The Many Faces of US Politics...

[PadraicHenryPearse]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/federal-judge-allows-activists-to-stake-out-ballot-boxes.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur


This is all totally normal ... 😳

Someone is going to end up getting killed when an interaction with one of these thugs gets out of hand.

Trump has done such damage to this country, all in service of his massive, but fragile, ego.

Yes.....a would be assassin showed up at the door of a conservative Supreme Court Justice having driven 3000 miles across the country stoked by rage and lies ginned up by the left.

Even more outrageous is the fact 27 members of the Democratic Party voted against a bill offering SJC justices round the clock protection including AOC who was front and center in leading the outrage about the Pelosi attack

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3523572-these-are-the-27-house-democrats-who-opposed-a-bill-expanding-security-for-supreme-court-families/amp/

what were the reasons for the 27 opposing the bill?

[whitey]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/federal-judge-allows-activists-to-stake-out-ballot-boxes.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur


This is all totally normal ... 😳

Someone is going to end up getting killed when an interaction with one of these thugs gets out of hand.

Trump has done such damage to this country, all in service of his massive, but fragile, ego.

Yes.....a would be assassin showed up at the door of a conservative Supreme Court Justice having driven 3000 miles across the country stoked by rage and lies ginned up by the left.

Even more outrageous is the fact 27 members of the Democratic Party voted against a bill offering SJC justices round the clock protection including AOC who was front and center in leading the outrage about the Pelosi attack

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3523572-these-are-the-27-house-democrats-who-opposed-a-bill-expanding-security-for-supreme-court-families/amp/

what were the reasons for the 27 opposing the bill?

It's in the article

[PadraicHenryPearse]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/federal-judge-allows-activists-to-stake-out-ballot-boxes.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur


This is all totally normal ... 😳

Someone is going to end up getting killed when an interaction with one of these thugs gets out of hand.

Trump has done such damage to this country, all in service of his massive, but fragile, ego.

Yes.....a would be assassin showed up at the door of a conservative Supreme Court Justice having driven 3000 miles across the country stoked by rage and lies ginned up by the left.

Even more outrageous is the fact 27 members of the Democratic Party voted against a bill offering SJC justices round the clock protection including AOC who was front and center in leading the outrage about the Pelosi attack

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3523572-these-are-the-27-house-democrats-who-opposed-a-bill-expanding-security-for-supreme-court-families/amp/

what were the reasons for the 27 opposing the bill?

It's in the article

I thought I missed something in the article as it differs to how you appear to be presenting it.

[whitey]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/federal-judge-allows-activists-to-stake-out-ballot-boxes.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur


This is all totally normal ... 😳

Someone is going to end up getting killed when an interaction with one of these thugs gets out of hand.

Trump has done such damage to this country, all in service of his massive, but fragile, ego.

Yes.....a would be assassin showed up at the door of a conservative Supreme Court Justice having driven 3000 miles across the country stoked by rage and lies ginned up by the left.

Even more outrageous is the fact 27 members of the Democratic Party voted against a bill offering SJC justices round the clock protection including AOC who was front and center in leading the outrage about the Pelosi attack

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3523572-these-are-the-27-house-democrats-who-opposed-a-bill-expanding-security-for-supreme-court-families/amp/

what were the reasons for the 27 opposing the bill?

It's in the article

I thought I missed something in the article as it differs to how you appear to be presenting it.

The NJ contingent had a legitimate reason

The other high profile Democrats were playing politics

[Gmac]

Swinging hammers at 2-30am

[Eamonnca1]

The latest in violent right wing conservative nutjobbery: A deranged conservative terrorist broke into the home of Nancy Pelosi asking "where's Nancy?" and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. Mr Pelosi was left with a fractured skull.

Don Junior's response?

Tweets a picture of a hammer and underwear with the caption "Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready."

"The internet remains undefeated... Also if you switch out the hammer for a red feather boa you could be Hunter Biden in an instant."

The billionaire twerp Elon Musk decided to tweet that there might be "more to this story than meets the eye" after reading unfounded BS in the right wing BSosphere about the assailant dressed in underwear only, ergo it must have been Mr Pelosi's gay lover.

These people are unhinged and it's only going to get worse. Democratic politicians are going to have to ensure they have good security.

[Eamonnca1]

From the LA Times:

'We are a tinderbox': Political violence is ramping up, experts warn
BY MELANIE MASON, DAVID LAUTER
OCT. 30, 2022 6 AM PT

In San Francisco's tony Pacific Heights neighborhood, an intruder broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's home and violently attacked her husband. In a New York courtroom, a man pleaded guilty to threatening to kill California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell. In Washington, federal law enforcement warned that violent domestic extremism posed an elevated threat in the approaching midterm election.

All on the same day.

The targeting of the home of Speaker Pelosi, a Democrat who is second in line for the presidency, stood out on Friday for its brutality and sinister intent. But for many Americans, shock was tinged with a weary sense of inevitability. Far from a freak occurrence, the attack felt of a piece with the other threats and warnings publicized that day — the latest additions to the country's growing sense of political menace, especially from the far right.

"Unfortunately, this is a continuation of at least a 2½-year-long established pattern of violence against elected officials and local officials, including poll workers, that has been steadily ramping up," said Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard Kennedy School professor who studies political violence.

Politically motivated violence has ebbed and flowed throughout U.S. history. Currently, America is going through an upsurge in right-wing violence, according to researchers who track attacks and other incidents. They say today's climate is comparable to that in the mid-1990s, when a similar wave of right-wing violence culminated in the 1995 bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people.

Incidents now range from the unprecedented — the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Trump who were trying to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election — to the more quotidian malice of telephone and email death threats.

There were 9,625 threats against members of Congress and their families last year, according to the Capitol Police — more than twice as many as in 2017. A joint project by the Anti-Defamation League and Princeton University tracked 400 incidents of harassment against local-level election, health and education officials in 43 states from January 2020 until mid-September this year.

The Nov. 8 midterm election is rife with potential targets for violence. In several parts of the country, right-wing organizations have mobilized poll watchers, who in some cases have confronted early voters. Members of one Arizona-based group, some in tactical gear, took photos of voters' license plates at ballot drop boxes in the Phoenix area; a federal judge on Friday rejected a request to ban the observers' activities, saying the 1st Amendment protected their right to assemble in public areas.

The cumulative effect of these incidents is a bleaker national mood, polls show. In a YouGov poll in August, a strong majority of respondents said they believed political violence would increase in the coming years, and over half thought America would be less of a democracy a generation from now.

Over 40% of Americans think civil war is at least somewhat likely within the next decade, another YouGov poll that month indicated. One in five people who identified as strong Republicans said they believe civil war is very likely — more than any other political group.

The unsettled atmosphere "tends to influence what I call the signals among the noise — the very few individuals who are not just talking, but are going to take action and are going to be politically violent," said Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist who has worked as a consultant to the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. "Our work has been to focus on how do we detect the signals amid the noise."

Over the last decade, politically motivated extremists, a majority of them right-wing, have killed over 400 people in the U.S., according to the Anti-Defamation League, which has tracked domestic political violence for 15 years. In 2021, political violence resulted in 29 deaths, according to the ADL's most recent report.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, which also tracks extremist violence, found that 2020 and 2021 had the most attacks since it began tracking incidents in 1994.

There was "a historically high level of both far-right and far-left terrorist attacks in 2021," the bipartisan think tank's researchers said, adding that "violent far-right incidents were significantly more likely to be lethal, both in terms of weapon choice and number of resulting fatalities."

Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist, likened the nation to a landscape full of flammable hazards during wildfire season.

"That combustible material doesn't go off spontaneously — you need a lightning strike or cigar butt to trigger it," Pape said.

"We are a tinderbox right now. ... The difference between the right and the left is you are getting lightning strikes on the right," he continued. "It is just happening again and again."

The "lightning strikes," Pape said, are messages, explicit or implied, from prominent Republican politicians or media figures who use incendiary rhetoric and winking nods to conspiracy theories to stoke animosity against their ideological opponents.

