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No one is making that straw man argument other than people like you.
Unless or until background checks are made universal and assault weapons are banned stricter enforcement is a bullshit argument.
An argument to avoid doing more.
Refute a single point you apparently ignored in my post.
Same laws as for DUI here. You can be ticketed for not using hands free in the car and if caught texting.
Shit, we need one between us and the IN, WI and MO State lines.
Those ARE where most of the illegal handguns used in gang shootings in Chicago come from. ALL of them are less strict with background checks.
Your argument, as usual, is specious and consequently unsupported by data. I've posted this before, un-responded to by you and by other opposed to expanded background checks and assault weapons bans.
NO one who is in favor of those measures argues that they would prevent all mass shootings.
Also, NO one argues that because DUI laws do not prevent all drunk driving accidents and fatalities that those laws should be loosened much less eliminated.
The facts are not on your side.
Here Are 12 Facts We Know About Gun Violence, According to Science
MORGAN MCFALL-JOHNSEN & AYLIN WOODWARD, BUSINESS INSIDER
13 AUG 2019
https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-which-factors-are-and-aren-t-linked-with-gun-violence-according-to-science
6. Permissive gun policies are also associated with more shooting deaths, researchers have found.
For a study published in March in the medical journal BMJ, researchers assigned each of the 50 US states an aggregate "firearm laws score", ranging from zero (completely restrictive) to 100 (completely permissive). The scores accounted for 13 factors, including gun-permit requirements, whether and where guns can legally be carried and kept, and whether state laws ensure a right to self-defence.
The results suggested that a 10-unit increase in the permissiveness of state gun laws – according to the scoring system – was associated with an 11.5 percent higher rate of mass shootings.
What's more, every state's score shifted toward greater permissiveness from 1998 to 2014.
By contrast, Switzerland, which has high gun ownership but hasn't seen a mass shooting in 18 years, has strict gun policies including rigorous licensing procedures (including training) and restrictions on who can buy guns.
7. Studies have also found a link between more gun purchases and higher rates of accidental gun deaths.
In December 2012, a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The tragedy gave rise to calls for gun-control regulation, which led to a now predictable phenomenon: People bought more guns.
With a sales spike of 3 million more guns in the months after the Sandy Hook shooting, the rate of accidental deaths related to firearms rose, especially among children, according to a study published in the journal Science. The researchers calculated that 40 adults and 20 children died as a result of those additional gun purchases.
9. There's also a clear link between assault weapons and gun-massacre deaths. After Congress let a 1994 ban on assault weapons expire in 2004, gun massacres increased by 183 percent, and associated deaths went up 239 percent.
The 1994 policy prohibited Americans from buying military-style firearms with high-capacity magazines, which enable shooters to discharge many rounds of ammunition in a short amount of time. After the assault-weapons ban went into effect, the number of deaths from gun massacres – defined as shootings in which at least six people die – decreased by 43 percent, as the researcher Louis Klarevas reported in his book "Rampage Nation".
When Congress let the ban expire, the opposite trend was observed.
Most gun deaths in the US are suicides and do not involve assault weapons. But most of the deadliest mass shootings in recent US history involved a military-style weapon with a high-capacity magazine.
10. Researchers and policy experts think a new ban on assault weapons could reduce mass-shooting deaths.
In 2016, The New York Times asked 32 gun-policy experts to rank the effectiveness of policy changes for reducing deaths from mass shootings on a scale from one to 10.
The experts gave an average score of 6.8 to an assault-weapons ban, a semiautomatic-gun ban, and a high-capacity-magazine ban – the highest score of the 27 policies surveyed.
"Nearly every mass shooting illustrates that large-capacity magazines can increase the death toll and that forcing a shooter to reload more frequently can provide opportunities for counterattack by those around," John Donohue, who researches mass shootings at Stanford University, previously told Business Insider.
He added: "Accordingly, a ban on high-capacity magazines is absolutely essential if one wants to reduce the loss of life from active-shooter scenarios."
11. A lack of background checks is also associated with higher rates gun violence.
States that have stricter background-check laws for gun purchases have fewer school shootings, and some show reduced gun-homicide rates overall.
A 2018 study published in BMJ looked at 154 school shootings from 2013 to 2015 and found that states with background-check policies had fewer such events. States that spent more money on education and mental-health care also had lower rates of school shootings.
Another study from 2015 found that a 1995 Connecticut law requiring gun buyers to get permits that involved background checks was associated with a 40 percent reduction in gun homicides.
By contrast, a study found that after Missouri repealed its permit-to-purchase law (which included a background-check requirement) in 2007, the change was associated with a 23 percent increase in gun homicides.
Research from the nonpartisan Rand Corporation estimates that universal background-check policies, which would mandate background checks for all firearm sales and transfers (including between private parties), could prevent 1,100 gun homicides a year.
Draw a line from OK to KY to ND. Sweep that line up the graph slope.
BANG....14 of 15 are Red States busily 'thinning their herds'. More guns for them, please. Give 'em more of what they want.
War dog returns from combat with necklace of enemy buttholes
Trigger faces charges that could result in a bad boy discharge.
September 2, 2019
By
blondesoverbaghdad
FORT BENNING, Ga. – Trigger, a military working dog assigned to the 127th Military Police Company, shocked his handlers by coming back from his last deployment with a necklace of enemy buttholes.
“Some of us noticed that Trigger was having some problems,” said Sgt. Mary McKelvin, Trigger’s Dog Mom. “He’s such a good boy, my precious little stinker. He started sleeping with his eyes open, which really was so cute and quirky that I had to Instagram it. Then he wanted to go out on patrols without being asked. Adorbs.
I even got him a bandanna. Who knew my little floof could be capable of war crimes?”
Trigger faces charges that could result in a bad boy discharge.
Early on, Trigger displayed only a feigned interest for sniffing care packages at the post office and cars entering the FOB, turning to the company of other dogs at every chance. When vector control slowly stopped finding stray dogs, it raised a few eyebrows. Trigger’s war trophy was found months later when his kennel was searched for a missing 240 barrel bag.
“I don’t take any pleasure in taking a life,” said Trigger. “But I do love buttholes. I sniff these buttholes to become more alive. I sniff these buttholes to remember.”
Trigger’s actions, while reprehensible, have observed in previous wars. General Patton’s dog, Willie, was quietly escorted out of the European theater after he was caught hiding buttholes in in footlocker. Hirohito’s dog, Saki, was known to show his littermates a framed display of artistically arranged tails and ’holes from the age of the samurai.
“War is a terrible, dirty place,” said Trigger at his court martial, staring past the judge to a field of buttholes only he could see. “I only sought to make it sweeter with the delicious scent of buttholes.”
https://www.duffelblog.com/2019/09/war-dog-returns-from-combat-with-necklace-of-enemy-buttholes/?utm_source=Normal+Subscribers&utm_campaign=7746933b95-Duffel_Blog_Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6d392bc034-7746933b95-23791221&goal=0_6d392bc034-7746933b95-23791221&mc_cid=7746933b95&mc_eid=cc8af7284a
"you're wasting this city's resources because you three guys can't get laid?"
Only In Boston @OnlyInBOS
The organizers of the Straight Pride Parade had a press conference.
One of the questions asked:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212424972
“What do you say to taxpayers who want to know why you’re wasting this city’s resources because you three guys can’t get laid?”
11. "If it wasn't for us, you wouldn't be here!"
You ain't my daddy, Santa Fraud.
Neither are any of the three softbellied cueballs behind you cosplaying as Mafia goons.
My own question: Who told you there was anything wrong with being straight?
My own answer: Nobody. Nobody told you that. You're just furious that everyone else is free to be who they are as well, and you think that diminishes you somehow.
America Is Not Just for Americans
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2019/08/america-is-not-just-for-americans.html
8/30/2019
At my college, the semester just started. And in my classes, as usual, I have an array of students from other countries, including Syria and Lebanon. I have said on other occasions that my Middle Eastern students are almost always some of the best, hardest-working, least-complaining ones. It's just an anecdotal observation based on years of experience, but make of that what you will.
In my classes, we read literature that has a political bent, often a liberal bent, but, let's be honest, there ain't much good literature written from a conservative point of view because creativity necessarily forces you into empathy for people different than you. And if you're an artist and don't believe that, you're a shitty artist.
Our class discussions can sometimes be freewheeling debates where all kinds of opinions are expressed. I have Trump supporters and Bernie supporters and everything in between and everything out from the edges, and I encourage them to say why they believe what they believe. Often, I ask them to write about some of the topics we discuss as they relate to the literature we're reading. Anyone who saw what we read and what we discuss could interpret it as a subversive attack on lots of political beliefs. And it definitely can be that. But mostly it's just adults having adult conversations.
