Here’s Hoping

20 thoughts on “Here’s Hoping”

1. wonder if the “everything” in “My sense is they’re looking [at] everything in a diligent way and they haven’t made a decision.”  might include the MI faked electors scandal pointing to another WH conspiracy that’s just been dumped in their laps related to the now ongoing jan6 seditious conspiracy case.  stuff keeps coming outta the woodwork. 

2. Michigan ‘fake elector’ was working with Trump lawyer, report claims (yahoo.com)

   Supporters of former president Donald Trump allegedly received orders to march into the Michigan Capitol in Lansing from the Republican leader’s campaign.
   A group of supporters “contemplated” working with a Republican lawmaker who had a Capitol office to get the 16 Trump electors inside the elector room where the official count was taking place, The Detroit News reported.
   “…(W)e convened and organised in the state Capitol, in the city of Lansing, Michigan, and at 2.00 pm Eastern Standard Time on the 14th day of December 2020,” said a false certificate signed and submitted to the National Archives.
   The supporters who signed the documents falsely claimed that they were “duly elected and qualified electors”.
   Robert Norton, an attorney who worked on the 2020 Michigan election in the “background,” told The Detroit News that there had been discussions about how to get the Trump electors in “the right place at the right time.”
   Stan Grot, a Shelby Township clerk, who signed the certificate claiming Mr Trump has won the state, claimed that he was asked to show up to sign a document.
   He said he believed he had gotten a call from an attorney working on behalf of Mr Trump in Washington, DC.
   [continues]

   also see https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2022/01/17/trump-backers-sought-ways-into-michigan-capitol-electors-meeting/6528564001/?gnt-cfr=1

3. 

4. Even Kevin doesn’t believe Kevin.

5. BTW, remember this story back in November when the twice impeached disgraced loser met with MI lawmakers at WH?

   here’s what sen. mitt had to say about it at the time:

   “Having failed to make even plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election,” he tweeted Thursday night. “It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President.”

6. even if the former guy is brought to justice, there are others smarter (just as if not more dangerous than he) waiting in the wings.  it’s obvious he knows they’re biting at his heel spurs.

   from wapo today:

   Will the real King of Florida please stand up? “For months, Trump has been grumbling quietly to friends and visitors to his Palm Beach mansion about a rival Republican power center in another Florida mansion, some 400 miles to the north,” the New York Times’s Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman write.

   • “Gov. Ron DeSantis, a man Trump believes he put on the map, has been acting far less like an acolyte and more like a future competitor, Trump complains. With his stock rising fast in the party, the governor has conspicuously refrained from saying he would stand aside if Trump runs for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.”
   • “‘The magic words,’ Trump has said to several associates and advisers.”
   • “That long-stewing resentment burst into public view recently in a dispute over a seemingly unrelated topic: Covid policies.”

   “At its core, the dispute amounts to a stand-in for the broader challenge confronting Republicans at the outset of midterm elections. They are led by a defeated former president who demands total fealty, brooks no criticism and is determined to sniff out, and then snuff out, any threat to his control of the party.”

    

   • “That includes the 43-year-old DeSantis, who has told friends he believes Trump’s expectation that he bend the knee is asking too much. That refusal has set up a generational clash and a test of loyalty in the de facto capital of today’s GOP, one watched by Republicans elsewhere who’ve ridden to power on Trump’s coattails.”

7. Rachel Maddow compares the boilerplate language past vice presidents have used in announcing the counting of the electoral college votes, and the additional language about the Senate parliamentarian Mike Pence added, suggesting he knew about the fake Trump elector slates.

8. It is so disheartening to realize that there aren’t ten Republican Senators willing to defy the group think and vote for voting rights.  

   I remember the joy of passing the original voting rights act.  Then the sorrow over the Supreme Court gutting the review provisions. 

   Now the deep sadness of a whole party lining up to support encroaching racism.

    

9. Jamie, it’s beyond disheartening. It is a reflection of the superiority of the right (perceived, not actual) and the recognition by Republicans that any margin they believe they might have at the ballot box is based on white votes in majority white states.  I believe that the reversal of PA, MI and WI and the loss of Georgia and Arizona scared crap out of them and what you’re seeing is a reaction to to that and an attempt at trying to insure it doesn’t happen in 2022 and 2024.  That 10 R’s can’t bring themselves to vote fot he VRA (which they all voted to renew the last time it was brought before the Senate) is beyond appalling.  Why any person who cares about the concept underlying democracy – that people vote to express their choices – would vote for modern Republicans is beyond me.

10. intimidation problem for some?  i would think the older folk in FL cuban community might have bad memories about police at polls

    Florida governor pushes new election police agency – The Washington Post

    WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A plan by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would establish a special police force to oversee state elections — the first of its kind in the nation — and while his fellow Republicans have reacted tepidly, voting rights advocates fear that it will become law and be used to intimidate voters.
    The proposed Office of Election Crimes and Security would be part of the Department of State, which answers to the governor. DeSantis is asking the GOP-controlled legislature to allocate nearly $6 million to hire 52 people to “investigate, detect, apprehend, and arrest anyone for an alleged violation” of election laws. They would be stationed at unspecified “field offices throughout the state” and act on tips from “government officials or any other person.”
    […]
    Voting rights experts say that no state has such an agency, one dedicated to patrolling elections and empowered to arrest suspected violators. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) announced the formation of a “2021 Texas Election Integrity Unit” in October, but that office is more limited in scope, has fewer than 10 employees and isn’t under the governor’s authority.
    “There’s a reason that there’s no office of this size with this kind of unlimited investigative authority in any other state in the country, and it’s because election crimes and voter fraud are just not a problem of that magnitude,” said Jonathan Diaz, a voting rights lawyer at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center. “My number one concern is that this is going to be used as a tool to harass or intimidate civic-engagement organizations and voters.”
    […]
    Broward County Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott said he’s concerned that the new unit would be “applied in a very partisan way” and certain that his heavily Democratic county would be a target.
    “It seems as if this is going to focus on a lot of grass-roots organizations that are out there trying to get people registered to vote, as well as people out there doing petition drives,” Scott said. “I think this is going to lead to people being intimidated if they’re civically involved. I don’t want people to be scared away from doing those kinds of things.”
    […]
    Cecile Scoon, a lawyer who is president of the League of Women Voters Florida, called an elections security force controlled by a governor an alarming concept.
    “So to have your own elections SWAT team, that would be under the direction of the secretary of state, who is under the direction of the governor, is not a comfortable feeling,” Scoon said. “Having governmental officials like this, traveling about overlooking elections just to see if there’s something going on, is very chilling, very scary and very reminiscent of past governmental interference that was directed to Black voters.”

11. salon:

    […]

    “While the story of phony electoral certificates submitted to Congress by Republican officials in five states as part of a failed attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election has caught on in a big way over the last week, it isn’t new,” Rotner explains. “The phony certificates were submitted nearly a year ago, and as early as March 2, 2021, American Oversight published the documents themselves after obtaining them through the Freedom of Information Act.”

    Rotner adds, “Actually, there weren’t just five states in which, despite Biden having won there, Republican pseudo-electors submitted Electoral College certificates in support of Trump. There were seven. The Republicans in two of those states, however, hedged their bets.”

    The two states where Trump supporters “hedged their bets,” Rotner notes, were New Mexico and Pennsylvania. The other five — the ones Maddow specifically discussed on her show —were Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and, of course, Michigan.

    […]

    According to attorney Rotner, those “phony GOP state certifications” were “not just deplorable political acts of subversion — they are criminal acts.”

    “The signing and transmission of the phony certificates were also stand-alone crimes in and of themselves, committed in broad daylight and easily prosecuted,” Rotner writes. “State and federal law enforcement should have been all over this for almost a year now. Worse, even for those inclined to think ‘better late than never,’ it’s still not clear that they are on it now…. The real action here is — or should be — at the federal level. These phony certifications were not isolated, one-off events. They were highly coordinated.”

