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2021-04-15 at 5:03 AM UTC in THE MAGA PARTY!,,, the GOP is dead, republicans are going down with the dems,, get ready for THE MAGA PARTY lefty'sNBC News
No charges for Capitol Police officer who shot Jan. 6 rioter, Justice Department says
Tom Winter and Dareh Gregorian
The Justice Department has determined it won’t file charges against the U.S. Capitol Police officer who fatally shot 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt during the storming of the Capitol on January 6th.
In a press release announcing the decision, the Justice Department said the investigation did not find evidence that the officer had violated any federal laws, and there was nothing to contradict that he believed it was necessary to shoot at Babbitt "in self-defense or in defense of the Members of Congress and others evacuating the House Chamber."
“Officials examined video footage posted on social media, statements from the officer involved and other officers and witnesses to the events, physical evidence from the scene of the shooting, and the results of an autopsy” and “based on that investigation, officials determined that there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution,” the release said.
The probe found "Babbitt was among a mob of people that entered the Capitol building and gained access to a hallway outside 'Speaker’s Lobby,' which leads to the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. At the time, the USCP was evacuating Members from the Chamber, which the mob was trying to enter from multiple doorways."
It also gave a harrowing account of what the officer, who was not identified, was facing at the time of the attack.
"Members of the mob attempted to break through the doors by striking them and breaking the glass with their hands, flagpoles, helmets, and other objects. Eventually, the three USCP officers positioned outside the doors were forced to evacuate. As members of the mob continued to strike the glass doors, Ms. Babbitt attempted to climb through one of the doors where glass was broken out," the statement said.
The officer "fired one round from his service pistol, striking Ms. Babbitt in the left shoulder, causing her to fall back from the doorway and onto the floor," the statement said. "A USCP emergency response team, which had begun making its way into the hallway to try and subdue the mob, administered aid to Ms. Babbitt, who was transported to Washington Hospital Center, where she succumbed to her injuries".
The Justice Department said the focus of the investigation was to determine whether the officer violated any federal laws, including federal criminal civil rights violations.
It noted that in federal court, “evidence that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment cannot establish the high level of intent required” under the law. The announcement also said that Babbitt's family had been notified that the case is closed.
Babbitt was an Air Force veteran who was a decorated security forces controller and served multiple Middle East tours from 2004 to 2016, according to Air Force records.
Babbitt was a loyal Fox News watcher, according to thousands of tweets to Fox News hosts, and also engaged on social media with the conspiracy site InfoWars. In 2020, Babbitt began to tweet with accounts and hashtags associated with QAnon. The day before the rally, she tweeted, "Nothing will stop us....they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours....dark to light!”
Babbitt was one of five people, including a Capitol Police officer, to die as a result of the riot.
More than 300 people have been charged with taking part in the riot, which happened as a joint session of Congress was tallying the Electoral College vote count.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-04-14 at 7:47 PM UTC in We are living in the era of stupidThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-14 at 5:10 PM UTC in Corona virus vaccines are killing people
Originally posted by ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I say if people are stupid enough to inject this garbage, let them. Just means less low-intelligence morons on the planet, which is a good thing, not a bad thing.
I say if Republicans don't want to get vaccinated, that's just fine.
That just means that many more dead Republicans.
A win-win situation for all!The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-04-12 at 5:19 PM UTC in Plague Coming: Cicada2021And some salsa freshly made by your Messican maid?The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-10 at 8:16 PM UTC in What are you listening to right now, space nigga?The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-12 at 5:16 AM UTC in THE MAGA PARTY!,,, the GOP is dead, republicans are going down with the dems,, get ready for THE MAGA PARTY lefty'sThe Washington Post
More than 100 corporate executives hold call to discuss halting donations and investments to fight controversial voting bills
Todd Frankel
More than 100 chief executives and corporate leaders gathered online Saturday to discuss taking new action to combat the controversial state voting bills being considered across the country, including the one recently signed into law in Georgia.
Executives from major airlines, retailers and manufacturers — plus at least one NFL owner — talked about potential ways to show they opposed the legislation, including by halting donations to politicians who support the bills and even delaying investments in states that pass the restrictive measures, according to four people who were on the call, including one of the organizers, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor.
