How does this fool keep getting reelected?

 

That's because you're deporting them all.  So I guess the furloughed federal workers can get jobs harvesting crops.

Ron Johnson has a moment of clarity

 

On Newsmax, no less.

UPDATE 11:25 am:  Also, Rand Paul says no.

Who needs stocks when you've got $Trump shitcoin?

Even Ron Johnson is concerned!

Smoot-Hawley.  An earlier iteration of Hawleys destroying the country.

What about Susan I'm Concerned! Collins?  Is she concerned?

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

Lev Parnas testifies to House

You remember Lev.

Parnas, who had cooperated in Trump's first impeachment inquiry into his dealings with Ukraine, was convicted of fraud and campaign finance crimes in 2021. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison and ordered to pay $2.3 million in restitution for the charges.

[...]

In a statement to NBC News, Parnas’ attorney, Joe Bondy, said that since his client first appeared in the Southern District of New York in October 2019, he had been prepared to meet with federal prosecutors and provide information to them, including about Trump and his private counsel.

“We asked (then-Attorney General) Bill Barr to recuse himself over what we believed was his actual conflict of interest, with no response,” Bondy said. “We reached out to former U.S. Attorney Scott Brady’s Office to proffer information, with no reply at all. Had anyone let Lev speak back then, perhaps America would have been in a vastly different place today.”

  NBC News

"He" being Trump, of course.

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

UPDATE 11:40 am:

Typical GOP maneuver

Republicans are not interested in doing anything but having power.  But when something does get done (eg. infrastructure), they claim credit.

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

Jesus Henry Christ

Maybe the Supreme Court will rule that inference is enough to convict.

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

Whaaaaaat?

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

Deplorable

Donald Trump pressed senior Justice Department officials in late 2020 to “just say the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me” and Republican lawmakers, according to stunning handwritten notes that illustrate how far the president was willing to go to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.

The notes, taken by Justice Department official Richard Donoghue, were released to Congress this week and made public Friday

[...]

The documents show the extent to which senior Justice Department officials “were on a knife’s edge” in late 2020 as Trump sought to prevent Biden from becoming president, said David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official.

[...]

In one Dec. 27 conversation, according to the written account, acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen told Trump that the Justice Department “can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election.”

The president replied that he understood but wanted the agency to “just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” according to the notes written by Donoghue, a participant in the discussion.

[...]

“These notes reveal that a sitting president, defeated in a free and fair election, personally and repeatedly pressured Justice Department leaders to help him foment a coup in a last-ditch attempt to cling to power,” [David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official] said. “And that should shock the conscience of every American, regardless of political persuasion.”

  WaPo

That's assuming the Republicans and Trump cultists have a conscience, and that's an assumption I'm not willing to make.

The notes were made public by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on the same day the Justice Department announced that it would support the release of Trump’s personal and business tax returns to a different Democratic-controlled House committee — another legal setback for the former president, who could continue to fight the issue in court.

[...]

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, said the notes “show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency.”

[...]

The notes also say that Trump suggested to Rosen that he might be replaced at the helm of the Justice Department and even dropped the name of his possible successor.

“We have an obligation to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt election,” Trump said, according to the notes. “People tell me Jeff Clark is great, I should put him in. People want me to replace DOJ leadership.”

The people being Trump and John Barron.

Donoghue’s notes show that Trump repeatedly brought up unsubstantiated tales of voter fraud in various states, which the Justice Department officials told him were not true.

“You guys may not be following the Internet the way I do,” Trump responded, according to the notes.

Which is why they weren't buying the bullshit.

Trump and his lawyers could have sought to block the release of Donoghue’s notes to Congress. There were days of discussion among Trump advisers about whether to do so, one adviser said, but the former president did not believe that the notes showed anything problematic, even though some of his advisers feared that the disclosures would be damaging.

“If it gets more attention on the election, he welcomes it,” this adviser said.

Fucking idiot.

[T]he Justice Department informed Rosen and others this week that their conversations with the president about the election were not protected by executive privilege.

In a statement revealing the content of the notes Friday, Maloney said that her committee “has begun scheduling interviews with key witnesses to investigate the full extent of the former President’s corruption, and I will exercise every tool at my disposal to ensure all witness testimony is secured without delay.”

And then impose no consequences?

Mr. Trump did not name the lawmakers, but at other points during the call, he mentioned Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, whom he described as a “fighter”; Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who at the time promoted the idea that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump; and Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, whom Mr. Trump praised for “getting to bottom of things.”

Mr. Jordan and Mr. Johnson denied any role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department.

  NYT

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

UPDATE:

Ron Johnson has seen the handwriting on the wall

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he may not be the best candidate for the 2022 midterms, ahead of what is expected to be a competitive Senate race in the Badger State.

