The Republican attack on President Biden, claiming he had accepted a bribe was centered on the testimony to the FBI of Alexander Smirnov who has just been indicted for lying in his testimony. As a result, the whole Republican case against Biden falls apart, not that I think that will make any difference to the MAGAts.
FBI informant Alexander Smirnov indicted for lying under oath
The confidential source at the center of allegations being promoted by House Republicans that President Biden accepted a bribe has been arrested and charged with making false statements to the FBI.
The allegations risk unwinding the House GOP probe into President Biden. In making their case, GOP lawmakers have frequently pointed to conversations the confidential source, Alexander Smirnov, had with the FBI relaying that the head of Ukrainian energy company Burisma told him he had paid both President Biden and his son Hunter Biden $5 million.
The indictment alleges Smirnov made up the allegations given his opposition to President Biden’s candidacy.
“As alleged in the indictment, the events that Smirnov first reported to the FBI Agent in June 2020 were fabrications,” the Justice Department wrote in a press release announcing the grand jury indictment.
“The indictment alleges that the defendant transformed his routine and unextraordinary business contacts with Burisma in 2017 and later into bribery allegations against Public Official 1 after expressing bias against Public Official 1 and his presidential […]
Mike Colias, Nora Eckert, and Sean McLain, Reporters - The Wall Street Journal
Stephan:
The EV vehicle market is crashing, and this article gives the details. Why is this happening? In my opinion, because people who buy EVs discover that there is no nationwide system for charging them. Why does this not exist? Because under criminal Trump, in contrast to Republican Dwight Eisenhower’s administration where there was a national program to build the interstate highway system, Trump made no effort to create a national program to replace gas stations. What should have happened was a national program to restructure major roads so that they would charge the vehicles driving on them. The truth is Americans who support MAGAt politicians don’t seem to understand that the Republican Party no longer exists as it once did. It has been replaced a cult that worships Donald Trump, and he has no interest in fostering wellbeing.
Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickups being assembled in Dearborn, Mich. Credit: Andia / Universal / Getty
The Michigan plant where the F-150 Lightning electric truck is built used to vibrate with excitement.
President Biden visited in 2021 and test drove the blazing-fast pickup. Before the first ones even started rolling off the assembly line in the spring of 2022, Ford said it would expand the factory to quadruple the number it could build.
That energy is rapidly fading. Ford is cutting the plant’s output by half, and workers are relocating to other facilities, mostly those making gas-powered pickups and SUVs.
The sudden change “was a little bit of a shocker,” said Matthew Schulte, who inspects trucks at the factory in suburban Detroit. “Reality has set in.”
As recently as a year ago, automakers were struggling to meet the hot demand for electric vehicles. In a span of months, though, the dynamic flipped, leaving them hitting the brakes on what for many had been an all-out push toward an electric transformation.
A confluence of factors had led many auto executives to see the potential for a […]
Nina Mast, Staff Writer - Economic Policy Institute
Stephan:
Child labor is becoming a significant, although little covered by media, trend. Backed by corporations who want to be able to employ children, and are funding/bribing state legislators across the country, America’s decades-long tradition of ending child labor is being weakened. Look at the map at the head of this article. If you live in one of the states doing this, write your state representative and senators and tell them you will not vote for them if they support weakening child labor laws.
Child labor remains a top issue in 2024 state legislative sessions amid soaring violations and widespread abuse of child labor laws in multiplesectors of the economy. On one hand, the coordinated, industry-backed effort to roll back child labor protections state by state has continued to expand. At the same time, some state legislators are proposing legislation to strengthen the rights of young workers and the laws designed to safeguard their health and education.
Since 2021, 28 states have introduced bills to weaken child labor laws, and 12 states have enacted them. By contrast, 14 states have introduced bills to strengthen child labor protections already in 2024—up from 11 states in all of 2023—as more state lawmakers recognize the need to address increasing violations and threats to current state and federal standards.
Attacks on child labor laws continue trend of weakening important state standards, with eventual goal of diminishing federal child labor laws
From the 1800s onward, states have often led the way on child labor regulation. Today, many important policy tools for preventing exploitative forms of child labor—such as work permit […]
Missouri is a state with very poor social wellbeing based on objective facts. Poor Healthcare, closing its libraries, terrible laws to control women, and awful, basically insane, gun laws. A 12-year-old can carry an unlicensed AR-15. Today the voters and the governor lived with the consequences of the laws they have voted for and passed. The MAGAt Republican governor was there personally and ran away scared from the post-Super Bowl mass shooting that occurred today and has dominated the news. This is what Red state America has degenerated into.
MAGAt Republican Missouri Governor Mike Parson Credi: Chris Kohley / St. Louis Post-Dispatch / TNS
Someone who says they ran away from the mass shooting at the Chiefs parade on Wednesday says they saw someone else running: a GOP governor who frequently touts his support for firearms.
Earlier on Wednesday, between eight and 10 people were shot near the Chiefs Super Bowl parade, and two armed suspects were then placed under arrest, according to Kansas City police, the New York Post and the Associated Press. Chaos erupted.
In that chaos, one man reported seeing Missouri governor Mike Parson running scared.
Patrick Quaife, identified on his social media as a KC alum, posted his observations after escaping the gunfire.
“I just ran away from a mass shooting at the Chiefs parade where I saw the Missouri governor (the gun lover below) running scared for his life next to me with an army of officers protecting him,” Quaife wrote, including a photo of the governor supporting “responsible, law-abiding gun owners.”
Just how stupid are the MAGAt Republicans of Missouri? Read this. This is why 18,854 Americans died by gunfire in 2023. America’s gun psychosis has warped our entire society and made attending any mass event in the United States potentially dangerous, as the Kansas City Mass Shooting makes clear. Will anything happen to correct this madness? I doubt it.
US founder Alexander Hamilton died after a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804. Credit: North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy
A Missouri Republican’s proposal to reintroduce dueling to solve statehouse differences was branded “utter stupidity” by a leading historian of political violence.
“Back in the day,” Joanne B Freeman of Yale tweeted, “they were smart enough to take dueling OUTSIDE. The draft that I saw suggests doing it in the chamber. This doesn’t show guts or bravery or manhood – if it’s supposed to. It shows utter stupidity.”
Freeman is the author of The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War.
The state senator behind the proposal said he was making a point about the breakdown of regular order in Missouri politics.
The draft rule change came to national notice when it was posted to social media by Democrats in the state senate.
“The Missouri Republican civil war continues to escalate as a member of the Freedom Caucus faction has filed a proposed rule change to allow senators to challenge an ‘offending senator to a duel’,” they wrote.
