Reply Private New

Replies (4) Next 10 Prev Next

Send PM Follow Ignore

Followers	59
Posts	34538
Boards Moderated	2
Alias Born	01/02/2003

Re: F6 post# 254616

Wednesday, 09/07/2016 7:41:59 AM

Wednesday, September 07, 2016 7:41:59 AM

U.S. investigating potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November elections

A view through a construction fence shows the Kremlin towers and St. Basil's Cathedral in central Moscow.
(Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)

By Dana Priest, Ellen Nakashima and Tom Hamburger
September 5, 2016

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.

The aim is to understand the scope and intent of the Russian campaign, which incorporates cyber-tools to hack systems used in the political process, enhancing Russia’s ability to spread disinformation.

The effort to better understand Russia’s covert influence operations is being coordinated by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence. “This is something of concern for the DNI,” said Charles Allen, a former longtime CIA officer who has been briefed on some of these issues. “It is being addressed.”

A Russian influence operation in the United States “is something we’re looking very closely at,” said one senior intelligence official who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Officials also are examining potential disruptions to the election process, and the FBI has alerted state and local officials to potential cyberthreats.

The official cautioned that the intelligence community is not saying it has “definitive proof” of such tampering, or any Russian plans to do so. “But even the hint of something impacting the security of our election system would be of significant concern,” the official said. “It’s the key to our democracy, that people have confidence in the election system.”

The Kremlin’s intent may not be to sway the election in one direction or another, officials said, but to cause chaos and provide propaganda fodder to attack U.S. democracy-building policies around the world, particularly in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

U.S. intelligence officials described the covert influence campaign here as “ambitious” and said it is also designed to counter U.S. leadership and influence in international affairs.

Their comments came just before President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin talked privately about cyberspying and other matters on the sidelines of the Group of 20 talks in China. After their meeting Monday, Obama acknowledged tensions over digital espionage and said the United States had strong capability in this area. “Our goal is not to suddenly, in the cyber arena, duplicate the cycle of escalation we saw when it comes to other arms races in the past,” Obama said.

One congressional official, who has been briefed recently on the matter, said “Russian ‘active measures’ or covert influence or manipulation efforts, whether it’s in Eastern Europe or in the United States,” are worrisome.

It “seems to be a global campaign,” the aide said. As a result, the issue has “moved up as a priority” for the intelligence agencies, which include the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security as well as the CIA and the National Security Agency.

Some congressional leaders briefed recently by the intelligence agencies on Russian influence operations in Europe, and how they may serve as a template for activities in the United States, were disturbed by what they heard.

After Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) ended a secure 30-minute phone briefing given by a top intelligence official recently, he was “deeply shaken,” according to an aide who was with Reid when he left the secure room at the FBI’s Las Vegas office.

The Russian government hack of the Democratic National Committee, disclosed by the DNC in June [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-government-hackers-penetrated-dnc-stole-opposition-research-on-trump/2016/06/14/cf006cb4-316e-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html ] but not yet officially ascribed by the U.S. government to Russia, and the subsequent release of 20,000 hacked DNC emails by WikiLeaks, shocked officials. Cyber analysts traced its digital markings to known Russian government hacking groups.

“We’ve seen an unprecedented intrusion and an attempt to influence or disrupt our political process,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, speaking about the DNC hack and the WikiLeaks release on the eve of the Democratic convention. The disclosures, which included a number of embarrassing internal emails, forced the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Members of both parties are urging the president to take the Russians to task publicly.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) in a statement urged Obama to publicly name Russia as responsible for the DNC hack and apparent meddling in the electoral process. “Free and legitimate elections are non-negotiable. It’s clear that Russia thinks the reward outweighs any consequences,” he wrote. “That calculation must be changed. .?.?. This is going to take a cross-domain response — diplomatic, political and economic — that turns the screws on Putin and his cronies.”

Another Republican, Sen. Daniel Coats of Indiana, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that if Moscow is indeed trying to influence the U.S. election, “such actions would be an outrageous violation of international rules of behavior and cannot be tolerated.”

Administration officials said they are still weighing their response.

Russia has denied that it carried out any cyber-intrusions in the United States. Putin called the accusations [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/putin-denies-that-russia-hacked-the-dnc-but-says-it-was-for-the-public-good/2016/09/02/d507a335-baa8-40e1-9805-dfda5d354692_story.html ] against Russia by U.S. officials and politicians an attempt to “distract the public’s attention.”

“It doesn’t really matter who hacked this data from Mrs. Clinton’s campaign headquarters,” Putin said in an interview with Bloomberg News, referring to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. “The important thing is the content was given to the public.”

The Department of Homeland Security has offered local and state election officials help to prevent or deal with Election Day cyber disruptions, including vulnerability scans, regular actionable information and alerts, and access to other tools for improving cybersecurity at the local level. It will also have a cyber team ready at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center to alert jurisdictions if attacks are detected.

Last month, the FBI issued an unprecedented warning to state election officials urging them to be on the lookout for intrusions into their election systems and to take steps to upgrade security measures across the voting process, including voter registration, voter rolls and election-related websites. The confidential “flash” alert said investigators had detected attempts to penetrate election systems in several states.

Arizona, Illinois and both the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as the DNC, have been the victims of either attempted or successful cyberattacks that FBI agents with expertise in Russian government hacking are investigating.

Federal law enforcement and local election officials say the decentralized nature of the voting process, which is run by states and counties, makes it impossible to ensure a high level of security in each district.

“I have a lot of concern” about this year’s election, said Ion Sancho, the longtime supervisor of elections in Leon County, Fla. “America doesn’t have its act together.” Sancho, who has authorized red-team attacks on his voting system to identify its vulnerabilities, added: “We need a plan.”

Sancho and others are particularly concerned about electronic balloting from overseas that travels on vulnerable networks before landing in the United States, and about efforts to use cyberattacks to disrupt vote tabulations being transmitted to state-level offices. Encryption, secure paper backups and secure backup computers are critical, he said.

Tom Hicks, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an agency set up by Congress after the 2000 Florida recount to maintain election integrity, said he is confident that states have sufficient safeguards in place to ward off intrusions. He noted that electronic balloting from overseas is conducted by email, not through online voting machines. The overseas voter “waives their right of privacy” by emailing the ballot, which is tabulated by election officials. The email may still be hacked, but it is not a systemic risk, he said.

Recently, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said he favors designating the voting systems used in the country’s 9,000 polling places as “critical infrastructure” — in other words, as vital to the nation’s safe functioning as nuclear power plants and electrical power grids.

Such a designation could mean increased DHS funding to localities to help ensure that voter registration, ballots and ballot tabulation remain free from interference. But it won’t happen before the November elections, federal and local officials said.

Russia has been in the vanguard of a growing global movement to use propaganda on the Internet to influence people and political events, especially since the political revolt in Ukraine, the subsequent annexation of Crimea by Russia, and the imposition of sanctions on Russia by the United States and the European Union.

The Baltic states, Georgia and Ukraine have been subject to Russian cyberattacks and other hidden influence operations meant to disrupt those countries, officials said.

