Well I hope the Dems are proud of themselves

[Ron Scott]

I don't appreciate reading anyone downplaying the events of Jan 6.

Others don't appreciate reading anyone overplaying the events of Jan 6.

I don’t appreciate the intolerance expressed in either of these perspectives.

[iris lily]

You should check out the video of someone from the "unarmed mob" hitting a cop with a flag pole several times.

Sure, "someone".  Some people did bad things, some just meandered through the Capitol.

In all seriousness, that anyone Died as a Result of [the] Capitol Riot is a tragedy, the same as any deaths in any other riots.  Gun charges against those who illegally brought guns seem appropriate.  But there was in fact also "...an unarmed mob meander[ing] through the Capital building taking selfies" (plenty of video evidence for that) so painting everything with the same brush is inappropriate.  Ignoring either the violence or the non-violence is not conducive to productive discussion.

Correct. And perhaps that's why Michael in ABQ was banned.

Are you really saying that anyone who offered only one perspective in this thread should be banned? ;)

Yes, pretty much.


I’m shocked every time someone who makes reasonable posts that don’t happen to fit the moderator’s view of life is banned. I just I’m shaking my head over this one.

Well, I guess I need to start using my signature line so that I don’t get banned. I guess I’ll plug-in the standard acceptable thoughts:

One. January 6 was a travesty insurrection, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot

Two. Any gender critical thoughts of any kind expressed here is transphobia full stop and the writer is a bigot.

Three. Donald Trump presents the greatest challenge to democracy and world peace than anything, past or  present. To  think otherwise is to be a bigot.

What other expressions should I include in my signature line to avoid banning?

[Phenix]

The level of success of Jan 6 is not relevant.  There was a violent mob that was encouraged by DJT.  Most of his actions were poorly planned and executed, but the intent was there, and the forgiveness and support by the GOP was never wavering.  DJT is their monster and they refuse to reel him in. 

Show your work. When did Donald Trump encourage violence or breaking the law? These were crazy people who certainly didn't need any encouragement.

[ATtiny85]

Based on the DOJ's public records, of the 1,457 people who have been charged [1] with breaching the Capitol, five were charged having a firearm [2] and 79 were charged with having any kind of dangerous or deadly weapon [3]. So, there was not sufficient evidence to charge (let alone convict) 94.6% or 99.6% of the people with being armed (depending on how you defined armed).

Now, let's see if FrugalTorque bans me for posting this.

And from the same record search, 140 charged with assault.   1 out of 10 ain't bad, right?  /s

I don't appreciate reading anyone downplaying the events of Jan 6.

Others don't appreciate reading anyone overplaying the events of Jan 6.

Isn't diversity wonderful?

I rarely comment on the political posts here, but the gaslighting and minimizing of Jan 6th just boggles my mind.  Overplaying?  You can't be serious.  Third world level coup d'etat happening at the capital of the United States.  You should be ashamed for normalizing extremists.

You can't be serious. We've got much bigger problems if a minimally armed group of crazy people in the capital building is all it takes to overthrow our government. There was intel that the events of January 6th were foreseeable and the National Guard should have been brought in to assist. This was preventable. I also don't recall any Republican elected officials goading people on and telling them they would pay their bail if arrested.

January 6th was a learning opportunity for all, but calling that unorganized mess a coup d'etat is giving those morons way too much credit.

Yeah, exactly my point of view also. Those idiots should be apprehended and punished as applicable for sure, but our country wasn’t in danger of folding. Hopefully we have implemented some new procedures and protocols (are those really different things?) to make sure that a better organized, better equipped, and better led significant group won’t be allowed to disrupt things.

[Dancin'Dog]

The level of success of Jan 6 is not relevant.  There was a violent mob that was encouraged by DJT.  Most of his actions were poorly planned and executed, but the intent was there, and the forgiveness and support by the GOP was never wavering.  DJT is their monster and they refuse to reel him in. 

Show your work. When did Donald Trump encourage violence or breaking the law? These were crazy people who certainly didn't need any encouragement.

Jan 6th.  Don't you remember?

[Wolfpack Mustachian]

You should check out the video of someone from the "unarmed mob" hitting a cop with a flag pole several times.

Sure, "someone".  Some people did bad things, some just meandered through the Capitol.

In all seriousness, that anyone Died as a Result of [the] Capitol Riot is a tragedy, the same as any deaths in any other riots.  Gun charges against those who illegally brought guns seem appropriate.  But there was in fact also "...an unarmed mob meander[ing] through the Capital building taking selfies" (plenty of video evidence for that) so painting everything with the same brush is inappropriate.  Ignoring either the violence or the non-violence is not conducive to productive discussion.

Correct. And perhaps that's why Michael in ABQ was banned.

Are you really saying that anyone who offered only one perspective in this thread should be banned? ;)

Yes, pretty much.


I’m shocked every time someone who makes reasonable posts that don’t happen to fit the moderator’s view of life is banned. I just I’m shaking my head over this one.

Well, I guess I need to start using my signature line so that I don’t get banned. I guess I’ll plug-in the standard acceptable thoughts:

One. January 6 was a travesty insurrection, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot

Two. Any gender critical thoughts of any kind expressed here is transphobia full stop and the writer is a bigot.

Three. Donald Trump presents the greatest challenge to democracy and world peace than anything, past or  present. To  think otherwise is to be a bigot.

What other expressions should I include in my signature line to avoid banning?

Hopefully that would be enough.../s

[Phenix]

The level of success of Jan 6 is not relevant.  There was a violent mob that was encouraged by DJT.  Most of his actions were poorly planned and executed, but the intent was there, and the forgiveness and support by the GOP was never wavering.  DJT is their monster and they refuse to reel him in. 

Show your work. When did Donald Trump encourage violence or breaking the law? These were crazy people who certainly didn't need any encouragement.

Jan 6th.  Don't you remember?

So Trump said "Jan 6th" and that was a wink & a nod for people to be violent?
What did Trump say/tweet/whatever that gave a group of crazy people the greenlight to be violent and break the law?

[LaineyAZ]

The level of success of Jan 6 is not relevant.  There was a violent mob that was encouraged by DJT.  Most of his actions were poorly planned and executed, but the intent was there, and the forgiveness and support by the GOP was never wavering.  DJT is their monster and they refuse to reel him in. 

Show your work. When did Donald Trump encourage violence or breaking the law? These were crazy people who certainly didn't need any encouragement.

Jan 6th.  Don't you remember?

So Trump said "Jan 6th" and that was a wink & a nod for people to be violent?
What did Trump say/tweet/whatever that gave a group of crazy people the greenlight to be violent and break the law?

I think you really need to watch the video of the televised Congressional January 6th hearings.  After that, come back and let us know if you still believe it was "a wink & a nod for people to be violent."

[GuitarStv]

The level of success of Jan 6 is not relevant.  There was a violent mob that was encouraged by DJT.  Most of his actions were poorly planned and executed, but the intent was there, and the forgiveness and support by the GOP was never wavering.  DJT is their monster and they refuse to reel him in. 

Show your work. When did Donald Trump encourage violence or breaking the law? These were crazy people who certainly didn't need any encouragement.

Jan 6th.  Don't you remember?

So Trump said "Jan 6th" and that was a wink & a nod for people to be violent?
What did Trump say/tweet/whatever that gave a group of crazy people the greenlight to be violent and break the law?

He very expressly and in great detail lied reputedly about the election being rigged in front of a gigantic crowd, telling them that they couldn't trust the results of the election, that there was a large conspiracy to defraud them of their power as voters coming from every level of government, that most of the problems in their lives were caused by the same group that was rigging the election, that Republicans like Mike Pence and Mitch McConnel were in the conspiracy against them, and that the whole legal system was invalid and working against them.  All of these lies whipped the crowd up into a frenzy:

In every single swing state, local officials, state officials, almost all Democrats made illegal and unconstitutional changes to election procedures without the mandated approvals by the state legislatures, that these changes paved the way for fraud on a scale never seen before. And I think we’d go a long way outside of our country when I say that.

So just in a nutshell, you can’t make a change on voting for a federal election unless the state legislature approves it. No judge can do it. Nobody can do it, only a legislature. So as an example in Pennsylvania or whatever, you have a Republican legislature, you have a Democrat mayor, and you have a lot of Democrats all over the place. They go to the legislature, the legislature laughs at them. Says, ‘We’re not going to do that.’ They say, ‘Thank you very much.’ And they go and make the changes themselves. They do it anyway. And that’s totally illegal. That’s totally illegal. You can’t do that.

