Minnesota Nice Vs. Minneapolis Deplorables
By Andy Bloom
Newsmax
October 14, 2019
Anyone who has spent significant time in Minnesota is familiar with the term “Minnesota Nice.” The friendliness demonstrated by Minnesotans is quite real. Depending on where you sat last week, you either saw Minnesota Nice at its best or the Minneapolis deplorables at their worst.
Trump’s campaign believes it has a chance to take Minnesota’s ten electoral votes in 2020. Trump won 80 of the 87 counties in the state in 2016, yet lost Minnesota by less than 44,000 votes (out of over 2.9 million cast). However, he lost Hennepin and Ramsey counties (Minneapolis and St. Paul, respectively) by 243,000 votes. Trump must narrow losses in the Twin Cities to win Minnesota in 2020.
Therefore, Trump’s first “Keep America Great” rally since the Democrats’ on-going impeachment efforts turned to the Ukraine came to Minneapolis. The rally was held downtown at the Target Center in the heart of the Congressional District represented by Ilhan Omar.
The day Trump’s Target Center rally was announced, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey made it clear that the president wasn’t welcome in the city. Frey acknowledged there was no legal way to prevent the Trump rally from taking place. Unable to stop the gathering, Frey and the DFL (Democrat Farm Labor Party) did everything possible to inconvenience the campaign.
In advance of the rally, Frey sent the Trump campaign a $530,000 security bill. In 2009, the then Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan told The Saint Paul Pioneer Press that security costs would top $20,000 for President Obama’s Target Center rally. The security bills for the two previous in-state Trump rallies averaged about $75,000. Frey was obviously playing games with the $530,000 security bill, and the campaign scoffed.
Simultaneously, the rules changed to prevent police officers from wearing their uniforms at political events unless they were on duty. Previously there had been no restrictions. In response, the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis sold red “Cops for Trump” t-shirts. Union President Bob Kroll announced that 5,000 had been sold. The red shirts had a noticeable presence inside the arena. Trump made it a point to voice his support for law enforcement officers. He also brought Kroll and off-duty Minneapolis police officers on stage.
The security bill and changing the police rules fueled a Twitter fight between Trump and Frey. Twitter is Trump’s standard operating procedure. I am not Donald Trump, and I did not win the White House. Still, I don't see the upside of elevating the Mayor of Minneapolis to the level of the President of the United States.
Inside an estimated 20,000 Trump fans packed the Target Center and demonstrated what "Minnesota Nice" means. For an hour and forty minutes, the atmosphere was as electric as election-day eve. The occasional protestor was ushered out quickly and without incident.
Trump's comments were a tour de force covering Mayor Frey, Ilhan Omar, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, FBI agents Stzrok and Page, Nancy Pelosi, Congressional Democrats, impeachment, and the media — with shoutouts to virtually every Fox News host, and introducing Minnesota's Mike "My Pillow" Lindell. He defended his actions in the Middle East, Ukraine, and the economy. He talked about the wall and immigration, including legal immigration focusing on Somalians, a large number of whom have immigrated to Minnesota. Those comments created moments of discomfort for me — there is a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants.
Hillary Clinton dubbed Trump supporters “a basketful of deplorables.” I’m at a loss for words to describe roughly 1,000 protestors roaming the cold, rainy night outside of the Target Center. Antifa and Black Lives Matter had a noticeable presence. Signs with words I can’t use here were plentiful. Protesters gathered against the police lines waving middle-fingers, screaming obscenities, and throwing everything from urine-filled bottles to burning MAGA hats.
Over 20,000 additional Trump supporters who did not get in the Target Center were watching the rally on the big screens outside. Protesters reacted violently to Trump's speech and supporters. MAGA hats were frequently taken or knocked off supporters' heads. Several Trump fans were spat on. A Fox News reporter was pushed, shoved, and cursed at repeatedly. Ultimately, most of the supporters sought shelter in the skyways.
A series of skyways connect most downtown buildings in Minneapolis. It is possible to walk from one side of the city to the other without going outdoors via the skyways. They are necessary for a city that can go weeks without temperatures above zero, months below freezing, and mountains of snow piled up on corners.
The skyways are critical to the Trump rally because they are how most people leaving the Target Center rally exited. Had 20,000 amped-up Trump supporters emptied to the streets with nearly 1,000 equally hyped protesters, it might have gotten ugly.
I can’t think of a similar example when conservative protesters intruded violently into a liberal politician's event. Aren’t conservatives supposedly intolerant? If you saw what happened during and after Donald Trump’s rally in Minneapolis last Thursday, you would have no doubt that the Trump “resistance” composes the real deplorables.
Sunday, October 20, 2019
TULSI TAKES ON THE QUEEN OF WARMONGERS
Tulsi Gabbard calls Hillary Clinton the ‘embodiment of corruption’
By Laura Italiano
New York Post
October 18, 2019
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard blasted Hillary Clinton Friday — calling the former first lady “the queen of warmongers” after Clinton implied the Russians were “grooming” the Hawaii congresswoman as an asset.
“Thank you @HillaryClinton,” tweeted Gabbard, who is vying to win the Democratic primary.
“You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.”
Gabbard’s red-hot tweet came in response to Clinton earlier Friday implying that Russians were “grooming” the Hawaii congresswoman to give up her Democratic primary bid and run for president as a third-party candidate.
Clinton did not accuse Gabbard by name on Friday, while appearing on former President Obama aide David Plouffe’s “Campaign HQ” podcast. But the former first lady said she believed Russia has “got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.
“She’s the favorite of the Russians,” Clinton said “They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”
Plouffe ended the podcast with a reference to Clinton’s “belief that Tulsi Gabbard is going to be a third-party candidate propped up by Trump and the Russians — ” and Clinton did not contradict him.
By Laura Italiano
New York Post
October 18, 2019
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard blasted Hillary Clinton Friday — calling the former first lady “the queen of warmongers” after Clinton implied the Russians were “grooming” the Hawaii congresswoman as an asset.
“Thank you @HillaryClinton,” tweeted Gabbard, who is vying to win the Democratic primary.
“You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.”
Gabbard’s red-hot tweet came in response to Clinton earlier Friday implying that Russians were “grooming” the Hawaii congresswoman to give up her Democratic primary bid and run for president as a third-party candidate.
Clinton did not accuse Gabbard by name on Friday, while appearing on former President Obama aide David Plouffe’s “Campaign HQ” podcast. But the former first lady said she believed Russia has “got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.
“She’s the favorite of the Russians,” Clinton said “They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”
Plouffe ended the podcast with a reference to Clinton’s “belief that Tulsi Gabbard is going to be a third-party candidate propped up by Trump and the Russians — ” and Clinton did not contradict him.
I, ROSE SAYER
Going Downriver With Donald Trump
By Lars Walker
The American Spectator
October 19, 2019
I’m not a huge fan of the film The African Queen. I’ve actually only seen it twice. But I know it well enough to know that, much as I’d like to tell you I identify with Charlie Allnut, Humphrey Bogart’s character in the film, I’m actually closer to Rose Sayer, as portrayed by Katharine Hepburn. I’m aging and unmarried, straitlaced, religious, and set in my ways.
In the last few years I’ve discovered another personal resemblance to Rose. I feel as if I’m riding a boat down a river, in hostile territory, tied up with, and dependent on, someone I’m dubious about.
President Donald Trump is Charlie Allnut to me. I didn’t want him for a candidate, though I voted for him in something like despair. His behavior often appalls me. And yet …
Although I live in the Minneapolis area, I didn’t attend the big rally last week. Can you imagine Rose Sayer at a Trump rally? Neither can I. But I heard a lot about it. Especially, thanks to a particular radio talk show host, one memorable line.
It’s line I’m not going to repeat here, because Rose wouldn’t approve. It had to do with a certain politician kissing another politician in a particular way. The talk show host I mentioned, whom I generally admire, was so delighted with that statement that he played it over and over on the air.
I had to turn it off. Rose and I were not amused.
I can remember a time, not that long ago, when no American politician would have said that in public. Even inveterate pottymouths like Lyndon Johnson knew how to button it up when the microphones were on.
I’m not blaming President Trump for lowering the tone of political discourse. That started long ago, in my college years, when the Left decided that common courtesy was hypocrisy and integrity meant using a lot of obscenities. Those campus radicals grew up to run the country and enshrined those ideas in the culture (see R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s recent column on this site). President Trump is only throwing their trash back over the fence where it came from. There’s some justice in that.
But still I sit here, under my metaphorical wide hat and parasol, thinking, “Here we are. We’ve descended to this level as a culture.”
My Never Trump friends will now jump in to say, “At last you’ve seen the light! Join us in standing for righteousness. God will never bless our country while a reprobate like that is our leader!”
Ah, but that seems unjust to me. Charlie Allnut is uncouth, and he drinks (which President Trump, I’m told, does not), but he’s done what no one else has done for me. He’s getting me through the rapids and the marshes and the crocodiles and the Germans. He isn’t the man I’d choose, but he’s the man on the job.
Was Rose a hypocrite for not going ashore and trying to make her way alone overland? Should she have given herself up to the “civilized” Germans? I can imagine one of her old friends, once she’d gotten home, saying, “Don’t you think it would have been better for your soul if you’d just accepted death rather than partnering with that evil man?”
But of course, Charlie wasn’t evil. He had serious character flaws. He was no doubt an embarrassment to Rose in later years, in many situations. But that’s not being evil.
Evil is advocating for unrestricted abortion and extending it past the point of birth. Evil is luring children into sex-change operations and barring parents from interfering. Evil is promoting voluntary euthanasia and gradually transitioning to the mandatory kind. Evil is identifying race as the most important characteristic of any individual. Evil is promising poor people free stuff in order to kill their ambition and doom them to lives of dependency. Evil is identifying the most wonderful country in the history of the earth as a conspiracy intended to perpetuate slavery.
In many ways, Charlie Allnut was his own worst enemy. His manners masked his virtues. I’ve always found Donald Trump annoying. He exemplifies that particular kind of stereotypical New Yorker we Midwesterners have always disliked — brash, arrogant, pushy, verbally abusive.
The danger for the Rose Sayers of the world is judging the Charlies by their manners alone. Charlie Allnut promised he’d go down the river, and he kept his promise. And Donald Trump has kept more of his campaign promises (for good and ill) than any president in my extensive lifetime. When did keeping promises cease to count among the virtues? I disagree with some of the president’s decisions, but the man is going down the river, and I’m headed that way myself, and I expect I’ll stay with him until he changes course.
I do wish he’d clean up his mouth, though. There are ladies present.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Here is that ‘memorable line’ about Joe Biden that Walker would not repeat.
“He was never considered a good senator. He was only a good vice president because he understood how to kiss Barack Obama's ass.”
By Lars Walker
The American Spectator
October 19, 2019
I’m not a huge fan of the film The African Queen. I’ve actually only seen it twice. But I know it well enough to know that, much as I’d like to tell you I identify with Charlie Allnut, Humphrey Bogart’s character in the film, I’m actually closer to Rose Sayer, as portrayed by Katharine Hepburn. I’m aging and unmarried, straitlaced, religious, and set in my ways.
In the last few years I’ve discovered another personal resemblance to Rose. I feel as if I’m riding a boat down a river, in hostile territory, tied up with, and dependent on, someone I’m dubious about.
President Donald Trump is Charlie Allnut to me. I didn’t want him for a candidate, though I voted for him in something like despair. His behavior often appalls me. And yet …
Although I live in the Minneapolis area, I didn’t attend the big rally last week. Can you imagine Rose Sayer at a Trump rally? Neither can I. But I heard a lot about it. Especially, thanks to a particular radio talk show host, one memorable line.
It’s line I’m not going to repeat here, because Rose wouldn’t approve. It had to do with a certain politician kissing another politician in a particular way. The talk show host I mentioned, whom I generally admire, was so delighted with that statement that he played it over and over on the air.
I had to turn it off. Rose and I were not amused.
I can remember a time, not that long ago, when no American politician would have said that in public. Even inveterate pottymouths like Lyndon Johnson knew how to button it up when the microphones were on.
I’m not blaming President Trump for lowering the tone of political discourse. That started long ago, in my college years, when the Left decided that common courtesy was hypocrisy and integrity meant using a lot of obscenities. Those campus radicals grew up to run the country and enshrined those ideas in the culture (see R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s recent column on this site). President Trump is only throwing their trash back over the fence where it came from. There’s some justice in that.
But still I sit here, under my metaphorical wide hat and parasol, thinking, “Here we are. We’ve descended to this level as a culture.”
My Never Trump friends will now jump in to say, “At last you’ve seen the light! Join us in standing for righteousness. God will never bless our country while a reprobate like that is our leader!”
Ah, but that seems unjust to me. Charlie Allnut is uncouth, and he drinks (which President Trump, I’m told, does not), but he’s done what no one else has done for me. He’s getting me through the rapids and the marshes and the crocodiles and the Germans. He isn’t the man I’d choose, but he’s the man on the job.
Was Rose a hypocrite for not going ashore and trying to make her way alone overland? Should she have given herself up to the “civilized” Germans? I can imagine one of her old friends, once she’d gotten home, saying, “Don’t you think it would have been better for your soul if you’d just accepted death rather than partnering with that evil man?”
But of course, Charlie wasn’t evil. He had serious character flaws. He was no doubt an embarrassment to Rose in later years, in many situations. But that’s not being evil.
Evil is advocating for unrestricted abortion and extending it past the point of birth. Evil is luring children into sex-change operations and barring parents from interfering. Evil is promoting voluntary euthanasia and gradually transitioning to the mandatory kind. Evil is identifying race as the most important characteristic of any individual. Evil is promising poor people free stuff in order to kill their ambition and doom them to lives of dependency. Evil is identifying the most wonderful country in the history of the earth as a conspiracy intended to perpetuate slavery.
In many ways, Charlie Allnut was his own worst enemy. His manners masked his virtues. I’ve always found Donald Trump annoying. He exemplifies that particular kind of stereotypical New Yorker we Midwesterners have always disliked — brash, arrogant, pushy, verbally abusive.
The danger for the Rose Sayers of the world is judging the Charlies by their manners alone. Charlie Allnut promised he’d go down the river, and he kept his promise. And Donald Trump has kept more of his campaign promises (for good and ill) than any president in my extensive lifetime. When did keeping promises cease to count among the virtues? I disagree with some of the president’s decisions, but the man is going down the river, and I’m headed that way myself, and I expect I’ll stay with him until he changes course.
I do wish he’d clean up his mouth, though. There are ladies present.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Here is that ‘memorable line’ about Joe Biden that Walker would not repeat.
“He was never considered a good senator. He was only a good vice president because he understood how to kiss Barack Obama's ass.”
A DE BLASIOVILLE PIE IN THE SKY PROGRAM ….. AND IT COSTS ONLY $3.91 MILLION
NYC Program Offers Criminals Art Lessons Instead of Jail Time
By Shant Shahrigian
New York Daily News
October 3, 2019
NEW YORK -- Good artists copy, great artists steal.
Now great artists busted for low-level crimes will be offered paint brushes instead of prison bars, thanks to a new city-backed program.
Under the nearly $4 million project, prosecutors and public defenders will give petty criminals the chance to opt for art appreciation sessions at sites including the Brooklyn Museum in lieu of going to court.
The goal is “ending a criminal justice system that turns minor offenses, minor crimes into lifelong problems,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson said at a Wednesday press conference at the Brooklyn Museum.
The City Council and de Blasio administration recently agreed to allocate $3.91 million total to the program, called Project Reset, following a trial run in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx.
About 200 people have completed the program at the Brooklyn Museum, where teachers take them to look at art, discuss it and then make works of their own in mediums including collage.
Participants in a trial run of the project were nearly 75% less likely to be convicted of a crime within a year of completing the program, according to a study by the Center for Court Innovation, which launched it.
“It definitely helped me avoid the anxiety of having to attend an actual court date for a mistake I made,” said program participant Jessy Singh.
“It helped to make me feel human in a system that often criminalizes people for the smallest of things,” she added.
Singh said she’d been caught with a friend who was shoplifting, though she declined to specify what she was arrested for. Now her record is clean thanks to the program.
People will be eligible for Project Reset for 15 non-violent misdemeanors including petit larceny and theft of services, graffiti, second-degree possession of drug paraphernalia and trespassing.
Artist Sophia Dawson, who is instructing groups at the Brooklyn Museum, said her sessions start with a viewing of Titus Kaphar’s painting “Shifting the Gaze.” Then she takes them to a room where they create collages using materials including newspaper headlines.
She said she challenges participants to “take on the authority as the artist."
“How can you take that authority, shift the gaze, switch the narrative, switch the perspective to say something that you want to say or cause the viewer to look at what you want them to see?” Dawson explained.
“We make a lot of mess,” she said.
The sessions last about 2.5 hours each, and some participants do follow-up counselling sessions.
The New Museum in Manhattan is also participating, according to Adam Mansky, director of the Center for Court Innovation. His organization launched Project Reset in partnership with the NYPD, the Brooklyn DA’s office, public defenders and the Brooklyn Museum.
Other than art, Project Reset offers group workshops on conflict and “identifying triggering factors” as an alternative to judicial proceedings for eligible people.
“It’s about holding people accountable but doing it in ways that promote human dignity, that help them think about their conduct and provide them with tools to contribute back to their community,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
Mansky hopes the Staten Island DA’s office will join the program by year’s end. He expects Queens to get on board, too, sometime after the next DA is elected in November.
Johnson declined to predict how many arrested people eventually will participate.
The project comes as sweeping criminal justice reforms are coming to the state starting Jan. 1, including new bail policies meant to reduce the number of people held in jail.
Last year, 271,630 people were arrested for misdemeanors in the city, according to NYPD stats. Johnson and Gonzalez declined to guess how many people would participate in Project Restart as it expands.
The Speaker asserted, “We say art instead of jail; culture instead of prosecution.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: When we came to America in 1936, our first home was in an apartment just two blocks from the Brooklyn Museum.
As for Project Reset, I’m sure the participants in the trial run were picked very carefully in order to ensure a good outcome so as to justify the program.
By Shant Shahrigian
New York Daily News
October 3, 2019
NEW YORK -- Good artists copy, great artists steal.
Now great artists busted for low-level crimes will be offered paint brushes instead of prison bars, thanks to a new city-backed program.
Under the nearly $4 million project, prosecutors and public defenders will give petty criminals the chance to opt for art appreciation sessions at sites including the Brooklyn Museum in lieu of going to court.
The goal is “ending a criminal justice system that turns minor offenses, minor crimes into lifelong problems,” Council Speaker Corey Johnson said at a Wednesday press conference at the Brooklyn Museum.
The City Council and de Blasio administration recently agreed to allocate $3.91 million total to the program, called Project Reset, following a trial run in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx.
About 200 people have completed the program at the Brooklyn Museum, where teachers take them to look at art, discuss it and then make works of their own in mediums including collage.
Participants in a trial run of the project were nearly 75% less likely to be convicted of a crime within a year of completing the program, according to a study by the Center for Court Innovation, which launched it.
“It definitely helped me avoid the anxiety of having to attend an actual court date for a mistake I made,” said program participant Jessy Singh.
“It helped to make me feel human in a system that often criminalizes people for the smallest of things,” she added.
Singh said she’d been caught with a friend who was shoplifting, though she declined to specify what she was arrested for. Now her record is clean thanks to the program.
People will be eligible for Project Reset for 15 non-violent misdemeanors including petit larceny and theft of services, graffiti, second-degree possession of drug paraphernalia and trespassing.
Artist Sophia Dawson, who is instructing groups at the Brooklyn Museum, said her sessions start with a viewing of Titus Kaphar’s painting “Shifting the Gaze.” Then she takes them to a room where they create collages using materials including newspaper headlines.
She said she challenges participants to “take on the authority as the artist."
“How can you take that authority, shift the gaze, switch the narrative, switch the perspective to say something that you want to say or cause the viewer to look at what you want them to see?” Dawson explained.
“We make a lot of mess,” she said.
The sessions last about 2.5 hours each, and some participants do follow-up counselling sessions.
The New Museum in Manhattan is also participating, according to Adam Mansky, director of the Center for Court Innovation. His organization launched Project Reset in partnership with the NYPD, the Brooklyn DA’s office, public defenders and the Brooklyn Museum.
Other than art, Project Reset offers group workshops on conflict and “identifying triggering factors” as an alternative to judicial proceedings for eligible people.
“It’s about holding people accountable but doing it in ways that promote human dignity, that help them think about their conduct and provide them with tools to contribute back to their community,” said Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
Mansky hopes the Staten Island DA’s office will join the program by year’s end. He expects Queens to get on board, too, sometime after the next DA is elected in November.
Johnson declined to predict how many arrested people eventually will participate.
The project comes as sweeping criminal justice reforms are coming to the state starting Jan. 1, including new bail policies meant to reduce the number of people held in jail.
Last year, 271,630 people were arrested for misdemeanors in the city, according to NYPD stats. Johnson and Gonzalez declined to guess how many people would participate in Project Restart as it expands.
The Speaker asserted, “We say art instead of jail; culture instead of prosecution.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: When we came to America in 1936, our first home was in an apartment just two blocks from the Brooklyn Museum.
As for Project Reset, I’m sure the participants in the trial run were picked very carefully in order to ensure a good outcome so as to justify the program.
FEWER JAILS WON’T MAKE FEWER CRIMINALS
New York City’s closure of Rikers Island is based upon magical thinking
By Seth Barron
City Journal
October 17, 2019
New York City has approved a plan to close the incarceration facilities on Rikers Island and replace them with four new borough-based jails. When first put forth in 2017, the plan was conditioned on a reduction of the city’s total jail population over the next ten years to about 5,000 inmates by 2026. Unlike Rikers Island—which, at half the size of Central Park, is large enough to hold ten separate low-rise jail facilities, along with parking lots, maintenance areas, and space for outdoor basketball courts and running tracks—the new jails will be high-rise buildings in already-dense urban areas. But community opposition to the new jail-skyscrapers led to an announcement earlier this week that the proposed facilities would be markedly smaller than originally anticipated. A planned 45-story jail in Manhattan will top out at 29 stories, while an originally conceived 39-floor, 395-foot facility in Brooklyn will now rise only 295 feet.
The city has decided to reduce the size of these not-yet-constructed facilities, according to Mayor de Blasio and city council speaker Corey Johnson, because the “expected average daily jail population for 2026 is now 3,300, due to the expectation of fewer people incarcerated.” This sudden one-third drop from the earlier 5,000 estimate was not driven by a change in crime trends—indeed, some serious crimes are trending up—but by the demands of council members in whose districts the new jails would be sited. These council members have refused to approve the construction of larger jails. The city, then, is apparently letting political considerations dictate how large its new jails can be, and then tailoring prisoner-population estimates to fit those circumstances.
Decriminalization of quality-of-life offenses and the elimination of cash bail for most misdemeanors and many felonies are indeed expected to reduce the jailed population—but even so, the new 3,300 target will likely require a significant realignment of expectations about public safety. The number of people in jail in New York City is already historically low, due to concerted efforts to divert low-level offenders into incarceration alternatives. The remaining incarcerated population largely represents a core group of hardened, violent, habitual criminals. The city’s own numbers demonstrate that virtually no one is in jail for marijuana possession, prostitution, or jumping subway turnstiles.
Speaker Johnson mostly attributes the reduction of the estimated population from 5,000 to 3,300 to bail reform, passed in Albany as part of the budget in June. The remainder of the reduction, he says, will represent people no longer sent back to jail, as they are now, after violating “technical” provisions of their parole, such as “missing curfew.” In reality, few parolees get remanded to prison simply for minor violations of the rules, and when they do, they spend only limited time in Rikers before being sent back to prison.
Keeping the number of people in jail below 3,300 will require fewer arrests and the immediate release of serious criminals following arraignment. This agenda is not confined to the far Left—it is the stated goal of a major segment of the city’s criminal-justice complex and is backed by a sizeable minority of its elected officials. The No New Jails coalition, which demands the closure of Rikers Island without replacing the lost capacity, has pushed its abolitionist argument into the mainstream.
The respected Legal Aid Society, which receives hundreds of millions in public dollars to provide legal services to indigent defendants, condemns the “false binary of the Close Rikers plan,” which is “inextricably linked to the gentrification that has gutted Black and Latinx communities.” The organization demands “a future with zero jails in our city, zero jails in our state, and zero jails in our country.” Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou, who represents the district that will house the Manhattan jail, argues against the new plan on the basis that “our system criminalizes poverty through mandatory surcharges and fees which create modern day debtors’ prisons.”
No evidence exists that anyone in New York City is incarcerated due to such fees.
The plan to close Rikers in favor of smaller jails adjacent to county courthouses is morally neutral, but its actualization has fulfilled the worst suspicions of skeptics, who see the effort as a camouflage for mass decarceration. That remains to be seen. Common sense should tell us, though, that smaller jails may mean fewer inmates—but not fewer criminals.
By Seth Barron
City Journal
October 17, 2019
New York City has approved a plan to close the incarceration facilities on Rikers Island and replace them with four new borough-based jails. When first put forth in 2017, the plan was conditioned on a reduction of the city’s total jail population over the next ten years to about 5,000 inmates by 2026. Unlike Rikers Island—which, at half the size of Central Park, is large enough to hold ten separate low-rise jail facilities, along with parking lots, maintenance areas, and space for outdoor basketball courts and running tracks—the new jails will be high-rise buildings in already-dense urban areas. But community opposition to the new jail-skyscrapers led to an announcement earlier this week that the proposed facilities would be markedly smaller than originally anticipated. A planned 45-story jail in Manhattan will top out at 29 stories, while an originally conceived 39-floor, 395-foot facility in Brooklyn will now rise only 295 feet.
The city has decided to reduce the size of these not-yet-constructed facilities, according to Mayor de Blasio and city council speaker Corey Johnson, because the “expected average daily jail population for 2026 is now 3,300, due to the expectation of fewer people incarcerated.” This sudden one-third drop from the earlier 5,000 estimate was not driven by a change in crime trends—indeed, some serious crimes are trending up—but by the demands of council members in whose districts the new jails would be sited. These council members have refused to approve the construction of larger jails. The city, then, is apparently letting political considerations dictate how large its new jails can be, and then tailoring prisoner-population estimates to fit those circumstances.
Decriminalization of quality-of-life offenses and the elimination of cash bail for most misdemeanors and many felonies are indeed expected to reduce the jailed population—but even so, the new 3,300 target will likely require a significant realignment of expectations about public safety. The number of people in jail in New York City is already historically low, due to concerted efforts to divert low-level offenders into incarceration alternatives. The remaining incarcerated population largely represents a core group of hardened, violent, habitual criminals. The city’s own numbers demonstrate that virtually no one is in jail for marijuana possession, prostitution, or jumping subway turnstiles.
Speaker Johnson mostly attributes the reduction of the estimated population from 5,000 to 3,300 to bail reform, passed in Albany as part of the budget in June. The remainder of the reduction, he says, will represent people no longer sent back to jail, as they are now, after violating “technical” provisions of their parole, such as “missing curfew.” In reality, few parolees get remanded to prison simply for minor violations of the rules, and when they do, they spend only limited time in Rikers before being sent back to prison.
Keeping the number of people in jail below 3,300 will require fewer arrests and the immediate release of serious criminals following arraignment. This agenda is not confined to the far Left—it is the stated goal of a major segment of the city’s criminal-justice complex and is backed by a sizeable minority of its elected officials. The No New Jails coalition, which demands the closure of Rikers Island without replacing the lost capacity, has pushed its abolitionist argument into the mainstream.
The respected Legal Aid Society, which receives hundreds of millions in public dollars to provide legal services to indigent defendants, condemns the “false binary of the Close Rikers plan,” which is “inextricably linked to the gentrification that has gutted Black and Latinx communities.” The organization demands “a future with zero jails in our city, zero jails in our state, and zero jails in our country.” Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou, who represents the district that will house the Manhattan jail, argues against the new plan on the basis that “our system criminalizes poverty through mandatory surcharges and fees which create modern day debtors’ prisons.”
No evidence exists that anyone in New York City is incarcerated due to such fees.
The plan to close Rikers in favor of smaller jails adjacent to county courthouses is morally neutral, but its actualization has fulfilled the worst suspicions of skeptics, who see the effort as a camouflage for mass decarceration. That remains to be seen. Common sense should tell us, though, that smaller jails may mean fewer inmates—but not fewer criminals.
TENNESSEE MAY HAVE EXECUTED SEDLEY ALLEY IN 2006 FOR A 1985 RAPE-MURDER FOR WHICH THOMAS BRUCE, A FORMER PASTOR, IS NOW A SUSPECT
Did Tennessee execute the wrong man for a horrific 1980s murder? Alcoholic who confessed but then recanted before his 2006 death may have been INNOCENT as cops suspect an ex-pastor arrested last year for another brutal killing in Missouri could be connected
By Ralph R. Ortega
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
A new suspect in the the brutal murder of a young female marine more than 30 years ago has been identified by authorities after another man was already executed for the slaying.
Sedley Alley was put to death by the state of Tennessee 15 years ago for the 1985 murder of Suzanne Marie Collins, a 19-year-old Marine who left her barracks for a jog and never returned.
Collins was later found raped, beaten and stabbed with a sharpened tree branch and strangled in a park in Millington, according to police.
Alley, a 29-year-old repairman at the time, who was alcoholic and addicted to drugs, confessed to the murder after cops fed him breakfast and bought him a pack of cigarettes, reports the Washington Post.
A jury delivered a guilty verdict in less than three hours, and despite changing his story and possible DNA evidence that could have exonerated him, Alley was forced to die by lethal injection at the age of 51 in 2006.
Then came the arrest of Thomas Bruce in Missouri in November 2018.
Cops said the 54-year-old, former Missouri pastor posed as a customer at a Catholic Supply store in the suburbs of St. Louis, returned armed with a gun, forced two women into sex acts, and killed a third.
He was arrested and faces 17-felony charges for the grisly attack and is currently awaiting trial.
At the time of Bruce's arrest, police were stunned that he had no prior criminal record. Given the horrific nature of his alleged sexual assaults and murder, took a closer look at the man.
That's when they suspected he may be linked to other crimes and came across a 77-year-old woman, who recognized his face in media reports, and said that before the Catholic supply store incident he had forced his way into her home, raped her and stole her cell phone.
He has plead not guilty to both charges.
Authorities in their investigation of Bruce also made what they believed could be major break in the Collins case. They said they had learned Bruce was enrolled in the same avionics school Collins had attended in Memphis, not far from where her body was found after she was murdered.
Cops contacted Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit group that helps to exonerate people who are wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA evidence, and which had unsuccessfully tried to help Alley.
'They were saying to us, there's a possibility that he is the serial killer that you had argued might be discovered by a DNA test all those years ago,' Scheck said.
Lawyers for the Innocence Project had long-argued that a potential piece of key evidence -- a pair of men's red underwear discovered at the scene where Collins was slain -- should have been submitted for testing to know for sure Alley was the killer.
Tennessee prosecutors, however, have argued that there were other factors proving Alley was the killer, and that DNA alone would not have been enough to prove his innocence.
His execution came after Alley took back his confession, and experts had come to the conclusion that he had been coerced.
There also had been no physical evidence linking him to the murder, and his recollection of the attack on Collins didn't match up to autopsy results and findings from the crime scene, reports the Post.
Innocence Project lawyers warned against putting Alley to death penalty without the DNA testing, and that if executed, the real murderer would still be on the loose.
After the execution, attorneys for the project petitioned the courts to have the DNA tested on behalf of Alley's daughter. She said she hoped to get closure during a court hearing on Monday.
A judge is expected to rule on her request in November.
By Ralph R. Ortega
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
A new suspect in the the brutal murder of a young female marine more than 30 years ago has been identified by authorities after another man was already executed for the slaying.
Sedley Alley was put to death by the state of Tennessee 15 years ago for the 1985 murder of Suzanne Marie Collins, a 19-year-old Marine who left her barracks for a jog and never returned.
Collins was later found raped, beaten and stabbed with a sharpened tree branch and strangled in a park in Millington, according to police.
Alley, a 29-year-old repairman at the time, who was alcoholic and addicted to drugs, confessed to the murder after cops fed him breakfast and bought him a pack of cigarettes, reports the Washington Post.
A jury delivered a guilty verdict in less than three hours, and despite changing his story and possible DNA evidence that could have exonerated him, Alley was forced to die by lethal injection at the age of 51 in 2006.
Then came the arrest of Thomas Bruce in Missouri in November 2018.
Cops said the 54-year-old, former Missouri pastor posed as a customer at a Catholic Supply store in the suburbs of St. Louis, returned armed with a gun, forced two women into sex acts, and killed a third.
He was arrested and faces 17-felony charges for the grisly attack and is currently awaiting trial.
At the time of Bruce's arrest, police were stunned that he had no prior criminal record. Given the horrific nature of his alleged sexual assaults and murder, took a closer look at the man.
That's when they suspected he may be linked to other crimes and came across a 77-year-old woman, who recognized his face in media reports, and said that before the Catholic supply store incident he had forced his way into her home, raped her and stole her cell phone.
He has plead not guilty to both charges.
Authorities in their investigation of Bruce also made what they believed could be major break in the Collins case. They said they had learned Bruce was enrolled in the same avionics school Collins had attended in Memphis, not far from where her body was found after she was murdered.
Cops contacted Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit group that helps to exonerate people who are wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA evidence, and which had unsuccessfully tried to help Alley.
'They were saying to us, there's a possibility that he is the serial killer that you had argued might be discovered by a DNA test all those years ago,' Scheck said.
Lawyers for the Innocence Project had long-argued that a potential piece of key evidence -- a pair of men's red underwear discovered at the scene where Collins was slain -- should have been submitted for testing to know for sure Alley was the killer.
Tennessee prosecutors, however, have argued that there were other factors proving Alley was the killer, and that DNA alone would not have been enough to prove his innocence.
His execution came after Alley took back his confession, and experts had come to the conclusion that he had been coerced.
There also had been no physical evidence linking him to the murder, and his recollection of the attack on Collins didn't match up to autopsy results and findings from the crime scene, reports the Post.
Innocence Project lawyers warned against putting Alley to death penalty without the DNA testing, and that if executed, the real murderer would still be on the loose.
After the execution, attorneys for the project petitioned the courts to have the DNA tested on behalf of Alley's daughter. She said she hoped to get closure during a court hearing on Monday.
A judge is expected to rule on her request in November.
MEXICANS RELEASE EL CHAPO’S CAPTURED SON TO PROTECT THE CITIZENS
Botched mission to capture El Chapo’s son sparked by DC judge
By Emily Saul and Ebony Bowden
New York Post
October 18, 2019
Mexico’s botched mission to capture an alleged drug-peddling son of narcotics kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán started with an arrest warrant from a federal judge in Washington, DC, his lawyer told The Post on Friday.
Eight people were killed when Mexican agents stormed a home in the country’s drug-infested Sinaloa state Thursday with an arrest warrant for Ovidio Guzman Lopez but abandoned the job when they were outgunned by cartel gunmen.
Lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman, who represented Lopez’s infamous kingpin father, confirmed to The Post that the warrant came out of DC — although he said details of what went down afterward are still murky.
“It’s unclear what exactly happened,” he said, but “Ovidio is safe and not in custody.
“As soon as the smoke clears, we’ll endeavor to figure out exactly what happened here.”
The Mexican national guard released Lopez following his brief capture when it led to an all-out cartel war — sparking wild gun battles throughout Sinaloa which killed eight people and injured another 21.
Guzman Lopez and his brother Joaquin Guzman Lopez were charged with drug trafficking in the US District Court of Columbia in 2017. The indictment was unsealed in February of this year.
Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said Friday he backed the decision to let Lopez go free, telling reporters it “was made to protect the citizens.”
Mexico’s defense secretary decried the botched operation by the country’s army and national guard, which he said was meant to pave the way for US extradition. He said Mexican cabinet officials were not made aware of it beforehand.
“The group responsible for this action, in eagerness to achieve positive results, acted in a hasty manner, with poor planning,” Secretary of Defense Luis Cresencio Sandoval told reporters in Culiacan on Friday.
In July, a Brooklyn federal judge sentenced El Chapo — the once-powerful leader of the Sinaloa cartel — to life in prison after he was convicted on a slew of drug-trafficking charges.
By Emily Saul and Ebony Bowden
New York Post
October 18, 2019
Mexico’s botched mission to capture an alleged drug-peddling son of narcotics kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán started with an arrest warrant from a federal judge in Washington, DC, his lawyer told The Post on Friday.
Eight people were killed when Mexican agents stormed a home in the country’s drug-infested Sinaloa state Thursday with an arrest warrant for Ovidio Guzman Lopez but abandoned the job when they were outgunned by cartel gunmen.
Lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman, who represented Lopez’s infamous kingpin father, confirmed to The Post that the warrant came out of DC — although he said details of what went down afterward are still murky.
“It’s unclear what exactly happened,” he said, but “Ovidio is safe and not in custody.
“As soon as the smoke clears, we’ll endeavor to figure out exactly what happened here.”
The Mexican national guard released Lopez following his brief capture when it led to an all-out cartel war — sparking wild gun battles throughout Sinaloa which killed eight people and injured another 21.
Guzman Lopez and his brother Joaquin Guzman Lopez were charged with drug trafficking in the US District Court of Columbia in 2017. The indictment was unsealed in February of this year.
Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said Friday he backed the decision to let Lopez go free, telling reporters it “was made to protect the citizens.”
Mexico’s defense secretary decried the botched operation by the country’s army and national guard, which he said was meant to pave the way for US extradition. He said Mexican cabinet officials were not made aware of it beforehand.
“The group responsible for this action, in eagerness to achieve positive results, acted in a hasty manner, with poor planning,” Secretary of Defense Luis Cresencio Sandoval told reporters in Culiacan on Friday.
In July, a Brooklyn federal judge sentenced El Chapo — the once-powerful leader of the Sinaloa cartel — to life in prison after he was convicted on a slew of drug-trafficking charges.
Saturday, October 19, 2019
NOTICE
BarkGrowlBite and The Unconventional Gazette will have no postings from October 21 through October 30.
Old Bark will be in Germany enjoying 10 days of Beer guzzling. And this Incredible Shrinking Nonagenarian won't be fucking around with a computer while I'm gone. I hope I won't be going through withdrawals. And I will sorely miss my doggie.
Until old Bark gets back, here's wishing all of you well.
Old Bark will be in Germany enjoying 10 days of Beer guzzling. And this Incredible Shrinking Nonagenarian won't be fucking around with a computer while I'm gone. I hope I won't be going through withdrawals. And I will sorely miss my doggie.
Until old Bark gets back, here's wishing all of you well.
THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING NONAGENARIAN
I’ve shrunk down from 5-8 t0 5-4½
Friday, I had a bone density scan. The technician asked me how tall I was. I told her 5-6, which I believed I was. But when she measured me I was only 5-4½.
Holy shit! I used to be 5-8. How depressing! If this keeps up, I may be shorter than my dick if I live for a few more years.
And my dick is also shorter than it used to be. It’s only good for peeing now. More depressing shit!
I guess I’m entitled to be called the incredible shrinking nonagenarian.
Friday, I had a bone density scan. The technician asked me how tall I was. I told her 5-6, which I believed I was. But when she measured me I was only 5-4½.
Holy shit! I used to be 5-8. How depressing! If this keeps up, I may be shorter than my dick if I live for a few more years.
And my dick is also shorter than it used to be. It’s only good for peeing now. More depressing shit!
I guess I’m entitled to be called the incredible shrinking nonagenarian.
FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS SAYS ‘I EARNED MY SPURS ON THE BATTLEFIELD; DONALD TRUMP EARNED HIS SPURS IN A LETTER FROM A DOCTOR’
Mocking American war heroes, betraying allies, joking about kids fighting as kids are dying, and willfully fueling impeachment… this has been President Trump’s worst week and he only has himself to blame
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
President Trump was on full self-aggrandizing Trumpian form last night as he addressed a packed stadium of loyal supporters in Dallas.
Like a veteran rock star, he swaggered through his greatest hits from ‘Crooked Hillary’ and ‘Sleepy Joe’ to ‘Crazy Nancy’ and ‘Shifty Schiff’.
And the fans, thousands of whom couldn’t even get into the rally so watched it on screens outside, lapped it up.
It was a two-hour tour de force brimming with high-energy performance and bombastic rhetoric.
Love him or hate him, and there’s no middle ground, Trump can whip up a crowd like nobody else in current U.S. politics.
And his unshakable self-belief shows no sign of shaking.
According to him, he’s the greatest president that’s ever lived (with the possible exception of Lincoln), America’s never had it so good, every decision he’s taken is not only right but pure genius, and he’s steaming to another election win in 2020.
To be fair, that last bit might actually be true.
Trump, as can be seen by the staggering fervor of the Texans who turned up to roar him on last night, continues to hold granite solid support among his base.
To them, Trump is still the modern-day Robin Hood standing up for the little guys against the ‘swamp’ establishment system, and delivering on his campaign promises.
(To his enemies, Trump more closely resembles a less endearing fabled legend - the Pied Piper.)
And with the Democrats seemingly dragging themselves ever more inexorably towards a socialist nominee, then unless he gets impeached, I still think Trump will get re-elected.
BUT, and it’s a big ‘but’, there is still every chance that Donald Trump could be defeated – by himself.
Let’s be frank; for all his self-congratulatory wallowing last night, this has been a terrible week for President Trump.
In fact, I’d say it’s been his worst since winning the White House.
His decision on Sunday to suddenly withdraw U.S. troops from north-eastern Syria, giving a green light to Turkey’s ruthless President Erdogan to invade and attack the Kurds, America’s allies in the fight against ISIS, was catastrophic.
Within hours, Turkish forces were killing Kurdish men, women and children, and hundreds of ISIS terrorists were pouring out of prisons amid the chaos.
It signaled a terrible betrayal of people who had so recently fought alongside America to defeat a common enemy.
For all his absurd triumphalism over a desperately sought four-day pause in the shocking violence – a truce that’s reportedly already been broken - Trump got played by Erdogan.
And the president’s childish ‘I’ll destroy your economy, you devilish fool’ threats in that now infamous letter to his counterpart – one that Erdogan contemptuously dismissed by throwing it away - were an embarrassment to him and his country.
The horrendous mistake has exposed Trump’s main weaknesses – a susceptibility to being manipulated by ‘strongman’ dictators, a refusal to listen to expert advice (everyone warned him it would be a disaster), a lack of clear strategic planning and a trash-talking diplomatic style better suited to the Apprentice boardroom than when deciding the fate of people’s lives.
‘Like two kids in a lot, you have got to let them fight,’ Trump quipped on stage last night, ‘and then you pull them apart.’
It’s hard to imagine a more insensitive analogy given that many kids have literally been killed in the fighting.
Back home, things have been no better; Trump’s faced increasing impeachment pressure over his dealings with Ukraine, and that pressure massively intensified yesterday when his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney all but confirmed there WAS a ‘quid pro quo’ surrounding the Trump administration’s decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless they helped, with a Justice Department investigation into alleged Ukrainian corruption in America’s 2016 election involving a DNC server.
‘I was involved with the process by which money was held up temporarily, OK? Mulvaney told reporters at a White House briefing. ‘Three issues for that: corruption in the country, whether or not other countries were participating in support of the Ukraine and whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing investigation with our Department of Justice. That’s completely legitimate.’
It’s also pretty much exactly the smoking gun impeachment campaigners have been hunting.
After the briefing, all hell broke loose as first the Justice Department denied any knowledge of any connection between aid to Ukraine and the department’s investigation, and then Jay Sekulow, the president’s legal counsel, issued a terse statement saying he’d had no involvement in Mulvaney’s bombshell revelation.
Later, Mulvaney walked back his comments, saying ‘there was never any condition on the flow of the aid related to the matter of the DNC server.’
Sorry, what? We heard that condition from Mulvaney’s own mouth, and he said he was personally involved in the process of implementing that condition.
What a fiasco, and what a dangerous development for President Trump.
Many Republicans have turned on him this week, voting in Congress against his decision to withdraw troops from Syria.
Now the main allegation of the proposed impeachment seems to have been confirmed by the man running the White House staff.
Yet the person really to blame is Trump himself, for making that ridiculously dumb phone call to Ukraine’s President Zelensky in the first place, then brazenly admitting it and saying he wanted China to get digging dirt on his US election opponents too.
To make this week even more difficult, the president has also been savagely attacked in the past 24 hours by two of America’s most respected military heroes.
First, retired Admiral William McRaven, the man who oversaw the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, accused Trump of destroying America.
‘He’s undermined the intelligence community,’ he said, ‘the law enforcement community, the Department of Justice, the State Department. He has called the press the enemy of the American people and I will tell you, I’ve fought a lot of America’s enemies – the press is not the enemy of the American people. He’s undermined our NATO allies, taken out of the JCPOA (Iran nuclear agreement) and the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal) and really the international community has lost faith in America. And then through the course of all this, he’s convinced he’s doing it all for the right reasons and that is really what is troubling.’
McRaven, who was particularly enraged that Trump has ‘left our allies the Kurds on the battlefield... betrayed them’, concluded in an op-ed for the New York Times: ‘If this president doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, both domestically and abroad, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office, Republican, Democrat or Independent – the sooner the better. The fate of our Republic depends on it.’
Wow.
A few hours later, at a dinner in New York, General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, Trump’s former defense secretary, launched a similarly withering assault on his old boss.
He spoke out after Trump told a meeting of members of Congress at the White House on Wednesday that Mattis was ‘the world’s most overrated general’, ‘wasn’t tough enough,’ and went onto say: ‘I captured ISIS.’
Mattis, who left the administration because Trump didn’t agree with his vehement pleas for U.S. forces to remain in Syria to stop ISIS resurging, taunted back: ‘I’m honored to be considered the most overrated general by Donald Trump because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress. So I guess I’m the Meryl Streep of generals, and frankly that sounds pretty good to me. You have to admit that between me and Meryl, at least we’ve had some victories.’
Ouch.
After a series of other lacerating zingers, Mattis got serious and paraphrased a speech made by Abraham Lincoln in 1838 in which Lincoln said great nations crumble for one of two reasons, either foreign invasion or, ‘the corrosion from within, the rot, the viciousness, the lassitude, the ignorance. Anarchy is one potential consequence of all this. The other is the rise of an ambitious leader, unfettered by conscience, or precedent or decency, who would make himself supreme.’
President Trump will doubtless react to the criticism from McRaven and Mattis as he does to all such criticism – very badly, very personally, and very abusively.
But denigrating America’s greatest military leaders in the same week you’ve committed one of the worst acts of military betrayal on your allies is not a good look.
In fact, it’s a shameful look.
And talking of looks, it’s time to take a good long hard look at yourself in the mirror, Mr President.
What kind of leader do you really want to be?
Because if it’s one that insults U.S. war heroes, betrays courageous allies, jokes about kids fighting as real kids are dying, and only helps countries in need if they dig up dirt on your election opponents, then Admiral McRaven’s right: America needs someone else in the White House.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Apparently with the betrayal of the Kurds and the absurd remarks Trump made since then, his friend Piers is no longer his friend. If Trump sounds like a raving lunatic, he’s brought that image on himself.
It boggles the mind that Trump the Draft Dodger would badmouth a Marine Corps general who served our country in combat at the same time the coward was playing 18 holes on the golf course with his phony bone spurs. While Mattis was ducking enemy fire, Trump was ducking an occasional stray golf ball.
We are fucked. If Trump survives impeachment, which he most probably will, we are left with the choice of either a crazy Democrat or a crazy Republican in 2020. And that’s why I won’t be voting for any of the presidential candidates.
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
October 18, 2019
President Trump was on full self-aggrandizing Trumpian form last night as he addressed a packed stadium of loyal supporters in Dallas.
Like a veteran rock star, he swaggered through his greatest hits from ‘Crooked Hillary’ and ‘Sleepy Joe’ to ‘Crazy Nancy’ and ‘Shifty Schiff’.
And the fans, thousands of whom couldn’t even get into the rally so watched it on screens outside, lapped it up.
It was a two-hour tour de force brimming with high-energy performance and bombastic rhetoric.
Love him or hate him, and there’s no middle ground, Trump can whip up a crowd like nobody else in current U.S. politics.
And his unshakable self-belief shows no sign of shaking.
According to him, he’s the greatest president that’s ever lived (with the possible exception of Lincoln), America’s never had it so good, every decision he’s taken is not only right but pure genius, and he’s steaming to another election win in 2020.
To be fair, that last bit might actually be true.
Trump, as can be seen by the staggering fervor of the Texans who turned up to roar him on last night, continues to hold granite solid support among his base.
To them, Trump is still the modern-day Robin Hood standing up for the little guys against the ‘swamp’ establishment system, and delivering on his campaign promises.
(To his enemies, Trump more closely resembles a less endearing fabled legend - the Pied Piper.)
And with the Democrats seemingly dragging themselves ever more inexorably towards a socialist nominee, then unless he gets impeached, I still think Trump will get re-elected.
BUT, and it’s a big ‘but’, there is still every chance that Donald Trump could be defeated – by himself.
Let’s be frank; for all his self-congratulatory wallowing last night, this has been a terrible week for President Trump.
In fact, I’d say it’s been his worst since winning the White House.
His decision on Sunday to suddenly withdraw U.S. troops from north-eastern Syria, giving a green light to Turkey’s ruthless President Erdogan to invade and attack the Kurds, America’s allies in the fight against ISIS, was catastrophic.
Within hours, Turkish forces were killing Kurdish men, women and children, and hundreds of ISIS terrorists were pouring out of prisons amid the chaos.
It signaled a terrible betrayal of people who had so recently fought alongside America to defeat a common enemy.
For all his absurd triumphalism over a desperately sought four-day pause in the shocking violence – a truce that’s reportedly already been broken - Trump got played by Erdogan.
And the president’s childish ‘I’ll destroy your economy, you devilish fool’ threats in that now infamous letter to his counterpart – one that Erdogan contemptuously dismissed by throwing it away - were an embarrassment to him and his country.
The horrendous mistake has exposed Trump’s main weaknesses – a susceptibility to being manipulated by ‘strongman’ dictators, a refusal to listen to expert advice (everyone warned him it would be a disaster), a lack of clear strategic planning and a trash-talking diplomatic style better suited to the Apprentice boardroom than when deciding the fate of people’s lives.
‘Like two kids in a lot, you have got to let them fight,’ Trump quipped on stage last night, ‘and then you pull them apart.’
It’s hard to imagine a more insensitive analogy given that many kids have literally been killed in the fighting.
Back home, things have been no better; Trump’s faced increasing impeachment pressure over his dealings with Ukraine, and that pressure massively intensified yesterday when his acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney all but confirmed there WAS a ‘quid pro quo’ surrounding the Trump administration’s decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless they helped, with a Justice Department investigation into alleged Ukrainian corruption in America’s 2016 election involving a DNC server.
‘I was involved with the process by which money was held up temporarily, OK? Mulvaney told reporters at a White House briefing. ‘Three issues for that: corruption in the country, whether or not other countries were participating in support of the Ukraine and whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing investigation with our Department of Justice. That’s completely legitimate.’
It’s also pretty much exactly the smoking gun impeachment campaigners have been hunting.
After the briefing, all hell broke loose as first the Justice Department denied any knowledge of any connection between aid to Ukraine and the department’s investigation, and then Jay Sekulow, the president’s legal counsel, issued a terse statement saying he’d had no involvement in Mulvaney’s bombshell revelation.
Later, Mulvaney walked back his comments, saying ‘there was never any condition on the flow of the aid related to the matter of the DNC server.’
Sorry, what? We heard that condition from Mulvaney’s own mouth, and he said he was personally involved in the process of implementing that condition.
What a fiasco, and what a dangerous development for President Trump.
Many Republicans have turned on him this week, voting in Congress against his decision to withdraw troops from Syria.
Now the main allegation of the proposed impeachment seems to have been confirmed by the man running the White House staff.
Yet the person really to blame is Trump himself, for making that ridiculously dumb phone call to Ukraine’s President Zelensky in the first place, then brazenly admitting it and saying he wanted China to get digging dirt on his US election opponents too.
To make this week even more difficult, the president has also been savagely attacked in the past 24 hours by two of America’s most respected military heroes.
First, retired Admiral William McRaven, the man who oversaw the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, accused Trump of destroying America.
‘He’s undermined the intelligence community,’ he said, ‘the law enforcement community, the Department of Justice, the State Department. He has called the press the enemy of the American people and I will tell you, I’ve fought a lot of America’s enemies – the press is not the enemy of the American people. He’s undermined our NATO allies, taken out of the JCPOA (Iran nuclear agreement) and the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal) and really the international community has lost faith in America. And then through the course of all this, he’s convinced he’s doing it all for the right reasons and that is really what is troubling.’
McRaven, who was particularly enraged that Trump has ‘left our allies the Kurds on the battlefield... betrayed them’, concluded in an op-ed for the New York Times: ‘If this president doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, both domestically and abroad, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office, Republican, Democrat or Independent – the sooner the better. The fate of our Republic depends on it.’
Wow.
A few hours later, at a dinner in New York, General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, Trump’s former defense secretary, launched a similarly withering assault on his old boss.
He spoke out after Trump told a meeting of members of Congress at the White House on Wednesday that Mattis was ‘the world’s most overrated general’, ‘wasn’t tough enough,’ and went onto say: ‘I captured ISIS.’
Mattis, who left the administration because Trump didn’t agree with his vehement pleas for U.S. forces to remain in Syria to stop ISIS resurging, taunted back: ‘I’m honored to be considered the most overrated general by Donald Trump because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress. So I guess I’m the Meryl Streep of generals, and frankly that sounds pretty good to me. You have to admit that between me and Meryl, at least we’ve had some victories.’
Ouch.
After a series of other lacerating zingers, Mattis got serious and paraphrased a speech made by Abraham Lincoln in 1838 in which Lincoln said great nations crumble for one of two reasons, either foreign invasion or, ‘the corrosion from within, the rot, the viciousness, the lassitude, the ignorance. Anarchy is one potential consequence of all this. The other is the rise of an ambitious leader, unfettered by conscience, or precedent or decency, who would make himself supreme.’
President Trump will doubtless react to the criticism from McRaven and Mattis as he does to all such criticism – very badly, very personally, and very abusively.
But denigrating America’s greatest military leaders in the same week you’ve committed one of the worst acts of military betrayal on your allies is not a good look.
In fact, it’s a shameful look.
And talking of looks, it’s time to take a good long hard look at yourself in the mirror, Mr President.
What kind of leader do you really want to be?
Because if it’s one that insults U.S. war heroes, betrays courageous allies, jokes about kids fighting as real kids are dying, and only helps countries in need if they dig up dirt on your election opponents, then Admiral McRaven’s right: America needs someone else in the White House.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Apparently with the betrayal of the Kurds and the absurd remarks Trump made since then, his friend Piers is no longer his friend. If Trump sounds like a raving lunatic, he’s brought that image on himself.
It boggles the mind that Trump the Draft Dodger would badmouth a Marine Corps general who served our country in combat at the same time the coward was playing 18 holes on the golf course with his phony bone spurs. While Mattis was ducking enemy fire, Trump was ducking an occasional stray golf ball.
We are fucked. If Trump survives impeachment, which he most probably will, we are left with the choice of either a crazy Democrat or a crazy Republican in 2020. And that’s why I won’t be voting for any of the presidential candidates.
HILLARY SEEING RUSSIANS UNDER THE BED
by Bob Walsh
Hillary Clinton, expert on all forms of Russian election interference, has declared that the Russkies are "grooming" a current female presidential candidate (presumably Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii) to run as a third party candidate to pee in the Democrat soup.
I do know that as soon as Ms. Gabbard files to run as a third party I will be happy to make a modest donation to her campaign, just to keep the pot stirring. You got to have some fun somehow.
