Republican Assault on Democracy and March Towards Fascism

[goldenvalley]

Feb 15, 2022 22:57:02 GMT LFC said:

More performance outrage by Republicans because it's the entirety of what they've been reduced to.

Raskin, wife of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), previously served as a member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve and a former United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under former President Barack Obama. She has been nominated as vice chair of supervision.

Excuse my eyes rolling.

Even if she hadn't worked in the Obama Administration, the Reps would not confirm her under the pay back provision which states that the wife of a Congress member who was part of the impeachment prosecution of Former President Trump cannot ever be approved by Republicans.  She will not receive a single vote from anyone with R after their names.

[LFC]

Feb 16, 2022 16:56:58 GMT goldenvalley said:

She will not receive a single vote from anyone with R after their names.

Let's all remember this when we start seeing praise for Romney again when he poops in the potty. He's NOT a decent politician. He's part of the Gingrich continuum, just not quite as far along the line.

[LFC]

The attorneys for Durham's political (no evidence yet that they are remotely criminal) targets are pushing back hard. Garland needs to get a handle on this but I don't see it happening. Here's how he is pushing conspiracy theories into the right-wing noise machine while not exactly saying anything false. It's diabolical and has clearly been carefully planned to do exactly what it's doing: creating propaganda. Here's the setup.

Special counsel John Durham is using court filings to spread conspiracy theories about the 2016 election, attorneys for defendant Michael Sussmann said in a late Monday court filing.

Durham set off a furor in conservative media over the weekend after adding some more flavor to his now-familiar mélange of allegations waving toward a broad conspiracy involving the Clinton campaign. In a Friday night court filing, Durham said that a tech executive linked to Sussmann had “exploited” access to White House servers by “mining” them for data in a bid to gather “derogatory information about Donald Trump.

Via that access, Durham claimed, the executive was able to observe internet traffic from “(i) a particular healthcare provider, (ii) Trump Tower, (iii) Donald Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and (iv) the Executive Office of the President of the United States.”

Conservative media and the Trump family seized upon the allegation to dust off a familiar refrain: that the Obama administration and/or the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign had “spied” on Trump during or after the election.

Durham did not specify in the filing under what administration the alleged “gathering” by the tech executive — identified by the New York Times and others as Rodney Joffe — took place. But the narrative seemed to tee up a conclusion that conservative outlets quickly leapt to: that the White House had been monitored during the Trump administration.

This led to an outpouring of rage on the right, which cast the filing as proof that Trump was right about the spying allegations all along.

Here's the pushback. They should publicly file complaints with the DOJ and demand the IG investigate. They should file official complaints and ask that he be disbarred for misconduct. This is a horrible abuse of government power.

“The Special Counsel is well aware that the data provided to Agency-2 pertained only to the period of time before Mr. Trump took office, when Barack Obama was President,” reads the filing from Sussmann. (Agency-2 is widely reported to be the CIA, to which Durham alleged Sussmann relayed Joffe’s findings.)

Joffe’s attorneys separately told the New York Times that Joffe only examined data from the Executive Office of the President while Obama was in office, and that it was part of an attempt to see whether there was malware on White House servers — a job for which he had been hired.

Sussmann’s attorneys added that Durham didn’t allege anything to do with the supposed spying scheme in the initial indictment, and questioned how it was relevant to the case.

“Sadly, the Special Counsel seems to be succeeding in his effort to instigate unfair and prejudicial media coverage of Mr. Sussmann’s case,” the filing reads. “Indeed, since the Motion was filed, numerous outlets published stories suggesting that the Special Counsel’s latest filing revealed a vast conspiracy involving Mr. Sussmann and the Clinton Campaign.”

Durham has produced nothing but propaganda in the 486 days and counting of his "investigation." It's what has become classic Republican abuse of power. One might even say "deep state."

[goldenvalley]

Feb 17, 2022 15:37:13 GMT LFC said:

The attorneys for Durham's political (no evidence yet that they are remotely criminal) targets are pushing back hard. Garland needs to get a handle on this but I don't see it happening. Here's how he is pushing conspiracy theories into the right-wing noise machine while not exactly saying anything false. It's diabolical and has clearly been carefully planned to do exactly what it's doing: creating propaganda. Here's the setup.

