Today In Biden Land

[Spicoli]

If a President Biden even thinks of flagging or calling out radio & television stations, no matter how sincere he may be- that is in fact supppression of free speech.

Lincold did it, he may as well, but we're treading into deep waters. As of lately there seems to be no free speech on possible solution(s), so as a result anyone who attempts to offer an alternative to big pharma will be labeled. ridiculed as fake. Now we got both parties crying fake. Is not! Is too!

Not to mention the previous Individual #1 who had lawyers send cease and desist letters and threatened a free press every other day and railed about the FFC pulling licenses and leveeing huge fines because they called the Administration out for it's incompetent response to Covid.

[Kirkland Laing]

If a President Biden even thinks of flagging or calling out radio & television stations, no matter how sincere he may be- that is in fact supppression of free speech.

Lincold did it, he may as well, but we're treading into deep waters. As of lately there seems to be no free speech on possible solution(s), so as a result anyone who attempts to offer an alternative to big pharma will be labeled. ridiculed as fake. Now we got both parties crying fake. Is not! Is too!

There is a solution. The vaccines. We know they work.

There aren't any other alternatives. There are a bunch of vitamin selling scammers trying to push bullshit alternatives and they're getting thousands of people killed. The government would be failing in its duty to protect the nation's health if it didn't try and do anything about it.

Once again, only one administration in recent history has threatened broadcasters and social media outlets for broadcasting/publishing stuff they didn't like and it's not the Biden administration.

[Kirkland Laing]

I can't understand how this guy working for this organisation would publish such a thing. He must be close to retirement and have his pension locked in.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...ans-better-not

The six hundred or so billion a year is actually a trillion dollars a year according to the guy currently running the IRS and this doesn't count all the tax being (legally) avoided. The trillion a year is illegal evasion.



Worth remembering as Republican start screaming about Biden spending. Even if all of Biden's three point five trillion in new spending gets passed it's over ten years and is only about one percent of the projected three hundred trillion in GDP in that period. Trump rang up five trillion in four years and not a peep from the GOP. Also, big difference between massive tax cuts for the top one percent and trillions invested in American infrastructure:

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/president...llion-debt-law

Trump spending is all pure debt and Biden's spending will be partly paid for, would be fully paid for if the GOP would agree to tax increases on top earners.



Jesus wept:

https://jabberwocking.com/finally-we...n-our-schools/



This is protected speech and the Biden administration is doing nothing about it. It's also getting thousands of people killed and giving tens of thousands of people long term serious illnesses:

https://twitter.com/BrendanNyhan/sta...46834955710468


Left wing media in action:

https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/s...17445564047364



GDP:

https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/stat...32724474748928



More left wing media. British paper covers Trump family involvement in yet another con. Another settlement, admit no wrongdoing etc etc:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...edgdhp&pc=U531





Keep scrolling:

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/stat...36112033665024





I haven't read this yet. Looks interesting though:

https://jabberwocking.com/the-secret...ng-america-is/




Finally this is not political but there's nowhere else to put it. It deserves some kind of award I think:

https://twitter.com/CHHNDLER/status/1419340550902272005

[palmerq]

Keep scrolling:

https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/stat...36112033665024

Good stuff in that short thread there...


I've been listening to krugman book at work(arguing with zombies) it seems to mostly be collections of his old blogs but I found one of the old articles amusing and slightly relevant to the Goings in this year..

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/20...d&login=google

The last paragraph of that post seems to work even 12 years later
......... Well I found it a bit funny anyway.

[TitoFan]

One good thing about Biden's subtle pot shots at "Former Guy" is that I personally find out about some of the hilarious things Former Guy did during his four years which I wasn't personally paying attention to.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-b...b0048f3619d5a0

I guess I wasn't paying too much attention to all this "Infrastructure Week" car-crash hoopla back when it was happening, although it was duly reported by different news outlets.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/u...ture-week.html

Infrastructure week.....




Although I'm not a Biden fan... I do find some pleasure in any and all digs he manages to throw Former Guy's way. It's the least he can do.

[Kirkland Laing]

WASHINGTON — President Donald J. Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results, according to new documents provided to lawmakers.
The demands were an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with an agency that is typically more independent from the White House to advance his personal agenda. They are also the latest example of Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging campaign during his final weeks in office to delegitimize the election results.
The exchange unfolded during a phone call on Dec. 27 in which Mr. Trump pressed the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and his deputy, Richard P. Donoghue, on voter fraud claims that the Justice Department had found no evidence for. Mr. Donoghue warned that the department had no power to change the outcome of the election. Mr. Trump replied that he did not expect that, according to notes Mr. Donoghue took memorializing the conversation.
“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and to congressional allies, Mr. Donoghue wrote in summarizing Mr. Trump’s response.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/30/u...e=articleShare



https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status...00233700233217




https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/stat...62460437925890




Bill Maher:

https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/...51192593735680






https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/stat...50658859913222

Keep scrolling with that one.








https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...eat-depression

[Kirkland Laing]

That chart is per capita economic growth. Misleading for a ton of reasons. This is economic growth by president:




Much bigger version in the Bloomberg article.

[TIC]

why do they have the comments disabled on the youtube whitehouse channel?

[Kirkland Laing]

This is the guy Trump was going to appoint as AG when the AG wouldn't announce that the election was corrupt:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/r...en-georgia-win




Ralph Neas has been involved in voting-rights battles since the nineteen-eighties, when, as a Republican, he served as the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. He has overseen a study of the Arizona audit for the nonpartisan Century Foundation, and he told me that, though the audit is a “farce,” it may nonetheless have “extraordinary consequences.” He said, “The Maricopa County audit exposes exactly what the Big Lie is all about. If they come up with an analysis that discredits the 2020 election results in Arizona, it will be replicated in other states, furthering more chaos. That will enable new legislation. Millions of Americans could be disenfranchised, helping Donald Trump to be elected again in 2024. That’s the bottom line. Maricopa County is the prism through which to view everything. It’s not so much about 2020—it’s about 2022 and 2024. This is a coördinated national effort to distort not just what happened in 2020 but to regain the House of Representatives and the Presidency.”
Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and one of the country’s foremost election-law experts, told me, “I’m scared shitless.” Referring to the array of new laws passed by Republican state legislatures since the 2020 election, he said, “It’s not just about voter suppression. What I’m really worried about is election subversion. Election officials are being put in place who will mess with the count.”

[...]


Gates says that Karen Fann, the Arizona Senate’s president, confided to him that she knew there was “nothing to” the fraud charges. (She didn’t respond to requests for comment.) Nevertheless, she buckled under the political pressure and authorized a subpoena of the county’s ballots, for the “forensic audit.” At one point, county supervisors were told that if they didn’t comply they would face contempt charges and, potentially, could be imprisoned. For a time, the official Twitter account for the audit accused the supervisors, without evidence, of “spoliation” of the ballots. “I get a little emotional when I talk about it,” Gates said. “My daughter called me, frantically trying to find out whether or not I was going to be thrown in jail.” Trump supporters set up a guillotine on a grassy plaza outside Arizona’s statehouse, demanding the supervisors’ heads. Inside, Gates recalled, one Republican member after another rose to denounce the county supervisors.


A representative for the national Republican Party tried to silence Gates when he spoke out to defend the integrity of Arizona’s election. He told me that Hoffman’s ally Tyler Bowyer, of the Republican National Committee, paid him a visit and warned, “You need to stop it.” According to Gates, Bowyer made it clear that “the Republican National Committee supports this audit.” Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Bowyer, denied that the visit was an official attempt at intimidation, calling it instead a “personal courtesy.”
Gates said that after he received death threats he fled with his family to an Airbnb. At one point, the sheriff sent two deputies to guard Gates’s home overnight. Trump supporters, Gates said, “are basically asking Republican leaders to bow before the altar of the Big Lie—‘You’re willing to do it? O.K., great. You’re not? You’re a RINO. You’re a Commie. You are not a Republican.’ It’s been incredibly effective, really, when you think about where we’ve come from January 6th.”

[..]

It would be tempting for Gates, a lifetime Republican with political ambitions, to blame only Trump for his party’s anti-democratic turn. But he has few such illusions. What’s really going on, he believes, is a reactionary backlash against Obama: “I’ve thought about it a lot. I believe the election of President Obama frightened a lot of Americans.” Gates argues that the fear isn’t entirely about race. He thinks it’s also about cosmopolitanism, secularism, and other contemporary values that make white conservatives uncomfortable. But in the end, he said, “the diversification of America is frightening to a lot of people in my party.”



https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...al-type=earned

[Kirkland Laing]

https://twitter.com/BrendanNyhan/sta...13014311882756



https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/stat...40165550874629



https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/t...rosen-donaghue

[Kirkland Laing]

https://twitter.com/HardSciFiMovies/...53508627488771



https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/...-curious-right



https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker...er&via=desktop

[Kirkland Laing]

https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie/sta...92052159225857

Interesting that the right are now talking about nationalising the means of production. Karl Marx would be applauding this.



https://twitter.com/Mrs_Wld_History/...97069314748427



https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1424350710418837510



https://twitter.com/lawindsor/status...67744418897925

[Master]

It's just like Bernie Sanders was president.