Animus against Republicans has also led to danger and bloodshed. Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the third-ranking House Republican, was gravely wounded in 2017 when a gunman opened fire at a practice for the GOP's congressional baseball team. And in June, a California man armed with a pistol, a knife and tactical gear was arrested outside conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh's Maryland home; the man now faces charges of attempted murder.

Though some Democrats have been criticized for provocative language — Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer warning conservative justices that they had "released the whirlwind" after they overturned Roe vs. Wade, for example — Pape said the party as a whole, especially President Biden, has been more forceful than Republicans in renouncing extremist rhetoric and actions.

"It's one thing to condemn the violence," Biden told reporters Saturday after he cast his ballot early in Delaware. "But you can't condemn the violence unless you condemn those people who are arguing that the election is not real. ... The talk has to stop. That's the problem."

Republicans who said they strongly or very strongly believed that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden is an illegitimate president — about 15% of the population — were "substantially more likely than others to consider violence usually or always justified" to achieve certain goals, according to a study by the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis.

But there is some reason for optimism, according to recent research by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, which Pape directs. The share of Trump supporters who think the use of force is justified to restore him to the presidency declined by 33% between April and September this year — a shift to roughly 13 million Americans justifying violence, down from 21 million.

The decline occurred over a period marked by several high-profile acts of ideological violence. Those included a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., by a believer in the racist "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory who targeted Black shoppers; and an armed Trump supporter's attempted attack on an FBI field office in Cincinnati a few days after agents searched the former president's Mar-a-Lago estate for improperly retained classified documents.

The summer also saw concerted efforts to draw attention to the rising threat of political violence. The congressional hearings on the Jan. 6 insurrection publicly explored the extent of the violence that day, as well as the extensive lies by Trump and his allies about election fraud. And Biden dedicated an entire speech in Philadelphia to warning of peril to democracy.

The idea that political violence is inevitable "is wrong," Pape said. "Naming and shaming, as has been done by the Jan. 6 committee and President Biden's speeches, are likely diminishing support for violence. But we have a long way to go."

Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican who sits on the Jan. 6 panel, said Friday that the attack on Pelosi's husband was a consequence of right-wing conspiracy theories.

"When you convince people that politicians are rigging elections, drink babies' blood, etc., you will get violence. This must be rejected," he wrote on Twitter.

And GOP Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska described the dynamic as "increasingly obvious: Disturbed individuals will easily succumb to conspiracy theories and rage — the consequences are bloody and un-American."

Both men are stepping down from Congress.

Most GOP officials denounced Friday's attack and offered thoughts and prayers without commenting on the broader political context.

The power of partisan reflexes was on display when Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, appeared to make light of the incident just hours after news of the assault broke.

"There's no room for violence anywhere, but we're going to send [Speaker Pelosi] back to be with him in California," Youngkin said while campaigning for a GOP congressional candidate. His audience cheered.

The polarized reactions extended to partisan media. While mainstream and left-leaning outlets reported on radicalization on the right, conservative outlets such as Fox News painted the assault as evidence of out-of-control crime.

In one segment, Fox News host Laura Ingraham fretted that a "lone lunatic" would be used as justification to "silence conservative speech." Her guest Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, assured her that voters would see the incident as the fault of "leftist elected officials who have not enforced the laws."

"The basic understanding about the context we're living in ... is literally worlds apart," said Chenoweth.

The Harvard political scientist said that bridging that divide will take time and deliberate effort, noting that research has shown that public figures using their platforms to condemn extremism and false conspiracy theories makes a difference.

"What we are experiencing is a democracy problem," Chenoweth said. "The thing that could really help our democracy problem right now is for all our leaders, including our Republican leaders, to say over and over that this stuff has to stop."

[Eamonnca1]

I challenge the conservative commentators on this forum to condemn this violence. No whatabouts, no ifs, no buts, no trying to turn it around into a jibe about whatever minority they're trying to blame this one on. Just condemn it.

[whitey]

I challenge the conservative commentators on this forum to condemn this violence. No whatabouts, no ifs, no buts, no trying to turn it around into a jibe about whatever minority they're trying to blame this one on. Just condemn it.

