Day: December 1, 2022

“Dead Eye Dick” Is Guilty

06 January conspirator has had his day in court and is found guilty…..

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was convicted Tuesday of seditious conspiracy for a violent plot to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential win, handing the Justice Department a major victory in its massive prosecution of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. A Washington, DC, jury found Rhodes guilty of sedition after three days of deliberations in the nearly two-month-long trial that showcased the far-right extremist group’s efforts to keep Donald Trump in the White House at all costs, the AP reports. The rarely used, Civil War-era charge calls for up to 20 years behind bars. Rhodes didn’t go inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, but was accused of leading a plot that began shortly after the 2020 election to wage an armed rebellion to stop the transfer of presidential power.

Through recordings and encrypted messages, jurors heard how Rhodes rallied his followers to fight to keep Trump in office, warned of a possible “bloody” civil war and expressed regret that the Oath Keepers didn’t bring rifles to the Capitol on Jan. 6. In an extraordinary move, Rhodes and two other defendants took the stand in their defense, opening themselves up to intense questioning from prosecutors. Rhodes told jurors there was no plan to attack the Capitol and insisted that his followers who went inside the building went rogue.

On trial alongside Rhodes were Kelly Meggs, leader of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers; Kenneth Harrelson, another Florida Oath Keeper; Thomas Caldwell, a retired Navy intelligence officer from Virginia; and Jessica Watkins, who led an Ohio militia group. Meggs was also found guilty of seditious conspiracy but Harrelson, Watkins, and Caldwell were found not guilty of the charge, the BBC reports. All five defendants were found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding.

Only right wing dipshits will mourn his conviction…..not even his family has anything good to say about Dead Eye Dick……

Prosecutors with the Justice Department were handed a big win Tuesday with the conviction of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes on sedition charges, but they’re not the only ones celebrating a victory. “I am beyond happy,” Tasha Adams, the far-right militia leader’s estranged wife, tells Insider. “He has absolutely never had to face a consequence in his entire life.” Adams, who shares six children with Rhodes, adds: “He’s spent his life making others pay; this was past due for him.” The outlet notes that Adams has previously talked about the fear she had of her husband, whom she married in 1994 after dating for three years.

She says that Rhodes was emotionally and physically abusive to the children, and that he “viciously pushed every psychological button after just the slightest request of him,” per Insider. She adds that she breathed a sigh of relief when he was arrested earlier this year on the Jan. 6 charges. Now, “I am thrilled that he’s finally facing justice,” she says, though she warns that her spouse will likely try to seek a pardon from former President Trump if he is elected back to the Oval Office, per HuffPost.

She’s not the only family member speaking out. The Daily Beast reports that, after Tuesday’s verdict was read, Dakota Adams, the couple’s 25-year-old son, took to Twitter to post a three-second YouTube clip from It’s a Wonderful Life, in which the villainous Mr. Potter exclaims, “Happy new year to you … in jail!” In a second tweet, Dakota added: “So much weight is off now.” The BBC has a longer take on the ordeal of Rhodes’ family, and how Dakota Adams helped them all escape from him in 2018. “Until I was an adult man, I lived absolutely under the thumb of an emotional terrorist,” Adams says. The family’s full story here.

I say give him/them the max penalties….jail time and cash…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

More On The Rail Strike

I have been following the possibility of a rail strike that will strike(no pun intended) fear and hate in the eyes of the consumer…..but all that could be premature…..Biden has ridden in on his white horse to save his bacon.

The House moved urgently to head off the looming nationwide rail strike on Wednesday, passing a bill that would bind companies and workers to a proposed settlement that was reached in September but rejected by four of the 12 unions involved. The measure passed by a vote of 290-137 and now heads to the Senate. If approved there, it will be quickly signed by President Biden, who on Monday asked Congress to intervene and avert the rail stoppage, which would unleash an estimated $2 billion-per-day hit on the economy. The unions have threatened to strike if an agreement can’t be reached before a Dec. 9 deadline.

Lawmakers from both parties expressed reservations about overriding the negotiations. And the intervention was particularly difficult for Democratic lawmakers who have traditionally sought to align themselves with the politically powerful labor unions that criticized Biden’s move, the AP reports. Democrats responded to that concern by adding a second vote Wednesday that would add seven days of paid sick leave per year for rail workers covered under the agreement; that bill passed 221 to 207, reports the Washington Post. It will take effect only if the Senate goes along and passes both measures. The call for more paid sick leave was a major sticking point in the talks.

The railroads say the unions have agreed in negotiations over the decades to forgo paid sick time in favor of higher wages and strong short-term disability benefits. The unions maintain that railroads can easily afford to add paid sick time at a time when they are recording record profits. Several of the big railroads involved in these contract talks reported more than $1 billion profit in the third quarter. Republicans voiced support for the measure to block the strike, but criticized the Biden administration for turning to Congress to “step in to fix the mess” and criticized Pelosi’s decision to add the sick leave second bill to the mix. They said the Biden administration’s own special board of arbitrators recommended higher wages to compensate the unions for not including sick time in its recommendations.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/11/30/house-passes-paid-sick-leave-railway-workers-despite-opposition-207-republicans

So will this settle the problems with band-aid solutions?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”