In a blizzard of pretrial briefs Friday, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s attorneys are seeking to have the congressman’s full statement to the FBI played for jurors — both to show the repetitive questioning of government agents and the idea that Fortenberry was simply confused, rather than lying to agents.
Attorneys for the embattled Fortenberry, 60, also want to call an expert to testify to the fallibility of memory, especially in older adults. And his defense team wants to delve into the purported political leanings of the lead prosecutor.
Fortenberry, who has represented eastern Nebraska’s 1st District since 2005, is charged with three felonies — two counts of making false statements to federal agents and one count of seeking to conceal the source of $30,000 in “conduit” political contributions from a 2016 California fundraiser.
Read the full article. The illegal donation came from a Nigerian man who reportedly shares Fortenberry’s interest in protecting Christians from persecution in the Middle East.
On the misleading right wing cartoons comment sections I go to one of the constant refrains is how confused and befuddled Biden is. They claim that he is senile or has Alzheimer’s constantly. Yet here is one of their own using that as an excuse for lying to the FBI. Now think about that, the lawmaker is claiming he is too old and confused to know he was lying. Then why is he still in the congress?
Saturday’s edition of Unfiltered with Dan Bongino on Fox News could have used some filtering with regards to an egregiously inaccurate graphic aired during a monologue on unhealthy cities.
In a segment designed to portray large cities run by liberal politicians as unsafe and unhealthy, Unfiltered showed a map of the U.S. that highlighted the “Top Ten Most Unhealthy U.S. Cities.”
The only problem is, the graphic actually showed the ten healthiest cities – or, nine of them anyway – according to the very source that Fox News cited.
“Let’s look at some major policy areas, right?” said Bongino. “The economy, healthcare, education, public safety. Where are economies struggling right now? Inner cities run exclusively and monopolistically by garbage Democrat politicians who don’t give a damn about people.”
Bongino lamented that many cities haven’t had Republicans at the helm for decades.
“You look at some of the health outcomes in these inner cities the Democrats have run monopolistically for decades, and you stand a pretty darn good chance of dying in one of these inner cities – far more likely, than if you lived in an areas where they gave a damn about people and their healthcare outcomes.”
During the monologue, Fox News aired a graphic claiming that the unhealthiest cities in the U.S. are: San Francisco; Seattle; Portland, OR; San Diego; Honolulu; Washington, D.C.; Austin; Irving, TX; Portland, ME; Denver.
But there’s a problem. According to WalletHub – the source that Unfiltered cited in its graphic – the 10 cities featured in the graphic are actually the “healthiest places to live in the U.S.” That is literally the opposite of “most unhealthy.”
Well, nine of the cities, anyway. Apparently, the Bongino and his production crew took Irvine, CA to mean Irving, TX, which made its way into the hilariously inaccurate graphic.
In a later airing of Unfiltered, the map graphic did not appear. In its place, Fox News ran B-roll footage of homeless people instead.
I went to the source cited in this graphic and I’m not sure what happened here pic.twitter.com/3E1S3Dzvhg
Manchin is trying to reverse psychologize the climate crisis by saying removal of fossil fuels will make the environment dirtier. https://t.co/wN8tVrBEQS
In other words his income is tied to fossil fuels and he want the US to keep using them. The idea that by using more fossil fuels such as oil and coal we can make the plant cleaner is asinine. Manchin is hoping what he said will be picked up and run on the right wing misleading media as sound bites. He wants to make sure the clean energy parts of the Build Back Better bill are dead even though much of the country wants to and is ready to do more to fix the climate crisis.
Take away obstruction and Republicans will have to work.
Ahhh! “Legitimate Discourse” defined by GOP National Committee. Pic (including PA man who just pled guilty to Capitol riot charges) Thanks to Phila. Daily News pic.twitter.com/th1XKP21TY
According to the Republican Party, sending lawmakers running for their lives and chanting about hanging the Vice President is simply “legitimate political discourse.”
Democrats must take this threat seriously — before there's no democracy left to protect. pic.twitter.com/zxpWATTXcq
But we are supposed to pretend this is only about merit and qualifications, just like we are supposed to pretend what Shapiro said was only a bad tweet and that this keeps being directed at black women, like @nhannahjones also, just by coincidence. https://t.co/LZE15is5zO
“Yes, of course [peaceful Muslims] exist, and those people are not good Muslims, but they’re good people. So, I’m talking about the doctrine of Islam itself, that’s what it prescribes, that’s what it’s calling for Muslims to do.”
Originally, most folks were predicting that a Russian invasion would be focused on eastern Ukraine — both due to troop concentrations and ease of assault. Eastern Ukraine is mostly flat, and will be hard to defend. 1/5
Now, many analysts are of the opinion that Kyiv is the target after all. The increased concentrations of Russian troops, with more on the way, certainly make it look like Putin has decided he wants *all* of Ukraine. 4/5
“Race” is a construct. There are only humans. That hasn’t stopped one set of humans for using demographic labels (race, religion, sex, economic class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.) as a means to suppress and kill that hated group. It’s human nature, unfortunately. We hate. We kill. Dig deep enough and you’ll find greed is the reason. It’s the most humanistic trait there is.
The old hero fantasy. Unlike in the movies there is a real mess to clean up. People who buy guns to shoot intruders are eight times more likely to shoot their own children. The burglary rate has dropped by half over the last ten years. The homicide rate, however, has climbed in those ten years. But it’s not because people are shooting burglars. Mostly it’s family or random, often unarmed strangers on the street.
Using the FBI data, the violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2019, with large decreases in the rates of robbery (-68%), murder/non-negligent manslaughter (-47%) and aggravated assault (-43%). Meanwhile, the property crime rate fell 55%, with big declines in the rates of burglary (-69%), motor vehicle theft (-64%) and larceny/theft (-49%).
Using the BJS statistics, the declines in the violent and property crime rates are even steeper than those reported by the FBI. Per BJS, the overall violent crime rate fell 74% between 1993 and 2019, while the property crime rate fell 71%.
So historically crime rates are down. Crime has risen as people are more desperate and stressed. However it is no where near the terrifying levels that the misleading right wing media wants to portray. Ask your self why it is so important for the misleading right wing media to push the narrative of a national crime wave? It is political. They want to find anything they can to make people feel the country is going wrong with Biden in charge. Don’t believe their hyped myth.
The right wing screamers that appointing a black woman is racist seem to have the assumption that race is the only qualification Biden is looking for and that there is no qualified black woman. That is racist. The idea of a white man not automatically getting the position while a black person must fight for it is shocking to the right.
Congress hasn’t done a good job since the GOP went off the range with the Tea Party, Trumpism, MAGA, and the other whack jobs they brought in.
Steve Kelley continues to LIE about the border crisis, even though he has been caught in his LIES many times.
The border crisis was caused 100% by DONALD TRUMP.
When Trump took office, illegal border crossings were at a FORTY-YEAR LOW because Dubya Bush (one of the few things he got right) and Obama had in place systems to stabilize minority indigenous communities who were the targets of racist gang violence. In one single day (June 17, 2019), TRUMP CANCELED EVERYTHING, not gradually or phased out, but all at once, and a border crisis from Central America resulted. It takes years to build bridges, a single day to blow them up. TRUMP BLEW IT UP. And yes, VP Harris is on it. The crisis is in Central America, not at our border (which Harris, as a native Californian from a border state, has been to many times). She has already met (in person and via Zoom) with the presidents of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Stabilization aid is being restored and the numbers of illegal border crossings are already plummeting. Again, blame the Democrats WHO ARE ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING to return to stability, for the problem TRUMP CAUSED.
Under Obama / Biden, our nation had brought the border to its most stable level — lowest number of illegal border crossings — in MORE THAN FORTY YEARS — by removing the incentives for coming here: addressing the violence, neighborhood insecurity and economic collapse and other issues that drive people out of their ancestral homelands.
Those leaving are predominantly INDIGENOUS MAYAN. They do not want to leave the ancestral homelands their people have occupied for tens of thousands of years, long predating the arrival of brutal European thugs.
According to the Republican Party, sending lawmakers running for their lives and chanting about hanging the Vice President is simply “legitimate political discourse.”
Democrats must take this threat seriously — before there's no democracy left to protect. pic.twitter.com/zxpWATTXcq
And yet rather than spend money fixing the electric system to ensure that the power stayed on, Abbot instead shifted state money to pandering gimmicks like finish building the wall on the border. In fact the big money donors from the fuel and energy industry gave large donations to stop any requirements that Abbot had talked about implementing to keep the power on. Now again in winter with freezing temperatures the power is again going off. They made no effort to fix the very issues that happened before and were told would happen again. Seems they care far more over their personal finance than the health and welfare of the people that elected them
Maybe we should retire the phrase "saying the quiet part out loud," on the grounds that there is no longer any quiet part.
Conservatives are about submission. Their kids will rebel one day.
Kids have no problem wearing masks. It’s the parents who can’t think of others.
What is horrifying is the change in the Republican party that went from saying “Better dead than Russian red” to praising Putin and supporting Russia. Russia under Putin is still as authoritarian as it was under communism. Russia under Putin is still as much an enemy to the US and democracy as it ever was.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
This cartoon author is one of the right wing misinformation cartoonist normally but in this case I agree with her. The Chinese government has shown they will crack down on anyone who says what they don’t like even if done by the athletes. The big scandal in the comment section of the page is over Nancy Pelosi saying the athletes should be care and watch what they say to keep themselves safe, and she blasted the Olympic committee for picking China to host them. The right wing commenters can not seem to understand why she said these things and are attacking her at the same time they are attacking China. So it doesn’t matter what she said, the fact is them must scream in anger about anything she says.
Oh boy the right wing media is on fire over trying to make Whoopi the worst racist ever. Why? Because she is a left leaning black woman. They are drooling to attack her, it is a dream come true for them.
Sen. Rand Paul said Republicans would subpoena Fauci if they win the Senate in the mid-terms.
Paul and Fauci have engaged in bitter exchanges at Senate hearings.
Paul has pushed unsubstantiated claims that funds approved by Fauci may have helped create COVID.
Sen. Rand Paul said that Republicans will subpoena chief White House medical advisor Dr Anthony Fauci if they take control of the Senate in the mid-term elections.
The Kentucky Republican is a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee. He stands to be nominated as chairman of the panel if Republicans win the Senate in November, securing him the power to launch investigations and issue subpoenas.
“If we win in November, if I’m chairman of a committee, if I have subpoena power, we’ll go after every one of [Fauci’s] records,” Paul said during an interview with anti-vax podcaster Lisa Boothe.
“We’ll have an investigator go through this piece by piece because we don’t need this to happen again.”
Paul, a physician, and Fauci have clashed in a series of heated exchanges in Senate hearings.
Paul, often trafficking in conspiracy theories and disinformation, has criticised Fauci on measures he has advocated to contain the virus.
His attacks have focussed on Fauci’s tenure as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and often rely on speculation that funding Fauci approved to a lab in Wuhan, China, may have been used to create the coronavirus.
The origin of the virus has not been established, with China blocking attempts to investigate the source of the pandemic. Many experts believe that the theory it originated in a lab is spurious and it most likely originated in nature, though others say it is plausible.
At hearing last July, Fauci said “you do not know what you’re talking about” to Paul, and accused him of “lying”, after the senator tried to draw connections between research in China partly funded by NIAID and the coronavirus.
Paul had at a hearing earlier in the year accused Fauci of indulging in “theater” by wearing a mask after having gotten vaccinated, and Fauci responded that vaccines don’t offer protection against all variants.
Fauci has become a hate figure for some on the right, with many Republicans rallying around opposition to federal government measures to control the virus.
Some Republican supporters have embraced fringe anti-vaccine views and conspiracy theories about the virus.
So Republican 101 normal behavior, when in power attack and try to destroy anyone who you dislike. The right hates Dr. Fauci because they cannot discredit him, he points out their misinformation and lies. I hate that this is the Republican idea of governing. How does this help the country? Why vote them into office if this is their goal? Remember that Rand Paul is making big money on Covid treatment drugs, and he fud raises off his attacks on Dr. Fauci. So he is putting his personal profit ahead of saving lives.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s former UCLA supervisor does not think he should be Florida’s state surgeon general.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ handpicked state surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, is currently doing the job, but he still needs to be formally confirmed by the Republican-led state Senate. To that end, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement did a routine background investigation as part of the confirmation process.
It apparently didn’t go especially well. The Tallahassee Democrat newspaper reported yesterday that Ladapo’s former supervisor at UCLA discouraged Florida officials from hiring the controversial doctor.
“In my opinion, the people of Florida would be better served by a Surgeon General who grounds his policy decisions and recommendations on the best scientific evidence rather than opinions,” the unnamed supervisor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in the Jan. 18 report prepared by a senior crime intelligence analyst for the Senate.
According to the local report, the UCLA supervisor added that Ladapo’s weird theories “created a stressful environment for his research and clinical colleagues and subordinates,” some of whom believed the doctor “violated the duty in the Hippocratic Oath to behave honestly and ethically.”
In the Florida Department of Law Enforcement report, Ladapo’s views were described as having led to “stress and acrimony among his coworkers and supervisors.”
The newspaper did not get a comment from Ladapo, but the press secretary for the Florida Department of Health “characterized Ladapo as a misunderstood visionary.”
This is not the first time Ladapo’s work at UCLA has generated scrutiny.
During his tenure, the physician claimed in a USA Today op-ed that his perspective on Covid treatments had been shaped by his experience “taking care of patients with COVID-19 at UCLA’s flagship hospital.” Two weeks later, Ladapo added in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had his experience “caring for patients with suspected or diagnosed Covid-19 infections at UCLA.”
Thanks to reporting from The Rachel Maddow Show, those claims have since been called into question. As my colleague Kay Guerrero explained in a report in November, “Several former colleagues of Dr. Joseph Ladapo … say he misled the public about his experience treating Covid-19 patients.”
One UCLA source also said, in reference to Ladapo, “A lot of people here at UCLA are glad that he is gone because we were embarrassed by his opinions and behavior. At the same time, we don’t wish this on the people of Florida. They don’t deserve to have someone like him making their health decisions.”
This latest reporting comes a month after Ladapo held a press conference in which he was critical of Covid testing.
A few months prior, Ladapo questioned the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, denounced vaccine requirements, referenced unsubstantiated conspiracy theories to argue against the vaccines, and encouraged Floridians to “stick with their intuition,” as opposed to following the guidance of public health officials who actually know what they’re talking about.
As regular readers may recall, it was around the same time when Ladapo started pushing “innovative” Covid-19 treatments with little track record of success, to the frustration of state physicians and medical experts.
Before taking office, the doctor also spent much of the pandemic questioning the value of vaccines and the efficacy of masks, while simultaneously touting ineffective treatments such as hydroxychloroquine.
It led the editorial board of the Orlando Sentinel to describe Ladapo as a “COVID crank” who’s been “associated with a right-wing group of physicians whose members include a physician who believes infertility and miscarriages are the result of having sex with demons and witches during dreams.”
Whether this might give the GOP-led state Senate in Florida pause remains to be seen. Ladapo’s nomination is scheduled to receive a vote in Tallahassee next week.
Ron DeSantis' surgeon general pick got a scathing review from an ex-supervisor, saying he wouldn't recommend him for the job:
"The people of Florida would be better served by a Surgeon General who grounds his policy … in the best scientific evidence."https://t.co/SKjix1noFj
![““Yes, of course [peaceful Muslims] exist, and those people are not good Muslims, but they’re good people. So, I’m talking about the doctrine of Islam itself, that’s what it prescribes, that’s what it’s calling for Muslims to do.”
– Yasmine...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/3277a88d473f3ba330a063be346696b9/6bdf7f88e8a2a81b-34/s1280x1920/ed60fb0c3bac923ec0d8b2c3efac3005a64b3360.jpg)
Scottie's Playtime 
Steve Kelley continues to LIE about the border crisis, even though he has been caught in his LIES many times.
The border crisis was caused 100% by DONALD TRUMP.
When Trump took office, illegal border crossings were at a FORTY-YEAR LOW because Dubya Bush (one of the few things he got right) and Obama had in place systems to stabilize minority indigenous communities who were the targets of racist gang violence. In one single day (June 17, 2019), TRUMP CANCELED EVERYTHING, not gradually or phased out, but all at once, and a border crisis from Central America resulted. It takes years to build bridges, a single day to blow them up. TRUMP BLEW IT UP. And yes, VP Harris is on it. The crisis is in Central America, not at our border (which Harris, as a native Californian from a border state, has been to many times). She has already met (in person and via Zoom) with the presidents of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Stabilization aid is being restored and the numbers of illegal border crossings are already plummeting. Again, blame the Democrats WHO ARE ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING to return to stability, for the problem TRUMP CAUSED.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-trump/as-promised-trump-slashes-aid-to-central-america-over-migrants-idUSKCN1TI2C7
Under Obama / Biden, our nation had brought the border to its most stable level — lowest number of illegal border crossings — in MORE THAN FORTY YEARS — by removing the incentives for coming here: addressing the violence, neighborhood insecurity and economic collapse and other issues that drive people out of their ancestral homelands.
Those leaving are predominantly INDIGENOUS MAYAN. They do not want to leave the ancestral homelands their people have occupied for tens of thousands of years, long predating the arrival of brutal European thugs.