From Deutsche Welle, military/industrial opportunism at work:
From The Independent, the former head of the Defense Intelligence shows a remarkable lack of intelligence:
Eric Trump, spawn of Donald, is either totally bonkers, or he’s hustling for a larger piece of Daddy’s inheritance.
Consider, if you will, his paternal hagiography on full display in a chat with Sean Hannity on Fox:
“They wanna tar and feather the man. They know he did a great job for this nation. They know that there’s never been a more beloved political figure in our country’s history.
“I think people are going to miss Donald Trump really quickly. I think they’re going to miss him really, really quickly.
“There are 75 million Americans who would follow him to the end of Earth. I mean, they love the man, they love what he stands for. They love that he was a fighter, that he carried that fight largely alone. Oftentimes he had to fight for the entire Republican party, right, because they weren’t doing a whole lot of — now you have a lot good fighters but you didn’t back then.
“What my father did is something that no political figure has ever done in American history, and he changed his country, and he changed it for the better. And he taught people how to fight, and he gave Americans the greatest civics lesson, and it’s exactly, frankly, what this country needed.
“He’s really a father to America.”
As a country. I fear we are well and truly screwed.
Although Democrat Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by 7,060,140 votes, most Republicans think Donald Trump was the actual winner, a delusion fostered by Trump a cabal of crazies, the craven, and the merely confused.
You know, the kind of folks who staged a lethal insurrection at the national legislature and those who led them on.
And of that lot, none is more dangerously delusional than Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican newly named to sit on the House of Representatives Labor and Education Committee.
As the Los Angeles Times reports:
She has promoted QAnon, the debunked conspiracy theory that imagines former President Trump is leading a fight against a government controlled by a global deep state cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles. On social media, YouTube videos and elsewhere, she has said Muslims don’t belong in government, suggested the 2018 Parkland, Fla., school shooting and others were staged, and repeatedly endorsed executing Democratic leaders.
<snip>
Greene was quick to back Trump’s false claims of election fraud and become a major promoter of “Stop the Steal.”
Greene has taken pains to distance herself from the mob that attacked Congress. But she has also pressed the subject of election fraud, railing against the “fake news” media and filing articles of impeachment against newly elected President Biden.
But it gets much, much crazier.
Marjorie and the Jewish Space lasers
The latest discovery is a now deleted Facebook post, as Media Matters for America reports, she blamed an unusual source for California’s disastrous 2018 Camp Fire, then the largest wildfire in California history [2020’s fires were even worse]:
She wrote a November 17, 2018, Facebook post — which is no longer available online — in which she said that she was speculating “because there are too many coincidences to ignore” regarding the fire, including that then-California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) wanted to build the high-speed rail project and “oddly there are all these people who have said they saw what looked like lasers or blue beams of light causing the fires.” She also speculated that a vice chairman at “Rothschild Inc, international investment banking firm” was somehow involved, and suggested the fire was caused by a beam from “space solar generators.”
A report in Forbes added an ironic twist:
In her post, Taylor Greene suggested that the 2018 California wildfires may have not been due not to climate change leaving vegetation more combustible. No, instead she advanced the theory that, drum roll please, some kind of “space laser” had lit things on fire. Yes, you heard that correctly: a space laser. As they said in the movie Wayne’s World, exsqueeze me, baking powder?
Usually when the words “space” and “laser” are involved in an explanation, you are sort of reaching. Saying “honey, I didn’t call you after work because the space laser caused interference,” and “sorry, we couldn’t give you the raise because, you know, the space laser,” don’t tend to be very convincing.
And here’s the post in question:
As toofab reported, there were some problems with her hypothesis, problems pother than the sheer insanity of it all:
But, as Solaren — the company behind the supposed galactic weapon pointed out on Friday — the self-declared bibliophile clearly didn’t read everything about the project.
For one, Solaren hasn’t quite gotten to the launching satellites into space stage yet.
Secondly, the contract between Solaren and PG&E dissolved in 2015 — three years before the fires started — because they were never able to generate the financing for it.
Thirdly — as the article Greene referenced clearly stated — the theoretical satellites would convert the solar energy to radio waves before transmitting them to Earth… which are both harmless and invisible, thus making them the unlikely source of those blue laser beams, much less the cause of any fires.
Thanks to their newfound viral fame, the company was forced to explain that its satellites — which do not even exist yet — “cannot” be weaponized.
Her post got the handle “Jewish space lasers” because of the inclusion of Rothschild, Feinstein, and Blum, and the invariable inclusion of a Rothschild or two in almost every crazy uber-Right conspiracy theory.
Greene’s reaction to the furor? The Los Angeles Times has it:
Greene put out a statement Friday addressed to “the radical, left-wing Democrat mob and the Fake News media trying to take me out.”
“I will never back down,” she wrote. “I will never give up. … More MAGA reinforcements are on the way.”
The real problem with Greene
While many Democratic fellow legislators, especially those she’s threatened, as well as some fellow Republicans want Greene ousted and/or censured, the sad reality is that Greene truly is representative of a large segment of the Republican voters.
And like Trump, she knows almost any bad press, especially in the mainstream media, is good press, proof she’s upsetting the people her constituents like to see hot and bothered.
And as NPR notes:
Greene has also “liked” social media posts that called for executing “deep state” FBI agents, or that advocated removing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with “a bullet to the head.”
Many of her supporters were no doubt thrilled to see a candidate who hustled votes with a display like this, posted eight weeks before the election:
After all, 38 percent of adult Georgians owned guns, often many guns, in 2018, and many oi them, we suspect, are Republicans.
Which raises question representative democracies invariably confront in times of crisis: What happens when a significant and militant section of the population is opposed to the nature of the government itself and crosses over into violence, both rhetorical and physical?
Posted in Culture, Extremism, Governance, Idiocy, Politics
A Napa, California man with a large private arsenal and a bunch of bombs is now in jail, charged with, possession of illegal explosives.
Among his possible targets were California Gov. Gavin Newsom, executives at Facebook and Twitter, and that favorite bugbear of the far Right, George Soros.
Perhaps the most peculiar item seized by state and federal investigators was this:
From the Department of Justice:
Ian Benjamin Rogers was charged yesterday in a federal criminal complaint with possessing five pipe bombs that were unregistered destructive devices, announced United States Attorney David L. Anderson and Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge Craig D. Fair.
“We allege that Ian Benjamin Rogers possessed homemade pipe bombs and the materials to make more,” said U.S. Attorney Anderson. “We draw a bright line between lawlessness and our constitutional freedoms. We will prosecute illegal weapons stockpiles regardless of the motivation of the offender.”
“The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Napa County Sheriff’s Office, and the Napa Special Investigations Bureau discovered five pipe bombs and other explosive material during our joint investigation,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Craig D. Fair. “The FBI investigates all credible threats, and our highest priority is ensuring public safety. We urge the public to remain vigilant. We need the community’s support in reporting threatening behavior and suspicious activity to local law enforcement or the FBI.”
The criminal complaint alleges that Rogers, 43, of Napa, possessed five pipe bombs discovered by law enforcement officers and agents during a search of his business on January 15, 2021. The complaint states that on that date, Rogers was arrested and a search warrant was served on Roger’s home and business in Napa County. Upon his arrest, at Roger’s business officers found a large gun safe. Inside the safe, the officers and agents discovered and seized several guns and the five pipe bombs. They also identified other materials at the scene that could be used to manufacture destructive devices, including black powder, pipes, endcaps, and manuals, including The Anarchist Cookbook, U.S. Army Improvised Munitions Handbook, and Homemade C-4 A Recipe for Survival.
At least 49 guns were seized from Roger’s home and business along with thousands of rounds of ammunition. Officers and agents also discovered a sticker on Roger’s vehicle window that is commonly used by so-called “Three-Percenters,” people who ascribe to extreme anti-government, pro-gun beliefs.
Rogers was arrested on January 15, 2021, and appeared in Napa County state criminal court on state illegal firearm charges. He is being held in state custody in lieu of a $5 million bail as he awaits a preliminary hearing. Federal prosecutors intend to seek Rogers’s appearance in federal court on the charges in the complaint upon the issuance of a federal order to transfer Rogers to the United States District Court in San Francisco. The date of such appearance has not yet been set.
Those damning text messages
The criminal complaint was accompanied by an affidavit from FBI Special Agent Stephanie Minor of the agency’s San Francisco Field Office Domestic Terrorism Squad.
The document outlines evidence recovered, including this:
[T]ext messages recovered from ROGERS’s phone indicate his belief that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, and his intent to attack Democrats and places associated with Democrats in an effort to ensure Trump remained in office. For example, in a message that I believe ROGERS sent on January 10, 2021, he said, “We can attack Twitter or the democrats you pick” and “I think we can attack either easily”. When the other person responded, “Hmmm” and “Let’s go after Soros,” ROGERS said, “We can attack Twitter and democrats easy right now burn they’re shit down,” whereas targeting “Soros,” which I believe is a reference to George Soros, would require a “road trip.” The next day, ROGERS sent another message to the same person: “I want to blow up a democrat building bad”. “The democrats need to pay,” he added. “Let’s see what happens, if nothing does I’m going to war” “Democrats, Twitter, etc” “I hope 45 goes to war if he doesn’t I will”. Based on my training and experience and my discussions with other agents with experience in domestic terrorism investigations, I believe that these latter messages indicate ROGERS’s belief that Trump (“45”) actually won the presidential election and should “go to war” to ensure he remained in power. I further believe that the messages evince ROGERS’s intent to engage in acts of violence himself locally if there was not an organized “war” to prevent Joe Biden from assuming the presidency.
ROGERS added, “Let’s see what happens then we act,” but followed it up with “I’m thinking sac office first target” “Then maybe bird and face offices”. I believe that when ROGERS said, “sac office first target,” he meant that their first target should be the offices of California Governor Gavin Newsom in Sacramento. I further believe that when ROGERS said that the “bird and face” offices would be next, he meant the offices of Twitter (“bird”) and Facebook (“face”), because both social media platforms had locked Trump’s accounts to prevent him from sending messages on those platforms. “Sad it’s come to this but I’m not going down without a fight” “These commies need to be told what’s up,” he said.
As for that peculiar card, Minor noted:
I know that many extreme anti-government militias are populated by white supremacists. I believe that the statement “Trumps Everything” and the numbers “0045” repeated four times (to make it look like a credit card number), are references to Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States.
We are continually amazed at how criminally inept the wingnuts are proving to be, especially when it comes to the art of criminal conspiracy.
We assume these guys watch a lot of thrillers and cop shows, and we know they’re obsessed with the deep state.
So why aren’t they using burner phones and deleting their text messages, as an observant fan of action flicks would seemingly know are the first things you do when you don’t want to get caught whilst plotting nefarious deeds?
Or maybe he thought that White Privilege plastic was a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. . .
And threats come from both without and within.
We begin with the latest warning, via the Associated Press:
Federal law enforcement officials are examining a number of threats aimed at members of Congress as the second trial of former President Donald Trump nears, including ominous chatter about killing legislators or attacking them outside of the U.S. Capitol, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.
The threats, and concerns that armed protesters could return to sack the Capitol anew, have prompted the U.S. Capitol Police and other federal law enforcement to insist thousands of National Guard troops remain in Washington as the Senate moves forward with plans for Trump’s trial, the official said Sunday.
The shocking insurrection at the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob prompted federal officials to rethink security in and around its landmarks, resulting in an unprecedented lockdown for Biden’s inauguration. Though the event went off without any problems and armed protests around the country did not materialize, the threats to lawmakers ahead of Trump’s trial exemplified the continued potential for danger.
Similar to those intercepted by investigators ahead of Biden’s inauguration, the threats that law enforcement agents are tracking vary in specificity and credibility, said the official, who had been briefed on the matter. Mainly posted online and in chat groups, the messages have included plots to attack members of Congress during travel to and from the Capitol complex during the trial, according to the official.
We’ll begin with some implicit threats, starting with a new member of the House whose campaign included this little gem:
The implicit threat posed by a colleague still resonates with the members of the the progressive Squad, as the Guardian reported 23 January:
Nobody should have to go to work every day wondering whether one of their colleagues is going to kill them. And yet, that’s precisely what some Democrats – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the Squad, in particular – are having to do. The Squad are a favourite target of rightwingers; they’ve had reason to worry about their safety long before the Capitol riots. Last year, for example, the QAnon supporter and new congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted an image on Facebook of her holding an assault rifle alongside Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. “We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart,” her post’s caption read. A Florida Republican running for Congress also openly suggested that Omar be executed for treason. “The fact that those who make these violent threats very publicly without hesitation reaffirms how much white supremacy has spread within the [Republican party],” Tlaib tweeted at the time.
Following the Capitol riots, AOC spoke out about how she feared for her life. She wasn’t just afraid of the rioters, she was worried that “white supremacist members of Congress” would disclose her location and endanger her safety. Squad member Ayanna Pressley was probably thinking the same thing: somehow every panic button in her office had been torn out before the riots.
“[Many of us] still don’t yet feel safe around other members of Congress,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Thursday. “One just tried to bring a gun on the floor of the House today.” Gun culture in America is so warped that instead of agreeing that bringing guns to work was bad, Cuomo suggested the armed congressman might have been trying to keep everyone safe. “I don’t really care what they say their intentions are,” AOC replied. “I care what the impact of their actions are and the impact is to put 435 members of Congress in danger … it is absolutely outrageous that we even have to have this conversation.”
I know the last four years have warped our idea of “normal” but there is absolutely nothing normal about members of Congress having to worry that their colleagues might murder them. “GOP lawmakers campaigned with images of them cocking guns next to photos of myself,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Friday. “Now they are trying to violate DC law and House rules to sneak guns onto the House floor two weeks after a white supremacist insurrection that killed 5 people. Why?”
Why, indeed? That’s a question that we all need to be asking. Trump may have left the White House but the violence he helped incite has not been eliminated. The Capitol isn’t just a hostile working environment at the moment, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
After Facebook purged her Squad ad last year, Greene tweeted back a response:
So who is Marjorie Taylor Greene?
The short answer: a white nationalist neo-fascist, a latter-day Silver Shirt, espousing a militant latter-day fascism of the sort mobilized and energized by Donald Trump.
A zealous adherent of Alex Jones and other spewers of virulent paranoiac bile, she is an exemplar of what happens when the delusional arouse the disaffected by incantations of hate and promises of cathartic violence.
She is a traitor, not to the nation as much as the very concept of humanity itself.
From the 22 January Washington Post:
Two years before she was elected to Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene hopped on Facebook to respond to a comment falsely claiming that the Parkland, Fla., school shooting was staged, according to screenshots posted by Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog group. Instead of rejecting the false claim surrounding the mass shooting that killed 17 people, Greene enthusiastically agreed with the conspiracy theory.
“Exactly!” she wrote in response.
<snip>
Greene’s office did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment as of early Friday. Facebook removed Greene’s comments for violating its policies following the watchdog group’s report, a Facebook spokesperson told The Post.
Greene, the first open supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory to win a seat in Congress, has also continued to repeat former president Donald Trump’s baseless claims of mass election fraud. Earlier this week, Twitter temporarily suspended her account after she posted a clip with false claims about the election.
More from the 22 January Connecticut Post:
In 2018, Greene suggested on Facebook that Democrats cooked up school shootings to limit gun access. She wrote “I am told that Nancy Pelosi tells Hillary Clinton several times a month that ‘we need another school shooting’ in order to persuade the public to want strict gun control.” Now, a first-term congresswoman, Greene has said she intends to be the strongest defender of gun rights on Capitol Hill and has signed onto to legislation to expand access to suppressors and ease transfers of firearm accessories.
