US Politics

[Tracker]

38 minutes ago, wpgallday1960 said:

I thought the Washington Post was owned by Jeff Bezos.  Just checked, he does.

Thanks for the info- Bezos must have bought it in the last few years, but the bias still persists.

[bustamente]

Okay she really can't be this stupid, or maybe she is but the people watching her are probably still trying to figure it out

 

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, bustamente said:

Okay she really can't be this stupid, or maybe she is but the people watching her are probably still trying to figure it out

 

Probably the most intelligent exchange on Faux News in many months.

[Wideleft]

14 hours ago, Tracker said:

Thanks for the info- Bezos must have bought it in the last few years, but the bias still persists.

You're not claiming the Post is biased by reading one opinion column?

It's a really, really good paper.  I've been a subscriber for 2 years and they are doing important investigative work and long-form climate stories that no one else is.

Take advantage of a free 30 day subscription and find out for yourself.

[JCon]

Nope, just like the NYT, the opinion section just allows the alt-right free space to make up their own narrative, without pushback or fact checking. It's a cesspool, just like the rest of US media. All about protecting the uber-rich and have the masses fight amongst themselves. 

[Tracker]

Pro-Trump Lawyer Tried to Instigate ‘Special Ops Mission’ in Germany to Sell Election Lie, Book Says

A lawyer who spearheaded Trumpworld efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election win tried to instigate a “special operations mission” in Germany as part of her bid to peddle the lie that Donald Trump was the real winner, a new book claims. Sidney Powell, a former lawyer to Michael Flynn who advised Donald Trump on his efforts to retain power, contacted a Pentagon official weeks after the election to push the bizarre claim that the then-CIA director was being held captive in Germany, according to the new Jonathan Karl book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.

“Gina Haspel has been hurt and taken into custody in Germany,” the book quotes Powell telling Ezra Cohen, a senior intelligence official. “You need to launch a special operations mission to get her,” Powell reportedly said, claiming that Haspel had somehow been injured during a deep state mission to get an election-related server that would prove the votes had been rigged. “They needed to get the server and force Haspel to confess,” Karl writes of Powell’s claims. Her call to Cohen reportedly came after a similar overture by former national security adviser Michael Flynn, another QAnon supporter who demanded that Cohen return from an overseas trip because “big things” were about to happen. “As Flynn ranted about the election fight, [Cohen] felt his old boss sounded manic,” the book notes.

Pro-Trump Lawyer Tried to Instigate ‘Special Ops Mission’ in Germany to Sell Election Lie, Book Says (thedailybeast.com)

[bustamente]

ABC's Jonathan Karl is making the rounds with his new book about Trump and thinks Trump is living in the past and has no thoughts on trying to be President again because frankly he knows he would lose and that would devastate him.

[HardCoreBlue]

2 hours ago, bustamente said:

ABC's Jonathan Karl is making the rounds with his new book about Trump and thinks Trump is living in the past and has no thoughts on trying to be President again because frankly he knows he would lose and that would devastate him.

But the wingnuts and their ardent supporters from all walks of life may have laid enough groundwork to ensure any election where Donald Trump or a reasonable facsimile doesn’t win an election is fraudulent. You win if you win and you win if you lose because I can’t lose 76 million people say so and the other 81 million people aren’t legal voters.

[bustamente]

There is always a lawyer who thinks they are going to get paid

 

[Tracker]

'Whole case is a mess': Internet stunned as judge lets Rittenhouse choose final jurors in raffle system
   
Controversial Judge Bruce Schroeder allowed Kyle Rittenhouse, on trial for shooting three people and killing two of them with an AR-15 assault weapon he had illegally obtains and carried across state lines, with literally having a hand in choosing the twelve jurors who will now decide his fate.

Judge Schroder has been under fire for what many see as extraordinary deference to Rittenhouse, some even say support of Rittenhouse. Others have noted his cell phone ring tone is the same song as Donald Trump's campaign theme song, and others still were offended by at least one offhand "joke" Schroder made. Trial watchers were also stunned when Schroder falsely claimed zooming in on a photo as millions of people do daily to enlarge it is "so-called scientific evidence." And others were disturbed by Schroeder's very public attacks on the prosecutor.

18 jurors sat through the entire trial, but only 12, as is customary, will decide the case.

"At the direction of Circuit Judge Bruce Schroder," the Associated Press reports Tuesday afternoon, "Rittenhouse's attorney placed slips of paper into a raffle drum with the numbers of each of the 18 jurors on it who sat through the two-week trial. The drum had been sitting on a window ledge throughout the trial but was placed in front of Rittenhouse at the defense table Tuesday."

'Whole case is a mess': Internet stunned as judge lets Rittenhouse choose final jurors in raffle system - Alternet.org

[JCon]

3 minutes ago, Tracker said:

'Whole case is a mess': Internet stunned as judge lets Rittenhouse choose final jurors in raffle system
   
Controversial Judge Bruce Schroeder allowed Kyle Rittenhouse, on trial for shooting three people and killing two of them with an AR-15 assault weapon he had illegally obtains and carried across state lines, with literally having a hand in choosing the twelve jurors who will now decide his fate.

