Invading Ukraine was the plan all along, going back years. According to Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times, this was the plan that Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian agent and Manafort associate, relayed to Paul Manafort in July 2016. Manafort was Trump’s campaign chairman at the time.
Known loosely as the Mariupol plan, after the strategically vital port city, it called for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded and -directed “separatists” were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead. The new republic’s leader would be none other than Yanukovych. The trade-off: “peace” for a broken and subservient Ukraine.
The scheme cut against decades of American policy promoting a free and united Ukraine, and a President Clinton would no doubt maintain, or perhaps even harden, that stance. But Trump was already suggesting that he would upend the diplomatic status quo; if elected, Kilimnik believed, Trump could help make the Mariupol plan a reality. First, though, he would have to win, an unlikely proposition at best. Which brought the men to the second prong of their agenda that evening — internal campaign polling data tracing a path through battleground states to victory….
…But what the plan offered on paper is essentially what Putin — on the dangerous defensive after a raft of strategic miscalculations and mounting battlefield losses — is now trying to seize through sham referendums and illegal annexation. … And the lesson of that meeting is that Putin’s American adventure might be best understood as advance payment for a geopolitical grail closer to home: a vassal Ukrainian state.
The Supreme Court did reiterate what lower courts held: that Graham can maintain limited, but significant secrecy about his actions in 2020.
Questions that he argues deal with issues around “legislative activity” can remain privileged, the court said — protected by the Constitution’s speech or debate clause. Because of that, the court said, halting the subpoena was “not necessary.”
So he’ll claim it was all “legislative activity,” even though a U.S. senator from South Carolina has absolutely no business with how Georgia runs its elections.
Also, yesterday John Roberts decided put the brakes on the House accessing Trump’s tax returns. “Roberts ordered the House to reply to Trump by Nov. 10 — two days after the upcoming midterm elections.”
That’s the first thing I thought when I heard about the delay — Roberts wants to be sure nobody gets Trump’s tax returns until after the midterms. I would be hugely surprised if SCOTUS stops the tax returns from getting to the House entirely, I doubt anyone the Court’s Republicans conservatives feel any loyalty to Donald Trump, just to the GOP.
Of course they will. The last post explained that the shooter couldn’t buy his assault weapon from a gun store, because he couldn’t pass the FBI background check. So he legally bought the gun in a private sale. His parents realized he shouldn’t have a firearm and asked the police to take it away from him, but Missouri law doesn’t allow police to do that. So some arrangement was made to give the gun to a third party known to the parents. Who that was hasn’t been made public. The shooter was able to get his assault weapon back, and so he went to his old high school and killed a student and a teacher, and seriously injured several others.
If there was ever a case in which a red flag law might very well have stopped a shooting, this was it. But the Missouri governor and legislature prefer guns to children. And I doubt this will make any difference in the midterm elections. Several state legislature seats aren’t even being contested; no Democrat is running.
Republicans who control state government say they see no need to enact public safety laws that might have taken away the gun used by a school shooter in St. Louis last Monday.
From Gov. Mike Parson at the top of state government down to rank-and-file lawmakers in the House and Senate, red flag laws, also known as “extreme risk” laws, are a non-starter for the GOP, despite support for them in Congress and in other states.
Take Republican Rep. Richard West of New Melle as an example.
“I doubt very seriously any red flag laws will come through the House,” said West, who is a former police officer. “I think we have enough gun laws in place and we have a lot of other pressing issues.”
Their position on red flag laws is, bascially, they don’t work because we said so. Right now only 19 states have red flag laws — mostly the more liberal ones, with tighter gun laws — and some states that have them are barely using them.
Chicago is one of the nation’s gun violence hotspots and a seemingly ideal place to employ Illinois’ “red flag” law that allows police to step in and take firearms away from people who threaten to kill. But amid more than 8,500 shootings resulting in 1,800 deaths since 2020, the law was used there just four times.
It’s a pattern that’s played out in New Mexico, with nearly 600 gun homicides during that period and a mere eight uses of its red flag law. And in Massachusetts, with nearly 300 shooting homicides and just 12 uses of its law.
An Associated Press analysis found many U.S. states barely use the red flag laws touted as the most powerful tool to stop gun violence before it happens, a trend blamed on a lack of awareness of the laws and resistance by some authorities to enforce them even as shootings and gun deaths soar.
In other words, the people in charge of enforcing this stuff are not enforcing it, because they prioritize gun rights over public safety. A Pew Research report from last year pretty much says the same thing. However, Pew says that in the few places where red flag laws are taken seriously, they do appear to be having an impact.
I am still avoiding any news about election polls and midterm predictions. I don’t want to know. I may not watch returns election night. These races are so close it may be a couple of days before we know anything. I need to catch up on other things, anyway.
First, I want to note the recent passing of Jerry Lee Lewis. Rock on, Killer. It has been truly said of Jerry Lee that even his wrong notes were right.
The shooter, Orlando Harris, was 19 and shot by police at the scene. He died in a hospital later. His parents had been worried about his moods and behavior, but Missouri has no red flag laws, of course. So police couldn’t take his assault rifle.
The family of the St. Louis high school mass shooter asked police for help removing the AR-15-style assault rifle from him nine days before the rampage — but it somehow ended up back in his hands, police said.
On Oct. 15, police responded to a domestic disturbance call at 19-year-old Orlando Harris’ home, where his mother found the weapon and wanted it removed, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Officers determined Harris was legally permitted to have the gun, but transferred it to a third party so it would not remain on the premises, officials said late Wednesday.
Harris had failed an FBI background check, so he bought the gun from a private seller, which apparently was legal.
The teenager accused of shooting a teacher and a student dead at a school in St. Louis earlier this week had been blocked from buying a gun from a licensed dealer due to an FBI background check, authorities said. Orlando Harris, 19, then purchased the AR-15-style rifle used in the attack from a private seller, according to police, with no law in place which could have prevented such a sale. The revelation comes after it emerged that Harris’ family had asked police to help remove the rifle when it was discovered in the family home before the attack, but Harris was somehow able to get it back after it had been given to a third party known to the family.
Missouri doesn’t require background checks for private sales. I haven’t heard any explanation of how Harris got the gun back. Whoever had it and gave it back to him might be in trouble in a sane place, but probably not in Missouri. The right to possess guns overrides everything else around here.
Harris had a AR-15-style rifle, over 600 rounds of ammunition and more than a dozen high-capacity magazines. Again, he may have acquired all that legally, in spite of his failed background check.
Predictably, when alleged governor Mike Parson finally addressed the incident, he said that these things happen and there’s nothing to be done about it. He originally claimed that state law allows for guns to be removed from people with mental health problems, which Harris had, but that was not true.
“People have mental health issues, you can take their weapons on that,” Parson incorrectly said. “That’s part of the bill that was passed and I think you can go in and read that.”
5 On Your Side has asked Parson’s office to show evidence to support his claims. His spokesperson has not responded to that question.
According to a link Parson’s office sent in a press release, the Second Amendment Preservation Act “declares…laws…,” and “court orders… invalid…including those that…prohibit the possession, ownership, use, or transfer of a firearm, or the confiscation of one.”
Law enforcement also visited the shooter’s home on three other occasions this year.
According to police reports obtained by 5 On Your Side’s Christine Byers, a crisis response unit visited the home in June — the shooter attempted suicide on July 6 and made a threat with a violent weapon on July 26 — and officers visited the home for a domestic disturbance on October 15.
On at least three of those visits, police could have theoretically confiscated any weapons in his possession at the time if state law allowed it.
Police said all the red flags were there. The red flag laws were not.
“The State of Missouri does not have a red flag law,” Officer Wall said. “That means SLMPD officers did not have clear authority to temporarily seize the rifle when they responded to the suspect’s home when called by the suspect’s mother on 10/15/22.”
Still, Parson claimed gun safety laws adopted in red states like Indiana and Florida wouldn’t have made any difference in Missouri.
“The red flag laws have never been in place in Missouri,” Parson said. “You got a criminal that committed a criminal act, you know, and all the laws in the world are not going to stop those things.”
The man is absolutely and utterly worthless, I tell you.
Do read Will Bunch’s Philadelphia Inquirer column, Why St. Louis hero teacher Jean Kuczka did what 376 Uvalde cops couldn’t. Jean Kuczka, 61, was a physical education teacher at the school. She was also a mother of five, grandmother of six, and a national championship field-hockey player. She died because she put herself in between the shooter and her students.
The student who died was named Alexzandria Bell. She didn’t quite make it to her 16th birthday. I understand one of the students who will survive is an art student who may lose the use of his hands.
Missouri gun laws are, basically, do what you want. No permit, no restrictions. There is no provision for taking guns from anyone, including domestic abusers and people who are mentally incapacitated.
I am still trying very hard to not listen to news about elections and polls and whatever might happen in the midterms.
So Elon Musk has taken over Twitter. People are starting to take bets on how quickly Twitter goes the way of MySpace. The geeks are very certain Musk has no idea what he’s gotten himself into. You have probably heard he fired the three top executives of the company last night, and now there are reports that other employees are leaving the building carrying boxes of belongings. However, that last part is unconfirmed and could be a hoax. Last week there were reports Musk planned to fire 75 percent of tech support staff, although today Musk says that’s not true. Even so, I bet a whole lot of people in that company have already updated their résumés and put them into circulation.
An emboldened cast of anonymous trolls spewed racist slurs and Nazi memes onto Twitter in the hours after billionaire industrialist Elon Musk took over the social network Thursday, raising fears of how his pledge of unrestricted free speech could fuel a new wave of online hate.
It could fuel all the high-end users — journalists, politicians, academics, etc. — to drop off the platform, which would be its downfall.
Musk’s takeover will certainly have international ramifications, if not yet interplanetary ones. But they may not be that sunny. The world’s richest man buying perhaps the world’s most influential political echo chamber is the latest sign of a development that international relations experts have long feared: With tech giants amassing stratospheric levels of influence over global affairs, they are morphing into a species of geopolitical actor, with uncertain long-term consequences.
Those experts have a term for this development: “Technopolarity.” The idea is that big tech companies have become their own sovereigns, on a par with nation-states. The result: an increasingly unchecked level of influence over international affairs that will demand a new kind of political response.
Bad news. We aren’t that good at old political responses.
David DePape, 42, was identified by police Friday as the suspect in the assault on Paul Pelosi at the speaker’s San Francisco home.
Two of DePape’s relatives told CNN that DePape is estranged from his family, and confirmed that the Facebook account – which was taken down by the social media company on Friday – belonged to him. …
… Last year, David DePape posted links on his Facebook page to multiple videos produced by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell falsely alleging that the 2020 election was stolen. Other posts included transphobic images and linked to websites claiming Covid vaccines were deadly. “The death rates being promoted are what ever ‘THEY’ want to be promoted as the death rate,” one post read.
DePape also posted links to YouTube videos with titles like “Democrat FARCE Commission to Investigate January 6th Capitol Riot COLLAPSES in Congress!!!” and “Global Elites Plan To Take Control Of YOUR Money! (Revealed)”
And so on. The story is that this guy ran into Nancy Pelosi’s house in San Francisco yelling “Where’s Nancy!” Not finding Nancy, he attempted to tie up Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband, then assaulted him with a hammer. Paul Pelosi is expected to be okay, I understand. I have a hard time believing an 82-year-old will ever be okay after being assaulted with a hammer, though.
If you haven’t gotten a flu shot yet, do it now. That’s an order. I got mine (and the new covid booster) yesterday. I’ve had so many covid shots they had to start another CDC card for me, as the old one was full. I haven’t turned into a magnet yet, however.
The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to reconsider an August ruling from three judges that gave a House committee the right to Trump’s tax returns for 2015 to 2020. The former president can still challenge the decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, but the appeals court declined a request from Trump to automatically hold the release of records pending that challenge.
So does that mean the House committee will really truly get the tax returns any minute now?
Today there was a school shooting in St. Louis that resulted in three deaths, including the shooter’s. I can already promise you that the governor may issue a statement, or not, but that will be the end of that. Nothing else will be done. Because guns are more important than people.
In other news — Miz Lindsey Graham really does not want the criminal justice system to know how he was involved with Trump’s scheme to overturn the election. He’s been fighting a subpoena from the Fulton County GA grand jury, and courts keep telling him he can’t get out of it. Now Clarence Thomas has given the senator a temporary freeze on a lower court’s ruling requiring Graham’s testimony to the grand jury.
Seriously, Graham could just show up and plead the Fifth. There must be something he is desperate for people to not find out that they might find out if he testifies, somehow, even though it’s a grand jury. People who have already testified to that grand jury include Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Pat Cipollone, Kelly Loeffler, Brad Raffensperger of course, and a Trump lawyer named Boris Epshteyn. They all survived. Why does Miz Lindsey think he is special?
Some of the classified documents recovered by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club included highly sensitive intelligence regarding Iran and China, according to people familiar with the matter. If shared with others, the people said, such information could expose intelligence-gathering methods that the United States wants to keep hidden from the world.
At least one of the documents seized by the FBI describes Iran’s missile program, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation. Other documents described highly sensitive intelligence work aimed at China, they said.
Per an earlier order from the special master, U.S District Judge Raymond Dearie for the Eastern District of New York, both sides had to file by Thursday a list of unresolved disputes between them over a subset of the records seized by the FBI in its August raid.
The Justice Department filed its own rundown of the disputed documents in a timely fashion, but Trump attorney Jim Trusty seemed to unilaterally give himself four extra days to file. In a brief letter Thursday night, Trusty disputed claims that the DOJ had made about what documents that Trump wants shielded from the investigation, and added that Trump would file its full response on Monday.
Dearie wasn’t having it with the blown deadline and self-appointed new deadline. In a Friday order, Dearie said that Trump’s filings were now “untimely” and that he needed to submit his position by close of business on Friday.
It’s coming out that a lot of the dispute seems to stem from the definitions of “government” and “personal.” Trump is claiming White House pardon and immigration policy records as “personal,” for example, a position the DoJ says is nonsense. Trump also seems to think he can claim “executive privilege” over “personal” documents, suggesting he still doesn’t grasp how any of this works. It’s possible his lawyers do understand how it all works, but that Trump is not letting them file anything with the court without his approval. And he’s a bleeping moron. So it’s a mess. Lawrence O’Donnell explains it:
I can’t even look at election news any more. It’s all doom and gloom. The fact that the Republican party can talk openly about cutting Social Security and Medicare without fear of punishment at the polls is astonishing. That a Nazi like Doug Mastriano is in Pennsylvania spouting blatant anti-Semitism as the Republican nominee for governor is astonishing. That the rummage pile of damage that is “Herschel Walker” might possibly defeat the Rev. Raphael Warnock is astonishing. I’m not sure there’s any coming back from this. We don’t have a country any more. What used to be the United States just a big dysfunctional socio-cultural-political garbage heap.
Yesterday the Fifth Circuit, “America’s Trumpiest Court,” declared that the entire Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional. The court’s reasoning is already being called “novel.” It used to be that courts were there to save us from the idiocy of politicians. Now there’s no one to save us from the idiocy of courts.
On that cheerful note … it’s looking more and more likely that Trump is going to face criminal charges for something, eventually. You probably heard about this yesterday —
Former President Donald J. Trump signed a document swearing under oath that information in a Georgia lawsuit he filed challenging the results of the 2020 election was true even though his own lawyers had told him it was false, a federal judge wrote on Wednesday.
The accusation came in a ruling by the judge, David O. Carter, ordering John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who strategized with the former president about overturning the election, to hand over 33 more emails to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Judge Carter, who serves with the Federal District Court for the Central District of California, determined that the emails contained possible evidence of criminal behavior.
“The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” Judge Carter wrote. He added in a footnote that the suit contained language saying Mr. Trump was relying on information provided to him by others.
I understand these emails will be made public eventually. And then this week Trump was deposed in the E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit. What he said in the deposition has not been made public. But it’s interesting to note that Trump’s original defense was that whatever defaming thing he said about Ms. Carroll was said while he was President and acting in the capacity of POTUS. Even if judges agree with that, which is questionable, the moronrepeated the same statements that inspired the lawsuit on his social media platform. And he wasn’t acting as POTUS then.
After Judge Kaplan denied Mr. Trump’s request to delay, Mr. Trump blasted Ms. Carroll in a lengthy social media post, repeating the kind of statements that had prompted her to sue in the first place.
“This ‘Ms. Bergdorf Goodman’ case is a complete con job,” Mr. Trump said in his statement. He said that Ms. Carroll was not telling the truth, that he did not know her — and that she was not his type: “While I am not supposed to say it, I will.”
That was before he was deposed. After he was deposed he “shared videos on Truth Social calling E Jean Carroll ‘crazy’ and mocking her rape claims against him just hours after he was deposed in her defamation case against him.” So if she didn’t have a strong enough case against him before, she’s got a stronger one now.
Also, Trump’s fundraising isn’t going so well. Bloomberg reports that he’s spent 91 cents to raise each dollar. Of course, that there are still people willing to donate to Trump is kind of astonishing.
An excerpt from a new audiobook revealed that President Donald J. Trump shared classified letters from Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, with the journalist Bob Woodward and seemed to acknowledge that they were sensitive material that he should not be sharing.
“Don’t say I gave them to you,” Mr. Trump said in December 2019, according to a copy of Mr. Woodward’s audiobook obtained by CNN, adding that “nobody else” had the letters and imploring the journalist to “treat them with respect.”
The Washington Post reported that a month later, in January 2020, Mr. Woodward also asked to see letters that Mr. Trump had written to the North Korean leader. Mr. Trump replied, “Oh, those are so top secret.”
The original letters between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump were among the voluminous number of presidential records that the National Archives tried to recover from Mr. Trump after he left office. Mr. Trump resisted returning the boxes of documents he had taken to his Florida estate, describing them to several advisers as “mine.”
I’m sure there’s something I’m forgetting. Too much going on.
That faint whimper you may hear is the end of the much overhyped Durham Investigation that was supposed to reveal how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and the Deep State and the Democrats all colluded to pick on poor Donald Trump and level false charges against him about his collusion with Russia.
A little over a month ago we learned that Durham’s grand jury’s time was up, and he wasn’t calling another one.
As of November 2021 Durham had issued single-count indictments against two Americans for making a false statement, and a five-count false statement indictment against a Russian national. One of the Americans was acquitted at trial; the other, an FBI lawyer, entered into a plea agreement with no jail time for doctoring an email used in preparation for a wiretap renewal application.
The Russian national, Igor Danchenko, goes on trial next month. The Right is feverishly looking forward to the Danchenko testimony that will discredit the evil Steele Dossier. The problem, of course, is that (one) the Steele Dossier has already been pretty much discredited; (two) the Steele Dossier wasn’t nearly as big a part of the evidence against Trump that the Right claims it to be. In fact, when the FBI began its investigation it didn’t yet know the dossier existed.
Durham tried to prove that Danchenko had lied about the dossier, and those lies led to an FBI wiretap of a Trump adviser. But the jury decided otherwise.
Mr. Trump and his supporters have falsely sought to conflate the dossier with the official investigation into Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia, but the F.B.I. did not open the inquiry based on the dossier and the final report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, did not cite anything in it as evidence. …
,,, Mr. Steele hired Mr. Danchenko to canvass contacts in Russia and Europe about Mr. Trump’s business dealings in Russia.
Mr. Danchenko conveyed rumors that Mr. Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia, and that Russia had a blackmail tape of Mr. Trump with prostitutes in a hotel room in Moscow. But during an interview with the F.B.I., Mr. Danchenko said that he had first seen the dossier when BuzzFeed published it and that Mr. Steele had exaggerated his statements, portraying uncorroborated gossip as fact.
Police and military officers swooped down on a Moscow business center this past week unannounced. They were looking for men to fight in Ukraine — and they seized nearly every one they saw. Some musicians, rehearsing. A courier there to deliver a parcel. A man from a Moscow service agency, very drunk, in his mid-50s, with a walking disability.
“I have no idea why they took him,” said Alexei, who, like dozens of others in the office complex, was rounded up and taken to the nearest military enlistment office, part of a harsh new phase in the Russian drive.
In cities and towns across Russia, men of fighting age are going into hiding to avoid the officials who are seizing them and sending them to fight in Ukraine.
Police and military press-gangs in recent days have snatched men off the streets and outside Metro stations. They’ve lurked in apartment building lobbies to hand out military summonses. They’ve raided office blocks and hostels. They’ve invaded cafes and restaurants, blocking the exits.
I want to know if the bobbleheads on Fox and OAN and whatever who love Vladimir Putin are mentioning this. The Brits stopped using press gangs at least a couple of centuries ago.
Suffering massive military casualties and repeated defeats in Ukraine, Russia has begun cannibalizing its male population. The hard-eyed pundits on state television are demanding more Ukrainian blood and more sacrifice from Russian men who they say have grown too used to soft living.
I’m assuming those hard-eyed pundits aren’t exactly living in caves and hunting their own meat.
Antiwar sentiment could harden as the bodies of soldiers who were deployed just weeks earlier begin returning home for burial. Alexei Martynov, the 29-year-old head of a Moscow government department, was mobilized Sept. 23 and was killed Oct. 10. He was buried last week. Five soldiers from the Southern Urals region, mobilized on Sept. 26 and Sept. 29, were killed in Ukraine in early October, authorities in Chelyabinsk reported.
So they grabbed Alexei Martynov on September 23 and he was KIA on October 10, only 18 days later. They really aren’t bothering to train them. are they?
And then this happened:
MOSCOW—Two recruits opened fire at a Russian military training ground near the border with Ukraine on Saturday, leaving 11 people dead and 15 injured, the state news agency TASS reported.
The shootings happened during a live-fire training exercise in the Belgorod region. The assailants opened fire with small arms before they in turn were fatally shot, the report said, citing the Russia’s Ministry of Defense.
TASS quoted ministry officials as calling the incident a terrorist attack and said the two gunmen were volunteers and citizens of a country from the Commonwealth of Independent States, a grouping of former Soviet republics. The report didn’t specify which country the men came from and whether they were included in the toll of 11 dead.
Yeah, I bet those guys “volunteered” the same way men were “volunteering” in Moscow.
Conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko declined to take part in a concert “intended by the occupiers to demonstrate the so-called ‘improvement of peaceful life’ in Kherson”, the ministry said in a statement on its Facebook page.
The concert on 1 October was intended to feature the Gileya chamber orchestra, of which Kerpatenko was the principal conductor, but he “categorically refused to cooperate with the occupants”, the statement said.
So, the Russians entered the conductor’s home and shot him dead, which is now in the news around the world. Like I said; they don’t grasp how PR works.
There are a lot of analyses saying that Russia’s recent escalation is more desperate than calculated. It’s all they’ve got. See:
