Hawley, josh Sen 5%

---

https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/joshua-hawley

merri ok

6* 5%

bak 8 22 html endit1

see working class hero/good ol boy/ pseudo-pop

2 23 pow on bomb train

see media bias section 230

i forgot CFG hit ads took out claire mccaskell

raga farm team? pow

leader on sedition caucus w/ cruz, both go for trump 2.0 fist salute

html seismic

---

AN 8 24

In Missouri's 2024 U.S. Senate race, incumbent Sen. Josh Hawley (a far-right MAGA Republican) is up against Democrat Lucas Kunce as well as Better Party candidate Jared Young. Hawley has been leading in the polls, which, political analysts say, is not surprising in light of how Republican Missouri is.

But Young has received an endorsement from someone who was once Hawley's political mentor: former Sen. John Danforth (R-Missouri).

A veteran of Missouri politics, Danforth served three terms in the U.S. Senate and is now 87.

Young, described by the St. Louis Post Dispatch as a "moderate conservative," thanked Danforth in a press release — saying, "I am honored by Senator Danforth's endorsement. We share the belief there are real solutions to complex problems if we can reject the angry, divisive tactics that have overtaken American politics."

When Danforth endorsed Young, the former senator said that he "embraces the ideas that have always defined the Republican Party and have been universally accepted across its membership."

Danforth endorsed Hawley in the 2018 midterms, which found Hawley ousting incumbent Democratic then-Sen. Claire McCaskill (now a pundit for MSNBC). But three years later, Danforth made it clear that he was totally disenchanted with Hawley and described that 2018 endorsement as the "worst mistake" of his life.

One of Danforth's big criticisms of Hawley is the MAGA senator's isolationist views on foreign policy.

Danforth, with his Young endorsement, said, "We are committed to supporting NATO, and we condemn Vladimir Putin's ambitions in Europe. We are steadfast in opposing Russian aggression. As a lifelong conservative now running on the Better Party ticket, Jared Young stands for the Constitution, Unity, Fiscal Responsibility, Free Markets and Peace through Strength. Josh Hawley rejects all of these."

'Moment of shame': Teamsters president ripped for GOP convention speech an 7 24

new rt pseudo populism good ol boy WCH

jdv and hawley some pro union? but no PRO Acts?

---

Opinion

The GOP pretends it's pro-union

:{[Robert Reich

---

an 7 24

'Advocating Christian nationalism': Analysis unveils Josh Hawley’s 'chilling radicalism'

---

an ah 6 24

veteran economist Robert Reich, now 77, has long been sounding the alarm about income inequality in the United States — a problem that, according to Reich, has only grown worse over the years.

Economic populism has also been a recurring theme among MAGA Republicans, many of whom often rail against "woke elites" on college campuses. But Reich, in a biting opinion column published on June 11, blasts Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and other Donald Trump supporters as examples of fake "populists" who don't really call out "inequality" as the major economic problem that it is.

"Trump and much of his Republican Party are deploying criticisms of the educated class to pose as populists on the side of the people," Reich observes. "Consider Elise Stefanik, Harvard class of '06 and chair of the House Republican Conference, who doesn't miss an opportunity to attack elite universities and their presidents. Or Sen. Josh Hawley, Stanford class of '02 and Yale Law '06, who calls the recent student demonstrations signs of 'moral rot.'"

Reich continues, "It's all a thinly veiled cover for their efforts to help the wealthy make even bigger bags while keeping everyone else — especially average workers — down. At this moment, Republicans are promising the moneyed class that in return for financial backing in the upcoming election, they'll get an extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts — which disproportionately boosted the wealth of big corporations and the rich — plus additional tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks."

According to Reich, Republicans like Stefanik and Hawley failed to acknowledge that the "money class" rather than "the educated class" is "holding back the rest of America."

Reich, who served as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton during the 1990s, laments that "inequality" in the U.S. in 2024 is much worse than it was during the 1960s.

"When I graduated Dartmouth College in 1968," Reich recalls, "almost no one I knew went into finance or consulting. In those days, inequalities were minuscule compared with now. The bags at that time could have fit into a glove compartment."

Reich continues, "One of the least-discussed but most profound consequences of America's surging inequality is the number of talented young people now devoting themselves to making bags. Remarkably, though, most talented young people are not yet in the bag."

*Robert Reich's full column for The Guardian is available at this link.

---

an ah 1123

mAGA Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) has been railing against the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC and has been pushing a measure attacking the controversial 2010 decision — which, he argues, conservatives never should have defended. Hawley's measure is a rare example of a pro-Donald Trump Republican attacking a High Court ruling that has drawn more criticism from the left than from the right.

But journalist Jason Linkins, in an article published by the liberal-leaning New Republic on November 4, slams the Missouri Republican's campaign to "overturn Citizens United" is a "complete joke."

"There are many — mainly on the left — who'd like to somehow overturn Citizens United v. FEC, the execrable 2010 decision that unleashed a tidal wave of funny money into our politics and demonstrated that the Supreme Court didn't need to have a 6–3 conservative tilt to cock up the entire country," Linkins argues. "It would be great if we could pass a law and set things right, but here's the rub: Congress can't fix it, sorry!"

Linkins adds, "As MSNBC's Jordan Rubin explained, overturning the decision would require one of two unlikely events: the Supreme Court choosing to reverse itself or the successful enactment of a constitutional amendment…. The fact that Hawley, even with the assent of Congress and the president, literally cannot 'overturn' Citizens United makes this matter done and dusted."

The journalist stresses that despite all of Hawley's "posturing," his Citizens United proposals "would leave unchecked the flood of dark money" in U.S. politics.

"If you're authentically aggrieved by the Citizens United decision," Linkins explains, "this is where the profound misrule lies: Political nonprofits — mainly 501(c)(4)s — can accept unlimited donations and don't have to disclose their donors, even when the nonprofit then sends the money to super PACs, which do have to disclose donors."

:{*:{Read Jason Linkins' full article for The New Republic at this link.}:

'Despicable': DHS secretary decimates GOP Senator Josh Hawley ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

---

thom 11 23

Article: "Defiant Josh Hawley defends THAT fist bump before the Capitol riot and says there's no proof that the group he saluted engaged in 'criminal' behavior" by Nikki Schwab.

Article: "Hawley Introduces Bill to Keep Corporate America's Dollars Out of U.S. Politics" by Josh Hawley.

Article: "Mitch McConnell warns GOP senators they'll face 'incoming' if they back Hawley bill to limit corporate giving in campaigns" by Manu Raju.

---

'Despicable': DHS secretary decimates GOP Senator Josh Hawley - Alternet.org

---

an badash 10 23

ignoring massive holds by numerous Republicans on the required Senate confirmations of U.S. military and diplomatic officials, Fox News is blaming President Joe Biden for what one host called the “lack of Senate confirmed elected officials.”

The officials are not “elected,” they are appointed or nominated by the President. The President nominates and the Senate’s constitutionally required role is “Advice and Consent.”

U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) since February has placed a near-total blockade on the confirmations of well over 300 military officers, and even in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Israel he has refused to lift his holds.

:{“:{Sen. Tuberville is not the only one using this tactic,” noted the Bipartisan Policy Center on August 29. “Recently, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) announced that, because of the Department of Justice’s indictment of former President Donald Trump, he would put a hold on all DOJ nominees.}:

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced a hold on Department of Energy nominations to pressure the Biden administration to produce an action plan for combating radioactive waste in St. Louis. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has a hold on the nominee for the Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) recently released a two-month-long hold on State Department nominees over documents on the origins of COVID-19.”}:

On Monday, Foreign Policy reported, “At the time of the deadly Hamas attack on Israel, Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East, the United States had no confirmed ambassadors to Israel, Egypt, Oman, or Kuwait. The State Department’s top counterterrorism envoy position has sat empty for more than two years, the top human rights envoy position—the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor—has been unfilled for the entirety of the Biden administration, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has not had a top Middle East official in nearly three years.”

Those observations closely track with what the Fox News host was saying. But she did not appear to read this from the same Foreign Policy article:

“The mostly empty bench is due to a nearly broken Senate confirmation process, where nominees have languished in limbo for months or even years due to the ‘new normal’ practice of Republican senators placing sweeping holds on all nominees for different agencies over policy disputes with the administration. On the Pentagon side, hundreds of senior military posts are on indefinite pause due to Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s blanket hold on nominees over the Biden administration’s abortion access policies for the military—including senior officials at U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East. At the State Department, Republican Sen. Rand Paul has held numerous nominees over access to documents on the origins of COVID-19, while fellow Republican Sens. J.D. Vance and Ted Cruz have also previously issued holds.”

---

no lnx an 7 23

A 'sloppy error': Analyst slams 'theocratic' Josh Hawley for using fake historical quote

Alex HendersonJuly 05, 2023

Ever since the Religious Right achieved prominence in the Republican Party in the early 1980s —much to the dismay of the late conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona) — far-right Christian fundamentalists and white evangelicals have been claiming that the United States is a "Christian nation." But there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that gives Christianity priority over any other religion.

The Constitution's 1st Amendment states, "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."

Catholics and Protestants most definitely enjoy religious freedom under the 1st Amendment, but so do Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Bahais, Rastafarians and members of other faiths.

READ MORE: How Pat Robertson helped shape the radical Christian nationalism Barry Goldwater warned against

In a July 4, 2023 post on Twitter,Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) promoted the false claim that the U.S. was "founded on" Christianity — and misquoted Founding Father Patrick Henry in the process.

:{:{}:

The far-right MAGA Republican quoted Henry as saying, "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here."

But Henry never said that. Twitter users fact-checked Hawley by pointing out that the quote was from a 1956 article about Henry in The Virginian — not something that Henry, who died in 1799, actually said. The article was written 157 years after Henry's death.

MSNBC's Steve Benen, producer of "The Rachel Maddow Show," did some additional fact-checking in an opinion column for MaddowBlog published on July 5

READ MORE: Flag-waving' liberal Norman Lear, now 100, warns against the 'threat of authoritarianism' America faces

"On the surface," Benen argues, "it's obviously unfortunate to see a senator — a graduate of Stanford and Yale — make a mistake like this, especially as so many other Republicans also fall for fake quotes. But let's not brush past the underlying point the Missouri Republican was trying to make by way of a made-up line: Hawley seems certain that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, with members of one faith tradition — his own — enjoying exalted status over others."

Benen emphasizes that the U.S. was not "founded on the gospel of Jesus Christ" as Hawley claims.

"Thomas Jefferson — in an actual quote — wrote in 1802 that our 1st Amendment built 'a wall of separation between church and state,'" Benen notes. "In 1797, John Adams agreed: 'The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.'"

The Religious Right has repeatedly claimed that "separation of church and state" isn't in the U.S. Constitution, but while the 1st Amendment doesn't use those exact words, the concept is mostly definitely present in the "no law respecting an establishment of religion" declaration. And "separation between church and state," as Benen points out, were the exact words of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson.

"It's unfortunate that Hawley made a rather obvious mistake," Benen laments, "but more important than the senator’s sloppy error is the fact that a prominent Republican senator thought it’d be a good idea to tout an inherently theocratic vision on the 4th of July."

READ MORE: 'Tell it to God': Evangelical pastor spars with Ted Cruz over Uganda’s 'Kill the Gays' law

Read Steve Benen's full MaddowBlog column at this link.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Atheists are among the most likely to be vaccinated for COVID — and white evangelicals are among the least ›

White evangelicals have a 'troubling' bond with 'cruel and racist' Tucker Carlson: conservative ›

Why far-right White evangelicals are among Vladimir Putin’s strongest American supporters ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Evangelicals should think twice about supporting Trump in 2024 ... ›

Do White Evangelicals Think Trump Is Jesus? ›

Evangelicalism Thrived Because it Enabled White Christians to ... ›

---

an kos 2 23

The GOP continues to sling whatever trash they’ve got at President Joe Biden in the wake of his historic trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, and his total dunking on them about the debt ceiling, Social Security, and Medicare. They’re taking their talking points from Tucker Carlson, keeping up the narrative Biden is responsible for the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, because he hates white people.

Here’s the repugnant Sen. Josh Hawley doubling down on that, and throwing in some antisemitism for the heck of it: “My message to congressional Republican: you can either be the party of Ukraine & globalists or you can be the party of East Palestine & the working people of American.”

[twt w tukr]

Let’s talk about the working Americans of East Palestine, Ohio, and who is really helping them. The population of the town is 4,761 as of the 2020 census. It’s in Columbiana County, population 101,877 in 2020. In 2021, the last year statistics are available from, there were 32,077 people in the county who were enrolled in Medicaid, the joint federal/state funded health insurance program for low-income individuals and families.

So, yeah, that’s about a third of the population of the county—the smallest geographical area for which Medicaid data is available. Ohio as a whole saw a nearly 28% hike in Medicaid and CHIP enrollments during the pandemic. (CHIP is the program for children’s health.)

More than 7,500 households in Columbiana County were receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, or food stamps, in November 2022. That’s 14,407 people, including 5,421 children.

This is not a prosperous place. The median household income for the county was $49,265 in 2021, the latest figures available. That’s $12,997 lower than the median Ohio household income and $20,452 less than the U.S. median household income. The minimum wage in Ohio is $10.10/hour, $5.05 for tipped employees.

At the same time, though, the unemployment rate for the county is just 4.3%, all of which means that there are a lot of working people in this place who are living in or very nearly in poverty. And yes, you hardly need to ask: Those people voted for Trump in 2020, 72% to 27% for Biden. They’re probably now lining up in diners all through the county to be interviewed by New York Times reporters.

These are the very programs the GOP always wants to destroy, the programs that truly help working people. Medicaid, food assistance—they’re all on the chopping block as far as the GOP is concerned, and always have been.

This isn’t about Ukraine, and it sure as hell isn’t about the working people of East Palestine, Ohio—where were any of them when Trump was deregulating the rails and making this kind of disaster almost inevitable? Oh, that’s right, supporting an insurrection against the government.

---

an ah 2 23

When Patrick Buchanan ran against President George H.W. Bush in the 1992 GOP presidential primary, he campaigned on a pseudo-populistmixture of economic angst, social conservatism and white male resentment. It was a message that most Republican strategists and organizers rejected at the time, arguing that instead of resenting the rich, Americans should learn from them and try to be more like them.

