Thursday, March 18, 2021
A Study Shows VERY FEW Capitol Hill Rioters Were QAnon Red-Staters With Ties to 'Right-Wing' Groups
A survey by the University of Chicago finds that most Capitol Hill rioters had no ties to any fringe right-wing groups and were merely engaged people outraged by what they believed was a rigged election.
While colorful weirdos with names such as QAnon Shaman and Baked Alaska stole the headlines, people who were arrested by federal officials during and after the riot were a “broader core of people” with a healthy skepticism about the veracity of the November 2020 election, according to the study.
There was plenty of reason for the skepticism, considering the collusion between Big Tech, unions, lawfare, and Democrats’ combined efforts to sway the election. Those efforts were at the very least unethical.
As Time Magazine enthused in an article entitled, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election,” “there was a conspiracy unfolding behind the [election] scenes” of an “informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans” to “save” the election from Donald Trump.
The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted. For more than a year, a loosely organized coalition of operatives scrambled to shore up America’s institutions as they came under simultaneous attack from a remorseless pandemic and an autocratically inclined President.
[…]Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears"
Rather than being ill-informed, it appears that the Capitol Building rioters may have been better informed than most on these moves to sway the election.
In a “working paper” that is considered to be a “novel approach” to “estimating community-level participation in mass protest events,” Asst. Prof. Austin Wright of the Harris School of Public Policy and David Van Dijcke of the University of Michigan found a surprising number of the people arrested at the Capitol Hill riot who were business owners and other professionals obviously upset over election fraud.
The paper found that those arrested were “more likely to have traveled to the Capitol from Trump-voting “islands,” where residents are surrounded by neighborhoods with higher numbers of Biden supporters.” More than half came from counties that Joe Biden carried.
Though the researchers include the fact that the overwhelming number of people live in Democrat areas, they also highlighted the fact “that proximity to Proud Boy chapters and local levels of engagement with misinformation posted on Parler, the exiled social media platform popular with the far right, are robustly linked to participation in the Capitol rally.”
However, researcher Austin Wright said living in those leftist areas “played a significant role.”
Social isolation and the perception of being threatened by neighboring areas that largely hold opposing political views also played a significant role in who was there.
The researchers also looked at cell phone data such as where in the country Capitol rioters called. Most were in the eastern, central, and southern parts of the country.
Could the cancel culture and being surrounded by people with Trump Derangement Syndrome and other anti-conservatives have helped trigger the attack?
They claimed some of the rioters were on the social media app Parler, though efforts to discover other social media apps used by the people arrested were not noted.
The survey found that approximately 10% percent of the Capitol rioters had a connection with Proud Boys, which they describe as a “hate group,” and Oath Keepers.
Nearly 90% had no ties or right-wing affiliations whatsoever.
And they found out that 85% of the people arrested were business owners or held down white-collar jobs.
WTTW TV reported that researchers hadn’t even needed a “business owner” category before when looking into protest groups. Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, oversaw the study and said the caliber of people at the riot was surprising.
“Normally, we don’t even have a category for ‘business owner’ when we study political violence, so this is a very big sign that we’re dealing with a new political movement with violence at its core that can’t be reduced to the usual suspects.”
President Trump also appealed to a wide variety of Americans from all socio-economic backgrounds. The fact that the rioters were not red-meat, right-wing fanatics threw researchers for a loop. It also forced some reflection by researchers about the people who believe there was election fraud, according to the study.
What we are dealing with here is not merely a mix of right-wing organizations, but a broader mass movement with violence at its core. We need to do more to understand who we are dealing with in the new movement. Targeting pre-2021 far right organizations alone will not solve the problem.
Perhaps they should consider that the 2020 election was seen by half the country as rigged. Election integrity efforts, not name-calling, lawfare, and canceling others who hold politically opposing views, will be key in winning back confidence in the elections process. If Democrats pass HR 1, all bets will be off.
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Joe Biden’s biggest headache seen on US-Mexico border
The mainstream media are beginning to recognize the immigration disaster under Biden. Below is a Reuters dispatch
Almost two months into his presidency, Joe Biden has plenty to feel pleased about. Coronavirus cases in the US have plummeted since the start of the year, the pace of vaccinations has increased dramatically and last week he signed a giant $2.5 trillion economic recovery package into law.
But one issue is fast becoming a major vulnerability for the US President, in terms of both policy and politics: immigration. A surge in migrants trying to cross from Mexico into the US at the southern border has given Republicans an opening to go on the attack against the new administration.
