Author Archives: jason330

About jason330

Jason330 is a deep cover double agent working for the GOP. Don't tell anybody.

DeSantis got his headlines – Now it is back to business as usual at Disney

Disney responded to Florida Republicans’ attempts to dissolve its special status self-government entity it by explaining DeSantis should kindly fuck off, unless Florida intends to pay off Reedy Creek’s $1 billion in outstanding bond debt.

CNN:In a statement issued to its bondholders last Thursday, Reedy Creek pointed out that the 1967 law establishing the district includes a pledge from Florida to its bondholders.

The law states that Florida “will not in any way impair the rights or remedies of the holders … until all such bonds together with interest thereon, and all costs and expenses in connection with any act or proceeding by or on behalf of such holders, are fully met and discharged.”

Due to that pledge, Reedy Creek said it expects to continue business as usual.

DL Open Thread Wednesday April 27 2022

It is a strategy that is brilliant in its simplicity and effectiveness, but they won’t do it.

Free Idea for Moderate Democrats: Criticize Republicans

Conservative positions on abortion and LGBT rights are astoundingly unpopular. It could be better sledding for moderates than condemning their own party.

Over the last week or so, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat from Virginia, has returned to one of her favorite activities: attacking members of her own party. She recently dished to Politico, attacking police reformers as being an electoral liability (as she did immediately after the 2020 election), and boasting about sucking up to her local police department.

All political news is just TMZ for current events nerds.

Kevin McCarthy was asked about his Trump lie. His answer was gibberish

(CNN)On Monday, during a trip to the US-Mexico border, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was asked why he had lied about the idea of asking then-President Donald Trump to resign in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Here’s how he responded:
“The reporter never asked me that question. The reporter came to me the night before he released the book. And my understanding was he was saying that I asked President Trump to resign. No, I never did. And that’s what I was answering. If you’re asking, now, did I tell my members that we’re gonna ask — ask them if I told any of them that I said President Trump — the answer is no. I’m glad you asked that question, but what’s more important than something that happened 15 months ago on a private conversation with about four other people is what’s happening here right now.”
Literal gibberish. (I listened to McCarthy’s answer about 15 times to try to understand what he was saying.)

The George W Bush and Obama administrations quashed evidence of Saudi governments connection to 911 hijackers. (This news broke last September but is getting some attention now because there is video.)

The Biden administration has declassified a 16-page FBI report tying 9/11 hijackers to Saudi nationals living in the United States. The document, written in 2016, summarized an FBI investigation into those ties called Operation ENCORE.

The partially redacted report shows a closer relationship than had been previously known between two Saudis in particular — including one with diplomatic status — and some of the hijackers. Families of the 9/11 victims have long sought after the report, which painted a starkly different portrait than the one described by the 9/11 Commission Report in 2004.

While the commission was largely unable to tie the Saudi men to the hijackers, the FBI document describes multiple connections and phone calls.

Years ago, the commission wrote that when it came to the Saudi diplomat Fahad al-Thumairy, “We have not found evidence that Thumairy provided assistance to the two hijackers.” A decade later, it appears FBI agents came to a different conclusion. The report says Thumairy “tasked” an associate to help the hijackers when they arrived in Los Angeles and told the associate the hijackers were “two very significant people” more than a year before the attacks.

An October Flag of the Day is in the news. 

This is how democracy ends – THE FLORIDA FASCIST STRIKE FORCE

DeSantis continues his strong move toward the Republican nomination in 2024 by creating a yahoo police force to intimidate people trying to vote.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a sweeping voting overhaul billthat establishes a new election police force — giving his administration a new way to probe election crimes.With the GOP governor’s signature, Florida has become one of the first states in the country with a unit focused on election fraud, an exceedingly rare problem that has become an animating issue for some Republican voters following former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss.

“I don’t think there is any other place in the country where you should have more confidence that your vote counts than in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said at a news conference before signing the law.

What could go wrong with this!