Hillary Clinton, expert on all forms of Russian election interference, has declared that the Russkies are "grooming" a current female presidential candidate (presumably Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii) to run as a third party candidate to pee in the Democrat soup.
I do know that as soon as Ms. Gabbard files to run as a third party I will be happy to make a modest donation to her campaign, just to keep the pot stirring. You got to have some fun somehow.
IN DE BLASIOVILLE, THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN CRIME IS LOCKING UP CRIMINALS
What does it take to get sent to jail in New York City?
By Bob McManus
New York Post
October 15, 2019
Does Tony Johnson, the Brooklyn 17-year-old who stands charged as a gang-banging crime tsunami, represent the future of New York?
Johnson now sits in a “secure youth facility” — whatever that means these days — having been busted on a 34-count street-crime indictment, turned loose by a soft-hearted, low-bail-setting judge and then, police say, getting right back to doing what he does best: brutalizing his neighbors.
His depredations seem to have ended with a particularly loathsome sexual assault on a 12-year-old girl in the basement of a Brooklyn housing project — but who knows for sure; the cops likely missed a mugging or two, and maybe worse.
Indeed, all that’s certain is that — thanks to New York’s new Raise the Age law — Johnson can’t be tried as an adult no matter how precocious his crimes.
So thank you, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
It’s easy to criticize the judge here — the prosecution had asked for $225,000 bail and Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Craig Walker knocked that down to $6,000 — and surely some blame accrues.
But this is de Blasioville circa 2019, where the zeitgeist has it that the only thing worse than crime is locking up criminals; where Congress member AOC is a guiding light of the No New Jails movement — and where the top municipal priority seems not to be schools, infrastructure or public hospitals, but rather shuttering Rikers Island.
And as for bail, well, it’s a town where the latest thing in do-goodery is dredging up dough to spring low-lifes, no questions asked. (Randy Santos, the accused Bowery mass murderer, was twice bailed by nonprofit organizations that exist pretty much solely to do that sort of thing; Santos’ victims could well be protesting today, if they weren’t dead.)
It’s only going to get worse.
The problem extends far beyond de Blasioville: Cuomo and the increasingly hard-left state Legislature in Albany this year went right to the heart of the pre-trial detention issue, mandating release without bail of suspects charged with a mind-bending array of charges, including intrinsically violent offenses.
Starting Jan. 1, for example, those charged with criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter, a wide range of drug-dealing offenses, weapons possession on school grounds, resisting arrest — even assault on a person less than 11 years old — will be shooed right back out on to the street.
Thus, those judges who do take seriously their responsibility to protect public safety (there really are a few in New York, you know) will be denied the bail-setting flexibility needed to do so.
Whence this insanity, and why?
All politicians pander, and you can learn a lot by studying who they pander to. And why they do it.
New York is a city in profound demographic flux. Its median age is 35 and 4.5 million of its 8-plus million residents are foreign born — which is to say, half the city has only the vaguest recollections, if any, of life before Pax Giuliana.
Meanwhile, newcomers tend not to be wave-makers, and Gotham’s streets tend to be tranquil compared to those many immigrants left behind — so all is good. They’ll learn better, of course, but it’ll take time.
So with relatively little solid-citizen pushback, New York’s pols — in Albany, on the City Council and just hangin’ at the Park Slope Y — are falling all over themselves sucking up to activist progressive lefties and the folks they champion: the types who came so close to bringing New York City to its knees a generation ago.
Not literally the same folks, of course. The addicts, pushers, pimps, gangsters, gunsels and murderously insane vagrants who made life in pre-Giuliani New York such a pulse-pounding adventure have long since gone to the places where bad choices take people.
Jail was one such destination, and in large numbers they went. It was a dreadful necessity back then and likely will be once again now that that the Giuliani-Bloomberg urban-oasis interregnum seems to be nearing an end.
Certainly the bad actors are making a comeback, as New York moves to shed jail cells, backs away from quality-of-life law enforcement, cedes mass transit and other public spaces to threatening, often vicious vagrants — all to keep the progressive population and its dubious clients happy.
Cultures reap what they sow, of course, and this year’s crop includes Randy Santos and Tony Johnson. There’s two long months to go.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Gov. Pinko Cuomo and Mayor Sandinista de Blasio must have taken a page out of Scott Henson’s book, or vice versa.
By Bob McManus
New York Post
October 15, 2019
Does Tony Johnson, the Brooklyn 17-year-old who stands charged as a gang-banging crime tsunami, represent the future of New York?
Johnson now sits in a “secure youth facility” — whatever that means these days — having been busted on a 34-count street-crime indictment, turned loose by a soft-hearted, low-bail-setting judge and then, police say, getting right back to doing what he does best: brutalizing his neighbors.
His depredations seem to have ended with a particularly loathsome sexual assault on a 12-year-old girl in the basement of a Brooklyn housing project — but who knows for sure; the cops likely missed a mugging or two, and maybe worse.
Indeed, all that’s certain is that — thanks to New York’s new Raise the Age law — Johnson can’t be tried as an adult no matter how precocious his crimes.
So thank you, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
It’s easy to criticize the judge here — the prosecution had asked for $225,000 bail and Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Craig Walker knocked that down to $6,000 — and surely some blame accrues.
But this is de Blasioville circa 2019, where the zeitgeist has it that the only thing worse than crime is locking up criminals; where Congress member AOC is a guiding light of the No New Jails movement — and where the top municipal priority seems not to be schools, infrastructure or public hospitals, but rather shuttering Rikers Island.
And as for bail, well, it’s a town where the latest thing in do-goodery is dredging up dough to spring low-lifes, no questions asked. (Randy Santos, the accused Bowery mass murderer, was twice bailed by nonprofit organizations that exist pretty much solely to do that sort of thing; Santos’ victims could well be protesting today, if they weren’t dead.)
It’s only going to get worse.
The problem extends far beyond de Blasioville: Cuomo and the increasingly hard-left state Legislature in Albany this year went right to the heart of the pre-trial detention issue, mandating release without bail of suspects charged with a mind-bending array of charges, including intrinsically violent offenses.
Starting Jan. 1, for example, those charged with criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter, a wide range of drug-dealing offenses, weapons possession on school grounds, resisting arrest — even assault on a person less than 11 years old — will be shooed right back out on to the street.
Thus, those judges who do take seriously their responsibility to protect public safety (there really are a few in New York, you know) will be denied the bail-setting flexibility needed to do so.
Whence this insanity, and why?
All politicians pander, and you can learn a lot by studying who they pander to. And why they do it.
New York is a city in profound demographic flux. Its median age is 35 and 4.5 million of its 8-plus million residents are foreign born — which is to say, half the city has only the vaguest recollections, if any, of life before Pax Giuliana.
Meanwhile, newcomers tend not to be wave-makers, and Gotham’s streets tend to be tranquil compared to those many immigrants left behind — so all is good. They’ll learn better, of course, but it’ll take time.
So with relatively little solid-citizen pushback, New York’s pols — in Albany, on the City Council and just hangin’ at the Park Slope Y — are falling all over themselves sucking up to activist progressive lefties and the folks they champion: the types who came so close to bringing New York City to its knees a generation ago.
Not literally the same folks, of course. The addicts, pushers, pimps, gangsters, gunsels and murderously insane vagrants who made life in pre-Giuliani New York such a pulse-pounding adventure have long since gone to the places where bad choices take people.
Jail was one such destination, and in large numbers they went. It was a dreadful necessity back then and likely will be once again now that that the Giuliani-Bloomberg urban-oasis interregnum seems to be nearing an end.
Certainly the bad actors are making a comeback, as New York moves to shed jail cells, backs away from quality-of-life law enforcement, cedes mass transit and other public spaces to threatening, often vicious vagrants — all to keep the progressive population and its dubious clients happy.
Cultures reap what they sow, of course, and this year’s crop includes Randy Santos and Tony Johnson. There’s two long months to go.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Gov. Pinko Cuomo and Mayor Sandinista de Blasio must have taken a page out of Scott Henson’s book, or vice versa.
WHO WOULD EVER BE A COP?
If Officer Aaron Dean is guilty of murder, what’s next? Should we charge doctors with murder when they make mistakes and someone dies? Is professional malpractice really now a strict liability offense for murder whenever someone dies?
By William Choslovsky
Chicago Sun-Times
October 16, 2019
So is the new standard that whenever a cop — even just mistakenly — shoots a citizen while doing his job, it’s murder?
If so, then let’s be very clear what the natural consequence will be: cops will be less likely to do their jobs.
Really, would you want to be a cop?
You get a call at 2:30 in the morning. Adrenaline running. You hear something. You overreact. You shoot. You kill an innocent.
That is what happened last weekend when Aaron Dean, a young, white, Fort Worth, Texas officer, killed Atatiana Jefferson, a young black woman. Dean was called to her home to investigate an open door early in the morning. He shot and killed Jefferson when she appeared on the other side of the window with a gun in her hand.
To be sure, Dean violated police policy by failing to identify he was a police officer when he suddenly saw someone — Jefferson — standing on the other side of the window. It is unclear whether in that split second he saw she had a gun. Either way, his violation was deadly.
In the old days, when police had license to do anything, nothing would have happened to Dean. There would be no consequence. That was, of course, wrong.
But the pendulum has swung so far that today — because of a mistake with no ill intent — Dean is charged with murder. He went from being on patrol looking for a bad guy to being the bad guy in a split second.
That too is wrong. Very wrong.
The proper consequence should be you lose your job. You violated policy. You made a mistake. You were negligent in doing your job, and it cost a life.
You — and your employer the police department — may also be sued civilly for the mistake. Prepare for a big-money judgment against you.
But losing your job and suffering financial penalty is one thing. Losing your liberty is another.
Absent ill intent, an officer should, at most, be charged with manslaughter, the standard of which is usually gross indifference or recklessness.
Such seemed the case with Amber Guyger, the Dallas cop who in 2018 mistakenly entered her neighbor’s apartment while off duty and tragically shot and killed Botham Jean. Guyger was convicted of murder.
But murder for an on-duty officer, like Dean this past weekend, for screwing up on the job? And perhaps piling on civil rights claims, as if an officer at 2:30 a.m. can make out race in a split second through a window, and then fire purposefully because of it?
Dean’s case is particularly bad — meaning he should lose his job, not his liberty — because reports now state that Jefferson, scared the cop outside was an intruder, pointed a gun at him from inside the window. With a gun pointed at him at 2:30 in the morning, he made a split second, tragic decision.
You might, too, in that situation, no matter your color. The truth of the matter, which we will never know, is that had Dean not fired, Jefferson might have shot him, fearful he was an intruder.
My goal is not to absolve all cops. As with any profession, there are rogue cops who cross lines. Murder charges for cops might at times be justified, as we sadly know here in Chicago.
But Dean’s case is not one of them.
If Dean is guilty of murder, what’s next? Should we charge nurses and doctors with murder when they make mistakes and someone dies? How about a firefighter who drives the truck too slow? Or the construction manager of the building in New Orleans that collapsed and killed a worker inside?
Is professional malpractice really now a strict liability offense for murder whenever someone dies?
As for the racial overlay, there is, sadly, enough racism in this world we don’t need to go looking and manufacture more. We don’t eviscerate our country’s sad racist history by charging white cops with murder every time they shoot a person of color.
The logical consequence of all this will be police won’t get out of their cars, what some call the “Ferguson effect.” Like you, almost all of them just want to do their jobs and go back to their families.
But if in doing their dangerous job they risk going to jail for murder when screwing up, good luck recruiting cops. Don’t complain when they stay in their cars. There’s way too much downside to do otherwise.
And as a result, we will all be less safe.
By William Choslovsky
Chicago Sun-Times
October 16, 2019
So is the new standard that whenever a cop — even just mistakenly — shoots a citizen while doing his job, it’s murder?
If so, then let’s be very clear what the natural consequence will be: cops will be less likely to do their jobs.
Really, would you want to be a cop?
You get a call at 2:30 in the morning. Adrenaline running. You hear something. You overreact. You shoot. You kill an innocent.
That is what happened last weekend when Aaron Dean, a young, white, Fort Worth, Texas officer, killed Atatiana Jefferson, a young black woman. Dean was called to her home to investigate an open door early in the morning. He shot and killed Jefferson when she appeared on the other side of the window with a gun in her hand.
To be sure, Dean violated police policy by failing to identify he was a police officer when he suddenly saw someone — Jefferson — standing on the other side of the window. It is unclear whether in that split second he saw she had a gun. Either way, his violation was deadly.
In the old days, when police had license to do anything, nothing would have happened to Dean. There would be no consequence. That was, of course, wrong.
But the pendulum has swung so far that today — because of a mistake with no ill intent — Dean is charged with murder. He went from being on patrol looking for a bad guy to being the bad guy in a split second.
That too is wrong. Very wrong.
The proper consequence should be you lose your job. You violated policy. You made a mistake. You were negligent in doing your job, and it cost a life.
You — and your employer the police department — may also be sued civilly for the mistake. Prepare for a big-money judgment against you.
But losing your job and suffering financial penalty is one thing. Losing your liberty is another.
Absent ill intent, an officer should, at most, be charged with manslaughter, the standard of which is usually gross indifference or recklessness.
Such seemed the case with Amber Guyger, the Dallas cop who in 2018 mistakenly entered her neighbor’s apartment while off duty and tragically shot and killed Botham Jean. Guyger was convicted of murder.
But murder for an on-duty officer, like Dean this past weekend, for screwing up on the job? And perhaps piling on civil rights claims, as if an officer at 2:30 a.m. can make out race in a split second through a window, and then fire purposefully because of it?
Dean’s case is particularly bad — meaning he should lose his job, not his liberty — because reports now state that Jefferson, scared the cop outside was an intruder, pointed a gun at him from inside the window. With a gun pointed at him at 2:30 in the morning, he made a split second, tragic decision.
You might, too, in that situation, no matter your color. The truth of the matter, which we will never know, is that had Dean not fired, Jefferson might have shot him, fearful he was an intruder.
My goal is not to absolve all cops. As with any profession, there are rogue cops who cross lines. Murder charges for cops might at times be justified, as we sadly know here in Chicago.
But Dean’s case is not one of them.
If Dean is guilty of murder, what’s next? Should we charge nurses and doctors with murder when they make mistakes and someone dies? How about a firefighter who drives the truck too slow? Or the construction manager of the building in New Orleans that collapsed and killed a worker inside?
Is professional malpractice really now a strict liability offense for murder whenever someone dies?
As for the racial overlay, there is, sadly, enough racism in this world we don’t need to go looking and manufacture more. We don’t eviscerate our country’s sad racist history by charging white cops with murder every time they shoot a person of color.
The logical consequence of all this will be police won’t get out of their cars, what some call the “Ferguson effect.” Like you, almost all of them just want to do their jobs and go back to their families.
But if in doing their dangerous job they risk going to jail for murder when screwing up, good luck recruiting cops. Don’t complain when they stay in their cars. There’s way too much downside to do otherwise.
And as a result, we will all be less safe.
YOU GOTTA LOVE SUBARU ….. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE A DOG
Subaru Announces National “Make A Dog’s Day”
By Jerry Reynolds
CarProUSA
October 18, 2019
I talked about this on the air last Saturday on the Car Pro radio show. As a dog lover, I applaud their actions!
Subaru of America is dedicating the month of October to its Subaru Loves Pets initiative that supports the well-being and protection of animals across the country. As in past years, Subaru says it will continue its partnership with The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), working together to help the approximately 3.3 million dogs that enter shelters annually find a safe, loving home.
National Make a Dog’s Day
This year, Subaru is also establishing the first-ever National Make A Dog’s Day on October 22. On this day, Subaru and its retailers will sponsor a nationwide effort to help the hardest-to-adopt shelter dogs find loving homes. Working closely with the ASPCA, the automaker will champion special needs dogs, specifically senior dogs, amputees, visually and hearing-impaired dogs, and dogs with birth defects and physical challenges. The automaker invites dog lovers to do something special for their loving companions on this day.
“Pets play a big role in our lives and the lives of Subaru owners. While we support efforts all year dedicated to the betterment of animals’ lives, in October, we make a concerted effort to help shelter pets – particularly the hard-to-adopt ones – find loving homes,” said Alan Bethke, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Subaru of America, Inc. “We are proud to establish the official National Make a Dog’s Day on October 22 and shine a light on the hundreds of thousands of dogs that are often times passed over including those with special needs.”
Subaru is also rolling out new dog-focused commercials throughout the month of October across broadcast and digital platforms (you can check out some of their videos on YouTube by clicking here.) The campaign includes TV spots that feature the automaker’s beloved spokesdogs, The Barkleys, on their latest adventures, as well as introduces some new faces through a set of advertising spots, entitled “The Underdogs.” These spots feature the dogs needing the most help getting adopted and debunk the myths, as well as celebrate their unique charms.
#MakeADogsDay
Subaru is also encouraging pet owners to do something special to celebrate their dogs on October 22 and share their happy dog in social posts using the hashtag #MakeADogsDay. The automaker says consumers can join the effort to help hard-to-adopt dogs by considering adopting a shelter dog, volunteering at an animal shelter, or participating in a Subaru retailer collection drive.
Pet Shelter Donations
Throughout October, select Subaru retailers across the country will collect unused pet supplies crucial to maintaining the health and well-being of shelter animals. In addition to these collection efforts, Subaru and participating retailers will donate 5,500 shelter supply kits and 4,800 new pet parent kits to local shelters. Also, more than 100 participating Subaru retailers will work in conjunction with animal shelters in their communities to host pet adoption events.
For more information on Subaru Loves Pets visit www.subaru.com/pets.
By Jerry Reynolds
CarProUSA
October 18, 2019
I talked about this on the air last Saturday on the Car Pro radio show. As a dog lover, I applaud their actions!
Subaru of America is dedicating the month of October to its Subaru Loves Pets initiative that supports the well-being and protection of animals across the country. As in past years, Subaru says it will continue its partnership with The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), working together to help the approximately 3.3 million dogs that enter shelters annually find a safe, loving home.
National Make a Dog’s Day
This year, Subaru is also establishing the first-ever National Make A Dog’s Day on October 22. On this day, Subaru and its retailers will sponsor a nationwide effort to help the hardest-to-adopt shelter dogs find loving homes. Working closely with the ASPCA, the automaker will champion special needs dogs, specifically senior dogs, amputees, visually and hearing-impaired dogs, and dogs with birth defects and physical challenges. The automaker invites dog lovers to do something special for their loving companions on this day.
“Pets play a big role in our lives and the lives of Subaru owners. While we support efforts all year dedicated to the betterment of animals’ lives, in October, we make a concerted effort to help shelter pets – particularly the hard-to-adopt ones – find loving homes,” said Alan Bethke, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Subaru of America, Inc. “We are proud to establish the official National Make a Dog’s Day on October 22 and shine a light on the hundreds of thousands of dogs that are often times passed over including those with special needs.”
