mrl

IMO, multiple sides of the same coin. If we want things to open up and (hopefully) get back to normal, we need to do all of the things that will reduce spread- whether that's vaccinations, masking (which works pretty well despite what some people here think) etc.- and if people just flat out refuse to do any of those things, than yeah, lockdowns may be needed to avoid crushing the healthcare system. But it seems like people would rather whine about "their freedoms" than to take the relatively minor steps needed to actually be able to live like before.

There's a story or two like these ones coming up every day- I just have to wonder how many people here won't get vaccinated, or continue to post about vaccinations and making being the devil until it's too late. I mean, we're well over 600K dead people, hospitals are filling up again, and morons like Paul and DeSantis seem determined to keep the rates escalating. It's a f'n disease, not a political issue. https://www.thedailybeast.com/h-scott-apley-chair-of-galveston-county-texas-gop-mocked-covid-days-before-he-died-of-virus https://www.businessinsider.com/conservative-radio-host-downplayed-vaccines-on-oxygen-machine-2021-7 https://apnews.com/article/health-california-coronavirus-pandemic-2ee388751b58035bd5d3973854a58489

With these clowns as the prime example Even as the police officers testified about having been brutalized by the rioters, a group of far-right Republicans was publicly siding with those who breached the Capitol. Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, (accused sex offender) Matt Gaetz of Florida, Paul Gosar of Arizona, and Louie Gohmert of Texas held a news conference outside the Justice Department to object to the treatment of the rioters charged in connection with the attack, calling them “Jan. 6 prisoners’’ who had been mistreated because of their political beliefs.

No support for these cops in here? No multi-page threads on how all the assho**s involved in this, including the guy who instigated it (and continues to spread the lie that started it) need to spend time behind bars? No anger at McConnell and McCarthy being “too busy” to watch the testimony? Gotta love the hypocrisy. WASHINGTON — One officer described how rioters attempted to gouge out his eye and called him a traitor as they sought to invade the Capitol. Another told of being smashed in a doorway and nearly crushed amid a “medieval’’ battle with a pro-Trump mob as he heard guttural screams of pain from fellow officers. A third said he was beaten unconscious and stunned repeatedly with a Taser as he pleaded with his assailants, “I have kids.’’ A fourth relayed how he was called a racist slur over and over again by intruders wearing “Make America Great Again’’ garb. “All of them — all of them were telling us, ‘Trump sent us,’ ’’ Aquilino A. Gonell, a US Capitol Police sergeant, said on Tuesday as he tearfully recounted the horrors of defending Congress on Jan. 6, testifying at the first hearing of a House select committee to investigate the attack. One by one, in excruciating detail, Gonell and three other officers who faced off with the hordes that broke into the Capitol told Congress of the brutal violence, racism, and hostility they suffered as a throng of angry rioters, acting in the name of President Donald Trump, beat, crushed, and shocked them. More than six months after the assault, the accounts of the four uniformed officers — as precise as they were cinematic — cut through a fog of confusion, false equivalence, and misdirection that Republicans have generated to try to insulate themselves politically and placate Trump. They provided a set of gripping first-person narratives that brought home the harrowing events of Jan. 6, when Trump’s supporters, urged on by his lie of a stolen election, stormed the Capitol to disrupt the official counting of electoral votes to formalize Joe Biden’s presidential victory. “This [n-word] voted for Joe Biden!’’ Officer Harry Dunn of the Capitol Police told the panel a rioter had screamed at him, prompting a crowd to turn on him with more racial slurs. Later, Dunn begged the lawmakers leading the inquiry to uncover the full extent of Trump’s role. “There was an attack on Jan. 6, and a hit man sent them,’’ he said. “I want you to get to the bottom of that.’’ The testimony, punctuated by video montages of the rampage — including some footage from the body cameras of police officers who testified — was a riveting reminder of the brutal reality of the day. In the hearing room and across Capitol Hill, officers, lawmakers, and aides who lived through the riot were glued to cellphone or television screens watching it unfold. Michael Fanone, a Washington police officer who was beaten unconscious and subjected to repeated shocks with his own Taser by the mob, suffering a heart attack and a brain injury, said he heard rioters calling for him to be killed with his own gun. “I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the people in this room,’’ Fanone said. “But too many are now telling me that hell doesn’t exist, or that hell wasn’t actually that bad.’’ “The indifference shown to my colleagues is disgraceful,’’ he added, as he pounded the witness table in anger. Gonell said what he went through on Capitol Hill that day had been more fearsome than any experience patrolling bomb-infested roads during an Army deployment in Iraq, denouncing what he called a “continuous, shocking attempt to ignore or try to destroy the truth of what truly happened.’’

LOTS of traitors on this board. Kind of useless trying to get through to you as long as you continue to believe the propaganda spewed out by trump and his soon to be impoverished minions.

Fake outrage? Capitol attacked by GOP and Q traitors trying to overthrow a legitimately elected government, cops attacked and injured, and it’s all good with you? Wow. Thanks for showing us who we’re dealing with here.

You do have to wonder when even Tucker Carlson throws him under the bus....... Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was on Fox News on Tuesday night, defending himself against newly public allegations that he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, when he seemed to pull his interviewer into the matter. “You and I went to dinner about two years ago, your wife was there, and I brought a friend of mine, you’ll remember her,” Gaetz told Tucker Carlson, connecting that friend to an ongoing Justice Department investigation of the lawmaker. He alleged that the woman had been “threatened” by the FBI and told “she could face trouble” if she didn’t confess to authorities that Gaetz was involved in a “pay-for-play scheme.” “I don’t remember the woman you are speaking of or the context at all, honestly,” Carlson cut in to say, visibly stunned. Later on in the show, Carlson — still looking surprised — appeared to distance himself further from Gaetz, saying: “That was one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted.”

A couple of hundred? You didn’t see the videos? One police officer killed, 140 others injured, people publicly stating that they intended to kill legislators and the Vice President, during an attempt to overthrow a legally and fairly elected government, and you think that’s a minor issue? It’s probably the worst thing in 150 years.

This one. How ‘bout you, comrade?

And at the same time, have continually repeated the lies about election fraud and a stolen election. You can’t avoid responsibility for effectively yelling fire in a crowded theater. Nor can you deny all the posts from people here who have either advocated violence towards those on the left, or to the refusal to call out those who did.

"Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence,'' the bulletin said. Remove "violent" from the above announcement from DHS and it fits almost everyone here. And based on several years of posts here in which members expressed delight (or at a minimum absolutely no regret) at the thought of personal harm coming to those on the left, I have to wonder about the violence thing as well.

Yeah, they’d just keep their brown shorts nicely ironed for the marches. Got your jackboots shined?

It’s assho*es like this (and everyone else who shares their beliefs, including the traitors who attacked the Capitol and their sympathizers here) who are going to create a government clampdown. Not the left, according to DHS, who have issued an unprecedented warning about the threat of domestic terrorism from people who believe trumps lies about “election fraud”. One member of an anti-government group accused of plotting to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan last fall pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court, with documents revealing new details about the group’s plans to storm the Michigan Capitol and commit other violence. Ty G. Garbin, a 25-year-old airplane mechanic, agreed to testify against the other five defendants charged in federal court in western Michigan, according to the plea agreement filed by prosecutors. Eight other men have been accused in state court of cooperating with the violent plans, and Garbin will serve as a witness against them, too, it said. The defendants, arrested in October, were accused of planning to kidnap Whitmer around the time of the Nov. 3 election and either to abandon her in a boat in the middle of Lake Michigan or to take her to another state, possibly Wisconsin, and put her on trial. They accused Whitmer of acting like a “tyrant’’ for restrictions the state had put in place to combat the spread of the coronavirus. The plot came amid heightened political tensions surrounding the presidential election, tensions that had been building all year in Michigan with protests against lockdowns that armed groups helped to organize starting in April. Former president Trump had tweeted “Liberate Michigan!’’ at that time, and two of the accused in the state case were among the protesters who entered the Michigan State Capitol last spring carrying long guns and dressed in camouflage. Other plans discussed by the group included a military-style assault on the Michigan statehouse, as well as carrying out attacks against Michigan state police, and the plea agreement included new details about those scenarios.. In the plot to kidnap the governor, the defendants visited Whitmer’s vacation home in Michigan twice and planned to buy $4,000 worth of explosives to blow up a bridge to try to prevent the police from responding to their plan. The group discussed waiting until after the election, as members anticipated widespread civil unrest that might make it easier to carry out the plan, the agreement said. At a field training exercise near Luther, Mich., the men also built a shoot house to simulate an attack on the governor’s house and practiced attacking it with firearms, the plea agreement stated.

I don’t know what you’re on, but whatever it is, you should probably stop.

Sadly, it’s exactly representative of trump supporters. Like the ones at rallies who punched protestors, and the ones here who said libs should be shot. All. Of. You. . Including Jim G above,who’s a perfect example of trying to divert attention from your brethren. . And trying to weasel out of it here is like cabinet members who think they can resign at the last minute in the hope that they can polish their resumes, after four years of lockstep participation. Won’t work for them, and won’t work for you.