Special counsel John Durham is using court filings to spread conspiracy theories about the 2016 election, attorneys for defendant Michael Sussmann said in a late Monday court filing.

Durham set off a furor in conservative media over the weekend after adding some more flavor to his now-familiar mélange of allegations waving toward a broad conspiracy involving the Clinton campaign. In a Friday night court filing, Durham said that a tech executive linked to Sussmann had “exploited” access to White House servers by “mining” them for data in a bid to gather “derogatory information about Donald Trump.

Via that access, Durham claimed, the executive was able to observe internet traffic from “(i) a particular healthcare provider, (ii) Trump Tower, (iii) Donald Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and (iv) the Executive Office of the President of the United States.”

Conservative media and the Trump family seized upon the allegation to dust off a familiar refrain: that the Obama administration and/or the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign had “spied” on Trump during or after the election.

Durham did not specify in the filing under what administration the alleged “gathering” by the tech executive — identified by the New York Times and others as Rodney Joffe — took place. But the narrative seemed to tee up a conclusion that conservative outlets quickly leapt to: that the White House had been monitored during the Trump administration.

This led to an outpouring of rage on the right, which cast the filing as proof that Trump was right about the spying allegations all along.

Durham has produced nothing but propaganda in the 486 days and counting of his "investigation." It's what has become classic Republican abuse of power. One might even say "deep state."

So did Durham really reach this conclusion or just do his part to drop little clues that will lead paranoids to leap to conclusions that really make no sense but that feed the "Hilary is bad, Trump was done wrong" line of conspiracy thinking?  I'm just trying to gauge how either dumb or devious he is.

[jackd]

At some point he's going to have to produce some evidence. Until then, it's anyone's guess what he's up to.

[pnwguy]

Feb 17, 2022 16:51:27 GMT jackd said:

At some point he's going to have to produce some evidence. Until then, it's anyone's guess what he's up to.

Silly rabbit.  MAGAts don't need evidence.  Maybe courts do, but the jury Durham was presenting his case to is Magastan.

[goldenvalley]

Feb 17, 2022 17:05:55 GMT pnwguy said:

Feb 17, 2022 16:51:27 GMT jackd said:

At some point he's going to have to produce some evidence. Until then, it's anyone's guess what he's up to.

Silly rabbit.  MAGAts don't need evidence.  Maybe courts do, but the jury Durham was presenting his case to is Magastan.

True.  I have to remember that there are alternative facts that don't need evidence.

[andydp]

Feb 17, 2022 17:42:27 GMT goldenvalley said:

Feb 17, 2022 17:05:55 GMT pnwguy said:

Silly rabbit.  MAGAts don't need evidence.  Maybe courts do, but the jury Durham was presenting his case to is Magastan.

True.  I have to remember that there are alternative facts that don't need evidence.

5G Towers and contrails.  A deadly mix.

[jackd]

MAGAts don't need convincing either so it's either a waste of time or an effort to influence someone not already convinced.

[LFC]

Feb 17, 2022 16:51:27 GMT jackd said:

At some point he's going to have to produce some evidence. Until then, it's anyone's guess what he's up to.

Dragging it out into the next election cycle with lots and lots of innuendo is the point. Durham knows he doesn't have dick and it doesn't matter. Ditto for Treytor Gowdy. Ditto for Ken Starr. The list of abusive Republican "investigators" just keeps getting longer and longer.

[LFC]

Trump has taken Durham's shady court filing mixed with right-wing media lies, added his own lies, and cranked out yet another Big Lie that the MAGAts will greedily gobble up.

Trump’s incoherent rant was, however, informed by conservative media’s spin on Durham’s filing. Right-wing outlets have been pushing hard this week a fallacious story about how the Clinton campaign paid to have shadowy cyber spies “infiltrate” not just Trump’s campaign, but his White House as well.

Durham alleged nothing of the sort, but he omitted and in some ways misrepresented facts he alluded to in his filing.

Right-wing media, frothing at the mouth for Durham news, then misrepresented Durham’s filing: In fact, Durham did not allege that anything was infiltrated, and spoke of an episode that unfolded when Obama was in the White House, not Trump.

