Frenetic Friday Fun: Big Pauly Sings, Flo Blows, Kavanaugh’s an accused rapist, and Russian Bots are all in for Ted Cruz
Posted: September 14, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Hate crimes and Racism, Kavanaugh sexual assault, Paul Manafort cooperation agreement, Ted Cruz's Bot Army 41 Comments
Huile sur toile (1925) de Vassily Kandinsky. Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, France. Donation Nina Kandinsky 1976. AM 1976-856
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
I do not even know where to start. All I know is that I miss No Drama Obama more and more every day. Oh, and Hillary Clinton was right about everything. I could never be a morning drinker of anything but coffee or tea, but sheesh, a day like this could do it to me if I ever had any inclination at all.
Oh, and a Louisiana congressman just made the Hate Watch headlines for the SPLC because he’s a fucking racist who hangs out with known Hate Groups. Two of these headlines come via The Bayou Brief and Lamar White Jr. He’s on a roll again. Gotta love Lamar on a Roll!
And I’m all in for Kandinsky and Abstract Art today because it makes about as much sense as ANY of this.
Last week in the nation’s Capitol, Rep. Higgins attended a conference hosted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, better known as FAIR, a recognized hate group of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
According to the advocacy group America’s Voices (emphasis added):
FAIR is an anti-immigrant hate group that was founded by white nationalist John Tanton, who helped create a network of anti-immigrant organizations — many of which are also hate groups. For this year’s “Hold Their Feet to the Fire”, an annual event, FAIR brought in anti-immigrant activists and far-right talk radio hosts from across the country to amplify their anti-immigrant messages. The conference also attracted a number of elected and appointed officials.
One of them was Ronald Vitiello, the acting director of ICE, who came to speake with far-right talk radio host Tom Roten. On the show, Vitiello defended the policy of separating families at the border and racistly characterized immigrants as the bearers of crime and disease.
Higgins was one of only ten elected official in attendance.
For our other report on Rep. Higgins’ associations with militia groups, click here.
Yup. You read that right. “TEN other elected officials in attendance.”
Wassily Kandinsky
In Grey (Im Grau) 1919
Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne / centre de création industrielle. Bequest of Nina Kandinsky 1981
This year, the entire country is watching the race between Beto O’Rourke, the dynamic young Congressman from El Paso who shares a name- Robert Frances- and more than a passing resemblance to another U.S. Senator, a man largely known by his initials, RFK.
In the early hours of Thursday, while searching for news about the Texas Senate race on Twitter, I noticed a troubling pattern, and I mentioned it:
As of this writing, my tweet has received 3.6 million impressions and more than 500,000 engagements from people all across the country and the world, making it- easily- the most viral tweet I’ve ever published. (For the first and likely the only time in my life, one of my tweets received more engagement than any of Donald Trump’s tweets that day).
The implication is clear: It defies logic and commonsense that hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of Texas voters decided to share the same exact tweet in the middle of the night.
Many, understandably, came to the same conclusion: 2AM CST is 10AM in Moscow, and considering the outsized role that Russian social media interference played in the 2016 election, it’s worth wondering whether this was a legitimate effort by the Cruz campaign or if they had been compromised.
Untitled,1922
Watercolor and ink on paper. 26.7 x 36.3 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Following that is the Malkin mouthpiece site trying to explain it away. Then, the Cruz campaign trying to explain it away. But, what follows that is highly interesting.
Unfortunately for the Perry and the Cruz campaign, it didn’t take much to discover that, in fact, this was not an organic response.
Christopher Bouzy, the creator of Bot Sentinel, a software system designed to “correctly identify propaganda bot/troll accounts with an accuracy of 98%,” conducted an independent forensic analysis of the tweets at issue.
“At first I thought it was a bunch of people just clicking the button like you suggested, until I realized many of the accounts are being tracked (by Bot Sentinel),” he explained to a skeptic.
“Unlike other machine learning tools designed to detect bots, we are not sacrificing accuracy for speed,” Bouzy explains. “We analyze hundreds of Tweets per each Twitter account to determine if an account exhibit irregular tweet activity or engaging in harassment.”
And Bouzy was not the only data expert to verify that a significant number of the accounts that had blasted out Team Cruz’s message were, in fact, not real people.
Circles in a Circle (1923) by Wassily Kandinsky
LaMar is getting national attention again for this and I wouldn’t be surprised if Chris Hayes or Lawrence or some one picks up on this story. But, like I said, today is a helluva a news day.
So, I’m torn between the absolute jaw dropping accusations that Kavanaugh attempted to rape a girl in high school and the Manaford–not a very brave man–cooperation/plea deal.
Let’s go with the Kavanaugh charges since BB is much better than me at explaining the Russia intrigue. It appears that Kavanaugh could possibly be Trump’s soul mate which is why he really really wants him on SCOTUS. Ronan Farrow appears to be the go to for all things Me Too related. This isn’t just sexual misconduct. This is attempted rape. I seriously doubt this anonymous woman is the only victim. This makes Clarence Thomas look like an underachiever! It’s much more Trumpish!
The woman, who has asked not to be identified, first approached Democratic lawmakers in July, shortly after Trump nominated Kavanaugh. The allegation dates back to the early nineteen-eighties, when Kavanaugh was a high-school student at Georgetown Preparatory School, in Bethesda, Maryland, and the woman attended a nearby high school. In the letter, the woman alleged that, during an encounter at a party, Kavanaugh held her down, and that he attempted to force himself on her. She claimed in the letter that Kavanaugh and a classmate of his, both of whom had been drinking, turned up music that was playing in the room to conceal the sound of her protests, and that Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand. She was able to free herself. Although the alleged incident took place decades ago and the three individuals involved were minors, the woman said that the memory had been a source of ongoing distress for her, and that she had sought psychological treatment as a result.
In a statement, Kavanaugh said, “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”
Kavanaugh’s classmate said of the woman’s allegation, “I have no recollection of that.”
The woman declined a request for an interview.
In recent months, the woman had told friends that Kavanaugh’s nomination had revived the pain of the memory, and that she was grappling with whether to go public with her story. She contacted her congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, a Democrat, sending her a letter describing her allegation. (When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Eshoo’s office cited a confidentiality policy regarding constituent services and declined to comment further on the matter.)
The letter was also sent to the office of Senator Dianne Feinstein. As the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Feinstein was preparing to lead Democratic questioning of Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing weeks later. The woman contacted Feinstein’s office directly, according to multiple sources.
Composition II (1910)
High school boys can be completely awkward. They can be cads. They can misread some signals. This, however, shows signs of something completely off in what might sit on SCOTUS pronouncing life and death sentences on laws that impact women’s lives significantly.
I cannot believe this was something he did once. It’s way too twisted and pathological. It definitely explains his obsession with the Lewinsky details. Guy is a full on criminal perv. Put his fat ass on the Sex Offender list.
Okay now to Big Pauly and his jailbird rock. Manaford has a plea deal and is cooperating. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Pence and Trump will throw themselves off the top of the Rotunda rather than make the country suffer needlessly any more. And wisdom beings, let them do it directly after Nancy becomes Speaker again. From Politico:
President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller under a plea agreement revealed Friday.
Manafort appeared in a Washington, D.C., courtroom Friday morning, looking relaxed in a suit and red tie, to formally announce the deal.
The deal dismisses deadlocked charges against Manafort from an earlier bank- and tax-fraud trial in Virginia, but only after “successful cooperation” with Mueller’s probe into Russian election interference and whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Moscow on its efforts. Later, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Manafort is agreeing to “cooperate fully and truthfully” with the investigation.
However, a source close to the defense told POLITICO, “the cooperation agreement does not involve the Trump campaign. … There was no collusion with Russia.”
Separately, the agreement calls for a 10-year cap on how long Manafort will be sent to prison, and for Manafort to serve time concurrently from his earlier Virginia trial and the D.C. case involving foreign-lobbying and money-laundering charges. But it will not release Manafort from jail, where he has been held since Mueller’s team added witness tampering charges during the run-up to the longtime lobbyist’s trial.
Manafort addressed Jackson in a soft voice, saying, “I do,” and, “I understand,” as she asked him whether he understood what rights he’s giving up.
“Has anybody forced you, coerced you or threatened you in any way?” she asked later.
“No,” Manafort replied in a barely audible voice. A deputy marshal stood directly behind Manafort, a reminder that he remains in custody.
Wassily Kandinsky, “Kleine Welten VIII” (1922) print
My guess is Trump will be out of control for days. Vox has more details. Will some one please point Trump towards the staircase to the rotunda?
What does Manafort know?
So now that Manafort has flipped — what does he know about collusion or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 campaign?
Previously, Manafort has said the answer is: nothing. That no collusion happened, so he would naturally have no information on this to provide.
But it’s seemed likely that Mueller has long believed otherwise, given his intense focus on Manafort. And there are two curious happenings during the campaign in particular that Manafort was involved in (that we know about).
The Trump Tower meeting: For one, there’s that infamous meeting at Trump Tower that Donald Trump Jr. set up in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer and other Russia-tied figures. The three attendees of that meeting on the Trump side were Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and Manafort. No attendee has become a cooperator for Mueller. Perhaps the special counsel does think more remains to be learned about this meeting and hopes Manafort will tell him about it.
Oleg Deripaska and Konstantin Kilimnik: Perhaps even more suspicious are Manafort’s surreptitious contacts with two Russian nationals during the campaign. There’s his former client, the oligarch Oleg Deripaska, to whom Manafort was heavily indebted. And there’s Manafort’s longtime business associate Konstantin Kilimnik, who Mueller’s team has said is tied to Russian intelligence.
Just weeks after joining the Trump campaign, Manafort seemed to see an opportunity. He emailed Kilimnik in early April about his newly high media profile, writing, “How do we use to get whole,” and “Has OVD operation seen?” (Those are Deripaska’s initials.)
Then in July 2016, Manafort and Kilimnik exchanged emails about Deripaska again, as the Washington Post and the Atlantic reported last year. “I am carefully optimistic on the issue of our biggest interest,” Kilimnik said. “He will be most likely looking for ways to reach out to you pretty soon.” Manafort wrote that if Deripaska “needs private briefings we can accommodate.”
The pair’s emails on the topic grew vaguer and more cryptic as the summer continued. In late July, Kilimnik wrote to Manafort, “I met today with the guy who gave you your biggest black caviar jar several years ago. We spent about 5 hours talking about his story, and I have several important messages from him to you.” This, again, is believed to be about Deripaska, with “caviar” thought to be code for money.
Kilimnik and Manafort arranged a meeting in New York City to discuss the matter on August 2 — Kilimnik wrote that he had a “long caviar story” to tell and “several important messages.”
Days after the meeting, Deripaska took a yacht trip with Sergei Prikhodko, Russia’s deputy prime minister, who is focused on foreign policy. Again, all of this occurred while Manafort was chairing the Trump campaign, before his mid-August 2016 firing.
Now, this year, Kilimnik seemed keenly interested in keeping Manafort out of jail — he was indicted alongside Manafort for obstruction of justice in June, for allegedly trying to get witnesses to give a false story. Yet Kilimnik is unlikely to ever face those charges since he’s currently based in Moscow.
We still don’t know what happened between Manafort, Kilimnik, and Deripaska during the campaign. Maybe this where the action on Trump campaign/Russia collusion happened. Or maybe Manafort was just freelancing and trying to get himself paid, and it doesn’t involve Trump personally. But it’s one of the biggest loose ends about what happened in 2016.
Wassily Kandinsky
Unstable Balance 1930
Ah yes, Karma is such a beautiful bitch!
Marcie at emptywheel reminds us this is pardon proof!
And at this point, the deal is pardon proof. That was part of keeping the detail secret: to prevent a last minute pardon from Trump undercutting it.
Here’s why this deal is pardon proof:
- Mueller spent the hour and a half delay in arraignment doing … something. It’s possible Manafort even presented the key parts of testimony Mueller needs from him to the grand jury this morning.
- The forfeiture in this plea is both criminal and civil, meaning DOJ will be able to get Manafort’s $46 million even with a pardon.
- Some of the dismissed charges are financial ones that can be charged in various states.
Remember, back in January, Trump told friends and aides that Manafort could incriminate him (the implication was that only Manafort could). I believe Mueller needed Manafort to describe what happened in a June 7, 2016 meeting between the men, in advance of the June 9 meeting. I have long suspected there was another meeting at which Manafort may be the only other Trump aide attendee.
And Manafort has probably already provided evidence on whatever Mueller needed.
So here’s what Robert Mueller just did: He sewed up the key witness to implicate the President, and he paid for the entire investigation. And it’s only now lunch time.
As I disclosed July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
Okay, so AccuWeather reports that: “Florence crawls over land as life-threatening flooding persists; Over 600,000 without power”.
Hundreds of thousands have lost power across North and South Carolina since Florence first began impacting the Carolinas on Thursday.
“Significant wind damage will lead to utility outages that may last several weeks, especially along the immediate coastline,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Matt Rinde warned.
Storm surge exceeded 10 feet in New Bern, North Carolina, on Thursday night, sending first responders out into the storm as many people were forced to their top floors and roofs. Similar flood conditions threaten coastal communities up and down the North Carolina coast.
Rainfall totals have already exceeded a foot at several locations, and the rain is not expected to let up any time soon.
“Florence has slowed to a crawl as expected, and this will only exacerbate the flooding situation for the Carolinas from now through Sunday,” Rinde said.
“Early next week, Florence will bring a threat of heavy rainfall and flooding farther north up the spine of the Appalachians and perhaps into the eastern Ohio Valley.”
Wassily Kandinsky Clear connection (1925)
All of you in the zone please be careful!
I have a lot more but we’re going to have to keep it in the thread so any crazy news or whatever please post! I’d like to talk about Cynthia Nixon and Susan Sarandon and their total exercise of white female privilege but that will have to wait for another day. I just hope black women realize that there are many of us that having been trying to be allies in the struggle for civil rights and we are continually discovering our shortcomings in the struggle for equality for all. At this point, I just listen and pass it forward and stand up and speak out when I see it. No woman or child in this country should experience any kind of persecution because of their sex, their color, their choice of life partner, or anything else. The first step is to shut up and listen. Sarandon, Stein, and Nixon don’t seem to realize that. All I can say is none of them speak for me.
Love you all! Try to just embrace the chaos!
What’s on your reading and blogging today?
Monday Reads: WTF Kenner?
Posted: September 10, 2018 Filed under: just because | Tags: #BlackLivesMatter, Colin Kaepernick, NFL 29 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
If all politics is local, then there is something really rotten in the parishes that surround mine. The same congressional district that gave rise to David Duke and “David Duke without the Baggage” Steve Scalise has a berg called Kenner which,of course, was part of an old plantation back in the day. You can’t go far around here without standing on ground that was likely taken from indigenous people and built up by slaves. Then, there’s the always haunting knowledge that the poor white man was placated by these rich, slave owning bastards with the comfort of “well, at least you’re not black”.
We’re not far–at any moment–from this history and we’ve not learned our history lessons.
The deliberate use of Colin Kaepernick’s symbolic and quiet protest of the incredible levels of police violence against persons of color to fan the flames of aggrieved white people has me sick to my stomach. I am sick of this illegitimate president*. I am even more sick of all the politicians that fan the flames of hatred between all of us that call this country home. I am sick of reading wypipo who simply want to cling to their ignorance and privilege. I want to scream it isn’t always about you at them!
It is difficult to not see the racism in all these actions and words. We’ve gone way pass the dog whistle phase.
