Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕
In this week’s episode of The Insurrectionists Are Running The Show, NBC News reported on Friday that the RNC recently hired a big time supporter of the “Stop the Steal” movement to work on the party’s policy platform-writing committee.
The Supreme Court’s right wing supermajority is clearly planning to release its radical decisions in a few dumps at the end of the term. By “flooding the zone with $hit,” they’ll make it hard to focus on any one of its disastrous rulings.
We should all be alarmed what harm the Court’s right wing supermajority plan to impose on our country in a matter of a few days.
I haven’t done any sleuthing about RoJo. I don’t have the resources to dig into his finances or inner-workings of his mind to find out why he has been such a solid Pro-Putin stooge. But the simplest answer, and it probably is the same for dozens (if not 100s) of MoCs…is that Russian money ended up in their coffers and was instantly used to cow and pressure the recipients.
I don’t have a photographic memory, perhaps people here know of any politicians reporting this attempt to entrap them? I would think if dozens and dozens had the attempt made, a few would have made it public and denounced the money at that time…in order to avoid becoming a captive stooge.
Anyways, at about the same time, a large proportion of the R elected officialdom decided to be pro Russian for no good reason. Becoming a MAGAt, bowing down to Chump, and remaining in Grab-Ankle mode for nearly 9 years doesn’t NECESSARILY mean they were also Kompromatted but it sure helps explain almost everything. Almost, except for why not a single one of them did the right thing and reported what was happening.
The simplest answer to me — besides your point that these corrupt hacks took Russian money — is they are following the lead of their cult leader Trump.
The timing of it seems to be the key. I don’t believe becoming a reluctant Chump groveler came right away, and being a reliable pro-Russian stooge wasn’t a mandatory component of being a MAGAt in good standing. The pro-Russian thing seemed to be coming from a different angle, and all-at-once. So, I am very short on details, but my impression was that being pro-Russian and being a willing doormat for Chump came about on different timelines and from different sources.
ETA: looking back on it, without much discernment, it might all seem to be tied together. But if you really examine it…I don’t believe the Pro Russian and Pro Chump timelines mesh well. Certainly, in a vague way they seem to intertwine. But I find it a particularly jarring and incongruous pairing that is explained better by Russia co-opting these lawmakers.
Many of these people were anti-Chump until late in his tenure, when they finally had to decide during Impeachment I, but it seems they were uneasily backing off Russia before that and all about the same time. My untutored guess-o-meter thinks that the NRA was funneling Russia money in 2016 (for sure) and 2018 (possibly), with Russia being VERY pro-active about nabbing the recipients the moment the money hit their warchests.
So many Republicans take on such a slew of quizzical, inexplicable, reprehensible positions I have to feel it often boils down to nothing more than trolling the libs. They’re like the people that will say with a straight face the Earth is flat, or birds aren’t real, or John Kennedy is still alive. The GOP revels in trolling. I posit more than a few expressing pro-Putin, pro-Russia sentiments do if for no other reason than to get a rise out of others.
That is a huge leap to make. Our ancestral enemy becomes our best friend, just because they want to troll the libs? 70 years of anti-Russian sentiment melts away in 2 years? Whole generations of Rs used the Russian scare, but suddenly reverse that to own the Libs? There were myriad ways to own the Libs, why this particular seismic change?
The immunity decision will be deferred to next term because the hearing period wasn’t long enough to come to a solid conclusion. That’s my take on it.
This is a fascinating article about a subject that has parallels over here. I, myself, was unaware of the Tasmanian Genocide against Aboringinals.
Studying history should never be about instilling pride or shame; it should be about encouraging understanding
Then there were the activists who turned up to guard a statue of the 19th-century novelist George Eliot. “I’m purely here to protect our history,” one military veteran told CoventryLive, apparently unaware that Eliot was a supporter of the anti-slavery movement and that her statue was under no threat whatsoever, unless the country’s army of Jane Austen fans had suddenly become dangerously radicalised in an entirely unexpected way.
Tim Shipman of the Sunday Times has argued that some Conservatives see it as a way of appealing to voters who are leftwing on spending and public services but “culturally conservative”. Meanwhile, historian Michael Taylor has proposed that historians are handy hate figures now there’s not much to be gained from attacking the European Union: “After all, we cannot just hate Jean-Claude Juncker for ever.”
And we don’t seem to have our very own “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Even the Democratic Senators don’t seem to have the ballz to hold these rotters accountable.
The entire MAGAverse is held together by lies, bullshit, conspiracies, and susceptibility to hoaxes that support their point of view and grievances.
Ugh, Ed Martin. That guy’s a butthole’s butthole. The one who always takes two spots when he parks on your street, and either runs it up on the curb so it tears up your grass, or is so far away from the curb that it’s hard to get by in the driving lane. (He used to live a block down from a good friend of mine.)
Policy-wise, he was the chief of staff for our former governor, and just flat refused to fulfill sunshine requests, converted all the state DMVs to private enterprise run by friends… basically every penny-ante graft you can think of.
Remember the couple who pointed guns at the BLM protesters? Those people but slightly more blue collar.
Calling Ed Martin a shit stain is an insult to soiled underwear.
I hope that someone is tracking Thomas for a quick get-a-way with Harlen Crow.
Did TFG choose who to send to Russia that fateful Independence Day? Saying to Vlad - these are your guys, all ready to go?
“I’ve been pretty upfront that the election interference — as serious as that was, and unacceptable — is not the greatest threat to our democracy,” Sen. Ron Johnson said in an interview with the Washington Examiner published over the weekend. “We’ve blown it way out of proportion.”
“We need to really honestly assess what actually happened, what effect did it have, and what effect are our sanctions actually having, positively and negatively,” the Republican from Wisconsin said.
Johnson won re-election in 2016, with President Donald Trump on the top of the ticket. He has said that the Senate may have gone too far with mandatory sanctions against a host of Russian entities, leaving Trump with too little negotiating room on other matters. He also said the sanctions did not appear to be working as intended.
Bottom line from RonJohn - It’s almost impossible to meddle in an election and change the outcome. Well, at least for Russians,
“We’ve had briefings on this — it’s very difficult to really meddle in our elections. It just is. These are locally run, it’s almost impossible to change the vote tally. My concern would be violating the voter files, but we have those issues anyway and there are plenty of controls on that,” he said. “You know from a standpoint of using social media we spent a couple of billion dollars on the last election, they maybe spent a couple hundred thousand.”
“We’ve had briefings on this — it’s very difficult to really meddle in our elections. It just is. These are locally run, it’s almost impossible to change the vote tally. My concern would be violating the voter files, but we have those issues anyway and there are plenty of controls on that,” he said. “You know from a standpoint of using social media we spent a couple of billion dollars on the last election, they maybe spent a couple hundred thousand.”
But of particular interest was Parnas’ comments about Team Trump’s congressional allies who helped spread anti-Biden misinformation.
The witness specifically told lawmakers, for example, that there were people “doing the bidding for the Russians — people in Congress, like Sen. Ron Johnson.” Referring to his disinformation efforts with Giuliani, Parnas added, “Ron Johnson was our guy in the Senate.”
[Martin] was reportedly not involved in any illegal storming-of-the-Capitol activities
Of course, not. Why mess up his police record. Let the suckers do that.
Of course, these very voting methods were part of Trump’s debunked narratives about voter fraud in the last election.
Say anything for press coverage. There will be more press coverage tomorrow.
I think a big part of support for Putin is that Putin and Biden dislike each other so magats naturally support Putin.
And hopefully someone will track which ‘Fuck You, Libtards’ flag Martha-Ann decides to fly to celebrate the carnage. I’m certain she has many in her collection.
I know Judge Merchan informed both parties entirely on the up and up, but the guy who posted that message now appears to have been an Internet troll. And knowing how predictably stupid and aggrieved the MAGAs are, it’s almost like Merchan baited them. Though it been disproved as an outlier during the trial, watch Trump run with it.
“Why this particular seismic shift?”
It’s simply simple.
Magats aren’t at all complicated. The simplest explanations for their behavior should be the most plausible.
