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Month: November 2022

Kash Patel gets immunity and speaks to the Grand Jury

Published by digby on November 4, 2022

Why does anyone think he told the truth?

I can’t pretend to understand the DOJ’s strategy with respect to Kash Patel. He is an Ultra-Trump loyalist and I have to assume that he will lie to protect Trump. The DOJ prosecutors must assume that as well, right? How could they not?But he took the 5th in his testimony before the Grand Jury and the DOJ was forced to give him some kind of limited immunity to get him not to take it. But again, do they think he will tell the truth? You tell me:

Kash Patel, a loyal aideto Donald Trumpand former White House deputy, faced questions before a grand jury Thursday as part of a criminal investigation into the former president’s possession of classified records more than 18 months after he left office, according to a personfamiliar with the matter.

National security prosecutors asked Patel about his public claims this spring that Trump had declassified a large number of government documents before leaving office in 2021. Patel was also questioned about how and why the departing president took secret and top-secret records to Mar-a-Lago, his part-time residence and private club in Florida, according to the person with knowledge of the session, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about a grand jury probe.

Patel, a former federal prosecutor, is considered a key witness by the Justice Department in large measure because of what evidence he may provide in defense of Trump’s retention of the records, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss it. Some of the records contained top-secret information about Iran’s missile system and intelligence related to China, The Washington Post has previously reported.

Investigators did not expect Patel to offer evidence implicating Trump in possible crimes, these people said. But they added that the government badly wanted his firsthand account, under oath, of any declassification decisions made by Trump.

Patel declared in media interviews in May and June that he was present when Trump decided to declassify material — though he brought up the subject in the context of investigations of any connections between Trump and Russian election interference, or past investigations involving Hillary Clinton, and did not mention the Mar-a-Lago probe, then in its early stages.

While Trump has publicly said he declassified material he brought to Mar-a-Lago, his lawyers have studiously avoided making such a claim in court filings — arguing only that he might have done so.

I guess they figured Patel would confirm his earlier statement that Trump declassified a bunch of documents in his presence? I guess so but it seems to me he could easily say he didn’t. The fact that he and Trump have both been lying all over TV is meaningless. Patel will say whatever benefits Trump.

Patel is a former DOJ employee. Maybe they know him? I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Or not. But this one has me a little confused. Kash Patel is a former DOJ employee. Maybe they know him?

If you’re so rich, why aren’t you smart?

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 4, 2022

Musk sets $44 billion “on fire”

The billionaire planning to build a rocket ship to Mars is having trouble managing Twitter.

Chaos, confusion reign ahead of Twitter layoffs

Twitter temporarily closes offices as layoffs begin

Catherine Rampell (Washington Post):

As Twitter advertisers run for the exits, the world’s richest man has apparently decided to set his $44 billion investment on fire.

Some might say Elon Musk, who last week became Twitter’s official new owner, has buyer’s remorse. But that implies he had actually wanted the thing before he bought it. Back in April, the mercurial billionaire made an overpriced takeover bid, which he then tried to back out of.

Perhaps understandably: Twitter has been plagued by problems for years, of both the monetary and moral kinds. When Musk made his offer, tech stocks were already tanking, and it was clear he had neither a plan for fixing the company nor the inclination to fritter away a big chunk of his fortune figuring it out. After some legal back-and-forth, he reluctantly agreed to complete the $44 billion acquisition.

Musk’s advocacy of unrestricted free speech on his private platform means his new toy saw a nearly 500% increase in use of the n-word within 12 hours of finalizing his acquisition.

Advertisers are either pausing their Twitter buys to see what happens or simply bailing.

Some consumer brands have already done so, including General Motors (a Tesla competitor). The Financial Times, citing inside sources, reported Wednesday that L’Oréal had also suspended its advertising spending on the platform; the company subsequently released a statement saying it had not made “any decision” about Twitter ads.

But one can understand why the global cosmetics and hair-care giant might feel conflicted about the issue: Skinheads probably don’t buy much shampoo, but they might be in the market for new sunscreen.