12. seems to be widespread breakdown of comity within our institutions as well as among our individual selves

    Fissures at the Supreme Court suggest justices are like a dysfunctional family : NPR

    It was pretty jarring earlier this month when the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court took the bench for the first time since the omicron surge over the holidays. All were now wearing masks. All, that is, except Justice Neil Gorsuch. What’s more, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was not there at all, choosing instead to participate through a microphone setup in her chambers.
    Sotomayor has diabetes, a condition that puts her at high risk for serious illness, or even death, from COVID-19. She has been the only justice to wear a mask on the bench since last fall when, amid a marked decline in COVID-19 cases, the justices resumed in-person arguments for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.
    Now, though, the situation had changed with the omicron surge, and according to court sources, Sotomayor did not feel safe in close proximity to people who were unmasked. Chief Justice John Roberts, understanding that, in some form asked the other justices to mask up.
    They all did. Except Gorsuch, who, as it happens, sits next to Sotomayor on the bench. His continued refusal since then has also meant that Sotomayor has not attended the justices’ weekly conference in person, joining instead by telephone.
    [continues]

13. j rubin  Opinion | Dear media: Stop giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt – The Washington Post

    The Republican Party has a reliable — albeit inadvertent — ally in the mainstream media. The latter remain all too anxious to make the authoritarian and often blatantly racist party seem “normal.”
    […]
    The media’s predilection for portraying Republicans as tactically brilliant is indicative of their preference for treating politics as a game. They denude their coverage of any qualitative judgment that would inform voters that the party’s “cleverness” is lying, plain and simple.
    This refusal by the media to render judgment on the GOP’s cult leaders has gone on for more than six years. Despite replete evidence of Trump’s inability to distinguish truth from fiction, his self-image of grandiosity and his fixation on conspiracy theories, the mainstream media failed to characterize Trump’s conduct as abnormal.
    Take his bizarre rally in Arizona on Saturday, where he rambled incoherently, ….
    [..]
    Certainly, the media should avoid rendering a psychiatric evaluation for Trump. But they routinely refuse to convey the abnormality on display before them. This is “the emperor has no clothes” on steroids.
    Unflinching, brutally honest coverage would describe Trump’s behavior accurately, including his syntax and preposterous lies. It would concede this conduct would be disqualifying for any business executive or even a small-town mayor. The media are compelled to level with voters: The two parties are not equivalent, in part because one treats its crackpot leader like a messiah. Unfortunately, there are no signs the media are ready for such candor.

14. For what it’s worth, using the 1/6 prosecutions as a model (think Oath Keepers here) the case that would have legs with this fraudulent electors stuff in Michigan and the other 4 states is CONSPIRACY to commit election fraud.  With respect to the marching on the Michigan Capitol, same deal – SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY. And the common element between the two classes of felony – Donald J. Trump.
     
    And as a follow up to patd’s NPR piece above, Ruth Marcus NAILS the hypocrisy of our RW SCOTUS – which mandates that those practicing in front of it to present a negative Covid test wear masks except while speaking (and allowing justices not comfy with those precautions to attend remotely) – while ruling that the Biden Covid test or mask mandate in workplaces (overseen by OSHA) is not constitutional.  Doing legal gymnastics (Ruth calls it statutory sophistry) while issuing rulings of legal sleight of hand (aka legal legerdemain). Pretty good gig – and now in the center ring….

15. Republicans To Introduce Bill Requiring Cranial Measurement To Vote

16. Jan. 6 committee subpoenas Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell https://t.co/PJDZsfPKOz

17. MSNBC: Ivanka cooperated with Jan. 6 committee 

18. Subpoena sandwich for Jenna Ellis and some Epshteyn feller also, and phone  records of Eric and Gillsfoiled

19. With mayo & mustard on white bread… 
     
    so what’s Congress got to enforce its inherent power of contempt?

20. NEW THREAD

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