“The defendants understood the stakes, and they embraced their role in bringing about a ‘revolution,’” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo released Thursday night. “They unleashed a force on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officials by force and to undo the results of a democratic election. The foot soldiers of the right aimed to keep their leader in power. They failed. They are not heroes; they are criminals.”
New Year’s 2024 Reads: Damn the Predictions! Full Steam Ahead!
Posted: January 1, 2024 Filed under: just because | Tags: @repeat1968, All together, All We are saying is Give Peace a Chance, Come together, Gaza, israel, Japan, John Buss, North Korea, Russia, South Korea, The Electoral College, Ukraine, USA politics 2024 2 Comments
John Buss, @repeat1968
Happy New Year’s Day, Sky Dancers!
I’m still rattled by the overwhelming use of fireworks last night by my little house along the Mississipi. It was like the ghosts of the Battle of New Orleans had taken up arms again! It went on for hours. The cats completely disappeared, and Temple and I hung out in the pillow fort. I can’t believe that with all the wars raging in the world right now, some people’s children would find like-sounds appealing. I’ve started my year with a jury summons. I wish I lived in the District, and summons was for you know who’s felonies. I have no idea how I will manage it, but I hope my doctor can explain the challenges I face this year. The process has been automated, so it might be easier if I don’t have to appear and then be sent home daily.
Mother Earth started the New Year off with a bang and a rattle. Japan experienced a 7.5 earthquake that was followed by a tsunami threatening Japan’s and South Korea’s coasts. About 100.000 people had to evacuate, 10s of thousands are still without power, and a building collapse killed one man. A 4.1 earthquake hit South of L.A. this morning. This one was par for the course for Coastal California.
The big question is, will 2024 bring worse climate change disasters than 2023? This is from the Washington Post. “The climate future arrived in 2023. It left scars across the planet. The year will mark a point when humanity crossed into a new climate era — an age of “global boiling,” as the U.N. Secretary General called it.” This is reported by Chico Harlen.
One explanation for 2023’s extreme heat is El Niño — a recurring oceanic phenomenon that warms the waters in the Pacific and causes a global ripple of consequences. But the scale of this year’s heat — amplified by human-caused factors and the burning of fossil fuels — is still well beyond what most scientists had thought possible. Some have theorized that planetary warming may be accelerating. Others have said there’s not enough evidence. What they agree upon, though, is that the earth is trending toward more extreme heat.
The list of examples from around the globe should shock a few politicians into taking action. I can say that it won’t happen here in America’s Oil Coast. Our politicians are wholly owned subsidiaries of oil and gas companies. Our next Governor will be worse than Jindal, which says a lot. All Republican pols are saying that we’re not drilling enough and 2023 has evidence to the contrary. This is also from The Washington Post. “U.S. oil production hit a record under Biden. He seldom mentions it. The politics of oil are particularly tricky for Democrats, whose chances for victory in next year’s elections can hinge on whether young, climate-focused voters come out in big numbers.”
You won’t hear President Biden talking about it much, but a key record has been broken during his watch: The United States is producing more oil than any country ever has.
The flow of huge amounts of crude from American producers is playing a big role in keeping prices down at the pump, diminishing the geopolitical power of OPEC and taming inflation. The average price of a gallon of regular gasolinenationwide has dropped to close to $3, and analysts project it could stay that way leading up to the presidential election, potentially assuaging the economic anxieties of swing-state voters who will be crucial to Biden’s hopes of a second term.
But it is not something the president publicly boasts about. The politics of oil are particularly tricky for Democrats, whose chances for victory in the 2024 elections could hinge on whether young, climate-conscious voters come out in big numbers. Many of those voters want to hear that Biden is doing everything in his power to keep oil in the ground.
“If you are not looking carefully at what the administration is actually doing, it is easy to get the wrong impression,” said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm. “There are a lot of things going on at once. This is an administration which is focused on the energy transition, but also taking a pragmatic approach on fossil fuels.”
The United States is producing about 13.2 million barrels of crude oil per day. That is millions of gallons more than is coming out of Saudi Arabia or Russia. It is more oil than was being produced even at its peak during the pro-fossil-fuels administration of former president Donald Trump, when production was 13 million barrels a day in November 2019.
There are plenty more theats than promises on our horizon for 2024. This reminder from ABC News should focus attention on getting another Blue Wave. “Former Trump White House insiders call possible 2nd term a threat to American democracy. “We don’t need to speculate,” one told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.” Is it just me or are all these Baby New Year cartoons a bit dystopian? We need a Shero!!
Three women who served in former President Donald Trump‘s White House are now warning against a possible second Trump term, with one of them saying it could mean “the end of American democracy as we know it.”
For the first time, former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin, former White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews, and former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson sat down together with ABC News “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl to discuss their roles in speaking out against Trump in the wake of Jan. 6.
“Fundamentally, a second Trump term could mean the end of American democracy as we know it, and I don’t say that lightly,” Griffin, now a co-host of ABC’s “The View,” told Karl, accusing the former president of having gone to “historic and unconstitutional lengths” in attempting to “steal a democratic election” and to stay in power.
“I’m very concerned about what the term would actually look like,” Griffin continued.
“We don’t need to speculate what a second Trump term would like because we already saw it play out,” Matthews told Karl.
“To this day, he still doubles down on the fact that he thinks that the election was stolen and fraudulent,” Matthews said, claiming Trump’s rhetoric has become “increasingly erratic,” citing his threats to skirt the Constitution and suggestions about weaponizing the Justice Department to retaliate against his political enemies.
Hutchinson, who served as a top aide to Trump’s last White House chief of staff Mark Meadows – and who stood by Trump the longest after the 2020 election – said there’s a large portion of the population that’s not recognizing their mistakes, that’s not working to continue to better our country.”
“This is a fundamental election to continue to safeguard our institutions and our constitutional republic,” Hutchinson said. “We’re extremely fragile as a country, and so is the democratic experiment.”
This was the first time Griffin, Matthews, and Hutchinson, who all cooperated with the House select committee that investigated the Capitol attack by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, gathered to share their experiences.
Gustaf Kilander of The Independent has a major reform in mind that’s been discussed quite a bit this century. “The Electoral College is a ‘bad’ and ‘undemocratic’ system. So why does the US still use it? In the most powerful democracy in the world, two of its last four leaders have been chosen by a minority of voters. The US’s Electoral College system is now functioning far from how its creators originally intended,” Indeed.
In the 2016 election, it was Hillary Clinton who won the popular vote with almost three million more votes than Donald Trump. But the showboating businessman ended up in the West Wing regardless.
To put it simply, in the most powerful democracy in the world, two of the nation’s last four leaders have been the less popular option among voters – due to an Electoral College system that many feel is undemocratic and needs to change.
“They came up with the Electoral College at the very end of the Constitutional Convention,” Kermit Roosevelt, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, tells The Independent about the founding of American democracy.
