Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Need another George Santos scandal?

Wait no longer.
During Rep. George Santos’ second run for a congressional seat on Long Island—he lost his first—he helped raise money for and direct a political action committee called Rise NY that was set up in 2020 under New York State law. Its declared mission was to focus on voter registration, education, and turnout. The PAC collected over $430,000 in donations for its operations. Yet Santos, the disgraced Republican fabulist, used a large chunk of those funds—$55,800—for a purpose other than voter registration and engagement and sent this money to a Washington, DC, nonprofit to fund a new conservative gay rights site associated with Richard Grenell, a prominent gay Republican who served in the Trump administration and who endorsed Santos and helped him gather campaign money.

  Mother Jones
It was for a good cause.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

In the age of Trump

Dobbs and no ERA.  How to fuck women over completely.



When can they stop searching Trump properties?

“The Justice Department wants to know how a box containing a handful of classified records scattered among copies of presidential schedules turned up at Mar-a-Lago late last year, well after several rounds of searches of the property by federal agents and aides to former President Donald Trump,” CNN reports.

“Investigators working for special counsel Jack Smith in recent weeks have interviewed a Trump aide who copied classified materials found in the box using her phone to put them onto a laptop. After a voluntary interview with the aide, prosecutors subpoenaed the password to the laptop, which she provided.”

“People familiar with the Trump legal team’s efforts to locate documents describe a confusing chain of events that delayed discovery of the box, including having its contents uploaded to the cloud, emailed to a Trump employee, and moved to an offsite location before finally ending up back at a Mar-a-Lago bridal suite that is now Trump’s office – the very place that the FBI had searched just weeks earlier.”

  Political Wire
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Does this affect ALL Jan 6 defendants?

Kevin McCarthy gave all the footage to Tucker Carlson.  I can only imagine Carlson will cut and air anything that helps his narrative around the insurrection.  But why wouldn't it also be applicable to every single case the DOJ has been prosecuting against the insurrectionsts?  How many appeals will there be?



What a nightmare.  But I think surely every defendant has a right to see it all.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 03/04/2023:  And so it begins.

Meanwhile, in Dominion v. Fox

Proof t[he people running the country’s most popular news network knew Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were false but broadcast them anyway in a reckless pursuit of ratings and profit] would help Dominion clear the high legal bar set by the Supreme Court for defamation cases. To prevail, Dominion must show not only that Fox broadcast false information, but that it did so knowingly. A judge in Delaware state court has scheduled a monthlong trial beginning in April.

  NYT
New court filing: Rupert Murdoch deposition transcript.
Murdoch not only admitted the hosts were pushing lies about the election, he suggested it was helping Fox make money. [...] One of Dominion’s lawyers asked Murdoch if he could have ordered people like Giuliani and Powell off the air. “I could have,” Murdoch responded. “But I didn’t.”

[...]

He was more explicit as to why when discussing Mike Lindell, the election-denying pillow salesman.

[...]

“The man is on every night. Pays us a lot of money,” Murdoch testified of Lindell. “At first you think it’s comic, and then you get bored and irritated.”

Murdoch said he wants to keep Lindell’s advertisements on the air, and when asked why Fox continues to give Lindell a platform, said, “It is not red or blue, it is green.”

  Rolling Stone
The document also described how Paul D. Ryan, a former Republican speaker of the House and current member of the Fox Corporation board of directors, said in his deposition that he had implored Mr. Murdoch and his son Lachlan, the chief executive officer, “that Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories.” Mr. Ryan suggested instead that the network pivot and “move on from Donald Trump and stop spouting election lies.”

[...]

On Jan. 5, 2021, the day before the attack at the Capitol, Mr. Murdoch and Suzanne Scott, the chief executive of Fox News Media, talked about whether Mr. Hannity and his fellow prime-time hosts, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, should make it clear to viewers that Mr. Biden had won the election.

  NYT
January 5, huh? Gee, you don't suppose Murdoch and Scott knew what was going to happen on January 6 do you?
According to the filing, Ms. Scott said of the hosts, “Privately they are all there,” but “we need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers.” No statement of that kind was made on the air.

Dominion details the close relationship that Fox hosts and executives enjoyed with senior Republican Party officials and members of the Trump inner circle, revealing how at times Fox was shaping the very story it was covering.

[...]

At one point, Dominion’s lawyers accuse Ms. Pirro, who hosted a Saturday evening talk show, of “laundering her own conspiracy theories through Powell.” The filing goes on to say Ms. Pirro bragged to her friends “that she was the source for Powell’s claims.” Dominion notes that this was “something she never shared with her audience.”

[...]

Dominion also describes how Mr. Murdoch provided Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, with confidential information about ads that the Biden campaign would be running on Fox.
Do I smell a new lawsuit coming?
The filing on Monday included a deposition by Viet Dinh, Fox Corporation’s chief legal officer, who was one of the many senior executive cautioning about the content of Fox’s coverage.

[...]

When asked in his deposition if Fox executives had an obligation to stop hosts of shows from broadcasting lies, Mr. Dinh said: “Yes, to prevent and correct known falsehoods.”
I wonder if he's still the chief legal officer. Or employed by Fox at all. I also wonder what his legal basis for that opinion is.
“There appears to be a pretty good argument that Fox endorsed the accuracy of what was being said,” said Lee Levine, a veteran First Amendment lawyer who has defended major media organizations in defamation cases. He added that Fox’s arguments were stronger against some of Dominion’s claims than others. But based on what he has seen of the case so far, Mr. Levine said, “I’d much rather be in Dominion’s shoes than Fox’s right now.”
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 09:14 am:


No shit.

Monday, February 27, 2023

Wise move


And they better follow up on whatever they're being told.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

👀

Molly Jong-Fast asked George Conway today on her podcast if there is "going to be a change in George Conway's life."  He said, yes, maybe, in a tone of admission.  Is he finally going to divorce the Trumpist lying Kellyanne?

Enquiring minds want to know.

See how rumors start?

UPDATE 03/05/2023:  And there it is...



Saturday, February 25, 2023

Another civil rights massacre you may not have heard about

I don't remember hearing about it.  



Excellent podcast on SCOTUS internet cases

If you've been hearing about the current Supreme Court cases on privacy rights and content moderation (is You Tube/Twitter/Facebook responsible for individuals' content on their site?) and are not absolutely certain you know exactly what they're talking about and what's at stake on the internet, this interview is just what you need. I thought I knew pretty well, but I learned a lot here.



A country with PTSD

The abuser has been acknowledged, but not held accountable.  And, in fact, the abuse is ongoing by the abuser's proxies.
[M]ore than 1 million people have died in America from the COVID pandemic – hundreds died just this week. The nation has not properly grieved such a massive loss. Part of that inability to properly grieve is a function of how the Trump regime and its agents have faced no serious criminal (or even civil) punishments for their role in what was a de facto act of democide.

Ultimately, however, Trumpism and other forms of fake populism are symptoms, not the cause of a deep societal rot that spans American society. When social deviance and other anti-social and anti-human behaviors are normalized entire cultures become pathological.

[...]

Of note: Americans are 4.4 percent of the world's population but consume more than 80 percent of the opioids.

  Salon
From Dr. Norrholm:
The fact is we have a major political party in this country that is hell-bent on breaking democracy – for largely selfish and nihilistic reasons. This major political party has a huge influence on almost half of the population (according to polls and the results of the 2020 Presidential and 2022 mid-term elections). This influence is bolstered and magnified by the right-wing news media and social media platforms. And let's be honest here, a loud voice has been given to people who, according to many widely held societal, moral, legal, psychological and faith-based criteria, are the worst humanity has to offer. They worship guns. They devalue the life of children. The support corporate greed and resist oversight despite deadly effects on the populace. They contort and misinterpret and mis-apply Christian thought and values. They lie with impunity. They define patriotism as fidelity to one man and his disciples.

[...]


There was a time when Howard Dean's candidacy for President was derailed because he once yelled too loud into a microphone at a campaign event. Jim Jordan covered up a university sexual assault scandal. Marjorie Taylor Greene cheered the 1/6 Insurrection. 147 Republicans voted to overturn the 2020 Presidential election. None were sanctioned, punished, or removed.
[...]

Social pressures and outright deception and corruption have muted any accountability efforts. These long-lasting ripple effects of the Trump era have created an open space for the delusional and dysfunctional to grab the wheel of our government and the people held hostage. Just look at the election process for Kevin McCarthy to Speaker of the House. One renegade group of MAGAites hijacked the U.S. Congress for days.

[...]

[T]he destruction of the moral compass and avarice and cowardice in the Republican party has ushered in a new wave of candidates and politicians. What were once damning qualities or behaviors are now either swept aside or embraced.

[...]

We have elected officials who are concocting fake personas out of whole cloth, who are (and were) opposing restrictions like closings and mask wearing meant to stop the spread of a deadly virus, and rather than wearing ribbons of support for the victims of gun violence are wearing depictions of deadly assault rifles – all while claiming to be "pro-life."

[...]

A healthy American society starts with accountability. It means pursuing the case against the former President and his acolytes for the only insurrection on American soil at the heart of our democracy. It means Fani Willis in Georgia fully pursuing the criminal case against the former President (and other loyalists) for actively interfering in an election. It means banishing the former President and his loyalists from serving in elected office.

[...]

[M]y advice is to build up your micro-world, build relationships, celebrate the little things, spend time with your parents, siblings and kids. Take time for self-care, relaxation, and hobbies. Exercise regularly and eat right. All of these micro-scale activities will help you gain resistance against the socio-political-cultural world that you can no longer blissfully ignore. I run several times a week, meditate, call friends and family often – all in the service of girding myself for the long haul.

Friday, February 24, 2023

Kevin McCarthy bumbling his way through



I agree with Tim, but one thing I will say is that if their aim is to incite and feed a second, more violent, attempt to overthrow the government if Democrats retain the White House in 2024, this move by McCarthy/Carlson will be fuel.  Which is not to say McCarthy isn't dumb enough to be a dupe in the process rather than a leader.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 02/26/2023:

This is the kind of thing we're going to  be seeing...


I think that's probably the kind of thing the Capitol Police don't want you to see.  And they probably don't want you to see them greeting people at the door and showing them in.  But none of it absolves the insurrectionists or the ex-President of their crimes that day.  Or the Republican congressfolk for voting to overturn the election.

Fascism rising

Keep in mind that Florida's governor DeSantis wants to be elected president some day, and a large number of Republicans want that to be in 2024.
Continue reading this thread

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.



A lesser-known lawsuit against Trump got a boost

A federal judge has agreed to permit former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to take sworn testimony from former President Donald Trump for two hours as part of their long-running lawsuits related to Strzok’s firing in 2018 after Trump repeatedly and publicly pilloried the pair.

[...]

Strzok and Page contend that Trump and his Justice Department appointees were carrying out a political vendetta.

[...]

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled on Thursday that Strzok and Page — whose text messages disparaging then-candidate Trump cast a pall over the FBI’s investigation of links between the Trump campaign and Russia — would also be allowed to depose FBI Director Christopher Wray for a similar two-hour period on a limited set of topics.

[...]

Jackson’s order gave the Justice Department a month to “inform the Court whether the current President will invoke … executive privilege” over any aspects of Trump’s testimony.

  Politico
Let me guess....no.
[Jackson] also stressed that she had not yet considered all potential objections to the demands for testimony from Trump and Wray. That could include arguments by Trump that he has the unilateral right as a former president to assert executive privilege.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Free advice for Mike Pence

In a stern rebuke of former Vice President Mike Pence, the conservative former judge who advised Pence on how to handle the January 6, 2021, election certification vote is now warning of both the legal and political consequences of Pence’s plan to fight the grand jury subpoena by special counsel Jack Smith.

[...]

In recent public comments, Pence has said he will fight the subpoena on the grounds that, under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, the executive branch cannot compel his testimony before a grand jury.

[...]

“We can expect the federal courts to make short shrift of this ‘Hail Mary’ claim and Mr. Pence doesn’t have a chance in the world of winning his case in any federal court and avoiding testifying before the grand jury,” former Judge J. Michael Luttig says in an op-ed published in The New York Times on Friday.

[...]

Mr. Pence is trying to score points with voters who want to see President Biden unseated in 2024. Well enough. That’s what politicians do,” Luttig writes. “But Jack Smith’s subpoena was neither politically motivated nor designed to strengthen President Biden’s political hand in 2024. Thus the jarring dissonance between the subpoena and Mr. Pence’s characterization of it. It is Mr. Pence who has chosen to politicize the subpoena, not the D.O.J.”

  CNN
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Zuckerberg takes a page out of Musk's playbook

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, confused a lot of people last weekend when it said it will begin selling $12-a-month subscriptions starting in Australia and New Zealand, and eventually the United States. No, it is not going to charge everyone for using its social networks.

Instead, Meta is testing a paid account “verification” service. That will come with a blue check mark after they’ve checked your ID and something desperately needed by everyone on Facebook: access to real-human customer service to deal with rampant account lockouts and hacker takeovers. They see your vulnerability as a business opportunity.

  WaPo
To be fair, they see EVERYTHING as a business opportunity, so don't take it personally.
Elon Musk’s Twitter recently said it will start charging for a basic security feature that used to be free. Going forward, Twitter says that two-factor text-message authentication will only be available to people who subscribe to its $8 Blue service.

[...]

While the details are different, both companies’ moves remind me of the protection rackets run by mobsters: force people to make regular payments in exchange for “security.”
Again, to be fair, mob tactics have been proven to work.
Twitter’s shift, [Rachel Tobac, the CEO of SocialProof Security] said, is the equivalent of secretly undoing someone’s seat belt while they’re driving; Facebook’s money grab is like charging them extra to send help when they get in a crash.
Twitter users can move to Post (Pulitzer) or Mastodon. And Facebook users can probably quit Facebook. Unless, of course, you use it for business.
“One of the reasons Facebook accounts are taken over so frequently is because so few users have the second step when they log in. They are easily phished or tricked,” [said a security expert]. (You can, and should turn this on now here.)
Yes, you should.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Thursday, February 23, 2023

We're not a democracy, we're a republic!


...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 02/25/2023:  Just saw this today with the same date as I created this post.  She must have been calling to me through the ether.


And this...




Thank heaven for the ACLU




Pete's honeymoon is over

“Pete Buttigieg has taken a lot of bullets for the president on this,” one senior Democrat said Wednesday, insisting on anonymity to talk about a crisis that the person was not authorized to discuss.

[...]

Buttigieg was prepared to speak about the incident if asked, according to the DOT official — but for 10 days, no interviewer asked him.

[...]

Buttigieg acknowledged in a CBS News interview Tuesday that he “could have spoken sooner about how strongly I felt about this incident, and that’s a lesson learned for me.”

  Politico
I might have thought that would have been a lesson learned while he was a mayor in Indiana. He's done a lot of time on Fox News. Surely he knows the character of MAGA. They'd already been debasing him about the airline industry scheduling fiasco and FAA computer failure. He should have known to get out in front of this much bigger disaster and not wait to be asked to talk about it. Lesson learned, indeed. Hope it's not too late.
Three people in Buttigieg’s orbit admit to being exasperated by the furor, saying nobody asked him about the derailment in any of the 23 media interviews he conducted during the first 10 days after the accident. Then critics lambasted him for not speaking sooner.

Since then, conservative media outlets have used images of the Feb. 3 wreck — including the flames, plumes of black smoke and piles of dead fish — to lambaste his oversight of rail safety. They’ve also criticized his failure to visit the crash site.

[...]

The Ohio derailment comes after a series of other transportation-related snarls that have happened on Buttigieg’s watch, including a threatened nationwide rail strike, airline scheduling meltdowns and a Federal Aviation Administration computer failure that grounded flights nationwide. These have brought him unsparing criticism from GOP lawmakers and conservative media outlets, which have portrayed him as overwhelmed by or detached from the job — and mocked his interest in issues such as racial justice and climate change.

[...]

Fox News’ prime-time coverage of the derailment on Tuesday included a Photoshopped image portraying him as a suit-wearing bicyclist grinning in front of the wreckage. Former President Donald Trump weighed in during a visit to East Palestine on Wednesday, telling reporters, “Buttigieg should’ve been here already.”
Come on, folks. You know you can't win the critics wars. Expect it. Deal with it.
Employees of both DOT and EPA were at the scene within hours after the derailment, as were crash investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board. The heads of DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration and the department’s hazardous materials agency visited East Palestine on Wednesday, though their trip was upstaged by Trump’s appearance.
If you're going to go political - go straight to Biden. Which, of course, they have.
[A] White House spokesperson, also called it misguided for Republicans to expect Buttigieg to personally rush to the site of a train wreck.

“It’s like them pretending they think the State Department takes point on rescuing people in the water during hurricanes instead of the Coast Guard,” Bates said. “Case in point, under the last administration EPA was also in the lead on similar derailments.”

[...]

More than 1,000 train derailments happen in the U.S. during a given year, and Transportation secretaries don’t normally go to the scene. Rail safety veteran Bob Lauby said that in his 23 years at the NTSB and the Federal Railroad Administration, he remembers just one time when a secretary visited the site — and it was 30 years ago, when the deadliest incident in Amtrak’s history killed 47 people near Mobile, Ala.

[...]

“During the initial response phase, I’ve followed the norm of staying out of the way of the independent NTSB,” [Buttigieg] tweeted Wednesday. “Now that we’re into the policy phase, I’ll be visiting.”

[...]

Buttigieg also sent a scathing letter to the CEO of Norfolk Southern, the railroad involved in the disaster, for what he called the “vigorous resistance by your industry to increased safety measures.”

Buttigieg’s supporters have accused Republicans of showing only newfound interest in rail safety, noting that Trump’s administration had shelved an Obama-era rule that would have required faster brakes on trains carrying highly flammable materials. (The rule would not have applied to the train that derailed in Ohio, NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy wrote on Twitter last week.) Trump’s DOT also ended regular rail safety audits of railroads and killed a pending rule requiring freight trains to have at least two crew members.

[...]

[W]hen Norfolk Southern or EPA tell communities the air and water are safe, people don’t believe them.

That skepticism hasn’t kept [Michael] Regan, the EPA chief, from getting the warm welcome from Republicans that has eluded Buttigieg. Those include DeWine and others who have met Regan during his two trips to East Palestine.
Regan isn't gay.
Buttigieg met [at the derailment site on Thursday] with U.S. Department of Transportation investigators who, according to Buttigieg's office, were on the ground in East Palestine hours after the train derailed on Feb. 3 near the Pennsylvania border.

[...]

Nearly three weeks later, the burned-out husks of several tanker cars sit off to the side of the railway that travels directly through downtown East Palestine. A strong odor of chemicals permeates the air.

[...]

None of the cars exploded in the derailment, Keltz said. But days after the crash, Norfolk Southern conducted a controlled burn of vinyl chloride to avoid an explosion, releasing hydrogen chloride and the toxic gas phosgene into the air.

[...]

Buttigieg in the wake of the derailment is calling on Norfolk Southern and other rail companies to expedite the implementation of DOT 117 train cars, which are designed to prevent the release of the car's contents if something happens. Companies must have those cars in place by 2029, but the transportation officials want to see it happen sooner.

  MSN
I heard someone discuss the issue with the braking systems that companies have been resisting. The new proposal for brakes would be a system where each and every car has brakes that are all applied in emergency situations, rather than stacking up like dominoes and derailing.
Buttigieg during his visit to this Ohio town near the Pennsylvania border sought to address criticism from some that he should have visited sooner. In a visit to the village on Wednesday, former President Donald Trump described the federal response to the train derailment as a "betrayal."

When questioned by reporters, Buttigieg said he was trying to strike a fine balance between being a public-facing official and giving NTSB room to investigate the incident.
Yes, Trump went to a McDonald's and bought everybody there "a nice meal," and gave people "good" Trump water "and some lesser water." Very helpful. Still, Biden and Buttigieg left themselves open by not visiting the site sooner. I know Biden was busy getting his trip to Ukraine lined up, but you can't turn your back on middle America and expect not to be assaulted for it.
Buttigieg expressed regret for not tweeting about the crash until a week and a half after it happened. "I felt strongly about this and could have expressed that sooner. Again, I was taking pains to respect the role that I have and the role I don’t have but that should not have stopped me from weighing in about how I felt in this community," he said.
Too little, too late, Pete.
“To any national political figure who has decided to get involved with the plight of East Palestine, I have a simple message, which is I need your help," he added. "If you’re serious about this, there is more that we can do to prevent more communities from going through this.”

In addition to stronger rail cars, Buttigieg wants federal officials to increase the maximum fine for railroads that violate safety rules. The figure is currently $225,455, which Buttigieg previously called a "rounding error" for companies that rake in billions of dollars.

Buttigieg also wants Congress to look at how trains are classified when they transport hazardous materials through states. The Norfolk Southern train was not considered a high-hazard flammable train, meaning it could pass through Ohio without any notification to the state.