[...]

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, and Marine veteran and former Senate candidate Kevin Nicholson have been floated as potential GOP Senate candidates in the case that Johnson does not run.

[...]

"I want to make sure that this U.S. Senate seat is retained in Republican hands," Johnson told conservative talk show host Lisa Boothe on Wednesday.

"You see what the media’s doing to me. I may not be the best candidate. I wouldn’t run if I don’t think I could win if I don’t think I was the best person to be able to win," he continued.

Johnson went on to describe Washington as "incredibly frustrating," citing what he was "dysfunction" within the political scene. The senator also revealed that he did not think his time on Capitol Hill has been "particularly successful," pointing to issues that he campaigned on tackling, including rising debt and abolishing the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

The senator has yet to formally announce whether he is running or not.

  The Hill

Like Trump, Johnson knows that if he says he's not running, the money will stop coming in. I'll bet, though, he's not running.  It's the media's fault, of course.  It has nothing to do with the fact that he's a full-blown idiot.

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

Rudy's squirming

And I assume getting his passport papers in order. 

Rudy Giuliani gave his first interview on Thursday following the FBI searches of his home and office, telling Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the DOJ had “spied on me.”

During a sprawling interview, the former lawyer to the former president spun a yarn in which the DOJ was engaged in a multi-year, politically motivated prosecution.

[...]

Giuliani said twice during the show, however, that he had a way out: since exiting the New York City mayoralty in 2001, he had inserted into his contracts with various foreign businessmen and governments a provision that declared that, whatever he was doing for them, it wasn’t lobbying.

  TPM

LOLOLOL

“I never, ever represented a foreign national,” Giuliani said. “In fact, I have in my contracts a refusal to do it because from the time I got out of being mayor, I did not want to lobby.”

Giuliani added that “I’ve had contracts in countries like Ukraine, in the contract there is a clause that says I will not engage in lobbying or foreign representation.”

“I don’t do it because I felt it would be too compromising,” the former mayor said.

The FBI warned Rudolph W. Giuliani in late 2019 that he was the target of a Russian influence operation aimed at circulating falsehoods intended to damage President Biden politically ahead of last year’s election, according to people familiar with the matter.

The warning was part of an extensive effort by the bureau to alert members of Congress and at least one conservative media outlet, One America News, that they faced a risk of being used to further Russia’s attempt to influence the election’s outcome, said several current and former U.S. officials.

[...]

Defensive briefings are given to people to alert them that they are being targeted by foreign governments for malign purposes, former officials said. But they’re also used “to see how they respond to that,” said Frank Figliuzzi, a former senior FBI counterintelligence official. “They’re now on notice.”

[...]

The warning, made by counterintelligence agents, was separate from the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal probe, but it reflects a broader concern by U.S. intelligence and federal investigators that Giuliani — among other influential Americans and U.S. institutions — was being manipulated by the Russian government to promote its interests and that he appears to have brazenly disregarded such fears.

Despite the alert, Giuliani went forward in December 2019 with a planned trip to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, where he met with a Ukrainian lawmaker whom the U.S. government later labeled “an active Russian agent” and sanctioned on grounds he was running an “influence campaign” against Biden. That operation, officials said, involved Ukrainian officials and political consultants who the U.S. intelligence community has since concluded were acting as Russian proxies not only to smear Biden and derail his candidacy but also to curtail U.S. support for Ukraine.

[...]

The FBI last summer also gave what is known as a defensive briefing to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who ahead of the election used his perch as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to investigate Biden’s dealings with Ukraine while he was vice president and his son Hunter Biden held a lucrative seat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

Johnson, a staunch Trump ally, recalled receiving a vague warning from FBI briefers in August, but he said Thursday that there was no substance to their cautionary message and that he did not view the meeting as a “defensive briefing” on his oversight of the Biden family’s foreign business ventures.

  WaPo

Dirtbag.   [See *Update below]

Johnson and staffers to Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), another Trump ally in the Senate who aided Johnson with his probe, said that in separate briefings earlier in 2020, FBI officials assured them there was no reason to discontinue their inquiry into Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine. It is not the bureau’s place to tell lawmakers what to investigate or not, or whether to stop or start an investigation, former FBI officials said.

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

UPDATE:

Jesus Christ, the man is a lawyer, ffs.*

UPDATE:

Oooh, boy.  I'm guessing the investigators have this just about sewed up. 

*UPDATE:

/2 First let's review what a federal search warrant means. It means that the feds provided a sworn affidavit to a magistrate judge showing that there is probable cause to believe these specific locations have evidence of a specified federal crime.

