Looking Past the Apocalypse
If you’ve ever dreamed about living in a dystopian sci-fi novel, 2020 was your year. Combine a rampant plague with social isolation, race riots, economic shutdown, Zoom gatherings, a reckless president spreading madness across the political spectrum, right-wing militias and left-wing cancel culture… mix well… and there you have it: an Orwellian nightmare vision of a society headed down the chute toward dissolution.
If an Orwellian nightmare isn’t your idea of the Good Life, don’t despair just yet. You’re reading this column, right? That means you’ve survived the most catastrophic year of our lives to date — an achievement in which you can take justifiable pride.
Over two decades ago, after enduring an especially dismal year, I wrote that “at least I’m still standing… my arms and legs still work. I still have my original head, though I could probably use a new one at this point.” If your original arms, legs and head are still in reasonable working order after the ordeals of 2020, it would be fitting and proper to give thanks.
In fact, 2021 will mark the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving, just as 2020 marked the 400th anniversary of their arrival in Massachusetts –- a feat broadly ignored by the press and public during a year of racial “reckoning.” I suspect that those intrepid white settlers offend most progressives today, despite their courage and stoicism, their peaceful relations with the natives (it was the later Puritan arrivals who stirred the pot), and the fact that half of them died by the end of their first brutal winter in the New World.
Once we’ve survived the winter of 2021 and received our vaccinations, we’ll be stepping out into an America transformed by the pandemic and so much else. Familiar restaurants, shops and other small businesses will have vanished. Watching movies in darkened theaters might already be a lost pastime, like taffy pulls and horse-drawn sleigh rides. Telecommuting could become a way of life for the corporate class.
Millions of jobs could simply go extinct like dodos and woolly mammoths, victims of artificial intelligence, changing habits and disruptive technologies that emerged during our plague year. The recent bickering in Washington over Covid stimulus checks will pale in comparison to the relief packages proposed when half the working-age population has been rendered obsolete and unemployable.
Will we ever see an end to racial tension, demands, riots and resentments? America is an excruciatingly race-conscious society, now more than ever. The mounting rage over unjust but relatively infrequent police killings of black people, exploited by ratings-driven media and “woke” pundits, boiled over last year to a degree unseen since the late 1960s.
We can’t live in a society that expects the majority of its citizens to flagellate themselves simply because they were born white. We also can’t live in a society that pressures us to toss our founders into history’s dumpster – or that finds ways to punish us if we refuse to parrot the latest pieties.
We can hope that old Joe Biden emerges as the unifying figure he promised to be: a man who promotes racial, social and economic justice without cowering before unreasonable militants and their fashionable allies. Of course, he can’t be a unifying figure if Trump loyalists, still smoldering, refuse to accept his leadership.
Granted, the left never accepted Trump’s leadership, but #45 wouldn’t have had it any other way. He was president of his base, not his country. An American president can’t dismiss half the population and expect to lead the republic.
If all goes well, Biden would set up a bigger tent — one that welcomes Republican dairy farmers and used car dealers along with Berkeley professors and civil rights advocates. If he governs as a moderate liberal in the style of JFK, he’ll be in a position to draw the more reasonable Republicans and Democrats back toward the center. The extremists at both ends will never surrender their grievances, but a sensible coalition of traditional liberals, centrists and conservatives can marginalize them until their strident voices recede into the background.
2021 is time for a national wake-up call. The United States, that grand 18th-century experiment in representative democracy, won’t survive if half its people continue to detest the other half. (And yes, that goes for you well-meaning folks with the “Hate Has No Home Here” signs on your lawns.)
Blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans… Democrats, Republicans and Independents… Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists… socialists and capitalists… Southerners and Yankees… intellectuals and checkout clerks… gays and straights and everyone in between: guess what? You’re all Americans if you live here, and our flag belongs to all of you. It’s time you made friends with people who don’t resemble you physically, socially or ideologically. In fact, you have no choice: the future of your country depends on it.
Keep the faith, fellow moderates – we might be neglected, mocked and downtrodden, but we’re more essential than ever. Meanwhile, let’s look forward to a happier New Year. If we can survive 2020, we can survive just about anything the fates throw our way.
Rick Bayan is founder-editor of The New Moderate. His three collections of dark-humored essays are available as e-books on Amazon for only $2.99 each. (Just search under Rick Bayan.)
THE NEW MODERATE 
Nice article, but wishful thinking. When you listed “You’re all American if you live here” you left out rich and poor. And that seems to be a significant role in the division in the country. Those that dont have expect those with ($150k+ per yr) to provide them with help, even when they are fully capable of helping themselves. Young will continue to attend extravagant universities with $50k+ tuitions and then demanding student loan writeoffs instead of attending state universities at 30%-50% of the higher cost university. Government will continue with healthcare policies that limit products, limit competition and drive up costs creating demand for legislation where middle class America will bare the brunt of the cost for the coverage of those unable to pay. And most importantly, we will see wasteful billions buried into legislation that provides pork to local districts that does little for America, but benefits a few.
What we will not find in 2021 is any sensible legislation where a partnership between high schools, community colleges, business, labor unions and federal government develop policies to address the loss of jobs due to business closures and technology (ie robotics) that eliminate the jobs held by the current lower income class. What we most likely will find true are fights over climate, taxes, more stimulus for the vast majority like myself who do not need additional stimulus, immigration, law enforcement legislation, tuition forgiveness and yes, healthcare. All of this is important, but if the GOP retains the senate, only fights will ensue while something could come from a task force addressing job loss and reeducation. Now if the democrats gain 50 senate seats, then anything can happen beginning with Shumer eliminating the 60 vote requirement, rendering any party with less than 51 impotent in the future to impact any legislation.
Since I wrote this, the senate has become democrat controlled, so now it is a matter of the filibuster. To keep and compromise, or do way with it and vote much with a 51-50 vote.
The fillibuster does not exist anymore for the majority of senate actions
Do you think the state of GA did any better in conducting the runnoff than they did in the general election ?
Both Rick’s column and Ron P’s comment are insightful and make sense. I would add that a huge encumbering factor to national reconciliation is the one-sided media portrayal of all the divisive issues and events. As long as obvious lefty bias and the accompanying political correctness and cancel culture lead the media coverage of all things, conservatives and many independents like me will rebel. I wish media pundits had been on the ballot to be voted out of sight and sound!
Rick, I have to agree with Ron that the hope of unifying under the left is very wishful thinking. I expect that the over/under on how long Biden will remain the titular POTUS is about 2 years, and I would take the under on that bet.
He has never been a unifier in his almost 50 years of bloodsport politics (it was in response to his leadership that Clarence Thomas accused the Senate Judiciary Committee of a “high tech lynching”) and he has accomplished almost nothing of import in all those years, with the possible exception of securing massive fortunes for himself and his family. Perhaps he won more votes than any presidential candidate in history ( while barely campaigning!), or perhaps the use of mass mail ballots, ballot harvesting, and internet connected voting machines were put in place to rig the election, but I predict that, either way, Biden’s tenure will be short and divisive. Past performance is generally predictive of future results. I hope I’m wrong.
A big part of the problem is that those on the left, and most so-called liberals, despise, feel superior to, and look down upon anyone who does not share their worldview, and, by taking control of education and the media, they have succeeded in convincing themselves that those who believe in personal liberty and small government are, in fact, white supremacists, driven by racism and gun lust, rather than working class patriots trying to exist in a world that no longer values them. Both sides have chosen to amplify this division, for their own political purposes. The left has been far more successful.
Whatever happens, Trump will likely not go away because 1) despite his flaws, he reaches a demographic that no one else reaches, and 2) the left media will not want to give up the filthy lucre of Trump click-bait. Democrats will still make Trump their all-purpose villain and whipping boy, because they have no agenda of their own, save the far left policies that few support and that, if implemented, will destroy the nation.
(who’s the biggest cynic now, lol?)
Ron, just to be explicit, this is NOT AIMED AT YOU. You are an example of the world the GOP has left behind, the world of sane principled conservative thought.
Conservatives can complain about the media all day and night. Its funny. First of all, anyone can choose their flavor today. People have settled into three camps and choose who to believe accordingly. Who even are the mainstream media today? Perhaps the 3 traditional networks, the AP and USA today?
So, forget the dreaded MSM if you are conservative, don’t read them, read the Wall Street Journal, the NY Post, those should be safe havens. Oh but wait, these news sources are also saying things that no trump cultist can bear listening to. Oh dear where can a conservative go to hear the pure trump cult news? The Epoch Times! There is a safe haven for tender right wing nut snowflakes. Pure Right wing nuttery 24/7.
Guys, if the trump world is portrayed in the “MSM” the way it is portrayed its because the trump world gives such a rich daily deluge of CRAZY. People will read stories about a train wreck and have a fascination with the bizarre so the trump world will always get ink.. Jerry Springer knew what kind of low brow spectacle to provide to find viewers and trump learned well from him how to provide it.
Look up Lin Wood and Justice Roberts for todays dose of GOP crazy. The conservative world is in free fall. Perhaps conservatives believe that is a winning strategy. Weird.
Meanwhile people like Ben Sasse and Romney and Kemp try to bring the GOP out of its lethal spiral dive. They seem to be having little luck. Crazy is going to drive conservative politics for the foreseeable future and the MSM media are going to report it and conservatives are going to complain and turn to ever wilder news sources for their theories and methods. Sue Pence to make him just give the election to trump! Brilliant! No lefty could make this up, its priceless. Blame yourselves! You let this cancer consume the GOP.
Those who are going to be miserable during a Biden administration are going to be miserable no matter what. trump addicted followers are gong to need a detox plan. Its going to be a brutal crash landing back to reality, a reality in which for example Putin and his thugs and poisoners and hackers are a threat that cannot be turned off by having his ass kissed by the POTUS a la trump.