But Buchanan’s ideas eventually found a home in former President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, and Trump-inspired Republicans like Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio have a lot more in common with Buchanan than they do with President Ronald Reagan or the late Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona).

In an article published by The Nation on February 3, journalist Jeet Heer examines GOP efforts to brand itself as a “working-class party” — and lays out some reasons why MAGA Republicans are not practicing what they often preach.

“Trump’s success in 2016 and his near-victory in 2020 — Joe Biden’s narrow triumph resting on fewer than 44,000 votes in three states — was due to the former reality-show star’s strong appeal to white non-college-educated voters,” Heer writes. “To be sure, the white working class was trending toward the GOP before Trump arrived on the scene. But in 2016, he solidified and intensified this trend through a shrewd message of economic populism: Trump eschewed traditional Republican calls for cuts to Medicare and Social Security, hinted that he’d replace Obamacare with his own better version of health care, criticized globalism in the form of trade agreements that led to the loss of manufacturing jobs, and called for immigration restrictions as a way to bolster wages.”

Heer adds, “There’s evidence that Trump’s populism in 2020 helped him to gain traction not just with the white working class, but also, with blue-collar people of color, especially Latinos.”

The journalist goes on to stress, however, that many MAGA economic policies haven’t been pro-working class.

“Notably, the tax cuts (Trump’s) party pushed through skewed heavily toward the wealthy,” Heer observes. “Trump’s failed bid to repeal Obamacare didn’t offer any replacement.Nor has Trump ever fulfilled his promise to deliver an alternative plan. But in the wake of Trump’s electoral strength and partial policy success, a new faction within the political right emerged that claimed to take the agenda of economic populism seriously. This group often calls themselves national conservatives or NatCons.”

Heer cites Hawley, Vance and billionaire donor Peter Thiel as examples of Republicans with a “national conservative” message, arguing that in reality, the GOP “shows little interest in economic populism.”

“For the Republicans, stoking the culture wars remains the easiest way to keep white working-class support without alienating the wealthy,” Heer explains. “It’s hardly a surprise that the two frontrunners for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination are Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis: both masters of pouring fuel into the fire of transphobia, xenophobia and racism. Rather than Hawley’s meager gestures at pro-worker economic policy, they represent the future of the GOP.”

Read The Nation’s full article at this link.

===

---

fail biden noms

https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/ted-cruz-josh-hawley

---

11 22 kirk claims

---

https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/why-j-d-vance-and-blake-masters-are-crucial-to-josh-hawleys-2023-strategy-report/

---

https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/missouri-ags-office-fined-12000-for-sunshine-law-violation-under-josh-hawley/

---

2x? an march?

United States Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) on Wednesday defended Ginni Thomas' newly-uncovered text message exchanges with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows regarding the January 6th, 2021 Capitol insurrection. Hawley, who infamously expressed solidarity with then-President Donald Trump's violent mob, was one of two Senators to formally object to the congressional certification of President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory in the 2020 election. The other was twice-failed Republican presidential primary candidate Ted Cruz of Texas.

The correspondence between Meadows and Thomas – a long-time right-wing activist whose husband Clarence is an associate Supreme Court justice – revealed that they were both intimately involved with the Trump-led coup to destroy American democracy.

This morning, Hawley said during an appearance on Fox News that any criticism of Thomas and her communications with Meadows amount to "misogyny" and that Democrats are exploiting Thomas' marriage to "rig" the Supreme Court.

"And here's the bottom line. This is ridiculous, these attacks on Justice Thomas. And the idea that Ginni Thomas' wife is supposed to sign off on her texts and her work with her husband as if he's in charge of her in some way — isn't that misogyny? Isn't that what the Democrats are always saying that they're against?" Hawley mused. "But the truth is is that they will take any avenue they can to try and smear Justice Thomas and Republicans have got to stand up against it and say, 'we're not gonna let you smear and rig the Supreme Court,' which is what they're trying to do."

Watch below via The Recount:

---

only laugh in hearings; home ppr

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/josh-hawley-2657717027/

---

dobbs amicus with cruz and mike lee

jOSH HAWLEY U.S. SENATOR Counsel of Record MICHAEL K. VELCHIK JOHN S. EHRETT 115 Russell Senate Office Bldg. Washington, D.C. 20510 (202) 224-6154 Ellen_James@hawley.senate.gov

---

fist bump cruz burn pits?

voted for insulin?

---

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/gop-senators-criticize-josh-hawley-for-his-opposition-to-adding-finland-sweden-to-nato/

---

an 8 22

On Wednesday, August 3, the U.S. Senate voted, 95-1, in favor of Sweden and Finland joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). President Joe Biden applauded the vote, declaring, “This historic vote sends an important signal of the sustained, bipartisan U.S. commitment to NATO, and to ensuring our Alliance is prepared to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. I look forward to signing the accession protocols and welcoming Sweden and Finland, two strong democracies with highly capable militaries, into the greatest defensive alliance in history.”

The vote was a rare example of everyone from Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer being on the same page. The lone “no” vote came from far-right Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who used the vote to boast about how MAGA he is on foreign policy and how devoted he is to former President Donald Trump’s “America first” agenda — and Hawley defended the vote during an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.

Never Trump conservative and veteran Washington Post opinion writer George Will examines Hawley’s “no” vote in his August 10 column, arguing that these events underscore the “degradation” of both journalism and politics in the United States.

“Like an infant feeling ignored and seeking attention by banging his spoon on his highchair tray, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) last week cast the only vote against admitting Finland and Sweden to NATO,” Will explains. “He said adding the two militarily proficient Russian neighbors to NATO would somehow weaken U.S. deterrence of China…. That evening, Hawley appeared on Fox News to receive Tucker Carlson’s benediction. This umpteenth episode of a senator using the Senate as a stepping stone to a cable television green room illustrates what Chris Stirewalt deplores in his new book, ‘Broken News.’”

Stirewalt served as Fox News’ political editor before being fired for, ironically, doing his job well. And he discusses that controversy in his new book, “Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back,” which has an August 23 release date on Amazon.

Will says of Stirewalt, “He was washed out of Fox News by a tsunami of viewer rage because on Election Night 2020, he correctly said Donald Trump had lost Arizona. Now, he says today’s journalism has a supply-side problem — that is, supplying synthetic controversies.”

Stirewalt, in his book, describes the state of U.S. journalism in 2022 as, “What did Trump say? What did Nancy Pelosi say about what Trump said? What did Kevin McCarthy say about what Pelosi said about what Trump said? What did Sean Hannity say about what Rachel Maddow said about what McCarthy said about what Pelosi said about what Trump said?”

Will shares Stirewalt’s complaints, writing, “But journalism also has a demand-side problem: Time was, journalists assumed that news consumers demanded ‘more information, faster and better.’ Now, instantaneous communication via passive media — video and television — supplies what indolent consumers demand. More than half of Americans between ages 16 and 74 read below the Sixth-Grade level. Video, however, requires only eyes on screens. But such passive media cannot communicate a civilization defined by ideas.”

Will continues, “Our creedal nation, Stirewalt says, ‘requires written words and a common culture in which to understand them’…. Technology — radio, television, the internet — turned journalism from reporting what had happened to reporting what was happening, and now to giving passive news consumers the emotional experience of having their political beliefs ratified.”

Now 81, Will has seen a lot of technological changes over the years. And he shares Stirewalt’s view that technology has made some political journalism a form of lowbrow entertainment.

“Technology has produced a melding of journalism and politics, to the degradation of both, as illustrated by the seamlessness of Hawley’s Senate floor grandstanding and his cable news self-congratulation,” Will observes. “Small wonder, says Stirewalt, that ‘the news business treats politics like sports’ — entertaining, but with no meaning deeper than the score. The fans, consumers of emotional-impact journalism, wear, figuratively speaking, their teams’ colors: red shirts against blue shirts.”

Will continues, “This journalism’s constant attention to politics instead of government — to gaining power instead of its exercise — makes the players on the field, Stirewalt says, ‘want to show off to the fans in the stands instead of trying to win the game.’ Hence Hawley, the quintessential example of the politics that the new journalism encourages. And hence his absurd vote against NATO expansion — spoon clenched in infant fist, banging the highchair tray to say: ‘Pay attention to me!’…. Define news down, and this is the kind of newsmaker you get.”

---

hypoc on kids

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/political-shenanigans-kansas-city-star-torches-josh-hawley-for-his-pseudo-concerns-about-abused-children/

A Missouri attorney is torching Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) for his pseudo concern about abused children in his state. In a blistering op-ed published by The Kansas City Star, attorney Rebecca Randles called out the Republican lawmaker for dropping the ball on an investigation that may have impacted the lives of many abused children.

The op-ed began with a brief comparison of Hawley and newly-confirmed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom Hawley strongly opposed. Noting that both individuals have had to make professional decisions that impact the lives of others, Randles explained how Hawley failed to hold up his end of that bargain.

"Her black garment is a metaphor for the difficult decisions she has made that impact the lives of others," Randles wrote in reference to Jackson. "Sen. Josh Hawley’s decisions also impact the lives of others. His garment, however, should be a lime green leisure suit on a hanger. He attracts a lot of attention; he’s loud; he makes a lot of statements. But he doesn’t do anything."

After offering a brief overview of Hawley's unfavorable actions amid Trump's post-election legal battle, she weighed in on the lawmaker's "political shenanigans."

"Hawley’s political shenanigans obscure the truth about victimization. He has introduced legislation about pornography, but only in concert with his bashing of the first Black woman to be nominated to the Supreme Court," she wrote. "When he grilled Jackson on her sentencing of an 18-year-old in a child pornography possession case, he was winking at QAnon true believers’ delusions about fictional networks of celebrity and politician pedophiles. However, Hawley ignores his own failure to protect sexually abused children who are very real."

Randles recalled the 2018 Pennsylvania child abuse case that opened the door for her office's Missouri investigation. At the time, Hawley was the attorney general, but according to Randles, he took very little interest in the case. "On review, my law partners and I found that Missouri had even more," she wrote. "Where was the then-attorney general’s outrage?"

Her office had appealed to Hawley to take action and although he agreed to do so, he abandoned the agreement when he moved on to the Senate and made no effort to express any other concerns about the investigation.

"After we challenged Hawley in letters, through advocacy organizations, and in press conferences, he agreed to investigate priests who had abused children," Randles added. "Then he left for the Senate, having done nothing. He left the so-called 'investigation' to his successor. He did not contact our clients (we have had hundreds). He did not contact us for information, and he did not make any kind of report regarding these abuses."

The op-ed concluded with a blistering statement saying, "Loud. Attention-grabbing. Do-nothing. A lime green leisure suit on a hanger.We challenge Sen. Hawley to take a fresh look at the crimes against children committed in his own state, including allegations against elected officials in his own party, and actually do something to protect kids."

---

4/22 edit bd

I don’t follow what every Democrat says. No one can. There’s no way for me to know whether the tenor and tone of their collective rhetoric changed last week. But it felt like it got stronger, sharper and angrier.

Consider Brian Schatz.

The Hawaii Senator took to the Senate floor to scorch his colleague Josh Hawley of Missouri, who’s been holding up appointments to the Department of Defense that are necessary to America’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Before he signs off, he said, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin must resign for his “failures” in Afghanistan.

Schatz said that’s rich coming from a guy who raised his fist in solidarity with the J6 insurrectionists and who voted to acquit the former president for the high crime of extorting Ukraine’s president.

“This comes from a guy who before the Russian invasion suggested that maybe it would be wise for [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to make a few concessions about Ukraine and their willingness to join NATO.”

He added:

“They withheld lethal aid until, unless Zelenskyy released false smears against Joe Biden's son. Then [Hawley] voted to exonerate President Trump for this. So spare me the new solidarity with the Ukrainians and with the free world, because this man's record is exactly the opposite.”

His tirade amazed those of us longing for the Democrats to take a strong stand against the Republican Party’s lies and bad faith. Perhaps we’ll see more now that Greg Sargent put a brighter light on it.

The Post columnist interviewed Brian Schatz on Friday. “Democrats need to make more noise,” the Senator conceded. “We have to scream from the rooftops because this is a battle for the free world now.”

Let’s not forget what Schatz said, however.

He said Hawley is “doing a very specific thing.”

“He is damaging the Department of Defense.”

So far, Schatz is the only Democrat seeing what needs seeing.

Though he says he’s outraged by the US pullout from Afghanistan, Josh Hawley is also attacking, directly, the military leadership itself. (He won’t move on appointments until the secretary of defense resigns.)

Demanding Austin’s resignation is not a “reasonable request,” Schatz said. It can’t be. The point is sabotaging civilian control of the military.

You read that right.

The point is cleaving the ranks. The point is to create conditions in which military personnel feel inspired to take action that’s favorable to the Republicans’ (perhaps the former president’s) return to power.

They are picking up where the J6 insurrection left off. But next time, it won’t be a mob of schlubs. It will be an army of highly-trained insurgents bent on restoring whiteness to the center of the republic.

At gunpoint.

Everyone should see what Schatz sees.

So I interviewed Fred Wellman, founder of Beer Hall Projectand a 20-year Army veteran who served when Secretary Austin was General Austin. I called Fred after US Rep. Matt Gaetz failed to humiliate the secretary in testimony before the House Arms Services Committee.

Fred said: “A standing army can’t be a tool of a political party. Under the Trump years, it became more partisan. Now Matt Gaetz and his peers in the Republican Party are directly undermining the apolitical and nonpolitical nature of the military by dividing troops from leaders.”

Matt Gaetz and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Thoughts?

My main frustration has always been with the “performance wing” of the Republican Party. They don’t want to govern. They want to act.

In this case, Matt Gaetz tried convincing people that “wokeism,” or trying to get a more diverse American military force, is hurting our ability to fight wars. It shows how monumentally stupid he is.

He's dragging culture wars into national defense. That he does so while sitting on the House Armed Service Committee is outrageous.

It’s a committee responsible for oversight of the men and women in uniform, but it’s oversight partially provided by someone as monumentally asinine as Matt Gaetz – that’s just disgusting to me.

Good point. When a country sends people overseas, the presumption should be that leaders will take that responsibility deadly seriously. Deadly serious responsibility is the opposite of Matt Gaetz.

I'm a 20-year Army veteran. I rose through the ranks to be a lieutenant colonel. I retired after Desert Storm and three Iraq tours. I’m the son of a World War II Marine veteran. My son is an Army veteran. My son-in-law continues to serve in the National Guard.

But not everybody can serve.

Less than 7 percent of our nation is veterans. Less than 1 percent serve at all. Less than one-third of the eligible population is capable of serving. I'm talking about fitness, criminal record, mental health, etc. This is the reality of maintaining and growing an all-volunteer force.

That's the point of trying to increase the diversity of the officer corps. That's the point of trying to increase the diversity of the pilot corps. That's the point of welcoming all races and creeds. As Secretary Austin said, anybody who's eligible, who has the capability to serve, should be welcomed even if they're non-binary, gay, straight, whatever.

If they're capable of serving, of meeting the physical and mental requirements we need in our military, we've got to open our arms.

There are just not enough white dudes left.

When you have someone like the Florida congressman directly attacking that, that turns away possible recruits. Gaetz is literally undermining those who serve and who may serve in the future.

Sounds like you’re angry?

I amangry.

The Matt Gaetzs and Marsha Blackburns of the world are openly undermining good order and military discipline with a culture war for political effect. A representative sitting on the Armed Services Committee should understand the challenges of an all-volunteer force.

Civilian oversight of the military matters even though those civilians may never have served, may not have been qualified to serve. People like me, people like Secretary Austin – we understand that. Someone who rose to the rank of four-star understands he’s going to answer to some 25-year-old kid on the Armed Services Committee.

That's the nature of it.

But what frustrates me is the lack of respect for the office and a lack of respect for the military as an apolitical and non-political entity.

One of the biggest fears of our founding fathers was a standing army. They didn't want one and that undermined efforts early on in the republic because of rebellions. We had no army to address them.

Even Washington was like, man, we need an army.

A standing army can’t be a tool of a political party. Under the Trump years, it became more partisan. Now Matt Gaetz and his peers in the Republican Party are directly undermining the apolitical and nonpolitical nature of the military by dividing troops from leaders.

The troops love Trump, they believe, but the troops are being failed by “woke” leaders. Where the fuck do you think the leaders are? You don't just magically make a general. Secretary Austin started as a fucking second lieutenant. He rose through the ranks. This is dangerous.

I do not say this lightly.

This is incredibly dangerous.

They attack the military leadership as“woke”because they're trying to cause a break in the ranks. They're literally undermining good order and military discipline deliberately to break the chain of command.

I've never seen that in my lifetime.

You’re describing national security risk. Is that overstating it?

No, I don't think so.

The very nature of our republic relies on an apolitical military every American knows serves them, no matter their race, creed, religion, color, region, political party, whatever. Our republic depends on everyone knowing a standing army is not a threat to the country.

Many in the Republican Party are super-fans of Putin, let's be honest.They're having CPAC in Hungary, for God's sake, a country led by a rightwing dictator, a Putin fan. Imagine a scenario in which they’re in power and we can't fight because they’ve undermined the military.

It's terrifying to think where this could go.

I've seen reports of white nationalism gaining traction in the ranks of the military. There's an effort from above to deal with that.

I learned in military science 101 at West Point that an all-volunteer force is a direct reflection of our society. You raised your children for 18 years before they get into the military. I give them 12 weeks of basic training. That won’t overcome 18 years of raising them as racists.

All I can do is ensure they don't act on those beliefs and undermine good order and military discipline. If they do behave inappropriately, we use the separate military system to discipline them appropriately and remove them from the military as they're no longer a threat.

But we do know white nationalist and patriot front-type groups have been actively sending “their troops,” if you will, into the military for military training. Right-wing nationalist groups are infiltrating the ranks and recruiting veterans after they get out of the military.

At one point,10 percent of Jan6 cases were United States military and veterans. One of them is an active-duty Marine Corps major!

How horrifying that is.

Talk about the fundamental tension between universal values, like honor, and individual interest, like investment in whiteness.

Some really extreme right-wing politicians say universal values are an attack on conservative thought. It's not against conservative thought.

Conservative thought should mean taxes and “pulling up my bootstraps and raising myself up by going into the military” – that's fine.

Saying Black people are inferior soldiers, assaulting the ranks, inciting homophobia and transphobia and attacking fellow service members – That’s not conservative. That’s extremism, white nationalism.

That needs to be stomped out.

There have been several surveys of service members saying the biggest threat they face isn’t Muslim terrorists. It’s extremism in the ranks....

---

https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2022/03/justice-thomas-really-really-wants-section-230-repealed-even-if-he-has-to-do-it-himself.htm

justice Thomas Really, REALLY Wants Section 230 Repealed (Even If He Has to Do It Himself)

March 9, 2022 · by Eric Goldman · in Content Regulation, Derivative Liability

The Supreme Court denied certiorari in Doe v. Facebook, a FOSTA case. The Texas Supreme Court held that FOSTA excluded some claims fromSection 230 (disregarding the statutory language Congress adopted), while other claims remain preempted by Section 230. The case will now go back on remand to deal with the FOSTA-excluded claims.

Along with the cert denial, Justice Thomas issued a “statement” bashing Section 230. This is his third solo-authored anti-Section 230 statement; the prior rants came in the Knight First Amendment v. Trump (2021) and Malwarebytes v. Enigma (2020) cases. Those earlier two statements were surely aided by his then-law clerk Josh Divine. a Hawley protégé. I had hoped that maybe Justice Thomas’ anti-230 statements would fade away following Divine’s departure. No such luck.

Justice Thomas writes: “It is hard to see why the protection §230(c)(1) grants publishers against being held strictly liable for third parties’ content should protect Facebook from liability for its own ‘acts and omissions.'” To be clear, Section 230 largely does not address “strict liability” for Internet services because that’s governed by the First Amendment, which typically makes strict liability for publishing or distributing third-party content unconstitutional. See, e.g., Smith v. California.

Also, Facebook’s “acts and omissions” at issue here solely involve the publication of third-party content, which is why Section 230 extends to them. As I’ve explained many times, treating publication decisions as “conduct” and not “speech” would make Section 230 a nullity. (Which, of course, is Justice Thomas’ objective…)

Justice Thomas also writes: “Assuming Congress does not step in to clarify §230’s scope, we should do so in an appropriate case.” Is that an implied threat to Congress? Whatever happened to judicial deference to legislatures? Courts fixing a statute’s “scope” when a legislature doesn’t is called judicial activism/legislating from the bench.

On the plus side, Justice Thomas has been utterly transparent about how he will rule on Section 230 when he gets his chance. He’s now said three times he’s ready to tear up Section 230–apparently regardless of the merits of a defendant’s arguments. That kind of immutable bias going into a case should prompt recusal, but Justice Thomas also has relaxed views about recusal.

More commentary from Mike Masnick at Techdirt.

---

an 222

Adam Kinzinger of Illinois is among the few Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives who isn’t afraid to vehemently criticize former President Donald Trump and his MAGA loyalists, and on February 2, the anti-Trump conservative slammed Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri as a “self-aggrandizing con artist” in response to the GOP senator’s comments on President Joe Biden and Ukraine.

Hawley has criticized Biden for ordering 3000 U.S. troops to Europe. Thousands of Russian troops are stationed on the Russia-Ukraine border, and the Biden Administration fears that Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, will invade Ukraine. Hawley also called for the Biden White House to block Ukraine from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

While Hawley is a major Trump apologist, Kinzinger is one of two Republicans on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s select committee on the January 6, 2021 insurrection. The other is Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, another scathing critic of the former president.

On February 2, Kinzinger tweeted, “I hate to be so personal, but Hawley is one of the worst human beings, and a self egrandizing con artist. When Trump goes down I certainly hope this evil will be laid in the open for all to see, and be ashamed of.”...

---

===

:{:{:{}:

https://democracychronicles.org/lawsuit-nra/

from the Campaign Legal Center:

Today, Campaign Legal Center Action (CLC Action) filed suit on behalf of Giffords against the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for failing to announce any action against the National Rifle Association (NRA) for using shell corporations to coordinate campaign spending with seven federal candidates spanning three election cycles from 2014-2018. The lawsuit was filed two days before President Trump addresses the NRA’s annual convention for the third year in a row – the only time in American history a president has done so.

The NRA’s complicated scheme had the effect of evading campaign contribution limits and shielding millions of dollars of political spending – including up to $25 million coordinated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign – from public scrutiny. The Trace first reported on the NRA’s scheme.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Giffords filed four complaints with the FEC to address these violations. The FEC is the independent regulatory agency tasked with enforcing campaign finance laws in federal elections, the agency routinely deadlocks and fails to reach the required four votes necessary to open an investigation. Today, Giffords is asserting its right of action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the 120-day period expired in which the FEC was legally required to respond.

“Our elections are awash in secret cash, and the federal agency charged with enforcing our nation’s election laws is asleep on the job,” said Trevor Potter, president of CLC, and a former Republican Chairman of the FEC. “Campaign finance laws are supposed to limit the influence of money in our politics. For our system to function properly, the FEC needs to enforce the laws that preserve the independence of campaigns and limit the influence of well-funded special interests.”

“When the FEC doesn’t do its job, groups like the NRA are able to get around the rules designed to limit the influence of money on our democracy,” said Brendan Fischer, director, federal reform at CLC. “The FEC’s failure to enforce the law sends a message to wealthy special interests that they can push the legal envelope and get away with it.”

“The FEC is supposed to be the nation’s election watchdog, but in this case it didn’t bite, bark, or even whimper,” said Adam Skaggs, Chief Counsel, Giffords Law Center. “Instead, it turned a blind eye while the NRA’s leadership made clear it’s more interested in handing bags of cash to candidates who will carry its water than following American laws or looking out for the interests of gun owners. In a desperate attempt to hold onto power and influence, NRA executives have flagrantly ignored our campaign finance laws and undermined the integrity of our election system. The FEC must bring illegal campaign conduct into the light of day and we are proud to join with CLC in calling on it to uphold the laws that protect the legitimacy of our democracy.”

, which explains the underlying story behind the NRA’s scheme.

Campaign finance law allows outside groups like the NRA to make unlimited expenditures supporting candidates only if the expenditures are completely independent of those candidates. To protect this independence, the FEC has rules prohibiting coordination between outside groups and campaigns, which include restrictions on how a vendor may work for both a candidate and an outside group supporting that candidate. Otherwise, the common vendor can act as a conduit to funnel strategic information to the outside group, and then that group’s expenditures are no longer independent.

The lawsuit implicates the NRA’s spending in support of the following seven candidates:

Matt Rosendale (2018 campaign for U.S. Senate in Montana)
Josh Hawley (2018 campaign for U.S. Senate in Missouri)
Donald Trump (2016 campaign for President of the United States)
Ron Johnson (2016 campaign for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin)
Thom Tillis (2014 campaign for U.S. Senate in North Carolina)
Cory Gardner (2014 campaign for U.S. Senate in Colorado)
Tom Cotton (2014 campaign for U.S. Senate in Arkansas)

You can see the full video here:

}:}:

:{:{:{}:

}:}:

:{:{:{}:

---

clarence is gunning for big tech?

https://www.protocol.com/policy/thomas-clerk-hawley

no lnx vid 2021

during the Supreme Court's most recent term, Justice Clarence Thomas fired two very public warning shots at Big Tech. First, in an unprompted statement last fall, he called for Section 230 to be reined in, saying the law had been interpreted too broadly by the courts. He followed that up months later with a concurring opinion that suggested Facebook and others ought to be regulated as common carriers.

:{:{}:

The two pieces of writing didn't escape the notice of tech policy watchers. What did go relatively unnoticed, though, was just who was working in Thomas' chambers at the time: a clerk named Josh Divine, who was coming off of a stint working for one of Big Tech's biggest critics and a vocal proponent of Section 230 reform, Senator Josh Hawley.

}:}:

---

an 11 21

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has prompted a social media firestorm with controversial argument suggesting Democrats are making an "attempt to give us a world beyond men."

During an appearance at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Fla., the Republican senator insisted "manhood" was "under attack" as he urged men embrace tradionally masculine positions, reports The Guardian.

"The left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic," he said. "They want to define the traditional masculine virtues – things like courage, and independence, and assertiveness – as a danger to society."

Hawley also discuss a seemingly baseless claim about the connection between males and pornography.

"Can we be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games?" Hawley said.

"While the left may celebrate this decline of men, I for one cannot join them. No one should."

In addition to his claims about pornography, Hawley attempted to connect toxic masculinity to a number of other issues.

"For centuries, lovers of liberty have praised these qualities as the highest standard of manhood. That's not to say that women don't possess them. But it is to say that these virtues are the bright side of the aggression and competitiveness and independence that psychologists, no less than philosophers, have long observed in men." he said.

"Assertiveness and independence are strengths when used to protect and empower others."

Hawley's remarks quickly led to blowback on Twitter as many users dismantled his arguments and his claims about the characteristics of manhood.

"In the good old days, uncriticized American men fucked real top-heavy silicone queens and machine-gunned their way through actual space aliens on a daily basis," David Simon tweeted. "Also, don't shake the junior Missouri senator's hand until you see him wash it.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/missouri-newspaper-bob-woodward-s-new-paints-a-damning-picture-of-josh-hawley-s-big-role-in-the-big-lie/

---

180 on afghan newspaper op ed

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/josh-hawley-2655073422/

afghan?

gOP senator demands top Biden officials resign — and threatens to block nominees until they do

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

September 14, 2021

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), best known as the "insurrectionist" who raised his fist high up in the air as he helped incite the January 6 attackers and rioters in front of the Capitol building, is demanding th....

---

A Senate hearing promoted unproven drugs and dubious ...https://www.nytimes.com › 2020/12/08 › technology › a-...

Dec 8, 2020 — Hydroxychloroquine is an antimalarial drug that President Trump has heavily ... Dr. Jane M. Orient, a prominent skeptic of vaccines, ...

TECHNOLOGY

A Senate hearing promoted unproven drugs and dubious claims about the coronavirus

Tracking Viral Misinformation: Latest Updates

A Senate hearing promoted unproven drugs and dubious claims about the coronavirus

Dec. 8, 2020

By Linda Qiu

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, at the Capitol last week, has embraced the role of the Senate’s leading contrarian on the coronavirus.]

Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, spent much of this year promoting investigations into Hunter Biden, trying fruitlessly to show corruption on the part of Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Now Mr. Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is more focused on another narrative sympathetic to President Trump if not to established science: that the reaction to the coronavirus pandemic has been overblown and that public health officials have been too quick to come to conclusions about the best ways to deal with it.

