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

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

oh look, yet another state i will fly over and never visit or spend money in.

[Simon of the Playa]

Representative Daniel Goldman (D-NY) noted: “Defending Trump is not a legitimate legislative purpose for Congress to investigate a state district attorney. Congress has no jurisdiction to investigate the Manhattan DA, which receives no federal funding nor has any other federal nexus.”

Representative Glenn Ivey (D-MD), a former state’s attorney for Prince George’s County, went further, saying that he was “stunned” that the House Republicans were trying to obstruct a criminal investigation and intimidate an elected state law enforcement official.

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ch-20-2023

[some seeing eye]

The Federalist Society Isn’t Quite Sure About Democracy Anymore

After recent Supreme Court wins, the society’s youth arm debates the next stage for the conservative legal movement.

More oligarchs, plutocracy, and corruption...

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... n-00087270

[Simon of the Playa]

[Simon of the Playa]

Donald Koresh

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

arrest all 3 of them.

donny, puti, and bibi.

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[The Rod]

Some light reading for your weekend:

China on Tuesday issued "The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2022."

Listed as major areas of human rights violations:

I. Dysfunctional Civil Rights Protection System

II. Hollowed-out American-style Electoral Democracy

III. Growing Racial Discrimination and Inequality

IV. Worsening Subsistence Crisis among U.S. Underclass

V. Historic Retrogression in Women's and Children's Rights

VI. Wanton Violation of Other Countries' Human Rights and Trampling on Justice

“ The United States, founded on colonialism, racist slavery and inequality in labor, possession and distribution, has further fallen into a quagmire of system failure, governance deficits, racial divide and social unrest in recent years under the interaction of its polarized economic distribution pattern, racial conflict dominated social pattern and capital interest groups controlled political pattern.”

[lucky420]

Some light reading for your weekend:

China on Tuesday issued "The Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2022."

Listed as major areas of human rights violations:

I. Dysfunctional Civil Rights Protection System

II. Hollowed-out American-style Electoral Democracy

III. Growing Racial Discrimination and Inequality

IV. Worsening Subsistence Crisis among U.S. Underclass

V. Historic Retrogression in Women's and Children's Rights

VI. Wanton Violation of Other Countries' Human Rights and Trampling on Justice

“ The United States, founded on colonialism, racist slavery and inequality in labor, possession and distribution, has further fallen into a quagmire of system failure, governance deficits, racial divide and social unrest in recent years under the interaction of its polarized economic distribution pattern, racial conflict dominated social pattern and capital interest groups controlled political pattern.”

Well, they’re not wrong

[The Rod]

But let’s talk some more about how evil TikTok is and how it should definitely, for sure, 100% be banned. And let’s not talk about how it’s becoming an increasingly effective tool for activists and unionizers in the USA.

Which type of country bans an entire social media platform? Is the authoritarian ones or the other kind?

[Simon of the Playa]

swipe right...

[some seeing eye]

Trump Tower "crime scene"

[Simon of the Playa]

"My grandparent’s generation served in World War II. They were all anti-fascists. My grandmother’s brother, who died in France, he was an anti-fascist. And really, what the current “antifa panic” boils down to is a right-wing ecosystem that is trying to perpetuate fascism, and racism, and xenophobia and anti-semitism — who have an incentive to see these problems brew in the United States."


Task Force Butler

[The Rod]

Everyone thinks of anti-fascism as punching neo-nazis and WWII veterans bravely fighting classic nazis. Which is great imagery and inspires noble feelings of self-superiority. But hardly anyone thinks of anti-fascism as dismantling the systems that incentivizes the rise of fascist movements in the first place.

It’s the worlds worst game of wack a mole.

And it goes on and on and on…

[Simon of the Playa]

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[The Rod]

why does a computer generated image have a copyright?

[Simon of the Playa]

"Because Mark Meadows sat in original planning meeting of Jan 6, he rats out Giuliani, General Flynn, the Kraken Lady & John Eastman. Because he arranged the theft of classified docs, he rats out Corey Lewandowsky, Christina Bobblehead etc

Odds of flip 99.3%"


who do you have on your Rat Bingo Card?

[some seeing eye]

why does a computer generated image have a copyright?

It is being discussed:

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/01/11676284 ... authorship

[Simon of the Playa]

The Supreme Court was in the news this morning, as Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica explained that for more than twenty years Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has enjoyed the hospitality and funding of Dallas real estate magnate and major Republican donor Harlan Crow. Thomas and his wife Ginni, who was closely involved in challenging the 2020 presidential election, have taken trips in private jets and gone on vacations with Crow worth as much as $500,000.

Thomas did not disclose any of these valuable gifts. Indeed, in a documentary funded in part by Crow, Thomas presented himself as a regular guy. “I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” he said. “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that—I prefer being around that.”

After the story dropped, David G. Savage of the Los Angeles Times recalled that his newspaper had disclosed the close connections between Thomas and Crow in 2004, noting, for example, that Crow had given Thomas a $19,000 Bible that had belonged to the famous formerly enslaved abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass and a $15,000 bust of Abraham Lincoln. After their story appeared, it seems that Thomas did not stop accepting expensive gifts and travel from the wealthy mogul, but instead stopped disclosing them.

In Crow’s company, Thomas rubbed elbows with his host’s other guests, including senior business executives, major Republican donors, and leaders of right-wing think tanks. Crow has worked hard to move the judiciary and the legal system to the right, and at one of the properties where Thomas vacations, there is a painting of him in conversation with a number of figures, including Leonard Leo, the leader of the Federalist Society who has orchestrated the court’s hard-right turn. Leo is now overseeing Marble Freedom Trust, established to disburse funds from a $1.6 billion bequest to manipulate elections in favor of Republicans.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted: “Important for news media to not simply label this guy as a ‘[Republican] mega donor’. It’s so much worse. Crow has many interests before the Supreme Court. His groups file petitions before the court. It’s the clearest, most brazen violation of judicial ethics you can imagine.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ril-6-2023

[Simon of the Playa]

"Texas judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an anti-abortion Trump appointee, has ruled that the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug mifepristone in 2000 was flawed and must be suspended. In the 23 years since its approval, the drug has been widely proved to be safe, and this is the first time a court has ordered the FDA to remove a drug from the market.


Kacsmaryk also said that mailing mifepristone across state lines is illegal based on the Comstock Act, which Congress passed in 1873, making it illegal to send contraceptive materials through the mail. He went further than that, though, going far beyond the Dobbs decision to embrace the concept that a fertilized egg is an “unborn human” from the time of conception.

He stayed the ruling for a week to give the government time to respond.

President Joe Biden vowed to fight the ruling. He noted that the Department of Justice has already filed an appeal and will seek an immediate stay. “But let’s be clear,” he wrote, “the only way to stop those who are committed to taking away women’s rights and freedoms in every state is to elect a Congress who will pass a law restoring Roe versus Wade. Vice President Harris and I will continue to lead the fight to protect a woman’s right to an abortion, and to make her own decisions about her own health. That is our commitment.”

Less than an hour after Kacsmaryk’s ruling, federal judge Thomas O. Rice in Washington state issued an injunction prohibiting the FDA from pulling mifepristone from the market.

With two opposing rulings in place, the case will go quickly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But the Supreme Court has its own issues right now. Today, Justice Clarence Thomas released a statement saying that he did not disclose the lavish gifts he received from right-wing megadonor Harlan Crow on the advice of “colleagues and others in the judiciary,” but he did not say who those individuals were. He says he will comply with new regulations in the future.

Thomas said that he and his wife Ginni had been dear friends of the Crows for over 25 years, but he joined the court over 30 years ago, making more than one commenter note that the friendship certainly seemed to be based on Crow’s access to the Supreme Court through Thomas. In 2011, Ian Millhiser, then of ThinkProgress, noted that Thomas sided with the American Enterprise Institute and the Center for the Community Interest, both of which were affiliated with Crow, in every case concerning them that had come before the Supreme Court."

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ril-7-2023

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

ProPublica interviewed Martin, his former classmates and former staff at both schools. The exact total Crow paid for Martin’s education over the years remains unclear. If he paid for all four years at the two schools, the price tag could have exceeded $150,000, according to public records of tuition rates at the schools.

Thomas did not report the tuition payments from Crow on his annual financial disclosures. Several years earlier, Thomas disclosed a gift of $5,000 for Martin’s education from another friend. It is not clear why he reported that payment but not Crow’s.


https://www.propublica.org/article/clar ... ion-scotus

[Simon of the Playa]

drip. drip. drip....

A conservative activist helped Ginni Thomas rake in nearly $100,000 for consulting, The Washington Post reported.

Conservative lawyer Leonard Leo reportedly ensured Ginni Thomas' name was kept off the paperwork.

The nonprofit that was billed filed an amicus brief before the Supreme Court that same year.

"When you funnel tens of thousands of dollars to the wife of a Supreme Court justice and go out of your way to specify that her name must be kept off all records of the transaction, that means you know you are doing something wrong," Sarah Lipton-Lubet, president of the Supreme Court advocacy nonprofit Take Back the Court, said in a statement shared with Insider.


https://www.businessinsider.com/ginni-t ... urt-2023-5

[Simon of the Playa]

"NRA money backed Republican candidates. In 2012 the NRA spent $9 million in the presidential election, and in 2014 it spent $13 million. Then, in 2016, it spent over $50 million on Republican candidates, including more than $30 million on Trump’s effort to win the White House. This money was vital to Trump, since many other Republican super PACs refused to back him. The NRA spent more money on Trump than any other outside group, including the leading Trump super PAC, which spent $20.3 million.

The unfettered right to own and carry weapons has come to symbolize the Republican Party’s ideology of individual liberty. Lawmakers and activists have not been able to overcome Republican insistence on gun rights despite the mass shootings that have risen since their new emphasis on guns."

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... may-6-2023

[Simon of the Playa]

[Simon of the Playa]

Nazis on the Washington Mall.


https://www.instagram.com/reel/CsMfyqir ... IwNjQ2YQ==

[Simon of the Playa]

The story of her time with Giuliani, whom she describes as a chronically alcoholic sexual abuser prone to racist and sexist outbursts, is bad enough—and she claims to have recordings—but her other allegations are politically incendiary. She claims to have heard Giuliani say that he was selling presidential pardons for $2 million a pop, splitting the proceeds with Trump, and that Giuliani told her on February 7, 2019, “about a plan that had been prepared for if Trump lost the 2020 election.” Specifically, Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy that Trump’s team would claim that there was ‘voter fraud’ and that Trump had actually won the election…. That same day, Giuliani had Ms. Dunphy sit in on a speakerphone conversation about a potential business opportunity involving a $72 billion dollar gas deal in China.”

Also of note is her claim that, since part of her job was managing emails, Giuliani gave her access to his email account. The system stored at least 23,000 emails on her own personal computer, including “privileged, confidential, and highly sensitive” emails from, to, or concerning Trump, his children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump; Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; Trump’s lawyers and advisors; media figures including Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson; and so on.

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ay-15-2023

[Simon of the Playa]

Video from CNN affiliate WUSA shows a Park Police officer taking inventory of the U-Haul truck, packing up several pieces of evidence. Among the items that appear to be from the truck are a flag of what appears to be a swastika, a black backpack and a roll of duct tape.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/23/politics ... index.html