“Our studies show that it is very likely that [the influence] operations are centrally run,” said Janis Sarts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, a research organization based in Riga, Latvia.

He also said there is “a coordinated effort involving [groups using] Twitter and Facebook and networks of bots to amplify their message. The main themes seem to be orchestrated rather high up in the hierarchy of the Russian state, and then there are individual endeavors by people to exploit specific themes.”

Sarts said the Russian propaganda effort has been “successful in exploiting the vulnerabilities within societies.” In Western Europe, for instance, such Russian information operations have focused on the politically divisive refugee crisis.

On the eve of a crucial post-revolution presidential vote in Ukraine in 2014, a digital assault nearly crippled the country’s Central Election Commission’s website. Pro-Moscow hackers calling themselves the CyberBerkut claimed responsibility, saying they were not state-affiliated, but the authorities in Kiev blamed Moscow. The Russians used a “denial of service” technique, flooding the commission’s Web server with a high volume of requests, which was meant to slow down or disable the network.

Read more:

Russia’s anti-American fever goes beyond the Soviet era’s
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russias-anti-us-sentiment-now-is-even-worse-than-it-was-in-soviet-union/2015/03/08/b7d534c4-c357-11e4-a188-8e4971d37a8d_story.html

Cyber researchers confirm Russian hack of DNC
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cyber-researchers-confirm-russian-government-hack-of-democratic-national-committee/2016/06/20/e7375bc0-3719-11e6-9ccd-d6005beac8b3_story.html

Russian hackers targeted Arizona election system
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-is-investigating-foreign-hacks-of-state-election-systems/2016/08/29/6e758ff4-6e00-11e6-8365-b19e428a975e_story.html

Readout of Secretary Jeh Johnson’s call with state election officials on cybersecurity
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/08/15/readout-secretary-johnsons-call-state-election-officials-cybersecurity

© 2016 The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/intelligence-community-investigating-covert-russian-influence-operations-in-the-united-states/2016/09/04/aec27fa0-7156-11e6-8533-6b0b0ded0253_story.html [with embedded video, and (nearly 10,000) comments]

--

Donald Trump’s Alt-Right Brain

Damon Winter/The New York Times

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
SEPT. 5, 2016

Donald Trump has devoted most of the past two weeks to discussing immigration, even though only 8 percent of Americans rank it as “the most important problem facing this country today,” according to a recent Gallup poll [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx ].

But within that thin slice of the electorate reside Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters, the “alternative right,” or alt-right. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls [ https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alternative-right ] the alt-right “a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that ‘white identity’ is under attack by multicultural forces using ‘political correctness’ and ‘social justice’ to undermine white people and ‘their’ civilization.” Most Americans hadn’t heard about the alt-right until this election, and some not until last month, when Hillary Clinton gave a speech in Reno, Nev., linking Donald Trump to it.

The term was coined in 2008 by Richard Spencer, a white supremacist whose National Policy Institute says it is “dedicated to the heritage, identity and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.” Through his online writings and YouTube channel, Mr. Spencer is a key player in the social-media universe where this core group of Trump supporters get their “news,” from sources with which most people aren’t familiar. A quick scan shows that immigration is not only their most important issue, it’s pretty much their only issue.

“Immigration is a kind of proxy war — and maybe a last stand — for White Americans, who are undergoing a painful recognition that, unless dramatic action is taken, their grandchildren will live in a country that is alien and hostile,” Mr. Spencer wrote in a National Policy Institute column [ http://www.npiamerica.org/the-national-policy-institute/category/limbo ].

Infowars is another website that puts immigration front and center. The site was created by the radio commentator/conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who is the source of Mr. Trump’s false claim that thousands of New Jersey Muslims celebrated 9/11, and on whose show Mr. Trump said: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” Infowars called Mr. Trump’s slashing anti-immigrant rant on Wednesday “an excellent speech sure to win him support from those who’ve been conned by the lying media into thinking he’s some evil demon creature when the truth is he’s a man with a heart of gold.”

Mr. Trump says he isn’t signaling the alt-right when he says of immigrants, as he did again on Wednesday: “We have no idea who these people are, where they come from. I always say Trojan Horse. Watch what’s going to happen, folks. It’s not going to be pretty.” Or when he said — in a line widely quoted on alt-right websites — “There is only one core issue in the immigration debate and it is this: the well-being of the American people.” Mr. Trump’s white supremacist followers don’t take his disavowals too seriously. After all, he has enthusiastically retweeted bogus crime statistics and incendiary imagery from these websites and hired one of their biggest lights, Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News, to manage his campaign.

There aren’t enough of these people to put Mr. Trump in the White House. But his candidacy has granted them the legitimacy they have craved for years. For the first time, a candidate is using a major-party megaphone to shout the ideas they once could only mutter among themselves in the shadowy fringes of national debate.

© 2016 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/opinion/donald-trumps-alt-right-brain.html

*

UN Human Rights Chief Compares Trump To ISIS

“The atmosphere will become thick with hate; at this point it can descend rapidly into colossal violence.”
09/05/2016 Updated September 6, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/un-human-rights-chief-compares-trump-to-isis_us_57cdd3a0e4b078581f13b36f [with comments] [original at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-human-rights-zein-idUSKCN11B275 ]

'Demagogues and cheats': UN rights chief condemns Trump and Wilders
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein delivers scathing rebuke, saying he fears ‘colossal violence’ if populists continue peddling ‘half-truths, manipulations and fear’
6 September 2016
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/06/demagogues-and-cheats-un-human-rights-chief-condemns-trump-and-wilders [with embedded video]

--

The Cowardice of Donald Trump

Carlo Allegri / Reuters

He’s built his reputation on straight talk—but when the Republican candidate sits down with the groups he vilifies, he exhibits a striking change.

Peter Beinart
Sep 5, 2016

Crusaders against “political correctness” often portray themselves as brave. They deride others for knuckling under to left-wing orthodoxy, for being too afraid of African Americans, Latinos, feminists, and gays to speak the truth. They, on the other hand, speak their mind, come what may.

No presidential candidate has used this conceit more effectively than Donald Trump. His supporters love his willingness to say things about Mexicans, Muslims, and African Americans that ordinary politicians won’t say for fear of being called a bigot. That’s part of what they mean when they say he “doesn’t talk like a politician.”

But over the last couple of weeks, Trump has illustrated something important about the anti-politically correct. They’re most comfortable confronting PC orthodoxy when the people they’re confronting aren’t around. Once they actually encounter African Americans, Latinos, and other minority groups, they become a lot less brave.

In an effort to soften his image, Trump has recently begun doing something he previous avoided: Talking to blacks and Latinos. Two weeks ago, he met with his Hispanic advisory council. According to media reports, he was “humble [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/us/politics/gop-hispanic-reaction-trump.html ]” and “conciliatory [ http://www.univision.com/univision-news/politics/trump-now-says-he-plans-to-legalize-some-undocumented-immigrants ].” Did he call for deporting the undocumented immigrants already in the US, as he has repeatedly promised his overwhelmingly white crowds? Nope. According to Jacob Monty, who attended the meeting, Trump said [ http://www.univision.com/univision-news/politics/trump-now-says-he-plans-to-legalize-some-undocumented-immigrants ] “deporting them is neither possible nor humane.”

Then, last week, Trump flew to Mexico City to meet President Enrique Peña Nieto. Did he repeat the pledge that brings white crowds to their feet: That Mexico will pay for a wall along the two countries’ border? Nope. Beforehand, the two sides agreed not to discuss the subject. When Peña Nieto brought it up anyway, and announced that Mexico would never foot the bill, did Trump set him straight? Nope. Rudy Giuliani, who was attending the meeting on Trump’s behalf, reportedly [ http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trumps-mexico-trip-was-weeks-in-the-making-1472779067 ] declared the topic “off the table” and The Donald moved on to less controversial subjects.

When Trump appeared publicly with Peña Nieto after their meeting, he again “avoided direct confrontation,” in the Washington Post’s words [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lands-in-mexico-for-last-minute-meeting-with-president-pena-nieto/2016/08/31/6e1a9f8c-6f8f-11e6-8533-6b0b0ded0253_story.html ]. He called it a “great, great, honor” to be invited to the country he has repeatedly trashed during the campaign. And he declared that he had “tremendous feelings” for the “tremendous” Mexican American people, a group he famously derided as rapists and drug dealers in his announcement speech.

But once Trump left Mexico and addressed an overwhelmingly white, anti-immigrant crowd that evening in Arizona, the Post noted [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lands-in-mexico-for-last-minute-meeting-with-president-pena-nieto/2016/08/31/6e1a9f8c-6f8f-11e6-8533-6b0b0ded0253_story.html ], he ditched his “subdued and cooperative tone” and “returned to the aggressive tenor that has defined much of his campaign. Repeatedly raising his voice to a yell, he said that ‘anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation.’”

The oscillation continued this weekend, when Trump addressed an African American congregation in Detroit. “Trump’s subdued rhetoric,” noted Politico [ http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/donald-trump-detroit-african-american-church-227712 ], “was a jarring contrast to his typically boisterous rallies.” The Republican nominee said nothing about Black Lives Matter being responsible for the murder of police, as he had told [ http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/18/politics/donald-trump-black-lives-matter/ ] Bill O’Reilly. He didn’t imply, as he has to white audiences [ http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-vote-fraud-20160812-snap-story.html ], that African Americans are prone to voter fraud. He said nothing about Barack Obama not being born in the United States. He didn’t repeat his claims [ http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/291938-trump-to-blacks-what-do-you-have-to-lose ] that blacks should vote for him because their lives are so miserable that they have nothing “to lose.” Instead, he flattered his audience, calling black churches “the conscience of our country,” which had inspired America “toward a better moral character, a deeper concern for mankind, and spirit of charity and unity that binds us all together.” Trump’s remarks, noted [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-a-bid-to-soften-his-image-trump-makes-a-brief-visit-to-a-black-detroit-church/2016/09/03/e7d30634-715b-11e6-9705-23e51a2f424d_story.html ] the Post, constituted a “jarring shift in tone and message.”

This isn’t surprising. Even more than most politicians, Trump lives for the approval of the crowd. His ego is so overdeveloped, and his ideological convictions so underdeveloped, that it’s hard to imagine him walking into a room and saying things he knows his audience doesn’t want to hear. But Trump isn’t alone. Put Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, or most of the other conservatives who have made a career of being anti-PC in a small room with Latinos, African Americans, or Muslims and I suspect their rhetoric would dramatically soften, too. It’s harder to speak bluntly and nastily about people when they’re staring you in the face. It’s also harder because when you actually listen to them, they often defy your stereotypes. Up close, their grievances become harder to dismiss.

I’m glad Trump is now speaking to more diverse crowds. I’m glad because, in so doing, he’s proving that when it comes to “political correctness,” conservative politicians and pundits aren’t more courageous than their liberal counterparts. They’re just more isolated from the ethnic and racial minorities about whom they speak. When the distance disappears, the “bravery” does too.

Copyright © 2016 by The Atlantic Monthly Group

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/the-cowardice-of-donald-trump/498704/ [with comments]

*

Donald Trump Won’t Back Down From Crackpot Birther Conspiracy Theory

Donald Trump says he won't talk about the birther issue anymore.
“I don’t talk about it.”
09/06/2016 Updated September 6, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-birther_us_57ce260fe4b0e60d31dfd237 [with comments]

--

Here’s what Hillary Clinton told the traveling press corps aboard her campaign plane

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton talks to reporters aboard her campaign plane on Labor Day.
(Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

By John Wagner
September 5, 2016

MOLINE, Ill. — If it happened more often, it probably wouldn’t have seemed like such a big deal.

After months of not engaging with the traveling press that follows her across the country, Hillary Clinton ventured to the back of her new campaign plane three times on Monday — once just to say hello and twice to start and complete what resembled a news conference in the air (albeit in cramped quarters and with a television reporter sitting directly in front of her in the aisle).

The Democratic presidential nominee appeared relaxed and engaged as she fielded about a dozen questions from the media on a wide range of subjects, calling several reporters by name and leaning in to hear some queries better.

During the back and forth, Clinton weighed in on a Washington Post report about possible Russian efforts to undermine U.S. elections through cyberattacks. She accused her Republican opponent Donald Trump of a pro-Russian bias, saying he had “parroted” the words of its president, Vladimir Putin.

Clinton responded to critics of her handling of classified emails. The Democratic nominee vigorously defended the work of the Clinton foundation but wouldn’t say whether her daughter, Chelsea, would maintain an association with the charity if she is elected president.

And Clinton gamely talked about a pesky cough, which caused her to retreat to her section of the plane about 15 minutes into the session with reporters. After the plane landed here, she returned for several more minutes.

Clinton said the cough — which also surfaced during the start of a rally in Cleveland — was the result of seasonal allergies. Asked if the episode would feed into rumors circulating about her health, Clinton said: “I’m not concerned about the conspiracy theories. There are so many of them I’ve lost track. . . .and so I pay no attention to them.”

What follows is run down of other things she said.

On the report of possible Russian government efforts to disrupt the U.S. elections:

“I’m really concerned about the credible reports about Russian government interference in our elections. The fact that our intelligence officials are now studying this and taking it seriously raises some grave questions. . . . When Putin was asked about it, he could barely muster the energy to deny it. . . . So we are facing a very serious concern. We’ve never had a foreign adversarial power be already involved in our electoral process.”

On whether the Russians appear to be trying to help Trump win the election:

“I often quote a great saying that I learned from living in Arkansas a lot of years: ‘If you find a turtle on a fence post, it didn’t get there by accident.’ I think it’s quite intriguing that this activity has happened around the time Trump became the nominee. Look, he very early on allied himself with Putin’s policies. To pull out of NATO, for goodness sakes. He furthermore has praised Putin. He seems to have this bizarre attraction to dictators, including Putin.”

On whether an inability to recall briefings related to email classifications indicate a “casual attitude” toward the way secrets were protected while she was secretary of state:

“No, not at all. . . . I went into to the State Department understanding classification. I’d been on the Senate Armed Services Committee for years before I was secretary of state. I take classification seriously. The fact that I couldn’t remember certain meetings, whether or not they had occurred, doesn’t in any way affect the commitment that I had and still have to the treatment of classified material.”

On whether she will succeed in closing the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay even though President Obama has not:

“It’s been a goal of President Obama from the very beginning of his administration, and it should remain the goal of the next president. Guantanamo Bay, as I think we all recognize, became a symbol of a lot of the problems that were started under the Bush administration and which have not served us well in terms of relations around the world. So, I would like to see it closed.”

On whether Chelsea Clinton should no longer be involved with the Clinton foundation if she is elected president:

“We’ll reach that if I’m elected, but I just want to say how proud I am of the work the foundation has done. And it’s world-renowned for what it’s accomplished. Since my husband started it, 11.5 million people get low-cost HIV/AIDS drugs that would have had a hard time doing that. . . . They brought the price of malaria drugs down 90 percent so that is now readily available. They’re working on a program to get the antidote to heroin overdose into every high school in America, and there’s so much more.”

On whether having some of her employees go back and forth has contributed to “blurred lines” between the State Department and Clinton foundation:

“No, I don’t. Everything I did at the State Department I did in furtherance of America’s interests in our security. The State Department has said there’s absolutely no evidence of any kind of external influence, and I know that to be the fact, and I know that the people who worked with me were devoted as well to pursuing the foreign policy that the Obama administration set forth.”

On her prospects in the November election:

“We’re not taking anything for granted. . . . “We’re just going as hard and fast as we can.”

© 2016 The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/09/05/heres-what-hillary-clinton-told-the-traveling-press-corps-aboard-her-campaign-plane/ [with embedded video, and comments]

*

Clinton Rejects Invitation To Mexico Following Trump Debacle

"He did choke."
09/05/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/clinton-rejects-invitation-to-visit-mexico-following-trump-debacle_us_57ce1bc8e4b078581f13b921 [with comments] [original at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-clinton-mexico-idUSKCN11C03V ]

--

TRANSCRIPT: ABC News Anchor David Muir Interviews Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine

Sep 6, 2016
On Monday, September 5, 2016, ABC News "World News Tonight" anchor David Muir interviewed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine.
The following is a transcript of the interview:
[...]
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/transcript-abc-news-anchor-david-muir-interviews-hillary/story?id=41901087 [with complete 31:55 non-YouTube video of the interview embedded, and comment], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM1I67AivV4 [ABC News YouTube upload of excerpts from the interview; with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSvkdt2ls4E [earlier, shorter ABC News YouTube upload of excerpts from the interview; with comments]

*

TRANSCRIPT: ABC News Anchor David Muir Interviews Donald Trump and Mike Pence

Sep 6, 2016
On Monday, September 5, 2016, ABC News "World News Tonight" anchor David Muir interviewed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and running mate Mike Pence.
The following is a transcript of the interview:
[...]
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/transcript-abc-news-anchor-david-muir-interviews-donald/story?id=41901825 [with complete 30:22 non-YouTube video of the interview embedded, and comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKdamCYR3vs [ABC News YouTube upload of excerpts from the interview; includes comments made separately to Muir by Trump on his campaign plane; with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrm7FnkdR6Y [earlier, shorter ABC News YouTube upload of excerpts from the interview and the comments on the plane; with comments]

--

Shut Down The Trump Organization. Now.

Oh, there’s been nary a peep from our esteemed opinion pages regarding the flood of money from foreign entities into the Trump Organization.
09/05/2016 Updated September 5, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/shut-down-the-trump-organization-now_us_57cd8111e4b0b9c5b7399639 [with comments]

--

Roger Ailes Hires Lawyer For Possible Lawsuit Against New York Magazine
Ailes’ lawyer has represented figures like Hulk Hogan and Melania Trump.
09/05/2016 Updated September 5, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/roger-ailes-lawsuit-ny-mag_us_57cdcd90e4b0e60d31dfcb33 [with embedded video, and comments]

--

EXCLUSIVE: Donald Trump Answers Questions From Press On Trump Plane 9/5/16

Published on Sep 5, 2016 by FOX 10 Phoenix [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJg9wBPyKMNA5sRDnvzmkdg , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJg9wBPyKMNA5sRDnvzmkdg/videos ]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tatdBW3ZIY [with comments]

--

Trump dismisses questions about improper gift to Florida attorney general
September 5, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-denies-he-talked-with-florida-attorney-general-about-donation/2016/09/05/e15d62e0-73b8-11e6-8149-b8d05321db62_story.html [with embedded videos, and comments]

Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?

September 5, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/05/trumps-history-of-corruption-is-mind-boggling-so-why-is-clinton-supposedly-the-corrupt-one/ [with embedded video, and (approaching 4,000) comments]

How Donald Trump made it look like he was bribing the attorney general of Florida

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks on the third day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 20, 2016.
September 6, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/06/how-donald-trump-made-it-look-like-he-was-bribing-the-attorney-general-of-florida/ [with comments]

Donald Trump’s Donation Is His Latest Brush With Campaign Fund Rules

Donald J. Trump with Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, before speaking at a campaign event in Tampa on Aug. 24.
SEPT. 6, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/us/politics/donald-trump-pam-bondi.html [with comments] [in full at/see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=125000498 and preceding (and any future following)]

New records show Bondi needs probing in Trump mess

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump walks in the rain with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, as he arrives at a campaign rally in Tampa.
New records from Floridians who turned to NY A.G. for help show Pam Bondi needs to be investigated
September 6, 2016
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-donald-trump-pam-bondi-scott-maxwell--donald-trump-made-national-news-last-we-20160907-column.html [with comments]

Pay to Play, Mr. Trump?

Donald Trump with Pam Bondi before he spoke at a campaign event in Florida in August.
Editorial
SEPT. 6, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/opinion/pay-to-play-donald-trump.html [with comments]

Trump Held Fundraiser For Pam Bondi At Mar-a-Lago After She Dropped Investigation

The Republican Party of Florida paid much less for the venue than Trump’s own campaign has paid.
09/06/2016 Updated September 7, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-pam-bondi-trump-university_us_57cf2c6ce4b0a48094a64854 [with embedded videos, and comments]

*

Trump Living Large On Donors’ Dime

Donald Trump chats with Ben Carson at the Mar-a-Lago Club in March. The GOP nominee has spent his campaign's money on his own properties rather than cheaper alternatives nearby.
The GOP nominee’s campaign is spending lavishly on Trump businesses instead of cheaper alternatives.
09/06/2016 Updated September 6, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-rnc-self-dealing_us_57cdcba0e4b078581f13b262 [with comments]

--

The ‘Father Of Biodiversity’ Fears Trump And Nuclear War More Than Climate Change

Retired Harvard University professor E.O. Wilson, pictured here in his campus office, sat down with The Huffington Post and Hawaii partner Honolulu Civil Beat during the world’s largest conservation event.
Famed conservationist E.O. Wilson says climate change is a threat. But he also worries about the Republican nominee and people with nuclear codes.
09/05/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/eo-wilson-fears-trump-nuclear-war_us_57ca5511e4b0e60d31df4634 [with embedded video, and comments]

--

Ferguson activist Darren Seals dies at 29

Darren Seals wearing his signature "Straight Outta Ferguson" t-shirt as he posed with fellow activists Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, Bree Newsome and Dr. Cornel West during the "Ferguson is Everywhere" hip-hop concert on August 9, 2015. The show was part of the programming for the one-year anniversary commemoration of the Ferguson uprising.
Photo by Lawrence Bryant

By Mariah Stewart
Updated Sep. 6, 2016

A locally known Ferguson activist who protested in the streets seeking justice for Michael Brown Jr.’s death was killed early Tuesday, September 6 in North St. Louis County.

Darren Seals, 29, was a factory line worker and hip-hop musician. Following the death of Mike Brown – an unarmed black teenager who was fatally shot by a white Ferguson police officer – Seals protested in the streets of Ferguson.

Seals was extremely vocal about issues surrounding Brown’s death and the St. Louis region. He was featured in national news outlets such as The Washington Post and Al Jazeera.

Seals recently uploaded a Facebook Live video sharing his own encounter with the Ferguson Police Department, saying police drew guns on him and his younger brother. Seals described himself on his Twitter profile as a “Businessman, Revolutionary, Activist, Unapologetically BLACK, Afrikan in AmeriKKKa, Fighter, Leader.”

Fellow activists took to social media to mourn his loss. Ashley Yates, an activist who protested in Ferguson, wrote “Darren King D Seals stood for Mike Brown and is and will always be a part of my Ferguson family. Rest in power, D.”

Carlos Ball, the brother of Cary Ball Jr., who was killed by St. Louis Police in 2013, replaced his Facebook profile picture with Seals’ profile picture, which was taken as part of the portrait series This is the Movement.

According to the St. Louis County Police Department, at approximately 1:50 a.m. on September 6, its Bureau of Crimes Against Persons and Bomb and Arson Unit were requested to assist the City of Riverview for a vehicle fire in the 9600 block of Diamond Drive.

Police say their investigation revealed that Seals suffered a gunshot wound before the car was set on fire. The incident is currently being investigated as a homicide.

The St. Louis County Police Department asks that the public contact them at (314) 615-5400 or CrimeStoppers at (866) 371-8477 if you have any information regarding the incident.

© Copyright 2016 St. Louis American

http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/ferguson-activist-darren-seals-dies-at/article_2174f1d8-747f-11e6-990f-33cd70d152a7.html [no comments yet]

--

Save the Republican Party: Vote for Clinton

Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

By JAMES K. GLASSMAN
SEPT. 6, 2016

Every day, I run into Republican friends who can’t stomach a vote for Donald J. Trump but don’t know what to do. Vote for Hillary Clinton, who has trouble with the truth, wants to raise taxes and opposes free trade with Asia? Vote for the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, an outlier who once ran a marijuana business [ http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/293587-johnson-defends-association-with-pot-industry ] and embraces isolationism? Or not vote at all, maintaining a certain purity but allowing others to decide the next president?

I faced exactly these choices myself. I have voted for every Republican nominee for president since 1980, but I will not this time. Mr. Trump’s appalling temperament renders him unfit to be president, and his grotesque policy formulations mock the principles of liberty and respect for the individual that have been the foundation of the Republican Party since Abraham Lincoln.

Even before Mr. Trump entered the race, I saw this coming. I worked to open a pathway for an independent — a solid third candidate who would attract the votes of the roughly two-thirds of Americans in the center. A serious contender would force the two major-party candidates to compete for votes in the middle, rather than appealing to the wings. I spent a year and a half on the project, but a month ago threw in the towel.

The deck is stacked by the parties against anyone but a Republican or Democrat. An independent has to run an expensive gantlet to gather enough signatures to get on the ballot in all the states, suffers a severe disadvantage in fund-raising, and is effectively barred from the fall presidential debates by a commission loaded with party stalwarts.

Through much trial and error, I learned that this is, whether we like it or not, an election between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton, period. And that means that if you want to stop Mr. Trump, you have no choice but to vote for Mrs. Clinton. There’s no sitting this one out.

It’s a matter of simple math. Consider a swing state like Ohio. Assume, for argument’s sake, that there are 3.1 million Trump voters, 3 million Clinton voters and 200,000 voters like me who will never vote for Mr. Trump but have reservations about Mrs. Clinton. If this last group doesn’t vote — or votes for Mr. Johnson, or another third-party candidate — then Mr. Trump wins the state. If the group votes for Mrs. Clinton, then Mr. Trump loses. A vote for Mrs. Clinton neutralizes a vote for Mr. Trump; an abstention allows that Trump vote to stand.

For this reason, I strongly disagree with my fellow Republicans — many of whom I served with in the George W. Bush administration — who say that they won’t vote for Mr. Trump because he’s a threat to the republic, but won’t vote for Mrs. Clinton either because she’ll raise taxes. Neither is appealing, but one is clearly a worse choice than the other.

Last month, 50 former officials from G.O.P. administrations issued a scathing indictment [ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/us/politics/national-security-gop-donald-trump.html ] of Mr. Trump, saying he would be the “most reckless president in American history.” Yet only a few of these Republicans have so far said they will vote for Mrs. Clinton.

I have some sympathy with this position, but it is a cop-out. If you think Mr. Trump is so lacking in experience and judgment that he shouldn’t have his finger on the nuclear trigger, then you are saying he is not just a bad candidate; you are saying he is a threat to the nation. You have an obligation to defeat him, no matter what you think of Mrs. Clinton.

I’m voting for Mrs. Clinton because, despite her deficiencies, she will make a better president. But I have another reason. Defeating Mr. Trump soundly will help save the Republican Party. If he wins, a party built on freedom and internationalism will become entrenched as a party of authoritarianism and isolation, which means that within a few years it will atrophy and die.

This year, Republican Senate candidates who should be winning are instead in deep jeopardy. I’ll be working to elect these candidates, and after Mr. Trump loses, I’ll work to rebuild the party in hopes of running a strong and sensible nominee against Mrs. Clinton in 2020.

Unfortunately, the Trump campaign has already cost the Republican Party its credibility. Out of some twisted notion of loyalty, party leaders previously seen as devoted to conservative ideals and policy are now viewed widely as unprincipled cynics. And they deserve to be. How do you recover from that?

For a Republican to vote for a Democrat — and publicly declare it — involves a cost. You can lose business, or lose friends. You won’t get a job in a Clinton administration, and certainly not in a Trump administration.

But if you really think that Mr. Trump is a threat to your country, the right thing to do is to take the next step. Don’t just say you won’t vote for him. Vote against him.

