Boy, is there ever a loaded dump truck of potential discussion points in this subject area.

First, Google via YouTube is reversing its position and allowing content that challenges the results of the 2020 election.

[Per Axios] “In a reversal of its election integrity policy, YouTube will leave up content that says fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 presidential election and other U.S. elections, the company confirmed to Axios Friday.”

After removing “tens of thousands of videos” (their admission) previously containing content that challenged the 2020 election results, suddenly that conversation is permitted.

“Two years, tens of thousands of video removals, and one election cycle later, we recognized it was time to reevaluate the effects of this policy in today’s changed landscape,” YouTube said in a statement.

So, according to the script, the “threat to democracy” has suddenly diminished as the 2024 election cycle starts to become a topic of increased discussion? Yeah, right.

I read this Google change two ways: (1) This reads like a “mission accomplished and we don’t need this anymore” kind of policy switch; and (2) There’s that probability of Donald Trump winning the 2024 election and they need to be able to question election results again.

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Let us be clear and non-pretending.  The RNC, a private corporation run by U.S. multinational corporations, billionaires and donors who control it, is a private club – who construct the rules of affiliation according to the interests and demands of the benefactors.

The RNC club, the right side of the UniParty corporate structure, has zero consideration or interest in the opinion of voters forced to register in their affiliation.

The people who fund the RNC have established the rules for participation in the club debate.  The first club debate is scheduled for August 23, 2023, on Fox News with the approved process through the prism of Rupert Murdoch and Paul Ryan.  Those club rules include:

♦ A qualifying candidate must poll support at least 1% in three national polls, OR 1% in two national polls and 1% in one early state poll from two separate “carve out” states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina) as conducted by polling recognized and approved by the RNC club. 

This rule will elevate all the purposeful idiot club members the voters do not like onto the stage.  After all, what good is a plan to split the vote if the club cannot give the optics needed for the operation.  In essence, and in fact, in order for Chris Christie and Nikki Haley to attack Trump on behalf of DeSantis, they must be on the stage.

♦ Each candidate must meet this polling requirement no later than 48 hours prior to the first scheduled debate and must originate from polling conducted on or after July 1, 2023.  

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President Donald Trump appeared for a townhall event in Iowa hosted by Sean Hannity and Fox News.  By request, here’s the full video of the townhall.  [Trump starts at 08:55] {Direct Rumble Link}

The full video is below, which begins with President Trump being asked a question about Joe Biden’s mental and physical competency and a thoughtful response from President Trump about not belittling Biden, no matter how tempting, “It just doesn’t look good for our country.”  WATCH:

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A few people like us predicted that once people realized the 2022 reelection bid of Ron DeSantis was a con, there was a strong probability he would lose support. According to polling taken after his launch, that’s exactly what happened.

There are two different YouGov polls. One that shows opinion of the DeSantis launch [Economist – SEE HERE] and one that shows the results of the head-to-head Trump -v- DeSantis matchup [Yahoo – SEE HERE]. The bottom line is that DeSantis has lost ground with voters AFTER his launch.

WASHINGTON – Ron DeSantis was surely hoping for a bump from his presidential campaign launch last week. But a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows no sign of improvement.

In fact, the survey of 1,520 U.S. adults, which was conducted from May 25-30, suggests that the Florida governor may have actually lost ground against frontrunner and former President Donald Trump since officially entering the race for the 2024 GOP nomination during a glitchy Twitter Spaces event with the platform’s billionaire owner Elon Musk.

Among potential Republican primary voters — registered voters who identify as Republicans or GOP-leaning independents — Trump now leads the full field of seven declared candidates with 53%. That’s up from 48% in early May, before DeSantis threw his hat in the ring. And DeSantis now lags further behind than he did just a few weeks ago; his 25% is down from 28% in early May. (read more)

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An interesting series of updates to the FBI whistleblower case of Joe Biden taking a $5 million bribe payment which now looks to have originated in Ukraine.

The background claim is pretty basic. A whistleblower approached congress stating the FBI had a report, an unclassified FD-1023, detailing a conversation with a ‘confidential human source’ (CHS) that outlined Vice President Joe Biden taking a $5 million payment from a foreign national to affect a U.S. policy decision.  The FBI agent responsible for investigating the CHS claim was FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten, a sketchy character from the Trump-Russia probe.

The investigative events took place in June and July 2020 during the presidential election year.  The claim is that FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Auten reportedly buried the CHS allegation saying it could not be corroborated, and then wrote an assessment that it was Russian disinformation.  However, the FBI investigative team didn’t see any effort by any FBI member to substantiate it.  Hence a whistleblower, with specific knowledge of the details in the allegation, surfaces and tells congress the FBI is hiding the FD-1023 that outlines the confidential human source allegation of bribery.

Congress requested the FD-1023, the FBI refused to provide it.  House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer then set a compliance deadline while he coordinated with Senator Chuck Grassley.  The FBI still refused to turn it over, saying they would neither confirm nor deny the FD-1023 existence, and said releasing any information like that would potentially compromise Confidential Human Sources (CHS’s).  The proverbial sources and methods excuse.

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According to NBC and confirmed by Politico, former Indiana Governor Mike Pence is scheduled to launch his bid for the GOP nomination in Iowa on June 7th.

Oddly, and speaking to the framework of the larger GOPe operation, Pence isn’t making his announcement in his home state; instead, he is going to launch his campaign during a speech in Des Moines, Iowa.

Mike Pence is a well-known name to voters having previously been vice-president to Donald Trump, and he is currently polling around 3% support according to Monmouth.

In his biggest role as Vice-President, Mike Pence was in charge of the federal COVID-19 emergency response as head of the White House COVID taskforce in 2020.

Pence is a well-known traditional Republican who identifies with voters primarily on social issues.  Pence will make an appeal to the evangelical community in Iowa and is organized in that effort by GOP brand consultant Chip Saltsman, the architect of former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s 2008 Iowa caucuses victory.

(Via NBC) – Mike Pence plans to enter the GOP presidential nomination fray June 7 with a campaign video and a kickoff speech in Des Moines, Iowa, according to a person familiar with his launch schedule.

The former vice president, a longtime advocate of the priorities of traditional conservatives on social and economic issues, will join the race at a time when his onetime boss, former President Donald Trump, claims a majority in most national polls and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is in a clear second place.

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A person who was a teenager when Obamacare was debated and passed is now around 30 years old.  Put another way, if you were 15 years old when We The People defeated Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley with Scott Brown and took the Kennedy senate seat, you are about to turn 30.  Think about the context of modern Republican politics and time.

This context reminds us that a large portion of the generally distracted population has no foundational understanding of modern Republican politics.

This context is also the baseline behind ‘battered conservative syndrome‘.

You will never, not ever, see a professional Republican politician attack a Democrat with the same level of vitriol, hatred, bitterness and anger as they do toward their own base voter.

The Democrat party fears their base; the Republican party despises their base.  The truth of this very visible reality will never change. Professional Republican politicians are not ideologues to principle or policy; they are interested in one thing, money.  That’s it.

If you peel the core of any issue involving conflict with the Republican Party, you will find money at the center of it.  Current Democrat politicians focus on advancing an ideological agenda; they swing for the fences in an effort to maximize control and power.  Current Republican politicians are focused, to the detriment of all other facets, on their personal wealth.

When you introduce a newly elected ‘conservative‘ to the DC world of republicanism, it is like sending a new guy/gal into the room to talk policy, only to be met with every face around the table staring back quizzically and dismissively while replying, “We don’t do that here – we are talking about money.”

Once you reset the Schoolhouse Rocks mindset and accept this is the truth of the thing, then everything else that puzzled you about Republican politics reconciles.

Ballot harvesting doesn’t generate money, so why do it?  We can make just as much money in the minority railing against ‘them’, so why be focused on a majority?  Donald Trump is threatening the financial position of our benefactors, so we hate him.  These are the simple truths of modern Republicans.

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The boss is back in town and the spontaneous crowd erupted in cheers as President Donald Trump briefly walked from his security detail into Trump Tower.

The people look genuinely happy to see President Trump back in town.  WATCH:

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…. “There are Trillions at Stake!”

2,600 people at $15/hr is $39,000 per hour. Anticipating 1,000 hrs per campaign worker, that’s $39 million. At $25/hr that’s $65 million. At $40/hr that’s $104 million.

This is the scale of spending that Ken Cuccinelli and Jeff Roe have for the Never Back Down SuperPAC to support Governor Ron DeSantis in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada on behalf of the Sea Island billionaires who want to manipulate the 2024 election.  That’s just payroll for new hires.

Overall, the New York Times is reporting a campaign support spending plan of more than $200 million. Essentially, these are payments from the billionaire Wall Street donors and multinationals, funneled through the SuperPAC, to influence the ’24 election. The context of the New York Times report sounds accurate.

NYT – A key political group supporting Ron DeSantis’s presidential run is preparing a $100 million voter-outreach push so big it plans to knock on the door of every possible DeSantis voter at least four times in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — and five times in the kickoff Iowa caucuses.

The effort is part of an on-the-ground organizing operation that intends to hire more than 2,600 field organizers by Labor Day, an extraordinary number of people for even the best-funded campaigns.

Top officials with the pro-DeSantis group, a super PAC called Never Back Down, provided their most detailed account yet of their battle plan to aid Mr. DeSantis, whom they believe they can sell as the only candidate to take on — and win — the cultural fights that are definitional for the Republican Party in 2024.

The group said it expected to have an overall budget of at least $200 million, including more than $80 million to be transferred from an old DeSantis state political account, for the daunting task of vaulting the Florida governor past former President Donald J. Trump, who has established himself as the dominant early front-runner.

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The Texas State House voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, effectively suspending him from legal authority within the state until an impeachment trial can be held in the State Senate.  There are 20 articles of impeachment [READ HERE].  The vote to adopt the 20 articles of impeachment was 121-23, with most of the Texas state republicans voting in alignment with the Texas democrats.

People are shocked when I share the opinion that Texas is not near the top of the Republican states considered deep red “conservative” or freedom/values based.   Of the mostly visible 30 states you might consider ‘conservative’ or ‘freedom balanced’, Texas wouldn’t appear in the top five; today’s vote in the Texas state house is just another datapoint in that direction.

TEXAS – In a history-making late-afternoon vote, a divided Texas House chose Saturday to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, temporarily removing him from office over allegations of misconduct that included bribery and abuse of office.

The vote to adopt the 20 articles of impeachment was 121-23, with three members absent.

Attention next shifts to the Texas Senate, which will conduct a trial with senators acting as jurors and designated House members presenting their case as impeachment managers.  Permanently removing Paxton from office and barring him from holding future elected office in Texas would require the support of two-thirds of senators. (read more)

The Texas Republicans who voted to remove the conservative AG, are the typical Texas RINO, Bush and DeSantis support group.  Understanding the dynamic, President Trump has promised to fight the Texas Republicans as they attack Ken Paxton.

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