Zelenskyy - Former Actor and Comedian

It has been puzzling to observe the tone used in press coverage about Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy since he took office in April of 2019. The United States has had actors become Governors (Reagan, Schwarzenegger), Representatives (Bono, Grandy), Senators (Thompson) and Presidents (Reagan) but any novelty of a "star" being in politics seemed to wear off quickly and any commentary directed their way focused more on their current acts than prior roles.

In contrast, despite Ukraine immediately becoming subjected to a previously unimaginable power squeeeze between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, references to Zelenskyy have consistently reiterated his prior roles as a comedian and actor rather than leader of a democratic country undergoing continual attacks from Russia while being extorted by the President of the United States for domestic US political purposes.

Here is one recent example:

https://news.yahoo.com/ukraines-zelensky-onetime-comedian-turned-president-rallies-nation-against-russian-invasion-155041324.html

This reportage seems intended to discount the importance of anything taking place in that region and as a result, excuse the failure of other countries to devise more effective responses to events in Ukraine. Essentially, these reports condition those in the rest of the world to conclude Ukraine is a bunch of rubes in some Borat country who were dumb enough to elect some sketch comedy actor as President so how can we possibly take anything going on there as worthy of our concern?

Based on his speech aimed at the Russian people and distributed via social media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-zilnPtZ2M

he seems to have a very clear grasp of the problems facing not just Ukraine but the entire world and he seems uniquely gifted at summarizing those problems for all audiences.

This really shouldn't be a surprise. Maybe a comedian is the BEST person to have in this absurd situation. A gifted comedian requires top notch perception skills to identify the hypocrisy and other human foibles in life, magnify them to the size of a skyscraper for comedic / dramatic effect then condense that illuminated picture down to something short and pithy that can play to all crowds to deliver a message in SECONDS that sticks.

You are told that this flame will bring freedom to the people of Ukraine. But the people of Ukraine are already free. They remember their past and are building their own future. They are building it, not destroying it, as you are told every day on TV. Ukraine in your news and Ukraine in reality are two completely different countries. The most important difference is ours is real.

By attacking us, you will see our faces. Not backs -- our faces.

Meanwhile, American politicians are focusing on how to spin gas shocks and other economic disruptions to their political advantage while the entire western world seems on the surface to content itself with a "sucks to be Ukraine," hands-off policy. Fifty to one hundred years from now, regardless of what happens, people will remember the name Zelenskyy and his words backed by his courage. And his wikipedia entry of the future won't start with "Volodymyr Zelenskyy, politician, former actor and comedian..."

WTH

American Justice is Seriously Dysfunctional

Events in Ukraine seem to be burying this story amid seemingly more important matters but a announcement of the simultaneous resignations of two prosecutors investigating potentially criminal offenses tied to The Trump Organization merit s equal concern in the United States. The story is a good reminder of what our justice system is turning into... Something that by the day less reflects any "system" or "justice" but instead reflects a Magic 8 ball with REALLY BAD random outcomes:

• castle doctrine - free the vigilante
• qualified immunity -- free the cop
• conspiracy to sell addictive opioids -- pay fine in exchange for criminal immunity
• exonerating DNA evidence -- you had your shot, die in the chair anyway

On February 23, 2022, the Manhattan District Attorney's office (a county level office) announced the two top prosecutors managing investigations into state criminal tax and fraud charges against Donald Trump both resigned on the same day.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/nyregion/trump-ny-fraud-investigation.html

Stories covering those resignations also noted that the grand jury seated to examine evidence in the case hasn't reviewed a single scrap of evidence in over one month. That grand jury's term expires in April making it highly unlikely any charges will arise from this investigation. There is still a separate state tax fraud case being pursued by New York State Attorney General Letitia James.

Details in the stories published so far do not make it clear what led the two prosecutors to resign, though their boss District Attorney Alvin Bragg recently stated he had doubts about the case moving forward.

Were they both quitting because they saw no case but felt someone above was pressuring them to continue?

Were they both quitting because they SAW a case but felt their efforts were being hampered by parties above them?

This inquiry was focused on suggestions that The Trump Organization consistently OVERVALUED properties when using them as collateral on loan documents and consistently UNDERVALUED them for tax purposes -- a two-fer crime of bank fraud and tax evasion if true. There were also examples being investigated where high dollar perks were being provided to senior employees of The Trump Organization in lieu of taxable salary, also a crime.

