The News Today, Oh Boy...

From The Onion: 

LEWISTON, ME—In the hours following a violent rampage in Maine in which a lone attacker killed at least 16 individuals and injured numerous others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Wednesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Idaho resident Peter Carter, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

And so on.

Doug Mastriano's "Senior Legal Advisor" Pleads Guilty

Whah??

From The New York Times:

Jenna Ellis, a pro-Trump lawyer who amplified former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud as part of what she called a legal “elite strike force team,” pleaded guilty on Tuesday as part of a deal with prosecutors in Georgia.

Addressing a judge in an Atlanta courtroom, she tearfully expressed regret for taking part in efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.

Ms. Ellis, 38, pleaded guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, a felony. 

And:

“If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these postelection challenges,” Ms. Ellis told Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court. “I look back on this experience with deep remorse. For those failures of mine, your honor, I’ve taken responsibility already before the Colorado bar, who censured me, and I now take responsibility before this court and apologize to the people of Georgia.”

Um, so I am guessing that among those failures of hers, for which she has "deep regret" is this:

President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election stretched into a more desperate phase on Wednesday as he phoned into a conspiratorial public hearing on voter fraud headlined by Rudy Giuliani and Republicans in Gettysburg, Pa.

The remarks from the president came virtually, as Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis — seated beside Giuliani in a Wyndham hotel ballroom — raised her phone to the microphone at their witness table, allowing Trump to participate in the hearing from the Oval Office. 

In case you didn't know, that was Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano's hearing:

The hearing on election irregularities in Gettysburg was historic. @PASenateGOP @SenatorArgall pic.twitter.com/DouU5fbkLs

— Senator Doug Mastriano (@SenMastriano) November 26, 2020

See that picture on the right? The woman sitting next to Rudy Giuliani?

That's Jenna Ellis, who just pleaded guilty in Georgia to spreading some of Trump's big lies about the 2020 election. There she is in Pennsylvania, spreading some of Trump's big lies about the 2020 election. 

And this is what Sen Mastriano said about that meeting:

There is election fraud in Pennsylvania and denying it won’t make it go away.

The day before Thanksgiving, along with Senator David Argall, I hosted the Senate Majority Policy Committee hearing in Gettysburg where hours of testimony was presented, reviewed, and vetted.

And:

After the hearing, I introduced a measure that would allow the Pennsylvania legislature to exercise its Constitutional authority of appointing presidential electors. For the legislature to pass the resolution, Governor Wolf needed to call a special session and he refused.

See that? Why was it important? This is why:

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Pennsylvania...[Emphasis added.]

That was the opening of the "certificate" Pennsylvania's fake electors signed. Doug evidently introduced the legislation that would have allowed those fakes to be recognized as real in Pennsylvania.

Then there's this:

Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania’s Republican nominee for governor who has pushed Donald Trump’s election lies, said Monday that he had appointed Trump’s former campaign lawyer as a senior legal adviser to his own campaign.

The lawyer, Jenna Ellis, endorsed Mastriano in the state’s contested Republican primary, campaigned with Mastriano and hosted Mastriano on her podcast, where he once discussed how to overturn Trump’s defeat to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Ellis, who also promoted Trump’s election lies, was with Mastriano the night he won his gubernatorial primary and, speaking on her podcast last month, said, “I like to say that Doug Mastriano is the Donald Trump of Pennsylvania.” 

Yep. That's what Jenna Ellis, who declared remorse for her post-2020 election dishonesty said about Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano.

ANY comment for the blog, Doug?

 

How 'Bout THIS? Can Someone Ask Mastriano About THIS TOO?

From The NY Times:

Kenneth Chesebro on Friday became the second lawyer in two days to plead guilty in a criminal racketeering indictment that also named Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Chesebro also agreed to cooperate with state prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., who have accused him, Mr. Trump and 17 others of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. On Thursday, Sidney K. Powell made a similar deal and said she, too, would cooperate with the prosecutors.

Mr. Chesebro was accused of conspiring to create slates of fake electors to support Mr. Trump in Georgia and several other states won by President Biden. His lawyers had argued that he was merely offering legal counsel to clients.

One of those "other states" was Pennsylvania. 

Back to The Times:

As part of his deal, Mr. Chesebro agreed to “truthfully testify” against the remaining co-defendants, as had Ms. Powell and Scott Hall, an Atlanta bail bondsman who was the first to accept a plea deal in the case in late September. Mr. Chesebro also agreed to turn over documents and other evidence relevant to the case.

And:

Mr. Chesebro is the first person with inside knowledge of the wide-ranging plan to create fake slates of pro-Trump electors in states that Mr. Trump actually lost to have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the authorities.

Pennsylvania was one of those "states that Mr. Trump actually lost" doncha know. 

This is what Count 13 of the Georgia indictment looks like:

And now we get to the curious case of the Pennsylvania "fake electors."

Five of the seven states with "fake electors" tried to submit certificates that started with this text:

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of...

And yet Pennsylvania's "fake electors" certificate started with this:

WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as being the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Pennsylvania...

For some reason (gee, what could that reason be?) Pennsylvania Trump-electors added this text to the original:

... on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as...

