#putin republicans

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Michael de Adder

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 30, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 31, 2024

Today, according to Clare Foran, Manu Raju, and Morgan Rimmer of CNN, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told his Republican colleagues that he will not bring forward the bipartisan immigration bill senators have been working on for months, calling it “absolutely dead.” 

Although Johnson insisted in November that border security was so crucial that he wouldn’t bring up aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and Gaza until such legislation was attached to it, Trump has made it clear he wants immigration and border security left on the table for him to use as an issue in his run for the presidency.

Instead of addressing border security through legislation, House Republicans instead are moving forward with their plan to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They wrote articles of impeachment even before holding hearings. Today, members of the House Homeland Security Committee held a hearing to mark up those articles, which claim that Mayorkas committed high crimes and misdemeanors because he allegedly breached the public trust and refused to enforce immigration law. 

In all our history, only one cabinet officer has been impeached. William Belknap, whose eight years as secretary of war under President U. S. Grant had been marked by ostentatious displays of wealth and apparent kickbacks from army contracts, was charged with corruption in March 1876 just hours after he tearfully handed Grant his resignation. 

The House charged Belknap with “criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain.” The Senate agreed that it had jurisdiction to hold an impeachment trial even for a former government official, for an officer should not be able to escape justice simply by resigning. After hearing more than 40 witnesses, a majority of senators voted to convict Belknap on each of five charges, but no vote reached the necessary two-thirds threshold for conviction, and he was therefore acquitted. 

Almost 150 years later, the impeachment of Mayorkas would be the second effort to impeach a cabinet member. Yet there is no suggestion that Mayorkas has done anything but try to implement the law, even as the administration has repeatedly asked for more funding to make it possible for him to do his job.

In the hearing today, Representative Seth Magaziner (D-RI) noted that “across the system, we are at and above capacity, and so, what should the secretary do? The secretary, because he has not received the funding to provide adequate detention capacity, has to use his judgment for who to detain and who to release. That is not illegal. It is certainly not impeachable. And it is the exact same kind of discretion that every other director before him has used. In the last two years of the Trump administration, 52% of migrants apprehended at the southern border were released, not detained…. Nearly a million people. I did not hear my Republican colleagues trying to impeach the secretary or acting secretary under the Trump administration during those years. But here they are, trying to impeach Secretary Mayorkas for doing the exact same thing.”

Rather than passing the laws the country needs, the extremist Republicans appear to be determined to tee up an issue on which Trump can run for president in 2024. House speaker Johnson has demanded “ZERO” illegal crossings into the U.S., but this is a standard that no previous homeland security secretary has met because it is impossible to wall off every single means of entering this country by water, air, or land. And—despite Republicans’ false claims that Biden has established “open borders”—immigrants were more likely to be released into the country during Trump's term than during Biden’s. 

What is going on here is an attempt of the extremist Republicans to undercut the administration by attacking a key cabinet officer not for actual misbehavior but on policy grounds.  

There is no chance the Senate, dominated by Democrats, will convict Mayorkas even if the House, with its razor-thin Republican majority, impeaches him, but the extremist minority in the House that is going after him is attempting to set a precedent that a minority can stop the government from functioning. 

The cost of that obstruction has been clear in domestic politics over government funding, but it has now become a global issue over the question of U.S. support for Ukraine. Johnson had said he would not bring forward a bill to provide supplemental funding for Ukraine unless it included measures for increased border security; now his rejection of a bill to provide that border security threatens Ukraine aid. 

Ukraine is defending itself against an invasion by Russia, but the struggle there is larger than one between two countries: it is the question of whether the rules-based international order put in place after World War II will survive, or whether the world will go back to a system in which stronger countries can gobble up less powerful ones. 

Military aid for Ukraine is widely popular among Americans and among American lawmakers, who recognize the larger questions at stake. But extremist Republicans are siding with Trump, who has made his preference for Russia and its autocratic leader over Ukraine clear. The realization that a few extremist Republicans are scuttling Ukraine aid has prompted officials from both parties to warn of the consequences if the U.S. stops providing support to Ukraine.

In Foreign Affairs today, Central Intelligence Agency director Wililam Burns noted that the war has weakened Putin’s Russia significantly. Aid to Ukraine has amounted to less than 5% of the U.S. defense budget, “a relatively modest investment with significant geopolitical returns for the United States and notable returns for American industry,” he wrote.

“For the United States to walk away from the conflict at this crucial moment and cut off support to Ukraine would be an own goal of historic proportions,” Burns said. The secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Jens Stoltenberg, has been in Washington, D.C., this week, urging Republicans to back the aid, if only on the grounds that most of the money appropriated goes to support jobs in the U.S. 

