Still not shutting up about the Capital Riots

1. We know the attack was planned. Some of the rioters had body armor, weapons, zipties, and other items that you don't normally bring to a peaceful protest. The peaceful protest actually started over a mile away from the Capitol. Most of the protesters were peaceful, but the rioters used them as cover.
2. We know that this was not Antifa's doing. Antifa goons wear masks because they don't want to go to jail. Bank robbers wear masks because they don't want to go to jail. Many of these rioters did not wear masks, they livestreamed what they were doing, and some even showed ID. They smiled and waved at photojournalists. They were proud of what they were doing. They expected to be honored and celebrated for this. They probably did not expect a lengthy prison sentence. They should all go to prison for a long time or something like this will happen again.
3. I think Donald Trump was part of the planning. I think the rioters wanted to kidnap Congress and force them to Donald Trump's will, and Donald Trump was aware of it and kept enough of a distance to maintain what he thought would be plausible deniability if the coup failed. Some of you think that Trump had nothing to do with the riot and that is fine. All of us can hope that the truth comes out in the impeachment trial.
4. Sometimes when I talk about the riot, some will hint that it's about stopping communism or socialism. Folks, civil unrest is bad for capitalism. Dead customers don't buy things. Dead employees can't come to work. Infrastructure and supply chains experience major disruptions during conflict. All this nonsense about war being good for the economy: was WW2 good for Germany's economy to bombed, invaded, and divided in two for decades? Was the Blitz good for the UK's economy? Was the Siege of Leningrad good for Soviet civilians? Was WW2 good for Nagasaki and Hiroshima? This is why corporations are cutting off donations for any politician that they even think had any thing to do with treason. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos would rather have a stable socialist (disclaimer: Biden is not a socialist) than an unhinged lunatic running the country.

Donald Trump should be arrested for murder.

Donald Trump should be arrested and charged with the murder of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. He knew the crowd was headed to the Capitol. He knew the Capitol Police would be obligated to protect the lives of the Representatives and Senators inside. He took no action as Commander in Chief to keep the crowd safe or Congress safe.

I believe that he knew what the plan was all along: The mob was trying to seize as many Representatives and Senators as they can, along with Vice President Pence. They were going to force them to recognize Trump as the winner of the 2020 election, and then receive a full pardon from Trump.

Do not believe the theory that Antifa was responsible. Antifa thugs almost always wear masks to hide their identity because they don't want to face the legal consequences. The Capitol rioters were not wearing masks. They gleefully committed major federal felonies in front of dozens of cameras. The rioters included off-duty police and military veterans. They knew what they were doing was illegal and they were not trying to hide it. They even advertised what they were doing by livestreaming it. All of these rioters had to have been promised a pardon, and President Trump is still the only one who can pardon them, as of this writing.

Let me be clear that I don't think all Trump supporters are bad. Brian Sicknick was a Trump supporter himself. He might have been tempted to escort the rioters to the Chamber of the House of Representatives so they could complete their mission. He would still be alive right now if he did that. Instead, he did his duty and died a hero.

Trump gets banned from Twitter and Facebook.

This was going to happen. Trump did advocate for violence. If I were to take Trump's side, I could point out that all living US Presidents have advocated for violence while in office. I could say that Trump didn't specifically say "Go into the Capital building, break stuff, and see if you can kidnap some Congressmen." What he did say is that the election had been stolen from him. He said this even though Biden was polling way ahead of him prior to Election Day. He claimed that the mail in ballots were fraudulent because they were mostly for Biden. 

Now, some people are more concerned than I am about the pandemic, and some people are less concerned than me. I wear a mask in public, I've avoided any meatspace political meetings, but I've also had close friends come over to visit. I really wanted my vote to count, so I voted in person. I would guess that people who are more concerned about the pandemic would be more likely to vote by mail in 2020, and would have been more likely to vote against a President who hasn't been taking the pandemic seriously.

Perhaps Trump sincerely believed something fishy was going on. If that were the case, he was correct to file lawsuits so to get at the heart of the matter. However, he didn't have enough proof for the courts. The preponderance of evidence as it stands now is that Joe Biden had more popular votes, and also won in enough states to win the Electoral College.

Part of democracy and due process is accepting the results even when they don't go your way. The hope is that when things do go your way, the other side will accept those results. To be sure, the results are never even close to fair, but the idea is to produce an outcome that is acceptable to enough people that life can go on. You can still go to work, you can still buy food at the store, and trash still gets picked up every week. If more people voted against you than voted for you, that's a huge sign that you probably don't have the numbers to win a civil war. Trump supporters might have expected the support of the military, but the military gets their funding from Congress. All those cool tanks and planes need spare parts and fuel, so the US military can be expected to try to stay on good terms with the US Congress.

Can we all agree that elections are more pleasant than wars? In an election, you get to wear cool shirts and buttons. In war, you have to wear camo. In elections, you can talk to your friends and try to get them to join your side. In war, you're not going to get much of a chance to hear from anyone who joined the other side. Most elections, you can go to rallies if the weather is nice, or just stay home if you don't feel like it. In wars, you go out on patrol in shitty weather whether you feel like it or not. You'll never learn from Call of Duty what MRE's taste like, what latrines smell like, or what it really feels like to get shot. I personally would rather lose the worst election than win the best war.

So when a President denounces the outcome of an election, that puts the country at risk of a war that's not even going to make the Top 50 of wars. He has already gotten people killed. Everyone who died at the Capital riot had voted for Trump, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. Sicknick might very well have been tempted to join the mob and help them round up members of Congress so that they do their bidding. He might still be alive if he had done that. Instead he did his duty and was beaten to death for it.

Sicknick also no longer has access to Twitter or Facebook.

Like all private companies and public traded corporations, Twitter and Facebook have an interest in having customers who are still alive and able to buy products from their advertisers. If lots of people die, this will run counter to their interests. This is as basic as economics gets: dead consumers stop consuming. Banning Trump from their platforms was the right thing to do, from both a financial and moral stand point.

That riot at the Capitol

1. I do think it is foolish for fiscal conservatives to intentionally damage public property. Tax money will be used to repair the Capitol. Even more tax money will be spent on increased security measures to make sure that the nice folks in Congress are safe from the maniacs who elected them. 

2. Trump has an amazing ability to get people to believe in absolute bullshit. Remember when he acted like Obama was actually born in Kenya? Obama let Trump do it too, because it was a useful distraction. Trump never had an endgame for his birther fantasies. Nothing he said was going to stop Obama from being President. He didn't have an endgame for the stolen election narrative either. Judges that he appointed himself kept throwing out his cases. 

3. Trump lost because he's obnoxious and he inspired millions to vote against him. Most successful leaders try not to inspire the opposition. Good politics is boring politics. But Trump doesn't like being bored. 

4. Folks, violence is like sex in that it is lots of fun but the consequences can be unpredictable. You should only resort to violence to protect people, you should only go bareback when you are trying to make more people. Fools literally fuck around and find out everyday. 

The consequences of sex and violence are arbitrary, random, and unfair. There is no way to make them fair. A woman might try to conceive a child within the bounds of marriage, then die from an ectopic pregnancy. A President can cheat on his wife and watch his polls numbers go up. A teen can throw a plastic bottle at someone then get shot in the face. A President can start a pointless bloody war then retire in comfort. 

I don't expect any of you to become celibate pacifists after reading that. We weigh the potential risks and consequences of sex and violence every day. A frizzy haired woman in a tube top might ask me to buy her cigarettes at the gas station with the implication that I might enjoy what comes next. A frizzy haired man in a suit might ask me to donate to his campaign with the implication that my quality of life might be improved when he pushes policies that put my neighbors in jail. Right now I'm feeling like strange women in tube tops are more trustworthy than famous men in suits. 

I'm not here to talk about the morality of sex and violence. People might tell you to stay away from riots and orgies. You might go to one anyway, have the time of your life, and have a nice story for your friends. Or you might get caught on camera, and your spouse or boss will find out that you fucked around.

Nashville bombing hot take

 There was a bombing in Nashville this morning. 

At this time, we don't know if the bomber was white, black, Latino, Muslim, atheist, or Christian. We don't know if they voted for Biden or Trump. I guarantee that there will be lots of conspiracy theories coming your way, very soon.

My personal hot take is that the bomber was an accelerationist. Accelerationists want to cause chaos so to accelerate the collapse of society. Some of them want to build their own racial or socialist utopia out of the ashes and rubble. Some of them might expect the Rapture to happen as a result of their actions.

They know that America can't be destroyed by one bomb or even a thousand bombs. What they are counting on is for Americans to turn on each other. They aren't satisfied with antifa and neo-nazis brawling in the streets. They want entire cities to burn.

In past years, you might sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with your racist uncle who likes to quote statistics he got from memes and your radical cousin who likes to quote Mao Tse-Tung. Blood is thicker than water and DNA is thicker than ideology, so you get though the turkey dinner.  Ten years from now, your uncle is still going to be racist but maybe he might make a few black friends. Your cousin will still be radical, but he'll hang up the Che shirt long enough to stay employed as a barista. And life will go on. 

This year, fewer of you had this kind of encounter thanks to both a pandemic and toxic electoral politics. Accelerationists might see this as an opportunity to keep life from going on. They are prepared to sacrifice not just your racist uncle and your moderate cousin, but your conservative dad, your progressive sister, and your moderate grandma as well. 

Charles Manson and Osama Bin Laden were both accelerationists. Manson tried to trigger a race war by murdering a pregnant woman. Bin Laden tried to cause a global war between Christians and Muslims. Both men failed miserably. The Nashville bomber might be caught by the police, he might disappear, or he might already be dead. It is up to us all to see that he also fails.