I would love to see the GOP return to its senses and start acting like a sane responsible party. Unfortunately pandoras box has been opened with the election of trump and there is too large a part of the conservative base of voters who are simply nuts and do not want anything but a WWF freak show for a presidential administration .
Here is a thought conservatives. Stop with the 24/7 freak show and see if that improves your outcomes. Or you can continue down the path of Sidney Powell, Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Lin Wood, Tucker Carlson, the nasty, crazy, irresponsible BS fantasy world in which 81 million people did not reject trump, it was all a fake, rigged.
I won’t hold my breath.
Roby, since you wrote this, much has happened. Those like me that would not vote for Trump because we had no trust in the man and despised his personal behaviors in 2016 voted for someone else, many for the libertarians since they had a viable alternative. This election, that was not available, so those like me who could never vote for Biden had a choice, Trump or nothing. Sorry to say I voted for Trump and my first thought were verified with the capital riot. So to address the issue of conservatives being able to break away from Trump like Romney, some already have like Liz Cheney. Some voters have also, bu those are the moderate right that had no other choice. But in 2024, if we do not want another 2016 primary season to give use Trumop again with a minority of GOP primary voters supporting Trump, the most obvious way to keep this from happening is impeachment after he leaves office and then whatever additional action is required to ban him from ever running again. Otherwise, the GOP will have a good chance of ending up with him as their candidate.
Recent poll of Trump voters – after the Capital protests less than 5% would change their vote.
Recent poll of Biden voters – after learning that Hunter Biden was the target of 2 separate Federal invesitigations 6.7% would have changed their vote.
Thanks, Roby. You have perfectly illustrated the arrogant condescension of the left.
Its not specific to the left. Its just ordinary human behavior. People who behave like freaks get treated like freaks because they behave that way. It can be that the root of the freaky behavior is ideology or politics but that is only one such reason. Nothing about this is particular to the left or right.
I have never bought the idea that I should not judge somebody according to their political or religious beliefs. There is no better yardstick of character than belief. It does not mean that I have a negative opinion of everyone who’s politics or religion are not mine. It does mean that there is a range of reasonable belief and behavior I am fine with and then there are the people who are outside of that range. The further outside my idea of reasonable belief the more I have a bad opinion of them.
As you know, I look on plenty of left wing nuttery and the people who are responsible for it with the same “condescension” I have for trump and Co. The Bernie brothers and the trumpies. The anarchist goons and the proud boy goons. Sidney Powell and Micheal Moore. I am an arrogant centrist, if anything, and not ashamed of It at all. It is my firm opinion that the world would be better off without these people and their idiotic ideas and actions. I have my standards.
You have, over the years, been very critical of your own socialist Senator from Vermont, that is true. And you are very good at lumping together those on the right as morons, imbeciles and villains. So, for example, you now take Lin Wood, who is clearly a bit of a nut case, and group him with Tucker Carlson and Ruch Limbaugh, long-time pundits on the right, who express opinions with which you personally disagree, but which have a much (or more) merit than those expressed by your preferred “centrists.” This idea that only those on the left, or center-left, deserve to be heard is exactly what has gotten us to this place.
I just read that, in the new House rules for the upcoming Congress, the Democrats have decided that no cisgender pronouns or familial titles (daughter/son, husband/wife) will be permitted in debate or legislation. This is neo-Marxist pig slop and the fact that Nancy Pelosi supported it and made it part of the Congressional rules shows you how far left the Dems have gone.
So, why can’t GOP elected officials challenge what was, indisputably, a very chaotic and weird election? In 2005, after poor Al Gore and John Kerry lost close ones to Bush43, the Electoral College results were disputed and debated, as permitted. When Trump won in 2016, the Senate challenged his victory, as well. But you think that allowing a Republican challenge, made under the Congressional rules, and in a proper manner, is crazy-town stuff? Funny, I don’t recall you getting all exercised over those Democrat challenges…
Face it Roby, you are as biased as anyone else, but , because you feel superior to those on the right, you apparently feel entitle to trash those who disagee with you as “nasty” “crazy” “freaks.” Fine by me, it’s still a free country, for at least a while longer, so believe what you want. Just expect some pushback from me.
This is an article, from a right-leaning, largely anti-Trump newspaper, about Josh Hawley, the young GOP senator who has said that he wants to hear a debate on the 2020 election before certifying the Electoral College results.
The article looks back at William Jennings Bryan and Teddy Roosevelt, and examines the idea that Hawley may be the 21st century leader of the populist, anti-establishment wing of the GOP, which, by all polling, is the new base of the Party, despite being opposed by the Party leadership. Trump has been stonewalled by that leadership since Day One of his presidency, yet it is now relying on him to drive the voter base in Georgia, at the same time that it has refused to support his demands to look into massive voter fraud.
That, to me, indicates that the GOP establishment understands that the working class is now its base, and wants to pretend that they are fighting for those people, when, in reality, they have no intention of ever doing so. Just as the establishment of the Democrat Party tries to stonewall the far left, while turning a blind eye to its violence, and pretending that they believe the patent gender and racial nonsense that it promotes.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/man-in-the-arena
“So, why can’t GOP elected officials challenge what was, indisputably, a very chaotic and weird election? ”
Oh dispute fine, but HOW your side disputes it is the issue that decides how the press reports it, the courts rule on it and how people like myself see it.
The WAY its been disputed entitles ridicule and contempt. The high proportion of trump voters who support this trumpian nonsense leads to me and many others lumping them together. Its very simple.
In the most idiotic and incompetent way imaginable trumpgop is attempting to overthrow the Constitution (while I hear from the trumpies that if the election is Not overturned the republic is lost) . The fact that they are so comically failing sort of conceals the seriousness of the destruction they are attempting.
You had better believe I am angry and hold this freak show in contempt. I am keeping my language as polite as possible so as not to spoil this site, You do not want to hear what I would say to your trump cult if I were not choosing my words with care.
I have written over the years many times that I think it best that no party hold the POTUS, House and Senate. I said the same regarding the Georgia runoffs (which your mentally defective freak of a cult leader and Constitutional scholar spent a tweetstorm last night calling unconstitutional and invalid) here a few weeks back. I said that I think it would be best for the country that the GOP hold the senate.
I expect the GOP to hold the Senate after the runoffs. But I personally no longer wish that, I no longer think of the GOP as a serious endeavor though it has a few serious members I can still respect.
If the GOP candidates win one or both races I will believe that its because they got the most votes. If the Dem candidates win the GOP world will explode into a whole other level of this insanity. Its just not possible or right that Democrats win a political race. I dread that supernova of conspiracy nonsense.
The details of what happened with Gore and with Clinton as far as disputing an election can be read online. Any intelligent person who reads the details will understand that what is happening under trump in the way of disputing the election is something Completely different. But trump and his loyal supporters care nothing for fact and they will prattle on.
Yes I despise them, I despise their party and I despise their freak show. I cannot wait for trump and Co to be history and take tweeting as a major presidential occupation with them.
You will understand precisely none of what I am talking about, you, after all, are in such a trumpian state that you not long ago claimed that trump has done nothing divisive you can think of. If it were just you it would just be your problem. But its you and tens of millions of trumpies who are so lost and that scares the bejeezus out of me.
I loath populism. I loath it from the bernie left and I loath it from the trump right. populism means that you are talking to the people of the lowest intelligence and asking them to become a mob based on scapegoating some class of people, the rich, the jews, the elite. When populism triumphs we descend into stupidity.
How well can a country run based on stupidity?
I am an intelligent and well educated person, as are my parents. I cannot take credit for that I just fell into it at birth. I sympathize to some extent with stupid people, its not their fault they were born stupid. But I do not pity intelligent people who make a fat living off of inciting stupid people by appealing to class envy and class hatred. Its the basis of marxism by the way. I despise such people. Bernie, Micheal Moore, Rush, Tucker to name a few. I have nothing but contempt for intelligent people who turn themselves stupid by swallowing populist propaganda that was intended to incite stupid people. Some people are born stupid. Others who were not born stupid work hard to turn themselves stupid to fit into stupid populist movements. This regards both left and right.
So yes, I am an arrogant condescending fellow, the issue is not left or right its stupidity vs intelligence and competence.
Roby, you seem very proud of being arrogant and condescending. I have always thought you were a smart guy. Then again, I’m fairly smart and well-educated myself, yet I have somehow avoided your sense of entitlement and superiority. For that, I am grateful.
I find it ironic that you are angry. Didn’t your preferred candidate win? I’m assuming you’re angry because everyone thinks that he cheated? It’s ok, he’ll be inaugurated, and will very shortly begin the process of rolling back much of Trump’s legacy, just as Trump rolled back much of Obama’s.
So, be happy, Roby, turn your frown upside down! You and the smart, educated folks won!!! Who cares if the morons on the right think that Biden and Harris are illegitimate? All’s well that ends well right?
Here’s the thing: arrogant and condescending elitists fail to understand why people vote the way they do, and they continue to portray conservative populists as uneducated whites, driven by anger and resentment. They miss the strength and diversity of the new GOP coalition, which includes increasing numbers of women, blacks, and Hispanics, and they believe that, when Trump leaves office, his base will go back to voting for politicians who betray them by promising things that they have no intention of delivering.
As I’ve said many times, Trump was not the cause of this movement, he was the result. There are other conservative populist leaders : Ron DeSantis (a real redneck, from Yale and Harvard Law) Tom Cotton, ( Harvard both undergrad and Law), Josh Hawley (Stanford and Yale Law) and others.
Libertarianism and populism have transformed the old GOP into a new big tent party. You may loathe populism, but it’s not going away.
Priscilla, according to your recent comments here before and after the election you are a full fledged believer in many absurd conspiracy theories. Those theories are not unifying the GOP; they are blowing it apart. The editorial boards of the NY Post, the WSJ, and the National Review have all called this trumpian scam what it is. So have Christie, Kemp, Sasse, Romney, George Will, Thune and on and on. You have your preprogrammed answer to tune them out: these are establishment obstructionists. Your stable genius hero has his very intelligent names for all of them. Its freakin hilarious.
Its hard for democrats not to laugh their asses off as the GOP is finally blown apart by trump and Co. and any intelligent non-afflicted follower of politics is going to feel like they are smarter than this idiotic world of grifters.
I do not know what IQ you were born with but you have turned your brain off and are letting other people fill you with their bullshit and poison (and they are getting rich doing it),
One thing this conversation has done for me is made me think about populism and its connection with Marxism. The irony is while you hate Marxism and are a fervent populist, you seem totally unaware that Marxism and Naziism were the ultimate populist movements. Having got power they became incredibly authoritarian. I blame a lot of what has happened on Bernie’s left wing nut populism. It had no chance to succeed but it did spawn a reaction, trumps right wing populism, which is now imploding and making a an utter failure of an attempt to break the meaning of the Constitution in two and continue in power, a right wing takeover of America. The GOP politicians and judges who have done their jobs and upheld the Constitution are now “obstructionists” in the eyes of you trumpians. Its disgusting, frightening, and hilarious at the same time
What I fear is not that your populist movement is going to achieve a stunning series of victories in the future, it is only going to succeed in crippling the GOP, its that it is going to spawn violence at some point in the future sooner or later by the less sane among its 2nd amendment contingent.
Ok, let’s try questions:
Since you obviously believe that the Democrat electoral challenges of 2000, 2004, and 2016 were totally constitutional, but the current Republican plan to challenge the 2020 election results in some battleground states is not, perhaps you could explain why you believe that. Without an open and transparent debate on the allegations of massive election fraud, how do suggest we unite and move on from this place?
How do we return to a place of moderation, of constitutional order, of some semblance of unity around a potentially corrupted election, if we are not even allowed to allege that strange and possibly illegal things happened in the 2020 election? And, doesn’t it seem odd to you that the Democrats shut down any and all allegations, without ever agreeing to an investigation? Wouldn’t an investigation be better than a tainted presidency? Or do they not give a damn, as long as they are in power?
No lower court has yet ruled on the merits of the case. Each dismissal has been on procedural grounds, e.g. lack of standing, doctrine of laches, etc. I think that SCOTUS should have heard the Texas lawsuit, so that the Constitutional case could have been presented. To me, it was a huge missed opportunity, The Court would have been able to tamp down the suspicions and fears of a stolen election, by letting the Trump team have their say in a public hearing… and, of course, the Biden team would have been able to refute.
The Court almost certainly would have upheld the election results, right? And then the 75 million voters who currently believe that their votes were nullified through fraud and deceit, would be satisfied that it didn’t happen. Well, maybe not all of them, but most would. The Supreme Court still has the respect of most Americans. I know I would be satisfied if all the facts were allowed to come out. I don’t need the election to be overturned, I just need to know that the election was free and fair. Or that, if it wasn’t, we have enough information to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
Don’t you think that would have been better than what’s happening now?
No Robby – we do not “know” that.
You say it – but the evidence of your comments is that you are blind to or participate in lots of left wing nuttery.
Regardless, you are a fixture here – you have been for years.
You know me – I know you. Your disclaimers are both unnecescary and incorrect.
If the claims made by Powell were not made by Powell I would dismiss them.
While it is not particularly difficult for voting equipment to do what she has claimed, the consequences of getting caught are the destruction of the company and potentially jail for those responsible.
But Powell made similar claims regarding the Micheal Flynn prosecution – and she was uniformly correct.
In fact a very very disturbing issue in the past 4 years is that True right win conspiracy theorist nut jobs like Alex Jones have proven right far more often than say Anderson Cooper. To be clear – I am not defending Alex Jones.
The fact that Dominion tool so long to respond to Powell is also disturbing.
Powells allegations are incredibly serious and it took DVS over a month to send a cease and desist – which is being ignored.
DVS did not file a defamaiton claim – they likely can’t, defaming a business is probably not a tort.
But finally the CEO did file a claim – but it is a really weak claim and problematic as it is not based on Powells claims.
Anyway I do not know what to think about the DVS claim – because it should be highly unlikely. But so much of what the left has done or what the deep state has done or what anti-Trumper’s have done is so highly unlikely.
5 of the 6 contested states have state constitutional provisions dating back to the 19th century that require secret ballots – these exist because there was massive voter fraud in the 19th century – buying votes, coercing votes.
Regardless, mailin voting is not secret ballots. It is unconstitutional in 5 of the 6 contested states – and yet it occured. Aparently there is no amount of lawlessness to great for the left.
I thought the claim that 68% of ballots processed by DVS systems were forced into adjudication was implausible. Yet of 132,000 votes in one precinct in Fulton County 105,000 of those ended up going through adjudication.
I thought that the GA hand recount would put lots of issues to bed.
Including the DVS issue. But it turns out that GA did not do a hand recount of the actual ballots. It merely recounted the ballot images in the computer systems. Worse, when DVS adjudicates a ballot them edit the ballot image and destroy the original – so there is no way the GA recount could possibly have found any DVS or adjudication related problems. It also could not have found votes scanned multiple times or fraudulent votes injected into the system.
Put simply the GA recount could not have found fraud.
More recently I learned that the live stream of vote counts during the election from GA included many negative votes for Trump.
This stream is what the networks used as their source for reporting.
It is what the GA dept state used for the official tallies that it certified.
Negative votes are highly unusual. Bit more unusual is these negative votes were not the result of corrections made by humans in precincts. These negative votes were issued by DVS systems servers. Next nearly every Trump negative vote report was matched by an identical number of Biden positive votes.
This is from sworn testimony before the GA legislature and it references data that is publicly available. It should be trivial for the media to confirm this – they received the vote updates.
It is possible that there are legitimate explanations. It is not likely.
Regardless, any negative vote reports in the stream MUST be explained.
They can only come from the voting computers or the election officials and they can only occur when counts were reported in error.
This is a particularly important allegation as if True it is one of few that is actually correctable. We can not fix the fact that mailin ballots were not legitimate in these states, or that they were not properly vetted for errors that would indicate fraud. We can not fix it if thousands of illegitmate ballots were counted. There is now no means to separate the votes of dead people from those of legitimate voters.
But counting errors and reporting errors can be corrected.
Worse this sounds suspiciously like what happened in Antrim County and what Sydney Powell is alleging. Yet no one but the GA legislature is looking at it
Priscilla, a huge number of people who you previously respected and listened to have explained why the entire conspiracy of a rigged election that trump promoted during all of this election season, all of the 2016 election season and even in the GOP primaries in 2016, is bullshit. You were sure BEFORE THE ELECTION EVEN OCCURRED that democrats would simply manufacture enough votes to win. Most of the trumpgop world probably believed likewise. Viola, after trump lost you guys already were programmed with your marching orders.
trumpgop has had its day in court and lost 60 times. Christie explained long ago that the trump lawyers were not presenting the factual case because the factual case was bullshit and there are penalties for lawyers who present deceptive and spurious materials to a court. I have read many of the decisions that trump appointed judges have made on these suits and those decisions stated that the evidence was not believable or credible and that the remedy asked, throwing out the Biden votes and giving trump the state was completely un-Constitutional and ridiculous..
What should we do now? Its not my responsibility or the responsibly of the non trump world to do anything. I think you should listen to people like Sasse and the trump appointed judges. But you are likely not going to. Its your problem.
I cannot help you, you will believe what you will believe. You have not listened yet to the Sasses and Ryans and Romneys and Kemps, you have tuned them and all conservative critics of trump out for the last 4 years. That is what you will continue to do until you decide to reconsider, if that ever happens. You and the world of true trump believers are not helping the GOP, you are crippling it.
trump is no longer any danger to the Dem party, he is now simply a sanders-like danger to the GOP. Perhaps at some point that will slowly dawn on some of his followers and self preservation will kick in so as not to hand the Dem party the world.
I was not asking for your help, just trying to begin a dialogue with you, instead of an argument. Silly me, I should know better.
Sketchy things have been happening in US elections for many years now, ever since Joseph Kennedy got Richard Daley to manufacture a few thousand votes in Chicago to swing the 1960 election. Both sides have cheated ~ I think that millions of folks still believe that Al Gore won the 2000 election and John Kerry won the 2004. Hell, millions still believe that the Russians cheated for Trump. And Stacey Abrams has never conceded the Georgia gubernatorial race, despite losing by 55,000 votes.
This time was different, because of mass mail ballots, which accounted for literally hundreds of millions of votes that cannot be traced. That cannot happen again. I think the nation can survive this election, especially if the Georgia runoffs are won by the Republicans, but we can’t continue as a democratic republic, unless people have faith that their electoral system is free and fair. That was why I thought we could discuss how things might be made right for the next election, but I get that you don’t give a damn, as long as your side wins. That’s one of the ways you and I differ.
Trump will be fine, He’ll be a political force for years to come, if he chooses to be. If not a political leader, then he may be a media force to be reckoned with. Maybe both. Bernie Sanders is a joke. Never accomplished anything as a senator. Well, he got pretty rich, so in that sense he succeeded in the way many politicians do. But no comparison to one of the most successful men in American history.
Lastly, it’s obvious that you read only mainstream Democrat media. So you don’t realize that no court has ruled on the merits of this case, not even SCOTUS. Every dismissal has been on procedural grounds, and the evidence has not been adjudicated. I don’t think the courts want to get involved in this. It’s regrettable, but it is what it is. I’m sorry to see Biden take office under these circumstances, but I really don’t think that he’ll be around that long…not as president, that is.
It’s me — Rick. Before I comment on anyone’s comments, please let me know how you gained access to The New Moderate. Whether I click on a saved link, or type newmoderate.com or even newmoderate.wordpress.com into the search engine, I get an error message with a warning that they couldn’t connect to the server, or that the server is insecure, or even that the page doesn’t exist.
I can still post my column, as you’ve seen. But the only way I accessed the site today was to go directly to wordpress.com and search for The New Moderate.
