Part 2
The GOP is so dirty!! They have colluded with Russia to steal elections and destroy our democracy--neither Putin or the GOP have any use for democracy. They've created unwarranted investigations, as the House GOP is about to start more, they've weaponized the Justice Dept. even as they falsely claim that Democrats did that, they worked with a high-ranking Justice Dept. official, who just so happened to be on Putin's payroll, to "steal" the 2016 election from Hillary, and they all worked together to steal the 2020 election. They are guilty of treason among other heinous crimes against our country and democracy! They don't care about governing or helping our country, they only care about seizing power anyway possible and lavishing tax cuts and gutting regulations on their donors/benefactors. When is their base going to wake up to how shamelessly they have been manipulated and used to destroy our country and democracy!

Opinion | Barr is the one who outrageously politicized the Justice Department - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/30/justice-department-barr-dunham/

#GOPLies
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPInBedWithPutin
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GOPGreedy

"...Joyce White Vance concurred:

"Three responses are warranted, although sadly none is likely to hold Barr accountable.

Jaw dropping reporting. Lots here including an explanation of why Durham's colleague resigned: under pressure from Barr to release an "interim" report damaging Clinton & the FBI as the election drew near, Durham had a draft prepared that wasn't factual."

First and foremost, Attorney General Merrick Garland should have the spine to remove Durham for gross misconduct. Moreover, any report issued should remove the names of those exonerated in court or who were never charged. They are victims of a political smear, which Garland should not enable by allowing baseless allegations to circulate publicly. Don’t hold your breath, however. Garland has shown little willingness to revisit the department’s conduct in the prior administration. (As an alternative, the inspector general could investigate Barr and Durham.)

Frankly, Garland erred in never conducting a top-to-bottom review of politicization during the Trump era (including Barr’s politicization of sentencing recommendations and the department’s misrepresentations in the U.S. Census case). Instead of prioritizing the department’s outside reputation over the need to remove the stench of corruption, Garland should have gotten to the bottom of the Barr/Durham debacle long ago. (At the very least, it would have preempted the false MAGA narrative that Democrats have been the ones engaged in misconduct).

Second, Barr and Durham should face disciplinary action just as coup architect John Eastman (coincidentally on Thursday) was charged with 11 counts by the California state bar for “violating a variety of attorney ethics rules in multiple episodes, court cases and other conduct,” as CNN put it. Unless and until attorneys such as Barr and Durham face accountability, the threat of professional disgrace and the loss of their law license, other lawyers will be tempted to engage in such shenanigans.However, Eastman, Jeffrey Clark (facing bar proceedings) and Rudy Giuliani (suspended from practice in New York) have sadly been the exception to the rule of sloth and passivity from state bars. Scores of attorneys who signed onto frivolous lawsuits after the 2020 and 2022 elections (including challenging Kari Lake’s defeat in Arizona) have yet to face any penalty.

The list of attorneys who participated in the effort to overturn the 2020 election but as yet have faced no consequences (Kenneth Chesebro, Cleta Mitchell) is far too long. (And none of the members of Congress who signed onto the utterly baseless Supreme Court brief seeking to disenfranchise millions of Americans has been taken to task.) State bars need to do their job to restore integrity to the legal profession.

Finally, Congress should be investigating Barr and Durham’s gross misconduct. You can be sure, however, that MAGA Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and the “weaponization of government” select subcommittee won’t be interested.

Two options remain, however. Senate Democrats can take up the matter, hold public hearings and demand answers from Garland as to why he has not cleaned house already. In addition, Democrats on the weaponization subcommittee should press at every hearing to investigate this matter and, when Republican witnesses are called, demand they respond to the facts regarding Barr and Durham.
...
In sum, just as Garland seeks to hold accountable political leaders who threatened our democracy, he must hold his own department lawyers’ responsible for misconduct. If not, an inspector general, state bars and congressional Democrats should do the job.""