Section 230

Donald Trump wants Section 230 repealed. He is threatening to veto the NDAA if he doesn't get his way on this. Maybe he's bluffing. In the past, Nancy Pelosi and Ted Cruz have talked about repealing or modifying Section 230 in the past.

What does Section 230 do? A lot of people seem to hate it without knowing what it is. Section 230 does two things that you should care about.

1. It protects Internet companies from getting sued over what users do. Since people break the law on the Internet all the time, this is important.

2. It allows Internet companies to moderate content. Companies like Facebook have the power to delete even this harmless post if it breaks their rules.

So let's say Grandpa Bubba gets an email from someone claiming to be the Nigerian Foreign Minister. Grandpa Bubba gets ripped off, and his caretaker Cousin Anna Mae is very mad. Since Anna Mae doesn't know who actually sent the email, she might try to sue Yahoo for letting a criminal use their email service. Section 230 protects Yahoo from Anna Mae and her lawyers. If it weren't for Section 230, Yahoo would have to be VERY picky about who gets to have an account.

So Anna Mae is having a bad week. So she writes DOWN WITH SCAMMERS on her bare chest and posts the picture to Facebook. Facebook takes down the picture and suspends her account. Anna Mae can argue that her picture was protected 1st Amendment speech (and it is.) She can argue that it isn't fair that men can post shirtless pics but women can't post topless pics (and it isn't fair.) Again, Section 230 protects Facebook from Anna Mae's elite legal team. Without Section 230, Facebook might become a hardcore porn site.

Sure, the Internet might seem like a big mess, but here you are reading what I typed because of Section 230. For better or for worse, Section 230 protects Twitter from getting sued over what Donald Trump tweets. Considering that Donald Trump is being sued for libel right now, I can't imagine that a corporation would let him have a social media account without some assurance that they won't be held responsible for what he says. You could probably convince people on the left to oppose Section 230 on the grounds that Trump would have never been allowed a Twitter account and probably would have never been elected President if Section 230 had not been passed in 1996.

But let's say for the sake of argument that the past 25 years were a huge mistake and we should give up email and social media. If we let Anna Mae sue Yahoo out of business for an email that a criminal sent, then that could set the precedent of suing Georgia-Pacific for making the paper that a kidnapper uses to make a ransom note. I might be oversimplifying things when I say this, but Section 230 like the Internet's 1st Amendment. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, all of that will be heavily restricted or go away completely without Section 230.

Lisa Montgomery is scheduled to be executed next month.

 Lisa Montgomery is sitting in a federal prison in Texas. Next month, she is scheduled to be taken to Terre Haute and lethally injected. In 2004, she killed a pregnant woman, cut her open, and took the baby. Montgomery kept the baby girl until she was caught and arrested.

The death penalty is a highly controversial and emotional subject. A lot of people go with their gut feeling and base their stance on that. Some folks think all murderers and rapists should be thrown off a cliff. Some people think that only the worst killers should get the needle. A growing number of people think the death penalty should be abolished entirely. For a long time, I thought that the death penalty should be reserved for terrorists and war criminals. My thinking was that such people are too dangerous to be kept alive. Except that most of these people just don't live long enough to answer to a judge and jury. The rare terrorists who do get caught and convicted in the US are put in an administrative maximum prison, or AdMax for short. See, a while back the government decided it needed a level of prison security more maximum than maximum, so they came up with AdMax. AdMax inmates don't go to lunch, play in the yard, or even get to pick up trash along the highway. They spend 23 hours a day sitting in the cell and they get one hour of exercise where they walk around in a concrete pit. As it stands now, there are no AdMax facilities for women, since no women up to this point have created that kind of a security concern. Instead, Lisa Montgomery is on suicide watch in the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth. She doesn't get to have socks, underwear, or anything that someone might have used to harm themselves in the past. Guards watch her go to the bathroom. Take a moment to appreciate this irony: the government is going to a lot of trouble to keep this woman from killing herself so that she can be killed by a designated government employee. Also, they plan on transporting her more than 800 miles to get this done. As if there is nobody in Texas who knows anything about executions. Only the government can make death this complicated. Lisa Montgomery is a mother of four and suffered from physical and sexual abuse as a child. If you don't feel sorry for her because of what she did, that's understandable. I'm not writing this to save her life. I'm writing this to protect due process. Everyone in jail or prison has a right to a lawyer. If the government starts making exceptions for really bad people or during times of crisis, they'll keep finding reasons to make exceptions. There might come a time where you or someone you love needs a lawyer, and you'll just be told "no". Lisa Montgomery's lawyers have both been infected with COVID-19 as a result of having to fly back and forth to Texas from their offices in Tennessee. Lisa Montgomery's execution should at least be delayed until her lawyers can safely represent her. It is bizarre and macabre that the Trump Administration would make federal executions a priority during a pandemic and his last year in office, but here we are. A lame duck president has nothing to gain or lose politically by commuting a death sentence. This will be the time when we really get to know what kind of man Trump is. https://www.newsweek.com/aclu-files-lawsuit-end-torturous-conditions-lisa-montgomery-1547625