That Rooskie money dried up… NRA can’t do anymore funneling lmaoo
General Political Fúckery Thread - Subplot: Can Democrats Win Back The House In Nov?
- Thread starter mc_brew
- Start date
That Rooskie money dried up… NRA can’t do anymore funneling lmaoo
Republican Senate candidate’s family egg company caught in price-fixing plot
Several food giants claimed that Rose Acre Farms – which John Rust chaired until recently – unlawfully fixed the prices of eggswww.theguardian.com
Republican Senate candidate’s family egg company caught in price-fixing plot
Several food giants claimed that Rose Acre Farms – which John Rust chaired until recently – unlawfully fixed the prices of eggs
Victoria Bekiempis and agencies
Thu 23 Nov 2023 14.06 EST
Jurors found that Rose Acre Farms exported eggs outside the US and killed hens early to inflate prices. Photograph: Aaron Piper/AP
The family farming company of a Republican candidate for the US Senate was found liable on Tuesday in a plot to fix the price of eggs.
Rose Acre Farms, which claims to be the second-largest egg producer in the country and until September was chaired by John Rust – now running as a Senate candidate for Indiana – was accused in a civil suit of cutting supply to raise prices.
Food giants including Kraft, Kellog, General Mills and Nestle filed the suit in Illinois federal court, arguing that between 1999 and 2008 Rose Acre and other producers – Cal-Maine Foods, United Egg Producers and United States Egg Marketers – “unlawfully agreed to and did engage in a conspiracy to control supply and artificially maintain and increase the price of eggs”.
Jurors agreed, finding that the egg suppliers had exported eggs to cut supply in the US market, as well as limiting the number of hens, reducing flocks and killing chickens earlier than they usually did.
The food giants argued that, as companies which buy eggs, these moves hurt them by artificially driving up their costs.
The court will consider damages starting on 29 November.
Rust chaired the board of Rose Acre until September of this year, when his brother took over. His candidacy for Senate has met setbacks: his opponent, Congressman Jim Banks, was endorsed by the Indiana Republican party and, perhaps more important for GOP candidates, by ex-president Donald Trump.
Rust is also suing Indiana over a statute that could bar him from appearing on the ballot, as it stipulates that candidates must vote in two primaries for the party with which they’re affiliated, or else have their candidacy approved by a county party chair. Rust did cast his ballot as a Republican during the 2016 primary, but voted in Democratic primaries from 2006 and 2012, according to the Indianapolis Star.
Banks seized on the jury’s decision against his opponent. “Today’s verdict proves John Rust isn’t just a conman pretending to be a Republican, he is a crook who exploits working-class Hoosiers across Indiana for his own financial gain,” the Associated Press quoted Banks as saying. “While Indiana families struggle to put food on the table, he’s making it even harder to do that.”
Make this into it's own separate thread in TLR
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dikk...ittee-biden-judges_n_6568fef4e4b066e398b6fb64
GOP Melts Down As dikk Durbin Uses Its Tactics For Advancing Biden Judges
"It's called precedent," the Senate Judiciary Committee chair said of violating the same rule that Republicans ignored to move forward with judicial nominees.
By Jennifer Bendery
Nov 30, 2023, 09:18 PM EST
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee had full-blown meltdowns on Thursday after Chairman dikk Durbin (D-Ill.) held votes on two of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees without allowing debate on them, saying he was simply following the “new precedent” established by Republicans when they did the same thing to Democrats, twice.
Durbin appeared to completely blindside Republicans by moving straight to votes on two U.S. District Court nominees, Mustafa Kasubhai and Eumi Lee, without opening up the floor for discussions on them. Both nominees had two previous hearings and had been debated. But typically the panel would still allow for more discussion in what was their confirmation hearing.
Not Thursday. Durbin went straight to their votes, saying senators already had two chances to debate their nominations. And GOP reactions went from confusion to anger to the kinds of high-octane tantrums familiar to anyone with children under the age of 5.
“Are we going to have an opportunity to speak?” asked Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
“I would also like to speak on the nomination,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.).
“I understand what you’d like to do, but I’m saying, in fairness, we’ve debated these nominees twice,” Durbin said. “I ask the clerk to call the roll.”
This is where the anger kicked in.
“You’re denying us an opportunity to speak?” Cornyn asked.
“Come on, man,” fumed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “I mean, OK. Do this. Just do it!”
“We don’t have a right to speak under the rules?” asked Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).
“Under the third time, I’d say no,” Durbin said flatly.
“So you’re just going to make it up?” Cotton demanded to know.
“You’re telling us to shut up? You want us to SHUT UP?” Blackburn said, raising her voice. “Is that what you’re saying?”
"Do this! Just do it!” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) fumed at Senate Judiciary Committee chair dikk Durbin (D-Ill.) for following a precedent set by Republicans on advancing judicial nominees.
VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Soon Republicans were talking over each other and hurling insults and threats at Durbin.
“There’s going to be a lot of consequences coming here,” warned Cotton. “I cautioned a lot of you. Listen to me! I cautioned a lot of you!”
Cornyn suggested that Republicans might walk out of the hearing right then and deny a quorum, meaning the committee couldn’t conduct any votes.
Cotton got so mad he started talking about himself in the third person.
“Mr. Cotton says the chairman needs to rethink his decision,” said Cotton, as his name came up in the roll call. “That’s what Mr. Cotton says.”
When Blackburn said again she wanted to talk, Cotton interjected, “Now I guess Sen. Durbin is not going to allow women to speak either. I thought that was sacrosanct in your party!”
“Congratulations on destroying the United States Senate Judiciary Committee,” Cornyn dramatically told Durbin.
“Congratulations on destroying the United States Senate Judiciary Committee!"
VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Through all this, Durbin sat expressionless, waiting for breaks in the attacks to quietly direct the clerk to continue the roll call. He periodically reminded Republicans that they’d already had two chances to debate both nominees in two separate hearings. That didn’t seem to matter much to them.
“You had to bring them up again,” Graham said. “It wasn’t our fault! It’s your fault!”
“This is a complete disgrace,” Cornyn said.
“Is this an illegal vote?” Blackburn wondered. (It was not.)
It wasn’t until after Democrats voted out both nominees and the complaints had somewhat subsided that Durbin had a chance to spell out why this was happening: He was following a precedent set by the last two Republican chairs of the committee, who violated the same committee rule to advance nominees and legislation without giving Democrats a chance to weigh in.
In other words, Durbin was giving Republicans a taste of their own medicine.
“The two preceding chairs of this committee violated the letter and spirit of Committee Rule IV,” he said, referring to a committee rule that requires at least one member of the minority to vote with the majority to end debate on a matter before moving to vote on it.
Durbin said one former chair, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), violated this rule with a vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination, and Graham was chair when he broke the rule to advance a partisan immigration bill without Democratic input.
“In doing so, Republicans established a new precedent that I followed on one occasion last Congress and will follow again today,” said the Illinois Democrat. “I’ve said time and again there cannot be one set of rules for Republicans and a different set for Democrats.”
“This is the third time they were brought up,” he added of the two nominees at the center of Thursday’s hearing. “That’s the reason the ruling was made by the chair.”
I'm just following your lead, guys.
VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) suggested it was petty for Durbin to break rules just because previous chairmen did it, too.
“So Mr. Chairman, you’re saying because you think Sen. Grassley violated the rule, you’re going to violate the rule?” he asked.
“It’s called precedent, senator,” replied Durbin.
A committee spokesperson noted that Kennedy spoke on Kasubhai in a Nov. 2 hearing and again in a Nov. 19 hearing, for a total of 12 minutes.
Graham spoke on both nominees in the Nov. 2 hearing, for about two minutes, too. And Cotton spoke on Kasubhai in the Nov. 9 hearing for about six minutes.
“Chair Durbin did in fact offer Republicans the opportunity to speak on Lee’s nomination before we turned to the subpoenas,” said the spokesperson, referring to other business carried out in the hearing, “and not a single one took him up on that offer.”
Both nominees now head to the Senate floor for final confirmation votes.
Johnson's Crusade Against Democracy, Calls for 'Biblical' Governance
House Speaker Johnson argues against democracy, advocating for a republic based on Bible (video)
boingboing.net
House Speaker Johnson argues against democracy, advocating for a republic based on Bible (video)
MARK FRAUENFELDER 9:25 AM MON DEC 4, 2023
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), official photo
"You know we don't live in a democracy," House Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson says about the United States in this 2016 video, "because democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what's for dinner."
Johnson is correct that we don't live in a democracy, but he's wrong about the make up of the population. The United States is like two lambs and a wolf.
How is that wolf going to eat the lambs if it keeps getting outvoted?
Thank the Lord we have a "constitutional republic," Johnson says. "The founders set that up because they followed the biblical admonition on what a civil society is supposed to look like."
Wolf rule is almost guaranteed with an unfair electoral system and a Senate where 39 million Californians get the same number of senators as 580,000 Wyomingites. But to make sure the wolf wins, though, you need people like MAGA Mike trying to overturn elections.
In December 2020, Johnson tweeted, "Proud to lead over 100 of my colleagues in filing an amicus brief to express our concern with the integrity of the 2020 election–and our election system in the future. We believe this suit filed by Texas, supported by 17 other states, merits full & careful consideration by SCOTUS."
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
Republican Senate candidate’s family egg company caught in price-fixing plot
Several food giants claimed that Rose Acre Farms – which John Rust chaired until recently – unlawfully fixed the prices of eggs
Republican Senate candidate’s family egg company caught in price-fixing plot
Several food giants claimed that Rose Acre Farms – which John Rust chaired until recently – unlawfully fixed the prices of eggs
Victoria Bekiempis and agencies
Thu 23 Nov 2023 14.06 EST
Jurors found that Rose Acre Farms exported eggs outside the US and killed hens early to inflate prices. Photograph: Aaron Piper/AP
The family farming company of a Republican candidate for the US Senate was found liable on Tuesday in a plot to fix the price of eggs.
Rose Acre Farms, which claims to be the second-largest egg producer in the country and until September was chaired by John Rust – now running as a Senate candidate for Indiana – was accused in a civil suit of cutting supply to raise prices.
Food giants including Kraft, Kellog, General Mills and Nestle filed the suit in Illinois federal court, arguing that between 1999 and 2008 Rose Acre and other producers – Cal-Maine Foods, United Egg Producers and United States Egg Marketers – “unlawfully agreed to and did engage in a conspiracy to control supply and artificially maintain and increase the price of eggs”.
Jurors agreed, finding that the egg suppliers had exported eggs to cut supply in the US market, as well as limiting the number of hens, reducing flocks and killing chickens earlier than they usually did.
The food giants argued that, as companies which buy eggs, these moves hurt them by artificially driving up their costs.
The court will consider damages starting on 29 November.
Rust chaired the board of Rose Acre until September of this year, when his brother took over. His candidacy for Senate has met setbacks: his opponent, Congressman Jim Banks, was endorsed by the Indiana Republican party and, perhaps more important for GOP candidates, by ex-president Donald Trump.
Rust is also suing Indiana over a statute that could bar him from appearing on the ballot, as it stipulates that candidates must vote in two primaries for the party with which they’re affiliated, or else have their candidacy approved by a county party chair. Rust did cast his ballot as a Republican during the 2016 primary, but voted in Democratic primaries from 2006 and 2012, according to the Indianapolis Star.
Banks seized on the jury’s decision against his opponent. “Today’s verdict proves John Rust isn’t just a conman pretending to be a Republican, he is a crook who exploits working-class Hoosiers across Indiana for his own financial gain,” the Associated Press quoted Banks as saying. “While Indiana families struggle to put food on the table, he’s making it even harder to do that.”
Both sides huh
T’Challa’s Heir
Superstar
You know, I’ve always wondered how someone with this view would answer the question, “if the founders intended for the US to be a Christian based government, why didn’t they write it into the Constitution itself?”
Speaker Mike Johnson says he's blurring Jan. 6 footage so rioters don't get charged
"We don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ,” the House speaker said. His office later noted that DOJ already has the raw footage.
www.nbcnews.com
Speaker Mike Johnson says he's blurring Jan. 6 footage so rioters don't get charged
"We don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ,” the House speaker said. His office later noted that DOJ already has the raw footage.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said the House is blurring faces in raw Jan. 6 footage.Kenny Holston / NYT via Redux file
Dec. 5, 2023, 3:48 PM EST
By Ryan J. Reilly
WASHINGTON — Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that House Republicans are blurring footage from the Capitol attack before releasing it publicly because they don't want Jan. 6 rioters to be charged with crimes.
"We have to blur some faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ," Johnson said Tuesday.
Johnson, who was deeply involved in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election based on false claims of mass election fraud, said that people should do their own research into the Capitol attack.
The speaker said he is releasing the footage to counter the Jan. 6 Committee's presentation of the riot.
“We want the American people to draw their own conclusions,” Johnson said. “I don’t think partisan elected officials in Washington should present a narrative and expect that it should be seen as the ultimate truth.”
Multiple elected Republicans have been spreading misinformation about the Jan. 6 attack, including comparing it to a "normal tourists' visit," questioning the FBI director about conspiracy theories and falsely claiming that Trump supporters who have been charged with crimes were actually undercover law enforcement agents.
Johnson's spokesman suggested that the speaker was trying to keep the raw footage away from online sleuthswho have helped identify hundreds of Capitol rioters and aided in the FBI's investigation.
“Faces are to be blurred from public viewing room footage to prevent all forms of retaliation against private citizens from any non-governmental actors,” Raj Shah, who worked as a deputy White House press secretary in the Trump administration and now works as deputy chief of staff for communications for Johnson, said in a statement. “The Department of Justice already has access to raw footage from January 6, 2021.”
DOJ does have that footage. But online sleuths have proven to be an extremely valuable resource in identifying Jan. 6 participants, using the CCTV footage to determine which rioters entered the building and then building a database with the clearest photos of those suspects. They have often used facial recognition for leads and have aided in hundreds of cases against Jan. 6 defendants.
More than 1,200 defendants have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, and more than 400 have been sentenced to periods of incarceration. An additional 1,000 Jan. 6 participants have been identified but not arrested.
Reality Check
Keepin' it 100
McCarthy is leaving at the end of this month. Here's his op-ed announcing it.
I’m an optimist. How could I not be? I’m the son of a firefighter. For 17 years I’ve served in the same congressional seat—the same office in which I was once denied an internship. Only in America.
I helped lead Republicans to a House majority—twice. We got more Republican women, veterans and minorities elected to Congress at one time than ever before. I remained cheerfully persistent when elected speaker because I knew what we could accomplish.
Even with slim margins in the House, we passed legislation to secure the border, achieve energy independence, reduce crime, hold government accountable and establish a Parents’ Bill of Rights. We did exactly what we said we would do.
We kept our eyes on America’s long-term global challenges by restoring the Intelligence Committee to its original charter and establishing a bipartisan Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
We reduced the deficit by more than $2 trillion, revamped work requirements for adults on the sidelines, cut red tape for critical domestic energy projects, and protected the full faith and credit of the U.S. We kept our government operating and our troops paid while wars broke out around the world.
No matter the odds, or personal cost, we did the right thing. That may seem out of fashion in Washington these days, but delivering results for the American people is still celebrated across the country.
It is in this spirit that I have decided to depart the House at the end of this year to serve America in new ways. I know my work is only getting started.
I will continue to recruit our country’s best and brightest to run for elected office. The Republican Party is expanding every day, and I am committed to lending my experience to support the next generation of leaders.
It often seems that the more Washington does, the worse America gets. I started my career as a small-business owner, and I look forward to helping entrepreneurs and risk-takers reach their full potential. The challenges we face are more likely to be solved by innovation than legislation.
Finally, the most reliable solution to what ails America is before our eyes: everyday men and women who are raising families, showing up for work, volunteering, and pursuing the American Dream with passion and purpose. I agree with President Reagan’s observation that “all great change in America starts at the dinner table.” Despite the best attempts by special interest groups and the news media to divide us, I have seen the goodness of the American people. They are what will ultimately uphold the enduring values of our great nation. We all have a role to play in that effort.
I never could have imagined the journey when I first threw my hat into the ring. I go knowing I left it all on the field—as always, with a smile on my face. And looking back, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Only in America.
I helped lead Republicans to a House majority—twice. We got more Republican women, veterans and minorities elected to Congress at one time than ever before. I remained cheerfully persistent when elected speaker because I knew what we could accomplish.
Even with slim margins in the House, we passed legislation to secure the border, achieve energy independence, reduce crime, hold government accountable and establish a Parents’ Bill of Rights. We did exactly what we said we would do.
We kept our eyes on America’s long-term global challenges by restoring the Intelligence Committee to its original charter and establishing a bipartisan Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
We reduced the deficit by more than $2 trillion, revamped work requirements for adults on the sidelines, cut red tape for critical domestic energy projects, and protected the full faith and credit of the U.S. We kept our government operating and our troops paid while wars broke out around the world.
No matter the odds, or personal cost, we did the right thing. That may seem out of fashion in Washington these days, but delivering results for the American people is still celebrated across the country.
It is in this spirit that I have decided to depart the House at the end of this year to serve America in new ways. I know my work is only getting started.
I will continue to recruit our country’s best and brightest to run for elected office. The Republican Party is expanding every day, and I am committed to lending my experience to support the next generation of leaders.
It often seems that the more Washington does, the worse America gets. I started my career as a small-business owner, and I look forward to helping entrepreneurs and risk-takers reach their full potential. The challenges we face are more likely to be solved by innovation than legislation.
Finally, the most reliable solution to what ails America is before our eyes: everyday men and women who are raising families, showing up for work, volunteering, and pursuing the American Dream with passion and purpose. I agree with President Reagan’s observation that “all great change in America starts at the dinner table.” Despite the best attempts by special interest groups and the news media to divide us, I have seen the goodness of the American people. They are what will ultimately uphold the enduring values of our great nation. We all have a role to play in that effort.
I never could have imagined the journey when I first threw my hat into the ring. I go knowing I left it all on the field—as always, with a smile on my face. And looking back, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Only in America.
Man pulled a Boehner.
Reality Check
Keepin' it 100
Crazy thing is this isn't out of the realm of possibilities for Democrats given McCarthy is leaving this year, Bill Johnson early next year and Santos being expelled.
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