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

Republican-sponsored violence against local public health officials in states like Michigan continues, and of course the party of violent, killer terrorists doesn't want to condemn the violence on record, lest they too become the next victims.

 

After Kent County Health Department director Adam London detailed threats and acts of violence against him following his schools mask mandate, Kent County Board of Commissioners members denounced the aggression — but would not unanimously agree to sign a statement saying as much during their Thursday meeting.

As first reported by the Michigan Advance this week, London wrote in an Aug. 22 email to commissioners that a woman twice attempted to run him off the road at 70 mph just hours after he announced a mask mandate for anyone in preschool through sixth grade school buildings in Kent County to protect them against COVID-19.

In his email to commissioners, London discussed concerns over his safety and that of his family’s and described the low morale in the county health department that has faced a barrage of vitriolic criticism and threats of violence over the mask requirement.



I need help,” London wrote in the email obtained by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. “My team and I are broken. I’m about done. I’ve done my job to the best of my ability. I’ve given just about everything to Kent County, and now I’ve given some more of my safety.”

Following the Advance’s story, national media, including the Washington Post, reported on the threats to London as part of a national trend of what health officials are facing during the pandemic.

During Thursday’s meeting, East Grand Rapids resident Tricia Ophoff of the organization Smart Science Alliance, which advocates for masks in schools, submitted a petition with some 800 signatures calling on commissioners to unanimously issue a statement “condemning all forms of threats and intimidation made against local, state and federal public servants.”

“We would also request you do this soon so as to give Dr. London, and all the other officials and administrators who are being threatened, the peace of mind that county leadership is concerned for their safety,” Ophoff said.

Commissioners’ responses to signing such a document varied along party lines, with all those backing the statement being Democrats and those who did not being Republican.

“For some reason, because I haven’t signed a petition to denounce violence, somehow I hate Dr. London and I don’t care about the community; that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Republican Commissioner Stan Ponstein, who represents the city of Grandville and part of the city of Wyoming, said during the meeting.

Ponstein said that he also has received threats of violence while in office.

“That’s part of public service,” he said.

Commissioner Tom Antor, a Republican who represents Alpine Township, Algoma Township, Sparta Township and Sparta Village, reported he has recently received threats and said he and his wife have gotten “vile phone calls” in recent days “from people in Seattle, Wash.”

 

The Republicans only care inasmuch that they all think it's Antifa or something, and they want to see "Seattle people" put in front of a firing squad anyway.  But they won't sign the petition, because they fear the crazies, and they fear their ringmaster. None of them want to see their families hurt or killed. It's fine if it happens to those liberal elitist health mask fascists though.

American politics in 2021 are completely defined by stochastic terrorism and the various responses by politicians to changing laws because of it.

Which is textbook terrorism.

The Big Lie, Con't

Amazingly enough, the Arizona GOP audit of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County found that Joe Biden not only won the state but did so by a slightly larger margin than the official count.

A monthslong hand recount of Maricopa County’s 2020 vote confirmed that President Joe Biden won and the election was not “stolen” from former President Donald Trump, according to early versions of a report prepared for the Arizona Senate.

The three-volume report by the Cyber Ninjas, the Senate’s lead contractor, includes results that show Trump lost by a wider margin than the county’s official election results. The data in the report also confirms that U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly won in the county.

The official results are set to be presented to the Senate at 1 p.m. Friday. Several versions of the draft report, titled “Maricopa County Forensic Audit” by Cyber Ninjas, circulated prematurely on Wednesday and Thursday. Multiple versions were obtained by The Arizona Republic.

The Cyber Ninjas and their subcontractors were paid millions to research and write the report by nonprofits set up by prominent figures in the “Stop the Steal” movement and allies of Donald Trump, but Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan said that would not influence their work.

The draft reports reviewed by The Republic minimize the ballot counts and election results and instead focus on issues that raise questions about the election process and voter integrity.

Election analysts say those findings are misleading and built on faulty data.

