Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

We're at the point now where one in six American adults believe "patriots" will have to resort to violence to "save our country" and I'd like to remind you that means about 30 million people or so are ready to throw down for a civil war or three, as a new PRRI poll finds some depressing news.

A nontrivial 15% of Americans agree with the sweeping QAnon allegation that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation,” while the vast majority of Americans (82%) disagree with this statement. Republicans (23%) are significantly more likely than independents (14%) and Democrats (8%) to agree that the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.

Similarly, one in five Americans (20%) agree with the statement “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders,” while a majority (77%) disagree. Nearly three in ten Republicans (28%), compared to 18% of independents and 14% of Democrats, agree with this secondary QAnon conspiracy theory. Trends among demographic groups are similar to those of the core QAnon conspiracy theory.

Fifteen percent of Americans agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” while the vast majority (85%) disagree. Republicans (28%) are twice as likely as independents (13%) and four times as likely as Democrats (7%) to agree that because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence.

The sources that Americans turn to for news are closely linked with openness to QAnon views. Americans are most likely to say the television news sources they trust most to provide accurate information about politics and current events are the major broadcast networks (17%), such as ABC, CBS, and NBC. One in ten or more report most trusting local television news (13%), Fox News (11%), and CNN (10%). Fewer rely on public television (8%), MSNBC (5%), and far-right news networks (3%) such as One America News Network (OANN) and Newsmax. Three in ten (30%) say that they do not watch television news, and 2% report turning to some other source.

Around four in ten Americans who say they most trust far-right news outlets such as OANN and Newsmax (40%) for television news agree with the statement that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.” Around one in five Americans who do not watch television news (21%) and trust Fox News (18%) agree. Around one in ten Americans or less who trust local news (12%), CNN (11%), broadcast networks such as ABC, CBS, and NBC (8%), public television (7%), and MSNBC (5%) believe this core tenet of QAnon.

Nearly half of Americans who trust far-right news (48%) and one-third who trust Fox News (34%) agree with the statement that “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.” About one in five who do not watch television news (22%), those who report trusting local news most (18%), and those who report trusting CNN most (17%) agree with this theory. Fewer Americans who trust MSNBC (14%), broadcast news (12%) or public television (11%) agree.

Around four in ten Americans who most trust far-right news sources (42%) and around one in four who most trust Fox News (27%) agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Less than one in five Americans who do not watch television news (19%) or who trust local news (16%) agree, and less than one in ten who trust CNN (9%), broadcast news (8%), public television (7%), or MSNBC (7%) agree.

 

The absolutely vile right-wing noise machine is fomenting, best-case scenario here, multiple terrorist attacks against the US government and Democrats in particular. Worst-case, it's 1861 again. I think people are badly underplaying how widespread the threat is here. 

We're talking tens of millions of radicalized Americans, and if even one percent of them acted, it would still be catastrophe for the nation.

I honestly believe it's coming, and soon, and the return of Trump's hate rallies next month will only add napalm to the fires.

Qball Tinfoil Wackiness is America's newest mass religion.

The teams behind the poll determined that 14 percent of Americans fall into the category of “QAnon believers,” composed of those who agreed with the statements in all three questions. Among Republicans only, that rises to roughly one in four. (Twelve percent of independents and 7 percent of Democrats were categorized as QAnon believers.)

But the analysts went a level further: They created a category labeled “QAnon doubters” to include respondents who had said they “mostly disagreed” with the outlandish statements, but didn’t reject them outright. Another 55 percent of Republicans fell into this more ambivalent category.

Which means that just one in five Republicans fully rejected the premises of the QAnon conspiracy theory. For Democrats, 58 percent were flat-out QAnon rejecters.

Mr. Jones said he was struck by the prevalence of QAnon’s adherents. Overlaying the share of poll respondents who expressed belief in its core principles over the country’s total population, “that’s more than 30 million people,” he said.

“Thinking about QAnon, if it were a religion, it would be as big as all white evangelical Protestants, or all white mainline Protestants,” he added. “So it lines up there with a major religious group.”

 

One in seven American adults are indoctrinated fully into a violent death cult.

We will not emerge from this without a ruinous cost.

(Un)Vaccination Nation

Ohio Republicans are about to get rid of vaccine requirements and make them illegal. Not making COVID vaccine requirements illegal,making all vaccine requirements illegal.

