Rick Wilson: Jim Jordan to use whistleblower's name repeatedly to blow up hearing

In private speech, Bolton suggests some of Trump's foreign policy decisions are guided by personal..

In private speech, Bolton suggests some of Trump's foreign policy decisions are guided by personal interest

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/private-speech-bolton-suggests-some-trump-s-foreign-policy-decisions-n1080651


Former national security adviser John Bolton derided President Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law during a private speech last week and suggested his former boss’ approach to U.S. policy on Turkey is motivated by personal or financial interests, several people who were present for the remarks told NBC News.

According to six people who were there, Bolton also questioned the merits of Trump applying his business acumen to foreign policy, saying such issues can’t be approached like the win-or-lose edict that drives real estate deals: When one doesn’t work, you move on to the next. The description was part of a broader portrait Bolton outlined of a president who lacks understanding of the interconnected nature of relationships in foreign policy and the need for consistency, these people said.

Bolton has kept a low public profile since he left the administration on Sept. 10, and Democrats' efforts to have him testify in the House impeachment inquiry into the president have stalled. But his pointed comments, at a private gathering last Wednesday at Morgan Stanley’s global investment event in Miami, painted a dark image of a president and his family whose potential personal gain is at the heart of decision-making, according to people who were present for his remarks.

Bolton served as Trump’s national security adviser for 17 months. The Ukraine scandal began to unfold about a week after his contentious departure. Trump said he’d fired him, though Bolton said he had resigned.

'It's like nothing we have come across before': UK intelligence officials shaken by Trump......

‘It’s like nothing we have come across before’: UK intelligence officials shaken by Trump administration’s requests for help with counter-impeachment inquiry

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry-latest-russia-mueller-ukraine-zelensky-a9181641.html

*snip*

The attorney general is focusing on the theory, aired on far-right conspiracy sites, and raised by Trump and Giuliani, that Ukraine framed Vladimir Putin over the US election in a complex triple-cross operation by impersonating Russian hackers.

Trump and Barr have also been asking other foreign governments for help in investigating the FBI, CIA and Mueller investigators. The US president has called on the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison for assistance, while the attorney general has been on similar missions to the UK and Italy.

And the information being requested has left allies astonished. One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented that “it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services”.

*snip*


I did a search of the forum before posting this. The last paragraph really should be blasted far and wide in this country.

Happy Halloween from a ghostly kitty

Cat snuggles up to firefighter who saved his life

Woody Guthrie lived in a Brooklyn building managed by Fred Trump and wrote a song about how.....

woody guthrie lived in a Brooklyn building managed by fred trump and wrote a song about how much he hated it

https://twitter.com/sarahsholder/status/1185611543976775680


https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/a-story-about-fred-trump-and-woody-guthrie-for-the-midterm-elections

A Story About Fred Trump and Woody Guthrie for the Midterm Elections

In 1950, Woody Guthrie moved into an apartment at Beach Haven, a cluster of sixteen residential buildings in Gravesend, Brooklyn, just a few minutes from the creaky boardwalk and frankfurter stands at Coney Island Beach. The complex was owned and operated by Fred Trump, which means that, for the two years Guthrie lived and wrote there, Trump was his landlord. It remains unsettling to accept that their signatures co-exist on the same lease agreement.

In the nineteen-seventies, Fred Trump was accused by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department of creating a “substantial impediment to the full enjoyment of equal opportunity” at Beach Haven; it appeared that he didn’t like to rent apartments to black people. (The case was eventually settled.) The complex’s reputation hasn’t improved much in the intervening decades. In 2016, Beach Haven, which is now operated by Beach Haven Apartments Associates, was fined for dumping two hundred thousand gallons of untreated sewage into Coney Island Creek each day. It is the largest fine that the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has ever levied against an apartment building for the mishandling of human waste.

Guthrie didn’t much like the place—he took to calling it “Bitch Havens” in his correspondence—and, in 1954, he wrote a delightfully scornful song about Trump’s discriminatory rental policies. Several handwritten drafts of the lyrics—sometimes titled “Beach Haven Race Hate,” “Beach Haven Ain’t My Home,” and “Old Man Trump”—are presently on display at the Woody Guthrie Center, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Will Kaufman, a professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire, in Britain, was the first researcher to discover the lyrics in Guthrie’s considerable archive. (Guthrie never recorded or published the song.) Earlier this week, I went to see them in person. The first verse is explicit in its indictments:

I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
He stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line

In his best songs, Guthrie is equally seized by feelings of outrage and hope. Listening to his records is still my favorite way to remember that those feelings can productively and even beneficially co-exist—that the former doesn’t necessarily have to eradicate the latter. Guthrie clung to an optimistic belief in the generosity and decency of all human beings. In the end, he believed, we would surely do right by one another. In 2013, Jay Farrar, Jim James, Will Johnson, and Anders Parker recorded a version of an unfinished Guthrie song called “Hoping Machine,” for a tribute record called “New Multitudes”:

Picture album found of Auschwitz Nazis (very long Twitter thread)

(Jewish Group) After watching the USA and Trump, now I understand how Hitler gained power

It used to baffle me how such a horrible anti-semite and psychopathic ethnic-cleanser as Hitler could gain power. Well, after watching our population in the USA from 2015 to now, I really get it.

Warning, a rant is coming. If not in the mood, feel free to click out.

First, a caveat: yes, I am not saying Trump "is Hitler". Whatever anti-semitism Donald Trump has is much more muted than Hitler had.

As we all know, Hitler came to power in a Germany deeply steeped in anti-semitism. The years 1918 to 1933 were, at times, filled with political instability, vicious street fighting between the Communists and Nazis, hyperinflation, and economic depression. The German people were tired of the depression and the flaws of the Weimar regime. Hitler offered a simple solution: kill all the Jews and the Communists who were allegedly plaguing the country, and all would be great! Make Deutschland Great Again!

Hitler never legitimately won elective office even though his NSDAP party did well in the 1932 election. He was appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg, and the rest is horrible history. Theoretically, Hitler could have been stopped well before 1933, but that was the defining point where he had to be stopped. Just like the current USA, people were too busy struggling with the depression (or if doing well, apathetic) to pay attention to the horror taking place right in front of them.

If you're a reasonably intelligent person and paying some attention to politics, what Trump has been doing since 2015 should horrify you. He should have been crushed at the ballot box in a landslide of historic proportions. Instead, due to Russian meddling and other factors, we have this narcissistic psychopath who is the closest American presidential comparison to Hitler in history. Yes, Mussolini is a closer comparison, but I know much more about Hitler.

How in the absolute fuck have we allowed ourselves to sink so low to allow this demented power-mad asshole to disgrace the Oval Office ? Nixon was bad, but wow, Trump takes the fucking cake. I mean, if we don't impeach (and hopefully convict) Trump, what's next ? A much smarter more sophisticated version of Trump who cranks it up to 11 ?

May God have mercy on our nation, but people need to WAKE UP, PAY ATTENTION, and get rid of this Dictator-wannabe and never allow ourselves to sink this low again!

Turkish president Erdogan 'threw Trump's Syria letter in bin'

Source: BBC

In the letter dated 9 October, and sent after US troops were pulled out of Syria, Mr Trump told Mr Erdogan: "Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool!"

Turkish presidential sources told BBC Turkish that the letter was "thoroughly rejected" by Mr Erdogan.

On the day the letter was received, Turkey launched a cross-border offensive against Kurdish-led forces.

<snip material about letter>

In response, Turkish presidential sources said: "President Erdogan received the letter, thoroughly rejected it and put it in the bin."



Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50080737

Halloween when you were a kid: fun, not fun, never did it, etc ?

I did Halloween up until I was about 10 I think. This was the 1960's (I'm 61). Absolutely no one worried about poison or razor blades in the candy (has that happened a lot ?). I feel sad for kids these days that their parents feel compelled to x-ray their candy to make sure it's not harmful. Yes, the good old days (at least for me).

Did you do Halloween as a kid ?