Part 1
The GOP is so dirty!! They have colluded with Russia to steal elections and destroy our democracy--neither Putin or the GOP have any use for democracy. They've created unwarranted investigations, as the House GOP is about to start more, they've weaponized the Justice Dept. even as they falsely claim that Democrats did that, they worked with a high-ranking Justice Dept. official, who just so happened to be on Putin's payroll, to "steal" the 2016 election from Hillary, and they all worked together to steal the 2020 election. They are guilty of treason among other heinous crimes against our country and democracy! They don't care about governing or helping our country, they only care about seizing power anyway possible and lavishing tax cuts and gutting regulations on their donors/benefactors. When is their base going to wake up to how shamelessly they have been manipulated and used to destroy our country and democracy!

Opinion | Barr is the one who outrageously politicized the Justice Department - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/30/justice-department-barr-dunham/

#GOPLies
#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#GOPInBedWithPutin
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#GreedKillsDemocracy
#GOPGreedy

"House Republicans are right that politicization of the Justice Department has been a jaw-dropping abuse of power. They’ve got the wrong culprit, however. As a blockbuster New York Times article made clear, then-Attorney General William P. Barr and special counsel John H. Durham engaged in unethical, abusive manipulation of the Justice Department in pursing the baseless conspiracy theory that the intelligence community had conducted a witch hunt of then-President Donald Trump in connection with Russian manipulation of the 2016 election.

The Times reported that “the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.” Durham brought two baseless cases, both resulting in acquittal. When Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s thorough investigation debunked their entire theory, Barr tried to pressure him to keep it under wraps. Then, as he did with the Robert S. Mueller III report, Barr publicly mischaracterized and trashed the report.

Durham also used a grand jury to pry into the record of major Democratic donor George Soros. Moreover, while supposedly operating independently, he met frequently with his pal Barr, in violation of the basic precept that a special counsel must operate with a high degree of independence. (From the Times article: “Mr. Durham visited Mr. Barr in his office for at times weekly updates and consultations about his day-to-day work. They also sometimes dined and sipped Scotch together.”)

Worst of all:

Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.
Their conduct was so egregious that several career prosecutors quit rather than participate in (to borrow a phrase) the witch hunt. In the end, Barr conceded there was no there there — but only after the 2020 election.

Former prosecutors reacting to the Times report were outraged. Andrew Weissmann tweeted, “This is all about the Trump weaponization of the DOJ — but we know that the House Rs won’t give a damn about it.” ...

Part 3
The greedy people who care only about money and possessions are destroying our country!!

What motivates Republicans to say they’re for the “little guy” when the only policies they'll pursue are to cut taxes for the rich, gut unions, destroy public schools & ship jobs overseas?

Why Must Americans Walk Life's Tightrope Without a Safety Net?
https://hartmannreport.com/p/why-must-americans-walk-lifes-tightrope?

#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPGreedy
#GreedKills

"It’s not about immigrants taking jobs from working-class Americans.

After “reforming” our immigration laws in 1986, Ronald Reagan stopped enforcing the laws against wealthy white employers hiring people who are here without documentation (even though those employers were — and are — committing a crime by hiring undocumented workers).

As a result, entire industries like construction and meatpacking that once provided good union jobs have been de-unionized, their former American-citizen union employees replaced by low-wage workers without documentation.

And when the spotlight gets shined on those industries, Republicans are more than happy to put poor, hard-working Brown people in jail, but there’s no way they’re ever going to go after wealthy white employers. The Trump administration, for example, kicked off the midterm election year of 2018 by raiding over ninety 7-Eleven stores, hauling off undocumented Hispanic people for the cameras they invited to the arrests. Not a single employer went to jail, although they were the ones who initiated the “crime.”

Republican politicians don’t give a damn about your job, particularly when they can find somebody else to do it cheaper, although they do have to put on a little show from time to time to keep the racists happy.

It’s not about putting America or Americans “first.”

Reagan and Bush the Elder negotiated NAFTA and revived the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) so businesses could offshore entire factories. Since the Reagan administration instituted neoliberalism in 1981, over 60,000 factories have left America, taking along with them at least 15 million jobs.

Donald Trump‘s rewrite of NAFTA even gave American companies a huge new tax break if they’d move their factories from America to Mexico.

