Politics, Everyday, All day... morning, noon and night....II

[Simon of the Playa]

"Schmidt’s biggest reminder, though, was that the director of the 2008 McCain campaign was Richard (Rick) Davis, a founding partner of Davis Manafort, the political consulting firm formed in 1996. By 2003, the men were representing pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Yanukovych; in July 2004, U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov was murdered in Moscow for exposing Russian government corruption; and in June 2005, Manafort proposed that he would work for Putin’s government in former Soviet republics, Europe, and the United States by influencing politics, business dealings, and news coverage.

From 2004 to 2014, Manafort worked for Yanukovych and his party, trying to make what the U.S. State Department called a party of “mobsters and oligarchs” look legitimate. In 2016, Manafort went on to lead Donald Trump’s campaign, and the ties between him, the campaign, and Russia are well known. Less well known is that in 2008, Manafort’s partner Rick Davis ran Republican candidate John McCain’s presidential campaign.

Schmidt writes that McCain turned a blind eye to the dealings of Davis and Manafort, apparently because he was distracted by the fallout when the story of his personal life hit the newspapers. Davis and Manafort were making millions by advancing Putin’s interests in Ukraine and eastern Europe, working for Yanukovych and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Schmidt notes that “McCain spent his 70th birthday with Oleg Deripaska and Rick Davis on a Russian yacht at anchor in Montenegro.”

“There were two factions in the campaign,” Schmidt tweeted, “a pro-democracy faction and…a pro Russia faction,” led by Davis, who—like Manafort—had a residence in Trump Tower. It was Davis who was in charge of vetting Palin.

McCain was well known for promising to stand up to Putin, and Palin’s claim that she could counter the growing power of Russia in part because “[t]hey’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska” became a long-running joke (the comment about seeing Russia from her house came from a Saturday Night Live skit).

But a terrific piece in The Nation by Mark Ames and Ari Berman in October 2008 noted: “He may talk tough about Russia, but John McCain’s political advisors have advanced Putin’s imperial ambitions.” The authors detailed Davis’s work to bring the Balkan country of Montenegro under Putin’s control and concluded that either McCain “was utterly clueless while his top advisers and political allies ran around the former Soviet domain promoting the Kremlin’s interests for cash, or he was aware of it and didn’t care.”

Trump’s campaign and presidency, along with Putin’s deadly assault on Ukraine, puts into a new light the fact that McCain’s campaign manager was Paul Manafort’s business partner all the way back in 2008."


“fully the party of Trump. It is corrupt, indecent and immoral. With the exception of a few governors…it is filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party's greatest leaders.... Today the GOP has become a danger to our democracy and our values.”


https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-9-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

In addition to McCarthy, the select committee subpoenaed Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona for testimony.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/january-6- ... ndy-biggs/

[Simon of the Playa]

A 106-page online manifesto, believed to have been uploaded by the shooter, explained that he was motivated by a conspiracy theory that white people are being replaced by other races. In the document, he says he is 18 years old and a self-described White supremacist and anti-semite.

The suspect was identified as Payton Gendron of Conklin, about 200 miles southeast of Buffalo in New York state, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press. The officials were not permitted to speak publicly on the matter and did so on the condition of anonymity. The suspect was being questioned Saturday evening by the FBI, one of the officials said.

Fox News personality Tucker Carlson has been the most prominent proponent pushing the conspiracy theory. In 2021, the president of the Anti-Defamation League demanded Fox News fire the anchor for pushing the conspiracy theory on his primetime show.

https://www.communityvoiceks.com/news/n ... 3ef2e.html

[Simon of the Playa]

Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska said Sunday that he will call a special session of his state's legislature to pass a total ban on abortion if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this term.

