Putin Warns That U.S. Will Be Controlled by Americans

Mod: It appears that the current ruler of the United States is not happy about what has been going on here lately. Sad Vlad has this message for the rest of the world. 

Putin Warns That U.S. Will Be Controlled by Americans (The Borowitz Report link): Asserting that his “darkest fears have been confirmed,” Vladimir Putin warned that the United States is on the verge of being controlled by Americans.

Speaking to reporters at the Kremlin, the Russian President alleged that President-elect Joe Biden was “the handpicked instrument of those who would seek to advance American interests.” 

“Joe Biden is no more and no less than a puppet of the American people,” he charged. 

“His Cabinet appointments have left little doubt that, after four years of progress, the United States has fallen into American hands,” he said. “Joe Biden is keenly aware that Americans put him in power, and he will do their bidding.” 

Russia experts said that Putin’s remarks were as close to a concession speech as he is likely to make.

Mod: Speaking of hostile foreign entities that are suddenly losing their death-like grip on America ... 

Fox News daytime ratings drop by 32% in two weeks since the election (The Blaze link): Cable news network behemoth Fox News dipped in viewership among a key demographic in recent ratings reports, and lost 32% of viewership in daytime.

Nielsen Media Research said that CNN took both top spots among the 25-54 age demographic during primetime on Friday. Anderson Cooper's show, "AC360," took the time spot with 604K viewers. Chris Cuomo's CNN show took the second highest slot.

Fox News' total viewership also fell an astounding 32% in the two weeks after the Nov. 3 election compared to its viewership the two weeks before the election.

While Fox News' viewership dropped, the viewership for CNN and MSNBC increased to near parity. In weekday average daytime viewership, Fox News garnered 1.63 million viewers, CNN received 1.68 million viewers, and MSNBC received 1.71 million viewers.  

sierramadretattler.blogspot.com

Conservatives’ favorite ‘anti-censorship’ platform Parler now censoring #WriteInTrumpforGA posts

Mod: If Parler is censoring this Roger Stone promoted initiative, doesn't that make them anti-Donald Trump, the POTUS who pardoned him?

Conservatives’ favorite ‘anti-censorship’ platform Parler now censoring #WriteInTrumpforGA posts (Raw Story link): On Tuesday, Newsweek reported that the alternative social network Parler is hiding posts tagged with “#WriteInTrumpforGA,” an online campaign to convince Republican voters to reject Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the January runoff and write in Donald Trump in protest of Georgia’s GOP officials’ supposed disloyalty for allowing President-elect Joe Biden to carry the state.

“A user on Twitter shared a screenshot of Parler’s search screen,” reported James Crowley. “The screengrab shows no results for #WriteInTrumpforGA. However, a Newsweek search on Parler shows that there are 21 ‘Parleys’ for the aforementioned hashtag, six for a #WriteInTrumpforSenateGA, and 52 for #WriteinTrumpGeorgiaRunoff.”

Parler has gained popularity among right-wing activists and politicians in recent weeks, because the site sells itself as “anti-censorship,” in contrast to sites like Facebook and Twitter which in recent months have taken more effort to remove posts containing fake news, hate speech, and election misinformation.

Nevertheless, Parler too has been forced to adopt content rules of its own as its follower count has expanded and users have tested what they can and can’t do on the site.

A conservative write-in campaign in the Senate runoffs in Georgia isn’t actually possible, because runoff ballots do not provide a write-in option. However, GOP abstentions from the election, if they occurred in any significant numbers, would threaten to throw the race to Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, effectively eliminating the Republican majority in the Senate.

At least some of the social media content pushing the write-in protest appear to be driven by the Committee for American Sovereignty, a super PAC linked to former Trump strategist and longtime Republican trickster Roger Stone. 

sierramadretattler.blogspot.com

Roger Stone-allied super PAC threatens to torpedo Senate GOP if they don’t save Trump

Mod: The madmen have taken over the asylum, and the Republican Party is falling to pieces. There goes Georgia.

Roger Stone-allied super PAC threatens to torpedo Senate GOP if they don’t save Trump (Raw Story link): A super PAC allied with infamous right-wing dirty trickster and convicted felon Roger Stone is threatening to torpedo Republicans’ Senate majority if they don’t help President Donald Trump steal the 2020 presidential election.

The Daily Beast reports that Stone-allied Committee for American Sovereignty is encouraging its supporters in Georgia to write Trump’s name in place of voting for Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Perdue (R-GA) in January’s senate run-off elections.

