You just cannot make this up. From The Daily Beast, June 4, 2021
A Capitol riot suspect who was captured on camera shouting to police that they were “protecting pedophiles” was himself previously convicted of statutory rape, according to court documents reviewed by CNN. Sean McHugh, who faces eight charges for his role in the Trumpist insurrection, including assaulting police, gave officers an audibly hard time when he brought out a megaphone and yelled “You guys like protecting pedophiles?... You’re protecting communists... There is a Second Amendment behind us, what are you going to do then?” according to footage reviewed by prosecutors. Yet, records show that McHugh was convicted of unlawful sex with a minor in 2010, and that he was sentenced to 240 days in prison and four years of probation. Additionally, when he allegedly took part in the riot at the Capitol, McHugh was already on probation for past misdemeanor convictions, including multiple DUIs. McHugh has not entered a plea, and has been in custody since late May after a judge deemed him too dangerous for the public. However, court filings show that McHugh’s lawyer is pushing for his release again.
You just cannot make this up. From The Daily Beast, June 4, 2021
A Capitol riot suspect who was captured on camera shouting to police that they were “protecting pedophiles” was himself previously convicted of statutory rape, according to court documents reviewed by CNN.
A good rule when dealing with the fringier segments of the American right is to assume that it's always projection.
How can states Democrats possibly stop voter suppression?
Elections are run at the state level, and rules about voting are made at the state level.
Mostly. The federal government has some powers over elections, mostly derived from the Fifteenth Amendment. (Americans often underestimate the degree to which the Reconstruction Amendments radically altered the American constitutional system, and the federalization of certain aspects of elections are one of them.) The big problem here is John Roberts' gutting of the Voting Rights Act which would have prevented these kinds of shenanigans if the law were still intact. This is a problem Congress could theoretically* correct if it had the will to do so.
*John Roberts' opinion in Shelby County v. Holder somewhat notoriously didn't say which part of the Constitution the VRA violated, so there's a distinct possibility that any future efforts by Congress would fall victim to Constitutional Calvinball as long as Roberts remains on the bench and has four other votes to back him up.
People get disillusioned. The failed predictions of QAnon have caused some to fall away. They wake up to the fact that they have been conned. There is a breakthrough point for all individuals. Loyalty depends on that breakthrough point not being reached.
All cults wall people off from opposing understandings so I don’t think much can be done from outside the cult. I understand that conservative church pastors who speak against QAnon fictions are finding this leads to divisions in their congregations.
And of course the mainstream media have been tarred as fake so often that the truth they broadcast is treated as lies.
In the end it is a matter of numbers. Will the number of defectors be sufficient to outweigh the changed state voting laws? Time will tell.
Can you explain that please Ruth? I'd have thought that if a group of people of like mind choose not to be present to vote, it would be carried by those present.
ETA I see you sayit's about quorum but isn't that a minimum number present to make the vote valid?
A quorum is the minimum number necessary for the body to act.
Understood.
When the Dems walked out, there were not enough Republicans present to constitute a quorum, so the House could not take any action other than adjournment.
So how does that work? Assuming the Rs are in the majority, if the Ds walk out the majority remain. Is the quorum figure set so that any vote requires more than half to be present - giving power to the minority to 'veto' anything they don't like by walking out?
When I was politicking around in University Union politics, there was a certain number of voters present at the meeting required to make a quorum, which was a significant proportion of those eligible to vote. We could not vote anything through without enough voters present, in theory, but the count for a quorum didn't always happen, some votes were uncontentious and business had to happen. It was a measure to stop a minority voting through unpopular measures behind closed doors.
If it looked as if an unpopular measure might get through, someone who didn't like it would shout "Quorum", which meant that those in charge of the vote had to count the voters present, and those against ran out, so even if there was a likelihood of reaching a quorum we insured we reduced the number below a quorum. Then before the measure was presented again there would be a lot of campaigning for and against, with a much greater number of voters present. And if it was voted through, shrug, that's democracy in process. Usually if we were doing that, the measure was a bit dubious.
The Trump phenomenon has exposed a dimension of democratic fragility. I had thought the Constitution was a strong protector but Trumpism has exposed how much it depended on norms. Couple that with State legislative power and we arrive today at a situation where a populist demagogue continues to threaten the democratic fabric of the USA in ways I had personally never foreseen.
Can you explain that please Ruth? I'd have thought that if a group of people of like mind choose not to be present to vote, it would be carried by those present.
ETA I see you sayit's about quorum but isn't that a minimum number present to make the vote valid?
A quorum is the minimum number necessary for the body to act.
Understood.
