October 31, 2021

To Win Virginia: HOLD the TRAITORS ACCOUNTABLE

Great political message because it’s TRUE, Tuesday and beyond. Democrats must make plain our priority: the restoration of JUSTICE by reversing the impacts of GQP insurrection in the Capitol, GQP criminal dereliction of duty, and GQP corruption in office. If we do, if we show WHY it most matters to vote Democratic, we will win Tuesday and next year, too.

October 31, 2021

When they don't vote to support Democratic policies, there's a problem. The data show...

Sinema and Manchin Flush With Lobbyist Contributions as They Hold Up Biden Agenda

By Matthias Rémy Lalisse
Data for Progress, Oct. 28, 2019

Amid ongoing Build Back Better negotiations, lobbyists have stepped up their contributions to Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, the sole Democratic holdouts against advancing the Biden agenda through the Senate.

Manchin and Sinema are the 2018 Senate class’s top recipients of contributions from lobbyists. In the first half of 2021, Sinema (first elected to the Senate in 2018) received $408,000 in contributions from lobbyists, 150% of what she received at the same time last year despite not being up for re-election until 2024. Manchin (re-elected in 2018) received $512,000 from lobbyists, nearly three times as much as last year. Together, the two top the list of their Senate cohort—both Democrats and Republicans—in donations from lobbyists, which include direct campaign contributions from lobbyist and/or lobbyist-controlled PACs, costs of lobbyists attending/organizing fundraisers, or sponsorship of events promoting Manchin or Sinema.

To place these quantities in perspective, the typical six-year electoral cycle means that Senate candidates receive the highest volume of lobbyist contributions in the year or two running up to their elections, followed by a trough until the next cycle. Manchin’s 2021 contributions are now at the same level as his election year, and Sinema has received a steady stream of lobbyist money into her coffers since taking office. Both are taking in lobbyist contributions at more than three times the rate of the average Senator.

The data presented provides real-time evidence that Sinema and Manchin’s obstruction of the Biden agenda is being rewarded by lobbyists seeking to influence their legislative priorities. In this case, those priorities are to smother provisions like negotiated pharmaceutical pricing through Medicare and a just transition to renewable energy, measures that directly target the interests of Big Pharma and Big Oil. This comes as new DFP polling shows Sinema at a severe disadvantage for a potential primary challenger in 2024.

Sold to Arizona voters in 2018 as a former Green Party activist with a working-class personal history, Sinema has acquired a new reputation for cozying up to donors lobbyists. But in reality, Sinema’s Senate campaign was always powered by big donors. According to FEC filings, only 16% of the summed direct contributions to Sinema’s campaign PAC came from donations of less than $500. In 2021, that amount has dropped to 7.5%. Manchin’s campaign contributions are even more dominated by large donors, with only 1.6% of 2021 receipts coming from small contributions.

As Sinema and Manchin continue to obstruct the Biden agenda, we cannot ignore the influence that lobbyist contributions are having on their votes. Such obstruction of highly popular policies is likely to impact their electoral prospects in 2024 and beyond.

Methods

Under the 1995 Lobbying Disclosure Act, lobbyists are required to register as such and to report any contributions to political officeholders/candidates, including personal donations, purchase of tickets to fundraisers, and contributions made from lobbyist-controlled PACs. Data were extracted from the publicly Form LD-203 filings, which require lobbyists to report a series of contribution types including personal contributions to the candidates, ones routed through PACs that the lobbyist founded or controls, as well as any spending on events honoring a legislator. Using the LDA API, we pulled all Form 203 filings from 2015-2021, eliminated duplicates/amendments, and extracted contributions aimed at each Senator using string matches mapped to a database of legislators. If the last name was unique among all legislators (e.g. Feinstein, Tester, Sinema, Manchin), we matched the last name. When there were duplicate last names (e.g. Sen. Sherrod Brown, Reps. Corinne Brown and Anthony Brown), we matched to all versions of the Senators’ names as they can appear in the disclosures ("Sherrod Brown", "Brown, Sherrod" ).

Matthias Lalisse (@MatthiasLalisse) is a data scientist, organizer, and recent PhD grad in Computational Cognitive Science from Johns Hopkins University.
OCTOBER 27, 2021

Source: https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/10/27/sinema-and-manchin-flush-with-lobbyist-contributions

October 31, 2021

Sure seems that way.

My opinion.

ETA support from the World Socialist Web Site:

But there is a unifying thread to the process of legislative horse-trading with two right-wing Senate Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and a half-dozen right-wing House Democrats, which shrank the initial social spending bill from $6 trillion at the beginning, to the $3.5 trillion bill put forward by the White House, and now to the $1.75 trillion embraced by Biden Thursday—half his original plan, and barely a quarter of the opening bid by Sanders.

Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/10/29/pers-o29.html

October 30, 2021

Understood the situation.

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” — Frank Zappa

October 29, 2021

CIA contracted Mafia for murder. Never told Warren Commission.

Then when Congress HSCA re-examined the JFK assassination in 1976 and asked about CIA-Mafia ties, CIA obstructed the investigation by assigning Oswald’s New Orleans watcher or handler, George Joannides, to serve as “CIA-HSCA liaison.”

October 28, 2021

Faceboot

Got your corporate rebranding, right there, for the social media behemoth that helped Dimdonnie Peedumputin push the Big Lie long before 2016.



Consider that Facebook is the Big Piranha in a tiny tank. Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow moguls cough oligarchs know how much you got, what you read, where you go, and with whom you spend time and what you talk about.

And, thanks to all the money they make off your data, they increasingly control the political narrative.

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

Who remembers nationalization?

October 27, 2021

Mort Sahl on JFK assassination

Originally published March 18, 1968 via MaeBrussell:

This is a man: Mort Sahl was and is unafraid to tell the truth -- even when doing so cost him his livelihood.

Of course, the truth we've learned and the history we've lived since then only support Mort Sahl.

October 26, 2021

To fix up the Senate, kick out the traitors.

Cruz, Hawley, Tuberville makes it 50-47.

October 26, 2021

OPTICS: Upendin' the Elite

https://twitter.com/cspanJeremy/status/1453076922922147845

REALITY: Doin’ Thiel’s Work.

October 26, 2021

U.S. Embassy Staffer Who Drugged, Molested Women on Video Was in CIA, Feds Say

Source: The Daily Beast

The FBI, which on Monday revealed convicted sex criminal Brian Jeffrey Raymond was in fact an intelligence officer, is urging additional victims to come forward.

Justin Rohrlich
The Daily Beast, Reporter, Oct. 26, 2021

A U.S. Embassy staffer accused of drugging and sexually assaulting at least 24 women over a 14-year period was in fact a longtime CIA employee, the FBI announced Monday, as the bureau urged any possible victims to come forward in the case.

Serial molester Brian Jeffrey Raymond, 45, was arrested Oct. 9, 2020, in La Mesa, California, where he had been staying with his parents after abruptly quitting his job at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. He pleaded guilty this past July to two counts of sexual abuse and one count of transporting obscene material, and will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life upon his eventual release from prison.

FBI spokeswoman Samantha Shero confirmed to The Daily Beast that Raymond was working for the CIA during his embassy posting in Mexico. She declined to provide further details about his exact position with the spy agency. A CIA spokesperson told The Daily Beast in an emailed statement, “CIA condemns in the strongest terms the crimes committed by former Agency officer Brian Jeffrey Raymond.” A source familiar with the case said the CIA took administrative action after Raymond’s arrest, and that he resigned from his position soon after.

Snip…

Raymond, who speaks Spanish and Mandarin Chinese and worked in at least six different countries over some 20 years of federal service that Raymond’s defense team described as “exemplary,” met his unsuspecting victims on Bumble, Hinge, and other dating apps. After meeting Raymond for a date, his victims reported “drinking alcohol supplied and/or prepared by Raymond and experiencing memory loss during their time with Raymond,” states Raymond’s plea agreement. At least nine of Raymond’s attacks occurred in his official government residence.

Continues…

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-embassy-staffer-brian-jeffrey-raymond-who-drugged-molested-women-on-video-was-in-cia-feds-say?ref=home

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Guy must’ve figured out how to pass the lie detector tests.