Sunday, November 22, 2020

Trump Throwing in the Towel?

As I will be soon for I will no longer be buying or reading the Boston Globe once Trump is gone.

There won't be any point to it. It will be like the eight years of Obama, with not an ounce of investigation into the Biden-Obama corruption and criminality.


Richard Fausset, Nick Corasaniti and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported that "President Donald Trump’s attempt to undo the election results was undercut twice by fellow Republicans on Friday, as Georgia became the first contested state to certify Joe Biden’s victory and Michigan lawmakers — after meeting with the president — said they would not intervene in their state’s election certification process."

He's doomed, says the Globe:

"Trump’s election legal strategy is all but doomed, but still could damage American democracy, experts say" by Jess Bidgood Globe Staff, November 20, 2020

WASHINGTON — First, President Trump lost the Nov. 3 election.

Then, his lawyers lost in court as they tried to allege fraud and irregularities — over and over and over again.

Now, Trump’s throw-it-all-at-the-wall strategy has apparently morphed into a brazen attempt to use his power as president to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. The effort seems to be aimed as much at fueling unwarranted doubts about election integrity among Trump’s supporters and soothing his ego as it does at actually preserving his presidency.

The audacious endeavor, which yielded a Friday White House meeting with Republican lawmakers from Michigan, appears all but doomed. Still, it is an unprecedented attempt to undermine the will of voters that could leave lasting scars on democracy, according to constitutional experts and former elected officials.

“Trump is like the kid who’s been told he can’t join the basketball game, who grabs the basketball and sticks a knife in it to deflate it,” said Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey. “It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.” 

OMG!

She was part of the Bush coup and is the one who told everyone that Ground Zero was safe five days after 9/11 even as the toxic stew continued to spew.

That's who the Globe skank turned to for opinion?

Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 6 million votes and his 232 projected electoral votes are well behind Biden’s 306, but Trump and his allies have claimed that he would have won the election if not for massive voter fraud — although they have been unable to offer a shred of evidence proving that claim.

I'm going to need that towel to puke in.

He has dispatched lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, to fight losing battles in court. On Tuesday, he fired Christopher Krebs, an official with the Department of Homeland Security who oversaw election security and who publicly disputed Trump’s claims that the election was compromised.

In Michigan, which Trump lost by 155,000 votes, he personally called a Republican member of the board of canvassers in Wayne County, which contains Detroit, who on Tuesday initially refused to certify the results there, according to the Detroit Free Press, and on Thursday, Giuliani and other members of Trump’s legal team gave a surreal press conference about their claims. As dark liquid leaked from his hair, Giuliani presented normal parts of the election process — like fixing mail ballots’ missing signatures — as fraudulent and made odd references to the film “My Cousin Vinny.”

Another member of the team, Sidney Powell, claimed inaccurately that Trump had won by a “landslide,” and that was before it became clear that legal filings in one of the Trump team’s cases had confused the states of Minnesota and Michigan.

The Globe doesn't bother investigating the claims, it just throws insults regarding superficial shit.

That's the state of the authoritative pre$$ that is the arbiter of truth!

A case of numbers being exactly what they seem.

“It’s beyond regrettable, it’s not presidential — it’s un-American,” said Tom Ridge, a Republican and the former governor of Pennsylvania. “He’s questioning and undermining the most basic and valued institution in our country, and that’s the legitimacy of our vote.” 

OMG, the globe turned to another 9/11 flunky while omitting Ridge's time at DHS.

If Trump’s only goal is to sow doubt, he is succeeding: A Monmouth University poll found 77 percent of Trump’s supporters believe Biden won because of fraud.

:)

If he is trying to throw a wrench in the election machinery, success is less assured. States are working to certify their results, a process that each state has to complete by Dec. 8. Then, on Dec. 14, each state’s electors will meet to award their votes to the candidate who won their state.

If, if, if.

It is possible that Trump and his allies see some hope for their efforts if they can persuade battleground state Republicans to send the results from competing slates of electors to Washington — something that happened in the chaos of the contested election of 1876, but the Michigan Republicans who met with Trump poured cold water on the idea they would take such a step.

Meanwhile, the gears of certification were grinding forward without Trump. On Friday afternoon, Georgia certified the results of its election, which saw Biden become the first Democrat since 1992 to win the state, with a lead of some 12,000 votes.

Trump’s antics have drawn increased condemnation from Biden and members of his transition team, who still are unable to access much of what they need to move the presidential transition forward.

“We have to be deeply disturbed about what he’s doing, while at the same time remaining mindful that he cannot succeed,” Bob Bauer, a campaign adviser to Biden, said Friday during a press call to refute the president’s claims.

It has also alarmed the people who spend their days monitoring elections in other countries, like Avery Davis-Roberts, the associate director of the Democracy Program at the Carter Center, who has been involved with election observation missions around the world.

“The erosion of trust in the honesty of our elections over the last several years, escalating in the last months and weeks, is very concerning,” Davis-Roberts wrote in an e-mail.

Well, four years of false charges of Russian collusion and interference caused that and now we are told it was the cleanest election ever by the same untrustworthy forces so f**k them.

Democracy experts believe that even Trump’s failing lawsuits carry long-term risk for the country.

“This is not really about winning in court. It’s about using America’s courtrooms to seed myths, to spread disinformation,” said Joshua A. Geltzer, the executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy at Georgetown University. 

As opposed to a newspaper, and why are so many sources in the pre$$ from a certain chosen tribe?

“The message that’s being sent this week and over the last couple of weeks is the loser doesn’t have to accept the result of the election and can try to delegitimize it,” said Lawrence Norden, of the Brennan Center for Justice. “That’s something we haven’t seen in modern history.”

Advocates of voting rights raise another concern about the impact of Trump’s rhetoric: His claims could add more fuel to the years-long Republican push to establish new voting restrictions, ostensibly under the guise of stopping fraud and shoring up trust in the system.

In Georgia, for example, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Friday proposed requiring proof of identification with voters’ absentee ballots, even though he also said there has been no evidence of widespread fraud.

“Georgia doesn’t need much of a pretext to try to make voting harder,” said Andrea Young, the executive director of the ACLU of Georgia. “We have to fight very hard in the Georgia Legislature, in every session, to prevent further restrictions on the right to vote.”

Those restrictions, she said, disproportionately affect Black voters and other voters of color.

A key determinant of the long-term impact of the president’s rhetoric, experts said, is whether members of his own party step up to condemn it.

“They’re going to have to look America in the eye and explain how they let this rogue individual come into our house, the GOP, and utterly wreck it,” said Michael Steele, a former chair of the RNC who endorsed Biden this year. 

OMFG!

That e$tabli$hment $cumbag thinks the party is still theirs, and honestly, they can have it at this point.

Some Republicans, including Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska, have condemned Trump’s actions.

A growing number of Republicans, like Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, are calling on Trump to at least allow Biden’s transition to begin, but party leaders like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have stayed on the sidelines.

Despite all his efforts, Trump himself seemed to acknowledge Friday that someone else might be in charge of the future of new drug pricing regulations his administration just rolled out.

“I just hope they keep it,” he said....

Well,  the pharmaceutical industry said Trump's approach would give foreign governments the “upper hand” in deciding the value of medicines in the U.S. and vowed to fight it and had Trump fought them sooner he wouldn't be in the position he is now. That is their gratitude after the billions upon billions and fast-tracking of their evil Operation Warp Speed vaccine agenda that is closer than you think.

The world is woke to their nefarious agenda, and thus the goosing of the gas pedal before it's too late and all their well-laid plans crumble to shit (word up, already has).

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"Iran’s allies on high alert in Trump’s final weeks in office" by QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA and SAMYA KULLAB The Associated Press, November 20, 2020

BAGHDAD — Iran has instructed allies across the Middle East to be on high alert and avoid provoking tensions with the United States that could give an outgoing Trump administration cause to launch attacks in the US president’s final weeks in office, Iraqi officials have said.

They are preemptively striking against any false flags!

The request — delivered by a senior Iranian general to allies in Baghdad this week — reflects the growing regional anxiety over President Trump’s unpredictable behavior and the uncertainty in the chaotic transition period until President-elect Joe Biden takes over in two months.

Is that why he is removing troops from the area?

Iran’s allies have collectively welcomed Trump’s election defeat

Do they?

Under his presidency, tensions with Iran escalated, reaching fever pitch at the beginning of the year with the US airstrike that killed Iran’s top general, Qassim Soleimani, at the Baghdad airport. Iran launched a ballistic missile attack in response to the fatal drone strike, targeting US soldiers in Iraq and wounding dozens. Trump also unilaterally withdrew America in 2018 from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, meant to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons, and re-imposed punishing sanctions on Iran, crippling its economy.

Iran has since abandoned all limits on its uranium enrichment program, even as the deal’s other international partners have tried unsuccessfully to salvage it. The incoming Biden administration has stated plans to rejoin or renegotiate the 2015 nuclear accord, but there is growing concern over what Trump, who is refusing to concede the election, might do in the last days of his presidency — including a potential strike on America’s enemies abroad. On Thursday, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader warned in an interview with the Associated Press that any American attack on Iran could set off a “full-fledged war” in the region.

The concern does not appear to be rooted in anything concrete — Trump has, in fact, ordered a drawdown in US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to be completed by mid-January — but rather in general nervousness about the unpredictability of Trump’s actions. His firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper two days after the election triggered a flurry of speculation about whether it was related to a broader plan to strike abroad. 

The flurry of propaganda, 'er, speculation isn't rooted in fact but could goose a war if my pre$$ gets its wish.

What $cum!

Iraq, where the US-Iran rivalry has chiefly played out, is seen as a potential arena. Frequent attacks against the US Embassy in Baghdad in recent months led a frustrated Trump administration to threaten to close the mission, a move that sparked a diplomatic crisis and diplomatic back channel messaging that led to an informal truce a few weeks ahead of the US election.

With two months to go until a Biden administration takes over, Iranian General Esmail Ghaani, head of the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, delivered Tehran’s request during a meeting with Iranian-backed Iraqi militia factions and Shiite politicians in Baghdad this week, according to two senior Iraqi Shiite politicians who attended the meetings in Baghdad.

The message: Stand down to avoid giving Trump the opportunity to initiate a fresh tit-for-tat round of violence, and to the Iraqi Shiite paramilitaries: Be calm and cease attacks for now against American presence in Iraq; however, if there was a US aggression by the Trump administration, Iran’s response would “be in line with the type of strike,” one of the Iraqi politicians cited Ghaani as saying.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the leader of the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group, Hasan Nasrallah, warned followers and allies to be vigilant during Trump’s remaining weeks in office, but only hours after Ghaani delivered Iran’s message in Baghdad — and while he was still in Iraq — a barrage of Katyusha rockets were fired at the Iraqi capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone, landing a few hundred yards from the US Embassy. A few of the rockets that landed just outside the Green Zone killed a child and wounded five civilians. 

Oh, the pre$$ finally noticing the civilian toll of the illegal war of aggression they promoted! 

Will wonders never cease!

As for the above, the timing alone carries with a stench of false flag of complete fakery. Just because my pre$$ says it doesn't make it true; in fact, it is often if not always the exact opposite that is the truth.

The attack — contrary to instructions to avoid escalation — could indicate potential disagreement within militia ranks, or a deliberate plan by the factions to offer mixed messages and keep their intentions ambiguous.

A little-known militia group, Ashab al-Kahf, believed to have links with the powerful Kataib Hezbollah, claimed responsibility for the rocket attack. For its part, Kataib Hezbollah denied it had carried out the barrage, and claimed the truce initiated in October was still in place. That claim was countered by Qais al-Khazali, the head of the powerful Iran-aligned Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia group, who said in a televised interview Thursday that the truce had ended.....

I have been reading the same war propaganda and garbage for 15 years and it reads no different than it did back then.

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The article was accompanied by Globe ad services provided by Google that said flaunt your curves!

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"APEC leaders, including Trump, agree on free trade" by Eileen Ng The Associated Press, November 20, 2020

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, including US President Donald Trump, pledged Friday to work toward free, open and non-discriminatory trade and investment to revive their coronavirus-battered economies.

The leaders cast aside differences to issue their first joint statement since 2017, in which they agreed to further deepen regional integration by working toward a massive free trade agreement involving the 21 APEC economies.

This year's host, Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, told a news conference that the U.S.-China trade war that had hampered talks in the past has “been eclipsed" by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The APEC leaders’ meeting was the first since 2018 after last year’s host, Chile, canceled the annual summit due to violent domestic protests, but at the Papua New Guinea summit in 2018, APEC leaders failed to issue a joint statement for the first time amid a U.S.-China row over trade policies.

Trump’s participation Friday, his first since 2017, came as a surprise as he challenges the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, won by Joe Biden. Last weekend, Trump skipped the East Asia Summits and withdrew from speaking at an APEC CEO meeting earlier Friday.

Trump, whose “America First" policy has alienated trading partners, addressed the meeting but his speech wasn't immediately available.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, in his remarks, urged countries to “defend multilateralism” and called for the establishment of an “Asia-Pacific free trade zone at an early date."