WordPress has been playing tricks on me for about a year now; for example, it recognizes me for writing/editing purposes only when I enter from my iPad; I get shut out on my other devices because they ask for my password, which I’ve long forgotten and never had to use in the past. I can’t change my password because WordPress still has my defunct e-mail address on file. When I tried to change my e-mail address, it might have triggered a hacker alert and the url no longer worked (at least for me).
WordPress doesn’t even have live tech support, so I’ll have to see if I can get help from the “community” of WordPress bloggers. Anyway, I’m glad you were still able to access the site. Let me know how you did it… I need all the clues I can gather before I tackle the problem.
Hi Rick,
I go directly through the WordPress site. If you recall, I was doing my own blog there for a while, so I had a paid account, but now I just use my free account, and click on the “Reader” heading at the top left. Since I follow your blog, your most recent posts show up at the top, and I just click on this one.
So, until you get this straightened out with WordPress (lord knows who they even have working at this point!) people can probably just sign up for a free WordPress account, and do the same thing that I do. I think Ron does the same….
Rick I get in through your facebook site. For some reason that works. If I go to the regular site it gives that message.
Question: are any other wordpress sites having the same problem? If it is only your site then I have the idea that perhaps someone may have deliberately shut you off from normal operation. Someone who knows the workings of the internet and dislikes your site. If it is something more ordinary it should be happening to other word press sites.
You could start a new site, “The New New Moderate” but then you would lose all the history and articles that you invested so much time in.
I can get to TNM directly using Chrome. But I must accept the fact that the ssl certificate has a name mismatch and is therefor invalid and agree to go there anyway, and I get a “not secure message in my address bar.
I can not get to TNM with Brave as it will not allow me to go to insecure web site.
dhlii
Just noticed it was sent to my main email address, and got into it that way. No other way worked, and I was happily surprised this one did.
Youza! Donnie has made another perfect phone call! He’s on a roll! What will that rascal do next?
What are you whigged out about ?
Trump did not bribe Reffensberger and he did not threaten him and he has no power over him.
So you are upset that Trump asked for something ?
The GA vote like that of many states was conducted fraudulently and lawlessly.
Raffensberger screwed up big time and ran a lawless election. He should be bitch slapped repeatedly.
Had he and other state executives administered their elections properly – we would not have the mess we have now.
Instead Biden will have the stain of fraud over his entire administration.
The GA constitution – like that of 28 other states requires secret ballots.
Mailin voting does not meet the requirement for secret ballots.
That is not Raffensbergs problem – but it is GA’s and it is those who pushed to get a fraudulent election.
Right now several leading republicans are askjing for a 10 day actual audit of the election.
Not the faux recount GA did – validating that dead people, out of state people, underage people and people using PO boxes and business addresses did not vote in sufficient numbers to change the election.
Not only should that be done – it should have been done BEFORE nov 4.
But it is not going to happen.
If you beleive that Biden won legitimately – you should not be affraid of scrutiny.
Below is a link an article with both a transcript of the call and the audio.
Listen to it yourself – rather than pontificating based on what others have said.
https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis/trump-call-actually-reveals-detail/
Frankly it is Raggensberger that looks bad.
Trump and his people know more about the GA election than the GA Sec of state.
Further it is clear that Reffensbuerger has NOT done many of the things that he claims,
and that he has been actively obstructing efforts to investigate fraud.
One of the big issues in the call was the information on illegitimate votes.
Trump and his team have concrete evidence from public sources.
But only the GA Sec. State can confirm whether the alleged invalid votes were actually cast and counted. GA has those records. They will ultimately be made public eventually.
Trump specifically requested that GA deputize one of his lawyers to allow them to access those records and compare them to Trump’s publicly obtained records to ascertain that the allegedly fraudulent votes were or were not cast.
This is a reasonable request – whether you like that or not. This is information that will ultimately be made public – just not soon. Raffensberger appears to agree but mostly just behaves dodgy. Throughout the call Raffensburger behaves dodgy.
TRump complains because Raffensberger aparently provided the Trump campaign with information on signature matching from Cobb County. But Trump and his lawyers did not want to explore signature matching in Cobb county as even if they prove an issue the number of votes is not sufficient – and Raffensburger knows it. Trump and his team wanted to look into signature matching in Fulton county – which is where everyone knows the problem is.
Regardless, before you make judgements based on some WaPo reporters editorializing.
Read the Transcript or listen to the audio yourself.
I would further note – this was not a Trump call. This was a call between Trump’s legal team and Raffensbergers staff.
And it is Raffensberger that comes of dodgy.
Maybe next time you will read something other than the headlines or the reporters nonsense and actually get to the facts.
Ah, Dave! Predictably Batshit crazy as always! You gave me a good laugh, thanks for that! Priscilla will love your nonsense so you will have an audience.
Meanwhile, none of your predictions came true in 2020 and here comes Biden to sweep out your revolution. Enjoy!
Laugh all you want – but try reading or listening.
Robby you live in an echo chamber. You need to get a clue.
There is an excellent Matt Taibbi editorial
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-echo-chamber-era
Much of the media spent 8 years in a mild lovefest over obama with little real journalism.
Then they were shocked when Trump won in 2016. And spent the next 4 year in a blatantly biased political the sky is falling rant. Now the same media is fawning over Biden even more than Obama.
And you are right there with them.
Few believe the media. nor do they believe you.
You have both burned your credibility.
By lawlessness, fraud or both you have won an election – but you are oblivious to the fact that there are almost 75M voters out there who are very tired of your nonsense – and they are REAL, they are not going away, and they have completely lost any faith in the garbage being sprayed by you and your ilk.
Every utterance of Trump – or anyone else you do not agree with – is not the end of the world,
and every utterance of those you like is not magic fairy dust.
The only people who believe the stuff that you fawn over – are those in an ever shrinking echo chamber.
Rick I managed to get on after receiving the first ‘unsafe’ warning by switching browsers, from Microsoft Edge to Avast. I’ve stopped monitoring or posting on political websites, tho check in occasionally to read your columns. But I’ve concluded it’s a waste of time, energy, and emotional good feeling to continue rational discussion with those whose brains have hardened with Trumpster mind-set. Instead I’m focusing on learning new skills – film & photo editing apps via Affinity Photo and LumaFusion Video; and my cooking repertoire with Xmas present gadgets – sous vide immersion cooker, home bread baking machine, and an air-fryer lid for my Instant Pot.
Humm… warning bell just advised me something cooking in the kitchen is ready. Stay healthy in Trumpless Twenty-Twenty-One,
Jay,
your observations are pretty wise. But you should have reached those conclusions 4 years ago. And the problem is not brain hardened Trumpsters. It is that you have been railing about nothing for years.
It is likely you will get a Trumpless 2021. At best things will be mildly worse than before.
Government is the disease – not the cure.
I beleive a bit less than a year ago you told me that 4M people in the US would die of C19.
We have not seen 1/2 of that in the entire world.
Further according to CDC data 94% of C19 deaths are WITH not FROM C19.
Total US deaths from all causes in 2020 was only a few thousand higher than 2019.
Just like Trump the left has ranted and ranted and demanded power and ruined our lives over nothing.
dhlii
Bravo! Excellent thinking! As you see I have been afflicted with the posting disease but I will be happy to do the same as you after trump lands on the garbage heap of history on Jan 20. Happy New Year!
“So you don’t realize that no court has ruled on the merits of this case, not even SCOTUS”
Wrong. Below I will quote just one example among many of a trump appointed federal judge ruling that guiliani and ellis had failed to provide credible proof to back their claims. As I said, Christie explained why all these lawyers and the clients have not presented credible proof. (I repeat myself. Why do I bother, I am talking to a wall). Democratic media, Republican media, the words of the judges in these cases are no different.
This is going to be a rambling and pretty poorly organized post, full of irritation, sarcasm, and redundancy. I do not have time to put it into better shape. It is what it is. I could summarize it in a short sentence: If trump and Co have compelling evidence where is it? Why as Christie noted, do they talk about it in news conferences in trump world and not present it is court?
Still the 60 suits have been about Something. You think that every one of the 60 lost lawsuits were about something other than the “merits”? Merely who has standing and procedural issues etc.? If so then Why? The trump lawyers filed their suits according to every possible permutation of weird and clearly un Constitutional theories. If they had compelling evidence, where is it? Is it Bidens fault they have not provided it? Is it the fault of the Democratic party? Is it Obama’s fault? Two months have gone by, where is the evidence? There is an obvious answer to this. There is no credible evidence that would convince any judge or any person other than a conspiracy-theory addled trump cultist. This is all trumpian bullshit that was planned out long before any vote was even cast.
Your supposedly innocent and sincere need for some kind of investigation just to ease your mind does not in any way square with what trump and Co. are doing. If they were not trying to blatantly steal the election for the last two months you might find more sympathy for an innocent objective post mortem.
These issues have been answered over and over, trumpworld just doesn’t want to believe the answer. You and the rest of the trump cult will be satisfied with the fairness of this election when trump says he is satisfied. NEVER.
Please do not make me laugh by talking about the integrity of elections since if that was something you actually cared about you would be appalled by trumps actions, just for example, his latest innocent and perfectly legal call to Georgia. When you want to have a serious and sincere discussion you can start by stating that trump has, as usual, walked all over the Constitution and lied his head off. When you sound like Ben Sasse or Liz Cheney then we can talk about this. Until then how seriously do you expect me to take you?
What trump and his lawyers and supporters are trying to get, as well as his obsequious scared and bullied allies in the House and Senate, is NOT an examination for the sake of relieving people’s concerns. What kind of fools do you take democrats and Biden voters for? What trump and his lawyers and allies are up to is a flat out stealing of the election, to cancel the results appoint a trump slate of electors. Just throw out the votes of the voters who choose Biden in the contested states. Alternate slates of electors, suits to let Pence choose which votes to count and which to ignore. This is totally new territory that has no comparison to any other election in our lifetime. It is a freak show run by delusional people. You trumpies take this farce seriously, but do you expect anyone outside of your world to not understand that this is not about some future election” Its about stealing this one. Yes I am ranting. but this farce provides endless reason to.
Dave will be along presently to argue with every molecule of my words adn make the case that that black is white and you, I can be sure, will enjoy and believe his answers, since they will be exactly what you want to believe. .
Here is just one ruling for you to read and ignore the meaning of.
“The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit threw out the case in a scathing 3-0 ruling, saying the Trump campaign “had to plead plausible facts, not just conclusory allegations” and “do more than just allege conclusions” for their case to succeed.
“The Campaign cannot win this lawsuit,” the court noted in its opinion, saying that the campaign’s legal arguments are weak and “cannot succeed.”
The court emphasized that the Trump campaign did not actually allege fraud or provide any evidence of voter fraud in the lawsuit—despite the Trump campaign’s allegations of voter fraud outside of court—and noted “there is no clear evidence of massive absentee-ballot fraud or forgery.”
The number of mail-in ballots affected by the claims in the Trump campaign’s lawsuit is “far smaller” than Biden’s margin of victory, the court notes, and the Trump campaign’s argument that all the election results should be invalidated is “grossly disproportionate” to their actual legal claims.
“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so,” U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, wrote in the court’s ruling. “Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
Now whose fault is that?
Enough already.
“On the merits,” is clearly a term you don’t quite understand.
When a case is decided on its merits, it simply means that the case has been decided by a court on the basis of the facts of the case, while ignoring any emotional or technical arguments, such as standing, mootness, doctrine of laches
So, no 2020 court has heard the evidence, prior to denying or dismissing the case. That doesn’t mean that evidence wasn’t presented, it simply was not considered in the judgement.
Actually I think the Trump campaign won one in Wisconsin. That may have been it.
However, you can gloat about the Georgia runoffs, which look as if they will be won by Warnock and Ossof.
Socialism rising, for sure…
“Socialism rising, for sure…”
No. But we have bigger worries now.
Priscilla, here is a your populist uprising reaching its next logical step. Its everything I told you it would be. I will be kind and presume that you will not defend it or defend trump any further. This is simply a lawless president inciting a lawless mob. Today’s events are Not actually surprising to me.
Priscilla, late in responding because I could not get into the website and WordPress is too hard to follow to respond to comments. Might be user error for all I know! Anyway, you have made many comments concerning the election, fraud, etc.
I do not believe any election is ever 100% accurate, but I also do not believe any election that has millions of votes in state totals is impacted enough to change an outcome of an election. Our chief justice election went down to the wire and after a hand recount of ALL ballots totalling 5.4 million+, the margin was 401 votes. And only about 25 votes were changed in the recount when both parties challenged any of them. And that was including mail in ballots where most anything on those could be challenged.
In regards to Georgia, these elections were very close. And, when reading many of the articles preceding the vote, I began to believe the democrats were going to win based on one situation only. Trump went to Georgia to campaign for the senators about a week before the election and instead of making them the subject, he spent most of his diatribe on himself and the election. After that, they interviewed many centrists who had voted in the Nov election for Trump and GOP candidates and enough as a percentage interviewed said they were tired of Trump that I thought that could cause the turnout to favor the Democrats. That came true when the polls began shifting and then during the election Ossoff received 105,000 fewer votes than in the general election and Perdue received 247,000 fewer votes. The same pattern held when totalling the democrat and republican votes for the special election. Democrats held their turnout better than the GOP and I base that on centrist who picked the best of the worst and voted for Trump.
Trump is the leader of a fringe group of extreme right wing individuals. He always has been. He mobilized that group early in 2016 and barnstormed the early primaries and other candidates, too many in the field splitting funding, began to lose funding and they dropped out. That left voters like me who could not stand the man left with really bad choices. And my thinking about Trump in 2016 was verified on January 6, 2021.
And as a centrist, moderate, whatever, I can separate the man from his actions as I did for many months as I debated with jay, Dave Roby and you about Trump. But once the election was over and he began acting like a Hugo Chavez and then did little to calm the crowd before they headed to the capital, that I could not separate because that went against the constitution and not political positions.
I agree in large part with your comment, Ron.
I have been struggling with my feelings about the 6th. I had a very bad feeling about it, even before it happened, because I knew that 1)there were Trump supporters who went to DC that day , because they believed that they would be heard, and I knew that that would never happen, 2) there were also Trump supporters who believed that they could affect the outcome of the election, with a strong showing, and some obviously believed that a show of force might be the way to do that and 3) that there were left wing agitators who knew that they would be able to “encourage” that latter group.
I think that, if I believed that this was a dangerous situation, there should have been people who were begging and demanding the president to call off the demonstration, knowing that it would end badly.
I actually knew Brian Sicknick, the Capitol policeman who died (he was from South River, a town in NJ not far from my house), and I know that he was a big Trump supporter. So, while not accomplishing anything good, the riot ended the lives of two young people who likely trusted that the demonstration would be non-violent.
Weirdly, my comment posted before I was done with it.
Anyway, I believe that it was wrong for Trump to aggressively question the election, after it became clear that he could not change the result.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be any better for our country. For all the talk of unity, they have made it clear that they don’t want to calm things down, or move us forward. Both sides seem more interested in vengeance than unity. That has become what drives the voter base on both sides, and what drives ratings for the news media.
I’m just generally sad and disgusted with politics in general. As an outsider, Trump had an opportunity to change things for the better, but between his own temperamental instability, and the relentless attempts to drive him from office, he ultimately failed in doing so.
And with that, I think I’m retired from talking politics
Priscilla, please stick around. even for just a sentence or two.
Now for your comments …”I’m just generally sad and disgusted with politics in general. As an outsider, Trump had an opportunity to change things for the better, but between his own temperamental instability, and the relentless attempts to drive him from office, he ultimately failed in doing so.”
I disliked Trump, not because of temperamental instability (which later proved to be correct), but because of temperamental superiority. Had he entered the White House and not responded to every little attack, I dont think he would have ended as he did. But like all bullies from elementary school age to those just before death, they have to be in the position of superiority and when the media and opposing party saw they could get under his skin , they entered the wounds and he let them fester. He was his own worst enemy. As things turned out, he could have kept silent for much of the issues he was attacked on and been in good position for reelection.
As for Biden, it does not matter which person is in that position. Politics of division can bring power. Trump did it gaining the GOP nomination in 2016 and Biden did it in 2020. Politics of moderation is not going to be on the radar anywhere. Just today I heard on day one he will repeal the permit for the keystone pipeline. So other than giving Buffetts railroad a huge boost in stock market valuation because the oil will still come in, but by rail, closing down that pipeline is nothing but divisive politics when one looks at the map of the USA and all the lines under the ground already.
Maybe someday someone will pay back the liberals that want this one shut down by shutting down the Colonial pipeline that feeds New York their oil from New Orleans. If it benefits the liberals, they are all for it. If it does not, they are against it. Maybe they should have to feel the same impact as those that there actions impacts.
I’ll still pop in. You and I have been discussing politics for many years now, and I’ve definitely been influenced by your knowledge of politics. ( remember I used to be a neo-con? You convinced me that the military-industrial complex really does push endless wars). So, I need to check in now and then, to get your perspective!
As far as stopping the Keystone Pipeline, that’s Biden appeasing the radical environmental base, at the expense of America’s energy independence, which is not an issue that the Democrat base cares about. It’s an easy EO for him, and we’ll all pay more for gas and air travel, but it’s politically expedient, because, as you say it plays to the divisive policies that drive electoral politics.
Trumps troops have now overrun the Capital and forced its evacuation. Meanwhile trump was on the offensive against his VP for following the Constitution”
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” Trump tweeted.”
My question to you Priscilla or anyone, are we Great Again yet?
Nope, A country that can not conduct elections according to its own laws and constitutions is not great.
“In what could be interpreted as an attempt to stoke the flames of a Capitol mob which has begun to disperse, President Trump sent a tweet at around 6 p.m. in which he reiterated the false claim that the election was stolen and encouraged his supporters to “remember this day” going forward.”
“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,” he tweeted. “Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
Is the meaning of the word “patriot” really now to be “violent deranged right wing scumbag”? Another word lost.
Remove little Hitler by impeachment or the 25th ASAP. His brownshirts I can hope are arrested and jailed and charged appropriately.
Charge trump with sedition.
We all saw in 2016 the consequences of a lack of public trust in elections.
A substantial portion of people beleived that the outcome of the election had been changed as a consequence of nebulously framed collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
That doubt resulted in a great deal of violence both immediately and over the next several years.
Ultimately every element of these claims was not only proven false but actual russian disinformation – ultimately it Was Clinton who was hopefully unwittingly working with Russian spies to influence the outcome of the election.
Regardless, we still spent 4 years debunking that left wing nut conspiracy theory.
You can come down off your hypocritical high horse and accept the fact that people are entitled to distrust elections and the burden of proving them rests with government.
Back to the Hilter and nazi references I see.
Sorry, they better fit the left.
“While the other cable news networks devoted live coverage to the Senate returning back to the Capitol floor to debate over the Electoral College vote, Fox News instead turned to far-right host Tucker Carlson for a monologue explicitly telling Trump supporters they are not to blame for the violence.
“Millions of American sincerely believe the last election was fake. You can dismiss them as crazy, call them conspiracy theorists, kick them off Twitter, that won’t change their minds,” he blared. “Rather than try to change their minds to convince them and reassure them the system is real democracy works as he would do if you cared about the country, our new leaders will try to silence them. What happened today will be used by people taking power to justify stripping you with the rights you were born with as un-American.”
Carlson, framing reaction to the riots as a means for elites to strip Americans of their rights, then finished his monologue with this thought: “It is not your fault, it is their fault!”
This is Sedition. Tucker Carlson is a traitor, not a patriot. His show should end along with the shows of all the other conspiracy peddlers on Fox, whose theme yesterday was that Antifa did this, these were not trump supporters, Carlson should be charged with sedition.
I hope that in the coming days Fox news loses all of its advertisers.
I doubt the right wing violence is over. I suspect its just beginning.
Rather than quote Carlson – you should actually read his words.
So king as there is no trust in government – you will have violence.
How do you think that the american revolution came about ?
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”
The words above from our declaration of independence are no different from those of Carlson.
“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.1 Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government.” – Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Paris, January 30, 17872
“Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the 1st. condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it’s evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. ”
Jefferson
I commend the sane voices in the GOP who (finally) surfaced yesterday, the majority of GOP senators. I commend all the GOP election figures such as Kemp and Raffensperger who did their Constitutional duties. They performed them bravely under tremendous threat from their insane POTUS (and his cult followers) a narcissistic rich boy playing populist who has been coddled and worshiped by the majority of GOP voters until he has become a full fledged monster.
As to the 5 GOP Senators who continued to fire this flame this insurrection, they are disgraced and do not deserve to sit in the Senate. They are joined by 138 GOP false “patriots” in the House.
There will almost certainly be further violence from the right-wing trump cult members. The GOP will be out of power until they can convince their base to live in reality and to know the difference between right and wrong again.
One Republican, Rep. Louie Gohmert, said earlier this week that a court loss in his efforts to overturn the election sent the message to people, “You have to go to the streets and be as violent as antifa.”
Words have meaning, power.
Here is a quote from Dave a few days back:
“Raffensberger screwed up big time and ran a lawless election. He should be bitch slapped repeatedly.
Raffensperger is in danger of much worse than that in trumps lawless version of America Dave.
This is a turning point, some part of this lunacy has now been so completely discredited that no one besides people like Cruz, Hawley, Tucker Carlson and trumps elite legal team could be unaware that the jig is up and not just with the rigged election trumpscam. Unfortunately more very grim violent events are a very real possibility and both the far left and trump right are capable of them. I never excused or tolerated the anarchist/antifa rioting and always wanted the perpetrators severely punished so I am in position to say that everyone involved in political violence needs to be charged and severely punished. Politicians and pundits inciting it need to lose their positions, at the least.
“A United States Capitol Police officer died Thursday night from injuries sustained when he engaged with a pro-Trump mob that descended on the U.S. Capitol the day before.”
Sixty police officers were injured, 16 were hospitalized. A prior report stated that “At least 14 DC Metropolitan Police officers were injured, including one who was hospitalized after suffering serious injuries when he was pulled into a crowd and assaulted, Police Chief Robert Contee said. One officer had significant facial injuries from being struck by a projectile, and another officer was hospitalized after being pepper-sprayed.” It was also reported that some of the protesters had metal pipes that they used to beat officers over the head with.
Some of the key trump inner circle who participated in the events of the last 60 days, as well as several FOX personalities, were still claiming that the mob was really antifa as of yesterday.
Trump lit this fuse with large input from his elite legal team. Guiliani, Paxton the corrupt and Constitutionally incompetent Texas Attorney General, populist firebrand Senator Hawley all personally participated at the festival of lies and incitement that proceeded the populist mob attacking the Capital police.
This is how history will remember trump and his era, that and 350, 000 Covid deaths while his administration turned to people like Dr Atlas for medical guidance.
I am doing my little part by recording it here.
I and many on the left, not to mention the center and right, have always been able to understand who trump is. He was not a different person ever in his public life he has always been the same person. People have turned their heads and shut their eyes because they thought they could win something through him. Today, increasing numbers of people on the right are finally understanding or admitting to understanding who trump is.
The National Review has seen a lot of honest understanding of trump’s character for all of trumps presidency and before it as well. So they are not just jumping on the anti trump bandwagon at the last second. Bravo to them. For that they have faced ferocious attacks from their readers in the comments section. I have read them. But somehow they have stayed alive, although Noah Goldberg had to go. Here is an excerpt from a column by Jim Garaghty today.
“…Notice Trump couldn’t even bring himself to mention Joe Biden, much less congratulate him.
If Trump had made these kind of remarks . . . say, back on December 11, when the Supreme Court declined to take the Texas case, the country would be in a better position today. We wouldn’t have seen Wednesday’s violence on Capitol Hill, which has now resulted in five deaths, including U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick, who succumbed to his injuries Thursday. He was reportedly hit repeatedly with a fire extinguisher.
If Donald Trump had conceded a month ago, the president of Zimbabwe would not be telling the world, “the United States has no moral right to punish another nation under the guise of upholding democracy.” Chinese state-run media would not be comparing the chaos on Capitol Hill to the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Russian politicians would not be scoffing, “The celebration of democracy is over. America no longer forges that path, and consequently has lost its right to define it. Much less force it on others.”
No, the damage is already done, and a three-minute video of the president reading the appropriate words from a teleprompter, mitigates very little of that damage.
We have seen brief moments of normalcy from Trump before, and we know they never last. Each of the past four years, he’s given either a joint address to Congress or the State of the Union address. Each night he’s stuck to the script, talked about policy proposals and accomplishments and paid tribute to great Americans, and the night goes well. Some people wonder if Trump is “growing into the job” or sees the responsibilities of the office with a new sense of seriousness and purpose . . . and then in a day or two, he reverts back to furiously tweeting, denouncing members of his own cabinet, calls a porn star “horseface,” and his usual circus of chaos.
Last night, the fringiest corners of the world of diehard Trump supporters insisted the video of the president making the statement had to be a computer-generated “deepfake.” That’s paranoid and conspiratorial nonsense, but that doesn’t mean the video isn’t “fake” in a different sense. There’s little reason to think that Trump will remain committed to “a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power” for very long, and there’s every reason to think he’ll revert back to insisting the election was stolen and a great crime was committed against him.
‘No One Seems to be Certain how Mr. Trump Spends his Days’
Peggy Noonan has a scorching column that will run in this weekend’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, but I want to focus on one section:
As for prudence, Mr. Trump is a sick, bad man and therefore, as president, a dangerous one. He has grown casually bloody-minded, nattering on about force and denouncing even his own vice president as a coward for not supporting unconstitutional measures. No one seems to be certain how Mr. Trump spends his days. He doesn’t bother to do his job. The White House is in meltdown. The only thing that captures his interest is the fact that he lost, which fills him with thoughts of vengeance.
What is Trump doing all day? His official schedule notices, which appear to be dictated by him, say only, “‘President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings.” The White House refuses to specify the who, what, when, where, and why of any of these meetings.
For much of the past four years, despite grumbles about long stretches of “executive time,” Trump was at least in front of the cameras on a nearly daily basis — cabinet meetings, photo ops, rallies, televised grip-and-grin handshake meetings with foreign leaders in the Oval Office, award ceremonies at the White House, etc. Since Election Day, the president’s public schedule has been minimal.
It’s not as if the country doesn’t have real problems to address right now. For the first time, more than 4,000 Americans succumbed to the coronavirus in a single day. The vaccine rollout is infuriatingly slow and complicated. Russian hackers have gotten into the computer systems of the Department of Justice and the U.S. court system.
Trump keeps insisting he must remain as president, but he shows zero interest in doing the job of a president.
Trump’s Easily Overlooked Attack on the Supreme Court
It is easily overlooked in all the other events of Wednesday, but at the “Save America” rally, Trump accused the entire Supreme Court — including, presumably, his own appointees — of ruling against him out of personal animus and a desire to be popular:
The Supreme Court, they rule against me so much. You know why? Because the story is — I haven’t spoken to any of them, any of them, since virtually they got in. But the story is that they’re my puppet. That they’re puppets. And now that the only way they can get out of that, because they hate that, it’s not good on the social circuit. And the only way they get out is to rule against Trump. So ‘let’s rule against Trump,’ and they do that.
Lots of presidents have disagreed with Supreme Court decisions, sometimes vehemently. No other president has ever come close to accusing his own appointees of ruling a certain way to fit in at Georgetown cocktail parties.
I got in using the Chrome browser on my laptop, but I still haven’t gotten to the root of the problem because WordPress has no live tech support for free accounts. Looks like they’re forcing me to upgrade.
Anyway, I’ll probably write at length about this tumultuous month after Biden’s inauguration. For now, I’m glued to the TV.
My initial response to the mayhem was that Trump should be arrested and removed by whatever means necessary. Now I wonder if he really intended to launch an insurrection. (The man isn’t capable of thinking in terms of consequences.) What if he simply wanted his followers to demonstrate in front of the Capitol? Still objectionable, but not as seditious as the invasion of a sacred national symbol (not to mention the home of both houses of Congress).
But here’s the crux of the matter: whether he intended the assault or not, any president with an ounce of conscience would have denounced the storming of the Capitol IMMEDIATELY. Instead, Trump waited a few hours, coddled the rioters with his words, and simply urged them to go home. I suspect he enjoyed the spectacle, and that puts him beyond the pale.
Hi Rick, According to Ben Sasse you are correct, trump was enjoying the spectacle and did not understand why his aides were not.
It is my opinion that the violent response from the right is just beginning. Its also my opinion that many republicans will support more violence if it happens, after all many republicans already support the Capital invasion, which I admit shocks me, I did not expect them to go so far. Five dead including a cop, guns, molotov cocktails, looting, vandalism, Murder the Press graffiti, pipe bombs, it all just fine with between 20 and 40% of republicans according two polls released in the last two days.
When a right wing militia planned an armed siege of the Michigan capital to kidnap the Governor after trump had attacked her and his followers chanted throw her in jail, to his beaming approval and trump then doubled down on his attacks on the Governor that was pretty well forgotten in a week and I would not say that many conservatives took it very seriously. So, now its just the new normal for the right. This is the future, armed right wingers who feel that it is their holy task to attack the government in the name of the Constitution. This is the party of law and order, the party of those who love the Constitution. All set into a frothing insurrection over a loony conspiracy theory from the POTUS about a rigged election, in fact the same conspiracy theory he spread in 2016.
