democracy

Resist normalizing criminal behavior in the age of Trump

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This is not normal and should not be happening. Period. Full stop.

Today the FBI and intelligence agencies will provide a briefing in an ongoing criminal investigation of the Trump campaign’s “collusion” with Russia to Midnight Run Devin Nunes, the House Intelligence Committee chairman who previously had to recuse himself from his own committee’s Russia investigation because he was caught conspiring with the Trump administration to fabricate the conspiracy theories that the Obama administration surveilled Trump Tower and inappropriately unmasked the identities of Trump campaign officials picked up on signal intelligence to undermine the Special Counsel’s investigation; and Trey “Benghazi!” Gowdy, who spent years promoting Benghazi conspiracy theories against Hillary Clinton that amounted to nothing according to the findings of his own committee reports. These are two of the least credible partisan members of Congress.

More importantly, this meeting is going to occur without the presence of their Democratic counterparts. This is entirely improper and unacceptable. Moreover, Trey Gowdy does not possess the necessary security clearance for this classified intelligence briefing (he is not a member of the Gang of Eight).

There is no doubt that this meeting is certain to result in Nunes and/or Gowdy selectively leaking cherry-picked classified intelligence (a crime) to FAUX News aka Trump TV as soon as today to support the new conspiracy theory of “Spygate,” a label that Trump and his propaganda machine have concocted in order to undermine the Special Counsel’s investigation. The Special Counsel should be considering charging them as accessories to Trump’s conspiracy to obstruct justice, which is what this briefing constitutes.

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Authoritarian Tea-Publicans call for the prosecution of the political enemies of ‘Dear Leader’ Donald Trump (Updated)

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Like the fog in the famous, ultra-short poem by the U.S. person Carl Sandburg, fascism may well come in “on little cat feet.”

The crypto-fascist Tea-Publican members of the GOP House Freedom Caucus are calling for the criminal prosecution of the political enemies of their “Dear Leader,” Donald Trump. This is what occurs in tin-pot dictatorships and  authoritarian banana republics.

Matthew Yglesias reports, 11 House Republicans call for prosecutions of Clinton, Comey, Lynch, and others The authoritarianism is coming from inside the House:

Eleven House Republicans — Ron DeSantis, Andy Biggs, Dave Brat, Jeff Duncan, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Andy Harris, Jody Hice, Todd Rokita, Claudia Tenney, and Ted Yoho — have signed a joint letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling for the criminal prosecution of Hillary Clinton and a variety of other Obama administration appointees, career FBI officials, and even Trump appointee Dana Boente, who is currently the FBI’s general counsel.

Arizona Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs have always been unfit to serve in any political office, and Arizona voters have both a moral and patriotic duty to remove these fringe radical extremists from office. These sorry excuses for a human being are a disgrace and an embarrassment to this state. As The Arizona Republic editorialized earlier this year, Our View: Rep. Paul Gosar is a disgrace to Arizona. Somebody please unseat him. The same goes for Andy Biggs.

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Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump’s equally corrupt partner in crime

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The Septuagenarian Ninja Turtle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is the man who broke America:

By rights, McConnell’s tombstone should say that he presided over the end of the Senate. And I’d add a second line: “He broke America.” No man has done more in recent years to undermine the functioning of U.S. government. His has been the epitome of unprincipled leadership, the triumph of tactics in service of short-term power.

After McConnell justified his filibuster-ending “nuclear option” by saying it would be beneficial for the Senate, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said this: “Whoever says that is a stupid idiot.”

McConnell is no idiot. He is a clever man who does what works for him in the moment, consequences be damned.

The Turtle Man also blocked a more forceful response to Russian interference in the 2016 election by the Obama administration by threatening partisan politicization, U.S. national security be damned.

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GOPropaganda, ‘fake news’ and the post-truth era comes to Gov. Ducey’s campaign

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For all the controversy generated by Donald Trump’s efforts to delegitimize the American news media by claiming they are “fake news” in an attempt to create a post-truth era where facts do not matter, a propaganda technique long employed by the Soviets/Russians and many other authoritarian regimes, this was not something new to the Trump campaign in 2016.

There was, of course, FAUX News and its mantra of “we report, you decide,” reducing everything to mere opinions rather than objective facts. “Don’t bother me with the facts, I know what I believe!” FAUX News is  a rejection of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s admonition that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

There was the quote attributed to a Bush aide by Ron Suskind (reportedly Karl Rove) in 2004: The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

In 2014, the National Republican Congressional Committee has launched more than 20 “fake news” sites to attack Democrats running for Congress, creating a media uproar and drawing protest from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the NRCC’s counterpart. GOP campaign arm launches fake news sites against Democrats. “If anyone was wondering why voters don’t trust Congress, look no further than the NRCC’s brand new voter outreach strategy—fake news sites,” said Josh Schwerin, national press secretary for the DCCC, in a statement.

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Donald Trump and his congressional allies are a clear and present danger to American democracy

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For those of you who have been distracted by other less important matters, as of today we are officially in a constitutional crisis.

The threat to our democracy is now at DEFCON 1. To paraphrase, “Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.” This is not a drill.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee disregarded a Justice Department  letter last week to Rep. Devin Nunes, the committee’s Republican chairman, from Stephen E. Boyd, an assistant attorney general, advising him it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release the “Nunes Memo” drawing on classified information without official review.

According to the ranking minority member on the committee Rep. Adam Schiff, and the Transcript of House Intelligence Committee Meeting Regarding the Nunes Memo, the committee chairman, Devin Nunes, despite meeting with FBI Director Wray on Sunday regarding the concerns of the FBI, refused to even hear from the FBI in the committee hearing regarding their concerns for national security sources and methods (pp.2-21):

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It should be noted that this committee hearing was the first time it was disclosed to Democrats on the committee that chairman Devin Nunes and several Republican members on his committee were conducting their own investigation into the FBI and Department of Justice, something that was not approved by a vote of the committee.

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