swordfish

https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a35201387/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-capitol-riot-incident-instagram-video/ When pro-Trump supporters breached the Capitol a week ago, many noted that progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was unusually absent from Twitter and hadn't confirmed she was safe during the riot. She eventually would post that she was okay on social media that evening, but in a new Instagram video last night, AOC admitted the truth behind her initial absent: She wasn't safe the entire time. In fact, she was afraid she would be killed. AOC described the riots as "a pretty traumatizing event," going on to say, "I can tell you that I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die." Ocasio-Cortez added that she couldn't get into specifics due to security reasons. “I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive. Not just in a general sense, but in a very, very specific sense." The Congresswoman added that she did not feel safe staying with other lawmakers in the protected “extraction point" because "there were QAnon and white-supremacist sympathizers and, frankly, white-supremacist members of Congress in that extraction point who I know and who I have felt would disclose my location and would create opportunities to allow me to be hurt, kidnapped, et cetera. So I didn’t even feel safe around other members of Congress." My first thought is "Snowflake"........Now maybe she can empathize with the many people whose lives, businesses and personal properties were destroyed during the "mostly peaceful" protests that lasted all summer long.

Atta boy BR - Your tin-foil hat is in the mail!! 🤣

****SHUDDER**** OK - your not the first person who floated the HRC name as a VP to me......Do you think she would be content as a VP?

Serious question - how long do the talking heads here on the GID expect a President Biden to be in office? I have have made no question of my belief that he may not even last 6 months, but have not come up with how (or when) the left will dislodge him to place Kamala Harris as the first female President. AND - who will she pick to be her VP?

A very well written observation.... https://nypost.com/2021/01/13/the-lefts-bare-faced-hypocrisy-devine/ What a difference a week makes. On Wednesday, we discovered that House Democrats actually support police. They are against mob violence. They believe in law and order. They believe in harsh punishment for rule breakers. They believe in accountability. They care deeply about civility. They believe words matter. They abhor intemperate rhetoric. They are against coarse language. Fancy that. They believe in a peaceful transition of power, at least this time, as opposed to 2016. They believe in the Electoral College. They believe in the legitimacy of the people’s vote. They believe in walls, at least when it comes to protecting their own place of work. They even believe in bringing in the National Guard to quell civil unrest, at least when it comes to preserving their own peace. They believe in guns, at least when their own safety is at risk. They revere American history and institutional norms. They honor the Founding Fathers. Hah! This is what we learned while watching the Democrats in the House impeach President Trump for the second pointless time in 13 months. We learned that they, almost to a man and a woman, suffer from an acute case of hypocrite-itis. Where have they been the past four years with these noble ideas that conservatives have been begging them to defend? Perhaps if Democrats had not normalized and encouraged violence when organized BLM-Antifa mobs began rampaging through our cities, the tragic events of Jan. 6 at the Capitol would not have occurred. As Republican Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas said Wednesday: “Last summer the Antifa and BLM riots swept across our country. Businesses were destroyed, cities burned. It was not like the horrible hours we had on January 6. But rather, they went on for weeks and in some cases months. “So if there’s any silver lining in this dark cloud, it’s that our friends across the aisle have come to realize that riots are bad. We conservatives have known this all along.” Perhaps if Democrats had not weaponized the intelligence agencies to spy on Trump’s campaign, perhaps if they had not used the Steele dossier to undermine the legitimacy of his presidency and accuse him of colluding with Russia to rig the 2016 election, perhaps if they had not hobbled his administration with the three-year Mueller investigation, perhaps more Trump voters would have been willing to accept the legitimacy of a Biden presidency. Perhaps if Dems had not already launched a spiteful partisan impeachment last year, their efforts to highlight the president’s shortcomings would have fallen on fewer deaf ears this time. As Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said, it took just 19 minutes into Trump’s presidency for the Washington Post to trumpet: “Campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.” “And now with just one week left,” Jordan said Wednesday, “they’re still trying.” Perhaps if Dems had reflected on their own culpability in the attempted assassination of Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana by a Bernie Sanders supporter, their sanctimonious lectures Wednesday would be more credible. “I’ve seen the evil of political violence firsthand and it needs to stop,” Scalise said Wednesday. “But all of us need to be unequivocal calling it out when we see it, not just when it comes from the other side of the aisle.” Perhaps if Joe Biden had not spent two years muscling up to Trump, with threats like “I’d smack him in the mouth” and “I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him,” Biden’s pitch for civility might be more palatable. Perhaps if Democrats had not spent the last four years calling Trump a dictator, authoritarian, Nazi, Hitler, white supremacist, anti-Semite, bigot, racist, hater, dangerous, demented and insane, then the hyperbole they used against him Wednesday might have been more effective. The Aesop’s fable of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” comes to mind. Democrats and their media handmaidens have spent four years demonizing Trump, using the most outlandish hyperbole their fevered imaginations could dream up. So when finally, at the bitter end, when he behaves in a way that angers even his most loyal supporters, there is nowhere left to go in the demonization department. Hence the absurdity of Wednesday’s rhetoric in the House, as Democrats overreached yet again, traducing the president as a “white supremacist” — or “racist in chief,” as Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan called him. Instead of impeaching the president, the House could have censured him and gathered a lot more Republican votes. His refrain since November about having won in a “landslide” was reckless and deluded but it had nothing to do with racism, and his speech at the Ellipse in DC on Jan. 6 explicitly called for the crowd to “peacefully” protest. How was he to know that the Capitol would not be adequately guarded, and the mob would so easily smash their way inside? Capitol Police had been left like lambs to the slaughter in part because the cop-hating mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser, wrote to the Department of Justice the day before the protests specifically to reject federal reinforcements. The flexible morality and selective outrage of the Democrats and their media boosters is so dishonest, it makes your head spin. Why wasn’t BLM probed like this? At a thunderous press conference Tuesday, acting US Attorney for DC Michael Sherwin said law enforcement officials are treating last week’s Capitol riot “like an international counterterrorism investigation. We’re looking at everything — money, travel records. No resource will be unchecked.” It is reportedly one of the “most expansive criminal investigations in the history of the Justice Department,” with all 56 FBI field offices involved. Great, but where was that kind of gravitas when BLM-Antifa rioters locked Seattle police in a building and tried to burn them alive? Or when police were attacked with bricks and Molotov cocktails, whole blocks were looted and set ablaze at a cost of billions of dollars, and parts of some US cities were turned into lawless autonomous zones inside which people were murdered? For months. There now are at least twice as many troops guarding the nation’s capital than the total number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Maybe it’s not overkill, but the optics also serve the purpose of further demonizing President Trump and his supporters to a worldwide audience. That’s why Nancy Pelosi posed merrily for photos outside the Capitol in front of rows of uniforms yesterday. All class, and subtle as a sledgehammer.

This is supposed to be funny..... Ordering a Pizza in 2021 CALLER: Is this Pizza Hut? GOOGLE: No sir, it's Google Pizza. CALLER: I must have dialed a wrong number, sorry. GOOGLE: No sir, Google bought Pizza Hut last month. CALLER: OK. I would like to order a pizza. GOOGLE: Do you want your usual, sir? CALLER: My usual? You know me? GOOGLE: According to our caller ID data sheet, the last 12 times you called you ordered an extra-large pizza with three cheeses, sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and meatballs on a thick crust. CALLER: Super! That’s what I’ll have. GOOGLE: May I suggest that this time you order a pizza with ricotta, arugula, sun-dried tomatoes and olives on a whole wheat gluten-free thin crust? CALLER: What? I don’t want a vegetarian pizza! GOOGLE: Your cholesterol is not good, sir. CALLER: How the hell do you know that? GOOGLE: Well, we cross-referenced your home phone number with your medical records. We have the result of your blood tests for the last 7 years. CALLER: Okay, but I do not want your rotten vegetarian pizza! I already take medication for my cholesterol. GOOGLE: Excuse me sir, but you have not taken your medication regularly. According to our database, you purchased only a box of 30 cholesterol tablets once at CVS Pharmacy, 4 months ago. CALLER: I bought more from another Pharmacy. GOOGLE: That doesn’t show on your credit card statement. CALLER: I paid in cash. GOOGLE: But you did not withdraw enough cash according to your bank statement. CALLER: I have other sources of cash. GOOGLE: That doesn’t show on your latest tax returns, unless you bought them using an undeclared income source, which is against the law! CALLER: WHAT THE HELL! GOOGLE: I'm sorry sir, we use such information only with the sole intention of helping you. CALLER: Enough already! I'm sick to death of Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and all the others. I'm going to an island without the internet, TV, where there is no phone service and no one to watch me or spy on me. GOOGLE: I understand sir, but you need to renew your passport first. It expired 6 weeks ago... Welcome to the future!!!

https://nypost.com/2021/01/10/what-the-left-wants-to-ignore-about-slain-capitol-police-officer/ On Thursday, Brian Sicknick, an officer with the US Capitol Police, died from injuries sustained during the storming of the Capitol building. Democratic leaders have presented Sicknick as a martyr of the #Resistance against President Trump and his dangerous supporters. Reality is more complicated. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described Sicknick’s death as a reminder of the need to “protect our country from all threats, foreign and domestic.” President-elect Joe Biden suggested that whoever backed Trump supports “an all-out assault on our institutions of our democracy.” The day’s violence, it seems, has become an all-purpose excuse to denounce and ­silence anyone not sufficiently anti-Trump. Yet neither Biden nor Pelosi reckoned with an uncomfortable fact: Sicknick was a Trump supporter himself, as his friend Caroline Behringer announced shortly after his death. Far from sharing the views of the #Resistance, he had written letters to his congressman opposing Trump’s impeachment. Like many Trump supporters who are now being censored, he ­believed that the system is fundamentally rigged in favor of a narrow elite. He had used fiery rhetoric, even called for regime change in America. The people who claim to honor Sicknick have elided these facts. Acknowledging them would undermine their ­effort to label the 75 million Americans who supported Trump as a domestic threat. Already, unelected Silicon Valley billionaires are using Sicknick’s death to justify censorship of views he expressed. Liberals are cheering the limitation of free speech. Leftists are applauding the exercise of corporate power. What could lead a man like Sicknick to support Trump? Must it be white supremacy, conspiracy theories or one of the other reasons usually cited by the media? What we know of Sicknick’s views tells a different story. Six months after graduating from high school in 1997, he joined the Air National Guard. He was deployed to Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan. A series of letters he later wrote to the editor of his hometown paper give a portrait of his disillusionment with the leaders of the country he served. In 2001, he described his ­attempt to gain help from his representatives in a dispute with his employer: “I have written a staggering number of letters to elected officials in both the state and federal governments. Only one state senator responded. This is one of the main reasons I will not be enlisting for a second term in the National Guard. I am no longer going to risk my life in hostile environments for a government that does not care about the troops.” In 2003, Sicknick expressed his growing doubts about the War on Terror: “Our troops are stretched very thin, and morale is dangerously low among them. I’m starting to see an increasing trend of US soldiers asking, ‘Why are we still here?’ ” Brian Sicknick’s father hopes Capitol cop’s death amid DC protests ‘stops all the lunacy’ He had come to believe that the United States was engaged in an “unnecessary war.” He ­denounced the “arrogant oil hacks that occupy the White House” and complained that the Bush administration had “its hands grasped firmly on the puppet strings of conservative senators.” His conclusion was stark: “I believe we should have regime change right here in America.” In 2004, he poured scorn on Team Bush’s proposal to ­revive space exploration. Why go to space, he wondered, when “the health-care system is in shambles, and many Americans have simply given up looking for jobs”? His rage deepened after the ­release of the 9/11 Commission Report: “Proven ­intelligence failures regarding the war in Iraq and Sept. 11 are troublesome. Why is it that I doubt any jobs will be lost over this? Why is it that I doubt an impeachment would happen? Why do I think the issue will soon be forgotten?” After serving his country and observing the workings of its government, Sicknick had come to believe that America is governed by a self-interested, unresponsive and unaccountable oligarchy. There is ample evidence to support his beliefs. Biden and Sen. Chuck Schumer, both of whom voted to authorize the invasion, have suffered no consequences for their folly. Nor have the countless other supporters of the invasion who populate Congress, K Street and the think tanks. The same people who launched a costly and failed war in Iraq now hope to humiliate and silence Trump’s supporters. But the concerns that led to the rise of Trump won’t disappear until our failed elites pay for their mistakes. When they smear Trump voters, they dishonor Officer Sicknick’s memory.

