Jd Vance Bak

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must be trumpier than josh m

merri ok

then pivot to ctr ish? medicare soc sec

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/jd-vance/

working class hero? good old boy

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nyt

no lnx

Vance Wins Republican Senate Primary in Ohio After Nod From Trump

J.D. Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” won a G.O.P. race that saw nearly $80 million in television advertising.

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J.D. Vance Wins Ohio Republican Senate Primary

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The author and venture capitalist parlayed an endorsement from Donald J. Trump into victory, beating out a crowded field of conservative challengers.CreditCredit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

Shane GoldmacherJazmine Ulloa

By Shane Goldmacher and Jazmine Ulloa

May 3, 2022

CINCINNATI — J.D. Vance, the best-selling author whose “Hillbilly Elegy” about life in Appalachia illuminated a slice of the country that felt left behind, decisively won the Ohio Senate primary on Tuesday after a late endorsement by Donald J. Trump helped him surge past his rivals in a crowded field.

Casting himself as a fighter against the nation’s elites, Mr. Vance ran as a Trump-style pugilist and outsider who railed against the threats of drugs, Democrats and illegal immigration, while thoroughly backpedaling from his past criticisms of the former president.

The contest, which saw nearly $80 million in television advertising, was one of the most anticipated of the 2022 primary season for its potential to provide an early signal of the direction of the Republican Party.

The result delivered a strong affirmation of Mr. Trump’s continued grip on his party’s base. But a fuller assessment of Mr. Trump’s sway will come through a series of primaries in the next four weeks — in West Virginia, North Carolina, Idaho, Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Mr. Vance had been trailing in most polls behind Josh Mandel, a former Ohio state treasurer who had also aggressively pursued Mr. Trump’s backing, until the former president’s mid-April endorsement helped vault Mr. Vance ahead. A third candidate, State Senator Matt Dolan, ran as a more traditional Republican, sometimes mocking his rivals for their unrelenting focus on the former president instead of Ohio issues and voters.

Cheers went up at Mr. Vance’s Cincinnati election party when The Associated Press called the race shortly after 9:30 p.m.

“The people who are caught between the corrupt political class of the left and the right, they need a voice,” Mr. Vance said in his victory speech. “They need a representative. And that’s going to be me.”

Mr. Vance is an unlikely champion of the Trumpian mantle, after calling the former president “reprehensible” in 2016 and even “cultural heroin.” But he had changed his tune entirely by 2022, and Mr. Trump called to congratulate him on his victory on Tuesday evening, according to a person briefed on the call.

With more than 90 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Vance was leading across almost the entire state. But the results also captured some of the tensions and demographic trade-offs of a Republican Party pulled in different directions as Mr. Dolan was strongest in the voter-rich cities of Cleveland and Columbus.

Trump-style Republicans did not prevail in the other top contest on Tuesday. Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a more traditional Republican who has held offices in the state for more than 40 years, finished far ahead of his multiple primary rivals after a strong right-wing challenge never gained traction despite some conservative backlash to Mr. DeWine’s early and assertive response to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Gov. Mike DeWine and his wife, Fran DeWine, greet their daughter Anna Bolton and grandson Calvin after voting in Cedarville, Ohio, on Tuesday.Credit...Paul Vernon/Associated Press

Mr. DeWine had almost double the votes of his closest rival, Jim Renacci, a former House member. In the fall, he will be running against Nan Whaley, the former mayor of Dayton, who won the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, becoming the first woman in Ohio history to be nominated by a major party for governor.

In the Senate race, Mr. Vance will now face Representative Tim Ryan, a 48-year-old Democrat from the Youngstown area who has positioned himself as a champion of blue-collar values and has not aligned with some of his party’s more progressive positions.

If Mr. Vance prevails in the fall, the 37-year-old graduate of Yale Law School and investor would become the second-youngest member of the Senate, the chamber’s youngest Republican and a rare freshman who would arrive in Washington with a national profile.

His book had achieved best seller status not just from conservatives but liberals, who in the wake of the 2016 election had used it as something of a decryption key to understand Mr. Trump’s appeal in rural reaches of the country.

Mr. Vance’s metamorphosis from an outspoken “Never Trump” Republican in 2016 to a full-throated Make America Great Again warrior in 2022 echoes the ideological journey of much of the party in recent years. Republicans have moved closer and closer to the former president’s hard-line policy positions on issues like trade and immigration, and to his combative posture with Democrats and on cultural issues that divide the two parties. For some Republican voters, the primary was animated by fears that traditional family values and a white American culture were under attack by far-left Democrats, establishment Republicans and elites.

From the very start, Mr. Vance did have a crucial financial benefactor: His former boss, Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor who pledged $10 million to Mr. Vance even before he formally joined the contest and who added millions more in the final stretch to trumpet Mr. Trump’s endorsement in the last weeks.

The Senate primary was unusual in the extent that it unfolded in two places at once. In Ohio, there was the typical fevered competition for votes, in town halls, debates and television ads. In Florida, there was the battle for Mr. Trump’s approval at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s private club, with public shows of fealty, lobbying by surrogates and shuttle diplomacy. In one episode last year, multiple Ohio candidates vied for Mr. Trump’s support in front of one another at an impromptu meeting at Mar-a-Lago.

In a verbal flub that seemed almost fitting to how the candidates ran, Mr. Trump accidentally conjoined the names of two rivals over the weekend. “We’ve endorsed J.P., right?” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Nebraska. “J.D. Mandel.”

Mr. Trump’s endorsement set off a frenzy among Ohio Republicans who questioned Mr. Vance’s Republican credentials, with rivals circulating fliers online and at a Trump rally accusing him of being a Democrat in disguise and resurrecting his past comments against Mr. Trump.

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The Senate candidate Josh Mandel, center, with supporters, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, left, in Columbus, Ohio, last week.Credit...Joshua A. Bickel/The Columbus Dispatch, via Associated Press

Mr. Mandel had been the front-runner for much of the race, casting himself as the true pro-Trump candidate (“Pro-God. Pro-Guns. Pro-Trump” was the tagline in his TV ads). But that became an all-but-impossible argument to prosecute in the final weeks after Mr. Trump picked Mr. Vance.

“If the whole issue in the campaign is who is most Trump-like, expect it to work against you when you don’t get the endorsement,” said Rex Elsass, an Ohio-based Republican strategist.

At a restaurant in the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood on Tuesday, more than a dozen Mandel supporters and campaign volunteers struck an optimistic tone at the start of the night, expressing confidence. But it was not too long before Mr. Mandel took the podium to deliver the news.

Mr. Mandel told the crowd that he called Mr. Vance “to congratulate him on a hard-fought victory” and would do what he could to help get him elected. “The stakes are too high for this country to not support the nominee,” Mr. Mandel said to a round of applause in the room.

Beyond Mr. Vance, Mr. Dolan and Mr. Mandel, the crowded race included a single female candidate, Jane Timken, a former Ohio Republican Party chair, who was backed by the retiring incumbent, Senator Rob Portman, as well as Mike Gibbons, a businessman who poured millions of his own money into the race and at one point had climbed to the top of the polls.

Mr. Dolan had toiled for most of the contest far behind the polling leaders, avoiding direct attacks from his rivals. But he tapped into his own fortune to fund more than $11 million in television ads as he cut a path separate from the rest of the Trump-focused field by refusing to amplify the falsehood that the 2020 election was rigged. At one debate, Mr. Dolan was the lone candidate to raise his hand to say the former president should stop talking about the 2020 election.

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State Senator Matt Dolan greets supporters at a library opening in Bay Village, Ohio, last week.Credit...Dustin Franz for The New York Times

The contest was nasty and lengthy, with nothing capturing the intensity more than a near-physical confrontation between Mr. Gibbons and Mr. Mandel at one March debate, where they bumped bellies as they lobbed verbal threats at one another.

Mr. Vance scolded them both. “Sit down. Come on,” he said. “This is ridiculous.”

Much of the race was shaped by huge sums spent on television — nearly $80 million, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, with a lot of it coming from outside groups and out-of-state donors. The conservative Club for Growth spent more than $12 million on television ads aimed to boost Mr. Mandel or tear down his rivals.

Mr. Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor, seeded a pro-Vance super PAC with $10 million in early 2021 — months before Mr. Vance even entered the race. Mr. Vance is one of two former Thiel employees — the other is Blake Masters in Arizona — running for Senate with Mr. Thiel’s hefty financial backing. Mr. Thiel had served as a key link between Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump, attending an introductory meeting between them in early 2021.

