“They will be punished.”
Trump’s minions have now all been schooled at Trump University.
Trump Concedes, Throws Minions under Bus
Month: January 2021
Q-anon Cracker Mastermind Speaks
Continue reading “Q-anon Cracker Mastermind Speaks”Hours after supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol, several of his allies in Congress and the media baselessly claimed anti-fascist provocateurs were to blame for the violence.
Some suggested, without evidence, that the crowd backing Trump’s efforts to overturn the election was infiltrated by antifa. Antifa stands for “anti-fascist,” and it is not a group but a broad coalition of activists.
Others focused on specific protesters who forced their way inside the Capitol and were shown in photographs, such as a bare-chested man who wore face paint and a horned fur cap.
“These are NOT Trump supporters,” said one Jan. 6 Facebook post. “Antifa THUGS.” The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
In Other News: Arctic Wildlife Refuge Sale is a Dud
More evidence of the ongoing downsizing of the oil industry.
Arctic under severe threat, but more and more from climate change, less and less from Oil/gas interests, going forward.
Continue reading “In Other News: Arctic Wildlife Refuge Sale is a Dud”In a blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to fossil fuel development, only half of the oil and gas leases offered for sale Wednesday received bids, and all but two of those came from the state of Alaska itself.
Only two companies, neither of them major oil producers, made bids to acquire 10-year rights to explore and drill for oil on two tracts totaling about 75,000 acres. A state-owned economic development corporation, offering the minimum of $25 an acre, was the sole bidder on the other tracts, totaling about half a million acres. The rights to another 400,000 acres remained unsold.
Once billed as a potential windfall that, over time, could bring in close to a billion dollars for the federal Treasury, in all the sale netted less than $15 million, with half of that going to the state.
Both the financial results, and the lack of interest from major companies, are quite likely a disappointment to the Trump administration, and to Alaska officials who have long favored oil development for the jobs and revenue it could bring.
President Trump made opening part of the 19-million-acre refuge in northeast Alaska a centerpiece of his program for developing more domestic production of fossil fuels.
Chad Padgett, Alaska state director for the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Interior agency overseeing the sale, acknowledged that financially, the results “might not meet some of the targets some folks think it should.” But he hailed the sale as a success.
“Obviously it’s a historic day for the nation and a historic day for Alaska,” Mr. Padgett said in a news conference following the sale in Anchorage. “It reflects an interest in the further development of Alaska’s energy resources.”
But the outcome was ridiculed by environmental groups and others who had long opposed it.
“This lease sale was an epic failure for the Trump administration and the Alaska congressional delegation,” Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, said in a statement. “After years of promising a revenue and jobs bonanza they ended up throwing a party for themselves.”
Autumn Hanna, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group in Washington, D.C., said that the way the lease sale was promoted as a major revenue generator “was always a far-fetched fantasy and these results prove it.”
How Our Info-Ecosystem Was Poisoned
It’s not like these Q-anon cracker bozos are listening to NPR and just coming up with different conclusions than normal people.
They are living in a different world.
Continue reading “How Our Info-Ecosystem Was Poisoned”Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: As an investigative reporter, you’ve written a book that takes readers into the heart of the institutional network that connects the Religious Right to the NRA, the Federalist Society, right-wing media, and the Republican Party. It’s a wild ride. What got you started on the path that made it possible for you to write this book?
Anne Nelson: I wrote Shadow Network out of a sense of civic duty. I observed some trends in our national life that were anti-democratic and detrimental to our public welfare. I’m deeply concerned by the epidemic of gun violence in our schools, the growing disdain for science and fact-based reporting, and, gravest of all, the campaigns against climate science and environmental protections. My research gave me some insight into the underlying mechanics that achieved these measures, and I dropped my other projects in 2016 to document them in this book.
As someone raised in the Southern Baptist church, I was struck by the way you see so much of the extremism in American life today rooted in the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s. Why was that struggle within America’s largest Protestant denomination so important to what would follow in public life?
It is indeed extraordinary that individuals connected to the Southern Baptist Convention should play such an outsized role in our national life. I see three major factors. The first is that, over a period when mainline Protestant denominations were shrinking in membership and influence, the Southern Baptist Convention was growing and exerting increasing influence over other evangelical sects.
The second is that the Southern Baptist Convention is extremely well represented in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, which, combined, amount to a virtual petro-state in terms of the oil industry’s sway over economic and political life, and there’s been a symbiotic relationship between the Baptists and the oil interests of the region.
Third, the Southern Baptist Convention was founded to defend slaveowners before the Civil War. I don’t see the issue of race playing out in the same way, but I do perceive many echoes of Civil War-era resentment of federal authority in its culture.
Same here. Not least in the ways this movement has focused on “state’s rights.” Paul Weyrich, the key organizer of the Council for National Policy (CNP) in its beginnings, saw the importance of state governments to his goal of subverting representational democracy. What has this movement done in statehouses to ensure its agenda can move forward without popular support?
The movement I describe in Shadow Network has devoted major resources and energy to winning state-level elections, including state legislatures. It is common for them to pilot bills in certain states, to leverage them to others through organizations such as the State Policy Network and the American Legislative Exchange Council. That’s one reason we’re seeing so many “copycat” bills in areas such as limiting women’s reproductive rights and gun control.
I noticed when Russian agent Maria Butina was arrested, people were asking why she had so many connections with both the NRA and the Religious Right. Short answer: The CNP. Can you talk about the NRA and the role it plays in the CNP?
Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the National Rifle Association, is a leading member of the Council for National Policy. The NRA claims some 5 million members and mobilizes them in the interests of the CNP’s agenda. The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action is the organization’s lobbying arm. Its cellphone app uses the Koch brothers’ data platform i360 to mobilize and equip members to conduct Get Out the Vote campaigns for gun rights supporters, to lobby local and national government officials, and conduct door-to-door canvassing in electoral campaigns. The app’s geofencing capability convenes NRA supporters for social interactions in gun shops and other locales.
What Made Them So Crazy?
30 years of deliberate falsehoods spun out by right wing media, for one thing.
Misinformation kills.
More below, while most of us were sleeping the House almost had a bench-clearing brawl when one member spoke the simple truth.
If This Holds, A Change is Gonna Come
The Numbers are Coming in
It’s Not a Party, it’s a Suicide Cult
If You Love this Country, Vote
Nice spot for Protect Our Winters from Director/Climber Jimmy Chin
Conspicuous Correlation between Climate Denial and Sedition
I’ve pointed out the strong correlation between climate denial, racism, and misogyny. Turns out deniers are a treasony bunch as well.
UPDATE:
Obviously these folks thought what they were doing was a sensible exercise in self promotion, and building their own brand, either as candidates, or perhaps as future Fox pundits. They are forever stained.
I’ve pointed out the strong correlation between climate denial and, for instance, racism, many times.
Same story with Misogyny, homophobia, and a host of other social pathologies.
Let’s just do a quick survey of climate science positions among the 12 Senators unwilling to accept the democratically conducted majority vote of the American people.
Ted Cruz, (R- Texas) of course, might be the Senate’s leading climate denier.
Ron Johnson,(R – Wisconsin):
James Lankford (R – Oklahoma)
Continue reading “Conspicuous Correlation between Climate Denial and Sedition”Lankford rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, calling it a “myth.” In 2018, he strongly criticized the National Science Foundation for funding projects that seek to increase reporting on climate change in weathercasts, saying it “is not science—it is propagandizing.”