"Including in the case of rape or incest?" Bash asked. To which the governor replied: "They're still babies, too. Yes."


https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/15/politics ... index.html

[lucky420]

If anybody is in need of making their own choices for their body, Nevada’s law is codified. We are a great tourist destination and we have orgs that will help you out

[Simon of the Playa]

[Simon of the Playa]

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who represents Buffalo, today wrote a letter to Rupert Murdoch, chair of the Fox Corporation, along with another three of the corporation’s leaders, to urge them to stop “the reckless amplification of the so-called ‘Great Replacement’ theory on your network’s broadcasts.” He noted that people who watch the Fox News Channel are nearly three times more likely to believe in the replacement myth than those who watch other networks. He pointed out “the central role these themes have played in your network’s programming in recent years,” especially on Tucker Carlson’s show. He wrote: “I implore you to immediately cease all dissemination of false white nationalist, far-right conspiracy theories on your network.”

New York representative Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, who paid for ads pushing the replacement myth, today said: “It is not the time to politicize this tragedy. We mourn together as a nation.” Other Republicans insisted they did not know what the Great Replacement Theory is, although a number of them are on video articulating it.

Today, in the wake of the Buffalo shooting, Miles Taylor—a member of Trump’s administration who warned anonymously of how dangerous Trump was—announced he was leaving the Republican Party and called on others to do the same. “In the wake of the mass shooting in Buffalo on Saturday,” he wrote, “it’s become glaringly obvious that my party no longer represents conservative values but in fact poses a threat to them—and to America.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-17-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

Led by personalities like Tucker Carlson, the American right wing embraces the Hungarian model, despite the corruption, lack of legal accountability, and attacks on the press that make Hungary the only member of the European Union no longer rated as “free” by democracy watchdog Freedom House. As if in illustration of Orbán’s policies, U.S. journalists were not allowed into CPAC today.

Orbán gave the keynote speech at the CPAC convention. In it, he embraced the “great replacement theory” that says white people are being replaced by immigrants of color. This is the myth that motivated the shooter in Buffalo, New York, last weekend, when he murdered ten people and wounded three others. It is the myth from which most Republicans have tried to distance themselves since the Buffalo killings.

And yet, when CPAC leader Matt Schlapp met U.S. journalists outside, he said that ending abortion rights would address the great replacement myth: “If you say there is a population problem in a country, but you’re killing millions of your own people through legalized abortion every year, if that were to be reduced, some of that problem is solved,” Schlapp said. “You have millions of people who can take many of these jobs. How come no one brings that up? If you’re worried about this quote-unquote replacement, why don’t we start there? Start with allowing our own people to live.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-19-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

In 2019 the Houston Chronicle ran a series calling attention to the 380 pastors affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention who had been accused of sexual abuse, blowing the lid off the scandal. In March 2021 the hugely popular leader Beth Moore, herself a survivor of sexual assault, left the church. In May, Russell Moore (no relation to Ms. Moore) left the church leadership and then, the following month, left the church itself over its handling of sexual abuse allegations and racism.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in 2021 was the largest one since 1995. Members rejected a hard-right leader and chose as president Ed Litton, senior pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, who since at least 2014 had focused on racial reconciliation. Members also called for an investigation of the escalating sex scandals, which had become so toxic after Trump’s election that In setting up an investigation, church members were leery enough of the leaders investigating themselves that they set up a task force to manage a third-party investigation. The task force hired the investigating team, Guidepost Solutions, on September 9, 2021.

Its report is so damning that Russell Moore’s first reaction was to say: “I was wrong to call sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention…a crisis. Crisis is too small a word. It is an apocalypse.” The investigation, he says, “uncovers a reality far more evil and systematic than I imagined it could be.” “How many children were raped, how many people were assaulted, how many screams were silenced,” he asked, “while we boasted that no one could reach the world for Jesus like we could.”

“That’s more than a crisis,” he said. “It’s even more than just a crime. It’s blasphemy. And anyone who cares about heaven ought to be mad as hell.”



https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-23-2022

[Token]

If anybody is in need of making their own choices for their body, Nevada’s law is codified. We are a great tourist destination and we have orgs that will help you out

So I can get elf ears and shark teeth installed in Nevada?

Who knew!

[lucky420]

If anybody is in need of making their own choices for their body, Nevada’s law is codified. We are a great tourist destination and we have orgs that will help you out

So I can get elf ears and shark teeth installed in Nevada?

Who knew!

I think that can be arranged.

