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reACTIONary

reACTIONary's Journal
reACTIONary's Journal
December 21, 2021

Boycott Overstock!!!

A very apolitical friend of mine called my attention to this article and suggested that We boycott overstock. To encourage her, I told her I would bring up the idea on a political forum. I'm hoping to get a lot of recs in order to encourage her!

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A former Trump administration aide and a leader with a pro-Trump Christian group are helping Patrick Byrne, the multimillionaire Overstock founder and ex-CEO, run a nonprofit that has pushed false election conspiracy claims, according to a filing reviewed by CNBC.

Byrne, who was also longtime CEO of online furniture retailer Overstock, has an estimated net worth of about $75 million, according to data compiled by Celebrity Net Worth. Earlier this year, he self-published a book called “The Deep Rig: How Election Fraud Cost Donald J. Trump the White House

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/20/trump-allies-help-overstock-founder-patrick-byrne-push-false-election-claims.html

December 8, 2021

Seen on Facebook...

... posted without comment.

• My Alma Mater profiles student-athlete.
• The Weizmann Institute of Science wants me to donate.
• The Art Museum has some interesting stockings they think I might like to hang by the chimney.
• Salon reports DC National Guardsman accusing Mike Flynn’s brother of lying. Also seen on DU
• Quip about scamming people on line. IRONY, poster was scammed trying to scam, LOL!
• Friend posted her new art work.
• Company wants me to invest in their robot enterprise.
• Museum posts interesting picture by 19th century protographer of the middle east.
• Friend wishes friend happy birthday with a very large glass of something intoxicating.
• ACLU advocates for race and gender discussion in school.
• Friend posts news article about stolen antiquiies being returned. Also seen on DU.
• A right-wing religious institution of higher learning wants to restore truth about 1776 to K-12 history curriculum.
• High school chum posts picture of early 60s basketball team.
• Some news organization thinks it’s cool that a local was selected to be a NASA astronaut.
• A friend thinks Iceland is realy great and wants me to vist. With snowmobile video!
• Friend shares quip about wasting time on YouTube.
• The Trevor Project wants to hear from me about my experience as a LGBTQ teenager. However, I don’t qualify to participate.
• A friend wishes happy Hanukkah / second Sunday of advent. He’s an academic philosophy professor in the deep, deep south.
• A quote from Aldous Huxley about the advent of pharmacological dictatorship. The doors of perception, or misdirection?
• Friend posts snapshot of sunset. Others follow suit.
• Friend posts latest art work.
• T-Mobile wants me to subscribe.
• Friend says “Fuck Jeff Bezos” and insists he DOES NOT want to guillotine billionaires.
• Friend brags that St. Louis is called the 2nd most sinful city. Wants St. Louis to up its game and go for number one.
• Law firm wants me to sue Monsanto for inflicting me with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
• AP reports looted Gilgamesh tablet returned to Iraq. Think this was on DU also.
• Friend posts video about rude woman on airplane experiencing instant karma.

And other such trivia.

November 27, 2021

Take all books off the shelves. They're just too dangerous.

Books make you cry, show you despair in a handful of dust, counterfeit life in strange ways and cheat you with shadows. Books follow you home and pry open your head and rearrange the things inside.

https://wapo.st/3HVI5ol

WaPo, no paywall

November 20, 2021

Attempted breach of Ohio county election network draws FBI and state scrutiny

Source: Washington Post (No Paywall)

Federal and state investigators are examining an attempt to breach an Ohio county’s election network that bears striking similarities to an incident in Colorado earlier this year, when government officials helped an outsider gain access to the county voting system in an effort to find fraud.

Data obtained in both instances were distributed at an August “cyber symposium” on election fraud hosted by MyPillow executive Mike Lindell, an ally of former president Donald Trump who has spent millions of dollars promoting false claims that the 2020 election was rigged....

....In an interview with The Post on Thursday, Frank said he did not remember speaking to Hamercheck or have any record of the call. He said he has met so many people in the past six months that he cannot recall them all. But Frank said the version of events described in Lake County sounded “plausible” because it was “exactly the model that we did with Tina.”

Read more: https://wapo.st/3x8btmv

November 10, 2021

America cannot give evangelicals what they want

A decade or two ago, no one had trouble figuring out what White evangelical Christians wanted from the federal government. Alongside supply-siders and national security hawks, they made up the triumvirate of the GOP base and were willing to embrace their allies’ economic and foreign policy positions to ensure support for abortion restrictions and anti-gay policies. (During the Cold War, they were enthusiastic partners with national security hawks in the battle against godless communism.)

But social policy is no longer at the heart of the agenda of the demographic.

So what, then, do these voters want? Many essentially see politics as a great battle between White, Christian America and the multiracial, religiously diverse reality of 21st century America. They want someone to help them win that existential fight. Government is there not to produce legislative fixes to real-world problems but to engage their enemies on behalf of White Christianity.

Washington Post, No Paywall https://wapo.st/3mZQ0Zr

November 1, 2021

Red Flags: Before, During and After Jan 6

WaPo's very extensive investigation and analysis of the insurrection.

"The Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event."


https://wapo.st/3jVa3WK

In the 20 years since the country had created fusion centers in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Sena couldn’t remember a moment like this. For the first time, from coast to coast, the centers were blinking red. The hour, date and location of concern was the same: 1 p.m., the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6.

Harvin was one of numerous people inside and outside of government who alerted authorities to the growing likelihood of deadly violence on Jan. 6, according to a Washington Post investigation, which found a cascade of previously undisclosed warnings preceded the attack on the Capitol. Alerts were raised by local officials, FBI informants, social media companies, former national security officials, researchers, lawmakers and tipsters, new documents and firsthand accounts show.

October 30, 2021

Florida Bars State Professors From Testifying in Voting Rights Case

Source: New York Times (No Paywall)

Three University of Florida professors have been barred from assisting plaintiffs in a lawsuit to overturn the state’s new law restricting voting rights, lawyers said in a federal court filing on Friday. The ban is an extraordinary limit on speech that raises questions of academic freedom and First Amendment rights.

University officials told the three that because the school was a state institution, participating in a lawsuit against the state “is adverse to U.F.’s interests” and could not be permitted. In their filing, the lawyers sought to question Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, on whether he was involved in the decision.

Mr. DeSantis has resisted questioning, arguing that all of his communications about the law are protected from disclosure because discussions about legislation are privileged. In their filing on Friday, lawyers for the plaintiffs said the federal questions in the case — including whether the law discriminates against minority groups — override any state protections.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/us/florida-professors-voting-rights-lawsuit.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqohlSFUZCibIRp8pqhqchPTGhaQmgXHzNzOSUy0H0eMJAo6Pvl3Maqp_fJ431iuAWd5ddr8zQfg4hsluA3tQcSj66J2VhMZCZCwvtYO4Wm5xgcLHAe5loGGvNjfnJqIinOTl-kLdOzL1CPbbgnQhLV4z9cNlZkjqjSJTvtrNG-9_2NN73PczVNstFXpbOn7877S_AA5-Od6Fchne9gM0PulZUjrQltWYgKkSJEQQURmVCSMivhtvrY9UK9gVP67gLxY_eMCYgb4ZCWRgL4nBFITIytJpyrkAcBFsh7_YoQMR&smid=url-share

October 28, 2021

Wall Street Journal publishes letter from Trump claiming 'rigged' election

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday published a lengthy letter to the editor from Trump charging, inaccurately, that the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden was “rigged.”

The nearly 600-word letter is replete with loosely sourced and largely debunked claims of fraud in Pennsylvania, a state that President Biden won by 81,660 votes, handing him 20 electoral college votes that helped secure his victory.

Trump took issue with an Oct. 24 piece from the Journal’s reliably conservative editorial board, which argued that the statewide margin between Trump and Biden was too vast for a debate over the status of approximately 10,000 mail-in ballots that arrived after the Election Day deadline to be germane to the outcome. “The country is lucky the election wasn’t closer,” the board wrote. “If the election had hung on a few thousand Pennsylvanians, the outcome might have been picked by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

“Well actually, the election was rigged, which you, unfortunately, still haven’t figured out,” Trump retorted baselessly in his letter, before listing “a few examples of how determinative the voter fraud in Pennsylvania was.” Trump cited talking points from “Audit the Vote PA,” a little-known organization that has promoted unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, which he described as “highly respected.”

https://wapo.st/3blhrWN WaPo, No Pay Wall

The 14 things you need to know about Trump’s letter in the Wall Street Journal

https://wapo.st/3byQn6R WaPo, No Paywall

October 28, 2021

Biden to announce new social spending framework expected to win support of all Democrats

Source: Washington Post (No Paywall)

President Biden plans to announce Thursday a revised framework for his social spending plan that he expects will gain the support of all Democrats, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation, marking a potential breakthrough moment after months of lengthy negotiations and stalled talks.

The specifics of what the president would announce were not immediately clear, nor was it clear whether he would be prepared to announce the support of key Democratic holdouts. But Biden recently told congressional Democrats that he thought he could secure a deal for a spending plan between $1.75 trillion and $1.9 trillion.

Read more: https://wapo.st/3Eq4d7G

October 24, 2021

Where Facts Were No Match for Fear

Where Facts Were No Match for Fear, NYT No Paywall

Civic boosters in central Montana hoped for some federal money to promote tourism. A disinformation campaign got in the way.

Ms. Grulkowski set about blowing up that effort with everything she had.

She collected addresses from a list of voters and spent $1,300 sending a packet denouncing the proposed heritage area to 1,498 farmers and ranchers. She told them the designation would forbid landowners to build sheds, drill wells or use fertilizers and pesticides. It would alter water rights, give tourists access to private property, create a new taxation district and prohibit new septic systems and burials on private land, she said.

None of this was true.

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