I completely condemn it!

Now will you condemn Chuck Schumer for threatening 2 Supreme Court justices by name, (one of who had an armed person drive across the country and show up at his house to kill him)

Will you condemn AOC and other member of the squad for voting against a bill that would have provided around the clock protection for Supreme Court justices and their families

[J70]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/federal-judge-allows-activists-to-stake-out-ballot-boxes.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur


This is all totally normal ... 😳

Someone is going to end up getting killed when an interaction with one of these thugs gets out of hand.

Trump has done such damage to this country, all in service of his massive, but fragile, ego.

Yes.....a would be assassin showed up at the door of a conservative Supreme Court Justice having driven 3000 miles across the country stoked by rage and lies ginned up by the left.

Even more outrageous is the fact 27 members of the Democratic Party voted against a bill offering SJC justices round the clock protection including AOC who was front and center in leading the outrage about the Pelosi attack

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3523572-these-are-the-27-house-democrats-who-opposed-a-bill-expanding-security-for-supreme-court-families/amp/

Not defending extremist reaction on either side, but the fact is that one case was about Roe V Wade being struck down, a real actual event. Where's the truth in Trump and the GOP's "heads I win, tails you cheated" lies and action on elections?

Many, many high profile Democrats spent the 4 years prior to 2020 questioning the legitimacy of Trumps 2016 victory and subsequent presidency and all of a sudden are outraged when the Republicans adopt the same tactics

https://gop.com/research/over-150-examples-of-democrats-denying-election-results-rsr/

Ah yes, the classic bad faith whitey false equivalence bullshit.

Go ahead and show us where Democrats fomented a violent attack on the Capitol in an attempt to thwart the transfer of power. Show us where they spent months trying to undermine faith in the election beforehand and years since using ludicrous, easily debunked fairy tales they wouldn't dare use in a court room. Go ahead and show us where the majority of their members refused to certify the election in what has always otherwise been a rubber stamping exercise. Go ahead and show us Democratic state platforms do not recognize the sitting president as legitimate. Go ahead and show us where Democrats are putting people into position to cancel the will of the people in future elections.

[J70]

Swinging hammers at 2-30am

Yeah, should have known the resident genius would be pushing this one.

[J70]

The latest in violent right wing conservative nutjobbery: A deranged conservative terrorist broke into the home of Nancy Pelosi asking "where's Nancy?" and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. Mr Pelosi was left with a fractured skull.

Don Junior's response?

Tweets a picture of a hammer and underwear with the caption "Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready."

"The internet remains undefeated... Also if you switch out the hammer for a red feather boa you could be Hunter Biden in an instant."

The billionaire twerp Elon Musk decided to tweet that there might be "more to this story than meets the eye" after reading unfounded BS in the right wing BSosphere about the assailant dressed in underwear only, ergo it must have been Mr Pelosi's gay lover.

These people are unhinged and it's only going to get worse. Democratic politicians are going to have to ensure they have good security.

Class acts, the lot of them.

[whitey]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/federal-judge-allows-activists-to-stake-out-ballot-boxes.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur


This is all totally normal ... 😳

Someone is going to end up getting killed when an interaction with one of these thugs gets out of hand.

Trump has done such damage to this country, all in service of his massive, but fragile, ego.

Yes.....a would be assassin showed up at the door of a conservative Supreme Court Justice having driven 3000 miles across the country stoked by rage and lies ginned up by the left.

Even more outrageous is the fact 27 members of the Democratic Party voted against a bill offering SJC justices round the clock protection including AOC who was front and center in leading the outrage about the Pelosi attack

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3523572-these-are-the-27-house-democrats-who-opposed-a-bill-expanding-security-for-supreme-court-families/amp/

Not defending extremist reaction on either side, but the fact is that one case was about Roe V Wade being struck down, a real actual event. Where's the truth in Trump and the GOP's "heads I win, tails you cheated" lies and action on elections?

Many, many high profile Democrats spent the 4 years prior to 2020 questioning the legitimacy of Trumps 2016 victory and subsequent presidency and all of a sudden are outraged when the Republicans adopt the same tactics

https://gop.com/research/over-150-examples-of-democrats-denying-election-results-rsr/

Ah yes, the classic bad faith whitey false equivalence bullshit.

Go ahead and show us where Democrats fomented a violent attack on the Capitol in an attempt to thwart the transfer of power. Show us where they spent months trying to undermine faith in the election beforehand and years since using ludicrous, easily debunked fairy tales they wouldn't dare use in a court room. Go ahead and show us where the majority of their members refused to certify the election in what has always otherwise been a rubber stamping exercise. Go ahead and show us Democratic state platforms do not recognize the sitting president as legitimate. Go ahead and show us where Democrats are putting people into position to cancel the will of the people in future elections.

Democrats fomented a gun attack on the entire Republican congressional delegation

Chuck Schumer fomented the attempted assassination of a conservative Supreme Court justice

[J70]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/us/politics/federal-judge-allows-activists-to-stake-out-ballot-boxes.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur


This is all totally normal ... 😳

Someone is going to end up getting killed when an interaction with one of these thugs gets out of hand.

Trump has done such damage to this country, all in service of his massive, but fragile, ego.

Yes.....a would be assassin showed up at the door of a conservative Supreme Court Justice having driven 3000 miles across the country stoked by rage and lies ginned up by the left.

Even more outrageous is the fact 27 members of the Democratic Party voted against a bill offering SJC justices round the clock protection including AOC who was front and center in leading the outrage about the Pelosi attack

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3523572-these-are-the-27-house-democrats-who-opposed-a-bill-expanding-security-for-supreme-court-families/amp/

Not defending extremist reaction on either side, but the fact is that one case was about Roe V Wade being struck down, a real actual event. Where's the truth in Trump and the GOP's "heads I win, tails you cheated" lies and action on elections?

Many, many high profile Democrats spent the 4 years prior to 2020 questioning the legitimacy of Trumps 2016 victory and subsequent presidency and all of a sudden are outraged when the Republicans adopt the same tactics

https://gop.com/research/over-150-examples-of-democrats-denying-election-results-rsr/

Ah yes, the classic bad faith whitey false equivalence bullshit.

Go ahead and show us where Democrats fomented a violent attack on the Capitol in an attempt to thwart the transfer of power. Show us where they spent months trying to undermine faith in the election beforehand and years since using ludicrous, easily debunked fairy tales they wouldn't dare use in a court room. Go ahead and show us where the majority of their members refused to certify the election in what has always otherwise been a rubber stamping exercise. Go ahead and show us Democratic state platforms do not recognize the sitting president as legitimate. Go ahead and show us where Democrats are putting people into position to cancel the will of the people in future elections.

Democrats fomented a gun attack on the entire Republican congressional delegation

Chuck Schumer fomented the attempted assassination of a conservative Supreme Court justice

More false equivalency and mental gymnastics.

Schumer's statement, which he retracted the very next day, came two years before the attempt on Kavanaugh. Which has been pointed out to you by myself on a previous occasion.

Have the GOP or Trump retracted ANY of their lies and bullshit about elections and a whole lot of other stuff?

And how did the Dems foment the headcase who shot up the baseball game?

[Gmac]

The latest in violent right wing conservative nutjobbery: A deranged conservative terrorist broke into the home of Nancy Pelosi asking "where's Nancy?" and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. Mr Pelosi was left with a fractured skull.

Don Junior's response?

Tweets a picture of a hammer and underwear with the caption "Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready."

"The internet remains undefeated... Also if you switch out the hammer for a red feather boa you could be Hunter Biden in an instant."

The billionaire twerp Elon Musk decided to tweet that there might be "more to this story than meets the eye" after reading unfounded BS in the right wing BSosphere about the assailant dressed in underwear only, ergo it must have been Mr Pelosi's gay lover.

These people are unhinged and it's only going to get worse. Democratic politicians are going to have to ensure they have good security.

Class acts, the lot of them.

a nudist pot smoking hippie who lives in a Berkeley half way house is a right wing nut job ?