Our Constitutional Republic faces a clear and present danger more deadly than that of the Civil War. The danger is the Republican Party, a "political party" that has sold out to white supremacy, autocracy, misogyny, and hatred of everything our Nation stands for. Republicans dismiss any sense of a common American narrative. The "Republican Party" is an outlier in our history – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of social and economic policies that have sustained us for a century; unwilling to compromise; dismissive of evidence, fact, and science; dismissive of the legitimacy of any viewpoint except their own. America needs to face the simple, frightening fact that the Republican Party is a clear and present danger to our Constitutional Republic.
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
The elementary rule of logic: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. The existence of “god” is everyday asserted without evidence, only with “faith”. Thus, if it can be asserted without evidence, the claim of “god’s” existence can be dismissed without evidence.
The libertarian paradise of Rio Verde Foothills is nestled out in the desert near Scottsdale, Arizona.
It was formed specifically to avoid the rules and regulations required for civilized society, and it is situated in dry, harsh conditions. For example, Arizona law requires developers to plan for 100 years of water use. Every new development has to engage in a process for securing water rights in compliance with the law. Rio Verde Foothills avoided that requirement by exploiting a big loophole in the law: It only requires it for subdivisions larger than five homes. You can guess what developers in Rio Verde Foothills did to circumvent that—they built five-home lots. For them, it was an easy payday, and the self-styled “rugged individualists” who chose to live there could brag about keeping government off their backs and paying fewer taxes. The area doesn’t even have a government.
Problem is, they live in a desert. Humans need water to survive.
But for years, the city warned that the agreement could not continue in perpetuity. It needed the water for its own growth. Rio Verde Foothills ignored the issue—until the day that Scottsdale finally cut them off.
“We’ve been telling them for five years since this began that we are not their permanent water solution,” said Valerie Schneider, Scottsdale Water’s Public information officer. “At some point, we have to realize this is our water, we’re in a drought, we’re in a Colorado River shortage so we have to take a stance.”
One resident hilariously told The Guardian that “her community didn’t ‘want a handout’ from Scottsdale. They want time to figure out a plan and, to her, Scottsdale shutting the water off is unneighborly and un-American.” Apparently, five years wasn’t enough. And … funny to hear a libertarian talk about being “unneighborly.” Isn’t that literally their thing? That woman had more to say:
“Think of the sacrifices some Americans have made for each other. And then these people are sitting here saying, ‘Well, you know, you should just dry up and die.’ Really? I just find it mind-blowingly unpatriotic,” she said.
Let me find that head-mushroom-cloud emoji … 🤯
Nothing says “AMERICA FUCK YEAH” more than putting up a house in the middle of a desert, without any regard to infrastructure, in a place designed to avoid laws, regulations, and government, and then crying when someone else won’t cater to your needs and whims. AMERICA!
Residents have had two options: one, have the private water haulers find other sources of water, which they’ve already done. But those sources are further out and are just as subject to being cut off, as Scottsdale did. This increases uncertainty and costs. Libertarian free-market principles can get pricey!
The other option was, well, government.
Incorporating could give the community more options for water supply in future but forming an official town or city brings requirements, such as paved roads, street lights, more taxation and rules.
Dear god, could you imagine? Well, what about creating a new water district? That could also work!
When some proposed forming their own self-funded water provider, other residents revolted, saying the idea would foist an expensive, freedom-stealing new arm of government on them. The idea collapsed.
Um, why?
“I don’t want to control water. That’s not my business,” Reim said. “I just want my neighbors to have water [locally] from whatever source we got to get it from.”
Hold on, hold on … I need to hear this this again…
I’m not even going to try and decipher that.
That hasn’t stopped residents from suing the city of Scottsdale to force them to continue providing water, because while they don’t want government on their doorstep, they fully expect some other government to cater to their needs. You know, because they’re such rugged individualists.
This story is being repeated all around Arizona, from Kingman in the Mojave desert, to Cochise County near the Mexican border. It always pits deep-red conservative-libertarian regions against a sudden realization that maybe government rules and regulations exist for a reason, that society can’t exist without them. As one Republican quoted in the Kingman article says, “We are very conservative – I think we’re one of the reddest areas of a red state right now. I don’t think securing your water supply is a partisan issue, or it shouldn’t be.” You see, once they are affected, it’s no longer partisan. Why politicize the things conservatism inherently politicizes?
You ever hear about the libertarian utopia in New Hampshire that was taken down by bears? There was a great book about it, titled A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear. From the book’s summary:
Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road.When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town’s thick wilderness.The anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton’s neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity.
This Vox story interviewed the author, and he was asked why the experiment failed.
It turns out that if you have a bunch of people living in the woods in nontraditional living situations, each of which is managing food in their own way and their waste streams in their own way, then you’re essentially teaching the bears in the region that every human habitation is like a puzzle that has to be solved in order to unlock its caloric payload. And so the bears in the area started to take notice of the fact that there were calories available in houses.
One thing that the Free Towners did that encouraged the bears was unintentional, in that they just threw their waste out how they wanted. They didn’t want the government to tell them how to manage their potential bear attractants. The other way was intentional, in that some people just started feeding the bears just for the joy and pleasure of watching them eat.
So weird how lawlessness has consequences!
Back in Arizona, Scottsdale is about to agree to a three-year extension of Rio Verde Foothills’ water, assuming it gets additional water from outside sources.
Ironically, those libertarians will get a temporary reprieve because of—you know it—government.
Rush has been sober for the past two years. Because he has been dead for the past two years. And absolutely no one gives a shit.
The biggest names at Fox News are a pack of liars. It’s not new information, but there is new information to support that point, thanks to a filing in the defamation lawsuit against Fox News brought by Dominion Voting Systems. Winning a defamation lawsuit against a news network requires meeting an extremely high standard of proof, but this is about as strong a case as you can imagine: Dominion has pages of internal communications between top Fox News personalities and executives showing that they knew what they were doing. Dominion’s case is so strong, in fact, that the new filing is a motion for summary judgment on liability in its $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News. (A summary judgment on liability would not settle the question of damages.)
Summary judgment involves one party in civil litigation asking a judge to rule based on evidence and material facts that a trial is not needed. It’s almost always the defendant asking for summary judgment. Here, the plaintiff, Dominion, is asking for summary judgment on the basis of the evidence it has assembled—despite the usual difficulty of winning a defamation suit at all. That is what you call confidence in your filing. And the filing backs it up with page after page of quotes from the likes of Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Rupert Murdoch, and Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott, showing that they knew the score. Maybe there were some true believers left at Fox, but they were not the majority. Fox News pushed lies about Dominion for its own cynical reasons.
“Sidney Powell is lying.” Tucker Carlson to his producer Alex Pfeiffer, November 16, 2020 (Ex.150)
“Sidney Powell is a bit nuts. Sorry but she is.” Laura Ingraham to Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, November 15, 2020 ( Ex.155 at FNN035_03890539)
“Really crazy stuff.” Rupert Murdoch, November 19, 2020 (Ex.156)
They knew it was nonsense, but they were worried about losing their voters to Newsmax and OAN. Trump supporters were already angry with Fox for calling Arizona for Joe Biden on Election Night, and Newsmax and OAN were all in on election lies. Not alienating the Trump base meant Fox News had to offer those viewers at least some of what they wanted.
On Jan. 5, 2021, Murdoch wrote to Scott, “It’s been suggested our prime time three should independently or together say something like the election is over and Joe Biden won.” That would be helpful, Murdoch said, because “such a statement would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen.” Forwarding the email, Scott noted, “I told Rupert that privately they are all there we need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers but they know how to navigate.”
That didn’t stop Fox News from continuing to push election lies, and—relevant to the Dominion lawsuit—lies specifically about Dominion having stolen votes, even as Dominion repeatedly reached out to the network with facts, calling on it to stop spreading lies.
As Murdoch said to Scott following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, “All very well for Sean [Hannity] to tell you he was in despair about Trump but what did he tell his viewers?” That’s a question for all of Fox News to answer.
The Dominion filing, which is excellent reading material, offers a long list of examples of the same Fox News personalities and executives who pushed election lies showing that they knew at least some of what the network was airing was false.
On Nov. 18, 2020, Tucker Carlson told Laura Ingraham, “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.”
“Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” Ingraham responded.
“It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” Carlson responded. But Powell and Giuliani continued to make appearances on Fox News for weeks thereafter.
