May 31, 2022

Michael Sussmann found not guilty of lying to FBI in Durham investigation

(CNN)Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI, in the first trial of special counsel John Durham's investigation.

The verdict is a major defeat for Durham and his Justice Department prosecutors, who have spent three years looking for wrongdoing in the Trump-Russia probe. He claimed Sussmann lied during a 2016 meeting in which he passed a tip to the FBI about Donald Trump and Russia.

The Washington, DC, federal jury deliberated for six hours over two days before reaching its verdict.

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Trump has treated Durham's probe as a political weapon, stoking excitement in the right-wing ecosystem that Durham will deliver Watergate-caliber indictments against Clinton loyalists and the "deep state" government agents who supposedly conspired against him. He has even suggested that Sussmann's and other Democrats' conduct should be "punishable by death."

(Read More) https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/31/politics/sussmann-verdict/index.html

May 27, 2022

Even crazy Florida changed their gun laws after the school massacre in Parkland, why can't Texas?

After the shooting at MSD, all the repubs in FL including Sick Rick Scott voted yes! They raised the age to 21 and created red flag laws and there were ZERO repercussions for the repub politicians because of it - they didn't lose voters, they held on to their power (we are still a disgustingly red state) and even the NRA never came after them. So what are you afraid of, Texas? Just do it already!

May 25, 2022

After getting booted, Beto went outside and kept going

Video from twitter (takes a minute to load)

https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1529531704695742465

May 23, 2022

Putin Survived Assassination Attempt Two Months Ago, Ukraine Official Says

(Newsweek) Russian President Vladimir Putin survived an assassination attempt two months ago, just after he announced the invasion of Ukraine, the country's chief spy has claimed.

Ukraine's Chief of Defence Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov claimed Putin was attacked in an "unsuccessful attempt" to kill him around two months ago, when he was in the Caucasus, an area comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia.

"Putin was assassinated...," Budanov told Ukrainian Pravda. "He was even attacked in the line of, as they say, representatives of the Caucasus not so long ago," he added. "This is non-public information. Absolutely unsuccessful attempt, but it really took place...It was about two months ago."

"Once again, he was unsuccessful. There is no publicity about this event, but it took place," Budanov said.

https://www.newsweek.com/putin-survived-assassination-attempt-two-months-ago-ukraine-official-says-1709096

May 19, 2022

Netflix's The G Word with Adam Conover Shows the Best and Worst of Government

* So my daughter wanted me to watch this show with her (6 episodes in the series) and boy am I glad I did. I enjoyed it, and learned a thing or two....

A recent tweet plaintively asked, “Couldn’t we get a Schoolhouse Rock for grown-ups?” A new series on Netflix called “The G Word” is pretty close. It doesn’t have singing and dancing animated legislative proposals and founding fathers, but it does have “investigative comedian” Adam Conover (“Adam Ruins Everything”) to keep things lively. And it has a producer who adds credibility by virtue of his extensive experience—including serving as the junior Senator from Illinois and two terms as President of the United States—Barack Obama, making a charming cameo in episode one, gamely trying to fill out his income tax forms. The series is also based in part on an excellent, if terrifying, book by The Big Short and Moneyball author Michael Lewis (The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy), an expert at putting the pill of math homework in the applesauce of entertainment.

(Read More) https://www.rogerebert.com/streaming/adam-conover-the-g-word-netflix-tv-review-2022

(Video Clip)

May 5, 2022

5 Ways To Protect Abortion Rights If The Supreme Court Overturns Roe

(HuffPost)

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“Right now is a moment when people are shocked, grieving and angry,” Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the progressive organizing group Indivisible, told HuffPost. “We want to be sure that as part of processing, folks understand where and how they can fight back ― and where they can have an impact on what is happening, whether that is at the state level, at the electoral level, or in their community.”

Greenberg can speak to this with expertise because that’s roughly what happened after the election of President Donald Trump in November 2016, when Indivisible helped to lead a backlash that defeated many of Trump’s initiatives and eventually turned control of Congress and the White House back to the Democrats.

So what are the practical, concrete objectives now? Is there a way to protect abortion rights, at least for some people, when the Supreme Court has taken away the federal guarantee and there are no short-term prospects for changing its membership? The answer is yes, there are things that can be done. Here are a few:

1. Pass A Federal Law Codifying Roe

2. Change Laws, Win Elections In The States

3. Support Abortion Funds And Similar Nonprofits

4. Make More Use Of Executive Authority

5. Change The Supreme Court’s Composition


(Read More) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/protect-abortion-rights-supreme-court-roe_n_6272cac3e4b046ad0d772283

April 30, 2022

Why Isn't Anyone Around Here Doing Anything About Leonard Peltier?

(HuffPost) Once upon a time, the U.S. government threatened vulnerable people, coerced witnesses into lying, and hid key evidence in a court case in order to put a Native American rights activist in prison for life. This is the story of Leonard Peltier, who’s been in prison since 1977 without any proof that he committed a crime. Think of him as America’s longest serving political prisoner: a fall guy whom the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office desperately needed after it failed to figure out who murdered two FBI agents in a 1975 shootout on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

There’s much more to this story, of course. The blatant 1970s-era racism against Indigenous people. The reality that the FBI was at least partly responsible for the deadly shootout that day. The U.S. government officials who have since admitted how flawed Peltier’s trial was and called for his release. The decades of protests by Native groups, celebrities, politicians and human rights leaders including Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Coretta Scott King and Amnesty International, an organization typically focused on political prisoners in other countries.

Books have been written. Movies have been made. But really, today, the story is simple: There is an ailing 77-year-old Indigenous man who has been in prison for 46 years who never should have been there in the first place. Why is he still there? I’ve been trying to figure this out for months. It’s two things.

The main reason is that the FBI doesn’t want him out. They told me so — even when I didn’t ask them! That was VERY WEIRD. The unsolicited statement they sent me was also full of misinformation, which tells me their plan is to keep recycling a flimsy, face-saving argument for keeping Peltier in prison until he dies. The other reason is that many people in Congress simply don’t know who he is. Peltier has been in prison longer than some of them have been alive, and certainly longer than their political careers. (Read More)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/leonard-peltier-biden-clemency_n_626acdede4b050c90f3dc79b

April 22, 2022

Trump says he'd rather be 'a dictator' than 'a dumb person'

after bragging about the cognitive test he took in 2018

(Business Insider) Former President Donald Trump on Thursday joked about being depicted as "a dictator" by the press, which he assumed was the result of the cognitive test he has repeatedly bragged about passing in 2018.

"Which would you rather be, a dumb person or a dictator?" Trump said Thursday night at the Heritage Foundation's annual leadership conference in Florida at the Ritz-Carlton resort on Amelia Island.

"Perhaps a dictator would be better," he continued. "I don't want to be a dumb person."


*Too late for that you moron.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-rather-be-a-dictator-than-a-dumb-person-video-2022-4

April 22, 2022

Why Is a Trumpy Cable Network Poaching All of Hallmark's Biggest Stars?

(Daily Beast) It’s a sentence that would have blown minds in the ’90s: Full House star Candace Cameron Bure is now embroiled in a quest to build the TV empire of former President Donald Trump’s dreams. Since her ABC sitcom days, the erstwhile D.J. Tanner has become something of an “it” girl on the Hallmark Channel; since 2008, she’s starred in dozens of titles for the cabler. On Tuesday, however, she announced her impending move to GAC Family—a Hallmark competitor funded by a group of investors with ties to the former president. Among the group’s previous reported pursuits? Assembling a far-right Fox News rival.

Last summer, Thomas Hicks and his private equity firm, Hicks Equity Partners, led an investor group that purchased cable networks Great American Country and Ride TV. The former became GAC Family; the latter, once a 24-hour equestrian network, is now GAC Living. In 2020, however, Hicks Equity reportedly had its eye on a different corner of the media landscape. First the group tried to buy out the Trump-friendly One American News Network (OANN), and later that year they eyed Newsmax TV.

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Rumors that Donald Trump wanted his own entertainment behemoth to rival Rupert Murdoch and Fox swirled from at least the moment he took office. In November 2020, days after the presidential election, the Wall Street Journal reported that sources claimed Hicks Equity had begun to explore “putting together a streaming service that would challenge Fox from the right”—a quest the paper described as a “longshot” based on the networks’ viewership.

Hicks’ eldest son, Thomas “Tommy” Hicks Jr., is co-chair of the Republican National committee, longtime family friend of the Trumps, and Donald Trump Jr.’s hunting buddy. Beyond his personal ties to the Trump family, Hicks Jr. also served as national finance co-chair for the Trump campaign and chaired the pro-Trump groups America First Policies and America First Action. BuzzFeed reports he raised $75 million in his first two years alone.

The news arm the Hicks group was trying to build, the Journal reported at the time, was part of a larger vision.

(Read More - Daily Beast via Yahoo) https://news.yahoo.com/why-trumpy-cable-network-poaching-091129630.html

April 15, 2022

Botanists rediscovered a rare tropical flower thought to be extinct for 36 years

(CNN) A rare blazing orange wildflower that was thought to be extinct for 36 years was rediscovered in South America.

The wildflower Gasteranthus extinctus has only been spotted in Ecuador's cloud forest and was last documented in 1985, according to a new study in the journal PhytoKeys. The researchers saw a dim future for the flower, so they named it "extinctus" because they believed it would soon die out, said coauthor Dawson White, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Most of the cloud forest suffered deforestation in the years that followed. The habitat loss was thought to have killed off dozens of species, White said.

Researchers decided to take another look in western Ecuador in 2021 to see if there were any patches of forest left and to search for the species that had lived there. Within days, the flower was found, White said. "It was total elation because Gasteranthus extinctus is a symbol of these unique forests," White said.

(CNN link to article and photos of flower) https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/15/world/extinct-flower-ecuador-scn/index.html