"Mike Pompeo subpoenaed by House committees over Ukraine scandal" by Nicholas Fandos and Sheryl Gay Stolberg New York Times, September 27, 2019
WASHINGTON — House Democrats, kick-starting their impeachment inquiry into President Trump, subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday, demanding he produce a tranche of documents related to the president’s dealings with Ukraine. Separately, they instructed him to make five State Department officials available for depositions in the coming two weeks.
A failure to do so, the leaders of three House committees wrote jointly, would be construed as “evidence of obstruction of the House’s inquiry.”
House Democrats set a deadline of Oct. 4 for complying with the subpoena.
It was the first official action in the rapidly escalating impeachment investigation.
The officials that Democrats said must appear were Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, Ambassador Kurt Volker, George Kent, T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, and Gordon Sondland.
The ambassador just submitted his resignation in wake of the New York Times saying he has ties to Giuliani.
“This subpoena is being issued by the Committee on Foreign Affairs after consultation with the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Oversight and Reform. The subpoenaed documents shall be part of the impeachment inquiry and shared among the Committees,” the Democrats wrote.
“Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry,” the chairmen wrote.
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That briefly rewritten front-page lead was completely truncated in the web version.
[flip to below fold]
Another obsession with them at the moment:
A new wave of youthful climate activists reinvigorates an older generation
By Robert Weisman Globe Staff
Greta has been coached, Greta is a production to pull on your heartstrings without any skepticism or criticism allowed as they furiou$ly pu$h that agenda!
If you kids really want to save the environment, de-fund the Pentagon.
Did Greta ever mention that amidst the coached spew?
Related:
‘Major’ gas leak in Lawrence gives residents flashbacks of 2018
By Michael Levenson and Emily Sweeney Globe Staff
Here is a faint whiff of the $tench:
Law firms seeking nearly $24 million for negotiating Columbia Gas explosion settlement
By Emily Sweeney and John R. Ellement Globe Staff
It could go nuclear:
Healey sues federal nuclear regulators over Plymouth plant transfer
By Danny McDonald Globe Staff
Deadly Maine blast caused by leak that allowed propane to pool in basement where it ignited
By Alyssa Lukpat Globe Correspondent
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Then there is the never-ending push using the same tactics for this agenda:
A victim of violence in her own country
By Maria Cramer and Gal Tziperman Lotan Globe Staff
I don't know about you, but I'm tired of having an agenda-pu$hing, war-promoting distorter and obfuscater waving women and children in my face to advance their advocacy for a particular issue.
My immediate response is where are the children of Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, or so many other places in the world that the EUSraeli empire has despoiled by war? Not in my pre$$, that's for sure. Then there is the population within the United States, drinking bad water for starters, but that coverage dries up quickly. Government failure to protect water supplies is the red line for the public. You can't help but breath so the air is less of a concern. Water is next on the list for survival and much more tangible to people.
Related:
"In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat signed an accord at the White House ending Israel’s military occupation of West Bank cities and laying the foundation for a Palestinian state."
Still working on it 24 years later.
"So, who wants to go to Saudi Arabia? The government is about to find out. The country said on Friday that it would open up the country to international tourists, announcing a new visa program that is intended to diversify the economy and reduce the kingdom’s dependence on oil. Under its de facto leader, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has been eager to bolster its international standing — particularly in the West — and draw investment, but it is unclear how attractive it will be to tourists: The country is notoriously repressive, drawing condemnation for an austere interpretation of Islam that includes strict social codes. Some of the rules governing public behavior have been relaxed, but Western visitors to the country will encounter an atmosphere that is far more restrictive than what they are used to. The country also found itself subject to global condemnation last year after the gruesome killing of the dissident Jamal Khashoggi by operatives at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul (New York Times)."
You can have fun in the sun with a special trip to the war next door, and be sure to see the upcoming PBS Frontline special on the Saudi king, to be followed by one on the Turkish dictator Erdogan.
Think what you want of Erdogan, but the guy has balls. I expect a color revolution and destabilization effort to soon be activated with possible coup attempt like under Obama (remember those glorious days?).
Joseph C. Wilson, diplomat caught in dispute over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, dies at 69
By Matt Schudel Washington Post
What's the dispute? They didn't find any because he didn't have any.
What they mean is the criminal outing of Plame, the CIA agent(!). I'm sure Trump regrets the pardon of scapegoat Libby now. So much for appeasement. Wilson blew the whistle on the lying, but he never will again.
Btw, Happy Birthday to Naomi Watts. She has done some great work and seems to be in the know; however, I think they have finally gotten to her (is that why Liev left?).
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‘Whitey’ Bulger’s girlfriend Catherine Greig living with his relatives in Hingham
Where is Epstein's girlfriend, Globe?
Right under your noses like the MIT lab?
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Next up is the World section lead:
"Ukraine lawmakers seek probes into allegations at ‘epicenter’ of US political battles" by Michael Birnbaum and David L. Stern Washington Post, September 27, 2019
More affectionately known in some circles as the CIA's newspaper, and not without cause (and its Bezos's paper now. What's he up to these days?).
KIEV, Ukraine — Lawmakers in Ukraine are seeking to launch probes into some of the same allegations at the heart of the Trump administration’s dirt-digging efforts, including possibly reopening inquiries into the Ukrainian natural gas firm with connections to Hunter Biden.
Democrats, on the other hand, are allowed to do that without consequence. Hell, even their alleged enemies are forced to cover it up.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s top anti-corruption official said Friday his agency hasn’t investigated former Vice President Joe Biden or his son as President Trump has suggested. Hunter Biden served on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma at the same time that his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv. Though the timing raised concerns among anti-corruption advocates, there has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either the former vice president or his son.
Just the tape of Biden at the CFR bragging about putting the arm on Poroshenko to fire the prosecutor.
If you aren't looking for evidence or are looking to omit or obfuscate it, then you will find no evidence of wrongdoing. If you are looking for it, there are places it can be found.
Those advocating for the parliament investigations say they address any potential loose ends and try to defuse Ukraine’s potentially explosive role in the 2020 presidential election, but they also acknowledge that their effort could have the opposite effect and keep Ukraine in the middle of the impeachment debate in Washington.
‘‘I don’t like it that Ukraine again and again is in such tight, uncomfortable situations,’’ said Valentin Nalyvaichenko, the Ukrainian lawmaker who is leading the push for the parliamentary inquiry.
Nalyvaichenko — who was head of Ukraine’s top security agency, the State Security Organization, at the height of a conflict with pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 — said Ukraine might as well try to seize control of the narrative.....
That's what the Wa$hington ComPo$t and the rest of the pre$$ and ma$$ media here do all the time.
--more--"
The article mentions the sacrificial lamb Manafort whose term in the hole has been dispatched down the pre$$ memory hole after his usefulness to them.
"Kremlin says it hopes Putin’s calls with Trump won’t be made public" New York Times September 27, 2019
MOSCOW — Amid the uproar over President Trump’s call to the leader of Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Friday that it hoped the contents of Trump’s phone conversations with President Vladimir Putin of Russia would not be made public, a disclosure that would likely generate far more attention.
Too late. The Wa$hington ComPo$t has already released them:
Trump told Russian officials in 2017 he wasn’t concerned about Moscow’s interference in US election By Shane Harris, Josh Dawsey and Ellen Nakashima Washington Post
Nor should he be. That narrative has collapsed if you have been paying attention.
Trump’s conversations with Putin have been an enduring mystery and a subject of intense interest, given the evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump, who has adopted a friendlier stance toward Moscow than his predecessors.
Really?
Where is that evidence?
Or is that just part of the narrative for perception management purposes?
Two days after the White House released a reconstruction of Trump’s call with the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov was asked if he worried about the confidentiality of the American president’s contacts with Putin.
Now the call was reconstructed like Auschwitz, calling the transcript that was released into question.
“We would like to hope that we would not see such situations in our bilateral relations, which already have plenty of quite serious problems,” he said in a conference call with reporters.
He emphasized that accounts of phone conversations between leaders were classified. The release this week was “quite unusual,” he added.
Can't wait for a Democrat president who has to release transcripts of all calls with foreign leaders.
When do we get to see all the calls Netanyahu made to Trump et al, 'eh?
Asked if the Kremlin would be ready to agree to release the contents of a phone call with Trump, Peskov said that such situations should be treated on a case-by-case basis. “No one has turned to us with such requests,” he said.
Some Democrats, charging that Trump may be beholden to the Kremlin, have said that the White House should disclose more of what he and Putin have said to each other, but those calls have never reached the fever pitch prompted by a whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s July 25 call to Zelensky.
Based partly on that complaint, Speaker Nancy Pelosi began a formal impeachment inquiry of the president on Tuesday. The White House record of the call shows that Trump repeatedly urged Zelensky to order Ukraine’s government to investigate former vice president Joe Biden — a leading candidate running against the president — and his son Hunter.
Maybe someone should be looking into that.
Trump has urged Zelensky to strike a peace deal with Russia, which seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has since that year supported separatist rebels trying to break eastern Ukraine away from the country.
Oh, look, an out-and out lie told by the New York Times! Russia never seized Crimea. The Crimea's voted to secede from Ukraine after the Obama regime change in that country. They then petitioned to join the Russian Federation, and Russia accepted.
What are we to think when the new$paper continually prints lies and distortions?
--more--"
The Putin calls could be the “death blow” to his presidency.
"Trump and Boris Johnson: Populist peas in a pod? Well, sort of" by Mark Landler New York Times, September 27, 2019
PFFFFFT!
Same could be said of the Times and Post!
LONDON — They are each facing the political test of a lifetime. They have each reacted with defiance, bravado, and brazen appeals to populism, and they are each flying by the seat of their pants.
Never have the fortunes of President Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain seemingly been so in sync — a trans-Atlantic psychodrama featuring two flamboyant, polarizing leaders, unfolding in parallel eruptions of vitriol, political jockeying, and unrelenting chaos.
It's crazy to continue taking this "journali$m" seriously anymore.
For all their surface similarity, however, Trump and Johnson are cut from decidedly different cloths: one, an Eton- and Oxford-educated lover of Greek classics; the other, an outer-borough New York real estate developer whose tastes run to reality television and who has spent a lifetime trying in vain to penetrate Manhattan society.
Yet, as they confront the biggest challenges of their careers, both men are resorting to scorched-earth tactics that are putting the world’s two great Anglo-Saxon democracies under intense strain.
Arguably, the brawling style comes easier to Trump. Friends and former aides say he thrives on conflict, an insurgent figure who fares best when trading punches with an opponent. Johnson, for all his bluster, has tended to steer clear of conflict. His political career has been less an insurgency than a relentless climb through the ranks of the establishment.
Now the implication is that Trump plants roadside IEDs, and don't you Brits feel duped?
“He’s sort of a son of Trump,” said Sonia Purnell, who worked with Johnson and wrote a biography of him, “Just Boris.” “In a way it’s more shocking because it’s here,” she added, noting the British reputation for being “courteous, sometimes awkward, but pragmatic and rational.”
Bush had his poodle, Trump has his son. The elite insult that spews from the Times even reaches to the ranks of the British premier. I wonder if they ever said anything like that about Churchill.
Where Johnson and Trump are alike, Purnell said, is in their acute sense of grievance when things go against them. In the days since the British Supreme Court ruled that Johnson had unlawfully suspended Parliament, and the House of Representatives opened a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump, both have lashed out at a familiar list of villains.
For both men, the bravado masked a precarious future.
Johnson has lost vote after vote in Parliament since he came into office. Opponents have accused him of misleading Queen Elizabeth II in asking her to suspend Parliament and called for his resignation.
If he had misled them into a war like Bliar it wouldn't have raised such outrage!
Trump said he believed he had put impeachment behind him when the special counsel, Robert Mueller, issued his report on the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. He now faces the genuine prospect of being the third president to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.
Rather than compromise, however, both have dug in their heels, apparently calculating that an unsparing response will galvanize their political bases and allow them to ride out the current turmoil. In the process, they have used language that has stunned even those used to the cut-and-thrust of politics.
On Wednesday, Johnson said Britain should press ahead with Brexit to honor the memory of Jo Cox, a member of Parliament who was adamantly pro-European and was killed a week before the 2016 Brexit referendum by a right-wing assassin. Johnson’s own sister, Rachel, condemned his words as inflammatory. “It was a very tasteless way of referring to the memory of a murdered MP, murdered by someone who said, ‘Britain first,’ ” she said to Sky News.
That ruined my vacation trip through Europe. Sorry for the indifference, but she was led like a sheep to slaughter and now they may be staying.
Trump told American diplomats he wanted to hunt down the officials who gave a whistleblower information about his call with the Ukrainian president. Anyone who did so was “close to a spy,” he said, adding, “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart with spies and treason, right?”
Well, Bill Weld does, but if they are from Israel we just send them back.
The impeachment process, Trump said, was a conspiracy of the news media and the Democrats, who he said never accepted his victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 and were determined to delegitimize his presidency.
Well, we all know there are no conspiracies, right?
Otherwise, you are a "conspiracy theorist" -- as opposed to a $hit-shoveling propagandist working for the pre$$.
Both leaders are framing their battles as populist crusades — the people versus the elite — and they have reasons for doing so. Johnson remains a relatively popular figure in Britain; the Conservative Party has held on to its lead in the polls through weeks of wrenching debate over Brexit.
“We’re enjoying this,” Dominic Cummings, a senior adviser to Johnson and a mastermind of his strategy for leaving the European Union, was filmed saying at a book launch.
Still, neither man wanted to be in this position, people who know them say. They blundered into it, these people said, as a result of their unorthodox style, disregard for accepted norms and lack of a Plan B.
“They’re both showmen; they’re both performers,” said Steve Bannon, a former chief strategist to Trump who has enthusiastically advocated for Brexit. “The trouble is, that gets you elected, but it doesn’t help you govern.”
Gee, look what the cat dragged in.
--more--"
Related:
"Thousands of protesters seeking to oust President Jovenel Moise attacked businesses and government buildings across Haiti Friday, creating chaos on the streets after a weeks-long shutdown of vital services that has damaged the country’s ailing economy and shaken the president’s already tenuous position. In the capital, Port-au-Prince, hundreds of opposition supporters ransacked a police station used by a special tactical unit, hauling out office furniture and even Kevlar vests and ammunition in the city shantytown of Cite Soleil. An Avis car rental office and Western Union branch were also attacked and burnt. Several houses in the Delmas neighborhood were burned, and groups of protesters hurled rocks at police, who responded with tear gas. A radio station in the city of Jacmel reported that a courthouse there had been burnt. Opposition leaders pledged that there would be no peace until Moise, who took office in 2017, resigns.
That's where my print ended, and why is this the first I'm seeing of it (oddly enough, no report on Hong Kong today, a near-daily feature for months).
The web version of the brief added this:
‘‘We are telling the people who live in the Cite Soleil area and the Haitian population to rise up to overthrow this government because President Jovenel Moise is not doing anything for us, just killing us,’’ said protester Francois Pericat. He said police had fatally shot three demonstrators. Government officials did not immediately return requests for comment. Other demonstrators waved green tree fronds as a sign that they were peaceful. Senator Youri Latortue, one of the opposition leaders, told Radio Caraibes that ‘‘if Jovenel doesn’t resign today, whatever happens to him is not our responsibility.’’ ‘‘Jovenel Moise will be held accountable for everything that happens in the country today,’’ he said. Haiti has seen months of protests over the government’s reluctance to investigate and prosecute accusations that Moise’s allies in the country’s previous administration embezzled and wasted billions in proceeds from a Venezuelan program that provided Haiti with subsidized oil. Those protests have been followed by strikes and violent demonstrations as the government has proved unable to import enough fuel to meet the nation’s daily needs. For three weeks, leaders of opposition parties have sent groups of young men onto the streets to enforce a shutdown of businesses and public services, which opposition leaders pledged would continue over the weekend (Associated Press)."
A one-off or regime change effort (sure looks one)?
If it gets more coverage it will confirm it as such.
"Scattered protests calling for President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt to step down broke out in multiple cities across the country Friday afternoon, marking the second Friday in a row of rare demonstrations challenging his authoritarian rule. A protest in the working-class Cairo neighborhood of Warraq, an island in the Nile, grew as neighborhood residents poured out of mosques after midday prayers, according to live videos posted on Facebook and a local journalist and activist who had spoken to protesters there. “No matter how, we’ll bring Sissi down,” the crowds chanted. Live videos posted on Facebook also purported to show a march in Qena, a city in southern Egypt. Given the risks of dissent in Egypt, where Sissi has jailed thousands of political opponents and controls politics and most of the press, the protests — though small — represent a stunning challenge to his authority. The government moved swiftly this week to try to prevent a repeat of last week’s protest, arresting more than 2,000 Egyptians, packing Cairo neighborhoods with security personnel, blocking or restricting popular Web services, and blaming the unrest on Islamists and outside agitators.
That's where the print ended and the web version took over.
On Friday, Sissi, who landed in Cairo on Friday morning after a weeklong trip to the United Nations, appeared to be taking no chances. Downtown Cairo, where some of last week’s protesters had converged, was nearly deserted apart from police officers, special security forces, and plainclothes informers who guarded major streets and squares, sometimes stopping vehicles and passersby. Tahrir Square, the scene of mass protests in 2011 and 2013 that brought down two of Sissi’s predecessors, was closed to traffic, along with roads and a bridge in the area. Cafes and stores in the normally busy shopping districts downtown were locked shut (New York Times)."
The sad thing is that the Sissi regime has been even more oppressive than Mubarak, begging of the question of what Egypt has done wrong lately.
Btw, how is that investigation of Morsi's death going? All dead and buried, 'eh, same as the Obama administration's tacit support of the coup?
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There was no Nation section in my printed paper, just a merger with the special impeachment section the Globe has been running every day since Pelosi's announcement.
Pelosi says Barr has ‘gone rogue’
By Eileen Sullivan New York Times
She thinks he has “gone rogue for a long time now” and accused the White House of “a cover-up of the cover-up,” on MSNBC Friday.
NSC lawyers oversaw handling of Ukraine call transcript, White House says
By Michael Crowley New York Times
That means BOLTON is the SOURCE of the impeachment initiative!
"Giuliani scheduled to make paid appearance at Kremlin-backed conference" by Tom Hamburger, Amie Ferris-Rotman, Josh Dawsey and Rosalind S. Helderman Washington Post, September 27, 2019
WASHINGTON — Rudy Giuliani, whose actions as President Trump’s personal lawyer have helped set in motion an impeachment inquiry, abruptly canceled his scheduled paid appearance at a Kremlin-backed conference in Armenia next week.
You're fired!
Giuliani, who confirmed to The Washington Post on Friday morning that he would attend the event, reversed himself that evening after The Post reported on his participation in the meeting, which Vladimir Putin and other top Russian officials are expected to attend.
The two-day conference is sponsored by Russia and the Moscow-based Eurasian Economic Union, a trade alliance launched by Putin, the Russian president, in 2014 as a counterweight to the European Union.
According to an agenda for the event posted online, Giuliani was set to participate in a panel led by Sergey Glazyev, a longtime Putin adviser who has been under US sanctions since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine five years ago.
Giuliani said Friday evening that he was no longer planning to attend the meeting. ‘‘I didn’t know Putin was going,’’ he said in a brief interview, adding in a text: ‘‘Discretion is the better part of valor.’’
Little late to close the barn door, isn't it?
It's like Rudy is there to sabotage him!
Giuliani’s decision to take part in the conference astounded national security experts. His appearance would have come days after the release of a whistleblower complaint accusing Trump and Giuliani of pressuring Ukrainian officials for damaging information about Democrats.
The trip was likely planned long in advance. WaComPo pounced on it.
Trump this summer withheld military aid from Ukraine, which counts on US support to help fend off pro-Moscow separatists in the country’s eastern provinces. As part of his efforts in Ukraine, Giuliani has said the focus on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election has overlooked what he claims was meddling by Kiev.
The agenda for the Eurasian conference showed Giuliani was the only American scheduled to speak at the gathering.
In an interview Friday before canceling his plans, Giuliani angrily rejected questions about whether it would be appropriate for him to attend the event, at which he also appeared last year.
Yeah, there was no fuss about it last year, nor is there any fuss regarding his speech to the MEK!
The former New York mayor confirmed in the interview that he intended to accept payment for his appearance but declined to say how much he would receive or which group or person was going to pay him. ‘‘It goes to my company,’’ Giuliani said.
?????
What company?
Isn't that a conflict of interest?
Hey, Rudy, who told you the trade towers were going to collapse and why did you destroy a crime scene?
One wonders what skeletons are in his closet and whether he was ever on Epstein's plane. That would surely open him up to blackmail.
Current and former White House aides said there is internal exasperation with Giuliani’s behavior and the fact that he does not clear his media appearances or paid speeches with the administration. Giuliani has said he works for the president in a personal capacity and does not take a salary from the government or the president.
Oh, not getting paid, that excuses everything.
A spokesman for the Eurasian conference declined to comment on Giuliani but said Putin, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore are set to attend the conference in the Armenian capital of Yerevan on Tuesday.
The conference is a regular summit of the Eurasian Economic Union, an economic trading union whose members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia.
It is the brainchild of Putin and was created in response to democratic upheavals taking place at the time in former Soviet countries. Putin has aimed to use the group to establish Russia as a bulwark against Europe and a center of gravity in the former Soviet region, describing the EEU as ‘‘a new supranational union that could become one of the poles of the modern world.’’
That was where the printed copy ended.
As secretary of state in 2012, Hillary Clinton called the group part of an effort to ‘‘re-Sovietize the region.’’
Thank God she wasn't awarded the presidency. We would be at war with Russia and Iran right now.
National security experts said Giuliani’s presence at the event could have bolstered the EU rival.
David Kramer, a former State Department official responsible for Russia and Ukraine during the George W. Bush administration, called it ‘‘terrible judgment’’ for Giuliani to have agreed to attend, saying his participation would have lent ‘‘credibility to an organization Putin set up as an alternative to the European Union.’’
A judgment akin to invading Iraq?
Michael McFaul, who served as US ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration, said he was surprised Giuliani would agree to attend the Eurasian conference, particularly since the organization was a flash point in Russian-Ukrainian tensions. He noted it was created by Putin at a time when Ukraine was considering joining the European Union. ‘‘I can’t remember anything like this,’’ McFaul said. He said Giuliani, as a private citizen, has a right to speak to any organization but called the conference an ‘‘odd’’ choice.
Makes one wonder where government officials and politicians fit in when they address AIPAC.
An agenda of the two-day summit says it is focused on transit in the region. The agenda, which was posted online in English, states clearly that Putin is set to take part in the official closing ceremony on Tuesday with Rouhani and leaders of the EEU’s other member countries.
Giuliani said Friday evening that ‘‘I've never seen the website,’’ adding: ‘‘I thought I was speaking at an Armenian security conference.’’ In a text, he added that the event ‘‘wasn’t that important. I don’t need to give the Swamp press more distractions.’’
That's its function and purpose.
Giuliani had been scheduled to appear on a panel titled ‘‘Digital financial technologies - new opportunities for integrating payment systems of the Eurasian continent in transport logistics.’’
The moderator listed on the agenda is Glazyev, an economist who served as one of Putin’s top advisers until this August and who is viewed in Moscow’s diplomatic circles as a possible successor to him. Next week, he is expected to be appointed to a top post at the commission that oversees the EEU.
Glazyev was one of a number of senior Russian government officials sanctioned by the Obama administration in 2014 as punishment for Russia’s incursion into Crimea.
OMG, that turns what happened on its head!
Last year, Giuliani was also listed as a participant in a panel moderated by Glazyev. In a photo posted online by the group, Giuliani can be seen standing at a lectern to the left of a group of seated men that include Glazyev.
Giuliani told The Post on Thursday that he did not realize Glazyev would be present at last year’s meeting before attending.
‘‘When we found out he was on the panel, the head of my security detail said [to the organizers], ‘The mayor is just going to be giving a speech and leaving, and if you don’t like that, screw you,’ ’’ Giuliani said.
He exemplifies what the world has come to know as American assholery.
Giuliani said he could not remember whether he and Glazyev spoke at the event.
‘‘I was discussing Russian collusion,’’ he said, sarcastically. ‘‘He helped me tank the case. Do you know what an idiot you sound like right now?’’
‘‘What does it matter what I did at the conference?’’ Giuliani added.
Before backing out of the event, Giuliani said that he was unaware his panel at next week’s conference was again scheduled to feature Glazyev.
In interviews this week, Giuliani has rejected any scrutiny of his conduct, saying attention instead should be put on his claims about former vice president Joe Biden and the Democrats.
‘‘I'm not an idiot. I know you all are going after me. I know what you guys are doing with this,’’ he said.
--more--"
"Trump campaign launches anti-impeachment blitz on Facebook, repeating falsehoods about four minority congresswomen" by Isaac Stanley-Becker and Tony Romm Washington Post, September 27, 2019
Well, the WaComPo should know all about repeating falsehoods, shouldn't they?
President Trump’s reelection campaign responded to the opening of a formal impeachment inquiry in Congress by launching a massive Facebook ad blitz, spending as much as $1.4 million on thousands of ads designed to reach voters in every state.
The online battery included misleading messages about the ‘‘socialist squad,’’ Trump’s epithet for the four congresswomen of color whom he previously directed to ‘‘go back’’ to their home countries, even though they are all American citizens.
Oh, now he is engaged in online battery, as if it were domestic abuse!
This hysterical screeching by the pre$$ has become unbearable, and it all comes after he refused to make war on Iran!
The ads falsely accused the freshman lawmakers of making ‘‘pro-terrorist remarks,’’ which they have not done, and pressed supporters to join Trump’s ‘‘official impeachment defense fund,’’ which he has also promoted in fundraising appeals sent by email and text message. The squad refers to Democratic Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, none of whom were mentioned by name.
I'm so glad the Zioni$t Jew pre$$ has picked up the gauntlet for the squad, aren't you?
In total, the Trump campaign and its backers spent between $346,700 and $1,430,182 on more than 2,000 ads for its Facebook page from Monday to midday Friday, according to data analyzed by Laura Edelson, a researcher at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. She obtained the data through Facebook’s public ad archive, which reports all of its data in ranges, not precise figures. Those ads had been viewed between 13.3 million and 25.3 million times, the NYU analysis found.
On Tuesday and Wednesday alone, the campaign shelled out roughly $500,000 on Facebook ads, according to figures tallied by ACRONYM, a digital outfit focused on progressive causes. On Wednesday alone, it spent roughly $350,000, an amount it typically spends in a week.
The online offensive offered a window into Trump’s bare-knuckle approach to the coming impeachment battles, as he took the showdown to his favored terrain — the internet. Already, campaign officials say they have filled their coffers with contributions: Eric Trump, the president’s second son and the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said on Thursday that the campaign had raised $8.5 million in the previous 24 hours.
The Facebook ads, which traffic in claims found to be false by The Washington Post Fact Checker, also provided a new test for the technology giant after it reaffirmed this week it would exempt speech by politicians from fact checking.
Well, we ALREADY KNOW they are LYING TO US, so no big deal; however, the real laugher is the Washington Post Fact Checker! AS IF! That'slike asking the fox to check the chicken coop!
That exemption, company executives said, also applies to ads, though sponsored posts are required to meet community standards that proscribe threats as well as ‘‘content aimed at deliberately deceiving people to gain an unfair advantage or deprive another of money, property, or legal right.’’
Isn't that interference in the campaign and election?
On Friday, Facebook said none of the ads violated its policies, including those that prohibit dehumanizing speech, though the company did not detail its reasoning. A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
As Trump flooded social media with impeachment-related advertising, would-be challengers competing for the Democratic nomination moved gingerly on the platforms. While it appeared that every single one of the hundreds of ads placed by Trump’s campaign since Tuesday used the word ‘‘impeachment,’’ not a single ad placed by Joe Biden, the former vice president, used the word. Biden said this week he would favor impeachment proceedings if the White House tried to thwart congressional oversight activities.
Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California, both of whom had previously called for the president’s impeachment, each ran ads on the topic, but far fewer than the general fundraising appeals they released that made no mention of the president.
In ads targeting mainly women, Warren asked users to sign a petition calling for impeachment proceedings to begin. Harris asked users, mainly in California, to sign a card thanking Nancy Pelosi, fellow California Democrat and Speaker of the House, ‘‘for showing the leadership the White House lacks by beginning an impeachment inquiry.’’
Biden, who became the subject of a July conversation between Trump and the president of Ukraine, placed new ads condemning the president for soliciting help from a foreign leader to smear him, but he stopped short of mentioning impeachment.
I think this whole effort is also a way to gently remove Biden from the process. His ancillary involvement in the impeachment process will be credited with bringing his campaign down after he fails to win either Iowa or New Hampshire (a bad look for one who was an alleged front-runner for so long).
In addition to the individual candidates, the national party committees also produced dueling advertising on the topic, with the Democratic National Committee asking users to donate to show their support for an impeachment inquiry and the Republican National Committee asking users to ‘‘stand against impeachment.’’ The GOP’s ads appeared to target in particular a swath of states in the Midwest, as well as New York, Pennsylvania, and Maine.
The RNC said Friday it planned to spend $10 million across television and digital platforms assailing Democrats for beginning an impeachment inquiry.
For months, Facebook spending on impeachment has been dominated by Tom Steyer, the investor turned impeachment activist, and his super PAC, Need to Impeach. Warren has been next in line, spending about $34,000 on the issue between Aug. 31 and Sept. 21, according to data compiled by Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic communications agency.
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Related:
"House Republicans’ campaign arm mocked a Democratic congressman on Twitter for getting marriage counseling with his wife, asking whether the couple’s seemingly divergent views on impeachment will be a topic of their sessions. Representative Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, a freshman representing a moderate district, is one of the remaining House Democrats who have not backed an impeachment inquiry into President Trump after revelations stemming from an intelligence official’s whistleblower complaint, but his wife, Amanda, this week shared an Instagram post from presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke advocating impeachment. That prompted the NRCC to take a screenshot image of her post and tweet it out, adding: ‘‘Looks like Mrs. Cunningham likes a man who supports baseless impeachment . . . wonder if this will come up in @RepCunningham’s marriage counseling?’’
So what sordid affair led to the counseling?
On Friday, Cunningham shot back. ‘‘Amanda is my rock — and the @NRCC just hit rock bottom,’’ he tweeted, referring to the National Republican Congressional Committee. ‘‘I respect my wife and all women, y’all should give it a try. Let’s show them there’s a price for living in the gutter.’’ He added a link to donate to his reelection campaign. She added: ‘‘Beto getting bolder and I like it.’’ Amanda Cunningham had mentioned her and her husband’s marriage counseling in a video posted on her Instagram account earlier this month in which she criticized her health insurance company for not covering it and other mental health services. People reacted indignantly on social media to Republicans making fun of a couple undergoing counseling, but the NRCC did not back down. John Weaver, a GOP strategist who worked for former president George W. Bush and the late senator John McCain, wrote: ‘‘What is wrong with you people?’’ To that, NRCC spokesman Chris Pack responded, ‘‘It’s not our fault that @RepCunningham’s wife publicly complains about having to pay for her marriage counseling, John. Take it up with her.’’ (Washington Post)."
They are whining about it after posting it on social media, and one can only wonder where the ACA is for them.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Dallas cop says she wishes neighbor had killed her instead
By Jake Bleiberg Associated Press
Yeah, sure. If I were her I would holler sexism. Men aren't receiving the same scrutiny for gunning down civilians. Hell, they get absolved each and every time.
"Tropical Storm Imelda dumped up to 43.39 inches of rain in southeast Texas, between Houston and Port Arthur, on Sept. 18 and 19. At least $1 billion in damage was probably incurred, along with at least five deaths from the epic deluge, which scientists estimate had a return period of once-in-1,200 years, but the flooding wasn’t a freak occurrence in this region, having followed other heavy rains in 2016, 2017, and 2018. The biggest and most damaging event was 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, which set a national rainfall record for the heaviest rain in a tropical system, at 60.58 inches. A new study examines Tropical Storm Imelda which, like Harvey, lingered in one general area for days on end, and any ties between the heavy rainfall totals and long-term, human-caused climate change.
I was waiting for them to blame "climate change."
A scientific consortium known as World Weather Attribution, which conducts rapid analyses of whether and how climate change played a role in extreme weather events, analyzed Imelda in a similar way to a previous analysis of Hurricane Harvey. The Harvey study found that global warming increased the intensity of rainfall from that devastating storm by about 15 percent, while the probability of its occurrence went up by a factor of three, due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and corresponding changes to ocean temperatures and the amount of water vapor available for storms to tap into as energy. The new study, which uses similar methods and has not yet been peer-reviewed, comes to similar conclusions, finding that although this event involved a weaker storm with slightly lower rainfall totals, it, too, was supercharged by a warming climate. Since 1900, the chances of receiving such an amount of rain has more than doubled, the study found, while the amount of rainfall in such an event has increased by about 18 percent. This is largely because warmer ocean waters and increasing average air temperatures provide additional moisture that storms can tap into for energy and wring out in the form of precipitation (Washington Post)"
Yeah, ignore your senses and attribute the weather to global warming.
Besides, the main concern these days is a phone call:
"Editorial Republican silence supports Trump’s threats" September 28, 2019
WHERE IS THE conscience of the GOP?
On Thursday, President Trump somehow found a new way to disgrace the presidency and expose the cowardice of his fellow Republicans. In rambling remarks at a private meeting in New York City, he implicitly threatened the life of officials in his administration who had helped a whistle-blower reveal Trump’s abuse of power during a phone call this summer with the president of Ukraine — the bombshell that triggered Congress to initiate an impeachment inquiry this week.
It’s no longer surprising that Trump makes such nauseating statements, but what remains disturbing is the continued inability of virtually every Republican in Congress to rebuke him. Each one of them has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, yet sits by silently while the president behaves like a mobster and erodes the rule of law.
In his remarks, a video of which was leaked to the Los Angeles Times, Trump compared officials who helped reveal his abuse of power to spies — and reminded his audience how spies used to be punished (death, if anyone missed the hint).
Related: Weld: president committed ‘treason, pure and simple’
Do I need to remind you of how Weld said he should be punished?
Of course, the Globe editorial board is in favor of that outlook and thus it isn't considered a disgrace or treason.
Of course, not all spies are treated equally, as some are either deported or dismissed.
The members of the audience were US diplomatic staffers. Absent an actual gun to the head, it couldn’t have been a clearer threat against any officials in the audience who might consider doing the right thing in the future. Because, make no mistake, exposing corrupt behavior is the right choice for any public servant: Blowing the whistle when they suspect wrongdoing is exactly what Americans should expect of their officials, and Republicans ought to be able to join Democrats in saying so.
This tripe comes in the wake of Obama's record prosecutions of whistleblowers, and proves just how phony are the hypocritical partisan political hacks down at the Globe. The double standards and cognitive dissonance must be a symptom of the autivism they are suffering.
In this case, in fact, the whistle-blower went exactly by the book when he learned that Trump had pressured the Ukrainians to investigate a political rival, former vice president Joe Biden, filing a complaint through official channels instead of leaking it to the press. Whoever the whistle-blower is, he behaved like a patriot.
Now they are extolling the Deep State CIA leaker even at their own expense after Mueller's office and Congre$$ were a sieve for them.
That doesn’t necessarily mean GOP officeholders have to line up with Democrats to impeach Trump. Confronted with his assaults on the rule of law, though, they do have a responsibility to at least speak up on the whistle-blower’s behalf, but with a few exceptions, the only response from Capitol Hill Republicans during this week of astonishing revelations has been silence. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, now a Utah senator, has been a lonely voice in the GOP caucus showing genuine concern regarding the complaint.
The call, a summary of which was released this week, was wrong in a staggering number of ways. The strongest GOP objections have come from the candidates challenging Trump for the 2020 Republican nomination, but silence is now complicity, and history isn’t going to accept fear of a primary challenge as an excuse for allowing Donald Trump to keep up his assault on democratic institutions.
Republicans cannot keep giving this president a pass on his behavior and expect the norms of US democracy to endure.....
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Now back to the Good Life:
Luxury hotel company Raffles starts work on 33-story Back Bay tower
"Harvard endowment underwhelms again" by Larry Edelman Globe Staff, September 27, 2019
Are you satisfied with how your investments are doing? If not, you’ve got some good company.
Harvard University, whose $40.9 billion endowment is the flushest in the academic world, said its fund returned 6.5 percent in the fiscal year ended June 30.
The performance lagged the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which had a total return including dividends of 10.4 percent for the period, and the Vanguard Balanced Index fund, which puts about 60 percent of its assets in stocks and 40 percent in bonds, which returned 8.8 percent. The Cambridge school also trailed New England rivals MIT (8.8 percent) and Dartmouth (7.5 percent), but beat Yale University for the first time since fiscal year 2010. Yale said Friday its fund rose 5.7 percent.
More important than a football game.
“I am encouraged by the progress our team has made to date,” said N.P. “Narv” Narvekar, CEO of Harvard Management Co., who is about halfway through a five-year restructuring effort aimed at improving performance by streamlining the endowment and how it is managed. “But we are mindful that there is much left to accomplish in the years ahead to resolve legacy issues and position the endowment for long-term success,” he said in a statement.
I wonder how much he is being paid in this age of ma$$ive wealth inequality.
Related: Harvard piles into hedge funds as new chief overhauls endowment
He is “trying to position the portfolio for the next market cycle,” and what does he know that you do not?
Harvard Management, which oversees the endowment, wasn’t planning to discuss performance until next month, when the university is set to release its annual financial report, but Narvekar issued the brief statement after The Wall Street Journal reported on the endowment’s return, citing people familiar with the matter. He didn’t provide details, but the fund’s performance was hurt by weakness in its emerging market and natural resources portfolios, a person with knowledge of the matter told the Globe.
Harvard’s fund, once a reliable top performer, was crushed during the financial crisis and has since posted mixed results. Narvekar was recruited from Columbia University at the end of 2016 to turn things around.
He hired a bunch of his friends, too.
It’s a complicated undertaking because of the size of the portfolio, which rivals the largest hedge funds in the world, and its use of private investments, which can take a long time to sell compared with publicly traded securities.
“Narv has done as good as could be expected,” said Charles Skorina, a longtime tracker of endowments whose firm recruits instititional investment executives. “He is simplifying the portfolio, which was spread into everything all over the world. At the same time, he’s trying to make decent new investments. It all takes time.”
Over the past several years, Harvard’s endowment has provided more than one-third of the university’s operating budget, or about $1.8 billion annually, but with a lackluster average investment return of 5.7 percent over the past five years, administrators have had to tightly control spending to stay within their budgets.
With all the money they are sitting on?
Moreover, Harvard, is one of about three dozen wealthy schools that will start paying a new federal 1.4 percent excise tax on investment income this fall. The levy was imposed on private school endowments with more than $500,000 in assets per student as part of the Republican-sponsored tax cut of 2017.
All I can say is the Republicans raised taxes on the right people.
The increase in Harvard’s endowment assets, from $39.2 billion in the previous year, reflects investment gains and gifts. The fund returned 10 percent in fiscal 2018.....
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How well are you endowed, reader?
