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Open Threads

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The Two Real Reasons the House Cancelled Today’s Session, Which Was An Understandable, But Really Bad Idea

by Adam L Silverman|  March 4, 202112:24 pm| 101 Comments

This post is in: America, An Unexamined Scandal, Crazification Factor, Domestic Politics, domestic terrorists, Investigations Into Violent Extremist Attacks, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, Violent Insurrection at the Capitols

Earlier this morning Anne Laurie highlighted that the House of Representatives would be taking today off because of a threat assessment, based on intelligence collected from social media and other sources, that some group of right wing violent domestic extremists – white supremacists, neo-NAZIs, armed and illegal paramilitary groups (aka “militias” and “patriot” groups), and/or other anti-government extremists – working off of a historically bonkers QAnon drop that is itself rooted in sovereign citizen (anti-government extremist) bullshit that 4 March is the real inauguration day and that since today is 4 March, Donald J. Trump is going to be inaugurated for his second term today. And that to celebrate, these anti-American violent domestic extremists were planning on attacking the Capitol again to kill as many members of Congress as possible. Or as members of the Bundy family call it: Thursday.

Just a few minutes ago, not realizing that he’d fallen for my nefariously cunning plan to turn him into my warm up routine, Mistermix asked the following question:

My second question is why the Capital is not ringed with soldiers, why every member and staffer doesn’t have an armed escort, and why some kind of armored vehicles aren’t patrolling streets around the building so the House can meet today?  (The Senate is in session, which makes little sense if you’re closing the House for a threat.)  Is not capitulating to terrorists reserved for foreign terrorists only?

There are two reasons that the House decided to cancel, even though the Capitol is nominally open for business given the pandemic protocols and the US Senate – the world’s greatest deliberative country club – is in session. Both reasons are different types of insider threats. An insider threat is defined as:

An insider threat is any person with authorized access to any U.S. Government resources, including personnel, facilities, information, equipment, networks, or systems, who uses that access either wittingly or unwittingly to do harm to the security of the U.S.

This threat can include damage to the U.S. through espionage, terrorism, unauthorized disclosure of national security information, or through the loss or degradation of government, company, contract or program information, resources or capabilities.

The first of these insider threats is from within the Capitol Police specifically and Federal law enforcement in general. Right now there are six officers from the Capitol Police Department that are suspended and another twenty-nine who are under investigation as part of the ongoing investigations into the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol. As a result, there is a very real worry that members of the Capitol Police may be sympathetic to these violent domestic extremists or, even worse, actually subjectively or objectively affiliated with them. It was reported yesterday that a DEA agent from LA has been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into his activities during the insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January. There is a credible threat of both specific insider threats within the Capitol Police Department and a general concern that there may be additional insider threats within and throughout other Federal law enforcement agencies. This means that those who work in the Capitol – from elected members of both chambers to their staffs to the committee staffs to the staff that just keep the building running for everyone else – may be at risk from those who are supposed to be protecting them.

The second insider threat is from members of the House Republican Caucus and/or members of their staff. Within hours of the attack on the Capitol, Democratic members of the House, led by Congresswoman Mikie Sherill, alleged that Republican members of the House and/or their staff gave reconnaissance tours to the insurrectionists in the days leading up to the attack.  Congressman Tim Ryan, who chairs the sub-committee with oversight over the Capitol complex itself, indicated last week that this question is now under active investigation by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Colombia:

Ryan also told reporters the issue of “reconnaissance tours” given by members of Congress to alleged rioters before the attack was now “in the hands of the U.S. attorney here in D.C.”

He said they were “reviewing the footage.”

In this case the concern is that there are members of the House of Representatives, specifically the House Republican caucus, or members of their staffs who aided and abetted the insurrectionists in planning and facilitating the domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol on 6 January. One of the reasons that this investigation has to be done by reviewing footage and not reviewing visitor log details is because there are no visitor logs right now as the Capitol is closed to visitors under the pandemic control protocols that have been put into place. Ordinarily everyone who enters for one of these member or member’s staff given tours has to provide a significant amount of personally identifying information (PII) that would be logged into the system and cross referenced against who was escorting them, for what purposes, and the day, date, and time of entry and departure. That information isn’t available for this investigation because none of the members or their staffs are supposed to be giving tours, which makes it a perfect time to aide and abet surveillance ahead of a domestic terrorist attack by taking advantage of the normal record keeping process being suspended.

Given these two potential and suspected insider threats, it is perfectly understandable why the House would go into recess for the week a day early. It is also a terrible decision for all that it makes perfect sense. Every time one or more of these specific domestic extremists, domestic extremist group, or the members of the Republican House or Senate caucus who have decided to either represent them or indulge them in the hopes of electoral success (Senator Micro Rubio is definitely in the latter category), make a threat and get a response to them that is a rewards for making a threat, they win. Moreover, they learn that making a threat or actually carrying out a threat – stalking, harassing, and verbally assaulting members of the House or Senate, attacking the Capitol or a member’s office back in their districts and states, doing the same thing at the state and municipal levels, etc – they receive reinforcement not just for their revanchist, reactionary anti-American, and anti-constitutional beliefs, but for the actions they take to make those beliefs real. The more rewards and reinforcement they receive, the more they will engage in these behaviors and others will be inspired and motivated to adopt these beliefs and behaviors for themselves.

And that is why this moment is very different and uniquely dangerous compared to previous moments of hyper-polarization in US politics. Normally we would all want to try to make a distinction, painting with a very fine brush if you will, between those who hold ideologically extreme views, but work within the existing political system and processes to achieve their goals and those who hold those same views, but advocate and undertake the use of violence to achieve the same goals. We would want to do this because by channeling even those with ideologically extreme views through the existing political system and process it keeps them both in touch with those that don’t hold their views, exposes them to counter-arguments, and uses the system to temper their extremism by using the systems and processes to prevent their extremist beliefs from becoming extremist outcomes. This moment is unique, however, because that is both not possible and because the system is not working to do that. Hawley, Cruz, Cotton, Lee, Johnson, Grassley, McConnell, Graham, Tuberville, and almost thirty other Republicans in the Senate and Greene, Boebert, Cawthorne, Gaetz, Jordan, McCarthy, Scalise, and almost 140 other Republicans in the House have all made it explicitly clear that if the existing political system and processes won’t produce the outcomes that they prefer, that they are perfectly happy to subvert them and if that doesn’t work destroy them to achieve their objectives. Moreover, they are using the threats of and actual violence and terrorism by the violent domestic extremists to justify their actions and achieve their objectives. This is not one or two ideological fellow travelers that happened to just get elected and are not able to accomplish much. This is an insider threat from within the Republican House and Senate caucuses that make up a majority of the GOP caucus in the House and between a third and half of the Republican caucus in the Senate.

These two insider threats are the answer to MisterMix’s question.

Open thread!

The Two Real Reasons the House Cancelled Today’s Session, Which Was An Understandable, But Really Bad IdeaPost + Comments (101)

Two Questions

by Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix|  March 4, 202111:03 am| 84 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

As John pointed out yesterday, the “concession” that Biden made to Manchin et. al. on the stimulus package is not that much (around $15 billion) and the people who will be hurt are those who were making between $80K and $100K (or couples making $160K-200K).  So it’s a little trim on what is shaping up to be a pretty large and surprisingly good disaster relief package.   That trim will still hurt some people, like those who were making a solid middle-class income then lost their job, because we need to hurt people for reasons, I guess.

My first question:  who is the audience for this nonsense?   It can’t be Fox News and Republicans, because they’ll still be able to dig up stories of undeserving (i.e., black and brown) stimulus recipients, no matter what caps we put on it.  Are there some Democrats who give a shit about the $15 or so billion that will be saved from a $1.9 trillion package?   Is there some quirk of West Virginia or Arizona politics that means that Manchin and Sinema will prosper because of this tiny cut?  Or are those two just like a dogs that have to piss on every tree to show the world that they exist?  Maybe I answered my own question.

My second question is why the Capital is not ringed with soldiers, why every member and staffer doesn’t have an armed escort, and why some kind of armored vehicles aren’t patrolling streets around the building so the House can meet today?  (The Senate is in session, which makes little sense if you’re closing the House for a threat.)  Is not capitulating to terrorists reserved for foreign terrorists only?

Open thread.

Two QuestionsPost + Comments (84)

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists Score Another ‘Victory’

by Anne Laurie|  March 4, 20217:37 am| 129 Comments

This post is in: domestic terrorists, GOP Death Cult, Open Threads

The U.S. House of Representatives canceled its session planned after Washington D.C. Police warned that a militia group could be plotting to attack the Capitol https://t.co/w8rksD4cXz pic.twitter.com/SvjtpRQDVc

— Reuters (@Reuters) March 4, 2021

show full post on front page

fox news getting the inside dirt on clandestine far right operations by interviewing their employees https://t.co/oBrWmsYXYg

— Peloton InfoSec Analyst (Incident Response) (@CalmSporting) March 3, 2021

Capitol Police did not identify the militia group that it says has threatened to breach the U.S. Capitol on Thursday. Capitol Police chief Yogananda Pittman declined in testimony before a House panel to provide any more details publicly. https://t.co/VokvZKS9ST

— The Associated Press (@AP) March 3, 2021


(Strong suggestions it’s the Three Percenters / Oath Keepers, but that mustn’t be averred directly, because so many members of that cohort are also working law enforcement officials.)