All the other text was identical. I can only guess they did it to give them some legal, if not political cover.

But that leads to the question: why would they feel the need for such cover?

In any event, despite the added differences in Pennsylvania, the source of the documents was Chesebro.

From The January 6 Committee report:

Despite the fact that all major election lawsuits thus far had failed, President Trump and his co-conspirators in this effort, including John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, pressed forward with the fake elector scheme. Ultimately, these false electoral slates, five of which purported to represent the “duly elected” electoral college votes of their States, were transmitted to Executive Branch officials at the National Archives, and to the Legislative Branch, including to the Office of the President of the Sen- ate, Vice President Mike Pence.

The fake electors followed Chesebro’s step-by-step instructions for completing and mailing the fake certificates to multiple officials in the U.S. Government, complete with registered mail stickers and return address labels identifying senders like the “Arizona Republican Party” and the “Georgia Republican Party.” (p.43) [Emphasis added.]

See?

And now Kenneth Chesebro has agreed to testify about his plan on submitting fake Trump electors. And there were fake Trump electors in Pennsylvania.

And from The NYTimes we learned in 2022:

As they organized the fake elector scheme, lawyers appointed a “point person” in seven states to help organize those electors who were willing to sign their names to false documents. In Pennsylvania, that point person was Douglas V. Mastriano, a proponent of Mr. Trump’s lies of a stolen election who is now the Republican nominee for governor.

Ok, so I'll ask it again:

Will someone please ask Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano about his participation in Donald Trump's "fake elector" scheme?

Can Someone PLEASE Ask St Sen Doug Mastriano About This??

We'll start here:

Sidney Powell, one of 18 co-defendants in former President Donald Trump's election interference case in Georgia, has taken a plea deal in which she has agreed to testify in the case.

She is pleading guilty to six misdemeanor charges, according to the agreement read in court Thursday. She will get 12 months of probation for each count, as well as a $6,000 fine.

As part of the agreement, Powell must "testify truthfully about any co-defendants" involved in the case and "provide all documents to the district attorney's office" relevant to their case against the other co-defendants, according to Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee.

And this:

Though the original seven felony charges against Powell focused only on her role in a breach of election equipment in a Coffee County, Ga., elections office that occurred on Jan. 7, 2021, the terms of Powell’s plea require her to turn over any evidence or documents requested by the district attorney’s investigators and to testify truthfully at any related trials in the broader racketeering case.  

And so why should someone ask Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano about this?

This is why:

A nonprofit organization run by former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell, who filed a series of lawsuits last year attempting to overturn presidential election results in Arizona and other states, contracted the company that’s now counting 2.1 million ballots from Maricopa County to conduct an election audit in a rural Pennsylvania county, according to records obtained by the Arizona Mirror.

Wake Technology Services, Inc., co-founder Gene Kern and Fulton County’s elections director, IT director and one member of the three-person election board signed a document on Dec. 31 stating that Kern was requesting to check the county’s voting machines and mail-in ballots from the general election. At the bottom of the typed document are handwritten notes stating that Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano set up the audit and that Wake TSI is contracted with Defending the Republic, Powell’s 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. County clerk Lisa Mellott-McConahy said the county’s elections director, Patti Hess, identified the handwriting as belonging to Kern. [Bold Italics added.]

Take a look:

 

Fulton County, Pennsylvania.

Take a look at what happened in Fulton County - as per the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Middle District:

The Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth decertified certain voting equipment that Fulton County acquired from Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. (“Dominion”) in 2019 and used in the 2020 general election. The Secretary decertified the voting equipment after learning that, following the 2020 election, Fulton County had allowed Wake Technology Services, Inc. (“Wake TSI”), to perform a probing inspection of that equipment as well as the software and data contained therein. The Secretary maintained that Wake TSI’s inspection had compromised the integrity of the equipment. Fulton County and the other named Petitioner-Appellees petitioned in the Commonwealth Court’s original jurisdiction to challenge the Secretary’s decertification authority generally and as applied in this case. During the pleading stage, the Secretary learned that Fulton County intended to allow another entity, Envoy Sage, LLC, to inspect the allegedly compromised equipment. The Secretary sought a protective order from the Commonwealth Court barring that inspection and any other third-party inspection during the litigation. The court denied relief. The Secretary appealed that ruling to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which entered a temporary order on January 27, 2022, to prevent the inspection and to preserve the status quo during the Court's review of the Secretary’s appeal. Months later—and with no public consideration, official proceedings, or notice to the courts or other parties to this litigation—the County allowed yet another party, Speckin Forensics, LLC to inspect the voting equipment and electronic evidence at issue in this litigation. Upon learning of this alleged violation of the temporary order, the Secretary filed an “Application for an Order Holding [the County] in Contempt and Imposing Sanctions.” The Supreme Court found Fulton County willfully violated the Supreme Court's order. The Court found Fulton County and its various attorneys engaged in a "sustained, deliberate pattern of dilatory, obdurate, and vexatious conduct and have acted in bad faith throughout these sanction proceedings." Taken as a whole, that behavior prompted the Court to sanction both the County and the County Attorney.

Um, that's bad, right?

Can someone please ask Doug Mastriano what he knows about Sidney Powell, Wake Technology and the Fulton County voting machines?

 

Meanwhile, Outside

Some science from the scientists at NOAA:

The September global surface temperature was 1.44°C (2.59°F) above the 20th-century average of 15.0°C (59.0°F), making it the warmest September on record. September 2023 marked the 49th-consecutive September and the 535th-consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average. September 2023 was 0.46°C (0.83°F) above the previous record from September 2020, and marks the largest positive monthly global temperature anomaly of any month on record. The September 2023 global temperature anomaly surpassed the previous record-high monthly anomaly from March 2016 by 0.09°C (0.16°F). The past ten Septembers (2014–2023) have been the warmest Septembers on record. [Emphases added.]

And: 

The January–September global surface temperature ranked highest in the 174-year record at 1.10°C (1.98°F) above the 1901–2000 average of 14.1°C (57.5°F). This surpassed the previous record from January–September 2016 by 0.03°C (0.05°F). According to NCEI's statistical analysis and data through September, there is a greater than 99% chance that 2023 will rank as the warmest year on record.

Science.

Nonsense:

A far-right Christian nationalist Republican state lawmaker in Pennsylvania is citing the Bible to explain her vote against legislation.

"When Democrats are pushing bills like banning gas-powered mowers and gas-powered stoves in New York City, all under the name of a climate control agenda, we can all see what is really going on here," said state Rep. Stephanie Borowicz, in a video posted by Heartland Signal. "The truth is, is in Genesis 8:22, it says, 'as long as the Earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.' I'll say that again, 'will never cease.' Of course, we are to be good stewards of God's creation, but not through a forceful climate control global agenda."

Nevertheless, it's getting warmer out there. No matter what Genesis 8:22 says.

Post Script: The Bible is not a scientific document. There is no science in there.

 

 

What Does "Columbus Day Mean?" - A Reprint

This was first posted in 2020. Then tweaked a year later.

Here's the original:

I'd like to take a break from watching our slow-motion Trump-led social suicide and talk a little about this: 

The Pittsburgh Art Commission unanimously voted on Wednesday to schedule a special hearing for the public to voice their opinions on the potential removal of the Christopher Columbus statue in Schenley Park.

Mayor Bill Peduto asked the commission in a letter Tuesday to begin a public review to determine the future of the statue.

The statue, which was erected in Schenley Park in 1958, was vandalized in 2010, 2017 and most recently again in June and July as part of nationwide protests against monuments honoring Columbus.

After the statue was vandalized in June, an online petition was created calling for its removal.

Let me say as a proud Italian-American that it's probably time for the statue to be removed.  As a cultural signifier, "Columbus" has way too much negative baggage to support it's continued presence in Oakland.

But instead of talking about the statues, let's talk about Columbus Day - something with similar calls for removal. What does "Columbus Day" mean? Evidently, different things to different people at different times.

From The New York Times:

Few who march in Columbus Day parades or recount the tale of Columbus’s voyage from Europe to the New World are aware of how the holiday came about or that President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed it as a one-time national celebration in 1892 — in the wake of a bloody New Orleans lynching that took the lives of 11 Italian immigrants. The proclamation was part of a broader attempt to quiet outrage among Italian-Americans, and a diplomatic blowup over the murders that brought Italy and the United States to the brink of war.

Here's the story:

It began with the murder of David Hennessy. A popular police chief, Hennessy was shot down by gunmen while walking home from work. As he lay dying, a witness asked him who did it. “Dagoes,” he reportedly whispered, using a slur for Italians.

And so, more than a few Italians were rounded up and put on trial. The trial ended in a way that the public didn't like (six not guilty verdicts and 3 mistrials) and then:

In response, thousands of angry residents gathered near the jail. Impassioned speakers whipped the mob into a frenzy, painting Italian immigrants as criminals who needed to be driven out of the city. Finally, the mob broke into the city’s arsenal, grabbing guns and ammunition. As they ran toward the prison, they shouted, “We want the Dagoes!”

A smaller group of armed men stormed the prison, grabbing not just the men who had been acquitted or given a mistrial, but several who had not been tried or accused in the crimes. Shots rang out—hundreds of them. Eleven men’s bodies were riddled with bullets and torn apart by the crowd.

It's not surprising that the crowd rejoiced. The Italian government, evidently, did not.

Back to The Times on President Harrison's proclamation:

President Harrison would have ignored the New Orleans carnage had the victims been black. But the Italian government made that impossible. It broke off diplomatic relations and demanded an indemnity that the Harrison administration paid. Harrison even called on Congress in his 1891 State of the Union to protect foreign nationals — though not black Americans — from mob violence.

Harrison’s Columbus Day proclamation in 1892 opened the door for Italian-Americans to write themselves into the American origin story, in a fashion that piled myth upon myth. As the historian Danielle Battisti shows in “Whom We Shall Welcome,” they rewrote history by casting Columbus as “the first immigrant” — even though he never set foot in North America and never immigrated anywhere (except possibly to Spain), and even though the United States did not exist as a nation during his 15th-century voyage.

Seems obvious that the establishment of Columbus Day was initially intended to appease an angry Italian government in light of a brutal Southern lynching and not necessarily a celebration of Columbus himself, who, let's remember, was a man of his time and thus could scarcely be seen today as anything but ignorant and vicious.

