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Twenty-One Days to Election Day!
This is not only an election between Democrats and Republicans. It is an election between those who threaten
the existence of democracy in the United States and those who are fighting to
preserve it. Those who threaten
democracy have hijacked the Republican Party and are using it to mask their
authoritarian, autocratic, programs.
But there are plenty of other reasons to vote
for Democrats, aside from preserving government of the people, by the people,
and, for the people:
-
If you support the right of
a woman to choose to have an abortion, or
- If you support increased gun
control measures to reduce the frequency of mass murders, or
- If you support a broadening,
not a narrowing, of access to voting for all Americans, regardless of race or
ethnicity,
Your choice is a simple one.
In Florida, Governor DeSantis, Senator Rubio, and almost all Republican
legislators in Congress and State legislatures OPPOSE these things. Democrats, like Val Demings and Charlie Crist SUPPORT them.
(And if you are not a Florida voter, the same kinds
of simple choices will be on your ballot in your State.)
But preserving democracy in the
United States is the basic reason why you should only vote for Democrats and
get your like-minded friends and relatives to do the same. Please remember
that a vote for any Republican
who does not denounce the defeated former president, in any election
whatsoever, is actually a vote for the replacement of democracy with the
authoritarian rule he represents. Republican opposition to the three
issues I mention are only the beginning of their strategy to replace democracy
with an autocracy.
IMPORTANT! They Play by Their Own Rules.
It is very clear
that those opposed to democracy in this country, when they cannot win elections
legitimately, make claims of 'election fraud' and when they cannot support them
with evidence, claim the right to disregard any election results with which they
disagree.
American
democracy has traditionally accepted a measure of such lunacy as something to live with, like one's
screwball uncle who mouths off at Thanksgiving dinner and whom everyone
ignores, but when it
results in the nation's second largest political party supporting the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kari Lake,
we are in big trouble.
In the end, such
‘lunatic’ candidacies, successful or not, can only speed the pendulum reaching
the end of its rightward swing and once again beginning its swing back seeking
political equilibrium. Voters like you and me must make that
happen this year. Now! Otherwise, we
will have a long wait, perhaps a generational one, for the swing back to occur.
Right now, however, American democracy is being
threatened! Saving it is up to you, and
you, and you.
JL
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It matters not if they vote by mail, at an early voting location or on Election Day. The important thing is that they …
Vote
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Law Enforcement Giving
Insurrectionists a Pass?
Saturday’s posting on Jackspotpourri alerted
you to the fact that some in law
enforcement, specifically the FBI and the Secret Service, supported the January
6 insurrectionists sufficiently
to stand idly by, or delay their response to that occurrence. That is becoming bigger and bigger news this
week. Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI
Assistant Director for Counter-intelligence, whom I suggested was the person to
take charge of what appears to have been a corrupted Secret Service, addressed
that in an MSNBC column this weekend. He
has no ax to grind and I have high regard for him. His column follows:
Oct. 15, 2022
By Frank
Figliuzzi, MSNBC Opinion Columnist
'Days after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, Steven
D’Antuono, the head of the FBI’s Washington field office, said the FBI had no intelligence that suggested
there would be anything that day but a lawful pro-Trump rally. Six months
later, FBI Director Christopher Wray reiterated the claim when he told Congress that the agency he leads had had no specific
“intelligence indicating that hundreds and hundreds of people were going to
breach the Capitol complex.”
Did our law enforcement and intelligence agencies fumble
the ball? Or was their failure more akin to intentional grounding?
But at Thursday’s hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee, Rep. Adam Schiff,
D-Calif., touted “evidence that President Trump was aware of the risk of
violence” and that “the FBI, U.S. Capitol Police, Metropolitan Police and other
agencies all gathered and disseminated intelligence suggesting the possibility
of violence at the Capitol prior to the riot.”
The Biden administration should be demanding answers. Did the leaders of
our nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies fumble the ball that
day? Or was their failure to prevent violence more akin to intentional
grounding? Without substantive answers from agency leaders many of us will be
left to conclude that there was a willful blindness to the signs that were
staring them in the face. Was there institutional sympathy for the rioters’
cause? Were there orders from higher-ups to downplay the available
intelligence? Do existing guidelines and laws constrain robust collection and
investigation of domestic terror threats? If the premier agencies in federal
law enforcement are to maintain credibility, they must be transparent with the
public they depend upon and protect.
The FBI is the nation’s primary counterterrorism agency, and Schiff said
Thursday that “days before Jan. 6, the president's senior advisers at the
Department of Justice and FBI, for example, received an intelligence summary
that included material indicating that certain people traveling to Washington
were making plans to attack the Capitol. This summary noted online calls to
occupy federal buildings, rhetoric about invading the Capitol building and
plans to arm themselves and to engage in political violence at the event.”
The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for approving and
disseminating critical intelligence to state and local law enforcement. But
according to a March 4 report from the DHS inspector general, DHS’s Office of
Intelligence and Analysis “identified specific threat information related to
the events on Jan. 6, 2021, but did not issue any intelligence products about
these threats until Jan. 8, 2021." That report also found that "the
Field Operations Division (FOD) considered issuing intelligence products on at
least three occasions prior to Jan. 6, 2021, but FOD did not disseminate any
such products ultimately. It is unclear why FOD failed to disseminate these
products."
Despite what they knew, neither the FBI nor the DHS prepared a
disseminable threat assessment for the January Electoral Collage vote
ratification or for the rally on the Ellipse.
