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This is good so I’m just going to post link to the Pelosi video. There’s no hard evidence he was a right wing intruder. I notice two things he had a drink in his hand and was partially undressed. Now if someone broke into my house late I’d probably be in my boxers. But I wouldn’t be wearing a button down shirt too; I’d be topless or in a t-shirt
I think the video will be interpreted both sides. It doesn’t prove he was paying a crazy gay prostitute to blow him but bodycam would lean in that direction instead of a red tribe terrorist.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/watch-paul-pelosi-hammer-attack-bodycam-video-released.
I guess bigger culture war issue is if he was just trying to get his dick sucked and the media said that was false and it was a right wing terrorist then basically confirms a lot of peoples view that they are lying to us. (Nothing wrong with trying to get your dick sucked).
Edit: there’s video of him breaking in which adds more to the intruder narrative I didn’t see previously still weird video of cops entering. Without breaking in video it looked more like a domestic.
If "The SFPD is so totally owned by the Pelosi's that they either fabricated DePape's confession or coerced him into a false confession" seems more plausible to you then "an 82 year old had a shitty security system, wore a button up shirt to bed, and had a funny expression on his face in a highly stressful situation" then you have some wild priors.
How does a random weirdo get into the house of the third most powerful person in the US?
In addition to their power, the Pelosis have over $100 million! Doesn't that buy you enough home security to keep out random weirdos in San Francisco, a city notoriously full of random weirdos who break into houses and cars?
Or the numerous times this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Fagan_(intruder) broke into buckingham palace. Most people don’t maximize physical security because our social contract doesn’t require it.
Fagan did that shit in the eighties. The social contract has changed drastically since then. Trying to find info about break ins at Buckingham Palace just get flooded with Fagan stories, but I remember some other guy was inspired by Fagan to break in around a decade ago and got caught right after jumping the fence. Also most people aren't hundred millionaires who run the country.
Yeah but if you read the wiki article it's not like there weren't security systems, the police just ignored the alarms since they assumed they were faulty. All it takes it one or two fuck ups for something like the Pelosi break in to happen, which is hardly implausible.
Also, MPs in Britain still don't really have extraordinary levels of security. David Ames' murderer was seemingly able to just walk up him in a constituency surgery and stab him. Iirc in the mid-2000s there was an MP who was attacked by someone in the lobby of the House of Commons, which you wouldn't think likely.
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Yes, but legislators aren't accustomed to thinking of themselves as suffering from extremely heightened exposure to random crazies the way executives are, so their security is lighter.
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I guess the same way a random weirdo gets into the house of the number one most powerful person in the US.
Sure, that's a good point. I suppose staggering incompetence and complacency is a decent answer.
Mid ranking judges in my much more peaceful country get offered extra home security. I would've thought very high-ranking officials in a violent country get proportionately more protection, especially given the hysteria about terrorism for the last 15 years.
As mentioned below, Nancy Pelosi has more protection, but she wasn't there, and since historically, with very few exceptions, violence against politicians in America is 'crazed weirdo with barely coherent thoughts who does it in public', nobody thinks somebody is going to try to break-in to a prominent politician's home and commit violence.
Hell, even at the height of political violence in the 70's, while Italian Prime Ministers were getting kidnapped, our violence left-wingers...bombed some post offices and office buildings, but made sure the bombs went off when nobody would be there.
I still can't believe a very rich and powerful family in the richest country in the world don't have shatter-proof windows. It's one thing if you have some men blasting down the bulletproof windows with sustained machine-gun fire, or if they use some kind of advanced tactic. Even an intermediate tactic or a basic tactic is something. I've seen tiktoks from South Africans showing more serious and elaborate security systems than whatever was going on here.
Nobody in the whole bloated US security/intelligence sector thought 'Al Qaeda has a bunch of skilled and capable operators working hard on doing us harm, so we should ensure our highest ranking politicans have decent protection at home, that their close relatives aren't kidnapped or anything'? Nobody thought that maybe the US Capitol should have doors that can lock and block unarmed masses of angry people, let alone well-armed terrorists prepared to die for their beliefs? What were they spending all that anti-terror money on? Doesn't this seem absurd?
You do believe what you say you don’t believe because, as you pointed out yourself, it is true. Or are you saying there’s a conspiracy to pretend pelosi has no shatter proof windows, but he does?
The US is violent in parts and very safe in parts and doesn’t have that much in political violence.
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But the US isn't South Africa. Hell, it isn't even Europe, where there are soldiers with assault rifles on what seems like every street and subway station in Western Europe and 3x the number of police per capita (humorously, this is what the average European internet commentator appears to think the US is like). Though considering the amount of political violence that occurs in Europe, and how packed together everyone is in the nations there, the fact that the social systems are basically expecting a revolution every 50 years or so (France is on its Fifth Republic in 200 years- in fact, apart from the UK, most European polities are less than 30 years old- and this isn't even ahistorical for them) they absolutely have a reason for the increased security.
