Dear Madeleine, Better not write that book

Why won't you take a picture with Tiffany?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Still another GOP Congresscritter bowing out

Illinois Republican John Shimkus announced Friday he won't seek reelection to the House next year.

The 12-term congressman, who is a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, told KMOX-AM in St. Louis that he would retire at the end of his term.

[...]

Illinois' 15th Congressional District is heavily Republican: President Donald Trump won 70 percent in the district in 2016. But Shimkus' decision to retire is another sign that Republicans see a difficult climb back to the majority in next year's elections.

  Politico

Another day....

....you guessed it .... another mass killing.

UPDATE 9/1:

His followers don't care about details

Did you know we're "energy independent"?

I guess we can stop fighting wars in the Middle East now.

Yeah.  Respected. 

Did you ever imagine we'd have a president who publicly called people names like a nasty little schoolboy?

Jesus wept.

Border "security"

August 25 2019, 10:00 a.m. ON THE SOUTHWESTERN END of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s reservation, roughly 1 mile from a barbed-wire barricade marking Arizona’s border with the Mexican state of Sonora, Ofelia Rivas leads me to the base of a hill overlooking her home. A U.S. Border Patrol truck is parked roughly 200 yards upslope. A small black mast mounted with cameras and sensors is positioned on a trailer hitched to the truck. For Rivas, the Border Patrol’s monitoring of the reservation has been a grim aspect of everyday life. And that surveillance is about to become far more intrusive.

[...]

U.S. Customs and Border Protection will soon construct a 160-foot surveillance tower capable of continuously monitoring every person and vehicle within a radius of up to 7.5 miles. The tower will be outfitted with high-definition cameras with night vision, thermal sensors, and ground-sweeping radar, all of which will feed real-time data to Border Patrol agents at a central operating station in Ajo, Arizona. The system will store an archive with the ability to rewind and track individuals’ movements across time — an ability known as “wide-area persistent surveillance.”

[...]

CBP plans 10 of these towers across the Tohono O’odham reservation, which spans an area roughly the size of Connecticut. Two will be located near residential areas, including Rivas’s neighborhood, which is home to about 50 people.

[...]

“Now we won’t be able to go anywhere near here without the big U.S.-Israeli eyes monitoring us, watching our every move,” [Rivas] says.

[...]

The towers on Tohono O’odham land are part of a surge in wide-area persistent surveillance systems across the borderlands. Elbit Systems of America has already built 55 integrated fixed towers in southern Arizona, which company executives say cover 200 linear miles. According to information provided by a CBP spokesperson, the agency has also deployed 368 smaller surveillance towers, known as RVSS towers, in areas ranging from south of San Diego to the Rio Grande Valley, as well as along parts of the U.S.-Canadian border.

  The Intercept

In the land of the free.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Treat!

America is broken

As the president’s top aides prepared for a high-stakes meeting on the future of Afghanistan earlier this month, one senior official was not on the original invite list: national security adviser John Bolton.

[...]

Eventually, Bolton secured a spot at the meeting after one of his aides appealed to White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, according to a U.S. official. During the meeting, Bolton and the president exchanged opposing views over policy options on Afghanistan, U.S. officials said.

[...]

The attendance of the top security aide would normally be critical, but the omission was no mistake, senior U.S. officials said. Bolton, who has long advocated an expansive military presence around the world, has become a staunch internal foe of an emerging peace deal aimed at ending America’s longest war, the officials said.

His opposition to the diplomatic effort in Afghanistan has irritated President Trump, these officials said, and led aides to leave the National Security Council out of sensitive discussions about the agreement.

  WaPo

It's good Trump disagrees with Bolton on the issue, but is this how you handle such a situation? Christ.

The fight over Afghanistan represents just one of several clashes between Bolton and other members of the administration, with several new ones on the horizon.

On Monday, Trump expressed a willingness to a meet with Iran’s president, ruled out any plans for regime change in the country and said discussions were underway to see if other nations could extend a “letter of credit” to bolster Iran’s ailing economy. Bolton for years has spoken in support of regime change in Iran and has pressed for more sanctions even as the risk of military conflict between the two adversaries grows.

[...]

In a recent standoff, Bolton asked for a copy of the draft agreement the United States is trying to strike with the Taliban. But the U.S. envoy leading the negotiations, Zalmay Khalilzad, denied the request, saying Bolton could read the agreement in the presence of a senior official but not leave with it in hand, U.S. officials said.

[...]

On Thursday, Trump said in a Fox News interview that he plans to draw down the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 8,600 and “then we make a determination from there as to what happens.” Bolton is not fighting that partial withdrawal decision, but U.S. officials said he remains deeply opposed to Khalilzad’s emerging deal. The agreement would see the partial removal of U.S. troops in exchange for the Taliban renouncing al-Qaeda and preventing the group from recruiting, fundraising, training and other activities.

And they're going to go for that?

U.S. officials also expect the agreement to advance talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government and an eventual cease-fire that would lead to a full U.S. and NATO withdrawal possibly by the end of next year. They have conceded that thorny questions about a residual U.S. counterterrorism presence remain unresolved. Khalilzad continued negotiations with Afghan and Taliban officials this week, but any agreement will require Trump’s final approval.

[...]

Despite his differences with Trump, [Bolton] has found a way to achieve some of his lifelong goals, defunding various United Nations organizations and ripping up international treaties he views as a constraint on American power, such as the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. He has also had a leading role on Russia policy, holding several meetings with his Russian counterpart Nikolai Patrushev in Moscow and elsewhere.

[...]

Trump is expected to make a decision on the path forward on Afghanistan in the coming days as he aims to fulfill a promise of ending America’s “endless wars.”

We may finally get out of Afghanistan simply because that's the only campaign promise he's able to keep in time for the 2020 election.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump's favorite clowns in the news

Pro-Trump vlogger duo Diamond & Silk are on a legal campaign this week, threatening to sue two bloggers unless they take down unflattering mentions of them.

[...]

The pair’s anonymous lawyer have sent at least two cease-and-desist aimed at stories that mention in Diamond & Silk in connection with racist groups.

One of the targeted blog posts, published on Wonkette, accused the African-American duo of helping to “prop up the most vile white supremacy.” Diamond and Silk’s mystery legal team wrote that the article “deliberately and maliciously slandered and defamed Diamond and Silk and the Diamond and Silk brand by deliberately and maliciously attaching their name to racist context.”

The letter also includes a warning for Wonkette not to post about the letter: "This notice is not to be made public via online sources or any other sources in any manner.”

  The Daily Beast

Can I get a Jesus eye roll gif?

The duo also sent a letter to Grant Stern, an author and investigative reporter who mentioned in a blog post that the duo had appeared on a neo-Nazi show. The letter Stern received is nearly identical to the one received by Wonkette, and it also demands that Stern take down his story or face legal action.

Stern, who has no plans to take down the mention of Diamond and Silk in his story, pointed out the irony of the free speech activists, who once appeared at a House hearing to complain about tech censorship, threatening him over his post.

And here's Wonkette's response to the cease and desist letter:

That's right. THE Diamond and Silk sent us a cease and desist. And it's just as beautiful as we imagined.

[...]

Everything about this letter is incredible and SUPER LEGALLY BINDING. The fact that it was sent to us via email by "robert," with a lowercase "r" and no last name. The subject line, "Cease and Desist Letter for Defamation of Character and Libeling," is just the tip of the iceberg.

[...]

The first paragraph sets the tone:

[...]

Specifically, they didn't like a few particular excerpts, so we'll just go ahead and reproduce those for you, here.

I"'m getting super tired of Diamond and Silk, especially since at this point they've been running this con long enough for me to accidentally remember BOTH of their real Government names, Lynette Hardaway (Fucking Diamond), and Rochelle Richardson (Goddamn Silk). I have long despised both trolls; I've hated their hair, their animal print, their dumb facial expressions, their jiggin' and jivin', but most of all? I have hated the way they prop up the most vile white supremacy in our government, and it's time to start calling that shit out."

"They are the black faces of White Nationalism."

"... hate them for looking so dumb ... "

[...]

Here in the US of A, we have this little thing called the First Amendment. And because of it, you don't get to sue people for being mean to you. In fact, making fun of assholes is a proud American tradition, much like obesity and electing white supremacists.

[...]

And for public figures, which Diamond and Silk unfortunately and undeniably are, it's a lot harder. Public figures have to show that any actual false statements were made "with actual malice."

[...]

The US Supreme Court has been pretty clear throughout the years that political speech, in particular, receives the most protection. That's because "speech concerning public affairs is more than self-expression; it is the essence of self-government." Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64 74-75 (1964).

[...]

In case you were wondering, writing besmirches and "maliciously attaching their name to racist context" are not causes of action in any of the 50 states. Just FYI.

[...]

[If Diamond & Silk actually sued, discovery] would be LIT.

Not only would we get to explore exactly how Quartz and Cotton-Poly Blend prop up white nationalism, we'd get to ask them why they think our articles are false and what kind of sketchy sources they get their money from.

ALLEGEDLY. Not that in any way we'd suggest that Diamond and Silk might have any sources of income they wouldn't want us to know about. Perish THAT thought.

  Wonkette

Never mind the mismatched singular noun/plural verb problem, I like how they capitalized untruthful and deceptive in their opening sentence, and all the other misplaced capitals in their closing:




Is there a Trump school of capitalization all his ass-kissers go to? I know Diamond & Silk don't have German roots.

By the way, Wonkette is an actual lawyer.  (A tediously arrogant one as long as I've known about her, but that's a different story.)

Indeed

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

So now we know what she said

Madeleine Westerhout, who left her White House job suddenly on Thursday as President Trump’s personal assistant, was fired after bragging to reporters that she had a better relationship with Trump than his own daughters, Ivanka and Tiffany Trump, and that the president did not like being in pictures with Tiffany because he perceived her as overweight.

[...]

Westerhout also jokingly told the journalists that Trump couldn’t pick Tiffany out of a crowd, said one of the people. “She had a couple drinks and in an uncharacteristically unguarded moment, she opened up to the reporters,” the person said.

[...]

Trump on Friday confirmed that Westerhout had been dismissed for talking to reporters about his children, calling the comments "a little bit hurtful."

"It was too bad," Trump told reporters before leaving the White House for Camp David, adding that Westerhout was a "very good person" who performed her job well. "I wished her well."

[...]

Trump said he would speak by phone with Tiffany when he reached Camp David, disputing that he had ever personally disparaged his daughter.

“I love Tiffany,” he said.

  Politico

So, soon we're going to see a picture of Trump with Tiffany, I suppose.



Madeleine Westerhout and Sarah Sanders - literally Trump's water carriers.

UPDATE:  Dear Madeleine, Warning: better hold off on that book...


UPDATE:

Seems like maybe she didn't sign an NDA.  And she said even more.

WTF?

President Trump has tweeted what experts say is almost certainly an image from a classified satellite or drone, showing the aftermath of an accident at an Iranian space facility.

[...]

NPR broke the news of the launch failure on Thursday, using images from commercial satellites that flew over Iran's Imam Khomeini Space Center. Those images showed smoke billowing from the pad. Iran has since acknowledged an accident occurred at the site.

[...]

But the image shown in the president's tweet appears to be of far better quality, says Ankit Panda, an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, who specializes in analyzing satellite imagery. "The resolution is amazingly high," says Panda. "I would think it's probably below well below 20 centimeters, which is much higher than anything I've ever seen."

[...]

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence referred questions about the image to the White House, which declined to comment.

[...]

Panda believes it was most likely taken by a classified U.S. satellite. But Melissa Hanham, deputy director of the Open Nuclear Network at the One Earth Foundation, believes that the resolution is so high, it may be beyond the physical limits at which satellites can operate.

[...]

That could mean it was taken by a drone or spy plane, though such a vehicle would be violating Iranian airspace. Hanham also says that the European company Airbus has been experimenting with drones that fly so high, they are technically outside the atmosphere and thus operating outside national boundaries. But she says she doesn't know whether the U.S. has such a system.

Glare in the center of the image suggests the image in the tweet was itself a photo of a briefing slide. Panda suggests it could have been displayed on a computer screen in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. It's also possible it was a photo of a piece of paper.

Either way, Panda notes that a small redaction in the upper left-hand corner suggests the intelligence community had cleared the image for release by the president.

But both he and Hanham question whether releasing it was a good idea. "You really risk giving away the way you know things," Hanham says. "That allows people to adapt and hide how they carry out illicit activity."

"These are closely held national secrets," Panda adds. "We don't even share a lot of this kind of imagery with our closest allies." In tweeting it out to the world, Trump is letting Iran know exactly what the U.S. is capable of. He's also letting others know as well, Panda says. "The Russians and the Chinese, you're letting them know that these are the kind of things that the United States has the capability of seeing," he says.

  NPR

Whatever happened to...

Once upon a time I read that if there's a photo published in a Trump tweet, it was posted by Dan Scavino because Trump doesn't know how to do that. ??

Scavino wouldn’t have tweeted something like this without authorization.

[...]

And why was the photo released at all? If you’re invested in the idea that he’s playing eight-dimensional chess here, showing the Iranians that we know more about their program than they thought, surely that point could have been made to them privately, in a manner that wouldn’t also reveal to Russia and China just how good our atmospheric observation is.

What happened here?

  Hot Air

To be continued, I'm sure.

Impeach the both of them

The nation’s top law enforcement official plans to spend upward of $30,000 at a hotel the president still owns and profits from for a holiday party, according to a blockbuster scoop from the Washington Post’s Jonathan O’Connell and David Fahrenthold. Attorney General William Barr reportedly wants people to believe he’s doing so not to promote his boss’s business, but because no other event space was available in Washington, DC, on a Sunday night four months down the road.

[...]

The Post says Barr booked a December 8 family holiday party at the Trump International Hotel, and, citing a Justice Department official, reports that “Barr is paying for the event himself..."

[...]

In a statement emailed to Vox, Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), noted how implausible the DOJ’s position is that Barr is essentially being forced to have his holiday party at Trump International because no other space is available in the city.

[...]

The DOJ official told the Post that career ethics officials were consulted, and “they determined that ethics rules did not prohibit him from hosting his annual party at the Trump hotel.” But it’s unclear whether Barr would’ve listened to ethics officials had they reached a different conclusion — during his confirmation hearing in January he refused to commit to following their advice. And since then Barr has behaved more like the president’s fixer than he has an independent arbiter of the law.

[...]

This is not the first time controversy has swirled around Barr’s trips to Trump International. In May, Barr was photographed dining there on the same night the hotel hosted a fundraiser for a pro-Trump super PAC.

[...]

Not only do people who spend money at Trump’s hotel directly line the president’s pockets, creating potential conflicts of interest that the Constitution’s emoluments clause aims to prevent, but by patronizing the president’s hotel, Barr provides free promotion for Trump’s business.

  Vox

So great to have an independent judiciary.

Barr — who also served as attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration — has pretended to be painfully ignorant about Trump’s conflicts of interest. It’s worth recalling that at his confirmation hearing in January he pretended to be unaware of what the “emoluments clause” even is.

But, as the Post reports, Barr has apparently learned about emoluments in the meantime, because when he’s not spending money at the Trump Hotel, he’s defending the president’s conflicts of interest in federal court:

Barr’s decision to book the Trump hotel is noteworthy, in particular, because Justice Department attorneys are defending the president’s business in court. Trump’s D.C. hotel has hosted a number of foreign governments as clients, business that has generated two lawsuits, one from the attorneys general of Maryland and D.C. and the other from about 200 Democratic members of Congress.

Both cases are being considered in federal court, and the Justice Department is defending the president’s position that he has not run afoul of the anti-corruption provisions in the Constitution called the domestic and foreign emoluments clauses.

News of Barr’s holiday party comes as the Trump White House makes a push to host next year’s G7 at another property the president still owns and profits from — the Trump National Doral golf resort in Florida.

[...]

In both instances, the quiet part — that spending money at the president’s properties is good because the president profits from it — isn’t quite being said audibly yet. But it’s getting louder.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Drugged to read a speech again

Honestly, he does seem drugged when he's giving a speech that's written for him.

"Military equipment nobody would have even conceived of two years ago."

Jesus.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Just what we need: more economic inequality

The White House is reported to be planning to unilaterally adjust the way capital gains are assessed to benefit the wealthiest Americans. The proposal would adjust capital gains for inflation, reducing taxes disproportionately for the wealthiest households who own most assets by limiting their taxable gains to those above and beyond the inflation rate.

[...]

The plan, which has long been rumored but apparently is now more serious and detailed, is for the administration to change—through regulatory action, not legislation—the definition of capital gains to exclude gains that reflect inflation. This was considered during the administration of George H.W. Bush, but officials then decided that the move would likely not be legal—that the definition of gains in statute is quite clear and does not provide much room for interpretation. The Trump Administration apparently is ignoring this history and plowing ahead.

[...]

To understand [the] argument [for indexing capital gains], imagine that you buy something for $5 million and then 10 years later you sell it for $9 million. Under our tax rules the $4 million profit you made from selling it is a capital gain, which is subject to federal income tax.

However, imagine that the inflation rate during the ten years is 6 percent annually. In this case, when you sell the asset for $9 million, you are only keeping up with inflation. You have not genuinely profited, they argue, when inflation is considered. You cannot buy more with the $9 million in proceeds from the sale than you could buy with $5 million a decade ago. So, the argument for excluding such gains from taxable income might initially seem compelling. But dig a little deeper and the argument falls apart.

[...]

Let’s expand upon the example above: You purchase an asset for $5 million and sell it for $9 million a decade later. Over the same time period, your friend puts $5 million in a savings account that pays an interest rate of roughly 6 percent on average, the same as the rate of inflation. If there was no income tax, both you and your friend would have approximately $9 million at the end of the decade. You would have $4 million in capital gains and your friend would have $4 million in interest. In both cases, you might argue that the income really just reflects inflation and should not be taxed.

In the real world, both types of income are taxed but the interest is taxed more.

[...]

The figures in this table assume that both capital gains and interest are taxed at ordinary income tax rates. In reality, the capital gains in this example would be taxed at lower rates under current law.

[...]

Let’s say you and your friend got together and figured out how you could profit from this mismatch in the tax code. You borrow $5 million from your friend and pay her 6 percent interest, which over a decade comes to $4 million. At the end of the decade you sell the asset for $9 million, meaning your gain of $4 million exactly equals the $4 million in interest you have paid. As has always been the case, you are allowed to deduct the $4 million in interest payments as a business expense. But now, thanks to the Trump administration, you no longer owe income tax on the $4 million in gains because gains would be taxed only to the extent that they exceed inflation.

In fact, you would even be willing to pay your friend a higher interest rate to lure her into the deal, so you effectively split the profits from your tax arbitrage. Thus, you have an incentive to make investments that do not make any sense economically but only become profitable because of inconsistent tax rules.
  ITEP

As Himself famously said, "That makes me smart."

Donald Trump surely remembers a time in the 1980s when the tax code encouraged such inefficient decisions by wealthy investors—the construction of empty buildings and other investments that were profitable only as tax shelters. President Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986 cleared most of those tax shelters away, and Trump testified before members of Congress calling that tax reform a “catastrophe.” In turn, his approach to taxes today is, unfortunately, hardly surprising.

The Trump Administration faces mounting pressure from conservative thinkers and activists — including calls from its own National Economic Council director — to promulgate a U.S. Treasury Department regulation that indexes capital gains for inflation. Proponents of such a move — which is sometimes called “presidential indexation” — make three principal arguments in favor of the proposal: (1) that inflation indexing would be an economic boon; (2) that the President and his Treasury Department have legal authority to implement inflation indexing without further congressional authorization; and (3) that in any event, it is unlikely that anyone would have standing to challenge such an action in court. This Article evaluates the proponents’ three arguments and concludes that all are faulty.

  SSRN (Yale Journal)

Get ready for more legal challenges.  Another reason to pack those courts.  (Sen. Michael Bennett, running for president in 2020, recently said that literally the only thing they're getting done in the Senate is installing federal judges.  Those are the only votes Mitch McConnell will bring to the floor.)

Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Whiney T

And those people are getting fucked by Trump's trade war.  Why is "manufacturers" in parentheses?



How long till somebody fixes that misspelling?  In fact, with the misspelling, he's more accurate:  they are reigning with bad and unfair players.



And how's that working out?

An interesting tactic to reach 0-0 tariffs: instigate tariffs and then match retaliatory tariffs tit for tat until you've destroyed the two largest economies in the world.



No wonder Trump failed at all his business attempts.  He thinks corporations might behave in any other way than to maximize profits for their shareholders.  (And is he inadvertently giving Obama credit there for "saving help" to corporations?)



Let us know when you figure out how to do that, because we're going to have four years worth.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Desperate measures

President Donald Trump has become increasingly rattled over the potential of an economic downturn and is spinning to find victories to sell to voters.

  CNN

Trump is just going to blame any downturn on the Fed and the Democrats. He's already been loading that argument.

[H]is own aides have admitted much of it is because of his trade war with China. Trump refuses to give up on [that] tactic, saying it would make him look weak.

[...]

Trump flashed signs of optimism this week that the trade war could be resolved, saying he's received calls from Chinese officials saying they wanted to restart talks. Though Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin insisted there had been "communication," aides privately conceded the phone calls Trump described didn't happen they way he said they did.

You don't say.

Instead, two officials said Trump was eager to project optimism that might boost markets, and conflated comments from China's vice premier with direct communication from the Chinese.

Were there even any calls?

The economy is flashing warning signs Trump didn't expect, his trade war with China is dragging on months longer than expected yet he refuses to give in and his chief promise to supporters -- that he would build a wall along the southern border -- has gone unfulfilled.

[...]

Trump has recently told aides he would pardon them if they committed illegal acts while fulfilling his demand to build a wall on the southern border by 2020, two officials confirmed to CNN. The Washington Post first reported the pardon comments. While his spokesmen insist he was only kidding, the eyebrow-raising assurances come as Trump has urgently told aides he's serious about finishing the wall -- stressing that it could be key to his reelection.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump's Fox feud continues

You're fired!

President Trump’s personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, whose office sits in front of the Oval Office and who has served as the president’s gatekeeper since Day 1 of his administration, resigned on Thursday, two people familiar with her exit said.

Ms. Westerhout’s abrupt and unexpected departure came after Mr. Trump learned on Thursday that she had indiscreetly shared details about his family and the Oval Office operations she was part of at a recent off-the-record dinner with reporters staying at hotels near Bedminster, N.J., during the president’s working vacation, according to one of the people, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss White House personnel issues.

[...]

Ms. Westerhout, one of the people familiar with her departure said, was now considered a “separated employee” and would not be allowed to return to the White House on Friday.

  NYT

She can write a book.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  What she said.

Ethnic cleansing

The Trump administration has quietly altered its handling of visas granted to immigrants who cooperate with criminal investigations, allowing people to be deported even while they are waiting for their visas.

The change to U visas will make immigrants far less likely to report serious crimes, say immigration attorneys, who argue it also reflects the Trump administration’s efforts to deport as many immigrants as they can from the United States.

“This is going to have a chilling effect,” Eileen Blessinger, a Falls Church, Va.-based immigration attorney told The Hill, because “by applying, you’re essentially reporting yourself to ICE but now there’s a risk that ICE might pick you up.”

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"Broken cameras"

The FBI is examining two broken cameras that were outside the prison cell where disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking and abuse charges.

A law enforcement source told Reuters that officials are reviewing the malfunctioning cameras from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. The cameras were sent to Quantico, Va., the site of a major FBI crime lab that analyzes forensic evidence.

The news comes after a report that at least one camera outside Epstein’s cell had footage that was deemed unusable.

[...]

Epstein was awaiting trial after being accused of sexually trafficking and abusing several underage girls from 2002 to 2005.

[...]

Epstein’s lawyers told U.S. Judge Richard Berman in Manhattan on Tuesday they had doubts about the New York City chief medical examiner’s conclusion.

Questions have arisen over why Epstein, who was found with marks on his neck in July, was not more closely monitored, though the Justice Department says the financier was cleared from suicide watch by a psychologist.

Reports have also surfaced regarding abnormalities in how he was observed, including one report claiming that guards in Epstein’s unit fell asleep and did not check on him during the time when he is believed to have hanged himself.

  The Hill

Two guards asleep and two cameras broken. Nothing to see here.

UPDATE:



UPDATE 1/9/20:



A few too many coincidences.

Organoids

More on that endless loop the universe is on:

For the first time, brain tissue grown in a lab has spontaneously exhibited electrical activity, and it looks startlingly similar to human brain activity. More specifically, it resembles the brain activity of premature babies.

This is a huge discovery that brings on possibilities for studying the early development of brain disorders.

[...]

These lab-grown brains are known as organoids - three-dimensional, miniature, simplified versions of organs grown in a lab for research purposes, such as testing drug responses, or cell development under certain adverse conditions.

  Science Alert

Or creating artificial life or mechanoid soldiers.

"The level of neural activity we are seeing is unprecedented in vitro," says neuroscientist Alysson Muotri from the University of California, San Diego.

"We are one step closer to have a model that can actually generate these early stages of a sophisticated neural network."

Interview with Michael Bennett

This is why the debates are fairly useless: in the little I saw of Michael Bennett, I wasn't impressed. Here's an interview/discussion with him, from which i've come away with a different view:

Say No to Joe

He got the essence right.  That'll be handy when he's making agreements and deals with other countries. 

I'll say it again:  We do not need a Democratic Trump.

Chris Cuomo is going to get nasty tweets and death threats

Looks like Trump got a younger, prettier Sarah Huckabee.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Say No to Joe

I don't even get the point. 

"When Barack and I were elected."  Joe wasn't elected.  Barack was, and Joe was on the wagon.

He sounds like he knows he has no chance at the presidency without pinning himself to Obama. Pathetic.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Natives are not fans

The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) Wednesday formally condemned President Trump in a statement for his “continued use of the name ‘Pocohantas’ as a slur” when referring to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

[...]

Trump earlier this month promised to “revive” the nickname he refers to Warren as, doing so as she climbs in the polls.

[...]

“NCAI condemns the President’s continued use of the name ‘Pocahontas’ as an insult for political gain,” NCAI CEO Kevin Allis said in the statement. “Not only does it disrespect Pocahontas’ legacy and life, it likens her name to a slur.”

[...]

[T]hose terms “dismiss our rightful place as this country’s First Americans, and ignore the immense contributions that tribal nations and peoples have made and continue to make to America.”

  The Hill

Make America Gasp Again

The Trump administration is expected to further ease oversight of the oil and gas industry’s emissions of climate changing greenhouse gases by relaxing regulations around methane – a key gas that impacts global heating.

Oil industry and environmental groups say they expect the Environmental Protection Agency to release a proposal as soon as Thursday that would roll back requirements on detecting and plugging methane leaks at oil and gas facilities.

  The Guardian

Something to celebrate, eh?

The decision rolls back Obama-era regulations and has actually been opposed by some major energy firms who have urged the Trump administration to keep the regulations in place.

[...]

Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases. Pound for pound it’s more destructive to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

A study by the Environmental Defense Fund, advocacy group, has concluded the oil and gas industry is emitting far more of the heat-trapping gas than is reported to the EPA.

Impeach.

Say No to Joe

I repeat:  we do not need a Democratic Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Surprise! He was lying

San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer is disputing President Donald Trump’s comments that Faulconer thanked Trump for his efforts on the border wall during a Tuesday meeting between the two men at the White House.

“The mayor was just up in my office - great guy,” Trump told Sean Hannity. “He came up to thank me for having done the wall because it’s made such a difference. He said it’s like day and night. He said people were flowing across and now nobody can come in.”

  San Diego Tribune

Christ. As if the person he claims said those things wouldn't be able to deny them.

Faulconer’s spokesman Craig Gustafson said the president’s recollection of the meeting is flat wrong.

“That’s not what Mayor Faulconer said,” Gustafson said in an email. “We all know that the president uses his own terminology. But that wasn’t the focus of their conversation.”

the latest euphemism for "the president lies": "the president uses his own terminology."

The mayor was in Washington to lobby for a proposed trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada, and to seek federal help to stop sewage from flowing across the Mexican border onto San Diego beaches.

Faulconer has consistently expressed opposition to Trump, a fellow Republican, on many issues related to immigration and the border, including Trump’s support for an upgraded and expanded wall.

[...]

“The president as an aside asked Mayor Faulconer what he thought about the border, and the mayor’s response is that we welcome federal investment in our land ports of entry,” Gustafson said. “We’re the busiest border crossing in the Western Hemisphere, and federal dollars help us make it easier to trade, cross legally and commute across the border.”

“Mayor Faulconer doesn’t support a wall from sea to shining sea,” he said. “Let’s invest instead on stopping sewage from the Tijuana River Valley.”

[...]

Faulconer also told Trump that the border “does not define San Diego’s relationship with Mexico,” Gustafson said. “Trade does, and that’s why he’s so focused on getting the USMCA trade agreement approved by Congress.”

A pool report issued by the White House after the meeting appears to support Faulconer’s recollection.

You mean, fake news?

The report says the two men discussed the trade agreement, the sewage problem and how San Diego is tackling homelessness. There is no mention of the border wall or immigration.

Imagine that.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Dipshit Don

O'Donnell capitulates

Background

Fox News trying to regain respectability

In the middle of a typically chaotic tweetstorm spurred on by his morning TV viewing habits, the president took aim at Fox News anchor Sandra Smith for having the audacity to bring on the Democratic National Committee’s communications director Xochitl Hinojosa to discuss the upcoming Democratic primary debate.

“Just watched @FoxNews heavily promoting the Democrats through their DNC Communications Director, spewing out whatever she wanted with zero pushback by anchor, @SandraSmithFox,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “Terrible considering that Fox couldn’t even land a debate, the Dems give them NOTHING! @CNN & @MSNBC are all in for the Open Border Socialists (or beyond).”

[...]

“Fox hires ‘give Hillary the questions’ @donnabrazile, Juan Williams and low ratings Shep Smith. HOPELESS & CLUELESS! They should go all the way LEFT and I will still find a way to Win - That’s what I do, Win,” he wrote. “Too Bad!”

The president concluded his online tantrum by complaining that Fox News was “letting millions of GREAT people down” and that he needs to “start looking for a new News Outlet” since the one-time “Fair & Balanced” channel “isn’t working for us anymore!”

Almost immediately after the president’s tweets, Fox News senior political analyst and former news anchor Brit Hume sounded off: “Fox News isn’t supposed to work for you,” he wrote.

