US Politics: Be Careful Out There

[Zorral]

Recommended particularly for those who poo poo how little significance there was concerning that out-and-out declared white supremacist mark to the Capitol on Saturday, because not thousands.  (Let's recall all it takes is a single person with bump stock, etc. to kill, and maim for life, many multiples of human beings and other living things.)   They have sponsors and organizers inside the government.

EXCLUSIVE: Capitol Hill Staffer Is A Prominent Follower Of Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes
Evidence shows Congressman Paul Gosar’s digital director is behind an online persona that Fuentes called one of his “strongest soldiers.”

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/paul-gosar-nick-fuentes-staffer-wade-searle

Quote

 

.... TPM has uncovered an extensive digital trail of interconnected Groyper social media pages using variations of the “ChickenRight” and “Chikken” handles that can be linked to Wade Searle, who works as the digital director for Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), one of the most extreme, far-right members of Congress. ChickenRight’s posting on far-right websites and Searle’s alleged involvement with Fuentes occurred before and after he started working in Gosar’s Capitol Hill office. Gosar, his chief of staff, his press secretary, and Searle have not responded to multiple detailed requests for comment. ....

... the presence of a prominent Groyper in Gosar’s office would indicate the congressman’s ties to the white supremacist movement are far deeper than previously known. Online, ChickenRight built a following of more than 20,000 people on far-right websites while posting extremist, anti-Semitic, racist, and anti-vaccine content. ....

 

O, btw, though all the other whistleblowers are in prison, dead or lost, MTGreen's assured us that she has not lost the submarine, which evidently is the most important whistleblower of all into the nefarious dealing of The Biden Family, so, which, natch, is in danger of its life.  Whew, so relieved that justice can still be served, even if underwater.

https://www.rawstory.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-whistleblowers/

 

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Obama in 2012 was not in the same boat. GWB in 2004 wasn't either.

I'm pretty sure neither has declared or is likely to run.

 

[Gaston de Foix]

1 hour ago, TrackerNeil said:

I'm never clear on just how important Biden's age is to Americans. I mean, it's not as if voters in 2020 were unaware of how old Uncle Joe is, yet he still garnered a tremendous amount of support. Perhaps that's due to him not being Trump--possible!--but it could also be that Biden a) staked out a good position in the Democrat Party; b) appears competent and rational.

I'm not sure about its political salience either, but I suspect in 2020 Biden was the preferred choice for independents and Republicans for the Dem nomination because he seemed like a normie old-school Dem compared to Sanders and Warren fire-breathers.  My (Never-Trump) Republican friends also seemed to think his brand of politics would not be particularly effective, but would be bipartisan and conciliatory and pro-filibuster and all those things they like to see from Dem presidents in the WH.  And of course the alternative was Trump.  

But he's significantly older now, and worse (from their perspective), amassed a significant record of legislative wins.  

[Week]

America's Mayor (tm)

 

 

[LongRider]

The victim also alleges that Rudy G. told her that he was selling pardons for 2 million dollars apiece and would split that with Trump. Bombshell if true.   Rudy gonna go through somethings.   

 

 

Edited May 15 by LongRider

[Zorral]

When are we getting They have already begun the killing war on us?  Women and Black people, of course, know it.

Dem Rep Connolly’s Staff Attacked By Man Who Stormed Office Armed With A Baseball Bat

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/dem-rep-connollys-staff-attacked-by-man-who-stormed-office-armed-with-a-baseball-bat

Also, Durham Report on its investigation of the investigators re the Russia - Trump election meddling issued today after 4 years and millions of dollars.  Conclusion? The investigation came up "dud."

 

 

[Zorral]

54 minutes ago, Week said:

America's Mayor (tm)

 

 

This is what it takes to be a top rethug. 

[Mindwalker]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

When are we getting They have already begun the killing war on us?  Women and Black people, of course, know it.

 

Trsans people know it, too. Btw, the next hot culture war operation (which most Dems will find too uncouth to fight)  is against "non-guilt divorce" (wrong term, right?) - that thing that made the women suicide rate go down by 20 % or so.

[Zorral]

5 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Trsans people know it, too. Btw, the next hot culture war operation (which most Dems will find too uncouth to fight)  is against "non-guilt divorce" (wrong term, right?) - that thing that made the women suicide rate go down by 20 % or so.

Yes they do.  

[DMC]

7 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

Obama in 2012 was not in the same boat.

Sure he was.  According to Gallup, as late as August 2011 Obama's approval dipped to 40 percent.  There also, at the time, was the argument that no president could win with unemployment as high as it was.  IIRC it dipped just below 8 percent right before the election, but that was still higher than any modern president getting reelected. 

Bush 1 lost in large part because of high unemployment (it's the economy stupid), as did Carter.  Obama, like Reagan, transcended that, but even Reagan in 84 didn't have as high unemployment as Obama.

Anyway, for the third time, your point about Biden being a weak incumbent is well-taken.  It's just we're in a unique situation if Trump is his opponent.  Biden IS very weak as it looks now.  It's just Trump is demonstrably weaker.  And the data even since 2020 bears that out.

Edited May 16 by DMC
Link

[Phylum of Alexandria]

12 minutes ago, DMC said:

Sure he was.  According to Gallup, as late as August 2011 Obama's approval dipped to 40 percent.  There also, at the time, was the argument that no president could win with unemployment as high as it was.  IIRC it dipped just below 8 percent right before the election, but that was still higher than any modern president getting reelected. 

Bush 1 lost in large part because of high unemployment (it's the economy stupid), as did Carter.  Obama, like Reagan, transcended that, but even Reagan in 84 didn't have as high unemployment as Obama.

Anyway, for the third time, your point about Biden being a weak incumbent is well-taken.  It's just we're in a unique situation if Trump is his opponent.  Biden IS very weak as it looks now.  It's just Trump is demonstrably weaker.  And the data even since 2020 bears that out.

I agree. To your earlier point about DeSantis being a credible threat for Biden, that makes sense, but we'd probably have to factor a vindictive Trump trying to tank the GOP if anyone other than he wins the nomination. Short of Trump's death or disqualification, DeSantis or any other Republican candidate would take the mantle at their peril, whether it's via a third party run by Trump, or just him telling people to write him in or not vote at all.

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

but we'd probably have to factor a vindictive Trump trying to tank the GOP if anyone other than he wins the nomination.

Yeah, Ty's emphasized this a lot over the past months/years.  I dunno.  If Trump loses the GOP nomination, then I don't think there's gonna be many people who give two shits about his whining/outrage at that point.  Maybe I'm wrong, but it's a tough hypothetical to game out.

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, Mindwalker said:

Trsans people know it, too. Btw, the next hot culture war operation (which most Dems will find too uncouth to fight)  is against "non-guilt divorce" (wrong term, right?) - that thing that made the women suicide rate go down by 20 % or so.

No fault divorce. I dunno. I think this is an attempted bridge too far by people like Stephen Crowder, who seems to have been the one to bring it to current prominence since he wants to be able to force his soon to be ex-wife to stay married to him. No fault divorce works both ways, men can ditch their wives when they get one too many wrinkles, or refuse to get a boob job, as is the wont of some rich boomers. I can possibly see it going in a more nuanced but no less harmful direction of no-fault divorce means no claim on the assets of either party. If you are a kept individual and the partner is the sole breadwinner and asset holder you are SooL. Still that can cut both ways when the woman is the financial master of the heterosexual relationship, and that is becoming more common than it was when no fault divorce became established in all states.

It would be a most unprogressive thing to do, but calling these guys pathetic loser betas who can't keep their women satisfied would be one way to head this off at the pass. Most of those right wing guys want to pretend they are all alpha.

[Mindwalker]

Fun fact: Presidential pardons were 2 million a piece, split between and Giuliani and Trump. Allegedly. Just a disgruntled former aide. I'm sure. (Disclaimer Linked Article has more graphic content.)

Rudy Giuliani sued by former associate alleging sexual assault and harassment

Filed in New York state, Noelle Dunphy’s suit includes the allegation that Giuliani “often demanded oral sex while he took phone calls on speaker phone from high-profile friends and clients, including then-President Trump”.

Giuliani is alleged to have told Dunphy “he enjoyed engaging in this conduct while on the telephone because it made him ‘feel like Bill Clinton’”.

The lawsuit also included an allegation that Giuliani asked Dunphy “if she knew anyone in need of a pardon” because “he was selling pardons for $2m, which he and President Trump would split”.

...he told Dunphy she could refer people seeking pardons to him as long as she avoided “the normal channels” of going through the office of the pardon attorney, a role within the Department of Justice, which could be subject to public disclosure.

The suit also says Dunphy had access to Giuliani’s private emails, including messages “from, to, or concerning President Trump, the Trump family (including … Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump) [and] Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner”.

Dunphy also claims to have had access to communications with “presidential candidates for Ukraine [and] President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/15/rudy-giuliani-lawsuit-noelle-dunphy-sexual-assault

 

Edited May 16 by Mindwalker

[James Arryn]

The pardon thing would have sounded entirely fictional like 7 years ago. 

[Zorral]

What the Courts Would Do if the Succession Fire Played Out in Real Life

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/succession-fire-wisconsin-election-law-supreme-court.html

Quote

 

.... As election nightmares go, Sunday night’s episode of the HBO series Succession, “America Decides,” was a doozy. It was the most uncomfortable hour of scripted television I have ever watched, and apparently I was not alone in being triggered. But it was not just a “good night of TV,” the ultimate result of which would be that “nothing happens,” as Roman Roy tries to assure his sister Shiv; it is a warning to us that the next election meltdown is always potentially around the corner.

To briefly recount the relevant plotline: It’s election night in the U.S. in a race between Trump-like authoritarian candidate Jeryd Mencken and left-leaning candidate Daniel Jiménez. The race comes down to Wisconsin. About 100,000 absentee ballots are destroyed in a fire, possibly arson, in Democratic-leaning Milwaukee. Without those ballots, Mencken would win Wisconsin. Some suspect the fire was caused by Mencken supporters; Roman, who is in cahoots with Mencken’s folks, calls that claim a “false flag” and causes a Tucker Carlson–like talking head to go on air on the Roys’ Fox News–like ATN Network to blame the left for the fire as a way of deflecting from an election loss.

Roman gets assurances from Mencken that if ATN declares him the winner and he assumes the presidency, he would block the merger of the Roys’ company with GoJo, a merger that Roman and his brother Kendall wish to stop. This ultimately drives a victory call for the far-right candidate on a major news network. The mild protestations of the data geeks that the election—and specifically what to do about the burned ballots that would have sent the race the other way—needs to be litigated in the courts before it can be called are ultimately ignored. The news network call gives the authoritarian candidate a PR boost, and with its blessing, he declares victory.

[Read: How Plausible Is Succession’s Election Nightmare?]

The episode was frightening on a number of levels: the power of right-wing media to muddy the truth and whip up a neo-authoritarian base, the difficulty of figuring out the true facts in real time on election night, and the risk that dirty tricks could lead to an election meltdown. These are things I’ve written about and worried about for many years. But the Succession episode presented the issue in a visceral and emotional way that no scholar could ever compete with.

And the episode performed a public service because it shows how, even after 2020, our elections still face serious risks of not producing a fair and democratic winner. Most states, including Wisconsin, do not have laws on the books to deal with election emergencies or dirty tricks like the (maybe arson) fire.

No doubt the candidates and others would turn immediately to state and federal courts for relief. Given the truncated nature of Electoral College voting, the entire dispute would have to be litigated to conclusion in just a number of weeks before Congress convened to count Electoral College votes (not in “three months,” as suggested in the episode by an ATN executive). It would be a litigation circus and nightmare in multiple courts with multiple theories.

Wisconsin’s election statutes do not appear to speak to what would happen with the massive destruction of ballots on Election Day. Many states interpret vague election statutes to favor enfranchisement of the voter, but Wisconsin gives less protection for absentee ballots, as the key state Supreme Court justice in the 2020 case of Trump v. Biden explained. If the justices on the state Supreme Court divided along party lines, as is often (but not always) the case, thanks to the recent election of Janet Protasiewicz, the court likely would side with the left-leaning candidate and offer some kind of remedy. Doing so would prevent voter disenfranchisement. If the same scenario were to take place in a potential tipping-point state that had a more conservative-leaning state Supreme Court, such as North Carolina, however, it could go another way.

To carry on the hypothetical based on the premise of a divided state court with a pro-democracy lean, like in Wisconsin: Perhaps the state court would require a partial revote in Milwaukee, as was suggested by Shiv in the Succession episode and by Claire Woodall-Vogg, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, who consulted on the Succession episode. Woodall-Vogg explained that election officials would have records to know whose absentee ballots were destroyed in the fire.

But a revote may violate federal law, which requires that there be a uniform day on Election Day. (My former dean Erwin Chemerinsky unsuccessfully tried to get a revote in Palm Beach County, Florida, in 2000 after many voters were misled to vote for Pat Buchanan rather than Al Gore by the infamous butterfly ballot.) And any order from the state court requiring a revote might violate the so-called independent state legislature theory, which, if adopted by the Supreme Court, would potentially limit state court remedies in federal elections when such remedies are not directly written into a statute. (The scope of this theory is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Moore v. Harper case.)

On the other hand, preventing a revote would clearly violate the equal protection or due process rights of voters protected by the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. It is easy to imagine a federal district court, particularly one in Milwaukee, saying that the Constitution requires a revote or some other remedy to prevent disenfranchisement.

Ultimately, the case would be decided by the United States Supreme Court, where, in some of the most contentious election cases, the justices split along party lines. Who is to say what this court might do?

Now you know why my skin was crawling after Sunday’s Succession episode. No clear answers. A situation fanned by media disinformation that could further undermine voter confidence in both the election system and the judiciary. Potential disenfranchisement first by fire and second by judiciary.

And yet, despite all our increasingly desperate warnings about an election meltdown, “nothing happens”—until it’s too late.

 

 

[Martell Spy]

‘We don’t have a choice’: Sen. Markey on expanding Supreme Court to 13 seats

https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/-we-don-t-have-a-choice-sen-markey-on-expanding-supreme-court-to-13-seats-174461509709

Quote

Sen. Ed Markey on his bill to expand the Supreme Court: “Are we going to stand up to the bullies? Are we going to try to restore the balance that did exist before they engaged in this ahistorical thievery of two Supreme Court seats. I don’t think we have a choice.”

 

[SpaceChampion]

BREAKING NEWS GOP House Report:  Nothingburger is Nothingburger

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/10/us/politics/hunter-biden-house-republicans-report.html

Quote

After months of investigation and many public accusations of corruption against Mr. Biden and his family, the first report of the premier House G.O.P. inquiry showed no proof of such misconduct.

 

[Zorral]

4 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

BREAKING NEWS GOP House Report:  Nothingburger is Nothingburger

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/10/us/politics/hunter-biden-house-republicans-report.html

 

That's because, as I informed us all earlier, that the only surviving whistleblower for the investigation into the investigation of Russia-Trump election meddling is a submarine, under water, in a safe dock, for fear of its life.  Citation: google Marjorie Taylor Green submarine whistleblower.  Or the link conveniently provided above.

Edited May 16 by Zorral

[Zorral]

Retirees with Social Security and Medicare had monies deducted from paychex all their working life.  Now ... they are supposed to have jobs in in order to receive SS and Medicare?

I guess, there are many ways to destroy a government and a nation, and make it the paradise hellhole They are determined to have, including destroying an economy in order to do it.