Politics Random, Random

[ti-amie]

[ponchi101]

Why do the democrats keep believing that the GOP is at its end? They hold 50 seats in the senate, are just a few seats away from a majority in congress.
Why are dems delusional?

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

[Togtdyalttai]

I'm not including the full list. They go into detail on a few but mostly link to articles about the rest.

57 GOP State And Local Officials Were At The Capitol Insurrection

At least 57 state and local Republican officials attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington that turned into a deadly insurrection, according to an updated HuffPost tally. Almost all of them are resisting calls to resign.

They traveled from 27 states for the “Stop the Steal” demonstration near the White House. A couple of officials even gave speeches, warming up the crowd for then-President Donald Trump, who took the stage and regurgitated lies about the election results before instructing the “Make America Great Again” mob to march on the U.S. Capitol.

Late last month, after identifying an initial 21 state and local GOP officials at the rally — among them a QAnon conspiracy theorist, a self-described member of a far-right militia and a man who once declared that “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat” — HuffPost received emails from readers across the country identifying the additional 36 officials in this new tally.

Some of the reader emails were urgent — “PLEASE, PLEASE REVISE YOUR ARTICLE TO REFLECT THESE INSURGENT SEDITIONISTS PLEASE!” read one — underscoring how communities across the country are still grappling with the fallout from the siege of the U.S. Capitol. Many are hoping that these officials will somehow face consequences for their actions.

Nearly all 57 are facing calls to resign. Yet only two men, both of whom were arrested for their role in the riot — a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates and a secretary of the California Republican Assembly — have actually stepped down.

Elsewhere, a Virginia state senator was censured and stripped of committee assignments. Two other censure attempts — of a city councilwoman and a school board member in California — were voted down. In Texas, a Pizzagate-conspiracy-theory-believing field organizer was fired.

In most cases, the GOP officials have brushed aside calls to resign. “For a call to go out seeking my resignation is beyond the pale and reeks of cancel culture,” said Rob Socha, a city councilman in Hillsdale, Michigan. (Incidentally, at least four of the 57 GOP officials invoked “cancel culture” or being “canceled” while dismissing calls that they step down.)

All across the country, accountability feels hard to find, including in Washington itself, where a Senate impeachment trial against Trump for inciting the insurrection is all but assured to end in a party-line vote for acquittal. (Trump’s lawyers have also invoked “cancel culture” during the proceedings.)

In the mob on Jan. 6, according to HuffPost’s analysis, were, at least, 16 Republican members of state houses or assemblies, four state senators, a state attorney general, six county commissioners, seven city council members, two mayors, three school board members, two state GOP chairs, two prosecutors and a slew of other officials and party functionaries. The group also included an extremist sheriff from Oklahoma who discussed harming members of Congress, a town council member from Massachusetts who is closely affiliated with the violent neo-fascist gang the Proud Boys and a county commissioner from Florida who once discussed beheading liberals.

Only a few breached the Capitol property itself, with four GOP officials having since been arrested on charges including “knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds” and disorderly conduct. The rest of the officials have since largely condemned the violence that occurred that day, insisting they were nowhere near the chaos or claiming they’d already returned to their hotels or boarded buses home before the rioters started ransacking the seat of American democracy, leading to the deaths of five people.

Many have since sought to avoid responsibility for their part in it all. Of the 57 GOP officials identified as being at the rally, afterward at least 20 pushed the false conspiracy theory that “antifa,” or leftist anti-fascists, actually started the violence — a claim that’s been rendered increasingly absurd with the arrests of about 200 Trump supporters since Jan. 6.

Meanwhile, Republicans continue to cast the Capitol rioters as a lunatic fringe who do not represent the party. But the party’s complicity comes into clearer focus each day, as do the demographics of those who traveled to Washington on Jan. 6: It was an overwhelmingly white, heavily armed, petit bourgeois and middle-aged mob marching alongside dyed-in-the-wool white nationalists and other extremists, as well as dozens of cops, all with a single-minded focus on keeping their perceived political enemies — Democrats — from acquiring power.

It was a perfect representation of the GOP.

Here are the 57 state and local Republican officials who were at the Jan. 6 rally, including one official whose attendance had previously gone unreported. (This list does not include the federal lawmakers in attendance.)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/57-gop-o ... 8289fb90a6

[ti-amie]

With Trump gone, CNN pulls the plug on White House press briefings
Different rules for Dems

Eric Boehlert

After creating new programming rules for the Trump administration and airing virtually every minute of every White House press briefing live and in its entirety, CNN has quietly cut the cord with the new Democratic administration.

Just one month into President Joe Biden's term, the all-news cable channel last week stopped airing the daily White House press briefings. Perhaps the events weren't entertaining enough, as White House spokesperson Jen Psaki has routinely declined to insert Biden into cultural war debates, refused to castigate reporters, and won’t make stuff up in the name of partisan warfare, the way her Republican predecessors did.

Instead, Psaki has answered questions as best she can about White House policy, while treating journalists with respect, instead of mocking them in search of cheap political points.

That's no longer considered must-see TV at CNN. Fox News also stopped airing the briefings, which is completely expected. MSNBC as of last week was still airing the live Q&A's from the White House.

CNN's move represents one of the most dramatic ways the press has changed the way it covers Biden, as compared to Trump. Suddenly gone is the nonstop, unfiltered coverage of White House briefings, which defined cable news during the past four years.

In January 2017, the rules changed overnight when Trump was inaugurated and suddenly the media sessions were treated as breaking news events. That, despite the fact that during the final six months of Barack Obama's presidency, just three percent of daily White House press briefings aired live, according to Media Matters.

In other words, Obama briefings were not aired. Trump's were. Now, Biden's are not. So much for liberal media bias.

here were no blockbuster stories or public crises unfolding back in early 2017. It was simply the D.C. press collectively deciding that every Trump utterance and each one of his administration's briefings had to be carried live, which meant hundreds of hours of free airtime.

That brand of obedient programming led to a breathless mindset more synonymous with a wartime culture — Everybody stop what you’re doing, the White House is about to make a statement! There was no justification for the nonstop coverage, especially when the briefings were built on deceits, designed to foil honest inquiries.

Early on, reporters knew the Trump White House press briefings were a sham and a waste of time. In June 2017, CNN's Jim Acosta called the events "useless" and "pointless" because so little relevant information was being given to reporters.

And from May 31 that year, on CNN [emphasis added]:

ALISYN CAMEROTA: So then Sean Spicer goes to the podium with the press; and he can't confirm or comment on the questions that the press has about Jared Kushner and whether or not Jared Kushner tried to set up this back channel. So I mean, at what point -- why is Sean Spicer holding these press briefings? You know? What's the point of these?

DAVID GREGORY: There's really no point. And what's unfortunate for Sean Spicer is that the White House press secretary position under President Trump doesn't have credibility.

That same day, CNN’s Dylan Byers detailed just how little substance then-White House spokesperson Spicer delivered at the briefings: “For two days in a row, since returning from President Trump's trip abroad, the White House press secretary has held uncharacteristically short press briefings in which he claimed not to know the answer to questions, outsourced questions to other officials or dismissed the premise of questions entirely.”

That was January 2017. CNN for the next four years continued to air virtually every White House press briefing during Trump's term. It wasn't until February 2021, with a new Democrat president inside the Oval Office that CNN decided press briefings were no longer newsworthy.

Even more unforgivable was the fact that Trump's pandemic briefings were aired all last year. Every time Trump addressed the novel virus and America's unfolding pandemic, he made things worse with his steady stream of reckless contradictions, lies, and misinformation. One low point was when Trump used a television briefing to suggest Americans inject bleach into their bodies to fight off Covid-19, a deadly suggestion. This, while Trump was simultaneously lying about dismantling the White House's pandemic team, accused hospital workers of stealing much-needed surgical masks, and told governors on a conference call that he hadn't heard any complaints about there being a shortage of coronavirus tests.

Another briefing moment of shame came in April when Trump hosted one of the most bizarre televised performances by a sitting president. The planned rant featured a campaign-style commercial that aired in the briefing room and attacked the media as well as Trump's critics who had hammered him over the administration's botched handling of the pandemic. Immediately following the meltdown, CNN anchor John King admitted, "That was propaganda aired at taxpayer expense in the White House briefing room."

So why did CNN keep airing future briefings?

More importantly, why did CNN decide the time to stop airing them was when a new Democratic president took office?

https://pressrun.media/p/with-trump-gon ... TApHU4vX70

[ti-amie]

And this is how CNN's reporters are treated.

[ti-amie]

[ponchi101]

Scary days in the USA. let's see what incendiary statements Tiny says during the weekend. It could be dangerous.

[patrick]

Yes, indeed. Something may happen a week after 45 speak

[JazzNU]

There's word of something happening next week that has kept the National Guard in place in DC. Not sure if this will influence that or not. But that's been the main worry.

[patrick]

If I recall, QAnon is saying 45 will be returning to Prez on March 4th.

[ponchi101]

The CPAC looney show is example #1 that the man is anything but finished. By comparison, North Korea is indifferent to Kim Yung Um.

[the Moz]

the Donald should hone his 2024 run with some freelance détente. Maybe use Bush 43's 'Axis of evil' as a stepping off point