When trump is gone, tucker carlson et al will take over the work of inciting, in fact they have already.
This gets worse before it gets better.
“When a right wing militia planned an armed siege of the Michigan capital to kidnap the Governor”
No a bunch of drunks said some stupid things and got arrested.
Rick, have not read all the comments past Jan 8th so you might have addressed this. I decided to check this site today jan18 and had no problem accessing through Google as I had in the past. But I have chrome and it was giving me the unsafe site message and would not let me in before.
These are our “patriots”. I will note that there was a gallows with a noose as part of the festivities of the trump protest. These people literally truly believed that Pence could make trump president again. Among those who believe that is Jenna Ellis, who tweeted after the riot on the 6th that she was deeply disappointed in Pence. This “elite lawyer” has that level of understanding of the Constitution. Giuliani has the same level. This is not some small fringe group in the GOP, its half of the GOP voters or more. The latest polls show that GOP voters believe that Biden instigated this instead of trump by a 50 to 25% margin. That is how wide and deep this lunacy is.
I believe that the majority of GOP senators now truly understand how far this has gone and regret coddling end empowering trump. But they do not represent the majority of their party in this thinking. Carlson ‘s latest rhetoric is that the GOP politicians despise their voters. By this he means Pence, he means even Graham and of course he means Sasse and Romney. Will FOX keep providing him a platform to incite revolution withouut of course directly saying so? I hope they won’t but I think they will.
There is going to be an attempt at a violent right wing revolution. Perhaps the FBI can get ahead of it and stop much of it. If it escapes containment it will be bloody but it will fail because there are enough good and sane people in this country to stop it. If it happens it will leave the GOP in shattered disgraced pieces. You would think GOP voters woudl be thinking ahead, but a very large element in the GOP are not, they have bought the trump and Carlson lies.
Here is an excerpt from this article:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/08/us/online-extremism-inauguration-capitol-invs/index.html
“It isn’t just the fringe elements who have gotten swept up in the current fervor. Mingling with the crowd of militia groups, white nationalists and high-profile conspiracy theorists on the Capitol lawn on Wednesday were other citizens who made the trip to challenge the certification.
One was Texas resident and former mayoral candidate Jenny Cudd, whose campaign slogan was “Jenny for Mayor.”
After railing against what she described as voter fraud and a stolen election, she called for the death of those who have committed treason.
“All we need is one public hanging, and then people will start acting right — kind of like it would be useful if we still had the firing squad for the death penalty,” Cudd said. “We shall see if there will be a public hanging in our future because it is still considered a valid form of death for treason.”
Cudd posted a video the night before the protests, where she talked about how the next day was going to be a “ruckus.”
“I don’t know what y’all think about a revolution, but I’m all for it,” she said. “Nobody actually wants war, nobody wants bloodshed, but the government works for us and unfortunately it appears that they have forgotten that, quite a lot, so if a revolution is what it takes then so be it.”
Right-wing news network OANN posted a photo of Cudd on Twitter Wednesday afternoon showing her inside the Capitol, wearing a Trump flag around her as a cape. And that evening, she posted a video from her hotel, where she drank a beer and choked back tears as she took her followers through what had happened that day.
“When Pence betrayed us is when we decided to storm the Capitol,” she said.
On Friday, Cudd told a local TV news outlet that she did nothing illegal.
“I pretty well walked up the steps and then there was an open door to the Capitol,” she said. “I personally did not tear down anything, destroy anything.”
Today’s developments: a Twitter ban for trump. Its strong medicine it will inflame the fires, there will be screaming about the right to free speech but I am for it. It is not a violation of the first amendment. There is no first amendment right to foment revolution on a privately owned platform. As so often is the case, it turns out that many conservatives do not have the most basic first idea of Constitutional issues. They will scream that this makes them even angrier and will make them behave even worse, but really, how can it be worse? A majority of GOP voters support what happened on the 6th and deny the most basic facts about the roles of trump, his lawyers, his congressional allies, and most of the House leadership. So, war has now been declared by trump nation and is supported by a majority of the right. If a private company decides to take action to slow the incitement to a violent revolution, that is a good move and not a violation of some imaginary first amendment rights to use a non government platform. God forbid anyone should ever say no to the right (or the left when they act batshit crazy).
Its pointless to pretend that this is not already a sort of low grade but real civil war, with one side armed to the teeth and ready to attack the Michigan and other state governments and now the Capital and the orderly transition of power, even its own Vice President. Nothing anyone does or says is going to deflect a huge number of conservatives from supporting this insanity. The right is going to act on its delusional conspiracy theories and faulty understanding of the Constitution and this is going to play itself out. A twitter ban for an insane lawless seditious president and his insane lawless seditious associates is a long overdue response.
Impeachment. I can see both arguments. Its not practical in this time period and is divisive. We should be putting our efforts into fighting COVID and supporting the economy. But, are we supposed to accept that trump is allowed to lead a lawless assault on the Constitution week after week, month after month? Just wait for it to go away, leave it unpunished and therefore accepted? I would lean to the idea of discussing impeachment but not carrying it out. He ought to be impeached but really, its is too late. Let him face criminal penalties after he is out of office.
Roby, why conservatives, such as the owner of Parler, expects a privately owned company to allow them to do and say anything is laughable to me. They cant make their own rules, they are owned by far left liberals that want nothing more than to see conservatives relegated to second class citizens as they are in California. If conservatives want a free space to make comments, then they should also fund the companies that provide the server support to get their messages out.
Remember, I have a lot of libertarian in me and this is one issue that the constitution does not insure. The 1st amendment only protects citizens freedom of speech from government control. It does not protect free speech from being blocked by private companies.
But these private companies should also not be protected by section 230.
The actions of Amazon and Big Tech have driven the Republican party into the world of real free speech real decentralized systems.
We will see conservatives relying more on P2P and bitcoin.
Tech Stock has taken a $51B hit.
The increased censorship is a short term problem that is unsustainable.
Nor is it targeted solely at the right – Big Tech has suddlenly decided to shutdown Antifa – they were useful this summer, they are not now.
But anyone thinks Antifa is gone is bonkers.
Regardless the news about people getting cancelled and censored is not mostly from the right. The left has been purging its own for almost a decade.
I am not worried about this.
Peer 2 Peer systems are a big deal – they can not be shutdown – not by Big Tech, not by government. We will also see a surge in Crypto Currencies – we already are.
I do not care what happens regarding impeachment – it is a lose lose proposition for the left.
Chenney and the few republicans who voted for it in the house will pay a political price – they do not represent the future of the Republican party.
You do not seem to grasp that – Whether we like it or not Trumpism is the future of the GOP.
It has a strong appeal to the voters that Republicans need to gain – like working class minorities. Democrats are increasingly becoming the very thing they have spent the past half century attacking – the party of the 1%, of the over educated elites, of the IYI’s – intelectual yet idiots, Of Big Tech and Big Business, of Wall Street, of Big Pharma…..
The democratic party is intellectually on the far left, but its money and power are corporatist.
That is politically unstable – it does not matter which part of the democratic party prevails.
How are you planning to “fight covid” ? Nothing that you have done works.
BTW there is a growing body of data to support that.
Vaccines are the route to herd immunity – that approach you have been poo-pooing for 9 months.
All the rest did not work – and how did you get Vaccines in record time ?
Free markets and Trump – the things you hate.
I thought we were in Atlass Shrugged int eh Obama admin.
We are up to our eyeballs now.
Regardless, I heard the Biden people talk about how now the science people were in charge.
Really – how well did the “scientific approach” work in California ? New York ?
Even China is aparently seeing a new spike with several cities with more than 10M people locked down.
Regardless, you want to roll up your sleaves and fight Covid – what are you planning to do ?
What has been shown to work – produce actual facts and data.
Your still smoking that nonsense that government is actually capable of doing the impossible.
The trump nightmare is over!!!!! An eloquent and 100% not senile or mentally declining decent American, Joe Biden, has replaced a delusional destructive child, a man who was always obviously unfit to be president, a man who history will portray as the worst president the US has ever had. Thank God!
May no one like trump ever become president again. May the GOP struggle and succeed in purging itself of the evil and insanity that has powered it during the trump debacle and become a respectable party again populated by people who can tell right from wrong and truth from right wing nut conspiracy theories. If not, its going to be one party control of the POTUS, Senate and House.
Roby, I was scanning through channels this morning and Meet the Press was on. Just watched about two minutes. Chuck Todd was presenting a study they did In the study there were 68% of the voters that identified with either the democrats or republicans. 32% stated independent, no actual preference. He did not mention “leans toward” in that group.
Anyway, they did further study and 17% identified as Trump Republicans, 17% Establishment Republicans, 17% Bernie-Elizabeth democrats and 17% establishment democrats. His point was the even divide between the splinters in the parties. How Biden can make things happen by looking at further analysis and what percent of each group accepts compromise to achieve certain outcomes.
My point in responding to you is your comment about the GOP purging itself of the evil that powered the Trump debacle. Remember, one can love a relative and not like them. Brothers, sisters, parents can have problems that family members do not accept, but there is still a family love. That same acceptance can happen in politics.One can like the policies for the most part and dislike the person. (Until something like Jan 6th occurs). But many of those that identified as Trump GOP could be some that liked his policies and disliked the man and the final act on the capital. So ridding the party of those people may not be hard, just as the democrats need to rid their party of the fringe that supports all the radicals that take over streets, cities, burn buildings, etc. The Bernie-Elizabeth faction.
What we need in the moderates to work in making good decisions and get rid of all the identity politics on both the right and left.
