Tag: youtube

LIVE: Let’s Watch Republicans Yell ‘Woke!’ At Pentagon Officials And Call It Oversight

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

There is literally an article in Politico this week about how Pentagon officials are practicing how to respond to Republican nutcases who just babble the word “woke” at them and act like that is reasonable, adult oversight of the military.

Today, Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are going before the House Defense Appropriations panel, and they will get to try out their answers. We’ve been here before. But with the modern Republican Party we can always guarantee that this time will be stupider than the last.

Come, let us liveblog together:

www.youtube.com

10:15: Oh we guess it’s already gotten started, but the cameras only just now came on. GOP Rep. Kay Granger is speaking, nothing real stupid has been said yet (that we’ve heard).

10:19: Austin says two of his priorities at the Pentagon are taking care of their people and teamwork. We hope you know that means WOKE PRONOUN PARTIES.

10:25: Austin is just giving his opening statement, do you need us to liveblog that? You do not. Just FYI. You probably also don’t need us to liveblog Milley’s opener. Stronger allies, support NATO, stick with Ukraine until the end, “Russia’s cruel war of choice,” and so forth.

10:28: Milley says we are not going to war with Russia or China anytime soon, thank yew very much, shut up to all idiots who say we are.

10:35: Now we start with GOP Rep. Ken Calvert, who would like Austin to tell us why we are getting rid of a bunch of Navy ships if we want to fight CHIIIIIINA. Austin is like man how many boats can a guy have, we just wanna have the right number of boats, why you wanna have too many boats?

“Ship count matters,” says Calvert. Sounds like a woke slogan.

10:44: Republican Kay Granger says our enemies are getting much cuddlier with countries in South America and wants to know what we are doing to deal with that. Does not even say CARAVAN!!1! or anything weird, it’s like these Republicans do not even want to be on “Hannity” tonight.

10:54: Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, wants to make sure Congress gets credit for giving more money to the Pentagon than even Trump or Biden has asked for. Remember who your real dad is, Pentagon!

11:05: We almost feel like it is newsworthy that a hearing in a Republican-controlled Congress is fairly normal and people are being respectful, even Republicans to the Democrats from the Democrat administration. Maybe somebody promised the Republicans that if they could be semi-normal for a whole hour they would get a pizza party.

11:19: This hearing has not had the word “woke” one time yet.

11:27: Mike Garcia, a Republican from California, is talking about a bill he sponsored, now a law, to make it easier for military spouses to take their professional licenses across state lines when they have to move. Also has serious concerns with how little money lower level enlisted people are making, many of them far below 32K per year.

All of this sounds suspiciously like governing and we don’t like it.

11:31: Garcia seemed to kind of want Milley to either blame the way Afghanistan ended on Trump or Biden, and Milley was like nah, that was a 20-year war, we have only begun to grapple with how fucked up that all was and why. And Garcia was like “Well said” and again he is a Republican and we are just going to keep asking what is happening and wonder when James Comer is going to invade this committee he is not on to declare that he’s found Hunter Biden’s penis in the backyard and let’s go get it.

11:41: MARIO DIAZ-BALART, A REPUBLICAN; No more blank checks in Ukraine! What is the end-state for Ukraine?

MILLEY: Uhhhh, Ukraine is a sovereign nation and stays that way and wins and Joe Biden has been clear on that?

We guess the chair of the committee, Ken Calvert, said something idiot at the beginning before the cameras came on about “no more blank checks for Ukraine.”

You know, because of how we’ve been giving Zelenskyy blank checks and saying “GO WILD, BABY! DEFEND YOURSELF FROM RUSSIA, LIKE A WILD CHILD!”

These people are garbage.

11:54: There was just a mild-mannered discussion about the issue of extremism in the ranks, but there was nobody that yelled at the military was attacking conservatives. Now Marcy Kaptur from Ohio is talking. She is giving out a book recommendation!

12:01: Hal Rogers, Republican from Kentucky, said he wanted to talk about the elephant in the room, and we figured he meant how under Joe Biden troops do Drag Queen Story Hour instead of Basic Training, but instead he wanted Milley and Austin to assess Xi Jinping’s recent trip to Moscow to play with Putin.

12:08: Oh good, it is Chris Stewart from Utah. He’s kinda very stupid.

He’s “concerned” about where things are going in Ukraine and wants to know if Ukraine winning means they get Crimea back. He is “concerned” about that. (This is Russian propaganda, the idea that Crimea should stay Russian.)

12:13: Chris Stewart wants to know about the “culture” of the military and what’s “broken” between fathers and sons to make them not hit their recruitment goals anymore.

Milley says we’re actually at a 50-year high on retention, so … that’s a thing. Says recruiting is definitely difficult. Says COVID plays a role. Recruiters can’t go to high schools and trick kids into convince kids to join the military when they’re home because of COVID.

We feel like Chris Stewart really wanted to yank the “woke” chain, but he’s kinda dumb, as we said, and we feel like in our experience of watching him, he kinda follows the other congressmen’s leads when it comes to how nutcase he acts.

11:18: And now they are finished and nobody said woke!

WEIRD. Tip your bartenders if you like liveblogs!

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here!

And once that doesn’t exist, I’m also giving things a go at the Mastodon (@[email protected]) and at Post!

Have you heard that Wonkette DOES NOT EXIST without your donations? Please hear it now, and if you have ever enjoyed a Wonkette article, throw us some bucks, or better yet, SUBSCRIBE!

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#LIVE #Lets #Watch #Republicans #Yell #Woke #Pentagon #Officials #Call #Oversight

100 Year Old Lady At Florida School Board Better Patriot Than All Book Banners Put Together

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

Earlier this month, the school district in Martin County, Florida, purged at least 84 books from school libraries after complaints from the head of the local Moms for “Liberty” chapter under the state’s school censorship law, HB 1467, passed last year. PEN America notes that most of the books were removed following challenges by a single objector, “who filed forms indicating that she did not actually read any of the books in question.” No problem; in keeping with the law, a DeSanctified “media specialist” in the district reviewed the books, or at least the list, and the books were gone.

Among the familiar suspects like Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved,the banned books also included 20 by a single author, Jodi Picoult, who writes novels for the young adult market. Picoult notes in an op-ed that the complaints — again, all from the one Moms for Censorship lady — inaccurately described all her books as “adult romance that should not be on school shelves.” Picoult, who we suspect knows her books better than the mom who didn’t read them, points out that most of the books that were targeted “do not even have a kiss in them.,” but they do deal with social issues that make rightwingers sad, and they “encourage kids to think for themselves.” Can’t have that.

Picoult also notes that one of her books marked for culling was The Storyteller, a novel about the repercussions of the Holocaust.

It chronicles the growth of anti-Semitism and fascism in Nazi Germany. There was a strange irony that a parent wanted this particular book removed, because it felt a bit like history repeating itself.

