That victory was more due to Feingold's failure than it was Johnson's wisdom or skill. Feingold was winning up until the last month, when he stopped advertising in great numbers and Johnson was nearly every other advert on TV. I remember being at the gym one time and the TV (not Fox) adverts were basically Johnson something Johnson Clinton Trump Johnson Sports Johnson PAC Johnson Feingold Clinton etc. That is about what it was about 3 or 4 weeks out. I knew at that point that even though Feingold was leading in the polls, he was going to lose unless he upped his advertising. He didn't. Edit to add: Also in 2016, Johnson was advertising on MSM pretty traditional Republican talking points. It was Tea-Party light, but nothing I saw was close to the stupidity he is doing now.
No offense to Kaz, but this does kind of sound like “the kids’ music sucks!” Kinda argument. Until after high school, I was never presented anything that didn’t worship the FF.
The book of Mormon was created so that Joseph Smith could have sex with a 12 year-old. Brigham Young turned it into a religion.
The Trump family allowed a documentarian full access, and now the filmmaker is going to testify. That’s, like, dumber than taking notes on a criminal ********ing conspiracy, because notes are just words in a page.
There's one massive problem with that argument - according to Wikipedia the legal age of consent in the USA was already lower than that when the Book of Mormon was written. For example, California's age of consent was 10 and until 1871 Delaware's age of consent was also 10, at which time they lowered it to 7. In 1880 the majority of states had an age of consent at 10. The remaining states had an age of consent at 12. No new religion needed.
Sykes has spoken a lot about Johnson - he used to be a standard republican but has become a raving looney. Pretty much representative of the descent of the local party into gibbering goons
Listening to an interview with Riggleman today, and he is dwelling on "follow the money" I get that thanks to an extreme/corrupt Supreme Court, American has bizarre ideas about the limits of free speech, but how was this stuff not basic fraud on the GOP marks? Trump marketed obvious falsehoods to personally profit and has appropriated money to his own ends. It also strikes me as the best evidence of his intent, because none of this money has been used to "stop the steal" But in any event, even allowing for political puffery, I don't see how this is not basic wire fraud.
Also - while this DOJ effort is unprecedented in scale and scope, I think we have the clearest evidence that America's institutions are simply not up to the moment. They certainly lack the resources, but also the imagination. With the Russia investigation, by the time they had finished investigating, Trump had already sacked Comey and rigged the game via Barr. And they didn't even investigate Trump's finances thanks to the cowardice of Rosenstein. In the case of J6, by moving so slowly, they allowed the organisers of the coup to continue to do the coup for 18 months, to the point where democracy might well be done, even if Trump were arrested today. As far as I know there is not even a hint of investigating the GOPs role in this - even though they are doing the coup right now.
Denver Riggleman is a pretty interesting character to say the least. He has a lot of insight into the J6 committee since he was a senior staffer there. He regularly implies there is more to come as well.
I think what's changed relatively recently is the degree to which that hagiography has been weaponized by the Right for cultural purposes, to the exclusion of anything else.
I've been wondering this, on and off, regarding Trump's belief. Is it really fraud if Trump believes his own lies? Or rather, it is really possible to prove fraud if he believes his own lies?
When I was a lad, we were told to ignore that the FFs were personally monsters because they pulled off such great deeds. Kids today can't seem to get past that.
Agreed I like that he is coming at this stuff from the counter-terrorism angle. His story is also very disturbing. Here is an airforce officer, NSA contractor, GOP congressman and successful entrepreneur, run out of town and smeared as a pedo and targeted with anti-semitic hate. https://www.timesofisrael.com/ouste...-works-with-jewish-groups-against-extremists/
I definitely noticed that during the peak Palin era It was part of the shorthand for attacking a black president
It seems to be more that in the context of political fundraising DOJ etc allows obvious fraud, whereas in just about any other context they don't.