Through PSAs, press appearances with doctors, and even launching an unheard of $1 million lottery for immunized residents, GOP Gov. Mike DeWine wants to persuade Ohioans to choose to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

He said the facts on vaccines, which are credited with saving millions of lives and eradicating smallpox from the face of the earth, will win out.

Republicans in the state General Assembly, meanwhile, are pushing sweeping legislation to weaken Ohio’s vaccination laws — for all vaccines, not just COVID-19. On Tuesday, anti-vaccination activists crammed into the House Health Committee hearing room to testify in support of House Bill 248.

The legislation would ban vaccine requirements on customers, employees or students from businesses, hospitals, nursing homes, K-12 schools, colleges, daycares, or others. It would also prevent governments, insurers, or businesses from offering incentives for people to get vaccinated, or even requesting that people get vaccinated.

In interviews, public health experts warned the legislation would hold the door open for infectious diseases to spread among Ohioans.

Under the bill, a small business owned by asthmatics or cancer survivors — both of whom are at higher risk of serious COVID-19 complications — would have no legal right to require or even request that employees or customers who come inside be vaccinated. That’s according to Dorit Reiss, a professor with a focus on vaccine policy from the UC Hastings College of Law.

“It’s against business rights, it’s against the individual rights of private businesses, it’s against safety, and it’s in support of the virus,” she said.

 

Ohio already allows parents to exempt kids from vaccinations out of choice (and the state's vaccination level among children has dropped to 88%), but this would essentially reverse decades of medical science and thousands would end up suffering from preventable diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella.

But Republicans are bound and determined to kill as many Ohioans as possible. Everyone has to suffer and die for their utter stupidity. DeWine, for his part, is trying to stop this bill, but he can easily be overridden.

We'll see if Ohio becomes a third world country.

The Big Lie, Con't

We go from Arizona across the country to New Hampshire, where The Big Lie is running into problems in the Granite State like a stone wall, and Trump continues to be a blockhead.

Outside a nondescript building, guarded 24/7 by state troopers, the leaders of Windham's election audit field questions on the type of tape they're using to seal boxes, why the livestream briefly failed and whether any ballot boxes have gone missing. 

Unlike audits of 2020 election results that have popped up in Arizona and Georgia, New Hampshire's audit arose from a tangible gap in vote tallies in a race for state representative. Auditors have said their early assessment reveals no sign of fraud and instead points to human errors that they don't believe are pervasive statewide. 

Even so, the bipartisan audit has become a flashpoint in this small town. And some conservatives are clinging to claims that the issue in Windham could point to broader election integrity problems throughout New Hampshire or even beyond. 

Harri Hursti, an expert in electronic voting security and part of the three-man team leading the audit, said he's been surprised at the level of "malicious misinformation" swirling around the audit. 

"I'm a little bit surprised at the level of confusion and the level of deliberate trolling," Hursti said. "The level of this is more than I expected. Nevertheless, we have to get the truth out. We have to make sure that people have the facts." 

While the Windham audit wraps up this week, the 2020 election conspiracy theories are sure to persist. Among those amplifying them: former President Donald Trump and his allies. In a statement Monday night, Trump seized on the errors auditors are uncovering in New Hampshire and then claimed -- without any supporting evidence -- that Democrats were somehow behind it. 

"Why aren't Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republicans doing anything about what went on in the 2020 Election? How can the Democrats be allowed to get away with this?" Trump said. 

Trump's longtime political ally Corey Lewandowski, who lives in Windham, has also seized on the audit as evidence that there are voter discrepancies elsewhere. 

"This isn't just about the town of Windham," Lewandowski said at an event flanked by conservatives who are pushing for an even broader audit in New Hampshire. "We're seeing things take place across this entire country." 

There's no indication that the presidential tallies were miscounted, and Trump's race is not being audited here. He lost the state by nearly 60,000 votes and -- even if Trump had managed to turn his fortunes around -- New Hampshire's four electoral votes would not have been enough to land him back in the Oval Office.

 

Every audit the doesn't somehow prove a massive democratic party conspiracy somehow still proves and even worse Democratic party conspiracy, you see. It'll never end, until we get rid of elections entirely and just declare Republicans the permanent winners in everything.

At the very least, it'll be used to justify the next wave of political violence against Democratic candidates and voters, and if election nullification comes along like I expect it will in 2022, it will be widespread and lethal violence.

Last Call For Climate Of Rage, Con't

Banks increasingly see fossil fuel technology as something they should divest from because of green energy becoming more efficient and profitable daily, but since the President is a Democrat now, Republicans are here to make sure that if banks actually do that, Republicans will divest of the banks.

More than a dozen Republican state treasurers are threatening to pull assets from large financial institutions if they agree to decarbonize their lending and investment portfolios, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The Biden administration — led by special presidential climate envoy John Kerry — has leaned on the banks to help reduce U.S. carbon emissions. That's prompted GOP lawmakers to criticize efforts to "de-bank" fossil fuel firms. The treasurers collectively control hundreds of billions worth of assets. Fifteen of them, led by coal-heavy West Virginia, say they're prepared to use this financial muscle to push back. The effort includes treasurers from other states with large energy industry presences such as North Dakota, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma.

What's happening: The state officials sent a letter on Tuesday to Kerry, who's leading the administration's efforts to enlist banks in its climate policy fight. 

"We intend to put banks and financial institutions on notice of our position, as we urge them not to give in to pressure from the Biden administration to refuse to lend to or invest in coal, oil and natural gas companies," the officials wrote. 

In an interview with Axios, West Virginia state Treasurer Riley Moore said he was prepared to terminate contracts with banks that pull back their fossil fuel industry lending in response to administration pressure. "Frankly, it is not fair for the people of West Virginia to allow a bank to handle our money when they're diametrically opposed to our way of life," Moore said.

What they're saying: Moore called the issue "a matter of life and death for my people." He said coal and gas operators in his state have reported difficulties obtaining financing from banks blaming pressure from the Biden administration to try to "green" their portfolios. "If you just cut these guys off at the knees — gas and coal in a state like West Virginia — and they can no longer conduct their business ... it is going to destroy us," Moore said. He cited the industries' heavy jobs footprint and contributions to the state's tax base. 

A State Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Between the lines: The state officials signing the letter collectively manage more than $600 billion in assets in state treasuries, pension funds and other government accounts, according to publicly available financials and information provided by the state treasurer offices.

 

Republicans are clearly preparing to turn this into another CANCEL CULTURE and HOW THEY DESPISE THE RURAL WHITE VOTER moment, but I bet the federal government has a lot more financial pull than just $600 billion, guys. Bankers are a lot of things, evil, greedy, mean, but they are not stupid, and they know how to count money.

 

Besides, it's not like rural white voters can hate Democratic politicians any more than they already do.

 

Right?

Orange Meltdown, Con't

After two years, Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance's probe into the Trump Organization has reached the grand jury phase, but that phase could take well into Thanksgiving or longer.

 

Manhattan's district attorney has convened the grand jury that is expected to decide whether to indict former president Donald Trump, other executives at his company or the business itself should prosecutors present the panel with criminal charges, according to two people familiar with the development.

The panel was convened recently and will sit three days a week for six months. It is likely to hear several matters — not just the Trump case ­— during the duration of its term, which is longer than a traditional New York state grand-jury assignment, these people said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Generally, special grand juries such as this one are convened to participate in long-term matters rather than to hear evidence of crimes charged routinely.

The move indicates that District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.’s investigation of the former president and his business has reached an advanced stage after more than two years. It suggests, too, that Vance believes he has found evidence of a crime — if not by Trump then by someone potentially close to him or by his company.

Vance’s investigation is expansive, according to people familiar the probe and public disclosures made during related litigation. His investigators are scrutinizing Trump’s business practices before he was president, including whether the value of specific properties in the Trump Organization’s real estate portfolio were manipulated in a way that defrauded banks and insurance companies, and if any tax benefits were obtained illegally through unscrupulous asset valuation.

The district attorney also is examining the compensation provided to top Trump Organization executives, people familiar with the matter have said.

A spokesman for Trump and an attorney for the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment. The former president has adamantly and repeatedly denied wrongdoing, deriding the investigation as politically motivated.

A spokesman for Vance (D) declined to comment.

