Clear and Present Danger

WINDER, Ga. (AP) — A Republican arrested after winning his race for a seat in the Georgia House has decided to step aside instead of facing a possible suspension as soon as he was sworn into office later this month,

The decision by Danny Rampey means a special election will be held on Jan. 31 to choose the new representative for the House seat based around Winder, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Rampey, 67, was arrested last month after investigators said he stole prescription narcotics at the retirement complex he manages.

Republican leaders were pressuring Rampey to step aside before new legislators are sworn in on Jan. 9 because the special election to fill the seat would only be for Republicans since Rampey didn’t have a Democratic opponent in November’s election.

He’s a Republican.  Why should we expect anything else?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/danny-rampey-georgia-rep-drug-arrest_n_63b1e981e4b0fe267ca9df48

 

1976

Not one Black,  Asian, or Hispanic face in the crowd.

PREDICTION:  2023 will bring the end of Trump, the end of our national nightmare.

I really don’t care what he is indicted for:

• Supporting the January 6 attempted coup.
• Violating the Constitution by urging Mike Pence to not certify electoral votes.
• Tax fraud.
• Insurance fraud.
• Bank fraud.
• Trying to overturn the election in Georgia.
• Plotting to present phony electors to Congress.
• Illegal possession of classified material.
• Violation of Presidential Records Act.

Doesn’t matter.  Just so he is indicted, goes to trial, and is convicted.

I’m also hoping this is the beginning of his going absolutely broke.  He owes somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion to various foreign banks and shady entities.  He has no way to pay this back.  Bankruptcy will not protect him.

Furthermore, I’m hoping he takes his entire family down with him:  Don Jr. and his ho’ Kimberly Guilfoyle; Stupid Eric and Dumbass Lara; Ivanka and Jared; and Melania The Illegal Immigrant and Paid Escort.

Trump announced a “Media Availability” at Mar-A-Lago, a couple of hours before the New Years Eve celebration.  He invited reporters, cameras, etc.

Four minor reporters showed up.

Not a single broadcast or cable news network covered it.

Notably even Fox News and Newsmax were absent — both networks have historically offered sympathetic coverage of the former president.

Link – https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-invited-press-media-availability-135849904.html
———————————————————————————————————-
Maybe, just maybe the networks are getting it. Trump is as vile as they come and a majority in this country are sick of him. Now, let’s see if we can, with the help of the DOJ, deposit this turd in prison for his crimes.

---

MORE ON TRUMP’S FAILED “NEWS CONFERENCE” — NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THIS FOOL (no one with half a brain, that is)

Now, if New Year’s Eve at Mar-a-Lago is any indication, we can look forward to a year of more failure for Donald Trump and his worshipful GOP cult followers. According to reports from the snooty soiree, Trump had invited the press to attend an end-of-year avail at his resort/home. However, in a prelude to what 2023 holds for him, not a single representative from a reputable news organization showed up. Even Trump-fluffing outlets like Newsmax and Fox News declined his invitation.

The media that refused to waste their New Year’s Eve on another Trump propaganda spew didn’t miss very much. He spoke for fewer than five minutes, and dodged pertinent questions about abortion and his prospective GOP primary opponent, Ron DeSantis (video below). He did, however, manage to squeeze out a response to a blatantly biased inquiry into his lies about the FBI and Department of Justice persecuting him. The question came from a “correspondent” from Steve Bannon’s “War Room”, vlog, Jayne Zirkle, who asked…

Zirkle: Mr. President, the DoJ and the FBI have weaponized against you. Will you commit to going after them in your second term?
Trump: I think it’s disgraceful what’s happened with the FBI and the weaponization of justice. There’s never been anything like this, and it is disgraceful.

Trump also replied to a question about how his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination is going. He said simply that it is going “very well.” Which is puzzling considering that he hasn’t had any campaign events, or even left his Mar-a-Lago bunker, since he announced his candidacy a month and a half ago.

The snub that Trump received from the press isn’t likely to soothe his fierce animosity toward the media and the Constitution’s First Amendment mandating that they operate freely. He has already dubbed them “the enemy of the people,” and just yesterday posted a rant on his floundering Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, expressing his hatred for the press and his desire to see these American businesses and workers suffer.

Trump also celebrated the lower ratings that television news have received this year, although he clearly has no idea why that is. And in the same post he lashed out at Fox News, who he said is struggling because “they never say ‘Trump’ or TRUTH, never talk about the Rigged Presidential Election, and is a Fake Polling Network.” Yeah, that’s why.

The wrath that Trump is directing at Fox News now may be because he just heard that his favorite Fox flunky, Sean Hannity, told the House Select Committee investing the January 6th insurrection, with regard to the 2020 election being “rigged and stolen,” that “I did not believe it for one second.” That’s gotta hurt.

And with that, Trump delivered his wishes for the nation on this holiday saying…

“HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of the Radical Left Democrats, Marxist Lunatics, China loving Coco Chow and her Obedient Husband, Mitch, and Clueless RINOS, who are working so hard to DESTROY our once great Country.”

Such uplifting, heartwarming, and positive thoughts for America’s future from the twice-impeached, former reality TV game show host, and soon-to-be criminal defendant.

---

AND THERE’S MORE:

Former President Donald Trump rang in the New Year on Saturday night with hundreds of Mar-a-Lago members and a few political cronies.

In past years, Hollywood celebrities have attended Trump’s annual A-list New Year’s Eve party at the Palm Beach club. But this year, the most notable, high-profile figures attending the opulent black tie-and-long gown gala were goofballs, liars, and failures from the former president’s political orbit, including pollster Dick Morris (renowned for bringing ho’s into the Executive Office Building and sucking their toes); legal adviser Rudy Giuliani (drunk on his ass and dripping with hair dye); and pillow maker Mike Lindell (still waiting for Trump to be reinstated). All walked the red carpet but did not comment about Trump or their expectations for 2023.

Trump’s second-oldest son, Eric, and his wife, Lara, attended as well. However,  two other adult children were notable by their absence: Donald Jr. with his ho’ Kimberly Guilfoyle; and daughter Ivanka with husband Jared.

House Majority Leader-elect Steve Scalise has announced a list of 11 slabs of red-meat legislation that his Republican caucus will be unveiling in the first two weeks of the 118th Congress.

Scalise released a “Dear Colleague” letter to the caucus Friday enumerating pieces of “meaningful, ‘ready-to-go’ legislation.” He neglected to mention that each of them might also be termed “ready-to-go-nowhere” since the Democrats maintained their majority in the U.S. Senate.

Overlooking that detail, Scalise promised to “hit the ground running” with some by tossing red meat to the base on immigration, abortion, crime, energy and China. In apparent denial of voter outrage over the repeal of Roe v Wade protection for American women, anti-abortion led the way with three of the 11 bills.

A “Born Alive Survivors Protection Act” purports to “ensure that infants born alive after an abortion receive the same protection of law and degree of care as any newborn.” That can be expected to have the same impact as the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act” when it doesn’t get considered in the Senate.

The latter measure purports to codify long-standing federal legislation denying reproductive freedom to those women who need it the most. It would “make permanent the long-standing Hyde Amendment as well as similar provisions to prohibit federal funding for abortion and funding for any insurance plan that includes abortion on demand.”

A third item of anti-choice symbolism “expresses the sense of Congress condemning the recent attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches.” Were abortion providers added to the list, that one presumably might have hope for passage in both chambers, albeit with no impact.

The Republicans’ desire to exploit the immigration issue occupies two of its proposed bills, although one of those might have an unintended consequence with the gun lobby. The first one is a straightforward scolding – nothing more – purporting to “address our crisis at the southern border by empowering the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to turn away illegal migrants at the border if the Secretary of DHS does not have operational control.”

But unlike that toothless expression of red-meat politics, another bill might raise eyebrows on the Right. It “requires the National Instant Criminal Background Check system (NICS) to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and relevant local law enforcement when a firearm transferee is illegally present in the United States “

It is not clear whether requiring the NICS to do anything regarding notifying law enforcement about a firearm transfer would comport with the “camel’s nose in the tent” prohibitions demanded by the National Rifle Association. That one might stir headlines from an intra-party squabble even without getting anywhere near the Senate.

The Republicans also plan to grandstand against President Joe Biden regarding energy policy. One bill would prohibit non-emergency drawdowns of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve without a plan to increase energy production on federal lands.” But that’s presumably as sexy to the base as attacking a straw man in this one:

“This bill prohibits the Secretary of Energy from sending petroleum products from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China.” That misleading reference has been clarified by fact-checkers who noted that when strategic reserves are made available to the highest bidder in the oil industry – as a tool of holding down U.S. gas prices during inflation – some companies “have then chosen to export some of the oil to countries around the world, including China.”

That fine point might be worth debating, were it not for this: None of the items on Scalise’s list of bills is headed for the Senate. They’re only getting sent to the base.

His returns show zero charitable deductions.  See the returns here.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23559121-trump-1040-2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donald Trump has been issuing increasingly frenzied denials and defense as the House select committee concludes its investigation and hands over new evidence to help the Department of Justice conduct their own.

The former president had been wailing about his predicament on his Truth Social platform since before the Jan. 6 committee held its final public hearing, where they voted to refer him to the DOJ for criminal charges, but his urgency seemed to pick up after the panel’s final report dropped and the IRS finally turned over his tax records to the House Ways and Means Committee, reported The Bulwark.

“Trump truthed out a novel legal defense: ‘The Fake charges made by the highly partisan Unselect Committee of January 6th have already been submitted, prosecuted, and tried in the form of Impeachment Hoax # 2. I WON convincingly. Double Jeopardy anyone!'” wrote columnist Bill Lueders.

“Double jeopardy is the legal principle that a person cannot be charged twice for the same crime,” Lueders added. “It does not apply to impeachment proceedings, because those are not criminal prosecutions. Trump should probably ask a lawyer to explain this to him, although maybe not the lawyers who were advising him in late 2020 and early 2021, since the committee has referred some of them for criminal prosecution alongside Trump.”

The ex-president continued blasting out frenzied denials through the holiday weekend attacking law enforcement and his political enemies, including one “frantic and foul-tempered rant” extending Christmas Day greetings to even the “Radical Left Marxists that are trying to destroy our Country.”

“Donald Trump gives new meaning to the word ‘shameless,'” Lueders said. “I could go on and on with the catalog of Trump posts, but you get the idea: He is ensconced in his bunker at Mar-a-Lago, spewing nonsense, denying the obvious, and making a perpetual display of his unfitness for office.”

The posts make plain Trump hasn’t read the report or understand that its findings undercut his lies about election fraud and his subsequent attempts to escape consequences for trying to overturn his 2020 loss, but Lueders said they seem to point toward a final reckoning with his criminality.

“With the release of the January 6th Committee’s report and the picked-up pace of the Justice Department investigation now led by a special counsel, this moment may be the beginning of the end of Trump’s avoidance of consequence,” Lueders wrote. “But don’t expect his social media to reckon with that possibility. He’ll just keep posting his angry lies — until, perchance, prison bars prevent him from accessing the internet.”

A Harvard business graduate, Youngkin spent 25 years climbing to the top ranks of the Carlyle Group. He played a key role in building Carlyle into one of the leading investment firms in the world, his bio states.

If you care, you can read the full disgusting, cloying, ridiculous article at this link.

Youngkin doesn’t say if God will lead him to become President.  Meanwhile, polling says something different.

 

NOTE:  The CBN reporter who interviewed Youngkin is Abigail Robertson.  She is the niece of Gordon Robertson, founder and owner of CBN, and is also the granddaughter of Pat Robertson.