The goal of doing this, the group argues, is to somehow force Republicans to not recognize the results of the 2020 election and keep Trump in power.

“If we can do this, we have a real chance at getting these RINO senators to act on the illegitimate and corrupt election presided over by a Democrat party that is invested in the Communist takeover of Our Great Nation,” the group explains on its website. “We will not stop fighting for you, the American Patriot, against the evils of Socialism and inferior Religions.”

Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich tells The Daily Beast that he’s worried about GOP voters turning out in the Peach State after watching Trump narrowly lose the state to President-elect Joe Biden.

“The anger over the secretary of state’s incompetence and the governor’s failure to lead could mean that Republicans just stay home,” he said. “I think there’s a very big problem with getting Republicans to turn out.”

Mod: Roger Stone and Newt Gringrich. A bushel basket full of batshit.

sierramadretattler.blogspot.com

Donald Trump fears Giuliani, other lawyers in Biden vote challenge are ‘fools that are making him look bad’

Mod: They are fools no doubt, but nowhere near as bad as the fool that hired them.

Trump fears Giuliani, other lawyers in Biden vote challenge are ‘fools that are making him look bad’ (CNBC link): President Donald Trump is sweating over his campaign lawyers’ dismal and often outlandish efforts to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s projected electoral victory. Trump is worried that his campaign’s legal team, which is being led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, is composed of “fools that are making him look bad,” NBC News reported Monday.

That group, which has unironically called itself an “elite strike force team,” to date has failed to win any legal victories that would invalidate votes for Biden, the former Democratic vice president, even as they tout wildly broad claims of fraud for which they have offered no convincing evidence. 

On Sunday, one of the team’s members, conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, was effectively fired after suggesting — again without any proof — that the Republican governor and secretary of state of Georgia were part of a plot to rig the election for Biden.

Powell’s ouster came days after she made similarly over-the-top claims at a press conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington. Trump has complained to White House aides and outside allies about how Giuliani and Powell conducted themselves at that event, NBC reported.

On Sunday before Powell got the axe, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a close Trump ally and former top federal prosecutor, called the president’s legal team a “national embarrassment.”

But when asked why Trump doesn’t fire Giuliani and other attorneys who remain on the team, a person familiar with the president’s thinking gave a profane shoulder shrug of an answer. 

“Who the f--- knows?” that person said to NBC News.

Trump’s Ridiculous, Sloppy Coup Attempt Just Face-Planted in Michigan (Vice link): President Trump just racked up yet another humiliating defeat in his desperate scramble to flip the 2020 election in his favor. The Michigan board of state canvassers voted to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s 150,000-plus-vote margin of victory on Monday afternoon, after a key GOP board member rebuffed political pressure from Trump and the Republican Party to delay making that count official.

Mod: Interesting that in places like Arizona, Georgia and Michigan local Republicans have the backbone so many national GOP figures were apparently born without.

sierramadretattler.blogspot.com 

Ted Cruz Tweeted A Tone-Deaf Thanksgiving Meme While Texas Morgues Overflowed With COVID Victims

Mod: Al Franken once observed: “I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.” This is just not a very likable guy.

Ted Cruz Tweeted A Tone-Deaf Thanksgiving Meme While Texas Morgues Overflowed With COVID Victims (BuzzFeed News link): Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was criticized over the weekend for tweeting a tone-deaf Thanksgiving meme while morgues in the state overflowed with COVID victims and thousands affected by the pandemic lined up outside food banks.

Instead of addressing the rising COVID cases in his state, Cruz on Saturday chose to tweet a "war on Thanksgiving" meme — the latest attempt by conservatives and right-wing figures to engage in a culture war over the pandemic which has killed more than 250,000 Americans.

Cruz tweeted an illustration of a turkey with the words "come and take it," ostensibly daring someone to stop him from celebrating Thanksgiving.

The CDC strongly advised people against traveling for Thanksgiving and public health professionals have suggested limiting indoor celebrations to residents of the same household, citing an alarming rise in COVID-19 cases nationwide.

This has prompted several conservative and right-wing figures to publicly reject these life-saving measures and misrepresent them as a left-wing attempt to "cancel" Thanksgiving altogether.

People immediately slammed Cruz for the tweet. Many pointed out that his tweet came two days after Texas National Guard troops were deployed to El Paso to help morgues overwhelmed with COVID victims as hospitalizations and deaths surged in the county.