In Pennsylvania, the Democrat Secretary of State and the Democrat State Supreme Court justices illegally abolished the signature verification requirements just 11 days prior to the election. So think of what they did. No longer is there signature verification. Oh, that’s okay. We want voter ID by the way. But no longer is there signature verification, 11 days before the election! They say, ‘We don’t want it.’ You know why they don’t want it? Because they want to cheat. That’s the only reason. Who would even think of that? We don’t want to verify a signature? There were over 205,000 more ballots counted in Pennsylvania. Now think of this. You had 205,000 more ballots than you had voters. That means you had 200 … Where did they come from? You know where they came from? Somebody’s imagination. Whatever they needed. So in Pennsylvania you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters! And it’s the number is actually much greater than that now. That was as of a week ago. And this is a mathematical impossibility, unless you want to say it’s a total fraud. So Pennsylvania was defrauded.

Over 8,000 ballots in Pennsylvania were cast by people whose names and dates of birth match individuals who died in 2020 and prior to the election. Think of that. Dead people! Lots of dead people, thousands. And some dead people actually requested an application. That bothers me even more. Not only are they voting, they want an application to vote. One of them was 29 years ago died. It’s incredible.

Over 14,000 ballots were cast by out-of-state voters. So these are voters that don’t live in the state. And by the way, these numbers are what they call outcome determinative. Meaning these numbers far surpass … I lost by a very little bit. These numbers are massive. Massive. More than 10,000 votes in Pennsylvania were illegally counted, even though they were received after Election Day. In other words, “They were received after Election Day, let’s count them anyway!” And what they did in many cases is they did fraud. They took the date and they moved it back, so that it no longer is after Election Day. And more than 60,000 ballots in Pennsylvania were reported received back. They got back before they were ever supposedly mailed out. In other words, you got the ballot back before you mailed it!

… they were supposedly mailed out, in other words, you got the ballot back before you mailed it, which is also logically and logistically impossible. Think of that one. You got the ballot back. Let’s send the ballots. Oh, they’ve already been sent. But we got the ballot back before they were sent. I don’t think that’s too good.

Twenty-five thousand ballots in Pennsylvania were requested by nursing home residents, all in a single giant batch, not legal. Indicating an enormous illegal ballot-harvesting operation. You’re not allowed to do it. It’s against the law. The day before the election, the State of Pennsylvania reported the number of absentee ballots that had been sent out. Yet this number was suddenly and drastically increased by 400,000 people. It was increased. Nobody knows where it came from by 400,000 ballots. One day after the election, it remains totally unexplained. They said, ‘Well, we can’t figure that.’ Now that’s many, many times what it would take to overthrow the state. Just that one element. 400,000 ballots appeared from nowhere, right after the election.

By the way, Pennsylvania has now seen all of this. They didn’t know because it was so quick. They had a vote, they voted, but now they see all this stuff. It’s all come to light. Doesn’t happen that fast. And they want to re certify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back.

Mike Pence has to agree to send it back. And many people in Congress want it sent back, and take of what you’re doing. Let’s say you don’t do it. Somebody says, ‘Well, we have to obey the constitution.’ And you are, because you’re protecting our country and you’re protecting the constitution, so you are. But think of what happens. Let’s say they’re stiffs and they’re stupid people. And they say, ‘Well, we really have no choice.’ Even though Pennsylvania and other states want to redo their votes, they want to see the numbers. They already have the numbers. Go very quickly and they want to redo their legislature because many of these votes were taken as I said, because it wasn’t approved by their legislature. That in itself is illegal and then you have the scam and that’s all of the things that we’re talking about. But think of this: if you don’t do that, that means you will have a president of the United States for four years, with his wonderful son.

You will have a president who lost all of these states, or you will have a president to put it another way, who was voted on by a bunch of stupid people who lost all of these things. You will have an illegitimate president, that’s what you’ll have. And we can’t let that happen. These are the facts that you won’t hear from the fake news media. It’s all part of the suppression effort. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to talk about it. In fact, when I started talking about that, I guarantee you a lot of the television sets and a lot of those cameras went off and that’s how a lot of cameras back there. But a lot of them went off, but these are the things you don’t hear about. You don’t hear what you just heard. And I’m going to go over a few more states. But you don’t hear it by the people who want to deceive you and demoralise you and control you, big tech, media.

Just like the suppression polls that said, we’re going to lose Wisconsin by 17 points, well we won Wisconsin. They don’t have it that way because they lose just by a little sliver. But they had me down the day before Washington Post, ABC poll, down 17 points. I called up a real pollster. I said, ‘What is that?’ ‘Sir, that’s called a suppression poll. I think you’re going to win Wisconsin, Sir.’ I said, ‘But why do they make it four or five points?’ ‘Because then people vote.’ But when you’re down 17, they say, ‘Hey, I’m not going to waste my time. I love the president, but there’s no way.’ Despite that, we won Wisconsin, you’ll see. But that’s called suppression because a lot of people, when they see that, it’s very interesting. This pollster said, ‘Sir, if you’re down three, four or five people vote. When you go down 17, they say, “Let’s save, let’s go and have dinner, and let’s watch the presidential defeat tonight on television darling”.’

And just like the radical left tries to blacklist you on social media, every time I put out a tweet, even if it’s totally correct, totally correct. I get a flag. I get a flag. And they also don’t let you get out. On Twitter, it’s very hard to come on to my account. It’s very hard to get out a message. They don’t let the message get out nearly like they should, but I’ve had many people say, ‘I can’t get on your Twitter.’ I don’t care about Twitter. Twitter is bad news. They’re all bad news. But you know what? If you want to get out of message. And if you want to go through big tech, social media, they are really, if you’re a conservative, if you’re a Republican, if you have a big voice, I guess they call it shadow ban. Shadow ban. They shadow ban you and it should be illegal. I’ve been telling these Republicans get rid of Section 230.

And for some reason, Mitch and the group, they don’t want to put it in there. And they don’t realise that that’s going to be the end of the Republican party as we know it, but it’s never going to be the end of us, never. Let them get out. Let the weak ones get out. This is a time for strength. They also want to indoctrinate your children in school by teaching them things that aren’t so. They want to indoctrinate your children. It’s all part of the comprehensive assault on our democracy and the American people to finally standing up and saying, ‘No.’ This crowd is again a testament to it. I did no advertising. I did nothing. You do have some groups that are big supporters. I want to thank that Amy and everybody, we have some incredible supporters, incredible, but we didn’t do anything. This just happened.

Two months ago, we had a massive crowd come down to Washington. I said, ‘What are they there for.’ ‘Sir, they’re there for you.’ We have nothing to do with it. These groups, they’re forming all over the United States. And we got to remember, in a year from now, you’re going to start working on Congress. And we got to get rid of the weak congresspeople, the ones that aren’t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world, we got to get rid of them. We got to get rid of them. She never wants a soldier brought home. I’ve brought a lot of our soldiers home. I don’t know, some like it. They’re in countries that nobody even knows the name. Nobody knows where they are. They’re dying. They’re great, but they’re dying. They’re losing their arms, their legs, their face. I brought them back home, largely back home, Afghanistan, Iraq.

Remember I used to say in the old days, ‘Don’t go into Iraq. But if you go in, keep the oil.’ We didn’t keep the oil. So stupid. So stupid, these people. And Iraq has billions and billions of dollars now in the bank. And what did we do? We get nothing. We never get. But we do actually, we kept the oil here. We did good. We got rid of the ISIS caliphate. We got rid of plenty of different things that everybody knows and the rebuilding of our military in three years, people said it couldn’t be done. And it was all made in the USA, all made in the USA. Best equipment in the world. In Wisconsin, corrupt Democrat-run cities deployed more than 500 illegal unmanned, unsecured drop boxes, which collected a minimum of 91,000 unlawful votes. It was razor thin, the loss. This one thing alone is much more than we would need, but there are many things.

They have these lockboxes and they pick them up and they disappear for two days. People would say, ‘Where’s that box?’ They disappeared. Nobody even knew where the hell it was. In addition, over 170,000 absentee votes were counted in Wisconsin without a valid absentee ballot application. So they had a vote, but they had no application. And that’s illegal in Wisconsin. Meaning those votes were blatantly done in opposition to state law. And they came 100 percent from Democrat areas, such as Milwaukee and Madison, 100 percent.

In Madison, 17,000 votes were deposited in so-called human drop boxes. You know what that is, right? Where operatives stuff thousands of unsecured ballots into duffel bags on park benches across the city in complete defiance of cease and desist letters from state legislature. The state legislature said, ‘Don’t do it.’ They’re the only ones that could approve it. They gave tens of thousands of votes.