James K. Glassman is an adviser to R4C16.org [ http://r4c16.org/ ] and served as the under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in the George W. Bush administration.

© 2016 The New York Times Company (emphasis in original)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/opinion/save-the-republican-party-vote-for-clinton.html [with comments]

--

FULL EVENT: Donald Trump in Virginia Beach, VA with General Flynn

Published on Sep 6, 2016 by FOX 10 Phoenix

Donald J. Trump holds a campaign event at the Sandler Center.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcI9d_TAjQI [with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vXTUUO3wzY (title taken from; with comment), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2rsn5Bujjg (with comment), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbZr9QIGKGs (with comments), and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAkmLzpbQM8 (with comments), and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSycRAWgq1g (with comments)]

*

Donald Trump doesn’t have much of an opinion on this new-fangled ‘cyber’ thing

Donald Trump, left, speaks with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn during a town hall on Tuesday in Virginia Beach.
(Evan Vucci/AP)

By Philip Bump
September 6 at 5:34 PM

At a military town hall meeting in Virginia on Tuesday, Donald Trump was asked to expand on his strategy for dealing with the Islamic State militant group.

"You have described at times different components of a strategy," the moderator — retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a Trump supporter — asked, according to a transcript

[ https://twitter.com/SopanDeb/status/773250721659486208 ] from CBS News' Sopan Deb. "Military, cyber, financial and ideological. Can you just expand on those four a little bit?"

Trump dove right into the second one, cyber.

Well, that's it. And you know cyber is becoming so big today. It's becoming something that a number of years ago, short number of years ago, wasn't even a word. And now the cyber is so big. And you know you look at what they're doing with the Internet, how they're taking and recruiting people through the Internet. And part of it is the psychology because so many people think they're winning. Any you know, there's a whole big thing. Even today's psychology — where CNN came out with a big poll. Their big poll came out today that Trump is winning. It's good psychology, you know. It's good psychology. I know that for a fact because people they didn't call me yesterday, they're calling me today. So that's the way life works, right?

And that's how we will beat the Islamic State at cyber.

There are a few nuggets in there worth parsing out. The first is the history of the word "cyber," which indeed wasn't even a word a few years ago — at least, not a century ago. In 2013, the technology blog Gizmodo dug into [ http://io9.gizmodo.com/today-cyber-means-war-but-back-in-the-1990s-it-mean-1325671487 ] the history of the word, tracing it back to the 1940 book "Cybernetics [ https://www.amazon.com/Cybernetics-Second-Control-Communication-Machine/dp/026273009X ]." That book dealt with "what was at the time a pretty futuristic idea — that one day there would be a computer system that ran on feedback," Gizmodo's Annalee Newitz wrote.

The first usage of "cyber" in the New York Times came in the 1970s, in the context of national defense. In 1976, shortly before he lost his bid for election to the presidency, Gerald Ford approved the sale of two computers to Communist China. The machines were Control Data Corporation Cyber 172s, powerful machines that the government refused to sell to the Soviets on the basis that they could be used for both civilian and defense purposes. (The 172 included [ http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/cdc/cyber/brochures/Cyber170_Mod172_Mar74.pdf ] a memory bank capable of storing up to 131,000 60-bit words — nearly a full megabyte of storage.) The deal was recommended by then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

By the 1990s, "cyber" was a familiar term in pop culture, meaning, generally, "digital" or "Internet-related." (Newitz goes into more nuance on this, if you're curious.) That's the context in which it enters Trump's comments about the fight against the Islamic State, as a general word used to describe things on the Internet.

He doesn't really answer the question of battling the Islamic State, instead talking about "cyber" as a descriptor for social media. The term is generally seen as fairly archaic, relegated mostly to descriptions like in that first news article in the Times: the government's way of talking about how it can do battle online. That's the way Trump talked about it in his big foreign policy speech [ http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/15/opinions/trump-isis-speech-bergen/ ] last month, as a tool of warfare.

But Tuesday, he used the term to transition into an example of how information can be used to convince people about things, citing a new poll from CNN-ORC [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/06/why-you-should-panicrejoice-over-that-new-poll-from-cnn-whoever-you-support/ ] that shows him in the lead. It's a poll carried out online ("cyber") and is an example of how information can persuade people (per Trump, to call him now that people know he's winning).

You can trace the thinking:

"How they're taking and recruiting people through the internet" — The link between the Internet and the Islamic State.

"And part of it is the psychology because so many people think they're winning." — The Islamic State gets recruits by presenting itself online as successful.

"And you know, there's a whole big thing." — When people think someone is winning, there's a psychology at play.

"Even today's psychology — where CNN came out with a big poll. Their big poll came out today that Trump is winning." — People think I am winning, for example.

He continued his thought after discussing that CNN poll, without adding much to answer Flynn's question.

"But cyber has been very, very important and it's becoming more and more important as you look and a lot of it does have to do with ideology and psychology and lots of other things," he said. "You know, we are in a different world today than we were in 20 years ago, 30 years ago."

On Monday, President Obama noted that the United States has "more capacity than anybody both offensively and defensively" in terms of cyberweapons but that he didn't want an "arms race" in that regard. "We’ve had problems of cyber intrusions from Russia and other countries in the past," he said at a brief news conference during his trip to Asia. "And we’re moving into a new era here where a number of countries have significant capacities." One example of online intrusions by Russia, of course, is an apparent effort to influence the outcome [ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/intelligence-community-investigating-covert-russian-influence-operations-in-the-united-states/2016/09/04/aec27fa0-7156-11e6-8533-6b0b0ded0253_story.html (first item this post)] of the presidential election.

Speaking of cyber and the election, there's a new poll out. Maybe you've heard.

© 2016 The Washington Post (emphasis in original)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/06/donald-trump-doesnt-have-much-of-an-opinion-on-this-new-fangled-cyber-thing/ [with comments] [excerpted at/see (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124998669 and preceding and following]

*

Trump Stumbles And Lies His Way Through Vets Town Hall

09.06.16
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/06/trump-stumbles-and-lies-his-way-through-vets-town-hall.html

*

Presidential Candidate Donald J. Trump: "The Cyber is So Big"

September 6, 2016
https://www.inverse.com/article/20638-donald-trump-cyber-is-so-big-virginia-beach-rally [with embedded videos]

*

Trump Likens the ‘Psychology’ of His Supporters to That of ISIS Recruits

Good psychology.
Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

By Eric Levitz
September 6, 2016 4:47 p.m.

Donald Trump answers questions about policy like a tenth-grade stoner amped up on Red Bull answers questions about last night’s reading — masking his ignorance in layers of confident blabber, before becoming too bored with his own bullshit to maintain any semblance of coherence.

This may not inspire much confidence in the GOP nominee’s qualifications for the Oval Office. But it does produce some of the most delightfully Dada sentences that mankind has ever heard. And on Tuesday, while discussing the importance of cybersecurity in the fight against ISIS, Trump took his gibberish-generating game to the next level.

Daniel Dale
@ddale8
Worth a read. Donald Trump somehow segues from "cyber" to ISIS propaganda to his poll numbers:

11:42 AM - 6 Sep 2016
[ https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/773229848798068736 (with comments)]

“Now the cyber is so big,” it’s “becoming something … that wasn’t a word.” No writer in America is doing more exciting things with syntax than the Republican standard-bearer. And the “substance” of this passage is no less remarkable than its style.

Trump begins by informing us that the word cyber did not derive from the theory of cybernetics [ http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-man-machine-myth-1472845119 ], popularized in the mid-20th century, but rather from the events of the last few years. He proceeds to conflate cybersecurity — protecting America’s digital infrastructure from hackers or physical attack — with combating ISIS’s digital recruitment efforts. And then he posits that the terror group has more success attracting new members when they spread the perception that they are winning — a “psychology” that he likens to that of his own supporters, who have been energized by a recent poll that shows him leading nationally.

This is a top-shelf performance from one of the all-time great masters of sputtering nonsense. And his abridged history of the Iran-Iraq War, which he also debuted on Tuesday, is nearly as good.

Daniel Dale
@ddale8
Donald Trump, in Virginia, recounts the Iran-Iraq War:

11:31 AM - 6 Sep 2016
[ https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/773227250200244224 (with comments)]

© 2016, New York Media LLC (emphasis in original)

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/trump-likens-his-supporters-to-isis-recruits.html [with comments]

--

Hillary Clinton talks to reporters aboard new plane

Published on Sep 6, 2016 by CBS News [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8p1vwvWtl6T73JiExfWs1g / http://www.youtube.com/user/CBSNewsOnline , http://www.youtube.com/user/CBSNewsOnline/videos ]

With nine weeks left until election day, Hillary Clinton took questions from reporters aboard her new campaign jet on her way to Tampa, Florida. See the full Q&A here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pcsse8KNymw [with comments]

--

Full Show - The MSM Scrambles To Coverup Hillary’s Failing Health - 09/06/2016

Published on Sep 6, 2016 by The Alex Jones Channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvsye7V9psc-APX6wV1twLg / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel/videos ]

On this Tuesday, September 6 edition of the Alex Jones Show, former Clinton insider Larry Nichols discusses Hillary Clinton's recent coughing fits, as well as her campaign's next course of action against Trump. Also, Dr. Steve Pieczenik covers the 2016 election, Hillary's health and more. On today's show, we'll also pay tribute to conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, who died this weekend at the age of 92.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBaKWobGcCg [with comments]

*

Kingston Drive shooting suspect says devil told him to do it

Lott

Updated Sept. 6, 2016

A suspect in the shooting of two teenaged girls in Wichita Falls Friday told police he was angry because he didn’t have a girlfriend and had planned the shooting by talking to the devil about it.

Kody Lott, 20, is charged with murder and aggravated assault and is held in lieu of $4-million bail in the Wichita County Jail.

Details of the shooting came out Tuesday in an arrest affidavit filed at the Wichita County Courthouse.

One girl, Lauren Landavazo, 13, was shot multiple times and was dead at the scene in the 5100 block of Kingston Drive. A friend she was walking with, Makayla Smith, also, 13, was wounded but survived.

According to the affidavit, Makayla was able to talk to police at the emergency room and told them she and Lauren were walking home from McNiel Middle School after class on Friday. The scene of the shooting is only a short distance away from the school.

Makayla said when the two reached Trinidad Drive, a vehicle stopped ahead of them and she saw a young male with shaggy brown hair driving. She said she didn’t know the driver, but made eye contact with him and he reached into the passenger area and produced a rifle.

Makayla said he shot her and she ran. She said she looked back and saw Lauren on the ground. The vehicle left on Trinidad.

The affidavit says investigators found 15 spent shell casings at the scene. All were .22-calibre, a small rifle bore. Preliminary autopsy reports indicated Lauren Landavazo was shot 14 times.

Police put out descriptions of the vehicle and driver through media. On Sunday, officers got a call from a person at Fountaingate Apartments, which is close to the shooting scene.

The caller said she had seen a man enter an apartment with what appeared to be a rifle or rifle case. She gave police the vehicle’s tag number. Officers spotted and stopped it in a parking lot in the 4700 block of Southwest Parkway and arrested Lott.

In an interview at the police station, the suspect admitted he shot the girls. He said he had seen them walking home and was attracted to Lauren, even though he knew she had a boyfriend, which made him angry.

He said he went to his parents’ apartment at Fountaingate and got his stepfather’s 22-calibre rifle and waited by a window, watching for Lauren to walk by. When he saw her, he drove to an alley and shot Lauren and Makayla. He said he shot Lauren first, then shot Makayla “a couple of times” before going back to continue shooting Lauren.

Afterwards, he said he drove away and threw the rifle into a field. He said he went back to the field Saturday to retrieve the rifle and put it back in his parents’ apartment so they wouldn’t know it was gone and wouldn't suspect him of the shooting.

According to the affidavit, Lott was upset during the police interview because media had called the shooting “senseless.” He said it was not senseless because he had thought it out and planned it because he had talked to the devil about it.

RELATED: Read Lott's arrest affidavits in full below:

Kody Lott's Arrest Affidavits [embedded]
https://www.scribd.com/document/323179378/Kody-Lott-s-Arrest-Affidavits

Related Coverage

Lott had standoff with Baylor Co. law enforcement in 2015
http://www.timesrecordnews.com/news/crime/lott-had-standoff-with-baylor-co-law-enforcement-in-2015-3bc788bc-e0ca-4e21-e053-0100007faed6-392372231.html

UPDATE: WFPD arrest, charge Kody Austin Lott, 20, in connection to Landavazo, Smith shooting
http://www.timesrecordnews.com/news/crime/Police-set-up-perimeter-around-apartment-complex-392304471.html

© 2016 Times Record News

http://www.timesrecordnews.com/news/crime/BREAKING--392471351.html

--

Trump Is Now Being Sued by Little Girls

The USA Freedom Kids perform at a Trump rally.
Photo: Michael Snyder/AP

By Claire Landsbaum
September 6, 2016 6:10 p.m.

The USA Freedom Kids [ http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/01/man-behind-trump-theme-song-loves-trump-freedom.html ], a music group known for such memorable lyrics as “Cowardice, are you serious?” “Apologies for freedom — I can’t handle this!” “President Donald Trump knows how to make America great,” and “Deal from strength or get crushed every time,” have officially turned on their orange-haired benefactor. A performance [id.] at a Trump rally in Pensacola, Florida, launched the group into the public eye, but the group’s manager, Jeff Popick, is now suing [ http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/trump-deals-from-strength-with-usa-freedom-kids.html ] the Trump campaign, claiming it reneged on a verbal agreement to pay for travel and expenses.

According [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/06/usa-freedom-girls-sue-trump-campaign-for-stiffing-them.html ] to Popick, a field director for the Trump campaign said they weren’t able to pay the girls, but offered them a space to sell merchandise at the rally. Figuring they could make up the difference with T-shirt and CD sales, Popick agreed, but when he arrived at the rally no such space was available. Worse, after the girls performed, they returned to their car to discover all their merchandise had been stolen.