Sussman’s defense attorneys slammed Durham for framing his allegations misleadingly to feed into MAGA conspiracy theories that the Clinton campaign had intelligence officials spy on the Trump 2016 campaign and fabricate evidence to launch the FBI’s Russia probe.

Mushing this unholy mess together with lies about 2020, however, was Trump’s innovation and Trump’s alone.

Remind me again, why shouldn't I assume Trump supporters are stupid?

[goldenvalley]

Feb 17, 2022 20:55:25 GMT LFC said:

Trump has taken Durham's shady court filing mixed with right-wing media lies, added his own lies, and cranked out yet another Big Lie that the MAGAts will greedily gobble up.

Remind me again, why shouldn't I assume Trump supporters are stupid?

They create their own smart by reasoning backwards from their desired conclusion and finding alternative facts.  

[LFC]

Multiple corporations who said they'd no longer donate to fascists have decided to donate to fascists after all.

After a violent mob stormed the Capitol building in January, hundreds of corporations pledged to make changes to their political giving. Some corporations pledged to withhold PAC funding to the 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the election, setting the stage for the riot. Other corporations said they were suspending all PAC activity and others promised to reevaluate their giving criteria in light of the violence.

Popular Information's January 6 corporate accountability index is the first resource that comprehensively monitors these pledges. It tracks which companies have kept their promises, which ones violated their promises directly, and which ones fall somewhere in between.

This index will be regularly updated as new FEC filings become available.

Here's a sample of what they produced.

Corporations that pledged to suspend donations to the 147 Republican objectors but directly donated to those Republicans

This category includes companies that pledged specifically to cut off donations to the 147 Republicans after January 6 and have since donated directly to those Republicans. There are currently seven companies in this group.

[snip]

What Home Depot said after January 6: “We are pausing to take time to carefully review and reevaluate each of the members who voted to object to the election results before considering further contributions to them. While the PAC is making contribution decisions on the next cycle, as always, it will evaluate future donations against a number of factors. Our PAC supports candidates on both sides of the aisle who champion pro-business, pro-retail positions that create jobs and economic growth.” Home Depot donated $50,000 to 10 Republican objectors and $45,000 total to the NRSC on March 31 and December 31.

[snip]

What Walgreens said after January 6: “As Walgreens continues to focus on ending the COVID-19 pandemic by delivering testing and vaccinations to communities across America, our employee political action committee has decided to suspend contributions to the members of Congress who voted to object to the certification of the U.S. Electoral College votes. Walgreens holds in high regard the role government plays in our country and the peaceful transition of power that is core to our democracy. We look forward to the country unifying to address the many challenges we are facing together as citizens of this great nation.”

Walgreens donated $26,500 to 12 Republican objectors.

[pnwguy]

Feb 18, 2022 17:06:11 GMT LFC said:

Multiple corporations who said they'd no longer donate to fascists have decided to donate to fascists after all.

Oligarchies thrive under autocracies. While the US is still sort of a democracy, the companies have to fear for their consumer image. But that doesn't mean they don't mind secretly lobbying for a fascist take over with their donor dollars.

[goldenvalley]

Feb 18, 2022 17:51:43 GMT pnwguy said:

Feb 18, 2022 17:06:11 GMT LFC said:

Multiple corporations who said they'd no longer donate to fascists have decided to donate to fascists after all.

Oligarchies thrive under autocracies. While the US is still sort of a democracy, the companies have to fear for their consumer image. But that doesn't mean they don't mind secretly lobbying for a fascist take over with their donor dollars.

They're all wanna be monopolists complete control over their product with no one else offering the same thing and complete control over all suppliers.  

[LFC]

Remember the sickening "atta' boys" from the MSM because Mike Pence pooped in the potty by not being instrumental in a coup? Yeah, well he's back to being an apologist about the RNC statement on the people who wanted to hang him. For somebody who claims to be so religious he sure seems to have no soul.

Former President Mike Pence on Thursday evening shrugged off the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) whitewashing of the events of Jan. 6, the day when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol while chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”

During an event he was headlining at Stanford University, Pence addressed the RNC’s resolution to censure House Jan. 6 Committee members Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), which defended the people being investigated over the Jan. 6 attack as “ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

Per the Washington Post, the former vice president said he didn’t think the resolution was “talking about people that engaged in violence against persons or property that day.”

The RNC was talking about “a whole range of people” who, in Pence’s words, “have been set upon” by the House committee, he told the Stanford audience.

“I just don’t know too many people around the country, including my friends at the RNC, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who have any different view than it was tragic day, that the people that ransacked the Capitol were wrong and should be held to account in the law,” the former vice president said.

Pence praised the RNC for making a “a very clear statement, after the fact” that it disapproved of the violence that took place that day.

“I believe them,” he said. “They’re good people, and I believe that’s what they meant.”

Pence also made it clear that his one moment of unequivocally pushing back against Trump two weeks ago — when the former vice president declared that he never had the power to overturn the 2020 election despite Trump’s claims — wasn’t the beginning of any serious effort to combat Trump’s ongoing lies about the election.

[goldenvalley]

Feb 18, 2022 21:46:59 GMT LFC said:

Remember the sickening "atta' boys" from the MSM because Mike Pence pooped in the potty by not being instrumental in a coup? Yeah, well he's back to being an apologist about the RNC statement on the people who wanted to hang him. For somebody who claims to be so religious he sure seems to have no soul.

Former President Mike Pence on Thursday evening shrugged off the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) whitewashing of the events of Jan. 6, the day when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol while chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”

During an event he was headlining at Stanford University, Pence addressed the RNC’s resolution to censure House Jan. 6 Committee members Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), which defended the people being investigated over the Jan. 6 attack as “ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

Per the Washington Post, the former vice president said he didn’t think the resolution was “talking about people that engaged in violence against persons or property that day.”

The RNC was talking about “a whole range of people” who, in Pence’s words, “have been set upon” by the House committee, he told the Stanford audience.

“I just don’t know too many people around the country, including my friends at the RNC, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who have any different view than it was tragic day, that the people that ransacked the Capitol were wrong and should be held to account in the law,” the former vice president said.

Pence praised the RNC for making a “a very clear statement, after the fact” that it disapproved of the violence that took place that day.

“I believe them,” he said. “They’re good people, and I believe that’s what they meant.”

Pence also made it clear that his one moment of unequivocally pushing back against Trump two weeks ago — when the former vice president declared that he never had the power to overturn the 2020 election despite Trump’s claims — wasn’t the beginning of any serious effort to combat Trump’s ongoing lies about the election.

He is sorta like Lindsey Graham who I think is generally smarter but no less opportunistic.  They go off in one direction and then realize Trump wouldn't like that and so change course.

[LFC]

Feb 17, 2022 20:55:25 GMT LFC said:

Trump has taken Durham's shady court filing mixed with right-wing media lies, added his own lies, and cranked out yet another Big Lie that the MAGAts will greedily gobble up.

Now this shitbag is basically playing the "What? I can't help what they do with the softball I teed up for them!" card. Gawd, what a piece of garbage.

Couldn’t Be Me!

After almost a week of Fox News and Trump goons going to town on his court filing, special counsel John Durham filed a defensive response on Thursday to accusations that he’d purposefully omitted and misrepresented facts in his filing to feed into MAGAland’s conspiracy theories about the Clinton campaign.

• It’s not his fault Fox et al. used his report to spread a fake narrative, Durham insisted. “If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government’s Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government’s inclusion of this information,” he sniffed.

• Trump had latched onto Durham’s filing to somehow make it about the 2020 election. The case has nothing to do with the 2020 election.

• By the way, even conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt thinks the right-wing media is overdoing it with the Durham thing.

[AnBr]

QAnon founder may have been identified

[goldenvalley]

Feb 20, 2022 12:10:28 GMT AnBr said:

QAnon founder may have been identified

Both an HBO documentary and a BBC radio 4 documentary identified this Ron Watkins guy last spring.

[LFC]

The police report on the "hacking" accusation my Missouri's asshole governor says he's full of shit. To top it off it turns out that the bug was 10 years old. If he was a real man who actually cared about his state then he'd be thanking the journalist for what he did. Instead he wanted to score political points but of course he failed miserably at that too.

A newly released police report thoroughly debunks Missouri Gov. Mike Parson's baffling claim that a journalist who helped the state identify and fix a website security flaw was a "hacker" and criminal.

Parson demanded the investigation in October and called for criminal charges against St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud. "It is unlawful to access encoded data and systems in order to examine other people's personal information, and we are coordinating state resources to respond and utilize all legal methods available," Parson said at the time. The Republican governor claimed that Renaud was "acting against a state agency to compromise teachers' personal information in an attempt to embarrass the state and sell headlines for their news outlet" and said his administration "will not let this crime against Missouri teachers go unpunished."

But the resulting police report confirms in detail that Renaud did exactly what he said from the beginning: He identified a security flaw by viewing publicly available HTML code on a misconfigured state website and delayed publishing an article on his findings until after the state closed the security hole.

The police report also revealed that the security flaw had existed since 2011. The mistake exposed teachers' Social Security numbers on a Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website that allowed anyone to search for information about teachers. Up to 576,000 teachers' Social Security numbers may have been exposed because the data goes back to 2005, the report said.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol police report was posted yesterday by the Post-Dispatch along with an article about the report. "The highway patrol said it spent about 175 hours on the investigation. Three officers assisted in the probe. No cost estimate was provided," the Post-Dispatch wrote.

How nice. Spending taxpayer dollars for a zinger of a sound bite which you didn't even get.

[goldenvalley]

Feb 24, 2022 14:12:25 GMT LFC said:

The police report on the "hacking" accusation my Missouri's asshole governor says he's full of shit. To top it off it turns out that the bug was 10 years old. If he was a real man who actually cared about his state then he'd be thanking the journalist for what he did. Instead he wanted to score political points but of course he failed miserably at that too.

A newly released police report thoroughly debunks Missouri Gov. Mike Parson's baffling claim that a journalist who helped the state identify and fix a website security flaw was a "hacker" and criminal.

Parson demanded the investigation in October and called for criminal charges against St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Josh Renaud. "It is unlawful to access encoded data and systems in order to examine other people's personal information, and we are coordinating state resources to respond and utilize all legal methods available," Parson said at the time. The Republican governor claimed that Renaud was "acting against a state agency to compromise teachers' personal information in an attempt to embarrass the state and sell headlines for their news outlet" and said his administration "will not let this crime against Missouri teachers go unpunished."

But the resulting police report confirms in detail that Renaud did exactly what he said from the beginning: He identified a security flaw by viewing publicly available HTML code on a misconfigured state website and delayed publishing an article on his findings until after the state closed the security hole.

The police report also revealed that the security flaw had existed since 2011. The mistake exposed teachers' Social Security numbers on a Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website that allowed anyone to search for information about teachers. Up to 576,000 teachers' Social Security numbers may have been exposed because the data goes back to 2005, the report said.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol police report was posted yesterday by the Post-Dispatch along with an article about the report. "The highway patrol said it spent about 175 hours on the investigation. Three officers assisted in the probe. No cost estimate was provided," the Post-Dispatch wrote.

How nice. Spending taxpayer dollars for a zinger of a sound bite which you didn't even get.

The sad thing is that the facts won't matter.  Only the accusation will ever be remembered and it will morph, if it already hasn't, into a "truth".  Disproving lies makes no impact on the base that wants to destroy anyone or anything it perceives to be an enemy.

[pnwguy]

Next up: Florida resident arrested after Governor DeSantis claims his reporting of a pothole on state route 528 was a crime to frighten motorists and cause accidents.

[LFC]

Feb 24, 2022 17:39:03 GMT pnwguy said:

Next up: Florida resident arrested after Governor DeSantis claims his reporting of a pothole on state route 528 was a crime to frighten motorists and cause accidents.

Is state route 528 in a highly Democratic area? If not I call bullshit.

[pnwguy]

Feb 24, 2022 19:10:40 GMT LFC said:

Feb 24, 2022 17:39:03 GMT pnwguy said:

Next up: Florida resident arrested after Governor DeSantis claims his reporting of a pothole on state route 528 was a crime to frighten motorists and cause accidents.

Is state route 528 in a highly Democratic area? If not I call bullshit.

If it was a highly Democratic area, DeSatanist would champion reports of potholes as proof of Democrats turning America into a sh*thole nation.  It would be a Democrat reporting of a pothole in a Republican region that warrants arrest, torture, and public ridicule.  Republican governed areas are a shining city on a hill, don't you know?