This should not stand and any person in Kenner, Louisiana should let their mayor know that the majority of people living around here will not tolerate it. It’s an abomination. It’s illegal. It’s a first amendment violation. To quote my friend and editor of the Bayou Brief Lamar White Junior:
The white mayor of an American city is attempting to prevent parents and coaches from buying or dressing their children in clothes and shoes from a company that aired an inspirational television commercial reaffirming the humanity and the hopes of black children in America.
Kenner Mayor Ben Zahn has apparently issued a memorandum demanding that the city recreation department and any booster clubs operating at its facilities no longer purchase or accept delivery of Nike athletic products or any apparel that features the company’s famous logo.
The Sept. 5 memo to Recreation Director Chad Pitfield, which is being circulated on social media, was not made public by City Hall. A spokesman for the city said Sunday (Sept. 9) that he had no comment. Zahn could not be reached.
Kenner booster club president Owen Rey told WWL the policy “shouldn’t be that way.”
“If we have something that we feel that we want that’s going to benefit our kids,” Rey said, “it shouldn’t matter what logo, what brand — as long as it helps the kids and what we’re trying to accomplish at the park.”
Nike recently unveiled its “Dream Crazy” campaign featuring former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who triggered a wave of protests against racial inequality last year by kneeling during the National Anthem prior to games. The ads generated passionate reactions from people around the world.
The Kenner memo says that, effective immediately, all purchases of clothing, shoes, athletic equipment or any other athletic equipment by booster clubs operating at city recreation facilities must be approved by Pitfield or his designee.
“Under no circumstances will any Nike product or any product with the Nike logo be purchased for use or delivery at any city of Kenner recreation facility,” according to the memo, which is on official mayor’s office letterhead and signed by Zahn. It makes no reference to the Nike campaign.
Kenner Councilman Gregory Carroll responded to the memo in a public Facebook post Sunday (Sept. 9), “I was not made aware of this decision beforehand and it is in direct contradiction of what I stand for and what the City of Kenner should stand for. I am 100% AGAINST this decision. I will meet with the Mayor and other Council members in an effort to rescind this directive.”
Those of us in Orleans Parish recognize these remnants of scared white people fleeing to Jefferson Parish to avoid white children and black children in the same classroom as “Kenner Brahs”. They’re not a very distinct breed down here in the old south. They’re just one with a slightly different accent that drinks beer and spews racism.
Black people are much more likely to be shot by police than their white peers.
An analysis of the available FBI data by Vox’s Dara Lind found that US police kill black people at disproportionate rates: Black people accounted for 31 percent of police killing victims in 2012, even though they made up just 13 percent of the US population. Although the data is incomplete because it’s based on voluntary reports from police agencies around the country, it highlights the vast disparities in how police use force.
The disparities appear to be even starker for unarmed suspects, according to an analysis of 2015 police killings by the Guardian. Racial minorities made up about 37.4 percent of the general population in the US and 46.6 percent of armed and unarmed victims, but they made up 62.7 percent of unarmed people killed by police.
This is at the heart of Kaepernick/NFL players protest. There is no intent to disrespect the flag or troops or whatever stupid things emanate from the fevered brain of our very mentally ill president. Athletic events have been used for protests against all sorts of thing. Every black athlete from Jesse Owens attending those Olympics in Munich was essentially a country wide troll of Hitler’s NAZI Germany. If you have a national or international platform, you’re in a special place to call attention to a problem. Most people who feel strongly about social justice issues use that platform. It’s nothing new. Many other athletes will join the call.
What is distinct about this protest? Is it just that we’ve got such naked white nationalism in the White House egging on the demons of our history? I suggest you read this brilliant essay “Dictating the conditions of freedom”.
White people don’t like it when black folks take a stand against their oppression. White culture expects black bodies and minds to be servile; existing for the sole purpose of entertaining, educating, or otherwise being in service to white people. White folks think that by ‘allowing’ black people to participate in ‘their’ stuff they aren’t racist. In reality, participation is often predicated on the unspoken expectation that ‘exceptional’ black people are only granted access to these spaces in exchange for their silence on the race issue.
We must always be thankful and express our gratitude at every turn. We must always pay obeisance to the benevolent white people who ‘gave’ us a chance.
Never talk about history; always focus on the present.
Be black, but not too black.
Never speak about current issues, unless you’re talking about what’s wrong with the black community.
Never call white people to account for their present racism.
Never make white people feel like they’re racist. Never speak out about your own or others’ oppression.
Do whatever it is that you’re being allowed to do without saying a mumbling word about how you’re being treated. Woe be unto you if you break this silent contract.
When Colin Kaepernick decided to take a knee during the national anthem, he broke the contract. What’s worse is that as a biracial man who was adopted by a white family, he broke solidarity with any claim that whiteness could make on him. In White America’s eyes, he had chosen a side. He could not play the role of the ‘ambiguous other with white parents.’ He was no longer a white man by proxy. Whiteness had been willing to grant him a pass until he took a knee on the sideline, his Afro advertising his bold blackness that could not be buried.
When Colin kneeled, White America stopped seeing his whiteness. They could only see a black man who had broken the contract, who had made them feel racist. They could only see an “ungrateful n——r” who deigned not to participate in America’s civil religion. Whether or not he intended to, Kaepernick chose his blackness on that day. Not that he should have had to (because he shouldn’t have), but a side was chosen for him.
When white people decide to stand up for the dignity of black people, they still retain their whiteness. Other white folks might call them unsavory names and attempt to cow them back into white solidarity, but they still carry white privilege everywhere they go.
But when black people, even those of us who carry multiple racial identities, stand up for black lives, we lose. We lose friends. We lose employment. Some of us even lose our places of worship or connections to family members. We become pariahs.
When white people can no longer buy our silence and acquiescence about white supremacy, they turn on us. They try to destroy our reputation. They make us out to be mentally ill. They sanction us for failing to pass their litmus tests for orthodoxy. They attempt to gaslight us and make us feel guilty for ‘changing.’
The reaction that we see to Colin Kaepernick’s Nike endorsement has nothing to do with patriotism, ‘the troops,’ or any other red herring that is being bandied about. People aren’t burning their shoes because they feel that our country is being disrespected. They aren’t cutting Nike swooshes off of clothes because they feel a deep sense of patriotism. White people are ‘protesting Nike’ because they are upset that a black man has called attention to how racist America is (and them by extension).
Any black person who is participating in this so-called protest is doing so because they have bought into the idea of their own exceptionalism above the rest of the black community. They are a contract player for white supremacy, and their actions should not be seen as a cachet of black approval for white folks’ racism.
White people’s anger shows that they do not believe that the First Amendment (or any other rights for that matter) applies to black people. Their rage shows that they feel that their whiteness is not being adequately respected and revered by someone who they believe is beneath them.
I have read some very disturbing comments on posts I’ve read from friends that make me wonder if so many white people are being willfully obtuse about not getting all of this. I suppose the actual motivation matters less than the words I read that make me realize that we’re a long way from seeing every one’s civil rights respected equally.
Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), a gubernatorial nominee who recently was accused of using racially tinged language, spoke four times at conferences organized by a conservative activist who has said that African Americans owe their freedom to white people and that the country’s “only serious race war” is against whites.
DeSantis, elected to represent north-central Florida in 2012, appeared at the David Horowitz Freedom Center conferences in Palm Beach, Fla., and Charleston, S.C., in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017, said Michael Finch, president of the organization. At the group’s annual Restoration Weekend conferences, hundreds of people gather to hear right-wing provocateurs such as Stephen K. Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos and Sebastian Gorka sound off on multiculturalism, radical Islam, free speech on college campuses and other issues.
On Monday, the Ford Motor Company, which owns the Detroit Lions, took a stand and pushed back on President Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric against NFL players who protest.