Not a real fan of Piers Morgan - but he makes a good point here. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9134413/PIERS-MORGAN-Trump-Terrible-deserves-dumped-Twitter.html It's been eerily quiet on Twitter since Donald Trump was kicked off the platform last Friday evening, silencing the world's biggest social media foghorn. There was an immediate and urgent imperative to temporarily shut Trump down given the horrendous rampage at the US Capitol on Wednesday that he had so outrageously and recklessly fuelled, which was the very genuine fear there will be more violence from his frenzied mob of supporters - a threat that remains extremely high given just how dangerously brain-washed they have become thanks to Trump's incessant false claims to have had the election 'stolen' from him. But this wasn't just a suspension. Twitter announced it was banning Trump for life. (I refuse to call him 'President' anymore because he shouldn't be, and very soon won't be.) It said: 'After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence. In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action.' It's hard not to argue with the logic of this statement if you believe, as I do, that Trump was directly responsible for his supporters attacking the Capitol and therefore attacking the very heart of American democracy to try to overturn a fair and democratic election result. He screamed at them to 'STOP THE STEAL!' and Trump's thuggish goons like Rudy Giuliani urged them to use 'combat'. The message was crystal clear: go to the Capitol and stop democracy happening. So, they went there and tried, and thankfully failed – but six people died as a result of events that day including a police officer brutally murdered in the line of duty, and the mob being seen on camera chanting 'HANG MIKE PENCE!' It was one of the darkest days in American history and the buck starts and stops with Donald Trump who didn't just lose the election but has lost his mind too. As I wrote in the aftermath, he should be removed from office immediately and barred from ever running again. But that doesn't necessarily justify Twitter's permanent ban on him, at least not if the tech giant wants to even pretend to be fair and consistent about their censorship policies. In its statement, it explained: 'Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open. However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules and cannot use Twitter to incite violence. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.' Fine words, but how does Twitter square this with the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran still has an account? The man who tweeted this in June 2018: 'Our stance against Israel is the same stance we have always taken. Israel is a malignant cancerous tumour in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.' Khamenei is self-evidently a world leader using Twitter not just to incite violence against a whole country and its 8.8 million people, but to have it and them 'eradicated'. He also made a direct threat against Americans for the killing of Iran's military supremo General Soleimani a year ago, tweeting on December 16, 2020: 'Those who ordered the murder of General Soleimani as well as those who carried this out shall be punished. This revenge will certainly happen at the right time.' That threat has not been deleted, presumably meaning Twitter doesn't consider that it contravenes its policies. And Khamenei's Twitter account remains active, which is truly ironic given that he has banned 83 million Iranians from using it. Indeed, he's been gleefully using it to taunt America since the Capitol Hill atrocity, sneering: 'Have you seen the situation in the U.S.? This is their democracy and this is their election fiasco. Today, the U.S. & 'American values' are ridiculed even by their friends.' On that last point, he's sadly not wrong. But how can Twitter justify letting Khamenei continue tweeting such threats if banned Trump? And here lies the problem for Twitter and all the other social media firms like Facebook who've belatedly raced to silence Trump after allowing him to spew his bellicose propaganda for five years. It's not just the Ayatollah of Iran who gets a pass. Several days ago, the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. tweeted an outrageous defence of China's appalling genocidal abuse of Uighur Muslims. It read: 'Study shows that in the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur [sic] women in Xinjiang were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines. They are more confident and independent.' The truth is that over a million Uighur Muslims have been incarcerated in concentration camps over the past few years and the women inmates have been subjected to a vile programme of forced sterilisation. Initially, and shockingly, Twitter said the tweet didn't violate its policies. Then, under pressure, it decided it did and replaced it with a message saying: 'This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules.' (This is not the first time Twitter's policy violation bar has twisted in the moral wind. In the run-up to the election, it was rightly condemned for blocking The New York Post's account after the newspaper published revelations about Hunter Biden's foreign business interests, only unblocking it after it came under huge criticism). But the Chinese Embassy's account has not been permanently banned for endorsing genocide. Neither have accounts belonging to Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro or Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud – both of whose many human rights abuses make Trump look like a choirboy. And nor has the account of former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who after a teacher in France was murdered last October by an 18-year-old terrorist angered by him showing his class a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, tweeted: 'Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.' So, it would seem you can threaten to 'eradicate' whole countries, promote genocide, or tell 1.8 billion Muslims they have a right to kill 'millions of French people', and keep your Twitter account. But if you're Donald Trump - and let me stress that I have no desire to defend the man ever again for anything - you can never tweet again. I don't like the idea of banning people from expressing their opinions. It goes against everything I believe about freedom of speech, especially in this dreadful cancel culture era. But even the First Amendment has restrictions, categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection under the Constitution including speech integral to illegal conduct and speech that incites imminent lawless action. It can be legitimately argued that Trump's constant lies about a 'stolen election' and his demands that the result be forcefully resisted, incited the mob to commit 'illegal conduct' and 'imminent lawless action' at the US Capitol. And that his tweeting after the attack made it clear he was going to carry on inciting the mob. But it has been quite sinister to witness the speed in which the tech world has conspired to use the Capitol riot to silence not just Trump but entire right-wing social media platforms like Parler which has been effectively driven offline by Google, Apple and Amazon. Again, there are perfectly legitimate concerns surrounding Parler's failure to properly censor extremist material. But its users are already screaming that this is all a liberal conspiracy to shut down conservative voices. And this will only serve to inflame rather than dial down the terribly toxic partisan atmosphere in America right now. On balance, I think Donald Trump deserves to be kicked off Twitter following the terrible events of last week. His stunningly reckless rhetoric prompted an incident that shamed America, attacked democracy, and ensured his presidency will now go down as the most ignominious in US history. He can't be trusted not to continue inflaming a mob prepared to murder police officers and if they got the chance, and we heard this from their own mouths, elected officials. But if Trump has to go then Twitter and other social media firms have to be consistent and kick out everyone else whose rhetoric incites such violence or worse - starting with Iran's Supreme Leader. Otherwise, the censorship looks the way its targets claim it is: hypocritical and politically motivated. Sinister indeed....

