2020 American Political Scene

[TopHatter]

GEM Michael Hayden was REALLY saying what a clown he was.

He was "encouraged" to leave active duty not long after as his evaluations to that point were less than "optimal".

Sounds like one of Trump's "Best People": Incompetent & Sycophantic. No wonder he got hired.

[Albany Rifles]

I didn't want to point that out, but yeah, apparently he couldn't have f--cked up any worse, right down to running toward the Marine TRAP team waving his M9 around.

GEM Michael Hayden was REALLY saying what a clown he was.

He was "encouraged" to leave active duty not long after as his evaluations to that point were less than "optimal".

[TopHatter]

A lot of Air Force officers on Twitter are dragging the shit out of O'Grady and what a complete and utter idiot he is.

They all agree the best thing he ever did for himself was get his ass blown out of the sky.

I didn't want to point that out, but yeah, apparently he couldn't have f--cked up any worse, right down to running toward the Marine TRAP team waving his M9 around.

[DOR]

How close was the election?

Six votes. 0.000015%. of the nearly four million votes cast.

No, not that election. The one for Iowa's second congressional district.

Republican Marianette Miller-Meeks was certified as the winner over Democrat Rita Hart. But, Ms Hart is appealing to the US House of Representatives' House Administration Committee – which actually has jurisdiction over who its members are – on the basis of 30+ ballots that have not been counted. The committee's authority covers election of the President, Vice President, Members, Senators, Delegates, or the Resident Commissioner; corrupt practices; contested elections; credentials and qualifications; and Federal elections generally.

(They're also in charge of the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, Congressional Record, and the United States Botanic Garden.)




https://www.kcci.com/article/miller-...house/34877746

[Albany Rifles]

A lot of Air Force officers on Twitter are dragging the shit out of O'Grady and what a complete and utter idiot he is.

They all agree the best thing he ever did for himself was get his ass blown out of the sky.

[JRT]

Congressional leaders push back on NDAA veto threats

by Lauren C. Williams
02 December 2020

The House Armed Services Committee announced Dec. 2 that both the Senate and House have reached agreement over the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.

Lawmakers appear united in deflecting veto threats coming from the White House.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the final bill will not include a repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act – a measure sought by President Donald Trump.

The proposed repeal, "has nothing to do with the military," Inhofe told reporters on Dec. 2. "That's not a part of the bill."

On Dec. 1, Trump said on Twitter that "if the very dangerous [and] unfair Section 230 is not completely terminated as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), I will be forced to unequivocally VETO the Bill when sent to the very beautiful Resolute desk. Take back America NOW. Thank you!"

Rep. Adam Smith, House Armed Services Committee chairman, fired back at the president on Twitter saying that the issue of Section 230 wasn't in either the House or Senate version of the 2021 NDAA. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the ranking member for the House Armed Services Committee, pushed for the bill's bipartisan support in a separate statement.

The president's latest NDAA veto threat also follows an earlier threat over a plan to rename bases U.S. military bases named for Confederate leaders. Trump wants to block the renaming, which has been a sticking point for the congressional defense committees. The requirement to rename the bases in included in the conferenced version of the bill announced today.

Funding deadline
Separately, the Dec. 11 deadline to pass an appropriations package or a new continuing resolution to fund the government is looming. The Navy is worried about potential multi billion-dollar costs of stopgap funding and is seeking a full appropriation for fiscal year 2021.

"Here in the Senate we've got a number of important bills that we're trying to finish up prior to the end of this Congress: both the COVID relief bill, the NDAA, and a final appropriations bill. Importantly, that's going to have military appropriations but it's not for sure that we're going to get there," Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Chairman Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said at a Dec. 2 hearing.

When asked about the potential impact of another continuing resolution, Adm. Michael Gilday, the Chief of Naval Operations, said the effects are "cumulative over time" starting with $1 billion that hit operations and maintenance accounts for a 72-day CR. At six months, "we have decisions to make with respect to moving money around" such as with next steps for procuring aircraft carriers and a potential hit to military and personnel accounts.

Gilday said, "you begin to see the effects more acutely in those accounts as well where you cannot hire the people you want to hire in numbers to get to where you want to be at the end of the fiscal year."

A 12-month CR, he said, would cost the Navy $18 billion and have "significant impact" on modernization and investments in the future as some maintenance dollars go towards networking infrastructure. Gilday wrote in his prepared testimony that funding for shore readiness also covers "cyber infrastructure protection for our ashore and deployed units."

"Protecting our networked fleet also requires building cyber security and resilience into our platforms. To meet this end, PB-21 requests over $1 billion to protect our forces from intrusions and will ensure that we can fight through and recover from cyber-attacks," Gilday wrote.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger said his biggest worry was modernization. "We have gotten by so far on this CR on readiness, without any negative impacts. It will begin to impact going into the next few months," Berger said. "My major concern is modernization" which needs new start initiatives that get paused under continuing resolutions.

"If we don't have the appropriations bill on time, you're going to delay the modernization of the Marine Corps and to the detriment of our readiness is going to be, for us, sort of a double whammy. Not a good picture."

Those sentiments were supported in a newly released Government Accountability report highlighting the Navy and Marine Corps' ongoing readiness and management challenges, including sufficient training for personnel.

.

...

[JRT]

It would seem that Trump has raked in $207.5 million in donations into his slushfund in the month after the election.

Losing And Complaining Is The Most Lucrative Scam Of Trump's Presidency

04 December 2020
(aired 05 December)

Rachel Maddow shows that Donald Trump has finally figured out how to make real money off his position as U.S. president, ironically, by losing his bid for re-election and manipulating his supporters into giving him hundreds of millions of dollars to complain about it.

.

...

[TopHatter]

It would seem there is mounting evidence that voter fraud won the election for Biden. What a scandal! (if it's true).

Are...are you being facetious?

[Gun Boat]

It would seem there is mounting evidence that voter fraud won the election for Biden. What a scandal! (if it's true).

[JRT]

While we witness POTUS-45 Trump's ongoing malevolent influence operations in his disinformation campaign in his war against truth... Here are three videos of Ben Nimmo on the subject of opposing disinformation campaigns.
____________________

Ben Nimmo on defending against online disinformation campaigns
Brookings Institution
22 May 2020
Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika, discusses how to defend against online disinformation campaigns.

____________________

How to kill a disinformation narrative: is fact-checking enough?
The Trilateral Commission
20 June 2019
Ben Nimmo, Senior Fellow for Information Defense, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Atlantic Council

____________________

DisinfoWeek Brussels 2019 Storyteller: Ben Nimmo
AtlanticCouncil
12 March 2019
Ben Nimmo, Senior Fellow for Information Defense, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Atlantic Council

[JRT]

Now I wonder how long his loyal followers, who don't seem to me to be the cream of the crop financially, will continue to follow. At his Super PAC he is asking for $250 donation but at the end there is very fine print that this donation will be automatic for another 10 months I believe. Basically an auto-renew donation every month out of their checking account. Should be interesting come January will loyal followers see another debit out of their checking account. Huh???

[JRT]

military officer + martial law + current president + overturn election =

Curious if POTUS-45, Donald J. Trump might award himself The Presidential Medal of Freedom before he vacates the office, and/or maybe sell some of those on eBay for a little pocket change. Some intern could be tasked with doing the actual work

He could also hand those medals out to every one of his cohorts as he pardons them for the crimes that they have committed against the United States, symbolizing their freedom from federal prosecution, freedom from American justice, and their elite status above the law of the land.

[tbm3fan]

Now I wonder how long his loyal followers, who don't seem to me to be the cream of the crop financially, will continue to follow. At his Super PAC he is asking for $250 donation but at the end there is very fine print that this donation will be automatic for another 10 months I believe. Basically an auto-renew donation every month out of their checking account. Should be interesting come January will loyal followers see another debit out of their checking account. Huh???

[TopHatter]

Michael Cohen on What Trump Wants Now

The president’s longtime lawyer, still serving out his federal sentence, explains his former boss’s post-election maneuvering.

Donald Trump is Captain Chaos.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, pinned that label on him and it has stuck.

Now, with less than seven weeks to go before he is escorted from the White House, Captain Chaos is still trampling norms and harming institutions. He is a dangerous con man and is all about the grift. He probably doesn’t want to burn it all down, because that could damage his income—but he’s too incompetent and stupid to see that his actions risk that very outcome.

His latest speech, recorded in the White House and transmitted on Wednesday via YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, served as another trigger for his rabid, emotional base. He began by saying, “This may be the most important speech I’ve ever made” before again spewing tepid conspiracy theories and lying incessantly about the election results.

But he wasn’t alone. Wednesday in Michigan, Trump campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani asked state lawmakers to deliver the state’s 16 electoral votes to Donald Trump though he lost the election in that state by 154,000 popular votes.

Reporting in the Detroit Free Press, Dave Boucher said that when the four and a half hour hearing, commandeered by Giuliani, ended, “The testimony did not show any evidence of widespread fraud.”

Democrats were indifferent to Giuliani’s pleas, and a Republican state representative, Steve Johnson, questioned why the Trump campaign did not request a recount of votes: “Instead, what we hear is a lot of talk, a lot of thoughts, a lot of allegations. But we had one opportunity to actually do this [a recount] and the Trump campaign did not make that request.”

During the hearing, Melissa Carone, Trump’s “star witness” to supposed campaign irregularities in Michigan, made a series of baffling and ridiculous claims—including smuggling ballots inside food vans—that drew criticism from the assembled lawmakers. They said she was “not credible.” Even Giuliani, the king of bad hair dye and forced theatrics, tried to silence her to no avail. Her critics say she’s a self-written Saturday Night Live sketch—all that is needed is Kate McKinnon in the appropriate wig and glasses.

Thus Donald Trump’s continued efforts to win an election by hook or by crook that he couldn’t win at the ballot box are playing out like the cheap carnival sideshow we always knew Trump was. He could never make the midway. He will forever be relegated to the rigged games of ring toss, near where the carnies who guess your weight troll the easy marks and the ground is littered with the sticky remains of half-eaten cheap cotton candy.

In all the talk about which Trump cronies might receive pardons in his final lame-duck weeks, there is one name that never comes up: Michael Cohen. After a dozen years as Trump’s lawyer and fixer, Cohen famously broke with his boss in 2018. He pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress. He was sentenced to three years in federal prison, although because of the pandemic he was released this past May to serve out his sentence under house arrest.

Reflecting on Trump and the end of his presidency, Cohen told me this week that Trump is the ultimate grifter and, as many have speculated, merely wishes to whip his supporters into a frenzy. “I want him to leave and keep his mouth shut for the next four years, the guy is so ignorant and arrogant,” Cohen said. “He billed himself as a builder and he’s done nothing. He couldn’t even get an infrastructure bill passed.”

It is true that wherever Trump and his minions go, chaos, corruption, and destruction follow.

But these days Trump is limiting his exposure because he cannot face the press, the truth, or any question that would challenge the warped, delusional view that he continues to sell to his base.

Cohen believes Trump has “done the math” and figures that, of his 74 million voters, he could successfully con about 20 million of them to continue donating money to him. “He’s very bright when it comes to figuring out angles and money,” Cohen explained in an interview for my podcast Just Ask the Question. “But he knows he can’t go back to real estate and he knows he has to leave the White House in January. But if he can get a large enough number of his supporters to send him money—then he’s set. That’s what he wants.”

It is the collateral damage that Trump continues to inflict on the country in the last seven weeks of his demented administration that should have us all concerned.

The anger that Trump displayed in his first few months in office translated to a wide variety of threats to those in the public who opposed him—entertainers, reporters, athletes: anyone who had a voice and questioned his legitimacy.

That faded after the first year—but has come back with a vengeance in the last few weeks.

Trump’s feverish, delusional, insane, and perhaps seditious denial of his loss, coupled with his ability to twist people into a knot and partnered with idiots like Giuliani and most of the White House senior staff have produced an environment ripe for violence.

Trump doesn’t care—as long as it doesn’t get too violent.

He wants to protect his bottom line, but he’s never been able to contain the Frankenstein monster he’s created—triggered racists, sycophants, and marginalized Americans who believe Trump has given them permission to access the very worst versions of themselves and threaten the world around them for perceived and often erroneous indiscretions.

So the irony is that Trump, in his frenzied delusional anger, is not only a hypocrite, but a vile, dangerous lunatic who threatens his own post-White House existence.

Will he face prosecution for federal or state crimes? Will he launch a new phase of a career in politics or the media? Or will he merely go away, financially and morally bankrupt, slinking into the night muttering to himself and wondering why everyone seems to despise him?

“I wish him nothing for Christmas,” Cohen said. “Except what he deserves.”
_________

Perfect description of Donald Trump: A cheap carnival sideshow that could never make the midway. He couldn't even make the White House without the Electoral College...against probably the most polarizing and then-hated person in the country.

And now his followers are demanding that he do exactly what they feared Obama would do: Declare martial law to stay in office. Trump's followers are exactly what they purport to hate.

[tbm3fan]

military officer + martial law + current president + overturn election =