Before moving on to the infrastructure bill, do note that the FBI searched James O’Keefe’s home today. That cheered me up, I can tell you. The feds showed up at at 6 am this morning at O’Keefe’s apartment in Mamaroneck, NY, with a warrant, banging on the door and yelling at O’Keefe to “open up.” A neighbor said they even had on FBI jackets, just like on teevee. So cool.
This was in regard to the diary of Ashley Biden, the President’s daughter. Last year burglers took the diary and other items from Ms. Biden’s home. Bill Barr’s Justice Department opened an inquiry. Shortly after that, portions of Ms. Biden’s diary were published on a right-wing website that is not directly connected to Project Veritas. However,
The company that owns the website that published the diary pages is reportedly registered to the same address as a consulting company that belongs to a former British spy named Richard Setton, who has worked with Project Veritas. The same address was also used to register another company that Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe was once the president of.
O’Keefe said he was offered the diary but decided not to publish it because he didn’t know if it was authentic. Like lack of authenticity ever slowed him down before. He also claims that his organization gave the diary to law enforcement last year. And no, I don’t know exactly what was in the diary that anyone would care about. Even right-wing media decided to not report on it. See also Legal expert explains how the theft of Biden daughter’s diary turned into a federal investigation.
In other news, a Dallas real-estate agent and January 6 insurrectionist who bragged she wouldn’t go to jail because she is white (and blonde!) just got a 60-day prison sentence. Heh.
In more other news, “a new lawsuit alleges U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley accepted $973,411 in illegal campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association during his 2018 Senate Campaign.” Heh.
Okay, on to the infrastructure bill. Last night before it passed the House, The Hill ran a headline that said Showdown: Pelosi dares liberals to sink infrastructure bill. Yeah, blame the “liberals.” Never the “moderates.” Makes me crazy. But this morning, National Review was ranting Disgraceful House Republicans Rescue Biden’s Flailing Agenda. Six Democrats voted no, but the bill passed because 13 Republicans voted yes.
To National Review, what’s in the bill doesn’t matter; a Republican’s only duty is to damage Democrats. The nation can rot.
I’m happy something passed, but people had better keep their commitments. The Hill reported yesterday,
The eleventh-hour deal between the Congressional Progressive Caucus, moderate Blue Dog Democrats and Congressional Black Caucus would allow the House to pass the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package and send it to Biden’s desk, as well as pass a rule setting up a future vote on Biden’s $1.75 trillion social and climate spending package.
The three-way agreement calls for a written commitment that moderates will vote for Biden’s $1.75 trillion social and climate spending package if the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score of the bill is in line with White House estimates. The statement would be backed by Biden.
I’ll believe the “moderates” will keep their agreement when they do it.
And, of course, the boundless and eternal Stupid that is Marjorie Taylor Greene had to react.
Republicans who hand over their voting card to Nancy Pelosi to pass Biden’s Communist takeover of America will feel the anger of the GOP voter.
— Marjorie Taylor Greene ?? (@mtgreenee) November 6, 2021
Yeah, real Americans don’t need roads or bridges to anywhere, I guess. One of the thirteen “traitors” responded.
Infrastructure=communism is a new one. Eisenhower’s interstate system should be torn up or else the commies will be able to conveniently drive! Red Dawn in real life pic.twitter.com/WTPtBYDSHx
— Adam Kinzinger (@AdamKinzinger) November 6, 2021
Other members of the dimwit caucus, including Matt Gaetz, are also expressing outrage. The bill passed in the Senate with 19 Republican votes, including Mitch McConnell’s, but that was okay.
Aaron Blake says that five of the thirteen House Republicans who voted yes are from New York and New Jersey, and I can’t imagine that voting to fix infrastructure will hurt them with their voters.
The bill included lots of popular projects and, in another era, probably would’ve gotten significantly more GOP votes. But we live in this era, in which delivering a political win for the other side — however popular the bill and however much your constituents might want it — is seen as apostasy. The demand in the GOP for such devotion to the party line and its election prospects is even greater than on the other side.
President Biden is expected to sign the bill soon. I don’t know if it has been officially transmitted from the House to the President yet.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, passes by a Build Back Better for Women rally held by Democrats on the House steps of the U.S. Capitol, on Sept. 24, 2021.