[...]

"What we have seen is that industry goes to Washington, and they get their way," Buttigieg said.
You want to talk about that rail workers strike the Biden administration shut down, Pete? Those guys that have to work long hours with no - zero - sick days, and too few crew on board, for instance?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What caused the derailment? The interim report.


UPDATE 02/24/2023:


Too bad he didn't have some Trump air.  

UPDATE 02/25/2023:


That would be James Comer.




How to keep the lie alive


Nearly a year after the 2020 election, Arizona’s then-attorney general, Mark Brnovich, launched an investigation into voting in the state’s largest county that quickly consumed more than 10,000 hours of his staff’s time.

Investigators prepared a report in March 2022 stating that virtually all claims of error and malfeasance were unfounded, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Brnovich, a Republican, kept it private.

In April, the attorney general — who was running in the GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat — released an “Interim Report” claiming that his office had discovered “serious vulnerabilities.” He left out edits from his own investigators refuting his assertions.

[...]

The innuendo and inaccuracies, circulated not just in the far reaches of the internet but with the imprimatur of the state’s attorney general, helped make Arizona an epicenter of distrust in the democratic process, eroding confidence in the 2020 vote as well as in subsequent elections.

[...]

It was only in the final days before this past November’s midterm election, several months after Brnovich had lost his Senate primary, that he began to denounce politicians who denied Trump’s defeat, calling them “clowns” engaged in a “giant grift.”

[...]

In releasing materials that Brnovich’s office had kept from public view, [Democrat Kris Mayes, who defeated Brnovich in November,] said she was reorienting the work of the attorney general’s office — away from pursuing conspiratorial claims of fraud and toward protecting the right to vote, investigating the few cases of wrongdoing that typically occur every election, and preventing threats against election workers.
  WaPo
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Last of the big spenders


McDonald's should change their spokesperson from Ronald McDonald to Donald McDonald.  It'd still be a clown.


And by the way, Fox News should get a proofreader in their chyron department.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

National Gun of America

Jesus would be proud

Has all of the GOP been infected?





Something strange is happening

Rep. Jason Smith hasn’t been chair of the House Ways and Means Committee very long, but he’s already done something rare for a Republican: He’s struck fear into the heart of corporate tax lobbyists.

The Missouri lawmaker is making it clear he isn’t the sort of Chamber of Commerce Republican his side usually picks for this job. He is going out of his way to let corporate America know he’s not terribly concerned with its problems, even if its taxes are going up substantially, while promising a lot more scrutiny of its relations with China.

“Our priorities have changed — our priorities are small business, working-class Americans and farmers over big corporations,” he said in an interview.

  Politico
I wonder how long before they kick him out of the GOP.
Asked what part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act shouldn’t be extended, Smith doesn’t point to any tax cuts that he thinks ought to lapse — but to Opportunity Zones, which he says should be rewritten to better benefit rural areas

[...]

The last time they were running the House, Republicans pushed through the biggest cut in the corporate tax rate in decades.

[...]

Many corporate leaders can’t believe Congress has allowed a series of time-delayed tax increases included in Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts to actually take effect and are still hoping lawmakers will reconsider provisions now making it harder to deduct research, interest and capital expenses.

On top of that, there’s Democrats’ new “book income” minimum tax on big companies, an especially complicated levy that is giving corporate tax departments fits.

Tax payments by big companies are projected to jump this year by 12 percent “largely” because of those increases, budget forecasters said last week.

Despots and tyrants use the same playbook

Fascism taking a good hold in Florida.

Add to the extreme limiting measures around education and women's rights in Florida the following:
At the governor’s urging, Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature is pushing to weaken state laws that have long protected journalists against defamation suits and frivolous lawsuits. The proposal is part [of governor Ron] DeSantis’ ongoing feud with media outlets like The New York Times, Miami Herald, CNN and The Washington Post — media companies he claims are biased against Republicans — as he prepares for a likely 2024 presidential bid.

Beyond making it easier to sue journalists, the proposal is also being positioned to spark a larger legal battle with the goal of eventually overturning New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limits public officials’ ability to sue publishers for defamation, according to state Rep. Alex Andrade, the Florida Republican sponsoring the bill.

[...]

Andrade’s proposal incorporates many of the elements DeSantis called [...] , including:

— allowing plaintiffs who sue media outlets for defamation to collect attorneys fees;

— adding a provision to state law specifying that comments made by anonymous sources are presumed false for the purposes of defamation lawsuits;

— lowering the legal threshold for a “public figure” to successfully sue for defamation;

— repealing the “journalist’s privilege” section of state law, which protects journalists from being compelled to do things like reveal the identity of sources in court, for defamation lawsuits.

[...]

“I have never seen anything remotely like this legislation,” said Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “I can’t say I have seen every bill ever introduced, but I’d be quite surprised if any state Legislature had seriously considered such a brazen and blatantly unconstitutional attack on speech and press freedoms.”

  Politico
And I wouldn't trust the Supreme Court on this one. We already found out with Dobbs that they actually don't give a shit about precedent.

And, then there's this:
The DeSantis administration now requires events held at the Florida state Capitol to “align” with its mission, a recent change that is sparking concerns that the governor’s office is trying to censor events it doesn’t like.

The Department of Management Services, the administration department that oversees state facilities, over the past few months has changed rules for groups or individuals who want to reserve space inside the Capitol. The changes require organizations seeking to reserve areas to make their requests through specific administration officials or legislative leaders and require they line up with the mission of the state.

  Politico
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

In Trump's image


Some idiot will always work for Trump, but it may not be so easy for Bannon to get new lawyers.  

Somebody alert Marj!


How's that going to go over with his MAGA fans?  

Marjorie Taylor-Greene just announced that Democrats are wanting to move into red states, but she doesn't think they should be allowed to vote when they do.  And here's Musk taking his business from red to blue. Oh my.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They're going to put this idiot on the 2024 ballot, aren't they?


I GUESS that's because he doesn't want to admit his father's administration cut back regulations to make the trains safer, but who knows?  You'd think blaming Russia for anything would be a no-no for a Trump.

I can tell you what's derailed here, and it's not a train.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 09:29 am:


So who the hell was responsible for categorizing it?

Rattle those sabers, Vlad


I don't even have to look: Trump is undoubtedly ranting that this would NEVER have happened if he were president.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 02/23/2023:
In his address today, Putin said the Sarmat silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles would be deployed this year. The RS-28 Sarmat liquid-fueled missile has been in development for years. Russia said it had test-launched the missile in April 2022.

[...]

The US believes Russia carried out a test of the Sarmat just before President Joe Biden’s visit to Kyiv earlier this week and that the fest failed.

[...]

In addition, Putin said Russia would continue mass production of air-based hypersonic Kinzhal systems and would start mass supplies of sea-based Zircon hypersonic missiles.

[...]

Putin said Russia would develop all parts of Russia’s conventional armed forces, improve training, add advanced equipment, bolster the arms industry and promote soldiers who had proven themselves in battle.

  0guardian
But if we elect Trump president, everything will be fine.

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

👀


Nitty gritty time.  

Trump will be throwing up all over Truth Social.

Grand juror spilling the beans


Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court, who is handling the case, has not barred the jurors from talking to reporters, but has sought to limit what they discuss — in particular when it comes to describing their deliberations. Ms. Kohrs is the first of the 23 jurors, and an additional three alternates, to speak out.

[...]

A focal point of the Atlanta inquiry is a call that Mr. Trump made on Jan. 2, 2021, to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which he pressed Mr. Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to recalculate the results and “find” 11,780 votes, or enough to overturn his loss in the state.

[...]

“We definitely talked about the alternate electors a fair amount, they were absolutely part of the discussion,” Ms. Kohrs said. “How could they not be?”

[...]

The jury also looked into hearings before state lawmakers in December 2020, orchestrated by Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, at which Mr. Giuliani and others advanced a number of falsehoods about the election.

[...]

“We found unanimously that there was no evidence of vote fraud in Fulton County in the 2020 election,” Ms. Kohrs said. “We wanted to make sure we put that in, because somehow that’s still a question.”

[...]

Ms. Kohrs, 30, declined to name the people recommended for indictment, since the judge handling the case decided to keep those details secret when he made public a few sections of the report last week. But seven sections that are still under wraps deal with indictment recommendations, Ms. Kohrs said.

Special grand juries in Georgia do not have indictment powers. Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., has led the investigation and will decide what charges to bring before a regular grand jury.

  NYT
An extra step. An extra delay of justice.
“It is not going to be some giant plot twist,” [Kohrs] added. “You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately.”
On the other hand, she was terribly excited about her situation.
Ms. Kohrs said she was between jobs, after helping make masks during the pandemic, when she received a grand jury summons last year. Even though she didn’t vote in 2020, she said she was “insanely excited” about serving on the jury, adding, “This is one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me.”

She could tell that not everyone on the jury felt the same way. “It seemed like everybody else was not initially happy about eight months of jury duty,” she said, and so she volunteered to be the forewoman.

[...]

As forewoman, she got to swear in each of the witnesses who came through, including her state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp.

“It was really cool,” she said. “I got 60 seconds of eye contact with everyone who came in the room. You can tell a lot about people in that 60 seconds.”

Oh Jesus.
Noting that she was 11 when the Sept. 11 attacks happened, Ms. Kohrs said that “Rudy Giuliani is almost like a myth figure in my head, so I’m already intimidated.” She said she made a point of shaking his hand when his testimony was finished.
Oh JESUS.
When Senator Graham testified during the week of Thanksgiving, Ms. Kohrs asked him whether it was too early in the year for her to wear a Santa hat.

His response, she said: “Absolutely not.”
Face palm. 

I'm glad they made the findings they did, but I'm also glad my fate is not in the hands of a Georgia Grand Jury.
Among the things that surprised her in listening to the testimony, including from a number of officials from the Trump administration, was “how much people curse in the White House.”
In Trump's White House anyway.

UPDATE 07:38 am:


Yeah, well, that woman should not have been the foreman, either.  Scary.



I hesitated to read another article on her interview after that NYT one, but I soldiered on with this one.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was on the receiving end of Trump’s pressure campaign, was “a really geeky kind of funny,” she said. State House Speaker David Ralston, who died in November, was hilarious and had the room in stitches. And Gov. Brian Kemp, who succeeded in delaying his appearance until after his reelection in November, seemed unhappy to be there.

[...]

At least one person who resisted answering questions became much more cooperative when prosecutors offered him immunity in front of the jurors, Kohrs said. Other witnesses came in with immunity deals already in place.

[...]

Kohrs said the grand jury wanted to hear from the former president but didn’t have any real expectation that he would offer meaningful testimony.

“Trump was not a battle we picked to fight,” she said.
Maybe I'm judging her too harshly, but "we" probably didn't include her. She would have been giddy to be entertained by Trump.
Though Kohrs said she tends to agree more with Democrats, Kohrs said she doesn’t identify with any political party and prefers to listen to all opinions.

“If I chose a political party, it would be the not-crazy party,” she said.

Kohrs called herself a “geek about the justice system” [...]
And yet...
Kohrs didn’t vote in 2020 and was only vaguely aware of controversy swirling in the wake of the election. She didn’t know the specifics of Trump’s allegations of widespread election fraud or his efforts to reverse his loss.
Could both of those things be true at the same time?
Kohrs sketched witnesses in her notebook as they spoke and was tickled when Bobby Christine, the former U.S. attorney for Georgia’s Southern District, complimented her “remarkable talent.” When the jurors’ notes were taken for shredding after their work was done, she managed to salvage two sketches — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence — because there were no notes on those pages.

  AP
I'm surprised we haven't been shown those.

But, apparently, she DID pay attention and learn some things.
Kohrs was fascinated by an explainer on Georgia’s voting machines offered by a former Dominion Voting Systems executive. She also enjoyed learning about the inner workings of the White House from Cassidy Hutchinson, who Kohrs said was much more forthcoming than her old boss, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Something tells me Meadows is on their list of suggested indictments.


I'm guessing the orange one claimed exoneration by the Grand Jury because he'd already heard they were indicting him.


I did not read that one.  Help yourself.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE :



UPDATE 02/23/2023:




UPDATE 02/24/2023:



Beyond daft


How (and why) is she tolerated in Congress?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE :




BTW, is Hannity using Trump's skin colorizer?

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

JFC


...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ooopsie


Pete Buttigieg, take heart.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Well, then


...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Mitt Romney: The last courageous Republican in Congress


Mitch McConnell should take a cue.

Is Mitt destined to switch parties to Independent?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.