Harrison was also a calling for patriotism. From the proclamation:

Now, therefore, I, Benjamin Harrison, President of the United States of America, in pursuance of the aforesaid joint resolution, do hereby appoint Friday, October 21, 1892, the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, as a general holiday for the people of the United States. On that day let the people, so far as possible, cease from toil and devote themselves to such exercises as may best express honor to the discoverer and their appreciation of the great achievements of the four completed centuries of American life.

Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.

In order to push the patriotism of the moment, Harrison had to shoe-horn Columbus into something he definitely (and absurdly) wasn't: an enlightenment-age "pioneer of progress." But what about all those who have since felt that the day is not about the misery brought by Columbus (and many others after him) but cultural pride in being written into the American origin story? The day means one thing if you see it as a celebration (or commemoration) of the beginnings of what turn out to be some very bad long-term abuses and another if you see it as a de facto Italian American heritage day and not a celebration of the misery and pestilence that followed Columbus' "discovery" of Hispaniola.

So we're at odds. What does "Columbus Day" mean? Who gets to define its meaning for everyone else? Those pushing for the "heritage day" risk offending those focusing on the very real abuses and those focusing on those abuses risk offending the cultural pride of a large swath of the population.

I don't know the solution.

Here's my domanda piuttosto pericolosa: is an Italian-American Heritage Day even necessary at this point? The fact of the matter is that every ethnic/cultural group deserves recognition for its unique contributions to The American Experience.

Perhaps it's time retire the day and use the temporal space it inhabits to make election day a national holiday instead. Perhaps we can all celebrate the American Experience that way.

About That $6 Billion -

It's Iranian money not US taxpayer money. And it was part of the deal to free American hostages held in Iran.

Here's the story. This is from the AP from 8/12/23:

The United States and Iran reached a tentative agreement this week that will eventually see five detained Americans in Iran and an unknown number of Iranians imprisoned in the U.S. released from custody after billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets are transferred from banks in South Korea to Qatar.

And specifically:

Under the tentative agreement, the U.S. has given its blessing to South Korea to convert frozen Iranian assets held there from the South Korean currency, the won, to euros.

That money then would be sent to Qatar, a small, energy-rich nation on the Arabian Peninsula that has been a mediator in the talks. The amount from Seoul could be anywhere from $6 billion to $7 billion, depending on exchange rates. The cash represents money South Korea owed Iran — but had not yet paid — for oil purchased before the Trump administration imposed sanctions on such transactions in 2019. 

So it's not US taxpayer money at all, is it?. It's money owed to Iran by South Korea for oil purchased more than 4 years ago.

Also:

The U.S. maintains that, once in Qatar, the money will be held in restricted accounts and will only be able to be used for humanitarian goods, such as medicine and food. Those transactions are currently allowed under American sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic over its advancing nuclear program.

This was confirmed by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on September 18, 2023:

With regard to the resources, I think it’s very important to be very clear about exactly what this involved.  As you know, this involved the access by Iran to its own money, money that had accumulated in a Korean bank as the result of oil sales that Iran made, which were lawful at the time those sales were made.  And from day one, our sanctions have clearly – and indeed always – exempt the use of resources for humanitarian purposes, because our aim is not to harm the Iranian people.  Our problem, our profound problem, is with the Iranian regime.  So from day one, these Iranian monies that were in a Korean bank have always been available to Iran to use for humanitarian purposes.  But for a lot of technical reasons, they weren’t able to access those funds where they were, so the funds were moved to another bank where we have absolute oversight of how they – how they’re used, and they can only be used for humanitarian purposes.

Also, all of that money is still there in Doha, officials have said.

Any questions?

 

Lock Him Up! Lock Him Up!! LOCK HIM UP!!

From ABC News:

Months after leaving the White House, former President Donald Trump allegedly discussed potentially sensitive information about U.S. nuclear submarines with a member of his Mar-a-Lago Club -- an Australian billionaire who then allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Lock him up!

The potential disclosure was reported to special counsel Jack Smith's team as they investigated Trump's alleged hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, the sources told ABC News. The information could shed further light on Trump's handling of sensitive government secrets.

Prosecutors and FBI agents have at least twice this year interviewed the Mar-a-Lago member, Anthony Pratt, who runs U.S.-based Pratt Industries, one of the world's largest packaging companies.

Lock him up!!

According to Pratt's account, as described by the sources, Pratt told Trump he believed Australia should start buying its submarines from the United States, to which an excited Trump -- "leaning" toward Pratt as if to be discreet -- then told Pratt two pieces of information about U.S. submarines: the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads they routinely carry, and exactly how close they supposedly can get to a Russian submarine without being detected.

LOCK HIM UP!! 

By the way, from ABC we learn this:

In 2019, speaking at the opening of a Pratt Industries plant in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Trump called Pratt a "friend" and praised him for funding the plant.

From elsewhere across the internets, we learn that Wapakoneta is the county seat for Auglaize County, Ohio.

Auglaize County is in Ohio's 4th Congressional District.

Rep Jim Jordan represents that district in the US House of Representatives.

