homesweethomeMrL

It was a remarkable moment in modern American politics: The House speaker amplifying Trump’s defense and turning the Republican Party against the federal and state legal systems that are foundational to the U.S. government and a cornerstone of democracy. Johnson, who is second in line for the presidency, called the court system “corrupt.”

The display was, by any fair measure, obscene. The sitting speaker of the House — Congress’ top official and a man two heartbeats from the presidency — decided that it would be fully appropriate to show up at a criminal trial and allow himself to be used as a mouthpiece for a suspected felon.

Johnson could’ve stuck to a relatively anodyne script, telling reporters that he expects his party’s presumptive 2024 nominee to ultimately be exonerated, but the GOP leader went far further, lashing out at the judge in the case, prosecutors, witnesses and even the system itself.

cross-posted from: https://yall.theatl.social/post/2679263

Conservative media personality appointed to seat on Georgia State Election Board

From WABE Politics News:

A media personality who co-founded a conservative political action committee has been appointed to a seat on the Georgia State Election Board, which is responsible for developing election rules, investigating […]

Conde’s professional experience has largely been focused on the board room, rather than the newsroom. (He sits on the boards of directors of both Walmart and PepsiCo, as well as on the Council on Foreign Relations.) A veteran of the company since 2013, Conde had overseen NBCUniversal’s international businesses and later its Spanish-language division Telemundo Enterprises before adding oversight of the NBC News Group in 2020. Cavanagh gave him a promotion last year, adding NBC’s local TV stations to his purview.

After Noah Oppenheim departed as president of the news division last year, Conde did not fill that position. Instead he elevated a handful of top executives, none of whom has broad oversight across the division. That organizational structure has been critiqued by some internally as being somewhat byzantine, with the different NBC News shows having their own “fiefdoms.” (Not that everything was smooth sailing in the Oppenheim era. Remember that the news division sat on the infamous Access Hollywood tape, and the allegations that Oppenheim helped kill Ronan Farrow’s Harvey Weinstein exposé.)

Chuck "Both Sides" Todd thinks NBC went too far.

During the interview, McDaniel indicated that she disagreed with Trump’s pledge to pardon rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6th. She also said that she believes that Joe Biden was elected president “fair and square.” But Welker pressed McDaniel on her past refusal to say that Biden was legitimately elected, running a clip from an interview she gave to Chris Wallace on CNN in July.

“I don’t think he won it fair,” McDaniel said in that interview.

Well that clears that up.

Four years after the toilet paper shortage of 2020, bidet converts say they’re never going back

While the toilet paper shortages that hit the United States during pandemic lockdowns in the spring of 2020 ultimately eased up, they’ve had a lasting impact on one industry: the bidet business.

“The industry here in the U.S. just blew up. You couldn’t get a bidet if you wanted to,” says James Lin, founder of BidetKing.com, an online marketplace for all varieties of the bathroom appliance. “We all sold out. … There was a huge scramble to get more.”

What in the name of all the Earth and its domains and the heavens above is this asshattery?

The family of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is very much up in arms at something called the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation over its decision to give a leadership award named after the former Supreme Court justice to **drumroll* … *Elon Musk.

. . . Oh yeah, Rupert Murdoch is also getting this year’s Leadership Award, along with Martha Stewart (weird but whatever), Michael Milken (what?), and Sylvester Stallone (no, seriously, fucking what?).

. . . The award is all of four years old, and has previously gone to “individual women of prominence.” Did we run out of those or something?

Going way back in time, we had only a mainstream media—the Times and the Post and the Associated Press and the major networks. In the 1970s, after the famous Powell Memo, wealthy conservatives began funding their own media. For most of the last 50 years, even as the right-wing media grew, it remained clear that the mainstream media set the agenda—that is, it determined what we all talked about every day.

But recently, that flipped. This transformation has been in process for several years, but I date it to January 6 for two reasons. First, before that, the right-wing media didn’t have all-consuming power when it came to crunch time. They could not, for example, elect Donald Trump. There was still enough of a shred of news-gathering honesty at Fox News that it called Arizona for Joe Biden. Second, January 6 was a moment of choosing for the American right. Conservative politicians and the right-wing media could have woken up on January 7 and decided that enough was enough and they were captaining their MAGA-ized spaceship back down to planet Earth.

But we’ve seen how both of those matters sorted themselves out. Fox forced out the two people who made that Arizona call. . . . And on the second matter, with a few notable exceptions, virtually the whole party now embraces the January 6 “uprising” (or is too cowardly to say otherwise).

cross-posted from: https://fedinews.net/m/ImproveTheNews/t/6140

Air Guard Member Accepts Sentence for Discord Leaks

• According to a signed court filing, Jack Teixeira, a 22-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who shared sensitive US military documents with gamers on social media, has accepted a 16-year prison sentence. Guardian (LR: 2 CP: 5)
• The disclosure of records about the war in Ukraine and other national security secrets on Discord last year soon led authorities to Teixeira. The Biden administration has told allies that classified information is safe. Al Jazeera (LR: 2 CP: 1)
• Teixeira withdrew his previous plea of not guilty and consented to enter a guilty plea to each of the six counts related to the intentional retention and transmission of information. Prosecutors agreed not to file further Espionage Act charges against him. ABC News
• Under the agreement, Teixeira also consented to a $50K fine, 36 months of supervised release, relinquishing any classified materials he may still have, and participating in a "satisfactory debrief" with intelligence personnel. Forbes (LR: 3 CP: 5)
• Because Teixeira is still a member of the Air Force, he may also face military prosecution. Teixeira served as a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman under Title 10 Air Force active service, which may have implications for further legal action. ABC News
• The prosecution found no evidence of espionage and concluded that Teixeira provided exclusive Ukraine conflict intelligence to a Discord chat channel to impress online friends. The lack of more severe criminal intent reportedly led to a reduction in sentencing. New York Times (LR: 2 CP: 5)

Pro-establishment narrative:

• Teixeira is a dangerous criminal who violated his oath and betrayed the US government by leaking classified and extremely sensitive national security information on social media. He is a traitor and an obvious threat to national security and should be treated as such by prosecutors.
  VOICE OF AMERICA

Establishment-critical narrative:

• While Teixeira is obviously to blame for the leak, much of the harm could have been mitigated if his superiors had reported his misuse of classified information and worrying behavior sooner. This is another example of systemic problems plaguing the Massachusetts Air National Guard.
  HARVARD LAW SCHOOL

Nerd narrative:

• There's a 1% chance that the United States institute a military draft by 2025, according to the Metaculus prediction community.
  METACULUS (LR: 3 CP: 3)