For any lesser group, that would’ve been it. But, encouraged by the promise of future gigs, the Freedom Kids agreed to appear at a Trump rally in Iowa — only to have the Trump campaign cancel on them after they’d flown cross-country. Then the campaign made them agree not to talk to the press, which was the last straw.

“This is not an opportunistic thing where we’re suing Donald Trump,” Popick told [id.] the Daily Beast. “We’re not suing for emotional distress and all that other stuff that people do when they trump up — no pun intended — when they trump up a lawsuit. That’s not what this is. This is tangible dollars I spent under false pretenses.” At least Trump is keeping the girls’ expectations realistic [ http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/06/trump-female-campaign-staffers-paid-less.html ].

© 2016, New York Media LLC

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/09/usa-freedom-kids-are-suing-donald-trump.html [with comments]

--

Clinton addresses the University of South Florida

Published on Sep 6, 2016 by CBS News

With only 63 days left until the election, Hillary Clinton warned that Donald Trump doesn't understand the weight of this election. Clinton addressed a crowd of about 1,600 in a speech focused on education, jobs, taxes and national security.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skyLbGv6P_I [with comments]

--

FULL: Richard Petty at Donald Trump Greenville, NC Rally

Published on Sep 6, 2016 by ABC15 Arizona [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIVk1L1-JmpdiGuZcVjImtA / http://www.youtube.com/user/abc15com , http://www.youtube.com/user/abc15com/videos ]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUzP3ZdRMYo [with comment]

*

FULL: General Flynn at Donald Trump Greenville, NC Rally

Published on Sep 6, 2016 by ABC15 Arizona

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2MI4NopvCY [no comments yet]

*

SO MUCH ENERGY! FULL: Rudy Giuliani at Donald Trump Greenville, NC Rally

Published on Sep 6, 2016 by ABC15 Arizona

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B33zVAhoIk [no comments yet]

*

FULL SPEECH: Donald Trump a little bit a teleprompter.. a little free style! Greenville, NC Rally

Published on Sep 6, 2016 by ABC15 Arizona

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFqmTaUGp9c [with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D0RbFJ7CMg (with comments), and, full event, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXMAvppTSAY (with comments)]

--

Donald Trump Thought A Saudi Plot Swayed The 2012 Election
Of course he did!
09/06/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-saudi-arabia_us_57cf24a2e4b0a48094a63091 [with comments]

--

Barack Obama Just Nominated A Muslim To Be A Federal Judge. That’s A First.

President Barack Obama appears to be all out of f**ks to give.
Abid Qureshi would fill a seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
09/06/2016 Updated September 6, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-muslim-federal-judge_us_57cf2cfbe4b03d2d45970d3a [with comments]

--

Why Trump’s Attack On The Federal Reserve Makes No Sense

Donald Trump thinks the Federal Reserve is rigging the entire economy to help President Barack Obama.
The GOP nominee claims the central bank is favoring President Obama with low interest rates.
09/06/2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-attacks-federal-reserve_us_57cf51a1e4b0a48094a67d0f [with comments]

--

L.A. airport gunman pleads guilty to murder, other federal charges

Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, is pictured in this undated handout photo courtesy of the FBI.
REUTERS/FBI/Handout via Reuters

By Dan Whitcomb
Tue Sep 6, 2016 7:38pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A man who fatally shot a security screener and wounded three other people at a Los Angeles International Airport terminal in 2013 pleaded guilty on Tuesday to federal charges under an agreement with prosecutors that spares him the death penalty.

Paul Ciancia, 26, entered his guilty plea to murder of a federal officer and 10 other criminal counts during a hearing in federal court in Los Angeles, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Ciancia is expected to face a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole when he is sentenced on Nov. 7.

"The guilty pleas entered in court today will hopefully bring some justice to the victims of this horrific attack that senselessly ended the life of a federal officer and injured several others,” U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker said in a written statement.

Federal prosecutors said last year they intended to seek the death penalty for Ciancia if the case went to trial, citing what they said was his substantial planning and premeditation ahead of the crime and its impact on the victims.

They agreed not to seek the death penalty under a plea agreement that avoided a lengthy trial.

Authorities say Ciancia walked into Terminal 3 of the second-busiest U.S. airport carrying a semi-automatic rifle and opened fire, killing Gerardo Hernandez, 53, an agent for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, as he stood at the entrance to a security checkpoint.Hernandez was the first TSA officer killed in the line of duty since the agency was created following the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijacking attacks on the United States.

Federal authorities have said that Ciancia, from New Jersey, had set out to target TSA employees.

Investigators said in a criminal complaint they found a handwritten letter signed by Ciancia in his bag that addressed TSA officials, writing that he wanted to "instill fear in your traitorous minds."

According to the plea agreement, Ciancia admitted purchasing a semi-automatic rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition and 10 magazines in preparation for the attack.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

© 2016 Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-lax-shooting-plea-idUSKCN11C2M1

--

Donald Trump's big gamble

Published on Sep 6, 2016 by Fox News [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXIJgqnII2ZOINSWNOGFThA / http://www.youtube.com/user/FoxNewsChannel , http://www.youtube.com/user/FoxNewsChannel/videos ]

'The O'Reilly Factor': Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points 9/6.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2exbiKlqWzE [with comments]

*

Donald Trump reacts to new polls

Published on Sep 6, 2016 by Fox News

Is he gaining ground on Hillary Clinton? Republican presidential nominee weighs in on 'The O'Reilly Factor'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5qgiXo041g [with comments]

*

Donald Trump on his visit to Detroit [actually, his stance on immigration and the wall (and some further); Trump re Detroit included in the YouTube just above]

Published on Sep 6, 2016 by Fox News

GOP candidate joins 'The O'Reilly Factor' to discuss voter outreach and race [actually, his stance on immigration and the wall (and some further); Trump re voter outreach and race included in the YouTube just above].

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0hpkCETXIw [with comments]

--

Trump's Campaign Goes Off Script

Published on Sep 7, 2016 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMtFAi84ehTSYSE9XoHefig/videos ]

Campaign spokesperson Jennifer Alderson appears via satellite from Detroit and offers completely candid answers to Stephen's questions.

[aired September 6, 2016]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MycW6cQ2AFk [with comments]

*

Cartoon Trump Is Emperor of New York

Published on Apr 21, 2016 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Cartoon Trump is riding high after his decisive win in New York.

[aired April 20, 2016]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3P_mFsIdWA [with comments]

--

We recommend Hillary Clinton for president

Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07

"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790

F6

Keep Last Read

Replies (4) Next 10 Prev Next

Join the InvestorsHub Community

Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.

Volume
Day Range:
Bid Price
Ask Price
Last Trade Time:

Boards:

Quotes:

Boards

News

Market Data

Markets

Discover

Discover

Boards:

Quotes:

Join the InvestorsHub Community