August 23, 2023

Time to talk about the Dark Money that funds the GOP

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/16/two-anonymous-425-million-donations-gives-dark-money-conservative-group-a-massive-haul-00067493

'Two anonymous $425 million donations give dark money conservative group a massive haul...DonorsTrust took in more than $1 billion in 2021, according to its tax filing. It came from three donations. The identities of those donors remains a secret....DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund, has doled out over $1.5 billion since its founding in 1999, according to the group’s website...DonorsTrust reported just three gifts in 2021, according to its tax filing. One contribution was listed for $427 million, and another for about $77 million. The third donation was worth roughly $426 million — but not in cash. DonorsTrust noted that on Dec. 30, 2021, it received hundreds of millions in “closely held common stock in a C-corporation.” It did not provide greater details on the identity of that investment.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/23/concord-fund-republican-attorneys-general

An influential group of 28 Republican attorneys general has benefited mightily from at least $9.5m since 2020 from the dark-money Concord Fund, public records reveal...The Concord Fund, the top donor in 2022 and the two prior years to the Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga), boasts strong links to Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo. Leo helped Donald Trump pick three conservative supreme court justices and now helps spearhead a dark money network that has secured $1.6bn from a single donor.

Raga members have been criticised as a “pay-to-play” operation for filing lawsuits in support of business interests that help fund the attorneys general group, including fossil-fuel companies opposing climate-change rules. Further, Raga sparked strong concerns during Trump’s fight to block Joe Biden from taking office when an affiliate, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, spent $150,000 on robocalls to boost attendance at Trump’s January 6 rally. Those robocalls urged “patriots” to attend the rally and said: “We will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal.”

August 22, 2023

Judge Michael Luttig not a Republican anymore

https://www.rawstory.com/republican-party-michael-luttig/


'Revealed: Conservative Judge says he's not a Republican anymore'

'"I want to ask you a personal question, (Nicolle) Wallace began. "I wouldn't put myself at your stature level but I parted with the Republican Party when it embraced Donald Trump who announced his candidacy by talking about people from Mexico as rapists and murderers and I have never looked back. But it can be lonely and I wonder what the experience has been like for you in your very high-level legal circles to part so publicly with the standard bearer of the party you are in."

"I held the views, the beliefs and the principles and the policy positions of the Republican Party my entire lifetime. I no longer hold the same views that they do, so I do not consider myself a Republican except in name only," Luttig confessed. In the past few years, Trump has used the "Republican in name only" or RINO moniker as a pejorative.

"To your question, your personal question, it troubles me a great deal where the Republican Party finds itself today and the direction in which it is headed. I just — I'm eternally hopeful that the party will come to its collective senses and its constitutional senses, in particular, because if it doesn't, it will never be the Republican Party that it has been up to this date."'

August 22, 2023

Mark Meadows 'decided to trust' Jack Smith and cooperate against Trump: NYT

https://www.rawstory.com/mark-meadows-jack-smith/

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/22/us/politics/mark-meadows-trump-legal-strategy.html

'Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reportedly decided to cooperate in Special Counsel Jack Smith's prosecution of Donald Trump...The New York Times reported Tuesday that Meadows was initially reluctant to answer questions about classified documents and Trump's attempts to stay in office after the 2020 election.

"But when prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, challenged Mr. Trump's executive privilege claims before a judge, Mr. Meadows pivoted," the paper reported....

"Even though he risked enraging Mr. Trump, he decided to trust Mr. Smith's team, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Meadows quietly arranged to talk with them not only about the steps the former president took to stay in office, but also about his handling of classified documents after he left."'

August 21, 2023

don't give me any bullshit about how unfairly Donald Trump is being treated: JEFF TIEDRICH

https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/dont-give-me-any-bullshit-about-how?utm_source=substack&utm_medium

'Trump has been treated with kid gloves his entire pampered life..

Donald Trump was indicted in Manhattan on 35 felony counts of business fraud. he was driven by motorcade to his arraignment where he pleaded not guilty and was released without bail. he was not handcuffed or fingerprinted, nor were mug shots taken. afterwards, Trump held a rally.

Kalief Browder was a 16-year-old kid from the Bronx. he was accused of stealing a backpack. cops arrested him, handcuffed him and took him to jail, where he was fingerprinted and photographed. at his arraignment, he pleaded not guilty. he was denied bail and was sent to Rikers Island to await trial.'...

Read on. It gets worse. And then Tiedrich ends with this (my words):

'Trump’s worshipers are going ballistic.'