Julie Marshall, the Mom for Purity who lodged the complaints, told the Washington Post by email, “At this point, we believe we have challenged the most obscene and age inappropriate books,” but didn’t specify what her issues with The Storyteller were. Apparently there’s sex, including depictions of Nazi guards committing sexual assault, so maybe we wouldn’t want kids thinking Nazis were rapists.

The removal of all those books meant that Tuesday night’s Martin County school board meeting was packed, with about 200 people there. Many of the 40 who spoke at the meeting called for the books to be restored, although a few also worried about all the nasty sex in books available to high school readers, giving the very laziest local news stations an excuse to present one quote from each side and call it good coverage.

Marshall was there, in a Wonder Woman T-shirt, to explain that while she filed almost all the complaints, she works with many many concerned parents both locally and nationwide, and sadly she didn’t actually say “There are dozens of us! Dozens!” But she did say

“If you guys want to continue making me out to be the sole parent in all of this and give me the power that I can have all these books removed and make me out to be Wonder Woman, so be it … Persecute me for standing on morality, I really don’t care.”

We really do hope someone lets her know that Wonder Woman is a queer icon, that Lynda Carter thinks bigots suck, and that the character was created in the first place by William Moulton Marston, who lived very happily in a throuple and deliberately included a LOT of bondage references in the comic, what with that Lasso o’ Truth and all. (He was also a lie-detector crank who always looked for a way to cash in on his dubious inventions, so there’s that.) Marston included this illustration, by Harry G. Peter, of what a real Wonder Woman believes, in his article “Why 100,000 Americans Read Comics” in American Scholar (1943-44):

Image: Harvard College Library via NPR

Happily, among the many folks calling for freedom to read, there was a real wonder woman at the school board meeting, 100-year-old Grace Linn, who knows far too well why fascism has to be nipped in the bud whenever it arises. Her husband was killed in action fighting them in WW II, and by god she’s not going to allow any book burners in her America, thank you very much.

Linn brought along a quilt she had made to honor books and ideas that the current round of fascists are trying to snuff out; in January, as America’s censorship crusade was well under way, she had shared a photo of her quilt with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi for his show’s “Banned Book Club” feature.

The quilt includes censored titles like Beloved,Maus, Fahrenheit 451, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Gender Queer, Two Boys Kissing, and more. Linn told Palm Beach TV station WPTV — one of the non-lazy ones! — “When I showed this to adult women, they’ll say, ‘Oh, no they didn’t do that to The Color Purple.‘”

Now, let’s get out of her way and listen:

A few highlights (full transcript of Linn’s remarks at AlterNet):

Good afternoon folks. I am Grace Lynn. I am a hundred years young. I’m here to protest our school district’s book-banning policy. My husband Robert Nichol was killed in action in World War II, at a very young age, he was only 26, defending our democracy, Constitution, and freedoms.

One of the freedoms that the Nazis crushed was the freedom to read the books they banned. They stopped the free press, banned and burned books. The freedom to read, which is protected by the First Amendment, is our essential right and duty of our democracy. Even so, it is continually under attack by both the public and private groups who think they hold the truth.

Linn noted she’d made the quilt last year in reply to the Right’s mania for book banning, and urged her fellow citizens not to knuckle under to today’s fascists, who seek power by trying to make us afraid of other Americans:

Banned books, and burning books, are the same. Both are done for the same reason: fear of knowledge. Fear is not freedom. Fear is not liberty. Fear is control. My husband died as a father of freedom. I am a mother of liberty. Banned books need to be proudly displayed and protected from school boards like this. Thank you very much. Thank you.

And that’s what we all need to be saying at every school and library board meeting in America, the end.

UPDATE: Well silly me, I didn’t include anything about the school board’s reactions to the two hours of public comment. According to the local paper, the board didn’t take any action on the banned books at Tuesday’s meeting, and no board members responded to the comments.

[PEN America / Daily Beast / WaPo / JTA / NPR / AlterNet / TC Palm]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. One you stop dabbing your eyes — you are so crying — please set up a monthly donation of $5 or $10 if you can afford it. And take your Lasso of Truth to a school board meeting if you can.

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#Year #Lady #Florida #School #Board #Patriot #Book #Banners #Put

Wowwww Everyone Saying Wokey McBankFace Gave Black Lives Matter $73M Is A Goddamn Liar

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

We guess this is their attempt to make the halfwit “woke bank” lie more intellectual racist. Because to appeal to the kinds of people who vote for Republicans and consume rightwing media with the voraciousness of Ron DeSantis fingering a pudding cup, your talking points need to make sense jam at the white supremacist G-spots inside their bottoms.

We first heard it on Tucker on Wednesday night, so there’s a huge shock. In the middle of his fuckbonkers monologue, which was really nothing more than interactive bingo for those aforementioned G-spots, he said that “according to amazing new analysis from the Claremont Institute, Silicon Valley Bank — brace yourself — spent more than $73 million on donations to BLM and related organizations.”

LOL “Claremont Institute.” There’s your first clue this is some absolute full-of-shit nonsense. OK actually the first clue was Tucker’s mouth was moving and he was making those high-pitched yipyap sounds that always come out when he talks.

SEVENTY-THREE MILLION DONATIONS TO BLM! (And related organizations asterisk shhhhhhh.)

Friends, does it make sense that Silicon Valley Bank donated $73 MILLION TO BLACK LIVES MATTER (and related organizations asterisk shhhhh)?

That would be a very big sponsorship, if so!

Anyway, this wasn’t just something that was written on whatever Tucker had stuck up his butt that night. The entire rightwing media has latched on. Donald Trump Jr. pulled the $73 million number out of his pants and played with it on Twitter. On Fox News, Jesse Watters said Tuesday night that Wokey McBankFace gave $74 million to BLM. He’s also said $75 million. (The number is jumping around a bit, which is fine, because it’s all lies.) Ainsley Earhardt repeated it on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning. Larry Kudlow pegged it at $75 million. (Guess that was one of the WOKE ROMPINGS he’s been accusing the bank of this week.)

Everybody on Fox News said it.

Look, a video.

www.youtube.com

Friends, would you like to know how much money Wokey McBankFace donated to Black Lives Matter?

Zero dollars. The answer is zero dollars.

Several sites have done extensive debunkings of how Claremont Institute put together its “amazing new analysis” that ended up manufacturing this fake lying amount of donations for lying rightwing fascist pundits to piss into their followers’ receptive gullets. Josh Marshall has a good one at Talking Points Memo. The link we posted above — and will post again right now — from Judd Legum and his pals at Popular Information is extensive and detailed.

