Tags
2024-presidential-election, Constitution, Democracy, Donald Trump, fascism, Freedom, NATO, Politics, Project 2025, Putin, Republican party, republican-party-fascism, Russia, trump, Ukraine
From the time Senator Tommy Tuberville was using all of last year to degrade our military readiness to who is in the background funding a kind of shadow fascist government setting policy and getting their enslaved Republican operatives elected or in place, where though unelected, wield enough power and opportunity to force their version of anti-democracy and fascism on America.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville refuses to budge on military nominee hold
ABC News – Nov 3, 2023
His sabotage of our US Military promotions and appointments was 9 months long as of November 2023.
September 2023 Congress in session, arguing budget to shutdown US govt, passes CR without Ukraine funding in it.
House Republican opposition to Ukraine aid grows … , NBC News
Sep 28, 2023 —
An amendment to the defense funding bill by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to prohibit all military assistance to Ukraine won 93 Republican votes Wednesday, as 126 Republicans and all 213 Democrats voted against it. That’s up from 70 Republicans who voted for a similar measure by Gaetz in July.
A separate amendment by Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., to slash $300 million in arms assistance for Ukraine — an allocation that has been the status quo since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 — got 104 GOP votes, with 117 Republicans joining 213 Democrats to vote it down.
Both amendments failed in lopsided votes, but the GOP opponents succeeded in getting leadership to strip out the Ukraine funding and try to pass it as a separate bill anyway. Their resistance points to a growing populism within the party, which some Republicans have likened to a new isolationism that questions the value of the current global order and the necessity of preventing a Russian victory in Ukraine. (etc.)
“If we’re forced to abandon Ukraine by a handful of extreme people who seem to have no sense of the reality of the world, we will pay a price for years to come. How can Speaker McCarthy let that happen?” Schumer [Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.] said. “How can he let that happen?”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-republican-opposition-ukraine-aid-grows-threatening-funds-war-ra-rcna117406
MAGA Republicans seeking to derail funding for Ukraine in service to Donald Trump and Russia’s Kleptocratic Dictator Putin who seems to own him, have not been representing the will of the American people nor the will of the real Republicans in the party who are very much in favor of supporting Ukraine against Russia’s illegal, unprovoked and unjustified invasion.
Majority of Non-Trump Republicans Support Continued Aid …
Chicago Council on Global Affairs
https://globalaffairs.org › research › public-opinion-survey
Jan 29, 2024 —
Republicans with a somewhat favorable or unfavorable view of the former president are more likely to say US assistance to Kyiv has been worth the cost.
On foreign policy, Republican Party candidates sharply disagree on US involvement in Ukraine. Front-runner Donald Trump has said that he would cut off the “endless flow of American treasure to Ukraine” though hasn’t clarified what exact steps he would take otherwise. Meanwhile, Nikki Haley argues that US aid to Ukraine is aimed at preventing the conflict from spreading more widely and helping a “pro-American, freedom-loving country.”
There are large differences between Trump and non-Trump Republicans on this question. Only a third of Trump Republicans favor continued economic aid (33%) in contrast to six in 10 non-Trump Republicans (59%). In a similar pattern, four in 10 Trump Republicans favor sending additional arms and military equipment to Kyiv (40%) compared to six in 10 non-Trump Republicans (59%).
Republican MAGA Senators Ron Johnson and Tommy Tuberville, in matters concerning Ukraine and support of military and economic aid to Ukraine against Russia’s illegal invasion sound like Putin’s parroted talking points verbatim coming from their mouths. Why the hell is that?
Tommy Tuberville Competes for Congress’s Biggest Putin Sycophant
The comments came just hours before Tuberville voted to shoot down the Senate’s foreign aid deal, which dedicates $60 billion in aid to Ukraine. (The $95 billion package also includes aid for Israel and Taiwan.)
“You can tell Putin’s on top of his game. One thing he said that, it really rung a bell, is the propaganda media machine over here, they sell anything they possibly can to go after Russia,” Tuberville said, aping almost word for word the Kremlin’s talking points on American opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“They can’t win,” Tuberville told Poor, referring to Ukraine. “Half the country’s like we are: They don’t even know what war is going on,” he added, a hard-to-believe assertion given the estimated $100 billion in damages Ukraine has suffered since the beginning of the war.
