US Politics

[bustamente]

1/6 Committee says it has enough to indict Trump but some members don't think it's the right move and it would look political, stop wasting peoples time either indict or disband and wait for the republicans to take over and come after you.

[HardCoreBlue]

17 minutes ago, bustamente said:

1/6 Committee says it has enough to indict Trump but some members don't think it's the right move and it would look political, stop wasting peoples time either indict or disband and wait for the republicans to take over and come after you.

Cynically all this will turn out to be is grandstanding  at it's finest with no action. They'll pat themselves on their backs, twitter a few things out, finger wag here finger wag there, onto their next crusade full of empty words.

[17to85]

And then wonder how they wound up in a republican dictatorship 

[Tracker]

'Criminal conspiratorial intent': Legal experts stunned Trump Jr. claimed 'operational control' over election results
   
Two days before the 2020 election was called for Joe Biden the President’s son, Donald Trump, Jr. sent a text to the White House Chief of Staff that said “we have operational control” to ensure a second Trump term, according to a just-published CNN bombshell report.
“It’s very simple,” Trump Jr. added in the November 5 text. “We have multiple paths We control them all.”

The damning text to Mark Meadows did not end there.

“We have operational control Total leverage,” Trump Jr’s text continued. “Moral High Ground POTUS must start 2nd term now.”

Legal experts are weighing in.

U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), an attorney who obtained the rank of Colonel in the Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps made sure to stress the President’s son’s remarks seem to reveal illegality:
Former federal prosecutor of 30 years, Glenn Kirschner, wrote: “The ‘Subject’ line of Don Jr.’s email might as well have been, ‘I’m a member of my father’s criminal conspiracy to overturn the election.’ ”

And he asks, “How long do we have to endure this open, treasonous criminality by Trump and company before someone gets indicted?”

Election law expert Rick Hasen, a law and political science professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law says “Mark Meadows election subversion texts are the gift that keep on giving. It’s amazing he didn’t fight against turning them over.”

Former US Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal served up a one-word response: “Premeditated.”

[bustamente]

Do Americans really want to show the world what a corrupt and truly money grubbing country they are full of racists and lunatics all on display, that's what will happen when the DOJ starts indicting Trump and all his cronies.

[Mark F]

11 hours ago, Tracker said:

Criminal conspiratorial intent': Legal experts stunned Trump Jr. claimed 'operational control' over election results

Seventy or eighty million supporters, plus fox news fully onside trump openly criminal, anti democracy outift.

you really wonder whats going to happen. Seems to be no bottom.

[Tracker]

32 minutes ago, Mark F said:

Seventy or eighty million supporters, plus fox news fully onside trump openly criminal, anti democracy outift.

you really wonder whats going to happen. Seems to be no bottom.

All the sane non-fascist Americans can hope for is that Garland is getting all of his ducks in a row before a mushroom-shaped cloud appears over Mar-A-Lago.

[blue_gold_84]

https://www.psypost.org/2022/04/donald-trumps-presidency-associated-with-significant-changes-in-the-topography-of-prejudice-in-the-united-states-62880

Quote

A series of 13 studies with over 10,000 participants tested the change in Americans’ prejudice following the presidency of Donald Trump. The researchers found that explicit racial and religious prejudice increased amongst Trump’s supporters, while prejudice decreased among those who opposed him. This research was published in Nature Human Behavior.

In recent decades, there has been a downward trend in prejudice toward racial and religious minorities. However, some studies suggest that racial and religious prejudice had a critical role in Trump’s presidential victory. While some commentators have suggested that numerous trends following the 2016 elections (e.g., increases in reports of hate crimes, minorities reporting more discrimination) point toward a rise in racial and religious prejudice in America, others have argued that these increases may be a consequence of “increased national attention to issues of prejudice.” Other commentators from both sides of the political spectrum have suggested that even if there has been a rise in discrimination, it only reflects extremist fringe groups, rather than the broader American population.

The authors concluded, “Together, this research suggests that the presidency of Donald Trump may have substantially reshaped the topography of prejudice in the United States.”

