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On May 29 2021 13:32 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On May 29 2021 13:26 NewSunshine wrote:On May 29 2021 13:23 Introvert wrote:
Amusingly enough, that's kind of how I feel the whole capitol incident is being treated! I mean go ahead, run on "1/6" in 2022 and we'll see what happens I guess. To Democrats nowadays everything a Republican does is and end-of-days level event and it looks the same way from the other side. So you think it was no big deal that violent insurgents attacked the capitol, and that Republicans were live tweeting the locations of Democrats in the Senate at the time? Show nested quote +On May 29 2021 13:27 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 29 2021 13:08 Introvert wrote:On May 29 2021 13:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 29 2021 12:51 Introvert wrote:
The ridiculousness of the responses aside, the idea that a commission with staffers chosen by Pelosi et al., who have already decided they know so much about that day that they impeached the president because of it, would be a neutral fact-finding operation is obviously nonsense. Might as well let a congressional committee do it, where we already know these are politicians with their minds made up. I thought the commission was going to be chosen in a completely bipartisan manner? Although, to be fair, I suppose your criticism applies equally well to the many Republicans who dismissed the insurrection as "no big deal". The staffers who do most of the work would not be, so far as I know. And the lead GOP sponsor of the House bill was someone who voted to impeach. Democrats are trying to echo the "9/11 commission" when these two events aren't even in the same universe. Agreed. One of those two events was an act of terrorism performed by foreign agents who were trying to undermine our democracy, while the other was an act of terrorism performed by Americans who were trying to undermine our democracy. The former event united us, while the latter event continued to divide us. Depending on the criteria, it's not really hard to make one look way more devastating than the other. For example, the body count "win" goes to 9/11, while the central instigator "win" goes to 1/6. And yes, having the president / leader of a major political party orchestrate a coup as he continues to try and retain power that he lost in a fair election is wayyy more undermining than OBL's attack, especially since tens of millions of Americans still support Trump. Again, I have no love lost for the guilty in this matter and as I said at the time they should all have the book thrown at them. But both of the above posts are detached from reality, and I was really hoping I wouldn't find that here, but apparently I have. Yes, I'm going to go way out on a limb and say 9/11 was worse for America, by whatever metric you use, than the capitol riot. If that's not agreed upon then I suppose we are done here.
If you're going to accuse everyone of being detached from reality without explaining why, and without demonstrating any kind of understanding of what happened, or even your own interpretation, then yes, we're done. If you want to argue a point with people, you're free to provide substance and do so.
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On May 29 2021 13:32 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On May 29 2021 13:26 NewSunshine wrote:On May 29 2021 13:23 Introvert wrote:
Amusingly enough, that's kind of how I feel the whole capitol incident is being treated! I mean go ahead, run on "1/6" in 2022 and we'll see what happens I guess. To Democrats nowadays everything a Republican does is and end-of-days level event and it looks the same way from the other side. So you think it was no big deal that violent insurgents attacked the capitol, and that Republicans were live tweeting the locations of Democrats in the Senate at the time? Show nested quote +On May 29 2021 13:27 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 29 2021 13:08 Introvert wrote:On May 29 2021 13:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 29 2021 12:51 Introvert wrote:
The ridiculousness of the responses aside, the idea that a commission with staffers chosen by Pelosi et al., who have already decided they know so much about that day that they impeached the president because of it, would be a neutral fact-finding operation is obviously nonsense. Might as well let a congressional committee do it, where we already know these are politicians with their minds made up. I thought the commission was going to be chosen in a completely bipartisan manner? Although, to be fair, I suppose your criticism applies equally well to the many Republicans who dismissed the insurrection as "no big deal". The staffers who do most of the work would not be, so far as I know. And the lead GOP sponsor of the House bill was someone who voted to impeach. Democrats are trying to echo the "9/11 commission" when these two events aren't even in the same universe. Agreed. One of those two events was an act of terrorism performed by foreign agents who were trying to undermine our democracy, while the other was an act of terrorism performed by Americans who were trying to undermine our democracy. The former event united us, while the latter event continued to divide us. Depending on the criteria, it's not really hard to make one look way more devastating than the other. For example, the body count "win" goes to 9/11, while the central instigator "win" goes to 1/6. And yes, having the president / leader of a major political party orchestrate a coup as he continues to try and retain power that he lost in a fair election is wayyy more undermining than OBL's attack, especially since tens of millions of Americans still support Trump. Again, I have no love lost for the guilty in this matter and as I said at the time they should all have the book thrown at them. But both of the above posts are detached from reality, and I was really hoping I wouldn't find that here, but apparently I have. Yes, I'm going to go way out on a limb and say 9/11 was worse for America, by whatever metric you use, than the capitol riot. If that's not agreed upon then I suppose we are done here.
The standard of "Republicans will only investigate events caused by other Republicans if they are objectively as tragic as 9/11" is pretty silly. Should we be putting that on red hats now? "Trump 2024: Technically not as bad as bin Laden!" "Trump 2028: At least I'm not Hitler!"
We don't need to move the goalposts back this far; we should be able to acknowledge that the insurrection that happened is worth investigating in more detail, because those kinds of things should not be happening.
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On May 29 2021 13:41 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On May 29 2021 13:32 Introvert wrote:On May 29 2021 13:26 NewSunshine wrote:On May 29 2021 13:23 Introvert wrote:
Amusingly enough, that's kind of how I feel the whole capitol incident is being treated! I mean go ahead, run on "1/6" in 2022 and we'll see what happens I guess. To Democrats nowadays everything a Republican does is and end-of-days level event and it looks the same way from the other side. So you think it was no big deal that violent insurgents attacked the capitol, and that Republicans were live tweeting the locations of Democrats in the Senate at the time? On May 29 2021 13:27 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 29 2021 13:08 Introvert wrote:On May 29 2021 13:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On May 29 2021 12:51 Introvert wrote:
The ridiculousness of the responses aside, the idea that a commission with staffers chosen by Pelosi et al., who have already decided they know so much about that day that they impeached the president because of it, would be a neutral fact-finding operation is obviously nonsense. Might as well let a congressional committee do it, where we already know these are politicians with their minds made up. I thought the commission was going to be chosen in a completely bipartisan manner? Although, to be fair, I suppose your criticism applies equally well to the many Republicans who dismissed the insurrection as "no big deal". The staffers who do most of the work would not be, so far as I know. And the lead GOP sponsor of the House bill was someone who voted to impeach. Democrats are trying to echo the "9/11 commission" when these two events aren't even in the same universe. Agreed. One of those two events was an act of terrorism performed by foreign agents who were trying to undermine our democracy, while the other was an act of terrorism performed by Americans who were trying to undermine our democracy. The former event united us, while the latter event continued to divide us. Depending on the criteria, it's not really hard to make one look way more devastating than the other. For example, the body count "win" goes to 9/11, while the central instigator "win" goes to 1/6. And yes, having the president / leader of a major political party orchestrate a coup as he continues to try and retain power that he lost in a fair election is wayyy more undermining than OBL's attack, especially since tens of millions of Americans still support Trump. Again, I have no love lost for the guilty in this matter and as I said at the time they should all have the book thrown at them. But both of the above posts are detached from reality, and I was really hoping I wouldn't find that here, but apparently I have. Yes, I'm going to go way out on a limb and say 9/11 was worse for America, by whatever metric you use, than the capitol riot. If that's not agreed upon then I suppose we are done here. The standard of "Republicans will only investigate events caused by other Republicans if they are objectively as tragic as 9/11" is pretty silly. Should we be putting that on red hats now? "Trump 2024: Technically not as bad as bin Laden!" "Trump 2028: At least I'm not Hitler!" We don't need to move the goalposts back this far; we should be able to acknowledge that the insurrection that happened is worth investigating in more detail, because those kinds of things should not be happening.
The question of "is it worth investigating" is an abstract and I was dealing with the actually proposed plan, i,e, a 9/11 style commission. I think a more narrow and particular question of "what went wrong with security procedures" is worth more time.
As to NewSunshine's post... if one is already inclined to think both "1/6" and 9/11 are even worth comparing than there's simply no more to say so I'm registering my dissent.