…He later feigned concern for Ukrainians and offered a confused, pseudo-historical pacifist argument, explaining to Poor, “Listen, if we don’t make Russia, you know, part of the world and get away from this old USSR communism situation.… We’ve gotta get peace back on this planet.”
Tuberville’s groveling is symptomatic of a decades-long trend of Republican flirtation with the Kremlin. To wit, he’s not even the only senator to have praised Putin this week. Given Trump’s own praise of Putin, it’s hardly surprising to see his most ardent supporters in the Senate hand it to the man Trump once called “genius.” But it’s no less alarming to see U.S. senators echo Russian pro-war talking points in response to a bipartisan aid package to an ally.
https://newrepublic.com/post/179003/tommy-tuberville-putin-suck-up-russia-ukraine
Last fall, during the emergency sessions to pass a continuing resolution (CR) for our US budget before the deadline when all funding would stop, Trump’s only concern was to call up as many Republican Congressional representatives as he could and demand they refuse to support the CR’s passage and shut down the US govt, hoping to defund the prosecutions and criminal investigations in progress against him. Did he also ask that all funding for Ukraine be denied as a gift to his buddy and best friend, Putin?
Donald Trump urges Republicans to shut down the government to STOP the prosecutions against him.
Sep 24, 2023 #TeamJustice
Donald Trump may be trying to set the record as the defendant who made the greatest number of incriminating statements in the history of American defendants. His latest incriminating statement, as reported by NBC News: “Trump demands Republicans shut down government to ‘defund’ his criminal prosecutions.”
…Trump even throws in a little aid and comfort to the insurrections by urging Congressional Republicans to shut down government to stop the prosecutions against him “and other patriots,” an obvious reference to other January 6 defendants.
Trump has created and handed to prosecutors so much incriminating evidence that, once his criminal cases move into court proper, Trump is toast.
– Glenn Kirchner
Eight days after Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin in Moscow, Navalny was killed. The Russian election for president is being held March 15-17, 2024. Although Russian propaganda media has often carried segments of Tucker Carlson from his show on Fox Broadcasting implying he’s on their side, this interview was not quite what Tucker expected. In August of 2023, Tucker ran his show from Hungary gushing over Viktor Orban’s dictator style “illiberal democracy.”
Tucker Carlson trips to Hungary were unauthorized by Fox News: Book
A trip that pundit Tucker Carlson took to Hungary to interview Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in 2021 was not authorized by Fox News, the network that later fired him, according to a new book.
In a forthcoming book about the inner workings of the network in recent months, excerpts from which he shared with the Daily Beast, journalist Brian Stelter writes that Carlson “whipped his show up into an infomercial for Viktor Orbán’s increasingly autocratic, patriarchal nation,” without permission from Fox to do so.
The Hill, https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4297192-tucker-carlson-hungary-unauthorized-fox-news/
Feb. 8, 2024 broadcast premiere of – Tucker Carlson goes to Moscow and interviews Putin. Also toured grocery store and gushing over how wonderful a dictatorship can make things better compared to how awful things are in America.
Putin told Carlson that Russia has not achieved its war aims in its widely condemned invasion of neighboring Ukraine, and he began the interview with a roughly 20-minute, mostly uninterrupted, speech about history that included the days of Catherine the Great, the empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796.
Carlson at one point flattered Putin and said it was not boring but added, “I just don’t know how it’s relevant.”
NBC News has not been provided any details about the circumstances under which the interview was recorded. Putin spoke in Russian, and the translation was provided by Carlson’s show.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/tucker-carlson-interviewed-russian-president-vladimir-putin-rcna137420
Russian CRINGES at Tucker Carlson Grocery Shopping in 🇷🇺
NFKRZ
Despite what people in the US and in Russia thought about the interview with Putin, there’s no end nor bottom to the pettiness of Putin. Dictators do that.
Feb. 16, 2024 Putin killed Navalny in Siberian penal colony after extended torture on 1st day of the Munich Security Council where is wife Yulia was attending. February 16, 2024 Putin has Navalny killed in the Siberian penal colony known for its brutality and torture. Navalny fought against the Russian kleptocracy and Russians came out by millions to support him before Putin had him poisoned three times and then imprisoned him. Navalny made a video of his investigation into the corruption of Putin and his oligarchs stealing Russian national and natural resource profits for their own personal wealth.
The next day or so, Putin had the Russian soldier who surrendered a Russian military helicopter to Ukraine for the $500k reward killed in Spain. Mourners have been arrested by the hundreds across Russia since Navalny’s death for placing flowers on memorials in his honor – Putin ordered they be arrested and then given draft notices to serve on the front lines in Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Dual US / Russian citizen & dancer publicly arrested with broadcast video of the arrest from her apt (in russia) for having donated $50 two years ago to a nonprofit providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine after the war started.
Putin foe Alexei Navalny dies in jail, West holds Russia responsible
By Guy Faulconbridge and Felix Light
February 16, 2024 2:08 PM PST Updated 11 days ago
MOSCOW, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most formidable domestic opponent, fell unconscious and died on Friday after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony where he was serving a three-decade sentence, authorities said.
The death of Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, robs the disparate Russian opposition of its most prominent leader as Putin prepares for an election which will keep the former KGB spy in power until at least 2030.
Alexei Navalny’s allies have alleged that Vladimir Putin had the opposition leader killed in jail to sabotage a prisoner swap in which Navalny would have been exchanged for a convicted hitman jailed in Germany.
Putin had Navalny killed to thwart prisoner swap, allies claim
https://www.theguardian.com › world › feb › vladimir-…
Putin had Navalny killed to thwart prisoner swap, allies claim
Russian leader accused of ordering Navalny’s death to stop him being exchanged for FSB hitman serving life sentence in Germany
Feb. 26, 2024
“Maria Pevchikh, a close ally of the opposition leader, said in a video that Navalny and two US nationals were in line to be exchanged for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian FSB security service hitman who is serving a life sentence in Germany for the assassination of a Chechen former separatist in Berlin.
“Navalny should have been free in the next few days because we had secured a decision to exchange him,” Pevchikh said. “I received confirmation that the negotiations were at their final stage on the evening of 15 February.” Navalny was reported dead on 16 February.”
Russia being one of the prime funders of European far rightwing fascist political parties and organizations, and Hungary being in bed with Russia on top of it – this seems little wonder that CPAC has been taken over from the conservatives to become a fascist rendition of itself –
Viktor Orbán tells CPAC the path to power is to ‘have your own media’
(2022) The Hungarian leader, Viktor Orbán, has told a conference of US conservatives that the path to power required having their own media outlets, calling for shows like Tucker Carlson’s to be broadcast “24/7”.
Orbán, recently elected to a fourth term, laid out a 12-point blueprint to achieving and consolidating power to a special meeting of the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), under the slogan of “God, Homeland, Family”, held in Budapest.
The Hungarian prime minister said that with his fourth electoral victory on 3 April, Hungary had been “completely healed” of “progressive dominance”. He suggested it was time for the right to join forces.
“We have to take back the institutions in Washington and Brussels. We must find allies in one another and coordinate the movements of our troops,” Orbán said. (etc.)
Carlson had been billed as a key speaker at the CPAC conference, but the Fox News talk show host sent only a 38-second video message, in which he extolled Hungary under the Orbán government as a model for the US. (etc.)
The second day of the CPAC conference on Friday is billed to start with a “surprise video message” that some speculate will be from Donald Trump, who was also invited to the event. The schedule also features Candace Owens, described as “Trump’s favorite influencer”, video messages from Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Santiago Abascal, president of Spain’s Vox party, and Zsolt Bayer, a pro-Orbán pundit who formerly called Roma people “animals”, referred to Jewish people as “stinking excrement” and used racist slurs for Black people during the BLM protests.
Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate from the French far-right National Rally, was announced as a speaker on Monday, but the post disappeared from the organizers’ Facebook after a couple of hours, and her name was deleted from CPAC Hungary’s website.
The Guardian, May 20, 2022
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/20/viktor-orban-cpac-republicans-hungary
At CPAC, Hungary’s Viktor Orban decries LGBTQ+ rights, migration
May 4, 2023 2:43 PM EST
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s populist prime minister likened liberalism to a “virus” in an opening speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in the Hungarian capital on Thursday, painting a picture of a global right-wing movement mobilizing to defeat “progressive elites.”
Viktor Orban’s speech at CPAC Hungary centered around battling what he frequently described as “woke culture,” and delved primarily into hot-button cultural topics such as transgender and LGBTQ+ rights, migration and the content of education for children.
The two-day conference, the second in Hungary in as many years, featured segments titled “Make Kids Not War” and “No Country for Woke Men.” A sign over the entrance to the venue, a conference hall on the Danube River, read, “No Woke Zone.”
After receiving a standing ovation, Orban said Hungary had become “world-famous” for its hard-line migration and cultural policies, and offered those in attendance a recipe for implementing a similar right-wing agenda at home.
(. . . he goes on to say – )
“Hungary is actually an incubator where experiments are done on the future of conservative policies. Hungary is the place where we didn’t just talk about defeating the progressives and liberals and causing a conservative Christian political turn, but we actually did it,” Orban said.
Orban has styled himself as a champion of what he calls “illiberal democracy,” drawing controversy and raising concerns in the European Union and elsewhere about Hungary sliding into authoritarian rule. He has depicted himself as a defender of European Christendom against Muslim migrants, progressives and the “LGBTQ lobby.”
PBS, May 2023, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/at-cpac-hungarys-viktor-orban-decries-lgbtq-rights-migration#:~:text=Viktor%20Orban’s%20speech%20at%20CPAC,content%20of%20education%20for%20children.
February 22, 2024 CPAC (Feb 21 – 24) – Jack Posobiec led the event with a statement that they are there to kill democracy and finish the job of Jan 6 plus Steve Bannon hosted talks describing how to make the most confusion possible to takeover the United States with the point of decimating the US govt and democracy (find his speech clip and the Prosobiec one.)
Surprise: The GOP’s Favorite Gathering Was Full of Nazis Despite denials from the conference’s leaders, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, and racists did attend CPAC over the weekend. Self-identified Nazis were at CPAC—and for all of the event leadership’s political waffling, NBC News had the receipts to prove it.
On Saturday, NBC News reported that the fascists “didn’t meet any perceptible resistance” at the conservative conference, and mingled openly with Republican personalities and members of Turning Point USA, describing themselves as “national socialists” while discussing “race science,” skull measurements, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
https://newrepublic.com/post/179282/surprise-gops-favorite-gathering-full-nazis
Looking again at the things Freedom Caucus member extremist Tommy Tuberville says publicly about the fight to defend Ukraine and push back Russia’s armies as they’ve been committing horrific atrocities every hour of every day for over two years now, it looks like he’s the cheerleader for the Russians and Putin rather than for US interests, NATO, Europe, Ukraine or anything resembling democracy and the free world that the United States is known for defending.
“I haven’t voted for a dime to send Ukraine,” Tuberville told Ingraham. “I’m for Ukraine. Russia should have never done this. I was in Ukraine three months with President [Volodymyr] Zelensky before this started. They were already fighting to that point.”
“But, at the end of the day, it’s a junior high team playing a college team,” he continued. “They can’t win. We can throw all the money we want to, but unless we send NATO and our troops over, which we’re not going to do, if I have got anything to do with it, then there’s no chance.”
The Hill, 08-08-23 https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4143533-tuberville-says-ukraine-cant-win-war-against-russia/
Pretending now like everything is politics as normal, after everything that is known about the complete overtaking of the Republican Party by fascists of the farthest rightwing extremes – that to call them conservatives is more than a misnomer and far more than misleading –
They’re Not Conservatives, They’re Extremists
By mislabeling the radical members of the Republican Party “conservative,” the mainstream media gives them a veneer of respectability.
May 26, 2021
By any reasonable measure, the Freedom Caucus and its members are not conservative. Because of their disruptive tactics and rhetoric, their contempt for bedrock conservative values like the rule of law, and their embrace of the most radical populist in modern U.S. history, they are more akin to European far-right politicians like those in the Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany and Fidesz in Hungary.
Traditional Republicans recognize that the Caucus and its members have nothing to do with the party they joined many years ago. Former House Speaker John Boehner, a more traditional Republican, gave an apt description of the caucus when he said in 2017, “They’re anarchists. They want total chaos. Tear it all down and start over. That’s where their mindset is.” (. . .)
At the same time, ideologies have evolved considerably in the United States over the last half-century. “Conservative” once stood for preserving traditional arrangements in society such as family, faith, community, and small business against the modernizing forces of the market. Conservatives have also adopted the British philosopher Edmund Burke’s distaste for the Enlightenment project of human rights and egalitarianism. Conservatives were also once conservationists (remember: it was Richard Nixon who, in 1970, created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Clean Air Act Extension).
The Reagan/Thatcher revolution changed all that. Conservatives suddenly became ultra-liberal in the economic sense. They wholeheartedly embraced the free market in their eagerness to deploy any powerful force against what they considered to be the primary evil in the world: big government. They supported laissez-faire economics—essentially, no government controls on the economy—even though unrestrained market forces tear apart communities, break apart families, undermine faith, destroy family farms, and sweep away small businesses. But since such a market served as a counterforce to government authority, the neo-liberal conservatives prepared to throw out whatever babies were necessary in order to get rid of the bathwater. ( . . .)
In some respects, Trump attempted to purge the conservative movement of these two newer tendencies through his rejection of both the cherished free trade of the neoliberals and the “forever wars” of the neoconservatives. In their place, the new president [Trump] reverted to the older right-wing ideology of nationalism, populism, and racism of the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s and the America First movement of the 1940s. At the same time, however, Trump retained the allegiance of these newfangled conservatives by slashing government involvement in the economy and championing higher Pentagon spending.
Institute for Policy Studies, 2021 https://ips-dc.org/theyre-not-conservatives-theyre-extremists
Two weeks before the anniversary of Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine where they are attempting to erase Ukrainians, Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian democracy, the Ukrainian language, Ukraine as a nation, Ukraine as a product member of the international community, Ukraine as a sovereign territory with its treaty agreement based borders of 1992 – Trump serving up a special public gift to Putin decided to tell the world, he would not be standing with NATO countries against Russia.
February 22, 2024 / February 24, 2024 Russian Invasion of Ukraine – 2 yr anniversary
Maidan 10-yr anniversary – Feb 20, 2024 Russian backed president Yanukovich administration’s secret police massacre of 77 protesters on Maidan Square
February 10, 2024 Trump made comments to the national news (and international news outlets carried it) about not supporting NATO as the next US president unless they paid (as if it were protection money or dues that are not kept up to date, which isn’t how NATO works). He said he would tell Russia to do whatever they want to any NATO ally if they didn’t pay. His words added instability to the international community of nations trying to work together to stop Russia from its continued genocide of Ukraine.
Trump tells public and international news that he won’t protect NATO allies unless they pay meaning, the US with him as president will not come to the aid of NATO allies and said, “I’ll tell Russia to do whatever they want to them.” (look up exact quote)
Trump says he would encourage Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want’ to any NATO country that doesn’t pay enough – (CNN)
Former President Donald Trump on Saturday said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member country that doesn’t meet spending guidelines on defense in a stunning admission he would not abide by the collective-defense clause at the heart of the alliance if reelected.
“NATO was busted until I came along,” Trump said at a rally in Conway, South Carolina. “I said, ‘Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”
Trump said “one of the presidents of a big country” at one point asked him whether the US would still defend the country if they were invaded by Russia even if they “don’t pay.”
“No, I would not protect you,” Trump recalled telling that president. “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”
President Joe Biden said Sunday that Trump “is making it clear that he will abandon our NATO allies” and outlined the potential consequences of Trump’s comments. (. . .)
Trump has for years inaccurately described how NATO funding works. NATO has a target that each member country spends a minimum of 2% of gross domestic product on defense, and most countries are not meeting that target. But the figure is a guideline and not a binding contract, nor does it create “bills”; member countries haven’t been failing to pay their share of NATO’s common budget to run the organization.
CNN, February 2024 https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/10/politics/trump-russia-nato/index.html
But, where did Trump get these ideas? Why has he hated NATO so much since his visit to the Soviet Union in 1987?
The Hidden History of Trump’s First Trip to Moscow
In 1987, a young real estate developer traveled to the Soviet Union. The KGB almost certainly made the trip happen.
By LUKE HARDING November 19, 2017
It was 1984 and General Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov had a problem. The general occupied one of the KGB’s most exalted posts. He was head of the First Chief Directorate, the prestigious KGB arm responsible for gathering foreign intelligence. (you just have to go and read this article, really.)
… In fact, the Soviet Union was interested in him [Trump] too, three decades earlier. The top level of the Soviet diplomatic service arranged his 1987 Moscow visit. With assistance from the KGB. It took place while Kryuchkov was seeking to improve the KGB’s operational techniques in one particular and sensitive area. The spy chief wanted KGB staff abroad to recruit more Americans.
Politico, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/19/trump-first-moscow-trip-215842/
That Time Trump Spent Nearly $100,000 On An Ad Criticizing U.S. Foreign Policy In 1987
Donald Trump once spent nearly $100,000 to place a full-page advertisement criticizing U.S. foreign policy in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe.
“There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure,” the ad’s headline blares. Below, the reader finds “an open letter from Donald J. Trump” — addressed “To The American People” — “on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves.”
The ads appeared in the papers on September 2, 1987. According to an Associated Press story published the night before they appeared in print, Trump paid $94,801 to run the advertisements.
… “‘Tax’ these wealthy nations, not America,” suggests the tycoon. “End our huge deficits, reduce our taxes, and let America’s economy grow unencumbered by the cost of defending those who can easily afford to pay us for the defense of their freedom.”
BuzzFeed News, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ilanbenmeir/that-time-trump-spent-nearly-100000-on-an-ad-criticizing-us
And now we have this – after retired General Mike Flynn made visits to Russia for various reasons described in these two articles and others, he hijacked an existing Health and Freedom event group appealing to Trump MAGA supporters and rightwing Christian nationalists by serving up conspiracies about Covid19; about our government being run by some deep state cabal; about liberals, Democrats and progressives in the US and globally; about PizzaGate and baby’s blood drinking by liberals; about Trump’s election loss claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him despite all evidence to the contrary and about every QAnon branch of conspiracy thinking Flynn can find (or may have helped to manufacture in the first place with some of his rightwing fascist nationalist operatives.)
Mike Flynn Worked for Several Russian Companies, Was Paid More Than $50,000, Documents Show
Former Trump national security adviser had business connections with Russia beyond RT that hadn’t been previously known
Mr. Flynn was paid $11,250 each by a Russian air cargo company that had been suspended as a vendor to the United Nations following a corruption scandal, and by a Russian cybersecurity company that was then trying to expand its business with the U.S. government, according to the documents, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. (etc., etc., etc., plus speaking fees and other interactions during Flynn’s time in the service – read about that last part somewhere else).
WSJ, https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-flynn-worked-for-other-russian-companies-besides-rt-documents-1489683618
Russians Paid Mike Flynn $45K for Moscow Speech, Documents Show
The former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency earned more than $50,00 from giving speeches RT and two other Russian companies.
The state-sponsored Russian television network RT paid former Defense Intelligence Agency head Mike Flynn more than $45,000, plus perks, to speak at its 10 anniversary gala in December 2015, according to documents released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee Thursday.
RT also paid to fly Flynn and his son to Moscow and put them up at a luxury hotel from December 9 to December 12, according to email exchanges between his speaker’s bureau, Leading Authorities, and a representative of the network.
Flynn was interviewed by an RT correspondent onstage, and was famously seated at the same table as Russian President Vladimir Putin during dinner.
NBC, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/russians-paid-mike-flynn-45k-moscow-speech-documents-show-n734506
Mike Flynn Astroturfing “Grass Roots” ReAwaken America Tour and the Heritage Foundation +75 orgs – Project 2025, (now over 100 orgs signed onto the Project 2025 plan) –
Astroturfing is the use of fake grassroots efforts that primarily focus on influencing public opinion and typically are funded by corporations and political entities to form opinions. On the internet, astroturfers use software to hide their identity.
Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#:~:text=Astroturfing%20is%20the%20use%20of,software%20to%20hide%20their%20identity.
Astroturfing – Wikipedia perfectly describes Mike Flynn’s psyops effort –
The ReAwaken America Tour is an American far-right[1][2] and Christian nationalist[3] movement launched in 2021 by Oklahoma entrepreneur Clay Clark and former Donald Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn. Its rallies have promoted a variety of right-wing and far-right conspiracy theories, including COVID-19 misinformation, election denialism, QAnon and doomsday prophecies.[4][5][6]
In the summer of 2021, the “Health and Freedom” events were rebranded the ReAwaken America Tour, sponsored by Charisma News.[23][24] In an interview with Rolling Stone, Clark cited a meeting with Michael Flynn — a frequent guest on the tour — as the impetus for turning the Health and Freedom events into a tour, with Clark telling Flynn that “God wants us to do a tour” and Flynn agreeing.[25] While the events (under both names) initially received attention for their opposition to COVID-19 mitigation measures, from the beginning, they also focused significant attention on supporting conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential election, including those espoused by QAnon followers.[26][27]
Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReAwaken_America_Tour
US is being run by the back seat drivers in Congress who serve Trump and seem to serve Putin and Russia, are extremists who do not stand up for our Constitution nor for our nation nor for democracy and freedom for all Americans. They just don’t. To be called the Freedom Caucus seems to be a snide joke on the American people like the Tea Party was and just as extremist white Christian nationalist male driven fascism.
The Freedom Caucus in the US Congress –
The caucus is positioned right-wing[9] to far-right[10] on the political spectrum. On October 30, 2017, Vanity Fair published an interview with John Boehner, who said of the Freedom Caucus: “They can’t tell you what they’re for. They can tell you everything they’re against. They’re anarchists. They want total chaos. Tear it all down and start over. That’s where their mindset is.”[45]
After the election of Donald Trump, the Freedom Caucus shifted its emphasis to loyalty to Trump,[17][19] and became what Politico described as “more populist and nationalist, but less bound by policy principles.”[20] The caucus has included some members who are libertarians.[21][22]
Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Caucus
So, when the stopgap funding bill came up last week in its last available hours of being passed by Congress to keep the US govt running – this is the list of Congress members who voted against it –
*Marsha Blackburn, (TN)
*Mike Braun, (Ind)
*Ted Budd, (NC)
*Josh Hawley, (Mo) who raised his fist in support of the Jan 6 insurrectionists storming our Capitol
*Ron Johnson, (Wis) who speaks like a parrot of Putin’s & spent Fourth of July in Moscow in 2018
*Mike Lee, (Utah)
*Roger Marshall, (Kan)
*Eric Schmitt, (Mo)
*Rick Scott, (Fla)
*Mike Crapo, (Idaho)
*Ted Cruz, (Texas)
*Tommy Tuberville, (Ala) who has been a legal resident of Florida for the last 24 years, not Alabama
*JD Vance, (Ohio)
Freedom Caucus Leadership and their membership too, for that matter, is like a who’s who of bullshittery and political performance art for viral click bait soundbites mixed with obstinacy and obstructionism. Their brand of clownishness is intended to sow chaos, breed confusion, waste time, get paid while doing nothing for the people of the United States using our taxpayer funds and seats in our Congress that are intended for those elected to represent us – not to do all this fascist extremist self-serving crap with these elected offices.
The current chair of the [freedom caucus] is Representative Bob Good from Virginia, with Representative Jim Jordan as the deputy chair. In January 2022, Representative Lauren Boebert was elected as communications chair, Representative Warren Davidson as whip, and Representative Chip Roy as policy chair.[119]
Leadership of the Freedom Caucus, from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Caucus
But who is funding and has been funding all this bullshittery of the Republican Party, conservative organizations and PACs which are now extremist, fascist and serve Donald Trump rather than anything or any other purpose than installing an authoritarian dictatorship in place of our democracy and freedoms?
The Koch Network – of the rightwing and libertarian organizations they have been funding –
On the other hand, although they “disavowed Trump,” opposed the extremes of the populist movement, so many Koch operatives served in top positions in the Trump administration (Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos, Rebekah Mercer) that Politico dubbed it “Trump’s Koch administration.”[44]
Koch’s have been accused of setting the general tone of Trump and the Trump-dominated Republican Party[79]—helping to “convince voters that Washington was corrupt and broken and that, when it came to governing, knowing nothing was preferable to expertise”,[79] (after all, climate scientists had expertise but were trying to convince everyone that the climate was warming/changing and that fossil fuels were the problem).
According to a “former employee in the Koch’s political operation”, “we are partly responsible” for the Trump populist movement nastiness. “We invested a lot in grassroots army that was not controllable”.[80]
Wikipedia – Koch Network, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_network
The Koch network is a “tightly interlocked set of organizations” that the brothers and “their closest advisors have developed over time into an integrated political machine”. Contrary to the impression of some, it is not an impenetrable “maze of money” funding all matter of right-wing groups; though some organizations outside of the core group have been funded, most of the grants bestowed by its “funding conduits” (such as Freedom Partners), are relatively tiny and not ongoing.[38]
While the network has also been called a third political party[91] because of its size and organization (“According to Kenneth Vogel at Politico, the Koch network has about three and a half times as many employees as the Republican National Committee plus GOP congressional campaign affiliates”),[38] its “network’s operatives and resources” do not work independently of the GOP, but “are closely intertwined” with it. For example, of the first fifteen directors of the different state Americans for Prosperity organizations, almost 70% “had previously held staff posts in GOP campaigns or in the offices of Republican elected officials”.[38]
Wikipedia – Koch Network, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_network
Sununus, Kochs & Libertarians
- In 1957, Bestseller Atlas Shrugged, by Russian refugee Ayn Rand, lionizes American capitalists as beleaguered heroes. America’s economy is collapsing because they are not allowed to pursue profit unchecked. “Greed is good,” her characters declare. They abandon the US to create a Libertarian utopia.
- David Koch and John H. Sununu both study engineering at MIT from 1958-1963.
- In 1980, David Koch runs for VP. His Libertarian platform demands the end of Medicare, Social Security, public schools, aid to children, the Fed, the Post Office, the Environmental Protection and most other Agencies. (Koch Industries is the largest private US firm, with $115 Billion in revenues, mostly from petrochemicals, in 2021.) But they only win 1% of the vote with his and Charles Koch’s millions.
found here – https://granitestatematters.org/how-extremists-took-control-of-nh/
The Koch Brothers had a father who worked for Nazi Germany and Hitler directly as well as Stalin to help them put their oil industry and its infrastructure in place, so maybe they come by their ideology straight from the source and have intently and intensively funded those organizations going that direction. But, the rest of these organizations that were considered “conservative” and part of the “conservative movement” or Libertarian, as well as the Republican Party and all its associated PACs, SuperPacs, and armies of organizations supporting them have no excuse at all. Now, they are in allegiance to and with complete loyalty and obedience to Trump with whatever lunacy he decides to pursue as dictator.
Trump’s Authoritarian Playbook for 2025 and What It Means For Democracy –
DONALD TRUMP: I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.
We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.
And we will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft. Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store. (APPLAUSE) Shot!
You’re not going to be a dictator, are you? I said no, other than day one.
In 2016, I declared, I am your voice. Today, I add, I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution.
Authoritarian autocracy would be closer to the truth. A leader claiming absolute rule without caring for others’ opinions or established systems of government. Donald Trump, in other words, sounds very much like another ruler he’s expressed deep admiration for, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who now leads a country that, according to several Hungarian and political science experts we’ve spoken to, looks like a democracy, but only if you squint very hard.
Our guests today have compiled, in detail, Donald Trump’s statements, promises, and plans of his supporters in PACs and think tanks. And they’ve put their findings together in a new publication called The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025, how an authoritarian president will dismantle our democracy and what we can do to protect it.
Aisha Woodward is one of the authors of this new publication. She’s the head of constraining executive power team and policy strategist at Protect Democracy, a non-profit, non-partisan, anti-authoritarian group. Aisha, welcome.
Donald Trump has openly admired authoritarians around the world.
Now, he’s pledging to rule like one.
Today, On Point: An examination of the promises, powers and plans of a second Trump presidency.
Trump’s 2025 authoritarian playbook and what it means for democracy – https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/02/26/trumps-authoritarian-playbook-for-2025-and-what-it-means-for-democracy
Apparently, all the American citizens who are not Trump MAGA cult members are the vermin Trump talks about and means to eradicate. Also apparently, he has help to do it from the Heritage Foundation and over 100 fascist and Christian Nationalist (both previously conservative) organizations who have now signed on to it, been a part of writing it and are intent on installing it in place of our democratically elected, non-authoritarian democracy form of government.
Project 2025
Description
Project 2025 is a plan to reshape the executive branch of the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Wikipedia
Parent organization: The Heritage Foundation
Budget: $22 million
Director: Paul Dans
Purpose: Plan to reshape the U.S. federal government to support the agenda of Donald Trump
What hope there is for democracy now rests with us, the people of the United States. There is no one coming to save us. We are the backstop for our Constitution and our guarantees of freedom. There is nobody else.
- cricketdiane 03-06-2024
Cricketdiane's Weblog 