The man behind the extremists, Trump, was in the news today for the fact that the political action committees that back him spent about $50 million covering his legal bills in 2023. That money came from donors and arrived primarily in the months after the 2020 presidential election, when Trump lied that he had actually won the election and needed financial support to challenge the results.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[tomorrowusa]

Thanks to House Republicans under orders from Putin's puppet Donald Trump, Ukrainian forces are being starved of ammunition. Despite that, they are still outfighting Russian invaders in the east of the country.

Putin is desperately sending mass waves of cannon fodder dubbed "meat waves" against better trained Ukrainians.

Russia's 'meat wave' assaults leave frozen corpses uncollected as Russian soldiers 'just go and die,' Ukrainian sniper says

Russia's "meat assault" tactics on a key battlefield are leaving frozen bodies that Russia isn't collecting, a Ukrainian sniper said. The sniper, a special forces officer with the call sign "Bess," told CNN that the dead soldiers "just lie there frozen." "Nobody evacuates them, nobody takes them away," he said. "It feels like people don't have a specific task, they just go and die." Bess, which means "demon" in Ukrainian, spoke to CNN from Avdiivka, a town in eastern Ukraine that for months has been the scene of some of the most intense fighting in the war. The tactic deployed by Russia involves sending wave after wave of generally poorly trained and unsupported soldiers at Ukrainian positions, to try to overwhelm them so that other troops can then progress. The tactic, which experts say has been used frequently in the war, is one that Russian elite soldiers — paratroopers and marines — have recently been refusing to take part in, a Ukrainian official said.

Putin is a sociopath who has as little regard for Russian lives as he does for Ukrainians. In the past ten days, estimated daily Russian fatalities have ranged from a low of 740 to a high of 1,070. At that rate, cumulative Russian fatalities could reach 400,000 as soon as Valentine's Day.

To Putin the war is just a board game with lots of blood.

The next time there's a mutiny in Russia, I hope its leaders don't foolishly back down like the late Yevgeny Prigozhin did. Giving Putin a break will only result in them ending up like Prigozhin.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

[republikkkanorcs]

[mysharona1987]

[rejectingrepublicans]

Share his shame.

[izooks]

Let that sink in!

[perseuspixl]

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A post shared by The Other 98% (@other98)

[the-orange-shit-stain-scam]

So called MAGA “Patriot” leaders wrap themselves in our flag while pissing on the legacy of our founding fathers and the constitution. A vote for The False Orange Savior is a vote for tyranny. Putin thanks all of the MAGA politicians via $$$ for their service in the dismantling of the “United” States of America. It is always hard to accept that you have been scammed. However, this is reality. Look up how Putin was trained to take down western governments via creating this form of internal cancer when he was in the KGB.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

On 7/31/2019 Trump has a private meeting with Putin. On 8/3/2019, just 3 days after his private meeting with Putin Trump issues a request for a list of top US spies. By 2021 the CIA reports an unusually high number of their agents are being captured and/or being murdered. During the search executed at Mar A Lago the FBI find nore documents with lists of U.S. informants on them.

A Timeline

• FBI wiretapped Russian gambling ring headquartered at Trump Tower for two years - March 21, 2017

• Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador - May 15, 2017

• Trump, Putin Meet For 2 Hours In Helsinki - July 16, 2018

• Rand Paul Goes To Russia And Delivers Letter For Trump, Marking Our Era Of Irony - August 9, 2018

• Following the Money: Trump and Russia-Linked Transactions From the Campaign to the Presidential Inauguration - December 17, 2018

• The US extracted a top spy from Russia after Trump revealed classified information to the Russians in an Oval Office meeting - September 10, 2019

• Trump’s Loose Lips Force US to Extract Spy From Kremlin - September 10, 2019

• Was Mar-a-Lago Trespasser a Tourist or a Spy? A Judge Said Her Story Didn’t Hold Up. - November 25, 2019

• Trump downplays massive cyber hack on government after Pompeo links attack to Russia - December 19, 2020

• Russia has been cultivating Trump as an asset for 40 years, former KGB spy says - January 29, 2021

• There was Trump-Russia collusion — and Trump pardoned the colluder - April 17, 2021

• Longtime GOP operatives charged with funneling Russian national’s money to Trump, RNC - September 20, 2021

• Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants - October 5, 2021

• Files Seized From Trump Are Part of Espionage Act Inquiry - August 12, 2022

• Ex-Clinton aide implies 'President of France' file found at Trump's home during Mar-a-Lago raid could be valuable to Putin as 'kompromat' - August 13, 2022

• Inventing Anna: The tale of a fake heiress, Mar-a-Lago, and an FBI investigation - August 22, 2022

• Russians used a US firm to funnel funds to GOP in 2018. Dems say the FEC let them get away with it - October 30, 2022

• Trump makes shocking comments about trusting Putin over US 'intelligence lowlifes' - January 31, 2023

• Russia's Prigozhin admits links to what US says was election meddling troll farm - February 14, 2023

