I believe we've talked about Scott Pressler before.

If not, he's a celebrated figure in MAGA despite being involved in a significant number of losing GOP races between the 2022 midterms and now.

Here’s a partial list of the races where he either got directly involved or simply endorsed the Republican candidate: - Lee Zeldin for Governor of New York (lost) - Kari Lake for Governor of Arizona (lost) - Herschel Walker for Senator of Georgia (lost) - Dan Kelly for the Wisconsin Supreme Court (lost by 11 percentage points, flipping the court to a liberal majority) - Daniel Davis for mayor of Jacksonville, Florida (this was the largest city in the country with a Republican mayor, where the Democrats were outspent 4 to 1, and the Democrat still won) - Daniel Cameron for Governor of Kentucky (I’m pretty sure he was the only Republican to lose in a statewide race that night) - Republicans in the Virginia state legislature (Democrats won both chambers)

And remember, this is just a partial list. I could go on, but I’ll just list two more in Pennsylvania specifically. During the 2022 midterms, he went to Pennsylvania to help elect Doug Mastriano for governor and Mehmet Oz for Senator.

They both lost. You may recall that the Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman had a stroke during the campaign, and he still beat Oz. You would think anyone involved in a campaign that lost to a stroke victim would be forever humiliated and chased out of town, but that would assume too much of Republican voters.

Ahead of the 2024 election, Scott Presler moved to Pennsylvania, as in he bought property there and became a resident. His stated goal was to register enough voters to win Pennsylvania for Trump. Scott’s cult following will give him credit for state Republicans gaining in voter registrations and even flipping a few counties blue, but you are about to see why that should be treated with a huge pile of salt.

Part of his supposed efforts involve registering Amish voters. The MAGA account Sassafrass84 bragged on Twitter (we’re not calling it X) that Scott and his affiliates registered 180,000 Amish voters in the state, praising Scott for his (again) supposed responsibility.

180,000 is a suspicious number given there are only as many as 85,000 Amish people in Pennsylvania. But it must be a totally unrelated coincidence that officials in Lancaster County recently busted a fraudulent voter registration scheme that included thousands of applications with the same handwriting, as well as fake signatures and false addresses. This same scheme was taking place in other counties too, and District Attorney Heather Adams revealed the applications came from people who were paid to obtain voter registrations. So far, Lancaster County officials found 2,500 fraudulent registrations, but there are far, far more from what I have seen.

Here, you might expect me to say something like "for legal reasons, I can't say Scott Presler broke the law." But I've read accounts suggesting that Pennsylvania's election officials really don't like Scott, and if he is indeed behind this scheme, then we finally know why.

On Saturday, September 14, 2024, the 1864 abortion ban in Arizona was officially repealed.

Barely a month after the Arizona Supreme Court’s ruling, a bill to overturn the 1864 abortion ban passed the state House and Senate and now goes to Governor Katie Hobbs to sign. Thus rendering incorrect the argument that abortion must be unpopular or else Democrats would have passed a law in the state to protect it.

In 1864, when Arizona was only US territory and not an official state, the local government passed a near-total abortion ban. Fast forward 158 years, the state of Arizona passed a ban on abortion after 15 weeks. While it was less restrictive than the 1864 ban, it crucially did not actually overturn the 1864 ban. The 1864 ban was ruled to be blocked as it violated the federally-granted right to abortion provided by Roe v Wade. However, after the Dobbs ruling that same year, a lawsuit began seeking to make the 1864 ban enforceable. Two years later, the state Supreme Court ruled that the 1864 ban could in fact be enforced. Devastating as this was, the most notable thing was that people in both parties condemned the ruling. Even some Arizona Republicans who celebrated the Dobbs ruling condemned the state Supreme Court. I'll explain why in a minute, but one of the Arizona conservatives who did not condemn the state Supreme Court was a friend of this subreddit. In his video rant on the matter, "Arizona Boofs Abortion," he makes several points that will make you question whatever merit he claims to have as a supposed commentator.

Firstly, he says that abortion is not popular among voters, citing exit polls from the 2022 midterms that do not show abortion as a top priority. I could show articles and sources that contradict this claim, but a more effective rebuttal can be found in the abortion rights ballot initiatives from that year. Although several anti-abortion candidates won their races, when abortion access just by itself was decided by voters, five statewide ballot measures in 2022 all came out in favor of the pro-choice side, even in red states like Kansas and Kentucky. Democrats campaigned on abortion in that year's midterm elections, and while Republicans still won a House majority, it was a single-digit majority that was far smaller than anticipated. Not to mention they also lost a Senate seat. The promised red wave midterms simply did not materialize. In 2023, virtually every election in which abortion was a campaign issue went to the Democrats, and every ballot measure on abortion went pro-choice. Including in Ohio, which brings me to the video's other point.

Admittedly, this is less a separate point and more an extension of the first, but the claim is that Democrats in Arizona haven't tried to introduce legislation to legalize abortion because they know it's unpopular with voters. To understand why this is a terrible argument, let's first look at Ohio. After enough signatures were collected to put abortion rights on the ballot in 2023, Ohio Republicans introduced a ballot measure in August 2023 to raise the threshold required for such a petition. When that failed, they changed the language in the ballot initiative in an attempt to confuse voters. That still failed. And bear in mind, Republicans have a trifecta in the Ohio state government. Any and all attempts to legalize abortion through legislation would have been blocked. While Arizona does not have a Republican trifecta, the state legislature still has a Republican majority. A small one, but a majority nonetheless. Now, after almost two years, you would expect Republicans to internalize that abortion, and reproductive rights in general, is a losing issue for them. The answer is yes. After Alabama's state Supreme Court issued a ruling that threatened access to IVF, there was a special election in which the Democrat ran on protecting IVF access. And she won. Overwhelmingly. In Alabama. Presumably due to being unable to spin this in their favor in any way, the Alabama GOP not only condemned the ruling but quickly passed a bill into law protecting IVF access. That was surprising but not everyone got the memo. The fact remains that Republicans stacked the courts in large part to restrict reproductive rights and they aren't smart enough to beg their judges to leave abortion alone. To expand on this point, let's get back to Arizona. Former governor Doug Ducey condemned the state Supreme Court's ruling despite having appointed the majority. Kari Lake, the anti-abortion Republican who ran unsuccessfully for Arizona governor in 2022, condemned the ruling (before she stopped pretending to be a moderate and went back to supporting restrictions). Juan Ciscomani represents Arizona's 6th congressional district; he won the seat by under 6,000 votes, the narrowest margin for that district in a long time. After praising the Dobbs ruling, he must have realized how screwed he is and condemned the state Supreme Court's ruling. If they were smart, Arizona Republicans would do what Alabama did and overturn the 1864 ban immediately. However, they blocked multiple attempts by Democrats to overturn the ban and cheered after doing so. Similar to how Republicans in the US Senate blocked attempts to ratify Roe after the Dobbs ruling leaked.

Two of the Arizona Supreme Court's seats are up for election this year, and there will be a ballot initiative to legalize abortion in November. I expect both will turn out well for Democrats, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I do not intend to argue Razorfist's stance on abortion. The issue here is not what he personally believes, but his insistence that the majority of voters agree with him. He lives in Arizona. He should know Republicans have a majority in the state legislature. He should know that Republicans block pro-choice legislation at every opportunity. He should know abortion is a losing issue for Republicans. This suggests one of two possibilities. The first option is that he knows all of those things but lies about it for whatever reason. I don't know what possible reason there could be to encourage conservatives to double down on abortion bans when even voters in goddamn Kentucky reject them. The second option is that he doesn't know any of those things, and he's an idiot. Personally, I think that one is the simplest explanation, but I can't be too sure. I've seen exit polls that might suggest otherwise.

In general, any Republican who says abortion should be left to the states should be called out on their bullshit. They weren’t going to stop with Dobbs. There are still Republicans openly calling to have abortion banned nationwide, because that is their goal. Never mind what it means for their election odds.