“They didn’t really pick it because it had features that they liked, so much as they couldn’t figure out any other way to accommodate people’s concerns.”
As it currently stands, to get to the White House, a candidate has to reach at least 270 out of the 538 electoral votes which are distributed to the states according to population.
However, most states have instituted winner-take-all systems.
This means that a candidate could win the most votes across the country but lose the electoral college by running up the numbers in some states and losing by smaller margins in others.
Partisan sorting appears to have worsened this phenomenon, as people move to areas where their neighbours share their political beliefs.
The size of some states is also so vastly different that smaller states have ended up with more representation in the Electoral College than their population may justify.
This is a really long read with a lot of history and some analysis that really will wake you up even though we’re all aware of the issue.The end result of this system is that very few voters actually matter.
“We’ve got sort of an aristocracy of the Dakotas and Wyoming, and Rhode Island,” Mr Roosevelt says.
“The big way in which the Electoral College distorts our political process … is that it makes people focus on the swing states” both when it comes to campaigning and governing, he adds.
“This is a point that I think is often lost or distorted – people say, ‘Well, if you didn’t have the Electoral College, no one would pay attention to the small states’. And I don’t think that’s true because a vote from a small state will matter just as much,” he says.
“Candidates don’t pay attention to small states, they pay attention to swing states. So you get all of this attention on Pennsylvania and Florida and Ohio and Wisconsin, North Carolina – the states that are in play.
“And no one pays attention to California or New York – or even Texas. There are millions of people in those states who may be persuadable, and maybe if you address their concerns, you could win their votes, but no one even tried.”
It’s frightening that Trump could win again without even approaching the 50% mark.
Is Israeli justice finally catching up to Bibi? The weekend was full of protests in the streets and calls for an election. Will the electorate and courts deal with this crook also? This is from the New York Times. This is especially important since Netanyu has just announced the war will continue for an unspecified period of time of months. “Israel-Hamas WarIsraeli Justices Reject Netanyahu-Led Move to Limit Court. The law, passed by the Israeli Parliament in July, had sharply divided Israelis and sparked mass protests. Monday’s ruling raised the prospect of renewed discord as Israel wages war in Gaza.” This is written by Isabel Kershner.
In a momentous ruling that could ignite a constitutional crisis, Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday struck down a law passed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government that was meant to limit the court’s own powers, by a majority of eight judges to seven.
The decision is likely to rekindle the grave domestic crisis that began a year ago over the right-wing government’s judicial overhaul plan — which sparked mass protests that brought the country to a near standstill at times — even as Israel is at war in Gaza.
The court, sitting with a full panel of all 15 of its justices for the first time in its history, rejected a law passed by Parliament in July. The law barred judges from using a particular legal standard to overrule decisions made by government ministers.
The court’s decision heralds a potential showdown between the top judicial authority and the ruling coalition, and could fundamentally reshape Israeli democracy, pitting the power of the government against that of the court.
Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition, the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history, has argued that the Supreme Court has overreached its authority and subverted the will of the voters and the function of the elected government. They argue that the legal concept of “reasonableness” — which the court used a year ago to strike down Mr. Netanyahu’s appointment as finance minister of a political ally who had been convicted of tax fraud — is ill defined and subjective.
But in a country that has one house of Parliament, no formal written constitution and a largely ceremonial president, many defenders of Israel’s liberal democracy view the Supreme Court as the only bulwark against government power, and the standard of reasonableness to be one of the primary tools at the judges’ disposal.
You may read more about the decision at the breaking news at the links. The war itself is moving South which is exactly where Bibi sent Palenstian civilians. This is from the AP. “Israel is pulling thousands of troops from Gaza as combat focuses on enclave’s main southern city.”
Thousands of Israeli soldiers are being shifted out of the Gaza Strip, the military said Monday, in the first significant drawdown of troops since the war began as forces continued to bear down on the main city in the southern half of the enclave.
The troop movement could signal that fighting is being scaled back in some areas of Gaza, particularly in the northern half where the military has said it is close to assuming operational control. Israel has been under pressure from its chief ally, the United States, to begin to switch to lower-intensity fighting.
Word of the drawdown came ahead of a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the region and after the Biden administration bypassed Congress for the second time this month to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel.
But fierce fighting continued in other areas of Gaza, especially the southern city Khan Younis and central areas of the territory. Israel has pledged to charge ahead until its war aims have been achieved, including dismantling Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for 16 years.
The year is definitely going to be a challenging one. Al-Jezeera reports on the latest coming from Ukraine. Putin plans to escalate. We need to help the fast! “Putin vows to ‘intensify’ strikes on Ukraine after deadly Belgorod attack. At least five people are killed in New Year’s Day attacks on Odesa, southern Ukraine and Russian-occupied Donetsk.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised to intensify strikes on Ukraine after an unprecedented attack on the Russian city of Belgorod over the weekend.
Saturday’s air attack killed at least 25 people and wounded more than 100, according to Russian officials.
Russia has blamed Ukraine for the attack, which was one of the deadliest to take place on Russian soil since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started more than 22 months ago.
“We’re going to intensify the strikes. No crime against civilians will rest unpunished – that’s for certain,” Putin said on Monday during a visit to a military hospital.
He said Russia would continue hitting what he called “military installations”.
“We are doing that today, and tomorrow, we will continue doing it,” Putin said.
Putin previously called the destruction in Belgorod a “terrorist attack” and accused Ukrainian forces of targeting “the city centre, where people were walking before New Year’s Eve”.
He said Ukraine was being used by the West to “settle its problems” and insisted the course of the war was changing in Russia’s favour.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said Ukraine hit Belgorod with two missiles and several rockets. It said most of the weapons were shot down, but some debris fell on the city.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region, said the attack damaged 30 apartment buildings and several houses and cars.
I don’t want to get to deep in the weeds, but North Korea and China are sabre-rattling again too. This is from the AP. “North Korea’s Kim says military should ‘thoroughly annihilate’ US and South Korea if provoked.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his military should “thoroughly annihilate” the United States and South Korea if provoked, state media reported Monday, after he vowed to boost national defense to cope with what he called an unprecedented U.S.-led confrontation.
North Korea has increased its warlike rhetoric in recent months in response to an expansion of U.S.-South Korean military drills. Experts expect Kim will continue to escalate his rhetoric and weapons tests because he likely believes he can use heightened tensions to wrest U.S. concessions if former President Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November.
In a five-day major ruling party meeting last week, Kim said he will launch three more military spy satellites, produce more nuclear materials and develop attack drones this year in what observers say is an attempt to increase his leverage in future diplomacy with the U.S.
It looks like Secretary Blinken and his team have their hands full. I’m still concerned about this news from two days ago via Reuters. I’m all for giving Israel defense equipment and keeping their shield at-ready, but have serious doubts about gifting them more offensive weapons. “US skips congressional review to approve sale of artillery projectiles to Israel.” It’s going to be a tough year for us Peaceniks and Justice Freaks.
But, anyway, I hope you have the ability to hunker down in peace and quiet in your home! And …
Here’s one with John, Yoko, and the late Tommy Smothers live from Bed in 1969,
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Happy New Year! Hang in here with us for 2024!
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: August 19, 2023 Filed under: 2020 Elections, 2021 Insurrection, Afternoon Reads, Cats, caturday | Tags: China, Christopher Worrell, Enrique Tarrio, fake electors, FBI, foreign policy, Georgia election interference case, January 6 insurrection, January 6 prosecutions, Japan, Joe Biden, Joe Biggs, Kenneth Chesebro, Proud Boys, South Korea, Vietnam 5 Comments
Happy Caturday!!
It’s difficult for me to focus on anything except the legal news about Trump’s crimes; but before I get to the latest on that, I want to call attention to Joe Biden’s latest foreign policy efforts. I admit I really that I originally was not at all enthused about a Biden presidency, but he has turned out to be very good at his job. His age and experience have prepared him for this moment in history.
Reuters: US, South Korea and Japan condemn China, agree to deepen military ties.
CAMP DAVID, Maryland, Aug 18 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of South Korea and Japan agreed at Camp David on Friday to deepen military and economic cooperation and made their strongest joint condemnation yet of “dangerous and aggressive behavior” by China in the South China Sea.
The Biden administration held the summit with the leaders of the main U.S. allies in Asia, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in a bid to project unity in the face of China’s growing power and nuclear threats from North Korea.
In a summit statement the three countries committed to consult promptly with each other during crises and to coordinate responses to regional challenges, provocations and threats affecting common interests.
They also agreed to hold military training exercises annually and to share real-time information on North Korean missile launches by the end of 2023. The countries promised to hold trilateral summits annually.
While the political commitments fall short of a formal three-way alliance, they represent a bold move for Seoul and Tokyo, which have a long history of mutual acrimony stemming from Japan’s harsh 1910-1945 colonial rule of Korea.
The summit at the Maryland presidential retreat was the first standalone meeting between the U.S. and Japan and South Korea and came about thanks to a rapprochement launched by Yoon and driven by shared perceptions of threats posed by China and North Korea, as well as Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
The leaders’ language on China stood out as stronger than expected, and is likely to provoke a response from Beijing, which is a vital trading partner for both South Korea and Japan.
“Regarding the dangerous and aggressive behavior supporting unlawful maritime claims that we have recently witnessed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the South China Sea, we strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the waters of the Indo-Pacific,” the statement said.
Next Biden plans to build closer ties with Vietnam. Politico: Biden to sign strategic partnership deal with Vietnam in latest bid to counter China in the region.
President Joe Biden will chalk up a fresh victory in his campaign to boost U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific by sealing a deal with Vietnam next month aimed to draw Hanoi closer to Washington at a time of rising tensions with Beijing.
Biden will sign a strategic partnership agreement with Vietnam during a state visit to the Southeast Asian country in mid-September, according to three people with knowledge of the deal’s planning. They were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the record about the agreement.
The agreement will allow for new bilateral collaboration that will boost Vietnam’s efforts to develop its high technology sector in areas including semiconductor production and artificial intelligence….
The deal adds to Biden’s string of successful diplomatic initiatives aimed to reassert U.S. influence in Asia in the face of China’s growing economic, diplomatic and military muscle in the region. They include a historic Camp David summit Friday with Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol — aimed at addressing regional threats from North Korea and China.
The Vietnam agreement coincides with an uptick in tension between Hanoi and Beijing over long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Vietnam — along with the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei — has long protested Beijing’s claim of authority over parts of the South China Sea that extend 1,200 miles from China’s coastline. Hanoi banned the Barbie movie last month due to a scene that appeared to reference the nine-dash line Beijing says marks its territorial waters. Satellite imagery released this week indicates China is building an airfield on an island that Hanoi says is Vietnamese territory.
But the agreement doesn’t necessarily signal that Vietnam is moving away from its giant neighbor China in favor of better ties with Washington.
“Vietnam is not aligning with the U.S. against China. … They’re happy to improve relations with the U.S., but it doesn’t mean they’re moving against China — they’re going to continue to calibrate very carefully,” said Scot Marciel, a former principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department who opened the first State Department office in Hanoi in 1993.
Now some legal news.
In the January 6th prosecutions, the DOJ has asked for 33 years in prison for Proud Boy leaders Enrique Tarrio and Joe Biggs. Kyle Cheney at Politico: Prosecutors seek 30-year sentences for Proud Boys leaders in Jan. 6 case.
Prosecutors are seeking 33-year prison sentences for former Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio and his ally Joe Biggs, who they say aimed to foment a revolution on Jan. 6 to keep former President Donald Trump in power.
The proposed jail sentences would nearly double the lengthiest Jan. 6 sentence handed down to date — 18 years for Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes — a decision prosecutors say reflects the pivotal role that Proud Boys leaders played in stoking and exacerbating the violence at the Capitol that day.
Both Tarrio and Biggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy in May by a jury who also found allies Philadelphia Proud Boy leader Zachary Rehl and Seattle Proud Boy leader Ethan Nordean guilty of the grave offense. Prosecutors are seeking 30 years for Rehl and 27 years for Nordean.
A fifth Proud Boy tried alongside the others, Dominic Pezzola, was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted on other serious offenses. Pezzola may be the best known of the group, however. He shattered a Senate-wing window with a stolen police riot shield, triggering the breach of the Capitol itself. Prosecutors are seeking a 20-year jail term for him.
Read more details at the Politico link.
Marcy Wheeler has an interesting story about Proud Boy Joe Biggs, who used to be an informant for the FBI. If you’ve wondered why the FBI failed to warn people about the terrorists who were working to overthrow the government on January 6, here’s one answer. Emptywheel: “They Spoke Often:” It Took the Fash-Friendly FBI Over Two Months to Document the Lies their Informant, Joe Biggs, Told Them.
I always have a hard time excerpting Marcy’s posts, but I hope you’ll go read it at the link. The gist is that the FBI used Biggs to target “Antifa.” They were focused on radical left groups and ignored the violent extremist on the right. Here’s the summary at the end of the post:
The FBI claims it had no notice of the terrorist attack on the nation’s Capitol, not even with an FBI agent “speaking often” with one of its leaders and an DC intelligence cop speaking often with the other one.
So now, DOJ wants to hold Joe Biggs accountable for the lies he told to the FBI agent who thought a key leader of the Proud Boys would make an appropriate informant targeting Antifa. But thus far, his handler has not been held accountable for missing the planning of a terrorist attack in DC when while speaking “often” with one of its key leaders.
Notably, the Daytona FBI office is the same one where, after fake whistleblower Stephen Friend refused to participate in a SWAT arrest of a Three Percenter known to own an assault rifle, his supervisor said “he wished I just ‘called in sick’ for this warrant,” before taking disciplinary action against him (though Friend didn’t start in Daytona Beach until after Biggs had already been arrested).
The second of these interviews (but not the first) interview was mentioned in Biggs’ arrest affidavit. It’s possible that investigating agents didn’t even know about what occurred in the first one.
Indeed, it’s really hard to credit the reliability of a 302 written two days after Biggs described his chummy relationship but not this interview in an attempt to stay out of jail.
This is why the FBI didn’t warn against January 6. Because these terrorists were the FBI’s people.
Another Proud Boy, Christopher Worrell, was supposed to be sentenced soon, but yesterday, news broke that he has disappeared. Associated Press: Proud Boy on house arrest in Jan. 6 case disappears ahead of sentencing.
Authorities are searching for a member of the Proud Boys extremist group who disappeared days before his sentencing in a U.S. Capitol riot case, where prosecutors are seeking more than a decade in prison, according to a warrant made public Friday.
Christopher Worrell, 52, of Naples, Florida, was supposed to be sentenced Friday after being found guilty of spraying pepper spray gel on police officers, as part of the mob storming the Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors had asked a judge to sentence him to 14 years.
The sentencing was canceled and a bench warrant for his arrest issued under seal on Tuesday, according to court records. The U.S. attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., encouraged the public to share any information about his whereabouts.
Worrell had been on house arrest in Florida since his release from jail in Washington in November 2021, less than a month after a judge substantiated his civil-rights complaints about his treatment in the jail.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth found Worrell’s medical care for a broken hand had been delayed, and held D.C. jail officials in contempt of court.
The big topic of conversation in the media and Twitter yesterday was a Trump ally who has previously passed under the radar–Kenneth Chesebro, who appears to be one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the Georgia election interference case. It turns out this guy was integral to what happened on January 6. Chesboro was also the originator of the scheme to use “fake electors” to overthrow the 2020 election.
When conspiracy theorist Alex Jones marched his way to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, riling up his legion of supporters, an unassuming middle-aged man in a red “Trump 2020” hat conspicuously tagged along.
Videos and photographs reviewed by CNN show the man dutifully recording Jones with his phone as the bombastic media personality ascended to the restricted area of the Capitol grounds where mobs of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters eventually broke in.
While the man’s actions outside the Capitol that day have drawn little scrutiny, his alleged connections to a plot to overthrow the 2020 election have recently come into sharp focus: He is attorney Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the scheme to subvert the 2020 Electoral College process by using fake GOP electors in multiple states.
When asked by the House select committee where he was the first week of January 2021 and on January 6, Chesebro invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. But a CNN investigation has placed him outside of the Capitol at the same time as his alleged plot to keep Trump in office unraveled inside it.
There is no indication Chesebro entered the Capitol Building or was violent. Jones did not enter the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or engage in violence, but he had warned of a coming battle the day before and urged his supporters to converge on the Capitol.
Chesebro is the only one of the unindicted co-conspirators in Trump’s recent federal indictment and only member of Trump’s legal efforts who is now known to have been on the Capitol grounds on January 6.
CNN was able to place Chesebro at the protest through publicly available databases with photos and videos from that day. Interviews with his acquaintances also confirmed his identity. Chesebro declined CNN’s requests for comment, citing ongoing litigation.
It was unclear why Chesebro was following Jones on January 6.
“Even if Chesebro is simply a diehard Infowars fan, I think that would further illustrate how thin the line was between the serious, credentialed people who sought to undermine election results and the extremist figures who sought to unleash havoc was in that period, to the extent it meaningfully existed at all,” said Jared Holt, an expert at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue which investigates extremism, hate and disinformation.
Read the rest at CNN.
More on Cheseboro from The Washington Post: The ‘brains’ behind fake Trump electors was once a liberal Democrat.
VEGA ALTA, Puerto Rico — The blinds were drawn at a handsome villa in an oceanfront gated community on the northern coast of this Caribbean island. Inside, a woman’s voice could be heard calling out “Ken” — but no one answered the door.
That’s all I have for you today. Have a nice Caturday!
Lazy Caturday Reads: Famous Authors And Their Cats (Plus News)
Posted: June 15, 2019 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, morning reads | Tags: Border Patrol, Germany, Hope Hicks, iran, Japan, Jeffrey Epstein, Kellyanne Conway, Matthew Bowen, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump lies 16 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
Yesterday, Dakinikat highlighted this article at The Independent in which the owner of a tanker that the Trump administration claims was attacked by Iran says the Trump folks are lying.
The ship operator said “flying objects” that may have been bullets were the cause of damage to the vessel, rather than mines used by Iranian forces, as the US has suggested.
Yutaka Katada, chief executive of the Japanese company operating the ship called Kokuka Courageous, one of two vessels attacked near the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, said the damage could not have been caused by mines or torpedos that are shot underwater, since the damage was reportedly above the ship’s waterline.
Now Germany has chimed in. Newsweek: Germany Joins Chorus Casting Doubt on Trump Administration Claim that Iran was Behind Attack on Oil Tankers.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Friday cast doubt on evidence that the U.S. government claims is proof that Iran was behind an attack this week on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman.
William Faulkner and cat
The attack on the two vessels, one Japanese and one Norwegian, took place as Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was visiting Iran to try to calm tensions between Tehran and Washington.
The U.S. Navy later released a video that purported to show members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard sneaking over to the ship in the middle of the night to remove an unexploded mine. U.S. officials claimed this is evidence of Iran’s culpability, but Maas argued that the video was insufficient proof to pin the attack on Iran.
“The video is not enough. We can understand what is being shown, sure, but to make a final assessment, this is not enough for me,” Maas told reporters during a press conference on Friday. The boat’s Japanese owner also cast doubt on the theory that a mine had been used to attack the ship, telling journalists that members of his crew had witnessed a flying object.
Iran has denied any role in the event, and some observers have raised questions about whether the intelligence was being used as a pretext for the U.S. to escalate conflict with the country.
Peter Baker writes at The New York Times: As Trump Accuses Iran, He Has One Problem: His Own Credibility.
For any president, accusing another country of an act of war presents an enormous challenge to overcome skepticism at home and abroad. But for a president known for falsehoods and crisis-churning bombast, the test of credibility appears far more daunting.
Ursula Le Guin and cat
For two and a half years in office, Mr. Trump has spun out so many misleading or untrue statements about himself, his enemies, his policies, his politics, his family, his personal story, his finances and his interactions with staff that even his own former communications director once said “he’s a liar” and many Americans long ago concluded that he cannot be trusted.
Fact-checking Mr. Trump is a full-time occupation in Washington, and in no other circumstance is faith in a president’s word as vital as in matters of war and peace. The public grew cynical about presidents and intelligence after George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq based on false accusations of weapons of mass destruction, and the doubt spilled over to Barack Obama when he accused Syria of gassing its own people. As Mr. Trump confronts Iran, he carries the burden of their history and his own….
The task is all the more formidable for Mr. Trump, who himself has assailed the reliability of America’s intelligence agencies and even the intelligence chiefs he appointed, suggesting they could not be believed when their conclusions have not fit his worldview.
That’s an important point. Trump has been attacking the findings of the U.S. intelligence community since he was a candidate. He has repeatedly said he believes Vladimir Putin over his own FBI and CIA.
Again following up on Dakinikat’s post yesterday, here’s a brilliant essay by Virginia Heffernan at The Los Angeles Times: All the president’s lying ladies — Hicks, Sanders and Conway — make news.
Anton Chekhov and cat
The Trump White House is a bit like Shakespeare summer camp: not enough substantial parts for the girls. The female roles at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. are for craven ladies-in-waiting who are allotted very little moral agency, let alone opportunities for heroics. They subvert their ambitions to their overlord’s; they lie, in short.
Yes, there’s a Lady Macbeth, portrayed in Trumpworld as a waxen blonde sleepwalker, a ghostly daughter-wife whose veins are certifiably free of the milk of human kindness. (Ivanka’s understudy, the creepy Melania, has skipped so many rehearsals she’s been written off.)
A shrewd, unholy trinity has settled for lesser roles: the liar-handmaidens Hope Hicks, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway. The president, according to Michael Wolff’s latest book, “Siege,” likes to see these three in a “cat fight,” in which each undermines the others as she competes to lie most robustly on his behalf.
The melancholic former White House Communications Director Hicks, choleric counselor Conway and splenetic Press Secretary Sanders aren’t just complicit in the president’s depravity. They have managed to advance it.
But the advantage this trio has over Lady Ivanka is that they can leave.
To further tempt you to read the whole thing, here is Heffernan’s characterization of Sarah Huckabee Sanders:
Sanders is known for her never-ending mendacity and her near-religious devotion to Trump, who, according to Wolff, calls her the “Huckabee Girl.”
Patricia Highsmith and cat
Indeed, Trump has often treated Sanders as if she were the possession of her father, Mike Huckabee, on loan to him as a scullery maid. Scullery for Trump includes, above all, mendacity. Sanders is featured in the Mueller report for her “slip of the tongue” — the claim that “countless” FBI agents disliked former FBI Director James Comey.
Not only was this fabrication part of Sanders’ tireless effort to make it seem as though Trump is a normal law-and-order Republican (and not a carnie thug with well-documented contempt for the whole FBI), it was also an effort to obfuscate Trump’s reason for firing Comey. We all know it: to kill the Russia investigation.
Go read the rest. You won’t be sorry.
At Rolling Stone, Tim Dickinson explains how the trial of a border patrol agent could expose the “toxic culture” of his agency: ‘Guats,’ ‘Tonks’ and ‘Subhuman Shit’: The Shocking Texts of a Border Patrol Agent.
In the days before he allegedly struck a 23-year-old undocumented Guatemalan man with a government-issued Ford F-150, Border Patrol agent Matthew Bowen sent a text to a fellow agent. In the exchange, which federal prosecutors now claim offers “insight into his view of the aliens he apprehends,” Bowen railed against unauthorized migrants who’d thrown rocks at a colleague as “mindless murdering savages” and “disgusting subhuman shit unworthy of being kindling for a fire.” The text message also includes a plea to the president: “PLEASE let us take the gloves off trump!”
Kingsley Amis and cat
Two weeks later, on December 3rd, 2017, Bowen was on patrol near Nogales, Arizona, when he spotted a suspected unauthorized border crosser. Identified as Antolin Rolando Lopez-Aguilar in a federal affidavit, the man had been hiding but took off running back toward the Nogales point of entry, “in an apparent effort to avoid apprehension,” the affidavit states.
Instead of pursuing Lopez-Aguilar on foot, Bowen chased after him in his federal vehicle, known as a “Kilo Unit” in Border Patrol lingo. As caught on camera, Bowen maneuvered “the front grille of the truck directly behind Lopez-Aguilar,” according to the affidavit. With the F-150 bearing down on him, Lopez-Aguilar reached back “to ‘push off’ of the hood” before Bowen “accelerated the… Kilo Unit directly into the back of Lopez-Aguilar’s body, knocking Lopez-Aguilar to the ground,” the document states. The Ford’s tires came to a full stop “within inches of running Lopez-Aguilar over where he lay on the ground.”
Bowen, now 39, was indicted in May 2018, on two counts — one, a civil rights crime, for what prosecutors call Bowen’s choice to use “deadly force against a person who was running away from him and posed no threat,” and the other, an obstruction charge, for his alleged effort to “cover up his crime.” Bowen has pleaded not guilty to both counts. (Lopez-Aguilar was scraped up, but not seriously injured according to court documents, and reportedly sentenced to 30 days for the misdemeanor offense of illegal entry into the United States.)
PD James and cat
Bowen’s trial is due to begin in August. But the case is already shining a spotlight on a troubled culture at Border Patrol, the law enforcement arm of Customs and Border Protection, at a moment when both agencies have been grappling with a surge in migrants, and faced allegations of widespread wrongdoing, ranging from physical and sexual abuse of minors to housing migrants in substandard shelters, including one likened to “a human dog pound.”
Read the rest at Rolling Stone.
At The Washington Post, David Von Drehle examines the differential treatment given to rich men in the U.S. justice system: Jeffrey Epstein’s scandal of secrecy points to a creeping rot in the American justice system.
When rich people are credibly accused of crimes, does the public have a right to know? Should multimillionaires be allowed to silence their accusers with cash?
According to superlawyer David Boies, “dozens” of women who could give testimony about being sexually assaulted as girls by mysterious financier Jeffrey Epstein are silenced by settlements they reached with their alleged assailant. The exact number is yet another secret in this least transparent of criminal cases. “Three dozen or eight dozen, I don’t know, but there are dozens,” Boies told me recently. He himself represents two alleged Epstein victims bound by “non-disclosure agreements” (NDAs).
Robert Graves and cats
Because Epstein can afford to buy silence, he may succeed in shuttering the window of accountability pried open in a South Florida court back in February. U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra ruled that federal prosecutors — led by the current labor secretary, Alexander Acosta — broke the law by entering a secret sweetheart deal to allow Epstein to serve a cushy sentence without facing evidence that he assaulted more than 30 underage girls in Palm Beach.
That ruling may prove hollow, however, if the alleged victims are now gagged by their settlements with Epstein. What a galling next chapter that would be in this appalling story.
Epstein, whose enormous and unexplained wealth attracted a circle of friends that included Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, actor Kevin Spacey and Britain’s Prince Andrew, travels from mansion to mansion while poor men accused of lesser crimes rot in prison.
This scandal of secrecy points to a creeping rot in the American justice system. Too many cases involving potential felonies are resolved through civil settlements that include ironclad NDAs. Once the money changes hands, witnesses can no longer testify to crimes; indeed, penalties for telling the truth after a settlement often run to the millions of dollars — ruinous for most crime victims. It’s a short step removed from silencing witnesses with cement shoes.
