crickets
crickets's JournalShe did go there.
Someone finally, clearly called out trump as a clear and present danger to our country. Thank you, Hillary Clinton. And thank you, Rachel, for ignoring the 'out of time' signal to ask her about Navalny. The topic desperately needed to be addressed, especially given our government is ignoring it.
I'm on the same page.
Going to read the minimum about today and save any watching for another time. The House is going to vote on the "Delivering for America Act" tomorrow. On Monday, Katie Porter is going clean this man's clock. Louis DeJoy has yet to recognize the world of hurt headed his way.
If the removals were justified, the systemic changes would have gone virtually unnoticed.
There's always going to be a time when machinery or mailboxes wear out and need replacing, there are shifting needs over time as mail use changes, with volume of some types of mail decreasing as others might increase. It's true that sorting equipment and delivery methods change with the times.
Still, if the removals were justified, mail delivery reliability would not have changed, certainly not to this degree.
Heart patients and others around the country wouldn't be scrambling to get medicines locally because the mailed prescriptions they have been able to depend on for years have not arrived. The VA would not have had to find other means to send prescription medications to veterans nationwide now that the Postal Service has broken down and cannot be depended on to deliver on time. Prescription delivery, including for the VA, was fine for decades up until the last weeks and months as the machines were taken out and employee hours were decreased.
Chronic late delivery of prescriptions nationwide, rotting food parcels, dead plants and animals -- this is not normal. This is not the level of service our USPS has provided for us year in and year out over the decades. These are not the results we expect or the results we see when the systems the USPS employees depend on are available and working properly. USPS employees are speaking out who agree and who are angry and disturbed about what is happening.
Our US Postal Service has been deliberately sabotaged.
It's all connected.
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1296472492995948544Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
9h
SUMMARY/ Investigators long thought Trump's pre-election collusion bilateral and binary: either Trump colluded directly with Russia in hacking and propaganda or he was innocent. The SSCI Report reveals the collusion was quadrilateral—a team effort joining UAE, Israel, and Russia.
What a complete and utter mess.
They couldn't screw it up any worse if they tried. Oh, wait...
“The virus doesn’t care what state it’s in — it’s a virus,” she said. “You have to have a standardized national approach, because we are one nation with open borders across our states.”
To Wasserman, the lack of direction and resulting confusion came down to a lack of federal leadership.
“A pandemic that kills the number of nursing home residents that this pandemic has killed requires clear federal direction,” he said.
Yep.
Good for you, Belarus.
Article linked in the replies:
Belarus, explained: How Europe’s last dictator could fall
https://theconversation.com/belarus-explained-how-europes-last-dictator-could-fall-144711
Error 1: Hubris
Holding elections with foregone results is part of the modern autocrat’s playbook. Venezuela’s unpopular authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro claimed 68% of the 2018 presidential vote, a result international observers considered fraudulent. That same year, Russia re-elected Vladimir Putin with 77% of the vote and no real opposition.
Lukashenko has long gotten away with improbably high electoral margins. This time was different because of the grassroots activism that took place ahead of the presidential vote. [snip]
Error 2: Counterproductive violence
Lukashenko conceded nothing. Instead, he called in the riot police.
Interesting article with a fair amount of background information about the situation.
Good for National Butterfly! They were right. nt
https://twitter.com/NatButterflies/status/1296455286539132929@NatButterflies
WE TOLD YOU SO!!! From the beginning, we said this was a Bannon scheme to raise dark money for the administration & help @FisherSandG defraud the government. We are sure there will be more coming out...Just wait!!! Oh, and SUCK IT, @BrianKolfage
😄
Why would anyone attempt to assassinate Navalny? Why now? More from Seth Abramson.
Apologies for length - skip to bold for the gist:
Background:
Alexei Navalny - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Navalny
Oleg Deripaska - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Deripaska, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Deripaska#Navalny_video
Why would Putin (or anyone) possibly attempt to assassinate Navalny? Plenty of political reasons. Why now? The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report that might have something to do with it.
More background on the Navalny tape:
Alexey Navalny is denied access to Oleg Deripaska's ‘yacht tape’ lawsuit
https://meduza.io/en/news/2018/06/18/alexey-navalny-is-denied-access-to-oleg-deripaska-s-yacht-tape-lawsuit
On February 9, Deripaska filed a lawsuit in Ust-Labinsk (where his businesses happen to pay half their national tax debt). Instead of targeting Navalny, however, Deripaska’s lawsuit is against Vashukevich and her apparent spiritual and PR advisor: a man named Alexander Kirillov. Deripaska says they shared his image online without his permission. Deripaska won an injunction that led Russia’s federal censor to ban the sharing of these photos and videos, though Navalny’s video is still accessible on YouTube, where it currently has more than 7.4 million views. Several media outlets and Instagram, however, did agree to remove the content named in Deripaska’s lawsuit.
Link to the video is in the above article. Vid is in Russian; there is a translation app available, but I have not installed it.
Seth Abramson had many thoughts about it on the day the tape dropped.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/961787445971963904.html
(THREAD) BREAKING: The just-released "Navalny Tape" gets us *much* closer to seeing the whole of the Trump-Russia coordination narrative. In this thread I explain how a dozen Trump aides fit into the narrative—with Manafort and Papadopoulos as the stars. Hope you'll pass this on.