At the end of the day, all Republican politicians care about is money. Greed is their principle animating force, and what binds them to their morbidly rich donors.

The greed embraced by Republican politicians — and the billionaires and CEOs who fund them — is why average Americans can’t have nice things. It’s why we and our children must walk the tightrope of life without the same safety net other countries — from Canada to Costa Rica, France to Taiwan — offer their citizens.

It doesn’t matter to Republican politicians how many Americans die unnecessarily, how many of our fellow citizens struggle in misery and poverty, how many children’s growth is stunted or bodies and brains are poisoned by industrial and mining waste being poured into our air and rivers.

As long as the money keeps rolling in and the GOP’s billionaire patrons keep paying less than 3 percent in income taxes, greed is all Republican politicians care about or are willing to fight for."

Part 2
The greedy people who care only about money and possessions are destroying our country!!

What motivates Republicans to say they’re for the “little guy” when the only policies they'll pursue are to cut taxes for the rich, gut unions, destroy public schools & ship jobs overseas?

Why Must Americans Walk Life's Tightrope Without a Safety Net?
https://hartmannreport.com/p/why-must-americans-walk-lifes-tightrope?publication_id=302288&post_id=94123524&isFreemail=true

#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPGreedy
#GreedKills

"It’s not about charity.

Republicans say that the housing, healthcare, and other needs of poor people should be taken care of through “private philanthropy” instead of government. What they’re really saying is that they don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes to maintain a healthy society.

By cutting government support for poor and working-class people, as Anand Giridharadas documents so well, those very average Americans will become more dependent on the noble philanthropists among the billionaire class and less bonded to their own nation’s government.

It’s not about Christianity, although they’re constantly invoking Jesus for everything from pushing the death penalty on women who want to get an abortion to giving bigots the legal right to discriminate against gay, lesbian, and trans people.

Jesus never once mentioned abortion and decried bigotry, but they regularly ignore and even flout His teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and His warnings in Matthew 25. They protect multimillionaire evangelists’ tax-free status, and the preachers repay them by preaching politics from the pulpit.

It’s not about saving Americans from the pandemic or concern for public health.

Trump used the Defense Production Act, for example, to force mostly Brown and Black meatpackers back to work, not to keep Americans safe. As long as the factories are humming and the stock market is rising, a few hundred thousand dead Americans are just collateral damage.

It’s not about conservatism.

They’re not interested in slowly or “cautiously” improving society, or “conserving” anything other than the balances in their own checking accounts. They like to use the word “conservative,” but they’ve rendered it meaningless at best and code for “racist” at worst.

It’s not about making the world a better place.

Republican politicians deny climate change, deregulate industries that poison our air and water, and do everything they can to screw working people out of unions, good wages, and decent benefits. They’re totally down with pesticides that are killing our pollinators while they poison our atmosphere with their carbon emissions, all just to make a buck.

It’s not about having a better-educated electorate or populace.

They’ve spent decades trying to destroy our public education system that was, in the 1960s, the envy of the world. When they did away with free and low-cost college education during the Reagan years they kicked off almost $2 trillion worth of student debt which is preventing people from starting families, opening small businesses, or even buying their first house. But it sure is profitable for Republican-donor bankers!

It isn’t about “culture.”

They do a good-old-boy NASCAR/Duck Dynasty routine to bring in the rubes, but there’s no way Donald Trump would ever invite the average Republican voter with a giant flag and a pickup truck to any of his golf clubs, nor would Ted Cruz want to vacation with one of them or their families in Cancun.

It’s not about “gun violence.”

As long as their investments in weapons manufacturers are profitable and the problem of gun violence is limited to poor- and working-class Americans, Republican politicians don’t give a rat’s ass about “gun safety.” Although they’re happy to use guns as a wedge issue to bring in male voters who are insecure about their own masculinity.

It’s not about “protecting our children.”

The main through-story of the GOP attacks on queer people is that “they’re coming for your kids.” If Republican politicians actually cared about our kids, they’d do something about America being the only country in the world where gun violence is the leading cause of childhood death.

