Tag: youtube

Here’s Joe Biden’s Student Debt Forgiveness Backup Plan … And His Other Debt Relief Plans, Too!

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Joe Biden went on TV yesterday to say that he thinks the Supreme Court got it wrong when it nuked his plan for up to $20,000 in student loan forgiveness in a very dubious 6-3 ruling. He was obviously pretty cheesed about the decision, especially the fact that so may Republicans are just fine with doling out corporate loans, tax cuts, and subsidies but suddenly care very much about the national debt if a struggling family gets a little help from the government, to give them some breathing room. But it wasn’t just condemnation of the Court and the greedheads; Biden also highlighted what he intends to do now to help families with student debt.

Previously!

Supreme Court: You Owe Your Soul To The Student Debt Store

Joe Biden’s Here With A Few Choice Words About The Supreme Court’s Student Debt Decision

Here’s the video; we have so much to get to in this post that we’re only barely going to mention the assholish question at the end from Jacqui Heinrich — of Fox News, of course — who accused Biden of giving “false hope” to millions with his debt forgiveness plan, because presumably he should have known in advance the Supremes would act lawlessly. Kudos to Joe for not letting that foolishness stand, and for pointing out that “Republicans snatched away the hope” borrowers had been given by the plan. Also, that brief flash of anger in his eyes before his fairly measured reply. I like this guy.

youtu.be

Biden said that since the Court ruled — stupidly, we’ll add — that the loan forgiveness plan wasn’t authorized by the 2003 HEROES Act, his administration would pursue a new path to loan forgiveness, using the Education Department’s authority under the 1965 Higher Education Act (HEA), which established low-interest federal student loans in the first place. It was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson and has been reauthorized nine times, with revisions to update it, like the establishment of Pell grants in 1972.

The law authorizes the secretary of Education to “compromise, waive, or release any right, title, claim, lien, or demand, however acquired, including any equity or any right of redemption,” and that clause was what Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer had in mind when they called on Biden to forgive student debt. Real policy nerds can dive into this 7-page analysis that Sen. Warren requested in 2020 from Harvard Law School’s Legal Service Center, which concludes that the HEA gives the secretary the power to grant “broad or categorical debt cancellation.”

Biden said he had already directed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to start the process of using the HEA to bring back debt forgiveness; because of the lengthy federal rulemaking process, it will likely take months to reach a final rule, which of course would then be subject to challenge in the same Court that decided the HEROES Act’s authorization for the secretary to issue “waivers and modifications” of student loans in national emergencies wasn’t good enough. To be sure, the HEA language is more expansive, but we suspect that still might not be enough for the Roberts Court because it doesn’t also say “including cancelling up to $10,000 of debt for most borrowers, or $20,000 for those who received Pell grants. P.S.: Alito’s a tool.”

In addition to the second try at loan forgiveness, Biden also said that when the pandemic loan payback and interest pause ends on October 1 and loan payments are again due, the Education Department will allow a 12-month “ramp up” period through September 30, 2024. That’s to make sure that

financially vulnerable borrowers who miss monthly payments during this period are not considered delinquent, reported to credit bureaus, placed in default, or referred to debt collection agencies.

In addition, Biden called attention to the Education Department’s proposed revisions to the Income Driven Repayment (IDR) plan for student loans, which were announced in January and are still moving through the federal rulemaking process. Once that revision goes into effect, many borrowers in the most popular income-based repayment plan will qualify for far lower monthly payments, and many financially challenged borrowers will actually see their monthly payments go to zero. At the end of 20 to 25 years, depending on the type of loan, their remaining debt will be discharged. Folks who initially borrowed $12,000 or less will have their loans forgiven after 10 years of payments. More on that program here.

More! Here!

Did Joe Biden Just Fix Student Loan Debt Going Forward? Mayyyyybe!

I Got My Student Loans Ready For Joe Biden’s Big Income-Based Forgive-A-Thon And You Should Too

Also too, while Biden didn’t mention it in his remarks yesterday, keep in mind that, in another administrative action the Education Department announced last year, millions of borrowers in IDR plans of all sorts will qualify for a special, one-time adjustment that could dramatically reduce the number of payments they need to get their loans discharged. More on that here; I still plan on doing an update to that next week, too.

Finally, Biden also touted other measures his administration has taken, like increasing the size of Pell Grants; fixing processing roadblocks that had kept participants in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program from actually getting their loans forgiven (Biden too-graciously didn’t name Trump’s Ed Secretary, Betsy DeVos, who made the problem worse); and cancelling more than $66 billion in student debt for those eligible public service workers, as well as for students who were defrauded by the grifty for-profit colleges that were DeVos’s very special darlings.

The more I look at how the Education Department is fixing what’s been wrong with student loans, the more impressed I am.

Now, if we could just tackle the many factors that have made college so expensive in the first place — first among them states’ abandonment of adequate tax support — we’d really have something to crow about.

[CBS News / NYT / Harvard Law School / Income Driven Repayment at Studentaid.gov / One-Time IDR Adjustment at Studentaid.gov]

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Wonkette Book Club Part 6: A Future Up In The Air

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This week we finish up our reading of Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 climate change epic The Ministry for the Future, and we close out our visit to a possible world where humanity manages, just barely, to save itself from the climate change disaster it created. Or at least that’s the case, as the song says, for the people who are still alive.

Since the start of the novel, with Chapter 1’s horrific heat wave in India, untold hundreds of millions of humans have died in the climate-related disasters and economic shocks resulting from 40 to 50 years of continued warming, although near the end of the novel atmospheric carbon has not only stopped increasing, but is finally beginning to decline. Of course, there’s still no guarantee that humanity still won’t find wonderful new ways to wipe itself out.

Cagey bastard writer that he is, Robinson begins Chapter 89 with the confirmation that yes, CO2 in the atmosphere is really declining, and has been for several years, so it’s clearly not a seasonal or economic blip. He immediately follows that with the assassination of Tatiana, the tough Russian member of the Ministry team, whose death (we never find out who did it) is devastating to Mary Murphy, who throws herself into work, as she does.

That all leads up to the international COP (Committee of the Parties) meeting in Zurich in Chapter 94, which includes a “global stocktake” of progress on climate, and what still needs to be done. Fun fact: Out here in reality, this year’s COP28, to be held in December in Dubai, will include the conclusion of the first global stocktake, a two-year process that started at 2021’s COP26 in Glasgow.

In a turn that should only happen in fiction, COP28 will be presided over by the head of an oil company. Sigh.

Unlike the mostly-celebratory COP58 in the novel, this year’s delegates will be reporting that we’re far behind where we should be to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goal of limiting warming since 1880 to below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), let alone the goal of 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), which will still be quite bad enough. On average, the world is already at 1.1 degrees (1.9 degrees F) above 1880, and carbon emissions keep rising. That said, the rate of increase appears to finally be slowing as methane (“natural”) gas power generation increasingly replaces coal and as more renewables come online, so as David Wallace-Wells wrote last fall (NYT gift link), the worst-case scenarios projected just a few years ago are actually looking less likely.

But back to the novel: At COP58 (it’s an annual meeting, so the book is now up to 2053), there’s lots of good news to report, particularly that big banner showing a leveling off and decline in the Keeling Curve, the zigzag measurement of atmospheric carbon that today is still only going up, from preindustrial levels of 280 to 300 parts per million.

In case you were wondering, today’s reading is 422.97 ppm. The year I was born, it was 318.43 ppm. You can look up your birth year up here. The highest level mentioned in Ministry for the Future is 475.

In the closing chapters we read this week, Frank is diagnosed with a brain tumor, and Mary visits him as often as possible in hospice, even working from his hospital room as he quickly declines and eventually dies. (I’m listening to Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” while writing this, because it’s always good to write to. Mary is right.) Climate refugees are released from camps and given the opportunity to relocate anywhere, with the costs being shared by the rich nations, and that’s some real science fiction there, I fear. But then, the world’s economy has been rearranged to make that more possible.

Mary eventually retires, nominating Badim as acting head of the Ministry, and she travels around the world with Captain Art Nolan, an airship pilot who ushers tour groups around to see the animals that are returning to newly depopulated parts of the world. Mary is ready for romance, but they don’t quite take the plunge.

Semi-spontaneously, the world Zeitgeists a new holiday, Gaia Day, into existence, so Badim’s dream of an environmentalism-based religion may have seen its first spark. Mary and Badim have a guarded conversation about the things his “black wing” of the Ministry did, and didn’t do. And Sky Captain Art returns for the last chapter, a literally carnivalesque Zurich festival celebrating the end of winter.

And in contrast to the novel’s first words, “It was getting hotter,” that’s no longer the case, except seasonally — there is no such thing as fate.

So let’s talk about this sucker! As always, these discussion questions are just a few of the things that occurred to me, but don’t feel limited to these. The other usual disclaimer: If you’re behind on the reading, or haven’t read the book at all, no problem, we’re not grading any of this. The conversation about climate is every bit as important. Also, no worries about spoilers, because hey, this is our last meeting!

1) How has the dynamic between Mary and Frank evolved over the course of the novel (if it has), and how does it relate to the book’s overall themes? Is Frank Mary’s Greek chorus or Jiminy Cricket, or something else?

2) After Badim meets with representatives of the Children of Kali to tell them that it’s time for the violence to stop (Chapter 78), terrorism does seem to largely vanish, at least from the plot of the novel, apart from reminders that the threat of being torpedoed has led shipping companies to retrofit container ships to run on solar, figuring the slower speed into their business model; by the time Mary takes her airship tour, most cargo ships are fully robotic, too. Again, I’m not sure that even effective, coordinated terrorism would have that effect, and the disappearance of the Kali groups from the final 30 or so chapters seems like a loose thread. Your thoughts?

3) Remember that terrific Wired profile of Jamie Beard, who’s doing everything she possibly can to get oil drilling companies to shift their expertise to enhanced geothermal? (We linked to it in Part 4 of the book club) My favorite climate-n-energy nerd David Roberts recently interviewed her on his Volts podcast, and she is exactly as brilliant, witty, and OMG even optimistic about the energy potential of geothermal as you’d expect from the profile. (If you’re not a podcast person, there’s also a transcript)

Why yes, this was more of a comment than a question. But it says a hell of a lot that Ministry doesn’t say much at all about using Earth’s own heat as an energy source, not because Robinson dropped the ball while researching the book, but because in the two and a half years since it was published, interest and investment in geothermal has accelerated to the point that it’s likely to be a huge part of the clean energy transition. As it happens, the very same month Ministry was published, October 2020, Roberts wrote that geothermal was “poised for a big breakout.” (He and Beard talk about that piece in the podcast, since it really did help shape much of the interest in geothermal.) The technology’s prospects are even more exciting now, with pilot projects in the works — another area Beard is helping with via a newly launched nonprofit, Project InnerSpace.

OK, fine, I’ll just embed Beard’s TED Talk too. It’s Saturday, so we can be a bit sprawling.

youtu.be

4) I really want to talk about how we can be optimistic about climate. Not in any Pollyannaish “Oh, they’ll figure it out” sense, but in the way I think Ministry for the Future encourages: very much aware of the challenges, and always on the lookout for ways to leverage existing systems to make significant advances. (One obvious example: the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which is already remaking American industrial and energy policy. We need a lot more like it, but combined with other Biden policies, it’s really very freaking impressive! How did Ministry for the Future — or our discussions of it here — affect your overall sense of what we can do about climate?

That’s plenty to start with, and please, add other questions and ideas as we discuss! I plan to come back to the discussion all weekend, too.

The one rule I am going to enforce strictly for this post is that, to keep the conversation focused, I will remove any off topic comments and ask you to move ’em to the open threads, either the Top Ten from this morning, or the late-afternoon Open thread later. I’d honestly like to keep the book & climate conversation going all weekend, and if you wanna come back and say more, please do so!

Here are our previous installments:

Book Club Part 1

Book Club Part 2

Book Club Part 3

Book Club Part 4

Book Club Part 5

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Oh Fiddlesticks, Lindsey Graham Has Gone And Upset The Russians

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What a strange day. First Ted Cruz was correct about a thing, and now we have a post wherein Lindsey Graham doesn’t need to go fuck himself.

Of course in both cases, it’s because the people who are mad at these MAGA garbage Republican senators are even more MAGA garbage than they are. And yes, we are including the Russian government and state-owned media under the umbrella of “MAGA garbage,” because you bet your ass we are.

Russia has issued an arrest warrant for Lindsey Graham. And Margarita Simonyan, the lying dogshit editor of Russian government-controlled RT, who will absolutely go to hell when she dies, is suggesting that the Russian government should just go ahead and assassinate Graham. “We have his address,” she said, as if that’s some great feat of the Russian intelligence services. Next she’ll say she can tell you what time stores open and close, and if Amazon is out of deodorant.

Turns Out All Russian Journalists Know They’re Lying About Ukraine War

This all started after Graham met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday. In video of that encounter, released by Zelenskyy’s office, Graham said that “Russians are dying,” and that US aid to Ukraine in fighting Russia’s genocidal war is “the best money we’ve ever spent.” Russia is very mad because the way the video is edited, it (sorta) sounds like Graham is saying the best money we ever spent is to kill Russians. (Shrug.)

Of course, anybody can tell the video has been spliced together. (Watch it for yourself.) That means the Russians can tell, unless they are just very dumb. And that means their outrage is performative bullshit.

But oh, what performative outrage it is! The Daily Beast shares this example:

State TV host Vladimir Solovyov […] angrily exclaimed: “Your dirty American money also fully supported the Nazi regime in Germany! You are a Nazi beast and you’re following in the footsteps of your predecessors. I’ll repeat it once again: you will croak, but the Russian people will live forever!”

LOL okeydoke.

So the Investigative Committee, which investigates things in Russia, opened an investigation, and the Interior Ministry issued an arrest warrant for Graham, which we are sure will prove bothersome to any dreams Graham might have of visiting a Potemkin country whose hottest tourism attractions are “broken Ferris wheel” and “airport to take you out of Russia.” Graham wasn’t on the newest list of Americans banned from Russia, because he was already on the old list.

