babbitt's journey from Capitol 'guardian' to invader

Financial problems were also apparent among people federal authorities said were connected to far-right nationalist groups, such as the Proud Boys.

Dominic Pezzola of Rochester, N.Y., is accused of helping lead the charge into the Capitol on Jan. 6. Over the past five years, he has had a history of state tax warrants totaling more than $40,000.

Dominic Pezzola, who federal authorities said is a member of the Proud Boys, is accused of being among the first to lead the surge inside the Capitol and helping to overwhelm police. Up to 140 officers were injured in the storming of the Capitol and one officer, Brian Sicknick, was killed.

Pezzola, of Rochester, N.Y., also has been named in state tax warrants totaling more than $40,000 over the past five years, according to public records. His attorney declined to comment.

The roots of extremism are complex, said Haider-Markel.

“Somehow they’ve been wronged, they’ve developed a grievance, and they tend to connect that to some broader ideology,” he said.

The price of insurrection

Ryan, who lives in Frisco, Texas, a Dallas suburb, said she was slow to become a big Trump supporter.

She’s been described as a conservative radio talk show host. But she wasn’t a budding Rush Limbaugh. Her AM radio show each Sunday focused on real estate, and she paid for the airtime. She stopped doing the show in March, when the pandemic hit.

But she continued to run a service that offers advice for people struggling with childhood trauma and bad relationships. Ryan said the work was based on the steps she took to overcome her own rough upbringing.

Twice divorced and struggling with financial problems, Ryan developed an outlook that she described as politically conservative, leaning toward libertarian.

But politics was not her focal point until recently. She recalled being upset when President Barack Obama won reelection in 2012. And she preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton four years later. But she said she wasn’t strident in her support for Trump.

That changed as the 2020 election approached.

She said she started reading far-right websites such as Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit. She began streaming shows such as Alex Jones’s “Infowars” and former Trump campaign manager Stephen K. Bannon’s “War Room: Pandemic.” She began following conspiracy theories related to QAnon, a sprawling set of false claims that have coalesced into an extremist ideology. She said she didn’t know if the posts were true, but she was enthralled.

“It was all like a football game. I was sucked into it. Consumed by it,” Ryan said.

She attended the first protest in her life in April, going to Austin to vent about the state’s pandemic lockdown orders. That was followed by a rally for Shelley Luther, who gained national attention for reopening her beauty salon in Dallas in defiance of the lockdown.

Ryan said she traveled to Trump’s “Save America” rally on a whim. A Facebook friend offered to fly her and three others on a private plane.

They arrived in Washington a day early and got rooms at a Westin hotel downtown, Ryan said.

It was her first trip to the nation’s capital.

The next morning, Jan. 6, the group of friends left the hotel at 6 a.m., Ryan said. She was cold, so she bought a $35 knit snow hat with a “45” emblem from a souvenir shop. They then followed the crowd streaming toward the National Mall.

“My main concern was there were no bathrooms. I kept asking, ‘Where are the bathrooms?’” she said. “I was just having fun.”

They listened to some of the speakers. But mostly they walked around and took photos. She felt like a tourist. They grabbed sandwiches at a Wawa convenience store for lunch. They hired a pedicab to take them back to the hotel.

She drank white wine while the group watched on television as Congress prepared to certify the electoral college votes. They listened to clips of Trump telling rallygoers to walk to the Capitol and saying, “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

They decided to leave the hotel and go to the Capitol.

Ryan said she was reluctant.

But she also posted a video to her Facebook account that showed her looking into a bathroom mirror and saying, according to an FBI account of her charges: “We’re gonna go down and storm the capitol. They’re down there right now and that’s why we came and so that’s what we are going to do. So wish me luck.”

She live-streamed on Facebook. She posted photos to Twitter. She got closer to the Capitol with each post. She stood on the Capitol’s steps. She flashed a peace symbol next to a smashed Capitol window. The FBI also found video of her walking through doors on the west side of the Capitol in the middle of a packed crowd, where she said into a camera, according to the bureau: “Y’all know who to hire for your realtor. Jenna Ryan for your realtor.”

