John Bolton is going ahead with publishing his book. I guess he has checked which way the wind is blowing and figures that the government can try to punish him for publishing classified information but they won’t get very far before Trump loses re-election:
Former national security adviser John Bolton will argue in his forthcoming White House memoir that the House of Representatives should have broadened its impeachment inquiry beyond President Donald Trump’s relationship with Ukraine to include other facets of his foreign policy, according to the book’s publisher.
In a news release Friday, Simon & Schuster revealed that Bolton’s highly anticipated book, “The Room Where It Happened,” not only covers “chaos in the White House,” but also “assessments of major players, the president’s inconsistent, scattershot decision-making process, and his dealings with allies and enemies alike.”
Simon & Schuster said Bolton was “astonished” by Trump’s actions, and viewed him as a “president for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation.”
The former aide plans to write that he was “hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision” during his tenure as national security adviser, from April 2018 through September 2019, “that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations.”
In his book, Bolton “argues that the House committed impeachment malpractice by keeping their prosecution focused narrowly on Ukraine when Trump’s Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy,” Simon & Schuster said — promising that Bolton “documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the administration to raise alarms about them.”
Simon & Schuster’s statement represents the most detailed, official preview yet of the contents of Bolton’s book ahead of its publishing on June 23. The memoir’s release has been delayed twice due to an extensive prepublication review by the National Security Council.
Other revelations from the book had been reported amid the president’s impeachment trial in the Senate, including Bolton’s claim that Trump told him he wanted to continue withholding U.S. government aid from Ukraine until officials there publicly pledged to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
The House voted to impeach Trump last December on charges of abusing his power and obstructing congressional investigations, and the Senate acquitted him on the two articles of impeachment in February, overwhelmingly along partisan lines.
The White House took significant steps to block administration officials from testifying during the House and Senate proceedings. Bolton refused to appear for a deposition during the House impeachment inquiry. He offered to testify during Trump’s Senate trial, but a vote to allow witnesses failed.
I won’t be buying this book. Bolton could have been a patriot and testified to all of this during the impeachment trial. He wanted to make money instead and I don’t think he should be allowed to do it.
But I will be interested to see what he has to say anyway. He did take copious notes and it’s important for the historical record.
During his three and a half years in office, President Trump has succeeded in damaging every institution of politics and government, from the Department of Justice to the federal courts to the Foreign Service and the State Department to the intelligence community, public health agencies and beyond. But until fairly recently he had more or less left the U.S. military alone.
There were been some skirmishes with his first defense secretary, James Mattis — but in the end, Mattis resigned over a policy dispute, an event well within regular executive branch norms. But then, after being lobbied by a Fox News commentator, Trump intervened in the military justice system and pardoned three accused war criminals late last year, causing the secretary of the Navy to resign in protest. It turned out Trump had no more respect for the military than anything else.
Nonetheless, the military brass did as they were trained to do, which is to respect the chain of command. But Trump’s latest manic episode with respect to the Black Lives Matter protests following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has tested that relationship in some very troubling ways.
Monday, June 1, may be a day history will record as one of those close constitutional calls that happen from time to time. It’s pretty clear that Trump had been terrified over the preceding weekend after he was hustled down to the White House bunker when protests outside the White House became rowdy and a small fire was set in the basement of St. John’s Episcopal Church across the street. When the bunker story came out in the press, he decided he needed to put on some kind of a show to prove he wasn’t weak.
So on that Monday morning, the president called the attorney general, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff up to the White House, where he got on the phone with the nation’s governors and proceeded to demand that they “dominate” the streets, saying, “Most of you are weak.” He told them that he was putting Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in charge:
We’re going to take care of it. And we’ve got a number of people here that you’ll be seeing. Gen. Milley is here, who’s head of Joint Chiefs of Staff, a fighter, a warrior, had a lot of victories and no losses. And he hates to see the way it’s being handled in the various states. And I just put him in charge.
The White House announced that Trump would give a speech later in the day. Although he didn’t mention this on the call, there were numerous reports that the president was considering invoking the rarely-used Insurrection Act which would allow him (at least hypothetically) to use active-duty military to quell the protests. That afternoon we saw the startling sight of Milley in battle fatigues, with Attorney General Bill Barr, on the White House grounds in advance of Trump’s speech in the Rose Garden. They appeared to be reviewing the troops which were lined up facing the peaceful protests in Lafayette Park across the street.
Suddenly the whole nation witnessed the aggressive and violent action by federal agents and National Guard troops, decked out in full Robocop garb, to move the protesters out of the way just before the president came out to speak about dominating the streets, saying, “As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers …”
Shortly after that, Trump led Barr, Milley, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and assorted other factotums over to the church where he famously held up a Bible.
That night as protests continued and Lakota military helicopters were buzzing the protesters, this happened:
General Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, walking the streets of Washington DC right now. Briefly spoke to say he is observing the situation. pic.twitter.com/fHcYOTYMzN
It was stunning enough that the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military was walking around the White House in those fatigues, something military observers say is rarely if ever done. But seeing the general walking around the streets that night as if he were commanding the troops in battle was even more bizarre.
Trump didn’t invoke the Insurrection Act, but the latest reporting by the New York Times on what happened that day shows that it was a very close thing. Evidently, virtually everyone in the administration, including Milley, was working feverishly to appease the president as best they could so he didn’t trigger a new crisis that would have required military leaders either to resign or use force against American citizens.
Trump was unconvinced and ordered the 82nd Airborne Division to stand by. So the team around him launched a plan to get as many National Guard troops to Washington as possible, in order to fulfill his desire to see lots of men in uniform patrolling the city.
All of this was done in order to make Donald Trump feel strong. Milley and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who commands the D.C. National Guard, apparently told the Guard “throughout the day that if it could not control the protests, Mr. Trump would most likely call in the 82nd Airborne.”
In a press conference the next day, Secretary Esper said he did not support using the Insurrection Act. When he ordered the 82nd Airborne to stand down and return to base, Trump countermanded it. (They’ve since been sent back.) It was soon reported, to the surprise of exactly no one, that Trump wanted to fire Esper.
What followed over the next few days was astonishing. One high-ranking retired military officer after another, led by former Defense Secretary Mattis, stepped up to condemn the use of the military for political purposes. Some were more pointed than others but it was clear that they were all on the same page. It’s more than reasonable to assume they were speaking for the active-duty brass, who would have had to resign en masse if they wanted to make this point.
According to NBC News, Milley considered resigning but was talked out of it. There’s no word yet on Trump’s reaction but it’s very hard to believe he’s OK with the general’s apology.
This episode illustrates one of the ongoing destructive dynamics of the Trump administration. The president makes mad demands and, in order to keep him from doing his worst, people around him appease him with flattery or come up with slightly less bad options and then scurry to carry them out. In the process, so many of them destroy their credibility and their reputations. Even if they succeed in short-circuiting the very worst of Trump’s impulses, their willingness to appease him always produces bad outcomes anyway.
And he never learns: He never becomes more measured or more “presidential,” never stops blurting out whatever random, angry thought flashes across his brainpan. On Wednesday, Trump was right back at it, demanding that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan crack down on protesters who have “liberated” portions of that city. He tweeted, “Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game.”
Inslee responded by saying that “a man who is totally incapable of governing should stay out of Washington state’s business” and Durkan retorted, “Go back to your bunker.” Perhaps the president’s staff should try being that direct. No doubt they’d lose their jobs, but at least they’d still have some self-respect.
“I think people are too messed up right now,” Yara Cabrera, 36, a special-education teacher in Phoenix tells the New York Times. “I don’t think it matters who’s president.”
Other Americans Lisa Lerer and David Umhoefer interviewed from Philadelphia to Phoenix, white, black and brown, Republicans, Democrats and independents, share the same anxieties that the United States is close to a fall:
The level of worry and disillusionment marks a unique moment in American public life, according to historians. In the 1930s, Americans faced the hardships of the Great Depression. Thirty years later, the United States hurtled through the tumultuous 1960s, grappling with the politics of the Cold War and the Vietnam War, shocking assassinations and the rise of revolutionary social movements like civil rights and feminism.
Now, Americans are living through the social and economic unrest of both decades simultaneously, along with a historic pandemic. And it’s all filtered through the divisive lens of social media.
Typically optimistic Americans see a bad moon rising, their country spiraling out of control. The Times reports a third showed signs of clinical anxiety or depression at the end of April. By early May, half felt “down, depressed or hopeless.” Lerer and Umhoefer quote several voters worried the country might never get back to normal. Whose idea of normal we should get back to is where the disagreement lies.
The rest of the piece is as grim as you might imagine. People who think Donald Trump “speaks like an idiot” and is “borderline crazy” plan to vote again for him anyway, as they did in 2016. People who oppose him think their votes this fall won’t make a difference.
In a way, Ms. Cabrera is right. It doesn’t matter who is president. The decisions that determine where we go from here will not be made in Washington, D.C., but by what you do next where you live. You get what you fight for, Sen. Elizabeth Warren says. Change does not come from the top down, but from the bottom up, in local decisions about who represents you on city council or in the state legislature. The quadrennial circus atmosphere of billion-dollar presidential campaigns obscures that basic truth.
It may not matter who is president but what you do does matter. What ordinary Americans did in streets across the country over the last two weeks mattered.
This week, in particular, the stress of following the news and staying engaged each day has taken a toll. It is easy sometimes to feel more like a victim of politics than a player. That is why I wrote back on Christmas Eve:
Maybe it’s the Irish in me, but I’m looking forward to the fight. It is not as much idealism as self-interest. The cure for feeling like political roadkill is not resignation, but persistent, defiant participation. Even when you get run over, you don’t feel like a victim anymore.
There comes that pivotal moment in films where heroes make a choice: to run or set their jaws and stand and fight. I thought this morning of the late Bruno Kirby who played Ed in City Slickers. In a violent lightning storm, stuck tending someone else’s cattle, the wannabe cowboys from New York City face that choice. Phil (Daniel Stern) wants to run:
Phil: Let’s just leave the heard and get the hell out of here, huh? Ed: No. A cowboy doesn’t leave his herd. Phil: You are a sporting goods salesman! Ed: Not today.
No. Not today.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like. Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse gives a rundown on where Lindsey Graham’s big Trump exoneration pageant is going:
The Senate Judiciary Committee has now headed down a partisan rabbit hole. On Thursday, the committee will likely vote to approve issuing 53 subpoenas against various political enemies of President Trump, including top campaign aides of Trump’s 2020 opponent, Joe Biden. Republicans assure us that they are not just running a political errand to dirty up Trump’s Democratic rival and advance Trump’s conspiracy theories.
We’ll see.
It is fair to question whether this will be a real investigation, consistent with the Judiciary Committee tradition of bipartisanship and sound oversight, or a partisan, scattershot fusillade to serve the Trump 2020 campaign. Opening indications are not good.
I recently read an article from The New York Post on the June 3 Judiciary Committee hearing that stopped me—a former federal prosecutor—in my tracks. The passage covered Rod Rosenstein’s testimony before us last week on his decision to sign off on FISA warrants. Here’s the part that caught my eye:
The key moment came in questioning from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who asked, “If you knew then what you know now, would you have signed the warrant application?,” referring to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant renewal concerning Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
“No,” testified Rosenstein, “I would not.”
And just like that, it became clear that the national torture of three years of the Russian collusion investigation simply should not have occurred.
State Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’sreport on the Russia investigation issued last December confirmed that there were false statements and material omissions in the FBI warrant applications. As a prosecutor, I would send back a warrant application I thought contained any false statements or material omissions. No supervisor at the Justice Department should sign off on a warrant application he knew contained false statements or material omissions. So this was an easy question for Rosenstein to answer.
But it does not support the conclusion that “the Russian collusion investigation simply should not have occurred.” If the warrant application I sent back came back to me corrected, without false statements or material omissions, I might well sign it. The fact that a prosecutor would not sign a warrant application he knew to be flawed does not mean the investigation stops; it merely means that the warrant application has to be corrected.
Of course it should have continued and it would have continued. That one warrant was nearly irrelevant to the rest of the investigation. It’s utterly ridiculous that they are trying to convince people that Carter Page was the center of the entire probe but then, they have to because the bad FISA warrant is the only thing they could fine wrong with the investigation.
As Whitehouse says, the investigation was into Russian election interference and there was plenty of. it that indicted the Trump campaign officials knew of it. In fact, they found 120 contacts between Russian agents of influence and the Trump campaign. Anyone who didn’t see that as worth looking into would be be abdicating their duty.
Whitehouse further adds:
Another example: In a story on the Judiciary Committee investigation, Newsweek reported on “a declassified document identifying Obama administration officials who sought to ‘unmask’ Michael Flynn, later Trump’s short-lived national security advisor.”
This has been a Republican theme: that Obama officials went after Flynn to expose him.
Again, precision matters. By definition, the request to “unmask” a U.S. person who is referenced in an intelligence intercept is a request to identify an unknown person; the identity of the person is not disclosed in the intelligence report. That’s why you have to ask. The implication that Obama officials were targeting Michael Flynn with an unmasking request elides that fact. It is only the “unmasking” that would reveal it was Michael Flynn. The implication that Flynn was the target of an “unmasking” creates a narrative of persecution, but it’s a false narrative if you understand how unmasking actually works.
Following the persecution narrative, committee Republicans are working hard to suggest that Flynn was being “surveilled” by the FBI. Again, precision matters. The Russian ambassador was the target of the surveillance. Flynn called in to the Russian ambassador and was therefore picked up on the surveillance of the Russian ambassador. I’ve done wiretaps, and that’s a big difference; prosecutors and agents working wiretap cases understand clearly the difference between a surveilled target and someone who calls in to the surveilled target. Lawyers on the Judiciary Committee should understand that too.
A narrative is already emerging: an investigation that should have stopped dead based on warrant application errors; an investigation that targeted Michael Flynn via “unmasking,” and that put him under “surveillance.” But precision matters in a search for truth. This narrative serves the President, but not the truth. If these misleadingly imprecise slants are what the Judiciary Committee “investigation” is out to create, we are off to a very bad start.
I don’t think anyone, especially Senator Whitehouse, ever thought that this inane judiciary committee investigation was designed to do anything but provide Trump with a soothing counter-narrative that he can parrot during the rest of the campaign.
Unfortunately, I think the ongoing catastrophes of the pandemic, the economy and massive social unrest have overtaken his “investigation of the investigators.” We have real problems now and Trump is dropping the ball on all of the.
I have written a lot about Bill Barr and read even more. And yet, I never saw the article that Dana Milbank refers to in this piece:
Get the feeling law enforcement in this country is being run by a middle-school bully?
If so, you are not wrong.
Childhood bullies have a predisposition to become adult bullies, research shows, and, sure enough, it seems Attorney General William Barr was a teenage bully more than 50 years ago.
Back in 1991, during Barr’s confirmation to be George H.W. Bush’s attorney general, lawyer Jimmy Lohman, who overlapped with Barr at New York’s Horace Mann School and later Columbia University, wrote a piece for the little-known Florida Flambeau newspaper about Barr being “my very own high-school tormentor” — a “classic bully” and “power abuser” in the 1960s who “put the crunch on me every chance [he] got.”AD
Nobody noticed the Flambeau piece at the time, but Lohman posted it on Facebook when President Trump nominated Barr in 2018, and it took on “a life of its own,” Lohman told me Tuesday from Austin, where Post researcher Alice Crites tracked him down. The article resurfaces in social media each time Barr does something unconscionable — which is often.
The 1991 description of 1963 Barr’s harassment sounds eerily like the 2020 Barr. He “lived to make me miserable,” with a “vicious fixation on my little Jewish ‘commie’ ass,” Lohman alleged, because he wore peace and racial-equality pins. He said the four Barr brothers picketed the school’s “Junior Carnival” because proceeds went to the NAACP, and he alleged that Billy Barr, the “most fanatic rightist” of the four, later “teamed with the New York City riot police to attack anti-war protesters and ‘long hairs.’ ”
The 1991 article says Barr, a “sadistic kid,” has “come a long way from terrorizing seventh graders just because they wore racial equality buttons.” The Justice Department didn’t respond to my request for comment.
Lohman’s account is consistent with Marie Brenner’s reporting for Vanity Fair: “A few who knew the Barr boys came to call them ‘the bully Barrs’; the siblings, these former classmates claimed, could be intimidating.” A petition from Horace Mann alumni asks the school to “rethink” an award for Barr, who “violated our school’s Core Values of Mutual Respect and Mature Behavior.”
Historian Paul Cronin, in Politico this week, says Barr was part of the “Majority Coalition” at Columbia that fought antiwar demonstrators. Barr had told the New York Times Magazine he was part of a “fistfight” in which “over a dozen people went to the hospital.” Cronin noted: “There appears to be no record of any trip to the hospital.”
Now Barr exaggerates violence on a grand scale. After he directed the forceful eviction of peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square, he claimed to Fox News on Monday that the image of peaceful demonstrators was “miscreated” to ignore “all the violence that was happening preceding that.” He alleged that there were two “bottles thrown at me” when he surveyed the scene; footage showed him at a safe distance. He charged that previously “things were so bad that the Secret Service recommended that the president go down to the bunker”; Trump claimed it was merely a bunker “inspection.”AD
Barr has also championed the president’s authority to use the military against protesters, even as Pentagon leaders recoiled. He assembled a militia-like force of often-unidentified federal police in Washington. He blamed antifa for recent “domestic terrorism,” but no new criminal complaint mentions antifa. He claims there is no systemic racism in law enforcement.
That’s consistent with his earlier management of the Justice Department as a thugocracy: mischaracterizing the Mueller report; alleging the Obama administration “spied” on the Trump campaign; naming a special prosecutor to investigate — and deliver an election-season report on — the Russia-probe Barr already declared a “travesty”; attempting to indict the official who approved the probe; overruling prosecutors to seek leniency for Trump friend Roger Stone; getting mentioned by Trump as participating in the attempt to get political dirt on Democrats from Ukraine; lending credibility to Rudy Giuliani’s allegations about the Bidens; dropping an investigation into campaign finance allegations against Trump; dropping the election-interference prosecution of a Russian firm; trying to drop the prosecution of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn; asserting his sole authority to approve election-related probes; and has just assigned another special prosecutor to fulfill Trump’s wish to probe the Obama administration’s “unmasking” practices.
In elementary school, Donny impressed classmates with his athleticism, shenanigans and refusal to acknowledge mistakes, even one so trivial as misidentifying a popular professional wrestler. No matter his pals’ ridicule, one recalled, he doubled down, insisting wrestler Antonino Rocca’s name was “Rocky Antonino.”
At the military academy where he attended high school, Donny grew taller, more muscular and tougher. Struck with a broomstick during a fight, he tried to push a fellow cadet out a second-floor window, only to be thwarted when two other students intervened.
His face crowned by a striking blond pompadour, young Donald commanded attention with his playground taunts, classroom disruptions and distinctive countenance, even then his lips pursed in a way that would inspire future mimics. Taller than his classmates, he exuded an easy confidence and independence.
“Who could forget him?” said Ann Trees, 82, who taught at Kew-Forest School, where Trump was a student through seventh grade. “He was headstrong and determined. He would sit with his arms folded with this look on his face — I use the word surly — almost daring you to say one thing or another that wouldn’t settle with him.”
A fierce competitor, Trump could erupt in anger, pummeling another boy or smashing a baseball bat if he made an out, two childhood neighbors said. In school, he misbehaved so often that his initials became his friends’ shorthand for detention.
“He had a reputation for saying anything that came into his head,” said Donald Kass, 70, a retired agronomist who was a schoolmate. When Trump misidentified Rocca, the pro wrestler, Kass recalled, “We would laugh at him and tell him he was wrong, and he’d say he was right. The next time, he would make the same mistake, and it would be the same thing all over again.”
In his neighborhood, Donald and his friends were known to ride their bikes and “shout and curse very loudly,” said Steve Nachtigall, who lived nearby. Nachtigall said he once saw them jump off their bikes and beat up another boy.
“It’s kind of like a little video snippet that remains in my brain because I think it was so unusual and terrifying at that age,” recalled Nachtigall, 66, a doctor in New Jersey. “He was a loudmouth bully.”
Those interviews all happened during the 2016 campaign so it’s not as if they were people recalling him after watching him for years as president. That was him.
This is a character issue that explains why Trump and Barr have formed such a bond.
“A report from the big white suburban guilty girls picnic march
By theaspenbeat.com
Urban trekking around Denver the other day, I happened across a protest march of maybe a thousand people. Here’s what I observed.
The marchers were almost all white. I saw fewer than a dozen black people and no Hispanics.
Most were young women looking vaguely guilt-ridden. They were well-dressed, well-groomed and well-fed. I’m not passing judgment, mind you, but just reporting the facts.
Some were in small groups of similar young women. Some were with boyfriends, who were neither well-groomed nor well-fed. They were scrawny and scruffy, if you ask me, with thin beards.
Not that there’s anything wrong with a guy with a body and beard that are thin and a girlfriend who’s not. Again, I’m just reporting the facts.
Most wore COVID masks. In virtue signaling, their march and their masks made the day a twofer.
Many carried signs displaying slogans like “Black Lives Matter” and “Justice for George.”
I agreed with those signs, at least the literal words of them. George deserves justice just as everyone does, and black lives matter just as all lives do.
The marchers surely aren’t worried that we onlookers reading those innocuous signs will don our MAGA hats, pull our 9 mm and shout: “No! Black lives do not matter! And no justice for George!”
Protesting that would be politically incorrect. Protesting that would require real courage.
No, it was not real courage that they were displaying. It was cheap virtue. After a morning of mirror preening, they went out for some moral preening.
In that respect, their little picnic walk (I was offered a water bottle) was as harmless as it was pointless. I guarantee that these suburban girls and their girly men aren’t looters.
But one sign troubled me. It appeared in various incantations, but the gist was “Justice NOW for George.”
I’ll be clear. I’ve watched the video of George dying, and it was horrifying. If no exculpatory evidence turns up, then I hope those cops rot in jail. I’m guessing nearly all people – including other cops – hope for the same.
But notice the “if” in the preceding paragraph. We have a system here in America that is summed up with “innocent till proven guilty.” That proof of guilt is presented, and challenged, at a trial.
Here, the cop has been arrested and is in jail on a million-dollar bond awaiting that trial. Given that, what exactly does the shouted word “NOW” mean in “Justice NOW for George”?
Are the protesters demanding that we bypass the trial and just lynch the cops right now? What kind of justice is that? I thought we reserved that sort of swift and trial-free punishment for Republican judicial nominees.
What about people like me, who think the video looks very bad but the cop still deserves a trial? For that sentiment, would the protesters lynch me too? Or would they lynch me instead for my MAGA hat and 9mm?
What if the evidence shows that the cop was a Democrat who mourns global warming and drives to yoga class in a Prius with a COEXIST bumper sticker, and that George admired Justice Clarence Thomas?
If that’s what the evidence shows, will these protesters let the cop off while spitting on George’s grave?
Here’s the problem. These sheep-like feel-gooders are cowards but nonetheless dangerous in a way they naively fail to grasp. They advocate a world where guilt depends not on a person’s actions but on how the herd carelessly and conveniently perceives his identity.
It’s the very definition of bigotry.
Humanity has tried all this before. The results were like the strangulation of George, but 100 million times over. Let’s not go back there.
Right. Liberal men are wimps, liberal women are fat and ugly and they’re all a bunch of commies.
Some things never change. Recall this lovely piece from the always horrific Ann Coulter from 15 years ago:
As for the pretty girls, I can only guess that it’s because liberal boys never try to make a move on you without the UN Security Council’s approval. Plus, it’s no fun riding around in those dinky little hybrid cars. My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call “women” at the Democratic National Convention.
I see quite a bit of this in my liberal west coast elite bunker (which is anything but elite) from wealthy wingnuts who like what Blue California has to offer but hate all the people they have to share it with.
A believer in a conspiracy theory the FBI classifies as a possible domestic terrorist threat is in a prime position to soon be elected to Congress, after coming in first in a Republican primary in Georgia on Tuesday.
QAnon conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has frequently posted messages about the bizarre pro-Trump conspiracy theory on social media, handily leads the primary field of Republicans in Georgia’s heavily Republican 14th district. Greene, who beat her closest opponent by more than 20 percent, will head to an August run-off after receiving 41 percent of the primary vote.
Greene is an outspoken supporter of QAnon, a conspiracy theory based on a series of anonymous messages posted online by a mystery figure named “Q.” QAnon believers think that Donald Trump is engaged in a shadowy war against a cabal of global elites, including the Democratic Party, and will soon arrest or even execute top Democrats in an event they know as “The Storm.”
Despite such ludicrous claims, Greene has praised QAnon. In a video posted online, she called the anonymous “Q” a “patriot” and said that their predictions had been accurate.
“Many of the things that he has given clues about and talked on 4Chan and other forums have really proven to be true,” Greene said.
Greene’s QAnon beliefs haven’t stopped her from winning the backing of at least one high-powered Republican. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) endorsed her bid, calling her “exactly the kind of fighter needed in Washington to stand with me against the radical left.” Greene has also been boosted by $44,000 in spending and $78,000 in earmarked contributions from the House Freedom Fund, a PAC tied to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to campaign finance watchdog group Open Secrets.
You might think she can’t possibly win the runoff or the race seeing as she’s obviously a deranged conspiracy theorist:
Because of her performance in the first round of the primary, Greene is heavily favored to win the nomination. Should she get over 50 percent of the vote in the primary’s runoff, she would have an excellent shot of winning the general election for her House seat, which is now held by retiring Rep. Tom Graves (R). Her district in northwest Georgia is rated “R+27” by the Cook Political Report, meaning that the Democratic candidate faces a Herculean task for taking the seat.
Somehow, I have a feeling her voters aren’t going to be the ones standing in line for hour after hour to vote…
I’ll have more to say about that later … But I think it’s important that he did it. There was a lot of damage done by that stunt last week and this was part of it.
Meanwhile, get a load of this piece of work who, in my view, should be fired for this “apology:”
A Manhattan NYPD lieutenant sent an email to his fellow officers apologizing for kneeling alongside George Floyd protesters late last month — telling them that “the cop in me wants to kick my own ass.”
In a June 3 email obtained by The Post Thursday, Lt. Robert Cattani of the Midtown South Precinct said he regrets his “horrible decision to give into a crowd of protesters’ demands” and kneel at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan, with several other cops.
“The conditions prior to the decision to take a knee were very difficult as we were put center stage with the entire crowd chanting,” Cattani wrote. “I know I made the wrong decision. We didn’t know how the protesters would have reacted if we didn’t and were attempting to reduce any extra violence.”
Video from the demonstration shows thousands of protesters chanting, “NYPD, take a knee” at officers.
“I thought maybe that one protester/rioters who saw it would later think twice about fighting or hurting a cop,” Cattani wrote. “I was wrong. At least that [sic] what I told myself when we made that bad decision. I know that it was wrong and something I will be shamed and humiliated about for the rest of my life.”
“We all know that a–hole in Minneapolis was wrong,” Cattani added, referring to fired cop Derek Chauvin, who has been charged with murdering Floyd.
“Yet we don’t concede [sic] for other officers’ mistakes,” he added. “I do not place blame on anyone other than myself for not standing my ground.”
I commuted to the Manhattan protest — follow @GwynneFitz & @scottheins for Brooklyn uodates. Thousands of protesters now marching down Broadway (heaping pile of trash for scale)
In Foley Square, resounding chants of “NYPD take a knee.” Eventually, four cops kneel to huge chants. “We just want to get home safely, same as you,” says one protester.
He wrote that his decision to kneel “goes against every principle and value I stand for.”
“I spent the first part of my career thriving to build a reputation of a good cop,” he said. “I threw that all in the garbage in Sunday.”
Since Cattani took a knee, he said, he’s struggled to eat and sleep and even considered leaving the department.
“I could not imagine the idea of ever coming back to work and putting on the uniform I so wrongly shamed,” he wrote. “However, I decided that was the easy way out for me and I will continue to come to work every day being there for my personnel.”
The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Cattani’s letter.
I would like to apologize for thinking he was being smart and decent for trying to show empathy for George Floyd and other black victims of police violence while doing what was necessary to keep the peace. Clearly, he is a joke.
What you see in those two apologies is two different definitions of leadership and honor.
Milley, for all his faults, recognized belatedly that he needed to be a leader and ensure that his troops do not take away the wrong message from his behavior and remain clear on the fact that owe their loyalty to the constitution.
This captain apologized for being a leader in order to bow and scrape to the racist elements among those he leads.
Two definitions of leadership. One showing bravery and one showing cowardice. I’m sure that people will say it is a rorschach test as to which is which.
Pence deleted that tweet once it was pointed out that they had violated Virginia law with that maskless, super-spreading gathering:
The photo appeared to be from the campaign’s Arlington, Virginia, office — Pence was not scheduled to travel on Wednesday and had no public events on his schedule. In the photo, no one, including the vice president appeared to be wearing a face mask and the group far exceeded the 10-person gathering limit outlined in Virginia’s phase one coronavirus guidelines.
Many people obviously don’t care anymore about the COVID pandemic, least of all Republicans. They simply will not wear masks or socially distance. They cannot do even that much.
It’s every man for himself now. If you don’t want to die, you’re on your own.
Alexandra Petrie helpfully put together some information for the American people to protect themselves from the senior command structure of Antifa:
NOW THE SIGNS: HOW TO TELL IF YOUR GRANDPARENT HAS BECOME AN ANTIFA AGENT
For your birthday, she knits you an unwanted scarf. To be used as a balaclava?
She belongs to a decentralized group with no leadership structure that claims to be discussing a “book,” but no one ever reads the book and all they seem to do is drink wine.
Is always talking on the phone with an “aunt” you have never actually met in person. Aunt TIFA????
Always walking into rooms and claiming not to know why he walked into the room. Likely.
He “trips” over and breaks your child’s Lego police station when walking through the living room in the dark.
Total and bewildering lack of nostalgia for good old days.
Gathers with loose-knit, disorderly group of figures you have never met to play “mah-jongg,” governed by mysterious “rule cards” issued annually from a nebulous central authority.
Suddenly, for no reason, will appear or pretend to be asleep.
Insists on producing container of nuts whenever there is company. Why? Code of some kind?
Carries peppermints (chemical irritant?) in purse at all times.
Is taking Centrum Silver. But for what reason? Surely to build up strength for the coming confrontation.
Keeps forwarding you what appear on the surface to be emails of jokes someone has typed out from a Reader’s Digest; claims to think you would “enjoy”; must be some sort of recruitment or propaganda or hidden message.
Hired a clown for your child’s birthday — part of the Juggalo command structure?
Big tin of Christmas popcorn mysteriously replenishes itself. WHO IS HELPING?!
You gave her a Precious Moments figurine of a law enforcement officer, but she hasn’t displayed it.
Remembers things from the past in incredible, exhausting detail, but recent ones only sporadically? Cover of some kind.
She claims not to know how to use her phone, yet always appears upside-down on FaceTime, which should be impossible without hacking capabilities.
If he is to be believed, he spends hours playing bridge.
He is walking non-threateningly at a public protest.