Election fraud is exceedingly rare. The Florida Secretary of State’s office says it received 262 election fraud complaints about the 2020 election and referred 75 to law enforcement or prosecutors. Nearly 11 million Floridians cast ballots in the presidential contest that year.

The new law creates an Office of Election Crimes and Security within the Florida Department of State — an agency under DeSantis’ jurisdiction — with a staff of 15 to conduct preliminary investigations of election fraud. In addition, the measure calls for DeSantis to appoint up to 10 law enforcement officers to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate election crimes.During Monday’s news conference, DeSantis said local election supervisors and prosecutors don’t necessarily have the expertise and tools to investigate voting-related complaints. The new officers would specialize in election-related crimes, he said.

Also, what no one really states with this discussion of DeSantis is that he is going to almost certainly see a blowout win in his own reelection campaign this fall because Florida loves this shit. The end of American democracy sure is fun!

Post copies in full from lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com

DL Open Thread Tuesday April 26 2022

I actually feel sorry for the rubes who still think justice is going to catch up with the Trump crime family.

NY judge holds Trump in contempt, issues daily $10K fines until he complies with AG

At least a nuclear war would at least be a Deus ex machina releasing us from the endless uselessness of the Democratic Party.

The threat of nuclear war is real, top Russian official says; U.S. wants to see Moscow ‘weakened’

Polio vaccine trials begin

On April 26, 1954, the Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving 1.8 million children, begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. Children in the United States, Canada and Finland participated in the trials, which used for the first time the now-standard double-blind method, whereby neither the patient nor attending doctor knew if the inoculation was the vaccine or a placebo.

One year later, on April 12, 1955, researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective and it quickly became a standard part of childhood immunizations in America.

Flag of the Day – Terres australes et antarctiques françaises

Coons Flip/Flops on US Troops in Ukraine

During April 14th remarks at the University of Michigan, Coons was plainspoken about potentially sending U.S. troops to fight in Ukraine:

“We are in a very dangerous moment where it is important that, in a bipartisan and measured way, we in Congress and the administration come to a common position about when we are willing to go the next step and to send not just arms but troops to the aid in defense of Ukraine.”

Now Coons is trying to stuff those comments down the memory hole:

In an interview with France 24 English on Tuesday, Coons claimed that “I am not calling for U.S. troops to be sent into Ukraine, but I am calling for the West to be clear-eyed about how hard and how long this conflict might be.”

Last Monday he tweeted that “The global community that has mobilized against Putin’s ruthless aggression in Ukraine must continue to work closely together to stop and deter him,” however, “I’m not calling for U.S. troops to go into the war in Ukraine.”

DL Open Thread Monday April 25 2022

Offering NOTHING of value to voters and therefor bracing for big loses in the midterms, the corporate Dems are on the run. This is the upside of Sober Centrist Moderate Dems Shitting Midterm Bed:

The Squad is poised for big gains in November despite the Democrats’ likely loss of the House.

Why it matters: The progressive politics that mainstream Democrats blame for their decline stand to take center stage if both trendlines hold. And the Squad-Plus would be positioned to push the diluted ranks of its rivals into backing some of its agenda — impacting the 2024 presidential race.

State of play: As many as six staunchly progressive candidates have viable chances to win House seats this cycle.

The most notable is Greg Casar, the Democratic nominee in a solid-blue seat rooted in Austin and San Antonio, Texas.

  • Another Texan, progressive Jessica Cisneros, forced moderate Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) into a primary runoff set for May 24.

  • In Pennsylvania, state Rep. Summer Lee, a self-identified Democratic Socialist, is leading her nearest opponent for a Pittsburgh-based U.S. House seat by 25 points, according to a poll from Emily’s List which is backing her candidacy.

  • Erica Smith in North Carolina, Becca Balint in Vermont and Amy Vilela in Nevada are three other progressives with shots at winning, multiple progressive strategists tell Axios.

 

The fascist lost in France. That’s good. The Center Right corporate fonctionnaire won, so the left is still out in the wilderness. That’s not so good.

Don’t click the link.  I just grabbed it to show what has become of CNN.  

The most dangerous railroad crossing in the country is in Phoenix. It lies just a few miles northwest of downtown.  From 2006 to 2015, the crossing had the highest number of reported incidents with 24, resulting in two injuries and no deaths.

I couldn’t find any more recent data, but the level crossing near the Deer Park seems to be in the news at least once a year.

NEWARK, Delaware (WPVI) — Two people were injured when a CSX freight train collided with a car.

The crash happened at around 2:30 a.m. on Saturday in Newark, Delaware where the tracks intersect with Main Street.

Burn the entire corrupt edifice down

According to Senator Chris Coons, the bad liberals and progressives (who hold all the power in the Democratic Party) put us in this dire situation by not clapping hard enough for glorious centrism.

Trumpism Resplendant

There’s something much worse than losing the House, and possibly the Senate, that’s rattling top Democrats who are studying polling and election trends:The big picture: It’s the possibility of a re-elected President Trump with a compliant, filibuster-proof Senate majority in January 2025.

The bottom line: David Shor, one of Democrats’ most respected data scientists, has been sounding the alarm for months. “Unless we see big structural changes in the Democratic party’s coalition,” he tweeted, the 2024 outcome could be “Donald Trump winning a *filibuster-proof trifecta* [House, Senate, White House] with a minority of the vote.”

 

“Structural changes” in this context typically means even more vigorous obsequiousness and further watering down popular Democratic policies until they are 99.99999999999% water.

If that fails (and it always fails) Hunter Biden and the entire Biden family should have a jet fueled and ready on the tarmac.

 

DL Open Thread Wednesday April 20 2022

I guess I’m a little age-ist.

The Geriatric Party

Biden is 79, but he is still younger than the entire House Democratic leadership. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer are both 82, while Majority Whip Jim Clyburn is 81. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is a comparative spring chicken at just 71, though Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin is 77.

Worse, there is no middle-aged heir apparent for any of these positions.

 

I had thought that at some point the GOP’s unhinged insanity (and the risk that insanity presents to quarterly earnings) would force  “business”  into pushing back against all the unhinged craziness.  The pushback never came.  

DeSantis Vs The Mouse

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is following through on his promise to try and cancel a 1967 deal between the state and the Walt Disney Co. that could leave the company on the hook for millions of dollars a year in local taxes — and with less autonomy over its property.

On Tuesday, DeSantis announced that lawmakers in Tallahassee for a special legislative session would take up the issue. The proposal follows weeks of public attacks on Disney by the governor

DL Open Thread Tuesday April 19 2022

Whackjob Trump appointed judge unilaterally sets new public health policy.  Remember when Coons worked feverishly to push through a mess of whack-job Trump judges by voting them out of committee, then covered his ass by voting “nay” in the full Senate?  Good times.

A former caseworker and campaign aide for Rep. Madison “fun drives” Cawthorn (R-NC), Lisa Wiggins doesn’t have anything good to say about her former boss.

“He’s a habitual liar, and he’s going to say and do anything he can to your face, but behind your back, he’s completely opposite,” Wiggins said in a recorded phone conversation with David Wheeler, the co-founder of the American Muckrakers PAC. “People need to know how this man really is…He’s still got a lot of people fooled.”

From The Daily Beast:

Wiggins, 46, filed a workplace complaint against Cawthorn, alleging he violated the Family and Medical Leave Act by rejecting her plea to take leave when she endured a series of family crises. In a litany of accusations, Wiggins further attested that Cawthorne systematically avoided speaking with constituents because “he doesn’t care about” them and that his office is routinely stocked with more liquor than water bottles.

Here is a twitter thread that will tell you how (and why) chickens got so big and flavorless. 

DL Open Thread Monday April 18 2022

Ladies and Gentlemen, your modern GOP…Crabs in a bucket. Trump holds Bum fights in his Plan Beach palace to decide who is going to endorse.

