Friday, December 22, 2023
Kompromized GOPers
Rep. Tim Burchett says that some Republican Members of Congress have been compromised by Russian hookers and drugs and are being blackmailed to switch their votes on bills.
Monday, December 18, 2023
Saturday, December 16, 2023
Sunday, December 10, 2023
Monday, November 27, 2023
Rep. Ken Buck Admits the GOP Is Lying About Everything Around the 2020 Election and Trump
But he's only doing this because he's not running for office after this term.
Monday, November 20, 2023
Tuesday, November 14, 2023
Ohio Republicans Refuse to Accept Democratic Vote for Abortion Rights
Theocratic Asshole Anti-Democratic Ohio Republicans are REFUSING to accept a landslide victory for Issue #1 on last week's election -- where Ohio voters approved protection of reproductive rights in Ohio state constitution BY THIRTEEN POINTS. Yes, by 13 %.
Monday, November 13, 2023
Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term
"Advisers have also discussed deploying the military to quell potential unrest on Inauguration Day. Critics have called the ideas under consideration dangerous and unconstitutional."
Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini
"On Veterans Day, the former president vowed to “root out” his liberal opponents, drawing backlash from historians who say his rhetoric is reminiscent of authoritarians"
Monday, November 6, 2023
Monday, October 16, 2023
10 giant lies that Republicans desperately want you to believe
1) inflation is all Biden's fault
Sunday, October 15, 2023
Friday, October 6, 2023
Thursday, October 5, 2023
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
Monday, September 18, 2023
Saturday, September 16, 2023
Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Monday, September 11, 2023
Tuesday, September 5, 2023
Monday, September 4, 2023
Wednesday, August 30, 2023
Saturday, August 26, 2023
Ben Rhodes on the Amazing Radicalization and Incredible Assholery of the GOP
Monday, August 14, 2023
Tuesday, August 8, 2023
Saturday, August 5, 2023
Wednesday, July 26, 2023
Friday, July 21, 2023
Friday, July 14, 2023
Monday, July 10, 2023
Ron deSatan Hates a Livable Planet
VARNEY: Headlines are full of stories about wildfires, smoke, extraordinary temperatures. Do you have a climate plan?
Thursday, July 6, 2023
Trump Threatens Special Prosecutor Smith
Goddamn, can they lock this evil asshole up for these threats, please???
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-demands-deranged-jack-smith-to-be-put-out-to-rest-in-angry-truth-social-tantrum/ar-AA1dqBzF?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=dedc04da4aaf4dd2981c4417d621268c&ei=13Trump Promoted Violence Against Former President Obama
A Jan. 6 defendant who was arrested near the home of former President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C., with weapons and ammunition in his van had threatened to blow up the vehicle at a government facility the day before, federal prosecutors alleged in a new court filing. Taylor Taranto, a 37-year-old from Washington state, was taken into custody in Obama's Kalorama neighborhood on June 29 after Secret Service agents spotted him several blocks from the residence. He was wanted on an arrest warrant related to his alleged actions on Jan. 6 and faces four misdemeanor charges related to the riot. Prosecutors have indicated they could bring additional charges. At a hearing over whether Taranto should remain behind bars pending trial, Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said late Wednesday that he would need to hear further argument and consider case law before issuing a ruling on prosecutors' request. Taranto's defense attorney strongly disagreed with prosecutors' conclusions, saying Taranto doesn't pose a flight risk and should be released. Before the hearing, which will continue Thursday, the government revealed new details about its investigation into Taranto in a memo asking a judge to keep him behind bars pending trial.
Tuesday, July 4, 2023
Thursday, June 29, 2023
Trump Was Deinitely Bought Off by China as POTUS
Monday, June 19, 2023
Saturday, June 10, 2023
Trump Indicted For Stealing and Concealing Classified Government Documents
World-Class Asshole Donald Trump indicted for 2nd time, in classified documents investigation
Goddamn, he is such a freaking treasonous crooked motherfucking asshole.
38 counts and highly classified documents
Rachel Maddow points out that while the federal indictment of Donald Trump does not explicitly reveal what intelligence was put at risk by his reckless retention of classified documents, U.S. allies around the world can see that the intelligence they share with the U.S. has not been protected. The Trump documents scandal has informed the rest of the world, "We can't handle our stuff." - Aired on 06/09/2023.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/read-full-indictment-text-classified-document-probe-rcna88600
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-indictment-released-rcna88592
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-indictment-document-classified-key-takeaways-rcna88611
from the last link-->
Hiding documents in a shower. Showing national security secrets to a political aide and an author. And telling lawyers to simply not cooperate with a grand jury subpoena.
These are some of the allegations against Donald Trump in the bombshell federal indictment unsealed Friday, related to the more than 100 classified documents federal agents retrieved from the former president's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in August.
The indictment accuses Trump of breaking seven laws, including 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information and single counts of false statements and representations, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document, concealing a document in a federal investigation and a scheme to conceal.
Trump has continued to insist that he did nothing wrong and that he is being unfairly targeted by President Joe Biden's administration.
"I had nothing to hide, nor do I now," Trump posted on his Truth Social platform Friday. "Nobody said I wasn't allowed to look at the personal records that I brought with me from the White House."
Here are some of the biggest revelations from the indictment:
Trump hid classified documents in a bathroom
Trump stored his boxes containing classified documents “in various locations” at Mar-a-Lago, including in a ballroom, an office space, his bedroom, a storage room and even a bathroom and shower, according to the indictment.
In April 2021, the indictment alleges, Trump employees transported some boxes from a Mar-a-Lago business center “to a bathroom and shower in The Mar-a-Lago Club’s Lake Room.”
The indictment even features a color photo of the scene: more than two dozen boxes on the bathroom's marble floor, stacked high in front of a shower with a crystal chandelier overhead.
Trump revealed classified documents to an author
Chief among the examples prosecutors lay out in the indictment of Trump sharing classified intelligence with unauthorized individuals took place during a July 2021 sit-down he had with an author and a publisher for an upcoming book on his presidency. Two Trump staffers without proper clearances were also in the room for the discussion.
While the indictment does not name the author and publisher, it does include a transcript of a conversation Trump had with the two about a classified military document described as a “plan of attack” against another country. That conversation, which stems from an audio recording, was reported earlier Friday by CNN.
“Secret. This is secret information,” Trump said. “Look, look at this."
Trump admitted that he didn't declassify the documents, and that they were still 'secret'
Trump has maintained that the Mar-a-Lago documents were declassified, because he was able to declassify any document he wanted, even without a specific process.
"You’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it," Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in September 2022.
But the indictment indicates that Trump privately knew the documents were still secret.
At another point in his conversation with the author and publisher, Trump conceded he could no longer declassify the documents and did not do so when he was president.
“See as president, I could have declassified it,” Trump said. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
“Yeah,” a staffer responded, laughing. “Now we have a problem.”
Trump could easily have received a waiver to possess classified documents
The indictment explained that protocols do exist for former presidents to obtain a specific waiver of a rule — known as a “need-to-know” requirement” — that would have allowed Trump, under certain circumstances, to possess classified documents.
But Trump “did not obtain any such waiver after his presidency,” the charging document states.
Trump told someone not to stand too close a classified map
At his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in August or September 2021, Trump reportedly showed “a classified map related to a military operation” to an aide who worked for his political action committee, according to the indictment. That person did not possess a security clearance.
Trump, the indictment states, “told the representative that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close.”
Trump's documents contained national security secrets
The indictment outlines the sensitivity of some of the classified documents retained by Trump, as they related to national security.
According to the indictment, documents Trump took “included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for a possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”
His disclosure of some of their documents' contents “could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military and human sources, and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods,” the indictment states.
Staffers freaked out as classified documents needed to be moved repeatedly
The indictment details multiple instances where documents were transported — or cleaned up — by staffers who lacked proper security clearances to be in contact with such information.
At first, photos showed the documents stacked high on a ballroom stage at Mar-a-Lago. They were later moved to a “business center” at the Florida resort. It was then that an unnamed Trump staffer messaged another employee asking if the boxes could be moved elsewhere so that the business center could be transformed into a workspace for fellow Trump aides.
“Woah!!” the second staffer responded. “OK so potus specifically asked [Trump’s valet] Walt [Nauta] for those boxes to be in the business center because they are his ‘papers.’”
Later, they discussed moving the boxes to “a little room in the shower” for storage. The indictment then includes a photo of the boxes stacked high in a bathroom.
By December 2021, some of the boxes that had been relocated to a storage room fell, with their contents spilling all over the floor. Nauta, who was also charged in the indictment, messaged a second staffer: “I opened the door and found this …” He attached photos of the spill.
“Oh no oh no,” the person responded, adding, “I’m sorry, potus had my phone.”
Classified documents came from a number of federal agencies
Classified documents Trump kept after his presidency ended originated from a plethora of the top national security and law enforcement agencies of the U.S. government. Among them: the CIA, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Department of Energy, the Department of State and its Bureau of Intelligence Research, according to the indictment.
