The Republican Party Has Flat Out Lost Its Mind

[AnBr]

[LFC]

MTG was punted from Twitter ... again.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) seems to have found a new ally: Twitter’s suspension tool. Greene was handed a seven-day suspension from Twitter Tuesday after tweeting that the Food and Drug Administration should not approve the COVID-19 vaccines, incorrectly blasting them as “failing.” Twitter told CNN that the tweet “was labeled in line with our COVID-19 misleading information policy. The account will be in read-only mode for a week due to repeated violations of the Twitter Rules.” It marks Greene’s third suspension this year. She was previously given a 12-hour suspension in January for false claims regarding the Georgia Senate runoffs, and another last month for calling the COVID-19 vaccines “controversial” after she cited a discredited database on vaccine-related deaths. If Greene violates Twitter’s COVID-19 disinformation policy again, she could be given a permanent suspension, per its guidelines.

[pnwguy]

Aug 10, 2021 15:48:43 GMT LFC said:

MTG was punted from Twitter ... again.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) seems to have found a new ally: Twitter’s suspension tool. Greene was handed a seven-day suspension from Twitter Tuesday after tweeting that the Food and Drug Administration should not approve the COVID-19 vaccines, incorrectly blasting them as “failing.” Twitter told CNN that the tweet “was labeled in line with our COVID-19 misleading information policy. The account will be in read-only mode for a week due to repeated violations of the Twitter Rules.” It marks Greene’s third suspension this year. She was previously given a 12-hour suspension in January for false claims regarding the Georgia Senate runoffs, and another last month for calling the COVID-19 vaccines “controversial” after she cited a discredited database on vaccine-related deaths. If Greene violates Twitter’s COVID-19 disinformation policy again, she could be given a permanent suspension, per its guidelines.

These "conservatives" need their own new app -- iAmFullOfShit,  brought to you by LyingLiars.com

[AnBr]

Aug 10, 2021 16:43:20 GMT pnwguy said:

These "conservatives" need their own new app -- iAmFullOfShit,  brought to you by LyingLiars.com

"Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them"?

[andydp]

As good a place as any for this.  Longish article and I didn't watch the video.  The article itself is quite informative

The MAGA Icons Are Not OK, According to Vic Berger

The Trump campaign, while liquifying nearly half a country’s worth of brains, was also a startup incubator for many businesses—from podcasts to supplements to merch. But after Trump lost the 2020 election, many of these entrepreneurs, who previously enjoyed a direct connection to the President, were forced to pivot. While many have returned to the far margins of public consciousness, video editor Vic Berger’s latest creation serves as a crucial reminder that they’re still out there—albeit sadder, and more scared than ever.

www.vice.com/en/article/v7ejb4/vic-berger-filling-the-void-takes-a-punishing-dive-into-the-biggest-maga-grifters

[LFC]

Aug 10, 2021 17:06:34 GMT andydp said:

As good a place as any for this.  Longish article and I didn't watch the video.  The article itself is quite informative

The MAGA Icons Are Not OK, According to Vic Berger

Wow, I had never heard of Tim Pool. He's a real piece of shit.

[LFC]

Rand Paul is punted from YouTube for 7 days.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, has been suspended from YouTube for seven days over a video claiming that masks are ineffective in fighting Covid-19, according to a YouTube spokesperson.

And this guy is supposedly a medical doctor. I think he's a product of his father who has clearly been batshit nuts for many decades. Rand is just as f***ed up.

[LFC]

Wow. And too many of these people are in law enforcement.

In between the assertions that 9/11 was an inside job, that Zionists aren’t real Jews and that satanic pedophilia fuels world commerce and politics, attendees at the “Arise USA!” tour in recent weeks have heard another pitch: We need to audit the 2020 election.

The tour is slowly coming to a halting close — the alleged result of a six-figure theft — but along the way it’s demonstrated the now near-universal insistence among prominent Trump supporters that the country has been captured by election criminals.

“I guarantee you that electronic voting machines were created with the purpose of designating the winner before the first vote was cast,” Arise USA’s chief organizer and speaker, former CIA officer Robert David Steele, said at a stop in Kentucky last month, shortly after discussing how Dick Cheney had made 9/11 possible through controlled demolitions.

