When A Local Crazie Hosts A National Crazie - BOOM, A Crazie Conspiracy Theory!

We'll start with this tantalizing tidbit from WBW:

🚨WARNING: HELLUVA LOT OF CRAZY GOING ON HERE!🚨

RWNJ Michele Bachmann calls in to RWNJ Wendy today…and well…insanity.

Here’s Wendy does her best overacting to convince her sheep she actually believes this crap. pic.twitter.com/SkHhHVLWbn

— WENDY BELL WATCH (@JonInPGH) May 13, 2022

Yes, The Angel of Death actually had Madam Chootspah on her show on May 12 and look what happens when crazie worlds collide (said George Pal to his bride)!

First, a transcript from Lady Chootspah:

Potentially, The WHO, under the pretext of solving climate change could order all sorts of radical edicts. Not only for The United States but for other nations across the world, too. Under that pretext.

The same would be if they find that the use of firearms is considered a health emergency, potentially he could issue an edict that could call for potentially confiscation of guns.

There's all sorts of things that would impact us, including mandates for lockdowns, where we would be confined to our homes, mandates for closing businesses, mandates for vaccines, so if we thought Fauci was bad, at the NIH, if we thought that Rachel (sic) Walensky was over the top at the Centers for Disease Control. 

Now think of handing that power to the current occupant, Tedros, who presumably will be reelected at the World Health Assembly, imagine giving that power and authority to him because he's essentially an arm of the communist party of China.

This meeting will be held in Geneva, Switzerland very shortly on May 22-28. That's why this is urgent.

This vote will take place sometime between May 22-28 to give authority to cede our sovereign authority health care decisions to The WHO.

There are already over 40 nations that have signed on, including the EU, The UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland. The major countries of the world have already agreed with the Biden Administration to cede this level of sovereignty.

It's unthinkable. I don't know why they would do this...

So what is Chelsea Chootspah ranting about now?

This, the 75th World Heath Assembly to be held in Geneva, Switzerland on May 22-28.

And this is how the WHO describes the meeting itself:

During the Seventy-fifth World Health Assembly, a series of strategic roundtables will be held. During these sessions, WHA delegates, partner agencies, representatives of civil society and WHO experts will discuss current and future priorities for public health issues of global importance. The themes, introduced during the Director-General’s opening remarks at the 150^th Session of the WHO Executive Board, are:

• Urgent paradigm shift towards preventing disease and promoting health: economics of Health for All
• Radical reorientation of health systems towards primary health care as the foundation of universal health coverage: the best and only choice to achieve universal health coverage
• Towards a new architecture for health emergency preparedness, response and resilience: 10 proposals for a safer world
• Behavioural sciences for better health
• A healthy return: investing in a sustainably-financed WHO

Specifically the proposed amendments to the IHR to be voted on by the Assembly later this May.

This is how the American Family News characterizes the amendments:

The backdrop of that little-publicized plan is the World Health Assembly, planned for May 22-28 in Geneva, Switzerland. At that meeting, now two weeks away, a total of 194 countries will meet to discuss a secret plan introduced by the Biden administration earlier this year to update the International Health Regulations of the WHO.

The plan was recently publicized by Michele Bachmann, the former congresswoman, who sounded the alarm on the “War Room” podcast hosted by Steve Bannon.

“The Biden administration is bringing amendments,” she warned, “that would propose that all nations of the earth cede their sovereignty over national healthcare decisions to the W-H-O, the World Health Organization.”

Read through the amendments. Tell me where there's any reference (either explicit or implicit) about ceding sovereignty over national healthcare decisions to the WHO.

This page has a clue about where in the amendments such horrors can be found. It's a "Call your members of Congress and tell them this NOW!" cut and paste text.

Take a look:

Ah Amendments for Article 12, sections 2, 3, and 5.

What do those look like?

Like this:

 And:

Show me where there's any reference to gun confiscation or vaccine mandate or involuntary lockdowns. 

Where is there the language for "ceding sovereignty" in any way?

Show me. Please.

It's just not there. Michele Bachmann found a way to shoot her wad into Steve Bannon's War Room and it tricked down into Wendy Bell's definitely not yet hi tech studio this week, that's all this is.

And Now, A Message From The Lancet

 

You can (and should) read the editorial here.

Representative Scott Perry Subpoenaed!

From The Committee chair Rep. Bennie G. Thompson::

The Select Committee has learned that several of our colleagues have information relevant to our investigation into the attack on January 6th and the events leading up to it. Before we hold our hearings next month, we wished to provide members the opportunity to discuss these matters with the committee voluntarily. Regrettably, the individuals receiving subpoenas today have refused and we’re forced to take this step to help ensure the committee uncovers facts concerning January 6th. We urge our colleagues to comply with the law, do their patriotic duty, and cooperate with our investigation as hundreds of other witnesses have done.

One of those colleagues is Rep Scott Perry of PA:

Representative Scott Perry was directly involved with efforts to corrupt the Department of Justice and install Jeffrey Clark as acting Attorney General. In addition, Mr. Perry had various communications with the White House about a number of matters relevant to the Select Committee’s investigation, including allegations that Dominion voting machines had been corrupted.

The link above leads to the letter The Select Committee sent to Perry saying that since he "declined voluntary cooperation" they were "left with no choice but to issue you this subpoena." 

What The Select Committee is looking for is contained in the first letter they sent:

• We have received evidence from multiple witnesses that you had an important role in the efforts to install Mr. Clark as acting Attorney General. Acting Attorney General Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Donoghue have provided evidence regarding these issues, and we have received evidence that others who worked with Mr. Clark were aware of these plans. We are also aware that you had multiple text and other communications with President Trump’s former Chief of Staff regarding Mr. Clark—and we also have evidence indicating that in that time frame you sent communications to the former Chief of Staff using the encrypted Signal app.
• In addition, we have information indicating that you communicated at various relevant times with the White House and others involved in other relevant topics, including regarding allegations that the Dominion voting machines had been corrupted.
  

We blogged on Perry/Rosen before - last December 17, in fact. In it I quote this piece from the NYTimes:

Mr. Trump had been handing out Mr. Donoghue’s cellphone number so that people could pass on rumors of election fraud. Who could be calling him now?

It turned out to be a member of Congress: Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who began pressing the president’s case. Mr. Perry said he had compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations that the department needed to vet. Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who had found favor with Mr. Trump, could “do something” about the president’s claims, Mr. Perry said, even if others in the department would not.

The message was delivered by an obscure lawmaker who was doing Mr. Trump’s bidding. Justice Department officials viewed it as outrageous political pressure from a White House that had become consumed by conspiracy theories.

It was also one example of how a half-dozen right-wing members of Congress became key foot soldiers in Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election, according to dozens of interviews and a review of hundreds of pages of congressional testimony about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The clear implication here is that Trump gave Perry Donoghue's cellphone number. After that the reporting is clear that Perry passed on some (fraudulent, of course) "voter fraud allegations" for Donoghue to give to Jeffrey Clark and so on.

The Times also reported that: 

On Nov. 9, two days after The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Biden, crisis meetings were underway at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va.

Mr. Perry and Mr. Jordan huddled with senior White House officials, including Mr. Meadows; Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser; Bill Stepien, the campaign manager; and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.

According to two people familiar with the meetings, which have not been previously reported, the group settled on a strategy that would become a blueprint for Mr. Trump’s supporters in Congress: Hammer home the idea that the election was tainted, announce legal actions being taken by the campaign, and bolster the case with allegations of fraud.