Subaru is also rolling out new dog-focused commercials throughout the month of October across broadcast and digital platforms (you can check out some of their videos on YouTube by clicking here.) The campaign includes TV spots that feature the automaker’s beloved spokesdogs, The Barkleys, on their latest adventures, as well as introduces some new faces through a set of advertising spots, entitled “The Underdogs.” These spots feature the dogs needing the most help getting adopted and debunk the myths, as well as celebrate their unique charms.
#MakeADogsDay
Subaru is also encouraging pet owners to do something special to celebrate their dogs on October 22 and share their happy dog in social posts using the hashtag #MakeADogsDay. The automaker says consumers can join the effort to help hard-to-adopt dogs by considering adopting a shelter dog, volunteering at an animal shelter, or participating in a Subaru retailer collection drive.
Pet Shelter Donations
Throughout October, select Subaru retailers across the country will collect unused pet supplies crucial to maintaining the health and well-being of shelter animals. In addition to these collection efforts, Subaru and participating retailers will donate 5,500 shelter supply kits and 4,800 new pet parent kits to local shelters. Also, more than 100 participating Subaru retailers will work in conjunction with animal shelters in their communities to host pet adoption events.
For more information on Subaru Loves Pets visit www.subaru.com/pets.
553 YEARS AND 8 MONTHS TO LIFE … DAMN IT, HE WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR PAROLE IN 470 YEARS
Man Sentenced To 5 Centuries In Prison For Shooting LAPD Swat Officer In Helmet, Wounding K-9 During Shootouts
LAPPL News Watch
October 18, 2019
A Los Angeles gang member received a prison sentence of more than five-and-a-half centuries Thursday for shooting a Los Angeles Police Department SWAT officer, who was saved by his helmet, and wounding a police K-9 during a series of shootouts in 2017, authorities said.
Jose Afredo Rauda, 36, was convicted earlier this month of 12 counts of attempted murder on a peace officer, 19 counts of assault with a firearm on a peace officer, four counts of assault with a firearm, one count of assault on a police animal, shooting at an occupied vehicle and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
He returned to Los Angeles County Superior Court for sentencing on Thursday, where he received a prison term of 553 years and 8 months to life, prosecutors said in a written statement.
LAPPL News Watch
October 18, 2019
A Los Angeles gang member received a prison sentence of more than five-and-a-half centuries Thursday for shooting a Los Angeles Police Department SWAT officer, who was saved by his helmet, and wounding a police K-9 during a series of shootouts in 2017, authorities said.
Jose Afredo Rauda, 36, was convicted earlier this month of 12 counts of attempted murder on a peace officer, 19 counts of assault with a firearm on a peace officer, four counts of assault with a firearm, one count of assault on a police animal, shooting at an occupied vehicle and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
He returned to Los Angeles County Superior Court for sentencing on Thursday, where he received a prison term of 553 years and 8 months to life, prosecutors said in a written statement.
Friday, October 18, 2019
THE BEST INDICATOR OF FUTURE BAD BEHAVIOR
Is Past Bad Behavior
by Bob Walsh
A bit over two years ago a young woman named Abdulia Sanchez was live-streaming herself driving drunk along Hwy 99 when she piled in, killing her 17-year old sister in the process.
She just got out of the slammer 3 weeks ago, on felony parole. The Stockton PD attempted to stop her for no registration. She boogied, blowing two stop signs and one red light before she crashed on the on-ramp to I-5 at March Lane. There was a .45 automatic in the car. A man who was a passenger in the car beat feet, leaving her holding the bag as it were.
So she is looking at violation of parole (driving without a license), running from the cops, maybe possession of the firearm, and conspicuous stupidity in public. Maybe she likes being in prison. She does, at the very least, habitually make really crappy decisions. At least she wasn't drunk.
by Bob Walsh
A bit over two years ago a young woman named Abdulia Sanchez was live-streaming herself driving drunk along Hwy 99 when she piled in, killing her 17-year old sister in the process.
She just got out of the slammer 3 weeks ago, on felony parole. The Stockton PD attempted to stop her for no registration. She boogied, blowing two stop signs and one red light before she crashed on the on-ramp to I-5 at March Lane. There was a .45 automatic in the car. A man who was a passenger in the car beat feet, leaving her holding the bag as it were.
So she is looking at violation of parole (driving without a license), running from the cops, maybe possession of the firearm, and conspicuous stupidity in public. Maybe she likes being in prison. She does, at the very least, habitually make really crappy decisions. At least she wasn't drunk.
SOMEBODY WASN'T DOING THEIR JOB
by Bob Walsh
The Northern Illinois Academy is a residential psychiatric treatment facility. It houses patients between the ages of 6 and 21. These patients have autism, mood disorders, developmental delays and other assorted psychiatric disorders.
Last April they went on a field trip to a public library. (They don't have their own library?) While on this trip Cody Pomrenke, 18, a resident patient of the facility lured another residential patient, a 13-year old female, into the men's bathroom and sexually assaulted her. The staff were aware that Pomrenke had taken an inappropriate interest in the girl and seemed to be 'grooming" her for sexual contact. They had directed him to stay away from the girl, but nevertheless took the two of them together on a field trip and clearly did not exercise adequate oversight.
The young girl's father is royally pissed. I expect he will sue. I don't blame him.
The Northern Illinois Academy is a residential psychiatric treatment facility. It houses patients between the ages of 6 and 21. These patients have autism, mood disorders, developmental delays and other assorted psychiatric disorders.
Last April they went on a field trip to a public library. (They don't have their own library?) While on this trip Cody Pomrenke, 18, a resident patient of the facility lured another residential patient, a 13-year old female, into the men's bathroom and sexually assaulted her. The staff were aware that Pomrenke had taken an inappropriate interest in the girl and seemed to be 'grooming" her for sexual contact. They had directed him to stay away from the girl, but nevertheless took the two of them together on a field trip and clearly did not exercise adequate oversight.
The young girl's father is royally pissed. I expect he will sue. I don't blame him.
BREXIT ACHIEVED
Yes No Maybe Kinda-Sorta
by Bob Walsh
Boris Johnson, P.M. of the United Kingdom and major Brexit proponent, announced yesterday that he has reached an accord with the E. U. to permit a more or less smooth exit of the U. K. from the E. U. on Halloween.
However.....the deal has to be approved by Parliament. By this Saturday. Or.......
The result would be another stall, or an no-deal Brexit, which everybody agrees would be an ungood thing.
Parliament has not held a Saturday session since the Falkland War. A nose count indicates that Boris will fall short by about five votes. You can bet that there is some major horse trading and arm twisting going on. A relatively small (ten seats) Irish labor party has announced that they are opposed to this particular deal, though in general they have been supportive of Brexit. It is hard to say if they are trying to get some freebies or if they really have a beef with the deal.
I wonder what John Oliver will say about it this coming Sunday on HBO. I will have to check it out.
by Bob Walsh
Boris Johnson, P.M. of the United Kingdom and major Brexit proponent, announced yesterday that he has reached an accord with the E. U. to permit a more or less smooth exit of the U. K. from the E. U. on Halloween.
However.....the deal has to be approved by Parliament. By this Saturday. Or.......
The result would be another stall, or an no-deal Brexit, which everybody agrees would be an ungood thing.
Parliament has not held a Saturday session since the Falkland War. A nose count indicates that Boris will fall short by about five votes. You can bet that there is some major horse trading and arm twisting going on. A relatively small (ten seats) Irish labor party has announced that they are opposed to this particular deal, though in general they have been supportive of Brexit. It is hard to say if they are trying to get some freebies or if they really have a beef with the deal.
I wonder what John Oliver will say about it this coming Sunday on HBO. I will have to check it out.
AFTER ERDOGAN TRASHED TRUMP’S LETTER, TRUMP AGAIN TREATED THE KURDS LIKE TURDS
Turkey agrees with US to pause Syria assault while Kurds withdraw
Israel Hayom
October 17, 2019
Turkey agreed on Thursday to pause its offensive in Syria for five days to let Kurdish forces withdraw from a "safe zone" Ankara had sought to capture, in a deal hailed by Washington but which Turkish leaders cast as a complete victory.
The truce was announced by US Vice President Mike Pence after talks in Ankara with Turkey's President Tayyip Erdoğan, and was swiftly hailed by President Donald Trump, who said it would save "millions of lives"
But if implemented it would achieve all the main objectives Turkey announced when it launched the assault eight days ago: control of a strip of Syria more than 30 km (20 miles) deep, with the Kurdish YPG militia, formerly close US allies, obliged to pull out.
"The safe zone will be primarily enforced by the Turkish Armed Forces," a joint US-Turkish statement released after the talks said.
A Turkish official told Reuters Ankara got "exactly what we wanted" from the talks with the United States. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu described it as a pause, solely to allow the Kurdish fighters to withdraw.
Kurdish fighters would be forced to give up their heavy weapons and their positions would be destroyed, Cavusoglu said. He declined to call the agreement a "ceasefire", saying ceasefires could be agreed only by legitimate sides, and not by the Kurds that Turkey considers terrorists.
Pence said Washington had already been in contact with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which had agreed to withdraw and were already pulling out.
Trump tweeted: "Great news out of Turkey".
"Thank you to Erdoğan," Trump said. "Millions of lives will be saved!"
"Today the United States and Turkey have agreed to a ceasefire in Syria," Pence told a news conference after more than four hours of talks at the presidential palace in Ankara.
"The Turkish side will pause Operation Peace Spring in order to allow for the withdrawal of YPG forces from the safe zone for 120 hours," Pence said. "All military operations under Operation Peace Spring will be paused, and Operation Peace Spring will be halted entirely on completion of the withdrawal."
The deal struck with Erdoğan also provided for Turkey not to engage in military operations in the flashpoint Syrian border town of Kobani, Pence said. Cavusoglu said Turkey had given no commitments about Kobani.
Pence added that he had spoken to Trump after the talks and that Trump had expressed his gratitude for the ceasefire accord. Washington's main goal had been to halt the violence, and it had succeeded, Pence said.
The Turkish assault has created a new humanitarian crisis in Syria with 200,000 civilians taking flight, a security alert over thousands of Islamic State fighters abandoned in Kurdish jails, and a political maelstrom at home for Trump.
Trump has been accused of abandoning Kurdish-led fighters, Washington's main partners in the battle to dismantle Islamic State's self-declared caliphate in Syria, by withdrawing troops from the border as Ankara launched its offensive on Oct. 9.
Trump had defended his move on Wednesday as "strategically brilliant". He said he thought Pence and Erdoğan would have a successful meeting, but warned of sanctions and tariffs that "will be devastating to Turkey's economy" otherwise.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In five days, the Turks will resume their offensive because no one negotiated or consulted with the Kurds who are not likely surrender and give up their land. Don’t believe that shit about the Kurds agreeing to withdraw and to give up their heavy weapons. This is another betrayal of the Kurds.
__________
Turkey's Erdogan threw Trump's 'don't be a fool' letter in the trash and considered it 'the final straw' before launching his offensive in Syria
Daily Mail
October 17, 2019
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan 'thoroughly rejected' Donald Trump's letter, dated October 9, and promptly threw it in the bin, officials have revealed.
__________
Donald Trump hails five-day ceasefire deal in Syria as 'a great day for civilization' and boasts of 'incredible outcome' claiming 'great leader' Erdogan and the Kurds are happy - but Turkey hits back that they have only agreed to a PAUSE
Daily Mail
October 17, 2019
Donald Trump hailed an agreement between the U.S. and Turkey for a five-day cease fire in Syria as a 'great day for civilization' as Turkish officials down played the outcome of the deal.
'A great day for the Kurds. It's really a great day for civilization. It's a great day for civilization,' Trump said.
Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday announced the United States and Turkey reached a deal to suspend Ankara's operations in northern Syria for five days to allow Kurds time to withdraw to a 'safe zone' as part of a cease-fire agreement.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A great day for the Kurds? Trump must be out of his mind. It’s a great day for the Turks and an atrocious one for the Kurds. A great day for civilization? That one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
Israel Hayom
October 17, 2019
Turkey agreed on Thursday to pause its offensive in Syria for five days to let Kurdish forces withdraw from a "safe zone" Ankara had sought to capture, in a deal hailed by Washington but which Turkish leaders cast as a complete victory.
The truce was announced by US Vice President Mike Pence after talks in Ankara with Turkey's President Tayyip Erdoğan, and was swiftly hailed by President Donald Trump, who said it would save "millions of lives"
But if implemented it would achieve all the main objectives Turkey announced when it launched the assault eight days ago: control of a strip of Syria more than 30 km (20 miles) deep, with the Kurdish YPG militia, formerly close US allies, obliged to pull out.
"The safe zone will be primarily enforced by the Turkish Armed Forces," a joint US-Turkish statement released after the talks said.
A Turkish official told Reuters Ankara got "exactly what we wanted" from the talks with the United States. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu described it as a pause, solely to allow the Kurdish fighters to withdraw.
Kurdish fighters would be forced to give up their heavy weapons and their positions would be destroyed, Cavusoglu said. He declined to call the agreement a "ceasefire", saying ceasefires could be agreed only by legitimate sides, and not by the Kurds that Turkey considers terrorists.
Pence said Washington had already been in contact with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which had agreed to withdraw and were already pulling out.
Trump tweeted: "Great news out of Turkey".
"Thank you to Erdoğan," Trump said. "Millions of lives will be saved!"
"Today the United States and Turkey have agreed to a ceasefire in Syria," Pence told a news conference after more than four hours of talks at the presidential palace in Ankara.
"The Turkish side will pause Operation Peace Spring in order to allow for the withdrawal of YPG forces from the safe zone for 120 hours," Pence said. "All military operations under Operation Peace Spring will be paused, and Operation Peace Spring will be halted entirely on completion of the withdrawal."
The deal struck with Erdoğan also provided for Turkey not to engage in military operations in the flashpoint Syrian border town of Kobani, Pence said. Cavusoglu said Turkey had given no commitments about Kobani.
Pence added that he had spoken to Trump after the talks and that Trump had expressed his gratitude for the ceasefire accord. Washington's main goal had been to halt the violence, and it had succeeded, Pence said.
The Turkish assault has created a new humanitarian crisis in Syria with 200,000 civilians taking flight, a security alert over thousands of Islamic State fighters abandoned in Kurdish jails, and a political maelstrom at home for Trump.
Trump has been accused of abandoning Kurdish-led fighters, Washington's main partners in the battle to dismantle Islamic State's self-declared caliphate in Syria, by withdrawing troops from the border as Ankara launched its offensive on Oct. 9.
Trump had defended his move on Wednesday as "strategically brilliant". He said he thought Pence and Erdoğan would have a successful meeting, but warned of sanctions and tariffs that "will be devastating to Turkey's economy" otherwise.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In five days, the Turks will resume their offensive because no one negotiated or consulted with the Kurds who are not likely surrender and give up their land. Don’t believe that shit about the Kurds agreeing to withdraw and to give up their heavy weapons. This is another betrayal of the Kurds.
__________
Turkey's Erdogan threw Trump's 'don't be a fool' letter in the trash and considered it 'the final straw' before launching his offensive in Syria
Daily Mail
October 17, 2019
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan 'thoroughly rejected' Donald Trump's letter, dated October 9, and promptly threw it in the bin, officials have revealed.
__________
Donald Trump hails five-day ceasefire deal in Syria as 'a great day for civilization' and boasts of 'incredible outcome' claiming 'great leader' Erdogan and the Kurds are happy - but Turkey hits back that they have only agreed to a PAUSE
Daily Mail
October 17, 2019
Donald Trump hailed an agreement between the U.S. and Turkey for a five-day cease fire in Syria as a 'great day for civilization' as Turkish officials down played the outcome of the deal.
'A great day for the Kurds. It's really a great day for civilization. It's a great day for civilization,' Trump said.
Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday announced the United States and Turkey reached a deal to suspend Ankara's operations in northern Syria for five days to allow Kurds time to withdraw to a 'safe zone' as part of a cease-fire agreement.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A great day for the Kurds? Trump must be out of his mind. It’s a great day for the Turks and an atrocious one for the Kurds. A great day for civilization? That one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
TUNISIA’S PRESIDENT-ELECT NOT EXACTLY A FRIEND OF ISRAEL
Kais Saied says normalization with the Zionist entity is treachery
BarkGrowlBite
October 18, 2019
Kais Saied, won the election for Tunisian president with 73 percent of the vote. In a televised interview on Monday, he said:
“This is my view on the Zionist entity and it will not change. If one day I change my mind, remind me about the things I said now. We are in a situation of war with Zionism, and normalization is treachery.”
And on Friday he said:
“The Jews visit Tunisia; we protected them in the Second World War. But whomever normalizes relations with the Zionist entity that stole the land of the Palestinian people and exiled them from their land is a traitor.”
BarkGrowlBite
October 18, 2019
Kais Saied, won the election for Tunisian president with 73 percent of the vote. In a televised interview on Monday, he said:
“This is my view on the Zionist entity and it will not change. If one day I change my mind, remind me about the things I said now. We are in a situation of war with Zionism, and normalization is treachery.”
And on Friday he said:
“The Jews visit Tunisia; we protected them in the Second World War. But whomever normalizes relations with the Zionist entity that stole the land of the Palestinian people and exiled them from their land is a traitor.”
SECOND FOUL UP WITH MOUNT SURIBACHI FLAG RAISING CORRECTED
Marines admit second hero is misidentified in Iwo Jima flag-raising photo
By Kenneth Garger
New York Post
October 16, 2019
A new hero has been named as one of the six Marines famously photographed raising the American flag over Iwo Jima during WWII — as the Marines Corps on Wednesday admitted it misidentified a second member of the group, according to a report.
An investigation by the Marines and the FBI’s Digital Evidence Laboratory confirmed what three historians already suspected — that Cpl. Harold “Pie” Keller, not Pfc. Rene Gagnon, was one of the jarheads captured in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, NBC News reports.
“Without the initiative and contributions of both private historians devoted to preservation of our history and the FBI’s Digital Evidence Laboratory, the Marine Corps would not have this opportunity to expand on the historical record of the second flag raising on Mount Suribachi,” the Marine Corps told the outlet in a statement.
“Regardless of who was in the photograph, each and every Marine who set foot on Iwo Jima, or supported the effort from the sea and air around the island is, and always will be, a part of our Corps’ cherished history,” the Marines’ statement continued.
The picture was taken by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal on Feb. 23, 1945. It shows the Marines raising the American flag atop Japan’s Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
The mishap comes three years after the misidentification of a different flag-raiser was corrected by the Marine Corps.
Historians Stephen Foley, Dustin Spence and Brent Westemeyer concluded that Keller was among the Marines in the iconic photo by using film footage from atop Mount Suribachi and photos taken by other soldiers, the report said.
Keller, who died of a heart attack in 1979 at the age of 57, never revealed that part of his history to his family.
“We knew he fought in the war, we knew he was wounded in the shoulder at one point … But he didn’t tell us he helped raise the flag on Mount Suribachi,” Keller’s daughter, Kay Maurer, 70, told NBC News. “He never spoke about any of this when we were growing up.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: In 2016 the Marine Corps acknowledged it had misidentified one of the six men in the Iwo Jima flag raising photo. Instead of Navy corpsman John Bradley, it was Pvt. 1st Class Harold Schultz who was actually in the photo. Schultz died in 1995 without publicly claiming he helped raise the flag.
There were two flag raisings on Mount Suribachi and Bradley was in a photo of the first raising. But the photo circulated by the Marine corps was the one of the second raising which was staged to be photographed.
Bradley’s son James Bradley and co-author Ron Powers wrote the best-selling book Flags of our Fathers which was made into the movie directed by Clint Eastwood.
By Kenneth Garger
New York Post
October 16, 2019
A new hero has been named as one of the six Marines famously photographed raising the American flag over Iwo Jima during WWII — as the Marines Corps on Wednesday admitted it misidentified a second member of the group, according to a report.
An investigation by the Marines and the FBI’s Digital Evidence Laboratory confirmed what three historians already suspected — that Cpl. Harold “Pie” Keller, not Pfc. Rene Gagnon, was one of the jarheads captured in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, NBC News reports.
“Without the initiative and contributions of both private historians devoted to preservation of our history and the FBI’s Digital Evidence Laboratory, the Marine Corps would not have this opportunity to expand on the historical record of the second flag raising on Mount Suribachi,” the Marine Corps told the outlet in a statement.
“Regardless of who was in the photograph, each and every Marine who set foot on Iwo Jima, or supported the effort from the sea and air around the island is, and always will be, a part of our Corps’ cherished history,” the Marines’ statement continued.
The picture was taken by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal on Feb. 23, 1945. It shows the Marines raising the American flag atop Japan’s Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
The mishap comes three years after the misidentification of a different flag-raiser was corrected by the Marine Corps.
Historians Stephen Foley, Dustin Spence and Brent Westemeyer concluded that Keller was among the Marines in the iconic photo by using film footage from atop Mount Suribachi and photos taken by other soldiers, the report said.
Keller, who died of a heart attack in 1979 at the age of 57, never revealed that part of his history to his family.
“We knew he fought in the war, we knew he was wounded in the shoulder at one point … But he didn’t tell us he helped raise the flag on Mount Suribachi,” Keller’s daughter, Kay Maurer, 70, told NBC News. “He never spoke about any of this when we were growing up.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: In 2016 the Marine Corps acknowledged it had misidentified one of the six men in the Iwo Jima flag raising photo. Instead of Navy corpsman John Bradley, it was Pvt. 1st Class Harold Schultz who was actually in the photo. Schultz died in 1995 without publicly claiming he helped raise the flag.
There were two flag raisings on Mount Suribachi and Bradley was in a photo of the first raising. But the photo circulated by the Marine corps was the one of the second raising which was staged to be photographed.
Bradley’s son James Bradley and co-author Ron Powers wrote the best-selling book Flags of our Fathers which was made into the movie directed by Clint Eastwood.
CARTEL PUNISHES RAPIST-MURDERER BY SHATTERING HIS HEAD, CUTTING OFF HIS DICK AND RAMMING A BROOMSTICK UP HIS ASS
Nuevo Cartel de Juárez aka La Línea avenge a woman's brutal murder
By Sol Prendido from La Polaka
Borderland Beat
October 16, 2019
Jiménez, Chihuahua - A criminal arrested by the State Prosecutor for cruelly killing a woman, was released to be slaughtered in the same way by La Linea Cartel. The man died with gunshots to the head and a broomstick embedded in his anus.
Octavio Rubio Rosselot, 34, aka El Guero, was arrested on suspicion of brutally killing Margarita Mendez, 34, two days ago. The woman was severely beaten and had a broomstick buried in her genitals in revenge for infidelity.
The body was left on a dirt road near the Torreón road.
Yesterday morning, the arrest of the murderer was known, who had been seen with the woman in recent hours.
Although evidence of the crime against the lady was found, authorities let him go and he later appeared brutally impaled, beheaded and tortured.
A video released by the Nuevo Cartel de Juárez shows the tortured and confessed individual of Margarita's crime. The gangsters in revenge killed him the same way he killed the woman, they shattered his head and cut off his genitals.
[A] Manta [left with his body] reads as follows: For being such a fuck up and a rapist. This will be the fate of every rapist. Sincerely, La Línea
EDITOR'S NOTE: I strongly suspect that in that area of Mexico, there won't be any rapes for some time to come.
By Sol Prendido from La Polaka
Borderland Beat
October 16, 2019
Jiménez, Chihuahua - A criminal arrested by the State Prosecutor for cruelly killing a woman, was released to be slaughtered in the same way by La Linea Cartel. The man died with gunshots to the head and a broomstick embedded in his anus.
Octavio Rubio Rosselot, 34, aka El Guero, was arrested on suspicion of brutally killing Margarita Mendez, 34, two days ago. The woman was severely beaten and had a broomstick buried in her genitals in revenge for infidelity.
The body was left on a dirt road near the Torreón road.
Yesterday morning, the arrest of the murderer was known, who had been seen with the woman in recent hours.
Although evidence of the crime against the lady was found, authorities let him go and he later appeared brutally impaled, beheaded and tortured.
A video released by the Nuevo Cartel de Juárez shows the tortured and confessed individual of Margarita's crime. The gangsters in revenge killed him the same way he killed the woman, they shattered his head and cut off his genitals.
[A] Manta [left with his body] reads as follows: For being such a fuck up and a rapist. This will be the fate of every rapist. Sincerely, La Línea
EDITOR'S NOTE: I strongly suspect that in that area of Mexico, there won't be any rapes for some time to come.
Thursday, October 17, 2019
WINNERS AND LOSERS IN DEMOCRATIC DEBATE
Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard comes out on top in Drudge poll but pundits claim Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg are the winners of the 2020 Democratic debate where Joe Biden faded into the background
By Marlene Lenthang
Daily Mail
October 16, 2019
Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard came out on top in the first online poll of the night following Tuesday's Democratic Debate.
The 38-year-old Congresswoman decided last minute to attend the debate despite earlier threats to boycott it and spoke on her veteran experience serving in the Middle East and called for Donald Trump's impeachment, winning 29,242 votes (39.44%), according to a Drudge poll.
In her time on the stage alongside 11 other Democratic candidates, she gave an impassioned speech on U.S. presence in Syria - calling it a 'regime change war' - and sparred with Mayor Pete Buttigieg over removing American troops there.
However, other political pundits claimed Bernie Sanders came out on top, securing the endorsements of Congress 'Squad' members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and Ilhan Omar.
Sanders, who is usually criticized for his aggressive and angry front, appeared to be in good spirits on the stage, just weeks after suffering a heart attack. When Sen. Cory Booker joked' Senator Sanders is in favor of medical marijuana', he quipped, 'I'm not on it tonight.'
Sen. Elizabeth Warren was also crowned a winner of the debate and deemed a frontrunner in the race after she fielded relentless attacks from her rivals on her healthcare plans and taxes throughout the three-hour joust.
And the attacks from her more moderate counterparts aren't unwarranted, as the Massachusetts senator continues to rise in the polls.
'Warren was the focal point, with the other candidates all but taking their focus completely off Biden. It wasn’t completely smooth sailing for Warren (which we’ll get to), but it was an affirmation that she is viewed as perhaps the frontrunner now,' the Washington Post's Aaron Blake said.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar was praised as a winner for her surprisingly aggressive front in this debate where she repeatedly attacked Warren, calling her out for failing to answer if she'll raise taxes on the middle class for her Medicare-for-all healthcare proposal.
The moderate candidate called her out saying: 'I'm sorry Elizabeth. You are making Republican talking points in this room. Bernie is being honest. We owe it to the American people to tell them where we will send the invoice.'
Some criticized this very point - her healthcare plan - as Warren's loss of the night. Despite being asked four times if her Medicare-for-all proposal would increase taxes on the middle class, she failed to give a direct answer, leading Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke to push back against her.
Buttigieg was a surprise winner of the night, according to CNN's Chris Cillizza, for hitting Warren hard on her Medicare-for-all plan.
He also sparred with Rep. Gabbard's call to end U.S. wars in the Middle East, marking a tense moment between the two military veterans where he clapped back and said: 'Respectfully, congresswoman, I think that is dead wrong. The slaughter going on in Syria is not a consequence of American presence, it a consequence of a withdrawal and a betrayal by this president of American allies and American values'.
The South Bend, Indiana Mayor also dug into former Congressman Beto O'Rourke over his proposed mandatory buy-backs of assault-style rifles.
He said: 'I don't need lessons from you in courage - political or personal.'
All the while former vice president Joe Biden was named a loser by many. Despite leading in the polls, Biden performance didn't stand out compared to the aggressive tactics of his peers and and skirted around the issue of his son's business deals and the Ukraine scandal.
He boasted that the others candidates didn’t measure up to his accomplishments in office, which led Warren to snub him saying she was 'deeply grateful to president Obama' for passing a measure she helped work on during his presidency.
Tom Steyer was also slammed as a loser of the night. It was his first time on the debate stage but he failed to shine against his outspoken rivals, but did challenge Trump saying: 'I would love to take him on as a real businessman'.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I thought Warren was a loser who did poorly in responding to the attacks against her. And Biden babbled on as usual. Kamala got stuck on reproductive rights, Corey Booker, who has no chance of getting the nomination, Mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar were three of the better debaters, but all 12 were full of shit.
There was lots of applause but the lousiest comment got the biggest applause when Julian Castro said, “Police violence is also gun violence.”
__________
MODERATOR? ... NOT HARDLY!
by Bob Walsh
The only thing that I found interesting (but hardly surprising) was the fact that Anderson Cooper completely exonerated both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden from ANY criminality or impropriety in regards to Hunter's business dealings in the Ukraine and China. He also slandered Trump in the same "question," but that was also to be expected.
By Marlene Lenthang
Daily Mail
October 16, 2019
Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard came out on top in the first online poll of the night following Tuesday's Democratic Debate.
The 38-year-old Congresswoman decided last minute to attend the debate despite earlier threats to boycott it and spoke on her veteran experience serving in the Middle East and called for Donald Trump's impeachment, winning 29,242 votes (39.44%), according to a Drudge poll.
In her time on the stage alongside 11 other Democratic candidates, she gave an impassioned speech on U.S. presence in Syria - calling it a 'regime change war' - and sparred with Mayor Pete Buttigieg over removing American troops there.
However, other political pundits claimed Bernie Sanders came out on top, securing the endorsements of Congress 'Squad' members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and Ilhan Omar.
Sanders, who is usually criticized for his aggressive and angry front, appeared to be in good spirits on the stage, just weeks after suffering a heart attack. When Sen. Cory Booker joked' Senator Sanders is in favor of medical marijuana', he quipped, 'I'm not on it tonight.'
Sen. Elizabeth Warren was also crowned a winner of the debate and deemed a frontrunner in the race after she fielded relentless attacks from her rivals on her healthcare plans and taxes throughout the three-hour joust.
And the attacks from her more moderate counterparts aren't unwarranted, as the Massachusetts senator continues to rise in the polls.
'Warren was the focal point, with the other candidates all but taking their focus completely off Biden. It wasn’t completely smooth sailing for Warren (which we’ll get to), but it was an affirmation that she is viewed as perhaps the frontrunner now,' the Washington Post's Aaron Blake said.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar was praised as a winner for her surprisingly aggressive front in this debate where she repeatedly attacked Warren, calling her out for failing to answer if she'll raise taxes on the middle class for her Medicare-for-all healthcare proposal.
The moderate candidate called her out saying: 'I'm sorry Elizabeth. You are making Republican talking points in this room. Bernie is being honest. We owe it to the American people to tell them where we will send the invoice.'
Some criticized this very point - her healthcare plan - as Warren's loss of the night. Despite being asked four times if her Medicare-for-all proposal would increase taxes on the middle class, she failed to give a direct answer, leading Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke to push back against her.
Buttigieg was a surprise winner of the night, according to CNN's Chris Cillizza, for hitting Warren hard on her Medicare-for-all plan.
He also sparred with Rep. Gabbard's call to end U.S. wars in the Middle East, marking a tense moment between the two military veterans where he clapped back and said: 'Respectfully, congresswoman, I think that is dead wrong. The slaughter going on in Syria is not a consequence of American presence, it a consequence of a withdrawal and a betrayal by this president of American allies and American values'.
The South Bend, Indiana Mayor also dug into former Congressman Beto O'Rourke over his proposed mandatory buy-backs of assault-style rifles.
He said: 'I don't need lessons from you in courage - political or personal.'
All the while former vice president Joe Biden was named a loser by many. Despite leading in the polls, Biden performance didn't stand out compared to the aggressive tactics of his peers and and skirted around the issue of his son's business deals and the Ukraine scandal.
He boasted that the others candidates didn’t measure up to his accomplishments in office, which led Warren to snub him saying she was 'deeply grateful to president Obama' for passing a measure she helped work on during his presidency.
Tom Steyer was also slammed as a loser of the night. It was his first time on the debate stage but he failed to shine against his outspoken rivals, but did challenge Trump saying: 'I would love to take him on as a real businessman'.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I thought Warren was a loser who did poorly in responding to the attacks against her. And Biden babbled on as usual. Kamala got stuck on reproductive rights, Corey Booker, who has no chance of getting the nomination, Mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar were three of the better debaters, but all 12 were full of shit.
There was lots of applause but the lousiest comment got the biggest applause when Julian Castro said, “Police violence is also gun violence.”
__________
MODERATOR? ... NOT HARDLY!
by Bob Walsh
The only thing that I found interesting (but hardly surprising) was the fact that Anderson Cooper completely exonerated both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden from ANY criminality or impropriety in regards to Hunter's business dealings in the Ukraine and China. He also slandered Trump in the same "question," but that was also to be expected.
IS CREEPY JOE CIRCLING THE FINANCIAL DRAIN ?
by Bob Walsh
It was widely reported yesterday that the Biden campaign is now spending more money than they are taking in, which is NOT where you want to be at this stage of a serious campaign. About $1 million of those expenditures are for private jets for Creepy Joe as he is being flown hither and yon.
I am fully confident they are reduced emission private jet planes, kind of like low emission buses or cows that don't fart and belch.
It was widely reported yesterday that the Biden campaign is now spending more money than they are taking in, which is NOT where you want to be at this stage of a serious campaign. About $1 million of those expenditures are for private jets for Creepy Joe as he is being flown hither and yon.
I am fully confident they are reduced emission private jet planes, kind of like low emission buses or cows that don't fart and belch.
BOSTON MAN FLIPPED CHICAGO ROBBER OVER LIKE A HAMBUTGER
‘I don’t like bullies’: Rider from Boston disarms robber on Blue Line train
By Emmanuel Camarillo
Chicago Sun Times
October 15, 2019
Boston man Jean-Paul LaPierre, who caught a Blue Line train Sunday morning to the Chicago Marathon, said he didn’t hesitate to act when he heard someone was robbing people on the train.
“I don’t like people that strike fear in people like that,” he said. “I don’t like bullies.”
A man boarded the train about 5:50 a.m. and showed a handgun to passengers while demanding their money in the 5800 block of North Cumberland Avenue, Chicago police said.
“He was very quietly robbing people,” LaPierre said. “I went up front and said to him, give me the gun and we started fighting for the gun.”
With all of the adrenaline in his system, LaPierre said he wasn’t thinking about getting shot when he approached the armed robber. “Once I got a few feet from him I knew he wasn’t going to be able to react fast enough to shoot me.”
“I was going nuts,” he said. “When I see someone pull a gun it makes me angry, it makes me really, really angry.”
LaPierre said he managed to pry the gun away from the man and was holding onto it with his right hand while maintaining a firm grip on the robber with his left.
“The man in front of me said he could put the safety on, so I handed him the gun and he put the safety on and walked it out of the train,” LaPierre said. “At this point, I was alone on the train with this guy and I had no more weapon,” LaPierre said.
“I kept telling him if you move I’m going to knock you out. I’m going to hit you seven times in three seconds.”
After that, the man “calmed down and waited for the police,” LaPierre said.
Officers told the man to get on his stomach, but when he instead laid on his back, LaPierre ran to him and “flipped him over like a hamburger and then they cuffed him” LaPierre said.
Tremaine Anderson, 30, was arrested and charged with unauthorized use of a weapon, police said.
LaPierre, who said he was in town to run the marathon, said this isn’t the first time he’s stepped into the role of Good Samaritan. He said he helped rescue a boy from a vehicle crash in Boston a few years ago, and tracked down a missing python in Newton, Massachusetts.
“I’ve been involved in a lot of things,” LaPierre said. “I just seem to be at the right place at the right time, is what people tell me.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: But the cops did not get the gun because a ‘Slick Willie’ took off with it.
Anderson will probably go Scott-free because the cops have no gun and LaPierre will be returning to Boston. It would have been far better if LaPierre had hit him seven times in three seconds and beat the living shit out of him, then quickly beat feet before the cops arrived.
By Emmanuel Camarillo
Chicago Sun Times
October 15, 2019
Boston man Jean-Paul LaPierre, who caught a Blue Line train Sunday morning to the Chicago Marathon, said he didn’t hesitate to act when he heard someone was robbing people on the train.
“I don’t like people that strike fear in people like that,” he said. “I don’t like bullies.”
A man boarded the train about 5:50 a.m. and showed a handgun to passengers while demanding their money in the 5800 block of North Cumberland Avenue, Chicago police said.
“He was very quietly robbing people,” LaPierre said. “I went up front and said to him, give me the gun and we started fighting for the gun.”
With all of the adrenaline in his system, LaPierre said he wasn’t thinking about getting shot when he approached the armed robber. “Once I got a few feet from him I knew he wasn’t going to be able to react fast enough to shoot me.”
“I was going nuts,” he said. “When I see someone pull a gun it makes me angry, it makes me really, really angry.”
LaPierre said he managed to pry the gun away from the man and was holding onto it with his right hand while maintaining a firm grip on the robber with his left.
“The man in front of me said he could put the safety on, so I handed him the gun and he put the safety on and walked it out of the train,” LaPierre said. “At this point, I was alone on the train with this guy and I had no more weapon,” LaPierre said.
“I kept telling him if you move I’m going to knock you out. I’m going to hit you seven times in three seconds.”
After that, the man “calmed down and waited for the police,” LaPierre said.
Officers told the man to get on his stomach, but when he instead laid on his back, LaPierre ran to him and “flipped him over like a hamburger and then they cuffed him” LaPierre said.