So on Tuesday, for not the first time, Mr. Johnson lent his committee’s platform to the promotion of unproven drugs and dubious claims about stemming the spread of the coronavirus while giving prominence to a vaccine skeptic.

In a move that led even most members of his own party on the committee to avoid the hearing, Mr. Johnson called witnesses who promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. The National Institutes of Health guidelines recommend against using either drug to treat coronavirus patients except in clinical trials.

Hydroxychloroquine is an antimalarial drug that President Trump has heavily promoted but has shown disappointing results in many clinical trials. Ivermectin is used to treat parasites in humans as well as to prevent heartworms in dogs; research on its effectiveness in treating the coronavirus has been mixed.

Despite the regulatory warnings and the lack of substantial scientific evidence for their efficacy, Mr. Johnson claimed that “discouraging and in some cases prohibiting the research and use of drugs that have been safely used for decades has cost tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people their lives.”

Just three other senators on the 14-member committee attended Tuesday’s session — “such low participation,” Mr. Johnson acknowledged at one point.Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee, criticized the hearing in opening remarks but left before asking questions. On the Republican side, only Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Josh Hawley of Missouri made appearances.

For about two and a half hours, the participants continuously challenged public health consensus, sometimes advancing inaccurate and previously debunked claims.

One witness, Dr. Ramin Oskoui, a cardiologist in Washington, argued that “masks do not work” and “social distancing doesn’t work” by citing a recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The study tracked virus transmission among Marine Corps recruits who underwent quarantine. But two of the study’s authors refuted Dr. Oskoui’s interpretation. Rather, they said, the study showed that nonpharmaceutical interventions like masks and social distancing cannot be relied on alone to eliminate transmission.

“For me, drawing the conclusion from our study that masking is not effective is like claiming that car brakes are not effective in preventing crashes because accidents still occur when they are used,” said Dr. Stuart C. Sealfon, the senior author of the study and a professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “This is either a mistaken or a deliberately misleading interpretation of the results of the study.”

Dr. Sealfon added: “In view of the preponderance of evidence in the scientific literature supporting the benefits of mask wearing in reducing the transmission of SARS-COV-2, no reasonable scientist would conclude that these measures are ineffective. They are very effective, but they are not foolproof.”

Throughout the hearing, Dr. Oskoui also promoted prescribing zinc and vitamin D. He said that the United States should follow the example of Britain and distribute vitamin D supplements to older people.

The N.I.H. also recommends against using zinc to treat the coronavirus except in clinical trials. The British government has offered 2.5 million people free vitamin D to keep bones and muscle healthy, especially as more people stayed indoors, but the National Health Service has noted that “there is currently not enough evidence to support taking vitamin D to prevent or treat coronavirus.”

Dr. Jane M. Orient, a prominent skeptic of vaccines, also cast doubt on mask wearing, suggesting that “maybe instead of putting masks on everybody, we should be putting lids on the toilet or putting Clorox into it before you flush it.” While there is some evidence that toilet bowls can be infectious, the virus is most commonly distributed through close contact with others, and masks do offer some protection.

:{:{}:

Dr. Orient also cited “192 studies compiled on hydroxychloroquine with all showing some benefit when used early.”

:{:{}:

That appeared to be an exaggerated reference to a database of studies gathered by an anonymous group. Of those studies, about 40 were categorized as researching use of hydroxychloroquine as an early treatment, and about two dozen of those concluding that the drug demonstrated “positive” effects.

Mr. Hawley criticized lockdowns as harmful to mental health, accurately citing a government survey showing that a quarter of young adults seriously thought about suicide in June. He then repeated an inaccurate claim from Mr. Trump that the World Health Organization no longer recommends lockdowns.

Mr. Johnson himself echoed praise for hydroxychloroquine, claiming that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also “talked” about the drug. While it is true that Dr. Fauci has discussed hydroxychloroquine in the pandemic, he has warned against its use.

As the hearing drew to a close, the senator offered his opinion of the severity of the pandemic.

“It’s certainly worse than the flu, but is it that much worse to cause that much economic devastation with that severe of a human toll?” Mr. Johnson asked.

That prompted almost immediate pushback from one of his own witnesses, Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya of Stanford University School of Medicine, who told the senator: “It is worse than the flu.”

---

an 621

Hawley demands Canada be added to religious freedom watch list

Alex Henderson

June 27, 2021

In Alberta, Canada, some pastors were arrested after openly defying COVID-19 restriction, and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri is claiming that the pastors, James Coates and Tim Stephens, were victims of religiou...

---

an 521 R Reich

At the risk of being the skunk at the picnic, I feel compelled to warn you that if we forget and move on from the tragedies of this past year, we're setting ourselves on a dangerous path. Of course I understand the desire to forget all the unpleasantness and start a new chapter. But if we do, we're inviting greater tragedies in the future.

Let me remind you: Donald Trump lied about the results of the last election. And then – you remember, don't you? – he tried to overturn the results.

Trump twisted the arms of state election officials. He held a rally to stop Congress from certifying the election, followed by the violent attack on the Capitol. Five people died. Senators and representatives could have been slaughtered.

Several Republican members of Congress encouraged the attempted coup by joining him in the big lie and refusing to certify the election — even after the mob desecrated the halls of our democracy.

This was in January of this year, yet we seem to be doing everything we can to blot it out of our memory. Meanwhile, those responsible for instigating the attack haven't been held accountable in any respect — including by the media.

The Washington Post hosted a live video chat with Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley, a ringleader in the attempt to overturn the results of the election. Hawley had even made a fist-pump gesture toward the mob at the Capitol before the attack.

But the Post billed the interview as being about Hawley's new book on big tech. It even posted a biography of Hawley that made no mention of Hawley's sedition, referring instead to his supposed reputation "for taking on the big and the powerful to protect Missouri workers" and as "a fierce defender of the Constitution."

CBS This Morning interviewed Florida Republican Rick Scott, another senator who tried to overturn the election by not certifying the results. But there was no mention of his sedition, either. The CBS interviewer confined his questions to Biden's spending plans, which Scott unsurprisingly opposed.

Senators Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also repeatedly appear on major news programs without being questioned about their attempts to undo the results of the election, or their continued promotion of Trump's lies.

The media is supposed to serve as a crucial check on those in power. But in its breathless desire to cover the "news" it is failing to remind us of our recent past.

The consequences of this failure are dire.

Trump's big lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and that President Biden is not legitimate, is not disappearing. A majority of Republican voters believe him.

That big lie is being used by Republican state legislatures to justify an all-out assault on the right to vote.

Hours after Florida enacted new voting restrictions, Texas's Republican-led legislature pushed ahead with its own bill that would make it one of the hardest states in which to cast a ballot.

The Republican-controlled Arizona Senate launched a private recount of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa County – farming out 2.1 million ballots to GOP partisans with no experience in ballot counting or election monitoring. At least one person involved in the recount participated in the Capitol attack.

The Republican Party even purged one of its leaders, Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, for telling the truth about the election.

Meanwhile, Republican state legislatures are muscling their way into election administration, as they attempt to dislodge or bully local election officials who have always run our voting systems.

Trump's big lie will continue to flourish unless the lawmakers who went along with it and have failed to renounce it face real consequences.

That means no book promotions, no cushy interviews, no guest op-eds in the Sunday paper.

What possible excuse is there for booking them if they have not publicly retracted their election lies? If they must appear, they should be asked if they continue to deny the election results and precisely why.

It also means a thorough independent 9-11 type inquiry into what happened, whether members of Congress were involved, how Donald Trump and others were involved.

Republican leaders must not duck this. History is watching.

They must be held accountable to the truth. Otherwise the trauma of 2020 will return — perhaps in even more terrifying form.

---

commm dr

this is what you shall do... stand up for the stupid and crazy...

— Walt Whitman, Preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass

A number of readers wondered whether, following my recent piece on The Triplets in the House of Representatives, I was being unfair to the United States Senate, a body that includes at least two people deserving recognition as much as the triplets in the House. I can only acknowledge my oversight with a mea culpa and make amends by directing the readers' attention to two Senators who, with each utterance, warm the cockles of the trumpian heart and the hearts of all who love and miss the trump.

The two Senators are Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Josh Hawley of Missouri. Great minds can differ on which of the two men is the dumbest man in the Senate. NBC's Joe Scarborough bestowed the label on Josh, calling him the dumbest guy in the Senate, but I prefer to bestow that honor on Wisconsin's Ron Johnson. Ron does not have the academic credentials of Josh. Josh attended Stanford, and Yale law school. The lack of those credentials does not, however, deprive him of the right to being first, not second, in the competition.

Ron has served in the Senate since 2010. During that time ample opportunities for him to show his stupidity have presented themselves, and he has rarely failed to take advantage of them. In 2021, however, he has taken positions that in the opinion of this writer give him an insurmountable lead over Josh Hawley. Among his most memorable demonstrations were his comments on the rioters who stormed the United States Capitol as Ron and his colleague took refuge in a safe space in the Capitol building. Ron said of his time being sequestered in a safe space in the Capitol that: "I never felt threatened I didn't foresee this. They made up their own standards in terms of incitement. The first question was 'Was this predictable? Was it foreseeable? And the answer was no, it wasn't. I don't know any Trump supporters who would do that."

In an interview in March he said of the rioters that: "I know those were people who love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, so I wasn't concerned." He went on to say that had the rioters been members of the Black Lives Matter crowd he would have been more concerned for his safety. He did not explain why he joined his colleagues in being taken to a refuge where they were protected from the people showing their love for the country by storming its capitol nor has he explained why more than 400 of them have been criminally indicted for trying to prove their love of country.

Ron's observations about the good intentions of the rioters by themselves, would perhaps not earn him the distinction I have granted him. It is also his expertise on the Covid-19 vaccine. He has repeatedly downplayed the need for people to get vaccinated against the virus. In an interview with Vicky McKenna on April 23 he explained that if a person had the vaccine he or she didn't need to worry about whether anyone else got the vaccine. As he explained: "So if you have a vaccine, quite honestly, what do you care if your neighbor has one or not. I mean, what is it to you?... So why this big push to make sure everybody gets vaccinated?" The more than 570,000 American who have died could explain why taking the vaccine is important. Anthony Fauci responded to Johnson's comments saying they were nonsense. He said we have very effective vaccines and it makes no sense to take the Johnson position that if he's been vaccinated no one else needs to take the vaccine.

Johnson's competitor is Josh Hawley. Josh is better credentialed than Ron. Josh received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and his law degree from Yale Law School. Both of his degrees have served him in poor stead proving, as a president of Harvard once said, the mere fact that you graduate from a great university does not mean you are an educated person. On December 30, 2020, Josh announced by means of a trump like tweet, that he would refuse to certify the vote that Joe Biden had been elected president. "I cannot vote to certify the Electoral College results on January 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws." Not content to express his unwillingness to certify the electoral college results, as the rioters gathered on January 6 preparing to launch their attack on the Capitol, Josh walked by them pumping his fist in the air in a gesture of support. What happened next is history.

Commenting on Josh's tweets and conduct, John Danforth, a former Missouri Senator said: "Supporting Josh Hawley. . . was the worst decision I've ever made in my life. He has consciously appealed to the worst. He has attempted to drive us apart and he has undermined public belief in our democracy. And that's great damage." Senator Danforth got that right. Josh Hawley is a national disgrace. So is Ron Johnson. The nut jobs in the House of Representatives have not upstaged the ones in the Senate. The electorate has made sure there are enough to go around.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/anti-corporate-gop/

no lnx twt

how 'anti-corporate rhetoric' captured 'the paranoid, vindictive post-Trump GOP': conservative

Alex Henderson April 27, 2021

Historically speaking, right-wing Republicans are strident defenders of corporate America. Economist Milton Friedman argued that corporations had no obligation to anyone but their shareholders, and the late talk radio host Rush Limbaugh equated anti-corporatism with anti-capitalism — that is, before he flip-flopped and endorsed former President Donald Trump's pseudo-populism. And in 2021, railing against "woke corporations" is a badge of honor for Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and other Trumpian GOP wingnuts. Never Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter takes an in-depth look at the strident "anti-corporate rhetoric" coming from the far right in an article published by The Bulwark on April 27 — stressing that it underscores the "paranoid, vindictive" nature of the "post-Trump GOP."

:{:{}:

The message of Republicans who have been railing against "woke capitalism," according to Carpenter, is "Screw with our elections…. and we'll screw your trusts, tax cuts, loopholes and credits."

"Republicans try to pretend that their bullying is something more principled — that it's anti-woke corporate populism — but in reality, it's little more than grievance weaponized as policy," Carpenter explains. "But don't laugh. The way things are going, this could be the next grand unifying theory for the GOP."

Carpenter points out that everyone from Hawley to Fox News' Tucker Carlson to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has been lambasting Corporate America for being "woke." Cruz, who once employed Carpenter as his communications director, came up with the hashtag #GoWokeGoBroke.

"The GOP's clash with business over the last few weeks is different in two ways from what came before," Carpenter observes. "First, on the business side, this case is different because the 'activism' in question — the holding back of donations, the criticism — is not related to some matter of policy or party, but rather, to election administration and the preservation of democracy itself. And on the GOP's side, this case is different because it is based solely upon the politics of retaliation."

The Republicans who have been raging against corporations, Carpenter notes, are upset because the companies have acknowledged Joe Biden as the legitimate president of the United States — rejecting Trump's false claims of voter fraud — and spoken out against GOP voter suppression bills.

"Republicans are proposing punitive action in direct response to political speech from companies about the post-election Big Lie, the attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and Georgia's recently enacted voting law," Carpenter observes. "Threatening to use the power of the state to crack down on that speech is repulsive…. This anti-corporate rhetoric has captured the paranoid, vindictive imagination of the post-Trump GOP."

By "post-Trump GOP," Carpenter isn't saying that the former president is no longer influential in his party. Most Republicans are afraid to say one word against him. Rather, Carpenter means "post-Trump White House GOP" or "post-Trump presidency GOP." And she stresses that the GOP, following Trump's presidency, has maintained his mean-spirited nature.