When the Dems walked out, there were not enough Republicans present to constitute a quorum, so the House could not take any action other than adjournment.
So how does that work? Assuming the Rs are in the majority, if the Ds walk out the majority remain. Is the quorum figure set so that any vote requires more than half to be present - giving power to the minority to 'veto' anything they don't like by walking out?
The Texas House of Representatives has 150 members; 100 are required to be present for a quorum. Currently the Democrats hold 67 seats, so under certain circumstances and for a limited time they can stall action on a bill by leaving the house.
This doesn't give them the power to veto anything they want. It would be crazy to have a system that gives a minority so much power to obstruct! (*cough* US Senate *cough*) But if you want to know the details, you'll probably have to find devotee of Texas politics or do your own internet research. Here's the Texas House Rules Manual.
Thanks Dave W for info about Texas quorum being 100 out of 150. I can understand the effect now.
My recollection of student politics was that there were many Students Union meetings on topics not connected with Union business but with politics, not even national politics but debates on overseas struggles against oppressive regimes. I'd be much more interested in that now but at the time most of my compatriots had our daytimes fairly full of lectures and study with some, but not much, free for recreation. These meetings were attended mostly by students of subjects with very light lecture schedules (sociology comes to mind) while there was a very large contingent of science and engineering students with pretty full schedules (incl me studying Physics) who didn't have time without skipping lectures - which did happen of course but we were expected to attend.
I have no idea about quorum required but it must have been a low number as motions were carried while most students weren't present to vote. There was increasing concern that the small number who went to the meetings had their views carried, giving a false impression and affecting our institution's public face. On one issue, large numbers of Engineering students organised themselves and turned up to vote en bloc and overturn the expected result. This annoyed the usual attenders who believed those students who usually gave all those daytime meetings a miss were right-wingers who didn't care about the world and them turning up on this one occasion to vote got them labelled as 'sheep'. (When the Engineering dept. had their next dance they promoted it as the "Sheep Dip" - though I can't imagine where they found enough women to make a dance worth the bother of organising. )
We had problems with quora - the number of students willing to attend got smaller and smaller - for mostly non-difficult non-political matters and outside lecture times. during my last year, the one where we had at last admitted men, we had a meeting to lower the quorum, which got blown out of the water when one of the more astute males pointed out that we had just passed a motion to allow motions to be put from the floor without advance publication, and this was going to lead to problems. So we went on with inquorate meetings. (And the motions from the floor motion was obviously lost!)
Attendance at my choral group's Annual Meeting (at which we elected officers and transacted other business) got so poor that we ended up defining a quorum as those members present.
I don't recommend messing about with quorum rules anymore. In a severely declining inner city church we redefined "quorum" to basically two confirmed members, in a time when our hardest challenge was getting people to stick around to do the boring decision-making that needed to happen, and when there was complete peace in the church. A few years later an antagonist arose who weaponised the situation and (through threats to families, attacks on people's stuff) managed to hold and shove through a dismissal of us and an excommunication of 60% of the congregation as well--at an unpublicized meeting. Before we knew it, we were all homeless.
What is it about human beings that they so dearly love making threats and wielding weapons?
Fear, wanting to control one's own life and needing some control over others to achieve it, all the way up to enjoying the feeling of power over others.
So, @Crœsos, @Ruth, any other US politicos, can quorum walkouts stop voter suppression in the key states? Or does it become unconstitutional? What about filibustering?
I read an article that suggested that the Texas situation can be overcome by Gov. Abbott calling what I interpreted as a joint session, where the numbers problem would disappear.
The Texas Legislature is a bi Carmel institution. That means each chamber has to act on its own to pass the legislation. I see Abbott, though, is threatening to veto the Legislature's budget, meaning a bunch of people will not get paid. It also sets up a constitutional quagmire. But that the way they play it in Texas.
Moving to the centre is a strategy for a country like Australia where you actually have to try to win over a majority of the electorate.
American politics is built on getting people to vote.** It's not people in the centre who feel strongly enough about which side they want to win that they choose to vote. It's people on either side.
**On getting the 'right' people to vote, and on trying to stop the 'wrong' people voting.
So, @Crœsos, @Ruth, any other US politicos, can quorum walkouts stop voter suppression in the key states? Or does it become unconstitutional? What about filibustering?
Filibustering is, so far as I know, primarily an issue in the US Senate. There are a dozen or so states (including Texas) with some form of legislative filibuster, I think, but I don’t know anything about exactly the form it takes or how much of an issue it is in those legislatures.
Likewise, the effects of walk-outs to avoid a quorum—whether it could defeat the bill, delay consideration, or whatever else—would depend on the rules and procedures of the legislative body in question, as well as perhaps the particular dynamics of the body.
From what I understand of the Texas situation (others may know more or better than I), the walk-out prevented a vote from being taken prior to a mandatory midnight adjournment, at which time the bill died. The legislature can be called back into special session and the bill can be reintroduced, and that is very likely to happen.
It it’s also my understanding that a number of changes had been made to the bill at the last minute that even some Republicans had problems with, and on which no debate was being allowed. The delay might provide some opportunity for negotiation there. Or it might harden positions, we’ll just have to see.
There will undoubtedly be court challenges to these laws. Some federal courts will likely look more favorably on any challenges, while others (including probably SCOTUS if it takes them up) likely will not. Similarly, some state courts will look more favorably on some challenges than others. If state court rulings are based on state constitutions, then SCOTUS will have no review of those decisions.
Funny how the Wuhan Lab escape theory was formerly dismissed as a barmy Trump conspiracy theory and now, with Biden's support, is taken seriously.
[ citation needed ]
My understanding is that the position among experts has always been, from the beginning of the outbreak until today, that:
The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 was most likely caused by human exposure to wild animals
While much less likely, the possibility that it escaped from some clinical setting where it was being studied was non-zero (and possibly non-trivial)
Given that it took about fourteen years to trace down the exact zoonotic vector of SARS (a.k.a. SARS-CoV-1), the fact that there is a good deal of debate about the exact path among scientists is unsurprising.
What made Trump (and various Trumpists) "barmy" was the suggestion that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately engineered and released by those devious ChiComs to hurt America in general and Donald Trump in particular. (The rest of the world is just collateral damage.) At least I think that's what @St German is talking about. His post was vague enough to count as a conspiracy theory in its own right, meaning whatever you want to read into it. At any rate it's hard not to view such claims as a bunch of boo-hooing and blame shifting about how unfair it is to notice that Trump's incompetence got tens of thousands of Americans killed.
Those I talked to IRL certainly thought (during Trump) that the lab theory meant an intentionally engineered (and possibly deliberately released) piece of bioweaponry. That's a whole different piece of shit to the idea that it was being studied and simply escaped. Accidents, and even carelessness, are a totally different realm of moral responsibility from the craziness my real-life interlocutors were worried about.
I might also point out that another difference between then and now is that current lab release hypotheses (and that's all they currently are) are based on evidence
It's got nothing to do with who the President of the US is.
Is there any more evidence now than there was before?
I have seen mentions of "look at this bit of the genetic sequence: that doesn't look like natural mutations" that I hadn't seen while Trump was doing his "China virus" schtick. I have not evaluated those mentions, so I have no idea whether they're reasonable.
Is there any more evidence now than there was before?
I have seen mentions of "look at this bit of the genetic sequence: that doesn't look like natural mutations" that I hadn't seen while Trump was doing his "China virus" schtick. I have not evaluated those mentions, so I have no idea whether they're reasonable.
Any of those unevaluated mentions you'd care to share?
Is there any more evidence now than there was before?
I have seen mentions of "look at this bit of the genetic sequence: that doesn't look like natural mutations" that I hadn't seen while Trump was doing his "China virus" schtick. I have not evaluated those mentions, so I have no idea whether they're reasonable.
I seem to remember hearing claims like that last year already. The virus was first sequenced nearly a year and a half ago; it seems unlikely that someone is just now finding clear evidence of lab origins that everyone else has missed all this time.
I suspect the lab leak hypothesis (which doesn't necessarily mean lab-engineered) is being taken more seriously now because the WHO China visit was disappointingly unenlightening and seemingly over-insistent on the zoonotic hypothesis, no infected animal has ever been found, and Trump is no longer omnipresent so suggesting a lab leak is now less likely to mark you immediately as a supporter of a dangerous con man.
Funny how the Wuhan Lab escape theory was formerly dismissed as a barmy Trump conspiracy theory and now, with Biden's support, is taken seriously.
Even just taking that at its face, it's Trump's fault. His stock in trade is barmy Trump conspiracy theories. That and hate speech is his thing, all designed to promote his interests. Its like his whining about the FBI investigations at the beginning of his term in office. He bought that on himself by his bizarre policy positions and statements about Putin.
Given what he says and how he says it, why would you take anything that he said prior to the January 6 attack on Congress seriously?
I don't know if the media can or even wants to ignore Trump -- he was their meal ticket. Viewership of left-leaning news channels like CNN and MSNBC has fallen off a cliff since Biden was sworn into office.
I really think they're hoping he mounts a 2024 campaign, and starts soon, so they can get back to selling what sells best: fear.
I don't know if the media can or even wants to ignore Trump -- he was their meal ticket. Viewership of left-leaning news channels like CNN and MSNBC has fallen off a cliff since Biden was sworn into office.
Interesting. I don't have cable anymore so I can't receive CNN or MSNBC.
I really think they're hoping he mounts a 2024 campaign, and starts soon, so they can get back to selling what sells best: fear.
No, no, no! It's bad enough that, at least here in Arizona, right-wing nutcases are beginning to declare their candidacy for senate, to try to unseat Democrat Mark Kelly, and are mounting TV ads accordingly.
Kirsten Sinema, on the other hand, deserves to be unseated. Democrat, she fooled us into thinking she'd advocate for us if elected. She's turned out to be more Republican than her predecessor, the utterly despicable Martha McSally, was.
But in retrospect, when I think of the ad campaign McSally waged against Sinema -- pretty much declaring her to be Democrat in name only -- I have to admit she was right.
To the list of ex-presidents facing criminal proceedings , we can now add Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Even if he was called "Prime Minister" rather than "president" he was the head boy.
The Trump phenomenon has exposed a dimension of democratic fragility. I had thought the Constitution was a strong protector but Trumpism has exposed how much it depended on norms. Couple that with State legislative power and we arrive today at a situation where a populist demagogue continues to threaten the democratic fabric of the USA in ways I had personally never foreseen.
Foresight was not necessary. One just has to look back at the Jim Crow South. The "democratic fabric" only included white people.
I agree with you Soror Magna, but for international fans of the USA like me who did not before Trump look closely at American political history, the Jim Crow South was a thing of the past, and its anti-democratic practices were limited to the South. Neither was true. Both were a shock to me in 2016.
I have a vague understanding that the state-level gerrymandering (which also happened in Australia) was previously used by the Democratic party to retain power in some states in the past. I'm vague on the allegation, but I wonder whether that particular practice was limited to the pre-1970's party, or whether it continued until smashed in the Regan era (again a guess).
Comments
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-facebook-instagram-accounts-suspended-1.6053578
A good rule when dealing with the fringier segments of the American right is to assume that it's always projection.
I ceased to find the Devil useful. Until now.
People get disillusioned. The failed predictions of QAnon have caused some to fall away. They wake up to the fact that they have been conned. There is a breakthrough point for all individuals. Loyalty depends on that breakthrough point not being reached.
All cults wall people off from opposing understandings so I don’t think much can be done from outside the cult. I understand that conservative church pastors who speak against QAnon fictions are finding this leads to divisions in their congregations.
And of course the mainstream media have been tarred as fake so often that the truth they broadcast is treated as lies.
In the end it is a matter of numbers. Will the number of defectors be sufficient to outweigh the changed state voting laws? Time will tell.
If it looked as if an unpopular measure might get through, someone who didn't like it would shout "Quorum", which meant that those in charge of the vote had to count the voters present, and those against ran out, so even if there was a likelihood of reaching a quorum we insured we reduced the number below a quorum. Then before the measure was presented again there would be a lot of campaigning for and against, with a much greater number of voters present. And if it was voted through, shrug, that's democracy in process. Usually if we were doing that, the measure was a bit dubious.
The Texas House of Representatives has 150 members; 100 are required to be present for a quorum. Currently the Democrats hold 67 seats, so under certain circumstances and for a limited time they can stall action on a bill by leaving the house.
This doesn't give them the power to veto anything they want. It would be crazy to have a system that gives a minority so much power to obstruct! (*cough* US Senate *cough*) But if you want to know the details, you'll probably have to find devotee of Texas politics or do your own internet research. Here's the Texas House Rules Manual.
My recollection of student politics was that there were many Students Union meetings on topics not connected with Union business but with politics, not even national politics but debates on overseas struggles against oppressive regimes. I'd be much more interested in that now but at the time most of my compatriots had our daytimes fairly full of lectures and study with some, but not much, free for recreation. These meetings were attended mostly by students of subjects with very light lecture schedules (sociology comes to mind) while there was a very large contingent of science and engineering students with pretty full schedules (incl me studying Physics) who didn't have time without skipping lectures - which did happen of course but we were expected to attend.
I have no idea about quorum required but it must have been a low number as motions were carried while most students weren't present to vote. There was increasing concern that the small number who went to the meetings had their views carried, giving a false impression and affecting our institution's public face. On one issue, large numbers of Engineering students organised themselves and turned up to vote en bloc and overturn the expected result. This annoyed the usual attenders who believed those students who usually gave all those daytime meetings a miss were right-wingers who didn't care about the world and them turning up on this one occasion to vote got them labelled as 'sheep'. (When the Engineering dept. had their next dance they promoted it as the "Sheep Dip" - though I can't imagine where they found enough women to make a dance worth the bother of organising. )
Fear, wanting to control one's own life and needing some control over others to achieve it, all the way up to enjoying the feeling of power over others.
