Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Here's a question or two for you, george... (quoting the NYT below)


Of course, as we know now, what was happening on Jan 6 was not merely a "protest" but rather a piece in a larger strategy to overturn the election (which Trump has now made explicit with his own statements).

So, was Jan 6 "legitimate political discourse" and is Liz Cheney guilty of the "persecution of ordinary citizens" through joining as a member in the committee investigating all that went on that day and related matters before and since? Is Cheney a traitor to the party and to conservatism?

I'm pretty certain that teachers and government employees won't be the ones doing the construction work.

One of the many ironies of human life is that it is very frequently the absence of temptation that is the real source of apparent virtue.

I would find it very difficult to even imagine a cult-like formation centered on Joe Biden's personality.

In addition my strong impression is that in Trump's case the cult involved only those irrationally opposed to everything he said or did. Certainly the continuing obsession with Trump, exhibited by nominal Biden supporters of this thread, ostensibly dedicated to Biden's Presidency , suggests a continuing cult-like obsession on their parts.

Most of the Republicans I know merely tolerated Trump's vulgarity & vanity, but favored the refreshingly realistic and effective elements of the policies he put forward.

Same here. But I believe that may because of the circles in which we move. As opposed to the Q-cult, the gun nuts, and the other extremists who stormed the Capitol.

I suspect there were a wide variety of factors behind the motivations of the protestors on Jan 6, and that many or most participants were not aware of or took no part in the entrance to the Capitol - something which, itself, is not illegal. You, in contrast, appear to see it (and most of the actions of people whose political aspirations you oppose) as necessarily and exclusively the result of a dark conspiracy. That suggests either a significant lack of wisdom and understanding , or alternatively a high degree of narrow-minded partisanship on your part.

The rather severe treatment of suspects in the Jan 6 events and the aggressive prosecutions that followed stands in stark contrast to that of politically motivated rioters who burned down and destroyed public & private buildings and businesses in numerous cities throughout the summer of 2020.

That's a very evasive and chickenshit response, my man.

An ineffective cheap shot that has no relevance whatever to the issue you are addressing .
Moreover there's no meaning or surprise in it. Unlike the thousands of owners and employees of small businesses shut down throughout most of the epidemic, our unionized teachers get paid, but refuse to even teach their students.

There are some "extremists" in every political movement, specifically including the "woke" mob which appears to exercise a great deal of influence in the Biden Administration, and among many of its supporters.

I suspect the "gun nuts" to whom you refer do not include the armed gangs of often very young people who are shooting up cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore, and randomly killing people around the including innocent very young children. Perhaps you should rethink your priorities and criteria.

Not at all ! I was merely putting the issues you raised in a more realistic context than the one you inferred, and calling attention to the very partisan, unstated presumptions that are so frequently imbedded in your comments

Citation? I thought that the people you refer to have been loudly complaining about being ignored by the administration.


No, but I do include the politicians who have helped to make those same firearms easily available. I don't recall the participation of armed urban gangs of very young people being involved in the Jan 6 insurrection.

What do you mean? This is what you said:

You're basically casting doubt on the quality of work done by unionized workers.

And here you claim that most union jobs are in the public sector. I just wanted to assure you that these aren't the same unions contracted to do construction.

Interesting points. However....
1. The interests of the Bernie Sanders *& squat elements of the Democrat Congress certainly appear to have been amply represented in the Democrat Legislative agenda that President Biden has so avidly supported.
2. The mortality associated with the well armed urban robbery and gang activities in Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore has been far greater than anything associated with avid supporters of our constitutional rights to bear arms.

Relative to other comments , I did not suggest that the Construction trades necessarily do shoddy or defective work, rather that they are generally far more expensive and (particularly on our East Coast) far more corrupt & given to padding the billable workforce with non working union staff and often mere criminals). I've run companies that performed a good deal of construction work, much of it through the Construction Trades hiring halls (mostly in the West). Relative to the Metal Trades unions, they were easier do deal with, but still far more expensive than equally proficient non union construction workers..

It is simply a fact that the great majority of unionized employees in this country are employees of Federal, State and local government agencies. The number of Right to work States in this country has grown significantly and the remaining manufacturing corporations in the country have flocked to them for their new plant sites.

Um, the rioters didn't film themselves participating in criminal acts.

Most of their riots were self-proclaimed "peaceful" political protests. What were the real motivations of individual rioters is something that neither of us can really know. However those who were supporting and in some cases organizing them were quite vocal in proclaiming their political goals.

No. You just prefer competition to honesty.

Judge rejects comparison between Jan. 6 riot and George Floyd unrest
'For people to say people who participated in the protests of the summer of 2020 got no jail time, that’s not my experience in my court,'

Chief Judge Beryl Howell had harsh words for federal prosecutors cutting plea deals for light sentences with Jan. 6 insurrection defendants.
Chief Judge Beryl Howell disputed the notion that participants charged in last summer's unrest were treated leniently. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

By JOSH GERSTEIN and KYLE CHENEY

11/05/2021 03:07 PM EDT

A judge playing a central role overseeing the criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol building has forcefully rejected claims from many alleged rioters that they’re being treated more harshly than people who broke the law during the widespread protests that arose last year in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

Speaking during a sentencing hearing for Capitol riot defendant Glenn Croy, Chief Judge Beryl Howell disputed the notion that participants charged in last year’s unrest were treated leniently. She also insisted that the motivations of those involved rendered the Jan. 6 attack a far more grave event.

“For people to say people who participated in the protests of the summer of 2020 got no jail time, that’s not my experience in my court,” said Howell, who added that she’d sentenced a man to more than a year for breaking a bank window and walking inside.

“He took nothing. I gave him 16 months,” said Howell, an appointee of President Barack Obama. She added: “He wasn’t disrupting a constitutionally mandated process. ... My experience was felony prosecutions in this court and lots of jail time.”

While some Republican lawmakers and defense lawyers for the more than 700 people charged in the Jan. 6 takeover of the Capitol have said they should be treated similarly to those arrested during political and social protests last year, Howell made clear she disagreed.

“The goal of a lot of protests in 2020 was to hold police accountable and politicians accountable for police brutality — and murder, in George Floyd’s case — and to improve our political system. What happened on Jan 6 is in a totally different category from that protest. It was to stop the government from functioning at all to stop the democratic process and it worked,” Howell said. “They’re not comparable.”

Howell acknowledged that her comparison was limited to her court, the federal district court, which traditionally receives only a small fraction of the criminal cases filed in Washington. Most cases are brought in Superior Court, although in Washington, prosecutors in both courts come from the U.S. Attorney’s office.

The issue has flared in other courtrooms in the federal district court in Washington, D.C., where all of the riot cases are being handled. Judge Trevor McFadden scolded prosecutors during one sentencing proceeding for a Jan. 6 rioter, suggesting they were being hypocritical for seeking strict punishment after declining to bring charges in earlier protest-related cases.

“I think the U.S. attorney would have more credibility if it was even-handed in its concern about riots and mobs in this city,” the appointee of President Donald Trump said, according to an Associated Press account.

Just days later, Judge Tanya Chutkan alluded to McFadden’s comments and rejected the comparison in remarks akin to Howell’s.

Chutkan, an Obama appointee, said that in fact, Jan. 6 rioters are arguably treated more leniently than those arrested over the summer of 2020. Police did not arrest them on the spot, she noted, and prosecutors have allowed many of them to plead to “petty offense” misdemeanors and to Zoom into court proceedings from their homes.

“The treatment of [Jan. 6] rioters ... has been far more lenient than other defendants who frequently appear in our court,” Chutkan said. “To compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights to those of a violent mob seeking to take over the Congress is false equivalence and ignores the very real damage the Jan. 6 riot poses to the foundation of our democracy.”

Croy’s attorney said Friday part of his agitation on Jan. 6 was due to his personal ties to Portland, Ore., as well videos he’d seen of destruction committed during long-running clashes between demonstrators and federal authorities there.

“Portland has a real place in Mr. Croy’s heart and it was really, really hard for him,” defense lawyer Kira Anne West said.

Following repeated calls last year from then-President Donald Trump for tough measures against protesters who broke the law, about 100 people were hit with federal charges in Portland. However, most of those cases have been quietly dropped by prosecutors there, sometimes as part of deals that leave the defendants with no criminal record. Such resolutions are not being offered in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, prosecutors and defense attorneys have said.

Prosecutors have said the negotiated resolutions in some cases differ because of the quality and amount of incriminating evidence available. Many of the alleged offenses in Portland took place at night and were not recorded on video. In Jan. 6 cases, by contrast, the events took place in daylight hours and with numerous surveillance and police body-worn cameras recording the events, along with the news media and participants in the fray.

Howell did not address the handling of the Portland cases, nor did she address the possibility that prosecutors may have chosen to charge cases more or less severely before they are brought to court. But she told Croy that she was baffled by his claim that what happened in Oregon excused overrunning police lines or clashing with officers in Washington.

“Moms tell their kids: two wrongs don’t make a right,” the judge said. “If he’s offended by what he saw in terms of some of the protests in the summer of 2020 because of the violence and criminal conduct that occurred with looting businesses, burning buildings — OK, well, why should he go and repeat that behavior if he thought it was wrong? That comparison makes little sense to me.”

Croy and many other defendants have argued that they came to Washington to attend Trump’s speech to a rally on the Ellipse and didn’t intend to engage in violence. They’ve also blamed Trump for setting up an explosive situation by telling attendees at the rally to march to the Capitol, albeit with a caution to do so peacefully. He promised to join them, then went back to the White House.

“It started out peacefully. It didn’t go south until Mr. Trump told everybody to go to the Capitol,” West said.

Croy said he’d felt cooped up during the pandemic and was experiencing some personal issues, so relished the ability to be part of a crowd for the first time in more than a year. He also said he’d been watching a lot of videos online that stirred him up.

“I hadn’t been around people except for my children, for months and months,” Croy told the judge. “All day we were under this impression that the election had been stolen ... I’ve learned a lot of that is not true.”

Howell also second-guessed a series of decisions made by prosecutors. In particular, she seemed displeased by the government’s decision to allow many defendants who entered the building illegally, but did not engage in violence, to plead to a “petty offense” misdemeanor.

Howell also suggested prosecutors chose poorly when they decided to use a misdemeanor charge of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building to resolve scores of cases. The judge said that made it sound like those pleading guilty were engaged in First Amendment-protected activity when they stormed the building on Jan. 6, disrupting the electoral vote court and sending lawmakers fleeing in fear.

In Croy’s case, which involved no allegation of violence but did stem from two trips into the Capitol on Jan. 6, prosecutors recommended a sentence of 60 days in jail, while Croy’s defense asked for probation.

Howell instead imposed a complex sentence not seen yet in Jan. 6 cases. She ordered Croy to serve 14 days in a federal halfway house, 90 days on home confinement with location monitoring but permission to work and engage in other essential activities, and three years probation.

The judge said it should send a “clear” message to Croy and others that any repeat of the events of Jan. 6 won’t be tolerated.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/05/judge-rejects-comparison-between-jan-6-riot-and-george-floyd-unrest-519723

This was more than a "riot" or even an "insurrection"; it was an attempted Coupe and should be treated as such. Treason is a capital offense and theRump with his hence men are guilty in conducting this atrocity!

It becomes official with this proclamation. Should the bckers.of the proclamation be held liable also? Do the Republicans become enemies of the state?

Maybe the Democrats should just plan for Biden to declare martial law before the mid-terms and forbid the States from holding elections. Then everyone would be able to enjoy the peaceful plans of Biden, who still doesn't hold grievance tirades and curse at press conferences.

Just a thought!

I honestly don't know what the right thing to do is glitter! Democracy is in a hurt right now, this is for sure. Even without trump, we were looking at a Fascist Republican party. Now, it is almost the whole party. What a shame.......

In Iowa, republicans just introduced a bill that would put tv cameras in every classroom. They want to monitor every teacher’s every word to make sure that nothing
inappropriate is being taught. Is this **** getting scary to you yet?