These resignations are concerning because the facts involved seem abundantly clear. Numerous documents reflect cases where Trump cited valuations of his Trump Tower condominium consistent with a 30,000 square foot property yet the physical property is only 11,000 square feet.

A quick google search for dimensions of the building point out that the outer footprint of the building is 76.12 feet by 144.03 feet or 10,963 square feet. Hmmmm. That's almost exactly 11,000 square feet. So was Trump claiming his luxury penthouse condominium was a THREE STOREY condominium? Why did no one processing his bank paperwork spot such an obvious exaggeration / fabrication?

The tax-free perks were also seemingly easy to prove. Paying private school tuition for an employee's child has nothing to do with operating a real estate development firm and could not be justified under any accounting or tax treatment as benefiting the firm, other than avoiding payroll taxes at the firm's level and getting the employee to accept less official taxable compensation by keeping it off a W-4.

Why would any prosecutor have trouble using those facts to sell criminal charges to a grand jury? Especially when there is a pattern of similar over / under fabrications for other Trump buildings, resorts and golf courses? I'm pretty sure if I filed bank loan papers inflating the value of a collateral asset by 3x while paying real estate taxes against a valuation under 1x on that asset I would be writing this piece in a letter from prison for someone else to post online.

The real concern is why most Americans seem genuinely SURPRISED when anything EXPECTED comes out of our judicial processes. A decade ago, when a sex offender or murderer was arrested then convicted, I didn't think ANYTHING of it. Crime reported, suspect caught, prosecution conducted, court and jury hear the case, justice (usually) served. When a business mogul was caught evading taxes or conspiring to violate environmental laws or filing years of fraudulent financial reports, we'd see a perp walk, the teams would disappear into courts for a couple of years and eventually the mogul would spend at least SOME time in Camp Cupcake and surrender at least a few million dollars of ill gotten booty.

Now?

We see cases tossed out on technicalities around prosecutor misconduct / incompetence. We see cases go to trial and judges tainting juries with their own biases. We see ignorant juries mis-interpreting legal principals or flat out ignoring them in their verdicts. We see prosecutors making public comments about the merits of cases rather than moving forward with them or just dropping them.

And today we see prosecutors publicly quitting cases at arguably THE WORST possible time in the process leaving room for suspicion from all parties about the entire system. What are those participants seeing that is hidden from the rest of us that is so revolting they cannot either see a case to trial or dismiss it without charges rather than fanning concerns from all sides about rigged outcomes?

WTH

The Olympic Movement - A Crime Syndicate

Let's cut to the chase and call the "Olympic movement" what it really is.

Child abuse...

Does anyone have any question in their mind about Olympic sports being a vehicle of systemic child abuse? After a fifteen-year-old is submitted for competition by a country ALREADY OFFICIALLY BANNED for wholesale doping who is still allowed to "unofficially" field a team and STILL puts a fifteen year old in the position of being administered illicit performance enhancing drugs then subject her to the WORLDWIDE shame of being caught? Then, after a corrupt regulating body somehow allows her to compete while indefinitely postponing ANY awards ceremony for any medal winners until her drug event can be adjudicated, the fifteen-year-old is yelled at by her coaches on worldwide television for failing to place and "disappointing" her entire country?

Does anyone have any doubts about the Olympics being a vehicle of systemic abuse after THREE HUNDRED female gymnasts were systemically raped or sexually abused by their "team doctor" and psychopath Larry Nassar? Does anyone think Larry Nassar is the only doctor or coach with access to dozens of young children over DECADES who didn't physically or mentally abuse children under his / her control?

Over forty years, American media has perfected the art of carefully crafted "backstory vignettes" about the years of sacrifices made by "Olympic families" moving to remote cities to be near famous coaches and enduring daily 4am wakeups to hit the ice at 5am for before-school practice along with after-school training sessions etc. All of this "sacrifice" starts with kids probably no older than second grade. Is there any seven year-old child who is capable of making an informed choice about that type of sacrifice or does that level of parent-induced "focus" constitute abuse?

Child abuse... masquerading as patriotism...

Patriotism is a much nicer sounding word than nationalism / jingoism but those are much better reflections of what the "Olympic movement" has become. Whatever the claimed motivations for resurrecting the concept in 1896 in Greece, the Olympics have never succeeded at spreading a shared, enlightened view of humanity -- that we are all one global family. They didn't fend off World War I, they were leveraged as a worldwide propaganda coup for Nazi Germany as it openly revved up for World War II, they served as a backdrop for Islamic terrorists killing Israeli athletes in 1972 and took on the baggage of the Cold War between the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" (US beating the Russians in hockey), the 1980 summer Olympic boycott by the US (because the Russians invaded Afghanistan) and the 1984 summer games boycotted by the Russians because we boycotted the 1980 games.

And how patriotic can an Olympic athlete be if they are forced to scrub their Twitter feeds of prior criticism of the host country or risk losses of future endorsements by speaking out about current domestic issues in their own country while waiting between events or standing on a podium they've worked twenty years since the age of 7 to reach?

Child abuse... masquerading as patriotism... masquerading as sport...

For some reason, the modern Olympics fetished on the concept of amateur athletes being the epitome of sportsmanship and all that is holy about the "Olympic movement," much in the same way we feel about college athletics.

Right...

That lasted until after the 1992 Olympics when western countries grew tired of the charade in which communist country athletes in EVERY sport arrived looking like American pro athletes in our elite sports while Western country athletes were limited to actual college athletes or (worse…) true amateur outsiders who couldn't get college scholarships for luge and similar crowd-kryptonite sports that weren't suitable for exploitation by the NCAA to line its pockets. The governing body decided to let any country use "professional" athletes, thus leveling the field (as it were) in the higher profile sports for training facilities, coaching talent, athletes and illicit performance enhancing drugs.

None of this is new to us in 2022. Hell, in 1988, Saturday Night Live had a Weekend Update skit lampooning Olympic drug scandals by a report from the first-ever "All Drug Olympics," an event in which nothing was off the table. The skit led off with Kevin Nealon setting the scene as Russian Sergie Achmodov prepped for his attempt to clean and jerk 1500 pounds ("a new world record…") while on a combination of anabolic steroids', Novacain, NyQuil, Darvon and some sort of fish paralyzer along with several cocktails in the past hour. This was funny in 1988 because it was already the impression EVERYONE had about the Olympics then -- thirty four years ago.

And stepping back for a moment to tie the patriotism and sport aspects more closely together in hypocrisy...

What possible value does national participation in Olympic games provide to a country's jingoistic fantasy that "we're better cuz we won the luge or curling or shot put" if every country is scouring the world for members of their team? China has two American-born athletes who gave up their US citizenship to skate for China. And of course, Canada has lent out its entire 18-30 year old male population to other countries who are unable to find natural born skaters for hockey. In some cases, these athletes may opt to change jerseys to represent a country they feel more attached to, regardless of where they were born. In other cases, athletes may be making a tactical decision to join a team / country providing them a better chance of making it to the Olympics if they have been brainwashed from age seven by their parents that competing is a worthy life achievement, right up there with solving global warming or inventing a new vaccine that can prevent millions of deaths in the face of a global pandemic.

Child abuse... masquerading as patriotism... masquerading as sport... masquerading as a crime syndicate

If any of the above is deemed to be true, then by definition, the work involved in bidding for and selecting host sites and building the infrastructure to conduct "the games" is a highly organized crime. And in the same manner as World Cup Soccer, the organization controlling decisions about where Olympic Games are held has figured out how to turn itself into a trans-national master of grift and corruption, transferring millions in wealth to organization officials and business cronies while imposing crushing debt on host cities and host countries for stadiums, arenas, ski jumps, luge tracks and similar facilities poorly suited for ANY other practical function.

If the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was pure as the driven snow and its members not PERSONALLY profiting from their selections, it would be relatively easy to show a spine and allow participants to speak their mind when visiting host countries eager to squelch unpleasant story lines about human rights abuses, labor conditions, etc. Instead, the IOC not only allows monster states to participate despite obvious violations of world norms and Olympic rules (remember, Russia is still competing despite being BANNED for prior wholesale doping behavior -- some ban) giving them a fig leaf of respectability and normalcy, it coaches other participating countries to control their athlete's public statements and avoid discussing any elephants in any rooms to avoid offending the monster states.

How bizarre is the result? The medal ceremony for women's figure skating was postponed for weeks AFTER the closing ceremony, on the CHANCE that the doped up fifteen-year-old Russian skater MIGHT win and trigger another wave of hand-wringing about which medals to grant if the win MIGHT be later nixed after doping chargers were confirmed. Again, all of this for a situation in which the ENTIRE TEAM was already "banned" (yet still allowed to send athletes) and a situation in which an athlete ON that team tested positive for performance enhancing drugs even prior to the actual games and was caught AND a situation in which after being allowed to complete, the suspect athlete didn't even place for would-be bronze, silver or gold. How insane is that? How fearful of offending Russia must the IOC be to allow this farce?

Seriously, the entire western world needs to look at the Olympics through a new lens and eliminate sponsorship and participation in them. Surely, there are other programs that could be devised to promote concepts of honor, fairness, self-sacrifice and some fun for kids that don't institutionalize environments fostering mental / physical / sexual abuse and don't support a trans-national crime syndicate bent on grifting billions of dollars from countries trying to prove their modernity or trying to disguise their modern take on tyranny.

WTH

We May Be Done With Covid...

...but Covid is far from being done with us.

News outlets seem to be all feeding off each other with stories about "covid fatigue", plummeting hospitalization rates for the omicron variant, relaxation of masking policies and a general sense that we have done what we can do as a collective to combat the virus and we need to move on and return to normal.

The Atlantic published a piece by Yascha Mounk titled "Open Everything", arguing we were too slow at the onset of the pandemic to adjust to changing conditions to IMPOSE restrictions and now we are too slow to respond to changing conditions to REMOVE restrictions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/end-coronavirus-restrictions/621627/

Candidly, this article is probably the dumbest thing I have ever read in The Atlantic. Mounk states...

By this I mean that we should lift all remaining restrictions on everyday activities (which were, in any case, unable to prevent the rapid circulation of Omicron cases this winter). Children should be allowed to take off their mask in school. We should get rid of measures such as deep cleaning that are purely performative. Politicians and public-health officials should send the message that Americans should no longer limit their social activities, encouraging them to resume playdates and dinner parties without guilt.

Since the onset of classic COVID, ghoulish as it may sound, what worried me the most was not DEATH from COVID but LIVING after a non-fatal but severe case of COVID with hospitalization after-effects. Of course, I never thought that 918,000+ people would DIE from a virus for which vaccines were widely available ten months after its onset but the root of my concern is still valid. Only now, it isn't the slightly larger percentage risk of getting COVID requiring hospitalization and emerging with complications from intubation. The real concern is that over 77.6 million people have become ill with the virus and at least 12 million are STILL suffering debilitating issues MONTHS afterwards. This isn't just an abstract, intellectual concern. I have a family member who contracted classic COVID in October 2020, required a two-day hospitalization for dehydration (but no vent) and has suffered uncontrolled heart rate and brain fog ever since. Despite being Pfizer vaccinated (both doses) and Pfizer boosted in early December 2021, a second omicron infection occurred in early January 2022. The omicron case was "mild" but surely did not improve the existing long haul issues.

What remedies exist for these long haul cases? NOTHING. What is known about the root causes of these long haul cases? Next to nothing. Some disturbing trends have been noted, though, in addition to the obvious symptoms of fatigue, shortness of breath and brain fog. Namely,

• problems with existing diabetics controlling blood sugars
• problems with non-diabetics controlling blood sugars
• elevated blood clotting, evidenced by sky high levels of D-dimers, a protein produced when the body breaks up blood clots
• cardiac rhythm issues

More importantly, medical studies from around the world are finding some of these issues are cropping up three to four months after the original (often mild) case of COVID.

https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj-2021-068414

Results Among individuals who were diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, 32% (27?698 of 87?337) sought medical attention in the post-acute period for one or more new or persistent clinical sequelae, which was 11% higher than the 2020 comparison group. Respiratory failure (risk difference 7.55, 95% confidence interval 7.18 to 8.01), fatigue (5.66, 5.03 to 6.27), hypertension (4.43, 2.27 to 6.37), memory difficulties (2.63, 2.23 to 3.13), kidney injury (2.59, 2.03 to 3.12), mental health diagnoses (2.50, 2.04 to 3.04), hypercoagulability 1.47 (1.2 to 1.73), and cardiac rhythm disorders (2.19, 1.76 to 2.57) had the greatest risk differences compared with the 2020 comparison group, with similar findings to the 2019 comparison group. Compared with the group with viral lower respiratory tract illness, however, only respiratory failure, dementia, and post-viral fatigue had increased risk differences of 2.39 (95% confidence interval 1.79 to 2.94), 0.71 (0.3 to 1.08), and 0.18 (0.11 to 0.26) per 100 patients, respectively. Individuals with severe covid-19 disease requiring admission to hospital had a markedly increased risk for most but not all clinical sequelae.

The long haul rate cited in this study of 32% is even higher than the 15% (12 million of 77 million) referenced earlier. These numbers are confirming that a huge population that contracted COVID from any variant faces a potential LIFETIME of future medical issues, many resembling chronic medical burdens already crippling the US in terms of costs and impairment to individual productivity and quality of life. The variety of long haul symptoms points out something more important. While COVID may spread via respiratory means, the disease itself is NOT limited to the respiratory system. It seems to be capable of attacking the kidneys, pancreas, heart and brain. Anyone contracting COVID and "clearing" without immediate signs of respiratory issues is by no means "clear" of the disease.

Hearing people throw in the towel on masks for children who cannot yet get vaccinated with these statistics available seems to be the ultimate example of intergenerational selfishness. Allowing in-person school without at least the AVAILABILITY of a vaccine for all ages is gambling an entire generation of children's future health for our short-term convenience. It's sadly a very apropos reflection of much that is wrong with America.

WTH

The American Fascist Playbook

Reporting after the 2020 elections noted several cases where Republican state officials -- Secretaries of State, Attorneys General, etc. -- played pivotal roles in rejecting fraudulent claims of voter fraud which under different circumstances could have been accepted without commotion allowing an Orange Coup d'état. Reporting since the election has also shown how some of those same officials are coming under attack for doing their jobs with integrity and speaking truth to insanity and are being targeted for elimination in favor of more extreme actors.

With those trends, it is frightening to think that a race to fascism is only being held back by individual Republican officials in key positions of power continuing to do the right thing for the larger country and resisting the pressure to support an even greater fealty to ignorance and fear. The odds are particularly scary after realizing that the Republican Party has already been curating any moderation out of its DNA for twenty plus years and failed two of the most obvious sanity checks possible by supporting Trumpism in 2016 and 2020. The odds of a quorum of mid-career Republican officials still holding the line against the growing insanity seem vanishingly small.

Here are two case studies of the forces of freedumb at work. Pay attention. They are probably already at work in your community.

Case Study #1 --- Proposed legislation in Arizona illustrates the tactics extremist Republicans are willing to adopt in order to explicitly thwart representative government and fair elections. House Bill 2596 was proposed by Republican Representative John Fillmore on January 21, 2022 and included these changes to Arizona election laws:

• eliminate mail-in voting for convenience (still OK for military, hospitalized, out of state on voting day)
• return to geographically based voting locations -- cannot vote at any arbitrary polling location
• require all ballots to be counted within 24 hours of polls closing
• require HAND COUNTING of all votes (in 24 hours...)
• require the legislature to call itself into session after each election to review ballot tabulation processes
• allow the legislature to REJECT any result, thus allowing any qualified voter to file a motion in court to re-do the election

In other words, the legislature is proposing giving itself the power to indefinitely delay the consequence of any vote with which it doesn't agree, presumably including a result that might toss members of the extremist sect out of power. Here's the full language of the bill for those interested:

https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/55leg/2R/bills/HB2596P.htm

Perhaps more newsworthy about this turn of events in Arizona is news that the bill appears to have been sent to the legislative equivalent of a tar pit from whence it is unlikely to escape by Rusty Bowers, the Republican Speaker of the House. Bowers read the legislation for exactly what it is -- an inexcusable assault on the most basic civic process in a representational democracy -- and on February 4, 2022 he routed the bill through TWELVE different subcommittees for review, virtually assuring it will never reach the floor for a vote.

That sounds encouraging, right? Finally, some Republicans are starting to show some sanity and backbone to fight the lunatic fringe that has taken over their party, right? Look at it another way. This is another case where this level of insanity is being blocked by a SINGLE PERSON. The House in Arizona is 31/29 Republican so if BOWERS wasn't #31, this travesty could have made it much farther in the process, perhaps into law. Bowers has served in government for 30 years. He's 70 years old. How has his profile in courage been rewarded?

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2022/02/01/ahouse-speaker-just-killed-arizonas-most-outrageous-election-reform/9307151002/

For standing on principle, Bowers was targeted by the Arizona Patriot Party for recall and Trump supporters cruised his neighborhood, using a loudspeakers to call him a pedophile. Since then, his fellow Republican legislators have introduced no fewer than 70 bills to “reform” our elections, the worst of them being Fillmore’s scheme to essentially take away our vote.

And the Representative who proposed HB2596? He previously proposed legislation that would have allowed the Arizona legislature to select candidates for the United States Senate.

So what happens when the one indispensable Republican leaves the scene or is forcefully removed from power? For that, we turn to Shasta County, California.

Case Study #2 --- A recall election for a County Supervisor seat in Shasta County, California demonstrates the variety of fringe groups with different priorities acting together to impair moderate government deemed insufficiently belligerent to their enemies. Shasta County is traditionally conservative and has a Republican controlled Board of Supervisors consisting of five elected supervisors managing the county's affairs. In the age of covid, the county made no serious effort to enforce State mandated mask policies in local schools and businesses but mere passivity was not deemed sufficient for a fringe set of community members.

As those people began showing up at public meetings for county government and school issues and disrupting meetings screaming about tyranny, masks, et al, they began to gain support from a local group called the Cottonwood militia with ties to The Proud Boys who joined in those disruptions and took things to the next level. The fringe then tried collecting signatures to recall three of the five Supervisors on the county board then decided to focus on just one member. At that point, the effort gained support from a Connecticut millionaire who eventually contributed $400,000 to the recall effort. He also donated $100,000 to the 2020 campaign for Patrick Jones, a fellow supervisor and supporter of the recall.

So what is the background of these fringe forces? The leader of the recall effort, Carlos Zapata was arrested with two companions after getting into a fight at a local restaurant on May 4, 2021 with another Redding resident who was a supporter of the supervisors targeted by the recall. All three were charged with battery and disturbing the peace. On October 4, the companions were convicted on both charges while Zapata was only convicted on the peace charge. The Connecticut millionaire bankrolling the recall? Reverge Anselmo had a zoning dispute with the county in 2007 related to a vineyard property he owned in the county.

And the background of the recall target? Leonard Moty, chair of the Board of Supervisors, lifelong resident of Shasta county, thirty year veteran of the Redding Police Department (ending his career as Chief) and lifelong Republican. There are still uncounted ballots that officials estimate could take one to two weeks to count but current figures show the recall passing by a 56/44 margin among the roughly 8700 votes in his district. The replacement with the highest vote total to replace him is aligned with the Cottonwood militia / Proud Boys fringe and by knocking off one Supervisor in one county government, the lunatic fringe gains another foothold and provides a lesson for those in other jurisdictions in how to expand their power.

And how were Moty and other county supervisors and election officials treated in the run-up to the recall?

https://www.sfgate.com/california-politics/article/Shasta-County-Republican-recall-warzone-16810959.php

Board of Supervisors meetings went virtual after death threats were made against Moty and the other two more moderate supervisors. Moty said that the threats are unlike anything he's ever experienced in his time as a public official.

One person indicated that bullets are expensive but ropes are reusable; and someone else talked about tarring and feathering me," Moty said. "There's been talk of guillotines, things like that. It’s been very difficult for my family, difficult for my wife and kids to hear attacks like that.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-04/extremists-take-over-shasta-county-northern-california-next

“We have to make politicians scared again,” Carlos Zapata, a bar owner and militia member, told my colleague Hailey Branson-Potts, as the militia was heating up its tactics. “If politicians do not fear the people they govern, that relationship is broken.” It isn’t just politicians who are cowed. Regular citizens are, too. People came up to Moty and said they supported him, “but they didn’t want to have their name out there because they are afraid,” he said.

It was safer to be quiet because those who opposed the recall, along with county employees deemed problematic, have received death threats and had their home and work addresses posted online. (Recall supporters say the same has happened to them.) Moty, who spent three decades in law enforcement including six as chief of the Redding Police Department, has been threatened, accused of being a pedophile, of taking bribes, of colluding with voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems to defraud the election, being against the 2nd Amendment (a big insult in these parts) and more, he told me Wednesday.

Note the similarities between the two cases… Especially the baseless charges of pedophilia out of nowhere.

Yup. Sounds like freedumb to me.

WTH