Perry was involved in the plan from the beginning.

But we've known this for a while, haven't we?

Both Perry and Clark are mentioned in that now-infamous Trump phone call to the DOJ.

Hey, there's another PA politician who's mentioned in that call. Did you know that?

Of course you did. It's PA State Senator (and current front runner for the GOP nomination for PA Governor) Doug Mastriano! 

State Senator Mastriano, now that your colleague (and fellow Army War College alum) Rep Scott Perry's been subpoenaed, are you worried that your name will come up in his testimony?

As I wrote in April, whenever you look into the mechanism of Trump's attempted coup for one name (Perry or Mastriano) the other one isn't too far away.

Will you be testifying, Senator?

Uh-oh. MORE Eastman Emails! (Does Doug Mastriano Know??)

From The NYTimes:

Even by the standards of other ideas promoted by the conservative lawyer John Eastman to keep President Donald J. Trump in the White House after his election loss in 2020, a newly revealed strategy he proposed to take votes from Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Pennsylvania stands out as especially brazen.

Mr. Eastman pressed a Pennsylvania state lawmaker in December 2020 to carry out a plan to strip Mr. Biden of his win in that state by applying a mathematical equation to accepting the validity of mail ballots, which were most heavily used by Democrats during the pandemic, according to emails from Mr. Eastman released under a public records request by the University of Colorado Boulder, which employed him at the time.

And: 

On Dec. 4, 2020, using his university email account, Mr. Eastman wrote to State Representative Russell H. Diamond, Republican of Pennsylvania, with plans for the legislature to appoint pro-Trump electors.

He suggested that a mathematical equation could be applied to the vote tallies to reject mail-in ballots for candidates at “a prorated amount.”

Mr. Eastman said he was basing his recommendations on his belief that the Trump legal team had presented “ample evidence of sufficient anomalies and illegal votes to have turned the election from Trump to Biden” at public hearings around the country, including in Pennsylvania. But he admitted that he had not actually watched the hearings.

That's the same Russell Diamond currently campaigning to be for the GOP nominee for Lt Governor of Pennsylvania.

And those "public hearings around the country, including in Pennsylvania" refers (at least for the purposes of this blog post) to PA State Senator Doug Mastriano's "hearing" in Gettysburg in November of 2020.

That "hearing" pops up again in the Times piece:

In one email, Mr. Diamond responded that Mr. Trump’s lawyers had not presented strong evidence of fraud at the Pennsylvania hearing.

“Honestly, the Trump legal team was not exactly stellar at PA’s hearing, failed to provide the affidavits of their witnesses and made a glaring error by purporting that more ballots had been returned than mailed out,” he wrote.

On Dec. 13, the day before all 50 states were set to cast their votes in the Electoral College, Mr. Eastman again urged Mr. Diamond to keep up with the plot to create an alternate slate of electors in Pennsylvania.

The Gettysburg hearing? Alternative electors?

Wasn't the January 6 Committee's subpoena to Doug looking at those as well?

Well, yes:

Based on publicly available information and information produced to the Select Committee, we believe that you have documents and information that are relevant to the Select Committee’s investigation. For example, we understand that you have knowledge of and participated in a plan to arrange for an alternate slate of electors to be presented to the President of the Senate on January 6, 2021, and we understand that you spoke with former President Trump about your post-election activities. We understand you participated in these activities based on assertions of voter fraud and other asserted irregularities and based on a stated belief that under the U.S. Constitution the “state legislature has the sole authority to direct the manner of selecting elegates to the Electoral College.” We have an interest in understanding these activities and the theories that motivated them.

Doug's even got a thing or two to say about those affidavits! 

Governor Wolf and the Secretary of State refused to conduct any type of thorough investigation despite the concerns of millions of our citizens in the aftermath of the election and hundreds of affidavits alleging firsthand fraud, irregularities, and illegal behavior witnessed at polling places.

PA State Senator Doug Mastriano is involved in this. Wherever you look at the Venn Diagram showing a circle "GOP plans to overturn the election" overlapping the "Pennsylvania" circle, you find Doug Mastriano's name.

He was there from the beginning.

He's been subpoenaed. He must testify to what he knows. And if he's guilty of a crime, he must be held accountable. 

Why, WTAE, WHY?

Today is May 11, 2022.

The New York Times published this on March 31, 2016:

About two weeks after a grisly shooting in a Pittsburgh suburb, Wendy Bell, a local news anchor for WTAE-TV, wrote a public Facebook post that focused in part on finding hope and offering kindness.

But before the offering kindness part, she swerved into racial commentary that led to her being fired on Wednesday.

She was responding to a shooting at a backyard party on March 9 in Wilkinsburg, Pa., that killed five people, including a pregnant woman. No one has been arrested, and the police have not yet publicly identified suspects.

Yet in her Facebook post on March 21, which was later edited and eventually deleted, Ms. Bell played detective in a way that some felt relied on damaging stereotypes.

So WTAE fired the noxious Wendy Bell on Wednesday March 30, 2016. For those who  haven't found the date calculator page, that's 2,233 days or 6 years, 1 month and 11 days ago.

It was all over the news:

P-G:

Wendy Bell, an award-winning journalist with WTAE-TV for 18 years, was fired Wednesday for comments she made on her Facebook page.

A statement from Hearst Television, the station’s parent company, said, “WTAE has ended its relationship with anchor Wendy Bell. Wendy’s recent comments on a WTAE Facebook page were inconsistent with the company’s ethics and journalistic standards.”

The Trib: 

WTAE-TV fired longtime news anchor Wendy Bell on Wednesday, more than a week after she posted a controversial message on Facebook.

And so on.

So why am I posting this?

Because I found this at WTAE's website this morning:

I snagged a screen shot with something that could be dated. See the "Breaking News" banner?

That's this story.

But wait there's more!

There's even a slideshow called "20 Things You Didn't Know About Wendy Bell"

Things like (and these are actual captions from the photos):

• At age 18, Wendy was Bachelorette #3 on an episode of "The All New Dating Game" in 1988… and she won. (slide 5 of 30)
  
• Wendy went to high school with actor Ricky Schroder. (slide 8 of 30)
• Wendy almost went to the prom with Erik Menendez, who was also a student at her school. (slide 11 of 30)

Hey, WTAE! You showed Wendy the proverbial door 6 years ago. Surely you can find someone to push a button and completely remove the noxious Wendy Bell from your otherwise trustworthy website.

I'm sure this is just an oversight on your part. It's time to fix it.

PA State Senator Doug Mastriano Talks Treason! With Steven Bannon! (Projection Ensues)

We'll start here:

PA gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano says that Mark Esper's efforts to keep Trump from taking the country in a dark direction were "treasonous" and a "danger to our Republic greater than anything else that has ever happened." pic.twitter.com/CazodiWQsq

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) May 9, 2022

Senator Mastriano is speaking with Steve Bannon. Bannon is currently under indictment (two counts) for Contempt of Congress. He was also indicted for wire fraud. The case was dismissed because he was pardoned by Donald Trump on the latter's last day of office.

And as we all know, PA State Senator Doug Mastriano has been subpoenaed by the same committee that issued the subpoenas that led to Bannon's contempt indictment.

Transcript:

Bannon: Could you believe your ears about what Esper is talking about about this coup against President Trump?

Mastriano: Yea, Steve, this is really disturbing. It really is treasonous activity, I know the left throws that around like it's just another word.

The idea - and we debated this in many of the Army schools I attended like the Air Command Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in civil military relations, and the idea that we have a shadow government that's undermining the president and developing and executing policy outside of is treasonous and it needs to be pursued and it needs to be squashed and stopped because this is a danger to our republic, Greater than anything else that's ever happened.

Hm. So what was some of the stuff that Esper undermined?

Let's go to what former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said on 60 Minutes:

During the late spring of 2020, it was not a foreign crisis, but the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, that Esper calls a turning point in his time as secretary of defense. On the night of May 31 in Washington, protests for racial justice were marred by rioters who set parts of Washington ablaze and, Esper says, enraged President Trump. At a meeting the next morning, Esper told us, the commander-in-chief was on the verge of ordering 10,000 active-duty troops into the streets of the Capital.

Norah O'Donnell: What was the most disturbing thing that the president said during that meeting on June 1st?

Mark Esper: The president is ranting at-- at the room. He's using a lot of, you know-- foul language. You know, "You-- y-- you all are f-in' losers," right?  And then he says it to the vice president, Mike Pence. He-- he's usin' the same language and he's lookin' at Pence.

Norah O'Donnell: He called Mike Pence--

Mark Esper: H-- he di--

Norah O'Donnell: --an f-in' loser?

Mark Esper: --he didn't-- he didn't call him directly, but he was looking at him when he was saying it. And it really caught my attention, and I thought, that-- we're at a different spot now. He's gonna finally give a direct order to deploy paratroopers into the streets of Washington, D.C. And I'm thinking with weapons and bayonets. This would be horrible. 

Norah O'Donnell: What specifically was he suggesting that the U.S. military should do to these protesters?

Mark Esper: He says, "Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something." And he's suggesting that that's what we should do, that we should bring in the troops and shoot the protesters.

Norah O'Donnell: The commander in chief was suggesting that the U.S. military shoot protesters? American protesters.

Mark Esper: Yes, in the streets--

Norah O'Donnell: American protesters.

Mark Esper: --of our nation's capital. That's right. Shocking.

So to the indicted Bannon and the subpoenaed Mastriano, stopping Donald Trump from giving the order to active military troops to shoot protestors in Washington DC is (now wait for it) treason. 

Stopping the order to shoot protesters is treason.

I would say that treason is working behind the scenes to overturn a free, fair and legal election that the candidate that you supported lost. That's what I would call treason, Senator Mastriano.

Esper defending himself against this "disloyalty" charge with this:

I never disobeyed a direct order from the president of the United States. I was fortunate that he often didn't give direct orders. But otherwise, I did what I thought was best for the nation and for our security, and completely within the authority granted to me under the law.

And:

My oath is to the Constitution, not to [Donald Trump].

You took an oath, didn't you State Senator? You took an oath to "support, defend and obey" The Constitution, am I right?

Please correct me if I am wrong.

And yet you participated in a coup attempt to thwart The Constitution by attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

Doesn't that make you the traitor here, Senator?

Quick Wendy Blogpost

Wendy Bell, The Angel of Death, said something crazie about something or other today. I don't know what it was. I wasn't watching.

There's a whole slew of brave souls on twitter who'll do that for you, by the way, but this blog post doesn't concern my friends over at the Wendy Bell Watch.

No, right now I want to focus on a section of today's BS Board:

Apparently Wendy was wanking on some sort of "appearance vs reality" argument.

Again, not important. But there's a problem with Wendy's first "Fact" example:

Doxxing of
Conservative
Judges

Do you see the problem?

Give the fact that Wendy Bell doxxed someone on her show once, she should probably never, ever mention anyone else's doxxing ever.

Here's what happened. A woman called Sierra Experts, one of Wendy's sponsors and complained about Wendy. And then Wendy herself explains what happened next:

That woman left, what she thought was an anonymous phone call at my advertisers. Well, my advertisers are really smart people. And they don't like it when people they don't know, who aren't customers of theirs, try to browbeat them into submission to join "Joe Biden's America." So one of my advertisers managed to unravel the no-caller ID private line blocked number and I got to see the number. 

So my team did a reverse search, found out who the woman was, did some digging, found some audio of her, did a cross reference check of the audio. You gotta make sure who you're talking about if you're gonna go on and say, "This is what's going on here."

And then this is how I wrote about it then:

Wendy Bell found a picture of the woman and showed it to her vast adoring audience. On her BS board, she'd written the woman's name, phone number, work place and, according to my buddy Jon, coiner of the term "Radio Karen," told her listeners to harass the woman who called Sierra Experts (who, by the way, can be reached at 412 378-8333).

Wendy Bell doxxed a critic. Wendy Bell doxxed a critic. Wendy Bell doxxed a critic. 

Say it one more time with feeling:

Wendy Bell. Doxxed. A. Critic.

 

The Day After Mother's Day - A Personal Story

OK, so I've been mulling this over for some time.

Considering Alito's leaked draft opinion, now's as good a time as any, I suppose.

I am, at the time of this writing, 58 years old and as such I was born in 1963. Late 1963, to be more a little more specific.

My parents were married in April of 1960 and my brother was born in February of 1961. He's 2 years 9 months older than I am. My parents were aiming for 6 kids but they stopped with 2.

A few years before he passed away in 2007, my dad told me the story why.

He said I was a just few weeks old - so this sets the story in late late '63 - and one evening after my mother had gone to the bathroom, he heard what sounded like a large jug of water being spilled on the bathroom floor.

He rushed in there and said that there was blood everywhere. Mom had hemorrhaged. She hemorrhaged a few weeks after giving birth to me.

Not one tile on the floor of the bathroom was spared, he said. There was blood everywhere, he said.

My dad must've been scared out of his mind.

He quickly got mom to the hospital and along with his concerns about his wife's health he was concerned, were she to die, about being a single dad raising two infant sons. How was he going to do that?

Luckily mom was well taken care of (she lived another 50 years until she passed in 2014) but the doctors told her that, even after she recovered, having another child would put her life at grave risk and she could die.

But this was Connecticut in 1963-4, more than a year before Giswold v Connecticut was decided. And from Giswold, we learn that at that, the General Statutes of Connecticut then held:

Any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception shall be fined not less than fifty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days nor more than one year or be both fined and imprisoned.

Birth control was illegal in Connecticut in 1963 - even for married couples. And my parents were very married.

What were their choices? Use the illegal birth control or put my mom's life at risk were she to become pregnant again.

This was also the reason my mother was, throughout her life, adamantly pro-birth control and pro-life.

It was very personal for her. For her birth control protected her from a possibly fatal pregnancy.

It was her choice to set her own family plan.

She's the only person with the moral authority to make that decision.

That's the way it should be for everyone else - now and into the future.

More On Mastriano's Meltdown

My previous blog post on this covered PA State Senator Doug Mastriano's first minute and a half (or so) of his meltdown.

Let's take a look at what happens next - this is right after Doug tried to deflect a question about the QAnon conference/rally he attended by saying that it was "disingenuous" to say that there were Q-conspiracists at "that good event" in Gettysburg.

Michael Graham: Well there were QAnon people there. I know for a fact there were QAnon people there. I hear from the QAnon people. That's one of the of the joys of being in the media.

Doug Mastriano: So what? So what?

Wait. Didn't Doug just say that it was disingenuous to say that there were QAnon people at that conference? That it was wrong to say so? But when faced with someone pushing back with a more solid assertion Doug just folds with a cynical "So what?"

