Failed state
This is horrific. I’m dead serious that Trump needs to be locked up in some fashion right now. He needs at the very least to be locked away from being able to incite anything, phone taken away, no visitors, doors locked, end of story. No access to the nukes.
Trump needs to be arrested right now. And his supporters. This is scary shit.
Just saw stills on TV of Capitol police with guns drawn on windows that “protesters”* were breaking from the outside. Another of “protesters” prone on the ground and cops standing over them with guns drawn and aimed. So that’s a start at justice.
Also on the video feed, a distant view of someone holding a Christian flag I’ve seen elsewhere: white, with a blue field and red cross in the upper left. Don’t know the specific meaning of it. Also another with a hand lettered “JESUS SAVES” sign. When fascism comes to America…
And an injured bleeding woman being rushed on a gurney to an ambulance by EMTs.
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*Insurrectionists? Rioters? Whatever. I’m sure some are very fine people.
Fine people on both sides, right?
How many of these seditious rioters believed wholeheartedly that “seeekrit-Moozlim-Commie Obama was going to somehow refuse to leave office at the end of his second term?
I guess it’s okay when the Antichrist is one of your own.
Somebody noted that, though it only took 156 years, an angry mob entered the US Capitol behind a Confederate flag.
I wonder how many Republican politicians escaping to safety are now thinking “well, okay, maybe supporting Trump wasn’t such a good idea …”
I see a guy on the steps of the Capitol holding up a sign saying “JOE BIDEN IS A PEDOPHILE”.
Well, that’s all right, then.
What is their obsession with pedophiles? Or are they just reaching for what they assume is one of the most horrific labels you can put on people? I suspect the latter. I suspect this has taken the place of “atheist” (or should that be athiest?) for a lot of people.
Yeah, pedophiles and satan worshippers. Believing that is a great motivator, apparently.
Meanwhile, I heard Nancy Pelosi’s office has been vandalised.
Biden just called it insurrection.
Jesus. https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1346927966144655362?s=20
Remember that in The Handmaid’s Tale, the Republic of Gilead was born after an attack on Congress.
Trump’s statement is to repeat that it’s a stolen election and they’re special people and he understands their hurt. Utterly unbelievable.
Trumps brief “go home” video was unbelievable.
The Reichstag fire has been lit in Washington.
Trump has lit the fire and is waiting to see how big the flames are before he completes his coup. The Insurrection Act will be invoked. Democracy will be abandoned. Trump will be the first in a line of Trumps as the Supreme Leader.
I’m watching this on CNN UK. It’s scary enough here – how bad for you guys in the USA.
Trump just released a video calling the election fraudulent. Yes, he tells people to stay peaceful, but he’s pouring gasoline on the fire.
Princess deleted her tweet calling the mob “patriots.”
Bit of good news: Jon Ossoff won his Senate race in Georgia with a sufficient margin to avoid an automatic recount. McConnell is effectively neutered.
Kamala’s going to have a busy couple of years as Senate Tie Breaker in Chief. I think she’ll enjoy it. I would!
So what pronouns is he going to “use” now?
I just spotted another sign: PELOSI IS SATAN. Check.
But her emails!
A picture that is worth more than a thousand words.
Bruce, #2:
There are unconfirmed reports that a woman was shot in the chest by a police officer inside the building when the rioters were in the cupola trying to break into the chamber, but it isn’t clear whether she was part of the mob or not.
Harald, #9:
Certainly breached, and one of the idiots has posted a photograph of himself sat in Pelosi’s chair with his military-style boots up on her desk. A second photograph was of a message he’d scrawled (because it could hardly be termed ‘written’: block caps, badly-formed letters and looking like the work of a 6-year-old) on the back of a card A4 document wallet: WE WILL NEVER BACK DOWN. Chances are good that they will have vandalised the room before moving on, but at least one of the morons has made identifying him rather easy.
This lot should keep Trump’s pardon Sharpie busy, just as soon as he’s through with using them as an excuse to proclaim martial law.
AoS: Just reported that she died.
Bill Kristol is surely right. There surely cannot be any fudging and concentrating only on ‘looking forwards’, or any further indulging of threats to public order so long as they come from the ‘patriotic’ right after this, if Americans wish to retain their democratic institutions.
We are in difficult times. All quite Shakespearean.
As for McConnell’s pronouns, iknklast, I think ‘it’ would be sufficient.
I find myself (with conviction) saying that “the sky is not falling”.
But if you ask me “what is falling?” I don’t really have an answer.
A stupid question, maybe, but this shit was always on the cards so why was security so unprepared? Also, it really does not bode well for Biden’s inauguration. It’s already known that there will be fewer National Guard on duty than for previous inaugurations because of Covid (low-key event so smaller crowds*) which makes it ideal for Trump’s last Hurrah! Not that he’ll be there, of course, but he’ll be sure to work his proud followers into a frenzy.
*Given Trump’s ‘less is more’ ethos whereby less votes = more votes: less knowledge = stable genius: smaller inauguration crowd than Obama’s = record-breaking turnout: if the crowd for Biden’s big day is as small as anticipated, will that mean that he’ll smash Trump’s record for biggest crowd?
Yes, terror about what will happen at the inauguration occurred to me too.
The shame of this is SCORCHING.
Rudy’s complicit in inciting the riot, too.
If that isn’t a clear call for violence then I need to learn to speak English.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/rudy-giuliani-dc-trump-rally-b1783428.html
White people aren’t terrorists, aren’t a threat. Ever. They’re “patriots” and “protesters.” Just ask Ivanka.
CNN is reporting that the first National Guard units being sent to Washington are going to be unarmed! Holy shit, why not just invite the rioters back into the capitol? If Trump can have a park cleared for a goddamn photo-op, you’d think they would take armed rioters attacking and occupying the Legislative Branch of Government a bit more seriously.
As a number of commenters have noted, had these insurgents been Black, there’d have been blood, there’d have been stacks of bodies. I’ve also seen one report of at least one Capitol Police officer having selfies taken with the occupying rioters: https://www.rawstory.com/capitol-police-selfie-rioters/
Mind you letting them get as far as they did without any “martyrs”, I think they overplayed their hand. Trump, as ever, let others do the dirty work for him. I sure as hell hope that they impeach his ass right away.
Oh, for fuck’s sake! Rudy again:
On the right side of the fucking law!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/rudy-giuliani-trump-capitol-hill-shots-b1783499.html
Sastra @#6:
Could be one or two; maybe as many as three. But then again, perhaps that’s a wild estimate on my part.
Bullshit from inside the White House:
Trump encouraged thuggish behaviour in his followers before he was even the Republican nominee, and it only got worse as he gained support and power. Of course this is exactly the sort of thing that should have been copletely predictable.
Also completely in line with Trump saying
This is what happens when Republicans go along with and affirm Trump’s fantasies of election fraud.
I think that the odds just shortened on a serious stretch of porridge coming up for Trump in some appropriate hoosegow north of the Mason-Dixon line. Strategic thinking always was the poor ignorant bastard’s short suit.
Not Bruce, I kept hearing journalists saying this was unimaginable, unimaginable! All they had to do was follow a number of political analysts, and they could have imagined it. Hell, I imagined it nearly 20 years ago in some of the short stories I wrote. Other people have imagined it, and not because we have amazing imaginations, but because we have eyes and brains and the two manage to work together.
I don’t think this was unimaginable. It was inevitable. I think it has been inevitable at least since the election of Reagan. The GOP has been pushing further and further in this direction with every deranged campaign add for nearly 40 years now. Palin flirted with it, but her calls for violence were seen as just rhetoric. Every single deranged tweet Trump made was leading up to this.
I’d like to see both 25th and impeach. I guess I just want to hit him between the eyes with every possible humiliation, every possible severe sentence, every possible reality check. And the rioters need to be arrested, too. Maybe they can all share one giant cell on an island somewhere, a jail with a big Maga hat dome for a roof.
Came across this retweeted by Dr. Jane Clare Jones https://mobile.twitter.com/sugaspov/status/1346919943238000645
It shows police letting people through a barricade.
As I find myself continuously saying. America has been made great again by Trump. As great as any banana republic in the Western Hemisphere; in the world even.