As for the agency whose paramount mission is to protect the president and
vice president of the United States, Schiff said, the committee has obtained
“nearly 1 million emails, recordings and other electronic records from the
Secret Service.” He said that “As early as Dec. 26, Secret Service officials
were sharing one tipster’s warnings about extremist groups coming to the
Capitol with murderous plans. ‘They think they will have a large enough group
to march into D.C. armed and will outnumber the police so they can’t be
stopped,’ the tip read. ‘Their plan is to literally kill people,’ the tipster
wrote. ‘Please, please take this tip seriously and investigate further.’”T. 13, 202201:51
Previous reporting revealed the Secret
Service learned on Parler of a threat against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
on Jan. 4 but did not let the Capitol Police know about it until 5:55 p.m. on
Jan. 6, when police officers had already been fighting the rioters for hours
and some rioters had posted photos from inside Pelosi’s office.
Then there’s the Defense Department, the agency responsible for
authorizing deployment of the District of Columbia National Guard. According to
testimony to the committee from Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, there were calls among the top brass to discuss planning for Jan. 6,
and Thursday, Schiff referred to a call with President Trump's White House
National Security staff in early January 2021 wherein: “Deputy Secretary of
Defense David Norquist warned about the potential that the Capitol would be the
target of the attack."
It's important that the committee provide us a play-by-play
analysis of what went wrong across these agencies.
But when Jan. 6 arrived, our law enforcement and intelligence agencies and
our military operated like a football team that had ignored the scouting report
on its opponent. The FBI, Homeland Security, Secret Service and Defense
Department seemed outnumbered and unprepared on Jan. 6. Before its time runs
out, it’s important that the committee provide us a play-by-play analysis of
what went wrong across these agencies and offer solid recommendations on how to
avoid a repeat of that colossal failure.
There’s a difference between losing by clumsily dropping the ball and
willfully throwing the game. If the government failure was a fumble caused by
outdated policies, inadequate laws and authorities, or insufficient collection
and dissemination, then those weaknesses need to get fixed. But if this was a
refusal to play to win, that is, a decision to let the opponent have its way,
then we’ll need some new players in key positions.'
* *
All that I can say is 'Wow!' I would hope the Department of Justice is aware of what may be government enforcers of our laws who put political loyalty ahead of their oaths to defend the Constitution. What Frank Figliuzzi wrote cannot be ignored.
JL
* * * *
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Forwarded This Blog Posting?
* * * *
And since Frank Figliuzzi uses football terminology in talking about what some agencies may or may not have done on January 6, let’s stick with that sport for a bit.
(I had started preparing the following item a
couple of weeks ago, but feel free to see it as somewhat allegorical, going
along with what Frank Figliuzzi currently writes.)
JL
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Street Brawls on the Gridiron
 |
| Is the tackler going for the ball carrier or the ball? |
The skill of offenses in college
and professional football is wonderful to watch. Quarterbacks throw passes with unbelievable
precision. Receivers pull them out of the air as if they were basketball
centers. Running backs are not only speedy but able to dance their way through
would-be tacklers. Offensive linemen are
very proficient in defending passers and making pathways for the running backs.
Defenses, on the other hand, have
a hard time keeping up with such accomplishments. Unfortunately, their efforts to do so amount
to playing ‘rougher’ and what appears to be ‘dirtier’ as well. Officiating
seems to recognize this with more frequent penalties for ‘targeting’ (using
one’s helmet as a weapon), grabbing a facemask, horse-collar tackling, pass
interference, and simply ‘unnecessary roughness.’ The more that such penalties
are called, the more the game suffers.
Incidental to this are the
numbers of players limping off of the field or even being carted away in many
games, both collegiate and professional.
You don’t see that in soccer (what the rest of the world calls
‘football’), rugby, lacrosse, hockey, basketball, and other sports where
physical contact can occur. Nor do you
see opposing players routinely snarling at each other after a play, ready to
swing fists, unable to separate blocking and tackling from what amounts to
street brawling.
Right now, if it were up to me, to
start off with, I would make one recommendation. It would further aid offenses
and weaken what passes today for defenses, but I feel it would be an overall
benefit to the game. It concerns
fumbles.
I am disgusted by the number of
fumbles caused by defensive players not simply tackling runners, but
specifically attempting to dislodge the ball from the ball carrier’s (or pass
receiver’s) grip to the extent that doing so is more important than making the
tackle itself. I know that is what they
are instructed to do by their coaches, but a player’s losing control of a ball
and dropping or fumbling it is not the same as it being ripped out of his grip.
Having slippery fingers or losing control of the ball due to being shaken by a
tackle are not the same as being victimized, amounting to being legally mugged
on the football field. Instead of a
purse or a wallet being snatched, it’s the football.
I would recommend that there be a
15-yard penalty, and an automatic first down, every time a camera or an
official’s eye detects a defender’s hand touching the football in a tackle that
results in a fumble, and this goes for a tackle of a receiver who had just
successfully caught a pass, as well.
As for a quarterback, or any
other passer who might fumble the ball, the same rule should apply, but also,
any fumble resulting from a tackle while a passer’s arm is raised with one hand
keeping the ball out of a tackler’s reach, not necessarily in the motion of starting
to throw a pass as is the present rule, should not be recoverable by the
defensive team.
Another situation that sorely needs
to be clarified is pass interference, both offensive and defensive, but that
we’ll leave for another day, along with the ‘transfer portal’ which is the
greatest single threat to college football today.
JL
* *
* *
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