US Politics: Catch the big crook under the “Big Cone”

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Someone had to put the fear of God in that bunny.

This is not about your Super Bowl Party.

[horangi]

59 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

We just shot “something” down off the coast of Alaska:

U.S. shoots down 'high-altitude object' over Alaska  - https://www.npr.org/2023/02/10/1156114384/u-s-shoots-down-high-altitude-object-over-alaska?origin=NOTIFY

Hopefully they used the same pilot so he can work towards his Ace credentials.    (yes, yes unlikely due to distance)

[Parsons]

Mysterious Green Lasers Over Hawaii Were Likely From Chinese Satellite

https://www.newsweek.com/mysterious-green-lasers-hawaii-chinese-satellite-nasa-1780468
 

Quote

 

On January 28—the same day a suspected Chinese spy balloon was detected by the U.S. off the coast of Alaska—a camera watching the night atop a mountain in Hawaii caught a series of green laser beams darting across the sky.

Lasting a matter of seconds, just as it turned 2:00 a.m. local time (7:00 a.m. ET), footage from the camera caught the bands arcing left to right, footage shows. While the owners of the camera initially supposed it was a NASA mapping satellite, the U.S. space organization has said that it was not them, suggesting it may have been the Chinese.

 

Regarding the Object shot down near Alaska this is government spokesman Josh Kirby explaining the situation.

 

Typically terse response that didn't provide much helpful information. The only thing of interest is that the object was much smaller than the infamous spy ballon. This object was only the size of a small car.

[Zorral]

This piece by the brilliant, very well informed historian, Jamelle Bouie, says it all -- these attacks on trans people are wedges to attack all Others, and particularly women -- it is to deny them their innate dignity of personhood.  And lordessa knows, the reichlicans are entirely without any dignity -- look at Their behavior at the SOTU address just for starters -- so perhaps this is why They are determined to take our dignity from the rest of us.

There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/opinion/trump-desantis-transgender-rights.html

Quote

 

... He wants to target transgender adults as well. “I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” Trump said. “I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.”

There is plenty to say about the reasoning and motivation for this attack — whether it comes from Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida or Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas — but the important thing to note, for now, is that it is a direct threat to the lives and livelihoods of transgender people. It’s the same for other L.G.B.T.Q. Americans, who once again find themselves in the cross-hairs of an aggressive movement of social conservatives who have become all the more emboldened in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year.

This is no accident. The attacks on transgender people and L.G.B.T.Q. rights are of a piece with the attack on abortion and reproductive rights. It is a singular assault on the bodily autonomy of all Americans, meant to uphold and reinforce traditional hierarchies of sex and gender. ....

.... Democracy, remember, is not just a set of rules and institutions, but a way of life. In the democratic ideal, we meet one another in the public sphere as political and social equals, imbued with dignity and entitled to the same rights and privileges.

I have referred to dignity twice now. That is intentional. Outside of certain select phrases (“the dignity of labor”), we don’t talk much about dignity in American politics, despite the fact that the demands of many groups for dignity and respect in public life have been a driving force in American history since the beginning. To that point, one of the great theorists of dignity and democracy in the United States was none other than Frederick Douglass, whose experience in bondage gave him a lifelong preoccupation with the ways that dignity is either cultivated or denied.

Douglass observed “that although dignity seems to be woven into human nature, it is also something one possesses to the degree that one is conscious of having it,” the historian Nicholas Knowles Bromell writes in “The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass,” “and one’s own consciousness of having it depends in part on making others conscious of it. Others’ recognition of it then flows back and confirms one’s belief in having it, but conversely their refusal to recognize it has the opposite effect of weakening one’s confidence in one’s own dignity.”

It is easy to see how this relates to chattel slavery, a totalizing system in which enslaved Black Americans struggled to assert their dignity and self-respect in the face of a political, social and economic order that sought to rob them of both. But Douglass explored this idea in other contexts as well.