“We respect individuals’ rights to express their views, even if they are not ones we share,” the company said on Monday. “That’s part of what makes America great.”
The company made the announcement after Trump on Friday urged people to protest the NFL and said owners should fire players who decide to kneel during the national anthem, CNN reports.
Ford has a heavy stake in the NFL with team ownership and last year entered into a three-year agreement making the Ford F-Series the league’s official truck.
The NFL has said it would not penalize players who refuse to take the field during the national anthem.
Martha Firestone Ford, owner and chairwoman of the Detroit Lions and a member of the Ford family, fired back at Trump for his divisive comments.
“Our game has long provided a powerful platform for dialogue and positive change in many communities throughout our nation,” she said. “Negative and disrespectful comments suggesting otherwise are contrary to the founding principles of our country, and we do not support those comments or opinions.”
Ford also owns the naming rights to the Ford Field in Detroit.
Just hours ahead of the first kickoffs on the first Sunday of the NFL’s regular season, President Trump again called for NFL players to stand for the national anthem and for TV networks to broadcast it, pointing to a decline in television ratings for the league’s season opener Thursday night.
“Wow, NFL first game ratings are way down over an already really bad last year comparison,” he tweeted. “Viewership declined 13%, the lowest in over a decade. If the players stood proudly for our Flag and Anthem, and it is all shown on broadcast, maybe ratings could come back? Otherwise worse!”
Even though Colin Kaepernick would later join Trump in tweeting about the issue, it was a relatively quiet day as it pertained to the issue, with most of the discussion on the league’s first Sunday focused on the action on the field.
The season-opening games featured few demonstrations during the playing of the anthem, with Kenny Stills and Albert Wilson of the Dolphins taking a knee and their teammate, Robert Quinn, raising a fist before the game against the Titans. Kaepernick, the former 49ers quarterback who started the idea of demonstrating during the anthem, tweeted that Stills and Wilson, who have frequently protested by kneeling before games, “continue to show their unwavering strength by fighting for the oppressed! They have not backed down, even when attacked and intimidated. Their courage will move the world forward! ‘Love is at the root of our resistance!’ ”
It seems Russian trolls are excited and “ready for some football”.
The same Kremlin-linked group that posed as Americans on social media during the 2016 US presidential election has repeatedly exploited the controversy surrounding the NFL and players who have protested police brutality and racial injustice during the National Anthem, playing both sides in an effort to exacerbate divides in American society.
The debate is almost certainly an irresistible one for the Russians, given that it includes issues of race, patriotism, and national identity — topics the Russian trolls sought to exploit during the run-up to the election, and have continued to focus on in the two years since.
CNN worked with researchers at Clemson University that have archived millions of tweets sent by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll group that was indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in February. The accounts’ links to Russia were discovered by Twitter, which provided details about them to Congress. The data shows the trolls repeatedly weighing in on the debate, using different accounts to take both sides. While they used some accounts to push petitions to fire the protesting players, they used others to hail them as heroes.
Over the past year, social media networks have identified and removed thousands of accounts tied to the IRA. But despite the tech companies’ efforts, there’s no indication that the group is shying away from the NFL controversy.
There is no question that the debate over the protests is real. But Americans watching the controversy unfold on social media ought to know that not all the outrage on either side is authentic, and not all of it is coming from US shores.
Clemson University researchers and CNN have found instances of accounts linked to Russian trolls by Twitter weighing in on the issue as recently as May of this year.
Meanwhile, the Kenna Brah suburb by the New Orleans Airport has a peaceful protest planned for tonight.
In the wake of a widely-circulated memo banning Kenner’s recreation booster clubs from purchasing Nike gear, a “peaceful protest” is planned for the city’s Susan Park at 5 p.m. on Monday.
The protests follow a firestorm that ignited over the weekend when a memo from Kenner Mayor Ben Zahn began to be shared on social media. That memo ordered that all recreation district purchases be routed through the city’s purchasing department and said “Under no circumstances will any Nike product or any product with the Nike logo be purchased for use or delivery at any city of Kenner recreation facility.”
Nike has recently found itself the subject of national controversy after running new commercials featuring former NFL quarterback Kaepernick, who had been widely criticized — and supported — for kneeling during the playing of the national anthem when he was with the San Francisco 49ers. Kaepernick chose to kneel as a protest against police killings of African-Americans.
Zahn did not respond to repeated requests for comment Sunday. But he made his feelings on the matter clear at the city’s Freedom Fest during the Labor Day weekend, when he said before a national anthem performance “In the city of Kenner, we all stand.”
Hey Zahn, when it comes to government stamping its damned shoes down on the rights of our fellow citizens, then I say this. A good number of us will not stand for it or any other tricks.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: Sociopaths of a feather Gaslight together
Posted: September 7, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Brett Kavanaugh, Crazy Town, Trump is Insane, Trump Rally 39 Comments
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
I truly have some news items today showing that every one in Trump’s orbit is extremely disturbed. I mean it too.
Okay, let’s just sorta tick off what’s actually in serious media this morning then take a deep breath while realizing these people are making policy decisions for this country that impact the entire wold.
From The NYDN: “White House officials flagged Trump’s behavior to psychiatrist last year”.
White House officials reached out to a noted Yale University psychiatrist last fall out of concern over President Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior.
Dr. Bandy Lee, who edited the best-selling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” told the Daily News Thursday the staffers contacted her because the President was “scaring” them.
Lee’s revelation comes as Trump fumes in response to an anonymous op-ed about administration insiders White House tell-all by journalist Bob Woodward that claims there are grave concerns among the highest ranks of the Trump administration about the President’s judgment.
Lee briefed a dozen lawmakers from the House and Senate last December about Trump’s fitness to be President. But lawmakers on Capitol Hill weren’t the only ones alarmed by the President’s erratic behavior, his troubling tweets or his temper.
A pair of West Wing representatives contacted her two separate times on the same day because they believed the President was “unraveling.”
“I had not mentioned this before because I did not want to confuse my role as an educator to the public,” Lee said when pressed about why she did not speak out sooner. “I thought I would be more effective by retaining my public role than getting involved in either the treatment of those who were feeling scared or in the actual intervention with the President.”
Salon first reported Lee’s claim.
Around the same time, a Trump family friend emailed her over concern for his mental health.
I didn’t watch the Rally last night but there’s all indications that it was a doozy.
And then there was this:
Trump is trying to deflect stories that accuse him of labeling southerners “Dumb” and using the slur “retarded” frequently.This is via the NYT.
“The Woodward book is a scam,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Friday morning about “Fear: Trump in the White House,” the new volume to be published by Bob Woodward next week. “I don’t talk the way I am quoted. If I did I would not have been elected President. These quotes were made up.”
In particular, Mr. Trump has denied that he called Attorney General Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” or a “dumb Southerner,” as the book reports. “I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone, including Jeff, and being a southerner is a GREAT thing,” the president wrote earlier this week.
But, in fact, Mr. Trump has used the phrase “mentally retarded” on recorded radio shows that have been unearthed this week. And in a previously unreported incident, a journalist who used to interact with Mr. Trump during his days as a real estate developer in New York said this week that he even used the phrase “dumb southerner” to describe his own in-laws.
But then, Trump’s staff isn’t faring any better at looking sane and stable. Here’s a Woodward story about John Kelly.
https://twitter.com/JamesKosur/status/1038085932409344000
John Kelly nearly engaged in a “fistfight” with an ICE official whom President Donald Trump invited to the White House. Bob Woodward’s new book suggests that Kelly had butted heads with the official while Kelly was working as Secretary of Homeland Security.
“I can’t believe you’d let some f–king guy like this into the Oval Office,” Kelly allegedly shouted at Trump in November 2017. Kelly was referring to Chris Crane, the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement union
Crane was invited into the oval office by Trump without Kelly’s knowledge. The invite was sent out after the POTUS heard Crane complaining on TV about him and other ICE agents had not been invited to the White House
The heated argument led to Kelly threatening to resign before storming out of the Oval Office. Later on, Trump told aids that it appeared Kelly and Crane were about to get into a “fistfight” over the interaction.
