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Post by the Scribe on Apr 4, 2020 9:35:59 GMT
U.S. seen as 'exporter of white supremacist ideology,' says counterterrorism official Sean D. NaylorNational Security Correspondent,Yahoo News•November 8, 2019 news.yahoo.com/america-seen-as-exporter-of-white-supremacist-ideology-says-us-counterterrorism-official-232420985.htmlWASHINGTON — After an upsurge in racially motivated attacks around the world, other countries are beginning to regard the United States as an exporter of white supremacism, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said Friday.
“For almost two decades, the United States has pointed abroad at countries who are exporters of extreme Islamist ideology,” Russell Travers, acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told an audience in Washington, D.C. “We are now being seen as the exporter of white supremacist ideology. That’s a reality with which we are going to have to deal.”
Travers said there is now a global movement of what he termed “racially motivated violent extremism,” or RMVE (pronounced “rem-vee”), fueled by a wide variety of motivations and facilitated by social media and other online communications.
“A large percentage of RMVE attackers in recent years have either displayed outreach to like-minded individuals or groups or referenced early attackers as sources of inspiration,” he said.
Jeff Schoep, former chairman of the National Socialist Movement, speaks during a rally at the state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark., Nov. 10, 2018. (Photo: Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
Travers cited as examples Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in two attacks in Norway in 2011; Dylann Roof, an American white supremacist who killed African-Americans in a church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015; and Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people in attacks on two mosques in New Zealand in March. The three attackers “have gained international reverence and are serving as an inspiration” for many like-minded white supremacists, “including those looking to plan or conduct attacks,” he said.
Having spent the years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, honing their skills at combating Islamist groups, U.S. counterterrorism officials are playing catch-up when it comes to the burgeoning white supremacist threat, according to Travers.
“We don’t fully understand how attackers are influenced and or what constitutes meaningful relationships between extremists,” he said. Unlike “relatively large, hierarchical” Islamist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State, racially motivated violent extremism “does not feature authoritative or structured organizations or a monolithic ideology,” he added. “Instead, it is dominated by lone actors and small cells who use the online space as a borderless safe haven.”
But there was one important lesson the U.S. officials learned in their fight against Islamist terrorism that they must bear in mind as they work to defeat white supremacism, according to Travers.
“In the case of the Islamist terrorist threat, we lost some control of the narrative” by allowing the idea to take among vulnerable Sunni populations “that the West is conducting a war against Islam,” he said. In dealing with racially motivated violent extremism, U.S. officials and their partners must “disaggregate,” Travers said, “appropriately dealing with violent white supremacist activity while not being perceived as painting with too broad a brush and impinging on legitimate right-wing political activity and free speech.”
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 4, 2020 9:36:43 GMT
Miller and the Duke Conservative Union helped co-member (White Nationalist leader) Richard Spencer, a Duke graduate student at the time, with fundraising and promotion for an immigration policy debate in March 2007. Spencer said in a 2016 media interview that he had mentored Miller at Duke. Describing their close relationship, Spencer said that he was “kind of glad no one’s talked about this”, for fear of harming Trump. The White Nationalist Websites Cited by Stephen MillerThe New York Times Katie Rogers and Jason DeParle,The New York Times 13 hours ago www.yahoo.com/news/white-nationalist-websites-cited-stephen-194055259.html
WASHINGTON — Peter Brimelow, founder of the anti-immigration website VDARE, believes that diversity has weakened the United States, and that the increase in Spanish speakers is a “ferocious attack on the living standards of the American working class.”
Jared Taylor, editor of the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance, is a self-described “white advocate” who has written that “newcomers are not the needy; they are the greedy.”
As a young Senate aide, Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s chief immigration adviser, referred to the two sources while promoting his anti-immigration views, suggesting deeper intellectual ties to the world of white nationalism than previously known.
“The heart of where these guys differ from neoconservatives and Republican orthodoxy is basically: ‘What is the American nation and what is the nature of American nationhood?’” Lawrence Rosenthal, the chair and lead researcher at the Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies at the University of California, said in an interview.
Stephen Miller, White House senior adviser, watches President Donald Trump and President Emmanuel Macron of France during a joint news conference at the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, Aug. 26, 2019. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times)
“It’s not based on ‘We hold these truths to be self evident.’ It’s based on ‘What were the color of the people who wrote those words?’”
A cache of Miller’s emails obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center shows Miller’s interest in disseminating some of the views of Brimelow and Taylor and their writers with the help of allies at Breitbart News.
The law center has labeled VDARE a “hate website” for its ties to white nationalists and publication of race-based science, and the Anti-Defamation League calls American Renaissance a “white supremacist journal.” Both sites approvingly cite Calvin Coolidge’s support for a 1924 law that excluded immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe, and praise “The Camp of the Saints,” a 1973 French novel that popularizes the idea that Western civilization will fall at the hands of immigrants.
Miller had no comment on the emails. The White House, which has publicly denounced “bigotry” on Miller’s behalf and equated the law center’s report to libel, did not respond to a request for comment.
But Katie McHugh — the former Breitbart editor who leaked the messages, some 900 emails sent from March 2015 to June 2016 — said in an interview last week that “it’s easy to draw a clear line from the white supremacist websites where he is getting his ideas to current immigration policy.”
McHugh was fired in 2017 for posting anti-Muslim tweets. She has since renounced white nationalist viewpoints and shared her emails with the Southern Poverty Law Center to “make amends,” Michael Hayden, the law center reporter with whom she initially shared the messages, said in an interview.
Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia who studies right-wing movements, said in an email that “both VDARE and American Renaissance are white nationalist organizations, who provide a pseudo-intellectual veneer to classic racism.”
Miller’s familiarity with white nationalist thinking predated his job as a staff aide to Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama. As a college student at Duke University, he worked with a fellow student, white nationalist Richard Spencer, to arrange for Brimelow to speak on campus.
The emails show a continued interest after his arrival in Washington. In the emails to Breitbart, a topic Miller referred to more than once was the Coolidge-era immigration law, which ushered in 40 years of lowered immigration levels with discriminatory quotas aimed at southern and Eastern Europeans, whom critics at the time attacked as nonwhite.
On Aug. 4, 2015, Miller sent an email supporting the idea of a complete ban on immigration “like Coolidge did,” an apparent reference to the 1924 law. As a result of those new “national origin quotas,” immigration fell by half and the arrival of Italians and Poles fell by 90%. Sessions, Miller’s boss at the time, was known for publicly praising Coolidge’s policies because he believed they had bolstered American wages.
The 1924 law endorsed by Coolidge is widely seen today as a symbol of bigotry and was heavily influenced by the eugenics movement and theories that immigrants from Eastern and southern Europe were genetically inferior.
Coolidge “embraced the so-called scientific argument that Italians and Eastern Europeans were genetically inferior,” Daniel Okrent, whose book “The Guarded Gate” is a history of the 1924 law. The law was disturbing, he said, not only because of the theories behind it but also because it prevented hundreds of thousands of would-be migrants from escaping the Nazis.
“Those people could have lived if they hadn’t locked the door,” Okrent said.
Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, whose work Miller has often referred to in White House policy discussions, said that Coolidge had a “complicated” legacy. “He reached the right result” — meaning low immigration — “but in the wrong way.”
But a recent article by Jerry Kammer of the immigration studies center, which advocates restricting immigration, says Coolidge behaved in an “odious” fashion in embracing the national origin quotas. In an interview, Kammer said citing Coolidge as a lodestar for the restrictionist movement was “an unfortunate and unwise and highly dubious association.”
“I think Stephen Miller has taken legitimate concerns about immigration to illegitimate extremes when he ties it to ethnicity and nationality,” he said.
In his communications with Breitbart, Miller does not explicitly endorse the national origin quotas, but praises Coolidge and his legacy.
He complains that “something tells me there’s not a Calvin Coolidge exhibit” at an expanding immigration museum. On June 2, 2015, he wrote that Immigration Heritage Month “would seem a good opportunity to remind people about the heritage established by Calvin Coolidge, which covers four decades of the 20th century,” an apparent reference to the period between 1924 and 1965 when immigration quotas were in effect.
There are dozens of references to the Coolidge era on American Renaissance.
In one email to McHugh, Miller writes approvingly about “The Camp of the Saints.” Chelsea Stieber, a specialist in French literature at Catholic University, said the approving reference is disturbing because the book makes the case against migration in explicitly racial terms.
“In white nationalist circles, it invokes the theory of the Great Replacement and the fall of the white West,” she said, referring to the theory that white civilization will be overrun by dark-skinned invaders from the developing world.
McHugh recalled a phone conversation in July 2015 in which Miller called her to discuss an article he had read on “AmRen.”
The article, “New DOJ Statistics on Race and Violent Crime,” was by Taylor, who noted that the Justice Department had begun reporting Latinos in a separate category on crime statistics “rather than lumping them in with whites.”
Taylor also wrote that the department had “long counted Hispanics as a victim category in its hate crime reports.”
“We look forward to their inclusion as a perpetrator category,” he added.
While Miller has long pushed the idea that immigration increases crime, decades of evidence suggest otherwise.
In an interview, Taylor said he did not know Miller personally and had never met him. Still, Taylor suggested that the kind of material Miller wanted to read about immigration policies did not exist on mainstream media sites.
“People with inquiring minds have to look elsewhere,” Taylor said, disputing the idea that he is a white supremacist, “and more power to those who have inquiring minds.”
Brimelow said his visit to Duke was the only time he and Miller had met. Miller also arranged for Peter Laufer, an author who wrote a book arguing for open borders with Mexico, to visit and debate Brimelow.
Laufer recalled sitting with Miller, Spencer and Brimelow before the debate and realizing that he had been invited to be “knocked down” for his beliefs.
“There is no question that these people were learning from each other, feeding off each other, and in concert in these viewpoints,” Laufer said.
Much of the emails’ content can be seen as foreshadowing the course that the Trump administration has taken under the influence of Miller. The nostalgia for Coolidge and all-white, northern European immigration of the past was echoed in Trump’s famous denunciation of immigrants from “shithole countries” and his calls for more Norwegians.
In a report on the administration’s proposed “public charge rule,” the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute concluded that it would shift migration away from Mexico and Central America and move it “toward other world regions, especially Europe.”
The central theme of “The Camp of the Saints,” another work Miller referred to in his communications with Breitbart, is that immigrants seek to exploit Western societies’ kindness — that a welcoming ethos is itself a threat.
That is a theme that Trump has advertised at mass rallies with his recitation of “The Snake,” a poem that he has turned into a parable of refugee treachery about a kindly woman who takes in a wounded reptile and is repaid with a venomous bite:
“I saved you,” cried that woman. “And you’ve bitten me even, why?“You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die.” “Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin. “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”
With Miller taking the lead, refugee admissions during the Trump administration have fallen by nearly three-quarters, to the lowest level since the modern program began in 1980.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
© 2019 The New York Times Company
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 4, 2020 9:37:38 GMT
quote author="@erik" source="/post/63321/thread" timestamp="1574174235"]I have been saying how dangerous a bastard Stephen Miller was from the beginning, and the only thing that I had ever heard others saying was something to the effect that "oh, he learned at the feet off Jeff Sessions".
I'm sorry, but that's garbage.
He didn't need former AG Beauregard to become a White Nationalist in a suit and a tie; it was ingrained in him, starting with his resentment of the African-American and Latino-American students he was surrounded by at Santa Monica High School. That he is a "perfect fit" for this administration kind of goes without saying. But let's not kid ourselves; he was a perfect fit for a White Nationalist mentality long before he ever knew Jeff Sessions, let alone Donald Trump. He just mindlessly hates anyone who is "different" from him, just like Trump, Sessions, and all the others; and he had it ingrained in him long before he ever became a figure of any note. Making it worse, of course, is that he tries to hide behind his being Jewish.
I have no apologies for hating the son-of-a-b**ch. But I knew long before now what he was about.[/quote]
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 4, 2020 9:38:20 GMT
I have been saying how dangerous a bastard Stephen Miller was from the beginning, and the only thing that I had ever heard others saying was something to the effect that "oh, he learned at the feet off Jeff Sessions". I'm sorry, but that's garbage. He didn't need former AG Beauregard to become a White Nationalist in a suit and a tie; it was ingrained in him, starting with his resentment of the African-American and Latino-American students he was surrounded by at Santa Monica High School. That he is a "perfect fit" for this administration kind of goes without saying. But let's not kid ourselves; he was a perfect fit for a White Nationalist mentality long before he ever knew Jeff Sessions, let alone Donald Trump. He just mindlessly hates anyone who is "different" from him, just like Trump, Sessions, and all the others; and he had it ingrained in him long before he ever became a figure of any note. Making it worse, of course, is that he tries to hide behind his being Jewish. I have no apologies for hating the son-of-a-b**ch. But I knew long before now what he was about.
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/stephen-miller-racist-ideology-donald-trump-white-house-adviser-emails-splc-a9205761.html
More disturbing is how the propaganda arm of the GOP aka FOX News (above and below video) and their talking heads speak glowingly of Miller and his actions. They even call him a genius. More like an evil genius but if Miller is what qualifies one to be a genius it is an insult to every genius that ever lived. Equally evil is FOX and their co agenda with the GOP and the new American conservatives. What exactly is their endgame?
This smacks of what happened in 1930's Germany wheras these cons are doing as much as they think they can get away with. But you know what saves us? The "ingrained" BUREAUCRACY of the USA. Lifetime patriotic Americans, (state dept., military, intelligence, the administrative state, etc.) many whose parents or they themselves were immigrants and understand what it is to be loyal to the USA Constitution and NOT any one president or any one political party. They STAY in their positions as the executive branch changes with elections (for the most part). It is therefore not surprising at how alarmed these people are with what is going on with the conservative movement in this country in the guise of the Republican Party.
GOP election modus operandi that systematically steal elections have exposed a huge flaw in our system that needs to be shut down. The ONLY way for that to happen is to have an unstoppable majority of Democrats, Liberals, Progressives and Conservatives with a conscience (if you can find any) that will hold a majority to change the system for the better in the next election. That will be extremely difficult with a compliant conservative controlled corporate mainstream media and a relentless right wing noise machine filled with reptilian brained ideologs that basically control the messaging to America.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 4, 2020 9:39:13 GMT
DEPLORABLES IN THE WHITE HOUSEObama aides deny they left behind nasty notes when they departed White House — in 2017 Christopher Wilson 3 hours ago www.yahoo.com/news/stephanie-grisham-obama-trump-transition-you-will-fail-165033730.html
Alumni of the Obama administration reacted with disbelief and outrage to a claim from White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham that incoming Trump administration officials found insulting notes left behind for them in their offices.
“We came into the White House, I’ll tell you something,” said Grisham during a local radio interview Tuesday morning, as reported by CNN’s Abby Phillip. “Every office was filled with Obama books, and we had notes left behind that said, ‘You will fail,’ ‘You aren’t going to make it.’”
She didn’t elaborate on what she meant by “Obama books.”
In the nearly three years since the presidential transition, no Trump administration officials have mentioned the notes or produced any photos that would support Grisham’s charge.
“This is another bald faced lie,” wrote Susan Rice, who served as national security adviser.
In a statement to NBC News responding to Rice’s tweet, Grisham clarified her statement, stating that she didn’t mean to suggest that the notes were left in every White House office, only in a press area.
“I’m not sure where her office was, and I certainly wasn’t implying every office had that issue,” Grisham wrote, referring to Rice’s office. “In fact, I had a lovely note left for me in the East Wing, and I tracked the woman down and thanked her. I was talking specifically about our experience in the lower press office — nowhere else. I don’t know why everyone is so sensitive!”
Additional officials who worked across the Obama administration strongly disputed Grisham’s claim on Twitter.
“100% false,” wrote Liz Allen, who worked as a deputy communications director. “I left a note wishing them good luck serving the American people and offering to be a resource.”
“This is a lie,” wrote Ben Rhodes, a foreign policy adviser for Obama. “If this happened I also don’t think the entire Trump staff would wait 3 years to tell us. Sad to see the WH press secretary fall this far.”
“I was there,” wrote Daniel Jacobson, who worked in the White House counsel’s office. “This is a complete and utter lie. Quite the opposite — we left them briefing books to try to help with the transition as much as possible.”
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham listens as President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Friday, Nov. 8, 2019, before boarding Marine One for a short trip to Andrews Air Force Base, Md. and then on to Georgia to meet with supporters. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Since taking office, President Trump has frequently complained about the “mess” he inherited from his predecessor, but generally in reference to domestic and international policy, not the conditions of the offices in the White House.
A report from the General Accounting Office in 2002 concluded that outgoing Clinton administration officials had caused damage amounting to $13,000 to $14,000 to White House offices before George W. Bush’s inauguration, including by removing the “W” keys from keyboards.
Grisham was named press secretary this summer, moving over from the office of the first lady after a history of misstatements. Grisham provided false information in 2018 about a controversial jacket worn by first lady Melania Trump and misstated the day of Trump’s 2016 visit to Scotland, which he claimed took place before the vote on the Brexit resolution but was actually the day after. Grisham’s predecessor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was found in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to have lied about the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Sanders’s predecessor, Sean Spicer, provided conflicting information on Comey’s May 2017 termination.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 4, 2020 9:39:57 GMT
I think the term dumfu*k says it all. Aubrey Huff Says He's Teaching Sons To Shoot Guns In Case Bernie Sanders Beats TrumpHuffPost Ron DickerHuffPostNovember 27, 2019 www.yahoo.com/huffpost/aubrey-huff-sons-guns-bernie-sanders-181338186.html
Aubrey Huff Says He's Teaching Sons To Shoot Guns In Case Bernie Sanders Beats Trump
Aubrey Huff batted left in his Major League Baseball career, but he tweets far right.
The former San Francisco Giant tweeted this week that he was teaching his 9- and 11-year-old sons to shoot in case Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wins the 2020 election because socialism will necessitate it. Sanders, vying for the Democratic nomination, has championed Medicare for All.
Huff included a photo of himself at a gun range with a target riddled by bullets apparently fired by his children.
“Getting my boys trained up on how to use a gun in the unlikely event @berniesanders beats @realdonaldtrump in 2020,” the 42-year-old wrote. “In which case knowing how to effectively use a gun under socialism will be a must.”
Huff, a staunch Trump supporter who won two World Series with the Giants, earned the mockery of two comedians. “This dumb f**k right here,” Kathy Griffin wrote. Tom Arnold chimed in: “Kathy Griffin just handed Aubrey Huff his ass.”
Huff, who last played in the majors in 2012, hit back. He defended the post as an example of educating his children about “safe gun practices.” He called Griffin a hypocrite because of her infamous photo shoot in which she held the bloodied fake head of Trump.
He also zeroed in on Arnold’s several divorces, writing, “If I were you I’d focus on hanging on to that 4th wife before you lose the rest of your money on alimony payments.”
Griffin kept firing away at the one-time Silver Slugger award winner, who, incongruously, has called on athletes to keep their political opinions to themselves.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost. 16,307
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 4, 2020 9:40:42 GMT
Trump impeachment hearing: Pro-Trump Infowars host who called for Obama to be lynched thrown out of inquiryThe Independent Clark Mindock, The Independent•December 9, 2019 www.yahoo.com/news/trump-impeachment-hearing-pro-trump-141500169.html
A host on the far-right US conspiracy and disinformation website InfoWars has been removed from the latest impeachment hearing by police, after interrupting House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler with pro-Donald Trump messages.
The interruption came from a host on the fringe conservative website who led a racist call earlier this year for the lynching of Barack Obama, America's first African American president.
The host was seen being led out by Capitol Police after the interruption on Monday, shortly after the start of the hearings in which politicians are to question the counsels hired by the House Intelligence Committee to spearhead questioning during earlier impeachment hearings.
Owen Shroyer, an Infowars host, disrupts the beginning of a House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing before being removed from police: AP "Americans are sick of your impeachment scam! Trump is innocent!" said the protester, Owen Shroyer.
Mr Shroyer had attracted attention to himself earlier this year with a racist call to lynch Mr Obama, whom he called "treasonous" during an interview with the far-right website Breitbart. He cited a conspiracy theory that has been pushed with no evidence by far-right actors as proof of the former president's alleged misdeeds.
"Folks, Obama was emailing Hillary Clinton on her illegal server under a secret name, that came out in emails. And he claimed he didn't know she had it. Barack Obama is a treasonous ... he belongs in jail. He belongs in Guantanamo Bay. I mean look, I'm not saying this should happen but Barack Obama, you know, find the tallest tree and a rope."
More follows...
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 4, 2020 9:41:24 GMT
Kansas cop admits McDonald’s coffee cup reading ‘F—ing Pig’ was fakeBy Tamar LapinDecember 30, 2019 | 10:36pm nypost.com/2019/12/30/kansas-cop-admits-mcdonalds-coffee-cup-reading-f-ing-pig-was-fake/
The message a local officer in Kentucky allegedly received on their McDonald's coffee cup Saturday morning. Facebook
The Kansas police officer who claimed he got a McDonald’s coffee with the words “F–ing Pig” scrawled on the cup resigned Monday after admitting the story was a hoax.
The 23-year-old cop, who wasn’t publicly identified, made the story up “as a joke,” Herington Police Chief Brian Hornaday told reporters at a news conference.
“This was completely and solely fabricated by a Herington police officer who is no longer employed with our agency,” Hornaday said.
Hornaday had originally written in a Facebook post Saturday that an employee at the Junction City McDonald’s wrote the expletive on an officer’s coffee cup, calling it a “black eye” on the community.
“This is now, absolutely, a black eye on law enforcement,” Hornaday told reporters Monday.
An investigation by Hornaday and McDonald’s found that no staffer at the fast-food eatery had written the missive. The owner of the McDonald’s had previously said that surveillance footage refuted the cop’s claims.
“In the investigation, we have found that McDonald’s and its employees did not have anything whatsoever to do with this incident,” Hornaday said.
Hornaday said the cop, who was employed by the department for two months, should have come forward before the incident became a national story.
McDonald's owner denies workers wrote hateful message on Kansas cop's coffee cup He declined to name the cop, a former military police officer with the US Army, citing the incident as a “personnel matter.”
“It’s not a matter of us not wanting to tell you who it is, because we have no reason whatsoever to protect the former officer,” Hornaday said.
The case was brought to the Dickinson County attorney, but no criminal charges are expected, Hornaday said.
Hornaday called the incident “an obvious violation of public trust” and an example “of what not to do.”
The original public post about the hoax on Hornaday’s private Facebook page had either been deleted by Monday night or was no longer public. The Herington Police Department Facebook page also appeared to have been deleted.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 4, 2020 9:42:26 GMT
Going back to LBJ (~53 years), there have been 25 years of Democratic presidents, and 28 years of Republican presidents.
In the 25 years of D presidents, there have been a total of 3 executive branch officials indicted, with 1 conviction, and 1 prison sentence.
In the 28 years of R presidents, there have been a total of 120 indictments of executive branch officials, 89 convictions, and 34 prison sentences.
Why only go back to LBJ? Because in 1965 he signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts into law causing all CONservatives in the Democratic Party to flee to and join up with the CONservatives inhabiting the Republican Party. Likewise, Liberals in the Republican Party switched to the Democratic Party. Fast forward 50 years and Donald J Trump perfectly embodies today's conservatism and the Republican Party.Chris Collins, First U.S. Lawmaker To Endorse Trump, Gets 26-Month Prison SentencePaul Blumenthal www.yahoo.com/huffpost/chris-collins-jail-sentence-224802066.html HuffPostJanuary 17, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC
A judge on Friday sentenced former Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), an early and staunch ally of President Donald Trump, to 26 months in prison after he pleaded guilty last September to conspiracy to commit securities fraud.
Collins, the first member of Congress to endorse Trump’s 2016 presidential bid, used his position as the largest shareholder in the Australian biotechnology company Innate Immunotherapeutics to illegally give other stockholders an inside tip that a test of the company’s main product had failed.
“You were a member of the [company’s] board ― that has legal significance. You owed a duty to Innate and you betrayed that duty,” U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick said during the sentencing, according to Matthew Russell Lee of InnerCityPress.com.
“It makes people believe the market is rigged,” Broderick added.
Federal prosecutors earlier this week urged a sentence of close to five years.
Collins cried as he spoke to the court shortly before his sentencing.
“I have no excuse. I tarnished my reputation,” he told the judge, as reported by The Washington Post.
“It’s hard to look at my wife ― she had her credit card canceled. My daughter had her brokerage account canceled. I apologize to the FBI for lying to them. I’ll be paying the consequence for that here momentarily,” Collins said.
Before the criminal investigation, Collins had used his Trump endorsement to raise his profile in Washington. He bragged about the clout he gained from his early backing of Trump, claiming it made him “significantly more visible.” And he was an early adopter of Trump’s bullying and blustering style, a copycat routine that has become popular throughout the GOP.
Collins, who represented a district that covers much of western New York, committed the crime that sent him to prison while he was visiting the White House for a June 22, 2017, congressional picnic. He received an email from the CEO of Innate Immuno announcing that the company’s main drug on which the company’s future hinged had failed a key test. Collins then called his son, another shareholder, from the South Lawn of the White House to tell him about the news and to plan for them to dump the stock.
The next morning Collins, his son and the father of his son’s fiancée sold their stock in the company before the drug test failure was announced and while a freeze on trading was in place for the company’s shares in Australian stock markets. They each saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling early. The company stock plunged 92% after Innate Immuno publicly announced the drug’s failed test.
Well before Collins broke the law, his odd position as the largest shareholder of Innate Immuno attracted attention. The Wall Street Journal and The Buffalo News both reported in January 2017 on suspicious trades Collins and other House Republican lawmakers made as Congress passed a bill that included provisions beneficial to Innate Immuno and other biotechnology firms. He also reportedly bragged to colleagues about how many “millionaires I’ve made in Buffalo.”
After seeing his political profile soar as an early backer of President Donald Trump, former Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) is headed to prison. (Photo: John Normile via Getty Images)
An investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics in 2017 found that Collins violated House ethics rules by providing nonpublic information to investors and visiting the National Institutes of Health in his official capacity to discuss Innate Immuno drug trials.
Collins, 69, was indicted and arrested for wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and lying to the FBI on Aug. 8, 2018. After his arrest, Collins initially said he would not run for reelection in 2018. But he reversed course, ran for his seat and won by less than one percentage point. He had won reelection in 2016 with 67% of the vote. His resignation from office became official last Oct. 1.
Collins was first elected to his House seat in 2012. A former mechanical engineer and business owner, he served as Erie County executive from 2007 to 2011.
Throughout the investigation into his illegal conduct, Collins struck a Trumpian pose as an innocent targeted as part of a “partisan witch hunt.”
He attacked The Buffalo News for “making up fake news on folks [the paper] can’t beat at the ballot box.” He called his then-colleague Rep. Louise Slaughter, a Buffalo-area Democrat who has since died, a “despicable human being” for filing an ethics complaint against him. And he attacked investigations into his activities as a “partisan witch hunt.”
In the wake of Collins’ guilty plea, his lawyers argued in court for a lenient sentence, saying that his actions were impulsive and that he has suffered enough by losing his political career.