They came in in duffel bags. Where the hell did they come from? According to eyewitness testimony, postal service workers in Wisconsin were also instructed to illegally backdate approximately 100,000 ballots. The margin of difference in Wisconsin was less than 20,000 votes. Each one of these things alone wins us the state. Great state, we love the state, we won the state. In Georgia, your secretary of state, I can’t believe this guy’s a Republican. He loves recording telephone conversations. I thought it was a great conversation personally, so did a lot of other … people love that conversation, because it says what’s going on.

These people are crooked. They’re 100 percent in my opinion, one of the most corrupt. Between your governor and your secretary of state. And now you have it again last night, just take a look at what happened, what a mess and the Democrat party operatives entered into an illegal and unconstitutional settlement agreement that drastically weakened signature verification and other election security procedures.

Stacey Abrams, she took them to lunch and I beat her two years ago with a bad candidate, Brian Kemp. But the Democrats, took the Republicans to lunch because the secretary of state had no clue what the hell was happening, unless he did have a clue. That’s interesting. Maybe he was with the other side, but we’ve been trying to get verifications of signatures in Fulton County. They won’t let us do it. The only reason they won’t is because we’ll find things in the hundreds of thousands. Why wouldn’t they let us verify signatures and Fulton County? Which is known for being very corrupt. They won’t do it. They go to some other county where you would live. I said, ‘That’s not the problem. The problem is Fulton County.’ Home of Stacey Abrams. She did a good job. I congratulate her, but it was done in such a way that we can’t let this stuff happen.

We won’t have a country of it happens. As a result Georgia’s absentee ballot rejection rate was more than 10 times lower than previous levels, because the criteria was so off, 48 counties in Georgia with thousands and thousands of votes rejected zero ballots. There wasn’t one ballot. In other words, in a year in which more mail-in ballots were sent than ever before, and more people were voting by mail for the first time, the rejection rate was drastically lower than it had ever been before. The only way this can be explained is if tens of thousands of illegitimate votes were added to the tally, that’s the only way you could explain it. By the way, you’re talking about tens of thousands. If Georgia had merely rejected the same number of unlawful ballots, as in other years, there should have been approximately 45,000 ballots rejected, far more than what we needed to win, just over 11,000.

They should find those votes. They should absolutely find that just over 11,000 votes, that’s all we need. They defrauded us out of a win in Georgia, and we’re not going to forget it. There’s only one reason the Democrats could possibly want to eliminate signature matching, oppose voter ID and stop citizenship confirmation. Are you in citizenship? You’re not allowed to ask that question. Because they want to steal the election.

The radical left knows exactly what they’re doing. They’re ruthless and it’s time that somebody did something about it. And Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our constitution and for the good of our country. And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I’m not hearing good stories. In Fulton County, republican poll Watchers were rejected in some cases, physically from the room under the false pretence of a pipe burst.

Water main burst, everybody leave. Which we now know was a total lie. Then election officials pull boxes, Democrats and suitcases of ballots out from under a table. You all saw it on television, totally fraudulent. And illegally scanned them for nearly two hours totally unsupervised. Tens of thousands of votes, as that coincided with a mysterious vote dump of up to 100,000 votes for Joe Biden, almost none for Trump. Oh, that sounds fair. That was at 1:34am. The Georgia secretary of state and pathetic governor of Georgia … although he says, I’m a great president. I sort of maybe have to change. He said the other day, ‘Yes, I disagree with president, but he’s been a great president.’ Oh, good. Thanks. Thank you very much. Because of him and others. Brian Kemp, vote him the hell out of office, please.

Well, his rates are so low, his approval rating now, I think it just reached a record low. They’ve rejected five separate appeals for an independent and comprehensive audit of signatures in Fulton County. Even without an audit, the number of fraudulent ballots that we’ve identified across the state is staggering. Over 10,300 ballots in Georgia were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match Georgia residents who died in 2020 and prior to the election. More than 2,500 ballots were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match incarcerated felons in Georgia prison. People who are not allowed to vote. More than 4,500 illegal ballots were cast by individuals who do not appear on the state’s own voter rolls. Over 18,000 illegal ballots were cast by individuals who registered to vote using an address listed as vacant, according to the postal service. At least 88,000 ballots in Georgia were cast by people whose registrations were illegally backdated.

Each one of these is far more than we need. 66,000 votes in Georgia were cast by individuals under the legal voting age. And at least 15,000 ballots were cast by individuals who moved out of the state prior to November 3rd election. They say they moved right back. They move right back. Oh, they moved out. They moved right back. Okay. They miss Georgia that much. I do. I love Georgia, but it’s a corrupt system. Despite all of this, the margin in Georgia is only 11,779 votes. Each and every one of these issues is enough to give us a victory in Georgia, a big, beautiful victory. Make no mistake, this selection stolen from you, from me and from the country. And not a single swing state has conducted a comprehensive audit to remove the illegal ballots. This should absolutely occur in every single contestant state before the election is certified.

In the State of Arizona, over 36,000 ballots were illegally cast by non-citizens. 2,000 ballots were returned with no address. More than 22,000 ballots were returned before they were ever supposedly mailed out. They returned, but we haven’t mailed them yet. 11,600 more ballots and votes were counted more than there were actual voters. You see that? So you have more votes again than you have voters.

150,000 people registered in Maya Copa County after the registration deadline. 103,000 ballots in the county were sent for electronic adjudication with no Republican observers. In Clark County, Nevada, the accuracy settings on signature verification machines were purposely lowered before they were used to count over 130,000 ballots. If you signed your name as Santa Claus, it would go through. There were also more than 42,000 double votes in Nevada. Over 150,000 people were hurt so badly by what took place. And 1,500 ballots were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match Nevada residents who died in 2020, prior to November 3rd election. More than 8,000 votes were cast by individuals who had no address and probably didn’t live there. The margin in Nevada is down at a very low number. Any of these things would have taken care of the situation. We would have won.

Any of these things would have taken care of the situation. We would have won Nevada, also. Every one of these we’re going over, we win. In Michigan quickly, the secretary of state, a real great one, flooded the state with unsolicited mail-in ballot applications, sent to every person on the rolls, in direct violation of state law. More than 17,000 Michigan ballots were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth matched people who were deceased. In Wayne County, that’s a great one. That’s Detroit. 174,000 ballots were counted without being tied to an actual registered voter. Nobody knows where they came from. Also in Wayne County, poll watches observed canvassers rescanning batches of ballots over and over again, up to three or four or five times. In Detroit, turnout was 139 percent of registered voters. Think of that. So you had 139 percent of the people in Detroit voting. This is in Michigan, Detroit, Michigan.

A career employee of the Detroit, City of Detroit, testified under penalty of perjury that she witnessed city workers coaching voters to vote straight Democrat, while accompanying them to watch who they voted for. When a Republican came in, they wouldn’t talk to him. The same worker was instructed not to ask for any voter ID and not to attempt to validate any signatures if they were Democrats. She also told to illegally, and was told backdate ballots received after the deadline and reports that thousands and thousands of ballots were improperly backdated. That’s Michigan. Four witnesses have testified under penalty of perjury that after officials in Detroit announced the last votes had been counted, tens of thousands of additional ballots arrived without required envelopes. Every single one was for a Democrat. I got no votes.

At 6:31am, in the early morning hours after voting had ended, Michigan suddenly reported 147,000 votes. An astounding 94 percent went to Joe Biden, who campaigned brilliantly from his basement. Only a couple of percentage points went to Trump. Such gigantic and one-sided vote dumps were only observed in a few swing states and they were observed in the states where it was necessary. You know what’s interesting, President Obama beat Biden in every state other than the swing states where Biden killed him. But the swing states were the ones that mattered. There were always just enough to push Joe Biden barely into the lead. We were ahead by a lot and within the number of hours we were losing by a little.

In addition, there is the highly troubling matter of Dominion voting systems. In one Michigan County alone, 6,000 votes were switched from Trump to Biden and the same systems are used in the majority of states in our country. Senator William Ligon, a great gentleman, chairman of Georgia Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, Senator Ligon, highly respected on elections has written a letter describing his concerns with Dominion in Georgia.