Trump suggested his lawyers should not 'play ball' with the grand jury subpoena
In May 2022, following a subpoena from the grand jury for all classified documents, Trump met with his lawyers, who told him that they needed to search for the requested items.
But Trump waved off his attorneys’ attempts to comply, according to the indictment, which recounted a series of conversations Trump had with his attorneys.
“I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes,” Trump said.
At another point, Trump said, “What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?”
“Isn’t it better if there are no documents?” he said, according to his attorneys’ records.
Trump made a ‘funny’ ‘plucking’ motion
The indictment recounts an interaction between Trump and one of his lawyers when they were discussing what to do with a folder containing documents with classified markings. The lawyer recounted that Trump made a “plucking” motion that seemed to indicate the lawyer should just remove the incriminating papers.
“He made a funny motion as though — well okay why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out,” the lawyer said. “And that was the motion that he made. He didn’t say that.”
Trump wanted his lawyers to takes notes from Hillary Clinton’s attorney
The indictment describes a conversation Trump had with two attorneys while discussing the document probe in May 2022. As one of the attorneys relayed, Trump was fixated on how an attorney for his 2016 Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton handled an investigation into her use of a private email server while she served as secretary of state.
“[H]e was great, he did a great job,” Trump said of the Clinton attorney whose name was redacted in the indictment. “You know what? He said, he said that it — that it was him. That he was the one who deleted all of her emails, the 30,000 emails, because they basically dealt with her scheduling and her going to the gym and her having beauty appointments. And he was great. And he, so she didn’t get into any trouble because he said that he was the one who deleted them.”
Trump, according to one of the attorneys, relayed that story multiple times that day.
Of course, Trump pilloried Clinton on the campaign trail for her use of the email server, making it central to his candidacy.
---------------------
A funny take on the indictment
Thursday, June 1, 2023
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
What GOP Assholes Want to Threaten the US and World Economy Over in the Debt Ceiling Fight
What’s in this supposedly commonsense bill McCarthy is demanding in exchange for not destroying the global economy?
Here’s my handy guide, for those interested in the substance of the legislation and not just political gamesmanship:
1. Unspecified across-the-board cuts to nondefense discretionary spending, down by one-third on average in 2024, after inflation. The cuts would then expand to roughly 59%, on average, by 2033. Does this mean WIC? Border security? Pells? FBI? No one knows
2. Defund the tax police - make it harder for IRS to collect taxes legally owed by wealthy/corporate tax cheats, and set back the agency’s other IT upgrades. (Would also increase deficits)
3. Medicaid work requirements - which sound nice, but are a solution in search of a problem. See Arkansas’s disastrous experiment, which did not boost employment but did cause a lot of poor working people to lose their healthcare.
4. Provision to grind entire regulatory system to a halt, by requiring Congress’s approval for all major regs. That includes deregulatory action too btw Congress can barely do the things it’s responsible for now. Like, say, paying our existing bills
THESE ARE INSANE CUTS
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) tries to sell the Nothingburger Durham FBI report about the Trump-Russia investigation as a smoking gun
“If people don’t go to jail for this, the American people should just stand up and say, ‘Listen, enough’s enough. Let’s don’t have elections anymore.’”
Tuesday, May 9, 2023
Timothy McVeigh’s Dreams Are Coming True
Timothy McVeigh, the right-wing terrorist who killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, cared about one issue above all others: guns. To him, guns were synonymous with freedom, and any government attempt to regulate them meant incipient tyranny. (snip)
It’s hard to think of a historical precedent for a society allowing itself to be terrorized in the way we have. The normalization of both right-wing terrorism and periodic mass shootings by deranged loners is possible only because McVeigh’s views have been mainstreamed.
Thursday, May 4, 2023
Monday, April 24, 2023
Sunday, April 23, 2023
Wednesday, April 19, 2023
The Horrifying Descent of GOP-Run States
"I'm really surprised that no one is actively talking about what an America run by the GOP looks like. We can see it in deep red states right now, and it's horrifying.
First, there's the gun violence. Red states have all but abolished gun laws, and are awash in firearms. The result: lots more death, both in terms of murders and suicides. We see people randomly blowing away innocent strangers all the time.Then there's the death from preventable disease, maternal mortality, and infant mortality. Half of the Ob-Gyns in Idaho are gone. So are most in MS. Life expectancy in red states was low, and is plummeting. China's life expectancy exceeds ours.
