Last Call For Shutdown Countdown, Armageddon Edition, Con't

House Republicans passed a DOA immigration bill Thursday that would add thousands of Border patrol agents and force the government to finish Trump's idiotic wall, and now the Clown Car is demanding that the bill become law as part of debt ceiling hostage nonsense or they'll crater the economy and send us into a recession.

 

Key GOP lawmakers are signaling they want border policies in the mix as congressional leadership and the White House try to negotiate a debt ceiling deal, the day after Republicans passed a sweeping border and immigration bill. It was a GOP wishlist that included restarting construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall and placing new restrictions on asylum seekers.

“We passed the bill that I think does the job. … And by the way, I think this is now a central part of any debt ceiling or spending debate for the remainder of the year,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said in an interview on Friday.

“Every day that the President continues to dilly dally, in my mind, the price goes up, not down. … You want a debt ceiling increase? You want to go fund the operations of government? Then fix the damn border, Mr. President,” Roy added.

And it’s not just Roy. One of McCarthy’s top deputies, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), pointed to the border bill and said Republicans are “bringing more ideas to the table.”

“The House has now added more to the mix,” Graves said in a separate interview Friday. “With yesterday passing the immigration bill — which doesn't just secure America, doesn't just save lives from fentanyl overdose, but also saves tens of billions of dollars in wasted money as a result of this administration's careless border policy.”

Republicans aren’t yet demanding specifics on which border provisions they want to see in a potential debt ceiling deal, instead pointing to their recently passed bill more broadly. That, of course, has no chance at passing the Senate.

But Roy, who said he wasn’t going to negotiate publicly, said that he was “not alone” in viewing it as a key issue in the negotiations now. He said they’d also want to bring it up during talks about government spending, with a shutdown deadline at the end of September.

 

Understand that if Biden and the Dems give in now, House Republicans will only keep increasing their demands until the country's economy shatters and tens of millions are made to suffer.

 

 

Do Federal Public Corruption Charges Matter Anymore?

I ask the above question for two reasons this week, first as the public corruption investigation into NJ Dem Sen. Bob Menendez is expanding with more subpoenas...

Another round of federal grand jury subpoenas went out this week in connection with the corruption investigation into Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey.

Two sources familiar with the matter said at least one powerful New Jersey politician — North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco — was among those who received subpoenas.

A North Bergen spokesman said, “As they always have, Mayor Sacco and the Township of North Bergen will comply with any inquiry they receive from law enforcement and will cooperate fully.”

For months, Menendez has been under criminal investigation into whether he and his wife improperly took cash and gifts from the owners of IS EG Halal, an Edgewater halal meat business.

Menendez and the company’s owners have denied any wrongdoing.

“I know of an investigation. Don’t know the scope or the subjects and of course stand ready to help authorities when and if they ask any questions,” Menendez said in October.

A Menendez spokesman declined to comment.

The newly issued subpoenas — including the one delivered to Sacco — are unrelated to any allegations involving the meat company and Menendez, the two sources said.

The sources added that the subpoenas in part seek information about certain legislative changes in New Jersey, but they did not offer details.

The subpoena for Sacco, a Democrat, was issued Wednesday, a day after he was re-elected mayor.

Sacco’s spokesman said, “We do not feel that it would be appropriate to offer any additional comment at this time.”

An FBI spokesman and a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Damian Williams of Southern New York, whose office is leading the federal investigation, declined to comment.

I mention the Menendez public corruption investigation for the reason that the Roberts Court this week overturned not one but two public corruption convictions in New York.

The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out two fraud convictions during Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration in New York, dealing prosecutors the latest in a series of setbacks in their efforts to pursue federal charges of public corruption in state government.

The cases were among the blockbuster public corruption prosecutions brought by Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, that fed into Albany’s reputation as a cesspool of corruption.

One case concerned Joseph Percoco, a former aide to Mr. Cuomo convicted of taking illicit payments to benefit a Syracuse-area developer.

The other involved Louis Ciminelli, the owner of a Buffalo construction firm convicted of fraud in a bid-rigging scandal in connection with Buffalo Billion, a development project championed by Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat.

The question in the first, Percoco v. United States, No. 21-1158, was whether Mr. Percoco could be prosecuted under a federal law that makes it a crime to deprive the government of “honest services” for conduct that took place after he resigned his official position to run the governor’s 2014 re-election campaign.