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Considering that you were the person who chose to bring up 9/11, yes, we are all eagerly waiting for you to provide an argument with any substance whatsoever.
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Maybe? I brought up 9/11 because Pelosi explicitly wanted a "9/11 style" commission and has, along with the rest of her party and the media, continued to use the same format with "1/6." I suppose I made a mistake in assuming the view that the two events were not comparable would be widely shared, but I don't think I did.
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On May 29 2021 14:16 Introvert wrote:
Maybe? I brought up 9/11 because Pelosi explicitly wanted a "9/11 style" commission and has, along with the rest of her party and the media, continued to use the same format with "1/6." I suppose I made a mistake in assuming the view that the two events were not comparable would be widely shared, but I don't think I did.
Maybe it's a very Spanish thing to refer to major events by their date, regardless of how major they are, but here a regular election is referred to by a number (day) and a letter (month), but so are the terrorist attacks in Madrid and Barcelona, the mass protests by the Indignados or the referendum for Catalan independence. But an event like the storming of Congress would be universally referred to as 6E here and there wouldn't be any discussion about whether that means it is somehow equal to 11M (the Madrid metro bombings).
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I mean, domestic partisans storming the seat of government with explicit support of party leadership (including the sitting president!) with unambiguous intent to intimidate government officials into overturning a legitimate election is just a very different kind of threat to foreign extremists trying to inflict as many civilian casualties on the US as possible. Obviously a lot more folks died in the latter.
On the other hand the latter never really threatened to undermine democracy or the legitimacy of the government. If any of the stuff those folks are talking about ever works - achieving policy goals by threatening officials with violence, overturning democratic election results by installing partisans in election certifying roles, or state or federal legislatures simply ignoring election results and deciding outcomes themselves - once those become viable pathways to enacting change, they’ll be the only pathways that matter.
Anybody claiming to have a shred of respect for the constitution should oppose anybody advocating for overturning legitimate election results as one of their top issues. The whole framework depends on that.
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Yes, I'm going to go way out on a limb and say 9/11 was worse for America, by whatever metric you use, than the capitol riot. If that's not agreed upon then I suppose we are done here.
Yeah, i'd hope we you are done here, since this is such a stupid starting point that a discussion inevitably would feel like trying to "win" an argument against flat earthers. There's no winners, there's just stupid - and people with some cognitive abilities left will just feel dumber afterwards.
The only way 9/11 would be worse for the US is if, indeed as some claim, it was an inside job. That's why it's a conspiracy theory. Because american actors would make that thing so much worse. We don't need a conspiracy theory to prove that it's american actors, in fact all the way up to the president, to prove an attack on the very fabric of what the US is supposed to be - a democracy (at least according to the US' own description).
Democracy itself wasn't under attack on 9/11. It was an outside attack against the US, much like pearl harbour was. Both sucked, many people died in both situations - yet what it did was, as was mentioned, undeniable uniformed "the people" behind a cause. The riot did the exact and polar opposite. It served to divide the american people, and to attack - again, as mentioned - the very fabric of democracy in your country. It's beyond me how people like you argue that all the commissions and investigations etc into Hillary, Benghazi etc were justified, yet a commission looking into something much worse is "a political charade".
The fuck would you suggest is supposed to happen - "move on", ignore that a president and republican senators incited a violent riot storming the capitol, certain republicans trying to steer that violent mob to other democrats still in the building? Explain that to the family of the officer who got killed not by foreign terrorists, but his own people. These aren't "made up minds", these are simple and pure facts - there's no way around this. Yes, people are "predisposed" to condemn republicans for what happened, because that's what fucking happened - there's no arguing this. Here's the fun part.
So you think it was no big deal that violent insurgents attacked the capitol, and that Republicans were live tweeting the locations of Democrats in the Senate at the time?
You say that this posting is "detached from reality". A post that in fact is quite literally is just facts that we saw unfold live. We know this is exactly what happened, we watched it happen live on television/twitter.
Makes you wonder who's actually detached from reality here. I'd take it rather personal if my elected leader tries to fan the flames of a violent "uprising", which could potentially lead to another civil war (which was talked about a lot by the right wing incels involved).