The draft report shows there was less than a 1,000-vote difference between the county's certified ballot count and the Cyber Ninjas' hand count.

The hand count shows Trump received 45,469 fewer votes than Biden. The county results showed he lost by 45,109.

The draft audit report says, however, the election results are inconclusive.

Maricopa County Board Chairman Jack Sellers said the overall results in the draft report confirm “the tabulation equipment counted the ballots as they were designed to do, and the results reflect the will of the voters.”

“That should be the end of the story,” he said. “Everything else is just noise.”

 

Sellers is right, this should be the end of the story, the end of Trump, and the end of the GOP. Republicans who supported the Big Lie should be laughed out the room, shamed out of office, and charged with fraud.

 

Of course, as Robert Kagan reminds us, the noise is but the opening stanza of the dirge of catastrophe that awaits our democracy in the years ahead.

 

The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial. But about these things there should be no doubt:

First, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024. The hope and expectation that he would fade in visibility and influence have been delusional. He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls; he is building a massive campaign war chest; and at this moment the Democratic ticket looks vulnerable. Barring health problems, he is running.

Second, Trump and his Republican allies are actively preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary. Trump’s charges of fraud in the 2020 election are now primarily aimed at establishing the predicate to challenge future election results that do not go his way. Some Republican candidates have already begun preparing to declare fraud in 2022, just as Larry Elder tried meekly to do in the California recall contest.

Meanwhile, the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “find” more votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process. As of this spring, Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other executive-branch officers to the legislature. An Arizona bill flatly states that the legislature may “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election” by a simple majority vote. Some state legislatures seek to impose criminal penalties on local election officials alleged to have committed “technical infractions,” including obstructing the view of poll watchers.

The stage is thus being set for chaos. Imagine weeks of competing mass protests across multiple states as lawmakers from both parties claim victory and charge the other with unconstitutional efforts to take power. Partisans on both sides are likely to be better armed and more willing to inflict harm than they were in 2020. Would governors call out the National Guard? Would President Biden nationalize the Guard and place it under his control, invoke the Insurrection Act, and send troops into Pennsylvania or Texas or Wisconsin to quell violent protests? Deploying federal power in the states would be decried as tyranny. Biden would find himself where other presidents have been — where Andrew Jackson was during the nullification crisis, or where Abraham Lincoln was after the South seceded — navigating without rules or precedents, making his own judgments about what constitutional powers he does and doesn’t have.

Today’s arguments over the filibuster will seem quaint in three years if the American political system enters a crisis for which the Constitution offers no remedy.

 

This is happening, out in the open, and it is happening now.  2020 was a dress rehearsal. The 2024 revision will, unless it is stopped, put America into a hell of authoritarian make where the only party will be the GOP, and we will join the many other dictator "democracy" states: the Philippines, Brazil, Turkey, Poland, Russia, where the reality of elections is permanent one-party rule by a tyrant dynasty for decades, cemented by military power.

We barely escaped it last time.  We won't be so lucky in 2024. Trump is setting the stage for a coup if he loses, and more importantly, he's setting the stage to normalize challenging and even nullifying and overturning election wins by Democrats in the years ahead.

Pay attention. It only gets worse from here.

Joe Versus The Orange Volcano

The Biden White House isn't going to cover for Trump on "executive privilege" when it comes to the January 6th insurrection, and frankly I'm shocked that they're not. I honestly figured Biden would bury this in the name of executive power, but here the Biden administration is doing the right thing.

The White House is leaning toward releasing information to Congress about what Donald Trump and his aides were doing during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol despite the former president’s objections — a decision that could have significant political and legal ramifications.

Trump has said he will cite “executive privilege” to block information requests from the House select committee investigating the events of that day, banking on a legal theory that has successfully allowed presidents and their aides to avoid or delay congressional scrutiny for decades, including during the Trump administration.

But President Biden’s White House plans to err on the side of disclosure given the gravity of the events of Jan. 6, according to two people familiar with discussions who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions.

In response to questions about White House deliberations over what information to release, Biden spokesman Michael J. Gwin said the president views the attack on the Capitol as “a dark stain on our country’s history” and is “deeply committed to ensuring that something like that can never happen again, and he supports a thorough investigation.”

Members of the investigative committee argue that Trump no longer enjoys the protection of executive privilege, encouraging the White House to push aside institutional concerns about sharing information with Congress and aid the panel in an investigation focused on what Democrats and a handful of Republicans have called an assault on democracy.

“It’s not really relevant because there’s no president involved — there’s no such thing as a former president’s executive privilege,” said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a committee member who teaches constitutional law. “That’s extremely dilute and not really relevant.”

What Trump was doing while the attack was occurring and who he was speaking with are among the big, unanswered questions concerning the assault on the Capitol.

The debate over the validity of his executive privilege claims comes as the committee is moving into a new, more aggressive phase of its investigation. Having requested material from telecom, social media companies and the White House — and receiving some response — it is now looking at how best to compel testimony and documents from those reluctant to participate.

Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said this week that his panel will soon issue subpoenas to witnesses and organizations, adding that the committee has started scheduling closed door testimony with cooperative witnesses. A preliminary list of subpoenas is expected to be released by the committee as soon as Thursday and may include prominent Trump allies and White House officials.

Trump has derided the committee’s work as partisan and is promising to fight its effort to collect information and testimony related to the attack.

“The highly partisan, Communist-style ‘select committee’ has put forth an outrageously broad records request that lacks both legal precedent and legislative merit,” Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said in a statement. “Executive privilege will be defended, not just on behalf of President Trump and his administration, but also on behalf of the Office of the President of the United States and the future of our nation.”

 

Trump has been threatening to use "executive privilege" to kill the January 6th Committee's work for months now.  The issue is whether or not Trump can run out the clock until January 2023 and a new Congress, quite possibly with a Republican Speaker who will end the investigation immediately and bury the results for decades.

It's also possible that this Supreme Court will step in and side with Trump completely.

 

So while Biden is "leaning toward" the right thing, we shouldn't expect to actually find out about anything for a while, even as Jan 6 Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson has sent out the first subpoenas in the committee's investigation.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has issued subpoenas to two top Trump White House officials, former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, as well as to Kash Patel, who was serving as chief of staff to the acting defense secretary that day. An additional subpoena targets longtime Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon.

The subpoenas were announced Thursday evening by the committee, which has moved its inquiry into a new, more aggressive stage after requesting White House records last month and sending preservation requests for records to telecom and social media companies.

Trump and his team have condemned the select committee’s inquiry since it began, vowing to fight its demands for documents and interviews with claims of executive privilege. A debate about a former president’s ability to restrict access to information and individuals has already begun in Washington — and is likely to become dramatically more intense now that these first subpoenas have been issued.

Along with asking Meadows, Scavino, Patel and Bannon to hand over records, the committee is instructing the four men to appear for depositions in mid-October.

Bannon and Scavino did not respond to requests for comment. Meadows could not be reached. 

The legal battle over this will almost certainly take years, so don't expect any of these scoundrels to comply, or for Democrats to take much action when it comes to putting force behind these subpoenas. Republicans will only return the favor in the future, and Democrats know it.

StupidiNews!

• At least two people are dead and 14 injured, including the suspected gunman dying from a self-inflicted gunshot, in a shooting at a Kroger in Colliersville, Tennessee.
• A new Arizona poll finds voters in the Grand Canyon State overwhelmingly support an "earned path to citizenship" for undocumented immigrants, including a majority of Trump voters.
• US Special Envoy to Haiti Daniel Foote has resigned, accusing the US State Department and the Biden Administration of deporting thousands of Haitian refugees back to a "collapsed state".
• US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says that the Biden administration is considering invoking the Defense Production Act to force semiconductor companies to turn over production data.
• With Fortnite creator Epic Games winning a court order against Apple to open up payment options outside the Apple App Store, Apple retaliated by yanking Epic Games products completely.