/3 Note there the difference between a criminal complaint and a search warrant -- they don't have to show proof that a particular person committed the crime, just proof that this LOCATION will have EVIDENCE of the commission of the federal crime.

/3 Note there the difference between a criminal complaint and a search warrant -- they don't have to show proof that a particular person committed the crime, just proof that this LOCATION will have EVIDENCE of the commission of the federal crime.

/4 Federal magistrate judges are, in my experience, **decent** at reviewing search warrant applications, particularly for problem locations like a lawyer's office. That means they are not as rubber-stampy as they might be in other circumstances and sometimes turn it down....

/5 ....at least in part, for instance, by rejecting a particular location or a request to look for a particular set of items or documents, or not allowing it to be done at night. Sometimes they make the feds go back and rework it a bit.

/6 This is in sharp contrast to state judges, who in my experience will sign a warrant even if the entirety of the probable cause statement is "you have beautiful thighs."

/7 So ANYWAY, we know that a federal magistrate judge was convinced there's probable cause that Rudy's home and office had evidence of a federal crime. But which crime, and based on what?

/8 Well, RUDY knows better than we do -- because RUDY now has a copy of the warrant -- the document saying "you can search these locations for this evidence of violation of these laws." Note that's NOT the affidavit -- he doesn't get that unless someone screws up.

/9 If we see the warrant -- someone leaks it, or Rudy hands it out because he's legally incontinent -- we'll see what specific federal laws they think were broken, which will tell us something about the investigation. We should also see what they searched for, which tells more.

/10 Rudy will also get a receipt of the things taken. Again, if that gets leaked or dropped by Rudy, we'll see the feds' (usually unhelpfully vague) descriptions of what they took.

/11 We can also tell things from the fact that there was also a search warrant for Victoria Toensing's home, apparently for her phone. That helps us narrow down what the search could be about.

/12 All of this may be corroborated by grand jury subpoenas (if they are leaked or publicized by people who get them), which will further detail what docs are being sought and what statutes are allegedly violated.

/13 Because Rudy is a lawyer, technically, we also know that the warrant required high-level approval. This could not be just some local AUSA power tripping. This went up the chain and got approved.

/14 Beyond that, we enter into the realm of (a) speculation (b) statements by unnamed sources of uncertain reliability and (c) talking head bullshit. /end

Toensing is widely presumed to have elicited federal interest viz. the Giuliani investigation due to her own representation of Ukrainian billionaire Dmytro Firtash and other Ukrainian nationals who played a role in attempting to disseminate information deemed harmful to then-candidate Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.

“This makes sense because, during the Ukraine impeachment investigation, we obtained draft retainer agreements between a Ukrainian official and Toensing and diGenova that Giuliani brokered,” Daniel Goldman, former lead counsel for the House impeachment inquiry, said on Twitter.

Firtash himself is currently under a federal indictment, but the role played by Toensing and diGenova is believed to go a bit further than a typical attorney-client relationship.

  Law & Crime

UPDATE: So here's an article regarding the specifics of the search warrant, according to "people familiar with the matter" :

The search warrants executed by federal investigators on Wednesday at Mr. Giuliani’s New York City apartment and office sought evidence related to Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine whom Mr. Giuliani pushed to oust in the spring of 2019, as well as communications with any U.S. government officials or employees regarding the former ambassador or her position, the people said.

[...]

The warrants also sought communications with or regarding associates who worked with Mr. Giuliani to push for Ms. Yovanovitch’s ouster and for an investigation by Ukrainian authorities into the Biden family’s activities in the country, the people familiar with the warrants said.

[...]

The warrants specifically sought evidence related to former Ukrainian prosecutors general Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko, former Ukrainian prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the people said.

[...]

The warrant also sought evidence related to three Giuliani associates who were arrested in 2019 on campaign-finance charges— Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman and David Correia—as well as two lawyers close to Mr. Giuliani, Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova, and conservative columnist John Solomon. Investigators on Wednesday executed a search warrant for Ms. Toensing’s phone.

[...]

Messrs. Parnas and Fruman have pleaded not guilty to the campaign-finance charges and are tentatively scheduled to go to trial later this year.

Mr. Correia pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced in February to a year and a day in prison for lying to federal election authorities and for duping investors in a fraud-insurance company.

  WSJ

*UPDATE:

UPDATE 9/11/21:

Igor Fruman found guilty in Trump campaign charge

UPDATE 10/24/21:

Lev Parnas found guilty in Trump campaign charge

Investigate Devin Nunes

This crook has been getting away with shit for too long.