May of 2020.....

A humor break for the GID club.....

Maybe this is why the protesters didn't get shot........(Hint - they complied with orders)

I kinda think the Libertarian party needs to thank President Trump.........He just explicitly exposed to a whole lot of Americans the "uni-party" that Muda teaches us about.....and maybe they invite him to join the Libertarian party before the next election......It would get my attention.....

SF prediction - we will hear in the news about this "Riot and/or Insurrection/Coup Attempt for the next 2 weeks Ad Nauseum about how America is forever tarnished and we need unity, the President needs impeached blah blah blah. Compared to the months of literal destruction that was brought to our major cities (plural) all summer long that this same press called "mostly peaceful protests" while standing in front of family-owned businesses burning to the ground, and stores being looted and sections of cities being taken over and controlled by mobs. Wednesday's events turned ugly but if you noticed, at 6:00 pm (when the curfew was started) the vast majority of that DC crowd left and went home. Those who didn't got arrested. Neither event was right, but the hypocrisy of the press coverage is glaringly alarming......

You sure did, you get an Atta boy. I mean, come on man, yes I (SF) certainly hoped DJT could pull off some kind of a win/upset here considering all the evidence that will eventually come out (as early as next month), but I always predicted he wouldn't be able to, especially as his days to 1/6/21 drew shorter. Either way waking up on 1/21 will be no different than today. Pull off my covers, pet the dog's head, hit the shower, pull in some coffee, head to work ..... SF's opinion of how TSG's mental state is today......

He may be ticked off enough to do it. I don't think it will be necessary though. IMHO - DJT would likely resign before forcing Pence to invoke the 25th.

FYI - They (the Capital Police and the Secret Service) already have the identities of the people who committed those crimes and yes, they will be prosecuted as they should be. And FTR - there were quite a few people of color in that crowd, admittedly not enough to make a difference, but don't claim it was just a bunch of white guys. No - they are not traitors, but they are criminals...... I think the difference in the police activity has to do with this crowd not descending on the Police demanding to defund them or protesting against them.

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWhatever......... It's over now.

Does anyone else see the difference in the coverage of this hours long incident (singular) in DC versus the weeks/months long incidents (multiple) all over the country this past summer? Or is it just me? I do not condone the breaching of the Capital building, that was over the top. Although I did see the video where the Capital Police removed barricades allowing the group to move closer to the building, and then actually opened the doors. I also find it poignant that as the protesters were walking through the Rotunda, they were staying inside the ropes and filing in very orderly-like. Did anyone else notice that the curfew was obeyed without protest? And it's actually over today.......