"There is a culture clash underway," Carpenter writes. "Hawley and the rest of the anti-woke crusaders are saying that Corporate America must heed their 'values' or get smashed — just like Hawley's rioters smashed up the Capitol when the Democrats didn't agree with their 'values' about 'election integrity.' It's all the same brute idea. Comply with my party, or get the fist."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

GOP's 'anti-democratic' rhetoric on HR 1 signals a disturbing battle ... ›

The basic deal between corporate America and the GOP is alive and ... ›

Here's why 'anti-corporate rhetoric' from Republicans is a 'hollow ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Robert Reich: Don't Buy the GOP's Phony Anti-Corporate Turn - In ... ›

Will the GOP Rift with Big Business Lead to Higher Corporate Taxes ... ›

The GOP Is No Longer the Pro-Business Party ›

---

dynamic duo

https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/mlb-georgia/

---

an 221 franken hawley ~ local paper op ed

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/eric-garland-and-josh-hawley/

---

josh Hawley has become 'the face of the Biden resistance': report

Alex Henderson

February 06, 2021

Among many Democrats and Never Trump conservatives, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri has become one of the most hated Republicans in the U.S. Senate and is being associated with violent insurrection, extremism and refusing to accept democratic election results. But in Trumpworld and right-wing media, the GOP senator is viewed much more favorably — and journalists Marc Caputo and Burgess Everett, in an article published by Politico on February 4, stress that Hawley has been positioning himself as the face of Trumpist opposition to President Joe Biden's policies.

Before January 6, Hawley announced that he would contest the certification of Biden's Electoral College victory during a joint session of Congress — and in a now-infamous photo taken on January 6 before the storming of the U.S. Capitol Building, Hawley can be seen raising his fist in solidarity with a mob of extremists. A January 9 headline on NBC News' website read, "Sen. Josh Hawley Becomes a Pariah on Capitol Hill." And Joe Scarborough, the former GOP congressman and Never Trump conservative who hosts "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, has repeatedly slammed Hawley as someone who helped paved the way for the violence of January 6.

Hawley, of course, has condemned that violence, arguing that it's unfair to link him with insurrection when all he wanted to do was make sure the 2020 election had an accurate vote count. And as Caputo and Everett's article explains, Democrats and Never Trump conservatives are not Hawley's target audience. Hawley is a Trumpist all the way.

"The face of the Biden resistance is taking shape in the Senate: Josh Hawley," Caputo and Everett explain. "In a prelude to a widely expected 2024 presidential bid, the Missouri Republican is the only senator to oppose every one of President Joe Biden's cabinet nominees — a distinction sealed Tuesday when he voted against confirming new Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Hawley briefly held up the confirmation of another cabinet official, for the Department of Homeland Security."

The Politico reporters add, "Even before Biden became president, Hawley initiated his bid for the Trump wing of the party by becoming the first senator to announce he would vote against the Electoral College results certifying the new president's win, thrilling the outgoing president and his followers."

Senate Democrats had been pushing for quick floor votes on Biden’s national-security nominees in light of the insur… https://t.co/IQsws9rwKF

— POLITICO (@POLITICO)1611089380.0

Hawley has denied that he plans to run for president in 2024, but according to Caputo and Everett, "No one familiar with presidential politics or the U.S. Senate is taking the 41-year-old at his word."

Veteran GOP strategist Scott Reed told Politico, "Hawley's always been a young man in a hurry. He ran for attorney general on a plank he would serve all four years and (almost) immediately ran for U.S. Senate once he got in office."

Hawley sounds very Trumpian when he rails against "big tech," "elites" and the mainstream media. And according to Reed, "He's clearly laying groundwork for running for president in 2024. There's no way else to explain this behavior."

GOP consultant David Carney spoke to Politico as well, saying that Hawley is "definitely one of the two dozen guys in the mix for president. Why would anybody know a Missouri senator, basically a freshman who's a first-termer? This is what you need to do to break through the clutter. Now, it's a double-edged sword because if you do too much crazy stuff, you're not credible. So, you have to do non-crazy stuff. You can't become a caricature. You can't be the class clown."

Caputo and Everett note that Hawley has become a very polarizing figure.

"His eagerness to ingratiate himself with Trump supporters led to a now infamous January 6 photo of Hawley, outside the Capitol, pumping his fist in support of a throng of demonstrators who later went on to storm the building, vandalize it and temporarily delay the vote," the reporters observe. "Hawley's role in opposing the Electoral College vote resulted in a Senate ethics complaint, and led Simon & Schuster to cancel his book deal, 'The Tyranny of Big Tech,' last month. And former Missouri Sen. John Danforth — who helped propel Hawley to the seat Danforth held decades ago — withdrew his support of the senator, saying his endorsement was 'the worst mistake I ever made.'"

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

---

comm dr

Facing growing callsfor his resignation or explusion for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley on Monday filed an ethics complaint against the seven Democratic senators who filed an ethics complaint against him and fellow GOP Sen. Ted Cruz last week over their roles in inciting the deadly January 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The Missouri Republican's counter-complaint (pdf) against Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio.) accuses the Democratic senators of filing an "unprecedently frivolous and improper ethics complaint" and demands that the Senate Ethics Committee mete out "discipline" in response.

In a letter to the group of seven Democrats on Monday, Hawley wrote that he was "astounded to see the outrageous personal and partisan attack you labeled an 'ethics complaint.' It is a startling abuse of the ethics process and a direct assault on democratic debate."

Hawley's counter-complaint prompted immediate mockery, with Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) likening the filing to a schoolyard taunt:

Mcconnell republican who incited fascist insurrection against democracy going with the ‘I’m rubber you’re glue’ def… https://t.co/wLaHykELmj

— Bill Pascrell, Jr. (@Bill Pascrell, Jr.)1611582286.0

The Democratic complaint against Hawley and Cruz states that the Republican senators "amplified claims of election fraud that had resulted in threats of violence against state and local officials around the country."

"Cruz and Hawley continued to amplify the claims of fraud that they likely knew to be baseless and that had led to violence earlier that day," the complaint continues. "Violent action provoked by false fraud claims remains a persistent threat."

In the early hours of January 7—shortly after the violent right-wing mob incited by then-President Donald Trump invaded and ransacked the halls of the Capitol Building—Hawley and Cruz voted with several of their Senate GOP colleagues and more than 100 House Republicans to toss out Arizona and Pennsylvania's electoral votes for President Joe Biden, an effort that was ultimately unsuccessful.

Hawley's role in the last-ditch Republican attempt to disenfranchise millions of voters drew particularly close attention, in part thanks to the now-infamous photo of the Missouri senator raising his fist in support of the pro-Trump mob just before it stormed the Capitol, resulting in five deaths.

While Hawley now claims he was "never attempting to overturn the election," The Washington Post's Greg Sargent argued last week that the senator's narrative is "just clever parsing: Hawley and others who announced plans to object to Biden's electors plainly helped persuade untold numbers of Americans that the election result might still be overturned (Hawley even subsequently voted to sustain the objections)."

"As long as a large enough constituency still continued believing the election was stolen from Trump, Hawley would be remembered among them as the leading fighter on their behalf," Sargent wrote. "Hawley thought he could harness these impulses. He is now stuck in the monumentally absurd position of condemning the violence without retracting or apologizing for his role in feeding the Big Lie that incited it."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/josh-hawley-2650126937/

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) exhibited "warning signs" of an extremist sympathizer long before he sided with a mob of people who set out to attack the U.S. Capitol, according to a recent report.

The Kansas City Star revealed on Sunday that Hawley has a history of standing up for racists and extremists that stunned his early mentors.

According to the Star, Hawley spoke up for the rights of militia members after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and defended L.A. police detective Mark Fuhrman against charges of racism following the trial of O.J. Simpson.

"Many of the people populating these movements are not radical, right-wing, pro-assault weapons freaks as they were originally stereotyped," Hawley wrote regarding militia groups following the bombing. "Dismissed by the media and treated with disdain by their elected leaders, these citizens come together and form groups that often draw more media fire as anti-government hate gatherings."

Hawley also argued in his writings that Fuhrman was unfairly called a racist after his use of racial slurs came to light during the Simpson trial.

"In this politically correct society, derogatory labels such as 'racist' are widely misused, and our ability to have open debate is eroding," he opined.

"Since the Capitol rampage, Hawley's mentors have disavowed him," the Star report explained. "Donors have demanded refunds. Colleagues have called for his resignation or expulsion. And those who helped guide his career are asking themselves if they missed something essential about their former mentee."

David Kennedy, a Stanford professor who served Hawley's academic adviser, told the paper that he felt "a little bamboozled" after learning the details of the senator's past.

Read the entire report from The Kansas City Star.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Hawley slammed for railing against 'the muzzling of America' — on the front page of the New York Post

Alex Henderson

January 25, 2021

In an op-ed published by the New York Post on Sunday, January 24, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri complains bitterly about what he claims is "the latest form of cancel culture" in the United States: being lambasted...

---

HNN

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/conservative-movement/

One of the challenges in trying to understand what has happened to a conservative movement that has clearly become detached from reality, is that for decades we've heard that someconservatives needed to be taken seriously as intellectuals. These chosen conservatives are often anointed as "serious" due their academic pedigree (usually Ivy Leaguers). But the equating of impressive degrees with intellectual seriousness has an especially bad track record for conservatives. Time and again when it comes to the integrity, honest analysis, and basic grasp of facts that are the basic standards of any "serious" scholar, they have failed.

Let's make a list of today's conservatives who currently get the "serious" designation by virtue of their elite education and for not being Louis Gohmert. In light of last week's conspiracy-driven, right-wing attack on Congress, Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz stand out for their unrelenting intellectual dishonesty. Both Hawley (Yale, JD) and Cruz (Princeton BA, Harvard JD) took to the floor of the Senate just hours after right-wing collaborators had vandalized the Capitol and threatened their colleagues out of an unmoored conviction that the 2020 election had been stolen. Multiple recounts, election certifications, and dozens of court cases later, these two Ivy Leaguers shamelessly continued to raise "concerns" about the election's basic fairness. Yet, when Hawley lost his book contract on the dangers of "big tech" with Simon & Schuster over the weekend, the Washington Post's Fred Hiatt expressed a hesitant reservation at a publisher deciding it didn't like the author instead of the manuscript....Up until that point, Simon & Schuster "obviously believed" that Hawley's manuscript had "merit" and Hiatt assumes that it would have made "a useful contribution to public debate on a vital subject."

Especially after Hawley's surreally dark turn last Wednesday night, why should we assume that a "useful contribution" was forthcoming from him on any debate? Hawley had led investigations into Google and Facebook, to be sure. But certainly part of the answer is that Hawley was seen a "serious" conservative. Ana Marie Cox's recent Washington Post article on Ted Cruz meanwhile stands out for her refreshing willingness to suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, Cruz, despite his reputation for smarts, is "devastatingly average." Mimi Swartz has also started to peel the protective cover of seriousness back. Cruz used "his pseudo-intellectualism and his Ivy League pedigree as a cudgel." And now, she adds, "Any decent soul might ask: If you are so smart, how come you are using that fancy education to subvert the Constitution you've purported to love? Shouldn't you have known better?" Assuming that an Ivy League degree translates into conservatives knowing better has been the problem all along. Swartz adds correctly that Cruz "did know better; he just didn't care." And because he was tabbed as a "serious" conservative, he didn't have to.

Senator Tom Cotton (Harvard BA, JD) stood out last Wednesday by not joining his fellow Ivy Leaguers in their objections on the Senate floor; but he'd already shown his flair for dangerous hyperbole and distortion last summer when the New York Times ran the Senator's opinion piece calling for the troops to march on Black Lives Matter protestors. Cotton cherry-picked the most extreme examples of unrest to malign the overwhelmingly peaceful protests happening on the streets. As any scholar will tell you, cherry-picking the evidence is both lazy and untrustworthy. Not a good look for someone posing as a "serious" conservative.

And one could go on. What really connects these elite-educated Senators is precisely their lack of seriousness intellectually. It's not new, however. Going back to the 1960s, alarmed that the conservative movement was falling into the grips of the delusional John Birch Society, William F. Buckley (Yale, BA) was anointed as that generation's "serious" conservative. While Buckley was public intellectual rather than an office-holder, his political influence was considerable and timely for the conservative movement. In particular, Buckley disavowed the Birchers, whose view of the world was rife with conspiracy theories and seething anti-communism. Some Birchers were convinced that Dwight Eisenhower himself was a communist plant, so the bar was pretty low here for a "serious" conservative to clear. The soft bigotry of low expectations, I guess. But Buckley also wrote in 1957 that the white South was right to oppose the civil rights movement because, he wrote, "for the time being, it is the advanced race." This was, he continued, "a fact . . . that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists." While over his long career Buckley did continue to reexamine the state of conservatism – indeed he had grave reservations about the war in Iraq – his entry intothe ranks of "serious" conservatism was by virtue of his patrician background and elite education. Once in, like the "serious" conservatives of today, he had permission to be either wildly wrong or occasionally right.

in between Buckley's heyday and the current crop of Ivy League-right wingers, we had the era of William Bennett and Newt Gingrich in the 1980s and 1990s. Bennett (Williams College BA, University of Texas PhD, Harvard JD) harrumphed his way to becoming the nation's high school principal, or officially, the Secretary of Education, under Ronald Reagan. In the early 1990s he published The Book of Virtues: A Treasure of Great Moral Stories. It started with a quote from Plato's Republic, and invoked Aristotle in the first paragraph, so you knew it was serious. The book included lessons on the importance of saying "please" and a Laura Richards poem, "In which we which learn to sit still." That this was heralded as an "important" book can only be attributed to the fact that Bennett had earned his stripes as a "serious" conservative. Newsweekpractically sighed with gratitude: "Maybe this is just what the country needs."

And then there was Newt Gingrich (PhD, Tulane). After having been denied tenure at West Georgia College, Gingrich eventually won a seat in the House of Representatives in 1978. He injected into the increasingly conservative Republican Party the slashing political style we all recognize now. Democrats were not simply the opponent, they were "radical" and "traitors." Pundits and columnists of the 1990s raised their collective eyebrow over Gingrich's style even as they soberly reminded their readers that Gingrich had a doctorate and had been a college professor. A 1995 New York Times profile noted that he compared himself to, "Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Churchill, and De Gaulle." But it also noted that while Gingrich "came to congress in 1979 as a 35 year-old history professor," he often used "hyperbole, absolutes and distortion to make his points, and he can be careless with facts and numbers." While perhaps these are just tools of the trade in politics, they make one unserious as a scholar. But Professor Gingrich has dined out for years now on his farcical reputation as a "serious" conservative.

Like Gingrich, today's elite-educated conservative politicians continue to get a pass when it comes to the basic ethical standards of real scholars, especially the moral obligation to be true to the evidence and facts. Ironically, toward the end of that long day of sedition last week, this principle was articulated poignantly by another conservative, one known more for his religion and wealth than his academic credentials. Mitt Romney (Harvard, JD/MBA), looking exhausted and shaken, pleaded with his fellow Republican senators, "The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth." Sadly, Hawley, Cruz, Cotton, et al., will likely continue to spread lies to keep their conservative base shored up. Their seriousness lies in the danger of their politics, but they themselves are not "serious" conservatives.

---

121 guk

...n 2018, Club for Growth spent nearly $3m attacking the Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in Missouri, a race that was ultimately won by Hawley, the 41-year-old Yale law graduate with presidential ambitions who has amplified Donald Trump’s baseless lies about election fraud.

That year, it also spent $1.2m to attack the Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who challenged – and then narrowly lost – against Cruz.

Other legislators supported by Club for Growth include Matt Rosendale, who this week called for the resignation of fellow Republican Liz Cheney after she said she would support impeachment of the president, and Lance Gooden, who accused Pelosi of being just as responsible for last week’s riot as Trump.

Dozens of the Republicans supported by Club for Growth voted to challenge the election results even after insurrectionist stormed the Capitol, which led to five deaths, including the murder of a police officer....

---

simon shuster pulls book deal, picked up by regnery, which will disttrib via S&S (no comment from latter an 121)

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/josh-hawley-ben-sasse

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) is still angry about his Republican colleague Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) recent political stunt in support of President Donald Trump's dangerous coup to challenge the Electoral College certification despite the U.S. Capitol breach that led to the deaths of five people.

On Friday, Jan.8, Sasse appeared on NPR's "Morning Edition" with host Steve Inskeep where he discussed the disturbing series of events that unfolded this week. The Republican lawmaker lambasted Hawley for his attempt to invalidate the outcome of the election on behalf of a disgraced president.

Sasse did not hold back when it came to sharing his brutally honest opinion of the Missouri senator. "Senator Hawley was doing something that was really dumbass, and I have been clear about that in public and in private since long before he announced he was going to do this" Sasse said.

Although Hawley claims to have been on the right side of history, Sasse argues that his actions were nothing more than "a stunt" and a "terrible idea." He also condemned the senator for repeatedly lying to the American public.

He added, "This was a stunt, it was a terrible, terrible idea, and you don't lie to the American people, and that's been going on. The American people have been lied to, chiefly by Donald Trump, and lies have consequences." twt vid]

sasse's latest remarks come just days after his remarks on the Senate floor just hours after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. At the time, Sasse made his sentiments quite clear. Now, he has become the first Republican senator to confirm that he will consider articles of impeachment to remove Trump from office.

"The House, if they come together and have a process, I will definitely consider whatever articles they might move, because as I told you, I believe the president has disregarded his oath of office," Sasse said during a "CBS This Morning" interview.Lawmakers are currently working to determine the next course of action as Inauguration Day approaches.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

---

persisted w elect coll objection after insurrection, in fact used it as rationale? said penn mail in vote violated state const ( state suprme ct, refused to hear thus he said never decided?

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/josh-hawley-2649774923

Leading Missouri newspaperThe Kansas City Staron Wednesday published an editorial excoriating Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) over the Republican leader's effort to block certification of President-elect Joe Biden's electoral college victory.

Wednesday afternoon, supporters of the president stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. as Congress moved to certify the electoral college vote. The mob forced representatives, senators, congressional reporters and staffers to don gas masks and evacuate the building. One woman on the Capitol grounds was shot in the chest and later died, the Metropolitan Police Department confirmed.

According toThe Kansas City Star, Hawley — who was the first senator to join President Donald Trump's last-ditch attempt to reverse the vote — "deserves an impressive share of the blame for the blood that's been shed" at the nation's Capitol today.

Per the Star:

"No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday's coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol than one Joshua David Hawley, the 41-year-old junior senator from Missouri, who put out a fundraising appeal while the siege was underway."

Acknowledging the "tragic, outrageous and devastating" events that transpired Wednesday at the Capitol Building, the editorial board described the attack as "wholly consistent with Trump's call to overturn the election to address nonexistent fraud."

"Those of you who have excused all of the brazen lawlessness of this administration can take a little bit of credit for these events, too," the paper wrote. "They couldn't have done it without you."

The Kansas City Star further accused Hawley "and other Republicans who upheld Trump's con about widespread fraud" of "[knowing] all along that his claims were bogus."

The paper then implored Hawley and other Republicans to "surprise us":

"Now that they've seen exactly where those lies have landed us, decency demands that they try to prevent further violence by making clear that Joe Biden did not win by cheating."

Read the full editorial at The Kansas City Star.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

an 121

...(The satirical news site *The Onion* deftly handled this, calling out each of the 126 with an individualized message. To Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida, "You have been absolutely fearless when stopping the American people from participating in elections;" to Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, "Never again will we allow U.S. citizens to recklessly turn in their ballots;" to Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, "Thank you for bravely standing up to the American voters;" and so on. Each was accompanied by an especially beguiling photo of a maggot.)

Many of those same members and more—some 140—are now lending their names to the smoke-and-mirrors effort in Congress to challenge the votes of the Electoral College, which already has given the election to Joe Biden. The votes of the electors officially are to be announced on Wednesday by Vice President Mike Pence in his capacity as President of the Senate.

In normal times, this would be a mere formality, but Trump and Republicans have decided to turn it into a clumsy attempt at a coup d'etat, ignoring the rule of law and numerous court rulings. They're putting on an act, trying to overturn the results of a free and fair election as a dumbshow of power, all out of fear of Tin Hat Trump's "base" of voters and to preserve a status quo that ignores the diversity of America, cossets the rich and fosters hate, poverty and inequality.

In the House, the leaders of this effort include the feckless Louie Gohmert of Texas, known as "America's craziest and dumbest congressman." Having just had an election lawsuit thrown out by a Federal appeals court on New Year's Day, he went on *Newsmax* suggesting that the alternative now is going to the streets and "being as violent as antifa and BLM."

He's joined in this mad pursuit—simultaneously dumbing down and radicalizing a significant portion of the party and American populace—by the usual suspects, led by Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama and including Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, Jody Hice of Georgia and Joe Wilson of South Carolina. New members of the House are piping up, too, including QAnon queen Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

On the Senate side, opposition to finalizing the presidential result is being led by Josh Hawley of Missouri, a man of vaulting ambition who wants to be president so badly he's is willing to violate his sworn oath of office and destroy the Constitution and Bill of Rights to get there, using conspiracy theories and falsehoods to oil his way into the White House as early as 2024.

In a letter published Saturday, eleven other Republican senators and senators-elect demanded an "emergency 10-day audit" of results in "the disputed states,"—in other words, the states Trump is shocked—shocked!—that he lost to Joe Biden, states he assumed would be a cinch for him. They weren't.

Remember their names:

Ted Cruz (Texas)
Ron Johnson (Wisconsin)
James Lankford (Oklahoma)
Steve Daines (Montana)
John Kennedy (Louisiana)
Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee)
Mike Braun (Indiana)
Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming) (new senator)
Roger Marshall (Kansas) (new senator)
Bill Hagerty (Tennessee) (new senator)
Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) (new senator)

Sadly, this Dirty Dozen (including Hawley), a so-called "Sedition Caucus" in the Senate, probably won't be deterred by news of that phone call Trump made to Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, trying to bully him into finding more votes to change the result in the state from Biden to Trump—a conversation much like the one with Ukraine President Zelensky that a year ago got Donald Trump impeached.

Trump's impeachment didn't lead to conviction by the Senate, thanks to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who would brook no new evidence or witnesses, turning the trial into a sham with a predetermined outcome. But McConnell now is opposed to his colleagues' efforts to subvert the Electoral College. Why? Because McConnell is all about the raw power he alone holds in the Senate. He cares for that and little else except, of course, tax cuts for the superrich, holding rules and regulations at bay and getting as many conservative Federal judges approved by the Senate as quickly as he can.

...

---

says he has 140 votes

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/republicans-contest-elecotral-college

partner w/ bernie on covid relief?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-election-2649699950

mo brooks tuberville BS

---

an 1220

...Newsweek:

A call to boycott Walmart gained traction on social media after the retail giant "mistakenly" issued a tweet calling Republican Senator Josh Hawley a "sore loser" on Wednesday.

The angry protest against one of the nation's largest retailers came after a member of Walmart's social media team insulted Hawley after he tweeted his intention to object to the results of the presidential election when Congress meets on January 6 to count the votes of the Electoral College.

"I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on January 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws," Hawley, who is from Missouri, said in a statement posted to Twitter. "And I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden."

Yeah, that's all bullshit, and he knows it. And his little tantrum will do nothing but force his fellow congressfolks to stay late after school, to everyone's eternal irritation and chagrin. But it will keep him viable as a 2024 presidential candidate. So that's what that's all about....

---

aha omg: in post-truth, JOK video dr is SOP // Neg attack ad, strip of context, hype anger, pix bypass brain

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/gop-conspiracy-theories/

it's been happening for decades — but the transformation is now complete.

It started with the Whitewater investigation, went through all of the Benghazi investigations, and ramped up in recent years when Republicans turned around to falsely claim that the investigation into Donald Trump's ties with a Russian conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election was as a "hoax," ignoring the overwhelming evidence of rampant collusion. On Wednesday, the transformation of the GOP from a real political party to a conspiracy theory cult was finally fully completed.

Wednesday was the day Senate Republicans spent hours and a hefty chunk of taxpayer money to bolster the lie that Democrats "stole" the 2020 election, with their only evidence being the say-so of a narcissistic sociopath whose only spoken language is lying. No one, especially no Republican politician, sincerely believes that Trump was the "real" winner of the 2020 election, or that there's any evidence whatsoever of voter fraud or election irregularities of any real importance. As Sen. Gary Peters, D.-Mich., the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee declared during his opening remarks, "this hearing gives a platform to conspiracy theories and lies" and " is a grave threat to the future of our democracy."

Of course, that is the point.

As the committee chair, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and his fellow Republicans understand, their party can no longer win fair elections or campaign on ideas, since the public rejects most policies the GOP stands for. So the party's only recourse is to dish out a steady stream of conspiracy theories meant to distract from the policy debate while leveraging their power to undermine democracy.

As the mainstream news coverage of the hearing dutifully noted, no evidence of voter fraud was presented during Wednesday's hearing and Democrats on the committee repeatedly emphasized that Trump's claims of "fraud" have been presented before the courts dozens of times and thrown out for lack of evidence. Indeed, anyone who actually watched the hearing or read responsible coverage of it would walk away with the impression that the Republicans were a bunch of raving madmen and the Democrats were the only people speaking any sense.

What the Republicans running the hearing understand, however, is that their audience, the Republican base, neither watched the hearing nor consumed the mainstream media coverage of it. Instead, the purpose of the hearing is to generate footage that can be edited, often misleadingly, into clips that are fed into right-wing media sources and circulated through social media.

Evidence is not needed, nor is proof, nor convincing arguments. All that's needed are clips of the Republican senators, looking officious in the trappings of a Senate hearing, railing about "stolen" elections and defending the honor of those who purport to believe that Joe Biden stole the election. And all those poignant and convincing rebuttals from Democrats? Those can be chopped and edited to make the Democrats look "crazy" and like they're unleashing "unhinged" attacks on the noble Republicans.

None of this is about keeping Trump in office.

Senate Republicans not only understand that he lost, but that his coup efforts are failing. Their crusade now is about exploiting his lies of a "rigged" election for their own political purposes. Feeding the GOP base's victim complex and riling them up with conspiracy theories keeps them too busy obsessively hating Democrats to notice that the Republicans have run the country into the ground. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri showcased the strategy perfectly, with a maudlin speech about how actual evidence of a rigged election wasn't the point, because "the constituents back at home" told him "theyfeltthey had been disenfranchised."

"These are normal, reasonable people. These are not crazy people," he said.

For someone actually watching the hearing, this is maddening. The folks Hawley is talking about are just rabid Republicans who back Trump's coup and are willing to stand by outrageous bad faith arguments to defend their belief that certain voters — namely Black voters in big cities — simply shouldn't have the same right vote.

But when Hawley's remarks about are inevitably cut into a video that removes all this context and fed into right-wing disinformation channels, all that audiences will see is Hawley defending his voters as "normal, reasonable people" who are "not crazy". It will read as him defending the honor of conservatives against those elitist, condescending liberals who are always calling them "crazy", instead of what actually happened, which was that Hawley said conservative "feelings" about the election matter more than the fact of who actually won.

Similarly, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky declared during the hearing that the election "in many ways, was stolen." He did not offer evidence, much less proof for this claim, which was a blatant lie. But it doesn't matter. He knows that his statement will be cut into a video and disseminated. He doesn't need evidence, so much as a quick clip with him looking authoritative as he offers this lie without rebuttal.

That's what GOP politics is all about these days. It's not about making a policy case to voters, since Republican politicians know that will never fly. Instead, it's about identity politics and stirring up hate, however ridiculous, against liberals. Hawley is hoping his constituents be so angry at the alleged liberals calling them "crazy" that they focus on getting their revenge by voting Republican, rather than asking hard questions about, say, why the Republican-run Senate has abandoned them to economic devastation during this pandemic.

This is all the Republican Party is these days: A propaganda engine churning out fake "scandals" meant to send their voters down conspiracy theory rabbit holes or stir irrational right-wing grievances. Anything, really, but ever talk about actual policy or governance, which Republican politicians know is territory they will always lose on.

That's why Republicans have fully committed to Trump's lies about the 2020 election. It's not that they care one whit about Trump — I suspect many of them are glad to see him go since he's a miserable person to be around — but because this conspiracy theory is so useful. Republicans can now focus their voters, ideally for four years, on nursing a grudge over losing an election they "should" have won, if only the votes of those meanie Democrats had been thrown in the trash.

After all, what's the alternative?

Republicans know they'd lose a reasonable debate about policy differences with Democrats. So this is what they've turned themselves into: A conspiracy theory cult that is always dashing from one mad lie to another, stirring up the base with nonsense and hoping the voters will never catch onto what a con the whole thing is.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/qanon-trump

amanda

Trump's attempts to steal the election are fruitless. His legal theater is going nowhere, and it's becoming apparent that this is more about shaking down credulous supporters for cash than about actually overturning the election results. Michigan pounded another nail in Trump's coffin Tuesday, when two Republicans who were blocking the vote certification in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, relented in the face of public outrage. It's all over but the grifting, which will likely continue as long as Trump keeps getting people to give him money for his "legal defense" — money that is being funneled through a PAC and likely straight into Trump's pocket.

Yet the Republican establishment is still tiptoeing around Trump, coddling his fragile ego by refusing to admit he lost the election. Some are going a step further, such as South Carolina's Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has been exerting pressure on state officials to toss out legally-cast ballots. Why are all these Republicans so afraid of Trump, who will no longer be president in 63 days?

The main reason appears to be that Republicans really are worried about their electoral prospects after Trump. The record Democratic turnout in the 2020 election — President-elect Joe Biden turned out 14 million more voters than Hillary Clinton in 2016 — caused many Republicans down-ballot from Trump to sweat their re-election prospects. Luckily for them, however, Trump also turned out an eye-popping 10 million new voters, which was enough to save the skins of many GOP candidates, even as Trump lost by slender margins in swing states.

Trump is a turnout machine for Republicans, who have been desperately casting around for years now for a way to save their party despite demographic changes that make the Democrats more popular among voters. The question of whether there will be Trumpism after Trump now dogs both Republicans who want to replicate their electoral successes under the reality TV president and Democrats who dearly hope this whole disaster was an anomaly.

"[S]ome conservative opinion leaders are already looking forward to a post-Trump future where the viable things about the 45th president can be neatly separated from his troublesome persona," Ed Kilgore writes for New York.

He cites "a representative fantasy" by right-wing writer Kristin Tate at The Hill, who longs for a "Republican with the political positions of Trump, but without decades of tabloid fodder," proposing that candidate might avoid "the bandwagon effect of suburban voters eager to show their public disapproval of his latest action."

Kilgore explores the various hopes that Republicans have for a "new Trump."Will it be Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Bible-thumper straight out of "The Handmaid's Tale" who has some crossover appeal for his occasional swipes at corporate America (though mostly for its perceived degeneracy)? Or Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who brings the racism and militant neofascism of Trump, but without the gleeful sleaze of a shameless sexual assailant?

These choices expose why Republicans fear that there may be no way to have Trumpism without Trump. Those guys and other contenders are all missing the secret sauce that helped Trump recruit so heavily among non-voters and infrequent voters. And no, it's not his so-called charisma.

What Trump really has going for him is what I call the "crackpot factor." Trump speaks to voters who share the racism and sexism of typical GOP voters, but who often don't vote because they think politics is boring and are awash in conspiracy theories about how the system is "rigged." Those voters saw a kindred spirit in Trump, a man who speaks fluent conspiracy theory and who got his start in politics by promoting claims that Barack Obama wasn't a native-born U.S. citizen.

Before the 2020 election, the team at FiveThirtyEight took a deep dive on the views of people who vote infrequently or not at all. There's a lot of reasons for non-voting, such as a belief it doesn't matter or the obstacles that make voting difficult, but one important factor was a lack of trust in the system. For some voters, especially nonwhite voters or liberal-leaning voters, this is unfortunately a realistic assessment of the situation, where social progress often feels glacial and voting doesn't seem to make much difference.

does not live in his state

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/josh-hawley/

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/hunter-biden-story/

comm dr

press freedom advocates and progressive journalists continued to sound the alarm Thursday following moves by both Twitter and Facebook to ban or restrict sharing of controversial New York Post reporting published earlier this week that claimed to uncover new details about the past work of Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, based on emails and documents supposedly found by a computer repairman on an abandoned laptop and then given to Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney.

As the Guardian reports:guk

In an unprecedented step against a major news publication, Twitter blocked users from posting links to the Post story or photos from the unconfirmed report. Users attempting to share the story were shown a notice saying: "We can't complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful." Users clicking or retweeting a link already posted to Twitter are shown a warning the "link may be unsafe."

Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for The Intercept, was among those critics Wednesday who said that while the reporting may itself have little or no merit, the decision by Twitter to block users' ability to share the Post's article—and to shut down the right-wing newspaper's main Twitter account—was a counterproductive and troubling move with long-term implications that should not be overlooked.

"This whole thing is an absolute gift to the right wing. It was a garbage story that wasn't going anyway, just showed Hunter doing the corruption we know about," Grim argued in a tweet. "Now the right will use this censorship to further delegitimize the election."

Right on cue late Thurdsay morning, Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texaswere among those charging that Twitter and Facebook, by their actions against the Post's story, were guilty of rigging the election in favor of the Democrats.

Grim's colleague at The Intercept, co-founder Glenn Greenwald, also let loose with his criticisms in a series of tweets Wednesday and again Thursday morning. For his part, in addition to other implications, Greenwald warned that all kinds of crucial reporting based on "unauthorized materials" would be in future jeopardy if such a policy by powerful media platforms was to remain unchallenged.

As one user said in response to Grim's tweet, the policy is not likely to maintain its aim only at reported pieces by right-wing outfits like the NY Post. "Today it was New York Post," the user said, "tomorrow it'll be Jacobin."

Greenwald also condemned self-identified liberals who were applauding Twitter's moves seemingly based on the sole fact that the actions were taken against a right-wing paper that published a story potentially damaging to Democrats. Such applause, he warned, misses the bigger implications of powerful tech corporations in the era of social media having such outsized impact on the public's ability to access information.

"Amazing how liberals are now full-on free market libertarians—let large corporations do whatever they want!—and have no understanding of or interest in monopoly power," Greenwald said.

While Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Wednesday came forth to say that the company's handling of the story was "unacceptable," the fault he articulated was not the blocking of content itself but that the "communications around our actions... was not great."

Weighing in on the debate Thursday morning, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who serves the district representing Silicon Valley, said he believed critics like Grim and Greenwald are making valid points but added that he still has questions about where the line should be drawn by platforms like Twitter or Facebook on so-called illegally obtained materials.

In direct response to Khanna's posted concerns and questions, Greenwald wrote: "That one can imagine a case where Facebook or Twitter validly block content—publication of the address or nude photos of a private citizen taken without consent—doesn't justify the broad rule Twitter invoked or repression of this story about the Bidens."

Meanwhile, Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, argued that the problem with Twitter's actions has nothing to do with how the company has communicated its reasoning. Similar to Greenwald, Timm warned such a policy—taken to its logical conclusion—would have woeful impacts on free speech and investigative journalism efforts like the Panama Papers project in 2016 which used internal documents—leaked or hacked or otherwise obtained—that exposed a global network of offshore banking operations and money laundering.

"No one really knows for sure, but there was a lot of speculation that the Panama Papers were hacked and then given to journalists," tweeted Timm. "Should Twitter wipe out all those old links too?"

Timm lamented that Twitter's decision will only serve to increase interest in the story—a dynamic that could be considered a backfire, especially if the nature or content of the reporting is, in fact, dubious.

"Now everyone will be talking about the NY Post story for a week instead of a day," Timmtweeted Wednesday night.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Experts dismiss 'garbage' Hunter Biden exposé in NY Post: 'Seems ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

---

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/video-fake-trump-mass-shooting-twitter-carpe-donktum-meme-898890/

pro-Trump meme-maker Carpe Donktum, a.k.a. Logan Cook, was suspended from Twitter on Monday following controversy over a video originating from a contributor to his website, Meme World. Following outcry from the right, however, Cook was quickly reinstated on the platform, prompting questions about censorship and Twitter’s response to allegations of political bias.

Cook, who describes himself on Twitter as an “Eternally Sarcastic Memesmith specializing in the creation of memes to support President Donald J. Trump,” is the creator of MemeWorld, a pro-Trump meme site. MemeWorld became engulfed in controversy on Monday following a New York Timesreport that a violent July 2018 video created by MemeWorld contributor TheGeekzTeam was screened at the right-wing American Priority Conference last week. The video, which is essentially a compilation of pro-Trump memes, features an edited version of a clip from the movie The Kingsman,which shows President Trump’s face superimposed onto that of actor Colin Firth as he guns down a crowd full of his critics, primarily members of the media. It was posted on the subreddit r/TheDonald last year and received thousands of upvotes.

How a Government Agency's Offbeat Twitter Memes Landed in the Library of Congress

Off-the-Rails President Takes to Twitter in Anti-Semitic and Racist Rant

In a statement to the New York Times,Stephanie Grisham, the press secretary for the White House, said that while President Trump had not seen the clip, “based upon everything he has heard, he strongly condemns this video.” Yet many interpreted the clip as a casual endorsement on behalf of Trump supporters towards violence against the president’s critics. Critics of the clip also accused Trump supporters of hypocrisy in light of their condemnation of a similarly violent image of comedian Kathy Griffin holding what appeared to be a fake version of the president’s decapitated head. (Griffin is also depicted in the video being mutilated with an axe.)

Initially, it was reported that Cook, who has been lauded as a “genius” by the president and visited the White House as part of a “social media summit” last July, was the creator of the video. While Cook denied this on Twitter, he confirmed that a “friend” who contributed to MemeWorld made the clip, and that that person would continue to be listed as a contributor. He also went on to endorse the message behind the video. “The Kingsman video is CLEARLY satirical and the violence depicted is metaphoric,” Cook said in a statement on MemeWorld that he posted on Twitter, accusing the New York Timesof launching an “outrage campaign” against him.“No reasonable person would believe that this video was a call to action, or an endorsement of violence towards the media. The only person that could potentially be ‘incited’ by this video is Donald Trump himself, as the main character of the video is him. THERE IS NO CALL TO ACTION.”

The defense that violent content is sarcastic or intended in jest is common among right-wing memers, says Jennifer Grygiel, an assistant professor of communication at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. “This is a propaganda technique to avoid detection and removal,” they tell Rolling Stone. “The bottom line is no, maybe they aren’t calling specifically for the president to go out and shoot the media, but these political memes have an indirect effect on our culture, and the political climate, which is already boiling over. In this case, the meme promotes attacks on the media, social movements such as Black Lives Matter, and Trump’s political opponents.”

Shortly after Cook posted his statement, multiple news outlets reported that he had been suspended by Twitter. (The Twitter account for TheGeekzTeam, which posted the video, remains active.) News of the suspension prompted outrage on far-right corners of social media, who argued that Twitter was applying left-wing bias in suspending Cook. Right-wing critics have long accused Twitter of harboring a bias against conservatives,with many on the right arguing that big tech platforms censor or shadow-ban those who espouse conservative views (though there is little evidence to support this claim). Earlier this year, Republican U.S. Senator Josh Hawley introduced legislation advocating for big tech platforms to undergo an audit investigating allegations of left-wing bias, while many on the left have also accused CEO Jack Dorsey and Twitter of bending over backwards to appease conservatives, in part byrefusing to censor right-wing trending topics and hosting dinners with right-wing leaders.

Approximately half an hour later, Cook’s account was reinstated. In a Periscope, he said that Twitter had decided to suspend him based on an unrelated copyright violationin a Feb. 2018 video, and that the suspension had been reversed. In the Periscope, Cook questioned this reasoning, claiming that the video featured no copyright infringement with the exception of a five-second song clip at the end of the video. In response to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment, a Twitter spokesperson says that “per ourcopyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives.”

Aside from Twitter, many big tech platforms like YouTube have been criticized for keeping the video online. Although YouTube, for instance, prohibits content that incites violence, the platform decided to age-gate the video and display a warning on the grounds that it contained “violence that is clearly fictional,” a spokesperson told CNN.

In a statement sent to Rolling Stone,the activist network CREDO Action decried platforms’ willingness to keep the video up. “Hate speech and violent threats must be taken seriously by YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the other big tech companies that are letting these messages run rampant across their platforms,” said CREDO Action campaign manager Jelani Drew-Davi. “The #TrumpVideo needs to be taken down immediately, as it actively promotes violence against specific people and members of the media.”

In This Article: Donald Trump,

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/this-gop-rising-star-pretends-to-be-a-populist-but-he-represents-something-much-darker/

no lnx

This GOP rising star pretends to be a ‘populist’ — but he represents something much darker

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly July 25, 2019

The junior senator from Missouri, Josh Hawley, can sound like he has a lot in common with progressives. His schtick is to advocate for “middle Americans” who have been dismissed by the political elite. For example, here is how he ended his commencement address at The King’s College in New York this summer.

We must rebuild a culture that affirms the dignity of the working man and woman, that protects their way of life and honors their central role in the life of this country. We must rebuild an economy that will offer opportunity for every American worker, whatever degree she may have, wherever he may live—an economy that rewards hard, productive work. For that, after all, is the work that built this country. We must rebuild a democracy run not by the elites, but by the great middle of America, a democracy that allows the working man and woman to realize their God-given ability to govern themselves and help manage the life of his nation.

That is the great task of the hour.

Hawley talks a lot about breaking up monopolies—especially big tech—and emphasizes that this country needs trade policies that benefit workers rather than line the pockets of multi-national corporations. He even hits a theme addressed by Daniel Block here at the Washington Monthly when he says that America must invest “in research and innovation in the heartland of this country, not just in San Francisco and New York.”

But scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find that Hawley is nothing more than a smarter, most strategic version of Donald Trump. Just as the president’s campaign fooled a lot of people into thinking he was some kind of economic populist, Hawley is the leading elected official of a movement that calls itself “post-liberal.” Alexander Zaitchick explains.

Behind this weltanschauung is an emergent conservative tendency dubbed “post-liberalism”—a stewing amalgam of long-marginalized ideas on the right that have found new life, like ancient spores released by an earthquake, in the aftermath of the 2016 election. While the lead thinkers of this movement might more accurately be dubbed “pre-liberals,” they claim Hawley as one of their own, and it is through the prism of their crabbed, reactionary political thought that Hawley’s tech crusade is best understood.

Following a speech he gave at the National Conservatism Conference last week, the senator garnered some renewed attention, including a spot with Tucker Carlson, where the man who once described himself as a “trust fund baby” talked with the son of a banker who attended Yale Law School about how liberals are the party of elites.

The reason for the renewed attention is that, in that speech, Hawley attempted to put a more positive face on nationalism.

For years the politics of both Left and Right have been informed by a political consensus that reflects the interests not of the American middle, but of a powerful upper class and their cosmopolitan priorities…

[T]hey subscribe to a set of values held by similarelitesin other places: things like the importance of global integration and the danger of national loyalties; the priority of social change over tradition, career over community, and achievement and merit and progress.

