President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

On one hand, no shit.

On the other hand, given how reticent the government has been to connect the far right with domestic terrorism — especially when the Obama administration leaned that way a decade ago — making this kind of direct connection is interesting and surprising.

The U.S. government is acknowledging for the first time that right-wing extremists were responsible for the majority of fatal domestic terrorist attacks last year, according to an internal report circulated by the Department of Homeland Security last week and obtained by Yahoo News.

A review of last year’s domestic terrorist incidents by a DHS fusion center — which shares threat-related information between federal, state and local partners — found that although civil unrest and antigovernment violence were associated with “non-affiliated, right-wing and left-wing actors, right-wing [domestic violent extremists] were responsible for the majority of fatal attacks in the Homeland in 2020.”

The report, produced by the Joint Regional Intelligence Center, a DHS-funded fusion center, was sent out to police and law enforcement agencies nationwide as part of an intelligence-sharing system created after the 9/11 attacks.

While independent think tanks and outside groups have been pointing to the rise in ring-wing violence for some time, this appears to be the first known instance of an official government or law enforcement agency clearly acknowledging the trend, though senior officials have noted the rise in white supremacist attacks. The report also comes not long after the end of the Trump administration, which was criticized for downplaying right-wing violence.

Former President Donald Trump, in particular, frequently referred to the threat from antifa, a loose movement of left-wing activists.

“The government has not said this publicly, law enforcement has not said this publicly,” said Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “This is new.”

The findings about right-wing extremism are “consistent with every single assessment of data I’ve seen, not just in 2020 but in 2019,” Jones said after reviewing the fusion center report.

In October of last year, CSIS published its own analysis of domestic terrorist activity in the U.S. for the first eight months of 2020. Its data showed that white supremacists and other right-wing extremists conducted two-thirds of the terrorist plots and attacks in the nation during that period.

The CSIS report notes that the FBI and DHS have in the past identified “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists,” and specifically white supremacists, as the biggest threat to the U.S. But the government has released no data on historical activity or the current threat landscape, prompting a number of data projects from think tanks and other groups tracking domestic extremist threats.

“What is a little unusual is that they’ve used terms like ‘right- and left-wing’ in a government document, because the government has generally used other terms,” said Jones.

“The government in 2020 did try to stay away from ‘right-wing’ terms because they were easily politicized,” he added.

During the Trump administration, government reports and officials typically avoided describing groups as left- or right-wing, instead referring to attackers under broad terms such as “racially motivated” or “antigovernment.”

Mike German, a former FBI agent and now a fellow at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, said the current terminology dates back to 2019, when Congress asked the bureau to provide detailed data on domestic terrorism investigations and the bureau changed its categories.

“The FBI reconfigured its categories to combine much more violent far-right militias with less violent anarchists, and the more violent white supremacists with ‘Black identity extremists,’ which really is a fabricated movement,” he said. “It makes no sense to put these groups together, as white supremacists and Black identity extremists don’t often overlap or work together. Likewise for far-right militants and anarchists.”

It’s unclear what prompted the fusion center to use the new language, or if there has been an official change in policy. The fusion center did not respond to a request for comment, and DHS declined to comment.​

Feds now say right-wing extremists responsible for majority of deadly terrorist attacks last year



Oh. Wow. That embed worked much better than I thought it would.

 

He's got them in the Palm Beach of his hand
Worst threat to our great land
Lackeys always quick with a defense
Even after the cries of "Hang Mike Pence"

 

I reckon they also had an all-electric house. Our place is 1,900 square feet and we’re all electric. We turn off lights and keep the heat around 68, lower at night. Our bills have been above $500 for the last two months, and it was more than $300 in our first. Granted I’ve been working from home instead of the house being empty all day, but that still sounds high.

 

We’re 3,000 square feet and all-electric heat. It’s insane during the winter. We go on budget billing to keep it from spiking to monstrous levels.

 

I've always had reasonable bills compared to a lot of people I know.

Electric cooling, gas heating. Average electric bill is $70-80 fall-winter-spring, high of $150 in summer.
Average gas bill is $15-20 in spring-summer-fall (basically just a service charge + water heater), and $150-180 in winter.

 

Apologies if this has already been explained but part of the so called Texas miracle is surge pricing for electric.

typically the price per kilowatt hour is 85 cents and it can get much higher but the cap is $9,000 per KWH. Typically, it never gets that high but when it does, it doesn’t last long.

Texas was at $9,000 per KWH for like five days. That’s what why people are seeing monstrous bills. There’s also no recourse as the state doesn’t have the authority to tell the providers to charge less as there’s no regulations.

Texas literally has the power infrastructure of a third world country and it completely bit them in the ass, again, as this is the third time this happened in a roughly 25 years, the last occasion was 2011.

And why should the providers care? There’s no regulations telling them they have to and they’ve figured out how to privatize the profits and have the feds pick up the losses.

In any other state, this would have providers going to prison, like Enron, but in Texas they’ll have a party because they just made generational wealth.

 

Trump to speak at CPAC next Sunday - CNNPolitics

Don't call it a comeback, I been here for years
I'm rockin' my peers, puttin' suckers in fear
Makin' the tears rain down like a monsoon
Listen to the bass go boom
Explosions, overpowerin'
Over the competition, I'm towerin'
Wrecking shop, when I drop
These lyrics that'll make you call the cops
Don't you dare stare
You better move, don't ever compare
Me to the rest that'll all get sliced and diced
Competition's payin' the price

 

trump at cpac how embarrassing for the media they can't let him go

 

Trump to speak at CPAC next Sunday - CNNPolitics

I'm a bitch, I'm a bitch,
Oh the bitch is back
Stone-cold sober, as a matter of fact
I can bitch, I can bitch,
'Cause I'm better than you
It's the way that I move,
The things that I do, oh-oh-oh

 

I guess I now understand the Mike Lee fundraiser at Mar-A-Lago. It's Republican Spring Break next weekend in Fla.

 

Noble Hermes,
inventor of the lyre,

I'd posit that Donald J Christ wouldn't have choppers either if he did the same ... but none of his are real anyway from the case of soda he consumes daily.