Writing after the Civil War on women’s suffrage, Douglass asked his readers to see the “plain” fact that “women themselves are divested of a large measure of their natural dignity by their exclusion from and participation in Government.” To “deny woman her vote,” Douglass continued, “is to abridge her natural and social power, and to deprive her of a certain measure of respect.” A woman, he concluded, “loses in her own estimation by her enforced exclusion from the elective franchise just as slaves doubted their own fitness for freedom, from the fact of being looked down upon as fit only for slaves.”

.... Although Douglass never wrote a systematic account of his vision of democracy, Bromell contends that we can extrapolate such an account from the totality of his writing and activism. “A democracy,” Douglass’s work suggests, “is a polity that prizes human dignity,” Bromell writes. “It comes into existence when a group of persons agrees to acknowledge each other’s dignity, both informally, through mutually respectful comportment, and formally, through the establishment of political rights.” All of our freedoms, in Bromell’s account of Douglass, “are means toward the end of maintaining a political community in which all persons collaboratively produce their dignity.”

The denial of dignity to one segment of the political community, then, threatens the dignity of all. This was true for Douglass and his time — it inspired his support for women’s suffrage and his opposition to the Chinese Exclusion Act — and it is true for us and ours as well. To deny equal respect and dignity to any part of the citizenry is to place the entire country on the road to tiered citizenship and limited rights, to liberty for some and hierarchy for the rest.

Put plainly, the attack on the dignity of transgender Americans is an attack on the dignity of all Americans. And like the battles for abortion rights and bodily autonomy, the stakes of the fight for the rights and dignity of transgender people are high for all of us. There is no world in which their freedom is suppressed and yours is sustained.

 

 

[Martell Spy]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

We just shot “something” down off the coast of Alaska:

U.S. shoots down 'high-altitude object' over Alaska  - https://www.npr.org/2023/02/10/1156114384/u-s-shoots-down-high-altitude-object-over-alaska?origin=NOTIFY

It's a UFO.

[Fragile Bird]

Geez guys, when are Republicans gonna start proposing ‘benevolent slavery’ as a realistic option?

[Mlle. Zabzie]

13 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Geez guys, when are Republicans gonna start proposing ‘benevolent slavery’ as a realistic option?

Ummm....you know how our state penitentiary system works, right?  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Shocker:

 

[Zorral]

How The Fake Electors Scheme Explains Everything About Trump’s Attempt To Steal The 2020 Election
New materials illustrate why Fani Willis and Jack Smith have focused on this esoteric part of Trump’s plot

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/how-the-fake-electors-scheme-explains-everything-about-trumps-attempt-to-steal-the-2020-election

Quote

 

... Instead of a series of disconnected, disparate schemes all aimed at the same goal, the fake electors plot provides a lens through which to view the entire effort, giving Trump’s 2020 plans a coherence, with each piece fitting neatly together. Now, two years after the violence of Jan. 6, this fresh look at the scheme reinforces how efforts to spread conspiracy theories, subvert the DOJ, weaponize state legislatures, summon an angry mob and, ultimately, pressure the vice president on Jan. 6 were all part of the same plot, with fake electors at the center. 

Importantly, it’s a scheme that may carry criminal liability as federal prosecutors continue their investigation.

This new understanding of the fake electors plot is drawn from the Jan. 6 committee’s now-released materials, and from other reporting conducted by TPM, including a review of the texts Mark Meadows turned over to the committee. It also comes as Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis weighs whether to issue indictments after her year-long investigation of Trump. Willis has focused on the fake electors in her investigation, probing not only the electors themselves but the attorneys and officials on the Trump campaign who organized them. 

TPM reported in summer 2022 on how the fake electors scheme could give the DOJ a way in to Trump’s election reversal effort, and on how they unite different portions of the broader universe of Trump’s bid to stay in power, against the will of the American people. 

But a closer look at the record made available by texts, documents, and other records shows precisely how central the fake electors were to the various schemes that Trump and his allies had going — they were the mechanism that, in Trumpworld’s thinking, could at any point from early December until Jan. 6 have allowed pressure on state legislators, officials, Congress, Mike Pence, and the Supreme Court to turn into actions that would flip the result. In the weeks after the 2020 election, the Trump campaign arranged for the creation of fake elector slates in seven states. 

Per memos released by the Jan. 6 committee, the electors had the stated purpose of “preserving” their vote — that is, retaining the option that, were the election to be declared invalid somehow, they could then be swapped in in the place of the former, now-unneeded Biden electors to provide a legal mechanism for Trump’s victory.

In a normal election, the electors of the winning candidate cast their ballots and send them onwards to Congress, where a joint session verifies that candidate’s victory. Trump sought to make the 2020 election abnormal, and to use his electors as part of his scheme to contest and to “win” various states, regardless of whether or not he received more votes in those states. 

Though much of Trumpworld quickly cottoned on to the fake electors scheme, the origins of the plan remain murky. The Atlantic’s Barton Gellman reported in September 2020 that versions of the scheme were already being discussed; he cited “sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels.” 

But it’s stunning to observe how, within days of the November 2020 election, people up and down the hierarchy of the Trump campaign were ready to move on the fake electors plot. 

On Nov. 5, 2020, Donald Trump Jr. was one of many people in Trump’s orbit to text White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows with a plan for how electors could be used to subvert the election, up to Jan. 6. 

“It’s very simple,” Don Jr. wrote, according to a text log that Meadows handed over to the Jan. 6 committee and that was obtained by TPM. “If through our lawsuits and recounts the Secretary of States on each state cannot �certify� that states vote the State Assemblies can step in and vote to put forward the electoral slate Republicans control Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina etc � we get Trump electors[.]” (The text message contents received by the committee contained tokens that replaced emojis and certain punctuation.) 

“There is a Safe Harbor on 8 December if for whatever reason you miss that the Electors then cannot meet in the individual state Capitols on 14 December,” he continued. “So we either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January 2021[.]”

According to the text log, Meadows acknowledged Don Jr.’s text, and other plans like it coming in from allies. 

Per a Nov. 12 email from Newt Gingrich to Meadows and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone obtained and released by the Jan. 6 committee, the former speaker wanted to know who was “in charge of coordinating all the electors” and remarked that they’d all have to meet on Dec. 14 to be valid. Then, Gingrich added, the ballots would “force contests, which the house would then have to settle.”

Gingrich’s email contained a seeming reference to a theory that would be further developed for Trump and given legal heft by a little-known attorney named Ken Chesebro, which posited that the final date to decide the election was not Dec. 14 — that was merely the date by which electors of any given candidate had to pledge themselves. The real, final deadline, in Chesebro’s thinking, was Jan. 6 — that’s when Congress would meet to hold a joint session certifying the electoral votes. 

It presented an opportunity, Chesebro articulated in a series of memos sent from mid-November through December published by the panel: State legislatures could re-certify pro-Trump electors even if state officials had said that Biden was the winner. 

Aiding in this was John Eastman, a conservative movement attorney who had worked with Chesebro on a birthright citizenship case years before. 

On Nov. 23, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) referenced Eastman’s role in developing the plot in a text to Meadows, saying that the professor was “proposing an approach that unlike what Sidney Powell has propose could be examined very quickly.”

“But to do this, you’d have to act very soon,” he added. ....

 

Much more.

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

It's a UFO.

I'm really hoping it wasn't unidentified by the people shooting it down. They could at least tell us they know what it was even if they're not going to tell us

[ThinkerX]

I doubt anybody here is surprised, but...

Chaos engulfs Michigan State House after GOP abruptly adjourns in protest of Dems' tax bill (msn.com)

Chaos broke out at the Michigan Capitol this Thursday after Senate Republicans unexpectedly adjourned for the weekend as Democrats were having a private meeting, WNEM5 reports.

The chaos was sparked by the passage of a bill that would lower taxes for low-income workers and give tax-paying Michiganders a $180 check. Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist said that the adjournment was a way for Republicans to avoid passing a bill they didn't like.

[Zorral]

Again, one wonders how desantis's determination to run for POTUS by ending medicare, medicaid and social security will fly in Florida, which lives off retirees.  Three of my bro's colleagues who retired when he did, have moved to FL in the last few months.  Their health isn't so good, yanno?  Good pensions and so on, but like my bro, for the first time in their lives they are dealing with medical insurance on their own -- the company and HR etc. always handled it, they didn't pay for any of it.  This included dental and optical.  And even medical insurance for my niece and her daughter!