[...]

Fox News contributor and radio host Guy Benson essentially repeated Hume’s remarks: “We don’t work for you,” he stated.

  Daily Beast

That'll be real news to a lot of people.

Benson also said that Trump was “working the refs,” agreeing with Axios’ Sara Fischer that Trump was playing to a “fringe culture” of rabid supporters whom the president hopes would help push Fox News to intensify its already largely pro-Trump coverage.

[...]

In recent months, Trump has made it a habit to regularly scorn Fox and make it appear that the network is not sufficiently loyal to him, his administration, or his followers.

Most of these attacks have centered on the so-called “straight news” division or Fox’s liberal commentators.

[...]

[E]arlier this month when Trump trashed Fox’s polling, telling reporters that “Fox has changed” and he’s “not happy with it,” Special Report anchor Bret Baier said on-air, “Fox has not changed. We have a news side and an opinion side. Opinion folks express their opinions. We do polls.”

[...]

[L]ast month, The Daily Beast reported, Trump began grilling his closest loyalists and confidants at the network—including primetime star Sean Hannity—asking them all the same question: “What the hell is going on at Fox?"

[...]

[T[hose inside Fox News actually feel the president’s repeated attacks are extremely helpful, as it allows them to rebut widespread criticism that the network often acts as “state media,” especially in light of a constantly revolving door between Fox and the White House.

“Everybody wins,” one Fox opinion-side staffer told The Daily Beast.

Everybody but the American public.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

2020 Quinnipiac poll

You know how I feel about polls, but ...



Here's 538's pollster rating for Quinnipiac:



Please, people:  Say no to Joe.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Emoluments

[W]e have finally sighted one bedrock principle, one unshakable constant in Trump’s conduct, from which he will never waver.

We’re talking, of course, about Trump’s absolute, unfaltering devotion to using the powers of the presidency to serve his own financial self-interest.

[...]

Trump just disclosed that he’s seriously considering hosting next year’s G-7 gathering at his Doral resort in Florida. Trump extolled his resort for its location (right near the airport!), size (tremendous acreage!) and amenities (great conference rooms!).

Trump gave “a long commercial of sorts for the property,” notes The Post, adding that if he goes through with this plan, he “could personally profit from one of the world’s most prestigious gatherings of foreign leaders.”

[...]

[I]n multiple ways, this constitutes a serious exacerbation of Trump’s self-dealing and profiteering off the presidency. First, this is arguably a more active effort on his part to exploit the presidency to enhance his businesses than many previous such efforts.As president, Trump has visited his resorts and properties scores of times, using the presidency to market and steer attention to them. Republican officials have staged events at them, fully cognizant that this means an appearance by Trump himself is more likely.

In this case, though, Trump will be leveraging the power of the U.S. presidency to draw multiple foreign leaders and their entourages — and the international attention that follows them — to one of his properties.

[...]

“Of all the locations throughout the U.S. where he could hold a conference, there is no reason why this one had to be in the mix,” Bookbinder said. “Doral appears to be struggling. He seems to be looking for ways to use the presidency to help it.”

[...]

He’s unfurling a big middle finger in the face of the underlying reason we have the divestment norm in the first place — so we can be confident the president is making decisions in the public interest, not his own.

[...]

House Democrats should investigate what has gone into this evolving decision. This would help illuminate the degree to which other arms of government — which would presumably be involved in the deliberations — are facilitating Trump’s self-dealing.

  WaPo

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Build that wall

Trump has repeatedly promised to complete 500 miles of fencing by the time voters go to the polls in November 2020, stirring chants of “Finish the Wall!” at his political rallies as he pushes for tighter border controls. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed just about 60 miles of “replacement” barrier during the first 2½ years of Trump’s presidency, all of it in areas that previously had border infrastructure.

[...]

Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules, according to current and former officials involved with the project.

He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers built quickly, those officials said.

  WaPo

The president has told senior aides that a failure to deliver on the signature promise of his 2016 campaign would be a letdown to his supporters and an embarrassing defeat. With the election 14 months away and hundreds of miles of fencing plans still in blueprint form, Trump has held regular White House meetings for progress updates and to hasten the pace, according to several people involved in the discussions.

[...]

Asked for comment, a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Trump is joking when he makes such statements about pardons.

Thus admitting Trump did say it.

And we all know he wasn't joking.



Impeach the motherfucker.

UPDATE:





This isn't the first time he's made false claims about San Diego and the wall.

This should be interesting

UPDATE:  O'Donnell's capitulation: