Democracy/ Capitalism 2.0 - Rules for Thee, but NOT the Elites.

Is CDC Deliberately Underestimating Excess Deaths to Produce Higher Covid Death Counts?

Verification from CDC Websight...

Coming Attractions...

The BBC has released a teaser trailer for the new series of films from multi-BAFTA-winning documentary maker Adam Curtis.

Premiering February 11, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World is a series of six films that will reflect on how we got to the strange days we are now experiencing. It is a BBC Film and BBC Three production for BBC iPlayer.

Here’s the logline: The films trace different forces across the world that have led to now, not just in the West, but in China and Russia as well. It covers a wide range – including the strange roots of modern conspiracy theories, the history of China, opium and opiods, the history of Artificial Intelligence, melancholy over the loss of empire and, love and power. And explores whether modern culture, despite its radicalism, is really just part of the new system of power.

Source 

Biden's Record of Results vs Promises for New Green Jobs from the Past...

Welcome to the New Democrat's Police State

What "Following the Science" Gets You...

That's Deplorable!

Who Knew that Biden's "Plan for Covid" was Xenophobic and Called for More Institutional Racism?

 

from CNBC

Biden to impose travel restrictions on South Africa, U.K. and Brazil to mitigate new Covid strains

President Joe Biden will sign a travel ban Monday on most non-U.S. citizens entering the country who were recently in South Africa, where a new strain of Covid-19 has been identified, a person familiar with the situation told CNBC.

Biden will also reinstate travel restrictions on the entry of non-U.S. citizens from the U.K. and Brazil, where new Covid strains have emerged. The restrictions will also apply to Ireland and much of Europe. Former President Donald Trump had rescinded the restrictions just before Biden took office.

We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 1, 2020

Reuters first reported news of the travel restrictions on Sunday.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the outlet that the agency was “putting in place this suite of measures to protect Americans and also to reduce the risk of these variants spreading and worsening the current pandemic.”

Before Biden took office, incoming White House press secretary Jen Psaki criticized Trump’s move to lift international travel restrictions even as more contagious variants emerged across the world.

“We plan to strengthen public health measures around international travel in order to further mitigate the spread of Covid-19,” Psaki wrote in a tweet.

Trump, through a proclamation last Monday, ordered a REMOVAL of travel restrictions that his administration had implemented early in the pandemic on most non-U.S. citizens who had been in much of Europe, the U.K. and Brazil, starting Jan. 26.

That is when the U.S. government will start mandating U.S.-bound air travelers, including U.S. citizens, to show recent, negative Covid-19 test results before boarding flights.

White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has said that available vaccines appear to be less effective against new, more contagious strains of Covid-19, but that they’ll still likely provide enough protection to be worth getting.

The CDC also announced on Sunday that it will remove the option for airlines with flights from countries that lack Covid-19 testing to apply for temporary waivers for some travelers. The agency will implement the order on Tuesday.

The virus has infected more than 25 million people and killed at least 417,000 people in the U.S. since the pandemic began, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. has not yet detected any cases of the South African variant, but several states have detected the U.K. variant.

Too Dangerous for the Internets

How Deplorable!

HyperNormalising Fascism

Banned from YouTube...

Sending the Troops Back to Iraq!

Russia-Russia-Russia gets put on steroids.

The Clown Show Begins

More "Laws for Thee but NOT for Me"- Biden Signs MANDATORY Mask Mandate on Federal Property - then Immediately Violates it.

 

As promised – though only after he was declared the winner of the election – Joe Biden signed a face mask mandate for anyone on federal property or engaged in interstate travel. Later, he went out for more of his victory lap, visiting the Lincoln Memorial and addressing the press at the base of the historic statue. (Wait… I thought statues of Lincoln were a bad thing now. Oh well…)

There was an awkward issue with that photo-op, however, as Ryan Saavedra pointed out on Twitter. While the entire press corps appeared to be following the mandate, Biden himself was not. Included are a video and a still shot of the new president addressing some reporters.

Peter Doocy just asked Press Sec Jen Psaki why Joe Biden was maskless at the Lincoln memorial just hours after signing an executive order requiring masks on federal property.

Psaki hesitated, beat around the bush, then said "we have bigger issues to worry about."

💀💀💀 pic.twitter.com/jaEhQDlfVe

— Caleb Hull (I'm With the CCP Don't Ban Me) (@CalebJHull) January 21, 2021

 

The Empire Strikes Back...

The Old Order Returns

JANUARY 20, 2021 By Ben Domenech

The central question Americans ought to consider on this Inauguration Day as The Old Order returns is whether what they are seeing in their country is happening because it is strong or because it is weak.

On its face, a capital city packed with a military presence — an occupation hailed by the media, as the swamp protects itself — may seem like a show of force, a reiteration of law and order above all else. As Chris Bedford writes this morning, all that needed to happen for Tom Cotton’s idea to become reality was for the seat of the powerful to be attacked instead of the neighborhoods in Kenosha. Had the federal government and the Department of Justice been willing to do what Donald Trump wanted them to do this summer, perhaps people would’ve learned earlier that rioting does not pay. But that’s not what they learned, and for good reason.

Wiser observers will understand that a capital city in need of such an overwhelming military presence — if only for the mental and emotional stability of the so-called leaders who inhabit it — also indicates a vast maw of weakness. The frail leadership of the United States is the great unremarked phenomenon of this moment. In this moment of crisis, we have what appears to be the most elderly class of political elites in the history of the nation. The octogenarian and septuagenarian set of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, Dick Durbin are white knuckling it to the end of their careers — attempting to make their mark before leaving the stage and passing things on to people who share none of their memories of the time before.

This brittle leadership class in our politics inhabits the same America as a much younger leadership class of corporatist tech oligarch, unmoored from any deep understanding of what made the nation the envy of the world. They believe they have inherited the godhead of the universe, with the ability and the duty to reshape the globe as they see fit. Where the aged elected officials dither, they have the ability to act to make the world a better place. They have, and they will. And they will do it by controlling to the greatest degree possible what people see, what they know, how they think, and ultimately, how they vote.

One class is frail, old, and out of touch in a rapidly changing world. The other is out of touch, too — lacking any of the humility necessary for leadership — but is absolutely convinced of its abiding power and wisdom. After all, if you can come up with so many products consumers want, wouldn’t it stand to reason they will also enjoy your total control over their lives?

The crumbling facade of America’s elites has been a bipartisan problem for two decades. Four years ago, Donald Trump thrived on being the only politician to say this explicitly, even to the extent of his inauguration speech and much to the disgust of the ruling class. But the reaction to this pandemic has only degraded trust in this class further. It is unlikely to reverse course upon the ascendancy of its first Silent Generation president, particularly when his policies will serve to reinforce the belief that our political leadership is not an advocate for the people, but a puppet on the strings of those who run the country.

This is what many people will think. And they will be right.

In such a moment, we should in no way expect a return to a sedate class of political leadership, but instead a continued rise in the appeal of new populist leaders in our politics and culture who have the ability to stand and say: There are no strings on me.

We've Got to Fight for Our Right to P-A-R-T-Y!

Rick Fuentes, "Stop the Steal"

There’s something about the title of this article that really rubs Democrat socialists the wrong way. It incites a level of anger and irrational behavior not seen since the MAGA clothing line hit the shelves. For the Democrat party and their media acolytes, this catchphrase has been stretched thin to wrap around the recent violent and unlawful breach of the U.S. Capitol, now used as the black swan event to drive a stake through the heart of Trump conservatives (Omitting Republicans here is deliberate, as the backbone and fealty of the Grand Old Party has been compromised in ways that are difficult to understand and painful to watch).

"Stop the Steal" is not a call to violence, nor does it narrow upon a disputed election that will put the worst possible nominee of any presidential race in American history behind the Resolute Desk. It represents a civil but firm opposition to a Democrat policy platform that seeks to wrench the foundations of democracy out from under our feet.

In the past year, the crawl of socialism in this country has become a full-out sprint acted out in anarchistic nightly displays on our city streets. Political scientists and Marxist apologists assuage concerns with claims that socialism can coexist with capitalism. At what price and for how long? Our schools, language, media, and workplaces have already willfully or unwittingly permitted this Orwellian drift to greater government control over our lives. Standing athwart complete capitulation is our Bill of Rights, against which beltway Democrats and blue state governors, hiding behind the pandemic, have leveled a crippling broadside.

American Thinker readers are smarter than most who claim familiarity with the Bill of Rights and the Founding Fathers that brought them to life. Notwithstanding, here’s a pared-down version of the top ten. The First Amendment is speech and religion, Second is right to bear arms, Third is civilian authority over the military, Fourth is search and seizure, Fifth is due process, Sixth is criminal prosecutions, Seventh is jury trial, Eighth is cruel and unusual punishment, Ninth is rights retained by the people, and Tenth is state’s rights, to include calling and holding elections.

With the help of the courts, the left has whittled away at these amendments for decades, although with less malevolence than we’ve seen in the last four years of the Trump administration. There is now more than a whiff of smoke to show that each of these fundamental rights has been diminished, tossed aside, or outright trampled in an effort to paper them over with a socialist model of government, advance one-party rule, and to wield authority in perpetuity.

Campus-coddled academics and the media writ large have taken pains to soften the realities of life under socialism and indoctrinated generations of students. How else could Bernie Sanders, the Senate’s longstanding Bolshevik who has functioned outside the two-party mainstream for thirty years and has seen the passage of only three of his more than 400 sponsored bills -- two of them naming post offices -- suddenly become the sweetheart of the country’s youngest voters? Sanders’ second-place finish in a field of twenty-seven primary candidates was a warning shot that academia had effectively ripped the bloom of democracy off the rose and that socialism was a new force to be reckoned with in American politics.

The problem for Democrats is that a huge swath of the population are content with the Constitution and won’t gently yield the right to free elections. A plurality of voters, to include more than three-quarters of Republicans, thirty percent of Democrats and quarter of all Independents, now have little to no faith that the recent presidential election was legitimate. Prima facie voter fraud on an epic scale coupled with a cold shoulder from several high courts to eschew examination of the hard evidence suggests dirty tricks to deprive the fundamental right of the people to choose their own leader. Chicanery at this height of federal and state government, if allowed to stand, is an open invitation to even greater levels of political misconduct.

Would the American government have accepted the legitimacy of a foreign election so contaminated? When Nicolas Maduro won by a landslide against a massive populist movement, the United States and European Union said no. Venezuela’s election irregularities bear semblance to our own, to include the omission of observers, and the manipulation of results.

The Democrats' pyrrhic victory and seizure of power has now salted appetites for vengeance. A highly disputed presidential election, coupled with Republican reticence, has put every Trump conservative at risk of hostility and persecution. An ascendant Democrat party, strengthened by Republican hibernation, is now aligned in ideology and practice to cancel a conservative movement first articulated by Edmund Burke in 1790, brought to influence in American politics by William F. Buckley, Jr., in the early 1960s, and advanced by the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Using the Capitol breach as a pretense to censure all Trump supporters as insurgents, social media outlets are suspending or canceling the accounts of conservatives. Deplatformed users are given anemic justifications that ironically overlook the existing accounts of the world’s most brutal regimes and thousands of their propaganda posts. Rebooting a plot line from Revenge of the Nerds, the CEOs and their algorithm wizards at Facebook and Twitter are hard at work giving online wedgies to anyone who dares to question a Biden presidential victory. Alternative blogging sites, such as Parler and Gab, are demonized as havens for right-wing miscreants and Amazon Web Services has shown a willingness to sever connections to sites that offer sanctuary to such views. Gone is all debate over partisan perceptions of hate speech.

After an election decided by hook and by crook, this is no longer just about power. Eliminating conservative opposition through dogmatism is on full display. While the president, all of his White House staff, Republican congressional representatives, and hundreds of thousands of Save America rally attendees have been harassed and blamed for the actions of a unlawful mob, there has been no atonement by Democrats and media pundits who have condoned, openly supported, or called for the year-long sacking of American cities and the murder of police officers.

Florida Congressman Brian Mast is a former Army explosives technician who lost both his legs in Afghanistan. Last week, he exercised the powers given to him by oath to vote against the second impeachment of President Trump. That got under the skin of CNN anchor Jake Tapper, who maligned Mast and his military service by suggesting that the Bronze Star vet had left his commitment to democracy on foreign soil.

Josh Hawley, U.S. senator from Missouri, is a well-spoken political voice whose strength of conviction makes him a Republican standout. His presence also puts him in the crosshairs of Democrats bent on denying conservatives any hope of an ideological leader in the wake of Donald Trump. The cancel culture has therefore mounted a full-throttled campaign against him in the media and corporate world. Simon & Schuster has refused to publish the book they, in fact, paid him to write. Loews hotel management canceled a fundraiser scheduled for Hawley. If Benny Thompson, Democrat chair of the House Homeland Security Committee had his way, Hawley and other Republicans would be on the no-fly list.

The Democrats and their social media axis are also squaring off against conservative firebrands Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan, and Matt Gaetz. Pages of results on popular internet search engines feature articles that put them in a bad light. The sycophants at Google are far more flattering to queries of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

The endgame for Democratic socialism will appear in the guise of political "reform" that will prey upon the careers and livelihoods of every conservative legislator, writer, commentator, and blogsite. Trump conservatives will increasingly become expats from their own government while a Republican apostasy goes the way of the Whigs.

Which Social Contract? The One Between Average Citizens and their Government, or the One Between Government and the Capitalist Elite? Which One will Government Keep?

Lily Hayes, "The collapse of the social contract"

In the days following events at the Capitol, we’ve been flooded with statements from media talking heads and Congresspeople clutching their pearls and vehemently denouncing the violence. Images of Congressmen and women donning gas masks and fleeing through underground tunnels have circulated via social media. The attack sent our leaders scurrying to their bunker and resulted in four lives lost.

Trump supporters have been completely demonized, with calls for post-9/11 surveillance methods to be used on “domestic terrorists.” The summer’s riots, which claimed 30+ lives and caused $1 billion in property damage, have been largely forgotten since the election. Down the memory hole.

Joe Biden and the Establishment, their power cemented in all three branches of government, are eager to dispose of Donald Trump and continuously call for “unity and healing.” In the D.C. machine, the attitude is one of victory: Events on January 6 successfully purged the Republican Party and American politics of Donald Trump.

But have they?

The riot at the Capitol was a sign of something far more troubling than angry voters expressing their contempt for legitimate election results. It was evidence of a complete loss of faith in the institutions.

The Left gave up on “the system” long ago. The constant calls for socialism, the anarchy in the streets, the “defund the police” movement -- these are demands from people who have given up on the traditional ways of politics. Republicans long defended the institutions from these narratives. These Leftist proposals were perceived as vicious attacks on the core of Americanism. Dismantling the system would result in pure chaos and the perfect conditions for malignant actors to seize power. Better to fill the institutions with politicians who will defend them.

But what happens when the people lose the power to fill those institutions? When the vote becomes merely symbolic? That is what the Left believes happened in 2016, and now the Right in 2020. The vote is meant merely to placate the people into believing that their government works. Meanwhile, elected officials carry on, keeping corporate donors and D.C. pundits happy, largely ignoring the reality that exists outside of Capitol Hill. And nothing can stop them.

We are seeing the systemic failure of the two-party system and all three branches of government. This election convinced the citizens who still had faith in the American system that voting doesn’t really mean anything. The Establishment always wins. America is neither a democracy nor a representative republic, and it hasn’t been for some time. Those who burst into the Congressional chambers didn’t do so because they sincerely believe in the politicians who inhabit them.

Trump played a crucial role in unveiling the corruption within D.C. Despite his flaws, he revealed a “swamp” deeper than anyone could have imagined. His anti-war, anti-establishment policies preserved the Tea Party’s shaken faith, temporarily stopping the gradual radicalization. His removal has opened the floodgates.

D.C. is no longer full of Democrats and Republicans engaging in debate on behalf of their constituents. The Capitol has emerged as a Uniparty, neither Left nor Right, but deeply corrupted. This Uniparty has succeeded in establishing an international war empire that George III would have drooled over.

Our leaders have taken on the same tyrannical qualities that Washington and Adams fought against. They engage in policy, not for the betterment of the people, but to line their bank accounts. Their obsession with “exporting democracy” has little to do with democratic values and everything to do with buying their next summer home.

Strangely, the far-left Socialists correctly identified these issues, seeing them before many on the right did. Still, leftist solutions are unreasonable and likely to lead to America’s demise. Abolishing private property, defunding the police, amnesty, no borders...these are not winning ideas.

There is no clear remedy. A Republic cannot function without the consent of the governed. When citizens believe that voting is merely symbolic and that our government is more a front for foreign trade deals than a representative body, that consent diminishes every day. Without the consent of the governed, the social contract falls apart. Elected officials can continue governing, but no one outside of D.C. will acknowledge their authority. America will not necessarily descend into anarchy, but the emperors will lose any shreds of legitimacy. Daily life will carry on with little importance assigned to Capitol Hill or the Oval Office.

That still is not a solution. If the Establishment always wins elections, there is no point in voting. If the masses don’t vote, the system will collapse. That seems far-fetched, but it happened in Georgia -- half a million voters stayed home for the January 5th runoff election. Staying home, though, works only if everyone does it. This is implausible, given the virtue assigned to casting a vote. It’s more likely is that the Establishment will keep on winning, with fewer voters to worry about.

What makes America great isn’t the government. It’s certainly not the Establishment. It’s the people. The people possess an incredible American spirit. Americans fought to abolish the evil of slavery, stormed the Normandy beaches, and ended systemic racial inequality via the Civil Rights movement. Demagogues cannot strip this spirit, which is why they despise us.

America is in a difficult position, one that will likely last for several years. We are at the tip of a cultural battle. Two opposing sides, both with no faith in the body that governs them. Two competing philosophies, as different as night and day. The future looks turbulent.

The good thing is, we can see the truth: The Ruling Class has no clothes.

Really?  Seems to me that they've got on "Camouflage". The "politics" of ordinary people have been thrown over for the politics of keeping the corporate global money flowing from J to K Streets.

btw - When was the last time you saw a legislator (and not a lobbyist) actually writing a law?

I thought so.

Voter Fraud? It Doesn't Exist.

...except when it NEEEDS to.

The *Asterix* Presidency, Is Condemnation and Boycott Just the Start of Something Larger?

Donald N. Finley, "What Do We Do with a Pretend President?"

I was struck by David Atwood's "The Right will Neither Forgive nor Forget." It struck close to home because I'm a boycotter. It takes a lot to get me to such a point, but if someone goes through the effort to do so, it sets in hard and deep.

I've never been an NFL fan. I played baseball. But I knew I was in the minority, so I watched the Super Bowl every year and tried to be somewhat conversant in the game highlights I'd watch on the news. Many of my friends were rabid fans and would have weekend get-togethers to watch a game. This was throughout most of my adulthood and working career in the Air Force. Then Colin Kaepernick came along and disrespected my flag, and the NFL let him get away with it. And then a clothing brand built an advertising campaign around him, paying him to disrespect my flag. I no longer watch the Super Bowl, or the game highlights, and I never buy that brand of clothing. There's also a pizza chain, an American auto maker, and one food company I boycott. That was it. Until now.

Atwood's characterizations of the latest Democrat shenanigans brought back a thought I had long ago forgotten. "All politics is local." Tip O'Neill said that. To college-aged me, that meant that what happens in Washington, D.C. should not have much impact on my life. Local politics was far more important. But then I entered the military, and what happened in Washington, D.C. touched my life every day. Over the years, my military life and family life merged so much that I lost that thought. I didn't make the connection when gas prices skyrocketed, when a friend was thrilled to get an 8% mortgage, when almost everyone I knew lost nearly 50% of his home's values, or I drove by abandoned houses in my neighborhood on my way to work.

My political coming of age was in the Clinton years, and I was surrounded by men and women who loathed him, so much so that Air Force leadership issued a memo emphasizing our prohibition from criticizing the commander in chief. He was in the news daily for some scandal or moral failing, and he abused the military, which impacted me and my family. Bush was better, but my time away from home was worse. Obama was a nightmare, and to this day, I will not display my retirement certificate because it has Obama's signature. As each president touched my life in an increasingly more invasive and personal way, I didn't separate the personal from the professional until I read Atwood.

Going to a child's high school sporting event is a one-game deal, often played over and over again, but win or lose, it doesn't normally impact your life, affect your family, or change your core beliefs. Presidential contests have become more and more life-impacting events. For conservatives, national elections are about moral character, tradition, adherence to the Constitution, and allegiance to the founders. Conservatives know that not all of our history is pretty, but we revere it because it collectively made us who we are. Liberals have no respect of history, blame it on all their current grievances, and vow to enact so much change as to fundamentally alter who we are. Rather than debate the merits of their beliefs and policies, they name-call, insult, and assassinate character through lies and exaggerations, then enact damaging policies with even worse unintended consequences.

The last four years for liberals have been one long temper tantrum. I mean that in the most childish context imaginable. A famous liberal campaign donor, an outsider somewhat morally compromised, promising to enact strict conservative policies, defeated the liberals' thoroughly corrupt, establishment first-female-president opportunity. It wasn't just that he won; it was that he wasn't supposed to win; he never had a chance; had they just known, they could have prevented it.

That's what they did this time. While Trump kept his promises and built the biggest following since the Beatles, the liberals whined and worked in the shadows to steal any chance he had of being re-elected. And they did it in our faces, blatantly, openly, proudly — with another thoroughly corrupt, establishment, unappealing oldest-and-most-senile-candidate-ever, who couldn't attract a dozen people to a rally but could manage to draw more votes than Obama the Great. It was the stuff of novels, boring movies, and conspiracy theorists. It was crazy, absurd, impossible, you-can't-make-this-stuff-up kind of stuff, and it was all real.

Mr. Atwood concludes there must be a discussion about free and fair elections, which he notes the Democrats don't seem to be interested in. After all, they still reference "baseless allegations" in slandering Trump. They believe they've found a good thing in free and unfair cheating, and they won't give it up voluntarily. But they've misjudged Trump-supporters. I know I'm not alone as a boycotter. I believe there are nearly 80 million others out there who, like me, will never donate to, support, or vote for a Democrat again as long as they live.

The Pretend President may ask for unity, but it's not at all different from a thief asking his victims to agree to let him keep what he's already taken. He can't have the Oval Office and unity; they don't go together without the legitimacy of rightfully sitting in the president's chair. When the criminal calls the victim a liar, and the victim's allegations of what the criminal knows he did as baseless — and the criminal plays himself as the victim of baseless allegations from a "sore loser" — he has quadrupled down on dishonesty, corruption, hypocrisy, and illegitimacy. The chair is vacant to me; there is no voice coming from that office. There is no longer a possible remedy; we are past making it right. There could be forgiveness and acceptance for acknowledgment and repentance, but neither of those has occurred. That leaves only condemnation and boycott.

As for unity...we 80 million Trump supporters have plenty of that.

Inauguration of Empire

Praetorians on Parade!

Violence in the Capitol, Dangers in the Aftermath
From the Cold War to the War on Terror: the harms from authoritarian "solutions" are often greater than the threats they are ostensibly designed to combat.

Glenn Greenwald
Jan 9

Members of the National Guard and the Washington D.C. police stand guard to keep demonstrators away from the U.S. Capitol on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

In the days and weeks after the 9/11 attack, Americans were largely united in emotional horror at what had been done to their country as well as in their willingness to endorse repression and violence in response. As a result, there was little room to raise concerns about the possible excesses or dangers of the American reaction, let alone to dissent from what political leaders were proposing in the name of vengeance and security. The psychological trauma from the carnage and the wreckage at the country’s most cherished symbols swamped rational faculties and thus rendered futile any attempts to urge restraint or caution.

Nonetheless, a few tried. Scorn and sometimes worse were universally heaped upon them.

On September 14 — while bodies were still buried under burning rubble in downtown Manhattan — Congresswoman Barbara Lee cast a lone vote against the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). “Some of us must urge the use of restraint,” she said seventy-two hours after the attack, adding: “our country is in a state of mourning” and thus “some of us must say: let’s step back for a moment, let’s pause just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control.”

For simply urging caution and casting a single “no” vote against war, Lee’s Congressional office was deluged with threats of violence. Armed security was deployed to protect her, largely as a result of media attackssuggesting that she was anti-American and sympathetic to terrorists. Yet twenty years later — with U.S. troops still fighting in Afghanistan under that same AUMF, with Iraq destroyed, ISIS spawned, and U.S. civil liberties and privacy rights permanently crippled — her solitary admonitions look far more like courage, prescience and wisdom than sedition or a desire to downplay the threat of Al Qaeda.

Others also raised similar questions and issued similar warnings. On the left, people like Susan Sontag and Noam Chomsky, and on the right people such as Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan — in different ways and at different times — urged U.S. politicians and Americans generally to resist unleashing an orgy of domestic assaults on civil liberties, foreign invasions, and an endless war posture. They warned that such a cycle, once initiated, would be very difficult to control, even more difficult to reverse, and virtually guaranteed to provoke even greater violence.

These few who dissented from the instant consensus were, like Congresswoman Lee, widely vilified. Both Sontag and Chomsky were branded anti-American Fifth Columnists, while David Frum, writing in National Review, denounced Buchanan and others questioning the excesses of the War on Terror from the right as “Unpatriotic Conservatives”: no different, proclaimed the neocon, than “Noam Chomsky, Ted Rall, Gore Vidal, Alexander Cockburn, and other anti-Americans of the far Left.”

In retrospect, it is hard to deny that those who defied, or at least questioned, the potent 2001 emotional consensus by urging deliberation in lieu of reactionary rage were vindicated by subsequent events: the two-decade expansion of the war in Afghanistan to multiple countries, the enactment of the Patriot Act, the secret implementation of mass surveillance systems, the trillions of dollars of taxpayer wealth transferred to weapons manufacturers, and the paramilitarization of the domestic security state. At the very least, basic rationality requires an acknowledgement that when political passions and rage-driven emotions find their most intense expression, calls for reflection and caution can only be valuable even if ultimately rejected.

Yesterday’s invasion of the Capitol by a Trump-supporting mob has certainly generated intense political passion and pervasive rage. It is not hard to understand why: the introduction of physical force into political protest is always lamentable, usually dangerous, and, except in the rarest of circumstances that are plainly inapplicable here, unjustifiable. It was foreseeable that an action of this type would result in deaths. The most surprising outcome is that “only” four people died: an unarmed woman, a Trump supporter and Air Force veteran, who was shot in the neck by a law enforcement officer, and three other protesters who died from unspecified “medical emergencies” (one reportedly died due to accidentally tasering himself, inducing a heart attack).

The U.S. Capitol remains a potent and cherished symbol even for Americans who are deeply cynical about the ruling class and political system. Its nobility is something continually engrained deep into our collective psyche since childhood, and that meaning endures even when our rational faculties reject it. It is therefore not hard to understand why watching a marauding band of hooligans invade and deface both the House and the Senate, without any identifiable objective other than venting grievances, reflexively engenders a patriotic disgust across the political spectrum.

It is unhinged to the point of being obscene to compare yesterday’s incursion to the 9/11 attack or (as Sen. Chuck Schumer did last night) to Pearl Harbor. By every metric, the magnitude and destructiveness of those two events are in an entirely different universe. But that does not mean there are no applicable lessons to be drawn from those prior attacks.

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One is that striking at cherished national symbols — the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the Capitol — ensures rage and terror far beyond body counts or other concrete harms. That is one major reason that yesterday’s event received far more attention and commentary, and will likely produce far greater consequences, than much deadlier incidents, such as the still-motive-unknown 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting that killed 59 or the 2016 Orlando shooting that left 49 dead at the Pulse nightclub. Unlike even horrific indiscriminate shooting sprees, an attack on a symbol of national power will be perceived as an attack on the state or even the society itself.

