throwaway201103

> continue to say the election was stolen, and to say you love them

You left out the last sentence, which was (paraphrasing) "Go home, go in peace."

He has said he will not attend the inauguration. He has said there will be an orderly transition of power, so that implies he acknowledges Biden as the president-elect, or at least realizes that he's out of challenges. True that he has not disavowed the fraud claims, and probably never will.

Then why did they file the cases? Did they not realize that they would need to present evidence under oath?

I've been reading a bit of Noam Chomsky this afternoon, not a person I'd agree with politically but many of his observations ring true regardless.

"The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information."

> made clear rulings based on the evidence.

At least some, maybe most of those challenges were dismissed on procedural grounds, lack of standing, etc. They never got to the point of examining the "evidence." Maybe the retort to that is the challengers should have foreseen that. But the people filing these challenges were not unhinged randos from Twitter. They were elected officials, lawyers, educated people. They aren't going to go into court with something they know is frivolous.

Given that a sizable minority (and likely unprecedented number) of the voting public thinks there was fraud in the 2020 election, maybe it would have been better to have rebutted the evidence rather than the process.

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...

That's likely true for some. But many people do belive there was fraud. I think there were some very suspect things about the election. But I read Article II, and the 12th amendment. The congress is directed to count the Electoral votes submitted by the states. It's basically ceremonial, unless there is no majority in the Electoral vote. There is a process defined for that situation. There is not a word about challenging the votes as submitted. Mike Pence was absolutely right.

There may or may not have been fraud in any of the states. But once they certify their Electors, that's it as far as I can see. I honestly don't know if there is a remedy even for clear fraud if the state goes ahead and certifies the results. In theory a state doesn't even need to hold a public vote. The legislature could just appoint the Electors. The founding fathers clearly wrote the constition to give the power of electing the president to the states. Allowing any level of the federal government to override that seems to be a conflict of interest.

Well, he did tell people to calm down and go home. May have been some of the tweets that were quickly taken down?

That's a very disturbing read.

By definition if you are delusional aren't you unaware of it?

Indeed, I read the GP hastily.

There police protests included riots, arson, looting, and murders. Harris didn't condemn this until months later when specifically pressed on the point. Just as Trump has always condemned violence when specifically asked.

> The idea of someone running warrant checks on the basis of a broken tail light is antithetical to notions like the presumption of innocence and right to privacy.

Hm, there's definitely a line somewhere. I'm with you in that I don't think cops should be able to demand ID and run checks on random people simply out and about in public. Broken tail light? Not sure. Speeding? OK now you're breaking the law and arguably creating a public safety threat, but probably not going to be arrested. DUI? Now you're in misdemeanor territory at least. When is it reasonable to check if you're also wanted for something else? Maybe when you're booked at the jail?

Maybe so. Neither you nor I were on the jury though. We don't just get to ignore a jury decision and impose our own personal justice because from the outside it doesn't seem fair. There were two blacks on the jury, according to what I read on Wikipedia.

So you believe that the crowd protesting and at the Capitol were all white supremacists?

Well, since there was an investigation, criminal charges, and a jury trial, it sounds like it was "explained" as much as our system is capable of.

Zero chance any of that would have happened. It certainly could have gotten more ugly than it was. But a loosely organized mob of protestors is not going to achieve that. One SWAT team, or the military if necessary, would have dealt with it easily.

Feeds into the conspiracy theories that it was all orchestrated by the left. Sets them up perfectly to crack down hard on their opponents.

Especially on a day when there was a large protest planned for a vote taking place. It's a government building and it should be reasonably open to the public but common sense needs to raise its head at some point. Securing the building for a few hours would not have been unreasonable.

This is also the case for cops shooting unarmed people.

OK, so then you're going to have some explaining to do when someone with a warrant commits another violent crime, and it turns out that the week prior he was pulled over for some traffic violation and was let go.

No, there were people also saying that the protestors should have been shot. On this very website, IIRC (rightly downvoted), but certainly on other platforms.

Both can be true.

So a traffic stop shouldn't involve a check for outstanding warrants?

As a thought experiment, imagine Trump won by a small margin.

Do you think we would have heard no unfounded accusations of fraud? No challenges in court? No protests and riots? After the year we've had?

And if, on January 6, as Congress was meeting to confirm the Electoral College vote for Trump, a riotous mob had stormed the Capitol and disrupted proceedings for a few hours, would it have been reported the same way? Would left-wing activist social media accounts be getting deplatformed?

It didn't happen. Might not have. But if it did, would you be calling it a coup? Would you be so disturbed about the attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power?

I'm not defending what happened. I'm asking, if it were reversed, how would you feel. Be honest.

HN has a lot of discussion that doesn't turn into partisan debate. When it does, it's the same as anywhere else.

Chuck Schumer compared it to Pearl Harbor. I assumed that was why it was mentioned.

If Trump wanted to stay in power why didn't he order the military to sieze the Congress and declare martial law? He thought a loosely organized band of civilian protestors were going to actually keep him in office?

No I feel the same way. When online discussion turns into debate, nothing is achieved. People use canned, cliched arguments and it's just a back and forth trying to have the last word until someone gives up.

In the US (and I assume also Canada) it's almost the exact opposite. Custom order cars are possible, but rare. The vast majority of new cars sold are built with a factory-chosen set of options and sold from dealer inventory. Transferring a car from another nearby dealer if needed is also fairly common, if they had the particular color or option group the buyer wanted but the local dealer didn't.

Yet we allow people to replace almost any part on the car themeselves, with varying grades of quality made by aftermarket or OE manufacturers. Brakes, suspension components, body panels, electical components, etc. purchased from Amazon and made somewhere in China. Once it's in the customer's hands, it seems a lot of those rules go out the window.