So it was disturbing as hell to read about Harvard freshman Ismail Ajjawi, who is a Palestinian from Lebanon, being denied entry to the United States because, as he explained it, a Customs and Border Protection agent searched his phone and laptop. "She said that she found people posting political points of view that oppose the U.S. on my friend list," Ajjawi said. Because of those friends' posts, his visa to study here was revoked. Ajjawi said he himself has never posted anything political on social media.
It makes me wonder where this examination of what's-on-your-laptop will end for some foreign students. It makes me wonder if some asshole CBP agent will look at the computer of one of my students one day and see the readings, like plays that are sympathetic to the Palestinians, and then perhaps that asshole CBP agent will dig a little deeper and see that the student's professor is a wild and woolly blogger/tweeter who has called President Trump all kinds of horrific shit and strongly suggested that Trump is a rapist who fucks his own daughter.
Because, see, if someone can be excluded from coming to the United States because his Facebook friends said the United States is, say, a racist country that mistreats immigrants and supports maniacal dictators, then what's to prevent the next person to have a visa revoked be an international student who went home to visit family over the summer and just so happens to have taken me or any politically-active professor who has a problem with the policies of this bullshit president and his bullshit party. What's to prevent any CBP agent from looking at the reading list for the student's classes and seeing The Communist Manifesto on there and freaking the fuck out?
(Quick aside: We don't read Marx in my classes. But I do give a lecture on understanding Marxism as it relates to other stuff we're reading.)
The mistreatment of immigrants both legal and undocumented by the Trump administration is getting increasingly hysterical and increasingly savage. This includes the honestly stunning and horrific change in a policy that gave a visa waiver to immigrants who are receiving life-saving medical treatment in the United States, and, in some cases, their families.
Now, cancer patients who are in the middle of their treatment face deportation. You can put that on the growing pile of inhumane policies, and add in Trump's "joke" that he wants his wall built no matter how it's done, even illegally, and he'll pardon anyone who breaks the law to do it, as well as his taking billions of dollars from FEMA to build it. (Let's not even get into the clusterfuck of irony that is illegally building a wall to keep people from coming here illegally.)
This isn't just hateful, xenophobic, and racist. It's all actually un-American. While the United States has rarely lived up to the principles that it has propagated about itself, at the very least there was an understanding that America is not just for Americans, that the very idea of America is of people who made a journey to get here and that the only reason America exists is because people continued to make that journey (and kill the people who were here first and take their land).
I mean, fuck, one way to see slavery is forced immigration. They weren't Americans but we sure as hell exploited, raped, and brutalized them for their labor in order to build the goddamn country.
The United States has always been in conflict about the next wave of immigrants, whether it was the Irish or the Chinese or Eastern Europeans or Latinx people. Or Middle Easterners. Ultimately, though, every population that comes here, even just as students for a few years, is part of America, even if they never become Americans.
And we've always fucking let students come here. Jesus, does no one remember the insanity about Iranian students studying here after the revolution in their country in 1979? I knew someone whose government job in the mid-1980s was to spy on them and make sure they didn't do anything "wrong." You know what those students did? They fucking studied.
They learned the United States is not the enemy. My spy-pal realized early how useless his job was, but he sure as hell loved hanging out with the Iranians. (He did file report after report about how nothing was going on.) Now, between 2015 and 2018, the number of applications for international students to come here has plunged 40%. Can you fucking blame them? Hell, if I were a Lebanese kid, I'd apply to Canadian schools.
Ultimately, incidents like what happened to Ajjawi or not giving flu vaccines to migrants in detention centers have nothing to do with protecting the lives of Americans. It's about fear, and not just fear of violence. It's about the constant fear that a new population will come to the United States and change it, make it less white, less homogeneous. But that shit never works.
Failing to allow the United States to change, to evolve, undermines the entire idea of America. Like I said, while we don't live up to our principles, at least we had them.
Guy threatens to slaughter Antifa. FBI takes his guns.
Using Oregon’s new red flag law.
https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/08/an-ex-marine-said-hed-slaughter-antifa-the-fbi-using-oregons-new-red-flag-law-took-his-guns-away.html
Shane Kohfield stood outside the home of Portland’s mayor in July wearing body armor and a “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, a large knife strapped to one shoulder and a copy of his concealed weapons permit displayed on the other.
Using a loudspeaker, he warned the right-wing activists who turned out to condemn the city’s handling of recent violent demonstrations that they needed to protect themselves against their anti-fascist, or antifa, rivals.
“If antifa gets to the point where they start killing us, I’m going to kill them next,” Kohfield, 32, said. “I’d slaughter them and I have a detailed plan on how I would wipe out antifa.”
FBI warrant for: "a detailed plan on how I would wipe out antifa.” Thank you very much for your help, dumbass.
But actually you had us at "I’d slaughter them...…" LMAO!
That threat pushed the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task to take a series of extraordinary steps against Kohfield, including temporary seizure of a cache of his firearms under Oregon’s new “red flag” law aimed at preventing gun violence, The Oregonian/OregonLive has learned.
(More at link, including the fact that they had him committed for 20 days)
On edit: not meaning for this to be a gun discussion, just noting that the FBI is actually taking threats seriously.
SOS! Trapped in Category 5 Shitstorm! Please Send Nukes!
"Dude, just move the Russian embassy to Melania’s side of the bed and be done with it."
Friday, August 30th, 2019
by Shower Cap | American Madness Journal |
http://showercapblog.com/sos-trapped-in-category-5-shitstorm-please-send-nukes/
My most irrational fear lately is that there somehow won’t be enough news to justify updating this blog every few days. All of my other fears, like, say, “I sure hope the President of the United States doesn’t call for civil war on Twitter if he loses in 2020,” probably would have seemed irrational to me not so very long ago, but times, they change…
William Barr had so much fun redacting the Mueller report, he’s decided to remove any and all ethical standards at the Department of Justice, booking a $30,000 holiday party at his Turd Emperor’s tacky D.C. hotel.
And while this may look to the cynical observer like a textbook example of a kickback, there’s almost certainly a reasonable alternative explanation, though no one is pretending to care enough to make one, because fuck you, that’s why.
The Republican Party of Alabama wants to kick Ilhan Omar out of the House of Representatives, over charges of alleged anti-Semitism, and I certainly look forward to their ethical consistency when they flip their state blue in 2020 over Donald Trump’s legitimately-right-out-of-the-Nazis’-mouths comments about Jewish “disloyalty.”
Serial child molester Roy Moore made sure to weigh in affirmatively on the nutty idea that the Heart of Dixie deserves veto power over the voters of the Minnesota 5th, and I dunno about you, but I’m just about done with moralizing lectures from Alabama.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/08/28/roy-moore-tells-rep-ilhan-omar-go-back-whence-she-came/2144083001/
Back when it looked like Hurricane Dorian was headed for Puerto Rico, Shart Garfunkel seized the opportunity to shit a little more on that island full of American citizens he’s already abandoned once to suffer and die out of racism-borne neglect, because he only wants to be president of some of us, and certainly not the brown folks with no Electoral College clout. And God heard him and re-directed the storm at Marm-a-Lago.
So, due to a recent resignation, the Federal Election Commission is basically shutting down, because they won’t have a quorum. I wouldn’t worry about this, since there aren’t any major elections coming up, and there certainly aren’t any significant incumbents with a well-documented history of colluding with hostile foreign powers to influence electoral outcomes.
As if on cue, new reports from behind the scenes at the G7 summit showed Little Donnie Two-Scoops acting PutinPuppetier than ever, with Uncle Vlad’s hand so far up the U.S. President’s ass I bet his elbow smells like room temperature Burger King fries. This on top of the reports that he tried like hell to cut off military aid to Ukraine. Dude, just move the Russian embassy to Melania’s side of the bed and be done with it.
Hey we’re finally getting to meet the new Gaslighter General, excuse me, I mean “Press Secretary,” which is nice, because so far our relationship with Stephanie Grisham has primarily been based on her drunk driving mugshots. She’s being courteous enough to completely shred any semblance of credibility right up front, which I must say I appreciate.
Seems President Liposuction Clinic Dumpster has finally started to notice that his term so far has amounted to little more than a festering landfill, overflowing with failure, and so he’s frantically scrambling for some sort of actual accomplishment to hold over his head with his tiny, inadequate, little hands, so as to bellow “look, I don’t totally suck I only mostly suck.”
And because he is very, very, very, very, very, very, stupid, he’s chosen the Big Dumb Wall Nobody Wants. He wants it like the Hamburgler wants heart disease. He wants it so bad he’s ordering aides to seize private lands, steal funding from whatever Pentagon programs forget to lock their doors at night, and for extra autocrat points, break any laws that stand in their way, secure in the knowledge that he’ll pardon away the consequences.
Anyway, I’m sure the career criminal who views the presidency as a never-ending stack of Get Out of Jail Free cards isn’t getting up to any other mischief behind the scenes.