And Dave, I don’t need any response from you because I know you do not believe Trump did anything bad, he did not act like Hugo Chavez, his defenders are not brainwashed radicals and he should be able to stand for reelection in 2024. I do not and will never believe any of that. Like I said, I supported many of his policies, some more than you because I separate specific actions into their own category and do not mix them all up like ingredients in a recipe, but the man went off the deep end and should never be able to run again. That one act makes him unable to hold that office again, but does not tarnish many of the good things he did, like putting the screws to China in his FAIR free trade war. Hopefully the senate will convict and make sure it can’t happen.
Ron sad to say, Dave is not an exception in thinking that trump did no wrong. Americans as a whole strongly believe he did wrong but not GOP and trump voters, only 15% believe he did anything wrong.They not only love trumps policies they love the man himself, his character, his behaviors. No amount of sensible words from people like Sasse and Cheney will change the nature of the GOP now. It will not win the POTUS again fro a very long time. I will contribute every cycle as much as I can to Dem candidates. I do not want the GOP to have any success at all at any level ever again in my lifetime. The Dems can hold 50-54 seats in the Senate in the future and that will be insufficient to go very far left according to my ideas of what very far left is. I am sorry for people like yourself but the GOP is broken.
What has Trump said that is more “wrong” than this ?
Sorry Robby – democrats have normalized violent rhetoric, “incitement”.
Even you just refered to me as “the enemy” – you are free to do so. But you can not then claim that I am somehow “wrong” to respond as if you are my enemy.
Democrats have normalized political violence. There is a long history of attacks on the Capital – over a century, The capital has been bombed before – by the left. There have been gun battles in the capital before – from the left.
You say most americans think Trump is “wrong” – for what ? Acting like a democrat ?
In July 2009 Democrats controlled 58 seats in the Senate. They controlled 256 seats in the house.
And you honestly think that they are better situated right now ?
It is OK to murder protestors – as long as they are not on the left.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/09/09/i-see-nothing-wrong-with-it-rhode-island-professor-defends-murder-of-right-wing-protester-in-portland/
On Jan 20, 2017 as he took Office Trump’s approval rating was 56%
On Jan 19, 2021 as he left Office Trump’s approval rating was 51%
On Jan 20, 2021 as he took Office Biden’s approval rating was 48%
That is funny stuff, trump at 51% approval on Jan 20. That funny man Rassmussen. Meanwhile Silver had trump down by 20 on his last day in his composite.
I always enjoy it when the enemy has bad intelligence and believes it. I have doubts that the GOP wins the POTUS again in my lifetime. I even doubt they will hold the Senate or House again for many years.
Robby – Rassmussen was accurate in 2016, They were accurate in 2020.
Further Rassmussen is the ONLY daily tracking poll that is left.
Silver is not a poll. He has a poor track record. He was horribly wrong in 2016, and wrong in 2020.
This is why democrats are in far far more trouble than republicans.
This is also why republicans will remain unified and democrats will not.
As YOU noted – everyone who does not agree with you is “the enemy”.
Guess what “we” know that. “You” have made it clear – the only unity that can be acheived with the left is victory or capitulation.
When violent right wing attacks on government are accepted and approved policy of the GOP then yes the GOP is the enemy. You have chosen this path. I did not previously think this way. You and your team of violent right wing nuts are going to lose and lose, I don’t make too many predictions but I will make this one.
So what is a “violent right wing nut” ?
What is it that these people beleive that puts them at the fringe ?
Does beleiving the election was stolen make you a “right wing nut” ? 46% of the country beleives that.
Does a lack of trust in government make you a “right wing nut” ? about 60% of people do not trust government.
I would ask you to think – are these protestors the “tip of the spear” ? or the “lunatic fringe” ?
If you beleive they are the latter – then how do you distinguish them from the majority of americans who do not trust government ?
I keep trying to get at the same question over and over. And you keep ducking it.
what part of “Trumpism” is actually unpopular ? Why do you think your “enemy” is weak ?
Twitter has suspended the account of the Chinese Embassy in the US over a tweet defending the Chinese policy toward Uighurs.
Chinese treatment of Uighurs is genocidal. But Twitter is wrong to censor the chinese government or anyone else.
But atleast the left can get credit for being consistent in their idiotic censorship policies
Biden brought 26,000 NG troops to DC for the innauguation
He left them housed in parking garages.
Trump opened his DC hotel to men in uniform
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/21/national-guard-troops-vacate-capitol-461220
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who wold pervert the Constitution”:
Abraham Lincoln.
Again – 1984 is a warning, not a howto manual.
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/01/25/impeachment-mania-hits-universities-students-are-facing-trials-or-removals-over-political-views/
So, I have been fascinated by this GameStop short squeeze story.
On the one side, you have the hedgefund short sellers, who legally destroy value for profit, and have been doing so for years, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
On the other, a Reddit subgroup of investors who noticed that the store in which they spent a lot of time, as up and coming gamer nerds, was being shorted by several big hedge funds . And not just shorted for a quick few billion, but completely driven to a penny stock, for tens of billions. So, they decided they would buy GameStop stock, against the short positions. Hundreds of thousands of little guys, many economically destroyed themselves by the neverending lockdowns, and deciding to used their stimulus checks to make some serious dough.
Powerful Wall St billionaires up against unemployed, small time investors, and the little guys were winning big, driving up the GameStop stock from $4 to over $300 a share. And guess what? A couple of hedge funds were losing billions, and began squealing that this wasn’t fair! Funny, since it’s not only 100% legal, but what hedge funds have been doing for decades, borrowing stock from retail investors to cover their short positions.
The NASDAQ halted trading on the the stock (along with some other shortsell targets), and when that didn’t work, they pressured RobinHoodApp.com, the internet app that a majority of the little guys were using, to block any small investor from trading on the stocks that hedgefunds are shorting. Which Robinhood did, and was immediately hit with a class action suit.
That wasn’t enough either, so Wall Street got the whole Reddit message board that sarted the squeeze shut down for ~ wait for it ~ RACISM! Funny, how that works.
When a small, elite group in any area, politics or finance, education, or any other, tries to hoard all of the power and the wealth, without allowing anyone outside of their circle to participate, it eventually leads to populist backlashes. At that point, those in power have to do one of two things: 1) share some of their power and wealth, or 2) crush the ability of the little people to fight for themselves. We see #2 playing out now, not only in politics, but in finance.
Well once again I seem to be on the wrong side of the issue because the people who own the server Discord where the Reddit subgroup “Wall Street Bets” maintains their group were unable to control a small portion of the Reddit group that were spewing racists and hateful speech. Discord warned the group, they did not listen, so the whole group within the subgroup WSB’s got blocked.
I kind of relate this to the teacher that tells the kids to be quite or they are all going to have to do “X” (something they dont like). Then a few in the class keep it up and the whole class ends up doing “X:”.
When someone owns a company, they have the right to make the rules. If you dont like the rules, then find another company or start your own and then you can say whatever you want. Seems like the Reddit group has done exactly that.
That is the way life is in a country based on our constitution. No where in that document does it say anyone has the right to force anyone else to do anything they do not want to do, including private companies. Now government is free to force you to do whatever it wants you to do unless it is banned by the Bill of rights or the courts rule it is illegal. But only the government is banned from making laws against freedom of speech.
had the few not made their racist remarks, then Discord may have found some other reason for banning Reddit subgroup, but it may have been much harder and much more apparent that the money that controls America was controlling Discord and forcing them to ban Reddit subgroup.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/27/22253251/discord-bans-the-r-wallstreetbets-server
Now all I have to say about this issue with the Reddit group taking on the hedge funds is more power to ya’. There is always a loser for every winner and if this small group of individuals can put it to the hedge fund guys manipulating the system with huge short positions that most always drive down stock prices, good for you! But the individual I feel sorry for is the one who gets caught in the middle of these two manipulating groups, does not do any research, invests money thinking its a good bet and next week loses their shirt when the stock price plummets after these other two groups bail out.
Ron, in my mind, it was far too coincidental that WSB just happened to get shut down for “hate speech,” in the middle of this trading chaos. There were 2.5 million users in that subgroup (now close to 6 million), and, oddly, Discord never found a problem until now?
As far as the Redditors beating the hedge funders at their own game, I am pretty sure that this will be a one off. For one thing, the Redditors will likely be accused of “collusion,” to manipulate the market. And, while that may be technically true, it’s exactly what hedge fund managers do every single day. Now, the SEC will put in place rules to make sure that online brokers shut down any potential run on a stock that Wall Street is shorting. They’ll claim that it’s for everyone’s welfare that an overvalued company is not being artificially pumped up.
Meanwhile, the hedge funders will be allowed to “ pump and dump” with impunity.
David may have beaten Goliath in this case, but it won’t be permitted to happen again.
Priscilla, it was not coincidence. I think any website that allows comments from viewers, even The New Moderate, would be much more aware now of comments being made on their platform and would be blocking those that would never had been given a second look at before. I look at comments now on Twitter and there will be 10 comments and then a banner about the comments that follow have some objectionable or questionable content (not sure exactly what it is), but looking at the content I wonder how did that ever make it under the warning.
There is a guy that owns Weatherbell.com that does comments on Twitter and Facebook and he does not question global warming, but he gives all the atmospheric and meteorological reasons why CO2 is not the major culprit, ties it all to historical and meteorological data and much of his comments are either blocked or warning labels. Because it now does not fit the liberal agenda.
So as for the Wall Street Bets gang sticking it to the hedge funds, as long as there are hedges, then there is no way the SEC can block large purchases of stock to protect against the shorts. If they did that, they would be the ones manipulating the market, not the longs v shorts. If this group is doing it, who knows if some other large investment groups are not doing the same?
I really think it will be hard to stop this completely because I think it has been going on for years, especially with computerized transactions where millions are bought and sold daily. It just happened this group had too many loud mouths bringing attention to what they were doing and the SEC had to limit their activities because to much volatility was being injected into the stocks at that point in time.
And the ones that bring up someones race, religion or politics in an investment group like this are total idiots and I would be the first to tell them to shut up or your out!