By the way. 

Anyway, back to Trump's alleged disclosure of some nuclear secrets. this time from The NYTimes:

According to another person familiar with the matter, Mr. Pratt is now among more than 80 people whom prosecutors have identified as possible witnesses who could testify against Mr. Trump at the classified documents trial, which is scheduled to start in May in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla.

Mr. Pratt’s name does not appear in the indictment accusing Mr. Trump of illegally holding on to nearly three dozen classified documents after he left office and then conspiring with two of his aides at Mar-a-Lago to obstruct the government’s attempts to get them back.

But the account that Mr. Trump discussed some of the country’s most sensitive nuclear secrets with him in a cavalier fashion could help prosecutors establish that the former president had a long habit of recklessly handling classified information.

Lock him up!

 

 

What John Kelly Said

From CNN:

John Kelly, the longest-serving White House chief of staff for Donald Trump, offered his harshest criticism yet of the former president in an exclusive statement to CNN.  

And:

“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.

“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly concluded. “God help us.” 

That's what John Kelly said about Donald Trump. 

That being said, let me pivot for a moment.

Each day on his "Government Official" Facebook page, State Senator Doug Mastriano posts In Memoriam, the pictures and brief bios of members of the military who've been killed in action, often adding, "We won't forget you, brother." at the end.

Perhaps it's sincere, perhaps it's just cheap political cover. I'll let you decide.

On the other hand, those KIA are exactly the same people that Donald Trump berated as suckers. Each "brother" killed in action left behind a Gold Star family - those same families that Trump held in such contempt in 2016, according to John Kelly.

Any comment, Senator Mastriano?

Trump did endorse you for Governor, right? You were the White House's "point person" for his fake elector scheme in Pennsylvania, right? You helped spread his big lie, right? 

You even spoke to him on the phone the night before his mob stormed the Capitol.

Don't you have anything to say?

Shaka, When The Walls Fell

 From The NY Times:

Donald J. Trump went on trial Monday in a New York courtroom facing a threat to the business empire that informed his public persona and undergirded his run for the White House.

The trial stems from a lawsuit brought last year by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, accusing Mr. Trump and other defendants, including two of his adult sons and his companies, of fraudulently inflating the value of their assets to obtain favorable loans and insurance deals.

The judge in the trial, Arthur F. Engoron, has already found that Mr. Trump and the other defendants were liable for fraud, and that the annual financial statements on which they listed their assets were filled with examples of such misconduct. [Emphasis added.]

Oh dear.

 

What Outgoing Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley Said

From NPR:

Under cloudy skies at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Milley never mentioned the former president by name. But he practically shouted on two different occasions that the U.S. military swears to protect the Constitution “against ALL enemies, foreign AND domestic.”

“We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or to a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator,” he said. “We don’t take an oath to an individual. We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it.”

This came a few days after Donald Trump, a wannabe dictator, suggested he be executed.

President Joe Biden, Patriot

The President gave a speech yesterday in Arizona.

Give it a listen:

Give it a read.

Some highlights:

Let me begin with the core principles. Democracy means rule of the people, not rule of monarchs, not rule of the monied, not rule of the mighty. Regardless of party, that means respecting free and fair elections; accepting the outcome, win or lose. (Applause.) It means you can’t love your country only when you win. (Applause.)

Democracy means rejecting and repudiating political violence. Regardless of party, such violence is never, never, never acceptable in America. (Applause.) It’s undemocratic, and it must never be normalized to advance political power.

And democracy means respecting the institutions that govern a free society. That means adhering to the timeless words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” A mission statement embodied in our Constitution, our system of separation of powers and checks and balances.

And:

And there is something dangerous happening in America now. There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy: the MAGA Movement.

Not every Republican, not even a majority of Republicans, adhere to the MAGA extremist ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with Republicans my whole career. But there is no question that today’s Republican Party is driven and intimidated by MAGA Republican extremists. Their extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it.

My friends, they’re not hiding their attacks. They’re openly promoting them — attacking the free press as the enemy of the people, attacking the rule of law as an impediment, fomenting voter suppression and election subversion.

Did you ever think we’d be having debates in the year — stage of your careers where banning books — banning books and burying history?

Extremists in Congress — more determined to shut down the government, to burn the place down than to let the people’s business be done.

And so on.

Donald Trump, Fraud.

From The NYTimes:

A New York judge ruled on Tuesday that Donald J. Trump persistently committed fraud by inflating the value of his assets, and stripped the former president of control over some of his signature New York properties.

From The Washington Post:

A judge overseeing a $250 million lawsuit against Donald Trump ruled the former president and his company committed fraud by inflating his net worth in business transactions, narrowing the scope of what the state’s attorney general must prove at an upcoming civil trial.

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron also ordered the cancellation of Trump business certificates and imposed sanctions on attorneys representing him, two of his adult children, two other company executives and the business for repeating arguments that failed multiple times previously and were called “borderline frivolous.”

You can read the ruling here.

Then there's this also from The NYTimes:

The ruling came as part of the New York attorney general’s civil case against Mr. Trump. The attorney general, Letitia James, has accused the former president of fraudulently overstating the value of his assets on annual financial statements by as much as $2.2 billion a year in order to receive favorable terms on loans and benefits.

