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Posts Made By: Russ Carroll

June 12, 2022 02:57 AM Forum: Politics

Wall Street Journal on Jan 6 hearings

Posted By Russ Carroll

The House inquiry into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot launched its TV miniseries Thursday night, and the trick for parsing the proceedings is to keep two ideas in tension. Do Democrats want to unfairly besmirch the entire GOP with the Jan. 6 disgrace, while distracting voters from 8.6% inflation and $5-a-gallon gasoline? Yes.

Yet did the committee offer a damning look at President Trump’s scheme to stay in office after losing the 2020 election? Also yes. Fresh video of the riot is a reminder that Jan. 6 was a brutal melee of fists and chemical sprays. “I was slipping in people’s blood,” said Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards. The footage is visceral, even if similar scenes were already on YouTube.


The committee did offer some new and ugly details. “Aware of the rioters’ chants to ‘hang Mike Pence, ’” Rep. Liz Cheney said, “the President responded with this sentiment: Quote, maybe our supporters have the right idea. Mike Pence, quote, deserves it.” Who is the source of that quotation? The committee didn’t say.

Ms. Cheney also said that Mr. Trump gave no orders to the National Guard on Jan. 6 to aid the besieged police, even as Mr. Pence was calling in the cavalry from his post at the Capitol. “There were two or three calls with Vice President Pence,” said Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in audio testimony. “He issued very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders.” In effect, “get the Guard down here, put down this situation.”

Mr. Milley also spoke with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. “He said, we have to kill the narrative that the Vice President is making all the decisions,” Mr. Milley recalled.

So was Mr. Pence in fact giving orders to the military, while the President watched the riot on TV and abdicated his responsibility as Commander-in-Chief? This was reported by the press soon after the riot, citing anonymous officials. But it’s something else to hear it from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

The same goes for the testimony about Mr. Trump’s flimsy theories of undetectable mass voter fraud. “I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the President was bull—,” Attorney General Bill Barr testified.

Alex Cannon, a lawyer for the Trump campaign, recounted a conversation with Mr. Meadows: “I remember sharing with him that we weren’t finding anything that would be sufficient to change the results in any of the key states.” The point is that Mr. Trump was told by his own advisers that he lost the election but still deceived his supporters.

The committee appears to be trying to build a case of “seditious conspiracy” against Mr. Trump, but here the evidence isn’t persuasive. Ms. Cheney offered no evidence that Mr. Trump communicated directly with the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys, who were the vanguard of the assault on the Capitol.

The President spread falsehoods about the election. He invited supporters to Washington on Jan. 6, tweeting on Dec. 19 that it “will be wild!” He riled up the crowd and urged it to march on the Capitol. After violence began, he dawdled instead of sending help. Mr. Trump bears responsibility for the mayhem. But inspiring followers to march is not the same as leading a criminal conspiracy.

One irony is that the largely Democratic committee’s evidence makes clear that Mr. Trump’s designs on overturning the election were foiled mainly by Republicans, including many in his Administration. White House lawyers threatened to resign if he fired Justice Department officials who didn’t indulge his fraud theories. GOP state legislators refused to name new electors. His judicial appointees rejected dubious fraud claims. Above all, his own Vice President stood up to Mr. Trump’s public and private pressure not to count electoral votes.

The committee calls Jan. 6 an “attempted coup.” That makes it seem as if there was a chance of success. There wasn’t. It was an impossible plan hatched by screwballs, and it would have gone down as such if the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers hadn’t breached the Capitol. In the event, Congress still returned to fulfill its duty and count the electoral votes.

***
Many Congressional Republicans dishonored themselves by voting to object to electors, even after the riot. But most of the GOP refused to go along. The person who owns Jan. 6 is Donald Trump. Remarkably, he seems to welcome this. “January 6th was not simply a protest,” he wrote Thursday on Truth Social, “it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again.”

Pity the people who went to Washington believing this nonsense, not least the more than 800 who have been charged with criminal offenses. Thursday’s hearing ended with video of rioters explaining their thinking, as their criminal charges flashed on the screen. “I did believe that the election was being stolen,” one man said, “and Trump asked us to come.”

Mr. Trump betrayed his supporters by conning them on Jan. 6, and he is still doing it.

June 12, 2022 03:04 AM Forum: Politics

Proud Boys

Posted By Russ Carroll

Originally Posted by Mel Maki
James, your points and the Dems are going to be buried by a landslide come Nov. If I am wrong this has been a good demonstration for all to see how 70 years (in my case) has destroyed my thinking ability. I will never understand how you could be sucked into believing the Russian fraud. And Trump being a bona fide weirrdoo has nothing to do with it!

Of course there could be an election changing event before the election.
Nuclear war or other world changing events.
We could all make such a list.

Yes, the Dems are going to get buried in November but that has zero to do with burying a seditious POS by the name of Donald J Trump. I hope this is a dagger in his heart, if anyone can find it.

June 13, 2022 06:49 AM Forum: Politics

Wall Street Journal on Jan 6 hearings

Posted By Russ Carroll

Originally Posted by Greg Shaffer


Bullshit....he called them off when he was speaking to them directly by telling them to march down and protest PEACEFULLY before it escalated......as I have already said not to mention later in his tweets and from the Rose Garden.....
How would you know. You refuse to watch the evidence.

June 15, 2022 05:53 AM Forum: Politics

Wall Street Journal on Jan 6 hearings

Posted By Russ Carroll

Originally Posted by Greg Shaffer


And both of them are 1st rate examples of the finest RINO's the Dims could rope in....... smile

The real reason there are not more Reps on the committee is they knew this was going to be a no expense spared, no lie too atrocious race to keep Trump from running again.... "Come on Man".....(doing my best Buydown imitation"

What possible motive would Liz Cheney and Adam Kissinger have to throw their political careers away other than pure concience? We are so used to not expecting it that I wonder if we can even recognize character when it shows up.

June 15, 2022 10:40 PM Forum: Politics

Wall Street Journal on Jan 6 hearings

Posted By Russ Carroll

Originally Posted by Mel Maki

Pure as the driven snow?

Someone's credibility goes way up when there is a high price to be paid for their position. Someones credibility goes down when it benefits them personally. 

June 16, 2022 04:12 AM Forum: Politics

So you tell us what to do Democrats

Posted By Russ Carroll

There are a number of reasons as to why oil/gas prices are so high, but let me side with Richard on at least one thing: The Biden administration's approach to fixing it sucks ass.

Here is a President who wants to accelerate the demise of the oil industry in his own words yet now needs them. What does he do? He yells at and threatens them for making money and demands they risk more capital to go get him out of political hot-water. I, like any other investor who has to be called on to fund these risky ventures have two words for Biden, and their initials are F and U. Go get your own f'ing oil wells, pipelines and refineries, jagoff.

The Oil and Gas industries are the ANSWER to our problems, not the creators of it. The level of economic incompetence displayed daily by Biden is sickening.

June 16, 2022 07:43 AM Forum: Politics

So you tell us what to do Democrats

Posted By Russ Carroll

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

"The Oil and Gas industries are the ANSWER to our problems, not the creators of it."
If that were true, don't you think they would have shared that answer with Biden in his letter to the oil execs today, not to mention the stockholders in their companies?
To wit: They should have anticipated the need for more refinery capacity since demand was expected to go way up post pandemic instead of waiting until it did and then sit back and watch prices go up due to supply and demand. Afterall, that IS their business... 

It is the POLICY of the Biden admin to get rid of the carbon energy business in the US. Only when this crisis showed up have they advocated for "help" from them.

We have not built a refinery in the US since 1977. Nobody wants one in their backyard and the regulatory burden is crazy to try and build one anywhere in the US. We don't have enough capacity and refineries are running at 100% capacity today, and losing the battle of keeping supplies up. Demand has to come down.

Building a new refinery requires new wells and pipelines to feed it. Fat chance. Keystone is just symbolic of the problem, but it is an example. Who in there right mind would start a project like this only to have these nitwits turn on you the moment they can.

Every part of the oil and gas industry has been under attack for decades by the green movement in concert  with the left/democrats/environmentalists.

Even if you are sympathetic to climate issues, which I am, you can't just wave your hands and switch to renewables. It will take decades.

This problem is the result of years of underdevelopment of the infrastructure needed to keep up with demand for oil and gas products in the US. Fixing it will take years.

Republicans want to deny there is climate change, which isn't productive, but Democrats want to deny that there is a need for a rational long-term transition to renewables. There is a middle ground, but we need to admit it will take decades, not years, to move to renewables.

The last thing we need right now is to demonize the industry. We need to be giving them incentives, not speeches or punitive taxes and regulations, to create more supply.

June 16, 2022 10:27 PM Forum: Politics

So you tell us what to do Democrats

Posted By Russ Carroll

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

I was shocked Greg to see that Rod and James would be the first ones to divert blame away from Biden and claim it would have happened no matter who was in office...

Shocked I say!    smile
This would have happened to any President, but another President, including Trump, would not be a headwind to the very industry that could fix this.

June 16, 2022 10:41 PM Forum: Politics

So you tell us what to do Democrats

Posted By Russ Carroll

Guys, oil production needs constant improvement to keep it at the same level over time. 2M barrels of oil per day came off-line at the start of the pandemic, so naturally the explorers and drillers did not do any development over the past 2+ years. We are now far behind the curve now that demand is back up. It will take some time to restore production. It will also take a significant investment to do that. Why would investors (like you and I) put money into the very industry that needs to develop new sources of energy if our investment dollars are just going to be rewarded by a "windfall" profits tax or some other confiscatory scheme by the Government?

June 16, 2022 11:03 PM Forum: Politics

So you tell us what to do Democrats

Posted By Russ Carroll

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman
So please Russ, stop pleading the poverty argument on behalf of big oil...
Where were you over the years when the industry lost billions? It's always a boom or bust cycle.

It is 100% undeniable that the message from the Dem's and Biden to the O&G industry is this:

The beatings will continue until morale improves