 

Typically a grand jury hears multiple possible criminal matters and returns bills of indictment if there's enough evidence to go forward in a case, but exactly when the Trump organization case will come up is anyone's guess. It could be June, or it could be November.

 

We won't know until indictments are unsealed, if at all. The jury could come back and say there's not enough evidence there for the charges Vance is seeking. Maybe it's just the low-end execs, maybe it's Trump's kids, and maybe it's Trump himself, but again, I don't expect charges. NYC would burn for it. Republicans would make sure of that.

In other words, don't expect much, and don't expect anything quickly.

Putin On The Ritz, Con't

You knew it had to happen eventually, as President Biden is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva next month.

President Joe Biden will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 16, the White House said Tuesday, in their first face-to-face encounter since Biden took office.

"The leaders will discuss the full range of pressing issues, as we seek to restore predictability and stability to the U.S.-Russia relationship," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said of Biden's goals for the summit.

The Kremlin also confirmed the date for the much-anticipated meeting.

Earlier this month, Biden was asked whether he was planning to meet with Putin in June when he heads overseas to attend the G-7 summit.

"That is my hope and my expectation. We're working on it," Biden said at the time.

In April, the United States announced a sweeping series of sanctions against Russia over election interference, cyber hacking and other "harmful foreign activities," it said, including reports of Russia offering "bounties" for Taliban attacks against U.S. troops, and Russia's occupation and alleged human rights abuses in Crimea.

"Our objective here is not to escalate," Psaki said. "Our objective here is to impose costs for what we feel are unacceptable actions by the Russian government."

Psaki reiterated that the White House wanted there to be a "stable and predictable relationship" with Russia but conceded "this continues to be a difficult relationship" with "adversarial components."

After Biden announced the sanctions, Biden and Putin spoke on the phone, and Biden proposed a meeting in a third country.

 

And so in a few weeks, here they will be.  Biden is already promising a full readout and no sneaky off-the-record meetings as with the Former Guy. We'll see how that goes.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump's lawyer says he is immune to the Dem Rep. Eric Swalwell lawsuit for the January 6th attack on the US Capitol because of his office and that he expects the suit's "swift dismissal".
• Retail giant Amazon is facing another antitrust lawsuit over its online shopping dominance, brought by DC Attorney General Karl Racine, the company accounts for "50-70%" of online sales.
• President Biden met with the family of slain police victim George Floyd on Tuesday, Floyd's family lobbied the President for national police reform.
• A second military coup in less than 12 months in Mali now has Vice President Assimi Goita taking control of the country from President and Prime Minister.
• Sen. Bernie Sanders is joining Dem Sen. Maria Cantwell's efforts to block NASA funding over Jeff Bezos's unopposed bid to construct the Human Landing System program.
  

Last Call For Return To Mueller Time, Con't

The Justice department is really, really trying to be too cute by half with the order by federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson to release the memo former Trump AG bill Barr used to justify not charging Trump with any federal crimes. On one hand, the DoJ is protecting their own. On the other hand, America needs justice on this.

The Justice Department late Monday night released part of a key internal document used in 2019 to justify not charging President Donald Trump with obstruction, but also signaled it would fight a judge’s effort to make the entire document public.

The filing comes after a federal judge excoriated former U.S. attorney general William P. Barr — and the Justice Department more broadly — for their explanations of how and why it decided not to pursue a criminal case against Trump over possible obstruction of the investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The Justice Department filing is likely to both fuel and frustrate Trump’s biggest critics, particularly Democrats who have long argued that Barr stage-managed an exoneration of Trump after Mueller submitted a 448-page report into his findings about his investigation into whether the 2016 Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the election, and whether Trump tried to obstruct that investigation.

The central document at issue is a March 2019 memo written by two senior Justice Department officials arguing that aside from important constitutional reasons not to accuse the president of a crime, the evidence gathered by Mueller did not rise to the level of a prosecutable case, even if Trump were not president.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued a scathing opinion saying that she had read the memo and that it showed that Barr was disingenuous when he cited the document as key to his conclusion that Trump had not broken the law. On Tuesday, Jackson ordered the public release of the still-secret portions of her opinion discussing the Justice Department's Trump memo.

In that ruling, the judge also accused department lawyers of misleading her about the internal discussions that surrounded the memo and ordered the memo be released, though she gave the government several weeks to decide whether to appeal.