The false, extremist theory that the Sandy Hook shooting, which killed 26 people, including 20 children, was a hoax, has plagued Newtown families for years, promoted by Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and others. Now even Jones doesn’t believe it was staged, like he did in 2014, according to court documents. But other extremists continue to hound and harass Sandy Hook families over the falsehood.
And the Donald loves her
Her biggest fan celebrated her Republican primary victory victory, as the Detroit News reported 12 August:
“Congratulations to future Republican Star Marjorie Taylor Greene on a big Congressional primary win in Georgia against a very tough and smart opponent,” Trump said on Twitter. “Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up – a real WINNER!”
“You inspired me to run and fight to Save America and Stop Socialism!!” Greene responded to Trump’s tweet. “No one will fight harder than me!!”
Greene has amassed tens of thousands of followers on social media, where she often posts videos of herself speaking directly to the camera. Those videos have helped propel her popularity with her base, but also drawn condemnation after videos surfaced in which she complains of an “Islamic invasion” into government offices, claims Black and Hispanic men are held back by “gangs and dealing drugs,” and pushes an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who is Jewish, collaborated with the Nazis.
On 4 November, the day after she won her seat in Congress, the Washington Post wrote about some of her beliefs:
Greene, who co-owns a commercial construction and renovation company with her husband, has been unambiguous about her support for QAnon. In the past, she has posted videos elevating QAnon and praising “Q,” its anonymous leader.
“Q is a patriot. He is someone that very much loves his country, and he’s on the same page as us, and he is very pro-Trump,” she said in a 2017 video posted to YouTube that has since been made private.
In that same video, she talks about an “awakening” that will reveal deep corruption and encourage Americans to support Trump.
“I’m very excited about that now there’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it,” she said.
Forbes reported on 17 January about another Greene social media takedown, this time over her election fraud claims:
Twitter on Sunday temporarily suspended the account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who first gained a social media following by promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory and who routinely posts outlandish content online, after the freshman Georgia congresswoman sparred with a state election official over baseless voter fraud allegations.
Greene’s personal account was suspended for 12 hours following “multiple violations” of Twitter’s “civic integrity policy,” a company spokesperson told Forbes on Sunday.
Twitter did not specify what content led to the action—and the congresswoman herself said she was in the dark about the suspension—though three of her tweets in the last 24 hours were labeled by Twitter for spreading false claims about the election.
In a string of tweets Sunday, Greene harassed Georgia voting systems manager Gabriel Sterling, calling him a “moron” and “little,” after the Republican election official held Greene, former Rep. Doug Collins and President Donald Trump responsible for Republicans’ loss in two Senate runoffs in the state.
Sterling claimed Greene, Collins and Trump drove down Republican voter turnout by making false claims about voter fraud.
ProPublica has collected pages of her deleted Tweets, including this gem, sent the day before the Capitol insurrection:
I’m fighting with everything I have to defend our 2A rights! I’m standing STRONG for election integrity & objecting to the Electoral College certification! The Democrats want me GONE & they’re working on it. Donate today so I can stay & fight FOR YOU!
And her accomplices, armed and dangerous
Greene’s not the only Republican who loves her concealed weapons.
From a 12 January story from CNN:
House Democrats told CNN that they are worried some lawmakers are ignoring House rules regarding firearms.
“There have been increasing tensions with certain incoming freshmen for months, who have been insistent on bringing firearms in violation of law and guidelines,” one House Democrat said, in a reference to Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and others.
Boebert was filmed in a campaign advertisement vowing to carry her Glock handgun around Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. and has said she would carry her gun to Congress. The District has strict gun laws and Washington’s police chief has warned the congresswoman that she is subject to the same laws as everyone else in the nation’s capital.
Cawthorn, meanwhile, said in an interview with Smoky Mountain News last week that he was armed when a mob stormed the Capitol.
“Fortunately, I was armed, so we would have been able to protect ourselves,” Cawthorn told the paper.
It’s illegal to carry a loaded firearm in the Capitol, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered House members to pass through metal detectors before entering the chamber, a measure vigorously opposed by the Boebert and her allies.
After a couple of incidents where Republicans tried to bypass the devices, Pelosi announced that she was introducing hefty fines for violations, sums to be deducted from Congressional paychecks. But the House won’t vote on the proposal before next month.
Another certifiable wingnut, armed and dangerous
Another tactic is a sort of legislative terrorism, throwing sands in the gears of the legislative process, what lawyers call malicious compliance, conforming to the rules in a way that disrupts system functioning.
And here’s a classic disruptor, fucking up other people’s lives just to get self-righteous jollies. a pistol packin’ GOPer profiled by the Washington Monthly on 22 January:
“Congressman Massie,” former Secretary of State John Kerry tweeted last March. “has tested positive for being an asshole.”
This view of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is shared across the political spectrum. Massie’s habit of clogging up the House with objections to measures that otherwise would otherwise pass by unanimous consent has made him unpopular with his colleagues. His objection to a coronavirus relief bill last spring required members of the House who were sheltering from the virus to return to the Capitol in person—where, needless to say, they were exposed to fellow members without masks.
