Daily Archives: May 23, 2022

Even by Washington standards, the Biden Administrations recent request for $33 billion for military aid to Ukraine was shocking. Surely a coalition of antiwar progressives and budget-hawk Republicans would oppose the dangerous and expensive involvement of the US in the Russia/Ukraine conflict? No! Not only did Congress not object: they added nearly seven billion MORE dollars to the package!

In the end, not a single House Democrat voted against further US involvement in the war, and just 57 Republicans said no to funding yet another undeclared war.

On the Senate side, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) both demanded immediate passage of the huge giveaway to Ukraine. Thats Washingtons bipartisanship for you.

Then the junior Senator from Kentucky came to the Senate Floor and did the unthinkable in Washington: he delayed the vote.

My oath of office is to the national security of the United States of America, Sen. Rand Paul said. We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the US economy. He went on to point out that the US has spent nearly as much on Ukraines military as the entire military budget of Russia and that the US government has sent more military money to Ukraine than it spent in the entire first year of the US war in Afghanistan.

Sen. Paul put the package into perspective: this massive giveaway to Ukraine equals nearly the entire yearly budget of the US State Department and is larger than the budget of the Department of Homeland Security!

Schumer was furious with Paul, accusing him of preventing swift passage of Ukraine aid because he wants to add at the last minute his own changes directly into the bill.

What was he trying to add to the bill? In his own words, All I requested is an amendment to be included in the final bill that allows for the Inspector General to oversee how funds are spent.

He wanted at least a bit of oversight on the nearly $50 billion in total that Washington has sent to what Transparency International deems one of the most corrupt countries on earth. Is that really too much to ask?

For Washington, the answer is yes. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) was an endless thorn in Washingtons side, because he actually did his job and reported on the billions of dollars that were stolen in Afghanistan.

In its final report on the 20 year Afghanistan war, SIGAR reviewed approximately $63 billion of the total $134 billion appropriated to Afghanistan and found that nearly $19 billion of the amount was lost to waste, fraud, and abuse. Nearly one third of the funds they reviewed were outright wasted or stolen by corrupt Afghan officials. Does anyone think it would be any different in Ukraine?

Maybe thats why they were so furious that Sen. Paul proposed that we perhaps keep track of this $40 billion to make sure its not wasted: Washington doesnt want to know. And, more importantly, Washington doesnt want us to know.

The temporary pause is important. It gives Americans a little time to let their Senators know that they do not support this ridiculous and wasteful giveaway to Ukraine. Inflation is ripping through the country. Gas prices are through the roof. Our infrastructure is crumbling. The dollar is teetering. And were giving money away?

The vote appears set for Wednesday. Time to let your Senators know what you think about it!

This article was published by RonPaul Institute

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Ron Paul: Why Did Rand Paul Delay Washington's $40 Billion Ukraine Giveaway? OpEd - Eurasia Review

From her days as Bush/Cheney propagandist, to her stint on The View, to her role as beloved-by-Democrats MSNBC host, Wallace has perfected the art of sociopathic lying.

By Glenn Greenwald / Substack

The most blatant and shameless liarsfrom the first term of the Bush/Cheney administration have, revealingly, enjoyed great success in media and journalism. That is because serial deceit is not a liability for a thriving career in corporate journalism but rather a vital asset provided that the lies are in service of ruling class policies. Tawdry propagandists who helped drive post-9/11 America into a bottomless pit of lies and self-destruction have become the most highly-paid and beloved stars of liberal media. They include:

But few Bush-era propagandists have thrived more, made more money, and developed a more devoted and swooning liberal fan base than the official Communications Director of the Bush/Cheney White House and 2004 Bush/Cheney-reelection campaign, Nicolle Wallace. Having catapulted from her work as Jeb Bushs Press Secretary to the White House to senior adviser to John McCains presidential campaign (working for her close friend, Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt, who recently performedone of the most public and sustained nervous breakdownsin the history of the internet), Wallace was always beloved by the DC press corps.

In 2005, when she was named Bush White House Communications Director,The New York Timeslavished her with praise,claiming thatshe comes from a different mold than the small band of Texans who carry out the White House press policy and admiringly noted that she was once fired for being too nice to reporters. She endeared herself further to corporate journalists by repeatedly sabotaging the McCain campaign from which she was collecting a paycheck, leaking negative stories about McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (whose selection as Vice Presidential candidate was driven primarily by liberal iconsBill KristolandSteve Schmidt).

As Wallace seeing the medias love affair with Obama began shrewdly repositioning herself as a liberal, sheclaimed in 2010that she did not even vote for McCain due to her misgivings about Palin (a claim which Schmidtrepeated about himselffor the first time last week during his multi-day psychological erosion). When Wallace published a self-glorifying novel about the first female chief of staff (modeled after herself) to the first female president in 2011, liberal corporate journalists includingMSNBCs Rachel Maddowgushed over it, whileThe New York Times reporter Ashley Parker, now ofThe Washington Post,heralded heras the tough, savvy and hard-charging conservative political operator who enjoys a close friendship with CNNs Dana Bash.

So beloved was Wallace by the corporate press that she was rewarded in 2014 with a highly lucrative contract to be a co-host on ABCsThe View. She then joined NBC News. Quickly adapting to her new role as a Republican who vehemently despised Donald Trump easily the most lucrative Trump-era archetype - MSNBC bestowed her with her own afternoon cable show in 2017. She quickly became one of Democratic viewers most popular hosts constantly giving a platform to Schmidt and other Lincoln Project sleaze merchants as part of the #NeverTrump gang, a faction so beloved by corporate media employees that they filled cable green rooms and newspaper op-ed pages while having little to no representation among the actual voting populace. Liberals love Wallace so much that she was given a second hour to host in 2020.

But lurking beneath her perky smile, multi-million-dollar media contracts, gushing liberal fan base and a long list of media admirers is something extremely dark and pernicious. In a swamp of professional liars and sleaze merchants, Nicolle Wallace has distinguished herself easily as one of the most seamless and casual liars in the world of Washington politics and media. She thrived in the Bush/Cheney administration precisely because she was so adept at selling the White Houses deadly lies to liberal corporate media employees, dressing up those lies in a pleasing-to-liberals packaging that she learned from growing up in a affluent town near San Francisco, and then at Berkeley and Northwesterns School of Journalism. She was the vintage conservative who liberals could love a smiling sophisticate, someone willing to betray her GOP employers to impress liberal journalists, an amicable young woman touting degrees from the types of schools that impress coastal media elites and it was virtually inevitable that she would thrive within media corporations that need women who can credibly claim to be conservatives yet appeal to liberal sensibilities and flatter liberal audiences.

Wallace has employed those personality traits in service of the most toxic and insidious of all tasks: ahappy,relentless purveyor of official disinformation. When the CIA wants the American public contaminated with its lies and disinformation, Nicolle Wallaces lips begin moving. She delivers the anonymous disinformation campaigns of the U.S. security state with a tone of empathy, compassion, and liberal elegance, all in the language and with the affectations which affluent liberals most admire.

She has an unsurpassed ability to broadcast to audiences outright lies whispered to her by Deep State operatives one after the next without flinching or betraying the slightest sense of a conscience or moral compass. She lies like only a sociopath can: exuding charm and warmth yet utterly vacant on the inside, except for a soul festering in rot. Over the last twenty years from her perches at the White House, onThe View, and now at MSNBC nobody has made liberals eat up Pentagon and neocon war propaganda more eagerly and uncritically than Nicolle Wallace.

There is literally not a single liberal/CIA disinformation campaign over the last six years that she did not fully and uncritically embrace. Each time the U.S. Security State and Democratic Party fabricated blatant lies and embarked on injecting their poisonous brew into the American bloodstream, Nicolle Wallace was at the forefront. Using the skills she harnessed to help lead Americans into one of its most destructive and immoral wars in U.S. history the invasion and 15-year destruction of Iraq the former Bush/Cheney shill, now a DNC and CIA shill, has played a starring role in virtually every lie American liberals have been led to believe.

Because Wallace is primarily a video performer she rarely writes or speaks extemporaneously, instead clinging loyally to talking points and teleprompter scripts video is the only medium that can really convey the full extent of her brazen contempt for the truth. After we began compiling many of the examples of Wallaces leading role in spreading official disinformation, we asked Matt Orfalea who came to prominence as a young videographer for the 2016 Sanders campaign and who has since become a much more heterodox voiceon his Rumble page, which he began after repeatedly being censored by YouTube to produce a video with the goal of viscerally conveying who Nicolle Wallace really is and the dark arts on which she relies for her careerist and ideological project.

Orfalea is an artist: a highly creative and unorthodox videographer. The videos he produced for journalist Matt Taibbi regarding themedias disinformation orgyabout the Kyle Rittenhouse trial andits even more deceitful effort to lie to the publicabout the materials on Hunter Bidens laptop are two of the best political videos I have seen in years. The video he produced for us on Nicolle Wallace the Typhoid Mary of Disinformation is, in my view, at least of the same quality. The tone and tenor of this video are obviously quite different from those we typically employ to do our reporting here, but the video so perfectly conveys who Wallace is, and how she spews and disseminates disinformation, that I am very proud to present it and eager for you to watch it.

The free trailer, available to all, is below. The full mini-documentary, for subscribers only, follows after that. Above all else, it demonstrates the key point about this new discourse about disinformation. Those who most flamboyantly warn of the dangers of disinformation and seek to censor the internet in the name of fighting it are, (through such tactics as thedefunct-for-nowHomeland Security Disinformation Board) in fact, the most aggressive and destructive purveyors of disinformation in the world.

The trailer for The Typhoid Mary of Disinformation:

The full video, The Typhoid Mary of Disinformation, produced by this Substack andMatt Orfalea:

Glenn Greenwald is a journalist,former constitutional lawyer, and author of fourNew York Timesbestselling books on politics and law. His most recent book, No Place to Hide, is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. Hisforthcoming book, to be published in April, 2021, is about Brazilian history and current politics, with a focus on his experience inreporting a series of expossin 2019 and 2020 which exposed high-level corruption by powerful officials in the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, which subsequently attempted to prosecute him for that reporting.

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The Typhoid Mary of Disinformation: Nicolle Wallace. Nobody Spreads it More Relentlessly. - Scheerpost.com

Its hard for Paul Bettany to play a lunkhead. With his dashing good looks and sophisticated air, the British actor practically exudes intelligence in a way that few major film actors of his generation possess. That patrician vibe has been a major plus for the actor in his transition to films, but what has made him such an in-demand star is his attention to character detail. Scroll through our photos below to see the Top 12 Paul Bettany movies and TV shows ranked worst to best.

Whether hes playing a troubled hero or a dastardly villain, Bettany is one of those actors who digs deep into his roles, probing the character of the man hes playing to find out what makes him tick and slowly revealing that to the audience. That skill has led him to shine in a wide variety of films, from standout performances in such Oscar-winning films as A Beautiful Mind and Master and Commander (both opposite Russell Crowe) to popcorn movies of the finest kind as a member of both the Star Wars and Marvel Comic universes.

Not surprisingly, for his work in both film and television, Bettany has seen his share of awards and nominations. For his performance in the ensemble of A Beautiful Mind he was recognized at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and for Master and Commander he was nominated for both a BAFTA and a Critics Choice Award, as well as being named British Actor of the Year by the London Film Critics Circle. In television, his performance as Vision in Marvels Disney+ series WandaVision earned Bettany Best Actor bids from the Emmys, Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards.

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Top 12 Paul Bettany movies and TV shows ranked worst to best: 'Master and Commander,' 'WandaVision' - Gold Derby

Larry Gerhard Moen

Sparks - Larry Gerhard Moen (61) died May 17, 2022, at his home in Sparks, Nevada.

Larry was born to Ron and Liz Moen on March 14, 1961, in Augusta, Georgia. Larry was the third of four children.

Larry graduated from Reed High School in 1979. He joined the US Army in 1981 and served in counterintelligence at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, Hanau, West Germany, and Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. Moen continued his military service over the next 32 years in both the Nevada Army National Guard and the Nevada Air National Guard unit, achieving the rank of master sergeant.

After Larry's discharge from active duty in 1985, he began a career in law enforcement. Larry started his career at Nevada State Prison in Carson City in the maximum security unit as a guard. Larry left prison guard duty to work as a Deputy Sheriff for Washoe County. Larry departed the Sheriff's

Office for the Nevada Office of Parole and Probation. In the final step in his career, Larry served as a Senior Investigator for Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval, retiring in 2009. One of the highlights of his career was to work in security at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. Larry also participated in the Olympic Torch Run.

Larry was a do-it-yourself guy. Larry had as many tools as Tim "The Toolman'' Taylor. Larry liked to work on his cars and those of his kids. He enjoyed home improvement projects and liked picking up new skills. Larry was not only quick to help friends and family, but also strangers. Larry knew all of his neighbors and was quick to lend a hand or even one of his tools to his neighbors. Larry was fondly known as Opa to his six grandchildren. Larry invested in their lives helping them with their school work, driving them to various activities and working with them on their game. Larry enjoyed cooking and barbecuing for his family and friends.

Larry and his wife Stephanie loved to travel. Their trips included visiting five different continents. They also enjoyed taking to the open road in their RV, often taking the grandkids along.

Larry was preceded in death by his mother, Liz and is survived by his wife of 33 years, Stephanie; daughter Courtney (Victor); son Paul (Lesley); his father Ron; his brother Ken (Denise); sisters Eva and Patty (Dave); and grandchildren Austin, Kody, Baylee, Cameron, Grant, and Charlotte. Larry is also survived by his in-laws, numerous nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends.

A memorial service is scheduled for Tuesday, May 31, 2022, at 1:30pm at Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Church in Reno, Nevada. Larry will be buried with full military honors at the Veterans Cemetery in Fernley, Nevada at a later date.

Posted online on May 23, 2022

Published in Reno Gazette-Journal

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Obituaries in Reno, NV | The Reno Journal-Gazette and Mason Valley News - Reno Gazette Journal

Paul Wight is older and wiser.

While The Big Show, Paul Wight, is considered to be one of the more legendary giant wrestlers in the history of the industry, at the start of his career, he was involved in a lot of campy angles in WCW. As part of the Dungeon of Doom, Paul, then known as Giant, took part in a Monster Truck Match against Hulk Hogan at Halloween Havoc 1995 and that segment would end with him being pushed off of Cobo Hall and supposedly onto the concrete.

Bron Breakker Says Rick Steiner Is Retired, Won't Return For Potential Tag Match

The night would end with him and The Yeti, Ron Reese, giving Hulk Hogan a very suggestive double bear hug.

Speaking to Shakiel Mahjouri for ET Canada, Paul Wight reflected on getting shoved off the roof by Hulk Hogan at Halloween Havoc 1995.

I definitely wouldnt even consider doing that now at my age with my wisdom, Wight told ET Canada. Like, No. Why are we doing that? But at 22, 23-years-old, Im like, Yeah, whatever you want to do. Push me off a building? Awesome. You know, because youre just so excited.

The thing was for me to fall off the building," he continued. "It was about four stories into a big airbag. Im not a stunt man. Ive never done anything like that, you know? Youre young and you think youre bulletproof Just being young and being funny, when I went over and Hulks looking over the top at me, I was flipping him a bird on the way down Its a wonder he didnt bust out laughing when I did it.

During his younger years, Paul Wight was also eager to bust help moves like moonsaults. Learn about the one time he actually tried to pull that off at this link.

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Paul Wight Reflects On Being Pushed Off Of The Roof Of Cobo Hall By Hulk Hogan In 1995 - Fightful