lol Nobody was promising $2600, but Tlaib and AOC are arguing for it. It's so crazy I understand your reluctance to believe it.

Good news for Ryan from a criminal/legal pov obviously, but as you say it doesn't lift the cloud of creepiness hanging over his head. As a Ryan Adams fanboy, I remain conflicted. Anyone who knows his music understands that he's emotionally stunted and socially dysfunctional, and as much as I'd like to excuse his behavior on those grounds they're not enough. Full grown adults are supposed to behave better.

His latest release is pretty damn good though.

Both Tlaib and AOC are *on board* with the $600 +$1400 doesn't = $2000 argument. They've twitterized as much. Seems like a bizarre hill to stake a flag on when the math is clearly against them and Biden has *quite clearly* advocated exactly what they wanted prior to changing their minds.

My own recollection of things is that neither of those CCers had publicly argued prior to Biden's move (ie., to include an additional $1400 in direct payments) that $2000 isn't enough. It's bizarre, distracting, and makes the left look as ridiculous as their worst detractors say they are.

I've learned that the hard way lol

Re: the substitute word "fish", until today I thought that was a (pretty lame) attempt to present as civil by the curse-word squeamish.

Now I know better.

This will be a useful change of topic you can respond to Pinky:

A majority of Republicans, 51%, say GOP leaders who supported Trump's efforts to overturn the election *did not go far enough* via ABC/Washington Post poll. Only 16% say they went too far; 27% say they handled it about right.

The Party of Moderation yo.

I don't know about you Pinky, but I'm just not seeing a lot of humility in the Republican party anymore. Thoughts and feelings?

Pinky, I understand that you confuse your feelings for facts. I'm not sure why I need to read anything to clarify that point though. But if it's a worthwhile topic maybe you could explain it to me in an OP-length essay about the origins and thought processes of Christian conservatism. It'd be nice for you to, so to speak, lay your cards on the table.

"felt"

Even that's condescending. I was alive when the song Back In Black was used by Cadillac in a commercial ya know.

Who cares, though?

That you're effectively lamenting the demise of the Jeremiah Wright scandal says something about you, though. Not sure what. I could make some guesses...

Thanks for that insight Jaybird. You've changed my entire perception of the 2016 election!

Really? That's your response?

Dude. You should be *apologizing* right about now.

I choose to read your comment as if it only included the first sentence to preclude attributing to you an insulting level of condescension.

Trump wasn't a response to Obama?

Trump doesn't remain a response to Obama?

Add: Trump's algorithm in during the general and in the first few years was to simply *do the opposite of what Obama did*. Which inlcuded being white.

The highlights of the pre trump years were lots of immigrants coming here and successfully building lives so their grandchildren could eventually turn into selfish ass regular old Americans.

Truer words have never been spoken, err, written, my friend.

Your point is that claims of fraud were about race, claims that were backed by 140 or so elected GOPers and about 75% of Republican voters. That's a bit different. I totally understand that Pinky wasn't aware of those facts when he wrote what he did.

Me too. :)

Our country needs more immigrants who *DO* love America to outpace the authoritarian Trumpist populists as well as the cynics like myself.

My perceptions of the US are corrupted by having lived here. :)

You've been an apologist for the GOP during the Trump presidency, yes? I understand your confusion.

Hmmm, what triggers moderation anymore?

Anyway, I got a comment in mod.

Moderation? Do curse words trigger mod? I wrote the word "fucking".

Is it a bannable offense to say that I *don't* love my country? Honestly, I don't even know what the expression means. It's not like my country is my kid or parent. It's just the place I was born. One reason I don't love my country is that the celebration of ignorance and arrogance we call "Trumpism" defines who we are as a people. Trump is often (conveniently) identified as the cause of Where We Are, but he isn't. He's just an opportunist.

Likewise, the pre-Trump years weren't all that fucking great either. Except for the wealthy. The highlights of the post-Nixon presidencies are Reagan reducing taxes on the rich and Bill Clinton offshoring American manufacturing jobs, and George Bush illegally invading a foreign country.

I don't love my country. But I do think that any hope for this country going forward includes a repudiation of populist insurrections against the worst-except-for-all-the-rest type of government we actually have. For better or worse, the politicians we elect and the policies they enact are *who we are* as a country. And the GOP has elected apologists - and in some cases accomplices - who support a coup on that system.
Don't love those folks.

Adding: seems to me the better counterfactual analysis to explain the insurrectionists behavior on Jan 6th would be the police response to two events conducted by folks on the right: the Bundy's occupation of the wildlife refuge and the armed militia taking over the Michigan state legislature. Both of those were *wildly* successful uses of private power to oppose government. Ie. "if not for those events and the correlated responses, there would have been no siege of the capitol."

Perception is EVERYTHING here. The entirety of the argument rides on perception.

Well, perception can't be "everything" otherwise the argument you made in the OP makes no sense, right? Delusional people have perceptions that are divorced from reality, yet they still act on their perceptions.

Maybe you want to say that the Trumpist insurrectionists had *correct* perceptions about not facing any consequences for engaging in a violent attack on the Capitol building despite the fact that those "correct" perceptions may turn out to be incorrect?

Let's flip it around. Seems to me that you're argument is that the thought process invoked by the folks that violently attacked the Capitol builidng (with intent to murder and kidnap elected CCers and Pence) was that since the BLM rioters weren't arrested and charged for the illegal violent acts they committed, they wouldn't be arrested and charged for illegally storming (and attempting to kill and kidnap various CCers) the Capitol building.

Is that plausible, though? In what way would *ascribing* (and let's be clear here, that's what you're doing in the OP, you're ascribing a mental state and a thought process to the insurrectionists) that belief be plausible? They'd have to (falsely) believe that storming the capitol wouldn't result in criminal charges against them; they'd have to believe (falsely) that the riots flowing from the BLM protests didn't result in charges against those perpetrators; they'd have to believe (falsely) that the use of violence to achieve political ends was justified based on the (incorrect) evidence of the riots over the summer. And that last one is the key, it seems to me, in understanding the thought processes of the insurrectionists: irrespective of the riots over the summer, those folks truly believe that the election was stolen from Trump and that Congress and/or Pence had the power to make things right, but that they were too chicken-s*** to act without some prodding. That was the perception they were acting under.

Two additional thoughts: if the response is that those protestors aren't so stupid as to actually believe the election was stolen so there's some other cause of their actions, I'd say that your hypothesis already attributes a high level of stupidity to them. Second, if the response is an insistence of that the violent protests over the summer helped cause the siege of the capitol, I'd insist that the counterfactual has no truth conditions, especially since the motivation for the siege can be explained by other factors (like a kindasorta did above).

FWIW, NYT is reporting that McConnell thinks Trump committed impeachable offenses, will wait for the hearing to officially decide, and isn't going to pressure anyone in his caucus to vote either way.

The idea that cops only use constitutionally allowed tools is what needs reconsidering.