Zesty Middle-Aged OKC Personal Shopper Now The Number One Black Relationship Guru?

MTONews |  Kevin Samuels is one of most popular dating gurus on Youtube, and today he's going viral MTO News can report.

Kevin has a very unique style of offering dating advice. Much of his advice, which is aimed at Black women, centers around telling Black women they should lower their dating standards. According to Kevin, Black women have unrealistic expectations when it comes to dating.

But it's not Kevin's advice that has people talking, it's his new much younger girlfriend. Kevin, who is 55, posted new pics online suggesting that he's now dating a 29 year old IG model. 

He posted pics of her online:

 

whispersofawomanist |   Earlier this month, self-proclaimed image consultant Kevin Samuels went viral for an on-air session he had with a black female client. In the session, Samuels responded to his client’s want for a man that brings home a six-figure income. The client, a thirty-five-year-old woman who makes six figures herself, has a teenaged son. Samuels contended that the client did not qualify for the men that she desires. To clarify here, Samuel’s use of the word “qualify” speaks specifically to the client’s physical appearance and her status as a mother— a status he deems social suicide to her desire partner and lifestyle.

I will be honest and say that few things make me feel as disappointed and upset as the inauthentic aesthetic that has engulfed much of the black female optic. From weaves to the false eyelashes and nails, this aesthetic betrays the drastic measures the western world has taken to assassinate the African-descended woman’s natural aesthetic. Nevertheless, participating in what I perceive as slave culture, is not grounds for disrespect. Particularly, it is the critical gaze and ridicule that Samuels renders that is the reason why black women don this aesthetic. It is this pervasive and normalized scrutiny espoused with general disbelief in black female beauty that creates an internal void, a deficit fictively oscillated with weaves, eyelashes, wigs, and other social depressants. Rather than using his words to lift a young lady knocked down by imbalanced standards, Samuels contributes to the epidemic facing black people with his words and ideology

This brings me to my next point. Black women remain held to impossible standards simply non-existent to women of other races. When African-adjacent women approach or interact with black men, the issue is not whether they are average, a mother, overweight, a high earner, under or “over” educated; rather, their appeal lies in their non-blackness. Samuels upholds this imbalance with his praise of mixed-race and non-black women of all ages and circumstances as better romantic investments than black women.

Thus, telling a black woman he deems average that she does not qualify for what women with less going for them could acquire with non-blackness adheres to the racism embedded in gender. Gender is not a sister to biology, it is kin to racism, and it functions as another means to globalize racism under a seemingly autonomous category. Moreover, Samuel’s implementation of gender as racism illuminates his plight to actualize the ways of a white man in a black male body.

Glenn Loury Does An Adolph Reed Jr Level Takedown Of Afrodemic Ass-Clownery...,

campusreform |  Professor Glenn Loury of Brown University shredded racial activists for "bluffing" as they turn a blind eye to black-on-black crime and other issues in the black community. 

Loury said that the forced silence of black people in talking about these issues will prompt more non-blacks to speak up, eventually exposing Ibram X. Kendi and others as an “empty suit.”

Glenn Loury, a Brown University economics professor, shredded racial activists for "bluffing" as they fail to address Black-on-Black crime and other issues plaguing the Black community.

 

On an episode of his podcast, The Glenn Show, Loury told co-host and Columbia University professor John McWhorter that certain issues in the Black community are neglected.

 

"We're in an equilibrium, as economists might say,” explained Loury. “We're in a stable, ongoing situation where there are tacit agreements not to talk about certain things. Not to talk about Black-on-Black crime as the scourge that it is. Not to talk about affirmative action as being necessary because of Black mediocrity, not measuring up on the competitive edge."

"People don't want to talk about the Black family,” he continued. “It's an absolute catastrophe that two-thirds to three-quarters of Black kids are being raised in a home without a father present in the home, in terms of the social cohesion of the community. People don't want to say that."

 

Loury also explained that the forced silence of Black people in talking about these issues will prompt more non-Blacks to speak up. 

 

According to Loury, Americans will eventually realize that Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Director and author of How to Be An Anti-Racist Ibram X. Kendi is an "empty suit." At that point, "the jig is up, the bluff is called, and they don't have any cards."

 

In his book, Kendi teaches readers that "the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

What Happens When Someone Drops A Rock From Space On You?

tomluongo |  I feel a lot like Amos right now finally realizing I’m walking through a post-civilizational landscape where everything looks normal but it isn’t. In his case violent Communists from the fringe of the solar system dropped asteroids on Earth.

For him this was a step-function change. But for many in our world the changes happening aren’t quite so profound yet. The lights are still on, there’s still food in a lot of our fridges.

It looks from where I’m sitting, the markets haven’t woken up to these changes yet. Because of the size and scope of the changes, and just how much of their valuation is a reflection of the false information being fed into them by stupid AI algorithms, the speed at which this realization is happening is far slower than we want to admit.

Normalcy bias is real. Markets never want to believe that cooler heads won’t prevail, because they always have before. But what happens when someone drops a rock from space on us, metaphorically? 

If you’re a fan of The Expanse (and if you aren’t you should be) you’ll be familiar with the term The Churn. The Churn is the controlling idea for Amos Burton, whose only defining ethos is survival.

Simply put, The Churn is that moment when, “the rules of the game change.” Which game?

Amos: The only game. Survival. When the jungle tears itself down and builds itself into something new. Guys like you and me, we end up dead. Doesn’t really mean anything. Or, if we happen to live through it, well that doesn’t mean anything either.

Embedded in Amos’ idea of The Churn, however, is that while the rules change society itself keeps on keeping on. So many people right now are trying to analyze the political situation in terms of The Churn, the normal ebb and flow of who has the upper hand in the power struggle.

 

Expendable Crazy Yellow Ants "Protecting" Parasitic Slug Politicians Kicked Out Of Capitol Hill Building

militarytimes |  National Guard troops forced to move out of the Capitol complex told Military Times they were finally allowed to return late Thursday evening.

“Because of the MASSIVE backlash over this, we are now being allowed back into the Senate building,” one National Guard soldier told Military Times. “We’re going to make a big show of marching back into the building.”

Another soldier told Military Times that “we were in the Thurgood Marshall Judicial Center parking garage and they kicked us out of that parking garage to make us walk half a mile away to the Hart Senate Office Building parking garage where we can’t be seen.’

Both soldiers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

The move back to the Capitol came after a tremendous reaction by lawmakers and the public.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, announced in a Tweet posted at 11:39 p.m. Thursday that she “Just received text from Guard Commander: the last Guardsmen will clear the garage by 2330 tonight.”

Duckworth earlier tweeted that she just “made a number of calls and have been informed Capitol Police have apologized to the Guardsmen and they will be allowed back into the complex tonight. I’ll keep checking to make sure they are.”

Duckworth said she made her statement after reading a story in Politico, which first reported about the situation.