PREVIOUSLY! Putin Bans Everybody Who Ever Hurted Donald Trump’s Feelings From Glorious Russia

Foreign Minister Dmitry Peskov said, “It’s hard to imagine a greater shame for the country than having such senators,” which is factcheck true but not for any of the reasons Peskov is saying.

Then there was beclowned Putin sycophant Dmitry Medvedev, who kept Putin’s chair warm as president of Russia from 2008 to 2012, while Putin was pretending he was just prime minister, because at the time the Russian constitution wouldn’t allow Putin to serve a third consecutive term as president.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said Graham “shouldn’t have done that” and called the 67-year-old lawmaker an “old fool.”

Medvedev also said on Telegram, “In his beloved America, not only ordinary people are regularly killed, but dirty money is also being spent on killing senators. He should recall the sad fate of Robert Kennedy, Huey Long, Clementa Carlos Pinckney, John Milton Elliott, Wayne Owens and other American politicians.” You know, in case people thought he was being too subtle and didn’t understand what he might be getting at.

And then there was Simonyan, who runs RT, and is a true garbage person. She allowed that maybe Graham’s comments had been edited, but then said:

“If Lady Graham really said that the money for the killing of Russians is the best money the US ever spent… I hope that in our country, the sons or grandchildren of Sudoplatov are alive, his pupils, or the descendants of his pupils. It’s not even hard. We have his address.”

“Lady Graham.” How cute. “Sudoplatov” is Pavel Sudoplatov, who the Daily Beast helpfully explains was part of the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

Then she said these things:

“I have no ill will towards anyone and our religion tells us to forgive, but no one tells us to reward these types of things. When we don’t act in response to these things, it is the same as encouraging them. It causes them to become increasingly more brazen.”

What’s Lindsey Graham gonna do? Invade the country next door unprovoked and start blowing its babies’ heads off like Russia did? Because we feel like that was pretty brazen.

Here’s video of all that fake Russian bellyaching:

www.youtube.com

Graham is acting like he isn’t even upset about all this, tweeting that he “will wear the arrest warrant issued by Putin’s corrupt and immoral government as a Badge of Honor.” He followed up:

“To know that my commitment to Ukraine has drawn the ire of Putin’s regime brings me immense joy. I will continue to stand with and for Ukraine’s freedom until every Russian soldier is expelled from Ukrainian territory.”

Melodramatic, but correct.

Specifically in response to Medvedev, Graham said, “[I]f you want Russians to stop dying in Ukraine, withdraw. Stop the invasion. Stop the war crimes. The truth is that you and Putin could care less about Russian soldiers.”

That’s one way to say it.

Or he could just tell all these Russians to eat an entire field full of Ukrainian assholes. But he would never do that because he is not cool and he still sucks, just not for the reasons the Russians think.

Watch, our next post will be about Marjorie Taylor Greene not kicking a puppy or something, WTF are we even on about today.

[NBC News / The Hill / Daily Beast]

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Just got to BlueSky!

I have profiles those other places but I think I forgot how to log on.

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Louisiana Wingnut Rep. Clay Higgins Bulldozes Protester. WHAR ASSAULT CHARGES?

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Rightwing Republican congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana — known around these parts as the ‘WHAR BOXES?’ guy, or simply WHAR BOXES — took it upon himself to play bouncer Wednesday when a young protester got a little too mouthy during a press conference being held by prominent House Wingnut Caucus members including Higgins, Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado), Paul Gosar DDS (R-Arizona) and others. (Higgins later tweeted that the presser was about the very real threat to US sovereignty posed by the World Health Organization, which is part of the UN One-World Communist Plot, which seems like indispensable context.)

The protester, law student and organizer/troublemaker Jake Burdett, 25, told the Daily Beast he’d actually been in DC for a Medicare for All rally led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), but when that was over, he saw the Freedom Caulkers setting up and decided to be a free speech pest, which is his right as an American citizen.

Spotting Gosar and Boebert, he decided to stick around. “I figured I’d ask them some tough questions,” he said. “Bird-dog them, whatever you want to call it.”

And indeed, as Burdett’s videos show, he was definitely heckling the rightwing dipshits, which may happen when politicians hold a “press conference” in public.

In the first video, Burdett shouts questions while Gosar is speaking, asking about his appearance at a confab held by neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, and about that embarrassing campaign ad made by Gosar’s own siblings, urging people not to vote for him. As Freedom Cockups try to tell Burdett to leave, Higgins steps in to promise he’ll answer all Burdett’s questions later (about Gosar, sure!) if the young man will just stop recording and be quiet. Higgins does get right up in Burdett’s face to deliver that offer of help.

In the first video, Higgins fairly calmly introduces himself and says, “All I’m asking you to do is just peacefully stand by with your camera and I promise you — look at me — I’ll come talk to you straight up and answer all your questions. Fair enough?”

And yes, Burdett wanted to know how on earth Higgins would be in a position to know anything about Gosar’s very public embarrassment.

But Burdett hadda go and persist. While Boebert spoke, he asked her about her divorce, and asked her whether it was at all related to that time in 2017 when her restaurant customers got diarrhea from tainted pork sliders. Sure, it was a rude, nonsensical, pesky question. And goddamn it, it was also perfectly legal because this is America and we can ask rude stupid questions of our elected leaders in public, Crom bless our First Amendment!

And because we are indeed a nation of laws, our elected leaders are not allowed to assault us just for being annoying, although that’s what Higgins did. Here’s video from another angle, showing Higgins grabbing Burdett to eject him (nearly knocking over another person in the audience) and manhandling Burdett away from the speakers all the way to the sidewalk.

Burdett wasn’t harmed or arrested; he told the Daily Beast that he was questioned for about a half hour by Capitol Police and told he could go. But he was certainly none too happy that the Capitol Cops didn’t seem very interested in hearing him tell them he’d been assaulted by a member of Congress.

“It’s one thing for anybody to do that,” he said of Higgins’ behavior. “But for a sitting U.S. congressperson to think that that’s OK—it just shows an extra level of entitlement, that they feel they’re untouchable and the law doesn’t apply to them.”

For his part, Higgins, a former sheriff who loves to act the Tough Guy, later took to Twitter to lie about the encounter, claiming that Burdett was “a 103M” (police code for “disturbance by a mental person,” never mind the bad English usage) and insisting in an attached video that Burdett (an “agitator activist”) was “very disruptive and threatening, in violation of the law.”

Higgins gives himself credit in the video for having “successfully de-escalated the situation,” a phrase with which we’re certain the Inigo Montoya meme would take issue. He also claims that Burdett “aggressively disrupted” Boebert and “approached her in a threatening manner,” which just isn’t the case. He was rude and shouty, not threatening.

Say, is this a good place to mention that in 2007, Higgins, then in law enforcement, was accused of beating up an innocent bystander to an arrest, and then lying to Internal affairs to cover it up? The former cop also busted for helping with that alleged cover-up is now a congressional aide to Higgins. Higgins resigned before he could be punished for that incident.

Burdett told the Daily Beast that he’s now “evaluating my options” and that “if it looks like there is a strong case for assault and [there is] an attorney willing to take on the case, I am absolutely prepared to press charges.” On Twitter, when Burdett asked for any attorneys to tell him if they thought he had a case, civil rights attorney Andrew C. Laufer replied, “Yes, assault, battery, and a potential civil rights violation.”

Former US Attorney and current MSNBC legal commentator Joyce Vance was succinct: “Looks like an assault to me?”

[Daily Beast / Lafayette Daily Advertiser / Salon / Nola.com]

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Oh No, What Is Joe Biden Doing To James Comer’s Informants Who Are Definitely Real And Not Imaginary?

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We have been having our little fun watching House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer flail around as he pretends he’s presenting hard evidence against the Bidens to the American people. He has nothing. It’s super-fuckin’ obvious. Fox News knows it. Quite frankly it kind of seems to be annoying them, because they were promised Biden investigations, and this dumb hick can’t manage to make up a damn thing. At least when they were hounding Hillary Clinton for years on end, they were able to scream “Benghazi!” and “Emails!” and they felt like they were saying something.

This is not that.

Comer went on Fox News with deflated Muppet costume Maria Bartiromo this weekend, and she wanted to ask hard journalism questions about “this coverup.” Her face was so serious, like she was a real reporter. But she accidentally got something hilarious out of Comer:

www.youtube.com

BARTIROMO: You have spoken with whistleblowers. You also spoke with an informant who gave you all of this information. Where is that informant today? Where are these whistleblowers?

COMER: Well, unfortunately we can’t track down the informant. We are hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant, the whistleblower is very credible.

Unfortunately, the informant has runnt away and Jamie Comer dunnot know whar he is. Heh heh heh. But don’t worry, Jamie Comer will find him wharever he’s hidin’. Maybe he is in the garage. Maybe he’s over yonder in the chicken coop.

Dangit, informant, whar yew at?

The informant is real, though. Jamie Comer seen him. Jamie Comer done come outside and the informant said, “Sir, I have a secret about Hunter Biden’s devil penis,” and Jamie Comer could tell they was real.

So, the very real informant and the very real whistleblower, these are two very real and separate people and not imaginary friends or Russian spies or imaginary Russian spies.

Except wait hold on a second:

BARTIROMO: Hold on a second, Congressman. Did you just say that the whistleblower or the informant is now missing?

COMER: Well, we’re hopeful that we can find the informant. Now remember, these informants are kind of in the spy business, so they don’t make a habit of being seen a lot or being high profile or anything like that.

“The spy business.”

Y’all, even Maria Bartiromo’s face was:

COMER: We have basic information with respect to what the informant has alleged, and it’s very serious! It alleges that Joe Biden when he was vice president was involved in a quid pro quo with a foreign country in exchange for foreign aid.

He pronounced it “quid pro crow.” Latin’s tough for guys like Jamie Comer.

Anyway, we hate it when the vice president of the United States withholds foreign aid. Definitely something the vice president does all the time. You know how they’re the ones who set policy and the foreign aid budget.

Also, it’s funny how those outlines are so similar to the criminal extortion Donald Trump was actually caught doing, trying to force Ukraine to help him steal the 2020 election.

It’s like Comer’s plan here is literally as half-witted as just accusing Biden of exactly what Trump did, but in the mostly brainlessly vague terms possible, and hoping the entire country is too stupid to notice that he’s trying to take all the proper nouns out of the Trump Mad Lib and replace them with Biden words.

BARTIROMO: Are there whistleblowers or informants missing right now?

COMER: [blah blah blah words that don’t mean things] Nine of the 10 people that we’ve identified that have very good knowledge with respect to the Bidens, they’re one of three things, Maria, they’re either currently in court, they’re currently in jail, or they’re currently missing.

Oh no, nine of the 10 people who know the things about the Bidens are one of three things, and one of those things is “in court.”

Okeydoke.

Comer bitched and moaned that the FBI won’t play along with his random accusations, and he babbled that “no president” has ever been accused of the things Biden has. (He hasn’t accused Biden of anything specific.)

And he baselessly said that the people who want to come forward and say things about the Bidens, “They fear for their LAAAAAAAAH-VES!” You betcha.

Bartiromo, if she was genuinely skeptical for even a moment when she was making that face above, went right back to being one of the dumbest, most gullible motherfuckers on Fox News. “This is absolutely extraordinary and it is stunning that some people are missing that you need to prove this!”

She continued:

BARTIROMO: Who in the White House is intimidating these people? Do you know?

COMER: I do know. We’re saving that for a later time.

Of course he is.

It’s funny because Trump and his administration were especially known for witness intimidation and tampering. The judge in the E. Jean Carroll case literally just advised the jurors not to make their identities known for a good long while, if ever.

Speaking to Bartiromo, Comer also accused the Democrats on his committee of acting as “defense attorneys for the Biden family.”

All of this is 100 percent the most laughable kind of projection. Jamie Comer might be stupid enough to think he’s being clever, and the 30 percent of Americans he’s playing to might be that stupid too.

That’s it, that’s the tweet.

Speaking of “that stupid,” here are two of the flying monkeys. Charlie Kirk is really leaning into the conspiracy theory and shitting his pants on command about nine whistleblowers being missing. Marjorie Taylor Greene may not have memorized her lines yet.

You’re all doing great and Jesus loves you.

The end.

UPDATE: Oh no, now she’s going to ask everybody where the informant is. Here she is this morning with GOP Rep. Tim Burchett. this is so GD sad.

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.

I would like a BlueSky invite.

I’m also giving things a go at the Mastodon (@[email protected]) and at Post!

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Lordy, Abby Grossberg Has Tapes!

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The other evening, former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, whose lawsuit may be a contributing factor for why Tucker Carlson was so unceremoniously fired Monday morning, started making the media rounds with her lawyer. (She thinks her lawsuit is probably a factor.) She appeared on MSNBC with Nicolle Wallace, and her lawyer showed up afterward on the same network’s Ari Melber show.

News, as they say, was made.

She talked about about how Tucker had made her life a “living hell,” and what a disgusting and misogynist place Tucker’s show was to work. (That’s all in her lawsuit.) She talked about how much Tucker liked to say the C-word, about women in general who made him mad, and especially about Sidney Powell, and how Fox News’s lawyers coached her to tell common lies about whether that bothered her. Indeed, she told Wallace that after she gave her original deposition in the Dominion lawsuit, the show threw a special lunch called “Abby Day” because they were so proud of her answers.

And she talked about how bizarrely and preternaturally obsessed Tucker was with making up and spreading conspiracy theories that the terrorist attack of January 6 was some kind of false flag perpetuated by the FBI. Even though lawyers for people on trial for invading the Capitol that day were begging him to stop.

That’s all at the end of this clip, which is quite a highlight reel of the full interview:

According to Grossberg, the now-former Fox News star was “very set on finding an FBI person who was implanted in the crowd” so he could prove the insurrection was a false flag by the government.

“[He was] spinning this conspiracy that they were ultimately the ones responsible for the Capitol attack, not Fox News as they’re about to go into the Dominion trial,” she said. “It was really the FBI that set up this thing, not Fox telling the American people that the election was rigged and the voting machines did it.” Grossberg claimed that even an attorney representing some of the Capitol rioters implored her to push Carlson away from the unhinged theory, but it was to no avail because “everyone was a believer” on the show.

“I went back to them and said, look, there’s no conspiracy theory here. I called the attorney who is representing one of the Proud Boys. He told me on two occasions, ‘There’s no conspiracy, get away from this stuff, this is dangerous. Tell Tucker to stop. I will come on your show, but I’ll absolutely walk off if he asks me this.’ And the result was, find somebody else, Tucker is really intent on this.”

It was bizarre how Tucker latched so quickly on to the idea that the January 6 terrorists were all innocents, and that an attack on them was an attack on all his viewers. And he knew exactly what the assignment was when Kevin McCarthy gave him all those tapes.

Oh well, thank goodness he can’t spew that nonsense to such a big audience night after night anymore.

Maybe he can get some cats and tell January 6 Was A Planned Demolition conspiracy theories to them in his Maine “Hee Haw” studio.

And Lordy, Her Tapes!

Grossberg really did record a lot.

She says she’s got 90 tapes, that she knows of, so far, so it’s definitely not just that Rudy Giuliani tape that came out just before the Dominion trial, where he admitted out loud to Maria Bartiromo that he didn’t have shit evidence for all his voter fraud lies.

In the clip below she explains that Fox News failed to turn over a whole lot of things she provided to them during discovery for the Dominion case, and doesn’t know whether it was intentional or reckless that they failed to turn them over to Dominion. Oh well, she found ’em now! She says she’s also gotten a subpoena in the Smartmatic case.

The next hour on Ari Melber’s show, where Grossberg’s lawyer was a guest, he played a big important tape of Ted Cruz on the phone with Maria Bartiromo on January 2, talking about denying certification of the election on January 6, then standing up a fake commission afterward to investigate all the fake frauds, then use that to overturn the result:

www.youtube.com

From the Washington Post:

If the commission found “credible evidence of fraud that undermines confidence in the electoral results in any given state,” then the state would then call a special session and recertify results, according to Cruz.

“Is there any chance you can overturn this?” Bartiromo asked Cruz.

“I hope so,” he responded.

“Who gets inaugurated?” asked Bartiromo. Ted Cruz said hopefully the commission could figure all that out.

Watch that whole Melber report above to see how much Cruz was plotting. He was working hard to overthrow the government y’all!

Cruz is angrily sending out missives acting like this is all some “gotcha!” by MSNBC and insisting these were things he was saying in public at the time too. And yes, it is true that those plotting the coup were largely doing it in all our faces, because that’s what kind of craven, unpatriotic shitheels they are.

But it’s just another piece of the puzzle, and Abby Grossberg’s lawyer Gerry Flippatos has told Melber and other news media that he’s been in touch with Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating the many-pronged plan to overthrow the government and steal the presidency from its rightful winner Joe Biden.

Have they given Smith all of Grossberg’s Lordy She Has Tapes, which include the ones we’ve mentioned, plus conversations between Maria Bartiromo and Sidney Powell and other Trump campaign people? Flippatos says they’ve talked to “numerous law enforcement agencies” about the tapes, and provided info about how they’ll deliver them:

“We have voluntarily surrendered to the relevant law enforcement agencies details regarding the approximately 90 Otter tapes in Miss Grossberg’s possession and have engaged in discussions with these law enforcement agencies to receive targeted subpoenas regarding any such tapes that may be of interest to them,” he said. Otter is an app that transcribes audio recordings and is popular with reporters and producers.

In summary and in conclusion, she recorded everything and they are ready and willing to help.

Have fun with your upcoming life adventures, everyone on Abby Grossberg’s recordings!

[Daily Beast / Washington Post / CBS News]

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Montana Republicans Want In On That ‘Expel Democrats’ Thing That Worked So Well For Tennessee

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Montana Republicans will vote this afternoon on taking disciplinary action against state Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) because she stood at her desk Monday and held a nonfunctioning microphone in the air while a crowd of supporters in the House gallery chanted “Let her speak!” The protest ended with seven protesters being arrested as state police cleared the gallery.

Monday’s protest followed last week’s refusal by House Speaker Matt Regier (R) to recognize Zephyr during debate on a bill that removed transgender people from more than 40 areas of Montana law, including protections against discrimination, and which eliminated the option for trans people to change the gender markers on any official documents like birth certificates, drivers licenses, and even death certificates.

Regier’s silencing of Zephyr was punishment for a speech she had made earlier in the week against another bill that banned gender-affirming care for trans kids. In that speech, Zephyr noted that ending treatments like puberty blockers and hormone therapy would force trans youth to undergo puberty, which was “tantamount to torture” and said the House “should be ashamed.” She followed that by saying that if Republicans voted for the bill, “I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.”

Regier has said that he will only allow Zephyr to participate in debate again during the current legislative session if she apologizes for the remarks, because decorum. Republicans in the Montana Freedom Caucus called for Zephyr’s censure, claiming the Legislature must have “civil discourse” and condemning Zephyr’s supposedly “hateful rhetoric” while deliberately misgendering Zephyr in the announcement.

So that’s how we got to Monday and the protest, in which Zephyr apparently did an insurrection by standing at her desk and holding up that microphone. Here’s video from CBS Mornings. Note the efficiency with which the one trooper — at about the 9-second mark — uses a club around the neck of one protester to just take them right down to the floor.

youtu.be

After the protests Monday, the Montana House cancelled its scheduled floor session Tuesday, because people had been loud and disruptive.

We haven’t yet seen any Montana Republicans claim it was exactly like January 6, 2021, or worse (minus any deaths, assaults on police, feces-smearing, or attempts to overturn an election). House GOP leadership said in a statement that the protest had been a “riot by far-left agitators,” and vowed to “stand firm in our commitment to decorum, safety, and order. We will uphold the people’s will that sent 68 Republicans to Helena,” a subtle reminder that Montana Republicans have a supermajority and will do what they want.

Regier himself held a 35-second press conference Tuesday, in which he took no questions and complained that the media hadn’t told the true truth, because he hadn’t silenced Zephyr, she had, by breaking rules and not apologizing.

“This is also a disappointing day for Montana media,” he said. “The entire story was not told. Headlines that have happened over the last week stating that the Montana House leadership or GOP has silenced anyone is false. Currently, all representatives are free to participate in House debate while following the House rules. The choice to not follow House rules is one that Rep. Zephyr has made. The only person silencing Rep. Zephyr is Rep. Zephyr. The Montana House will not be bullied.”

If only Zooey Zephyr would stop bullying the Republican supermajority with all that accurate explanation of why forcing trans kids off their medications will be torture.

House Minority Leader Kim Abbott (D) issued a statement saying Democrats will be united in opposition to any disciplinary measure, for all the good it may do:

“The Republicans are doubling down on their agenda of running roughshod over Montanans’ rights — to free expression, to peaceful protest, to equal justice under the law. Montana Democrats will hold them accountable for every step they take in escalating their anti-democratic agenda.”