Bro had one hell of an eye opener on these matters -- particularly as niece has lots of health issues, and is way too young for medicare for decades yet, and isn't working, thus not accruing SS, and of course, granddaughter, being so young, is always coming down with something, including ear aches, incurring doctors' visits.  He's having to pay for all this.

 

 

[Wilbur]

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

...He's having to pay for all this.

 

 

Even worse than paying for it is the red tape.

My God, the paperwork and general dumbassery an individual has to deal with was a huge shock to me.  US health insurance is configured so as to prevent health care, not pay for it.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Wilbur said:

Even worse than paying for it is the red tape.

My God, the paperwork and general dumbassery an individual has to deal with was a huge shock to me.  US health insurance is configured so as to prevent health care, not pay for it.

My brother was gobsmacked.  It took him months to get it all worked out, find the doctors who accept medicare, find supplemental insurance plans that seemed not completely useless.  It was particularly difficult to accept he had to pay for dental and eye care.

Re, the bolded, So Many have been saying this for decades already.  My brother thought we were all, well, shall we say going over the top? when we said these things.  And he's far better off to deal with these matters than most people, both financially and organizationally.

[Varysblackfyre321]

5 hours ago, Zorral said:

Again, one wonders how desantis's determination to run for POTUS by ending medicare, medicaid and social security will fly in Florida, which lives off retirees. 

Go Trans people bad

[hauberk]

3 hours ago, Wilbur said:

Even worse than paying for it is the red tape.

My God, the paperwork and general dumbassery an individual has to deal with was a huge shock to me.  US health insurance is configured so as to prevent health care, not pay for it.

I sat in a leadership program healthcare day over a decade ago.  CEOs of two rival healthcare networks were presenting and described the US Healthcare system as the end of Thelma and Louise.  Both were of the opinion that jerking the wheel could not be any worse that burying the pedal and going straight on ahead.  Having dealt with my families healthcare needs since then - especially helping my retired veteran father navigate what was covered by Medicare and what from his VA benefits was a real education.  I'm firmly of the belief that there is an award winning investigative piece waiting to be done about vets, post surgery or hospitalization rehab and cancer treatment (VA benefits cover the cancer treatment, medicare covers rehab stays (but medicare reimbursement is dependent upon providing all services - including the meds that are covered only by VA benefits).

[Parsons]

Another UFO has been tracked by NORAD, this time over Canada. I'm hearing some people saying it was also shot down but I don't know if these are just rumors. I haven't seen any press briefing today because I've been away from the internet for most of the day. Does anyone have more information?

[Parsons]

1 minute ago, Parsons said:

Another UFO has been tracked by NORAD, this time over Canada. I'm hearing some people saying it was also shot down but I don't know if these are just rumors. I haven't seen any press briefing today because I've been away from the internet for most of the day. Does anyone have more information?

Just to answer my own question I found this CNN update

 

So Canada ordered the object shot down but it was a US fighter that did it. Recovery operations are underway.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I've got $5 on some Republican of note saying Biden looks weak because he followed Trudeau's orders. 

[Parsons]

BREAKING: United States closes airspace over state of Montana for 'defense activities.'

https://bnonews.com/index.php/2023/02/faa-closes-airspace-montana-for-defense-activities/

 

Quote

 

The Federal Aviation Administration has closed airspace in a part of Montana near the Canadian border, federal officials say. The cause was not immediately known but it follows a series of incidents involving balloons and unidentified objects.

A notice to airmen (NOTAM), which was issued around 5:30 p.m. MT on Saturday, said airspace around Havre had been designated as “national defense airspace.” All civilian flight operations were banned with immediate effect.

 

“The FAA closed some airspace in Montana to support Department of Defense activities,” an FAA spokesman said in response to an inquiry from BNO News. “Contact NORAD for additional information.”

A number of military aircraft were active in the area but other details were not immediately known.

 

I'm kind of getting impatient with all of these airspace violations and shootdown over the past couple of days. At least with the Chinese spy balloon we had numerous visuals. Can we see some images or video of these objects that they are shooting down instead of vaguely worded statements?