To my knowledge, "they don't actually have any skilled and capable operators" was their assessment, and that assessment was ultimately correct (alternately, their SIGINT is so good they managed to stop everything; I'm half willing to believe this but ultimately have no real basis for that).
Why would it need that? You can normally just waltz right in to the Capitol; it's not like those other countries where "government is this closed-off, special thing". Unlike 24 Sussex Drive or Buckingham Palace, you can just go in to the White House to the point that they have organized tours most every day. You'd kind of expect that from a country with such anime-esque slogans and beliefs about government... especially since most people still believe in it 250 years after the fact.
(Also, the symmetry in the US massively favors the attacker- the tools for that are not only readily available to basically anyone, but ownership of them for such a purpose is celebrated by half the nation and its founding document. It's probably not worth trying to stop even with added security across all politicians and their families, with the exception of the President and his Vice.)
Well, the US is an absurd country where most citizens are defended from others simply by being really spread out, defended from its enemies by two oceans, and rich enough that the people who are screwed up enough to attack politicians are relatively inept.
I should defend Britain here by saying that you can in fact just go and watch the proceedings of the House of Commons or Lords whenever you like. Unless you want to watch PMQs or a very important debate you don't have to book, you just walk in and queue. In quieter times you can often go straight in iirc, even though the gallery is quite small.
Also, you can actually just walk into the lobby of Parliament and ask to see your MP, and I am told that some MPs do sometimes (though probably relatively rarely) just go and see random constituents who turn up there and ask for them.
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He smashes the window of a door with a hammer, unlocks the door, and walks inside. There is a video of this happening if you want I can find it.
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My parents got a security sytem after a single break in 2 decades ago. Guess how often it is now actually on? They remember to set it about a third of the time leaving. And my dad dosen't like it on when he is in the house because it goes off when he opens the windows. In theory he turns it on when they go to bed but thats a coin flip at best.
Complacency is common even among the well off, especially if you haven't had any incidents in a long time.
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What are your priors on people cracking a Heinekin during a home invasion?
I mean, Paul Pelosi is pretty clearly an alcoholic, and DePape is pretty clearly a nut who isn’t interested in him in any particular way.
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If I were an unarmed elderly man alone with a crazy guy with a hammer my strategy would be to de-escalate the situation as much as possible. Act calm, and normal, keep the crazy guy (who said his plan was not to assassinate Pelosi but to interrogate her) talking until the police show up. Maybe offer him a drink, or have a drink myself to give the impression that the situation is normal.
Is that the modal outcome when a potential assailant breaks into an elderly person's home? Probably not, but it seems more likely than a major police department being so bought off it would coerce a lengthy false confession and continued silence from DePape in an extremely high-profile case. "Elderly guy has a drink in his hand during home invasion" also seems much more plausible to me than "extremely rich man hires a chubby neckbeard guy who posts right-wing manifestos as a gay prostitute in the #1 city for gay prostitutes, then pays him so little the guy comes back and murders him with a hammer"? When I saw these memes I assumed the guy was hot or something but good lord.
Exactly. Were a crazy guy to break into my house, I would absolutely offer a drink to humor him.
Maybe offer him a drink -- just grabbing one for yourself doesn't seem likely to curry any favour.
Doesn’t one usually make a drink for oneself as well as the other person?
Pelosi was the only one in the video with a drink?
At the moment the door was opened, yes. That doesn't mean he didn't offer the other guy one, nor that the other guy didn't have one two seconds earlier.
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That's how you offer a drink without being patronising.
I usually say "how about a beer?" -- I hope I haven't been patronizing all this time?
I meant in the context of trying to appease someone. You can't have them thinking you're trying to handle them.
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Is this a joke? I can't be sure.
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Yeah if some guy breaks into my house with a hammer wanting the truth about the one world government my wife runs I'd call the cops, crack a beer, and make up some wild stories for him.
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I do have the priors to not trust the left. Won’t lie about that. And a lot of us do.
But you don't have to trust "the left" you have to trust that the SFPD didn't coerce an elaborate confession and continued silence from this guy.
Arent they ran by leftist? Do I have to trust the fbi? That they would never lie to us (or plan a kidnapping of a governor or invent a Russian hoax). And it’s not like right leaning cops have never lied. So yes until proven I’m not going to just trust the SFPD.
So yes I’ve had officials lie to me before so not exactly going to accept the narrative.
There's a huge gap between "the politically appointed leadership of the SFPD is probably left-leaning" and "rank and file members of the SFPD are so thoroughly corrupt that everyone involved in this case is willing to fabricate/coerce a confession". And there's a huge difference between, lying about the details of an altercation in order to paint the department in a favorable light and fabricating/coercing the confession of a still living witness who could at any time just come out and say "no I was actually a gay prostitute".
You don't have to knee-jerk trust the narrative, but if you also just reflexively assume the opposite of the narrative you're gonna end up making some wildly implausible claims.
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