He told the meeting that Beijing would also “actively consider” joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that includes Japan, Canada, Mexico and other regional economies but not the United States.

Xi's comments came just after Beijing and 14 Asian nations inked the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world’s largest free trade agreement.

If China were to join the CPTPP, that would make Xi’s government a member of the Asia-Pacific region’s two biggest trade arrangements, while Washington is part of neither.

APEC leaders adopted the Putrajaya Vision 2040, a new 20-year growth vision to replace the Bogor Goals named after the Indonesian town where leaders agreed in 1994 to free and open trade and investment.

Think Great Re$et, folks.

They pledged to build an “open, dynamic, resilient and peaceful region” by 2040, and tasked officers to draw up implementation plans by next year.

“We recognize the importance of a free, open, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent and predictable trade and investment environment to drive economic recovery at such a challenging time," according to the joint statement.

“We resolve to further navigate the region towards recovery along the path of strong, balanced, inclusive, sustainable, innovative and secure economic growth,” the statement added.

Earlier Friday, the leaders of Japan and New Zealand warned countries against the temptation of retreating into trade protectionism.....

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Thus, as Taiwan marks its 200th day without a domestic COVID-19 infection even as cases surge in other parts of the world and recalls its Japanese ambassador, they hope to win European Commission approval to buy Volkswagens that leak through sanctions.

"G-20 summit opens as leaders urge united response to virus" by AYA BATRAWY Associated Press Nov. 20, 2020

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The Group of 20 summit opened on Saturday with appeals by the world's most powerful leaders to collectively chart a way forward as the coronavirus pandemic overshadows this year's gathering, transforming it from in-person meetings to a virtual gathering of speeches and declarations.

In a sign of the times, the traditional “family photo” of leaders in the summit was digitally designed and superimposed on a historical site just outside the Saudi capital, Riyadh, which would have hosted the gathering. The kingdom has presided over the G-20 this year.

The pandemic, which has claimed more than 1.37 million lives worldwide, has offered the G-20 an opportunity to prove how such bodies can facilitate international cooperation in crises — but has also underscored their shortcomings.

This is sickening $hit, folks.

“We have a duty to rise to the challenge together during this summit and give a strong message of hope and reassurance,” Saudi Arabia’s King Salman said in the summit’s opening remarks.

While G-20 countries have contributed billions of dollars toward developing a vaccine for the virus, they have also mostly focused on securing their own vaccine supplies. Countries such as Britain, the U.S., France and Germany — all G-20 member states — have directly negotiated deals with pharmaceutical companies to receive billions of doses, meaning that the vast majority of the world’s vaccine supply next year is already reserved.

A day before the summit, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that while $10 billion has been invested in efforts to develop vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics, another $28 billion is needed for mass manufacturing, procurement and delivery of new COVID-19 vaccines around the world.

Guterres called on more G-20 nations to join COVAX, an international initiative to distribute COVID-19 vaccines to countries worldwide. The United States has declined to join under Trump. 

Biden will, and why do we even need a vaccine for a virus that hasn't been isolated and doesn't exist?

The pandemic has had a far-reaching economic impact on developing countries and pushed millions into extreme poverty. It has also plagued the world's wealthiest nations, with nine G-20 countries ranking highest globally for the most cases of COVID-19 recorded. The United States tops the list, followed by India, Brazil, France, Russia, Spain, the U.K., Argentina and Italy, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Three G-20 leaders participating in the summit have been infected by the coronavirus this year: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Trump.

The virus shows no signs of abating as major cities in the U.S. and Europe bring back lockdowns and curfews.

That is where the print copy ended.

The World Health Organization says more cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the past four weeks than in the first six months of the pandemic.

PFFFT! 

Then the LOCKDOWNS and TYRANNY have FAILED!

The International Labor Organization says an equivalent of 225 million full-time jobs were lost in G-20 countries alone in the third quarter of 2020. G-20 member-countries represent around 85% of the world’s economic output and three-quarters of international trade.

As part of the summit, seven leaders released video messages on “Pandemic Preparedness and Response”. France's President Emmanuel Macron warned of the challenges in obtaining “universal access to health technologies against COVID-19”. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for strengthening the World Health Organization and stressed the pandemic can only be overcome if an affordable vaccine is available to all nations.

I'm sick of your goddamn f**king agenda, you bastards!

In a video statement released ahead of the summit, Johnson appealed to global leaders to harness the resources of the world’s wealthiest nations to end the COVID-19 pandemic and tackle climate change.

Yeah, the COVID CON is really about the GREAT RESET!

“Our fates are in each other’s hands,” said Johnson, who plans to attend two virtual events at the summit while self-isolating at home in London after coming into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19.


Bolsonaro, who spent months downplaying the severity of the virus while deaths mounted rapidly inside Brazil, emphasized in a video message that world leaders “should take care of people’s health and of the economy at the same time."

President Trump also participated in the closed-door virtual sessions that are taking place Saturday and Sunday. It does not appear that any leaders dropped out of the summit, despite calls by rights groups, lawmakers and EU parliamentarians for leaders to boycott the gathering to protest Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and war in Yemen.

G-20 heads of state last gathered virtually for an emergency meeting in March as the coronavirus was fast-spreading around the world. At the time, they vowed “to do whatever it takes to overcome the pandemic.”

G-20 nations have since agreed to suspend debt payments for the world's poorest countries until mid-2021 to allow those nations to focus their spending on health care and stimulus programs. The U.N. secretary general, however, has called on the G-20 to extend debt repayments through the end of 2021 and expand the scope to middle-income countries in need.

“I am confident that the Riyadh summit will deliver significant and decisive results and will lead to adopting economic and social policies that will restore hope and reassurance to the people of the world, ” King Salman said.

U.S. President Donald Trump highlighted what the U.S. has done to response to the coronavirus and rebuild the economy and work on vaccines, which are expected to become available soon, according to White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Trump, however, appeared not to have acknowledged that Joe Biden won this month's presidential election.

“It’s been a great honor to work with you and I look forward to working with you again for a long time,” Trump said, according to audio obtained by The Guardian. The South China Morning Post reported similar comments.....

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Despite the landslide vote and protest in his favor, time is running out and Trump is on thin ice with climate change making it more dangerous.

"Trump allies are among frequent purveyors of election misinformation" by Linda Qiu New York Times, November 20, 2020

President Trump and his allies have continuously amplified false and unsubstantiated claims about voting as they wage a multifront assault on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, a preelection analysis from the Election Integrity Partnership found.

This week, Trump has falsely accused Detroit of reporting more votes than people (it did not); wrongly declared that Michigan “refused to certify the election results” (it is not scheduled to do so until Monday); claimed a “big victory” after a Nevada commission declined to verify the results of a local race (it did not affect the presidential election); and shared an image purporting to show that President-elect Joe Biden received a “dump” of more than 143,000 votes in Wisconsin a day after the election at 3:42 a.m., “when they learned he was losing badly” (Milwaukee, a Democratic stronghold, continued to count votes throughout that night).

Yeah, the New York Times is a reliable source when it comes to Trump and the truth. 

Gimme' a f**king break!

Trump allies who have also amplified false claims include Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist, who promoted misleading claims about “found ballots.” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, raised the specter of computer “glitches" that switched votes. Chuck Callesto and Omar Navarro, who both have run unsuccessfully for Congress, amplified unsubstantiated claims of a rigged election raised by Sidney Powell, an election lawyer for Trump, which relied on dubious connections to Venezuela.

All have to say about false claims are WMD, Russia collusion and bounties, Mueller, etc.

F**k the New York Times for all eternity at this stage.

Trump’s son Eric, Benny Johnson of the conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA, and Jim Holt of the pro-Trump Gateway Pundit blog also all shared Trump’s inaccurate tweet about the Wisconsin vote tally.

Members of Trump’s election legal team have played a role, too. Three of those lawyers — Rudy Giuliani, Powell, and Jenna Ellis — held a news conference Thursday where they repeated many debunked falsehoods and unsubstantiated theories. Giuliani and Powell in particular have promoted speculative and false claims about Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, two election software companies.

A legion of conservative media outlets, activists and lawmakers have also spread claims from the president and his aides.

Kirk, Giuliani, Powell, Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, conservative author Dinesh D’Souza, and Emerald Robinson, a White House correspondent at Newsmax, all repeated the false claim that votes were being tabulated in Frankfurt, Germany, and Barcelona, Spain.

Similarly, right-wing personalities like Sean Hannity of Fox News and Chanel Rion of One America News Network have helped spread bogus claims about Dominion and have been viewed millions of times, at least in part thanks to Trump’s promotion on Facebook and Twitter..... 

Is it just me, or do you sense PANIC coming from the New York Times? 

Methinks they doth protest too much!

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Related:


He says there is ‘no more room for delay.’

"Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive Vermont independent, has emerged as a contender for labor secretary in President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration, a prospect that would suit his ambitions of being a warrior for working Americans — and one that makes some Senate Republicans very uneasy. It is a testament to the deterioration of the Senate confirmation process that a longtime colleague — even one they vehemently oppose on policy — would face such a Republican roadblock. In the not-too-distant past, fellow senators got considerable leeway from the opposing party if they were selected to join the executive branch. “The truth is, to the best of my knowledge, there has been a courtesy within the Senate that when a president nominates senators, they have been approved,” Sanders said in an interview. The growing senatorial resistance to Sanders even before any formal action by the new administration reflects the formidable task Biden faces. Should Republicans hold on to their Senate majority next year, Biden would be the first president since George Bush in 1989 to enter office without his party controlling the chamber and managing the confirmation process, and that process has grown much more toxic, to the point where senators routinely engage in near-blanket opposition to the picks of a president from the opposite party — if they allow consideration at all. Some Republicans, who need to win at least one of two Senate runoff elections in Georgia on Jan. 5 to hold their slim majority, have already made clear that they are not eager to grant much latitude to Biden when it comes to nominees. They note efforts by Democrats over the past four years to block President Trump’s picks and to force Republicans to clear every time-consuming procedural hurdle even when the final outcome was inevitable. “I can assure you that there will not be one set of rules for Donald Trump and, should Joe Biden take office, another set of rules for him,” Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, said this week on the radio show of Hugh Hewitt, a conservative host."

Labor Secretary is a useless position, and the Senate is still up for a steal as Loeffler goes into quarantine after a mixed(?) COVID test result and Lindsey Graham subverts democracy?

"With a Trump appointee still declining to release the millions of dollars set aside for a transition, Biden is asking his donors to make up the difference. In a tweet Friday, the president-elect asked his supporters to donate to the “Biden-Harris Transition.” The fundraising page on the Democratic platform ActBlue says the money will be used to help “lay the foundation to lead a just and equitable recovery.” Suggested donations range from $15 to $5,000. Once Biden is officially recognized as the president-elect, his team will receive more than $6 million set aside by Congress for transition-related expenses. The acknowledgment, which must be given by the administrator of the General Services Agency, will also allow Biden to be given national security briefings and information on the coronavirus pandemic."

When Trump formed such a thing to battle election fraud the Globe front-paged it and hammered him for it, yet they bury Biden's money-grubbing in a brief.


Michael D. Shear of the New York Times says that on issues of war, the environment, criminal justice, trade, the economy, and more, President Trump and top administration officials are doing what they can to make changing direction more difficult.

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We know where there will be no change:

"For Netanyahu and Israel, Trump’s gifts kept on coming" by David M. Halbfinger New York Times, November 21, 2020

JERUSALEM — The U.S. decision to allow Jonathan J. Pollard, the American convicted of spying for Israel in the 1980s, to complete his parole on Friday freed him to move to Israel and ended one of the most rancorous and long-running disputes between the two allies.

It also capped what has been an extraordinary four-year stretch in the countries’ relationship, during which President Trump’s treatment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been nothing short of lavish.

Trump is still kissing his ass even after Netanyahu recognized Biden as the winner!

Trump broke sharply with his predecessors’ approaches to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, taking Israel’s side on the status of Jerusalem, West Bank settlements and other occupied territory. His Middle East team applied enormous pressure on the Palestinians in a failed attempt to get them to consider a lopsided peace proposal, then brokered historic normalization accords for Israel with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan — deals that shattered a half-century of Arab solidarity behind the Palestinian cause.

How many lives was Pollard worth?

The United States and Israel teamed up in confronting Iran and against global diplomatic bodies they considered biased against Israel, and Trump bestowed other political prizes upon Netanyahu, some of which helped him in three straight reelection campaigns — most vividly in March 2019, when Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the long-disputed Golan Heights.

Here are some of the most noteworthy gifts Netanyahu has received.....

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"Jonathan Pollard, Convicted Spy, Completes Parole and May Move to Israel" by Julian E. Barnes New York Times  Nov. 20, 2020

WASHINGTON — Jonathan J. Pollard, the American convicted of spying for Israel in one of the most notorious espionage cases of the late Cold War, completed his parole on Friday, the Justice Department said, freeing him to go to Israel as he has said he intends to do.

The Justice Department’s decision to let his parole restrictions expire may be one of the final gifts from the Trump administration to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Pollard’s case had long been an irritant in the relations between the two countries, and both sides at times had used him as a diplomatic bargaining chip.

A U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, Pollard gave a range of classified documents to Israel starting in 1984. His disclosures exposed the abilities of the American spy agencies, potentially damaged intelligence collection efforts and risked exposing secrets, C.I.A. and Defense Department officials said in classified documents prepared after his arrest. He was arrested in 1985, and was convicted and served 30 years in prison before being released in 2015. 

Stuff was passed onto Russia according to my printed report.

American national security officials had long objected to any easing of Pollard’s punishment, highlighting the damage Pollard did to American intelligence collection, but objections from intelligence officers have largely become muted, with some acknowledging that Pollard has both served his time and fulfilled his parole obligations.

Israel owns the Deep State!

The United States Parole Commission, the arm of the Justice Department that supervises the releases of federal prisoners, decided Friday not to extend the travel restrictions it had placed on Pollard when he was released from a federal prison five years ago.

Pollard, now 66, was given Israeli citizenship in 1995 and has said he would move there if allowed

That was where the print copy ended it.

His lawyers, Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, said in a statement that he was free now to travel to Israel and that they looked forward to seeing him there, though they did not say when he would go.

Pollard, who is in ill health, wants to live out his life and be buried in Israel, said Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School who has advocated on behalf of Mr. Pollard.

“He would love to go to Israel; that’s been his dream, his wish, his hope,” Dershowitz said. “That would be good for Israel, it would be good for America, it would be good for the rule of law, so I hope it will happen.”

Maybe Epstein's plane could fly him over, huh?

In Israel, Pollard still is viewed as a hero, who sacrificed much for the country’s security, but even if time has blunted the outrage, the American government continues to view him as a traitor who did huge amounts of damage. Still, intelligence officials in the United States and Israel are eager to forget Mr. Pollard and the contentious era he represented when the countries’ intelligence relationship was marked as much by spying and suspicion as it was by cooperation.

What's the point of doing this anymore, really?

Israel OWNS US!

Some former American intelligence officials noted that the threat of Israel spying on the United States remains, even as cooperation has deepened. In just the past year, the countries have worked closely together on the assassinations of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s security mastermind, and Abu Muhammad al-Masri, a senior Qaeda operative living in Tehran.

Like before 9/11, right?

After his arrest in 1985, Pollard eventually pleaded guilty in a deal with prosecutors who agreed to seek a yearslong sentence, but the judge, relying on a once-classified damage assessment written by Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, sentenced him to life in prison. Pollard ultimately served three decades behind bars, the longest stretch in prison for an American who illegally gave material to an allied government.

In October 1987, the C.I.A., with Pollard’s cooperation, began working on a damage assessment. Though a redacted version of the document has been made public, much remains classified. Intelligence officials identified a large number of documents on varied topics that Pollard shared with Israeli officials.

The report found that while the Israelis did not request information on American military plans or some of the most delicate topics, the “sheer quantity” of disclosures posed a risk to intelligence sources and collection methods. “Pollard’s operation has few parallels among known U.S. espionage cases,” the C.I.A. report said.

Pollard was released from prison in November 2015, leaving a federal penitentiary in North Carolina to live in New York. The conditions of his parole, unsuccessfully contested by his lawyer and the Israeli government, did not allow him to travel outside the United States for five years without permission.

Attorney General William P. Barr could have asked the parole commission to extend the restrictions on Mr. Pollard, a request that would most likely have been granted, but no request was made, according to the Justice Department. The commission announced Friday that it had decided not to extend the restrictions.

Over the years, Israeli leaders have sought his release, only to encounter stiff resistance from American intelligence and defense officials, including George Tenet, the former C.I.A. director, and Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary.

Netanyahu repeatedly pressed President Bill Clinton to commute Mr. Pollard’s sentence so he could move to Israel, arguing that his release was key to winning over right-wing support for any Israeli-Palestinian peace deal pushed by the White House, but the spy agencies balked, citing the damage Pollard’s spying had done to American military intelligence.

“The Navy program was really shaken by what he had done right under their noses,” said Jim Townsend, a former senior Pentagon official who joined Navy intelligence as a reservist around the time of  Pollard’s arrest. 

So much for Trump's love of this country, since he obviously loves Israel more and has been a total tool for them from the start. 

What a FRAUD!

The damage that Pollard did in particular to the National Security Agency’s collection efforts was too great, intelligence officials said, to allow any early release, pardon or commutation. In 1999, as the Clinton administration was considering a pardon, intelligence officials leaked information about the damage they believed his spying caused.