Musk’s initial response to advertisers’ concerns was to assure brands that Twitter won’t devolve into a “free-for-all hellscape” (too late, methinks). When that strategy didn’t work, he tried to cyberbully them into sticking around. In a Twitter poll posted Wednesday, he asked his followers whether advertisers should support “freedom of speech” or “political ‘correctness.’ ”

Yeah, Musk cannot even best a former bartender from the Bronx.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dragged Musk because her Twitter feed went down after she criticized him.

CBS News followed the exchanges:

Musk argued that charging users for their badge would allow the platform a revenue stream with which to reward content creators, and that those shelling out extra money would have access to additional in-app benefits, such as priority in replies, mentions, searches, extended video and audio posting privileges and reduced advertisements. 

Musk replied to Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet, writing, “Your feedback is appreciated, now pay $8.” 

Shortly after the exchange, Musk tweeted a photo of a sweatshirt available on Ocasio-Cortez’s website, circling the $58 price tag. Ocasio-Cortez quote-tweeted the dig, writing, “My workers are union, make a living wage, have full healthcare, and aren’t subject to racist treatment in their workplaces,” referencing lawsuits which have been filed against Tesla by Black employees of the company. 

Musk is out of his league as well as out $44 billion.

“Just a reminder that money will never [buy] your way out of insecurity, folks,” AOC tweeted.

One wonders now if Tesla will go the way of DeLorean.

The proper rejoinder to a rich asshole’s “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” is “If you’re so rich, why aren’t you smart?”

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Please go vote and take family and friends.

What will we tell the children?

Published by digby on November 3, 2022

These are the people who are concerned about education. Look at the stupid lies and lame rationalization he offers:

A candidate running for a school board seat in Hunterdon County, pictured in a photo on social media, said he wore a T-shirt on Saturday saying “Where is Nancy?” for a Halloween party that had a theme of “scary costumes.”

Tom Gregor, who is running unopposed for a three-year term on the Bethlehem Township school board, said he dressed as a “home intruder.” And although he did not mention the recent attack on the House Speaker’s husband, said it referenced “what was in the current event of the week.”

On Friday, a home intruder broke into Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s home in San Francisco and asked her 82-year-old husband, Paul, where his wife was, before attacking him in the head with a hammer, police said. Nancy Pelosi was in Washington D.C. at the time.

The photo of Gregor, a sales executive who lives in Asbury,posted by an anonymous account, appeared on Twitter Monday.

When asked by NJ Advance Mediawhat his shirt meant and who Nancy was, he said, “I don’t know who Nancy is.”

In the tweet, the anonymous poster called the picture a “distressing image” and said, “These people walk among us. Not good.” The photo shows Gregor with his wife dressed as a zombie, he said.

When pressed as to why he wrote Nancy, Gregor replied, “No reason,” then added, “it’s what was in the current event of the week.”

Asked if he was referring to Nancy Pelosi, he said, “No, I think it’s just a Nancy in general. Like a Karen, a Nancy.” Asked a second time, he said, “I was not dressed up as Nancy Pelosi, no.”

This is the American right. The only thing that surprises me about this guy is that he didn’t just come right out and say “the old battle ax was asking for it.” That’s what they really think.

I’m sure you know what this means, right?

Published by digby on November 3, 2022

Mercedes Schlapp was a White House adviser during the Trump administration. Matt Schlapp runs CPAC.

In case you were wondering:

“The vote counter is often more important than the candidate,” he told the crowd, saying he had learned that from radio show host Mark Levin. “ … We have to get a lot tougher and smarter at the polls.”

If not, he said, the Republican Party would no longer exist.

“At a certain point, they won’t show up if we allow this to happen again,” he said of Republicans.

The fact that he learned about this from Mark Levin … Jesus H Christ he’s ignorant.

The post-truth election

Published by digby on November 3, 2022

Reality can’t keep up

Molly Jong-Fast details some of the grotesque commentary from the right after the Pelosi assault. Then writes:

Perhaps it was NBC’s Ben Collins who said it best earlier this week: “Reality can’t even exist anymore because it cannot catch up to lies on the internet.”

Many Republican candidates running for the office this midterm cycle have embraced this post-truth ethos, with the majority of those on the ballot this Tuesday having denied or questioned Joe Biden’s victory two years ago. For Republican candidates, it seems, there’s increasingly no incentive to tell the truth.

Take a recent Senate debate in Ohio, where this post-truthfulness was on full display. “We are running for the United States Senate,” Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic candidate, said onstage. “This is the highest office you could get in this country except for president. And he’s running around backing these extremists. The most extreme people in the country. A guy who denied Sandy Hook. He’s like, ‘No, he’s credible.’”

J.D. Vance, Ryan’s Trump-backed Republican opponent, shot back: “This is a complete fabrication. I never said that.” To which Ryan responded, “You’re on tape, man. It’ll be like 30 minutes, and we’re all going to know you’re lying.”

Not only is there video of Vance defending Alex Jones, but there’s also a tweet: “Alex Jones is a far more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow. One of them is censored by the regime. The other promoted by it.” But it doesn’t matter in a post-truth party because Vance’s supporters will believe what he tells them and not what is actually true. Trump may have primed the pump for all this with his relentless attacks on the mainstream media, giving Republicans a better chance at skirting accountability this cycle.

Perhaps the most absurd case of Republicans operating in a post-truth environment is the lie about kitty litter being provided to children who identify as cats. The kitty litter story seems to have gained traction at a Michigan Midland Public Schools board of education meeting when an attendee suggested there were kids identifying as cats (furries) and that these furries were given litter boxes to use in the bathrooms. The story was quickly debunked by Michael E. Sharrow, the superintendent of Midland Public Schools. But in the post-truth ecosystem, what’s true doesn’t necessarily matter if you get enough people to believe the lie.

The kitty litter story has been popular on the stump this year, with NBC News finding at least 20 conservative candidates and elected officials having pushed it. At a campaign event on October 27, Republican Don Bolduc, who’s running for the U.S. Senate from New Hampshire, shared the bogus story, saying, “And get this, get this, they’re putting litter boxes, right? Litter boxes for that…. These are the same people that are concerned about spreading germs. Yet they let children lick themselves and then touch everything. And they’re starting to lick each other.”

None of this is true, all of it has been debunked, but does it matter if a critical mass of voters believes it? New Hampshire could provide a test case, as Bolduc, who has also pushed 2020 election lies, is now running neck and neck with incumbent Senator Maggie Hassan.

This shift into unreality will ripple out in unpredictable and potentially dangerous ways. DePape hoped that the House speaker being “wheeled into Congress” would serve as a warning. This is the kind of unreality that cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard wrote about in his 1981 treatise, Simulacra and Simulation: “We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” We are swimming in a sea of content, but it’s being rejected by a segment of the population because it just doesn’t fit into their reality. In a post-truth world, everything, including fact, becomes subject to opinion. Kids aren’t identifying as cats and Paul Pelosi wasn’t having some kind of love affair with David DePape. Sometimes, actually, most of the time, the most obvious answer is correct.

Republican politicians are either believers themselves or are liars because their voters will only accept being told what they want to hear. It’s a toxic feedback loop. I do not know how this changes unless those who are benefiting from this dangerous post-truth dynamic stop benefiting. It happened in 2020 but it wasn’t enough. If they had put Trump away after the insurrection it might have had a chance. But they got yelled at in airports and they lost their nerve.

At this point I don’t know what could happen to change their minds. Honestly, no level of right wing violence is likely to do it. A Reichstag fire is a possibility.

But maybe they’ll sober up. It’s always possible.

“Who in the hell do they think they are?”