The key to the damned fucking lie is that it’s including “pledges to groups that are associated with Black Lives Matter.” Wait, that’s not the key to the lie. Wokey McBankFace gave all those related orgs zero dollars.

The key to the damned fucking lie is that it includes “organizations and initiatives that advance one or more aspects of BLM’s agenda.” And what are some aspects of BLM’s agenda? Well, Claremont says it’s to — hold on to your funny bones for this one — “undermine capitalism, the nation state, and Western civilization.” These people are such fucking shut-in bigots, Jesus Christ.

But that’s not even how Claremont calculates it, as Legum explains. We’re just going to copy/paste you four paragraphs, because it’s not like we did the research:

In 2021, SVB made a pledge to spend $50 million over five years on an internal initiative called Access to Innovation. The program sought to connect women, Black people, and Latinos with startup funding, networking, and leadership development in the venture capitalist ecosystem. Integrating marginalized groups into the venture capitalist community seems like an odd way to “undermine capitalism,” the purpose of BLM, according to the Claremont Institute. And since the program was to last five years, most of the money has probably not been spent. Nevertheless, the $50 million represents more than two-thirds of SVB’s alleged support for BLM.

The other major contribution by SVB that the Claremont Institute says was BLM-related was a $20 million donation “to support additional COVID-19 relief” and establish a “full-ride, needs-based University Scholarship program to students at Arizona State University, Florida A&M University, Tulane University, and Xavier University.” (The $20 million represented the fees SVB collected for processing loans under the Paycheck Protection Program.) It is unclear what COVID-19 relief and college scholarships have to do with BLM.

The Claremont Institute database also says that SVB spent another $1.2 million on the Access to Innovation program and $1.6 million on “causes supporting gender parity in innovation” in 2020. According to the sources cited by the Claremont Institute, these expenditures actually occurred in 2019. They also have no apparent connection to the BLM movement.

Rounding out the Claremont Institute database is a 2020 “2:1 matching campaign for employees who donate their money or time to social justice organizations, which raised nearly $400,000.” The identity of these groups is not disclosed, but the Claremont Institute assumes they must be related to BLM. In addition, the database includes $250,000 of donations from the SVB Foundation in “corporate donations to the NAACP, ACLU, National Urban League and other organizations.” (These donations may overlap with the matching program.) The Claremont Institute considers the NAACP and the ACLU to be “BLM partners.” In reality they are two of the oldest and most respected civil rights and civil liberties organizations in the United States.

And that, friends, is how the rightwing white supremacist sausage party lie is made. If you’d rather read it in more bite-sized form, Legum made a Twitter thread.

Why do they get away with this? Because Claremont and every rightwing piece of shit repeating the lie know with 100 percent confidence that the idiots who get their news from them are too stupid and gullible to check the information for themselves, and too racist to notice the fact that THE LIE DOESN’T EVEN FUCKING MAKE SENSE. These morons have been buying “WOKE BANKS!11111!” this whole week, they’re the stupidest people in the entire world.

Remember how the Dominion texts are showing us how Fox News knowingly and intentionally lies to its viewers for fun and profit?

Yeah.

[Popular Information]

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here!

And once that doesn’t exist, I’m also giving things a go at the Mastodon (@[email protected]) and at Post!

Please donate to Black Lives Matter by donating to Wonkette with the widget below.

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#Wowwww #Wokey #McBankFace #Gave #Black #Lives #Matter #73M #Goddamn #Liar

LIVE: Jim Jordan’s House Un-American Fap-Tivities Committee Tries Again

Post By Politics , , , , , , , ,

All the headlines right now about Jim Jordan’s House Un-American Dumpster Clown Committee are that Jim Jordan is a failure and he should feel bad. He’s literally doing interviews so he can swear up and down that he’s not a failure. After the first loser hearing, Fox News’s Jesse Watters was having meltdowns because he really thought he was going to get bombshells, and there were no bombshells.

And wait, didn’t Jim Jordan just get caught … LOL OMG … paying his whistleblowers? Aren’t they all paste-snorting bananapants weirdos who still haven’t managed to blow any whistles?

This is what happens when you get a coach to teach a real class.

But maybe he’ll turn it around with today’s hearing, because today it is Matt Taibbi and TWITTTRURRR FILES!

Wait what?

It’s Matt Taibbi and the TWURRRRRIRTUR FILRES!

What what?

Matt Taibbi! He’s going to say the TWTTITIITIIIIITIITRUR FLIRES!

But wait, weren’t those an entire waste of time, a futile exercise that revealed absolutely nothing of any value, unless you think it is “of value” to watch a formerly respected journalist give Elon Musk a big handy in public?

Yes.

TWIRRTTRRRTUR FFRRRRRILES!

If Jim Jordan is going to fail, we’re gonna be the ones pointing and laughing at him in real time. Let’s liveblog!

www.youtube.com

10:07: By the way, Jim Jordan is out there bragging that this IS NOT JUST A RIGHT-WING MASTURBATION CHAMBER, because his first hearing had known liberal Tulsi Gabbard. Just so you know how much Jim Jordan understands who is a liberal and who is a pro-Russian clown stooge.

Also we should note that hardly any news organizations are carrying this live, not even on YouTube.

BUT WONIKETTE IS HERE.

10:10: Jim Jordan is mad because the FBI warned Twitter that there might be a hack-and-leak operation about Hunter Biden before the 2020 election but then there wasn’t one. How did the FBI know this? Was it because they had Hunter Biden’s …

cat laptop GIFGiphy

WELL WAS IT?

Jim Jordan is also very mad that the FBI briefed people like GOP Senator Ron Johnson and told them they were being used for a Russian active measures campaign to fuck with the 2020 election. There is no evidence Russia was not doing that, despite how Jim Jordan will lie and say there is.

He is just babbling, like he always is.

Did we mention no news organizations are even covering this, even on YouTube? OK fine Fox News has it live, but we said news organizations.

10:15: Democratic ranking member Stacey Plaskett is noting that some new info has released info in the last 20 minutes or so that hasn’t been given to the Democrats.

Then begins her opening statement. She’s talking about how the first hearing was such a flaming turd that revealed nothing, and that hearing had actual Twitter executives. “The Republicans have brought in two of Elon Musk’s public scribes” today, she says, because Republicans think these morons are going to tell a story that will help them.

LOL Plaskett is just being openly mean to Republicans.

10:19: PLASKETT: “There’s something going on between congressional Republicans and Elon Musk.”

Now she’s questioning all the foreign sources that blew money up Elon’s butthole to allow him to buy Twitter and asking if those foreign sources have access to Twitter users’ private information.

10:22: Plaskett is playing video of former Twitter exec Yoel Roth explaining all the horrible harassment and threats and danger Elon’s and Matt Taibbi hate campaign have caused to him and others. Some Republican pig is mad and accusing Plaskett of impugning the integrity of the witnesses.

