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batboyblog · 2 years

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Senate 2022: You'd Better Vote!

If you're an American VERY IMPORTANT! elections are coming up on November 8th. Since the 2020 election the US Senate has been tied at 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans with Vice-President Harris casting the tie breaking vote that gives Democrats their majority. Even with such a tight margin Democrats have managed to pass the largest climate action taken by any country so far on earth (yet), lower prescription drug costs, pass the first gun control law since the 1990s , made lynching a federal crime after over 100 years of trying, made Juneteenth a federal holiday, confirmed the first black woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court, passed a trillion dollar infrastructure bill to rebuild our roads, bridges, transportation, better internet, clean water, and support electric cars, saved the US Post Office, passed a renewal of the Violence Against Women Act which had been in limbo since 2019.

Imagine all that the Democrats in the Senate could get done in the next 2 years with a stable majority? On the Flip side if Republicans net just one seat Mitch McConnell has made it clear there will be no progress if he's majority leader again. There are 35 Senate seats up on November 8th, I'm gonna list out the 9 seats with vulnerable Democrats who need re-electing and seats Democrats can flip to expand their majority. Everyone needs to vote, but voting is the start, the most basic thing you need to do, if you live in any of these states PLEASE sign up to volunteer for these candidates, to go talk to voters, to register new voters, to give rides to the polls etc. If you don't live in any of these states, you can still volunteer to make phone calls or text voters it's easy! if you have money to give please please give money campaigns are so expensive. Finally most of these campaigns have merch shops so if you feed more comfortable buying a shirt or a bag or whatever do that lots of them have cool pro-choice things.

Arizona

Mark Kelly (Re-elect)

Senator Mark Kelly was elected in a special election in 2020 and is running for a full term this year. Kelly is a former astronaut and the husband of gun violence survivor and gun control advocate Gabby Giffords. Kelly is a strong supporter of gun control an issue he's worked on with Giffords as an activist for 10 years before Congress. Republicans have nominated Blake Masters, who worked for one of Trump's top supporters, Peter Thiel, Thiel spent 13 million dollars to get Masters nominated. Masters calls himself a "America First Conservative" and a "hard-core nationalist". Masters has embraced the racist "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory, supports Trump's conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen, is against gay marriage, says gun violence is all the fault of black people, and is against aid to Ukraine. Kelly is a good democrat, Masters is a white nationalist and election denier, we need Kelly back in the Senate, and we need to keep Masters far far away

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Florida

Val Demings (Flip)

Congresswoman Val Demings has represented the city of Orlando in the US House since 2017. Before that she served as Orlando's first woman chief of police. In Congress Demings has used her law enforcement background to lend credibility to gun control and police reform. Demings also served as one of the impeachment managers in Trump's first impeachment trial. If elected Val Demings will be Florida's first woman and first black Senator. Demings is running to unseat Republican Senator Marco Rubio. After running against Trump in the 2016 primaries Rubio became one of Trump's biggest supporters in Congress. Rubio reacted to the Parkland shooting in his state by doubling down on opposing any gun control, Val Demings voted to ban assault rifles. Rubio has also been a cheerleader for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' anti-LGBT/anti-Trans policies that bully queer students in Florida, he doesn't believe in the right to same sex marriage and is for banning books. Rubio also wants a total ban on abortion in all cases, Val Demings has a 100% rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America. Florida needs a strong supporter of Gun control, climate action, the right to choose, and LGBT rights in the Senate, Florida needs Demings not Rubio

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Georgia

Raphael Warnock (re-elect)

Senator Raphael Warnock was elected in a special election in 2020 and is running for a full 6 year term this year. Warnock is the first black senator from the State of Georgia and the first Democrat elected in 20 years. Before becoming a senator Warnock was the pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's church and a center of the 1960s civil rights movement. Warnock used his position to protest and fight against the death penalty, to expand medicare in Georgia, for gun control, and for voting rights. In the Senate, Senator Warnock has been one of the most outspoken on voting rights pushing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act named after his late friend Georgia Congressman John Lewis. Republicans for nominated former football player, and Trump super fan, Herschel Walker to try to unseat Senator Warnock. Walker vocally supported Trump's election lies, posting many times on social media that Biden did not win the 2020 election. Walker declared this week that climate action was "giving money to trees" and "don't we have enough trees?". Walker believes in a total ban on abortion, and is against LGBT rights. Walker is against gun control and floated the idea of the government monitoring all social media and internet usage by Americans instead of gun control. Walker beat his now ex-wife Cindy Grossman, and threatened her with a gun and knives multiple times, after the divorce Grossman feared Walker would kill her and her boyfriend. Walker also is a dead beat dad who has a number of children out of wedlock that he has no contact with, he has criticized black men many times for being absent fathers. The US Senate doesn't need a man who threatens to shoot women, re-elect Senator Warnock.

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Nevada

Catherine Cortez Masto (re-elect)

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto was narrowly elected in 2016 and his running for her second term in the Senate. Senator Cortez Masto is the first women elected to represent Nevada in the Senate and the first and to date ONLY Latina elected to the US Senate. When she was Nevada's attorney general Cortez Masto sued Bank of America for it's predatory lending practices and won nearly a billion dollars against the bank. As a US Senator Cortez Masto has been a major supporter of clean energy jobs and hopes to turn Nevada into the solar energy capital of America. Republicans have nominated former Nevada attorney general Adam Laxalt to try to unseat Cortez Masto. Laxalt spent his time as AG (2015-2019) suing the Obama Administration EPA to fight against strong climate regulations. Laxalt opposed a multi-state law suit against ExxonMobil for it's role in downplaying Climate change. Laxalt also sued the Obama administration to stop DACA, filed briefs supporting radical anti-abortion laws from Texas and Mississippi when they went to court, and sued the Obama Department of Labor to stop certain workers being paid over time. After leaving office Laxalt was the Chairman of Trump's 2020 re-election effort in Nevada. As Chairman Laxalt was the leading figure in the election conspiracy in Nevada claiming the election in his state was fraudulent and Biden hadn't really won Nevada. Laxalt has made many false claims of election fraud in Nevada in the 2020 election. Laxalt launched his 2022 campaign for Senate claiming "woke corporations" "academia" and "the radical left" have taken over America. Nevada has to send Cortez Masto, the only Latina in the Senate, back for another term, Laxalt is dangerously unfit.

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New Hampshire

Maggie Hassan (re-elect)

Senator Maggie Hassan was elected in the closest senate race of 2016 and is running for her second term in the senate. Senator Hassan was a key vote to save Obamacare from repel in 2017. During her time in the US Senate Senator Hassan has helped pass bills to more than double the funding to help treat the opioid crisis as well as banning surprise medical billing. Senator Hassan first ran for office 20 years ago as a way to advocate for her son who has Cerebral palsy, she's been a strong advocate for disability rights and special education through out her time in public service. Because New Hampshire has one of the latest primaries (September 13th) we don't know for sure which Republican will be nominated to face her in November. The front runner is a retired general named Don Bolduc. Bolduc's first foray into into politics was spinning and supporting 2020 election denial conspiracy theories, even after the January 6th riot. Bolduc has closely tied himself to Trump. Bolduc called fellow Republican, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu "Chinese Communist sympathizer" and accused him of "supports terrorism" for not being conservative enough and loyal to Trump enough. New Hampshire should send back a Senator who gets things done and not a wing-nut calling people in his own party communists and terrorists.

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North Carolina

Cheri Beasley (flip)

Former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court Cheri Beasley is running to fill a Senate seat opened up by the retirement of Republican Senator Richard Burr. In 2008 Beasley became the first black women to win a state wide election in North Carolina when she was elected to the Court of Appeals. In 2012 she was appointed to the state Supreme Court and won election in 2014. She was appointed the Chief Justice in 2019 the first black woman to serve as the State's Chief Justice. Beasley lost by less than 500 votes her run for a full term as Chief Justice in 2020. In her time as a public defender and elected Judge and Justice Beasley has stressed fairness and equity. If elected she'd be the first black Senator from North Carolina. She's stressed health care and abortion rights as key issues of her campaign. Republicans have nominated Congressman Ted Budd to try to fill the seat. Congressman Budd is a member of the radical "House Freedom Caucus". He voted to repeal Obamacare in 2017. Budd was also a major support of Trump's attempt to over throw the result of the 2020 election. Congressman Budd voted against certifying the election result on January 6th, even after the capital had been stormed by violent Trump supporters. Budd is Trump's hand picked candidate for the North Carolina Senate seat, Budd only launched his campaign after meeting with Trump in Mar-a-Lago. North Carolina doesn't need an election denying Trump toady for Senator, send Cheri Beasley to Congress.

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Ohio

Tim Ryan (flip)

Congressman Tim Ryan is running to fill a Senate seat being opened up by the retirement of Republican Senator Rob Portman. Congressman Ryan has represented the Youngstown area of Ohio since 2003. In his time in Congress Ryan has been a champion of unions and American workers. His Senate run is focused on protecting American manufacturing jobs and bring well paying union jobs back to the American heart land. Ryan is strongly pro-choice. Republicans have nominated author and venture capitalist JD Vance. Vance is closely tied to Trump money man Peter Thiel as well as Arizona candidate and white nationalist Blake Masters. Vance has publicly said that women should stay in abusive marriages. Vance is against abortion in all cases even rape or health of the mother. Vance has also publicly stated he sees the populist, antisemitic, anti-LGBT dictatorship of Hungarian Prime Minster Viktor Orbán as a model for America. Vance talked about how he hopes in a second Trump term to purge all civil servants who don't agree with Trumpism and replace them with "our people". America does not need a pro-fascist who supports wife beating in the Senate, send Tim Ryan to the Senate instead.

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Pennsylvania

John Fetterman (flip)

Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman is running to fill a seat opened by the retirement of Republican Senator Pat Toomey. First elected Lt Governor in 2018 Fetterman has used his platform to advocate the legalization of marijuana. Fetterman also is a vocal supporter of the LGBT community clashing with the Republican state legislature repeatedly about the display of a pride flag off the balcony of his official office at the state capital. Fetterman is running a campaign that is strongly pro-choice, supportive of criminal justice reform, and calls healthcare a human right. Republicans have nominated Mehmet Oz, better known as Dr. Oz. As a reality TV star "physician" Oz was criticized repeatedly for advocating fake cures and dangerous weight loss pills. During the Covid-19 pandemic Oz pushed Trump's favorite fake cure, Hydroxychloroquine, which is not a treatment for Covid. While running for the senate Oz has endorsed banning trans people from sports by law, and that trans youth are based on "false science". Oz is also says he'd vote to repeal Obamacare and strongly supports fracking. Pennsylvania doesn't need a flip flopping TV huckster from New Jersey as its Senator, election Fetterman.

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Wisconsin

Mandela Barnes (flip)

Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes is running to unseat Republican Senator Ron Johnson. Barnes served in the state legislature from 2013 till 2017 before being elected Lt Governor in 2018, he is the first black person to win state wide office in Wisconsin. As Lt Governor Barnes served as the chair of the Climate Task Force putting forward a 55 point plan to combat climate change. Barnes has been a vocal supporter of policies like Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and marijuana legalization. If elected Barnes would be the first black Senator from Wisconsin and one of only two Senators in their 30s. Incumbent Republican Senator Ron Johnson has been Wisconsin's Senator since 2010 and is running for his 3rd term in office. In the Senate Johnson was one of Trump's strongest allies. Johnson was one of the main congressional pushers of the 2020 election conspiracy theories to the point his home town paper the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called him a member of the "Sedition Caucus". Johnson also has pushed conspiracy theories that the January 6th riot was the fault of Nancy Pelosi or the FBI, and said he didn't think it was a big deal and felt safe during the attack because they were Trump supporters. Johnson has also pushed Covid misinformation, such as mouthwash as a treatment for Covid-19 or that "thousands" of deaths had been linked to the vaccine. Johnson has blamed mass shootings on a failure to teach "values" and is against gun control. in resent weeks Johnson has floated the idea of privatizing Social Security and Medicare. Protect Social Security, send Barnes to Congress.

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If you're one of the 85 million Americans who live in one of these States please PLEASE PLEASE remember to VOTE November 8th

Everyone remember to VOTE NOVEMBER 8th! vote in EVERY election from School Board on up to Governor and Senate, now more than ever all these elections matter and they matter a lot.

if you have $10, $5, even $1 to spare please please please think about giving it to one of these candidates, Democrats are passing big things and are running against the worst of the worst.

If you live in one of these states please please PLEASE think about giving just one weekend between now and Election Day to talk to voters and help turn out the vote. Even if you don't live in any of these states you can call or text voters in these states and help these campaigns

#Politics #US politics #Democrats #Senate #Florida #pennsylvania #Ohio #Georgia #Arizona #election #vote #voting #November 8th

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donald-trump-official · 8 months

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Trump, September 2019: look I just want you to do me a favor, all I’m asking is for you to investigate all this Biden corruption

Trump, September 2023: look I just want you to do me a favor, all I’m asking is for you to impeach all this Biden corruption

Trump, September 2024: look I just want you to do me a favor, all I’m asking is for you to grant me campaigning privileges

#trump speaks again #satire #donald trump #parody

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1americanconservative · 7 months

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BREAKING: Ukrainian prosecutor general Andriy Kostin has launched a CRIMINAL investigation of Mitt Romney, Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry for a money laundering scheme involving their respective sons' alleged illegal business dealings with energy companies in the known corrupt country. The parents have been implicated in their sons' respective criminal probes that stemmed from the impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden. This comes at a time when Romney has announced he is not seeking re-election to the US Senate and Pelosi has bowed out from leadership of the House Democrats. All logic points to Pelosi, Romney and Kerry knowing this was on the radar. Will the US Justice Department accept a criminal referral and take on the investigation? Under Merrick Garland, don't hold your breath... But we have an election coming up next November. Justice is coming.

Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Mitt Romney do not have sons on boards of energy companies doing business in Ukraine, much less being investigated. Claims otherwise have been debunked repeatedly since 2019. reuters.com/news/picture/f… politifact.com/factchecks/202… factcheck.org/2019/10/dubiou…

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tomorrowusa · 4 months

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It isn't just liberals who claim that House Republicans are in Putin's pocket.

Conservative Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) told the host of a rightwing podcast that some of his House colleagues have been compromised by the Kremlin.

A Republican Tennessee congressman accused his colleagues of being “compromised” by Russian spies and moneyed interests, who bed and then blackmail them to sway their votes. [ ... ] “The old honeypot,” the conservative representative, continued. “The Russians do that, and I’m sure members of Congress have been caught up. Why in the world would good conservatives vote for crazy stuff like what we’ve been seeing out of Congress?” [ ... ] “You’re visiting, you’re out of the country, you’re out of town, or you’re in a motel, or bar in D.C., and some — whatever you’re into, women or men or whatever — comes up and they’re very attractive and they’re laughing at your jokes, and you’re buying them a drink,” he explained. “Next thing you know, you’re in the motel room with them naked.” “And next thing you know, you’re about to make a key vote and what happens? Some well dressed person comes out and whispers in your ear, ‘Hey, man, there’s tapes out on you,’ or ‘Were you in a motel room on whatever [date] with whoever?’” Then comes the suggestion that “you really ought not be voting for this thing,” Burchett said.

So there are probably the equivalents of the famous "pee tapes" for members of the House GOP caucus.

Speaking of Donald Trump...

Putin ‘has Trump’s number’ and still sees him ‘as an asset’, says Fiona Hill

Vladimir Putin has had Donald Trump’s “number for some time … knows how to manipulate him” and still sees him “as an asset”, the former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill said, discussing the Russian leader and the Republican presidential frontrunner. “That’s literally [Putin’s] trump card,” Hill told the One Decision Podcast, hosted by Jane Ferguson, a reporter, and Sir Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6, when asked if she thought the Russian president, bogged down in war in Ukraine, was betting on Trump beating Joe Biden next year and returning to power. Hill added: “The anticipation that Trump’s going to come back is something for Putin of a boon … he can play with that. He can use it as kind of a warning … scare the Ukrainians, the Europeans, the rest of the world. Putin is pretty confident, given his experiences with Trump in the past, that Trump will be quick to try to resolve the … war in Ukraine in his favor. “And, you know, obviously, Putin has had Trump’s number for some time, he knows how to manipulate him … he has been very good at the art of flattery with Trump. He sees Trump as an asset in many respects.” From 2017 to 2019 Hill was a senior national security aide in the Trump White House, eventually coming under the spotlight as a witness in Trump’s first impeachment, for seeking to blackmail Ukraine for dirt on political rivals. In 2013, she published Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, a widely praised study.

Trump has done little to hide his Putin connection since 2015. Yet tens of millions of American voters can't wait to cast their votes for a Russian asset.

The Republican Party is apparently riddled with office holders doing Russia's bidding – either through blackmail or through manipulation.

The 2024 election is the clearest ever between American democracy and foreign totalitarianism. We should not take the outcome for granted.

#russia #republicans #russian assets #blackmail #donald trump #vladimir putin #honeypot #house gop caucus #tim burchett #tn-02 #fiona hill #россия #владимир путин #дональд трамп #трамп - путинский пудель #election 2024

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ebookporn · 28 days

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Because wire fraud and money laundering are now also book terms

Books have always played a role in politics as a way to get to know the candidate, outline their vision, and set the record straight after they have left office but political books can also be weaponized and not always in the way you might think. Recently Harper accidentally released metadata on a James Comer book called ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MONEY due to release on September 10th, strategic timing for a close election. Comer quickly denied he has a contract for a book but Harper wouldn’t have this data in their system if they weren’t already working on it. The ONIX feed is now been refed listed as UNTITLED by Anonymous. Shopping a book deal at the same time that he is leading the Biden impeachment probe, is obviously not a good look for Comer. Sure this is a way to throw chum the water and try and smear the other candidate but I live in Baltimore and another concern comes to mind. With a bankrupt Republican Party, it might be very important to watch just who is buying these books.

In 2019, just before Covid, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and two counts of tax evasion in what has become known as BookGate. Pugh and her long-standing legislative and campaign adviser, Gary Brown fraudulently sold self-published Healthy Holly children's books to local nonprofit organizations in order to obtain more than $800,000 to fund her campaign and enrich herself. These were cheap and poorly written books riddled with errors and spelling mistakes. Holly, the main character’s name, was spelled differently throughout the series. Tens of thousands of books sold to organizations and intended to be distributed to children ended up piled in warehouses and were never delivered. They were however resold multiple times. Significantly more books were sold than were ever printed. But this wasn’t just about selling crappy kids books. The buyers didn't care, they bought anyway.

CNN reported that during BookGate the University of Maryland Medical Center spent $500,000 to fund the purchase of some 100,000 books from Pugh’s company, Healthy Holly LLC. The former mayor also received about $114,000 from healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente for some 20,000 books from 2015 to 2018 and an additional $80,000 from the public foundation Associated Black Charities, which said it bought some 10,000 copies of Pugh’s between 2011 and 2016. All of these groups worked with and lobbied the city.

Catherine Pugh was sentenced to 3 years in prison and ordered to pay $411,948 in restitution and to forfeit more than $600,000, including a property in Baltimore and nearly $18,000 from her campaign account.

Sound familiar? It is openly acknowledged that this is precisely what is going on with Donald Trump’s self-published bible. High-velocity sales of an objectively poor product are hard to hide and easier to subpoena and trace as people notice. Now if you can put a legitimate business between you and the questionable product all the better. We can see that with Trump’s media company now listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

In the post-Trump world, it is no longer just monitoring institutional sales and people trying to game the bestsellers lists. Trade Publishers and retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Barnes & Noble need to be extra careful and pay attention to just how and to whom these books are being sold lest they get caught up in an FBI investigation because wire fraud and money laundering are now also book terms.

~eP

#political books #money laundering #bookgate #book publishing #bookstores #retailers

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 22 days

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Daniel Boris, Vladimir Putin's Nesting Dolls

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 8, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 09, 2024

On Sunday, Representative Michael R. Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said it is “absolutely true” that Republican members of Congress are parroting Russian propaganda. “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union.

Turner was being questioned about an interview in which Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Russia specialist Julia Ioffe that “Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” McCaul blamed right-wing media. When asked which Republicans he was talking about, McCaul answered that it is “obvious.”

Catherine Belton and Joseph Menn reviewed more than 100 internal Kremlin documents from 2022 and 2023 obtained by a European intelligence service and reported in the Washington Post today that the Russian government is running “an ongoing campaign that seeks to influence congressional and other political debates to stoke anti-Ukraine sentiment.” Kremlin-backed trolls write fake “news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions” while claiming that “Biden’s policies are leading the U.S. toward collapse.”

Aaron Blake pointed out in the Washington Post that Republicans are increasingly warning that Russian propaganda has fouled their party. Blake notes that Russia specialist Fiona Hill publicly told Republicans during the 2019 impeachment inquiry into Trump that they were repeating “politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests,” but Republicans angrily objected.

Now Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and John Cornyn (R-TX) and a top aide to Senator Todd Young (R-IN), as well as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and even Trump’s vice president Mike Pence, have warned about the party’s ties to Russia. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) has said the Republican Party now has “a Putin wing.”

Trump has hinted that he has a plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Yesterday, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Michael Birnbaum reported in the Washington Post on the details of that plan: he would accept Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and the Donbas region. He refuses to say how he would negotiate with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been adamant that Ukraine will not give up its territory to an invader, or Russia president Vladmir Putin, who has claimed all of Ukraine, but after meeting with Trump last month, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said Trump told him he would accomplish “peace” by cutting off funds to Ukraine.

Trump’s team said Orbán’s comment was false, but it is worth noting that this plan echoes the one acknowledged by Trump’s 2016 campaign director Paul Manafort as the goal of Russian aid to Trump’s campaign.

Fiona Hill told the Washington Post reporters that Trump’s team “is thinking…that this is just a Ukraine-Russia thing…rather than one about the whole future of European security and the world order.”

Trump’s MAGA loyalists in the House of Representatives have held up funding for Ukraine for six months. Although a national security supplemental bill that would fund Ukraine has passed the Senate and would pass the House if it were brought to the floor, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuses to bring it to the floor. The House returns to work tomorrow after a two-week recess but is so backed up on work that Johnson is not expected to bring up the Ukraine measure this week.

Clint Watts, the head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, told the Washington Post’s Belton and Menn: “The impact of the Russian program over the last decade…is seen in the U.S. congressional debate over Ukraine aid…. They have had an impact in a strategic aggregate way.”

The Trump loyalists echoing Russia who have taken control of the Republican Party appear to be hardening into a phalanx around the former president, but even as they do so, Trump himself appears to be crumbling.

In the week since Trump posted a $175 million appeals bond, halting the seizure of his properties to satisfy the $454 million judgment against him and the Trump Organization, multiple problems with that bond have come to light. It is possible the bond isn’t worth anything at all, and New York attorney general Letitia James has filed papers to require Trump’s lawyers or the bond underwriter to show that it’s good within ten days. A hearing is set for April 22.

Meanwhile, Trump’s trial for election interference in 2016, when he paid people with damaging information to keep quiet before the election and falsified business records to hide those payments, is set to begin on April 15. Evidently very worried about this trial, Trump has already tried eight times to delay it until after November’s election, and today his lawyers tried yet again by requesting a delay so he could fight to get the trial moved to a different venue, but an appeals judge rejected the attempt.

Aside from Trump’s personal problems as a presidential candidate, the Republicans face strong headwinds because of their deeply unpopular opposition to abortion rights. Trump has openly bragged about being the instrument for ending the rights recognized in the United States since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Since then, abortion bans are galvanizing opposition, and the Republicans are trying to find a message that can bring back angry voters without antagonizing the antiabortion white evangelicals who make up their base.

After months of waffling on the issue, Trump today released a video trying to thread that needle by echoing the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump said in the video that states will decide the issue for themselves, a statement that simply reflects the Dobbs decision.

This was a dodge. In the video, Trump appealed to the antiabortion loyalists by telling the ghoulish lie that women are “executing” their babies even after birth. He also ignored that Republicans are already calling for a national ban, extremist antiabortion Texas judge Matthew Kacsmaryk has tried to take the common abortion drug mifepristone off the national market by challenging its FDA approval, and legislatures in many Republican-dominated states are refusing to implement the will of the people to protect abortion rights even after they have voted for such protections.

Still, antiabortion leaders, including Mike Pence, immediately slammed Trump’s statement.

The video did, though, make an enormously interesting and unintended point: Trump is communicating with voters outside his carefully curated bubble almost exclusively through videos, even on a topic as important as abortion. At rallies, his speeches have become erratic and wandering, with occasional slurred words, and observers have wondered how he would present to more general audiences. It appears that his team has concluded that he will not present well and that general audiences must see him in carefully curated settings, like this apparently heavily edited video.

The Trump takeover of the Republican National Committee (RNC) also appears to be in trouble. This weekend, Trump claimed to have raised $50 million in a single night from billionaires, but that number is conveniently a little more than double the new record of what President Joe Biden raised at an event last week with former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and it is long past time for everyone to stop believing anything Trump says about money.

More to the point, The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported today that the RNC’s aggressive purge of the staff to guarantee that positions are held only by Trump loyalists means that “the RNC has been left without people with deep knowledge of election operations at the Republican party’s central committee.” Lowell notes this lack is especially apparent on the RNC’s data team, which is being moved from Washington, D.C., to Palm Beach, Florida, near Mar-a-Lago.

And yet Trump loyalists continue to block aid to Ukraine, threatening the existence of the rules-based international order that has helped to prevent war since World War II. Last week, even Trump’s former secretary of state Mike Pompeo warned Speaker Johnson against “abandoning our Allies at this time of great need, when they are staring down enemies of the free world.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#political cartoons #Daniel Boris #nesting dolls #Putin #russia #collusion #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Ukraine #war in Ukraine #House Republicans #Russian Propaganda #election 2024 #election interference #funding for Ukraine

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 10 months

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The Ukrainian oligarch Republicans claim bribed Joe Biden said he never actually talked to Biden, according to an interview transcript made public Thursday by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).

Mykola Zlochevsky is a co-founder of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma that employed Biden’s son Hunter for several years. Zlochevsky served as Ukraine’s energy minister, but has been in hiding since fleeing corruption charges.

Republicans claim there’s evidence a Burisma executive — apparently Zlochevsky — paid Joe Biden a $5 million bribe when he was vice president in exchange for an official favor. They’ve demanded the FBI hand over a document reflecting a confidential source’s conversation with Zlochevsky.

Raskin has now countered with a document of his own — a three-page transcript of a 2019 interview between Zlochevsky and an acquaintance of Rudy Giuliani, who at the time was publicly seeking dirt on Biden on behalf of then-President Donald Trump.

“No one from Burisma ever had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him during Hunter Biden’s engagement” with Burisma, Zlochevsky says in the transcript.

When asked if the Vice President had assisted him or his company “in any way,” Zlochevsky says no.

In 2015, however, a Burisma executive named Vadym Pozharskyi thanked Hunter Biden in an email for having had the chance to meet his father at a charity dinner, though other guests told The New York Times they didn’t recall the elder Biden having a substantive conversation with Pozharskyi.

Politico in 2020 reported the contents of the Zlochevsky transcript, and Democrats have repeatedly referred to it in response to Republican claims that the FBI is withholding derogatory material against Biden. Democrats obtained the transcript in 2019 in their impeachment inquiry into Trump for pressuring Ukraine to announce a sham investigation of the Bidens.

Raskin has said FBI officials told him the Justice Department assessed the derogatory material on Biden and found it wasn’t worth formally investigating, but the bureau has declined to make any public statements to that effect. So Raskin has turned to what lawmakers already have on hand from Zlochevsky.

“Despite being interviewed as part of a campaign by Mr. Giuliani and his proxies in 2019 and 2020 to procure damaging information about the Biden family, Mr. Zlochevsky explicitly and unequivocally denied those allegations,” Raskin said in a letter to House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) on Thursday.

“Mr. Zlochevsky’s statements are just one of the many that have debunked the corruption allegations against President Biden that were first leveled by Rudy Giuliani and have been reviewed by former President Trump’s own Justice Department,” Raskin said.

In response, Comer insisted the FBI’s tip from a confidential human source who spoke to the Burisma executive has nothing to do with Giuliani. (He has not explicitly said the source is Zlochevsky, but has noted the source is in hiding. Other Republicans, including Giuliani, have named Zlochevsky.)

“The Burisma executive claims then-Vice President Biden solicited and received a $5 million bribe in exchange for certain actions,” Comer said in a statement on Thursday. “The executive also claims he didn’t pay ‘the big guy’ directly but used so many bank accounts that it would take ten years to unravel.”

State Department officials have said they considered Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board during his father’s vice presidency awkward because it looked like a conflict of interest. Joe Biden at the time was the face of the U.S. government’s Ukraine policy and urged the country to root out corruption, including by firing its top prosecutor.

Trump dispatched Giuliani to find evidence that Biden’s action was designed to protect his son, but Republicans have been unable to substantiate claims that the elder Biden bent U.S. foreign policy in his family’s favor. An investigation by Senate Republicans in 2020 concluded it was “not clear” that Hunter Biden’s position with Burisma affected the U.S. government’s stance toward Ukraine.

Nevertheless, Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have kept the story alive this year, seizing on the FBI’s refusal to hand over unverified raw material to argue the bureau is protecting the Bidens.

They have stepped up their efforts following this month’s federal indictment of Donald Trump on Espionage Act charges.

On Wednesday, Comer asked the Treasury Department to hand over any “suspicious activity reports” filed by banks on accounts related to Zlochevsky and other Burisma executives. In his letter to Treasury, Comer claimed his committee “has reviewed government documents that allege President Biden, while serving as Vice President, solicited and received a bribe from a foreign source in return for certain actions.”

Other Republicans have suggested that Zlochevksy might not be a credible source. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), for instance, said earlier this month that the bribery allegation “could be coming from a very corrupt oligarch who could be making this stuff up.”

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msternberg · 10 months

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$10 million - the amount of bribe money received by Joe and Hunter from Burisma CEO, allegedly

$8.3 million - the amount of money Hunter Biden received from overseas deals between 2014 - 2019 as identified by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley

$3.5 million - money received from the wife of the former mayor of Moscow, Elena Baturina

$2.2 million - the amount of money Hunter Biden failed to pay in taxes

$225,000 - the price of one Hunter Biden finger painting

20 - the number of companies created by Biden family members and business associates to conceal large overseas payments—most were LLCs formed after Joe Biden became Vice President

17 - the number of recordings between Joe and Hunter Biden and a foreign national documenting alleged bribes

9 - the number of Biden family members who received incremental payments of at least $10 million from foreign associates, per House Oversight (based on subpeonas of 4 of 12 banks, so likely much more)

0 - days Hunter or Joe Biden have spent in prison

Joe Biden, with the help of bagman Hunter, sold out America's foreign policy decision in Ukraine, China, and Romania to the highest bidder.

Joe Biden should be impeached.

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republicansaredomesticterrorists · 7 months

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1americanconservative · 11 months

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BREAKING: The FBI had information on the Bidens being bribed by Burisma in 2017 but hid this when Trump was impeached for asking Zelensky about it in 2019 They redacted it to take down Trump and protect Burisma. Why?

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beardedmrbean · 1 year

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Critics of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., were outraged after reading Elon Musk and journalist Matt Taibbi’s latest "Twitter Files" entry alleging that Schiff lobbied Twitter to suspend journalists from the platform.

Published Tuesday, the latest round of the Twitter Files – internal documents revealing how Twitter engaged in censorship and promoted disinformation in tandem with government agencies for the past few years – revealed that Schiff’s office asked Twitter to remove journalist Paul Sperry and others from the site.

Taibbi, who published the Twitter Files post-by-post to Twitter at the behest of Musk, provided documentation showing that "the office for Democrat and House Intel Committee chief Adam Schiff" asked "Twitter to ban journalist Paul Sperry."

TWITTER FILES: REP. ADAM SCHIFF'S OFFICE REQUESTED TECH GIANT TO SUSPEND ACCOUNTS

The document Taibbi shared featured correspondence between the "House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee" – Schiff’s office – and Twitter, which included a request to "Suspend the many accounts, including @GregRubini and @paulsperry, which repeatedly promoted false QAnon conspiracies and harassed [REDACTED]."

As Taibbi’s documentation indicated however, Twitter was reluctant to fulfill such a request, responding, "we’ll review the accounts again but I believe [REDACTED] mentioned only one qualified for suspension."

In response to Schiff’s office demanding Twitter remove "any and all content" as well as "quotes, retweets, and reactions to that content" concerning its staff members, Twitter flat-out refused.

A Twitter staffer responded, "no, this isn’t feasible/we don’t do this."

Sperry, an author and New York Post columnist, was later suspended from Twitter for unrelated reasons, telling conservative commentator Glenn Beck in August 2022 it was due to tweets of his about the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

However, Sperry was reinstated to Twitter this week and immediately responded to the latest Twitter Files revelations. He claimed that the real reason Schiff sought his suspension was because, at the time, Sperry was reporting on the whistleblower who exposed the phone call to Ukraine that prompted Trump’s first impeachment.

On Tuesday evening, Sperry wrote, "Around the same time Adam Schiff's office was lobbying Twitter to have me banned, Schiff's chief of staff Patrick Boland was making threats to my employer http://RealClearInvestigations.com about my stories exposing Schiff's impeachment whistleblower & his ties to Schiff's staffer."

In another tweet, Sperry linked to his 2019 article, and captioned it, saying, "Here's the real reason House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff secretly lobbied Twitter to have me banned -- he was angry I outed his anonymous impeachment ‘whistleblower.’"

TWITTER FILES PART 11 SHOWS HOW ‘PR CRISIS’ FOLLOWING 2016 ELECTION ALLOWED COMPANY TO EMBRACE INTEL COMMUNITY

Conservatives were appalled at Schiff’s apparent attempts to silence Sperry on Twitter, and used the platform to rip into the lawmaker.

UFC champion Jake Shields felt as though Schiff should get a taste of his own medicine, tweeting, "I would like to request Elon Musk remove Adam Schiff from twitter."

Breitbart News Pentagon correspondent Kristina Wong summed up the shocking censorship story, tweeting, "Then-Intel Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s office wanted Twitter to shut down one of the most effective journalists pushing back on his phony Russia collusion narrative. How very anti-freedom of the press this is."

The Spectator contributing editor Stephen L. Miller commented sarcastically, "Adam Schiff just using his 1A rights."

Journalist Adam Housley wrote, "This is disturbing. I don’t care what political party you follow…this cannot be accepted. @AdamSchiff needs to answer."

RealClearInvestigations senior writer Mark Hemingway tweeted, "Of course, Sperry's real crime was doing vital reporting exposing the mistruths about Russia collusion, a subject Schiff lied about for years."

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton asked if this constituted "Another reason to expel Schiff from Congress?"

Conservative actor Randy Quaid quipped, "Schiff is a piece of Schiff!"

Conservative pundit and lawyer Will Chamberlain offered a solution, tweeting, "Adam Schiff should be expelled from Congress."

Author Jim Hanson remarked, "The only surprising thing here Is they didn't just wipe everyone out. The sickening thing is @RepAdamSchiff abused his office and oath to the Constitution with this malfeasance."

#nunyas news #shocked by twitter actually doing the right thin

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mightyflamethrower · 4 months

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The abject narcissism of the insular Left is startling. They apparently believe the American public is amnesiac enough to forget what leftists once did, now that they're doing the utter opposite. And they assume we are to discount their hypocrisy and self-absorption simply because they self-identify as erudite and moral and assume their opponents are irredeemable and deplorable.

Impeachment

The Left is saturating the airwaves with outrage over the current House Republicans' impeachment inquiry. They allege that formally investigating Joe Biden's role in the family grifting operation is somehow a poor constitutional precedent, if not out-of-bounds entirely.

So we hear further arguments that it will be unwise to impeach a first-term president when he loses his House majority, that there is no reason to "waste" congressional time and effort when Biden will be automatically acquitted in the Democratically controlled Senate, and that the impeachment is cynically timed to synchronize with president's reelection efforts.

All of these are the precise arguments many of us cited when Donald Trump was impeached in December 2019 (as his reelection campaign began, and immediately after being cleared of the 22-month, $40-million-special-counsel Russian-collusion hoax).

The Democrats tried to remove an elected president over a phone call without a special counsel's report. So Trump was impeached only after the 2018 election led to a Democratic House majority, which went from eating up nearly two years of his administration in the Russian-collusion hoax straight into the impeachment farce. There was no concern about the cost to the nation of putting an elected government into a continual state of siege.

There is one difference, though, between the Trump impeachment and the Biden impeachment inquiry. Donald Trump was impeached because he accurately accused the members of the Ukrainian government of paying Hunter Biden, with his zero fossil fuel expertise, an astronomical sum to serve on the Burisma board -- as the costly quid that earned the lucrative quo from his dad Vice President Joe Biden.

No one now denies that Joe Biden got prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired by threatening to cancel legislatively-approved U.S. aid. Shokin knew about the skullduggery through which the Biden family eventually received $6.5 million from Ukraine -- and so Biden ensured his firing, and publicly bragged about it in performance-art fashion.

In sum, Trump had a perfect right as commander in chief to delay (he did not cancel) aid to Ukraine, to ensure that its government was not still paying off the Bidens for their lobbying efforts on its behalf.

It is also now clear that Biden serially lied about his ignorance of Hunter's shake-down operation. In fact, he was, as Devon Archer emphasized, "the brand" central to Hunter's scheme to coerce money from foreign governments. Joe was proverbially, in Hunter's words "the man sitting next to me" and thus able to either punish or reward foreign interests, depending on the size of the checks they wrote to his various fronting family members.

Offspring subpoenas

The left is now furious that Hunter has been subpoenaed by the House to testify in private about how he earned his multimillion-dollar income, whether he fully paid taxes on it, and to whom he distributed his winnings.

Hunter has refused to testify. He is now being held in contempt of the U.S. Congress -- to the silence of the usually self-righteous former senator Joe "pay your fair share" Biden.

We hear sanctimonious harangues that Joe is guilty of loving "his only son" Hunter too much, or that it is way out of bounds for a Department of Justice prosecutor to hound Joe Biden by going "after his family," or that Republican congressional subpoenas and contempt findings should be summarily ignored.

Ask Peter Navarro or Steve Bannon whether one can simply ignore a House subpoena. Ask Ivanka Trump whether she was, or was not, subpoenaed to appear before the January 6 committee. Ask the Trump sons whether they could breezily say "no" to Letitia James's subpoenas in her farcical real-estate-valuation suit against Trump.

Whistleblowers

Do we remember when, not long ago, whistleblowers were noble?

The alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella, an Obama holdover who had burrowed inside the Trump administration, had zero firsthand knowledge of the Trump phone call to Ukrainian president Zelensky. Ukrainian expatriate Lt. Col Alexander Vindman was on the call, as a member of the Trump national security team. He broke the law and apparently disclosed the classified call -- in outrage that Trump was apparently too hard on his native Ukraine -- to Ciaramella, and then hid the latter's identity. Both met privately with Rep. Adam Schiff (D -- CA) to engineer an impeachment writ.

This impeachment gambit was well-known to the media and the Democratic House. Both Vindman and Ciaramella were canonized as invaluable tools in wearing down Trump in a way that the failed Mueller prosecution had never done.

And whistleblowers now?

IRS Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and 13-year Special IRS Agent Joe Ziegler never violated any statute or disclosed classified information. They did not leak a presidential phone call to a foreign leader.

Instead, both came forward as whistleblowers to testify before Congress about how the Biden Justice Department deliberately and carefully ensured that the mountain of evidence for the prosecution of Hunter Biden that they had presented had simply been ignored -- at least long enough for the statute of limitations to run out on his most egregious crimes.

When they both made their case that facts proved the Biden family received huge sums for selling access to or action from Joe Biden, they were roundly trashed by Democrats in Congress and pilloried as disgruntled politicos by a toady press.

Dictators

Never-Trumpers and leftists vie to predict the most nightmarish consequence of a 2024 Trump election win. Supposedly, he will commit every imaginable sin, from ending habeas corpus to jailing his enemies.

This fear-mongering has no basis in fact, especially given that the nation has already experienced a Trump administration for four years. And it saw none of the weaponization of the CIA, FBI, DOJ, and IRS that we have seen under the Biden and earlier Obama administrations. There was no concerted effort to destroy the 2020 Biden campaign in the manner of the 2016 Russian-collusion caper, no FBI suppression of evidence as we saw in the case of the Hunter laptop, no warping of a FISA court, no paying social media corporations FBI money to suppress news unfavorable to Trump. And so on.

The Burden of Familial Indictments?

Suddenly yet another new narrative emerges: Joe Biden is unduly preoccupied, bearing the enormous burden of Hunter's indictments. Apparently, we have never appreciated the supposedly unnecessary and cruel encumbrance on a president when his son is indicted.

So, we are told that a son's legal exposure is an unfair weight on a president.

Have we again forgotten the subpoenaed Trump children, much less the four weaponized indictments of Trump himself? Does anyone wish to compare the drug-addicted, prostitute-hiring, gun-losing, pornographic-photo-taking, shake-down grifting of Hunter with the conduct of the five Trump children?

What would Biden think if the next Republican Secretary of State had once tried to ruin him by rounding up "51 intelligence authorities" to blatantly lie that a Trump son's incriminating laptop was not his own, in order to affect the 2024 election -- all in the manner of the Antony Blinken 2020 ruse? Or imagine a future National Security advisor who had once tried, in Jake Sullivan's 2016 way, to concoct a malicious yarn that Hunter was engineering a computer ping correspondence from Biden headquarters to Moscow. Would those be burdens on Biden? Were they on Trump?

It may well be unwise to impeach a president in his first term when he loses his House majority. It may certainly set a bad precedent to subpoena the children of presidents. It may be regrettable that whistleblowers are either unduly demonized or sanctified. And it is of course wrong to smear a president as a veritable Hitlerian dictator.

But the left does not see such absolutes. Instead, once a supposedly morally-superior agenda is enunciated, then any means necessary are justified to obtain it.

And that alternate reality ensures that impeaching a president, indicting him, subpoenaing his kids, praising or libeling whistleblowers, or smearing a president as a dictator become good or bad things only by determining whether they prove useful to the progressive project.

#Trump #Real Justice #media bias #political humor #government corruption #woke liberal madness

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