Regarding O'Keefe, the crime is the burglary – not the 'reporting' which O'Keffe didn't participate in. It seems to me that the FBI has (or thinks they have) a link between Veritas and the burglary. I wonder if there is a link between the financing of the burglary, the intent (forging something into the diary?), and Trump? The Hunter Biden/ Ukraine thing had fallen apart with the testimony that led to impeachment. Trump was intent on discrediting Biden through his kids.
So, how much was O'Keefe paid? Who paid it? What did they expect from O'Keefe? No, I don't think anyone expected anything incriminating in the diary – so the plan was to plant something in the diary. Just my guess.
Gawd, I hope they nail him.
Regarding the infrastructure bill, depending on how the bill is laid out, there's time for the US to see benefits in the next year – in jobs, and the commitment to fork over the cash for important projects. Example: Here in Tampa, there's a stretch of highway where I-4 intersects I-275, called "malfunction junction." It's been a mess for decades. The area is critical for Democrats in Florida – big turnout in Tampa and Orlando offsets Trump's popularity in the panhandle. We can't fix "malfunction junction" in a year, but DC can commit to it and Democrats can run on it.
We're after turnout – to get it we need to declare we're changing lives where it affects people directly. We need to deliver in the purple states most, FL, NV, GA, AZ… But do it with federally-funded projects that make life easier where people feel it.
On infrastructure, candidates should be nasty. Trump had an 'infrastructure week' almost as often as he played golf – but Democrats delivered. We needed to begin messaging like… yesterday.
Regarding the 1.75 T bill hanging in the balance, it will get a vote. That's the deal. It's not guaranteed passage but the Democrats who do not want to pass it also do not want to be held responsible for their vote. They should be. If the bill goes down, we will have a list of who we need to primary – we need to nationalize those elections where Democrats sold us out.
Regarding corruption: the party will want to protect them – this we must not allow. Running against the incumbent is an uphill battle but if progressives make replacing corrupt congress-critters a national issue and raise and distribute generously, it can be done. Note: the Tea Party took down Eric Cantor for being a Wall Street toady with exactly that formula. Cantor outspent an unknown Republican 10 to 1 and still lost because money doesn't matter in the primary. That election proved – money won't change turnout. Voters ignore the primary. If you can turnout progressives in a blue district in the primary, the incumbent is toast. (The reverse is just as true in a red district.) This is the thesis of my book. The primary election is the Achilles heel of corruption.
tRUMP was – and sadly still is – the motherload of jokes for stand-up comedians and talk-show hosts – especially the night time crew of Colbert, Meyers, Jimmies Kimmel, and Fallon, and, of course, SNL!
IMO, tRUMP saved SNL. SNL was kind of lame under Obama, because, well, there weren't the oceans of gaffes that both "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" provided on a daily basis – sometimes, even on an hourly basis. Bill Clinton was, of course, a great source for comedy because… Well, there's just something intrinsically funny in a sax-blowing, skirt-chasing, good ol' boy being POTUS.
But tRUMP, though he’s gone – for now at least – like a real stud bull, impregnated the American political system with his hysterical comedy seeds like "The Ultimate Karen," GA's MTG, and ultra dim-bulb, CO's Lauren Boebert, among waaaaaaaay too many other new dangerous sources of political humor. These newbies are, of course, the latest threads in the rich, but stupid and dangerous, tapestry of loons that comprise today's RepubliKKKlan Party.
If cobra's and crocodiles were funny – AND STUPID – they'd be leaders of the 21st Century GQP.
As for the Democratic Party’s corporate whores, like Senators (mental) Munchkin and sENEMA, now that they've stalled Biden's BBB.Plan, are now free to use their new-found free time by f*ucking around with other Democratic initiatives.
In other words, like you, maha, I'll believe those two, and the House DIMocrats, when I hear BBB is passed!!
Glad to see that Jenna Ryan got some jail time. Far, far less then she deserved but, any time for a shitbag like her is good time. I'm hoping her privileged white ass gets a good beatdown to help her understand how vile a personality she really is. Maybe that will become the second best day of her life?
In spite of the fact that she got off easy in her sentencing, I console myself with the knowledge that she's getting death threats, her business has suffered, and her name is out there for all to know that she's an ungrateful privileged shitbag who tried to destroy our democracy.
It's hard to tell from the reporting, but she seemed to (finally) express remorse, after the judge gave her a talking-to. I'm thrill that this will be on her record for the rest of her life. Of course she'll probably spin it as a badge of honor, her moment of courtroom contrition not withstanding. Grifters gotta grift after all.
Of course she'll probably spin it as a badge of honor,
Yeah, but only when she knows she's safe among her fellow Trump stooges. As time goes on, and Trump's lies and actions are further brought to light, the more she's going to be exposed as a dupe who lacked even a modicum of discernment.
I think of the scripture of the prodigal son where the father was able to see his son returning 'from afar'. A reading of that scripture could be understood as the father seeing his son in a physical proximity (coming down the road), or it could be understood in the sense that the father was able to honestly process all of the decisions about the circumstances his son would be faced with, and knew that ultimately that his son would return. Sorta like the expression used when somebody gets hoodwinked….They saw you coming! (from afar)
I only mention that scripture to illustrate the fact that if Jenna Ryan couldn't see what a despicable lying bag of shit Trump is after five or six years of public scrutiny then she's got emotional and intellectual issues far deeper than any political persuasion could ever account for.
I've read that she started some charity for… basically her own self-rehabilitation. Full damage control, what any image doctor would recommend.
I've read that O'Keefe has been schooled by people experienced in espionage, so I suspect his tracks are well-covered. All the rest^ is good news, badly needed.
"Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."
From "All The President's Men"
Trump thought he would win. If he didn't win, IMO, Trump planned to cheat. If Trump hired O'Keeffe for the burglary, Trump was sure that he could pardon anyone who got caught. That was the promise made for Jan 6 in planning, (reportedly.) I doubt provisions were made for if Trump lost and if facts came to light. Yeah, the money moved through several accounts and communications might have been encrypted but the government has a "back door" key to decipher almost every bit of encryption software out there. Nobody from Langley is gonna teach a frat-boy like O'Keeffe enough to get around CIA surveillance. If these people were smart and prepared, they wouldn't be crapping their britches about the documentation they left behind regarding Jan 6. But just like Nixon's crew, these are not bright people. If O'Keefe was in on it, he's got a lot to worry about.
CIA? What's CIA got to do with it? Whatever happened to the law that the CIA must not conduct operations within the United States? Was it overridden by the Patriot Act? The NSA is a different can of worms, of course. And the CIA is hugely overrated, anyway. When they wrote the Intelligence Community Assessment in January 2017, they couldn't even fabricate convincing evidence that the Russians stole the DNC's emails. Or at least they didn't, I don't suppose that really proves they couldn't.
I had to pick up a few things at Wall Mart the other day, and was in the grocery section when a young lady shouted out to the others in the group "I looked on the box and all you have to do is add pancakes and you get water".
I assume she was a young Republican.
Sowing confusion and misinformation is their stock in trade, along with digging dirt on people and fostering criminal and unethical activity.
Doug's label of malfunction junction has a good ring to it. I predict other large scale engineering debacles to come as "politically correct" overrules correctly engineered or any other correct for that matter. How did that approach work for Boeing?
The important point about your anecdote is that "language" has devolved to the point where slips of the tongue can no longer be confidently identified as such. Every utterance may as well be surrealist poetry; politics is applied literary criticism. This is the last stage of a process of decay that has no name, as it is unprecedented.
Jenna Ryan's remorse was straight out of page one of the Karen handbook: When caught and forced to face responsibility say "That was not who I am".
I was shocked to hear James O'Keefe is not in jail already.
Can someone besides Marjorie Taylor Greene tell me what a voting card is? Is it laminated to protect against "Jewish space lasers?"
Has anyone noticed both O'Keefe and Greene have three e's in their name. Coincidence? Yes. I think so.
Jenna Ryan is putting on her unrepentant patriot face. She claims she's going to a minimum security 'camp'. What she needs is 60 days in the black hole of Calcutta. That might change her attitude.
She's now the darling of Newsmax and OANN.
I was supposed to get a 'camp.' In my case, recommended by the judge. I would up in a high-security prison. Unless she's gotten a letter from BOP, she doesn't know where she's headed.
BOP didn't decide for over a month where I was going. I speculate in the book there may have been some hanky-panky in not sending me to a camp but my congresswoman opened an inquiry regarding why I was sent to FDC Miami, which may have saved my ass.
BTW, it's a lesson in "Do the right thing." I scheduled a meeting with Congresswoman Castor for her to sign an anti-corruption pledge before I found out that I wouldn't get a camp. The meeting with her was relaxed and I had the chance to ask.
I was called to sign some papers in the first week I was at FDC Miami authorizing the release of info to her office. So she was watching and BOP knew she was watching.
Her lawyer probably told her that she was going to camp just to make her sentence more palatable. And justify his fees.