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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
And she's compromised by the Russians, if not an actual FSB asset.
David Hogg's home was Swatted, though no one was there at the time.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/05/us/hogg-family-home-swatting-incident-trnd/index.html
McConnell has cancelled the Senate's August recess, saying "there's a lot of work to do."
edited 5th Jun '18 11:53:22 AM by tclittle
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
That's not going to make him any Friends.
I'm waiting for his own party to turn on him.
edited 5th Jun '18 11:55:51 AM by megaeliz
Perdue and Cotton are both for it, Cotton spurting out the same obstruction rhetoric.
https://twitter.com/CraigCaplan/status/1004054912072867840
https://twitter.com/CraigCaplan/status/1004054096524046336
Reposting since I stealth edited it on the bottom of last page:
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."I know you already posted this last page, Rationalinsanity, but if I may, just for discussion's sake:
David Hogg's home swatted while Hogg was out of town.
edited 5th Jun '18 1:18:40 PM by SciFiSlasher
"Somehow the hated have to walk a tightrope, while those who hate do not."@Jill Stein being a plant: Source that please?
Van der Zwaan has been deported after being released from prison.
edited 5th Jun '18 1:46:22 PM by TroperOnAStickV2
Hopefully I'll feel confident to change my avatar off this scumbag soon. Apologies to any scumbags I insulted.#NationalBoneSpursDay
edited 5th Jun '18 2:06:48 PM by megaeliz
Anyone ever read the Honor Harrington series? I always thought that the Opposition Party of Manticore's government was comically evil and inept to a somewhat unbelievable degree, but after two years of this administration, I can only conclude that it is a very accurate representation. Down to some of the more inept/evil politicians being plants/having ties to foreign/criminal agencies.
This is just kind of weird.
EPA's Pruitt told aide to obtain 'old mattress' from Trump hotel, perform other personal tasks
Ranking Democratic Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and Gerry Connolly of Virginia, in the letter addressed to House oversight committee chair Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., accused Pruitt of "multiple abuses of authority" for using agency aides to complete personal tasks, which is prohibited under federal ethics rules.
The allegations stem from an interview the committee conducted on May 18 with Millan Hupp, who serves as Pruitt's director of scheduling and advance. According to partial transcripts from her interview included in the Democratic lawmakers' letter, Hupp said that during the summer of 2017, Pruitt tasked her with scouting apartments for him in Washington and with getting a mattress from President Donald Trump's luxury hotel.
During work hours, she said, she reached out to D.C. realtors about rental properties for Pruitt and his wife, working unpaid for more than several hours a week over the course of several months and touring at least 10 properties.
And, hell, even that is an Insult to Rocks, as at least Young served in the military. Granted, he was drummed out for cowardice in the face of the enemy, but he still got further than Cadet Bone Spurs did.
edited 5th Jun '18 2:35:18 PM by sgamer82
Not really. The fact that Koch brothers Charles and David need to die, (and more importantly, their beliefs need to die or be so discredited that only .00001% of Americans will associate with them or with anything that does associate with them) before America can make any significant progress is simply a statement of fact. Charles and David Koch are the sons of a cofounder of the John Birch society, a wild eyed conspiracy theory group most prominent in the late-50s through mid-60s, (but still alive today
, and it gets new attention every few years or so) which believed that Communism is the greatest evil that can possibly exist, and that any government which does anything beyond the absolute minimum for its citizens is a socialist tyranny and on an inevitable slide into Communism, and must be destroyed and replaced with a proper worship of free market capitalism. (So if your government does anything more than provide for national defense, enforce court rulings, and maybe pave the roads they're all a bunch of evil socialists who need some capitalism forced onto them.)
Here's a long article from 1961
about the Birchers and their anti-Communist frenzy, with some relevant sections quoted below:
(1) Its image of world events and American politics is wholly conspiratorial. In the July 1960 Bulletin, Welch explains that the “key” to the advance of world Communism “is treason right within our government and the place to find it is right in Washington.” The danger, Welch says in the Blue Book, “is almost entirely internal.” And it is “a certainty,” he writes in May God Forgive Us, that there are “more Communists and Communist sympathizers in our government today than ever before.” As recently as January 1961, Welch was informing his supporters that “Communist influences are now in almost complete control of our Federal Government.”
Each year since 1958, Welch and his “board of experts” have published a “scoreboard” rating all the nations of the world according to the “present degree of Communist influence and control over the economic and political affairs” of the country. In 1958, the United States was rated as 20—40 per cent under Communist control; in 1959, the United States went up to 30—50 per cent; and in 1960, the figure climbed to 40—60 per cent. (At that pace, we will reach the 80—100 per cent mark in 1964.) England’s rating went from 20—40 per cent in 1958 to 50—70 per cent in 1960. Israel is presently rated as 40—60 per cent controlled; Egypt 80—100 per cent.
Everywhere, the Birchers advise, Communists are at the heart of events, even some events that might seem to less skilled observers remote from Kremlin direction. In an open letter to Khrushchev in 1958, Welch said “your hands played the decisive unseen part” in the run on American banks and their closing in 1933. It was the Communist-contrived recognition of the Soviets in 1933 that “saved them from financial collapse.” The “very idea of American foreign aid was dreamed up by Stalin, or by his agents for him.” The “trouble in the South over integration is Communist-contrived”; the Communists have invented a “phony ‘civil rights’ slogan to stir up bitterness and civil disorder, leading gradually to police-state rule by federal troops and armed resistance to that rule.” The United States Supreme Court “is one of the most important agencies of Communism.” The Federal Reserve system is a “realization” of “point 5” of the Communist Manifesto, calling for centralization of credit in the hands of the state. The purpose of proposed legislation requiring registration of privately-owned firearms is to aid the Communists in making “ultimate seizure of such by the government easier and more complete.” Everywhere, Welch concludes, the Communists are winning: in “the press, the pulpit, the radio and television media, the labor unions, the schools, the courts, and the legislative halls of America.”
_____________
All the above descriptions of conspiratorial trends have been cited from official Birch Society literature, what Welch calls the Society’s “steps to the Truth.” But the picture grows darker when one turns to the Black Book, or, as it is more commonly known, The Politician—the book-length “letter” which Welch circulated “privately” to hundreds of persons but which the Society has carefully rejected as an official document. The Politician is to the Society what Leninist dogma is to the Communist front groups in Western or neutralist nations—it is the ultimate truth held by the founder and his hard-core, but it is too advanced and too powerful to present, as yet, to the “masses” being led. In The Politician, Welch names names. Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower; Secretary of State John Foster Dulles; CIA Director Allen Dulles; Chief Justice Warren—all of these men are called knowing instruments of the Communist conspiracy.
It is worth noting that Eisenhower and his administration draw the strongest venom in The Politician, just as Social Democracts do in full-dose Communist literature. For Welch (a Taft supporter and Mc Carthy stalwart), the Eisenhower administration was a betrayal which could only have had Communists at its source. “For many reasons and after a lot of study,” Welch writes, “I personally believe [John Foster] Dulles to be a Communist agent.” “Allen Dulles is the most protected and untouchable supporter of Communism, next to Eisenhower himself, in Washington.” Arthur H. Burns’s job as head of the Council of Economic Advisers “has been merely a cover-up for Burns’s liaison work between Eisenhower and some of his Communist bossess.” “The chances are very strong that Milton Eisenhower is actually Dwight Eisenhower’s superior and boss within the Communist Party.” As for Dwight Eisenhower himself, Welch states unequivocally: “There is only one possible word to describe [Eisenhower’s] purpose and actions. That word is treason.” “My firm belief that Dwight Eisenhower is a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” he continues, “is based on an accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable that it seems to put this conviction beyond any reasonable doubt.” Discussing what he terms Eisenhower’s “mentality of fanaticism,” Welch refuses to accept the idea that Ike may just be an “opportunistic politician” aiding the Communists. “I personally think he has been sympathetic to ultimate Communist aims, realistically willing to use Communist means to help them achieve their goals, knowingly accepting and abiding by Communist orders, and consciously serving the Communist conspiracy for all of his adult fife.”
(2) The Birchers impugn the integrity and patriotism of those at the head of the major social and economic groups of the nation. In a supplement to the February 1961 Bulletin, Welch announced that “Communist influences” are “very powerful in the top echelons of our educational system, our labor-union organizations, many of our religious organizations, and of almost every important segment of our national life. Insidiously but rapidly the Communists are now reaching the tentacles of their conspiracy downward throughout the whole social, economic, and political pyramid.” Thus, the National Council of Churches of Christ is Communist-minded, and from 3 to 5 per cent of the Protestant clergy have been called actual Communists. “Treason,” Welch further declares, “is widespread and rampant in our high army circles.” The American Medical Association has been “took” and can no longer be depended upon for support in the fight against socialism. So too with the United States Chamber of Commerce, which has been preaching dangerously liberal and internationalist doctrines in its courses on practical politics. (When Chamber leaders protested this slur, Welch replied that their outraged reaction was exactly like that of the State Department in the 1940’s when charges of Communist infiltration were first raised.) The leadership of our universities, corporations, foundations, communications media—all are riddled with Communists, or “Comsymps” (a word Welch coined to avoid having to say whether a given person was a real party member or only a sympathizer).
Naturally, Welch and his colleagues are certain that these “Comsymp” elites are out to destroy him and his movement. References to persecution and images of martyrdom abound in Birch literature, ranging from incessant mention of how the patron saint (Senator Mc Carthy) was driven to his death, to suggestions that Welch may be murdered one day by the Communists.
(3) The Birchers are convinced that the Communists have gone so far in penetrating American politics that there is little hope in the existing political system. In his letter to Khrushchev, Welch wrote that the Communists obviously intended to “maintain and increase [their] working control over both our major political parties.” We cannot count on “politicians, political leadership or even political action.” Though he advocates the nomination, on an American Party ticket, of Senator Barry Goldwater for President and J. Strom Thurmond for Vice President in 1964, Welch has warned his followers that even Goldwater—the most “Americanist” figure around in politics at the moment—is “still a politician” and therefore not to be relied upon. Welch has also had some things to say about “Jumping Jack” Kennedy. According to Welch, the nation received “the exact Communist line . . . from Jack Kennedy’s speeches, as quickly and faithfully as from the Worker or the National Guardian. . . .” And in 1959, Welch denounced the “Kennedy brat” for “finding the courage to join the jackals picking at the corpse of Mc Carthy.”
_____________
A particularly revealing sample of Welch’s sense of American political realities is found in his description of the Eisenhower “steal” of the Republican nomination in 1952, one of the “dirtiest deals in American political history, participated in if not actually engineered by Richard Nixon.” If Taft had not been cheated of the nomination, Welch predicted:
It is almost certain that Taft would then have been elected President by a far greater plurality than was Eisenhower, that a grand rout of the Communists in our government and in our midst would have been started, that Mc Carthy would be alive today, and that we wouldn’t even be in this mess. . . .
(4) Most of the Birch Society’s positive program consists of advocating the repeal of things or the removal of the nation from something or somewhere. A partial” list of the things that the Society describes as wicked, Communist, and dangerous includes: U.S. membership in the United Nations, the International Labor Organization, the World Health Organization, the International Trade Organization, and UNICEF; membership in GATT (the General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs); reciprocal trade agreements; the “useless and costly” NATO; “so-called defense spending”; all foreign aid; diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and all other Communist nations; the National Labor Relations Act; social security; the graduated income tax; the Rural Electrification Administration, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and TVA; government wage and price controls; “forced integration”; “deliberately fraudulent” U.S. government bonds; the Federal Reserve system; urban renewal; fluoridation; metro government; the corporate dividend tax; the “mental health racket”; federal aid to housing; and all programs “regimenting” farmers.
Some items on this list may be opposed by conservatives or by liberals. But taken together, it adds up to a nihilist’s plea for the repeal of industrialism and the abolition of international politics. Such a program can be called rational or even political only by people who do not know what those words mean.
(5) Finally, the Birch Society advocates both “direct action” and “dirty tactics” to “break the grip of the Communist conspiracy.” Unlike those right-fundamentalist groups which have energetic leaders but passive memberships, the Birchers are decidedly activist. “Get to work or learn to talk Russian,” is a slogan Welch recommends to his followers, and they are certainly hard at work. From national headquarters in Belmont, Massachusetts, Welch formulates a set of complementary national and local action programs, then issues them to members through directives in the Bulletin and contacts with chapter leaders. A mixture of traditional and fundamentalist techniques is prescribed. The local programs include infiltration of community organizations such as PTA (“to take them away from the Communists”); harassment of “pro-Communist” speakers at church meetings, political gatherings, and public forums; creation of local front groups (e.g., the Committee Against Summit Entanglements, College Graduates Against Educating Traitors at Government Expense, the Committee to Impeach Earl Warren, and the Committee to Investigate Communist Influences at Vassar College); campaigns to secure endorsement of Birch positions and signatures for Birch petitions in all groups that Birch members belong to (e.g., veterans and business organizations); letters and telephone calls to local public officials, leading citizens, and newspapers who support what the Society opposes or oppose the Society directly; monthly telephone calls to the local public library to make sure it has copies of the five right-wing books recommended by Welch every month.
The national campaigns are carefully pinpointed efforts. They range from letter-and postcard-writing to national advertising campaigns. In the past two years, Birchers have been told to: write the National Boy Scouts director and demand to know why the president of the National Council of Churches addressed their National Jamboree; insist personally and in writing each time a member flies American, United, or Eastern Airlines that they stock Human Events and National Review on their planes; write to Newsweek to protest a “pro-FLN Communist” story (the Society has a crush on Jacques Soustelle), to Life protesting the “glorification” of Charles Van Doren, and to the NBC network and the Purex Corporation for sponsoring a TV drama favorable to Sacco and Vanzetti; circulate petitions and write letters on the number one project of the moment, to impeach Chief Justice Warren and thereby “give the Communists a setback.” Welch also sends out the copy for punchy postcards to be addressed to national political leaders. To cite instances in 1960 alone: to Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. at the UN, “Two questions, Mr. Lodge—Who Murdered Bang-Jensen? And Which Side are You On?”; to Secretary of State Christian Herter, “Castro is a Communist. Trujillo is an anti-Communist. Whose Side are You On?”; and to President Eisenhower, on the eve of the scheduled summit conference, “Dear President Eisenhower—If you go, don’t come back.”
The last postcard stirred some protests from Society members, who felt that Welch’s savage little message to the President was a bit too strong. Welch set them straight in the Bulletin: “It is one of our many sorrows that, in fighting the evil forces which now threaten our civilization, for us to be too civilized is unquestionably to be defeated.” The Communists, he continued, want us to be “too gentle, too respectable . . . [but] this is not a cream-puff war . . . and we do mean business every step of the way.” Welch admitted that the technique of planted and loaded questions and the disruption of meetings was a “dirty trick,” but he still defended it as another vital tactic.
To stimulate compliance by members with the local and national efforts prescribed each month in the Bulletin, Welch has devised the MMM system, or “Member’s Monthly Memos.” These forms are filled out by the member detailing what he or she has done and including sundry observations on the “Americanist fight.” They are then collected by the chapter leader and transmitted to Belmont. Welch and his staff, according to the Bulletin, spend much time going over the MMM’s.
Charles and David were active, even lifetime members
who participated in the Society's attempts to do things like campaign for the removal of Supreme Court Justices who had ruled against segregation, accusing American Presidents and senior officials as being communist plants, the civil rights campaign as being a communist plot to weaken America, etc.
1958
Fred Koch attended the initial meeting of right-wing businessmen called by Robert Welch, who proposes creating the John Birch Society to fight the spread of communism in the U.S., after the ignominious death of Senator Joe Mc Carthy, who was censured. Fred joins the Executive Committee, which met monthly to plan Birch Society strategy.
1961
Charles Koch moved home to Wichita to work for his dad and joins the John Birch Society, which his father, Fred, co-founded. (According to Sons of Wichita, Charles joined the Birch Society when he moved home.)
That year, Fred Koch published and circulated his pamphlet, "A Businessman Looks at Communism," which claimed the U.S. Supreme Court was pro-communist, that President Dwight Eisenhower (the former allied commander in WWII) was soft on communism, that the public schools used many communist books, and that many teachers were commies.
Also that year, David Koch–a student at MIT–helps incite an anti-communist, anti-Castro protest that turns into a riot where students are arrested.
...
According to Time magazine's profile, Wichita was designated a "pilot" town for the John Birch Society and it mentioned Fred Koch's leadership of the organization. Professors at the city college, Wichita University, reported being harassed by Birchers for their books and what they taught. At a major Birch event there, Fred Koch introduced the John Birch Society founder, Bob Welch, at a town hall meeting of 2,000 people. Friend of the Koch family and fellow Bircher, Bob Love of the Love Box Company shut down a news filming of the speech in which Welch was tape recorded claiming "The Protestant ministry is more heavily infiltrated by Communists than any other profession in America." The Wichita Eagle-Beacon editorialized that "Welch is selling snake oil, and that a lot of people are buying it."
...
A John Birch Society front group runs advertisements in Dallas before President Kennedy's arrival, depicting his head in mug shots with the word "TREASON" below, along with claims that Kennedy is guilty of treason for purportedly being soft on communism.
President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
Fred Koch then helped spearhead a national advertisement in the New York Times blaming Kennedy's assassination on the communists.
...
Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The John Birch Society claimed that the few "handicaps to Negro voting" "could be and were being corrected" without federal legislation and that "To tear a whole great nation to pieces, and to try to plunge a large part of it into civil war, over the few such injustices as do exist, is on a par with sinking a mighty ship in order to get a rat out of the scupper." (Robert Welch, "Two Revolutions at Once" in American Opinion and then published as a stand-alone John Birch Society pamphlet in 1966.)
Among other things in 1965, Charles Koch helped promote the John Birch Society bookstore in Wichita, which was managed by Bob Love. The bookstore peddled John Birch Society pamphlets like Earl Lively's "The Invasion of Mississippi," which claims the racial integration of Ole Miss was unlawful and sides with the white racist protestors. Other titles included Robert Welch's pamphlet, "A Letter to the South on Segregation" and a tract titled "Is the Supreme Court Pro-Communist." It also offered "Support Your Local Police" stickers from the campaign begun in 1963.
Charles Koch's confidante and assistant George Pearson joined the John Birch Society and began volunteering at the American Opinion Bookstore in Wichita, too.
The John Birch Society also promoted its new "What's Wrong with Civil Rights" campaign in its bookstores and newspapers. The campaign claimed African Americans are better off in the U.S. than in other countries and have personal security on par with whites
...
1966
James Meredith is shot during the "March against Fear" to register African American voters.
The John Birch Society continued its campaign to Impeach Earl Warren and also pushed to raise $12 million to take over Congress through launching political action in 325 districts.
Charles Koch sent out a fundraising letter with Bob Love to raise money for the John Birch Society. They said they had contributed $3500 toward the goal of $5000 (the average annual wages of an American worker that year).
