Today's Beau

In the GOP, as it is now, Kevin McCarthy isn't far enough to the right. That should tell us something.

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Today's Beau

Justine King - Beau Of the First Column

The human cost of disinformation. There are people in cages now instead of being at home with their families - because they bought the false narrative fed to them by a "news" organization that betrayed them.

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Show me the crime first, and then show me proof that a particular person committed that crime.

Lavrentiy Beria

Beria was the longest-lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after the war. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, he was responsible for organizing purges such as the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and officials. He would later also orchestrate the forced upheaval of minorities from the Caucasus as head of the NKVD, an act that was declared as genocidal by various scholars and, as concerning Chechens, in 2004 by the European Parliament. He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state, and acted as the de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of NKVD field units responsible for barrier troops and Soviet partisan intelligence and sabotage operations on the Eastern Front. Beria administered the expansion of the Gulag labour camps, and was primarily responsible for overseeing the secret detention facilities for scientists and engineers known as sharashkas.

After the war, Beria organised the communist takeover of the state institutions in central and eastern Europe. His ruthlessness in his duties and skill at producing results culminated in his success in overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project. Stalin gave it absolute priority, and the project was completed in under five years.

After Stalin's death in March 1953, Beria became First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In this dual capacity, he formed a troika with Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov that briefly led the country in Stalin's place. A coup d'état by Nikita Khrushchev, with help from Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov, removed Beria from power in June 1953. After being arrested, he was tried for treason and other offenses, sentenced to death, and executed on 23 December 1953. During his trial, and after his death, numerous allegations arose that Beria had been a serial rapist and serial killer.

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau of The Fifth Column

I get that they have to be careful with Prior Restraint, but when a law enforcement agency opposes applying a very sensible standard like: You don't get to join the force if you've been posting racist shit online - we have to ask, "Where the fuck have you been getting your recruits?"

A Classic

GOP Playbook, Page 1

1. Fuck something up
2. Wait a bit
3. Point at it and say, "Oh look - it's fucked up"
4. Pretend you had nothing to do with it - you're just trying to fix it

Justin King - Beau of The Fifth Column

Today's Beau

From now on, everybody who comes for dinner, or is seen on stage at a rally, or whatever - they've all been vetted and approved by Trump's handlers.

Question - what's the Over/Under on how long before Trump crashes thru those guardrails?

Justin King - Beau Of the Fifth Column

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of the Fifth Column

In anywhere from 60% to almost 70% of mass casualty shootings, the suspect will have been involved in a Domestic Violence incident within a 2- or 3-year period preceding the shooting.

Today's Beau

Let us (ie: me) pause in my goddamned-fuckin'-idiots-how-do-you-vote-for-those-assholes downward spiral, and reflect on how we didn't see the wipeout so many Press Poodles told us to expect.

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

The youngsters showed up and stopped the Red Wave.

BTW, the Roberts kids turnout was 100%

Again

Today's Beau

The parties are not the same. We can drop the Both Sides crap because - well, because it's crap.

Hypothetical:

• Your buddy needs a ride home from the Pride Parade.
• He's dressed to look the part - shiny boots, short shorts, crop top, and rainbow hair.
• You decide you should stop in for a beer or two, and when you're inside, you notice you need to go a few doors down and hit the ATM.
• You excuse yourself, and leave him at the bar for a few minutes.

• In one instance, you notice some of the other patrons are wearing band t-shirts or kinda quasi-hippie-looking garb, some of the men have ponytails, etc. Classic Rock is playing on the overhead.
• In a second instance, about half the the men are wearing MAGA hats, and there's a few Let's Go Brandon shirts, and some of the ladies are decked out with several pounds of costume jewelry, and big hair. The music is Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood.

Based solely on appearances, you have to know that the first gang is pretty likely to lean to the "liberal" side - and they'll be voting mostly Democrat.

You can be just as sure that the second gang is prob'ly pretty "conservative', voting Republican.

Question: Which crowd do you feel more comfortable leaving your friend alone with?

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Today's Q Fantasy

When prediction after prediction after prediction comes up empty, ya gotta think some of these boneheads would get hip to the scam.