Penis envy
Moving to the centre is a strategy for a country like Australia where you actually have to try to win over a majority of the electorate.
American politics is built on getting people to vote.** It's not people in the centre who feel strongly enough about which side they want to win that they choose to vote. It's people on either side.
**On getting the 'right' people to vote, and on trying to stop the 'wrong' people voting.
Likewise, the effects of walk-outs to avoid a quorum—whether it could defeat the bill, delay consideration, or whatever else—would depend on the rules and procedures of the legislative body in question, as well as perhaps the particular dynamics of the body.
From what I understand of the Texas situation (others may know more or better than I), the walk-out prevented a vote from being taken prior to a mandatory midnight adjournment, at which time the bill died. The legislature can be called back into special session and the bill can be reintroduced, and that is very likely to happen.
It it’s also my understanding that a number of changes had been made to the bill at the last minute that even some Republicans had problems with, and on which no debate was being allowed. The delay might provide some opportunity for negotiation there. Or it might harden positions, we’ll just have to see.
There will undoubtedly be court challenges to these laws. Some federal courts will likely look more favorably on any challenges, while others (including probably SCOTUS if it takes them up) likely will not. Similarly, some state courts will look more favorably on some challenges than others. If state court rulings are based on state constitutions, then SCOTUS will have no review of those decisions.
Damn spell check.
[ citation needed ]
My understanding is that the position among experts has always been, from the beginning of the outbreak until today, that:
Given that it took about fourteen years to trace down the exact zoonotic vector of SARS (a.k.a. SARS-CoV-1), the fact that there is a good deal of debate about the exact path among scientists is unsurprising.
What made Trump (and various Trumpists) "barmy" was the suggestion that SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately engineered and released by those devious ChiComs to hurt America in general and Donald Trump in particular. (The rest of the world is just collateral damage.) At least I think that's what @St German is talking about. His post was vague enough to count as a conspiracy theory in its own right, meaning whatever you want to read into it. At any rate it's hard not to view such claims as a bunch of boo-hooing and blame shifting about how unfair it is to notice that Trump's incompetence got tens of thousands of Americans killed.
It's got nothing to do with who the President of the US is.
I have seen mentions of "look at this bit of the genetic sequence: that doesn't look like natural mutations" that I hadn't seen while Trump was doing his "China virus" schtick. I have not evaluated those mentions, so I have no idea whether they're reasonable.
Any of those unevaluated mentions you'd care to share?
I suspect the lab leak hypothesis (which doesn't necessarily mean lab-engineered) is being taken more seriously now because the WHO China visit was disappointingly unenlightening and seemingly over-insistent on the zoonotic hypothesis, no infected animal has ever been found, and Trump is no longer omnipresent so suggesting a lab leak is now less likely to mark you immediately as a supporter of a dangerous con man.
Even just taking that at its face, it's Trump's fault. His stock in trade is barmy Trump conspiracy theories. That and hate speech is his thing, all designed to promote his interests. Its like his whining about the FBI investigations at the beginning of his term in office. He bought that on himself by his bizarre policy positions and statements about Putin.
Given what he says and how he says it, why would you take anything that he said prior to the January 6 attack on Congress seriously?
Or since.
I really think they're hoping he mounts a 2024 campaign, and starts soon, so they can get back to selling what sells best: fear.
No, no, no! It's bad enough that, at least here in Arizona, right-wing nutcases are beginning to declare their candidacy for senate, to try to unseat Democrat Mark Kelly, and are mounting TV ads accordingly.
Kirsten Sinema, on the other hand, deserves to be unseated. Democrat, she fooled us into thinking she'd advocate for us if elected. She's turned out to be more Republican than her predecessor, the utterly despicable Martha McSally, was.
But in retrospect, when I think of the ad campaign McSally waged against Sinema -- pretty much declaring her to be Democrat in name only -- I have to admit she was right.
Foresight was not necessary. One just has to look back at the Jim Crow South. The "democratic fabric" only included white people.
I have a vague understanding that the state-level gerrymandering (which also happened in Australia) was previously used by the Democratic party to retain power in some states in the past. I'm vague on the allegation, but I wonder whether that particular practice was limited to the pre-1970's party, or whether it continued until smashed in the Regan era (again a guess).
Look at a map of Maryland's third Congressional district, for example. The Washington Post has called it out as a blatant example of gerrymandering.
Yes, well...... An excellent case for an independent electoral commission.