Mar-a-Lago Machine: Trump as a Modern-Day Party Boss

Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, the former president is dominating the G.O.P., preparing for another race and helping loyalists oust officials who thwarted his attempted subversion of the 2020 election.

PALM BEACH, Fla. — On any given night, Donald J. Trump will stroll onto the patio at Mar-a-Lago and say a few words from a translucent lectern, welcoming whatever favored candidate is paying him for the privilege of fund-raising there.

“This is a special place,” Mr. Trump said on one such evening in February at his private club. “I used to say ‘ground zero’ but after the World Trade Center we don’t use that term anymore. This is the place where everybody wants to be.”

For 15 months, a parade of supplicants — senators, governors, congressional leaders and Republican strivers of all stripes — have made the trek to pledge their loyalty and pitch their candidacies. Some have hired Mr. Trump’s advisers, hoping to gain an edge in seeking his endorsement. Some have bought ads that ran only on Fox News in South Florida. Some bear gifts; others dish dirt. Almost everyone parrots his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

Working from a large wooden desk reminiscent of the one he used in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump has transformed Mar-a-Lago’s old bridal suite into a shadow G.O.P. headquarters, amassing more than $120 million — a war chest more than double that of the Republican National Committee itself. Federal records show that his PAC raised more online than the party on every day but two in the last six months of 2021, one of which was Christmas Eve.

On ‘Face the Nation’ Coons Opens Door to Direct US Involvement in Ukraine

MARGARET BRENNAN: In some public remarks this week, you said the country needs to talk about when it might be willing to send troops to Ukraine. You said if the answer is never, then we are inviting another level of escalation and brutality by Putin. Are you arguing that President Biden-

SENATOR CHRIS COONS: Margaret-

MARGARET BRENNAN: -was wrong when he said he would not send troops to Ukraine? Are you asking him to set a red line?

SENATOR CHRIS COONS: Margaret,  (…long preamble about how great Biden is doing…) If Vladimir Putin, who has shown us how brutal he can be, is allowed to just continue to massacre civilians, to commit war crimes throughout Ukraine without NATO, without the West coming more forcefully to his aid, I great- I deeply worry that what’s going to happen next is that we will see Ukraine turn into Syria. The American people cannot turn away from this tragedy in Ukraine. I think the history of the 21st century turns on how fiercely we defend freedom in Ukraine and that Putin will only stop when we stop him. I’ll close with this, Margaret. This is a weekend when so many families gather to celebrate the very best in the human spirit and where we grieve the loss of many to do due to COVID, we should also be prayerful and mindful of those who are fighting for freedom in Ukraine and how much their heroism and patriotism inspires the rest of us.

 

I had to drive from Ocala FL to Dover yesterday and passing through Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia,  as the radio reported mass shooting after mass shooting I passed billboard after billboard for gun store after gun store, each on emblazoned with some version of of an AK-47.

DC Consultants to Re-Brand Dems as the “Octogenarian Party”

Doddering oldsters like Carper will never retire

When a California Democrat in Congress recently engaged in an extended conversation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, they prepared for a rigorous policy discussion like those they’d had with her many times over the last 15 years.

Instead, the lawmaker said, they had to reintroduce themselves to Feinstein multiple times during an interaction that lasted several hours.Rather than delve into policy, Feinstein, 88, repeated the same small-talk questions, like asking the lawmaker what mattered to voters in their district, they said, with no apparent recognition the two had already had a similar conversation.

The episode was so unnerving that the lawmaker — who spoke to The Chronicle on condition they not be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic — began raising concerns with colleagues to see if some kind of intervention to persuade Feinstein to retire was possible. Feinstein’s term runs through the end of 2024. The conversation occurred several weeks before the death of her husband in February.

Adding urgency to the recent concerns: If Democrats retain control of the Senate next year, Feinstein will succeed retiring Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy as the Senate’s president pro tem — putting her third in line for the presidency.