While no final steps were agreed upon, the meeting represents an aggressive dialing up of corporate America’s stand against controversial voting measures nationwide, a sign that their opposition to the laws didn’t end with the fight against the Georgia legislation passed in March.
It also came just days after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned that firms should “stay out of politics” — echoing a view shared by many conservative politicians and setting up the potential for additional conflict between Republican leaders and the heads of some of America’s largest firms. This month, former president Donald Trump called for conservatives to boycott Coca-Cola, Major League Baseball, Delta Air Lines, Citigroup, ViacomCBS, UPS and other companies after they opposed the law in Georgia that critics say will make it more difficult for poorer voters and voters of color to cast ballots. Baseball officials decided to move the All-Star Game this summer from Georgia to Colorado because of the voting bill.
The online call between corporate executives on Saturday “shows they are not intimidated by the flak. They are not going to be cowed,” Sonnenfeld said. “They felt very strongly that these voting restrictions are based on a flawed premise and are dangerous.”
Leaders from dozens of companies such as Delta, American, United, Starbucks, Target, LinkedIn, Levi Strauss and Boston Consulting Group, along with Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, were included on the Zoom call, according to people who listened in.
The discussion — scheduled to last one hour but going 10 minutes longer — was led at times by Kenneth Chenault, the former chief executive of American Express, and Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck, who told the executives that it was important to keep fighting what they viewed as discriminatory laws on voting. Chenault and Frazier coordinated a letter signed last month by 72 Black business executives that made a similar point — a letter that first drew attention to the voting bills in executive suites across the country.
The call’s goal was to unify companies that had been issuing their own statements and signing on to drafted statements from different organizations after the action in Georgia, Sonnenfeld said. The leaders called in from around the country — some chimed in from Augusta, Ga., where they were attending the Masters golf tournament.
“There was a defiance of the threats that businesses should stay out of politics,” Sonnenfeld said. “They were obviously rejecting that even with their presence (on the call). But they were there out of concern about voting restrictions not being in the public interest.”
One Georgia-based executive talked about how the final version of Georgia’s legislation — which Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has said actually expands voting access, a claim that many have challenged — was much worse than expected, and how that should serve as a warning to other chief executives as more states consider adopting their own voting bills, according to people on the call.
Access to the polls has emerged as a major national issue. Republican state lawmakers are trying to pass legislation they say is designed to combat voting fraud — which Trump has baselessly and frequently claimed is a problem. GOP-backed bills in various statehouses aim to ban ballot drop boxes, limit voting periods, restrict absentee voting or stiffen requirements for voter identification. Five bills with new voter restrictions have been passed nationwide so far, with 55 restrictive bills in 24 states being considered by legislatures, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute.
Companies have jumped into hot-button political debates before, such as the corporate backlash to a 2016 North Carolina bill banning transgender people from using the public restroom that corresponds with their gender identities. After the Capitol riot in January, many companies pledged to stop donating to politicians who spurred doubts about the outcome of the presidential election.
Now, it is voting rights. Many of the corporate leaders who joined the call seemed to view the voting restrictions as attacks on democracy, rather than as a partisan issue, according to people who listened in.
Mike Ward, cofounder of the Civic Alliance, a nonpartisan group of businesses focused on voter engagement, said he felt there was a broad consensus at the end of the call that company leaders plan to continue working against voting bills they think are restrictive — “to lean into this, not lean away from this.”The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-04-10 at 10:47 PM UTC in THE MAGA PARTY!,,, the GOP is dead, republicans are going down with the dems,, get ready for THE MAGA PARTY lefty's"Donald Trump is the real true President!"
Hell, Trump wasn't a real President when he was.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-03-16 at 5:06 PM UTC in Best way to stash cashMake a treasure hunt out of your stash. Give us clues as to where you buried it and we can all search for it.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-09 at 5:05 PM UTC in DMX Has now diedIsn't that a bicycle?The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-07 at 4:12 PM UTC in THE MAGA PARTY!,,, the GOP is dead, republicans are going down with the dems,, get ready for THE MAGA PARTY lefty'sThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-07 at 4:10 PM UTC in THE MAGA PARTY!,,, the GOP is dead, republicans are going down with the dems,, get ready for THE MAGA PARTY lefty'sJust a few questions before starting:
-Didn't Trump campaign in the 2016 race on the "fact" that he was so rich that he didn't need donations?