Flashback to August:

During a closed-door business meeting of the panel on Wednesday — a transcript of which was made publicly available Thursday — Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) pressed Nunes about news reports indicating that he was one of several GOP lawmakers to whom packets of information were delivered from Derkach in December 2019 that contained allegations about Joe Biden. Derkach has confirmed he sent the packages to Nunes, as well as GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

"[M]y question ... is of the ranking member, whether he is prepared to disclose to the committee whether he has received materials that have been called into question in the public reports from Andrii Derkach and, if so, whether he is prepared to share them with the rest of the committee," Maloney asked.

"Does the ranking member wish to respond?" asked House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

"No," Nunes replied.

Maloney responded by suggesting that Nunes's refusal to answer "speaks volumes" and indicated that committee staffers are "in possession of evidence that a package was received."

[...]

The officials say they sought to access the materials from Nunes at the time but that he never agreed to share them.

[...]

In late January — in the midst of the Senate’s impeachment trial — the committee’s Democratic staff reported the existence of the package to the FBI and has since received no response from the bureau, according to committee officials.

[...]

In a statement to POLITICO last week, Derkach said he sent the materials to the lawmakers and former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney with the goal of “creating an interparliamentary association called ‘Friends of Ukraine STOP Corruption.’” He added that he recently notified Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Grassley, Graham, and Democratic Sens. Gary Peters of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon “about the content and materials published and voiced” at his news conferences. Graham, Grassley, Peters and Wyden indicated they never received materials from Derkach.

[...]

Maloney emphasized that the details about the packages he described in Wednesday’s meeting are unclassified, which suggests there is additional information in the addendum that is more sensitive.

The discussion of Nunes' receipt of a packet came after the committee voted along partisan lines to share the classified addendum with the full House. Committee officials say two dozen Democrats requested access to the addendum, requiring a committee response. Republicans voted against sharing the material, calling it an effort to distort and weaponize classified information for political gain. Nunes described the contents of the addendum as "extremely sensitive" and said he was sure the information would leak publicly if the full House were granted access.

[...]

Derkach’s website lists Secretary of State Mike Pompeo among the Republicans to whom he has sought to provide information. On Thursday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked Pompeo whether Derkach is credible, during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“I don’t want to comment on any particular individual like Mr. Derkach,” Pompeo said.

[...]

Before the transcript of Wednesday’s House Intelligence Committee meeting was posted publicly, Republican members of the panel spoke to friendly media outlets to allege that Maloney may have violated House ethics rules by raising questions about Nunes.

"He was very rude,” Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas told Breitbart News. “Members don’t question other members in hearings. This wasn’t on the agenda for the meeting. It was really inappropriate in my opinion, and pretty childish.”

[...]

“Russians are still trying to interfere in the election using bogus claims about events in Ukraine. So I don’t know what the secret is,” he said. “What’s in the box, is my question. Just show us and explain why it’s some big secret. We’ve literally got the receipts. The committee received this material. Why wouldn’t he share it?”

  Politico

Now flash forward to the current date:

A newly-declassified intelligence report raises very serious questions about the role top Republicans Rep. Devin Nunes and Sen. Ron Johnson played in laundering Russian disinformation during the 2020 presidential election cycle.

[...]

Johnson, you may recall, led the Senate investigation into Hunter Biden last year. Although he has denied receiving information from [Andriy Derkach, a Russia-tied Ukrainian legislator,] and laughably claimed not to know who he is, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Johnson “repeatedly cited information provided by Ukrainian official Andriy Telizhenko” as part of an effort to discredit Biden.

[...]

Then there’s Nunes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee. He has refused to say what was in a package he received from Derkach, sent to him at the committee.

[...]

Maloney, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, expressed his alarm on Deadline: White House Wednesday about how Republicans were so willing to do Putin’s bidding.

MALONEY: The fact is, is that [the Russians] were so comfortable using people like Devin Nunes that Andriy Derkach, a known Russian asset, sent information to Devin Nunes at the Intelligence Committee. We literally had the package receipt. … [It was] the same information, presumably, that Ron Johnson trying to spread around using the position in the Senate as the Chairman, at that time, of the Homeland Security Committee.

[...]

Maloney called for Nunes, Johnson and others to be held accountable. But it’s not just elected officials. Maloney also reminded us that others, such as Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, and Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, lied to Congress and to the public by over-hyping the threat that China played and downplayed that of Russia in the election cycle.

  Crooks and Liars

Definitely Barr should be investigated.

A report released Tuesday made clear that the intelligence community believed that Russia had long attacked Mr. Biden for the benefit of Mr. Trump. But throughout 2020, senior officials bowed to Mr. Trump’s hostility toward any public emphasis of the threat from Russia, and they offered Congress and the public incomplete or misleading portraits of the intelligence on foreign influence in the election.

[...]

