So Trumps campaign sent a letter to news organizations emulating Hitler saying that they should not let on people who lie. The list they gave did not include Sarah Sanders and Kellyanne Conway or Donald Trump. Instead it was the Presidents political enemies like Comey, Brennan and Adam Schiff.
So today whiny Republicans were demanding Schiff resign because Barr claimed that the Mueller report which we can't see totally clears Trump and how could you have accused the man who lies constantly and ran scams and commited crimes of doing crimes? We don't have the Mueller report, only the Barr memo.
Adam Schiff took the opportunity to DESTROY Republicans with facts for shrugging off Trump's collusion.
Then at the end of this speech one of the Republicans tried to talk over him and interrupt with some more bs and Schiff wasn't having it, he put him in his place. It was pretty badass, well for Congress.
In all seriousness, the fact is that Trump is seeking to imprison his political opponents, accusing the FBI of treason, sends out propaganda everyday, and is ignoring the Constitution (emoluments and the first Amendment freedom of the press). All this shows how dangerous things are these days. We're very close to fascism with this guy and his Republican brown coats who are loyal to him and not America.
So Trumps campaign sent a letter to news organizations emulating Hitler saying that they should not let on people who lie. The list they gave did not include Sarah Sanders and Kellyanne Conway or Donald Trump. Instead it was the Presidents political enemies like Comey, Brennan and Adam Schiff.
So today whiny Republicans were demanding Schiff resign because Barr claimed that the Mueller report which we can't see totally clears Trump and how could you have accused the man who lies constantly and ran scams and commited crimes of doing crimes? We don't have the Mueller report, only the Barr memo.
Adam Schiff took the opportunity to DESTROY Republicans with facts for shrugging off Trump's collusion.
Then at the end of this speech one of the Republicans tried to talk over him and interrupt with some more bs and Schiff wasn't having it, he put him in his place. It was pretty badass, well for Congress.
In all seriousness, the fact is that Trump is seeking to imprison his political opponents, accusing the FBI of treason, sends out propaganda everyday, and is ignoring the Constitution (emoluments and the first Amendment freedom of the press). All this shows how dangerous things are these days. We're very close to fascism with this guy and his Republican brown coats who are loyal to him and not America.
Did someone forget to tell Adam that Trump just gave the Golan Heights to Israel? Why Orange Man still bad? Israel is getting Greater Again.
So Trumps campaign sent a letter to news organizations emulating Hitler saying that they should not let on people who lie. The list they gave did not include Sarah Sanders and Kellyanne Conway or Donald Trump. Instead it was the Presidents political enemies like Comey, Brennan and Adam Schiff.
So today whiny Republicans were demanding Schiff resign because Barr claimed that the Mueller report which we can't see totally clears Trump and how could you have accused the man who lies constantly and ran scams and commited crimes of doing crimes? We don't have the Mueller report, only the Barr memo.
Adam Schiff took the opportunity to DESTROY Republicans with facts for shrugging off Trump's collusion.
Then at the end of this speech one of the Republicans tried to talk over him and interrupt with some more bs and Schiff wasn't having it, he put him in his place. It was pretty badass, well for Congress.
In all seriousness, the fact is that Trump is seeking to imprison his political opponents, accusing the FBI of treason, sends out propaganda everyday, and is ignoring the Constitution (emoluments and the first Amendment freedom of the press). All this shows how dangerous things are these days. We're very close to fascism with this guy and his Republican brown coats who are loyal to him and not America.
I watched that video. Then I watched the video in the link. Then I started watching the entire hearing.
Within the first 10 minutes of the meeting, in the opening remarks of the Republicans, they are calling for Adam Schiff to resign his position.
Because he keeps going after Trump because "You further have stated you will continue to investigate the counterintelligence issues. That is, is the president or people around him compromised in any way by a hostile foreign power."
Uh, yeah? That's kind of THE COMMITTEE'S JOB.
Ongoing operations in the millions of dollars in hostile countries would count as compromised. Decades long funding from top officials in those countries would count as compromised.
Yeah. Republicans are running with President Donald Trump's lie that the Mueller report is "complete and total exoneration". That claim is solely based on Attorney General William Barr's summary that in one of the few direct quotes states that Mueller said that the facts they have do "not exonerate” Trump. And Republicans are also saying we can't see the report just trust Barr. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell twice and Rand Paul once have blocked Senate resolutions calling for the release of the report.
It certainly seems like a cover-up is going on. Claiming that a report that we haven't seen exonerates and investigators who followed the evidence we have seen out in the open is treason (much less evidence we haven't yet been able to see) is at best wildly premature. But that hasn't stopped Republicans from trying to cover up the report and push false narratives. They seem to want to leave Barr's memo as the sole information Americans have.
Look, if the Mueller report "totally exonerated" Trump as he claims he'd have printed and put copies of it in his golf clubs next to his fake Time magazine covers. He should be happy that investigators apparently couldn't find enough evidence of his guilt to prove it in court. Instead he's saying the FBI committed treason. That seems strange right. And finally having the subject of the investigation redact and edit the report before it's released is obviously a terrible idea at best and another attempt at a Republican cover-up at worst. The FBI or the House of Representatives or others are more than capable of redacting the report if that is even needed at all.
There's a slow moving cover-up going on here and I'm glad Schiff and other strong Democrats are able to stand up and point out the Republican bullshit going on. You know it makes even less sense that Trump has been so nice to Putin, and met with him in private multiple times without US officials or notes, and done things like not implement sanctions passed by Congress if he isn't a Russian puppet. We need to see the report.
Even IF you were going to say the public can't see it (based on the time-honored bullshit excuse of "national security", (another thing that Nixon left us that will never leave), what possible reason is there to keep it from people on the House and Senate committees who have top security clearances?? Nadler, Schiff and Pelosi at a bare minimum have every right to see this report based on their positions. I was under the impression that elections had consequences, and the Democrats are in control of the House. But, once again, there are only consequences when REPUBLICANS win. When Democrats win, all rules are tossed out the window.
The report is apparently between 300-700 pages long (no one really knows). We have seen less than 70 WORDS of it in excerpts. And Barr isn't even planning on releasing a redacted version to the House committees. He is going to write ANOTHER summary. This is such complete bullshit. Subpoenas need to start being issued post-haste. From a former federal prosecutor by way of TPM:
A few thoughts on the Barr Gambit, which I think will go down as a singular achievement in the annals of intellectual dishonesty and bad faith legal jujitsu:
1. It is undisputed that the Russian government brazenly interfered in the 2016 election to support Donald Trump. In so doing, the Russians and those acting on their behalf committed a variety of federal crimes including computer hacking and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Those crimes were committed to benefit (a) Vladimir Putin and the interests of the Russian government; and (b) Donald J. Trump. It is also undisputed that Trump and his campaign joyfully used and weaponized the information the Russians stole against Hillary Clinton. Trump personally trumpeted the Wikileaks disclosures 141 times during the campaign, and his surrogates countless more times. While Mueller’s team apparently “did not establish” (i.e., did not find enough evidence to charge criminally) that Trump personally conspired with the Russian government to commit the underlying crimes, there is no question that he was (along with Putin) the single biggest beneficiary of those criminal efforts.
2. Mueller apparently pulled together significant evidence that the President attempted to obstruct the investigation into these crimes. But to support his decision not to prosecute the President for obstruction of justice, Barr relied in part on Mueller’s conclusion that he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the President was involved in an underlying criminal conspiracy. Therefore, Barr’s reasoning goes, Trump lacked corrupt intent to obstruct because, at least in part, he was not involved in any underlying crime. This argument is both legally wrong (obstruction charges don’t depend on the existence of an underlying crime, just an investigation or proceeding), and it flies in the face of one simple fact: Trump was a prime beneficiary of the undisputed criminal conduct that did occur. He of course had a strong personal interest in seeking to obstruct this investigation for a variety of reasons. If you receive and use stolen money, even if you weren’t involved in the theft, you have a strong interest in thwarting any efforts to investigate the underlying theft. Why? Because you don’t want to lose the right to hold onto your money. Same here. This investigation posed a direct threat to the Presidency. It also posed a direct threat to prying open Trump’s shady business empire. Barr’s argument might hold water if the Russian election interference was intended to help Hillary and Trump’s campaign was not the subject of the investigation. As it stands, the President had a deep personal stake in the outcome of the investigation and it appears he used his executive power to thwart it. That cannot be countenanced.
3. The non-charging decision on obstruction by Mueller cannot be explained as a failure of evidence. On conspiracy or coordination, it appears Mueller made a clear decision not to charge because of a lack of evidence. As too many members of the media seem to get wrong, this was not a “no evidence” situation, but rather a failure to get to the required level of admissible evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. And the level of proof had to be something in between probable cause (you can’t get 500 search warrants without it) and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I have no problem with that decision from a prosecutorial discretion standpoint. There was lots of evidence of an underlying conspiracy, but it was always going to be very difficult to prove the President’s direct involvement with sufficient admissible evidence (classified intercepts from foreign governments won’t do it). And Manafort and Stone holding the line seems to have been the stopped the Mueller team short. Mueller made a decision not to charge conspiracy because of a lack of evidence, so why not obstruction? If it’s a 50-50 call and a pure “jump ball” that’s easy. You decline. If it’s “more likely than not,” the civil standard, you also decline. Even if it’s “clear and convincing” evidence that doesn’t rise to the level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, you decline the case. So what is going on here? To me, the only answer is that they had a chargeable obstruction case but stopped short of making a decision to charge the President–because he’s the President. It could have been the policy not to indict a sitting President, it could have been the legal and policy arguments around executive authority, or it could have been out of deference to the legislative branch and its impeachment prerogatives. Any way you cut it, I just can’t see Mueller shying away from a tough evidentiary call. If we ever get to see it, I fully expect the actual Mueller report to contain a devastating case against the President for obstruction of justice. This is why we should expect to see Barr, the White House, and the Republicans in Congress fight like hell to keep as much of the report as possible away from the public and House Judiciary. Democrats cannot let this go.
