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Home Front: Politix

Get Ready for More Rigged Presidential Debates

2024-05-20

[Townhall] Since 1976, every four years, the presidential nominees of the Republican and Democratic parties have met for televised debates. Usually, these debates are highly anticipated and attract impressive ratings. The largest viewing audience for a presidential debate was the first 2016 encounter between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It drew an incredible eighty-four million viewers.

Of course, the problem with most of these debates is that liberal "journalists" masqueraded as impartial moderators. Thus, previous presidential debate moderators have included Lester Holt of NBC News, Gwen Ifill of PBS, Martha Raddatz of ABC News, Anderson Cooper of CNN, and Kristen Welker of NBC News. None of these moderators can be considered fair, objective, or impartial.

Every debate is the same scenario, featuring the GOP presidential candidate battling both his opponent and the moderator. For example, in 2012, moderator Candy Crowley of CNN, shockingly interjected on behalf of President Barack Obama to refute an accurate point that Republican nominee Mitt Romney was making about the Benghazi terrorists. The incident skewed the debate toward Obama.

Four years later, in the Democratic presidential primary debates between Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders, Donna Brazile, a CNN political analyst, improperly intervened by giving advance notice to Hillary Clinton’s campaign about some of the questions that would be asked. After the revelations, Brazile was fired by CNN and expressed regret, but the episode shows how the presidential debates are rigged.

Unfortunately, this year’s two presidential debates will follow the same pattern. The Republican Party’s nominee, President Donald Trump, will be debating both President Joe Biden and the moderators.

Link

Home Front: WoT

16 Republican senators demand IRS investigate fiscal sponsor of Students for Justice in Palestine

2024-05-15

[Jpost] Republican senators urge IRS to investigate nonprofits backing pro-Palestinian groups like National Students for Justice in Palestine, alleging support for terrorism.
The "investigation" has likely been conducted. The results of the "investigation" is what is needed.
A group of 16 Republican senators is asking the Internal Revenue Service to investigate nonprofits that support National Students for Justice in Palestine - including the group’s fiscal sponsor, the suburban New York nonprofit Wespac.

The senators’ letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, dated May 9, says the agency should investigate whether, by directing funds to NSJP, the nonprofits are supporting terrorism - which would violate their tax-exempt status.

“We should not need to remind you of the heinous support NSJP chapters across the country have voiced for Hamas, a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,” the letter says. “That support has exploded at NSJP chapter-led demonstrations in recent weeks.”

The recent wave of pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations - many of them organized by SJP chapters - has made the investigation especially urgent, Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, the letter’s lead signatory, told the New York Jewish Week. A range of Jewish groups have condemned the protests for targeting Jews with antisemitic rhetoric and creating a hostile atmosphere at schools across the country.

“The antisemitism that has popped up on college campuses coast to coast is fundamentally un-American,” Ernst said in a statement, adding, “it is clear these organizations should not receive any favors from our government to do Iran-backed Hamas’s bidding on our own shores.”

The IRS is notoriously underfunded when it comes to enforcement, making it unlikely that the call will swiftly lead to an investigation. Still, the senators’ call highlights just how closely they are scrutinizing the organizations that are known to be tied to the protest movement, which many of them have decried as antisemitic.

Other signatories included Marco Rubio of Florida, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mitt Romney, from Utah.

The letter cites a recent lawsuit filed by survivors of Hamas’ October 7 attack, which claims that NSJP collaborated with Hamas and has promoted its messaging in the months since the attack. It also refers to an existing investigation into one of the groups by Virginia’s attorney general.

The letter comes seven months after dozens of Jewish groups signed a letter in mid-October asking schools to withdraw funding for SJP due to its support for Hamas’ attack. On October 12, NSJP released a “toolkit” lauding the October 7 invasion as a “historic win,” and the senators’ letter argues that in the months since, the pro-Palestinian student group has continued to promote Hamas, including at the campus protests.

Wespac and the IRS did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The other nonprofits named by the senators are the California-based Tides Foundation and Virginia’s AJP Educational Foundation. The Tides Foundation donated $35,000 to Wespac in 2022.

Wespac’s tax-exempt status allows it to support a number of pro-Palestinian groups. The organization, a small nonprofit with the stated mission of “current affairs education,” quietly facilitates funding for NSJP along with Within Our Lifetime, which has organized frequent pro-Palestinian street protests and also endorsed Hamas’ attack.

Wespac - which is chaired by an anti-Zionist Jew named Howard Horowitz - facilitates funding for the groups by acting as a fiscal sponsor, which allows it to receive tax-exempt donations and grants for organizations that do not have nonprofit status, including NSJP. The arrangement allows NSJP to keep its finances out of public view and doesn’t require the fiscal sponsor to detail the funding it channels to other groups.

In its most recent tax filings, covering September 2022 through August 2023, Wespac reported $2.3 million in revenue, mostly from donations and grants. It does not make its fiscal sponsorships public. The Anti-Defamation League said in a 2022 report that Wespac sponsored a total of 15 groups related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, far more than for any other cause. It is unclear how many groups it sponsors in total.

Among the other groups it sponsors are the US Palestinian Community Network, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the Palestinian Feminist Collective, the Palestine Freedom Project, and Adalah-NY, which all collect donations through Wespac online. Wespac has sponsored NSJP since at least 2019 and Within Our Lifetime since 2020, according to archived web pages.

Link

-Lurid Crime Tales-

Why Nashville school shooting victims' families don't want the handwritten confession of killer...

2024-04-19

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] …of killer Audrey Hale

…mentally ill woman, 28, cosplayed a male spree killer at her childhood school as a nasty suicide by cop…

from ever being released

Families of the victims are trying to exert a copyright claim on the manifesto

They are opposed to the release of the 'dangerous and harmful' rantings

A year after the horror officials are still blocking the release of the documents

When Hale was killed as a result of the mass shooting, her parents transferred control of her estate to the families of the victims

Link

Home Front: Politix

New RNC chief counsel Spies worked for Romney, Bush, DeSantis, downplayed 2020 election issues

2024-04-16

[JustTheNews] "All of these examples, do not mean, by the way, that the election was stolen," Charlie Spies said. "When election officials' incompetence results in catastrophic errors and voters have to be concerned if their vote will count, voters lose their trust in the process,” Spies also wrote.

Charlie Spies, the new Republican National Committee chief counsel, is an election lawyer who worked in support of presidential campaigns for Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Notably, Spies has long downplayed 2020 election issues as the GOP seeks to recapture the White House in the November election.

Last month, then-RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel resigned from her position, following poor fundraising hauls and three consecutive election cycles where Republicans underperformed, and was replaced by North Carolina Republican Party leader Michael Whatley as chairman and Lara Trump as co-chairperson.

After the new leadership was elected, new legal counsel was hired, including Spies as chief counsel, former President Donald Trump attorney Christina Bobb as senior counsel for election integrity, and Bill McGinley as outside counsel for election integrity.

While Bobb and McGinley have both worked for Trump on his campaign and in the White House, respectively, Spies has worked for other GOP presidential candidates in the 2012, 2016, and 2024 elections.

In 2015, while Spies advised pro-Bush PACs, he filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against the Trump Organization. Spies alleged that Trump illegally used his business for campaign purposes when the Trump Organization’s general counsel sent cease-and-desist letters to the Right to Rise leadership PAC, the Club for Growth, and Bush donor Mike Fernandez.

In 2016, Spies was asked by CNN how everyone except Trump “could be so sure” that the election was invulnerable to fraud or being rigged.

Spies told CNN, “A presidential election in America can’t be rigged because there’s multi-levels of checks and balances, and those checks and balances are done in a bipartisan way. Any vote can be tracked, in terms of what’s on the machines, and then you can go back and make sure it wasn’t hampered with, and that’s done by state and local officials who are from different parties across the board, depending on where the election’s taking place.

“And the scale of conspiracy and collaboration that would have to take place to rig a national election would assume that Republican governors and Republican secretaries of state across the county were all working together with Democrats to try and hurt a Republican nominee, and that’s just not plausible,” he continued.

On President Biden’s inauguration day, Spies posted on X , "Congratulations to President Biden and Vice President Harris. May G-d Bless you with wisdom and justice and continue to bless America. #InaugurationDay"

Former Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington told Emerald Robinson on FrankSpeech that Spies’ history was concerning and that “somehow the establishment always keeps its foot in the door, no matter how they pry their way in there.”

She said that Spies is like the people who worked at the RNC during the 2020 election, when they “didn’t do anything to try to preempt the cheating in 2020.”

During a panel with Spies at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2021, Marci McCarthy, who is now chair of the DeKalb County GOP, explained how there was inadequate oversight of ballot adjudication in DeKalb County. Ballot adjudication is when ballots are unable to be processed by a scanner and a two-person team determines the voter’s intent. Spies purportedly didn’t understand how the adjudication worked, leading to McCarthy’s explanation.

Spies also said during the panel, “All of these examples, do not mean, by the way, that the election was stolen. It means that they were out there active and energized and had a message that got people to the polls.”

“We need to instill trust in the system and we need to change some of these laws, but more important is not the lawyers here, but all the political professionals and the politicians and the candidates to have a message that drives people to the polls and we win by such a margin that it’s not going to make a difference,” Spies added.

McCarthy told Robinson that Spies’ hiring was “100% surprising to me, because he really out said that none of this happened and tried to disregard everybody in the room that had genuine concerns, including my own of what I actually experienced, where I was a panelist in DeKalb County, Georgia, and I was adjudicating ballots.”

McCarthy also said, “The man that is the general counsel over election integrity at the RNC gives me heartburn that he’s going to be there and not gonna really be there for us on November 6th. And we’re doing so much to prevent the steal from happening again, and is he going to be there undermining everything that’s happening?”

She noted that the RNC hasn't joined Arizona GOP candidate for U.S. Senate Kari Lake's lawsuit that was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court while the Georgia GOP has filed an amicus brief along with the Arizona GOP and Delaware GOP. Lake's lawsuit alleges that Arizona’s use of electronic voting machines violates both the U.S. Constitution and state law.

"Where are they? Why aren't they standing up with us across the board?" McCarthy asked of the RNC regarding the lawsuit.

While on the CPAC 2021 panel, Spies said that he was in Antrim County, Mich., during the 2020 election and that there were votes flipped by a machine that were caught and corrected.

“We were suspicious for a long time that perhaps there was a software glitch statewide, because other people use the same software, and there is just zero evidence that’s true,” Spies said.

However, while downplaying some election concerns, Spies has also supported election integrity legislation. Last June, Spies testified as a witness at a House Administration Committee hearing in support of the "American Confidence in Elections Act."

“When election officials' incompetence results in catastrophic errors and voters have to be concerned if their vote will count, voters lose their trust in the process,” Spies wrote in his prepared statement.

“Whether it was in Detroit where in 2020 the majority of precincts were out of balance (meaning the number of votes cast didn’t match the number of voters at the precinct), or a few months ago in Maricopa County, Arizona, where half the polling places on election day had printer and tabulator malfunctions, or in Luzerne County in Pennsylvania where they ran out of paper ballots disenfranchising thousands of voters, or when Pinal County sent out 60,000 erroneous ballots to voters, society’s confidence in the our elections wane. It is understandable when voters have concerns with the efficacy of the electoral process in certain states and territories,” he added.

The RNC and Spies didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Link

-Lurid Crime Tales-

Nashville School Shooting: Federal Judge Orders Release of Transgender Shooter's Journals

2024-03-22

[Breitbart] A federal judge ordered the FBI to release the writings of the transgender woman who shot and killed six people at a Christian school in Nashville on March 27, 2023.

In the hours after the shooting, Breitbart News noted that police indicated Audrey Hale identified as transgender.

Less than a month after the shooting, Breitbart News pointed out that Hale left behind a suicide note, 19 journals, and other items, and all of them have been kept from the public since the attack occurred. (The exception was a November 2023 leak of three pages, purportedly from the shooter’s writings. Seven Nashville police officers were put on “administrative leave” over the leak.)

But U.S. District Court Judge Aleta Trauger has ordered the release of the writings.

Trauger wrote:

The FBI is ORDERED to produce ex parte all documents that are potentially responsive to the defendants’ Freedom of Information Act request for in camera review, with the exception that, based on the plaintiffs’ concessions in this litigation, the FBI need not produce any documents that could not reasonably be construed to bear on Audrey Hale’s motives.

Her decision is in response to a Freedom of Information Act suit filed by the parent company of the Tennessee Star, a local newspaper owned by former Breitbart contributor Michael Patrick Leahy.

“It has been long enough, and the public has an urgent right to know why this tragedy happened, how future events may be prevented, and what policies should be in place to address this and other similar tragedies,” lawyers for the Tennessee Star contended during the hearing. … “[The] FBI has no right to retain a monopoly on this information.”

Link

Home Front: Politix

After criticism, White House says Israel interferes in US politics more than the other way around

2024-03-19

Smiling as he attempts to slide a knife into Israel’s back.

[IsraelTimes] US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says Israel weighs into American politics more than the US weighs into Israeli politics, amid fury in Jerusalem over Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer
...Senator-for-life from New York, renowned for his love of standing in front of cameras and microphones. Schumer has been a professional politician since 1975, when disco was in flower, which is 48.28466 years. Senate minority leader as of 2017...
’s call for early elections in Israel to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Sullivan is asked during a press briefing whether the US could do more to speak directly to the Israeli people regarding its concerns over a mass IDF invasion of Rafah. He says it is ironic that the press is asking that question given Netanyahu’s recent appearance in American media, in which he has blasted Washington for interfering in Israeli politics.

"In fact, we don’t do nearly as much as they speak into ours," Sullivan asserts without elaborating. Pot, Kettle

Netanyahu has long been criticized by Democrats over what they saw was his support for Republican presidential nominee Willard Mitt Romney, aka Pierre Delecto
...former governor of Massachussetts, the Publican nominee for president in 2012, now Senator from Utah. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney has a record as a successful businessman, heading Bain Capital, and he rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from the midst of bribery and mismanagement scandals. He is currently a trans Republican and a member in good standing of the Never Trump Party, attempting to assume the mantle of the late John McCain...
in 2012, but more notably the 2015 speech that the Israeli premier organized in Congress behind then-president Barack Obama
That’s just how white folks will do you....
’s back in order to lobby politicians against the Iran
Iran

...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
nuclear deal that Obama was seeking to ink.

Sullivan appears to try and soften his criticism, saying it was not "a constructive answer to your question, just an observation."

He reveals that Netanyahu on the call raised his concern regarding "a variety of things that have come out in the American press," but avoids detailing them further.

"From President Biden’s perspective, this is not a question of politics, it’s not a question of public statements, it’s a question of policy and strategy. That’s what he’s focused on, that’s what he was focused on in the call," Sullivan says.

Biden is not focused on what’s popular or on shaping public opinion, but rather in advancing his broader regional initiative to see a two-state solution with Israel enjoying normalized relations with all of its Arab neighbors, Sullivan maintains.

"While it is true that many voices in Israel can’t see that today, that is not going to alter the president’s view... that that is what is not just in the US national security interest, but it’s really the only solution to secure Israel’s future as a democratic, Jewish state that is secure and at peace with its neighbors, including its most immediate neighbors — the Paleostinian people."

Link

Cyber

Google has ‘interfered' with elections 41 times over the last 16 years, Media Research Center says

2024-03-19

[FoxNews] ‘No organization has more control over information than Google,’ Brent Bozell told Fox News Digital

Google has "interfered" with major elections in the United States 41 times over the last 16 years, according to a new study from the Media Research Center.

"MRC researchers have found 41 times where Google interfered in elections over the last 16 years, and its impact has surged dramatically, making it evermore harmful to democracy. In every case, Google harmed the candidates – regardless of party – who threatened its left-wing candidate of choice," MRC Free Speech America vice president Dan Schneider and editor Gabriela Pariseau wrote in a summary of their findings.

"From the mouths of Google executives, the tech giant let slip what was never meant to be made public: That Google uses its "great strength and resources and reach" to advance its leftist values," they continued. "Google’s outsized influence on information technology, the body politic and American elections became evident in 2008. After failing to prevent then-candidate for president Donald Trump from being inaugurated following the 2016 election, Google has since made clear to any discerning observer that it has been — and will continue — interfering in America’s elections."

Google pushed back, insisting it has a "clear business incentive" to keep both sides happy and that safeguards ensure non-biased and accurate search results.

MRC Free Speech America, a division of the conservative Media Research Center, believes the most recent example was recorded after Google artificial intelligence Gemini "refused to answer questions damaging" to President Biden.

The group’s research found that from 2008 through February 2024, "Google has utilized its power to help push to electoral victory the most liberal candidates, regardless of party, while targeting their opponents for censorship."

Examples include appearing to favor Barack Obama over John McCain in 2008, favoring Obama over Mitt Romney in 2012, refusing to correct a "Google bomb" that "smeared" then-leading GOP primary candidate for president Rick Santorum, using its algorithm to exclude autofill results that were potentially damaging to Hilly Clinton in 2016, "not doing the same for then-candidates Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders," and working with partners to help likely pro-Clinton Latino voters go to the polls that same year, according to MRC Free Speech America.

Other examples cited by the MRC include disabling Tulsi Gabbard’s Ads account just as she became the most searched candidate following the first Democratic Party primary debate in 2020, suppressing news critical of Biden, concealing most Republican campaign websites for the 12 competitive Senate races in 2022, and aiding Biden in 2024 by "burying in its search results the campaign websites of every one of his significant opponents."

The study cites several other examples.

"Utilizing the many tools in its arsenal, Google aided those who most closely aligned with its leftist values from election cycle to election cycle since as far back as the 2008 presidential election. Meanwhile, it targeted for censorship those candidates who posed the most serious threat," Schneider and Pariseau wrote.

"While its interference was first evident in 2008, its meddling has turned into an organizational mission to ensure that its candidates win on election day," they continued. "Many studies reveal the results of the tech giant’s commitment."

Schneider and Pariseau cited AllSides and Dr. Robert Epstein, who performed additional research and found that "Google’s search algorithm likely shifted at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton" in 2016 and that "Google’s results and get-out-the-vote reminders favored Democrats and shifted the 2020 election results by at least 6 million votes."

Google strongly denied any wrongdoing.

"There is absolutely nothing new here - just a recycled list of baseless, inaccurate complaints that have been debunked by third parties and many that failed in the courts. Politicians on the left have a long history of making similar claims too. We have a clear business incentive to keep everyone using our products, so we have no desire to make them biased or inaccurate and have safeguards in place to ensure this. Numerous conservatives have been particularly successful in using our platforms to spread their message to a wide audience," a Google spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

Google has said it is restricting the types of election-related queries on Gemini out of an abundance of caution, directing users to Google Search instead. As for Gabbard’s ads, Google points to a federal judge dismissing a lawsuit she filed against the company on the matter.

Link

-Great Cultural Revolution

Deadspin lays off ENTIRE editorial staff after the popular sports website is sold to European startup firm Lineup Publishing

2024-03-12

[DM] "Karma! Can you spell it, bitches?". Heard this on Clay and Buck while driving. Made my black heart smile
Popular sports blog Deadspin has been sold to a European startup firm Lineup Publishing, with the website's new owners not retaining any of the current editorial staff.

Deadspin had been owned by G/O Media since 2019 before Monday's sale.

Deadspin's writers and editors were given 30 minutes notice of losing their jobs before being locked out of their company laptops, per senior editor Julie DiCaro.

'I do want to make it clear that we were not actively shopping Deadspin,' G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said in a memo to staff, which was obtained by DailyMail.com.

'The rationale behind the decision to sell included a variety of important factors that include the buyer's editorial plans for the brand, tough competition in the sports journalism sector, and a valuation that reflected a sizable premium from our original purchase price for the site,' Spanfeller continued.

Link

-Short Attention Span Theater-

Bill Maher urges Biden to dump Kamala Harris for Nikki Haley to form 'dream unity ticket' for 2024

2024-03-12

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Bill Maher has suggested President Joe Biden consider replacing his current Vice President Kamala Harris with either Nikki Haley or Republican Senator Mitt Romney in a bid to bridge the divide between the political parties.

Sometimes Mr. Maher gets it. Sometimes he most emphatically does not.

Maher suggested that if Biden were to pursue such an unconventional idea, it would likely result in electoral victory for the Democrats as the GOP members would be running on a unity ticket.

'I know it's crazy to think that she could run with Biden, but that's my dream, a unity ticket. And then he would, I think, definitely win,' Maher suggested.

Maher, speaking during a panel conversation on HBO's Real Time, acknowledged that the scenario was extremely unlikely with Harris almost certain to be Biden's running mate.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Nikki Haley's complete ignorance of her own party is why Trump is the last candidate standing

2024-03-03

[NY Post] In truth, Haley’s not wrong that the party has changed.

But she doesn’t seem to understand why it had to change.

It would help if she at least recognized that radical leftists now control the Dems’ agenda and that a collegial GOP approach is doomed to fail.

Like the media, Haley yearns for the days when the GOP was genteel, united — and comfortable with losing.

Enter Trump, and whatever anyone wants to say of him, most of which is true, his GOP is no longer comfortable with losing.

He survived the spying of the FBI and CIA, defeated Hillary Clinton and is again under relentless attack from Dem media and prosecutors.

He has somehow survived it all and that is why he’s going to be the party’s presidential nominee for the third consecutive time.

And don’t forget that his policy record is far superior to President Biden’s, especially on the border and economy.

Trump’s ace, of course, is that his supporters see in him a defender and street fighter they never had in Mitt Romney, John McCain or either of the Bushes.

And Haley, despite her racial background and pioneering efforts to break the party’s glass ceiling, more resembles the GOP nominees of yesteryear than Trump.

Her temperament and policies are why many Trump supporters call her a RINO — a Republican in name only.

That’s the ultimate insult, reserved for those who are willing to compromise with Democrats on the assumption the favor will be returned.

Anyone who believes such give-and-take Dems still exist isn’t paying attention.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Sen. Lankford Sets High Bar for Republican Support of a Bipartisan Border Giveaway

2024-01-16

[Breitbart] Lead Republican negotiator Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said GOP Senate leadership will only support a Democrat-backed border-management bill if half of its 49-member caucus supports the deal, Politico reported Friday.

The statement is important because it ensures the bloc of swing-voting GOP Senators in the middle of the party — not just the pro-migration establishment wing — will determine the party’s direction under the glare of an angry GOP base and aggressive outlets such as Breitbart News.

Politico reported:

Senate Republicans don’t control the floor, but Lankford outlined his thinking in an interview. If he can get 25 or more of the 49 GOP senators to sign onto something, he’s betting that it might be enough to get Speaker Mike Johnson to take up a big emergency spending bill with Ukraine aid – without losing the gavel to a conservative rebellion.

When Lankford met with House Republicans on Wednesday, he told them that he doesn’t plan to back a border deal that barely skirts the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Lankford explained that he doesn’t want to win “51 Democrats and 10 Republicans. … That is not what this is. This is not just trying to barely squeak it over to them.”

“Let’s be real: [Lankford’s half-the-caucus] goal is incredibly challenging,” Politico added.

Lankford’s half-the-caucus rule means that the Democrats cannot squeeze the giveaway bill through with just the 1o-15 most pro-migration, pro-business Republicans.

The in-the-bag yes votes likely include Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Mitt Romney (R-UT), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Mike Rounds (R-SD), and Susan Collins (R-ME).

The hell-no bloc has roughly ten Senators. The group includes Sens. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

So the Lankford plan means the Democrats must win roughly 15 votes from the approximately 30-member bloc of Republican Senators who swing between the pro-migration establishment wing and the pro-American populist wing.

That will be difficult because few Senators want to display their support for Biden’s unpopular migration — especially if the giveaway bill will die in the House.

Link

Government Corruption

Pence dismisses conspiracy theory FBI instigated Jan. 6 attack

2024-01-10

[HILL] Former Vice President Mike Pence in an interview Sunday dismissed conspiracy theories about government involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rioting.

Pence, who was a target of rioters, rejected the idea that the FBI could have been responsible for instigating the Capitol riots.

"We’ve been assured again and again that it was not the case," Pence said in a CNN interview.
assured by...whom?
"I just must tell you, having been there that day, to see people literally breaking windows, ransacking the Capitol, it just infuriated me," he continued. "I remember thinking, ’Not this. Not here. Not at the United States Capitol."

As many as a quarter of Americans and a third of Republicans said they believe that the Jan. 6 Capitol riots were instigated by the FBI or other government influence, according to a University of Maryland poll released last week.

The conspiracy theory has gained traction among some Republicans, being boosted by GOP figures including former President Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.

Pence, however, called on those that believe the conspiracies to "look at the facts."

The FBI and Department of Justice have worked to convict almost 1,000 people of crimes related to the Capitol riots, including more than 400 for assaulting police officers.

"[Jan. 6] should never have happened," Pence, who repeatedly criticized Trump over Jan. 6 during his brief 2024 presidential campaign last year, said Sunday. "As I’ve said many times before, the former president’s words that day were reckless. I believe history will judge his role in that."

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