Oh damn, Plaskett and Jim Jordan are just openly yelling at each other.

Also Jim Jordan just protested that Matt Taibbi is a Democrat, therefore this isn’t a right-wing smear job lololol.

Yep, Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Taibbi! Those people that real Democrats respect!

Here is Plaskett.

The other babbling Elon idiot Michael Shellenberger is babbling now, about “censorship.” Then Taibbi will babble.

10:30: Sooooooo hilarious.

10:32: We think this Shellenberger nerd is saying the government is censoring people for being wrong on the internet. Mat

10:33: Matt Taibbi is mad Stephanie Plaskett called him a “so-called journalist.”

Hey you guys remember when he was a respected journalist? Honestly we cannot remember it. We know it happened and that during some decade of our life we read his articles and he was smart, but it’s fading away, like memories do.

Anyway, he just talked about Bari Weiss joining his TWITTTTTUR FILES journalism project, that is what Matt Taibbi is talking about in 2023.

10:36: Matt Taibbi seems to be mad that government organizations were allowed to submit moderation requests to tech companies. He says this is “digital McCarthyism” and that this is bad because he grew up a “traditional ACLU liberal.”

So much babbling.

10:40: Mike Johnson is a very stupid Republican congressman from Louisiana and he says that “documents” show that Twitter was basically a “subsidiary” of the FBI and that they worked together for their left-wing Twitter/FBI agenda.

LOL.

10:42: JOHNSON: Matt Taibbi is the best journalist ever. Is Twitter Files your favorite of all your journalism?

TAIBBI: It is more important than the financial crisis!

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

10:45: The Shellenberger nerd says fighting against “domestic misinformation” is INHERENTLY tantamount to totalitarian censorship of opinions. This is an idiot take.

10:47: Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch notes that literally everyone — the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was led by Republicans at the time, the Mueller Report, all intelligence agencies — agrees that Russia attacked the 2016 election. Does Matt Taibbi agree? No he does not, but he wants to babble a bunch of conspiracy theories to qualify his answer. Lynch is like fuck you.

Matt Taibbi is mad because he says the stuff the Russians hacked and released was TRUE! You can’t censor the Russians if they want to say true things!

LOL what a fucking clown.

Also Lynch notes that the very Russian oligarch who ran the social media influence campaign in 2016 also runs the Wagner group, the mercenaries massacring people in Ukraine right now.

10:52: Here’s Taibbi’s apologetics for Russia:

10:56: Darrell Issa questioned for five minutes but it was boring.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz just asked if journalists should avoid being spoonfed cherrypicked bullshit with predetermined conclusions. Matt Taibbi is not sure.

She’s calling him Elon’s “handpicked journalist” and saying that’s an oxymoron and quoting things he said on Joe Rogan about literally eveyrthing he’s doing now goes against everything he used to say. She’s explaining how he’s just creating right-wing conspiracy bullshit and profiting off it.

“Don’t interrupt me,” she said.

“Attention is a powerful drug,” she said.

“Hypocrisy is the hangover of an addiction to attention,” she said.

Wasserman Schultz is just pants-ing Taibbi over and over and over again here.

11:01: Dan Bishop, a very stupid congressman from North Carolina, is giving Matt Taibbi a chance to explain why Debbie Wasserman Schultz is wrong and mean and he is a real journalist. He has to re-explain every five minutes that he is a real journalist, like real journalists always have to do.

11:08: What we’re noticing is that when Republicans and Taibbi start tickling each other’s undersides, they just babble words that would make NO SENSE to anybody watching if they just came across it.

Democrat Gerry Connolly is curious if Matt Taibbi has noticed that the Trump White House also bothered Twtter a whole lot with moderation requests, like fucking constantly. The Shellenberger nerd has not seen that!

You know, like when Chrissy Teigen called Trump a “pussy ass bitch” and Trump was so apoplectic for days that they begged Twitter to take it down. Matt Taibbi has seen that. He says he saw one from Adam Schiff and one from Angus King.

Gerry Connolly says “Nice try.”

Here’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz beating the shit out of Taibbi over and over again from earlier:

11:13: Matt Taibbi is explaining to Gerry Connolly the purpose of Jim Jordan’s clown committee, and how it is not even to expose bias against conservatives at all!

Jim Jordan is now taking five extra minutes for himself because he wants to.

11:17: Jim Jordan’s latest incoherent conspiracy theory is about the FTC. It is his latest big scoop that will go nowhere.

Also Jim Jordan says Matt Taibbi is brave to show up today because the federal government’s got its eye on him. LOL.

11:19: Now Plaskett takes some time for herself. The Shellenberger nerd says Elon gave them so many emails that it’s not even possible they didn’t give them all the emails they had. Because that makes logical sense. “If you get bunches of emails from Twitter, that’s too many emails for them to take some out!”

Plaskett is asking these idiots about their conversations with Elon Musk and Jim Jordan just interrupted to accuse Plaskett of trying to get them to expose their sources.

12:24: That’s for damn sure. Both the videos right here.

Plaskett also is not hiding her disdain for Matt Taibbi.

Now we are going to go to the clownfuck Harriet Hageman who replaced Liz Cheney. But first Plaskett and Jim Jordan are going to have a fight because Jordan AGAIN is accusing Plaskett of demanding Taibbi’s sources.

11:26: This is the clownfuck who replaced Liz Cheney.

LIZ CHENEY: I will protect democracy from fascist presidents who try to overthrow the government and incite terrorist attacks against America, even when they are part of my own party

HARRIET HAGEMAN: Twittttttturrrrrrrr filllllles!!!!1!!111111!!!!

11:30: Taibbi thinks the government can’t even get involved in going after disinformation. This is a childish belief that fails to even try to grasp the realities of the world we live in.

Hageman just referred to Jim Baker as “allegedly a former FBI employee.” You know, ALLEGEDLY.

11:33: Rep. John Garamendi is reading studies that show that ACTUALLY Twitter’s algorithms over-promote conservatives and over-weight conservatives. His thesis is that Taibbi is a fucking clown, but he’s saying it quietly and slowly, even when he tells Taibbi to shut the fuck up.

11:35: GARAMENDI: Is banning QAnon accounts BAD?

Also he is taking the opportunity to note that Fox News is currently being exposed for actively and willingly lie to its viewers about the 2020 election, and about Trump inciting the terrorist attack of January 6. Because sure why not? It’s not like anything important is happening in this hearing.

11:38: Here comes weird thin-lipped Utah Republican Chris Stewart. He is accusing the FBI of laundering its censorship banning through Twitter. Which is … OK, cool. These people are just hallucinating. Literally delusional.

The Shellenberger nerd accuses the White House of demanding Twitter take down factual information. Is he talking about when Chrissy Teigen called Trump a pussy ass bitch?

Because the thing with Hunter Biden’s penis pictures came from the Biden campaign. And it was nonconsensual nudes.

11:42: While Matt Taibbi babbles words that don’t matter to anybody who matters, let’s talk about why none of these idiots can ever find a suit jacket that fits them.

Finally, it is time for a Democrats to beat the shit out of them again. It is Sylvia Garcia from Texas.

She asks when Elon Musk snuck up Taibbi’s butt and started begging him to be his journalistic scribe. Taibbi says this is REVEAL SOURCES! So Elon is your source? MATT TAIBBI DIDN’T SAY THAT!

11:46: Now Sylvia Garcia is like “what even is Substack?”

The Shellenberger nerd is not going to “reveal his sources” by saying when he first talked to Elon Musk. He is a journalist who knows about journalism like Matt Taibbi knows about it.

GARCIA: Also who is Bari Weiss?

SHELLENBERGER/TAIBBI: She is a journalist!

GARCIA: Are you boys in a threesome with Bari Weiss?

The word “journalist” is doing such hard work today.

11:52: Now it is time for the Shellenberger nerd to explain why it’s wrong to tell people if Russian disinformation is Russian disinformation, because he is a journalist. This is about Hunter Biden’s penis obviously.

11:56: Rep. Colin Allred asks Taibbi to read Kanye’s anti-Semite tweets. He won’t do it because his eyes are bad, he says. Was it right to take those “death-con 3 tweets” about Jews from Kanye down?

Matt Taibbi just does not know.

What about tweets with the N-word?

Matt Taibbi says hate speech is protected in America!

And as we all know, the First Amendment definitely applies to private companies.

Allred just said Taibbi is making up conspiracy theories to discredit the facts of Russian attacks on our elections. Taibbi mutters in his own defense.

TAIBBI: Can i ask a question?

ALLRED: No you don’t get to ask questions.

ALSO ALLRED: Take off your tinfoil hat.

Tells the story of Russian attacks on HIS OWN ELECTION.

Little men like Matt Taibbi shouldn’t fuck with people like Colin Allred.

Anyway, now it is time for weird Kentucky Republican prepper weenus Thomas Massie, to say some COVID vaccine conspiracy theories.

12:06: Massie isjust very upset that Twitter said his anti-vaxx tweets were lies. Matt Taibbi agrees that some truths about vaccine side effects have been censored. The Shellenberger nerd doesn’t like labels being put on tweets because they “discredit” the person who put out the lie tweet. “The First Amendment protects our right to lie!” He said that.

12:09: Time for hot impeachment lawyer Dan Goldman to beat the shit out of everybody.

12:10: GOLDMAN: Did you know Rudy Giuliani was the only source of the laptop? Did you know he was hanging out with Russian agents constantly? Did you knokw they were the same Russian agents who were up Ron Johnson’s ass? Did you know the FBI had nothing to do with pausing the dissemination of the New York Post’s laptop story? Did you know even Fox News thought the laptop story was sketch?

Did you know the laptop the FBI had was different from the hard drive Giuliani gave the New York Post? Did you know the analysis of the hard drive found it HAD been altered? Do you get that it had been tampered with?

Did you know the New York Post’s FIRST SENTENCE OF ITS LAPTOP STORY ABOUT HUNTER BIDEN’S PENIS was wrong?

12:15: Haha Matt Gaetz thinks he is qualified to follow that.

Here’s some Dan Goldman video:

He is too good at this.

Meanwhile, Matt Taibbi is worried that the Twitter Files are a canary in the coal mine for worse things. What? Who even knows.

Goldman is back!

GOLDMAN: My turn again. I understand why y’all might not like that it’s my turn again.

GOLDMAN: Do you agree with Mueller’s indictments?

TAIBBI: durr durr durr durr durr.

GOLDMAN: Do you think it’s legitimate for the FBI to try to stop foreign intervention in our elections?

TAIBBI: Can I answer the question?

GOLDMAN: IT’S A YES OR NO QUESTION!

TAIBBI: No it’s not, I have opinions! I have Twitter Files!

GOLDMAN: Hey other nerd, did the FBI ever order Twitter to take things down?

OTHER NERD: Yes! When they flagged things! That’s an order!

GOLDMAN: No it’s not. You fucking idiot.

Goldman is just killing it.

Hey, who wants to hear from craven hack Elise Stefanik? Long time ago people thought she might have a soul.

12:33: Stefanik asks the idiots how they’ve been targeted ever since TWITTTRUR FILES.

They got nothin’. Other nerd didn’t go viral on Facebook or something. We imagine this is whataboutism to distract from how Elon’s campaign against former Twitter employees has put them in danger.

Now it is time for true asshole Florida Rep. Kat Cammack. We are sure she will say something important, because she’s a Republican on this committee.

12:37: Now we are back to babbling about things that would make no sense to literally anyone who just happened to come across it.

Cammack just said “experimental vaccine,” drink!

And here’s some more Dan Goldman to finish you up!

And that’s it. Jim Jordan’s latest failed hearing has come to a close. And nothing of value was gained.

But Democrats kicked a lot of hilarious ass. We didn’t think Matt Taibbi could be any less credible than he was three hours ago, but he did it.

If you love these liveblogs, TIP YOUR BARTENDERS!

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here!

And once that doesn’t exist, I’m also giving things a go at the Mastodon (@[email protected]) and at Post!

Have you heard that Wonkette DOES NOT EXIST without your donations? Please hear it now, and if you have ever enjoyed a Wonkette article, throw us some bucks, or better yet, SUBSCRIBE!

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#LIVE #Jim #Jordans #House #UnAmerican #FapTivities #Committee

How ‘apolitical’ Western Youtubers help push Syrian propaganda

Post By World , , ,

Their videos get huge amounts of clicks and profits on YouTube. And their vlogs show a Syria that has turned the page on years of civil war. But these so-called “apolitical” travel influencers are shown around the country by regime-sponsored guides that shape the narrative. One guide who appears in a number of travel vlogs even has family ties with the Syrian deputy minister of tourism.

Come spend your next summer holiday in Syria! That’s the message from at least a dozen Western travel influencers who share videos showing the Middle Eastern country that has been devastated by years of civil war and still split into government and rebel-controlled zones.

They claim to show you “the Syria the media won’t show you”, like in this video by British vlogger Benjamin Rich, known to his 3.8 million subscribers by the name of his YouTube channel, Bald and Bankrupt.

In April 2022, Rich and his government-authorised translator/guide travelled to several Syrian cities under Damascus’ control. The video shows him attending a football match in the capital, visiting the historic citadel of Aleppo and checking out a bombed hotel in Maaloula.

Even though Rich doesn’t like all the ruins around, he doesn’t blame the Syrian government, which has used barrel bombs as a weapon of repression for a decade, nor their allies.  

Rich and his guide avoided going to Idlib, which is the last stronghold of the 2011 revolt against the regime. While passing near the city, the guide referred to it as an area held by “Islamist extremists”, but failed to mention the 4.5 million Syrian civilians living in the northwest of the country, an area that the government has besieged.

The video of this trip has been viewed over 3.8 million times. In the description, Rich says he used an “independent tour agency” called Marrota Travel and Tourism, and gives the email address of a certain “Ayoub” working there.

In an interview from August 2022, Rich says he received an invitation to travel to Syria on Instagram, sent by someone he did not know, but who was called Ayoub. “Would you like a tour of Syria? I think you would enjoy it,” the message said.

In April 2022, Benjamin Rich, a British YouTuber and influencer, visited Syrian government-controlled areas. In this image, he stands in front of a shawarma restaurant with a Syrian tour guide on his left and another British YouTuber, Simon Wilson. © Observers

More recently, on February 13, 2023, two British vloggers who run the travel YouTube channel Dabble and Travel (227,000 subscribers) joined the long list of content creators who were drawn to visit regime-controlled Syria. In an Instagram story taken in Damascus, they can be seen smiling with two Syrian guides in front of a sunset and a Baathist Syrian flag. One of the guides can also be seen in Benjamin Rich’s video.

A screenshot of a story posted on Instagram on February 13, 2023 by the British Youtubers known as Dabble and Travel. The screenshot shows them visiting areas controlled by the Syrian government, accompanied by two Syrian tour guides.
A screenshot of a story posted on Instagram on February 13, 2023 by the British Youtubers known as Dabble and Travel. The screenshot shows them visiting areas controlled by the Syrian government, accompanied by two Syrian tour guides. Observers

Clickable content that claims to be ‘apolitical’

These videos claim to showcase a tourist destination poised to reclaim the ten million annual visitors it welcomed prior to 2011. This is not a coincidence: this narrative mirrors the discourse of the regime, which aims to once again reap the economic benefits of tourism.

Bassam Al Ahmad, director of the human rights NGO Syrians For Truth and Justice, explains:

Some Western YouTubers visit Syria because they are attracted to adventure tourism. To them, it is a challenge to create controversial content and increase interaction. Others come with the objective of relaying official propaganda. They are invited by the regime, often through intermediaries close to the regime, and only visit authorised places and venues. The chic bars and restaurants shown in the videos are only frequented by a small, wealthy part of the population, while 90% of the population lives below the poverty line.

Benjamin Rich’s guide is briefly featured in a video by Danish YouTuber Gustav Rosted. Rosted, who has 291,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, has published at least 18 videos, including one titled “I was tortured in Syria”.

In the video’s thumbnail, Rosted appears shirtless with a man who seems to be strangling him. However, the scene actually shows Rosted receiving a massage in a traditional hammam in Damascus. He boasts about the service, which includes an entrance fee, massage, and towels for only €4.

The provocative title did not sit well with many Syrians, since at least 14,475 people have been tortured to death in government jails since 2011, according to the human rights NGO Syrian Network for Human Rights. The video generated hundreds of disgusted comments from Syrians on Facebook.

Gustav Rosted, a Danish travel influencer, made a video called
Gustav Rosted, a Danish travel influencer, made a video called “I was tortured in Syria” that got 28,000 likes and 1 million views on Facebook. The video used ambiguity in the image and title to get people’s attention. © Observers

It’s one of at least 18 videos Rosted posted on YouTube and Facebook after a December 2022 trip to Syria. Others bear titles like “Night out in Damascus, Syria”, “Crazy POOL Party in Syria”, and “Is Syria Safe in 2023? (war zone!)”.

One Syrian commenter on Facebook wrote: “The life in Syria that you are trying to portray represents 1% of the population as the other 99% of the population live in poverty at less than 15 euros a month.”

Rosted told the FRANCE 24 Observers team that he understood Syrians’ reactions online:

There’s always a lot of criticism when you go to these countries. And I totally understand that there’s this criticism because some people have to leave the country, especially in Syria.

But I’m just a guy who likes to travel to talk with people on the ground. I’m not into politics. I like to talk with the locals. I’ve done interviews in so many countries. So my travels are just about connecting with people and not anything political.

A guide close to the deputy minister of tourism

On July 30, 2022, Giath Al Farrah, the Syrian deputy minister of tourism, said in an interview with a local radio station that his ministry had decided to make it easier for people with a large social media following, such as YouTubers, to get visas to visit Syria. He believed that these influencers could promote Syria by sharing their experiences on social media.

The number of tourists who visited Syria in the first half of 2022 was over 750,000, well over the 570,000 visitors recorded in all of 2021.

Even though vloggers have an easier time getting visas than journalists, they are not allowed to travel independently in the country. Instead, they must hire tour guides for “private tours”. Some of these guides are allegedly connected to the Syrian government.

A Syrian journalist tweeted on February 4, 2023, that the tour guide who accompanied Danish travel influencer Gustav Rosted was the same guide who had previously accompanied Simon Wilson, another influencer who had entered Syria on a government-issued visa.


It’s the same guide we saw in Benjamin Rich and Dabble and Travel’s videos.

The FRANCE 24 Observers team was able to use open-source tools to identify the guide as Rami Nawaya and find his social media accounts. Nawaya claims to work as a translator and tour guide for several Syrian travel agencies, including Marrota Tourism and Travel, as stated on his Facebook page and other platforms.

On Facebook, Nawaya also claims to be a family member of Giath Al Farrah, the aforementioned Syrian deputy minister of tourism.

Screenshot of Rami Nawaya's Facebook page where he says he is the brother-in-law of the Syrian Deputy Minister of Tourism Giath Al Farrah.
Screenshot of Rami Nawaya’s Facebook page where he says he is the brother-in-law of the Syrian Deputy Minister of Tourism Giath Al Farrah. © Observers

Several guides, same content

Gustav Rosted said he did not reach out to Nawaya, instead claiming that he met him spontaneously in Aleppo, adding that Nawaya was not his guide. Rosted was accompanied by another guide named Khaldoun Alamy, who runs the Golden Target Tours agency. Alamy has also accompanied other vloggers in Syria, such as Eva zu Beck from Poland and Xavier Taychell Blancharde from the UK, since June 2019.

Eva zu Beck told the FRANCE 24 Observers team: “I was not invited by anyone from Syria and paid for the trip out of my own pocket […] What I published was 100% my own views with no direction or censorship from anyone else in any way. I found my guide through a friend’s recommendation.”

British youtuber Xavier Taychell Blancharde (left), with Khaldoun Alamy, a Syrian tour guide (right). In January 2023, he was the first to travel to the part of Idlib under Syrian army control, which he says is
British youtuber Xavier Taychell Blancharde (left), with Khaldoun Alamy, a Syrian tour guide (right). In January 2023, he was the first to travel to the part of Idlib under Syrian army control, which he says is “infamous in recent years for terror groups, war, and in general bad things”. Observers

FRANCE 24 has confirmed that Marrota Travel and Tourism has accompanied at least five vloggers whose content has caused controversy for aligning with regime narratives. One of the vloggers, Spaniard Joan Torres, organizes private tours of Syria through his agency Against The Compass (at a cost of €1,650 for an eight-day stay). Torres appeared in a photo posted on Rami Nawaya’s Facebook account holding cups bearing the image of Bashar Al-Assad. After his trip to the country, Torres was criticised for referring to the Syrian forces’ “liberation” of Aleppo.

In a photo posted on Facebook in 2022, Rami Nawaya, a guide and translator, is seen smiling while holding mugs with the image of Bashar Al-Assad. He is accompanied by Joan Torres, a Spanish vlogger who organises expeditions to Syria.
In a photo posted on Facebook in 2022, Rami Nawaya, a guide and translator, is seen smiling while holding mugs with the image of Bashar Al-Assad. He is accompanied by Joan Torres, a Spanish vlogger who organises expeditions to Syria. Observers

Golden Team Tourism is another agency that offers private tours to influencers. It is run by Fadi Assi and Gaidaa Ayoub, who are both close to Rami Nawaya, according to photos posted on his Facebook account. In 2019 and 2022, two American vloggers, Drew Binsky (with 3.6 million subscribers) and Thomas Brag (with 8 million subscribers), were accompanied by this agency.

Despite our multiple requests, Rami Nawaya of Marrota Travel and Tourism declined to respond. The Deputy Minister of Tourism Giath Al Farrah and the Syrian ministry of tourism did not respond to our messages either. We reached out to all the vloggers, guides, and agencies mentioned in this article, and only Gustav Rosted and Eva zu Beck agreed to talk to us.

In 2010, Syria attracted 10 million tourists a year, many of whom were Westerners. However, this changed in 2011 with the start of the war, which killed at least 350,000 people and displaced half the population, with millions fleeing abroad.

Bassam Al Ahmad warned:

In Syria, the absence of military operations does not mean that there is no longer arbitrary detention. Many Syrian refugees are deprived of their country and cannot return. These YouTubers are not trying to tell the reality, but to hide it, and that is why we have to be very careful when dealing with this kind of content.



Source link

#apolitical #Western #Youtubers #push #Syrian #propaganda

YOU LIE! Mike Lee DOES NOT Want To Murder Social Security! He Just Wants To Murder It *For Your Children*!

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

When President Joe Biden very accurately said in his State of the Union speech Tuesday that some Republicans have called for eliminating Social Security and Medicare, all the Rs in the House chamber were shocked and horrified, and few were more hilariously performative in their how dare you, sir! theatrics than Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). It made for a really fun side-by-side video the next morning, contrasting Lee looking outraged during the speech with his actual comments in 2010 where he proudly announced to mostly elderly voters in Cache Valley, Utah, that he wanted to phase out Social Security and Medicare because America simply can’t afford all the socialism. Roll 212, as they say (no one remembers that Daily Show bit from a decade ago, Dok):

Well Mike Lee was not at all pleased that people keep pointing out that he did indeed tell Utah voters during his first run for Senate in 2010,

“I’m here right now to tell you one thing you’ve probably never heard from a politician. It’ll be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up from the roots and get rid of it. People who advise me politically always tell me that’s dangerous and I tell them, ‘In that case it’s not worth my running.’ That’s why I’m doing this, to get rid of that. Medicare and Medicaid are of the same sort, they need to be pulled up.”

Sure sounds like a pledge to phase out Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, to pull them up by the roots and get rid of both programs. Indeed, that goal was why Lee wanted to be in the Senate. It wouldn’t be worth running if he couldn’t get rid of all three. As Newsweek pointed out Wednesday, Lee had framed his vow to extirpate the programs because the Constitution itself (and he waved a copy around) doesn’t say anywhere that government has “the power to redistribute my wealth, yet that’s what entitlement programs are — they’re a wealth redistribution.”

Biden made a point of quoting Lee Wednesday when he spoke to union workers in Wisconsin. Clearly enjoying himself, Biden said, “There was a senator named Mike Lee who was yelling, you know, liar, liar, house on fire kind of stuff last night.” He then went on to quote Lee’s 2010 comments, adding, “Sounds pretty clear to me. How about you? But they sure didn’t like me calling them on it.”

The White House also tweeted out the Newsweek article, noting again the line about Lee’s 2010 pledge to “phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots, and get rid of it.”

But wait! Lee tweeted an angry statement later Wednesday to point out that his critics were leaving out a vital part of his statement! He was the victim of selective editing, is all, he said, because his real point in 2010 was that even though he wanted to drive a stake through Social Security and Medicare, he also said America must “honor the commitments made to those who have paid into the system for decades” — in other words, as with George W. Bush’s failed plan to privatize Social Security, those already in the program wouldn’t be thrown off. He’d simply eliminate the programs for the young folks coming up. See? Big difference!

“In repeatedly quoting my 2010 remarks today, President Biden conveniently left out that critical detail — that even when I voiced that position, I insisted that we honor the reliance interests of those who have paid into the system.”

If you want to nitpick — and it would be irresponsible not to — nothing of the sort could be done for current Medicaid beneficiaries, because how exactly would you grandfather in those useless eaters and their useless children in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for an income-based program, exactly.

Lee also griped that in the dozen years he’s been in the Senate, he hasn’t actually tried to abolish Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, so there — he broke that campaign promise and he broke it good!

Lee followed up with a tweet replying to the White House, with video evidence that he had definitely told the senior voters in 2010 that he’d only wipe out Social Security and Medicare for their children and grandchildren, not them. And if “I will impoverish your children and grandchildren when they reach retirement age, but not you” isn’t a GOP motto, it sure could be.

Decide for yourself just how exculpatory the full context is, ‘kay?

“We have to hold harmless those who are current beneficiaries. Those who have retired and are currently receiving those benefits, their benefits have to be left untouched, unchanged, un … fazed.”

We Think maybe Lee meant un-phased out there, but maybe the benefits would just hear the news without reacting. He went on to add that “The next layer beneath them, those who will retire within the next few years, probably also have to be held harmless,” so that’s very reassuring.

Lee didn’t specify what age cohort would be spared the axe, but it’s very clear, in the context that Lee provides, that even though he wouldn’t cut Nana’s Medicare, Nana’s granddaughter is screwed, even if she’s been paying into the system for a decade or two.

Lee didn’t go into any details about how, once all the youngs are freed from the burden of paycheck withholding, Social Security and Medicare would be sustained for existing beneficiaries until they all died and the programs wound down.