The politics of Ohio have changed drastically in the Trump era. Once the quintessential presidential swing state, Ohio broke for Mr. Trump by 8 percentage points in both 2016 and 2020, ending a half-century streak of the state backing the national winner. Republicans have sharply run up their margins among working-class white voters and in more rural areas, offsetting the losses that the party has suffered in the state’s suburbs around cities like Columbus and Cleveland.

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Representative Tim Ryan, right, with Michael S. Regan of the Environmental Protection Agency in Youngstown, Ohio, where lead pipes will be replaced as part of new federal infrastructure spending.Credit...Dustin Franz for The New York Times

In the Democratic primary, Mr. Ryan, who briefly ran for president in 2020, easily turned back a primary challenge from Morgan Harper, 38, a former adviser at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who ran as a progressive, banking $5 million for the general election.

Mr. Ryan has already run an anti-China ad that focuses on Ohio jobs and his opening ad of the general election has him tossing darts inside a bar and seeking to separate himself from the broader Democratic brand, lamenting those who have called for defunding the police.

But Mr. Ryan faces an uphill race in a state that has trended Republican and in a year when his party is saddled with President Biden’s low approval ratings. Some Republicans see Mr. Ryan as formidable — Mr. Trump among them — but the general election is not seen by either party as among the half-dozen closest contests that will determine control of the Senate, now divided evenly 50-50.

Shane Goldmacher reported from Cincinnati. Jazmine Ulloa reported from Beachwood, Ohio.

Shane Goldmacher is a national political reporter and was previously the chief political correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining The Times, he worked at Politico, where he covered national Republican politics and the 2016 presidential campaign.

Jazmine Ulloa covers national politics from Washington. Before joining The Times, she worked at the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times and various papers in her home state of Texas.

A version of this article appears in print on May 4, 2022, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: With Trump’s Nod, Vance Rallies To Win Senate Primary in Ohio. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: Republican Party, Democratic Party, U.S. Senate, Mike DeWine, Donald Trump, Tim Ryan

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an 8 24

Since being chosen as Donald Trump's presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) has been deluged with criticism from Democrats as well as from Never Trump conservatives. Much of it has been in response to his widely reported "childless cat ladies" comments from 2021 and 2022, but his ties to Project 2025 and others on the far right have also been a source of scrutiny.

In a report published on August 28, The Guardian's Jason Wilson details the links between Vance, his press secretary Parker Magid and the far-right Claremont Institute.

Founded in 1979, Claremont was once a mainstream conservative think tank that championed the late Sen. Barry Goldwater's (R-Arizona) ideas. But in recent years, Claremont has taken a far-right MAGA turn and openly embraced conspiracy theorists and election deniers like attorney John C. Eastman.

READ MORE:[He 'disgusts me to my core': Ex-Trump supporters explain why they’re now 'all in' for Harris

"Parker Magid was recently appointed as Vance's press secretary and his employment history links Vance and his circle to elements of the extremist right far outside the mainstream of American politics," Wilson explains. "Vance's staffer links him to Beck & Stone (B&S) and its subsidiary political consultancy Knight Takes Rook (KTR). The brand consultancy with a business address in New York is close to Vance allies, including the far-right Claremont Institute, the serial Arizona political candidate Blake Masters and the 'counter-revolutionary' magazine IM–1776."

The Guardian reporter continues, "B&S was founded in 2014, according to statements by its founders, Andrew Beck and Austin Stone. Initial company filings in Florida date from April 2015. Its current Florida filings give an address that is a UPS store in New York City."

Wilson notes that Beck "is closely involved with the Society for American Civic Renewal (SACR), a secretive invitation- and men-only fraternal lodge that has been the subject of extensive previous reporting in the Guardian."

Beth Daviess of Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey has been researching SACR and described their views as "much more extreme than mainstream conservatism."

READ MORE:[Swing state GOP leader admits election 'going to be a little tighter' with Harris as nominee

SACR, according to Daviess, has been expressing troubling views on "whether government should be democratic at all."

"The link is just one of a series of connections between Vance and the so-called 'new right,' an anti-democratic movement that attacks feminism, racial equality and immigrants while centering the grievances of white men," Wilson reports. "Those connections were dramatized in an April 2023 photo resurfaced last month in which Vance posed with the staff of New Founding, a B&S-aligned venture capital firm 'for the right' that opposes what it calls “woke capital."

READ MORE:[This GOP congressman's exit is 'a case study in what's broken in national politics': columnist

*Read The Guardian's full report at this link.

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Even Trump allies 'worried' after Russia’s foreign minister 'praised' JD Vance: reports

a 824

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an july

2024 Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) reportedly keeps close company with far-right activists according to a new report, and they may soon find themselves embedded high up in the federal government if former President Donald Trump returns to power this fall.

On Thursday, tech publication Wired reported on the details of Vance's Venmo account, which is a popular platform used for online payments. Because Venmo automatically sets accounts to be publicly viewable, Wired was able to comb through the profiles of the several hundred people listed as "friends" on the Ohio senator's Venmo.

Many of those are controversial figures tied to the same academic and political establishment Vance has constantly railed against in his public speeches. But others are major figures in extremist political circles.

According to Wired, names in the 2024 VP hopeful's contacts include Stop The Steal organizer Ali Alexander, conservative provocateur James O'Keefe and pro-Trump social media personality Laura Loomer. His profile also lists former Michael Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis, who also represents international mafioso Dmitry Firtash — a high-ranking member of the Russian mob.

This appears to be his actual personal contacts," Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington vice president Jordan Libowitz told Wired. "[T]he more personal data that is public about someone the more points of pressure or influence there are on that person."

Earlier this week, Andrew Torba — the CEO of far-right social media app Gab — tweeted that Vance was "influenceable" given the people he's surrounded himself with. Gab was thrust into the national spotlight after reports confirmed that the perpetrator of the 2017 Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting was active on the platform and frequently posted anti-Semitic content.

"We have plenty of people in his orbit. Plenty of our guys can be put into positions of power because he’s there," Torba wrote. "Our focus should be on pulling him as far right as possible by 2028. Long game. Honey, not vinegar."

Torba's comments are particularly revealing, even though he didn't mention any particular names. After his nomination was announced, screenshots emerged of Vance in a Twitter group chat with several teenage "groypers" (the name associated with followers of white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes).

"Yo Akron Caleb is thirsty," Vance wrote in response to a former George Santos staffer asking for Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt to follow him back. "Just practicing my cool kid lingo with the simps chat."

Vance's Venmo also shows other "friends" in his contacts including a lobbyist for the Heritage Foundation (the chief organization pushing Project 2025), billionaire Todd Ricketts and Michael Flynn Jr.

*Click here to read Wired's report in its entirety.

ref

no lnx

uS senator J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican and former US president Donald Trump’s pick for vice president, has a public Venmo account that gives an unfiltered glimpse into his extensive network of connections with establishment GOP heavyweights, wealthy financiers, technology executives, the prestige press, and fellow graduates of Yale Law School—precisely the elites he rails against.

A WIRED analysis of the account, the people listed as Vance’s friends, and, in turn, the people listed as their friends highlights sometimes bizarre and surprising connections. Experts, meanwhile, worry that the information revealed by the peer-to-peer payment app raises the potential for stalking, trolling, and impersonation.

More than 200 people appear on Vance’s Venmo “friends” list. Among them is Amalia Halikias, government relations director at the Heritage Foundation—the conservative think tank coordinating the controversial Project 2025. So is an assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York, among many other lawyers for the Department of Justice, frequently decried by Trump loyalists as enemies and part of the “deep state.”

So are Jeff Flake, the famously anti-Trump former Arizona senator and current ambassador to Turkey; lobbyists from organizations like the Government Strategies Group; people affiliated with other conservative think tanks like the Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute; journalists and media personalities like Bari Weiss and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson; and tech executives from Anthropic and AOL. (None of these people responded to requests for comment.)

Lanny Davis, a well-known political operative and former lawyer for Trump antagonist Michael Cohen, is among those who denied being Venmo friends with Vance despite seemingly appearing in Vance's contacts. (The account in question, which Davis declined to confirm or deny was his, was also linked to someone named Michael Cohen.) This points to one important caveat—being friends on Venmo does not mean two people have transacted together, or even know the payment app has designated them as friends.

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'This is not a serious person': JD Vance blasted for claiming to fund bill before he was even elected an 724

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AN 6 24

Trump ally Sen. J.D. Vance(R-OH) compared the former president’s election denial claims to a violent, racially-tinged disputed vote in 1876 during a New York Times interview this week — and on Saturday he got a harsh history lesson from the same newspaper.

The right-wing Republican, rumored to be on Trump’s vice presidential shortlist, whined that dismissing “Stop the Steal” grievances was taking “this very legitimate grievance over our most fundamental democratic act as a people, and completely suppress[ing] concerns about it.”

Then he compared it to the 1876 election.

“Here’s what this would’ve looked like if you really wanted to do this,” he said. “You would’ve actually tried to go to the states that had problems. You would try to marshal alternative slates of electors, like they did in the election of 1876. And then you have to actually prosecute that case, you have to make an argument to the American people.”

His comparison infuriated Times columnist Jamelle Bouie.

“Let’s look at what happened in 1876,” he said.

“In that race, the Democrat, Gov. Samuel Tilden of New York, won a majority of the national popular vote but fell one vote short of a majority in the Electoral College. The Republican, Rutherford Hayes, was well behind in both. The trouble was 20 electoral votes in four states: Florida, Louisiana, Oregon and South Carolina.

“In the three Southern states, where the elections were marred by fraud, violence and anti-Black intimidation, officials from both parties certified rival slates of electors.

"Hayes believed, probably correctly, that had there been “a fair election in the South, our electoral vote would reach two hundred and that we should have a large popular majority.”

Had Blacks been allowed to vote, the election result would likely have been overturned, he wrote.

The dispute resulted in months of legal battles and a threat by Democrats to seize a statehouse by force.

“It is strange for Senator Vance to cite it as an example of what should have been done in 2020,” Bouie wrote.

“The big and most important reason is that there was actual fraud and violence and intimidation in the 1876 presidential election cycle. In one incident in Hamburg, S.C., a paramilitary death squad of white Democrats — called Red Shirts for their attire — stormed a local armory and kidnapped more than two dozen Black citizens, executing several men on the spot.”

He added, “If Trump voters had been attacked, intimidated and defrauded, then there might be reason to make the comparison with 1876 and demand serious investigation into the integrity of the vote."

“But as we know from actual litigation carried out over two months, there was no fraud to speak of. The 2020 presidential election was arguably the most secure — and among the most scrutinized — in American history.

"What Vance calls the “legitimate grievances” of the Jan. 6 rioters were actually sour grapes. They lost, they did not like it, and they were determined to change the outcome by any means necessary. There’s no reason any of us should respect their tantrum."

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JD Vance calls for Judge Merchan and his daughter to be subpoenaed so GOP can 'punish' them

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an 5 24

Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) was called out Monday over his response to a Memorial Day post on social media.

"JD Vance is praising a Memorial Day speech by Ret. Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly — the same John Kelly who confirmed on the record that Trump repeatedly disparaged US servicemembers," The Daily Beast's Roger Sollenberger wrote via X (formerly Twitter). "Vance also served in the Marines."

Sollenberger later[vid] , "Correction: It was a Veterans’ Day speech."

Vance was replying to a post Republican Nate Hochman shared, which includes a story Kelly told during the speech given 14 years ago, writing, "Every Memorial Day, I think of a speech that John Kelly gave to the Semper Fi Society of St. Louis in 2010 — four days after his own son, a Marine, was killed in action in Afghanistan. The speech was titled 'Six Seconds to Live.'"

Vance wrote, "This is an extraordinary story. Thank you to everyone who gave the ultimate sacrifice."

Last October, NBC News reported:

*In a statement to CNN published Monday, Kelly delivered a scathing criticism of former President Donald Trump while confirming reporting in The Atlanticin 2020 that detailed the comments he made during his presidency.

'A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them,' Kelly said of Trump. 'A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.' A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family — for all Gold Star families — on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.'*

Listing the Ohio senator as a Trump running mate contender earlier this month, the New York Times reported, "Vance is one of Trump’s most vigorous defenders, which sets him apart in a Senate populated with skeptics of the former president."

The Times also noted one of the "cons" of Trump picking Vance as a running mate would be that he's "fiercely anti-abortion, which could add to the party’s difficulties on that issue."

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May 20, 2024 RWW

Hunter Walker @ Talking Points Memo: Lawsuit Exposes Internal Feuds And Inner Workings Of Stew Peters’ Extremist Media Empire

The online hate speech broadcaster has Republican connections, a lucrative corporate sponsorship, and a lot of drama in his life.

Ahmad Austin Jr. @ Mediaite: Minnesota GOP Endorses Ex-NBA Player Royce White to Run for Senate — As White’s Wild Past Comments Resurface Online

The Minnesota GOP on Saturday announced its endorsement of former NBA player Royce White to run against Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Dan Ladden-Hall @ The Daily Beast: Trump Hilariously Claims He ‘Doesn’t Freeze!’ in Viral Gaffe Pushback

Donald Trump came out swinging Monday morning, pushing back on claims that he froze up during a speech over the weekend and asserting that an apparent mishap involving a wobbly podium was, in fact, a stunning feat of his physical talents.

Brett Sholtis @ Lancaster Online: How a Lancaster charity linked to a private Christian college influences public school policy in Pa.

The Eden Bridge Foundation tells prospective donors that their support will help build “the Kingdom of God” on Earth with money flowing to Lancaster Bible College and other ministries. Over the past 14 years, the nonprofit has steered tens of millions of dollars to Christian schools, churches and charities. But some donations to the 501(c)(3) Eden Bridge Foundation routinely go to Republican-aligned groups at the center of conservative political advocacy.

Eric Hananoki @ Media Matters: Rep. Young Kim has spent years cultivating support from far-right extremist Jack Hibbs

Hibbs, a podcaster and pastor, has spouted toxic rhetoric targeting Jewish, LGBTQ, and Muslim people.

Marita Vlachou @ HuffPost: Sen. J.D. Vance Says The U.S. ‘Could Learn From’ Viktor Orbán’s Policies

> The Ohio Republican is one of the top contenders to become Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

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hypoc

an 12 23 no lnx

Busted: Jim Jordan and James Comer have a new judicial plan

Matt Laslo

andRaw Story

December 25, 2023

WASHINGTON – Republicans in Congress aren’t just doing all they can to impeach the Biden name – and possibly President Joe Biden himself – they’re also going to extraordinary lengths to protect two billionaire GOP megadonors who helped the party remake the Supreme Court in recent years.

For one, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) are trying to stymie Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb’s investigation into Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo.

Schwalb is looking into allegations that Leo is illegally profiting off non-profits. Jordan and Comer have responded by threatening to subpoena Schwalb.

ALSO READ: A neuroscientist’s guide to surviving Christmas with Trump-loving relatives

Meanwhile on the other side of the U.S. Capitol, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee walked out en masse, boycotting Democrats’ effort to subpoena Leo and Republican jurisprudence sugar daddy Harlan Crow over the hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts he’s given to Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni over the decades, according to a ProPublica investigation.

The GOP offensive to protect two billionaire donors is blatant hypocrisy, according to ethics watchdogs.

“There are many senators who will say anything. I mean, as long as it's their guy, they'll defend anything, and they have no consistency whatsoever and they're completely hypocritical,” Melanie Sloan, a senior adviser for nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight, told Raw Story.

ALSO READ: Florida judge’s son is a neo-Nazi patron: data leak

In today’s tribal and perpetually warring Congress, it seems even pay-to-play politics are now partisan. While Senate Republicans are vowing to use all procedural tools at their disposal to block Leo and Crow from being subpoenaed, most in the party are also backing the Biden impeachment inquiry because they say Hunter Biden was selling access to his father — an accusation for which they’ve provided no evidence to date.

On paper – paper stamped with GOP letterhead, mind you – the impeachment inquiry is focused on buying access.

“It better be, because, quite honestly, Hunter Biden's personal problems aren't the issue. The issue is whether he was selling access to a vice president willing to provide that access, and whether the vice president at the time – the current president – was enriched by it,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told Raw Story.

As for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in private jet travel, stays at his private retreat and luxurious free vacations aboard his 162-foot yacht that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni admitted to receiving from Harlan Crow?

“That's not enriching yourself, because you went on a boat ride for God's sake. That's not the same as cash in your checking account,” Cramer said of ProPublica’s revelations.

Cramer argues, if the trips weren’t free “maybe he wouldn't have gone on it.”

“The difference is … he’s a friend. Friends are allowed to provide hospitality for you in their home or on their boat. That's very different than a foreign adversary providing cash to a sitting vice president of the United States through his son. That's barely, barely even in the same ballpark, if at all,” Cramer said. “It’s a stretch, to say the least. It's just, it's not the same thing.”

That’s not even mentioning the free private school tuition Thomas’ nephew – who he raised like a son – received from Crow, which ProPublica estimates could have totaled upward of $150,000.