Earlier this week, El Paso County officials sent out a plea requesting for additional morgue workers to help with the rise in COVID fatalities, prompting the county's use of jail inmates to help transport bodies of victims.

Others, including Democratic congresswoman-elect Cori Bush, slammed Cruz for focusing on his Thanksgiving celebrations, while ignoring thousands of Texans hard-hit by the pandemic who were waiting in an hours-long line outside a Dallas food bank last week. Some said that politicians who were more interested in trolling than governing were responsible for the more than 250,000 COVID deaths in the US.

sierramadretattler.blogspot.com

Red Elephants: Trump Supporters in Georgia Threaten to Destroy GOP, Boycott Senate Runoff Elections

Mod: So you know, I fully support the boycott of Georgia's upcoming Senate runoff elections by woke Trump partisans there. It truly is time Donald's most loyal followers showed the  GOP out the gate. 

Trump Supporters in Georgia Threaten to Destroy GOP, Boycott Runoff Elections (Newsweek link): President Donald Trump supporters protesting the outcome of the 2020 election have a new and surprising opponent: the Republican Party. A viral video of protesters, as well as posts on social media platform Parler, indicate that Trump supporters are looking to boycott the upcoming Georgia Senate runoff elections.

A video, shared on Twitter on Saturday (link), shows a protester speaking into a mic criticizing Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Utah Senator Mitt Romney, who are both Republicans. The protester calls them "traitors."

Seemingly reacting to certification from Georgia election officials that President-elect Joe Biden had indeed won the Peach State following an election recount, the protesters disavowed the GOP.

"Any Republican who allows this to happen is complicit, and we will finish you," the protester, donning a camo sweatshirt with an elephant on it, shouts into the microphone. "For any Republicans not explicitly helping Trump to 'stop the steal,' we will make sure you are never elected ever again." Another demonstrator can be heard shouting a long "We're the new GOP." Reading remarks off his phone, the protester in the camo vows to dismantle the party.

"If the Republican establishment stands back and stands by and allows the steal to go through, we will do whatever it takes to completely destroy the Republican Party," he said. "We will accept nothing less than a Donald Trump victory." 

He also accused recounts and ballots of being "fake"—yet claims about voter fraud have been widely debunked.

While in-person protests urged officials to call the election for Trump, a number of Republicans on the "free-speech" social media website Parler have demanded a boycott of the Senate runoff elections, citing a conspiracy theory about "rigged" voting machines. 

Screenshots shared by reporter Marcus Baram showed that people on the app accused Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of being "RINOs"—an acronym for "Republican in Name Only"—and trying to lead to victories for Democratic candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. 

Both Warnock and Ossoff are challenging incumbent Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, respectively.

Many of the posts bore a resemblance to language used by people who believe the QAnon conspiracy theory.

"DO NOT VOTE IN THE GEORGIA RUNOFFS, THE DEEP STATE WILL BE COLLECTING EVERYONE'S INFO. THIS IS A CHARADE, MEANT TO IDENTIFY PEOPLE WHO DON'T VOTE DEMOCRAT," one post read, which also lamented that potential victories for Warnock and Ossoff were a "small price to pay."

Mod: Goodness. Now they're eating their own. Anyone even a little bit surprised?

Federal judge emphatically tosses Trump election suit in Pennsylvania after Giuliani’s embarrassing appearance (New York Daily News link): A federal judge Saturday emphatically tossed out President Trump’s lawsuit seeking to overturn the Pennsylvania’s presidential election results — and trashed Rudy Giuliani’s much-mocked performance in his courtroom.

Sparing no words to express his disgust at Trump’s case, Williamsport, Pa. federal Judge Matthew Brann dismissed the suit with prejudice, meaning Trump cannot amend or refile the case because the judge considered it so far fetched.  

“This Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations,” Brann wrote. “In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state.”

sierramadretattler.blogspot.com 

Televangelist Kenneth Copeland who mocked Biden victory with maniacal fake laugh ‘hit by Russian hackers’

Mod: Big bucks Evangelical preacher Kenneth 'Ha! Ha!' Copeland has been hacked by the Russians. And if he doesn't pay up they'll divulge secrets that up until now only God knew. Say hallelujah, sinners.

Televangelist Kenneth Copeland who mocked Biden victory with maniacal fake laugh ‘hit by Russian hackers’ (The Sun link): Millionaire televangelist Kenneth Copeland has allegedly been hit by hackers who are threatening to release 1.2 terabytes of data about his business. Copeland - who went viral over his maniacal fake laugh at Joe Biden's election win - has become the latest high profile figure targeted by ransomware gang REvil, according to a post on the gang’s dark web site. 

Russian hacking group REvil published on their dark web headquarters, Happy Blog, that they had accessed Copeland's firm and presented a string of screenshots as alleged evidence.

The gang has previously threatened to auction off data allegedly stolen from pop star Madonna, released legal documents relating to Lady Gaga, and tried to extort Donald Trump.

The group uses ransomware - a type of software often unknowingly installed by the victim - to break into a networks and encrypt them. FBI agents are said to have described the gang as "cyber terrorists", to which the group angrily responded in a blog post, moaning "your position is your choice".

Copeland, 83, who has an estimated net worth of $760 million, based in Texas, heads up Kenneth Copeland Ministries (KCM) and is one of the world's wealthiest pastors. He has risen to notoriety in 2020 after a string of bizarre claims about the coronavirus pandemic. Hackers claim they managed to get inside KCM's systems and steal more than 1.2tb of data, the equivalent of around 120,000 storage boxes of files.

Screenshots show banks of alleged computer files with labels such as "budgets", "projects", "payroll" and "inventory".

Writing in broken English, hackers threaten the data "will soon be made public". They claim to have "financial documents, contracts, bank documents, sales history, emails, bases, geo documents". 

"Money, authority religion and again money. A success story. Absolutely all servers and working computers of the company are hacked and encrypted," the cyber criminals claim. It is understood the listing has now been taken down from the site on the dark web.  

REvil is known to have released legitimate documents stolen from companies into the public, and has previously threatened President Trump.

Watch: Preacher Kenneth Copeland Confronted by Interviewer over Lavish Lifestyle (Heavy link): Inside Edition Chief Investigative Correspondent Lisa Guerrero confronted televangelist Kenneth Copeland over his lavish lifestyle and the results were uncomfortable.

sierramadretattler.blogspot.com

Sweating Rudy Giuliani presents 'evidence' for 'massive voting fraud' as hair dye runs down his face

Mod: When will all of this madness end? It was mockingly asked here yesterday if Rudy Giuliani would be representing Donald Trump at his treason trials next year. To which someone replied, "Sounds like a certain death sentence."

'Did you all watch My Cousin Vinny?' Sweating Rudy Giuliani presents 'evidence' for 'massive voting fraud' as hair dye runs down his face - alongside 'elite legal strike force' who claim Joe Biden's win is a Venezuelan plot they uncovered on the Internet (Daily Mail link): Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani delivered a rambling monologue Thursday meant to reveal evidence for a 'massive' vote fraud where he quoted 'My Cousin Vinny' and claimed he had 'hundreds' of sworn affidavits as evidence that he would not share - because, he claimed, it would put his witnesses' lives at risk.

After suffering more than a score of legal defeats on President Trump's multi-state case to throw out ballots, Giuliani resorted to an extended rant about alleged fraud to reporters packed in tightly at the Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington. 

The last time he held a press conference was at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in northern Philadelphia, making the RNC's packed conference room at least an upgrade. And this time there were no known sex offenders on stage with him.

Instead there was a self-styled 'elite strike-force team working on behalf of the president' who outlined a vast conspiracy which wove together Hugo Chavez; China; Venezuela; Cuba; the Clinton Foundation; George Soros; testimony found 'on the internet'; ballots which arrived in trucks; New Jersey voters who crossed the Camden; 'hack' judges; vote counters in Germany and Spain; Democratic political machines just like Mayor Daley in the 1960s; the 'fake news media'; and Joe Biden.

The strike-force team's other leader, Jenna Ellis, bristled at the demand for actual evidence, saying: 'Your question is fundamentally flawed when you're asking where is the evidence.'

At the end she claimed that Rudy Giuliani and another lawyer - Sidney Powell - had 'released the Kraken,' a mythical sea creature which destroys ships. 

The press conference was announced by Donald Trump and praised by him as it went on in a tweet: 'An open and shut case of voter fraud. Massive numbers!' 

As the two-hour long spectacle unfolded, two streaks of brown dye rolled inexorably down 76-year-old Giuliani's face, apparently unnoticed by the former mayor and presidential candidate, who wiped his face and forehead repeatedly with a white handkerchief. 'Did you all watch My Cousin Vinny?' he said, seeking to make the point that election observers were kept too far away from ballots during the count. 

