Thursday, April 15, 2021

The Capitol Police Inspector General's report on the preparation for January 6 riot updates Election 2020 and its aftermath for Throwback Thursday

I foretold the topic of today's post twice, first in last week's Noah and Colbert on vaccinations vs. a possible fourth wave of COVID update the pandemic for Flashback Friday, when I wrote "The next retrospective should be about the 2020 election and the actions that led to impeachment for Throwback Thursday next week." I repeated myself in yesterday's Seth Meyers, 'SNL,' and 'Tooning out the News' take closer looks at Matt Gaetz "stay tuned for retrospectives on Throwback Thursday and Flashback Friday. Tomorrow's should be the last one about the 2020 election and its aftermath." I'm recapping the top entries featuring serious news reports about those topics over the jump after I update them with current news stories, beginning with NBC News' Inspector General Report: Authorities Ignored Intelligence Ahead Of January 6th Capitol Riot.

A report from the Capitol Police inspector general says that authorities ignored intelligence ahead of the January 6th riot, including a warning that “Congress itself is the target”. NBC News’ Tom Winter and Leigh Ann Caldwell break down the details of the warnings and how Capitol Police are responding to the report.
I wish I could say that I wasn't surprised. There were lots of reports and worries that the January 6th event would be violent. Olivia Troye said "I am very concerned there will be violence on January 6" in an MSNBC interview on December 28, 2020.

Former member of the Trump administration Olivia Troye expresses her worry that the divisiveness Trump has stoked in this country will have damaging and lasting implications.
She turned out to be right. I wish I could say I was with her when I mentioned the joint session of the new Congress on January 6, 2021 as an opportunity to game the system back in November, but that's all I thought would be, an attempt by Congress to overturn the election, not a violent coup attempt when then Vice President Pence refused to go along.

Back to yesterday's news. I agree with Tom Winter that this wasn't a failure of gathering the information; the Capitol Police had the information. It was a failure of leadership to understand what it meant. At least they agreed with the findings and then used it as an opportunity to ask for more money. Defund the police? Not in this case!

The facts and analysis need a context and an opinion, so I'm sharing the most germane MSNBC clip about the report, Hayes: Jan. 6th Would Have Been A Massacre If Police Reacted Like They Do To BLM Protests | All In.

"It is very hard not to see some fundamental contradictions in how our country, the state, wields force against its citizens," says Chris Hayes, comparing police responses in Black Lives Matter protests and the Capitol riot. Aired on 04/14/2021.
One would have to have a bad case of "Who are going to believe, me or your own eyes" to not see the inequitable responses of the police to the two different classes of protestors.

While I desire a more equitable level of policing, Steve M. at No More Mr. Nice Blog despairs at the likelihood of achieving it.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the report says that the Capitol Police had adequate warning of what was coming and should been able to prevent the Capitol from being breached. On the other hand, do we trust any police agency right now to find the sweet spot where order is maintained without the use of excessive force?

Even if the Capitol Police had used an appropriate amount of force, if that included stun grenades, can you imagine the right-wing reaction -- not just at the time, but even now, and for the foreseeable future? Can you imagine this being done ... not to evil BLM/Antifa commies, but to Real Americans? We'd have never heard the end of it.
Sigh. Probably not.

I conclude the update part of today's post by quoting part of a comment by Frank Wilhoit at Crooked Timber (Emphasis mine).
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protectes (sic) but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.

As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.

So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.
The contrast between how the police treated the Black Lives Matter protestors and the January 6th insurrectionists is consistent with Wilhoit's formulation of conservatism while my ideal is what Wilhoit stated about anti-conservatism and then repeated at the end of his comment: "The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone."

Follow over the jump for the top posts featuring serious news sources about the election and its aftermath, including the insurrection and impeachment.


The most read entry about the election from the tenth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News featuring serious news sources was WOOD-TV finds dismantled mail sorting machines in Michigan and Governor Whitmer and Senator Peters react on MSNBC from August 20, 2020. It earned ~1,210 default and 1306 raw page views from my first sharing the link at the Coffee Party USA Facebook page followed by Tengrain sharing it at Crooks and Liars the next day and then Infidel753 linking to it on his blog a few days later. The graph above shows the combined spike in readers from Facebook and Crooks and Liars, then the smaller spike from Infidel753's blog. The entry ended the 2020 calendar year with ~1,210 default and ~1280 raw page views to rank seventeenth overall and fifteenth among entries posted during 2020. It ranked sixteeth overall and fourteenth among entries posted during the tenth year of this blog. It also tied for most comments on an entry posted both August 2020 and during the 10th year of the blog with 10, enough for third overall.


CNBC asks 'What Went Wrong With Political Polling In 2020?' and 'Are Polls Trustworthy?' from January 10, 2021 was the second most read entry about the election from a serious news source during the blogging year just ended, 22nd overall and 20th among posts from the tenth year of this blog. During the two and one half months between its posting and March 20, 2020, it earned ~1,080 default and 1133 raw page views again from my first sharing the link at the Coffee Party USA Facebook page followed by Tengrain sharing it at Crooks and Liars and then Infidel753 linking to it on his blog; the graph above shows spikes in readership for each share. The entry ranked third among the most read posts of January 2021 with ~1,080 default and 1108 raw page views by the end of the first month of 2021, but it also had the most comments during the month with six. It's currently the fourth most read entry of 2021.


Ta-ta, Tulsi, as Gabbard gives up from March 21, 2020 earned a mention because of the 8 comments had the most comments during March 2020, tied for second most comments on an entry posted during the 10th year, and ranked fourth overall.


Brad Parscale calls the Trump digital campaign the 'Death Star' in a tweet from May 7, 2020 and tweeted December 3, 2020 was the second most active link from this blog on Twitter and the most active of an entry posted this year, earning 3,095 impressions and 29 total engagements, including 11 link clicks, 9 profile clicks, 5 likes, and 4 detail expands.


Kamala Harris heading home came as a complete surprise from December 4, 2019 and tweeted April 12, 2020 had 1,735 impressions and 48 total engagements, including 28 media engagements, 15 link clicks, 3 detail expands, 1 like, and 1 profile click, to rank as the fourth most active link from the blog tweeted out this year.


Leslie Stahl interviews Nancy Pelosi on '60 Minutes' after the siege of the Capitol from January 11, 2021 and retweeted the same day earned 1,258 impressions and 2 total engagements, including 1 like and 1 profile click ranked as the tenth most active tweet of a link from the blog during its tenth year and the third most active from the posting year just ended.


Vox, Washington Post, and CBS News explain the importance of the Senate runoff elections in Georgia tied for most saved pin for the then-current blogging year during December 2020 and tied for third most saved from the tenth year of this blog with one save.

That's it for the election and impeachment for the tenth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News. Stay tuned for a much shorter retrospective on Flashback Friday.

Previous posts in this series Previous retrospectives about the 2020 election and impeachment
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