Abbott also told the Helena Independent Record, “I think this is the most extreme action that I’ve seen a Speaker take against a member in the 20 years I’ve been around this building,”

It’s not clear yet whether the House Republicans intend to pursue censure or expulsion of Zephyr later today; a letter sent to Zephyr yesterday said that she had violated the “rules, collective rights, safety, dignity, integrity, or decorum of the House,” and referenced the section of the Montana state constitution giving them the power to punish members or expel them with a two-thirds majority vote.

The House Judiciary Committee, on which Zephyr sits, cancelled its scheduled meeting this morning, and the GOP leadership’s letter to Zephyr noted that the House gallery would be closed for today’s floor session, which is scheduled for 1 p.m. “Mountain Time,” or 3 p.m. Eastern. You can watch the Republicans take a billy club to democracy here at the Montana Legislature’s website, and maybe we will do a livebloog too.

Update: Erin Reed reports that the gallery will remain closed not only today, but for the remainder of the session, which is likely to last another week or so. Can’t have the public nosing around the People’s business.

In related news, the Montana Free Press reports today that David Gianforte, the son of Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, has lobbied his dad to ask him to not sign anti-LGBTQ legislation, including three of the worst bills:

David, 32, sat down in the governor’s office on March 27 with a prepared statement about legislation affecting transgender Montanans and the LGBTQ+ community generally, to which David says he belongs. He wanted to talk about Senate Bill 99, a ban on gender-affirming health care for minors; Senate Bill 458, a bill to define sex as strictly binary in Montana code; and House Bill 359, a ban on drag performances in many public spaces.

David, who is nonbinary and uses both he and they pronouns, read a statement telling their father that the bills would harm their transgender friends, and called the bills “immoral, unjust, and frankly a violation of human rights.”

It’s not yet clear whether Montana Republicans will also vote on whether to expel the younger Gianforte from his family.

[Montana Free Press / Helena Independent Record / Montana Free Press]

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Montana Silences Zooey Zephyr

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The Montana Legislature this week took up a raft of legislation aimed at eliminating trans people. One bill would write transgender people out of the state’s legal code, requiring that birth certificates, drivers licenses, and even death certificates list only a person’s sex at birth. Another would allow public school teachers to deliberately misgender trans students, with no provision for parents to instruct schools to use the child’s preferred pronouns. A third would amend an anti-porn bill to ban “acts of transgenderism” from any website that doesn’t require age verification, treating most LGBTQ sites as if they were porn.

Finally, both houses passed a final version of Senate Bill 99, which not only bans gender-affirming medical care for minors but also will require trans minors to immediately stop taking their medication, forcing them to begin detransitioning. (At least, unlike in Missouri, adults will be able to continue their medical care. For now.) That’s to “protect” them by forcing them to experience puberty as the sex with which they don’t identify. The bill provides for both civil lawsuits and criminal prosecution against any healthcare provider who “harms” a trans youth by giving them the care recommended by virtually all medical and mental health professional organizations in the US.

PREVIOUSLY: What IS Gender Affirming Health Care For Kids Anyway, Because Texas Is Super F*cking Lying About It Right?

Missouri Attorney General Singlehandedly Bans Care For Trans Adults Too, No Law Required

SB 99 passed both houses once, but Gov. Greg Gianforte sent it back with amendments that, among other things, got rid of the word “procedures” to ensure that all medical treatment was banned — get it, because your medication isn’t a “procedure” — and more extensively defined “sex” more comprehensively around reproductive organs, declaring, “In human beings, there are exactly two sexes, male and female, with two corresponding types of gametes,” do not pass GO, do not collect a tiara if you have a dong. The amended bill passed Wednesday and went to Gianforte for his signature, once more over the protests of pediatricians and other medical professionals who warned again that trans kids will be harmed.

That, after all, was the point.

Blood On Their Hands

It was, finally, too much for first-term state Rep. Zooey Zephyr, Montana’s first trans legislator, who gave a blistering condemnation of the bill, as well as the cover letter Gianforte sent the House regarding his requested amendments. Please watch this speech, since it may well be the last time the Republican supermajority allowed Rep. Zephyr to speak in defense of the trans community.

youtu.be

Zephyr rejected Gianforte’s assertion that SB 99 would “protect” Montana children, saying that forcing puberty on a trans young person amounts to torture. She also rejected his notion that the bill still allows “psychotherapy to treat young Montanans struggling with their gender identity.” But without the transitional medical care that’s actually the proper treatment for gender dysphoria — puberty blockers, with the option of hormone treatment later (most people delay surgery until after they’re 18 anyway) — Zephyr correctly pointed out that the only “psychotherapy” that remains would be “conversion therapy, which is torture.”

But the real fire of Zephyr’s comments was reserved for the state Legislature and for the fraud of SB 99 itself, with its attempt to legislate all humans into a gender binary, an idea as ridiculous, Zephyr said, as legislating that the Earth is flat. As for the claim that “life altering” medical treatment must be delayed until adulthood, Zephyr said,

“If you are forcing a trans child to go through puberty when they are trans, that is tantamount to torture. This body should be ashamed.”

House Majority Leader Sue Vinton (R) objected to that, saying that her caucus “will not be shamed.”

Nevertheless, Zephyr persisted.

“Then the only thing I will say is that if you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments, I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.”

Vinton and nearly all the other Republicans stood to object, and Vinton said that Zephyr’s comments were “inappropriate, disrespectful and uncalled for.”

Freedom’s Just Another Word For Shut Up And Sit Down

Within hours, the “Montana Freedom Caucus” tweeted out a call for Zephyr to be censured, claiming that the Legislature is a place for “civil discourse” while deliberately misgendering Zephyr in both the tweet and the attached press release, and lying that her comments had been “threatening.” We suppose that actually recognizing the blood on their hands might scare them, though.

Zephyr also tweeted a letter from an ER doctor who recently wrote to her that a colleague had treated a suicidal transgender teen who said that they mostly wanted to die because the were constantly being told that their very existence was wrong. The teen

“referenced the current legislative session and told my partner, ‘My state doesn’t want me.’ Please consider that statement and let it sink in. This young teen is so distressed by the laws that you all have been discussing and passing, that they were driven to want to kill themselves.”

Zephyr prefaced the letter by saying, “When I said there is blood on their hands, I meant it.”

This Isn’t Legislating, This Is Genocide

Then yesterday, the House finished debate on SB 458, which enshrines in state law that binary definition of “sex” as either male or female, and nothing else. The law — which is probably unconstitutional, as if that matters anymore — effectively writes trans people out of 41 sections of Montana law. For instance, it specifies that the state’s law against discrimination now means that “a person may not be subjected to discrimination because of sex, as defined in 1-1-201, race, creed, religion, age, physical or mental disability, color, or national origin.” That section, of course, is the bit saying “there are exactly two sexes, male and female,” etc.

Another clause notes that the state’s “fair campaign practices” code means that candidates will pledge to “not make any appeal to prejudice based on race, sex, as defined in 1-1-201, creed, or national origin” — in other words, campaigning on prejudice against trans folks is apparently 100 percent ethical in Montana.

Housing and job discrimination against trans people? Completely legal now. And birth and death certificates and drivers licenses can only list the person’s sex at birth. You’ll be permanently misgendered even in the grave.

You get the idea.

We’re Republicans, We Can Do What We Want

As Zephyr stood to voice her objections to the bill, House Speaker Matt Regier (R), refused to recognize her, which prompted a formal objection from Minority Leader Kim Abbott (D) and other Democrats. Regier said that as speaker, he decides who will speak and who won’t, and that’s that: “It is up to me to maintain decorum here on the House floor, to protect the dignity and integrity, and any representative I don’t feel can do that will not be recognized.”

The Democratic objection led to a meeting of the Rules Committee, where after some debate, the Republicans voted that Regier does indeed have the power to decide who can participate in debate, or not. But before that, the Rs tossed in an incidental threat to also silence Native American Rep. Sharon Stewart Peregoy (D), for warning that the Legislature was headed down a slippery slope to fascism, how dare she.

Regier later told reporters that unless Zephyr properly apologizes for her rude behavior, she won’t be allowed to speak again for the remainder of the 2023 legislative session, which is likely to run for another two weeks or so.

Zephyr made clear that she has nothing to apologize for, because these bills are going to kill trans kids, just as hatred has already killed trans people:

“I have lost friends to suicide this year,” she said. “I field the calls from multiple families who dealt with suicide attempts, with trans youth who have fled the state, people who have been attacked on the side of the road, because of legislation like this. I spoke with clarity and precision about the harm these bills do. And they say they want an apology, but what they really want is silence as they take away the rights of trans and queer Montanans.”

The Montana Democratic Party and the Montana American Indian Caucus both issued statements condemning the silencing of Zephyr, as well as the Montana Freedom Caucus for misgendering her. The latter statement also praised Zephyr for “speaking up for the Montana trans, nonbinary, and Two-Spirit community,” and condemned the legislature’s passage of laws that “spread disinformation and fear, prevent them from receiving life-saving health care, ban their self-expression, and erase them from all public life.”

Fascist Creeps And Creeping Fascism

Montana’s silencing of Zooey Zephyr is proof that Republicans haven’t learned anything at all from the backlash to Tennessee Republicans’ attempt to silence two Black Democrats who spoke up (without permission, egad!) against gun violence.

Or maybe the Montana GOP did learn something. The House speaker silenced her even though there was no censure resolution at all. Just to add to the farce, the Montana “Freedom” Caucus celebrated Zephyr’s silencing with another press release that flat out lied, claiming that the Legislature had “officially” voted to censure Zephyr. Of course, no such vote happened, just the Rules Committee vote affirming that Regier can silence anyone he wants.

Not like anyone will be allowed to call that a lie in the House. Wouldn’t be civil.

[Erin in the Morning / Daily Montanan / Montana Free Press]

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A-Hole Trump Coup Lawyer Sick Of Gross Youngs Voting, What If We Just Made That Totally Impossible?

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Cleta Mitchell is one of those old assface white conservative lawyers who turns up like a slug languishing underneath a railroad tie pretty much anytime Republicans are caught doing fascism. Pick up the railroad tie, oh there she is!

The project to overthrow the American government in 2020 and reinstall Donald Trump because white fascists can’t handle the fact that all normal people hate their fucking guts and never want them to have power again? There she is!

Trying to help with the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the will of the actual people in Georgia? There she is! She was literally on Trump’s perfect phone call, where he said to “find” him 11,780 votes. (She had to leave her law firm after that one.)

THERE SHE IS!

Ginni Thomas Just A Sweet Christian Lady Who Never Tried To Steal An Election At All, Wait WHAT Texts?

Trump Lawyers F*ck Around And Find Out In Georgia

Trump Makes Conveniently Timed Donation To Mark Meadows’s Employer

Training MAGA idiots to keep a keen (white) eye on the polls to make sure nothing nefarious goes on? There she is! “I don’t care what anybody says. You can tell me I’m ‘the Big Lie.’ Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Actual quote.

But her slug railroad tie action goes way back. Here are a couple of deep cuts, courtesy of JoeMyGod: Back in the days of the Teabaggers, she did some work for the National Organization for Marriage — those viciously bigoted garbage humans — in Minnesota. She’s such a vicious bigot, or at least used to be — maybe she’s woke now! LMAO — that in 2011, she led a campaign to get a gay Republican group called GOProud kicked out of CPAC. Of course, her first husband was gay. So that’s interesting.

But yeah, she’s been around. Her Wikipedia’s got a good rundown of all her slug railroad tie appearances, should you be interested. But back to the present!

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Mitchell gave quite the presentation to an RNC donors retreat in Nashville on what Republicans have got to do to start winning elections again, specifically in 2024. Is it to learn to govern in ways normal people actually support? No, not that. Is it to do things that might make life better for people who are NOT old white racists who are going to die within the next few years? LOL shut up.

A top Republican legal strategist told a roomful of GOP donors over the weekend that conservatives must band together to limit voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration and automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters.

Haha of course. These goddamn kids are trying to make decisions about what kind of country they want to live in, and they haven’t even asked Christian fascists’ permission!

Her presentation was called “A Level Playing Field for 2024,” because we guess she decided to go with that old white Republican strategy where they name things the exact opposite of what they are.

Journalist Lauren Windsor taped some of Mitchell’s presentation, and boy howdy:

“What are these college campus locations?” she asked, according to the audio. “What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.”

LOL, old white asshole can’t stop herself from adding completely baseless digs about the youngs being lazy. She was talking to old white assholes after all.

The Post says her presentation was really mad about campus voting in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Virginia and Georgia, noting that all five states “are home to enormous public universities with large in-state student populations.” Guess how all those states voted in the 2020 election? (Also, weirdly, her presentation said Alaska is one of the eight states that’s going to decide 2024. Something interesting happening up there we should know about? HMMMMM!)

THERE SHE ISN’T! Welcome To Congress, New Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola!

She really wants more “oversight” in Fulton County, Georgia — Republicans always want to do “oversight” in Atlanta, wonder why! — and she doesn’t like that Culinary Workers Union in Nevada and how it organizes ordinary culinary workers to vote for the people they’d like to represent them.

And she’s mad some states will let 17-year-olds register ahead of time if they are going to be 18 on Election Day. (We’re reminded of Kellyanne Conway’s recent freakout that TikTok might have a bad influence on all the Youngs, by peer pressuring them to vote.)

GROOMING! Kellyanne Conway Worried TikTok Influencers Might Groom Kids To Do Dirty Stuff, Like Voting

She hates early voting too, obviously:

“Forty-five days!” she said in a reference to Virginia’s early voting period. “Do you know how hard it is to have observers be able to watch for that long a period?”

We imagine it is indeed very difficult to get enough drooling MAGA grunts to stare menacingly at Black people at the polls to sustain a 45-day effort. Thoughts and prayers.

But yes, it is terrible, the tyranny of making voting easy for eligible young citizens, even those who don’t vote the way white Republican social conservatives would prefer. It’s like they don’t even respect their white fascist elders! (Exactly.) It’s like they don’t even think old Republican garbage has ever contributed anything of value to American society! (Correct.)

Mitchell told her RNC audience that her organization, the Election Integrity Network, “is NOT about winning campaigns,” according to the text of the presentation. But the slidesgave little other rationale for why campus or mail voting should be curtailed. At another point in the presentation, she said the nation’s electoral systems must be saved “for any candidate other than a leftist to have a chance to WIN in 2024.”

“The Left has manipulated the electoral systems to favor one side … theirs,” she wrote in the presentation. “Our constitutional republic’s survival is at stake.”

One-hundred percent projection, but whatever, motherfucker, cry more.

And definitely, keep doing this shit. Keep trying to make it harder for people to vote. That’s the Republican ticket. Piss off the youngs even more.

It’s so pathetic, though, because this just reconfirms what everybody knows, namely that Republicans really don’t have anything to sell that any good and patriotic American wants to buy. Everybody hates their shitty ideas. Everybody thinks they’re fucking weirdos, crying about how the green M&M isn’t fuckable anymore while they shoot guns at Bud Light because it was nice to a transgender person.

FUCKING WEIRDOS! Here’s Tucker Declaring Flawless Victory Over M&Ms That Stole All His Boners, Good Morning

Is This The Right Amount To Get Mad At Beer?

So they have to give presentations in Nashville hotels about how it’s unfair letting young people vote by mail or on their college campus. As if there aren’t mailboxes and polling places all over old balls white Republican neighborhoods in the exurbs.

Keep fuckin’ around, y’all, and ye shall keep finding out.

Here’s a fun Mehdi Hasan video about what a piece of shit Cleta Mitchell is:

www.youtube.com

The end.

[Washington Post]

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Arizona House, In Weird Twist, Expels Member Who Deserved It

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The Arizona House of Representatives got on the expel-a-member bandwagon started by Tennessee last week, voting Wednesday to expel first-term Republican state Rep. Liz Harris for inviting a loonypants election denier to testify before a legislative committee in February. Harris no doubt thought that would be fine, since she herself is a loonypants election denier who insisted that her own election last fall was full of fraud and needed to be rerun.

Previously, On The Expulsion Chronicles:

Arizona Republican Demands Election She Won Be Overturned

TN House GOP To Expel Democrat Terrorists Who Called For Saving Kids’ Lives Without Permission

Forgive Them Lord They … Oh Wait. They Do. Tennessee House Lets Its Racist Freak Flag Fly.

OK, so maybe the only thing Harris’s situation has in common with the travesty in Tennessee is that it ended with expulsion. Unlike the Kafkaesque railroading of Democrats for a minor decorum violation in Tennessee, Harris was only removed — by a bipartisan vote — after an investigation by Arizona’s House Ethics Committee, which allowed Harris to present a defense. It probably didn’t help her case that the committee’s nine-page report determined that Harris had fibbed when she told the committee she absolutely did not know what her invited guest would say.

So no, not at all like the Tennessee expulsion, where the Republican supermajority ignored due process and just made things up as it went along. That said, we do think “Kafka Railroad” would be a really good name for a band.

And hoo boy, the Tennessee Three’s brief, unrecognized protest for gun control sure can’t hold a candle to Harris’s decision to invite a fellow election denier to testify in February before a hearing held by Arizona’s joint House and Senate Election Committee. Harris’s guest witness, Scottsdale insurance agent Jacqueline Breger, managed to out-crazy the average run of the mill election conspiracy tale, even in a state where the loser of the 2022 gubernatorial election, Kari Lake, insists she’s actually the governor.

Here’s the Arizona Republic’s summary of Breger’s testimony:

Breger shocked officials with accusations that Gov. Katie Hobbs, House Speaker Ben Toma, lawmakers, judges, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and others conspired with a Mexican drug cartel and received bribes through a scheme using property deeds.

Breger failed to mention that two women she claimed were key players in the scheme were the ex-wife and former mother-in-law of her boyfriend, John Thaler, a lawyer with a suspended license, who was the source of the claims. Thaler had previously outlined the same bribery scheme in court proceedings related to this divorce and child custody case; two separate judges in federal and Maricopa County Superior courts called the narrative “delusional.”

That brief overview barely scratches the surface of what a clownshow the February hearing was; the committee report also notes that Breger claimed the bribery scheme involved elected officials at every level of government in the state, from city court judges to the state supreme court, as well as members of the Legislature, city and county prosecutors, and “mental health providers as in court-appointed advisors, and related specialists.”

She also insisted that the LDS church secretly controls Arizona government agencies and is “integral to the laundering activities” that got the cartel bribes to what sounds like half the people in government jobs in Arizona. The weird fear of Mormons certainly fits with a lot of Evangelical folk belief, in which Mormons are a dangerous cult, almost as bad as Unitarians.

At one point during Breger’s testimony, a member of the elections committee asked how Breger had been invited to testify. When Breger said she’d been invited by Harris,

Representative Harris made a gesture moving her hand across her neck and mouthed something to Breger. […] Representative Harris subsequently stated that she hoped that the hearing was being presented by all national networks.

Harris got at least part of her wish. Breger’s claims blew up in righting media and, as the Arizona Republic reports,

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Arizona constituents and social media users apparently believed Breger’s testimony. Calls for the arrest of the governor spread on social media immediately afterward.

Later, Harris insisted she was simply helping a constituent voice concerns about the possibility of election integrity issues, in hopes of preventing “mal-administered elections.” When the Ethics Committee asked if she was aware what Breger would present to the Elections Committee, Harris replied, “Absolutely, positively, 100 percent no.”

Big surprise: The investigation found text messages between Harris, Breger, and Thaler, and they even consulted with each other on coming up with a title for Breger’s presentation that would be vague enough to not tip off anyone that it was a load of conspiracy cacadoody.

The Ethics Committee found that Harris “committed disorderly behavior, thereby violating Rule 1 of the Rules of the Arizona House of Representatives and damaging the institutional integrity of the House,” and referred the case to the House for discipline. The vote to expel her was 43-13, with 18 Republicans voting to remove her. All 13 votes against expulsion came from Republicans.

Before the vote, one Republican, state Rep. Alex Kolodin, defended Harris, saying that if she were expelled, the public “will perceive that they don’t have a true voice in this body,” presumably because the bugfuck nutso parts of the public need representation too. Kolodin explained that Harris’s constituents had chosen “somebody to rock the boat,” only to see her expelled, and what a sad day for democracy etc. He did at least acknowledge that Harris’s boat-rocking was “admittedly in the wrong way … a way that should have been better considered.”

As for Harris, TV journalists caught up with her as she was taking stuff from her office to her car, and she insisted the Ethics Committee report was “a lie,” and muttered that Republicans had taken her down to “make an example” of her to make members “toe the line.”

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Also one of her supporters yelled that they loved her, and that now she’s been “set free from the vipers” in the Legislature. When a reporter asked Harris how she’s feeling emotionally, the same voice interrupts, “aren’t you relieved to not to deal with these vipers?” No word on whether these vipers are also RINOs, which would make for a cool chimera in a medieval bestiary.

Now that she’s returned to private life, Harris is ready for the wingnut welfare circuit. This morning, in fact, she’ll be doing an interview show at 10 EDT on Rumble with a couple of wingnut “journalists,” so that might generate some quotable lunacy about Mormons and vipers.

[CNN / MSNBC / Arizona Republic / Arizona House Ethics Committee Report]

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