This unpopularity may partially explain Massie’s apparent eagerness to arm himself on the House floor. Earlier this month, after Speaker Nancy Pelosi placed metal detectors at the doors to the chamber, Massie pushed through the detectors. He says, by cracky, the Constitution lets him do that. Stopping armed members from entering the chamber, he told the New York Post, violates “the part [of the Constitution] that says you can’t be stopped coming or going, you can’t be detained coming or going from the House. It just says that, very specifically.”
Newly elected Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), half of the House QAnon caucus, also insists on entering the chamber strapped. “The metal detector policy for the House floor is unnecessary, unconstitutional, and endangers members,” she said. Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX), a leader of the established crazy caucus, also refused the detector. “Article 1, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution contains specific language prohibiting Members of Congress from being impeded on the way to a session of the House or to a vote,” Gohmert said.
No wonder members of the Squad fear for their lives and the lives of loved ones and allies.
A direct threat to assassinate AOC
These people are not rational, and the evidence can be found in the words of the insurrectionists who seized the Capitol on 6 January, inspired by by the likes of Trump, Boebert, Greene, and Massie.
Here’s one instance of a would-be assassin who takes the logic of Congressional rants to their logical and lethal conclusion, via the Independent:
The Justice Department has charged a Texas man who allegedly participated in the 6 January mob at the US Capitol with threatening to assassinate congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Garret Miller of Texas is charged with five offenses including trespassing and making death threats towards the New York representative and a US Capitol Police officer.
According to court documents, Mr Miller tweeted “assassinate AOC,” and that a Capitol officer who fatally shot a Trump supporter during the attack “deserves to die” and won’t “survive long” because it’s “huntin[g] season.”
The man posted extensively before and during the Capitol attack, according to prosecutors, writing on his now-banned social media accounts that a “civil war could start” and “next time we bring the guns.”
A sign of the times
Here’s a billboard that greeted Southern motorists in August 2019:
The story, via CNN:
A controversial North Carolina billboard targeting four female members of Congress is coming down.
The sign for Cherokee Guns shows Reps. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, who have come to be known as “The Squad” – with “The 4 Horsemen Cometh” written above their photos. The “cometh” is crossed out and replaced with “are Idiots.”
The store’s owner, Doc Wacholz, said that he chose the women because of their “their message of turning this country into a socialist country,” he told CNN affiliate WTVC.
President Donald Trump recently tweeted that “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen” should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” He did not name them, but four congresswomen of color – Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley and Tlaib – have been outspoken about Trump’s immigration policies. Three of the four are natural born US citizens, and Omar, who was born in Somalia, became a US citizen in 2000.
“I don’t care if it was four white women or four white guys that had their view – they’d be on the billboard,” he said.
After a flood of protest and negative stories, the billboard came down.
But it’s message has endured.
Posted in Crime, Extremism, Governance, Idiocy, Intolerance, Law, Media, Politics, Protests, Uncategorized
Wonder why the Bidens had to wait so long in front of the White House door after the inauguration before someone opened it for them?
In two words: Trump spite.
From the National Journal, the tale of another Trump class act:
One of Donald and Melania Trump’s final small acts in a presidential transition charitably described as grudging was to send White House ushers home for the day on Wednesday morning, leaving the new first family to fend for themselves upon entering, according to several informed sources.
“The Trumps sent the butlers home when they left so there would be no one to help the Bidens when they arrived,” a well-placed official not associated with the incoming Biden team told National Journal. “So petty.”
The no-shows apparently included chief usher Timothy Harleth. Sources familiar with what happened confirm that Harleth, a former executive of Trump Hotels hired by Melania Trump, was summarily fired by the Trumps before they left—not by the Bidens, as has been widely reported.
Harleth was shown the door before the Bidens reached the door at the North Portico on Wednesday afternoon for their first official entrance as president and first lady. Video of their arrival showed them waving to photographers and hugging for the cameras for more than a minute—longer than typical presidential photo ops—before approaching the entrance with their family. The heavy doors swung open from within about 15 seconds later.
From the Washington Post‘s Fact Checker tracks the pulse of pusillanimous Presidential persiflage, showing the daily rates of discharge of the 30,573 false or misleading claims uttered, Tweeted, or otherwise flowing from the devious brain of Donald Trump for every day of his presidency. His peak prevaricational performance came on 1 November 2020, in a pre-electoral spew of no less than 503 whoppers [click on the image to enlarge]:
Posted in Human behavior, Idiocy, Politics
The London Daily Mail‘s headlines strike again, starting with this little bit of Trumpian malice:
Then a chronicle of loneliness:
And some more shunning:
And some appealing partisans:
Plus more partisans:
And another one:
And another one, a really, really dumb one:
Posted in Crime, Extremism, Governance, Idiocy, Journalism, Military, Politics
Our nominee for wingnut of the day goes to an Israeli far-Right cleric who claims that getting vaccination for coronavirus will turn strtaights into gays.
From the Independent:
An ultra-Orthodox rabbi has told his followers to avoid getting a Covid vaccine because it can “make them gay”.
Israeli media reported that Rabbi Daniel Asor, who has amassed a large online following, also claimed inoculation efforts were part of a “global malicious government“ trying to ”establish a new world order”.
While his claim of a link between the vaccine and homosexuality is factually incorrect, it also contradicts statements from leading orthodox rabbis who have called on their followers to come forward for a coronavirus jab.