ALSO READ: Busted: These healthcare nonprofits are accepting millions from Big Tobacco

Senate Democrats, some of whom argue Thomas was in a prime position to rule on cases that effect Crow’s fortune, are particularly interested in whether Crow declared the lavish free vacations and travel as business expenses on his federal taxes.

For Leo – co-chairman of the Federalist Society, including the $1.6 billion fortune it now controls – Campaign for Accountability filed an IRS complaint alleging he’s funneling money from seven nonprofit entities he controls to his for-profit businesses, thus illegally profiting off campaign donations. The apparent interference from Jordan and Comer is appalling to watchdogs.

“Then, at the same time, they're screaming about the politicization of justice when they talk about Donald Trump, but they want to tell a sitting U.S. attorney – you know, the state's attorney for D.C. – who he can and can't look at because they don't want him looking at Leonard Leo,” Sloan said. “They just are bowing down at the altar of Leonard Leo and his $1.6 billion.”

House Republicans deny they’re interfering with an ongoing investigation.

“I’m confused. So it’s OK for Democrats to subpoena Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow, but not OK for us to look into AG Schwalb? Isn’t that literally the definition of a double standard — a.k.a Democrats can do something, but we can’t?” Russell M. Dye, communications director and counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, emailed Raw Story.

ALSO READ: ‘Too preposterous to be real’: College hires ‘pink slime’ publisher as journalism prof

Republicans say there’s no reason for an investigation, because the megadonors aren’t accused of trying to change the outcomes of specific cases before the Supreme Court.

“I really think there's like a fundamental difference here between trading favors and not, right? The difference here is the consideration. I've seen no evidence that any of the Supreme Court justices, least of all Clarence Thomas, offered to give anything back. To me, that’s the big difference,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) told Raw Story.

“Now look, if Harlan Crow or anybody else wrote $100 million to a Supreme Court Justice, and say, ‘Hey, please do this thing in my benefit’ — well, that raises some serious problems. But is it the standard that a Supreme Court justice can't have a rich friend?” Vance continued. “If they want to set that standard, it’s up to them, but I don't think that that raises nearly the same pay-to-play concerns as Joe Biden’s situation.”

Gifts are different than business appears to be the current GOP ethical standard for such matters.

“We're not talking about gifts. This is business. So with Hunter [Biden], this is, you know, he's on the Burisma board. He's doing these foreign business deals in Ukraine and China and lots of offices, and he is openly out there selling his dad,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Raw Story. “At the very least, he's clearly making money off his father. The question is, did the president benefit from that? That's what they need to answer. So that's why we have the inquiry.”

When pressed on the impeachment inquiry into Biden, former Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wasn’t up to date on the specifics, even as he proudly remembers getting the investigative ball rolling for House Republicans.

“You’re talking about the substance of it. I’m not sure I can talk about the substance of it,” Grassley told Raw Story. “Except, the process is necessary to complete what [Sen. Ron] Johnson (R-WI) and I started four years ago, and that is to get all the information that Congress is entitled to in our oversight capacity and that's what it's all about, as far as I know.”

The Supreme Court adopted a new code of ethics since the lavish gifts were first reported, so Democrats’ complaints are outdated, Grassley argues.

ALSO READ: You blew it in New Hampshire, Joe Biden. Pray it doesn’t hurt you — and then some

“Because the judicial branch put out their … new regulation, and if that doesn’t take care of it – and we won't know that for a little while, maybe a year or two – then maybe that'd be a legitimate question,” Grassley said. “But right now it’s not a legitimate question considering the initiative of the Supreme Court.”

After all, 10 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee walked out of the vote to subpoena Leo and Crow on November 30 – allowing Democrats to pass the measure 11-0 – Senate Republicans argue the vote broke committee rules.

“They’re not legal,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Raw Story. “Anybody who knows a lawbook from a J. Crew catalog knows they can get those subpoenas quashed in one hearing.”

Because of wholesale GOP opposition, there doesn’t seem to be the votes to formalize the subpoenas on the Senate floor where Republicans are threatening to require a 60-vote threshold.

“You’ll never see this come to the floor,” Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Politico. “We’ll attack it legally, we’ll vote against it. It’d be a s—show.”

Even as the party hasn’t decided how it will proceed in the Senate, many Democrats expected this.

“We're going after the icons of the Republican Party, Leonard Leo, of course, and, to some, Justice Thomas. They’re very sensitive to that,” Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) told Raw Story. “Public sentiment is overwhelmingly in our favor, so they have got to be strident in opposition.”

The two different standards for Biden and GOP donors is remarkable to Democrats.

“Republicans want to protect the court that they have packed, and they protect the court by maintaining its status as an unaccountable highest court of the land,” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) told Raw Story. “It looks like they're doing everything they can to keep hidden the secret relationships that are going on at the court with powerful interests that bring cases before the court.”

To the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), this made-for-Fox-and-Newsmax drama shows how completely former President Donald Trump has remade the GOP in his own image.

“It is just sad the way that Donald Trump has completed his stranglehold over the Republican Party,” Raskin told Raw Story. “Donald Trump has taught them – from the Charlottesville riot forward – that there should be no enemies on the right. And they have no enemies on the right, and they will take no principled stance against anybody on the right, no matter how fascistic they are.”

===

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an 12 23

In a new column, MSNBC host Jen Psaki is warning that a conspiracy theory popular with the most far-right fringes of society has now become standard conservative orthodoxy.

On Saturday, Psaki remarked on a comment uttered by businessman Vivek Ramaswamy that went relatively unnoticed during the fourth Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, in which he baselessly suggested that the so-called "Great Replacement Theory" is "a basic statement of the Democratic Party's platform (it isn't)." That theory posits that Democrats seek to have immigrants and refugees "replace" the white population, with the overall goal of having them become registered voters to sway elections.

"The great replacement theory is definitely not a part of the Democratic Party platform. It is a conspiracy theory — one touted by neo-Nazis and avowed white supremacists," Psaki wrote. "The scary part is that it has become mainstream in Republican politics. There’s Donald Trump’s comments that immigration from the southern border was 'poisoning the blood of our country.' In the same vein, House Speaker Mike Johnson said in May that Democrats are 'intentionally' encouraging undocumented immigration to 'turn all these illegals into voters for their side.'

"It's all a part of a movement on the right wing to foment outrage and seize power by playing up the fear of the 'other,'" she added. "And it's not a strategy that is going away."

The "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory has also been popularized by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who frequently alluded to it on his primetime Fox News program to millions of nightly viewers. By the Guardian's count, Carlson mentioned it in approximately 400 episodes. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) have also been criticized for promoting the "replacement" conspiracy theory.

The growing prevalence of that conspiracy theory has led to violent and tragic outcomes. In 2022, the perpetrator of the mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York grocery store mentioned it in the manifesto he wrote prior to massacring 10 people and injuring three others at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood. While he didn't specifically name Fox News, he did admit to being radicalized on the forum 4Chan.

Neo-nazi Andrew Anglin, founder of the white supremacist website The Daily Stormer, called Tucker Carlson "literally our greatest ally" and lauded him for "dropping the ultimate truth bomb on his audience" in reference to the "great replacement" theory.

They play-act': Jon Stewart torches JD Vance and Tucker Carlson over Ohio train derailment

Meaghan Ellis

February 15, 2023

Jon Stewart did not mince words when he slammed both Fox News' Tucker Carlson and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) for their reaction to the Ohio train derailment.

According to Stewart, although both expressed outrage...

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an ah 11 22

When the results of 2022 midterms came in on Election Night, one saw some patterns emerging. Democrats were performing much better than expected, and many of the Republicans who were defeating Democrats in statewide races in swing states tended to be traditional conservatives rather far-right hyper-MAGA conspiracy theorists.

Hyper-MAGA, ultra-Trumpian candidates, in fact, lost key gubernatorial races in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, while many of the GOP governors who were reelected — Ohio’s Mike DeWine, Georgia’s Brian Kemp, New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu — were more traditional conservatives. One saw some ticket splitting in New Hampshire; Sununu was reelected by around 15 percent, while far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist Don Bolduc lost to incumbent Democratic Sen. Maggie Hasan by 9 percent.

DeWine and Sununu are often slammed as RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) by the MAGA crowd, but unlike Arizona’s Kari Lake, Michigan’s Tudor Dixon or Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano — Republican gubernatorial nominees who ran on ultra-MAGA platforms — they won. Conservative Washington Post opinion columnist Henry Olsen had a blunt comment in his November 22 column: “College-educated voters just aren’t into MAGA.”

But “weird” Republicans, The New Republic’s Graham Gallagher emphasizes in an article published on November 25, aren’t going away. In fact, they have achieved more and more prominence in the GOP and are making their presence felt in some right-wing think tanks such as the Claremont Institute.

“The ascendant weird right will likely struggle to sell its deeply anti-patriotic vision to many voters,” Gallagher explains. “In these segments of the mostly young, online-influenced American right, the optimistic vision espoused by Ronald Reagan’s ‘morning in America’ has been discarded. The elite educated right has moved even beyond the overt pessimism of Donald Trump’s ‘American carnage’ — now, disgust with equitable citizenship, personal liberty, and democratic self-governance is commonplace. Fed by an endless outrage cycle and a motivated and well-resourced donor class willing to pour money into increasingly reactionary think tanks like the avowedly anti-democratic Claremont Institute, right-wing thinkers and activists have begun to identify the foundational pillars of the United States itself with immorality and adopted a new fascination with medieval Catholicism and imported European extremisms.”

Gallagher points to “the right-wing embrace of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin” and former Rep. Allen West’s obsession with the Medieval Knights Templar as examples of how “bizarre” the “online weird right” can be. Others include beliefs that “real men don’t eat soybeans, seed oils are dangerous, meat substitutes will turn men into women and…. the best diet is all-meat.” And Gallagher cites some specific examples of how “weird” MAGA candidates could be in the 2022 midterms.

“Blake Masters and J.D. Vance — two Republican candidates for Senate funded in part by tech billionaire and new-right linchpin Peter Thiel — have embraced new-right ideas and actively courted the ‘weird right,’” Gallagher observes. “Vance has questioned whether women should leave violent marriages; Masters has praised domestic terrorist Theodore Kaczynski’s infamous manifesto, argued against legal access to contraception, and openly said that democracy is a smokescreen for the masses ‘stealing certain kinds of goods and redistributing them as they see fit.’ Americans on balance like democracy; legal contraception is almost universally popular; and Kaczynski’s unpopularity is so widely assumed that pollsters rarely ask about him. Masters, perhaps unsurprisingly, lost his bid to unseat Mark Kelly, and Vance badly underperformed in his blood-red home state.”

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debate

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/jd-vance-tim-ryan/

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/tim-ryan-mercilessly-mocks-jd-vance-for-being-a-trump-flunky/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/postliberalism/

salon kat j

...For Hazony, the primary issue was about how conservatives understand China, the rising superpower that NatCons see as America's No. 1 rival. Their conference had banned all speakers who are "pro-Xi, pro-Putin, racists or antisemites," although that standard seems malleable at times. (As Political Research Associates' Ben Lorber reported, this year'sNatCon included a meditation on the viciously xenophobic French novel "Camp of the Saints," approving mention of antisemitic Action Française leader Charles Maurras and an address by a former Trump speechwriter fired for alleged ties to white nationalists.) But some integralists, Hazony charged, had "always had a soft spot for dictatorship, for imperialism and for China," and in recent months that had become impossible to ignore, as members of the movement wrote articles praising China's government or culture.

Then there was Compact Magazine, the hybrid "radical American journal" Ahmari co-founded last March with fellow Catholic Matthew Schmitz and Marxist populist Edwin Aponte. Its professed agenda was to wage "a two-front war on the left and the right" and promote "a strong social-democratic state that defends community — local and national, familial and religious — against a libertine left and a libertarian right."

Although Compact has declined to specify who funds the magazine, a source familiar with its operations told Salon that it was launched with significant support from right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel — who has funded numerous other "new right" projects, from NatCon conferences to the political campaigns of J.D. Vance, Blake Masters and Josh Hawley — and Claremont Institute chair Tom Klingenstein (another top NatCon donor). Klingenstein did not respond to requests for comment. A source close to Thiel denied that Thiel has directly funded Compact, but couldn't rule out the possibility that an entity Thiel funds has in turn donated to the magazine. In a statement, Ahmari said, "Compact is an independent, for-profit publication supported by our subscribers. A group of investors helped us jump-start it. We respect their privacy and decline to name them."

Both Thiel and Klingenstein spoke at NatCon this year, and a handful of other NatCon speakers attended the integralist conference too. But on the whole, Hazony said, Compact was a bridge too far for most NatCons. While many in the movement were open to "rethinking the commitment to the free market as an absolute principle," and might even support targeted business regulations, he said, there was "no appetite, no capacity among nationalist conservatives to accept the ideal of social democracy as an alternative to the market mechanism."

Integralists had their own complaints. Some also involved foreign policy questions, like whether NatCons' enthusiastic defense of Ukraine amounted to a creeping neoconservative revival, or whether their strident hostility to China reflected warmed-over Cold War politics. But their main concern was more fundamental: NatCons, they charged, were abandoning the populist promise of Trumpism for a seat at the establishment table.

To be sure, NatCon 3 featured critiques of big business, but, with limited exceptions, most amounted to dragging "woke corporations." Ron DeSantis (introduced in Miami as "the future president") spoke dutifully about how free enterprise should be seen as a tool to help "our own people" rather than an end in itself. But his real firepower was saved for war stories: his battle with Disney over Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law, his resolution banning state pension funds from weighing environmental or social justice concerns in investment decisions, a promised law to help Floridians sue tech companies that commit "viewpoint discrimination."

Other speakers called forblacklisting banks that disinvest in fossil fuels; seizing universities' endowments; and making it illegal for employers to ask if applicants attended college, in order to disincentivize young people from entering the "inherently liberalizing environment" of higher education. (In a more recent example, after contrarian billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter and numerous companies stopped advertising on the platform, Republicans suggested that congressional hearings into "leftist corporate extortion" might be in order.)...

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an 9 22

A former Republican congresswoman is blasting a recent speech from former President Donald Trump, calling it "humiliating" and referring to the event as a "QAnon Fest."

Barbara Comstock, who served as a GOP representative from Virginia from 2015 to 2019, spoke Sunday evening following the former president's speech. The event, which took place in Youngstown, Ohio, was a rally in support of Senate candidate J.D. Vance, someone who Trump has boosted heavily in recent months.

The speech was largely full of most of the same rhetoric that has been heard from Trump since he left office, and Comstock told CNN anchor Jim Acosta that the event was a "contribution to [Democratic challenger] Tim Ryan." She went on to say that Trump made "J.D. Vance look like a mouse, not a man."

"It was humiliating," Comstock added. "It was a QAnon fest, it was playing this strange QAnon music, they were all sort of, you know, bowing - I think Marjorie Greene was there talking about the one true leader." The event featured a number of bizarre outings, such as one moment when the rally attendees raised their hands to the former president in an apparent show of loyalty.

However, Comstock noted that, while Trump has often pushed the size of his rally crowds, the event was lightly attended.

"I think this is the last gasp of a dying cult...J.D. Vance is really a shell of a person to be there, bowing and scraping to somebody who he rightfully attacked just a few years ago," she said.

Watch video below or at this link.

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8 22 cpac rant about hotdog buns burger?

no lnx

JD Vance addresses CPAC in Texas while facing criticism for time outside Ohio

Kate Scanlon,Washington Examiner

JD Vance addresses CPAC in Texas while facing criticism for time outside Ohio

DALLAS — Ohio Republican Senate nominee J.D. Vance addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on Friday as some Republicans question how much time he is spending outside the state during a must-win Senate race for his party.

AT CPAC, TED CRUZ SAYS REPUBLICANS ‘SPEND TOO MUCH TIME PREACHING TO THE CHOIR'

In remarks to the conservative conference, Vance sought to introduce himself as a candidate to the activists in the audience, outlining his roots in rural Ohio and from what he called a "nontraditional family."

"This country, ladies and gentlemen, is a great place, especially a great place to a kid like me," he said. "And for that reason, I believe it's time to step up. It's time to fight for it, ladies and gentlemen — it is time to save this country."

Vance urged conferencegoers to back his campaign.

"I want you to support me, I want you to make phone calls for me, I want you to go out there if you're in Ohio and knock on doors for me," Vance said.

Holding the Ohio Senate seat soon to be vacated by the retiring Sen. Rob Portman (OH) is crucial to Republicans' efforts to win a Senate majority. Vance's remarks in Texas come after some recent headlines questioned his campaign's strategy when it comes to campaigning and the candidate's time outside Ohio, including a recent trip to Israel.

Ohio conservative talk radio host Bill Cunningham recently told the Daily Beast that "the Republican faithful are telling me they can't find J.D. Vance with a search warrant."

Vance's schedule has become a talking point for the Ohio Democratic Party, which has hit him for his appearances outside the state.

Vance recently attended the Ohio State Fair earlier this month, and his campaign says he will visit Pickaway County outside Columbus on an agriculture tour next week.

Original Location: JD Vance addresses CPAC in Texas while facing criticism for time outside Ohio

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an 8 22

no twt

Vance, the billionaire-backed U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio, has routinely positioned himself as an anti-opioid China-hawk, promising to rein in Big Pharma and bring jobs back to the U.S. But in recent weeks it has been revealed that Vance, a Trump-backed author, worked for a white shoe law firm that represented multiple Chinese companies and lobbied for Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. Vance then hired an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) resident who cited Purdue-funded studies to downplay the role overprescribing painkillers plays in the opioid crisis as the addiction specialist to Ohio's Appalachian region for his nonprofit, "Our Ohio Renewal."

The apparent contradiction, first reported by Politico, stems from a "vulnerability analysis" posted online by Protect Ohio Values (POV), the Super PAC through which Vance has raised millions of dollars for his Senate campaign. Because campaign finance law bars any candidates from communicating with their associated Super PACs, POV appears to have posted a trove of polling data, strategic documents, and opposition research on a low-profile Medium account for Vance to reference, detailing potential weak spots in his competitors' campaigns as well as his own.

Vance's vulnerability analysis reveals that the lawyer-turned-author, who founded a non-profit dedicated to curbing the opioid epidemic, had at one point worked for law firm Sidley Austin LLP in Washington, D.C. During Vance's time there, the firm's lobbying arm was working on behalf of Purdue Pharma, which pleaded guilty in 2020 to criminal charges and faced penalties of roughly $8.3 billion. During that same time, Sidley Austin also reportedly represented "a Chinese real estate company" and lobbied Alibaba Group, a massive Chinese e-commerce platform. But as a Senate candidate, Vance has repeatedly called for the U.S. to sever its economic ties with the country, calling globalization a "gravy train" for China.

"On one side you have people who want to go back to the America Last foreign policy, the weak on China trade policies," as Vance said in a recent Fox News interview. "And on the other side you have me, supported by President Trump, trying to bring back our manufacturing jobs from China."

The Associated Press (AP) then reported this week that Vance's charity suffered a major conflict of interest when it recruited an AEI resident who never disclosed Perdue's financial contributions to AEI while favorably citing Perdue-funded studies to argue that prescription painkillers played a significant role in the region's drastic uptick in opioid addiction. According to the AP, Dr. Sally Satel "occasionally shared drafts of the pieces with Purdue officials in advance." And as ProPublica reported in the past, AEI received financial support from Purdue totaling $800,000.

Vance's past work may prove a problem with other areas besides Big Pharma. He was with Sidley Austin while the firm filed an amicus brief in support of gay marriage back in 2015, while the Supreme Court was ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges. Since then, Vance has taken countless swipes at the LGBTQ+ community. AIn 2020, Vance excoriated the "conservative legal movement" after Supreme Court ruled that gay and trans workers cannot be fired for their gender identity or sexual orientation.

"The conservative legal movement has accomplished two things: libertarian political economy (enforced by judges) and betrayal of social conservatives and traditionalists," he wrote at the time in a since-deleted tweet.

Since the beginning of his campaign, numerous critics have also called out Vance's funding as problematic. Vance has repeatedly blasted Big Tech, claiming that the industry systematically censors conservative voices. But the Republican's chief benefactor is Peter Thiel, a prominent tech billionaire responsible for co-founding PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, through which he was one of the first investors in Facebook.

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MIA?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/jd-vance-2657718764/

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open secrets

Vance surges to victory in Ohio’s record-breaking Senate primary

May 4, 2022 | Outside groups spent over $40 million ahead of Ohio's Senate primary, almost three times more than the previous record of about $15 million.

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an 4 22

As Democratic lawmakers worked to finalize the confirmation of US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a number perplexing events took place in national political theater this week. One of the most pivotal moments centered on Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison’s attack on Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) following the Republican senator's suggestion that Jackson is a Nazi sympathizer, per The Washington Post.

Harrison described Cotton as a “maggot, infested man” while collectively calling out the Republican Party and labeling it a political party “built on fraud, fear, and fascism.”

Almost immediately after Harrison made the remarks, the Republican National Committee (RNC) fired back with a response. But instead of criticizing the Democratic official for his charge about the party, the RNC focused more on his remarks targeting Cotton. In a newly published op-ed, The Washington Post's Dana Milbank highlighted the seemingly odd argument from the party.

"Interestingly, a statement from the Republican National Committee taking offense at the 'maggot-infested' charge did not dispute the “fraud, fear and fascism” formulation," Milbank wrote. "As your self-appointed fact-checker, I have therefore examined the merits of the accusation."

So, Milbank decided to discuss those three keypoints as he highlighted how they factually relate to the Republican Party. In reference to fraud, Milbank highlighted the irony Republicans' claims of fraud as he noted the evidence of fraud that has been uncovered actually proves it was likely committed by members of their own party.

"The 'big lie' about a rigged election, accepted by two-thirds of Republican voters, has spawned new frauds about the dangers of coronavirus vaccines (leading to sharply higher death rates in heavily Republican counties) and the promise, touted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) of the deworming drug ivermectin to treat covid-19; an exhaustive new study finds the drug useless," he wrote.

He went on to offer an example of the type offearmongering Republicans are responsible for invoking. "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.)," Milbank highlighted, "said people like Ketanji Brown Jackson become public defenders because 'their heart is with the murderers.' Cotton said Justice Robert H. Jackson 'left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis. This Judge Jackson might have gone there to defend them.'”

Milbank also noted recent remarks made by Ohio Senate Republican candidate J.D. Vance. In a recent ad, hesaid, “Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

Assessing Republican lawmakers' opposition to a resolution in support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Milbank explained how their perspective aligns with fascism. "Sixty-three House Republicans — 30 percent of the caucus — voted against a resolution this week affirming unequivocal support for NATO as authoritarian Russia attacks democratic Ukraine," he wrote.

On another note, he added, "A Republican National Committee resolution, never rescinded, refers to the Capitol insurrection not as an authoritarian attempt to overthrow democracy and keep the defeated Trump in power but as legitimate political discourse.' And Trump expresses regret he didn’t march to the Capitol with the insurrectionists."

He concluded, "Is the GOP 'a party built on fraud, fear, and fascism'? Certainly, not all Republicans think this way. But too many others are subverting democracy, cavorting with white nationalists, spreading racist fears and fantasizing about extrajudicial punishment for political opponents and the media. For them, the jackboot fits."

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/j-d-vances-electorally-stupid-ukraine-comment-has-doomed-his-senate-campaign-conservative/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/twisted-and-warped-maga-republicans-fears-justin-trudeau-more-than-vladimir-putin-conservative/

wingnuttery c owen no twt

'Twisted' and 'warped' MAGA Republicans fear Justin Trudeau more than Vladimir Putin: conservative

Alex Henderson February 22, 2022

At a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin appears likely to invade Ukraine, many right-wing media outlets — from Fox News to the Daily Wire to Breitbart News — are vigorously defending Putin and Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán while arguing that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is the real authoritarian. Trudeau’s unforgivable sin, according to the MAGA far right, is enforcing vaccine and testing requirements for people entering Canada from the United States.

Conservative Daily Beast opinion writer and Never Trumper Matt Lewis, in a February 22 column, compares the MAGA movement’s views on Trudeau versus Putin — arguing that the American right has truly gone off the deep end when it considers Trudeau the enemy but defends Putin.

“If you want to understand someone’s values or worldview,” Lewis writes, “take a look at who and what provokes outrage and who and what evokes sympathy. The cognitive dissonance inherent in much of the American right can make such an examination problematic. That’s because some of the most prominent voices on the right today view Vladimir Putin as a misunderstood victim. Meanwhile, they cast Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as an authoritarian strongman.”

Lewis goes on to offer specific examples, noting that the Daily Wire’s Canace Owens tweeted, “STOP talking about Russia. Send American troops to Canada to deal with the tyrannical reign of Justin Trudeau Castro.”

The Never Trumper adds, “Or consider Fox News host Tucker Carlson, my friend — though we disagree profoundly on politics — and former boss. Carlson isn’t outraged over what is happening to Ukraine, but found time last week to bash ‘strongman’ Trudeau as ‘the dictator of Canada,’ while saying that ‘Canada canceled democracy.’ There’s also Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who says Trudeau has gone ‘full dictator.’And J.D. Vance, celebrated author and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, who recently declared that he ‘doesn’t really care what happens to Ukraine.’”

Lewis injects some humor into his column, noting that Marty McFly — the time-traveling Reagan-era teenager Michael J. Fox portrayed in the 1985 fantasy film “Back to the Future” — would be shocked to see so many Republicans fawning over a former KGB agent. Indeed, back in the days of Madonna, Run-D.M.C. and Duran Duran, Reagan Republicans railed against the Kremlin nonstop; now, MAGA Republicans consider Putin and his ally Orbán people to be admired.

“If the 1985 version of Marty McFly transported to 2022,” Lewis writes, “it would be impossible to explain to him why so many conservative Republicans are willing to look the other way on Russia invading a sovereign nation, while they simultaneously blast Canada for imposing consequences on protesters blocking traffic…. To be clear, Putin is a former KGB agent and an actual authoritarian. He literally kills and imprisons his critics. And don’t forget the little matter of 100,000 of his troops massed on the Ukrainian border.”

Lewis adds, “Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau is the elected leader of a free nation. He took action to restore law and order [and GNP!]after three weeks of truckers blocking traffic and generally disturbing the peace.”

The conservative Lewis has spent plenty of time bashing the left, but he has been a blistering critic of former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. And he wraps up his February 22 column by stressing that MAGA Republicans are as “warped” now as they were when Trump was still in the White House.

“If you find someone willing to defend Vladimir Putin for threatening to invade and kill his neighbors, while simultaneously calling Justin Trudeau a ‘dictator’ for shutting down a lawless protest after three weeks,you have found someone who either is intellectually dishonest or has a warped sense of reality,” Lewis warns. “If you thought the gaslighting would end with Trump, you were wrong. The American right is getting in the habit of calling evil good and good evil. It’s a truly twisted and perverse perception of a dangerous world, and the scary thing is, it’s catching on.”

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an 2 22

Because “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance comes across as such a cynical, opportunistic, insincere flip-flopper — he went from vehement Donald Trump critic to strident MAGA extremist — his detractors would love to see him lose in Ohio’s 2022 GOP U.S. Senate primary. But former Ohio State Treasurer Josh Mandel, Vance’s main opponent in that primary, is very much a MAGA extremist himself. And Mandel's campaign is the focus of an article by Politico reporter Michael Kruse.

The bitter, ugly, hateful mudslinging between Vance and Mandel comes down to: I’m more MAGA than you. Mandel and Vance have both focused heavily on culture war themes. And Mandel, Kruse notes, showed how far-right he is at an event in a Baptist church in January.

Kruse says of Mandel, “He called Black Lives Matter activists ‘thugs.’ He called ‘the transgender movement…. insane.’ He called COVID-19 ‘a bioweapon manufactured by the Chinese Communist Party’ to defeat Donald Trump. He talked about the ‘seep’ of ‘illegals’ at the border, describing the emigration of Haitians, Hondurans, Mexicans andGuatemalans as an ‘invasion funded’ by George Soros, ‘orchestrated’ by Barack Obama and ‘enabled’ by Joe Biden. He said he didn’t believe in the separation of church and state because ‘there’s no such thing.’”

Vance’s critics have slammed him as a shameless flip-flopper, and he was brutally mocked in a goofy Republican ad: [vid]

The Vance of 2016 predicted that Donald Trump would be a terrible president — an accurate prediction — whereas the Vance of 2022 is stridently MAGA all the way. But Mandel’s tone is also much different from what it was in the past.

“(Mandel) doesn’t act the way he used to act, and he doesn’t talk the way he used to talk, say so many Democrats and Republicans alike. And they’re right,” Kruse observes in Politico. “He used to present as more moderate, used to preach bipartisanship and diversity and civility, and no longer does. Perhaps most importantly, he once was conspicuously unsupportive of Trump, and now, he has publicly pivoted to full-fledged MAGA. Who, they wonder, is he really?”

Ohio-based Democratic strategist Dennis Eckart views Mandel’s MAGA posturing as motivated by self-serving opportunism.

Eckart told Politico, “I don’t think he’s ever really changed. He’s an opportunity-seeking opportunist.”

In addition to Mandel and Vance, Republicans competing in that U.S. Senate primary include Ohio State Sen. Matt Dolan and former Ohio Republican Party Chair Jane Timken. Trump has yet to make an endorsement in the primary, which will be held on May 3. But so far, polls are showing Mandel to be the frontrunner.

“For now, this election is Mandel’s to lose, and he absolutely could,” Kruse observes. “But in a primary with no runoff, decided by not a majority, but merely the most votes, he just as surely could win.”

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an 2 22

Conservative technology mogul and billionaire investor Peter Thiel has announced that he is stepping down from the board for Facebook and Instagram's parent company, Meta. Thiel, who is considered one of the earliest investors in Facebook, will continue to serve in the capacity of board director until Meta's upcoming annual shareholders' meeting. At that point, he will not seek to be re-elected.

According to The Wall Street, Thiel will now be focusing his efforts on helping the Republican Party elect candidates who align with former President Donald Trump's political agenda. Speaking to Bloomberg, an insider familiar with the situation and Thiel's departure revealed which Republican candidates Thiel will be focused on helping.

“He thinks that the Republican Party can advance the Trump agenda and he wants to do what he can to support that,” a source close to Thiel told Bloomberg. “His focus will be on supporting Blake Masters,JD Vance and others who support the Trump agenda.”

In a press release following the announcement of Thiel's departure, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg applauded him for his work. “Peter has been a valuable member of our board and I’m deeply grateful for everything he has done for our company,” Zuckerberg said. “Peter is truly an original thinker who you can bring your hardest problems and get unique suggestions.”

Thiel also spoke highly of Zuckerberg saying, “His talents will serve Meta well as he leads the company into a new era."

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gotta go hard right for trumpistas? primary flanker? i thot it was pre-emptive [self-] mockery RCS? 2.0 blog AI solves Jew Q space laser cmd or somesuch or just mirror/cryptic reversal: we are the true VICTIMS and you are the true racists/bully/oppressor/tyrant but now i think they just pick up random devil terms and see if they can be made to stick like spaghetti

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/matt-gaetz/

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., suggested on Wednesday that his office is open to hiring Kyle Rittenhouse as a congressional intern if the accused gunman is acquitted, arguing that the 18-year-old is "not guilty" for the killing of two men during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin last summer.

"You know what, Kyle Rittenhouse would probably make a good congressional intern," Gaetz said Wednesday during an appearance on Newsmax. "We may reach out to him and see if he'd be interested in helping the country in additional ways."

The Florida lawmaker continued: "He is not guilty. He deserves a not guilty verdict and I sure hope he gets it."

Thursday marks the third day of jury deliberations for Rittenhouse's trial, which began on November 1. In August of 2020, Rittenhouse drove from his home of Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, where he apparently sought to defend a car dealership from the threat of looting in the aftermath of the police shooting of Jacob Blake. During an armed confrontation – the details of which were litigated at trial – Rittenhouse fatally shot two men and injured another with an AR-15-stylerifle.[barrrell short thus got off one slam dunk charge, ok to carry if hunting? POC?]

Rittenhouse has pleaded not guilty, claiming that he acted in self-defense, while prosecutors argue that the then-17-year-old acted like a vigilante. "I defended myself,"[[proudly, manly?] Rittenhouse said during the trial last week. The teen faces life imprisonment if convicted.

Over the last several weeks, the televised trial has been closely followed by politicians, pundits, and activists, who have weighed in the proceedings as they relate to racial justice, white privilege, Black Lives Matter, and gun violence.

In a Fox News interview this week, conservative author J.D. Vance, currently vying to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy for Ohio, called Rittenhouse's trial a "farce," adding that "it's child abusemasquerading as justice in this country."

"The kind of people who thought O.J Simpson was innocent are the same people who believe that Kyle Rittenhouse is guilty," echoed right-wing commentator Candace Owenslast week. "Facts don't matter to emotionally-indoctrinated zombies. Only feelings do."

But those on the left have sung a markedly different tune.

Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that Rittenhouse's trial reflects "white privilege on steroids."

"It is literally impossible to imagine a 17-year-old Black kid traveling to a different state … who shoots three people, kills two – who, right now, isn't in prison," Butler told POLITICO.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., spoke about the case with marked candidness for a federal lawmaker, tweeting on Wednesday: "Lock up Kyle Rittenhouse and throw away the key."

Rittenhouse's defense team has already filed a motion for a mistrial with prejudice, according to CNN, meaning that Rittenhouse would be protected from any state bid to retry the case going forward.

