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.
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.
🔥 Russia: The Kavkaz oil depot in Rostov region stored oil products for exclusive use by the Russian military.
— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) August 19, 2024
The storage tanks continue to detonate as fire expands, for 40 hours now.
The governor initially reported that all Ukrainian drones were "intercepted." pic.twitter.com/C4IztWUjCq
#Cubie would like to dispell any rumors around the oil depot fire.
— #Cubie (@MeatCubie) August 19, 2024
This is a regular cleaning operation. As everyone knows, oil is a perishable liquid that goes rancid after a while. In order to keep the supply "fresh" we must burn off the bad oil with fire, before replenishment. pic.twitter.com/Y1LkuntNxU
Inflation and interest rates tracker: see how your country compares
Valentina Romei and Alan Smith in London August 14 2024
https://www.ft.com/content/088d3368-bb8b-4ff3-9df7-a7680d4d81b2
Just 10 companies own most of America's food. Here are some of their 2023 profits:
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) August 19, 2024
Danone: $1 billion
General Mills: $2.6 billion
Mondelez: $5 billion
Unilver: $8 billion
Pepsi: $9 billion
CocaCola: $10.7 billion
Nestle: $13 billion
They can afford to stop jacking up prices.
Corruption
CREW, ACLU of Georgia and Public Rights Project object to illegal Georgia Election Board rule
https://www.citizensforethics.org/legal-action/letters/crew-aclu-of-georgia-and-public-rights-project-object-to-illegal-georgia-election-board-rule/
August 13, 2024 Updated August 19, 2024
CREW, ACLU of Georgia and Public Rights Project object to a newly proposed rule by the Georgia State Election Board (SEB) that would illegally broaden county election board members’ authority prior to election certification, under the guise of transparency.
The rule, which would allow county board members to examine “all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results,” plainly exceeds the SEB’s rulemaking authority, would invite abuse and could impose unreasonable burdens on Georgia election workers in the hectic six-day period between election day and certification.
The broad language of the rule is plainly in violation of the law and would not withstand judicial review—Georgia law does not vest power in individual members of county election boards and no Georgia statute grants even full county boards unconditional access to election documents.
Additionally, the proposed rule would invite disruption and abuse of county canvassing and certification, especially since it provides no safeguards against document requests designed to delay or obstruct the lawful certification process and does not limit access to documents containing sensitive personal information.
Already, a current member of the Fulton County Board of Registrations and Elections, Julie Adams, has burdened elections staff with demands for documents, refused to certify elections and provided no credible explanation as to why the extensive documents provided to her were insufficient—raising questions about her document demands and concerns about similar behavior at a larger scale should the rule be passed. During an election year where the concerns of election subversion are already high, the SEB should be looking to enact measures that bolster confidence in our elections, not ones that risk burdening election workers and legitimizing efforts to sabotage the certification process.
.
Don’t “LET” your wives
— WTFGOP (@DogginTrump) July 26, 2024
Oh motherfucker, all you motherfuckers are in for a rude awakening come November
Ladies, you seeing this shit? pic.twitter.com/i0b2zRWgeP
Narrated by Rosario Dawson
Greg Palast and his investigations team bust the most brazen, racist attack on voting rights yet.
The film centers on a terrible new threat this year to the right to vote: “Vigilante” challenges by self-appointed vote-fraud hunters, not government officials, who’ve are targeting well over one million to challenge and block the counting of their ballots. Most suspiciously, the vast majority of vigilante targets are young voters and voter of color.
As shown in our trailer (watch below), our film features African-American career officer Maj. Gamaliel Turner whose vote was challenged and blocked by a GOP official who actually dresses up like vigilante Doc Holliday, including loaded six-guns. The Major was challenged because he’d been temporarily assigned by the military to a California based.
Here’s the statistic that should scare all defenders of democracy. Our early “ACLU” version of the film exposed the 88 vigilantes, challenging voters only in Georgia. Now, the Trump-sponsored group True the Vote has gone from 88 vigilantes to over 40,000 “volunteers” in 43 states!
Executive Producers: Martin Sheen, George DiCaprio
Producer: Academy Award Winner Maria Florio
🚨 They're at it again. The GA Election Board will meet at 9AM today to discuss another rule change, which could further delay certification of results.
— Greg Palast (@Greg_Palast) August 19, 2024
The real danger this November is a quiet coup carried out under cover of the arcane rules of “reasonable” certification. https://t.co/455FwD6r2t pic.twitter.com/D5q7jCs7nd
Republicans are central in an effort to rescue Cornel West’s ballot hopes in Arizona
https://apnews.com/article/republican-lawyers-cornel-west-arizona-88cd1b4f698715a3071a93b5e1526074
By DAN MERICA and BRIAN SLODYSKO
Updated 8:02 AM MDT, August 19, 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — A group of lawyers with deep ties to the Republican Party scrambled over the weekend to rescue an effort to get independent presidential candidate Cornel West on the Arizona ballot, offering one of the clearest examples yet of the GOP’s extensive involvement in furthering the left-wing academic’s long-shot bid.
As a deadline loomed to submit the needed paperwork, two well-known Republican lawyers in the state and a GOP attorney working to get West on the ballot elsewhere learned that two of their would-be electors — Jerry Judie and Denisha Mitchell — were not interested in fulfilling the role. The electors’ decisions led to a barrage of text messages and phone calls looking to keep the operation alive. When those efforts failed, two Republican lawyers visited Judie’s and Mitchell’s homes, seemingly seeking to persuade them to reconsider.
The Arizona Secretary of State’s office said Monday that West did not file the paperwork needed to get on the ballot before Saturday’s deadline.
The work by the GOP attorneys appears to be part of a broader effort by conservative activists and Republican-aligned operatives across the country to push West’s candidacy and subvert the integrity of the ballot in the months leading up to November’s presidential election. Republicans are eager for West to be a spoiler in the 2024 presidential election by syphoning away voters who would probably support the Democratic nominee otherwise.
“I am officially no longer interested in being elector,” Judie, a 62-year-old retired park ranger for the city of Phoenix, said when an operative working to get West on the ballot texted him and asked if he could meet at a local hotel to sign another document.
Judie told The Associated Press he had been a fan of West since his 20s, drawn to his ideas and passion. He was excited earlier this year when he learned that West was running for president and pursued a chance to be an elector to the progressive’s campaign. Judie began to sour on that idea, however, when President Joe Biden ended his campaign last month, making way for Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic nominee.
“When she was in the driver’s seat, that changed the game,” he said. “That changed everything for me, my family, and the people that I know. It was like magic.”
To qualify for the ballot, Arizona law requires independent presidential candidates to put forward a slate of electors who would cast Electoral College voters for them. After Judie informed the operative that he was no longer interested in representing West’s campaign, he received a series of phone calls, according to call records provided to the AP, from people working on the effort, along with a visit to his house by two Republican lawyers hoping to get West on the ballot.
“I am sorry ... we have been calling the crap out of you,” Paul Hamrick, an attorney who has been involved in getting West on the ballot in other states, said in a voicemail to Judie obtained by the AP. “The reason we have been trying to get in touch with you is we found out in the last 24 hours we have got to have everybody sign a letter that Dr. West has also signed.”
Hamrick then relayed that he knew Judie no longer wanted to be an elector. “Is there anything you can tell me about that or has anyone encouraged you not to be?” Hamrick asked.
Judie said two people came to his door looking to speak with him after he received the voicemail. He didn’t answer or talk to them — assuming they were looking to speak about West — but someone Judie knows spoke with them and they identified themselves as Amanda Reeve and Brett Johnson, two well-known lawyers from the law firm Snell & Wilmer.
Reeve is a former Republican state representative and Johnson is a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association. Reeve and Johnson’s firm has done extensive work for the Republican National Committee, GOP candidates and conservative groups, according to campaign finance disclosures.
Republicans and their allies have worked to get West on the ballot in Arizona, Wisconsin, Virginia, North Carolina, Nebraska, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maine, all in the hope that West will help boost former President Donald Trump’s chances of winning later this year by pulling support from Harris. West does not need to win a state to serve as a spoiler candidate — a few thousand votes in battleground states could be decisive.
Reeve also called Mitchell after the AP reported Friday that she has signed an affidavit stating that she did not agree to be a West elector and never signed her name to a filing, alleging that the document that was filed in her name was forged.
“We need to get this information in as soon as possible,” Reeve said to Mitchell in a Friday voicemail in which she said her firm represented “the Cornel West campaign.”
“It’s due tomorrow morning,” Reeve stressed.
On Saturday, two people — one resembling Johnson and another Reeve — visited Mitchell’s home, according to footage from her doorbell camera obtained by the AP. The two rang the doorbell and left, not speaking with anyone in the home.
Neither Johnson nor Reeve responded to calls or emails requesting comment for this story.
Mitchell said after the AP story was published Friday — in which said she “didn’t even know what an elector was” and that the paperwork was “forged” and riddled with errors — she received a call from someone who had been handling the West petition work. She missed the call, but when she called back, she was connected to Hamrick.
Hamrick, an Alabama-based attorney, said the allegations against him were “false” when reached Sunday night, but declined to comment further.
Mitchell’s and Judie’s cases are the latest examples of the dubious tactics used to get West on ballots nationwide. The campaign did not respond to a request for comment Sunday.
Mitchell, who had been drawn to West’s progressive message before she learned Republican-aligned operatives were working to get him on the ballot, told the AP on Friday that she was unaware who filled out the paperwork in her name, calling it “forged.” She and her husband previously worked for a signature-gathering contractor called Wells Marketing, collecting signatures to get an initiative on the ballot that would raise the wages of tipped workers in Arizona.
Wells Marketing, a mysterious Missouri limited liability company, was also leading the effort to gather the signatures needed to get West on the ballot in Arizona.
The company is tied to Mark Jacoby — a brother-in-law of a Wells Marketing official, according to social media posts — who was listed on state documents as the employer of one signature gatherer working to get West on the ballot. Jacoby is a Republican-aligned operative with a reputation for using deceptive tactics. He was convicted in 2009 of voter registration fraud, according to court records.
Jacoby also worked in 2020 to gather signatures to place the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, on the presidential ballot. Democrats widely viewed the campaign as an effort to hurt President Joe Biden’s popularity with Black voters. Jacoby did not answer a call Friday at a number listed to him and his voicemail inbox was full.
Judie, reflecting on his chaotic last three days, said he was left with an uneasy feeling, especially because he still respects West.
“They had only one reason they were doing it,” Judie said. “Just to get him on the ballot so some votes would go to him and not go to other people.”
A spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, declined to comment Sunday. The Arizona secretary of state’s office did not respond to a request for comment. It is unclear whether West qualified for the ballot in Arizona.
.
DID YOU KNOW that two top funders of NPR - the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Omidyar Network Foundation - gave millions to a conservative PAC that supports Project 2025? Maybe that's what happened to NPR. https://t.co/fcBEu7t5bA
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) August 18, 2024
If red states (MAGA states) are more dependent on the federal government, how do they figure Democrats are communists or socialists? pic.twitter.com/k122AJGzvx
— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) August 19, 2024
On this day in history Aug 18th, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified. This was after a very long battle failing to be the 16th, 17th, and 18th Amendment originally introduced in 1878. Many republicans and Project 2025 would like to see it scrapped.
How the AP covered ratification of the 19th Amendment
https://apnews.com/article/cabinets-ap-top-news-constitutions-laws-8732ddd9804cb74b2ba965e3b6c014dc
.
This chart illustrates the dynamic. Americans like to say they favor "less government spending." But get specific and almost nothing makes the cut. Hence it's very hard for presidents and congresses to enact budgets that lower red ink—and easy for opponents to undercut attempts. pic.twitter.com/ArAlSF49Ri
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) August 16, 2024
Child rapist ex-cop’s 10-weekend US jail sentence called ‘epitome of injustice’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/16/rochester-police-officer-child-rapist-jail-sentence
Prominent advocate for child abuse survivors said sentence for former New York officer Shawn Jordan is ‘dangerous’
Ramon Antonio Vargas
Fri 16 Aug 2024 04.00 EDT
Last modified on Fri 16 Aug 2024 04.02 EDT
It “is the epitome of injustice” as well as “dangerous” for a judge to have given a sentence of 10 weekends in jail to a former upstate New York police officer who pleaded guilty to raping a 13-year-old girl before his forced resignation, according to a prominent advocate for child sexual abuse survivors.
“This sentence is the epitome of injustice and a dangerous nod to child sexual predators letting them know, ‘No worries, we won’t go too hard on you,’” Kathryn Robb, the national director of the Children’s Justice Campaign at the Enough Abuse organization, said on Thursday. “This little girl will be imprisoned by her memories for life, while [the rapist] loses a mere 20 days of his liberty.”
Robb, an attorney, has helped state legislatures across the US reform laws addressing child sexual abuse. She added that “rape of a child is one of the most horrendous crimes with lifelong effects on the victim”. And she maintained that the case centering on ex-Rochester, New York, police officer Shawn Jordan was unconscionable for anyone who believed in the ongoing need for stiffer criminal punishments and more substantial civil damages in instances of child molestation.
Jordan, 40, pleaded guilty to second-degree rape and forcible touching in March in connection with allegations that he had molested a girl who was age 13 in 2022 in South Bristol, a community in Ontario county, New York.
It was one of two separate criminal cases filed against Jordan that involved an underage victim. In the other matter, which remained unresolved as of Thursday, authorities in Monroe county, New York, charged him in the spring of 2023 with exposing himself to a 16-year-old girl over a video call.
Under a plea agreement struck in the Ontario county case, state judge Kristina Karle sentenced him on Wednesday to spend 10 weekends in jail as well as 10 years on probation. Karle also ordered Jordan to register as a sex offender and pay fines.
The mother of Jordan’s acknowledged victim implored Karle to send him to prison, saying he had “ruined” her daughter’s life and “doesn’t deserve to be out on the street”, the New York ABC affiliate WHAM reported.
According to Rochester news outlet WROC, Karle approved Jordan’s plea deal after telling him: “I hope you feel shame, I hope you feel remorse, and I hope you never ever hurt another child.”
While the judge reportedly said Jordan’s admitted actions left her with “no words”, she approved his plea agreement.
The president and founder of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (Rainn), Scott Berkowitz, joined Robb in expressing disappointment in the outcome of Jordan’s case in Karle’s courtroom.
“A sentence of 10 years in prison, or more, would make a lot more sense than one of 10 weekends,” Berkowitz said. “He’ll be out in a few months, while she will be dealing with the consequences of his crime for many years to come.
“That is not justice.”
The local assistant district attorney Kelly Wolford told WHAM, the New York NBC affiliate WHEC and other outlets that she was “not entirely satisfied with the sentence” given to Jordan. But, despite the brief corresponding punishment for him, Wolford said her office proceeded with Jordan’s plea agreement after considering “the impact of actually having to testify on the victim of this crime”.
“She’s a child, and she was going to have to face her accuser in the courtroom,” Wolford said.
She added: “When I was given the opportunity to consider whether or not we’d take a guilty plea – absolutely, all day, in a circumstance like this.”
Jordan rushed to his car without answering any questions after his sentencing, according to WHEC.
A spokesperson for prosecutors in Monroe county – which includes Rochester – told WHEC that Jordan did not have a court date for his pending case there. That case was the one that triggered a suspension and his subsequent resignation from the Rochester police department.
.
Postmenopausal AND childless AND a cat lady. Triple threat. #HarrisWalz2024 pic.twitter.com/tMfWSQfbXh
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) August 15, 2024
He's either rooting for Harris with the banners behind Vance's speeches, or rooting for Biden with showing headlines like this. I saw one pic I can't find now that the lighting was too dark and it looked like they were going for a Bela Lugosi theme. Lets say that it didn't put Vance in a very good light. lol
The Wall Street Journal headline on the newspaper in this photo reads: Inflation Hits Lowest Level Since 2021 https://t.co/uFyn8AtzcB
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) August 15, 2024
What Harris Learned Investigating Russian Interference
On the Senate Intelligence Committee, Harris had a front-row seat to Moscow’s meddling.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/09/kamala-harris-senate-intel-committee-russia-election-interference-investigation/
By Amy Mackinnon, a national security and intelligence reporter at Foreign Policy.
August 9, 2024, 9:51 AM
Three days after Kamala Harris was sworn into the Senate in early January 2017, the U.S. intelligence community released a stunning declassified report that concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an influence campaign meant to sway the previous year’s presidential election in favor of Donald Trump and undermine faith in U.S. democracy.
The revelations spurred three high-profile investigations into Russian election interference by lawmakers and special counsel Robert Mueller and would come to dominate headlines for much of the Trump presidency.
As a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which conducted a wide-ranging three-year investigation of Moscow’s interference efforts, Harris had a front-row seat to reams of highly classified material about Russian intelligence operations targeting the United States. The experience left a long-standing impression on the vice president, according to current and former aides who characterize it as a highly formative experience that left her with few illusions about Moscow’s intentions.
“I see those first few weeks as pivotal, because those were both her and Donald Trump’s first few weeks in Washington,” said Halie Soifer, who served as national security advisor to Harris in the Senate.
A Republican source familiar with Harris’s time on the committee said that during the Russia investigation, members were exposed to “borderline raw intelligence” on Moscow’s interference efforts, which they described as an eye-opening experience, even for long-standing members of the committee. “I think it was sobering for everyone,” said the source, who requested anonymity to share their insights.
The Senate’s final report, which spanned over 1,000 pages across five volumes, is generally regarded to be the most detailed look at aggressive Russian intelligence efforts to make inroads with the Trump campaign and to sway the election in favor of the former president.
The report did not reach a conclusion as to whether the Trump team had actively sought to collude with Moscow for its own advantage.
As part of its investigation, the committee reviewed over 1 million pages of documents and interviewed more than 200 witnesses.
While much of the day-to-day work of the probe was carried out by committee staffers, senators from both sides of the aisle have described Harris as a quick study whose advice on questioning witnesses was sought by seasoned committee staff, according to a 2019 BuzzFeed article.
In public hearings on both the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, on which she also sat, Harris developed a reputation for her prosecutorial style as she interrogated senior members of the Trump administration.
“Members get out of it what they put into it, and she put a lot of time and energy and effort into it,” said the Republican source.
Harris and Walz Can Remake U.S. Foreign Policy
The VP pick may help Harris reinvest in diplomacy—and abandon America’s reflex for military interventionism.
Former aides to the vice president have spoken of how her background as a lawyer also informs her view on foreign policy, placing particular emphasis on the importance of international laws and norms. In a 2019 interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, Harris described the U.S. role in building a “community of international institutions, laws, and democratic nations” as America’s biggest foreign-policy achievement since World War II.
While the House Intelligence Committee Russia investigation was beset by political infighting, the Senate investigation remained bipartisan and largely free of public drama—something Harris has spoken fondly of.
“Every week, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee would walk into that wood-paneled room—no cameras, no public, no devices,” said Harris during a memorial service last year for the late California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who had been a long-standing member of the committee.
“Senators of both parties who would take off their jackets and literally roll up their sleeves, putting aside partisanship to discuss what was in the best interests of our national security,” she said.
Harris served on the Intelligence Committee, which, alongside the House panel, provides oversight of the sprawling U.S. intelligence community, throughout her four years in the Senate.
In 2018, Harris backed an amendment that would compel law enforcement to obtain a warrant before accessing the communications of American citizens inadvertently gathered under a controversial program that enabled intelligence agencies to conduct wide-ranging foreign electronic surveillance.
She also used the perch to stress the need for greater investments in election security in light of Russia’s attempt to sway the vote, co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation on election cybersecurity.
.
Harris campaign sees volunteer surge
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/florida-playbook/2024/08/15/harris-campaign-sees-volunteer-surge-00174133
By KIMBERLY LEONARD, GARY FINEOUT and KIERRA FRAZIER
08/15/2024 07:00 AM EDT
Hidden-camera video shows Project 2025 co-author discussing his secret work preparing for a second Trump term
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/15/politics/russ-vought-project-2025-trump-secret-recording-invs/index.html
Vought, an author of #Project2025, said his group "was secretly drafting hundreds of executive orders, regulations, and memos that would lay the groundwork for rapid action on Trump’s plans if he wins, describing his work as creating 'shadow” agencies'..."https://t.co/vNABlfSnCD pic.twitter.com/LhJ2oTN4dT
— Susan Bordson (@susanbordson) August 15, 2024
5 people charged in Matthew Perry's death, including 'Friends' actor's doctor, assistant
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2024/08/15/matthew-perry-death-arrests-ketamine-friends/74249342007/
KiMi Robinson
Taijuan Moorman
Jay Stahl
USA TODAY
Five people have been charged in connection to "Friends" star Matthew Perry's death from "the acute effects of ketamine" last October.
During a Thursday press conference, Martin Estrada, the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, announced a shocking "number of charges against the five defendants," including a doctor, 42-year-old Salvador Plasencia, and Perry's live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, 59.
"The defendants in this case knew what they were doing was wrong," Estrada said.
"It is a drug that must be administered by medical professionals, and the patient must be monitored closely. That did not occur here," Estrada added during the conference, saying that after Perry's death, "these defendants tried to cover up what they did."....................................................................
.
In Rural Tennessee, Domestic Violence Victims Face Barriers to Getting Justice. One County Has Transformed Its Approach.
https://www.propublica.org/article/tennessee-scott-county-domestic-violence-guns
Reporting Highlights
Deadly Consequences: Tennessee consistently has one of the highest rates of women killed by men, and most of those homicides are committed with a gun.
Unique Barriers: Victims in rural areas have access to fewer resources, while misconceptions about domestic violence and attitudes about guns can make it harder to disarm abusers.
Unlikely Leader: One county on the Kentucky border has emerged as a model for how to keep domestic violence cases from escalating.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
.
‘Greedflation’ caused more than half of last year’s inflation surge, study finds, as corporate profits remain at all-time highs
BYIrina Ivanova
https://fortune.com/2024/01/20/inflation-greedflation-consumer-price-index-producer-price-index-corporate-profit/
.
Making headlines on the financial networks.
Right now, Americans pay two to three times more for prescription drugs than they would anywhere else.
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 15, 2024
But the Biden-Harris Administration beat Big Pharma. And after months of negotiations, Medicare has reached agreements to lower the price for 10 of the highest-cost drugs. pic.twitter.com/eGVtAtJsVO
NEW: Candy giant Mars, Inc. is buying Kellanova, maker of Pop Tarts, Pringles, and Eggo, for $36 billion. It's the largest merger of the year.
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) August 15, 2024
The new snack conglomerate will be large enough to "resist any push from supermarkets for lower prices," Bloomberg reports.
Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday is expected to call for a federal ban on price gouging to lower grocery prices and everyday costs for Americans in her first economic policy speech in Raleigh, North Carolina.https://t.co/s9ytrrd7kT
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) August 15, 2024
🚨NEW from @CMSeeberger: As Harris delivers big SAVINGS on drug costs, Trump's Project 2025 spells disaster for seniors.
— Alex Wall (@AlexBWall) August 15, 2024
📈Higher drug costs for 18.7 million people
📈$400 in lost savings for seniors next year
📈$900 tax HIKE for typical senior householdshttps://t.co/vlODNA7PI5 pic.twitter.com/Uf0kHqbRUX
VP debate is on.
Breaking news (The Hill): The vice presidential debate between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) is set for Oct. 1 on CBS.
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) August 15, 2024
Legal bills and greasing witnesses come first.
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) August 15, 2024
Trump's North Carolina speech went predictably off the rails. Can he even spell 'economy'?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/08/14/trump-rally-north-carolina-rambling-economy-harris-crime/74798514007/
Of course no intellectual presidential campaign speech on the economy is complete without an extended riff on immigrants and rape.
Rex Huppke
USA TODAY
Former president and self-described stable genius Donald Trump let a small crowd in a small venue in North Carolina know what was in store for them Wednesday: “We’re talking about a thing called the economy.”
Ah, yes. That thing is called the economy. I’ve heard of it.
He continued: “We’re doing this as an intellectual speech.”
Good. Many Republicans have encouraged Trump to stop babbling and hurling insults and steer his campaign onto some kind of coherent message.
Trump's economic speech went off the rails predictably fast
“You’re all intellectuals today,” Trump said at the 2,400-seat Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville. “Today we’re doing it and we’re doing it right now and it’s very important, they say it’s the most important subject. I think crime is right there, I think the border is right there, personally. We have a lot of important subjects because our county has become a third-world nation, we literally are a third-world nation. We’re a banana republic in so many ways, and we’re not going to let that happen because we’re starting a free fall.”
Hoo boy. Trump spends less time on track than a decommissioned train car. And so it was that his highly intellectual speech on a thing called the economy became, predictably, a dumb speech on a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with the economy.
Like making fun of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s laugh.
Trump proves again in North Carolina that insults are all he has
“For nearly four years Kamala has crackled as the American economy has burned,” Trump said, presumably mispronouncing “cackled,” because he struggles with words. “What happened to her laugh? I haven’t heard that laugh in about a week. That’s why they keep her off the stage, that’s why she has disappeared.”
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have been barnstorming states lately, doing far more events than Trump and drawing crowds significantly larger than the one that showed up Wednesday to hear him occasionally reference the economy.
“That’s the laugh of a crazy person, I will tell you,” Trump droned on. “She’s crazy.”
Labeling Harris crazy and mocking the way she laughs is the kind of thing Republicans keep advising Trump not to do. But he couldn’t help himself, later calling Harris an “incompetent socialist lunatic.”
'Kamabla'?Trump isn't just losing the election, he's losing his mind.
Trump's understanding of how the economy works seems dodgy at best
When he did deign to talk about the economy, Trump said things like this, referencing the brief stock market drop of last week, something he had labeled the “KAMALA CRASH!!!”:
“Many people say the only reason the stock market is up is because people think I’m going to win, did you ever hear that? But there was one day a couple weeks ago when they weren’t thinking that.”
OK, first off, nobody thinks Trump has anything to do with the stock market being up. And then to think last week’s drop – from which the market quickly recovered – happened due to a brief belief that Harris might win the election? That makes me wonder if Trump can even spell “economy.”
An economic speech about ... rape?
Of course, no intellectual presidential campaign speech on the economy is complete without an extended riff on immigrants and rape, so Trump said: “Rape and murder, rape and beatings, rape and something else, and sometimes just immediate killing. These people are brutal. These are people that came out to the toughest jails anywhere in the world all over the world, and we can’t take them.”
Migrants commit crimes at far lower rates than U.S. citizens, but, you know … THE ECONOMY!
Speaking of the economy, while Trump was occasionally mentioning the word – providing no concrete policy proposals other than specious claims he will singlehandedly fix everything – the U.S. inflation rate hit its lowest point in three years.
The economy is simply not the disaster Trump and the GOP claim
And that gets to the heart of one of Trump’s biggest problems. The economy is doing reasonably well. Unemployment is low, the stock market has been breaking records and inflation continues to drop. Back in April, Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi told CNBC: “The U.S. economy is leading the way for the global economy. It’s driving the global economic train.”
So, calling America a third-world country while taking childish swipes at the vice president’s laugh and fear-mongering about an immigrant crime wave that doesn’t exist? That’s not going to do much to swing voters who have been swinging in Harris’s direction since she took over the top of the Democratic ticket.
Republicans have been frustrated with the Trump campaign, and they know he needs to show voters something that will help him regain footing. His intellectual speech on that thing called the economy didn’t show anyone anything.
It was just another stumble from an aging candidate who can’t see that his schtick has gotten old.
.
The GOAT @Simone_Biles just added one more accomplishment to her already amazing career pic.twitter.com/IzWOwk6IeN
— Brad Williams (@funnybrad) August 14, 2024
GREEN JOBS BOOM
Trump’s Weird “Nuclear” Moment With Elon Musk Gives Kamala an Opening
Trump and J.D. Vance love to say the climate agenda is a job-killer. But a new report shows the opposite is true—and here’s how Harris can flip that script.
https://newrepublic.com/article/184855/trump-weird-nuclear-moment-elon-musk-kamala-opening
Yep. Trump wants to take away the green energy jobs that Biden/Harris are creating, and continue letting China dominate the technological frontier while the GOP sticks us with a dying fossil fuel infrastructure
— XLProfessor (@XLProfessor) August 14, 2024
There is a both a jobs and a foreign policy element here for Dems https://t.co/qNXzleFE4Y
Ukraine seizes more land in a week than Russia managed in eight months
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/08/13/ukraine-seizes-more-land-in-week-than-russia-eight-months/
Kyiv said it controls 74 settlements in border region as Moscow turns attention from eastern Ukraine
Joe Barnes 14 August 2024 • 5:24am
Ukrainian servicemen near the Russian border. It is thought the seized territory could be used as a bargaining chip in any peace talks Credit: Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters
Ukraine has captured more Russian land in a week than the Kremlin’s forces have managed in more than eight months of cross-border warfare.
Kyiv said on Tuesday it had taken control of 74 settlements in Kursk, a border region in southern Russia.
By Monday evening, Ukrainian forces were in control of around 1,000 sq km (386 sq miles) of Kursk, according to Oleksander Syrsky, Kyiv’s top general.
The Telegraph was not able to verify that figure and independent analysts put the total lower.
The operation has drawn Moscow’s attention away from eastern Ukraine, where Russia has been slowly advancing for months.
Before Kyiv’s cross-border attack, the Russian army had reached within a short distance of Pokrovsk, a key garrison city in the Donetsk region, and was close to capturing the towns Chasiv Yar, Toretsk and Niu-York.
The Kursk incursion by Ukrainian troops
Institute for the Study of War
Ukraine’s offensive into Russia enters its first full day with reports of Kyiv’s forces taking Russian prisoners
However, a Telegraph analysis of Russian gains found that it has taken more than eight months to capture 994 sq km of territory.
Moscow has not been able to capture a 1,000 sq km swath of land in any month from Dec 1 2023 to the present day.
During that time, Moscow has lost around 300,000 troops, killed or wounded, according to estimates published by the Ukrainian military.
Russian gains in Ukraine since 1st December 2023
It has fought through heavily fortified Ukrainian positions, using slow-moving infantry advances and destructive artillery barrages.
Those grinding advances sped up with the February 2024 capture of Avdiivka, an industrial city in Donetsk. That paved the way for the capture of more territory, as Ukrainian forces suffered from ammunition shortages amid a stalled US aid package.
Russia has captured less land than Ukraine's Kursk gains in eight-and-a-half months of fighting
DeepState / State Emergency Service of Ukraine
Despite supplies starting to reach Kyiv’s front-line positions, its outgunned and outnumbered troops have been unable to put a stop to the Russian offensive.
Russia’s most successful month on the battlefield came in May 2024 when its forces opened up a new front, launching a cross-border invasion into Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region.
However, Moscow only managed to capture around 250 sq km, which at the time was its biggest gain in 17 months.
Ukrainian servicemen operate a tank in the Sumy region near the border with Russia on Aug 12 2024 Credit: Roman Pilpey/AFP via Getty Images
Putin’s troops were able to advance six miles into the region before Kyiv managed to stabilise the situation.
The Kursk operation has boosted morale in the Ukrainian army after months of battlefield losses.
It is not clear how long Ukraine will seek to hold onto its newly seized land over the border in Russia, which could become a bargaining chip in future peace talks.
Russia has begun rushing reinforcements into the region, with Putin vowing to drive his Ukrainian enemy from Russian soil.
On Tuesday Apti Alaudino, who commands the Chechen Akhmat special forces unit, said Russia had started to retake some of its territory.
.
Was stimmt eigentlich bei Euch nicht, @CSU @cducsubt?!?
— The Vïtruvïan Fella (@vitruvianfella) August 14, 2024
Bissi Faschismus besprechen mit #HeritageFoundation und #Project2025 ?!?@Markus_Soeder https://t.co/wpuBIg3Gsn
Biden-Harris Administration announces ARPA-H awards to develop novel technologies for precise tumor removal
https://arpa-h.gov/news-and-events/arpa-h-announces-awards-develop-novel-technologies-precise-tumor-removal
PSI performer teams aim to deliver groundbreaking tools enabling surgeons to successfully remove tumors through a single operation
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced the first eight teams selected by its Precision Surgical Interventions (PSI) program to receive awards. The agency’s commitment is not expected to exceed $150 million to develop novel technologies that will allow surgeons to remove cancerous tumors with higher accuracy. If successful, these technologies will revolutionize surgeries, dramatically reducing rates of repeat procedures. They can also reduce instances of unintentional injury to critical structures such as nerves, blood vessels or lymph ducts. These imaging tools may also be used to improve other types of surgeries.??
“From the start, ARPA-H has had a singular purpose: to drive breakthroughs in?health, including cancer. Revolutionizing surgical techniques?is a?critical step forward towards improving detection and treatment of cancer, and improving the overall patient experience in the process,” said HHS Secretary?Xavier Becerra. "The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to reducing the cancer death rate by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years. This goal is becoming more and more achievable?thanks to breakthrough treatments and innovative technologies like these.”?
“With the Precision Surgical Interventions program, we're seeking to fundamentally change how surgery is done. PSI and its technical performer teams are committed to developing tools that reduce the rate of reoperations or accidental damage to critical structures,” said Ileana Hancu, Ph.D., ARPA-H PSI Program Manager.??
ARPA-H selected these awardees to develop methods and techniques to improve cancer detection and increase the visibility of critical anatomical structures during surgery. PSI will pursue two technical areas: cancer localization (technical areas 1-A and 1-B) and healthy structure localization (technical area 2).?? ...................................................
.
It was the graphic I believe with that one that was the main signal, not the actual text. Will catch some to read farther, but many don't go past the headline or first view. Only meant for the ones that sitting on the edge and confused. Not really going to effect anyone else. Not sure how many there are in any particular battleground area, the republican machine doesn't really either. They're just doing anything and everything and something like that is really cheap and minimum effort to do. Their hope is to catch whatever votes they can and create as much turmoil as they can. Why we have to win by a LOT, nothing close in order to get through what the republicans are planning and fomenting, which is political unrest.
.
There's many people that do, that's how advertising works. It is designed to view it, even if it is viewed for only enough time to delete or send it into the junk file. Proven fact with advertising whether political or product, that multiple times of the same message sells it. That's what criminal trump and his republicans use, stating a lie hundreds, even thousands of times making people believe it. Hence the election denial big lie and all the other bs they spew. Their disinformation war against America and democracy has worked. Too many gullible people out there.
In a close race, even a small amount of votes can make the difference. Why they are doing it in battleground states. The republicans are trying to get the results of the election close enough to not certify and create havoc in order to take over and put their guy in.
.
Active measures (Russian: ???????? ???????????, romanized: aktivnye meropriyatiya) is a term used to describe political warfare conducted by the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. The term, which dates back to the 1920s, includes operations such as espionage, propaganda, sabotage and assassination, based on foreign policy objectives of the Soviet and Russian governments.[1][2][3] Active measures have continued to be used by the administration of Vladimir Putin.[4][5]
Description
Active measures were conducted by the Soviet and Russian security services and secret police organizations (Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, KGB, and FSB) to influence the course of world events, in addition to collecting intelligence and producing revised assessments of it. Active measures range "from media manipulations to special actions involving various degrees of violence". Beginning in the 1920s, they were used both abroad and domestically.[3]
Active measures includes the establishment and support of international front organizations (e.g., the World Peace Council); foreign communist, socialist and opposition parties; wars of national liberation in the Third World. It also included supporting underground, revolutionary, insurgency, criminal, and terrorist groups. The programs also focused on counterfeiting official documents, assassinations, and political repression, such as penetration into churches, and persecution of political dissidents. The intelligence agencies of Eastern Bloc states also contributed to the program, providing operatives and intelligence for assassinations and other types of covert operations.[3]
Retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin, former head of Foreign Counter Intelligence for the KGB (1973–1979), described active measures as "the heart and soul of the Soviet intelligence":[6]
Not intelligence collection, but subversion: active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs.[6]
According to the Mitrokhin Archives, active measures was taught in the Andropov Institute of the KGB situated at Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) headquarters in Yasenevo District of Moscow. The head of the "active measures department" was Yuri Modin, former controller of the Cambridge Five spy ring.[3]..... ..........................................
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/active_measures/videos/1294844483871
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/active_measures#where-to-watch
J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk Named in Cyberbullying Lawsuit Filed by Algerian Boxer Imane Khelif After Olympic Win (EXCLUSIVE)
https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/jk-rowling-elon-musk-imane-khelif-lawsuit-1236105185/
By Elsa Keslassy, Alex Ritman
J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk have both been named in a criminal complaint filed to French authorities over alleged “acts of aggravated cyber harassment” against Algerian boxer and newl crowned Olympic champion Imane Khelif.
Nabil Boudi, the Paris-based attorney of Khelif, confirmed to Variety that both figures were mentioned in the body of the complaint, posted to the anti-online hatred center of the Paris public prosecutor’s office on Friday.
The lawsuit was filed against X, which under French law means that it was filed against unknown persons. That “ensure[s] that the ‘prosecution has all the latitude to be able to investigate against all people,” including those who may have written hateful messages under pseudonyms, said Boudi. The complaint nevertheless mentions famously controversial figures.
“J. K. Rowling and Elon Musk are named in the lawsuit, among others,” he said, adding that Donald Trump would be part of the investigation. “Trump tweeted, so whether or not he is named in our lawsuit, he will inevitably be looked into as part of the prosecution.”
Khelif — who on Saturday won the Olympic gold medal in the women’s 66 kilogram boxing competition — spent much of the 2024 Olympics in Paris at the center of a noisy and unpleasant dispute about her gender eligibility that reverberated around the world. Despite being born female and not identifying as transgender or intersex — and being backed by the International Olympic Committee, who asserted “scientifically, this is not a man fighting a woman” — Khelif faced a torrent of accusations and abuse over her gender.
Most of the attacks came via social media, particularly on X/Twitter, and the controversy was escalated when high-profile figures stepped into the fray. In one message to her 14.2 million followers, Rowling posted a picture from Khelif’s fight with Italian boxer Angela Carini, accusing the former of being a man who was “enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head.” Musk, meanwhile, shared a post from swimmer Riley Gaines that claimed “men don’t belong in women’s sports.” The X owner co-signed the message by writing: “Absolutely.” Trump posted a message with a picture from the fight with Carina accompanied by the message: “I will keep men out of women’s sports!”
Boudi said that although the complaint mentions names, “What we’re asking is that the prosecution investigates not only these people but whoever it feels necessary. If the case goes to court, they will stand trial.”
Boudi also claimed that while the lawsuit was filed in France, “it could target personalities overseas,” pointing out that “the prosecutor’s office for combating online hate speech has the possibility to make requests for mutual legal assistance with other countries.” He added that there were agreements with the U.S. equivalent of the French office for combating online hate speech.
Logan Paul was also among those who attacked Khelif on social media, posting on X following her win against Carini: “This is the purest form of evil unfolding right before our eyes. A man was allowed to beat up a woman on a global stage, crushing her life’s dream while fighting for her deceased father. This delusion must end.”
Paul later deleted the post and admitted that he “might be guilty of spreading misinformation.”
But for Bouli, such apologies — including those that Khelif has received personally from prominent figures who tweeted derogatory comments — wouldn’t change anything regarding the investigation. “The lawsuit is filed and the facts remain,” he said.
As for X, Boudi said the complaint is aimed at the authors of social media posts and not the platforms themselves. “It’s the responsibility of lawmakers to issue sanctions to platforms, not ours,” he said. But he did note that cyber harassment cases were now being taken much more seriously by judicial authorities and that, in some cases, “there are prison sentences.”
Khelif’s coach, Pedro Diaz, told Variety that the bullying Khelif endured during her run in the Olympics “incredibly affected her” and “everyone around her.”
“The first time she fought in the Olympics, there was this crazy storm outside of the ring,” said Diaz, who runs Miami-based Mundo Boxing Gym and started training with Khelif in February 2023. “I had never seen anything so disgusting in my life,” added the coach, who has participated in the training of 21 Olympic champions prior to the Algerian boxer. Diaz said he asked Khelif to refrain from looking at social media so she “wouldn’t lose her focus on winning the gold medal.”
“She’s so smart and has such an amazing motivation,” he said, adding that her gold medal win “felt like the most rewarding victory of my career as a coach.”
.
Someone just leaked this to me.
— Kevin Gaughen 🇺🇸 (@gaughen) July 31, 2024
SAG PAC, a conservative political action committee, is sending these text messages to voters in Pennsylvania, a swing state.
SAG PAC is trying to siphon votes away from Kamala by painting pro-Trump antivaxx whack job RFK Jr. as a “progressive.” pic.twitter.com/iEHTe1vOZ6
To Texas With Love: What Russia's support of TEXIT tells us about the frayed nature of U.S. politics
Russian bots are among the most vocal supporters of 'TEXIT' on social media. It's not the first time they've spread online comments on Texas politics.
https://www.sacurrent.com/news/to-texas-with-love-what-russias-support-of-texit-tells-us-about-the-frayed-nature-of-us-politics-33862864
By Michael Karlis on Thu, Feb 22, 2024 at 9:11 am
TNM President Daniel Miller delivers a petition demanding Texas Gov. Greg Abbott call a special session to discuss the possibility of TEXIT.
After 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called Russia the United States' "No. 1 foe" during a CNN interview, he was subjected to mockery for the duration of the campaign.
During one debate with President Barack Obama, the incumbent even jabbed Romney over the remark, suggesting it showed he was out of touch with current events. "The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back," Obama chided.
Fast forward to the present, and few reasonable people would dispute Russia's threat to U.S. democracy and global stability. However, it's not in the form of global atomic annihilation, despite reports last week that Russia has developed a so-called "space nuke."
Instead, experts argue the greatest threat Russia poses to the U.S. is as a sower of discord. Putin's government and its allies operate "troll farms" spreading disinformation to the American electorate, helping push what once were fringe conspiracy theories and ideologies into mainstream politics.
"If our enemies are flooding social media with all of this stuff which is not just inaccurate but harmful to democracy, then you get people, like the far-right, who are now pro-Putin. They don't care about the Khashoggi murder, and now they think authoritarianism is good," said Carolyn Gallaher, a professor at American University's School of International Service who studies far-right extremism and Russian election interference.
"American democracy is at stake," she added.
Now, as Russia prepares to pit Americans against one another amid a new election cycle, it's taken an interest in Texas politics, specifically, the push by some for Texas to secede from the rest of the United States. Indeed, the once-fringe secessionist movement has broken into mainstream news cycle like the Kool-Aid Man through a brick wall. Hell, the question of whether Texas could become a breakaway republic even graced a recent Newsweek cover.
Although the Texas Nationalist Movement, or TEXIT, is real and made up of flesh-and-blood Texans, some of its most avid online supporters appear to be Russian trolls. What's more, experts including Gallaher warn that those trolls are more concerned with weakening the United States' status as a global superpower than seeing the success of a Second Republic of Texas.
North American Fella Organization
A U.S. Army veteran who uses the handle @FluteMagician on social media platform X was among the first to recognize irregularities in the accounts of the most vocal TEXIT supporters. Last month, he pieced together that "TEXIT" was a keyword search frequently used by accounts suspected of spreading Russian propaganda.
The veteran, who asked the Current not to use his real name out of fear of retribution from far-right extremists, didn't work in intelligence during his time in the military. Even so, he said he was trained to detect behaviors that appear random but are actually coordinated.
He's also a member of the North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO), an organized social media group dedicated to countering Russian propaganda and disinformation, especially related to that country's invasion of Ukraine.
"What I discovered is Russian trolls operate using keyword searches based on their specific mission or current events that Russians want to give attention to," he explained. "I found that 'TEXIT' was one of the keyword searches, and I just worked backward through the trolls to find out who they were connected to."
The accounts the online NAFO sleuth targeted had odd syntax in their messages, which frequently voiced support for TEXIT while also making out-of-place comments about the greatness of Russia. One such X account he suspects of being of Russian origin is @TexanIndSup, or Texas Independence Supporters.
In one tweet defending itself against being a Russian operative posing as a TEXIT supporter, @TexasIndSup wrote, "How does Russia have any connection to Texas independence when Texas isn't even seen as an important thing to Russia? Russia is also not the aggressors in the Ukrainian-Russian War."
In another tweet from the account, @TexasIndSup encouraged the U.S. media to stop covering the Russia-Ukraine conflict and instead focus on issues "within its homeland." Another tweet from the account railed against the Democrats' "Pro Women Rights" platform.
"We will never support the whole 'Pro Women Rights' thing because 'Pro Women's Rights' is just code for 'Pro-abortion," the account stated.
The account @TexasIndSup didn't respond to the Current's inquiry about its country of origin.
The NAFO member's investigation of the @TexasIndSup account is one of dozens of examples of alleged Russian bots interacting with and supporting fringe right-wing movements he's chronicled on his X profile.
Privyet, fellow Texans
Such online investigations might be easy to dismiss as conspiracy theories of their own had the Russian government not shown a prior interest in Texas politics — and specifically the idea of secession.
A U.S. Senate report on Russian interference during the 2016 presidential campaign found Russian bots actively promoting TEXIT, along with an array of right-wing conspiracy theories. Since then, some of the same conspiracies have become mainstream talking points of the Republican Party.
The 2018 Senate report zeroed in on a public Facebook page called "Heart of Texas" and the Instagram account @rebeltexas. Both were created and managed by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company researchers described as a troll farm.
"You just have these people sitting in a building, they speak English, and they are reading and monitoring what's going on in English-speaking social media in the United States, and they are creating these narratives and flooding platforms with shit," American University's Gallaher said.
The shit flooding the Heart of Texas Facebook page — which picked up hundreds of thousands of users during the 2016 election cycle — included "visual clusters included with a wide swatch of shapes of Texas, landscape photos of flowers and memes about secession and refugees," according to the Senate report.
In May 2016, the operators of the Facebook page upped the ante in its effort to spread potential unrest, according to the Senate report. Using the platform, they organized a rally outside a mosque in Houston to "Stop the Islamification of Texas." Not only did the Russians behind the Heart of Texas page organize an Islamophobic protest, but another Russian-sponsored group, the United Muslims of America, helped create a counter-protest, the report notes.
In other words, both sides of a protest at a Texas mosque in 2016 were brought there, at least in part, thanks to the work of the Russian government, according to investigators.
During that same election cycle, the Russian-backed @rebeltexas Instagram account shared posts calling for an insurrection against the federal government, according to the Senate report. What's more, @rebeltexas parroted TEXIT talking points and drew similarities between the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) and Brexit. That account also tried to organize an in-person TEXIT rally, which ultimately ended up being unsuccessful, according to the federal report.
More recently, TNM President Daniel Miller also likened his group's push to break Texas off from the United States to Brexit. However, in a recent conversation with the Current, he said his organization isn't funded or supported by the Russian government.
Mr. Miller goes to Moscow
Just the same, Miller acknowledged that his group isn't without past ties to the Kremlin. Representatives from the TNM attended two separate political conferences in Russia in 2015 and 2016, Miller said.
The Dialogue of Nations conferences attended by TNM officials were billed as safe spaces where separatist groups from around the world — Irish republican party Sinn Féin and the Catalonian Independence Party among them — could speak about their movements and learn from colleagues abroad.
The conferences were funded by a state grant from Russia's National Charity Fund, founded in 1999 by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and fueled by donations from state-owned public companies and oligarchs, British-based newspaper The Guardian reports.
Miller said TNM gave a presentation at one of the conferences about Article 1 Section 2 of the Texas Constitution — his group's argument for legal secession. The conference paid for his group's lodging and food but nothing more, he added.
"That literally is the sum total of what was paid [by the conference], and people go around, and they spread this nonsense that somehow we got this grant money and all this kind of nonsense," Miller said. "They covered our food and they covered a hotel. That's it, just like any other speaking engagement or any other conference."
Miller adamantly maintains that following the 2016 conference in Moscow, he and his group have cut off contact with the Russian organizers and haven't spoken with them since.
Despite Miller's insistence that TNM has ended its contact, Russian politicians have made no secret that they wholeheartedly support the movement.
In 2019, now-defunct progressive news site ThinkProgress reported that TNM's flag hung in the office of Alexander Ionov, a prominent Russian businessman and a leader of that country's Anti-Globalization Movement. This month, former Russian president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, vocalized his support for Texas secession.
"Establishing a People's Republic of Texas is getting more and more real," Medvedev tweeted, adding that Gov. Greg Abbott's recent standoff with the White House over immigration enforcement could result in a "bloody civil war" that could cost "hundreds of thousands of lives."
Although Miller strongly refutes assertions that the TNM is connected with the Russian government, he doesn't necessarily oppose Moscow politicos' support for Texas secession.
"What we care about is making Texas independent," he said. "I don't care about who that makes happy or who that upsets."
click to enlarge A pickup emblazoned with pro-TEXIT insignia is parked outside a Garden Inn in San Antonio ahead of a TNM meeting. - Michael Karlis
A pickup emblazoned with pro-TEXIT insignia is parked outside a Garden Inn in San Antonio ahead of a TNM meeting.
From far-right to mainstream
It would be inaccurate to label TNM as a Russian front to disrupt American tranquility. The group's ranks include real Lone Star State residents who genuinely believe a Second Republic of Texas will emerge.
On Feb. 13, 70 or so of those supporters drove to the State Capitol, some from as far away as Lubbock and Houston, to watch Miller drop off a petition with 140,000 signatures verified by the Texas GOP demanding that Abbott call a special session to discuss Texas secession. TNM officials said they verified that all the signatures came from registered Texas voters.
One of those who made the trip to the Capitol was Dean Ross, whose said his X handle @DeanRoss34 has been accused of being operated by a Russian bot. During a conversation with the Current, he confirmed that he's an actual Texan and one of many eager to see the state return to its days as an independent republic.
Still, the NAFO member the Current spoke to for this story maintains that some of the accounts Ross interacts with via X are Russian bots. The online sleuth argues that adding that some legitimate TEXIT supporters may not even realize their followers or those commenting on their posts are doing so on Russia's behalf.
That's a problem, American University's Gallaher said.
Russian bot mills not only create misinformation but also actively promote false or divisive content via "coordinated link sharing," when one bot shares something from another bot or real person, according to the professor's research. If they share the information enough times, the rhetoric can seep into mainstream political discourse.
Indeed, according to the 2018 U.S. Senate report on Russian election interference, the Facebook page Heart of Texas specifically emphasized and promoted unproven claims that fraudulent votes cast by migrants helped the Democratic Party during the 2016 election cycle.
With Abbott's backing, the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature in 2021 passed a sweeping "election security" bill which civil-rights advocates have called one of the most restrictive pieces of voting legislation enacted in recent history. Lawmakers, including the governor, defended the proposal with debunked claims of rampant voter fraud.
Gallaher also points to the Republican Party's sudden fascination with child sex trafficking as something that was talked into existence via online chatter around the far-right Qanon conspiracy mill.
"The whole child sex trafficking thing was not an issue until Qanon made it an issue," she said. "Qanon came out of 8chan and that corner of the internet. But then you start seeing this getting repeated over and over again, and a lot of the accounts that were repeating it over and over again were Russian."
Indeed, Nathan Buchanan, a Republican running for Bexar County Sheriff this election cycle, told TNM members during a February meeting of the group's San Antonio chapter that stopping child sex trafficking was among his top priorities should he be elected.
"It would be harder to [spread disinformation] before social media and it would be harder if we had some unifying place that produced news," Gallaher said.
"That's not to say that the news has always been completely partisan, but we could debate. Those parameters have collapsed, and I don't think the Russians created it, but they boosted it."
.
MUST WATCH: My investigation of the conspiracy cops in Millersville, Tennessee, gets even stranger. Asked about the reason for my investigation of his department, the chief says: "The only thing I can think is: you are a pedophile or you are covering for somebody that is." https://t.co/TPR9QkuLGb pic.twitter.com/iEuBDrB61u
— Phil Williams (@NC5PhilWilliams) August 13, 2024
The GOP’s War on Retirees Is Just Blatantly Ripping Seniors Off
https://newrepublic.com/article/184814/gop-war-retirees-ripping-off-seniors-savings
Some financial advisers are paid per trade. They cost retirees millions. And two right-wing judges and some GOP members of Congress are totally in their pockets.
Thom Hartmann @thom_hartmann
Recently, a retired woman seeking advice wrote in to MarketWatch’s financial adviser, saying: “I was ‘financially set’ after my husband died. But my current adviser lost $500,000 over the last few years, and then a new adviser said my portfolio was ‘a mess’ and wants 1.25 percent to fix it. What’s my move?”
She was the victim of an unethical financial adviser hustling and decades of churning commission-based products that essentially transferred her money into his pocket. As she told MarketWatch, “The adviser was paid per trade.”
President Biden wants to do something about this. “This is about basic fairness,” Biden said when announcing a new rule to protect people like her. “People are tired of being played for suckers.” He added: “Bad financial advice by unscrupulous financial advisers driven by their own self-interest can cost a retiree up to 1.2 percent per year in lost investment. That doesn’t sound like much, but if you’re living long, it’s a lot of money. Over a lifetime, it can add up to 20 percent less money when they retire. For a middle-class household, that can amount to tens of thousands of dollars over time.”
But Republicans have declared war on Biden and middle-class people who want to save for retirement. Odds are you’ve never heard of their shock troops: Judge Jeremy Kernodle and Judge Reed O’Connor, federal judges appointed to Texas districts by Donald Trump and George W. Bush respectively.
For reference, both are hard-core right-wingers: Kernodle was one of the 13 federal judges who pledged not to hire clerks from Columbia University after the student demonstrations there against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza; O’Connor struck down the Gun Control Act of 1968 and tried to take down Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
But even if you’ve never heard of them, they’re trying their best to have a huge impact on your ability to comfortably retire when the time comes, or on how you can live off your retirement funds if you’re already past 65.
Millions of Americans use investment advisers to manage their retirement funds; the total that could be affected by these judges’ actions is, according to The Washington Post, more than $770 billion.
While there’s a wide variety of companies and financial products (insurance, annuities, 401Ks, simple investment accounts, etc.) that people use to invest their retirement funds, the advisers and brokers who handle them on your behalf basically fall into two categories: those who are looking out first and foremost for your interests and those who’re looking out first and foremost for ways they can siphon off your funds into their own pockets.
Those advisers and brokers who are looking out for you are called “fiduciaries,” an industry and legal term that requires them to put your interests ahead of their own. Typically, this means they don’t sell products that pay them a commission but instead work on a simple and transparent fee basis.
Most of those agents and companies that aren’t fiduciaries are working in what could be described as the Wild West of finance: They’re constrained by fraud and embezzlement rules but can easily shave off part of your savings with every transaction they make on your behalf simply by putting you into products that pay them a commission.
And those commissions aren’t chicken feed. Just for Americans who put their money into annuities, if all brokers and agents selling them were required to act as fiduciaries, the people buying the annuities would save over $32 billion over the next decade.
Commissions on insurance-based products can run as high as 70 percent of the first year’s payment, and can hit 10 percent on annuities. Advisers who churn your investments can drain your funds before you realize what’s happened to you, and there’s usually no recourse to get your funds back.
It comes down to America having a regulated investment industry where it’s against the law to rip off its customers by hustling high commission products versus a country where every American is at the mercy of unscrupulous investment advisers who are getting rich by shaving a few points in commissions off every trade or financial product bought or sold on our behalf.
To deal with this problem and make the United States a safe place for average citizens to save for retirement, the Biden Labor Department put into place earlier this year a set of rules that would require most investment advisers and insurance brokers to act as fiduciaries and put their customers’ interests first.
The industry immediately sued before Judges Kernodle and O’Connor, who, three weeks ago, put the fiduciary rules on hold pending appeals.
Democrats are on the side of average American consumers and retirees, which is why the Biden Labor Department put those rules into place requiring a huge chunk of the investment industry to operate as fiduciaries.
Republicans, on the other hand—including the two judges mentioned earlier—claim to believe in a mythical so-called “free market” where giant corporations and sleazy brokers can rob us of our retirement and then make campaign contributions to the GOP with some of that money.
Contributions, for example, to Republican Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, whose top contributor according to OpenSecrets.org is Apollo Global Management and whose top two donating industries are “retired” and “securities and investment.” Of the $2,938,046 in cash-on-hand Foxx has for her campaigns, a mere $38,896 came from individual under-$200 donors.
Foxx, in exchange for this retirement industry largesse, has sponsored legislation in the House of Representatives that would permanently bar the Labor Department from putting fiduciary requirements into law.
While shilling for the investment industry, Foxx pretends she’s defending the little guy—a popular Republican scam—saying that requiring investment advisers and brokers to put the customer first and not shave commissions off their retirement funds would “eliminate options for working-class Americans, reduce their ability to retire and limit their access to financial advice.”
And arguably that’s true. Fiduciary requirements do “eliminate” the option of buying products that rip you off and also “limit” your access to bad financial advice that will leave you poorer than when you started. But, to Foxx’s concern, they also prevent the industry from extracting that estimated $33 billion in fees and commissions from your pension, IRA, 401k, etc.
Republicans in the House are also going to try to zero out of the Labor Department’s funds money that could be used to enforce the rules if they survive in the courts: Expect that to be part of the GOP’s threat to shut down our government this fall if they don’t get their way.
Every day, it seems, brings new examples of the stark differences between Democrats and Republicans, this merely being the most recent.
Of course, there won’t be a peep about this on Fox “News” or right-wing hate radio, keeping GOP voters safely and quietly in their ignorant little bubble.
The rest of us, however, can see what’s going on with Republican scams at every level—from taxation to climate policy to protecting our retirements.
.
Thanks to @MeidasTouch for putting my clip in their new documentary “Against All Enemies” and recapitulating the research I’ve been doing for four years.
— Jim Stewartson, Counterinsurgent 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙🎈 (@jimstewartson) August 13, 2024
However, credulously platforming criminal lunatic Stanley McChrystal is pretty weird tbh.#ArrestMikeFlynn https://t.co/tdCONsdxw7 pic.twitter.com/r4P347ipA0