He knows QAnon was at that conference.  And since Lexicon defines "disingenuous" as:

Not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.

Doug is the one who's being disingenuous.

And so he deflects. Again:

M: I want you to call on Josh Shapiro then and scrutinize who's in his audience and which groups he's speaking with. Or do you give him a free pass?

That's what I always see on the left and I'm sick and tired of it. If you're going to cast judgements and aspersions on people that I associate with then by God Josh Shapiro and Fetterman.

I know Fetterman's been in a room with some really radical people, especially with his bus tour around the state on recreational marijuana. 

Free pass every damn time. So we gotta tighten this up.

G: Well Senator some people would argue that Lt Gov Fetterman would be with radical people when he's n a room by himself.

M:  [Speaking Over] As far as my right to assemble, you may forget we do have a Constitution and, unlike you, I actually defended The Constitution for 30 years of my life. It's no game.

And I resent the fact that you want to castigate anyone who went down to Washington DC on January 6 as some kind of enemy of the public. That is dangerous. You're talking like an East German there. We had the right to assemble under The Constitution.

Shame on you. I do know that the left and maybe your outlet proudly reported on Barack Obama said in 2016. In 2016 antifa and BLM, they gathered around the nation and they were criticized by some journalists but Barack Obama says, "Nope. Don't condemn this group here because it's not right to condemn a group or a movement based on the actions of a few."

And so anyone who breaks the law at any event whether it's in Washington DC or Minnesota, they need to be held to equal justice.

What we see now in America thanks to biased left wing reporting is that we have double standard reporting.

I can gather on the steps in the Capitol [in Harrisburg] and be condemned as reckless as superspreader, endangering our state but we look the other way when Tom Wolf gets on the steps [garbled] and others because it's a cause that that state approved.

This is a very dangerous trend here and I fear for my country. Especially that you buy into this narrative here and perpetuate it. What a waste of time.

We're now about 4 minutes into Doug's snowflaking (which began, let's remember, at about 9 minutes into the posted interview).

But look at the structure of Doug's argument. Unless "the media" reports that Josh Shapiro did something as outrageous as attending a conference that showed a video implying that Hitler faked his own death/that JFK was killed because he knew too much and it was a high risk of "cabal exposure", it should remain utterly silent. 

Doug is insisting that anything other than a artificially balanced "both sides do it" neutrality in the media is unfair to him - against the guy who took "The Sword of David" from the same folks who want you to think that those wildfires out in California a few years ago were "accidentially" started by The Rothchilds.

So unless the news media reports something equally egregious about Josh Shapiro, it should just remain silent about Mastriano's QAnon friends. That's how Doug wants the news media to report on him.

Anything else is left wing media bias against him.

Snowflake.

I wasn't able to track down that exact Obama quote about not condemning the group for the actions of a few (I'm not saying it isn't out there, I'm just saying I can't find it) but on BLM/Antifa, I was able to find this:

"I don't think that you can hold well-meaning activists who are doing the right thing and peacefully protesting responsible for everything that is uttered at a protest site," [President Obama] continued. "This week people felt hurt and angry and so some of this is just venting, but I think that the overwhelming majority of people who are involved in the Black Lives Matter movement -- what they really want to see is a better relationship between the police and the community so they can feel that it's serving them."

In the wake of the violent slayings of police officers in Dallas, however, the president also cautioned that if any BLM sympathizers attack law enforcement -- both in their rhetoric and in their actions -- they are "doing a disservice to the cause."

"Any violence to police officers is a reprehensible crime and needs to be prosecuted," Mr. Obama said. "But even rhetorically, if we paint police in broad brush without recognizing that the vast majority of police officers are doing a really good job and are trying to protect people and do so fairly and without racial bias, if our rhetoric does not recognize that, then we're going to lose allies in the reform cause."

I'm not sure how that jibes with what Doug said Obama said.

It does fold into Doug's next deflection: his participation (however deep or shallow) in the events of January 6. To Doug, since most of the people on that day did not storm The Capitol, it's simply unfair to talk about those who did.  

(For the record, there's no evidence of Doug being in The Capitol that day. He just wandered past the barricades that the protestors pulled down - and then lied about it later.)

In any event once the violence broke out it was no longer a Constitutionally protected protest. No one has the "right to assemble" if the purpose is to break the law.

Doug knows that - he's just deflecting about the day. Again.

QAnon Doug wants to be Pennsylvania Governor.

And let me end by saying that I agree with Doug on one thing: This is very dangerous and I fear for my country.

Wendy Bell Gaslights Trump's Attempted Coup

From WBW:

It’s WBW challenge time! Dear readers we challenge you to find one…just one…truth in insurrection denier Wendy’s show today! pic.twitter.com/45LO84HK3y

— WENDY BELL WATCH (@JonInPGH) May 7, 2022

Ok. I'm game. I'll go take a look.

Wendy starts with:

On January 6, 2020 at the ellipse in Washington, DC, in front of an audience estimated to be upwards of a million people...

This is incorrect. From Newsweek 12/23/21: 

The Secret Service added: "There are approximately fifty nine (59) groups identified as potentially participating in First Amendment activities on January 6, 2021 at or around the White House Complex (WHC) ... Expected attendance is around 20,000 participants."

Six times as many protestors—as many as 120,000—would show up on the Mall on January 6, according to classified numbers still not released by the Secret Service and the FBI but seen by Newsweek. But there is still not an official estimate, nor have any of the Congressional committees or task forces offered a number. Nor is there a clear number of how many people actually entered the Capitol, or tried to get in.

And from a little more than a year later The LA Times 01/05/2022:

Rally organizers told the National Park Service that they anticipated 30,000 people would attend. Law enforcement said the crowd size ahead of the protest was possibly as much as 80,000, according to then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy. The crowd size at the rally was at least 10,000, according to the Associated Press.

Even if the largest number mentioned (120,000) is accurate, that's still less than one eighth of Wendy's "an audience estimated to be upwards of a million people." 

Not a good start, Wendy. But she went on and then said:

A million people who support the whole “Make America Great” notion, is a safe place to be. First, a hell of a lot of them are carrying, so that makes me feel good right away.

No real way to fact check this. But I'd question the word "safe." Ask the people punched out at Trump rallies if they feel safe.

But let's go to the main part of Wendy's gaslighting. You can read a transcript of Trump's remarks that day here.  It's a long run-on sentence so we'll take in phrase by phrase:

And so when Donald Trump was there urging his fellow Americans to peacefully and patriotically protest the certification of the election results...

While Trump did say:

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

He also said:

All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they're doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That's what they've done and what they're doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved.

Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that's what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.

And:

And again, most people would stand there at 9 o'clock in the evening and say I want to thank you very much, and they go off to some other life. But I said something's wrong here, something is really wrong, can have happened.

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country.

And I say this despite all that's happened. The best is yet to come.

So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.

The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them 

So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

So Wendy left out the part where Trump told his crowd that the election was stolen. She left out the part where he told them, "if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." She left out the part where he told them to go to The Capitol to give the "weak" Republicans "the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

Didn't she already say that the crowd was carrying?  Why did she leave out the parts where Trump was telling the armed crowd to go The Capitol to convince those weak Republicans to do his bidding?

Kinda makes you wonder why she left those parts out when she wanted to convince yinz that he said nothing other than "peaceful" and "patriotic" to his armed and angry mob.

Then she criticizes with this:

[The Democrats] stopped at nothing to dig into his cell phone data, and “Why didn't he speak sooner about the violence at The Capitol?” 

Hmm. Cell phone data and asking Trump to stop the violence. Wait, wasn't that The Republicans?

Yes, it was. Wendy, you might want to read this. It's a news article about Republican Liz Cheney's remarks regarding the text messages Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows received on January 6:

First, President Trump's failure to stop the violence. On January 6^th, our Capitol building was attacked and invaded. The mob was summoned to Washington by President Trump. And, as many of those involved have admitted – on videotape, in social media, and in Federal District Court – they were provoked to violence by President Trump's false claims that the election was stolen.

The violence was evident to all – it was covered in real time by almost every news channel. But, for 187 minutes, President Trump refused to act when action by our President was required, indeed essential, and compelled by his oath to our Constitution. Mr. Meadows received numerous text messages, which he has produced without any privilege claim – imploring that Mr. Trump take the specific action we all knew his duty required.

These texts leave no doubt: the White House knew exactly what was happening at the Capitol. Republican members of Congress and others wrote to Mark Meadows as the attack was underway.

And as crazie as Wendy sounded up until that poiint, she finally broke the psycho-sack open with this:

...the violence at The Capitol?” which I believe was planned by the Democrats, by Nancy Pelosi specifically not allowing sufficient security to be there, enabled by specific members of The Capitol Police. 

Oddly several have committed suicide since – makes you wonder why.

It was certainly aided by ninja-looking antifa thugs and by specific plants in the crowd who were put there to create chaos.

Lots o'crazie to unpack here.

First off, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not in charge of the Capitol Police so she had no say in allowing or not allowing sufficient security that day.

Second, the suicides. Is Wendy saying that they were not suicides? Makes you wonder what Wendy was thinking when she said that. Is she saying they were they silenced for knowing too much? The video played at that QAnon Conference PA State Senator Doug Mastriano attended made the same case about JFK and "the high risk of cabal exposure" whatever that means.

Hey, Wendy! Next time you talk to Doug maybe you can ask him about the QAnon conference he attended. Maybe you can get him to show you The Sword of David they gave him or the contents of that heavy goodie bag also gave him.

In any event Wendy's assertion is simply disgusting.

Finally, were there "ninja-looking antifa thugs" in the crowd that stormed The Capitol that day?

Not according to The FBI:

The FBI has found no evidence so far that far-left groups such as Antifa participated in the violent mob of President Donald Trump supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 despite persistent conspiracy theories, the bureau's director said Tuesday, adding that racially motivated violent extremists – white supremacists – and members of militant groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers represent the preponderance of people arrested.

"We're equal opportunity in looking for violent extremism of any ideology," FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning about the bureau's investigations since the deadly violence at the U.S. Capitol. "We have not seen, to date, any evidence of anarchist violent extremist or people who subscribe to Antifa in connection with Jan. 6."

In fact according to the AP (and that's a news organization, Wendy):

They came from across America, summoned by President Donald Trump to march on Washington in support of his false claim that the November election was stolen and to stop the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden as the victor.

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump tweeted a week before Christmas. “Be there, will be wild!”

The insurrectionist mob that showed up at the president’s behest and stormed the U.S. Capitol was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, off-duty police, members of the military and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals. Records show that some were heavily armed and included convicted criminals, such as a Florida man recently released from prison for attempted murder.

The Associated Press reviewed social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public records for more than 120 people either facing criminal charges related to the Jan. 6 unrest or who, going maskless during the pandemic, were later identified through photographs and videos taken during the melee.

The evidence gives lie to claims by right-wing pundits and Republican officials such as Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that the violence was perpetrated by left-wing antifa thugs rather than supporters of the president.

 So how much of Wendy's gaslight was actually correct?

Well, she got the date and place of Trump's attempted coup correct: January 6 at The Ellipse

And Trump did use these two words as he incited his crowd to go influence the weak Republicans in Congress to overturn the election; peacefully and patriotically. 

Most everything else the noxious Wendy Bell got wrong.

QAnon Doug's Meltdown

As I blogged yesterday, you can hear it here.

The fun starts at about 9 minutes in.

Michael Graham, Managing editor of Inside Sources: So you've led right into my question. You brought up all three elements because the desire for Republican Primary voters in the Delaware Valley and across the state of Pennsylvania is to win.

And there's a concern that your campaign is in a tough spot when it comes to to growing a big enough slice of the pie in November to win. You mention having rallies. You talked about a rally you attended in April that some people characterized as sponsored by QAnon theory advocates. 

And you've also ah had had people ask questions about your stance on the rally on January 6.

So I have two questions that I want to ask. One of them is, what do you think happened on January 6? In your opinion, Senator, what happened on January 6 and what should the right response have been to that?

Mastriano: [Garbled] Brother, you gotta let me talk, You threw a lot at me.

G: I asked the question. How here's your chance to answer it. It's a really simple system.

M: It's going to be a long answer. I'm not going to let you stand on any of that crap you passed on -

G: I'm saying - I'm giving you the chance to respond. These are the allegations that have been made. I'm not saying anything. I'm waiting to hear your answer.

M: Thank you for passing on baseless claims that the left has always done on us. I shake my head because Barack Obama was literally a best friend, he called him a mentor, of a convicted domestic terrorist. And everyone looked aside and made excuses for him.

And to paint the people in Gettysburg at that good event as Q-conspiricists is so disingenuous. I don't know why you'd want to take something from that guy from the Philadelphia Inquirer and take it seriously.

Ok - there's about 10 more minutes of this but let's take a look at the first minute and a half of Doug's meltdown.

When asked about that QAnon rally, Doug deflects by saying they're "baseless claims" and that to say that the "good people" there are "Q-conspiricists" is disingenuous.

But they gave him a very sharp parting gift:

After speaking at the "Patriots Arise" event last weekend, Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano was awarded a "Sword of David" by QAnon conspiracy theorist hosts Alan and Francine Fosdick: "You are fighting for our religious rights in Christ Jesus." pic.twitter.com/FWc5F1A5Sh

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) April 26, 2022

And then there's that video played at the beginning of the QAnon conference - you can see it here.

Then there's this:

Francine Fosdick, organizer of the QAnon "Patriots Arise" event attended by several GOP candidates last weekend, claimed that the government worships Lucifer while Sheila Holm warned about "The Order of Paladin," "The Wiccan Order of Knighthood," and the New World Order. pic.twitter.com/ZhsvBP1KHq

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) April 26, 2022

The "good people" at that conference were there to see and learn about the Q-conspiracies, Doug.

Doug Mastriano is lying when he called them "baseless claims" and disingenuous.

Then there's President Barack Obama's best friend and "mentor" the domestic terrorist.

Who could that have been?

From the Washington Post March 23, 2015:

No other person can claim the title of Obama “mentor” than [Frank Marshall] Davis, wrote Paul Kengor in “The Communist,” his book about Davis and Obama. “Frank is a lasting, permanent influence, an integral part of Obama’s sojourn,” he wrote.

Is that who Doug Mastriano called a domestic terrorist?

The Post continues:

Obama’s grandfather introduced him to Davis, whom Obama took to as a father-like figure, Kengor wrote. Kengor quotes passages from “Dreams from My Father” of their conversations on social justice, race relations and limitations of white tolerance.

Obama sat around listening to stories as his grandfather and Davis drank, and “it would be the height of gullibility to assume that (Davis), during those long evenings of talk and drink, never taught any politics to the wide-eyed Obama, or ruminated aloud with no effect whatsoever on the impressionable young man in the room — brought there (by a leftist grandfather) to be mentored in the first place,” Kengor wrote.

Obama sought advice from Davis as a college freshman — the last known meeting between the two. As Obama became a community organizer in college and later grappled with the challenges of race and poverty in Chicago, he visualized Davis and asked, “What would Frank do? What would Frank think?” Kengor wrote. Obama does refer to Davis several times in his book when listing people who influenced his understanding of his black identity.

Marshall was being watched for being a communist. The FBI officially removed him from the its Security Index in 1963 - just two years after Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.

Obama was born in Hawaii, right Senator? You believe he was a US Citizen and all that, right Senator?

You should tell us now if you're a birther, too.

Frank Marshall Davis also passed away in 1987, when Obama was 26 or so, a community organizer in Chicago and not yet a Harvard Law student.

Or maybe he meant Bill Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground.

The NYTimes actually looked into that in 2008:

A review of records of the schools project and interviews with a dozen people who know both men, suggest that Mr. Obama, 47, has played down his contacts with Mr. Ayers, 63. But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

And by the way about Ayers:

Federal riot and bombing conspiracy charges against him were dropped in 1974 because of illegal wiretaps and other prosecutorial misconduct, and he was welcomed back after years in hiding by his large and prominent family. His father, Thomas G. Ayers, had served as chief executive of Commonwealth Edison, the local power company.

Marshall? Ayers? If it was either of the two one thing is for sure: PA State Senator was being disingenuous when he was deflecting his connections to the QAnon rally he heartily attended.

More to come.

Snowflake Doug In The NEWS!

Take a look:

You can listen to the podcast here.

Stay tuned to this page - you know what's gonna happen.

How Long Before Posting This Becomes Illegal?

Since reading that a number of states are inching towards legislation criminalizing the termination of pregnancies (both the people who get them and their doctors who perform them), I was wondering how long it will be before stories detailing a "Tonic For Female Weakness" - a recipe for a solution to induce la home remedy abortion - will themselves be made illegal.

Fuck'em here it is from nearly 3 years ago:

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across this:

Between 1800 and 1900, the birthrate of white native-born women in American declined by almost half, due in some part to the increased use of birth control. The amount of printed literature providing information about contraception, from medical texts to classified advertisements, indicates the popular demand for knowledge, products, and services beginning in the 1840s. Contraception allowed women a degree of freedom and control over their own bodies; abortions enabled them to choose to carry a pregnancy to term or not, whether they were prostitutes selling sex for a living or “ordinary” working women struggling to support the children they already had.

At the bottom of the page were some examples of advertisements found in the New York Herald - like this one from 1841:

It might be difficult to read but the important words are in the title:

FEMALE MONTHLY PILLS And in the text:

These Pills are acknowledged by the first Physicians in the United States as the very best medicine that ladies laboring under a suppression of their natural illness can take, and they very seldom fail to relieve when taken according to the directions.

And so on. What do you think "a suppression of their natural illness" could possibly mean?

I think you can figure it out when you see this other add for Madame Costello:

Were you to take a close look at the second paragraph:

Suppression, irregularity, obstruction &c, by whatever case produced, can be removed by Madam C, in a very short time.

And then the end of the third, how Madame can see:

...those who wish to be treated for obstruction of their monthly period.

"Obstruction of their monthly period"?? I'm not a doctor but what could possibly "obstruct" menstruation but a pregnancy?

So we're talking, at the very least, about pills to trigger miscarriages, if not actual abortion procedures, advertised in New York City newspapers.

The coded language for pregnancy back then was amazing:

• suppression of [the ladies'] natural illness
• obstruction of the monthly period

As were the code words used for treatment:

• "female tonic"
• "female pills"
• "female remedies"
• "regulators"

As well as the names of the medicines themselves:

• English Remedy
• French Remedy

And so on. The combination of these terms ("female tonic to regulate the monthly period" or "English Remedy for the removal of any obstruction") could only point to one thing - ending an unwanted pregnancy.

Take as an example an ad touting the above mentioned "French Remedy" from the Brandon Mail May 5, 1887:

The code words are there - Dr LeDuc's "periodic pills" are a  "cure for suppressed menstruation" along with the necessary warning that they "must not be taken during the first five months of pregnancy."

What do you think a woman in 1841, scared that she might be pregnant, would think reading the above ad?

Exactly.

Got me to thinking - did any of these ads show up in any Pittsburgh newspaper in the 19th century/early 20th century?

We've gotten this far down the blog post so I think you know the answer to this.

Take a look at this from The Daily Pittsburgh Gazette, August 2, 1841:

It's ostensibly an announcement regarding a set of medicines previously sold at "41 and 19 St Clair Street" will now be sold by a "Mr. SAMUEL FREW, corner of Wood and Liberty, downtown.

Look about a quarter of the way down:

DR LEROY'S FEMALE PILLS, for diseases peculiar to the sex.

 Any woman in need of those pills in 1841 would know exactly what they were for.

70 years later the story was the same. Take a look at this from the Pittsburgh Press of August 10, 1910:

No longer Dr LeRoy, now we're on to Dr Martell's "Female Pills" sold at May Drug stores.

But May Drug stores (and I guess there were 7 in 1910) wasn't the only place to go. Along with the sales of the "female pills" or the "French Remedy" or the various products promising "regulation of the menstrual period" there were ads selling "female tonic."  Like this one from the Pittsburg Press September 29, 1912:

The amazing part of this is that it's a recipe for the tonic. The tonic is for "toning up the system and restoring the female organs to their normal conditions...." And there's that word "regulator" in there as well.  The clue for it's use is the first ingredient, "black cohosh."

What is it? What is it used for?

Well, there's this from WebMd:

Black cohosh is most often used to control the symptoms of menopause, such as:

Some studies have found evidence that black cohosh does help with these symptoms. However, many experts consider the evidence unclear and say more research is needed.

Other uses of black cohosh have less scientific support. Women sometimes take it to regulate periods, ease PMS symptoms, and cause women to go into labor.

So, let me ask - as it's a recipe for a tonic intended to end a pregnancy, is it illegal for me to repost? For you to read? How about for a woman in Georgia or any of those other "heartbeat bill" states?

Let me put in a caveat here: I am not a doctor or expert in biochemistry in any way. I have no idea whether any of these remedies actually work or even if they're safe. Given that 19th century America was drenched in snake oil cures for many maladies known (or imagined), it would not be wrong to think that some or all of these "cures" are hokum - perhaps even dangerous hokum.

But that doesn't matter - what matters is that the women of 19th century Pittsburgh believed that taking the "periodic pills" (or the tonic or the various remedies) would end an unwanted pregnancy and they were willing to take the pills to end those pregnancies.

Women have been doing this for centuries.

Legislating it away won't legislate it away.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

During her confirmation hearings in 1993, then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked about whether the equal protection clause of the 14h Amendment applies to the decision to terminate a pregnancy.

The answer:

The argument was it's her right to decide either way, her right to decide whether or not to bear a child.

And:

This is something central to a woman's life, to her dignity. It's a decision that she must make for herself. And when Government controls that decision for her, she's being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.

That's what's at stake.

PA State Senator Doug Mastriano Sings The Golden Oldies!

From his Facebook Page:

A year and a half later, over 200 sworn affadvits from the 2020 election remain uninvestigated by the Attorney General and the State Department. They were brought to light during our hearing in Gettysburg.

And I take it the video is his 7 minute long statement is something of an introduction to the "hearing in Gettysburg."

In a comment to that video, I had a rather cheeky suggestion, that if Senator Mastriano has all this evidence of election shenanigans, he should reply to the subpoena the January 6 Committee sent him and bring all that evidence with him.

The event is even obliquely referenced in a footnote in that subpoena:

Based on publicly available information and information produced to the Select Committee, we believe that you have documents and information that are relevant to the Select Committee’s investigation. For example, we understand that you have knowledge of and participated in a plan to arrange for an alternate slate of electors to be presented to the President of the Senate on January 6, 2021,¹ and we understand that you spoke with former President Trump about your post-election activities.² We understand you participated in these activities based on assertions of voter fraud and other asserted irregularities and based on a stated belief that under the U.S. Constitution the “state legislature has the sole authority to direct the manner of selecting delegates to the Electoral College.” ³ We have an interest in understanding these activities and the theories that motivated them.

That second footnote leads here - a story about when Doug tested positive for Covid that day:

A Pennsylvania state senator abruptly left a West Wing meeting with President Donald Trump after being informed he had tested positive for the coronavirus, a person with direct knowledge of the meeting told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano had gone to the White House last Wednesday with like-minded Republican state lawmakers shortly after a four-hour-plus public meeting that Mastriano helped host in Gettysburg — maskless — to discuss efforts to overturn president-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

And the AP went on to describe Mastriano's "hearing" this way:

Mastriano sought the meeting of the Pennsylvania Senate Republican Policy Committee earlier Wednesday that drew Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, a second Trump lawyer, several witnesses and a crowd of onlookers. Only a few of them were masked.

The committee let Giuliani and others, for several hours, air their beliefs that there had been problems with how the Pennsylvania vote was conducted and counted. All claims were baseless; no evidence was presented to support any of the allegations they made.

Trump even participated, calling from the White House while one of his lawyers held a phone up to a microphone. He reiterated the same unfounded claims of fraud he’s been tweeting about for weeks.

So if Doug has actual evidence of fraud, he definitely should bring it to the attention of The Committee, shouldn't he?

The Committee is even planning on having televised hearings in June. So if Doug indeed has all this uninvestigated 200 affidavits worth of evidence, he definitely should to those televised hearings and tell the entire nation about them, shouldn't he?

It's the perfect solution, isn't it?

And BTW, if you watch the video, Doug publicly acknowledges Rep Scott Perry's presence at the "hearing" - the same Scott Perry who's now been shown to be deeply embedded in Trump's attempted coup:

Newly obtained text messages and recent court filings fill in significant gaps about the key role a little-known Pennsylvania Republican congressman played at almost every turn in scheming to reverse or delay certification of the 2020 election.

The texts, which were among those selectively provided by Donald Trump's former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to the House select committee, show Rep. Scott Perry pushing to have the nation's top intelligence official investigate baseless conspiracy theories and working to replace the US acting attorney general with an acolyte willing to do Trump's bidding.

 

"From an Intel friend: DNI needs to task NSA to immediately seize and begin looking for international comms related to Dominion," Perry wrote to Meadows on November 12, just five days after the election was called for Joe Biden.

 

In the text, which has not been previously reported, Perry appears to be urging Meadows to get John Ratcliffe, then-Director of National Intelligence, to order the National Security Agency to investigate debunked claims that Dominion voting machines were hacked by China.

Yea, that Scott Perry. 

Doug, if you have all that evidence of voter fraud and The January 6 Committee subpoenaed you looking for what you know about the events leading up to the insurrection, why aren't you bringing it to their attention rather than whining on Facebook about being ignored?

You took an oath, Doug, to protect The Constitution. Man up and honor your oath.

 

Me, Today

 

 

 

 

Stunned.

 

 

 

 

And if that's not enough, Mark Joseph Stern over at Slate tweeted:

Alito's draft opinion explicitly criticizes Lawrence v. Texas (legalizing sodomy) and Obergefell v. Hodges (legalizing same-sex marriage). He says that, like abortion, these decisions protect phony rights that are not "deeply rooted in history." https://t.co/4690k0KG1F pic.twitter.com/urF7A02INU

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) May 3, 2022

And then this from Court House News:

Reporting from Politico said that Alito is joined in the majority by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The liberal justices are reported to be writing dissents in the case, but it is not clear how Chief Justice John Roberts will vote.

Alito goes on to say that the due process clause guarantees some rights that are not mentioned in the constitution but those rights have to be rooted in the nation’s history and tradition. 

“The right to abortion does not fall within this category,” Alito wrote. 

The due process clause of the 14th Amendment is the backbone of many rights established by the Supreme Court aside from abortion, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, the right to birth control in Griswold v. Connecticut and the criminalization of anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas.

Stunned.

In case you don't know it by now, this is what our good friends, the morality police in the "freedom loving" GOP, are coming for:

• A woman's right to choose
  
• Members of the LGBTQ community's right to marry and love as they choose
  
• Everyone's right to birth control

Not that it was much of a surprise.

PA State Senator Doug Mastriano's QAnon Rally Appearance GOES NATIONAL

It was on Friday Night's Rachel Maddow Show - that evening hosted by Mehdi Hasan.

I have some questions.

If yinz need a refresher course in the conference, take a look at this.

The next day, it was the opening story on Maddow.

Some highlights from MSNBC's transcript. It starts with the video of the Fosdicks bequeathing a very special gift on PA State Senator Doug Mastriano:

Yes, that man in the center, the man receiving the giant sword, that was Pennsylvania state senator and Republican candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano. The man dressed in multiple American flags, and the woman to his left or the organizers of this event in Gettysburg last week. And they are gifting Mastriano what they call a David sword.

That is a nice gift. Who doesn`t appreciate a good sword, right? But honestly, the sword may have been the least weird thing about this event because this was a big QAnon event. And not just QAnon, it was kind of a every conspiracy theory under the sun event.

This was the poster for the event which was called Patriots arise for God and country. The headliner for this event you can see her name there, Dr. Betsy Eads. She is actively pushing a theory that people who got the COVID vaccine booster shot are going to get AIDS. She was the headliner at this event.

Then Hasan showed a clip of that "Hitler faked his own death" video. Then:

That crazy video keeps going like that with a hodgepodge of every conspiracy theory possible from 9/11 was an inside job to 5G networks are killing you, to Hitler`s death was faked. Didn`t see that one coming, did you?

But of course, all of those conspiracy theories are just the appetizers. The main course is the big one that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump. And candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, wasn`t just attending this event, he was all in. His campaign auctioned off this print of a painting of a very muscular Donald Trump to raise money for his campaign.

Someone paid $4,000 for it. Madness.

This I did not know. The Mastriano campaign had a painting of what? How did it get that painting? If it was able auction it off for four large, how did it show up in the FEC paperwork? 

Can someone please ask the Mastriano Campaign?

Back to Hasan:

Mastriano himself who has been subpoenaed by the January 6th investigation over his efforts to overturn Joe Biden`s win in Pennsylvania. He gave a speech in which he described that subpoena as a badge of honor. And you know, how times change, and how fast they change, because just last year, Doug Mastriano was distancing himself from the same group, and this same event.

His spokesperson at the times that he strongly condemns the QAnon conspiracy theory, and that it was a mistake that he was listed as a speaker at last year`s conference. But this year? He is not shying away. He went all in, and left with a sword, and a goody bag. [Emphasis added.]

QAnon Doug went all in with the Prophets Fosdick and their "Sword of David" and that goody bag. 

What was in the bag, Doug? Anything of value? If this was simply a campaign appearance (you said at the debate that you were there speaking with constituents) don't you have to declare the value of the sword and the contents of the bag?

PA State Senator Doug Mastriano Responds to Questions About QAnon and That Subpoena!

But he also completely avoids actually answering those questions about QAnon and that subpoena!

This all happened during the GOP Gubernatorial debate this past week. You can find the video here.

At about 9 minutes in, Dennis Owens of ABC27 asked Sen Mastriano this:

Today the Philadelphia Inquirer reported you attended a conference last week in Gettysburg hosted by a couple who publicly call themselves “Prophets of QAnon.” What can you tell about that and do you consider yourself a member of that group. 30 Seconds.

To which Doug "responded" with this:

It's funny how the media likes to paint anyone they disagree with as a right, on the conservative side, as some kind of extremist.

I don't know that those two ever said that. I was there, of course, speaking to constituents and many people from across the state. And it's very unfair – and people across the state are sick and tired of being labeled as something because you disagree with them politically. 

And with great non-menace, Dennis let him off the hook with:

Ok, thank you.

Ok. So let's unpack Doug's evasion since Dennis simply moved on from it.

Here is the Philadelphia Inquirer article on Doug's attendance at that rally. And this is what they say about the Fosdicks - the hosts:

The conference was organized by Francine and Allen Fodsick, self-described prophets who have long promoted QAnon.

So they're "self-described prophets" who've promoted QAnon but the Inky did not say they called themselves "Prophets of QAnon." 

Dennis got this one a tiny bit wrong and it gave Doug a tiny loophole to avoid the Fosdick's deep QAnon connections.

The Inquirer continued:

About 25 minutes into the two-day conference, organizers played a video claiming the world is experiencing a “great awakening” that will expose “ritual child sacrifice” and a “global satanic blood cult.”

Followers of QAnon believe a global cabal of Democrats and elites are trafficking children for sex and engaged in other demonic activity — but that all of this will soon be exposed. Images associated with the conspiracy theory were on display during the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.

The video showed Friday featured a kind of greatest hits of conspiracy theories that have circulated for decades. It showed images of the Twin Towers collapsing on 9/11 — with the label “false flags.” It claimed John F. Kennedy was assassinated because he “knew too much” and posed a “high risk of cabal exposure,” that vaccines amount to “genocide therapy,” and that Hitler faked his death. It offered other conspiracy theories about the atomic bomb, the Spanish flu, 5G, the 2008 financial crisis — and, of course, the 2020 election.

This is how the Fosdicks promoted themselves on the Patriots Arise website advertising this QAnon rally:

Allen & Francine Fosdick are the founders of Up Front in the Prophetic Podcast and can be seen on YouTube, Rumble as well as other platforms. Their mission was, and still is today, to inform and educate on all realms of media to include Government, Business, Education, Supernatural, Family, Wellness and so much more.

 In a world that is full of noise and confusion, Up Front in The Prophetic was established to bring truth and solid biblical answers to the issues of our day.

From call-in shows to events, prophecy updates to news reports and national prayer calls, Up Front in The Prophetic is on the cutting edge to keep you, the listeners, informed. [Italics in original.]

Their website does contain a "Q" page but it's nearly empty - the videos victims of YouTube's misinformation scrubbing.

The Inquirer also has this:

Mastriano has been interviewed by the Fodsicks multiple times for their podcast. After the Fodsicks began promoting a similar event last year and listed Mastriano as a featured speaker, the senator’s spokesman said he wouldn’t be attending.

Mastriano “strongly condemns the ‘Q anon’ conspiracy theory” and “never committed to speak at this event but sadly was used to help promote it with his picture on the invite,” the spokesperson said at the time.

But that didn’t stop Mastriano from attending this time. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Mastriano’s campaign has not responded to repeated inquiries over the course of the campaign.

So while the Inquirer never said that the Fosdicks promoted themselves as "prophets of QAnon" it's hard if not impossible to see how Doug Mastriano did not know what they believed and did not know the sort of the room he was entering to "speak to his constituents."

 

They were there because they believed (or were at least very sympathetic) to QAnon. Doug had to know this. His suggesting anything otherwise is just a lie. 

 

And then there's Doug evading a question about the Subpoena. 

About 15 minutes in, Dennis the non-Menace asked:

You organized buses to the Capital on January 6, 2020. You’ve been subpoenaed to testify before the House committee investigating that day. To our knowledge, you have not responded to that subpoena. But what do you say to Republican voters tonight, specifically those who might be concerned that there are still legal issues ahead for you on that topic?

And Doug evaded with:

There are no legal issues. I'll delineate in the US Constitution that we have five freedoms delineated in the first Amendment. Freedom of Religion, Press, Speech, Assembly and Right to Redress the Government. I was there to hear my president speak and then I was invited to speak in two locations, exercising my constitutional rights. And shame on the media and the democrats for painting anyone down there as a villain. 

Barack Obama said in 2016 and this station played that. He said, “to condemn a group based on the actions of one is irresponsible and wrong.” And so condemning all those people that did nothing wrong, that's unjustice to our freedom.

Yea, Doug's leaving a lot out. For example the First Amendment says this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [Emphasis added.]

Did you see the adverb Doug left out?

The Committee is not investigating the peaceable assembly of Trump's mob.  It's investigating the violent assembly of Trump's mob.

From the Subpoena letter Doug evaded:

The Select Committee is investigating the facts, circumstances, and causes of the January 6th attack and issues relating to the peaceful transfer of power, in order to identify and evaluate lessons learned and to recommend to the House and its relevant committees corrective laws, policies, procedures, rules, or regulations. The inquiry includes examination of how various individuals and entities coordinated their activities leading up to the events of January 6, 2021.

And specifically, this is what the committee is asking of Doug:

Based on publicly available information and information produced to the Select Committee, we believe that you have documents and information that are relevant to the Select Committee’s investigation. For example, we understand that you have knowledge of and participated in a plan to arrange for an alternate slate of electors to be presented to the President of the Senate on January 6, 2021, and we understand that you spoke with former President Trump about your post-election activities.

We understand you participated in these activities based on assertions of voter fraud and other asserted irregularities and based on a stated belief that under the U.S. Constitution the “state legislature has the sole authority to direct the manner of selecting delegates to the Electoral College.” We have an interest in understanding these activities and the theories that motivated them. 

Based on your public statements, we understand that you were present during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and that you witnessed “agitators...getting in the face of the police” and “agitators...start pushing the police up the [Capitol] steps.”4 We would like to better understand these statements and expenditures, events that you witnessed or in which you participated, and communications we believe you may have had with national, state, and local officials about the outcome of the November 2020 election.

See that? Nothing about Doug exercising his constitutional rights. Nothing about his free speech rights. Nothing about anything other than the events surrounding and leading up to a non-peaceful assembly.

By evading that characterization, Doug is lying about the January 6 Committee subpoena.

On the other hand, he got the Sword of David (and a heavy swag bag!) as thanks for being a part of at that QAnon conference he willfully attended.

After speaking at the "Patriots Arise" event last weekend, Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano was awarded a "Sword of David" by QAnon conspiracy theorist hosts Alan and Francine Fosdick: "You are fighting for our religious rights in Christ Jesus." pic.twitter.com/FWc5F1A5Sh

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) April 26, 2022

What's in the heavy bag, Doug?