If You Are A Conservative You WILL BE Targeted - Even Libertarians!!!

alt-market |  The strategy seems to be this: Demonize conservatives as much as possible as quickly as possible so that our purge from social platforms can be rationalized. When we are incapable of defending ourselves in the public sphere because we have been removed from the internet, the establishment and leftists can blame us for everything going wrong. The public would have no access to any other points of view or contradictory facts and evidence because the alternative media will be gone. We become the monsters, the bogeymen and the source of all American suffering.

We didn’t fall into the trap of supporting martial law measures during the BLM riots, so this must be Plan B.

Will their plan work? I doubt it. Just as the globalist rollout of the pandemic lockdowns and medical tyranny is failing to gain traction in the US as huge numbers of people refuse to take the questionable vaccines, I suspect millions upon millions of Americans are already savvy to the propaganda schemes of the establishment and will not buy in. But, that doesn’t mean the elites won’t try it anyway.

In early November in Issue #47 of my newsletter, The Wild Bunch Dispatch, I war gamed the Biden scenario extensively and concluded that if he was to enter the White House it would have to be followed by a massive erasure of conservative media platforms from the internet. I stated that:

“If Biden does indeed enter the White House and take control of the presidency, expect certain consequences right away: A complete full spectrum censorship campaign of conservative news sources will be undertaken by tech companies and government. There is no way Biden and the democrats could keep control of the situation while conservatives are able to share information in real time. Do not be surprised if web providers suddenly start kicking conservative sites off their servers, just as Bitchute (a YouTube alternative) was kicked off their server for 24 hours on election night.”

This is already happening, and Biden hasn’t even stepped foot into the role of “commander and chief” yet. The coordinated effort by Big Tech to remove Parler, a Twitter alternative, from the web completely was not all that surprising. Luckily, Parler will be back up and running by the end of the month, but the censorship campaign is only going to get worse from here on. Biden WILL support and defend the censorship efforts by Big Tech and the fascist marriage between government and the corporate world will be complete.

To summarize, the globalists have to silence us before they can effectively demonize us. The truth is on our side; facts and logic are on our side. They can’t win the war of ideas if we are allowed to speak; this is why they are so desperate to silence us.

Sweeping gun control measures will be issued by Biden, but only after the conservative purge from the internet is close to finished. If conservatives are isolated from one another in terms of communication, this makes it harder to organize a defense against aggressive gun confiscation. Biden will most likely try to exploit Red Flag gun laws first, this would allow federal agencies to declare anyone to be “a threat to public safety” without due process, and have their guns taken away preemptively.

There is an obvious outcome to all of these actions and I don’t think it’s far fetched to suggest that conservative counties and states will demand secession. At the very least, conservatives are going to continue to relocate to red states and red counties, just so they can continue to do business and make a living without government interference. There’s no way that most conservatives controlled states or counties are going to submit to federal lockdown mandates or medical passports, and economies in conservative regions are going to remain stable because of this while blue states are going to crumble.

Biden will seek to retaliate against conservative controlled areas of the country in response.

There comes a point when it is impossible for those that value freedom, logic and reason to live side-by-side with those that are irrationally obsessed with control. The American constitutional framework in particular was designed to prevent collectivism from overriding individual liberties, but if the system is sabotaged through subversion and the Bill of Rights is violated, then maintaining the system is no longer plausible.

The best option for a number of reasons is to separate. Secession is often referred to as “running away” from a cultural problem, but this is an ignorant way of looking at it.

We are reaching a stage right now in the US where it will be virtually impossible to voice political concerns without risking retribution. If you are a conservative, you will be targeted.

Nothing Boosts Trust In Government Like A CFR Panel Of Pasty CIA Alumni Talking About Trust...,

thehill |   In October, Thomas Weiss and I urged all of us to keep calm in the face of what might be a violent election and transition season. We foresaw the need to say, among other things, that the military should affirm the rule of law and their oath to the Constitution. Sadly, the Joint Chiefs felt the need to do just that last week.  

When President Trump extolled “strength” to a nascent mob in Washington on Jan. 6, he wasn’t talking about moral force. In militarized societies, the model of political change is often military.  War is the assertion of “might makes right,” the negation of the rule of law. 

Political scientists worry these days about democratic erosion, when the norms and institutions of previously stable representative democracies decline. We usually ponder the causes of erosion in other countries. 

Democracy is, on one hand, democratic elections where the people decide who will govern them, and processes for horizontal and vertical oversight and accountability. There is also a deeper conception of democracy — the norms of citizen deliberation, and human and civil rights that guarantee expression, inclusion and collective action. Democratic legitimacy depends on the ability of citizens to engage in public reason. The more democratic a society is, the greater the limits it has on the use of force both at home and abroad. We don’t take out weapons to resolve our disputes.

Democratic erosion or backsliding occurs when democratic institutions, norms and values are gradually — and sometimes almost imperceptibly — reduced. Democratic erosion includes the decline of competitive elections, the reduction in forums where citizens can deliberate and form policy preferences, and the diminished ability for accountability. The indicators of erosion also include constraints on freedom of the press, which reduces transparency and accountability, the unchecked accretion of power in the executive branch, and the loss of civil rights, including the right of assembly.

Democratic erosion has various causes. Some blame power-hungry executives who don’t want to give up power. The question, here, is why democratic institutions aren’t able to stop power-hungry elites who would concentrate power and economic resources.  

Suzanne Mettler and Robert Lieberman, in their book “Four Threats,” also highlight excessive executive power but then add political polarization, racism and nativism, and economic inequality that prompts the wealthy to mobilize to protect their position.  

War and militarism exacerbate all those things. But more than that, war and militarism are antipodal and undermining of democratic norms, institutions and practices.

Nothing Says Pandemic Mitigation Like Opening The Border And Pausing Deportations

 Read the National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness White House. 

The goals and their ordering are not encouraging. Particularly not liking the choice of Goal 1, the lack of any clear commitment to financial support, and the continuing emphasis on Magic Covid Vaccines without pursuit of treatments like Ivermectin and others:

 

Goal One: Restore trust with the American people

Goal Two: Mount a safe, effective, equitable vaccination campaign

Goal Three: Mitigate spread through expanding masking, testing, data, treatment, workforce, and clear public health standards

Goal Four: Immediately expand emergency relief and exercise the Defense Production Act

Goal Five: Safely reopen schools, businesses, and travel while protecting workers

Goal Six: Protect those most at risk and advance equity, including across racial, ethnic and rural/urban lines

Goal Seven: Restore U.S. leadership globally, advance health security, and build better preparedness for future threats

Red Ants Getting SHOOK!!! That Bell Curve NOT Working In Their Favor...,

About a week ago I posted thus: Oh Yes, but you have guns you say. Well those pasty faced, namby, pamby West Coast transgender wokeists, as you call them, may not be able to shoot straight but they have drones, swarming drones, robots and God knows what else in the way of weapons. They have satellite data and  almost perfect intelligence regarding your behaviour. They don't have to shoot accurately, they have machines to do that. They can and will commit unspeakable acts of murder and destruction before they turn off the monitor and jog off for a Latte. After all if you are not with us you are a domestic terrorist aren't you? There is no middle ground. smdh....,  this is on a grad student's budget with open source technology. DAYYUM!!!

FACES OF

THE RIOT

wired |  When hackers exploited a bug in Parler to download all of the right-wing social media platform's contents last week, they were surprised to find that many of the pictures and videos contained geolocation metadata revealing exactly how many of the site's users had taken part in the invasion of the US Capitol building just days before. But the videos uploaded to Parler also contain an equally sensitive bounty of data sitting in plain sight: thousands of images of unmasked faces, many of whom participated in the Capitol riot. Now one website has done the work of cataloging and publishing every one of those faces in a single, easy-to-browse lineup.

Late last week, a website called Faces of the Riot appeared online, showing nothing but a vast grid of more than 6,000 images of faces, each one tagged only with a string of characters associated with the Parler video in which it appeared. The site's creator tells WIRED that he used simple open source machine learning and facial recognition software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face from the 827 videos that were posted to Parler from inside and outside the Capitol building on January 6, the day when radicalized Trump supporters stormed the building in a riot that resulted in five people's deaths. The creator of Faces of the Riot says his goal is to allow anyone to easily sort through the faces pulled from those videos to identify someone they may know or recognize who took part in the mob, or even to reference the collected faces against FBI wanted posters and send a tip to law enforcement if they spot someone.

"Everybody who is participating in this violence, what really amounts to an insurrection, should be held accountable," says the site's creator, who asked for anonymity to avoid retaliation. "It's entirely possible that a lot of people who were on this website now will face real-life consequences for their actions." Fist tap Dale.

Red Ant Evangelicals Enmeshed In Revolution Against The Government?

newrepublic |  These Christians apparently believe that they had no choice but to try to overthrow the Congress. For months, various evangelicals have claimed in sermons, on social media, and during protests that malicious forces stole the election, conspired to quash Christian liberties, and aimed to clamp down on their freedom to worship and spread the Christian gospel. They felt sure that the final days of history were at hand and that the Capitol was the site of an epochal battle. As one evangelical from Texas told The New York Times, “We are fighting good versus evil, dark versus light.”

Much has been made about the evangelical community’s relationship to Donald Trump. And typically, observers tend to view this alliance as purely transactional, with nose-holding evangelicals pledging their support to this least Christian of men in order to get something in return—most notably, a trio of religiously conservative Supreme Court justices. This dominant interpretation also treats Trump as the apotheosis of a shape-shifting brand of grievance politics that unites and permeates all factions of the right, very much including the evangelical movement. But what is less understood—and what the Capitol riot revealed in all its gruesome detail—is the extent to which Trump channels the apocalyptic fervor that has long animated many white evangelical Christians in this country.

For the last 150 years, white evangelicals have peddled end-times conspiracies. Most of the time their messages have been relatively innocuous, part of the broader millenarian outlook shared among most major religious traditions. But these conspiracies can have dangerous consequences—and sometimes they lead to violence. Every evangelical generation throughout American history has seen some of its believers driven to extreme conspiracies that blend with other strains of militant political faith. This has meant that in the Trump era, with the destabilizing impact of a global pandemic and a cratered economy, white evangelical Christianity has become enmeshed with, and perhaps inextricable from, a broader revolution against the government.

And so an insurrection in the name of Jesus Christ broke out in tandem with the Trump voter fraud putsch. The action is also, in all likelihood, a prophetic foretaste of where this group might go once Trump is finally out of office.

---

Evangelical apocalypticism is grounded in a complicated and convoluted reading of the biblical books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation, some of the most violent books in the Bible. When read in conjunction with one another, and overlaid with some of Jesus’s and Paul’s New Testament statements, they reveal a hidden “plan of the ages.” The word apocalypse comes from the Greek word apokalypsis—an unveiling or uncovering of truths that others cannot see.

Media Won't Make A Peep About The Coming Domestic War On Terror

greenwald  |  The last two weeks have ushered in a wave of new domestic police powers and rhetoric in the name of fighting “terrorism” that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first War on Terror that began nearly twenty years ago. This trend shows no sign of receding as we move farther from the January 6 Capitol riot. The opposite is true: it is intensifying.

We have witnessed an orgy of censorship from Silicon Valley monopolies with calls for far more aggressive speech policing, a visibly militarized Washington, D.C. featuring a non-ironically named “Green Zone,” vows from the incoming president and his key allies for a new anti-domestic terrorism bill, and frequent accusations of “sedition,” “treason,” and “terrorism” against members of Congress and citizens. This is all driven by a radical expansion of the meaning of “incitement to violence.” It is accompanied by viral-on-social-media pleas that one work with the FBI to turn in one’s fellow citizens (See Something, Say Something!) and demands for a new system of domestic surveillance.

Underlying all of this are immediate insinuations that anyone questioning any of this must, by virtue of these doubts, harbor sympathy for the Terrorists and their neo-Nazi, white supremacist ideology. Liberals have spent so many years now in a tight alliance with neocons and the CIA that they are making the 2002 version of John Ashcroft look like the President of the (old-school) ACLU.

The more honest proponents of this new domestic War on Terror are explicitly admitting that they want to model it on the first one. A New York Times reporter noted on Monday that a “former intelligence official on PBS NewsHour” said “that the US should think about a ‘9/11 Commission’ for domestic extremism and consider applying some of the lessons from the fight against Al Qaeda here at home.” More amazingly, Gen. Stanley McChrystal — for years head of Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and the commander of the war in Afghanistan — explicitly compared that war to this new one, speaking to Yahoo News:

I did see a similar dynamic in the evolution of al-Qaida in Iraq, where a whole generation of angry Arab youth with very poor prospects followed a powerful leader who promised to take them back in time to a better place, and he led them to embrace an ideology that justified their violence. This is now happening in America….I think we’re much further along in this radicalization process, and facing a much deeper problem as a country, than most Americans realize.”

Media Didn't Make A Peep About The Military Occupation Of Washington DC

mtracey  |  Question: does anyone with a media job find this situation to be worthy of some further inquiry? Or in other words, worthy of questioning the premise of why such an extravagantly intensive military presence is allegedly necessary? Is it proportionate to the scale of the purported threat? Has the nature of the threat itself — whatever that might be, exactly — been adequately probed to determine whether it is grounded in reality? Already a bunch of purported threats initially trumpeted across the media with the usual five-alarm-five hysteria have dissipated in short order, so there is perhaps some reason for doubt in that regard.