-What would the interest be on a short-term $122,000,000 loan be and, should Trump be required to reimburse that amount to those he hoodwinked along with reimbursing the fees charged that are being kept on unauthorized "donations"?
'A complete ripoff': Campaign finance experts puzzled and stunned by Trump camp's reported 'money bomb' ploy
gpanetta@businessinsider.com (Grace Panetta)
Experts are puzzled and stunned by the Trump campaign's reported 'money bomb' ploy.
A New York Times investigation detailed how supporters were duped into making recurring donations.
So far, it's unclear whether the reported actions are illegal or just unethical.
Elderly donors who gave a few hundred dollars to former President Donald Donald Trump's reelection campaign were shocked to see thousands drained from their accounts. Refund requests spiked in the final months of the campaign. The ensuing surges in credit card fraud claims associated with Trump even got on the radar of the US' biggest banks.
A New York Times investigation published Saturday detailed a recurring donation scheme reportedly referred to as "the money bomb" that the Trump campaign used to pad its coffers in the final months of the campaign through the GOP fundraising platform WinRed.
The tactics included added pre-checked recurring donation boxes at the bottom of fundraising emails and creating an opt-out instead of opt-in system for recurring donations. And as time drew closer to the election, the fine print by those bright-yellow donation boxes became smaller and more confusing, leading to donors, including many elderly ones, unknowingly signing up to give thousands in contributions.
Asking for recurring donations is a common practice for Democratic campaigns and nonprofits too, but the Trump campaign's methods were particularly alarming to many experts.
"Groups do this all the time in a non-toxic way, and of course Trump, being Trump, did this 72 million times in the wrong direction, and it started to look like fraud," Beth Rotman, National Director of Money and Politics at advocacy group Common Cause, told Insider.
The payments, according to The Times, essentially functioned as an "interest-free loan" from Trump's donors to his campaign, which faced upheaval and financial turmoil in the months leading up to the November 3 election. Eventually, tens of millions of donations were refunded over the course of 2020, with WinRed pocketing the transaction fees.
As Insider's Tom LoBianco reported, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale had booked nearly $200 million worth of TV ads with the expectation that a surge in last-minute donations would cover the cost, a misstep that "left the reelection effort dead broke by the start of October."
The Trump campaign's recurring donation ploy both perplexed and shocked even the most seasoned campaign finance professionals interviewed by Insider.
'A complete ripoff' of a plan
Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy21, who has been a leader in pivotal campaign finance and ethics reform battles in Congress and the courts over the past four decades, told Insider that he'd "never seen anything like this."
"I've never seen anyone do what the Trump campaign just did," Wertheimer said, arguing that the Trump campaign's behavior constituted elder abuse and is "below the bottom of the barrel" of acceptable fundraising tactics.
"This is a complete ripoff, they knew exactly what they were doing," he added. "They knew they were tricking people into signing up for what they thought was one contribution, when they were really signing up for multiple contributions. Then when they got caught, they sent the money back. It's like if a bank robber got caught and said, 'Oh, well, I gave the money back.'"
The highly unusual nature of the Trump campaign's methods were also reflected in the staggering rate of refunds. While it's routine for presidential campaigns - particularly those that operate at a large scale - to refund some contributions to donors who unknowingly gave over the legal limit, the sheer number of refund requests and the spike in refunds stuck out to experts and insiders.
In all, the Trump campaign refunded $122 million in online donations, including 10.7% of its donations raised through WinRed, The Times reported. By contrast, President Joe Biden only refunded $21 million of online donations and 2.2% of the donations that came in through ActBlue.
"I've been here almost six years, and I can't think of anything particularly like this in which people did not know that they were making recurring contributions," Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW), told Insider. "Reimbursing 10% of donations is a massive, unbelievable amount."
In a lengthy Monday statement issued through his Save America PAC, Trump denied the main claims in the article, arguing that the Trump campaign always promptly refunded donations upon request, pointing to a less than 1% rate of contributions being subject to formal disputes through credit card companies. He also attacked The Times' reporting as "a completely misleading, one-sided hit piece" and continued to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
The law doesn't always account for campaign finance ploys
Experts interviewed by The Times and Insider all agreed that the Trump campaign's and WinRed's actions cross an ethical line, especially regarding the elderly donors who say they were duped. But it's not yet clear whether their ploys run afoul of campaign finance or consumer protection laws.