For his part,Gaetz also railed against the recent sentencing of 34-year-old Jacob Chansley, the "QAnon Shaman" notorious for breaching the U.S. Senate floor on January 6 while donning a horned fur headdress. On Wednesday, Chansley was sentenced to three years in prison on a single count of felony obstruction of an official proceeding.

"This QAnon Shaman is a relatively harmless,nonviolent veganand the notion that he has to be in prison for three and a half years to settle some sort of political score defies justice,"[eternal victims, shocked shocked playing politics, we never do that] Gaetz continued.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/peter-thiel/

igor salon

Billionaire Republican donor Peter Thiel is bankrolling election conspiracists and primary challengers against Republicans who backed Donald Trump's impeachment after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, including an Arizona Senate candidate who is literally on his payroll.

Thiel, the Facebook board member who co-founded PayPal and later the controversial data-mining company Palantir, has long been a top Republican benefactor, donating millions to GOP candidates and political action committees. But in the wake of Trump's 2020 defeat, Thiel has grown more aggressive in his political investments, dropping more than $20 million to support two far-right Senate candidates and helping to fund primary challengers against Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and other Republicans who called for Trump's removal after the deadly riot.

"He wants to be the patron of the Trump wing of the Republican Party," said Max Chafkin, a Bloomberg reporter and author of "The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power." Thiel is focused on building out "Trumpism after Trump," Chafkin said in an interview with Salon, describing the tech billionaire as "in many ways further to the right than Trump."

Thiel, who donated $1.25 million to back Trump in 2016, has made an even bigger splash this election cycle with a $10 million donation to back his protégé Blake Masters, who plans to run for the Republican nomination in next year's Arizona Senate election. Masters is uniquely connected to Thiel, serving as the chief operating officer of Thiel Capital, the billionaire's venture capital fund, and co-writing Thiel's book "Zero to One."

While candidates like Virginia's Glenn Youngkin have stepped away from their corporate careers to run for office, Masters appears to still be on Thiel's payroll. He earned $775,000 from Thiel Capital last year and received more than $340,000 in royalty payments from the sales of "Zero to One," according to a personal finance disclosure that was first reported by Insider. Masters did not respond to questions from Salon about whether he still collects a salary from Thiel's company, but still lists himself as the firm's COO on his LinkedIn page.

Thiel last month hosted a fundraiser for Masters' campaign at his Los Angeles home that cost up to $5,800 to attend.

Saving Arizona PAC, the Thiel-funded effort that has already spent nearly $1.7 million in Arizona, has launched ads attacking state Attorney General Mark Brnovich, Masters' principal GOP opponent, for rejecting Trump's lie that voter fraud cost him the election.

"Mark Brnovich says President Trump is wrong on voter fraud. Really? Brnovich failed to convene a grand jury, certified Biden as president. Now he's nowhere to be found, making excuses … instead of standing with our president,".

Brnovich was one of multiple state officials, including Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who certified the election results. The ad does not explain why Brnovich should have convened a grand jury. There has been no evidence of widespread fraud in Arizona or any other state, and courts have repeatedly rejected challenges by Trump allies seeking to overturn Biden's win.

The PAC also blasted Brnovich on Twitter, arguing that he is "nowhere to be found in the fight against voter fraud."

Masters is the "only candidate who will demand fair and transparent elections," the PAC said.

The Saving Arizona PAC recently made yet another six-figure ad buy attacking Brnovich for not being Trumpy enough.

Masters, who was endorsed by Trump's former national security adviser Robert O'Brien this week, has walked a fine line when discussing the presidential election. He has stopped short of claiming that the election was stolen outright, but has boosted conspiracy theories on Twitter about "dead people voting," Dominion voting machines and fears about election "integrity," echoing a trope employed by numerous other Republicans who have tried to distance themselves from the voter fraud lie while still trying to appease Trump loyalists.

After the dubious so-called audit in Arizona's Maricopa County actually showed Biden gaining a handful of votes compared to the official total, Trump and other Republicans began to claim that the audit had turned up serious questions about the election administration. In fact, Republican audit officials testified to Congress last week that the county held a "**free, fair and accurate election."Masters, however, sided with TrumpWorld throughout the process, teasing the release of the audit report, echoing Trump's claims about "fake" polls and "anti-Trump disinformation," and making the evidence-proof argument that "no matter what the audit finds, we know this election wasn't fair."

Masters later demanded action from Brnovich in response to the audit, though he did not say exactly what he wanted the state attorney general to do.

"The AZ audit findings have been referred to the Attorney General," Masters tweeted. "The ball is now in Brnovich's court. He has a track record of doing the bare minimum, so let's pay attention, and we'll see if the Republican establishment is serious about election integrity."

Masters also demanded that Ducey immediately "call a special session" to impose new voting restrictions, even though Ducey had already signed a bill to restrict mail ballots and purge the state's popular early voting list in the spring.

"Get the legislature back to work so they can tighten up our election laws," Masters tweeted. "Starting with universal voter ID for every kind of ballot — nothing less is acceptable."

Masters did not respond to questions from Salon about whether he believes Biden legitimately won Arizona, or what he would like Brnovich to do in response to the "audit" results.

The attacks on Brnovich come as Masters seeks to close a massive early polling deficit against the attorney general. A Republican poll conducted last month showed Brnovich leading Masters, by 41% to 6%. Another September poll from OH Predictive Insights also showed Masters polling at just 6% and performing the worst of any candidate against incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat.

"It's clear Blake Masters is threatened by AG Brnovich," Joanna Duka, a spokeswoman for Brnovich, said in a statement to Salon.

Thiel has also dropped another $10 million to back J.D. Vance, another longtime business associateand the author of "Hillbilly Elegy," in Ohio's Senate race. As with Masters, Thiel has a long business relationship with Vance, who got his start in venture capital working at Thiel's Mithril Capital Management, which is named after a fictional metal in "The Lord of the Rings." Vance later got an investment from Thiel to help start his own venture fund, Narya Capital, which is named after one of the Elven rings in J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy classic. Both men recently invested in the right-wing video platform Rumble.

Masters and Vance are "kind of extensions of Peter Thiel," Chafkin said, describing them as "hardcore ideologues" who are more disciplined and coherent than Trump, but largely focused on the same issues.

Vance has tried to stay away from election conspiracies but defended rioters at the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as mostly "super peaceful." Thiel's allies have generally avoided directly claiming that the 2020 was rigged, but have continued to raise irrelevant or baseless questions about the result.

"They're trying to walk a line and come up with some kind of intellectually respectable version of The Big Lie," Chafkin said, adding that the Thiel-backed candidates have tried to "cozy up" to hardcore Trump backers and "be perceived as friendly to them."

Thiel himself has also cultivated relationships in TrumpWorld. He developed close ties to former Trump campaign chief and White House strategist Steve Bannon, whom Chafkin described as Thiel's "ideological" ally who shares his views on the "deep state." Thiel routed his big 2016 donation to back Trump through the super PAC controlled by Rebekah Mercer, also a major donor to far-right Republicans. Mercer was a longtime patron of Bannon and his projects and has joined Thiel in funding Vance's Ohio campaign. Mercer has spent **millionsto support some of the leading proponents of Trump's election lies, as well as election objectors who fueled the Capitol riot.

More recently, Thiel met with Trump at the ex-president's Bedminster, New Jersey, resort and began funding candidates in support of the former president's revenge tour against pro-impeachment Republicans, according to Politico.

Thiel donated the maximum $5,800 to Harriet Hageman, the Trump-backed primary challenger to Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. Hageman has continued to claim that there are "legitimate questions about what happened during the 2020 election" and supported the Arizona "audit."

Thiel has also donated to Joe Kent, the Trump-backed primary challenger to Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., who also voted to impeach Trump after the riot. Kent spoke at the recent "Justice for J6" rally in Washington in support of the Capitol rioters charged in the attack. He vowed to lead a "full congressional inquiry" into the 2020 election if elected. Kent was among a group of Trump supporters who filed lawsuits last month in Washington state accusing multiple counties of "flipping votes" and calling for a "full forensic audit" of the election.

Thiel's funding for candidates pushing election lies is "totally consistent" with his embrace of Trumpism, Chafkin said. Though Thiel ultimately decided not to donate to Trump in 2020 out of frustration about the former president's "perceived competence," the billionaire has sought candidates who will pursue Trump's hardline policies on immigration, relations with China, regulation of tech companies, "political correctness" and globalization.

On all those issues, Thiel "basically agrees" with Trump, Chafkin said. "He wants to be involved in this movement and what you're seeing now is he's making that play. He's trying to be the main patron to his part of the Republican Party."

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