But:

Some of the true believers will go along with whatever floats their direction. They've swallowed the whole thing - hook, line, sinker, pole, boat, and trailer - all of it. And it's all but certain that they'll never stop believing. Even when the instigators are shown to be tricksters and flim-flammers - they'll just glom on to whatever is next. But that's not all we have to worry about.

So let's worry about the kind of dog-ass politicians who go along, thinking it's all pretty harmless, and "as long as the rubes are in line and sending us their butter-n-egg money, we stay in power, and that's all we care about."

But then there's the "good Germans" faction. People who cherry-pick the one or two issues they care about and vote for "their Republican" no matter what shitty things come with that candidate.

And what really really bothers me is the people who are sitting comfortably with their cynicism, thinking all that matters is to stir the shit and to watch the fun. They get to mock the rubes buying the QAnon crap, and to laugh at the libruls losing their shit - so they can pretend it's a Both-Sides problem, and nobody's threatening democracy, and it'll all come out in the wash next time.

So how do we move forward from here?

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Ask questions.

And there's guys like me. I'm getting pretty isolated, and adamant about my positions too. It feels like I've been bombarded so often and for so long with so much information that turns out to be total horseshit, that it's getting really hard to sort thru it in order to find whatever little kernel of truth there might be, so I don't just dismiss it out of hand, and give myself a shot at getting "the other side" to talk to me.

It is a puzzlement.

But remember:

• The Daddy State lies as a means of demonstrating their power.
• The lies have practically nothing to do with the subject of the lies.
• Lying about everything is a way to condition us - to make us accept their premise that they can do anything they want.

THE GOAL IS

TO DICTATE REALITY TO US

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Call his bluff.

Dick O' The Day

Because the "party of family values" (and their #1 pimp) don't give one empty fuck about families - or values.

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column - explains

Anyone who'd mock a guy for trying to communicate those thoughts to his only remaining child is a scum-eating slug of the lowest form - a "man" who has never been loved at all. He can't imagine what it's like to be loved unconditionally - or to love someone unconditionally, from way deep down in your soul.

If this is the behavior that can be embraced (or shrugged off) by enough people to get Republicans elected, then we are well and truly fucked.

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column 

In the last few days - the Ukrainian counter push - the low estimate of Russian losses is greater than what the Americans lost in 20 years of war in Afghanistan.

I'll push bash back on Beau's point about "this is geopolitics - don't expect morality to factor in", but we can quibble on that one over drinks later.

Слава Україні

🌎🌏🌍❤️🇺🇦

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of the Fifth Column

We haven't seen an update on these programs in over 50 years because Republicans have been actively working against them.

Allowing government to work in any way runs counter to what Republicans want.

Today's Beau

We know there has to be some number of Dems doing shitty things like this fund-raising scam in Tennessee, but we don't hear very much about them very often.

And I really do think that's not because of a liberal bias in the political media. Cuz fake lord knows the Press Poodles are always willing to jump on a good old-fashioned Both Sides story so they can countervail their reputation for being a buncha leftie stooges.

So anyway, for now, Republicans are the ones who keep showing up as dog-ass crooks, uninterested in anything but lining their pockets with money that they haven't come by honestly.

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Reality has a well known liberal bias.

Liberals have a well known reality bias.

Former Tennessee speaker, top aide arrested in corruption probe

Aug 23, 2022

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee’s former House Speaker Glen Casada and his top aide were arrested Tuesday on federal charges including bribery, kickbacks and conspiracy to commit money laundering involving federal funds.

Their indictments come months after a Republican legislator, Rep. Robin Smith, abruptly resigned while facing federal wire charges that involved Casada. Casada was not directly named in those court documents, but her March indictment kicked off speculation that more charges would come from the corruption investigation.

U.S. attorney says FBI agents searched offices and homes of Tennessee lawmakers

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Casada and former Chief of Staff Cade Cothren face a 20-count indictment. FBI agents arrested both at their homes Tuesday morning.