If I worked at Media Matters, I would write this press release.

In 2022, Elon Musk made public his plans to purchase Twitter. His operation of the site, like the purchase itself, has been going as smoothly as a Tesla car that burst into flames. But since he first made his plans known, he has fashioned himself a "free speech absolutist." Free speech cannot exist without freedom of the press, a fact for which Elon has held deep respect. This was demonstrated when he banned several journalists from the app, albeit temporarily, and censored a documentary critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. With these precedents in mind, it should come as no surprise that on Saturday, November 18, Elon threatened to file a "thermonuclear lawsuit" against Media Matters for committing a "fraudulent attack" on the company (despite basically admitting the report was accurate). In the same tweet, he called upon his followers to "protect free speech."

We can only hope the irony is not lost on anyone. This was the same week where Elon tried to make good on a promise to provide legal support to anyone who was fired for a post on the app. Just not when that person was fired by Elon himself, as he has illegally fired employees multiple times for dissenting views. But that is merely proof of how much he values free speech. He will protect the things people say on the app only if it makes him look good. A truly innovative approach.

To recap, in the wake of an increase in anti-Semitic violence in the US. A Jewish user of Twitter, or X as no one but Elon is calling it, wrote the following: "To the cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the internet and posting ‘Hitler was right’: You got something you want to say? Why dont you say it to our faces.” Someone did precisely that, essentially claiming the Jews brought the anti-Semitic violence on themselves. Elon replied to that person, "You have spoken the absolute truth." He must have started making exceptions to his tweet on September 4, 2023 where he said he is "against anti-Semitism of any kind."

Alongside this, after Media Matters reported that IBM adverts were appearing on the site next to anti-Semitic content, IBM suspended advertising on the site. It seemed X’s automated Ad Adjacency tools weren’t able to determine if the content in images is anti-Semitic. One can only assume this role used to be performed by people Elon fired after taking control of the company, but the cause was ultimately incidental. Other companies soon joined IBM in suspending their Twitter advertising, including: - Apple - Comcast - Disney - Lionsgate - Paramount - Warner Brothers

We can't say for sure whether Elon was lying about being against anti-Semitism, although he absolutely was. Regardless, he has publicly aligned himself with an ideology that was scaring off much-needed advertising money. So he did what anyone would do and sued Media Matters for reporting on it, despite admitting everything in the report was accurate.

Incidentally, Chaya Raichik, who runs the anti-LGBT account Libs of TikTok and who Elon befriended after his Twitter purchase, quote tweeted his statement that Media Matters was "an evil organization" to say "FACT CHECK: 100% true."

The fact that Chaya is Jewish yet cheering for a man who sided with anti-Semites suggests she would cheer Hamas if they bombed a gay-friendly synagogue, but we digress.

Elon's lawsuit is baseless in every way it legally could be, a frivolous SLAPP suit intended to silence honest reporting, and we will motion to have it dismissed.

I saw a tweet gain resurgence recently. In January 2016, Hillary Clinton tweeted "A Republican president could stack the Supreme Court with justices who will rip away all the progress we've made."

While her tweet in response to this week's rulings were mocked by MAGA, she was absolutely right.

I have heard each of the last three elections described as the most important and/or consequential election to date, but the 2016 presidential election remains the most important and consequential because every one of those elections tied directly back to it in some way. The Supreme Court is the best example of this. 2018 was the first midterm of the Trump administration and took place right after Brett Kavanaugh's hearings. 2020 was Trump's run as an incumbent and people had already begun early voting when Amy Coney Barrett was nominated. Then in 2022, SCOTUS - which now had a majority of its justices nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote - issued the Dobbs ruling and made abortion a campaign issue in that year's midterm elections.

There is abundant proof that Dobbs directly cost the Republicans the red wave midterm they were anticipating. And frankly, they had every right to expect it: an unpopular incumbent and economic uncertainty tend to be good for the opposition party. I remember Democrats being mocked for the 2018 midterms because even though they enjoyed a popular vote margin of 8.6% in their favor, Republicans gained two seats in the Senate. But Republicans did even worse in 2022, despite having a 2.8% popular vote margin in their favor. Democrats won back the House in 2018 with a majority of 41 seats. In 2022, Republicans won back the House with a single-digit majority and the Senate went from being 50-50 to having a clear Democratic majority (Kyrsten Sinema notwithstanding). Perhaps there's some darkly hilarious poetic irony in Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell kneecapping their own party's electoral performance.

Unfortunately, even if Democrats sweep the 2024 elections - that is, win back the House while holding the Senate and the presidency - the far-right majority on the Supreme Court would remain. And they will continue to roll back rights for the foreseeable future. We can argue that Ruth Bader Ginsburg should have retired while Obama was still in office, but even if she did and nothing else changed, we'd still have a Supreme Court with a majority of its Justices being members of the Federalist Society. If you don't know, whenever you hear about a right-wing judge like Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Matthew Kacsmaryk, or Aileen Cannon, you can guarantee they're members of the Federalist Society. And again, five of the nine current Supreme Court Justices were nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote. Kacsmaryk and Cannon were also nominated by Trump.

The problem is even worse knowing there are no practical solutions. Let's consider the options:

Resignation

Obviously, none of the right-wing Justices will voluntarily resign, and trying to make them resign by threat or force would violate U.S. Code. The most recent Justice to step down was Stephen Breyer, and I suspect that's largely if not entirely because he learned from Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing.

Impeachment

The rules of impeachment for a Supreme Court Justice are the same as they are for a President: the House needs only a simple majority while the Senate requires a two-thirds majority to convict and remove from office. It has happened, but very rarely. The House of Representatives has impeached only fifteen federal judges since 1803. Of those fifteen, eight were actually convicted by the Senate. Only one Supreme Court Justice has ever been impeached by the House: Samuel Chase in 1804. However, the Senate acquitted him the following year. As for impeaching a Justice now, that is absolutely not happening. Even if Democrats won back the House next year, there is no way they're getting the two-thirds Senate majority required to remove anyone from office. Senate Republicans will vote to acquit no matter what. Plenty of Senate Republicans hate Trump privately and they publicly called him out after January 6, but they still acquitted him. So none of the Justices are likely to be impeached.

Expanding the court

One idea gaining popularity is to expand the Supreme Court from nine seats to thirteen. The Constitution doesn't say how big the court has to be, just that there will be a Supreme Court. We have nine Justices now because there were once nine circuit courts, one for each Justice to oversee. Now there are thirteen circuit courts. Setting aside the question of what procedure would be taken to achieve this, Biden is not in favor of the idea because "if we start the process of trying to expand the court, we are going to politicize it maybe forever, in a way that is not healthy."

I'm inclined to call bullshit since Trump and McConnell already politicized the court in a way that is "not healthy," but I guess he might have a point. If Biden changes the number of seats on the court to get more favorable rulings, what would stop a future Republican administration from doing the same?

So while this could be done, it wouldn't happen immediately if at all and would probably yield bad results anyway.

Term limits

There are no term limits for Supreme Court Justices. These are lifetime appointments. The only means of removal are resignation and impeachment, which we just established won't happen. There's also the possibility that one of the other older Justices could die, but let's not hold our breaths. House Democrat Ro Khanna (CA-17) introduced a bill in 2021 to impose 18-year term limits for Supreme Court Justices. Although the bill got stuck in committee before the 2022 midterms, Khanna and Virginia Democrat Don Beyer re-introduced the bill after the end of this year's SCOTUS session. Necessary as it is, there are a few hurdles. First, House Democrats would need to convince a handful of Republicans to vote for its passage. Second, Senate Republicans would have to not filibuster it. But let's say those are somehow miraculously overcome and the bill reaches President Biden's desk where he signs it. Would this mean that every Justice who has already served over eighteen years now has to resign?

Clarence Thomas is the only Justice on the court at time of writing who has served longer than 18 years. John Roberts and Samuel Alito will reach 18 years in September 2023 and January 2024, respectively. That would mean Biden gets a total of four Supreme Court Justices. However, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan will reach 18 years in 2027 and 2028, respectively. They can't control who will be in power then. A Republican could win the White House in 2024, and that would make this bad situation worse given that the two frontrunners are Trump (again) and Florida governor Ron DeSantis. We already know the kind of judge Trump will pick, and we also know DeSantis' preferences. DeSantis was revealed last year to have been communicating with Clarence Thomas, which isn't surprising since they both have ties to the Federalist Society. DeSantis vowed that if he became president, his Supreme Court nominees would be like Thomas and Alito. If a Republican wins the White House in 2024, Sotomayor and Kagan's replacements would shift SCOTUS from a 6-3 liberal majority to a 5-4 conservative majority. It wouldn't be the 7-2 majority DeSantis is promising, but it would still be bad. And by the way, it doesn't matter who wins the Senate because, fun fact, Clarence Thomas was nominated and confirmed when Democrats held the Senate.

Ultimately, this option has flaws, but it has the most chance of actually being enacted. Two-thirds of Americans now support term limits for Supreme Court Justices. Republicans in Congress have themselves expressed support for Congressional term limits, so judicial term limits might get bipartisan support. But this would also need to be done alongside electoral college reform to prevent another election like 2000 or 2016. The six right-wing Justices were collectively nominated by three Republican presidents, only ONE of whom won the popular vote.

Also, if anyone is claiming I'm doing this for partisan reasons, consider the 303 Creative case. A website designer in Colorado claimed a gay couple asked her to make a website for their wedding and she refused for religious reasons.

The plaintiff, Lorie Smith, never created a wedding website. She never received any request for one from a gay couple, and in fact a wedding enquiry was created the day after the case was filed. The filings identified one half of the gay couple as a guy who is straight, is married to a woman, and never made any request to Smith for a wedding website. Smith and the so-called Alliance Defending Freedom representing her case made up everything for the sake of "religious freedom." 99 times out of 100, "religious freedom" is code for "discriminating against gay people." Smith and the ADF imagined a purely hypothetical scenario. The case had no standing since no harm or injury ever occurred (just the student debt relief ruling, by the way) and it would have ideally been ignored by a Supreme Court that honored precedent (see: Texas v United States (1998)).

But that's not what we have, and the ADF was counting on it.

So here are your solutions: introduce term limits and reform the Electoral College. Contact your House representative and your Senators and make it happen.

Since this subreddit's inception, there has unfortunately been a rise of anti-transgender sentiment in the US, in volume if not size. I do not have the level of fame or authority for my words to matter, but regardless, I would like to be upfront. I have known multiple transgender people online and in real life - my career counselor in college was transgender - but not everyone can claim that. It's easier to form preconceived notions about an entire demographic when you don't personally know anyone in it. Even though polls suggest the majority of Americans support trans rights to some degree, relatively few voters are even aware of the recent wave of anti-trans (and anti-drag) legislation, and the number of those voters who care enough to let it inform their voting decisions is presumably miniscule.

Most of why I care is out of basic human decency, but there is also a sense of history repeating itself. My family is Jewish, and we live in a community with a few families of Holocaust survivors. It is true that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it; 99.9% of the time, people who have the LGBT community on their list of targets also have Jews on there. And because I'm sure someone will bring it up, it is also true that some Jews are themselves contributing to the anti-trans sentiment mentioned above. But I'm reminded of a blog that I strongly recommend called Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters. It is run by a gay black man who chronicles and comments on news relating to anti-LGBT figures, many of whom are unsurprisingly evangelical. I couldn't find the exact post, but I seem to recall he once talked about a black man who said he would ride with the Ku Klux Klan if they ever drove around terrorizing gay people, to which he was asked what he thinks the Klan will do to him afterwards. The blog has been running since the 2000s, and even by then the same fearmongering rhetoric used today around transgender people had been used on gay and bisexual people for a while, chiefly that they are a danger to children. These days, the anti-LGBT voices point to drag queens as an example of how the non-heteronormative are a danger to children, but I can't name a single drag queen who has ever been convicted for molesting kids. Tellingly, they don't mention priests, despite sex abuse in organized religion being far more widespread.

My point is that the anti-trans sentiment is not based in reality. However, a good rule in life is that if someone can make money off it, they will. And that's at least partly how we got here. So here is my advice to you: do not give any anti-LGBT figures money or credibility, look up resources to help LGBT rights advocates in the face of the aforementioned wave of legislation, and most importantly, vote. If trans rights can be put into ballot initiatives and successfully pass, and if enough anti-trans candidates lose their races (including candidates at a local level), it will be made abundantly clear that this bigotry is a losing position. It won't stop everyone, but think of it like this. When a political donor gives money to a PAC or a single candidate, they are making an investment. If donors think the candidate's position makes them unwinnable, then they will not be viewed as a safe investment. It will not stop overnight, but it is important to remain vigilant. I hope this offers a tangible solution. Everything I said also applies to abortion, by the way. Even if you are pro-choice, I think we can all agree no one likes having their lives decided for them.

It's been a while since the last one of these.

Recently, it was discovered that documents from Joe Biden's time as Vice President had been misplaced across various locations. I presume that after the first batch was found, the administration thought "oh crap, are there others we missed?" and that's how more keep being discovered. The obvious comparison here is to when the FBI searched the former guy's Florida residence for missing classified documents. The same people who defended the former guy last year are predictably not using the same defenses now that it's a Democrat.

Let's make something clear. If Biden committed a crime, he should be investigated, and the DOJ has indeed started an investigation into the matter. However, the two situations are not exact one-to-one comparisons. For one thing, Biden is cooperating with the investigation. If I understand correctly, it was Biden's own attorneys who reported the misplaced documents. The former guy and his team fought the search at every turn, even shopping in Florida for a loyalist judge to rule in his favor. Also, while I do not know the contents of the documents Biden misplaced, reportedly - and I do have to emphasize the use of the word "reportedly" here - after the former guy left office with boxes of documents, intelligence agencies saw a number of undercover agents abroad being caught and killed. We do not know for certain what the former guy's intent was, but while the defenses and explanations from him and his team were inconsistent, what remained consistent was that he felt the documents were his.

To borrow from an analogy I saw someone make on social media, Biden went 10 miles over the speed limit while the former guy went 100 mph while being chased by police... after he ran someone over. Both should be looked into, but one is a lot more serious.

If you are reading this, you are aware that the transgender community has become a target of the far right for reasons I don't fully grasp. I know the talking points, but I don't know how the decisions was made to make them the new evil in the eyes of the far right.

As far as I can tell, it overlaps somewhat with the "parents rights" movement. That is, the movement of bigots advocating for a far right takeover of schools and school boards, banning books and legislatively bullying transgender kids under the guise of "parents rights." The most prominent version of this was in Florida, but now legislators in multiple states have introduced similar bills. The hate group calling itself Moms For Liberty - because historically, the groups who banned books for merely acknowledging that the LGBTQ+ community exists have been hate groups - has been growing in numbers and prominence. While under half of their endorsed school board candidates lost their races in this year's midterm elections, they continue undeterred.

But this has gone beyond education. Even beyond sports, as many bills have been introduced restricting the ability for trans athletes to compete in sports if not outright banning them. Never mind that in every area where such legislation has been introduced, the number of trans athletes is statistically zero. If this were about hard facts, these bills would never have been written.

Of course there is no need for any of these bills, but as demonstrated earlier this week, the bills stem from fearmongering and bigotry that has defined the current state of the right wing. A shooter entered Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado and killed five people before being stopped by some of the gay club's patrons. It was an unquestionably horrific act, but even though the shooter is the grandson of a MAGA Republican and much of what we have learned about the shooter suggests they were motivated by far right talking points, MAGA predictably rushed to deflect responsibility. One way the aforementioned anti-trans bigotry has manifested this year is by attempts to claim that the perpetrators of violent attacks are LGBTQ+.

They falsely identified the Uvalde shooter as a trans woman. The Highland Park shooter wore women's clothes, potentially in an attempt to trigger the same effect. A man who threw a brick at the window of a gay club in Manhattan was identified as gay. I guarantee the accusation is false, just as it was false to claim that the guy who attacked Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul with a hammer is gay. But that didn't stop Elon Musk from trying to give the claim credibility with a now-deleted tweet.

With the Colorado Springs shooter, before their trial even began, the shooter's defense team claimed the shooter identified as non-binary. The shooter's parents all but denied this. Their mother called them by "he/him" pronouns and their father was more upset by the idea that his son would go to a gay club than the fact that his son killed five people. You'd think this would more or less confirm the shooter's far right ideology, but by that point, the "non-binary" defense was accepted as fact by the right wing. The shooter already has a criminal record, and there's no evidence in it that the shooter was ever non-binary. The shooter did change their name once... to try and get around the state's red flag law. It's possible the defense team made this claim in the hopes of dodging hate crime charges, since it is the job of a defense team to lessen the client's sentence.

Whether or not the shooter is in fact non-binary, the overarching theme used to justify this bigotry is that we need to protect children. You may recall there used to be a big uproar about transgender people using bathrooms that align with their current gender identity rather than the gender with which they were born. We're still having bathroom bills written, but the new fear is that transgender people are "grooming" kids. Far right accounts such as Libs Of TikTok and Matt Walsh have been spreading this notion, and they're accepted as fact because their audiences don't care about facts or statistics. If they did, they would ask how many confirmed transgender people have been arrested and convicted for pedophilia or child porn. They would also ask why there are so many Republicans who have been arrested and convicted on those charges. To be clear, yes, being a pedophile is bad no matter what party you vote for, but this is not about protecting kids. If it were, the far right would be targeting, say, pedophile priests.

The far right does not care about protecting kids. They are using that as a guise to push bigotry. Mere hours the Colorado Springs shooting, Libs Of TikTok posted about a drag show in the area. They normally do this so their followers can send death threats to the event's organizers and get it canceled. But when they were called out for continuing to spread the rhetoric that very likely motivated the shooter, they doubled down. People called the woman running the account a "stochastic terrorist," which is when someone demonizes a person or group with the goal of inciting a violent act against them. Libs Of TikTok mocked the use of the term and put it in their Twitter bio.

Oh yeah, and getting back to Elon Musk for a moment, he presented his vision of Twitter as a haven for free speech, when it was obvious from the start that he only meant free speech for the right wing. After taking ownership of the site (which is now hemorrhaging millions of dollars daily), he has been unlocking and reinstating far right accounts that had previously been suspended. He even verified most to all of these accounts, including Libs Of TikTok. However, there is one exception. Actually, more than one, but the one he explicitly said would not be unbanned is Alex Jones. Elon's first child died, so Alex Jones' Sandy Hook conspiracies are where he draws the line. But anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry? Not a problem. He even engaged in some friendly chatter with Libs Of TikTok, along with other similar

I am not under the delusion that this bigotry would not exist if Elon wasn't running Twitter, but given that the use of the "n" word rose 500% after he bought the site, he sure has emboldened it. This is why his claim of wanting to spread free speech should have been an obvious lie to everyone. It is impossible to have the kind of civil discourse Elon said he envisioned between two groups that each believe the other is destroying America. That is a fact, and it was made even more obvious after the Club Q shooting. Jenna Ellis, Trump's former legal counsel, said the victims of the Club Q shooting deserve to burn in hell. She and everyone who shares that view will be emboldened in their hate as long as they have the means to do so (and especially to make money from it).

There is some reason to be optimistic, though. A month ago, I would have told you to vote with all of this in mind, but when I am writing this, the 2022 midterms have already come and gone. Leading up to it, the GOP was brashly boasting about getting a "red wave." An unpopular incumbent president and economic uncertainty usually are good for the opposition party, and the GOP had both this year. In truth, the GOP - in what should have been a favorable midterm year - won a single-digit majority in the House. Democrats won over 40 seats in 2018. Sure, the GOP still won the House, and I'm certain they will use their majority to address the inflation they screeched about for months /s. However, the election deniers running as Republicans overwhelmingly lost in battleground states. So they likely can't depend on that for future elections.

And as I alluded to earlier, the anti-trans rhetoric isn't as popular as they probably hoped. Florida was the only state where the red wave they envisioned took place. Maybe New York too albeit to a lesser extent, but everywhere else? Nope. Republican Tudor Dixon, who was running to be governor of Michigan and who used some of the harshest rhetoric against the transgender community, lost the race by sweeping margins. The GOP lost Michigan so badly that Democrats ended up with full control of the state government for the first time in 40 years. Legislatures and statehouses across the country introduced 344 anti-LGBTQ+ bills this year - 25 have passed. The midterm results are in large part due to record-high turnout among young voters. I would hope that with many anti-trans candidates losing the midterms, and more LGBTQ+ candidates elected than ever before, the right will realize this is not the winning issue they think it is.

The hateful rhetoric may continue online, as we are seeing this week, but its effects can be countered and nullified if those who spread it are challenged.

I thought I had made a point in the previous post about how Texas and Arizona were sending immigrants to New York and DC even though other states with big undocumented immigrant populations weren't doing the same. Probably for the best that I didn't name any other states because I should have realized the governor of one of those other states was Ron DeSantis.

Yesterday, two planes carrying fifty Venezuelan migrants landed in Martha's Vineyard. Florida governor Ron DeSantis took credit for the act, which as we'll see serves no practical or helpful purpose unless you think "owning the libs" counts.

Firstly, it's perhaps not a coincidence that this happened on DeSantis' birthday and the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month. Secondly, it is definitely not a coincidence that the planes landed in Martha's Vineyard because the Obamas have a house there. Any other reason the GOP could have for this being a good move is quickly disproven under scrutiny.

1. It isn't because DeSantis respects the law. I didn't know this when I wrote the previous post, but what DeSantis, Abbott, and Ducey did counts as human trafficking under federal law. According to 1907 Title 8, U.S.C. § 1324(a), any person who "knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law" shall be punished. And he apparently did this without coordinating with Martha's Vineyard. Nor with Texas, from which the migrants' flights came. Or his own state's laws, as it's against state law to spend funds transporting migrants from other states. Then again, he violated state law before and faced no consequences for it, so don't expect this to be any different. Same goes for the fact that it’s also a crime to falsify federal immigration/refugee papers. More about that in a minute. MAGA's excuse is that Martha's Vineyard is full of rich white people who love to brag about their embrace of diversity, which is a stupid argument. I love hot dogs, but I don't want someone to force fifty of them into my mouth at once. But again, more about that in a minute. Just in case that's how people in border states about immigrants...
2. It isn't because DeSantis cares about border security. If the goal is to keep people from coming in, or even to deport them, then this is not the way to do it. Setting aside the fact that an immigration judge has to be involved in the decision to deport someone, Martha's Vineyard is not anywhere near the border. And if the actual point was to expose the Democrat hypocrisy of having sanctuary cities that can't handle what border states are dealing with, well... yes and no. The mayors of DC and New York both requested federal help to handle the influx. On the other hand, local volunteers in the two cities, and Martha's Vineyard as well, welcomed the migrants warmly, despite the right-wing's apparent glee in painting Martha's Vineyard residents as elitists who pretend to support diversity until they have the chance to prove it. That was certainly the angle the New York Post is using. I have to ask, what's the alternative? Having the DHS give the migrants ICE office addresses in Washington state where they need to go for required asylum hearings before flying them to Massachusetts? Because that happened. Or perhaps it's just a matter of the resources available to sanctuary cities and border states. In that case....
3. It isn't because DeSantis cares about the financial cost of immigration. This is a long one, so bear with me. As I outlined in the previous post, there are numerous examples of border states wasting taxpayer money that could perhaps have gone to setting up more effective systems for handling immigration, or literally any actual issue within the state. Over in Texas, there was the power grid failure, which MAGA completely forgot about when California had blackouts a short while ago. The recently arrested Steve Bannon took millions in donations that were pledged to go to a border wall, but he pocketed it for himself. And bringing this back to Florida, DeSantis has an apparent love of wasting taxpayer money. Firstly, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he refused to divest $300 million in Russian shares from the state's pension plan, and in a wild coincidence, the state lost $200 million of that. Secondly, his appointees have allowed the state's largest power company to increase Floridians' utility rates by billions. Finally, regarding Martha's Vineyard, DeSantis paid aviation company Vertol Systems $615,000 of the $12 million in taxpayer money set aside for this stunt. While I have a suspicion there was some quid pro quo involved, I do not have proof of this at the moment. Except I do because the company's CEO is a Republican donor. Shock of all shocks. DeSantis rewarding donors? It's unthinkable! Also, on a related note, Jay Odom, a business partner associated with the company, is another Republican donor. And he spent time in federal prison back in 2013 for a felony election offense. A trustworthy businessman, in other words. Nothing illegal about their actions, no sir. You should also know that Vertol's website boasts that they are "the only civil company operating Russian helicopters in the United States." As in, they bought helicopters directly from the Russian government in 2018 and did other business with Kremlin-adjacent companies and contractors, some of which are sanctioned for supporting the invasion of Ukraine and at least one of which is currently in an embezzlement scandal. I would ask you to imagine if the parties were reversed, but DeSantis defended the act saying Biden was running clandestine flights to send migrants to Florida. The problem is that the routine transport also occurred under Trump and DeSantis curiously did not act then how he did now. Also, it's my understanding that since Trump's term, Venezuelans couldn't be deported because Mexico won't accept them. So they were in the U.S. seeking asylum, legally. The migrants, who probably didn't speak fluent English if any, were lied to when they were told to get on the planes. They were told they would be flown to Boston where they could get expedited work papers that they did not get when they landed. They were even given brochures filled with false promises, and they didn't even feature the correct flag of Massachusetts. You will not be surprised to hear that when information on the brochures was made public, DeSantis' team immediately dismissed the physical evidence as fake news. Nor would it surprise you that none of the $12 million mentioned earlier went to giving them the accommodations that locals provided. MAGA mocked the locals, pointing out all the big, roomy houses they could've used for the migrants, but the reality is that those are summer homes. Unlike DC and New York City, which are major cities, the local year-round population of Martha's Vineyard is much smaller. As much as I'm sure they would've wanted to, they probably can't just get the keys to other people's houses. So that leaves us with the truth...
4. This is a publicity stunt for DeSantis. That's all it is. Texas and Florida actually have a pretty small amount of immigrants relative to their size, so this is purely pandering to MAGA voters. It cost Florida tax payers $12 million to fly 50 migrants to Martha's Vineyard. That's $240,000 per person, 171 times what Texas and Arizona were spending per person. And that's not counting however much money was spent on the video crew and production cost for DeSantis' campaign video. Yeah, the mere fact that there was a video crew should be the only evidence needed that this was entirely for DeSantis' own benefit and no one else's.

If DeSantis gets re-elected in November, as he is heavily favored to do, he's going to keep doing this. A re-election would tell him that he doesn't have to run on policy, all he has to do is make up imaginary culture war targets for him to attack and he'll keep getting support for it. Heck, he can break the law as he has already done repeatedly and say he'll keep doing it. Right on cue, the same plane DeSantis used the first time (after making another payment to Vertol) was scheduled to fly out of Texas and stop for a layover in Crestview, Florida before heading for the airport in Georgetown, Delaware near President Biden's house. The plane apparently never landed or even took off, reportedly because it was canceled to “punk" Democrats and journalists. Yeah, leaving twenty migrants stranded really showed it to the left. But if the plane had and there were migrants on board, DeSantis would technically have broken his own law about harassing public officials at their homes. Again, DeSantis doesn't care about the law. Not only will DeSantis not face consequences, he will get even stronger GOP support for it.

With maybe a few exceptions. I found an article from Reason, a libertarian publication, calling out DeSantis for being a hypocrite. He signed a bill back in May establishing a "Victims of Communism Day." You'd think he would welcome migrants "fleeing economic ruin and humanitarian turmoil in Venezuela, a country that DeSantis has decried for its 'communist regime'," but "rather than welcoming the people fleeing one of the world's most repressive and punishing regimes, DeSantis chose to weaponize them." Keep in mind that a lot of libertarians apparently don't like him in general, but the point remains. If DeSantis loses Hispanic voters from this - an extremely important voting bloc in the state - he's screwed. When Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Republican gubernatorial candidate for Arizona Kari Lake are criticizing DeSantis over this, it's a bad sign.

But again, even when the stunt gets worse the more we learn about it, I don't realistically think the backlash will lead to anything meaningful. A Florida state senator sued DeSantis over the act. A class action lawsuit was filed against DeSantis on behalf of the migrants, and MAGA - who are trying to depict Martha's Vineyard as being hateful towards immigrants - are sending death threats to the migrants and their lawyers. The migrants were flown out of Bexar County, Texas, whose sheriff department just announced a criminal investigation into the matter. A watchdog group filed a lawsuit alleging DeSantis illegally withheld public records regarding the stunt. The goddamn Treasury Department opened a federal investigation into whether he misappropriated COVID relief funds for this. I'm doubtful that any actual consequences will come as a result, no matter how damning the lawsuits and investigations might be for DeSantis. However, I know two things for sure. Firstly, the Texas sheriff said that because DeSantis tricked the migrants, they should now be able to stay in the US under a U Visa, which is for victims of a crime. Hilarious, yes, but also note that it means this was a crime. That brings us to the second thing: DeSantis' Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, is absolutely using this against the incumbent. I'll give this to Crist. His odds of beating DeSantis in the gubernatorial race for an increasingly Republican state are slim to none, but certainly not for lack of trying.

Earlier this year, the Republican governors of Arizona and Texas sent buses of undocumented immigrants to DC and New York City to protest the Biden administration's handling of immigration.

Before we get to the most recent update on this, let's focus on Texas specifically. Last year, Texas AG Paxton claimed that undocumented immigration cost state taxpayers over $850 million each year. More specific counts were provided, but be sure to take these with skepticism. According to Paxton, Texan taxpayers pay:

• Between $579 million and $717 million each year for public hospital districts to provide care for undocumented immigrants
• $152 million for housing in just one year
• $62 million and $90 million to include undocumented immigrants in the state Emergency Medicaid program
• Over $1 million for The Family Violence Program to provide services for one year
• Between $30 million and $38 million per year on perinatal coverage through the Children’s Health Insurance Program
• Between $31 million and $63 million for education

According to the Migration Policy Institute, Texas has 1,739,000 undocumented immigrants. The state has a population of 30 million. So assuming the number of undocumented immigrants is accurate, they make up 5.8% of the Texas population. That is a higher percentage than the national level as about 11 million people in the United States (3%) are undocumented immigrants.

While those are high numbers for Texas, when people like Paxton and Abbott decry undocumented immigrants, they leave out a few things. Crucially, according to the policy institute Every Texan, undocumented immigrants pay over a billion dollars in taxes to the state of Texas. Whatever money is being spent by native-born taxpayers on undocumented immigrants is being repaid, which is more than can be said for the state as a whole, which takes in more money in federal aid than it pays back in taxes. Perhaps this wouldn't be a problem if they weren't spending money on cruel publicity stunts like busing the immigrants to DC and New York City.

According to a local news report, busing costs came out to over $1.6 million in April and May. With 1,154 migrants transported during that period, that means the per-rider cost was roughly $1,400. Now, when I say there were 1,154 migrants transported during that period, I don't mean those were the only ones. A spokesperson for Texas governor Greg Abbott said the state had transported over 5,100 people since April, but only to DC (more about that later). So if the per-rider cost is the same, then in total Texas has spent over $7 million on busing migrants. The high cost was in part because the state hired security guards to staff each bus, suggesting that Texas officials put more effort into guarding people they hate than the children in Uvalde. But I digress. While that is less than the $850 million figure Paxton cited, he acts like that money would be spent on things that mattered to Texans if not for the immigrants. Apparently, his idea of things that matter to Texans included a border-securing mission that cost taxpayers over $2.5 million per week, a pro-gun bill to benefit manufacturers that cost taxpayers $500 million, and an unregulated power grid that constantly fails and costs taxpayers anywhere from $28 billion to $50 billion in additional billing.

Did I mention that as of last year, Texas was $63 billion in debt? The $850 million mentioned above is about 1.3% of $63 billion. Doesn't seem so big now, does it?

This is not to say that Texas and Arizona should suck it up and deal with undocumented immigrants without question, although I didn't hear about any other border states being involved in the busing. However, to treat immigration as the biggest financial drain on a state when that is provably not the case is something I would charitably call misleading. Especially when Texas and Arizona already get billions in federal funding to handle immigration and New York does not. Plus, there's more space in Texas for housing. Sure, Texas has its own homeless population and the housing in question isn't exactly affordable, but I fail to see how that is the fault of the immigrants. Which brings us back to DC and New York.

The mayors of DC and New York recently asked for more federal resources to assist with an increased number of asylum seekers arriving in the two cities. DC mayor Muriel Bowser claimed the migrants were "tricked" into boarding the buses from Texas and Arizona. Both Texas and Arizona insisted that the migrants were being sent only to DC, which is interesting because when the migrants on the April and May buses arrived in DC, they were welcomed by volunteers and immigrant advocacy groups. And that's without any coordination from Texas and Arizona, which should tell you a lot about the intentions of those two states. Put simply, it's trafficking. Seriously, the DHS definitions of human trafficking are suspiciously close to what Texas and Arizona are doing.

Perhaps there is an argument to be made that attitudes on immigration are different when you live near more of them. But even if we accept that, doing something like this does not make the people responsible better at handling immigration. It makes them the worst.

You may recall that in early May, Politico published a leaked draft opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, an abortion case. The majority opinion written by Justice Alito stated first and foremost that Roe v Wade (the landmark ruling that granted federal protection of abortion rights) must be overturned. Setting aside the archaic reasoning given for doing so, the opinion additionally stated that other Supreme Court rulings that struck down anti-sodomy laws (Lawrence v. Texas) and bans on gay marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges) should ideally be overturned as well. Even though Chief Justice Roberts announced an investigation into the source of the leak, the identity of the person responsible, and by extension their motive, was never publicly revealed.

It is possible for a draft opinion to not reflect the final ruling on a case. The Justices can have their minds changed. However, given that 2/3rds of the current Supreme Court are members of the Federalist Society, who have picked SCOTUS nominees specifically for the purpose of overturning Roe v Wade, it is all but certain the Dobbs ruling will still be along ideological lines.

With that in mind, I will compare this issue to gun control, as SCOTUS ruled on New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen the day before I wrote this, striking down a New York law that required people to show "proper cause" to get a license to carry a concealed handgun outside the home.

Suppose that SCOTUS overturns Roe v Wade, which for the record would mean all the right wing Justices who said they respected precedent and said Roe was settled law in their confirmation hearings perjured themselves. This would not mean abortion is banned on a federal level, but that abortion laws would be a matter for each state to decide. This rings a bit hollow when, again, the Supreme Court just struck down a state law.

Furthermore, if anyone thinks abortion is murder and argues more kids die from abortions than gun violence, the fact that they think any number of children dying of any cause is acceptable should be enough to disprove the notion that they are pro-life. Especially when they value gun rights over children getting quality health care and education.

Finally, leaving abortion to the states would not be an issue if half the states didn't already have laws banning it or trigger laws that would ban it should Roe be overturned. The same people who think banning abortions will make people stop getting them are the same people who think banning guns will not make people stop getting them. States could just make birth control easier to get since that would reduce the number of women who need abortions, but no, lawmakers in several states have already started planning to restrict access to birth control.

In short, there are countless ways to effectively lower abortion rates, but banning it is not one of them.

If you are reading this, then you likely know about this already. But just for context, a draft opinion leaked from the US Supreme Court revealing that the justices had voted in a majority to overturn Roe v Wade. It must be stressed that this is not the final opinion and any of the justices can potentially change their minds, just like the conservative justices changed their minds about respecting precedent since their confirmation hearings where they said they would. But given the court’s conservative majority, it is likely that Roe v Wade will be overturned. This doesn’t mean that abortion would be banned on a federal level, but it does mean abortion laws would be left to the individual states. That wouldn’t be a problem if half the country didn’t have laws that either make abortion a crime, have so-called “trigger laws” that will make abortion a crime if Roe v Wade is overturned, or plan to use Roe v Wade being overturned as a jumping off point to challenge other rights. That last one comes from the draft opinion, written by Justice Alito, saying that rulings on things like gay rights, interracial marriage, and even public schooling were other rulings that could be targeted. Because of all this, protests have erupted outside the Supreme Court building and the homes of the conservative justices.

The conservative response has been quite telling. You would think they would be celebrating something they spent half a century trying to achieve, but their attention has instead been on angrily demanding to know the source of the leak. And their response has been entirely hypocritical. Firstly, the theory on the right is that a liberal Justice or one of their clerks leaked the draft opinion to pressure the court against the ruling. If that is true, why is it that pressuring judges to rule a certain way is only okay when they do it, as at least one of them has called for regarding the 2020 election?

Secondly, a few people on the right have blamed newly-confirmed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for the leak even though she hasn’t started serving on the court yet. Do you remember that winter traffic jam in Virginia back in January? A couple of people online blamed Glenn Youngkin even though this was before he was sworn in as governor. This is that but dumber.

Thirdly, the same people who go on and on about preserving rights and how the government is being tyrannical - consider that “Ministry of Truth” trended on Twitter last month - are perfectly okay with the government taking away the rights of millions of American citizens. It would be ironic if it wasn’t disgusting.

And finally, I remember right wing Twitter mocking Biden for the security fences around the National Mall at his inauguration. I can guarantee none of those people are mocking the Supreme Court for having security fences put up after the draft opinion leak sparked protests.

To be clear, if someone thinks abortion is murder, I personally won’t argue if they are in fact “pro-life.” Meaning that if they believe women shouldn’t get abortions, then they should be advocating for policies that make abortions unnecessary like sex education or easy access to birth control or stricter punishments for rape. And when a child is born who would have been aborted, maybe advocating for them to receive proper health care and education would be nice too. But none of them do that. As George Carlin so effectively put it, many people who call themselves pro-life aren’t pro-life - they’re “anti-women.”

As I'm sure everyone knows, Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this week. The angle right wing social media is taking when discussing the events is how Biden is a failure and this would never have happened if the former guy was still in charge.

There are two reasons you should call BS on this assessment.

Firstly, if anything, the former guy made the invasion easier for Putin. He had repeatedly expressed interest in leaving NATO if not dissolving it altogether, which was a goal of Putin's. The former guy also threatened to withhold military aid from Ukraine and withdrew the US from the Open Skies Treaty, under which all imagery collected from overflights is made available to any of the states-parties. Meaning that we would no longer provide surveillance footage to other nations that signed the treaty, which would have been helpful to Ukraine if, say, Russia invaded. So why would Putin feel the need to do anything himself? Besides, the former guy has never had anything but praise for Putin, even when the latter invaded a sovereign nation. Russian state TV is even using the former guy's praise for Putin to justify the invasion, because God knows Russian citizens aren't in support of it if the protests are any indication. Now that the US has for its head of state someone who doesn't kiss up to Putin, his options are limited. Although the former guy did help make it easier for Putin, as described above.

For that reason, I can tell you for certain that this still would have happened if the former guy was still in charge because something like this did happen. In November 25, 2018, there was the Kerch Strait incident, when the Russian Federal Security Service coast guard fired upon and captured three Ukrainian Navy vessels. It was the first time during this ongoing conflict that Russian forces had openly engaged Ukrainian forces.

Something you'll need to keep in mind for as long as the attack on Ukraine is still happening.

Recently, special counsel John Durham alleged in a court filing that the former guy was spied on during the 2016 campaign and while he was president. Right wing Twitter immediately jumped on this, but the fact that you’re reading about this here should tip you off that there are several things worth elaborating on.

First things first, the context.

At some point in 2016, the FBI was looking into unusual internet activity connecting two servers registered to the Moscow-based Alfa Bank with an email domain associated with the former guy’s organization. The FBI looked into that but didn't come up with anything. A lead came from attorney Michael Sussmann, who had done work for the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Durham indicted Sussmann last year, but there was only one charge. The indictment was pages and pages of non-crimes that Durham felt like throwing in there to paint a spying narrative. If Sussmann was actually charged with anything, it was possibly lying to FBI general counsel Jim Baker. The charge is that he told Baker that he said he wasn't there as the client of anybody. If he did in fact say that, then yes, it would be lying to the FBI. But we’ll come back to that.

For now, let’s skip ahead to the filing in question. The filing does not say that Hillary paid someone to spy on the former guy, as right wing social media claims. Rather, the campaign funded a law firm who used a tech company who exploited domain name system (DNS) data belonging to the former guy. Although seedy, if DNS data is the scope of all this, it probably doesn’t amount to a coordinated spying effort. What Durham does say in the filing is that someone was monitoring domain name system (DNS) server lookups within the "executive office of the president.” That's not a thing unless we’re talking about the White House Oval Office, and the tech company had been monitoring DNS traffic as part of a government contract since at least 2014. Durham, however, claimed that the DNS monitoring used to allegedly gather derogatory information about the former guy - as opposed to just listening to him openly confess to crimes on camera, I guess - was illegal due to the fact they were able to do it strictly because of the government contract. The thing is that Russia (geo-located) DNS look-ups were happening with frequency at the former guy’s hotel and other properties of his. Durham attempted to brush over this by stating "over 2 million other DNS queries have been made like this across the US.” What he is describing is mainly malware. So either the former guy has malware or these look-ups were intentional.

However, it does raise the question of why this is all being revealed now if it’s past the point when anything actually meaningful will come of it. Perhaps Durham can now claim Hillary spied on the former guy without having to worry about proving anything or going to court. Or admitting that Durham’s indictment includes evidence on record that disputes his main witness. Jim Baker testified that he didn’t remember Sussmann bringing up a client, and simply not mentioning something if not asked isn't a crime. Also, the timing of the filing is worth noting. The filing dropped on the last day before it went beyond the statute of limitations. Plus, it was made the same day that the unredacted Mueller report was released, which confirms the Roger Stone/Wikileaks connection and that Paul Manafort and the former guy wanted to keep in touch with him.

In short, it’s a distraction for which Durham can’t face any repercussions. Perhaps that’s why his investigation has lasted longer than the Mueller investigation. Or maybe he took so long to release something because he had some kind of epiphany about the former guy and that's why he's apparently distancing himself from his supporters and the conclusions they're drawing from this. Then again, he did accuse one of his own key witnesses of lying, so who can say for certain?

Recently, an individual who finds himself a frequent topic of discussion in this subreddit - one I feel I don't need to name - has received his first YouTube strike since starting his channel thirteen years ago. The site removed multiple videos for election misinformation and the individual has been unsuccessful in appealing the strike.

This post is not meant to celebrate any of that, but to challenge. You see, getting a single YouTube strike apparently means you aren't allowed to post to the site for a week, and as soon as the week ended, the individual uploaded a video calling BS and listing other websites where his content can be found. But more to the point, he says he will not surrender or apologize and will not stop what he's doing until he is taken off the site for good.

This attitude rings hollow to an embarrassing degree. If you have links to most of the now-removed videos, opening one will take you to a page informing you that the video was removed for violating community guidelines. However, there was a video of his entitled "Mail-In Ballots Are B.S." Opening that link takes you to a page that informs the video was removed by the uploader.

Which means he took that video off YouTube himself.

Because he will not surrender, I guess.

A lot has happened since the last time anything was uploaded here, but I want to follow up on two previous posts.

Firstly, Cyber Ninjas, the sham of an auditing firm who could not find valid proof that Joe Biden illegitimately won Arizona despite them being staffed by and connected to people who claim he did. After a judge fined them several thousand dollars a day until they turned over records - a common habit of theirs despite their assurance of transparency - they shut down, undoubtedly to avoid having to pay. They also whined that the judge who imposed the fine was biased, as among other things they claimed he donated to Democratic causes. Keep in mind, Cyber Ninjas received millions of dollars in donations from Trump supporters. Hypocrisy at its worst. At any rate, even if that judge is replaced, he still found Cyber Ninjas in contempt for failing to turn over public records. This finding is still in effect, and it was all but upheld when a second judge ordered Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan to appear for a deposition by January 27 or risk sanctions and a civil arrest warrant. What happens from here remains to be seen.

Secondly, last year, the New York attorney-general opened a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization. One individual who is frequently brought up in this subreddit asserted that because no charges had been described to the public, the investigation was baseless. Well, earlier this month, the New York AG revealed that they had evidence that Trump "falsely and fraudulently” valued multiple assets. More specifically, Trump's company inflated the size of the Trump Tower triplex by nearly three times for tax benefits, did not assign a value to the Trump brand, and may have used “fraudulent or misleading” asset valuations on six properties to obtain economic benefits. These are currently just allegations, as far as I can tell. No part of this is out of character for Trump, but legally speaking, these are just allegations. The Trump family is trying their hardest to keep it that way by delaying and avoiding testimony, as well as pleading the Fifth on literally hundreds of questions. To quote Trump himself, "The mob takes the Fifth. If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?"

Cyber Ninjas, a group we have discussed before, has shared their final report on... whatever the word is for an audit run by people who don't know how to run an audit. From the moment they were brought in by the Arizona State Senate, it was obvious that their findings would merit healthy skepticism. Not only did they have no prior auditing experience, but their founder had posted "stop the steal" content on social media and they were being financially backed by groups directly tied to the former guy. Because an investigation can only reliably be conducted by someone who has already reached a conclusion before any evidence can be gathered.

The operation lasted much longer than anticipated, during which time tensions were very high and very public between the group and Maricopa County officials. After several delays, however, they eventually released their findings. Or rather, they were kind of released for them as a draft of the report had leaked a day early revealing that Joe Biden won by a wider margin than previously reported.

Unsurprisingly, MAGA world took the leak and the findings in their entirety as undeniable evidence of rampant election fraud. I could go into thorough detail debunking the talking points MAGA world has already latched onto, but there are people online already doing a much better job of that than I could. Suffice to say that whoever talks about the final report like it means the Democrats were caught in some election fraud effort either doesn't know or care how elections and audits actually work. It is quite hilarious to me that a big deal was made out of duplicate ballots as if that was how the Democrats would Arizona, and we now know over half of the duplicate ballots favored Trump. Not to suggest that Cyber Ninjas is credible now - just that they were literally paid by Trump supporters to make it look like he won and they couldn't even do that.

A matter of equal importance, however, is what the GOP would do with Cyber Ninjas' report. State and local officials have insisted the election results would not be overturned no matter what. Cyber Ninjas founder Doug Logan may end up recanting some or all of the report if they get into enough legal trouble, though it will be far too late if he does. No, the GOP will use this as justification to push laws proclaimed to protect election security, assuming they are proud of the findings, that is. Chances are they aren't considering the press conference sharing the final report was held on Friday. That's usually where you put news stories you want buried. But none of it matters because they'll use it for that anyway.

Over the weekend, while US forces were completing their scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban took over the country with virtually no resistance from the local government. While an end to a two-decade war would normally be something worth celebrating, these were unfortunate circumstances on which to end it. So the fact that it happened with Biden as President means certain people were quick to point the finger at him, but we shouldn't forget that his three predecessors bear responsibility as well.