[JCon]

3 minutes ago, blue_gold_84 said:

https://www.psypost.org/2022/04/donald-trumps-presidency-associated-with-significant-changes-in-the-topography-of-prejudice-in-the-united-states-62880

[Tracker]

The goal of the GOP's QAnon-influenced "groomer" troll: More political violence

Republicans don't really think liberals are "grooming" children — but they know saying so is permission to violence
Here is the most important thing to remember about the word "groomer": Exactly zero percent of the people flinging the word at progressives care one bit about child abuse. This is all just pure, uncut trolling. It's never meant as a sincere concern or accusation. Indeed, the deep unfairness of the word "groomer" is the point. What right-wing trolls want more desperately than anything else is to "trigger" liberals. Falsely accusing someone of heinous crimes, while unimaginative, is a crude-but-effective way to bully people. 

So in the past month, there's been a rapid escalation of conspiracy theories falsely accusing Democrats of being somehow pro-pedophilia. The proximate twin causes are the confirmation hearings of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court and Florida passing a "don't say gay" bill clearly meant to force LGBTQ teachers and students back into the closet. In the former, Republicans led by slime monster Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri spent the hearing falsely accusing Jackson of going light on sentences for child molesters. In the latter, Republicans defending the law have taken to suggesting that anyone who opposes it is a pedophile. Soon, a generalized accusation that Democrats and even companies that are mildly pro-LGBTQ want to "groom" children spread across Fox News. 

Falsely accusing someone of heinous crimes, while unimaginative, is a crude-but-effective way to bully people. 

Much digital ink has been spilled, for good reason, on how this nonsense is both about pandering to the QAnon cult and encouraging more Republican voters to be Q-curious. After all, QAnon espouses a conspiracy theory that Democrats secretly run a blood-drinking pedophilia cult that worships Satan. So any Republican leaders and pundits chattering about "grooming" and other false allegations around the subject of child abuse are clearly nodding in the direction of QAnon. 

https://www.salon.com/2022/04/11/the-goal-of-the-gops-qanon-influenced-groomer-troll-more-political-violence/

[Sard]

1 hour ago, Tracker said:

The goal of the GOP's QAnon-influenced "groomer" troll: More political violence

Republicans don't really think liberals are "grooming" children — but they know saying so is permission to violence
Here is the most important thing to remember about the word "groomer": Exactly zero percent of the people flinging the word at progressives care one bit about child abuse. This is all just pure, uncut trolling. It's never meant as a sincere concern or accusation. Indeed, the deep unfairness of the word "groomer" is the point. What right-wing trolls want more desperately than anything else is to "trigger" liberals. Falsely accusing someone of heinous crimes, while unimaginative, is a crude-but-effective way to bully people. 

So in the past month, there's been a rapid escalation of conspiracy theories falsely accusing Democrats of being somehow pro-pedophilia. The proximate twin causes are the confirmation hearings of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court and Florida passing a "don't say gay" bill clearly meant to force LGBTQ teachers and students back into the closet. In the former, Republicans led by slime monster Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri spent the hearing falsely accusing Jackson of going light on sentences for child molesters. In the latter, Republicans defending the law have taken to suggesting that anyone who opposes it is a pedophile. Soon, a generalized accusation that Democrats and even companies that are mildly pro-LGBTQ want to "groom" children spread across Fox News. 

Falsely accusing someone of heinous crimes, while unimaginative, is a crude-but-effective way to bully people. 

Much digital ink has been spilled, for good reason, on how this nonsense is both about pandering to the QAnon cult and encouraging more Republican voters to be Q-curious. After all, QAnon espouses a conspiracy theory that Democrats secretly run a blood-drinking pedophilia cult that worships Satan. So any Republican leaders and pundits chattering about "grooming" and other false allegations around the subject of child abuse are clearly nodding in the direction of QAnon. 

https://www.salon.com/2022/04/11/the-goal-of-the-gops-qanon-influenced-groomer-troll-more-political-violence/

I've noticed over the past couple of years that most of what the Repulicans keep accusing the Democrats of doing are things that they are doing themselves...

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

17 minutes ago, Sard said:

I've noticed over the past couple of years that most of what the Repulicans keep accusing the Democrats of doing are things that they are doing themselves...

The meme:

 

 

Exist for a reason.

[Tracker]

“The coup attempt is ongoing”: Ex-Trump lawyer John Eastman still trying to overturn 2020 election

Former Trump lawyer John Eastman is still trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election amid a legal battle with the House Jan. 6 committee over his role in the former president's failed effort to reverse his loss.

Eastman played a key role as a top adviser in Trump's scheme to block the certification of President Joe Biden's win and wrote a plan claiming that then-Vice President Mike Pence could reject legitimate electors from states Trump lost. Eastman's efforts came under the scrutiny of the Jan. 6 committee, which subpoenaed his records related to the scheme. Eastman fought the subpoena before a judge last month ordered him to turn over documents after finding that he and Trump "more likely than not" committed federal crimes when they "corruptly attempted to obstruct" Congress.

But Eastman is not done trying to undo Trump's loss. He was one of several Trump allies who last month secured a two-hour private meeting with Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to pressure him to "nullify" the 2020 election and "reclaim the electors awarded to Biden," which legal experts say is not possible, according to ABC News.

Eastman urged Vos to "decertify the election," according to the report. Jefferson Davis, a Wisconsin activist who also attended the meeting, told ABC that Eastman pushed Vos to start "reclaiming the electors" and move forward with "either a do over or having a new slate of electors seated that would declare someone else the winner."

https://www.salon.com/2022/04/12/the-coup-attempt-is-ongoing-ex-lawyer-john-eastman-still-trying-to-overturn-2020/

[Mark F]

52 minutes ago, Tracker said:

Former Trump lawyer John Eastman is still trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election

This guy is mentally ill if that is actually what hes really doing. Out of contact with reality.

Much more likely its some kind of scam. Like every single trump related activity.

but trump has a remarkable ability to recruit prominent people to do these kind of crackpot things.

It's actually quite similar to what sacha baron cohen does.

 

Edited April 12, 2022 by Mark F

[Tracker]

Stunning New Report Reveals Trump Administration Used DHS to Conduct Cyber-Audit of Arizona at Request of One State Rep.

There is an old saying that an important difference between a nation of laws and fascism is that the police in democracies following the law only investigate reports of a crime. Fascist dictatorships harness the police to investigate people to find something to justify a pre-determined outcome. According to a blockbuster report in Politico, the Trump administration’s DHS Cyber Security Agency (the police) investigated Arizona and its voting machines, a problematic “person,” who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

In late December of 2020, Arizona State Rep. Mark Finchem (almost surely on behalf of the White House as a long-time Trump ally) made a unique request to Homeland Security’s little known department, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, requesting “a full spectrum forensic examination” of Arizona’s voting machines. As typical of the corrupt Trump administration, the request from a state representative was on the desk of the director of the department the next day, the morning of Christmas Eve of 2020. Brandon Wales, the “acting-director” of the little-known agency, received the request as a top priority at 7:59 a.m. All of eight minutes later, Wales wrote, “We need to do a call on this today,” in a message to several people, including the agency’s then-deputy chief external affairs officer.

In other words, an unknown state representative called up a highly-specialized and sophisticated federal agency to report a person (Arizona) and requested that the specialized unit find a crime – or mistake – within the Arizona computer vote tabulators. This is new reporting and if one appreciates the utter insanity of it, jaw-dropping.

https://www.politicususa.com/2022/04/12/stunning-new-report-reveals-trump-administration-used-dhs-to-conduct-cyber-audit-of-arizona-at-request-of-one-state-rep.html

7 minutes ago, Mark F said:

This guy is mentally ill if that is actually what hes really doing. Out of contact with reality.

Much more likely its some kind of scam. Like every single trump related activity.

but trump has a remarkable ability to recruit prominent people to do these kind of crackpot things.

It's actually quite similar to what Sacha baron Cohen does.

 

Eastman is an attorney, and what he is apparently trying to do is conspiracy to commit election fraud, and he would have to know that.  Either his obsession have devolved into mania or he feels confident that he has some sort of immunity from prosecution. The intransigence (so far) of the American DOJ to have indicted any of Trump's inner circle or Trump himself could reasonably interpreted to give give that impression.

[Tracker]

'This is incredibly dangerous': white nationalism is poisoning the military 'to break the chain of command'
.

I don’t follow what every Democrat says. No one can. There’s no way for me to know whether the tenor and tone of their collective rhetoric changed last week. But it felt like it got stronger, sharper and angrier.

Consider Brian Schatz.

The Hawaii Senator took to the Senate floor to scorch his colleague Josh Hawley of Missouri, who’s been holding up appointments to the Department of Defense that are necessary to America’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Before he signs off, he said, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin must resign for his “failures” in Afghanistan.

Schatz said that’s rich coming from a guy who raised his fist in solidarity with the J6 insurrectionists and who voted to acquit the former president for the high crime of extorting Ukraine’s president.

“This comes from a guy who before the Russian invasion suggested that maybe it would be wise for [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to make a few concessions about Ukraine and their willingness to join NATO.”

He added:

“They withheld lethal aid until, unless Zelenskyy released false smears against Joe Biden's son. Then [Hawley] voted to exonerate President Trump for this. So spare me the new solidarity with the Ukrainians and with the free world, because this man's record is exactly the opposite.”

His tirade amazed those of us longing for the Democrats to take a strong stand against the Republican Party’s lies and bad faith. Perhaps we’ll see more now that Greg Sargent put a brighter light on it.

The Post columnist interviewed Brian Schatz on Friday. “Democrats need to make more noise,” the Senator conceded. “We have to scream from the rooftops because this is a battle for the free world now.”

Let’s not forget what Schatz said, however. He said Hawley is “doing a very specific thing. He is damaging the Department of Defense.”

So far, Schatz is the only Democrat seeing what needs seeing.

Though he says he’s outraged by the US pullout from Afghanistan, Josh Hawley is also attacking, directly, the military leadership itself. (He won’t move on appointments until the secretary of defense resigns.) Demanding Austin’s resignation is not a “reasonable request,” Schatz said. It can’t be. The point is sabotaging civilian control of the military.

You read that right.

The point is cleaving the ranks. The point is to create conditions in which military personnel feel inspired to take action that’s favorable to the Republicans’ (perhaps the former president’s) return to power.

They are picking up where the J6 insurrection left off. But next time, it won’t be a mob of schlubs. It will be an army of highly-trained insurgents bent on restoring whiteness to the center of the republic.

At gunpoint.

Everyone should see what Schatz sees.

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/white-nationalism-poisoning-military-command/

 

[Tracker]

On 2022-04-09 at 10:25 AM, Tracker said:

Texas Woman, 26, Charged With Murder After Alleged 'Self-Induced Abortion'

A 26-year-old Texas woman has been arrested and charged with murder after authorities said she had a “self-induced abortion.” The extreme move comes after Texas passed a draconian anti-abortion law last year that has forced thousands of women to seek care out of state.

Lizelle Herrera was arrested Thursday when officials said she “intentionally and knowingly cause[d] the death of an individual by self-induced abortion,” according to a spokesperson for the Starr County Sheriff’s Office.

No details about the “abortion” or fetus were provided. Herrera was still in custody Friday. Her bail was set at $500,000, according to Valley Central, which was the first to report the arrest.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-murder-charge-self-induced-abortion_n_62510a34e4b06c2ea31d9ec3

[TrueBlue4ever]

35 minutes ago, Tracker said:

If the States are going to treat unborn babies as humans for the purposes of criminal charges against women, perhaps someone should bring criminal charges against the fathers for criminal negligence cause death or child abandonment, or go after them civilly for child support. I always notice these “laws” conveniently do nothing to really protect the child or help them after they have left the womb so much as they are there to punish women and dictate their bodily autonomy, all the while turning a blind eye to the absent fathers and abdicating any responsibility to them in the eyes of the law. Sometimes you need to fight these lawmakers on their own terms, and using these arcane laws against the fathers would be more effective than trying to stop them from being passed in the first place. The fear of making the men more responsible based on the very laws these male dominated legislatures want to pass would stop them in their hypocritical tracks. 