What else is happening? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a nice weekend!
Tuesday Reads
Posted: August 29, 2017 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Claude Taylor, Donald Trump, Felix Sater, Houston flooding, Hurricane Harvey, Japan, Joe Arpaio, John Bolton, Louise Mensch, North Korea, Trump Russia investigation 112 Comments
Good Morning!!
I feel like a zombie this morning. I’ve been house-sitting for my brother for the past two weeks, and it has been somewhat disorienting. I’m finally going to go back home sometime this afternoon. I guess my state of mind is a combination of being away from home and following the constant breaking news that never seems to end. I don’t even know where to begin today.
You’ve probably already heard the latest news: Hurricane Harvey is still raging; Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio; Trump is on his way to Texas; Multiple Russia stories broke yesterday and over the weekend; North Korea launched a missile that flew over Japan; Trump threatened North Korea again; and multiple Trump advisers have been dissing him.
The remainder of photos in this post are from the Houston disaster.
Links to recent stories in case you missed them:
Hurricane Harvey
Houston Police SWAT officer Daryl Hudeck is captured carrying Catherine Pham and her 13-month-old son Aiden to safety, The Associated Press reported.
New Yorker: Hurricane Harvey and Public and Private Disaster in Houston, by Jia Tolentino.
Washington Post: Harvey takes aim at Louisiana as Trump plans to survey stricken Texas.
Forbes: Hurricane Harvey Greatly Complicates The Government Shutdown Calculation.
Politico: How Washington Made Harvey Worse.
Arpaio
HuffPost: Trump Defends Pardoning Joe Arpaio During Hurricane, Saying He Did It For ‘The Ratings.’
ABC News: Already-pardoned Arpaio asks judge to undo conviction.
Trump/Russia
NBC News: Mueller Team Asking if Trump Tried to Hide Purpose of Trump Tower Meeting.
Washington Post: Top Trump Organization executive asked Putin aide for help on business deal.
New York Times: Trump Associate Boasted That Moscow Business Deal ‘Will Get Donald Elected.’
ABC News: Trump signed ‘letter of intent’ for Russian tower during campaign, lawyer says.
North Korea
CNN: Trump says ‘all options on table’ after North Korea launches missile over Japan.
The Guardian: Trump and Abe vow to increase pressure after North Korea fires missile over Japan.
Advisers Dissing Trump
New York Times: Does Trump Represent U.S. Values? ‘The President Speaks for Himself,’ Tillerson Says.
Bustle: What James Mattis Implied About Trump & His Inability To Inspire Is Unprecedented.
Politico: Trump unusually silent after aides challenge him.
More interesting stories
The Guardian: Lurid Trump allegations made by Louise Mensch and co-writer came from hoaxer.
Harris County Sheriff’s Department’s Richard Wagner is seen rescuing Wilford Martinez from his flooded car along Interstate 610, according to The Associated Press.
Explosive allegations about Donald Trump made by online writers with large followings among Trump critics were based on bogus information from a hoaxer who falsely claimed to work in law enforcement.
Claude Taylor tweeted fake details of criminal inquiries into Trump that were invented by a source whose claim to work for the New York attorney general was not checked, according to emails seen by the Guardian. The allegations were endorsed as authentic and retweeted by his co-writer Louise Mensch.
The source’s false tips included an allegation, which has been aggressively circulated by Mensch and Taylor, that Trump’s inactive fashion model agency is under investigation by New York authorities for possible sex trafficking.
The hoaxer, who fed the information to Taylor by email, said she acted out of frustration over the “dissemination of fake news” by Taylor and Mensch. Their false stories about Trump have included a claim that he was already being replaced as president by Senator Orrin Hatch in a process kept secret from the American public.
“Taylor asked no questions to verify my identity, did no vetting whatsoever, sought no confirmation from a second source – but instead asked leading questions to support his various theories, asking me to verify them,” the source said in an email.
After being approached for comment by the Guardian on Monday, Taylor posted what he described as a “mea culpa” on Twitter. “As a ‘citizen journalist’ I acknowledge my error and do apologize,” he wrote.
Mensch denied using the bogus information and said her allegations about Trump’s model agency came from her own sources. Asked why she had retweeted Taylor’s false posts, Mensch said: “I don’t think anybody can vet anybody else’s sources.”
Read the rest at the Guardian. LOL!
Bloomberg: Trump Punishes Longtime Aide After Angry Phoenix Speech, Sources Say.
Donald Trump was in a bad mood before he emerged for a confrontational speech in Arizona last week.
Marty Malloy on Twitter: “Blessed to be safe and dry with Stewie. Hoping for the same for the people and pets of Houston.”
TV and social media coverage showed that the site of his campaign rally, the Phoenix Convention Center, was less than full. Backstage, waiting in a room with a television monitor, Trump was displeased, one person familiar with the incident said: TV optics and crowd sizes are extremely important to the president.
As his surrogates warmed up the audience, the expanse of shiny concrete eventually filled in with cheering Trump fans. But it was too late for a longtime Trump aide, George Gigicos, the former White House director of advance who had organized the event as a contractor to the Republican National Committee. Trump later had his top security aide, Keith Schiller, inform Gigicos that he’d never manage a Trump rally again, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Gigicos, one of the four longest-serving political aides to the president, declined to comment.
Hahahahahahaha! You may have seen on Twitter that the Trump people may have even advertised on Craigslist for paid actors to come to the rally, and still the space that holds only 5,000 was half-full.
Other sources claimed the ads were fake, but still funny, IMHO.
Sean Illing at Vox: 10 legal experts on why Trump can’t pardon his way out of the Russia investigation.
Last Friday, President Trump pardoned former Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio was convicted in July of criminal contempt after ignoring a court order to cease his signature immigration roundups but hadn’t yet been sentenced. Trump ignored the court’s judgment and ended the case without any formal Justice Department review.
To some, Trump’s decision is a sign that he’s preparing — or at least willing — to pardon people associated with the growing investigation into his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia. Robert Bauer, a law professor at New York University and former White House counsel to President Obama, argued in the Washington Post that the pardon may be a “test run for shutting down the Russia investigation.”
I reached out to 10 legal experts and asked them if the Arpaio decision is a signal of how Trump might seek to undercut the Russia investigation. I also asked what it would mean for the investigation if Trump pardoned key players in the scandal like Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, or Jared Kushner before any of them could be convicted.
Andrew White is seen below helping a terrified neighbor after pulling her and her dog from her home in the upscale River Oaks neighborhood, Getty reported — White was out with his boat as well.
While it’s impossible to predict what Trump will do, nearly all the experts I spoke to agree on one thing: If Trump does use his pardoning powers to thwart the Russia investigation, it’s very likely to backfire.
If someone like Flynn or Kushner were preemptively pardoned, he wouldn’t be able to plead the Fifth Amendment if he were called to testify against Trump. The Fifth Amendment protects citizens against self-incrimination. But if someone has been pardoned, they no longer face the threat of prosecution, and so they can’t use a desire to avoid incriminating themselves as an excuse not to answer a question.
