ideol Entre 2

619, age ofinfluencer/trump

see provocateur/ troll/

neglected?

ideol entre meets soc med: but vpn?

hcr 11 25

...last week a new feature on X that permitted users to see where accounts originate revealed that a number of high-engagement MAGA accounts that claim to be those of patriotic Americans are in fact from Russia, Eastern Europe, India, Nigeria, Thailand, and Bangladesh. Since X pays certain content creators for tweets that drive engagement, posters from other countries have a financial incentive to post material that feeds the anger of American users and thus will get reposted.

===

an 10 22

In avideo posted on Twitter on October 11, frequent Fox News guest and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party. Gabbard’s talking points were right out of the MAGA playbook when she slammed Democrats as “an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness” and declared, “The Democrats of today are hostile to people of faith and spirituality. They demonize the police and protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans. The Democrats of today believe in open borders and weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents.”

Gabbard has gone from praising Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2016 and running for president as a Democrat in 2020 to endorsing far-right “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theorist Kari Lake in Arizona’s 2022 gubernatorial race. Right-wing media, following Gabbard’s October 11 announcement, were quick to paint the former Hawaii congresswoman as an example of someone Democrats have alienated.

But one conservative who isn’t the least bit impressed with Gabbard’s defection from the Democratic Party is Never Trumper and Daily Beast opinion columnist Matt Lewis. In a biting October 20 column, Lewis is vehemently critic of Gabbard and slams her announcement as a cheap political stunt designed to promote “her new role as celebrity influencer.”

“To the degree that ‘wokeness’ is the 2022 update of ‘political correctness meets identity politics,’” Lewis argues, “Dems have been trafficking in that for decades…. So, why did Tulsi decide to break up with the Democrats, and why now? Gabbard may want to take a page from ex-Democrat Ronald Reagan, who famously said, ‘I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the party left me.’ But the two are hardly analogous.”

Lewis continues, “I struggle to find any coherence in Gabbard’s political philosophy or strategy, but as a lifelong conservative, one possible answer may be that the Republican Party has left us. It has become the kind of MAGA party that is attractive to people like Lake, a former Obama voter; Donald Trump, a former Clinton supporter; Kanye ‘George Bush doesn't care about Black people’ West; Dr. Mehmet Oz of ‘Oprah’ fame; and now, the ex-Bernie-booster Tulsi Gabbard.”

The conservative columnist goes on to describe Gabbard’s defection from the Democratic Party as an example of former President Donald Trump’s toxic influence.

:{“In these reactionary times,” Lewis explains, “ambitious right-wing newbies just have to make the right enemies, and they are parlaying their fame into taking over not just the GOP, but the conservative movement…. A common thread among the MAGA upstarts is that they are opportunistic and attention-starved. Politics, once dreary and boring to the general public, is now a gateway to widespread attention, and the far right has by far the lowest barrier to entry. In this regard, Gabbard is merely the latest celebrity brand to hop on the conservative entertainment wing’s wagonin pursuit of even more clout.”

Lewis continues, “Seen in that light, Gabbard’s conversion, seemingly timed to coincide with the launch of a new podcast, is less confusing…. Tulsi didn’t have to pay her dues or show her conservative credentials — all she had to do is slam her own party. Instant MAGA stardom!.... Welcome aboard, Tulsi. You’ll fit right in!}:”

TP grift continues

an 6 22

Long before the rise of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement — long before the Big Lie and the January 6, 2021 insurrection — True the Vote made voter suppression its top priority. Founded in Houston in 2009 by far-right Tea Party activist Catherine Engelbrecht, True the Vote has spent 13 years pushing the false narrative that voter fraud is widespread in Democratic areas.And True the Vote has raised millions of dollars with that narrative. But exactly how that money has been spent, according to Mother Jones reporter Cassandra Jaramillo, remains a mystery.

