Ramping up

“At the President’s direction and Secretary Austin’s recommendation, the Department of Defense will reposition certain Europe-based units further east, forward deploy additional U.S.-based units to Europe, and maintain the heightened state of readiness of response forces to meet these commitments,” a senior administration official said in a statement to The Hill. he troops will be deployed to Germany and Poland.

[...]

[T]he troops will be deployed to Germany and Poland.

[...]

“These forces are not going to fight in Ukraine. They are not permanent moves. They respond to current conditions,” the official added.
  The Hill

Yeah, they're going to be close at hand and PREPARED to fight in Ukraine.

Russia has amassed upward of 100,000 troops near its border with Ukraine, and the Biden administration is now warning that a military incursion of Ukraine is imminent.

Some speculate after the Olympics in order not to prejudice judges against Russian athletes.

JFC

UPDATE:

Also at that meeting...

[Ryan Kelley, a Republican candidate for governor,] told the crowd in the video that "If you see something you don't like happening with the machines, if you see something going on, unplug it from the wall."

  Business Insider

WTF? Better call a lawyer immediately after, because you're going to need one.

Post-racial America

A growing number of historically Black colleges and universities have had to lock down or postpone classes due to bomb threats on the first day of Black History Month.

At least 13 HBCUs reported bomb threats Tuesday. At least one of them, Howard University, also received a bomb threat Monday.

  CNN

I hope we get to see some of this

Manchin: A little good news

NY AG going deep

I wonder what info she got that led her there.  Unless she found some bribery going on, which seems very likely.

And I have no doubt that what's going on in the AG's office is what's driving Trump to rally his supporters to take to the streets in his defense if the authorities "do anything wrong or illegal."

America's inexorable march toward authoritarianism

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

Trump's involvement in the seizure of voting machines scheme

The New York Times, citing three unidentified sources, reported that Trump ordered his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in December 2020 to ask if it could legally take possession of voting machines in crucial swing states.

Giuliani reportedly placed a call to Acting Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli to relay the president’s request. But, according to the Times, Cuccinelli told Giuliani that he did not have the power to examine or take possession of the voting machines.

The request came after Trump declined to use the Pentagon to seize the voting machines, an idea that was floated by his team of outside advisers, the Times reported.

  The Hill

Come on. He didn't decline. Somebody told him he couldn't do that.

Trump also reportedly brought up potentially using the Department of Justice to take possession of voting machines. According to the Times, the president raised the prospect during a meeting with then-Attorney General Bill Barr in the Oval Office, a gathering that took place not long before Giuliani called Cuccinelli.

See what I mean? He was asking everybody to do it.

Last month, Politico reported on a draft executive order that sought to order the Defense secretary to take possession of voting machines, and appoint a special counsel to investigate the 2020 election.

And on Monday, CNN reported that advisers to Trump drafted another version of an executive order that would have directed DHS to seize voting machines.

Three sources told the Times that retired Army Col. Phil Waldron conceived the idea to order federal agencies, like the military or DHS, to seize voting machines. Waldron reportedly went to former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn with his idea.

Doesn't really matter who conceived the idea. Trump was the one pushing it.

Trump also tried to encourage state lawmakers in key battleground states — including Michigan and Pennsylvania — to uti.lize law enforcement agencies and seize voting machines, according to the Times. The state lawmakers, however, would not get on board with the effort.

He should have asked Erik Prince. (And for all I know, maybe he did.)

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

UPDATE:

Yet another hazard from Covid

The vast amount of waste accumulated as part of efforts to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic poses a threat to human and environmental health, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.

Discarded syringes, used test kits and old vaccine bottles have piled up to create tens of thousands of tonnes of medical waste, putting a huge strain on healthcare waste management systems, the United Nations health agency said in a new report on Tuesday.

[...]

The discarded material poses a potential hazard to health workers to burns, who are exposed to needle-stick injuries and disease-causing germs, as well as communities close to poorly-managed landfills, who can be affected through contaminated air from burning waste, poor water quality or disease-carrying pests.

[...]

The UN health body called for reform and additional investment, including through the reduction in the use of packaging, using PPE more rationally and investing in non-burn waste treatment technology.

  alJazeera

Aphids also die from an accumulation of their own waste, but at least they're not killing everything else around them in the bargain.

Trump's attempts to keep records from Congress

This is what happens when you're too lazy or entitled to destroy your own papers.

After a process that reached the supreme court, the [National] Archives gave more than 700 documents concerning the Capitol attack to the House committee last month.

[...]

In a statement, the Archives said: “Some of the Trump presidential records received by the National Archives and Records Administration included paper records that had been torn up by former president Trump. “These were turned over to the National Archives at the end of the Trump administration, along with a number of torn-up records that had not been reconstructed by the White House. The Presidential Records Act requires that all records created by presidents be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administrations.” The Archives did not say how it knew Trump had torn the records but his habit of tearing up documents has been widely reported.

  Guardian

He should have eaten them.

In 2018, Politico spoke to Solomon Lartey, a records management analyst who spent time “armed with rolls of clear Scotch tape … sft[ing] through large piles of paper and put[ting] them back together … ‘like a jigsaw puzzle’.”

Lartey and another staffer who taped records were fired by the White House that year, they said summarily.

Lartey said: “They told [Trump] to stop doing it. He didn’t want to stop.”

[...]

Speaking to the Washington Post, Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor, said destroying White House documents “could be a crime under several statutes that make it a crime to destroy government property if that was the intent of the defendant.

“A president does not own the records generated by his own administration. The definition of presidential records is broad. Trump’s own notes to himself could qualify and destroying them could be the criminal destruction of government property.”

The least of his crimes while in office.

For future researchers, if we have a future, this will be a funny find. Four years of historical records will be taped together.

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