Republican politicians know that most pedophiles are straight men, but attacking defenseless minorities has been the cheap trick of craven demagogues from the eras of crusades, pogroms, and witch burnings to this day."

Part 1
The greedy people who care only about money and possessions are destroying our country!!

What motivates Republicans to say they’re for the “little guy” when the only policies they'll pursue are to cut taxes for the rich, gut unions, destroy public schools & ship jobs overseas?

Why Must Americans Walk Life's Tightrope Without a Safety Net?
https://hartmannreport.com/p/why-must-americans-walk-lifes-tightrope?publication_id=302288&post_id=94123524&isFreemail=true

#GOPInBedWithRich
#GOPLovesPower
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#WantTheirSerfsBack
#GOPGreedy
#GreedKills

"Republicans are about to seize control of the US House of Representatives, where the Constitution says all taxation and spending must originate. And the result won’t be difficult to predict.

This Spring will be the 20th anniversary of my radio program. During that entire time, I’ve run a contest for anybody who can name even one single piece of legislation from the past 40 years (since Reagan) that was:
— authored by Republicans,
— principally co-sponsored by Republicans,
— passed Congress with a Republican majority,
— signed by a Republican president,
— and benefited average working people or the poor more than it did the GOP’s donor class.

Outside of a feeble-attempt bill to regulate spam callers during the first Bush administration and legislation reversing the Osage Allotment Act of 1906, nobody has ever won the autographed book prize.

Every developed country in the world has some variation on a free or low-cost national healthcare system, and free or subsidized higher education.

In most developed countries homelessness is not a crisis; nobody goes bankrupt because somebody in their family got sick; and jobs pay well enough and have union pensions so people can retire after 30 or 40 years in the workforce and live comfortably for the rest of their lives.

But not in America. Republican politicians have fought tooth-and-nail for generations to prevent any of those things from happening here.

Which raises the question: “Why?”

Why do Republican politicians promote hateful messages and cruel policies? Why are Republican-run states the real “shithole” parts of the US with the highest rates of poverty, violence, early death, disease, and illiteracy?

What motivates these Republican politicians to say they’re for the “little guy” when the only policies they pursue are to cut taxes on the rich, gut unions, destroy public schools, and ship jobs overseas?

It’s not about ideology.

Republicans don’t hate Social Security and Medicare, for example, because they’re afraid that those programs are going to somehow turn America into a “socialist” country. They hate those programs because they’re paid for with tax dollars, and greedy Republicans hate to pay their fair share of taxes.

It’s not about racism, although it often appears that way.

The reason Republicans work so hard to keep Black and Brown people down is because they subscribe to a weird economic theory that “requires” an underclass who do most of the hard work for very little money. Thus, morbidly rich Republican “donors” — being part of the overclass — can reap the benefits of increased corporate profits while keeping their taxes low so they can stuff the extra cash into their money bins.

If their use of racist language and Confederate iconography brings in a few more low-IQ white voters, that’s just icing on the cake. They can use the racist yahoos to get themselves reelected so giant corporations will continue to stuff their SuperPACs with lobbyist cash they can use for their own retirement."

Looks like a good portion of that treasonous and seditious behavior was motivated by good old greed!

Mark Meadows Texts Cache Adds Details to Trump Legal Efforts
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a42255884/mark-meadows-rudy-giuliani/
#GOPTreason
#GOPGreedy

"Yes, the attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election was a perilous time for the republic, being a direct, many-pronged assault on constitutional government and the rule of law. But for the people in the white-shoe end of the effort, it also was a pretty sweet gravy train. Bring down the government? Hey, it beats working. From Bernie Kerik in a text to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, via Talking Points Memo:

Sir, we are airborne on the way to Michigan from Arizona. We’re going to need a hotel for the team and two vehicles to pick us up. Christina Bobb, Who is our coordinator back in DC does not have a credit card or authorization for these logistics. I reached out to Mike Glassner who Apparently is no longer on payroll. Can you I have some money coordinate with Christina to handle? Thank you sir.
(I'd forgotten that Bernie Kerik, Renfield to Rudy's Dracula, was involved in this scam, but it was inevitable that he would be.)

Giuliani’s fees made headlines following his work on the election challenges. In late January 2021, the Times obtained an email from Giuliani’s reported girlfriend and associate, Maria Ryan, where she asked Trump campaign officials for “$20,000 a day which will include all of the expenses for Mr. Giuliani and his staff.” When the newspaper asked about his fee, Giuliani insisted he did not want to be paid and had done the legal work “out of my sense of commitment[...]I feel extremely bad that I’m portrayed as some kind of money-grubbing ambulance chaser,” said Giuliani, whose personal financial issues have also made headlines.
Rudy was the ambulance chaser who caught the ambulance.

And midway through TPM's account of these texts, a familiar character takes the stage.

As he spoke at the press conference that Vanity Fair dubbed “batshit crazy” and New York Magazine described as simply “insane,” a substance that appeared to be hair dye oozed down Giuliani’s face. Based on a text she sent Meadows while Giuliani’s event was underway, Ginni Thomas, a GOP activist and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was oozing tears of happiness. "Tears are flowing at what Rudy is doing right now!!!!????????” Ginni Thomas wrote. Meadows, seemingly unsure if Thomas was expressing joy, confusion, or despair at Giuliani’s behavior, replied: “Glad to help??” Thomas, who did not respond to a request for comment, clarified her own position in response: “Whoa!! Heroes!!!!”
Whoa!! Nutballs!!!!

Of course, three months later, when the Supreme Court quashed the Trump forces' last attempt to dragoon them into the seditious activities, Justice Clarence Thomas, Ginni Thomas' best friend and also her husband—with whom she never-ever-ever discusses any issue coming before the court—wrote of his disappointment with his colleagues. From AP:

Justice Clarence Thomas called the cases an “ideal opportunity” to address an important question whether state lawmakers or state courts get the last word about the manner in which federal elections are carried out. And he called it “befuddling” and “inexplicable” that his colleagues were declining to weigh in. “We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence,” he wrote. Thomas cited the expansion of mail-in voting as another reason to take the case and said “fraud is more prevalent with mail-in ballots.” Trump had made claims of massive fraud in the vastly expanded use of mailed in ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic, but courts found no evidence to substantiate those claims.
Move along. Nothing to see here."

Like herding cats, the GOP has to keep its crazy constituencies in line--the racists, fundamentalists, Christian nationalists, Qanoners, government-haters, freedumb-lovers, Muslim bashers, Gay-haters, conspiracy theorists, perpetually fearful and hateful, etc.,--so they can have enough votes to win office and do the bidding of their real masters, the obscenely wealthy! The Republican BigTent is an unholy alliance of groups that have nothing in common except they are crazy and deemed pariahs by the mainstream, yet without all of them, the GOP can't get sufficient votes to hold enough elected offices to do the bidding of the crazy, greedy, power-hungry, wealthy nutjobs who are really in charge and behind the party.
#GOPPartyOfRich
#GOPBigTentOfPariahs
#GOPGreedy

'This is insane': Ex-GOP insider slams Republicans for assailing the Constitution they once vowed to protect - Alternet.org https://www.alternet.org/trump-nick-fuentes-2658924350/?utm_medium=email&recip_id=462208&list_id=2

""Although conservative pundit Tim Miller is a former Republican insider, he has since become a blistering critic of the party he once belonged to — a party he believes that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have turned into a hotbed of hatred and authoritarian extremism. Miller, in a scathing yet humorous video for the conservative website The Bulwark, lays out some examples of MAGA Republicans attacking so many of the constitutional ideals they once espoused.

Miller opens the video, posted on December, by noting that Trump recently called for the U.S. Constitution to be suspended “so he can be installed as an unelected dictator.”

“This is insane,” Miller tells viewers. “For all the flaws of our other politicians, nobody in either party in my lifetime or my parents’ lifetime had proposed something as fundamentally un-American and radical as that. And it comes on the heels of his dinner with manic Nazi Kanye (West) and America’s leading virgin incel white nationalist livestreamer, Nick Fuentes.”"