But no matter: ALL you meanies need to be nice to Mike Lee, who never said he’d completely eliminate Social Security and Medicare. All he wanted was to screw everyone under, say, 50 or 55, and thank goodness he broke that particular campaign promise, so he is the hero, OK?

Thank you for the clarification, sir!

Of course, this is all touche and en garde about one little campaign appearance a decade ago, when actually “get rid of the social safety net” is one of the very few policy positions Republicans bother holding anymore since they’ve all become idea-free nihilists, and it’s one that goes back decades and they’re still doing it as of this term.

[Newsweek / Deseret News / YouTube]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please give $5 or $10 monthly, so we can keep bringing you the meanest and most accurate fact checks in North America and beyond.

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#LIE #Mike #Lee #Murder #Social #Security #Murder #Children

PSA: New GOP House Oversight Chair James Comer Is A F*cking Clown

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

Good morning! Welcome back to the Joe Biden classified documents story, which is worse than Donald Trump’s classified documents because Hunter Biden’s laptop and Hunter Biden’s penis and because Republicans are deeply unserious and deeply unwell people.

In every way, the Biden classified documents story — while still infuriating for a number of reasons — is a how-to class on “What To Do If You Accidentally Took Some Classified Docs Home And Found Them In Your Backpack.” Meanwhile, Donald Trump stole a far greater number of classified documents, and has spent the entire time since investigators started asking lying about it and ducking subpoenas. Nobody in the general public has any idea what kind of nefarious purposes Trump had for those documents, but it is Trump, so no matter how horrifying the truth ends up being, we will not be shocked.

Gallant Found Few More Classified Docs In Garage And Gave Them Back. Goofus Should Still Go To Prison.

Biden ‘Surprised’ Classified Docs Found At His Think Tank, But He WOULD Say That, Now Wouldn’t He?

This weekend, the Biden administration continued being obscenely transparent about this and revealed that on Thursday, Biden White House lawyer Richard Sauber found a few MORE classified docs from Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, house. (This is batch three.) So of course they told us immediately, because they are good and they are well-behaved and when they find classified documents they always tell the teacher immediately!

Sauber found the document because Biden’s personal lawyers called him when they found that other classified doc next to the garage in Wilmington. So he went out there to help turn it over to the Justice Department. One thing led to another and they checked this other box, blah blah blah.

“Because I have a security clearance, I went to Wilmington Thursday evening to facilitate providing the document the President’s personal counsel found on Wednesday to the Justice Department,” Sauber said. “While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages. The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them.”

He added, “The President’s lawyers have acted immediately and voluntarily to provide the Penn Biden documents to the Archives and the Wilmington documents to DOJ.”

Again, this is what you should do in the unlikely event you ever find a document with classified markings in one of your piles of junk mail. Returning classified documents is easy and fun!

You don’t go on the radio and call the special counsel appointed to investigate a “terrorist” and paint a target on their family; you don’t lie and say you declassified those documents in your brain; you don’t baselessly insinuate that maybe the FBI/Deep State planted those documents, and you don’t lie to the National Archives and Justice Department to conceal the fact that you are still hiding a shitload more classified documents you stole.

None of this changes the fact that Kentucky Fried Pigshit Person Rep. James Comer, new chair of the House Oversight Committee, told Jake Tapper this weekend that he will be investigating Biden’s classified documents, but not Trump’s. Why? Refer to what we said about how Republicans are deeply unserious and deeply unwell, and add how they are where integrity goes to die.

Also remember that the entire thing James Comer is famous for is heavily breathing in frustration in November because reporters wouldn’t focus their questions on Hunter Biden. If we could keep this about Hunter Biden, OK? We think it’s pretty important to keep this about Hunter Biden! Hunter Biden!

Tapper played a clip of Comer saying in November that the Trump documents case would “not be a priority” for him, and asked:

“Do you only care about classified documents being mishandled when Democrats do the mishandling?” Tapper asked.

“Absolutely not,” Comer responded. He added, “At the end of the day, my biggest concern isn’t the classified documents, to be honest with you. My concern is how there’s such a discrepancy in how former President Trump was treated, by raiding Mar-a-Lago, by getting the security cameras, by taking pictures of documents on the floor, by going through Melania’s closet versus Joe Biden where its like — okay, your personal lawyers who don’t have security clearance, they can go through, they can just keep looking and keep looking and determine whatever is there. That’s not equal treatment, and we’re very concerned and there’s a lack of trust here at the Department of Justice by house Republicans.”

“Why was Mar-a-Lago raided, but the president’s home not?” asked Comer, as disingenuously as every other square-faced white-haired southern Republican who looks like he’s dressed in drag for a Young Newt Gingrich lookalike contest. He told Tapper that “With respect to investigating President Trump, there have been so many investigations of President Trump. I don’t feel like we need to spend a whole lot of time investigating President Trump because the Democrats have done that for the past six years.”

To which we reply oh go fuck yourself.

Also, if Comer moves those goalposts any faster he’s going to poke somebody’s eye out.

All these questions have been asked and answered. Gallants who cooperate in every way are treated with respect. Goofuses who lie and obstruct investigations get their asses raided. It’s real fuckin’ simple. And if Melania has to buy new underpants, well, Wonkette has already done the journalistic work of finding out where the closest Walmart to Mar-a-Lago is.

Hope You’re Happy: Melania Had To Get New Underpants

Here’s the entire interview if you like hick yokels with grins that make people uncomfortable.

www.youtube.com

Things are about to get so much stupider. You can tell by looking at James Comer’s face, it is the face of “getting stupider.”

[NBC News / Mediaite]

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here!

And once that doesn’t exist, I’m also giving things a go at the Mastodon (@[email protected]) and at Post!

Have you heard that Wonkette DOES NOT EXIST without your donations? Please hear it now, and if you have ever enjoyed a Wonkette article, throw us some bucks, or better yet, SUBSCRIBE! Don’t use Paypal for your new monthly donations for the moment, though, we are having some long and boring ISSUES.

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.



Source link

#PSA #GOP #House #Oversight #Chair #James #Comer #Fcking #Clown

LIVE: It’s Ron DeSantis Vs. Human Decency, And Charlie Crist Will Be There Too!

Post By Politics , , , , ,



Will this debate turn things around for Democrat Charlie Crist, who’s been the governor of Florida before? Will Ron DeSantis charter a plane and kidnap migrants literally while he’s onstage?

Watch and find out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC3p2PDiHAEwww.youtube.com

Follow Evan on Twitter right here!

Have you heard that Wonkette DOES NOT EXIST without your donations? Please hear it now, and if you have ever enjoyed a Wonkette article, throw us some bucks, or better yet, SUBSCRIBE!

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.





Source link