Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

If emergency powers are being misused, Congress has the option of revoking them.

The Department of Defense said in a statement on Friday that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had “provided detailed justification to Congress that an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale” to Israel.

It looks like opposition to this has been primarily on procedural issues and not on the sale itself.

Quote:

@izzythepush,
No one changes gender to go pee with girls or boys, either.

You and Izzy are both correct.

That tells us that congress is just as guilty as joe since they've opted to do nothing to stop the crimes against humanity being perpetrated against the innocent human beings of Gaza.

That tells us that anthony is just as guilty as joe since he claims justification for the continued war crimes against the Gazans.

And what was that justification?

That tells us that the use of procedural issues is being used as a stalling tactic which, in this case, allows for the continuation of war crimes against the innocent people of Gaza.

There is not one legitimate reason for subjecting humans to treatment deemed inhumane even to animals.

The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee today released a 156-page report showing that when he was in the presidency, Trump received at least $7.8 million from 20 different governments, including those of China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Malaysia, through businesses he owned.

The Democrats brought receipts.

According to the report—and the documents from Trump’s former accounting firm Mazars that are attached to it—the People’s Republic of China and companies substantially controlled by the PRC government paid at least $5,572,548 to Trump-owned properties while Trump was in office; Saudi Arabia paid at least $615,422; Qatar paid at least $465,744; Kuwait paid at least $300,000; India paid at least $282,764; Malaysia paid at least $248,962; Afghanistan paid at least $154,750; the Philippines paid at least $74,810; the United Arab Emirates paid at least $65,225. The list went on and on.

The committee Democrats explained that these payments were likely only a fraction of the actual money exchanged, since they cover only four of more than 500 entities Trump owned at the time. When the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in January 2023, Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) stopped the investigation before Mazars had produced the documents the committee had asked for when Democrats were in charge of it. Those records included documents relating to Russia, South Korea, South Africa, and Brazil.

Trump fought hard against the production of these documents, dragging out the court fight until September 2022. The committee worked on them for just four months before voters put Republicans in charge of the House and the investigation stopped.

These are the first hard numbers that show how foreign governments funneled money to the president while policies involving their countries were in front of him. The report notes, for example, that Trump refused to impose sanctions on Chinese banks that were helping the North Korean government; one of those banks was paying him close to $2 million in rent annually for commercial office space in Trump Tower.

The first article of the U.S. Constitution reads: “[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument [that is, salary, fee, or profit], Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

The report also contrasted powerfully with the attempt of Republicans on the Oversight Committee, led by Comer, to argue that Democratic Joe Biden has corruptly profited from the presidency.

In the Washington Post on December 26, 2023, Philip Bump noted that just after voters elected a Republican majority, Comer told the Washington Post that as soon as he was in charge of the Oversight Committee, he would use his power to “determine if this president and this White House are compromised because of the millions of dollars that his family has received from our adversaries in China, Russia and Ukraine.”

For the past year, while he and the committee have made a number of highly misleading statements to make it sound as if there are Biden family businesses involving the president (there are not) and the president was involved in them (he was not), their claims were never backed by any evidence. Bump noted in a piece on December 14, 2023, for example, that Comer told Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo that “the Bidens” have “taken in” more than $24 million. In fact, Bump explained, Biden’s son Hunter and his business partners did receive such payments, but most of the money went to the business partners. About $7.5 million of it went to Hunter Biden. There is no evidence that any of it went to Joe Biden.

All of the committee’s claims have similar reality checks. Jonathan Yerushalmy of The Guardian wrote that after nearly 40,000 pages of bank records and dozens of hours of testimony, “no evidence has emerged that Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current or previous role.”

Still, the constant hyping of their claims on right-wing media led then–House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to authorize an impeachment inquiry in mid-September, and in mid-December, Republicans in the House formalized the inquiry.

There is more behind the attack on Biden than simply trying to even the score between him and Trump—who remains angry at his impeachments and has demanded Republicans retaliate—or to smear Biden through an “investigation,” which has been a standard technique of the Republicans since the mid-1990s.

Claiming that Biden is as corrupt as Trump undermines faith in our democracy. After all, if everyone is a crook, why does it matter which one is in office? And what makes American democracy any different from the authoritarian systems of Russia or Hungary or Venezuela, where leaders grab what they can for themselves and their followers?

Democracies are different from authoritarian governments because they have laws to prevent the corruption in which it appears Trump engaged. The fact that Republicans refuse to hold their own party members accountable to those laws while smearing their opponents says far more about them than it does about the nature of democracy.

It does, though, highlight that our democracy is in danger.

Yeah, okay. And then what?

That's the world we live in. What's your plan for change?

You're not the one to discuss solutions with.

If you're going to do a song and dance in order to avoid honest criticism of Israel, save your strength; we've all seen it before.

So, your answer to the problem of what to do about Israel's nonstop commission of war crimes against human beings right now is to shut up about it because there's nothing we can do to stop them anyway.

But this is when you put your dancing shoes on and try to disparage those who want to discuss the solution.

If you want to discuss solutions, you'll have to admit to what's going on.

I am only one person, I don't know where the duality comes from.

@bobsal u1553115,

Quote:

@izzythepush,
No one changes gender to go pee with girls or boys, either.

You and Izzy are both correct

The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee today released a 156-page report showing that when he was in the presidency, Trump received at least $7.8 million from 20 different governments, including those of China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, and Malaysia, through businesses he owned.

Sean Hannity calls reports that Donald Trump got millions of dollars from China while president “lies”
01/04/24 9:49 PM EST

Donald Trump to Sean Hannity in 2023: A president receiving money from China would be “compromised”
01/04/24 8:14 PM EST

Donald Trump to Sean Hannity in 2023: “Could you imagine” if my family had received money from China
01/04/24 7:09 PM EST

Sean Hannity in January 2023: “There've never been any accusations that Donald Trump got paid by China or his children made deals with China”
01/04/24 4:14 PM EST

Donald Trump Jr. in 2019: If I took even a dollar from China it would be a scandal
01/04/24 4:04 PM EST

Leonard Leo, architect of conservative Supreme Court, takes on wider culture

In October 2022, the Opus Dei-affiliated Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., bestowed its highest honor, the John Paul II New Evangelization Award, on the conservative legal activist Leonard Leo. Six months later, he received an honorary doctorate from Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. Both events provided an opportunity for the self-described introvert to give a public speech.

In the two presentations, Leo used the same language to describe a trio of frightening forces — "barbarians, secularists and bigots" — that he said represent nothing less than a war with the devil.

"The barbarians are determined to threaten and delegitimize individuals and institutions who refuse to pledge fealty to the woke idols of our age," Leo told graduates of Benedictine, a conservative school where he likely expected a friendly reception to his strong words.

"The secularists are fine with Catholics in the public square so long as we don't, you know, practice our faith. They want us to draw the curtains at home and keep it in the pews, and it remains to be seen how long they'll accept even that," Leo continued.

"And the progressive bigots distort who we are and what we believe in, and will go so far as to intimidate or harass us in public in an effort to drive us into professional and social exile."

Quote:

'Leo wanted to see his own moral principles become the law of the land. And now he wants his moral principles to be the culture of the land.'

—Mary Jo McConahay

In the Catholic Information Center speech, he compared the "current-day bigots" to the Ku Klux Klan...

The National Catholic Reporter does and excellent deep dive on the far right Catholic organizations and individuals pushing a broad campaign towards theocratic determination of American politics and culture. Though we often tend to think that this dynamic is mainly a Protestant/Evangelical phenomenon, that assumption misses much of what is actually going on.

Quote:

Leonard Leo, architect of conservative Supreme Court, takes on wider culture

In October 2022, the Opus Dei-affiliated Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., bestowed its highest honor, the John Paul II New Evangelization Award, on the conservative legal activist Leonard Leo. Six months later, he received an honorary doctorate from Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. Both events provided an opportunity for the self-described introvert to give a public speech.

