Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Tweets Of The Day


Chief Twit thinks he's Batman. Others beg to differ --


 

 

 


The Republican / Seditionist / Q-cult Party in a handshake -- 



Always remember that cruelty is the point for these bastards --

 


Unmoored, unloved sicko looking to spread his misogyny --  



Tovarich Tuck getting big ratings.....on Russian State TV -- 



Prosecute the Russians for their war crimes. Damn them. --  



Driver training needed -- 

 

 

Loser Lake Sued For "Frivolous" Election Suit




It's gratifying to see that Arizona Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs and other Arizona officials acted swiftly yesterday to seek sanctions against Trumpist election denier, conspiracy monger and loser Kari "Shallow" Lake for her frivolous and dishonest challenge of Arizona's election results. Lake, who lost by over 17,000 votes, came to Maricopa County superior court unprepared to offer any evidence of fraud or deliberate sabotage of ballots, causing the judge to throw her case out Saturday and Hobbs to file suit against Lake:

"Attorneys for Hobbs, who has been Arizona's secretary of state for four years, joined the county in its filing Monday seeking $25,050 from Lake, which includes attorney fees for Hobbs and the state’s most populous county. The county took aim at Lake’s remarks before the election indicating she would not accept the results unless she won, as well as her 'groundless' and 'frivolous' lawsuit after the election was certified.

'Before a single vote was counted in the 2022 general election, Kari Lake publicly stated that she would accept the results of the gubernatorial election only if she were the winning candidate,' the county said in the filing.

'But she has not simply failed to publicly acknowledge the election results. Instead, she filed a groundless, seventy-page election contest lawsuit against the Governor-Elect, the Secretary of State, and Maricopa County and several of its elected officials and employees (but no other county or its employees), thereby dragging them and this Court into this frivolous pursuit.'”  (our emphasis)

As with her mentor and cult leader the Malignant Loser, Lake's own mouth was her worst enemy, including when she told Republican supporters of the late Sen. John McCain to "get the hell out" at a campaign event before the election. They did, and she lost. It's a good bet she'll lose this latest suit, too, and Arizona would be the better for it.

(photo: ABC News)

 

"Liar Rep.-Elect George Santos Admits Fabricating Key Details Of His Bio" *

 


 

Let's catch up with a man with a promising future in the Republican/ Seditionist Party:

Long Island Rep.-elect George Santos came clean to The Post on Monday, admitting that he lied on the campaign trail about his education and work experience — but insisting that the controversy won’t deter him from serving out his two-year term in Congress.

Wait, this is the Washington Post, right?  No?  Rupert Murdoch's New York Post?!  Do go on:

“I am not a criminal,”* Santos said at one point during his exclusive interview. “This [controversy] will not deter me from having good legislative success. I will be effective. I will be good.”

Santos’s professional biography was called into question earlier this month after the New York Times reported that he misrepresented a number of claims, including where he attended college and his alleged employment history with high-profile Wall Street firms.

“My sins here are embellishing my resume. I’m sorry,” Santos said on Monday.

If by "embellishing" you mean "lied shamelessly about."

Santos confessed he had “never worked directly” for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, chalking that fib up to a “poor choice of words.”

The 34-year-old now claims instead that a company called Link Bridge, where he worked as a vice president, did business with both of the financial giants.  

“I will be clearer about that. It was stated poorly,” Santos said of the lie.

"Lie."  Even the New York Post has bright lines (possibly).  The "limited hangout" carnage continues:

He also admitted that he never graduated from any college, despite previously claiming to have received a degree from Baruch in 2010.

“I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume,” he said. “I own up to that … We do stupid things in life.”

Santos, elected to Congress on Nov. 8 to represent the Long Island- and Queens-based 3rd District, was also accused of lying about his family history, saying on his campaign website that his mother was Jewish and his grandparents escaped the Nazis during World War II. 

Santos now says that he’s “clearly Catholic,” but claimed his grandmother told stories about being Jewish and later converting to Catholicism.

“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos said. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.'”

So, it was another "embell-ish-ment."

Is he also a deadbeat?  Do bears shit in the woods?  Are Republicans lawless hypocrites?

Santos also acknowledged being a deadbeat tenant in Sunnyside, Queens, where The Times reported he was ordered by a judge to pay more than $12,000 to a former landlord who claimed non-payment of several months of rent — as well as that Santos had tried to pass a check that bounced.

On Monday, Santos claimed that at the time of the lawsuit, his family was deep in medical debt from his mother’s cancer battle.

“We were engulfed in debt,” he said. “We had issues paying rent at the time. It’s the vulnerability of being human. I am not embarrassed by it.” 

Santos said his mother died of cancer on Dec. 23, 2016, after living with him at the Queens apartment and acknowledged the judgment against him.

Asked if he ever actually paid the arrears, Santos admitted: “We didn’t pay it off. I completely forgot about it.”  

Santos also admitted to lying when he claimed that he owned 13 different properties, saying he now resides at his sister’s place in Huntington but is looking to purchase his own place. 

We won't bother with stories about his sexual orientation (Santos says he's gay, but it could be he's just "gay-ish").  Without question, he's a deeply disturbed person (but then again, so is the leader of his party).  So, in conclusion, his future in Republican politics is bright.  Welcome to the Republican caucus, Mr. Santos (if that's your real name)!

(Photo:  "I swear-ish to tell the truth now!" / David Becker, Washington Post)

____________________

Actual New York Post headlineCan't improve on that.  When you've lost the NY Post ...

** A.k.a., the Richard Nixon defense.


Monday, December 26, 2022

More Electric Grid Sabotage



Thousands of electric customers in Washington State had their power cut off as a result of attacks on four substations around Tacoma yesterday. Power stations are the target of far-right fascist groups aiming to provoke civil unrest in furtherance of their politics. From the linked article:

"The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department described the early morning attacks on two Tacoma Public Utilities substations and a Puget Sound Energy facility as acts of vandalism, with those responsible unidentified.

It is unknown if there are any motives or if this was a coordinated attack on the power systems,' the sheriff’s department said in a statement.

The agency estimated that the number of affected homes and businesses was 14,000 at one point Sunday when there were three substations affected.

The sheriff's department described a fourth incident Sunday about 7:21 p.m. at another Puget Sound Energy substation.

'The suspect(s) gained access to the fenced area and vandalized the equipment which caused the fire,' the sheriff’s office said in a statement. 'There are no suspects in custody at this time.'"

You can be certain that radical right- wing domestic terrorist groups are coordinating these attacks, which have been occurring for weeks. From the above linked article:

"...Oregon Public Broadcasting and KUOW public radio of Seattle reported that separate attacks on six substations operated by Portland General Electric, the Bonneville Power Administration, the Cowlitz County Public Utility District and Puget Sound Energy in Washington and Oregon had taken place mid-November. The incidents are alleged to have included breaches of utility properties, the outlets said.

On Dec. 3, vandals attacked two Duke Energy substations in Moore County, North Carolina, leaving 45,000 customers in the dark for more than three days, officials said. People with guns opened fire and, in one case, breached a facility, they said, and they remained outstanding nearly a month later."

Last February, three white supremacists pled guilty in Ohio to a plot to attack power stations, in an attempt to start a race war:

"Federal prosecutors in Ohio said the three planned to disrupt the electricity grid in order to sow civil unrest and economic uncertainty in furtherance of their white supremacist cohort. They hoped to cause unrest and trigger a race war, but the plot never really got past the planning stage, prosecutors said."

Think of any lawless pro-Trump militia, white supremacist / anti-Semitic organization, or QAnon creeps and you likely have the profile of these saboteurs. When they're found, they need to be indicted, convicted and sentenced to long terms in prison.

(photo: A Tacoma Power crew works at an electrical substation that was damaged. Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times via AP)

 

Tweets Of The Day

 

A tale of two presidents --

 

 

A productive Democratic Congress soon gives way to a seditious Republican House --

 


What's that Musk-y smell?  Explosions and implosions --

 


Putin's fifth column --

 

 


Mothertucker's bad year --

 


WWJD --

 

 

 

Coming in from the storm, meeting "real Americans" --


 

 

China, N. Korea Probe Defenses of Taiwan, S. Korea

 

Two separate but likely coordinated actions demonstrate the increasing aggressiveness on the part of China and North Korea toward Taiwan and S. Korea respectively: 

"China’s military sent 71 planes and seven ships toward Taiwan in a 24-hour display of force directed at the island, Taiwan’s defense ministry said Monday, after China expressed anger at Taiwan-related provisions i n a U.S. annual defense spending bill passed on Saturday."

"South Korea’s military fired warning shots, scrambled fighter jets and flew surveillance assets across the heavily fortified border with North Korea on Monday, after North Korean drones violated its airspace for the first time in five years in a fresh escalation of tensions."

Virtually nothing that North Korea does is without the approval -- tacit or otherwise -- of big brother Beijing, which is increasingly aligning itself with Putin's criminal regime and supporting his war in Ukraine.  North Korea, too, is providing weapons for Putin's onslaught in Ukraine. Add Iran and their Shahed drone sales to the Kremlin and you have a perfect stew of the world's worst tyrannies challenging the "rules based order" that's largely kept the peace.

 

Today's Tomorrow Cartoon: Invisible Hand By Remote Control

 

(click to enlarge)



Tom's occasional snark about the wonders of the "invisible hand" of the free market is today's message. With the income gap widening, creating enormous wealth and abject poverty, it's worth noting that the invisible hand seems to be visibly helping one side and not the other.

You can support Tom's work by going here.

 

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

An Arizona judge on Saturday rebuffed an effort by Kari Lake, the defeated GOP candidate for governor in Arizona, to reverse the outcome of her November election, ruling against her after a two-day trial that showcased speculation about systematic malfeasance at the polls but failed to prove it.

The finding was in line with recent judgments against Abe Hamadeh and Mark Finchem, the unsuccessful candidates for attorney general and secretary of state, respectively, who also challenged their losses. Taken together, the rulings show how the judiciary in Arizona, a state rife with distrust in the democratic process, rejected challenges to election results and affirmed the will of voters.  [snip]

The judge hearing Lake’s case, Peter A. Thompson of Maricopa County Superior Court, earlier tossed most of her assertions but allowed arguments to proceed on two claims — that employees at Maricopa County’s ballot contractor stuffed extra ballots into the system and that the printer problems on Election Day were intentional.

In Saturday’s 10-page ruling, Thompson said the court “acknowledges the anger and frustration of voters” who were inconvenienced by technical problems on Election Day.

“But this Court’s duty is not solely to incline an ear to public outcry,” he wrote. “It is to subject plaintiff’s claims and defendants’ actions to the light of the courtroom and scrutiny of the law.” [snip]

Tom Liddy, an attorney for Maricopa County, confirmed to The Washington Post that the county will be seeking sanctions.

“A lawyer may not go to court without the evidence necessary for a chance to prevail,” Liddy said. “Lake had to make up 17,117 votes. She failed to identify one lawful ballot that was not counted, or one ballot that was counted that should not have been — and she knew that before she filed the contest.”...

Her attorneys are MAGA loons and deserve sanctioning.  After her appeals are exhausted, they need to go after "Shallow" Lake as well.  Being saboteurs of democracy should have consequences for these dead- enders.

The bad:

Three buses full of migrants arrived at Vice President Harris’s residence in Washington, D.C., from Texas on Christmas Eve amid bitingly cold temperatures, the latest in an influx of newcomers sent to the Northeast by Southern states.

About 110 to 130 men, women and children got off the buses outside the Naval Observatory on Saturday night in 18-degree weather after a two-day journey from South Texas. Some migrants were bundled up in blankets as they were greeted by a mutual aid group that had received word that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) had sent the caravan.

Volunteers scrambled to meet the asylum seekers after the buses, which were scheduled to arrive in New York on Christmas Day, were rerouted due to the winter weather. In a hastily arranged welcoming, a church on Capitol Hill agreed to temporarily shelter the group, while the restaurant chain Sardis provided 150 breakfasts, lunches and dinners, a mutual aid organizer said.

Abbott began offering asylum seekers free passage to immigrant-friendly Democratic cities on the East Coast in April, an effort to pressure the Biden administration into cracking down at the border. Other Republican governors, including Arizona’s Doug Ducey and Florida’s Ron DeSantis, have also sent buses to New York and the nation’s capital...

Rancid Christofascist Texas Republican pustule Gov. Greg Abbott sent these migrants, many clothed in shorts and sweatshirts, to Washington, DC, where the temperatures were in the teens.  What a fine thing for a "Christian" to do on Christmas Eve, no less.  Perhaps detaining the bus drivers and impounding their buses would send a message, too?

The ugly

The huge winter storm that has already killed 46 people in the United States looked set to continue wreaking havoc into Monday with plummeting temperatures and huge snow drifts trapping people inside their homes and snarling travel across the country.

The full brunt of the storm was being felt in western parts of New York, which had become a “warzone,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Sunday, with looting incidents and roads blocked by emergency vehicles.

A “band of heavy snow” in the Buffalo area was producing two to three inches of hourly snowfall, the National Weather Service said in a 3 a.m. bulletin, warning of rapidly deteriorating conditions. 

Stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the Mexican border, the storm has killed at least 46 people as of Monday morning, according to an NBC News tally. The deaths were recorded in 12 states: Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wisconsin. [snip]

The National Weather service said “hazardous travel conditions” were expected to continue over the next few days and that they would slowly ease over the new year.

“Much of the eastern U.S. will remain in a deep freeze through Monday before a moderating trend sets in on Tuesday,” it said in a 2:56 a.m. bulletin.

Meanwhile, the western parts of the country were also bracing for an incoming storm, with forecasters warning of a “potent surge of moisture” into the Pacific northwestern and California on Tuesday, threatening flash floods.

“The life-threatening cold temperatures and in combination with dangerous wind chills will create a potentially life-threatening hazard for travelers that become stranded, individuals that work outside, livestock and domestic pets,” the National Weather Service said in an earlier bulletin...

Especially hard hit Buffalo, NY, is currently reporting 16 storm-related deaths, with the number expected to rise. 

Sunday, December 25, 2022

Merry Christmas And Happy Holidays




Happy holidays to all, and thank you for your readership over the weeks, months and years. It's truly your best gift to us.


Saturday, December 24, 2022

Republican Crime Blotter -- "In God We Trust," But Not In This Dude




The promising career of another Christofascist Republican hits a speed bump:

Michael Capps, a former Kansas lawmaker who once sponsored a bill to put the words “In God We Trust” in every federal building, has been found guilty of committing COVID relief fraud and money laundering.

His career wasn’t supposed to end this way. In 2018, the Republican was appointed to the Kansas State House and won his own election bid later that year. Like other members of his party, he used his time in office to push Christianity on everyone. That’s why, in addition to his anti-trans and anti-abortion bills, Capps sponsored a bill to put “In God We Trust” in public buildings, including public schools.

Capps even defended the bill by citing former president John Adams: “Statesmen may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.”

That bill eventually died in committee, but Capps’ point was clear: It was necessary to promote religion and morality because, in his mind, those two things were synonymous.

The Wichita Eagle picks up the illegal particulars of the story:

Michael Capps, a 44-year-old Wichita business owner, was found guilty Wednesday of 12 felony charges for lying on applications for federal COVID-19 relief aid while he was a member of the Kansas House of Representatives. 

A federal jury announced the decision at 4 p.m. Wednesday after deliberating more than eight hours over multiple days. The FBI began investigating Capps after a 2020 Wichita Eagle investigation found Capps inflated payroll information, revenues and employee numbers to maximize federal awards to three entities under his control — Midwest Business Group, Krivacy and the nonprofit Fourth and Long Foundation.

Krivacy and Fourth and Long are both defunct. Midwest Business Group, which Capps co-owns with Uber driver and former Wichita City Council member James Clendenin, recently closed its downtown office. A federal grand jury indicted Capps in September 2021. His trial focused on 18 felony charges related to COVID-19 fraud. He was found guilty on multiple counts of making false and fraudulent statements, bank fraud, four counts of wire fraud and four counts of money laundering.

Capps defrauded Emprise Bank, U.S. Small Business Administration and Kansas Department of Commerce out of $355,550 in COVID-19 recovery funds, the jury found. He then transferred the money through business and personal accounts, including some money that went into investment funds. 

Capps remains out on bond while he awaits his sentencing hearing, which is scheduled for March 10. He could face millions of dollars in fines and decades in prison. 

You may recall the case of another Christofascist Republican lawmaker recently caught up in Covid relief fraud.   Then there were those January 6 seditionists who happily took Covid relief funds then stormed the Capitol where those relief funds were authorized. 

You might say it's a pandemic.

(Photo:  goodbye grift, hello prison/ screenshot from Only Sky)

 

Letters We Wish We'd Written, False Equivalence Department


A reader takes issue with a misleading characterization in a recent article in the Washington Post (slogan: "Democracy Dies In Darkness" --  well, democracy also dies in timid false equivalence):

I must take issue with how the Dec. 14 Politics & the Nation article “Biden signs bill to protect same-sex and interracial marriages” characterized the recent congressional votes for the Respect for Marriage Act. It reported that 12 Republican senators (out of 50) and 39 Republican House members (out of 213) voted for the bill and called this “strong bipartisan support.” It is not. Simple arithmetic shows that a significant majority of Republican members of Congress opposed this legislation, despite the Gallup survey of 2022 the article cited showing that 55 percent of Republicans supported same-sex marriage. These Republican members of Congress don’t represent their own voters, just their own prejudices and the prejudices of those who fund and bolster their primary electoral campaigns.

In the future, The Post should avoid such strained attempts at equivalence. When it comes to issues such as LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, civil rights and voting rights, the two parties are still very far apart, with Democrats in support and Republicans in opposition.

Bob Dardano, Washington

We keep seeing this type of nonsense from the Post, which seems incapable of self-correction.  Corporate media masquerading as truth tellers will be the death of us.


A Mother And Her Son In Ukraine

 

Sometimes it's hard to capture the devastation and deliberate cruelty that the Russian regime of war criminal and psychopathic thug Vladimir Putin has visited on the people of Ukraine. Civilian casualties have mounted in Putin's criminal assault on apartment buildings, residential areas, schools, hospitals and public infrastructure, in a brutal attempt to dampen Ukraine's resolve to fight back as winter has descended. Two heartbreaking photos -- perhaps more heartbreaking on Christmas Eve than any other time -- capture the evil of Putin's war on Ukraine. They show a Ukrainian mother standing by her son's covered body in a street near Kherson, where he died earlier today in a Russian artillery barrage:




As depressing as these pictures are, we must never forget scenes like this even as we celebrate the holidays -- especially as we celebrate the holidays so far away from that war. We must resolve to bring the Kremlin war criminals, and not just their soldiers in the field, to justice for their crimes against humanity, however long it takes.

Today's Cartoons

 

(click on images to enlarge)

(Randy Bish, @Bishtoons)

(Jeff Darcy, Cleveland Plain Dealer)

(Paul Fell, politicalcartoons.com)

(John Deering, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

(Peter Brookes, The Times, London)

(Matt Wuerker, Politico)

(Steve Benson, Arizona Mirror)

(Gary Markstein, gocomics.com)

(Banx, Financial Times, London)


Tweets Of The Day


A victory lap and a bow for Dem achievements --  



That goes for the spineless "men" who cower before the Malignant Loser --

 


And may the fire continue into 2023 and beyond! -- 

 


In just 10 months of war, Russian casualties have passed 100,000 -- 

 


They get our vote, too, for scoundrels of 2022 --  



Safe travels! -- 



 

QOTD -- The Danger Of January 6 Fatigue

 

"January 6th was a phenomenon rooted both in the degraded era of Trump and in the radicalization of a major political party during the past generation. The very power of these developments explains why many people may approach this congressional report with a sense of fatigue, even denial. Part of Trump’s dark achievement has been to bludgeon the political attention of the country into submission.

"When a nation has been subjected to that degree of cynicism—what is politely called 'divisiveness'—it can lose its ability to experience outrage. As a result, the prospect of engaging with this congressional inquiry into Trump’s attempt to delegitimatize the machinery of electoral democracy is sometimes a challenge to the spirit. That is both understandable and a public danger. And yet a citizenry that can no longer bring itself to pay attention to such an investigation or to absorb its astonishing findings risks moving even farther toward a disturbing “new normal”: a post-truth, post-democratic America.

"A republic is predicated on faith—not religious faith but a faith in the fundamental legitimacy of its political institutions and the decisions they issue. To concede the legitimacy of statutes, rulings, and election returns is not necessarily to favor them. It’s simply to participate in the basic system that gives them form and force; citizens can, through democratic machinery, seek to defeat or contest candidates they deplore, initiatives that offend them, court opinions they consider misguided. By contrast, the campaign that culminated in the Capitol attack of January 6th was, fatefully, against democracy itself. It sought to instill profound mistrust in the process of voting—the mechanism through which, even in highly imperfect democracies, accountability is ultimately secured..." -- David Remnick, The New Yorker, in his preface to the Final Report of the January 6 committee, one of several being published by private companies (print versions holding the #1, #3 and #11 spots on the current Amazon best seller list).