The John Birch Society also promoted its "Liberty Amendment," opposing graduated income taxes as a marxist plot to impose collectivism. It also took out "Support Police" ads and opposed "Civilian Review Boards" that would impose citizen oversight against police brutality.
That year, with his father ill, Charles Koch took on the leadership of the family corporation that would become Koch Industries.
As the John Birch Society began mostly falling apart and became increasingly irrelevant, Charles Koch resigned his lifetime membership. Not having been able to have a major impact through direct activity, the Kochs turned to slightly more subtle methods, which included largely coopting the libertarian movement, (David Koch was the Vice President on the 1980 Libertarian Presidential ticket) but when they felt that was going to be as ineffective as the Birch Society was in the 60s, they became big money men for the GOP, pulling it ever more towards their desire to utterly erase any kind of welfare state, society security, etc.
They also began influencing the school system to try to bring it into line with their dogma, being major supporters and figures behind the desires for public funding of charter schools, opening their own private schools, and bribing universities into teaching their dogma through large donations. (Here
are
some
relevant
links
for
you
.)
The Kochs are huge funders of the Tea Party
, and while they may not have wanted Trump specifically, they're very much an integral part of the decades long movement that pushed the Republican party into fanaticism and Trump into power. They have their occasional moment of usefulness for a leftie, like being against the crazy US prison system or Trump's tariffs, but yeah, they've got to go. Them and their influence has to die or be rendered so irrelevant it might as well be dead. And no, I refuse to feel sorry for saying as much. I don't see it as any different than a person in a dictatorship wishing for the death of the dictator or his loyal torturers and such.
Sadly, it's probably not going to happen, because the men have been trying to influence politics for almost 60 years now and so I doubt they've neglected the issue of how they want the $62 billion or so in profit their companies make per year to be used for political purposes after their inevitable and likely imminent deaths. (One is 78 and the other almost 83.)
Oh, and last thing, you know the creepy ways Weinstein and Trump tried to hire teams to follow, get dirt on, and discredit people? (Weinstein's accusers and the negotiators of the Iran Deal, respectively.) Well, the Kochs have plenty of practice in that too
, including trying to slander and arrange for the firing of journalists who try to report on them.
So in conclusion, fuck those guys, and no, I'm not sorry about it, and there's nothing unfortunate about saying so either.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |More blatant corruption from Pruitt, this time it was using a government employee to inquire about...getting his wife a Chick-Fil-A franchise?
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/05/politics/scott-pruitt-chick-fil-a-job-wife/index.html
Man, when I took courses on government corruption and public ethics near the tail end of my Undergrad, I figured no one would be this blatant. Even most 3rd World crooks are more discreet than Pruitt.
edited 5th Jun '18 3:33:35 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Pruitt: can I divert funds and hire some of Prince's spooks to discretely obtain a sandwich for my wife? I know there are less complicated ways of doing this, but my complexity addiction demands a ten step plan for maximum chicken related satisfaction.
At least that is what I pictured when I heard that.
Seriously Pruitt, sandwiches?
edited 5th Jun '18 3:36:09 PM by NickTheSwing
Surprising no one, John Bolton likely made a deliberate attempt to scuttle the talks with North Korea.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/06/05/john-bolton-libya-model-nk-talks-kosinski-nr-sot.cnn
Cause one war wouldn't be enough.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

2 of the 3 Texas Democrats, who were previously against supporting Moderate Republicans plans to force a Vote for Dreamers, have signaled they now support the measure
. Last I remember, 23 Moderate Republicans have signed on board. If every other Democrat, excluding the 1 Texas Democrat, signs the petition that would force the Dreamer Votes, only 3 more Republicans would need to join. If that Texas Democrat joins his colleagues, only 2 more Republicans are needed.
I'm holding my breath, but I do have some hope the vote will be forced; mostly because 23 Republicans have already signaled they want to save the Dreamers, 2-3 more can't be that hard to find.