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| 05-16-22 11:16am - 857 days | #101 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Photos show GOP Senate candidate Kathy Barnette marching with Proud Boys on Jan. 6. But Barnette explains that she was only out for exercise, that she doesn't know who the Proud Boys are. So she is completely innocent of marching, or of any civil or criminal actions. Vote for Trump. He's the Man who can stop Putin from invading the USA, from firing nuclear missiles into the US and killing innocent civilians. ------- ------- Photos show GOP Senate candidate Kathy Barnette marching with Proud Boys on Jan. 6 Yahoo News Christopher Wilson May 16, 2022, 9:30 AM Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Kathy Barnette marched with members of a right-wing extremist group prior to the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to footage recently unearthed on social media. The photos and video showing Barnette marching alongside the Proud Boys originally surfaced on Sunday via writer Chad Loder’s Twitter account. On Monday, the photos were verified by NBC News. Responding to NBC News, Barnette’s campaign said, “Kathy was in DC to support President Trump and demand election accountability. Any assertion that she participated in or supported the destruction of property is intentionally false. She has no connection whatsoever to the proud boys.” Over the last week, Barnette has surged into contention for the race to fill the seat of retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey. After months trailing two well-funded candidates, Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick, Barnette has recently closed the gap and is seen as a top contender for the nomination. Karl Racine, the attorney general of Washington, D.C., is suing the Proud Boys for its involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. “Our intent is to hold these violent mobsters and these violent hate groups accountable and to get every penny of damage that we can,” Racine said in December. The pro-Trump group’s leader, Enrique Tarro, was arrested in March on conspiracy charges related to the insurrection. Five other Proud Boy associates were also charged for their alleged connections to the Jan. 6 violence. Barnette has been a prominent promoter of election conspiracy theories, including organizing buses to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the violence at the Capitol. She has contended that there were irregularities in her own 2020 House race for a safe Democratic district, which she lost by 19 points to Rep. Madeleine Dean. Barnette is a close political ally of Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the frontrunner for the GOP’s gubernatorial nomination. Mastriano was also in Washington on Jan. 6. and was subpoenaed by the congressional committee investigating the events of the day. National Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have warned that Barnette would prove unelectable if she’s the GOP nominee this November. Her detractors note that she has a history of making Islamophobic and homophobic comments, and has refused to clarify pieces of her biography, even to conservative outlets. But Barnette, having run her campaign so far on a shoestring budget, recently received the backing of the Club for Growth, an anti-tax organization that is now running $2 million in TV ads for her. She also received the endorsement of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group. In addition, Steve Bannon, the far-right media personality and sometime Trump adviser, embraced Barnette on his podcast on May 9. “Barnette is a true-blue MAGA candidate and her victory would be a message from the grassroots that they want candidates who are dependably MAGA more than they want candidates who Trump endorsed,” Bannon’s website said. | |
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| 05-16-22 11:19am - 857 days | #102 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Amber Heard denies defecating in Johnny Depp's bed. Says she was potty trained as a child. Says she suspects Depp is a disgusting person who probably did it himself. ----- ----- Amber Heard denies defecating in Johnny Depp marital bed: 'That's disgusting' Yahoo Celebrity Taryn Ryder May 16, 2022, 8:31 AM Amber Heard and Johnny Depp were back in court on Monday after a weeklong hiatus in their defamation trial. The Aquaman star, 36, testified about her "violent and chaotic" relationship with Depp, claiming most of their fights ended with her being assaulted. But she insisted no argument ended with human fecal matter in their marital bed. One of the many headline-grabbing claims during trial is that, in April 2016, there was "human fecal matter" left on Depp's side of the bed. (The topic even made it into Saturday Night Live's latest cold open.) Last month, the court was shown a photo of the defecation, which Heard insinuated was from the pair's small dogs, Boo or Pistol, not a prank played by her or her friend. "What if any issues did Boo have with bathroom problems, if you will?" Heard's lawyer, Elaine Bredehoft, asked. "She had eaten Johnny's weed when she was a puppy and had bowel control issues for her entire life, among some other issues, we regularly had to take her to the vet," Heard replied. "She had some control issues." Heard said she left the dogs in bed while she packed for Coachella. "Did you commit any kind of prank?" Bredehoft asked. "Absolutely not," Heard replied. "First of all, I don't think that's funny. I don't know what grown women does. I was also not in a pranking mood, my life was falling apart." Johnny Depp arrives into the courtroom at the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia on May 16, 2022. Johnny Depp arrives into the courtroom at the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia on May 16, 2022. (Photo: Reuters) Heard testified Depp abused her the night before. "I had just been attacked on my 30th birthday by my violent husband with whom I was desperately in love and knew I needed to leave. It was not really a jovial time and I don't think that's funny, period. That's disgusting," the actress added. Heard claimed that the night prior, Depp chest-bumped her "in a kind of bro-y way." When she was on the ground, he allegedly grabbed her pubic bone. "He kind of pushed my down and was asking me: 'You're so tough? You wanna be tough like a man now?" she claimed. The actress said she used their safe word "couch," which meant truce. "I was just so tried, hurt. I remember crying, feeling ridiculous," she told a jury. As Depp left their penthouse that night, Heard said the actor purportedly yelled out, "Happy f****** birthday!" The April 2016 incident was one of many Heard walked the jury through. The former spouses didn't see each other for a month after the fight on her birthday. They met up in May 2016 after Depp's mother passed away. Heard said they got into a fight about the fecal matter as Depp was certain it was human feces. "I thought it was just a delusion he was having," Heard said. She claimed Depp threw a cell phone that hit her in her face. He then whacked "me on the top of my head." The actress testified her friend and neighbor ran in and saved Heard. Depp has denied all of his ex-wife's allegations of abuse. The actress is expected to face cross-examination from Depp's legal team later on Monday. Heard's spokesperson preemptively issued a statement. "There's an old saying by trial lawyers: when the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the facts are not on your side, pound away on the podium. Today, we expect Depp's attorneys will instead pound away on the victim. We fear it will be equal parts shameful and desperate. And, the overwhelming evidence — the truth — is not on Depp's side," Heard's rep said. "The one thing we suspect Depp's attorneys will avoid is the central issue of this trial: does Amber or any woman have the First Amendment Right of Freedom of Speech." Depp is suing Heard for $50 million for a 2018 op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post describing herself as a victim of domestic and sexual abuse. | |
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| 05-17-22 06:13pm - 856 days | #103 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
I realize that Donald Trump had some crazy ideas. But maybe they weren't all bad. What would be so wrong about shooting protesters in the leg? You aren't trying to kill them. Also, if you fire missiles into Mexico, won't you get rid of druggies? Isn't that a good thing? In Esper’s book, A Sacred Oath, the former cabinet member claims that he wrestled with quitting but decided to stay to prevent the president from doing anything catastrophic. That being said, he also shared stories about Trump wanting to fire missiles into Mexico to take out the drug cartel, as well at wanting to shoot the protesters that gathered following the murder of George Floyd. ------- ------- Judd Apatow slams Stephen Colbert's other guest on Monday's 'Late Show': 'People with money manipulate the whole system' Yahoo TV George Back May 17, 2022, 1:12 AM Judd Apatow visited The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Monday to promote his documentary George Carlin's American Dream. Apatow was the second guest on the show, with the first being Mark Esper, former President Donald Trump’s secretary of Defense. Esper was there to promote his new tell-all book about the absurd things the former president did in office. Apatow did not pull any punches when Colbert asked him what Carlin would think of Esper. “I don't think George Carlin would like Mark Esper,” Apatow said. “Carlin's whole idea was that people with money manipulate the whole system. So if somebody knows that Trump is a maniac, you would think the day after he gets fired is the day to go, ‘Hey, he wanted to shoot all the George Floyd protestors in the legs.’ But he waits a year to write a book and make money. And I think that was George Carlin's whole thing, which is that they're not looking out for you.” In Esper’s book, A Sacred Oath, the former cabinet member claims that he wrestled with quitting but decided to stay to prevent the president from doing anything catastrophic. That being said, he also shared stories about Trump wanting to fire missiles into Mexico to take out the drug cartel, as well at wanting to shoot the protesters that gathered following the murder of George Floyd. While Colbert appeared more willing to give Esper the benefit of the doubt, Apatow seemed prepared to make things awkward with the other guest in the green room. The Late Show With Stephen Colbert airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS. | |
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| 05-17-22 06:28pm - 856 days | #104 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Florida family complains about pet alligator in their swimming pool. Don't they realize that Donald Trump, the most fierce President of the Untied States of Trumperland, has opened the borders of Florida to illegal immigrants? Donald Trump has stated that, after Sleepy Joe Biden stole the White House, that Trump is taking a break from fighting illegal immigrants. That includes alligators and other pests. Vote for Trump, and when he's back at the White House, he will fight to increase the Police Force and help Florida residents remove unwanted pets and pests. ---- ---- Florida family finds 550-pound alligator in their swimming pool CBS News Victoria Albert May 17, 2022, 12:14 PM A Florida family got a massive surprise when they found a 550-pound alligator in their swimming pool, according to a Tuesday post from the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office. Authorities said the nearly 11-foot-long gator tore through the family's screen in search of cool water. The sheriff's office said a family in Deep Creek, Florida — about 30 miles north of Fort Meyers — was woken up at night by a series of loud noises. When the family looked outside, they saw the giant animal swimming in their pool. "Always check your pool before diving in!" the sheriff's office said. Photos of the incident shared by the sheriff's office show multiple officials working to restrain the alligator. Alligators are no stranger to Florida swimming pools. In 2020, a resident in Tampa found a gator leisurely doing laps in his pool. And in 2018, the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office posted images and video of an 11-foot gator floating in a backyard pool. The incident in Deep Creek, Florida wasn't the only warning pool owners received about dangerous animals this week: A volunteer fire department in Salado, Texas, told residents to check inside their pool noodles for rattlesnakes, which like to hide in the cool, dark spaces. | |
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| 05-17-22 09:26pm - 856 days | #105 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
The truth comes out. The investigation into Trump's ties to Russia was political. Trump is blameless. He should not be held accountable for anything he ever did, since he became a political figure. Trump is above the law. He was the President/Dictator-For-Life of the Untied States of Trumperland. Therefore, anything he said or did, or anything that anyone did on his behalf, was legal. Shame on the Democrats for suggesting otherwise. Democrats are dirty, evil beings. Trump is a Republican, the party of Lincoln, Washington, and other great leaders of the US. We must stand firm behind Trump, and let him manage the gold at Fort Knox, since he is the greatest businessman to ever hold office. ----- ----- Yahoo News Prosecutor: Dem used FBI as 'political tool' in seeking Russia-Trump probe Mark Hosenball Mark Hosenball·Contributor Tue, May 17, 2022, 12:38 PM A prominent Democratic lawyer tried to “use the FBI as a political tool” when he met with the bureau’s chief counsel about an alleged connection between a Russian bank and Donald Trump while hiding that he was doing so on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, a prosecutor for special counsel John Durham told a Washington, D.C., jury on Tuesday. The claim about the actions of D.C. lawyer Michael Sussmann — which was strongly challenged by the defense — came on the opening day of a closely watched trial that represents the first key test of Durham’s controversial three-year-long probe into the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia. “The evidence will show that this is a case about privilege — the privilege of a well-connected D.C. lawyer with access to the highest levels of the FBI,” Brittain Shaw, one of Durham’s prosecutors, told the jury during opening statements. Sussmann is charged with one count of lying to the FBI when he approached James Baker, then the FBI’s general counsel, in September 2016 and told him he was not acting on behalf of any client while bringing him data that purported to show secret computer messages being exchanged between the Alfa Bank, a major Russian financial institution owned by oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin, and the Trump Organization. In fact, prosecutors say, Sussmann, then a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm, was representing Clinton’s campaign and Rodney Joffe, a cybersecurity researcher and longtime client who was allegedly seeking a top job in a potential Clinton administration. But defense lawyer Michael Bosworth fired back at the prosecutors, telling the jury that Durham’s team had stitched together a narrative that didn’t make sense. “This case is an injustice, and I suspect when all the evidence is in, you will agree,” Bosworth told the jury. Sussmann “didn’t lie to the FBI and wouldn’t lie to the FBI,” Bosworth said. Sussmann was a serious national security lawyer with a top-secret security clearance for over two decades who approached Baker out of concern for national security, he argued. Sussmann approached Baker after Joffe brought him information about the alleged contacts between the Trump Organization and the Russian bank, according to Bosworth. Believing the New York Times was about to run a story about the purported communications, Sussmann reached out to the FBI to “give them a heads-up that the story was coming so they wouldn’t be caught flat-footed,” he said. Bosworth said his client’s meeting with the FBI “was the exact opposite of what the Clinton campaign would have wanted. No one told him to go. No one authorized him to go.” Moreover, Bosworth said, the FBI subsequently contacted the New York Times asking it to hold the story, which resulted in the newspaper’s story being “shut down.” But Shaw, the prosecutor, argued that the real purpose of the meeting was to gin up an FBI investigation that would give more traction to media stories about Trump-Russia ties, an effort she described as an attempt to create an “October surprise” for the Clinton campaign. In fact, the FBI appears to have given little credence to the claims about a computer link between the Alfa Bank and Trump’s business. Taking the witness stand, FBI agent Scott Hellman, who with another agent analyzed the Alfa Bank data supplied by Sussmann for an FBI cybercrime squad, told the court that the bureau did not agree that this data represented material that passed through a secret channel between the Trump Organization and Russia. The methodology that the people who supplied the data to Sussmann used to analyze it “was questionable,” Hellman said. It “just didn’t make sense” to FBI investigators that a supposedly secret communications channel between the Trump Organization and Russia would be engaging with computers directly and openly linked to Trump, he said. A counterintelligence unit in the FBI Chicago office also investigated the data, he said, and reached the same conclusion. Durham was initially appointed to look into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation by then-Attorney General William Barr after the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Mueller ultimately found multiple contacts between members of Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives but no criminal conspiracy among the parties. That has prompted Trump allies to argue that the entire FBI investigation into Trump was a political dirty trick, and they’ve looked to Durham to vindicate their claims, making his investigation a lightning rod in the rough-and-tumble political culture of Washington. However, contrary to the hopes of Trump’s allies that Durham would find criminal wrongdoing by the bureau, his first case at trial presents the FBI as a victim, not a perpetrator. | |
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| 05-18-22 05:02am - 855 days | #106 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Is Trump losing his grip on the Republican party? Not all the candidates Trump is backing are winning victories. Will Trump be able to rally the White voters of the Untied States of Trumperland and kick out peoples who can't prove they were born in the Untied States? Is the Republican party the party of lies and fraud and hypocrisy and grabs-for-money-by-the-rich? Are the Democrats any better? Will the voters ever wake up? --------- --------- Takeaways: Election denier wins, bad behavior dooms Cawthorn Associated Press JILL COLVIN and NICHOLAS RICCARDI May 17, 2022, 11:51 PM WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump's support was enough to elevate his Senate candidate to victory in North Carolina on Tuesday, while his pick in Pennsylvania remained in a tough fight in that state's Senate primary. In a key congressional race, a Republican congressman's bad behavior finally caught up with him. And in the Pennsylvania governor's race, a Trump-backed candidate who has spread lies about the 2020 vote count won the GOP nomination, putting an election denier within striking distance of running a presidential battleground state in 2024. But in Idaho, with incumbency on his side, the sitting governor weathered a primary challenge from his far-right lieutenant governor. Takeaways from Tuesday's primaries in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Kentucky, Idaho and Oregon: TRUMP WINS SOME, LOSES SOME The former president entered the primary season on a high after JD Vance, his endorsed candidate in Ohio's hypercompetitive GOP Senate contest, shot from third to first. But Trump's tally Tuesday night included wins, losses and a marquee race too close to call. Trump had shocked party faithful in North Carolina when he endorsed U.S. Rep. Ted Budd, a little-known congressman, last June for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican Richard Burr. But after a rocky start, Budd easily captured his party’s nomination, passing a crowded field of GOP rivals that included the state's former governor, Pat McCrory. And in Pennsylvania’s GOP race for governor, Trump's endorsed candidate, the far-right Doug Mastriano, easily won the nomination — though he was already well ahead in the polls when Trump weighed in just days before the primary. His nod was widely seen as an effort to hedge his bets and guarantee a victory in the state in case his endorsed candidate for Senate, celebrity heart surgeon Mehmet Oz, loses his race. Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick were virtually tied early Wednesday, with more votes left to be counted. In North Carolina, meanwhile, Rep. Madison Cawthorn lost his reelection bid Tuesday even after Trump urged voters to "give Madison a second chance!” Trump also whiffed when Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, his pick, failed to defeat Gov. Brad Little in that state's primary. Trump is facing down another possible defeat in next week's high-stakes governor's primary in Georgia, where his candidate is trailing in both polls and fundraising. Trump's endorsed candidate, the far-right Doug Mastriano, easily won the nomination in Pennsylvania’s GOP race for governor. (AP) Trump's endorsed candidate, the far-right Doug Mastriano, easily won the nomination in Pennsylvania’s GOP race for governor. (AP) ELECTION DENIALIST WINS KEY REPUBLICAN PRIMARY Trump has made election denial a key loyalty test in the Republican Party, and that may have kneecapped his party in Pennsylvania with the victory of Mastriano, a vocal election denier. Mastriano backed baseless reviews of the election results in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Joe Biden won by nearly 100,000 votes. He organized buses to ferry Trump supporters to Washington for the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. And he says that if he's elected, he'll ferret out fraud partly by making every single voter in the state reregister. Mastriano was the front-runner even before Trump's endorsement late last week helped cement his victory. All the major statewide Republican hopefuls in one way or another cast doubt on the election results, but Mastriano was by far the loudest and that's what won him Trump's nod. With Trump prioritizing fealty to his election lies over all else, many Pennsylvania Republicans fear the former president has undermined their chances in the crucial state. That led them to try to coalesce around a last-minute alternative to Mastriano, but the effort failed. Mastriano will face Democrat Josh Shapiro, the state's attorney general, in the November general election. Shapiro, who was uncontested, has appeared eager to take on Mastriano, running a television ad calling Mastriano “one of Donald Trump's biggest supporters,” a move that seemed designed to boost the state senator with GOP voters. Mastriano has said he wouldn't have certified Biden's victory in Pennsylvania if he'd been governor then. That raises questions about the 2024 presidential election and whether Mastriano, if elected, would follow the will of the voters if a candidate he opposes were to win the state. GOP VOTERS HAVE HAD ENOUGH Even in Trump’s Republican Party, there are limits. Rep. Cawthorn, the youngest member of Congress, was ousted from office on Tuesday by state Sen. Chuck Edwards after a rocky first term filled with salacious headlines and scandals. The young congressman, who uses a wheelchair after a car accident, became a media sensation when he first won a House seat at age 25, but he may have gotten singed under the spotlight. Cawthorn last month was cited for carrying a handgun through an airport security checkpoint — his second such citation. In March, he was cited for driving with a revoked license after being stopped for speeding twice. He angered local Republicans by choosing to run in a different district after new congressional maps were drawn this year, then coming back to his original district when litigation shifted the lines again. And, most notoriously, Cawthorn insinuated that Washington Republicans had invited him to at least one cocaine-fueled orgy. Trump sought to give Cawthorn a boost on Monday, urging voters to keep him in office. But voters decided not to. Edwards, who was endorsed by Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, inched past Cawthorn in the primary. Still, the big picture wasn’t that close — with eight candidates in the contest, Cawthorn won just 3 in 10 voters in the district. That’s a warning for other Republicans who may feel that Trump’s ability to hold his base's loyalty through repeated scandals makes them bulletproof, too. POWER OF INCUMBENCY IN IDAHO In Idaho, Trump-inspired populism ran smack into the wall of incumbency. Gov. Little easily beat back a Republican primary challenge from Lt. Gov. McGeachin, despite her endorsement from the former president. He touted steps he’d taken to please conservatives by capitalizing on the benefits of office — signing tax cuts and a law banning abortion after about six weeks. McGeachin was deeply controversial. When Little traveled out of state, McGeachin proclaimed herself the effective governor and issued executive orders banning mask and vaccine mandates, which he nullified upon returning to the state. She spoke at a conference sponsored by white nationalists and ran with several far-right allies for other statewide offices. But, in contrast to what happened in Pennsylvania, Republican voters in Idaho balked. It’s a good omen for the next Trump target — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who’s also been using his incumbency to shore up his conservative bona fides against a challenger backed by the former president in next week’s primary. | |
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| 05-18-22 05:15am - 855 days | #107 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Replacement theory: Democrats are trying to replace white Americans with colored people in order to win elections. This is not right. If Democrats are guilty of treason, they must lose the right to vote. Only true-blue-white people who know the truth have the right to vote. Vote Republican. Vote for honor and decency. Vote to make America great again. And vote to give guns to every registered Republican, to ensure their personal safety. The demonstration in Washington on January 2021 to uphold Trump's victory was certified peaceful by the Republican party, so you know it was a patriotic event. And Trump had the power to ask his supporters to shoot Democrats in the legs, to keep Trump in the White House, where he was trying to make America great again. ----- ----- McConnell, when asked, fails to denounce racist 'replacement theory' ABC News ALLISON PECORIN May 17, 2022, 6:28 PM As Democrats have ratcheted up condemnation of "replacement theory" in the wake of Saturday's mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, some Republicans on Capitol Hill have shied away from rejecting the racist idea that some members of their own party have espoused. At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked repeatedly about his views of "replacement theory," a conspiracy theory that holds that Democrats are trying to replace white Americans with undocumented immigrants and people of color in order to win elections. He repeatedly avoided denouncing it outright. PHOTO: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks during a news conference after a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol, on May 17, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) PHOTO: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks during a news conference after a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol, on May 17, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) MORE: How 'replacement theory' became prominent in mainstream US politics McConnell was asked whether he, as the party leader, had a responsibility to speak out against the theory, which authorities say was adopted by the 18-year-old white man accused of killing 10 Black people at a local food market. He responded by denouncing the actions of the suspect, calling him a "deranged young man," but making no mention of "replacement theory." Pressed again by reporters on whether the Republican Party is obligated to denounce the theory, McConnell condemned racism generally. "Look — racism of any sort is abhorrent in America and ought to be stood up to by everybody, both Republicans, Democrats, all Americans," McConnell said. MORE: Biden labels Buffalo shooting 'domestic terrorism' after visiting scene He then was asked whether he believed that Democrats are seeking amnesty for undocumented immigrants for the purpose of influencing and changing the electorate. He responded by criticizing the Biden administration's policy at the southern border. McConnell's comments Tuesday came as the Senate GOP conference hosted Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance, who has used language similar to the theory on multiple occasions. Vance secured the GOP nomination during Ohio's primary race earlier this month after a late endorsement from former President Donald Trump, who has supported multiple Republicans who echo the theory's main points, if not its outright racist basis. In a March 17 appearance on Fox News, according to the news monitoring site Mediaite, Vance told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that Democrats are intentionally creating a surge in undocumented immigration. "You have to ask yourself who is benefiting from this and who is getting rich from it? First of all Chamber of Commerce-style Republicans and Democrats who love the cheap labor who love the fact that these immigrants are displacing America's workers but also Democrat politicians who have decided that they can't win reelection in 2022 unless they bring in a large number of new voters to replace the voters that are already here," he said. Vance's campaign declined to comment to ABC News and he did not answer a barrage of reporter questions as he left the Senate GOP luncheon. McConnell was not the only Republican leader to avoid calls to denounce replacement theory Tuesday. PHOTO: President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visit a memorial near a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, after the May 14 mass shooting at the store on May 17, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images) PHOTO: President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visit a memorial near a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, after the May 14 mass shooting at the store on May 17, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images) Rep. Elise Stefanik, House GOP Conference Chair, has faced renewed criticism in recent days for her campaign ads echoing replacement theory. Her campaign released a statement about the attack, and another from her senior adviser calling the focus on the ads a "disgusting low for the left, their Never Trump allies and the sycophant stenographers in the media." When pressed by reporters, Stefanik didn't respond directly, saying she didn't want to make the Buffalo shooting political. "Our nation is heartbroken and sad and of the horrific loss of life in Buffalo. This was an act of pure evil and the criminal should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Stefanik said. "It is not the time to politicize this tragedy. We mourn together as a nation." PHOTO: Representative Elise Stefanik speaks during a news conference outside the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., May 12, 2022. (Bloomberg via Getty Images) PHOTO: Representative Elise Stefanik speaks during a news conference outside the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., May 12, 2022. (Bloomberg via Getty Images) Republican reticence to reject replacement theory comes as President Joe Biden traveled to Buffalo on Tuesday and in a speech called on Americans, to "reject the lie" and condemn those "who spread the lie for power, for political gain and for profit." JUST IN: Speaking in Buffalo, Pres. Biden condemns the notion of "replacement theory." "I call on all Americans to reject the lie. And I condemn those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit." https://t.co/MgI8hAMXzHpic.twitter.com/kynFl5vp84 — ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 17, 2022 MORE: Biden labels Buffalo shooting 'domestic terrorism' after visiting scene Later, speaking to reporters, Biden declined to name names but was blunt when asked if he thinks members of the Republican Party, and cable news pundits like Fox News host Tucker Carlson, deserve blame for violence. "I believe anybody who echoes a replacement is to blame not for this particular crime, but it's for no purpose, no purpose, except profit and or political benefit," Biden said. "And it's wrong. It's just simply wrong," Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has gone further, calling out Fox News and pundits like Carlson by name. Schumer penned a direct appeal to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, his son, and the heads of Fox News Tuesday urging them to "to immediately cease all dissemination of false white nationalist, far right conspiracy theories on your network." CES Letter 5.17.22 by ABC News Politics on Scribd Invoking massacres with racial motivations in Pittsburgh and El Paso, Schumer wrote about his Buffalo constituents, saying that they'll "be forced to relive this tragic event every single time they visit the supermarket for a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk" —- asking that Fox take into consideration the very real impacts of the dangerous rhetoric…" Carlson has denied that discussing what he claims is a political matter is racist. A spokesperson for Fox pointed to a comment Carlson made on his show earlier this week regarding the Buffalo shooting. Carlson, she said, called the shooter "racist" and "immoral" and "called for a de-emphasis of racial tensions and working toward a “colorblind meritocracy” adding “all people have equal moral value, no matter what they look like” and quoted Martin Luther King, Jr." She did not directly address Schumer's letter. The shooting has revealed a divide in the Republican ranks. While McConnell and Stefanik have fallen short of denouncing "replacement theory," others have been outspoken on condemning it. MORE: Enter headline of content here Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., had no qualms about rejecting the theory outright. "Oh, it's ... an outrageous theory. I totally reject it as any reasonable discussion to be had." Blunt, who is retiring, is from a state where two GOP politicians have openly espoused the racist theory. MORE: In wake of Buffalo shooting, Liz Cheney says House GOP leaders 'enabled white nationalism' On Monday, GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, whose role as GOP conference chair was usurped by Stefanik, called her colleagues out directly in a tweet. "The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism," Cheney tweeted. "History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them." "Despite sickening and false reporting, Congresswoman Stefanik has never advocated for any racist position or made a racist statement," Alex DeGrasse, a senior adviser to Stefanik, said in a statement. "The shooting was an act of evil and the criminal should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," he added. ABC News' Ben Siegel, Lalee Ibssa and Trish Turner contributed to this report. McConnell, when asked, fails to denounce racist 'replacement theory' originally appeared on abcnews.go.com | |
