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

[Simon of the Playa]

It is not clear that the idea of a resurgence of Trump will motivate Republican voters. Indeed, so far, election data for next week’s election is not showing the red wave that media has recently tried to argue was in the offing. Pollsters Simon Rosenberg and Tom Bonier both have focused less on polls and more on the early vote, which so far has shown Democrats overperforming. Races are still very close, but the idea of a red wave appears to be premature. The results of the election will come down to voter turnout.

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ber-4-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

Today, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch and the leader of the private military company the Wagner Group, who is close to Russian president Vladimir Putin, boasted that Russians had interfered in U.S. elections and continue to do so. “We have interfered, we are interfering and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do.” He added: “During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once.”

Prigozhin is apparently behind the Russia-based “troll farms” that try to affect U.S. elections. Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times writes that Russians have indeed targeted the 2022 elections to make right-wing voters angry and undermine trust in U.S. elections. Their hope is to erode support for Ukraine’s struggle to repel Russian invasion by electing Republicans who side with Putin.


https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ber-7-2022

[FIGJAM]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

“This is someone who, in my opinion, shows a bit of a God complex,” Galloway said.
He argued that technology leaders are taking the place of religion for many people amid declining church attendance, with Musk taking on the mantle of a “new Jesus Christ.”
“And every ridiculously mean, nonsensical, irrational move he makes is somehow seen as chess not checkers,” Galloway said.
“This is an individual who has demonstrated a total lack of grace, has no guardrails around him and is going to see his wealth probably cut in half,” he said, noting that all people “eventually screw up.”

[Popeye]

Do you trust them to reasonably use the power?
Is force really needed if all you have to do is out wait them?
The San Francisco Police Department is currently petitioning the city's Board of Supervisors for permission to deploy robots to kill suspects that law enforcement deems a sufficient threat that the "risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD." The draft policy, which was written by the SFPD itself, also seeks to exclude "hundreds of assault rifles from its inventory of military-style weapons and for not include personnel costs in the price of its weapons," according to a report from Mission Local.
This makes me remember the 1986 MOVE bombing, by Philadelphia police. 11 where killed and 250 made homeless. https://www.engadget.com/san-francisco- ... 14906.html

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

Today, Ye, also known as Kanye West, appeared with right-wing white supremacist Nick Fuentes on Alex Jones’s show InfoWars, and was so vile even Jones began to push back. Eventually, Ye praised Nazis and Adolf Hitler. Then, and only then, did the Twitter account of the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee delete its tweet of October 6, 2022, that read: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ber-1-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

https://apple.news/Al1N5OUvHQUSUz7EtIbcZFQ

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[Simon of the Playa]

The letter outlines the timing of the 2018 financial bailout of the badly leveraged Kushner property at 666 Fifth Avenue (now known as 660 Fifth Avenue) with more than $1 billion paid in advance from Qatar. Qatar had repeatedly refused to invest in the property, but after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates imposed a blockade on Qatar—after Kushner discussed isolating Qatar with them without informing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—Qatar suddenly threw in the necessary cash. Shortly after that, the Saudi and UAE governments lifted the blockade, with Kushner taking credit for brokering the agreement.

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ber-7-2022

[Simon of the Playa]

“We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets,” Wax said, as reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“This is the only language the left understands. The language of pure and unadulterated power."


https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3771 ... lanned-it/

[lucky420]

They’re pretty stupid if they think the left doesn’t have guns.

[The Rod]

The left? What left? Individual leftists may well be armed but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that the U.S. has any sort of political leftist movement.

[lucky420]

The left? What left? Individual leftists may well be armed but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that the U.S. has any sort of political leftist movement.

[Simon of the Playa]

"Mark, in seeing what’s happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of � no return � in saving our Republic !! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!"


https://talkingpointsmemo.com/feature/m ... 0-election

[some seeing eye]

"Common Good Constitutionalism" (is constitutionalism even a word?) is what they do in China. All laws are interpreted by courts (and police) on their adherence to Communist Party goals. China does not have an independent judiciary, and other dictatorships do not have an independent judiciary.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... s-00069201

[The Rod]

"Common Good Constitutionalism" (is constitutionalism even a word?) is what they do in China. All laws are interpreted by courts (and police) on their adherence to Communist Party goals. China does not have an independent judiciary, and other dictatorships do not have an independent judiciary.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... s-00069201

It was only a matter of time before the fascists stopped pretending that “liberty” actually meant anything

[The Rod]

the liberals are making bad 4D chess moves again

"Don’t get me wrong. It is essential that the former president be held accountable. His subversion of Congress, the electoral process and our principles of democracy caused grave damage, and his recent call to terminate the Constitution in order to undo the 2020 election demonstrates that he continues to threaten our democratic institutions. He violated his oath to uphold the Constitution while serving as president, and he continues to reject our constitutional values as a former president.

However, making the case for a federal criminal prosecution is the responsibility of the U.S. Department of Justice rather than Congress. The House created the Jan. 6 committee to undertake a legislative investigation aimed at figuring out how to prevent future assaults on the Capitol and on democracy more generally. Ironically, in trying to hold Trump accountable under the law, the committee seems to be flouting the rule of law."

[Elorrum]

Fox News' Sean Hannity says he knew all along Trump lost the election
"I did not believe it for one second," Hannity testified, according to an attorney for Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, who was offering it as a precise quote.

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/11449263 ... suit-trump

[Simon of the Playa]

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[some seeing eye]

^ I was thinking about that. They should have a camera or cameras pointed at the congress to get reaction shots and butt-sitters for major speeches, this, State of the Union, and the like.

^^ Thanks. I did the seminal work on election software. FOX admits lying? Now I need to dig into this case.

[some seeing eye]

I'm really getting tired of bully personalities and their followers in politics. We are getting ex-military who can't leave the killing persona behind on the battlefield.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/opin ... trump.html

OPINION
Do Not Cross Ron DeSantis
Dec. 22, 2022

By Frank Bruni

Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years.

When you picture Ron DeSantis, is he smiling or glowering? Telling you about some new project he’ll bring to life or some group of people he’ll bring to their knees? Sowing inspiration or vowing retribution?

I’m guessing he’s the seething protagonist of a revenge thriller.

That’s precisely the starring role he wants.

Here’s DeSantis as he tortures Disney for daring to disagree with his pet education law — he’s a Republican contract killer coming for Mickey Mouse. Here he is punishing and publicly shaming a Tampa-area prosecutor who doesn’t share his restrictive views on abortion. And here he is insisting that a grand jury in Florida investigate Pfizer and Moderna for allegedly exaggerating the efficacy of Covid vaccines.

His big set piece is a sadistic game with migrants, whom he relocates from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard not to benefit them but to bedevil his Democratic adversaries. And his vow to make Florida “where woke goes to die”? Woke isn’t meeting any natural end in the Sunshine State. It’s crossing paths with an assassin.

The Florida governor and Republican supernova models a version of politics not as messy theater for problem solving but as spiteful arena for retaliation, in which you’re defined by your enemies — or, rather, by how effectively you torment them.

An arena like the House of Representatives in the new year, when Republicans assume control of the chamber. How soon will they come for Hunter Biden? Anthony Fauci? Alejandro Mayorkas? They’re itching to impeach anyone who sits still long enough to be impeached. They’re bent on humiliation.

That approach isn’t new, nor is it confined to one party. It’s what has turned Supreme Court confirmation hearings into such splenetic spectacles, with senators scoring the most points by exhibiting the most disdain for nominees and making them squirm most visibly.

But Donald Trump raised it several nasty notches during and after his 2016 presidential campaign, when he beamed as his Hillary-hating supporters chanted, “Lock her up!” He understood that in an era of such intense negative partisanship, with so many people voting against the other team, grudges were gold.

“He enjoyed some of his success by being viciously retaliatory,” James Kimmel Jr., a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, said when we spoke recently. “That has worked for him, at least in outward-seeming ways.” It carried him to “the highest pulpit that the country has available,” Kimmel noted, and other people — including other politicians — extract lessons from that.

DeSantis did. That’s obvious in his public remarks, like the ones he made in Pennsylvania on behalf of Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of the state, before the midterms. Gabriel Sherman described the scene in a profile of DeSantis in Vanity Fair:

He offered cursory praise for Mastriano and then uncorked a grievance-fueled stump speech that sounded like it had been written by A.I. plugged into Fox News. In DeSantis’s telling, the honest people of Florida were besieged by a vast array of liberal scourges: Big Tech, I.R.S. agents, George Soros, the Biden administration, the corporate media, illegal immigrants, Anthony Fauci, police defunders, Disney, China, communism, cancel culture, critical race theory, and woke gender ideology. Only Ron DeSantis was brave enough to confront these malign forces.

The cynicism and nihilism stoked by rants like that get the country nowhere, and the supremacy of revenge as a political tactic allows politicians who are receiving legitimate scrutiny — as Trump is for his tax returns — to explain it away as reflexive payback. If everyone’s perceived as indiscriminately vengeful, no investigation has merit and no investigator is on the side of the angels.

That suits DeSantis. He’s a self-styled terminator and, silly me, I thought real leaders were supposed to be germinators. But that’s not the temper of these times. DeSantis has sized them up accurately. And shrunk himself accordingly.



Bonus:

Dana Milbank has been listening closely to Representative Kevin McCarthy as the California Republican campaigns, ineloquently, to become the next speaker of the House: “Deep in his brain there seems to be a syntax scrambler (I’m guessing it was put there by Hunter Biden, or perhaps the Chinese) that causes violent clashes between subjects and objects, nouns and verbs, singular and plural, and past and present.” (Thanks to Donna Silver of Madison, Wis., and Arlyne Willcox of Manhasset, N.Y., for nominating this.)

[Simon of the Playa]

"Former president Trump was not simply the general instigator of the Big Lie that he had won the election, and the person egging on his violent supporters, but also that he was the prime instigator of the attempt to file false slates of electors. This puts him at the heart of the attempt to defraud the U.S. government and to interfere with an official proceeding. On page 346, the report says: “The evidence indicates that by December 7th or 8th, President Trump had decided to pursue the fake elector plan and was driving it.” In that effort, he had the help of Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, even after White House lawyers had called the plan illegal and had backed away from it.

Committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS)’s introduction to the report put Trump’s effort in the larger context of a history that reaches all the way back to the American Revolution. “Our country has come too far to allow a defeated President to turn himself into a successful tyrant by upending our democratic institutions, fomenting violence, and…opening the door to those in our country whose hatred and bigotry threaten equality and justice for all Americans.”

“We can never surrender to democracy’s enemies. We can never allow America to be defined by forces of division and hatred. We can never go backward in the progress we have made through the sacrifice and dedication of true patriots. We can never and will never relent in our pursuit of a more perfect union with liberty and justice for all Americans.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... er-23-2022


here, have a Gift NFT.

have a merry christmas , happy holidays, and a wonderful new year

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[Simon of the Playa]

[Simon of the Playa]

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well, that is an interesting turn of events...

[Simon of the Playa]

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[some seeing eye]

I didn't notice you already posted this when I posted. It's pretty funny

[Simon of the Playa]

the year in politics, or how the republicans sucked, and the democrats didn't...

but you know, that is kinda a given...


https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... er-30-2022