After years of watching the news feature right-wing idjits every day, whining about being oppressed while advocating the shooting of black people, screaming “lock her up!” at politicians only slightly less conservative than they are, and posturing stupidly in racist groups and gun-toting militias, it’s nice to wake up to new schadenfreude every morning, as they receive their just deserts.
So, the guy capering about in the “Camp Auschwitz” shirt during the Capitol riots? Identified. His name is Robert Keith Packer, and I hope he’s about to suffer some severe economic stress and is anxiously twitching every time someone knocks on his door. The media are already digging through his arrest record! I thought that only happened with black people who were murdered by the police.
You know who else is twitching behind closed doors right now? The guy who inspired Mr Packer.
Trump:
“We love you, you’re very special. Particularly the ones with the cable ties for hostages and the ‘Camp Auschwitz’ and ‘6 Million Wasn’t Enough’ T-shirts and the racist flag”#terroristsnotprotestors pic.twitter.com/9B5uUqSxcI— David Schneider (@davidschneider) January 7, 2021
In other fantastic news, after months of far right jerks announcing that they were stomping off to join Parler, the new social media site for just fascists, all the rich tech companies like Amazon and Apple and Google abruptly pulled the rug out from under them and withdrew all support, and Parler has gone dark. Oh dear. Now they’re all going to come crawling back to Twitter and Facebook, those media sites they found intolerable, even though they had willingly given free reign to their Big Cheeto to spread propaganda, medical misinformation, and lies right up until next week.
Even better, they’d signed up for Parler even though it required them to hand out sensitive info, like their social security information, and now it’s revealed that all the GPS information for their criminal activities in Washington DC was uploaded with their photos and videos! It turns out that Parler was the world’s ugliest Honey Trap!
I’m going to find something in the news to enjoy every day for the next few weeks, I think. Then I think it will go back to normal as all these awful people get slaps on the wrist and go back home to start fundraising for Trump monuments and fomenting insurrection again.
Parler did not strip GPS info from photos before posting? What a lazy self-0wn.
AP has a great article this morning (I read it in the Boston Globe but it’s behind a paywall). They followed up on over 120 rioters who were arrested or otherwise publicly identified. Guess what? No antifa. They’re all long-time Trump supporters, white supremacists, nazis, Republicans (but I repeat myself), and/or QAnon fools.
The Globe also had an article quoting the (former) chief of the Capitol Police, who says he tried to get backup from the DC National Guard days before the riot, but was blocked by the Sergeants At Arms of the House and Senate, who thought it would have bad optics. Then on the day, he tried over and over to get the NG to deploy but the commander couldn’t get authorization from the Defense Department until after 5:00.
A stunning quote from that article:
“As soon as they hit the fence line, the fight was on,” Sund said. “Violent confrontations from the start. They came with riot helmets, gas masks, shields, pepper spray, fireworks, climbing gear – climbing gear! – explosives, metal pipes, baseball bats. I have never seen anything like it in 30 years of events in Washington.”
It is probably worse than that.
They will probably be pardoned by Trump.
It might even be legal.
Blanket pardons before any legal proceedings have been done before.
Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon before anything happened to him.
Bush pardoned all the criminals from the Reagan administration.
Carter pardoned all the draft resisters from the Vietnam war.
Trump has already pardoned the criminals from the 2016 election.
I’ve been posting for months that the right wingnuts are probably going to end up more violent.
Wherever you have hate speech, you have hate violence.
They are also all dressed up (tactical gear, semiautomatic rifles, ammunition, cammo, you know, right wingnut high style cool guy stuff) with nowhere to go.
I’m still waiting.
One of these guys is going to empty their clip into a crowd somewhere.
You don’t bring multiple weapons to a peaceful protest!!!
raven@3 That’s a good argument for not just running out the clock (as if one was needed), though I don’t see nearly enough action on invoking the 25th amendment or impeachment. There is also the possibility of state and local charges, but I’d hate to see it come down to nickel and diming when the real charge is insurrection.
It’s a disgrace that Trump’s impeachment failed last year.
and
There was collusion and cooperation with the attackers at the highest levels, including the president.
The only question is how high, how many, and how much collution and cooperation.
The head(s) of the Defense department are some of them.
Four people died at Benghazi. Hillary Clinton was investigated 33 times over 7 years and no one found anything of note.
The US congress needs to do a thorough investigation of what happened and why.
I wish. That isn’t entirely clear.
I tried to find out on Google without too much clarity.
It looks like all the courts in Washington DC are Federal.
Which means that even Trespassing and Curfew violations are under Federal law.
raven@7 Trump is probably still angry at them for failing. That’s a thin thread to hang on, but it’s not obvious he wants to pardon them. I honestly have no idea what’s going to happen next.
Trump will absolutely pardon all of these folks and himself. If the Biden administration fails to fight the self-pardon, it will become precedent and will be harder to fight the next time a fascist becomes President.
I am expecting Biden administration to let the investigations die off. Garland does not seem like an AG to work towards actual justice being applied to the rich and powerful and I expect limited (if any) push in going after Trump. I also expect that if we don’t truly go after Trump and the right wing terrorists, we guarantee a future that will see escalating right wing violence and eventually the election of a competent fascist (unlike the incompetent one that we have now) in the next 20 years.
Another prediction, Jan 6 will be a day of celebration for fascist/racist groups in the US for decades if not longer.
As regards the National Guard… From what I’ve read (not a lot on the issue), Trump refused to sign off on the call up. The Pentagon went along with a joint request from Pence, Pelosi, Grassley. At first glance, that’s an odd combination. The key is that it’s the VP, Speaker of the House, and the President Pro-Tempore of the Senate. Those are, in order, the three officers that would become President if something took out the President.
By the time they got there late, there wasn’t much for them to do.
Who actually reinforced the Capitol Police and cleared the building were the Washington DC police.
The US has a $750 billion Defense budget and couldn’t protect the US Capitol from a few thousand attackers.
DHS/FBI has a budget of $52 billion and had little idea of what was going on, even though a high school kid could have figured it out by just reading internet web sites.
Since Trump has been attacking the US government departments for 4 years, it is no surprise that they no longer work. The CDC, EPA, DHS, DofJ etc.. are mostly Undeads, looking alive until you look closer.
raven@11 I think it’s less a question of resources or ability to protect the Capitol than the fact it was intentionally left vulnerable. There are some real traitors in high places, including though not limited to Trump himself. I don’t see this as a “failure of imagination” since it should have been clear that a crowd that size had intent and ability to rush the building the same as if it were a storefront in an ordinary riot.
It is true that certain people’s imaginations work more effectively when the crowd is leftwing or minority, but I don’t believe that explains it either. The whole thing was a setup.
“I’m going to find something in the news to enjoy every day for the next few weeks, I think.”
Have fun – it’s so much easier than doing something about the actual problem. No, voting for JoeB doesn’t count.
Trump isn’t going to pardon any of the insurrectionists. Why? Because they have nothing to offer him in return. Trump only ever thinks of himself, and any interactions with others are purely transactional in nature.
At this point it gets worse for him if he does anything for those being arrested, and pardoning them isn’t necessary to keep his base in line. All he has to do is play the victim and they’ll still have his back.
I thought the same and I hope you’re right, but I am uncomfortable making predictions.
mnb0@13 And pray tell what are you doing about the “actual problem”?
Tell you what: go through the Twitter feeds of every current Democratic officeholder, and see how many of them were actively wishing Trump well when he was hospitalized with coronavirus. Nobody who publicly wanted Trump to recover a month ago can be trusted to protect the country from Trump’s supporters now — and that’s Biden and Harris and Buttigieg and Gabbard and all the usual gang of idiots.
Biden built a career out of getting along with Republicans. He was to the right of Ronald Reagan on a bunch of issues, and ended up pushing Reagan further right to avoid being outflanked. Before he even started his campaign, he was saying how much he loved Republicans. After he started it, he mused on stage about maybe getting a Republican as a running mate. Do you think he’s going to push for prosecutions of his buddies? Not likely.
Funny how, in 2016, we had Democrats on this very forum saying “Trump is telling us who he is, listen and be afraid”, but we’ve had decades for Biden to show us who he is — an enabler of the worst, whose career was built out of sabotage in favor of the people who just tried to pull off a coup — and those same people were silent.
America won’t be destroyed by the right wing without the help of centrists, and the people who claim to be on the left but support centrists are traitors.
The Vicar @17: If you were sick, I’d wish you well.
Keep your eyes peeled for this acronym: WWG1WGA, or “where we go one, we go all”
Translation: mob rules. I saw a video (since disappeared) that was on parler, intimating the use of violence to “turn blue states red” and using that acronym. Individuals and government should assume the fascists can and will attempt organized violence again before 1/21. It’s not over.
You’re a liar. Most of those on this forum who have advocated for Biden over Trump have also been quite clear that Biden is a conservative, establishment politician, with close ties to Wall Street and the rich; and that progressives must push at all levels – on the streets, in the media, in primary elections, in campaigning organizations, for radical change. It really is gobsmacking that after an attempted fascist coup, incited and supported by Trump, you still can’t bring yourself to admit that getting him out of power was absolutely necessary, and will be an enormous achievement – primarily of women, of African-Americans and other minorities, above all of black women – for whom you show only contempt.
Speaking of fascists ongoing attempts to stage a coup, the trumplican Secretary of State currentlyhas a Twitter feed pushing lies about the WHO and China, and is using the voice of America to broadcast further propaganda.
wtf!!!
Sons of the Covfeferacy: The Shout Will Rise Again!
I am reassured that “our tame priest” has graced us with his deep insight and said the same thing as he always says. which echo the sentiments of some others posting here. The world is still the same as before. It is clear, that as been said before, that the far left and the far right are almost indistinguishable, the difference being only who is to be in-charge not the means off enforcing control nor how they are to take control. neither have any tolerance with democratic processes.
violence and terror
uncle frogy
I’m fully supportive of a suitable monument to Trump. Perhaps, even in every community.
I suggest renaming every compost pile in every sewage treatment plant The Donald J. Trump memorial shitpile.
In other news, the FBI is warning of loads of chatter for armed “protests” in every state. Odd, how they missed the warnings coming out of the CMPC and OSC for the past year, but managed to remember them now (there are other centers that contribute to the mountain of stinker tracking as well).
This is quite far from over, it was allowed to fester for far too long.
So many wannabe martyrs – right until they’re the ones bleeding, then they scream about their victimhood.
Wzrd1:
Heh. I take you’re unaware of John Oliver’s rhetorical Jiu-Jitsu.
“Mr. Mayor, I could not be more proud to have my name on your s*** sorter.”
I’m with raven @4, I thought a lot of the rioters that I saw were really, really scary and dead-set (ha ha) on killing. And I’m very glad that many of them are off the streets or not flying on planes or at least out on bail and knowing that the FBI is watching them.
This was almost a massacre, only luck that it wasn’t. There are headlines like “Man arrested in DC with semiautomatic rifle was texting plans to murder Pelosi.”
Now psychologists say that in the next days Trump will become ever more dangerous, although I can’t imagine what he could get up to except global thermonuclear war, which they seem to be taking some precautions against.
The as-yet-unarrested MAGAs, though, will certainly attack again. Maybe congress or the capitol or state capitols, or someplace where they can use their assault rifles, and I am close to certain that at least one suicide bomber will try to attend the inauguration.
There’s the aspect of negative value, though; the collective outrage at betrayal. If Trump doesn’t pardon his fans when they knew he had the power to do so, he’s basically putting himself in the crosshairs of at least some of them. Somewhat more specifically, those who aren’t quite committed to the Trump cult of personality, but see him as being useful for delivering the fascist state they long for. Kind of like how Pence got added to Trump’s shitlist for not doing what he wanted.
Something like the poster of this post, quoted here on Intransitive. Even if that one guy is in fact fake, there are probably at least some of Trump’s fans who think like that.
Does Trump understand that he might be in danger from those of his followers who would feel betrayed?
I’m just afraid of y’all come Jan 16th to 20th, as Vanilla Isis are planning more violence.
Also, if I had all the straw the Vicar needs for his strawmen, I’d be rich making biogas from biomass.
“Parler did not strip GPS info from photos before posting? What a lazy self-0wn.”
Who could have possibly guessed that a website tailored for the incompetently and terminally stupid fanatics would be run by the same class of professional idiots.