I'm going to keep coming back to this point. Florida and the pearl-clutchers are making a big deal about something that does not exist. Would I be upset if Tropicana Orange Juice made teenagers pregnant? Fuck, yes. Am I going to ask for a law to prevent that? I mean, it doesn't appear to be a valid risk, or even, you know, possible. So no. Until I actually hear about real K-3 classes having "the talk" I'm not going to ask for a law to prohibit that. Quite frankly, even if one or two schools had that, it sounds more like "you should go to school board meetings more often" than "OMG CALL SWAT" to me.
Oh, and when you do attend a school board meeting, "bring ammo" is not okay.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/0...-case-00024031
And today in, "The Republican party is the party of projection", we have "Why they complain about pedophiles and child pornographers". Starring former RNC Aide and GOP Staffer Ruben Verastigui. What did he do?
I look forward to every Republican that attacked Jackson for defending "child porn" to attack their own party for having a child pornographer, with a focus on baby porn, in their ranks.A former GOP staffer and Republican National Committee aide who admitted to being part of a ring that traded child pornography involving babies was sentenced Thursday to more than 12-and-a-half years in prison Thursday.
Ruben Verastigui, 29, received the 151-month sentence from U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta during a hearing held via video conference, according to an announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C.
I'm curious to know who else was in this "ring". Like, can the RNC go with "that could be anyone's pedophile"? Or is this a systemic problem of Republicans forming a group to protect their own interests in having sex with children, something I will call "a Gaetz'd community"?
Donohoe joins Greene in the list of "Proud Boys pleading guilty to conspiracy".
Donohoe is one of the highest-ranking members, a regional leader, and now a convicted felon.
I could be off, but I'm guessing the more people in a conspiracy plead guilty, the worse it is for everyone else. How many more will plead guilty before prosecutors stop asking and just crush the remaining members under testimony under oath (plus all those emails and texts)?Charles Donohoe, 34, pleaded guilty during an appearance in federal court in Washington to charges of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding and assaulting or impeding federal officers. His plea agreement includes a provision to cooperate in the ongoing Justice Department cases against other Proud Boys members.
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In the ongoing effort to prove himself a liar, Trump endorses "don't say gay" bill that would prevent K-3 students from learning about sex in Florida, which again, is not happening.
"Okay, but why does that make Trump a liar?"
He claimed he was for LBGT rights. This move directly refutes that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/08/u...ping-case.html
Welp, 2 of the domestic terrorists in Michigan got off scott-free, 2 others are deadlocked and may have to go to trial again.
Guess planning and preparing to kidnap the governor of a state and leave her stranded on a boat in the middle of a lake, with backup plans to violently take the capitol building and burn it to the ground, and other backup plans to take it over and execute people there, is perfectly fine and legal?
I don't even have fuckin worse. This is beyond horse shit and this is precisely the reason why right wing extremism and domestic terrorism has festered into the very present threat it is to this country today.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/08/polit...ext/index.html
The disappointing son was also involved in attempts to overturn the results of the election with Trump's chief of staff."It's very simple," Trump Jr. texted to Meadows on November 5, adding later in the same missive: "We have multiple paths We control them all."
In a statement to CNN, Trump Jr.'s lawyer Alan S. Futerfas said, "After the election, Don received numerous messages from supporters and others. Given the date, this message likely originated from someone else and was forwarded."
The November 5 text message outlines a strategy that is nearly identical to what allies of the former President attempted to carry out in the months that followed. Trump Jr. makes specific reference to filing lawsuits and advocating recounts to prevent certain swing states from certifying their results, as well as having a handful of Republican state houses put forward slates of fake "Trump electors."
If all that failed, according to the Trump Jr. text, GOP lawmakers in Congress could simply vote to reinstall Trump as President on January 6.
"We have operational control Total leverage," the message reads. "Moral High Ground POTUS must start 2nd term now."
"Which son is that?"
It's non-specific, both of his adult sons are disappointments. But in this case, it's the one that bears his name.
1: They were white
2: It's Michigan. Once you go north of Flint, you hit "I hear banjos" mentality. If the word "lynch" had been said in public before they got caught the local Walmart would have been out of stock of everything from rope to tie up a boat to cross stitch thread.
3: There are still people out in the boondocks who think "Those Nichols boys had the right idea. Too bad Tim was sloppy."
https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...eport-1334716/
Reminder: The Trump cult is the cult of rapists and abusers.The draft report also detailed agencies paying off accusers, including a cash payment $255,000 to a CPB employee who claimed her boss sexually harassed her and asked her for sex, and then retaliated against her refusal by denying her work opportunities. Senior officials suggested this removed be removed the report, as well as other evidence pertaining to sexual misconduct. Also removed, at the direction of Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, were parts of a draft report about how employees received were not disciplined for domestic violence, as well as how the agencies had “put victims and the public at risk of further violence” by not confiscating perpetrators’ firearms.
Cuffari, whom former President Donald Trump appointed in 2019, has a history of this sort of thing. He blocked investigations that Secret Service staff proposed into the agency’s use of tear gas and sting-ball grenades to violently disperse those protesting police brutality near the White House in 2020. He blocked an investigation into the spread of Covid-19 within the Secret Service. He slow-rolled an inquiry into a retaliation complaint from a DHS employee who says he was demoted for criticizing the Trump administration. (The employee, Brian Murphy, would go on to file a whistleblower complaint alleging a litany of wrongdoing going far beyond workplace retaliation.)
The survey about sexual misconduct began before Cuffari was on the job, and asked respondents about their experiences from 2012 to 2018. The survey ended in October 2019.
Upon learning of the POGO report, DHS Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas stated in a memo that it “underscore[s] the need for immediate action.” Accordingly, he said he is directing his general counsel to initiate a “45-day review of the employee misconduct discipline processes currently in effect throughout DHS and to recommend any necessary improvements, including to ensure these processes align with relevant best practices and are consistent with all applicable laws.”
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https://apnews.com/article/donald-tr...31c12a81248e56
And more likely corruption -
The State Department says it is unable to compile a complete and accurate accounting of gifts presented to former President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials by foreign governments during Trump’s final year in office, citing missing data from the White House.
In a report to be published in the Federal Register next week, the department says the Executive Office of the President did not submit information about gifts received by Trump and his family from foreign leaders in 2020. It also says the General Services Administration didn’t submit information about gifts given to former Vice President Mike Pence and White House staffers that year.
The State Department said it sought the missing information from National Archives and Records Administration and the General Services Administration, but was told that “potentially relevant records” are not available because of access restrictions related to retired records.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...fb4_story.html
So, how's Republican populism going?
WHY CAN'T PEOPLE JUST PAY THEIR TAXES BEFORE RETIRING TO THEIR SUMMER YACHTS?!Mike Gibbons, a leading Republican Senate candidate from Ohio, said at a media event last fall that middle-class Americans don’t pay “any kind of a fair share” of income taxes.
“The top 20% of earners in the United States pay 82% of federal income tax — and, if you do the math, and 45% to 50% don’t pay any income tax, you can see the middle class is not really paying any kind of a fair share, depending on how you want to define it,” Gibbons said.
The comments by Gibbons, a millionaire investment banker from Cleveland, were made in a September episode of “The Landscape” podcast by Crain's Cleveland Business. But they could take on new resonance after Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, introduced a governing plan in February that has divided the party over its call to raise taxes on millions of Americans who don’t earn enough to pay federal income taxes.
They might be - and I sincerely hope they are. But to trigger the Federal RICO statute, they have to secure a RICO conviction first (and I'm almost certain you can count a plea deal as that conviction). Just want everyone to be on the same page here. However, if they get that first conviction, it's going to be hog-fucking-wild after that. Even Trump would be caught up.
If I had to guess, and assuming the Federal Prosecutors are going for a RICO conviction, they are building up to it with these conspiracy charges/plea-deals/convictions. The moment RICO comes out of the Feds mouth - it's going to be a whole new ball game.
The FBI and other alphabet agencies are running into the same problem that they always did with their cooked up "Islamic terror" schemes - the demand for "terrorists" among law enforcement vastly exceeds the actual supply. At least half of these sorts of cases of "terrorists" are some idiots that had no plausible plan to do anything being egged on by feds that desperately want to be the hero that saved the day.
Well, no. The US has got plenty of terrorists. Most of them are white supremacists, Trump supporters, or both. And, well, there seems to be a double standard amongst, um, "some people" as to how to handle that.
Linking to the DoJ blathering on about how there are totally tons of terrorists is just begging the question. If there were "plenty of terrorists", the FBI wouldn't need to concoct ridiculous pseudo-cells like the Michigan idiots - we'd see something that looks like the Irish Troubles, a situation with serious body counts, not the direction of massive federal resources at a few drunks ranting about how they're totally going to do something about that Whitmer.