So in addition to potentially obstructing justice, Trump would only leave himself — and his colleagues — more vulnerable if he decided to pardon anyone currently under investigation. Of course, that doesn’t mean he won’t pull the trigger anyway. But he might want to think long and hard about the implications before he does.
Read more at Vox.
Trump biographer Tim O’Brien: Felix Sater Is a Lean, Mean Trump-Russia Machine.
Felix Sater is back, and making it even more difficult for President Donald Trump to write off questions about his ties to Russia.
Among the many characters who have populated Trump’s checkered history in real estate, Sater is the guy with one of the diciest resumes. A career criminal with ties to both organized crime and federal law enforcement, he partnered with Trump for years on a series of high-profile and unsuccessful real estate deals, including the Trump Soho hotel and condominium in Manhattan.
On Monday, the New York Times and the Washington Post disclosed a series of emails involving Sater’s efforts in 2015 and 2016 to help the Trump Organization build a Trump Tower knock-off in Moscow. There’s is a little hitch that makes that noteworthy: Trump was also running for president at the time.
“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote in an email to Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in 2015. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”
According to Bloomberg News, Cohen recently told a congressional committee investigating Trump’s ties to Russia that he debriefed Trump three times about the Moscow deal. But Cohen apparently had a different impression than Sater of the value of the deal, telling congressional investigators that it “was not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.”
Head over to Bloomberg to read the rest.
One more from Politico: Bolton writes in op-ed he can’t get in to see Trump anymore.
A rescue worker carries two dogs to safety after evacuating their family from floodwaters in Houston, Texas.
Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton once enjoyed regular access to President Donald Trump, but can no longer get a hearing with him. “I requested a meeting with him and I was turned down,” Bolton told POLITICO, though he declined to offer further details.
Bolton went public with his complaint in an op-ed published Monday in National Review in which he laid out a blueprint to exit the Iran nuclear deal because he couldn’t deliver it to the president himself….
Bolton said in his op-ed that “staff changes” now prevent him from seeing the president. He wrote that although former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon had asked him to draw up a plan to extricate the United States from the Iran deal in late July, that plan never made it to Trump’s desk after Bannon was fired earlier this month.
Given news reports that the president was reluctant to recertify the nuclear agreement — and that the president asked to see additional options — Bolton is raising an eyebrow about why his plan wasn’t considered.
“The idea was I would go see him and, you know, the timing of the certification decision and Reince Priebus’s firing were not far apart,” he said. Priebus’s replacement as White House chief of staff, John Kelly, has limited the number of visitors to the Oval Office.
Again, LOL!
So . . . what else is happening? What stories are you following today?
Lazy Saturday Reads
Posted: June 17, 2017 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Black Lives Matter, Donald Trump, ignorance, Japan, Philando Castile, police shootings, priming the pump, stupidity, USS Fitzgerald, William Hagerty 43 Comments
Good Morning!!
Seven U.S. Sailors are missing following a collision off the coast of Japan. NBC News: 7 U.S. Sailors Unaccounted for After Navy Destroyer Collides With Ship Off Japan.
The USS Fitzgerald, a 505-foot destroyer, collided with a Philippine container vessel at approximately 2:30 a.m. Saturday local time (1:30 p.m. ET Friday), about 56 nautical miles off Yokosuka, the U.S. 7th Fleet said.
The ship, which had experienced some flooding after the collision, was tugged back to Yokosuka Naval Base, south of Tokyo, early Saturday.
Meanwhile search and rescue efforts by U.S. and Japanese aircraft and boats were underway in the area where the vessels collided.
The U.S. Navy said damaged areas of the ship will also be searched for the seven unaccounted-for sailors after the ship is safely docked.
“Right now we are focused on two things: the safety of the ship and the well-being of the Sailors,” Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said in a statement. “We thank our Japanese partners for their assistance.”
More details from The Washington Post:
The operators of the merchant ship, ACX Crystal, reported all of the 20-member Filipino crew were safe….
The Philippine-flagged Crystal is nearly four times as large as the Fitzgerald, an Aegis guided-missile destroyer. Japanese and U.S. vessels and aircraft fanned out across the scene of the collision, about 12 miles off Japan’s Izu peninsula. The Japanese coast guard led the search teams.
USS Fitzgerald arrives at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo. TORU HANAI / Reuters
Three of the Fitzgerald’s crew, including the destroyer’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, were evacuated from the damaged vessel and are being treated at the U.S. naval hospital at Yokosuka, the home of the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet.
Benson was reported to be in stable condition, while the other two were still having their injuries assessed. The Seventh Fleet had set up an information center for families of sailors serving on the ship.
The USS Dewey, another Navy destroyer and two naval tugboats were at the scene, about 56 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka. Two Japanese coast guard cutters with helicopters were helping with the search.
The Crystal, which is fully loaded with cargo, is bound for Tokyo, according to a website that tracks maritime traffic. Nippon Yusen K.K., the Japanese shipping company that operates the container ship.
The Fitzgerald, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer commissioned in 1995, is part of the Yokosuka-based group that includes the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, but it was operating independently of the carrier when the collision occurred, Flanders said.
It still is not clear how the vessels collided, but one thing we know is that “President” Trump’s unfilled appointments could be a problem for those trying to find the missing sailors and determine the cause of this tragedy. The Guardian reports: USS Fitzgerald collision: Trump criticised for leaving key posts unfilled.
Donald Trump has been criticised for delays in appointing a navy secretary and ambassador to Japan, leaving a communications vacuum as the countries continued their search for seven missing sailors off the east coast of Japan.
The commanding officer of the USS Fitzgerald, Bryce Benson, and two other crew were injured after the vessel collided with a Philippine-registered container ship before dawn on Saturday.
The US has been without an ambassador to Japan since Caroline Kennedy left Tokyo in January.
William Hagerty, nominated but not yet confirmed as Ambassador to Japan
Her successor, the Tennessee businessman William Hagerty, has attended a Senate confirmation hearing but has yet to take up his post.
Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official and co-founder of the McPherson Square Group, a strategic communications firm in Washington, pointed to the absence of an ambassador and navy secretary – two officials who would be expected to take a lead in liaising between the US navy, and Japanese and US government officials during the search.
“The USS Fitzgerald might sink off Japan and the US President can’t call our ambassador or our navy secretary because we have neither,” Friedman said.
Trump’s nominee for US navy secretary, Richard Spencer, has yet to be confirmed by the Senate.
The “president” has been too busy tweeting and raking in money from foreign governments to attend to his constitutional duties. According to Max Boot at Foreign Policy, he is also “proving to be too stupid to be president.”
I’m starting to suspect that Donald Trump may not have been right when he said, “You know, I’m like a smart person.” The evidence continues to mount that he is far from smart — so far, in fact, that he may not be capable of carrying out his duties as president.
There is, for example, the story of how Trump met with the pastors of two major Presbyterian churches in New York. “I did very, very well with evangelicals in the polls,” he bragged. When the pastors told Trump they weren’t evangelicals, he demanded to know, “What are you then?” They told him they were mainline Presbyterians. “But you’re all Christians?” he asked. Yes, they had to assure him, Presbyterians are Christians. The kicker: Trump himself is Presbyterian.
Trump claims he originated the saying “priming the pump.”
Or the story of how Trump asked the editors of the Economist whether they had ever heard of the phrase “priming the pump.” Yes, they assured him, they had. “I haven’t heard it,” Trump continued. “I mean, I just … I came up with it a couple of days ago, and I thought it was good.” The phrase has been in widespread use since at least the 1930s.
Or the story of how, after arriving in Israel from Saudi Arabia, Trump told his hosts, “We just got back from the Middle East.”
These aren’t examples of stupidity, you may object, but of ignorance. This has become a favorite talking point of Trump’s enablers. House Speaker Paul Ryan, for example, excused Trump’s attempts to pressure FBI Director James Comey into dropping a criminal investigation of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on the grounds that “the president’s new at this” and supposedly didn’t realize that he was doing anything wrong. But Trump has been president for nearly five months now, and he has shown no capacity to learn on the job.
More broadly, Trump has had a lifetime — 71 years — and access to America’s finest educational institutions (he’s a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he never tires of reminding us) to learn things. And yet he doesn’t seem to have acquired even the most basic information that a high school student should possess. Recall that Trump said that Frederick Douglass, who died in 1895, was “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.” He also claimed that Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War, “was really angry that he saw what was happening in regard to the Civil War.”
Read the rest at Foreign Policy.
Think Progress on all those emoluments: Trump details how he’s profiting off the presidency.
New financial disclosure forms provide insight into where and how Donald Trump has reaped profits since he launched his bid for the presidency.
The 98-page filing with the Office of Government Ethics, released on Friday afternoon, provides an incomplete snapshot of Trump’s financial picture. But since Trump has broken presidential precedent by refusing to release his taxes, it’s the closest look into his investments the public has gotten so far.
The documents provide financial information for the period of time between last January and this spring — encompassing the lead-up to the presidential election and Trump’s transition into the White House.
Trump’s sprawling business empire is difficult to definitively quantify. However, the filings do show that the properties Trump has visited frequently as president have seen significant gains in income, the D.C. hotel at the center of an ethical controversy has generated millions in revenue, and the royalties for Trump’s books have soared.
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where he spent most of his weekendsimmediately after his inauguration, returned millions more in income after his campaign and subsequent election. Trump reported about $16 million in profits for Mar-a-Lago in his report filed in 2015, about $30 million in his report filed in 2016, and about $37 million in his most recent report.
Trump didn’t hide the fact that his presidency made Mar-a-Lago a more profitable venture for him. The initiation fee for the so-called “Winter White House” doubled to $200,000 — a figure that doesn’t include taxes and $14,000 annual dues — immediately after Trump was inaugurated.
Please click on the link and read the rest.
I’m sure you’ve already heard about this story, but it’s important to take note of it. In Trump’s America, police officer can kill unarmed black people on video and still evade punishment. Slate: Philando Castile’s Killer Acquitted Despite Forensics That Contradicted His Case.
Philando Castile’s killer, police officer Jeromino Yanez, was acquitted of manslaughter and two counts of dangerous discharge of a firearm on Friday. The case of Castile’s shooting last July in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota had sparked mass protests after his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds posted a dramatic and wrenching video of the shooting’s aftermath. The video, taken with Reynolds’ 4-year-old daughter in the car, included footage of Castile lying in a puddle of blood after he was struck five times from seven shots.
Castile had informed the officer that he was carrying a firearm, for which he had a permit. Shortly thereafter, Yanez opened fire. In his opening statement, Yanez’s defense attorney claimed that Castile was holding his gun when he was shot.
Philando Cast
“He has his hand on the gun,” Engh reportedly said during opening arguments. “The next command is, ‘Don’t pull it out.’ … [Yanez] can’t retreat … But for Mr. Castile’s continuous grip on the handgun, we would not be here.”
The prosecution argued that the 32-year-old school cafeteria supervisor with no violent criminal record was reaching for his driver’s license—as Yanez had instructed—and not his gun when he was shot. The forensic evidence and Reynold’s testimony would both seem to back up the prosecution’s account and rebut the defense’s version. Reynolds testified that he was trying to unbuckle his seatbelt so that he could get out his wallet and driver’s license when he was shot. As the Associated Press reported, this was supported by forensics:
Prosecutor Jeff Paulsen highlighted autopsy evidence in his closing argument, reminding the jury of a bullet wound to what would have been Castile’s trigger finger — and that there was no corresponding bullet damage nor wounds in the area of Castile’s right shorts pocket, where he carried his gun. He also cited testimony from first responders who saw Castile’s gun in his pocket as he was loaded onto a backboard.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports: Hours after officer Yanez is found not guilty in fatal shooting of Philando Castile, marchers close I-94.
After 27 hours of deliberation, a jury of seven men and five women reached a verdict in Philando Castile’s death. Eight hours later, after a march in St. Paul, hundreds went on the freeway, where some faced off with police before 18 were arrested.
A jury found St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez not guilty Friday in the fatal shooting of Philando Castile, whose livestreamed death during a traffic stop stunned a nation.
Castile’s family called the decision proof of a dysfunctional criminal justice system, while prosecutors cautioned the public to respect the jury’s verdict “because that is the fundamental premise of the rule of law.”
“I am so disappointed in the state of Minnesota,” Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, said at a news conference shortly after the verdict was read in court about 2:45 p.m. “My son loved this state. He had one tattoo on his body and it was of the Twin Cities — the state of Minnesota with TC on it. My son loved this city and this city killed my son. And the murderer gets away.”
Castile’s girfriend Diamond Reynolds, who videotaped his murder.
Castile was a cafeteria worker who was very popular with the children he served. Twin Cities Pioneer Press: J.J. Hill school’s grief over Philando Castile’s death continues after verdict.
Philando Castile’s death last year rattled the J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School community.
Friday’s verdict acquitting the officer who fired the shots that killed the beloved school cafeteria worker brought no relief to their grief, parents contacted afterward said.
“I’m appalled, unbelievably sickened,” parent Chad Eisen Ramgren said about the verdict.
Castile — called “Mr. Phil” by the students — had worked at J.J. Hill for two years as nutrition services supervisor before he was fatally shot by St. Anthony officer Jeronimo Yanez during a traffic stop on July 6. A vigil and children’s march were held in the days after outside the school where his smile and kindness were recalled….
Families knew Mr. Phil as the man who gave their children high-fives in the lunch line and helped them with their lunch numbers.
More at the link.
I’ll have more links in the comment thread. Please join me in posting your thoughts and links.
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