Their efforts allowed Americans to dismiss a widely accepted intelligence assessment as politics, deepening distrust and division among the electorate, current and former officials said, adding that a divided country was vulnerable to foreign interference.

[...]

The newly released report, former Trump administration officials argued, blurs the definitions of influence and interference. Russia’s effort was always more about spreading misinformation and propaganda, the former officials said, and there was no evidence that the Kremlin changed votes, the report’s definition of interference.

[...]

[T]he designated election security czar, Shelby Pierson, was consistent in how she portrayed Russian actions in briefings to Congress, according to people familiar with her testimony.

But one of her briefings, in which Ms. Pierson told lawmakers Russia favored Mr. Trump and was working for his re-election, prompted outrage among Republicans and contributed to the ousting of Joseph R. Maguire as the acting director of national intelligence.

[...]

[T]he intelligence community ombudsman said in January that there were substantive differences between talking points for briefing Congress and what the intelligence community really thought.

The newly declassified report showed that the March briefing was at best misleading to Congress and backed Ms. Pierson’s February testimony.

[...]

While some senior intelligence officials have suggested that intelligence on Russia was in flux at various points in 2020, the new report made clear that the intelligence community’s view on President Vladimir V. Putin’s support for Mr. Trump was little changed from 2016 to 2020.

Senior Trump administration officials’ comments about China were also at odds with the report.

John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s final director of national intelligence, said publicly before and after the election that China was the greatest national security threat.

[...]

Some intelligence officials defended Mr. Ratcliffe’s comments on China, noting that Beijing was the most serious long-term threat to the United States and that it clearly tried to influence how it was viewed in America and elsewhere. The January ombudsman report did find merit in Mr. Ratcliffe’s critique of how intelligence on Chinese influence operations was handled.

[...]

Mr. Ratcliffe’s relentless focus on China, rather than Russia, had the effect of leaving the impression, particularly with the president’s most enthusiastic supporters, that China was the most urgent threat to the 2020 election.

The new report rejected that assertion.

  NYT

All of this may shed some light on Maloney's aggressive questioning of Gordon Sondland at the November impeachment hearing.

Ron Johnson is a racist ass

And also...WTF?

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson is facing accusations of racism after saying the supporters of former President Donald Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol in January didn't worry him but that he might have been concerned if they had been supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement.

"I knew those were people who love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, so I wasn't concerned," Johnson said about the predominantly white crowd that marched to the U.S. Capitol to overturn a presidential election and triggered an assault that left five people dead, 140 police officers injured and windows smashed.

"Now, had the tables been turned, and Joe — this is going to get me in trouble — had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa, I might have been a little concerned," Johnson said during an interview with syndicated radio show host Joe "Pags" Pagliarulo.

  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

They respect law enforcement by beating and killing police officers.

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

Ron Johnson is still an ass

It is just the latest step by Johnson, who is up for reelection in a state narrowly won by Biden, to burnish his Trump credentials, whether that’s by repeating unfounded theories about the Jan. 6 attack or becoming the face of GOP opposition to the coronavirus bill that is broadly popular even among Republicans.

[...]

Johnson’s move delays the vote-for-all, a process where senators will be able to force amendment votes, and the subsequent final passage of the bill.

[...]

Johnson is taking a two-pronged approach to his hardball tactics: First, he’s forcing the Senate clerks to read the entire piece of legislation, a delaying tactic that irritated Democrats and even some Republicans. Then, he wants Republicans to sign up for shifts so they could potentially force hundreds of amendment votes.

Johnson’s delaying tactics won’t sink the bill, and some colleagues have been puzzled over what his endgame is.

  The Hill

There's no endgame. He's just an ass.

"It doesn’t punish anybody except members of the staff … and pretty much all 100 senators,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D).

[...]

Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, defended Johnson’s ability to force the reading, but noted that Republicans are also eager to get to the debate so they can showcase their opposition to the Democratic bill.

“I think our goal would be to have to be able to use 20 hours so our members can get up and talk. While they’re reading the bill you don’t get a chance to do that,” Thune said.

[...]

Johnson says he is forcing the reading to give the American people more time to get acquainted with the 628-page bill that was formally unveiled on Thursday afternoon, and to let Republicans craft amendments.

Apparently the Republicans already have their amendments crafted and want to get them out there. As for the American people, does he really think any but the most hardcore policy wonks are going to listen to ten hours of it being read? Or even ten minutes? No. All he's done is further cement his reputation as an ass and caused some poor schmucks to read dry as dust legal verbiage for 10 fucking hours.  The Senators themselves aren't going to sit there for it.  Johnson won't even do that.

Is he trying to take Ted Cruz' place as the most hated person in the Senate?

It’s hardly the first time Johnson has found himself in the middle of controversy in recent weeks, as he at times appears to be positioning himself as the most pro-Trump member of the Senate.

