No surprise that Lisa Benson, in her typically uneducated ignorance of economic context, wants to focus on the single factor of inflation — the TEMPORARY imbalance of supply with regard to consumer demand — caused by Trump’s devastation of our trade policy, tariff policy, infrastructure neglect and mishandling of the pandemic instead of the long-range booming consumer confidence, strong wage growth, plummeting unemployment, the most jobs created in the first year of a new president EVER in history, investment and capital markets finishing the year at record highs and a strong economic outlook due to infrastructure gains.
The only flaw in Democratic economic policy is their failure to communicate the current strength of the economy and the fast pace of recovery that results in inflation as recovery and demand outpace supply.
But then, unlike conservatives, we don’t have our own 100% wholly-owned captive media like Faux “News,” NoiseMax or OAN, and even the supposedly “mainstream” media, while it does strive towards a standard of journalistic balance, is 100% owned — every single major media outlet, whether broadcast, cable or print — by very wealthy billionaires and corporations representing the special interests of the wealthiest elites who want to hang onto their economic power.
Price gouging and profit taking are a large cause of the current inflation. Businesses are trying to make more money as they do at the cost of the people suffering. This is win win for large or wealthy businesses. While small businesses are going under more money for the large ones. They get more money, more power, more help from the governments, the only ones getting less are the people. Scottie
Businesses created the model that is the biggest contributor to this problem so they could make more profit. In the old days where product and service meant more than profit manufacturers would have a supply of what they needed to make a product readily stored for use. The makers of a item would stock the items parts in a warehouse. the ones that make the parts would have a supply of their needs, all up and down the chain. But in worshiping the god of more profit they got rid of the warehouses and extra inventory, instead going to a system of timed deliveries. Works great if the deliveries are on time no delays. But when there is a problem then the entire system shuts down. Locally the grocery story nearest me me had empty shelves in some spots. While other stores of their same company had those products with full shelves. I checked. Turned out the problem was a hold up in the shipments directed to their store and they had no back of the store storage to hold any amount of supply in. That equaled empty shelves but more profit because when they built the store they did not need to add the cost of the storage area, nor the costs to maintain it, fill it, use it, so on. The cult leader may be tRump but the long time god is profit at all costs.
The American People are all in favor of Biden’s agenda but the rich business owners are not.
We know exactly what Dr. King would say about the filibuster today, because he said it in 1963. pic.twitter.com/iRm6Sf8ea6
I'm extremely tired of the oxygen that the lab-leak hypothesis gets. If you wanted an article that lays out the actual evidence natural origins of SARS-CoV-2, here it is. Note that there is *no evidence at all* for a lab-leak. Me for @massivescihttps://t.co/oQal3IsMIw
— Dan Samorodnitsky (@d_samorodnitsky) May 26, 2021
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
“The clogged polling locations in metro Atlanta reflect an underlying pattern: the number of places to vote has shrunk statewide, with little recourse. Although the reduction in polling places has taken place across racial lines, it has primarily caused long lines in nonwhite neighborhoods where voter registration has surged and more residents cast ballots in person on Election Day.”
For Republicans that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Why so much skepticism and/or opposition to the most fundamental right in our democracy — the Right to Vote!
Like Sinema, I believe the cause of the Civil War was abolitionists not working hard enough to get slavers on board with anti-slavery reforms. If only they had talked about slavery more, and tried to find a compromise (perhaps involving Missouri) everything would've been solved.
The founding fathers would say, “What the hell is a filibuster?”
Projection. Every GOP accusation is an admission of guilt.
Today (1/13/21) the Michigan AG criminally referred, to the US Attorney for Michigan, the fake “electors” who forged electoral certificates as part of an apparent 5-state conspiracy to defraud the United States with respect to the 2020 election. The AG is bound to weigh in now.
Republicans are the party of theft. They all know voter suppression and gerrymandering are about stealing elections. They know the audits were about stealing elections. They know slowing the Post Office was about stealing elections.
The complicity and gaslighting, vis a vis, ‘stop the steal’, represent manifest diseased GOP morals/ethics.
Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. Your bigotry is showing. Again.
Trumpism = shameless, racist misogynists
Women in Texas: I’d like to have some privacy
Supreme Court: nope
The misogyny is so obvious.
I want everybody to remember that the Supreme Court has said the government doesn't have the authority to make people wear a mask when it later says it *does* have the authority to force women to give birth against their will.
Be kind. You don’t know what others are going through.
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
Fox News the media arm of the GQP, got caught using an image that is actually from a 2011 NPR story (photo #15) about residents fleeing the disaster area near the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Yet their viewers claim to be the smartest most informed. Scottie
At the hearing to again appoint him chairman of the FED, Jerome Powell admitted to Senator Warren that the high prices could be profit taking by companies. They were raising prices and charging more because they could. Inflation and profit taking / price gouging is world wide yet the right wing media hopes to pin it all on Biden. I don’t buy it. Scottie
If it is a federal election , it should be ” federalized “. What happened to the right-wing talking point that we should just let the free market work things out? Don’t pay attention to the fact that Republicans are making it harder for people to vote and giving themselves the power to easily overturn election results they don’t like. A perfect recipe for a dictatorship. Scottie
Get your shots, wear a mask, keep some distance. It’s really not all that difficult. Scottie
So the five Republican senators vs 1 Democratic one retiring means? Fact is members of both parties are either retiring, running for different offices, or have been redistricted out of their seat. This is nothing new nor unexpected. As of January 2022, 44 members of Congress—six members of the U.S. Senate and 38 members of the U.S. House—have announced they will not seek re-election. Twenty-nine members—six senators and 23 representatives—have announced their retirement. Five retiring Senate members are Republicans and one is a Democrat, and of the retiring House members, 18 are Democrats and five are Republicans. Fifteen U.S. House members are running for other offices. Four Republicans and four Democrats are seeking seats in the U.S. Senate, one Republican and two Democrats are running for governor, one Republican is running for secretary of state, one Democrat is running for mayor, and one Democrat and one Republican are running for attorney general. No U.S. Senate members are running for other offices. Scottie
Complete bullshit. Try restricting voting places so people can not reach them and if they do they have wait in line times of 8 to 12 hours. Try removing the places to get ID in areas of POC and making it as hard as possible to get one. Try having one drop box in highly populated Democratic areas. The fact is voter restrictions are happening and that is not a democracy. In a democracy the people vote for the people they want in elective office, in the Republican way of governing the elected office holder allows only their supporters to vote. Scottie
Is Steve Kelley so ignorant of history (or honest enough to be accurate as to historical context) that he does not understand how the parties reversed roles on social justice issues?
I will acknowledge the evils of my party’s past.
But today’s Democratic Party is…
Not the party of the KKKonfederacy
Not the party of George Wallace
Not the party of Bull Conner
.
and today’s TrumpubliQan cult is…
Not the party of Lincoln.
Not the party of Teddy Roosevelt.
Not the party of Eisenhower.
Not even the party of McCain or R-money.
The Democrats’ ugly racist PAST is the Republicans’ ugly racist PRESENT.
Once upon a time, the Democratic party was the conservative party that was pro-slavery, pro-racism and pro-anything that was bad for the American people, and the Republican party was the LIBERAL party of Lincoln.
Then some time went by, some things happened, and eventually, the parties switched ideological sides.
Only the trolls are dumb enough, or willingly ignorant enough to take your BS at face value. Scottie
The SCOTUS is pro corporate and profit while anti-government services for the public, and so they side with the GQP. What the supreme court turned down was not mask mandates but mandating business vaccinations through OSHA. Had congress or other means been used they would have been forced to agree with it. Scottie
The National Archives received documentation from Nevada’s Republican Party certifying their elector votes of the 2020 Presidential Election to former President Donald Trump, documents obtained by the 8 News Now I-Team indicate.
Despite the state’s real electors submitting the verified documentation for President Joe Biden, Nevada’s GOP went ahead with attempts to validate their elector votes. In December 2020, the I-Team reported Nevada Republican Party’s six electors signed paperwork signaling their support for Trump in a symbolic ceremony devoid of any legal merit and the event in Carson City coincided with the actual state-sanctioned tally on Dec. 14, 2020.
The certificate received by the National Archives looks much different than the official state-sealed one reads, “We, the undersigned, being the duly elected and qualified electors for president and vice president of the United States of America from the State of Nevada, do hereby certify six electoral votes for Trump.”
The state’s real election certification versus the one sent in by the Nevada Republican Party. (KLAS)
The outside of the envelope accompanying the documents is stamped and verified by the U.S. Postal Service, addressed and sent via certified mail to the National Archives from the rural town of Minden, Nevada. The USPS time stamps indicate the packet arrived in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 22.
The Supreme Court of Nevada and Gov. Steve Sisolak certified the election for Biden in November 2020. In certifying the results, the governor directed the electors from the winning presidential candidate’s party to cast their votes.
Nevada’s Electoral College met via Zoom during an official ceremony with the Secretary of State’s Office on Dec. 14. The electors cast their ballots and held them up so they could be seen.
Nevada’s six electors cast their votes for President-elect Joe Biden. (KLAS)
The constitutional process took place across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
A few hours after the official state process had ended, a video accompanied a tweet from the Nevada GOP, saying, “History made today in Carson City,” as footage showed Republican electors signing papers on a table. The event was live-streamed on a YouTube channel called “Right Side Broadcasting Network.”
“Our brave electors standing up for what is right and casting their electoral votes for @realDonaldTrump,” the state party’s Twitter account later tweeted. “We believe in fair elections and will continue the fight against voter fraud in the Silver State!”
Documents obtained by the I-Team on Wednesday indicate at least one set of the Republican-written electoral votes for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were sent to the National Archives.
The Republican ceremony on Dec. 14 was not a state-sanctioned electoral vote meeting and has no legality in the actual process. No state can submit more than one set of electoral votes.
The Nevada Republican Party sent the federal government documentation certifying the election for former President Donald Trump, even though the state’s real electors had already done the same, documents obtained by the 8 News Now I-Team indicate. (KLAS)
When the I-Team asked the National Archives in Dec. 2020 about receiving the documents, a spokesperson pointed back to the official state-signed certificate, which says Democratic electors in Nevada won and cast their six electoral votes for Biden.
A spokesperson for the National Archives said they could not comment on any “communication with private individuals.”
In a statement after the event, Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald said the party’s electors convened in Carson City due to ongoing legal battles seeking to overturn the election results.
“The people of Nevada did not have a fair election due to the irregularities and fraud seen throughout the state,” McDonald said. “With ongoing challenges and evidence left to be investigated, we must submit our electoral votes for the rightful victors and allow Congress to make a determination.”
“With disturbing evidence of voter fraud in the state, including double voting, illegal voting, deceased voters casting ballots, and more, there is a legitimate concern over the rightful victor in the Silver State,” the statement continued. “A court of law has failed to meaningfully evaluate the evidence and our law enforcement agencies and government officials have failed to investigate. This left our electors no choice but to send their votes for President Trump to Congress to make a determination as to who is the rightful victor of Nevada between the dueling votes.”
Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, did not have a comment on the Republican event at the time.
The event had no legal standing. Biden won Nevada by more than 33,000 votes.
Nevada’s six Republican Party electors cast symbolic votes for President Donald Trump. The votes have no legal merit as the state’s actual electors cast their votes for President-elect Joe Biden. (Twitter/KLAS)
A review of the reports found 10 possibly deceased voters had ballots cast in their names, the report said, citing data from the Office of Vital Statistics.
In one case, Donald “Kirk” Hartle, who told the I-Team last year that someone had stolen his deceased wife’s ballot and voted, in fact voted himself, officials said.
An envelope accompanying the documents indicates the packet was sent via certified mail to the National Archives from rural Minden, Nevada, later that day. It arrived in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 22. (KLAS)
Rosemarie Hartle, of Las Vegas, died in 2017 at age 52 from breast cancer, Kirk Hartle, told the I-Team after the November election. A ballot for Rosemarie was issued in October 2020 and later received by the county, but Kirk said the ballot never came to his house. The I-Team found even though Rosemarie died in 2017, her name appeared on the active voter list.