Published by digby on November 3, 2022

Yes, they really are dancing gleefully on the third rail

They’re going to do it:

Congressional Republicans, eyeing a midterm election victory that could hand them control of the House and the Senate, have embraced plans to reduce federal spending on Social Security and Medicare, including cutting benefits for some retirees and raising the retirement age for both safety net programs.

Prominent Republicans are billing the moves as necessary to rein in government spending, which grew under both Republican and Democratic presidents in recent decades and then spiked as the Trump and Biden administrations unleashed trillions of dollars in economic relief during the pandemic.

The Republican leaders who would decide what legislation the House and the Senate would consider if their party won control of Congress have not said specifically what, if anything, they would do to the programs.

Yet several influential Republicans have signaled a new willingness to push for Medicare and Social Security spending cuts as part of future budget negotiations with President Biden. Their ideas include raising the age for collecting Social Security benefits to 70 from 67 and requiring many older Americans to pay higher premiums for their health coverage. The ideas are being floated as a way to narrow government spending on programs that are set to consume a growing share of the federal budget in the decades ahead.

The fact that Republicans are openly talking about cutting the programs has galvanized Democrats in the final weeks of the midterm campaign. Mr. Biden has made securing Social Security and Medicare a late addition to his closing economic messaging, and Democratic candidates have barraged voters with a flurry of advertisements claiming Republicans would dismantle the programs and deny older adults benefits they have counted on for retirement.

Mr. Biden has repeatedly said he will not agree to cuts to Social Security, which provides retirement and disability pay to 66 million Americans, or Medicare, which provides health insurance to about 64 million people. He has also accused all Republicans of putting both programs on the chopping block, based on the possible outcomes of proposals put forth by two Republican senators, which party leaders have not embraced.

“You’ve been paying into Social Security your whole life. You earned it. Now these guys want to take it away,” Mr. Biden said during a visit to Hallandale Beach, Fla., on Tuesday. “Who in the hell do they think they are? Excuse my language.”

They think they are winners and they are feeling their oats.

Obviously, Joe Biden will not let this happen but we know they have already signaled they are going to hold the debt ceiling hostage (unless the Dems do the smart thing and pass the debt ceiling in the lame duck — if Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema say it’s ok.) And they might very well shut down the government over the budget to get this done. They love doing that.

I’m never sure why they think this is such a big winner but it appears they are reverting to their former selves when it comes to slashing the safety net. I guess Trump is on board as well. He certainly hasn’t said anything and I’d be surprised if they didn’t get the ok. It’s never worked out for them in the past but who knows? Maybe if they can combine it with the kind of rank racism and xenophobia that has characterized this campaign it will finally get a majority in favor.

In case you were wondering what the odds of Manchin going along with a debt ceiling hike in the lame duck in order to avoid this fight:

So ….

More racist trash from Stephen Miller

Published by digby on November 3, 2022

He’s really on a roll

Those flyers went out to AAPI voters all over the country. It’s from the America First Legal PAC, Miller’s Trump affiliated group that’s also been running ads like these:

“When did racism against white people become OK? Joe Biden put white people last in line for Covid relief funds. Kamala Harris said disaster aid should go to non-white citizens first. Liberal politicians block access to medicine based on skin color. Progressive corporations, airlines, universities all openly discriminate against white Americans. Racism is always wrong. The left’s anti-white bigotry must stop. We are all entitled to equal treatment under the law.”

There was a time not long ago when there would be universal condemnation of this garbage. They would have tried to hide their affiliation and denied they were behind it. Today it’s just business as usual.

We are in a dark place.

They’re baaaaack!

Published by digby on November 3, 2022

Mitchell says, “if we can keep them from stealing it, I think we have a good chance to win.”

The New York Times reports:

At least three dozen lawyers and law firms that advanced Donald J. Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election are now working for Republican candidates, parties and other groups, filing lawsuits and other complaints that could lay the groundwork for challenging the results of midterm elections, according to a New York Times analysis of campaign finance records and legal filings.

Though the 2020 legal push failed, with just one victory out of more than 60 lawsuits, scores of lawyers behind it have continued to work on election litigation.

