Yesterday's Hit men are prosecuted, unless they are Donald Trump post featured a Jan 6 topic commentary by American Historian Heather Cox Richardson. The highlighted end of my comment to Heather raised some hackles in blue spectrum readers.
Sloan Bashinsky
Saw TV replay of some of the Capitol officers' testimony today. A black officer said a white rioter called him "a fucking nigger". I watched a lot of raw footage of the riot and saw a lot of phots o TV. All I recalled seeing in the riot mob was white people. When they, and Trump, and Republicans in Congress and Republicans elsewhere and MAGAs say the election was stolen, they mean it was stolen by blacks. The black officer also said a hit man is arrested and prosecuted, and who hired the hitman is arrested and prosecuted as if the hit man, and that should be investigated. I practiced law a while in Birmingham, Alabama, and I have wondered since Jan 6 and Mitch McConnell blamed the riot on Trump, why Trump was not and has not been prosecuted? I have a very good Republican friend, who voted for Trump, and in his youth was US Army Special Forces and was in serious jungle combat. He said the Capitol rioters should all have been shot dead. I have thought all along the Capitol police had every right to empty their guns into the rioters once they broke into the Capitol, and reloaded and emptied their guns again, and again, until they ran out of bullets defending themselves, the Capitol and the U.S. Congressmen regardless of their party. Yet I never heard my Republican friend condemn Trump or say he should be shot dead. I don't think people want to consider what is really in play, perhaps because the right claims to have God on its side and the left often reacts to mention of God. What's really in play is mass demonic possession similar to what was seen in Germany as Hitler rose to power. I wish it was confined to the right, but when I watched President Biden's press secretary refuse to answer a reporter's question about how many of President Biden's vaccinated staff had contracted Covid-19, I was so disturbed that I wondered what got into me to vote, albeit very reluctantly for Biden? Good-bye transparent presidency. Hello what loves the opposite.
kimceann🌈 (WA)Jul 27
This:
"President Biden said, “We need to remember the government isn’t some foreign force in a distant capital. No, it’s us. All of us. We, the people.“
This was an all-out declaration of war on the underlying premise of the Reagan Revolution. And a full-throated embrace of the first three words of the Constitution, “We, the people.”
kimceann🌈 (WA)
And this:
"Americans are now watching, for the third time in just 30 years, a Democratic president clean up the economic and social debris of a prior Republican presidency.
They’re starting to figure out that crushing the middle-class didn’t produce prosperity and stability, but instead destroyed tens of millions of people’s lives and dreams.
And they’re seeing the hollowness of the Republican’s promises as we all watch, aghast, as the GOP scrambles to mobilize the last remnants of its white racist base, at the same time waging an all-out war on the ability of Black, young and working-class people to vote. "
the Hartman Report
Sloan Bashinsky
Not sure you got my point. I lost confidence in President Biden and his press secretary to level with Americans. If they won't disclose how many vaccinated White House staffers tested positive, then how can they be trusted about anything else?
Joseph Nemeth (CA)
If you want to make a big deal out of something, you sometimes have to explain why it is important.
How many White House vaccinated staffers got COVID? How many "staffers" are there? Are you talking about the Executive Office? (Google says 1800). The vaccine, as of April 2, is about 90% effective. So we would expect that 180 of the Executive Office have (or have had, or will have) COVID symptoms. If the press secretary had answered 200 (or 150), would you have understood that this is a reasonable error-bar around the expected value of 180? Out of 1800 employees, I wouldn't imagine anyone in the White house has that number at their fingertips.
I don't understand the importance of this question, and certainly not why it would be grounds for not trusting the White House for not giving a response. It seems to me like a trap question, and the right answer to a trap question is to offer no answer at all.
Sloan Bashinsky
Sorry, I should have explained the importance of the reporter's question. America (and the world) are in the grip of a viral pandemic; the virus is mutating; there has been stiff resistance in large segments of the right, and in segments of the black communities, and scattered resistance elsewhere to being vaccinated, while President Biden pushes for all Americans to be vaccinated. We now know from the news reports that being vaccinated does not guarantee not getting infected, but it does seem to reduce the chances of being infected and it seems to reduce the severity of infections that do occur. So, the vaccinations are not bullet proof, which is what the resisters say. I'm not a resister, I had both Pfizer shots early this year, despite concerns about side effects I have yet to see in me, thankfully. Psaki seemed upset with the reporter for pressing for an answer. If Psaki didn't know the answer, she could have said she didn't know. She did tell the reporter that White House staffers are not required to be vaccinated, which, I had been the reporter, I would have asked, why not. President Biden is pushing for all people in America to be vaccinated, but he does not require being vaccinated to be part of the White House staff? Surely he can require that. Surely he should require vaccination to be consistent with his vaccination campaign. While in Arizona before a huge super spreader mob convinced the 2021 election was stolen, Trump said he got the vaccinations but its everybody's choice to be or not be vaccinated, and the mob went wild.
Joseph Nemeth (CA)
I still find this argument uncompelling, and the conclusion extreme.
It's a huge leap from, "Biden's employee didn't answer a question that I think she should have, or could have given a better answer, so I can never trust him again."
kimceann🌈 (WA)
strange rabbithole
Joseph Nemeth (CA)
Yeah.
Sloan Bashinsky
Even before I ran many times as an Independent for local public office in Key West and the Florida Keys, I didn't like politics and didn't trust politicians. I was the candidate who didn't count votes when he spoke to the news media and at candidate forums. Parallel, I followed national politics much more closely, and didn't care much for what I saw from the Republican or the Democrat side. I voted 3rd party, or didn't vote, in presidential elections, until 2020, when I voted for Joe Biden, reluctantly, because he didn't cause me to fear for the physical safety of my children and their families, and he talked about saving the planet from humanity. Donald Trump demands blind loyalty, regardless of moral, legal and common sense factors. That should be a wake up call for anyone devoted to a leader.
Maggie/NYS
I believe either today(28th) or yesterday, I saw on the news that now everyone at the White House MUST be vaccinated! I have to agree that should have been mandated by now and it IS!
Sloan Bashinsky
If so, thanks to the reporter and FOX News coverage?
Maggie/NYS
I really doubt the WH mandate came about BECAUSE of that reporter & Faux - likely one more of the current crackdown of masks & vaccinations caused by this surge of Delta virus.
Joseph Nemeth (CA)
I believe that would be the post hoc fallacy.
Sloan Bashinsky
Same argument could be made to refute President Donald Trump did not cause the Capitol riot. The fact is, the reporter challenged Psaki, who refused to answer the question and said White House staff were not required to be vaccinated, and FOX News jumped on that hard, and Maggie above commented that everyone at the White House now MUST be vaccinated, and then Biden started talking about all federal employees being required to be vaccinated. That will be interesting to see him pull off. Meanwhile, the stiffest resistance to vaccination is in the red spectrum and perhaps enough of them will catch the delta variant and thin their ranks, or scare them to death, almost, and they become born again vaccination evangelists :-).
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com