The FBI document does not state how long Ryan spent inside the building. She said it was just a few minutes. She and her new friends eventually walked back to the hotel, she said.

“We just stormed the Capital,” Ryan tweeted that afternoon. “It was one of the best days of my life.”

She said she realized she was in trouble only after returning to Texas. Her phone was blowing up with messages. Her social media posts briefly made her the infamous face of the riots: the smiling real estate agent who flew in a private jet to an insurrection.

Nine days later, she turned herself in to the FBI. She was charged with two federal misdemeanors related to entering the Capitol building and disorderly conduct. Last week, federal authorities filed similar charges against two others on her flight: Jason L. Hyland, 37, of Frisco, who federal authorities said organized the trip, and Katherine S. Schwab, 32, of Colleyville, Texas.

Ryan remained defiant at first. She clashed with people who criticized her online. She told a Dallas TV station she deserved a presidential pardon.

Several Capitol rioters are blaming Trump's rhetoric. What's in it for them?

Then Trump left for Florida. President Biden took office. And Ryan, at home in Texas, was left to wonder what to do with her two mini-goldendoodle dogs if she goes to prison.

“Not one patriot is standing up for me,” Ryan said recently. “I’m a complete villain. I was down there based on what my president said. ‘Stop the steal.’ Now I see that it was all over nothing. He was just having us down there for an ego boost. I was there for him.”

 

[Guest Lobo]

It starting to sound like a lot of these insurrectionists aren't really "all for personal responsibility."  Many of them sound like stupid pawns, promised yet again, that if they're willing to just make a few more bad choices...they'll finally get back that American Dream that has eluded them for lo, these many years.  

I still come back to the contention that are we examining this all in the wrong light.  It's not economics, race, politics, or even absurdity.  We simply have to accept that there are tens and tens and tens of millions of Americans who support this insurrection, tacitly though it may be, not out of idolatry, politics, cult of personality, questioning of the legality of the elections, or any of that other cosmetic bullshit.  It's for the very simple reason---they're stupid.  It's not class divide or education divide. 

These Capitol bad actors are representative of 30mm+ Americans that are just plain fucking stupid.  Sorry if that sounds elitist, but that's the god's honest truth.  Something happened recently, between the media and the two party system failing America and bad education and lack of being taught how to critically think.  They're not immoral, or unpatriotic...they're just easily fooled and often duped.  They're fucking stupid.  That's all it is.  No reason to window-dress it.  We've always had stupid people in this country, they just knew their place.  They knew to hang back, work hard, and die quiet.  It just never occurred to me that they could be so easily aggregated behind some movement they could barely understand...you should just had to tell them a handful of instructions over and over again...real slow.  I don't know what we do this chunk of stupid people going forward, but I'm open to ideas. 

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

15 minutes ago, Lobo said:

It starting to sound like a lot of these insurrectionists aren't really "all for personal responsibility."  Many of them sound like stupid pawns, promised yet again, that if they're willing to just make a few more bad choices...they'll finally get back that American Dream that has eluded them for lo, these many years.  

I still come back to the contention that are we examining this all in the wrong light.  It's not economics, race, politics, or even absurdity.  We simply have to accept that there are tens and tens and tens of millions of Americans who support this insurrection, tacitly though it may be, not out of idolatry, politics, cult of personality, questioning of the legality of the elections, or any of that other cosmetic bullshit.  It's for the very simple reason---they're stupid.  It's not class divide or education divide. 

These Capitol bad actors are representative of 30mm+ Americans that are just plain fucking stupid.  Sorry if that sounds elitist, but that's the god's honest truth.  Something happened recently, between the media and the two party system failing America and bad education and lack of being taught how to critically think.  They're not immoral, or unpatriotic...they're just easily fooled and often duped.  They're fucking stupid.  That's all it is.  No reason to window-dress it.  We've always had stupid people in this country, they just knew their place.  They knew to hang back, work hard, and die quiet.  It just never occurred to me that they could be so easily aggregated behind some movement they could barely understand...you should just had to tell them a handful of instructions over and over again...real slow.  I don't know what we do this chunk of stupid people going forward, but I'm open to ideas. 

find a way to make money off of them seems like as good of an option as any.