The hot new dance craze started by Government Cheese Goebbels has spread all the way across the Atlantic! Yes, everyone’s doing the Fuck Democracy Shuffle, even new Prime Minister (For Now) Boris Johnson, who figured his plot to kidney-punch the British economy via no-deal Brexit would go a lot more smoothly without all those pesky legislators telling him to do something less colossally suicidal, so he asked the Queen to let him suspend Parliament for a spell. This whole “giving authoritarian morons immense political power” thing doesn’t seem to be working out, y’know?
Mad Dog Mattis became the latest former Treasonweasel Administration official to peek his head over the edges of cone of shame, taking the first halting steps of the traditional image rehabilitation tour. But no brash, uncouth, Scaramucci is General Jim, no no; he prefers coquettishly batting his eyes, teasing “oh, I certainly have a tale or two to tell, but I have MUCH too much military discipline and respect for the office of the presidency to tell them just yet, but don’t you find my shapely ankle tantalizing?”
The latest bug up Baron Golfin von Fatfuk’s ass is the seven minutes a day Fux Nooz doesn’t devote to brainwashing (or MyPillow ads), whining about how they’re slacking on the job, like a disgruntled contractor that’s just realized he’s never getting paid.
And various Fux propagandists got all huffy and went, “we don’t work for YOU, Mister, we work for institutional white supremacy IN GENERAL so there!” so anyway, to be fair n’ balanced, fuck BOTH SIDES of this jagoff kerfuffle.
The latest Seriously What the Living FUCK move from the What Can We Say We Just Fucking Hate You All Administration reverses the policy of automatically granting U.S. citizenship to the children of federal employees, including servicemembers, born overseas.
How does an idea like this even come up? Is Stephen Miller so demented that he’s pacing around his apartment in the middle of the night, fucked up on some experimental drug made from the distilled tears of frightened migrant children, muttering to himself “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this country! We’re too motherfucking easy on the people who risk their lives to defend it!”
But even as they experiment with bold new techniques for Fucking People Over for No Reason Whatsover, your government works ceaselessly to develop new innovations in core competencies like Hurting Children. Get the Fuck Out notices have been sent to immigrants who have been receiving life-saving medical treatment in the United States, because Donald Trump is in some sort of evil-off competition with Hitler’s ghost, I guess.
Kicking someone out of the hospital while they’re undergoing life-saving treatment is called murder, by the way. Just murder. Once they got away with opening the concentration camps, they were always going to try murdering people. And so that’s what’s happening now. In America.
Anyway, it comes as absolutely no surprise that these rat bastards are blocking congressional staff from visiting border detention facilities. When you really think about it, it kinda defeats the whole purpose of a concentration camp, if you allow oversight. You really wanna make the decent people work for it, y’know? Like a, “we’ll let you in when you’re at the head of a liberating army” sort of thing.
Judge Jeanine Pirro became the latest conservative pundit to let her hair down and go full white nationalist, spouting the same vile “white replacement” bile as the Tiki Torch Loser Brigade in Charlottesville and the mass-murdering terrorist in El Paso.
Jeanine, I gotta ask: what, precisely, do you imagine you bring to this world that’s worth replacing? I get crazy people shouting at me every time I go on the subway, and they’re usually much less hateful.
Always legacy-minded, Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot rolled back methane emissions regulations this week, because his disdain for his fellow man isn’t limited to just those of us actively suffering through his reign; he wants to send an enduring “go fuck yourself, plebs” to resonate through generations yet to come. He’s probably gonna bury time capsules filled with used diapers and mustard gas all over the White House lawn.
And it turns out Donnie Dotard did indeed lie about his alleged phone calls from the Chinese, in order to trick the market into not plummeting any further following the latest escalation in his bonehead trade war. On the bright side, the markets falling for the obvious lie of a known liar is pretty much the only argument in favor of regulating capitalism that we’ll ever need.
Self-Proclaimed Campaign Trail Superstar Shartboy, Jr., went to Kentucky to campaign for Healthcare-Thieving Ghoul Matt Bevin, and the turnout was pretty good…for a didgeridoo concert in a hot air balloon. Just a little schadenfreude bonbon for ya, you deserve it.
Tulsi Gabbard went on Tucker Carlson’s show to call him out, face to face, on his own turf, for his despicable record of white supremacy. JUST KIDDING she dropped by to whine about the DNC’s debate rules, with their totally unfair “you must have a snowball’s chance in hell of actually winning, c’mon, it’s almost Labor Day” cutoff.
Just a head’s up, lending your celebrity and credibility to Liar Tuck’s White Power Hour isn’t gonna win you any more Democratic votes, Tulsi. You are now cordially invited to fuck off forever.
And a Department of Justice inspector general report found that Jolly Jim Comey did not, as he had been accused by a certain Marmalade Shartcannon, break the law in leaking his famous memos. Turns out all he broke was the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD. But hey, you don’t have to go jail, Jimbo. Except for, you know, the jail of your making we’re all forced to inhabit now thanks to your shit judgment.
Sharty McFly’s personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout, got fired, apparenlty for drunkenly telling some reporters some mean stories about how her boss doesn’t really like one of his own children, yet another reminder that there are no good guys in this asshat administration, just dirtbags that periodically turn on one another.
And President Crotchrot figured today was as good a day as any to casually reveal the capacities of our espionage apparatus to the whole world on social media, no doubt believing that blurting out such a highly-guarded secret was surely worth it to troll Iran a little bit. Something something something Hillary’s e-mail server. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-shares-potentially-revealing-image-of-iranian-missile-site-on-twitter/2019/08/30/4820db10-cb5e-11e9-a1fe-ca46e8d573c0_story.html
(Is it weird to anyone else that in the midst of all this madness and atrocity, the shitbag responsible for it all isn’t focused on the imminent weather disaster, or the economy he’s about to break, but on allegations of bedbugs at one of his crappy resorts?)
There is, I’m sure, a ton of stuff I missed, but I have taken all I can take for one week. If you need me, I’ll be the guy curled up in the fetal position on his sofa, watching old Duck Tales cartoons, dreaming of the time when I could still believe the comforting lies told in my public school American history textbooks.
Give America Mug Shots Again. GAMSA will fit on a hat, right?
UPDATED: Comparing Presidential Administrations by felony arrests and convictions (as of 9/17/2018)
Nixon’s Presidency remains the most criminal, with 76 different individuals charged with felony indictments and 55 of them convicted or pleading guilty. But Trump is hot on his heels. Though we aren’t even two years into his Administration, already 35 individuals (including 28 foreign nationals) have been indicted – more than any administration except Nixon’s.
And seven have been convicted and/or pleaded guilty, more than every Democratic Administration in the past 50 years combined.
Felonies by Presidential Administration
Donald Trump is continuing the GOP’s trend of being the party with the most corrupt Administrations. We can measure this with more than fevered tinfoil hat conspiracies of pizza parlor pedophile rings. We can actually use indictments, convictions, and incarcerations as an impartial, statistical measure.
Trump Campaign & Administration Felonies
To date, more people in the Trump camp – including foreign nationals – have been indicted for felonies than any administration in the last 50 years except Nixon’s. These include seven Americans and 28 foreign nationals.
Felony Indictments in the Trump Campaign & Administration (to date)
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/18/1796668/-UPDATED-Comparing-Presidential-Administrations-by-felony-arrests-and-convictions-as-of-9-17-2018
Starting with Nixon
In my original article, I mentioned that I started with Nixon for a number of reasons. Nixon was elected about 50 years ago, and it seemed like a nice, round number to start with. In addition, not including the only president forced to resign due to his criminal behavior would be a bizarre choice.
I could have gone back farther. Many view the modern presidency as everything after World War II, which could have been a good place to start. But while there were resignations under scandal in previous post-war administrations, none of them involved anyone getting indicted. If we extend it back to the turn of the 20th century, there was one Executive Branch conviction under Franklin Roosevelt, one or two under Calvin Coolidge, three convictions under Warren Harding, and one under William McKinley. Eight other Administrations in the 20th century (Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson) did not have any Executive Branch indictments.
With that, I maintain that Nixon remains a logical place to start.
LOL! I can always count on you for the apocalyptic take no prisoners response.
Reminds me. I got into a board flame war with a Rapture believer.
I put the following to him. Let's say you're on a commercial plane flight. 'It's time' echoes over the intercom in a celestial voice. Passengers begin disappearing before your eyes. You're still there of course, Why would anyone choose you?
Anyway, now you're wondering what's going on in the cockpit. Since you're 'left behind' you're now praying, hard, to a hopefully beneficent god.
Please don't rapture both the pilot and the copilot. If both are chosen can you please, dear lord, leave one to land the plane, and taxi to the gate, before rapturing him?