The I-Team was first to report that prosecutors were charging Kirk Hartle in October 2021. In a plea agreement, Kirk Hartle pleaded guilty to one charge of voting more than once in the same election, which is a category D felony. Category D felonies carry a maximum prison sentence of four years.
As part of the plea deal, Hartle avoided prison time and was placed on probation. If he stays out of trouble for a year, he will be able to withdraw his plea and instead plead guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit voting more than once in the same election.
Rosemarie Hartle’s ballot was one of two cited by Nevada Republicans and national party leaders as evidence of voter fraud in Nevada.
“Dead people voted in Clark County,” Matt Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union, said in a news conference after the election last year. “We have two examples that we have talked about and want to talk about today. One is the death of Rosemarie Hartle in 2017.”
The other allegation Schlapp referenced appears to have not been intentional, the I-Team confirmed last year.
Neither the Nevada GOP nor Schlapp have responded to repeated requests for comment on the Hartle case. A spokesperson at the Secretary of State’s Office said staff worked a combined 240 hours on the Hartle case.
It can take years for voter fraud elections to end in charges. There are cases from the 2016 election that are still making their way through court.
Voter fraud is a felony and carries a fine and jail time.
Cegavske’s party censured her for defending the election, which she oversaw.
The I-Team reached out to the Nevada GOP again on Wednesday for comment.
The Nevada Attorney General’s Office declined to comment.
In a campaign ad, Nevada gubernatorial candidate Michele Fiore steps out of a Ford F-150 with a handgun holstered on her hip and tells viewers she was one of the first elected officials to endorse Donald Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
“You better believe I was attacked for it,” Fiore says, affirming her commitment to the former president as a country rock-style guitar riff plays in the background. She hopes Trump is watching.
In addition to purchasing ads in Nevada media markets like her competitors, Fiore is investing campaign funds to air her 60-second segment in Palm Beach, Florida, where the former president spends winters at his Mar-a-Lago club.
Fiore first appeared on JMG in 2015 when she declared that she would like to shoot every Syrian refugee in the head, saying, “I’m OK with putting them down, blacking them out, just put a piece of brass in their ocular cavity and end their miserable life. I’m good with that.”
Fiore launched her gubernatorial campaign with a video that shows her “shooting” vaccine mandates, voter fraud, and critical race theory. That same “Lady Trump” ad is now running in Palm Beach in the hope of landing Trump’s endorsement.
Smart story from @metzsam about a Nevada gubernatorial candidate who is running her campaign ads not just in Nevada, but in Palm Beach, Florida.
She hopes former President Donald Trump—at his Mar-a-Lago club—is watching. https://t.co/NjiC8NUBAk
Attorneys representing national Republican groups are using the arrest of a Donald Trump supporter and alleged voter fraud in one of Florida’s biggest GOP strongholds to defend a controversial election bill pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Lawyers working for the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee late last week asked a judge overseeing a legal challenge to the controversial Florida voting law to take notice of three incidents of voter fraud that had surfaced in Florida over the last two years. The court filing has not previously been reported.
One of the cases cited involved a central Florida woman who pleaded no contest in December to charges that she had turned in fake voter registration forms on behalf of registered voters. When authorities first arrested Cheryl Hall in March 2020, news reports noted that she had posted pictures of herself on Facebook with DeSantis, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and Sean Hannity. The New York Times reported she had life-sized cutouts of Trump and former first lady Melania Trump in the window of her house.
“Fraud is fraud, no matter who commits it or what party they prefer,” said Chris Hartline, a spokesperson for the NRSC. “Our goal is maximum participation and zero fraud. That’s why we’re fighting the Democrats in court to defend common-sense election integrity measures put in place by Republican legislatures across the country.”
Voting rights and civil rights groups have filed a legal challenge to the voting law passed by Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature and the case is set to go to trial in a Florida federal court in late January.
The measure put in new limits on drop boxes and mail-in ballots, including a two-ballot limit on how many mail-in ballots someone could gather and turn in on behalf of the elderly or sick and disabled voters. The limit does not apply to immediate family members.
Democrats scoffed at Republicans highlighting their own members allegedly violating election laws. State Sen. Gary Farmer, a Broward County Democrat and attorney who strenuously opposed Florida’s new voting law, said the filing by Republicans “is not even relevant or material.”
“The ultimate irony here is the whole ‘Stop the Steal’ movement is actually the group violating election law and trying to take away the system for counting votes,” Farmer said.
Florida was just one of several GOP-controlled states that enacted voting restrictions in the aftermath of Trump’s loss and his unsubstantiated complaints about voter fraud, although it isn’t as restrictive as laws passed in Georgia and Texas.
Republicans contended that they were enacting the law to head off potential problems in the future. But a raft of internal emails and text messages obtained by POLITICO showed GOP lawmakers drafted the legislation with the help of the Republican Party of Florida’s top lawyer — and that a crackdown on mail-in ballot requests was seen as a way for the GOP to erase the edge that Democrats had in mail-in voting during the 2020 election.
The League of Women Voters of Florida and the NAACP, as well as other groups, contend that the law unfairly harms elderly, disabled and minority voters. The case has attracted widespread attention from more than a dozen Democratic attorneys general as well as the administration of President Joe Biden.
Lawyers for GOP groups that intervened in the federal lawsuit have tried to present evidence to justify the rationale behind the law even though legislators did not really cite any incidents while pushing for the bill.
U.S. Chief Judge Mark Walker, who is overseeing the case, early last week blocked the introduction of a December report prepared by a Florida International University professor. The report highlighted several examples of alleged voter fraud, including the recent arrest of four people from the retirement mecca The Villages, who are accused of casting multiple ballots in the 2020 presidential election. The report also cited a case where a central Florida town council election was reversed after the discovery of two illegal votes.
The pending federal trial will occur just as legislators are expected to consider additional election-related bills during Florida’s legislative session that started on Tuesday. DeSantis wants to spend nearly $6 million in the coming year to create a new election police to investigate voter fraud and other election law violations. Both Senate President Wilton Simpson and House Speaker Chris Sprowls said they were open to considering the proposal, but neither leader gave a ringing endorsement either.
Cheryl Hall, a 63-year-old and very ardent Republican whose ranch house in Clermont sports life-size cutouts of Donald and Melania Trump and a MAGA poster in the window, was charged last week with 10 felony counts of submitting false voter registration forms. On at least 10 forms traced to Ms. Hall, officials said, the party affiliations of already-registered Democrats and Independents had been switched to Republican. More than 100 others that may be tied to her contained missing or bogus data such as wrong birth dates.
Ms. Hall was a canvasser for Florida First Inc., a recently created nonprofit that is financed at least in part by a dark-money group formed by Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, and other Trump associates. Her Facebook page was festooned with photographs — some of which have been recently removed — of her posing with conservative luminaries, such as Donald Trump Jr., Sean Hannity, Roger J. Stone Jr. and the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
Hall pleaded no contest in December 2021 and was sentenced to one year of probation.
Yet a black woman who asked if she was eligible to vote because she was just out of prison was given a provisional ballot that was never counted, she was sentenced to five years in prison. Her name is Crystal Mason and she was in Texas. You should look her story up. Talk about open racism and different standards of justice. Scottie
Scottie's Playtime 
No surprise that Lisa Benson, in her typically uneducated ignorance of economic context, wants to focus on the single factor of inflation — the TEMPORARY imbalance of supply with regard to consumer demand — caused by Trump’s devastation of our trade policy, tariff policy, infrastructure neglect and mishandling of the pandemic instead of the long-range booming consumer confidence, strong wage growth, plummeting unemployment, the most jobs created in the first year of a new president EVER in history, investment and capital markets finishing the year at record highs and a strong economic outlook due to infrastructure gains.
The only flaw in Democratic economic policy is their failure to communicate the current strength of the economy and the fast pace of recovery that results in inflation as recovery and demand outpace supply.
But then, unlike conservatives, we don’t have our own 100% wholly-owned captive media like Faux “News,” NoiseMax or OAN, and even the supposedly “mainstream” media, while it does strive towards a standard of journalistic balance, is 100% owned — every single major media outlet, whether broadcast, cable or print — by very wealthy billionaires and corporations representing the special interests of the wealthiest elites who want to hang onto their economic power.