That's just me though. And other people that aren't buying into this whole "naw, no big deal brah" bullshit.
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foreign extremists trying to inflict as many civilian casualties on the US as possible.
I haven't studied terrorism in detail, but I don't think this is always the chosen goal. 9/11 was aimed at symbols of US political and financial power, not US civilians, I don't think they cared too much about how many civilians died. Tbh, most of us think about it as an attack on the towers themselves, not the people inside them.
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well, I for one welcome back one of the few (US) Conservatives back.
since like - well since a certain insurrection leader lost. first the election and then months and months of legal and political battles. including putting pressure on highest ranking state election officials - and with his own VP federal officials - to change the result.
finally culminating in a last ditch effort of open insurrection to void the very same election. where people died on US soil directly because of it. and many are still in disbelief it actually happened as it was at the same time thinkable and unthinkable. and others are living in a world of make belief where it did not happen or are saying it was not a big deal.
now if he could meet people a third to half the way and apply a similar fraction of the scrutiny to the events of 1/6 - and events leading there - as Rs put on Benghazi.
that would be something.
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I would add that if one seems more upset about naming it similarly to 9/11 than about what actually happened and the damage that was inflicted that day, it's likely to be because they either don't perceive the damage done, or because to them it's not damage, it's design. I hate to be hard line about anything, but it's just a fact that the forces in America which detest our democracy had their day on January 6th, and that them even being able to do what they did in the first place is a sign that things are seriously messed up. That's not up for debate. Sorry.
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United States24755 Posts
I think what Republicans are worried about is that the commission will identify a large amount of Republicans (and some others) committed actual crimes and should be prosecuted. Having large numbers of influential Republicans prosecuted would make it harder to win upcoming elections and would tip the scales to the Democrats which would be far more damaging to the Republic than overlooking the crimes of the Republicans in question. The easiest way to prevent this is to block the investigations with accusations like the fact that the panels would be biased.
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Is there anything Congress could find or do that the DoJ can't in such an investigation?
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United States24755 Posts
Only thing I can think of is better control the flow of information to the public, for better or worse.
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On May 28 2021 17:58 Doublemint wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2021 05:30 BlackJack wrote:On May 27 2021 01:42 Mohdoo wrote:
Really happy to see the left starting to embrace investigating chinese covid lab stuff. So much smoke. The hopsitalized researchers in earlier in the year is a huge red flag. My wife is a microbiology researcher and she is very outraged by the whole thing. She sees this as the most cut and dry case of lab incompetence you can ever see. Its honestly weird to me there aren't already sanctions on China. It has always seemed to me that the biggest reason the left had, until now, rejected the wuhan lab origin of coronavirus is because it was supported by the orange guy. It's a strange time we are in when the plausibility of something is seemingly dependent on what Trump thinks about it. I often wonder about what the OG anti-vaxxers think about all their new MAGA allies. Like are the Jenny McCarthy's of the world happy now that so many more people are anti-vax or do you think they are so horrified to be associated with the MAGA people that they might give vaccines a chance? lol yeah people are irrational beyond belief, however as far as rationality is concerned going against Mr. Big Lie is generally not a bad bet... the lab theory gaining traction again, though certainly interesting enough, will most likely lead nowhere... there are hardly any people reporting from China anymore and good intelligence (assets) are hard to come by. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/27/china-expels-foreign-journalists-crackdown-transparency/
I think China would've been more open about sharing more information if Trump didn't focus his whole presidency and foreign policy on trade war with, isolating, trying to contain, bash and blame China for everything, even his epic fail in containing the Coronavirus spread in the US. The end result is that racism and hate crime are on the rise against Chinese and other Asians. As comments here prove, people starting to jump the gun without any evidence again, just like the start of the pandemic. Pandemics will come and go through history, but such backlash only happens when it supposedly originates in China. I didn't read or heard any kinds of conspiracy theories about the Spanish flu and Swine flu originating from the US or other disease like MERS originating from Saudi Arabia, which sounds much more plausible to escape a lab, since Saudis aren't exactly the shinning example of free speech and democracy, not to mention a state sponsoring all kinds of terrorists and mercenaries in the middle east. The Wuhan lab theory is only a thing because, the US is insisting that there is a lab theory and that the world as a whole was grossly unprepared for such a pandemic and there is a need to blame someone else for personal incompetence.