What makes the Arise USA tour notable is that some rally speakers are trying to act on that Big Lie. A sheriff who spoke at Arise USA’s Hillsdale, Michigan stop has dispatched a deputy and a private investigator to question township clerks about their voting machines. A state representative in Maine who addressed the rally there is pushing for an audit of her own state’s results. In Pennsylvania, where a state senator has threatened to subpoena several counties for 2020 election materials, a prominent pro-audit activist threw out wild statistics about the last election.

Between “duplicate registrations,” “phantom votes” and other mysteries, the total sum of bogus ballots is well over Trump’s losing margin in the state, Audit The Vote PA co-founder Jamie Sheffield said at an Arise USA event in Beaver, PA. “I am convinced, whether we get him back into office or not, that this election needs fixed.”

“We are going to be loud, we are going to be bold, and we are not going to stop until we get what we want,” she added.

Arise USA, also known as “The Resurrection Tour,” combines Steele’s frantic diagnosis of America’s problems with an equally fraught proposed response: “Constitutional” counties, run by “constitutional” sheriffs who consider themselves above the federal government’s authority.

Alongside Steele, a key figure in the tour is Richard Mack, the former sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, a former board member of the Oath Keepers and the founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, the foremost group promoting that ideology.

“I’m the top-dog on three topics: election fraud and reform, Wall Street treason and crime, and Satanic pedophilia with child trafficking,” Steele said in an early-July interview posted to the group’s website and highlighted by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a group that examines far-right movements. “But those topics are not going to be understood by the American people unless they see the solutions that Sheriff Mack represents.”

“Sheriff Mack represents elected Sheriffs deputizing armed engaged citizens to push back against the abuse of power,” Steele continued.

The constitutional sheriff movement has traditionally been most concerned with resisting federal gun restrictions, and, as of last year, with COVID-19 health measures. The recent focus on election fraud is a “Trump-related phenomenon,” said Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

“Donald Trump injected paranoia about our electoral system into the right wing of American politics, and a conviction that elections are easily rigged — and are being rigged — against Republicans,” Pitcavage told TPM. “It just sucked faith in elections straight out of the right, from the mainstream right to the far right.

[andydp]

So many places to put this...  It's the usual scenario of a con job.  The article explains it better than I ever could. Feel free to add any extra information that would be helpful to "sane" people.


The con is winding down


Watching the symposium live stream Tuesday morning, I think I figured it out. The start of the event was delayed by technological problems, problems Lindell claimed were a function of his bespoke social media site being “hacked.” This was the refrain: He’d done everything right but hackers kept picking apart his site’s defenses. He said the same thing when his site first launched and quickly got flooded. He also said Tuesday morning that his plane had trouble landing Monday night, hinting at a conspiracy aimed at silencing him.

In other words, this seems very much like a guy who’s primed to believe fairly far-flung excuses for why bad things happen. The kind of guy who, when told that the data will be ready in a month, waits patiently for the month to pass. Maybe he’s something more sinister, engaged in an effort to willfully delude America, but observing him over time makes it seem more like he’s the mark than the hustler.

www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-con-is-winding-down/ar-AANa5IQ?ocid=BingNewsSearch

[andydp]

I'm shocked !! Shocked to see there was nothing behind the "voter fraud" fraud other than "fraud".
The computer experts here can explain some of this better but...

Seems to me when you challenge people to "disprove" your theory and you let experts on this very subject see (something like) it and they call it for what it is (sheize) then you lose big time.  Funny how this dragged out to almost "Reinstatement Day" eve.  


SHOCKER! Mike Lindell’s Own Cyber Expert Announces His Election Fraud Conspiracies Are Baseless


Lindell claims to have 37 terabytes of network data that will prove a large-scale cyberattack occurred on America’s voting systems. Unfortunately for him, Merritt has told the Times that these “packet captures” are unrecoverable, and Lindell’s data cannot prove any malfeasance from China.



“So our team said, we’re not going to say that this is legitimate if we don’t have confidence in the information,” Merritt said. He also added that Lindell is cancelling the $5 million offer he was apparently going to give to any in-seminar attendee who can disprove his claims.


www.mediaite.com/weird/shocker-mike-lindells-own-cyber-expert-announces-his-election-fraud-conspiracies-are-baseless/

[goldenvalley]

Aug 12, 2021 14:37:35 GMT andydp said:

I'm shocked !! Shocked to see there was nothing behind the "voter fraud" fraud other than "fraud".
The computer experts here can explain some of this better but...