“A review of thousands of pages of documents from state filings, tax returns, and court records…. paints the picture of an organization that enriches Engelbrecht and partner Gregg Phillips rather than actually rooting out any fraud,”Jaramillo reports in an article published on June 8. “According to the documents, True the Vote has given questionable loans to Engelbrecht and has a history of awarding contracts to companies run by Engelbrecht and Phillips. Within days of receiving $2.5 million from a donor to stop the certification of the 2020 election, True the Vote distributed much of the money to a company owned by Phillips, (attorney James) Bopp’s law firm, and Engelbrecht directly for a campaign that quickly fizzled out.”

True the Vote, according to Jaramillo, has “engaged in a series of questionable transactions that sent more than $1 million combined to its founder, a longtime board member romantically linked to the founder, and the group’s general counsel, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.”

True the Vote has a shameful history. The group claims that its mission is to “prevent voter fraud,” but its real mission is making it more difficult to vote — especially if one is African-American. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California has been a vehement critic of True the Vote’s efforts to discourage African-Americans and Latinos from voting, saying that a more accurate name for the group would be “Stop the Vote.”

Nonetheless, True the Vote’s voter suppression efforts have made Engelbrecht a star in the MAGA movement and the right-wing media.

“A former PTA mom-turned-Tea Party activist, True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht has played a pivotal role in helping drive the voter fraud movement from the political fringes to a central pillar in the Republican Party’s ideology,” Jaramillo observes. “Casting herself as a God-fearing, small-town Texan, she’s spread the voter-fraud gospel by commanding airtime on cable television, space on the pages of Breitbart News, and even theater seats, as a new feature film dramatizing her organization’s exploits,‘2000 Mules,’ plays in cinemas across the country.”

“2000 Mules,” a documentary by far-right conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza, claims to offer proof that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump. But the documentary proves nothing, and D’Souza’s slopping reporting has drawn widespread criticism. Never Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter, for example, has slammed “2000 Mules” as a badly done, embarrassing cash grab on D’Souza’s part.

According to Jaramillo, Reveal’s findings don’t look good for True the Vote.

“The records show: True the Vote regularly reported loans to Engelbrecht, including more than $113,000 in 2019, according to a tax filing,” Jaramillo notes. “Texas law bans nonprofits from loaning money to directors; Engelbrecht is both a director and an employee.”

a niche for anyone who has procreated? SEE PINK PILL QANON

https://www.mediamatters.org/critical-race-theory/professional-conservatives-find-path-victory-ginned-outrage-over-critical-race

Born in a constellation of right-wing think tanks, the outrage against “critical race theory” spent over a year in the metastasizing embrace of right-wing media, churning up hatred against discussions of race in schools.

As this deceptive marketing reached a fever pitch, there was an explosion in Facebook groups being formed or shifting their focus to opposing critical race theory in schools. These groups were a nexus for supporters to organize in-person disruptions at school board meetings.

This astroturfed frenzy against supposed CRT in schools led to threats and harassment against school board members nationwide, and, in Virginia, helped propel Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin to the governor’s mansion.

Assigning national importance to a statewide election can be reckless; anti-CRT outrage did not prevail everywhere in the 2021 election. But for the effort and money that conservative activists and media put into defining the Virginia gubernatorial race with critical race theory, it is clear that these charlatans will attempt to export the Virginia playbook nationally in 2022 and beyond[twt.]

as Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, who helped launch the campaign, has explained, the goal is to “put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category” so that people “read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’” Other right-wing institutions and groups, like the Heritage Foundation, joined in the fray with events, activist toolkits, model legislation, and pushes for bans made in concert with lawmakers.

From there, advocacy groups use this think tank framework to generate local outrage against critical race theory.[IT'S A FRANCHISE MODEL?! MLM?] According to an NBC News analysis, there are now “at least 165 local and national groups that aim to disrupt lessons on race and gender,” and several of the most prominent ones are headed by Republican activists and strategists. These groups cram local controversies into the CRT framework established by Rufo and others, disrupt school board meetings, and place spokespeople in media appearances -- sometimes professional spokespeople, who are instead described as local parents.

