DL Open Thread: Friday, Feb. 11, 2022
Doesn’t Look Like Sarah Palin Starred As Star Witness. How did this case even make it to trial?:
No one who has even casually followed the former governor’s career would be surprised at these specifics-free blasts against the media. Yet this time, Palin chose the wrong venue for such a critique. Adoring audiences at Fox News don’t stop and ask for citations, specifics, supporting evidence. But that’s precisely what happens in a courtroom.
Palin’s blame-the-media-at-all-costs ethos also arose when she was asked about the SarahPAC map at issue in the lawsuit. It overlaid stylized crosshairs over congressional districts in which the PAC hoped to prevail in the 2010 midterm elections.
Citing language in the editorial saying that SarahPAC had “circulated” that map, Turkel asked Palin if that was the case. “No,” responded Palin. “No. It was put on my website. The media circulated it.” But if that argument holds sway with the jury, just think of the arguments that the Times’s attorneys could make: The New York Times didn’t circulate this erroneous editorial. It was put on our website. Subscribers circulated it.
Teh Stoopid–Just Gotta Love It:
A man living in Ohio tried to divert Canadian police in Ottawa with a bogus bomb threat to show support for truckers in the country who are protesting COVID-19 restrictions.
Instead, the unidentified 20-year-old man actually called police in Ottawa, Ohio — a village in Putnam County, roughly 50 miles southwest of Toledo.
Putnam County sheriff’s Capt. Brad Brubaker told Insider on Thursday the man may now face criminal charges after he called the sheriff’s office twice in Ohio on Monday, first threatening he had a bomb in Canada’s Ottawa.
Opinion: Biden Should Choose His Own Scalia To Shift Court Leftward. I agree. The problem?: The man making the choice is Joe Biden.
QAnon Pushes RWNJ Candidacies For Secretaries Of State. Unlike Delaware, in most states the Secretary of State oversees elections. (Here, of course, they protect the ‘incorporation/secrecy’ scam.) Get anti-democratic whackos in those positions, and you can steal elections, so goes the theory behind this:
In recent months concern has risen over the coordinated efforts of at least 15 candidates – committed to Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him – who are now running to serve as chief election officials in key swing states.
At least eight of the candidates standing for secretary of state positions have formed an alliance in which they share tactics and tips for success, details of which the Guardian revealed last month.
Should any of the candidates be elected, they would be in prime position to distort or even overturn election results in favor of Trump or another preferred presidential candidate in ways that could have a profound impact on or even determine the national outcome.
The links between QAnon and the coordinated push to control election counts was revealed by one of the big lie candidates himself. Jim Marchant, a former Republican lawmaker who is running to become chief election official in Nevada, disclosed the connection at “Patriot Double Down”, a QAnon-linked convention held in Las Vegas in October.
Marchant told the convention that the idea that he should run for secretary of state was not his own. It was given to him by a prominent QAnon-influencer who goes by the alias Juan O Savin (107, it’s QAnon thing).
What do you want to talk about?