"This is not a common thing we've seen before," Libowitz said. "It could be that this is a thing without a lot of regulation around it, just because laws follow issues."
Rotman of Common Cause told Insider that the new revelations about the Trump campaign present a prime opportunity for agencies like the Federal Election Commission and lawmakers in Congress to set new, updated regulations and standards for solicitation of recurring online donations.
"It's not really fraud, but it's potential trickery," Rotman said of the Trump camp's tactics. "You're talking about attempts at trickery, and you need anti-trickery regulations and statutes. And you can do that with clearer guidance and enforcement. It should not be so easy for people to be mystified as to how much they're giving and how often."
Craig Holman, a campaign finance and ethics lobbyist for democracy watchdog group Public Citizen, told Insider that federal campaign finance laws and the Internal Revenue Code mainly only prohibit soliciting campaign donations over the legal limit, not necessarily the tactics used in those solicitations.
"I have never seen a fundraising practice for candidates and party committees like this before, but the laws and regulations governing solicitations are quite lax," Holman said. "It could be argued that the solicitation method would likely cause illegal contributions beyond the contribution limits, but it appears that refunds were made in such cases, so it is unlikely that legal action could be taken against the Trump campaign and WinRed."
Meredith McGehee, executive director of campaign finance reform advocacy group Issue One, told Insider that the Trump campaign's activities raise new questions about the intersection of campaign finance and consumer protection, including whether fundraising platforms like WinRed will be held to the same standards as other businesses, especially for actions that could be seen as preying on seniors.
"Basic consumer law is that you give consumers clear and noticeable notification that a pledge is going to happen. It sounds in the case of just pure consumer law that this failed the test of people knowing what they're getting into," she said.
Long-term, WinRed's mandate to make a profit and to catch up to their political opponents on the Democratic side in the online fundraising game creates an incentive structure more permissive of cutting corners, verging into ethical gray areas like this, McGehee added.
"It's important to note that WinRed is structured as a for-profit entity as opposed to ActBlue, which is nonprofit. When you're a for-profit company, the incentives to make these things clear are less strong - they're a business and their job is to make money," she said. "Since they're operating as a business, the question I would raise immediately is: is this good business practice?"
Even if the Trump campaign and WinRed don't face immediate consequences from federal agencies, the damning allegations could hurt the platform's ability going forward, and by extension, the GOP.
"The highly unethical and deceptive fundraising practices will inevitably take its toll," Holman told Insider. "These donors are quite unlikely to give a campaign donation again to Trump and WinRed."The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-04-06 at 5:41 PM UTC in The living embodiment of inbred white trashThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-06 at 5:54 PM UTC in Why are most of you so stupid?
Originally posted by Donald Trump Do stupid people even realise they are stupid?
headshot
Robert Reich
Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley; author, ‘Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few’’
Seriously, How Dumb Is Trump?
For more than a year now, I’ve been hearing from people in the inner circles of official Washington – GOP lobbyists, Republican pundits, even a few Republican members of Congress – that Donald Trump is remarkably stupid.
I figured they couldn’t be right because really stupid people don’t become presidents of the United States. Even George W. Bush was smart enough to hire smart people to run his campaign and then his White House.
Several months back when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “f—king moron,” I discounted it. I know firsthand how frustrating it can be to serve in a president’s cabinet, and I’ve heard members of other president’s cabinets describe their bosses in similar terms.
Now comes “Fire and Fury,” a book by journalist Michael Wolff, who interviewed more than 200 people who dealt with Trump as a candidate and president, including senior White House staff members.
In it, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster calls Trump a “dope.” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus both refer to him as an “idiot.” Rupert Murdoch says Trump is a “f—king idiot.”
Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn describes Trump as “dumb as sh-t,” explaining that “Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”
When one of Trump’s campaign aides tried to educate him about the Constitution, Trump couldn’t focus. “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment,” the aide recalled, “before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”
Trump doesn’t think he’s stupid, of course. As he recounted, “I went to an Ivy League college … I did very well. I’m a very intelligent person.”
Yet Trump wasn’t exactly an academic star. One of his professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and Finance purportedly said that he was “the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”
Trump biographer Gwenda Blair wrote in 2001 that Trump was admitted to Wharton on a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer who had known Trump’s older brother.
But hold on. It would be dangerous to underestimate this man.
Even if Trump doesn’t read, can’t follow a logical argument, and has the attention span of a fruit fly, it still doesn’t follow that he’s stupid.
There’s another form of intelligence, called “emotional intelligence.”
Emotional intelligence is a concept developed by two psychologists, John Mayer of the University of New Hampshire, and Yale’s Peter Salovey, and it was popularized by Dan Goleman in his 1996 book of the same name.
Mayer and Salovey define emotional intelligence as the ability to do two things – “understand and manage our own emotions,” and “recognize and influence the emotions of others.”
Granted, Trump hasn’t displayed much capacity for the first. He’s thin-skinned, narcissistic, and vindictive.
As dozens of Republican foreign policy experts put it, “he is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood. He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate criticism.”
OK, but what about Mayer and Salovey’s second aspect of emotional intelligence – influencing the emotions of others?
This is where Trump shines. He knows how to manipulate people. He has an uncanny ability to discover their emotional vulnerabilities – their fears, anxieties, prejudices, and darkest desires – and use them for his own purposes.
To put it another way, Trump is an extraordinarily talented conman.
He’s always been a conman. He conned hundreds of young people and their parents into paying to attend his near worthless Trump University. He conned banks into lending him more money even after he repeatedly failed to pay them. He conned contractors to work for them and then stiffed them.
Granted, during he hasn’t always been a great conman. Had he been, his cons would have paid off.
By his own account, in 1976, when Trump was starting his career, he was worth about $200 million, much of it from his father. Today he says he’s worth some $8 billion. If he’d just put the original $200 million into an index fund and reinvested the dividends, he’d be worth $12 billion today.
But he’s been a great political conman. He conned 62,979,879 Americans to vote for him in November 2016 by getting them to believe his lies about Mexicans, Muslims, African-Americans, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and all the “wonderful,” “beautiful” things he’d do for the people who’d support him.
And he’s still conning most of them.
Political conning is Trump’s genius. It’s this genius – when combined with his utter stupidity in every other dimension of his being – that poses the greatest danger to America and the world.
And...this was written before the whole "Contributiongate" scandal where Trump grifted extra payment from his own unsuspecting donors without their knowledge or approval.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-04-06 at 4:53 PM UTC in Joe Biden - best president in human history(365 x 4) + 1 (leap year) = 1461 days in office
If Trump played golf on 298 days while in office, Trump played golf on 20.397% of his days in office.
Trump spent the other 79.6% of his days watching Faux News and tweeting hate.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-04-05 at 6:44 PM UTC in Candyrain looks like something from the twilight zoneIt's all pink on the inside.The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-05 at 6:35 PM UTC in THE MAGA PARTY!,,, the GOP is dead, republicans are going down with the dems,, get ready for THE MAGA PARTY lefty'sThe following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-05 at 4:15 PM UTC in Reminder that Trump is not presidentI also have all my own money unlike the Republicans who attempted making a one time donation to Trump only to find their bank account drained, their credit score ruined, overdraft charges on bounced checks and fees not refunded on non-approved "donations".The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-05 at 4:17 PM UTC in Isn't it about time for Bugz to make a thread about California?Why don't you make a thread about the real bugs?
We got billions of cicadas coming!
GREAT BAIT!The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire! -
2021-04-04 at 9:59 PM UTC in Why are none of the trumptards talking about Gaetz?The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
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2021-04-04 at 5:30 PM UTC in CardninalsCardinals History
Musial Cycle 1280
All Time Leaders
Stan Musial is the club's all-time leader in games (3,206), runs (1,949), hits (3,630), doubles (725), triples (177), home runs (475), total bases (6,134), RBI (1,951), bases on balls (1,599), total bases (6,134), extra base hits (1,377), and plate appearances (12,712).
Now, that's a Cardinal!The following users say it would be alright if the author of this post didn't die in a fire!