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| 05-18-22 08:19am - 855 days | #108 | |
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Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Report blames both Trump and Biden for the collapse of the Afghan military. Trump says he is innocent. Says all the blame falls on Sleepy Joe Biden. Trump, the bestest general of the Untied States of Trumperland, led the US forces in person, leading with his bare hands, without a weapon other than his fists. Trump, man of honor, is filled with hot air as he makes his fiery speeches. Trump will crush Sleepy Joe, as Sleepy Joe lets America fall into the swamp of dirty politics. ------- ------- Taliban deal biggest factor in collapse of Afghan forces, watchdog says Reuters Kanishka Singh May 18, 2022, 4:45 AM WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The biggest factor that led to the collapse of the Afghan military in August last year was the U.S. decision to withdraw forces and contractors from Afghanistan through an agreement with the Taliban signed by the Trump administration and executed by the Biden administration, a U.S. watchdog report concluded. The withdrawal "destroyed" the morale of the Afghan military as it was dependent on U.S. military support, according to an assessment by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, which was made public late Tuesday. "SIGAR found that the single most important factor in the ANDSF's (Afghan National Defense and Security Forces) collapse in August 2021 was the U.S. decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from Afghanistan through signing the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020 under the Trump administration, followed by President Biden’s withdrawal announcement in April 2021," the report said. Under President Biden's Republican predecessor Donald Trump, the United States made a deal with the Islamist Taliban to withdraw all American forces. After the signing of the deal, the U.S. military support to Afghan forces came down, which also included a drop in air strikes in 2020 after a record high level in the previous year, the report added. The Taliban overran Afghanistan in August "Limiting airstrikes after the signing of the U.S.-Taliban agreement the following year left the ANDSF without a key advantage in keeping the Taliban at bay," John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, said. The Taliban overran Afghanistan in August as the former Western-backed government collapsed with surprising speed and the last U.S. troops withdrew. Biden had argued the war in Afghanistan needed to be brought to a close after 20 years of fighting that had cost American lives, drained resources and distracted from greater strategic priorities. The U.S. Congress created the office of SIGAR to provide an oversight of reconstruction projects and activities during the war in Afghanistan. "Many Afghans thought the U.S.-Taliban agreement was an act of bad faith and a signal that the U.S. was handing over Afghanistan to the enemy as it rushed to exit the country," Sopko said. | |
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| 05-18-22 08:30am - 855 days | #109 | |
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Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Russian soldier pleads guilty to shooting an unarmed civilian. Says he was told to shoot. But is this a crime? Trump wanted the US military to shoot protesters in the leg. Trump was commander-in-chief when he was President. Why didn't the military start to shoot protestors? Doesn't the President have the right to have people shot? ------- ------- Russian soldier pleads guilty at Ukraine war crimes trial Associated Press May 18, 2022, 8:50 AM KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A 21-year-old Russian soldier facing the first war crimes trial since Moscow invaded Ukraine pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing an unarmed civilian. Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin could get life in prison for shooting a a 62-year-old Ukrainian man in the head through an open car window in the northeastern Sumy region on Feb. 28, four days into the invasion. Shishimarin, a captured member of a Russian tank unit, was prosecuted under a section of the Ukrainian criminal code that addresses the laws and customs of war. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova previously said her office was readying war crimes cases against 41 Russian soldiers for offenses that included bombing civilian infrastructure, killing civilians, rape and looting. It was not immediately clear how many of the suspects are in Ukrainian hands and how many would be tried in absentia. Prosecutors plan to continue presenting evidence against Shishimarin following his guilty plea, although the trial is like to be shorter. As the inaugural war-crimes case in Ukraine, Shishimarin’s prosecution was being watched closely. Investigators have been collecting evidence of possible war crimes to bring before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Venediktova’s office has said it was looking into more than 10,700 potential war crimes involving more than 600 suspects, including Russian soldiers and government officials. With help from foreign experts, prosecutors are investigating allegations that Russian troops violated Ukrainian and international law by killing, torturing and abusing possibly thousands of Ukrainian civilians. Shishimarin's trial opened Friday, when he made a brief court appearance while lawyers and judges discussed prosecedural matters. After his plea on Wednesday, the proceedings were continued until Thursday, when the trial is expecgted to resume in a large courtroom to accomodate more journalists. Ukrainian authorities posted a few details on social media last week from their investigation in his case. Shishimarin was among a group of Russian troops that fled Ukrainian forces on Feb. 28, according to Venediktova’s Facebook account. The Russians allegedly fired at a private car and seized the vehicle, then drove to Chupakhivka, a village about 200 miles east of Kyiv. On the way, the prosecutor-general alleged, the Russian soldiers saw a man walking on the sidewalk and talking on his phone. Shyshimarin was ordered to kill the man so he wouldn’t be able to report them to Ukrainian military authorities. Venediktova did not identify who gave the order. Shyshimarin fired his Kalashnikov rifle through the open window and hit the victim in the head, Venediktova wrote. “The man died on the spot just a few dozen meters from his house,” she said. The Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, posted a short video on May 4 of Shyshimarin speaking in front of camera and briefly describing how he shot the man. The SBU described the video as “one of the first confessions of the enemy invaders.” “I was ordered to shoot,” Shyshimarin said. “I shot one (round) at him. He falls. And we kept on going.” Russia is believed to be preparing war crime trials for Ukrainian soldiers. | |
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| 05-18-22 09:09am - 855 days | #110 | |
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Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
More than 1 million Americans have died from Covid. Trump blames Sleepy Joe Biden. Says that if Biden had followed Trump's lead, very few Americans would have died. Says that the virus was supposed to disappear in the warm weather, but that Sleepy Joe kept the virus around, even though Trump was fighting to keep America virus-free. Trump even ordered more Clorox for Americans to gargle with. But not to worry: Trump is working with the Russians to save American lives. Vote for Trump, and you will be safe from Covid and safe from Russia. ---- ---- More than 1 million Americans have died from COVID Yahoo News Dylan Stableford May 17, 2022, 11:07 AM The United States on Tuesday passed a milestone that once seemed unimaginable: 1 million COVID-19 deaths. According to the Johns Hopkins University, 1,000,004 Americans have died of complications from the coronavirus, and there are more than 82 million confirmed U.S. cases of COVID-19 to date. President Biden issued a statement last week preemptively marking the staggering number of American lives lost. “One million empty chairs around the dinner table,” he said Thursday. “Each an irreplaceable loss. Each leaving behind a family, a community and a nation forever changed because of this pandemic.” The president also issued a proclamation ordering flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House and on all public buildings and grounds in memory of the dead. The country was on the brink of reaching the 1 million mark in late March, but the number of daily deaths slowed considerably, falling to about 300 per day last month. U.S. health officials then expressed hope that the nation was at an “inflection point.” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease director and Biden’s chief medical adviser, went as far as declaring that the U.S. was “out of the pandemic phase.” He later clarified those remarks. Columns representing victims of the coronavirus line the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the eve of Joe Biden's inauguration, Jan. 19, 2021. Columns representing victims of the coronavirus line the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on the eve of Joe Biden's inauguration, Jan. 19, 2021. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) The death toll is especially staggering when you consider what Americans thought it would be at the start of the pandemic. According to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted on March 11, 2020, 88% predicted that the U.S. death toll — then at 28 — would never top 10,000. In April 2020, then-President Donald Trump said the projected number of American deaths related to the coronavirus would be “substantially under” 100,000 people. “It looks like we’ll be at about a 60,000 mark,” Trump said on April 19, 2020. The U.S. passed 100,000 coronavirus deaths a month later. In February 2021, shortly after he took office, Biden addressed the nation from the White House after the U.S. surpassed 500,000 COVID-19 deaths. “As we acknowledge the scale of this mass death in America, we remember each person and the life they lived,” Biden said. “They’re people we knew. They’re people we feel like we knew.” The availability of COVID-19 vaccines that spring brought hope, and by the summer of 2021 the number of new cases and deaths declined. Last July, Biden delivered an Independence Day speech in which he all but declared victory over COVID-19. “We are emerging from the darkness of years, a year of pandemic and isolation, a year of pain, fear and heartbreaking loss,” he said. “Today, we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.” President Biden President Biden delivering a speech on Independence Day last year in which he declared victory over COVID. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters) But the emergence of the highly contagious Delta and Omicron variants, combined with the reluctance of a large swath of Americans to get vaccinated, set back that declaration indefinitely. There’s also reason to believe that the true death toll from COVID-19 is far greater than the reported figures. Earlier this month, the World Health Organization released new estimates showing that nearly 15 million people in the world have died as a result of the pandemic — or roughly three times more than the number of coronavirus deaths officially reported. “Now is the time for us to act — all of us, together,” Biden said during the opening of the Global COVID-19 Summit at the White House last week. “We all must do more. We must honor those we have lost by doing everything we can to prevent as many deaths as possible.” Earlier Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration authorized a booster dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. | |
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| 05-18-22 09:21am - 855 days | #111 | |
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Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Does Donald Trump stink? Does shit smell good? Enquiring minds want to know: where did Donald Trump get his money? And how much of his money is illegal? ------ ------ Donald Trump ‘Sinkhole of corruption’: Trump Organization sells Washington hotel Ethics group and Democrats say questions remain, even as workers remove Trump’s name from Old Post Office building Workers remove signage for the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Workers remove signage for the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Photograph: Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP Martin Pengelly and agencies @MartinPengelly Thu 12 May 2022 07.56 EDT Last modified on Mon 16 May 2022 10.59 EDT Workers took Donald Trump’s name off his hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC on Wednesday, after the completion of the $375m sale of the lease to investors from Florida. Trump has said he does not have any relevant files, a claim Judge Arthur Engoron said last month he found surprising. Trump must pay $110,000 fine to purge contempt, judge says Read more House Democrats estimate the former president, under legal and financial pressure on multiple fronts, will reportedly gain $100m from the sale, once a loan for the renovations is paid off. One ethics group called the hotel “a sinkhole of corruption”. During Trump’s four years in the White House, the hotel became a magnet for aides, supporters and foreign businesses seeking favour. Critics and ethics groups were particularly concerned about the situation as Trump did not formally divest himself from the Trump Organization. The presidential historian Michael Beschloss predicted that even after the sale “political ghosts will linger”. Advertisement The hotel lost more than $70m in the four years of Trump’s presidency, including losses each year before pandemic shutdowns in 2020. Many hotel brokers, owners and consultants did not expect the 263-room hotel, located close to the White House, to fetch such a high price. The price of the lease, equivalent to more than $1.4m a room, has drawn scrutiny from Democrats in Congress. The New York Times reported that JLL, a real estate firm, put the average sales price for hotels in Washington in 2020 at $354,000 per room. CGI Merchant Group, the buyer, reportedly plans to turn the hotel into a branch of the Waldorf Astoria hotel chain. Earlier this month, the House oversight committee requested documents from CGI, listing all investors, which reportedly include the former New York Yankees slugger and confessed drugs cheat Alex Rodriguez. The sale marks the end of a controversial chapter in Trump’s rise. The real estate magnate opened the Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office building in 2016, during his run for the presidency. In a statement on Wednesday, Eric Trump, Trump’s second son, said: “We took a dilapidated and underutilised building and transformed it into one of the most iconic hotels in the world.” The hotel had long attracted criticism for perceived conflicts of interest. Recently, the Trump Organization and Trump’s 2017 presidential inaugural committee agreed to pay $750,000 to settle a suit brought by the District of Columbia attorney general that claimed the hotel received excessive payments from the committee. On news of the settlement, Carolyn Maloney, the Democratic chair of the House oversight committee, said her concerns about the sale of the lease “had only increased”. The building is still owned by the federal government, which approved the sale of the lease in March. When Trump was in power, claims or lawsuits under the emoluments clause of the constitution, which covers gifts and payments to office holders, could not stick. In 2019, Kathleen Clark, Washington University Law professor, told the Guardian: “For over a hundred years, the justice department has strictly interpreted the constitution’s anti-corruption emoluments clause to prohibit federal officials from accepting anything of value from foreign governments, absent congressional consent. “In 2017, the department reversed course, adopting arguments nearly identical to those put forward by Trump’s private sector lawyers. Instead of defending the republic against foreign influence, the department … defend[ed] Trump’s ability to receive money from foreign governments.” On Wednesday, the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or Crew, said: “The Trump Hotel in DC is no more. Good riddance to a sinkhole of corruption.” FILE- In this Dec. 21, 2016 file photo, the Trump International Hotel in Washington is shown. On Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, a New York judge has rejected a lawsuit by restaurant workers, a hotel event booker and a watchdog group who say President Donald Trump has business conflicts that violate the Constitution. The lawsuit was rejected by federal Judge George Daniels, who says the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) Trump hotels exempted from ban on foreign payments under new stance Read more But it also said: “We still have some questions … namely, whether a ‘premium sale price’ for a hotel that has been losing money is justified and what are the outstanding security risks to the hotel.” Mark S Zaid, an attorney in Washington who specialises in cases involving the federal government, added: “I still count this as vindication for our legal efforts to remove Trump from this majestic building. We started an effort that contributed. It took longer than it should have.”  2022 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | |
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| 05-18-22 08:55pm - 855 days | #112 | |
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Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
If you want to make millions of dollars, enter the pharmaceutical industry. Many drugs are needed to keep people alive. But if you raise the prices on those drugs, you might be able to make lots of money. Most people will keep paying, if they need the drugs to keep alive. Maybe Donald Trump can start his own drug company. We need people like Trump, who can sell drugs to people. ----- ----- Former pharmaceutical exec Martin Shkreli released from prison Reuters Jonathan Stempel May 18, 2022, 11:32 AM Scroll back up to restore default view. By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) - Martin Shkreli, the former pharmaceutical executive known for raising the price of a lifesaving drug more than 40-fold, has been released from prison, where he had been serving a seven-year term for fraud. The early release of the 39-year-old Shkreli from a low security prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania was confirmed on Wednesday by the prison and by Benjamin Brafman, who represented Shkreli at his 2017 criminal trial. "Martin Shkreli has been released from Allenwood prison and transferred to a BOP halfway house after completing all programs that allowed for his prison sentence to be shortened," Brafman said in a statement, referring to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Shkreli is eligible to be released completely from federal custody on Sept. 14. His confinement is now overseen by a New York office that helps prisoners reenter society. Speculation about Shkreli's whereabouts grew on Wednesday after photos appeared on Twitter of an older-looking man who resembled him, accompanied by a man wearing a "Free Shkreli" t-shirt. Shkreli became known as "pharma bro" after raising the price of the anti-parisitic drug Daraprim to $750 per tablet from $17.50 in 2015, and appearing unapologetic when criticized. He was convicted in August 2017 of defrauding investors in two hedge funds he ran, and scheming to defraud investors in drugmaker Retrophin Inc, where he had been chief executive. Last July, the government sold a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" that Shkreli bought at auction for $2 million, to help pay off $7.36 million he was ordered to forfeit because of his conviction. In January, a Manhattan judge banned Shkreli from the drug industry for life and ordered him to pay $64.6 million for trying to keep generic Daraprim rivals off the market. The following month, the Brooklyn judge who oversaw Shkreli's criminal trial permanently banned him from serving as an officer or director of public companies. Brafman said he has "encouraged Mr. Shkreli to make no further statement." (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot) | |
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| 05-18-22 09:04pm - 855 days | #113 | |
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Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Bill Cosby lawyers cry foul as civil sex assault trial looms. But even though they are crying, are they happy in secret? Are they getting paid for their work, or doing it for free becasue they think Cosby is innocent? Lawyers can be tricky. That's why so many of them become politicians. Will Donald Trump step forward and testify in Bill Cosby's defense? Are Trump and Cosby friends? Or business associates? Enquiring minds want to know: what did Donald Trump learn from Bill Cosby about the right way to treat women? ---- ---- Bill Cosby lawyers cry foul as civil sex assault trial looms Associated Press ANDREW DALTON May 18, 2022, 9:21 AM SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — With jury selection less than a week away, attorneys scrambled to deal with shifting evidence Tuesday in Bill Cosby’s civil trial over allegations that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl at the Playboy mansion nearly 50 years ago. Plaintiff Judy Huth said in a recent court filing that she now believes the assault happened in 1975 when she was 16, not in 1974 when she was 15 as she had long alleged, spurring cries of foul and a request to dismiss the case from Cosby’s attorneys, who said the change has upended their defense on the eve of trial. “It's not fair,” Cosby's lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said outside court. “It's called trial by ambush.” Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Craig Karlan gave no indication he planned to throw out the 8-year-old case just before a trial that he is determined to have start as scheduled on Monday, and forged ahead in preparations. Cosby, 85, will not attend any of it, his attorneys said. The case has taken on renewed significance as one of the few remaining legal actions against him after the Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out his criminal sexual assault conviction in June and released him from prison, and many other lawsuits were settled against his will by his insurer. Huth's attorneys said the change in her story came after research of archival evidence led them to determine the dates when Cosby was shooting the movie “Let’s Do It Again” at a Los Angeles-area park, where Huth says the two met before he took her to the mansion. The evidence included a dated photo of Cosby with a beard and a tuxedo looking exactly as Huth had remembered him. The change was revealed in a declaration that was attached as an exhibit to a May 5 motion. But Bonjean said she should have gotten direct notification, and told the judge the move was “subversive.” One of Huth's attorneys, Nathan Goldberg, took offense. “We filed it with the court, that was subversive?” Goldberg said. He suggested the defense had long been concealing the timing of the mansion visit. “They've known all along it was 1975," Goldberg said. Cosby's attorneys said they had built much of their trial defense around the timing of the trip to the Playboy Mansion, including going to great lengths to establish Cosby's whereabouts at the time, and basing their planned questions for Huth on the witness stand around her account of the chronology. Huth's lawsuit alleges Cosby forced her to perform a sex act on him in a bedroom of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's famed Los Angeles mansion. Bonjean acknowledges that Cosby met Huth and took her to the mansion — a photograph shows the two there together — but that the visit happened later when Huth was not a minor, and that no sexual assault took place regardless. Bonjean also said the changed story also means changes to the relevance of the case's law, which treats 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds differently. Without dismissing the case or delaying the trial, the judge did agree with Huth's lawyers that they should have clearly notified the defense of the timing change, and he ordered Huth and a friend who is corroborating her story to sit for new depositions this week. “It is extraordinarily difficult to defend against an allegation from 50 years ago. Nobody could do it, innocent, guilty or something in between," Bonjean, who also represented Cosby in his criminal case and is representing R. Kelly in his Chicago child pornography trial, said outside court. "You work you work you work to create a defense, and then all of a sudden at the last minute, it’s a bait-and-switch.” Huth attorney Gloria Allred declined comment outside court. Cosby gave a videotaped deposition early in the case, but will not be required to testify the trial. He will not make the trip to California from his Pennsylvania home because of glaucoma that has left him blind, his representatives said. But his absence is no indication of how vigorously he intends to fight. "Mr. Cosby is a guy who has never settled for anything in life, and he's not going to settle in this case," Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt said after the hearing. The Associated Press does not normally name people who say they have been sexually abused, unless they come forward publicly, as Huth repeatedly has. Cosby, the groundbreaking Black actor and comedian, had been the first celebrity convicted of sexual assault in the #MeToo era. The jury at his 2018 retrial found him guilty of drugging and molesting a college sports administrator. However, the conviction was later reversed. A barrage of such sexual assault allegations destroyed his image as “America’s Dad” and led to multimillion-dollar court settlements with at least eight women. | |
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| 05-19-22 08:03am - 854 days | #114 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Husband charged for killing his wife. Says God told him to do it. Says that Jesus Christ is his attorney. But if need be, Donald Trump will also serve as part of the defense team. Trump supports all white people. Vote for Trump, and he will make America Free, White, and Great Again. The man is trying to expose the truth: that Halloween, the Easter bunny and COVID-19 vaccines are part of Satan's plan. ------ ------ Husband charged with murder in death of former KU soccer player Regan Gibbs, says God told him to do it Yahoo Sports Jason Owens May 18, 2022, 4:12 PM Chad Marek is charged in the death of Regan Gibbs. (Associated Press) Former Kansas University soccer player Regan Noelle Gibbs was found dead in her Lawrence home on Monday. She was 25 years old. Her husband Chad J. Marek, 26, is facing a first-degree murder charge in her death. Gibbs was a goaltender for Kansas from 2015-18 and played on two NCAA tournament teams. She was a native of Naches, Washington, and attended West Valley High School before enrolling at Kansas. Head coach Mark Francis released as statement on Tuesday mourning Gibbs. “Our soccer program is heartbroken to hear about the tragic loss of Regan," the statement reads. "She was a tremendous teammate and young woman, and touched so many during her time at Kansas. Regan will always be remembered for the impact she had both on and off the field. We share our condolences to her family, friends and teammates during this difficult time.” The Lawrence Police Department announced via news release that officers arrived at the couple's apartment after receiving a call at 7:26 p.m. on Monday to find Gibbs dead. Marek was at the scene when first responders arrived. Lawrence Police Chief Rich Lockhart told the Lawrence World Journal that Marek made the 911 call himself and told the dispatcher that God told him to do it. Marek was arrested at the scene and detained on $1 million bail with the prosecutor citing the "excessive brutality" of the crime in the bail request, the Lawrence Times reports. Officials didn't announce the method of the alleged murder. Marek appeared before the Douglas County District Court and told the judge that “Jesus Christ is my attorney," the World Journal reports. According to the World Journal, Marek was frequently seen in downtown Lawrence "evangelizing with a bullhorn." His Facebook page contains messaging that includes linking Halloween, the Easter bunny and COVID-19 vaccines to Satan. Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden said in court on Tuesday that Marek had at least 10 prior convictions including battery, interference with medical emergency crews and interference with law enforcement, the World Journal reports. Marek is scheduled for his next court appearance on May 24. | |
