;)
October 20, 2022
Morning/Afternoon Update:
Nicholas Wu, et al., of Politico: "... Donald Trump has hired a firm to engage with the Jan. 6 select committee on its forthcoming subpoena of him.... A person familiar with the situation said [the Dhillon Law Group] is now being tasked with negotiating the terms of the Trump subpoena, which the committee voted to issue last week.... Harmeet Dhillon, the firm's managing partner, is a national Republican committeewoman from California. She has helmed litigation related to other conservative causes including pushing back on policies that shut down schools, churches and businesses during the Covid pandemic. Dhillon has also been critical of previous select committee and Justice Department grand jury subpoenas to her other clients."
Kyle Cheney & Nicholas Wu of Politico: "A log of text messages sent and received by former Sen. Kelly Loeffler [R-Ga.] during the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack is raising questions about potentially unauthorized access to investigative material relevant to probes of the 2020 election. The messages, reviewed by Politico, shed light on Loeffler's shifting political calculus as she weighed whether to lodge a challenge to the 2020 results at the urging of ... Donald Trump.... The 59-page log of 405 texts was obtained by media organizations via an anonymous sender who declined to reveal more details about the source of the messages, which begin on Nov. 8, 2020 and end Feb. 3, 2021. The document, which Politico is not publishing in full because it contains unauthenticated as well as authenticated conversations, focuses only on Loeffler's election-related correspondence." After Loeffler called for the resignation of of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, his wife Tricia Raffensperger wrote to Loeffler in an authenticated text, "... My family and I am being personally besieged by people threatening our lives because you didn't have the decency or good manners to come and talk to my husband with any questions you may have had. Instead you have put us in the eye of the storm."
Stacy Cowley of the New York Times: "A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a leading financial regulator, has been unconstitutionally funded since its creation more than a decade ago, a decision that vacated a bureau rule on payday lending and cast doubt over a vast swath of its regulations. The consumer bureau is funded directly by the Federal Reserve, a structure that Congress created through the 2010 Dodd-Frank law to shield the independent agency from political whims. It has been a frequent target of ire from Republican lawmakers. A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said that the funding method improperly ceded too much authority to the bureau and insulated it from being accountable to Congress and the American people."
Craig Whitlock & Nate Jones of the Washington Post: "Two retired U.S. admirals and three former U.S. Navy civilian leaders are playing critical but secretive roles as paid advisers to the government of Australia during its negotiations to acquire top-secret nuclear submarine technology from the United States and Britain. The Americans are among a group of former U.S. Navy officials whom the Australian government has hired as high-dollar consultants to help transform its fleet of ships and submarines, receiving contracts worth as much as $800,000 a person.... All told, six retired U.S. admirals have worked for the Australian government since 2015, including one who served for two years as Australia's deputy secretary of defense. In addition, a former U.S. secretary of the Navy has been a paid adviser to three successive Australian prime ministers. A Washington Post investigation found that the former U.S. Navy officials have benefited financially from a tangle of overlapping interests in their work for a longtime ally of the United States. Some of the retired admirals have worked for the Australian government while simultaneously consulting for U.S. shipbuilders and the U.S. Navy, including on classified programs."
U.K. Lettuce Outlasts Liz. Peter Walker, et al., of the Guardian: "Liz Truss has resigned as prime minister and will step down after a week-long emergency contest to find her successor, she has announced outside Downing Street. It follows a turbulent 45 days in office during which Truss's mini-budget crashed the markets, she lost two key ministers and shed the confidence of almost all her own MPs. Her statement came after she met Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs at Downing Street, followed by her deputy PM, Thérèse Coffey, and the party chair, Jake Berry." MB: In fairness to Liz, she is the first British PM since Winnie whose leadership" spanned the reigns of two rulers. ~~~
~~~ Mark Landler & Stephen Castle of the New York Times: "Prime Minister Liz Truss announced on Thursday that she would resign, just days after her new finance minister reversed virtually all of her planned tax cuts, sweeping away a free-market fiscal agenda that promised a radical policy shift for Britain but instead plunged the country into weeks of economic and political turmoil. 'I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected,' she said in brief remarks outside Downing Street." This is a liveblog. ~~~
~~~ Leo Sands of the Washington Post: "The question was all over British social media. Who would survive longer: the United Kingdom's prime minister, Liz Truss, or a wilting head of lettuce with a shelf life of just 10 days? By Thursday at lunch time, Britain had its answer. It was the lettuce.... [A head of iceberg lettuce] has done what many Machiavellian politicians have failed to achieve -- a takedown of a sitting prime minister." ~~~
The Daily Star lettuce has come out victorious in the battle of the year - to see whether it could outlast Prime Minister Liz Truss in #LizVsLettuce
— Daily Star (@dailystar) October 20, 2022
[THREAD] pic.twitter.com/sP7QDgqcfr
Amanda Holpuch of the New York Times: "Anne Sacoolas, an American who fled Britain in 2019 [under diplomatic immunity] after her car fatally stuck a 19-year-old British motorcyclist in central England, pleaded guilty on Thursday to causing the death of the teenager, Harry Dunn, by careless driving, British prosecutors said. The British Crown Prosecution Service had previously charged Ms. Sacoolas, 45, with causing death by dangerous driving in December 2019, but she pleaded guilty to the lesser charge in a hearing in London on Thursday at the central criminal court of England and Wales. She appeared at the hearing in a video call. The police said that Ms. Sacoolas, a State Department employee, was driving on the wrong side of the road near the village of Croughton, in central England, on Aug. 27, 2019, when her car struck Mr. Dunn, who was riding a motorcycle on the correct side of the road. Mr. Dunn died at a hospital shortly after."
Jason Horowitz of the New York Times: "... even before a government can be sworn in, [Silvio Berlusconi,] the 86-year-old billionaire media mogul has proved himself to be less of a stable, moderating force, than the source of renewed anxiety after the leak of surreptitiously recorded remarks revealed that he blamed Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for forcing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to invade Ukraine. The remarks, complete with talk about a 'sweet letter' and vodka from Mr. Putin, raise concerns that the new right-wing government, led by Giorgia Meloni, herself a solid supporter of Ukraine, is wobblier than expected and could, if it ever actually comes together with another Putin-admiring partner, potentially lead Italy to undercut Europe's united front against Russia.... Within days, the hard-right leader Giorgia Meloni ... is expected to become prime minister. But she needs Mr. Berlusconi's support, and he has now become the largest, and most erratic, obstacle to forming a government."
~~~~~~~~~~
Judge: Trump Lied in Sworn Affadavits. Kyle Cheney & Josh Gerstein of Politico: "... Donald Trump signed legal documents describing evidence of election fraud that he knew were false, a federal judge indicated on Wednesday. U.S. District Court Judge David Carter wrote in an 18-page opinion that emails from attorney John Eastman, an architect of Trump's last-ditch effort to subvert the 2020 election, needed to be turned over to the Jan. 6 select committee. Those emails, Carter wrote, 'show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public.' The emails are among the files that Eastman had been declining to turn over to the committee, citing attorney-client privilege.... [Judge Carter] ruled that Eastman must disclose four [of those] emails to congressional investigators because they are evidence of a likely crime." After Eastman warned some of Trump's attorneys that allegations Trump had previously made were "not accurate," "Trump and his lawyers opted to file the federal complaint using the same numbers that Eastman conceded were inaccurate." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Luke Broadwater & Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump signed a document swearing under oath that information in a Georgia lawsuit he filed challenging the results of the 2020 election was true even though his own lawyers had told him it was false, a federal judge wrote on Wednesday.... Judge [David] Carter wrote on Wednesday that the crime-fraud exception applied to a number of the emails related to Mr. Trump and [attorney John] Eastman's 'efforts to delay or disrupt the Jan. 6 vote' and 'their knowing misrepresentation of voter fraud numbers in Georgia when seeking to overturn the election results in federal court.'... In one [email], Mr. Trump's lawyers advised him that simply having a challenge to the election pending in front of the Supreme Court could be enough to delay the final tally of Electoral College votes from Georgia. 'This email,' Judge Carter wrote, 'read in context with other documents in this review, make clear that President Trump filed certain lawsuits not to obtain legal relief, but to disrupt or delay the Jan. 6 congressional proceedings through the courts.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: George Conway, appearing on CNN, said that the timing of the email exchange is crucial. Eastman urged Trump not to sign documents misrepresenting voter-fraud numbers in Georgia just a few days before Trump called Georgia Secretary of State [WashPo link] Brad Raffensperger (R) & pleaded with him to "find me 11,700 votes" because "we won the state, and we won it very substantially and easily." That is, Trump knew that everything he told Raffensperger about his big win in Georgia was a lie, including multiple claims like, "anywhere from 250 to 300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls," and "a couple of hundred thousand of forged signatures of people who have been forged." Yet Trump used these false (and absurd) claims to pressure Raffensperger to change votes for Joe Biden to votes for Trump. ~~~
~~~ As Politico notes, the false affidavits Trump signed were in a federal case, so Trump has managed to break both federal law -- by submitting false verifications to a federal court -- and Georgia state law -- by urging the Secretary of State to unlawfully change votes Trump knew were legal votes for Joe Biden.
Katherine Faulders of ABC News: "The Jan. 6 committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol has yet to formally subpoena ... Donald Trump, in part because investigators are still trying to find someone authorized to accept service of it, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News. Last week, the committee took the historic step of voting to subpoena the former president, with all nine members of the panel voting to approve the resolution to compel him to testify about the attack on the Capitol, which the committee argues was the violent culmination of Trump's many efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But multiple lawyers representing Trump have told committee investigators they aren't permitted to formally accept service of the subpoena on behalf of Trump...." At least three Trump lawyers have told committee investigators they don't have the authority to accept a subpoena for Trump.
Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times: "Three years after the writer E. Jean Carroll sued Donald J. Trump for defamation in New York, the former president submitted to a sworn deposition on Wednesday at Mar-a-Lago, his residence and private club in Florida. Ms. Carroll, in a 2019 book and excerpt in New York magazine, accused Mr. Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s at the department store Bergdorf Goodman. She said that he pushed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights, opened his pants and forced himself upon her. Mr. Trump said that he had never met Ms. Carroll, that she was 'totally lying' and that she was not his 'type.'... [Recently] Mr. Trump blasted Ms. Carroll in a lengthy social media post, repeating the kind of statements that had prompted her to sue in the first place.... The trial is scheduled for Feb. 6." A CNN story is here.
Sarah Murray, et al., of CNN: "Donald Trump's legal team is weighing whether to allow federal agents to return to the former President's Florida residence, and potentially conduct a supervised search, to satisfy the Justice Department's demands that all sensitive government documents are returned, sources tell CNN.... In the throes of multiple legal battles and hoping to alleviate some of the pressure he is facing, Trump has recently signaled to aides and allies that he is open to a less adversarial approach toward the Justice Department.... The approach comes even as Trump continues to indulge legal theories that the records he took with him at the end of his presidency are his personal property...." ~~~
~~~ Marie: This doesn't make any sense. We've already seen photos of Trump staff at the airport bringing file boxes from Mar-a-Lardo to some undisclosed location in New York or New Jersey. We've already read reports that the FBI doesn't believe all the docs Trump stole are at Mar-a-Lardo. So how is a Trump-"supervised" FBI visit to the Florida residence supposed to satisfy the FBI & DOJ? No search, without considerable cooperation from Trump staff, family members & other co-conspirators, can begin to answer where Trump has stashed all the stuff he (allegedly) stole.
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump inquired whether a documentary filmmaker recording an interview with him last year was a 'good Jewish character,' described Persians as 'very good salesmen' and complained that Israeli Jews favored him more than Jews in the United States, a new clip released by the filmmaker shows.... The clip cuts off as Mr. Trump asks someone...: 'You Persian? Very smart. Be careful, they're very good salesmen.'... The video was recorded on May 20, 2021, and was provided to The New York Times by the documentary filmmaker, Alex Holder. It was filmed at an event at Mr. Trump's golf club in Bedminster, N.J., as he spoke with several people.... Mr. Holder said that in one of their meetings, Mr. Trump had, off camera, expected Mr. Holder to be appreciative of the fact that as president, he had moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Mr. Trump, he said, seemed surprised when Mr. Holder explained that he was British. 'But you're Jewish,' he recalled Mr. Trump saying.... Mr. Holder's footage was subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: I'm confused. Apparently if you're of Jewish heritage, no matter where in the world you live & however little you care or even know where the U.S. Embassy in Israel is located, you're supposed to be grateful -- and loyal -- to Trump because he moved it to Jerusalem. Or something.
Jill Colvin of the AP: "Former Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday warned against the growing populist tide in the Republican Party as he admonished 'Putin apologists' unwilling to stand up to the Russian leader over his assault on Ukraine. Speaking at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington less than a month before November's midterm elections, Pence addressed the growing gulf between traditional conservatives and a new generation of populist candidates inspired, in part, by ... Donald Trump.... Pence criticized those in the party who have pushed a more isolationist foreign policy, particularly when it comes to Russian aggression."
Rachel Weiner of the Washington Post: "Christian Secor, who led a campus group at UCLA with white supremacist ties, was sentenced Wednesday to 42 months in prison for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after admitting he entered the Senate chamber that day and sat in Vice President Mike Pence's chair.... Secor, who pleaded guilty in May to obstructing an official proceeding, was among the first wave that broke into the Capitol. He went into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office suite, where McFadden noted staffers were 'cowering ... terrified' in another room. Secor then joined a group of about 40 people pushing against three Capitol Police officers guarding a set of doors on the east side of the Rotunda. The door gave way, allowing more demonstrators to flood in -- including members of the Oath Keepers who are on trial in the same courthouse." The AP's report is here.
Fractured History. On Tuesday, Marjorie Taylor Greene posted to Liars Social, "Tonight, I stopped at the Wilder Monument in Chickamauga, GA, which honors the Confederate soldiers of the Wilder Brigade. I will always defend our nation's history!" Minor hiccup: the Wilder Monument memorializes the Wilder Brigade, a crack unit of the Union Army credited with twice saving the Union Army from the Confederates at the Battle of Chickamauga. The Confederates ultimately won the battle, but at the price of great loss of life on both sides. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Akilah Johnson & Dan Keating of the Washington Post: "The imbalance in death rates [from Covid-19] among the nation's racial and ethnic groups has been a defining part of the pandemic since the start.... Early in the crisis, the differing covid threat was evident in places such as Memphis and Fayette County. Deaths were concentrated in dense urban areas, where Black people died at several times the rate of White people.... Over time, the gap in deaths widened and narrowed but never disappeared -- until mid-October 2021, when the nation's pattern of covid mortality changed, with the rate of death among White Americans sometimes eclipsing other groups.... Racial disparity vanished at the end of last year, becoming roughly equal. And at times during that same period, the overall age-adjusted death rate for White people slightly surpassed that of Black and Latino people."
Fox "News" Starts a New Covid Conspiracy Theory. Dan Diamond & Lena Sun of the Washington Post: "On Tuesday morning, a Fox News contributor claimed on Twitter that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was set to mandate that schoolchildren get coronavirus vaccines. By Tuesday evening, the claim was being repeated by the nation's most popular cable news show, and had been amplified to millions more on social media. 'The CDC is about to add the Covid vaccine to the childhood immunization schedule, which would make the vax mandatory for kids to attend school,' host Tucker Carlson tweeted, sharing a segment from his show that has been viewed more than 1.5 million times online. But the claim was wrong: The CDC cannot mandate that schoolchildren receive vaccines, a decision left up to states and jurisdictions.... 'This is an all new level of dangerous misinformation,' Jerome M. Adams, who served as U.S. surgeon general during the Trump administration..., wrote in a text message to The Washington Post." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Surely some regulatory agency (FCC) can send Fox a cease-and-desist letter ordering it to stop describing the network as "Fox News" when so much of its content is "Faux News" or "Fox Rumors, Conspiracy Theories & Flat-Out Lies." If I sold you a bag of sand and gravel labelled "Pure Cane Sugar," you would have some recourse. Fox viewers should have similar protection.
November Elections
Arizona. Sebastian Murdock of the Huffington Post: "A GOP candidate running for an Arizona college district's governing board was arrested on a charge of public sexual indecency after an officer allegedly caught him masturbating in his truck near a preschool. Randy Kaufman was arrested Oct. 4 but suspended his campaign Tuesday following media reports of his arrest. Kaufman is running for the governing board of the Maricopa County Community College District, and was allegedly caught masturbating by the county's community college police.... The officer said ... that Kaufman was in view of a nearby bicyclist and a preschool where children were playing outside. When confronted, the officer said, Kaufman apologized for the act. 'I'm sorry,' Kaufman said, according to the report. 'I fucked up. I'm really stressed.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Beyond the Beltway
Florida. Another DeSantolini Stunt Gone Awry. Michael Wines & Neil Vigdor of the New York Times: "Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida announced in August 'a first salvo' in what he called a long-overdue crackdown on voting crimes. But newly released body camera footage indicates that people arrested on charges of voting illegally seemed puzzled and appeared to have run afoul of the law through confusion rather than intent. The arrests targeted people convicted of felonies, a group that includes many former inmates who had voting rights restored in a process that left many others uncertain or misinformed about their eligibility to vote. In the videos that were obtained on Wednesday by The New York Times from the Tampa Police Department, those arrested repeatedly told officers that they were blindsided by the charges and had previously been cleared to vote by election officials." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: I heard on MSNBC (I think it was) that the state (the outfit DeSantolini runs) was supposed to send lists to the counties of ex-felons who were ineligible to vote for some reason. But, at least to the five largest Florida counties, the state did not send the list. So, naturally, poll workers allowed these registered voters to vote.
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al.
The New York Times' live updates of developments Thursday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Thursday are here: "Ukrainians are set to experience rolling blackouts starting Thursday after Russia's military continued attacks on the country's energy facilities this week, officials said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who will join a European Council summit to address Ukraine's energy challenges later in the day, pledged to do 'everything possible to restore the normal energy capabilities of our country.'... Ukraine's electricity grid operator told residents to charge their phones, flashlights and other key appliances, adding: 'The weather is getting worse.'... The resettlement of around 50,000 civilians from Kherson is under way, Russian proxy officials in the southern region said. The Wednesday announcement came as the Institute for the Study of War think tank said Russia's warnings of a Ukrainian offensive in the region were likely attempts to set the conditions for a full retreat across the Dnieper River and Russia's ceding of the city of Kherson, the first major settlement it took in the invasion.... The U.S. government has examined wrecked Iranian-made drones shot down in Ukraine, and information it gains about the drones could help the United States and its Ukrainian allies prevent future drones from reaching their targets...."
Andrew Kramer & Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times: "President Vladimir V. Putin declared martial law in four Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine on Wednesday, but in a telling sign that his real concerns may lie far closer to home, he also moved to put the economy on a wartime footing and imposed restrictions in more than two dozen areas across Russia. With battlefield losses mounting in Ukraine and the Russian public simmering over an unpopular military conscription order, Mr. Putin's actions appeared to be less a show of strength than a sign of disarray. As a practical matter, Moscow has only tenuous control of the eastern Ukrainian regions where it imposed martial law, weeks after illegally annexing them."
Eric Tucker & Fatima Hussein of the AP: "The Biden administration on Wednesday announced a round of criminal charges and sanctions related to a complicated scheme to procure military technologies from U.S. manufacturers and illegally supply them to Russia for its war in Ukraine. Some of the equipment was recovered on battlefields in Ukraine, the Justice Department said, and other nuclear proliferation technology was intercepted in Latvia before it could be shipped to Russia. The Justice Department charged nearly a dozen people in separate cases in New York and Connecticut, including Russian nationals accused of purchasing sensitive military technologies from U.S. companies and laundering tens of millions of dollars for wealthy Russian businessmen; Latvians accused of conspiring to smuggle equipment to Russian and oil brokers for Venezuela accused of working on illicit deals for a Venezuelan state-owned oil company."
U.K. Mark Landler & Stephen Castle of the New York Times: "Fighting for her political survival after the collapse of her economic agenda, Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain suffered another heavy blow on Wednesday after she was forced to fire one of her most senior cabinet ministers, the second major ouster in a six-week-old government that has tumbled into chaos. Hours after Ms. Truss rejected demands to resign herself..., the prime minister dismissed the home secretary, Suella Braverman, over a security breach involving a government document that Ms. Braverman had sent to a lawmaker in Parliament through her personal email.... Appearing at a stormy session of prime minister's questions in Parliament, Ms. Truss repeated her apology for the disastrous fiscal program.... The emergence of the news about Ms. Braverman only a few hours later exposed bitter rifts in the cabinet and a prime minister largely at the mercy of events.... In her letter of resignation to Ms. Truss, [Ms. Braverman] said she had 'concerns about the direction of this government,' accusing it of breaking pledges to voters and, in particular, of failing to curb immigration.... Ms. Braverman was replaced by Grant Shapps, a more centrist figure, whose appointment underscored the shift in the political balance of the cabinet away from the hard-liners who supported Ms. Truss in the leadership contest...." The Guardian's story, which first broke the news, is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Gosh, the U.K. is like a mini-U.S. An incompetent leader (tho maybe not as stupid as Trump), ridiculous Cabinet turnover, recriminations and even, "But the emails!" ~~~
~~~ Daniel Victor of the New York Times: "... [a head of] lettuce has become a caricature of the Conservative leader's flailing hold on power, pitted against the prime minister by The Daily Star, a left-leaning British tabloid. 'Will Liz Truss outlast this lettuce?' the newspaper asks in a live video that has been running since Oct. 14, attracting bounds of viewers and comments on social media. The lettuce gag was inspired by The Economist, which noted on Oct. 11 that between a near-immediate political implosion at the beginning of her tenure and the 10 days of mourning after Queen Elizabeth II died, her grip on power amounted to seven days, or 'roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce.'... On Tuesday the newspaper declared in a front-page headline: 'Lettuce Liz on Leaf Support.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
News Lede
Washington Post: Daniel R. "Smith, who was 90 when he died Oct. 19 at a hospital in Washington, was one of the last remaining children of enslaved Black Americans, and a rare direct link to slavery in the United States. Born when his father was 70, he was part of a generation that dwindled and then all but disappeared, taking with them stories of bondage that were told firsthand by mothers and fathers who, after enduring brutal conditions on Southern plantations, sought to build a new, better life for their families."
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Reader Comments (15)
Marie wrote: “ If I sold you a bag of sand and gravel labelled ‘Pure Cane Sugar,’ you would have some recourse. Fox viewers should have similar protection.”
Quite. Except that Faux viewers don’t want protection. They want, no, they need, the lies in order to justify their metastasizing hatred and inbred ignorance. Even the very few who might want the taste of truth and facts, they’d be like concentration camp victims who couldn’t be fed real food all at once after being freed as their systems wouldn’t be able to handle it, and from which they could die.
Longtime Faux addicts are happy putting sand and gravel in their coffee and on their Cheerios.
Talk about thin skinned, hypocritical, whiny babies…
While thinking about Faux, I recalled recently reading about a lawsuit Lachlan Murdoch has brought against a tiny online publication in Australia, the website Crikey.
Some time back, a Crikey opinion piece described Fox and the Murdochs as "unindicted co-conspirators" in Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, a claim that has many times the truth value of anything the Murdochs put on the air.
Funnily, his argument is two pronged. One, he has a first amendment right to say whatever the holy hell he wants.
Two, Crikey has no such rights and should be sued out of business for “damage to his reputation”. Hang on…hahahahahahaha…damage? How can you damage the reputation of someone known as a serial liar and pissy provocateur?
But here’s the other thing, a bit of a Trumpy echo. The Murdochs control 70% of the newspapers and TV stations in Australia. 70%! They inject their lies into tens of millions of homes every day. Crikey has 20,000 subscribers and is probably seen by fewer than 50,000 on any given day. So the number of people who actually read the original piece was minuscule. Until Murdoch started whining about his reputation. Then the piece was linked all over the place. Just like Fatty wouldn’t be in this stolen documents mess if he hadn’t opened his big mouth about everything being unfair to poor Donald, practically no one would have read that piece in Crikey if poor Lachlan (one of the wealthiest people on the planet) hadn’t spouted off about how everything is unfair to him.
But my favorite part is “I can say whatever I want. You have to shut up”.
Fucking losers.
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/lachlan-murdoch-sues-australian-news-site-defamation-2022-08-24/
Hey kids, another all purpose, use-it-anytime story starter for any piece related to the Fat Fascist: “Trump lied…” (linked above). Can’t go wrong with that.
And just a side note, if Fatty lies on a sworn affidavit to the federal government, who thinks he won’t lie to the Jan. 6 committee, or in that rape case? He ALWAYS lies. I guess he can’t help it. But for the most part, he’s always gotten away with it. It’s up to Merrick Garland (and a jury in NY) to call him on these particular lies.
We shall see.
MTG might be an uneducated, dishonest idiot, but she comes by it honestly, if that makes sense.
You can’t fault her for going to the Wilder monument in Georgia thinking it celebrated confederates. She thought it was the Will Be Wild-er monument. Poor thing.
But it does show how idiots with little education and massive amounts of ego are almost never right about anything.
The Battle of Chickamauga is one of the most famous military encounters of the Civil War, but it wouldn’t have been if it hadn’t been for Colonel John Wilder and his Lightning Brigade. Wilder was one of the most unusual and innovative officers in the war. Not knowing about his unique role in that battle would be like claiming to know about the Battle of the Bulge but not knowing about General McAuliffe, whose reply to the Nazis demanding his surrender (“Nuts”) put him in the history books.
But history, real history, is unknown and anathema to psycho harpies like Greene.
Go figure, right?
Trussed up in Britain…
That new Tory PM barely got out a “Lettuce prey” before her ass departed Number 10. Poor dear. Who’s next? They might think of trying a TV comedian. Ukraine did pretty well going that route. But nah, conservatives these days are permanently wed to the stoopid. Bring on the next Noddy.
I felt like I was immersed in battlefields etc via the roadside markers all over the east in trips of my childhood (stepfather taught college-level history--)but we did not travel in the South much, so I was not familiar with that particular battle. BUT, Perjury apparently can't read. If it is a real memorial, there will be reams of historical information attached/adjacent to it. Just a cursory skim of it would have alerted her as to whom it memorialized. She is arrogant and loud and ignorant, and it is pathetic that this is the type of voter responsible for Dumpie in office and herself in Congress. But I am also sure that more than those voters is responsible for our current crap. Every damn day we are assured that Dumpie has broken another law or multiples of laws, and they are unable to serve the simple subpoena because no one is responsible?? All of us commoners would have been tried and convicted by now. This is nothing short of disgusting.
Is Francis too optimistic?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/francis-fukuyama-still-end-history/671761/
I know I’m hogging the stage this morning, but just one more:
A Trump supporting MAGA candidate in Arizona (epicenter of dangerous MAGA morons) was arrested by police for sitting in his vehicle and spanking the monkey—in front of a PRESCHOOL!
This guy rails on his website about godless baby killing Democrats, but gets picked up for masturbating in front of a preschool.
Where was this in Arizona? A place called Surprise. Yup…”Surprise, surprise, surprise!”
These assholes can’t suck enough.
https://www.mediaite.com/crime/maga-candidate-arrested-for-masturbating-while-parked-near-a-preschool-i-fcked-up/
AK: "Spanking the monkey"–––wow, that's a new one for me although it has a faint familiar ring. Now the question is: Did the bloke just happen to get overcome while driving near the preschool or did he deliberately park there in order to get off on watching pre-schoolers.
Day after day we are entertained by the right wingers who continue to put their fingers in the wrong pies––-no plum for them except they get a lot of negative press which obviously doesn't bother their supporters who will vote for these meshugeners no matter what. "It's what we do!" they chant––they simply can't help themselves. Meanwhile, like Rome, we burn.
There was a 1994 movie titled "Spanking the Monkey". Can't recall
seeing it. Probably R rated, I would think.
M.T. Greene reminds me of someone who thinks Auschwitz is a
brand of beer.
And the Battle Of The Bulge was that last diet she was on.
I keep wondering if history of any kind is still taught in schools.
I had to learn most history the hard way, reading on my own. In our
school, history was taught by the coach, so not much history was
discussed. We learned a lot about football though.
PD,
Monkey spanking MAGA man in Arizona told the arresting officer he was watching interracial porn on his phone. Odd place to do that, innit? How about at home? Too overcome by the idea of watching black guys boinking white women? Even more interesting considering the virulent racism that informs the MAGA “philosophy”, if one can call a mash up of hatred, misogyny, paranoia, and violence a philosophy.
Nonetheless, when arrested, he told the cop “I fucked up”. I guess he meant, given the location, he should have been watching kiddie porn.
Forrest,
As funny as it is that MTG might think Auschwitz is a brand of German beer, I’m guessing she knows exactly what it is. You can’t say “was” anymore because Trump neoNazis in attendance at his insurrection wore “Camp Auschwitz” shirts that day. Auschwitz and the Final Solution are still very much alive in Trump World. On the back of shirt was the word “staff”, and on the front, the Auschwitz motto “Arbeit mach frei” in English translation.
At his trial, one guy repeatedly photographed wearing this shirt said he only wore it cuz he wuz cold.
In the end, most of these jabronis are cowards.
And MTG still pumps up the Big Lie that triggered that horror show. She might not know a lot, but she knows all about the evil shit.
On that subpoena, I was tempted to suggest putting it in a KFC bucket, but it would probably be intercepted by DiJiT's food-taster.
Why can't Chairman Thompson tell the U.S. Marshall's Service to take the paper to DiJiT, after coordinating with the Secret Service. Or maybe they can get the judge to issue a search warrant for the fat man (hiding behind the curtain?) and they can serve him when they find him?
He's a citizen, he's servable, why is this a big problem other than getting past his Protective Detail?
TFGs personal jet, a Boeing 757, is being flight safety tested after sitting for a few years. Feds might consider a hold on his passports just in case he gets itchy feet as the net closes.
Poor Lindsey.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/20/sen-lindsey-graham-loses-bid-to-stall-testimony-in-trump-election-interference-probe.html