We're repealing child labor laws now. Letting them work in factories, night shifts, and bars. Given increasing wealth inequality, and low wages, more families will choose to pull kids out of school to work. More high school drop outs, and poverty cycle continues.
We're also looking at the end of the line for the LGBT community, and particularly trans people. The laws being passed in Florida and elsewhere resemble something out of Russia or West African nations infiltrated by the religious right.
Their crusade to ban books that might tell the stories of LGBT people and Blacks has denuded entire library systems of books. Entire library systems are being closed or defunded to prevent people from having access to disfavored information.
Gerrymandering and voter suppression are rampant, meaning most votes, and most election races, are meaningless: GOP politicians already picked their voters, and thereby the winner of every race. And when Dems get uppity, they get tossed.
Lack of access to birth control and abortion means more unwanted children, more poverty, worse schools (tax base issues), more child abuse, etc... The result will be more strains on already scarce social services, and even worse educational attainment. It may mean more crime.
Red states are particularly Malthusian in their views on social spending. This means that people in need of help aren't going to get any. CPS won't have resources. This means more homelessness, hunger, disease, and death.
Corruption among public officials will run even more rampant as the system refuses to prosecute its own. Look at Brett Favre, Clarence Thomas, and the Ohio state legislature. Money will disappear down ratholes the same way it does in Russia.
The long term picture for much of the American South is basically your average corrupt, violent, unequal, single-party, religiously conservative developing world country, complete with tropical diseases and staggering maternal and infant mortality rates.
And yet, because white Christians are on the top of the social heap there, they vote for this outcome overwhelmingly, because they see this as a better option than a pluralistic society.
Even if I'm wrong about one or two of these (and I'm almost certainly not), all of these together paint a bleak picture of what lies ahead for half the US. What blue states need to understand is that GOP controlled states will stop at nothing to make everyone just like them."
-- Brynn Tannehill
Thursday, April 13, 2023
Saturday, April 8, 2023
Trump Accused of Threatening Judge Hours After 'Incite Violence' Warning
Hours after his court appearance in New York, Trump gave a speech at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. He continued to attack the investigation into him, deny any wrongdoing, and criticize Judge Merchan and his family.
"I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family whose daughter worked for [Vice President] Kamala Harris and now receives money from the Biden-Harris campaign," Trump said.
Saturday, April 1, 2023
Trump Indicted in New York
Long time coming for this POS criminal asshole.
This is the hush money case where he cheated in the 2016 campaign.
Hope this is just the start of the indictments.
Friday, March 24, 2023
"Trump, Turning Up Heat, Raises Specter of Violence if He Is Charged"
In an overnight social media post, former President Donald Trump predicted that “potential death and destruction” may result if, as expected, he is charged by the Manhattan district attorney in connection with hush-money payments to a porn star made during the 2016 campaign.
The comments from Trump, made between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on his social media site, Truth Social, were a stark escalation in his rhetorical attacks on the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, ahead of a likely indictment on charges that Trump said would be unfounded.
“What kind of person,” Trump wrote of Bragg, “can charge another person, in this case a former president of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting president in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a crime, when it is known by all that NO crime has been committed, & also that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our country?”
“Why & who would do such a thing? Only a degenerate psychopath that truely [sic] hates the USA!” the former president wrote.
----
Also
Sunday, March 19, 2023
Saturday, March 18, 2023
Reagan's 1980 Treason to Beat Carter
This new piece confirms what we knew all along -- another case of Republican treason to our democracy. Seems like 3 of the 5 Republican presidents elected in my lifetime (Nixon, Reagan, Trump) sought out and got illegal foreign help for their elections. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/us/politics/jimmy-carter-october-surprise-iran-hostages.html
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
Monday, March 6, 2023
Donald Trump Receives Huge Boost in Criminal Investigation Against Him as Georgia Republicans Pass Bill that Would Target "Rogue Prosecutors"
Friday, March 3, 2023
Thursday, March 2, 2023
A DeSantis Presidency Could Be Even Worse Than Trump
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Kevin McCarthy Committed Treason
What an evil treasonous asshole
"How Should We React to Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy Unilaterally Gifting Tucker Carlson Access to Sensitive National Security Data?
McCarthy’s unprecedented move overrode express warnings from federal officials in both the executive and judicial branches. And it’s just the sort of government-media collusion MAGA says it opposes.
SETH ABRAMSON
FEB 21
This shocking story cannot be discussed without first acknowledging the context in which it arises: (a) an ongoing federal criminal investigation into Kevin McCarthy patron Donald Trump for mishandling national security-sensitive data; (b) an ongoing federal criminal investigation into Trump for his actions on and before the January 6 insurrection; and (c) McCarthy himself being not just the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives—and therefore third in line to the presidency—but a man who was himself referred for federal criminal investigation by the House January 6 Committee that he summarily disbanded because he (i) ignored a federal subpoena to testify about January 6, and (ii) manifestly lied about both his own words and actions and those of former president Trump on that terrible day.
It is factual, not partisan, to say that McCarthy not only just orchestrated a major national security breach but did so under circumstances in which he is currently under federal investigation for aiding and abetting an insurrection through illegal conduct (not to mention conduct that violates his Oath of Office). That the national security breach McCarthy orchestrated—which will reveal sensitive security data about the U.S. Capitol to the Trumpist insurrectionists currently engaged in a plot to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States—will result in a Putinist white supremacist (infamous far-right propagandist Tucker Carlson) gaining unfettered access to this sensitive data makes the whole scandal that much more terrifying. And that McCarthy’s collusion with private individuals in media is exactly the sort of public-private partisan cooperation Elon Musk and MAGA have for months been saying is tearing our country apart makes their implicit support for the new Speaker’s actions that much more risible and hypocricial.
And in the face of all this, reaction from major media continues to be muted.
If major media had been using the same frame that Proof and certain other media outlets have been using since January 6, 2021—that we’re in the midst of an ongoing insurrection that has accomplices in both government and far-right propaganda ops, it’d be easier to see what just happened here and call it by its rightful name(s). There is, instead, a sense that journalists are merely shaking their fists weakly at what Mr. McCarthy has done, as though what he has done is something less egregious than knowingly and unilaterally aiding and abetting future Trumpist violence against our democratically elected government.
To be very clear, McCarthy had been told by the FBI, DOJ, and the federal judiciary that the data he was gifting a white supremacist militant—while Carlson sometimes cosplays as a far-right propagandist or even merely a far-right “commentator,” his recent statements about America have been extremist to the point of dangerous militancy—would permanently endanger the Capitol from Trumpist insurrectionists.
He nevertheless chose to act unilaterally, without any advance warning to anyone else in the federal government and without instituting any prior checks on what information about the security arrangement at the Capitol would or would not be made available to a man (Carlson) who increasingly hints, as do certain members of McCarthy’s House GOP Conference, that a Second U.S. Civil War might be coming—and justified.
There is a version of this country in which we have enough of an instinct for our own self-preservation that impeachment proceedings get launched against McCarthy right now—not to mention (another) federal criminal investigation of him—given that this is not even the first or second time he has publicly taken actions to aid and abet what we know is an ongoing seditious conspiracy among enemies of American democracy.
In factual terms, McCarthy is an insurrectionist. While he may not be a true believer—he may only be aiding and abetting Trump’s insurrection in order to further his own career—but federal criminal statutes don’t make special allowances for people who seek to overthrow our government for purely selfish rather than (as it were) eldritch, self-declared “principled” reasons.
Every result that flows from what McCarthy has done in colluding with private media—again, exactly the sort of collusion leading far-right figures like Elon Musk (not to mention journalists-turned-propagandists like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald) have been decrying via #TheTwitterFiles for months now—makes America less safe.
McCarthy, Carlson, Musk, Trump, Taibbi, Greenwald, and GOP leaders advocating for civil war like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)—the last, incredibly, a possible Trump VP candidate—all know it.
But America is so broken right now that nothing will be done about it—and in fact maybe nothing can be.
To be clear, no one is saying—not here at Proof or anywhere else—that none of the thousands and thousands of hours of January 6 CCTV footage from inside the U.S. Capitol should be seen. Indeed, the House January 6 Committee already showed some of it. But all branches of the federal government have been in agreement, up until now, that any future releases of such material either in court or to American media would have to go through an extremely careful, exhaustive, national security-sensitive vetting process.
We needn’t doubt why McCarthy has unilaterally chosen to do an end-around on that process. His reasons are the same as ever: (a) his own personal advancement in D.C. and (b) an ongoing, Oath-violative willingness to aid and abet a violent insurrection that continues to be overseen by his political patron.
What remains unclear is what the consequences for America will be when Carlson broadcasts (and then almost assuredly leaks) national security-sensitive data to the enemies of America—both domestic and, possibly, even foreign. The answer to this open question is one that Americans may not have for some time yet. But when we do, it will no doubt come under some of the most unpleasant circumstances imaginable."
#GOPTraitors