As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.
Reporting in Rolling Stone is apparently confirming what was already in the wind about January 6 insurrectionists' prior coordination with Republican Members of Congress (paywall at link):
As the House investigation into the Jan. 6 attack heats up, some of the planners of the pro-Trump rallies that took place in Washington, D.C., have begun communicating with congressional investigators and sharing new information about what happened when the former president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Two of these people have spoken to Rolling Stone extensively in recent weeks and detailed explosive allegations that multiple members of Congress were intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.
Rolling Stone separately confirmed a third person involved in the main Jan. 6 rally in D.C. has communicated with the committee. This is the first report that the committee is hearing major new allegations from potential cooperating witnesses. While there have been prior indications that members of Congress were involved, this is also the first account detailing their purported role and its scope. The two sources also claim they interacted with members of Trump’s team, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who they describe as having had an opportunity to prevent the violence. (our emphasis)
Now that the January 6 select committee has this information about the seditious Republicans (doubtless most members of the "Freedom Caucus", including Arizona madman Rep. Paul Gosar), getting them under oath in front of the cameras is imperative. This nest of traitors to our democracy needs to be cleaned out.
Meanwhile, wannabe Trump usurper and Florida man Gov. Ron "One Glove" DeSantis is putting out the welcome mat for Trumpist police thugs who lost their jobs because they refused to get vaccinated to protect their community:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has invited law enforcement officers around the country to come to Florida if they lose their jobs because they refuse to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.
During an interview on Fox News, DeSantis explained that he had "scientific" reasons for hiring unvaccinated police officers.
"On a scientific basis, most of those first responders have had Covid and have recovered," DeSantis claimed without evidence. "So they have strong protection and so I think that influences their decision on a lot of this that they have already had it and recovered."
"In Florida, not only are we going to want to protect the law enforcement and all the jobs," he continued, "we're actually actively working to recruit out-of-state law enforcement because we do have needs in our police and our sheriff's departments. So the next legislative session, I'm going to hopefully sign legislation that gives a $5000 bonus to any out-of-state law enforcement that relocates in Florida."
Our hearts go out to the good citizens of Florida.
The so-called "Facebook Papers" show a company under siege as more is known about its harmful effects on the world:
Facebook the company is losing control of Facebook the product — not to mention the last shreds of its carefully crafted, decade-old image as a benevolent company just wanting to connect the world.
Thousands of pages of internal documents provided to Congress by a former employee depict an internally conflicted company where data on the harms it causes is abundant, but solutions, much less the will to act on them, are halting at best.
The crisis exposed by the documents shows how Facebook, despite its regularly avowed good intentions, appears to have slow-walked or sidelined efforts to address real harms the social network has magnified and sometimes created. They reveal numerous instances where researchers and rank-and-file workers uncovered deep-seated problems that the company then overlooked or ignored.
Final responsibility for this state of affairs rests with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who holds what one former employee described as dictatorial power over a corporation that collects data on and provides free services to roughly 3 billion people around the world.
More here from the Washington Post. The "profits- before- people" business model will continue, certainly as long as Zuckerberg is holding all the cards. Meanwhile the best advice remains to disengage from it.
Dana Milbank writes that Republican weasel Glenn Youngkin's campaign for governor in Virginia is both running away from and with Trump. This long excerpt gives you the flavor of this slippery demagogue:
[W]hile Youngkin banished Trump, he could not wash away the stench of Trumpism.
At his rally here Saturday night in Richmond’s suburbs, Youngkin debuted his closing argument. It was a Trumpian blend of conspiracy theories, race-baiting and fabrications.
Conspiracy theory:
“Terry McAuliffe wants government to stand between parents and their children,” Youngkin said of his Democratic opponent. “And when parents across this great commonwealth said, ‘No, Terry, you’re wrong,’ he called his friend Joe Biden and asked the FBI to come silence us.”
PolitiFact already identified this baseless claim (that McAuliffe got U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to order the Justice Department to help combat growing threats against school-board members and educators) as a “pants on fire” lie. But Youngkin keeps repeating it.
Race-baiting:
“What we won’t do is teach our children to view everything through the lens of race,” Youngkin vowed, adding that “on Day 1, I will ban critical race theory.” It was perhaps the biggest applause line of the night.
Preceding Youngkin onstage, the Republican attorney general candidate, Jason Miyares, argued that “you cannot survive as a nation if you’re raising an entire generation of children to hate their country, and that is exactly what critical race theory is.”
Critical race theory isn’t taught in Virginia schools. It’s a phantom menace, whipped up by Fox News to fill White people with racial terror. Youngkin urged his supporters to fear a “20-year high murder rate,” even though overall violent crime decreased in 2020 in Virginia, among the safest states in the country.
Fabrication:
Youngkin complained that “Virginia ranks 50th in the nation in standards for kids to progress in math, reading,” but Virginia kids’ actual proficiency exceeds the national average.
He suggested that Virginia “children cannot pass an 8th-grade math equivalency test” because of pandemic school closures — “so we will proclaim that Virginia’s schools will never be closed again to five-day-a-week, in-person education.” In reality, Virginia’s 38 percent proficiency in 8th grade math topped the national 33 percent. And the test results to which Youngkin referred were from before the pandemic-related closures.
Youngkin claimed that McAuliffe “said there’s no place for parents in their kids’ education” (a line that prompted boos and shouts of “communist”). But McAuliffe didn’t say there’s “no place” for parents. He spoke out against vigilantism in which “parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions. I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” and “running down teachers.”
This is a race Democrats need to win. They need to make sure their winning coalition from 2020 isn't asleep at the switch and gets out to vote (early voting continues through October 30).
Finally, a reminder to check out Infidel 753's link round- up for the best, most comprehensive collection of links to posts of varied topics from around the Internet. Always an excellent selection.