• GOP operative sentenced to 18 months for funneling Russian money to Trump- February 17, 2023

• Trump allegedly discussed US nuclear subs with foreign national after leaving White House: Sources - October 5, 2023

• 'So appalled': What witnesses told special counsel about Trump's handling of classified info while still president - April 24, 2024

🤔🤔🤔

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The problem Ukraine had before they lost Avdiivka was a lack of manpower on the front lines and severely diminished ammunition supplies due to inaction on Ukraine aid by the U.S.  The tiny country of Denmark recently announced that they are turning over to Ukraine their entire stock of artillery ammunition to defend against Russia.  How House Republicans can get up in the morning and look at themselves in the mirror is beyond me, unless the image they see in their mind’s eye is the Crème Brulee-colored face of Donald Trump.

Even more important than the tactical or strategic implications of Avdiivka is the symbol of a Russian victory at this specific moment.  President Zelenskyy was in Munich literally begging NATO countries for more weapons and ammunition while his troops were in retreat in Avdiivka, underscoring the dire situation of a country fighting for its existence. 

Putin’s army is fighting a war of attrition against a country beleaguered by its lack of political support by its biggest ally, the United States, at a time when Ukraine is trying to rebuild its military manpower and stave off new Russian offensives along a 600-mile border that they just don’t have the soldiers to adequately defend.  All Putin has to do is turn on CNN International to watch his allies in the Republican Party fight the third front in his war in Ukraine – the front on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and in Trump’s “America First” campaign for president.  Trump gets huge cheers and applause at his rallies every time he tells his crowds that we have to “take care of our border before we take care of other countries.”  He and Putin know they’ve got Ukraine in a hammerlock with his damned if you do, damned if you don’t political strategy linking support for Ukraine with immigration.  They demanded a right-wing dream package on immigration in return for support for Ukraine, and when they got it, they followed the Trump-Putin lead and said no deal.

Trump and Putin don’t even have to talk on the phone to be in perfect sync on the issue of Ukraine.  The danger we are facing is that those two authoritarians don’t have to talk on the phone to be in sync on our domestic politics, either.  Putin is whispering disinformation to “sources” that he would rather see Biden elected at the same time he’s probably readying the biggest aid package of them all – political support for Donald Trump the way he did in 2016 and 2020.

God help Ukraine, and God help us.

[Lucian Truscott Newsletter]

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[beauty-funny-trippy]

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

People supposedly on our side regurgitated Republican propaganda about Hillary and Trump was elected. Many of those same people are now actively regurgitating Republican propaganda targeting Biden.

Some people are completely naive about how foreign policy and diplomacy work. Short of sending in troops Biden can’t force that little prick Netanyahu to stop this madness. At this point Netanyahu is actively trying to sway the election in Trump’s favor. Trump and the Republicans in power means the literal end of Palestine and its people.

Repeating Republican/Hamas/Iranian/ Russian propaganda will only make things worse for the Palestinians, Americans, and the whole world. Biden is a good man doing as much as he can while being hindered by a Republican House of Representatives and an illegitimate SCOTUS. Stop calling Biden the lesser of two evils, he is not. Trump is the only evil person (from an evil party) and he’s already proved it repeatedly.

Trump killed over a million Americans, killed more Middle Easterners than Netanyahu, and is responsible for the Russian aggression in Ukraine. Further it’s almost a certainty that Putin put his proxy Hamas launch the October 7th terrorist attack on Israel. Putin needed a distraction to take the world’s attention off his campaign in Ukraine and wanted to weaken Biden in the hopes of getting a more compliant Trump back. Putin funnels money and arms through his other proxy Iran to Hamas, which is also a proxy of Iran and has also attacked Israel.

Hamas are not champions of the Palestinians, they are an oppressive terrorist organization holding Palestinian as virtual hostages and using them as literal human shields. Palestinians want them gone as much as they want that little shit Netanyahu gone. Hamas leadership resides in luxury estates in Qatar that are paid for by Iran. Most Middle Eastern governments are oppressive autocracies and they only way they can keep their own people from rebelling is to provide them with a common enemy as a distraction and that scapegoat is Israel. Just as states like Iran need Israel as a foil, Netanyahu, and his conservative government, need the Hamas terrorists and hostile regimes like Iran to keep himself in power.

Protest Netanyahu and his supporters as much as you want as they deserve it and more. Donate to feeding and caring for the people of Gaza. I do both. But don’t repeatedly drag Biden through the mud and dissuade people from voting for him. Biden is trying to solve this nightmare while Republicans are giving speeches about how they are going to exterminate Palestinians and confiscate their land.

All these slogans you repeat came from a Republican think tank. Please consider doing something constructive for the Palestinians instead of working to get Trump back in the White House, because if he does we all lose.

[republikkkanorcs]