Brane Space: Lori Klausutis

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Friday, May 29, 2020

Battling The Excesses Of An Authoritarian Demagogue? Don't Look To FaceBook's Mark Zuckerberg

"You did GOOD, Mark! Defending my lies from those nannies at Twitter!"

"This order is a reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law. It threatens the future of online speech and internet freedoms"
- Twitter response to Trump's executive order designed to regulate existing law toward authoritarian ends

"President Trump said Twitter is trying to censor him and he wants to use his presidential power to crack down on them.": - CBS reporter Paula Reid this morning

"I see this order as just a distraction intended to divert attention from the devastation of Covid 19"- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

What is Trump's game and why is he really so furious at the prospect of mail voting? It is because he's been exposed as the shameless con man he is for trying to manage perceptions about the virus and he knows a majority of citizens aren't buying his act. Hence, with the economy cratering too (40 million now unemployed) he has nowhere to go but down - and certainly will be blown out in November. That is, unless he can get enough states to back off mail ballots using his fulminations and "terrible twos" -style of tantrums

In his latest con, Trump issued an "executive order" yesterday in retaliation for Twitter putting flags on his lying tweets about voting, e.g.

The flag simply read: 'Get the facts about mail voting'

Simply a heads up to those who gobble Trump's tweets with zero discrimination. Certainly not "censorship" as the Right's crybabies are trying to portray. But leave it to Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook honcho, to try to offer his absurd two cents. Likely terrified of Trump's twitter fulminations, Zuckerberg and his other spokesmen tried to defend their own cowardly stance by saying (WSJ yesterday, p. A4):

"We prefer not to be an arbiter of truth"

But given Trump's outrageous lies about mail voting, it's clear Zuckerberg has no problem being an enabler of lies. What else could he be? Because if you're not prepared to at least flag lies when they appear - irrespective of the source- then you and your platform are useless. Worse, you're contributing to the ongoing national polarization.

Zuckerberg and his ilk have always taken the position of laissez faire social media speech and they just assume FB users are grown up enough to engage in "robust debate" and recognize falsehoods when and where they appear. But that is a helluva ask, especially after Russian bots overloaded Facebook's boards back in 2016, playing no small part in Hillary's narrow electoral college loss. Oh, and seeing a record for retweets of the bots' anti- HRC balderdash. As per a WSJ piece from Oct. 17, 2017 (p. B2):

"470 Russia-backed Facebook accounts including Blacktivist and Secured Borders quietly infiltrated communities on social media. The issues they targeted spanned the U.S. political and social spectrum, including religion, race, immigration, gun rights, and gay rights. "

Adding:

"Facebook said the accounts were created by Russian entities to exploit tensions among Americans and interfere with U.S. elections

Yep, Markie, there's a lot of insight for truth there!

According to one FB spokesperson quoted in the WSJ piece:

"We have crafted our policies to focus on misrepresentations that would interfere with the vote."

Well, if Trump's deranged tweets against mail ballots aren't doing that, I don't know what would qualify. The scumball is blatant and aggressive in his single-minded campaign and even had the temerity to screech Wednesday:

"Clean up your act NOW!"

This from a Turd whose own act has been one prolonged exercise in authoritarian depravity and irresponsibility. This is the same president who on Thursday Tweeted out a video of a supporter saying, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” A classless degenerate who's hurled the office of the presidency further into the gutter in the last week with his attacks on Joe Scarborough for allegedly killing a woman.(Lori Klausutis) when she worked as part of Scarborough's staff when he was a FLA congressman. This despite a medical examiner's report that Lori had a heart condition which caused her to lose consciousness, fall and hit her head.

Thus, Trump is using her as his own political football against perceived enemies as he causes the family no end of grief and pain. But why be surprised when he's directly responsible for tens of thousands of COVID 19 deaths for not acting in a competent and responsible manner? For initially calling the virus a hoax, wasting a valuable 2 weeks before acting, which a Columbia University study disclosed probably resulted in 54,000 more deaths.

As for his executive order to try to punish Twitter, don't make me laugh. Incredibly before signing his order yesterday the fool blabbed (WSJ, p. A1 today) :

"We're here today to defend free speech from one of its greatest dangers."

Failing to have the self-awareness or intellect to grasp that HE - as an autocratic demagogue - is the singular greatest danger to liberty and that his lies are a perversion of free speech.

Here it is useful to go to the Wikipedia entry:

"There is no constitutional provision nor statute that explicitly permits executive orders. The term executive power in Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution refers to the office of President as the executive. They are instructed therein by the declaration "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" made in Article II, Section 3, Clause 5 or face impeachment. Most executive orders use these Constitutional reasonings as the authorization allowing for their issuance to be justified as part of the President's sworn duties, the intent being to help direct officers of the U.S. Executive carry out their delegated duties as well as the normal operations of the federal government: the consequence of failing to comply possibly being removal from office"

In other words, these more comport with a wish list based on appeals or pleas from a president to the legislative branch to formalize into law what he seeks to do. In Trump's case, most legal experts note his scribbles on fancy paper are "essentially toothless" - they don't change existing federal law- nor can they without formal legislative input. Hence, only congress has the power to curtail Twitter's legal protections.

As Mike Masnick of Techdirt explained:

To be clear: the executive order is nonsense. You can’t overrule the law by executive order, nor can you ignore the Constitution. This executive order attempts to do both. It’s also blatantly anti-free speech, anti-private property, pro-big government — which is only mildly amusing, given that Trump and his sycophantic followers like to insist they’re the opposite of all of those things.

As for Zuckerberg's act and the insipid claims of supporting "free speech" I was gratified to see one professor (Bridget Barrett) call it out in the WSJ piece. As she aptly noted:

"To give a less kind reading of that, they (Facebook) want to stay friends with the folks who are regulating them."

As for the two Trump tweets that were flagged, they were:

"There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent"

And then: "This will be a Rigged Election!"

Both hysterical expulsions I'd more expect from a high school sophomore who flunked his Government class. And as Ms. Barrett of UNC Chapel Hill pointed out:

"The posts appeared to violate two of Facebook's own rules around voter interference which bar posts that misrepresent methods for voting and whether votes will be counted."

Again, that makes Zuckerberg a liar enabler, as well as a punk for Trump, to help spread his bunkum. In the meantime, kudos to Twitter for continuing to courageously flag Trump's most outrageous tweets - including beckoning "shooters" to fire at the "thugs" in Minneapolis. While Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has taken some heat for being too mild in response to Trump's flagrant speech crimes, he is at least doing something! That's more than can be said for Mark Zuckerberg and his "clown car" of Trump enablers and sycophants at Facebook.

See Also:
Anything to get reelected: Trump once more stokes violence

And:

White supremacists are thriving on Facebook, despite its promises to crack down

And:

Donald Trump

Twitter Put up a Fact-check — so Trump Threw a Tantrum

by Cody Fenwick | May 29, 2020 - 7:11am | permalink

— from Alternet

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Trump's Derangement On Mail Ballots Signals A Potential Effort At A November Election Coup

"BWAAHAAHAHA! We got to stop mail voting! It would be the end of me! Melania, change my diapers!"

"How is it that this man is even president?" - Maureen Dowd, Sunday NY Times

"So Trump is worried about his reelection prospects and eager to attack mail-in voting that pretty clearly does not give Democrats any particular leg up, raising the possibility that he is setting himself up to accuse Michigan and Nevada of rigging the system if he loses in November." - Heather Cox Richardson, 'Trump's Twitter Threats On Voting: Is There Really A Bite Behind The Bark?', smirkingchimp.com blog

After yet another weekend with endless histrionics from a "leader" with the moral compass of a slug and self-control of a two year old on a sugar high, even closet Trumpers have to admit the obvious: The nation is saddled with a degenerate whose vile depravity and excesses know no bounds. This is especially after we beheld the fungus -infested maggot relentlessly using his Twitter feed to spread slurs and slander about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. This in connection to the death of Lori Klausutis who worked for him when he was a congressman, inventing outrageous conspiracy ideations about Scarborough being somehow responsible (despite coroner's finding it was a cardiac condition causing her to fall and hit her head on a desk).

Even worse, this unhinged swine continued his drumbeat despite Timothy Klausutis pleading with Twitter to take down the offensive Trump posts that have caused deep pain to him and his family. But Trump, white trash vermin that he is, wouldn't hear of it. Instead ramping up his squalid attacks while drawing next to zero rebukes from the Reepos eager to look the other way as Dotard wreaks havoc. So again what we have seen the past few days is a swine who calls himself "president" willing to spout almost anything - no matter how inflammatory or untrue - in order to be used in his tawdry political battles. So Timothy Klausutis has become yet more collateral damage of Trump's war against critics and we know he has lost it since the COVID-19 pandemic usurped his one sure track to re-election. Exposing him as the grifting con man and reality show pretender resident he really is. As the NY Times also noted:

"Among other things on Tuesday, he boasted about the rising stock market and tried to sow doubt about the results of the coming fall election that polls currently show he would lose, saying, “This will be a Rigged Election.”

The last, of course, is tied to his endless jihad against mail ballots and voting. His latest ploy has been to create so much turmoil, angst and confusion over mail ballots that state governors bow to his whims and whining and halt the march forward: to making mail balloting a viable option for most citizens in November. That is, incidentally, when the COVID second wave could be at its peak - thanks to the hundreds of thousands of idiots who think masks are for Halloween, and COVID intubation scenes in ICUs on the news are medical play acting.

According to a Denver Post piece a week ago, Trump is escalating his assaults on mail voting, with animus especially directed at states like Nevada and Michigan. The foul fungal imp, unable to bluff or intimidate the COVID virus, is trying his best to get as many states as possible to back off a move to mail ballots. In the course of his tilting at mail ballot 'windmills' he has unloaded so many lies, tall tales and disinformation that even his GOP enablers are starting to worry he's gone too far. After all, Reepo voters like and use mail voting as much as Dem voters, as I pointed out in a previous post, e.g.

Skewering The Strawmen Surrounding Mail Voting

This is important, all Trump's huff and puff and hysteria to the contrary. For example, therein I cited University of Florida professor Michael McDonald - who tracks balloting in his own ex post facto research, and found that "Republicans rather than Democrats are most likely to vote by mail".

So, in effect, the bombastic buffoon brat is trying to kneecap his own voters in the process of trying to halt blue states' efforts like in Michigan. In regard to that state, Trump really took a brain dump as he went after Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan Secretary of State, bellowing in one nutso tweet (cf. Denver Post, ibid.):

"Michigan sent absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of primaries and the general election. This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this voter fraud path!"

An hour later, the Post article notes he made similar threats to Nevada.

Several wacko aspects to note here which are germane to this discussion: First Ms. Benson did NOT send mail ballots to Michigan residents, she sent applications for mail ballots "just as election officials have done in other states." That also includes, btw, more than a dozen R-governed states. This alone shows Trump doesn't even know what he's talking or tweeting about before he pulls it out of his fat ass.

Second, the threats made to withhold funding, are exactly the classic impeachable offenses that professor Pamela Karlan of Stanford cited in a House impeachment committee hearing last fall. In her words:

“What would you think if, when your governor asked the federal government for the disaster assistance that Congress has provided, the President responded, ‘I would like you to do us a favor.’ I’ll... send the disaster relief once you brand my opponent a criminal.”

That is, trying to extort a political favor via the threat of no critical funding if said favor wasn't delivered.

Interestingly, as the Post article points out, all this kerfuffle and flailing from Trump has occurred as polls show him trailing Biden nationally and in key swing states. In Wisconsin alone, polls take before his rage tweets showed him losing over 65 voters by nearly 18 points. And yet Trump's own campaign staff - writing their own op-eds (D. Post May 17), also are casting baseless suspicion on mail ballots.

I refer to two Trumper campaign clowns, Jenny Ellis and Justin Clark, writing in that Post op-ed ('Mail Ballot Cheating Is Real', ibid.) claiming that: "ballot harvesting creates an environment for potential fraud and election illegitimacy"

Then targeting Democrats in our state (Colorado) for "paying ballot traffickers to go door to door to collect ballots". It appears these two geniuses neglected to mention the most monstrous such "ballot trafficking" offense occurred in North Carolina. An investigation found that such "trafficking" had been done in the NC 9th congressional district election in 2018.

The result? Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. was indicted for tampering with mail ballots. Again, this was a GOP lackey in the service of the campaign he was seeking to help get elected. No thanks to these shenanigans the Republican Mark Harris narrowly defeated Dem candidate Dan McReady.

To my knowledge, no Dem candidate has benefited from such tampering - even in low level elections to a school board. The two Trumper propagandists could as well have saved their time and brain power because no one here in Colo. is going to drop mail voting. It's too convenient and too important an option to be left off the table. And as one former election official responded in a Post letter to Ellis and Clark:

"Mail ballots in Colorado are totally secure. A signature is required for validation and this is always compared to the signature at voter registration. Also, a tab is provided which can be removed before mailing and allows the voter to check to see if anyone else has attempted to vote in their name."

Let's also point out, as Oregon Governor Kate Brown did on All In last week, that mail voting is safe from hacking, and also that paper record provides proof of the process being sound. This skewers the claims of the two Trumpers that "there is a risk of losing the chain of custody of the ballots." No, there is not, given the response of the Colorado state election official, specifically the signature and the tab to mark custody of the actual ballot. Hence, any voter can determine at any time if his ballot is being misused or copied.

Trump's fulminations are clearly also being done to deliberately undermine trust in the November general election. If he can sow enough distrust of the process, especially if mail ballots are allowed in most states, this slimey despot can try to claim the election was rigged. As a recent NY Times article ('Trump Sows Doubt On Voting - It Keeps Some People Up At Night') by Reid J. Epstein put it:

"The president attacked mail balloting again Sunday morning, with a baseless claim that it would lead to “the greatest Rigged Election in history.” And the Republican National Committee said on Sunday that it and other G.O.P. groups had sued to stop Gov. Gavin Newsom of California from mailing absentee ballots to all of the state’s voters... “We’re setting ourselves up for an election where neither side can concede defeat,” Professor Foley said. “That suggests that the desire to dispute the outcome is going to be higher than ever.”

The piece went on to note how Democrats and others are game planning for Trump refusing to leave the White House after a marginal Electoral College loss - and we know he'll be slaughtered in the popular vote. As for the risk of Trump not leaving office if he endures a "narrow" loss, I side with former AG Eric Holder on Real Time some weeks ago: we dispatch the Capitol police and/or SWAT teams, to remove him by force.

In the meantime, Twitter has at least flagged Trump's false tweets about mail voting - giving an addendum 'Get the facts about mail voting'. Well, I have provided a lot of them in this and earlier posts. And btw, should this cockroach try remain in office after being voted out, or try to claim the election results were "rigged" , we will need Americans to erupt in fury in the streets.

See also: