Politics, More News

Talking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, called President Joe Biden’s home a “crime scene” because two dozen classified pages were discovered there and immediately turned over to the DOJ. Yet Comer said they didn’t need to investigate Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) after the discovery of hundreds of classified documents, some of them in DDT’s desk drawer, because the Democrats had already done that. Republicans consistently defend DDT and criticized the FBI search while not calling for any congressional oversight, avoiding questions about their hypocrisy.

Although Comer doesn’t need visitor logs from DDT’s Mar-a-Lago residence, Comer wants that information from Biden’s home, claiming people need to know who “had access to these highly sensitive documents.” That request was sent to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. Biden had reinstated disclosures of official guests to the White House and released their first records within a few months after his inauguration; DDT had stopped the practice when he moved into the White House.

Comer did describe Rep. George Santos (R-NY) “a bad guy” and called his lies “despicable” but didn’t call on him to be forced out of Congress unless he broke campaign laws. Harbor City Capitol in Florida called George Santos, under the name George Devolder, a “perfect fit” as an employee. The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Harbor City of running a “classic Ponzi scheme” defrauding investors of millions of dollars. In late 2020, Santos said he was “Harbor City Capital’s head guy for New York City.”

Shortly before the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, one of the insurrection leaders, Ali Alexander, texted the top aide of Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) stating, “I think you and your staff should leave.” A protégé of Roger Stone, Alexander testified that Gosar is “a friend to the movement” and “a stellar dude.”

Speaker McCarthy vowed publicly that he will hold China accountable for its damage to the U.S. economy. His chief of staff, Daniel P. Meyer, owns between $250,000 and $300,000 of shares in Alibaba Group Holdings Limited, one of the largest companies in China with close ties to its government. In the decade before working for McCarthy, Meyer was president of the Duberstein Group, the firm earning millions lobbying for Alibaba in the U.S. Meyer was also former senior aid to ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich and helped to develop the Contract with America, a document undermining the social safety net in 1994.

Too little, too late. Fox wants to move past DDT, according to contributor Mara Liasson after Media Buzz host Howard Kurtz of the network’s Media Buzz questioned why DDT isn’t getting the same media coverage for his comments about Biden’s classified documents as Biden is about DDT’s hiding the same sort of materials. The reason the network is stuck? It elected DDT in 2016 because owner Rupert Murdoch was DDT’s close friend. Fox made money on DDT: he owns them. But now DDT has CNN because his supporter John Malone is on the board controlling that network.

A few other bits:

The conservative Heritage Foundation spent over $5 million in 2021, lobbying for laws to block voters, on top of another $560,000 from in-house federal lobbying efforts and registered lobbying by its staffers in at least 24 states. The wealthy Rebecca Mercer, a Heritage board member, helped elected DDT in 2016. Heritage maintains a database of election fraud but finds only 1,402 “proven instances of voter fraud”—an annual average of 35 among hundreds of millions of votes.

In 2017, then-Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) and the Republicans passed a law dropping taxes for the wealthy and big business. The next year, 34 percent of large, profitable corporations paid no federal taxes, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The report also shows that, on average, large profitable U.S. corporations paid less than nine percent of their profits in federal income taxes for that year. Instead of making these corporations pay their fair share, the Republicans want to reduce amounts for Social Security and Medicare, programs that people have already paid into as part of their taxes.

The GAO didn’t name specific corporations, but another report found that AT&T paid no taxes for 2021 although the company made $29.6 billion that year. AT&T also got a $1.2 billion refund from the IRS. In 2017 before the new law reduced taxes, profitable U.S. corporations paid only 14 percent of their profits; the percentage dropped to 8.9 percent in 2018. Profitable U.S. corporations paid 14 percent of their profits in federal income taxes on average between 2008 and 2012; only one-fifth of them paid nothing every year. The Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act introduced in 2021 would have restored the tax rate to 2017. The provision in the bill closing offshore loopholes would have raised over $1 trillion in revenue during the next decade.

A new study verifies eight-year-old news that Exxon was aware in the 1970s of how his company caused climate change when its action could have made a difference. In short, the oil company knew that carbon dioxide from the fossil fuel industry would heat the earth in drastic fashion. Lead author Geoffrey Supran, from his new post at the University of Miami, stated:

“This is the nail-in-the-coffin of Exxon Mobil’s claims that it has been falsely accused of climate malfeasance. Our analysis shows that ExxonMobil’s own data contradicted its public statements, which included exaggerating uncertainties, criticizing climate models, mythologizing global cooling, and feigning ignorance about when—or if—human-caused global would be measurable.”

Exxon minimized the reality of climate change for decades and obfuscated its reality. Over 25 years ago, CEO Lee Raymond attended the World Petroleum Congress in Beijing shortly before the Kyoto climate talks and insisted that the world was cooling and that even if it wasn’t it would make no difference if people delayed action for a few decades. He lied so that Exxon could begin to set the record for highest annual corporate profit.

Those questioning the accuracy of the New York Times have a new problem with the publication. When the U.S. deficit dropped from $2.6 trillion to $1.4 trillion in 2022, Biden’s first full year as president, the country was led by Democrats. Yet the newspaper report used a photo of Republican legislators cheering McCarthy as newly-elected Speaker. One tweet explained:

“But isn’t that the usual MO? When things go well, GOP take wholly undeserved credit. When they eff things up, they blame Biden. And the glorified stenographers, pretending to be journalists, gladly play along to get along.”

Buried toward the end of the article, however, is information about how GOP policies will add to the deficit.

Republicans pretend they are attacking transgender healthcare only for children, but at least three states have bills to restrict access to gender-affirming health care for people up to age 26. Oklahoma has the most extreme, restrictive bill thus far in the Millstone Act, the name taken from a Bible verse punishing adults harming children, that bans Medicaid from coverage for “gender transition procedures” to individuals younger than 26. Justification for the age of 26 is the belief that the human brain doesn’t reach full maturity until adults turn 25. Over ten states have also introduced dozens of bills to ban gender-affirming care for minors.

The Supreme Court is hearing a challenge to New York’s new restrictions on concealed carry of firearms but agreed that the law can continue until it decides whether to uphold a 2^nd Circuit Court order to reinstate the law while considering judicial rulings against the law in three cases. The law lists places where guns can be banned such as bars, stadiums, subways, and Times Square. People can carry a concealed weapon on private property only if the property owner consents. Permits require a character test, 18 hours of training, and disclosure of social media history and family members.

Elon Musk turned over internal Twitter company documents to Alex Berenson, a leader in spreading vaccine lies, who had been banned from Twitter in 2021 for repeatedly writing misinformation about the pandemic. In the first of Musk’s “Twitter Files,” Berenson tries to prove that the company censored “vaccine debate” in 2021. Matt Taibbi also made claims that Twitter worked with the federal government to suppress free speech on the social media platform.

The six-year-old boy who shot his teacher in Virginia on January 6 was suspected of bringing the 9mm handgun to school, according to the school superintendent. Parents are wondering why a search of the boy’s backpack but did not reveal the weapon. Police were not told about the tip that he had a gun. The condition of the teacher, 25-year-old Abigail Zwerner, has improved to “stable.” No warning or struggle occurred in the classroom before the boy intentionally shot Zwerner. The gun belonged to the boy’s mother who legally purchased it. Virginia law prohibits leaving a loaded gun accessible to a child under 14. With a wound in her chest from the 9mm bullet shot through her hand, Zwerner had ushered her students to safety, perhaps saving their lives. Investigators found the handgun next to the boy’s desk along with a cellphone and backpack. The school is still closed.

Another Republican has been charged with voter fraud, 52 counts after Kim Phuong Taylor filled out and cast dozens of absentee ballots throughout Sioux City’s Vietnamese community in her husband’s failed race in Iowa for Congress in 2020. Prosecutors stated she also committed the same fraud for the November 2020 election when her husband was elected to the Woodbury County Board.

 

January 6, 2021 Hearings – June 23, 2022 plus Breaking News

 In another bombshell ruling, six Supreme Court justices struck down a 1913 New York law requiring people to demonstrate they have a “special need for self-protection” to carry a concealed handgun in public. To an indifferent majority, Justice Stephen Breyer noted the 277 reported mass shootings, more than one per day, during fewer than the first six months of 2022. He added, “Gun violence has now surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents.” Shootings in New York City doubled between 2019 and 2021, rising much more in the first quarter of 2022. Wayne Pierre, NRA’s executive vice president, took credit for the ruling; its opinion was written by Clarence Thomas.

The six Supremes also blocked people from suing police if they are not given their Miranda rights. Samuel Alito wrote the violation is not “a violation of the Fifth Amendment.” Therefore police are required to read everyone their Miranda rights, but not doing it doesn’t violate the law.  

By 65-14, the Senate passed its lukewarm “gun reform” bill that one media sourced called the “most significant gun legislation in three decades.” The anti-assault law, which saved many lives, passed in 1994 but expired in 2004, resulting in thousands of deaths. The bill now goes to the House for debate, revisions, and a vote.

Since the fourth hearing by the House January 6 investigative committee on June 21, the number of violent threats against committee members has been on the rise, probably requiring security detail for all of them. Even before that hearing, the wife of Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) received a letter threatening to execute her and their five-month-old baby. He said that violence will not lessen until people believe the truth. Despite her security detail since last year, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has not been able to have publicized campaign events because of security concerns.

After his day in the sun on June 21 for his testimony about denying the demands of Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) to violate the law and the U.S. Constitution, Rusty Bowers, Arizona state House speaker, destroyed his credibility when he said he would still vote for DDT in 2024. He testified that DDT “wanted him to take illegal, immoral, unprecedented, and unconstitutional steps to overturn the 2020 election results in his state,” according to Oliver Knox. “And Trump never provided a shred of evidence for his false claims of voter fraud.”

DDT attacked Bowers for being a RINO, “Republican in Name Only,” and repeated his lie that Bowers had told DDT he believed “the election was rigged.” Bowers needs DDT’s base in his state senate run against against another Mormon during the August 2 primary as he leaves the House. DDT has also become increasingly angry with the failed strategy of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) who tried to close down the House investigative committee by pulling his appointments after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refused two of them, one of them now subpoenaed.

McCarthy advised Republicans to ignore all these hearings, but DDT isn’t following that advice. McCarthy said that appointing Republicans to the committee would create more difficulty if they attacked it as political, but DDT wants to know why no one is defending him on television. DDT has also not endorsed McCarthy for becoming House speaker job if the GOP takes over the chamber in 2022, and McCarthy needs DDT’s base.

The first GOP failure in blocking an investigation was their refusal to create an independent commission with five Republicans and five Democrats who would equally share subpoena powers and prepare the final report. McCarthy had agreed to the commission if Democrats agreed to five changes. The Democrats agreed with the changes, but McCarthy backed out. House Republicans said they voted against it after DDT opposed the idea. The five GOP members who McCarthy withdrew from the official committee have formed their own “shadow” group to center on “the real true story about what took place on Jan. 6” largely focusing on alleged security failures under Pelosi’s watch with a report released before the August recess.

The official committee is now able to investigate and present findings without distraction. It behaves in a highly professional manner, and obstructive Republicans have no information to prepare DDT’s defense, no way to influence the committee’s direction, no contrary questions, no leaking, and no diluting findings before the final report. Republicans other than DDT are upset with McCarthy.

The night before the June 23 hearing, law enforcement officers used an FBI-issued warrant to search the home of Jeffrey Clark, Assistant AG for the Environment. Warrants are given only with evidence of a crime. DDT had planned to install Clark as acting AG in January 2021 to replace Jeffrey Rosen and make Clark the third AG in two weeks, after DDT fired his own appointee Bill Barr. The proposal failed when hundreds of DOJ employees threatened to quit if DDT replaced Rosen with Clark who planned to tell Georgia officials the lie that the department had proof for the state to rescind its certification of Joe Biden for the presidency.

When earlier called by the investigative committee to testify, Clark declared both attorney-client privilege—although he worked for an independent agency—and the Fifth Amendment over 100 times to not incriminate himself. He can’t do both. On January 3, DDT started calling Clark his acting AG, although he had not appointed him, to give Clark the power to endorse his lies about election fraud.  

[The hearings require an elaborate production as shown by this shot of the MSNBC control room.] 

Witnesses at the June 23 hearing included Rosen, acting AG during the January 6 insurrection; Richard Donoghue, Rosen’s top deputy; and Steven Engel, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel. Both Donoghue and Engel had threatened to resign if DDT replaced Rosen with Clark. All witnesses detailed their clarifications with DDT about the invalidity of DDDT’s accusations of the “stolen election” theories. Donoghue testified that DDT asked him to tell the public that the election had “widespread fraud” despite no evidence. He said, “Leave the rest of it to us,” meaning himself and the “U.S. Congressmen.” DDT’s former White House attorney Eric Herschmann told Clark, considered incompetent because he knew nothing about criminal law, sarcastically told Clark he was perfect for the job because he was willing to commit a felony.  

Some of today’s revelations:

Congressional co-conspirators to overturn the 2020 presidential election: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), sworn into the House three days before the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) attended a December meeting at the White House to discuss strategy although DDT knew there was no evidence of fraud. Perry introduced DDT to Clark who had no connection to election fraud or criminal investigations outside environmental damage.

Request for DDT’s pardons: Among members of Congress asking for DDT’s pardons to cover their crimes were GOP Reps. Matt Gaetz (FL), Mo Brooks (AL), Andy Biggs (AZ), Louie Gohmert (TX), Scott Perry (PA), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA). Both Gaetz, under investigation for federal child sex-trafficking and other crimes, and Brooks wanted blanket pardons for all possible crimes in the past and future, according to Mark Meadows’ former aide Cassidy Hutchinson. More members of Congress may have asked for presidential pardons. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) also asked if DDT would be giving pardons to congressional members. Pardoned people have to testify because they cannot plead the Fifth Amendment, not incriminating themselves.

Links with DOJ to overturn the election: In addition to the hearing’s DOJ witnesses and news about Clark, new DOJ attorney Ken Klukowski worked with Clark and DDT’s lawyer John Eastman to overturn the election, according to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY). Their dual method was to overhaul DOJ for it to focus on fraud claims and persuade legislatures to sign off on alternate slates of electors.

Pentagon involvement: DDT told former Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller to call a high-ranking official in Rome (Italy) about the conspiracy theory “Italygate” that an Italian defense contractor uploaded software to a satellite to switch votes from DDT to Joe Biden. It was just one of the conspiracy theories that DDT told the DOJ to follow.

Film footage: British filmmaker Alex Holder testified behind closed doors and showed the raw footage of DDT, his family, friends, and then-VP Mike Pence from September 2020 to after the January 6 attack. DDT told the filmmakers, “I think I treat people well, unless they don’t treat me well, in which case you go to war.”

Sedition: DDT’s daily pressure on members of an independent government agency presents a clear picture of his opposition to his own government which was searching for justice, support the will of the people, and following the Constitution.

After this evidence of DDT’s incessant push at the DOJ to make the independent agency an arm of his campaign to create a coup, the next hearings, expected to cover domestic extremism and DDT’s actions inside the White House, will be scheduled starting the week of July 11. The wait is to incorporate the “new evidence [the committee reveives] on a daily basis with enormous velocity,” according to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD). The two hearings may not be the last before the panel issues final reports later this year.

A more detailed summary of the June 23 hearing by Heather Cox Richardson.

‘Open Carry’ Grows More Frightening

Texas, one of the most conservative states in the union and a leader in gun “open carry,” is finally getting nervous about their resident gun nuts. It should. The Texas senate may not pass a law allowing open carry in public without a gun permit, and Kory Watkins of Open Carry Tarrant County gave a rant on his Facebook page that should disturb legislators—maybe even make them understand the problems of gun “enthusiasm.” Watkins wrote:

“I don’t think they want to mess with us too much longer. They better start giving us our rights or this peaceful non-cooperation stuff is gonna be gamed up. We’re going to step it up a notch. I think here in Texas we’re tired of jacking around with people in suits who think that they can take away freedoms in the name of safety … We should be demanding [Texas legislators] give us our rights back, or it’s punishable by death. Treason. You understand how serious this is, Texas? We need to start sticking more than foots in doors. This is treason against the American people. You don’t sell my rights back to me? You’re going to find trouble.”

Law enforcement officials, however, are supporting legislators. State Sen. Joan Huffman talked about “concerns from law enforcement and constituents that allowing unlicensed open carry [of handguns] ‘could create some chaos in an ordered society.'” A recent Texas Police Chiefs Association survey distributed to over 800 police chiefs reported that almost 75 percent of the respondents oppose open carry of a handgun.  Another 90 percent said that a license should be required for open carry, and 71 percent said that holsters should have retention ratings to help secure the gun.

The reason for these concerns is the dangerous and aggressive behavior of people carrying long guns in public because they confront and harass police. After Watkins and other pro-gun activists refused to leave the office of Texas State Rep. Poncho Nevárez (D-74th), the legislator and his family received so many death threats that state law enforcement officers are assigned to guard him. Legislators’ office now may have panic buttons to protect them and their staff.

Even Republicans are beginning to understand the danger of unrestricted gun ownership.  Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that he’s “not necessarily all that fond of this open carry concept” and added that those who carry guns in public should be “appropriately backgrounded, appropriately vetted, appropriately trained.” Former Texas Land Commissioner/State Sen. Jerry Patterson, sponsor of the state’s concealed-handgun law in 1995, said that open-carry legislation “has been pushed off the rails by the nut jobs.” And State Sen. Charles Perry pointed out to The Chad Hasty Show that “some of the folks … that are coming in with intimidating tactics have issues in their background that they can’t get a CHL [concealed-handgun license]. So there’s always more than one agenda that’s apparent.”

The most bizarre gun bill in Texas would allow teachers to kill their students. Teachers are already permitted to carry guns in their classrooms, but H.B. 868 would authorize instructors to use “force or deadly force on school property, on a school bus, or at a school-sponsored event in defense of the educator’s person or in defense of students of the school that employs the educator.” Instructors would also have the right to use deadly force “in defense of property of the school that employs the educator.” Moreover, civil immunity would be granted to those who use deadly force, meaning they would not be liable for the injury or death of student. Black and Latino students already face much greater rates of discipline than white students; this bill could permit teachers to kill them.

In Washington state, a gun group is planning a gun show in defiance of the new state law for background checks. Dubbed the Arms Expo, it is scheduled for the third weekend of June in the Yakima area. Advertising promises “no background checks, no paperwork, no infringement.” Organizer Sam Wilson said that they would be breaking the law, but he predicted that law enforcement wouldn’t intervene.

States that have loosened their gun laws are finding them expensive. Idaho’s new law to allow guns on college campuses will cost schools $3.7 million for the year. With no additional state funding, that’s money taken from the educational process.

Although extremists think that guns will make them safer, studies have shown this argument is false. A re-enactment of the recent Charlie Hebdo shooting showed that no “armed civilian” was able to take out both shooters, and the only person who didn’t “die” was the one who ran away. Even trained police officers in New York City hit the intended target 18 percent of the time. Yet the majority of people in the U.S. think that a gun in the house makes them safer. Studies show that a gun in the house is more likely to kill the owner or a loved one than to kill a stranger in self-defense, and the annual per capita risk of death during a home invasion is 0.0000002 percent.

Owning a gun, holding one, or even just seeing one has a significant effect on perceptions and behavior. Studies for almost 50 years have examined the “weapons effect,” in which the presence of a gun or a picture of one can stimulate aggressive behavior. A 2006 study found that men exposed to firearms before an experiment had higher levels of testosterone and were three times more likely to behave aggressively than those who weren’t exposed to a gun.

In 2009, the University of Pennsylvania found that people with guns were 4.5 times more likely to be shot than those without guns. One conclusion was that “a gun may falsely empower its possessor to overreact.” Evidence supports this. In a 2012 study, people had either a replica of a gun or something like a ball and asked to identify objects that other people held. The participants holding guns were more likely to guess that others had guns and more likely to “engage in threat-induced behavior” like raising a gun to shoot.

Brains react to guns in almost the same way as to spiders and snakes by capturing the attention. People identify threats to safety in order to avoid them. The brain immediately responds, which is why people instantly see a gun among other objects. The automatic response often results in 911 calls when people see gun owners openly carrying their firearms. Displaying guns doesn’t stop crime because brains see them as threats. People who become de-sensitized to guns are in even more danger because they cannot perceive them as dangerous threats.

States with the weakest gun violence prevention laws and higher rates of gun ownership have the highest overall gun death rates in the United States. The reverse is true as shown by this chart. Every 1 percent increase in gun ownership is correlated with a 1.1 percent increase in the firearm homicide rate and a .07 percent increase in total homicide rate. With the absence of guns, criminals do not switch to another weapon for homicide. Gun ownership doubles the risk of homicide and triples the risk of suicide, and a gun in the home is far more likely to be used to threaten a family member or intimate partner than to be used in self-defense. In Missouri, annual murder rates increased by 16 percent after the state’s 2007 repeal of its permit-to-purchase handgun licensing law.

People who threaten legislators with death if they vote the wrong way and collectively flaunt actions against the law are domestic terrorists. These are acts of intimidation and should be treated like terrorism. People who threaten violence if they don’t get their own way are capable of committing bloodshed as shown by the Bundy standoff in Nevada and the ensuing murders of two police officers in a pizzeria. One member of Open Carry Texas/Open Carry Tarrant County is awaiting trial for killing her estranged husband and his 20-year-old daughter.

The same political party that fights for states’ rights wants to trump these with a bill to allow carrying concealed guns across state lines without permits from those states. Chief sponsor in the senate is Texas Republican John Cornyn. Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said that “law-abiding citizens should be able to exercise this fundamental right while traveling across state lines.” No mention from the NRA that governments can’t know whether the carriers are “law-abiding.” The House will most likely pass the bill, and the senate has a better chance of getting past the 60-vote filibuster level than in 2013. Cornyn compared the process to that of a driver’s license. It would be good if gun licenses would be comparable to driver’s licenses.