Alito threw that conviction out because Percoco wasn't in the government at the time, but the second case applies broadly to the Menendez investigation.

The prosecutors’ legal theory was that Mr. Ciminelli had committed fraud by depriving the government of its “right to control” the use of its assets by failing to disclose potentially valuable information.

By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, though, the government had disavowed the theory. That made for an awkward argument when the justices heard the case in November, one focused on how and how badly the government was going to lose.

Justice Thomas, writing for the court, said flatly that “the right-to-control theory is invalid,” returning the case to the appeals court for further proceedings.

“Because the theory treats mere information as the protected interest, almost any deceptive act could be criminal,” he wrote.

In other words, the government's use of public corruption laws just got torched. Even if somehow the investigation involves charges against Menendez, this court will overturn the conviction down the road. At this point, bribery and fraud in government service is now perfectly legal because the Supreme Court has declared the theory that misuse of taxpayer resources is fraud is invalid. 

So yeah, if I'm Menendez's lawyers, I tell the Justice Department that this conviction would be overturned, so there's no point in the investigation.

Whether or not that's true, well..

The Uncivil Right's Act

When I keep telling readers that the GOP wants the end of the Civil Rights Era and to eliminate six decades of protections and advancements for Black, Latino, and Asian folks, LBGTQ+ folks, and women, it is not hyperbole or metaphor or theoretical, I literally mean the Black Republican who is North Carolina's current Lt. Governor is running for Governor and wants to reverse the entire Civil Rights era and wants to remove these protections in my home state.

 

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the state’s first Black lieutenant governor and the GOP front-runner for the 2024 gubernatorial race, repeatedly lambasted the “so-called” 1960s Civil Rights Movement, lamenting that “so many freedoms were lost during the civil rights movement.”

In a CNN KFile review of his media appearances over the last five years, Robinson baselessly claimed that the Civil Rights Movement was a communist plot to “subvert capitalism” and used “to subvert free choice and where you go to school and things like that.”

“So many things were lost during the Civil Rights Movement. So many freedoms were lost during the Civil Rights Movement. They shouldn’t have been lost,” Robinson said in a March 2018 podcast episode.

Robinson made many of the comments on the podcast “Politics and Prophecy” with host Chris Levels on Freedomizer Radio, a station whose slogan says “Freedomists Freedomizing Freedom.” Levels is a conspiracy theorist who has shared 9/11 truther posts on Facebook, called the Olympics an illuminati event from Satan and shared posts saying Jews control nearly everything in society.

Robinson’s previously unreported comments criticizing the Civil Rights Movement starkly contrast the rhetoric he recently espoused highlighting his hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina, as “an epicenter of the Civil Rights’ Movement.” Greensboro was home to the Woolworth lunch counter sit-in-protests in 1960 started by four Black students, one of whom – Clarence Henderson – Robinson later befriended after launching his political career.

Robinson is currently seen as the GOP favorite for North Carolina’s gubernatorial race, where he will likely face Democrat Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general. The current Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, is term-limited.

After publication, Robinson published a video with Clarence Henderson, a civil rights icon, saying that he “couldn’t be more proud” of Henderson’s work in the Civil Rights Movement and now. Robinson ended the video by saying, “I’ll tell you what. You made history in this state once before. I’m gonna make history again.”

Prior to his political career, Robinson frequently referred to the civil rights’ era as the “so-called Civil Rights Movement” and criticized the Greensboro lunch counter protests as a “ridiculous premise” designed to pull “the rug out from underneath capitalism and free choice and the free market.”

“You talk about the sit-in movement. We’re in a free market system. So we’ve got a place called Woolworth in Greensboro that won’t serve Blacks at the lunch counter. What do you do? You go down there and you sit at the lunch counter and you demand for these people to take your money. How crazy is that?” said Robinson in March 2018. “That’s not what you do in a free market system. What you do in a free market system is you just say, ‘Hey guys, these guys don’t treat people fair. Do not eat here.’”

 

Mark Robinson is absolutely a very real threat to anyone who isn't white, straight, or Christian, and living proof that white supremacy can absolutely be served by someone who isn't white. And yes, He's most likely going to be the GOP candidate to succeed Roy Cooper and he'll get 45% of the vote guaranteed because this won't be a dealbreaker for Republican voters in the state.

Millions will believe him and vote for him.