Here We Go

 

ATTENTION

ATTENTION

ATTENTION

ALL HANDS REPORT IMMEDIATELY

TO YOUR

LIFEBOAT INCINERATION STATIONS

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

REPEAT

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

Josh Hawley's running for president (I'm pretty sure), and as much as I'm loath even to appear as if I'm carrying water, or a message, or anything other than a burning dislike for Mr Hawley, I had to post his Op/Ed because this is a Burn The Lifeboats moment if ever there was one.

Also - you're all over the fuckin' map here, Joshie.

eg: you say you wanna boost American wage-earners, and save people money, but then you're against lifting tariffs - which are nothing more than a "value added" tax (ie: pass every penny of the cost along to the consumer), and it falls hardest on middle- working- and lower class Americans. You know - the ones you say you wanna help, and should be listening to, while China feels practically no pain at all.

(pay wall)

Opinion by Josh Hawley

The GOP is dead. A new GOP must listen to working people.

The old Republican Party is dead. It has been wasting away for years now, and this month’s midterm results are the finishing blow. If Republicans learn nothing else from this election, they must learn that much.

As frustrating as the election outcomes are, the death of the old GOP is no reason to mourn. It just means that it’s time for Republicans to forge something new — a party that truly represents the cultural backbone of this nation: America’s working people.

Many Republicans are primed to learn all the wrong lessons from this cycle. Over the past week, we’ve heard this election is about nothing more than “candidate quality” or turnout operations.

Wrong. The problem isn’t principally the tactics; the problem is the substance. For the past two years, the Republican establishment in Washington has capitulated on issue after issue, caving to Democrats on the Second Amendment and on the left’s radical climate agenda (“infrastructure”). These Republican politicians sided with Big Pharma on insulin and advocated lowering tariffs on our competitors overseas.

Then they wonder why working-class independents have little enthusiasm about voting Republican.

For decades, Republican politicians have sung a familiar tune. On economics, they have cut taxes on the big corporations and talked about changing Social Security and Medicare — George W. Bush even tried to partially privatize Social Security back in 2005. In the name of “growth,” these same Republicans have supported ruinous trade policies — such as admitting China to the World Trade Organization — that have collapsed American industry and driven down American wages.

This tax-and-trade agenda has hollowed out too many American towns by shipping jobs overseas. It has made it almost impossible to raise a family on one income and to find a good-paying job that doesn’t require a college degree. Our trade deficit with China has cost this country 3.7 million good jobs, while a crisis of drug overdose deaths — particularly among working Americans — has ravaged many of the same communities that have suffered most from deindustrialization. It has all made it harder to stay rooted in your hometown or region. That’s not a record of success.

Republican politicians have frequently advocated higher immigration levels and four years ago went all in for soft-on-crime “sentencing reform.” They have done nothing on Big Tech. This record doesn’t appeal to working people. Just the opposite: It repels them. If Republicans want to be a majority party, now is the time to change course.

Republicans will only secure the generational victories they crave when they come to terms with this reality: They must persuade a critical mass of working class voters that the GOP truly represents their interests and protects their culture. The red wave didn’t land in part because voters who cast a ballot for Barack Obama and later supported Donald Trump — voters who likely disapprove of Joe Biden and the Democrats’ agenda — chose to stay home.

Republicans must win these voters. We will not be a majority without them. That means waking up to what they care about. Work, family and culture are the touchstones of meaning for working people across the country. They must form the bedrock of a new party agenda.

We can start by stopping the bleeding. No more talk of grand bargains that turbocharge illegal immigration. No more liberalizing the United States’ trade agenda, making us more dependent on foreign adversaries. No more fiddling with Social Security in the guise of “entitlement reform.” All that should be clear enough.

But beyond this, it’s time for proactive policymaking. No nation ever got strong by consuming stuff other people make. We need an economy that produces critical goods here, in this country, and creates good-paying jobs for working people. That means tariffs to foster American industry, local content requirements to reshore manufacturing, and taking the shackles off U.S. energy producers. That means new antitrust laws for Big Tech that will bust up monopolies such as Google and restore competition to the marketplace. And while we’re at it, we should start relocating federal agencies such as the Departments of Energy, Interior and Agriculture to middle America. It’s long past time for cosseted policymakers to confront the real-world consequences of their decisions, economic or otherwise.

We need explicit support in our tax code for marriage and family, such as a parent tax credit for working families. We should adopt new protections for parents to ensure they control their children’s education and medical care, such as a Parents’ Bill of Rights. And families can’t thrive unless they are safe. That’s why we need 100,000 new police officers on the streets, spread across every state in America.

Right now, the Republican Party stands at a crossroads. Its leaders can, of course, attempt to resurrect the dead consensus of offshoring, amnesties and “free trade.” That’s the path to further losses.

A reborn Republican Party must look very different. It must offer good jobs and good lives, not just higher stock prices for Wall Street. And it must place working Americans at its heart and take them as they are, rather than treating them as resources to be exploited or engineered away.

That’s the way to victory. That’s the way to national renewal.

This is warmed-over Fortress America Isolationist bullshit dressed up in flowery rhetoric that still means mostly nothing.

And don't ever forget who - or what - this little prick is.

http://ProLeftPod.com

A Small Win

Wondering why the Republicans are so eager to start "investigating" everything from unicorns and pixies to laptops and puppy farms?

And yes - we could see them bring back Benghazi.

They have to keep our focus away from the shitty things they're helping to facilitate for assholes like Vladimir Putin and Bob Mercer and Charlie Koch and the NRA and and and.

Keep your dirty money

outa my elections 

(pay wall)

GOP operative found guilty of funneling Russian money to Donald Trump

A Republican political strategist was convicted of illegally helping a Russian businessman contribute to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.

Jesse Benton, 44, was pardoned by Trump in 2020 for a different campaign finance crime, months before he was indicted again on six counts related to facilitating an illegal foreign campaign donation. He was found guilty Thursday on all six counts.

Elections “reflect the values and the priorities and the beliefs of American citizens,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Parikh said in her closing argument this week. “Jesse Benton by his actions did damage to those principles.”

The evidence at trial showed that Benton bought a $25,000 ticket to a September 2016 Republican National Committee (RNC) event on behalf of Roman Vasilenko, a Russian naval officer turned multilevel marketer. (Vasilenko is under investigation in Russia for allegedly running a pyramid scheme, according to the Kommersant newspaper; he could not be reached for comment.) The donation got Vasilenko a picture with Trump and entrance to a “business roundtable” with the future president.

Vasilenko connected with Benton through Doug Wead, an evangelical ally of the Bush family who was also involved in multilevel marketing. Vasilenko sent $100,000 to Benton, who was working for a pro-Trump super PAC at the time, supposedly for consulting services. Benton subsequently donated $25,000 to the RNC by credit card to cover the ticket.

Witnesses from the RNC and the firm hired to organize the event said they weren’t told Vasilenko was a Russian citizen. Benton said in an email to his RNC contact that Vasilenko was “a friend who spends most of his time in the Caribbean”; he described Vasilenko’s interpreter as “a body gal.” In fact, according to the testimony, Benton and Vasilenko had never met.

Benton argued that he followed the advice of his previous counsel, David A. Warrington, who has also represented Trump. Warrington testified that Benton contacted him at the time to ask if he could give a ticket to a political fundraiser to a Russian citizen. Warrington said he told Benton “there is no prohibition on a Russian citizen receiving a ticket to an event” and that “you can give your ticket that you purchased to a fundraiser to anybody.”

Prosecutors said Benton failed to tell Warrington that he was getting reimbursed by the Russian citizen for the donation. Benton asked for the advice only “to cover his tracks,” Parikh said.

Benton also claimed that he earned the $100,000 acting as a tour guide in Washington for Vasilenko, whose interest was not politics but self-promotion.

Wead — who died at age 75 last December after he was indicted with Benton — had previously discussed with Vasilenko the possibility of a photograph with Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama or Steven Seagal before suggesting Trump.

“If Oprah was available,” defense attorney Brian Stolarz said in his closing argument, “we wouldn’t even be here.”

Vasilenko posted the photograph of himself with Trump on Instagram with a banner that said “Two Presidents” and advertised his own company. He said Benton “delivered on what he was asked to do,” which was “get him in a picture with a celebrity” so Vasilenko “could brag on Instagram.” To Vasilenko, he said, Trump was not a politician but “the guy who used to be on ‘The Apprentice.’ ” At the roundtable, he said Trump appeared only briefly and “just talked about polls.”

Stolarz emphasized that there was no evidence Vasilenko ever engaged with Trump outside the single event, and no evidence the RNC ever returned the donation. Witnesses from the RNC said they were in the dark about the origin of the funds.

“He wants to be an influencer,” Stolarz said. “This is just shameless self-promotion from a guy who can afford to take this picture.”

But prosecutors said that once it was offered, Vasilenko saw the value of an introduction to Trump. He was running for parliament in Russia at the time, according to the Justice Department, and after Trump’s election was invited on Russian television.

“He’s sophisticated,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Wasserman told jurors. “He got access to someone he helped elect.”

Benton’s defense downplayed the $25,000 as “nothing” in an election that cost billions.

“This is not some nefarious backroom scheme to funnel millions of dollars from Russia,” he said.

Prosecutors argued that every dollar counted in a race where Democrat Hillary Clinton was far ahead in fundraising, and that Benton knew Trump needed money at the time.

Stolarz said Benton was also paid to organize a charity dinner Vasilenko attended on his U.S. trip, which prosecutors dismissed as a cheap meal at a chain restaurant.

“They may try to downplay it, but Maggiano’s is good,” Stolarz said.

Benton began his career on the GOP’s libertarian fringe as an aide to former congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.), whose granddaughter is Benton’s wife. He gained mainstream credibility helping Paul’s son, Rand Paul (R-Ky.), win a Senate seat in 2010 and was hired by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) 2014 reelection campaign.

But Benton resigned before that election amid an investigation into whether an Iowa state senator was bribed to support Ron Paul in the 2012 presidential race. Benton was convicted in May 2016 of conspiracy and involvement in filing of false campaign finance reports — not long before the new scheme began.

“He knew the law,” Wasserman said. “He knew the rules.”

After the verdict, Stolarz said Benton “maintains his innocence and plans to appeal.”

Today's PG

The best pep talk I've heard in a good long time.

Leigh McGowan

Today's Wingnut

I think this derives from Constitutional Originalism, but this guy wants to take it all the way out to the Logical Extreme - if not a few steps beyond.

This could easily translate to "property-owners only", and with not much imagination, to requiring a Literacy Test as well.

I can't remember the last time I saw anyone this adamant about squelching the vote.

Learning

The Dems are not planning to "fight" by bending over backwards trying to be accommodating of a buncha crazed Berserker Republicans - not this time.

Because you can't do that with these assholes, and then expect to be accommodated in return.

They're assholes.

(pay wall)

Nonprofits With Ties to Democrats Plan Counteroffensive Against Congressional Investigations

The groups want to take pressure off the administration by pushing back in a more adversarial manner than President Biden’s team.

The Biden administration has added lawyers and communications staff members, while working with outside lawyers to prepare for an anticipated barrage of subpoenas.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — With Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, a loose network of groups allied with Democrats is planning a multimillion-dollar counteroffensive against an expected onslaught of oversight investigations into President Biden, his family and his administration.

The White House, which is building its own defense team, has quietly signaled support for some of the efforts by nonprofit groups with ties to some of the biggest donors in Democratic politics, according to people familiar with the groups.

The efforts appear intended to take pressure off the administration by pushing back in a more adversarial manner than Mr. Biden’s team on sensitive subjects, including the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the administration’s Covid response and — perhaps most notably — the foreign business dealings of Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

“The White House cannot be the sole nucleus for publicly responding to the onslaught of congressional investigations,” reads a memo from a nonprofit group called Facts First USA that has been circulating among major Democratic donors, members of Congress and others.

It lays out a $5 million-a-year “SWAT team to counter Republican congressional investigations,” including on issues that “may be too personal or delicate for the White House to be responding or to even be seen as directing a response” — an apparent reference to Hunter Biden.

David Brock, the Democratic activist behind Facts First, said his group “intends to work with the White House where appropriate but will make our own judgments.”

Another group, the Congressional Integrity Project, announced Wednesday that it intended to launch a multimillion-dollar “war room” to undermine investigations from the Republican-led House. People involved in that initiative, which was first reported by Politico, have previously worked with Mr. Brock’s team and have close connections to the White House and the Democratic Party.

The political arm of the Center for American Progress, the influential progressive think tank, is planning to cast the Republican investigations as “politically motivated revenge politics,” according to its chief executive, Patrick Gaspard.

The rush by some of the left’s leading figures to mount responses underscores mounting concerns that Republicans could use their investigations to damage Mr. Biden and other Democrats headed into the 2024 presidential election. The scramble also highlights an old Washington dynamic: When there is divided government, lawmaking tends to grind to a halt and Congress is dominated by oversight fights.

That is likely to be particularly true when Republicans take control of the House of Representatives next year with a majority that is slimmer than the party had hoped. In such an environment, it can be easier to win support for oversight investigations, which require less consensus than major legislative initiatives.

The battles could be turbocharged by new outside groups like Facts First, which is funded by “dark money” from donors whose identities can be kept secret. The ongoing law enforcement inquiries into two figures who loom largest in the oversight investigations — Hunter Biden, who is under investigation for tax-related violations and other issues, and former President Donald J. Trump — add another layer of intensity to the fight.

Mr. Trump declared his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election on Tuesday, even as he faces investigations related to his handling of classified materials, his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his business.

While some in the party blame him for disappointing results in this month’s midterm elections, his allies in Congress have indicated that they intend to use the oversight investigations to damage Mr. Biden and avenge Mr. Trump.

Many of the planned oversight investigations align closely with Mr. Trump’s grievances, including accusations of politically motivated Justice Department investigations into him, criticisms of the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and border policies, and claims about the business dealings of Hunter Biden and other members of the president’s family.

House Republicans have been working closely for months with outside groups affiliated with Mr. Trump and funded by anonymous cash to plan for the oversight.

Representative James Comer of Kentucky, who is in line to become chairman of the Oversight Committee, and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who is expected to be chairman of the Judiciary Committee, planned to hold a news conference Thursday morning on “investigative actions.”

The White House declined to comment.

But it has been gearing up for the oversight battles ahead as well, by compiling research on Republican arguments and the members of Congress making them, including trawling deeply conservative corners of the internet to build out a rapid-response database, according to a person familiar with the effort.

The White House also added lawyers and communications staff members, while working with outside lawyers to prepare for an anticipated barrage of subpoenas, as well as possible efforts to impeach Mr. Biden. An administration official said that additional personnel would be added to handle the inquiries in the White House and the agencies under Republican scrutiny, including the Defense Department, the Education Department, the Health and Human Services Department, the Homeland Security Department and the State Department.

“Republicans are going to launch baseless broadsides against the White House,” Eric Schultz, who handled the Obama administration’s response to congressional oversight investigations, said in an interview. “They already have been. Holding them accountable for their own word as a measure of their credibility, that’s entirely fair game.”

Hunter Biden will be assisted in the congressional investigations by Joshua A. Levy, who previously represented the opposition research firm Fusion GPS when it became the target of Republican congressional investigations.

Mr. Levy declined to comment.

Hunter Biden himself has mostly stayed quiet as Republicans have worked to make him into a boogeyman.

It is a void that Mr. Brock and Kevin Morris, a close adviser to Hunter Biden, are preparing to fill.

Mr. Morris, a Hollywood lawyer who has been helping Hunter Biden with financial and legal support, offered to collaborate with the Facts First effort during a meeting in September in Los Angeles with Mr. Brock, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Mr. Morris has assembled a team of lawyers, computer forensic experts and public relations professionals, according to a person familiar with Mr. Morris’s plans. They have discussed plans to go on offense against allies of Mr. Trump who targeted Hunter Biden, including those who disseminated or highlighted a cache of files with embarrassing information that appears to have come from an abandoned laptop.

Mr. Brock has far more political experience than Mr. Morris, but he also has a track record of bare-knuckle tactics that have drawn criticism on both sides of the aisle.

Once a self-described “right-wing hit man,” Mr. Brock switched sides and became an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton, setting up a political action committee that coordinated with her 2016 presidential campaign to defend her against media scrutiny and attacks from rivals.

Over the last two decades, Mr. Brock built a network of nonprofit groups that are supported by some of the biggest donors on the left, and that play important roles in the Democratic Party’s ecosystem.

Mr. Brock is stepping away from his position as chairman of two of his main groups, Media Matters and American Bridge, to focus on Facts First USA, for which he will serve as president. It is in some ways modeled on the PAC he used to attack Mrs. Clinton’s rivals, and he left open the door to Facts First coordinating with the White House, the Democratic National Committee or other Democratic groups, including a potential Biden campaign, if the president declared for re-election.

“We’re an outside independent group,” he said, “and we hope that lots of people are willing to join the fight against Republican disinformation and conspiracy mongering, including the White House and all allied groups.”

His group, the Congressional Integrity Project and the White House seem aligned so far on one thing — targeting the Republicans driving the oversight.

Mr. Brock’s group and the White House are assembling research intended to cast Republicans involved in the oversight as hypocrites, pointing to those who defied subpoenas in the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Oy

A renowned expert on Black People In The American South explains:

How is that racist?

(white people proverb)

Today's Tweet

Perfect phrasing.

Of everything that never happened, this never happened more than anything pic.twitter.com/Q14l1OkaPX

— Adam Kinzinger #fella (@AdamKinzinger) November 16, 2022

Today In Murdoch Land

The Rupert finally turns

(NY Post pg 26) Been there, Don that

With just 720 days to go before the next election, a Florida retiree made the surprise announcement that he was running for president.

 

In a move no political pundit saw coming, avid golfer Donald J. Trump kicked things off at Mar-a-Lago, his resort and classified-documents library.

 

Trump, famous for gold-plated lobbies and for firing people on realtity television, will be 78 in 2024. If elected, Trump would tie Joe Biden as the oldest president to take office. His cholesterol levels are unknown, but his favorite food is a charred steak with ketchup.

 

He has stated that his qualifications for office include being a “stable genius.”

 

Trump also served as the 45th president."

Today's Pix

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