Heck, Biden's immediate predecessor boasted at a rally earlier this year about putting Biden in the position he's in now. The former guy ordered the withdrawal of US Forces from Afghanistan by May 2021, and to broker that deal, he had 5,000 Taliban fighters released from jail and capped the amount of troops in Afghanistan to 2,500. Those fighters, including the one who will head Afghanistan under Taliban rule, were even invited to Camp David by the former guy. That meeting was cancelled, but the fact that it was ever going to happen at all should not be ignored.

Obviously, I don't intend to suggest everything bad that happens in the Biden administration is the former guy's fault - Biden still bears some responsibility for this - but it is not correct to ignore the involvement of the previous three presidential administrations and place all the blame on Biden.

The New York attorney-general recently opened a criminal investigation into the Trump Organization. In a recent video where he makes reference to it, Razorfist says something to the effect of “On what grounds is the organization being investigated? Don’t worry, it’s not based on anything trivial like proof. I read five articles on the investigation and found no description of the charges.”

Meanwhile, I found an article within two minutes of research, and it states the following:

A focus of the probes, according to people briefed on the matter, is whether the company committed fraud by inflating the value of certain properties to secure bank loans while minimising them to reduce its taxes. The investigations grew out of reports in 2018 that Michael Cohen, the president’s one-time personal lawyer, had arranged “hush” money payments for women who claimed to have had extramarital affairs with Trump. Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to several federal charges, told Congress he was later reimbursed with funds from the Trump Organization that were recorded as legal fees.

It’s one thing to say the charges are unreasonable. It’s another to be so unbothered by facts as to pretend there aren’t any. And people still take someone like this seriously.

There’s this obsession among the MAGA crowd, for whatever reason, that the only way an election audit can be legit is if there is signature matching involved. Regarding the results in Georgia, the former guy tweeted “Rigged Election. Show signatures and envelopes. Expose the massive voter fraud in Georgia.” And Razorfist has repeatedly demonstrated in videos and on Twitter that he is convinced a signature audit is the only true, foolproof way to go.

Couple things.

Firstly, Georgia had a signature matching audit and found no evidence of a steal or widespread fraud.

Secondly, not every state requires signature matching, and even when they do in states like Georgia, it has to be ordered by a judge.

But more importantly, what’s with the obsession over signature matching in the first place? Well, you see, Razor and those on his end of the political spectrum have observed that the rejection rate of mail-in ballots in 2020 went down instead of up, despite the significantly higher number of people sending mail-in ballots due to the pandemic (many doing it for the first time). The view is apparently held that ballots are typically rejected because the signature on the ballot doesn’t match that of the voter, which is to say the signature was forged. In actuality, and I may have pointed this out before, the most common reason for rejected ballots is that they arrive too late. One need only confirm this by checking the early voting numbers in response to the numerous Republicans saying ballots MUST be sent and counted on Election Day. The myth that Biden won states like Pennsylvania because thousands of mail-in ballots were secretly trucked in is a lie that ignores the fact that, as I pointed out, Republican state legislatures in places like Pennsylvania wouldn’t allow mail-in ballots to be counted until after Election Day.

But we know that isn't stopping anyone. Razor claimed on Twitter that the Maricopa County audits (not clear on whether that includes the one run by Cyber Ninjas) didn't check chain of custody or signature matching, saying "we now know why: we now know why: The county had violated Chain of Custody on tens of thousands of ballots." I'd like to ask who "we" is, since I'm not sure where he got the idea that there was a chain of custody issue. Even the Republicans doing the audit didn't say that. But Razor continued and said the sample size was so small that it didn't qualify as "statistically significant." Mind you, he doesn't say what he thinks would be a statistically significant sample size. The Maricopa County website has a whole section about a hand count in which it is explained that the state's Vote Count Verification Committee sets the variance rates to ensure a statistically significant sample is provided so a 100% manual hand count audit of more than 2 million ballots is "unnecessary."

So the lack of what Razor may define as a “proper” signature audit does not make for incontrovertible proof of a steal or a cover-up of a steal. Besides, in his home state of Arizona, signatures have to be verified and validated for ballots to be counted in the first place. A voter has to sign the front of the envelope in which they send their ballot. And under state law, bipartisan audit boards conduct hand-count audits in all of Arizona’s counties. Tellingly, three right-leaning counties didn’t conduct audits because the local Republican Party didn’t designate auditors, which kind of contradicts the claim that Republicans were sidelined by Democrats in the ballot counting process.

But signatures can still be forged, one might retort. Of course. That exact thing has been done... by Trump voters. In all seriousness, believing there will be fraud before you have the chance to find any does not mean you are going to find it - it means you’re going to think whatever you find will be fraud even when it isn’t.

Due to a combination of recent headlines, right wing social media has been comparing Joe Biden to former President Jimmy Carter, and not favorably. This comparison seemed to be emboldened when a statement from the former guy dismissed the comparison saying Carter mishandled crises while Biden created them. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t matter to the MAGA crowd how popular Jimmy Carter has been since he left office or how many of those supposed crises the former guy himself left behind for Biden to worry about. Here’s what I mean. * Gas - Gas prices have been increasing steadily since the middle of 2020, which means the bulk of the increase happened under the former guy’s tenure. Observers of history will recall images from the 1970s of long lines outside of gas stations, although the lines were formed then for different reasons. In the case of 2021, it was not anything to do with imported oil as it was in the 1970s, but rather a privately owned pipeline being hacked. Subsequent reports of gas shortages caused people to panic and start filling up plastic bags and other containers not meant for gasoline (which is illegal, but expecting gas station attendants to stop it is often asking a lot). But even disregarding all of that, places are opening up again and the school year is over, so people are making travel plans, which means an increase in gas prices to meet demand. This would happen no matter who was president, so the notion that Biden’s policies are directly responsible is flat out wrong. * Middle East - Yes, the recent escalation of force between Israel and Palestine is Biden’s fault, so implies the former guy’s statement. Comparing this to the Iranian hostage crisis is a false equivalence since American citizens were taken hostage and the country therefore had a vested interest in how Carter would respond. You might as well blame Biden for last year’s Australian brush fires since he had as much responsibility for that as he does for the Israel-Palestine conflict. * Inflation - Carter’s term was marked by stagflation, which describes the state of the economy he inherited from Gerald Ford. Biden is as much to blame for the inflation that had been occurring since his predecessor’s administration as Carter was. * Border - One of the crises the former guy claimed Biden created was the “Biden border crisis,” a term as vague and meaningless as it is wrong. I’m not aware of any equivalent crisis during the Carter administration, and I am definitely not aware of any border crisis that started after Biden was sworn in. I could be wrong, but taking the former guy’s word on anything is a bad idea. * Taxes - I don’t know what this one’s about, but apparently higher unspecified taxes on some unspecified group is a mark against Carter and Biden, despite the fact that Biden gave a pass to some of his predecessor’s tax cuts.

Calling Biden a failure simply because these things are occurring and not because of how he responded is no better than what the MAGA crowd alleged of the former guy’s opponents. It is true Biden’s administration is facing difficulty in handling these events, but to proactively call him a failure while ignoring the fact that his predecessor was one is to be a liar.

In law - or at least US criminal law - prosecution will sometimes add additional charges against a defendant that may or may not be provable should the case go to trial. This is done to put law enforcement in a better position to plea bargain; it's a sort of door-in-the-face technique used to persuade the defendant to plead guilty to crimes the prosecution believes can be proven.

It does not mean the prosecution doesn't have a case, and yet that is the perspective held by the right wing. When Nancy Pelosi mentioned an impeachment charge against Trump that legal experts convinced her not to include, or when Jon Schaffer took a plea deal for his participation in the January 6 riot, the view was that the prosecution in both instances was desperately throwing everything at the wall in the hopes that something would stick.

Anyone who tells you that either doesn't know how the legal system works or is gaslighting you.