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newstfionline · 5 months

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Monday, December 4, 2023

Air Traffic Controllers Pushed to the Brink (NYT) One air traffic controller went into work drunk this summer and joked about “making big money buzzed.” Another routinely smoked marijuana during breaks. The incidents were extreme examples, but they fit into a pattern that reveals glaring vulnerabilities in one of the most important protective layers of the nation’s vaunted aviation safety system. In the past two years, air traffic controllers and others have submitted hundreds of complaints to a Federal Aviation Administration hotline describing issues like dangerous staffing shortages, mental health problems and deteriorating buildings, some infested by bugs and black mold. Air traffic controllers, who spend hours a day glued to monitors or scanning the skies with the lives of thousands of passengers at stake, are a last line of defense against crashes. The job comes with high stakes and intense pressure, even in the best of conditions. Yet the conditions for many controllers are far from ideal. A nationwide staffing shortage—caused by years of employee turnover and tight budgets, among other factors—has forced many controllers to work six-day weeks and 10-hour days.

Kissinger’s unwavering support for brutal regimes still haunts Latin America (AP) In Chile, leftists were tortured, tossed from helicopters and forced to watch relatives be raped. In Argentina, many were “disappeared” by members of the brutal military dictatorship that held detainees in concentration camps. It all happened with the endorsement of Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. secretary of state who died Wednesday at age 100. As tributes poured in for the towering figure who was the top U.S. diplomat under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, the mood was decidedly different in South America, where many countries were scarred deeply during the Cold War by human rights abuses inflicted in the name of anti-communism and where many continue to harbor a deep distrust of their powerful neighbor to the north. “I don’t know of any U.S. citizen who is more deplored, more disliked in Latin America than Henry Kissinger,” said Stephen Rabe, a retired University of Texas at Dallas history professor who wrote a book about Kissinger’s relationship with Latin America. “You know, the reality is, if he had traveled once democracy returned to Argentina, to Brazil, to Uruguay—if he had traveled to any of those countries he would have been immediately arrested.”

One dead and two injured in Paris attack near the Eiffel Tower (Reuters) One German tourist died and two others were injured after a man attacked tourists in central Paris near the Eiffel Tower on Saturday evening in what President Emmanuel Macron described as “a terrorist attack”. Police quickly arrested the 26-year-old man, a French national, using a Taser stun gun, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters on Saturday. The suspect had been sentenced to four years in prison in 2016 for planning another attack, was on the French security services’ watch list and was also known for having psychiatric disorders, the interior minister added.

For eastern Ukrainians, the ordeal of war is entering its second decade (Reuters) Yevhen Tkachov, a volunteer aid worker and devout Pentecostal from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, spent much of his life travelling to the world’s war zones helping civilians in need. Nearly 10 years ago, his own homeland erupted into conflict, and the war never went away. “Right now I think it makes the most sense to help my own people,” said the 54-year-old, who is also a qualified veterinarian, after making his daily dash to deliver aid to the residents of Chasiv Yar, a once-sleepy, tree-lined town of 12,000 where he grew up. Like most people from Chasiv Yar, Tkachov has moved further from the fighting though some remain. All of them have lived through nearly a decade of war, a reminder that for millions in eastern Ukraine the conflict has rumbled on since 2014, long before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February last year grabbed the world’s attention. Ukraine and its Western allies say Russia infiltrated eastern Ukraine with fighters and intelligence operatives to stage a coup in Donbas in 2014 which Moscow subsequently supported with regular troops. Russia denied those allegations at the time, describing the events as a local rebellion against a government it accused of hostility to Russian speakers, which most Donbas residents were.

Unusual Names Can Complicate Life in Japan (NYT) Growing up, all Yuni Matsumoto wanted was to fit in. But his name made that hard. It was highly uncommon in Japan and, on top of that, essentially unreadable as written. Middle school classmates ridiculed him. The bullying got so bad that he eventually dropped out of school. Mr. Matsumoto, 24, had what is known as a kira-kira—meaning “shiny” or “glittery”—name. A growing number of Japanese parents are choosing these unconventional names, often in hopes of making their children stand out in a country where pressure to conform is strong. Mr. Matsumoto’s parents were driven by that same desire for uniqueness, but to him, his name was a shackle. This spring, he went to family court and had it changed to a common one, Yuuki, written in a way anyone could read. Japan is far from the only country where unusual names are on the rise. But Japanese children with unconventional names face societal and practical challenges unique to their country and its written language. Citing those difficulties, the government is now moving to rein in the practice, while insisting it is not closing off space for parents to be creative.

Strong earthquake that sparked a tsunami warning leaves 1 dead amid widespread panic in Philippines (AP) A powerful earthquake that shook the southern Philippines killed at least one villager and injured several others as thousands scrambled out of their homes in panic and jammed roads to higher grounds after a tsunami warning was issued, officials said Sunday. The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the quake Saturday night had a magnitude of 7.6 and struck at a depth of 32 kilometers (20 miles). The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said it expected tsunami waves to hit the southern Philippines and parts of Indonesia, Palau and Malaysia, but later dropped its tsunami warning. In Japan, authorities issued evacuation orders late Saturday in various parts of Okinawa prefecture, including for the entire coastal area, affecting thousands of people. Thousands of residents stayed outside their homes for hours in many towns due to the earthquake and tsunami scare, including in some that were drenched by an overnight downpour, officials in the Philippines said. Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr said that initial reports indicated there were no major damages except for two damaged bridges and pockets of power outages.

Freed Palestinians Were Mostly Young and Not Convicted of Crimes (NYT) Israel released a total of 240 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in exchange for 105 hostages freed by Hamas during a weeklong pause in hostilities, an arrangement that diplomats had tried to extend before it collapsed into fighting on Friday morning. A New York Times analysis of data on the Palestinians released showed that a majority of them had not been convicted of a crime. There were 107 teenagers under 18, including three girls. Another 66 teenagers were 18 years old. The oldest person released was a 64-year-old woman. Israel detained all of the people on the list for what it said were offenses related to Israel’s security, from throwing stones to more serious accusations like supporting terrorism and attempted murder. More than half of the cases were being prosecuted in Israeli military courts, which try Palestinians in the occupied West Bank but not Israeli settlers who live there. Nearly all Palestinians tried in Israeli military courts are convicted, and those accused of security offenses can be imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial.

U.S. officials warn Israel to protect civilians as airstrikes resume in southern Gaza (Washington Post) Top U.S. officials warned Israel to protect civilian lives as it resumed aerial attacks on Gaza after a week-long pause in fighting, including in the south, where the majority of the Strip’s population is now crowded after Israel instructed people in the north to evacuate. “Too many Palestinian civilians have been killed,” Vice President Harris said Saturday. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he “personally pushed Israeli leaders to avoid civilian casualties,” saying that a failure to do so would drive Palestinians “into the arms of the enemy,” undermining its war efforts against Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military was determining “safe areas” for Gazan civilians. Since the pause ended, Israel’s military has hit hundreds of targets in Gaza, including dozens in Khan Younis in the south, according to the Israel Defense Forces. At least 193 people in Gaza have been killed since the fighting resumed after the pause, the Gaza Health Ministry said. At least 15,207 people have been killed in Gaza and 40,652 wounded since the war began, the Gaza Health Ministry said. At least 1,200 people were killed in Israel during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

Netanyahu’s goal for Gaza: “Thin” population “to a minimum” (Intercept) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tasked his top adviser, Ron Dermer, the minister of strategic affairs, with designing plans to “thin” the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip “to a minimum,” according to a bombshell new report in an Israeli newspaper founded by the late Republican billionaire Sheldon Adelson. The outlet, Israel Hayom, is considered to be something of an official organ for Netanyahu. It reported that the plan has two main elements: The first would use the pressure of the war and humanitarian crisis to persuade Egypt to allow refugees to flow to other Arab countries, and the second would open up sea routes so that Israel “allows a mass escape to European and African countries.” Israel Today and other Israeli media are also reporting on a plan being pushed with Congress that would condition aid to Arab nations on their willingness to accept Palestinian refugees. The plan even proposes specific numbers of refugees for each country: Egypt would take one million Palestinians, half a million would go to Turkey, and a quarter million each would go to Yemen and Iraq.

Commercial ships hit by missiles in Houthi attack in Red Sea, US warship downs 3 drones (AP) Three commercial ships in the Red Sea were struck by ballistic missiles fired from Houthi-controlled Yemen on Sunday and a U.S. warship shot down three drones in self-defense during the hourslong assault, the U.S. military said. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Houthi rebels, who are backed by Iran. The attacks marked an escalation in a series of maritime attacks in the Mideast linked to the Israel-Hamas war, as multiple vessels found themselves in the crosshairs of a single Houthi assault for the first time in the conflict. In a statement, U.S. Central Command said the attacks “represent a direct threat to international commerce and maritime security. They have jeopardized the lives of international crews representing multiple countries around the world.” The Carney, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, has already shot down multiple rockets the Houthis have fired toward Israel so far in the war. It hasn’t been damaged in any of the incidents and no injuries have been reported on board.

#headlines #news

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ysbnews · 2 years

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Ukraine Atrikes Another Russian Base — Mariana Budjeryn

🎬 Times Radio | 8/18/2022 | ⏱️ 11’37”span / 240K views

"Ukrainians are targeting Russian ammunition depots, air bases and various command and control centres, they're being targeted, hit and destroyed." — Mariana Budjeryn discusses the spate of attacks on Russian occupied Ukraine and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

Comment By Kurt Callaghan: Love the patriotism and fighting spirit of the Ukrainians. Would be awesome if we cared when other countries are subjected to wars of aggression.

Comment By SpicyAl3000: We do — turns out a lot of people don't want us involved in their countries though, there to help against a common enemy or not. Ironically, Ukraine would absolutely welcome any and all Western help, and make great use of said help. But agreed, being universally nice is good :)

Andre Savard: If a burglar would occupy your house, would you accept to negociate the right to stay in your house in some parts the burglar would allow you to stay? Negociation to legitimize what Russia is doing would pave the way to more "military operation" from Russia.

andrew: The only way to scare away the burglar is to do like a convenient store owner will do, pull out your own gun and fight back till they run away or die.

Scott Davis: Ukraine hits Russian military bases and ammo depots; Russia hits Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

Mark Bezeredi: Exactly. One would assume that if the Russians were capable of doing similar operations, they would. So their only capability is to fire unguided munitions at a city.

Bernard Warr: I noticed Russia attacks shop malls and homes, Ukraine attacks Military bases and Ammunition store’s?

Emilia Teerds - de Jonge: Why are people so inpatient for ending this war, while Ukraine is still in the disadvantage? It’s only 6 month give the Ukrainian the chance to Win. So please give them the weapon’s to fight this evil!

Robin Claassen: There are a couple of qualitative differences between the attacks on Ukraine by Russia since 2014, and other wars since World War 2:

1. It's an attack on a democracy.

2. It's an attack by one country with the purpose of conquering territory form another country.

Both of those are huge violations of international norms than make this war exceptional. Were we to allow Russia to be successful in its aims in this war, we would be allowing a breakdown of the international rules-based order?

Robin Claassen: We'd be going back to a 19th Century system in which more powerful countries were allowed to impose their wills on less powerful countries. That's not a world that anyone wants to go back to. That's what makes this war so important and exceptional, and requires that we all to come Ukraine's defense. The attack on Ukraine is an attack on all free peoples.

William Neacy: Every day that goes by is another day the strength and capabilities of the Ukrainian armed forces grows. The opposite is true on the Russian side. Assuming Western support continues to ramp up as it has, there's only one way this thing ends. I think it may happen a lot faster than people think.

Harbin Tiger: The Russians fight like it is 1945, the Ukrainians like it is 2022.

Philip Dunne: Crimea is occupied territory... less than a minute in and already the distinctions are being misrepresented.

yllib lee: The worst for Russia would be a full retreat caused by Ukraine, no control just fleeing soldiers

Esra Erimez: Slava Ukraine. A way out of this is for Russia to get out of Ukraine.

Watch Times Radio on YouTube ▶️ https://youtu.be/w4l_McMoAfY

#times radio #ukraine #war news #sevastopol #crimea peninsula #russian air force #air base #russia is losing #ukraine will win #slava ukraini #🇺🇦

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whentherewerebicycles · 2 years

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some scattered midday thoughts:

student situation continues to worry me though we have done all we can at this point (in terms of directing her to resources and strategizing with the other people involved). feels like it might be a mental health crisis that is spiraling. hoping she is okay.

finished the first draft of the slides for the talk and it made me really emotional! our students have done such amazing work over the past three years and it's so affirming/heartening to get to sit down and really spend some time reflecting on what the program has accomplished (and then thinking about how to communicate that to a large audience unfamiliar with our work). I am still working a little bit on the phrasing of the talk, so don't quite have it perfectly articulated yet... but the general framing i am using is about the importance of experiential social justice-oriented education in a historical moment that is so marked by crisis and unpredictability (god these kids have spent some of their most formative years weathering a pandemic, a series of environmental disasters, major political movements against police brutality, concerted efforts to roll back a whole range of civil and political rights, uhhh ongoing national and global threats to democracy, etc etc). and in this climate it's SUPER important to cultivate students' sense of agency/autonomy, to give them practical tools and skills to meaningfully effect change in their communities, to connect them to robust networks of people who are doing meaningful advocacy work, and just to do everything we can to nurture their sense of themselves as people who are capable of working hard to build a more just world.

anyway as i was working on the talk i was like oh god i actually really really believe this!!! i really believe that the antidote to generational despair, disengagement, and pessimism is helping kids learn how to actually deeply and meaningfully engage. like giving them the tools to go beyond social media activism to actually doing hard rewarding meaningful work in collaboration with others. like is it going to fix everything? no. but is it going to feel a hell of a lot better than just doomscrolling endlessly and reblogging angry or cynical rhetoric divorced from real action on social media? oh yeah for SURE.

also like everyone else in the world i am glued to the news from ukraine and feel like i have just been holding my breath for days. i keep getting super emotional about zelensky's courage and also am just grieving for the ukrainians who are being killed or wounded or displaced, and for all these very young russian soldiers who have been sent into a war that they didn't ask to fight, and for the poor and middle class in russia who are going to experience devastating economic consequences because of the decisions of ultra rich and power-hungry men. what a fucking mess and what a completely avoidable tragedy for everyone involved. gahhh okay i am trying to compartmentalize the time i spend thinking about it so i can continue to do my work but it is really a Lot. the past six or seven years have really been a Lot.

#edit: oof I think this student is really spiraling #trying to decide what to do #we have an advice line but they’re not particularly helpful #and student is at home with family I think

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you-can-be-what-you-want-to-be · 2 years

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"the guy who supported nazis" okay so... Biden in Ukraine right this very moment. But instead of fighting the Actual Imperial Fascist War-Machine, the liberals (much like ur sensibilities) are supporting nazis "freedom" to bomb russo-supporting Ukrainian countries. Biden is an imperialist, and even a "socialist" US candidate like Bernie would have STILL been an imperialist (and in his voting record has been and continues to be). White 'leftists' learn what neo-colonialism is challenge, otherwise ur 'activism' is useless to the third world and indigenous ppl everywhere.

Ok, so trump wouldn’t have done that? We should’ve just let him win?

I’m not saying Biden is a good guy. I’m not saying this is in anyway ok. I AM saying that I haven’t been given another option than this guy or the dude who called an antisemitic Mob very fine people and wouldn’t denounce the proud boys and tried to kill democracy with his cult who would’ve also still done the bad things Biden is doing on top of that is worse than Biden.

What’s not clicking? What is your alternative suggestion? Are you personally making an effort to over throw the government or are you just sending people angry asks for voting against the guy who incites your neighbors to violence and tells them drinking bleach will stop Covid? Are you doing anything to make the world better on government level? Do you have a place and time to meet you for the guillotine where we change things or do you just feel morally superior doing nothing bc you think no choice is better than making things even slightly better, and would rather sit in a burning house then try to relegate it to a few rooms because you’re upset it’s not out all the way? Are your ideas of morality more important than the actions that make the world a little less worse?

Maybe, just maybe, among one guy bombing and another doing the same thing but he’s also gunning down everyone he sees on the way and also is bombing more places and not allowing refugees and encouraging the people where he lives to think that POC are like animals, maybe one of these is worse than the other. But who can say?

Apparently not me, or the Mexicans who don’t have to deal with the wall being built anymore or being told that they’re like animals, or the Muslims who are allowed to seek refuge here again, or the Jews who had to listen to him praise neo nazis, or the disabled people who are finally have medical supplies prices being capped. I didn’t know all of these people were white leftists. And yeah, Biden is still making life fucking miserable for a lot of these people still, but I dare you to try and tell me it’s worse than trump made it.

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bopinion · 3 years

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2021 / 16

Aperçu of the Week:

Mein Freund der Baum ist tot

Er fiel im frühen Morgenrot

(Alexandra)

My friend the tree is dead

He fell in the early morning

Bad News of the Week:

Christmas 2019, my daughter had wished that instead of another gift from her "budget", it was better to plant trees. And I was proud of it. Of her selflessness and of the trees themselves - after all, the fresh green stands for life and sustainability, breaks down man-made carbon dioxide and gives us oxygen in return. It provides habitat for other species and is also beautiful to look at. Every tree is worth so much more than a cell phone tower. So much for that.

It's no wonder, then, that reforestation is seen as a crucial key in the fight against climate-damaging gases. But two aspects are currently shaking this hope to the core: First, the existing forests are in poor condition. The latest "Forest Condition Report" published by the Thünen Institute states that only one fifth of the tree crowns in German forests are still healthy. And more than a third of the ill trees fall into the highest damage category. The main reasons are nitrogen oversaturation, pests, (less robust) monocultures and climate change itself - with storms in winter and drying out in summer.

Trees extract the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the air store carbon in their wood and release oxygen. To grow, they need nitrogen, which acts like a fertilizer. But "a lot helps a lot" does not apply here. The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) observed around 100,000 coniferous and deciduous trees in 23 European countries for 15 years and analyzed their growth. The result: too much nitrogen, if more water and nutrients are not available at the same time, makes for significantly weaker, less resistant trees that also bind less carbon dioxide. This overturns an important factor in all calculations of how humankind still has a chance of sufficiently slowing climate change.

The recipe of quickly planting lots of trees is therefore only partially effective. If only because of the very long cycles involved. It takes 2,000 young trees to replace one adult tree. And they need several decades to grow up. That's why the Bavarian state forests are already relying on so-called climate-tolerant varieties such as serviceberry or weeping cherry, which are supposed to cope better with the much warmer climate in 100 years' time than the currently dominant spruce. It's just too bad that we won't have time to wait for "Forest 2.0." We need to protect the forest of today - today.

In 1968, the pop singer Alexandra sang the hit song "My friend the tree". In the song, she mourns a tree that was cut down to make way for a house. You could almost say that nowadays mankind has more subtle ways of killing trees. Which, in turn, could be interpreted as man's indirect attempt at suicide. Not for nothing is it said to "saw off the branch you're sitting on" when someone endangers themselves out of ignorance. Today is the international "Day of the Tree". But also tomorrow our friend the tree needs our help. Since it benefits ourselves, this should actually not be difficult.

Good News of the Week:

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is one of the most professional politicians ever. The inventor of "controlled democracy" could well be placed in the same row as Julius Gaius Caesar, because both are gifted geostrategists. And, of course, ruthless. Putin gets away with it again and again. The annexation of Crimea in violation of international law? Without any real consequences. The support of the Syrian war criminal Bashar Al-Assad? Without any real consequences. The digital sabotage of free elections abroad? Without any real consequences. The illegitimate condemnation of regime critics? Without any real consequences. Fueling the civil war in Ukraine's Donbas? Without any real consequences. The suppression of liberal media? Without any real consequences.

I could think of many more. After all, Putin disregards democracy seemingly every week. All the more astonishing that I was positively surprised twice in the week that is coming to an end. First, by unexpected participation in Joe Biden's online climate summit. Although that could be taken as a concession to multilateralism. Second, by the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Ukrainian border. Although that could be understood as a concession to Ukraine's sovereignty.

A rare touch of mild of age? Perhaps even a rethinking away from isolationism? Certainly not. Putin does nothing without self-interest. But he apparently does not automatically put his personal machismo above the raison d'état. Opportunism does not necessarily have to be negative. Perhaps the realization that cooperation does not necessarily mean renouncing sovereignty is beginning to take hold. That would be good news.

Personal happy Moment of the Week:

My twelve-year-old son is definitely addicted to anything with a screen. Whether it's Netflix on the TV or Roblox on the iPad - the main thing is digital. And now he also wants a Switch for his birthday. Of course, the fact that distance learning also takes place on a display doesn't make it any better. So I was all the happier when he now apparently decided to listen to the family predisposition to creativity. Last week I was supposed to tell him one of my favorite musicians. Sting was playing. So all right. Half an hour later, he presents me with a pencil drawing of Gordon Sumner. And his mother's significant other got a portrait for his birthday yesterday that morphs from him to Mr. Spock - because he's a Star Trek fan. Again, in pencil. On paper. So totally analog. Nice...

As I write this...

...I am once again drinking far too much espresso. Freshly ground, of course, from Fair Trade organic Arabica coffee beans. Pleasure apparently often comes with a bouquet of unreason ;-)

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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Trump’s Choice: National Security or Political Obsession https://nyti.ms/2KhfkX5

Trump’s Choice: National Security or Political Obsession

The impeachment inquiry is the first to involve an issue of geopolitical gravity: Whether the president was undercutting American national interests — containing Russia — to bolster his campaign.

By David E. Sanger | Published Nov. 14, 2019 Updated 4:52 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted November 14, 2019 |

The last two impeachment investigations of the past half-century began with a third-rate burglary and an extramarital affair. They quickly expanded to question the credibility and ethics of the president, but never touched on America’s national interests in the weightiest geopolitical confrontations of their eras.

The sober, just-the-facts testimony of two previously little-known diplomats on Wednesday left no doubt that the investigation into President Trump’s actions is fundamentally different. Mr. Trump had a choice between executing his administration’s own strategy for containing Russia or pursuing a political obsession at home.

He chose the obsession.

In an otherwise divided Washington, one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement for the past six years has been countering the Russian president Vladimir V. Putin’s broad plan of disruption. That effort starts in Ukraine, where a hot war has been underway in the east for five years, and a cyberwar underway in the capital, Kiev.

It is exactly that policy that Mr. Trump appears to have been discarding when he made clear, in the haunting words attributed to Gordon D. Sondland, who parlayed political donations into the ambassadorship to the European Union, that “President Trump cares more about the investigation of Biden” than about Ukraine’s confrontation with Mr. Putin’s forces.

It was perhaps the most telling, and to some the most damning, line of the torrent of revelations in the past two months — the distillation of an internal argument inside the Trump administration that the president’s closest aides have endeavored to keep hidden.

That single line, relayed by William B. Taylor Jr., the avuncular, experienced diplomat sent back to Kiev in May by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, encapsulated the now obvious truth that Mr. Trump had little interest in the central national security strategy that his own administration published in late 2017.

That strategy ostensibly reoriented American diplomacy from an 18-year focus on counterterrorism to a new approach to the world’s two “revisionist powers,” Russia and China. Each poses very different challenges to the United States.

Mr. Taylor, a veteran — first of Vietnam and then of the Cold War and its messy aftermath — has devoted much of his career to building fragile democracies from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Those who know him say they do not know his politics. So it was no surprise when he cautioned the committee that he had no desire to take part in impeachment proceedings.

“I am not here to take one side or the other or to advocate for any particular outcome of these proceedings,” he said, a line that brought visible skepticism from those on the committee who believe he epitomizes the diplomatic “deep state.” Instead, Mr. Taylor, who served as ambassador to Ukraine under the George W. Bush administration, portrayed himself as a “fact witness” who had just returned from the Donbas, the eastern area of Ukraine where 14,000 people have already died.

But his facts led him to a pretty politically charged conclusion. “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Mr. Taylor said. When pressed what he meant, Mr. Taylor added that because “that security assistance was so important for Ukraine as well as our own national interests, to withhold that assistance for no good reason other than help with a political campaign made no sense.”

“It was counterproductive to all of what we had been trying to do,” he added. “It was illogical. It could not be explained. It was crazy.”

The issue is explained away by Mr. Taylor’s superiors in the State Department and the White House, who argue that the story of withheld aid is a political concoction. Ultimately, the funds were released. It was like paying your credit bill on the last day possible — in this case, the deadline was the end of the government’s fiscal year on Sept. 30.

No real harm, no impeachable foul, they contend, and did not President Barack Obama decline to provide the Ukrainians with Javelin antitank missiles? One of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers noted that Washington’s press corps was not writing several years ago that Mr. Obama was, in this official's words, leaving Ukrainians to die. In contrast, Mr. Trump offered them the Javelins. (Mr. Trump’s sale of those weapons prohibited the use of Javelins on the front lines, in an effort to cast them as deterrent weapons.)

But from where Mr. Taylor was sitting in Kiev, withholding the aid hardly seemed harmless. The power of his testimony lay in how starkly he laid out what amounted to an extortion scheme: that Mr. Trump was personally refusing to release the funds unless Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announced two investigations.

One was into Burisma, the energy company in which the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had taken a board seat and payments of as much as $50,000 a month. The other was an investigation into a completely discredited theory that Ukrainian hackers, not Russia’s military intelligence unit, may have been responsible for the 2016 breach of the Democratic National Committee. If that was true, the Justice Department might have to consider withdrawing its indictment of a dozen Russian intelligence officials for masterminding and executing one of the boldest hackings in American political history. The indictment was issued last year by Jeff Sessions, who was then serving as attorney general.

Of the many odd twists in the partisan noise around the impeachment, Mr. Trump’s effort to divert attention from suspicions about the intrusion away from Russia — implicit in his July 25 telephone conversation with Mr. Zelensky — may be the oddest. Ukraine has been Mr. Putin’s favorite cybertarget, the petri dish where the Russian leader has tried out many of the techniques he later turned on the United States, like influence operations, tinkering with voter systems and riddling the electric grid with malware.

As George P. Kent, the assistant secretary of state with responsibility for Ukraine, told the committee Wednesday, the funds appropriated by Congress, and withheld on Mr. Trump’s orders, were meant “to fight Russian aggression in the defense, energy, cyber and information spheres.”

It was clear from the testimony that Mr. Taylor and Mr. Kent have been pressing for — and carrying out — some version of that policy for several administrations, and deeply believe in it. But it has become more urgent. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 unified Republicans, Democrats and Western allies; they issued sanctions and threw Russia out of the Group of 8, where its presence had been intended to integrate the nation with Europe.

When the Senate voted in 2017 to extend sanctions on Russia, the vote was 98 to 2; only Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders voted against it. That veto-proof majority forced Mr. Trump to sign the legislation.

Still, the evidence this pressure is working is scant. Be it Syria or Libya, or elsewhere in Africa and Eastern Europe, Russia has stepped up its actions, and here in the United States, the big question is whether the United States is prepared to stave off Russian interference in next year’s presidential election.

All this made tightening the alliance with Ukraine more important, as a signal, and as a deterrent.

But Mr. Trump has never signed on to that strategy; the evidence now is that he sought to undercut it. In fact, it was an open secret in the White House that the president, who has little patience for long documents, never read the full national strategy published under his name, according to several of his former national security officials.

He has never repeated its main tenets, particularly its references to Russia, in public; instead, he makes vague mention of how it would be a good thing if Russia and the United States got along. His actions, as opposed to his strategy documents, have been a quilt of contradictions. He has pulled out of treaties with the Russians — most recently the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty — and invested in a new nuclear arms race. But he has also questioned why the United States needs to keep up the sanctions imposed on Moscow after the annexation of Crimea and the attacks on Ukraine, and, by pulling back from Syria, he has ceded territory that Mr. Putin coveted.

As it seeks to quash the impeachment parade, the State Department under Mr. Pompeo has added to the confusion by declining to answer questions about what happened this summer, as the aid was frozen. Mr. Pompeo himself has declined to be drawn into those discussions, saying simply that they are internal conversations that should be kept confidential.

That is now over: Mr. Taylor’s lengthy, calm recitation of each interaction over the summer with his colleagues back in Washington, based on his copious notes, gives a window into policymaking unmatched since the revelation in 2010 of the State Department’s internal cables by WikiLeaks.

But what Mr. Taylor’s and Mr. Kent’s accounts reveal is a department that was keeping its own diplomats in the dark. Mr. Taylor, sitting in the Kiev Embassy as a temporary successor to the mysteriously ousted Marie L. Yovanovitch, never received the formal notes from Mr. Trump’s conversation with Mr. Zelensky. He only heard by accident that military aid was frozen. He said he did not figure out how that was related to Mr. Trump’s demands until late in the summer.

The Cold War, too, was filled with incomprehensible moments and quid pro quos. President John F. Kennedy struck the most famous, secretly trading a Russian nuclear presence in Cuba for the withdrawal of American nuclear weapons in Turkey. The details were kept secret for years. But both the quid and the quo were rooted in some plausible definition of American national interest.

That is drastically different from what Mr. Trump sought: American military aid in return for dirt on his opponents.

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Pelosi Points to Possible Bribery Charge Against Trump

The day after the first public impeachment hearing, Speaker Nancy Pelosi used the word “bribery,” mentioned in the Constitution’s impeachment clause, to describe President Trump’s conduct.

By Nicholas Fandos | Published Nov. 14, 2019 Updated 1:47 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted November 14, 2019

WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi sharpened the focus of Democrats’ impeachment case against President Trump on Thursday, accusing the president of committing bribery when he withheld vital military assistance from Ukraine at the same time he was seeking its commitment to publicly investigate his political rivals.

The speaker’s explicit allegation of bribery, a misdeed identified in the Constitution as an impeachable offense, was significant. Even as Ms. Pelosi said that no final decision had been made on whether to impeach Mr. Trump, it suggested that Democrats are increasingly working to put a name to the president’s alleged wrongdoing, and moving toward a more specific set of charges that could be codified in articles of impeachment in the coming weeks.

“The devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery uncovered in the inquiry, and that the president abused his power and violated his oath by threatening to withhold military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for an investigation into his political rival — a clear attempt by the president to give himself an advantage in the 2020 election,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference in the Capitol.

Democrats have begun using the term “bribery” more freely in recent days to describe what a string of diplomats and career Trump administration officials have said was a highly unusual and inappropriate effort by Mr. Trump and a small group around him to extract a public promise from Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and a discredited theory about Democrats conspiring with Ukraine to interfere in the 2016 election.

The House Intelligence Committee convened the House’s first public impeachment hearing in two decades on Wednesday with testimony from William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, and George P. Kent, a senior State Department official responsible for policy toward the country.

They told the committee that Mr. Trump and his allies inside and outside of the government placed the president’s political objectives at the center of American policy toward Ukraine, using both $391 million in security assistance that Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s war with Russia as well as a White House meeting that was coveted by the country’s new leader as leverage.

Asked to clarify her remarks later, Ms. Pelosi said: “The bribe is to grant or withhold military assistance in return for a public statement of a fake investigation into the elections. That’s bribery.”

She added: “We have not even made a decision to impeach, that is what the inquiry is about.”

Ms. Pelosi said Mr. Trump should give Congress exculpatory evidence, if he has it, and said the president would be given an opportunity to defend himself. Republicans and the White House have accused Democrats of denying Mr. Trump a proper say in the proceedings.

Ms. Pelosi’s remarks on impeachment were the first time she discussed the growing inquiry at length with reporters since Congress recessed in late October. She provided other clues as to how she is thinking about the case.

Asked if Democrats were successfully bringing the public along with them, Ms. Pelosi conceded that the country was likely too polarized to ever support impeachment as overwhelmingly as it did when Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974. Public opinion polls now suggest a majority of Americans favor the impeachment inquiry, but only by a thin margin.

“Impeaching is a divisive thing in our country — it’s hard,” Ms. Pelosi said. “The place that our country is now, it’s not a time where you’ll go to 70 percent when President Nixon walked out of the White House.”

Indeed, there was no sign from congressional Republicans that the testimony had shaken their conviction that Mr. Trump is innocent.

Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, told reporters that the hearing had only confirmed that the accounts from Mr. Taylor, Mr. Kent and other witnesses who have offered damaging information about Mr. Trump are not firsthand, and therefore could not be trusted. And he pointed back to a July phone call between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.

“The call summary is still the most important piece of evidence we have, and it shows no pressure or even mention of conditionality between the two leaders,” Mr. McCarthy said.

The White House released a reconstructed transcript of the call in September that showed that after the Ukrainian leader thanked Mr. Trump for military assistance, the American president pivoted and asked Mr. Zelensky “to do us a favor, though.” Mr. Trump then asked Mr. Zelensky to investigate unsubstantiated corruption accusations against Mr. Biden and his son Hunter who worked for a Ukrainian energy firm, as well as a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered with the 2016 election to help Democrats.

The United States intelligence community has concluded that Russia interfered to help Mr. Trump.

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reading-writing-revolution · 4 years

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Heather Cox Richardson:

August 11, 2020 (Tuesday)

The big news of the day is that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden named his running mate: California Senator Kamala Harris.

Harris was born in Oakland, California. Her mother was an endocrinologist who immigrated to the U.S. from India; her father is an economist from British Jamaica who is now retired from the Stanford University economics department. Harris has a degree in political science and economics from Howard University and a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. She spent seven years as the District Attorney of San Francisco, then six as the Attorney General of California. Both are elected offices, and in both she developed a reputation as a tough prosecutor. In 2016, California voters elected Harris Senator with more than 60% of the vote. Shortly after arriving in Washington, she was placed on the important Senate Judiciary Committee, so she has had a front-row seat at the hearings and proceedings of the past three years.

Harris is perceived as solidly in the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. Her inclusion on the ticket disappointed members of the progressive wing, who had hoped for someone closer to their own principles to balance out the moderate Biden. It seems likely that Biden himself would have preferred former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, with whom he has a close relationship, but her association with the attack on Benghazi, Libya, would be prime fodder for Republican attacks.

Still, Harris stakes out some important turf for the Democratic ticket. She is a woman with both Black and South Asian American roots, enabling the Democrats to illustrate their commitment to a multiracial democracy by nominating her. She is crackerjack smart, a quality that many Americans would like to see in an administration. She is seen as a defender of the rule of law at a time when it seems under attack—she caught Attorney General William Barr in a falsehood at his confirmation hearing, noticeably throwing him off and forcing him to avoid her question out of fear of perjury. At 55, she is a generation younger than Biden (or Trump) balancing out the older ticket. And since she was hard on Biden during the primaries, his invitation to her indicates his willingness to accept criticism and continue to work with those who are not yes-men, a significant contrast to Trump.

Finally, I’m pretty sure Harris is the first Democratic nominee for the top of the ticket who has ever hailed from California, and one of the first from the far West. In 1988, Michael Dukakis’s running mate Lloyd Bentsen was from Texas, and LBJ was from Texas, but I can’t think of another. This is significant because since World War II, the far West has been Republican turf. It is where Reaganism rose in the 1970s to win the White House in 1980 and take over the nation. That the Democrats are cracking into that Republican stronghold with a national candidate suggests they are marking a sea change in American politics.

Already Republicans are insisting that Harris, a former prosecutor, is, as Trump tweeted, part of a “radical left.” National Review ran an article titled “Kamala Harris Is Farther Left than Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.” Trump campaign advisor Katrina Pierson said that Harris had “gleefully embraced the left’s radical manifesto” during her own run for the presidency, and that Biden’s choice showed that he was “surrendering control of our nation to the radical mob.”

The Republicans are clearly hoping to convince voters that Harris is an extremist. It will not be an easy charge to make stick to a former prosecutor, especially on a day when a Republican candidate who supports QAnon conspiracy theories won a congressional primary in a solidly-Republican district in Georgia, virtually guaranteeing that she will go on to Congress. Marjorie Taylor Greene seems the definition of an extremist. She has spouted anti-Semitic, anti-Black, and Islamophobic comments, and called George Soros a “Nazi.” She has defended QAnon, a mysterious source of a belief that Trump is secretly fighting against a well-connected ring of Satan-worshipping pedophiles that has taken over the government, praising the source as “someone that very much loves his country, and he’s on the same page as us, and he is very pro-Trump.”

When Trump talked to Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity tonight on his show, though, there was something else on his mind. Asked about Senator Harris and her previous comments about Biden and race, Trump responded by talking about the 2016 Russia investigation. According to the transcript, he riffed on how bad the media is and how the “fake reporting” got the Russia story wrong. Then he complimented Hannity on getting “the Russia hoax correct,” and finally, after complaining about Pulitzer Prizes, moved on to how “we caught Obama Biden. That’s why I didn’t think that [Obama’s National Security Advisor] Susan Rice could get it because he’s part of this whole illegal thing that happened, which is one of the worst perhaps the worst political scandal in the history of our country, and they got caught. Now let’s see what happens but they’re caught red handed…. Russia, Russia, Russia was made up fabricated….”

Russia is clearly on Trump’s mind. This morning, he tweeted “John Bolton, one of the dumbest people I’ve met in government and sadly, I’ve met plenty, states often that I respected, and even trusted, Vladimir Putin of Russia more than those in our Intelligence Agencies. While of course that is not true, if the first people you met from… so called American intelligence were Dirty Cops who have now proven to be sleazebags at the highest level like James Comey, proven liar James Clapper, & perhaps the lowest of them all, Wacko John Brennan who headed the CIA, you could perhaps understand my reluctance to embrace!”

What might be behind this is that Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), chair of the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, is under fire for his ongoing investigation of the debunked theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that attacked the U.S. in the 2016 election, and of the idea that Hunter and Joe Biden were involved in corruption in Ukraine. Intelligence experts and the chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee have warned Johnson that he is amplifying Russian disinformation.

This weekend, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post warning that Johnson was taking information from Ukrainians with ties to Russia. The accusations hit close enough to home that Johnson responded yesterday with an 11-page single spaced letter denying he was spreading Russian lies and instead accusing Democrats of trying to hurt Trump by attacking Johnson's investigation.

But, as Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa at JustSecurity pointed out, the letter was disingenuous, at best. They write, "the letter itself contains apparent products of Russian disinformation. And while Johnson denies taking information directly from two specific Ukrainians linked to Russia and its disinformation efforts, he makes no mention of his staff taking information directly from one of those individuals’ principal collaborators, which reportedly occurred over the course of several months."

This controversy might be bothering the president. One of the things not on Trump's mind, though, is the bill to help Americans weather the coronavirus pandemic by extending federal unemployment benefits, shoring up ailing states and cities, and preventing evictions, all things that his executive actions did not, in fact, do.

Senior administration officials say there is little chance of talks about a new coronavirus relief bill any time soon. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is away for the week. More than that, though, the White House thinks it has Democrats in a “real pickle” because if they try to stop the Trump’s executive actions of last Friday, they will look like they are refusing to help ordinary Americans. While this was clearly the plan for those three memorandums and one executive order, it doesn’t look to me like it has worked. Democrats are not pushing back on legal grounds, but on the grounds that the measures don’t actually do anything, and that seems to be the story that is dominating the media.

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Offices after COVID: Wider hallways, fewer desks (AP) The coronavirus already changed the way we work. Now it’s changing the physical space, too. Many companies are making adjustments to their offices to help employees feel safer as they return to in-person work, like improving air circulation systems or moving desks further apart. Others are ditching desks and building more conference rooms to accommodate employees who still work remotely but come in for meetings. Architects and designers say this is a time of experimentation and reflection for employers. Steelcase, an office furniture company based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, says its research indicates half of global companies plan major redesigns to their office space this year. “This year caused you to think, maybe even more fundamentally than you ever have before, ‘Hey, why do we go to an office?’” said Natalie Engels, a San Jose, California-based design principal at Gensler, an architecture firm.

Canada sets record temperature of over 114 degrees amid heat wave, forecasts of even hotter weather (Washington Post) Lytton, a village in British Columbia, became the first place in Canada to ever record a temperature over 113 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday—and experts are predicting even hotter weather to come. The temperature in Lytton soared to just under 115 degrees Sunday, according to Environment Canada, a government weather agency. “It’s warmer in parts of western Canada than in Dubai. I mean, it’s just not something that seems Canadian,” Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips told CTV News on Saturday. Even in the metropolitan hub of Vancouver, parks, beaches and pools have been flooded with residents eager to cool off as the temperature hit 89 degrees at the local airport on Sunday—a record in a coastal city that usually has mild weather. The high temperatures in the region have been blamed on a “heat dome”—a sprawling area of high pressure—now sitting over western Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Experts say climate change can make extreme weather events like this more common.

Florida condo collapse echoes tragedies in Brazil, Egypt and India (Washington Post) Around the world, in countries with paltry building codes, little enforcement of existing rules and the proliferation of informal housing, tragedies like Thursday’s building collapse in Florida—where scores of people are still missing—have taken a heavy toll. Among the missing is the first cousin of a former president of Chile, where in 2019 at least six people died when two houses collapsed in the port city of Valparaiso. Others are from Argentina and Colombia, sites of two deadly building tragedies that killed at least a dozen people in each country in 2013. On Friday, five people were killed in the coastal Egyptian city of Alexandria after a five-story building collapsed—an all-too-frequent event in a country where planning permits are often bypassed or violated and makeshift structures house millions of people. At least two people died in Brazil when a four-story residential building crumbled June 3 in a slum in Rio de Janeiro, were organized crime is known to have a hand in shoddy construction projects. In India, buildings are routinely at risk of collapse during the annual monsoon rains. The night of June 9, at least 11 people, including eight children, were killed in Mumbai when a two-story building collapsed on nearby structures, the BBC reported. Local authorities said it was likely due to heavy rains.

New Cuba policy on hold while Biden deals with bigger problems (Washington Post) Five months into his administration, President Biden’s campaign promise to “go back” to the Obama policy of engagement with Cuba remains unfulfilled, lodged in a low-priority file somewhere between “too hard” and “not worth it.” “I would say that 2021 is not 2015,” when Obama reestablished full diplomatic relations with Havana and opened the door to increased U.S. travel and trade with the communist-ruled island, only to see Donald Trump slam it closed again, a senior administration official said. “We have an entire world and a region in disarray,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “We are combating a pandemic and dealing with a breaking down of democracy in a whole host of countries. That is the environment we are in. When it comes down to Cuba, we’ll do what’s in the national security interest of the United States.” But if the current state of the world and national security demands on the administration make addressing the relationship with Cuba one hard problem too many, what makes it not worth the effort is a purely domestic matter. For the most part, it comes down to two words: Robert Menendez. The Democratic senator from New Jersey, the powerful chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is a key player in issues the administration sees as far more important than Cuba in a Senate evenly split along party lines. The U.S.-born son of immigrants from pre-communist Cuba, he is strongly against reopening the door to Havana.

Venezuela migrants cross US border in droves (AP) Marianela Rojas huddles in prayer with her fellow migrants, a tearful respite after trudging across a slow-flowing stretch of the Rio Grande and nearly collapsing onto someone’s backyard lawn, where, seconds before, she stepped on American soil for the first time. It’s a frequent scene across the U.S.-Mexico border at a time of swelling migration. But these aren’t farmers and low-wage workers from Mexico or Central America, who make up the bulk of those crossing. They’re bankers, doctors and engineers from Venezuela, and they’re arriving in record numbers as they flee turmoil in the country with the world’s largest oil reserves and pandemic-induced pain across South America. Last month, 7,484 Venezuelans were encountered by Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border—more than all 14 years for which records exist. While some are government opponents fearing harassment and jailing, the vast majority are escaping long-running economic devastation marked by blackouts and shortages of food and medicine.

Peru’s election limbo (Foreign Policy) Supporters of both Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori took to the streets of Peru over the weekend as the June 6 presidential election still does not have an official winner. Castillo’s apparent 44,000-vote victory has been delayed by Fujimori’s accusations of fraud in an election process that international observers, including the United States, have described as free and fair. An electoral jury charged with adjudicating contested ballots resumes its review today, with an official result only possible once the jury’s work has concluded.

Who needs hackers? (Foreign Policy) A spat between Russia and the United Kingdom over a British naval vessel’s transit near Russian-occupied Crimea took a bizarre turn over the weekend when classified documents about the operation were found in a sodden heap behind a bus stop in Kent. The documents, given to the BBC, describe the boat’s journey—which caused Russia to scramble military jets—as an “innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters,” and includes potential routes that would have avoided a Russian response. The British government has launched an investigation into how the documents leaked. Responding to the incident, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova mocked the British government. “Why do we need ‘Russian hackers’ if there are British bus stops?,” Zakharova said on Telegram.

The Far-Right Stumbles in France (Foreign Policy) The French far-right fared poorly in regional elections over the weekend, failing to win control of even one of France’s 18 regions and potentially denting Marine Le Pen’s chances ahead of next year’s presidential contest. Le Pen will hope that the low turnout belies greater support on the national stage. An estimated 34.5 percent of French voters cast a ballot on Sunday.

Spain, Portugal further restrict UK travelers (AP) Spain and Portugal have placed new restrictions on U.K. travelers. Portugal says they must go into quarantine for two weeks unless they have proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 finished 14 days earlier. The policy took effect Monday. The government says people can quarantine at home or in a place stipulated by Portuguese health authorities. Arrivals from Brazil, India and South Africa come under the same rule. All others entering Portugal must show either the European Union’s COVID Digital Certificate or a negative PCR test. In Spain, beginning Thursday, people arriving from the U.K. in the Balearic Islands will have to show they have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or have a negative PCR test.

India Shifts 50,000 Troops to China Border in Historic Move (Bloomberg) India has redirected at least 50,000 additional troops to its border with China in a historic shift toward an offensive military posture against the world’s second-biggest economy. Although the two countries battled in the Himalayas in 1962, India’s strategic focus has primarily been Pakistan since the British left the subcontinent, with the long-time rivals fighting three wars over the disputed region of Kashmir. Yet since the deadliest India-China fighting in decades last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration has sought to ease tensions with Islamabad and concentrate primarily on countering Beijing. Over the past few months, India has moved troops and fighter jet squadrons to three distinct areas along its border with China, according to four people familiar with the matter. All in all, India now has roughly 200,000 troops focused on the border, two of them said, which is an increase of more than 40% from last year. China is adding fresh runway buildings, bomb-proof bunkers to house fighter jets and new airfields along the disputed border in Tibet, two of the people said. Beijing also adding long-range artillery, tanks, rocket regiments and twin-engine fighters in the last few months.

U.S. targets Iran-backed militias in Iraq, Syria strikes (Washington Post) U.S. forces launched airstrikes on facilities on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border, the Pentagon said Sunday, in response to recent drone attacks on U.S. troops in the region carried out by Iran-backed militias. Two militia locations in Syria were attacked, along with one in Iraq, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement, which described the strikes as defensive in nature. Officials have said militias employing small, explosive-laden drones to attack regional U.S. personnel is one of the chief concerns for the U.S. military mission there. Syrian state media said, without providing evidence, that U.S. strikes hit residential buildings near the border around 1 a.m. local time, killing one child and wounding three residents.

Palestinians protesting against Abbas (AP) Thousands of Palestinians have taken to the streets in recent days to protest against President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, whose security forces and supporters have violently dispersed them. The demonstrations were sparked by the death of an outspoken critic of the PA in security forces’ custody last week, but the grievances run much deeper. Abbas’ popularity plunged after he called off the first elections in 15 years in April and was sidelined by the Gaza war in May. The PA has long been seen as rife with corruption and intolerant of dissent. Its policy of coordinating security with Israel to go after Hamas and other mutual foes is extremely unpopular. Protesters at the Al-Aqsa mosque on Friday accused the PA of being collaborators, a charge that amounts to treason.

Ethiopia declares immediate, unilateral cease-fire in Tigray (AP) Ethiopia’s government on Monday declared an immediate, unilateral cease-fire in its Tigray region after nearly eight months of deadly conflict as Tigray forces occupied the regional capital, soldiers retreated and hundreds of thousands of people continue to face the world’s worst famine crisis in a decade. The cease-fire could calm a war that has destabilized Africa’s second most populous country and threatened to do the same in the wider Horn of Africa, where Ethiopia has been seen as a key security ally for the West. The declaration was carried by state media shortly after the Tigray interim administration, appointed by the federal government, fled the regional capital, Mekele. Meanwhile, Mekele residents cheered the return of Tigray forces for the first time since Ethiopian forces took the city in late November. Ethiopia said the cease-fire will last until the end of the crucial planting season in Tigray. The season’s end comes in September.

After pandemic free-for-all, parents struggle to reinstate screen-time rules (Washington Post) The week after Rebecca Grant took away her kids’ video games for a month, after a year of relaxed pandemic rules, her 10-year-old son was livid. The ban wasn’t an easy decision for Grant. The 46-year-old mom of two from Fremont, Calif., did hours of research and read multiple books from parenting experts. She joined Facebook groups for families in similar situations and closely watched her children’s behavior, which had been worrisome for a while. “He was really not taking it well,” Grant said. “In a way, it reinforced my decision. He’s just so attached to this [video games], he’s not rational.” After 15 months of various levels of shutdowns, families in the United States are trying to come out of a tech-filled haze for summer. It’s a chance to swap out Xbox time for bike rides with friends, or Zoom school for summer camp. But parents are discovering that subtracting screen time is much harder to do than adding it. They are facing resistance from kids accustomed to their freedom or just struggling to find alternatives to fill the time before a more normal fall school semester begins. While some parents just want their kids to be social or active again, many have noticed personality and behavioral changes in their children. They’re irritable, argumentative and have poor focus. Some have become anxious or depressed, or throw more tantrums and fly into rages. “Having all that screen time all day for a whole year, their nervous system is really disregulated, and those symptoms need to be reversed,” said Victoria Dunckley, a child psychiatrist who studies the impact of screens on children and the author of “Reset Your Child’s Brain.” “All this overstimulation is putting them into a state of stress.”

#headlines #news

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alexsmitposts · 5 years

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Radio Free Europe Reveals Liberalism’s Decline Democracy in Europe is failing. The U.S. State Department’s Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty RFE/RL says so. I know the spirit of legendary CIA spook Allen Dulles is spinning like a Russian ballerina in his grave at Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore. And think of all those disappointed eastern Europeans who were told America would save the day. This is a shattering revelation. I was scanning news this morning to find out what the latest propaganda on Putin and Russia is. Some fast-track passports for Ukrainians and news of a 20-something New York Rangers hockey player criticizing Putin dominated the news out of Russia. Yes, they ran out of places for Putin to invade, and third rate spies he is supposed to have snuffed out. So, I turned to RFE/RL, a source I have come to rely on for finding out the “real” CIA and State Department strategies. Imagine my surprise when I ran across the erstwhile report “Measuring Democracy In Central And Eastern Europe.” Thinking I would find a glowing golden fleece of globalization and prosperity hanging there on the limbs of RFE/RL’s truth tree, I was gobsmacked to discover how generations of CIA propagandists have utterly failed Romania, Ukraine, Hungary, Russia, and even Poland. I am sorry to report that the liberal democracy index of all these countries has plummeted since 2009. Where mighty promises and foghorn narratives once swayed the tens of millions, super capitalistic globalization has just gone wrong. Why even stalwart Russia hating Romania is rated right down there with neighboring Hungary on the Liberal Democracy Index. Only pitiful Ukraine and Mother Russia herself are less democratic. That is if you believe RFE/RL. What’s interesting to note in the CIA’s, oh excuse me, the RFE report is the disparity in between the indexes used by the editorial board. The figures from Freedom House tell us Poland is almost as democratic as Germany, while The Economist’s alleged “intelligence unit” tells us the former Soviet republic sunken alongside Romania and Hungary. The graphic created by Kristyna Foltynova was obviously not intended to announce the surrender of the liberal world order, but the providers of statistics she chose shed light on another Putin headline. The one where he proclaims liberalism dead as a doornail. Here’s where my report gets good. The RFE/RL report is designed to shame Hungarians and other eastern Europeans into running back arms wide open to the liberal bankster henchmen of the west, to the same sellout politicians who were puppets to the order. Underneath the attempt at high-level peer pressuring, a Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) status report support’s Mr. Putin’s assertions at the recent G-20 Summit. Here is part of the intro to the V-Dem report which shows the RFE/RL propaganda method and that of the V-Dem Institute is the same. After proclaiming big trouble for liberal democracy, the authors reveal the intent of the report and the coming methods for fighting the worldwide move to conservatism: “There is nothing inevitable about future outcomes. It is in this spirit that readers should interpret the results from the groundbreaking V-Forecast project (see page 27) presenting the top-10 countries at risk of an adverse regime transition 2019-2020. Rather than suggesting that these countries are doomed, this is an invitation for action. History shows that if pro-democratic forces work together, autocratization can be prevented or reversed.” Before I go on, it’s important to understand the roots beneath the tree of western propaganda and strategy. The V-Dem Insitute is a creation of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame University. It is academic branches of this liberal world order tree that feed the U.S. State Department its bureaucrats. In this announcement of a alumni schmoozing affair at Kellogg, Stephanie Mulhern Ogorzalek (Graduate of 2011) from the US State Department, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Office of African Affairs heads a career networking panel alongside the U.S. Treasury’s Cherrica Li (2011).And yes, you can order Notre Dame football tickets straight from the webpage of the announcement. I know you get it, so let’s move on. The V-Dem report tells us that democracy overall is on the upswing, but at the same time “liberal democracies” are on the decline. The report authors attempt to paint a fearsome picture of dictators taking over all those countries that do not agree with the liberal world order. The rest of the world, the countries they say have “degenerated” into electoral democracies, include economic war-torn Greece and the refugee stop-gap Hungary. Places like Brazil, India, and even the United States under the Trump administration are deemed to be in a “third wave of democratization.” Amazingly, while laughing in our faces, this new breed of liberal psychopaths claims the #1 challenge to their world domination is, and I quote; “Government manipulation of media, civil society, rule of law, and elections.” They spit out numbers like a scoreboard of liberal world order versus the rest of the world categorized by degrees of liberalism. According to them, their order was at its peak when 18% of the world fell under their sway. Now, with the scoreboard at 13%, it seems like the panic button has been hit. Notre Dame University may need support more than Notre Dame Cathedral soon. If Putin and reason have their way. Good God. Like trapped animals the globalist that started the world’s biggest mess bite at their paws to free themselves from their own snares. Here is how they view the same social media and digitalization they advertised to us all a decade ago: “Still, most democracies remain relatively resilient after serious global challenges such as the financial crisis, mass immigration to Europe, and fake news sparking fear spreading effortlessly on social media with the rise of digitalization.” Reading between the lines here, they blame everything on whoever did not fall praying to their god of non-existent morality and total control by them. But RFE/RL has spilled the beans now. Vladimir Putin was right, liberalism is dead. If you won’t take my word, read the section of the V-Dem report titled “Democratizing Countries at Risk: Tender Flowers of Progress.” Oh, Allen Dulles, you created a spy network like the world has never seen, you should have seen THIS coming. What we are seeing now is the nervous twitching of a corpse. Now maybe we can get around to discovering a system that actually works for all the people, not just the vagina hat wearing Clinton supporting nincompoops and Rothschild’s minions.

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euromaidanpress · 4 years

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[box title=”” align=”center”]To mark the Day of Remembrance and the sixth anniversary of the Ilovaisk tragedy, PLUS 1 photo art project was launched on Mykhailivska Square in Kyiv on August 29, 2020. Why PLUS 1? Plus 1 Ukrainian, plus 1 fighter, plus 1 daughter, plus 1 sister, plus 1 answer to Russian propaganda, plus 1 democratic state… Plus 1, plus 1, plus 1. The individual is one small grain, a plus 1 unit in a strong, united and democratic state.[/box]

PLUS 1 is a street-based photo exhibit designed to support the families of fallen Ukrainian servicemen and memorialize their stories, as well as to build a new socio-cultural image of Ukrainians as defenders of such core values as democracy and freedom.

PLUS 1 is also part of a comprehensive multimedia advocacy campaign in which the stories of Ukrainian servicemen, who perished in the Russian-Ukrainian war, are told through photo portraits and original texts written by noted Ukrainians, which can be referenced on the project website.

Photo gallery of PLUS 1 photo project, Mykhailivska Square, Kyiv, August 29, 2020. All photos: courtesy of Marian Prysiazhniuk.

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Identity and self-affirmation

After the 2013-14 Revolution of Dignity and six years of war against Russia and their minions, Ukraine is slowly moving forward and forging an identity as a nation. PLUS 1 raises the issue of self-determination and self-identity through individual Ukrainians, who laid aside their interests, studies, jobs and families in order to defend their ideals and homes, united in their effort to preserve and build a full-fledged independent state. This national identity is still work in progress. It requires conscious daily exertion. Political bickering and extremism might nibble away at this identity, so we need to keep working at it ever harder. Celebrations such as the commemoration of Ukrainian Defenders, Remembrance Day, etc. should give us the motivation to persevere.

Each identity is crystallized in the image of a family or relative, holding an object or a symbol dear to the fallen Warrior. Plus 1 Ukrainian, plus 1 son, plus 1 father, plus 1 husband fighting on the Eastern Front. Plus 1 sister, plus 1 wife, plus 1 daughter standing on the front lines of the struggle for liberation. Plus 1 defender. Plus 1 warrior. Plus 1 loss. Together, the PLUS 1s unite to make a plus 1 democratic country.

Project implementation

The project is built around 22 individual exhibition stands. Captured by a photographer’s camera – Youry Bilak, a Frenchman of Ukrainian descent – Ukrainian families tell the stories of their loved ones – Ukrainian servicemen who perished in the war. Each family chose an object that most reminds them of their departed: a father’s jacket, a guitar, a suit of medieval armour, a book. These family artifacts reflect a living continuation of the missing person. Ukrainian artists, intellectuals, and journalists were invited to create original texts about each soldier. After interviewing the families, Yuriy Andrukhovych, Oleksandr Irvanets, Yaroslav Hrytsak, Larysa Denysenko, Oleksandr Mykhed and 17 other prominent Ukrainians wrote moving stories about their subject, which were subsequently published on the PLUS 1 website.

The stands are purposely asymmetrical… because war never brings symmetry to life, only chaos, destruction and grief. Each stand displays a large photo of the soldier’s family members, a short caption and a QR-code linking the viewer to the website and the full version of the photo project.

Traveling abroad

The creators of PLUS 1 also intend to export their exhibition abroad and travel to as many countries as possible. Their aim is to present a true image of modern Ukrainians, who rose to defend not only their country, but also democratic values and ideals.

Although citizen support for democracy is still massive in Europe, dissatisfaction is widespread, giving rise to a surge of populist challengers from the left and the right. This is why the Ukrainian example is so important and should be seen and understood by other countries. Ukraine is an example of nation-building where the yoke of communism still permeates so many levels of society, but where the Revolution of Dignity and the Russia-Ukrainian war have firmly set the country on the path towards European integration. Each fallen hero was a man, a citizen, a European, who accepted responsibility for himself and his family, his home, his region, and his country.

As the authors and founders of PLUS 1 state:

“A deep awareness of this image will help us to better navigate the present and the future, to be inspired and move towards the creation of a democratic country, a society of free and worthy people.”

The fallen heroes

The heroes of the exhibition were teachers, journalists, builders, programmers, sailors, students, military personnel. Many of them were like most of us, but they took up arms and went to war. They came from all over Ukraine – Mariupol, Zhytomyr, Kharkiv, Kolomyya… and from all walks of life – opera singer Wassyl Slipak, Ukrainian worker Volodia Pytak, who lived in the United States for ten years, student of Japanese Svyat Horbenko, and sailor Andriy Nazarenko. Defending the values of democracy and freedom, they became defenders of not only Ukraine, but of European values and civilization.

Vadym Antonov was an active participant of the Revolution of Dignity, and when war broke out, went to the front as a volunteer fighter. When his unit liberated Lysychansk, “Litachok” (Airplane) hoisted a blue and yellow flag in the central square. It was a gift from his comrades-in-arms for his 38th birthday.

Vadym Antonov was killed near Ilovaisk, Donetsk Oblast on August 10, 2014.

Vadym Antonov. My father gave me this guinea pig. It reminds me of him. Photo: Youry Bilak

Mykola Kozlov was a former KGB major in the soviet Border Guard Service. And yet, when war broke out, he was one of the first men to volunteer for service in a Ukrainian army that didn’t exist. The recruitment office refused, but Mykola went and enlisted in the Donbas Battalion. He adopted the call sign “Matviy”, the name of his grandfather who fell in the Second World War.

Mykola Kozlov was killed in the battle of Karlivka, Donetsk Oblast on May 23, 2014.

Mykola Kozlov. Our entire married life was spent against the background of his military service. And it ended there as well. Photo: Youry Bilak

Captain Mykola Zhuk was killed near Debaltseve-Novohryhorivka on January 25, 2015.

“She believes that his story should be told. Talking about him is like bringing him back to life. Talking about him is giving him the opportunity of being here with us. As long as we keep telling their stories, they remain alive,” says writeYuriy Andrukhovych.

“She” is Olena, the wife of Mykola Zhuk, Captain in the 128th Separate Mountain Infantry Brigade.

Olena, Mykola Zhuk’s wife and Nastia, his daughter

Mykola Zhuk. Mom’s waiting. I’m waiting. Our dog Dania is waiting. Our warm home and sounds are also waiting. Photo: Youry Bilak

Volodymyr Kyian, call sign “Typhoon” served in the 80th Separate Air Assault Brigade. He was killed near on September 3, 2015 near Shchastia, Luhansk Oblast.

From childhood, Volodymyr dreamt of becoming a soldier. “I look at Olia and think about what she’s been through. She lost a loved one. She lost the father of her newborn. What should I ask her? Did Volodia see his little one? Yes, he did. He was on leave when Olia delivered their child. He took tiny Danylko in his arms, hugged him tightly to his chest …” writes poet Oleksandr Irvanets.

Volodymyr Kyian. Volodia loved wearing “Jolly Roger” on his backpack and baseball cap. Photo: Youry Bilak

The PLUS 1 team

Marian Prysiazhniuk

Founder and project manager. Former mentor at NGO Ukrainian Leadership Academy, cultural activist, volunteer

Youry Bilak

French photographer of Ukrainian origin

Maryna Lukianova

Executive director, NGO Euroatlantic Course, CEO of the project Odnodumtsi

Taisia Bratasiuk

Coordinator of the Katowice Euromaidan movement (Poland)

Oleksandra Zadilska

Communications Manager of the crowdfunding campaign

Yuliia Hryhoruk

Graduate of the Ukrainian Leadership Academy, student at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and activist with NGO National Alliance

Vira Mashnina

Project finance manager

[box title=”” align=”center”]A crowdfunding campaign is underway to translate the essays of our heroes into English. You can join the campaign by making a voluntary donation on the website under the “Donations” section.

PLUS 1 is also looking for volunteer translators to translate the Ukrainian texts into English.

Thank you![/box]

PLUS 1: traveling photo exhibition dedicated to the fallen Defenders of Ukraine To mark the Day of Remembrance and the sixth anniversary of the Ilovaisk tragedy, PLUS 1 photo art project…

#Identity #photo project #war in Donbas

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networkingdefinition · 4 years

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Affiliation Quotes

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• A lack of affiliation may mean a lack of accountability, and forming a sense of commitment can be hard without a sense of community. Displacement can encourage the wrong kinds of distance, and if the nationalism we see sparking up around the globe arises from too narrow and fixed a sense of loyalty, the internationalism that’s coming to birth may reflect too roaming and undefined a sense of belonging. – Pico Iyer • A recent Pew Study revealed that 70% of Americans with a religious affiliation say that many religions lead to eternal life. Some people might think that “surely the statistics among evangelical Christians is different.” Not by much. – Robert Jeffress • According to current research, in the determination of a person’s level of happiness, genetics accounts for about 50 percent; life circumstances, such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, income, health, occupation, and religious affiliation, account for about 10 to 20 percent; and the remainder is a product of how a person thinks and acts. – Gretchen Rubin • All religions try to benefit people, with the same basic message of the need for love and compassion, for justice and honesty, for contentment. So merely changing formal religious affiliations will often not help much. On the other hand, in pluralistic, democratic societies, there is the freedom to adopt the religion of your choice. This is good. This lets curious people like you run around on the loose! – Dalai Lama • All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens. – Ernest Hemingway • Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles. – Paul Fussell • Anyone with a gun can go out and commit an act of terrorism, even without a political affiliation. – Aaron McGruder • As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people’s struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism. – Angela Davis • As an elected official who comes from the African-American community, there are some similarities. You are always trying to reconcile your own personal biography and affiliations with the demands of the broader democracy. And you need to make sure you are representing everybody. – Barack Obama

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Affiliat', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '4', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_affiliat').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_affiliat img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Biophilia, if it exists, and I believe it exists, is the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms. – E. O. Wilson • Certain kinds of people become Republicans and certain kinds of people become Democrats, and … it’s more than a matter of party affiliation. It’s a way of thinking and being. – Marya Mannes • Companies in the East put a lot more emphasis on human relationships, while those from the West focus on the product, the bottom line. Westerners appear to have more of a need for achievement, while in the East there’s more need for affiliation. – Daniel Goleman • Crimea has always been and remains Russian, as well as Ukrainian, Crimean-Tatar, Greek (after all, there are Greeks living there) and German – and it will be home to all of those peoples. As for state affiliation, the people living in Crimea made their choice; it should be treated with respect, and Russia cannot do otherwise. I hope that our neighbouring and distant partners will ultimately treat this the same way, since in this case, the highest criteria used to establish the truth can only be the opinion of the people themselves. – Vladimir Putin

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Disease does not recognize congressional districts or party affiliation. – Steve Kagen • Everybody seems to be imprisoned in their own sectarian or political affiliations. They don’t seem to be able to rise above these things. – Adnan Pachachi • For people who must fear for their lives because of their religion or political convictions, the protection provided by Article 16a of the German constitution, the right to asylum, applies. Nobody is questioning that. Irrespective of that, there is immigration that must be regulated, to bring skilled personnel to Germany, for example. We have to establish criteria for that. Their affiliation with the Christian-Western culture should be one of them. – Horst Seehofer • History will not judge our endeavors–and a government cannot be selected–merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these. – John F. Kennedy • Husbands lie, Masha. I should know; I’ve eaten my share. That’s lesson one. Lesson number two: among the topics about which a husband is most likely to lie are money, drink, black eyes, political affiliation, and women who squatted on his lap before and after your sweet self. – Catherynne M. Valente • I don’t consider myself ever joining. But I have affiliations, for sure. – Ice Cube • I have been unable to live an uncommitted or suspended life. I have not hesitated to declare my affiliation with an extremely unpopular cause. – Edward Said • I have never belonged to a party. I don’t have party affiliation. – William Eldridge Odom • I hope that no American will waste his franchise and throw away his vote by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation. It is not relevant. – John F. Kennedy • I love being able to be political without any political affiliation. – Lady Gaga • I promised to have no partisan affiliation and no subsidy except advertising. – Benjamin Day • I think you get some attention and some hype from the marijuana affiliation but I think also there’s obviously problems still. My mother is not very excited about it. Understandably, I suppose. – Doug Walters • I will be a president of all Bulgarians, irrespective of their ethnicity, religion or political affiliations. – Georgi Parvanov • I will never say, ‘support the troops.’ I don’t believe in the validity of that statement. People say, ‘I don’t support the war, I support the troops’ as though you can actually separate the two. You cannot; the troops are a part of the war, they have become the war and there is no valid dissection of the two. Other people shout with glaring eyes that we should give up our politics, give up our political affiliations in favor of ‘just supporting the troops.’ I wish everything were that easy. – Thomas Naughton • I would describe my spirituality as exactly the opposite of having a religious affiliation. – Bill Maher • If the media isnt slanted toward the Left, why is everyone so worried about my affiliation with Glenn Beck but not with Alec Baldwin? – Adam Carolla • If you are constantly making judgments based on superficial affiliations, your world gets to be pretty small. – Larry Brilliant • I’m 100 percent Jewish by blood, but by education I’m nothing. By affiliation I’m nothing. – Joseph Brodsky • In its conception the literature prize belongs to days when a writer could still be thought of as, by virtue of his or her occupation, a sage, someone with no institutional affiliations who could offer an authoritative word on our times as well as on our moral life. – J. M. Coetzee • In practice it is possible to determine directly the skin colour and hence the ethnic affiliations of the ancient Egyptians by microscopic analysis in the laboratory; I doubt if the sagacity of the researchers who have studied the question has overlooked the possibility. – Cheikh Anta Diop • It is certainly true that conservative Christians are much more likely to doubt the reality of climate change than mainline Christians or the unaffiliated. But when we control for political affiliation and for the important role of thought leaders in determining our opinions on social issues such as climate change, most of the faith-related bias disappears. – Katharine Hayhoe • It is different [to perform in Israel] because it arises from very deep wells of affiliation. – Leonard Cohen • It’s comprised of both Republicans and Democrats and their membership in this club known as the establishment, party affiliation is second or third in terms of your qualifications to be in the club. – Rush Limbaugh • I’ve always been a big fan of the Yeti, simply because I have an affiliation to Everest – who was the New Zealander, Sir Edmund Hillary, the guy that conquered it. – Rhys Darby • I’ve always been a big fan of the Yeti, simply because I have an affiliation to Everest – who was the New Zealander, Sir Edmund Hillary, the guy that conquered it. He actually went on an expedition after the Everest climb to look for the Yeti, and they didn’t find it, but they found a footprint and some hair samples that turned out to be a goat or something. – Rhys Darby • I’ve always had a natural affiliation with nature. If I wasn’t an actor, I’d be some sort of biologist working in the field in Africa or something. – Callan McAuliffe • I’ve been married too many times. How terrible to change children’s affiliations, their affections – to give them the insecurity of placing their trust in someone when maybe that someone won’t be there next year. – Elizabeth Taylor • Let them be reassured, it has never been one of our intentions to ban religion in society, but solely to protect the national education system from any conspicuous display of religious affiliation. – Jean-Pierre Raffarin • Lyndon Baines Johnson technique in negotiation would be that he’d lean into you and take away your personal space, it didn’t matter your party affiliation when he was trying to convince you of something. – Jay Roach • Many people who say they have no religion are simply saying they have no official religious affiliation. They may actually have strong personal beliefs. – Rodney Stark • Men seem more bound to the wheel of success than women do. That women are trained to get satisfaction from affiliation rather thanachievement has tended to keep them from great achievement. But it has also freed them from unreasonable expectations about the satisfactions that professional achievement brings. – Phyllis Rose • Meyer [sic] Amschel Rothschild, who founded the great international banking house of Rothschild which, through its affiliation with the European Central Banks, still dominates the financial policies of practically every country in the world, said: ‘Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.’ – Mayer Amschel Rothschild • Motherhood is the second oldest profession in the world. It never questions age, height, religious preference, health, political affiliation, citizenship, morality, ethnic background, marital status, economic level, convenience, or previous experience. – Erma Bombeck • My affiliation with England is borne out by the fact that I do come back for periodic visits. – George Shearing • My goal has been to encourage jointness, to push people to think of affiliations rather than to operate as solo entrepreneurs. – A. Bartlett Giamatti • No one can deny that a network (a world network) of economic and psychic affiliations is being woven at ever increasing speed which envelops and constantly penetrates more deeply within each of us. With every day that passes it becomes a little more impossible for us to act or think otherwise than collectively. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin • Of course, peer pressure has a strong positive component. It provides the social cohesion that allows the very development of communal affiliation. But peer power as an extrinsic force is a lot like radiation: a little goes a long way. – Charles D. Hayes • On a day when all Americans, regardless of party affiliation, are celebrating the growth of freedom and honoring the sacrifices of American and Iraqi troops with elections in Iraq, it’s sad that John Kerry has chosen once again to offer vacillation and defeatism. Even after the first free elections in Iraq in more than 50 years John Kerry still believes Iraq is more of terrorist threat than when the brutal tyrant Saddam Hussein was in power and even more remarkably Kerry is now once again for funding our troops, after being for the funding before he was against it. – Ken Mehlman • One’s head is finite. You pour more and more things into it – surnames, chronologies, affiliations – and it packs them away in its tunnels, and eventually you find that you have a book about something that you publish. – Nicholson Baker • Our predecessors understood that the ties that bind America are far stronger than disagreements over any particular policy and far more durable and profound than any party affiliation. – Madeleine Albright

• Peace cannot come by legislation or through affiliation with any political philosophy…Peace, joy, and happiness can come only through an acceptance of God’s revealed plan of life. – Theodore M. Burton • Regardless of your race, religion or political affiliation, never hesitate to question those in authority. – Tavis Smiley • Right now if this preacher died he would go to heaven. Not because I spent years in the jungles and the Andes Mountains of Peru. Not because of piety, devotion or bible study. Not because of denominational affiliation, baptism, or participation in the Lord’s supper. If I died right now, I would go to heaven because two thousand years ago the Son of God shed His blood for this wretched man. And that is my hope. – Paul Washer • Safety lies in catering to the in-group. We are not all brave. All I would ask of writers who find it hard to question the universal validity of their personal opinions and affiliations is that they consider this: Every group we belong to – by gender, sex, race, religion, age – is an in-group, surrounded by an immense out-group, living next door and all over the world, who will be alive as far into the future as humanity has a future. That out-group is called other people. It is for them that we write. – Ursula K. Le Guin • Since the moment of the United Nations’ inception, untold energies have been expended by governments not only toward the exclusion of persons of principle and distinction from the organization’s leading positions, but toward the installation of men whose character and affiliations would as far as possible preclude any serious challenge to governmental sovereignty. – Shirley Hazzard • That’s what running does to lives. It’s not just exercise. It’s not just achievement. It’s a daily discipline that has nothing to do with speed, weight, social status, sexual orientation, political affiliation, where you live, what car you drive, or whether anyone anywhere loves you. It’s about the slow and painful process of being the best you can be. – Martin Dugard • The affiliation clause in our Constitution is a privilege: a courtesy to a sympathetic body. Were you not a Mason, or Co-Mason, you would have to be proposed and seconded, and then examined by savage Inquisitors, and then-probably-thrown out on the garbage heap. Well, no, it’s not as bad as that; but we certainly don’t want anybody who chooses to apply. Would you do it yourself, if you were on the Committee of a Club? The O.T.O. is a serious body, engaged on a work of Cosmic scope. You should question yourself: what can I contribute? – Aleister Crowley • The behavior of an individual is determined not by his racial affiliation, but by the character of his ancestry and his cultural environment. – Franz Boas • The best hope for peace in the world lies in the simple but far-reaching recognition that we all have many different associations and affiliations, and we need not see ourselves as being rigidly divided by a single categorization of hardened groups, which confront each other. – Amartya Sen • The day will never come when any Palestinian would be arrested because of his political affiliation or because of resisting the occupation. The file of political detention must be closed. – Said Seyam • The definition of terrorism is killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation. – Caleb Carr • The development of a kind heart, or feeling of closeness for all human beings, does not involve any of the kind of religiosity we normally associate with it…It is for everyone, irrespective of race, religion or any political affiliation. – Dalai Lama • The Empathic Civilization is emerging. A younger generation is fast extending its empathic embrace beyond religious affiliations and national identification to include the whole of humanity and the vast project of life that envelops the Earth. – Jeremy Rifkin • The fact that there are now many entities that may have some loose affiliation with a former core Al Qaeda – or who have decided to fashion themselves as an affiliate or follower in the Al Qaeda jihadist tradition – as well as groups that are just inspired by the concept that they could also be the perpetrators of mass killing, means that there is a spectrum of threats. – Graham T. Allison • The Night Manager doesn’t exist in the post-Cold war universe, it exists much more in the modern world, I think. There is more action. The bad guys don’t have particularly political or national-political affiliations. – Tom Hiddleston • The public library is where those without money, power, access, university affiliation, or advanced degrees can get information for free. – Siva Vaidhyanathan • The question really is what will be the central focus of global politics in the coming decades and my argument is that cultural identities and cultural antagonisms and affiliations will play not the only role but a major role. – Samuel P. Huntington • The time has come to make the protection of children – all our children – a common cause that can unite us across the boundaries of our political orientation, religious affiliation and cultural traditions. We must reclaim our lost taboos, and make the abuse and brutalization of children simply unaccepetable. – Olara Otunnu • The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence. – Don DeLillo • There are people hell-bent on the idea that we’re a Christian band in disguise, and that we have some secret message. We have no spiritual affiliation with this music. It’s simply about life experience. – Amy Lee • There is a duty in refusing to cooperate in any undertaking that violates the Constitutional rights of the individual. This holds in particular for all inquisitions that are concerned with the private life and the political affiliations of the citizens. – Albert Einstein • Those of us who don’t have a party affiliation ought to be able to register under the heading “Confused. – Andy Rooney • To be motivated to sit at home and study, instead of going out and playing, children need a sense of themselves over time–they need to be able to picture themselves in the future…. If they can’t, then they’re simply reacting to daily events, responding to the needs of the moment–for pleasure, for affiliation, for acceptance. – Stanley Greenspan • We are all born free from all religious affiliations and only come to believe in such things after being introduced to it ― so, atheism is the default position. Although some children are not indoctrinated with a specific religion before the age of reason, there are many more who are. – David G. McAfee • We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than most textbooks and any speech that I could write what a proper government should be: the idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another’s pain, sharing one another’s blessings — reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race, or sex, or geography, or political affiliation. – Mario • We could come together, Democrats and Republicans, to find practical, commonsense solutions to health care, to education, to energy issues, because although I’m a proud Democrat, I’m a prouder American. And I think all of us believe, regardless of our party affiliations, that this is a critical time, where we’ve got to solve big problems. – Barack Obama • We shall say clearly that any symbol conspicuously displaying religious affiliation in school is prohibited. – Jean-Pierre Raffarin • What some now call ’emerging Christianity’ or ‘the emerging church’ is not something you join, establish, or invent. You just name it and then you see it everywhere- already in place! Such nongroup groups, the ‘two or three’ gathered in deep truth, create a whole new level of affiliation, dialogue, and friendship. – Richard Rohr • Whatever my party affiliation, I will continue to be guided by President Kennedy’s statement that sometimes party asks too much. – Arlen Specter • Whatever the political affiliation of our next President, whatever his views may be on all the issues and problems that rush in upon us, he must above all be the chief executive in every sense of the word. – John F. Kennedy • While it may not heighten our sympathy, wit widens our horizons by its flashes, revealing remote hidden affiliations and drawing laughter from far afield; humor, in contrast, strikes up fellow feeling, and though it does not leap so much across time and space, enriches our insight into the universal in familiar things, lending it a local habitation and a name. – Marie Taylor Collins Swabey • Women will not advance except by joining together in cooperative action…. Unlike other groups, women do not need to set affiliation and strength in opposition one against the other. We can readily integrate the two, search for more and better ways to use affiliation to enhance strength–and strength to enhance affiliation. – Jean Baker Miller • Wonder is our erotic affiliation with all of life. If we develop this, enjoy it, and follow its promptings, our wants will be fewer and our needs plainer. – Stephanie Mills • Yesterday in New York City, Donald Trump officially changed his political affiliation from Republican to Independent. And Donald’s hair has switched from pelt to carpet sample. – Jay Leno • Your race and gender don’t change, but you can choose to change your political affiliation at will. – John Podhoretz

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equitiesstocks · 4 years

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clobov · 5 years

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RENO, Nev. -- Rep. Mark Amodei was not prepared for the backlash from his fellow Republicans when he said Congress needed to "follow the facts" and look into whether President Donald Trump should be impeached.Newspapers declared he was breaking ranks. Conservative constituents branded him a traitor: "I'm Brutus, and Trump's Julius Caesar," he said. In short order, he was forced to explain himself to the Trump campaign's political director, top House Republicans and the acting White House chief of staff. All had the same question: "What the heck are you doing?"As evidence mounts that Trump engaged in an intensive effort to pressure the leader of Ukraine to investigate a political rival, Amodei is one of a growing number of Republicans who, while not explicitly endorsing the Democrats' impeachment inquiry, are at least indicating an openness to it. None have said Trump should be impeached. But neither are they defending him.It is a politically delicate but increasingly common approach among independent-minded lawmakers like Amodei, who are working to balance their fear of inviting Trump's wrath -- and that of the party base -- with a deep anxiety that there is more to be revealed about the president, some of it potentially indefensible, and the knowledge that history will hold them accountable for their words and actions.In Michigan, Rep. Fred Upton told an audience at the Detroit Economic Club that while he did not support an impeachment inquiry, "there are legitimate questions" about Trump's interactions with Ukraine, and he had no problem with Democrats' efforts to get more information."We need to know what the answers are," he said.In Texas, Rep. Will Hurd -- who is retiring, and therefore perhaps feeling liberated to speak his mind -- has called on the House to investigate the "troubling" allegations against Trump, though he cautioned against a rush to impeachment. In Pennsylvania, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick said he thinks law enforcement should investigate. In Illinois, Rep. Adam Kinzinger said, "I want to know what happened here."In Maine, Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican whose seat is seen by Democrats as especially vulnerable, also criticized Trump's decision to call on China to investigate a political rival. "It's completely inappropriate," she told the Bangor Daily News on Saturday.And in Utah, Sen. Mitt Romney, who has emerged as a lonely voice criticizing Trump's dealings with Ukraine, and last week called the president's appeal for foreign help investigating the Bidens "wrong and appalling," appears to have company. Before a whistleblower's complaint against Trump was made public, a fellow Utahan, Rep. John Curtis, introduced a resolution calling for the White House to release it, and he has said he is "closely monitoring the formal inquiry."On Saturday, in a warning shot to Republicans who might cross him, Trump lashed out at Romney on Twitter, calling him a "pompous 'ass' who has been fighting me from the beginning" and using the hashtag IMPEACHMITTROMNEY."As they distance themselves from Trump, these Republicans -- some in swing districts in tight reelection races -- are also taking care to distance themselves from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who they say rushed into the impeachment inquiry. For the most part they are refraining from directly criticizing the president, who has branded the investigation a "witch hunt" and a "hoax."But neither are they adopting the language of their leaders, whose strategy centers on attacking Pelosi, branding the inquiry politically motivated and changing the subject to Biden and his son Hunter, whose work for a Ukrainian energy company fed Trump's accusations of a nefarious web of corruption involving one of his top political foes. More than a dozen House Republicans have remained silent."It's a matter of following their conscience and saying what they will be happy defending to their children in later years," said Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist, adding, "Some of them are following the rule that if you can't say anything good about your president, you should not say anything at all."These Republicans still account for a small minority of the 197 in the House. But their comments, at a time when polls show public support for the impeachment inquiry is growing, are the first hint at cracks in party unity. They also offer echoes of the path the party took during the impeachment proceedings against Richard M. Nixon, when even the staunchest defenders of the president eventually abandoned him."My sense is that if there were a secret ballot vote on impeachment it would garner significant Republican support," said David Wasserman, who tracks House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, citing "my private conversations with Republican members of Congress who believe he is wildly unfit to be president. "But, Wasserman added, "They can't say that in public, or else their political careers would be torpedoed by one tweet from the Oval Office."Here in Nevada, Amodei, 61, a garrulous former federal prosecutor who led Trump's 2016 campaign in Nevada, is choosing his words carefully.During a candid hourlong conversation that included a tour of his lovingly restored red-and-white Chevy Silverado flatbed truck (model year 1988 -- the same year he switched his party registration from Democrat to Republican), he sounded mystified at the uproar he created. He votes with Trump nearly 99% of the time, but described himself as a "process guy" who believes in congressional oversight."I just think you have to respect the process," he said. "I think you need to be transparent, and you need to tell the truth."He said he was not a fan of Pelosi's process and said she should have put the inquiry up to a vote of the full House. And he lamented that the word "inquiry" has become politically toxic for Republicans -- a lesson he learned after he shared his views with local reporters, one of whom wrote that he backed the House inquiry but was withholding judgment on whether Trump "crossed the legal line."The characterization was accurate, Amodei said, but it sparked an uproar when news media outlets (including The New York Times) called him the first Republican who had broken ranks to support an impeachment investigation. He quickly recalibrated, issuing a statement making clear he did not support Trump's impeachment."I now know 'inquiry' is a special word in the impeachment thesaurus," he said wryly, "which I'm still looking for on Amazon, but I haven't found."Still, anti-Trump voices within the Republican Party have been emboldened by comments like Amodei's. Republicans for the Rule of Law, the main initiative of the conservative anti-Trump group Defending Democracy Together, is spending more than $1 million to run television ads on Fox and MSNBC, calling on Republicans to "demand the facts" about Trump and Ukraine.The campaign began last week with ads in five districts -- including Amodei's, Upton's and Fitzpatrick's -- and will expand this week to target 12 Republican senators and 15 members of the House."Given where they've been, for congressional Republicans to say, 'Well, we need to see all the facts,' is a pretty important step forward," said Bill Kristol, the conservative commentator and a founder of Defending Democracy Together.Polls have shown a steady rise in support for the Democrats' impeachment inquiry, with a majority of Americans approving of it. But sentiment is split along party lines. A recent CBS poll found that nearly 9 in 10 Democrats approved of the inquiry, and two-thirds strongly approved, as compared with just 23% of Republicans."Overwhelmingly, Republicans oppose the impeachment inquiry," said Ayres, the pollster. "They want their Republican elected officials to defend the president and protect him from his many enemies."But for Republicans in swing districts who have tight reelection races, like Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania, defending Trump at all costs is not an option. In Washington state, for instance, Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler, who represents a district Democrats have targeted, has echoed Amodei, saying that while there is not yet evidence of impeachable offenses, for the "sake of this nation, we should all follow a process that does not put conclusions before facts."Here in northern Nevada, though, sentiment runs strong in favor of Trump. Amodei's district stretches south from Reno, past the cattle ranches and casinos that line the road to the state capital, Carson City, and into largely rural areas like Douglas County, where members of the local Republican women's club were having their monthly luncheon last week."I think it's a scam and it's a witch hunt, just like Trump says," said Gloria Darrington, 77, expressing the views of many here when she said she believed Democrats were simply continuing a long-running quest to undo the results of the 2016 election."He lives in a very Republican area, and he ought to be listening to his Republicans," Elinor Lindberg, 83, said of Amodei.Amodei, the only Republican in Nevada's congressional delegation, is not in danger of losing his seat to a Democrat. But he is in danger of drawing a Republican primary challenger from the right, and already some well-known Nevada names -- Adam Laxalt, the former attorney general who ran for governor last year, and Danny Tarkanian, a businessman -- are being bandied about.Amodei sounded unworried. He said some Democrats in his district have been thanking him for his open-mindedness."I am a member of the legislative branch -- I defend that institution," he said, adding, "Quite frankly, if you don't believe in the processes of your own institution, what are you doing there?This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company

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Trump and his minions will do whatever it takes to hide his crimes from the American people and change the narrative. WE CANNOT FORGET WHAT HAS HAPPENED OVER THE PAST YEAR. It is more important than ever to STAND UP, be HEARD and VOTE to protect our DEMOCRACY. THE TRUTH WILL COME OUT eventually.

BOLTON FACES POTENTIAL LEGAL BATTLES IN STANDOFF WITH WHITE HOUSE OVER HIS BOOK

By Tom Hamburger, Josh Dawsey and Derek Hawkins | Published January 31 at 7:51 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 1, 2020 |

John Bolton could face legal challenges as he pushes ahead with a book describing conversations he claims to have had with President Trump while serving as his national security adviser, experts said, setting the conservative icon on a potential collision course with the administration he once served.

Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” is still scheduled to be released in March, even after the National Security Council warned his attorney last week that it will have to be revised because it contained “significant amounts” of classified material. Bolton’s lawyer has disputed that.

Amid the standoff, details about the contents of his manuscript are continuing to leak out, with the New York Times reporting Friday that Trump directed Bolton in May to call the Ukrainian president and urge him to meet with Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Trump denied Bolton’s account. “I never instructed John Bolton to set up a meeting for Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of the greatest corruption fighters in America and by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, to meet with President Zelensky,” the president said in a statement.

As Trump and his GOP allies have lambasted Bolton, the former national security adviser has sounded a defiant note. During a private appearance in Austin on Thursday, he defended administration officials who testified during the impeachment proceedings.

“The idea that somehow testifying to what you think is true is destructive to the system of government we have — I think, is very nearly the reverse — the exact reverse of the truth,” Bolton said, according to Austin’s KXAN television station.

White House officials declined to comment Friday on whether Bolton has been asked to delete certain portions of his manuscript or whether the administration has been in touch with Bolton’s team in recent days. A spokeswoman for Bolton declined to comment.

A representative of Simon and Schuster, which is scheduled to publish the manuscript, declined to comment.

A person familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the dispute, said Bolton’s team expects a lengthy fight over the issue but appears determined to see it through.

Legal experts and former government officials said the White House has several tools available to try to halt or delay publication of Bolton’s book, including the pre-publication review process.

“If the administration simply doesn’t want the manuscript to see the light of day, they could just drag it out far beyond the March publication date,” said Guy Snodgrass, who served as a speechwriter to then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

“My biggest concern is the process is too easily corrupted by political designs,” he said.

A book by Snodgrass, “Holding the Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis,” was held up for five or six months by the Defense Department last year for a security review — and released only once he filed a suit alleging the department was blocking its publication. One of the people he said who asked him to remove material was Bolton, then the national security adviser, which he agreed to do.

Legal experts said the White House might also challenge Bolton’s account as a violation of executive privilege or national security, subjecting him to possible legal challenges or even criminal prosecution if he proceeds with publication.

“The president has ultimate authority for deciding what is classified and what is not classified, and Mr. Bolton has an uphill battle to convince the president that there’s no classified information in there,” said John Ficklin, former senior director for records and access management at the NSC from 2014 to 2016.

Bolton’s attorney, Charles Cooper, has said his client is confident there is no classified material in his manuscript. Nonetheless, a Jan. 23 White House letter to Cooper warned that the manuscript contained a significant amount of classified material, including some considered top secret.

The letter, written by Ellen J. Knight, the National Security Council’s senior director for records, access and information security management, said Bolton would be breaking his nondisclosure agreement with the U.S. government if he published the book without revisions.

“The manuscript may not be published or otherwise disclosed without the deletion of this classified information,” she wrote.

Cooper had submitted the manuscript to the National Security Council for vetting on Dec. 30.

“Ambassador Bolton has carefully sought to avoid any discussion in the manuscript of . . . classified information, and we accordingly do not believe that prepublication review is required,” Cooper wrote to Knight in a letter accompanying the draft. “We are nonetheless submitting this manuscript out of an abundance of caution.”

In the past, the U.S. government has had mixed success in its attempts to block the publication of books by former officials. Many experts say the system for reviewing manuscripts for potential classified material is dated, opaque and in need of reform.

“The whole prepublication review system is a mess,” said Oona Hathaway, a professor at Yale Law School who previously served in the Defense Department.

“Each agency has its own set of rules. . . . There’s a rationale behind the system, but it’s badly managed, it’s not well organized, it’s not centralized, there are no clear rules, and it is very much open to abuse,” Hathaway said.

Nonetheless, she said, the government has a “Damocles sword” hanging over Bolton, noting that “they could sue him if he doesn’t get the government’s permission, and they could make him give up everything he earns on the book.”

The Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that employees who evade pre-publication review requirements can suffer serious financial repercussions. The case involved former CIA agent Frank Snepp, who described the CIA’s role in Vietnam but failed to submit the publication for review. The court’s decision effectively permitted the government to seize the profits of his book.

Most writings by former government officials — such as op-eds, law review articles and even books — make it through the National Security Council review relatively smoothly. Smaller issues are often resolved via email or in sit-down meetings with the author, according to people familiar with the process.

But people who violate the procedures can face severe consequences. Courts have allowed the government to seize multimillion-dollar advances and royalties from authors who violated their nondisclosure agreements. The government could also bring charges under the Espionage Act, though that’s rare.

In 2016, the Navy SEAL who wrote a best-selling book, “No Easy Day,” about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, had to pay the federal government at least $6.8 million to avoid prosecution for not getting pre-publication approval for the work.

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Karen DeYoung and Alice Crites contributed to this report.

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One thing Trump and his minions are good at is 'FAKE NEWS' and 'HATE'

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

ANATOMY OF A ‘SMEAR’: HOW JOHN BOLTON BECAME A TARGET OF THE PRO-TRUMP INTERNET

By Isaac Stanley-Becker | Published

Jan 28 at 8:14 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 1, 2020 |

The headline drew little notice when it appeared last spring on a blog called “Disobedient Media.”

“John Bolton Took Money From Banks Tied To Cartels, Terrorists, Iran,” it read.

On Monday, the blog entry gained sudden popularity. That’s because its central claim — based only on innuendo and half-truths — proved useful to President Trump’s most fervent online supporters, who rushed to discredit the former United Nations ambassador and national security adviser as news broke that his forthcoming book would corroborate accounts that the president held up aid to Ukraine to advance investigations into his domestic political rivals.

The story quickly gained more than 5,000 interactions on Facebook — meaning shares, likes or other user actions — as it spread across pages and groups devoted to defending Trump. Soon, it became a building block of a campaign to discredit Bolton by impugning his motives and portraying him as a turncoat.

The attacks, which unfolded vividly in the 24 hours after it became clear Bolton had potentially damaging information to share, crescendoed on conservative podcasts and cable television, as individual catchphrases — such as “Book Deal Bolton” — gained currency across the far-right firmament. By Tuesday, they offered a case study in how the pro-Trump Internet targets a perceived enemy, even an archconservative and war hawk.

The vilification of Bolton — branding him as a traitor and member of the “deep state,” a reference to a conspiracy theory favored by the president that a shadow government is working to thwart him — made use of misleading text as well as eye-catching memes. It moved from anonymous Twitter accounts with a few dozen followers to prime-time hosts on Fox News with an audience of hundreds of thousands. Finally, it made its way to Capitol Hill, when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday described the eyewitness to activity at the heart of the president’s impeachment trial as a “disgruntled, fired employee who now has a motive, a multimillion-dollar motive, to inflame the situation.”

Trump himself echoed some of the attacks Monday when he retweeted a post from Lou Dobbs of the Fox Business Network calling Bolton a “Rejected Neocon” and the “Deep State’s Last Desperate Act.”

That move, experts say, showcased how personal insults driven by online conspiracy theories — which Trump harnessed on his path to the presidency — remain fundamental to his hold on his base.

“It only makes sense to keep dancing with the ones who brought you to the prom,” said Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami and co-author of “American Conspiracy Theories.” The attacks are successful, he said, because Trump elevates them, “hitting back fairly strongly with a smear that pushes back on the allegation without really addressing it.”

The path traveled by the “Disobedient Media” entry also illustrated how random nooks and crannies of the Internet can wind up being useful for political propaganda. The blog is written by William Craddick, who has a law degree from Pepperdine University and works in consumer advocacy in Los Angeles. The name of his blog, he said, was based on a “joke with friends, capturing the sentiment of going against the grain.”

The sensational headline mischaracterized the evidence presented in the post, which drew on a Washington Post story about how Bolton had earned speaking fees from Deutsche Bank, the British bank HSBC and a foundation operated by a Ukrainian steel magnate. All nuance was lost, however, when the blog post gained sudden traction on Monday, posted to about two dozen Facebook groups — with a collective membership of more than 300,000. One of them was a group called “Fox News Sean Hannity,” described as a forum for “all Sean Hannity fans.” The blog post primed Fox viewers in the group — which has no official links to the network or the popular Trump-friendly host — for what they would hear when they tuned in that night.

Craddick bluntly assessed the motivations behind the renewed interest in his post, but he had little sympathy for Bolton’s boosters, either.

“Now the Republicans don’t like Bolton, so they’ll take an article that makes him look bad and push it,” he said. “But if the Democrats weren’t getting something useful out of him, they wouldn’t be fans either.”

Efforts to portray Bolton as craven and self-interested got underway simultaneously, seeking to raise doubts about the timing of the revelations, which emerged on the same day that his book became available for preorder on Amazon. A blogger drew up a meme pairing an image of the former national security adviser with the text, “Turned his ‘drug deal’ into a book deal” — a reference to Bolton’s description of the shadow foreign policy pursued in Ukraine, according to the testimony of Fiona Hill, a former top White House adviser on Russia.

The blogger, Craig Weide, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, posted the meme to the Facebook page associated with his blog, which has about 16,000 followers, as well as to a handful of public groups, reaching a combined potential viewership of more than 74,000 within about five minutes on Sunday night. One was a group called “FOX NEWS with Tucker Carlson,” an online assembly for fans of the Fox host, though it also has no formal ties to the network.

The idea captured in the meme was also articulated in a memo from the Republican National Committee’s rapid response team. “How convenient that this leaked info happened to be released at the same time preorders were made available for the book on Amazon,” wrote Steve Guest, the RNC’s rapid-response director. “What a joke.”

Jason Miller, a spokesman for Trump’s 2016 campaign and co-host of Stephen K. Bannon’s “War Room: Impeachment” podcast, took to Twitter first thing Monday morning to brand the former national security adviser “Book Deal Bolton.” The nickname spread widely on social media during the day, amplified by pro-Trump influencers with tens of thousands of followers.

A joint statement from Bolton, along with his publisher and literary agency, denied any coordination with the media.

Conservative pundits were unconvinced, repackaging Twitter talking points for their prime-time audiences. The epithet “Book Deal Bolton” appeared on screen Monday night on Fox News behind Hannity.

“Good for John,” Hannity said. “He can sell all the books he wants.”

But few went further than Dobbs, the hard-line Fox Business host and Trump whisperer who announced Monday night that Bolton had been “reduced to a tool for the radical Dems and the deep state.”

The accusation of being a “tool for the radical Dems” has been leveled widely on social media in recent months, applied to individuals as disparate as Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, and Univision’s Jorge Ramos. What they have in common is rebutting the president’s claims.

Using the same guilt-by-association logic supporting the blog entry in “Disobedient Media,” Dobbs claimed that major donors to Bolton’s super PAC were “never Trumpers.”

“Do you see the pattern here with Mr. Bolton?” Dobbs said, not stating the pattern but relying on his viewers to put together the pieces of the conspiratorial puzzle.

The notion that Bolton, a longtime bugbear of Democrats who has worked in four Republican administrations, was operating furtively within the White House to advance liberal objectives bemused some who have dealt with him. “I think it’s ridiculous, and if it wasn’t so serious, it’d be humorous,” said Chuck Hagel, the former defense secretary and Republican senator from Nebraska.

“It shows you once again that there’s very little honesty, decency or civility in Trump and the crowd around him,” added Hagel, who was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Bolton’s nomination as U.N. ambassador foundered, leading to a recess appointment by President George W. Bush. “I had my differences with him, but I would say that John Bolton is anything but ‘deep state.’ ”

Bolton’s lawyer, Charles Cooper, didn’t respond to a request for comment. Of the effort to cast Bolton as a disgruntled government holdover, a former aide, Fred Fleitz, said, “He is an honorable man who had some significant achievements with President Trump in the National Security Council.” Fleitz on Monday published an op-ed urging the former White House official to postpone publication of his book until after the election. But he distanced himself from the more strident criticism, saying in an interview, “I’ve never called John Bolton part of the deep state.”

While lacking in evidence, the assertions made by Dobbs rested on a reliable scaffold of misleading claims bolted into place on Twitter over the course of the day.

An account that goes by the name Philip Schuyler — a Revolutionary-era general who went on to become a senator from New York — and describes itself simply as a “Supporter of President Trump” pointed implausibly to the “deep state.”

“Though a Republican, Bolton would’ve fit nicely into Obama’s ultra conceited deep state,” the user wrote Monday morning. By noon, the conservative columnist Todd Starnes, a former Fox News Radio host, was claiming without evidence or explanation that, “These Bolton allegations smell like Deep State swamp gas.”

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Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.

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THE CRINGING ABDICATION OF SENATE REPUBLICANS

By Editorial Board | Published January 31 at 5:50 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 1, 2020 |

REPUBLICAN SENATORS who voted Friday to suppress known but unexamined evidence of President Trump’s wrongdoing at his Senate trial must have calculated that the wrath of a vindictive president is more dangerous than the sensible judgment of the American people, who, polls showed, overwhelmingly favored the summoning of witnesses. That’s almost the only way to understand how the Republicans could have chosen to deny themselves and the public the firsthand account of former national security adviser John Bolton, and perhaps others, on how Mr. Trump sought to extort political favors from Ukraine.

The public explanations the senators offered were so weak and contradictory as to reveal themselves as pretexts. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she weighed supporting “additional witnesses and documents, to cure the shortcomings” of the House’s impeachment process, but decided against doing so. Apparently she preferred a bad trial to a better one — but she did assure us that she felt “sad” that “the Congress has failed.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said the case against Mr. Trump had already been proved, so no further testimony was needed. But he also said, without explanation, that Mr. Trump’s “inappropriate” conduct did not merit removal from office; voters, he said, should render a verdict in the coming presidential election. How could he measure the seriousness of Mr. Trump’s wrongdoing without hearing Mr. Bolton’s firsthand testimony of the president’s motives and intentions, including about whether the president is likely to seek additional improper foreign intervention in that same election?

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) echoed Mr. Alexander’s illogic, only he lacked the courage even to take a position on whether Mr. Trump had, as charged, tried to force Ukraine’s new president to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, or whether that was wrong. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) managed to be even more timorous, telling reporters that “Lamar speaks for lots and lots of us” and refusing to elaborate.

So cowed are most of those “lots and lots” of Republicans that few of them dared to go as far as Mr. Sasse. Some have echoed the president’s indefensible claims that there was nothing wrong with the pressure campaign. Their votes against witnesses have rendered the trial a farce and made conviction the only choice for senators who honor the Constitution.

Americans who object to Mr. Trump’s relentless stonewalling and Republicans’ complicity can take some comfort in the prospect that most or all of the evidence the White House is hiding will eventually come out. A reminder of that came Friday in a New York Times report about Mr. Bolton’s unpublished book, which describes how Mr. Trump ordered him last May to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to meet with his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani said publicly at the time he wanted to induce Mr. Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden because it would be “helpful to my client,” Mr. Trump.

That report underlined the cringing shamefulness of the Republican decision to block Mr. Bolton’s testimony — and there will surely be more reminders in the weeks and months ahead. We can hope only that voters who wanted that evidence to be heard in the trial will respond by showing incumbent senators they are a force to be reckoned with, as much as the bully in the White House.

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WHEN THE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL ENDS, THE SENATE’S REPUTATION WILL BE HOPELESSLY IN TATTERS

By Ruth Marcus | Published January 31 at 6:13 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 1, 2020 |

What will be left of the impeachment power after the Senate’s acquittal of President Trump? Not much. What will be left of the Senate’s reputation as the world’s greatest deliberative body? Same answer.

SAME SCARY ANSWER.

The two are interconnected, of course, but my point is not that the Senate was obligated to convict the president. Conviction and removal from office are warranted, but that was never a realistic possibility. And a reasonable senator with an eye on the electoral calendar could have concluded that it would be better for the country to let voters decide.

What a reasonable senator could not do was what happened here: wholesale shirking of the Senate’s constitutional responsibility to assess — which includes a responsibility to obtain — all the evidence of potential wrongdoing. Senators offered up an unconvincing grab bag of excuses for this dereliction of duty:

That the House didn’t do its homework and it wasn’t the Senate’s job to make up for that — as if the Senate had not been entrusted with the “sole power to try” impeachments. That it would take too long and distract the Senate from its other pressing work — as if there were anything more important, and as if the Senate were actually doing anything beyond ramming through judicial nominees.

As bad an argument, and perhaps even more dangerous as precedent, was Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (Tenn.) assessment that the Senate didn’t have to pursue the evidence because, although Trump’s behavior was, to use Alexander’s milquetoast phrase, “inappropriate,” it wouldn’t justify removal. That may be a legitimate basis for acquittal. But how can the Senate decide how bad the president’s behavior was if it doesn’t know the facts?

Most dangerous of all were the constitutional arguments made by the president’s lawyers, which would render the impeachment clause meaningless: A president cannot be impeached except for criminal conduct. A president cannot be impeached for abuse of power. A president cannot be impeached if he believes his quid pro quo arrangement was in the nation’s interest.

That combination of jaw-dropping audacity and constitutional illiteracy now leaves a toxic residue: the impeachment clause neutered and the country in dangerous constitutional territory.

It would have been one thing if the president’s lawyers, rather than doubling down on his “perfect” conversation approach, had acknowledged that Trump’s behavior was wrong. Instead, they slavishly lauded his good works and proceeded to drain all meaning out of the impeachment clause. The Senate’s acquittal in the face of their extreme positions risks complicity with this constitutional mischief. It is not hard to imagine a future Senate being confronted with the arguments of Alan Dershowitz and the Trump outcome, and being lectured on the significance of this precedent.

There are two risks inherent in any impeachment. One, which Trump’s lawyers repeatedly invoked, is that lawmakers will set the impeachment bar so low that it will become a regular tool to seek to remove presidents on the basis of policy disagreements and as an exercise in partisan mischief.

The other, which Trump’s lawyers resolutely ignored, is that impeachment and removal will be made even more difficult than the constitutional structure already entails — such as the requirement that conviction be by a two-thirds majority — and that presidents will therefore feel unconstrained by the implicit threat presented by the impeachment clause.

That strikes me as the bigger risk. Extremists on either side have bellowed about it on occasion, but the country has witnessed very few serious attempts to remove a president precisely because impeachment is such a drastic and unwieldy remedy. There was lots of chatter after the Bill Clinton impeachment that the mechanism would become just another weapon in the political arsenal. That didn’t happen.

Indeed, even with all of Trump’s outrages, and even with a Democratic majority in the House after the 2018 election, impeachment did not become a reality until the disclosures about his dealings with Ukraine essentially forced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to take that step.

The impeachment power isn’t needed to keep most presidents from engaging in impeachable conduct, just as homicide statutes aren’t necessary to keep most of us from committing murder. Presidents face other constraints, moral and political, on their behavior. The reason the Framers wrote the impeachment clause into the Constitution was that they recognized the risk, even within the span of a four-year term, of an outlier, renegade president, and one so dangerous that they needed to take desperate measures. In such cases, impeachment isn’t overturning the will of the electorate; it’s effectuating the wisdom of the Framers.

They put their faith in checks and balances. We are left with a president unchecked and a system dangerously unbalanced.

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‘THE CENTER OF THE ORBIT’: ENDANGERED REPUBLICANS GO ALL-IN ON TRUMP

By Robert Costa and Ashley Parker | Published January 31 at 4:55 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted Feb. 1, 2020 |

Many of the most endangered Republicans have concluded that fully embracing President Trump is their only credible path to victory in November, rallying to his side in the final days of the Senate impeachment fight and indulging his most controversial actions and statements.

At-risk Republicans — including those in battlegrounds such as Arizona, Colorado and Georgia — are calculating that a strong economy and an energized pro-Trump base will be enough to carry the party as it works to retain the White House and its Senate majority in 2020, according to interviews and private discussions with more than a dozen Republican senators, Senate aides and veteran strategists and officials.

More broadly, most Republicans have also largely jettisoned plans to break ranks with Trump to woo independents and suburban women, who turned on the party in 2018 and helped hand the House to the Democrats. This political positioning is driven in part by their view that Democrats are again poised to nominate a uniquely vulnerable presidential standard-bearer weighed down with ideological or establishment baggage.

“There’s nothing in the middle of the road other than dead possums and yellow lines,” said Will Ritter, co-founder of Poolhouse, a center-right ad agency. “Like no other president before, Republican voters want you to wrap yourself around Trump. There is no upside to doing any distancing.”

Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) has concentrated in recent weeks on rallying base Republicans rather than appealing to moderates for her tough reelection fight, pushing for a swift acquittal in Trump’s impeachment trial while raising money off a feud with a CNN reporter she called “a liberal hack.” Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), who is running for reelection in a state Hillary Clinton won by five points in 2016, came under attack by his likely Democratic opponent, former governor John Hickenlooper, after deciding against calling for impeachment witnesses and evidence this week.

And Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), facing a tough intraparty primary fight from Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.), has gone all-in on supporting Trump in a state that Democrats are targeting for its growing diversity and booming Atlanta suburbs, including an attack this week on fellow Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) for supporting the call for witnesses.

Loeffler, who has been personally friendly with Romney and who has donated to him in the past, accused him in a tweet of trying to “appease the left” and concluded: “The circus is over. It’s time to move on!”

Trump’s uncontested grip over his party came into focus again Friday as two key Republican senators — Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is retiring, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who is not up for reelection — supported the president by blocking Democratic attempts to extend the trial, couching their positions as driven by frustrations with Democrats. It will mark the first time in U.S. history that no witnesses will be called in a Senate impeachment proceeding.

“There is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense,” Alexander said in a statement, arguing that while Trump had taken “actions that are inappropriate,” they did not merit his removal from office.

It was the most significant political move made by Senate Republicans this week: Their refusal to join Democrats in calling for additional evidence or witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial, ensuring that it could wrap up in the coming days.

At the center of the calculation was Trump himself, and just how much Republicans feel they can distance themselves from a president who, in just over three years, has traveled from troublesome outsider to Republican Party standard-bearer.

Ritter said some vulnerable Republicans running in swing states and House districts may be able to differentiate themselves from Trump and appeal to the center on specific policy issues, but on something hyper-politicized like impeachment, they cannot afford to cross the president.

“On Trump, it’s binary,” Ritter said. “You’re either a treacherous Democrat or you’re with the president.”

The 2018 midterm elections did provide a flashing alarm for Republicans about the risks of being inextricably bound with Trump. Democrats retook the House majority after toppling Republican incumbents in many suburban districts and in state and local races — a takeover that laid the groundwork for impeachment.

Former Republican senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said challenges in suburbs, such as those surrounding Philadelphia, remain troubling for the party. But he said opposing Trump on impeachment is seen by most at-risk Republicans as the “wrong way to try to win over those voters.”

“You won’t get seen as playing to the suburbs,” Santorum said. “You’ll be seen as playing to the angry leftists who hate the president.”

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee worked to keep the probe of Russian election interference as bipartisan as possible, said he fully supports Trump and is surprised that anyone might be surprised.

“He’s a Republican, he’s president and we support his agenda,” Burr said. “The media, of course, tries to drive a wedge and wonder, but every poll today shows the president actually stronger today than he was four years ago.”

For Trump, Republican unity on impeachment is the fruit of the ultimate pressure campaign in a short political career defined by them. The president has upended so many norms that he has simply become the norm, with everyone else in the party scrambling to adjust.

That doesn’t mean Republicans all personally like Trump or cheer his conduct, either on foreign policy or other matters — in fact, many Republican lawmakers still complain loudly about him behind closed doors, sometimes mocking him as incompetent and undisciplined.

But many also privately acknowledge that Trump dominates the party in a potent and visceral way and say they are operating out of the partisan reality of an intensely divided nation.

Democrats, they add, should stop expecting a Republican establishment to stand up and block Trump, since Trump himself is now the establishment.

“I regularly talk to five or six Republicans who I feel some closeness to,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “I’ve heard for months that they know the president lies a lot. . . . They worry about his character. But they aren’t willing to come forward and say that publicly. That’s one of the tragedies of this era.”

Former Republican Georgia congressman Jack Kingston said he once had reservations about Trump but has since become an ardent admirer and booster. He explained his transformation with a shrug, saying his party and Washington “needed a shake-up.”

“I accept it,” he said.

The Georgia primary fight brewing between Loeffler and Collins is a classic Trump-era standoff, he added.

“Any GOP candidate is going to want to show he or she is close to Trump,” Kingston said. “If you think about the Republican Party, he’s the center of the orbit. You don’t want him to say something bad about you.”

The impulse for Republicans to link themselves tightly to the president spans the country, and includes some lawmakers not even currently up for reelection. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who doesn’t face reelection for four years, released a 30-second ad in Iowa that sided with Trump and attacked former vice president Joe Biden and other Democrats.

“I’d like to thank the Democrats for badly botching this impeachment charade and for spending so much time in a coverup for Joe Biden,” says Scott, who introduces himself as a juror in the Senate trial. “The real story here is the corruption Joe Biden got away with.”

The ad goes on to levy a series of factually problematic charges against Biden and his son Hunter, but its mere existence is sure to delight Trump — and sparked speculation that Scott is eyeing a 2024 presidential bid, seeking to cast himself as the torchbearer of Trump’s brand.

Jeff Sessions, the former attorney general under Trump who is now running to retake the Alabama Senate seat he vacated to join the administration, is also pushing to prove his fealty to the president — despite the fact that Trump, furious at Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, publicly and privately berated and humiliated his attorney general for the majority of his tenure.

Nonetheless, on Wednesday, Sessions touted his loyalty to Trump in a trio of tweets focused on former national security adviser John Bolton, whose forthcoming book directly ties Trump to the Ukraine decision at the heart of his impeachment trial. Sessions emphasized that he never publicly criticized the president and dismissed Bolton’s memoir as “an act of disloyalty.”

Former senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said he understands if Republicans poke holes in the Democrats’ case against Trump and vote for acquittal but cannot accept Republicans insisting that Trump did nothing wrong. Those who do the latter, he said, are willfully taking a position they know is false.

“That’s the difference. Vote to acquit? Okay. You can make that argument. But to say this wasn’t an egregious abuse of his presidential duty? That’s where this party has problems,” Flake said. “To suggest otherwise signals complete subservience to the president.”

But Scott Reed, senior strategist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, pointed to Trump’s “unprecedented high approval ratings with the GOP rank and file.”

“It’s Trump’s party now — there’s no way around that,” Reed said. “You may not agree with the boxes, but he’s checking all the boxes.”

Democrats, meanwhile, have had their own challenges holding their ranks together as Trump voters in red states have made clear to Democratic senators that they will pay a price for opposing the president.

Two centrists who won election last year — Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) — as well as Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who will face voters this year after a long-shot win in a special election in 2017, have been coy about how they will vote on acquittal, giving hope to Trump’s allies that the president could win bipartisan support.

Many Republicans also believe that Trump stands a strong chance of reelection against a flawed Democratic opponent, whether a nominee from the left like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), or a longtime politician like Biden.

Dick Wadhams, a longtime Republican strategist based in Colorado, said the specific choice between Trump and the eventual Democratic nominee will help Republicans who have tacked to the right to appease the party’s base win over moderates, as well.

“It’s going to be a choice on the ballot and not a referendum in 2020, and that’s what makes this very different than 2018,” Wadhams said. He added that he was a begrudging Trump voter in 2016 but now is fully supportive. He pointed to Trump accomplishments like passing a tax cut and appointing conservative judicial nominees, as well as his concern about where the Democrats would take the country.

“I still have concerns about the way he behaves, his tweets drive me nuts, and a lot of Republicans feel that way, but at the same time — Medicare-for-all, Green New Deal, killing fracking — spare me,” he said, rattling off a list of liberal proposals. “Democrats are driving people who might want to vote for them back to Trump.

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REPUBLICANS AGREE IT WAS NO ‘PERFECT CALL’ — BUT WILL VOTE TO ACQUIT TRUMP ANYWAY

By Josh Dawsey | Published January 31 at 7:20 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 1, 2020 |

IT WAS NOT A PERFECT PHONE CALL.

That was the message to President Trump from a range of Republican senators on Friday — even as they voted to block witnesses from the Senate impeachment trial and signaled they would vote to acquit him on charges that he sought to tie foreign aid to Ukraine launching an investigation into a political foe.

In sparing the president a continued spectacle, the senators pointedly offered the defense that many GOP senators wished to make all along: That Trump’s actions, while odious, were not deserving of the political death sentence.

As more revelations from former national security adviser John Bolton’s book flowed, senators shrugged. They knew what he’d done, they said. It was not great, they added, but not that bad. They were ready to move on.

“It was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

He then explained why he would not vote against the president. “The Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate,” Alexander said.

While the terms were entirely different, it was in one respect similar to former president Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial: Democratic senators impugned Clinton’s conduct and questioned his morals for lying about sex in the White House — but did not believe it rose to the level of impeachable offenses.

A number of Republican senators agreed that Trump should not have asked Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, former vice president Joe Biden’s son, during the phone call while raising a debunked theory about a Democratic National Committee server and Ukrainian interference in the election.

That Trump should not have withheld foreign aid to Ukraine for months, raising questions about the United States’ support for the country at war with Russia and sending Congress and the foreign policy firmament into a perplexed tizzy.

That Trump should not have involved his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani in an irregular foreign policy channel to “attempt to interfere in an investigation,” in Giuliani’s own words.

And that Trump should not have ousted career diplomat Marie Yovanovitch as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine after a smear campaign that even some of his own administration officials admitted was filled with erroneous information.

Many of the senators did not try to justify or explain the president’s conduct. Some mentioned an election in nine months or other Trump accomplishments. “Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a president from office,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said.

Alexander said the case had been proved. Trump was guilty. He was just not going to convict.

“Wrong and inappropriate,” said Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican who repeatedly asked the administration to release the aid to Ukraine. That was in a statement when he declared he wanted to hear no more.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a moderate Republican who delivered the death blow for a Democrat-led bid to hear from more witnesses, instead attacked Congress for not doing its job.

The terrible-but-not-impeachable defense rang hollow to some of the president’s critics. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the House impeachment managers, talked of the “Dershowitz Principle of Constitutional Lawlessness,” referring to Alan Dershowitz, one of Trump’s attorneys, and his expansive legal arguments.

Trump was unlikely to enjoy the statements, even if he liked the votes. He had repeatedly told lawmakers that he did not want to give an inch, and wanted lawmakers, surrogates and allies to reiterate his oft-said statement that the call was “perfect.”

“I JUST GOT IMPEACHED FOR MAKING A PERFECT PHONE CALL,” he posted, in all caps, on Jan. 16. “What I said on the phone call with the Ukrainian President is ‘perfectly’ stated,” Trump tweeted in November.

“READ THE TRANSCRIPTS!” he said, turning what some advisers believed was the most damning piece of evidence into his cri de coeur of innocence.

He told senators and allies that he did not want to distance himself from Giuliani when they suggested the lawyer’s actions were potentially an albatross. In a statement Friday, he called Giuliani “one of the greatest corruption fighters in America and by far the greatest mayor in the history of N.Y.C.”

He never conceded — as some lawmakers did — that his treatment of Yovanovitch was poor, instead taunting her on Twitter as she testified in the House about her abrupt firing and the threats she received.

“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” he wrote as she spoke. “. . . It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.”

As he stepped out of the White House one week after the impeachment inquiry was launched, he did not back down from calling for political investigations into his opponent. Instead, he called for China to investigate the Biden family as well — doubling down on the original sin with a new country.

Even in private, advisers say Trump has repeatedly stated it was a perfect phone call, that he does not understand, or at least will not admit, the impropriety of what he did.

“He genuinely believes he did nothing wrong,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump ally, said in a recent interview.

Dershowitz said he was pleased with the statements from the senators who criticized the president’s conduct but said they would not remove him.

“That’s right,” he said, asked if that was the point of his argument. “My argument was whether or not you think he did anything wrong, it was it did not

rise to the level of impeachment.”

Dershowitz declined to comment when asked if he thought the president did anything wrong, or whether the call was perfect.

“That’s something we should all take into account when we vote in nine months,” he said.

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THE SENATE IMPEACHMENT TRIAL WAS RIGGED!

By Dana Milbank | Published January 31 at 8:11 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted February 1, 2020 |

In the end, they DIDN’T EVEN PRETEND to take their OATHS SERIOUSLY.

Senators were instructed “to be in attendance at all times” during President Trump’s impeachment trial. But as the Democratic House managers made their last, fruitless appeals Friday for the Senate to bring witnesses and documents, several of the body’s 53 Republican senators didn’t even bother to show up.

“A trial is supposed to be a quest for the truth,” lead manager Adam Schiff pleaded.

Thirteen GOP senators were missing as he said this. Sens. Kevin Cramer (N.D.), Joni Ernst (Iowa) and Ron Johnson (Wis.) chewed gum.

Manager Val Demings (Fla.) reminded them that this would be the “only time in history” that an impeachment trial was held without witnesses or relevant documents.

Twelve Republican senators were missing. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Dan Sullivan (Alaska) and Tom Cotton (Ark.) joined in the chewing.

“The American people deserve to hear the truth,” insisted manager Sylvia Garcia (Tex.). By now, 15 Republican senators were missing.

Manager Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) spoke from the well. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), wearing cotton chinos for the occasion, perused a magazine.

“Please don’t give up,” manager Zoe Lofgren (Calif.) urged. “This is too important.”

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) stuck a finger in his left nostril. Johnson waved a hand dismissively and shared a chuckle with Cramer. Fully 20 Republican senators were missing.

At the start of the impeachment trial, Trump’s Senate allies limited media coverage to hide from public scrutiny. Then they made sure the trial would end without a single witness called or a single document requested. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the clinching vote against witnesses, declared before Friday’s session began, “I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything.”

It was all over but the shouting. And now several of those who had rushed Trump toward acquittal wouldn’t even grant the courtesy of listening to the House managers. (They returned, curiously, when Trump’s defenders had their turn in the well; Paul put away his magazine.)

This was an ugly end to an ugly trial. It began with bold promises by the president’s lawyers to prove there was no quid pro quo in his dealings with Ukraine. When former national security adviser John Bolton’s manuscript, with firsthand evidence of the quid pro quo, made that impossible, key Republicans fell back to a new position: Trump’s guilt doesn’t matter.

“There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) declared late Thursday. But the choice of “what to do about what he did,” Alexander said, should be “in the presidential election.”

What an elegant solution! He accepts that Trump is guilty of cheating in the election — and, therefore, his fate should be determined by the very election in which he has cheated.

It’s like a sprinter, caught doping before a competition, being told his fate would be determined by having him run the race.

RIGGED!

Shortly before Alexander declared Trump guilty but unimpeachable, Trump lawyer Patrick Philbin made the same argument. “Even if John Bolton would say it is true, that is not an impeachable offense,” he told the senators.

Now that the Senate has accepted the White House argument that Trump’s cheating in the election is “perfectly permissible,” why wouldn’t Trump continue to cheat? Why would anybody have faith that the 2020 election will be on the level?

Democrats now take their case to the voters, unsure of who might be helping Trump’s campaign. Putin? Erdogan? Xi? MBS?

Republicans, poised to benefit from foreign help, expressed no such alarm. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Friday that “just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a president.” Rubio thought it “difficult to conceive of any scheme Putin could undertake that would undermine confidence in our democracy more than removal would.”

NOW, VLADIMIR PUTIN GETS TO PUT THAT LOGIC TO THE TEST.

“Senators, there is a storm blowing through this Capitol,” Schiff warned on Friday. “Its winds are strong and they move us into uncertain and dangerous directions.”

But on the Senate floor, those on the GOP side who bothered to attend (the Democratic side was largely full throughout the day) were tranquil. Cory Gardner (Colo.) edited some text. John Neely Kennedy (La.) looked at news clippings and a bar graph. Mike Lee (Utah) tapped his watch and studied its glowing screen. John Barrasso (Wyo.) struck up a chat. Others busied themselves with reading.

At the start of Friday’s session, Senate Chaplain Barry Black reminded the senators that “we reap what we sow.”.

In their cowardly, 51-to-49 vote Friday evening to speed a guilty president on his way to a hasty acquittal while suppressing the evidence, Trump’s protectors planted the seeds of a poisonous harvest in November.

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