While J.D. Vance has his own controversies, his close connection to billionaire Peter Thiel, who is poised to have unprecedented influence in a new Trump administration, should deeply unsettle every American who cares about freedom, privacy and reining in the surveillance state.
H/T: The Most Revolutionary Act
Related:
The Atlantic: Two Men Running to Stay Out of Prison
Liz Cheney warns US ‘sleepwalking into dictatorship
Robert Kagan: A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.
…We can expect more of this when the war against the “deep state” begins in earnest. According to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), there is a whole cabal determined to undermine American security, a “Uniparty” of elites made up of “neoconservatives on the right” and “liberal globalists on the left” who are not true Americans and therefore do not have the true interests of America at heart. Can such “anti-American” behavior be criminalized? It has in the past and can be again.
So, the Trump administration will have many avenues to persecute its enemies, real and perceived. Think of all the laws now on the books that give the federal government enormous power to surveil people for possible links to terrorism, a dangerously flexible term, not to mention all the usual opportunities to investigate people for alleged tax evasion or violation of foreign agent registration laws. The IRS under both parties has occasionally looked at depriving think tanks of their tax-exempt status because they espouse policies that align with the views of the political parties. What will happen to the think-tanker in a second Trump term who argues that the United States should ease pressure on China? Or the government official rash enough to commit such thoughts to official paper? It didn’t take more than that to ruin careers in the 1950s.
Their panic just shows how out of touch they are with the working class! As for Kagan, there’s so much more that I could say, but for now I’ll just roll my eyes! 🙄
In the 2022 midterms, MAGA election deniers haven’t necessarily been as overt as Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake or her Pennsylvania counterpart Doug Mastriano. Some have never acknowledged that President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election but avoid discussing the Big Lie. In Wisconsin, however, Democrats are slamming Republican gubernatorial nominee Tim Michels for saying “the quiet part out loud” and essentially promising that if he defeats Democratic incumbent Gov. Tony Evers on November 8, he would simply throw out any election results that he doesn’t like.
‘The quiet part out loud’: Wisconsin GOP gubernatorial nominee makes extreme promise to supporters if he wins
Never-Trumper neocons were hardly strangers to inciting mobs
You reap what you sow!
Hawks seek revival with new group
As senior director for Near East and North African affairs from 2002 to 2009, Abrams played a key role in encouraging the U.S. invasion of Iraq and urging other interventions in the region and supported an armed coup attempt against the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza, touching off a brief civil war that left the Islamist group stronger than ever. His advocacy as special envoy for Venezuela and Iran of ever-stronger sanctions against the governments in those two countries succeeded only in strengthening hard-line forces in both nations and pushing much of their middle classes into poverty. Given that record, why Vandenberg’s backers would choose him as the group’s chairman and public face, is intriguing, to say the least.
But be careful, though. Is Steve Bannon back in prison? It’s hard to know where he is at the moment.
Bannon and I have a lot of history. In 2015, when I came out against Trump, a person inside Breitbart News sent me an internal Slack from Bannon.
And Bannon said, “I want you to go after Wilson. I want you to go after his kids, his family, his wife, his business, everything. I want to destroy him.” And someone said, “Yeah, he’s gonna punch you back, Steve,” and Steve wrote, “This will be fun.” So, since then, I have pursued Steve Bannon like a wild animal. And I will never—Steven Bannon will never be off the hook for me. Once he goes back to prison, once he gets into prison, I’m gonna … I’m only just starting.
McCain Conservatives Are Rallying Behind Justin Amash
— Read on reason.com/2019/12/19/mccain-conservatives-are-rallying-behind-justin-amash/
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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