That includes partners at large law firms like Consovoy McCarthy and Snell & Wilmer, which filed challenges shortly after Mr. Trump’s defeat and dropped them within weeks. But it also includes lawyers who for months argued cases based on groundless allegations and dubious legal theories, giving Mr. Trump’s false claims a veneer of legitimacy and propelling a swirl of misinformation about elections.

On that list are Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman, two lawyers who helped devise Mr. Trump’s legal strategy in 2020 and are now mobilizing activists to hunt for evidence of fraud in the midterm count. Lawyers with the Thomas More Society, a conservative legal group that tried to push the so-called fake electors proposal through the courts after the 2020 election, have recently filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania disputing how officials handle absentee ballots.

In Michigan, Erick Kaardal, another lawyer with the group, told a group of right-wing organizers in late October that he was already preparing to challenge the results if the Republican candidate for governor, Tudor Dixon, loses narrowly to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.

“Are we going to be ready if they rigged the election so Tudor loses a close race?” Mr. Kaardal said, according to an audio recording of the call obtained by The New York Times. “And are we going to be ready to bring those cases into court, bring those facts, that investigation into court, that would require it to be redone, right? I mean that’s really what it’s about. If election official illegalities and irregularities cast doubt on a close election result, then the Michigan election has to be redone.”

Election lawyers and administrators say they fear 2020 may have ushered in a sea change in election law. Previously, campaigns and parties challenged election rules before Election Day and, typically, accepted a court’s ruling and the results of the vote. But after many of Mr. Trump’s pre-election lawsuits failed and he lost the election, his allies returned to similar legal arguments — now citing falsehoods, rumors and exaggerations as evidence — to claim that all votes were fraudulent.

A big part of the plan as well:

This is one of the reasons we are seeing so many Republican polls out there flooding the zone with great news for them. They are setting up the expectation that Democrats can’t possibly win.

It’s not true. The polls are very tight and Dems could very well win races that Republicans have been told they can’t lose. And that’s where the lawyers will come in.

Buckle up.

It’s the organizing, stupid

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 3, 2022

Get out from behind your keyboards

The mandate for Howard Dean’s 50-state plan field organizers was to turn rural county parties that had devolved into social clubs back into functioning political organizations. That need still remains widely unmet.

Statewide Democratic campaigns have too long forsaken rural counties for cities where they can more easily find blue votes in bulk. Too often that means they clean up in the cities but lose statewide elections — and congressional seats and state legislatures — in rural counties. Often, too, state parties cater more to statewide candidates and treat others running in local districts as extras in the fall campaign drama.

Two stories spotlight efforts here to reverse that. North Carolina’s New Rural Project led by Cynthia Wallace is working to increase minority turnout in several rural counties. In Anson County (22k pop., 47% Black), North Carolina, 2,500 non-white voters sat out the 2020 election, NBC reports. Democratic candidate for Senate Cheri Beasley lost her bid for reelection as chief justice of the state Supreme Court in 2020 by 401 votes.

“Ain’t gonna do nothin’ for us,” one Anson resident told a “Meet the Press” film crew. In tiny towns, who is in office makes no difference. The New Rural Project has convincing to do.

In Chattooga County, Georgia, white voters (84%) represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene feel seen. Very seen.

In Person County, North Carolina (22k pop., roughly 50% non-white) , Democrats’ young county chair, Anderson Clayton has Republicans nervous.

Clayton helped elect Roxboro’s first-ever majority-minority city council, including its first two Black women. Even when the day goes sour, she’s still smiling.

“People keep saying, ‘How do we reach rural voters?’ and I’m like, “How do we reach rural Democrats?” Clayton says. “There are people in these communities that are just not voting our way and that are not voting at all because they don’t feel like they have power in their vote, and that’s a problem. Their votes were being left on the table. With the Person Dems, I was just kind of able to help build that energy back up.”

Democrats can’t “leave it all on the field” if they leave rural votes on the table.

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Please go vote and take family and friends.