And from Josh Marshall at the same site:
Our situation now seems pretty clear. The administration plan is this: Release the Barr Letter and use it as a cudgel to claim bogus exoneration and threaten revenge against the President’s perceived enemies while Bill Barr tries to run down the clock until January 2021.
So where’s the report? There’s zero reason it can’t be released today. To the degree there is some classified information that must remain secret it can be released today either to the full Congress or the so-called Gang of Eight. If there’s a purported issue with Grand Jury secrecy, a judge can rule to release it. (There’s also a Watergate precedent in this case) In other words, there’s zero reason it can’t be released to Congress today and a very lightly redacted version to the public a short time later.
Now here’s the thing: just a couple weeks ago the House voted unanimously to demand the report be released with no Barr-ite funny-business. The resolution called for a full un-redacted release to Congress and a full public release “except to the extent the public disclosure of any portion thereof is expressly prohibited by law.”
This makes it easy in terms of holding people accountable. Did your Rep vote to release it? Of course they did! Because the vote was unanimous! The only exceptions were four Reps who voted “present”: Reps. Amash, Gaetz, Massie and Gosar. Call them too if you want. (Call Senators if you want. But Leader McConnell forbade a vote. So there no one is on the record.) But with these four exceptions everyone is now on the record demanding the immediate release. The problem is GOPs Reps found out about the Barr Letter plan and went silent. Indeed, Republican Reps are starting to say, the Barr Letter is plenty, let’s move on and investigate Hillary! It’s so damn exonerating that it’s critical that no one ever see it except Bill Barr.
Well, this, at the very least, is true. But that doesn't mean the American public doesn't need to see it. But I will absolutely concede he has to be defeated at the ballot box. That has always been true as long as Republicans held the Senate. But this clear burying and cover-up of the actual report is not acceptable.
The thing is, I expected Trump to get a HUGE bump in the polls because of the way this has played out, with the media by and large buying into the Barr bullshit. But he didn't. He hasn't moved an ounce, not even on this issue. Most people still think he acted illegally, and one of the most interesting numbers I saw was that 7% of people were more likely to vote for him because of the report and 6% were LESS likely to do so. Basically, a wash. No one is changing their mind on this guy. It's on Democrats to put up a candidate who can get out enough votes to defeat him, though you and I will clearly differ on who and what that means. I suspect you think it means reaching out to people like yourself. I think it means energizing the base that stayed home last time.
But this constant refrain I am seeing on TV and in print about the "Mueller Report" is driving me nuts, because as far as 99.9999999999999% of the country is concerned, there IS NO Mueller Report yet. There is a Barr Memo. And if that is allowed to be the standard for how we judge a major investigation of the President, then we are truly lost. Because it sure as shit wasn't the standard in 1998.
May's Brexit plan was just shot down for the third time, even though she sweetened the pot by being willing to step down if it passed.
UK now leaves in 14 days, unless it extends again. I cannot imagine a second extension will happen without some kind of political assurance of a soft exit or a second referendum. Extending a second time (and thus going through the EU elections) just to hard leave seems ridiculous.
May's Brexit plan was just shot down for the third time, even though she sweetened the pot by being willing to step down if it passed.
UK now leaves in 14 days, unless it extends again. I cannot imagine a second extension will happen without some kind of political assurance of a soft exit or a second referendum. Extending a second time (and thus going through the EU elections) just to hard leave seems ridiculous.
I don't see how this entire thing could have possibly gone any worse than it has. May isn't the main problem here, but I was continually astounded by how she was surviving in her position based on the circumstances under which previous PMs were forced out. So once again, the UK is nowhere on this. Didn't Corbyn just finally get behind a second referendum??
May's Brexit plan was just shot down for the third time, even though she sweetened the pot by being willing to step down if it passed.
UK now leaves in 14 days, unless it extends again. I cannot imagine a second extension will happen without some kind of political assurance of a soft exit or a second referendum. Extending a second time (and thus going through the EU elections) just to hard leave seems ridiculous.
I don't see how this entire thing could have possibly gone any worse than it has. May isn't the main problem here, but I was continually astounded by how she was surviving in her position based on the circumstances under which previous PMs were forced out. So once again, the UK is nowhere on this. Didn't Corbyn just finally get behind a second referendum??
Labour voted in favor of a second referendum on Monday, though Corbyn is still emphasising he wants a general election to clarify what will happen (a general election of course won't help to do that because neither main party has a consensus on what to do).
A no-deal exit is certainly still possible as that's the legal default. Parliament previously voted heavily against that, but if the choice is between a long extension and a no-deal, some of the MPs that don't like the idea of no-deal would still support it. My guess though is that a narrow majority will vote for an extension, even though that means participating in the European elections. There will then be some difficult conversations with the EU ...
The chance of a second referendum of some sort has also significantly increased. It's not a popular idea at the moment, but there is a strong logic behind saying that Parliament should not vote for a proposal that's significantly different from the previous general expectations of Brexit without testing that out in the country. Just what a referendum would cover is still totally up for grabs - it could just ask for a vote for or against any specific deal proposed by Parliament or cover wider options such as no-deal and remain. There should be a further series of indicative votes next Monday which may clarify the direction of travel a bit.
Corruption has been showing up in California charter schools. Apparently some folks have used them as an opportunity to funnel taxpayer money into their own pockets while underfunding the schools they run, taking advantage of weak regulations and a biased system that favors charter schools' interests. There's more than one example of flat-out criminal conduct that's resulted in imprisonment and the shutdown of an entire school because of the corruption. Clark and Jeanette Parker appear to have made millions of dollars off of running charter schools, and the problem appears to be corruption of government oversight:
Many of the people responsible for regulating the couple’s schools, including school board members and state elected officials, had accepted thousands of dollars from the Parkers in campaign contributions.
Steaming broccoli seems like it would be a bit stiff. I grew up with softer, boiled broccoli.
I grew up eating broccoli from our garden. I always eat it raw. At most I'll take it lightly blanched.
You're all wrong.
Chop the broccoli, toss it with a few tablespoons of olive oil and juice of half a lemon, sprinkle salt and pepper, and then ROAST it for 10-12 minutes.
ROAST was the answer you were looking for. Enjoy your consolation prize* and good luck next time.
* (The consolation prize is a plate of boiled broccoli.)
Huh. I always thought of broccoli as either being steamed, boiled, or smothered with cheese. I couldn't stand the cheese-covered version, for some reason; I only liked plain broccoli with a bit of salt. My mom used to add a little butter, but mostly it's the broccoli I like.
Back to politics, I'm upset that Barr is not making the Mueller report public or even sharing it with Congress. Currently, the only one who has control of the report is a Trump appointee who was appointed because he believes that the president isn't capable of committing obstruction of justice. Trump himself said recently that if Barr were in charge from the beginning, the Mueller investigation never would have happened--Trump picked Barr specifically because he wanted someone to protect him.
The lack of transparency is frustrating. Hillary Clinton was never allowed to silence any of the numerous investigations into her activities, yet Trump is given that power.
Barr has issued ANOTHER statement today which feels like alot of damage control, and I personally simply will not believe him until he takes action. He says he will have a report for Congress in mid-April. Jerry Nadler has responded that the April 2nd deadline he set still stands. The purpose here is to create a month-long gap where (generally) the only narrative the media can cling to is the one outlined in Barr's memo.
The fact is, it won't matter. This White House is not going to be constrained by the norms of a normal government. The Democrats will continue to hold hearings on everything, as they absolutely should, but nothing is going to move the needle at this point. The only way this guy is going anywhere, no matter what is revealed on any subject, is if he is defeated at the ballot box at on first Tuesday of November next year. And IF that happens, what events transpire after that is the real big question.
So who can take him on?? I think the only people who have any chance in a one on one fight with someone as vicious and dirty as Trump are Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. I absolutely love what I've been hearing from Pete Buttigieg, but he also has to prove he can win a knife fight (so to speak). I don't think exclusively appealing to America's better angels (as he is excellently doing each time he makes a public appearance) is enough. The rest of them don't have a shot. I don't see what constituency Corey Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand can put together. The rest of them aren't even worth mentioning. It's a 7 person race that will quickly get whittled down to 4 after Iowa and New Hampshire. If Biden gets in the race (and I seriously hope he doesn't), he is going to get excoriated for his positions going back to the '70s and '80s on any number of issues, and he'll do nothing but ruin his legacy. He "leads" in the polls on nothing but Vice Presidential name recognition. I don't see him having any actual shot once things start. His past positions have no support among Democratic voters.
Even the weakest candidate probably has better odds than Clinton did in 2016 considering how rough Trump's term has been for everyone (I get the feeling that more Republicans have soured on Trump than centrists have warmed up to him), but I do think we need to pick a Democratic candidate largely based on how likely they are to beat Trump. The differences between the candidates aren't too big on most issues, but the differences in their general election chances do seem pretty wide. Bernie could crush Trump; Biden might struggle.
We don't want to see another race where foreign interference, election fraud, fake news, voter suppression, the electoral college, and/or partisan manipulation warps the result. Elections can defy expectations, and 2016 showed us that it's not enough to win the most votes; you also need to win the right votes.
We don't want to see another race where foreign interference, election fraud, fake news, voter suppression, the electoral college, and/or partisan manipulation warps the result. Elections can defy expectations, and 2016 showed us that it's not enough to win the most votes; you also need to win the right votes.
I'm afraid all that stuff is going to be here for good since with Trump and Mitch McConnell it's been proven how effective it is. Obstructionist Republicans cried their way through Obama's term to victory and a stolen Supreme Court seat and hundreds of empty judicial seats that they are now packing with nitwits without any punishment so far.
And the discourse and love for fellow man is totally gone. You can't go anywhere on facebook without nastiness. It's pretty much the same in real life in America. People think "speaking their mind" means freedom to be a jerk. Congratulations, you are indeed a jerk people. Well done, we've ruined everything. I can't see how we can come back from this at this point. We are literally inches away from fascism in America with Trump "talking", haha just talking like he's known to do, about imprisoning his rivals and destroying the Constitution nearly everyday.
There's an interesting Slate article about the most viral Facebook news share of the year. The headline was "Suspected Human Trafficker, Child Predator May Be in Our Area." Partly it was the title that made it spread as far as it did, and the author points out that "our area" could be interpreted to be anywhere if you only read the headline and not the text below, but there are other factors that made the headline spread as far as it did, factors that in retrospect are completely arbitrary flukes of Facebook's algorithm.
In 2018, Facebook announced a set of major algorithm changes designed to prioritize news from “trusted” and “local” sources, and to boost content shared by users’ friends and family over content published by professional Facebook pages. It said users would see less news in their feeds overall, but what they did see would be more reliable, and that it would focus on facilitating “meaningful interactions” among users.
In practice, the levers that Facebook’s engineers pull tend to be blunter instruments than you might think. Facebook’s mechanism for determining “trusted sources,” for instance, turned out to be a two-question survey. It assumes news is “local” to you if it’s being shared by a publication that has an audience tightly clustered in your area—regardless of whether the story’s topic is actually local. It defines “meaningful interactions” partly based on the number of comments on a post.
...
While Facebook couldn’t confirm exactly what aspects of its algorithm helped the story on its way, Savage’s crime brief appears to have ticked nearly every box that the social network is trying to prioritize. First, it was shared by a local news organization, making it more likely that people in the Waco area would see it at the top of their feeds. Second, it generated large numbers of comments, which Facebook counts as “meaningful interactions.” Finally, its sharing was driven heavily by individual Facebook users, rather than by professional publishers with large followings, which means that it would be helped along by the company’s focus on surfacing posts from “friends and family first.”
Granted, we're talking about the most viral news share of the year, so naturally this is an outlier--not a representative sample. But it does show just how much the news you get can change based on an update to an algorithm. Before the algorithm change, this story wouldn't have spread anywhere near as far as it did.
It's not that algorithms are inherently dangerous or untrustworthy. We use algorithms to recommend content all the time. I like the suggestions I get from Youtube and deviantart. But recommending information is a heavier matter than recommending entertainment. A bad Netflix recommendation can mean you spend 5 minutes watching a show you don't like. A bad news recommendation can mean you don't vaccinate your kids.
I think this is one of the reasons we need to break up these colossal social media companies. The problem isn't just monopoly power over a specific market; these networks have vast impacts on our entire society.
A handful of people at Facebook can exert massive power over the entire world simply by changing an algorithm.
And stranger still, these people don't even know what their own massive power is doing to the world--Facebook doesn't really have a way of understanding what its algorithm changes are really doing on the ground. It can't closely analyze all those billions of posts; Zuckerberg and the other folks at the top can only get a vague idea of what's going on.
It's not good for us when a small number of unelected people have that kind of power, and I don't think it's necessarily better or worse that the people controlling that power don't--and can't--fully understand how to use that power.
Split up those companies, and you don't just have stronger competition in the market--you also decrease the risk of a single bad decision by a CEO affecting everyone, because power is split across more people.
If someone on my friends list posts something, show it to me. It is why they are on my friends list. Simple.
Therefore it is up to the actual user to screen what exactly they want to see, not some random mathematical equation.
But what about advertising?
Companies should be proactively attempting to get users to add them as friends so that they can directly advertise to the people that are interested in their products or services. These companies shouldn't be able to purchase screen time unless it is an actual advert, with advert written on it. Once again simple.
Comments
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/25/trump-campaign-tv-news-1235376
So today whiny Republicans were demanding Schiff resign because Barr claimed that the Mueller report which we can't see totally clears Trump and how could you have accused the man who lies constantly and ran scams and commited crimes of doing crimes? We don't have the Mueller report, only the Barr memo.
Adam Schiff took the opportunity to DESTROY Republicans with facts for shrugging off Trump's collusion.
Then at the end of this speech one of the Republicans tried to talk over him and interrupt with some more bs and Schiff wasn't having it, he put him in his place. It was pretty badass, well for Congress.
Vid here on CSPAN
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4788356/gentleman-recognized
In all seriousness, the fact is that Trump is seeking to imprison his political opponents, accusing the FBI of treason, sends out propaganda everyday, and is ignoring the Constitution (emoluments and the first Amendment freedom of the press). All this shows how dangerous things are these days. We're very close to fascism with this guy and his Republican brown coats who are loyal to him and not America.
The honeymoon is officially over.
https://globalnews.ca/news/5103763/trudeau-approval-rating-snc-lavalin-budget/
Did someone forget to tell Adam that Trump just gave the Golan Heights to Israel? Why Orange Man still bad? Israel is getting Greater Again.
I watched that video. Then I watched the video in the link. Then I started watching the entire hearing.
Within the first 10 minutes of the meeting, in the opening remarks of the Republicans, they are calling for Adam Schiff to resign his position.
Because he keeps going after Trump because "You further have stated you will continue to investigate the counterintelligence issues. That is, is the president or people around him compromised in any way by a hostile foreign power."
Uh, yeah? That's kind of THE COMMITTEE'S JOB.
Ongoing operations in the millions of dollars in hostile countries would count as compromised. Decades long funding from top officials in those countries would count as compromised.
Those are egregious conflicts of interest.
It certainly seems like a cover-up is going on. Claiming that a report that we haven't seen exonerates and investigators who followed the evidence we have seen out in the open is treason (much less evidence we haven't yet been able to see) is at best wildly premature. But that hasn't stopped Republicans from trying to cover up the report and push false narratives. They seem to want to leave Barr's memo as the sole information Americans have.
Look, if the Mueller report "totally exonerated" Trump as he claims he'd have printed and put copies of it in his golf clubs next to his fake Time magazine covers. He should be happy that investigators apparently couldn't find enough evidence of his guilt to prove it in court. Instead he's saying the FBI committed treason. That seems strange right. And finally having the subject of the investigation redact and edit the report before it's released is obviously a terrible idea at best and another attempt at a Republican cover-up at worst. The FBI or the House of Representatives or others are more than capable of redacting the report if that is even needed at all.
There's a slow moving cover-up going on here and I'm glad Schiff and other strong Democrats are able to stand up and point out the Republican bullshit going on. You know it makes even less sense that Trump has been so nice to Putin, and met with him in private multiple times without US officials or notes, and done things like not implement sanctions passed by Congress if he isn't a Russian puppet. We need to see the report.
The report is apparently between 300-700 pages long (no one really knows). We have seen less than 70 WORDS of it in excerpts. And Barr isn't even planning on releasing a redacted version to the House committees. He is going to write ANOTHER summary. This is such complete bullshit. Subpoenas need to start being issued post-haste. From a former federal prosecutor by way of TPM:
A few thoughts on the Barr Gambit, which I think will go down as a singular achievement in the annals of intellectual dishonesty and bad faith legal jujitsu:
1. It is undisputed that the Russian government brazenly interfered in the 2016 election to support Donald Trump. In so doing, the Russians and those acting on their behalf committed a variety of federal crimes including computer hacking and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Those crimes were committed to benefit (a) Vladimir Putin and the interests of the Russian government; and (b) Donald J. Trump. It is also undisputed that Trump and his campaign joyfully used and weaponized the information the Russians stole against Hillary Clinton. Trump personally trumpeted the Wikileaks disclosures 141 times during the campaign, and his surrogates countless more times. While Mueller’s team apparently “did not establish” (i.e., did not find enough evidence to charge criminally) that Trump personally conspired with the Russian government to commit the underlying crimes, there is no question that he was (along with Putin) the single biggest beneficiary of those criminal efforts.
2. Mueller apparently pulled together significant evidence that the President attempted to obstruct the investigation into these crimes. But to support his decision not to prosecute the President for obstruction of justice, Barr relied in part on Mueller’s conclusion that he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the President was involved in an underlying criminal conspiracy. Therefore, Barr’s reasoning goes, Trump lacked corrupt intent to obstruct because, at least in part, he was not involved in any underlying crime. This argument is both legally wrong (obstruction charges don’t depend on the existence of an underlying crime, just an investigation or proceeding), and it flies in the face of one simple fact: Trump was a prime beneficiary of the undisputed criminal conduct that did occur. He of course had a strong personal interest in seeking to obstruct this investigation for a variety of reasons. If you receive and use stolen money, even if you weren’t involved in the theft, you have a strong interest in thwarting any efforts to investigate the underlying theft. Why? Because you don’t want to lose the right to hold onto your money. Same here. This investigation posed a direct threat to the Presidency. It also posed a direct threat to prying open Trump’s shady business empire. Barr’s argument might hold water if the Russian election interference was intended to help Hillary and Trump’s campaign was not the subject of the investigation. As it stands, the President had a deep personal stake in the outcome of the investigation and it appears he used his executive power to thwart it. That cannot be countenanced.
3. The non-charging decision on obstruction by Mueller cannot be explained as a failure of evidence. On conspiracy or coordination, it appears Mueller made a clear decision not to charge because of a lack of evidence. As too many members of the media seem to get wrong, this was not a “no evidence” situation, but rather a failure to get to the required level of admissible evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. And the level of proof had to be something in between probable cause (you can’t get 500 search warrants without it) and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I have no problem with that decision from a prosecutorial discretion standpoint. There was lots of evidence of an underlying conspiracy, but it was always going to be very difficult to prove the President’s direct involvement with sufficient admissible evidence (classified intercepts from foreign governments won’t do it). And Manafort and Stone holding the line seems to have been the stopped the Mueller team short. Mueller made a decision not to charge conspiracy because of a lack of evidence, so why not obstruction? If it’s a 50-50 call and a pure “jump ball” that’s easy. You decline. If it’s “more likely than not,” the civil standard, you also decline. Even if it’s “clear and convincing” evidence that doesn’t rise to the level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, you decline the case. So what is going on here? To me, the only answer is that they had a chargeable obstruction case but stopped short of making a decision to charge the President–because he’s the President. It could have been the policy not to indict a sitting President, it could have been the legal and policy arguments around executive authority, or it could have been out of deference to the legislative branch and its impeachment prerogatives. Any way you cut it, I just can’t see Mueller shying away from a tough evidentiary call. If we ever get to see it, I fully expect the actual Mueller report to contain a devastating case against the President for obstruction of justice. This is why we should expect to see Barr, the White House, and the Republicans in Congress fight like hell to keep as much of the report as possible away from the public and House Judiciary. Democrats cannot let this go.
And from Josh Marshall at the same site:
Our situation now seems pretty clear. The administration plan is this: Release the Barr Letter and use it as a cudgel to claim bogus exoneration and threaten revenge against the President’s perceived enemies while Bill Barr tries to run down the clock until January 2021.
So where’s the report? There’s zero reason it can’t be released today. To the degree there is some classified information that must remain secret it can be released today either to the full Congress or the so-called Gang of Eight. If there’s a purported issue with Grand Jury secrecy, a judge can rule to release it. (There’s also a Watergate precedent in this case) In other words, there’s zero reason it can’t be released to Congress today and a very lightly redacted version to the public a short time later.
Now here’s the thing: just a couple weeks ago the House voted unanimously to demand the report be released with no Barr-ite funny-business. The resolution called for a full un-redacted release to Congress and a full public release “except to the extent the public disclosure of any portion thereof is expressly prohibited by law.”
This makes it easy in terms of holding people accountable. Did your Rep vote to release it? Of course they did! Because the vote was unanimous! The only exceptions were four Reps who voted “present”: Reps. Amash, Gaetz, Massie and Gosar. Call them too if you want. (Call Senators if you want. But Leader McConnell forbade a vote. So there no one is on the record.) But with these four exceptions everyone is now on the record demanding the immediate release. The problem is GOPs Reps found out about the Barr Letter plan and went silent. Indeed, Republican Reps are starting to say, the Barr Letter is plenty, let’s move on and investigate Hillary! It’s so damn exonerating that it’s critical that no one ever see it except Bill Barr.
Here it is:
Well, this, at the very least, is true. But that doesn't mean the American public doesn't need to see it. But I will absolutely concede he has to be defeated at the ballot box. That has always been true as long as Republicans held the Senate. But this clear burying and cover-up of the actual report is not acceptable.
The thing is, I expected Trump to get a HUGE bump in the polls because of the way this has played out, with the media by and large buying into the Barr bullshit. But he didn't. He hasn't moved an ounce, not even on this issue. Most people still think he acted illegally, and one of the most interesting numbers I saw was that 7% of people were more likely to vote for him because of the report and 6% were LESS likely to do so. Basically, a wash. No one is changing their mind on this guy. It's on Democrats to put up a candidate who can get out enough votes to defeat him, though you and I will clearly differ on who and what that means. I suspect you think it means reaching out to people like yourself. I think it means energizing the base that stayed home last time.
But this constant refrain I am seeing on TV and in print about the "Mueller Report" is driving me nuts, because as far as 99.9999999999999% of the country is concerned, there IS NO Mueller Report yet. There is a Barr Memo. And if that is allowed to be the standard for how we judge a major investigation of the President, then we are truly lost. Because it sure as shit wasn't the standard in 1998.
UK now leaves in 14 days, unless it extends again. I cannot imagine a second extension will happen without some kind of political assurance of a soft exit or a second referendum. Extending a second time (and thus going through the EU elections) just to hard leave seems ridiculous.
I don't see how this entire thing could have possibly gone any worse than it has. May isn't the main problem here, but I was continually astounded by how she was surviving in her position based on the circumstances under which previous PMs were forced out. So once again, the UK is nowhere on this. Didn't Corbyn just finally get behind a second referendum??
I grew up eating broccoli from our garden. I always eat it raw. At most I'll take it lightly blanched.
Why do I feel like I'm missing out on some very important political debate here between you two because I'm not 'hip' enough to get the jargon?
Labour voted in favor of a second referendum on Monday, though Corbyn is still emphasising he wants a general election to clarify what will happen (a general election of course won't help to do that because neither main party has a consensus on what to do).
A no-deal exit is certainly still possible as that's the legal default. Parliament previously voted heavily against that, but if the choice is between a long extension and a no-deal, some of the MPs that don't like the idea of no-deal would still support it. My guess though is that a narrow majority will vote for an extension, even though that means participating in the European elections. There will then be some difficult conversations with the EU ...