Crane and Kelly had previously fought over ICE’s attempts to execute an extreme plan for crackdowns on certain immigration violations — Kelly blocked the crackdown and Crane didn’t agree with the decision.
Numerous reports have suggested that the quarreling between Donald Trump and John Kelly have been ongoing and heating up for months. Kelly is expected to resign from his position in the near future.
The Kavanaugh Hearing is turning into one of the most incredible things I’ve seen in a long time. Brett Kavanaugh is a lying piece of shit. The Democrats have a strategy that’s pissing off Mitchie McConnell whose screaming “the rules” and “bad behavior” when it’s not like he hasn’t done everything possible the last 8 years to screw up all decorum, tradition and standing rules himself.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in an interview that aired Friday that Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) could face scrutiny from the Senate Ethics Committee for violating a rule that prohibits the release of confidential material.
During Thursday’s hearing on the nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Booker said he was knowingly violating a Senate rule by releasing an email revealing the nominee’s views on racial profiling. After another senator on the Judiciary Committee said that could result in expulsion, Booker dared his colleagues to take that action.
It turns out that document had already been cleared for public release. But later Thursday afternoon, Booker, who is weighing a 2020 presidential bid, released what he said were 28 documents marked “committee confidential” in a defiant bid to make the confirmation process more transparent.
During a radio interview, McConnell characterized Booker’s actions as “unusual behavior” and said it “wouldn’t surprise me” if it draws the attention of the Ethics Committee.
“When you break the Senate rules, it’s something the Ethics Committee could take a look at,” McConnell told host Hugh Hewitt. “And that would be up to them to decide. But it’s routinely looked at by the Ethics Committee.”
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh seems to think birth control is “abortion-inducing” via Vice.
While the D.C. Circuit court ruled in favor of the Obama administration, denying the religious groups a chance to argue their case before the entire panel, Kavanaugh dissented from the majority.
“The question was first was this a substantial burden on their religious exercise? And it seemed to me, quite clearly, it was,” Kavanaugh explained Thursday. “They said filling out the form would make them complicit in the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter, objected to. That phrase — ”abortion-inducing drugs” — is inaccurate and, in the eyes of abortion rights advocates, incredibly telling. In their brief to the Supreme Court, which eventually heard the case, Priests for Life and its fellow plaintiffs argued that they didn’t want to “affirmatively authorize, and facilitate coverage for contraception, sterilization, abortifacients, and related education and counseling.”
Zina Bash must be trolling us all. First, she shows up in a Ruth Bader Ginsberg collar and then she trolls us with the okay (sic) hand signal once again.
Oh, and but his emails via The Daily Beast: “Newly Released Emails Show Brett Kavanaugh May Have Perjured Himself at Least Four Times”.
You can forgive Democratic senators for saying “I told you so.”
For over a month, Democrats (and this writer) have complained that the confirmation process of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is fatally flawed because the records of Kavanaugh’s White House tenure were being redacted by his former deputy, then redacted again by the Trump White House, then redacted a third time by Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
As a result, only 7 percent of Kavanaugh’s White House records have been released to the public—compared to 99 percent of Justice Elena Kagan’s, a nominee of President Obama.
Well, so what, Republicans said. You’ve got over 400,000 pages to look at—a few more isn’t going to make a difference.
On Thursday, with the release of a half dozen emails by Grassley and several more by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), the Democrats have been proven right. Brett Kavanaugh has misled the Senate at least four times, and the censored emails have been withheld not because of national security or executive privilege, but, at least in part, because they make Kavanaugh look bad.
And Booker is not backing down at all.
My Congressman was one of the folks testifying today against Kavanaugh.
There’s also still the parlor game about the anonymous op ed writer claiming to be a Senior official and White House ‘resister’. Frank Rich’s piece today is brilliant on that account. And yes, I feel like all of this should be coming from the National Enquirer or The Globe along with the Hillary adopts Alien baby stories but we’re all strangers in a strange land right now.
At least when those like Lindsey Graham espouse such a rationale they attach their names to it. Mr. Anonymous is a coward so lacking a moral compass that he doesn’t realize that the best way to “preserve our democratic institutions” (as he claims to be doing) is to identify himself, resign, and report any criminal activity he has witnessed by the president or his colleagues. The Washington Post media columnist Erik Wemple has a point when he dismisses the op-ed as “a P.R. stunt” for the Times, since it adds an intriguing guessing game but no news to what we already know about this White House from Woodward and even Omarosa, not to mention the stalwart work of reporters at the Times and Post since Inauguration Day.
But the piece could also be viewed as a P.R. strategy for its author. It reads like a defense document that’s being put on the record should that rainy day come when Mr. Anonymous, no longer anonymous, will have to defend his own actions in a Nuremberg-like legal reckoning once the king of Crazytownhas been carted off. As any student of Vichy knows, there was no shortage of French collaborators who falsely claimed to have been secretly part of the underground Resistance to the Pétain regime once the war was over.
Rich also takes on Lady Lindsey’s pearl clutching about children seeing protests at the Kavanaugh hearings. Why not worry about all children who happen to watch the US president at a rally on any given day?
What kind of country have we become?” whined Lindsey Graham, appalled that Kavanaugh’s daughters had to witness rude protesters in the hearing room on opening day. Thanks to Graham and his cohort, we have become Trump country. In keeping with that, the hearings are a clown show, a bare simulation of democratic procedure, with withheld evidence, unexamined evidence delivered in a last-minute document dump, and a foregone conclusion. In that spirit, here’s what I would ask Kavanaugh if I were a Democratic senator on the Judiciary Committee: “Explain your thinking when you wrote a legal memo to the independent counsel Kenneth Starr proposing that President Clinton be asked this question and nine others like it: ‘If Monica Lewinsky says that on several occasions in the Oval Office area, you used your fingers to stimulate her vagina and bring her to orgasm, would she be lying?’” And in further keeping with the ethos set by the “grab ’em by the pussy” president who nominated Kavanaugh, I would ask that question aloud before the nominee’s family. The answer might well illuminate the future justice’s view of women and their right to govern their own bodies with a specificity missing in his obfuscating filibusters about Roe.
My bottom line is that absolutely none of this should be normalized by the media because it’s all absolutely insane and not worthy of a country whose democracy has been centuries in the making. Actress Alyssa Milano had this to say and I agree.
Actress Alyssa Milano in an interview that aired Thursday on “Rising” said the news media has normalized President Trump throughout his campaign and the first half of his presidency instead of pointing out events she calls “crazy.”
“The media actually normalized some of what he did, and continues to normalize it instead of going ‘Can you believe how crazy this is? This guy wants to do this,’ ” Milano, a frequent critic of Trump, said to Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton on Tuesday.
Sexton noted that some in the media would probably say they have tried to “raise as many alarms as they can.”
“I would wonder if you were to have this conversation with any number of White House correspondents or major news anchors, other than at one channel that I’m sure you could guess, you would probably have a lot of folks saying they’re doing everything that they can to raise as many alarms as they can,” Sexton said.
Milano pushed back on that assertion, saying she does not think the media has done “enough.”
“I don’t think it’s enough, and I don’t think it was enough when he was campaigning,” Milano replied. “I think that we coddled this idea of a man who has been a self-proclaimed pussy grabber.
“During this time, instead of calling it what it was, which was total and crazy bullshit that this guy would actually be allowed to be the leader of the greatest country on the planet, the most powerful country on the planet, the fact that instead of news media going ‘This is just crazy,’ they reported it like it was normal, so it completely normalized the entire thing. We looked at it like ‘This is entertaining. This is getting us ratings.’”