Instead of applying a modicum of skepticism to this gigantic show of military force, much of which appears to be “security theater” in its purest form, our vaunted media is doing little other than cheering it on. And of course, inflating the threats being cited as justification for it. They can repeat over and over again that what occurred on January 6 at the Capitol was an “attempted coup,” and therefore everything and anything is justified to retaliate, but everyone with a brain by now should be able to recognize that the government was never at a greater than 0% risk of being overthrown that day. Fear-inducing terms like “insurrection,” “domestic terrorism,” “seditious conspiracy,” “armed rebellion,” and others have been marshaled intentionally to inure the public to extreme actions such as the swiftly-executed corporate censorship purge and now, the transformation of the country’s capital into a military fortress.

It’s doubly odd because the deployment of military personnel to various cities last summer, though generally welcomed by locals and intended to quell what had genuinely been a sudden outburst of destructive chaos, was depicted by media members at the time as the rawest incarnation of violent fascism. The New York Times nearly imploded in a spasm of wild outrage. Suddenly though, this unprecedented militarization of DC is greeted by the same media hive-mind as the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness. It’s almost like the ultimate variable is not principled apprehension about the force of the state, but whose political priorities are being defended by such force — and who is being punished.

Red Ant's Opinion Of The Current Political Moment

As the republican party detonates before our eyes the core of the right which has deeply bought into the above is not going away.  So what are they going to do?

Remember in 2015 Mike Pompeo said:
“‘America had worshipped other Gods and called it multiculturalism. We’d endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.'”

So how do you get from that to jointly running a country?  You don’t unless folks like him change their minds as the only other option is to give up your identities. Democracy is a very fragile thing and unnatural in the light of history. We are in serious trouble……

A tweet from Mike Pompeo today:

Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — they're not who America is. They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker. pic.twitter.com/Mu97xCgxfS

— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) January 19, 2021

Having a fair amount of direct experience in helping foment revolutions (to overthrow an existing govt that the US wanted removed – frequently democratic in nature), helping suppress anti-government movements (normally seeking what we consider ‘freedoms’ – thus keeping an authoritarian/dictatorial regime in place), and spending about half of my US govt career (in one of ‘those’ orgs) working operations targeting various terrorist groups…I can say Mr. Black Ant is dead wrong.

The Juan Cole article is very accurate. If one has experience in these things it is pretty obvious it is real and about what stage it is in – we who live here in the US can be thankful it has not progressed to much more violent acts, but it is likely they are on the horizon.

I understand the strong desire for it not to be true and the natural reaction to deny its existence – it is frightening. To someone who has been there and done that it is clear America is in the early stages of a civil war. Whether this development continues is to be determined of course and we need to reverse it if possible – personally I am not optimistic. There are a host of actors in the nascent right wing terrorist groups in the US who are determined to further its progress. They are backed up (or led to some extent) by visible media personages, politicians, some from the 1% who are helping formant in many minds the beliefs which will help gain supporters, structure a mythology around their movement, and so on.

What is happening is not an overreaction in any way. It is actually an underreaction – govts almost always react slowly to internal dissolution and that gives a big advantage to those trying to overthrow them. When you have not been burrowed into these kinds of activities you don’t see the steps being taken as being serious and incremental progress towards that break. Not being a citizen of the culture means one does not pick up the subtle clues as to what some things actually mean as opposed to what they might be interpreted from an outside perspective. As someone who has direct experience in these things and who also has lived for decades in right wing American culture I can guarantee this is very serious. There were people in the Capitol building who would have killed Pense, Pelosi and others should they have caught them. That kind of action is one of the next most likely steps in this kind of process.

Political assassination is clearly on the table – I have heard some of my militia neighbors talk about killing ‘liberals’ many times down at the local gun range. It is common talk among those types and as one should be able to see from recent events they are serious about the ‘need’ to do this. And that makes it likely there will be some level of such actions soon as there are people in these groups who are very committed to changing how America is run.

What makes it more likely is when it is not directly addressed. The perpetrators/supporters always say something about getting on to the ‘healing’ process, or not to overreact as they are just blowing off steam and such. We are way past that here in the US. The citizenry is very broken and divided. That families are broken to the point that they are taking actions against each other is a perfect example of that. It is much easier to take action against strangers than family. Family frequently will protect members who are way out of line and even into serious criminal activity. But that only goes so far. In the American Civil War it was not uncommon for family members to fight on opposite sides as we are seeing signs of here now.

The linkages to outside (non-US based) organizations that the article details is actually very important and should not be discounted. Thinking that the very limited number of Americans who went to the Ukraine and have come back add any meaningful amount of military expertise to the these radicals is just mistaken. They are a drop in a giant bucket. American is chock full of men (and a some women) who are combat veterans (far more than any other country on earth). Counting up just those who have been in the military and wars since 9/11 is in the millions and when you go back further there are millions still hanging around from Vietnam (and if you watched the videos of the Capitol attack some of them were there), not to mention the huge numbers from in between those 2 large scale events. And these people are NOT separate at all from the ‘gun-nut Trumper in Omaha’ as they are all part of the same mozaic. America is armed, trained, has experience, and is motivated and it is ripe for real disruption.

It is not relevant to this discussion but I cannot help it since you brought it up. Having been involved in the immediate response to 9/11 and having friends who hit the ground in Afghanistan within days and having knowledge of the state of Afghanistan at the time the Taliban was in no way a spent marginal force (they were totally in charge of the country for all intents and purposes). Now it certainly did not take long before that situation changed. But the only relevant thing about Afghanistan to this discussion is the lesson we need to keep in mind about how terrorist groups can use contacts in other countries to garner support for their activities elsewhere – a key point of the article.

To sum up (this explanation/discussion could go on for hundreds of pages obviously) what is happening in the US is typical of events which have occurred in other countries which fell into open violent civil war. We are on the cusp of it right now and there are a large number of actors who are trying to make it happen. The current state of the situation is in their favor, but not by a huge margin (I think). The country has to track down everyone it can who is actively trying to overthrow the government (it is breaking the law after all) and to put lots of pressure on those supporting it to stop (with in generally legal guidelines – but be careful not to fail at this). Our security services must get a handle on the leaders and members of the organizations who will be the troops which go violent and be prepared to stop them.

This is their duty and one of the prime reasons for their existence – and yes I know that this activity will be problematic and there is no way to avoid that. The other side is bent on revolution and what they are doing is treason and will lead to great suffering. Thus my pessimism about getting out of this intact. One cannot fight an active insurgency except by fighting and this always hardens both sides further. Once the real fighting starts (and it hasn’t yet) there is no viable solution other than defeating the opposition – you have to choose sides at that point. So let’s treat this with the seriousness it deserves and try hard to contain it short of open warfare. That is the only option we actually have.

Black Ant's Opinion Of The Current Political Moment

I’m leading the call for national security powers to not be expanded in light of the attack on our nation’s Capitol that occurred two weeks ago, as such measures often lead to the erosion of Americans’ civil liberties. pic.twitter.com/K6IHTPQzne

— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) January 19, 2021

In Juan Cole world right now, he and I are living in different universes. In mine, I go to work, see family, and interact with Trump voters and supporters on a regular basis, all of whom, and I do mean that I haven’t met any, are far from radicals.
 
In Dr. Cole’s world, the US is now struggling with an al-Qaeda/Taliban insurgency at home that is made up of violent revolutionaries that are planning massive actions to destroy the republic.
 
It can be a frighteningly effective tactic. Accelerationism, what I call “sharpening the contradictions,” was the tool that al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia and then ISIL used to take over 40 percent of Iraq. They have also had some success in pushing France to the far right and in damaging French traditions of civil liberties and tolerance.
…
Not all anti-government groups are organized on a paramilitary basis. They estimated that there are 181 militias. It was members of the militias who were dressed in military garb as they invaded the Capitol, and who appear to have contemplated violence against our elected representatives.
 
The SPLC has gathered information on 25,000 militiamen. The capabilities of the militiamen have been vastly enhanced by the veterans of Bush’s Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, who have joined them in significant numbers and have brought with them tactical and firearms and explosives expertise.
 
So in Juan Cole world, there’s 25,000 people preparing RIGHT NOW to destroy the United States. That’s a remarkable claim.
 
His two main sources for these arguments are the FBI and the SPLC.  The point of these stories is not to get the facts right, but to establish a narrative that, by dint of repetition, becomes accepted as common sense by the targeted audience. In the past few days, there have been *lots* of comments by and interviews of current and former FBI and CIA, etc. officials on network and cable news that tend toward this same direction.
 
This tells me that the legislation is coming, whatever we think of it. The task between now and February or March is to sufficiently saturate corporate media outlets with the official narrative so that bipartisan establishment support for the legislation becomes accepted and even expected. Some liberal-left Democrats like Rashida Tlaib will be allowed to voice mealy-mouthed objections to the legislation, but none will actually expend political capital contesting it. It will pass by large (nearly unanimous) majorities in the House and Senate and will involve further restrictions on the open internet, independent platforms, etc. and will further merge the interests of establishment Washington with the tech monopolies.
 
The one wrinkle in the above is whether enough Republicans can be convinced to turn on Trump and his voters, because the true Trumpists will reject the coming legislation (for mostly the wrong reasons).

Sumbody Workin Really Hard To Get The Red Ants And The Black Ants Going...,

caitlinjohnstone |  A new viral video calling on liberals to form “an army of citizen detectives” to gather information on Trump supporters and report their activities to the authorities has racked up thousands of shares and millions of views in just a few hours.

The hashtag #TrumpsNewArmy is trending on Twitter as of this writing due to the release of a horrifying video with that title from successful author and virulent Russiagater Don Winslow. As of this writing it has some 20 thousand shares and 2.6 million views, and the comments and quote-retweets are predominantly supportive.

“On or before January 20th, Donald Trump will no longer be the Commander-in-Chief: he will lose control of the Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines, Special Forces and America’s nuclear arsenal,” Winslow’s voice begins ominously. “On January 20th Donald Trump will become Commander-in-Chief of a different army: this army.”

Viewers are then shown footage from Trump rallies while being told that they are looking at “radical extreme conservatives, also known as domestic terrorists”.

“They are hidden among us, disguised behind regular jobs,” Winslow warns. “They are your children’s teachers. They work at supermarkets, malls, doctor’s offices, and many are police officers and soldiers.”

Winslow talks about white supremacists and the Capitol riot, warning that Trump will continue escalating violence and fomenting a civil war in America.

“We have to fight back,” Winslow declares. “In this new war, the battlefield has changes. Computers can be more valuable than guns. And this is what we need now more than ever: an army of citizen detectives. I’m proposing we form a citizen army. Our weapons will be computers and cellphones. We, who are monitoring extremists on the internet and reporting our findings to authorities. Remember, before the Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden, he had to be found. He was found by a CIA analyst working on a computer thousands of miles away. It’s up to you.”

The viral video is being loudly amplified by popular #Resistance accounts like Majid M Padellan (better known as Brooklyn Dad Defiant) with frighteningly paranoid and HUAC-like rhetoric.

White Supremacists Didn't Organize The Rallies Or Protest Preceding The Capitol Hill Desecration...,

WaPo |  The fiery rallies that preceded the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 were organized and promoted by an array of established conservative insiders and activists, documents and videos show.

The Republican Attorneys General Association was involved, as were the activist groups Turning Point Action and Tea Party Patriots. At least six current or former members of the Council for National Policy (CNP), an influential group that for decades has served as a hub for conservative and Christian activists, also played roles in promoting the rallies.

The two days of rallies were staged not by white nationalists and other extremists, but by well-funded nonprofit groups and individuals that figure prominently in the machinery of conservative activism in Washington.

In recent days, as federal authorities rounded up those involved in the Capitol riot, promoters and participants of the rallies have denounced the violence and sought to distance their events from the events that followed.

“I support the right of Americans to peacefully protest,” wrote Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), “but the violence and destruction we are seeing at the U.S. Capitol is unacceptable and un-American.”

Organizing warm-up events is not the same thing as plotting to invade the Capitol. But before the rallies, some used extreme rhetoric, including references to the American Revolution, and made false claims about the election to rouse supporters to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

Unless Congress responds to the protests, “everyone can guess what me and 500,000 others will do to that building,” tweeted Ali Alexander, a former CNP fellow who organized the “Stop the Steal” movement. “1776 is *always* an option.”

On Jan. 5, at Freedom Plaza in D.C., Alexander led protesters in a chant of “Victory or death.”

Alexander did not respond to a request for comment for this story. He previously told The Washington Post that he had “remained peaceful” during the riot and said his earlier speeches “mentioned peace” and were being misrepresented.

“Conflating our legally, peaceful permitted events with the breach of the US Capitol building is defamatory and false,” he said in an email to The Post. “People are being misled and then those same people are fomenting violence against me and my team.”

In the days and hours before the riots, Alexander and his allies attracted tens of thousands of protesters from around the country — a crowd that included white supremacists, Christian activists and even local police officers.

Events included a “Patriot Caravan” of buses to Washington, a “Save the Republic” rally on Jan. 5 and a “Freedom Rally” on the morning of Jan. 6. A little-known nonprofit called Women for America First, a group run by Trump supporters and former tea party activists, got approval to use space on the Ellipse for what they called a “March for Trump,” according to the “public gathering permit” issued on Jan. 5.

 

No Evidence Of Planned Armed Uprisings In All 50 States

dossier |   In the wake of the Capitol Hill melee last week, the news media has been breathlessly reporting on the possibility — citing an intelligence bulletin from the FBI — that there will be widespread armed protests in all 50 states on and leading up to Inauguration Day. If the FBI is to be believed, there is a serious, deliverable plot in motion that involves armed insurrectionists simultaneously storming each and every state capitol.