Call it the cosmopolitan consensus…

According to the cosmopolitan consensus, globalization is a moral imperative. That’s because our elites distrust patriotism and dislike the common culture left to us by our forbearers…The cosmopolitan elite look down on the common affections that once bound this nation together: things like place and national feeling and religious faith.

Hawley took some heat from the Jewish community in his home state for his constant references to the “cosmopolitan consensus,” the “cosmopolitan elite,” the “cosmopolitan class,” the “cosmopolitan economy,” and the “cosmopolitan agenda.”

Karen Aroesty, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in St. Louis, said Hawley may not have intended to offend anyone with his speech. But terms like “cosmopolitan” and “globalist” have a sinister history as anti-Semitic dog whistles, and she said Hawley should apologize.

Hawley’s speech, “raised real concern for members of the Jewish community who are and should be acutely sensitive with increased incidents of antisemitism in the US and beyond,” Aroesty said….”For the Senator and all who have a public platform that comes with power, context matters. Words matter.”

In case you are not familiar with the history of the word “cosmopolitan,” Amulya Shankar provides us with some of its history.

It was an “anti-Semitic fighting term,” Volker Ullrich writes in his biography, Hitler: Ascent, “used against the Jews by Nazis and Bolsheviks alike.” Ullrich writes that the Jewish diaspora in Europe was “considered not only cosmopolitan, but also rootless, and in the late 1940s the term became a code word for Jews who insisted on their Jewish identity.”

James Fallows says that Hawley doesn’t get a pass on being ignorant of that history

1) Anyone w a Stanford BA in history and a JD from Yale (like Hawley) knows *exactly* the implications of “cosmopolitan.” https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-08-03/cosmopolitan-dog-whistle-word-once-used-nazi-germany-and-communist-russia …

Again, not “everyone” knows this. But Hawley must.

2) America is great precisely *because* its ideals and embrace are universal. https://twitter.com/BennettJonah/status/1151278921649987584 …

'Cosmopolitan' is a dog whistle word once used in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia

The word “cosmopolitan” has an anti-Semitic history.

pri.org

Jonah Bennett

Sen. Josh Hawley tonight: "It's time we ended this cosmopolitan experiment and recovered the promise of our republic. Let's start with this: America is not going to become the rest of the world, and the rest of the world is not going to become America."

Perhaps you can understand why Tucker Carlson, the favorite television personality of white supremacists, is so taken with Hawley. His emphasis on the word “cosmopolitan” also aligns him the man in the White House who is most responsible for Trump’s xenophobic immigration policies, Steven Miller.

When it comes to solutions offered by Hawley, Ian Millhiser suggests that they are less political than they are cultural.

“We must work to raise up a generation united in a common love for our distinctive achievements as a people,” the senator proclaims. “We must teach our children who we are, without apology.” and we must “honor the claims of kinship and the covenant of marriage.”

America’s enemies, in Hawley’s vision, are not external. They are a fifth column of “cosmopolitans”…who “dislike the common culture left to us by our forbearers.” To thrive, America must become more chauvinistic, more insular, less open to diversity, and more tightly bound by “place and national feeling and religious faith.”

At the very least, Hawley’s vision of the ideal society is inherently segregationist — though not necessarily along racial lines so much as along religious and cultural ones. It entails a world where people stick to their own kind. “America,” Hawley claims, “is not going to become the rest of the world. And the rest of the world is not going to become America.”

Hawley’s speech, in other words, is nothing less than a direct attack on our national motto — E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one. For Josh Hawley, America’s youngest senator, our nation’s original sin is its embrace of pluralism.

For Hawley and his colleagues in the post-liberalism movement, Zaitchick writes that they seek to “cage the furies loosed by Donald Trump and put them at the service of an intellectually coherent movement without the baggage of a leader accused by multiple women of rape.” While the president has a way of emotionally triggering the same audience Hawley is targeting, the senator does so with a contrived gravitas, along with the kind of face and voice that is made for television.

It is clear that this young man has big ambitions, and regardless of all of his talk about elitists, he also has the backing of big money donors like the Koch brothers. So keep an eye on this one. No matter how much he mimics the words of economic populists, he’s a nationalist and a theocrat at heart.

Kansas City Star editorial board blasts Missouri Republican for bill aimed at big tech companies: ‘A dangerous assault on the First Amendment’

by Alex Henderson June 20, 2019

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley is drawing criticism from both the left and the right for a bill they are stressing would reduce First Amendment protections for large tech companies. And…

---

annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was quite a spectacle, with everything from attacks on “the ghost of John McCain” to speakers claiming Democrats want to take your hamburgers and make you eat dog food.

But for newly-minted Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), the festivities were dampened slightly.

According to the Kansas City Star, immediately after exiting the stage at CPAC on Friday, Hawley was served with a subpoena:

Elad Gross, a Democratic candidate for attorney general who is suing Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s office, said on Twitter that the Missouri senator was served moments after he completed his appearance.

“We got him,” Gross said. “After more than two weeks of evading service, Senator Josh Hawley was personally served with the subpoena at CPAC.”

Gross wants to depose Hawley over his handling of Missouri’s “Sunshine Law” as attorney general during the 2018 midterm election, when he successfully ran for Senate. Hawley, for his part, is seeking to quash the subpoena, and his spokeswoman Kelli Ford has dismissed it as “a political stunt by a political candidate.”

While Hawley is not directly named as a party to Gross’ lawsuit, he has faced mounting questions about whether he violated the Sunshine Law when the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) asked his office for his emails with OnMessage, a group of out-of-state political consultants. At the time, Hawley’s office claimed there were no emails to turn over — but subsequent reporting showed he had in fact emailed OnMessage consultants using a private account he had not disclosed.

Hawley’s consultant operation itself has been the subject of scrutiny and an investigationby Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft. Previous reports suggested that Hawley used these consultants to run the attorney general’s office while he executed his bid for Senate — which would be illegal if taxpayer money mingled with his campaign activities, and at the very least is a betrayal of his election promise not to leverage one office “to get to another.” A New York Times exposé last year revealed this arrangement threw Hawley’s office into chaos, with staffers confused about the chain of command, civil rights litigators quitting, judges blasting Hawley for incompetent, delayed discovery, insufficient vetting for top aides, and millions of dollars of taxpayer money wasted.

It does not appear as if these problems will go away any time soon. Hawley should hold himself accountable, and cooperate.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has been under investigation by the Missouri Secretary of State for allegations that he illegally used taxpayer resources while he was state attorney general to support his Senate campaign. The allegations followed reports that he had farmed out his office to private political consultants to run while he prepared to run for higher office, and potentially mingled staff between both the attorney general’s office and his campaign office.

But it gets worse. Hawley was asked by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) to provide emails between his staff and the consultants, and his office responded that there were none. But on Friday, the Kansas City Star reported that there were, in fact, emails — they just communicated using private accounts and failed to disclose them, a possible violation of Missouri’s sunshine laws:

The decision by Hawley’s AG office to use private email rather than government accounts was first uncovered by The Star, which reported in October that his staff was using the private accounts to communicate with his out-of-state consultants. The Star’s investigation found that Hawley’s campaign consultants Timmy Teepell and Gail Gitcho gave direct guidance and tasks to his taxpayer-funded staff and led meetings during work hours in the state Supreme Court building, where the attorney general’s official office is located.

After that reporting, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican, with the help of State Auditor Nicole Galloway, a Democrat, launched an investigation to determine whether Hawley illegally used state resources in the attorney general’s office to support his successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.

It was in response to Ashcroft’s investigation that the attorney general’s office turned over 85 pages of records shortly before Christmas — documents that confirmed The Star’s reporting.

The emails that Hawley’s office failed to turn over include directions to his taxpayer-funded staff from Teepell from his email account with OnMessage Inc., the D.C. consulting firm that worked with Hawley for both of his campaigns.

Experts suggest that it is not definitive that Hawley’s office violated sunshine laws, but that if they knowingly lied, that would be a violation. “If they tell you right out of the box that we don’t have anything, I view that as a violation of law if that turns out not to be true,” said Mark Johnson, a First Amendment lawyer in Kansas City. “The thing that it didn’t say is whether they found the stuff by looking further and at the time they told you they didn’t have anything they honestly didn’t believe it. That would have to be something that would have to be established.”

Regardless, all of this looks very bad for Hawley, who during his campaign pledged he would never leverage “one office to get to another.” He also was highly critical of Hillary Clinton’s private email server during his 2016 run for attorney general, tweeting, “Sec. Clinton’s outrageous conduct & lack of prosecution shows we need an AG who knows how to win for the rule of law.”

Hawley needs to be held accountable if he has violated state laws — and the public deserves answers.

---

ref

https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article222900205.html

Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has formally requested that the state’s Democratic auditor investigate allegations that Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley used public resources to support his successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway was already scheduled to begin an audit of the attorney general’s office in January. Galloway’s office conducts an audit any time there is a change in a statewide office.

Ashcroft is seeking to enlist Galloway’s subpoena power in an investigation sparked by a complaint filed in early November with the secretary of state’s office by The American Democracy Legal Fund, a liberal group backed by influential Democratic operative David Brock. The group demanded an investigation to determine whether Hawley should be prosecuted for violating a state law barring elected officials from using public funds to support political campaigns.

The secretary of state’s office began its formal investigation into the allegations last week.

New GOP senator-elect suddenly revealed to be under investigation for allegedly using public funds to boost his campaign

---

krugman/cody f

...For those of us who have long covered health care policy, it's been a mind-boggling turn of events. Republicans, who have always played a losing hand by arguing for the unpopular and wrongheaded idea that there should be more free-market principles applied in health care, are now literally saying one thing and doing the other.

Many GOP candidates are insisting — vociferously — that they are in favor of protecting people with pre-existing conditions — even while the party does its best to dismantle all the protections for people with pre-existing that are at the core of Obamacare.

"Indeed, 20 Republican state attorneys general filed a lawsuit trying to eliminate protection for pre-existing conditions, and the Trump administration has declined to oppose the suit, in effect endorsing it," Krugman noted. "Now, you might imagine that Republicans would respond to the manifest unpopularity of their health care position by, you know, actually changing their position. But that would be hopelessly old-fashioned. As I said, what they’ve chosen to do instead is lie, insisting that black is white and up is down."

He continued:

Thus Josh Hawley, as Missouri’s attorney general, is part of that lawsuit against Obamacare’s regulation of insurers; but in his campaign for the Senate, he’s posing as a defender of Americans with pre-existing conditions. Dean Heller, running for re-election to the Senate in Nevada, voted for a bill that would have destroyed Obamacare, including all protection for pre-existing conditions; but he’s misrepresenting himself just like Hawley is.

And they aren’t just lying about their own position. They’re also lying about their opponents’. Incredibly, Republicans have spent the years since passage of the A.C.A. accusing Democrats of wanting to destroy Medicare.

And of course, this week saw the publication of Trump's op-ed attacking Medicare-for-All, in which, as the Washington Post explained, “Almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood.”

If they wanted to, Republicans could try to convince the American people that their view that the health insurance industry should be less regulated, not more, is correct. Or they could, in the face of the facts and the wild unpopularity of their position, either change their minds or simply leave the issue alone and focus on other topics they care about.

But they've realized Trump has had a lot of success lying to voters faces while stabbing them in the back. And, to top it off, he gratuitously smears Democrats with obvious falsehoods. That's been his consistent strategy, and now the whole party has adopted it as its own.

Monday, Missouri Attorney General and GOP Senate candidate Josh Hawley told reporters during a campaign stop at a glass plant in Kansas City that, while he opposes the Affordable Care Act, he wants to keep one of its most popular provisions: the provision that insurance companies must issue coverage to anyone regardless of their health.

"I think we ought to require insurance companies to cover folks with pre-existing conditions," Hawley said. "I think we ought to — you mandate it. You say, you have to cover them with pre-existing conditions."

There's just one problem: he is currently part of a lawsuit to eliminate that very provision.

Hawley is a party to Texas v. United States, a suit brought by 20 GOP-controlled states which alleges that essentially the entire individual-market provisions of President Barack Obama's signature health care law — including guaranteed issue to those with pre-existing conditions — are invalid, because the individual mandate has been cut to zero by the Republican tax scam bill.

Most legal experts, on the left and the right, believe the lawsuit makes no sense. But given the case is set to be heard by a judge who has ruled against the ACA before, and could potentially be appealed to judges appointed by President Donald Trump, who has taken the extraordinary step of siding with the suit against his own government, there is no guarantee it will lose — and a victory for Hawley and his fellow Republican attorneys general would put 52 million Americans' coverage at risk.

Hawley made no effort to reconcile his claim to support pre-existing condition coverage with his involvement in a lawsuit to obliterate it. Nor did he explain what sort of "mandate" he is advocating for.

Hawley's opponent, incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, was one of the original votes for the ACA, and for the protection of pre-existing conditions. She has furiously condemned the lawsuit, and Hawley's involvement in it, co-sponsoring a Senate resolution to oppose it.

A seismic shift in public opinion on the ACA has taken place over the last two years. Voters who once feared and distrusted the most significant health care reform in decades now broadly support the law, and Republicans who spent their careers running on killing it suddenly find their old mantra toxic on the campaign trail.

Environmental groups say the RAGA meeting in July was no different from their own efforts; the Republican attorneys general plotted strategy with like-minded groups. The environmentalists say that they are exercising the free speech RAGA claims to be protecting and that they also have the right to petition government officials and to consult experts. Their meetings were not secret, they add.

“This is much more like collusion,” said Nick Surgey, research director at the Center for Media and Democracy. “These corporations have leverage because they pay into RAGA. And most of their money goes to elections.”...Much of RAGA’s strategy will revolve around television ads in states where the group hopes to make a difference.

The group has booked $3.8 million in broadcast and cable TV advertising time for the final five weeks of the state attorney general campaign in North Carolina, where the Republican nominee, state Sen. Buck Newton, is in a tough race against Democratic state Sen. Josh Stein.

The association has already spent, through its Mountaineers Are Always Free PAC, nearly $2 million on four rounds of ads in West Virginia, where it is highlighting the fight against the Clean Power Plan, which would hurt the state’s coal industry. And it has sent $2 million to Josh Hawley’s campaign for attorney general in Missouri, which allows direct contributions. RAGA plans further spending in those states as well as in Pennsylvania and Indiana.

---

endit1