Seems to me when you challenge people to "disprove" your theory and you let experts on this very subject see (something like) it and they call it for what it is (sheize) then you lose big time.  Funny how this dragged out to almost "Reinstatement Day" eve.  


SHOCKER! Mike Lindell’s Own Cyber Expert Announces His Election Fraud Conspiracies Are Baseless


Lindell claims to have 37 terabytes of network data that will prove a large-scale cyberattack occurred on America’s voting systems. Unfortunately for him, Merritt has told the Times that these “packet captures” are unrecoverable, and Lindell’s data cannot prove any malfeasance from China.



“So our team said, we’re not going to say that this is legitimate if we don’t have confidence in the information,” Merritt said. He also added that Lindell is cancelling the $5 million offer he was apparently going to give to any in-seminar attendee who can disprove his claims.


www.mediaite.com/weird/shocker-mike-lindells-own-cyber-expert-announces-his-election-fraud-conspiracies-are-baseless/

Yeah but the truth doesn't matter. The election was stolen and they just need to keep digging to confirm that. Conspiracy theory is never wrong; the truth is hidden deeper than we thought; the circle of wrong doers is even bigger than we thought.  These folks just shift to a different version of the same theory or espouse a new theory altogether because the ultimate truth is that the election was stolen.  

[LFC]

Yes, he still leads the GOP. Stephen Moore (yes, that Stephen Moore) proves that even a blind squirrel...

It’s been more than six months since Donald Trump left office and, despite pleas from multiple friends and advisers, the former president has kept refusing to mount anything resembling a real effort to get his supporters vaccinated.

As COVID-19 continues to rip through the United States, Trump has done little more than make sporadic gestures toward the vaccine, including when he said he’d “recommend” people get the shot during a Fox News interview, while underscoring at the same time that he respected people’s “freedoms” to not get vaccinated.

But Trump’s resistance toward truly pushing for people to get the vaccine hasn’t been from lack of trying from some of his allies.

According to four people who’ve independently spoken to Trump about a potential pro-vaccine campaign, the former president has shown little interest in tying his name to broader efforts to get people inoculated.

When asked why Trump hadn’t done more on vaccines, Stephen Moore—who previously advised Trump on economic and coronavirus-related policy—said he didn’t have a “good answer for that.”

Moore, a former top Trump surrogate, said that after he published an op-ed in The Hill late last month arguing that Trump should give a national primetime address with President Joe Biden urging his supporters and voters to get the shot, “especially because of the Delta variant,” Moore made sure to send the article to the former president.

“I know from a friend who works with Trump that they gave it to him…[and that it] got to his desk,” he added. “I think he would be well-advised to make a public statement and a speech [devoted to] really encouraging people to get vaccinated; I think it would influence people…It would be in his own political interest, as well as the nation’s interest.”

[LFC]

Mike Lindell continues doing whatever it is that he does. That boy needs to be hauled away in a rubber truck.

Embattled MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell on Tuesday told former Trump political strategist Steve Bannon that his disastrous "cyber symposium" about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election was actually a wild success.

While talking with Bannon, Lindell didn't mention the total lack of voter fraud evidence presented at the meeting, but instead talked about supposedly uncovering ties between antifa and mainstream news networks.

"This was, beyond my wildest dreams, a success!" Lindell boasted. "It's probably 3X what I wanted it to be because we found out all the internal people, we had antifa there, we found out media outlets that were involved, we're exposing all that as this story goes this week, there was media involved with antifa, we've uncovered them!"

Last week, Lindell blamed antifa for conspiring with mainstream media outlets to sabotage his symposium, which was marred by repeated technical glitches.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 17, 2021 20:47:44 GMT LFC said:

Mike Lindell continues doing whatever it is that he does. That boy needs to be hauled away in a rubber truck.

That boy and conspiracy theorists like him are real Polly-Annas.  Whatever happens it's just further proof that the theory is correct and they've uncovered new aspects of it that need explanations.  

[Deleted]

Aug 17, 2021 20:47:44 GMT LFC said:

Mike Lindell continues doing whatever it is that he does. That boy needs to be hauled away in a rubber truck.

...but he sleeps well at night.

Leave Mike alone. He's the comic relief the country needs to plough through these dark days.

[andydp]

Aug 23, 2021 13:25:24 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

Aug 17, 2021 20:47:44 GMT LFC said:

Mike Lindell continues doing whatever it is that he does. That boy needs to be hauled away in a rubber truck.

...but he sleeps well at night.

Leave Mike alone. He's the comic relief the country needs to plough through these dark days.

Not so fast there, bucko !!  He's now campaigning for January 2022.  I think he may be losing finacial support so he's extending the "Special Grift Sale" to January.

Mike Lindell, still in Trump's good graces, has new prediction: reinstatement by New Year's

www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mike-lindell-still-in-trump-s-good-graces-has-new-prediction-reinstatement-by-new-year-s/ar-AANBsd1?ocid=msedgntp

[Deleted]

I'd campaign for January 2022 too, i.e., Ms. January 2022, if I only knew her.

[goldenvalley]

Aug 23, 2021 15:46:55 GMT andydp said:

Aug 23, 2021 13:25:24 GMT @probabilistic3 said:

...but he sleeps well at night.

Leave Mike alone. He's the comic relief the country needs to plough through these dark days.

Not so fast there, bucko !!  He's now campaigning for January 2022.  I think he may be losing finacial support so he's extending the "Special Grift Sale" to January.

Mike Lindell, still in Trump's good graces, has new prediction: reinstatement by New Year's

www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mike-lindell-still-in-trump-s-good-graces-has-new-prediction-reinstatement-by-new-year-s/ar-AANBsd1?ocid=msedgntp

Well of course he said that and of course Trump still likes him.   Conspiracy theorists never give up; they just adjust the theory from time to time.  

[pnwguy]

Aug 23, 2021 16:35:23 GMT goldenvalley said:

Well of course he said that and of course Trump still likes him.   Conspiracy theorists never give up; they just adjust the theory from time to time.  

Not always.  Look at Heaven's Gate.  They got serious and put down a hard line in the sand.

I wish Mike My Pillow would take the Marshall Applegate stand -- self castrate and eat that applesauce and pudding.

[Deleted]

Aug 23, 2021 17:53:33 GMT pnwguy said:

I wish Mike My Pillow would take the Marshall Applegate stand -- self castrate and eat that applesauce and pudding.

With an altered voice, I wouldn't be able to take My Pillow guy seriously. Nobody would take his Cybersecurity expertise seriously. Imagine, Mike the mustachioed castrati. Horrible!

[goldenvalley]

I hope no one was holding their breath until the Arizona audit report is released.

The report detailing the conclusions of a GOP-backed review of ballots cast last year in Arizona has been delayed after the chief executive of the private company conducting the widely pilloried audit and two other members of his team tested positive for the coronavirus.

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann (R) announced the delay Monday, saying that Doug Logan, chief executive of the Florida firm Cyber Ninjas, and two other members of the audit team had been infected and were “quite sick.”

I wonder if CyberNinja offers medical insurance benefits.  

[LFC]

Matt Gaetz notches up another failure.

Amid a Justice Department investigation into alleged sex crimes and a related House Ethics probe, beleaguered congressman Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) appears to have committed at least one much smaller but more straightforward federal violation: failure to disclose how much money he made from a book he published last September.

When The Daily Beast inquired about the omission last week, a Gaetz spokesperson said the office needed “additional documentation” from the publisher and was “in the process of receiving that information and amending the Congressman’s financial disclosure.” Sure enough, an amended financial disclosure was filed three days after The Daily Beast reached out asking about the undisclosed book income.

The Gaetz spokesperson did not answer follow-ups about the nature of the documents and why Gaetz did not have them when he filed his original disclosure several days ahead of deadline.

But the amendment itself raises its own questions. Gaetz reported that his publishing contract awarded him 60 percent royalties—a share normally reserved for online distributor sales of self-published work, and more than double the typical hardcover royalty rates. House rules require lawmakers to request permission from ethics officials to accept royalties, which can be granted if the publishing deal is under “usual and customary contractual terms.”

Gaetz’s book, Firebrand, went on presale last August and hit bookshelves and online stores in September, after last year’s financial disclosure deadline. The new amended disclosure claims the beleaguered Florida conservative earned exactly $25,000 from book sales last year, after giving 30 percent of his personal profits to his agent, Sergio Gor—a former staffer for Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who also officiated and DJ’ed at Gaetz’s surprise wedding last weekend.

If Gaetz’s $25,000 claim and publishing terms are accurate, the disclosure indicates Firebrand didn’t exactly burn up the charts. His reported profits suggest the memoir brought in a total of about $59,500 between August and December, netting his contracted publisher, Post Hill Press, a little less than $15,000.

Hardcover copies were originally listed for $27—new ones now go for less than $10—and you can still pick up an ebook for $14.99. To match his disclosure, a $27 price tag would come out to about 2,200 units sold. But even at the low end of $10 a pop, Gaetz would have sold fewer than 6,000 copies of Firebrand across several months.

I wonder how many copies were purchased by his campaign and his dad.

[Deleted]

Nit picky much? He's a busy man. No time left in the day, after all teenagers can be handful.

[goldenvalley]

An opinion piece in the Atlantic suggests that Trump has become too mainstream for many Republican Party members, leaving it with the likes of MTG and company. Remember Trump heard scattered boos when he suggested that getting the vaccine was a good idea in a rally in Alabama last weekend.  

Two days later Alex Jones, the far-right radio host and conspiracy theorist Trump courted in 2016, rebuked Trump. After playing a clip of Trump declaring that the vaccines are working, Jones responded, “BS. Trump, that’s a lie. You’re not stupid.” Jones added, “Shame on you, Trump. Seriously. Hey, if you don’t have the good sense to save yourself and your political career, that’s okay. At least you’re gonna get some good Republicans elected, and you know, we like ya. But my God. Maybe you’re not that bright. Maybe Trump’s actually a dumbass.”

These incidents are just a few of the straws in the turbulent wind, signs that something ominous is happening to the Republican Party. The GOP base may be identifying less and less with Trump personally—that was inevitable after he left the presidency—but it is not identifying any less with the conspiracist and antidemocratic impulses that defined him over the past five years.

Why is this?

The dark, destructive place the GOP has found itself in isn’t shocking. For more than half a decade, the Republican base—MAGA world—has been fed a constant diet of outrageous lies and conspiracy theories, not just by Trump but also by his allies in the party and the right-wing media ecosystem. Negative emotions such as fear, rage, and resentment have been constantly stirred up. Over time, transgressive behaviors became chic; “owning the libs” became the name of the game. What mattered was hating the right people.

The MAGA brain was rewired. The psychologist Daniel Goleman refers to “amygdala hijack,” an intense emotional reaction that’s dramatically disproportionate to the situation. When a person has been triggered, their emotions take over, and they see the world through a distorted lens.

Republicans who assumed that the party would return to sanity after Trump left office never understood how deforming the effects of his presidency would be. For many, Trump’s behaviors were initially a bug; eventually, they became a feature. Republicans ignored his corruptions and reveled in his cruelty. They entered Trump’s hall of mirrors, and they rather enjoyed it.

To better understand what’s happening in the GOP, think of a person with addiction who over time develops a tolerance; as a result, they need more potent and more frequent doses of the drug to get their desired high. And sometimes even that isn’t enough. They might turn to a more potent drug, which offers a more intense experience and a longer-lasting high, but at the price of considerably more danger.

What was seen as shocking in 2017 is now anodyne. The ethical lines that existed then turned out to have been drawn in sand. When you cross into territory devoid of moral axioms or epistemic standards—the kind of world you would find in a Turgenev novel—things can get very ugly, very quickly. Even Trump—whose derangement now includes turning a violent Capitol Hill rioter who was shot and killed by a police officer into a martyr, falsely accusing the police officer of murder, and issuing yet another barely concealed incitement to violence—can begin to look like a mainstream figure within the party. At some point in the future, the same may be said of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Cheery thought, isn't it?

[AnBr]

Aug 26, 2021 18:57:15 GMT goldenvalley said:

Cheery thought, isn't it?

GOP Delenda Est.