1/ The Trump-Russia coordination narrative becomes much less confusing—particularly after today (more on that in a moment)—if you just (a) know all the key players in the narrative, and (b) understand the relatively limited role that nearly all of them except four or five played.
2/ Here are the names to know: Trump, Trump Jr., Kushner, Manafort, Gates, Sessions, Page, Papadopoulos, Clovis, Lewandowski, Hicks, Flynn, Prince, Cohen, Sater, Phares, Gordon, and Bannon. That's 18 names—but most played a relatively small role in the narrative. I'll show you.
[snip LOTS]
15/ At this point we're down to Trump, Don Jr., Kushner, Manafort, Sessions, Page, Papadopoulos, Flynn, Prince, Cohen—10 men. Keep in mind that while a successful criminal conspiracy may be a scheme many are aware of, the number of people carrying out the operation must be small.
16/ Jeff Sessions wasn't as useful as a key operator because of his high profile—but what he *could* do was use his position as a Senator and head of Trump's NatSec team to surreptitiously negotiate sanctions with the Russians on three occasions and then lie about it to Congress.
17/ Here's where we *begin* to approach today's news: the Navalny Tape, fundamentally a story about Manafort and Papadopoulos—one already indicted, one already convicted. During the campaign, Manafort made clear only a "low-level" Trump aide could make direct contact with Russia.
18/ That's why Sessions only met with Russia's ambassador—he had the right cover for such a meet, as a Senator, but wasn't low-profile enough to be in on meetings beyond that. Still, as the Trump-Russia conspiracy was a sanctions-for-aid deal, he *could* work the sanctions angle.
19/ To recap where we're at: the Trump-Russia coordination conspiracy was a straight-up sanctions relief-for-specified/unspecified Russian assistance deal. Russia was able to make contact with Sessions as needed to see where Trump was at—at various points—on the sanctions piece.
[snip LOTS MORE]
97/ Manafort knew Russia's assistance of Trump's campaign would only continue if the Kremlin was certain Trump wasn't wavering in his drop-all-sanctions Russia policy (and indeed, we learned in January 2017 that he remained true to Putin—that *was* his policy on entering office).
98/ Today we got audio and video of Deripaska secretly reporting to the Kremlin on Trump's activities. He claims Manafort never briefed him—we know he's a liar, however, as this video proves in general terms (he said he had nothing to do with any of this).
99/ The early-August video was taken a month after Manafort offered Deripaska briefings—enough time for one to occur. A week later, Trump got his first intel briefing confirming Russian crimes against America.
Three weeks after, he had Sessions negotiate sanctions with Kislyak.
100/ By September's end, Manafort and Page were gone, and Papadopoulos was on ice—brought back in the last week of the campaign just to keep him close and (per Papadopoulos) offer him a job, likely to ensure he wouldn't snitch. It was OK letting them go—the deal was already done.
CONCLUSION/ Manafort, Papadopoulos, Page—perfect patsies, and the key figures in the pre-election Trump-Russia coordination conspiracy. All charged or cooperating.
[snip]
PS5/ Trump isn't worried—per friends—Manafort will flip, so he never attacks him. Papadopoulos *already* flipped, so there's no purpose in Trump attacking him (except to lie and say he never spoke to him).Page is still in the wind—which is why Nunes targeted Page's FISA warrant.
Again, apologies for length. The original is much longer, but well worth the read.
TLDR: SSCI report may have prompted someone, perhaps Putin, to attend to a loose end.
There's some good reading here!
Kolfage’s GoFundMe page touched a nerve amongst Trump supporters during the President’s government shutdown and while nearly suspended, was subjected to a mass opt-out.
“That’s why I’m sending it to you. I back what’s right,” said the anonymous source who elaborated in a phone call about the concern that the money wasn’t being spent on a wall. “That money was supposed to be for the wall. I hate fuckers that take money under false pretense. Kolfage is using the wall money to fly private, range rovers boats, etc…” [snip]
The Post reports that Kolfage would not comment today either and that the ire of his followers is rising after numerous blown dates to begin constructing his wall. Kolfage’s project only became a possibility only after estranged former White House senior advisor Steve Bannon, Kobach and ex-Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke got involved.
In early 2017, Kris Kobach became best known as the person whom President Trump appointed to lead a dubious voter fraud commission that made no significant findings. He is the former Kansas Secretary of State. Kobach got held in contempt of a federal court for being an atrocious lawyer in early 2018. The Kansas Supreme Court ordered a grand jury to investigate his handling of voter registration in 2016 after a citizen-initiated process. He then won the GOP gubernatorial nomination by a razor-thin margin in a primary that his Republican opponent openly accused him of cheating to win the recount, only to lose the general election by 5-points. Kansas political experts call Kobach “Democrats best hope” to win an open U.S. Senate seat next year.
Highly recommend reading the rest. It's tasty.
A tiny bit awkward at first, but I thought it was poignant in a way.
It shows what we are going through right now, what we're missing. It also showed a great example of self discipline. That's a good thing. The heck with the right wingers who can't understand that. They don't really matter.
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