The noise and attention from these professionally operated, think tank-inspired groups then generates coverage from an obsequious and obsessive right-wing media, champing at the bit for any angle that will hurt Democrats and help Republicans. Empowered by the outrage suddenly all over TV -- to the tune of hundreds of Fox mentions per month, plus loads more from OAN and Newsmax -- GOP politicians find incentive to take legislative action to drastically limit the teaching of civil rights, sometimes even banning books altogether. [AND WORDS]

This feedback loop is a concerted strategy whose first trial run was the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election. It is not a grassroots movement, it is not a natural response to alleged left-wing excesses, and it is not about what is best for children. It is a top-down attempt by professional political operatives to morph political landscapes to suit their racially regressive needs. And, at least in Virginia, it seems to have worked. [twt.]

as Rufo promised, the professional outrage against critical race theory has only just begun. As the next election looms, critical race theory (or similardog whistles like “parents’ rights”) will suddenly get thousands of TV mentions again, and professional GOP operatives will again call themselves mere concerned parents. Think tankers may even publicly discuss their exact plans again, because they know it won’t cause any harm; enough of the mainstream media will still cover these anti-CRT outrages as grassroots “education” issues, instead of what they are: a think tank astroturf project.

podcast or radio show can be parlayed into a video/interview show, meaning provide a log-rolling platform up the the escalator for others grifters on the make eg sparked by

The Josh Bernstein Show began as an internet podcast in 2014. Since then it has evolved into a live-recorded TV show with weekly guests. Josh Bernstein has appeared on thousands of radio and television programs as an analyst and political pundit.^[citation ^needed]

^320 ^covid:

^i ^sort ^of ^lost ^track ^of ^this ^node; ^originally ^it ^was ^gang ^of ^five ^80's ^guys ^who ^could ^not ^get ^legit ^jobs ^in ^legit ^inst, ^so ^they ^had ^to ^find ^a ^niche ^in ^the ^RWI; ^now ^i ^dunno,

^look ^at ^the ^vast ^array ^willing ^to ^peddle ^trump ^BS ^in ^covid:

^small ^selection]

Here are just some of the most notable examples of conservative media pushing this negligent narrative:

America’s Newsroomco-anchor Ed Henry said that “you don’t want to minimize any lives,” but then noted a “best estimate” of the mortality rate is less than 1%, and asked “what is the balance?”

Fox primetime host Tucker Carlson argued that “you can't just let epidemiologists run a country.”
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick appeared on Carlson’s show to suggest that many grandparents, like himself, would be willing to die if it meant saving the economy.
Right-wing radio host Buck Sexton tweeted, then deleted, a comment saying that “America is going to have to go back to work very soon, even if that means there are more casualties from Covid-19 than would occur under this continued extreme shutdown.” Sexton added that, “it’s a hard thing to say, but it is reality and we need to accept and act on it.”
Fox News host Steve Hilton said: “You know that famous phrase ‘the cure is worse than the disease’? That is exactly the territory we are hurtling towards"
[pix]
Fox News’Bill Hemmer Reports, Heritage Foundation fellow Stephen Moore, a former Trump adviser, said that “we have reached the point where maybe the cure is worse than the disease.”

A panel on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria agreed that the economic shutdown is worse then the deadly virus itself, expressing support for the U.K.’s strategy of “encouraging people to go out, pretty much expecting that everybody will get it, and that's the point.”
The Federalist published an article asking the “harsh” question of “whether the nation might be better off letting a few hundred thousand people die.” The article argues that social distancing policies restrict “freedom” and are giving Americans “a dress rehearsal for tyranny."

Another article published in The Federalist asked, “Will the costs of a Great Depression outweigh the risks of coronavirus?”
The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed titled “Rethinking the Coronavirus Shutdown: No society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its economic health.”
Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren tweeted, “these Democratic governors and mayors are LOVING all this power. Every day they take away a little more and a little more.” In another tweet, Lahren attacked California Governor Gavin Newsom for closing hiking trails and state parks.

Top Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow appeared on America’s Newsroom, where he told co-anchor Ed Henry that he agrees with the president that “the cure can’t be worse than the disease, and we’re gonna have to make some difficult trade-offs.”
The Gateway Pundit published an article cheering Trump's tweets for suggesting “the destruction of the US economy over [the] Chinese Flu is not in his plans.”
Right-wing commentator Bill Mitchell theorized that the virus was a bioweapon designed to hurt the economy, tweeting, “The difference between a #BioWeapon and a #BioEconomicWeapon? A #BioWeapon is designed to destroy the enemy's fighting and working age population. A #BioEconomicWeapon is designed to destroy an enemy's economy through fear. #BioEconomicWeapons require #Media allies to work.”

Fox News host Mark Levin said that “we cannot have medical experts and scientists making economic policy. We just can’t. So there needs to be a more sober look at this.”
Right-wing radio host Jesse Kelly tweeted: “You do not destroy your economy for any reason. ... The show must go on.”

On The Next Revolution, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk argued that Americans are panicked about the “economic catastrophe” and therefore must go back to work, saying that “you cannot cage the American entrepreneur.”
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh published an article saying that “no government” has ever “willfully plunged itself into a depression, obliterating its own economy on purpose, in order to prevent some other potential calamity."
Fox News host Laura Ingraham tweeted that “doctors provide medical treatment and cures—they should not be the determinative voices in policy making now or at the end of 15 days."...?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/heres-why-cory-gardner-and-other-gop-senators-are-still-all-in-for-trump-even-if-it-costs-them-the-election/

alex h

recent polls have not been looking good for Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, who is trailing his Democratic opponent, former Gov. John Hickenlooper, by 9%, according to Morning Consult as well as Public Policy Polling. Trumpism is not serving Gardner well, begging the question: why is the Colorado Republican doubling down on his support of President Donald Trump even though it appears likely to cost him the election? Never Trump conservative journalist Jonathan V. Last answers that question in an article published in The Bulwark over Labor Day Weekend. And Last’s explanation applies not only to Gardner, but also, to Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona, Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and other incumbent GOP senators in swing states who refuse to say a word against the president.

“Gardner is running behind Trump in a state that Trump is going to lose,” Last observes. “And yet, Gardner remains almost wholly beholden to Trump. Why is that?”

Last, citing polling data from Morning Consult, stresses that Gardner’s “political career is over” in Colorado — where “Democrats loathe him, independents are repelled by him, and Republicans see him as a cuck for not supporting Trump from the start.”

“He almost certainly realizes that there is no path forward for him in Colorado politics,” Last argues. “The state is changing, demographically and politically, and he’s on the wrong side of everything: he’s not where the main body of voters are, and he’s not where the party base are, either. He’s both too Trump and not QAnon enough…. So why is Gardner still all-in for Trump?'

the answer, according to Last: Gardner is putting “party over country.” Gardner, Last emphasizes, is the type of Republican who sees “the Republican Party as a higher priority than the country itself” — and when he loses to Hickenlooper, he “is going to have to make due with raking in the Benjamins in the private-sector sinecures reserved for washed-up politicos.”

Last doesn’t discuss McSally in his Bulwark article on Gardner. But taking the conservative journalist’s arguments a step further, one could say that Gardner is thinking long-term: even if he is “washed up” in Colorado, he could still have a place in Republican politics in general — perhaps as a pundit at Fox News, perhaps writing books, perhaps hosting a radio program. The same applies to McSally. Although poll after poll shows her losing to Democrat Mark Kelly in Arizona’s 2020 U.S. Senate race, she isn’t about to criticize Trump because she knows there could be money-making opportunities for her down the road in the right-wing media.

After being voted out of office in 2006, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was never elected to public office again yet remained a prominent figure in right-wing politics. CNN, in the Trump era, has often featured Santorum as a pro-Trump pundit. And former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the late Sen. John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election, made millions of dollars as a pundit even though she never became vice president and never ran for political office again after 2008. Palin is an embarrassment, but in the right-wing media, she is taken seriously.

The “private-sector sinecures reserved for washed-up politicos,” as Last describes them, can be incredibly lucrative. Palin is the butt of jokes outside of the GOP/Fox News/AM talk radio bubble, but that hasn’t stopped her from making millions of dollars.

If recent polls are accurate, Trumpism will cause Gardner and McSally to be voted out of office in November — even if Trump himself manages to pull off a narrow victory in the Electoral College. But the right-wing media often find ways for wingnuts to prosper after they lose elections, from Fox News appearances and AM talk radio shows to book deals. And cable news viewers will probably be seeing a lot of Gardner and McSally in 2021 no matter how badly they lose in November.

age of trumpista, mini-me eg gaetz?

no lnx

pA County Commissioner Joe Gale shows the absolute intellectual emptiness of Trumpism and the GOP

Commissioner Joe Gale at the new King of Prussia Mall connection / Image via.

Written by Daily Kos June 22, 2020

Abraham Lincoln began his famous “House Divided” Speech in 1858 with this phrase:

“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.”

Sometimes it is good to step back and try to figure out what is going on in a larger sense. Why are we facing an enormous climate, economic, and political catastrophe in this nation?

It would take to long to go into the steady decline of the Republican Party since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It has accelerated to the point of the GOP becoming a quasi White Nationalist party. However, one thing that has really accelerated since 2008 is the extreme anti-intellectualism of the Republican Party. The Party used to stand for some policies however, wrong-headed, they were policies.

The history of the past 40 years shows the Republican Party in no way stands for “small government” or “balanced budgets.” The Trump Presidency would put even the most die-hard believer of this myth to the test. They can’t even run like most Center-Right parties around the world on competence in government. We have seen everything the party touches turns to sh-t again and again.

At this point, the party is simply a racialized culture war grievance. It is like an extended “airing of the grievances” from the make-believe holiday of Festivus from Seinfeld.

The almost Platonic ideal of this is Pennsylvania Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale. Gale is the top Republican in the third biggest county in Pennsylvania. Like most educated suburbs, Montgomery County has turned a fairly deep shade of blue. However, due to election law, the minority gets one seat on the three-person county commission. That person is Joe Gale.

When he is not blocking people on social media, Gale engages in temper tantrums and does his best Donald Trump impersonation. He is “draining the swamp” in Montgomery County. Some examples will suffice. Gale often travels outside the county to protest things like Planned Parenthood and to go to Philadelphia to rally with rightwing wingnut radio host Dom Giordano (at the now gone) statue to former mayor Frank Rizzo who urged voters to “vote white.” Gale even attempted to run for Lt. Governor of the State without checking to see he didn’t meet the age eligibility. Of course, this was more reason for him to wallow in grievance. He has turned county news conferences into embarrassing personal grievance sessions after the actual adults give medical information.

The latest culture war issue that Gale is pushing is that Black Lives Matter is a “radical left-wing hate group” that are “perpetrators of this urban domestic terror.” Of course, “This organization, in particular, screams racism not to expose bigotry and injustice, but to justify the lawless destruction of our cities and surrounding communities.”

Many have called on Gale to resign and protests have happened at his parent’s home where he lives:

Story Here

But isn’t Gale simply what the Republican Party is now? He may be a bit cruder than some, but not too much. But this is a party that has now nominated Qanon people for Congress.

America is a two-party system. Many would like it to change, but that is what we have due to the way our government is set up. We need to have a center-right party that is not a trainwreck. Trump and Gale are symptoms of a party that has no governing philosophy beyond endless grievance and racial culture war. Until that changes, America is in for prolonged trouble.

an 6/20