#FeC

[animatronicappreciation]

Do you know anything about the restaurant layout of Captains Carnival or anything about it?

The main animatronic, Captain, was built by Elnicky Enterprises and could be controlled by a cast member! Here's two shots of him.

Aside from him, there was another stage that was a pirate band called The Beach Bones; not sure if they were also by Elnicky or not. I swear there was a photo of them around, but I can't find it now... Here's an ad for the place.

-Mod Rat

[gwydionmisha]

Of course he does. If we still had rule of law, this would be laughed out of court, but we don't so... stay tuned.

[porterdavis]

[dailyanimatronics]

[I've sent the reference in DMs] Can I request a drawing of Fang The Jaguar [my FEC oc] talking with PTT era Chuck E Cheese?

[ID: a drawing of ptt chuck and fang the jaguar, an oc, standing beside each other and talking. fang is an orange jaguar with a pompadour wearing a leather jacket, white shirt, and jeans. he's smiling down at chuck with half lidded eyes and his paws in his pockets. chuck is staring up at him with an eyebrow raised. /end ID]

babam

[aryburn-trains]

Unlike most Christmas trains this one is picking up toys. They are collecting toys from organizations that have collected them for the Santa train which will run later in the month. St. Augustine, FL December 8, 2012

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Nichols at The Nation:

Donald Trump has made no secret of his determination to govern as a “dictator” if he regains the presidency, and that’s got his critics warning that his reelection would spell the end of democracy. But Trump and his allies are too smart to go full Kim Jong Un. Rather, the former president’s enthusiasm for the authoritarian regimes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Tayyip Erdoğan, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán suggests the models he would build on: managing elections to benefit himself and his Republican allies; gutting public broadcasting and constraining press freedom; and undermining civil society. Trump, who famously demanded that the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential voting be “recalculated” to give him a win, wants the trappings of democracy without the reality of electoral consequences. That’s what propaganda experts Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead once described as “demonstration elections,” in which, instead of actual contests, wins are assured for the authoritarians who control the machinery of democracy. The outline for such a scenario emerges from a thorough reading of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, which specifically proposes a Trump-friendly recalculation of the systems that sustain American democracy. The strategy for establishing an American version of Orbán’s “illiberal democracy” is not spelled out in any particular chapter of Mandate. Rather, it is woven throughout the whole of the document, with key elements appearing in the chapters on reworking the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In the section on the DHS, for instance, there’s a plan to eliminate the ability of the agency that monitors election security to prevent the spread of disinformation about voting and vote counting.

How serious a threat to democracy would that pose? Think back to November 2020, when Trump was developing his Big Lie about the election he’d just lost. Trump’s false assertion that the election had been characterized by “massive improprieties and fraud” was tripped up by Chris Krebs, who served as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the DHS. The Republican appointee and his team had established a 24/7 “war room” to work with officials across the country to monitor threats to the security and integrity of the election. The operation was so meticulous that Krebs could boldly announce after the voting was finished: “America, we have confidence in the security of your vote, you should, too.” At the same time, his coordinating team declared, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” This infuriated Trump, who immediately fired the nation’s top election security official.

In Mandate’s chapter on the DHS, Ken Cuccinelli writes, “Of the utmost urgency is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis/disinformation efforts. The federal government cannot be the arbiter of truth.” Cuccinelli previously complained that CISA “is a DHS component that the Left has weaponized to censor speech and affect elections.” As for the team that worked so successfully with Krebs to secure the 2020 election, the Project 2025 document declares that “the entirety of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee should be dismissed on Day One.” The potential impact? “It’s a way of emasculating the agency—that is, it prevents it from doing its job,” says Herb Lin, a cyber-policy and security scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

This is just one way that Project 2025’s cabal of “experts” is scheming to thwart honest discourse about elections and democracy. A chapter on public broadcasting proposes to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of a larger plan to upend NPR, PBS, and “other public broadcasters that benefit from CPB funding, including the even-further-to-the Left Pacifica Radio and American Public Media.” More destabilizing than the total funding cut that Project 2025 entertains is a parallel plan to end the status of NPR and Pacifica radio stations as “noncommercial education stations.” That could deny them their current channel numbers at the low end of the radio spectrum (88 to 92 FM)—a move that would open prime territory on the dial for the sort of religious programming that already claims roughly 42 percent of the airwaves that the FCC reserves for noncommercial broadcasting. And don’t imagine that the FCC would be in a position to write new rules that guard against the surrender of those airwaves to the Trump-aligned religious right.

[...]

While project 2025 seeks to rewire the FCC to favor Trump’s allies, it also wants to lock in dysfunction at the Federal Election Commission, the agency that is supposed to govern campaign spending and fundraising. Established 50 years ago, the FEC has six members—three Republicans and three Democrats—who are charged with overseeing the integrity of federal election campaigns. In recent years, however, this even partisan divide has robbed the FEC of its ability to act because, as a group of former FEC employees working with the Campaign Legal Center explained, “three Commissioners of the same party, acting in concert, can leave the agency in a state of deadlock.” As the spending by outside groups on elections “has exponentially increased, foreign nationals and governments have willfully manipulated our elections, and coordination between super PACs and candidates has become commonplace,” the former employees noted. Yet “the FEC [has] deadlocked on enforcement matters more often than not, frequently refusing to even investigate alleged violations despite overwhelming publicly available information supporting them.”

John Nichols wrote in The Nation about how Project 2025’s radical right-wing wishlist of items contains plans to wreck and subvert what is left of America’s democracy.

See Also:

The Nation: June 2024 Issue

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

I understand why Cipher ended but I will forever lament how this means we'll never get card art of the cast of Engage (+ future games).

.

[clover-cat-commissions]

Dame Renfane howled as her dead flesh was cleaved,

"My liege, why must I pay this toll?

How have ye come to be so grieved,

When I serve Nagash with all my soul?"

And Ushoran spoke, eyes black as storms,

"Ye worship he whose hand did mark my brow."

Then the Summerking laughed, and his voice was warm,

"So I shall send thee to meet him now!"

[20th-century-railroading]

FEC southbound at JAX by Steve Grabman Via Flickr: Two of Florida East Coast’s blue GP40’s lead a southbound freight out of its northern terminus of Jacksonville, Florida as it begins its over 300 trek south along the Atlantic coast towards Miami in 1984. 

[skywalkerab]

Tips & Tricks for Climbing with Kids

Learning to climb has a different meaning for children than it does for teenagers or adults. It is commonly known that climbing helps children develop.

.

👉bit.ly/3di5oOg

.

#skywab #fec #familyentertainmentcenter #trublue #climbing

[porterdavis]

How to tell when the fix is in

FEC = Federal Election Commission

OGC= Office of the General Counsel (of the FEC)

[indoorplaygroundequipment]

Iplayco and Angry Birds have teamed up for an amazing interactive and Gamified Attraction.

Iplayco today announced a partnership with Rovio Entertainment for a new line of Angry Birds-themed interactive and gamified attractions, in a deal facilitated by Angry Birds’ global licensing agency IMG.

The engaging new attractions include the “Attack on Pig City” Ballistic Adventure, the “Protect Bird Village” a “Tag Active” experience, and the interactive multi-event “Angry Birds Inflatable bounce park”. 

These attractions feature a range of interactive, digital experiences as well as Media guided AV interaction and gamified elements. These one-of-a-kind attractions deliver unique ways for guests to enjoy the Angry Birds storyline firsthand. These attractions are now available worldwide, with more customizable offerings currently under development.

[aryburn-trains]

FEC 2000 leads the Toys for Tots train south along the mainline coming into St. Augustine.

December 11, 2010

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Kayla Gogarty at MMFA:

Amid Kamala Harris’ surging fundraising, right-wing media are alleging that Democratic PAC ActBlue is laundering money through a Virginia donor, claiming there were more than 22,000 donations listed for that individual, totaling over $800,000. But according to data from the Federal Election Commission, the alleged donor actually gave hundreds of thousands to WinRed and other Republican PACs. Regardless, the claim spread — including to former President Donald Trump — and right-wing media figures called on attorneys general to investigate. At least two Republican attorneys general have announced they are looking into it. After President Joe Biden announced that he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, fundraising for her campaign surged. Amid that surge, right-wing personalities accused ActBlue of engaging in a money laundering scheme.

As part of these accusations, some right-wing media figures and social media accounts amplified data from a website for a tax-exempt organization, Election Watch, reportedly founded by serial election denier Peter Bernegger, which provides “smurfing data by state.” (“Smurf” apparently refers to “an individual whose ID may have been used to launder money into political campaigns.”) Users can click on a state to see the so-called “smurf” donors, which are apparently identified by “numbers and patterns of transactions” in FEC data “that indeed appear to be highly questionable.”

Right-wing media have seemingly latched onto the first Virginia entry, which the website claims made 22,619 transactions, totaling $839,466. According to FEC data for an individual of the same name living in the same zip code (or at the affiliated address), that individual has made nearly 25,000 transactions since 2019, totaling more than $765,000. Nearly half of the transactions were with WinRed — totaling nearly $380,000. Additional hundreds of thousands went to other Republican PACs. Only four transactions were apparently made with ActBlue — totaling just $66. (Previously, Republican donors have reportedly been “steered … into unwitting donations,” unknowingly signing up for weekly recurring contributions when contributing through WinRed.)

[...]

07/29/24: Just over an hour after Trump made his post, Virginia’s Jason Miyares said his office was “looking into” the claims about ActBlue and money laundering. On social media, Miyares responded to Kirk and said, “My office is aware of these allegations and rest assured, we are looking into it.” The same day, Dan Bishops — the Republican candidate for North Carolina AG — suggested he would take action against ActBlue on “January 1” after being elected. [Twitter/X, 7/29/24, 7/29/24]

07/30/24: Wyoming Republican Secretary of State Chuck Gray announced an “investigation into ActBlue,” citing “nationwide money laundering and identity theft allegations.” In a press release, which he posted on social media, Gray encouraged “any Wyoming citizen who has reason to believe a political action committee stole their identity or falsely reported a donation using their name” to report it to his office. [Wyoming Secretary of State media release, 7/30/24]

08/01/24: Right-wing activist James O’Keefe said he would “personally pay” $3,000 to people who confront potential “smurfs” in their neighborhoods. O’Keefe, the ousted founder of Project Veritas who is now trying to build up O’Keefe Media Group, posted on social media: “Uncover ActBlue Smurfs and get paid like our Citizen Journalists,” urging people to go to Election Watch’s site, “ choose your state, enter your zip code, and start investigating. Not comfortable going door-to-door? … Submit potential Smurfs and links to your FEC findings through our X DMs or Signal.” The post included a video showing how to use Bernegger’s Election Watch site and instructing people to “knock on these people’s doors,” tell them they “seem to be a victim of a money laundering scheme,” and get bank statements from them. [Rolling Stone, 6/20/24; Twitter/X, 8/1/24]

At least two states’ Republicans are conducting politically-motivated investigations against Democratic fundraising agent ActBlue, baselessly accusing them of “laundering money.”