No abortions for Female Vets!

Wow.

What have Republicans become...?

The Republican Party is now EXTINCT...as in "no more".

We have witnessed the destruction of the Republican Party, a once proud political party that used to promote AMERICAN VALUES...values that American families supported and promoted...

Today, the Republican party sold out to GREED AND POWER over American and family values. The core of this new political movement is the ART OF THE "LIE". Republican politicians will look into a camera and LIE LIKE HELL to convince their followers that their version of a subject is the truth. IT WORKS, TOO...many of the average Republican voters choke down some of the MOST OUTRAGEOUS LIES their Republican politicians spew and like hypnotized Jonestown Zombies, Republican Voters simply follow and promote the same lies their Republican politicians spread.

...some things can not be fixed and are left to die a slow death as the Republican voters and followers realize THEY HAVE BEEN CONNED..!

One factor that might be helping Republicans to understand how THE CON works is the realization that every time these Republican supporters are fed another lie...what follows is the cry for MORE MONEY...MORE DONATIONS. The lying Republican politicians are getting rich off of THEIR CON GAME and it seems that some of those Republican followers in our area of Ohio are beginning to realize how this REPUBLICAN CON GAME WORKS.

Many of those Trump signs that were proudly displayed earlier this year are now "gone"... One neighbor commented that he had no idea that the donations he had given to the Republican Party were not being used to support his candidates...that pissed him off and he started asking questions about how the Republican Party was utilizing the money/donations. I guess he realized that he was being played, conned and used by the Republican Party he had supported for a long time.

Even some of the big Republican donors are bailing on the Republican Party...

The headline read...

Longtime GOP donor quits party over Trump. Says no one will stand up to him, but I’m a Texan and I don’t lick anyone’s boots.

by Christopher Powell August 6, 2022
link

Bro, i'm still trying to figure out how conservatives looked at Masters and Mastriano and went "yea, these guys best represent my values."

You don’t think when you’re angry.

yea but - i guess not all conservatives - but enough seem to be angry all the time.

America's abundance of ignorance is on display in a diner! At least some GOPers are finally getting it. Peen, was that first Trump guy related to you? Fact's didn't seem to matter to him either.

It sure seems like a majority at least.

Trump says McConnell has 'death wish' after supporting Democratic legislation
by Cami Mondeaux, Breaking News Reporter |
October 01, 2022 11:29 AM

Former President Donald Trump issued his latest attack against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), sayind that the senator "has a death wish" after supporting legislation introduced by Democrats.

It’s not entirely clear what legislation Trump is referring to, but his comments came after the Senate passed a stopgap funding bill. The legislation would keep the government funded until Dec. 16, and it was supported by McConnell and other Republicans. It also follows the Senate minority leader confirming he would back the Electoral Reform Act, a bipartisan bill aiming to make it harder to object to presidential election results following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“Is McConnell approving all of these Trillions of Dollars worth of Democrat sponsored Bills, without even the slightest bit of negotiation, because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am strongly opposed to them, or is he doing it because he believes in the Fake and Highly Destructive Green New Deal, and is willing to take the Country down with him?” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “In any event, either reason is unacceptable. He has a DEATH WISH.”

Trump also took aim at McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao, who worked in the Trump administration as the transportation secretary before resigning in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot, calling her “his China loving wife, Coco Chow!” Chao was born in Taipei, Taiwan.

Trump has repeatedly taken shots at McConnell since leaving the White House, particularly after the Senate minority leader rebuked the former president’s actions during the Capitol riot and rejected efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election.

Some pundits pushed against Trump’s suggestion that McConnell had a “death wish,” calling the comments potentially dangerous. However, a spokesman for the former resident rejected the accusations.

“Mitch McConnell is killing the Republican Party through weakness and cowardice. He obviously has a political death wish for himself and Republican Party, but President Trump and the America First champions in Congress will save the Republican Party and our nation,” spokesman Taylor Budowich told NBC News.

The Washington Examiner reached out to McConnell’s office for comment but did not receive a response.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/senate/trump-mcconnell-has-death-wish-democratic-legislation

The pressure of all the lawsuits be must driving Trump NUTS...dude is talking crazy with comments like McConnell "has a death wish" and then attacking McConnell's wife with this comment “his China loving wife, Coco Chow!”

This is going to be fun to watch...

How is this anything but a call for violence against Mitch to his sycophants?

That's exactly what it is. He wants Mitch to toe the line, get out of his way, or whatever happens, happens. Trump is still not in jail and is still trying his hardest to get there doing this crap. I just can't imagine what anyone still sees in this guy.

In the original post, the words 'death wish' were in all caps.

jesus you libs are so sensitive. Trump was just joking. OBVIOUSLY he was talking about the Death Wish movies lead by Charles Bronson.

edited cause wrong actor.

Charles Bronson, but your message is still on-point-

thanks bro. im actually salty cause those are some of my favorite movies. can't believe i got the actors name wrong.

sorry- I just had to do it.
I hope that you'll forgive me-

Do I live in your head?

You're hilarious.

Matt Gaetz Votes No On Relief Money As Florida Grapples With Hurricane Ian Aftermath

https://www.yahoo.com/news/matt-gaetz-votes-no-relief-042534442.html

this the kind of crap im ticked off about. this dude just straight up told his own state that he dont give a damn about them, and watch his district STILL re elect him.

Oh they love him. I’m honestly perplexed as hell. He’s in that same boat as Cawthorne with me that just makes me wonder who the hell these people are that live in those places.

Hey, I just checked in on a thread I hadn't commented on in days and you were calling me out. What else am i supposed to think? The evidence is pretty clear.


I don't click your links, so I wouldn't know if the person is a relation, but I doubt it.

That quote coming from a former president is stunning.

“ has a death wish; Must immediately seek help and (advise) (can't spell) from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!”

And Biden is senile? Talk about unhinged.

Making threats and stoking asian hate. How delightful for a card carrying racist. Who since 2015 has been rightfully accused of 55 crimes.

Unreal how anyone can take trump seriously. What a loser.

bone...how about all the outrage from those "family values" Republicans...nothing but CRICKETS from the GOP over Trump's threats and racist comments.

Family values and evangelicals the whole belief in Christian ideology.

Separating parents from children. Using people's lives as pawns for political gain.

Backing a blatant racist like trump.

Hypocrisy on a grand scale.

Trump sues CNN for defamation

Former President Donald Trump is suing CNN for defamation and asking for compensatory damages in excess of $75,000 and punitive damages of $475 million, according to a lawsuit filed Monday.

He is claiming that the cable news giant has harmed his reputation with "false, defamatory, and inflammatory mischaracterizations of him" and that CNN's conduct "is intended to interfere with [his] political career."

In particular, Trump argues that he's entitled to hundreds of millions of dollars in punitive damages because of CNN's use of the term the "Big Lie" to describe Trump's "stated concerns about the integrity of the election process for the 2020 presidential election." Trump's lawyers say that the "Big Lie" "is a direct reference to a tactic employed by Adolf Hitler and appearing in Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

"'If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,'" Trump's lawyers stated, noting it was used by Hitler to generate hatred against Jews and to justify their genocide.

The lawsuit says, "CNN's campaign of dissuasion in the form of libel and slander against the [Trump] has only escalated in recent months as CNN fears [he] will run for president in 2024."

The former president has been claiming since November 2020 that the election was rigged, despite dozens of lawsuits and recounts that found it was not. He is being investigated by Congress and the government for trying to overturn the election results, and two years later, he still claims that he won the 2020 election.

CNN had no comment.

The case has been assigned to Trump-appointed Judge Raaj Singhal, in the Southern District of Florida.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-sues-cnn-for-defamation/

How great it must be to make up some BS lawsuit and then have it assigned to a judge who owes you gratitude for giving him his job. No conflict there! Murica!

Herschel Walker paid for girlfriend’s abortion, report says

https://apnews.com/article/abortion...p2yoJENtEJJd0QHbBKKy-WWzwtdhk-VjctyvuLqc

Another candidate that is a beacon of family values the GOP espouses....

From His son.....

Seven states continue to see unusual levels of threats to election workers

Seven states across the country continue to see unusual levels of threats to election workers, senior FBI officials said in a briefing Monday.

Those states are Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Wisconsin — all states where the 2020 election results were questioned, officials noted. President Biden won each of those states. FBI officials are discussing how to deal with these threats as state officials in 8,800 election districts prepare for the midterm elections next month.

Since June 2021, the FBI has received more than 1,000 tips concerning threats to election workers, according to the agency. Roughly 11% of those tips have led to FBI investigations.

FBI officials say a majority of the threats appear through emails, on election-related websites and in phone calls, while a smaller portion of threats are made in person.

Federal law enforcement officials continue to watch out for "foreign malign influence" campaigns by adversaries, as they have since 2016. Senior FBI officials said Russia and China remain the "prime culprits." That said, federal investigators are not aware of any cyber campaigns targeting elections at this time.

The country's top election security official broke down in a recent interview as she discussed the vitriol targeting election officials.

"It's unnerving," Kim Wyman, the senior election lead at the nation's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told CBS News in her first TV interview since accepting her new role. "Threats like 'we're going to hang you.' And 'I hope somebody puts a bullet in your head.'"

"Just hateful": Public servants had lives upended by threats after Trump's claims of a stolen election

CBS News cybersecurity expert and analyst and former director of the CISA Chris Krebs said threats against election workers need more attention.

"We do need local law enforcement, I think to get more involved in investigating threats, protecting election workers themselves, ensuring that they're not being doxed, or their public information or their personal contact information is being released so they can get- so they get more threats," Krebs said on CBS News "Face the Nation" in an interview that aired Sunday.

"So this is an area that I think Congress needs take a hard look at, are the right deterrence measures in place from criminal statutes," Krebs continued. "And then do we have the investigation techniques? It is, you know, I personally have received a significant number of death threats and other-other threats. And some of them come in through anonymous- through anonymous means like protonmail. We do need more attention on these threats. Otherwise, we're going to see a shortage of election workers."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/electi...uTMrNXwCWc-FsfQYjSo90Egl8KflyieqCUaaxRPc

"Just hateful": Public servants had lives upended by threats after Trump's claims of a stolen election

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-january-6-committee-hearing-witnessess-public-servants-threats/

You could not make this up.

I mean this is a riot. Here is a moron who has done nothing but lie. He runs around the country promoting his "big lie."

And he is going to sue CNN for saying "the big lie." How crazy is that? donny boy you lost the election by a lot.

In fact you lost the popular vote twice. You are THE BIG FAT LIE.

Sucks that kid had to put out that video. I really hate what our politics have become and I resent those who have allowed themselves to be brainwashed into all the fervor.

imagine thinking you represent masculinity but not even able to call out trump for his racist tweet and demand that he apologizes for insulting someone's wife.

GOP = beta males.

Once again. Everybody in the world is lying. Everybody! Except for Putin, trump, and Hershel friggin Walker.

j/c

As Walker continues his denials, the plot thickens.....

Woman at center of Herschel Walker abortion firestorm says she also had a child of his: report

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hersch...says-she-also-had-his-child-daily-beast/

So far Walker hid three illegitimate children. Then he lied about graduating from Georgia. About working in law enforcement. He has claimed to own companies which do not exist.

Don't let anyone fool you with the claim that the Republican party continues to stand for family values and accountability. That ship has sailed.

2nd man convicted in Whitmer plot gets 4 years in prison

A man who pleaded guilty to conspiring to kidnap Michigan’s governor in 2020 was sentenced to four years in prison Thursday.

Kaleb Franks was rewarded for testifying for prosecutors at two trials and he will get credit for the two years already spent in custody. But his sentence was longer than the term given to another man who had quickly cooperated and pleaded guilty much earlier.

Franks was among six anti-government extremists who were charged in federal court with conspiracy and other crimes. Investigators said the group’s goal was to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and incite a U.S. civil war — the “boogaloo” — before the 2020 presidential election.

“I would like to start by saying I’m sorry to the governor and her family,” Franks told U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“I understand that this experience had to have been very traumatizing and difficult,” he said. “I’m ashamed and embarrassed of my actions, and I regret every decision that I made.”

The group considered Whitmer, a Democrat, and other elected officials to be tyrants who were infringing on constitutional rights, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when businesses were shut down, people were told to stay home and schools were closed.

Franks, 28, participated in a key step in the conspiracy: a ride on a rainy night to scout Whitmer’s vacation home in northern Michigan. She was not there at the time.

He testified that he had hoped to be killed by police if a kidnapping could be pulled off at some point. The FBI, however, had undercover agents and informants inside the group.

“I was going to be an operator,” Franks said last spring. “I would be one of the people on the front line, so to speak, using my gun.”

Prosecutors said Franks’ cooperation was important because it backed up critical testimony from Ty Garbin, who pleaded guilty a year earlier and was sentenced to just 2 1/2 years in prison.

Two men described as leaders of the conspiracy, Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr., were convicted in August. Two other men, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta, were acquitted in April.

Meanwhile, 120 miles (190 kilometers) away in Jackson, Michigan, a jury heard a second day of testimony Thursday in the trial of three members of a paramilitary group who were also arrested in 2020. Joe Morrison, Pete Musico and Paul Bellar are not charged with directly participating in the kidnapping plot but are accused of assisting Fox and others.

https://apnews.com/article/election...VMH_qpgthUcPXXwPSPSDYov9pyIF2Lg_bj5UxP_4

I hope they keep handing out those light ass sentences when I go to jail for helping put down the next insurrection.

If Dems can't beat the likes of Blake Masters, true scum, then this country is dead.

GOPers are on a roll tonight. This would be comedy gold if it wasn't so damn sad.

""I think Hunter Biden is small potatoes""

A little truth in that clip. But the guy is either deranged - or more likely playing a scripted part to brainwash the masses. Much like the Roger Stone audio that recently came out, it's not about what is happening or what actually happened - it's about planting the seed.

This Republican sounds sane......

Georgia GOP lieutenant governor blasts Trump over Walker Senate campaign

Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) blamed former President Trump for embattled GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker’s campaign on Thursday as Walker’s Senate bid remains engulfed in scandal.

“[Georgia] let down the entire country,” Duncan told CNN. “Donald Trump led us down a rabbit trail post-election because he was too consumed with trying to save face from losing his election. And he ran us down a trail, and we screwed up.”

Walker’s campaign has been on defense since Monday, when The Daily Beast reported that the anti-abortion candidate had encouraged and paid for a then-girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. Walker strongly denied the allegations, which The Hill has not independently verified.

However, The Daily Beast followed up with a second story revealing that the women making the allegations was the mother of one of Walker’s children. The former NFL star’s campaign continued to struggle when his son Christian Walker, a conservative influencer, publicly criticized his father and accused him of lying about the incident.

Trump, who endorsed Walker, defended the candidate, claiming that he was “being slandered and maligned by the Fake News Media and obviously, the Democrats.”

Duncan said on Thursday that the scandal has left him, along with other Georgia Republicans, unsure of who to support in the Senate race.

“I’m not voting for Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker hasn’t earned my respect or my vote,” Duncan said. “I’m like hundreds of thousands of other Republicans here in Georgia. We’re confused. We don’t really have anywhere to go right now.”

The Georgia lieutenant governor is aligned with GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who has frequently clashed with the former president. Kemp soundly defeated Trump’s endorsed candidate, former Sen. David Perdue, in the Republican primary for governor in May.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campai...TuQG8L0A6CvV39ETumtdqrcEQBtoPzqxqlffnkiY

I guess nobody had anything to say about the Kanye/Tucker clips. I wonder if Kanye is on the spectrum. Sometimes he comes across with hard-hitting facts/truth, but then spins off into weirdness or tries to apply what he's saying to his life. And he makes his childhood sound harsh saying his dad was an Amry brat... but listening to him, I don't think he had it very tough. Probably a lot together than his kids will have it with a billionaire dad.

My only comment would be that even before you posted those clips I had seen enough of Kanye crazy to last a lifetime.

Iowa man arrested for threatening Arizona election official: "We're going to hang you"

An Iowa man has been arrested for allegedly threatening to "lynch" and "hang" a Maricopa County, Arizona, election official nearly a year after the 2020 election, the Justice Department announced.

Mark Rissi was arrested Thursday for allegedly leaving voicemails for the unnamed election official, in which Rissi allegedly threatened the official with lynching, hanging, and torches, according to the indictment filed against him. The arrest comes as the FBI continues to warn about heightened threats to election officials across seven states, including Arizona, where election deniers continue to disbelieve that President Biden legitimately won.

"Hello Mr. [VICTIM], I am glad that you are standing up for democracy and want to place your hand on the Bible and say that the election was honest and fair," Rissi allegedly said in a voicemail left on approximately Sept. 27, 2021, according to court documents. "I really appreciate that. When we come to lynch your stupid lying Commie [expletive], you'll remember that you lied on the [expletive] Bible, you piece of [expletive]. You're gonna die, you piece of [expletive]. We're going to hang you. We're going to hang you."

In another message on about Dec. 8, 2021, Rissi allegedly left a voicemail for an election official in the Arizona attorney general's office about the Maricopa County official. The Arizona attorney general is the highest law enforcement official in the state.

"I'm a victim of a crime," Rissi allegedly said. "My family is a victim of a crime. My extended family is a victim of a crime. That crime was the theft of the 2020 election. The election that was fraudulent across the state of Arizona, that [VICTIM] knows was fraudulent, that [VICTIM] has images of the conspirators deleting election fraud data from the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors computer system. Do your job, [VICTIM], or you will hang with those [expletive] in the end. We will see to it. Torches and pitchforks. That's your future, [expletive]. Do your job."

Rissi faces two counts of making a threatening interstate communication and one count of making a threatening phone call. He faces up to 12 years in prison, if convicted on all counts.

The FBI is still investigating the case, which is a part of the Justice Department's Election Threats Task Force announced by the Justice Department in June 2021.

In 2021, the GOP-led Arizona Senate ordered a controversial review of Maricopa County's 2.1 million 2020 ballots and voting equipment. Maricopa County is Arizona's most populous county and was a longtime Republican stronghold, but President Biden carried it by about 45,000 votes. A cybersecurity firm, Cyber Ninjas, was selected to lead the review, though it had no experience with official election audits, and its CEO, Doug Logan, had promoted election conspiracy theories on social media. Ultimately, the nonbinding review re-affirmed Mr. Biden's victory.

Election deniers continue to hold and run for some of the top offices across the country. Arizona's Republican nominee for secretary of state, Arizona's highest ranking election official, Mark Finchem, still won't say President Biden legitimately won the election.

Seven states across the country continue to see unusual levels of threats to election workers, senior FBI officials said in a briefing Monday.

Those states are Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Wisconsin — all states where the 2020 election results were questioned, officials noted, and all states won by President Biden. FBI officials are discussing how to address these threats as state officials in 8,800 election districts prepare for the midterm elections next month.

Since June 2021, the FBI has received more than 1,000 tips concerning threats to election workers, according to the agency. Roughly 11% of those tips have led to FBI investigations.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iowa-m...MQ6qF93i_Kb6LG69FL_kOj0pzecOzTlIwWIPasE4

How Different Would America Be Today if Trump was Still President?

By Wayne Allyn Root

This is the easiest column I’ve ever written. It’s so simple to imagine what America would be like today if Trump was still President. What a tragedy that we allowed a brain-dead, feeble, confused, old man with dementia and diapers, and his radical, anti-American, globalist, communist handlers to destroy the greatest country in world history – in only 22 months.

Let’s start with the obvious. How did this happen? The 2020 election was stolen. That’s how they removed Trump from office and installed a man who doesn’t know who he is, where he is, or what he’s doing. A man who can’t put 2 sentences together, and who can’t attract more than 20 people in concentric circles to his speeches- yet they want us to suspend reality and believe he got 81 million votes- the most in history. Bizarre.

And look what they did to us after rigging and stealing the election. They quickly put a plan in place to disassemble America; overwhelm the economy, make America poor, destroy the middle class, make America unsafe, and to open the borders and make America foreign to Americans.

And as a bonus, they put in place a disastrous foreign policy of liberal weakness, wokeness and appeasement that has set the entire world on fire.

Now World War 3 is upon us. Not just any World War, but a nuclear war that threatens to end the world as we know it. I’ve been warning about this for months. Days ago, Biden agreed. He announced we are closer to “nuclear Armageddon” (his words) than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

What a fine job you’ve done Joe. And in record time!

Now let’s look at exactly where we’d be if Trump was still President of the United States. And yes, I’m a pretty sharp and successful businessman- and I do believe in every bone in my body that Trump is the rightful, 100% legitimate president. This should never have happened.

If Trump were still president…

We would have energy independence. We’d be selling our oil and gas to other countries all over the world. Gas would be $3 per gallon and middle-class Americans would be enjoying low prices and record prosperity.

OPEC would no longer have power over our lives, and we certainly would not be begging our socialist enemy Venezuela for an oil deal.

We would have low to zero inflation. Groceries would cost dramatically less than now. Middle class consumers would be dancing in the aisles.

The stock market would be thousands of points higher. Trillions of dollars have been lost since Biden became president. All those trillions would be back in the hands of consumers, business owners and the retirement accounts of Americans.

Russia would have never invaded Ukraine- so not only would there be no threat of World War 3, or “nuclear Armageddon”, but American taxpayers would have an extra $100 billion still in the bank (that’s the money we’ve given away to President Zelensky and his Ukranian mafia and Nazi cronies).

North Korea wouldn’t be shooting rockets over Japan. Iran would be broke- starved of funding by Trump.

The Taliban would not have $80 billion of our military equipment. And 13 US soldiers would still be alive looking forward to Christmas at home with their families.

Our cities would not be destroyed by the worst crime wave in history- simply because Trump doesn’t allow violent criminals to walk free, while defunding and demoralizing police. A large percentage of police would not be retired in the past 22 months. We’d have plenty of cops to keep us safe. How many Americans out of the tens of thousands murdered since Biden took over, would be alive and looking forward to Christmas with their families?

Britney Griner, the WNBA star in a Russian prison cell, would be home with her wife and family. Trump and Putin would have negotiated her release in a matter of days.

There would certainly not be 87,000 new IRS agents hired to harass, intimidate and bankrupt the American people.

Although President Trump and I disagree on the Covid vaccine, if Trump was still president, millions of Americans would never have been forced to take the experimental jab, or risk losing their job. Trump is strongly against mandates. He would never have forced one American to take the vaccine against their will.

How many Americans would still be alive or uninjured today, if never forced to take the vaccine by Biden’s mandate. How many would still have their jobs?

I saved the most important for last- Open Borders. With Trump in the White House, we’d have a secure border. That means five million new illegals allowed in since Biden became president wouldn’t be in our country. How many billions of dollars would be saved?

Think of all the criminals who have come in that open border. How many Americans murdered in the past 22 months would still be alive? How many communities and schools would be safer?

If Trump was still President, America would be a much nicer, wealthier, healthier and safer place. There’d be prosperity instead of inflation. We’d still be dominating the world, instead of facing World War 3. America would be great again.

What a difference. Night and day. Life and death.

https://rootforamerica.com/if-trump-was-still-president/

Look! Another trash article from the far right.

Perfect.

FATE, your girl is at it again.

This is what the craziness has led us to.....

Bullet-proof glass, guards: U.S. election offices tighten security for Nov. 8 midterms

Oct 9 (Reuters) - When voters in Jefferson County, Colorado, cast their ballots in the Nov. 8 midterm election, they will see security guards stationed outside the busiest polling centers.

At an election office in Flagstaff, Arizona, voters will encounter bulletproof glass and need to press a buzzer to enter. In Tallahassee, Florida, election workers will count ballots in a building that has been newly toughened with walls made of the super-strong fiber Kevlar.

Spurred by a deluge of threats and intimidating behavior by conspiracy theorists and others upset over former President Donald Trump's 2020 election defeat, some election officials across the United States are fortifying their operations as they ramp up for another divisive election.

A Reuters survey of 30 election offices found that 15 have enhanced security in various ways, from installing panic buttons to hiring extra security guards to holding active-shooter and de-escalation training.

Reuters focused on offices in battleground states and offices that had openly expressed a need for security improvements, for example in congressional testimony. While the survey does not speak to how widespread such moves are, it does show how election officials are responding to threats in parts of the country where the election will likely be decided.

Election officials around the country said they were coordinating more closely with local law enforcement to respond quickly to disturbances. Many have also trained workers in de-escalating conflicts and evading active shooters.

Until recently, such threats to safety were seen as hypothetical in a country that has seen few instances of election-related violence since the civil rights battles of the 1960s, when the presence of armed officers sometimes intimidated rather than reassured Black voters.

Now those risks are seen as real, said Tammy Patrick, a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund, a nonpartisan public-interest group founded by entrepreneur and Democratic donor Pierre Omidyar.

"The likelihood that they could occur has definitely increased, so everyone is taking that to heart," she said.

Election officials in 12 states, including some who have paid for moderate security improvements, said they have not received enough money to make their desired upgrades due to bureaucratic hurdles.

In Champaign County, Illinois, clerk Aaron Ammons would like to install metal detectors at his office, where visitors have filmed staff and the layout of the space in what he described as a threatening manner.

"It makes us feel like we're targets, or we're not a priority in the same way our men and women in uniform are. And we're on the front lines of democracy just like they are," said Ammons.

Ammons gave testimony to Congress in August that he and his wife received anonymous messages threatening their daughter's life ahead of the 2020 election, and he told Reuters he recently saw someone filming his house.

The Justice Department says it has investigated more than 1,000 messages to election workers since the 2020 election, including more than 100 that could warrant prosecution. Reuters documented the campaign of fear being waged against election workers in a series of investigative reports.

Seven cases have been charged so far. The first sentence came Thursday, when a Nebraska man received 18 months in prison for threatening an election official.

SPOOKED WORKERS

One in five U.S. election officials said that they were unlikely to stay in their job through 2024, when Americans will go to the polls again to elect a president, according to a survey by the Brennan Center for Justice that was released in March. They cited stress, attacks by politicans and impending retirement as reasons.

The lingering bitterness from the 2020 election has also spooked many of the temporary workers who check in voters, count ballots and perform other tasks that make elections possible, officials say.

Philadelphia has boosted pay for election day workers from $120 to $250 to help recruiting efforts that have been complicated by fears of harassment, as well as a tight labor market, said Omar Sabir, one of the city's three election commissioners. After receiving death threats in 2020, he himself changed his travel patterns.

"You've got to keep your head on a swivel," Sabir said. "Sometimes I have nightmares thinking about that, somebody walking up and causing me harm."

PROTECTIVE MEASURES

Many election officials blame disinformation, such as Trump's baseless claims about election fraud in the 2020 election, for the surge in threats.

Justin Roebuck, the Republican clerk of Michigan's rural, conservative Ottawa County, said Trump's rhetoric had "really poisoned the well," inspiring other candidates to sow doubts about elections. In Michigan, Republican candidates for governor, attorney general and other positions have questioned the outcome of the 2020 election.

Roebuck's office held a three-hour role-playing exercise with local emergency management officials this year to plan how to respond to violent incidents. They also printed a brochure explaining balloting procedures that workers can hand to people to de-escalate confrontations with anyone agressively questioning their work.

In addition to adding Kevlar walls, the Leon County, Florida, elections office has held active shooter trainings for its workers, installed bullet- and bomb-resistant glass, and invested in security cameras and video file storage, according to elections supervisor Mark Earley, who says he gets frequent hostile and profane calls from strangers.

"I've got to worry about my workers leaving the building and walking up to their cars after dark," he said.

Earley paid to stiffen his facility's security with a 2020 grant from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a non-profit group funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. But Florida and 25 other states have since banned such outside funding.

FUNDING WOES

Election officials say they have struggled to get federal aid for safety measures.

The departments of Justice and Homeland Security said this year that funds would be available for election office security, but that money was claimed by local police departments and others more familiar with those programs, said Amy Cohen, the head of the National Association of State Election Directors.

A spokesman for the Justice Department said the agency's Election Threats Task Force had worked since its launch in 2021 to steer federal aid to local election offices for security enhancements, and had urged Congress to provide more such funding.

Some offices have paid for security enhancements by cutting back elsewhere. Jefferson County, Colorado, has scaled back mailings to voters to pay for four security guards who will monitor the busiest four voting locations in the weeks surrounding the election.

"It's worth it for us, having the ability to be proactive rather than reactive," said George Stern, the Jefferson County clerk.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/bu...YNBmpGgOrpfvbAjPUCEf-qH42sX9onrs6agPY_S0

Murica!

The price we’ll all pay for those who believe in trump and the big lie.

Yeah, if you live in Ohio and vote blue, don't wear your dem gear (if you have any) to the polls. Never know when a trumpian nutjob might attack you.

Wearing political gear of any kind is prohibited at all the polls I’ve gone to. But outside anything goes, short of a riot that is.

You are something else, my friend. How’s Tommy Tuberville treating you down south these days. He voted down the STOCK act because it would “disincentivize” people to run for office. So I’m sure he’s using your tax dollars well and fairly representing your interests vs his own.

I hope I don’t need purple.

Cuckoo republicans making fun of elder statesmen again. Good job. Please post a speech impediment funny next.

if there is a minimum age requirement to be a politician there should be a maximum age like we do with the military.

We agree on something! I don't think a first-term POTUS should be any older than 65-ish max. The 70s age bracket is where most really start to fall apart or slow down. Not all, but most.

And we probably should stop letting people over 65-70 vote. They are way too out of touch with the times, stuck in the past. JMHO.

This is a joke I hope.

Depends, how old are you? Doesn't matter, you'll come around to my way of thinking after you stand in line behind Grampa Gravy Diaper for two hours this November. Unless you are Grandpa Gravy Diaper?

If he needs Depends, I imagine he's getting up there...

He is mad because somewhere along the line he fell off the train. Heck, maybe got pushed off based on the way he talks and acts.

I'm not in that age bracket yet but I cannot believe you would think disenfranchising people based on age is at all a good idea. What other rights do you think they should lose when they get older? Maybe we should just pick an age and start putting people in the incinerator.

They should lose the right to pick where the family goes out to eat.

"What's wrong with Perkins??"
"Nothing grandma, we'll go to Perkins... again."

That would mean neither trump nor biden could run in 2024. I'd be fine with that.

Ok, now you are talking common sense.

Suggesting Americans over the age of 65-70 should not be allowed to vote? Common Man!

LOL. I'm obviously joking, but the truth behind the joke is my mom (81) always picks the same horrible restaurant to eat at whenever we take her out, the name of which shall remain confidential...

It's Perkins isn't it?

my guess is Golden Corral

It's actually a small-biz place in Westlake where she lives, so I don't want to blow it up on here. I'll just say it's terrible.

Wow, I laid the bate for some harsh reactions and this is the best I could get? GET OFF MY LAWN! lmao, and he still votes. I expected more. We definitely need age limits on candidates and voters. Definitely.

There should also be IQ limits. If you're too stupid to form coherent independent thoughts, you can't vote. I would LOVE that.

Purported Trump supporter who claimed Antifa burned down his camper admits to staged attack, DOJ says

A Minnesota man who claimed Antifa set fire to his camper during the political unrest of 2020 because he had displayed a Trump campaign flag admitted to staging the event and committing insurance fraud, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

Denis Molla, age 30, of Minneapolis suburb Brooklyn Center was indicted by a federal grand jury in July and pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud after being accused of defrauding and attempting to defraud an insurance agency and GoFundMe donors of more than $300,000 following the alleged incident, according to court records.

In September 2020, Molla had “falsely reported to law enforcement that someone had lit his camper on fire and that three unknown males were near his home when he heard an explosion,” according to a DOJ news release. The Justice Department said Molla claimed his property was vandalized with graffiti referencing “Biden 2020,” Black Lives Matter, and Antifa.

Molla falsely told CNN affiliate WCCO shortly after the fire that he believed someone set the blaze in response to Trump 2020 flags he had put in his yard. “These kind of stuff should not happen, especially over beliefs of some sort,” he told WCCO.

“Mr. Molla was obviously remorseful during his federal plea hearing today,” Ryan Garry, Molla’s attorney, told CNN via email Tuesday. “It’s easy for the general public to look down on him, without knowing what was going on in his life, and cast immediate judgement. Mr. Molla is a wonderful husband and father who made a mistake that he sincerely regrets. Unlike many others, he has accepted full responsibility for his actions and is sorry for what happened.”

Federal guidelines call for Molla to receive a sentence of up to 51 months, plus a fine and restitution, but prosecutors did not immediately make a sentencing recommendation.

Judge David Doty released Molla on his own recognizance pending a sentencing hearing to be scheduled at a later date.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/12/us/t...HnLIMwXAS5odKSojb-APeBBOMVrg7u-Cj8nlSMRI

Actually I might go with you on IQ levels. I saw where average ACT scores are below 20 for the first time since 1990. The top score is 36.

That is what we get by lowering standards in order for large segments of our population to pass.

Lot's of dumb people in this country.

We don't let teachers teach kids anymore. They teach test-taking. Anything beyond the public school getting its annual money from the government costs parents extra. It's a dam shame what has happened to education.

We agree. It a reason why you see more and more private schools. When I was young, a kid who went to public school, the only real private schools were the Catholic schools and a very few high priced private schools.

Now it seems about half the churches have a school of some sort and there are numerous private schools that fall in to what I call the mid priced private schools. The ones that don't cost so much that only the wealthy can afford.

I do understand that your definition of wealth and my definition are different. I am just saying they are inexpensive enough that you don't have to be the kid of some corporate CEO or the kid of a parent who owns a football team. I am talking about a kid who's parents are maybe a nurse and a shop floor supervisor. People who make very good money, but they aren't wealthy by any means.

I missed this Herschel Story ... Apparently the US is getting China's bad air and they are getting the USA's good air. Makes perfect sense.

https://www.gpb.org/news/2022/07/12...ts-the-latest-in-series-of-policy-gaffes

Spotted while reading this breakdown of the mid term key battles. Quite and interesting and succinct read.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/11/us-midterms-congress-senate-house-races-to-watch

Religious schools only wish to use government tax dollars to indoctrinate children into religion. As for "private schools, you know, if we stopped allowing religion and for profit schools to siphon off tax dollars intended for public schools we could much better fund public schools.

It seems a lot of times private schools end up teaching anyone who doesn't believe what they teach are the godless hoards or communists.

j/c

The Herschel Walker saga continues......

I must be out of it, I didn't know President Bidens son lost his life in Iraq.

That's just his speech impediment making him stutter.

Corn pop probably gave him a brain tumor a decade or so after he got out of the military, in retaliation for his dad taking a "length of chain" out to confront Corn pop and his gang of bad dudes.

Boy you race to the board with "hit the old guy over the head every time he slips" talking points don't cha? Well, after you are done drooling down your ancient American bibb over Biden being old, maybe I can connect the dots for you. Biden blamed the burn pits for his son's cancer. In his mind, his service in Iraq got him killed. Kind of shameful to attack that, but I know you come from the party where the POTUS craps on war heroes and gold-star families, so not shocked.

Yes yes, we know. Biden can do no wrong, no matter how you have to spin it.

"My son died in Iraq" is not a speech impediment. In fact, it's a lie.

BIDEN blamed the burn pits for his son's brain cancer a decade or so later? How many others got brain cancer from burn pits?

Look, it's tragic, okay? But old Joe is being old joe again. Misrembering, and making things up. Like how his first wife died from a drunk driver.

Corn pop.

Thanks for adding so much to the topic! You're a wondrous contributor. At times like this, you post and all of us wonder why.

At least your didn't call me a fascist this time.

I've agreed numerous times he's old and I hope he doesn't run again. But I'm not going to lower myself to the level of attacking him every time he makes a gaffe reminding us just how old he is. If I thought for a second that he was incompetent, I would sound the alarms, trust me. But compared to the last guy Joe is sane, has his crap on point, and is kicking butt getting dem legislation through total gridlock. Now talk to me during dem primaries in 24 and I might be a bit harsher, but if anything removes him before 24, President Harris would be the result and I prefer Joe stumbling here and there. But hey, y'all let us know what Tuckums comes up with next over on Klueless klan News so we can have another meaningless debate tomorrow night.

Sorry buddy, I didn't mean to disappoint the fascists.

I'm not a Dr. Oz fan... but find it hilarious that ad said he's unfit to run.... Fetterman had a stroke... has auditory processing issues to the point that he has to read questions asked of him... and has various cognitive issues from the stroke.... dude is definition of unfit for office.... again, a situation where both parties give the voters crap to vote for...

Dude has a history of lying... I can't tell if this was just a lie or his dementia... it's sad watching elders lose their cognitive ability...

I'd like a guy like Fetterman for POTUS. He's a decent man who cares about regular people and takes no crap. Pennsylvanians would be ignorant to NOT send him to congress over Oz. And I liked the Oz show back when it first got popular.

A liar? OMG. Thankfully there's never been a lying POTUS before. We should invoke the 25th or impeach him immediately.

Wow... he seems pretty extreme for me.... I would love to be able to vote for someone who is a centrist who will actually work with both sides... Joe said he was going to do that but went crazy left once elected...

Yes... he has a history of lying... just because there have been other presidents who have also lied does that mean Joe shouldn't be held accountable... I dunno if he should be impeached for lying but invoking the 25th for his cognitive decline would not be that hard to prove...

Opps, sorry man, I forgot the /purple tags.

Hope this helps clarify things for you:



https://whatbidenhasdone.wordpress.com/2022/01/20/year-one-what-biden-has-done-mega-thread/

You will find lots of people that blame military activity as the cause of cancer and premature death of a former service member.

Burn pits have been taken up by Jon Stewart. Just like the 9/11 compensation before.

Sometime the claims have merit. Agent Orange for one.

Right now there are about a million commercials/email per day looking for Camp Lejune victims.

We have a long history of cause and effect going back to asbestos, Love Canal, Erin Brockovich, roundup and even baby powder.

You may drop the word liar with ease, but that is not appropriate when dealing with the loss of someone you love.

I was going to merely "click a like" on this post, but nah....

Imma repost it- because Americans need to know things like this.

this clown still gonna get reelected.

Ted Cruz Falls For Fake News, Then Blames The Real Media For Calling Him Out

Sen. Ted Cruz’s latest attempt at owning those danged libs failed miserably on Thursday when the Texas Republican fell for a tweet of a nonexistent news story supposedly published in The Atlantic.

Cruz tweeted a link to what looked like an Atlantic article headlined “The Evolution of White Supremacy” with this subhead: “In Dearborn Michigan, Muslim parents who oppose teaching pornography to children become the new face of the far right.”

Later, after many people pointed out that there was no such Atlantic article, Cruz deleted his tweet.

The story that was the supposed subject of the tweet does have a basis in reality. A group of Muslim parents recently did object to LGBTQ books being available to students, according to the Detroit Free Press.

However, the Atlantic never wrote about the controversy, and the author credited with writing the nonexistent article, Abby Ohlheiser, hasn’t worked for the magazine since 2014, according to WGHP-TV.

Naturally, Twitter users fact-checked Cruz’ post and found it fact-free.



Some people called out the senator for deleting his tweet of the fake article without publicly admitting his mistake.



When Cruz finally fessed up, he blamed a familiar scapegoat: the media.

“Didn’t know it was fake,” he wrote. “You guys are so insane, it could easily have been real.”



Some people decided Cruz needed to be reminded of other times he spread misinformation in his unending efforts to, yes, own those libs:



Meanwhile, the journalist Ohlheiser said having her name falsely attached to a fake news story made for a challenging day.

https://news.yahoo.com/ted-cruz-falls-fake-news-182652246.html

Trump isn't as unpopular as you think:

Trump's Truth Social app soars to No. 1 on the Google Play store
After long wait, Trump-owned app scores 100,000 plus downloads in first days in Android marketplace.
By Charlotte Hazard
Updated: October 14, 2022

Former President Donald Trump's social media app Truth Social soared to the No. 1 downloaded app on the Google Play store Friday after its long-awaited debut.

Truth Social sat atop the free apps list ahead of such brand names as Tik Tok, Amazon, WhatsApp and Instagram.

"It took us a while to get here," said Devin Nunes, the CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group that owns Truth Social. "But we're glad to be here. So we're hopeful now that everyone who has an Android can either go to the Google Play Store or the Samsung Galaxy Store and download the app."

Nunes told the John Solomon Reports podcast that Truth Social is still continuing to update many features to keep improving the app while expanding its reach internationally to places like Britain, Canada and Portuguese-speaking countries.

"Our next feature to come out is direct messaging," Nunes explained. "So that you can be not only in a social network and get your news, but people that you follow, and people that follow you — you'll be able to communicate with them. And it's all part of us building out this separate ecosystem of giving the American people their voice."

Nunes said theTruth development team is dedicated to more than building an app: its goal is to create a new free-speech "internet superhighway."

"We have very dedicated people who believe in free speech and who work 24/7 around the clock," Nunes said. "I mean, this is how we're able to do this. We're constantly building and testing one brick at a time very. It's very methodical, and just making sure that we can't be taken down by a tech oligarch."

https://justthenews.com/nation/free-speech/truth-social-app-goes-number-one-google-play-store

100K downloads is a major fail bro. There are 330 million Americans, and 100K is 0.03% of those 330 million. Just saying, that's not popular, that's reviled. Especially when the real big social media platforms are now measured in the billions. And just an FYI, but the whole thing will come down upon his first conviction in NYC because misused funds collected for political purposes to do it. After he misused vet and children funds collected as charitable donations. This scumbag will not be allowed to spread his lying poison at all.

Donald Trump Is an Antisemite and Republicans Are Totally Cool With It

Donald Trump is an antisemite.

He regularly employs antisemitic tropes, essentializes Jews as a monolithic group, and entertains base stereotypes of Jews. He suggests that Jews are—or at least should be—more loyal to Israel than the United States. And yet, his defenders insist he can’t truly be antisemitic because his son-in-law is Jewish and his daughter converted to Judaism. Plus, he supports Israel.

Trump himself has said he is “the least antisemitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life.” But that, like most of the words that come out of Trump’s mouth—is a lie.

For American Jews, Trump’s anti-Jewish utterances are not necessarily surprising or unique. They are the kind of words that most of us have heard in whispered tones (or perhaps from clueless Gentiles) our entire lives. If, as Isaiah Berlin once joked, an antisemite is someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary, Trump rarely went too far beyond that line into Grammy Hall territory—a “classic Jew hater.”

But on Sunday that changed, as he took his antisemitism to a new and much more dangerous place—implicitly threatening Jews. And, once again, his fellow Republicans said nothing.

On his social media site, Truth Social, Trump wrote this:

“No President has done more for Israel than I have. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S. Those living in Israel, though, are a different story – Highest approval rating in the World, could easily be P.M.! U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – Before it is too late!”

Trump has made similar statements in the past. Last December he complained that “People in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel.” He added that “evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country,” who according to the former president “either don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel.” (For good measure, he threw in that classic antisemitic dog whistle—“Jewish people run The New York Times.”)

Trump says things like this because he views politics in a wholly transactional manner. In his mind, he’s been incredibly supportive of Israel. As president, he moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and thus, American Jews should vote for him. It’s a quid pro quo.

It would never occur to him that American Jews might take into account other factors—like whether a presidential candidate regularly makes openly antisemitic statements, runs blatantly antisemitic ads, or helms a political movement that has turned a wealthy Jewish philanthropist into an antisemitic bogeyman.

It certainly would never dawn on him that the voting patterns of American Jews are driven by something other than a finite, definable good.

Indeed, American Jews have long been among the most loyal bloc of Democratic voters. That’s largely because, of the two major political parties, Democrats are consistent supporters of equal rights for minority racial and ethnic groups and are far less likely to give aid and comfort to antisemitic voices (though the party has not been as stalwart on this point as it once was). Quite simply, the values of the Democratic Party largely align with the values of the Jewish community in America.

The idea that American Jews’ political support could be informed by shared values—or a moral core—is as foreign to Trump as is the idea that values and morality are actual human attributes.

Indeed, Trump is likely unaware in his Sunday post that he gave voice to one of the more despicable and long-standing antisemitic tropes—that Jews are as loyal to Israel, as they are to America. Disloyalty is a charge that has been levied against Diaspora Jews for thousands of years, long before there even was a state of Israel. But Trump found a way to put an even worse modern spin on it by suggesting that “U.S. Jews have to get their act together…Before it is too late!”

Before what is too late?

Does that mean that if Trump comes back into power he will use the presidency to attack Jews for their lack of loyalty, or perhaps Israel for the supposed sins of their Jewish brethren in the United States? It’s not often that a potential presidential candidate demands votes by implicitly threatening an entire group of Americans, but here we are.

But if we dig deeper into Trump’s words, there’s an even more unsettling accusation. Unlike the usual charge of Jewish dual allegiance, Trump appears to suggest that Jews aren’t even loyal to America. According to Trump, the only real concern is the fate of Israel, which makes sense considering he once told a group of Jewish attendees at a White House Hanukkah event that Israel is “your country.” Our only true allegiance is, and apparently should be, with a country that is 5,000 miles away, not the place we call home.

Trump’s antisemitic slander is more than just another crude attack on Jews, it’s an assault on the very idea of what it means to be an American, particularly for those of us from immigrant backgrounds, who maintain an affinity and appreciation for our home country.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s latest disgusting attack on American Jews received the same response it almost always does from his fellow Republicans: crickets. If you were searching social media to find a prominent Republican who criticized Trump’s threatening language you were out of luck.

This, of course, is the same political party that regularly castigates Democrats for not speaking out against antisemitic members in their own camp. Or as Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said earlier this month, in defending Kanye West after he tweeted out an explicit threat against American Jews, he can’t really be an anti-Semite since he 100 percent supports Israel—as if the latter somehow excuses the former.

As one exasperated Jewish friend texted to me on Sunday evening, “all you f***ers who tell me you can’t support the Democrats because Rashida (Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan) or Omar (Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota) are antisemites. Where the f** are you today?”

For years, Republicans have been more than happy to ignore Trump’s racism and misogyny—considering it politically useful to look the other way as he attacks minority groups as insufficiently American. But then again for Trump’s Republican enablers, unlike the Jewish Americans he vilified on Sunday, their true allegiance is clear—and it’s not to America.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-is-an-antisemite-and-republicans-are-totally-cool-with-it

Today Obama said democrats are killjoys and they should stop obsessing over Trump. LMAO

I could have sworn there were some GOPers on here saying how Durham was going to expose the deep-state plot. I wOnDeR wHaT hApPeNeD?


Durham loses again in court, but trial airs FBI flaws

The Danchenko verdict is the latest setback for the Trump-appointed special counsel's investigation into the FBI and Russia inquiry.

Special Counsel John Durham’s probe into the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation suffered another high-profile blow Tuesday, but his disciples see a silver lining in the veteran prosecutor’s checkered courtroom record.

After about nine hours of deliberations, a federal jury acquitted Russian policy researcher Igor Danchenko on Tuesday on four felony false-statement charges brought as part of Durham’s probe of misinformation that triggered the FBI probe of former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Simply put, federal prosecutors are not used to losing. So, Durham’s defeat at the Danchenko trial — which came less than five months after a similar acquittal in another case brought by the special prosecutor — represents an unmistakable defeat.

However, Durham and his aides used the forum of the recent trials to air evidence of what they suggested was a failure by FBI personnel to pursue leads as they probed the sourcing of the Steele dossier, a compendium of allegations former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele assembled about links between Trump and Russia. Danchenko was Steele’s key source when compiling the dossier.

Durham’s open criticism of the FBI produced an unusual spectacle at the trial, as he and his team attacked the competence of FBI agents and analysts who were the prosecution’s key witnesses. The back-and-forth led to disclosures about senior investigators’ refusal to pursue inquiries that more junior FBI personnel thought were warranted, as well as ongoing efforts to discipline FBI personnel over issues related to the Trump-Russia investigation.

Defenders of the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe have said Durham’s criticisms have focused on a relatively small part of the broad investigation, although Durham could offer more disclosures in a forthcoming report. However, his back-to-back courtroom defeats suggest he and his aides misjudged those cases and committed some of the same investigative gaffes they’ve decried in the original probe.

Danchenko managed to defeat the charges against him even though he declined to take the stand in his own defense and called no witnesses during the trial. His attorneys suggested to the jury that he was the victim of a politically inspired prosecution by Durham, who was tapped in 2019 by then-Attorney General William Barr to look into how the Trump-Russia probe began and played out.

The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for about nine hours over two days before returning their verdicts.

Danchenko initially showed little emotion as the successive “not guilty” verdicts were read aloud by a court clerk shortly after 4 p.m. Tuesday. At least one member of the jury looked directly at him as the verdicts came down.

Danchenko glanced briefly at his wife, who began crying as the verdicts were delivered and was handed a box of tissues by a bailiff via one onlooker in the audience. Later, Danchenko teared up himself and embraced his attorneys.

Durham did not address reporters at the courthouse, but issued a written statement saying: “While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service. I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case.”

The four charges the jury considered all involve Danchenko’s statements about his dealings with Sergei Millian, who served in 2016 as head of the Russian American Chamber of Commerce.

Danchenko told the FBI that he received a call in July 2016 from an unidentified man who shared derogatory information about Trump. The Russian researcher said he believed the man was Millian and that the pair agreed to meet up in New York, but the man never showed.

Durham’s team said Danchenko never had contact with Millian and invented the entire story to cover for having told Steele that Millian was the source of a lurid story about Trump’s alleged actions at a Moscow hotel.

“There was no call with Millian and there was no call with any individual,” prosecutor Michael Keilty said in a closing statement for the Durham team. “It’s a not-to-be believed story.”

But the prosecutors found themselves in the difficult situation of having to prove a negative — that Millian never talked to Danchenko — and having to do so beyond a reasonable doubt.

Durham’s team suggested that the absence of Millian’s known phone numbers from call logs for Danchenko’s phone proved the two men never spoke, but the defense noted that people often speak via a variety of phone apps, such as WhatsApp and Signal.

They also noted that travel records showed Millian, who did not testify, arriving in New York from Asia on the night before the day Danchenko said he was supposed to meet the anonymous caller in New York.

Before the jury verdicts Tuesday, the criminal case against Danchenko had already proved to be difficult for Durham and his team. At the conclusion of the prosecution’s evidence on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga granted a defense motion to throw out one of the five false-statement charges the former think tank employee faced.

Durham had charged Danchenko with lying to the FBI when he said he never “talked” to public relations executive Charles Dolan about the compendium Trump’s political opponents paid Steele to compile about Trump’s ties to Russia. Many of the stories in the so-called Steele Dossier appear to be apocryphal and FBI personnel who testified at the trial said they were unable to corroborate any of it.

While there was proof at the trial that Danchenko emailed with Dolan about the dossier, there was no evidence the two men ever spoke. Durham’s team alleged the jury could find the emails amounted to talking, but Trenga- — an appointee of President George W. Bush — said it appeared Danchenko’s denial was literally true so the count had to be thrown out.

The prosecution of Danchenko on false-statement charges is the third criminal case brought by Durham’s team.

The first, against FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, netted a guilty plea from the lawyer for forging details in an email related to a surveillance application during the early stages of the Trump-Russia probe. Clinesmith, who said he altered the message to save himself time, got no jail time.

Jurors in Washington made short work of Durham’s second outing, a single-count false-statement charge against cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann for allegedly lying about his client when relaying to the FBI suspicions about computer links between Trump and Russia.

A prosecutor argued to jurors that the evidence of Sussmann’s guilt was “overwhelming,” but after a two-week trial, the jury took just six hours to acquit the Washington lawyer.

Shortly after the verdicts were received, Trenga called Danchenko to the lectern, saying “Your bond has been discharged and you’re free to go.” After that, the Russian national also began crying and embraced both of his defense attorneys, Stuart Sears and Danny Onorato.

In the wake of the verdicts, Onorato and Sears shook hands with Durham and his prosecutors, Keilty and Brittain Shaw.

“We’ve known all along that Mr. Danchenko was innocent. We’re happy now that the American public knows that as well,” Sears said outside the courthouse, flanked by his client. “We thank these jurors for their hard work and deliberation for reaching the right result.”

The defense lawyers declined to answer questions from reporters, while Durham never came to the cameras stationed in front of the courthouse and commented only in his written statement.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/...l-counts-in-durham-russia-probe-00062380

Typical trump supporter’s need a villain like antifa to coverup their own deplorable acts like white supremacy, insurrection, and taking away women’s rights.

Not what he said. But whatever. Lol

This is the conversation we need to have with GOPers...

This is how you counter BS. Val Demmings owned Rubio in last night's Senate race debate.



Hard to believe that once upon a time I thought he might be POTUS material.

Joe Biden Appeared To Briefly Doze Off During An Interview – The Reporter Had To “Rescue” The Situation (Video)


https://defiantamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/biden-dozeof.mp4

How Propaganda Is Destroying Democracy

You know you're the losing side when you plan how to challenge the midterm elections before they happen! Trump is about to openly double down on trying to steal elections.

What's as frightening as Trump saying those things - there's a lot of people that would agree with him. I bet there's a few on this board - you know, the one's that aren't communists.

BuT WhY ArE YoU So FiXaTeD oN TrUmP!?!?

Most of this is very good and well worth watching. It sort of touches on confirmation bias - it sort of hints at or talks about both Left and Right doing things - I wish it went further in that regard so that it was more balanced. But man - there are a lot of crazies and none more than that crackpot "pastor" .... "If you believe what the Left Believes then you are Evil" ...

"If you believe what the Left Right Believes then you are Evil" ...

Trying to count how many on this very forum think and voice the above on a regular basis... And I don't mean "maybe, kinda, sorta"... I mean believe with their whole heart and mind, and yell it through a megaphone.

Ooops, lost count again.

I am not certain about that. I think there is a lot of Trump angst and posters despise him and what he has done. I see a lot of posters highlighting that the extremes of the Right (Q, Alex Jones, extreme Christian Right) are dangerous. But there is a world of difference between Dangerous and Evil. There are factors and agendas on the Left I would brand Dangerous.

And I don't think this is Semantics either. And I think you'd need to watch the clip and see how and what was said by the "religious leader" that was saying this to appreciate just how different it is.

Here's an example of something I think is dangerous - long but good read:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-tea-party-republican-state-legislatures

Should a convention be achieved, the plan would be to give states one vote each. There is no legal or historical basis for such an arrangement but its appeal is self-evident.

One vote per state would give small rural conservative states like Wyoming (population 580,000) equal leverage to large urbanized progressive states like California (39.5 million). Collectively, small states would be in the majority and control would tip to the Republicans.

Last December Santorum spelled out this minoritarian vision at a private ALEC meeting. In an audio recording obtained by CMD, Santorum said: “We have the opportunity, as a result, to have a supermajority, even though we may not even be in an absolute majority when it comes to the people who agree with us.”


--- To emphasize the issue I believe the last time the GOP won the actual popular vote was 2004. I'll let you decide if you believe even discussing or theorizing one state one vote is worthwhile.... I mean the easy thing to do would be to say it'll never happen. Just like the ide that a POTUS with 18 months left on his term would have his moderate choice for a new Supreme Court Nomination could be thwarted yet the next POTUS could rush in two nominations appointed in less time - one of which was 2 months before the end of his term IIRC

I do agree with you that sometimes happens. I don't think by and large that's the rule however. I believe we have posters that fall somewhere in the middle. I'm not a fan of either extreme.

I have always maintained there is a vast difference between a Republican and a MAGA/Trumpian. When it comes to actual Republicans I certainly have disagreements with some of their policy issues. However that's a far cry from trying to refuse to certify our elections. And we will be seeing more of that with the 2022 election results. I see the downright insults about other races and general nastiness as an infection. And I'm not saying that doesn't happen with both sides to an extent, but if you have any doubts about what I'm saying I can post many of the things Trump has said that no president would have ever said before. But I'm sure you know that. So yes, I do believe that type of rhetoric is dangerous to America and democracy as we have known it.

What was unthinkable not so very long ago has become far more mainstream now. But maybe on the other hand that's not such a bad thing? At least now we know what they were thinking all along and now we can identify who they are. There's a lot more of them than I would have ever imagined and knowledge is power.

Now on the other side as we see on this very board, if you don't agree with everything they say you're a communist. That's some whacked out BS right there.

Here is your president...

I've been called damn near everything on here at one point or the other. I was right about Trump being a criminal, traitor, dumbass, fascist, stupid, not a Christian, not a businessman, and damn sure not a good Potus. I even warned about blood being spilled on Jan 6th. Yet, I'm still called an extremist by almost all of you when that's all you have to throw at me. So all I have to say about the right and the middle is shut up until you put up. Progressives are the only leaders in this country, the rest are all pure trash as far as leading goes.

Their America Is Vanishing. Like Trump, They Insist They Were Cheated.

The white majority is fading, the economy is changing and there’s a pervasive sense of loss in districts where Republicans fought the outcome of the 2020 election.

When Representative Troy Nehls of Texas voted last year to reject Donald J. Trump’s electoral defeat, many of his constituents back home in Fort Bend County were thrilled.

Like the former president, they have been unhappy with the changes unfolding around them. Crime and sprawl from Houston, the big city next door, have been spilling over into their once bucolic towns. (“Build a wall,” Mr. Nehls likes to say, and make Houston pay.) The county in recent years has become one of the nation’s most diverse, where the former white majority has fallen to just 30 percent of the population.

Don Demel, a 61-year-old salesman who turned out last month to pick up a signed copy of a book by Mr. Nehls about the supposedly stolen election, said his parents had raised him “colorblind.” But the reason for the discontent was clear: Other white people in Fort Bend “did not like certain people coming here,” he said. “It’s race. They are old-school.”

A shrinking white share of the population is a hallmark of the congressional districts held by the House Republicans who voted to challenge Mr. Trump’s defeat, a New York Times analysis found — a pattern political scientists say shows how white fear of losing status shaped the movement to keep him in power.

The portion of white residents dropped about 35 percent more over the last three decades in those districts than in territory represented by other Republicans, the analysis found, and constituents also lagged behind in income and education. Rates of so-called deaths of despair, such as suicide, drug overdose and alcohol-related liver failure, were notably higher as well.

Although overshadowed by the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the House vote that day was the most consequential of Mr. Trump’s ploys to overturn the election. It cast doubt on the central ritual of American democracy, galvanized the party’s grass roots around the myth of a stolen victory and set a precedent that legal experts — and some Republican lawmakers — warn could perpetually embroil Congress in choosing a president.


Representative Troy Nehls during a book signing at the Fort Bend County Fair in Texas this month. His book falsely claims that Democrats rigged the election.Credit...Mark Felix for The New York Times

To understand the social forces converging in that historic vote — objecting to the Electoral College count — The Times examined the constituencies of the lawmakers who joined the effort, analyzing census and other data from congressional districts and interviewing scores of residents and local officials. The Times previously revealed the back-room maneuvers inside the House, including convincing lawmakers that they could reject the results without explicitly endorsing Mr. Trump’s outlandish fraud claims.

Many of the 139 objectors, including Mr. Nehls, said they were driven in part by the demands of their voters. “You sent me to Congress to fight for President Trump and election integrity,” Mr. Nehls wrote in a tweet on Jan. 5, 2021, “and that’s exactly what I am doing.” At a Republican caucus meeting a few days later, Representative Bill Johnson, from an Ohio district stretching into Appalachia, told colleagues that his constituents would “go ballistic” with “raging fire” if he broke with Mr. Trump, according to a recording.

Certain districts primarily reflect either the racial or socioeconomic characteristics. But the typical objector district shows both — a fact demographers said was striking.

Because they are more vulnerable, disadvantaged or less educated white voters can feel especially endangered by the trend toward a minority majority, said Ashley Jardina, a political scientist at George Mason University who studies the attitudes of those voters.

“A lot of white Americans who are really threatened are willing to reject democratic norms,” she said, “because they see it as a way to protect their status.”

That may help explain why the dispute over Mr. Trump’s defeat has emerged at this moment in history, with economic inequality reaching new heights and the white population of the United States expected within about two decades to lose its majority.

Many of the objectors’ districts started with a significantly larger Black minority, or had a rapid increase in the Hispanic population, making the decline in the white population more pronounced.

Of the 12 Republican-held districts that swung to minority white — almost all in California and Texas — 10 were represented by objectors. The most significant drops occurred in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs and California desert towns, where the white percentage fell by more than a third.

Lawmakers who objected were also overrepresented among the 70 Republican-held districts with the lowest percentages of college graduates. In one case — the southeast Kentucky district of Hal Rogers, currently the longest-serving House member — about 14 percent of residents had four-year degrees, less than half the average in the districts of Republicans who accepted the election results.

While Mr. Nehls’s district exemplifies demographic change, Representative H. Morgan Griffith’s in southwest Virginia is among the poorest in the country. Once dominated by coal, manufacturing and tobacco, the area’s economic base eroded with competition from new energy sources and foreign importers. Doctors prescribed opioids to injured laborers and an epidemic of addiction soon followed.

Residents, roughly 90 percent of them white, gripe that the educated elites of the Northern Virginia suburbs think that “the state stops at Roanoke.” They take umbrage at what they consider condescension from outsiders who view their communities as poverty-stricken, and they bemoan “Ph.D pollution” from the big local university, Virginia Tech. After a long history of broken government promises, many said in interviews they had lost faith in the political process and public institutions — in almost everyone but Mr. Trump, who they said championed their cause.

Marie March, a restaurant owner in the town of Christiansburg, said she embodied “the mind-set of the Trump MAGA voter.”

“You feel like you’re the underdog and you don’t get a fair shake, so you look for people that are going to shake it up,” she said of the local support for Mr. Trump’s dispute of the election results. “We don’t feel like we’ve had a voice.”

Ms. March, who said she attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington but did not go to the Capitol, was inspired by Mr. Trump to win a seat in the state legislature last year. She said she could drive 225 miles east from the Kentucky border and see only Trump signs. No one in the region could imagine that he received fewer votes than President Biden, she insisted.

“You could call it an echo chamber of our beliefs,” she added, “but that’s a pretty big landmass to be an echo chamber.”

For America or Against It

In a bustling clinic called the Health Wagon in Mr. Griffith’s district, Paula Hill-Collins sees low-income and uninsured patients with maladies from tooth decay to heart conditions and diabetes.

Since the last election, they have often raised another complaint: the false claim that Democrats stole Mr. Trump’s victory.

“‘Did you see that box of votes that was thrown away? Did you see they found extra ones?’ This is what we hear from our patients,” said Ms. Hill-Collins, a nurse practitioner who grew up in the town of Coeburn, population 1,600.

Residents of the area — former coal towns at the southern end of Appalachia — have felt cheated for generations, she said. “They believe it because look what’s happened to us,” she said, recalling the exploitation of her community first by mining interests and more recently by drugmakers. “That’s fed a culture of suspicion.”

Families still swap stories about underhanded land deals that prospectors struck with residents more than a century ago for minerals under the hills. Now, the number of coal miners has plunged to less than 2,000 from more than 10,000 employed at about 340 mines three decades ago, according to government statistics.

In a congressional district bigger than New Jersey, villages that once hummed with the sounds of children now feel “just like ghost towns,” said Betty S. Hess, 75, of Honaker, population 1,200. A daughter, sister and wife of miners, she now helps lead an association to support those with black lung disease.

Nearly a fifth of the homes in the district sit empty. The average household earns about $46,000 a year, about a quarter less than in other Republican-held districts. Even with Virginia Tech, only about 21 percent of the residents hold college degrees, compared with about 31 percent nationally.

The toll of the opioid crisis is unmistakable. In Lebanon, population 3,100, seven addiction clinics line Main Street. Kimberly Harris, 50, director of a nearby funeral home, said she typically buried at least one overdose victim a month. “The older I get, the younger they get,” she said, noting that she adopted the child of a relative who had become addicted. (Last week, she was preparing a service for a 67-year-old who had died of lung cancer after working in coal mines from the age of 14.)

Conditions like diabetes and heart disease overlap so often that health workers feel lucky when their patients can walk in the door, said Teresa Owens Tyson, a nurse practitioner at the Health Wagon. “Sometimes they collapse in the parking lot,” she said.

Although not all are so hard-pressed, the districts of the House objectors share similar disadvantages. Households there had nearly 10 percent less annual income in 2020 than those in other Republican areas. Not only were college degrees less common, so were high school diplomas.

The G.O.P.’s hold on those districts reflects its shift away from its former country club image to become the party of those left behind. The residents of Democratic districts, on average, are better educated and earn significantly more.

Tim Wilson, a 60-year-old Army veteran who owns a business in Christiansburg that provides wigs and other supplies to cancer patients, said he won a town council seat last year to help attract business and jobs.

Yet he feared the cultural cost of outside investment. A big employer “would also bring with it all the executives and what comes with it from Northern Virginia or California, one of the strong blue regions,” he said. “There is this fear.”

The same distrust drove feelings about the last election, he said: Democratic elites in the big cities — the ones who took people “from being coal miners to being put out on the street” — were pushing what he called the myth that the election had run perfectly.

“If we don’t show the people that are a level above us and a level above them in elected offices that we mean business, it’ll never change anything,” he said. “We need to show them that we have the courage to stand up to the status quo.”

Others took offense at the suggestion that election doubts were tied to income, education or faith. (Districts of objectors had higher concentrations of evangelical Protestants than other Republican-held areas, according to the most recent data available.)

Instead, some residents said that their reasons for questioning the results should be obvious to anyone: the relatively small size of Mr. Biden’s rallies, the overnight disappearance of Mr. Trump’s early lead as more votes were tallied, the allegations about stuffed ballot drop boxes.

“It’s not a political thing. It’s a we-love-our-country thing,’” said Alecia Vaught, 46, a homemaker and Republican organizer in Christiansburg. “You’re either for America or you’re not.”

Vanishing Opportunities

Mr. Griffith, 64, a lawyer and state legislator before joining Congress, built his career fighting for the lost cause of coal. In the Tea Party wave of 2010, he defeated a 14-term Democratic incumbent by slamming him for supporting carbon caps.

His commitment to fossil fuels has made Mr. Griffith a vocal critic of electric cars, which he notes cannot yet cross his district without recharging. Earlier this year, he criticized Democrats for holding a hearing on the technology even though many Americans were worried about high energy prices because the Russian war in Ukraine had cut global oil and gas supplies.

“Have my friends forgotten where our electricity comes from today?” he asked fellow lawmakers, arguing for focusing on U.S. production of coal, oil and gas.

He was an enthusiastic backer of Mr. Trump, who had made a campaign promise to bring coal jobs back. After he took office, Mr. Griffith celebrated: “The war on coal is over.”

When Mr. Trump lost in 2020, his claims of a stolen election quickly took hold in the district. “I’d be pumping gas and people who didn’t even know me would want to know if I thought the election was stolen,” said Frank Kilgore, 70, a lawyer-lobbyist and local historian who is an independent.

“Morgan heard it more and more from his base,” Mr. Kilgore added. Local Republican leaders “said they thought it was stolen, too,” raising the specter of a primary challenge if Mr. Griffith voted to accept the results. Constituents circulated a petition demanding that he fight Mr. Trump’s loss.

Yet Mr. Griffith was not among the vocal chorus of House Republicans echoing Mr. Trump. On Jan. 6, 2021, he voted to object citing only changes to election procedures during the pandemic.

The congressman, who declined to comment for this article, wrote to constituents after Mr. Biden was inaugurated: “It is time to move forward.”

But local party leaders have not given up.

In Montgomery County, the largest in the district, the party has been offering weekly screenings since the summer of the film “2000 Mules.” Using faulty arguments, the film alleges that Democrats conspired to stuff ballot drop boxes to engineer Mr. Trump’s defeat.

“The other side always talks about facts, facts, facts, but facts change and facts are whatever you want them to be,” said Jo Anne Price, 70, host of the screenings, accusing news organizations of distorting the truth.

The screenings take place at a strip mall in Christiansburg, where she also leads seminars on accounting, cursive and “the foundation of the nation.” A biracial woman who traces her lineage to enslaved people and the white family that owned them, Ms. Price sells and flies the Confederate flag. “I’m proud of all the things that made my country what it is,” she said.

She became involved in local politics during the pandemic, organizing protests against masks and vaccines. This year she replaced the county party’s chair, faulting her predecessor for not pushing the “stop the steal” cause.

At a recent meeting, Ms. Price warned fellow party volunteers that thousands of former Virginia Tech students may be registered to vote in her county. Her group vowed to seek new laws to purge voter rolls and to elect pro-Trump insurgents.

“We’re going to set this county on fire,” Ms. Price promised.

A New America

Less than a month before the 2020 election, Democrats organized a rally outside a predominantly Black high school in a Fort Bend town adjacent to Houston, and a caravan of Trump backers showed up.

Several arrived in military vehicles. One drove a white hearse displaying a sign: “Collecting Democratic Votes One Dead Stiff at a Time.” A placard on the windshield served as a rejoinder to the recent racial justice movement: “All Lives Matter.” A mannequin that appeared to be a Black woman lay in an open coffin.

Eugene Howard, 39, an alumnus of the high school and then president of a local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., said Trump supporters shoved him and used a racist slur as he walked to his car.

“The goal was intimidation,” he argued in an interview, saying it was motivated by the same emotions as the denial of the 2020 election results: “white fear and backlash.”

Texas is one of six states where the white population is now outnumbered by Black, Hispanic and Asian residents. Mr. Nehls’s district, which includes most of Fort Bend County, is part of the reason: It swung from nearly 70 percent to less than 40 percent white over the last three decades.

But changing demographics in many places may not yet be reflected at the polls, because of a larger white share of the voting-age population and higher turnout levels. Exit polls show that white Texans still made up 60 percent of the state’s voters in 2020.

The greater Houston area is the center of the state’s transformation and also a hub of the “stop the steal” movement. True the Vote, the organization behind some of the loudest accusations of voter fraud, was founded 12 years ago by a Fort Bend resident who claimed that a nonprofit was falsely registering voters in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Houston. A cluster of congressmen who actively promoted Mr. Trump’s election denial come from the area. Next month, another Republican who calls the election stolen is expected to replace an incumbent who accepted the Biden victory and did not seek re-election.

Many Fort Bend-area Republicans say their doubts about the 2020 results have nothing to do with race.

“I think it has more to do with polarization than it does with racial or demographic issues,” said Jacey Jetton, 39, a Texas state legislator and former G.O.P. county chairman. “We are so divided now,” he added, that no one can accept that their opponents “believe what they believe.”

He said he “declined to speculate” whether Mr. Trump had won or lost in 2020. But Mr. Jetton, who is Korean American, noted that forward-looking Republicans in many places were competing for minority voters. In Fort Bend, the party won local races through 2016, partly through outreach to Black, Hispanic and immigrant groups — particularly Asian Americans. The county government flipped to the Democrats under Mr. Trump in 2018, organizers in both parties said, in part because the president’s rhetoric — “shithole countries,” a “Muslim ban” — had repelled those voters.

But William Thompson, 47, a white Republican who declined to seek re-election in 2020 as a Fort Bend town constable, said the racial shift in the electorate helped explain the denial of Mr. Trump’s defeat.

“The Republican Party is, you know, dominated by white males, and the hard-core Republicans — especially in a place like Fort Bend — might not be fully awake to the fact that we are a melting pot,” he said. “They just may not believe that all these people of color — all these different religions, maybe Muslims, maybe atheists — have moved in and are voting.”

Craig LeTulle, 65, a building contractor who described himself as dubious about Mr. Biden’s win, felt similarly.

Mr. LeTulle used to lead the county party’s outreach to minority voters, courting culturally conservative Asian American business owners and professionals. He said he often visited the local Hindu temple in his cowboy hat and boots with a kurta over his Wranglers. And he cited some success, like persuading a Black Democrat who had lost her primary to switch parties.

“You could see the demographic changes coming a long time ago,” he said, “but if you look at a picture of our list of candidates, it is white, white, white, white, white.”

Right-leaning media commentators sometimes assert that liberals are conspiring to increase the number of nonwhite voters in order to “replace” white ones. That theory may have particular traction in objectors’ districts, where the white share of the population fell an average of 14 percent over the last three decades, compared with about 10 percent in other Republican-held areas.

Many objector districts are in former Confederate states that were home to large Black populations. Black residents make up about 20 percent of Fort Bend, including descendants of former slaves who once worked on a sugar plantation, the site of what is now the town of Sugar Land.

The town is the center of the fast-growing Asian American population, now a fifth of the county. The largest mosque, Maryam Islamic Center, is so besieged by candidates of both parties that it limits political speeches to three Fridays each election cycle and caps them at three minutes.

A sprawling Hindu temple with a specialized grocery store and cafe draws visitors from across the South and Southwest. And where football once ruled, cricket leagues flourish. About a dozen pitches around the county attract players with roots in former British colonies — despite occasional friction with neighbors.

In some farm towns, “they don’t want us going into their property after a ball — some guys say they will shoot if we trespass,” said Devon Small, 68, a Jamaican-born umpire. “But some of the neighbors are friendly and they will come and ask, what is that?”

Mr. Nehls called immigrants an asset to the community.

“If you go to the Sugar Land memorial hospital and try to read the names of the doctors, we can’t pronounce them or spell them, right?” the congressman said in an interview at his book signing.

“But those are the same guys who are going to be putting in my stent in a few years!” he continued, trying to sound out the name of his own cardiologist from a business card. “I think he is from Pakistan, and I think he is a Muslim,” Mr. Nehls said, “and I love him!”


‘Power Grab’

Some Fort Bend Democrats said they saw an obvious connection between the declining white share of the population and the refusal by Mr. Nehls and his supporters to accept Mr. Trump’s defeat.

“It is a power grab by white Republicans,” said K.P. George, a Democrat born in India who was elected in 2018 as the county’s top executive, the first nonwhite person to hold the office.

Xenophobic hostility “is all I get,” he quipped in an interview.

Mr. George has cited slurs against him posted by online accounts backing his Republican opponent this fall. These have included falsehoods that he is a Muslim and changed his name “to sound more American,” attempts to link him with Osama bin Laden and a demand that he recognize a “white heritage month.”

In response, his rival has accused Mr. George and other Democrats of stoking “racial division to distract from their failures of leadership.” (That candidate is Mr. Nehls’s twin brother, Trever, a former elected constable and ex-Army colonel. He declined to comment.)

Troy Nehls, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, served as the county sheriff for eight years before running for Congress in 2020. His seat appears safe this year because the Republican-controlled state legislature redrew the boundaries of his district to include more predominantly white and solidly Republican terrain outside Fort Bend County. Whites now make up a majority of the eligible voters in the district.

Fort Bend Republicans say they are playing down election integrity issues in the midterms, wary that attention on Mr. Trump’s dispute may turn off independent voters worried about everyday matters like inflation. Still, Bobby Eberle, the county party chairman, said fears of voter fraud after the last election drove many of the calls he received from volunteers.

The Harris County Republican Party is training poll watchers to suspect mischief from local election workers. “There was a lot more shenanigans going on than I was aware of,” said Jacqueline Clinton, 55, leaving one of the training sessions in Kingwood, a Houston suburb.

For his part, Mr. Nehls said election fraud was the only thing that could stop “the greatest leader of my lifetime” from returning to the Oval Office in 2024.

“In a fair election, you can’t beat Donald Trump!” Mr. Nehls said, posing for photographs in front of a life-size photo of the former president.

He saw no fear of demographic change among his supporters, he said. “These people aren’t against brown or Black people. They just don’t like the way Democrats are running the country.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/23/us/politics/republican-election-objectors-demographics.html

Those people. smh

The Open, Unabashed Rise Of Anti-Semitism From Leading Figures On The Right

If only some of them could be elected outside of California and New York. It's hard to lead when you can't get elected.

3 men found guilty of supporting Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot

October 26, 2022 / 12:38 PM / CBS/AP

Three men accused of supporting a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer were convicted of all charges Wednesday, a triumph for state prosecutors after months of mixed results in the main case in federal court. Joe Morrison, his father-in-law Pete Musico, and Paul Bellar were found guilty of providing "material support" for a terrorist act as members of a paramilitary group, the Wolverine Watchmen.

They held gun drills in rural Jackson County with a leader of the scheme, Adam Fox, who was disgusted with Whitmer and other officials in 2020 and said he wanted to kidnap her.

Musico's attorney, Kareem Johnson, said he was disappointed in the verdict and would prepare for sentencing.

Jurors read and heard violent, anti-government screeds as well as support for the "boogaloo," a civil war that might be triggered by a shocking abduction. Prosecutors said COVID-19 restrictions ordered by Whitmer turned out to be fruit to recruit more people to the Watchmen.

"The facts drip out slowly," state Assistant Attorney General Bill Rollstin told jurors in Jackson, Michigan, "and you begin to see — wow — there were things that happened that people knew about. ... When you see how close Adam Fox got to the governor, you can see how a very bad event was thwarted."

Morrison, 28, Musico, 44, and Bellar, 24, were also convicted of a gun crime and membership in a gang. Prosecutors said the Wolverine Watchmen was a criminal enterprise.

Morrison, who recently tested positive for COVID-19, and Musico watched the verdict by video away from the courtroom. Judge Thomas Wilson ordered all three to jail while they await sentencing scheduled for Dec. 15.

Defense attorneys argued that the three men had broken ties with Fox by late summer 2020 when the Whitmer plot came into focus. Unlike Fox and others, they didn't travel to northern Michigan to scout the governor's vacation home or participate in a key weekend training session inside a "shoot house."

"In this country, you are allowed to talk the talk but you only get convicted if you walk the walk," Johnson said in his closing remarks.

Defense lawyers couldn't argue entrapment. But they attacked the tactics of Dan Chappel, an Army veteran and undercover informant. He took instructions from FBI agents, secretly recorded conversations and produced a deep cache of messages exchanged with the men.

Whitmer, a Democrat running for reelection on Nov. 8, was never physically harmed. Undercover agents and informants were inside Fox's group for months. The scheme was broken up with 14 arrests in October 2020.

Fox and Barry Croft Jr. were convicted of a kidnapping conspiracy in federal court in August. Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta were acquitted last spring. Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks pleaded guilty.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gretch...dKNQqI3aeq17yucFg8c3xuBDAT8xHoA2UPOgY5J8

Good. Those people should rot in hell IMHO.

Violent much?

Coward much?

Dont worry Arch, he cant go any farther than his oxygen tube.

Crime = time.
The Good Guys won this time.

Who are the Good Guys?
We, The People.

We are still a nation of laws.
These crazed folk broke them.
Retribution is now nigh.
Let Justice be done.

______________

This crazyass story is just the iceberg's tip.

It's going to get worse... and more frequent- as an increasing number of marginalized, isolated, desperate individuals find each other online. The most recent/most visible example that bears out my predix: Jan 6. That event resulted in almost 1K arrests/hundreds of prosecutions.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were my wake-up call.
I've been awake/aware ever since.

These folk are just getting started.
Samuel L. Jackson's character Ray Arnold said it best in the movie movie 'Jurassic Park':

What do you know about my tube? And no, only at night.

I been wondering how many of those I don't support what Trump did on the 6th, I'm done with MAGA, I'm not Qanon, I'm a one-issue voter, yada-yada-yada guys will post that they voted straight dem? I can't believe JD Vance is running so close to Ryan. We would never get honest answers on here, but I'd love to see a show of hands for Vance supporters. He's every bit the turd Trump is.

The mad Goper MAGA haters will believe the altered version no doubt.

January 6 committee obtains eight emails showing possible planning of post-election crime

The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol has obtained eight emails from late 2020 that a judge determined show Donald Trump and his lawyers planning to defraud courts and obstruct the congressional vote on the presidency.

A new court filing from Trump’s then-attorney John Eastman disclosed that the House said it had accessed the emails on Friday.

The House probe has been fighting for the records for months, and a federal judge cleared the way for the committee to receive them in recent weeks, calling them possible evidence of the planning of crimes on Trump’s behalf.

Eastman had tried several last-ditch attempts to hold off the committee. The panel declined to comment to CNN.

The emails that the committee finally has accessed include four communications between Trump attorneys that appear to indicate they knew details they submitted to courts to challenge the election were false, and four emails that reveal them discussing filing lawsuits as a way to hold off congressional certification of Trump’s electoral loss, Judge David O. Carter previously revealed.

One of the emails describes concern the lawyers had about submitting a declaration signed by Trump himself in a lawsuit challenging the election, which said the election fraud allegations it presented to the court were true, the judge’s previous opinion revealed. The Trump-signed statement was sent to court, even though the lawyers knew the allegations within weren’t sound, according to the court record.

Eastman is now asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for an order telling the House to return or destroy the eight emails.

“In order to comply fully with the district court’s production order, counsel for Dr. Eastman provided to the Select Committee at 2:04 pm PDT [Friday] a link to a drop box folder containing the remaining eight documents that were the subject of the Motion to Stay that was at the time (and is still) pending before the Ninth Circuit. In the email transmitting that link, counsel for Dr. Eastman requested that the documents not be accessed until the Ninth Circuit had had a chance to rule on the Motion for Stay pending appeal,” Eastman’s team told the appeals court on Sunday.

The committee has repeatedly argued that a core tenet of Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 election results was to file frivolous lawsuits intended to delay certification of the results in key swing states.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/30/politics/january-6-committee-2020-election-emails

This, a few days after serial election denier is already denying 2024... just in case. Wow.





Bush was "selected, not elected". Trump is an "illegitimate president". And already... "___________ is not our president, this election was stolen!"

Yet she conceded. Let me know when trump does the same. And in case you missed it, election deniers are making plans to undermine and withhold election certifications if their candidates lose. And it will get worse after 2022 as even more election deniers get into office. Just watch and learn.

Hilarious.

Feds warn that domestic violent extremists pose heightened threat to midterm elections

Federal officials on Friday warned that domestic violent extremists pose a heightened threat to the 2022 midterm elections, in a joint intelligence assessment sent to state and local officials and obtained by CNN.

The bulletin, released by the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, US Capitol Police and National Counterterrorism Center, says that perceptions of election fraud will likely result in heightened threats of violence.

The bulletin did not list any specific credible threats.

"Following the 2022 midterm election, perceptions of election-related fraud and dissatisfaction with electoral outcomes likely will result in heightened threats of violence against a broad range of targetssuch as ideological opponents and election workers," it states.

Enduring perceptions of election fraud related to the 2020 general election continue to contribute to the radicalization of some violent extremists, and likely would "increase their sensitivity to any new claims perceived as reaffirming their belief that US elections are corrupt," according to the assessment.

The joint federal assessment comes as election workers are increasingly concerned about physical threats to themselves and election infrastructure, and foreign actors seek to widen divisions in the United States.

"We assess that election-related perceptions of fraud and (domestic violent extremist) reactions to divisive topics will likely drive sporadic (domestic violent extremist) plotting of violence and broader efforts to justify violence in the lead up to and following the 2022 midterm election cycle," the bulletin states.

"The midterm elections are occurring at a time when the nation is experiencing what has been described as the most volatile, complex and dynamic threat environment in recent times," former DHS intel chief and counterterrorism coordinator John Cohen told CNN. "Communities across the nation continue to experience mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence by individuals inspired by conspiracy theories."

Law enforcement on alert

Law enforcement across the country is on the lookout for threats to election officials, such as, intimidating behavior directed at voters, vandalism of ballot boxes and the potential of people visiting polling sites and questioning the legitimacy of voters, according to Cohen, who continues to work with state and local law enforcement.

Over past weeks, law enforcement agencies across country have been discussing steps that can be taken to mitigate these risks and ensure election is conducted in safe and secure manner, he said.

"The Department of Homeland Security regularly shares information regarding the heightened threat environment with federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial officials to ensure the safety and security of all communities across the country," a DHS spokesperson told CNN.

The assessment was released on the same day that Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked at the couple's home in San Francisco. The assailant who attacked him was searching for the speaker of the House, according to a source briefed on the attack.

As of Friday evening, authorities hadn't yet determined a motive for the attack.

Cohen said it should serve as a warning to Democratic and Republican elected officials that "they are being targeted by individuals who are motivated by extremist ideological beliefs."

On Thursday, the New York Police Department advised "elevated vigilance" in the closing days of the midterm election season, according to an NYPD bulletin obtained by CNN, though there are currently no credible threats to New York City polling sites, candidates or poll workers

There are three "primary threat vectors" concerning officials amid the midterm elections -- cybersecurity, mis- and disinformation and physical security, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a conference on Wednesday.

Election officials and federal agencies have been on heightened alert for any attempt by hackers to breach computer systems that support the election process.

Unidentified hackers twice in the last month have sent phishing emails to employees of an elections board in a Midwestern state, US officials told election officials on a Friday briefing, sources familiar with the call told CNN. The apparently run-of-the-mill cybercriminal activity was blocked and didn't result in any breach of election board computers, officials said.

The department has received reports of "a number of election officials" expressing concern about their physical security, Mayorkas said at the Homeland Security Enterprise Forum.

"And I must say in 2022, it's a very sad state of affairs when election officials are concerned about their physical security," he added.

Since Russia's interference in the 2016 election, a range of foreign governments have shown more of an interest in shaping US public opinion or spreading disinformation in advance of US elections, according to US intelligence officials.

When it comes to spreading lies, Mayorkas pointed to Russia, Iran and China, saying, "the disinformation that they spread, both pre- and post-election, undermine the integrity, the perception of the integrity of the elections, to sow further discord in our country."

Iran's level of aggressiveness in trying to interfere in the 2020 election -- in part by impersonating the far-right Proud boys -- surprised some US national security officials. China considered trying to influence the 2020 election outcome, but ultimately chose not to, according to a public US intelligence assessment.

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Russian and Chinese government-affiliated operatives and organizations have amplified misinformation from Americans about the integrity of elections, senior FBI officials told reporters this month.

But it's physical security that has risen to the top of the list of concerns for election officials as conspiracy theories about voter fraud have boomed.

The FBI and sheriffs from across the country last week discussed the possibility of misinformation fueling violence at polling stations during the midterm elections, a sheriffs group told CNN.

Election workers have reported over 1,000 interactions, including death threats, with the public that they considered hostile or threatening to a Justice Department task force, but that is likely just a fraction of the threatening behavior that has occurred since 2020.

In response, federal officials are now offering state and local election officials training to "safely de-escalate" confrontations with voters that could turn violent, CNN first reported.

https://abc11.com/midterm-election-security-domestic-extremists-terrorist/12401210/

Stop being so obtuse. Any idiot can see that MAGA is infecting our political system from top to bottom with election deniers who intend to do whatever it takes to make sure GOPers win. They will follow Donnie's lead on whatever, so don't pretend it's not a serious issue. You will be that guy going, wow, I never thought they would seriously start a civil war. Smart guy with a lying ass party. -

Election deniers like Hillary?

Pathetic.

$hillary is denying a future election and we're pathetic.

I know. She was, and still is pathetic. Probably the first election denier ever.

You knew I was talking about you. But nice try.

Hillary conceded. Let us know when trump does. You do comprehend that when someone concedes and election they are admitting they lost, right?

I guess you don't follow what's going on. Election deniers are running for governors in several states. 19 to be specific. In 2020 there were attempts to install fake electors to overthrow the vote of the people in some states. People are running and expected to win office that will have the authority to do just that and they believe it's legal and they have the authority to do so. If you were half as worried about what's actually going on in our country as you are as making fun of those who do it would be quite refreshing. But so many like yourself will ignore it and make fun of it until after it happens and then claim you didn't see it coming.

Hillary Clinton says Biden should not concede the election 'under any circumstances'

The former Democratic presidential nominee predicted Republicans could try to “mess up absentee balloting” for a narrow advantage in the Electoral College.

By Rebecca Shabad
WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton said in a new interview that Joe Biden should not concede the 2020 presidential election “under any circumstances," anticipating issues that could prolong knowing the final outcome.

“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances, because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an interview with her former communications director Jennifer Palmieri for Showtime's “The Circus,” which released a clip Tuesday.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/20...not-concede-2020-election-under-n1238156


=================================================

I just want to know that this behavior is acceptable that it's not "a threat to our democracy", like everything else. To constantly question elections before they even take place? I mean, she's basically saying that all our elections are rigged, right? Am I expected to believe that they are only rigged by one side? Or should I read her endless bogeyman conspiracies and then have complete confidence in our election process when her side wins?? Seems like a strange, convenient dichotomy.

It's a good thing she's not an elected government official that holds no power to actually disrupt our elections. I wish that were true across the board.

As long as it is fine with you that she constantly tries.

I can show you thousands of people that constantly try. Most of them trying to accomplish exactly what she's referring to. Replacing electors to overthrow elections. Refusing to certify election results. But let's ignore all of that.....

Did you include Stacey Abrahams in your "election deniers running for governor?" tally?

Hmm, it's weird how some of them get cancelled, suspended, removed and destroyed... while others are propped up as actual soothsayers.

What's weird is some things are facts and some things are not. There are people currently in office who will be circumventing our election process and have already tried to do so. Many others of the same ilk are expected to be elected. Sometimes facts matter. At least to some people. I guess we should all sit back and support things get posted to social media that cause things like Jan. 6th and the Pelosi attack. That seems to work out so much better.

That was actually hilarious.

We've switched from dangerous to funny. Sadly I'll take that given the choices we had.

Fair enough. Did you watch? The reporter from Skynews is pretty funny, that almost seemed like an SNL skit. lol

I did and it is funny.

Ohio man accused of having bomb-making materials and wanting to kill police

The FBI arrested a suspected member of far-right extremist group the Boogaloo Bois Tuesday after he allegedly posted about killing police, government officials and expressing a desire to "blow up the IRS" and Facebook's headquarters.

Driving the news: Aron McKillips, 29, is accused of stockpiling bomb-making materials, an "AR-15 type rifle" and a grenade launcher, which he later allegedly said he traded for some "primo cocaine," according to a complaint unsealed Tuesday in Toledo federal court and first obtained by The Daily Beast.

Zoom in: The complaint documents screenshots of Signal chats and audio recordings on the encrypted messaging platform in which someone with the username of "prisonoh," or "Prison OH" (meaning "Prison Ohio"), whom the FBI identified as McKillips, posted on several occasions about weapons.

The user also expressed a desire to "kill feds, kill police, kill government officials," according to the complaint.
An informant reported that McKillips "posted a picture of his AK and said he wants to turn this into 'The country Concert 2,' likely referencing the Las Vegas mass shooting" of 2017, the complaint states.

The big picture: McKillips, of Sandusky, Ohio, was charged with unlawful possession of a machine gun and interstate communication of threats.

https://www.axios.com/2022/11/02/fb...EY1vyHy-wENr7j_TC03KtGJQuFwTFbNGdcIb4aX8

Hopefully sending a message to radicalized extremists that we’re coming for you and your guns.

Election Official Fired for Doing a Voting Fraud to Prove Voting Fraud

The action seemed designed to sow doubt in Wisconsin voters’ trust in their election system.

A Milwaukee, Wisconsin, election official was fired after she reportedly admitted to fraudulently requesting multiple mail ballots—an action she seemingly took to show that voting fraud was possible and prove right-wing theories that election-rigging is easy and commonplace in one of the nation’s biggest swing states.

Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said Thursday that he’d fired Milwaukee Election Commission Deputy Director Kimberly Zapata after an internal investigation found she’d requested multiple military ballots under fraudulent names.

Johnson said Zapata “apparently sought fictitious military ballots.” Zapata allegedly admitted she did it and said she committed the crime to show voter fraud was possible.

“This has every appearance of being an egregious and blatant violation of trust,” Johnson said at a Thursday press conference, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “Election integrity is absolutely integral. It's absolutely essential.”

The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office is now investigating the matter.

Zapata also reportedly had the ballots mailed to the home of Wisconsin Republican Rep. Janel Brandtjen, one of the state’s loudest champions of the claim that the 2020 election was rigged. Brandtjen announced Monday that she’d received three different military ballots at her home from three different Milwaukee-area election clerks.

“I believe someone was trying to point out how easy it is to get military ballots in Wisconsin. Registration for military ballots is not required, so a fictitious name and birthdate is all that is required to obtain a military ballot online,” Brandtjen said in a Monday statement. “Feeling shocked about this situation is an understatement, because it demonstrates stolen valor from those who protect this nation. I think it’s sad that people feel they have to break the law to get the attention of the legislature.”

Brandtjen said she delivered the ballots to the Waukesha County sheriff’s office for investigation, and also contacted former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, the leader of Wisconsin’s right-wing voting-fraud witch hunt.

Zapata’s alleged action is the latest in a series of chaotic efforts to destabilize the 2022 midterm elections and undermine voters’ faith in the election system across the nation. And it occurred just one week before the Nov. 8 midterm elections in a state with hotly contested races for governor and senator.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/ake...KG2AREUgUUQG-QLt6akhUC6LBFG4Ftnjgy2DLuCs

Oath Keepers founder talked of hanging Pelosi in days after Jan. 6

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes reportedly said he wanted to hang U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “from the lamppost” in a recording obtained by the FBI and played during his trial this week.

In the Jan. 10, 2021, audio recording played by the FBI Wednesday in the trial against the far-right militia leader, Rhodes told members of his group that his “only regret is they should have brought rifles” to the riot on the Capitol four days earlier.

“We should have brought rifles. We could have fixed it right then and there. I’d hang F–— Pelosi from the lamppost,” Rhodes said in the recording, according to CBS News.

The news comes after a man broke into Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) San Francisco home last week and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer.

The suspect, David DePape, faces state and federal charges for the assault. He reportedly shouted “Where is Nancy Pelosi?” when he entered the residence, seeking to break the speaker’s kneecaps as a warning to others in Congress.

President Biden noted last week that DePape’s calls for Pelosi was eerily similar to the chanting of the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and broke into her office.

Other Jan. 6 rioters have been accused of wanting to kill the Democratic leader, including a woman who was seeking to shoot Pelosi and a man who wanted to drag her out of the Capitol.

Rhodes and four other Oath Keepers are charged with seditious conspiracy and are accused of plotting to overthrow the government.

All five defendants have pleaded not guilty and have claimed they were at the Capitol to provide security detail to former President Trump. Other members of the group have pleaded guilty.

Attorneys for Rhodes have also claimed the Oath Keepers were waiting on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, an old law that allows the president to call up armed forces to quell a domestic rebellion or disturbance.

The Oath Keepers trial began last month and could last for several more weeks.

https://thehill.com/policy/national...OQw07oMYgx-dTyHh_Pyrg9rFI3GKBqgiDURrrGtA

More like this:

You realize nobody even knows what that means, right?

Women hater. Giving her a dull saw. Geez

God made Ron DeSantis to be a politician you should vote for to represent you. Don't disappoint God.

I actually saw something like that for Trump back in 2016. My question is - in which Christian denomination is something like that NOT considered blasphemous to make such a declaration?

Man charged, accused of fatally shooting neighbor in Butler County

OKEANA, Ohio —

A man is dead and another man has been charged following a shooting in Butler County on Saturday.

The Butler County Sheriff's Office confirmed deputies responded to report of a victim with a gunshot wound in the 2700 block of Chapel Rd. in Okeana, Ohio.

Once deputies arrived on the scene, they confirmed that one person was found dead. The victim has been identified as 43-year-old Anthony King.

His cause of death is listed as gunshot wounds and the manner of death is listed as homicide.

Sheriff Richard Jones later confirmed 26-year-old Austin Combs has been charged with murder. Jones said the victim was Combs' neighbor.

Jones said the investigation is ongoing and more charges could be added at a later date.

King's son called 911 to report the shooting. When a dispatcher asked the caller if he knew why Combs his father, the son said, "We don't know. He's crazy ... He's come over multiple times making statements. He's insane."

King's wife told a dispatcher, "He's come over like four times confronting my husband because he thought he was a democrat."

https://www.wlwt.com/article/butler...d-of-fatally-shooting-neighbor/41891759#

Now it isn't black while driving gets you killed, now a Democrat needs killing....WOW, what a great country. AND, we have the Great One, saying he should have the nuke codes, while spewing he lies about gestapo Justice Dept and FBI.....can't wait to see if the IDIOT RP nominates him for another four more years.....God help us.

Bury him under the jail. He'll probably get off on insanity, smfh.

Great…right next to me. It’s also where Oober lives…wherever that boy has gone off to these days.

North Carolina Sheriff Who Resigned After Making Racist Comments Wins Reelection

A North Carolina man is projected to win reelection as sheriff two weeks after he resigned from the same job for making derogatory statements about Black deputies.

Republican Jody Greene defeated Democratic candidate Jason Soles in Columbus County despite stepping down from the sheriff’s office in October, following the release of a leaked audio recording from 2019.

Greene defeated Soles by 1,576 votes, or 54% of the total ballot count, according to unofficial voting results from Columbus County.

Greene’s win will be certified by the Columbus County Board of Elections on November 18. Greene posted a Facebook status Tuesday night that said only “Thank you all!!!!!”

In the 2019 phone call, Greene referred to multiple Black employees as “bastards” and indicated that he planned to fire them for supposedly undermining him, according to a petition filed by the local district attorney’s office last month.

“Every Black that I know, you need to fire him to start with, he’s a snake!” Greene was quoted as saying in the petition.

The recording sparked outrage from local NAACP officials, who called Greene’s comments “divisive” and “horrifying.”

Greene’s comments sparked an investigation into the sheriff’s office for misconduct and obstruction of justice.

Jody Greene, who is projected to win reelection as Columbus County sheriff in North Carolina. (Photo: Columbus County Sheriff's Office)

The district attorney’s office demanded that Greene be removed from his role following reports of the 2019 remarks. District Attorney Jon David wrote that a new petition would be filed to force Greene out of office if he were to win reelection in November.

In an amended petition filed last month, David said several individuals approached his office regarding the filing of the initial petition about concerns with Greene and his agents engaging in “intimidation” and “abusing” his authority, according to documents.

David cited a sexual relationship between Greene and one of his deputies, which lasted for months and “interfered with the necessary and proper administration” of the sheriff’s office.

The state and local NAACP chapter wrote two letters to the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene in Columbus County last month as early voting was starting.

David’s allegations were alarming to the group, which cited instances of Greene pursuing criminal charges against a County commissioner after he voted against providing pay increases and riot gear to the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office.

The group is demanding a federal civil rights investigation into the statements made and actions taken by Greene.

Though he had stepped down, Greene was still eligible to appear on the ballot. Just hours after his resignation, he posted on Facebook that he never intended to end his campaign, according to local TV station WECT.

“Due to my love for Columbus County and to spare my fellow citizens along with my family and friends the ordeal and spectacle of a long trial, I resigned as Sheriff of Columbus County for the term elected in November 2018 effective this morning. The allegations ... are not true. They were politically motivated,” Greene wrote last month.

“I’m still running for Sheriff of Columbus County in the November 8, 2022 election. I am running to make Columbus County better and safer for ALL our citizens.”

The chairman of the Columbus County Republican Party told WECT at the time that the local GOP was not calling on Greene to withdraw from the election and that the party planned for him to “win and win big.”

In 2018, Greene successfully ran for the sheriff’s seat against Lewis Hatcher — the Democratic incumbent at the time, and one of the Black men specifically named in the leaked audio recording.

Hatcher filed a court complaint in August seeking reinstatement as sheriff after questioning Greene eligibility for the role.

https://news.yahoo.com/north-carolina-sheriff-resigned-making-155305671.html

Judge scorches and sanctions Trump lawyers for lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and Democrats

A federal judge on Thursday ordered sanctions against attorneys for former President Donald Trump in his failed lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and numerous others that he claimed conspired to undermine the 2016 presidential election.

Judge Donald Middlebrooks ordered Trump lawyers Alina Habba, Michael Madaio, Peter Ticktin, Jamie Alan Sasson and their law firms to pay $50,000 in penalties to the court and $16,274.23 in legal fees to Charles Dolan, one of more than two dozen people or entities named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Middlebrooks, who previously dismissed the lawsuit, calling it a “two-hundred page political manifesto,” said the attorneys ignored warnings from Dolan, a volunteer on the Clinton campaign, and his attorney that their facts were wrong, including basic information such as where he lived.

“The pleadings in this case contained factual allegations that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth,” Middlebrooks wrote.

“Not just initiated by a shotgun pleading, this was a shotgun lawsuit. Thirty-one individuals and organizations were summoned to court, forced to hire lawyers to defend against frivolous claims,” the judge wrote. “The only common thread against them was Mr. Trump’s animus.”

Middlebrooks added: “Plaintiff deliberately misrepresented public documents by selectively using some portions while omitting other information including findings and conclusions that contradicted his narrative. … It was too frequent to be accidental. Every claim was frivolous, most barred by settled, well-established existing law. These were political grievances masquerading as legal claims.”

“This cannot be attributed to incompetent lawyering,” he wrote. “It was a deliberate use of the judicial system to pursue a political agenda.”

Dolan’s lawyer, George Doumar, praised the ruling. “Trying to use the courts for political purposes undermines the foundations of our court system, I think that’s the message being sent. That message applies to lawyers and to clients,” Doumar said.

“We gave Trump’s lawyers multiple warnings, and rather than heed the warnings and serve as gatekeepers of the integrity of the court system as lawyers are supposed to do, they doubled down on unsupported allegations and apparently chose not to tell their client that he was so wrong that they couldn’t go forward,” Doumar added.

“It should be no surprise that we will be appealing this decision,” Habba said in a statement following the ruling.

Ticktin called the ruling a “kick in the teeth.”

“Of course, we are disappointed by the decision by Judge Middlebrooks. We attempted to right a wrong, and our reward is a kick in the teeth,” Ticktin told CNN. “Ultimately, this will be decided by a panel of three judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, as we believe that the dismissal and the sanctions which followed will ultimately be reversed.”

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/10/politics/trump-dolan-lawsuit-sanctions

So that all the craziness doesn't get mixed up on one shuffle - we need a separate thread for each of the Priorities the House has come in with. Obviously the crazy bull crap will keep the MAGA faithful happy - anyone with a brain should pay attention and realize what Trump 2024 would mean.

I wish a bigger deal out of this would be made - I mean if it's all about God's Will then God was rooting hard for Obama. He put Biden in power because He wanted him there..... smh.

That's not how any of this works. If a Republican wins it's God's will. If a democrat wins Satan is taking over the country. Haven't you been paying attention?

That's sad. I think a lot of my critique of the Republicans over the course of the last several years is that they don't have a platform. They did not run on anything other than blame. What you posted, and what I've been seeing myself show they are consistent in that goal, even now. I actually agree that we should open a thread to review the House actions. Anyone could post in there and we can measure to see what they actually do. Hell, do one for the Senate, too. I'd be curious to see how they measure against each other over the next two years in their proposals.

I think it's rather comical that one party is actually investigating the actions of a president when all the other party can seem to come up with is, "Yeah, but his kid!"

You haven't been paying much attention, have you?

Sure I have. Just more conspiracy theories. You can only cry wolf so many times before people actually need to see some substance instead of more rhetoric.

Failed South Dakota House candidate arrested on rape charge after election loss

Bud Marty May, 37, lost the race against his mother.

A state House candidate in South Dakota was arrested on a rape charge just days after he lost his race against the incumbent — his mother.

Bud Marty May, 37, was arrested in Box Elder around 4 a.m. Sunday and charged with second-degree rape, court filings said. The criminal complaint alleges May used "force, coercion, or threats of immediate and great bodily injury" against the victim.

Referring to law enforcement reports at a court hearing Tuesday, the judge said officers found the victim hiding behind a bar, and she alleged that May had raped her, the Argus Leader newspaper of Sioux Falls reported.

May's attorney, Matt Kinney, declined to comment, saying he had not yet been provided any police reports or statements.  

May, a Republican, came in fourth in a four-person race for two District 27 House seats. One of the two winners was his mother, Republican state Rep. Liz May.

A Republican candidate for the state Senate in neighboring District 26 was arrested in the days before the election, as well. The candidate, Joel Koskan, was charged with child abuse Nov. 3, court records show.

The Mitchell Republic reported that a plea agreement has been submitted to the judge. The agreement — which the newspaper reported would spare Koskan jail time for pleading guilty while requiring him to undergo therapy, pay fines and stay away from the alleged victim — was entered onto the court docket on Nov. 7, the day before the election. Koskan lost the Senate race by about 1,000 of the nearly 6,000 votes cast.

Koskan's lawyer, Clint Sargent, declined to commen

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/po...Gi2RQLJL8y0SxEDCC0A4yTrbkOfesdlwK775Xnjw

I wonder if trump endorsed these guys?

Maybe not this time around, but certainly if we’re to run again.

who is this guy? lmao.

LMAO

According to McCarthey and those who think the way he does all Democrats are radicals, communists, out to destroy the country, attacking Christianity and the list just keeps going.

Ain't Trump great- those who voted for him must be proud. Initial news reports about his income taxes- NO WONDER he never released them- show he LOST Billions- he's the great businessman, the outsider who would drain the swamp, he's only conned every voter into HIS personal swamp- how many millions has he gotten from the gobblers to pay for his lawyer fees....damn, and they called slick Willie, slick...Trump makes every politician look like a saint. ANYONE but Trump.

Former Packers QB DeShone Kizer says Aaron Rodgers asked him if he believed in 9/11

DeShone Kizer’s NFL career didn’t amount to much—it lasted all of four seasons, including a winless 2017 campaign in Cleveland. But, if nothing else, Kizer at least brushed shoulders with future Hall-of-Famer Aaron Rodgers, serving as his backup in 2018. Kizer, who spent time with three organizations (four if you include his stint on the Titans’ practice squad) before his career fizzled out in 2021, got quite the introduction to Rodgers, who, upon meeting him, immediately prompted him for his thoughts on September 11th.

“The first thing that comes out of Aaron Rodgers’ mouth was, ‘Do you believe in 9/11?’” Kizer told Adam Breneman on his podcast earlier this week. “[I said], ‘Yeah, why wouldn’t I?’ He was like, ‘You should read up on that.’”

While Kizer attributed this bizarre first encounter to the usual feeling out process by veterans initiating new teammates, Rodgers’ views on everything from psychedelics (including his well-documented use of ayahuasca) to alternative treatments for COVID-19 would suggest he has legitimate doubts about what took place on 9/11.
ADVERTISING

Living in the age of spin, where unsubstantiated rumors and narratives (aka “fake news”) run rampant, requires a healthy skepticism. However, as we’ve seen with other pop-culture figures who tout themselves as “free thinkers” (Kyrie Irving, Joe Rogan, Kanye West, etc.), challenging existing beliefs with contrarian opinions doesn’t equate to greater intelligence and, in many cases, does more harm than good. Just ask the families of Sandy Hook victims, who recently won a $1-billion lawsuit against Alex Jones (a known conspiracy theorist and far-right radical) for alleging one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history was a hoax staged by crisis actors.

“What it ended up being was a real thought experiment where he wanted me to go back and look into some of the conspiracies around it and provoke conversation and bond over that,” said Kizer, who, though skeptical at first, believes Rodgers’ icebreaker was actually beneficial for their friendship. “We started sharing some books and talking about some other things. Got into history and finance.”

Whether you think Rodgers is a misunderstood genius or a dangerous purveyor of misinformation, the 38-year-old has had, by all accounts, a nightmare 2022, struggling to a 4-8 record while playing through a painful thumb injury that has many wondering if the Packers would be better off shutting him down, allowing Jordan Love to play out the stretch of a meaningless season. Still, Rodgers confirmed during his weekly appearance on The Pat McAfee Show that he plans to suit up against the Bears, a team the four-time MVP has dominated throughout his career (23-5 record).

https://www.audacy.com/971theticket...3ZC-ociQK-38IEHfJNi0W7sAf_cRMnJAIS6Bz9I8

Yeah, ya'll should read up on that.

Newt Gingrich praises Biden, warns GOP against underestimating president

Alexander Nazaryan·Senior White House Correspondent
Fri, December 2, 2022 at 2:09 PM·4 min read


WASHINGTON — President Biden recently received praise — backhanded and qualified, but praise all the same — from one of the figures least likely to offer a favorable assessment of a Democratic administration: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

In a new column published on his website, Gingrich offers his own party a blunt warning: “Republicans must learn to quit underestimating President Joe Biden.”

It is a remarkable concession for a man who practically invented modern-day partisan combat, which allows for little concession or compromise. Gingrich engineered the impeachment of President Bill Clinton; later, having left Congress amid ethical lapses, he assailed President Barack Obama as a supposed “socialist” in disguise.

Gingrich is no Biden supporter, to be sure, and he takes plenty of jabs at Biden’s allegedly “woke” agenda, meant to usher in what he calls “Big Government Socialism,” a seeming reference to the trillions of dollars the president has devoted, with congressional approval, for coronavirus relief, infrastructure projects and green energy initiatives.

Yet he also believes that GOP attacks on the president have been ineffective, citing Democrats’ surprisingly good showing in last month’s elections as evidence.

“The Biden team had one of the best first term off-year elections in history,” he writes, an assertion bolstered by recent trends in electoral politics. “They were not repudiated. They did not have to pay for their terrible mismanagement of the economy.”

Republican attacks have often focused on Biden’s age and his supposed senility. Some opponents of the current president made similar attacks — albeit much less harshly — during the 2020 primary for the Democratic presidential nomination. They did not work then; Gingrich does not seem to think they are working now.

“We dislike Biden so much, we pettily focus on his speaking difficulties, sometimes strange behavior, clear lapses of memory, and other personal flaws. Our aversion to him and his policies makes us underestimate him and the Democrats,” Gingrich writes.

He even compares the current president to Republican predecessors Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, both of whom at times benefited from similarly low estimations.

As the legendary journalist Murray Kempton wrote of Eisenhower in Esquire, “He was the great tortoise upon whose back the world sat for eight years. We laughed at him; we talked wistfully about moving; and all the while we never knew the cunning beneath the shell.”

Much like Biden, Reagan was eternally hounded by questions about his age and mental competence. In a 1983 column for the New York Times, former Nixon speechwriter William Safire urged Reagan to retire. “I think President Reagan would better serve the country by passing the torch to somebody ready to make a fresh start on the course he originally set,” Safire offered, sounding very much like the Democrats who now want Biden to step aside.

A little more than a year later, Reagan would prevail in his reelection campaign, with a 49-state victory that remains unrivaled.

Although it is not yet clear if Biden will seek reelection, his success in helping the Democratic Party avert disaster in the midterms will almost surely serve as an argument in favor of his running again. Biden, his family and longtime advisers expect to make a final decision during the holiday season.

Republicans, meanwhile, are struggling to reconcile the return of Donald Trump, who is running for a third time, with a spate of younger candidates eager to challenge him. That eventual candidate will likely confront some of the same challenges that Republicans did in 2022, when many of them waged campaigns based on culture war issues like public safety and transgender rights.

That would be a mistake, Gingrich appears to say, despite having waged plenty of culture wars of his own. “Today there is not nearly enough understanding (or acknowledgement) among leading Republicans that our system and approach failed,” he writes.



https://www.yahoo.com/news/newt-gin...underestimating-president-190833800.html

Yet more stupidity from a Republican politician who was defeated yet still refuses to concede.....

Judge calls election lawsuit ‘baseless,’ orders Kari Lake, Mark Finchem to pay court fees

A U.S. District Court Judge in Phoenix ordered former Arizona GOP candidates Kari Lake and Mark Finchem to pay court costs incurred by Maricopa County to defend against what the judge said was a lawsuit “filled with false narratives.”

In August, Judge John J. Tuchi dismissed Lake and Finchem’s lawsuit over the county’s electronic ballot machines.

“It is to make clear that the Court,” Judge Tuchi wrote. “Will not condone litigants ignoring the steps that Arizona has already taken toward [elections] and furthering false narratives that baselessly undermine public trust at a time of increasing disinformation about, and distrust in, the democratic process. It is to send a message to those who might file similarly baseless suits in the future.”

Maricopa County election official Bill Gates offered a statement after Thursday’s ruling:

As a former Election Day lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party, I have deep respect for the election contest process because it allows campaigns a venue for legitimate grievances by distinguishing truth from conjecture.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many examples in recent years of attorneys trying to weaponize the court for political purposes, in particular, to undermine free and fair elections. It is wrong, it is unethical, and these attorneys must be held accountable if we are to protect our democratic republic.

Today’s sanctions against the lawyers who brought the frivolous Lake v. Hobbs case are a win for the rule of law. Although rarely imposed, Rule 11 sanctions serve as a consequence for those who file baseless and meritless lawsuits.

A judge already dismissed the lawsuit, but Maricopa County asked for sanctions because these claims are demonstrably false.

Today, Judge Tuchi ruled that “the Court will not condone litigants...furthering false narratives that baselessly undermine public trust as a time of increasing disinformation about, and distrust in, the democratic process.”

Bill Gates, Chairman for the Maricopa County board of supervisors

https://www.azfamily.com/2022/12/01...s-kari-lake-mark-finchem-pay-court-fees/

And of course in the most trumpian response possible.....

Kari Lake criticizes judge who sanctioned her legal team in lawsuit against Maricopa County

Kari Lake says the lawsuit she and Mark Finchem filed before the Arizona Primary was not in bad faith.

Lake says her lawyers should not be sanctioned.

On Thursday, Federal District Court Judge John Tuchi disagreed saying Lake's and FInchem's legal team filed false, misleading, and unsupported claims in their lawsuit against Maricopa County.

Lake and Finchem tried to block Maricopa and Pima counties from using any electronic device to cast or count votes.

Their case was thrown out in August. Judge Tuchi called it frivolous and baseless.

"When a judge issues a 30-page ruling with specific detailed factual findings that is a judge who is irate over the misconduct of attorneys who have engaged in basically a fraudulent case," said Attorney Tom Ryan, an election law expert.

Lake and Finchem wanted only paper ballots which are already used and they wanted the ballots to be counted by hand.

In his 30-page ruling ordering sanctions, Judge Tuchi wrote the plaintiffs sought "massive, perhaps unprecedented federal judicial intervention."

Tuchi went on the say, "They never had a factual basis or legal theory that came anywhere to meeting the burden."

Ryan said, "the court ruled maybe Finchem and Lake should have known better, but the lawyers must have known better and should have known better."

The legal team included Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Parker, Jesse Kibort and Joseph Pull from Parker Daniels Kibort LLC in Minnesota and Kurt Olsen, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney.

In a statement through her spokesman Ross Trumble, Lake said, "Sanctions like this are rare. In every lawsuit, there will be a winner and a loser. Sanctioning the loser is rare and has to rise to the level of subjective bad faith or frivolity. This case is not about money or gain. It was essentially a public interest lawsuit seeking electoral integrity. It is very rare to sanction a party in public interest suits. There were 5 experts called by the plaintiff. One cannot be in "bad faith" with that many experts supporting your theory. They could be wrong. But not bad faith."

"Punishing counsel," the statement read, "is a serious effort to impugn the professional reputation of counsel. This could lead to a bar complaint. Doing this deters other lawyers from ever agreeing to help conservatives. We saw this in real-time in 2020 with numerous Trump lawyers."

Tom Ryan said that is exactly the point, "As judges realize that this election denial industry is not going away and that sanctions that they have imposed haven't stopped, I believe they're going to start to turn to additional penalties and sanctions to bring this to a grinding halt."

https://www.abc15.com/news/state/ka...-team-in-lawsuit-against-maricopa-county

Trump's call to suspend Constitution not a 2024 deal-breaker, leading House Republican says

Sun, December 4, 2022 at 9:55 AM·1 min read


Republican Rep. Dave Joyce said Sunday that he didn't want to be drawn into commenting on Donald Trump's recent call to suspend the Constitution over baseless claims of 2020 election fraud.

Joyce, the chair of the influential Republican Governance Group in the House, was asked by ABC "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos to respond to Trump's post on Saturday on his Truth Social platform.

Joyce initially declined to do so, saying the public wasn't "interested in looking backwards." But Stephanopoulos followed up and Joyce ultimately said that Trump's comment shouldn't be taken seriously but that it wouldn't lead him to pull potential support for Trump's 2024 comeback bid.

"I will support whoever the Republican nominee is," Joyce said while noting he didn't think Trump would manage to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

"That's a remarkable statement," Stephanopoulos said. "You just said you'd support a candidate who's come out for suspending the Constitution."

"Well, you know, he says a lot of things," Joyce said. "I can't be really chasing every one of these crazy statements that come out about from any of these candidates at the moment."

"You can't come out against someone who's for suspending the Constitution?" Stephanopoulos pushed back once again.

"He says a lot of things that, but that doesn't mean that it's ever going to happen. So you got to accept fact from fantasy -- and fantasy is that we're going to suspend the Constitution and go backwards," Joyce said.



https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/trumps-call-suspend-constitution-not-145500995.html

Nothing but fascist gun toting thugs and crackpots.

Muh rights! To hell with the rights of others! Murica!

I'm pretty sure this isn't what our nation's forefathers had in mind when they wrote the second amendment.

Disgraced Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz Smears Ron DeSantis With Tired Democrat “Antisemitism” and “White Supremacy” Slanders

Wasserman Schultz Accuses DeSantis of Complicity Concerning Antisemitism Does silence equal complicity?
JACKSON BAKICH DECEMBER 5, 2022

Recently, Ye or the artist formally known as Kanye West, has provided a flurry of antisemitic comments. These statements have included admiration for Hitler, Nazis, and a disdain for those who rush to criticize the former. The national outrage prompted President Joe Biden (D) to release a statement condemning the rapper’s utterances, going as far as saying that “silence is complicity.” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) is calling out Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and has accused him of being complicit due to his lack of vocalization on the matter.

The silence of Ron DeSantis about the antisemites and white supremacists his party leader promotes can't be forgiven just because it conflicts with his naked personal ambitions. Silence is complicity. https://t.co/ThTi0OI8CB

— Debbie Wasserman Schultz (@DWStweets) December 2, 2022

“The silence of Ron DeSantis about the antisemites and white supremacists his party leader promotes can't be forgiven just because it conflicts with his naked personal ambitions. Silence is complicity,” tweeted Rep. Wasserman Schultz.

According to the Rolling Stone article that Wasserman Schultz attaches alongside her statement, Gov. DeSantis and his camp is looking avoid talking about the infamous dinner in which former President Donald Trump (R) invited West over for dinner who apparently brought a far-right commentator and antisemite Nick Fuentes along with him.

President Trump has repeatedly taken shots at DeSantis, at one point dubbing him “Ron DeSanctimonious.” Gov. DeSantis has refused to return any shots, perhaps delaying a public insult-fest until the 2024 presidential primary season begins.

Trump almost certainly did not receive any positive press once the dinner was reported. Just a few days following his campaign announcement, it is another unforced error that could possibly turn off more voters to the former Commander-in-Chief, even after the January 6th debacle.

Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) released statements denouncing West and Fuentes respectively.

Anti-Semitism is disgusting and evil. The nonsense Kanye West is spewing is hate and will never, ever be tolerated.

As Americans, we must all stand united against anti-Semitism and support our Jewish neighbors in the face of these despicable attacks.

— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) December 2, 2022

“Anti-Semitism is disgusting and evil. The nonsense Kanye West is spewing is hate and will never, ever be tolerated. As Americans, we must all stand united against anti-Semitism and support our Jewish neighbors in the face of these despicable attacks,” tweeted Scott.

Rubio gave an exclusive statement to The Floridian, stating “"Nick Fuentes is a purveyor and a spreader of an evil ideology," and that "he is a flat-out anti-Semite who should never be legitimized."

Perhaps the error made by Trump to bring West and Fuentes to Mar-a-Lago alongside with his past missteps could entice those such as Sens. Scott and Rubio to entertain a presidential run for office in 2024? around.

And if the Rolling Stone report is true and the murmurs concerning a DeSantis presidential run come to fruition, there could be 3 statewide elected politicians looking to change their address to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

https://floridianpress.com/2022/12/...s-of-complicity-concerning-antisemitism/

I can't stand her, but Debbie Wasserman Schultz is 100% correct, and no apologies are needed. DeSantis is a turd, Trump 2.0, and will never be POTUS, I promise you that. The Biden coalition of moderate Rs, independents, and the left isn't about to give up the fight against looney fascism anytime soon. Just adding a bit of truth to your world of misinformation.

I would be careful about making promises like that one. A Republican led congress is going to have two years to sling all the mud they can at the democrats. And while DeSantis isn't really that much different than trump he does spread the message in a far less childish and attacking form.

Meh, maybe.

That pic is as fake as Trump, just in case you didn't know.

He doesn't care. Somehow in his mixed up brain he thinks that's pwning the libs. That's all he cares about.

LOL @ you little ankle biters...:)

You both mall cops on weekends? HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA

No, we're also not wannabe trumpians. You really believe you are being creative and accomplishing something don't you?

He's a troll. lmao. SB is baiting you and you gobbled it up. Guess I did too in his mind. He called us ankle biters like we're insignificant pests. You can't make this crap up. Problem is, I actually like him now. He's just completely and utterly misinformed is all. He thinks Tump is Rocky.

What a difficult decision Georgia voters will have to arrive at today....

Shouldn’t even be close. But it will.

That must be one BLISSFUL FOOL.

Benedict Biden Asked Why He Isn’t Visiting the Border While in Arizona – His Answer Proves He’s a Traitor and Shows Where His Allegiance Lies

Video: Biden Was Asked Why He Isn’t Visiting The Border While He’s In Arizona – His Answer Proves That He’s A Traitor And Shows Where His Allegiance Lies
By Kellyanne Richardson - December 6, 2022

President Biden today visited Phoenix, Arizona, for semiconductor manufacturer TSMC’s announcement to increase its chip investment in the state to $40 billion.

Taiwan-based TSMC will also announce its commitment to construct a second fab that will produce three-nanometer chips.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su will also be in attendance Tuesday. Cook and Su will both be sourcing significant chips from TSMC’s Arizona facility, White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said in a briefing.

Deese said TSMC’s announcement furthers Biden’s economic agenda that he says goes beyond semiconductors.

But it seems it’s all about money when it comes to the big guy!

When Biden was asked why he isn’t visiting the southern border while he’s in Arizona, he revealed that he isn’t worried about the Fentanyl and the children that are being trafficked through our southern border.

He doesn’t care about the patriots that have their homes invaded every day!

He says there are more important things and that money comes first when it comes to him!

Doocy: “Why go to Arizona and not visit the border?”

Biden: “Because there’s more important things going on.”

Video below:



Yea, like another Taiwanese chip plant that only employs Taiwanese…. Except for the janitorial positions.

As Fox News reported President Biden is not scheduled to visit the southern border during his trip to Arizona on Tuesday — a decision criticized by both conservative and progressive immigration experts.

The White House schedule states that Biden will visit Phoenix to tout his economic initiatives, but there is no mention of a stop at the border, which is just over 100 miles away.

Biden has not gone to the border as president, despite soaring illegal immigration, gruesome human trafficking and massive quantities of fentanyl illegally entering the U.S.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last month that “he’s been there,” but she may have been referring to trips Biden made to the border before becoming president. Officials did not respond to a request on when Biden supposedly visited the border.

https://defiantamerica.com/video-bi...tor-and-shows-where-his-allegiance-lies/

Why have you never called out the real Benedict Arnold's and traitors that attacked the Capital on January 6th rather than post some stupid story that actually proves nothing of the sort?

What about what about what about.

Those people are being prosecuted. Mean while, others just walk across the border.

He probably knows people who were there if he wasn't himself.

Maybe when y'all elect true leaders, they will pass legislation to deal with your little border issues. NOPE! They will investigate Hunter's laptop like they did Hilldawgs emails. No there, there but they will waste Dem's time and theirs chasing their tails. And you making fun of a whataboutism with what about the border...

Ah, got it. You're depending on the R's to protect the border, since the D's don't and won't. Thanks for that admission. (hey, how long has biden been president?????)

No. Me thinking you are a big boy and should easily be able to answer your own question. Dems are protecting the border. Sanely. Why sanely? Because we don't shiver, quiver, and crap our pants when we see brown people. Got that?

Oh. How are they protecting the border?

With border patrol and common sense. You probably don't know much about the latter, but you understand what the border patrol does, right? The border, contrary to prevalent GOPer BS, is far from wide open.

Incorrect.

And I have more common sense in my big toe than you do in your whole body.

Border Patrol apprehensions and expulsions by US Border Patrol by year 1990-2022

https://www.statista.com/statistics/329256/alien-apprehensions-registered-by-the-us-border-patrol/

Could that be because the number of illegals trying to get here has grown ?

Sure you do. Proof? Link? Witness? Testimony?





























jk, just busting your balls, arch. Sorry about the last comment, was just trying to get a rise out of you.

OR could be that Biden is on it. But hey, don't let the numbers get in the way of an excellent GOPer lie. And BTW- they quit coming when Trump was in office, not because he was tough on them, but because they were better off in Mexico and Canada.

Funny how you only whine about the border when the D's are in power. Where were you from 2016-2020? I get it, it's only a real problem when the people you support aren't in power. Just because you believed trump didn't mean what he said was true. I actually thought you had better sense than actually believer all of his lies. But here's the actual truth....

Trump's Promise of Millions of Deportations Is Yet to Be Fulfilled

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/trump-deportations-unfinished-mission

I suppose you believe he built the wall too...

Perhaps you've missed some of my posts over the years? I've 'whined' about illegal aliens entering the country, as well as about the debt and out of control gov't. spending REGARDLESS of what letter was behind the pres. name, or what majority had congress.

And you've complained about you being attacked because you are a Christian and you've complained about people getting food assistance and you've complained by claiming that businesses can't get help because people simply don't want to work, and so on, and so on, and so on. There's really no end to it.

Rep. Paul Gosar Endorses Trump’s Call to ‘Terminate’ Constitutional Rules

Republicans have largely been silent about Donald Trump’s call to “terminate” certain provisions of the Constitution in order to overturn the results of the 2020 election and reinstall himself in the White House. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), however, has spoken out about the anti-democratic idea: He supports it.

“I support and agree with the former President,” he wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “Unprecedented fraud requires unprecedented cure.”

Trump responded to the unremarkable release of the “Twitter Files” last Friday — which mostly revealed what had already been known about the company’s deliberations surrounding the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election — by writing on Truth Social that “Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

Republicans largely shied away from denouncing the former president’s suggestion that the Constitution should be shredded. “He says a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen,” Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) squirmed during an appearance on ABC’s This Week. Some other GOP politicians said they didn’t agree with terminating the Constitution but stopped short of criticizing Trump directly. “Obviously, I don’t support that,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) managed on CNN’s State of the Union.

Gosar, one of the most prominent conspiracy theorists in Congress who earlier this year participated in a conference hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes, didn’t mince words, and the fact that Trump’s call to tear up the document the GOP prides itself on defending now has a vocal audience in Congress is more than a little troubling — especially considering Gosar and his fellow Republicans are now set to assume control of the House of Representatives.

Trump, earlier this week, seemed to recognize that pushing for the Constitution to be terminated may not be a winning message for a presidential candidate. He tried to claim on Truth Social on Monday that he didn’t actually say what he said. “The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution,” he wrote on Monday. “This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES.”

Gosar must not have gotten the memo.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/rep-paul-gosar-endorses-trump-182737544.html

Except he didn't say the constitution should be terminated. Rather, election fraud allowed the constitution to be terminated. As in, the termination of the constitution was already ended.

Now, if one wants to say there was no election fraud, fine. Say that. But don't say Trump wants to terminate the constitution.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-termination-us-constitution/

I have no idea how you think the link you posted supports your claim.

AMERICAN NEWS Dec 7, 2022
Bus load of Nicaraguan migrants dropped off at Kamala Harris' DC home
Since claiming in September that the Unites States had a "secure border", over 125 migrants have been dropped off outside the gates of her official residence in DC.

Dozens of migrants arrived in Washington, DC from Texas on Wednesday morning, where they were unloaded in front of Vice President Kamala Harris' residence at the US Naval Observatory

The group of migrants, who identified themselves as Nicaraguan, were met by volunteers from the humanitarian organization SAMU First Response as they were exiting the bus, who established their needs and found out what plans they had before transporting them to their organization's headquarters, the New York Post has reported.

The group, among them young children, emerged from the bus in the early hours of the morning, some of them wrapped in blankets to shield from the mid-50s temperatures that greeted them.

This is not the first time that buses filled with migrants have arrived at Harris' doorstep.

Since claiming on NBC's "Meet the Press" in September that the United States had a "secure" border, over 125 migrants have been dropped off outside the gates of her official residence.

She also stated during that same interview that she wants there to be a "plan for a pathway to citizenship for the millions of [illegal immigrants] who are here."

Harris was appointed by Biden in March 2021 to tackle the illegal immigration crisis, but since then, the country has seen migrants flooding across the border in record numbers.

Migrant arrest numbers are almost twice what they were before the Biden administration took power, and have already exceeded last year's numbers, according to recent Customs and Border Protection data.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott first announced back in April that he would be transporting busloads of migrants away from the Texas border in an attempt to relieve the pressure from the overwhelmed border towns that have taken the brunt of Biden's failing immigration policies.

Since then, hundreds of migrant buses from Texas have arrived in DC, as well as other so-called "sanctuary cities" in the US.

Chicago and New York, two of the aforementioned sanctuary cities, have been plagued by near-record levels of violent crime. NYC Mayor Eric Adams said in August that his city was too crime-ridden to take in more illegal migrants.

https://thepostmillennial.com/bus-load-of-nicaraguan-migrants-dropped-off-at-kamala-harris-dc-home

Human trafficking across state line is a felony. Unless you’re a Republican Governor. We get it.

Stolen elections, letting our borders run free...You and your party are the felony.

because he believes everything that trump says is true.

Of course you don't. It takes reading comprehension, not just taking the swill from biased sources. Carry on. Can't have a discussion with someone whose full time job is knocking others, and being proud of it. Ya done well, sir. And you're proud of being bombastic, insulting, and rude.

Get a hobby other than this.

We’re going to need proof on the stolen elections, but letting our borders run free is not a felony.

Lol.. hit a nerve? Anyone that believes trump is not enemy #1 to our constitution is clueless.

Trump probably has the top three spots of the enemy of the constitution.

There was nothing in my reply to you that should have brought on the hatred you spewed in response. But you do you. It appears as though that description you gave became a self fulfilling prophecy. It appears I'm not the only one who didn't see what you claimed was there. So, rather than insult you any further, let me show you some things.


But you know, that doesn't mean anything, right? Even Republican politicians know what he said and are not in denial about it. Do you think you can mount an actual response without your hateful vitriol or is that above you?

And let me worry about my hobbies. You have enough of your own issues to deal with obviously.

And of course I suppose it must be all of these other Republican politicians that have comprehension issues too. It couldn't be you.....

Former Vice President Mike Pence said in an interview with a South Carolina radio station on Monday that everyone who aspires to serve in public office should make clear that they will support and defend the Constitution. Multiple GOP lawmakers, including Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), also slammed Trump’s post, calling it “very inappropriate” and “ridiculous,” respectively. 

And then there's this ass clown who agrees with trump that the constitution should be overruled.....

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) tweeted and then deleted a post on Wednesday supporting former President Trump’s call for terminating the election rules in the Constitution. 

“I support and agree with the former President. Unprecedented fraud requires unprecedented cure,” he said, accompanied by a screenshot of Trump’s post on Truth Social. 

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/...zlySL-P9J5zdVFhNMtMNbAEr2aK9VxqFzYtT3U5M

And the P.T. Barnum saga continues......

Trump's Paying People Who Are Key to Criminal Cases Against Him

Several key witnesses in a number of criminal cases against former President Donald Trump remain on the payroll of his presidential campaign, raising questions of whether they'd willingly offer incriminating evidence against him ahead of his third campaign for president in 2024.

According to campaign finance disclosures filed with the Federal Elections Commission, several witnesses party to Trump's illegal removal of classified documents from the White House are currently on the payroll of his Save America PAC, the main fundraising arm of Trump's 2024 re-election bid.

These include former White House aides Dan Scavino, Beau Harrison and Stephen Miller—all who testified before a grand jury earlier this year—as well as associates like Walt Nauta, a longtime valet for the former president who was reportedly captured on security camera footage moving boxes out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago prior to a May subpoena by the Department of Justice demanding the return of all classified documents in Trump's possession.

This in itself is not unusual: campaign officials can often follow their candidate into the administration, while advisors can often work dual roles both in Washington and on the campaign trail.

However, Trump has a long history of eyebrow-raising hires closely tied to his myriad of criminal investigations.

Months after claiming Trump had declassified a "whole set of documents" before leaving office, Kash Patel—another former advisor to Trump—found his way onto Trump's payroll, receiving $7,500 in fees for his consulting firm in August. Patel has since testified before a grand jury investigating the case.

But financial disclosures have also revealed Trump's Save America PAC had been footing the bill for the attorneys representing witnesses in a case investigating Trump's role in instigating the Jan. 6 riots at the United States Capitol, raising concerns he was attempting to influence their testimony.

In the past, outlets like The New York Times have noted Trump lawyers dangled the prospect of pardons to a pair of individuals under investigation for their roles in alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 elections ahead of their testimony, while his former lawyer—Michael Cohen—plead guilty to other charges and publicly denounced the former president after Trump stopped paying Cohen's legal fees.

Some have raised questions about whether that conduct is continuing.

Of the several million dollars Trump has spent on attorneys' fees this cycle, several hundred thousand dollars have been directed to firms like JPRowley Law, a Washington D.C. firm that represents a pro-Trump attorney who has fought subpoenas from the Jan. 6 subcommittee in Congress. Trump has also dangled pardons for various others accused in inquiries around Jan. 6 if-elected.

Additional funds have also gone to firms like Silverman, Thompson, Slutkin & White—which had represented Trump ally Steve Bannon as he refused to comply with subpoenas seeking his testimony in the Jan. 6 probe—as well as firms like the Brand Woodward Law Firm, which represents several Trump associates who have appeared before a grand jury or spoken with investigators around the Mar-a-Lago case.

"It looks like the Trump political action committee is either paying for the silence of these witnesses, for them to take the Fifth, or for favorable testimony," former federal prosecutor Jim Walden told The Washington Post Tuesday.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-payi...C2dVf5StbzsSevjcBr-l9bJfr4CYQaDsQm9pmgoM

I'm not a legal expert so maybe somone who thinks they are can explain to me how this isn't witness tampering?

Trump hosts Mar-a-Lago event with prominent QAnon, Pizzagate conspiracy theorist

Former President Trump hosted a prominent QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist at his Mar-A-Lago club in Florida on Tuesday night, just two weeks after his much-criticized dinner with Ye and white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

Liz Crokin, a former journalist and celebrity gossip writer now associated with far-right conspiracy theories, spoke at a fundraiser intended to combat child trafficking, according to posts on her Telegram account.

At the event, Crokin said she discussed Pizzagate, a debunked conspiracy theory suggesting Hillary and Bill Clinton and other political elites run a child sex trafficking ring at a pizza shop in Washington.

She also discussed the fashion company Balenciaga, which has recently taken heat for a photo campaign featuring children and plush bears with BDSM accessories.

Trump, who last month declared himself a 2024 presidential candidate, made an appearance at the event.

“You are incredible people and doing unbelievable work,” he said in a video shared by Crokin. “We just appreciate you being here and I hope you’re going to be back.”

The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

Trump received backlash, including from high-ranking Republicans, for dining with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, along with Fuentes at his Florida club last month.

Ye recently praised Hitler and Nazis after making multiple rounds of antisemitic comments and social media posts over the fall. Fuentes is a known white nationalist and Holocaust denier who has been condemned for racist and vitriolic remarks.

Crokin is an early embracer of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which alleges the world is run by a shadowy cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles and that Trump is the only one who can stop them.

In 2017, Crokin infamously picked fights with celebrities Chrissy Teigen and John Legend after she suggested the couple was part of the Pizzagate conspiracy.

Crokin, who has been banned from most social media platforms, has more than 100,000 subscribers on her Telegram channel. She is originally from Illinois and began her career as a tabloid journalist.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campai...5Z86ySfYb6uwce8lQqnIfBVZs6j8j-n88Hcmi3Q4

They need to get their stories straight before they’re all indicted.

Donald Trump Calls Joe Biden’s Prisoner Swap for Brittney Griner a ‘Stupid and Unpatriotic Embarrassment
WENDELL HUSEBØ 8 Dec 2022

Former President Donald Trump slammed President Joe Biden’s Brittney Griner prisoner swap as “stupid” and “unpatriotic embarrassment.”

Issuing the statement on Truth Social, Trump said the swap was a bad deal because Biden traded an ex-WNBA basketball star for notorious Russian arms dealers Viktor Bout, “one of the biggest arms dealers anywhere in the world.”

Trump said the trade was especially grievous because Griner has been “openly” hateful towards her own nation.

“What kind of a deal is it to swap Brittney Griner, a basketball player who openly hates our Country, for the man known as ‘The Merchant of Death,’ who is one of the biggest arms dealers anywhere in the World, and responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and horrific injuries,” he said.

Trump also questioned why Biden worked to release Griner without American prisoner Paul Whelan, who was arrested in Russia in 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison for alleged “espionage.” The former Marine denies the charges. Russia has presented little evidence for its claims outside of what was used to imprison him in court.

“Why wasn’t former Marine Paul Whelan included in this totally one-sided transaction?” Trump asked. “He would have been let out for the asking.”

“What a ‘stupid’ and unpatriotic embarrassment for the USA!!!” Trump concluded.

After Biden announced the swap, Whelan reportedly released a statement through CNN expressing his great surprise and frustration he was not included in the swap.

“I am greatly disappointed that more has not been done to secure my release, especially as the four-year anniversary of my arrest is coming up. I was arrested for a crime that never occurred,” he said. “I don’t understand why I’m still sitting here.”

In February, Griner, a two-time Olympic basketball champion, was arrested in Russia and pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis vape cartridges at an airport near Moscow. Her release had been negotiated since last Thursday.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/...griner-stupid-unpatriotic-embarrassment/

Of course, he does. If some kind of crap weren't oozing out of his mouth 24/7 to keep people like you on the hook, we wouldn't have to tolerate his BS anymore. But as long as fools lap it up like it's gravy and biscuits, he'll keep pumping crap into your brains.

Lol ..now I’m hungry for biscuits and gravy.

Anyways, didn’t trump have a few years to get the release of Paul and didn’t even try? Damn, if trump came out and said Paul W. was actually Jack Ryan, he’d have his base believing it and reading books.

Trump dinner with antisemites was ‘breaking point,’ Jewish former allies say

Donald Trump hosted Kanye West and white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes for dinner at his home.

Prominent Jewish leaders who once backed former president Donald Trump said that his connection with antisemites was a breaking point for them after he hosted white nationalist Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West at his Mar-a-Lago resort in November.

Former Democratic New York state assemblyman Dov Hikind backed Trump for president in 2016 and 2020. But after his recent dinner with two infamous promoters of antisemitic rhetoric, Hikind, a prominent Jewish leader in Brooklyn, said there is no chance he will endorse Trump ever again.

“Trump has disqualified himself, plain and simple; it's over for him,” the representative of Brooklyn district 48 for 35 years until 2018 told The Jerusalem Post.

“This incident goes beyond the pale,” Hikind said. “It never should have happened in the first place, but after it did happen, Donald Trump should have apologized. He should have said something. He said he didn't know who [Fuentes] was. He said he didn't know a Holocaust denier was sitting at the same table with him enjoying dinner.

"Nobody Googled who was having dinner with the former president?" he asked. "I don't know if I believe that, but let's say it's true. [But] by the next day, he knew, [so] how come he didn't say anything? And [Trump] said he likes Kanye regardless of what he says because ‘he says nice things about me.’ It's pathetic.”

The dinner meeting places Trump, who last month announced a 2024 White House bid, in direct contact with two prominent figures who have unapologetically promoted antisemitism in recent months.

West’s Twitter account was recently restored after being blocked over a series of antisemitic comments, including a threat to go “death con 3” on the Jews, that cost him a slew of lucrative sponsorship deals.

Fuentes, who has been labeled a “white supremacist” by the Justice Department and first gained prominence after participating in the 2017 white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, said in June that “Jews stood in the way” of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Trump's meeting spurs pushback from Republicans

Trump's dinner has sparked ire from Trump's supporters, many of whom echo Hikind's outrage.

“There is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement. “And anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, is highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States.”

Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, a Jewish pro-Trump Republican who now represents Hikind's district, told the Post that the former chief executive's recent actions put the GOP's integrity to the test. She called on Republican leaders to condemn Trump. 

“While he was President, Trump did more for the Jewish people and the State of Israel than any president in modern history,” Vernikov said.

“But when he spends time with individuals who openly support Hitler, our party’s integrity, morals and leadership are put to the test. Who will do what’s politically expedient and stay silent, and who will do what is right despite political backlash? Republican leadership must do what is right: condemn his actions and publicly call on him to apologize and disassociate himself.”

Other top Republicans are staying silent. Rep. Lee Zeldin, who some in the GOP are promoting to be party chairman after his defeat in last month's election for governor of New York, called West a “deranged antisemite” this past week – but the Jewish congressman from Long Island has not released a statement condemning Trump. 

Hikind, who is known for outspoken Israel advocacy and hard-line support for the large population of Orthodox and hasidic Jews in his state assembly district, called the US-Israel relationship “the best ever during Trump's four years.”

“I recognize that no president has ever even come close,” he told the Post. “But that is not a pass for having people like Kanye West at your table.”

“Antisemitism is spreading like wildfire. Jews are getting beat up because of Kanye's words,” he continued. “This is a very sad chapter in this country and we are at an important junction. Donald Trump telling me that he is such a great friend of the Jewish people: I'm tired of it. He did do great things but does that give him a pass to hang out with antisemites and Holocaust deniers? No, it is not okay. With Donald Trump you lose; he's the greatest gift to the Democratic Party.”

“There's no question this is a breaking point within the Republican Party,” Hikind continued. “You can't let anyone get away with this kind of behavior.”

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-724066

Trump's response?

Said Trump, on Truth Social: “Jewish Leaders forgot that I was the best, by far, President for Israel. They should be ashamed of themselves. This lack of loyalty to their greatest friends and allies is why large numbers in Congress, and so many others, have stopped giving support to Israel.”

https://politicalwire.com/2022/12/09/trump-bashes-jewish-leaders-for-not-being-loyal/

He sounds like an abusive spouse. "Don't forget those years when I was good to you."

Republican Kari Lake files lawsuit in bid to overturn Arizona election

The lawsuit claims that the gubernatorial candidate "received the greatest number of votes and is entitled to be named the winner," days after certified results showed Lake had lost.

Kari Lake, the GOP candidate who lost Arizona's governor race in November, filed a lawsuit Friday challenging certification of the state's election results and seeking a court order that declares her the winner.

The 70-page lawsuit from Lake, a prominent election denier and Trump ally, contains numerous inaccuracies about the election won by Democratic Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs, Arizona's secretary of state.

The suit names Hobbs and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer as defendants, along with other election officials in Maricopa, claiming their alleged misconduct “nullifies” the results of the election in the state’s most populous county and that their actions “wrongfully” led to the state naming Hobbs as the winner.

“Lake received the greatest number of votes and is entitled to be named the winner,” the lawsuit states. “Alternately, the election must be re-done in Maricopa County to eliminate the effects of maladminstration and illegal votes on the vote tallies reported by Maricopa County.”

The suit claims that ballot printer and tabulator failures, which Lake said were intentional, “created chaos” on Election Day with "oppressively long lines" that depressed voter turnout and disproportionately deterred Republican voters who were more likely to cast a ballot in her favor.

Maricopa County issued a report on the voting glitches late last month after the state’s Republican attorney general’s office demanded answers on widespread voting machine glitches. Election officials had urged voters at polling sites where machines malfunctioned to exercise other options, including either dropping their ballots in a secure box to be counted later in the day or going to another location to vote.

Lake's lawsuit seeks a series of court orders, including “setting aside the certified result of the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election and declaring that Kari Lake is the winner of the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election.”

Arizona certified its election results on Monday.

In a statement Friday, Hobbs' campaign manager blasted Lake's filing of a "sham lawsuit."

“Kari Lake needs attention like a fish needs water — and independent experts and local election officials of both parties have made clear that this was a safe, secure, and fair election,” Hobbs’ campaign manager said.

“Arizonans made their voices heart and elected Katie Hobbs as their governor. No nuisance lawsuit will change that, and we remain laser-focused on getting ready to hit the ground running on Say One of Katie Hobbs’ administration next year.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/20...ACDytQZz5QZEb5MQ9gRDlc0mcEISCPMBjVYGzAi4

If Republicans wish to become relevant again they need to purge the far right wing crazy out of the party. This should be embarrassing for all of them.

Another insurrectionist gets a five year prison sentence......

A rioter who assaulted police officers at the Capitol gets 5 years in prison

Ronald Sandlin, 35, of Tennessee pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/po...k0ZHp8BeZWJatWdi0SJch0__fWJ5X_V3leXAP40w

The moron is gonna moron.......

Trump Demands Items Be Returned 'at Once' After More Documents Discovered

Amid the latest discovery in Florida of additional classified documents in former President Donald Trump's possession, Trump said, "Everything should be returned, at once!"

On Friday, Trump made a post on his Truth Social platform calling the "taking of documents" by FBI agents "ILLEGAL."

"Under the Presidential Records Act and the very well established Clinton Socks Case, the raid of Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, and the taking of documents and many other items, was ILLEGAL," Trump said. "Everything should be returned, at once!"

Two days earlier, the Washington Post reported that an outside team hired by the former president found additional records outside his Mar-a-Lago home—which was raided for documents by the FBI in August—at a storage unit connected to Trump. The items were immediately turned over to the agency upon their discovery.

Tensions between the two sides have heightened in recent months, with the Department of Justice (DOJ) repeatedly seeking a sworn assurance from Trump's team that all records be returned and Trump's team unwilling to provide or sign such a statement.

In June, Trump's lawyers said a diligent search had been conducted. Yet evidence in the FBI's possession suggested there were still sensitive records in Trump's possession—a speculation that was later confirmed by August's court-authorized search. The government has reportedly recovered over 300 sensitive records from Trump since he left the White House.

In response to this week's reports of additional documents being found, Trump's team said he and "his counsel continue to be cooperative and transparent, despite the unprecedented, illegal and unwarranted attack against President Trump and his family by the weaponized Department of Justice."

The search of the storage facility in Palm Beach, Florida, is part of a larger search that Trump's outside team is conducting. It also has searched the former president's Bedminster golf club in New Jersey as well as his home and office at the Trump Tower in Manhattan. So far, no other classified documents have been found at the other locations.

New reports say that the DOJ is asking a federal judge to hold Trump's office in contempt of court for failing to comply with a subpoena issued in May that required all classified documents to be returned. A hearing on the matter is set for Friday.

If DC District Chief Judge Beryl Howell agrees to hold Trump in contempt, the former president could face daily fines until the demands of the subpoena are met. The cost of those fines will be left to Howell.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-demands-items-returned-once-after-more-documents-discovered-1765937

Of course the judge ended up not holding trump in contempt because you know, lying and stealing top secret documents while still hiding them isn't doing anything wrong.

Canadian oil that was headed for export now trashing Native American lands. Well done Murica, well done.

Which MAGAt will be the first to call him RINO?

j/c:



A clown, indeed.

The next grift.
NFT's.

If it's slippery, shady or shadowy, he's all over it.

So glad I had a cop for a dad. He trained me to spot a con man before I turned 14. Folks who didn't get this training will now spend their real American dollars on some fake digital bs.

Barnum was right.

Man, 40 and SB slapped leather the second they saw that.

Even Biden mocked Trump.

Georgia Republican arrested on charges of stealing prescription narcotics from seniors' home he runs

A Georgia Republican was arrested after investigators said he stole prescribed narcotics from elderly people at the home he manages, according to local reports.

Danny Rampey, who is due to take a seat in the state's House of Representatives, was arrested on Thursday, according to records at the Barrow County Detention Center.

He ran unopposed in November after winning the primary in the state's 119th House district, and is due to take office in January.

Rampey is a manager at the family-owned Magnolia Estates of Winder Assisted Living Center.

Initially arrested on three felony charges, by the time he was released on bond Rampey faced 19, per court records reviewed by Insider.

They include six counts of burglary, six of exploitation of an elderly or disabled person, six of obtaining a controlled substance by theft, and one of possession of a controlled substance.

Barrow County Sheriff's Office launched an investigation a couple of weeks ago after receiving reports of "suspicious activity involving missing medications" at Magnolia Estates, according to the Athens Banner-Herald local newspaper.

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said in an interview with the paper that there is footage of Rampey going into the assisted living complex and taking medications.

Investigators served search warrants on Thursday at Magnolia Estates and Rampey's home, Smith said. Rampey was arrested as he was leaving the assisting the estate grounds, a Sheriff's Office spokesperson said, according to another loca-news source, the Gwinnet Daily Post.

Insider contacted Rampey, Magnolia Estates, and the Barrow County Sheriff's Office for comments on Sunday morning but did not immediately receive responses.

Investigators said they could file for additional charges as the investigation continues, according to FOX 5 Atlanta.

https://www.businessinsider.com/geo...fYMzFgL0dznPMzCJXws-Yrr_qxLn715z9Ti00L_s

Actually it's set to expire. It's simply not being extended as of now.

Title 42 is set to expire by a law. And as usual the GOPer’s don’t want to follow the letter of law, again.

2.9 million apprehensions at the southern border since Biden woke up as president.

Over one million "got-aways"

Over 50 people from the terrorist watch list.

Enough Fentanyl to kill every human on the planet.

Crumbling infrastructure in border cities as the flow increases by the day... all under the guise of "asylum".


Response? "GOPers don't want to follow the law"

Paco isn't bringing that Fentanyl over in his backpack and isn't anything new since Biden took office.

And I'm actually in favor of keeping the guidelines of title 42. But title 42 was and is written as strictly being for Covid prevention. It needs to be rewritten where that isn't the case. It was an emergency measure that was set with limitations as such.

What it accomplishes is a great help. But the way it was written makes it to where it no longer applies.

Just to be clear, Title 42 was written in 1944. 45 relied on an interpretation of Title 42 to issue a public health order during the COVID-19 pandemic that authorized the rapid expulsion of migrants, citing concerns over the spread of the virus, without giving them a chance to apply for asylum. I think Biden’s plan will be a little more humane.

Marjorie Taylor Greene attacks plans for Ukraine's president to visit Congress, calling Zelenskyy the 'shadow president' and Ukraine the '51st state'

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has criticised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's surprise visit to the US, amid opposition from the Republican far right to US support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. 

Zelenskyy early Wednesday announced he was on his way to Washington, DC, his first overseas trip since Russia launched its brutal invasion of Ukraine in February. He will meet with President Joe Biden and appeal for enhanced support.

The trip was organized in secrecy to void compromising security arrangements, with reports of the planned visit emerging on Tuesday.

In a tweet later that day, Greene, a Georgia Republican and prominent supporter of Donald Trump, criticized the plans.

"Of course the shadow president has to come to Congress and explain why he needs billions of American's taxpayer dollars for the 51st state, Ukraine. This is absurd. Put America First!!!" Greene said. 



Zelenskyy's visit comes at a key moment in the US political cycle, as well as in the war in Ukraine.

Republicans are set to take control of the House of Representatives after winning a slender majority in the midterm elections. While in Ukraine, some reports claim Russia may be planning to launch a massive winter offensive, after suffering a series of recent setbacks.

The $19 billion in aid the US has so far given Ukraine has been vital in its fight against Russia, with additional US support expected to be announced by Biden during Zelenskyy's visit. 

The far right of the GOP has long stirred opposition to the US' support for Ukraine, rallying around an isolationist "America First" foreign policy, and with some expressing admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Greene could emerge with enhanced power in the wake of the midterms, as a prominent member of the party's MAGA wing. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who is campaigning to be elected House Speaker, has echoed her criticisms of the US' Ukraine aid program, saying in October that under GOP control the House would not be offering a "blank check" in its support for Ukraine.

However, analysts believe that broad bipartisan support for Ukraine remains strong, and attempts to cut off or seriously limit aid to Ukraine are unlikely to succeed.

In an address to Congress on Wednesday, Zelenskyy is expected to appeal to the US not to relent in its support for Ukraine, which he will portray as part of an existential battle against authoritarianism. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/mtg...UHFn0pw7o0L4V3AhhkZp531_CKFJnfXG8jglLx1c

I have no idea why Zelenskyy thinks appealing to the far right to fight an existential battle against authoritarianism would work. America can't get them to fight against that among its own party much less on a global scale.

GOPers, smh.

oh Lauren Lol ….when did Mexico attack us with guided bombs and drones taking out our infrastructure and occupied and annexed our lands? GOPer’s want Putin to win his war just to make Biden look bad, that seems pretty obvious now. GOPers want everything that hurts America right now. They want inflation and recession. They don’t want immigrants from Central and South America. Anything to make Biden look bad is the only agenda and plan they can give us now. It’s so obvious. smh. More GOPer backlash for them losing elections. And oh BTW Lauren do your job for western Colorado. Not for trump as you have.

Herschel Walker 2.0? Only this guys multiple lies didn't surface until AFTER he was elected.....

LI Congressman-elect George Santos under fire for claiming his grandparents survived Holocaust

LONG ISLAND (WABC) -- Congressman-elect George Santos, whose election on Long Island last month helped Republicans narrowly take control of the House, is facing new allegations of fabricating his life story.

The latest claim coming into question is that his grandparents survived the Holocaust.

"My grandparents survived the Holocaust, so these regimes of socialism, Marxism, they don't work," Santos said.

He told voters that his grandfather fled to Brazil after escaping the Nazis in Eastern Europe.

"Fleeing Stalin's persecution, going to Belgium, finding refuge there, marrying my grandmother, then fleeing Hitler going to Brazil. That's a story of perseverance," Santos said.

But, according to "The Forward", an independent, Jewish news organization, genealogy websites show both Santos' grandparents were born in Brazil.

Santos has said he attended NYU and Baruch College, but the schools say they have no records of him.

He also said he worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, though the banks say they have no record of him.

Even Santos' animal charity has no IRS paper trail.

"If you've seen "Inventing Anna" on Netflix, this is "Inventing George Santos. It's time he do the right thing and step aside," democratic former congressional candidate Josh Lafazan said.

On Thursday, Santos said on Twitter that he would address the questions about his past next week.



Santos has still not come forward to respond. His attorney did issue a statement, suggesting the accusations are a political hit job.

His opponents say otherwise.

"He appears to be a complete and utter fraud his whole life story is made up. And he's going to have to answer that question: Did you perpetrate a fraud on the voters of the 3rd Congressional District in New York?", Rep. Hakeem Jefferies said.

Some are calling for Santos to resign before he's even sworn in. Analysts say it's more likely he will face an ethics investigation once he takes office.

https://abc7ny.com/george-santos-resume-fraud-new-york/12601421/

If he was a Dem he’d been roasted and righteously ejected into oblivion by now.

That tweet belongs in the whacko liberal thread.

it's like saying if you have a child with a puppy you are grooming them for beastiality.

Damn bro. Pounded that nail in with one swing.

This world seems to be overflowing with weak-minded people that spout off some of the dumbest crap I've ever heard. The celebrity brand is a very special breed.

If you like that make sure to hit the like button and click that little bell to be alerted to new content...



too many YT videos... too many YT videos....

Exactly. Another example of what makes Twitter irrelevant now. Nothing is believable as real. Everything is fake.

You think he was "groomed" because there was a pic of him as a kid holding a gun?

Then we've all been groomed...

It is nothing like that at all

You've all been groomed. And GOPers must like it.

Context is everything. It's about as accurate as saying if you mention the gay community or explain to a class that Bobby has two dads because families sometimes have two moms or two dads and that love is love you're grooming children to be gay. Let's use a more accurate word. Indoctrinated. Like force feeding children religion from the time they're old enough to walk. Hopefully you get the craziness in all of that and can see how comparable they all are. Or that none of that makes any sense depending on your own perspective.

We’ve all been groomed to one extent or another. Some of us have been groomed with great loving parents that teach us to do onto others as we wish them to do for us. That skin tone and sexual preferences is not a prerequisite to discriminate against anyone. That love always triumphs over hate. And some of us have not.

Follow up on George Santos.....

Representative-elect George Santos admits to lying about his past

Rep.-elect George Santos, R-N.Y., admitted Monday that he lied about his job experience and college education during his successful campaign for a seat in the U.S. House.

In an interview with the New York Post, Santos said: "My sins here are embellishing my resume. I'm sorry."

He also told the newspaper: "I campaigned talking about the people's concerns, not my resume" and added, "I intend to deliver on the promises I made during the campaign."

The New York Times raised questions last week about the life story that Santos, 34, had presented during his campaign.

Joseph Cairo, Jr., the chair of the Nassau County Republican Committee, which includes much of Santos' district, said in a statement that Santos has "broken the public trust" and said Santos will have to "continually prove that he has learned his lesson." But Cairo did not call for Santos to step down. 

"He has a lot of work to do to regain the trust of voters and everyone who he represents in Congress," Cairo said. But, Cairo said Santos "must do the public's will in Washington. Residents want him to deliver tax relief and pass laws that will make our neighborhoods and our nation safer. "

Santos, a Queens resident, had said he had obtained a degree from Baruch College in New York, but on Monday he acknowledged: "I didn't graduate from any institution of higher learning. I'm embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume."

He added: "I own up to that. … We do stupid things in life."

A spokesperson from Baruch College had previously told CBS News that no record of his attendance could be found.

Santos had also said he had worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but representatives from both companies told CBS News last week that they could not confirm Santos' employment.

Santos told the Post he had "never worked directly" for either financial firm, saying he had used a "poor choice of words."

He told the Post that Link Bridge, an investment company where he was a vice president, did business with both.

An earlier version of Santos' campaign website stated, "George Anthony began working at Citigroup as an associate and quickly advanced to become an associate asset manager in the real asset division of the firm," and in the next paragraph claimed "George Anthony was then offered an exciting opportunity with Goldman Sachs but what he thought would be the pinnacle of his career was not as fulfilling as he had anticipated." Neither bank is currently named on his website.

Another news outlet, the Jewish American news site The Forward, had questioned a claim on Santos' campaign website that his grandparents "fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium, and again fled persecution during WWII." It said records appear to show his grandparents were born in Brazil.

"I never claimed to be Jewish," Santos told the Post. "I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was 'Jew-ish.'"

Santos first ran for Congress in 2020 and lost. He ran again in 2022 and won in the district that includes some Long Island suburbs and a small part of Queens.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/george-santos-admits-to-lying-about-his-past-new-york-post/

Can you imagine any of us mere mortals being caught lying about our educational backgrounds and work history right after getting a new job? Claiming we graduated college when we did not? Claiming we had high profile jobs that we did not? None of us would still hold that job. He was elected based on nothing but a bunch of lies.

Murica!

Santos Blames ‘Bourgeois’ Media for Pointing Out His Many, Many Campaign Lies

“Did I embellish my resume? Yes I did. And I’m sorry … but I’m still the same guy, I’m not a fraud.”

New York congressman-elect George Santos admitted on Monday to having engaged in “résumé embellishment” and lying about his education and work history. Santos has been embroiled in controversy following a New York Times report that raised discrepancies in the incoming congressman’s background. In various interviews responding to the controversy, Santos has now admitted to misrepresenting his job history, lying about his educational background, and exaggerating his financial position.

Despite repeatedly apologizing for misleading the public, Santos still attempted to deflect blame for his lies onto other entities. Santos pointed the finger at elitism in the media as the motivation behind the exaggeration of his credentials. “I worked as a customer service agent for 6-7 months of my life…elitists like the New York Times like to call blue-collar jobs like that ‘odd jobs’ because it just doesn’t fit their bourgeois-style lifestyle.”

And that, Santos says, is what’s to blame for him making a litany of false statements to voters while seeking office. “It’s those expectations and those connotations from elitist organizations such as the New York Times that lead people like me” to embellish their history.

The investigation by the Times was unable to verify claims by Santos regarding his self-reported work for major financial groups Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, as well as his assertion that he had graduated from Baruch College in New York and New York University. In an interview with the New York Post, Santos admitted that he had “never worked directly” with Goldman Sachs or Citigroup. He explained that a financial firm he had worked for, Link Bridge, had done work with the companies and blamed the discrepancy on his “poor choice of words.” “If I was trying to really defraud the people, like everybody keeps saying, I could have just listed bigger — just as big names,” Santos said in an interview with City & State New York.

“I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning,” Santos admitted to the Post. “ I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume,” he stated. “I own up to that … We do stupid things in life.”

Santos further denied accusations that he had lied about having Jewish heritage, telling the Post that he “never claimed to be Jewish.” “I am Catholic,” Santos said, “because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’” Santos had previously claimed that his grandparents were Holocaust survivors who escaped persecution in WWII.

Regarding questions on discrepancies in his finances, Santos admitted to little besides a history of bad tenancy and never actually having owned property. Addressing claims that he owned more than 13 properties to City & State Santos said he “never claimed to” have owned property himself. “No I do not own property,” he said, “I’ve never purchased property under my name.” Santos clarified that while his family members owned various properties he helped manage, none outright belonged to him.

The revelations have prompted calls from Democrats for Santos’ resignation, including accusations from his future colleagues that Santos “[defrauded] the voters of Long Island about his ENTIRE resume.” However, the incoming congressman plans to see his term through. ”I will be sworn in. I will take office.” Santos told New York’s WABC.

https://news.yahoo.com/santos-blames-bourgeois-media-pointing-154454240.html

Pathetic. Yeah, the media made him lie.

Co-leader of plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Whitmer sentenced to 16 years in prison

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — The co-leader of a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was sentenced Wednesday to 16 years in prison for conspiring to abduct the Democrat and blow up a bridge to ease an escape.

Adam Fox returned to federal court Tuesday, four months after he and Barry Croft Jr. were convicted of conspiracy charges at a second trial in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

They were accused of being at the helm of a wild plot to whip up anti-government extremists just before the 2020 presidential election. Their arrest, as well as the capture of 12 others, was a stunning coda to a tumultuous year of racial strife and political turmoil in the U.S.

The government had pushed for a life sentence, saying Croft offered bomb-making skills and ideology while Fox was the “driving force urging their recruits to take up arms, kidnap the governor and kill those who stood in their way.”

But Judge Robert J. Jonker said that while Fox’s sentence was needed as a punishment and deterrent to future similar acts, the government’s request for life in prison is “not necessary to achieve those purposes.”

“It’s too much. Something less than life gets the job done in this case,” Jonker said, later adding that 16 years in prison “is still in my mind a very long time.”

In addition to the 16-year prison sentence, Fox will have to serve five years of supervised release.

Fox and Croft were convicted at a second trial in August, months after a different jury in Grand Rapids, Michigan, couldn’t reach a verdict but acquitted two other men. Croft, a trucker from Bear, Delaware, will be sentenced Wednesday.

Fox and Croft in 2020 met with like-minded provocateurs at a summit in Ohio, trained with weapons in Michigan and Wisconsin and took a ride to “put eyes” on Whitmer’s vacation home with night-vision goggles, according to evidence.

“People need to stop with the misplaced anger and place the anger where it should go, and that’s against our tyrannical … government,” Fox declared that spring, boiling over COVID-19 restrictions and perceived threats to gun ownership.

Whitmer wasn’t physically harmed. The FBI, which was secretly embedded in the group, broke things up by fall.

“They had no real plan for what to do with the governor if they actually seized her. Paradoxically, this made them more dangerous, not less,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said in a court filing ahead of the hearing.

In 2020, Fox, 39, was living in the basement of a Grand Rapids-area vacuum shop, the site of clandestine meetings with members of a paramilitary group and an undercover FBI agent. His lawyer said he was depressed, anxious and smoking marijuana daily.

Christopher Gibbons said a life sentence would be extreme.

Fox was regularly exposed to “inflammatory rhetoric” by FBI informants, especially Army veteran Dan Chappel, who “manipulated not only Fox’s sense of ‘patriotism’ but also his need for friendship, acceptance and male approval,” Gibbons said in a court filing.

He said prosecutors had exaggerated Fox’s capabilities, saying he was poor and lacked the capability to obtain a bomb and carry out the plan.

Two men who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and testified against Fox and Croft received substantial breaks: Ty Garbin already is free after a 2 1/2-year prison term, while Kaleb Franks was given a four-year sentence.

In state court, three men recently were given lengthy sentences for assisting Fox earlier in the summer of 2020. Five more are awaiting trial in Antrim County, where Whitmer’s vacation home is located.

When the plot was extinguished, Whitmer, a Democrat, blamed then-President Donald Trump, saying he had given “comfort to those who spread fear and hatred and division.” In August, 19 months after leaving office, Trump said the kidnapping plan was a “fake deal.”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politi...IjrkDQs8gvzABxvwKk4rNpNCqAS2RasYLO6z96OQ

And of course according to trump it is all fake and didn't really happen.

Murica!

If Republicans don't dump this Santos guy, they'll prove its about Party over character for them.

They did that with trump. If they don't dump Santos it will prove they didn't learn anything from their support of trump.

He claims he didn’t break any laws. So according to this right wing standard, Hunter Biden’s job, that he wasn’t qualified for, is a nothing burger.

For MAGA folks,,, It's party over country. But it wasn't always that way. I remember a time when I was a proud republican. Did I sometimes vote for a democrat or independent? You bet I did. I always voted for who I thought was the best person.

Then came these folks that call themselves the "Freedom Caucus".... Then Trump. With them it's that they are free to do what ever they want, but we aren't. They loved Trump because he's just like them only worse.

Santos is a typical example of the type of folks that Trump backed for office. Kari Lake, telling all the McCain supporters in Arizona to leave.. They don't need you. Guess what, she needed them. She kicked them out.. I'm sure that made Trump happy because as he said, he prefers men that didn't get caught... Hershal Walker,, worst candidate ever.

He must hate Rudy, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Mike Flinn and many others that thought they could get away with breaking the law. This guy Santos has just proven he'll lie, cheat and mislead. That proves to me that he'll do the same thing.

[video:youtube][/video]

I read somewhere that Trump was celebrating Shwanza by serving up Hamberders and Cofefi.......

You Haters can't get Trump out of your minds.

Trump living rent free........HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Ah, poor Super. His hero has been proven to be a sham and he can't help but throw a little tantrum. What, no meme this time?

Former Trump White House aide told Jan. 6 panel Mark Meadows burned documents a dozen times during the transition period

Washington CNN — 

The January 6 committee released another batch of transcripts Tuesday, including two more of its interviews with blockbuster witness Cassidy Hutchinson and testimony from several other Trump White House officials.

The transcripts shed new light on how then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows regularly burned documents during the transition period, according to Hutchinson. She also described how Meadows occasionally told staffers to keep some Oval Office meetings “close hold” and potentially omitted from official records.

There were also additional details about Hutchinson’s dueling loyalties that led her to ultimately switch lawyers and provide damning testimony about what she saw and heard at the White House after the 2020 election.

The latest cache of transcripts also revealed some of the rumors, gossip and wild conspiracies that were floating around the White House – including conversations about QAnon conspiracies – while then-President Donald Trump refused to concede and tried to overturn the election results.
Burned White House documents and “close hold” Oval Office meetings

Meadows told White House staffers to keep some Oval Office meetings “close hold” during the transition period, potentially leaving meetings off the books, according to Hutchinson, who was a top Meadows aide.

Hutchinson also testified that there “were certain things that had potentially been left off” the Oval Office diary.

Hutchinson said she recalled Meadows having a meeting at the end of November or early December 2020 in which he told outer Oval Office staffers: “Let’s keep some meetings close hold. We will talk about what that means, but for now we will keep things real tight and private so things don’t start to leak out.”

She testified that she couldn’t recall whether there was specific information Meadows wanted to keep “close hold.” She said she was not aware of any explicit directions that Meadows gave to keep January 6 information “close hold.”

Additionally, she told the committee that she saw Meadows burn documents in his office fireplace around a dozen times – about once or twice a week – between December 2020 and mid-January 2021.

On several occasions, Hutchinson said, she was in Meadows’ office when he threw documents into the fireplace after a meeting. At least twice, the burning came after meetings with GOP Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, who has been linked to the efforts to use the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election. The New York Times and Politico have previously reported on Meadows’ alleged document-burning practices.

Hutchinson said she did not know what the documents were, whether they were original copies, or whether they were required by law to be preserved.
Tug-of-war over Hutchinson’s loyalty

One of the transcripts released Tuesday was Hutchinson’s final deposition with her initial, Trump-funded lawyer, Stefan Passantino, which was conducted on May 17. She soon hired a new attorney, Jody Hunt, and sat for another deposition on June 20, a transcript of which was also released Tuesday. That was just eight days before she delivered surprise testimony at the January 6 committee’s sixth public hearing.

The new batch of transcripts show the deepening divide between Hutchinson and Passantino just weeks before she hired hew new lawyer. The two bicker several times, according to the transcript of her May deposition, and Passantino cut off Hutchinson on a few occasions, interrupting her with warnings about her testimony, and sometimes trying to finesse what she said.

To be sure, Passantino told Hutchinson during the deposition that he was not trying “to shape what you’re saying at all,” according to the transcript. Passantino has denied any wrongdoing and said he represented her “honorably” and “ethically.”

The May interview began with questions about whether Trump agreed with some rioters’ chants calling for the hanging of then-Vice President Mike Pence.

Hutchinson said she did not hear those comments firsthand, but said she did hear Meadows mention those comments to two White House lawyers. Passatino then interrupted the line of questioning, warning Hutchinson not to accidentally divulge privileged legal advice.

She went on to testify that she overheard Meadows say Trump thought “maybe perhaps the chants were justified.” This detail ended up being one of the most damning things to emerge from her testimony and was featured prominently at the panel’s public hearings.

When Hutchinson continued testifying about Trump’s alleged reaction to the chants, Passantino jumped in again.

“I don’t want to interrupt, nor do I want to shape what you’re saying at all here,” he said, before offering a different take on Trump’s reaction to the anti-Pence chants. He told the lawmakers that he believed “the President said perhaps they’re right” as opposed to expressing a clear, affirmative view that Pence should be executed, according to the transcripts.

After Hutchinson parted ways with Passantino, her new attorney told the January 6 committee during her June deposition that she needed to clarify and “correct” some of her previous testimony, according to the newly released transcript.

Hunt, the new lawyer, told the committee that Hutchinson had things she would like to clarify, to provide context for and “in some respects, to correct” from her previous testimony.

“She wants to be clear about it,” Hunt said, thanking the committee for the opportunity to address Hutchinson’s previous testimony.

Hutchinson walked the committee through the transcripts of her first two interviews in order to clarify and elaborate on a number of things she had said.

She went on to provide a significant amount of new and damning testimony about Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021.

QAnon conspiracy discussions in the White House

Hutchinson told the committee about several discussions at the White House involving QAnon conspiracies.

In her June interview – the fourth she had conducted with the panel – Hutchinson described a discussion about QAnon during a December 2020 meeting with Meadows, then-President Trump and Republican members of Congress, including Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene bringing QAnon up several times, though, in the presence of the president, privately with Mark,” Hutchinson testified. “I remember Mark having a few conversations, too, about – more specific to QAnon stuff and more about the idea that they had with the election and, you know, not as much pertaining to the planning of the January 6th rally.”

In her May interview, Hutchinson said she also remembered Greene bringing up QAnon while Trump was in Georgia for a rally on January 4, 2021.

“Ms. Greene came up and began talking to us about QAnon and QAnon going to the rally, and she had a lot of constituents that are QAnon, and they’ll all be there,” Hutchinson said. “And she was showing him pictures of them traveling up to Washington, D.C., for the rally on the 6th.”

Hutchinson also testified that Trump aide Peter Navarro would bring her materials about the election to pass along to Meadows. “And at one point I had sarcastically said, ‘Oh, is this from your QAnon friends, Peter?’ Because Peter would talk to me frequently about his QAnon friends,” Hutchinson testified.

“He said, ‘Have you looked into it yet, Cass? I think they point out a lot of good ideas. You really need to read this. Make sure the chief sees it,’” she continued.

Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s top Republican, asked Hutchinson whether Navarro was being sarcastic about his QAnon friends.

“I did not take it as sarcasm,” Hutchinson said. “Throughout my tenure working for the chief of staff, he would frequently bring in memos and PowerPoints on various policy proposals that – he would then expand on, you know, ‘Q is saying this.’”
Trump groused about ‘effing Pence’ after January 6, aide told committee

White House aide John McEntee told the January 6 committee about Trump’s anger toward Vice President Mike Pence, after Pence resisted Trump’s pressure to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

McEntee told the panel about a small Oval Office meeting to discuss the vice president’s role in certifying a presidential election. McEntee said he was asked to look into historical precedents, and he later found and circulated some information from the election of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson was the vice president.

McEntee also recalled hearing Trump tell Pence during a separate Oval Office meeting things like, “Michael, do the right thing,” and “do what you think is right, Mike,” according to the transcripts.

On January 6, 2021, Pence refused to go along with the scheme that many of Trump’s advisers believed was unconstitutional. McEntee told the panel that after January 6, he heard Trump speak negatively about Pence.

“Just like, you know, effin’ Pence, or whatever,” McEntee said.
WH aide acknowledges pressing GSA to delay transition

McEntee was also asked about the transition after the election. He recalled that it was discussed with a group of people, including Meadows, that the person in charge of starting the transition at the General Services Administration needed to delay the start of the transition until they knew “more of what was going on.”

“And I think she did that up until, again, one of these other milestones was reached,” McEntee said.

CNN reported at the time that the White House was pressuring GSA Administrator Emily Murphy not to ascertain the election and begin the transition process after Joe Biden was declared the winner.

McEntee added that he spoke to Murphy once when she had left Washington and was home during this period to check in on her.

Despite these apparent efforts to influence Murphy, when she finally recognized Biden’s victory and initiated the transition, she said in a letter to the president-elect that “I was never directly or indirectly pressured by any Executive Branch official, including those who work at the White House.”
Rumors in the White House about a Trump concession

Former Trump White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere testified to the January 6 committee that he heard “gossip” from his colleagues during the week after the 2020 election that Trump was considering conceding and inviting the Bidens to the White House.

“In the week after the election, there was gossip around the building that he was considering conceding,” he told the panel, according to a transcript of his testimony that was released Tuesday.

Deere said Trump was “even strongly considering inviting the President-elect and the incoming First Lady to the White House.”

He added, “Being the Deputy Press Secretary in charge of ensuring that the protected press pool always has access to him… I was very inclined to hear more about if the President-elect and the incoming First Lady would be making a visit.”

Congressional investigators pressed Deere to reveal where he heard the rumors, but he said he could not remember. Obviously, Trump did not concede to Biden and instead tried to overturn the election results, leading to the violent storming of the US Capitol on January 6.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/27/politics/january-6-transcripts-key-findings/index.html

Judge orders another long prison term in Whitmer plot

A Delaware trucker described as a co-leader of the conspiracy to kidnap Michigan’s governor was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison Wednesday, a day after an accomplice received 16 years behind bars.

Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for Barry Croft Jr., 47, who was the fourth and final federal defendant to learn his fate. Croft and Adam Fox were convicted in August of conspiracy charges in Grand Rapids. Croft also was found guilty of possessing an unregistered explosive.

They were accused of hatching a stunning plot to abduct Gov. Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation home just before the 2020 presidential election. The conspirators were furious over tough Covid-19 restrictions that Whitmer and officials in other states had put in place during the early months of the pandemic, as well as perceived threats to gun ownership.

Whitmer was not physically harmed. The FBI was secretly embedded in the group and made 14 arrests.

Croft regularly wore a tri-cornered hat common during the American Revolution and had tattoos on his arms symbolizing resistance — “Expect Us” — as he traveled to Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan to meet with like-minded extremists.

“Although he may not have had hierarchical control over all the other participants, he coordinated and pushed the implementation of the conspiracy from its inception to its final stages,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said in a court filing.

“The only remaining step was for the governor to appear at her cottage so they could launch their plan, but fortunately she was still beyond their control,” the prosecutor said.

A different jury in Grand Rapids, Michigan, couldn’t reach a verdict on the pair at the first trial last spring but acquitted two other men .

“The abduction of the governor was only meant to be the beginning of Croft’s reign of terror,” Kessler said. “He called for riots, ‘torching’ government officials in their sleep and setting off a ‘domino’ effect of violence across the country.”

A key piece of evidence: Croft, Fox and others traveled to see Whitmer’s vacation home in northern Michigan, with undercover agents and informants inside the cabal .

At one point, Croft told allies: “I don’t like seeing anybody get killed either. But you don’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, you know what I mean?”

Croft’s attorney tried to soften his client’s role. In a court filing, Joshua Blanchard said the Bear, Delaware, man didn’t actually have authority over others and often frustrated them because he “just kept talking.”

“Simply put, to the extent that the jury determined he was a participant, as they necessarily did, he was a participant to a lesser degree than others,” Blanchard insisted.

Two men who pleaded guilty and testified against Fox and Croft received substantial breaks : Ty Garbin already is free after a 2 1/2-year prison term, while Kaleb Franks was given a four-year sentence.

In state court, three men recently were given lengthy sentences for assisting Fox earlier in the summer of 2020. Five more are awaiting trial in Antrim County, where Whitmer’s vacation home is located.

When the plot was extinguished, Whitmer blamed then-President Donald Trump, saying he had given “comfort to those who spread fear and hatred and division.” In August, 19 months after leaving office, Trump said the kidnapping plan was a “fake deal.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/...ZBRO4d-RC2VynVL9bIi-6yC4ZnAthR2MIuTLoHWY

Just to demonstrate how crazy you are, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden live rent free between your ears.. Of course, rumor has it that there is plenty of empty space there.

Brazilian authorities intend to revive fraud case against George Santos

Law enforcement officials in Brazil will reinstate fraud charges against Rep.-elect George Santos, the Rio de Janeiro prosecutor’s office tells CNN, as the New York Republican officially assumes his role in the US House Tuesday under a cloud of suspicion over his dubious resume.

Prosecutors said they will seek a “formal response” from Santos related to a stolen checkbook in 2008, after police suspended an investigation into him because they were unable to find him for nearly a decade.

Authorities, having verified Santos’ location, will make a formal request to the US Justice Department to notify him of the charges, Maristela Pereira, a spokeswoman for the Rio de Janeiro prosecutor’s office, told CNN. The prosecutor’s office told CNN the request will be filed upon reopening on Friday.

CNN previously confirmed that Santos was charged with embezzlement in a Brazilian court in 2011, according to case records from the Rio de Janeiro Court of Justice. However, court records from 2013 state that the charge was archived after court summons went unanswered and they were unable to locate Santos.

CNN has reached out to a lawyer for Santos for comment. The reinstatement of the fraud charges was first reported by The New York Times.

According to the Times, citing court records it has reviewed, the criminal case stems from a visit Santos made to a small clothing store in Niterói, a city outside of Rio de Janeiro, where Santos spent nearly $700 out of the stolen checkbook using a fake name.

In an interview with the New York Post last week, Santos denied that he had been charged with any crime in Brazil, saying: “I am not a criminal here – not here or in Brazil or any jurisdiction in the world. Absolutely not. That didn’t happen.”

Set to take office despite controversy

Santos, who helped Republicans win a narrow House majority last year when he flipped a Democratic-held seat, is set to take office on Tuesday despite admitting to lying about parts of his resume after The New York Times first revealed that Santos’ biography appeared to be partly fictional.

CNN confirmed details of that reporting about his college education and employment history and uncovered even more falsehoods from Santos, including claims he was forced to leave a New York City private school when his family’s real estate assets took a downturn and that he represented Goldman Sachs at a top financial conference.

Santos’ claims that his grandparents fled the Holocaust as Ukrainian Jewish refugees and that his mother died as a result of being present in the South Tower during 9/11 have also come under scrutiny, CNN’s KFile found.

In interviews with WABC radio and the New York Post on December 26, Santos admitted to lying about attending Baruch College and New York University as well as misrepresenting his employment at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup but said at the time he still intended to serve in Congress.

Two days later, CNN reported that the US attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York had begun investigating the finances of Santos, who faces questions over his wealth and loans totaling more than $700,000 he made to his successful 2022 campaign.

The same day, the Nassau County district attorney’s office announced it was also looking into fabrications from Santos.

“No one is above the law and if a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said at the time.

The district attorney’s office did not specify what fabrications it was exploring and the US attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York declined to comment.

CNN has reached out to a representative for Santos for comment on the probes.

Santos’ FEC reports contain a number of unusual expenditures, including exorbitant expenses on air travel and hotels, as well as a number of expenses one penny below the dollar figure above which the FEC requires campaigns to keep receipts.

“Campaign expenditures for staff members including travel, lodging, and meals are normal expenses of any competent campaign. The suggestion that the Santos campaign engaged in any unlawful spending of campaign funds is irresponsible, at best,” Joe Murray, a lawyer for Santos, said in a statement to CNN on Saturday.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/02/politics/george-santos-brazil-fraud-case/index.html

MAGAts are trying to make Jim Jordan Speaker of the House. Smh. They want another traitor in power.

Former N.Y. election official pleads guilty to 2021 ballot fraud

Jason Schofield, a Republican who recently resigned from the Rensselaer County Board of Elections, admitted he applied for absentee ballots using other voters' personal info.

ALBANY, N.Y. — A former Republican county elections commissioner in upstate New York pleaded guilty Wednesday to applying for absentee ballots in the names of other registered voters.

Jason Schofield, who is from Troy, resigned last month from the Rensselaer County Board of Elections. He admitted that in 2021 he unlawfully used the names and birthdates of voters in connection with 12 absentee ballot applications he submitted electronically to the New York State Voter Absentee Ballot Application Request Portal, according to federal prosecutors.

Schofield, 43, admitted he falsely certified that he was the voter requesting each of the absentee ballots.

When Schofield was originally arraigned in September, his attorney said Schofield maintained he was innocent of the charges in the 12-count indictment.

Schofield is scheduled to be sentenced on May 12. He faces up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and supervised released of up to three years for each count.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/el...leads-guilty-2021-ballot-fraud-rcna65462

More Republicans call for George Santos to resign over lies and fabrications

Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who oversees a slim House majority in which Santos is currently a reliable vote, has not joined the calls for the first-term congressman to step aside.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans' calls for Rep. George Santos to resign are growing after state GOP leaders in New York said he should step aside over a slew of lies and fabrications in the biography he ran on in the 2022 midterm election.

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., also starting his first term, dropped his earlier hedging and unequivocally said Thursday that Santos should resign.

“It is clear that George Santos has lost the confidence and support of his party, his constituents, and his colleagues. With the extent and severity of the allegations against him, his inability to take full responsibility for his conduct and the numerous investigations underway, I believe he is unable to fulfill his duties and should resign," Lawler said in a statement.

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said Thursday that Santos "should resign," one day after she deferred to the Ethics Committee to investigate him in a process she said could take weeks or months.

"It is a problem for us in Congress because the American people, they don’t trust anybody. They think all politicians lie, and there are good guys among us who are trying to do the right thing," Mace said Thursday on MSNBC's Morning Joe. "He should resign, but obviously, he won’t."

Santos insisted Thursday he won't resign "until those same 142,000 people" in New York who elected him "tell me they don’t want me." (The New York board of elections shows that 145,824 voters supported him in November).

And Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is not calling on him to quit.

“He’s got a long way to go to earn trust, but the one thing I do know is you apply the Constitution equal to all Americans,” McCarthy told reporters Thursday. “The voters of his district have elected him. He is seated. He is part of the Republican Conference. There are concerns with him, so he will go before Ethics. If anything is found to be wrong, he will be held accountable exactly as anybody else in this body would be.”

Santos presents a political dilemma for Republicans. National news about his various deceptions have tarnished his image and created embarrassment for a party that doesn't want to be defined by him. In New York, the GOP over-performed expectations in the midterm election and picked up four House seats. But McCarthy is overseeing a wafer-thin majority, with no more than four votes to lose before needing Democratic votes to pass legislation, and Santos has so far proved to be a reliable vote for him.

Santos flipped a Democratic-held seat on Long Island. If he resigns, it could be up for grabs again in a special election.

Republican Rep. Brandon Williams, who represents a swing district in upstate New York, said Wednesday he agrees with Nassau Republicans’ calls for Santos to step aside.

“He must resign,” Williams said in a statement, citing “biographical exaggerations and apparent deceptions.”

Some Republicans are hedging on Santos, expressing concerns about him but stopping short of calling on him to quit.

That includes first-term Rep. Marc Molinaro of New York.

"I don’t think there’s any way he can possibly perform his duty. But the man’s got to be honest with himself and his constituents and it’s just clear to me that he can’t do his job," Molinaro told reporters on Thursday.

And on Wednesday, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., a co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, said Santos deserves the due process of an investigation before being forced to resign, even though he argued that the congressman's "conduct was egregious."

“I don’t think he should be here, that’s for sure. But there’s a process in place that has to apply equally to all members of both parties in both chambers," Fitzpatrick said on MSNBC. "We should just have an expedited review.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/co...antos-resign-lies-fabrications-rcna65550

Let's face it if lying was a problem with elected officials none would have a job. They need to be careful what their asking for because making honesty a requiremnet for the job and everyone of them will be on the outside looking in soon.

(R) Beside his name. Pass go collect $200. Nothing to see here. Now take your place on a select committee investigating Biden. The party of law and order takes no responsibility for those who lie on their resume to get elected anymore. Until a dem does it.

That's BS, the GOP is calling for him to resign. Nobody wants him in office. He is a fraud.

I guess you missed McCarthy’s statement on him.

Kevin McCarthy on George Santos: “Well, Is There a Charge Against Him?”

New York Representative George Santos does, in fact, have a charge against him. He’s also under three other criminal investigations.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy seemed Wednesday to overlook the fact that serial fabulist George Santos has already been charged with fraud, saying he would not ask the New York congressman to resign.

McCarthy—whose Republican Party holds the House majority by only a few seats and who needs every vote he can get—sought to defend Santos, even as the latter’s list of tall tales seems to grow longer by the hour.

“What are the charges against him?” McCarthy asked reporters, in what he clearly thought was a bump-set-spike of a response. “In America today, you’re innocent till proven guilty. So just because somebody doesn’t like the press you have, it’s not me that can oversay what the voters say.”

I guess you missed the GOPers calling for his resignation.

I guess you missed the part where Santos said he won’t resign! And I believe only McCarthy can act on Santos but won’t because he needs every vote he can get in the house. And finally only 3 republicans called for his resignation to date that I know of. So my post wasn’t BS like yours.

Republican candidate's wife arrested, charged with casting 23 fraudulent votes for her husband in the 2020 election

The wife of an Iowa Republican who ran for Congress in 2020 was arrested Thursday and accused of casting 23 fraudulent votes on behalf of her husband.

In an 11-page indictment, prosecutors allege that Kim Phuong Taylor "visited numerous households within the Vietnamese community in Woodbury County," where she collected absentee ballots for people who were not present at the time. Taylor, who was born in Vietnam, then filled out and cast those ballots herself, the indictment alleges, "causing the casting of votes in the names of residents who had no knowledge of and had not consented to the casting of their ballots."

Taylor is also accused of signing voter registration forms on behalf of residents who were not present. In all, prosecutors allege, she engaged in 26 counts of providing false information and voting, three counts of fraudulent registration, and 23 counts of fraudulent voting. Each charge carries a maximum 5-year prison sentence.

The aim, prosecutors allege, was to get her husband, Republican politician Jeremy Taylor, elected to public office.

Jeremy Taylor ran in the 2020 GOP primary for Iowa's 4th congressional district, which at the time was represented by Steve King, a far-right politician with ties to white nationalists. Taylor ended up finishing third, garnering just over 6,400 votes.

But Taylor was more successful in the fall 2020 general election, where he ran as a Republican candidate for the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors. He currently serves as the board's vice chairperson. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The couple met while Jeremy Taylor was teaching at a university in Vietnam, according to his official biography. They have six children.

Kim Taylor's court-appointed attorney, John P. Greer, declined to comment on behalf of his client. According to court documents, she is currently out on bail.

https://www.businessinsider.com/wif...ed-of-casting-23-fraudulent-votes-2023-1

Somebody call the Trump campaign, I think we found voter fraud. Of course, it's a Republican.

Nice…….. cue the maga crickets! Once again it’s how they work. They project their deplorable flaws onto others. “We cheat so they must cheat”

You are certainly correct. The question becomes is it all lip service? So far most of those asking he resign are on the state level where he was elected. I'm not sure but as far as I know all they can do is push for a recall election. Thus far I haven't seen any of them call for that. In the actual senate I have seen very little said about it and the only one who matters, Kevin McCarthy isn't going to do anything.

I think you seem to be missing something. I don't believe people are speaking in terms of "total honesty" here. What I think people are talking about is an entire fabrication of youe life and family history. Everything from your religion to your educational background and employment history. Everything from your grandparents escaping the holocaust to losing employees in the Pulse Nightclub shootings. Claiming he was a volleyball star at a college he never even attended. Claiming he graduated in the top 1% of his class to a college he never attended.The list just goes on and on. The GOP gives a questionnaire for potential candidates to fill out giving basic information on their background and education. Santos turned that in full of lies. Any of us that turned in a total fabrication of everything from our education to our job history on a job resume' would be fired if we got that job based on that resume'.

That's exactly what Santos did to the voters in his district.

Are you talking about Santos, or Biden?

Being facetious I see. That doesn't change anything.

Police arrest disgruntled Republican candidate in connection with shootings in New Mexico



Now one of you GOPer nutjobs are trying to shoot us.

Thank trump for this. If you are not against trump you are for this, because this is caused by trump. If there was no trump there would have been no insurrection and this.

And once again we will hear crickets. Because you know, this is only a thread for the libs.

McCarthy says Santos will be seated on committees

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday said Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) will be seated on committees, after the embattled freshman lawmaker admitted to embellishing parts of his résumé.

“He’ll get seated on committees,” McCarthy said in the Capitol when asked if he would be assigned to any panels.

The comments come after McCarthy last week said Santos should not be on any top House committees — including Appropriations, Ways and Means, Financial Services and Energy and Commerce — but left the door open to seating him on other panels.

Santos has been at the center of a controversy on Capitol Hill following revelations that he fabricated portions of his résumé and biography. The freshman congressman admitted to embellishing some details, but has said he has no plans to step down from Congress despite several calls for his resignation — including some from within the GOP.

McCarthy has stopped short of demanding that Santos resign from his seat, arguing that voters in New York’s 3rd Congressional District sent him to Washington to serve.

“I try to stick by the Constitution. The voters elected him to serve. If there is a concern, and he has to go through the Ethics [Committee], let him move through that,” McCarthy said, adding “he will continue to serve.”

On Monday, however, McCarthy did say he “always had a few questions” about Santos’s résumé. The comments followed reports from CNN and The New York Times that said Dan Conston — an McCarthy ally who heads a PAC aligned with the Speaker — expressed concerns about Santos.

Asked about those comments and if he raised concerns about Santos during the campaign, McCarthy pointed to reports that someone working for the New York candidate impersonated the Californian’s chief of staff during Santos’s campaigns in 2020 and 2022.

“My staff raised concerns when he had a staff member who impersonated my chief of staff, and that individual was let go when Mr. Santos found out about it,” McCarthy said Tuesday.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/..._0NiMxVPgNdt_u0O9RyoqFjrijQ9iXVIvHfHpKZU

Kevin McCarthy reaffirms pledge to give Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar committee assignments again after they attended a white nationalist conference

https://www.businessinsider.com/mcc...rning-mtg-and-gosar-to-committees-2022-3

This fits the very definition of the inmates running the asylum.

didnt trump drain the swamp?

He added on to it and made it worse. As a developer he knew chaos was his friend.

he did a lot.. drained the swamp, built a wall, got income tax paperwork down to a post card. Circled Georgia on a map, killed tens of thousands of people with covid denial. suggested drinking bleach. Showed you just need to lie and deny to get what you want and encouraged racism and division.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/re...s-democrats-homes-new-mexico-2023-01-17/

Jan 16 (Reuters) - An unsuccessful Republican state House candidate in New Mexico was arrested on Monday and accused of orchestrating recent shootings at four local elected officials' homes, the Albuquerque Police Department said.

Police said on Monday they had arrested Solomon Pena, 39, and accused him of conspiring with, and paying, four other men to shoot at the homes of two county commissioners and two state legislators, all Democrats. Police said they had evidence Pena had fired some shots.


This is what happens when sad little Goper tears turn into hate. You get a volley of live ammo directed at the opposition. Pffft.

Jury convicts Kansas man of threatening to kill congressman

Chase Neill, 32, testified that the threat was a message from God to Rep. Jake LaTurner regarding sorcery, wizards, extraterrestrials and a war for people's souls.

TOPEKA, Kan. — A federal court jury convicted a Kansas man who insisted that a death threat he made against U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner was a message from God, amid what authorities have said is a sharp rise in threats against members of Congress and their families.

Jurors found Chase Neill, 32, of Lawrence, guilty of a single count of threatening a U.S. government official. The presiding judge instructed jurors that to find Neill guilty, they had to conclude that a reasonable person would find that he had made a true threat and intended to either intimidate LaTurner or interfere with his work as a Republican congressman representing eastern Kansas.

Neill acted as his own attorney and cross-examined LaTurner on the witness stand Wednesday. Neill testified Thursday that he was a messenger from God and he passed along a message from God threatening LaTurner for ignoring concerns about sorcery, wizards, extraterrestrials and a war for people’s souls.

Federal prosecutors said Neill fixated on LaTurner before leaving an after-hours voicemail June 5 with the congressman’s Topeka office that included, “I will kill you.” LaTurner testified that he worried about his family’s and staff’s safety and beefed up security at his home and Topeka office.

“You cannot cloak yourself in religious belief and justify such a threat,” federal prosecutor Stephen Hunting said in his closing remarks. “There is a line you cannot cross.”

Neill sat calmly as U.S. District Judge Holly Teeter read the jury’s verdict, which came after about two hours of deliberation. He politely declined to have the jury polled and, when asked whether he had more about the case to discuss, he said, calmly, “No, your honor.”

As a marshal handcuffed him, his mother, Pamela Neill, who had watched the three-day trial, told him, “I love you.”

Teeter scheduled Neill’s sentencing for April 11. He could face 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

The judge had Neill give his testimony Thursday as a narrative from the witness stand because he was representing himself. Neill interrupted his comments to make sure documents were projected onto four big screens on a wall behind him and to confer with the judge and prosecutors about what evidence would be allowed. Prosecutors did not cross-examine him.

Neill admitted in court that he left the June 5 voicemail and others with more death threats the next day. But he said he was conveying a message from God that LaTurner and other officials faced death by an act of God, such as a tornado or hurricane, for attacking God’s creation.

“This is not me saying, ‘I’m going to chase you down with a knife,’ or something like that,” Neill said in his closing argument.

His mother, fighting back tears, told reporters upon leaving the courtroom, “He never raised a hand on anybody.”

Threats against members of Congress have increased since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. In October, an intruder severely beat former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer in their San Francisco home.

Local school board members and election workers across the nation also have endured harassment and threats. Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this week arrested a failed Republican legislative candidate over a series of shootings targeting elected Democratic officials’ homes or offices.

Hunting told jurors that it was reasonable for LaTurner and his staff to take Neill’s words seriously as threats.

LaTurner said in a statement after the verdict: “Violence and threats of violence have no place in our society.”

Neill said his concerns about a war for souls were sparked by a May 13 story on the Kansas Reflector news site about a legislative debate in which a western Kansas lawmaker urged colleagues to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a measure that would have restricted public health officials’ power in epidemics following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Republican state Rep. Tatum Lee was quoted as saying, “The war is real you all. We are fighting for the soul of our nation.”

Neill told jurors he values his soul and was required by God to act when he “heard the sound of the trumpet.”

He also showed jurors a LinkedIn page for himself, saying he dealt with “matters concerning over 400 million lives lost with high sorcery.”

Neill testified that in 2018, “God came to me very directly,” without elaborating. A U.S. magistrate judge said in an August order refusing to release Neill from custody that Neill had suffered a head injury four or five years ago “characterized as a head fracture.”

But the trial judge concluded last month that Neill was capable of following what goes on in court and assisting his lawyers, making him mentally competent to stand trial. She granted his request to act as his own attorney, starting Wednesday.

“I’m really trying to explain how I interact with God, and it’s a difficult explanation,” Neill told jurors during his testimony Thursday. “I apologize.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/co...RJIa5BsXeOSdiBQEdDTwUZdmTXkyMpsxOQqCtLGc

There they go infringing one people's right to free speech again!

I don't want to tell someone else what to believe when it comes to religion. I also don't want their beliefs beaten into me.

I don't either. Where the problem begins is when you blame your religious beliefs for your own criminal acts. You know, like people who blew up abortion clinics and killed abortion doctors claiming it was the work of God.

I think Neill is confused. It’s the devil he’s communicating with. Someone should tell him.

As expected. Goper’s run on crime and and the economy and do no governing on that and now want to defund the military. Pffft.

Every single politician runs on solving problems that they have no intention of solving, promising things they don't wish to deliver and blaming the other side for getting in the way.

This is not a red or blue issue. This is not a left or right issue. This is not a conservative or liberal issue. This is a people in power want to stay there and if we aren't fighting each other we might notice how useless they are, how fat their wallets get and start fighting them.

But people don't want to quit being loyal to their political religion, so it is the same as it has ever been.

The ole “we do it, so they must do it” excuse. Gotcha.

If that is what you got out of what I said you really are a lost cause.

Go yell at clouds, I hear GOPers made them because they hate the environment.

When someone starts a reply with “every politician does the same thing” that’s not truth it’s an excuse. But I wouldn’t call you a lot cause over it.

When someone only thinks GOPers are the problem then that's just biased spin.

NEW YORK — FBI agents are investigating Rep. George Santos’ role in an alleged GoFundMe scheme involving a disabled U.S. Navy veteran’s dying service dog.

Two agents contacted former service member Richard Osthoff Wednesday on behalf of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York, he told POLITICO.

Osthoff gave the agents text messages from 2016 with Santos, who he says used his plight to raise $3,000 for life-saving surgery for the pit bull mix, Sapphire — then ghosted with the funds, as first reported by Patch.

“I’m glad to get the ball rolling with the big-wigs,” Osthoff said in an interview Wednesday. “I was worried that what happened to me was too long ago to be prosecuted.”

The alleged fundraising scheme is one of many scandals plaguing the freshman Republican, who has refused to leave office despite a series of allegations of lying and fraud that first came to light in December shortly after he won a swing seat on Long Island.

New York Democratic Reps. Ritchie Torres and Daniel Goldman, who called for a Federal Election Commission investigation into Santos’ campaign finances last month, welcomed the news that the Eastern District investigation is proceeding at a serious clip.

“Only the U.S. attorneys are capable of moving at the speed that’s necessary,” Torres said in an interview.

“There’s no one that poses a greater threat in Congress than Santos. It’s undeniable that he’s broken the law. We have to protect Congress from George Santos, who threatens it from within,” Torres said.

Goldman, an ex-federal prosecutor who has a seat on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, echoed Torres’ comments in a separate interview.

“Given that a serial liar like Santos is still walking the halls of the Capitol, it is imperative that the Justice Department move quickly to determine whether an indictment is appropriate.”

I have to say this, this dates back to 2016. Isn't there a statute of limitations on such things???

My guess would be that the get out of jail free card hasn't come due as of yet or they wouldn't be pursuing it on a criminal level.

Maybe. But 6 or 7 years isn’t that long ago. And 4 years of Covid slowed the legal system down substantially. Book him. But the party of “law and order” isn’t really that are they? Goper’s Pffft.

Essentially, today the Republicans are being accused of wanting to do away with SS and Medicare. They say no,, we are NOT doing that. But, they do say (especially McConnell) that they want to cut Entitlements.

Now we have Pence wanting to privatize these programs.

But NO,, They don't want to cut them.... I ain't buying it. I think it is the third rail and I don't think that this thinking will kill the republican party. I would have been sad about this once but not anymore.

No one is trying to take your Social Security. They just want common sense entitlement reform. It's just paranoia to think anyone wants to ban entitlements completely.

yeah ..that’s exactly what y’all said about Wade V Roe. I’m going to laugh like hell at all the soon to be retired Goper’s that voted for all these dumb asses when you don’t get your SS you paid into for your entire career.

It’s so typical, crime, border security, inflation, all go to the wayside, and the Goper’s hit the poor and middleclass with everything they got.

See that Frank.

Abortion...

has something to do with a Social Security!

Maybe they'll abort the social security??

I think it's a possibility with all these racist Trumpians!

Didn’t mention “abortion”. Thanks for playing.

You said evil GOPer Nazi Trumpians would end Social Security... because... Roe vs Wade.

Can't read your own posts?

Now you’re just. stalking. Please continue I love the attention. Lol

Where have I seen this nonsense before? Hard to put my finger on it.

I simply don't believe that.. Not for one second. They've been talking about it for 20 years.. To say they won't want to take it is just not true.

I think the difference here is a simple one. By saying "they won't take it" it means they aren't going to end Medicare and Social Security. Which is true. What that doesn't address is how much they will cut benefits and take from the elderly that have worked and paid into it for decades. How those with the least will suffer the most while those with the most will continue to be protected.

Replace entitlements with arms. It's the same platitude that has been blown up gun owners rears from the proggie left.

I do find it odd that people label something people have paid into for decades an entitlement. It's much more something people have helped fund to earn later in life. I know that wasn't your idea or a label you created. I just find that a very odd way of labeling it.

It is not an entitlement. That gets me all the time.

It is government administered retirement and disability plan. You pay into it. Your employer pays into it. You get money back when you retire.

It is an actuarial game. So many people, so many years, some will make it, some will not, some will need disability insurance.

Hopefully the actuarial game was correct. It is hard to predict the future from the past.

There should have been an automated mechanism to update the statistics for changes in demographics needed to keep the plan fully solvent.

It should have been kept fully separate from the budget.

Can’t disagree with any of your post.

And there it is. The left wants all your guns battle cry. Lol

Nice try,. but no. Republicans have wanted to blow up the SS and Medicare system as well as food related programs and abortion for years. They are getting called out on it now more than ever and that is as it should be. They deny it all, (except Abortion) then turn around and to in front of conservative voters and tell them they want to cut those programs... If you choose to deny it, be my guest.. In fact, please continue to deny it. America has proven, via the last two elections, they they aren't buying into it either.. By and large, America doesn't believe Republicans.

Given how much they lied, who could blame them?

Just as an afterthought, the last three conservative justices appointed to SCOTUS have all made the claim that Roe was established law when asked their opinion. They also all said it wouldn't be changed..

Guess what, another lie.

When you say Arms, I assume you mean Guns not actual human limbs. That's a terrible argument.. Awful

I'd rather not have to pay into and just be able to invest it myself... would get a better return than what I'm getting with SS...

I don't think it's going to go away, but anyone who relies on SS for their primary income in retirement is a fool...

j/c

I paid in. From adolescence through adult life.
I payed in once again, just last week.

My pay-ins gave Americans older than me their retirement payout.
I'm getting closer to the age when I'm supposed to draw on my investment in the system I supported.

This was a promise.
Honor the promise you made when you slipped that % from my first taxable paycheck. 50 years ago.

I did what I was supposed to. Time is coming nigh that My Country step up like I did. For 50 years.

Yes- I'm keeping it simple. Because a promise is a promise.
It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

Clemdawg, U.S. Citizen

Just remember that you will also have to buy a lifetime disability policy and probably another policy or two to cover your children in case you become disabled before they reach adulthood.

Social security is not has never been full retirement that covers your lifestyle. But it is a base for those who are not as fortunate.

Boomers in the United States are too numerous for the system to handle. We still have the remaining members of a generation or two ahead of the boomers drawing benefits and a ton of other social spending to finance. People have had fewer children for decades, and the tax base is just not there to support the influx of retirees. Lower-paying jobs and a constantly growing profits-based economy also wreck the entire formula. So the government will have to find a way to cover those entitlements they promised. This not only means writing massive deficit spending checks for entitlements but also significant cuts in spending to the MIC and other industries like big pharma, who suckle at the government teet. But that's only the tip of the iceberg for population issues worldwide. Some countries may be unable to feed themselves or will have their economies collapse over these issues in the next few decades; it's that bad. Some of the most extreme prediction models give us less than 30 years before the global population crisis ends civilization as we know it. All economies collapse, all governments fall, famine, disease, and death wreak havoc on the rest, and the human population falls below 5% of current levels.

It's not any fault of boomers, IMHO, though. They did what they thought was right and followed the rules. And there are many factors at play regarding how the government spends its money. Beyond corruption-driven spending motives for the elite and limiting anything that might "trickle down" to the rest of us, the republicans want to keep you broke, hungry, and dependent on the elite wage slave system. And they can deny this, but until they come back to the table and task of actually governing with real solutions instead of empty rhetoric, I can't help but see them for the slime they are behaving like. This antiquated socialism for the elite and rugged individualism for the rest model has all but played out, IMO, and uncertainty lies ahead for all of us.

So it's not like I don't see the problem, but republican solutions are nothing more than self-serving remedies for the financial elite that cast the rest of us off like dead weight in whatever is to come. I'm with Clem and most Dems; a promise should be kept, damn the consequences. The government raided and squandered the assets for these programs, not us. Now they can write the check like they always have and kick the can down the road.

SS is a Ponzi scheme has been from the beginning and will always be until it goes away. It is just a way to get more tax dollars out of the pocket of the hard-working people. I do not believe the government is smarter with my money than I am. I could make more out of that money than they could ever dream of. As far as people that never paid into SS but get entitlements. There goes the problem. If you did not pay in, you should not reap any rewards.

Yep, DoD is totally singing the Republican talking points.

Republicans have hated it from the start, and have tried to bury it every chance they get.

But they run into a quandary because it works for the vast majority of people.

It is a good program and a life saver for those who did not or could not invest in retirement or insurance.

Have you looked at the fees for 401(k) administration?

There are things that should have not been done. It should have been kept totally separate from the federal budget. I believe Clinton made that change and it was the worst possible thing that he could do.

I liked Al Gore's lockbox concept a lot better and wish we would return to that concept.

Yet 48% of jobs in America offer no retirement benefits at all.

New AARP Research: Nearly Half of Americans Do Not Have Access to Retirement Plans at Work

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rel...-retirement-plans-at-work-301585809.html

Then when people won't take those jobs the same group of people who say what you do complain that nobody wants to work. The vicious circle some people create is hilarious.

So if they don't take those kinds of jobs they're lazy. If they work without a retirement plan they're fools. How convenient.

Doesn’t really matter … retirement plans are on a schedule to tank every 10 years to reset the budgets of big corporations.

The NY stock exchange is a bigger ponzi scheme than SS. Just saying.

Oh the horror. Because it's so hard to click over to fidelity and sign up for an IRA. I guess 48% of americans don't have internet either. People don't save because they don't want to. They have to have their Uber Eats and 65 inch TVs, Xbox and the latest iphone.

You are obviously ignoring the pay scale compared to the price of living. Sure, people like you and I can afford to save and invest and that's wonderful. But many of the jobs out there do not allow for that. These are the very type of jobs people complain people aren't filling because "nobody wants to work".

Of course you are also ignoring what I was replying to.


Sometimes it's important to remember not everyone, actually many people simply don't have any other option.

I think one of the larger problems is the large swath of able-bodied males that have thrown in the towel. Over 7 million between the ages of 25 and 50, not working... 90% of them just laying idle. What makes people just quit?

Obviously they're "riding the system" and paying in nothing.

I guess the question I have for you is what benefits do able bodied men have that makes you think they are "riding the system"? I understand what it is you're trying to convey but as far as I know able bodied men are entitled to very little if any benefits to speak of. I think you may have many of them working under the table being paid in cash which is certainly wrong and criminal, but I think claiming they have all just given up is most likely a mischaracterization.

You know, they are just sitting in their parents basement, just playing video games...

There may be some who are there, that is an issue between them and their parents.

However, a lot of people work under the table or off the books to take advantage of the tax system.

How do you ride the system when you don’t qualify for SS yet? I’m betting many made enough money in their short careers to just quit and do what they want. And they probably paid more into the system than you ever will.

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/3850036-republicans-social-security-medicare-debt-ceiling/

here is a decent article on who has said what.

Rich Scott and Ron Johnson "sunset plan" provides the opening to drastic changes in Social Security and Medicare.

It basically an individuals someones planning to work 40 to 50 years and being able to count on money in your retirement.

You don't allow a plan that is intended to last a persons lifetime to be subject to renewal every 1 or 5 years.

That is pure cuckoo thinking.

And yes I fully believe that the party of MTG and the party of loony tunes would do it. GWB wanted to do it, Paul Ryan wanted to do it, every Republican that wants to be called a conservative wants to do it. They just have not been able to figure out a way to sell it or disguise it, although they keep on trying.

So don't give them a chance. It is an idea that has plausible underpinnings but when you think about it it provides an opening for total chaos.

Call them out on it, make them defend it and they can learn how to sweat it out.

They will say that this is not the intent, but subjecting a major program to a congressional vote every 1 to 5 years is not the way to maintain stability.

It is a bad idea, just like the filibuster rule and the scotus judge rule. We get partisan not consensus results.

Another article....

https://slate.com/news-and-politics...den-rick-scott-social-security-plan.html

You don't give anyone the opportunity to "cancel" a program as large as social security or medicare or defense.. It is a simple as that. If it is worthwhile, then you exclude it from the proposition. But alas those words wont come out of Rick Scott's mouth that is complete with a forked tongue.