He wrote, and I quote, ‘The Dominion voting machines employed in Fulton County had an astronomical and astounding 93.67% error rate.’ It’s only wrong 93 percent of the time. ‘In the scanning of ballots requiring a review panel to adjudicate or determine the voter’s interest, in over 106,000 ballots out of a total of 113,000.’ Think of it, you go in and you vote and then they tell people who you’re supposed to be voting for. They make up whatever they want. Nobody’s ever even heard. They adjudicate your vote. They say, ‘Well, we don’t think Trump wants to vote for Trump. We think he wants to vote for Biden. Put it down for Biden.’ The national average for such an error rate is far less than 1 percent and yet you’re at 93 percent. ‘The source of this astronomical error rate must be identified to determine if these machines were set up or destroyed to allow for a third party to disregard the actual ballot cast by the registered voter.’

The letter continues, ‘There is clear evidence that tens of thousands of votes were switched from President Trump to former Vice President Biden in several counties in Georgia. For example, in Bibb County, President Trump was reported to have 29, 391 votes at 9:11 PM Eastern time. While simultaneously Vice President Joe Biden was reported to have 17,213. Minutes later, just minutes, at the next update, these vote numbers switched with President Trump going way down to 17,000 and Biden going way up to 29,391. ‘And that was very quick, a 12,000 vote switch, all in Mr. Biden’s favour.

So, I mean, I could go on and on about this fraud that took place in every state and all of these legislatures want this back. I don’t want to do it to you because I love you and it’s freezing out here, but I could just go on forever. I can tell you this …

Crowd: We love you. We love you. We love you. We love you. We love you. We love you. We love you. We love you.

So when you hear, when you hear, ‘While there is no evidence to prove any wrongdoing,’ this is the most fraudulent thing anybody’s … This is a criminal enterprise. This is a criminal enterprise and the press will say, and I’m sure they won’t put any of that on there because that’s no good, do you ever see, ‘While there is no evidence to back President Trump’s assertion,’ I could go on for another hour reading this stuff to you and telling you about it. There’s never been anything like it. Think about it, Detroit had more votes than it had voters. Pennsylvania had 205,000 more votes than it had more, but you don’t have to go any … Between that, I think that’s almost better than dead people, if you think, right? More votes than they had voters, and many other States are also.

It’s a disgrace that the United States of America, tens of millions of people are allowed to go vote without so much as even showing identification. In no state is there any question or effort made to verify the identity, citizenship, residency or eligibility of the votes cast. The Republicans have to get tougher. You’re not going to have a Republican party if you don’t get tougher. They want to play so straight, they want to play so, ‘Sir, yes, the United States, the constitution doesn’t allow me to send them back to the States.’ Well, I say, ‘Yes, it does because the constitution says you have to protect our country and you have to protect our constitution and you can’t vote on fraud,’ and fraud breaks up everything, doesn’t it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn’t listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he’s listening to. It is also widely understood that the voter rolls are crammed full of non-citizens, felons and people who have moved out of state and individuals who are otherwise ineligible to vote. Yet Democrats oppose every effort to clean up their voter rolls. They don’t want to clean them up, they are loaded. And how many people here know other people that when the hundreds of thousands and then millions of ballots got sent out, got three, four, five, six, and I heard one who got seven ballots. And then they say, ‘You didn’t quite make it, sir.’ We won. We won in a landslide. This was a landslide.

They said, ‘It’s not American to challenge the election.’ This is the most corrupt election in the history, maybe of the world. You know, you could go third world countries, but I don’t think they had hundreds of thousands of votes and they don’t have voters for them. I mean, no matter where you go, nobody would think this. In fact, it’s so egregious, it’s so bad, that a lot of people don’t even believe it. It’s so crazy that people don’t even believe it. It can’t be true. So they don’t believe it. This is not just a matter of domestic politics, this is a matter of national security. So today, in addition to challenging the certification of the election, I’m calling on Congress and the state legislatures to quickly pass sweeping election reforms, and you better do it before we have no country left. Today is not the end. It’s just the beginning.

Then he told this same frenzied crowd to march down to the capitol and (lied again) that he would be marching with them in order to take 'back the country'.  The insurrection riots very predictably followed.

So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give … The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I want to thank you all. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you all for being here, this is incredible. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[MDM]

I don't appreciate reading anyone downplaying the events of Jan 6.

Others don't appreciate reading anyone overplaying the events of Jan 6.

I don’t appreciate the intolerance expressed in either of these perspectives.

Touché  :)

[Phenix]

So if someone were to shoot DJT after Biden called him a threat to democracy, would you assign blame to Biden or not since you agree with that viewpoint?

[GuitarStv]

So if someone were to shoot DJT after Biden called him a threat to democracy, would you assign blame to Biden or not since you agree with that viewpoint?

If Biden held a gigantic rally, where he told dozens of lies about Trump in order to whip up a huge crowd of people into a fervor and then told them to march to where Trump's house was?  Hell yes, Biden would share blame for that.

[bacchi]

"Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States"
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2383

Nobody has been charged with that crime, insurrection, for the events of Jan 6th.

18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

It's a more serious crime than "insurrection" (18 U.S. Code § 2383), apparently.

[doneby35]

I would argue that nobody on here who thinks they know what happened on January 6, actually knows the true details. You are all either relying on the DOJ or some other 3 letter governmental entity or the media. And yes depending on which side of the aisle you are on, you will select which entity to trust more.

Of course one side of the aisle who hates Trump is going to think of January 6 as the worst day of their lives, and the side that loves Trump will not. That is not the point! Unless someone is personally attacking someone else in their comments or threatening them, you cannot ban people for having a different opinion. Half of the country has a different view on almost everything politically than the other half. Guns, abortion, vaccine mandates, january 6, climate change, gender and skin color… we are all allowed to have our opinions and express them no matter how strongly anyone feels about a certain topic.

@FrugalToque back to the main issue here, most people seem to agree that this was wrong on your part, are you going to reverse the ban on Michael and apologize?

[OzzieandHarriet]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

[Ron Scott]

Well it looks like Jan 6, 2025 will be peaceful!

Biden’s narcissism is winning the day and we’ll have him to thanks for another 4 years of the Trumpster.

Joe has been around long enough to know the Dems are pathetic weaklings and could never launch much of an effort to oust him if he persists.

Thanks Joe—you suck buddy!

[doneby35]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

[doneby35]

You should check out the video of someone from the "unarmed mob" hitting a cop with a flag pole several times.

Sure, "someone".  Some people did bad things, some just meandered through the Capitol.

In all seriousness, that anyone Died as a Result of [the] Capitol Riot is a tragedy, the same as any deaths in any other riots.  Gun charges against those who illegally brought guns seem appropriate.  But there was in fact also "...an unarmed mob meander[ing] through the Capital building taking selfies" (plenty of video evidence for that) so painting everything with the same brush is inappropriate.  Ignoring either the violence or the non-violence is not conducive to productive discussion.

Correct. And perhaps that's why Michael in ABQ was banned.

Are you really saying that anyone who offered only one perspective in this thread should be banned? ;)

Yes, pretty much.


I’m shocked every time someone who makes reasonable posts that don’t happen to fit the moderator’s view of life is banned. I just I’m shaking my head over this one.

Well, I guess I need to start using my signature line so that I don’t get banned. I guess I’ll plug-in the standard acceptable thoughts:

One. January 6 was a travesty insurrection, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot

Two. Any gender critical thoughts of any kind expressed here is transphobia full stop and the writer is a bigot.

Three. Donald Trump presents the greatest challenge to democracy and world peace than anything, past or  present. To  think otherwise is to be a bigot.

What other expressions should I include in my signature line to avoid banning?

Hopefully that would be enough.../s

Lol this is actually funny and spot on for this forum!

[dividendman]

Let's look at the bright side folks, when the Republicans sweep everything we'll probably get some juicy corporate tax cuts to fuel the stock market.

[sixwings]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

[doneby35]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

That’s totally fine, if someone lies or you think they are lying, then show them how they are wrong. They’re likely to not change their mind but so what. Whether it’s a lie or an opinion does not matter. What matters is people are allowed to speak without someone who has access to a button deciding those people should be silenced.

[jrhampt]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

Agreed.  There are facts, and then there are "alternative facts"/lies.  This is not a matter of opinion...it's reality vs nonreality.  Also, this is the same kind of reasoning that Alex Jones used to argue/lie that Sandy Hook was a "false flag" operation....we actually do know what happened at Sandy Hook, and it was bad.  If eyewitness testimony isn't enough, than I don't know what is.  And in the case of 1/6, we do have lots and lots of video, testimony of people watching cops getting bludgeoned and congress people fleeing for their lives.

Edited to add that I remember what the Republicans in Congress, including McConnell said about this immediately after the attack (when the fear for their lives was fresh) even though now they are trying to rebrand it as a harmless tour group. 