Tremaine Anderson, 30, was arrested and charged with unauthorized use of a weapon, police said.
LaPierre, who said he was in town to run the marathon, said this isn’t the first time he’s stepped into the role of Good Samaritan. He said he helped rescue a boy from a vehicle crash in Boston a few years ago, and tracked down a missing python in Newton, Massachusetts.
“I’ve been involved in a lot of things,” LaPierre said. “I just seem to be at the right place at the right time, is what people tell me.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: But the cops did not get the gun because a ‘Slick Willie’ took off with it.
Anderson will probably go Scott-free because the cops have no gun and LaPierre will be returning to Boston. It would have been far better if LaPierre had hit him seven times in three seconds and beat the living shit out of him, then quickly beat feet before the cops arrived.
ABC NEWS SHOWED TURKS BOMBING KURDS IN KENTUCKY GUN RANGE
ABC Mistakenly Label a Video from a US Gun Range as Syrian War Footage
By Bethania Palma
Snopes
October 15, 2019
A nightly news program on ABC erroneously aired a video from a Kentucky gun range during a report about the outbreak of war in northern Syria between Turkey and U.S.-allied Kurds after U.S. President Donald Trump pulled American forces out.
The video depicting a fiery explosion was shown during “World News Tonight” on Oct. 13, 2019, and again the following day on “Good Morning America.” The video described itself as “appearing to show” the Turkish military bombarding Kurdish forces. In reality, it showed a night-time shooting event at a Kentucky gun range. ABC apologized for the mistake.
“We’ve taken down video that aired on ‘World News Tonight Sunday’ and ‘Good Morning America’ [on Oct. 14, 2019] that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy. ABC News regrets the error,” an ABC spokesman said in a statement.
A source from ABC said the video was provided by someone who purported to be in a “sensitive position” on the border between Turkey and Syria. The network is investigating the incident.
Turkey launched a military offensive against Kurdish forces in northern Syria shortly after Trump pulled American troops from their posts there, where they had been for several years supporting Kurds in a fight to contain Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists. The resulting chaos that included the escape of detainees associated with ISIS, violence against civilians, and a geopolitical advantage handed to America’s adversaries, have prompted sharp bipartisan criticism of Trump’s decision.
The video aired by ABC has been online since at least 2017. A caption on what appears to be the original YouTube post says the explosion was the rather spectacular result of a night time machine-gun shoot, an event held at the Knob Creek Gun Range in Kentucky.
A number of right-wing partisans have pointed to the incident as evidence of the nefarious work of the “mainstream media” or “MSM,” which attracted the attention of Trump, who often attacks the news media.
But Peter Adams, head of education at the non-profit, non-partisan News Literacy Project, explained that although ABC owes the public a detailed account of how the misstep happened, it appeared to be nothing more than human error, not an intentional effort by ABC to mislead.
“Despite the online rantings of bad-faith partisans, there is no evidence that this was intentional nor ideologically-motivated. The conflict in Syria is highly newsworthy & the motivation here was almost certainly to get a sensational, great-for-TV clip,” Adams wrote in a Twitter thread. Adams added that legitimate news outlets publicly acknowledge even minor errors and correct the record, and that it’s important to remember that these types of mistakes are relatively rare.
By Bethania Palma
Snopes
October 15, 2019
A nightly news program on ABC erroneously aired a video from a Kentucky gun range during a report about the outbreak of war in northern Syria between Turkey and U.S.-allied Kurds after U.S. President Donald Trump pulled American forces out.
The video depicting a fiery explosion was shown during “World News Tonight” on Oct. 13, 2019, and again the following day on “Good Morning America.” The video described itself as “appearing to show” the Turkish military bombarding Kurdish forces. In reality, it showed a night-time shooting event at a Kentucky gun range. ABC apologized for the mistake.
“We’ve taken down video that aired on ‘World News Tonight Sunday’ and ‘Good Morning America’ [on Oct. 14, 2019] that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy. ABC News regrets the error,” an ABC spokesman said in a statement.
A source from ABC said the video was provided by someone who purported to be in a “sensitive position” on the border between Turkey and Syria. The network is investigating the incident.
Turkey launched a military offensive against Kurdish forces in northern Syria shortly after Trump pulled American troops from their posts there, where they had been for several years supporting Kurds in a fight to contain Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists. The resulting chaos that included the escape of detainees associated with ISIS, violence against civilians, and a geopolitical advantage handed to America’s adversaries, have prompted sharp bipartisan criticism of Trump’s decision.
The video aired by ABC has been online since at least 2017. A caption on what appears to be the original YouTube post says the explosion was the rather spectacular result of a night time machine-gun shoot, an event held at the Knob Creek Gun Range in Kentucky.
A number of right-wing partisans have pointed to the incident as evidence of the nefarious work of the “mainstream media” or “MSM,” which attracted the attention of Trump, who often attacks the news media.
But Peter Adams, head of education at the non-profit, non-partisan News Literacy Project, explained that although ABC owes the public a detailed account of how the misstep happened, it appeared to be nothing more than human error, not an intentional effort by ABC to mislead.
“Despite the online rantings of bad-faith partisans, there is no evidence that this was intentional nor ideologically-motivated. The conflict in Syria is highly newsworthy & the motivation here was almost certainly to get a sensational, great-for-TV clip,” Adams wrote in a Twitter thread. Adams added that legitimate news outlets publicly acknowledge even minor errors and correct the record, and that it’s important to remember that these types of mistakes are relatively rare.
BECAUSE HAMAS WOULD WIN, THERE WILL BE NO GENERAL ELECTION FOR THE PALESTINIANS, CERTAINLY NOT SO LONG AS ABBAS IS ALIVE
'PA elections will result in Hamas taking over the West Bank'
By Daniel Siryoti
Israel Hayom
October 16, 2019
Despite the diplomatic schism between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan, senior security officials from Israel, Jordan, and the PA are confirming that security coordination and intelligence cooperation are operating with "Swiss clock" precision.
Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Amman are in rare agreement when it comes to elections for the Palestinian presidency in east Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. In a speech at the United Nations last month, PA President Mahmoud Abbas declared that PA elections would lead to Hamas defeating Fatah and the organization seizing control of the Palestinian Authority, quickly and brutally ousting Fatah officials from all government agencies, ministries, and the PA security and intelligence apparatuses.
Senior Palestinian officials say that Abbas' close associates acknowledge that recent polls indicate clearly that if PA parliament elections were held now, not only would Hamas beat Fatah, but Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would also beat Abbas in a race for the presidency by a considerable margin.
The last time parliamentary elections were held in Gaza and the West Bank (2006), Hamas secured a majority in the PA parliament. A year later, Hamas carried out a putsch in Gaza and took control of all government agencies, while lynching many Fatah officials and deporting others from Gaza, along with their families.
Recently, the Palestinian public has become more critical of the lack of progress toward reconciliation between the various Palestinian factions.
Meanwhile, fellows at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) who research Palestinian politics are emphasizing that the public's criticism of Abbas and his associates grew stronger after they rejected a proposal for reconciliation with Hamas that had been put together by eight different organizations in the West Bank and Gaza. In contrast, Hamas strongman Haniyeh announced that he accepted the proposal "unconditionally and as written."
Because Abbas rejected the plan, while Haniyeh approved it, Abbas was perceived as someone who was trying to undermine the process of reconciliation, which should have resulted in parliamentary elections.
Head of the General Authority of Civil Affairs in the PA Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Fatah official and member of Abbas' inner circle, rejects criticism of the "rais" (president) as well as the claim that despite his UN speech urging parliamentary elections in the PA, Abbas does not really want them to take place for fear that Hamas will oust him and his Fatah movement from power.
"We are not ruling out any reconciliation initiative. In this case, the proposal that the organizations put together would only waste time and deepen the schisms, thereby increasing the divide in Palestinian society. We must call an immediate general election in Gaza, the West Bank, and east Jerusalem, after which a national unity government will be formed that can fully govern the West Bank and [Gaza] Strip," al-Sheikh said.
Another senior PA official responded to al-Sheikh's comments, telling Israel Hayom that "There will not be a general election in the Palestinian Authority, certainly not so long as Abbas is alive."
According to the official, the people in Fatah know that "they'll lose an election, and in this case, Hamas would rush in to seize power in the West Bank. That is a nightmare scenario, not only for Israel but for Jordan, too. It would really pose a danger to Jordan and Israel's national security. Not to mention the ramifications on the day-to-day lives of the average Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza."
The official also said that Hamas had no interest in promoting reconciliation with Fatah if the process would not result in an election.
"Hamas doesn't want to divide control over the Gaza Strip with the PA, which it kicked out in the putsch of 2007. Hamas wants to take control over the West Bank, too, so the organization is willing to promote a process of reconciliation between the Palestinian factions only if it's clear that doing so will lead to elections that will put Hamas into power in the West Bank. If the organization loses the elections, it won't be in a hurry to hand over power in Gaza," the official continued.
After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in September that he planned to annex the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea area, Abbas stated that if annexation went ahead, the PA would freeze all existing agreements with Israel.
But despite Abbas' declarations, the facts on the ground indicate that security and intelligence coordination, as well as civil cooperation at the mid-level, is proceeding as usual. According to one senior official in Ramallah, this is due to "an understanding and acceptance of a situation in which we have common interests with Israel and, to a certain extent, with Jordan – namely, stopping Hamas' vision of seizing power in the West Bank like it did in Gaza."
Israeli diplomatic officials familiar with developments in Palestinian politics notes that Abbas' call to suspend all agreements with Israel and even his insistence on continuing to pay stipends to relatives of Palestinian terrorists have driven the PA into a serious economic crisis.
"The call [to freeze the agreements] was mainly intended to show that he was deterring Israel and is not afraid to freeze all the agreements with Israel, including the security coordination that is so vital to the Palestinian security apparatuses, not less so than to Israeli security and defense," the researchers said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Democracy Abbas style. The election which brought Abbas to power took place in January 2005, almost 15 years ago. The election for the PA parliament which he has since dispersed, was held in January 2006.
By Daniel Siryoti
Israel Hayom
October 16, 2019
Despite the diplomatic schism between Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan, senior security officials from Israel, Jordan, and the PA are confirming that security coordination and intelligence cooperation are operating with "Swiss clock" precision.
Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Amman are in rare agreement when it comes to elections for the Palestinian presidency in east Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. In a speech at the United Nations last month, PA President Mahmoud Abbas declared that PA elections would lead to Hamas defeating Fatah and the organization seizing control of the Palestinian Authority, quickly and brutally ousting Fatah officials from all government agencies, ministries, and the PA security and intelligence apparatuses.
Senior Palestinian officials say that Abbas' close associates acknowledge that recent polls indicate clearly that if PA parliament elections were held now, not only would Hamas beat Fatah, but Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would also beat Abbas in a race for the presidency by a considerable margin.
The last time parliamentary elections were held in Gaza and the West Bank (2006), Hamas secured a majority in the PA parliament. A year later, Hamas carried out a putsch in Gaza and took control of all government agencies, while lynching many Fatah officials and deporting others from Gaza, along with their families.
Recently, the Palestinian public has become more critical of the lack of progress toward reconciliation between the various Palestinian factions.
Meanwhile, fellows at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) who research Palestinian politics are emphasizing that the public's criticism of Abbas and his associates grew stronger after they rejected a proposal for reconciliation with Hamas that had been put together by eight different organizations in the West Bank and Gaza. In contrast, Hamas strongman Haniyeh announced that he accepted the proposal "unconditionally and as written."
Because Abbas rejected the plan, while Haniyeh approved it, Abbas was perceived as someone who was trying to undermine the process of reconciliation, which should have resulted in parliamentary elections.
Head of the General Authority of Civil Affairs in the PA Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Fatah official and member of Abbas' inner circle, rejects criticism of the "rais" (president) as well as the claim that despite his UN speech urging parliamentary elections in the PA, Abbas does not really want them to take place for fear that Hamas will oust him and his Fatah movement from power.
"We are not ruling out any reconciliation initiative. In this case, the proposal that the organizations put together would only waste time and deepen the schisms, thereby increasing the divide in Palestinian society. We must call an immediate general election in Gaza, the West Bank, and east Jerusalem, after which a national unity government will be formed that can fully govern the West Bank and [Gaza] Strip," al-Sheikh said.
Another senior PA official responded to al-Sheikh's comments, telling Israel Hayom that "There will not be a general election in the Palestinian Authority, certainly not so long as Abbas is alive."
According to the official, the people in Fatah know that "they'll lose an election, and in this case, Hamas would rush in to seize power in the West Bank. That is a nightmare scenario, not only for Israel but for Jordan, too. It would really pose a danger to Jordan and Israel's national security. Not to mention the ramifications on the day-to-day lives of the average Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza."
The official also said that Hamas had no interest in promoting reconciliation with Fatah if the process would not result in an election.
"Hamas doesn't want to divide control over the Gaza Strip with the PA, which it kicked out in the putsch of 2007. Hamas wants to take control over the West Bank, too, so the organization is willing to promote a process of reconciliation between the Palestinian factions only if it's clear that doing so will lead to elections that will put Hamas into power in the West Bank. If the organization loses the elections, it won't be in a hurry to hand over power in Gaza," the official continued.
After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in September that he planned to annex the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea area, Abbas stated that if annexation went ahead, the PA would freeze all existing agreements with Israel.
But despite Abbas' declarations, the facts on the ground indicate that security and intelligence coordination, as well as civil cooperation at the mid-level, is proceeding as usual. According to one senior official in Ramallah, this is due to "an understanding and acceptance of a situation in which we have common interests with Israel and, to a certain extent, with Jordan – namely, stopping Hamas' vision of seizing power in the West Bank like it did in Gaza."
Israeli diplomatic officials familiar with developments in Palestinian politics notes that Abbas' call to suspend all agreements with Israel and even his insistence on continuing to pay stipends to relatives of Palestinian terrorists have driven the PA into a serious economic crisis.
"The call [to freeze the agreements] was mainly intended to show that he was deterring Israel and is not afraid to freeze all the agreements with Israel, including the security coordination that is so vital to the Palestinian security apparatuses, not less so than to Israeli security and defense," the researchers said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Democracy Abbas style. The election which brought Abbas to power took place in January 2005, almost 15 years ago. The election for the PA parliament which he has since dispersed, was held in January 2006.
WE’RE IN A PERMANENT COUP
Americans might soon wish they just waited to vote their way out of the Trump era
By Matt Taibbi
October 11, 2019
I’ve lived through a few coups. They’re insane, random, and terrifying, like watching sports, except your political future depends on the score.
The kickoff begins when a key official decides to buck the executive. From that moment, government becomes a high-speed head-counting exercise. Who’s got the power plant, the airport, the police in the capital? How many department chiefs are answering their phones? Who’s writing tonight’s newscast?
When the KGB in 1991 tried to reassume control of the crumbling Soviet Union by placing Mikhail Gorbachev under arrest and attempting to seize Moscow, logistics ruled. Boris Yeltsin’s crew drove to the Russian White House in ordinary cars, beating KGB coup plotters who were trying to reach the seat of Russian government in armored vehicles. A key moment came when one of Yeltsin’s men, Alexander Rutskoi – who two years later would himself lead a coup against Yeltsin – prevailed upon a Major in a tank unit to defy KGB orders and turn on the “criminals.”
We have long been spared this madness in America. Our head-counting ceremony was Election Day. We did it once every four years.
That’s all over, in the Trump era.
On Thursday, news broke that two businessmen said to have “peddled supposedly explosive information about corruption involving Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden” were arrested at Dulles airport on “campaign finance violations.” The two figures are alleged to be bagmen bearing “dirt” on Democrats, solicited by Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman will be asked to give depositions to impeachment investigators. They’re reportedly going to refuse. Their lawyer John Dowd also says they will “refuse to appear before House Committees investigating President Donald Trump.” Fruman and Parnas meanwhile claim they had real derogatory information about Biden and other politicians, but “the U.S. government had shown little interest in receiving it through official channels.”
For Americans not familiar with the language of the Third World, that’s two contrasting denials of political legitimacy.
The men who are the proxies for Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani in this story are asserting that “official channels” have been corrupted. The forces backing impeachment, meanwhile, are telling us those same defendants are obstructing a lawful impeachment inquiry.
This latest incident, set against the impeachment mania and the reportedly “expanding” Russiagate investigation of U.S. Attorney John Durham, accelerates our timeline to chaos. We are speeding toward a situation when someone in one of these camps refuses to obey a major decree, arrest order, or court decision, at which point Americans will get to experience the joys of their political futures being decided by phone calls to generals and police chiefs.
My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.
The Trump presidency is the first to reveal a full-blown schism between the intelligence community and the White House. Senior figures in the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies made an open break from their would-be boss before Trump’s inauguration, commencing a public war of leaks that has not stopped.
The first big shot was fired in early January, 2017, via a CNN.com headline, “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him.” This tale, about the January 7th presentation of former British spy Christopher Steele’s report to then-President-elect Trump, began as follows:
Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.
Four intelligence chiefs in the FBI’s James Comey, the CIA’s John Brennan, the NSA’s Mike Rogers, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, presented an incoming president with a politically disastrous piece of information, in this case a piece of a private opposition research report.
Among other things because the news dropped at the same time Buzzfeed decided to publish the entire “bombshell” Steele dossier, reporters spent that week obsessing not about the mode of the story’s release, but about the “claims.” In particular, audiences were rapt by allegations that Russians were trying to blackmail Trump with evidence of a golden shower party commissioned on a bed once slept upon by Barack Obama himself.
Twitter exploded. No other news story mattered. For the next two years, the “claims” of compromise and a “continuing” Trump-Russian “exchange” hung over the White House like a sword of Damocles.
Few were interested in the motives for making this story public. As it turned out, there were two explanations, one that was made public, and one that only came out later. The public justification as outlined in the CNN piece, was to “make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him [were] circulating among intelligence agencies.”
However, we know from Comey’s January 7, 2017 memo to deputy Andrew McCabe and FBI General Counsel James Baker there was another explanation. Comey wrote:
I said I wasn’t saying this was true, only that I wanted [Trump] to know both that it had been reported and that the reports were in many hands. I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material or [redacted] and that we were keeping it very close-hold.
Imagine if a similar situation had taken place in January of 2009, involving president-elect Barack Obama. Picture a meeting between Obama and the heads of the CIA, NSA, and FBI, along with the DIA, in which the newly-elected president is presented with a report complied by, say, Judicial Watch, accusing him of links to al-Qaeda. Imagine further that they tell Obama they are presenting him with this information to make him aware of a blackmail threat, and to reassure him they won’t give news agencies a “hook” to publish the news.
Now imagine if that news came out on Fox days later. Imagine further that within a year, one of the four officials became a paid Fox contributor. Democrats would lose their minds in this set of circumstances.
The country mostly did not lose its mind, however, because the episode did not involve a traditionally presidential figure like Obama, nor was it understood to have been directed at the institution of “the White House” in the abstract.
Instead, it was a story about an infamously corrupt individual, Donald Trump, a pussy-grabbing scammer who bragged about using bankruptcy to escape debt and publicly praised Vladimir Putin. Audiences believed the allegations against this person and saw the intelligence/counterintelligence community as acting patriotically, doing their best to keep us informed about a still-breaking investigation of a rogue president.
But a parallel story was ignored. Leaks from the intelligence community most often pertain to foreign policy. The leak of the January, 2017 “meeting” between the four chiefs and Trump – which without question damaged both the presidency and America’s standing abroad – was an unprecedented act of insubordination.
It was also a bold new foray into domestic politics by intelligence agencies that in recent decades began asserting all sorts of frightening new authority. They were kidnapping foreigners, assassinating by drone, conducting paramilitary operations without congressional notice, building an international archipelago of secret prisons, and engaging in mass warrantless surveillance of Americans. We found out in a court case just last week how extensive the illegal domestic surveillance has been, with the FBI engaging in tens of thousands of warrantless searches involving American emails and phone numbers under the guise of combating foreign subversion.
The agencies’ new trick is inserting themselves into domestic politics using leaks and media pressure. The “intel chiefs” meeting was just the first in a series of similar stories, many following the pattern in which a document was created, passed from department from department, and leaked. A sample:
• February 14, 2017: “four current and former officials” tell the New York Times the Trump campaign had “repeated contacts” with Russian intelligence.
• March 1, 2017: “Justice Department officials” tell the Washington Post Attorney General Jeff Sessions “spoke twice with Russia’s ambassador” and did not disclose the contacts ahead of his confirmation hearing.
• March 18, 2017: “people familiar with the matter” tell the Wall Street Journal that former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn failed to disclose a “contact” with a Russian at Cambridge University, an episode that “came to the notice of U.S. intelligence.”
• April 8, 2017, 2017: “law enforcement and other U.S. officials” tell the Washington Post the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge had ruled there was “probable cause” to believe former Trump aide Carter Page was an “agent of a foreign power.”
• April 13, 2017: a “source close to UK intelligence” tells Luke Harding at The Guardian that the British analog to the NSA, the GCHQ, passed knowledge of “suspicious interactions” between “figures connected to Trump and “known or suspected Russian agents” to Americans as part of a “routine exchange of information.”
• December 17, 2017: “four current and former American and foreign officials” tell the New York Times that during the 2016 campaign, an Australian diplomat named Alexander Downer told “American counterparts” that former Trump aide George Papadopoulos revealed “Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.
• April 13, 2018: “two sources familiar with the matter” tell McClatchy that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office has evidence Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was in Prague in 2016, “confirming part of [Steele] dossier.”
• November 27, 2018: a “well-placed source” tells Harding at The Guardian that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
• January 19, 2019: “former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation” tell the New York Times the FBI opened an inquiry into the “explosive implications” of whether or not Donald Trump was working on behalf of the Russians.
To be sure, “people familiar with the matter” leaked a lot of true stories in the last few years, but many were clearly problematic even at the time of release. Moreover, all took place in the context of constant, hounding pressure from media figures, congressional allies like Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, as well as ex-officials who could make use of their own personal public platforms in addition to being unnamed sources in straight news reports. They used commercial news platforms to argue that Trump had committed treason, needed to be removed from office, and preferably also indicted as soon as possible.
A shocking number of these voices were former intelligence officers who joined Clapper in becoming paid news contributors. Op-ed pages and news networks are packed now with ex-spooks editorializing about stories in which they had personal involvement: Michael Morell, Michael Hayden, Asha Rangappa, and Andrew McCabe among many others, including especially all four of the original “intel chiefs”: Clapper, Rogers, Comey, and MSNBC headliner John Brennan.
Russiagate birthed a whole brand of politics, a government-in-exile, which prosecuted its case against Trump via a constant stream of “approved” leaks, partisans in congress, and an increasingly unified and thematically consistent set of commercial news outlets.
These mechanisms have been transplanted now onto the Ukrainegate drama. It’s the same people beating the public drums, with the messaging run out of the same congressional committees, through the same Nadlers, Schiffs, and Swalwells. The same news outlets are on full alert.
The sidelined “intel chiefs” are once again playing central roles in making the public case. Comey says “we may now be at a point” where impeachment is necessary. Brennan, with unintentional irony, says the United States is “no longer a democracy.” Clapper says the Ukraine whistleblower complaint is “one of the most credible” he’s seen.
As a reporter covering the 2015–2016 presidential race, I thought Trump’s campaign was disturbing on many levels, but logical as a news story. He succeeded for class reasons, because of flaws in the media business that gifted him mass amounts of coverage, and because he took cunning advantage of long-simmering frustrations in the electorate. He also clearly catered to racist fears, and to the collapse in trust in institutions like the news media, the Fed, corporations, NATO, and, yes, the intelligence services. In enormous numbers, voters rejected everything they had ever been told about who was and was not qualified for higher office.
Trump’s campaign antagonism toward the military and intelligence world was at best a millimeter thick. Like almost everything else he said as a candidate, it was a gimmick, designed to get votes. That he was insincere and full of it and irresponsible, at first at least, when he attacked the “deep state” and the “fake news media,” doesn’t change the reality of what’s happened since. Even paranoiacs have enemies, and even Donald “Deep State” Trump is a legitimately elected president whose ouster is being actively sought by the intelligence community.
Trump stands accused of using the office of the presidency to advance political aims, in particular pressuring Ukraine to investigate potential campaign rival Joe Biden. He’s guilty, but the issue is how guilty, in comparison to his accusers.
Trump, at least insofar as we know, has not used section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to monitor political rivals. He hasn’t deployed human counterintelligence “informants” to follow the likes of Hunter Biden. He hasn’t maneuvered to secure Special Counsel probes of Democrats.
And while Donald Trump conducting foreign policy based on what he sees on Fox and Friends is troubling, it’s not in the same ballpark as CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post and the New York Times engaging in de facto coverage partnerships with the FBI and CIA to push highly politicized, phony narratives like Russiagate.
Trump’s tinpot Twitter threats and cancellation of White House privileges for dolts like Jim Acosta also don’t begin to compare to the danger posed by Facebook, Google, and Twitter – under pressure from the Senate – organizing with groups like the Atlantic Council to fight “fake news” in the name of preventing the “foment of discord.”
I don’t believe most Americans have thought through what a successful campaign to oust Donald Trump would look like. Most casual news consumers can only think of it in terms of Mike Pence becoming president. The real problem would be the precedent of a de facto intelligence community veto over elections, using the lunatic spookworld brand of politics that has dominated the last three years of anti-Trump agitation.
CIA/FBI-backed impeachment could also be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Donald Trump thinks he’s going to be jailed upon leaving office, he’ll sooner or later figure out that his only real move is to start acting like the “dictator” MSNBC and CNN keep insisting he is. Why give up the White House and wait to be arrested, when he still has theoretical authority to send Special Forces troops rappelling through the windows of every last Russiagate/Ukrainegate leaker? That would be the endgame in a third world country, and it’s where we’re headed, unless someone calls off this craziness. Welcome to the Permanent Power Struggle.
By Matt Taibbi
October 11, 2019
I’ve lived through a few coups. They’re insane, random, and terrifying, like watching sports, except your political future depends on the score.
The kickoff begins when a key official decides to buck the executive. From that moment, government becomes a high-speed head-counting exercise. Who’s got the power plant, the airport, the police in the capital? How many department chiefs are answering their phones? Who’s writing tonight’s newscast?
When the KGB in 1991 tried to reassume control of the crumbling Soviet Union by placing Mikhail Gorbachev under arrest and attempting to seize Moscow, logistics ruled. Boris Yeltsin’s crew drove to the Russian White House in ordinary cars, beating KGB coup plotters who were trying to reach the seat of Russian government in armored vehicles. A key moment came when one of Yeltsin’s men, Alexander Rutskoi – who two years later would himself lead a coup against Yeltsin – prevailed upon a Major in a tank unit to defy KGB orders and turn on the “criminals.”
We have long been spared this madness in America. Our head-counting ceremony was Election Day. We did it once every four years.
That’s all over, in the Trump era.
On Thursday, news broke that two businessmen said to have “peddled supposedly explosive information about corruption involving Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden” were arrested at Dulles airport on “campaign finance violations.” The two figures are alleged to be bagmen bearing “dirt” on Democrats, solicited by Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman will be asked to give depositions to impeachment investigators. They’re reportedly going to refuse. Their lawyer John Dowd also says they will “refuse to appear before House Committees investigating President Donald Trump.” Fruman and Parnas meanwhile claim they had real derogatory information about Biden and other politicians, but “the U.S. government had shown little interest in receiving it through official channels.”
For Americans not familiar with the language of the Third World, that’s two contrasting denials of political legitimacy.
The men who are the proxies for Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani in this story are asserting that “official channels” have been corrupted. The forces backing impeachment, meanwhile, are telling us those same defendants are obstructing a lawful impeachment inquiry.
This latest incident, set against the impeachment mania and the reportedly “expanding” Russiagate investigation of U.S. Attorney John Durham, accelerates our timeline to chaos. We are speeding toward a situation when someone in one of these camps refuses to obey a major decree, arrest order, or court decision, at which point Americans will get to experience the joys of their political futures being decided by phone calls to generals and police chiefs.
My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.
The Trump presidency is the first to reveal a full-blown schism between the intelligence community and the White House. Senior figures in the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies made an open break from their would-be boss before Trump’s inauguration, commencing a public war of leaks that has not stopped.
The first big shot was fired in early January, 2017, via a CNN.com headline, “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him.” This tale, about the January 7th presentation of former British spy Christopher Steele’s report to then-President-elect Trump, began as follows:
Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.
Four intelligence chiefs in the FBI’s James Comey, the CIA’s John Brennan, the NSA’s Mike Rogers, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, presented an incoming president with a politically disastrous piece of information, in this case a piece of a private opposition research report.
Among other things because the news dropped at the same time Buzzfeed decided to publish the entire “bombshell” Steele dossier, reporters spent that week obsessing not about the mode of the story’s release, but about the “claims.” In particular, audiences were rapt by allegations that Russians were trying to blackmail Trump with evidence of a golden shower party commissioned on a bed once slept upon by Barack Obama himself.
Twitter exploded. No other news story mattered. For the next two years, the “claims” of compromise and a “continuing” Trump-Russian “exchange” hung over the White House like a sword of Damocles.
Few were interested in the motives for making this story public. As it turned out, there were two explanations, one that was made public, and one that only came out later. The public justification as outlined in the CNN piece, was to “make the President-elect aware that such allegations involving him [were] circulating among intelligence agencies.”
However, we know from Comey’s January 7, 2017 memo to deputy Andrew McCabe and FBI General Counsel James Baker there was another explanation. Comey wrote:
I said I wasn’t saying this was true, only that I wanted [Trump] to know both that it had been reported and that the reports were in many hands. I said media like CNN had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the FBI has the material or [redacted] and that we were keeping it very close-hold.
Imagine if a similar situation had taken place in January of 2009, involving president-elect Barack Obama. Picture a meeting between Obama and the heads of the CIA, NSA, and FBI, along with the DIA, in which the newly-elected president is presented with a report complied by, say, Judicial Watch, accusing him of links to al-Qaeda. Imagine further that they tell Obama they are presenting him with this information to make him aware of a blackmail threat, and to reassure him they won’t give news agencies a “hook” to publish the news.
Now imagine if that news came out on Fox days later. Imagine further that within a year, one of the four officials became a paid Fox contributor. Democrats would lose their minds in this set of circumstances.
The country mostly did not lose its mind, however, because the episode did not involve a traditionally presidential figure like Obama, nor was it understood to have been directed at the institution of “the White House” in the abstract.
Instead, it was a story about an infamously corrupt individual, Donald Trump, a pussy-grabbing scammer who bragged about using bankruptcy to escape debt and publicly praised Vladimir Putin. Audiences believed the allegations against this person and saw the intelligence/counterintelligence community as acting patriotically, doing their best to keep us informed about a still-breaking investigation of a rogue president.
But a parallel story was ignored. Leaks from the intelligence community most often pertain to foreign policy. The leak of the January, 2017 “meeting” between the four chiefs and Trump – which without question damaged both the presidency and America’s standing abroad – was an unprecedented act of insubordination.
It was also a bold new foray into domestic politics by intelligence agencies that in recent decades began asserting all sorts of frightening new authority. They were kidnapping foreigners, assassinating by drone, conducting paramilitary operations without congressional notice, building an international archipelago of secret prisons, and engaging in mass warrantless surveillance of Americans. We found out in a court case just last week how extensive the illegal domestic surveillance has been, with the FBI engaging in tens of thousands of warrantless searches involving American emails and phone numbers under the guise of combating foreign subversion.
The agencies’ new trick is inserting themselves into domestic politics using leaks and media pressure. The “intel chiefs” meeting was just the first in a series of similar stories, many following the pattern in which a document was created, passed from department from department, and leaked. A sample:
• February 14, 2017: “four current and former officials” tell the New York Times the Trump campaign had “repeated contacts” with Russian intelligence.
• March 1, 2017: “Justice Department officials” tell the Washington Post Attorney General Jeff Sessions “spoke twice with Russia’s ambassador” and did not disclose the contacts ahead of his confirmation hearing.
• March 18, 2017: “people familiar with the matter” tell the Wall Street Journal that former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn failed to disclose a “contact” with a Russian at Cambridge University, an episode that “came to the notice of U.S. intelligence.”
• April 8, 2017, 2017: “law enforcement and other U.S. officials” tell the Washington Post the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge had ruled there was “probable cause” to believe former Trump aide Carter Page was an “agent of a foreign power.”
• April 13, 2017: a “source close to UK intelligence” tells Luke Harding at The Guardian that the British analog to the NSA, the GCHQ, passed knowledge of “suspicious interactions” between “figures connected to Trump and “known or suspected Russian agents” to Americans as part of a “routine exchange of information.”
• December 17, 2017: “four current and former American and foreign officials” tell the New York Times that during the 2016 campaign, an Australian diplomat named Alexander Downer told “American counterparts” that former Trump aide George Papadopoulos revealed “Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.
• April 13, 2018: “two sources familiar with the matter” tell McClatchy that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office has evidence Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was in Prague in 2016, “confirming part of [Steele] dossier.”
• November 27, 2018: a “well-placed source” tells Harding at The Guardian that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort met with Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
• January 19, 2019: “former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation” tell the New York Times the FBI opened an inquiry into the “explosive implications” of whether or not Donald Trump was working on behalf of the Russians.
To be sure, “people familiar with the matter” leaked a lot of true stories in the last few years, but many were clearly problematic even at the time of release. Moreover, all took place in the context of constant, hounding pressure from media figures, congressional allies like Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, as well as ex-officials who could make use of their own personal public platforms in addition to being unnamed sources in straight news reports. They used commercial news platforms to argue that Trump had committed treason, needed to be removed from office, and preferably also indicted as soon as possible.
A shocking number of these voices were former intelligence officers who joined Clapper in becoming paid news contributors. Op-ed pages and news networks are packed now with ex-spooks editorializing about stories in which they had personal involvement: Michael Morell, Michael Hayden, Asha Rangappa, and Andrew McCabe among many others, including especially all four of the original “intel chiefs”: Clapper, Rogers, Comey, and MSNBC headliner John Brennan.
Russiagate birthed a whole brand of politics, a government-in-exile, which prosecuted its case against Trump via a constant stream of “approved” leaks, partisans in congress, and an increasingly unified and thematically consistent set of commercial news outlets.
These mechanisms have been transplanted now onto the Ukrainegate drama. It’s the same people beating the public drums, with the messaging run out of the same congressional committees, through the same Nadlers, Schiffs, and Swalwells. The same news outlets are on full alert.
The sidelined “intel chiefs” are once again playing central roles in making the public case. Comey says “we may now be at a point” where impeachment is necessary. Brennan, with unintentional irony, says the United States is “no longer a democracy.” Clapper says the Ukraine whistleblower complaint is “one of the most credible” he’s seen.
As a reporter covering the 2015–2016 presidential race, I thought Trump’s campaign was disturbing on many levels, but logical as a news story. He succeeded for class reasons, because of flaws in the media business that gifted him mass amounts of coverage, and because he took cunning advantage of long-simmering frustrations in the electorate. He also clearly catered to racist fears, and to the collapse in trust in institutions like the news media, the Fed, corporations, NATO, and, yes, the intelligence services. In enormous numbers, voters rejected everything they had ever been told about who was and was not qualified for higher office.
Trump’s campaign antagonism toward the military and intelligence world was at best a millimeter thick. Like almost everything else he said as a candidate, it was a gimmick, designed to get votes. That he was insincere and full of it and irresponsible, at first at least, when he attacked the “deep state” and the “fake news media,” doesn’t change the reality of what’s happened since. Even paranoiacs have enemies, and even Donald “Deep State” Trump is a legitimately elected president whose ouster is being actively sought by the intelligence community.
Trump stands accused of using the office of the presidency to advance political aims, in particular pressuring Ukraine to investigate potential campaign rival Joe Biden. He’s guilty, but the issue is how guilty, in comparison to his accusers.
Trump, at least insofar as we know, has not used section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to monitor political rivals. He hasn’t deployed human counterintelligence “informants” to follow the likes of Hunter Biden. He hasn’t maneuvered to secure Special Counsel probes of Democrats.
And while Donald Trump conducting foreign policy based on what he sees on Fox and Friends is troubling, it’s not in the same ballpark as CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post and the New York Times engaging in de facto coverage partnerships with the FBI and CIA to push highly politicized, phony narratives like Russiagate.
Trump’s tinpot Twitter threats and cancellation of White House privileges for dolts like Jim Acosta also don’t begin to compare to the danger posed by Facebook, Google, and Twitter – under pressure from the Senate – organizing with groups like the Atlantic Council to fight “fake news” in the name of preventing the “foment of discord.”
I don’t believe most Americans have thought through what a successful campaign to oust Donald Trump would look like. Most casual news consumers can only think of it in terms of Mike Pence becoming president. The real problem would be the precedent of a de facto intelligence community veto over elections, using the lunatic spookworld brand of politics that has dominated the last three years of anti-Trump agitation.
CIA/FBI-backed impeachment could also be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Donald Trump thinks he’s going to be jailed upon leaving office, he’ll sooner or later figure out that his only real move is to start acting like the “dictator” MSNBC and CNN keep insisting he is. Why give up the White House and wait to be arrested, when he still has theoretical authority to send Special Forces troops rappelling through the windows of every last Russiagate/Ukrainegate leaker? That would be the endgame in a third world country, and it’s where we’re headed, unless someone calls off this craziness. Welcome to the Permanent Power Struggle.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)