As that deadline neared, the government filed papers seeking both to appeal the ruling and to appease the court by offering a partially unredacted version of the document — making the first two pages public, while filing an appeal to try to keep the other half-dozen pages secret.

“In retrospect, the government acknowledges that its briefs could have been clearer, and it deeply regrets the confusion that caused. But the government’s counsel and declarants did not intend to mislead the Court,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote in asking the judge to keep the rest of the document under seal while they appeal her ruling.

The parts of the memo released Monday night offer a deeper glimpse into why the judge was angry — and indicate that the decision not to accuse Trump of a crime had been the subject of previous conversations among Justice Department leaders.

The memo written by Steven A. Engel, then the head of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), and Edward O’Callaghan, then a senior department official closely involved in supervising the Mueller investigation, was addressed to Barr, then the U.S. attorney general.

“Over the course of the Special Counsel’s investigation, we have previously discussed these issues within the Department among ourselves, with the Deputy Attorney General, and with you since your appointment, as well as with the Special Counsel and his staff. Our conclusions are the product of those discussions, as well as our review of the Report,” the lawyers wrote in the newly public section.

 

In other words, the DoJ really, really does not want to reveal to the country what Barr was advised to do, when Judge Berman makes it obvious in her opinion that the problem is the advice was written at the same time as Barr's decision not to prosecute, which is CYA justification after the fact.  The usual suspects on the right are howling victory chants, saying it proves that there was never anything Trump would have ever been charged with, even if he wasn't in the Oval Office.

But that's the entire point. The memo was written in order to support a conclusion Barr had already reached.

The whole memo would help to prove that, which is why we'll never see it. Merrick Garland could stop it. He will not. His entire staff would quit.

That's unfortunate.

Infrastructure, Weak Con't

We know we're in the final phases of Biden's infrastructure package becoming "No Republicans will vote for it regardless" and shoved through reconciliation because the "collapse" word is now getting involved.

Washington’s bipartisan infrastructure talks may soon look a lot like its cicada population: squashed after staggering around haplessly.

Senate Republicans negotiating with the White House sounded dour notes on Monday evening and are mulling whether to even make a counteroffer to President Joe Biden’s proposal last week. Democrats are increasingly calling for Biden to consider going it alone rather than see the GOP water down his agenda.

An unofficial deadline for a bipartisan accord on infrastructure hits a week from now and negotiators are some $1.5 trillion apart, with severe differences in both size and scope, after more than a month of talks. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said Republicans won’t come up “anywhere near the number the White House has proposed,” and Democrats are even more skeptical that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will greenlight a deal they find palatable.

“We’re too far apart. Because I think Mitch’s ultimate purpose is not compromise but delay and mischief,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who sounded less urgent notes in an interview last week. Biden is “entitled to his judgment on this but if I were in a room with him, I’d say it’s time to move on.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the next move is up to Republicans and the White House is “not quite there” at bailing on the talks. The main holdups are moderate Democrats, who are signaling they still aren't quite ready to go it alone on a massive new spending bill, ensuring the plodding talks continue for at least a few more days.

Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) both said they remain hopeful about talks with Republicans. Asked about the obviously dire state of the talks between Biden and Republicans, centrist Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said: “It’s always darkest before dawn.”

 

No, this will be DOA by Memorial Day next week, and Dems can move forward and deal with Manchin and the Georgia and Arizona Dems. It'll be fun too.

But we'll finally move forward.

Florida Man Now Controls Social Media

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed into law a laughably unconstitutional bill that punishes social media companies for banning state and local politicians with large fines as a direct response to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube banning Donald Trump.

Florida on Monday became the first state to regulate how companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter moderate speech online, by imposing fines on social media companies that permanently bar political candidates for statewide office.

The law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is a direct response to Facebook’s and Twitter’s bans of former President Donald J. Trump in January. In addition to the fines for barring candidates, it makes it illegal to prevent some news outlets from posting to their platforms in response to the contents of their stories.

Mr. DeSantis said signing the bill meant that Floridians would be “guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites.”

“If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable,” he said in a statement.

The bill is part of a broader push among conservative state legislatures to crack down on the ability of tech companies to manage posts on their platforms. The political efforts took off after Mr. Trump was barred after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Lawmakers around the country have echoed Mr. Trump’s accusations that the companies are biased against conservative personalities and publications, even though those accounts often thrive online.

More than a hundred bills targeting the companies’ moderation practices have been filed nationwide this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Many of the bills have died, but a proposal is still being debated in Texas.

Twitter declined to comment. Google and Facebook did not immediately offer comments on the signing of the bill.

The Florida law makes it illegal to bar a candidate for state office for more than 14 days, in a move that would seem to outlaw the kind of permanent ban the social media platforms applied to Mr. Trump’s accounts. Companies would be fined $250,000 per day for cases where they barred a candidate for statewide office. The fine is lower for candidates seeking other offices.

The law says the platforms cannot take down or otherwise prioritize content from a “journalistic enterprise” that reaches a certain size. Conservatives were outraged last year when Facebook and Twitter limited the reach of a New York Post article about the contents of a laptop it said belonged to Hunter Biden, the younger son of President Biden.

Under the law, platforms are also required to be clear about how they decide to take down content or leave it up. Users could sue the platform if they felt those terms were inconsistently applied.

A late amendment to the bill exempts companies from the law if they own a theme park or an entertainment venue larger than 25 acres. That means the law is unlikely to apply to websites owned by Disney, which operates the Walt Disney World Resort, and Comcast, which owns Universal Studios Florida.

In Florida, as in dozens of other states, the Republican lawmakers’ push to punish social media companies follows the party’s other efforts to feed the demands of a conservative base that remains loyal to Mr. Trump.

 

So it won't hurt Disney or Comcast, but any other social media site can be sued in Florida if they "limit the reach" of certain "journalistic enterprises". The plan is for conservative media outlets to sue the social media giants for millions in the state on a regular basis, until they admit defeat or something. At the very least, expect lots of actions in Florida state courts, with the hope of discovery and lots of owning of the libs.

Normally in a fight between the GOP and Big Tech I'd be rooting for a meteor to wipe out both sides, but the GOP passing laws to limit what can be allowed to be said online is pretty much a first amendment mess that should have both the press and media companies screaming, because they're next.

 

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

 Black lives still matter. This applies to non-American Black lives as well.

The Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson is in a critical condition after sustaining a gunshot wound to her head in an incident in south London, her affiliated group, Taking the Initiative party, has announced on social media.

In a statement on the group’s Facebook page, the party said the incident happened in the early hours of Sunday and followed “numerous death threats”.

A Met police statement said there was nothing to suggest that it had been a targeted attack.

Taking the Initiative’s statement said: “It is with great sadness that we inform you that our own Sasha Johnson has sustained a gunshot wound to her head. She is currently hospitalised and in critical condition. The incident happened in the early hours of this morning, following numerous death threats.

“Sasha has always been actively fighting for black people and the injustices that surround the black community, as well as being both a member of BLM and a member of Taking the Initiative Party’s Executive Leadership Committee. Sasha is also a mother of 3 and a strong, powerful voice for our people and our community.”

Johnson is a prominent member of TTIP, which has been described as “Britain’s first Black-led political party”. She rose to prominence after last year’s BLM protests spread around the country, helping to organise marches and addressing crowds.

 

London Metro police are investigating this as a random shooting (in London, mind you), while TTIP members say Johnson had received a number of death threats for her activism. 

Black Lives Still Matter.

The Big Lie, Con't

Jeremy Stahl over at Slate is finally asking the right question: what happens when the clown show AZ GOP "audit" magically declares Trump the winner in Maricopa County and in the state of Arizona?

 

Here’s how Arizona recounts are supposed to normally work: Two counters, under the eye of a supervisor, tally ballots in batches of 10 at a time. Their results must agree, and any discrepancies in each batch must be resolved by a bipartisan board before they are added to the count. Here’s what Smith had been watching inside the audit: batches of 50 ballots, swinging around on a Lazy Susan, as three people speed-read votes in the presidential race and the U.S. Senate race, which were won by Democrats Joe Biden and Mark Kelly.

“Everybody’s got about three and a half seconds to watch two races,” Smith said. For many tables, it appeared to be less time than that. If he were on the floor trying to count ballots himself, Smith said, he believed he would be making mistakes under those conditions. “That table is rolling,” Smith says pointing at a particularly fast-counting group. “Me standing there for five hours, I would not say that it would be ideal.”