Collins’ son and the father of his son’s fiancée also pleaded guilty in the case and await sentencing
Quickly joining Collins in early 2016 as Trump’s second official backer on Capitol Hill was then-Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) ― who also now faces prison time. Hunter pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws in December, gave up his House seat earlier this week and awaits sentencing. Like Collins, Hunter initially characterized the charges facing him as a “witch hunt.”
Reporter Carla Herreria contributed to this story.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 4, 2020 9:43:10 GMT
Evidently, FASCISTS AND CONSERVOFASCISTS don't like Socialists.Rodney Garcia Issues a WarningMontana lawmaker: Socialists should be shot or jailedAssociated PressFebruary 1, 2020, 5:52 PM MST www.yahoo.com/news/montana-lawmaker-socialists-shot-jailed-005240176.html BILLINGS, Montana (AP) — The Montana Republican Party on Saturday condemned a comment made by a state GOP lawmaker who said the U.S. Constitution calls for people who identify as socialists to be jailed or shot.
State Rep. Rodney Garcia made the comment Friday at a state party gathering when he spoke about being worried about socialists entering the government and being “everywhere” in Billings, the Billings Gazette reported.
Garcia stood behind his remarks on Saturday when asked by a reporter about them, though he couldn't point out where in the Constitution it says socialists are to be shot or jailed.
“They’re enemies of the free state,” Garcia said. “What do we do with our enemies in war? In Vietnam, (Afghanistan), all those. What did we do?”
Spenser Merwin, the executive director of the Montana Republican Party, said in statement the party wholeheartedly condemned Garcia's comments.
“Under no circumstance is violence against someone with opposing political views acceptable,” he said. ”It’s disappointing that this isolated incident took away from the weekend’s events which showcased the strength of our statewide candidates and the importance of the upcoming election.”
Montana Democratic Party chair Robyn Driscoll condemned Garcia's remarks.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 4, 2020 9:43:52 GMT
Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse of Trump Supporters on Impeachment | The Daily Show
Klepper Asks Trump Supporters: Who Won the Impeachment Fight? | The Daily Show
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 4, 2020 9:44:49 GMT
Masked white nationalists march in Washington with police escortReutersFebruary 8, 2020, 6:37 PM MST www.yahoo.com/news/masked-white-nationalists-march-washington-013740419.html
Masked Patriot Front members end demonstration peacefully in Washington
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Police escorted masked members of a white nationalist group on a march through Washington's National Mall on Saturday that Metropolitan Police said occurred without incident or arrests.
More than 100 members of the Patriot Front, dressed in khaki pants and caps, blue jackets and white face masks, shouted "Reclaim America!" and "Life, liberty, victory!" video of the march showed.
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the Patriot Front as a white nationalist group that broke off from a similar organization, Vanguard America, in the aftermath of the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
At that rally, self-described neo Nazi James Fields drove his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2018.
U.S. President Donald Trump drew criticism from his fellow Republicans as well as Democrats for saying that "both sides" were to blame for the deadly 2017 incident.
Video of Saturday's march in Washington posted on the News2Share Facebook page showed occasional hecklers, but there appeared to be no organized counter-protest movement waiting for the Patriot Front as the group marched from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol grounds and later a nearby Wal-Mart parking garage.
They were accompanied by dozens of police, some on bicycles, but it was unclear whether the group had obtained a permit for the march. A spokeswoman for District of Columbia Metropolitan Police said it had no record of a permit for the march. Capitol Police and the National Park Service could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said that the "First Amendment demonstration was peaceful with no incidents or arrests."
(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by David Gregorio)fin
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Post by heatwavedave on May 3, 2020 12:08:50 GMT
wow, these people are off the wall nuts
The "Best" Of Trump Supporters
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Post by the Scribe on May 3, 2020 13:00:26 GMT
uncle daddy presents:
Diehard Trump Fans Exposed on Rally Road Trip | NowThis 163,813 views•Feb 13, 2020
NowThis News
These diehard Trump fans took a 300-mile road trip via bus to the recent Milwaukee Trump rally. This is why they’re still on the president’s side.
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Post by the Scribe on May 4, 2020 12:06:21 GMT
Jordan Klepper vs. Trump Supporters | The Daily Show
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