[Guest Lobo]

Yeah, I should at least have gotten them to do some chores for me before they left to the Capitol.  
 

'Say, how you'd like to mow my lawn this weekend?  I figure a D.C.-bound moron like you could use a few extra bucks.  And when you're finished, why don't you cruise by my resort in Florida.  I'm christening a new baby I have no intention of spending time with.'  

[Brisketexan 104574]

1 hour ago, Lobo said:

It starting to sound like a lot of these insurrectionists aren't really "all for personal responsibility."  Many of them sound like stupid pawns, promised yet again, that if they're willing to just make a few more bad choices...they'll finally get back that American Dream that has eluded them for lo, these many years.  

I still come back to the contention that are we examining this all in the wrong light.  It's not economics, race, politics, or even absurdity.  We simply have to accept that there are tens and tens and tens of millions of Americans who support this insurrection, tacitly though it may be, not out of idolatry, politics, cult of personality, questioning of the legality of the elections, or any of that other cosmetic bullshit.  It's for the very simple reason---they're stupid.  It's not class divide or education divide. 

These Capitol bad actors are representative of 30mm+ Americans that are just plain fucking stupid.  Sorry if that sounds elitist, but that's the god's honest truth.  Something happened recently, between the media and the two party system failing America and bad education and lack of being taught how to critically think.  They're not immoral, or unpatriotic...they're just easily fooled and often duped.  They're fucking stupid.  That's all it is.  No reason to window-dress it.  We've always had stupid people in this country, they just knew their place.  They knew to hang back, work hard, and die quiet.  It just never occurred to me that they could be so easily aggregated behind some movement they could barely understand...you should just had to tell them a handful of instructions over and over again...real slow.  I don't know what we do this chunk of stupid people going forward, but I'm open to ideas. 

As harsh as this is.....it's also spot-on.  I've asked the question around her before -- the most challenging question facing modern America is "what are we going to do with our morons?"

I remember my S. Texas rancher grandfather waxing philosophical over cold beers after a work day, enlightening us young folk.  "The problem is all the morons living in the city with you.  They get to the big city, and they're stupid, so they just can't compete.  So they steal your nice car, or stuff like that.  Back in my day, we had PLENTY of stupid people.  But we kept 'em on the farm.  Where they could do simple jobs, make enough money to eat, and not hurt anyone.  You can't do that anymore, not enough farms."

Then we asked him "well, what would YOU do with all of the stupid people?"

"Put 'em in a cage and feed 'em oatmeal with a dump truck."

Grandpa wasn't the most enlightened or progressive fella.  But his original point has some merit.  We have the same amount of idiots that we've always had.  But now, they are enabled, and out moving in society at large.  And now, shit, they move in dangerous herds.  We need to give our idiots something to do -- something where they WON'T end up $50k in debt, desperate and looking to blame someone else.  Bread, circuses, whatever -- just something to fill the space that "hey, maybe we should try out being a fascist authoritarian state!  It'll be fun!" is currently occupying.

[drt 637]

1 hour ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

find a way to make money off of them seems like as good of an option as any.

I'm in sales, so this hits close to home.

Seriously though, American prosperity has really affected the average and below average American in a positive way economically.  This is just a glaring example of chickens coming home to roost for those folks when things are not great economically, or conditions changing in their field.  I don't know what the answer is, but if shit gets worse for a good number of people the reckoning will suck for us all.

[Guest Lobo]

1 hour ago, drt said:

Seriously though, American prosperity has really affected the average and below average American in a positive way economically.  This is just a glaring example of chickens coming home to roost for those folks when things are not great economically, or conditions changing in their field.  I don't know what the answer is, but if shit gets worse for a good number of people the reckoning will suck for us all.

I used to worry about this, about a groundswell of anger and rage taking itself out on the rest of American society.  And I go back to my post upthread, I thought it was more about class/income levels, political parties, or education level, or race, etc.  But it's not.  What the last few years have shown me is the "uprising", the "insurrection movement", it's about stupid people.  Some of those people are economically successful, some are college educated, most aren't all that political.  But they are gullible and they are stupid. 

I don't worry anymore about some rising up of the economically and politically disenfranchised because they've proven themselves at every turn the last few years (culminating in the Capitol assault), to be fucking stupid.  All you have to do is toss them some red meat, some key phrases, help them blame some non-existent group somewhere else, promise them some bullshit that is just two weeks away from happening, make vague accusations, etc.  And then after that, offer some discounted merch like hats and flags so they feel validated ("Hey bad could that Ted Nugent concert have been, that guy there bought a t-shirt at it").  It's 30mm dumb fucking idiots who will fall for anything if you dangle it in a shiny way.  "We know you're upset about the economy in your town, but we're gonna rise up and tell the WTO and Wall Street that we're mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore."  Boom, I just got 30mm gun-toting "patriots" to ostensibly join Occupy Wall Street because those 30mm are fucking stupid.  They don't know they're just gonna spend the rest of their lives steered to fill strategic purposes and be kept down near the bottom.  

You can spend a lot of time and money gerrymandering districts, suppressing votes, fighting court cases, antiquated tactical media buys, overhauling platforms to appeal to broader voter groups, passing centrist and pragmatic legislation, and fighting for decency.  Or you can just grab the algorithmic key that unlocks the access to these 30mm stupid and vulnerable voter bloc and you can move these pawns anywhere you need on the gameboard.  You can assault seats of government, start social media movements, win elections, usurp other elections, and all the while pretend that if anything goes wrong---it's because of lizard aliens eating baby's blood.  That was the long-game.  It started about 10 years ago.  The demographical shifts showed a trend that could not be solved for, so a shortcut was needed to serve as a stop-gap for the next generation.  So ~30mm stupid people who weren't terribly engaged in politics and felt marginalized were identified and brought to the cool kids table in the cafeteria to mock the kids at the other tables...and the Capitol Insurrection was their Senior Prom.  Now we are going to put them back into their shitty summer jobs until we need them again to do our bidding.  

tl; dr   The best pawns are the ones who fight for some 'leader' and think they have a shot at the promotion in the last row.

[GRHorn 105]

So has there been any progress towards an arrest for the death of the cop?

Edited February 10, 2021 by GRHorn

[Guest Lobo]

The investigation into the cold-blooded murder of a federal law enforcement officer at the seat of the U.S. Government is being delayed because the person they have in custody has made a very curious legal claim.  That they won't agree to questioning until their accomplice is brought in as well.  

[GRHorn 105]

26 minutes ago, Lobo said:

The investigation into the cold-blooded murder of a federal law enforcement officer at the seat of the U.S. Government is being delayed because the person they have in custody has made a very curious legal claim.  That they won't agree to questioning until their accomplice is brought in as well.  

What’s the claim?

[Guest Lobo]

It's not exactly pocket aces, but it's a pretty good hole card.  Not sure the legal term, but it's something to the effect of "Somebody else made me do it."  

[atomheartbevo 89413]

7 hours ago, drt said:

Seriously though, American prosperity has really affected the average and below average American in a positive way economically.  This is just a glaring example of chickens coming home to roost for those folks when things are not great economically, or conditions changing in their field. 

I think that when things aren't going great economically or things are happening that don't have a positive impact on their lives, it opens up a helluva lot of them to being susceptible to things like Qanon.

Or to put it another way, I don't personally know of anybody who bought into the qanon batshittery, who wasn't having some serious problems in their lives, either financially, or perhaps relationship-wise or whatever.   Every person I know that bought into the qanon bullshit had some warning signs that things were not right in their lives.

And I think that's why TexAgs had a qanon thread that was what, over a thousand pages before the powers that be nuked it?  All those people in that thread were just fucking off their rockers for one reason or another.

Sure, there were some people with positive things going on in their lives that were into the qanon stuff, but they were probably also making money off of it, or had other issues that weren't really issues with them (racism, etc.).

 

[atomheartbevo 89413]

5 hours ago, Lobo said:

I used to worry about this, about a groundswell of anger and rage taking itself out on the rest of American society.  And I go back to my post upthread, I thought it was more about class/income levels, political parties, or education level, or race, etc.  But it's not.  What the last few years have shown me is the "uprising", the "insurrection movement", it's about stupid people.  Some of those people are economically successful, some are college educated, most aren't all that political.  But they are gullible and they are stupid. 

I don't worry anymore about some rising up of the economically and politically disenfranchised because they've proven themselves at every turn the last few years (culminating in the Capitol assault), to be fucking stupid. 

I don't worry much about it, because they are too busy on the internet bitching about everything, sending around batshit stuff to each other, liking each other's shit, watching cable news or YouTube channels that rile them up (but not enough to get them off their asses and out doing shit, because that would cause them to stop watching TV or YouTube!).

And way too many of these people seem to be more than happy to turn informant on each other when they get even a little bit of pressure.

[tbone_ 14020]

As harsh as this is.....it's also spot-on.  I've asked the question around her before -- the most challenging question facing modern America is "what are we going to do with our morons?"
I remember my S. Texas rancher grandfather waxing philosophical over cold beers after a work day, enlightening us young folk.  "The problem is all the morons living in the city with you.  They get to the big city, and they're stupid, so they just can't compete.  So they steal your nice car, or stuff like that.  Back in my day, we had PLENTY of stupid people.  But we kept 'em on the farm.  Where they could do simple jobs, make enough money to eat, and not hurt anyone.  You can't do that anymore, not enough farms."
Then we asked him "well, what would YOU do with all of the stupid people?"
"Put 'em in a cage and feed 'em oatmeal with a dump truck."
Grandpa wasn't the most enlightened or progressive fella.  But his original point has some merit.  We have the same amount of idiots that we've always had.  But now, they are enabled, and out moving in society at large.  And now, shit, they move in dangerous herds.  We need to give our idiots something to do -- something where they WON'T end up $50k in debt, desperate and looking to blame someone else.  Bread, circuses, whatever -- just something to fill the space that "hey, maybe we should try out being a fascist authoritarian state!  It'll be fun!" is currently occupying.

It occurred to me quite some time ago that the fundamental problem with democracy is that everyone’s vote counts the same.

[GRHorn 105]

On 2/10/2021 at 5:41 PM, Lobo said:

The investigation into the cold-blooded murder of a federal law enforcement officer at the seat of the U.S. Government is being delayed because the person they have in custody has made a very curious legal claim.  That they won't agree to questioning until their accomplice is brought in as well.  

Bear spray causing anaphylaxis?

[workswithseed 2035]

22 hours ago, tbone_ said:

It occurred to me quite some time ago that the fundamental problem with democracy is that everyone’s vote counts the same.

I wouldn't mind land owners to have the only vote again.

[JimmyJames 12271]

2 hours ago, workswithseed said:

I wouldn't mind land owners to have the only vote again.

Says a lot about you. 

[workswithseed 2035]

1 minute ago, JimmyJames said:

Says a lot about you. 

What does it say about me? Please explain.

[JimmyJames 12271]

Just now, workswithseed said:

What does it say about me? Please explain.

You only want the landed gentry to be able to vote. The peasants can eat cake. Seems pretty obvious but if I have to spell it out for now you, I will.

You’re either an elitist piece of shit or a piece of shit Internet troll. Either way it’s all the same result. 
 

Or am I misinterpreting your voting remark? 

[immortal13 4059]

9 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

You only want the landed gentry to be able to vote. The peasants can eat cake. Seems pretty obvious but if I have to spell it out for now you, I will.

You’re either an elitist piece of shit or a piece of shit Internet troll. Either way it’s all the same result. 
 

Or am I misinterpreting your voting remark? 

Which one are you?

[workswithseed 2035]

14 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

You only want the landed gentry to be able to vote. The peasants can eat cake. Seems pretty obvious but if I have to spell it out for now you, I will.

You’re either an elitist piece of shit or a piece of shit Internet troll. Either way it’s all the same result. 
 

Or am I misinterpreting your voting remark? 

I don't think he's wrong that everyone has a vote, and not many restrictions. I say land owners, cause I think taxes wouldn't be as high, which I would be personally okay with, and is my bias. I would lose my vote, but I would be okay with that personally. I definitely can see how elitist it could be, even though America was like that beforehand. 

I'm not saying it's the perfect system, it's just seems closer to what I would like, especially how far we've come from since the founding we're it was only white men who could vote. Hell, I'd be glad to give everyone a plot of land that isn't being used and go from there. Mostly a pipe dream.

Edited February 12, 2021 by workswithseed

[JimmyJames 12271]

1 minute ago, workswithseed said:

I don't think he's wrong that everyone has a vote, and not many restrictions. I say land owners, cause I don't think taxes wouldn't be as high, which I would be personally okay with, and is my bias. I would lose my vote, but I would be okay with that personally. I definitely can see how elitist it could be, even though America was like that beforehand. 

I'm not saying it's the perfect system, it's just seems closer to what I would like, especially how far we've come from since the founding we're it was only white men who could vote. Hell, I'd be glad to give everyone a plot of land that isn't being used and go from there. Mostly a pipe dream.

I’m not exactly sure what you’re saying here so in response I’ll simply give my opinion and not attempt to argue against a statement I don’t understand.

The American model was the greatest created in all of history. Still is. But it was based on the white man having democracy, and slavery of the blacks and extermination of the Indians. So it had its good points and bad ones.

Now almost 250 years later it’s time to recognize both the greatness and the faults and create a society that is a democracy for not just the whites but for all the citizens in America.

Restriction of voting won’t accomplish that. The opposite will. 

 

[Captainant 27446]

10 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Hell, I'd be glad to give everyone a plot of land that isn't being used and go from there. Mostly a pipe dream.

Edited February 12, 2021 by Captainant

[BradInATX 9208]

Is there a better example of how the rich have brainwashed poor whites into thinking they're on the same team than workswithweed?

[workswithseed 2035]

1 minute ago, JimmyJames said:

I’m not exactly sure what you’re saying here so in response I’ll simply give my opinion and not attempt to argue against a statement I don’t understand.

The American model was the greatest created in all of history. Still is. But it was based on the white man having democracy, and slavery of the blacks and extermination of the Indians. So it had its good points and bad ones.

Now almost 250 years later it’s time to recognize both the greatness and the faults and create a society that is a democracy for not just the whites but for all the citizens in America.

Restriction of voting won’t accomplish that. The opposite will. 

 

Basically that landownership would reduce taxes since a smaller bracket would be extremely taxed since property taxes would affect them the most, and sales tax would be what would affect everyone else. At least in my pipe dream. Like I said, it's definitely not perfect.

 

Just now, Captainant said:

Ha, they would own the land. Everyone is a kulak in my system. 

[workswithseed 2035]

2 minutes ago, BradInATX said:

Is there a better example of how the rich have brainwashed poor whites into thinking they're on the same team than workswithweed?

I can see problems = brainwashed

 

 

[JimmyJames 12271]

2 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Basically that landownership would reduce taxes since a smaller bracket would be extremely taxed since property taxes would affect them the most, and sales tax would be what would affect everyone else. At least in my pipe dream. Like I said, it's definitely not perfect.

 

Ha, they would own the land. Everyone is a kulak in my system. 

Whether that’s true or good or not why should that effect who gets to vote or not? Are you saying in order to vote you have to own land and if you don’t, we’ll give it to you? 

[BradInATX 9208]

5 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

I can see problems = brainwashed

 

 

 

Braiwashed = the fact that you are completely oblivious to the fact that you have more in common, by orders of magnitude, with a Mexican immigrant or a poor black family than you do with the rich white men that you are a pawn for. The rich white men that you worship literally would not shake your hand if you offered yours to them in passing. Their security would handle you.

And I'm not trying to be a dick by calling you poor - we're talking relatively speaking here. The above statement would be true for me in almost every situation outside of my business as well.

Edited February 12, 2021 by BradInATX

[workswithseed 2035]

10 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

Whether that’s true or good or not why should that effect who gets to vote or not? Are you saying in order to vote you have to own land and if you don’t, we’ll give it to you? 

Giving land would be the headstart for everyone. I guess you could choose where to live, so you could have something you're able to take care of and afford. First flaw would be if someone was rich why couldn't they just buy up all the land? I have no answer, but this now turned into a fun thought experiment. The answer I thought on the spot is Let the rich go last, since they would just buy prime real estate, and people want to sell their estate to them, then it's so.

If everyone is given land that they owned, then no one could say that someone was discriminated (not all land is equal though, some would have to live in Ok). 

Then you could do anything with your land, and vote. You still have everything else stay the same, but now you have to take care of bills, and pay taxes. 

 

[Guest Lobo]

4 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Giving land would be the headstart for everyone. I guess you could choose where to live, so you could have something you're able to take care of and afford. First flaw would be if someone was rich why couldn't they just buy up all the land? I have no answer, but this now turned into a fun thought experiment. The answer I thought on the spot is Let the rich go last, since they would just buy prime real estate, and people want to sell their estate to them, then it's so.

If everyone is given land that they owned, then no one could say that someone was discriminated (not all land is equal though, some would have to live in Ok). 

Then you could do anything with your land, and vote. You still have everything else stay the same, but now you have to take care of bills, and pay taxes. 

 

I read this in the voice and beat of Woody Guthrie and...well...it's not good dude.  

[JimmyJames 12271]

5 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Giving land would be the headstart for everyone. I guess you could choose where to live, so you could have something you're able to take care of and afford. First flaw would be if someone was rich why couldn't they just buy up all the land? I have no answer, but this now turned into a fun thought experiment. The answer I thought on the spot is Let the rich go last, since they would just buy prime real estate, and people want to sell their estate to them, then it's so.

If everyone is given land that they owned, then no one could say that someone was discriminated (not all land is equal though, some would have to live in Ok). 

Then you could do anything with your land, and vote. You still have everything else stay the same, but now you have to take care of bills, and pay taxes. 

 

Sounds a little communist. Lol. 

[JimmyJames 12271]

Time is a flat circle. 

[workswithseed 2035]

1 minute ago, JimmyJames said:

Sounds a little communist. Lol. 

Ha, I never said it was a true libertarian paradise. Yeah, I'm trying to think of way where everyone could start with a vote and go from there. 

[BradInATX 9208]

If workswithweed keeps talking he's going to eventually start explaining to us why the world shouldn't have oligarchs and billionaires. He actually sees the issue with the rich people owning everything and creating a permanent underclass with a gutted middle class. Soon he'll realize that has already happened.

Keep going wws! 

Edited February 12, 2021 by BradInATX

[JimmyJames 12271]

1 minute ago, workswithseed said:

Ha, I never said it was a true libertarian paradise. Yeah, I'm trying to think of way where everyone could start with a vote and go from there. 

To be clear I wasn’t making fun of you. Just making a joke.  If you got some good ideas let them for whole froth! 

[workswithseed 2035]

27 minutes ago, BradInATX said:

 

Braiwashed = the fact that you are completely oblivious to the fact that you have more in common, by orders of magnitude, with a Mexican immigrant or a poor black family than you do with the rich white men that you are a pawn for. The rich white men that you worship literally would not shake your hand if you offered yours to them in passing. Their security would handle you.

And I'm not trying to be a dick by calling you poor - we're talking relatively speaking here. The above statement would be true for me in almost every situation outside of my business as well.

No hard feelings. I'm probably a poor compared to most of y'all. I'm just having fun with a thought experiment if I could create a society basically from scratch. Definitely doesn't belong here, but it's fun.

[BradInATX 9208]

18 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

No hard feelings. I'm probably a poor compared to most of y'all. I'm just having fun with a thought experiment if I could create a society basically from scratch. Definitely doesn't belong here, but it's fun.

Same, nothing I say to you is meant to be taken with hard feelings.

 

"First flaw would be if someone was rich why couldn't they just buy up all the land?"

Interesting sentence. Have you ever looked at one of those videos that shows the true magnitude of wealth inequality? Like do you fully conceptualize the gulf between someone who is worth hundreds of billions of dollars and someone worth what you or I are? Because your sentence is basically where we're at. The top half-percent or so of our country own almost all of the wealth and resources, the majority of which they can never use in hundreds of lifetimes, while people can't afford to feed their children.

It's like you're able to recognize that the above is hugely flawed, but you haven't come to terms with the fact that it's not some theoretical like you talk about it as. It's where we are.

But anyway yeah, this is for another thread.

Edited February 12, 2021 by BradInATX

[workswithseed 2035]

1 minute ago, BradInATX said:

Same, nothing I say to you is meant to be taken with hard feelings.

 

"First flaw would be if someone was rich why couldn't they just buy up all the land?"

Interesting sentence. Have you ever looked at one of those videos that shows the true magnitude of wealth inequality? Like do you fully conceptualize the gulf between someone who is worth hundreds of billions of dollars and someone worth what you or I are? Because your sentence is basically where we're at. The top half-percent or so of our country own almost all of the wealth and resources, the majority of which they can never use in hundreds of lifetimes, while people can't afford to feed their children.

But anyway yeah, this is for another thread.

I'm also trying to not have a society that rises up and change government with violence, like Communism, so it makes it hard. I do want everyone to own land, but people could rise to the top anyways. I don't want to people stay in thier small plot of land if they have a product people will buy.

[BradInATX 9208]

1 minute ago, workswithseed said:

I'm also trying to not have a society that rises up and change government with violence, like Communism, so it makes it hard. I do want everyone to own land, but people could rise to the top anyways. I don't want to people stay in thier small plot of land if they have a product people will buy.

That's all fair and I completely agree with you. The problem with your analogy is that the little guy with the product ends up trying to win a system rigged in favor of corporations and the rich and the majority of the time gives his product to the big guy in exchange for a slightly less small piece of land while the big guy uses the product to get exponentially more land.

I'm fine with competition and capitalism when it's a level playing field. But what we have today is a deck stacked in favor of the oligarchs who have bought and paid for our government (yes, on #BothSides). What we have is less of a free market and more of an oligarch and corporatist state. The rich want you to focus on the socialist and BLM boogey men so that you don't wise up to that fact.

[Captainant 27446]

 

 

[riloh05 107]

On 1/13/2021 at 12:42 PM, Captainant said:

I'll see if I can find articles, but it was:

Capitol police officer bludgeoned to death by MAGA

Edit: drt got the 5th

that looks to be false...interesting turn of events. 

[Cheeseweasel 26437]

35 minutes ago, riloh05 said:

that looks to be false...interesting turn of events. 

[Captainant 27446]

2 hours ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Lolwut, so because the cause of death was initially reported incorrectly, officer Sicknick wasn't actually killed by the MAGA mob? What a relief for his family that must be!

Fuck outta here, brownshirt. 

[Guest Lobo]

3 hours ago, Captainant said:

 

 

These fucking idiots who couldn’t organize a small boat parade on a sunny day on Lake Travis  were gonna smuggle heavy artillery on the most heavily policed waterway on the eastern seaboard?  These same morons sunk pontoon boats on a man made lake, and they thought they were capable of moving weapons down the Potomac?  
 

Here’s the fun part-people this stupid are allowed to own semi automatic weapons.  
 

I miss when stupid people used to Kill themselves out of shame.  

[NeverMarryAStripper 21781]

4 hours ago, Captainant said:

 

 

I think I spotted one of the "Heavy Weapons"

 

[Guest Lobo]

Man, I told Jenna Ryan not to photograph in green with an earth tones backdrop.  Realtor 101.  

I love the defense going on this week about the insurrectionists.  Everything you hear has this tacit undertone that's basically, "Though they were acting as surrogates for tens of millions of Americans...these bad actors are really, really stupid fucking people.  You can't blame anybody for what they did except them, because honestly...we didn't know there were this many stupid, gullible people in this country.  We are as astounded as you are that not only did they follow orders they didn't really receive, but they went and did this shit and filmed themselves doing it, and then put it on the internet thinking they'd be somehow rewarded.  Judge them for their violent behavior if you must.  But please remember, these are literally the dumbest fucking people we have in our country.  And here's the kicker---they're actually some of the smartest people in their movement.  The even dumber ones couldn't find their way to the U.S. Capitol, or even travel to D.C. in the first place.  This was actually the B-team.  The C and D teams live amongst you back in your cities and towns, good luck with that America!" 

Edited February 12, 2021 by Lobo

[Buzzrock 14870]

A kid that lives less than five miles from me in the Atlanta burbs was arrested last week. The cockroaches really swarmed from everywhere.