In February, Johnson said the Jan. 6 mob attack [Johnson's] decision to become the leading critic of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill also puts him on the record against $1,400 stimulus checks to millions of households and providing a $400 increase in unemployment benefits to the jobless.

Such provisions have made the legislation broadly popular, even with Republicans.

P.S. Mike Lee is still an ass, too.

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

UPDATE:

At this moment, on this issue, time can be measured in human lives. On average, nearly 2,000 people a day are dying from covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. That’s a death about once every 44 seconds. It’s an improvement over the end of January, when people were dying at a rate faster than two a minute. But it’s still a far faster rate than the country had seen for much of the pandemic.

CBS’s Frank Thorp reported that the reading of the bill (by a non-speed reader) began at about 3:22 p.m. By 4:01 p.m., the reader had gotten to only page 40, a rate of 37 pages an hour. The bill is 628 pages long so, if the text of the bill were consistently dense throughout, it would have taken about 17 hours to read it in its entirety. Reading would end at about 8 a.m. on Friday.

As it turned out, the readers picked up the pace. The reading of the bill completed after 10 hours, 44 minutes. Given the current rate at which people are dying of covid-19, that means that about 880 Americans likely succumbed to the disease during that period.

  WaPo

Censure Ron Johnson

Then boot his ass out of the Senate.

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

Give the freshman senator an impossible job

That Ron Johnson is on ANY committee is a hint at GOP true colors.

Not a good look, Ron

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) tried to get consent, which requires the cooperation of every senator, to pass his bill that would provide $1,200 for individuals who make up to $75,000 — the exact same language that Congress passed as part of the CARES Act in March.

"What I'm proposing is what every senator has supported already, this year. ... What I'm proposing will give working folks in my state and across this country a shot ... at getting back up on their feet," Hawley said from the Senate floor.

  The Hill

Twelve hundred dollars a month would have been more reasonable. And Johnson doesn't even want to give people that much once a year.

But Johnson objected. Under the Senate's rules any one senator can request to pass a bill but any other senator can object and block it.

How stupid is that?

"I completely support some kind of program targeted for small businesses. ... So what I fear we're going to do with this bipartisan package and what the senator from Missouri is talking about is the same thing, is a shotgun approach," Johnson said.

"We will not have learned the lessons from our very hurried, very rushed earlier relief packages," Johnson added.

FFS, the problem was not the $1,200 for a select number of people, but the lack of control over where the larger loan relief was going.

Leadership is negotiating a package that is expected to include $600 checks.

That's not what I'd call leadership.

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

UPDATE:

A tale of two last-ditch attempts at a coup

1) Ron Johnson's truly awful "hearing"

A Republican-led Senate panel provided a three-hour platform for allies of President Donald Trump to dispute the results of the 2020 election.

[...]

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Ron Johnson argued the forum was simply to evaluate information.

[...]

Johnson sought to head off criticism at the outset, insisting his hearing was just about seeking “information” and “should not be controversial.”

[...]

GOP-called witnesses, including two Trump campaign lawyers described rampant fraud in Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, some of which had been considered and scrapped in court, others of which had no basis.

[...]

Johnson insisted without evidence that fraud had undoubtedly occurred at an indeterminable scale.

[...]

The one witness called by Democrats, the Trump administration’s former top election security official Christopher Krebs, served as a counterweight. He urged Americans to put baseless election disputes behind them and warned that false conspiracy claims had fueled violent threats to election officials — including himself.

[...]

Johnson said that he hoped no one would portray the hearing itself as encouraging these types of threats. “Nobody should condone it. Certainly not this committee, certainly not this chairman,” he said.

[...]

The hearing also provided an opportunity for Trump’s Senate allies to stoke the unsupported claims of election irregularities that they said had led to a loss of confidence in the election results, without mentioning Trump’s weeks-long campaign to drive up such distrust. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said the president’s court losses were largely on technical grounds and therefore shouldn’t be viewed as conclusively defusing the fraud claims. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said he’s often asked by Floridians, “How is this different than what Maduro is doing?”

Shortly after the hearing, Trump tweeted in support of Paul's claim that the election was "stolen" and slammed Krebs, who he falsely said had been "excoriated" at the hearing. "Chris Krebs was totally excoriated and proven wrong," Trump tweeted, before listing a litany of baseless fraud allegations.

  

2) GOP calls for a military coup

An 1807 law invoked only in the most violent circumstances is now a rallying cry for the MAGA-ites most committed to the fantasy that Donald Trump will never leave office.

The law, the Insurrection Act, allows the president to deploy troops to suppress domestic uprisings — not to overturn elections.

But that hasn’t stopped the act from becoming a buzzword and cure-all for prominent MAGA figures like Sydney Powell and Lin Wood, two prominent pro-Trump attorneys leading efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and even one North Carolina state lawmaker. Others like Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser who was recently pardoned for lying to the FBI, have made adjacent calls for Trump to impose martial law.

[...]

While scattered theories about a “deep state” arrayed against Trump have long circulated in MAGA circles, calls for troops to stop a democratically elected president from taking office have taken those ideas to a more conspiratorial and militaristic level. It also displays the exalted level to which Trump has been elevated among his most zealous fans as his departure looms.

[...]

Trump ally and convicted political operative Roger Stone brought it up on Infowars as a way for Trump to combat anything from coups to protests to election fraud. “The president's authority is the Insurrection Act and his ability to declare martial law,” he told host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Stone added that Trump could also use the law to arrest anyone from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for election interference, to Democratic power couple Bill and Hillary Clinton — an interpretation that legal experts say strains credulity.

  Politico

Roger Stone strains credulity.

Trump himself seemed keen to the idea, telling Fox News host Jeanine Pirro that he would “put down [anti-Trump protests] very quickly” if they broke out after the election: “Look, it's called insurrection. We just send in and we do it very easy.”

[...]

It seems nearly impossible Trump would actually invoke the law in this manner. But that hasn’t stopped prominent Trump supporters like Wood, one of the lawyers pushing unsubstantiated lawsuits through the courts, from suggesting Trump send the military into Georgia to break up a meeting of the Electoral College.

And over the weekend, after the Supreme Court rejected a Trump-boosted lawsuit from Texas asking to overturn the election results on four other swing states, MAGA supporters took to the street to demand, among other things, that Trump use the Insurrection Act to force an election do-over, or at the very least, stop Biden from taking office.

[...]

The Epoch Times [...] ran an editorial on Monday arguing that it was time for Trump to invoke the act and send in the military to seize thousands of voting machines in order to find fraud: “Our system is in crisis. Trump would act to restore the rule of law.”

Do not be surprised if, after Joe Biden moves into the White House, there are "militias" taking up arms and filling the streets around him.

The Insurrection Act has been rarely invoked since the civil unrest of the 1960s — the last time was to quell violence during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. And when it has been used over that period, it was always at the request of a state governor.

[...]

Only once [has it] been used in the wake of an election — and that was to stop a literal militia from seizing the Louisiana government on behalf of John McEnery, a former Confederate officer who had lost the 1872 governor’s race.

In other words, it would more properly be applied AGAINST Trump.

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

How is this shit being just shrugged off?

A former head of US election security who said Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden was not subject to voter fraud should be “taken out at dawn and shot”, a Trump campaign lawyer [Joe DiGenova] said.

[...]

[Chris] Krebs was fired as head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) on 17 November, not long after he said the election, contrary to Trump’s claims, “was the most secure in American history”.

[...]

DiGenova made the remark about Krebs on The Howie Carr Show, a podcast shown on YouTube and the Trump-allied Newsmax TV, on Monday.

“Anybody who thinks the election went well,” he said, “like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity, that guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”

  Guardian

Why hasn't Joe DiGenova lost his law license?

Louis Clark, chief executive of the Government Accountability Project, said in a statement: “Threats like these trigger an avalanche of them. They terrorise other whistleblowers into silence. It’s behavior befitting a mob attorney.”

Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI deputy director, said DiGenova had made “a retaliatory threat involving Krebs’ official duties, in violation of federal law Title 18 USC 351”.

Then he should be disbarred AND charged with a crime.

And then there's Ron Johnson, known asshat and SOB, who spoke to a reporter assuming what he said wouldn't be published.

My discussion with Senator Ron Johnson was one that I have hesitated openly discussing for three weeks. As a former chairman for the Brown County Republican Party, I have people I respect deeply who are still members of the party. There are many elected officials whom I consider friends and I do not want to give reason to think twice about any conversation we have. Additionally, I didn’t want my family to become a target, especially with my wife days from giving birth to our child. However, given what was discussed, and given the war that leaders of the GOP such as Senator Johnson are waging on the very foundations of our democracy, I could no longer stay silent.

[...]

I opened the conversation by remarking on my concern for the party. I reiterated that what the GOP is doing and the direction it is going are unsustainable. The GOP has become the party of Donald Trump, and Trumpism has become the doctrine upon which everything else is built; they are one and the same. Senator Johnson spoke about the massive amounts of people Donald Trump brought into the party, many of whom have never cared about politics before.

[...]

Senator Johnson knows that Joe Biden won a free and fair election. He is refusing to admit it publicly and stoking conspiracies that undermine our democracy solely because it would be “political suicide” to oppose Trump.

[...]

He said that “yes, Donald Trump is an asshole,” but the votes that Trump received, especially in Wisconsin, cannot be overlooked. Senator Johnson talked about how, prior to November 3, Johnson received the highest number of Republican votes in the history of the state of Wisconsin. His goal going into his 2016 re-election was to get 1.5 million votes. He failed to reach that in 2016, while President Trump did in 2020, despite losing. (It did not seem to occur to Senator Johnson that President Trump motivated massive, greater turnout in opposition to him than he did in support.)

Senator Johnson argued that that kind of message from Republican voters was one that he received loud and clear.

[...]

Senator Johnson then asked me if I had ever been to a Trump rally. I chuckled and responded that I had not. He said that I should have gone because if I did, I would have seen that the one constant throughout all his rallies was, “the people there absolutely love America.” I reminded him that in every speech I gave as a Republican county chairman, I asked those in attendance to stop calling Democrats the “enemy.” I would say, “Democrats aren’t the enemy. We both love our country and want to make it a better place. We just have different ways to achieve that goal.”

[...]

Johnson scoffed and said, “Absolutely not. Bernie Sanders and AOC want to fundamentally change our country. And you can’t love something you want to fundamentally change.”

[...]

I said I was both frustrated and gravely concerned about how the GOP is continuing to advance disproved conspiracy theories regarding the integrity of the election. Senator Johnson said that he knew and accepted the fact that Joe Biden had won. I asked why he wouldn’t say so at a moment when Trump was taking a sledgehammer to the very foundation of our democracy. Senator Johnson replied that the institutions of our democracy are strong enough to withstand what is going on. This response shocked me, since it suggested that the truth was ultimately unimportant.

[...]

Ron Johnson knows that this is BS. Because five years ago he said so. In 2015 he introduced legislation streamlining the transition process, saying “the peaceful transition of power is one of the hallmarks of our democracy. It is also an enormous undertaking requiring months of planning in order to be successful.”

Here he was five years later on the phone with me saying that he knows Biden won. But simultaneously refusing to publicly congratulate Biden and standing in the way of his transition.

And since then, Sen. Johnson’s performance has gone even further. On Tuesday, Attorney General Bill Barr announced that he had found no evidence of fraud that would rise to the level of altering the outcome of the election. Senator Johnson then said that Barr needed to “show evidence”—meaning: a negative—and that he still thinks “there’s enough questions outstanding.”

[...]

After dismissing the notion that being honest with his constituents about election integrity was important, Sen. Johnson said that although Biden had won, he was, “the worst candidate for president in the history of the country.” He said that Biden won strictly because of all the hatred for Trump that was advanced by the media every single day. We spoke of organizations such as the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump. Johnson said that he loathed these organizations because “they are money-grubbing pieces of shit.” He said that these organizations and the media refused to accept all the good things Trump has done, “even though he [Trump] is an asshole, he was right on so many things.” He talked about his displeasure for the “political establishment.” He said that he “honestly doesn’t even much care for Mitch McConnell,” because of his entrenchment within said establishment.

[...]

Looking back at the disaster these last four years have been, I hope that my speaking out gives those on the right a permission structure to come back to the world of facts. You can support the good things President Trump did without lying about how our elections were rigged by Venezuela. Conspiracies and alternate realities are causing our society to crumble. We can’t move forward together when we acknowledge reality in private and then peddle falsehoods in public.

  Mark Becker, former chairman for the Brown County Republican Party @ The Bulwark

Johnson dismissed the op-ed’s accusations against him on Wednesday, saying the article “should be viewed as the political hit piece it is, and simply ignored.”

“I have been very consistent in both public and private statements that I believe there are way too many irregularities and suspect issues that need to be fully investigated and publicly vetted before a final result is determined and a peaceful transition of power takes place,” Johnson said in a statement emailed to National Review.

  MSN

Zero integrity. A hallmark of the modern GOP. 

There is no bottom; there is no hope

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

And the hits keep coming

So far, it's Republicans. Anyone surprised?

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has tested positive for the coronavirus, becoming the third senator to announce in the past two days that they had contracted the virus.

Johnson’s office said in a statement on Saturday that he was exposed to an individual on Sept. 29 who has since tested positive for the virus.

  The Hill

September 29. Was that individual at the Ohio superspreader event, aka the presidential debate?

“Senator Johnson feels healthy and is not experiencing symptoms. He will remain isolated until given the all-clear by his doctor."

[...]

In addition to Johnson, Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) both said on Friday that they had tested positive for COVID-19.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is delaying the chamber’s return to Washington from Oct. 5 to Oct. 19.

  Politico

And counting.

source