Why would China want to share any information with the US when they were blamed with all sorts of conspiracy theories from the start? Any information even benign ones shared with the US could just fuel the hate that Trump and Pompeo were preaching and spreading through their whole term. Trump himself praised China for the lockdowns it did to tackle the spread at first, but quickly did a 180 degree turn to relentlessly blame China for everything he couldn't hid, about his incompetence.
Some people think that China created the virus as some sort of weapon, which is highly unlikely. Others think that through examination of animals they've uncovered the virus and somehow the virus broke free from the lab. I would think that China would more likely publish information and research papers and advance the knowledge in virology and brag about a new discovered virus... or they would hid it, because it's a weapon of mass destruction... And there is the third view that the scientists support that the virus originated in the wild and was spread through wet market meat sales...
Regardless if the virus originated in a lab or in the wild, what would you suggest that China should've done better to contain the pandemic and not get these kinds of backlash, apart from being a one party system. Should they change to a 2 party system like the US? There was information about the virus in the end of 2019 and there was information of people dying by it in November and December, but the cases were few. In January China had already completely mapped out the virus and send the necessary information to the WHO and had the whole city of Wuhan under lockdown, a 11+ million people under lockdown. What more information did the rest of the world and the US need?
I'm gonna quote information from wikipedia about Spanish flu and Swine flu, and I want you to tell me what the US did better then China to prevent an epidemic?
"The 2009 swine flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic that lasted about 19 months, from January 2009 to August 2010, and was the most recent flu pandemic involving H1N1 influenza virus (the first being the 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic and the second being the 1977 Russian flu).[12][13] The first two discoveries were independently made in the United States in April 2009.[14] The virus appeared to be a new strain of H1N1 that resulted from a previous triple reassortment of bird, swine, and human flu viruses and that further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus,[15] leading to the term "swine flu".[16]
Some studies estimated that the real number of cases including asymptomatic and mild cases could be 700 million to 1.4 billion people—or 11 to 21 percent of the global population of 6.8 billion at the time.[9] The lower value of 700 million is more than the 500 million people estimated to have been infected by the Spanish flu pandemic.[17] However, the Spanish flu infected a much higher proportion of the world population at the time, with the Spanish flu infecting an estimated 500 million people, which was roughly equivalent to a third of the world population at the time of the pandemic.[18]
The number of lab-confirmed deaths reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) is 18,449,[10] though the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic is estimated to have actually caused about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) deaths.[19] A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu.[20] For comparison, the WHO estimates that 250,000 to 500,000 people die of seasonal flu annually.[21]"
What did China do wrong in comparison, except that Sars-Cov 2 happened to be far more infectious and lethal virus then the influenza virus and how the hell would China know that before January 2020?
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On May 29 2021 23:09 micronesia wrote:
I think what Republicans are worried about is that the commission will identify a large amount of Republicans (and some others) committed actual crimes and should be prosecuted. Having large numbers of influential Republicans prosecuted would make it harder to win upcoming elections and would tip the scales to the Democrats which would be far more damaging to the Republic than overlooking the crimes of the Republicans in question. The easiest way to prevent this is to block the investigations with accusations like the fact that the panels would be biased.
I'll just take this one.
No, anyone who committed a crime should be prosecuted. The DOJ is, I believe, going after hundreds of people right now. If anything, from what I've read, they are being too aggressive and now they are having to meekly go back and drop charges against a bunch of people. I think they went all the way to Alaska to get Pelosi's laptop and broke into the wrong couples' house! The warrant was apparently a travesty and shouldn't have even been approved or sought.
I think the point of the commission is a the inverse of what you are saying. It's an attempt to keep in the public memory an event most Americans think was bad, but doesn't actually worry them to their bones as it does some others. Not that I trust public polling a lot, but from that and other things I've seen, the "average American" isn't going to factor that day into their future decision making. A commission is to give a patina of objectivity to a pursuit that will obviously have none. Just let a congressional committee do it.
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United States24755 Posts
On May 30 2021 00:55 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On May 29 2021 23:09 micronesia wrote:
I think what Republicans are worried about is that the commission will identify a large amount of Republicans (and some others) committed actual crimes and should be prosecuted. Having large numbers of influential Republicans prosecuted would make it harder to win upcoming elections and would tip the scales to the Democrats which would be far more damaging to the Republic than overlooking the crimes of the Republicans in question. The easiest way to prevent this is to block the investigations with accusations like the fact that the panels would be biased. I'll just take this one. No, anyone who committed a crime should be prosecuted. The DOJ is, I believe, going after hundreds of people right now. If anything, from what I've read, they are being too aggressive and now they are having to meekly go back and drop charges against a bunch of people. I think they went all the way to Alaska to get Pelosi's laptop and broke into the wrong couples' house! The warrant was apparently a travesty and shouldn't have even been approved or sought.
Two serious questions:
1) Is and should the DOJ be "going after" the Republican elected officials and the former president who may have taken illegal action in the days and hours leading up to and during the capitol riot/invasion?
2) Of what relevance to this discussion does it have whether or not the DOJ is being too aggressive in going after the people who stormed the capitol building and the associated crimes? Can you state your point explicitly?
I think the point of the commission is a the inverse of what you are saying. It's an attempt to keep in the public memory an event most Americans think was bad, but doesn't actually worry them to their bones as it does some others. Not that I trust public polling a lot, but from that and other things I've seen, the "average American" isn't going to factor that day into their future decision making. A commission is to give a patina of objectivity to a pursuit that will obviously have none. Just let a congressional committee do it.
It's kind of weird how you are trying to trivialize the event by alluding to the fact that it doesn't really worry many Americans.
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On May 30 2021 01:06 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On May 30 2021 00:55 Introvert wrote:On May 29 2021 23:09 micronesia wrote:
I think what Republicans are worried about is that the commission will identify a large amount of Republicans (and some others) committed actual crimes and should be prosecuted. Having large numbers of influential Republicans prosecuted would make it harder to win upcoming elections and would tip the scales to the Democrats which would be far more damaging to the Republic than overlooking the crimes of the Republicans in question. The easiest way to prevent this is to block the investigations with accusations like the fact that the panels would be biased. I'll just take this one. No, anyone who committed a crime should be prosecuted. The DOJ is, I believe, going after hundreds of people right now. If anything, from what I've read, they are being too aggressive and now they are having to meekly go back and drop charges against a bunch of people. I think they went all the way to Alaska to get Pelosi's laptop and broke into the wrong couples' house! The warrant was apparently a travesty and shouldn't have even been approved or sought. Two serious questions: 1) Is and should the DOJ be "going after" the Republican elected officials and the former president who may have taken illegal action in the days and hours leading up to and during the capitol riot/invasion? 2) Of what relevance to this discussion does it have whether or not the DOJ is being too aggressive in going after the people who stormed the capitol building and the associated crimes? Can you state your point explicitly? Show nested quote +I think the point of the commission is a the inverse of what you are saying. It's an attempt to keep in the public memory an event most Americans think was bad, but doesn't actually worry them to their bones as it does some others. Not that I trust public polling a lot, but from that and other things I've seen, the "average American" isn't going to factor that day into their future decision making. A commission is to give a patina of objectivity to a pursuit that will obviously have none. Just let a congressional committee do it. It's kind of weird how you are trying to trivialize the event by alluding to the fact that it doesn't really worry many Americans.
That last quote from introvert is representative of what many point to as one of the most worrying trends among Republicans, that the importance of anything and everything is forcefully channeled through what they think voters think at the expense of all other principles; rather than lead such that votes follow, Republicans follow their voters so uniformly that the rare few who take public positions are derided as not true Republicans (like Romney and Cheney) or become the de facto ideological hotshots of the party (like Gaetz, MTG, and most of all, Trump). McConnell and McCarthy lead from Congress in lockstep with that framework, and I'd guess it'll take something worse than 1/6 (which isn't hard to imagine happening sometime within the next couple years) to shake it up.
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EPT