'These people were further away than My Cousin Vinny was from the witness,' he said. Giuliani even acted out part of a scene played by actor Joe Pesci, using a Brooklyn accent. He called it one of his favorite crime films. He said the race was 'not a victory. It's a fraud.'

The film's director Jonathan Lynn got a laugh out of the moment. 'I regard Giuliani's praise of My Cousin Vinny as generous from the man who is currently giving the Comedy Performance of the Year,' he told The Hollywood Reporter.

Mod: More on this latest Trump disaster at the link.

sierramadretattler.blogspot.com

USA Today: Do we dare call Donald Trump a treasonous president?

Mod: The roiling debate over whether former President Trump needs to be investigated bytthe federal government for anti-American activities continues. Even the usually mild-mannered USA Today is boldly jumping in.

Do we dare call Donald Trump a treasonous president? (USA Today link): Never have we seen such speculation over whether a U.S. president is actively working against his own country. By refusing to concede an election he clearly has lost, by making baseless charges intended to undermine faith in the vote, by assaulting American national security infrastructure, Donald Trump seems less democracy’s friend than foe.  

From the start of his presidency, critics have wondered whether Trump, despite his America-first rhetoric, was prepared to put country first. Before he took office, Trump operatives softened language in the Republican Party platform that implicitly criticized Russian involvement in Ukraine. Months into his tenure, and with no apparent consideration of the consequences, Trump cavalierly disclosed sensitive intelligence information to Russian visitors. Trump refused to confront Russia over bounties on American soldiers. 

And his attempted takedown of America’s voting system left him at odds with his own Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. 

Christopher Krebs, the agency’s director, confided that he expected to be fired for exposing the voter fraud propaganda generated by Trump and his allies. Trump’s efforts to overturn the presidential election drove Timothy Snyder, a Yale professor and author of "On Tyranny," to tweet, “What Donald Trump is attempting to do has a name: coup d'état. … It must be made to fail.” 

Is Trump's behavior treasonous? Have we reached the point in America where the president, with total impunity, can attack the very foundation of our democracy? Do we dare call such a thing treason? 

And must we accept such behavior as a presidential right? It’s not as if no one saw this coming. Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist and the president’s niece, wrote a best-seller in which she argued that as long as Trump is in office, he'll threaten national security and play politics with American lives: “He’ll withhold ventilators or steal supplies from states that have not groveled sufficiently. 

If New York continues not to have enough equipment,” Trump will focus on humiliating its governor, whom he despises and whose leadership skills he envies, rather than helping its residents. 

Mary Trump predicted: Gov. Andrew Cuomo “will look bad, the rest of us be damned. … What Donald thinks is justified retaliation is, in this context, mass murder.” 

Mod: Much more at the link.

sierramadretattler.blogspot.com  

“Voter surveillance tool of extraordinary power” - Trump campaign app tracked movements of supporters

Mod: If you are a red hat MAGA who downloaded the Trump campaign app, be assured that Donny is watching you.

Trump campaign app tracked movements of supporters — and served up ‘intimate’ view of social networks (Raw Story link): The Trump campaign’s smartphone app tracked the movements of millions of the president’s supporters, gave the campaign an “intimate” view of users’ social networks, and delivered massive amounts of data that Trump will be able to use in the future, for a wide variety of purposes.

“The app lets Trump’s team communicate directly with the 2.8 million people who downloaded it — more than any other app in a U.S. presidential campaign — and if they gave permission, with their entire contact list as well,” the Associated Press reports. “Once installed, it can track their behavior on the app and in the physical world, push out headlines, fundraise, sell MAGA merchandise and sync with mass texting operations, according to the app’s privacy policy and user interface.” 

CBS News earlier this year reported the campaign’s app allows “for the collection of very detailed information about a person’s movements.”

The AP notes that while the campaign might be over, the “data strategy is very much alive, and the digital details the app collected can be put to multiple other uses — to fundraise for the president’s future political ventures, stoke Trump’s base, or even build an audience for a new media empire.”

In June MIT Technology Review called the Trump campaign’s app “a voter surveillance tool of extraordinary power.”

The app has “location-based tools and other features to help the campaign crowdsource new users,” the AP notes, adding there is a “gamified loyalty system, where supporters could accumulate points to spend on signed MAGA hats or pose for a picture with Trump.”

The app is still available for download. “With the most recent update, you can join the official army for Trump,” the iPhone version says.  

sierramadretattler.blogspot.com