'it’s not fair, they’re screaming. how can they treat him like this?

oh, please.

he’s going to have a mug shot.

boo hoo hoo.

everyone’s his going to find out his true height and weight.

cry me a fucking river.

it’s going to be on television.

well then pass me the popcorn.

is Donald Trump being treated unfairly?

let’s ask Kalief Browder if Donald Trump is being treated unfairly.

oh wait, we can’t.'

August 20, 2023

Finally, the truth about the GOP. This is a 'must read' people...

https://www.rawstory.com/ivanka-trump-and-jared-kushner-2659707969/

My summary doesn't do it justice. Please read the entire article. (my words).

'Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and the core of the GOP's existence' Thom Hartmann Commentary

'Nobody ever accused Republicans of not knowing how to make a buck or BS-ing somebody into voting for them. Lying to people for economic or political gain is the very definition of a grift. Whenever there’s another mass- or school-shooting, Republican politicians hustle out fundraising emails about how “Democrats are coming to take your guns!” The result is a measurable and profitable spike in gun sales after every new slaughter of our families and children, followed by a fresh burst of campaign cash to GOP lawmakers...

When Jared Kushner was underwater and nearly bankrupt because he overpaid for 666 Fifth Avenue and needed a billion-dollar bailout to cover his mortgage, his buddies in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia and the UAE) blockaded American ally (and host to the Fifth Fleet) Qatar until that country relented and laundered the money to Jared through a Canadian investment company.

Just this year, after Trump deregulated toxic trains leading to a horrible crash and the contamination of East Palestine, Ohio, Steve Bannon — already charged with multiple fraud-related crimes and then pardoned by Trump — showed up to hustle $300+ water filters to the people of that town...The grift is a recurrent theme through Republican presidencies in the modern era.

Ronald Reagan told us if we just destroyed America’s unions and moved our manufacturing to China and Mexico, great job opportunities would fill the nation. He followed that up by promising if we just cut taxes on the morbidly rich, prosperity would trickle-down to the rest of us. Reagan even assured us that raising the Social Security retirement age to 67 and taxing Social Security benefits would mean seniors could retire with greater ease. All, of course, were grifter’s lies. Republican presidents since Reagan have continued the tradition....

Donald Trump told Americans he had the coronavirus pandemic under control while he was actually making the situation far worse: America had more deaths per capita from the disease than any other developed country in the world, with The Lancet estimating a half-million Americans died needlessly because of Trump’s grift.

Jared and Ivanka cashed in on their time in the White House to the tune of billions, while Trump squeezed hundreds of millions out of foreign governments, encouraging them to illegally pay him through rentals in his properties around the world....

While Nixon was simply corrupt — a crook, to use his own term — in 1978 when five Republicans on the Supreme Court signed off on the Bellotti decision authored by Lewis Powell himself, giving corporations the legal right to bribe American politicians, the GOP went all in.Ever since then, the GOP has purely been the party of billionaires and giant corporations, although their most successful political grift has been to throw an occasional bone to racists, gun-nuts, fascists, homophobes, and woman-haters to get votes.

Democrats at that time were largely funded by the unions, so it wasn’t until the 1990s, after Reagan had destroyed about half of America’s union jobs and gutted the unions’ ability to fund campaigns, that the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton was forced to make a big turn toward taking corporate cash.

Since Barack Obama showed how online fundraising could replace corporate cash, however, about half of the nation’s Democratic politicians have aligned with the Progressive Caucus and eschewed corporate money, returning much of the Party to its FDR and Great Society base.The GOP, in contrast, has never wavered from lapping up corporate money in exchange for tax cuts, deregulation, and corporate socialism.

Their most dangerous grift today, though, has been their embrace of the lie that America is not a democracy but instead is a theocratic republic that should be ruled exclusively by armed Christian white men. It’s leading us straight into the jaws of fascism...'

August 19, 2023

Trump's refusal to pay Rudy Giuliani worse than we thought:

https://www.rawstory.com/giuliani-payment/

'Former New York mayor and ex-President Donald Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who is currently "having financial difficulties" according to his lawyer, has repeatedly requested compensation from the former president and been unsuccessful, The New York Times reports...

"Mr. Trump's political action committee, which has doled out roughly $21 million on legal fees primarily for Mr. Trump but also for a number of people connected to investigations into him, has so far covered only $340,000 for Mr. Giuliani, a payment made in late May."...

In the past, Mr. Trump has entered dangerous territory by not paying an associate's legal bills when the case is connected to him, most notably with his former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, who has become a chief antagonist and star witness against him. But people close to both Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani take it as an article of faith that the former mayor would never cooperate with investigators in any meaningful way against the former president. (Mr. Giuliani has said both he and his former client did nothing wrong)'

I wouldn't make any bets that in the end Rudy won't turn on the first traitorous American President (my words).

August 18, 2023

The peaceful transfer of power... words for our times from Franklin Delano Roosevelt

https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/the-peaceful-transfer-of-power?utm_source=substack&utm_medium

'The peaceful transfer of power' STEVE SCHMIDT

This seemed so appropriate for our times because, as President Biden said, we are currently 'in a battle for the soul of America'. (my words).

'...Franklin Roosevelt...His last inaugural address...remains remarkable nonetheless as a declaration of moral purpose around a national purpose.'

We Americans of today, together with our allies, are passing through a period of supreme test. It is a test of our courage--of our resolve--of our wisdom--our essential democracy. If we meet that test--successfully and honorably--we shall perform a service of historic importance which men and women and children will honor throughout all time.

'As I stand here today, having taken the solemn oath of office in the presence of my fellow countrymen--in the presence of our God-- I know that it is America's purpose that we shall not fail. In the days and in the years that are to come we shall work for a just and honorable peace, a durable peace, as today we work and fight for total victory in war. We can and we will achieve such a peace. We shall strive for perfection. We shall not achieve it immediately--but we still shall strive. We may make mistakes--but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle.

I remember that my old schoolmaster, Dr. Peabody, said, in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled: "Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights--then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward; that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend."

Our Constitution of 1787 was not a perfect instrument; it is not perfect yet. But it provided a firm base upon which all manner of men, of all races and colors and creeds, could build our solid structure of democracy. And so today, in this year of war, 1945, we have learned lessons-- at a fearful cost--and we shall profit by them.

We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community. We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that "The only way to have a friend is to be one." We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the understanding, the confidence, and the courage which flow from conviction.

The Almighty God has blessed our land in many ways. He has given our people stout hearts and strong arms with which to strike mighty blows for freedom and truth. He has given to our country a faith which has become the hope of all peoples in an anguished world. So we pray to Him now for the vision to see our way clearly--to see the way that leads to a better life for ourselves and for all our fellow men--to the achievement of His will to peace on earth.'

August 18, 2023

'he ran a secretive in-house intelligence unit for the conservative Koch brothers organization'

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/mike-roman-placing-obscure-co-defendants?utm_source=substack&utm_medium

'Mike Roman: Placing Obscure Co-Defendants'
JOYCE VANCE

Roman has had an interest in propagating false claims of voter fraud for a long time. He was doing it as far back as the early 1990s...Before becoming an advisor to Trump, he ran a secretive in-house intelligence unit for the conservative Koch brothers organization, making upwards of $250,000.00 a year for his voter suppression work. He worked on the 2016 election, took on a White House role doing special projects that was never well defined, and was back on the campaign staff by 2018. He became Trump’s director of Election Day Operations for 2020. Traditionally that’s the type of position that involves efforts to get out the vote, but in Roman’s case, many people familiar with his work believed he would focus again on undercutting the legitimacy of the election results by pushing fake claims of fraud....One of the allegations in the Georgia indictment is that in late November 2020, Roman was encouraging other campaign officials to contact state legislators in Georgia to urge them to unlawfully appoint Trump electors. Roman even kept a spread sheet with names and contact information for fake electors in it.

Roman told the January 6 committee that his role with the Trump campaign was maintaining contacts with state officials and tracking voting-related legislation before the election...The committee’s report reveals that it was Roman who dispatched a staffer to the Capitol to deliver the fake elector certificate to Congress. Roman took the 5th when he was asked about it...He refused to answer questions about any conversations he might have had with Trump about calls Trump had with state legislators to encourage them to appoint fake slates of electors. He declined to reveal “other options for changing or affecting the results of the 2020 Presidential election” that he and Trump might have discussed. And he refused to tell Congressional investigators whether he discussed the alternate elector plans with Trump before or after the fake slates voted on December 4.

Roman was charged in Georgia with the RICO count all 19 defendants are named in. In addition, Roman was charged with 2 counts of conspiracy to commit forgery, 2 counts of making false statements, conspiracy to impersonate a public officer and a conspiracy to file false documents. That’s a lot of luggage. Roman could be looking at as much as five to 20 years in custody if convicted on the RICO charge alone, which makes you wonder whether the veteran political operative might not be a candidate to cooperated against Trump.'

August 17, 2023

The Devil Went Down to Georgia JOYCE VANCE

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/the-devil-went-down-to-georgia


This is a comprehensive discussion, folks, that includes the complete indictment. Here is a bit of a teaser (my words).

'...In Georgia state proceedings there are cameras. Not just for trial but every step of the way. ...The impact when people can see it for themselves can’t be overstated. That’s especially true when it comes to hearing the evidence and the legal arguments the lawyers make...All 19 of the defendants are charged with the RICO violation in Count I of the indictment. Forty additional counts follow, one or more defendants in each. Trump is charged in 12 counts in addition to RICO...In some cases, both a conspiracy to do “the thing” and doing “the thing” itself are charged. In other words, being charged with a conspiracy to forge documents, as well as the forgery itself...The...crime of conspiracy is a separate crime from...doing the act itself and can be charged separately...

Fulton County DA Fani Willis sent the judge a proposed order that...calls for the defendants to be arraigned during the week of September 5...When the defendants surrender, they will show up at the Fulton County jail...That...is currently being investigated by DOJ...“The recent allegations of filthy housing teeming with insects, rampant violence resulting in death and injuries, and officers using excessive force...” Although it’s unlikely that Trump or his co-defendants will remain in custody for longer than it takes to process them...

Could Trump be held in jail pending trial? We don’t know yet if Fani Willis will seek detention, but...Trump avoids accountability for this sort of conduct, as well as for the threats he makes against people, because instead of doing it face to face, he uses social media. If he had told the witness face to face that he shouldn’t testify as opposed to “truthing” it, there would have been little question prosecutors would take action if they learned of it. We’ll likely learn at arraignment how Judge McAfee intends to handle this behavior.

What kind of time would the former president do in prison if convicted?'... (read on - my words)

August 17, 2023

This is one reason why who is President is so important...

https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/do-you-ever-think-about-the-boomers?utm_source=substack&utm_medium

STEVE SCHMIDT

'Do you ever think about the Boomers?' (Not those Boomers, these Boomers - my words)

'Do you ever think about the Boomers?...I suspect I do more than most — which is barely at all...Boomers, of course, are the nickname for America’s fleet of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, which are the most powerful weapons of war in the history of human civilization. Here are their names:USS Henry M. Jackson (SSBN 730), Bangor, WA, USS Alabama (SSBN 731), Bangor, WA, USS Alaska (SSBN 732), Kings Bay, GA, USS Nevada (SSBN 733), Bangor, WA, USS Tennessee (SSBN 734), Kings Bay, GA, USS Pennsylvania (SSBN 735), Bangor, WA, USS West Virginia (SSBN 736), Portsmouth, VA, USS Kentucky (SSBN 737), Bangor, WA, USS Maryland (SSBN 738), Kings Bay, GA, USS Nebraska (SSBN 739), Bangor, WA, USS Rhode Island (SSBN 740), Kings Bay, GA, USS Maine (SSBN 741), Bangor, WA, USS Wyoming (SSBN 742), Kings Bay, GA, USS Louisiana (SSBN 743), Bangor, WA.

Aboard them are men and women from all 50 US states and territories. They are US Navy sailors, and are in the business of deterrence, which means they will be the first to know if Armageddon is at hand...The commander in chief is the president of the United States. The crew will follow his orders and they will fire the missiles. The American people choose the person who can give that order. Why don’t we ever talk about that? Why aren’t politicians ever asked about it? It is real...Now watch the captain talk about how the hidden submarine communicates with the commander in chief, receives its orders and prepares to fire. Lest there be any doubt around whether the order to fire would be disobeyed the captain will put your mind to rest. The missiles will be fired:

Donald Trump controls the Republican Party at an institutional level...He is an accused felon facing nearly 100 criminal charges that include being at the center of the greatest criminal conspiracy in American history. He is running on a platform of retribution, revenge, threat and division. His intimations toward violence and chaos will inspire the results he hopes for...We should all think about our Boomers. We should think about the young men and women aboard them. They will survive the first wave. It is said that when the missiles launch, the survivors will envy the dead. In the end, there is only one American who is ever given the power and discretion to launch the weapons of extinction. That person is the president of the United States of America. What type of sick society would ever invest that power again in a man like Donald Trump.? What type of broken media would pretend the powers of the office don’t exist? What type of people are we?'