Of course not. Trump's cultists will bend their very lives in half to make their view of reality fits Trump's words. As long as Trump tells them to attack the FBI, which several have done, they'll do it, even as Trump tells them he'd sell them out for a polite handshake.
Our Ruling
Our RulingSen. Rick Scott, R-Fla.,claimed that with the addition of 87,000 new agents, the IRS will be "larger than Pentagon, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Customs and Border Protection and the State Department combined."
The Inflation Reduction Act will provide funding that will allow the IRS to strengthen its workforce significantly, but just how that will play out is not set in stone. The best figures available suggest it would not be as big as Scott’s claim suggests.
The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.
Our RulingRep. Bob Good, R-Va., said, "Democrats are voting to add an army of 87,000 IRS agents who will target middle class taxpayers and conduct at least 1 million more audits each year."
The Inflation Reduction Act will increase staffing and enforcement at the IRS. But the 87,000 figure is flawed because not all of those employees would work in IRS enforcement, and not all of them would be new employees added to the overall workforce. Many of the hires will replace an estimated 50,000 IRS workers who are expected to retire this decade.
There is no basis for saying the IRS will target the middle class. To the contrary, the administration has ordered no increase of auditing earners making less than $400,000.
The last part of his statement — that the IRS will conduct at least 1 million more audits a year — is undetermined. It’s clear the agency will be auditing more tax returns from high earners, but there’s no official estimate on how many more.
All told, we rate Good’s statement Mostly False.
Our RulingSen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said the CBO "says 90% of the revenue generated from the new IRS agents will come from people making less than $200,000," and that the government will collect more than $300 billion.
The actual revenue estimate is $204 billion.
The 90% statistic comes from the Joint Committee on Taxation — not the Congressional Budget Office — and its letter to a member of Congress said nothing about tax audits. Tax experts said it is misleading to use the letter’s data the way Scott did. It addressed a totally different policy option, and it distorted who might be affected by categorizing taxpayers based on the income they reported, not their real incomes.
Scott made it sound as though all taxpayers making less than $200,000 are at risk, but the type of income in the 90% figure represents about 17% of all individual returns filed.
We rate this claim False.
The GOP, defenders of the rich and increasingly the criminal, are afraid the IRS will take the tax money they rightfully owe the people of the United States. Unable to find a valid reason to oppose this, they resort to lying.Gaetz claimed that the government is arming up the IRS because the president is raising taxes and disarming Americans, citing the amount of money spent on ammunition by the agency this year.
But there’s been no significant increase in spending on ammunition, and Gaetz ignores that the IRS Criminal Investigation division has existed for more than a century and that the weapons and ammunition are for those law enforcement officers. That division had fewer special agents in 2021 than it had in 2017, but the number of agents has stayed about the same for decades.
The $725,000 the division spent this year on ammunition, much of which is used for agents’ firearms training, is only slightly more than was spent in recent years and less than was spent a decade ago. There is no evidence this continued tradition of spending by the IRS has any connection to Biden’s positions on taxes and gun restrictions.
We rate this claim False.
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Trump calls Washington Post 'Fake News' following report claiming he's 'scrambling' for lawyers after FBI raid
Let's review Trump's legal team, shall we?In a post on Truth Social, Trump called the report "fake news" and continued to claim he was innocent of any wrongdoing.
"The WAPO story that ‘Trump is scrambling to add seasoned lawyers’ to the Mar-a-Lago Raid case is, as usual, FAKE NEWS," he wrote. "I already have excellent and experienced lawyers - am very happy with them."
Trump’s Legal Team Includes a Former OAN Host, a Lawyer for a Parking Garage Company, and Kash Patel Selling Tank Tops and Beanies
So...he's happy with these people? I mean, okay...Trump’s inner circle is fretting about the D-list status of his current crop of legal advisers, reported the Post, with a growing list of respected and experienced attorneys declining the invitation to defend him against potentially serious federal charges.
One source that dished on the record was Michael Cohen, who parted ways with his former client after his 2018 conviction for tax evasion, false statements, lying to Congress, and campaign finance violations. Trump used to be able to attract top-tier law firms by pointing out they could advertise he was their client, said Cohen, but “[t]oday it’s not the same.” The former president is “a very difficult client in that he’s always pushing the envelope, he rarely listens to sound legal advice, and he wants you to do things that are not appropriate, ethically or legally,” Cohen added.
Several other sources spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity, saying Trump “was nearly impossible to represent and that it would be unclear if they would ever get paid.” His penchant for oversharing on social media was a major issue; one attorney said Trump had been urged by his legal team not to tweet about the Mueller probe “only to find he’d tweeted about it before they got to the end of the West Wing driveway.”
Instead, Trump has former OAN host Christina Bobb; Lindsey Halligan, a Florida insurance claims lawyer admitted to the bar in 2014 with zero prior federal court filings; and Alina Habba, whose legal experience includes serving as general counsel to a parking garage company, filing lawsuits on Trump’s behalf against The New York Times, Hillary Clinton, and Trump’s niece Mary L. Trump, and defending Trump against a defamation claim by E. Jean Carroll, the writer who has accused Trump of sexual assault.
He’s also got Boris Epshteyn, who helped Rudy Giuliani with the “alternate electors” scheme to block the certification of the 2020 Electoral College votes, and former White House aide Kash Patel, whom the Post article describes as “raising money for a ‘legal offense’ fund by selling merchandise such as tank tops and beanies emblazoned with the logo ‘K$H.'”
Maybe his goal is to get a bunch of small fry lawyers he knows aren’t big enough to effectively go after him when he doesn’t pay them and who are so incompetent that he can chalk up any loss to the incompetency in hopes of affecting a mistrial.
If so it’d be the single most planned out thing trump has ever done. So that makes me think no.
“Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
Words to live by.
When the Washingon Examiner has an article about Alex Jones leaving Team Trump, you know it's a big deal.
I'm cross-posting this because, simply put, we are witnessing a break between Alex Jones and the QAnon alt-right conspiracy theorist cultists, and Donald Trump.DeSantis has just gone from being awesome to being unbelievably good. And I don’t just watch a man’s actions. As Christ said, judge a tree by its fruits. I can also look in his eyes on HD video, and I see the real sincerity.
This is what Trump should be like. And I’ve been hammering this point, and he’s doing it now. And we have someone that is better than Trump — way better than Trump.
I pigheadedly supported Trump a few years ago even though I disagreed with his Warp Speed because I thought that we had to keep him in office because of the nightmare scenario if Hillary or Biden got in.
In this thread, I'll ask: what does this mean for Donald Trump?
Alex Jones isn't the only far-right conspiracy theorist nutjob, but he's certainly one of the most well-known. Nothing gets headlines like lizard people eating gay frogs. Trump losing Jones might be a one-off, something Jones-specific, because Jones helped organize the rally turned riot turned rebellion and Trump did nothing to help him (the fact that Trump had few/no options isn't the point here, Jones is crazy). Or, Trump losing Jones could be symptomatic, hardee har har, of a growing issue for Trump: he's not what the crazy people need enough, anymore.
Notice the bolded above. Trump almost won the popular vote in 2016, in part, because he was an anti-vaxxer. He was an anti-vaxxer until there was an outbreak so bad under his watch he told people to get their shots in public in 2019. As we saw in 2020, he was kind of still on board? Ivermectin, UV lights, swallowing bleach, etc etc we all know the highlight reels of Trump asking people to do fucking stupid medical stuff. But he did push what he claimed was his vaccine -- he lied, but he claimed it as his own.
Has anyone heard from Joe Rogan recently? Last I checked, he wasn't talking about the FBI executing a legal warrant on Trump's grounds. He's pro-choice now.
Is Trump losing his grip on the frothing, rabid fanbase he spent so much time cultivating? Is Jones a symptom of something greater, or a one-off that can be handwaved?
CDC has problems, and Trump is problematic - but blaming CDCs problem on Trump being a science denier and anti-vaxxer isn't correct.
Note that on the listed problems could even be described as CDC being too "science-focused"; basically working more on having the perfect scientific paper than on actually doing something reasonably correct in time. Unfortunately (not noted in the article) CDC still didn't communicate the scientific uncertainty.
And early on CDC has problems with testing for covid - and didn't allow any other tests; the usual Not-Invented-Here syndrome.
As noted in the article a similar problem with Monkeypox is that the vaccine-distribution system is messed up.
For the vaccines:
Trump actually did a decent job with getting them ready with funding (the UK and EU did the same). Trump possibly even pushed this too much; so that the companies felt the need to distance themselves from him to not make it seem as though it was a Trump-vaccine (which would have made some democrats reluctant to use it). And drinking bleach (etc) was more of his usual Dunning-Kruger persona than anti-science.
And more importantly Trump isn't focused on being anti-vaxx (or pro-vaxx) or anti-science, Trump's focus is Trump.
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1560449991981862915
The latest defense for Trump retaining classified documents: It was in a secure room! There was a lock! Mar-a-Lago is a secure location!
Also, remember that time a Chinese businesswoman "got lost" and wandered into the place with a purse full of electronics, including a thumb drive with malware?
Man, who knew a storage closet at a golf course/resort was actually a secure location. They're not even trying to deny that Trump took classified documents to his private residence and illegally retained them.
Oh, I can guarantee they won't. Because every time they call for something to be released, it turns out to be bad for them. They asked for the warrant and inventory list, it showed they had classified above top secret stuff, that could possibly be nuclear weapons or something crap. Now they are asking for the affidavit, and the cover letter for it, shows the reason for the warrant, and now they being investigated for several crimes. The only reason they would want those tapes released, is so they can attack the investigating FBI agents. Just like with the people that have sued Trump, or the judges that have gone after Trump or other investigating parties like the J6 committee and others.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/08/...ook-challenge/
Lol, Fox is losing their shit that the book-banning they support is hitting one of their favorite books at a single school district, with the book temporarily pulled for review alongside all other books reported by parents as having sexual or inappropriate content for kids.
God the absolute irony of that quote. The hypocrisy and lack of self reflection.“What’s so difficult to digest here is that the whim of a few has such an impact on the many,” co-host Emily Compagno said. “This is literature that this school should be exposed to…. The fact that because one person or three people put the X on the list [is] absolutely horrifying…. School administrators need to step up and say absolutely not… Every day without the X is a day lost!”
just epic.
It ignores such insignificant forces as time, entropy, and death
While I would prefer the bible out of the school library, its kind of hypocritical of me because one of my favourite books from the elementary school library was on Greek Mythology. I guess I'm not opposed to religious texts being available as long as its not promoted as facts.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with a study of comparative religions.
But if idiots are out there banning books because "think of the children!!!" then the one containing a story about a woman who was gang-raped to death, dismembered, and had her body parts sent around the country as some perverse demonstration of what happened would definitely qualify.