reACTIONary
reACTIONary's JournalTake 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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
Where Facts Were No Match for Fear
Where Facts Were No Match for Fear, NYT No PaywallCivic 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.
CDC Tracks Down a Killer - "Healing" Gemstones
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/23/health/aromatherapy-melioidosis-mystery/index.html
It was a mystery by any definition of the word -- a rare tropical infection that had sickened people in the decidedly non-tropical states of Minnesota and Kansas, as well as Texas. The first patient to get sick, in Kansas in March, died.
Using PCR -- polymerase chain reaction -- the same type of lab test used to amplify genetic material for coronavirus tests and crime scene investigations they found genetic material from the bacterial crime suspect: "Better Homes & Gardens Lavender & Chamomile Essential Oil Infused Aromatherapy Room Spray with Gemstones." The product had been manufactured in India and sold at Walmart.
It's not clear which ingredient in the spray may be the contaminant. It might the "gemstones," however.
"Rocks are collected from the environment and there's bacteria in the environment, so if the rocks weren't sterilized before they went in, that's a possibility. The other thing is the possibility that another component was contaminated and the rocks made a little micro-environment in that bottle for the bacteria to grow in. So the significance of the rocks we don't really know yet, but having rocks in a fragrance bottle is definitely unusual. So that's something I think we're interested in looking at."
Trump's Pentagon Chief Quashed Idea to Send 250,000 Troops to the Border
Source: New York Times, No Paywall
President Trump’s defense secretary thought the idea was outrageous.
In the spring of 2020, Mark T. Esper, the defense secretary, was alarmed to learn of an idea under discussion at a top military command and at the Department of Homeland Security to send as many as 250,000 troops — more than half the active U.S. Army, and a sixth of all American forces — to the southern border in what would have been the largest use of the military inside the United States since the Civil War.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/us/politics/trump-border.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqohlSFUaCibIRp8_qRmHmfnE2_sgnGL7NG2fTixOwv5TA5SF_w2FQ5tfUOYJ_mbRQs5dYvhoTeZuz-RbMgtgEAX5-5GKydEPc3hp7N_rVzJzjp-dUPViqTLmZGTmIbkmn-T19wiLPzmRLa_V2HwgJghnqYI0Ng35nCxVmdqWV7J9ydJ83v8-BpllRj5mZSGCvfPgCR4WK8zRJ1iHqVFwA7cFLGmVyd2M6LsAcBFRCUbETh594WU96tBdOrAHLaVt9zINTxvLwkMEKKhdk0s&smid=url-share
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