I love this world where we're on pins and needles bimonthly because some shitposting soothsayer turned our most divorced uncles into Templars. https://t.co/gfX4L5Kgm2

— Zeddy (@Zeddary) March 3, 2021

Comprehensive explainer, by the BBC, of our quaint ex-colonial ways:

Why are QAnon believers obsessed with 4 March?https://t.co/J1VHEZH2hn

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 4, 2021

… The idea stems from the belief among some QAnon followers that the United States turned from a country into a corporation after the passage of the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871.

It’s an odd, unfounded theory drawn from the sovereign citizen movement, an extreme libertarian fringe that opposes federal laws, general taxation and even the US currency on the grounds that they restrict individual rights.

Believers in the QAnon offshoot maintain that every US president, act and amendment passed after 1871 is illegitimate…

Come, fellow SovCits, let us declare a return to the halcyon days when not-Whites were livestock, and women not much more privileged!

Somebody keep an eye on Rand Paul; I don’t think he’s a sovereign-citizen believer, but he’s surely aware of their propaganda and ready to take advantage of any opening they might wedge.

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists Score Another ‘Victory’Post + Comments (129)

Later Night Open Thread: Quick, Henry, the FLIT!

by Anne Laurie|  March 4, 20212:55 am| 47 Comments

This post is in: Books, Open Threads, Racial Justice

"madam press secretary, does mister biden assert that horton does not in fact hear a who and is perpetuating a falsehood on par with the leadup to the iraq war? i work for the washington post, btw." https://t.co/y8EP8WUomE

— Peloton InfoSec Analyst (Incident Response) (@CalmSporting) March 2, 2021

I don’t actually remember the content of And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street — one of the not-acutally-banned six — but I do remember getting in trouble for publicly criticizing it, back in 1960, when I was in kindergarten. Most of the story-hour books at P.S. 291 were of the genre best described as Worthy Educational Material, designed more to lull the young audience into naptime than to inspire. But one day Mrs. Bookbinder, bless her earnest heart, decided to bring in a copy of the already-vintage Dr. Seuss book that had once inspired her children. And, of course, as a budding literary snob, I was impelled to denigrate it as nowhere near the standards of the author’s later work (not even 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, much less the slyly subversive One Fish Two Fish). Which I probably could’ve gotten away with, if not for the predicatable teacher’s pet…

“I think it was a wonderful story, Mrs. Bookbinder!”

“Yeah, cuz you’re a suck-up.”

So I had to bring home (yet another) Note to My Parents. My poor mother, a nascent English teacher herself, was torn between the honesty of my critique and her immense respect for the social forms. My old man, after explaining (probably not for the first time) that there were many things which were true and yet not to be said in public, introduced me to Mr. Geissel’s original source of fame: the advertising campaign for FLIT, which was popular enough to enter the general awareness as a tag line — I remember it being used in both Pogo and MAD magazine. (And some of those ads, if you click over: hella racist, by 21st-century standards!)

I was also held incidentally responsible, by the educational authorities, for a minor kerfuffle with the parents of a couple of my Italian-American classmates. Apparently the fuss over my brutal emotional assault on Teacher’s Pet impressed those kids enough that, although they’d never mentioned anything about earlier stories, they described the Seuss-inspired scene to their parents. Now, Geissel was talking about his home town in Massachusetts, but in NYC, Mulberry Street was (still is, such as it remains) Little Italy. You find us funny? Are we some kind of joke to you?…

Such is the power of literature, even at its most (pre)elementary level.

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It's weird to put self-cancelation in the "cancel culture" category.

Here, the people doing the cancelling are the people who own the books being cancelled. If the publisher doesn't want to publish something they object to, that's their business. Property rights 'n' all that. https://t.co/OZnl86rEKG

— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) March 2, 2021

Look on the bright side. Fifteen years from now you can make some bucks selling these old books on Ebay, assuming you actually own some copies, which stop lying almost none of you actually do.

— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) March 2, 2021

that will show dr. seuss enterprises for ceasing publication of some of their catalogue. they're getting fucking owned now by people buying all these books from them https://t.co/A5tdqEQt4v

— Wild Geerters (@classiclib3ral) March 3, 2021

Later Night Open Thread: <em>Quick, Henry, the FLIT!</em>Post + Comments (47)

Late Night Open Thread – H.R. 1 Passes The House

by Cheryl Rofer|  March 3, 202111:25 pm| 65 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Voting Rights

H.R.1, which contains voting protections and much else, just passed the house, 220 -210.

H.R. 1, the "For the People Act':

Overhauls government ethics and campaign finance laws

Creates automatic voter registration

Expands access to early and absentee voting

Curtails the influence of big money in politics

Curbs partisan gerrymandering

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 4, 2021

BREAKING: The House just passed H.R. 1, the sweeping voting rights and ethics reform bill. The vote was 220-210. Not a single Republican voted in favor of the bill.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 4, 2021

BREAKING: House Dems just passed the most important democracy reform bill since the 1965 Voting Rights Act!#HR1 enacts sweeping new voting protections, bans congressional gerrymandering, & adopts public campaign financing. See the major provisions here: https://t.co/a2nIWn7ETf pic.twitter.com/OWcDcKnJlA

— Stephen Wolf (@PoliticsWolf) March 4, 2021

Breaking: HR1, the #ForThePeopleAct, passes the House on a 220-210 vote. pic.twitter.com/6ZHdkvIPBU

— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) March 4, 2021

Late Night Open Thread – H.R. 1 Passes The HousePost + Comments (65)

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Eat Audit the Rich!

by Anne Laurie|  March 3, 20216:15 pm| 184 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Education, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat

Elizabeth Warren's plan isn't just Tax the Rich.

It's also Audit the Rich.

She wants wealthiest ~100,000 to have an audit once every ~3 years, and to nearly double the budget for the IRS, she tells @kevcirilli https://t.co/1S0fXgAtc5

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) March 3, 2021

One of my senior Senator’s campaign proposals that I’m glad to see revived, because she’s proposing to spend those new taxes on educational services that really need to be implemented.

It will, doubters insist, lead to a proliferation of cryptocurrency and money-laundering schemes. On the other hand, I’m seeing a lot of stories about new & creative methods in grey-area finance already (GameStonks! Non-Fungible Tokens!), along with hand-wringing that such schemes usually indicate the end of a ‘bubble’, so…

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Warren says she plans to talk to Yellen about how to implement a wealth tax; she discounts talk that it will be difficult to tally. Only assets worth more than $50,000 have to be counted and a lot of that is stock and real estate.

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) March 3, 2021

At about ~$22B a year, IRS would still be a very small % of federal spending. In ballpark of NASA.

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) March 3, 2021

To the moon, Alice!

Warren has a way to describe the difference in the wealth gap vs the income gap that's hard to describe in text alone:https://t.co/fdPa4V11Dt

— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) March 3, 2021

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: <del>Eat</del> Audit the Rich!Post + Comments (184)

This Is a Pretty Stupid Headline

by John Cole|  March 3, 20215:27 pm| 176 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Democratic Cowardice, Democratic Stupidity, Our Failed Media Experiment

This Is Pretty Lazy Analysis

This is pretty stupid, and you can see why in the first few paragraphs:

After being badgered to death by moderate Senate Democrats, the Biden administration has agreed to put stricter limits on who will be eligible for a relief check as part of its big COVID recovery bill.

Centrists such as Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia have spent weeks urging the administration to “target” the new round of $1,400 economic impact payments more narrowly to lower-income families in order avoid spending money on households that might not be facing financial difficulties at the moment. On Wednesday, Democrats said they would phase down the checks more quickly for higher earners than originally planned. As a result, approximately 11.8 million fewer adults and 4.6 million fewer children will benefit from a payment, according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Singles who earn up to $75,000 will still receive the full check amount. But the payment will ramp down to zero for those who earn more than $80,000, well below the previous cutoff of $100,000. Married couples who file jointly will still receive their entire check if they make up to $150,000. But payments will fall to zilch for those earning more than $160,000, down from the previous threshold of $200,000.

Maybe it’s just me, but NOT BEING ABLE TO PASS ANY BILL OTHERWISE seems like a pretty good reason to me.

Now Manchin and Sinema and whoever else’s reasons for opposing the bill as is, might be pretty bad, but I would argue the overall reason team Biden is acquiescing to these dipshits is pretty fucking solid.

This Is a Pretty Stupid HeadlinePost + Comments (176)

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