[EvenSteven]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

That’s totally fine, if someone lies or you think they are lying, then show them how they are wrong. They’re likely to not change their mind but so what. Whether it’s a lie or an opinion does not matter. What matters is people are allowed to speak without someone who has access to a button deciding those people should be silenced.

The unmoderated philosophy of running a forum is one option that a site owner can choose to go with. This often devolves into a place over-run with assholes.

This forum has chosen a different philosophy where they use moderation. There is always 4-cahn if you like that better.

[Radagast]

. . . assuming Trump doesn't win this year and end up more successful leading his next insurrection.

Yes, because his last presidency ended up with him as dictator for life in a fascist state as we all recall. Having an unarmed mob meander through the Capital building taking selfies was super effective in overthrowing the country.
[MOD: banned]

@FrugalToque

I also have to disagree with this banning. Sure there is some tribal myopia here which I don't appreciate, and the most troubling aspect is overlooking some explicit attempts on the behalf of Trump to end the Constitutional governance of the US and institute rule by himself, however the troubling parts were not related to the mob but to requests of Pence and state officials. I'd substantially agree that this was an unarmed (but violent) mob taking selfies.

I'd suggest that Michael in ABQ 's perspective is within one standard deviation of the mean in the US, and is thus normal, and not extremist. The sentences were neither impolite nor inappropriate. Also, perusing forum rules I don't see which was broken. There are far worse and more extremist posters on this site spreading only negativity and with no interest in FIRE, for example Cawl who openly posts links to Russian propaganda sites and exclusively incites strife and negativity with no interest in FIRE topics, and yet is still around. On the whole this was a bad decision, and out of bounds with respect to forum rules and this site's typical moderation practices.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Bacci - My problem is with posters calling Jan 6th an "insurrection", when nobody was charged with that crime.  Courts don't see it that way.

---
Trump's attackers and defenders point to two different sections of his Jan 6th speech, which normally have context removed.  He's a few paragraphs near both his "peacefully march" quote, and his "fight like hell" quote.

And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.

Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down, we're going to walk down.

Anyone you want, but I think right here, we're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.

Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections. But whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country. Our country has been under siege for a long time. Far longer than this four-year period. We've set it on a much greater course. So much, and we, I thought, you know, four more years. I thought it would be easy.

...

I think one of our great achievements will be election security. Because nobody until I came along had any idea how corrupt our elections were.

And again, most people would stand there at 9 o'clock in the evening and say I want to thank you very much, and they go off to some other life. But I said something's wrong here, something is really wrong, can have happened.

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country.

And I say this despite all that's happened. The best is yet to come.

So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial

[GuitarStv]

. . . assuming Trump doesn't win this year and end up more successful leading his next insurrection.

Yes, because his last presidency ended up with him as dictator for life in a fascist state as we all recall. Having an unarmed mob meander through the Capital building taking selfies was super effective in overthrowing the country.
[MOD: banned]

@FrugalToque

I also have to disagree with this banning. Sure there is some tribal myopia here which I don't appreciate, and the most troubling aspect is overlooking some explicit attempts on the behalf of Trump to end the Constitutional governance of the US and institute rule by himself, however the troubling parts were not related to the mob but to requests of Pence and state officials. I'd substantially agree that this was an unarmed (but violent) mob taking selfies.

I'd suggest that Michael in ABQ 's perspective is within one standard deviation of the mean in the US, and is thus normal, and not extremist. The sentences were neither impolite nor inappropriate. Also, perusing forum rules I don't see which was broken. There are far worse and more extremist posters on this site spreading only negativity and with no interest in FIRE, for example Cawl who openly posts links to Russian propaganda sites and exclusively incites strife and negativity with no interest in FIRE topics, and yet is still around. On the whole this was a bad decision, and out of bounds with respect to forum rules and this site's typical moderation practices.

Yes.

While I don't entirely agree with Michael in ABQ's characterization of the events of Jan. 6th, banning seems like an unusually heavy handed move for this forum.

[doneby35]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

That’s totally fine, if someone lies or you think they are lying, then show them how they are wrong. They’re likely to not change their mind but so what. Whether it’s a lie or an opinion does not matter. What matters is people are allowed to speak without someone who has access to a button deciding those people should be silenced.

The unmoderated philosophy of running a forum is one option that a site owner can choose to go with. This often devolves into a place over-run with assholes.

This forum has chosen a different philosophy where they use moderation. There is always 4-cahn if you like that better.

Proper moderation does not equal banning people that said something you personally did not like or cannot tolerate. If the moderator was conservative leaning, then they would just ban 90% of accounts on these forums. So if you want the minority of independents and conservative voices to just keep quiet or leave because this place does not accept them, then just say so.

[Omy]

Trump's tweet on 12/19/2020 was a call to action:

"Big protest in D.C. on January 6th," he wrote, referring to the day Congress was set to formally certify Joe Biden's victory in the electoral college.

"Be there, will be wild!"

I can't remember another president in my lifetime inviting their supporters to a "wild" protest. It galvanized the Proud Boys (and others) who Trump had previously told to "Stand back and stand by".

He knows how to dog whistle his most violent supporters into action. It was a failed coup because he *eventually* called off the dogs. If he had a firmer grip on the DOJ he would have found a way to declare Marshall law to stop the peaceful transfer of power. 2021 was a dress rehearsal for Project 2025.

[EvenSteven]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

That’s totally fine, if someone lies or you think they are lying, then show them how they are wrong. They’re likely to not change their mind but so what. Whether it’s a lie or an opinion does not matter. What matters is people are allowed to speak without someone who has access to a button deciding those people should be silenced.

The unmoderated philosophy of running a forum is one option that a site owner can choose to go with. This often devolves into a place over-run with assholes.

This forum has chosen a different philosophy where they use moderation. There is always 4-cahn if you like that better.

Proper moderation does not equal banning people that said something you personally did not like or cannot tolerate. If the moderator was conservative leaning, then they would just ban 90% of accounts on these forums. So if you want the minority of independents and conservative voices to just keep quiet or leave because this place does not accept them, then just say so.

People say things I don't like 10 times a day on this forum with no moderator intervention. I've never asked for anyone to be banned. I think good moderation does include the prevention of spreading known lies (I'm not talking about anything Michael from ABQ said, I'm talking about you explicitly defending peoples ability to spread known falsehoods).

[Dancin'Dog]

. . . assuming Trump doesn't win this year and end up more successful leading his next insurrection.

Yes, because his last presidency ended up with him as dictator for life in a fascist state as we all recall. Having an unarmed mob meander through the Capital building taking selfies was super effective in overthrowing the country.
[MOD: banned]

@FrugalToque

I also have to disagree with this banning. Sure there is some tribal myopia here which I don't appreciate, and the most troubling aspect is overlooking some explicit attempts on the behalf of Trump to end the Constitutional governance of the US and institute rule by himself, however the troubling parts were not related to the mob but to requests of Pence and state officials. I'd substantially agree that this was an unarmed (but violent) mob taking selfies.

I'd suggest that Michael in ABQ 's perspective is within one standard deviation of the mean in the US, and is thus normal, and not extremist. The sentences were neither impolite nor inappropriate. Also, perusing forum rules I don't see which was broken. There are far worse and more extremist posters on this site spreading only negativity and with no interest in FIRE, for example Cawl who openly posts links to Russian propaganda sites and exclusively incites strife and negativity with no interest in FIRE topics, and yet is still around. On the whole this was a bad decision, and out of bounds with respect to forum rules and this site's typical moderation practices.

Yes.

While I don't entirely agree with Michael in ABQ's characterization of the events of Jan. 6th, banning seems like an unusually heavy handed move for this forum.

Perhaps there was a PM warning/conversation that we are unaware of. 

[bacchi]

Bacci - My problem is with posters calling Jan 6th an "insurrection", when nobody was charged with that crime.  Courts don't see it that way.

Yeah, people are using the dictionary definition instead of the legal definition of "insurrection."

[doneby35]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

That’s totally fine, if someone lies or you think they are lying, then show them how they are wrong. They’re likely to not change their mind but so what. Whether it’s a lie or an opinion does not matter. What matters is people are allowed to speak without someone who has access to a button deciding those people should be silenced.

The unmoderated philosophy of running a forum is one option that a site owner can choose to go with. This often devolves into a place over-run with assholes.

This forum has chosen a different philosophy where they use moderation. There is always 4-cahn if you like that better.

Proper moderation does not equal banning people that said something you personally did not like or cannot tolerate. If the moderator was conservative leaning, then they would just ban 90% of accounts on these forums. So if you want the minority of independents and conservative voices to just keep quiet or leave because this place does not accept them, then just say so.

People say things I don't like 10 times a day on this forum with no moderator intervention. I've never asked for anyone to be banned. I think good moderation does include the prevention of spreading known lies (I'm not talking about anything Michael from ABQ said, I'm talking about you explicitly defending peoples ability to spread known falsehoods).

Of course, why would I not defend it? If you think someone is lying, you don’t silence them/ban them. You do your best in showing them how they might be wrong and move on. Again, 50% of the country thinks the other 50% is spreading lies about “insert political topic” here. We don’t go about it by silencing 50% of the country.

[EvenSteven]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

That’s totally fine, if someone lies or you think they are lying, then show them how they are wrong. They’re likely to not change their mind but so what. Whether it’s a lie or an opinion does not matter. What matters is people are allowed to speak without someone who has access to a button deciding those people should be silenced.

The unmoderated philosophy of running a forum is one option that a site owner can choose to go with. This often devolves into a place over-run with assholes.

This forum has chosen a different philosophy where they use moderation. There is always 4-cahn if you like that better.

Proper moderation does not equal banning people that said something you personally did not like or cannot tolerate. If the moderator was conservative leaning, then they would just ban 90% of accounts on these forums. So if you want the minority of independents and conservative voices to just keep quiet or leave because this place does not accept them, then just say so.

People say things I don't like 10 times a day on this forum with no moderator intervention. I've never asked for anyone to be banned. I think good moderation does include the prevention of spreading known lies (I'm not talking about anything Michael from ABQ said, I'm talking about you explicitly defending peoples ability to spread known falsehoods).

Of course, why would I not defend it? If you think someone is lying, you don’t silence them/ban them. You do your best in showing them how they might be wrong and move on. Again, 50% of the country thinks the other 50% is spreading lies about “insert political topic” here. We don’t go about it by silencing 50% of the country.

Sure, and I am trying to explain to you that lots of people thinking global warming is a Jewish hoax, or that vaccines cause autism, or (insert crazy shit here), doesn't mean that this forum is obligated to host those views. They have chosen to moderate the forum. I don't know of all the backstory behind this particular ban, and I agree that this one seemed heavy handed. But this isn't an absolutist free speech zone where you can just say any old shit you want.

[doneby35]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

That’s totally fine, if someone lies or you think they are lying, then show them how they are wrong. They’re likely to not change their mind but so what. Whether it’s a lie or an opinion does not matter. What matters is people are allowed to speak without someone who has access to a button deciding those people should be silenced.

The unmoderated philosophy of running a forum is one option that a site owner can choose to go with. This often devolves into a place over-run with assholes.

This forum has chosen a different philosophy where they use moderation. There is always 4-cahn if you like that better.

Proper moderation does not equal banning people that said something you personally did not like or cannot tolerate. If the moderator was conservative leaning, then they would just ban 90% of accounts on these forums. So if you want the minority of independents and conservative voices to just keep quiet or leave because this place does not accept them, then just say so.

People say things I don't like 10 times a day on this forum with no moderator intervention. I've never asked for anyone to be banned. I think good moderation does include the prevention of spreading known lies (I'm not talking about anything Michael from ABQ said, I'm talking about you explicitly defending peoples ability to spread known falsehoods).

Of course, why would I not defend it? If you think someone is lying, you don’t silence them/ban them. You do your best in showing them how they might be wrong and move on. Again, 50% of the country thinks the other 50% is spreading lies about “insert political topic” here. We don’t go about it by silencing 50% of the country.

Sure, and I am trying to explain to you that lots of people thinking global warming is a Jewish hoax, or that vaccines cause autism, or (insert crazy shit here), doesn't mean that this forum is obligated to host those views. They have chosen to moderate the forum. I don't know of all the backstory behind this particular ban, and I agree that this one seemed heavy handed. But this isn't an absolutist free speech zone where you can just say any old shit you want.

Agreed, I’m with you. I’m just standing up for someone who was unfairly banned based on a sarcastic comment made about January 6. That’s all.

[Ron Scott]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

That’s totally fine, if someone lies or you think they are lying, then show them how they are wrong. They’re likely to not change their mind but so what. Whether it’s a lie or an opinion does not matter. What matters is people are allowed to speak without someone who has access to a button deciding those people should be silenced.

The unmoderated philosophy of running a forum is one option that a site owner can choose to go with. This often devolves into a place over-run with assholes.

This forum has chosen a different philosophy where they use moderation. There is always 4-cahn if you like that better.

Proper moderation does not equal banning people that said something you personally did not like or cannot tolerate. If the moderator was conservative leaning, then they would just ban 90% of accounts on these forums. So if you want the minority of independents and conservative voices to just keep quiet or leave because this place does not accept them, then just say so.

People say things I don't like 10 times a day on this forum with no moderator intervention. I've never asked for anyone to be banned. I think good moderation does include the prevention of spreading known lies (I'm not talking about anything Michael from ABQ said, I'm talking about you explicitly defending peoples ability to spread known falsehoods).

Of course, why would I not defend it? If you think someone is lying, you don’t silence them/ban them. You do your best in showing them how they might be wrong and move on. Again, 50% of the country thinks the other 50% is spreading lies about “insert political topic” here. We don’t go about it by silencing 50% of the country.

Sure, and I am trying to explain to you that lots of people thinking global warming is a Jewish hoax, or that vaccines cause autism, or (insert crazy shit here), doesn't mean that this forum is obligated to host those views. They have chosen to moderate the forum. I don't know of all the backstory behind this particular ban, and I agree that this one seemed heavy handed. But this isn't an absolutist free speech zone where you can just say any old shit you want.

Agreed, I’m with you. I’m just standing up for someone who was unfairly banned based on a sarcastic comment made about January 6. That’s all.

All of this is moot.  If Joe doesn’t step down, Trump will win.

Time for the pile on.

[FINate]

. . . assuming Trump doesn't win this year and end up more successful leading his next insurrection.

Yes, because his last presidency ended up with him as dictator for life in a fascist state as we all recall. Having an unarmed mob meander through the Capital building taking selfies was super effective in overthrowing the country.


[MOD: banned]

This has to be a mistake. Michael in ABQ is an extremely valued and level headed member of this forum. He doesn't just comment on politics. In fact, his comments on many financial posts, questions about his geographic location, etc. have been super helpful. His political leanings are conservative, but he's cordial about it and never that I've seen been personally insulting to anyone. I looked back at his posts, and I didn't see any warnings in the last five to ten pages of posts I looked at. Surely this is a mistake.

Agreed. If there's some crazy backstory/PM thread we don't know about that's different. But the ban message makes it appear Micheal in ABQ was banned for his views on Jan 6 (fwiw, he's wrong). This has a chilling effect on these forums. Which is a shame, because this has long been a place one could fly their freak flag as long as they followed the rules and kept things civil, especially the Off Topic section. Reading posts from a diverse group of backgrounds and ideas is informative and interesting. I've learned a lot over the years even from those I happen to disagree with.

If this is no long the case and users are expected to toe the party line then please let us know and I'll just show myself out. I don't have the patience for this kind of thing anymore and have zero interest in adding to the noise of yet another echo chamber.

[ATtiny85]

There seems to be maybe some building of momentum for a "step aside President Biden" push, just based on the general NBC news reporting we watch upon wake-up. I keep trying to wargame out the impact for the various timing of when for a step aside, with of course the complicating factor of the who. It is going to be quite interesting, and I am sure some folks have already written 80% of their books about it.

I recall saying that the 2016 election was going to be one for the books, with a woman (interesting because of the history of the seat) and a newbie (cuckoo newbie, but still a newbie). 2024 is going to be otherworldly. As mentioned, I have no true fear for the US, so I will be watching with what will amount to morbid curiosity.

[iris lily]

. . . assuming Trump doesn't win this year and end up more successful leading his next insurrection.

Yes, because his last presidency ended up with him as dictator for life in a fascist state as we all recall. Having an unarmed mob meander through the Capital building taking selfies was super effective in overthrowing the country.
[MOD: banned]

@FrugalToque

I also have to disagree with this banning. Sure there is some tribal myopia here which I don't appreciate, and the most troubling aspect is overlooking some explicit attempts on the behalf of Trump to end the Constitutional governance of the US and institute rule by himself, however the troubling parts were not related to the mob but to requests of Pence and state officials. I'd substantially agree that this was an unarmed (but violent) mob taking selfies.

I'd suggest that Michael in ABQ 's perspective is within one standard deviation of the mean in the US, and is thus normal, and not extremist. The sentences were neither impolite nor inappropriate. Also, perusing forum rules I don't see which was broken. There are far worse and more extremist posters on this site spreading only negativity and with no interest in FIRE, for example Cawl who openly posts links to Russian propaganda sites and exclusively incites strife and negativity with no interest in FIRE topics, and yet is still around. On the whole this was a bad decision, and out of bounds with respect to forum rules and this site's typical moderation practices.

Yes, I absolutely agree with you that the most troubling part of the January 6 problem is Trump’s pressure on Pence and state officials. That is where the real bullshit happened.

I suppose now I will get banned for not sufficiently weighting the rioting of Jan. 6.

[iris lily]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

That’s totally fine, if someone lies or you think they are lying, then show them how they are wrong. They’re likely to not change their mind but so what. Whether it’s a lie or an opinion does not matter. What matters is people are allowed to speak without someone who has access to a button deciding those people should be silenced.

The unmoderated philosophy of running a forum is one option that a site owner can choose to go with. This often devolves into a place over-run with assholes.

This forum has chosen a different philosophy where they use moderation. There is always 4-cahn if you like that better.

Proper moderation does not equal banning people that said something you personally did not like or cannot tolerate. If the moderator was conservative leaning, then they would just ban 90% of accounts on these forums. So if you want the minority of independents and conservative voices to just keep quiet or leave because this place does not accept them, then just say so.

People say things I don't like 10 times a day on this forum with no moderator intervention. I've never asked for anyone to be banned. I think good moderation does include the prevention of spreading known lies (I'm not talking about anything Michael from ABQ said, I'm talking about you explicitly defending peoples ability to spread known falsehoods).

Our moderator explicitly mentions “gaslighting” about January 6 and that will not be tolerated!

This entire thread started about the gaslighting by White House operatives and  Democratic Party of Joe Biden‘s facilities. The thread started because President Biden is too frail to be President,  he demonstrated that on debate night.

 There has been conspiracy to hide the truth from the American public. And there are people on this thread defending that conspiracy and that gaslighting, and even making up conspiracy theories of their own speculating that media personalities are influenced by Russia. I guess this is the editorial board in the New York Times? The writers of the Economist? All of the formerly friendly-to-Biden news people who deliberately did not look into the story of his frailty, now they have been turned by the Russians?

I don’t know how you get “the truth “ for posts on this forum but I know that this is not one of those truths.  Anyway  I think it’s dangerous to set yourself up as a moderator of “the truth” so that we do not “spread lies” here.

I’m not so clear about seeing “the truth “ in all of these posts but I guess it’s good some people have that confidence.(?)

[iris lily]

There seems to be maybe some building of momentum for a "step aside President Biden" push, just based on the general NBC news reporting we watch upon wake-up. I keep trying to wargame out the impact for the various timing of when for a step aside, with of course the complicating factor of the who. It is going to be quite interesting, and I am sure some folks have already written 80% of their books about it.

I recall saying that the 2016 election was going to be one for the books, with a woman (interesting because of the history of the seat) and a newbie (cuckoo newbie, but still a newbie). 2024 is going to be otherworldly. As mentioned, I have no true fear for the US, so I will be watching with what will amount to morbid curiosity.

I know! King maker George Clooney now has come out saying President Biden was clearly off when they met 3 weeks ago. George and the major donors in Hollywood want President Biden to step down.

I wonder if our conspiracy theory for a members here I think George Clooney has also been sued by Russian bots.

And Nancy Pelosi is  supporting the President in making a decision soon about dropping out. That’s so interesting because he’s already announced firmly in several ways that he’s staying in the race. What decision is she anticipating?

[EvenSteven]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

That’s totally fine, if someone lies or you think they are lying, then show them how they are wrong. They’re likely to not change their mind but so what. Whether it’s a lie or an opinion does not matter. What matters is people are allowed to speak without someone who has access to a button deciding those people should be silenced.

The unmoderated philosophy of running a forum is one option that a site owner can choose to go with. This often devolves into a place over-run with assholes.

This forum has chosen a different philosophy where they use moderation. There is always 4-cahn if you like that better.

Proper moderation does not equal banning people that said something you personally did not like or cannot tolerate. If the moderator was conservative leaning, then they would just ban 90% of accounts on these forums. So if you want the minority of independents and conservative voices to just keep quiet or leave because this place does not accept them, then just say so.

People say things I don't like 10 times a day on this forum with no moderator intervention. I've never asked for anyone to be banned. I think good moderation does include the prevention of spreading known lies (I'm not talking about anything Michael from ABQ said, I'm talking about you explicitly defending peoples ability to spread known falsehoods).

Our moderator explicitly mentions “gaslighting” about January 6 and that will not be tolerated!

This entire thread started about the gaslighting by White House operatives and  Democratic Party of Joe Biden‘s facilities. The thread started because President Biden is too frail to be President,  he demonstrated that on debate night.

 There has been conspiracy to hide the truth from the American public. And there are people on this thread defending that conspiracy and that gaslighting, and even making up conspiracy theories of their own speculating that media personalities are influenced by Russia. I guess this is the editorial board in the New York Times? The writers of the Economist? All of the formerly friendly-to-Biden news people who deliberately did not look into the story of his frailty, now they have been turned by the Russians?

I don’t know how you get “the truth “ for posts on this forum but I know that this is not one of those truths.  Anyway  I think it’s dangerous to set yourself up as a moderator of “the truth” so that we do not “spread lies” here.

I’m not so clear about seeing “the truth “ in all of these posts but I guess it’s good some people have that confidence.(?)

I encourage you to get Karine Jean-Pierre to post here and I will then advocate for her to be banned, so the moderators can signal to you their impartiality.

[doneby35]

@FrugalToque doesn’t seem to care at this point. It’s a shame. Banning someone who might have already provided so much value to others in this forum or possibly was going to in the future, because the moderator did not like what was said based on where they stand politically.

Forum rules are:
1. Don't be a jerk.
2. Attack an argument, not a person.
3. Your posts must not break any laws.
4. Be respectful of the site and other members.
5. No spam.
6. Use good taste

Maybe let’s add: 7. Political views need to align with moderator. FYI left of the aisle.

[bluecollarmusician]

What in the world is going on here?  Why is @Michael in ABQ  banned??!?

For making a satirical comment??

He is a highly valued member of this forum.  We have a few trolls around here- he certainly is not one of them?

@FrugalToque  I appreciate all your contributions to this forum, but suggest that this is worth review. It is important to consider what kind of place this should be.

This level of moderation, while I am sure well intended does not serve the best interest of the members of this forum.

Bring on debate if people have differing views.

I don't see any warnings, or forum rules being violated.

There is room for discussion and debate on this Forum-

What action is required to get this to be reviewed?  Who do we need to contact?

[FrugalToque]

What in the world is going on here?  Why is @Michael in ABQ  banned??!?

For making a satirical comment??

You all may not be aware, so I'll clear this up.

I have had to ban a number of people and shut down threads.  Do you know why?
a) anti-trans bigotry
b) outright racism
c) spam (a lot of spam)

So when I see someone posting about how "Jan 6 was some harmless tourists", I don't have a lot of patience.

This is a retirement blog.  I want to keep it focused on retirement. I do not want it to become like the rest of internet, full of flat earth conspiracies, "Jan 6 was just walking around" and "pro trans people are just adults with a porn-inspired fetish" and any of that nonsense.

I admit I have a hair trigger because, frankly, there's a lot of this going around and I don't have time to patiently examine every use of this sort of gaslighting to see if the person in question has a long or short history of this behaviour.  Michael has been reinstated and I'm hoping we can avoid this particular bit of nonsense appearing on the blog, satirically or otherwise, in the future.

Toque.

[FrugalToque]

@FrugalToque doesn’t seem to care at this point. It’s a shame. Banning someone who might have already provided so much value to others in this forum or possibly was going to in the future, because the moderator did not like what was said based on where they stand politically.

Forum rules are:
1. Don't be a jerk.
2. Attack an argument, not a person.
3. Your posts must not break any laws.
4. Be respectful of the site and other members.
5. No spam.
6. Use good taste

Maybe let’s add: 7. Political views need to align with moderator. FYI left of the aisle.

Now now.

Frugal Toque cares very deeply about keeping this forum
a) focused on early retirement
b) free of racism, sexism, violence, gaslighting, trolling and other forms of cruelty and disingenuous argumentation.

We also made a rule against using rape as a metaphor.
That wasn't to everyone's taste either.
Some people think it's a great metaphor, but here we are, being tasteful and having to name the exact ways you have to be tasteful.

Should I have to write another rule:
"You're not allowed to gaslight people by suggesting that the deaths of five police officers and one protestor trying to get to Mike Pence to hang him was 'tourists taking selfies'."

Are those my "political views", or do I have a set of values that involves honest argumentation?

Toque.

[LaineyAZ]

Lest we forget, the call to come to Washington D.C. was for January 6, 2021- not January 5, or January 7.

The specific date was the date the Vice-president presided over the certification of the election with a joint session of Congress.  False information had been deliberately spread that VP Pence could simply refuse to certify and thereby allow Trump to continue in power. 
When the certification process started and it became clear that Pence would proceed and ratification would happen is when Trump riles up the crowd and they start to march to shut it down.  It wasn't to "take selfies" - it's called election interference or seditious conspiracy.
The FBI considers it a riot.  The rioters were charged and convicted under various charges mostly "obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, or attempting to do so." 
Over 1,300 people were charged and as of today over 890 people have been convicted of federal crimes.  Many used the defense in court of "my president called me to come and so I did." 
In August 2023, Trump himself was indicted.

In good news, in 2022, the law was changed with bipartisan support to make it clear that the VP's role is ceremonial only.  And importantly, it also ensures only one slate of electors makes it to Congress because, let's remember, Republicans in several states including my own state of Arizona, tried to submit an "alternate slate."   As of today, those fake electors are being prosecuted by our state attorney general, a Democrat who won her seat by only 280 votes. 

So if you ask me are the Democrats proud of themselves, in my case I say Hell, yes - we came very, very close to seeing our vice-president assassinated and the U.S. becoming a dictatorship.

[bluecollarmusician]

This is a retirement blog.  I want to keep it focused on retirement. I do not want it to become like the rest of internet, full of flat earth conspiracies, "Jan 6 was just walking around" and "pro trans people are just adults with a porn-inspired fetish" and any of that nonsense.

Thank you for the consideration and revisiting. I have always valued what @Michael in ABQ has to share here.  I wouldn't belong in a place he wasn't welcome.

I understand and acknowledge that moderating this forum is thankless, time consuming, and without a perfect rule book.  I also prefer seeing the focus be on retirement and FIRE strategy and support.  Thank you for all you do to that end.

I humbly posit that in a thread that is explicitly politically based in "off topic" people who differ in their viewpoints need a modicum of leeway.

Thanks for revisiting this one.

[doneby35]

@FrugalToque doesn’t seem to care at this point. It’s a shame. Banning someone who might have already provided so much value to others in this forum or possibly was going to in the future, because the moderator did not like what was said based on where they stand politically.

Forum rules are:
1. Don't be a jerk.
2. Attack an argument, not a person.
3. Your posts must not break any laws.
4. Be respectful of the site and other members.
5. No spam.
6. Use good taste

Maybe let’s add: 7. Political views need to align with moderator. FYI left of the aisle.

Now now.

Frugal Toque cares very deeply about keeping this forum
a) focused on early retirement
b) free of racism, sexism, violence, gaslighting, trolling and other forms of cruelty and disingenuous argumentation.

We also made a rule against using rape as a metaphor.
That wasn't to everyone's taste either.
Some people think it's a great metaphor, but here we are, being tasteful and having to name the exact ways you have to be tasteful.

Should I have to write another rule:
"You're not allowed to gaslight people by suggesting that the deaths of five police officers and one protestor trying to get to Mike Pence to hang him was 'tourists taking selfies'."

Are those my "political views", or do I have a set of values that involves honest argumentation?

Toque.

I’m glad you reversed the ban. But I would respectfully encourage you to re-examine your understanding of the bolded statement as it could also be considered gaslighting or propaganda/half truth/lie and makes you a valid candidate to be banned. The officers who died all died from natural causes and NOT during the protest. The only person who actually was shot dead by an officer was an unarmed protestor named Ashli Babbitt. So take that as you will, but these are the reported facts.

In any case. The mistake was corrected and that’s all that matters. Welcome back @Michael in ABQ

[Fireball]

@FrugalToque doesn’t seem to care at this point. It’s a shame. Banning someone who might have already provided so much value to others in this forum or possibly was going to in the future, because the moderator did not like what was said based on where they stand politically.

Forum rules are:
1. Don't be a jerk.
2. Attack an argument, not a person.
3. Your posts must not break any laws.
4. Be respectful of the site and other members.
5. No spam.
6. Use good taste

Maybe let’s add: 7. Political views need to align with moderator. FYI left of the aisle.

Now now.

Frugal Toque cares very deeply about keeping this forum
a) focused on early retirement
b) free of racism, sexism, violence, gaslighting, trolling and other forms of cruelty and disingenuous argumentation.

We also made a rule against using rape as a metaphor.
That wasn't to everyone's taste either.
Some people think it's a great metaphor, but here we are, being tasteful and having to name the exact ways you have to be tasteful.

Should I have to write another rule:
"You're not allowed to gaslight people by suggesting that the deaths of five police officers and one protestor trying to get to Mike Pence to hang him was 'tourists taking selfies'."

Are those my "political views", or do I have a set of values that involves honest argumentation?

Toque.

The officers who died all died from natural causes and NOT during the protest.

FYI - It was a stroke 8 hours after the riot and four suicides.

[iris lily]

January 6: we saw it all happening live - ALL of it. It’s on countless videos, eyewitness accounts, sworn testimony of people who were there, including those who were physically assaulted, and on and on. To say that “no one knows the true details” is ….i don’t know what words to use.

Great, you think January 6 was bad, but others don’t. You saw it live and have an opinion, others also saw it live and have a different opinion on it. Again the point is nobody should get banned for having an opinion.

There's a difference between an opinion and spreading known lies. We should not tolerate lies and pretend that it is "an opinion".

That said, I disagree with banning conservatives, I am a pretty aggressive poster about this stuff and I think it's important that conservatives can post their lies so they can be promptly smacked with the actual facts. It has happened quite a few times with Michael in ABQ, where he posts a conservative lie which then gets disproved with the truth. Hopefully, when that happens, some read it and self-reflect on the lies they have been told and are telling and stop telling lies. It's no different than if a liberal posts a lie, they also need to be smacked with reality and hopefully they reflect on it. The truth needs to be told, retold, and retold every time.

That’s totally fine, if someone lies or you think they are lying, then show them how they are wrong. They’re likely to not change their mind but so what. Whether it’s a lie or an opinion does not matter. What matters is people are allowed to speak without someone who has access to a button deciding those people should be silenced.

The unmoderated philosophy of running a forum is one option that a site owner can choose to go with. This often devolves into a place over-run with assholes.

This forum has chosen a different philosophy where they use moderation. There is always 4-cahn if you like that better.

Proper moderation does not equal banning people that said something you personally did not like or cannot tolerate. If the moderator was conservative leaning, then they would just ban 90% of accounts on these forums. So if you want the minority of independents and conservative voices to just keep quiet or leave because this place does not accept them, then just say so.

People say things I don't like 10 times a day on this forum with no moderator intervention. I've never asked for anyone to be banned. I think good moderation does include the prevention of spreading known lies (I'm not talking about anything Michael from ABQ said, I'm talking about you explicitly defending peoples ability to spread known falsehoods).

Our moderator explicitly mentions “gaslighting” about January 6 and that will not be tolerated!

This entire thread started about the gaslighting by White House operatives and  Democratic Party of Joe Biden‘s facilities. The thread started because President Biden is too frail to be President,  he demonstrated that on debate night.

 There has been conspiracy to hide the truth from the American public. And there are people on this thread defending that conspiracy and that gaslighting, and even making up conspiracy theories of their own speculating that media personalities are influenced by Russia. I guess this is the editorial board in the New York Times? The writers of the Economist? All of the formerly friendly-to-Biden news people who deliberately did not look into the story of his frailty, now they have been turned by the Russians?

I don’t know how you get “the truth “ for posts on this forum but I know that this is not one of those truths.  Anyway  I think it’s dangerous to set yourself up as a moderator of “the truth” so that we do not “spread lies” here.

I’m not so clear about seeing “the truth “ in all of these posts but I guess it’s good some people have that confidence.(?)

I encourage you to get Karine Jean-Pierre to post here and I will then advocate for her to be banned, so the moderators can signal to you their impartiality.

I feel sorry for KJP and all the lies she’s got to do.

But I don’t think for a moment with that KJP posting on this form would get banned. A large percentage of posters here do not think she ever prevaricates, misleads, or avoids.