There are other, more important historical lessons to draw not only from the 9/11 attack but subsequent terrorism on U.S. soil. One is the importance of resisting the coercive framework that demands everyone choose one of two extremes: that the incident is either (a) insignificant or even justifiable, or (b) is an earth-shattering, radically transformative event that demands radical, transformative state responses.

This reductive, binary framework is anti-intellectual and dangerous. One can condemn a particular act while resisting the attempt to inflate the dangers it poses. One can acknowledge the very real existence of a threat while also warning of the harms, often far greater, from proposed solutions. One can reject maximalist, inflammatory rhetoric about an attack (a War of Civilizations, an attempted coup, an insurrection, sedition) without being fairly accused of indifference toward or sympathy for the attackers.

Indeed, the primary focus of the first decade of my journalism was the U.S. War on Terror — in particular, the relentless erosions of civil liberties and the endless militarization of American society in the name of waging it. To make the case that those trends should be opposed, I frequently argued that the threat posed by Islamic radicalism to U.S. citizens was being deliberately exaggerated, inflated and melodramatized.

I argued that not because I believed the threat was nonexistent or trivial: I lived in New York City on 9/11 and remember to this day the excruciating horror from the smell and smoke emanating throughout Lower Manhattan and the haunting “missing” posters appended by desperate families, unwilling to accept the obvious reality of their loved ones’ deaths, to every lamp post on every street corner. I shared the same disgust and sadness as most other Americans from the Pulse massacre, the subway bombings in London and Madrid, the workplace mass shooting in San Bernardino.

My insistence that we look at the other side of the ledger — the costs and dangers not only from such attacks but also the “solutions” implemented in the name of stopping them — did not come from indifference towards those deaths or a naive views of those responsible for them. It was instead driven by my simultaneous recognition of the dangers from rights-eroding, authoritarian reactions imposed by the state, particularly in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event. One need not engage in denialism or minimization of a threat to rationally resist fear-driven fanaticism — as Barbara Lee so eloquently insisted on September 14, 2001.

Human memories are usually short and the dominance of social media has abridged them even further. Many have forgotten that the Clinton administration seized on the 1995 courthouse bombing in Oklahoma City to radically expand law enforcement powers and escalate its demands for full-scale backdoor access to all encrypted internet communications. The fear necessary to justify such draconian measures was fueled by incessant media hyping of weekend citizen militias in places like Idaho and Montana said to be plotting armed insurrection against the federal government.

One of the first major War on Terror attacks on core Constitutional rights which I wrote about was Newt Gingrich’s 2006 speech suggesting that the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee to fight terrorism should be “modified”.

The former House Speaker approvingly cited a Commentary article by former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy — entitled “Free Speech for Terrorists?” — insisting that some ideas are so dangerous, especially in the era of terrorism and the internet, that the First Amendment must be limited to permit greater censorship powers:

With an enemy committed to terrorism, the advocacy of terrorism—the threats, the words—are not mere dogma, or even calls to “action.” They are themselves weapons—weapons of incitement and intimidation, often as effective in achieving their ends as would be firearms and explosives brandished openly. . . .

Do we so lack confidence (except in the sacrosanct status of speech itself) that we are unable to say with assurance that some things are truly evil, and that advocating them not only fails to serve any socially desirable purpose but guarantees more evil? Must our historical deference to opinion, however noxious, defer as well to a call to arms against innocents, or a call to destroy a form of representative government that protects religious and political freedom? May we not even ban and criminalize the advocacy of militant Islam and its métier, which is the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians? . . .

In America's bumptious, bounteous marketplace, there are no limits on words as the building blocks of ideas, or on ideas as the legitimate instruments of persuasion. Terror has no place in such discourse. It is the function of law to express our society's judgments. Ours should be simple and humane: words that kill are not words we need abide.

As a free speech advocate and civil libertarian, I was naturally repelled by this notion that some political ideas could be deemed so dangerous by the state that they can be legally suppressed. In response, I asked rhetorically in 2006: “Are there any American values at all in which Bush followers and neocons actually believe -- any constitutional principles that are sacrosanct and whose violations they would oppose if undertaken in the name of fighting The Terrorists?” I concluded: “It certainly doesn't appear so.”

Beyond raising alarms about civil liberties erosions, I also often insisted that the underlying causes of terrorism aimed at the U.S. should be considered if for no other reason than to understand how to address it without destroying core liberties for Americans.

While religious fanaticism may sometimes be the cause, far more often, I argued, such attacks were motivated by rage over the killing of innocent people, including children, by the U.S. Government’s bombs, drones and tanks in Muslim-majority countries. Right-wing advocates often demonized such arguments as pro-terrorist or as “justifying” terrorist attacks, but the left largely supported the inquiry into motivating causes, just as they have long supported the attempts to understand what motivates violent crime, on the ground that misguided actions are often driven by valid or at least widely shared redressible grievances. But the view that we should attempt to identify the core motives of terrorist acts or violent crime, rather than just label them evil and vow to destroy their perpetrators, was largely deemed taboo in mainstream discourse.

It is stunning to watch now as every War on Terror rhetorical tactic to justify civil liberties erosions is now being invoked in the name of combatting Trumpism, including the aggressive exploitation of the emotions triggered by yesterday’s events at the Capitol to accelerate their implementation and demonize dissent over the quickly formed consensus. The same framework used to assault civil liberties in the name of foreign terrorism is now being seamlessly applied — often by those who spent the last two decades objecting to it — to the threat posed by “domestic white supremacist terrorists,” the term preferred by liberal elites, especially after yesterday, for Trump supporters generally. In so many ways, yesterday was the liberals’ 9/11, as even the most sensible commentators among them are resorting to the most unhinged rhetoric available.

Within hours of the Capitol being cleared, we heard truly radical proposals from numerous members of Congress. Senators and House members who objected to Electoral College certification, or questioned its legitimacy, should be formally accused of sedition and expelled from the House if not prosecuted, argued Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), with other House members expressing support. Even those unarmed protesters who peacefully entered the Capitol should, many argued, be hunted by the FBI as domestic terrorists.

Calls proliferated for the banning of the social media accounts of instigators and protest participants. Journalists and politicians cheered the decision by Facebook and Twitter to temporarily bar the President from using their service, and then cheered again when Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday that the ban on Trump extended through Biden’s inauguration. Some journalists, such as CNN’s Oliver Darcy, complained that Facebook had not gone far enough, that more mass censorship was needed of right-wing voices. The once-radical 2006 Gingrich argument — that some opinions are too dangerous to allow to be expressed because they are pro-terrorist and insurrectionary — is now thriving, close to a consensus.

These calls for censorship, online and official, are grounded in the long-discredited, oft-rejected and dangerous view that a person should be held legally accountable not only for their own illegal actions but also for the consequences of their protected speech: meaning the actions others take when they hear inflammatory rhetoric. That was the distorted mentality used by the State of Mississippi in the 1970s to try to hold NAACP leaders liable for the violent acts of their followers against boycott violators after hearing rousing pro-boycott speeches from NAACP leaders, only for the Supreme Court in 1982 to unanimously reject such efforts on the ground that "while the State legitimately may impose damages for the consequences of violent conduct, it may not award compensation for the consequences of nonviolent, protected activity," adding that even "advocacy of the use of force or violence does not remove speech from the protection of the first amendment."

The complete reversal in mentality from just a few months ago is dizzying. Those who spent the summer demanding the police be defunded are furious that the police response at the Capitol was insufficiently robust, violent and aggressive. Those who urged the abolition of prisons are demanding Trump supporters be imprisoned for years. Those who, under the banner of “anti-fascism,” demanded the firing of a top New York Times editor for publishing an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) advocating the deployment of the U.S. military to quell riots — a view deemed not just wrong but unspeakable in decent society — are today furious that the National Guard was not deployed at the Capitol to quash pro-Trump supporters. Antifa advocates are working to expose the names of Capitol protesters to empower the FBI to arrest them on terrorism charges. And while Rep. Cori Bush’s proposal to unseat members of Congress for their subversive views went mega-viral, many forget that in 1966, the Georgia State Legislature refused to seat Julian Bond after he refused to repudiate his anti-war work with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, then considered a domestic terrorist group.

Those who argued in the summer that property damage is meaningless or even noble are treating smashed windows and looted podiums at the Capitol as treason, as a coup. One need not dismiss the lamentable actions of yesterday to simultaneously reject efforts to apply terms that are plainly inapplicable: attempted coup, insurrection, sedition. There was zero chance that the few hundred people who breached the Capitol could overthrow the U.S. Government — the most powerful, armed and militarized entity in the world — nor did they try.

Perhaps many view it as more upsetting to see august members of Congress hiding in fear of a riot than to watch ordinary small-business owners weep as their multi-generational store burns to the ground. Undoubtedly, national reporters who spend much time in the Capitol and who have long-time friendships with Senators and House members are more horrified, far more so, by violent gangs in the Capitol rotunda than on the streets of Portland or Kenosha. But that does not mean that rational restraint is unnecessary when searching for sober language to accurately describe these events.

There is a huge difference between, on the one hand, thousands of people shooting their way into the Capitol after a long-planned, coordinated plot with the goal of seizing permanent power, and, on the other, an impulsive and grievance-driven crowd more or less waltzing into the Capitol as the result of strength in numbers and then leaving a few hours later. That the only person shot was a protester killed by an armed agent of the state by itself makes clear how irresponsible these terms are. There are more adjectives besides “fascist treason” and “harmless protest,” enormous space between those two poles. One should not be forced to choose between the two.

It has long been clear that, in the post-Trump era, media outlets looking to keep viewers hooked, and government officials looking to increase their power, will do everything possible to center and inflate the threat posed by right-wing factions. I’ve said this more times than I can count over the last year at least.

Like all inflated threats, this one has a kernel of truth. As is true of every faction, there are right-wing activists filled with rage and who are willing to engage in violence. Some of them are dangerous (just as some Muslims in the post-9/11 era, and some Antifa nihilists, were and are genuinely violent and dangerous). But as was true of the Cold War and the War on Terror and so many other crisis-spurred reactions, the other side of the ledger — the draconian state powers clearly being planned and urged and prepared in the name of stopping them — carries its own extremely formidable dangers.

Refusing to consider those dangers for fear of standing accused of downplaying the threat is the most common tactic authoritarian advocates of state power use. Less than twenty-four hours after the Capitol breach, one sees this tactic being wielded with great flamboyance and potency, and it is sure to continue long after January 20.

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© 2021 Glenn Greenwald
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It's Gerrymander Time Again, Citizens. Gotta Keep the Voter Fraud from Getting Too Obvious!

Maryland is notorious for having some of the most gerrymandered districts in the nation, but we believe that voters should choose their representatives—not the other way around.

Today at 1 p.m., I’ll make an announcement regarding redistricting reform. pic.twitter.com/kzY0mlwphA

— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) January 12, 2021

Hogan to announce redistricting legislation ahead of 2021 Maryland General Assembly session

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said Tuesday he will launch “a sustained effort” to push for a less-partisan process of redrawing political districts, an effort he has failed to get through the General Assembly for the past six years.

The Republican governor has made redistricting an issue since his first campaign as governor in 2014, and repeatedly introduced legislation that would set up a bipartisan process to draw boundaries for state legislators and members of Congress.

Hogan on Tuesday announced a commission composed of Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters that he will charge with recommending boundaries for the next round of redistricting. He named the leaders of the commission: retired federal Judge Alexander Williams Jr., a Democrat; Walter Olson of the Cato Institute, a Republican; and Howard Community College President Kathleen Hetherington, an independent voter. Those three will appoint six other members to the commission.

Hogan said that “unfair” redistricting in Maryland has “made a mockery of the electoral system.”

Hogan’s announcement comes as a redrawing of the state’s legislative and congressional map looms. It was slated to occur upon completion of the 2020 U.S. Census.

The governor gets to propose both the General Assembly and congressional district maps. State lawmakers can substitute their own General Assembly map. To change a congressional map, they have to pass their own bill and possibly muster the three-fifths vote needed to override a veto.

Maryland’s congressional districts, in particular, are considered among the most gerrymandered in the nation and have been the subject of court challenges. In one court case, a federal judge infamously described the 3rd District as “reminiscent of a broken-winged pterodactyl, lying prostrate across the center of the state.”

Democrats hold a 2-to-1 voter registration advantage over Republicans, but the eight-member U.S. House delegation includes just one Republican, Andy Harris. As recently as the early 2000s, Maryland had a 4-4 split between Democrats and Republicans.

In 2017, Democrats in the General Assembly passed a bill that would have required the state to use a nonpartisan redistricting process, but only if five surrounding states chose the same process. Hogan vetoed that bill, saying it was more of a “political ploy” than good-faith effort at changing redistricting.

Steve Bannon is Rumbling on...

The New Left finally takes "Acta non Verba" to Heart?

I really need to start following  #FraudSquad...

Pelosi's Attempted Coup Revealed...

OK

Lessons from History - Corruption in Philadelphia

 

from Wikipedia

Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "Old Gimlet Eye",[1] was a senior United States Marine Corps officer who fought in both the Mexican Revolution and World War I. Butler was, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I. Butler later became an outspoken critic of American wars and their consequences. Butler also exposed an alleged plan to overthrow the United States government.

By the end of his career, Butler had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to receive the Medal of Honor twice, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (along with Wendell Neville and David Porter) and the Medal of Honor, and the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.

In 1933, he became involved in a controversy known as the Business Plot, when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists were planning a military coup to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler selected to lead a march of veterans to become dictator, similar to Fascist regimes at that time. The individuals involved all denied the existence of a plot and the media ridiculed the allegations, but a final report by a special House of Representatives Committee confirmed some of Butler's testimony.

In 1935, Butler wrote a book titled War Is a Racket, where he described and criticized the workings of the United States in its foreign actions and wars, such as those in which he had been involved, including the American corporations and other imperialist motivations behind them. After retiring from service, he became a popular advocate, speaking at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists, and church groups in the 1930s.

New Reichstag's/ Bastille's...

Sachem Andy Harris (R-MD1) Earns Serious Street Cred...

Rep. Andy Harris Won’t Resign As Democrats Call For Him To Step Down Following Alleged Scuffle On House Floor During Election Certification Vote

WASHINGTON (WJZ) — A Maryland delegate and the Maryland Democratic Party are calling for the removal of Rep. Andy Harris after he was reportedly involved in a scuffle on the House floor as Congress debated over the certification of election results overnight.

Del. Eric Luedtke, a Democrat who represents District 14, tweeted early Thursday:

“Every Maryland leader who cares about the Constitution – Democrats and Republicans both – should come together to remove Andy Harris from office at the earliest opportunity,” Luedtke said. “His support for overthrowing a legitimate democratic election demonstrates that he is unfit to serve.”

Every Maryland leader who cares about the Constitution - Democrats and Republicans both - should come together to remove Andy Harris from office at the earliest opportunity. His support for overthrowing a legitimate democratic election demonstrates that he is unfit to serve.

— Delegate Eric Luedtke (@EricLuedtke) January 7, 2021

The Maryland Democratic Party also called for his removal:

.@RepAndyHarrisMD must resign immediately.

Representative Andy Harris has sought to undermine the will of voters across Maryland and our nation. Join us in calling for the immediate resignation of Representative Andy Harris. pic.twitter.com/UMDFQFHWMp

— Maryland Democratic Party (@mddems) January 7, 2021

Congress returned to session around 8 p.m. Wednesday, just hours after a violent mob of Pro-Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol while lawmakers were inside. They decided they would continue to work to affirm the Electoral College votes that would officially name the next U.S. president.

While Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania spoke, Rep. Harris — a Republican — reportedly got into an argument with Democratic Rep. Colin Allred from Texas.

Multiple witnesses say it almost got physical and the two had to be separated. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi asked for order before dismissing the two congressmen.

You can hear the scuffle in the background of this video.

"Get outta here!"

A confrontation breaks out after GOP Rep. Morgan Griffith asks to strike out comments from Rep. Conor Lamb saying Republicans lied about the election.

Lamb replies, "The truth hurts" https://t.co/wTKxzqAo9U pic.twitter.com/XDA9ArvRrG

— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 7, 2021

The Wampum Belt

Fire And Smoke

red as searing hot

the flames of desire

fanned by yesterdays thoughts

' collected visions, relived investments '

gone realities in burned debris

beginnings born from empty arms

stirred the fire as ashes waft

warmth friction sparks blazes high

broken branches are bodies spent

gratefully torched the flame subsides

resistant coals of burnished red

reminisce the temperature of last nights fire

spent fire works lay cold and damp

fragments used now used up

burned and gone ashes now gray

in the smoke of lingering ideas

who carries the torch in today's heart?

a matchbook moment to ready the fire

restore the heat of passions desire

quell the flames that still are warm.

Myrtle Thomas