For instance, according to the filing:
[Lou] Dobbs had Powell on his show yet again on November 30 , again publishing the fraud and algorithm lies. . .
Two days prior to this, on November 27, Fawcett had again texted Dobbs asking if Dobbs had read Powell’s lawsuit (Dobbs confirmed he had) and stating those suits were “complete bs “
The day after Powell’s “Kraken” lawsuits were dismissed, Dobbs had her on as a guest again.
When Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich accurately fact-checked a Trump tweet about the election having been stolen, Carlson went ballistic, telling Hannity in a group text, “Please get her fired. Seriously … What the fuck ? I’m actually shocked. It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”
Carlson’s reference to the stock price was not a side note—he was concerned about the network losing viewership to Newsmax and OAN.
Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News Media, got involved in policing the Heinrich tweet, telling other executives, “Sean texted me he’s standing down on responding but not happy about this and doesn’t understand how this is allowed to happen from anyone in news. She [Heinrich] has serious nerve doing this and if this gets picked up, viewers are going to be further disgusted.”
Heinrich deleted her fact-check tweet—even though it was accurate.
Carlson’s concern about stock prices may also have come out when, on Jan. 26, he had Pillow Man Mike Lindell on his show to spread lies about Dominion. Lindell, after all, may have been making claims that Carlson and his producer had privately made clear they knew were false, but he was a top advertiser.
The standard for summary judgment, cited also by the Dominion filing, is that a court should grant summary judgment if the party seeking it can “show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” In layman’s terms, Dominion is saying that there are no meaningful facts in dispute, meaning there’s no need for a trial, and that the law requires the judge to find that Fox News did indeed defame the company.
Fox may try to claim there is genuine dispute as to material fact, but with this level of evidence—from internal communications at the time the claims about Dominion were being regularly aired on Fox News and Fox News Business—they’re going to have to get creative.
Dominion’s lawyers write in the filing, “The movant bears the initial burden of showing that undisputed material facts support its motion, but once that burden is met, the burden shifts to the non-movant, who must show material issues of fact exist and who ‘may not rest upon the mere allegations or denials of the adverse party’s pleading’ but instead ‘must set forth specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial.’” Your move, Fox News. And the response filing, too, may be very entertaining, albeit in a different way.
It’s amazing that Fox News let this lawsuit get to this point, with so much damaging material being publicly aired and brought as evidence in court. And yet Tucker Carlson is still, to this day, encouraging viewers to question the results of the 2020 election:
Source: New York Times
The comments, by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and others, were released as part of a defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems.
Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.
The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network.
“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020.
Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”
Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/business/media/fox-dominion-lawsuit.html
A Georgia judge released parts of a report produced by an Atlanta-area special grand jury investigating efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia — though the panel’s recommendations on potential charges remain secret.
The five-page excerpt made public on Thursday revealed that a majority of the grand jury concluded that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony before the panel and recommended that charges be filed. The grand jury did not identify those witnesses in the unsealed excerpt.
“A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” the report reads. “The grand jury recommends that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”
The unsealed document offered no major clues about the grand jury’s other findings — though the panel pointedly noted that it unanimously agreed that Georgia’s 2020 presidential vote had not been marred by “widespread fraud” as has been claimed by Trump and his allies.
The special grand jury report issued in Georgia contains some “very bad news” for Donald Trump, according to legal experts.
The nine-page report contains only two new findings, showing the special grand jury concluded there was no widespread election fraud in the state and that at least one witness should be indicted for perjury, which will then be up to Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis to decide.
“We find by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election,” the report found.
Willis had asked a court to block much of the full report from release while she decided on charges, so only portions were issued Thursday to the public, but those findings were enough for legal experts to declare the former president was in trouble.
IN OTHER NEWS: Proud Boys say they’ll ask feds for help subpoenaing Trump for their trial
“The GA special grand jury excerpts are starting to emerge & they are very bad for Trump,” said attorney Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. “’We find by unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election.’ If that’s true, then Trump likely committed crimes.”
He later concluded, “The GA special grand jury has spoken–that means Trump committed crimes He’s gonna get indicted.”
“This is me reading into it, but it’s perfectly clear they recommended more than one indictment,” agreed legal analyst Luppe B. Luppen, who goes by “SouthPaw.”
National security analyst Marcy Wheeler took a different approach, citing the lack of fraud in Georgia and commenting, “Donald Trump loses GA for a Sixth time!!!”
Los Angeles Times legal analyst Harry Litman summed the report up in one tweet: “Basically, we sat, we discussed, we voted on charges. And yes, some people committed perjury, and we agreed that there was no fraud in the election.”
Lawyer Allison Gill pointed out the piece of the report noting one piece not previously known is “that they recommend indictments for the unnamed people who lied under oath.” The report cites at least one person who lied, under oath but didn’t give any details about how many people.
The new grand jury begins next month. The “special” grand jury doesn’t have the power to indict, only a regular grand jury can do that. This one, however, will likely be impaneled for a lot less time than the previous one given the legwork is mostly complete.
Former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann pointed out that the lack of fraud in Georgia is “not a good omen for Trump & co; the next shoe to drop will be Willis’s.”
Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal joked, “Or, as Bill Barr would summarize the report, ‘The report concludes no crimes were committed whatsoever.’” It’s a reference to the former attorney general asserting himself prior to the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report which ultimately cited 10 cases of obstructions of justice by the former president. Using Barr’s rewriting of the facts, Trump declared himself “exonerated” when he wasn’t.
The special grand jury report may not have offered any bombshell evidence against Donald Trump and his allies, but a legal expert explained that it showed just enough to suggest trouble on the horizon.
The Fulton County special grand jury issued a nine-page report the concluded there had been no widespread election fraud in Georgia’s presidential election in 2020, and they believed at least one of the witnesses who testified before them should be indicted for perjury, and MSNBC legal analyst Chuck Rosenberg said district attorney Fani Willis might have all she needs to press charges.
“I just wanted to remind viewers of one important thing that’s missing from the report, and that’s the record of all of the witnesses who went in front of that special grand jury and under oath testified,” Rosenberg said. “So there’s no mention of what they said in the report, there’s no compendium of the evidence that they gave.
“But all of that evidence is in the possession of the district attorney. She knows what everyone said, she knows what they said under oath [and] she can use that evidence to build her case.”
IN OTHER NEWS: ‘Trump lost Georgia for a sixth time’: Analysts predict Trump indictment after Fulton County report drops
“So I don’t want people to think that the special grand jury simply met and wrote a nine-page heavily redacted report,” he added. “Rather, they met for months, they heard from scores of witnesses, and everything those people said in the grand jury under oath is evidence of the underlying case and can be used by the district attorney, so the report is somewhat interesting.”
“It’s not all that revelatory, but all that work that the special grand jury did is all available to the district attorney and will inform her prosecutive decision and inform, if there are trials down the road, what evidence jurors at those trials hear.”
The FBI wants to know how Donald Trump spent the money his “Save America” PAC raised on his false claims of mass voter fraud, the Daily Beast reports.
The Save America PAC was created after the 2020 election and was set up as a “leadership PAC,” which allows Trump to access the funds even after leaving office.
The organization was investigated by the Jan. 6 committee for possible wire fraud. As the Daily Beast points out, when the committee issued its final report, its “Follow the Money” appendix revealed some questionable vendor relationships.
“A number of former Trump officials appear to have been on the Save America payroll, taking money through shell LLCs. Smith’s investigation, according to reports, appears concerned with whether those payments were legitimate,” the Beast’s report stated.
From the Daily Beast: “For instance, the report noted that from July 2021 to the present, Save America appears to have paid longtime Trump adviser and former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino in two ways simultaneously—personally and through an LLC. Scavino, FEC records show, makes about $9,700 a month on the Save America payroll. At the same time, Save America was also making monthly payments of $20,000 to an entity called Hudson Digital LLC, which FEC filings peg to Scavino’s address.”
Speaking to the Daily Beast, Robert Maguire of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said that after looking at the pattern, “you have to wonder whether it’s part of an effort to keep people quiet about what they saw in the Trump administration.”
“If they only paid them directly, you’d see a list of all these people who left the administration suddenly getting these massive monthly paychecks, some of them more than others. But by paying them through these companies, it gives the outward impression that these companies must be doing something,” he said.
“Open carry” brings out the stupid people and makes it easy to identify them.