The chance of a second referendum of some sort has also significantly increased. It's not a popular idea at the moment, but there is a strong logic behind saying that Parliament should not vote for a proposal that's significantly different from the previous general expectations of Brexit without testing that out in the country. Just what a referendum would cover is still totally up for grabs - it could just ask for a vote for or against any specific deal proposed by Parliament or cover wider options such as no-deal and remain. There should be a further series of indicative votes next Monday which may clarify the direction of travel a bit.
ROAST, I was looking for roast and not fried.
Back to politics, I'm upset that Barr is not making the Mueller report public or even sharing it with Congress. Currently, the only one who has control of the report is a Trump appointee who was appointed because he believes that the president isn't capable of committing obstruction of justice. Trump himself said recently that if Barr were in charge from the beginning, the Mueller investigation never would have happened--Trump picked Barr specifically because he wanted someone to protect him.
The lack of transparency is frustrating. Hillary Clinton was never allowed to silence any of the numerous investigations into her activities, yet Trump is given that power.
The fact is, it won't matter. This White House is not going to be constrained by the norms of a normal government. The Democrats will continue to hold hearings on everything, as they absolutely should, but nothing is going to move the needle at this point. The only way this guy is going anywhere, no matter what is revealed on any subject, is if he is defeated at the ballot box at on first Tuesday of November next year. And IF that happens, what events transpire after that is the real big question.
So who can take him on?? I think the only people who have any chance in a one on one fight with someone as vicious and dirty as Trump are Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. I absolutely love what I've been hearing from Pete Buttigieg, but he also has to prove he can win a knife fight (so to speak). I don't think exclusively appealing to America's better angels (as he is excellently doing each time he makes a public appearance) is enough. The rest of them don't have a shot. I don't see what constituency Corey Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand can put together. The rest of them aren't even worth mentioning. It's a 7 person race that will quickly get whittled down to 4 after Iowa and New Hampshire. If Biden gets in the race (and I seriously hope he doesn't), he is going to get excoriated for his positions going back to the '70s and '80s on any number of issues, and he'll do nothing but ruin his legacy. He "leads" in the polls on nothing but Vice Presidential name recognition. I don't see him having any actual shot once things start. His past positions have no support among Democratic voters.
https://www.thecut.com/2019/03/an-awkward-kiss-changed-how-i-saw-joe-biden.html
We don't want to see another race where foreign interference, election fraud, fake news, voter suppression, the electoral college, and/or partisan manipulation warps the result. Elections can defy expectations, and 2016 showed us that it's not enough to win the most votes; you also need to win the right votes.
I'm afraid all that stuff is going to be here for good since with Trump and Mitch McConnell it's been proven how effective it is. Obstructionist Republicans cried their way through Obama's term to victory and a stolen Supreme Court seat and hundreds of empty judicial seats that they are now packing with nitwits without any punishment so far.
And the discourse and love for fellow man is totally gone. You can't go anywhere on facebook without nastiness. It's pretty much the same in real life in America. People think "speaking their mind" means freedom to be a jerk. Congratulations, you are indeed a jerk people. Well done, we've ruined everything. I can't see how we can come back from this at this point. We are literally inches away from fascism in America with Trump "talking", haha just talking like he's known to do, about imprisoning his rivals and destroying the Constitution nearly everyday.
It's not that algorithms are inherently dangerous or untrustworthy. We use algorithms to recommend content all the time. I like the suggestions I get from Youtube and deviantart. But recommending information is a heavier matter than recommending entertainment. A bad Netflix recommendation can mean you spend 5 minutes watching a show you don't like. A bad news recommendation can mean you don't vaccinate your kids.
I think this is one of the reasons we need to break up these colossal social media companies. The problem isn't just monopoly power over a specific market; these networks have vast impacts on our entire society.
A handful of people at Facebook can exert massive power over the entire world simply by changing an algorithm.
And stranger still, these people don't even know what their own massive power is doing to the world--Facebook doesn't really have a way of understanding what its algorithm changes are really doing on the ground. It can't closely analyze all those billions of posts; Zuckerberg and the other folks at the top can only get a vague idea of what's going on.
It's not good for us when a small number of unelected people have that kind of power, and I don't think it's necessarily better or worse that the people controlling that power don't--and can't--fully understand how to use that power.
Split up those companies, and you don't just have stronger competition in the market--you also decrease the risk of a single bad decision by a CEO affecting everyone, because power is split across more people.
If someone on my friends list posts something, show it to me. It is why they are on my friends list. Simple.
Therefore it is up to the actual user to screen what exactly they want to see, not some random mathematical equation.
But what about advertising?
Companies should be proactively attempting to get users to add them as friends so that they can directly advertise to the people that are interested in their products or services. These companies shouldn't be able to purchase screen time unless it is an actual advert, with advert written on it. Once again simple.