Edited April 13, 2022 by TrueBlue4ever

[Goldkobra]

1 hour ago, Tracker said:

The utter ghoulish-ness of this is mind blowing.  Loss for words.

[bustamente]

He was rejected for a high security clearance but got one anyway the rest is a tail of enrichment for doing nothing that served the country only his wealth.......................

 

[JCon]

3 minutes ago, bustamente said:

He was rejected for a high security clearance but got one anyway the rest is a tail of enrichment for doing nothing that served the country only his wealth.......................

 

But what about Hunter's laptop? Does it have Hilary's emails on it? The morons deserve to know!

[bustamente]

Poor Trump can't find a buyer for a property he owns in St. Martin in the Caribbean even though he has cut the price in half, I guess his former potential buyers are having a tough time coming up with cash, wonder why😁

[Mark F]

1 hour ago, JCon said:

But what about Hunter's laptop? Does it have Hilary's emails on it? The morons deserve to know!

Secret video of top level Republican computer tech working on biden laptop:

 

 

[Tracker]

Trump told Mitch McConnell about his coup to flip election results in Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, but McConnell stayed silent.

CNN reported:

In the weeks after he lost the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump had a plan to stay in office — and he wanted Mitch McConnell to know about it.

If Trump could successfully pressure Republican Gov. Brian Kemp to de-certify Biden’s narrow win in Georgia, that would lead to a domino effect: Officials in Pennsylvania and Michigan would follow suit and overturn Biden’s electoral victory, Trump believed, a stunning reversal that could keep him in the White House for a second term.
And Trump was certain he could subvert the election outcome, telling McConnell, then the Senate majority leader, and other top Republicans that he had personally been on the phone with officials in Pennsylvania and Michigan — and they told him they would move to keep him in power, despite the results showing Biden had won their states.

The new book from Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns reports that McConnell knew about the plot but stayed silent because he didn’t want Trump to sabotage the Georgia Senate runoff elections. (Trump sabotaged the Georgia runoff elections anyway because that is what Donald Trump does).

Mitch McConnell knew about the coup plot, and he did nothing because keeping Trump in power would benefit him and hopefully give him the Senate majority.

McConnell has betrayed his country on too many occasions to count, but his most telling betrayal might be his decision not to try and stop Trump. If McConnell had spoken up, 1/6 might have been prevented. The Big Lie would not have taken hold, and lives would have been saved.

[Wideleft]

Mark Meadows removed from N.C. voter rolls amid fraud investigation

By Amy B Wang

Yesterday at 12:05 p.m. EDT|Updated yesterday at 1:35 p.m. EDT

 

Mark Meadows, a former top Trump aide, has been removed from the voter rolls in North Carolina as the state investigates allegations that he committed voter fraud in the 2020 election, election officials said Wednesday.

Meadows, who served two terms as a congressman from North Carolina before becoming President Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, has helped promote Trump’s baseless claims that widespread voter fraud delivered the presidency to Joe Biden. But his withering rhetoric about potential voter fraud has clashed with reports in recent weeks that Meadows registered to vote in 2020 using the address of a North Carolina mobile home he never stayed in.

Those reports prompted North Carolina state investigators to launch a probe last month into Meadows’s voter registration. On Monday, Macon County officials “administratively removed the voter registration of Mark Meadows … after documentation indicated he lived in Virginia and last voted in the 2021 election there,” North Carolina State Board of Elections spokesman Patrick Gannon said in a statement Wednesday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/13/mark-meadows-north-carolina-removed-voter-rolls/