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Like Traitor trump, seems like Putin is losing his grip.
2 hr 14 min ago
Municipal deputies from Moscow and St. Petersburg call for Putin’s resignation
https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-09-12-22
Deputies from 18 municipal districts in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kolpino have called for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s resignation, according to a petition with a list of signatures posted on Twitter on Monday.
“We, the municipal deputies of Russia, believe that the actions of its president Vladimir Putin are detrimental to Russia’s and its citizens’ future. We demand Vladimir Putin’s resignation from the post of the President of the Russian Federation,” said the petition posted by Ksenia Thorstrom, a local deputy of the Semenovsky District in Saint Petersburg.
The petition follows Russia’s first regional and municipal elections since the start of the war, which brought a sweeping victory for pro-Kremlin candidates.
“The petition’s text is concise and does not “discredit” anyone. If you are mundep [municipal deputy] and want to join, you are welcome,” Thorstrom said in a Twitter post.
The council of one Moscow district (Lomonosovsky) also demanded Putin’s resignation, saying: “Your views and your model of government are hopelessly outdated and hinder the development of Russia and its human potential.”
Last week, the deputies of the Smolninskoye municipality of St. Petersburg called on the State Duma of the Russian Federation to bring charges of treason against Vladimir Putin. Several of them now face charges for discrediting the Russian army, according to a Twitter post from one of the local officials, Nikita Yuferev.
This just gets more putrid and rotten smelling everyday. Everything together has created the most hazardous and detrimental situation in American history ever. Sure, there could be a logical explanation. But remember no matter what you think, it's always a lot worse. I don't know why they haven't raided Bedminster. Check out the videos in the feed.
Peter Strzok
@petestrzok
https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1568615338606039040
8h
Better check Bedminster…
On May 6, NARA emails Trump to say material is missing and may be at MAL.
On May 9, Trump gets on a private plane from Palm Beach to Bedminster. On video, several boxes are seen loaded onto the plane.
Nuclear energy. Any thoughts or favorites? Nuclear stocks coming into vogue again with the energy needs of tomorrow. Entered into LEU about month and half ago and swung once but even if I didn't I'd still be up about 60% on it now, as it is, I've almost doubled. The 50 is about to come up and hit the 200 and odds it goes through with the amount of momentum in the trend currently. May be ready for a retrace and another swing due to that it might get a bit overextended, but it is in a pretty strong overall upward trend, so not sure what kind of retrace we'll see or when exactly. Might be better plays in the sector, sort of a flip of the coin at the time.
I would of rather seen an indictment, but have to settle I guess. Not a lawyer, but it seems to me that any delay in this matter would have nothing to do with all the other investigations of his other crimes (known and unknown to us) which of course would still intersect with this one and still bring results to this case.
70 yrs on the throne. Queen has passed at 96 years old.
That was my business for over thirty years. First I had the business of management and maintenance of all types of RE, then became owner and sales of RE commercial and residential big time at the bottom of the great recession. Had a couple of partners, but went all in and a lot of debt at pennies on the dollar of already half down appraisals. Wasn't long after that year that it started reaping the benefits of that move and even went to lending hard money myself. At the time, my wife was working in the underwriting section of a big bank (which she still works for, but at home since covid) that gave some advantage to the move.
Then the Covid Wars came and I took the signal to get out of most of it. Could of waited another year and got a lot more near the top, but it was time and I was way up in all of my RE investments so another year of risk not knowing where in the heck it was going wasn't appealing. Dealing with the Covid and political Wars and had already lost basically a whole quarter of income, my body getting more tired and older, just took all the fun out of something I enjoyed for so long, so took it as my cue and haven't regretted it. Trading in the market a lot less stress and a lot more fun. Profitable too.
Although I have been tempted many times to invest or trade in crypto and then the should of, could of, would of thoughts, but never really regretted not pulling any triggers. Just always came back to to it being monopoly money. Although I think there is more intrinsic value to monopoly money. At least you can get $50 bucks for an old board game in good condition. Won't pay for your kids education, but at least you won't lose their college money. lol But for that kind of money, you might as well buy RE or land. Always have a large intrinsic value no matter what happens to the market.
Elon Musk $258 billion Dogecoin lawsuit expands
By Jonathan Stempel
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/elon-musk-258-billion-dogecoin-lawsuit-expands-2022-09-07/
September 7, 2022
10:08 PM MDT
Last Updated 9 hours ago
2 minute read
NEW YORK, Sept 7 (Reuters) - The $258 billion racketeering lawsuit accusing Elon Musk of running a pyramid scheme to support the cryptocurrency Dogecoin has expanded, adding seven new investor plaintiffs and six new defendants including his tunnel construction business Boring Co.
According to an amended complaint filed on Tuesday night in Manhattan federal court, Musk, his electric car company Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), his space tourism company SpaceX, Boring and others intentionally drove up the price of Dogecoin more than 36,000% over two years and then let it crash.
By doing so, the defendants "profited tens of billions of dollars" at other Dogecoin investors' expense, while knowing all along that the currency lacked intrinsic value and that its value "depended solely on marketing," the complaint said.
Tesla, SpaceX and Boring did not immediately respond on Wednesday to requests for comment. Tesla disbanded its media relations department in 2020.
The original lawsuit was filed in June. read more
Shortly afterward, Musk, the world's richest person, tweeted that he would "keep supporting Dogecoin," and in an interview said "people that work around the factory at SpaceX or Tesla" asked him for that support, the amended complaint said.
Other new defendants include the Dogecoin Foundation, which calls itself a nonprofit providing governance and support for Dogecoin. It could not immediately be reached for comment.
The $258 billion in damages is triple the estimated decline in Dogecoin's market value since May 2021.
That was around the time Musk, playing a fictitious financial expert on a "Weekend Update" segment of NBC's "Saturday Night Live," called Dogecoin "a hustle."
Dogecoin traded at about 6 cents on Wednesday, down from around 74 cents in May 2021.
The case is Johnson et al v. Musk et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-05037.
Michigan GOP leaders encourage rule breaking at poll worker training session Just having a loud enough megaphone to say X happened can create distrust."
And fueling distrust in the election process is the ultimate goal, said Timmer, the former Michigan GOP executive director.
"Their plan is to be a wrench in the gears of democracy," he said of the Republican-led effort. "That's their motive.
By Bob Ortega, Audrey Ash, Yahya Abou-Ghazala and Drew Griffin, CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/07/politics/michigan-gop-poll-worker-training-invs/index.html
Updated 4:57 PM ET, Wed September 7, 2022
Lead Drew Griffin LIVE_00050918
Michigan GOP leaders suggest election rule breaking at poll worker training session 05:32
(CNN)The evening before Michigan's state primary, Wayne County GOP leaders held a Zoom training session for poll workers and partisan observers -- warning them about "bad stuff happening" during the election and encouraging them to ignore local election rules barring cell phones and pens from polling places and vote-counting centers.
"None of the constraints that they're putting on this are legal," former state senator Patrick Colbeck told trainees on the August 1 call.
As far as cell phones, "I would say maybe just hide it or something, and maybe hide a small pad and a small pen or something like that because you need to take accurate notes," Cheryl Costantino, the GOP county chairwoman and host of the call, told participants.
Some participants raised concerns about being tossed out if they broke the rules. "That's why you got to do it secretly," Costantino replied.
While volunteer partisan observers have always been trained by political parties and non-profit groups in Michigan, the Wayne County GOP had also invited poll workers -- people hired and paid by the local clerk's office. They are in charge of running the election, and their responsibilities can include checking voter IDs, counting ballots, and even securing voting equipment at the end of the day. Poll workers are required to engage in non-partisan training overseen by the local clerk and are only identified as Republicans for the purposes of making sure there is equal representation of both major parties working the election, according to the Michigan Bureau of Elections.
During the Wayne County training call, obtained by CNN, the presumption that Democrats cheat -- thus justifying Republican rule-breaking -- permeated the discussion. It offers a snapshot of one of the ways Trump-backing, MAGA-minded conspiracy theorists are intervening in the election process across the country, sometimes encouraging poll workers or volunteer observers to violate election rules in hopes of finding evidence that Democrats might be doing the same.
It's an approach election experts fear could spur chaos and conflict in November's mid-term elections and in 2024.
"There is no exception to following the laws; there is no 'two wrongs make a right,'" said Wendy Weiser, a vice president at The Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks potential insider threats to the election process. Weiser said the center is seeing a spread in efforts by election deniers to infiltrate and manipulate the voting and vote counting process.
"If poll workers are not committed to following the law, to following the directions of election officials, to protecting the integrity of the election process, they can do serious harm," Weiser said.
Concerns mount over partisan election training
Like its counterparts in fellow battleground states Arizona and Pennsylvania, Michigan's Republican Party has conspiracy believers pushing for influence over the election process at all levels, from candidates for statewide office down to poll workers and observers. As CNN has previously reported, that's partly due to a strategy by Trump allies of ceaselessly recruiting conspiracy-minded MAGA volunteers for rank-and-file party positions.
Earlier this year, unsuccessful GOP gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley called on Michigan poll workers to unplug election equipment "if you see something you don't like happening." In June, Kelley was charged with trespassing and other crimes in connection with the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The Michigan GOP group Election Integrity Force, which Colbeck helped start, pushes baseless claims about the 2020 election that feed suspicions about the fairness of upcoming elections. In a July session, as first reported by Politico, members of the group coached poll workers and observers to call 911 and bring law enforcement into election-related complaints.
The mounting efforts to influence poll workers have prompted concerns over election disruptions, forcing the state to establish a code of conduct for those individuals, said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
Poll workers who don't adhere to the rules will be removed "by the local clerk, if they violate the law ... or in any way interfere with the administration of fair and secure elections," Benson told CNN.
The GOP has "made a concerted effort to put election deniers in positions where they can gum up the works, afterward, if they don't win," said Jeff Timmer, former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party.
The training sessions are providing a thinly veiled, read-between-the-lines instructions that essentially show "people how to break the law without expressly telling them to break the law, in most cases," said Timmer, an advisor to the Lincoln Project, a political action committee founded in 2019 by Republicans and former Republicans opposed to Trump.
Both Costantino and Colbeck, the trainers on the Wayne County call, have actively promoted 2020 election conspiracies that amount to make-believe.
In the lead up to the 2020 election, Colbeck posted on Facebook that Democrats were conspiring to commit electoral fraud and "manipulating the vote tallies transmitted from county election boards to the state board of canvassers."
While serving as a poll challenger at a counting center in Detroit, Colbeck claimed he saw vote-tabulation machines connected to the internet. He submitted an affidavit to that effect for a lawsuit that Costantino filed a week after the election, seeking to stop the results from being certified and requesting an audit.
Costantino's lawsuit, backed by Trump, drew national attention to her claims of election fraud. But a state circuit court judge dismissed the suit, stating that "no evidence supports Mr. Colbeck's position." Noting Colbeck's Facebook posts, Judge Timothy Kenny said that his "predilection to believe fraud was occurring undermines his credibility as a witness," before concluding that Costantino's interpretation of events was "incorrect and not credible."
Costantino filed an appeal, which was denied.
Colbeck's continuing claims that machines hooked to the internet flipped votes in 2020 led Dominion Voting systems to demand a retraction from him last year, stating that his claims "are not just false but have been repeatedly debunked by bipartisan election officials, actual election security experts, judges, and numerous Trump administration officials and allies."
Colbeck also has tried to get copies of election files and Dominion software, zeroing in on Canton Township -- a part of his former state Senate district. Canton Township Clerk Mike Siegrist, a Democrat, wrote in an August memo to the town's board of trustees that his office denied those parts of Colbeck's public-records requests because releasing the files would "violate our contracts with Dominion and jeopardize future elections."
Colbeck did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.
'Keep our heads on a swivel'
At the Wayne County election training session last month, Costantino and Colbeck said they were tracking scores of Democrats who Colbeck said "were trying to masquerade as Republicans" while signing up to work elections. ?
Colbeck told participants, "We're going to have to keep our heads on a swivel and just start documenting irregularities."
The two also attacked some election officials by name, including Siegrist, the Canton Township clerk, whom Costantino called "the worst clerk I think I've ever dealt with." She added, "what we have to do is knock him down as soon as possible, before he works his way up in the Democratic Party."
"He'll get his due," said Colbeck, claiming improprieties in how Siegrist handled his records requests.
Colbeck called on the trainees to try to prove his repeatedly debunked theory about vote machines and tabulators being connected to the internet by checking screens whenever possible for connectivity symbols.
Towards the end of the Zoom call, Costantino told the trainees, "So you are all, really, undercover agents. Congratulations. That's undercover training."
Approached by CNN at the Michigan Republican state convention, Costantino said comparing the poll workers to spies was just her way of reframing the training session and "make it more fun and interesting" -- with Michigan's open primary serving as a kind of dry run for the election cycle ahead.
"I said just, you know, instead of causing a bunch of scenes and things like that, just write it down," she said. "Just kind of be like spies and ... let me know what's going on."
She also said she considered the regulations, outlined in clerk-led trainings that barred cell phones and pens, to be unconstitutional.
"It should not be illegal," she told CNN, adding, with respect to election fraud claims, "If they're going to call us out and say, 'prove it,' we have to be able to prove it."
Poll workers are key to making 'democracy function'
While poll challengers are partisan observers "empowered by a political party to witness the election and to bring up legal concerns in real time as they witness them," poll workers are supposed to be neutral election officials who assists voters and "make our democracy function," Siegrist said.
Most of the people who come to his office to apply to be poll workers are suspicious about elections, he said, but being a part of the process helps resolve their concerns. It's why Siegrist remains optimistic that election workers will do the right thing.
"Those same individuals who come in as almost critics of the process, become the process's most staunch and ardent supporters," he said.
A whistleblower holding an envelope.
Do you have information to share about this story? We offer several ways to reach our journalists securely.
The rules about phones and pen and paper aren't uncommon, said Jennifer Morrell, a co-founder of The Elections Group, a nonprofit led by former elections officials that focuses on protecting the election process.
"Anytime we had anybody working around ballots, we'd ask them not to have a pen, to eliminate any perception that anybody might mark a ballot," she said.
Trainees on the call, some of whom went on as poll workers in Michigan's primary, seemed in tune with the premise and advice from Costantino and Colbeck.
One participant, Martin Szelag,?attended?a rally last year outside the Michigan Capitol with a sign hanging around his neck that read, in part, that "This election was STOLEN!" and that "we will support Joe Biden as our President if you can convince us he won legally." Szelag told CNN he worked in the primary feeding ballots into a tabulating machine, and that everything "did happen in an orderly fashion." Szelag, who said he trusts and admires Colbeck, doesn't believe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election.
Larry Ludtke was among the trainees who had concerns about bringing pens and paper on the Zoom call, though he told CNN he didn't recall bringing that up. He said he wouldn't say Democrats stole the 2020 election, but that "there is fraud in every election." Ludtke, who was a poll worker in the Michigan primary, noted that "everything seemed to work out -- I got no real complaints."
Gerry Hermann -- a?supporter?of Colbeck's unsuccessful 2018 campaign for governor of Michigan -- also took part in the session. Hermann serves as the?co-chair?of the Washtenaw County Republican Party's Election Integrity Committee, which is responsible for "restoring credibility to Michigan's badly broken election system."?When contacted by CNN, Hermann declined comment on the training session.
Also on the call was Mark Ashley Price, who told CNN he did not work in the primary because he's a candidate. Price?serves?on the board of the Highland Park School District and is the Republican?nominee?for Wayne County Executive. Earlier this year, in a?Facebook post, Price wrote that former president Donald Trump "was robbed of the 2020 election with cheating." More recently, in a?Facebook?post, Price wrote he was "happily part of the MAGA movement." If elected, under county ordinances, Price would have a broad range of?powers?where he can "supervise, direct, and control functions of all departments of the County except those headed by elected officials."
A broader strategy
Similar election-training efforts predicated on 2020 election conspiracies have been mounted by an array of national and state-level groups with innocuous names such as the Election Integrity Network, True the Vote, Clean Elections USA, and others, along with the Republican National Committee.
True the Vote, which has trained poll observers in various states, was a primary source for the thoroughly debunked film "2000 Mules," claiming that election fraud cost Trump the 2020 election. Clean Elections USA is organizing a multi-state effort to have observers watch drop-boxes this fall to deter supposed vote fraud.
The Election Integrity Network is a group organized by Cleta Mitchell, an attorney and Trump ally who has been among the most active promoters of election conspiracies. They have conducted events in Michigan and at least seven other states.
"We'll be able to make sure that there's another set of eyes going on, watching the ballots, watching the voting, watching the process -- knowing what's going on in the election offices," Mitchell told CNN.
Morrell, of The Elections Group nonprofit, said her organization sent a contractor to an election training in Pennsylvania led by the Election Integrity Network. The Wayne County training "sounds like the same sort of playbook," she said.
"We're dealing with a unique and volatile situation with a group of people operating on their own, outside of the statutory requirements and procedures," said Morrell. "It creates a recipe for, at best, tense situations, and at worst, escalating to violent confrontation. ...They don't need to see something that's an actual problem; they could record or take notes of something they don't think looks right. Whether it is or isn't may not matter. Just having a loud enough megaphone to say X happened can create distrust."
And fueling distrust in the election process is the ultimate goal, said Timmer, the former Michigan GOP executive director.
"Their plan is to be a wrench in the gears of democracy," he said of the Republican-led effort. "That's their motive. Whatever lipstick or qualifying words they put on this pig, that's what they intend to do, to cause chaos as the 2022 election unfolds, as a dress rehearsal for the even bigger election in 2024."
CNN's Sara Murray and Jeff Simon contributed to this report.
Just having a loud enough megaphone to say X happened can create distrust."
And fueling distrust in the election process is the ultimate goal, said Timmer, the former Michigan GOP executive director.
"Their plan is to be a wrench in the gears of democracy," he said of the Republican-led effort. "That's their motive.
Dead cat bounce might be a little hard to do unless FCEL really comes out with something substantial and big surprise. This article came across my radar, have no position at the moment, just watching the drifting downward trend.
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3880873-fuelcell-energy-q3-earnings-preview-deepening-losses-in-the-cards-for-green-energy-firm?utm_source=stck.pro&utm_medium=referral
FuelCell Energy Q3 earnings preview: Deepening losses in the cards for green energy firm?
Sep. 07, 2022 10:35 AM ETFuelCell Energy, Inc. (FCEL)By: Preeti Singh, SA News Editor1 Comment
Hydrogen-Powered Fuel Cell Unveiled in L.A.
David McNew
FuelCell Energy (NASDAQ:FCEL) is scheduled to announce Q3 earnings results on Thursday, September 8th, before market open.
The consensus EPS Estimate is -$0.06 and the consensus Revenue Estimate is $35.16M (+31.2% Y/Y).
Over the last 3 months, EPS estimates have seen 3 upward revisions and 2 downward. Revenue estimates have seen 5 upward revisions and 3 downward.
FuelCell Energy posted a larger than forecast Q2 GAAP loss while revenues rose 17% Y/Y to $16.4M, roughly half of analyst expectations. It attributed the wider loss to higher manufacturing variances, $4.8M of non-recoverable costs related to the construction of the Toyota project, lower Advanced Technologies margin, and increased operating expenses.
Meanwhile, FuelCell's shares are trading near all-time lows, having fallen more than -32% YTD, far greater than its peer Plug Power (PLUG), which recently reported a larger than expected loss in its latest quarter.
Seeking Alpha has maintained a Sell rating on the stock, while SA authors on average have a Hold rating. FuelCell remains a challenging buy unless "management revises its medium-term outlook significantly" according to JR Research.
Multiple project delays and minimal pipelines also make it unlikely for FuelCell to meet its projections of delivering profitability and $300M in revenues in FY2025.
Now Read: FuelCell: Don't Be Tempted To Buy This Pullback Yet
Hear what professor who studies civil wars thinks is happening to US democracy
University of California - San Diego professor Barbara Walter, author of "How Civil Wars Start", says that there is a faction of the Republican party who wants to unravel the US democracy due to former President Donald Trump engaging in "fear-mongering."
Short video/interview, needs to be said more.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2022/09/05/barbara-walter-civil-war-trump-doj-rehtoric-sot-nr-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/this-week-in-politics/
Barbara Walter's book, "How Civil Wars Start" was one of the two books recommended by the judge to the J6 insurrectionist who was pictured with Pelosi's lectern.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/25/politics/january-6-rioter-posed-with-pelosi-lectern-sentenced/index.html
Sinister is the New GOP's middle name.
An intriguing thread. I'm sure you remember Traitor trump's Cambridge Analytica. Main players are still around, just names and places changed to protect the guilty. The dirty deeds are still being done.
Conspiracy? Maybe not so much. One thing is definitely true.
PS: Networked insurgency has no vertical hierarchy. It’s based on “nudges”, not on given orders.
Thread: Russians and digital mercenaries from the US ( Flynn, Prince) started a demonstration of power in Czech Republic, Prague. Why should you pay attention:
— AlexAlvaro@toad.social (@AlexAlvarova) September 4, 2022
1. Cambridge Analytica tested their final performance (2016) years before in Czech Republic.
But her emails.
How Many Of 'Her Emails' Were Classified? Actually, Zero
https://www.nationalmemo.com/amp/hillary-clinton-emails-2658142483-2658142483
September 03, 2022
Joe Conason
Nearly every day fresh revelations emerge in the federal investigation of the national security and presidential records that Donald Trump purloined from the White House. So far, his alibis have been exposed one after another as empty, and we have seen no adequate public reckoning of why he took those papers, what he meant to do with them, how some went missing, or even exactly how many documents he hijacked to his Florida estate.
As more and more evidence of the former president’s reckless and potentially criminal misconduct comes to light, he and his defenders keep pointing to “her emails.” They insist that because the Justice Department declined prosecution of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after a long and thorough probe of how she handled allegedly classified information, there should be no investigation, let alone indictment or conviction of Trump.
But while we don’t yet know the extent or nature of Trump’s abuse of classified documents, we can determine how many were found by investigators, after exhaustive searches, among Clinton’s thousands of State Department emails.
The accurate and definitive answer is zero – although few if any news outlets have informed the public of that startling fact. Moreover, it is a fact that the Trump administration itself confirmed three years ago.
In the recent coverage that references her emails, former FBI Director James Comey is sometimes quoted as saying that of the 33,000 Clinton emails examined by bureau investigators, three had classification markings. That’s less than one-hundredth of one percent, and not worth comparing to Trump’s malfeasance anyway, but it’s still false -- apparently meant to bolster Comey’s absurd claim that other Clinton emails were “classified” although never marked as such.
Those three State Department documents were “call sheets,” innocuous memos reminding Clinton to make scheduled phone calls. During her FBI interview, investigators showed her one of those memos, reminding her to place a condolence call to the president of Malawi--not exactly a top secret matter. As Comey himself later admitted, any classification marking on that sheet had been wrongly applied.
In short, the three supposedly classified documents attributed to her emails were barely even confidential, let alone secret or subject to the sanctions of the Espionage Act.
Still, the hunting of Hillary never ends and – amid regular threats to her by Trump when he was president -- inevitably resumed after the FBI investigation concluded. What has been overlooked is that “her emails” and those of her State Department aides became the target of not one but two departmental probes that picked up where her exoneration by the Justice Department left off.
The first round, which began under Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first Secretary of State, opened with an inquiry into a claim of 41 “security incidents” attributed to Clinton and concluded, after months of argument and appeals by her attorneys at Williams & Connolly, that none of those alleged incidents was valid, though she shouldn’t have used a private email server. In that respect her conduct was no different from her Republican predecessor, the late Colin Powell, who advised her to use private email, or many officials in the Bush White House, including Karl Rove.
The second State Department review commenced with more fanfare in 2019 under Tillerson’s unscrupulous successor Mike Pompeo, who, it is worth noting, soon came under official scrutiny himself for gross and self-serving misuse of State Department resources. By then, the hypocrisy behind Republican indignation over “her emails” had been highlighted by massive, repeated security breaches in the Trump White House, where numerous officials , including Ivanka Trump, unlawfully used private email accounts and normal protective protocols were routinely flouted.
No doubt Pompeo, a veteran of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, hoped to find something, anything to arraign Clinton. But again, in the end, there was zero, zilch, nada. Although the second review began with a July 31, 2019 notice from State Department officials that they “suspected” Clinton might be responsible for 12 classified “spillages,” this investigation concluded nine weeks later that she did not “bear any individual culpability” for those incidents.
Again, the overarching absurdity of the State Department and FBI investigations lay in the fact that nearly all of the documents at issue had been classified retroactively – meaning they had carried no markings identifying them as such when Clinton handled them. Comey's assertion that documents can somehow be deemed inherently secret, without proper markings or any classification history whatsoever, is extremely dangerous and hostile to the concept of open democratic governance. It is an idea that should never have been entertained by a free press.
Nobody in their right mind would hold Clinton, or any official, to be culpable under those circumstances.
The same cannot be said for Trump in the current documents scandal, as must be obvious to anyone who has seen that photograph of the folders, clearly marked “TOP SECRET,” strewn around his office floor at Mar-a-Lago, or the folders emptied of their contents, who knows where.
Despite the hysterical accusations that persist to this day, Hillary Clinton was repeatedly judged to be innocent of jeopardizing national security, including twice by the Trump administration. It now appears frighteningly obvious that Donald Trump is not nearly so innocent.
Now that's a pretty powerful ruling. Kudos to the judge. Probably be appealed, but at least it's a start.
Conservative Texas phone company fueling extremist takeover of schools
Patriot Mobile, a ‘Christian conservative wireless provider’, is targeting school board elections to push its far-right agenda
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/05/texas-phone-company-conservative-takeover-schools
Erum Salam
Mon 5 Sep 2022 05.00 EDT
A conservative Texas-based phone company is planning a takeover of political offices in the US state, starting with public schools.
Patriot Mobile, which calls itself “America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider”, has been fueling an extremist conservative movement taking over curriculum in public schools across Texas.
Leigh Wambsganss, the executive director of the company and its political arm, proudly declared victory in 11 out of 11 school board seats in the last election cycle in school districts around the Dallas-Fort Worth area on behalf of the company and conservative American Christians.
She said: “What this means is that now in north Texas, over 100,000 students who, before May, had leftist leadership now have conservative leadership!”
Earlier this year, the company established a political action committee, Patriot Mobile Action, which allows them to legally fundraise and finance political campaigns.
By acting as the financial backbone for the campaigns of far-right candidates for school boards, the phone company is seeking to promote its conservative agenda on issues like abortion, books and gender identity. It happens as across the US, school boards and local elections have witnessed intense fights as far-right candidates and groups have sought to win positions.
“Patriot Mobile Action is engaging on the front lines of this culture war. We are independently researching candidates and advocating on behalf of those who will stand for American values and stand against leftist indoctrination, racist Critical Race Theory and the sexualization of children that is rampant in public schools,” their website says.
Some key beliefs of the organization are American exceptionalism, “Critical Race Theory and Marxist policies have no place in schools or government,” and that “the United States constitution was founded on Judeo-Christian principles”.
In Keller independent school district, where Patriot Mobile played a key role in getting school board members elected, a new policy went into effect that required the board’s review and approval of books in its schools.
At the start of this academic year, faculty and staff were tasked with removing certain books previously challenged by parents like Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and a graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary, in order for the school board to review the books according to new unknown criteria.
Patriot Mobile also concentrated its efforts in the school board elections of Carroll independent school district, and emerged triumphant. It was here that Patriot Mobile donated “In God We Trust”signs, after a state law passed requiring public schools to display any signs with the nation’s official motto, so long as it was donated.
Local resident Sravan Krishna donated signs that read “In God We Trust” in Arabic and another with a rainbow background. The school board rejected those signs, citing having enough signs as the reason.
More recently, the Patriot Mobile sponsored CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference), partly held in Dallas this year. Far-right politicians like Texas senator Ted Cruz and Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert were seen signing their books at Patriot Mobile sponsored booths at the event.
Patriot Mobile’s chief financial officer and founder Glenn Story was a guest on former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s podcast.
Speaking on Patriot Mobile’s recent wins in the state’s school boards, Bannon said: “The school boards are the key that picks the lock.”
The phone carrier said it will donate $1.5m to conservative causes in 2022 and expects to double that contribution by next year.
Duty To Warn ??
@duty2warn
An association of mental health professionals warning now about TrumpISM. #UNFIT doc was released 2020. #UNTRUTH doc will be released before midterms
https://twitter.com/duty2warn
#UNTRUTH explores the psychology underlying the dangerous cult of Trumpism, and its "alternative realities." From the makers of #UNFIT.
Created by
UNTRUTH LLC.
1,134 backers pledged $102,617 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/untruth/untruth-psychology-of-trumpism-war-for-democracy
#UNTRUTH is a film that will make sense out of where we are and why we're here. It's a behavioral perspective we don't ever get in the media. It will speak truth to ANYONE who watches. It explains, clearly, the true underlying reasons for the urgency we face.
Before you read, please:
** PUT ASIDE THE NOISE, THE JUDGMENT, AND THE NEWS CYCLE. **
REMEMBER:
There ARE such things as facts and truth. And there was NO election fraud in 2020. It WAS America’s most secure election, ever.
Although many people believe the BIG LIE, and many more say they do, our focus is understanding HOW and WHY the BIG LIE is being weaponized; for therein lies the solution.
REALIZE:
TRUMPISM is a different issue than TRUMP himself. It's way bigger. It has already metastasized into a full-on apparatus. Trumpism operates in an echo chamber. It has many powerful, far-reaching players -- enablers, amplifiers, grifters, opportunists.
TRUMPISM has emotionalized our electorate. People, some of which we know, were coopted. Trump supporters weren't born more emotional; they were susceptible and manipulated.
The principal weapon of TRUMPISM is propaganda (disinformation). Propaganda blurs facts, creates doubt. Disagreements ensue. Trust erodes. Tribalism is enhanced. Laws are disrespected. It's happened throughout history. It begins with propaganda.
RECOGNIZE:
Most of the tribal hatred, including racial hatred, is rooted in fear. Tens of millions of Trump supporters are fearmongered, regularly and relentlessly, every day. They are pelted with fearful messaging that is concise, targeted, and repetitive, and ALWAYS propped up by false narratives and lies. Those doing that pelting are the amplifiers.
Many elected officials these days also amplify the messaging. Don't see them as "believers," or crazy. They are enablers. Grifters. Actors. When they say something that gets you outraged, it's because they want you outraged. It's strategy. They play and perform - to influence behavior. Their goal is power. Your real life is their reality show.
BELIEVE:
All Trump supporters are NOT the same. We tend to see only the worst on TV.
If you judge all Trump supporters by the worst, those in the mob, you'll judge them all beyond reach. Take a breath. Don't judge so much. Truth is, many can re-embrace truth. And some will. The math tells us: we don't need that many to prevail.
It is exceedingly difficult to break through tribalistic propaganda. Most people only absorb media that validates their predetermined views. The light doesn't get in. And while there are truthful books, many Americans don't read books.
But everyone watches films.
For a film to break through the propaganda, it must transcend partisan politics, and entertain as it informs. #UNTRUTH will do that. Experts. Psychology. Behavior. Truth.
We all know that Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels famously said: "Make the lie big, keep it simple, keep saying it, and people will believe it.” BUT Goebbels also said something else -- that it's absolutely necessary to hide the truth, because if truth escapes: “It will prove stronger than the lie.” We can't echo this enough! Propaganda is not only about lies; it's also about suppression of truth.
We MUST fight to expose truth. To fight for truth, is to fight for democracy. It's not an easy fight. But know this: If enough truth prevails, democracy prevails.
Democracy is THE thing most worth fighting for. It's the fundamental basis of the common good, the only system of government where the dignity of a human is above the power of the state. Our constitutional crisis is not "coming soon." It's here.
IF WE ALL BETTER UNDERSTAND WHAT WE'RE REALLY DEALING WITH, WE'LL ALL SHOW UP IN NOVEMBER, AND WE'LL FLIP A FEW. DEMOCRACY WILL PREVAIL.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/untruth/unfit-malignant-narcissism-comes-to-wash-dc-very-b
Duty To Warn ??
@duty2warn
An association of mental health professionals warning now about TrumpISM. #UNFIT doc was released 2020. #UNTRUTH doc will be released before midterms
https://twitter.com/duty2warn
#UNTRUTH explores the psychology underlying the dangerous cult of Trumpism, and its "alternative realities." From the makers of #UNFIT.
Created by
UNTRUTH LLC.
1,134 backers pledged $102,617 to help bring this project to life.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/untruth/untruth-psychology-of-trumpism-war-for-democracy
#UNTRUTH is a film that will make sense out of where we are and why we're here. It's a behavioral perspective we don't ever get in the media. It will speak truth to ANYONE who watches. It explains, clearly, the true underlying reasons for the urgency we face.
Before you read, please:
** PUT ASIDE THE NOISE, THE JUDGMENT, AND THE NEWS CYCLE. **
REMEMBER:
There ARE such things as facts and truth. And there was NO election fraud in 2020. It WAS America’s most secure election, ever.
Although many people believe the BIG LIE, and many more say they do, our focus is understanding HOW and WHY the BIG LIE is being weaponized; for therein lies the solution.
REALIZE:
TRUMPISM is a different issue than TRUMP himself. It's way bigger. It has already metastasized into a full-on apparatus. Trumpism operates in an echo chamber. It has many powerful, far-reaching players -- enablers, amplifiers, grifters, opportunists.
TRUMPISM has emotionalized our electorate. People, some of which we know, were coopted. Trump supporters weren't born more emotional; they were susceptible and manipulated.
The principal weapon of TRUMPISM is propaganda (disinformation). Propaganda blurs facts, creates doubt. Disagreements ensue. Trust erodes. Tribalism is enhanced. Laws are disrespected. It's happened throughout history. It begins with propaganda.
RECOGNIZE:
Most of the tribal hatred, including racial hatred, is rooted in fear. Tens of millions of Trump supporters are fearmongered, regularly and relentlessly, every day. They are pelted with fearful messaging that is concise, targeted, and repetitive, and ALWAYS propped up by false narratives and lies. Those doing that pelting are the amplifiers.
Many elected officials these days also amplify the messaging. Don't see them as "believers," or crazy. They are enablers. Grifters. Actors. When they say something that gets you outraged, it's because they want you outraged. It's strategy. They play and perform - to influence behavior. Their goal is power. Your real life is their reality show.
BELIEVE:
All Trump supporters are NOT the same. We tend to see only the worst on TV.
If you judge all Trump supporters by the worst, those in the mob, you'll judge them all beyond reach. Take a breath. Don't judge so much. Truth is, many can re-embrace truth. And some will. The math tells us: we don't need that many to prevail.
It is exceedingly difficult to break through tribalistic propaganda. Most people only absorb media that validates their predetermined views. The light doesn't get in. And while there are truthful books, many Americans don't read books.
But everyone watches films.
For a film to break through the propaganda, it must transcend partisan politics, and entertain as it informs. #UNTRUTH will do that. Experts. Psychology. Behavior. Truth.
We all know that Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels famously said: "Make the lie big, keep it simple, keep saying it, and people will believe it.” BUT Goebbels also said something else -- that it's absolutely necessary to hide the truth, because if truth escapes: “It will prove stronger than the lie.” We can't echo this enough! Propaganda is not only about lies; it's also about suppression of truth.
We MUST fight to expose truth. To fight for truth, is to fight for democracy. It's not an easy fight. But know this: If enough truth prevails, democracy prevails.
Democracy is THE thing most worth fighting for. It's the fundamental basis of the common good, the only system of government where the dignity of a human is above the power of the state. Our constitutional crisis is not "coming soon." It's here.
IF WE ALL BETTER UNDERSTAND WHAT WE'RE REALLY DEALING WITH, WE'LL ALL SHOW UP IN NOVEMBER, AND WE'LL FLIP A FEW. DEMOCRACY WILL PREVAIL.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/untruth/unfit-malignant-narcissism-comes-to-wash-dc-very-b
Some fun facts
Not only does education in Finland produce top tier students, but the country has also created an education system that works for everyone. About 93 percent of Finns graduate from high school, 17.5 percentage points higher than the US, and 66 percent go to college, the highest rate in the European Union. Yet, Finland spends 30 percent less on education than the US.
Maybe we're putting out too much effort. Got it all wrong, we just need to relax and catch it as it comes to us freely. lol
Alex Alvarova????Victory to Ukraine??Author
@AlexAlvarova
"Feeding the Demons"/thriller on algorithmically driven propaganda and Kremlin mobsters. Born CZ,not RU,for the God’s sake! Cursed prophet on Titanic.
Boston, MAamazon.com/Feeding-Demons…Joined March 2011
12.5K Following
17.2K Followers
https://twitter.com/AlexAlvarova
Alex Alvarova????Victory to Ukraine??Author Retweeted
Cheri Jacobus
@CheriJacobus
Sep 3
The murder of CIA informants and agents is only after Trump became POTUS where he had access to their names and alarmed staff by requesting their names shortly after speaking with Putin, Kim Jong Un, and other foreign adversaries. Trump sells those names. Our spies get murdered.
Quote Tweet
Cheri Jacobus
@CheriJacobus
·
Sep 2
Replying to @IanMSwanson1110 and @neal_katyal
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/575384-cia-admits-to-losing-dozens-of-informants-around-the-world-nyt/?fbclid=IwAR0quhi3oP2dZtXDdOpEJMl_QvLZykPmWv-mUhq-06uaM0m7dU6vPQzvqhA
https://twitter.com/CheriJacobus
Cheri Jacobus
@CheriJacobus
#NeverTrump, former GOP,
Exec Producer "America Reads The Mueller Report",
Cancer survivor! http://patreon.com/PoliticsWithCheriJacobus
Marylandcherijacobus.comJoined January 2012
4,100 Following
223.7K Followers
Pinned Tweet
Cheri Jacobus
@CheriJacobus
·
Feb 24
When I wrote in
@USAToday
about JD Gordon of Trump camp national security team strong-arming the RNC platform committee to change language on Ukraine to favor Putin, JD (pal/partner w/Michael Caputo) contacted his rightwing editor pal at the paper to pull the piece and fire me
Cheri Jacobus
@CheriJacobus
·
19m
Trump’s insurrectionists tried to kill VP and Speaker on J6. Do you think they will hesitate to eliminate the line of succession in order to elevate a Speaker Trump to the Presidency? He’d then control DoJ and the investigations of him end.
Quote Tweet
Cheri Jacobus
@CheriJacobus
·
50m
Reminder: if GOP wins the House, they can make Trump Speaker, just 2 heartbeats from the Presidency. Then it’s time to worry - very, very much - about what his violent MAGA cult will do to those other 2 heartbeats. I pray the Secret Service has purged itself of insurrectionists.
Alex Alvarova????Victory to Ukraine??Author
@AlexAlvarova
"Feeding the Demons"/thriller on algorithmically driven propaganda and Kremlin mobsters. Born CZ,not RU,for the God’s sake! Cursed prophet on Titanic.
Boston, MAamazon.com/Feeding-Demons…Joined March 2011
12.5K Following
17.2K Followers
https://twitter.com/AlexAlvarova
Alex Alvarova????Victory to Ukraine??Author Retweeted
Cheri Jacobus
@CheriJacobus
Sep 3
The murder of CIA informants and agents is only after Trump became POTUS where he had access to their names and alarmed staff by requesting their names shortly after speaking with Putin, Kim Jong Un, and other foreign adversaries. Trump sells those names. Our spies get murdered.
Quote Tweet
Cheri Jacobus
@CheriJacobus
·
Sep 2
Replying to @IanMSwanson1110 and @neal_katyal
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/575384-cia-admits-to-losing-dozens-of-informants-around-the-world-nyt/?fbclid=IwAR0quhi3oP2dZtXDdOpEJMl_QvLZykPmWv-mUhq-06uaM0m7dU6vPQzvqhA
https://twitter.com/CheriJacobus
Cheri Jacobus
@CheriJacobus
#NeverTrump, former GOP,
Exec Producer "America Reads The Mueller Report",
Cancer survivor! http://patreon.com/PoliticsWithCheriJacobus
Marylandcherijacobus.comJoined January 2012
4,100 Following
223.7K Followers
Pinned Tweet
Cheri Jacobus
@CheriJacobus
·
Feb 24
When I wrote in
@USAToday
about JD Gordon of Trump camp national security team strong-arming the RNC platform committee to change language on Ukraine to favor Putin, JD (pal/partner w/Michael Caputo) contacted his rightwing editor pal at the paper to pull the piece and fire me
Cheri Jacobus
@CheriJacobus
·
19m
Trump’s insurrectionists tried to kill VP and Speaker on J6. Do you think they will hesitate to eliminate the line of succession in order to elevate a Speaker Trump to the Presidency? He’d then control DoJ and the investigations of him end.
Quote Tweet
Cheri Jacobus
@CheriJacobus
·
50m
Reminder: if GOP wins the House, they can make Trump Speaker, just 2 heartbeats from the Presidency. Then it’s time to worry - very, very much - about what his violent MAGA cult will do to those other 2 heartbeats. I pray the Secret Service has purged itself of insurrectionists.
Another good one who I have been following for awhile, right there at the courthouse and courtroom and many times first to report Traitor trump happenings;
https://twitter.com/hugolowell
Hugo Lowell
@hugolowell
Congressional reporter
@Guardian
— covering the Jan. 6 and Trump investigations. Talk to me: hugo.lowell@protonmail.com and hugo.lowell@theguardian.com
Washington DCinstagram.com/hugoxlowellJoined May 2014
9,621 Following
186.1K Followers
He also just won an award for his reporting.
The Guardian US’ Congressional Reporter, Hugo Lowell, Wins at the National Press Club Journalism Awards
GNM press office
Wed 31 Aug 2022 13.19 EDT
The Guardian US’ Congressional Reporter, Hugo Lowell, Wins at the National Press Club Journalism Awards
GNM press office
Wed 31 Aug 2022 13.19 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/2022/aug/31/the-guardian-us-congressional-reporter-hugo-lowell-wins-at-the-national-press-club-journalism-awards
The Guardian US’ Congressional reporter, Hugo Lowell, has won the National Press Club’s (NPC) Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism for his submission, ‘Inside how Trump and aides sought to stop Biden’s certification on January 6’. The winners were announced by the NPC on August 11; the awards ceremony will be held today (Wednesday 31 August).
Another good one who I have been following for awhile, right there at the courthouse and courtroom and many times first to report Traitor trump happenings;
https://twitter.com/hugolowell
Hugo Lowell
@hugolowell
Congressional reporter
@Guardian
— covering the Jan. 6 and Trump investigations. Talk to me: hugo.lowell@protonmail.com and hugo.lowell@theguardian.com
Washington DCinstagram.com/hugoxlowellJoined May 2014
9,621 Following
186.1K Followers
He also just won an award for his reporting.
The Guardian US’ Congressional Reporter, Hugo Lowell, Wins at the National Press Club Journalism Awards
GNM press office
Wed 31 Aug 2022 13.19 EDT
The Guardian US’ Congressional Reporter, Hugo Lowell, Wins at the National Press Club Journalism Awards
GNM press office
Wed 31 Aug 2022 13.19 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/2022/aug/31/the-guardian-us-congressional-reporter-hugo-lowell-wins-at-the-national-press-club-journalism-awards
The Guardian US’ Congressional reporter, Hugo Lowell, has won the National Press Club’s (NPC) Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism for his submission, ‘Inside how Trump and aides sought to stop Biden’s certification on January 6’. The winners were announced by the NPC on August 11; the awards ceremony will be held today (Wednesday 31 August).
GOP escalates fight against citizen-led ballot initiatives
By DAVID A. LIEB
yesterday
https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-voting-rights-abortion-arkansas-recreational-marijuana-0c003046cc981ebcfb38fa77c1455737
FILE - Members of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers, from left, Richard Houskamp, Anthony Daunt and Mary Ellen Gurewitz listen to attorneys Olivia Flower and Steve Liedel during a hearing, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2022, in Lansing, Mich. Republican-dominated courts and legislatures have been pushing back against citizen-led ballot initiatives to keep them off the ballot, in what critics say is a partisan attack on direct democracy. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions this year backing proposed ballot initiatives to expand voting access, ensure abortion rights and legalize recreational marijuana in Arizona, Arkansas and Michigan.
Yet voters might not get a say because Republican officials or judges have blocked the proposals from the November elections, citing flawed wording, procedural shortcomings or insufficient petition signatures.
At the same time, Republican lawmakers in Arkansas and Arizona have placed constitutional amendments on the ballot proposing to make it harder to approve citizen initiatives in the future.
The Republican pushback against the initiative process is part of a several-year trend that gained steam as Democratic-aligned groups have increasingly used petitions to force public votes on issues that Republican-led legislatures have opposed. In reliably Republican Missouri, for example, voters have approved initiatives to expand Medicaid, raise the minimum wage and legalize medical marijuana. An initiative seeking to allow recreational pot is facing a court challenge from an anti-drug activist aiming to knock it off the November ballot.
Some Democrats contend Republicans are subverting the will of the people by making the ballot initiative process more difficult.
2022 MIDTERM ELECTIONS
US election conspiracies find fertile ground in conferences
Trump moves to general election mode with Pennsylvania rally
Kansas governor lauds abortion vote but focuses on economy
Democratic lawmaker who just won Senate primary resigns
“What is happening now is just a web of technicalities to thwart the process in states where voters are using the people’s tool to make an immediate positive change in their lives,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which has worked with progressive groups sponsoring the blocked initiatives.
“That is not the way our democracy should work,” she added
Republicans who have thrown up hurdles to initiative petitions contend they are protecting the integrity of the lawmaking process against well-funded interest groups trying to bend state policies in their favor.
“I think the Legislature is a much purer way to get things done and it represents the people much better, rather than having this jungle where you just throw it on the ballot,” said South Dakota state Rep. Tim Goodwin, who has perennially targeted the initiative process with restrictions.
About half the states allow citizen initiatives, in which petition signers can bypass a legislature to place proposed laws or constitutional changes directly before voters. But executive or judicial officials often still have some role in the process, typically by certifying that the ballot wording is clear and accurate and that petition circulators gathered enough valid signatures of registered voters.
In Michigan this past week, two Republican members of the bipartisan Board of State Canvassers blocked initiatives to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and expand opportunities for voting. Each measure had significantly more than the required 425,000 signatures. But GOP board members said the voting measure had unclear wording and the abortion measure was flawed because of spacing problems that scrunched some words together.
Supporters have appealed both decisions to the Michigan Supreme Court, which consists of a majority of Democratic-appointed judges.
The Arkansas Supreme Court, whose justices run in nonpartisan elections, is weighing an appeal of an August decision blocking an initiative that would legalize recreational marijuana for adults.
The State Board of Election Commissioners, which has just one Democrat among its many Republicans, determined that the ballot title was misleading because it failed to mention it would repeal potency limits in an existing medical marijuana provision. Because the deadline has passed to certify initiative titles, the Supreme Court has allowed the measure on the general election ballot while it decides whether the votes will be counted.
A lawsuit by initiative supporters contends a 2019 law passed by the Republican-led Legislature violates the Arkansas Constitution by allowing the board to reject ballot titles.
“The (initiative) process in Arkansas has gotten consistently harder each cycle, as the Legislature adds more and more requirements,” said Steve Lancaster, a lawyer for Responsible Growth Arkansas, which is sponsoring the marijuana amendment.
It would get even harder if voters support a legislatively referred amendment on the November ballot that would require a 60% vote to approve citizen-initiated ballot measures or future constitutional amendments.
In Arizona, the primarily Republican-appointed Supreme Court recently blocked a proposed constitutional amendment that would have extended early voting and limited lobbyist gifts to lawmakers. The measure also would have specifically prohibited the Legislature from overturning the results of presidential elections, which some Republicans had explored after then- President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020.
After a lower court initially ruled the measure could appear on the November ballot, Arizona’s high court instructed the judge to reconsider. Then it upheld a subsequent ruling throwing out enough petition signatures to prevent the initiative from qualifying for the ballot.
Still on the ballot are several other amendments referred by Arizona’s Republican-led Legislature. Those measures would limit initiatives to a single subject, require a 60% supermajority to approve tax proposals and expand the Legislature’s authority to change voter-approved initiatives.
Those proposals come after Arizona Republicans have spent the past decade enacting laws making it more difficult to get citizen initiatives on the ballot. State laws now require petition sheets to be precisely printed and ban the use of a copy machine to create new ones. Other laws require paid circulators to include their registration number on each petition sheet, get it notarized and check a box saying they were paid.
“The effect is to make it much harder, much more expensive to get the signatures to put one of these propositions on the ballot,” said Terry Goddard, a Democrat who served as the state’s attorney general from 2003 through 2011.
After years of trying, Goddard finally succeeded this year in getting an initiative on the ballot that would require nonprofit groups that spend large amounts on elections to reveal their donors.
Earlier this summer, South Dakota voters defeated a measure that would have made it harder to pass initiatives on taxes and spending. The proposal from the Republican-led Legislature would have required a 60% vote to raise taxes or spend over a certain amount of money. Voters rejected the measure by 67%.
“This just seems like a way to suppress voters. honestly,” Joshua Matzner, a Democrat, said after voting against it.
___
Associated Press writers Bob Christie in Phoenix and Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ap_politics
One of the people I have been following that does some good investigative reporting;
https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__
Ben Collins
@oneunderscore__
Senior reporter, dystopia beat,
@NBCNews.
New York, NYJoined January 2010
8,490 Following
336.4K Followers
https://twitter.com/search?q=kiwi%20farms&src=typed_query
Ben Collins
@oneunderscore__
I've been covering bad parts of the internet for long time now.
For years, there was one site extremist researchers warned me not to cover because publicizing it would be dangerous.
But it's time people know KiwiFarms—and how they're chasing political enemies around the world.
KiwiFarms just got booted from Cloudfare
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/cloudflare-provided-security-services-kiwi-farms-blocks-website-rcna46219
Internet services company Cloudflare blocks fringe message board Kiwi Farms citing 'targeted threats'
After one of the targets of website went public with the harassment against her, Cloudflare dropped the platform that has become synonymous with online terror.
But Putin and Russia already has backed them up with KiwiFarms going to Russian servers and continues their major attacks upon the US in the Russia-America War.
Makes one wonder sometimes. This guy, Traitor trump's ex-wife down the stairs, Madoff's buddy Jeffry Picower found in pool, Jeffrey Epstein and his pal Jean-Luc Brunel hangings, and the list grows longer.
The list of meme massacres gets longer too. Not surprising when you see these kind of statements from the massacred.
Traders on the Reddit forum WallStreetBets, who have cheered the stock in recent weeks, reacted with a mixture of stoicism and despair.
'I just wanted make money without any effort. why I have to suffer like this? why?' wrote one user on the forum.
There was this yesterday too.
Sep 1, 2022 Press Release
Agreement with Trump and Accounting Firm Mazars USA Follows Committee’s Subpoena and Successful Litigation
https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases
I have to believe that there was people in the know that the loss of China business coming down the line for NVDA. It was on the top five hedge funds short with GS list. Surprise my ass. Might be some short covering going on around at this price point.
Had NVDA a while back when it was up there, but got out before most of the drop. Still looking to come back in at some point. Added KO yesterday at $61.56. Might add some more in the coming week. I'll see if the 200ma holds or floats around it, or totally loses it with more bear market like so many good stocks have done lately.
Gen Michael Hayden
@GenMhayden
·
14h
Holy smokes.
Quote Tweet
Visegrád 24
@visegrad24
· 17h
Someone hacked Russia’s largest taxi company and ordered all available taxis to central Moscow, creating huge traffic jams in the city.
The Russians don’t have a monopoly on hybrid warfare.
Someone hacked Russia’s largest taxi company and ordered all available taxis to central Moscow, creating huge traffic jams in the city.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) September 1, 2022
The Russians don’t have a monopoly on hybrid warfare. https://t.co/MbEiloswcA
The nation's poorest state used welfare money to pay Brett Favre for speeches he never made
The state auditor says $70 million in federal welfare funds went to Favre, a volleyball complex and a former pro wrestler in a scandal that has rocked Mississippi.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/nations-poorest-state-used-welfare-money-pay-brett-favre-speeches-neve-rcna45871
Sept. 1, 2022, 4:13 PM MDT
By Ken Dilanian and Laura Strickler
Brett Favre earned nearly $140 million as a star NFL quarterback over two decades and millions more in product endorsements.
But that didn’t stop the state of Mississippi from paying Favre $1.1 million in 2017 and 2018 to make motivational speeches — out of federal welfare funds intended for needy families. The Mississippi state auditor said Favre never gave the speeches and demanded the money back, with interest.
Favre has repaid the fees, although not the $228,000 in interest the auditor also demanded. But the revelation by the auditor that $70 million in TANF welfare funds was doled out to a multimillionaire athlete, a professional wrestler, a horse farm and a volleyball complex are at the heart of a scandal that has rocked the nation’s poorest state, sparking parallel state and federal criminal investigations that have led to charges and guilty pleas involving some of the key players.
Favre hasn’t been accused of a crime or charged, and he declined an interview. His lawyer, Bud Holmes, said he did nothing wrong and never understood he was paid with money intended to help poor children. Holmes acknowledged that the FBI had questioned Favre in the case, a fact that hasn’t previously been reported.
The saga, which has been boiling at low grade for 2½ years, drew new attention in July, when the state welfare agency fired a lawyer who had been hired to claw back some of the money, just after he issued a subpoena seeking more information about the roles of Favre and the former governor, Phil Bryant, a Republican. The current governor, Republican Tate Reeves, acknowledged playing a role in the decision to sack Brad Pigott, accusing the Bill Clinton-appointed former U.S. attorney of having a political agenda. But the state official who first uncovered the misspending and fraud, auditor Shad White, is a Republican.
Image: Brad Pigott
Brad Pigott was hired to claw back some of the TANF money. He was fired just after he issued a subpoena seeking more information about the roles of Brett Favre and former Gov. Phil Bryant.NBC News
In his first television interview since he was fired, Pigott said his only agenda was to get at the truth and to recoup U.S. taxpayer funds sent to Mississippi that he says were “squandered.”
“The notion of tens of millions of dollars that was intended by the country to go to the alleviation of poverty — and to see it going toward very different purposes — was appalling to many of us,” he said. “Mr. Favre was a very great quarterback, but having been a great NFL quarterback, he is not well acquainted with poverty.”
Pigott, who before he was fired sued on behalf of Mississippi’s welfare agency, naming Favre and 37 other grant recipients, laid ultimate blame at the feet of top Mississippi politicians, including Bryant.
“Governor Bryant gave tens of millions of dollars of this TANF welfare money to a nonprofit led by a person who he knew well and who had more connections with his political party than with the good people in Mississippi who have the heart and the skills to actually cajole people out of poverty or prevent teenage pregnancies,” he said.
In an interview with the website Mississippi Today, Bryant said he never knew the grants came from welfare money. His lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Image: women's volleyball facility at the University of Southern Mississippi
Millions of dollars of federal welfare funds intended for needy families are alleged to have been used to build a women's volleyball facility at the University of Southern Mississippi.NBC News
The person in charge of the nonprofit group Pigott was referring to is Nancy New, a close friend of Bryant’s wife. New and her son have pleaded guilty to state and federal charges and agreed to cooperate. New, a key player in doling out the money, said in a court document that Bryant was among those involved in directing the transactions. Her lawyer declined to comment.
The former head of the state welfare agency, John Davis, has pleaded not guilty to state charges of bribery and conspiracy, and law enforcement officials say the investigations continue.
Favre defended himself in a series of tweets last year against allegations from White, the state auditor, that he accepted state money for speeches he never intended to give.
“I would never knowingly take funds meant to help our neighbors in need, but for Shad White to continue to push out this lie that the money was for no-show events is something I cannot stay silent about,” Favre tweeted.
The speeches aren’t the only welfare grants tied to Favre. Text messages obtained by Mississippi Today and authenticated by Pigott show that Favre sought a $3.2 million grant for a drug company in which he was a shareholder and a $5 million award that built a volleyball arena at the University of Southern Mississippi, where his daughter played the sport and where he played football. Favre’s lawyer declined to comment.
The drug company, Prevacus, was touting treatments to mitigate the effects of concussions, although none were approved by the Food and Drug Administration. In some texts, Favre suggested awarding shares in the drug company to Bryant while he was governor.
“Don’t know if legal or not but we need cut him in,” Favre texted a company official in November 2018, referring to Bryant. Following up three days later, Favre wrote, “Also if legal I’ll give some of my shares to the Governor.”
For anyone who missed and wants to watch;
Joe Biden; The Soul of the Nation
https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1ynJOaEdOzrKR
Just finished a bit ago. Watched it online nbc, but it was shown on abc, and a lot of others. It was a bad ass speech. If we make it through stopping any civil war, adapting to our world war, dealing with any virus or climate wars, the speech will go down in history.
MAGA = Making Attorneys Get Attorneys
Oath Keepers lawyer charged with obstruction in connection with January 6
Holmes Lybrand
By Holmes Lybrand
Updated 12:02 PM EDT, Thu September 1, 2022
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/01/politics/oath-keepers-lawyer-charged-with-obstruction-january-6/index.html
More windows being replaced.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/01/russian-oil-executive-dies-in-fall-from-moscow-hospital-window
Russian oil executive dies in fall from Moscow hospital window
Ravil Maganov was chair of Russia’s biggest private oil company, Lukoil, which has criticised Ukraine invasion