According to news outlet Israel Yahom, Mr Asor used a recent sermon to claim: “Any vaccine made using an embryonic substrate, and we have evidence of this, causes opposite tendencies. Vaccines are taken from an embryonic substrate, and they did that here, too, so … it can cause opposite tendencies,” seemingly referring to homosexuality.
Responding to his comments, LGBT+ rights group Havruta joked that it was “currently gearing up to welcome our impending new members”.
What is it about COVID that turns far-Right zealots into total idiots.
Talk about your white privilege.
From the East Bay Times:
It’s been costing taxpayers $3,000 a month to provide the Secret Service agents protecting Ivanka Trump, her husband and their three children, with a toilet. That’s because President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law reportedly forbade agents from using any of the many bathrooms at the couple’s Washington D.C. mansion.
People began sharing memories about the “The Help,” a film set in the Civil Rights era, after the Washington Post published a story alleging that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner instructed agents guarding them and their three young children to stay out of their 6.5 bathrooms.
The agents were instead told to find facilities away from their house in the city’s exclusive Kalorama neighborhood, the Washington Post reported, citing interviews with neighbors and law enforcement officials. For a time, the agents used a porta-potty set up on the sidewalk, which neighbors complained about as being unsightly. Agents then used bathrooms in the nearby home of former President Barack Obama and the “not-so-nearby” residence of Vice President Mike Pence. Sometimes, they had to rely on the hospitality of nearby restaurants.
So let’s see if we got this right.
They can crap on the country, but taxpayers have to pay extra because the men and women charged with protecting their lives can’t even take a tinkle in one of their seven toilets?
What arrogance.
Two grand for an outhouse for a Goldman Sachs thumbsucker and his pretentious spouse.
And on the day after he’s sworn in.
I guess the nuts don’t fall far from the tree.
From the Independent:
Newly elected Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has said she would be filing articles of impeachment against incoming president, Joe Biden, for alleged “abuse of power” on his first day at the Oval Office.
Ms Greene announced her plan on Twitter after the Democrat-controlled House passed the threshold to impeach president Donald Trump on charges of inciting insurrection, writes Namita Singh.
While 10 Republicans voted to support the impeachment article, Ms Greene was amongst the 197 House representatives, who defended the president.
‘On January 21, 2021, I’ll be filing Articles of Impeachment against Joe Biden for abuse of power,’ Ms Greene had tweeted
An extreme statement?
No. It’s a statement of fact, and we have evidence, thanks to the New York Times, which posted a video captured during the Congressional lockdown during the Trump-inspired Capitol takeover in which Delaware Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester passes out masks, and sequestered Republican colleagues rebuff her efforts:
Refusing to mask-up is not a symbolic gesture of liberty [other than the “liberty” to be an asshole]; it is an expression of contempt for the ill and the elderly who might catch the virus because of their refusal to accept simple public health measures.
Their contempt for a simple act of humanity is simply breathtaking, and given that Republican voters skew older than Democrats, it’s a contempt that impacts directly on their own base.
From the accompanying New York Times story:
While sheltering in a secure location as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, House lawmakers may have been exposed to someone who was infected with the coronavirus, Congress’s Office of the Attending Physician said on Sunday.
<snip>
Dozens of lawmakers, staff members and reporters took shelter in the secure room on Wednesday, but a handful of Republicans refused to wear masks, one person there said, even as Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, Democrat of Delaware, tried to pass out masks.
Before the mob breached the Capitol, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, overseeing the certification of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory and debate over a Republican effort to subvert those results in certain states, admonished Republicans for having too many people on the floor and for some objectors refusing to wear masks as they spoke.
As the 117th Congress reconvened a week ago, multiple lawmakers tested positive for the coronavirus after taking their oath. Late Wednesday, one Republican, Representative Jake LaTurner of Kansas, received positive test results after voting on the House floor to overturn Arizona’s results and did not return for a second vote early Thursday. It was unclear where Mr. LaTurner was sheltering in place as the mob tried to break into the House chamber, but in a statement issued shortly before 3 a.m. on Thursday, his office said he was not experiencing symptoms.
And if someone exposed to one of the maskless wonders catches COVID as a result, a massive civil suit could follow, and even a possible prosecution from criminally negligent homicide, were this a just and reasonable world.
It’s a tactic familiar to any parent who catches a kid doing something naughty: Blame the other kid.
It’s far less innocent when it’s practiced by a sitting Member of Congress seeking to shift criminal blame from your own followers onto the backs of convenient scapegoats.
From BuzzFeed News:
A facial recognition company says a viral Washington Times story claiming it identified antifa members among the mob that stormed the Capitol on Wednesday is completely false.
XRVision told BuzzFeed News it has asked the conservative outlet for a retraction and apology over the story, which was cited in the House of Representatives after the riot late Wednesday by Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, an ardent Trump supporter.
On Wednesday, the Washington Times published a story that claimed XRVision “used its software to do facial recognition of protesters and matched two Philadelphia Antifa members to two men inside the Senate.” It claimed one man “has a tattoo that indicates he is a Stalinist sympathizer” and the other “is someone who shows up at climate and Black Lives Matter protests in the West.” The story did not name the men or provide evidence that they were involved in antifa, a decentralized group of “anti-fascists” who go to protests around the US and whom the right often uses as a bogeyman.
An attorney representing XRVision, which says it was founded in 2015 in Singapore, issued a statement to BuzzFeed News refuting the Washington Times story. The statement said XRVision’s software actually identified two members of neo-Nazi organizations and a QAnon supporter among the pro-Trump mob — not antifa members.
Donald Trump owns the Republican National Committee, and if you doubt it, consider this from today’s Washington Post [emphasis added]:
Trump briefly called in to the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting Thursday morning — and received a loud and overwhelmingly enthusiastic reception when RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel put him on speakerphone, according to people in the room.
“We love you!” some in the room yelled.
Addressing RNC members by phone as they held a private, members-only breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island in Florida, Trump said he had heard that the news media had falsely reported he would not be speaking. He told the RNC members he wanted to speak, was sorry to miss the event and looked forward to seeing them in person.
Trump made no mention of Wednesday’s violence at the U.S. Capitol, according to the people present, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the president’s remarks. Trump had originally intended to deliver a longer speech but is not scheduled to address the event Thursday night.
The London Daily Mail‘s pivot from Trump booster to Trump trasher is complete.
We start with calls for an end:
He’s turning on, tuning in, and dropping out:
A co-conspirator laments:
A rogue’s gallery revealed:
At least they’re consistent:
More legislative backpedaling:
And a happy vandal:
Noting some peculiar behavior:
A point well taken:
We conclude with a word from on high:
Posted in Crime, Governance, Idiocy, Journalism, Police, Politics, Protests
Nebraska’s Republican governor, the son of a racist Wall Street billionaire, has just sentenced scores of his fellow Nebraskans to death by COVID.
And he’s done it by ordering that no COVID vaccinations be given to non-documented workers at the state’s massive meat-packing industry.
And why is that so terrible?
Consider this from a study reported in July in the prestigious British Medical Journal [open access}:
Slaughterhouses and meat processing plants are favourable environments for SARS-CoV-2 transmission. The virus thrives in lower temperatures and very high or very low relative humidity. Metallic surfaces retain live viruses for longer than other environments. A dense production of aerosols combining dust, feathers, and faeces is produced in the plants, and intense water use carries materials extensively over surfaces. Workers must speak loudly or shout over the noise, releasing more droplets and spreading them further. Workplaces are crowded, and social distancing is difficult.
<snip>
The meat industry is highly profitable globally and a major driver of both antimicrobial resistance and climate breakdown. People may come to reflect on how they get their meat, what they are prepared to pay for it, and what conditions they expect the animals and the workers to endure so they can have it.
And then there’s this, from a study reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and published late last month, focusing on the U.S. packing industry [emphasis added]:
We estimate the total excess COVID-19 cases and deaths associated with proximity to livestock plants to be 236,000 to 310,000 (6 to 8% of all US cases) and 4,300 to 5,200 (3 to 4% of all US deaths), respectively, as of July 21, 2020, with the vast majority likely related to community spread outside these plants. The association is found primarily among large processing facilities and large meatpacking companies. In addition, we find evidence that plant closures attenuated county-wide cases and that plants that received permission from the US Department of Agriculture to increase their production-line speeds saw more county-wide cases. Ensuring both public health and robust essential supply chains may require an increase in meatpacking oversight and potentially a shift toward more decentralized, smaller-scale meat production.
Even Trump’s own administration acknowledges the link.
Here a dramatic graphic from the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
There also another surge erupting, and a new, much faster-spreading variant here in the U.S., and a third even more contagious variety already spreading through Europe and certain to arrive here.
Now toss in the fact that Nebraska is the nation’s largest producer of beef, with all the slaughterhouses and packing plants that entails.
And add in this from Insurance Journal [emphasis added]:
States with a heavy presence of meatpacking facilities such as South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota now have among the highest concentration of new cases by population.
And, finally, the story
Via the London Daily Mail, with emphasis added:
Undocumented immigrants in Nebraska will not be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines, Governor Pete Ricketts announced Monday.
Ricketts, the son of TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, was asked at a press conference if undocumented persons would be included when vaccines become available to meatpacking plant workers.
‘Illegal immigrants are not permitted to work in those facilities, so I don’t think that will be a problem,’ the governor replied without further explanation.
In reality the issue is much more complicated, as undocumented workers make up a large section of Nebraska’s meatpacking industry – which is the largest in the US with roughly 26,600 workers in total.
According to recent data from the Migration Policy Institute, some 66 percent of the state’s meatpacking workers are immigrants, and varying estimates suggest that anywhere between 14 percent to almost all of them are undocumented.
The American Immigration Council estimated that in 2016, Nebraska was home to 60,000 immigrants, 41 percent of them undocumented, rendering Rickett’s claims absurd.
And by ordering no vaccines for undocumented workers in meat plants, Rickett has passed a death sentence on his friends and neighbors.
Ricketts, the school-slasher with a bigoted billionaire daddy
When he’s not ensuring another COVID surge, Gov. Ricketts has been busy cutting school funding, and for the obvious neocon reason, cutting taxes at the very moment the state is struggling with a pandemic.
From the Omaha World–Herald:
Gov. Pete Ricketts made it clear Friday that he’s not done pushing for lower property taxes.
Ricketts, during a press briefing on the state’s COVID-19 response, said he will be pursuing legislation to place limits on local school spending during the 2021 session, which begins Jan. 6.
Slowing the growth of K-12 school spending was one thing that was left out of a property tax relief bill passed earlier this year, the governor said, and he will be asking state lawmakers to rectify that.
“That will be a big priority,” he said. “That’s the next step in what we have to do to continue to get that property tax relief for Nebraskans.”
He’s also, with his dad and three siblings, co-owner of a baseball team in another meat-packing town, the Chicago Cubs.
And his billionaire daddy, whose business is headquartered in Omaha, is also a a racist, a truth revealed when someone leaked his emails, complete with gems like these:
● “good one” – a joke about how Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians and Pakistanis won’t exist in the future
● “very good” – a joke about a “Mexican family of six,” an “Islamic group of welfare cheats,” and “6 LA, Hispanic, Gang Bangers, & ex-cons” dying in an apartment fire that didn’t kill a white couple because they were at work
● “tired of Political Correct, Multicultural and Diversity aspects of our culture” – a story about how former Congressman Allen West fired a gun at the crotch of an Iraqi prisoner (note: West actually fired the gun near his head) in an interrogation, which led led to West’s retirement from the military
● “great laugh” – a joke with a punchline revolving around a white man agreeing to not call his black wife the n-word
● “WOW! I’m sending on” – a video titled “Is Barack Obama really a Saudi/Muslim plant in the White House?”
● “I like this” – a forward of a speech tied to disgraced Seinfeld actor Michael Richards about racism against white people in America that ends with “Be proud to be white! It’s not a crime yet … but getting very close!”
Looks like the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
A final word
Via the 16 December 2020 Wall Street Journal:
Tyson Foods Inc. said it fired seven managers of an Iowa meatpacking plant following the company’s investigation into allegations that they had wagered on Covid-19 infections among employees.
Tyson announced the investigation in November, after a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of a deceased Tyson worker claimed that managers of the company’s Waterloo, Iowa, pork-processing facility organized a betting pool around how many employees would contract the coronavirus and pressured sick employees to stay on the job.
Posted in Agriculture, Education, Ethnicity, Governance, Health, Idiocy, Intolerance, Labor, Medicine, Pandemics, Politics, Race, Wealth
Those darn typos!
From the Toronto Star:
A former Michigan resident was briefly amused to be mistaken for a high-ranking legislator by President Donald Trump supporters who demanded nullification of President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory in the state.
But when a trickle of calls and texts Sunday became a torrent of hundreds that continued into Monday, it wasn’t funny anymore.
The recipient, who goes by the name O Rose and uses non-gendered they/them pronouns, has a phone number nearly identical to that of Lee Chatfield, former Republican speaker of the Michigan House, whose term expired this month.
In social media postings Sunday, the president’s campaign organization targeted Chatfield and Lee Shirkey, a Republican and the Senate majority leader. “Hear the evidence … Correct false statements … Demand vote on decertification,” the campaign said on Facebook.
The posting provided email addresses and phone numbers for Chatfield and Shirkey. But the number listed as Chatfield’s actually belonged to Rose, who moved from northern Michigan to the Oakland, California, area five months ago.
“People are calling me from every single state. It’s weird, very weird,” Rose said in a phone interview Monday with The Associated Press. The 28-year-old provided a first initial but withheld their full first name because of concerns about security.
I guess AOC’s gonna need some body armor when a far-Right Republican claims her seat in the House of Representatives.
From BBC News:
A newly elected congresswoman has pledged to carry a Glock handgun during her term in Washington DC.
In a video released on Sunday, Republican Lauren Boebert is shown loading a handgun before walking around the city. “I will carry my firearm in DC and in Congress,” she says in the video, which has been viewed over two million times.
<snip>
Police were quick to respond, with Washington DC Police Chief Robert Contee III telling reporters: “That Congresswoman will be subjected to the same penalties as anyone else that’s caught on the DC streets carrying a firearm.”
While the US constitution enshrines the people’s right to keep and bear arms, the rules governing this vary. Members of Congress are allowed to keep firearms in their offices and transport them in Washington DC, as long as they are not loaded. However, a permit is needed to carry a gun through the city’s streets and weapons from other states must first be registered with local authorities.
Somehow I don’t think this is going to end well.
Seems like the governor of Florida just can’t follow doctors’ orders, and when he disobeys people pay.
Just take the case of the Florida COVIDS vaccination program, where Ron DeSantis failed to heed medical advice and hundreds of elderly Floridians paid the price, waiting up all night in long queues — the things doctors tell you to avoid unless you want to catch coronavirus — to get their shots.
From the Independent:
Hundreds of seniors spent the night sitting in lawn chairs outside vaccination sites in Lee County in southwestern Florida after the state’s Governor Ron DeSantis disregarded CDC guidelines and opened up the vaccinations to more people than recommended for this phase of the process.
This led to crashed websites, crowded phone lines, and seniors spending the night in queues waiting for first-come-first-served, vaccination centres to open.
<snip>
Public Health officials had to quickly set up vaccination sites all over central Florida as Mr DeSantis strayed from the CDC guidelines on who should be receiving the vaccine at this time. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Mr DeSantis said there was a recommendation from the CDC to vaccinate “so-called essential workers. What’s essential?”
“There’s a lot of people who work really hard that the CDC doesn’t consider essential, but their family considers them essential. I consider them essential,” Mr DeSantis said, arguing that CDC guidelines put young people ahead of seniors.
Posted in Governance, Health, Idiocy, Medicine
eats shoots 'n leaves 