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| 05-19-22 08:31am - 854 days | #115 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Elon Musk says he can no longer support Democrats. I know that Democrats have faults. But are the Republicans any better? Also, Musk has moved from California to Texas. Texas has no state income tax. Musk has sold about $25 billion of Tesla stock recently. He's trying to save enough money to take his mother out to McDonald's, for a burger and fries. But McDonald's is trying to raise prices, to keep profits up. And Musk is trying to save money. Who will donate to Musk, in his efforts to feed his mother? ---- ---- Tesla's Musk says he 'can no longer support' Democrats, 'will vote Republican' Reuters Hyunjoo Jin May 19, 2022, 7:43 AM By Hyunjoo Jin SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk said on Wednesday that while he voted for Democrats in the past, he will now vote for Republicans. "In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican," he tweeted. "Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold," said Musk, the world's richest man, who has agreed to buy Twitter Inc. The 50-year-old billionaire recently said he would reverse Twitter's ban on former U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, when he buys the social media platform. He also said Twitter is far-left-biased because it is headquartered in California, a state known for its progressive politics. Tesla's stock fell 6.8% on Wednesday, after he announced his support for Republicans and Tesla was removed from a closely-watched sustainable index. Tweets mocking Elon as being "poor Elon" were trending on social media platform Twitter, sparking his mother Maye Musk to weigh in with her own tweet to defend her son. "Poor Elon might only be the 2nd or 3rd richest man in the world now," one twitter user said. "Poor Elon. No liberals are going to buy his cars anymore, when there's so many nicer options," another said. Musk's mother criticized some tweets for "nasty comments" and alleged they were "troll or bot", referring to fake accounts. Musk has been a vocal critic of the Biden administration and Democrats for their proposals to tax billionaires and give more tax incentives to union-made electric vehicles. Tesla does not have unions at its U.S. factories. Last year, Tesla, which counts California as its biggest market in the United States, moved its headquarters from California to the more politically conservative Texas. Musk moved his personal residence from California to Texas, where there is no state income tax. He has sold about $25 billion worth of Tesla stock since last year in order to pay taxes and finance his proposed acquisition of Twitter. Analysts said the sales helped him cash in on Tesla's stock rally and diversify his wealth. (Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in San FranciscoEditing by Matthew Lewis and Richard Pullin) | |
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| 05-19-22 11:51am - 854 days | #116 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Republicans panicking over loss. Say that they will dump Trump in favor of a gay trans man. Never before have Republicans admitted fear. Now they are running scared. Afraid that rabid Democrats will start riots and shoot Republicans down like mad dogs. ---------- ---------- The New York Times Republican Panic Grows After Mastriano Wins Blake Hounshell Thu, May 19, 2022, 5:47 AM The aftershocks of Tuesday’s big primaries are still rumbling across Pennsylvania, but one impact is already clear: Republican voters’ choice of Doug Mastriano in the governor’s race is giving the GOP fits. Conversations with Republican strategists, donors and lobbyists in and outside of Pennsylvania in recent days reveal a party seething with anxiety, dissension and score-settling over Mastriano’s nomination. In the run-up to Tuesday night, Republicans openly used words and phrases such as “suicide mission,” “disaster” and “voyage of the Titanic” to convey just what a catastrophe they believed his candidacy will be for their party. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times An adviser to several Republican governors, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there was wide displeasure with the outcome, calling him unelectable. The Mastriano campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Some in Pennsylvania blame Jeff Yass, a billionaire options trader and the state’s most powerful donor, for sticking with Bill McSwain for governor despite former President Donald Trump’s blistering anti-endorsement. Others point the finger at Lawrence Tabas, the state party chair, for failing to clear the field. Still others say Trump should have stayed out of the race altogether instead of endorsing Mastriano. Tabas did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. An eleventh-hour effort to stop Mastriano failed when both McSwain and Dave White, a self-funding candidate who spent at least $5 million of his own money, refused to drop out and support former Rep. Lou Barletta, whose supporters insisted he was the more viable option. Many Republicans thought that idea was futile and far too late. Several said a serious effort to prevent Mastriano from winning should have begun last summer, while others said Yass and his allies could have dropped McSwain sooner. “Had they kept their powder dry, they could have seen the lay of the land, when Mastriano’s lead was 8-10, and backed Barletta,” said Sam Katz, a former Republican candidate for governor who now backs Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee. “Had they spent $5 million in three weeks, they might have forced Trump to make a different choice and changed everything,” Katz said. Mastriano had amassed 44% of the vote as of Thursday morning. Matthew Brouillette, head of Commonwealth Partners, which bankrolled McSwain’s campaign, noted that his organization also backed Carrie DelRosso, who won the lieutenant governor’s race. He said the criticism was coming largely from “consultants and rent-seekers who don’t like us as we disrupt their gravy trains.” Ties to Jan. 6 and QAnon Mastriano’s vulnerabilities are legion, GOP operatives lament. The state senator and retired U.S. Army colonel has taken a hard line on abortion, which he has said should be illegal under all circumstances. He organized buses to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington and can be seen on video crossing police lines at the Capitol as the rally became a riot. He has also been a leading advocate of the baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Mastriano’s name has appeared in documents released by the committee investigating the Capitol riot, and he claims to have been in close personal contact with Trump about their shared drive to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory. In February, the committee demanded “documents and information that are relevant to the select committee’s investigation” in a letter to Mastriano. He has refused to say whom he would appoint as secretary of state, a critical position overseeing election infrastructure and voting. Mastriano has appeared at events linked to QAnon, the amorphous conspiracy theory that alleges there is a secret cabal of elite pedophiles running the federal government and other major U.S. institutions. He also has made statements that veer into Islamophobia. He is likely to be an especially weak candidate in the crowded suburbs around Philadelphia, the state’s most important political battleground. On the other side of the state, the editorial page of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has already all but officially endorsed Shapiro as “the only statewide candidate who did everything the Pennsylvania way.” Operatives in both parties expect Shapiro to blitz Mastriano with advertising portraying him as a dangerous extremist while Mastriano’s shoestring organization struggles to raise money. Even before Mastriano clinched the nomination, Shapiro’s campaign aired an ad highlighting his views on abortion and the 2020 election as well as his ties to Trump, who lost the state to Biden by 80,000 votes. Mastriano gave scant indication during Tuesday’s victory speech that he was ready to shift toward a more palatable general election message. Listing his early priorities as governor, he said, “mandates are gone,” “any jab for job requirements are gone,” critical race theory is “over,” “only biological females can play on biological female teams” and “you can only use the bathroom that your biological anatomy says.” The Mastriano matchup also plays to Shapiro’s carefully cultivated image as a fighter for democracy, though his campaign plans to focus primarily on bread-and-butter economic issues such as jobs, taxes and inflation. As attorney general, Shapiro was directly involved in the Pennsylvania government’s litigation after the 2020 election, and oversaw at least 40 cases of alleged voter fraud — winning every single one. Wait-and-see mode Will national Republicans help Mastriano or shun him? The major players in governor’s races appear to be waiting to see how the race develops before making that determination. Some Republicans believe the national tail winds blowing in their favor might help Mastriano win despite all of his weaknesses, but for now, Democrats are thrilled to be facing him in November. They note that Shapiro performed better than Biden did in Pennsylvania during his reelection race as state attorney general, and expect Shapiro to be flooded with donations from in and outside the state. On Tuesday night, the Republican Governors Association issued a lukewarm statement acknowledging Mastriano’s victory, but suggesting he was on his own for now. “Republican voters in Pennsylvania have chosen Doug Mastriano as their nominee for governor,” Executive Director Dave Rexrode said. “The RGA remains committed to engaging in competitive gubernatorial contests where our support can have an impact.” The statement left room for the possibility that the GOP governors might help Mastriano should the Pennsylvania race be close in the fall. “We make those decisions based on where we think we can be effective,” Gov. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, co-chairman of the governors’ group, said on CNN on Sunday. “Our policy has long been we get involved in races where we think we can win. So, that candidate, whoever gets elected in Pennsylvania, will have to show that they’re going to make it a good race.” 2022 The New York Times Company | |
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| 05-19-22 12:08pm - 854 days | #117 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Republicans, the party of Washington, Lincoln, Trump and the greatest politicians in American history, are digging deep to see if Sleepy Joe Biden is hiding dirt. Did Sleepy Joe take illegal bribes from his son, Hunter Biden? Did Hunter Biden hunt illegally during the off-season in Africa for endangered wolves and lions and coyotes? Did Hunter Biden try to stop Donald Trump from having sex with interns? Why is the Republican party so enraged with Hunter Biden? Is it because they want to reclaim the White House, and are using smear tactics to bring down Sleepy Joe? Sleepy Joe must wake up and start investigations into any and all Republicans, who have been guilty of crimes. This includes Donald Trump, who has admitted that he has criminal tendencies, and wants to be dictator of the Untied States of Trumperland. Put Donald Trump in jail, for fraud, lies, and corrupt behavior. Then we can start to drain the swamp in Washington of depraved Republicans and other criminals. ------ ------- Analysis of Hunter Biden's hard drive shows he, his firm took in about $11 million from 2013 to 2018, spent it fast NBC Universal Tom Winter and Sarah Fitzpatrick and Chloe Atkins and Laura Strickler and Hallie Jackson May 19, 2022, 1:29 AM From 2013 through 2018 Hunter Biden and his company brought in about $11 million via his roles as an attorney and a board member with a Ukrainian firm accused of bribery and his work with a Chinese businessman now accused of fraud, according to an NBC News analysis of a copy of Biden’s hard drive and iCloud account and documents released by Republicans on two Senate committees. The documents and the analysis, which don’t show what he did to earn millions from his Chinese partners, raise questions about national security, business ethics and potential legal exposure. In December 2020, Biden acknowledged in a statement that he was the subject of a federal investigation into his taxes. NBC News was first to report that an ex-business partner had warned Biden he should amend his tax returns to disclose $400,000 in income from the Ukrainian firm, Burisma. GOP congressional sources also say that if Republicans take back the House this fall, they’ll demand more documents and probe whether any of Biden’s income went to his father, President Joe Biden. “No government ethics rules apply to him,” said Walter Shaub, a former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics who is now an ethics expert with the Project on Government Oversight. Shaub added, however, that “it’s imperative that no one at DOJ and no one at the White House interfere with the criminal investigation in Delaware.” Shaub had previously raised questions about Hunter Biden’s new line of work, selling his own paintings, which created the potential to purchase a painting to buy perceived influence, and also because the White House became involved in the transactions, arranging that none of the buyers’ names be known to Biden, the White House or the public. Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI’s former assistant director for counterintelligence, said there is a national security risk when foreign powers like China see an opportunity to get close to someone like Biden. “It’s all about access and influence, and if you can compromise someone with both access and influence, that’s even better,” said Figliuzzi, now an NBC News contributor. “Better still if that target has already compromised himself.” The documents and the analysis indicate that few of Biden’s deals ever came to fruition and shed light on how fast he was spending his money. Expenditures compiled on his hard drive show he spent more than $200,000 per month from October 2017 through February 2018 on luxury hotel rooms, Porsche payments, dental work and cash withdrawals. Biden has admitted to burning through cash to pay for drugs and partying with strangers who routinely stole from him, and he struggled to pay multiple mortgages or keep up with alimony and child support payments to his ex-wife. In his autobiography, “Beautiful Things,” he says the money from Burisma “turned into a major enabler during my steepest skid into addiction” and “hounded me to spend recklessly, dangerously, destructively. Humiliatingly. So I did.” In a February 2017 divorce filing, an attorney for Biden’s ex-wife said the couple’s outstanding debts were “shocking and overwhelming” and that they owed $313,000 in back taxes. According to the filing, they had bounced checks to their housekeeper and owed money to doctors and therapists. The filing alleged that Hunter Biden had spent copiously on drugs, strip clubs, prostitutes and girlfriends “while leaving the family with no money to pay legitimate bills.” A representative for Biden says all of his tax responsibilities to the IRS are now satisfied. Two sources familiar with the matter have confirmed to NBC News that Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris began advising Biden in 2020 and arranged to pay off the approximately $2 million Biden owed the IRS. Legal experts say, however, that paying the bill won’t relieve Biden of criminal liability or necessarily erase his debts. NBC News analyst Chuck Rosenberg, a former Justice Department official, said that Biden’s paying what he owes could even be seen as an admission of criminal violations. Not paying taxes for many years, rather than one or two, Rosenberg said, helps establish intent, which can otherwise be a struggle for prosecutors in white-collar cases. Paying the bill, Rosenberg said, might help Biden if he faced sentencing and “mitigate some of the damage, but it doesn’t undo the crime. That would be like returning money to a bank that you robbed. You still robbed the bank.” Biden is represented by former federal prosecutor Christopher Clark in the ongoing criminal investigation in Delaware. Clark declined to comment on the record. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware declined to comment. NBC News obtained a copy of Biden’s laptop hard drive from a representative of Rudy Giuliani and examined Biden’s business dealings from 2013 to 2018 based on the information available on the hard drive and the scope of the documents released by the Senate. The Republicans on the Senate Finance and Homeland Security committees, then chaired by Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, respectively, issued their first report on Biden’s business dealings in September 2020. The 87-page report said Biden had “cashed in” on his name, but Johnson said in an interview before its release that the report included “no massive smoking guns.” Now in the minority, the Republicans from the two committees are still reviewing and analyzing several hundred pages of financial and business documents tied to Biden and his business associates, according to a person familiar with the committee’s work. Biden has denied any illegal activity, and he told CBS News in an interview that he is “cooperating completely” with the federal investigation in Delaware. “And I’m absolutely certain, 100 percent certain,” he said, “that at the end of the investigation, I will be cleared of any wrongdoing.” Biden and China Biden made $5.8 million, more than half his total earnings from 2013 to 2018, from two deals with Chinese business interests. Biden’s most lucrative business relationship was acting as a consultant in a project with a company that belongs to a once-powerful Chinese businessman who is now thought to be detained in his homeland. According to business records referred to in the Senate report, Hudson West III, a venture funded by the Chinese oil and natural gas company CEFC and its chairman, Ye Jianming, paid $4,790,375.25 to Owasco P.C. over about one year. President Joe Biden talks with his son Hunter Biden as he holds his grandson Beau Biden as they walk to board Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., on March 26, 2021. (Patrick Semansky / AP file) President Joe Biden talks with his son Hunter Biden as he holds his grandson Beau Biden as they walk to board Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., on March 26, 2021. (Patrick Semansky / AP file) Filings with the Washington, D.C., government show Owasco P.C. is controlled by Hunter Biden. A review of the personal and corporate emails on Biden’s hard drive yield little information about any business he conducted on behalf of Hudson West III, and his autobiography doesn’t discuss his Chinese business dealings in any detail. One of the few potential business opportunities discussed appears in a series of email exchanges among Biden, several U.S. partners and Chinese individuals associated with Hudson West III. They talked about a potential gas deal on Monkey Island in Louisiana in 2017, but it appears no deal was made, and no publicly available documents indicate any sort of purchase, sale or agreement. Britt Singletary, the attorney who conducted due diligence for the Monkey Island deal and another deal, told NBC News that ultimately the deals didn’t come together because they just didn’t make sense. “Financially, it wasn’t going to work,” said Singletary, because the deals were too big and too risky for Hunter Biden, his uncle Jim Biden and their Chinese partners. Citing attorney-client privilege, Singletary said he couldn’t discuss his advice on the deals to Hunter Biden, his uncle Jim or two Chinese employees of Hudson West III, Mervyn Yan and JiaQi Bao. He described Yan and Bao as “very smart” and said two meetings occurred, one in Atlanta and one in New Orleans. Hunter Biden attended the meeting in New Orleans. Singletary was counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1970s, where he met then-Sen. Joe Biden. Singletary says he believes he was chosen because Joe Biden and ultimately Hunter Biden knew he wouldn’t get the Chinese businesspeople or the Bidens into bad business deals. | |
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| 05-19-22 07:03pm - 854 days | #118 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Oklahoma state arms police to invade Indian Reservations for illegal abortions. If Indians are guilty of crimes, as criminals, they can be arrested. They can even be shot if they resist arrest. Power to the people. Indians must follow the same laws as regular people. Can the governor of Oklahoma call on President Sleepy Joe for help in sending in the National Guard to arrest Indians? And what about sending these Indians to Africa? Do we really want to pay for keeping Indians in jail or prison? Send them back to Africa, where they belong. Keep America Free and White, says the Republican party. ---- ---- After Roe, can states stop abortions on Native American lands? Ben Adler Ben Adler·Senior Editor Thu, May 19, 2022, 9:18 AM Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Sunday hinted at retribution for Indigenous Oklahomans should doctors readily perform abortions on tribal lands if Roe v. Wade is overturned. But he was stepping outside the boundaries of state authority, according to Indigenous legal experts. “The tribes in Oklahoma are super-liberal,” Stitt said on “Fox News Sunday,” as he discussed the implications of the leaked Supreme Court majority draft opinion, which indicated that the court is soon likely to revoke the constitutional right to an abortion. “We think that there’s a possibility that some tribes may try to set up abortion on demand. They think that you can be the 1/1,000th tribal member and not have to follow the state law. And so that’s something that we’re watching. “Oklahomans will not think very well of that, if tribes try to set up abortion clinics,” he added. Stitt signed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country this month. Experts in tribal sovereignty law, however, say that the legality of abortion on reservations probably won’t be up to the state government. While Oklahoma would criminalize abortion procedures if Roe v. Wade is overturned, as is widely anticipated, recognized tribes have considerable autonomy under federal law. “Tribal nations existed before Oklahoma, and have a long history of women making health decisions for themselves,” Angelique EagleWoman, director of the Native American Law and Sovereignty Institute at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, told Yahoo News. “Tribal nations, including the ones in Oklahoma, often entered in treaties — legal documents — with the United States. And, generally, treaties guarantee health services. Native Americans are the only people in the United States guaranteed public health services, and that’s administered through the federal agency called the Indian Health Service. There’s nowhere along the line of health care where the state attaches, or its laws come into play, for tribal members.” Gov. Kevin Stitt at the microphone in the State Dining Room of the White House, in front of an Oklahoma flag. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt addresses a roundtable at the White House in June 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) Many Native American women already lack direct access to abortions. Most pregnant women cannot obtain abortions from the Indian Health Service because of a 1976 law, known as the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funding for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother. Those exceptions can be hard to prove. As a result, a 2002 study by the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center found that only 25 abortions had been performed in the Indian Health Service system since the law was passed. Rachael Lorenzo, executive director for Indigenous Women Rising, an Indigenous abortion fund, recently told Indian Country Today that local Indian Health Service officials in Oklahoma and New Mexico don’t always offer abortion services even to women who qualify for one of the exceptions. “Even though they are legally allowed to provide that care, they still don't, and every medical director has a different policy that guides their providers when they have a patient who is expressing they want to terminate their pregnancy,” Lorenzo said. “We have been told by providers ourselves that their medical directors tell them that they're not allowed to even mention abortion.” Most Native American women who get abortions go to abortion clinics outside tribal land, which has already become increasingly difficult in more conservative states. Stitt recently signed a strict anti-abortion law, vowing that he wants his state to be “the most pro-life state in the country.” The Oklahoma law does not have an exception for victims of rape or incest. Demonstrators chant as they jointly hold a huge banner saying: Our Bodies, Our Abortions, as well as signs saying: Stand With Black Women, Rape Survivor Re-traumatized by ... SCOTUS, and so on. and others. Advocates for abortion rights march on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., to the Supreme Court on May 14. (Jose Luis Magana/AFP via Getty Images) If the Supreme Court strikes down Roe next month, states would have even more leeway to enact strict abortion bans. But state criminal law does not apply on reservations. “States are ousted from criminal jurisdiction on reservations,” EagleWoman said. “An understanding of tribal sovereignty and tribal jurisdiction would lead to the conclusion that there would be no engagement with state law whatsoever on tribal health care decisions or services.” Oklahoma has the largest Native American population of any state, at more than 526,000, accounting for 13% of the state’s population. Oklahoma is home to 39 Indigenous nations and 19 million acres of reservation land, accounting for more than 40% of the state’s total. Under a 1953 federal law, there are six states — Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon and Wisconsin — that have jurisdiction over criminal law on reservations. Some other states, including Florida, Idaho, Montana and Washington, later obtained criminal law jurisdiction on reservations, but a 1968 law prevented any more states from doing so without tribal permission. That is precisely why Stitt is concerned about Indigenous tribes setting up abortion clinics on reservations, once the facilities have been shuttered in the rest of his state. (Stitt’s office did not respond to a request for comment.) The specific limits of tribal authority on the issue, however, have yet to be adjudicated by the courts. While a Native American provider of abortions on tribal land would be exempt from the Oklahoma law making it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to perform the procedure, that exception to state criminal law does not necessarily apply to interactions between non-Indigenous people, even on a reservation. If a non-Native doctor performed an abortion on a non-Native woman, Oklahoma might be able to prosecute a case, even if the clinic was on a reservation. Under 19th century Supreme Court rulings, “white on white” crime on Native American land is still subject to state law. Oklahoma could argue that a non-Native doctor performing an abortion on a non-Native patient falls into this category, although it’s unclear whether a court would agree. (As a practical matter, experts say, state investigators would lack the legal authority to gather evidence on a reservation, making it difficult to prosecute.) A nurse in a mask monitors the blood pressure of a Navajo woman, also masked, who has complained of virus symptoms, in a white tent. A nurse checks the vitals of a Navajo woman at a COVID-19 testing center at the Navajo Nation town of Monument Valley, Ariz., in May 2020. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images) Then there’s the possibility that federal prosecutors could enforce state laws against abortion under federal laws that allow the federal government to prosecute under state law “major crimes” such as murder on reservations. “Let’s say you are not an Indian, and you’re on Indian lands, and you engage in some acts related to abortion that is criminalized in the state. Here’s how you are federally prosecuted: The federal government will assert that it has exclusive jurisdiction over that crime,” Matthew Fletcher, director of the Indigenous Law and Policy Center at Michigan State University and chief justice of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians Supreme Court, told Yahoo News. “So, if it is a crime in the state and the federal crime doesn’t prohibit it, what the United States attorney can do is bring a federal prosecution by assimilating state law. They borrow the state criminal law and apply it in federal court. “That’s a choice that likely will not occur in the event of a Democratic administration,” Fletcher added. “But in a Republican administration, you could totally see it happening.” Taken as a whole, law professors say, the laws governing state crimes on Indigenous land amount to a “jurisdictional maze.” “It’s a gray area,” Fletcher said. “It’s messy.” | |
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| 05-19-22 07:08pm - 854 days | #119 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Texas, a great state. Will soon kick undocumented children out of school. Why spend tax money on undocumented children. Let them learn on the streets, where criminals and politicians will teach the kids the right values of America. Texas, home of the Texas Rangers. ---- ---- Texas educators fear Abbott's effort to kick undocumented children out of school Yahoo News Carmen Valencia May 19, 2022, 2:30 PM Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is set to challenge Plyler v. Doe, the 1982 Supreme Court ruling that ensured free public education for all children, including undocumented immigrants. Abbott, a Republican, announced that he would revisit the Supreme Court case on May 6 during an appearance on the conservative talk radio program “The Joe Pags Show,” saying the federal government should be paying for undocumented children’s education. Abbott has taken up the issue now because Title 42, the Trump-era policy that allows Customs and Border Protection officials to expel migrants back to Mexico, will soon be ending. Abbott argued that the public education system in Texas is being overwhelmed by the number of undocumented students enrolled. “I think we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again,” he said on the program. “Because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler v. Doe was issued many decades ago.” Elizabeth Santos with her graduating class. Elizabeth Santos with her graduating class. (Elizabeth Santos) According to Higher Ed Immigration Portal, there are 1,644,000 students enrolled in public schools in the state of Texas, 58,255 of them undocumented. The United States as a whole is home to more than 427,000 undocumented students. Many educators in immigrant-heavy districts do not agree with Abbott. Elizabeth Alba Santos, the first vice president of District I of the Houston Independent School District, told Yahoo News she has seen students go on to be productive members of society, like public school teachers, lawyers and politicians. “Many of my students, my former students, are now teachers that were once undocumented, and so many of my students have gone on to further their education,” Santos said. “The ripple effect [of Abbott’s plan] is literally denying a future for communities ... and dividing people against each other,” Santos, the daughter of Mexican American immigrants, said. Santos has been active with the district since 1986 and believes that free public education is essential for all students regardless of their citizenship status. She said the effects of denying public education to undocumented students could be devastating. “We would lose millions of dollars in funding, school districts will begin denying enrollment to children and communities will become unsafe,” she said. “Not to mention our classroom dynamics: We make our students thrive off of one another, and they learn from each other. And I can’t stress that enough, the diversity of a classroom in both socioeconomic status, religion, these things, because all of who we are makes up every bit of every individual person.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images) Yahoo News contacted Abbott’s office for comment on the issue, but it did not immediately respond. Other Texas school leaders believe that the state should put the focus on providing a strong education for all students and leave politics out of it. In a statement released to families, Waco Independent School District Superintendent Susan Kincannon said that singling out a small group of vulnerable students won’t solve problems. “Regardless of how our students’ families got here, though, they are our neighbors now, and we all benefit when our students receive an education that enables them to contribute to our community,” Kincannon said. Santos said she will continue to fight for all her students to have access to a free public education. “We have undocumented children that are growing up and becoming Dreamers. They’re lawyers, doctors, they’re helping our economy at all levels. And this is something that makes America very unique, that we do welcome immigrants and bring in the best and the brightest, the hardest-working, really heroes of America,” she said. | |
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| 05-19-22 09:33pm - 854 days | #120 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Jan 6 panel is asking Republican lawmakers if they helped with the Jan 6 riots. Did the Republicans willingly help the rioters to case the joint? So the rioters would know where to go, to threaten the Democrats? Will the Republicans co-operate, and give testimony? Or will the Republicans ask for immunity, which is the normal way for politicians to act? The best defense is to ask for immunity, before testifying. That's what any good politician knows. Also, did President Trump know what the rioters did was wrong? Or did he think the rioters were only trying to help Donald Trump stay in power? ------ ------ Jan. 6 panel asks GOP lawmaker to testify about Capitol tour Associated Press FARNOUSH AMIRI May 19, 2022, 5:11 PM Scroll back up to restore default view. WASHINGTON (AP) — The congressional committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection is asking a House Republican for more information about a tour of the building the panel says he led the day before the deadly attack. The committee's letter to Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk on Thursday is the latest attempt by House investigators to obtain cooperation from GOP lawmakers in the probe of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack, when supporters of then-President Donald Trump violently broke into the Capitol and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden's victory. “Based on our review of evidence in the Select Committee’s possession, we believe you have information regarding a tour you led through parts of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021,“ wrote Reps Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, the chairman and vice-chairwoman of the committee, wrote Loudermilk. “Public reporting and witness accounts indicate some individuals and groups engaged in efforts to gather information about the layout of the U.S. Capitol, as well as the House and Senate office buildings” in advance of the insurrection, they wrote. A request for comment from Loudermilk was not immediately returned. The voluntary request comes as the panel has already conducted more than 1,000 interviews about the insurrection and as it prepares for a series of hearings in June. The questions about tours of the Capitol ahead of the attack have lingered since the days afterward, when Democrats suggested that some Republican members may have helped the rioters. But so far there has been no public evidence of that assistance. The letter to Loudermilk said that Republicans on a separate panel, the House Administration Committee, had previously said they reviewed security footage from Jan. 5 and said there were “no tours, no large groups, no one with MAGA hats on.” Loudermilk is a member of that panel. But the Jan. 6 committee's review of the evidence “directly contradicts that denial," Thompson and Cheney wrote. That assessment by GOP members came after three dozen Democrats sent a letter to the committee days after the attack citing alleged sightings of “unusually large” groups led by either Republican lawmakers or their staff in the days leading up to the attack The request to Loudermilk comes a week after the seven Democrats and two Republicans on the Jan. 6 panel issued subpoenas to five of their Republican colleagues, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The decision to issue subpoenas to McCarthy, R-Calif., and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama was a dramatic show of force by the panel, which has already interviewed nearly 1,000 witnesses and collected more than 100,000 documents as it investigates the worst attack on the Capitol in two centuries. The five Republicans, all of whom have repeatedly downplayed the investigation’s legitimacy, have yet to say whether they will comply. In total, the committee has now publicly requested cooperation from at least eight lawmakers it believes have information crucial to the planning and execution of the attack and former President Donald Trump’s potential role in inciting it. | |
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| 05-20-22 12:56am - 854 days | #121 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Rep. Madison Cawthorn took to Instagram to post a defiant, vengeful message promising a “Dark MAGA” comeback. Cawthorn, a follower of Donald Trump, is also a follower of the Dark Forces promoted in the Star Wars history of the world of Princess Leia. Will Cawthorn and Donald Trump force civil war in the Untied States of Trumperland, and restore Donald Trump to power? Will Donald Trump have Sleepy Joe Biden executed for treason after Biden stole the White House away from Donald Trump? ------ ------ The Daily Beast Vengeful Madison Cawthorn Vows ‘Dark MAGA’ Takeover Sam Brodey Thu, May 19, 2022, 1:17 PM Callaghan O’Hare/Reuters Less than 48 hours after his shocking defeat in North Carolina’s primary election, Rep. Madison Cawthorn took to Instagram to post a defiant, vengeful, and typo-riddled message promising a “Dark MAGA” comeback. After decrying the establishment-driven campaign to unseat him following a long series of scandals, Cawthorn credited those he called his true allies, specifically naming figures like former President Donald Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), “the great Charlie Kirk,” and Tucker Carlson. “I am on a mission now to expose those who say and promise one thing yet legislate and work towards another, self-profiteering, globalist goal,” Cawthorn said. “It’s time for the rise of the new right, it’s time for Dark MAGA to truly take command.” Before vowing that this Dark MAGA would “defeat the cowardly and weak members of our own party,” Cawthorn said the “time for gentile politics as usual has come to an end,” presumably not in reference to the politics of non-Jews. GOP state Sen. Chuck Edwards defeated Cawthorn by 1.5 percentage points in Tuesday night’s primary election, and the 26-year old incumbent may serve out his term until January 2023. Voters Send Madison Cawthorn Home to Think About What He Did | |
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| 05-20-22 07:11am - 853 days | #122 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Republicans pushing to change laws to make stealing elections easier. Republicans are saying the only real votes are the votes for Republicans. All other votes are fraudulent. Vote Republican. Or risk being a fraud. Republicans, the party of George Washington, Lincoln, Trump, and all the greatest politicians the Untied States of Trumperland has ever had. Sleepy Joe Biden has to wake up. Send in the National Guard, and have all Republicans lined up in a row and shot. Execute the traitors. The evil doers. Cleanse the swamp in Washington, and keep us safe from the commie Republicans. ----- ----- Voter 'subversion': Trump Republicans push laws to make it easier to change elections, per report USA TODAY David Jackson May 19, 2022, 6:15 PM WASHINGTON - Donald Trump-style Republicans in more than 30 states are pushing new laws that basically would make it easier for them to steal future elections, according to a new report provided to USA TODAY by a group of voting rights organizations. "This trend increases the risk of a crisis in which the outcome of an election could be decided contrary to the will of the people," said the report compiled by three organizations: States United Democracy Center, Protect Democracy, and Law Forward. Victoria Bassetti, a senior adviser with the States United Democracy Center and one of the authors of the report, described the efforts as "election subversion," and called the idea a "new and dangerous attack on democracy." With 50 proposals passed since the organizations started tracking them at the start of 2021, Bassetti said that "systematic election subversion like we have found is really new." The 2022 edition of an annual report – titled "A Democracy Crisis In The Making" – said proponents are pursuing election subversion through five methods: Awarding state legislatures the power to award electoral votes; authorizing post-election "audits" that could be partisan in nature; giving partisan lawmakers and appointed officials more powers over election operations; placing "unworkable burdens" on election administrators; and intimidating election officials with the threat of criminal penalties for certain actions. The concept of subversion:'Election subversion' accusations: Donald Trump and allies look for new ways to challenge votes Threats on election workers:Election workers faced new threats after 2020 election. Experts fear it will drive them away Since 2021, a total of 33 states are considering at least 229 bills that involve some form of election subversion, the report said. That includes the 50 bills that have been enacted in at least 14 states. Trump and his allies began pushing election changes after his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, and his many false claims about voter fraud. These proposals also come at a time when Trump is endorsing Republican candidates at all levels of government, including state legislatures, secretaries of state offices, governor's offices, and Congress – people who would be in a position to pursue election subversion if given the chance. President Donald Trump addresses his supporters at a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe Biden as president in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. President Donald Trump addresses his supporters at a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe Biden as president in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. After Election Day in 2020, Trump and allies pressured officials to change the results in six closely contested states that went for Biden: Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. All six are now involved in the election subversion movement, the report said, along with other potential battlegrounds like Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Missouri, and Minnesota. "The goal is to change the rules and change the players so as to change the outcomes," said Rachel Homer, counsel at the voting rights organization Protect Democracy. Where is the subversion happening? The report detailed the states where lawmakers are considering or enacting the five methods of subversion: – Giving legislatures the power to overturn elections and award electoral votes to candidates who did not win the state's popular vote. Bills that would do this are pending in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to the report, though it acknowledged that none of these proposals are expected to pass. "The fact that they are even being introduced indicates that legislatures are considering the option to overturn future elections," the report said. "This raises obvious alarms for democracy." – Partisan "audits" While professional audit procedures are in place in many states, at least 49 proposals in at least 20 states would allow "unprofessional or biased reviews of election results," the report said. After the 2020 election, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Texas authorized election audits by companies that lacked experience in this area and appeared to have partisan motives. Trump had demanded audits and trumpeted specious findings as evidence of voter fraud. Voting rights: Voting rights groups tell Biden they want action, not 'platitudes,' as he travels to Georgia for speech Secretaries of state:In 2022 midterms, a new 'Big Lie' battleground: secretary of state elections "The false belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump due to voter fraud, election machine manipulation, or other irregularities has been repeatedly debunked, yet it motivates the trend of unprofessional reviews often conducted by explicitly biased personnel," the report said. – Giving partisans more control over the election process. There are 38 proposals in at least a dozen states that would give more authority over election procedures to more biased lawmakers or their appointees. These proposals "increase the danger of partisan election manipulation," the report said. One example is Georgia, which passed new laws in direct response to Trump's protest of his loss to Biden in the Peach State. Trump still criticizes Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and is backing challengers to both Republican incumbents in Tuesday's primaries. FILE - In this Nov. 30, 2020 file photo, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference in Atlanta. Georgia's most populous county, a Democratic stronghold that includes most of Atlanta, faces a high-stakes test in Tuesday’s Nov. 2, 2021 municipal elections, with some Republicans itching for a state takeover using a sweeping new law. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File) ORG XMIT: NYMV302 FILE - In this Nov. 30, 2020 file photo, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference in Atlanta. Georgia's most populous county, a Democratic stronghold that includes most of Atlanta, faces a high-stakes test in Tuesday’s Nov. 2, 2021 municipal elections, with some Republicans itching for a state takeover using a sweeping new law. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File) ORG XMIT: NYMV302 As if to punish Raffensperger, the Georgia law stripped the secretary of State of his role as chair of the State Election Board. It gives the more partisan legislature the authority to appoint the election board chair, and gave the board as a whole the power to remove local election officials for cause, after a hearing and appeals process. Pending proposals in Kansas, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would allow legislators to revoke any election rule or regulation they dispute. – "Unworkable burdens" on election administration. Some subversion proposals are designed to sow doubt about the results by placing unreasonable demands on election administrators said. For example, Trump backers in at least six states are calling for required hand counts of ballots, a reaction to false claims that voting machines were tampered with in 2020. While fine in theory, hand-counting creates problems in the real world where states deal with hundreds of thousands or even millions of ballots, the reports' authors say. Demanding hand counting practically guarantees "delays, higher rates of counting error, and increased risk of tampering by bad actors." The six states considering hand counting requirements are Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, New Hampshire, Washington, and West Virginia. Another set of proposals would prevent election officials from responding to "partisan poll watchers who interfere with or intimidate voters or officials." That might lead to suppression of votes or interference with counting ballots, the report said. – Legal threats against election officials Some proposals seem designed to intimidate election officials into undermining balloting, the report said, threatening them with legal penalties "for poorly defined offenses." Polling place worker Donna Appleby holds her dog Daisy Mae as she waits for voters during the Pennsylvania primary election at the LSL Sportsman's club in Orrstown, Pa., Tuesday, May 17, 2022. Polling place worker Donna Appleby holds her dog Daisy Mae as she waits for voters during the Pennsylvania primary election at the LSL Sportsman's club in Orrstown, Pa., Tuesday, May 17, 2022. In Texas, for example, the state's new voting law makes it illegal to help people fill out ballot applications. Florida has created a new office to investigate complaints against election officials. The goal: Pressure. "They create this air of intimidation," said Elizabeth Pierson, an attorney with the organization Law Forward who helped put together the report. After the 2020 election, Trump and his allies tried some of these same tactics in states like Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona. They were unsuccessful in getting states to change their electoral votes Many of these pending proposals, Homer said, would "make it more plausible that their efforts could succeed next time." | |
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| 05-21-22 04:47am - 852 days | #123 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Wife of Supreme Court judge Clarence Thomas guilty of crimes. Thomas (the judge) needs to be removed from the Supreme Court for bias. Is he responsible for the acts his wife commits? No. But a Supreme Court justice is supposed to be above politics. And his wife was heavily involved in politics. So, his actions are suspect. And he should be removed from the Supreme Court. And his wife should be put in jail for fraud. Trying to overturn legal votes by claiming, without proof, that the votes were fraudulent. Republicans are the party of privilege. And dirty tricks. Put them in jail where they belong. Make America great again, by cleaning the swamp of dirty Republicans. Clean the Supreme Court, by removing judges suspected of political bias. ------ ------ Ginni Thomas' emails deepen her involvement in 2020 election Associated Press MARK SHERMAN and JONATHAN J. COOPER May 20, 2022, 1:12 PM WASHINGTON (AP) — Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a conservative political activist, urged Republican lawmakers in Arizona after the 2020 presidential election to choose their own slate of electors, arguing that results giving Joe Biden a victory in the state were marred by fraud. The revelations first published by The Washington Post on Friday show that Thomas was more involved than previously known in efforts, based on unsubstantiated claims of fraud, to overturn Biden's victory and keep then-President Donald Trump in office. In the days after The Associated Press and other news organizations called the presidential election for Biden, Thomas emailed two lawmakers in Arizona to urge them to choose “a clean slate of Electors” and “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure.” The AP obtained the emails under the state's open records law. Thomas also had written to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks following the election encouraging him to work to overturn Biden's victory and keep Trump in office, according to text messages first reported by the Post and CBS News. Thomas was a staunch Trump supporter who acknowledged she attended the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse but left before Trump spoke and his supporters later stormed the Capitol. She has been critical of the ongoing congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 violence, including signing onto a letter to House Republicans calling for the expulsion of Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois from the GOP conference for joining the Jan. 6 congressional committee. Justice Thomas, meanwhile, has taken part in the court's consideration of lawsuits challenging the election results. The court turned away every challenge without a hearing, though Thomas was among three conservative justices who said cases from Pennsylvania should be heard. In February 2021, Thomas called the cases an “ideal opportunity” to address an important question whether state lawmakers or state courts get the last word about the manner in which federal elections are carried out. In January, Thomas was the lone member of the court who supported a bid by Trump to withhold documents from the Jan 6. committee. The documents were held by the National Archives and Records Administration and included presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and handwritten notes dealing with Jan. 6 from Meadows' files. Thomas did not immediately respond to a request for comment, made to the court Friday. Democratic lawmakers have called on Thomas to step aside from election-related cases, but he has given no indication he intends to do so. The latest disclosure comes at a time when Chief Justice John Roberts has ordered an internal investigation into the leaking of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, in one of the court’s most prominent cases in decades, and opinion polls have shown a loss of public confidence in the institution. Thomas was referencing the leaked opinion at a conference in Dallas last week when he talked about the damage to the court. "I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them.” Ginni Thomas has said she and the justice keep their work separate. “Like so many married couples, we share many of the same ideals, principles, and aspirations for America. But we have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too. Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” Thomas told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview published in March. Thomas sent emails to Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and Rep. Shawnna Bolick, who this year is running for Arizona secretary of state. That would make her the top elections administrator in Arizona. She wrote them again on Dec. 13, the day before electors met in state capitols around the country to formally cast their votes for president. “As state lawmakers, you have the Constitutional power and authority to protect the integrity of our elections — and we need you to exercise that power now!” the email said. “Never before in our nation’s history have our elections been so threatened by fraud and unconstitutional procedures.” Bowers dismissed the idea of replacing Arizona's electors shortly after the election. The following year, Bolick introduced a bill that would have allowed the Legislature to overturn any presidential election results for any reason, and replace the electors. Bolick has said her legislation would have made the process more bipartisan by requiring a two-thirds vote, but the text of the proposal calls for a simple majority. In any event, Bowers essentially killed the legislation before it ever came to a vote. ___ Associated Press writer Bob Christie contributed to this report from Phoenix. Cooper also reported from Phoenix. | |
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| 05-21-22 05:03am - 852 days | #124 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Voters don't approve of Sleepy Joe Biden. If Sleepy Joe can't wake up and start attacking the Republicans, who are trying to bring him down, get someone more effective who will fight back. Also, put Donald Trump on trial for the Covid deaths. He was President of the US, and allowed the virus to spread and kill over 1 million Americans. Put Trump on trial, and then put him in jail. Was the Covid epidemic a trick by Republicans to kill Americans? Did Trump lie to the American public, saying the virus would go away? Why are we letting Trump off the hook, when his policies and lies led to more America deaths than the Vietnam War? ----- ----- Biden's approval dips to lowest of presidency: AP-NORC poll Associated Press NICHOLAS RICCARDI May 20, 2022, 8:15 AM President Biden’s approval rating dipped to the lowest point of his presidency in May, a new poll shows, with deepening pessimism emerging among members of his own Democratic Party. Only 39% of U.S. adults approve of Biden’s performance as president, according to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Research, dipping from already negative ratings a month earlier. Overall, only about 2 in 10 adults say the U.S. is heading in the right direction or the economy is good, both down from about 3 in 10 a month earlier. Those drops were concentrated among Democrats, with just 33% within the president’s party saying the country is headed in the right direction, down from 49% in April. Of particular concern for Biden ahead of the midterm elections, his approval among Democrats stands at 73%, a substantial drop since earlier in his presidency. In AP-NORC polls conducted in 2021, Biden’s approval rating among Democrats never dropped below 82%. The findings reflect a widespread sense of exasperation in a country facing a cascade of challenges ranging from inflation, gun violence, and a sudden shortage of baby formula to a persistent pandemic. “I don’t know how much worse it can get,” said Milan Ramsey, a 29-year-old high school counselor and Democrat in Santa Monica, California, who with her husband had to move into her parents’ house to raise their infant son. 'He hasn't delivered on any of the promises' Ramsey thinks the economic dysfunction that's led to her being unable to afford the place where she grew up isn't Biden's fault. But she's alarmed he hasn't implemented ambitious plans for fighting climate change or fixing health care. “He hasn't delivered on any of the promises. I feel like the stimulus checks came out and that was the last win of his administration,” Ramsey said of Biden. “I think he's tired — and I don't blame him, I'd be tired too at his age with the career he's had.” Republicans have not been warm to Biden for a while. Less than 1 in 10 approve of the president or his handling of the economy, but that's no different from last month. Gerry Toranzo, a nurse and a Republican in Chicago, blames Biden for being forced to pinch pennies by taking steps like driving slower to conserve gas after prices have skyrocketed during his administration. “His policies are destroying the economy,” Toranzo, 46, said of Biden, blaming him for stopping the Keystone XL fuel pipeline to Canada and hamstringing domestic energy production. “It's a vicious cycle of price increases.” Overall, two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy. That rating is largely unchanged over the last few months, though elevated slightly since the first two months of the year. But there are signs that the dissatisfaction with Biden on the economy has deepened. Just 18% of Americans say Biden’s policies have done more to help than hurt the economy, down slightly from 24% in March. Fifty-one percent say they’ve done more to hurt than help, while 30% say they haven’t made much difference either way. The percentage of Democrats who say Biden’s policies have done more to help dipped from 45% to 37%, though just 18% say they’ve done more to hurt; 44% say they’ve made no difference. Some Democrats blame other forces for inflation. Manuel Morales, an internet service technician in Moline, Illinois, thinks the pandemic and war in Ukraine have had a far bigger impact than Biden's decisions. But the 58-year-old Democrat is now questioning the benefits of Biden's biggest legislative achievement, the American Rescue Plan, and its stimulus checks. “It helped a lot of people, but," Morales said, "people did not want to go back to work.” Only 38% back Biden on immigration Morales faults Biden on another area of persistent vulnerability to the president — immigration. Only 38% back Biden on immigration, and Morales is disappointed at the scenes of migrants continuing to cross the southern border. Though he himself is a Mexican immigrant, Morales thinks the U.S. needs to more stringently control its border to have a hope of legalizing deserving migrants who are in the country illegally. Also, Morales said, there have to be limits. “It's impossible to bring the whole of Central America and Mexico into this country,” he said. Another area where Morales faults Biden, albeit mildly, is the war with Ukraine. “We are spending a lot of money going to the Ukraine and all that is going to the deficit,” Morales said. Overall, 45% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the U.S. relationship with Russia, while 54% disapprove. That’s held steady each month since the war in Ukraine began. Seventy-three percent of Democrats and 15% of Republicans approve. The new poll shows just 21% of Americans say they have “a great deal of confidence” in Biden’s ability to handle the situation in Ukraine; 39% say they have some confidence and 39% say they have hardly any. Charles Penn, a retired factory worker in Huntington, Indiana, is satisfied with Biden's performance on Ukraine. “I think he's done alright,” Penn, 68, said of the president. But overall Penn, an independent who leans Republican, is disappointed with Biden, and blames him for rising prices that have squeezed him in his retirement. “The Democrats in the long run have screwed up things by pushing for higher wages, like going from $7 an hour to $15 an hour," Penn said, citing the push for a sharp increase in the federal minimum wage that Biden has embraced. “The other side of it is that if you had Republicans, they'd cut my Social Security.” Still, Penn thinks Biden should pay the political price. “He's captain of the ship, so he's responsible,” Penn said of the president. ___ The AP-NORC poll of 1,172 adults was conducted May 12-16 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points. | |
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| 05-22-22 06:16am - 851 days | #125 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
The Jones family, close allies of Donald Trump, are facing troubles in Texas. Will Donald Trump rush to their aid? Or let them go to jail? ----- ----- Skeet Jones is a powerful judge in Texas' smallest county. He is being charged with cattle theft. NBC Universal Susan Carroll May 21, 2022, 11:48 AM Skeet Jones is a powerful judge in Texas' smallest county. He is being charged with cattle theft. Sarah M. Vasquez for NBC News Lawmen came to remote Loving County, Texas, on Friday to arrest the county judge, a former sheriff’s deputy and two ranch hands on one of Texas’ oldest crimes — cattle theft. Judge Skeet Jones, 71, the top elected official since 2007 in the least populated county in the continental United States, is facing three felony counts of livestock theft and one count of engaging in criminal activity, accused of gathering up and selling stray cattle, authorities said. Jones, the scion of a powerful ranching family that settled in Loving County in the 1950s, was booked into Winkler County Jail on Friday and released on $20,000 bond, records show. He did not return phone calls seeking comment. Authorities also arrested former Loving County deputy Leroy Medlin Jr., 35, on one count of engaging in criminal activity — a second-degree felony that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. Medlin did not return phone calls, but his wife sent an email that questioned the motives behind the arrests. “We are being targeted,” she wrote, “at full force.” Officials with the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, the lead agency on the case, offered few specifics about the alleged crime. Commissioned through the Texas Department of Public Safety, the association has “special rangers” — certified peace officers — who investigate livestock theft and other agriculture crimes. Jeremy Fuchs, a spokesman for the association, said the yearlong investigation is ongoing and more charges are possible. The idea that the judge — who is paid $133,294 annually — would get picked up for cattle rustling was just too much for Susan Hays, a Texas election lawyer who’s wrangled with the Joneses in the past. “You can’t make this shit up,” she said. “It’s a pain in the ass to round up cattle and take them to market. And then to risk real trouble for it? It’s just asinine to me.” Word of the arrests spread faster than a prairie fire with a tailwind through this West Texas county, population 57 as of the last U.S. Census Bureau estimate. Spread over 671 square miles of mesquite-studded desert, Loving County has no school, no church, no grocery store and no bank. The few children who live there board the bus in the only town, Mentone (population 22), and travel about 35 miles each morning and afternoon to attend school. For decades, a handful of prominent families in Loving County have feuded bitterly for control of the local government, with the Joneses finally largely coming out ahead. Skeet Jones has served as the judge for more than 15 years. His sister is the county clerk. His cousin’s husband is the county attorney. His nephew is the constable. But some recently elected county officials have been butting heads with the Joneses and their allies, making for colorful commissioner’s court meetings and a much-anticipated November election. And blood is no longer holding the Jones family together. “He’s had free reign for the entire time since he’s been the judge,” said Skeet Jones’ nephew, Constable Brandon Jones, who was elected in 2016. “That’s given him a sense of power and impunity that he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants. Even the feeling of self-righteousness. That he can do no wrong.” When Skeet Jones was sworn in as judge in 2007, most of the caliche roads were rutted like washboards and residents still had to line up to get potable water dispensed from a community tank. But he presided over a period of unprecedented growth, as fracking boomed in the Permian Basin, feeding money into the county’s coffers. The parched landscape is dotted with massive gas plants, water plants and salt water disposal systems. Many of the surviving working ranches have “frac pads” for horizontally drilled wells that cut through the caliche and bedrock to free up the lifeblood for Loving County’s economy: oil and gas. The tax base hovers around $7 billion to $9 billion. And the county’s budget has grown from about $2 million in 2008 to more than $28 million. The salaries for many of the top officials in town — the judge, auditor, treasurer, clerk, justice of the peace, county attorney, constable and sheriff — are $100,000 or higher. Jones’ father, Elgin “Punk” Jones, and mother, Mary Belle Jones, started the P&M Jones Ranch in 1953, settling into a wood-frame house with no running water. “When I first came to Mentone in 1953, it was quite a shock,” Mary Belle Jones told the Texas Monthly in 1997. “I said to my husband, ‘Punk, how long are we going to live in this godforsaken place?’” But she came to love Loving County’s vast, open skyline. She served as the county’s chief appraiser for years. Punk Jones, the sheriff for 28 years, is credited with discovering the freshwater well field that feeds Mentone. Skeet Jones has gotten into trouble before, but nothing like this. In 2016, the state Commission on Judicial Conduct determined Jones failed to follow the law by charging steep fees — about $600 to $750 — for reducing tickets including speeding and marijuana possession down to parking tickets. The judge denied any involvement in negotiations over tickets and told the commission he just approved the plea deals presented to him. He was issued a public warning and ordered to take 10 hours of additional education. Medlin previously worked as a detective for the San Antonio Police Department, where records show he was issued indefinite suspensions — the department’s equivalent of being fired — three times. In 2015, he was placed on indefinite suspension for a 100-plus mph pursuit of a driver who had a toddler in the back seat, records show. Medlin was reinstated after an appeal. Then in 2018, Medlin engaged in another high-speed pursuit after telling dispatchers the driver “almost ran me over,” records show. But body and dash camera footage contradicted Medlin’s account, according to internal affairs reports. He appealed again, telling supervisors he felt threatened, even if it wasn’t evident from the videos. He was later issued another indefinite suspension after supervisors determined he issued tickets for violations he didn’t witness, records show. Medlin joined the Loving County Sheriff’s Office in January 2019 and “separated” from the agency less than two years later, records show. (Sheriff Chris Busse declined to say why.) Medlin also worked on Jones’ ranch before being hired by Loving County as a janitor and groundskeeper. Two ranch hands also were arrested on Friday. Cody Williams, 31, was charged with three counts of livestock theft and engaging in organized criminal activity, records show. He did not return a reporter’s phone call. Jonathon Alvarado, 23, faces one count of theft of livestock, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. He hung up on a reporter seeking comment. In addition to the judge, Medlin, Williams and Alvarado posted bond and were released from jail. | |
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| 05-22-22 06:49am - 851 days | #126 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Donald Trump is considering whether to support Amber Heard or Johnny Depp in their trials. Trump supports women's rights. But he also supports the rights of men to grope women by their pussies. So Trump will have to decide: can he act as a witness for both Heard and Depp? Or will he have to pick sides? Vote for your favorite. And Donate $100 to Donald Trump if you want a genuine letter from Trump, signed by real person. ---- ---- People Amber Heard's Agent Was Told 'Lack of Chemistry' with Jason Momoa Caused Reduced Aquaman 2 Role Charmaine Patterson Fri, May 20, 2022, 5:44 PM Amber Heard's agent says she was told the star's Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom role was reduced due to chemistry issues — but the agent believes that behind the scenes, negative press around Heard's accusations against Johnny Depp affected her career. WME's Jessica Kovacevic, the talent agent for the 36-year-old actress, virtually testified in Depp's defamation lawsuit against Heard on Friday, stating that she was told Heard received a smaller part in the forthcoming sequel because of her "lack of chemistry" with costar Jason Momoa, 42, who leads the film. Depp, 58, filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit in March 2019 against Heard claiming that her December 2018 Washington Post op-ed about domestic violence hurt his career prospects, even though he wasn't mentioned by name in the article. Heard was first cast in 2017's Justice League and starred as Mera in the original Aquaman the following year. Kovacevic said while testifying that Heard was also set to make $2 million in the sequel. The actress has already filmed the movie, and it is set to hit theaters in March 2023. RELATED: Johnny Depp Waves to Cheering Fans Outside Courtroom and Jokes He Made Waffles for 'All of Them' Her agent testified that she was told Warner Bros.' reason for allegedly reducing Heard's role in Aquaman 2 was because of "the lack of chemistry between her and Jason." The agent said WME learned Heard's role as Mera was allegedly reduced when Heard received the script. Speaking about Heard's success after Aquaman, Kovacevic said that she believed the actress's career did not take off as much as Momoa's. When asked how Heard's career was harmed, Kovacevic said, "In my experience ... Your career takes a turn after something like that. She was very well received in the movie at the time, everyone was happy with her at the time, there were no issues. Then to have a complete downturn after that, and then have that coincide with constant tweets and negativity put out about her, I don't have a physical piece of paper of evidence, but it's the only logical conclusion I draw." | |
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| 05-22-22 01:19pm - 851 days | #127 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Your taxpayer dollars at work. When Trump became President, he made sure your tax payer dollars were spent wisely. Do not give money to old people. That is a waste. Give it to the millionaires, who know how to spend and save wisely. And if a Trump appointee made any errors, take 10-20 years to investigate, before making any decisions. You must allow the full weight of the law to grind slowly but surely. ----- ----- Washington Post 'Full investigation' pledged of vast fines imposed by Social Security More than 100 people who received disability benefits to which they were not entitled were hit with penalties as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those fines were imposed on poor, disabled and elderly people, many of whom had no hope of ever being able to pay. (Getty Images) (Getty Images) Lisa Rein Sat, May 21, 2022, 2:56 PM The acting Social Security commissioner will launch a "full investigation" on Monday of Inspector General Gail Ennis's oversight of an anti-fraud program that imposed extensive penalties on disabled and elderly people, a senior agency official said Saturday. The action follows a Washington Post report that revealed how attorneys in charge of a little-known program run by Social Security's watchdog division issued unprecedented fines starting during the Trump administration. Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. More than 100 people who received disability benefits to which they were not entitled were hit with penalties as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those fines were imposed on poor, disabled and elderly people, many of whom had no hope of ever being able to pay. The acting commissioner "has very serious concerns about the issues raised by The Washington Post about the inspector general's oversight of this program," Scott Frey, chief of staff to Kilolo Kijakazi, said in an interview. Kijakazi has scheduled a meeting with her senior staff on Monday "to discuss how to proceed," Frey said. Top House Democrats with oversight of the Social Security Administration and its watchdog also called on President Biden to investigate, calling the penalties an "apparent abuse of authority." "We are outraged by this stunning report," Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass.; Social Security subcommittee Chairman John Larson, D-Conn.; and worker and family support subcommittee Chairman Danny Davis, D-Ill., wrote in a statement late Friday. The lawmakers called on the president and Kijakazi to "swiftly investigate this apparent abuse of authority, to put in place safeguards to prevent future abuse, and to provide relief to any individuals wrongfully victimized." A White House official said in an email, "We are aware of the reporting but have no further comment at this time." A spokesman for the Senate Finance Committee, which also has jurisdiction over Social Security, said the committee is "evaluating a number of steps" in response to the article. The remarkable penalties issued by the Civil Monetary Penalty Program started in 2018 as the program was floundering. Attorneys went against federal regulations and deviated from how the program had recovered money from those accused of fraud for more than two decades. The inspector general's office failed to take into account recipients' financial state, their age, their intentions and level of remorse, among other factors, according to interviews, documents and sworn testimony before an administrative law judge. Staff attorneys were directed to charge those affected as much as twice the money they had received in error, on top of the fines. Over a seven-month period that ended in mid-2019, 83 people were charged a total of $11.5 million, the documents obtained by The Post show — a jump from less than $700,000 for all of 2017. It is not clear whether that is a full accounting of those affected by the practice of imposing stepped-up fines, which was halted by Ennis's office last year amid ongoing whistleblower complaints. Two senior officials who raised repeated concerns about the fees to Ennis and her top staff after Ennis took office as a Trump appointee in 2019 — were abruptly placed on administrative leave. Ennis then fired one official and directed that her staff demote the other, Deborah Shaw, an attorney who was found by an administrative law judge at the Merit Systems Protection Board in May to have been the victim of a "prima facie case of whistleblower reprisal" by Ennis's office. The office was ordered to restore Shaw's back pay and benefits and reinstate her as a supervisor. Ennis had told Shaw and the other official, senior executive Joscelyn Funnié, that she would not renegotiate the penalties because she did not want to draw attention to the program and worried that Social Security would take it away from her office, according to testimony and four people familiar with her comments during a staff meeting. Ennis spokeswoman Rebecca Rose said in an email Saturday that the civil monetary program imposes penalties on those who commit fraud against the Social Security Administration and its trust fund. "The ultimate victims are taxpayers and future, rightful beneficiaries," she said. Rose wrote that the inspector general "is committed to ensuring that penalties and assessments are imposed fairly, consistently and in accordance with the law." She said Ennis will be responsive to "any Congressional inquiries" and will keep the acting commissioner "informed" about the program's operations. Inspectors general at large agencies have broad autonomy over their operations once the Senate confirms them. Ennis reports both to Congress and the Social Security commissioner, but neither engages directly in hiring or policy decisions. Federal watchdogs also are monitored by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), which sets government-wide policies and investigates complaints of misconduct against them. The group's chairwoman, Allison Lerner, also the watchdog for the National Science Foundation, said in an interview that "while I cannot comment on any specific inspector general, we have a time-tested process for handling allegations of misconduct against inspectors general or their direct reports." Ennis was named earlier this year to the council's Integrity Committee, which is in charge of any investigations. Any member who is the subject of an inquiry must recuse themselves, Lerner said. - - - The Washington Post's Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report. | |
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| 05-22-22 02:30pm - 851 days | #128 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Donald Trump vows to publish his own newspaper for FAKE NEWS. Says that everyone lies. It's part of life. That is why he became President of the Untied States of Trumperland: To spread the word that people are liars. And one of the biggest liars is our bestest and favorited President, Donald Trump. Donate $100 to Trump, and you might get a letter from him, signed by a real person. Or not. ---- ---- NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week Associated Press The Associated Press May 20, 2022, 9:50 PM Scroll back up to restore default view. A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts: ___ Experts: Mars ‘doorway’ just small crevice on barren terrain CLAIM: NASA’s Mars rover has captured images of a doorway cut into a mountainside of the red planet, suggesting the presence of extraterrestrial life. THE FACTS: Social media users shared a magnified version of the image, which made it appear the formation was much larger than its actual dimensions. NASA officials and Mars experts say the curious formation is nothing more than a narrow, naturally-occurring crevice in the rocky, barren terrain. Andrew Good, a spokesman for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told the AP that the image being circulated is a “very, very, very zoomed in shot” of a naturally formed rock crevice. On Wednesday, NASA posted on its website more detailed renderings of the area, which it says is a mound of rock nicknamed “East Cliffs” on Mars’ Mount Sharp. Curiosity, a rover that’s been exploring the mountain since landing in 2012, took the image of the crevice on May 7. Good said that NASA scientists overseeing the rover estimate the opening is 12 inches (30 centimeters) tall and 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide. “You can see all kinds of cracks and fractures in the surrounding area,” Good wrote in an email. “There are linear fractures throughout this outcrop, and this is a location where several linear fractures happen to intersect.” Gaia Stucky de Quay, a researcher at Harvard’s earth and planetary sciences department who studies Mars’ surface, said images suggest this particular spot started developing linear cracks until a large wedge of rock eventually broke off, perhaps due to wind erosion, dust storms or “marsquakes.” “The shadows make it look like a perfect rectangle in low quality images, which has been used to suggest it is a ’doorway,” Stucky de Quay wrote in an email. “But cracks generally form in straight lines, and you can actually see very clearly into the inside of the rock wall, and see the back of the wall, with even more cracks in it.” The assessment from NASA and other Mars experts hasn’t deterred some online skeptics from questioning the timing of the image release. It came just days before Congress opened its first hearing in more than half a century on unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, on Tuesday. Rather than extraterrestrials, lawmakers at the hearing honed in on concerns that China, Russia and other well-equipped foreign adversaries could be using new aerospace technology against the U.S. and its allies without their knowledge. — Associated Press writer Philip Marcelo in Boston contributed this report. ___ WHO health regulations don’t infringe on US decision-making CLAIM: The Biden administration is proposing amendments to the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations that would transfer U.S. sovereign authority over health care decisions to the WHO director-general. THE FACTS: The International Health Regulations, which are aimed at detecting disease outbreaks, allow the WHO director-general to declare a public health emergency of international concern. Member countries agree to abide by the guidelines, but the WHO does not have the power to enforce them, nor can it interfere in other countries’ decision-making processes, according to experts. As the WHO hosts its 75th World Health Assembly beginning on Sunday, some social media users are misrepresenting proposals the U.S. is bringing to the conference, where delegates from 194 member states convene to discuss priorities. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. has drafted a series of amendments to a legal framework called the International Health Regulations, which define countries’ rights and obligations in handling cross-border public health emergencies. The U.S. amendments call for greater accountability and transparency in responding to such emergencies. But some remarks, including those by former U.S. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, bloggers and conservative political commentators, are misrepresenting the proposals to falsely claim they would take health policy decision-making powers away from U.S. officials and grant unilateral authority to the WHO’s director-general. “These amendments would transfer our health care decision-making out of U.S. hands, into the hands of the director-general of the WHO,” said Bachmann, a former congresswoman from Minnesota, while calling into a conservative radio show last week. The segment was posted on Facebook, where it was viewed more than 32,000 times. Bachmann went on to suggest that the same amendments would allow the director-general to impose global lockdowns and vaccine mandates, as well as force climate change policy and even gun control measures on member nations. Bachmann did not respond to a request for comment. Experts familiar with the International Health Regulations say these assertions are misleading, and the idea that the director-general could impose enforceable mandates on other countries is unfounded. Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University law professor and director of the university’s WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, told the AP that the director-general only has the power to make recommendations, not enact laws or otherwise dictate national policy decisions. “It is utterly untrue that the IHR would interfere with health care decisions or transfer such decisions to the WHO Director-General,” he wrote in an email. Gostin, who also helped write the 2005 version of the IHR, cited the fact that China signed the IHR, but violated it by delaying reporting of the initial COVID-19 outbreak and later pushing back against the WHO investigation into its origins. The U.S. amendments seek to prevent this from happening, by tightening requirements for reporting information to the WHO and allowing them to conduct unimpeded investigations, among other changes. Dr. David Freedman, the president-elect of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, who served on a WHO committee of IHR experts for a decade, reiterated that the WHO “has zero enforcement, police or punitive powers.” Further, the IHR is mostly focused on preventing the spread of infectious diseases and pandemics, he said. Climate change, gun control or even specific measures like vaccinations or lockdowns are not mentioned. Some social media users are also conflating the IHR with a separate effort the WHO has launched to develop a global accord on pandemic prevention and response. That accord is still being drafted, but experts told the AP there’s no evidence it would cede any national decision-making powers, either. “Unfortunately, there has been a small minority of groups making misleading statements and purposefully distorting facts,” WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said during a news briefing Tuesday, clarifying that the WHO does not override member nations’ sovereignty. — Associated Press writer Sophia Tulp in Atlanta contributed this report. ___ Trump misleads on Afghanistan casualties CLAIM: When former President Donald Trump was in charge, 18 months went by in Afghanistan when “we didn’t lose one American soldier.” THE FACTS: There is no year-and-half time frame under Trump’s presidency alone that no combat deaths among U.S. service members in Afghanistan were reported. But while speaking in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, Trump claimed, “when I was in charge, in 18 months, we didn’t lose one American soldier.” After mentioning that day’s deadly shooting in Buffalo, New York, in which a white gunman killed 10 Black people in a supermarket, Trump reiterated that “in 18 months in Afghanistan, we lost nobody." He didn’t specify which 18-month period he was referencing, and a spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for clarification. During Trump’s presidency, which ran from January 20, 2017, to January 20, 2021, there were 45 combat deaths among U.S. service members reported in Afghanistan, as well as 18 “non-hostile” deaths, according to the Pentagon's Defense Casualty Analysis System. While there was an 18-month stretch that saw no combat, or “hostile,” deaths in Afghanistan — from early February 2020 to August 2021 — it was a time period that also included Biden's presidency. There were two combat deaths reported in early February 2020, when Trump was president, and none reported again until late August 2021, when an attack killed 13 U.S. troops amid the exit from Afghanistan, during Biden’s presidency. There were also several “non-hostile” deaths among U.S. service members in Afghanistan during that time frame, specifically in 2020. Looking at other periods of Trump’s presidency also tells a different story than the one he offered. During the last, full 18 months before Trump left office in January 2021 — from July 2019 to December 2020 — there were 12 combat deaths reported. Nearly 2,500 U.S. service members died during the 20-year war. — Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report. ___ | |
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| 05-24-22 04:23am - 850 days | #129 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Donald Trump: the uncrowned hero of the Untied States of Trumperland. Donald Trump has come out swinging. He refuses to bow down to Democrats, and says we must grab our AK47s, our 357 Magnums, and storm the White House and take back what belongs to Donald Trump. If we need to put the nation in Civil War, so be it: Justice must be served. Give me liberty, or give me death, screams Trump. I will not live under a Democrat who stole the election. Trump, Elon Musk, and Vlad Putin are seen holding hands in this photo, taken at a secret hide-a-way in Florida. Are they plotting to retake the White House with Russian military forces? ---- ---- TheGrio Donald Trump sparks backlash over post calling for ‘civil war’ TheGrio Staff Mon, May 23, 2022, 12:42 PM America’s former president is shocking voters again, this time for appearing to advocate civil war in the United States. Former President Donald Trump is sparking backlash again, this time for a social media post he shared that appeared to advocate civil war in America. According to Newsweek, Trump’s posting was a Twitter message uploaded on Truth Social, a social media network founded by the former president after he was barred from major platforms following the Jan. 6 attacks on Capitol Hill. The war remark was made in reaction to a screenshot of a Twitter message in March from El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, a tweet that former CBS News reporter-turned-conspiracy-theorist Lara Logan shared. “The most powerful country in the world is falling so fast, that it makes you rethink what are the real reasons,” Bukele asserted. “Something so big and powerful can’t be destroyed so quickly, unless the enemy comes from within.” Truth Social user MAGA King Thanos replied to the tweet with the phrase “Civil war” — earning himself a “ReTruth,” that site’s version of a retweet, from Trump. Lawyer and political activist George Conway, who is married to former White House advisor Kellyanne Conway, criticized Trump’s thumbs-up to discord in America. He believes many Republicans are mired in fear. During a one-on-one Sunday with Jim Acosta on CNN, he called them “terrified of a Republican base that’s become increasingly radicalized, that actually does believe that people who politically disagree with them are a threat to the nation and therefore, violence could be necessary to fight them off.” According to Conway, “Trump could basically go away tomorrow and never be heard from or seen again, and these termites are set loose in our country, eating from the foundation of our democracy. And that is something that we have to take more seriously.” David Weissman, a U.S. Army veteran who no longer supports Trump, was also among several people who slammed him for attempting to incite violence once again. Newsweek reported that Weissman sent a Twitter note in response to SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s assurance that if the billionaire bought Twitter, he would allow Trump back on the website. “Hey, @elonmusk, did you see Trump supporting a call for a civil war on his Truth Social platform?” Weissman tweeted. “Are you sure you want that on this site if your deal goes through?” There has been no response from neither Musk nor Trump. Trump created Truth Social after he was accused of instigating the Jan. 6 attacks and worries mounted that his postings would incite more violence. On that infamous date, a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed Capitol Hill to prevent the certification of the electoral votes in favor of Democratic candidate Joe Biden, believing his baseless claims of voter fraud. Five people died during the attacks, and hundreds of others were injured. | |
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| 05-24-22 04:47am - 849 days | #130 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Trump reveals that Sleepy Joe Biden, the Fake Democrat who stole the White House away from the GOP, planned to have Trump abducted and held in a secret prison. Never before has the Untied States of Trumperland faced such terrifying threats from a sitting President. Fortunately, Trump has gathered a loyal band of supporters who will fight to the death, to protect our beloved leader. And federal forces under Biden who enter the State of Florida, will be under a sentence of Death! Send $100 to Trump now, and you can get a signed letter from the Great Man Himself, with a Certificate of Authenticity. For an added $500, Melania Trump will add her signature. | |
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| 05-25-22 11:04am - 848 days | #131 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Republicans, the party of liars, thieves, hypocrites. That is why Donald Trump ran as a Republican. To have the freedom to lie, steal, and utter false statements. But do not worry: only the mentally ill would vote for Trump. ------ ------ HuffPost Rep. Paul Gosar Spreads Lie About Texas Shooter In Hateful Since-Deleted Tweet Josephine Harvey Wed, May 25, 2022, 12:43 AM Extremist Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) deleted a disturbing and offensive tweet Tuesday that falsely claimed the gunman who killed more than 20 people at a Texas school was a “transsexual leftist illegal alien.” The lawmaker wrote the message in response to a Twitter user who wondered if the shooter was a member of the far-right, “the kind of trash that” Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Gosar “travel to speak to?” before deleting their tweet. Gosar replied: Paul Gosar deleted a tweet containing racist, transphobic and false claims about a mass shooting at an elementary school. (Photo: Twitter) The tweet was deleted about two hours after it was published. Hours earlier, a shooter killed at least 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Texas State Police identified the gunman as Salvador Ramos, 18. He was killed by responding officers, according to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R). Gosar, an anti-immigration hardliner who routinely cozies up to white nationalists, was apparently promoting a false claim circulating on right-wing networks. Users shared images of a trans person unrelated to the attack claiming they were the shooter. The lawmaker was censured and stripped of his committee assignments last year after he posted an anime video depicting him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and threatening President Joe Biden. Only two Republicans voted with Democrats on the measure. It did little to deter him from continuing with his increasingly radical behavior. In February, he spoke at the white nationalist America First Political Action Conference, prompting renewed calls for his expulsion from Congress. Nonetheless, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) said Gosar would be able to regain his committee assignments if Republicans win control in November’s midterm elections. Gosar’s own family members have called for his expulsion. His brother, Tim Gosar, said last year that he is “dangerous, unhinged and is reckless.” Six of his nine siblings endorsed his 2018 election opponent, and several appeared in an ad in 2021 calling for him to be held accountable for his role in the Capitol riot. This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated. | |
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| 05-25-22 11:28am - 848 days | #132 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz rush to Texas to support the NRA. In times like this, where crazies go out to kill unarmed civilians, Trump and Cruz support the right of crazies to buy guns. "We must stand firm with the US Constitution", yells Trump and Cruz. They are linking arms with the NRA to support the right of people, including crazies, to bear arms. If people die to support freedom, that is their right. However, the Secret Service is banning the right of Americans to bear arms when listening to Donald Trump speak. "Considering Trump’s address, the U.S. Secret Service is prohibiting firearms from the general assembly hall where he’ll be speaking, along with knives, pepper spray and any other kind of weapon, according to the NRA’s website." This is obviously wrong. How can we defend ourselves if we can't carry guns????? ---- ---- NRA to host Texas convention days after Uvalde school shooting Yahoo News Alexander Nazaryan May 25, 2022, 8:58 AM WASHINGTON — Just days after the fatal shooting of 19 children in Uvalde, Texas, the nation’s most powerful gun lobby is slated to host its convention in Houston, on the other side of the big and contentious state. Scheduled long before Tuesday afternoon’s shooting — committed by an 18-year-old who had purchased his guns legally — the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting, which starts Friday, will nevertheless sit in uneasy juxtaposition to the nation’s latest gun tragedy. In his impassioned remarks on Tuesday night, President Biden charged that groups like the NRA were preventing the passage of sensible reforms. “As a nation, we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” the president said. Two people embrace each other, both in tears. People outside the SSGT Willie de Leon Civic Center in Uvalde, Texas, where students were transported from Robb Elementary School after the shooting on Tuesday. (Marco Bello/Reuters) Slated to attend are Texas elected leaders including Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz, both of whom are fervent supporters of gun rights. Both Republicans expressed sorrow at the carnage in Uvalde but have historically shown little willingness to enact measures to limit the ease with which guns can be purchased. But two other Texas Republicans won’t be there, despite having earlier committed to attending. One of them, Sen. John Cornyn, is a leading Republican in the upper chamber and a close ally of Republican leader Mitch McConnell. “Prior to the tragedy in Uvalde we had already informed the NRA he would not be able to speak due to an unexpected change in his schedule,” Cornyn press secretary Natalie Yezbick told Yahoo News in an email. “He has to be in D.C. for personal reasons on Friday.” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who represents the Houston suburbs and is a supporter of gun rights, will also not travel to Houston for the NRA convention. “Congressman Crenshaw is in Ukraine and we let the event organizer know that he wouldn’t be back in the country in time to attend the event Friday evening,” his chief of staff, Justin Discigil, told Yahoo News. The NRA did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo News. Images of Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Sen. John Cornyn. Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Sen. John Cornyn. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images, Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images) On his social media platform Truth Social, former President Donald Trump, who is expected to speak at the event, said Wednesday that he still plans to attend. “America needs real solutions and real leadership in this moment,” the post said, “not politicians and partisanship. That’s why I will keep my longtime commitment to speak in Texas at the NRA Convention and deliver an important address to America.” The offices of Cruz and Abbott did not respond to requests for comment from Yahoo News. Cruz is a regular attendee at the annual NRA meeting. He has an A+ rating from the organization for his opposition to gun reforms and has, like other Republican legislators from Texas, been a consistent recipient of NRA largesse in the form of campaign contributions. Considering Trump’s address, the U.S. Secret Service is prohibiting firearms from the general assembly hall where he’ll be speaking, along with knives, pepper spray and any other kind of weapon, according to the NRA’s website. Though once a relatively moderate organization of gun enthusiasts, the NRA has morphed into a political powerhouse that sees virtually all gun control measures as an infringement on Second Amendment liberties. In general, the organization gives far more money to Republican candidates seeking elected office than it does to Democrats. The NRA endorsed Trump in 2016 and again in 2020. “His support has been and continues to be unrelenting,” the NRA said in a letter endorsing Trump for reelection. Trump lost to Joe Biden, who has an F rating from the NRA. | |
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| 05-25-22 12:16pm - 848 days | #133 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Donald Trump is considering a move to North Korea. Although Trump is besties with Vlad Putin, he is also great friends with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. And if Trump moves to North Korea, Kim Jong Un has promised Trump a military uniform with lots of gold and platinum medals. Trump is negotiating with both Putin and Un for the right to wear military uniforms of both nations. Also, would they put him in charge of all military forces? That is the deciding point, that Trump needs. Unfortunately, Trump did not wear the military uniform of the Untied States of Trumperland, because bone spurs kept him out of the military during the Vietnam War. He would have volunteered, except for family obligations. ----- ----- Seoul: North Korea launches 2 ballistic missiles toward sea Associated Press May 24, 2022, 4:45 PM FILE - In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, watches a military parade to mark the 90th anniversary of North Korea's army at the Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea on April 25, 2022. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday, May 25, the missile was fired toward waters near North Korea's eastern coast. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea launched two ballistic missiles toward the sea on Wednesday, South Korea’s military said. The missile firings came three days after the leaders of South Korea and the United States agreed to consider expanded military exercises to deter North Korean nuclear threats during President Joe Biden’s visit to Seoul. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missiles were fired toward waters off North Korea’s eastern coast. The statement gave no further details. The launches were North Korea's 17th round of missile firings this year. Experts have said North Korea's testing is aimed at modernizing its weapons arsenal and at applying pressure on its rivals amid long-dormant nuclear diplomacy. North Korea’s unusual pace in weapons tests this year included its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile since 2017 in March. U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials have that North Korea could soon conduct its first nuclear test in nearly five years. | |
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| 05-25-22 10:15pm - 848 days | #134 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Ted Cruz, genius of the Republican party, tells how to prevent school shootings: Put armed police at the only entrance to the school. That way, any gun man has to pass through the police entry point. And if the people don't submit to a full body search, either arrest them or shoot them, whichever is better. Of course, that might slow down people trying to get into or out of the school, but better safe than sorry. Is Ted Cruz a genius or not? He stands besides Donald Trump in protecting the rights of people to arm themselves. Ted Cruz says the federal government needs to give free classes to people in how to shoot. Only then, will we be safe on the streets. And in the schools. ------ HuffPost Ted Cruz Flayed Over Ludicrous Idea For Preventing School Shootings Josephine Harvey Wed, May 25, 2022, 7:44 PM According to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the solution to school shootings is fewer doorways and more guns. After 19 children and two teachers were killed at a Texas elementary school Tuesday by a man armed with an assault rifle, the state’s senator suggested that schools would be safer if there was only one way in or out. “One of the things that everyone agreed is don’t have all of these unlocked back doors. Have one door into and out of the school and have ... armed police officers at that door,” he told Fox News Wednesday. Armed police officers were at the door quite quickly, thanks to several 911 calls. Those officers shot at the gunman and still did not prevent the deaths of those 21 victims. “If that had happened,” Cruz said, “if those federal grants had gone to this school, when that psychopath arrived, the armed police officers could have taken him out. And we’d have 19 children and two teachers still alive.” He accused Democrats calling for gun reform of “empty political posturing” after a tragedy and then immediately complained that Democrats blocked legislation he introduced nearly a decade ago that would spend $300 million on federal grants to “harden schools to make them safer” with upgrades like bulletproof doors, bulletproof glass and armed police officers. The U.S. has significantly more mass shootings than any other developed country, some of the loosest controls over who can buy guns and what sort of firearms are allowed. Elected Republicans have repeatedly called for heightened security and mental health resources to protect children from shooting massacres, even though the data has shown again and again that the U.S. is an outlier on guns, not mental health or school security. House Democrats and some Republicans have passed two bills that would tighten gun sales regulations by expanding background checks ― measures that consistently attract support from a majority of Americans in polls. But the legislation has stalled due to resistance from Senate Republicans, many of whom receive enormous campaign support from gun lobbyists. Cruz, for example, has received nearly $750,000 during his time in office, according to campaign finance tracker Open Secrets. His proposal to cut back on doors instead of guns met immediate backlash online. See the reaction below. This is Kirkwood High School where I graduated. It is a campus with some 12+ buildings on 3 streets. So, @tedcruz tell me about how they should lock all doors but one and put armed cops on it. Performative jackassery to divert us again. It’s the guns you idiot. pic.twitter.com/GPffNQkBYr — Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) May 26, 2022 This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated. | |
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| 05-26-22 08:41am - 847 days | #135 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
He said. She said. Police narrative on Texas school shooting questioned. " However, the Associated Press reported late Wednesday that police waited outside the school for at least 40 minutes while parents and onlookers urged them to do something. “Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” Javier Cazares, whose daughter Jacklyn was killed in the attack, told the AP. “More could have been done.” “There were five or six of [us] fathers, hearing the gunshots, and [police officers] were telling us to move back,” Cazares told the Washington Post. “We didn’t care about us. We wanted to storm the building. We were saying, ‘Let’s go,’ because that is how worried we were, and we wanted to get our babies out.” " So the state governor is saying the cops are heroes, who saved everyone they could. While some parents are saying the cops waited at least 40 minutes outside the school while shots were heard inside the school. Maybe the cops were trying to figure out if they needed to go inside the school? Or trying to find school blueprints, like they do in the movies? Or deciding if they were hearing firecracker, in celebration of the school closing for a holiday? Let's be honest: did the cops do a first rate job saving teachers and children? Or maybe they were a little slow to stop the gunman who was killing teachers and children? And the governor, in praising the cops, was only being a politician: I'm for the police. Whatever they did was heroic, so I did my job as governor in putting these police on the job. Vote for me, I'm a great governor. Ignore the possibility that maybe the police weren't as great as what I'm saying they were. But don't worry. The truth will come out. The police are committed to releasing all details of the event within 10 years, or when ordered to by the courts, which could take up to 100 years to decide on legal issues, or whenever it's convenient. In the meantime, ignore all reports and videos by the news agencies, which disagree with official police reports. ------ ------ Police narrative on Texas school shooting in question as new details emerge Yahoo News Christopher Wilson May 26, 2022, 6:21 AM Scroll back up to restore default view. The official account of what happened during a shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, is under scrutiny following the reporting of new details. At a press briefing Wednesday afternoon, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott praised police for their response to the massacre Tuesday that killed 19 kids and two teachers. A Border Patrol officer fatally shot the gunman, who authorities identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos. “The reality is as horrible as what happened, it could have been worse," Abbott said. "The reason it was not worse is because law enforcement officials did what they do. They showed amazing courage by running towards gunfire for the singular purpose of trying to save lives. And it is a fact that because of their quick response getting on the scene, being able to respond to the gunman and eliminate the gunman, they were able to save lives. Unfortunately, not enough.” Greg Abbott and a dozen or so other people are on stage behind a table with microphones in front of a red curtain and American flag. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other officials hold a press conference to provide updates on the Uvalde elementary school shooting, at Uvalde High School on Wednesday. (Photo by Allison Dinner/AFP) However, the Associated Press reported late Wednesday that police waited outside the school for at least 40 minutes while parents and onlookers urged them to do something. “Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” Javier Cazares, whose daughter Jacklyn was killed in the attack, told the AP. “More could have been done.” “There were five or six of [us] fathers, hearing the gunshots, and [police officers] were telling us to move back,” Cazares told the Washington Post. “We didn’t care about us. We wanted to storm the building. We were saying, ‘Let’s go,’ because that is how worried we were, and we wanted to get our babies out.” A nearly seven-minute video posted to social media seems to support the AP’s story, showing police restraining parents outside of the school, including holding one person on the ground. Uvalde, a small city of about 16,000 people, spends roughly 40% of its annual city budget on police. Police said the shooter had barricaded himself inside the school, but the AP reported that he barricaded himself by locking the door. Border Patrol had difficulty breaching the locked classroom door and had to get a staff member with a key to unlock it. “The bottom line is law enforcement was there. They did engage immediately. They did contain (Ramos) in the classroom,” Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told reporters Wednesday. Flowers are placed on and next to a brick structure with a sign reading: Robb Elementary School. Flowers are placed on a makeshift memorial outside Robb Elementary School on Wednesday. (Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) Law enforcement did not provide a televised press briefing on Tuesday evening. Abbott spoke briefly about the shooting in the late afternoon before attending a campaign fundraiser. School district leadership gave brief statements without providing any details. Officials said Wednesday that they immediately engaged the shooter so he was pinned down and couldn’t access other areas of the school. NBC News reported early Thursday morning that, “For the second time, it appears the information initially provided by Texas law enforcement officials was wrong. The shooter was not stopped by the first officer that encountered him. And he wasn’t pinned down but rather appears to have locked himself in a classroom.” Law enforcement had previously said the shooter was wearing body armor but also retracted that initial claim. A large white trailer labeled: Emergency Medical Task Force Texas is parked on the street near orange cones and other vehicles. Texas state troopers outside Robb Elementary School on Wednesday. (Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) In an interview Wednesday evening with San Antonio outlet KENS 5, a fourth grader who said he was hiding in a classroom indicated that police officers’ actions may have caused another child who was hiding from the shooter to get shot. “When the cops came, the cop said: ‘Yell if you need help!’ And one of the persons in my class said ‘help.’ The guy overheard and he came in and shot her,” said the boy. “The cop barged into that classroom. The guy shot at the cop. And the cops started shooting.” The two teachers in the fourth-grade classroom, Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles, were killed. The student said they were “nice teachers” who “went in front of my classmates to help. To save them.” Lt. Christopher Olivarez of the Texas Department of Public Safety told CNN Thursday morning that authorities were still gathering information on what had happened, including why it took officers so long to enter the building. “I can tell you right now, as a father myself, I would want to go in too, but it’s a volatile situation,” Olivarez said when asked about Cazares’s comments. “We have an active shooter situation, we’re trying to preserve any further loss of life, and as much as they want to go into that school, we cannot have individuals go into that school, especially if they’re not armed.” Olivarez said the school did have surveillance video that the FBI was obtaining. “We’re trying to establish every single timeline, as far as how long the shooter was inside the classroom, how long did the shooting take place, but as of right now, we have not been able to establish that,” Olivarez said. “We want to provide factual information as opposed to just providing timelines that are preliminary. We estimate anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour.” Olivarez also said they were still gathering the exact details of the initial confrontation between the shooter and the school resource officer. Olivarez said the initial report he had received was that gunfire was exchanged between the two but that information had yet to be corroborated. | |
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| 05-26-22 08:55am - 847 days | #136 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Reality TV. The real reality. How to manage your life if you are a celebrity. Get your moments of fame video-ed and photo-ed by the news. Did Amber Heard's team get video evidence of Johnny Depp hurting Amber Heard? Did they publicize it? Does a bear shit in the woods? ---- ---- Ex-TMZ employee claims Amber Heard staged photo-op of alleged Johnny Depp bruise in 2016 Yahoo Celebrity Taryn Ryder May 25, 2022, 3:22 PM A former TMZ employee testified on Wednesday at Johnny Depp and Amber Heard's defamation trial and lifted the curtain on how some stars work with the paparazzi. Morgan Tremaine was called as a rebuttal witness for Depp, despite TMZ's parent company EHM production trying to block that from happening. Tremaine worked as a field assignment manager and was in charge of about 20 paparazzi in Los Angeles. When asked who usually tipped off TMZ, he explained, "Oftentimes it would be publicists, managers, agents or B-list celebrities... and lawyers, definitely." Tremaine testified that he was instructed to dispatch photographers to a Los Angeles courthouse on May 27, 2016 — the day Heard filed for a temporary restraining order from Depp. He said his news producers would not have given him that assignment without verifying the credibility of the source who sent the tip that Heard would be filing a TRO. Amber Heard leaves the a Los Angeles courthouse on May 27, 2016 with what appears to be a bruise on her right cheek amid Johnny Depp divorce. Amber Heard leaves the a Los Angeles courthouse on May 27, 2016 with what appears to be a bruise on her right cheek amid Johnny Depp divorce. (Photo: Reuters) "We were trying to capture Amber leaving the courthouse and an alleged bruise on the right side of her face," he told the court. "She was going to sort of stop and turn towards the camera to display the bruise on the right side of her face, the alleged bruise." When asked if TMZ got the shot, Tremaine replied, "We did." (Heard previously denied working with TMZ.) Tremaine said he was assigned to photograph Heard amid the actress's contentious divorce on three other occasions. On Aug 6. 2016, he was instructed to dispatch paparazzi to a parking lot adjacent to the law office where Heard was set to appear for a deposition. "Do you typically send paparazzi to parking lots of law offices?" Depp's lawyer, Camille Vasquez, asked. "No, not at all," Tremaine replied. "Did you get the shot of Ms. Heard?" Vasquez asked "We did," he replied. On August 12, 2016, Tremaine testified that TMZ received a "video depicting Johnny Depp slamming some cabinets that was captured by Ms. Heard." "The video was sent in through our email tip line," Tremaine explained. He confirmed TMZ owns the copyright to the video. "How does TMZ obtain copyright over images and videos?" Vasquez asked. "The only way to obtain copyright over media would be if we shot it ourselves, if it was sent to the tip line and the source verified it was from the original copyright owner and then either purchased from that person or given to us and then the third option would be if it was directly given to us by the copyright holder like a direct source," Tremaine replied. Tremaine said TMZ was able to verify the source so quickly, they got the video up in 15 minutes. He also told the jury the video they posted was edited. "It was much shorter than the video that's been played in this trial," Tremaine testified. "There was a bit at the beginning that was played here in which Ms. Heard is seemingly sort of setting up the camera and getting into position. And then, there's a bit at the end where she's seemingly snickering and looks at the camera. That part was not present in what we received." When asked if TMZ edited the video, he replied, "No. Not even a little." During cross-examination, Heard's lawyer accused Tremaine of seeking his "15-minutes of fame." "I stand to gain nothing from this. I'm actually putting myself kind of in the target of TMZ, a very litigious organization. And I'm not seeking any 15-minutes here," Tremaine replied. "I could say the same thing about taking Amber Heard as a client, for you." Depp and his lawyer, Ben Chew, seemed to find that answer amusing. When Heard was cross-examined earlier this month, Depp's lawyer accused the actress of staging "a photoshoot" at the courthouse when filing her TRO. "What does that get me? If I wanted to leak things about Johnny I could have done that in much more successful way, in a bigger way for years," Heard said, denying she tipped off TMZ. "Not when you were extorting him for $7 million," Vasquez said, referencing the divorce settlement Heard received. "I got a fraction of what I was entitled to in the state of California by the way," Heard replied. "What extortion?" MORE: Kate Moss testifies that Johnny Depp "never pushed" or "threw me down any stairs" | |
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| 05-26-22 09:03am - 847 days | #137 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Conservative Republicans are blaming transgenders for the Texas shooting. Are they trying to hide the fact that the governor of Texas is a secret gay? That many gays hate gays, and are pushing for laws that will put gays in jail? ------ ------ Trans woman’s photo used to spread baseless online theory about Texas shooter The Today Show Ben Goggin and Jo Yurcaba and Ben Collins May 25, 2022, 6:34 PM Sam, a transgender woman who lives in Georgia, said that on Tuesday evening, Reddit users started commenting on a photo of her that she had shared on the platform three months ago. They told her the photo was being shared on 4chan, a forum website with little moderation, and people were saying that it showed the shooter who killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday. The shooter, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, was killed on the scene by police. Sam, 20, who asked to go by her first name to protect her privacy and safety, told NBC News that the photo and others were taken from her personal Instagram page, and that she’s faced harassment and threats as the image has spread. “This isn’t the first time I was harassed, but it is the first time I’ve been accused of murder,” she said. For Sam, the false narrative around her image is a safety concern. “I just want to live without being attacked when I leave my house,” she wrote on Reddit. (Sam) For Sam, the false narrative around her image is a safety concern. “I just want to live without being attacked when I leave my house,” she wrote on Reddit. (Sam) The false claims started shortly after news of the shooting first broke. A photo of Sam was posted to 4chan on Tuesday afternoon, in a post that began with “here’s the shooter’s reddit” before linking to her Reddit account and posting a transphobic slur. While some users said they did not believe the photo was of the shooter, other users posted new threads soon afterward, using pictures with fewer details of Sam’s face from her profile. She said she’s feeling annoyed more than anything: “I’m more worried about the families of the victims of the attack,” she told NBC News. Social media users and trolls on 4chan, Twitter and Facebook are using Sam’s photos and images of at least two other transgender women to spread the baseless theory that the shooter was transgender. In some cases, they have created collages that place the women’s photos alongside images from an Instagram page believed to have belonged to the shooter. The claims were spread by some prominent conservatives on Tuesday. Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, said of the shooter in a since-deleted tweet, “It’s a transsexual leftist illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos.” Gosar has not returned a request for comment. One of Sam’s photos was shared by the Young Conservatives of Southern Indiana Facebook page, which has more than 4,000 followers. Sam, 20, started posting photos of herself and her art online to help build up her confidence. (Sam) Sam, 20, started posting photos of herself and her art online to help build up her confidence. (Sam) Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who was successfully sued for defamation for falsely claiming the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a hoax, also echoed the misinformation that the Uvalde shooting suspect was trans. Representatives for Jones’ website did not immediately respond for comment. Conservative personality Candace Owens joined in on Wednesday, referencing “cross-dressing” photos she said she’d seen of the suspect. Owens has previously shared misinformation in her feeds and unsuccessfully sued Facebook in 2021 after the company added a fact-checking warning to one of her posts. The photos that social media users are claiming show the shooter are actually of three different transgender women wearing skirts, including Sam, according to Trans Safety Network, a U.K.-based group that monitors online threats made against the transgender community. The group wrote in a post that all three women have confirmed they are alive. In an effort to debunk the theory, Sam shared a photo of herself standing in front of a transgender Pride flag on Reddit Tuesday evening and wrote, “It’s not me, I don’t even live in Texas.” In response to a comment on the post, she said she just wants “to live without being attacked when I leave my house.” She also shared another photo of herself holding a piece of paper with the date on it. She encouraged people to be careful about what they see online. “Transphobic people exist and people are quick to blame someone for terrible things instead of looking for the truth about what actually happened,” Sam told NBC News. Despite the fact that the posts including Sam’s photos violate Twitter and Facebook’s misinformation policies, the platforms have done little to combat the emerging false narrative. A review of posts on Twitter and Facebook Wednesday morning found numerous tweets and posts using Sam’s image and labeling her as the shooter. In a statement, a Twitter spokesperson said, “In line with our hateful conduct policy, we will require the removal of Tweets that share misleading claims about the identity of the perpetrator with the intent to incite fear or spread fearful stereotypes about a protected category.” Additionally, the spokesperson said, “In line with our synthetic and manipulated media policy, we will require Tweets to be removed if they contain media that present false or misleading context surrounding the identity of the perpetrator.” A Meta spokesperson said the company is removing content that violates its Bullying & Harassment policy, which forbids content “in which criminal allegations pose off-line harm to the named individual.” “They’ve been relying on me and others to report the misinformation before doing anything,” Sam said. Some advocates condemned the basely theory that the shooter was transgender. “This has GOT to stop,” Erin Reed, a trans advocate, said on Twitter. She went on to reference investigations that Texas opened into the parents of some transgender youths in March following a directive from Gov. Greg Abbott that ordered state agencies to investigate claims of parents providing gender-affirming medical care to minors. “A sitting congressman just spread a lie about the Texas shooter to pin it on transgender people spread by troll sites, in a state where they are spending more time banning trans kids than they are spending regulating guns,” she said. Sam on May 25, 2022. (Sam) Sam on May 25, 2022. (Sam) Another advocate, Charlotte Clymer, criticized Gosar and said he “owes the public an apology.” “It’s pathetic that @DrPaulGosar sought to exploit this horrific tragedy for anti-trans propaganda,” she said. “There is zero evidence that the shooter is transgender.” Reporter and MSNBC contributor Katelyn Burns said this isn’t the first time “right wing liars have tried to falsely claim a mass shooter was trans.” She referenced an article she wrote in April 2018 following a shooting at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California, in which three people were wounded. The shooter died by suicide by the time police arrived at the scene, and afterward, some far-right websites and conservative critics speculated, without evidence, that the shooter was transgender. Similarly, Burns noted that following a 2015 shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, that left three people dead, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, shared the unsubstantiated theory that the shooter was transgender after a far-right outlet reported that he registered to vote as a woman. “Well, it’s also been reported that he was registered as an independent and a woman and transgendered leftist activist, if that’s what he is,” Cruz said during a campaign event in 2015, according to audio obtained by the Texas Tribune. Cruz’s campaign later told news outlets that he was trying to make a point that there were still many unknown details about the shooter. This article originally appeared on NBC Out. | |
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| 05-26-22 09:10am - 847 days | #138 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Donald Trump, the fightenest president of the Untied States of Trumperland we've ever known, has been ordered to testify in New York. As a past president, will Donald speak openly in his defense? Or will he honor the US Constitution of Trumperland, and claim the Fifth Amendment? Enquiring minds want to know: what thoughts fill the mind of our beloved leader? ----- ----- Trump loses appeal, must testify in New York civil probe Associated Press MICHAEL R. SISAK May 26, 2022, 9:41 AM Scroll back up to restore default view. NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump must answer questions under oath in New York state’s civil investigation into his business practices, a state appeals court ruled Thursday. A four-judge panel in the appellate division of the state’s trial court upheld Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 17 ruling enforcing subpoenas for Trump and his two eldest children to give deposition testimony in Attorney General Letitia James' probe. Trump had appealed, seeking to overturn the ruling. His lawyers argued that ordering the Trumps to testify violated their constitutional rights because their answers could be used in a parallel criminal investigation. “The existence of a criminal investigation does not preclude civil discovery of related facts, at which a party may exercise the privilege against self-incrimination,” the four-judge panel wrote, citing the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Message seeking comment were left with lawyers for the Trumps and with James' office. The Trumps could still appeal the ruling to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. James, a Democrat, has said her investigation has uncovered evidence Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, used “fraudulent or misleading” valuations of assets like golf courses and skyscrapers to get loans and tax benefits. Thursday's ruling could mean a tough decision for Trump about whether to answer questions, or stay silent, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Anything Trump says in a civil deposition could be used against him in the criminal probe being overseen by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. At a hearing prior to Engoron’s Feb. 17 ruling, Trump’s lawyers argued that having him sit for a civil deposition is an improper attempt to get around a state law barring prosecutors from calling someone to testify before a criminal grand jury without giving them immunity. A lawyer for the attorney general’s office told Engoron that it wasn’t unusual to have civil and criminal investigations proceeding at the same time, and Engoron rejected a request from lawyers for the Trumps to pause the civil probe until the criminal matter is over. Last summer, spurred by evidence uncovered in James’ civil investigation, the Manhattan district attorney’s office charged the Trump Organization and its longtime finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, with tax fraud, alleging he collected more than $1.7 million in off-the-books compensation. Weisselberg and the company have pleaded not guilty. | |
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| 05-26-22 09:14am - 847 days | #139 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Jimmy Kimmel fights back tears while slamming Texas leaders Cruz and Abbott: ‘Admit you made a mistake’ Yahoo TV George Back May 26, 2022, 12:48 AM On Wednesday's Jimmy Kimmel Live!, host Jimmy Kimmel broke down while discussing the tragic shooting death of 19 children in Uvalde, Texas. The loss of innocent lives was upsetting to Kimmel, but his focus was the response from two of the top politicians in Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. Greg Abbott. Both GOP leaders are against gun-control legislation and in fact are slated to make a paid appearance at the upcoming National Rifle Association in Houston this weekend. “It's OK to admit you made a mistake,” Kimmel begged. “In fact, it's not just OK, it's necessary. To admit you made a mistake. When your mistake is killing the children in your state.” Texas passed seven measures last year to make gun ownership easier and more accessible, while minimizing and removing restrictions and safety concerns. Now Kimmel wants them to act against the NRA lobbyists and consider common-sense gun legislation. “It takes a brave person to do something like that,” Kimmel implored. “And do I think these men are brave people? No, I don't. I don't. But man, I would love it if they surprised me. I would love it if any of these guys surprised me.” While other late night hosts called for change in politics, Kimmel suggested replacing the politicians who refuse to change the status quo. “We need to make sure that we do everything we can to make sure that unless they do something drastic, let's make sure that not one of any of these politicians ever holds office again.” Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on ABC. | |
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| 05-26-22 09:29am - 847 days | #140 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
When Donald Trump was running for President of the Untied States of Trumperland, he revealed that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of John F Kennedy. Since that time, Trump and Cruz have healed their relationships, and become more friendly. But we must question whether Ted Cruz still bears scars from their previous history. ------ ------ Donald Trump implicated Ted Cruz's father in the JFK assassination Mr Cruz responded by calling his opponent a 'narcissist', 'pathological liar', and a 'serial philanderer' Feliks Garcia New York Tuesday 03 May 2016 As Indiana voters cast their ballots to answer the question of whether or not Donald Trump will become the presumptive Republican nominee, the GOP front-runner has a question of his own about Sen Ted Cruz’s family history. Donald Trump implied that Ted Cruz's father was somehow involved in the assassination of President John F Kennedy. In a phone interview with Fox News Tuesday morning, Mr Trump referenced a story run by the US tabloid, National Enquirer, that said Rafael Cruz was in a photo with the Kennedy assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Recommended Read more Cruz confronted by mother of disabled girl over bill to limit abortion Read more Cruz confronted by mother of disabled girl over bill to limit abortion “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Mr Trump said. “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don't even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.“ “I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?" Mr Trump added. ”It's horrible." A spokesperson for the Cruz campaign immediately rebuked the claim. "This is another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage,” communications director Alice Stewart told the Miami Herald. “The story is false; that is not Rafael in the picture.” “It's embarrassing that anyone would enable Trump to discuss this. It's a garbage story and clearly Donald wants to talk about garbage," Ms Stewart added in a statement. "Ted Cruz will do what he's been doing, talking about jobs, freedom, and security for the American people." Later Tuesday morning, Mr Cruz responded to Mr Trump's accusations, quipping: "While I'm at it, I guess I should go ahead and admit, yes, my dad killed JFK, he is secretly Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa is buried in his backyard." The Texas senator went on the offensive and attacked Mr Trump on his morals, calling his opponent an "utterly amoral ... narcissist", "pathological liar", and a "serial philanderer". "He describes his battle with venereal disease as his own Vietnam!” Cruz said referring to a 1997 interview with radio personality Howard Stern. In the interview, Stern asked Mr Stern about testing his partners for sexually transmitted diseases. “I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there — it’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era. ... It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier,” Mr Trump remarked, guided somewhat by Stern's interruptive interview style. | |
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| 05-26-22 10:05am - 847 days | #141 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Ray Liotta has died. He was 67. Liotta was in a bunch of criminal movies. Was his death the work of assassins, who were working for Donald Trump? Was Trump nervous that Liotta would reveal that Trump has secret ties to the Mob? That Trump's fortune is founded on criminal enterprises? That Trump could be put in prison for ordering the hits of innocent people? That Trump could be put in prison for ordering the hits of criminal associates? Why are people in Trump's inner circle being eliminated? Enquiring minds want to know. ----- ----- Ray Liotta has died. The Emmy Award winner was 67. The Goodfellas actor died in his sleep in the Dominican Republic, PEOPLE confirms. He was engaged to fiancée Jacy Nittolo, and he was dad to daughter Karsen, 23, with ex-wife Michelle Grace. Deadline was first to report the news. Liotta spoke to PEOPLE in November about how his personality differed from the tough-guy roles he played in TV and film. "I have never been in a fight at all, except for during sports, and that's just pushing and goofy kid stuff," he said at the time. He added of his career, "It's weird how this business works, because I've definitely had a career that's up and down. For some reason, I've been busier this year than I have in all the years that I've been doing this. And I still feel I'm not there yet. I just think there's a lot more." The star recently appeared in the Sopranos prequel movie The Many Saints of Newark and the Amazon Prime series Hanna, and he was currently filming the movie Dangerous Waters. RELATED: Celebrities Who've Died in 2022 Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. Liotta revealed his engagement to Nittolo, a mom of four, on Christmas in 2020, writing on Instagram, "Christmas wishes do come true. I asked the love of my life to marry me, and thank God she said yes!!!" He also opened up to PEOPLE about not taking family for granted. Raised in New Jersey, the star was adopted from an orphanage as a baby by his father Alfred, an auto parts store owner, and mom Mary. "At first, I didn't understand how a parent could give up a child," he said. "So I had that kind of energy of just being like, that's f---ed up. And then when I finally met my birth mom in my 40s, by then, I wasn't as angry about it. It's just another journey." Added Liotta, "After years, you grow up, and you just see the pattern of things. I've definitely developed more patience. Now I'm grateful for my health. And being born. For my parents that adopted me. I mean, it could have gone a lot of different ways." | |
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| 05-26-22 10:39am - 847 days | #142 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Donald Trump, man of peace, knows how to be strong. When Sleepy Joe Biden stole the election and took the White House away from Trump in an obviously illegal move, Trump cried, "Hang Mike Pence. He's a traitor. He will not support keeping me in power in the White House, where I belong." Mike Pence, the traitor who stabbed Donald Trump in the back, deserved to die. God save Donald Trump, the one man who can make America great again. -------- -------- Trump suggested Mike Pence should be hanged for refusing to overturn 2020 election, witness testified Yahoo News David Knowles May 25, 2022, 2:20 PM As he watched on television as his supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence” while storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump remarked that his vice president should perhaps be hanged over his refusal to block the certification of Joe Biden's win in the 2020 election, the New York Times reported Wednesday. The comment was relayed to colleagues by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, and appeared in testimony given to the Jan. 6 select committee investigating the events of that day, the Times reported. Matching the story in the Times, Politico reported that “three people familiar with the matter” confirmed that Trump had “expressed support for hanging his vice president.” Shortly before the violence erupted at the Capitol, Trump had whipped up a crowd of several thousand supporters at a rally where he specifically targeted Pence. “Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country, and if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you, I’ll tell you right now,” Trump said. By then, Pence had already decided he would not attempt to block the certification of the Electoral College vote showing Trump had lost to Biden. As the formality of tallying the votes got underway, the crowd who had watched Trump outside the White House marched to the Capitol with the purpose of disrupting the count. Mike Pence Former Vice President Mike Pence. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Overwhelming Capitol Police, smashing windows and forcing their way inside the building, many of Trump's supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” with some erecting a makeshift gallows fitted with a noose. As he watched the mayhem unfolding, Trump reportedly made his remark, though as the Times noted, the exact wording and the tone he used remain unclear. Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for Trump, released a statement to the Times and Politico, that, while not directly denying that the former president made the comment about Pence, went after the Jan. 6 committee. “This partisan committee’s vague ‘leaks,’ anonymous testimony, and willingness to alter evidence proves it’s just an extension of the Democrat smear campaign that has been exposed time and time again for being fabricated and dishonest,” Budowich said in the statement. “Americans are tired of the Democrat lies and the charades, but, sadly, it’s the only thing they have to offer.” A spokesperson for Pence declined a request from Yahoo News for comment. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Meadows aide, confirmed to the Jan. 6 committee that her boss had recounted Trump’s remark about hanging Pence, the Times reported. A lawyer for Meadows told the Times that he had “every reason to believe” the story about what Meadows said “is untrue.” In an interview with ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl last year, Trump was asked about the “Hang Mike Pence” chant and whether he had worried about his vice president’s safety during the riot. “Were you worried about him during that siege? Were you worried about his safety?” Karl asked. “No, I thought he was well protected, and I had heard that he was in good shape,” Trump responded. “No, I had heard he was in very good shape. But, but — no, I think —” “Because you heard those chants, that was terrible, I mean, you know, those —” “He could have — well, the people were very angry,” Trump continued. “They were saying, ‘Hang Mike Pence,’” Karl added. “Because it’s — it’s common sense, Jon, it’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect. How can you — if you know a vote is fraudulent, right — how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress?” Trump said. When I interviewed Trump for "Betrayal" and asked him about his supporters chanting "Hang Mike Pence", he didn't condemn them, he defended them. Here's a clip from the interview. More audio from the genuinely shocking interview will air Sunday on @ThisWeekABCpic.twitter.com/MlnhTgw8Cu — Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) November 12, 2021 In a February speech to the Federalist Society, Pence refuted Trump’s contention that he simply could have blocked the Electoral College certification. “President Trump is wrong: I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president,” Pence said. In April, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who serves on the Jan. 6 committee, described the effort by the Secret Service to remove Pence from the Capitol building as the certification of the Electoral College vote was halted by the rioters. “The Secret Service agents, who presumably were reporting to Trump’s Secret Service agents, were trying to spirit him off of the campus and he said, ‘I’m not getting in that car until we count the Electoral College votes.’ He knew exactly what this inside coup they had planned for was going to do,” Raskin said in an interview at Georgetown University, adding, “This was not a coup directed at the president. It was a coup directed by the president against the vice president and against the Congress.” | |
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| 05-26-22 05:22pm - 847 days | #143 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Now that we have conservative judges on the Supreme Court, can we put Donald Trump back in the White House? And can we have a public holiday, so we can observe the public execution of Mike Pence, the VP who stabbed Donald Trump in the back? And the public execution of Sleepy Joe Biden, the crafty Democrat who stole the election and moved into the White House, where our beloved Donald Trump belongs? The Untied States of Trumperland is heading downhill. Only Donald Trump can save us. Vote for Trump, our Glorious Commander in Chief, the true Leader of the Free World. | |
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| 05-27-22 06:11am - 846 days | #144 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Ted Cruz and Donald Trump stand firm with the US gun lobby. Say that the best way to ensure safety is by selling more guns. How much does the NRA give to Ted Cruz and Donald Trump? Are they unwilling to admit that guns kill people? Are Ted Cruz and Donald Trump stupid or evil? Maybe they are both. ----- ----- Ted Cruz Stops Interview Rather Than Answer Why America Has So Many Mass Shootings HuffPost David Moye May 26, 2022, 11:57 AM US Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, looks on as he attends a vigil for the victims of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 25, 2022. - The tight-knit Latino community of Uvalde was wracked with grief Wednesday after a teen in body armor marched into the school and killed 19 children and two teachers, in the latest spasm of deadly gun violence in the US. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP) (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images) (CHANDAN KHANNA via Getty Images) Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) stormed off an interview with a British reporter on Wednesday rather than answer a tough question about America’s mass shooting epidemic. It happened when Sky News reporter Mark Stone asked the pro-gun senator whether Monday’s shooting in Uvalde, Texas, represented an opportunity to reform gun laws. Cruz, who is among the top recipients of campaign contributions from gun lobbyists, didn’t like the question and suggested the reporter was politicizing the tragedy. “You know, it’s easy to go to politics,” he said, before dismissing previous suggestions to curb gun violence. “The proposals from Democrats and the media? Inevitably, when some violent psychopath murders people… if you want to stop violent crime, the proposals the Democrats have? None of them would have stopped this,” Cruz claimed. Stone followed up by noting that America is “exceptional” when it comes to mass shootings ― with 288 school shootings between 2009 and 2018 ― 280 more than the next leading country, Mexico. “Why only in America? Why is this American exceptionalism so awful?” Stone asked. Cruz bristled at Stone’s use of the popular Republican buzzword and used it to focus his answer on anything but the question asked. “You know, I’m sorry you think American exceptionalism is awful. You’ve got your political agenda. God love you…” Cruz said. The reporter was undaunted. “Senator, I just want to understand why you do not think that guns are the problem. It’s just an American problem,” he asked. When Cruz walked away, Stone asked again, “You can’t answer that, can you?” Cruz then accused Stone of not appreciating the U.S. “Why is it that people come from all over the world to America? Because it’s the freest, most prosperous, safest country on Earth. Stop being a propagandist.” While Cruz avoided answering questions about America’s gun violence problem, he attempted to offer possible solutions. He suggested a solution to school shootings is fewer doorways and more guns ― a suggestion that many found ludicrous. On Thursday, Cruz showed that he will continue to stand firm with his friends in the gun lobby and will speak at the National Rifle Association convention this coming weekend in Houston. “I’m going to be there because what Democrats and the press try to do in the wake of every mass shooting is they try to demonize law-abiding gun owners, try to demonize the NRA,” he told CBS Dallas-Fort Worth. This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated. | |
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| 05-27-22 06:45am - 846 days | #145 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
The true story of the Texas shooting. Wait for the details. Don't judge. The cops are here to protect you. And if they don't, there's a good reason. ------- ------- Texas police defend 'complex' shooting response as more details emerge Yahoo News Christopher Wilson May 26, 2022, 1:56 PM Scroll back up to restore default view. Law enforcement officials in Texas defended their response to the Uvalde elementary school shooting amid questions about why officers waited an hour to engage the shooter, who killed 19 children and two teachers. In a Thursday afternoon press briefing, Regional Director for the Department of Public Safety South Texas Region Victor Escalon said it was a “complex situation” at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday. Escalon said there were “numerous officers” outside the fourth-grade classroom but refused to elaborate on what law enforcement was doing for an hour while they waited for the Border Patrol team that eventually killed the gunman to arrive. He said they were getting negotiators on-site but later added that the shooter did not have demands. Escalon also said that there was no school resource officer at the scene, as officials, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, had initially described. At a press conference on Wednesday, Abbott said that an officer had “approached the gunman and engaged with the gunman.” Escalon said Thursday that not only did the officer not exchange gunfire with the shooter, but also that no officer was even present. Abbott, as well as Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw, said the shooter had barricaded himself inside the classroom. When asked about the detail on Thursday, Escalon would not provide further information. “We’ve been given a lot of bad information, so why don’t you clear all of this up now and explain to us how it is your officers were in there for an hour — yes, rescuing people — but yet no one was able to get inside that room?” asked CNN reporter Shimon Prokupecz. Escalon said he would eventually answer the questions but needed time to establish the “why.” Escalon’s press conference followed a written statement from Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez In which he said he "[understood] questions are surfacing regarding the details of what occurred," but that police had responded “within minutes” and had suffered gunshot wounds. Police also had to retract initial statements that the gunman was wearing body armor. Since Wednesday night, reporting has continued to surface that law enforcement officials on-site milled around outside the school while parents urged them to enter the building or asked to borrow equipment so they could attempt to save their children. Law enforcement officials wearing protective vests are seen from behind. Law enforcement personnel guard the scene of the shooting at Robb Elementary School. (Marco Bello/Reuters) The Associated Press reported late Wednesday that police waited outside the school for at least 40 minutes while parents and onlookers urged them to do something. “Let’s just rush in, because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” Javier Cazares, whose daughter Jacklyn was killed in the attack, told the AP. “More could have been done.” “There were five or six of [us] fathers hearing the gunshots, and [police officers] were telling us to move back,” Cazares told the Washington Post. “We didn’t care about us. We wanted to storm the building. We were saying, ‘Let’s go,’ because that is how worried we were, and we wanted to get our babies out.” The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday afternoon that one mother “was one of numerous parents who began encouraging — first politely, and then with more urgency — police and other law enforcement to enter the school. After a few minutes, she said, federal marshals approached her and put her in handcuffs, telling her she was being arrested for intervening in an active investigation.” Angeli Rose Gomez, who had children in second and third grade, told the Journal that she “convinced local Uvalde police officers whom she knew to persuade the marshals to set her free. Around her, the scene was frantic. She said she saw a father tackled and thrown to the ground by police and a third pepper-sprayed. Once freed from her cuffs, Gomez made her distance from the crowd, jumped the school fence, and ran inside to grab her two children. She sprinted out of the school with them.” The aunt of one of the victims told a similar story to the New York Times, saying that her niece’s stepfather was restrained and handcuffed by police when he attempted to help her. “Nobody was telling him anything,” said Desiree Garza, whose niece Amerie Jo Garza was killed. “He was trying to find out. He wanted to know where his daughter was.” A nearly seven-minute video posted to social media seems to support the reporting, showing police restraining parents outside of the school and even holding one person on the ground. Uvalde, a small city of about 16,000 people, spends roughly 40 percent of its annual city budget on police. When asked about the reports of parents begging officers to do something, Escalon said he had heard that information but had not verified it yet. “You gotta understand we’re getting a lot of information we’re trying to track down and see what is true,” Escalon said. A person wearing a shirt reading FBI walks outside of a school building. A sign on the brick wall reads: Robb Elementary, Together We Rise. An FBI agent walks by the outside of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Wednesday. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) During the Thursday afternoon press conference, Escalon provided the latest timeline on the shooting. After wrecking a truck that belonged to his grandmother, whom he had shot in the face (Escalon said the woman is alive and in stable condition), the gunman, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, entered the school through what was believed to have been an unlocked door around 11:40 a.m. Four minutes later, Uvalde and district police engaged the shooter but took cover while being shot at. Authorities didn’t enter the school because of the gunfire, Escalon said, and called for help. “Tactical teams. We need equipment. We need specialty equipment. We need precision riflemen, negotiators,” Escalon said, adding that officers were evacuating students and teachers during this time. An hour later, a Border Patrol agent killed Ramos. Abbott had praised the police response at his Wednesday press conference. “The reality is, as horrible as what happened, it could have been worse," Abbott said Wednesday. "The reason it was not worse is because law enforcement officials did what they do. They showed amazing courage by running toward gunfire for the singular purpose of trying to save lives. And it is a fact that because of their quick response getting on the scene, being able to respond to the gunman and eliminate the gunman, they were able to save lives. Unfortunately, not enough.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other officials. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other officials hold a press conference on Tuesday at Uvalde High School to provide updates on the Robb Elementary School shooting. (Allison Dinner/AFP via Getty Images) In an interview Wednesday evening with San Antonio outlet KENS 5, a fourth grader who said he had been hiding in a classroom indicated that police officers’ actions may have caused another child who was hiding from the shooter to get shot. “When the cops came, the cop said, ‘Yell if you need help!’ And one of the persons in my class said, ‘Help.’ The guy overheard, and he came in and shot her,” said the boy. “The cop barged into that classroom. The guy shot at the cop. And the cops started shooting.” Details about the events of Tuesday had been scarce, as law enforcement did not provide a televised press briefing on Tuesday evening. Abbott spoke briefly about the shooting in the late afternoon before attending a campaign fundraiser. School district leadership gave brief statements without providing any details or taking questions. Lt. Christopher Olivarez of Texas DPS told CNN Thursday morning that authorities were still gathering information on what happened, including why it took officers so long to enter the building. “I can tell you right now, as a father myself, I would want to go in too, but it’s a volatile situation,” Olivarez said when asked about Cazares’s comments. “We have an active shooter situation, we’re trying to [prevent] any further loss of life, and as much as they want to go into that school, we cannot have individuals go into that school, especially if they’re not armed.” Olivarez said the school did have surveillance video that the FBI was obtaining. | |
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| 05-27-22 10:09pm - 846 days | #146 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Support your local police. The governor of Texas, after first praising cops for responding to the gunman who was killing kids and teachers, is now saying he wants the cops investigated. This is not right. We are told to support our local police. The governor must step down. He has to take responsibility for the shootings. ------ ------ Texas police admit to failed shooting response, say kids in room with gunman called 911 Yahoo News Christopher Wilson May 27, 2022, 11:31 AM Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday that he was "absolutely livid" about being misled about the police response to the mass shooting Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, During a press conference late Friday afternoon that began moments after Abbott addressed the National Rifle Association's annual meeting in a pre-recorded video message, Abbott said he had initially been given information about the police response to the shooting that "turned out in part to be inaccurate." On Wednesday, Abbott had praised the law enforcement response, saying, “The reality is, as horrible as what happened, it could have been worse. The reason it was not worse is because law enforcement officials did what they do. They showed amazing courage by running toward gunfire for the singular purpose of trying to save lives. And it is a fact that because of their quick response getting on the scene, being able to respond to the gunman and eliminate the gunman, they were able to save lives. Unfortunately, not enough.” Abbott amended that assessment Friday, saying that "every act by every official involved in this entire process is under the investigation conducted both by the Texas Rangers and by the FBI." At a separate press conference held earlier in the day, Texas’s top public safety official said officers on the scene failed to follow protocol at the Uvalde school shooting, with officers standing in the hallway as children in the classroom called 911 as their classmates were killed. State Director of Public Safety Steven McCraw said that 19 officers stood in the hallway outside the fourth-grade classroom on Tuesday while students inside the room called 911 for help. McCraw said the on-site commander, school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, thought there was no longer a threat to the children inside, so he waited for nearly an hour to breach the room because the gunman had locked the door. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, speaks during a press conference about the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 27 in Uvalde. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, speaks during a press conference on Friday about the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) McCraw said that Texas active-shooter doctrine states that police should have engaged the gunman and neutralized him. According to McCraw, students in the room were calling 911 and pleading with police to help as they stood outside the classroom where 19 students and two teachers were killed. After a Border Patrol tactical team arrived, law enforcement finally breached the classroom and killed the gunman after a janitor had unlocked the door. “When it comes to an active shooter, you don’t have to wait on tactical gear. Plain and simple, you’ve got an obligation,” McCraw said, adding, “If shooting continues and you have any reason to believe there’s individuals alive in there, you’ve got an obligation to move back to an active-shooter posture, and that means everybody at the door.” McCraw choked up as he shared details of at least eight 911 calls made by students inside the classrooms before police made entry. He said the first student called 911 at 12:03 p.m., and calls continued for more than 45 minutes, during which operators could hear gunfire over the phone. At 12:16, McGraw said, a girl called to report that "eight to nine" students were alive. She called back 30 minutes later, begging for help, saying she could hear officers outside the classroom. Texas Highway Patrol troopers stand at attention on Friday in front of a memorial for the victims of the mass shooting in Uvalde. Texas Highway Patrol troopers on Friday in front of a memorial for the victims of the shooting. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) "Please send the police now," she said, according to McGraw. McCraw was unable to explain how word of the 911 calls was not relayed to officers on the site as they stood outside. When asked if the parents of the children who died while officers stood outside were owed an apology, he said, “If I thought it would help, I'd apologize.” In an interview with CNN, 11-year-old Miah Cerrillo, who was in the classroom, said she and a friend were able to grab her dead teacher’s phone and call 911 for help. She said she told a dispatcher, "Please send help because we’re in trouble.” As Miah lay there, she thought the police simply hadn't yet reached the school, according to CNN. Later, she said, she overheard that police had been waiting outside the school. When she spoke about it during the CNN interview, she started crying, and said she didn’t understand why the police didn’t come inside and get the children. A senior government official who conducts active-shooter trainings at schools told Yahoo News the responding officers broke every protocol put in place since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado. “What they did was pre-Columbine protocol. After Columbine, all this changed — active shooters, you go in, the first guy goes in and neutralizes the threat,” the official said, ”They broke every rule in the book. They did everything wrong.” The official said the decision to wait about 45 minutes for a janitor to unlock the door with a skeleton key cost lives. “You can breach a door in 15 seconds,” the official said. “You put plastique on the edge of the door, you blow it open. If you have no bomb guys, you shoot the door, you shoot the lock, the lock will break, you get in that way.” “Nineteen cops … didn’t breach the door, they waited for [Customs and Border Protection]. Shoot the door, just shoot the door,” the official added. “I don’t know why they waited, they could have gone outside of [the] building and fired into the glass. Saying, ‘Sorry, it’s a bad call’ — well, it’s a bad call with 21 people dead.” The Friday press briefing also confirmed there was no school district police officer present, reversing what McCraw and Abbott had originally said at a press conference on Wednesday. Officials also originally reported that the gunman was wearing body armor, which they also later retracted. Just before McCraw spoke, the New York Times reported that federal agents arrived on the scene between noon and 12:10 p.m. but that the Uvalde Police Department kept them from going in, with the eventual breach not coming until nearly 1 p.m. An FBI agent takes a photo of a memorial for victims of Tuesday's mass shooting at Robb Elementary School. An FBI agent takes a photo of a memorial for victims of the shooting. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) A Border Patrol source with knowledge of the Uvalde response told Yahoo News the team that responded to the shooting urged local cops to let them rush the building, saying, "We were told to wait; we were told to wait and wait, and the team wanted to go, but you have to understand CBP is not the lead agency, so they had to wait, and now look what happened." Authorities have said the gunman, identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, entered the school through what was believed to have been an unlocked door around 11:40 a.m. In a February 2020 Facebook post, the Uvalde Police Department posted a photo of its SWAT team — nine officers armed with assault rifles — stating that they would be visiting local schools and businesses to “familiarize themselves with layouts.” McCraw said he did not know why the team did not lead the assault on the gunman. While officers stood in the hallway, parents who could still hear gunshots were pushing law enforcement outside the school to do something. There are multiplereports of parents being handcuffed outside as they pleaded with officers to act. A nearly seven-minute video posted to social media supports the reporting, showing police restraining parents outside the school and even holding one person on the ground. “There were five or six of [us] fathers hearing the gunshots, and [police officers] were telling us to move back,” Javier Cazares, whose daughter Jacklyn was killed in the attack, told the Washington Post. “We didn’t care about us. We wanted to storm the building. We were saying, ‘Let’s go,’ because that is how worried we were, and we wanted to get our babies out.” Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez has yet to give a public briefing but issued a written statement Thursday in which he said he understood that "questions are surfacing regarding the details of what occurred," but that police had responded “within minutes” and had suffered gunshot wounds. Abbott had praised the law enforcement response, saying Wednesday,“The reality is, as horrible as what happened, it could have been worse. The reason it was not worse is because law enforcement officials did what they do. They showed amazing courage by running toward gunfire for the singular purpose of trying to save lives. And it is a fact that because of their quick response getting on the scene, being able to respond to the gunman and eliminate the gunman, they were able to save lives. Unfortunately, not enough.” | |
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| 05-28-22 03:51am - 846 days | #147 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Donald Trump, Man of the Year, speaks at the NRA convention. Says the best way to defend yourself is with a gun. Talks about security in schools. Do you remember the shooting in the Texas school this week? Trump said: "As the age old saying goes: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," Trump said. "Have you ever heard that?" Because of Secret Service protocols surrounding Trump's appearance, attendees were advised by the NRA that they would not be allowed to bring guns into the assembly hall where Trump spoke — and that there would be "no storage available for firearms." Did Trump ever hear of hypocrisy? You are only safe if you can carry a gun. But you can't carry a gun if you are near Trump. Who is no longer even a president. But not to worry: Send Trump $500 and you might get a letter signed by Trump. For an additional $1000, the letter might be signed by Melania. This would be an heirloom that can be passed down to your children. Or sold at auction if you really need the money. ------- ------- Trump zeroes in on school security, mental health in campaign-style NRA speech NBC Universal Jonathan Allen and Allan Smith May 27, 2022, 5:09 PM Brandon Bell Undeterred by Tuesday's school shooting a few hundred miles away, former President Donald Trump headlined the National Rifle Association's annual legislative conference in Houston on Friday and called for "a top-to-bottom security overhaul at schools across this country" in addition to "drastically" changing the U.S. approach to mental health. It was a welcome message for the embattled NRA, which has been plagued by scandal and embroiled in litigation. Had Trump skipped the event, he would have been in good company: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pulled out of a planned appearance in favor of a return visit to Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in an elementary school Tuesday. Abbott provided pre-recorded remarks to the conference, which Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas also backed out of, citing scheduling conflicts. “Unlike some, I didn’t disappoint you by not showing up,” Trump said at the start of his remarks. Trump described the Uvalde shooting as "a savage and barbaric atrocity" and called for a moment of silence as he read the names of the 21 victims. The former president said those killed "are now with God in heaven" while the shooter "will be eternally damned to burn in the fires of hell." Trump then laid into President Joe Biden for urging Congress to take up gun safety legislation, saying Biden's criticism of the gun lobby was really directed at gun owners across the country. But Trump also called for action, arguing there are steps that can be taken to prevent mass shootings. "While we don’t yet know enough about this week’s killing, we know there are many things we must do," he said. "We need to drastically change our approach to mental health. There are always so many warning signs. Almost all of these disfigured minds share the same profile." "Teachers, parents, school officials, and community members need to be recognizing and addressing these alarm bells promptly and very, very aggressively," he continued. "And our school discipline systems, instead of making excuses and continually turning a blind eye, need to confront bad behavior head on and quickly. And clearly we need to make it far easier to confine the violent and mentally deranged into mental institutions." In calling for increased school security, Trump echoed other Republicans in suggesting schools must transition to having only a single point of entry, implement metal detectors and employ an armed security officer at all times. Trump also said teachers should be able to be armed on school property. “If the United States has $40 billion to send to Ukraine, we should be able to do whatever it takes to keep our children safe at home,” Trump said. “We spent trillions in Iraq, trillions in Afghanistan, and got nothing. Before we nation-build the rest of the world, we should be building safe schools for our own children in our own nation. Right?” At the same time, increased spending, security and training preceded the shooting in Uvalde, where Robb Elementary School had invested in a significant safety plan. The school had hired security officers and erected fencing around the building. Teachers were under instruction to keep classroom doors locked, and students routinely went through drills to prepare for an active shooter. Those efforts did not prevent Tuesday's massacre. Trump dedicated a significant portion of his speech to boosting the police, at one point going so far as to suggest he would “no longer feel obligated” to defer to state and local governments to respond to protests that turn violent if he were to be president again. “I would crack down on violent crime like never before,” he said. Trump also veered sharply off topic in his campaign-style speech. As is the case in virtually all of the former president’s remarks following his 2020 loss, Trump decried a “rigged election,” elevating the false claim that widespread voter fraud and malfeasance by election administrators cost him a second term. And while those comments were far afield from the debate over gun laws, it was an appropriate venue nonetheless. Few national organizations have been as important to Trump's political fortunes as the NRA, the country's most prominent pro-gun rights group. In the 2016 presidential election, Trump won 63 percent to 31 percent among voters who lived in gun-owning homes, while losing 65 percent to 30 percent among those who didn’t. As he considers a third bid for the presidency — and as other Republicans with similar support for gun rights do the same — Trump has tremendous incentive to tighten his ties to the NRA and the gun owners who make up its more than 5 million members. In 2019, the last annual meeting of the NRA before the coronavirus pandemic, Trump made the political connection explicit: "Far-left radicals in Congress want to take away your voice, your jobs, your rights, and they especially want to take your guns," he said at the time. "You know that. They want to take away your guns. You better get out there and vote." From the White House, Trump delivered prized victories to the gun lobby by nominating Supreme Court justices — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — who have expansive views of the Second Amendment's protection of the right to bear arms. He also nixed an Obama-era rule adding people with mental illnesses to the national background-check system. And, despite thorough negotiation of potential statutory and executive actions that could be taken to counter mass shootings, Trump did little to change policy from Washington. He signed a broader law that strengthened the existing background-check system and issued a regulation to ban bump stock devices that make it easier for shooters to fire multiple rounds quickly. When he considered pushing to expand background checks to cover many more transactions, the NRA was quick to deter him. Likewise, his flirtation with supporting a "red flag" law to take guns away from people deemed to pose a risk did not result in any federal action. He made no mention of expanded background checks or red flag laws in Friday's address. The shootings in Texas this week, where law enforcement officers waited outside as the gunman shot children and teachers, injected an awkward dissonance into Trump's long-held view that more guns are the answer to mass shootings. "We know that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," he said at the 2019 NRA conference in Indianapolis. He echoed that line on Friday. "As the age old saying goes: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," Trump said. "Have you ever heard that?" Because of Secret Service protocols surrounding Trump's appearance, attendees were advised by the NRA that they would not be allowed to bring guns into the assembly hall where Trump spoke — and that there would be "no storage available for firearms." | |
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| 05-28-22 04:33am - 845 days | #148 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
There is no cover-up if the police or anyone else doesn't see the evidence, because I didn't know they haven't seen it. Mea culpa: I did it, but I didn't do it. Support your local police. -------- -------- Governor saw deadly arrest video months before prosecutors Associated Press JIM MUSTIAN and JAKE BLEIBERG May 27, 2022, 6:55 PM BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — With racial tensions still simmering over the killing of George Floyd, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and his top lawyers gathered in a state police conference room in October 2020 to prepare for the fallout from a troubling case closer to home: troopers’ deadly arrest of Ronald Greene. There, they privately watched a crucial body-camera video of the Black motorist’s violent arrest that showed a bruised and bloody Greene going limp and drawing his final breaths — footage that prosecutors, detectives and medical examiners wouldn’t even know existed for another six months. While the Democratic governor has distanced himself from allegations of a cover-up in the explosive case by contending evidence was promptly turned over to authorities, an Associated Press investigation based on interviews and records found that wasn’t the case with the 30-minute video he watched. Neither Edwards, his staff nor the state police he oversees acted urgently to get the crucial footage into the hands of those with the power to charge the white troopers seen stunning, punching and dragging Greene. That video, which showed critical moments and audio absent from other footage that was turned over, wouldn’t reach prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, death on a rural roadside near Monroe. Now three years have passed, and after lengthy, ongoing federal and state probes, still no one has been criminally charged. “The optics are horrible for the governor. It makes him culpable in this, in delaying justice,” said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a New Orleans-based watchdog group. “All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing,” Goyeneche added. “And that’s what the governor did, nothing.” What the governor knew, when he knew it and what he did about an in-custody death that troopers initially blamed on a car crash have become questions that have dogged his administration for months. Edwards and his staff are expected to be called within weeks to testify under oath before a bipartisan legislative committee probing the case and a possible cover-up. Edwards’ attorneys say there was no way for the governor to have known at the time that the video he watched had not already been turned over to prosecutors, and there was no effort to by the governor or his staff to withhold evidence. Regardless, the governor’s attorneys didn’t mention seeing the video in a meeting just days later with state prosecutors, who wouldn’t receive the footage until a detective discovered it almost by accident six months later. While U.S. Justice Department officials refused to comment, the head of the state police, Col. Lamar Davis, told the AP that his records show that the video was turned over to federal authorities about the same time, mid-April 2021. Edwards, a lawyer from a long line of Louisiana sheriffs, did not make himself available for an interview. But his chief counsel, Matthew Block, acknowledged to the AP that it was not acceptable for evidence to be available to the governor and not the officials investigating the case. The governor’s staff also stressed that state police, not Edwards’ office, actually possessed the video. “I can’t go back and fix what was done,” Block said. “Everybody would agree that if there would have been some understanding that the district attorney did not have a piece of evidence, whether it was a video or whatever it might be, then, of course, the district attorney should have all the evidence in the case. Of course.” At issue is the 30-minute body-camera footage from Lt. John Clary, the highest-ranking trooper to respond to Greene’s arrest. It is one of two videos of the incident, and captured events not seen on the 46-minute clip from Trooper Dakota DeMoss that shows troopers swarming Greene’s car after a high-speed chase, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns, beating him in the head and dragging him by his ankle shackles. Throughout the frantic scene, Greene is barely resisting, pleading for mercy and wailing, “I’m your brother! I’m scared! I’m scared!” But Clary’s video is perhaps even more significant to the investigations because it is the only footage that shows the moment a handcuffed, bloody Greene moans under the weight of two troopers, twitches and then goes still. It also shows troopers ordering the heavyset, 49-year-old to remain face down on the ground with his hands and feet restrained for more than nine minutes — a tactic use-of-force experts criticized as dangerous and likely to have restricted his breathing. And unlike the DeMoss video, which goes silent halfway through when the microphone is turned off, Clary’s video has sound throughout, picking up a trooper ordering Greene to “lay on your f— belly like I told you to!” and a sheriff’s deputy taunting, “Yeah, yeah, that s— hurts, doesn’t it?” The state police’s own use-of-force expert highlighted the importance of the Clary footage during testimony in which he characterized the troopers’ actions as “torture and murder.” “They’re pressing on his back at one point and Ronald Greene’s foot starts kicking up,” Sgt. Scott Davis told lawmakers in March. “The same thing happened in the George Floyd trial. There was a pulmonologist who said that’s the moment of his death. The same thing happened with Ronald Greene.” Clary’s video reached state police internal affairs officers more than a year after Greene's death when they opened a probe and later showed it to the governor. But it was long unknown to detectives working the criminal case and missing from the initial investigative case file they turned over to prosecutors in August 2019. Its absence has become a focal point in the federal probe, which is looking not only at the actions of the troopers but whether state police brass obstructed justice to protect them. Detectives say Clary falsely claimed he didn't have any body-camera footage of his own from Greene's arrest and instead gave investigators a thumb drive of other troopers' videos. State police say Clary properly uploaded his body-camera footage to an online evidence storage system and the then-head of the agency, Col. Kevin Reeves, defended his administration’s handling of the Greene case. “I don’t think that there was any cover-up by state police of this matter,” Reeves, who has described Greene’s death as “awful but lawful,” said in recent legislative testimony. But the detectives investigating Greene’s death say they were locked out of the video storage system at the time and had to rely on Clary to provide the footage. Albert Paxton, the now-retired lead detective on the Greene case, said he didn’t learn the video existed until April 2021 when Davis, who had broad access to body-camera video as the agency’s use-of-force expert, made a passing reference to it in a conversation. An internal affairs investigation into whether Clary purposely withheld the footage was inconclusive and details of the probe remain secret. Clary, who didn't respond to requests for comment, avoided discipline and remains in the state police. In early October 2020, days after AP published audio of Trooper Chris Hollingsworth bragging that he had “beat the ever-living f--- out of” Greene, Edwards and his top attorneys Block and Tina Vanichchagorn went to a state police building in Baton Rouge and watched videos of the arrest, including the Clary video, the governor’s office said. Days later, the governor’s lawyers flew with Reeves and other police brass 200 miles north to Ruston to discuss the videos with John Belton, the Union Parish district attorney leading the state investigation. The Oct. 13 meeting was intended to plan a closed-door event the next day in which Greene’s family would meet the governor and view footage of the arrest. Although the meeting was about showing video of the arrest, it never emerged that the governor’s lawyers and police commanders were all aware of the Clary footage while prosecutors were in the dark. “It didn’t come up at all,” Belton said, adding he only knew at the time of the DeMoss video. Block agreed, saying, “We didn’t go through what happened on the videos.” That agreement falls apart over what happened the next day. Greene’s family says it was not shown the Clary video after meeting Edwards on Oct. 14, a claim Belton and several others who attended the viewing in Baton Rouge affirmed. State police and the governor’s office, however, disputed that, saying the Clary video was in fact shown. But state police spokesman Capt. Nick Manale acknowledged, "The department has no proof of what was shown to the family that day.” Lee Merritt, an attorney for the Greene family, recalled the response he received when they asked if there was a Clary video: “We were told it was of no evidentiary value.” “The fact is we never saw it,” added Mona Hardin, Greene’s mother. “They’ve tried to have total control of the narrative.” Throughout this process, Edwards had considered making the Greene arrest videos public, records show, but decided against it at the request of federal prosecutors. After they were withheld from the public more than two years, the AP obtained and published both the DeMoss and Clary videos in May 2021. | |
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| 05-28-22 04:35am - 845 days | #149 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
Article continues: An AP investigation that followed found Greene’s was among at least a dozen cases over the past decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism. Edwards was informed of Greene’s deadly arrest within hours, when he received a text message from Reeves telling him that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle” with a Black motorist, ending in his death. But the governor, who was in the midst of a tight reelection race at the time, kept quiet about the case publicly for two years as police continued to push the narrative that Greene died in a crash. Edwards has said he first learned of the “serious allegations” surrounding Greene’s death in September 2020, months after Greene’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit and the FBI sent a sweeping subpoena for evidence to state police. After the videos were published, the governor broke his silence and called the troopers' actions criminal. In recent months, as his role in the Greene case has come under scrutiny, Edwards has gone further to describe them as racist while denying he's interfered with or delayed investigations. The governor’s lawyers now acknowledge prosecutors did not have the Clary video until spring of 2021. But Edwards insisted as recently as February that evidence turned over to prosecutors prior to his November 2019 re-election was proof there was no cover-up. “The facts are clear that the evidence of what happened that night was presented to prosecutors well before my election, state and federal prosecutors,” Edwards said in a news conference. “So obviously that is not part of a cover-up." | |
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| 05-28-22 12:47pm - 845 days | #150 | |
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LKLK (0)
Active User Posts: 1,583 Registered: Jun 26, '19 Location: CA |
This is not right. A woman passenger, on an airplane, punched a flight attendant. The flight attendant suffered broken teeth. The punching woman got 15 months in prison. If you pay for a ticket, and are not satisfied with the plane, don't you have the right to complain? And if the flight attendant was being obnoxious, can't you teach her better manners? The Wild West was settled by pioneering women. Why can't the Wild Skies of America be flown by independent women, who want to express their frustrations with their fists? Donald Trump, where are you when we need you? Help us to overcome life's daily frustrations. Amen. ------ ------ Woman gets 15 months in prison for punching flight attendant Associated Press JULIE WATSON May 28, 2022, 5:11 AM SAN DIEGO (AP) — A California woman who punched a Southwest Airlines flight attendant in the face during a flight, breaking her teeth, has been sentenced to 15 months in federal prison. Vyvianna Quinonez was also ordered Tuesday by the federal judge in San Diego to pay nearly $26,000 in restitution and a $7,500 fine for the assault on a May 23, 2021, Southwest flight between Sacramento and San Diego. The 29-year-old Sacramento woman is prohibited from flying for three years while she is on supervised release and must participate in anger management classes or counseling. Quinonez last year pleaded guilty to one count of interference with flight crew members and attendants, admitting she punched the flight attendant in the face and head with a closed fist and grabbed her hair. Neither she nor her attorney could be reached for comment Tuesday. During the flight’s final descent, the attendant had asked Quinonez to buckle her seat belt, stow her tray table, and put on her facemask properly. Instead, Quinonez began recording the attendant on her cellphone, pushed her, then stood up and punched the woman in the face and grabbed her hair before other passengers intervened, authorities said. The assault was recorded on another passenger’s cellphone. The plea agreement said that the flight attendant suffered three chipped teeth, two of which needed crowns, along with bruises and a cut under her left eye that needed stitches. “Attacks on flight crew members, who perform vital jobs to ensure passenger safety, will not be tolerated," U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman said in a statement after the sentencing. FBI Special Agent in Charge Stacey Moy said the sentence should “send a very strong message to air travelers — the FBI will vigorously pursue anyone who assaults or interferes with flight crews.” The incident was part of an escalation in unruly behavior by airline passengers amid the coronavirus pandemic and led the president of the flight attendants’ union to ask for more federal air marshals on planes. Airlines in 2021 reported more than 5,000 incidents of unruly passengers to the Federal Aviation Administration. Most were passengers refusing to follow the federal requirement for passengers to wear face masks while on planes, but nearly 300 involved intoxicated passengers, the FAA said. | |
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