Republicans need to stop collaborating with a clearly unqualified, unhinged man or acting like they can secretly save us from his madness. Mitch McConnell needs to find the drawer where he hid his soul. Are tax cuts and clearly radical judges with outlier opinions really worth what you’re putting the country and our institutions through you feckless asshole?
Grow a fucking pair and ask Cory Booker to show you his if you need some instructions!
East Coast Sky Dancers! Be on the watch out for Florence!
And have a great weekend!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Monday Reads: Storm’s a’brewing
Posted: September 3, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Brett Kavanaugh, hearings, Pool Patrol Patty, Rio Museum Fire, Tropical Storm Gordon, Trump legal problems. Guilliani 34 Comments
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
Well, I woke up with the news we’re under a Tropical Storm warning and all the models point it straight at us. It’s a rain event–which normally wouldn’t bug me–except I need to get this new roof on my house yesterday. I’ve spent the last 3 days with water coming on to my bed again. My turkey roaster comes in handy for brief storms but I have no idea how I’m going to bail things out from what’s projected from Gordon. I’m trying to find a few people to put more tarps on the roof. I have the roofing guy coming tomorrow oddly enough. I’ve had a hard time scrambling for my deductible and I’m at the point it just needs to be done whatever other bill has to go unpaid.
I used to find these things oddly exciting but I’m not sure if old age or the number of hurricanes/tropical storms I have to deal with, but, this is getting to me. Karma died during the last one and I was without electricity for quite a period. This is the first one I will go through without Miles too. Anyway, I’m a bit of a wreck already and it’s just over the tip of the Florida peninsula headed to us some time tomorrow. Hopefully, it just blows right through and goes away quickly.
Our infrastructure sucks here and costs plenty. I’m expecting a lot of flooding here too. I’m not in danger of that but I know a lot of people that will be. Our Sewage and Water Board is in a state of collapse and the head of the Electric company has been fired. Basically, both utilities are rudderless. I’m just hoping and praying that the people that actually do the hard work are going to be able to do it.
So, here’s a few things you might want to read today.
From the New Yorker and Courts watcher Jeffrey Toobin: How Rudy Giuliani Turned Into Trump’s Clown. The former mayor’s theatrical, combative style of politics anticipated—and perfectly aligns with—the President’s.” Do shit storms count? At least, this one is not aimed at me.
Since joining Trump’s team, Giuliani has greeted every new development as a vindication, even when he’s had to bend and warp the evidence in front of him. Like Trump, he characterizes the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt” and the prosecutors as “thugs.” He has, in effect, become the legal auxiliary to Trump’s Twitter feed, peddling the same chaotic mixture of non sequiturs, exaggerations, half-truths, and falsehoods. Giuliani, like the President, is not seeking converts but comforting the converted.
This has come at considerable cost to his reputation. As a prosecutor, Giuliani was the sheriff of Wall Street and the bane of organized crime. As mayor, he was the law-and-order leader who kicked “squeegee men” off the streets of New York. Now he’s a talking head spouting nonsense on cable news. But this version of Giuliani isn’t new; Trump has merely tapped into tendencies that have been evident all along. Trump learned about law and politics from his mentor Roy Cohn, the notorious sidekick to Joseph McCarthy who, as a lawyer in New York, became a legendary brawler and used the media to bash adversaries. In the early months of his Presidency, as Mueller’s investigation was getting under way, Trump is said to have raged, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” In Giuliani, the President has found him.
…
Giuliani’s behavior has provoked disgust among some of his former fellow-prosecutors. “He has totally sold out to Trump,” John S. Martin, a predecessor to Giuliani as U.S. Attorney who later became a federal judge, said. “He’s making arguments that don’t hold up. I always thought of Rudy as a good lawyer, and he’s not looking anything like a good lawyer today.” Preet Bharara, who served as U.S. Attorney from 2009 until 2017, when he was fired by Trump, told me, “His blatant misrepresentations on television make me sad. It’s sad because I looked up to him at one point, and this bespeaks a sort of cravenness to a particularly hyperbolic client and an unnecessary suspension of honor and truth that’s beneath him. I would not send Rudy at this point in his career into court.” Giuliani’s desire for attention and publicity has always been at odds with the buttoned-up traditions of the Southern District of New York. In 2014, some seven hundred current and former prosecutors for the Southern District met for a gala dinner to celebrate the two-hundred-and-twenty-fifth anniversary of the office. Almost every former U.S. Attorney still living gave a speech—except Giuliani, who sent a video, with the excuse that he was attending to his duties as an “ambassador” to the U.S. Ryder Cup golf team. The announcement was greeted with derisive laughter.
The Kavanaugh nomination barrels forward with so much aplomb and gall that it’s really disturbing. Hearings start tomorrow. There’s likely to be a battle of some kind per ABC.
Democrats are expressing alarm over the Trump White House decision to claim executive privilege and withhold some 100,000 pages of documents from Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s time with the George W. Bush administration.
That decision, relayed in a letter late Friday, just days before confirmation hearings are set to begin Tuesday, is a move top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New Yorkcalled a “Friday night document massacre.”
More than 400,000 other pages have been handed over to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Democrats say the withheld documents would give details and color to Kavanaugh’s time as White House Counsel in the Bush White House — when he was involved in some of its most controversial decisions and judicial nominations.
It’s a time Democrats say is key in giving context to his time as a partisan Republican.
Before serving in the Bush White House, Kavanaugh had been a key deputy to Independent Counsel Ken Starr and advocated for tough questioning of President Bill Clinton about his sexual encounters with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Later, he said, after seeing the pressures inside the Bush White House, he wrote in a 2009 article for the Minnesota Law Review that any civil and criminal investigations of a president should be deferred until they’re out of office because they’re “time-consuming and distracting.”
The just over 100,000 pages of material was withheld after the Trump White House “directed that we not provide these documents,” wrote William Burck, the lawyer handling the document release on behalf of the Bush administration.
WAPO has an interesting feature that discusses how the Trump presidency has caused the “Trump Effect” which is basically seen in all that Wypipo outrage about black people in what they consider white spaces. This discusses the small town and “Pool Patrol Paula” who was outraged that young black children would be swimming in their neighborhood pool.
Darshaun’s aunt said she noticed that none of the adults at the pool seemed to be doing anything to help him. She called over Darshaun’s mother to watch. Darshaun told them that he and two friends had been invited to the pool by a family that lives in the subdivision. They were just sitting down at a table and kicking off their shoes when Strempel approached them, asked them if they lived in the subdivision and then accused them of trespassing.
Darshaun’s mother took him to the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office to file an assault complaint.
His aunt looked Strempel up on Facebook and dashed off a quick message.
“Good evening, Stephanie. Is this you in the video?” she asked.
After four hours passed without a response, Darshaun’s aunt posted it to her Facebook page, tagging local activists, two television news stations, the NAACP and the Coast Guard unit where, she had learned, Strempel’s husband was serving.
“This kind of behavior is unacceptable and we WILL NOT TOLERATE IT!!!! PLEASE SHARE!!!!” she wrote. “. . . Racism at its best.”
She hit post at 11 p.m., flipped off her computer and went to sleep.
Online, Strempel would soon be dubbed “Pool Patrol Paula,” joining “ID Adam,” “BBQ Becky,” “Permit Patty,” “Coupon Carl” and others branded as exemplars of racism and white entitlement.
It was 10 the next morning when Strempel, who declined to comment for this article through her attorney, sent her first message to Jovan Hyman. She denied hitting Darshaun — even though the video showed her doing so — and defended herself as an involved member of the community.
“I have children,” she wrote. “My husband is a respected coast guard officer. I have a special needs son. . . . My husband and I are being threatened and slandered all over social media [and it] is not okay.”
By this point, Hyman had watched the video several times, and he had no doubt that Strempel had targeted the boys at the pool because of the color of their skin.
…
Today, Reminisce is reminiscent of a typical Southern suburb, where blacks and whites live side by side but usually avoid sensitive topics such as race and politics. It’s a precinct where Trump took nearly two-thirds of the vote, is mostly white and made up of schoolteachers, police officers, and employees of the nearby Air Force base and Boeing plant.
What follows is a tick tock of how the town dealt with and is still dealing with its race issues.
A devastating fire has leveled a 200 year old museum in Brazil. It was a repository of many artifacts that cannot be replaced.
“It was the biggest natural history museum in Latin America. We have invaluable collections. Collections that are over 100 years old,” Cristiana Serejo, one of the museum’s vice-directors, told the G1 news site.
Marina Silva, a former environment minister and candidate in October’s presidential elections said the fire was like “a lobotomy of the Brazilian memory”.
Luiz Duarte, another vice-director, told TV Globo: “It is an unbearable catastrophe. It is 200 years of this country’s heritage. It is 200 years of memory. It is 200 years of science. It is 200 years of culture, of education.” TV Globo also reported that some firefighters did not have enough water to battle the blaze.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the fire began. The museum was part of Rio’s Federal University but had fallen into disrepair in recent years. Its impressive collections included items brought to Brazil by Dom Pedro I – the Portuguese prince regent who declared the then-colony’s independence from Portugal – Egyptian and Greco-Roman artefacts, “Luzia”, a 12,000 year-old skeleton and the oldest in the Americas, fossils, dinosaurs, and a meteorite found in 1784. Some of the archive was stored in another building but much of the collection is believed to have been destroyed.
Paul Blumenthall–writing for Huffpo–outlines the number of investigations surrounding the Trump Family Crime Syndicate. “It’s Not Just Robert Mueller. President Donald Trump Faces Six Separate Investigations And Lawsuits.Prosecutors are digging into the president’s business from which he refused to divest.”
There are currently five separate investigations into Trump and his associates from four different investigative bodies. An additional lawsuit brought by two state attorneys general challenges whether Trump is in violation of the U.S. Constitution. There are further reports about probes into the financial dealings of the president’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, and his second eldest son, Eric Trump.
It’s a great list and description of all the investigations from obstruction of justice to emoluments clause violation.
So, I know you’re all likely having a great long weekend. I’ve got to start working on getting ready for this and finishing up my grades. I have no doubt this will likely take me offline for a few days.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: The Walls Close In on the Trump Family Crime Syndicate
Posted: August 31, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Manafort Foreign Agent, Trump Russia Collusion 35 Comments
The Sandy Beach at Olonne by Albert’ Marquet – circa 1938.
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
It’s the usual Frantic Friday News Day. A new WAPO/ABC Poll shows exactly how unpopular KKKremlin Caligula has become and shows wide spread support for both the oldest Living Confederate Widow at the DOJ and the Russia Inquiry. I bet the Twitler storm will be epic over the weekend if they don’t keep him on the golf course.
President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a high point of 60 percent, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that also finds that clear majorities of Americans support the special counsel’s Russia investigation and say the president should not fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
At the dawn of the fall campaign sprint to the midterm elections, which will determine whether Democrats retake control of Congress, the poll finds a majority of the public has turned against Trump and is on guard against his efforts to influence the Justice Department and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s wide-ranging probe.
Nearly half of Americans, 49 percent, say Congress should begin impeachment proceedings that could lead to Trump being removed from office, while 46 percent say Congress should not
And a narrow majority — 53 percent — say they think Trump has tried to interfere with Mueller’s investigation in a way that amounts to obstruction of justice; 35 percent say they do not think the president has tried to interfere.
Overall, 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance, with 36 percent approving, according to the poll. Because of random sampling variation, this represents only a marginal shift from the last Post-ABC survey, in April, which measured Trump’s rating at 56 percent disapproval and 40 percent approval.
I wonder how his base feels about his snobby comments about Sessions. Jonathan Chait provides this analysis.
Trump has touted the mindless loyalty of his base, and when he marveled that he would not lose any support if he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue, he was not complimenting the discernment of his supporters. He has tried to turn that into a positive — “I love the poorly educated!” — but the association with low socioeconomic strata has grated on him. Trump is the ultimate snob. He has no sense that working-class people may have equal latent talent that they have been denied the chance to develop. He considers wealthy and successful people a genetic aristocracy, frequently attributing his own success to good genes.
Attempting to explain his penchant for appointing plutocrats to his Cabinet, Trump has said, “I love all people, rich or poor, but in those particular positions I just don’t want a poor person. Does that make sense?” It makes sense if you assume a person’s wealth perfectly reflects their innate intelligence. Trump has repeatedly boasted about his Ivy League pedigree and that of his relatives, which he believes reflects well on his own genetic stock. He has fixated on the Ivy League pedigree of his Supreme Court appointments, even rejecting the credentials of the lower Ivys as too proletarian.
Trump has built a brand on attracting working-class strivers. But the relationship he cultivates is unidirectional admiration. Trump gives his supporters a lifestyle they can enjoy vicariously. He views them as suckers. The Trump University scam was premised directly on exploiting the misplaced trust of his fan base. The internal guidance for salespeople trying to drain the savings accounts of their targets explained, “Don’t ask people what they think about something you’ve said. Instead, always ask them how they feel about it. People buy emotionally and justify it logically.”
isis is now making a comeback. The frequency of the group’s attacks is up, and so, apparently, are its numbers. It excels, once again, at crafting small explosive devices, and weaponizing drones. And its sophisticated media outreach is recovering, according to a new U.N. report. The elusive isis emir, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whom Russia claimed to have killed in a May, 2017, air strike, reëmerged this month with an hour-long broadcast, his first in a year. He acknowledged that his followers had been tested with “fear and hunger.”
The United States had boasted of its “so-called victory in expelling the state from the cities and countryside in Iraq and Syria,” Baghdadi, who was held by U.S. forces in Iraq for several months in 2004, said. He urged a different metric. “The land of Allah is wide and the tides of war change,” he said. “For the believer mujahideen, the scale of victory or defeat is not tied to a city or town being stolen or subject to those who have aerial superiority, or intercontinental missiles or smart bombs.” He referred to the revival of an earlier version of isisafter it was decimated by U.S. troops in Iraq during the surge of 2007. At the time, the jihadi group was down to only a thousand fighters. isis subsequently mobilized more than sixty thousand fighters from more than a hundred countries to its cause. Baghdadi vowed that those who “patiently persevere” would again have “glad tidings.”
isis may already have numbers sufficient to rebuild. Two stunning reports this month—by the United Nations and Trump’s own Defense Department—both contradict earlier U.S. claims that most isis fighters had been eliminated. The Sunni jihadi movement still has between twenty thousand and thirty thousand members on the loose in Iraq and Syria, including “thousands of active foreign terrorist fighters,” the U.N. said, despite the fall of its nominal capital, Raqqa, last October. The Pentagon report is more alarming: isis has fourteen thousand fighters—not just members—in Syria, with up to seventeen thousand in Iraq. More important, isis has successfully morphed from a proto-state into a “covert global network, with a weakened yet enduring core” in Iraq and Syria, with regional affiliates in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, the U.N. reports. It can “easily” obtain arms in areas with weak governance; it is now a threat to U.N. member states on five continents.
Children Playing on the Beach Mary Cassatt 1884
A breaking story on DOJ Attorney Bruce Ohr is possibly what has made Trump so angry the last few days.
A senior Justice Department lawyer says a former British spy told him at a breakfast meeting two years ago that Russian intelligence believed it had Donald Trump “over a barrel,” according to multiple people familiar with the encounter.
The lawyer, Bruce Ohr, also says he learned that a Trump campaign aide had met with higher-level Russian officials than the aide had acknowledged, the people said.