Over the years, Pollard’s release had come up in conversations between Israel and the United States in the context of peace talks with the Palestinians, but during the Trump administration, a number of moves that other presidents held in reserve as incentives to prod Israel to make a deal with the Palestinians were done unilaterally, including recognizing annexation of the Golan Heights and moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem.

Allowing Pollard to move to Israel may be a similar gesture as the Trump administration has continued to focus on Israel in its final weeks. This week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and a community in the annexed Golan Heights.

Now that Pollard has served his sentence and fulfilled the terms of his parole, the internal opposition to allowing him to go to Israel has eased. No longer are intelligence chiefs threatening to resign in protest — or even taking much notice of the impending end of  Pollard’s parole restrictions.

“If he’s served his time and finished parole, I would see no damage in letting him go to Israel,” said Gregory F. Treverton, a former National Intelligence Council chairman. “Any secrets he knows are now out or old.”

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Related


Why do you think we are still in Afghanistan?

"Mortar shells hit Kabul residential areas; at least 8 dead" by Tameem Akhgar and Kathy Gannon The Associated Press, November 21, 2020

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Mortars slammed into a residential area of the Afghan capital, killing eight people Saturday, hours before outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held what are likely his last meetings with the Taliban and Afghan government negotiators trying to hammer out a peace deal.

The attack in Kabul, which was blamed on Islamic State militants, also injured 31 people.

The assault came as peace talks were underway in Qatar, where Pompeo told Afghan government negotiators that the U.S. will “sit on the side and help where we can” in the negotiations with Taliban militants.

Two Taliban officials told The Associated Press that the two warring sides have found common ground on which to move forward the stalled talks. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, did not elaborate.

In Kabul, at least one of the 23 mortar shells fired from two cars hit inside the Iranian Embassy compound. No one was injured, but it damaged the main building, the Iranian Embassy said in a tweet. At least 31 people were hurt elsewhere in the city, according to the Afghan Interior Ministry.

Who would want to provoke them, huh?

US-created, funded, and directed Al-CIA-Duh or ISIS™?

The local Islamic State affiliate issued a statement claiming the attack that targeted the so-called Green Zone in Kabul which houses foreign embassies, the presidential palace and Afghan military compounds, according to SITE Intelligence Group.....

Again, it's the same old false flag, Zioni$t war propaganda I have been reading last 15 years, not one thing has changed, so fuck this.

--more--"

Related:


I'm told "the Biden administration needs to reimagine the foreign service and revitalize America’s influence abroad."

Also see:


FUCK OFF, JOE! 

NOT MY PRESIDENT!

YOU GUYS ARE TRULY ASSHOLES, and bring it on!

The Globe will explain to you how the electoral fraud is baseless despite the massive grass-roots movement in favor of Trump.

The Globe is of the Idea that the country needs marital therapy because a national divorce isn’t really an option (why not?) and says that thinking clearly requires feeling deeply when it is the EXACT OPPOSITE! Emotions cloud clear thinking and judgement!

That's why the Globe is saying impeach Trump again to bar him from running for office again, and given the results of the election in the House, it is safe to say there was vote theft there as well to leave Democrats in charge so Republicans couldn't impeach Biden!

"A lot of attention and a bevy of proposals have focused on the rising cost of drugs, among all Americans, including older adults covered by Medicare, but are these costs really rising as fast as people think, or is the concern over drug spending due to something I call the prescription escalator? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in September that the average spending by senior households for prescription and nonprescription drugs dropped in 2019 for the second straight year. In fact, households headed by Americans age 65 and older devoted only 1.5% of their total household outlays to out-of-pocket spending on drugs in 2019, the lowest level in at least 20 years....."

There can now no longer be no any doubt that the Globe and its affiliates are in the pocket of the pharmaceuticals, even as they argue that a student debt bailout would be unjust.


If only Obama had done that with the war criminal Bush or Trump to the criminal Clintons, and how dare the Democrats ask for unity and healing in light of such threats?

Even if we rise up, the country is literally beyond repair at this point (as planned), and it will soon be a ghost of a memory. If Trump is somehow retains office, you can bet an assassination is already in the works, and how much you want to bet the sexual allegations against Trump just melt away like those of a Boston police officer?


She made an emotional appeal to viewers in a live-feed broadcast from her home in Western Mass., while Don Jr. and Rudy's kid take one for the team and continue to support the lying narrative regarding the non-existent disease as they extend an extra long goodbye for military recruits and their families and the country prepares for new leadership.