In the ruling, the judge, Arthur F. Engoron, agreed that Mr. Trump committed fraud when he sent those statements to banks and insurance firms. A trial in the case could start as soon as Monday; if Mr. Trump does not successfully have the ruling reversed before then, the proceeding will largely focus on the size of the penalty against him. Ms. James is seeking a fine of $250 million.

For instance, and this is from the ruling:

This Court takes judicial notice that the Trump Tower apartment in which Donald Trump resided for decades (the Triplex ) is 10,996 square feet. Between 2012-2016, Donald Trump submitted SFCs falsely claiming that the Triplex was 30,000 square feet, resulting in an overvaluation of between $114-207 million dollars. The misrepresentation continued even after defendants received written notification from Forbes that Donald Trump had been overestimating the square footage of the Triplex by a factor of three.

In opposition, defendants absurdly suggest that the calculation of square footage is a subjective process that could lead to differing results or opinions based on the method employed to conduct the calculation. Well yes, perhaps, if the area is rounded or oddly shaped, it is possible measurements of square footage could come to slightly differing results due to user error. Good - faith measurements could vary by as much as 10-20%, not 200%. (p. 21) [Italics in original.]

And followed closely by

A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living
space of decades, can only be considered fraud. (p. 22)

And so on. 

He's a fraud. And has been for a long long time.

 

 

Meanwhile, Outside

Science from the scientists at NOAA: 

The August global surface temperature was 1.25°C (2.25°F) above the 20th-century average of 15.6°C (60.1°F), making it the warmest August on record. This marked the first time an August temperature exceeded 1.0°C (1.8°F) above the long-term average. August 2023 was 0.29°C (0.52°F) warmer than the previous August record from 2016, but the anomaly was 0.10°C (0.18°F) lower than the all-time highest monthly temperature anomaly on record (March 2016). However, the August 2023 temperature anomaly was the third-highest anomaly of any month on record. August 2023 marked the 45th-consecutive August and the 534th-consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average. 

And:

The January–August global surface temperature ranked second warmest in the 174-year record at 1.06°C (1.91°F) above the 1901–2000 average of 14.0°C (57.3°F). January–August 2016—another year with El Niño conditions—holds the record for the warmest such period on record by just 0.03°C (0.05°F) above the current year-to-date anomaly. Global ocean surface temperature during this January–August 2023 period ranked warmest on record. According to NCEI's statistical analysis, there is a 95% probability of 2023 ranking among the two warmest years on record.

Science. 

And yet, from Scientific American:

Conservative activists and politicians in states across the country are trying to limit or distort the teaching of climate science to schoolchildren, marking a growing front in the culture war against social movements over race, gender identity and the environment.

Specifically:

In Ohio, legislators are expected to pass a bill that could require colleges and universities to teach “both sides” of climate change. A member of a local school board in Pennsylvania sought to block the use of a climate-themed novel in middle school because, he said, it was “propaganda.” Meanwhile, classroom content by a far-right group that produces animated videos that denigrate climate action is being approved for use in schools in numerous states.

You can read about the Pennsylvania part of the story here.

But of course everything's bigger in Texas:

Perhaps nowhere are climate lessons being reshaped by conservative politicians more than in Texas, where members of the education board have tried in recent years to block programs that teach about reducing greenhouse gases, emphasizing instead the benefits of fossil fuels. The state education board is now deciding whether it will block textbooks that accurately portray climate science.

Of course. 

Meanwhile its getting hotter out there. The science says so.

 

Wendy Bell - 9/11 Truther?

So I saw this on the cesspool formerly known as Twitter yesterday:

If I'm reading this right (and I'd like to think I am), I have to assume Wendy Bell, anti-vaxxer, election-denier, climate science denier, is also a 9/11 truther.

Who'd a thunk it??

The 9/11 conspiracy theory that Wendy so obediently spews is this: Since you can't see any evidence of a plane hitting The Pentagon, American Airlines Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon. Therefore it must've been a cruise missile and therefore it must've been an inside job.

Of course, just like the rest of the spew that flows like a river out of Wendy's gob, this is BS.

Some questions for Wendy:

If Flight 77 did not hit The Pentagon, where did it go? What happened to the 50 or so passengers?

Did you know, Wendy, that among the passengers was Barbara Olson, prominent conservative pundit and wife of the then Solicitor General of the US, Ted Olson? Where did she go?

Science (meaning reality, Wendy) has the answer:

The remains of five people killed in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon were damaged beyond identification in the massive explosion and fire after a hijacked airliner crashed into the building's west side, officials said.

Investigators have identified remains of 184 people who were aboard American Airlines Flight 77 or inside the Pentagon, including those of the five hijackers, but they say it is impossible to match what is left with the five missing people.

Has had for decades.

Here's some more reality for you, Wendy:

Footage from two Pentagon security cameras outside the building shows the American Airlines flight crashing into the Pentagon. The footage was released by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2006 after conservative government watchdog Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request two years earlier, the Associated Press reported. 

And then there's this:

There's the plane, Wendy.

In Case You Missed It - Sandra Weyer. Who?

This sentencing memorandum was filed in Federal Court on 9/8/23. It starts:

The United States of America, by and through its attorney, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, respectfully submits this sentencing memorandum in connection with the above-captioned matter. For the reasons set forth herein, the government requests that this Court sentence Sandra S. Weyer to 30 months’ incarceration, the high-end of the applicable Sentencing Guidelines range; three years of supervised release; $2,000 in restitution; and the mandatory $170 special assessment. 

And:

The defendant, Sandra S. Weyer, a 60-year-old mother of two and high school graduate, participated in the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol—a violent attack that forced an interruption of the certification of the 2020 Electoral College vote count, threatened the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential election, injured more than one hundred police officers, and resulted in more than 2.9 million dollars in losses.

Note: she was found guilty in June.

She also did this:

Another Mastriano supporter, Sandra Weyer, has been charged with unlawfully entering the Capitol on Jan. 6. Federal authorities say she encouraged other rioters to “mace” a New York Times photographer who was being attacked by two rioters. Weyer was also at the eastern doors leading to the rotunda on Jan. 6, not far from Clarkson. She entered a not guilty plea after she was indicted in February.

You can read about the assault on the photographer here.

She's good people, no?

No.

So why am I directing your interest to the soon-to-be sentenced Sandy Weyer?

This is why:

Here’s Sandra Weyer posing with Doug Mastriano: pic.twitter.com/L9k3J7WTFh

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) June 29, 2021

So. Any comment, Senator?

For the record, her sentencing memo contains this information:

     Weyer’s frustrations motivating her to storm the Capitol began in the days leading up to the attack on January 6, 2021, in her home state of Pennsylvania. Upset over the election results, Weyer participated in rallies and protests to decertify the election in favor of her chosen candidate.

     When those lawful efforts failed to achieve her desired result, Weyer and her associates decided to come to Washington, D.C. They drove a van approximately three hours from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C. Weyer, who was in the front passenger seat, led her group in chants of “four more years!” during the drive. She recorded and   published her trip to her Facebook Live followers on social media in real-time. See Government’s Trial Exhibit 202.2. [Emphasis added.]

Evidently not in one of Doug's rented buses. 

For the record.

But still, any comment Senator? One of your followers, someone photographed with you, has been found guilty of crimes committed in the Capitol on January 6 and could be facing more than a year in jail.

Anything?

And please, will someone in the otherwise very capable Pennsylvania press corps stick a microphone in Doug's face and ask him about this? Or about anything else having to do with January 6? 

Please?

Meanwhile, Outside

From the scientists at NOAA:

The July global surface temperature was 1.12°C (2.02°F) above the 20th-century average of 15.8°C (60.4°F), making it the warmest July on record. This marked the first time a July temperature exceeded 1.0°C (1.8°F) above the long-term average. July 2023 was 0.20°C (0.36°F) warmer than the previous July record from 2021, but the anomaly was 0.23°C (0.41°F) lower than the all-time highest monthly temperature anomaly on record (March 2016). July 2023 marked the 47th-consecutive July and the 533rd-consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th-century average.

Climatologically, July is the warmest month of the year. As the warmest July on record, July 2023 was more likely than not the warmest month on record for the globe since 1850. The past nine Julys have been the warmest Julys on record.

Huh. 

From NASA:

Global climate change is not a future problem. Changes to Earth’s climate driven by increased human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are already having widespread effects on the environment: glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking, river and lake ice is breaking up earlier, plant and animal geographic ranges are shifting, and plants and trees are blooming sooner.

Effects that scientists had long predicted would result from global climate change are now occurring, such as sea ice loss, accelerated sea level rise, and longer, more intense heat waves.

And so on.

Wendy Bell - WHAT Is She Thinking?

Let's start here with my good friends at Wegner's Groceries:

As Rudy Giuliani is found liable for defaming Ruby Freeman, guess who #PittsburghsBiggestEmbarrassment and @NEWSMAX superstar Wendy Bell was defaming on Monday? Yes, in 2023. Yes, after everything about Ms. Freeman has been proven false. You guessed it! pic.twitter.com/F58y51bq8W

— Wegner’s Groceries (@grocerieswegner) August 31, 2023

Transcript.

WB: Ruby Freeman was complicit via video evidence of counting ballots with no election supervision for hours. And it just so happened that after those hours of tabulated those ballots, no matter how much they want to normalize, "We keep suitcases of completed ballots under this table every election. That wasn't a USB drive. Those were breath mints."

Is Wendy Bell not aware that there were Republican poll watchers there that night?

There were:

Central to claims of fraud is the insinuation that poll watchers, especially Republicans, were not allowed to watch the processing of ballots. This is not true; poll watchers were able to enter and monitor the facility at any hour.

And yet Wendy says that Ruby Freeman was counting ballots "with no election supervision for hours."

Something that Wendy Bell gets completely wrong.

Here's another. It's a big one.

Teams of investigators from the FBI, GBI, and Georgia SOS conducted independent and simultaneous interviews of Fulton County employees who were involved in the processing and scanning of absentee ballots at State Farm Arena on election night in November 2020. All employees interviewed provided a consistent account regarding how absentee ballots were processed and scanned that evening. Additionally, no one had any knowledge of observers, poll watchers, or the media being told they had to leave. Two poll watchers who identified themselves as members of the Georgia Republican Party had submitted affidavits as to what they observed on election night. Much of what they reported was consistent with what was reported by the Fulton County elections employees. Additionally, the Fulton County elections
employees’ accounts were consistent with the actions observed on the video surveillance footage. Both poll watchers confirmed that no one was told or instructed to leave State Farm Arena.

Furthermore, Investigators from three law enforcement agencies reviewed the entire unedited video footage of the events in question surrounding Freeman and Moss at State Farm Arena. There was no evidence of any type of fraud as alleged. Fulton County Board of Elections and Registration put specific processes in place to store ballot boxes underneath tables and to have them in a certain order to monitor and track ballots during the tabulation process so election workers would know where to begin the next day. No evidence was provided to show that Freeman or Moss deviated from that established process. The initial tabulation, the statewide audit involving a manual hand count of every ballot, and the machine recount reveal there was no evidence to suggest fraudulent ballots were scanned and counted in the final tabulated results for the November 2020 General Election in Fulton County.

Lastly, the FBI identified and interviewed the true creator of the Instagram account that reportedly contained a post by Freeman admitting she conspired to adversely affect the November 2020 election. The account creator admitted he created the fake account and confirmed the content that was posted on the account was fake.

All allegations made against Freeman and Moss were unsubstantiated and found to have no merit. [Emphasis added.]

The Georgia Secretary of State's office reported this on March 7, 2023 - almost 6 months ago. There's also the names of the Republican poll watchers in there, Wendy.

Finally, there's this about the USB drives:

The stark warning was entirely appropriate, and prescient. In addition to the examples Sterling identified, President Trump and his team were also fixated on Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss. He and Giuliani mentioned Freeman repeatedly in meetings with State legislators, at public rallies, and in the January 2nd call with Raffensperger. Referring to a video clip, Giuliani even accused Freeman and Moss of trading USB drives to affect votes “as if they [were] vials of heroin or cocaine.” This was completely bogus: it was not a USB drive; it was a ginger mint.

Page 44 of the report issued by The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, December 22, 2022.

2 Questions, Wendy:

• Aren't you a little late with all this? The facts (and facts are stubborn things, y'know) have been out there for months and you're still getting them wrong.
  
• Aren't you now a little afraid that you (and yer lil buddy Brock, of course) are going to be sued for defamation?
  

No One Is Above The Law

 

Inmate P01135809

Questions About Giuliani and Ellis Mugshots

First, Rudy Giuliani:

Now, Jenna Ellis:

And now some context:

Three of Donald Trump’s key election lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, surrendered Wednesday on charges in the Georgia election subversion case. 

That happened yesterday. 

A little more than a THOUSAND DAYS AGO, this happened:

And some context:

Having failed to gain traction in court, President Donald Trump’s campaign brought its case challenging Pennsylvania’s election results to a state Senate hearing Wednesday in Gettysburg, where it repeated its unfounded claims of widespread fraud to a welcoming audience of Republican legislators.

Addressing members of the state Senate Majority Policy Committee in a proceeding that played out like a campaign rally — with firebrand speeches from GOP lawmakers and whooping cheers from dozens of supporters — Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani pressed his baseless case that the election had been stolen and the truth covered up by “Big Tech,” the media, and the courts.

“I know crooks really well,” he told the panel, gathered in a conference room of the Wyndham Gettysburg hotel. “You give them an inch and they take a mile. And you give them a mile and they take your whole country.”

Then, with Trump attorney Jenna Ellis holding a cell phone to a microphone, the president himself addressed the crowd from Washington.

That was the meeting hosted by failed GOP candidate for PA Governor, State Senator Doug Mastriano. Jenna Ellis went on to become Doug's "senior legal advisor" for that failed campaign. In the picture, that's Jenna holding up the cell phone to the microphone so that the enthralled can hear their master's voice.

This event is even listed as "Act 8" from the Georgia indictment:

     On or about the 25th day of November 2020, RUDOLPH WILLIAM LOUIS GIULIANI and JENNA LYNN ELLIS appeared, spoke, and presented witnesses at a meeting of Pennsylvania legislators in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. During the meeting, RUDOLPH WILLIAM LOUIS GIULIANI made false statements concerning fraud in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Pennsylvania and solicited, requested, and importuned the Pennsylvania legislators present at the meeting to unlawfully appoint presidential electors from Pennsylvania. During the meeting, JENNA LYNN ELLIS solicited, requested, and importuned the Pennsylvania legislators present at the meeting to unlawfully appoint presidential electors from Pennsylvania. DONALD JOHN TRUMP joined the meeting by telephone, made false statements concerning fraud in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Pennsylvania, and solicited, requested, and importuned the Pennsylvania legislators present at the meeting to unlawfully appoint presidential electors from Pennsylvania. These were overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. [Bolding and CAPS in original.]

BTW, Jenna Ellis is quoted as saying that "Doug Mastriano is the Donald Trump of Pennsylvania.”

Will any of Pennsylvania's political reporters be asking Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano for a comment on the indictment/arrest/mug shot of either Rudy Giuliani or Jenna Ellis?