A Honduran man seeking asylum in the United States wears a shirt that reads, “Biden please let us in,” as he stands among tents that line an entrance to the border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico.
According to Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, US officials soon expect to encounter more more individuals at the south-west border than they have in the past 20 years.
US Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 100,000 migrants at the US-Mexico border in February, and that number is expected to balloon in March. An estimated 5000 people are now being apprehended at the border each day.
The number of apprehensions was already increasing steadily during the final months of the Trump presidency, but has accelerated since Biden’s inauguration. Such a surge was entirely predictable.
After all, Trump was famous for his hardline immigration policies, including his signature pledge to build a wall on the border and his controversial family separation policies. Biden came to power promising a more “fair, orderly and humane” approach, and quickly steps to soften Trump’s tougher policies.
On day one of his presidency, Biden suspended Trump’s so-called “remain in Mexico” rule which requires asylum-seekers trying to enter the US from the southern border to wait in Mexico for their American court hearings.
Crucially, Biden also tweaked emergency restrictions introduced by Trump at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Under Biden’s changes, unaccompanied minors can now enter the US and, after a short period in detention, live in the community while their immigration claims are processed.
Biden administration officials have insisted that the border is not open, and urged migrants not to try to enter the US right now. But that message isn’t cutting through.
Apprehensions of unaccompanied minors rose by 63 per cent from January to February while family arrivals soared by 168 per cent. Some of the unaccompanied minors apprehended at the border have been as young as six.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has made clear he is concerned about the surge and that he believes it has been driven by the change from Trump to Biden.
Children play as people who are seeking asylum in the United States are gathered outside the El Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico.
“They see him as the migrant president, and so many feel they’re going to reach the United States,” Lopez Obrador said earlier this month after a meeting with Biden.
“We need to work together to regulate the flow, because this business can’t be tackled from one day to the next.”
Some migrants have even shown up at the border wearing T-shirts, styled in the manner of Biden’s election campaign merchandise, reading: “Biden, please let us in!”
Big increases in the number unaccompanied children pose particular difficulties for immigration officials. Under US law, unaccompanied children are only supposed to remain in immigration detention for three days but that timeframe has proven impossible to stick to with the current influx.
The need to enforce social distancing rules has also made it hard for officials to cope with the surge in arrivals. In recent days, the administration has opened new detention facilities in Texas and enlisted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help shelter migrant children.
Democrats are happiest when the public is focussed on issues such as education and healthcare. As a rule, it’s good news for conservatives when immigration is in the headlines.
That’s why a slew of Republicans have hot-footed it to the border region in Texas to highlight the issue in recent days.
“It’s more than a crisis, this is a human heartbreak,” Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy said during a visit this week. “This crisis is created by the presidential policies of this new administration. There’s no other way to claim it than a Biden border crisis.”
A YouGov poll released this week found that 52 per cent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of immigration - significantly below his approval ratings on the pandemic or the economy.
As well as distracting from his achievements, the surge in unauthorised arrivals at the border will limit Biden’s ability to overhaul America’s immigration laws.
Biden wants to provide a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the US. That would be difficult to achieve at any time, let alone when the migration system is widely perceived to be out of control.
It’s one thing to promise an immigration system that is “fair, orderly and humane”. It’s far more difficult to deliver all three at once, as Biden is quickly learning.
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Trump Vindicated as Judge Rules Michigan Secretary of State Violated Election Laws
A judge in Michigan has vindicated President Trump by ruling that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, broke state law when she unilaterally changed election rules concerning absentee balloting in the 2020 election. This ruling legitimizes a key claim made by the Trump legal team in its challenges to the 2020 election.
A major change imposed by Benson was loosening the signature verification requirement for absentee ballots. Michigan Court of Claims Chief Judge Christopher Murray ruled that this change violated Michigan Administrative Procedures Act.
The court made the following conclusion:
…nowhere in this state’s election law has the Legislature indicated that signatures are to be presumed valid, nor did the Legislature require that signatures are to be accepted so long as there are any redeeming qualities in the application or return envelope as compared with the signature on file. Policy determinations like the one at issue — which places the thumb on the scale in favor of a signature’s validity — should be made pursuant to properly promulgated rules under the APA or by the Legislature.
Over 3.1 million Michiganders voted by absentee ballot in November. Biden “won” the state by just over 154,000 votes, according to the state-certified results.
Michigan was not the only state where Democrat state officials unilaterally changed election laws, so this ruling certainly raises legitimate doubts whether Biden truly won the election without invalid votes.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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