The charging document alleges Casada and Cothren exploited their positions of power by working with another unnamed lawmaker to funnel money to themselves using a political consulting firm that concealed their involvement.

more at NYT (pay wall)

Ex-Tennessee Speaker and Aide Charged With Bribery and Conspiracy

F.B.I. agents arrested Glen Casada and Cade Cothren at their Tennessee homes on Tuesday.

A former Tennessee speaker of the House and his former chief of staff were arrested on Tuesday at their homes on federal charges in connection to a bribery and kickback scheme, prosecutors said.

Former Speaker Glen Casada, 63, a Republican, and his top aide, Cade Cothren, 35, were charged with conspiracy to commit theft from programs receiving federal funds; bribery and kickbacks concerning programs receiving federal funds; honest services wire fraud; and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The charges were announced by U.S. Attorney Mark H. Wildasin for the Middle District of Tennessee and Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s criminal division in a joint statement on Tuesday.

Mr. Casada and Mr. Cothren appeared in federal court on Tuesday. Mr. Casada entered a plea of not guilty “and will present a vigorous defense at trial,” Ed Yarbrough, a lawyer for Mr. Casada, said on Tuesday. He did not comment further. It was not immediately clear who was representing Mr. Cothren. If convicted, Mr. Casada and Mr. Cothren each face up to 20 years in prison.

The arrests came months after the resignation of Representative Robin Smith, a Tennessee Republican who pleaded guilty to a federal wire fraud charge over involvement in the political consulting scheme with Mr. Casada and Mr. Cothren, according to The Associated Press.

Around October 2019, Mr. Casada, who represented Tennessee House District 63 in Williamson County, and another conspirator, who was also a Tennessee representative but was not named in the prosecutors’ statement or court documents, launched a scheme “to enrich themselves” by using their positions to obtain state approval for a company called Phoenix Solutions as a vendor to provide mail services to members of the state’s General Assembly and political campaigns, according to the statement.

Mr. Casada, Mr. Cothren and the third associate then sought to pull state funds for Phoenix Solutions, a political consulting business that was run by Mr. Cothren, according to court documents, one that Mr. Casada and the third individual profited from.

“Casada and the other conspirator are alleged to have enriched themselves by obtaining bribes and kickbacks from Cothren, in exchange for securing the approval of Phoenix Solutions as a mailer program vendor,” according to the statement.

The associates told members of the state’s General Assembly that the company was run by a man named “Matthew Phoenix” who was described as “an experienced political consultant,” but was actually a fabrication, prosecutors said.

Mr. Casada, Mr. Cothren and the third conspirator concealed their involvement in Phoenix Solutions “by submitting sham invoices to the state of Tennessee in the names of political consulting companies” owned by Mr. Casada and the other conspirator to funnel funds to the company from the state, prosecutors said.

In all, Phoenix Solutions received nearly $52,000 through the mailer program, according to court documents.

Mr. Casada was first elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 2003 and was re-elected as a representative in each subsequent General Assembly, according to court records.

In 2019, Mr. Casada resigned as speaker from the Tennessee House after it was revealed that he and Mr. Cothren had “exchanged sexually explicit text messages” about women, according to The Associated Press.

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Following up on a "Whooda Thunk It" post earlier today

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

"It's not theirs - it's mine."

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

The Quickening

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of the Fifth Column

The game shifts. Putin and his plutocratic fellow travelers here in USAmerica Inc are making common cause to destabilize democracies.

It served that purpose to have Trump in power, and it can serve their purpose just as well to see him in prison. Whatever fuels division and discontent is what they need to see.

I think the "red pill gang" is beginning to see they've been hornswoggled, and (IMO) a lot of the ones who haven't been totally absorbed into the body of the cult are figuring out ways to rid themselves of the stigma without having to admit badly they were conned.

We have to figure out how to help them peel themselves off from the infectious mass that surrounds Trump - how to give them permission to move away from him - without simply forgiving and forgetting.

Meanwhile, In Smarmspace

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Smarmspace: the distance between promise and delivery; between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law; where loopholes are found, and often manufactured; the land of rationalization. Trump is The King Of Smarmspace, and he's taught his devotees well.