[Kirkland Laing]

https://twitter.com/ModeledBehavior/...81213539643396

https://www.mediaite.com/news/over-9...rom-covid-cdc/

https://twitter.com/nielslesniewski/...04002475220999

[Kirkland Laing]

In November 2017, with the administration of President Donald Trump rushing to get a massive tax overhaul through Congress, Sen. Ron Johnson stunned his colleagues by announcing he would vote “no.”
Making the rounds on cable TV, the Wisconsin Republican became the first GOP senator to declare his opposition, spooking Senate leaders who were pushing to quickly pass the tax bill with their thin majority. “If they can pass it without me, let them,” Johnson declared.


Johnson’s demand was simple: In exchange for his vote, the bill must sweeten the tax break for a class of companies that are known as pass-throughs, since profits pass through to their owners. Johnson praised such companies as “engines of innovation.” Behind the scenes, the senator pressed top Treasury Department officials on the issue, emails and the officials’ calendars show.
Within two weeks, Johnson’s ultimatum produced results. Trump personally called the senator to beg for his support, and the bill’s authors fattened the tax cut for these businesses. Johnson flipped to a “yes” and claimed credit for the change. The bill passed.
The Trump administration championed the pass-through provision as tax relief for “small businesses.”
Confidential tax records, however, reveal that Johnson’s last-minute maneuver benefited two families more than almost any others in the country — both worth billions and both among the senator’s biggest donors.
Dick and Liz Uihlein of packaging giant Uline, along with roofing magnate Diane Hendricks, together had contributed around $20 million to groups backing Johnson’s 2016 reelection campaign.
The expanded tax break Johnson muscled through netted them $215 million in deductions in 2018 alone, drastically reducing the income they owed taxes on. At that rate, the cut could deliver more than half a billion in tax savings for Hendricks and the Uihleins over its eight-year life.
But the tax break did more than just give a lucrative, and legal, perk to Johnson’s donors. In the first year after Trump signed the legislation, just 82 ultrawealthy households collectively walked away with more than $1 billion in total savings, an analysis of confidential tax records shows.


https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/s...utiful-tax-cut


Byung J. Pak, a former U.S. attorney in Atlanta, told congressional investigators on Wednesday that his abrupt resignation in January had been prompted by Justice Department officials’ warning that President Donald J. Trump intended to fire him for refusing to say that widespread voter fraud had been found in Georgia, according to a person familiar with his testimony.

[...]

While he did not discuss Mr. Trump’s role in his decision to resign at the time, he told the Senate panel that the president had been dismayed that Mr. Pak had investigated allegations of voter fraud in Fulton County, Ga., and not found evidence to support them, according to the person familiar with the statements.
Mr. Pak testified that top department officials had made clear that Mr. Trump intended to fire him over his refusal to say that the results in Georgia had been undermined by voter fraud, the person said. Resigning would pre-empt a public dismissal.



https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/u...ion-fraud.html





The Biden administration is preparing for Afghanistan’s capital to fall far sooner than feared only weeks ago, as a rapid disintegration of security has prompted the revision of an already stark intelligence assessment predictingKabul could be overrunwithin six to 12 months of the U.S. military departing, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.



One official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the issue’s sensitivity, said Tuesday that the U.S. military now assesses a collapse could occur within 90 days. Others said it could happen within a month. Some officials said that although they were not authorized to discuss the assessment, they see the situation in Afghanistan as more dire than it was in June, when intelligence officials assessed a fall could come as soon as six months after the withdrawal of the U.S. military.


“Everything is moving in the wrong direction,” said one person familiar with the military’s new intelligence assessment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...ce-assessment/







https://twitter.com/DonLew87/status/1425154542619054085



https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/s...78418123759618



https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/statu...48261442871296



https://twitter.com/DavidAvromBell/s...75051703980033



https://twitter.com/SawyerHackett/st...67352895873029



https://twitter.com/StevenTDennis/st...19981479350277



https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/sta...90878797586437



https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/stat...45746882445312



https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/stat...92878020268035



https://twitter.com/NYinLA2121/statu...78113076436995



https://twitter.com/natalie_allison/...49438202548224



https://twitter.com/jrstlouis/status...60332827496452