Judge Schroder has been under fire for what many see as extraordinary deference to Rittenhouse, some even say support of Rittenhouse. Others have noted his cell phone ring tone is the same song as Donald Trump's campaign theme song, and others still were offended by at least one offhand "joke" Schroder made. Trial watchers were also stunned when Schroder falsely claimed zooming in on a photo as millions of people do daily to enlarge it is "so-called scientific evidence." And others were disturbed by Schroeder's very public attacks on the prosecutor.

18 jurors sat through the entire trial, but only 12, as is customary, will decide the case.

"At the direction of Circuit Judge Bruce Schroder," the Associated Press reports Tuesday afternoon, "Rittenhouse's attorney placed slips of paper into a raffle drum with the numbers of each of the 18 jurors on it who sat through the two-week trial. The drum had been sitting on a window ledge throughout the trial but was placed in front of Rittenhouse at the defense table Tuesday."

'Whole case is a mess': Internet stunned as judge lets Rittenhouse choose final jurors in raffle system - Alternet.org

This is common. Sometimes the clerk does it, sometimes the defendant. 

[bustamente]

How bad has it gotten in the States where a person in Congress can make a video threatening or killing other members and the President and still be in politics.

[bustamente]

As a follow up they are voting to censure Gosar this afternoon and what do you know pretty well all the Republicans are in favor of violence against their fellow house members just like what happened on 1/6 

[bustamente]

So of the 2 Republicans that voted for censure 1 is quitting and the other is being pushed out of the GOP, Democrats are hooped when they lose the House

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, bustamente said:

So of the 2 Republicans that voted for censure 1 is quitting and the other is being pushed out of the GOP, Democrats are hooped when they lose the House

This is exactly why the rabid wing of the GOP has attacked the moderates there. A prominent conservative law professor recently wrote an article about how, despite the recent charges against rioters, he has grave concerns about the future of democracy in the US.

Conservative anti-Trump law professor explains why the 'prognosis for democracy is bleak' in America - Alternet.org

[Tracker]

The evidence we have now about the blueprint for Trump's coup attempt is utterly damning
 

On January 2, Trump lawyer John Eastman called into Steve Bannon's War Room podcast to explain how to steal the election. Eastman told Bannon that Vice President Mike Pence could still overturn Biden's victory. The interview was part of an extremely public campaign by Trump and his closest allies to lobby Pence to steal the election during the certification ceremony.

One of Eastman's crackpot theories was that the vice president has the unilateral power to accept or reject electoral votes at his whim, or failing that, to somehow "send the election back" to Republican-controlled swing state legislatures that would disregard the will of their people and replace Biden's electors with Trump's.

Eastman was Trump's master of self-serving constitutional bafflegab. His job was to spin elaborate pseudo-legal theories to justify Trump's assault on democracy. It was Eastman who wrote the notorious memos outlining his fanciful legal arguments for why the vice president has the power to unilaterally reelect himself. Eastman also co-wrote a blueprint for how Trump could use the military, the police, and criminal gangs to hold onto power after a disputed election. Eastman even spoke at Trump's rally on the Ellipse, making wild allegations of election fraud before Trump set the mob on the Capitol.

To understand January 6, you have to think in terms of an inside game and an outside game. The inside game was to steal the election procedurally. The outside game was to gather a mob to terrorize officials into going along with it. Eastman was a conceptual architect of both the paper coup attempt and of the plan for the political repression that Trumpists expected to follow in the wake of the theft.

READ: A growing threat is emerging from the theocratic wing of the GOP — but many liberals are missing it

It all comes back to the Big Lie of massive Democratic voter fraud in the swing states. Trump used the fantasy of a stolen election to gather his supporters in Washington for a "wild protest" on January 6, whip them into a rage and set them on the Capitol. Eastman used the same lie to justify his schemes to overturn the election procedurally.

In his various memos and public appearances, Eastman presented several paths to overrule the will of the people, but his ultimate justification was always the same: Democratic "fraud" in the swing states invalidated their certified slates of Biden electors.

Therefore, he maintained, Mike Pence was entitled to unilaterally cast aside the electoral votes and count alternate slates of fake electors in their place or discard the votes from those states altogether, denying either candidate the necessary 270 votes and throwing the election to the state delegations in the House.

As Eastman wrote in his second memo, Trump would prevail, "if the Republicans in the State Delegations stand firm." At the time, the GOP caucus was deeply divided over whether to back Trump's paper coup, and Pence was signalling he was not willing to play his assigned role.

READ: 'Whole case is a mess': Internet stunned as judge lets Rittenhouse choose final jurors in raffle system

Hence the need for extra muscle on the outside.

This fits with what another key conspirator has said about his reason for gathering a mob on January 6. "We […] schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting," said Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander, regarding his motives. He wanted to "change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside."

After an extended rant about the cowardice of Mike Pence, the last order Trump gave the mob before sending them down Pennsylvania Avenue was that they must give "boldness" to "weak Republicans."

Trump's command echoed Eastman's language in the longer of the two memos in which he described his own scheme as "BOLD, certainly."

Read: 'Conspiracy nuts': DeSantis is in the hot seat after his aide gets caught pushing anti-Semitic theory

The label "coup" conjures up images of a military takeover, but a procedural coup under the threat of violence is still a coup.

Denialists try to mislead by pointing to the insurgents' relatively light weaponry and saying: "You don't think they meant to overthrow the US government with that, do you?" But the plan was never to physically seize control of the government. Insurgents just had to bully Pence and House Republicans into reversing the election for Trump.

Trump's advisors were well aware that reversing a free and fair election would provoke national outrage and widespread protests. Eastman's blueprint for leveraging the military, the police, and criminal gangs to hold onto power would work as well or better after a procedural coup as it would after an uncertain Election Night (the scenario nominally entertained in the report). A stolen election would put Biden supporters in the streets where the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers would be waiting for them, prepared to start or escalate violence wherever they could. This kind of unrest was exactly what Eastman warned local officials to be prepared to suppress.

We eagerly await what Bannon and Eastman will tell the January 6 committee, but what they've already said is utterly damning.

The evidence we have now about the blueprint for Trump's coup attempt is utterly damning - Alternet.org

[blue_gold_84]

The judge overseeing this trial is such a clown.

[HardCoreBlue]

3 hours ago, blue_gold_84 said:

The judge overseeing this trial is such a clown.

There is definitely something wrong with him. Some neuron is not firing correctly. 

[Tracker]

3 minutes ago, HardCoreBlue said:

There is definitely something wrong with him. Some neuron is not firing correctly. 

This judge is apparently a Trump supporter- his cellphone chimed during the trial and the chime was Trump's rally song. His berating and restricting of the prosecution's lines of questioning of Rittenhouse ought to  provide ample grounds for appeal, or declaration of a mistrial- which Rittenhouse's  lawyer may want. In the US justice system, a defence attorney with a weak case often seeks to have mistrials declared in the hopes of the prosecution will give up.

[JCon]

This is what happens when you elect judges. It's a kangaroo court down there for everyone. Left or right. It's insane that any country would run this way. 

[TrueBlue4ever]

7 minutes ago, Tracker said:

This judge is apparently a Trump supporter- his cellphone chimed during the trial and the chime was Trump's rally song. His berating and restricting of the prosecution's lines of questioning of Rittenhouse ought to  provide ample grounds for appeal, or declaration of a mistrial- which Rittenhouse's  lawyer may want. In the US justice system, a defence attorney with a weak case often seeks to have mistrials declared in the hopes of the prosecution will give up.

The Prosecutor has no right of appeal in a criminal trial in the US. Different from Canada. Also, a mistrial in the States can be “with prejudice” meaning no do-over allowed. Again different from Canada. 

[Bigblue204]

19 hours ago, Tracker said:

This is exactly why the rabid wing of the GOP has attacked the moderates there. A prominent conservative law professor recently wrote an article about how, despite the recent charges against rioters, he has grave concerns about the future of democracy in the US.

Conservative anti-Trump law professor explains why the 'prognosis for democracy is bleak' in America - Alternet.org

There is no democracy in the US and there hasn't been for sometime.

[blue_gold_84]

5 minutes ago, Bigblue204 said:

There is no democracy in the US and there hasn't been for sometime.

Not when you have mouth-breathers like this putz in office: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/speech-congress-canada-1.6253849

Quote

How's this for an attention-grabbing bit of political oratory, delivered in the United States House of Representatives? A Wisconsin Republican opined that Canada and lots of other places are less successful than the United States and offered his theory about why they are "countries that fail."

Rep. Glenn Grothman says it's because of cultural divisions. In Canada's case, he says, those divisions involve language. And he lumped it in with a long list of what he called failed countries.

"I never felt Canada was quite as successful as America," he began in his Nov. 16 speech. "[That's] because, to a degree, their elections pitted the French speakers against the English speakers."

He went on to say it's true in lots of other places, including the continent of Africa that contains 54 countries: "You look at elections in the Middle East, and it is the Sunnis against the Shiites. You look at elections in Africa, and it is one tribe against another tribe."

In other words, he said, when people in these countries "go to the polls, they don't say what is the appropriate money to spend on national defence or what is our roads policy or what should be appropriate criminal justice policy or the length of jail sentences.

"No, in these countries that fail, the elections are a contest of one ethnic group against another."

Is it just me or is the state of Wisconsin rife with brainless dipshits?

[TrueBlue4ever]

8 minutes ago, blue_gold_84 said:

Not when you have mouth-breathers like this putz in office: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/speech-congress-canada-1.6253849

Is it just me or is the state of [insert US state here] rife with brainless dipshits?

FIFY. 

[FrostyWinnipeg]