[Simon of the Playa]

Meadows left Trump in a dining room off the Oval Office and told colleagues in his own office that Trump “said something to the effect of, maybe Mr. Pence should be hung,” according to witnesses cited in the report.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 929389002/

[ygmir]

If anybody is in need of making their own choices for their body, Nevada’s law is codified. We are a great tourist destination and we have orgs that will help you out

So I can get elf ears and shark teeth installed in Nevada?

Who knew!

I think that can be arranged.

[Simon of the Playa]

https://erikravelo.myportfolio.com/los- ... touchables

[Simon of the Playa]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-sen ... 022-05-26/

[Simon of the Playa]

[Simon of the Playa]

https://thenib.com/shot-chasers/

[Simon of the Playa]

Today the Justice Department filed a superseding indictment charging Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and four colleagues with up to ten criminal counts, including seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, in relation to the January 6 insurrection. Sedition is the crime of inciting a revolt against the government, and conspiracy means there was an organized group of people with a plan.

A grand jury indicted Tarrio and Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola, all of whom had already been charged with crimes; this filing adds to those charges. The indictment says that the five men “did knowingly conspire, confederate, and agree, with other persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to oppose by force the authority of the Government of the United States and by force to prevent, hinder, and delay the execution of any law of the United States…. The purpose of the conspiracy was to oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force.”

Wow.

The DOJ is acknowledging that the insurrectionists were trying to overthrow the government. As retired Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe tweeted, “Seditious conspiracy is huge. No more serious federal crime short of treason.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-6-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

from the Idaho Statesman:

"Stop lending silent toleration to the lie that Trump won the 2020 election. State clearly that the Big Lie is a lie.

Historians will certainly mark the year they failed to do so and call it cowardice. But there remains an opportunity for our delegation to redeem themselves, at least in part, by telling the truth they already know."

https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/ ... 25887.html

[Simon of the Playa]

"It was Trump who “summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame” for January 6, the committee says. Unable to accept his loss and determined to remain in power, Trump organized and deployed an attack on our democracy."

"President Trump oversaw a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the 2020 election and prevent the transition of presidential power.

President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information to the American public claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him.

President Trump corruptly planned to replace the Acting Attorney General, so that the Department of Justice would support his fake election claims.

President Trump corruptly pressured Vice President Pence to refuse to count certified electoral votes in violation of the US Constitution and the law.

President Trump corruptly pressured state election officials, and state legislators, to change election results.

President Trump's legal team and other Trump associates instructed Republicans in multiple states to create false electoral slates and transmit those slates to Congress and the National Archives.

President Trump summoned and assembled a violent mob in Washington and directed them to march on the US Capitol.

As the violence was underway, President Trump ignored multiple pleas for assistance and failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol."

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-9-2022

[Elderberry]

Sounds like more than enough to indict/convict him. Unfortunately, I won't be holding my breath.

[Simon of the Playa]

"But when a leader whips up a mob to attack democracy with the goal of maintaining his grip on power in defiance of democratic order, then privately refuses to stop them while endorsing the murderous aims of people he claims as his own supporters, it’s hard to see him as anything but a leader of a violent anti-democratic movement with important parallels to interwar fascism."

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
Most of this seems to fit Trumpism fairly well. “Obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood”? Check.
“Compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity”? Check.
"Uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites”? Check.
"Without ethical or legal restraints”? Check, check, and check.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... mp-fascist

[Simon of the Playa]

A Bolivian court found former President Jeanine Anez guilty on Friday of orchestrating a coup that brought her to power during a 2019 political crisis.

She was sentenced to 10 years in prison. An former military commander and ex-police general were also convicted.

Anez, 54, was convicted of making "decisions contrary to the constitution" and of "dereliction of duty."

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/ ... 022-06-11/

[Simon of the Playa]

gosar, biggs, perry, jordan and gohmert.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jan-6-hear ... he-nation/

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/p ... aul-gosar/

[Simon of the Playa]

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver on Tuesday asked the state Supreme Court to order a three-member county commission to certify the results of the June 7 primary elections in Otero County -- after commission members refused to do so this week, citing concerns about Dominion vote-counting machines.

The action by the Otero County Commission is one of the first examples of a county blocking the certification of results in the 2022 election cycle, and Oliver, a Democrat, warned of the potential for similar moves in other New Mexico communities.
In a statement, Oliver said the Otero County Commissioners were "appeasing unfounded conspiracy theories and potentially nullifying the votes of every Otero County voter who participated in the primary" with their action.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/14/politics ... index.html

[Simon of the Playa]

"Individuals on the tour photographed and recorded areas of the complex not typically of interest to tourists, including hallways, staircases, and security checkpoints,"


One of the individuals on the tour returned the following day, and can be heard in the released video making threats against several Democratic lawmakers including now-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

"They got it surrounded. It's all the way up there on the hill, and it's all the way around, and they're coming in, coming in like white on rice for Pelosi, Nadler, even you, AOC," the man says in the video released by the committee. "We're coming to take you out and pull you out by your hairs."

The footage also shows a man with a flagpole "appearing to have a sharpened end," according to the committee. "That's for somebody special, somebody special," the man says.





https://www.businessinsider.com/video-r ... y-6-2022-6

[Simon of the Playa]

Both Pence’s counsel Jacobs and his chief of staff Marc Short believed that Eastman’s plan was bananas, and an avalanche of White House advisors agreed. According to today’s testimony, those agreeing included Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Trump lawyer Eric Herschmann, and Trump advisor Jason Miller, who testified that people thought “Eastman was crazy.” Herschmann testified that even Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani agreed on the morning of January 6 that Eastman’s argument wouldn’t stand up in court.

Nonetheless, Giuliani went out in front of the crowd at the Ellipse on January 6, insisted that the theory was correct, and lied that even Thomas Jefferson himself had used it.

Meanwhile, beginning in December, Trump had been pressuring Pence to go along with the scheme. Pence had refused, but Trump kept piling on the pressure. At rallies in early January, he kept hammering on the idea that Pence could deliver the election to Trump, and in meetings on January 4 and 5, he kept demanding that Pence overturn the election. When Pence continued to refuse, Trump appeared to try to lock him in by tweeting on January 5 that he and Pence were “in total agreement” that Pence could act to change the outcome of the election.

By then, Short was so worried about what Trump might do on January 6 that he told the Secret Service he was concerned about Pence’s safety.

On January 6, Trump called Pence on the phone and, according to witnesses, called him a “wimp” and a “p*ssy.” Pence then issued a statement saying it was his “considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.” Trump then went before the crowd at the Ellipse and added to his prepared speech sections attacking Pence.

After Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows told him that violence had broken out at the Capitol, Trump tweeted that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what needed to be done,” and violence ratcheted up. The committee showed rioters claiming they were there because Pence had let them down. “Pence betrayed us…the president mentioned it like 5 times when he talked,” one said. That 2:24 tweet was “pouring gasoline on the fire,” one White House press member told the committee. At 2:26, Pence and his family were evacuated to a secure location, where he would stay for more than four hours. The rioters missed the vice president by about 40 feet. A Proud Boy told the committee that if they had found Pence, they would have killed him.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... ne-16-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

"Delegates to a convention of the Texas Republican Party today approved platform planks rejecting “the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and [holding] that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States”; requiring students “to learn about the dignity of the preborn human,” including that life begins at fertilization; treating homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice”; locking the number of Supreme Court justices at 9; getting rid of the constitutional power to levy income taxes; abolishing the Federal Reserve; rejecting the Equal Rights Amendment; returning Christianity to schools and government; ending all gun safety measures; abolishing the Department of Education; arming teachers; requiring colleges to teach “free-market liberty principles”; defending capital punishment; dictating the ways in which the events at the Alamo are remembered; protecting Confederate monuments; ending gay marriage; withdrawing from the United Nations and the World Health Organization; and calling for a vote “for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... ne-18-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

knock knock.

[Elorrum]

Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.),
Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.),
Louie Gohmert (R-Texas),
Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.),
Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and
Mo Brooks (R-Ala.)
all personally asked for pardons, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, who served as an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.