To the uninitiated observer, this might seem alarming. But Smith assured me it was nothing to worry about—because, he said, “they’re not recounting the election.”

What were the people busily counting election ballots doing, then? Over the course of three days in Phoenix, talking to participants and critics and watching the event unfold, I couldn’t get a coherent answer. The Arizona audit is a new kind of political ritual, whose purpose exists beyond reason or consensus or fact. More than six months after Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election was certified by Republican officials in Maricopa, Arizona’s largest and one of the largest in the country, this audit is what the Arizona Senate has decided is necessary to resolve continued accusations by the former president and his supporters that the 2020 election was stolen.

Acceptance of error—of alternative facts, as it were—is built into the process: If two counters have the same total, but the third counter disagrees by one or two votes, then the two matching counts become the official tally, overruling the discrepancy. According to observers of the audit, this happens often.

Around the audit site, the political fault lines are multiplying—not merely between Trump supporters and Biden supporters, but between the local Republican officials, who are responsible for election results being verifiable and making sense, and the state Republicans, who are chasing a myth. The irregularities in the numbers are the least of it.

“They destroyed the election,” former County Recorder Adrian Fontes said of the Senate auditors. “And I think that they did it on purpose.”

The statement might sound like partisan hyperbole from a former elected official with an ax to grind. But in the past week, similarly damning calls were issued by every major Republican elected official in Maricopa County. In a meeting on Tuesday, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers said plainly, “It’s time to be done with this craziness,” as he and the county’s other top elected officials, who had previously tried to work with the Republican state senators, signed a letter calling for an end of the audit. On Thursday, the Democratic secretary of state said that Maricopa County could no longer safely use the voting equipment that had been handed over to the audit.

The Republican-controlled county board went along with the audit plan initially because the Senate, Fontes said, “had given these guys guarantees it wasn’t going to be a shit show.” Instead, the state Senate ended up handing nearly 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots to a previously unknown company called “Cyber Ninjas,” whose CEO has claimed the election may have been manipulated by a firm with ties to the former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez (who is dead).

“We’ve changed course,” Stephen Richer, the current county recorder who unseated Fontes in the last election, told me of the local Republican response.

That course correction appears to have come too late. Up close in Arizona, it’s clear that the Cyber Ninjas are doing exactly what their CEO, Doug Logan, has accused election officials of doing: miscounting the 2020 election. If and when that new and inaccurate result is made public as part of an official audit report, local leaders believe the consequences will be grave.

“I think a small mushroom cloud will go up over Maricopa County if the Cyber Ninjas report that Donald Trump really was the winner of the election,” Richer says.

 

So what does happen if this farce declares Trump the winner? It's something democrats had better be prepared for, and that means immediate Justice Department intervention. It's good that AZ Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has made it clear last week that the chain of custody of the ballots were completely compromised, but this gets very, very ugly from here if it happens the way I think it will.

It will absolutely threaten the stability of the US government. And should Senator Mark Kelly's election be overturned as well...

The word crisis doesn't begin to settle it.

History says things get violent from here.

It's About Suppression, Con't

Texas Republicans are making voting "more fair" by redistributing polling places "evenly", but only in large urban counties. The result of course is that high-population urban precincts -- all represented by Democrats -- would lose dozens of polling places and suburban precincts represented by Republicans would get more polling places.

 

The number of Election Day polling places in largely Democratic parts of major Texas counties would fall dramatically under a Republican proposal to change how Texas polling sites are distributed, a Texas Tribune analysis shows. Voting options would be curtailed most in areas with higher shares of voters of color.

Relocating polling sites is part of the GOP’s priority voting bill — Senate Bill 7 — as it was passed in the Texas Senate. It would create a new formula for setting polling places in the handful of mostly Democratic counties with a population of 1 million or more. Although the provision was removed from the bill when passed in the House, it remains on the table as a conference committee of lawmakers begins hammering out a final version of the bill behind closed doors.

Under that provision, counties would be required to distribute polling places based on the share of registered voters in each state House district within the county. The formula would apply only to the state’s five largest counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and Travis — and possibly Collin County once new census figures are released later this year.

A comparison of the Election Day polling locations that were used for the 2020 general election and what would happen under the Senate proposal shows a starkly different distribution of polling sites in Harris and Tarrant counties that would heavily favor voters living in Republican areas.

In Harris County — home to Houston, the state's biggest city — the formula would mean fewer polling places in 13 of the 24 districts contained in the county, all currently represented by Democrats. Every district held by a Republican would either see a gain in polling places or see no change.

In most cases, the districts that would lose polling places are represented by people of color and have a far higher share of potential voters of color than the districts that would gain voting sites. Represented by Republican Mike Schofield, House District 132, a more suburban district on the outer edge of the county, would see the biggest gain with 18 additional polling places. White citizens of voting age make up a plurality — 45.9% — in that district, according to U.S. Census estimates.

House District 141 — represented by Democrat Senfronia Thompson, the longest serving Black person in the Legislature — would lose the most polling places with 11 fewer sites. About 59% of citizens of voting age in that district are Black. Roughly 86% of citizens of voting age are either Black or Hispanic.

In Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, four of the 11 districts in the county would lose voting sites — two represented by Republicans and two by Democrats. But the two Democratic districts would see more significant declines.

 

Making it harder to vote, but only for large, urban districts with lost of Black voters who tend to vote for Democrats. Every time this is the plan, and this is what the plan is designed to do. North Carolina Republicans weren't able to get away with it because they documented that this was the plan. Texas I figure is going to be smarter than that, and even if they aren't no judge will stop them (and the federal courts now cannot, thanks to the Roberts Court). 

Which of course, is the entire point.

StupidiNews!

• At least 14 people were killed Sunday in a cable car accident in the Italian Alps when the gondola's cable broke 300 feet from the summit above Lake Maggiore.
• Texas Republicans are expected to finish up passage of a bill this week that would allow open carry of handguns without a permit for anyone not convicted of a felony.
• EU leaders are threatening to restrict air traffic over Belarus after President Alexander Lukashenko ordered a RyanAir flight from Greece to land in order to arrest dissident Roman Protasevich.
• China is accusing the US of unfairly promoting the theory that Beijing released COVID-19 from a biological lab.
• Ana is the Atlantic's first named storm in 2021, forming more than a week ahead of the official June 1 opening of hurricane season.
  

Last Call For All About The Idiocracy Performance, Con't

It seems the only qualification for being a Republican House member is to get on TV and the internet as much as possible and say vile bullshit to piss off Democrats. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) doubled down on her controversial comments comparing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to the Nazis because of her mask rules for the House, telling a local Arizona reporter that she had said nothing wrong, and “any rational Jewish person should also oppose “what’s happening with overbearing mask mandates.”

On a Thursday Newsmax appearance, Greene criticized Pelosi for “running a tyrannical, oppressive workplace,” and then made the Nazi comparison:

This woman is mentally ill. You know, we can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.

Bianca Buono, a reporter with Arizona’s 12 News, spoke to Greene after the event she held in Mesa, Az. with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and asked her if she stood by her comments “comparing mask mandates to the Holocaust.”

“No one should be treated like a second-class citizen for saying ‘I don’t need to wear a mask,’ or saying that my medical records are my privacy based on my HIPAA rights, and so I stand by all of my statements,” Greene replied. “I said nothing wrong.”

As Mediaite’s Michael Luciano observed regarding HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), “it is impossible for Pelosi or any other non-healthcare provider to violate the act, which prohibits medical providers from disclosing private medical information.”

“And I think any rational Jewish person didn’t like what happened in Nazi Germany, and any rational Jewish person doesn’t like what’s happening with overbearing mask mandates and overbearing vaccine policies,” Greene added.

“Do you understand, though, why some would be upset and offended by the comment?” Buono asked.

Greene didn’t budge, asking Buono if she understood “how people feel about being forced to wear masks or being forced to have to take a vaccine or even have to say that whether they’d taken it or not? These are just things that shouldn’t be happening in America. This is a free country, and it’s just ridiculous to have these kinds of conversations.”

 

The entire point of Greene is to say horrible things and dare anyone to do anything about her. Since nobody will vote her out of office, and nobody will expel her from the House, she can continue to do this for years if not decades. She remains useful to her GOP colleagues as a lightning rod to occasionally deny.

It's all performance art, and the performance will never, ever, stop.