The previously unreported details of the July 30, 2016, breakfast with Christopher Steele, which Ohr described to lawmakers this week in a private interview, reveal an exchange of potentially explosive information about Trump between two men the president has relentlessly sought to discredit.
They add to the public understanding of those pivotal summer months as the FBI and intelligence community scrambled to untangle possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. And they reflect the concern of Steele, a longtime FBI informant whose Democratic-funded research into Trump ties to Russia was compiled into a dossier, that the Republican presidential candidate was possibly compromised and his urgent efforts to convey that anxiety to contacts at the FBI and Justice Department.
The people who discussed Ohr’s interview were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the closed session and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Among the things Ohr said he learned from Steele during the breakfast was that an unnamed former Russian intelligence official had said that Russian intelligence believed “they had Trump over a barrel,” according to people familiar with the meeting. It was not clear from Ohr’s interview whether Steele had been directly told that or had picked that up through his contacts, but the broader sentiment is echoed in Steele’s research dossier.
Steele and Ohr, at the time of the election a senior official in the deputy attorney general’s office, had first met a decade earlier and bonded over a shared interest in international organized crime. They met several times during the presidential campaign, a
Tahitian Women on the beach Paul Gauguin
relationship that exposed both men and federal law enforcement more generally to partisan criticism, including from Trump.
There’s also a new indictment of a Manafort crony with connections to Cambridge Analytica. This is another FARA violation charge. This may be connected to the upcoming DC trial for Manafort.
A former associate of Paul Manafort agreed to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors after pleading guilty to failing to register in the U.S. as a foreign agent for his work lobbying on behalf of a Ukrainian political party.
The lobbyist, Sam Patten, is a longtime international political operative who’s partnered with a Russian already indicted in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. He appeared in federal court in Washington Friday.
Mueller’s office referred the case to U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu in the District of Columbia, according William Miller, a spokesman for Liu, who declined to comment further on a pending case.
Patten has worked with Manafort and on Ukrainian campaigns, as well as in countries including Russia, Georgia, Iraq and Kazakhstan. He served in the State Department under George W. Bush, and reportedly worked on microtargeting operations with Cambridge Analytica.
From 2014, Patten provided a “prominent” Ukrainian oligarch who isn’t named in court papers and his Opposition Bloc political party with lobbying and consulting services, according to the criminal information. A company Patten co-owned with a Russian national received more than $1 million for the work, the U.S. said.
As part of his lobbying work, he violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by not disclosing the work to the U.S., prosecutors said. No date has been set for his sentencing.
He headed the Moscow office of the International Republican Institute in the early 2000s. A Russian IRI employee in those years, Konstantin Kilimnik, went on to work as a fixer for Manafort in Ukraine and is a business partner with Patten. Kilimnik has been indicted in absentia alongside Manafort on obstruction of justice charges the former Trump campaign chairman faces in Washington next month.
Beach Scene Edgar Degas
Trump continues his war on Canada as the Toronto Star uncovered some Trumpertantrums regarding the so-called NAFTA rework. Trump’s interview with Bloomberg News has turned into a verbal bombing campaign.
High-stakes trade negotiations between Canada and the U.S. were dramatically upended on Friday morning by inflammatory secret remarks from President Donald Trump, after the remarks were obtained by the Toronto Star.
In remarks Trump wanted to be “off the record,” Trump told Bloomberg News reporters on Thursday, according to a source, that he is not making any compromises at all in the talks with Canada — but that he cannot say this publicly because “it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal.”
“Here’s the problem. If I say no — the answer’s no. If I say no, then you’re going to put that, and it’s going to be so insulting they’re not going to be able to make a deal … I can’t kill these people,” he said of the Canadian government.
In another remark he did not want published, Trump said, according to the source, that the possible deal with Canada would be “totally on our terms.” He suggested he was scaring the Canadians into submission by repeatedly threatening to impose tariffs.
“Off the record, Canada’s working their ass off. And every time we have a problem with a point, I just put up a picture of a Chevrolet Impala,” Trump said, according to the source. The Impala is produced at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ontario.
Trump made the remarks in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg. He deemed them off the record, and Bloomberg accepted his request not to reveal them.
But the Star is not bound by any promises Bloomberg made to Trump. And the remarks immediately became a factor in the negotiations: Trudeau’s officials, who saw them as evidence for their previous suspicions that Trump’s team had not been bargaining in good faith, raised them at the beginning of a meeting with their U.S. counterparts on Friday morning, a U.S. source confirmed.
The Star was not able to independently confirm the remarks with 100 per cent certainty, but the Canadian government is confident they are accurate. Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, who was one of the journalists in the room, did not dispute their authenticity.
Two Women Running on the Beach Pablo Picasso
Trump has removed cost of living raises for Federal Employees. What a small minded little manchild.
President Donald Trump told lawmakers on Thursday he wants to scrap a pay raise for civilian federal workers, saying the nation’s budget couldn’t support it.
In a letter to House and Senate leaders, Trump described the pay increase as “inappropriate.”
“We must maintain efforts to put our Nation on a fiscally sustainable course, and Federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases,” the President wrote.An across-the-board 2.1% pay increase for federal workers was slated to take effect in January. In addition, a yearly adjustment of paychecks based on the region of the country where a worker is posted — the “locality pay increase” — was due to take effect.
Trump said both increases should no longer happen.“I have determined that for 2019, both across the board pay increases and locality pay increases will be set at zero,” he wrote.
Congress has an opportunity to effectively overrule the President’s edict if lawmakers pass a spending bill that includes a federal pay raise. The Senate passed a bill this summer that included a 1.9% raise for federal workers. The House’s version did not address federal pay. Senate and House negotiators will negotiate a final measure in the coming weeks.
Trump’s 2019 budget proposal, released earlier this year, included a pay freeze for civilian federal workers. It’s not clear if Trump would approve a budget that includes the pay increase; the White House has not issued a formal veto threat of the Senate’s bill.
Boats on the Bieach of Saiint Marie, Vincent Van Gogh 1888
The nation is mourning Aretha Franklin and John McCain today. WAPO wrote an article on McCain’s 106 year old mother who attended the service today. I wanted to share some of it with you.
She was sitting in a wheelchair as they carried her son’s casket into the Capitol Rotunda Friday.
Roberta McCain, 106, held granddaughter Meghan McCain’s hand and lifted a handkerchief to dab her eyes. Wearing lipstick, pink blush and a polka dot white blouse, she sat silently as congressional leaders and Vice President Mike Pence lauded Sen. John McCain, who died last week at age 81.
When the tributes were over, Roberta was the last member of the family to touch his flag-draped casket. She crossed herself afterward.
Many obituaries have been quick to mention the McCain family’s prestigious lineage within the American military. The senator’s father and grandfather — both of whom shared his name — were the first father and son in Navy history to become full admirals.
But often overlooked is the influence McCain’s mother had on his upbringing and political life. Now, Roberta has outlived the child she still calls “Johnny,” whose death she faced once before when he was shot down over Vietnam and presumed lost.
Roberta, who lives in Washington, spent years crisscrossing the globe, often alongside her identical twin sister, Rowena, eager for whatever spontaneous adventure came next. She has ridden through the Jordanian desert in the dark of night, hopped a ferry to Macau and trekked through Europe on less than $5 per day.
Roberta and Rowena were born in 1912 when William Howard Taft was president. They grew up traveling the country with their father, a successful oil wildcatter who retired young to raise his children. The family would travel for weeks, sometimes along the California coast or by the banks of the Great Lakes.
Those trips would later serve as the blueprints for what Sen. McCain described as his mother’s “mobile classroom” — one that could show her children the world’s wonders in ways a four-walled classroom could not.
“My mother grew to be an extroverted and irrepressible woman,” Sen. McCain wrote in his memoir, “Faith of My Fathers.”
I hope you have a great Labor Day weekend. I’ll be dreaming about the days when I use to spend it on a beach.
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