In the two presentations, Leo used the same language to describe a trio of frightening forces — "barbarians, secularists and bigots" — that he said represent nothing less than a war with the devil.

"The barbarians are determined to threaten and delegitimize individuals and institutions who refuse to pledge fealty to the woke idols of our age," Leo told graduates of Benedictine, a conservative school where he likely expected a friendly reception to his strong words.

"The secularists are fine with Catholics in the public square so long as we don't, you know, practice our faith. They want us to draw the curtains at home and keep it in the pews, and it remains to be seen how long they'll accept even that," Leo continued.

"And the progressive bigots distort who we are and what we believe in, and will go so far as to intimidate or harass us in public in an effort to drive us into professional and social exile."

Quote:

'Leo wanted to see his own moral principles become the law of the land. And now he wants his moral principles to be the culture of the land.'

—Mary Jo McConahay

In the Catholic Information Center speech, he compared the "current-day bigots" to the Ku Klux Klan...

That just the first small part of this excellent reporting. You can find it all HERE and I really hope folks will attend because it is important.

But I wanted to add a note on the Catholic Information Center. This is a far right activist group deeply imbedded in Republican politics and which has significant power and profile. Board members are Leonard Leo, William Barr and Pat Cipilone. Sam Brownback and Newt Gingrich are also deeply involved. If you want a clear idea of the theocratic aims of this crowd, just read William Barr's speech at Notre Dame four years ago. Here.

If you read the National Catholic Reporter piece, you'll see that this is the crowd who has, over decades, created/populated the present Supreme Court majority through serious organization and multi-billion dollar funding.

I notice that's the only point you can address.

I asked you to stop patronising me and this is just more 9f the same.

I could do without it, and your long winded responses.

The Bard said "brevity is the soul of wit," maybe you could try that out sometime.

Even the Pope (who is Catholic) is irritated by American Catholics...

Sorry you perceive things this way but it's just not the sort of conversation that I'm interested in engaging.

The year 2023 ended with announcements from two prominent Catholic Republicans that they are no longer opponents of the LGBT agenda. Presidential candidate Chris Christie, citing Pope Francis’ decision to allow priests to bless same-sex couples, said this was enough for him to rethink gay marriage.

In 2013, when Christie was governor of New Jersey, he denounced a Supreme Court decision (the Defense of Marriage Act) that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. At the time, he said this was a “bad decision.” Now he’s fine with it, trotting out the pope for cover.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine was also known as a reliable partner in the culture war. But last week he vetoed a bill that would have banned prescribing hormones, chemical castration and sex-reassignment surgery for minors. He also said it was okay for boys who misidentify as girls to compete against girls in athletics.

Why is genital mutilation of children now considered proper? Why is the assault on female sports considered proper? DeWine says these matters are not the government’s business. Really? Since when has the welfare of minors not been the business of government? We have laws on the books barring parents from abusing their children. We also have laws, of more recent vintage, discriminating on the basis of sex. Allowing boys to compete against girls in sports eviscerates the rights of girls.

It looks like Christie and DeWine are following the lead of another Catholic Republican, Paul Ryan. The former Speaker of the House, who now sits on the board of Fox News’ parent company, admitted last year that “I’m not a culture war guy.” We don’t need convincing.

The 2024 Republican Platform will be decided this summer. The head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, who is a Mormon, announced in 2021 that the “GOP is proud to have doubled down our LGBTQ support over the last 4 years” and will continue to do so. After considerable blowback, she modified her stand saying that her outreach was simply about mobilizing voters. She pledged to stand up for “religious liberty, family values and Republicans of faith.”

It is a sure bet that the Platform will be hotly debated at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. What it says about the LGBT agenda will reveal whether the Christie-DeWine-Ryan wing will encourage the Nervous Nellies like McDaniels to sell out “Republicans of faith.” source

And there's always Bill Donahue:

There's a war going on.