The hysteria has reached new heights this week, with prominent pundits, politicians, reporters, and other personalities claiming that a wave of pro-Trump right wing violence is right around the corner.

Security is being ramped up in capital cities across America, with many states announcing that they are bringing in National Guard units to prepare for the chaos that they’ve been told will meet them on or before the 20th.

The FBI, which has not gone on the record publicly to speak about this potential massive national security issue, has decided to communicate it to the public by leaking this bulletin to select individuals in the news media. As shown above, it has been the source for blaring, intense headlines across the legacy media landscape. The details within this “internal FBI bulletin” have now been shared by a variety of news sites such as CNN, Yahoo News, ABC News and other establishment outlets.

CNN reports on the FBI intel report:

The FBI has received information indicating "armed protests" are being planned at all 50 state capitols and the US Capitol in Washington, DC in the days leading up to President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20.

ABC reported on the memo: 

Starting this week and running through at least Inauguration Day, armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols and at the U.S. Capitol.

 

The Intelligence Briefing Did Not Identify Any Specific Plots To Attack The Inaugural...,

WaPo  |  The FBI privately warned law enforcement agencies Monday that far-right extremists have discussed posing as National Guard members in Washington and others have reviewed maps of vulnerable spots in the city — signs of potential efforts to disrupt Wednesday’s inauguration, according to an intelligence report obtained by The Washington Post.

The document, a summary of threats that the FBI identified in a Monday intelligence briefing, warned that both “lone wolves” and adherents of the QAnon extremist ideology, some of whom joined in the violent siege on the Capitol on Jan. 6, have indicated they plan to come to Washington for President-elect Joe Biden’s swearing-in ceremony.

The FBI also said it had observed people downloading and sharing maps of sensitive locations in Washington and discussing how those facilities could be used to interfere in security during the inauguration.

But the intelligence briefing did not identify any specific plots to attack the inaugural events that would be akin to the Jan. 6 siege on the Capitol and noted that “numerous” militia and extremist groups are publicly denouncing any violence targeted at the transition of presidential power.

While the FBI has picked up “suspicious traffic” in monitoring the kinds of communication systems used by some participants in the Capitol siege, it includes “nothing that points to any specific action.”

The FBI on Monday declined to characterize the credibility or gravity of the threats it outlined for law enforcement in advance of the inauguration.

The agency instead pointed to remarks FBI Director Christopher A. Wray made last week, when he said the agents were monitoring a “extensive amount of concerning online chatter” and noted the challenge of “trying to distinguish what’s aspirational versus what’s intentional.”

“We’re monitoring all incoming leads, whether they’re calls for armed protest, potential threats that grow out of the January 6 breach of the Capitol, or other kinds of potential threats leading up to inaugural events and in various other targets. So we’re latched up with all of our partners in that regard,” Wray added.

A spokesman for the Secret Service also declined to comment on the threat report or to characterize the agency’s level of concern.

The Simpson's 90's Era Lifestyle No Longer Attainable By The Majority Of Americans

theatlantic |  The most famous dysfunctional family of 1990s television enjoyed, by today’s standards, an almost dreamily secure existence that now seems out of reach for all too many Americans. I refer, of course, to the Simpsons. Homer, a high-school graduate whose union job at the nuclear-power plant required little technical skill, supported a family of five. A home, a car, food, regular doctor’s appointments, and enough left over for plenty of beer at the local bar were all attainable on a single working-class salary. Bart might have had to find $1,000 for the family to go to England, but he didn’t have to worry that his parents would lose their home.

This lifestyle was not fantastical in the slightest—nothing, for example, like the ridiculously large Manhattan apartments in Friends. On the contrary, the Simpsons used to be quite ordinary—they were a lot like my Michigan working-class family in the 1990s.

The 1996 episode “Much Apu About Nothing” shows Homer’s paycheck. He grosses $479.60 per week, making his annual income about $25,000. My parents’ paychecks in the mid-’90s were similar. So were their educational backgrounds. My father had a two-year degree from the local community college, which he paid for while working nights; my mother had no education beyond high school. Until my parents’ divorce, we were a family of three living primarily on my mother’s salary as a physician’s receptionist, a working-class job like Homer’s.

By 1990—the year my father turned 36 and my mother 34—they were divorced. And significantly, they were both homeowners—an enormous feat for two newly single people.

 

Replacement Negroes Now, Replacement Negroes Tomorrow, Replacement Negroes Forever...,

LATimes |  During his first days in office, President-elect Joe Biden plans to send a groundbreaking legislative package to Congress to address the long-elusive goal of immigration reform, including what’s certain to be a controversial centerpiece: a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants who are in the country without legal status, according to immigrant rights activists in communication with the Biden-Harris transition team.

The bill also would provide a shorter pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of people with temporary protected status and beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals who were brought to the U.S. as children, and probably also for certain front-line essential workers, vast numbers of whom are immigrants.

In a significant departure from many previous immigration bills passed under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the proposed legislation would not contain any provisions directly linking an expansion of immigration with stepped-up enforcement and security measures, said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center and its Immigrant Justice Fund, who has been consulted on the proposal by Biden staffers.

Both Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have said their legislative proposal would include a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, and The Times has confirmed the bold opening salvo that the new administration plans in its first days doesn’t include the “security first” political concessions of past efforts.

Hincapié, who was co-chair of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force on Immigration — part of Biden’s outreach to his top primary rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and his progressive base — said that Biden’s decision to not prioritize additional enforcement measures was probably a result of lessons learned from the Obama administration’s failed attempt to appease Republicans by backing tighter immigration enforcement in hopes of gaining their support for immigration relief.

“This notion concerning immigration enforcement and giving Republicans everything they kept asking for … was flawed from the beginning,” she said.

Biden-Harris transition team officials declined to comment on the record.

But on Saturday, Biden’s incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, sent a memo to the administration’s senior staff that said the new president’s agenda includes “the immigration bill he will send to Congress on his first day in office,” which Klain asserted would “restore humanity to our immigration system.”

Biden’s proposal lays out what would be the most sweeping and comprehensive immigration package since President Reagan’s Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which granted legal status to 3 million people who were in the country without documentation.

The Collapse Of The American Dream Explained

theburningplatform |  As an adult, I have witnessed the world I grew up in fall to ruin. I have watched as our currency and our economy have been shamelessly corrupted beyond redemption. Since we’ve been married, my husband and I TWICE had our meager investment savings gutted by the market that we were told to invest in, now that pensions no longer exist and we working stiffs are on our own. We will be working until we die, because the Social Security we’ve been forced to pay into has also been robbed from under us.

I have watched as our elected officials enter Congress as ordinary folks and leaves as multi millionaires. I have watched my blue collar husband get up at an ungodly hour every day and come home with an aching back that we pray will hold out long enough to get him to old age in one piece. Outside of shoes, socks and underwear, almost everything my family wears was bought used. We’ve been on one vacation in 12 years.

We don’t have cell phones, or cable, or any sort of streaming services, just a landline and internet. We hardly ever eat out. Our house is 1400 square feet, no air conditioning. I cook from scratch and I can and I garden and I raise chickens for eggs and meat and I moonlight selling things on Etsy. Still it is barely enough to pay the bills that go up every year while service quality and the longevity of goods goes down. What I just described is the life you can live on 60K a year without going into debt.

At last calculation, when you consider all of the federal, state and local taxes plus registration and user fees, Medicare and SS payroll taxes, almost a third of what my family earns is stolen by the govt each year. What’s left doesn’t go far, just enough to cover the basics and save a little for when the wolf howls at the door.

I watched as my family’s health insurance was gutted and destroyed. Our private market insurance, which we had to have because my husband’s employer is too small to have a group plan, was made illegal. We were left with the option of either buying an Obamacare plan with unaffordable deductibles and insanely ridiculous out of pocket maxes, or paying the very gov’t that destroyed our healthcare a fine for not buying the gov’t mandated plan that we cannot afford. We now have short term insurance that isn’t really insurance at all, and I live in fear of one of us getting injured or sick with anything I can’t fix from the medicine cabinet.

I have watched as education, which was already sketchy when I was a kid, became an all out joke of wholly unmathematical math, gold stars for all, and self-loathing anti-Americanism. My family has taken an enormous financial hit as I stay home to home school our child. At least she’ll be able to do old-fashioned math well enough to see how much they are screwing her. A silver lining to every cloud, I guess.

I’ve sat by and held my tongue as I was called deplorable and a bitter clinger and told that I didn’t build that. I’ve been called a racist and a xenophobe and a chump and even an “ugly folk.” I’ve been told that I have privilege, and that I have inherent bias because of my skin color, and that my beloved husband and father are part of a horrible patriarchy. Not one goddamn bit of that is true, but if I dare say anything about it, it will be used as evidence of my racism and white fragility.

Raised to be a Republican, I held my nose and voted for Bush, the Texas-talking blue blood from Connecticut who lied us into 2 wars and gave us the unpatriotic Patriot Act. I voted for McCain, the sociopathic neocon songbird “hero” that torpedoed the attempt to kill the Obamacare that’s killing my family financially. I held it again and voted for Romney, the vulture capitalist skunk that masquerades as a Republican while slithering over to the Democrat camp as often as they’ll tolerate his oily, loathsome presence.

And I voted for Trump, who, if he did nothing else, at least gave a resounding Bronx cheer to the richly deserving smug hypocrites of DC. Thank you for that Mr. President, on behalf of all of us nobodies. God bless you for it.

When The Herd Grows Restive - Teachable Moments And Hard Examples BECOME IMPERATIVE!!!

sicsempertyrannis |   It appears to me that Schumer has in mind to try former President Trump in the senate with John Roberts presiding.  IMO this is unconstitutional.  As Alan Dershowitz said on the TeeVee today, the prospect of such a procedure should be horrifying to all.  Why?  If the congress can try a private citizen and bar him/her from holding federal office, then whichever party controls the congress can simply bar significant opposition figures from office by re-defining the meaning of statutes, imputing motive where there is none and through guilt by association.   This all begins to smell like Stalin's show trials in the 30s in which he killed off his Old Bolshevik comrades and the leadership of the Red Army.  Trump will always remain vulnerable to the civil courts.  The Dems fear that Florida or federal courts in Florida will not extradite him?  They should live with that in the interest of maintaining the Union.

We now have most of downtown Washington, DC transformed into a Green Zone on the Baghdad model.  25,000 federalized National Guard troops plus various kinds of cops occupy that zone.  25,000?  How about 1,000?  How about 2.000?  What do they expect, an attack on the Biden inauguration platform from the other end of the Mall?  The bridges from Virginia are closed by order of his majesty Ralph Northam.   We live here under Ralph's imperial decrees in a vast outdoor prison.  The ability of the imperial authorities to wall us up, each in our own crummy little domain bodes ill for the future.

Not for the first time am I disgusted by the susceptibility of those I thought my countrymen to waves of hysteria.   German and then Communist spying in WW1,  Prohibition, internment of Japanese descended citizens of the US in WW2,  McCarthyism, the 2K fantasy in which people waited for the end of civilized life, 9/11, after which the whole country went into a profound funk and stumbled about terrified of the NEXT ATTACK.   And now, we have the Left's desire to destroy opposition, the opposition of 75 million citizens and to do it through mass mobilization of political hysteria.

This will never be the same country again.  We have lost the talent needed to maintain a federal republic.

Racist Redneck Domestic Terrorists Stormed The Capitol CAUSE THEY'RE LIVING THE DREAM!!!

nakedcapitalism |  Upgrading the physical security around the country’s political institutions is of little long-term value, especially if the activities that occur within them continue to manifest ongoing dysfunction worthy of a banana republic.

Let this be our wake-up call, America’s “Beirut blast.” The bomb explosion that devastated large parts of Beirut last summer was not an isolated, unfortunate occurrence, but the profound manifestation of decades of incompetence, complacency, and corruption in the Lebanese government—an outcome of the ruling classes’ criminal neglect of essential public needs.

By the same token, the events of January 6th should be viewed as the point U.S. political dysfunction reached its breaking point. While the country still appears to remain economically powerful, it has become politically weak and socially fragile in ways characteristic of a society in decline.  The focus on the relatively small group that broke into the Capitol as a result of lax security is akin to focusing on the Beirut blast wreckage to the exclusion of all else. Far more significant are the surveys of representative samples of Americans that reveal deepening mistrust of the core institutions and a growing commitment to sectarian interests which have, in many parts of the nation, superseded commitment to the republic itself.

This sheds a different light on the events. While the spark that ignited the violent pro-Trump upheaval was the incumbent’s allegations that the November Presidential election was fraudulent, for many the assault on the Capitol was also an insurgency against the entire political class. “All these politicians work for us. We pay their salaries, we pay our taxes. And what do we get? Nothing. All of them inside are traitors”—as a member of the mob stated.

On this particular point, the grievances of the violent mob and the findings of scholars align: America is an oligarchy, not a functioning democracy, as the detailed study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page argued in 2014. Thus, much as this was an assault on American democracy, the storming of the Capitol was also a sign that American democracy had already failed. Surely, these clumsy “revolutionaries” did not storm the Capitol because they are living the American Dream—and they are blaming, unsurprisingly, the whole political class for their malaise.

Whenever economic explanations of this radicalization are attempted, inequality is singled out as the root of working-class discontent. Commentators from Joseph Stiglitz to Thomas Piketty or Emmaunuel Saez relentlessly hammer on one theme above all others: an economic inequality that has deep roots in the political system. A cross-party consensus is now emerging on fighting inequality through redistribution—from raising the minimum wage to increasing unemployment benefits.

One reason why inequality has attracted so much attention is that it is easily measurable. Indeed, reports of the top 1% of Americans taking $50 trillion from the bottom 90% easily appeal to our sense of injustice. However, there are studies of the white working class which reveal that despite the outrage about inequality, many in this demographic still admire the rich. Additionally, the singular focus on economic inequality obscures another phenomenon—the massive economic insecurity which is affecting broader swathes of the population beyond the ‘precariat’ (those in poorly paid and insecure jobs). While insecurity is not easy to measure and report, it is in fact at the root of the social malaise of Western societies.

Pelosi Kicks Katie Porter Off The House Financial Services Committee

Rep. Katie Porter challenged big bank CEO Jamie Dimon to pay his workers a living wage by literally showing him the math pic.twitter.com/FpzxrIc8Co

— ᴿealfarmacist (@real_farmacist) April 13, 2019

nakedcapitalism |  Katie Porter has been a star since being elected to Congress in 2018. Two years after narrowly ousting GOP incumbent Mimi Walters– 158,906 (52.1%) to 146,383 (47.9%)– the Republican Party was on the war-path in Orange County but not serious about taking on Porter. They defeated corporate conservative Democrats Harley Rouda and Gil Cisneros but never really got behind former Mission Viejo mayor Greg Raths, their candidate against Porter. The NRCC spent no money on Raths’ behalf and Porter beat him 221,843 (53.5%) to 193,096 (46.5%).

Several weeks ago, Porter was elected Deputy Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Having won two terms in Congress as a supporter of Medicare for All in a district where Republicans outnumber Democrats, she is best known for holding corporate special interests accountable and advocating for stronger worker protections. Her star shined brightly as a fierce questioner of banksters and government bureaucrats who came before the House Financial Services Committee.

On Thursday evening, I read that Pelosi has pushed her off the committee at the urging on the banksters, the Fed and Wall Street special interests. In a conversation with another member of the committee, an admirer of Porter’s, I was told that it was a combination of the Fed and Wall Street that demanded her removal. The member told me that “It is, in fact, a tragedy for that committee to lose someone like her. It’s a staff-run committee, with revolving-door staff… Also taking someone off a committee means they’re losing their committee seniority, which is very, very bad karma, since the whole system is built on that.”

Rep. Fang-Bang Swalwell Gets To Impeach Trump And Hunt Down His Racist Redneck Terrorist Supporters

I’m honored and excited to rejoin active service on @HomelandDems, where I plan to focus on highlighting and finding solutions to the scourge of white nationalist extremism. pic.twitter.com/JIhh0fOAPk

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) January 15, 2021

NYPost |  Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell is joining the House Committee on Homeland Security one month after it was revealed he was targeted by a suspected Chinese spy.

The California lawmaker — who was revealed to have been duped by a Chinese honey-trap spy who cozied to him and other pols in a bid to infiltrate the US political system — announced his appointment back onto the sensitive post in a tweet on Friday afternoon.

“My committee memberships — along with my experience as a prosecutor and as the son and brother of law enforcement officers — will give me a unique opportunity to delve into one of America’s most serious national security threats,” Swalwell wrote.

Members of the committee are responsible for oversight of the US Department of Homeland Security and the nation’s security legislation.

Swalwell also still sits on the House Intelligence Committee.

Swalwell’s appointment to the Homeland panel follows a bombshell Axios report which revealed the father-of-two had a relationship with Christine Fang, an accused Chinese spy.

Why Can't I Work? Where's My Pursuit Of Happiness?

newyorker |  One man angrily invoked the pandemic lockdown: “Why can’t I work? Where’s my ‘pursuit of happiness’?” Many people were equipped with flak jackets, helmets, gas masks, and tactical apparel. Guns were prohibited for the protest, but a man in a cowboy hat, posing for a photograph, lifted his jacket to reveal a revolver tucked into his waistband. Other Trump supporters had Tasers, baseball bats, and truncheons. I saw one man holding a coiled noose.

“Hang Mike Pence!” people yelled.

The attack on the Capitol was a predictable apotheosis of a months-long ferment. Throughout the pandemic, right-wing protesters had been gathering at statehouses, demanding entry. In April, an armed mob had filled the Michigan state capitol, chanting “Treason!” and “Let us in!” In December, conservatives had broken the glass doors of the Oregon state capitol, overrunning officers and spraying them with chemical agents. The occupation of restricted government sanctums was an affirmation of dominance so emotionally satisfying that it was an end in itself—proof to elected officials, to Biden voters, and also to the occupiers themselves that they were still in charge. After one of the Trump supporters breached the U.S. Capitol, he insisted through a megaphone, “We will not be denied.” There was an unmistakable subtext as the mob, almost entirely white, shouted, “Whose house? Our house!” One man carried a Confederate flag through the building. A Black member of the Capitol Police later told BuzzFeed News that, during the assault, he was called a racial slur fifteen times.

Beneath the soaring dome, surrounded by statues of former Presidents and by large oil paintings depicting such historical scenes as the embarkation of the Pilgrims and the presentation of the Declaration of Independence, a number of young men chanted, “America first!” The phrase was popularized in 1940 by Nazi sympathizers lobbying to keep the U.S. out of the Second World War; in 2016, Trump resurrected it to describe his isolationist foreign and immigration policies. Some of the chanters, however, waved or wore royal-blue flags inscribed with “AF,” in white letters. This is the logo for the program “America First,” which is hosted by Nicholas Fuentes, a twenty-two-year-old Holocaust denier, who promotes a brand of white Christian nationalism that views politics as a means of preserving demographic supremacy. Though America Firsters revile most mainstream Republicans for lacking sufficient commitment to this priority—especially neoconservatives, whom they accuse of being subservient to Satan and Jews—the group’s loyalty to Trump is, according to Fuentes, “unconditional.”

The America Firsters and other invaders fanned out in search of lawmakers, breaking into offices and revelling in their own astounding impunity. “Nancy, I’m ho-ome! ” a man taunted, mimicking Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Shining.” Someone else yelled, “1776—it’s now or never.” Around this time, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country. . . . USA demands the truth!” Twenty minutes later, Ashli Babbitt, a thirty-five-year-old woman from California, was fatally shot while climbing through a barricaded door that led to the Speaker’s lobby in the House chamber, where representatives were sheltering. The congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, later said that she’d had a “close encounter” with rioters during which she thought she “was going to die.” Earlier that morning, another representative, Lauren Boebert—a newly elected Republican, from Colorado, who has praised QAnon and promised to wear her Glock in the Capitol—had tweeted, “Today is 1776.”