And oh yeah, would you please leave one flight attendant as well? I'm going to need a stiff drink or two while you sort out my prayers.
I don't remember the response which I'm sure was sputtering and incoherent. Cognitive dissonance will have that effect.
The Megyn Kelly Syndrome Strikes Bret Stephens
The Times columnist is just the latest example of a right-winger who flounders outside his ideological bubble.
By Jeet Heer
Today 9:00 am
https://www.thenation.com/article/bret-stephens-likes-safe-spaces/
Bret Stephens and Megyn Kelly (MSNBC / Reuters)
All columnists have their hobbyhorses—topics they obsessively ride at the risk of testing the patience of their readers. For Bret Stephens of The New York Times, the spécialité de la maison is academic freedom and the supposed threat to robust debate posed by politically correct students huddling in safe spaces.
In a 2017 commencement address at Hampden-Sydney College, he defined safe spaces as places “where like-minded people—often sharing the same race, gender, sexual orientation or political outlook—can spend time together without having to encounter the expression of any ideas or opinions that they do not endorse.”
Stephens’s frequent huffing and puffing on this topic made him an easy and deserving target of derision when it was revealed that the columnist tried to get a professor in trouble for the trivial offense of insulting him.
On Monday, David Karpf, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, tweeted out a link to an article reporting that the New York Times newsroom suffered from bedbugs. “The bedbugs are a metaphor,” Karpf joked. “The bedbugs are Bret Stephens.”
In response, Stephens raised the threat level to DEFCON 2. In a letter sent to both Karpf and his provost at George Washington University, Stephens wrote, “I’m often amazed about the things supposedly decent people are prepared to say about other people—people they’ve never met—on Twitter.
I think you’ve set a new standard.” The columnist invited the professor to come over to his house and repeat the bedbug comment to his face. Stephens also sent a separate letter to another university higher-up, the director of Karpf’s program.
Despite Stephens’s demurrals, he was clearly trying to get Karpf in trouble with George Washington University. This created an easy opening for critics to accurately zing Stephens as not just a hypocrite but a snowflake as well. Yet there’s something more than bad faith at work.
Stephens has, in fact, proven his argument about the dangers of safe spaces—although not in a way that he’s likely to understand. To understand why Stephens reacted with such fury to what was in fact a mild rebuke, we must first recognize that the columnist has spent most of his adult life pampered in a right-wing cocoon, so he’s not used to the rough-and-tumble of political debate.
Prior to being hired by The New York Times, Stephens had two major employers, The Jerusalem Post and The Wall Street Journal. During Stephens’s tenure at the Post, the paper was owned by Hollinger, run by disgraced press baron Conrad Black. I worked at another Hollinger operation, the National Post, during that era and can testify that the upper management of that firm was securely ensconced in a right-wing cone of silence, where few liberal or left-wing ideas ever penetrated.
After The Jerusalem Post, Stephens’s other major place of employment was The Wall Street Journal, owned for most of Stephens’s tenure by another far-right press baron, Rupert Murdoch. As Mark Schmitt of the New America Foundation tweeted, “I’ve long thought that WSJ editorial page is a terrible place to spend one’s 20s and 30s. It is an extraordinarily insulated environment w/ colleagues, editors and readers who nod along to an identical world view.”
Stephens fell victim to the Megyn Kelly Syndrome, the pattern whereby those who were groomed by the peculiar insular culture of right-wing media find it hard to adjust to the norms of the outside world.
While at Fox News, Kelly was freely able to race bait all she wanted, with many segments warning of the supposed dangers of the New Black Panthers. Since this was on Fox, Kelly didn’t have to deal with viewers who found her racist demagoguery offensive.
When she was hired by NBC, she quickly floundered, with her career at the network crashing after she suggested on air that blackface was fine for a Halloween costume. It wasn’t just her comments that got her in trouble but also her sputtering apology, which made it clear that the objections to blackface remained a mystery to her.
Other examples of the Megyn Kelly Syndrome include Rush Limbaugh (fired from ESPN after four weeks when he suggested that black quarterbacks benefited from affirmative action) and Kevin Williamson (a writer quickly dismissed from The Atlantic after it turned out that he had misled his employer about his commenting that women who had abortions should be executed).
Not everyone who emerges from right-wing media suffers from the Megyn Kelley Syndrome. Usually writers who are adept at reporting or reasoned debate have no trouble shifting from right-wing to mainstream outlets. Examples include Tim Alberta, Betsy Woodruff, and Richard Brookhiser. But these are all writers who are genuinely thoughtful.
By contrast, the Megyn Kelly Syndrome tends to strike those who emerge from what might be called the trolling culture of the right, where the main goal is not persuasion but outrage.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page represents the high end of this trolling culture. It’s more refined than Rush Limbaugh or Fox News—but just as committed to performative mudslinging.
Stephens, a Never Trump conservative, often poses as someone who is more high-minded than the partisan right, but he’s been indelibly stamped by that environment, as can be seen in his minimizing of climate change, his dismissal of rape culture, and his talk of the “disease of the Arab mind.”
Stephens has spent his entire career in one of the most insular safe spaces in America: the intellectual gated community of the right. No wonder he is having so much trouble handling the criticism he gets from New York Times readers. He’s never had to face the challenge of genuine disagreement—and freaks out when confronted. Clearly, the safe spaces of the right need to be broken down.
I thought that recent bans on this board may have atrophied my writing skills as they pertain to busting righty chops.
Not so. Another board, another Trumpanzee, has served as the necessary speed bag to keep my timing ship shape.
I see that some of the usual suspects are due back soon. I can hardly wait.
Thank God for Trump - a MAGAt's View
If it wasn’t for Trump putting those kids in cages at the border, they would have taken over our jobs by now, while plotting terrorist attacks on daycare centres across the country. I feel so much safer knowing those toddlers are behind bars.
If it wasn’t for Trump giving tax-cuts to the wealthy, there’d be a lot less wealth to ‘trickle down’ to us. I feel so much richer now, knowing that the wealthy have more money to potentially dribble my way.
If it wasn’t for Trump lying all the time, I’d have to rely on the truth. I feel so much more optimistic knowing that fact is just another word for ‘fake news’, and that there are ‘alternative facts’ out there for me to believe in.
If it wasn’t for Trump distancing us from our allies, I’d have to wonder what influence the Krauts, the Limeys, and the Spics would have over our government. I feel much more comfortable knowing that our traditional ally, the Ruskies, are controlling things.
If it wasn’t for Trump undoing environmental protections, I’d have to worry about toxic waste polluting our air and our water. I feel relieved that lobbyists for coal and oil interests are finally in positions of power, people who have always been dedicated to cleaning-up our environment.
If it wasn’t for Trump appointing ‘only the best people’, I’d be worried about criminals having influence over our government – you know, people who could wind up in prison. I sleep peacefully knowing that will never happen.
If it wasn’t for Trump being in love with Kim Jung-Un, the North Koreans would still be pursuing their nuclear weapons agenda. We can all heave a sigh of relief knowing that NK is no longer a threat.
If it wasn’t for Trump putting those tariffs on Chinese goods, we’d be paying more for those products instead of the Chinese having to pay up.
If it wasn’t for Trump, we wouldn’t have his competent and experienced children giving him their valuable advice. It’s a relief knowing that a fashion designer and a real estate mogul’s son are advising the president on things like peace in the Middle East.
If it wasn’t for Trump, we wouldn’t have our amazing First Lady, whose Be Best initiative has swept the nation, and has all but eliminated bullying from our social interactions. I, for one, admire her tireless efforts to bring civility back to our nation.
If it wasn’t for Trump’s good Christian values, we’d be back in the days when presidents used terms like sons-of-bitches and bullshit on a regular basis. Thank God we have a moral man in the White House, who isn’t afraid to say God Bless America at least every once in a while.
If it wasn’t for Trump pointing out that white supremacists are ‘very fine people’, the very fine people among us would still be living in fear of being harassed for being racists, instead of being praised for our willingness to stand up for our beliefs.
If it wasn’t for Trump deporting ‘illegals’, all of those high-paying jobs working in chicken processing plants wouldn’t finally be open to Americans looking for employment. It’s not a job I would ever do – but I’m happy knowing I could now have that job if I wanted it.
If it wasn’t for Trump’s brilliant insight, we’d never know that wind turbines cause cancer, or that the Revolutionary War was won by colonists who had the foresight to shut down the airports. I appreciate both the scientific and historical perspective he brings to the table.
If it wasn’t for Trump setting the record straight, we would still be in the dark about the tens of millions of people who attended his inauguration, and the hundreds of thousands of people who cram into 15,000-capacity venues for his rallies. It’s exhilarating to finally have a president willing to call out the media on their obvious lies.
If it wasn’t for Trump ridding government agencies of scientists, climate change experts, medical experts, education experts, and economic experts, we’d just be another shithole country that the world looks down upon for its ignorance and stupidity.
Thank God for Trump, who is working to bring our country back to where it should be – a nation where bigots, racists, the uneducated, the ill-informed, and the downright stupid are catered to, where lies override facts, where foreign dictators are lauded, where immigrants seeking asylum are treated worse than prisoners-of-war, where black Americans are shot dead on our streets, where votes are suppressed, where citizens die for lack of access to healthcare, and where immigrant children are locked in cages to protect us all from the imminent danger they pose.
Why you libtards can’t understand how Trump has Made America Great Again is beyond me.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212421285
US spies say Trump's G7 performance suggests he's either a 'Russian asset' or a 'useful idiot' for Putin
https://amp.businessinsider.com/spies-react-trump-g7-summit-russian-asset-2019-8
Sonam Sheth
Aug 29, 2019, 4:17 PM
• Current and former spies are floored by President Donald Trump's fervent defense of Russia at this year's G7 summit in Biarritz, France.
• "It's hard to see the bar anymore since it's been pushed so far down the last few years, but President Trump's behavior over the weekend was a new low," one FBI agent who works in counterintelligence told Insider.
• At the summit, Trump aggressively lobbied for Russia to be readmitted into the G7, refused to hold it accountable for violating international law, blamed former President Barack Obama for Russia's annexation of Crimea, and expressed sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• One former senior Justice Department official, who worked closely with the former special counsel Robert Mueller when he was the FBI director, told Insider Trump's behavior was "directly out of the Putin playbook. We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office."
• A former CIA operative told Insider the evidence is "overwhelming" that Trump is a Russian agent, but another CIA and NSA veteran said it was more likely Trump was currying favor with Putin for future business deals.
• Meanwhile, a recently retired FBI special agent told Insider that Trump's freewheeling and often unfounded statements make it more likely that he's a "useful idiot" for the Russians. But "it would not surprise me in the least if the Russians had at least one asset in Trump's inner circle."
•
"It's hard to see the bar anymore since it's been pushed so far down the last few years, but President Trump's behavior over the weekend was a new low."
That was the assessment an FBI agent who works in counterintelligence gave Insider of President Donald Trump's performance at this year's G7 summit in Biarritz, France. The agent requested anonymity because they feared that speaking publicly on the matter would jeopardize their job.
Trump's attendance at the G7 summit was peppered with controversy, but none was more notable than his fervent defense of Russia's military and cyber aggression around the world, and its violation of international law in Ukraine.
Trump repeatedly refused to hold Russia accountable for annexing Crimea in 2014, blamed former President Barack Obama for Russia's move to annex it, expressed sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and castigated other G7 members for not giving the country a seat at the table.
Since being booted from the G8 after annexing Crimea, Russia's done little to make up for its actions. In fact, by many accounts, it's stepped up its aggression.
In addition to continuing to encroach on Ukraine, the Russian government interfered in the 2016 US election and was behind the attempted assassination of a former Russian spy in the UK. US officials also warn that as the 2020 election looms, the Russians are stepping up their cyberactivities against the US and have repeatedly tried to attack US power grids.
"What in God's name made Trump think it would be a good idea to ask to bring Russia back to the table?" the FBI agent told Insider. "How does this serve US national-security interests?"
Trump's advocacy for Russia is renewing concerns among intelligence veterans that Trump may be a Russian "asset" who can be manipulated or influenced to serve Russian interests, although some also speculate that Trump could just be currying favor for future business deals.
'We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office'
Trump with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP
A former senior Justice Department official, who worked closely with the former special counsel Robert Mueller when he was FBI director, didn't mince words when reacting to Trump's performance at the G7 summit: "We have a Russian asset sitting in the Oval Office."
"There is no fathomable explanation for why the president said these things," the former official said. "Letting Russia off the hook for bullying smaller countries and then blaming Obama for it? It's directly out of the Putin playbook."
While arguing for Russia to be invited back into the G7, Trump said the country would be helpful in addressing hot-button issues like Iran, Syria, and North Korea and that the alliance was better off with Russia "inside rather than outside."
But Russia is a staunch ally of Syria's Assad regime, and it's also cozied up to Iran in recent years. US military and intelligence officials view Russia as one of the US's foremost rivals and believe it generally stands in opposition to American interests.
Glenn Carle, a former CIA covert operative and frequent Trump critic, told Insider there's been "no question" in his mind for years that the president is behaving like "a spy for the Russians."
"The evidence is so overwhelming that in my 35 years in intelligence, I have never seen anything so certain," Carle said, adding that he's spoken with several intelligence veterans about the matter in the four years since Trump first launched his presidential campaign, many of whom believe Trump's actions are a threat to national security.
"Intelligence assets become convinced to be spies for multiple reasons," Carle, who specialized in getting foreign spies to become turncoats when he was at the CIA, said in an earlier interview with Insider. "It might start with kompromat or financial hooks, and the asset may be convinced he is acting as a patriot until he becomes accustomed to his role."
"Trump clearly responds favorably to praise," he said. "And over the years, the handling officer - Putin, in this case - realizes what the asset wants, and that's what they provide. Trump wants to be told he's the greatest, so that's what you tell him, over and over again, until he comes to believe that is the motivation for his actions."
'A useful idiot' or 'currying favor'
Frank Montoya Jr., a recently retired FBI special agent, told Insider "it's hard not to think the Russians have an asset in the White House." But he added that Trump's erratic behavior and his freewheeling and often false statements imply he's "not playing with a full deck on any matter of state these days."
"Still, those same delusions are what give me pause when conclusions are reached about the likelihood he is a Russian asset," Montoya said. "Useful idiot is more like it."
But given the abundance of meetings and contacts between Trump associates and Russians before, during, and after the election, Montoya said "it would not surprise me in the least if the Russians had at least one asset in Trump's inner circle."
Robert Deitz, a former top lawyer at the CIA and the National Security Agency, agreed that Trump was catering to Putin's interests, but he disagreed on why.
"I think what's going on right now is an Occam's razor scenario," he told Insider, referring to the philosophical theory that the simplest explanation for an event is often the correct one.
"Trump wants to do deals with Russia when he leaves the presidency," Deitz said.
"We already know he was interested in building a Trump Tower in Moscow before and during the election. The best way of doing a deal with Putin is to be nice to him, so I think what Trump is doing is currying favor."
He emphasized, however, that regardless of Trump's motives for being subservient to Putin, "it's still harmful" to US interests.
"When Trump goes to bed each night, what do you think his last thoughts are: the welfare of the United States, or the size of his bank account?" Deitz added.
A familiar pattern emerges
Trump's defense of Putin at the G7 summit didn't go unnoticed in Russia.
According to The Washington Post, one show on the state-run Rossiya-1 network played a celebratory soundtrack as it showed six video clips of Trump demanding that Putin be given a seat at the table.
The Russian media analyst Julia Davis said that Kremlin-controlled media reacted to Trump's G7 performance with laughter and mockery.
One anchor rejoiced that "Trump is dancing to Putin's tune," while others were amused by the "maniacal persistence" with which Trump was lobbying for Russia.
This isn't the first time the president has been accused of working to advance Russia's interests ahead of the US's.
Perhaps the sharpest example of this was when Trump and Putin held a bilateral summit in Helsinki last year.
After the meeting, Trump stunned the US national-security apparatus and foreign allies when he sided with Russia over the US intelligence community, blamed "both sides" for the deterioration of US-Russia relations, and praised Putin as being "extremely strong and powerful."
In 2017, Trump refused to accept the US intelligence-community finding that Moscow meddled in the 2016 race to propel Trump to the presidency.
That May, he fired FBI director James Comey, who was overseeing the FBI's investigation into Russia's election interference and cited "this Russia thing" as the reason. Two days after firing Comey, Trump shared classified intelligence with two Russian officials in the Oval Office and told them firing Comey had taken "great pressure" off of him.
Shortly after, the FBI began investigating whether Trump was a Russian agent.
So, Lindsey, let's have those hearings you are licking your chops over. Let's call Comey and everyone referenced in this article to recount.....everything in this article. I can hardly wait.
3,000 applications
The Morris Animal Refuge in Philadelphia put out a call online recently for adoptees of a 26-pound (!) cat named BeeJay, a.k.a. Mr. B. Needless to say, given the collective preferences of the internet, the call went viral and some 3,000 applications were submitted.
Mr. B did find a home, and the shelter is working with the foster family “to help resolve the cat’s health and behavioral issues so that they might eventually become his permanent home.” Good luck, big fella. [NBC News]
140 home runs
Records continue to fall in baseball’s latest home-run era. Most recently, the Minnesota Twins broke the record for most homers on the road, smacking two in the third inning yesterday against the Chicago White Sox for a total of 140. That previous record was 138, set by the San Francisco Giants in 2001. [Associated Press]
2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 20 and 30
For decades, an Edmonton, Alberta, man named Bon Truong played the exact same lottery numbers, derived from important dates in his life: 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 20 and 30. And last fall, he finally won — $60 million. Truong said he has waited nearly a year to claim his winnings because he was “overwhelmed by the size of his luck.” I, for one, am overwhelmed by the size of his persistence. [The Washington Post]
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/significant-digits-for-friday-aug-30-2019/
If this isn't a classic 'be careful what you wish for' I don't know what is.
Graham is a Trump sycophant and a hyper-partisan fool. If Obama is summoned and shows he'll make Miss Lindsey look like Trump at that WH Press Corps Dinner where he was humiliated by Obama.
Ahh like me some turtles too. This here un is the finest specimen in all of KY.
"Hopefully he’ll take care of us and do things right: Just uphold the laws for the ethanol industry that Congress put into place," Aistrope said.
Yet another statement indicating why we're all in the mess we're in with the Trump presidency.
WTF is there in Trump's conduct thus far to justify the continued triumph of hope over experience that his supporters continue to manifest?
Do they really believe, rhetorical, that his lack of integrity in all that he says and does WON'T spill over into their economic world?
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me......and you can't get fooled again.
Guess so, about triumphant hope.
Plot: Jimmy Fallon just couldn’t let his old Weekend Update anchor chair be usurped by Seth Meyers. As expected, Fallon came scooting in to give Meyers a run for his airtime. But the predecessor facing off against his prodigy wasn’t enough — each comedian’s former co-anchor also rolled in.
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler took their places behind the desk, launching a joke-off, which saw two generations of Weekend Update reporters buzzing in with jokes about a strip club being in a rather giving mood for the holidays.
Best Line: “Looks like the hottest toy this holiday season is the crumpled $20.” — Tina Fey
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/12/18/snls-five-best-skits-weekend-update-reunites-buble-sings-christmas-duets/
Brilliant, a gun show would be like catnip. Maybe raffle off an M-16 or two. If it's rural enough, step out back and fire the 50 cal.
Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies, it's Love Brother Love's traveling political rally and gun show. Don't sweat the salvation, that was lost when you voted for the marmalade shartcannon.
The irony in this coming from non serving dickheads like Trump and Miller is rich. They really go out of their way to behave like stone cold pricks.
Veterans rip Trump for 'abominable and unpatriotic' new rule attacking military families
By Oliver Willis -
August 29, 2019
'The stress and strain that this is causing military families is a cruelty that one would never expect from a commander in chief.'
Veterans and military advocacy organizations are slamming the Trump administration for sudden changes to immigration rules announced Wednesday that children of government and military employees living overseas are not considered to be "residing in the United States" for the purpose of acquiring citizenship.
The change is "an abominable and anti-patriotic position for the Trump Administration to take," said Will Goodwin, an Army veteran and Director of Government Relations for the group VoteVets, in a statement.
"Tonight, there's someone likely on patrol in a war zone, or at an embassy, who is scared to death that their child is no longer a citizen, just because they were born overseas. There are military families sitting at the kitchen table, trying to figure out how this might affect their child's benefits. The stress and strain that this is causing military families is a cruelty that one would never expect from a commander in chief."
Andy Blevins, executive director of Modern Military Association of America — a group of LGBTQ service members, military spouses, veterans, their families — called the change "preposterous" and "truly beyond reasonable."
https://shareblue.com/veterans-rip-trump-for-abominable-and-unpatriotic-new-rule-attacking-military-families/
I don't know about anyone else on this issue, but coming from a military family and having a brother born in Japan, a sister born in Germany........................I think that asshole Stephen Miller and this "commander and thief" of being a traitor (lets not forget that he had Russian spies dancing around in the oval office) should come and explain themselves in a House hearing........................................on the issue of their citizenship and the 320 rule:
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-legal-considerations/us-citizenship/Child-Citizenship-2000-Sections-320-322-INA.html
...............................this just irks me to know end..........................
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212419266
The Israel-Iran Shadow War Escalates and Breaks Into the Open
A funeral procession for a Hezbollah member killed during a suspected Israeli airstrike in Syria.
By David M. Halbfinger, Ben Hubbard and Ronen Bergman
•Published Aug. 28, 2019 Updated Aug. 29, 2019, 1:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/world/middleeast/israel-iran-shadow-war.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190829?campaign_id=2&instance_id=11965&segment_id=16562&user_id=4598f2b6c0cd59a7a59daee9f650852d®i_id=222124460829
JERUSALEM — Israel has carried out a series of attacks across the Middle East in recent weeks to prevent Iran from equipping its Arab allies with precision-guided missiles, drones and other sophisticated weapons that could challenge Israel’s defenses.
The attacks represent a new escalation in the shadow war between Iran and Israel, which has broken into the open and threatens to set off a wider confrontation.
In one 18-hour period over the weekend, an Israeli airstrike killed two Iranian-trained militants in Syria, a drone set off a blast near a Hezbollah office in Beirut’s southern suburbs and an airstrike in Qaim, Iraq, killed a commander of an Iran-backed Iraqi militia.
Israel accuses Iran of trying to establish an overland arms-supply line through Iraq and northern Syria to Lebanon. The attacks, only one of which Israel has publicly acknowledged, were aimed at stopping Iran and signaling to its proxies that Israel will not tolerate a fleet of smart missiles on its borders, officials and analysts said.
“Iran is building something here in the region,” said Sima Shine, a former head of research for Israeli intelligence, now a scholar at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “What’s changed is that the process reached a level in which Israel has to act differently.”
Iranian officials said the Israeli attacks would not go unanswered. Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, who oversees covert military operations outside Iran, said on Twitter that “the Zionist actions are insane and will be their last.”
While Iran has not publicly acknowledged the transfer of missile technology, an Iranian with knowledge of Iran’s regional efforts said that in the past year Iran had shifted its focus from training its proxy forces for ground battle in Syria and Iraq to equipping them with high-tech weapons and training.
Leaders on all sides say they do not want an all-out war, but the accelerating pace of violent strikes, often with cheap drones and other covert technologies, has raised the possibility that even a minor attack could spiral into a larger conflict.
And public taunting, saber-rattling and domestic politics are all contributing to an atmosphere of volatility and brinkmanship.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, told his followers, “We will not allow for this type of path, no matter the cost!”
Israel acknowledged carrying out the airstrike in Syria on Saturday, which it said was to prevent militants from launching an explosives-laden drone into Israel.
The drone blast near Beirut early Sunday destroyed what Israeli officials described as machinery vital to Hezbollah’s precision-missile production effort. Israel’s responsibility for that strike, the aim of which was first reported by The Times of London, was confirmed by two officials briefed on the operation.
In Iraq, bases belonging to Iranian-backed paramilitary groups have been attacked repeatedly in recent weeks, and their leaders have accused Israel, saying Israeli drones had hit their vehicles in Qaim, killing one commander.
Israel carried out at least one of the attacks, on a base north of Baghdad on July 19, and American officials have said that Israel carried out others.
On Wednesday, the Lebanese Army said it had fired on two of three Israeli drones that breached Lebanese airspace before returning to Israel.
The flare-ups highlight how Iran’s opportunistic expansion in much of the Middle East is coming up against fierce Israeli pushback.
“The military theater has been broadened by Israel in terms of the targeting of its attacks,” said Randa Slim, an analyst at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “It is no longer about Iranian presence in Syria. It is about Iran’s network in the region.”
For years, as unrest and conflict have weakened Arab states, Iran has moved in, building strong ties with local forces that benefit from its patronage while expanding its influence and amplifying the threat to Israel.
Iran pioneered this approach by building Hezbollah into Lebanon’s most formidable military force, with tens of thousands of trained fighters and an arsenal believed to contain more than 100,000 rockets and missiles pointed at Israel.
More recently, Iran has strengthened its regional network by providing arms and expertise to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, militias in Iraq and pro-government forces in Syria. Iran has also strengthened cooperation between its allies: Hezbollah operatives from Lebanon have trained fighters in Iraq and Yemen and sent aid to Palestinian jihadist movements, and Iran has airlifted thousands of militiamen from Iraq and elsewhere into Syria to help President Bashar al-Assad defeat a rebellion there.
The lives of the two militants killed by the Israeli strike in Syria over the weekend illustrate the borderless nature of the Iranian network. The fighters, Hassan Zabeeb and Yasser Daher, grew up in Lebanon, studied aviation engineering in Iran and returned to Lebanon to work with Hezbollah, according to the Lebanese news media.
Iran calls its regional network the “axis of resistance.” While its members operate with significant autonomy in their own countries, they share the broader goal of combating American, Israeli and Saudi influence in the Middle East. Having militarized allies across the region also serves as a deterrent against Israeli and American strikes on Iran, since any such attacks could elicit violent responses elsewhere.
Israel’s efforts to hinder Iranian expansion in recent years have focused largely on Syria, where Israel has carried out more than 200 airstrikes since early 2017 on suspected weapons convoys, bases and other sites associated with the Iranian war effort.
Israel mostly avoided killing Hezbollah fighters in Syria and attacking inside Lebanon, which could have provoked counterstrikes. This led to an unwritten understanding — often called the rules of the game — about where and how their conflict would and would not play out.
The attacks last weekend appeared to break the rules by killing two Hezbollah fighters in Syria and reaching into the heart of a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut.
Raising temperatures further are brash public statements on both sides, which seem intended as much for domestic audiences as for each other.
Israel’s military has taken to taunting its adversaries on social media: After the airstrike in Syria, it ridiculed General Suleimani.
Israel Defense Forces
? @IDF
TO: Iranian Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani,
RE: Last Night
"We will carry out a large-scale attack of killer drones on the 'Zionist entity' from Syria."
It sounded good in your morning meeting, didn't it?
“Israel knows how to defend itself and to pay back its enemies,” Mr. Netanyahu said on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, it launched a Twitter account in Persian to try to undermine him with the Iranian public.
Addressing his followers over the weekend, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, vowed to retaliate, shouting his determination to prevent attacks in Lebanon from becoming frequent.
“We in the Islamic resistance, we will not allow for this type of path, no matter the cost!” he said. He did not say how or when his forces would respond.
“I suggest to Nasrallah to calm down,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel responded mockingly on Tuesday. “Israel knows how to defend itself and to pay back its enemies. I say the same to Qassim Suleimani: be careful with your words and even more so with your actions.”
Some analysts suggested that the approaching Israeli election encouraged Mr. Netanyahu’s tough stance, while Mr. Nasrallah also could not appear to be weak at a time when American sanctions have hurt his group’s finances.
Talal Atrissi, a sociologist who studies Hezbollah at Lebanese University, said he expected the group to retaliate against Israel to prevent attacks in Lebanon from becoming commonplace.
Alluding to Israel’s national elections on Sept. 17, he added: “There are elections, and Netanyahu needs to show that he is protecting Israel, but if there is no response, he’ll keep doing it. It won’t just be the election. It will become a new strategy.”
Officials and analysts said the recent uptick in strikes, and their spread into Iraq and Lebanon, came in response to adjustments to Iran’s strategy.
An airstrike in Qaim, Iraq, killed a commander of an Iran-trained Iraqi militia.
One involved General Suleimani’s efforts to maintain supply lines for shipments of arms and equipment from Iran. Until about a year ago, according to a senior Middle Eastern intelligence official, Iran used unmarked or Iranian commercial planes flying into the Damascus airport to reach Hezbollah or Quds Force units in Syria.
But repeated Israeli airstrikes drove Iran to reroute supplies through airfields in northern Syria instead.
When Israel struck those fields, too, General Suleimani moved to set up a land route. That route goes from Iran through Iraq, where drivers and vehicles are often changed to elude surveillance, before crossing into northern Syria.
The Israeli attack on July 19 at Amerli base, north of Baghdad, struck a shipment of guided missiles bound for Syria. It was the first time Israel had carried out an airstrike in Iraq since it destroyed a nuclear reactor near Baghdad in 1981, when Saddam Hussein was in power.
Israel has been working to prevent Hezbollah from manufacturing its own precision-guided missiles since early 2017, using a combination of disclosures, warnings and threats, Israeli analysts say.
Prevented from military action by its understanding with Hezbollah and a desire to avoid war, Israel at first tried to weaponize its intelligence gathering, hoping that exposing Hezbollah’s missile project as a threat to regional security would create international pressure to quash it.
That approach culminated in a speech by Mr. Netanyahu to the United Nations last September, in which he showed aerial photos of what he said were three factories for precision-guided missiles in downtown Beirut.
Ofek Riemer, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who writes frequently on national security, called the public-relations tactic “coercive disclosure.”
But he said that phase appeared to have ended with Sunday’s blast in Beirut.
He cautioned that the explosion in Beirut still appeared well short of an all-out Israeli attempt to stop Hezbollah’s precision-guided missile project by military means.
“We’re still in the signaling business, as I see it,” Mr. Riemer said. “We’re not really going head-on against this project. But it’s also signaling to the international community: Either we take action, and you don’t know where that leads, or you come in and try to pull strings and influence the Lebanese government, Hezbollah by proxy, or even Iran.”
David M. Halbfinger reported from Jerusalem; Ben Hubbard from Beirut, Lebanon; and Ronen Bergman from New York. Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting from New York.
August 2, 2019
Think the Iraq War Was Hard? Here's What a War in Iran Would Be Like.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/think-iraq-war-was-hard-heres-what-war-iran-would-be-70726
It’s Hard To Know What Kind Of Damage Trump’s Primary Challengers Can Do
By Nathaniel Rakich
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/its-hard-to-know-what-kind-of-damage-trumps-primary-challengers-can-do/
I struggle with the volume of coverage that’s produced every time a Republican announces, or even teases, a primary challenge to President Trump. On one hand, it was notable that former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh threw his hat into the ring this week, as he is a former Trump supporter of some stature (after leaving Congress, he became a nationally syndicated radio host).
On the other, covering Walsh and his ilk as serious candidates implies that Trump is actually vulnerable to a primary challenge, and, well … he’s not.
There are plenty of reasons a primary challenge to Trump will probably fall flat. For starters, serious primary challenges are fairly rare; the last sitting president to be denied renomination was Chester Arthur in 1884.
(Yes, there was Lyndon Johnson, but he retired before he could properly lose the nomination — although primary challengers probably had something to do with his decision.) Putting that aside, however, the biggest thing Trump has going for him is that he is extremely popular among Republicans — and that’s true in virtually every poll.
For example, 88 percent of the GOP approves of his job performance in the latest Gallup poll. (True, Trump approval isn’t quite that high among voters who merely lean Republican, but even polls that incorporate leaners still give him overwhelming intraparty support — 82 percent in one recent poll.)
According to a CNN analysis from December, the only president in the last 70 years who was more beloved among members of his own party (as measured before the New Hampshire primary) was Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. And this is important because the only presidents who faced muscular primary challenges in the modern primary era were all under 75 percent approval with members of their own party: Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992.
And yes, all three went on to lose the general election. This is not to say that primary challenges caused those losses; it could just be that only weak incumbents draw primary challengers. Trump is currently not weak among members of his own party (although he is unpopular overall), so it’s unclear if his primary challenges will foreshadow that same result.
Finally, head-to-head polls of the Republican primary give Trump massive leads over any primary challengers. He leads former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, who was the first notable candidate to jump in the race, by anywhere from 60 to 85 points, and he even leads high-profile hypothetical challengers like Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley by up to 80 points.
But these stubborn facts don’t appear to be deterring challengers — though it’s probably not a coincidence that those who might run are former politicians with no current office to lose.
In addition to Walsh and Weld, former South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford is considering jumping in. But beating Trump may not be their real goal (Sanford, for example, has acknowledged that it would be close to impossible); instead, they may simply be hoping to spur a conversation about the party’s direction.
Earlier this year, my colleague Geoffrey Skelley devised a scale for rating the “success” of presidential primary challengers on this front, from 1 (no-name candidates) to 5 — the (as-yet hypothetical) candidate who manages to successfully topple a sitting president.
Right now, I would think that Walsh, Weld and potentially Sanford are somewhere between Levels 1 and 2. They are known commodities and could put together a professional campaign apparatus, but it seems unlikely that they will attract as much support as Pat Buchanan did against Bush in 1992, the model for a Level 2 primary challenge.
But of course, we can’t give them a final grade until after the primary. It will be interesting to see if one of the three is more successful given that they each represent different wings of the party: Weld is a socially liberal New England Republican; Sanford is a fiscal hawk in the wonkish ideological mold of former House Speaker Paul Ryan.
And Walsh is a former tea partier who actually shares some of Trump’s controversial stances — for example, he called former President Barack Obama a Muslim and an “enemy of the state,” although he has since said he was wrong for doing so.
So someone like Weld may be best positioned to appeal to the most Trump-skeptical Republicans: those who are liberal or moderate, live in urban or suburban areas, are younger and/or identify as independents.
On the other hand, Walsh’s in-your-face style may be needed to actually pry away some of the president’s existing support. Then again, maybe Sanford may hold the most appeal to business-oriented Republicans (and their deep pockets), who have traditionally made up the Republican establishment.
At the same time, if there is only a limited amount of anti-Trump sentiment in the party to go around — say, 10 or 20 percent, based on the polls — there is the risk that Republican challengers split that small share into even smaller pieces, rather than eat more into Trump’s support.
For example, a HarrisX national poll from May, when Trump and Weld were the only notable Republicans in the race, gave Trump a 73-7 lead. But HarrisX’s latest national poll, the first to include Walsh, puts Trump at 76 percent, Walsh at 5 percent and Weld at 3 percent. So any additional candidates who jump into the race saying they want to “stop Trump” may make it harder to do just that.
That said, even if the president doesn’t lose renomination, it would still be a bad sign for Trump if one of his challengers gets frisky and siphons off a respectable share of the primary vote.
It would put him in a category with Ford, Carter and Bush, which would bode poorly for his reelection chances. Realistically, that may turn out to be the most important takeaway from Walsh’s and other primary challengers’ campaigns.
Three criteria, 3 choices.
Maybe we should come full circle and embrace the symbolism of placing it near the Native American Reservation/Casino that is closest to the contiguous geographic center?
The geographic center of the United States is a point approximately 20 mi (32 km) north of Belle Fourche, South Dakota at 44°58'2.07622?N 103°46'17.60283?W.
It has been regarded as such by the U.S. National Geodetic Survey (NGS) since the additions of Alaska and Hawaii to the United States in 1959.
Map showing the locations of the U.S. geographic center of area, mean center of population, and median center of population, 2010 (U.S. Census Bureau)[1]
This is distinct from the contiguous geographic center, which has not changed since the 1912 admissions of New Mexico and Arizona to the contiguous United States, and falls near the town of Lebanon, Kansas.
This served as the overall geographic center of the United States for 47 years, until the 1959 admissions of Alaska and Hawaii moved the geographic center of the overall United States approximately 550 mi (885 km) northwest by north.
The old marker for Geographic Center of the U.S. at Smith Center, Kansas in 1918
Because first and foremost psyops requires an operational psyche, which Trump clearly has not.
New fossil reveals face of 'Lucy' ancestor who lived almost 4 million years ago
No fossil named Rickey has been found as yet, so some splainin' yet to do.
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/new-fossil-reveals-face-lucy-ancestor-who-lived-almost-4-ncna1047431
A fossil from Ethiopia is letting scientists look millions of years into our evolutionary history — and they see a face peering back.
The find, from 3.8 million years ago, reveals the face for a presumed ancestor of the species famously represented by Lucy, the celebrated Ethiopian partial skeleton found in 1974.
This ancestral species is the oldest known member of Australopithecus, a grouping of creatures that preceded our own branch of the family tree, called Homo.
Scientists have long known that this species — A. anamensis — existed, and previous fossils of it extend back to 4.2 million years ago. But the discovered facial remains were limited to jaws and teeth. The newly reported fossil includes much of the skull and face.
<more>
Our ancestors were amazing - if they weren't, we would not be here....
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212417735
WASHINGTON – Sen. Lindsey Graham, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, said over the weekend that Americans are going to just have to "accept the pain" of the escalating trade war between the U.S. and China.
Graham said Sunday that notable lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said "China cheats" and Democrats, specifically, have been claiming that the U.S. should stand up to China.
"Now Trump is," Graham said during an interview with CBS's "Face the Nation." "We’ve just got to accept the pain that comes with standing up to China. How do you get China to change without creating some pain on them and us? I don’t know."
The South Carolina Republican's comments come days after markets plunged Friday after China raised tariffs on $75 billion in American products. Trump later on Friday also raised tariffs on $550 billion in goods.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/08/26/graham-says-us-must-accept-pain-trade-war/2118602001/
Click on the link at the bottom of my post and then 'read more' and you will find your way to....
Pic Of The Moment: Wednesday Wingnuts
1. We need a t-shirt with a pic of Tom Beringer from this scene in Platoon. Trump 2020 above and
Take The Pain below.
I forgot. The ten years of living dangerously?
A reasonable restriction.....
https://bottlebreacher.com/freedom-frag/?gclid=CjwKCAjwzJjrBRBvEiwA867byvAgRgcbQd2rmg1arn2wa1bXlLx6Xx5Lh-2I90vyXbSC66QdOdYD_hoCv30QAvD_BwE
FREEDOM FRAG GRENADE BOTTLE OPENER by BOTTLE BREACHER
We have truthfully claimed for several years to be home of the *most Bad Ass bottle openers on the market. We have out done ourselves again in creating the Freedom Frag Bottle Breacher. We guarantee this frag grenade bottle opener will open all of your bottles and have your friends asking if they can try it and then where they can buy one.
* I often think when looking at the wine bottle openers "don't they have a more bad ass opener than THAT?
15% of the R.E.D. Freedom Frag Sales are donated to the Navy SEAL Foundation, providing immediate and ongoing support and assistance to the Navy Special Warfare community and their families.
- Made in the USA
- Steel Casting with a Sheet Metal Spoon; uniquely different not perfectly symmetrical
- Noticeable imperfections, dents, divots and elevated ridges
- Available in 3 colors: Desert Tan, Chrome Powder and R.E.D. (remember everyone deployed)
- Do NOT take this into the airport
*Please note, our Chrome is Chrome powder coating versus a decorative Chrome like our Bottle Breachers
https://www.popsci.com/new-hand-grenade-design-for-u-s-army-in-works/
Jakarta Bureau of Tourism says to Indonesian president......'WTF?! NOT helpful.'
3.5 million people
Indonesia’s president has announced that the country will move its capital from “sinking and polluted” Jakarta (which has a population of 30 million people in its greater metro area) to an as-yet-unnamed city in “sparsely populated” East Kalimantan province on Borneo island (population 3.5 million).
The relocation will reportedly take as long as a decade and cost some $32.5 billion. [The Associated Press]
719 days
A Boeing X-37B spaceplane belonging to the Air Force set a record this week for the longest time in orbit around Earth — 719 days. Few know what it’s doing up there, however, as the mission’s details are classified. The Air Force’s description says its goals are “reusable spacecraft technologies for America’s future in space and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth.” [Gizmodo]
$30,000 party
Attorney General William Barr booked a 200-person holiday party at the Presidential Ballroom of President Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel — a party “that is likely to deliver Trump’s business more than $30,000 in revenue,” according to a contract obtained by The Washington Post. A Justice Department official said that the booking was made only after it was found that other hotels were already full up, and that the point of the party “wasn’t to curry favor with the president.” [The Washington Post]
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/significant-digits-for-wednesday-aug-28-2019/
Noooo, it's not about putting the Roadrunner INTO a safe but rather positioning him, finally and fatally, UNDERNEATH a falling safe.
And here I thought that Bugs was going to serve up some bourbon to what, slow down his spin rate? Where DID the Tasmanian Devil get that whirling dervish meme?
For bonus points, do you believe that the Tasmanian Devil could have first coexisted and, secondly, cooperated with Wile E. Coyote to secure an ACME Safe drop caper that would have actually put an end to the Roadrunner?
I knew Tasmania was near Australia, and I knew about the devil.
The same can be said for many humans.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_devil
Although it is usually solitary, it sometimes eats with other devils and defecates in a communal location.
Look at that SOB. My instinct would be to speed up to get clear of 'em.
The Tasmanian devil is probably best known internationally as the inspiration for the Looney Tunes cartoon character the Tasmanian Devil, or "Taz" in 1954. Little known at the time, the loud hyperactive cartoon character has little in common with the real life animal.[200] After a few shorts between 1957 and 1964, the character was retired until the 1990s, when he gained his own show, Taz-Mania, and again became popular.[201]
In 1997, a newspaper report noted that Warner Bros. had "trademarked the character and registered the name Tasmanian Devil", and that this trademark "was policed", including an eight-year legal case to allow a Tasmanian company to call a fishing lure "Tasmanian Devil". Debate followed, and a delegation from the Tasmanian government met with Warner Bros.[202]
Ray Groom, the Tourism Minister, later announced that a "verbal agreement" had been reached. An annual fee would be paid to Warner Bros. in return for the Government of Tasmania being able to use the image of Taz for "marketing purposes". This agreement later disappeared.[203] In 2006, Warner Bros. permitted the Government of Tasmania to sell stuffed toys of Taz with profits funnelled into research on DFTD.[204]
There is a DC Comics superhero called Tasmanian Devil who is a member of the Global Guardians team.[205] Snarl, a character in the Transformers Beast Wars storyline, had the alternate form of a Tasmanian devil.[206] Tasmanian Kid from Beast Wars II could also transform into a Tasmanian devil.[207]
I never have to add anything to the end of the Sig Digit stories, the writer is always up to the task.
IF I add anything to a post I put it in italics
7 northern white rhino eggs
This weekend, scientists in Italy took frozen sperm previously removed from two of the planet’s last living male northern white rhinos (both of whom have since died) and used it to try to artificially fertilize eggs taken from the last two living females of the species. They hope to create as many as seven embryos, with a goal of creating a herd of at least five of the animals that could be returned to their natural habit. What did you do over the weekend? [Associated Press]