November 30, 2018

Putin looks like one of the goons from Popeye

And why on earth is Ivanka at the G20? Getting some more grifting in, I guess.

November 30, 2018

There's been some fuckery in NC's 9th district. Might be another Dem pickup.

For those of you not familiar with the area, Dan McCready is the Dem candidate. Mark Harris , an ex-evangelical pastor and all- around whackjob is the R. The NC Board of Elections is refusing to certify until an investigation has been done. People were knocking on voter’s doors saying they were there to pick up their absentee ballots and offered to finish and sign them.
*snip*
Allegations of voting irregularities in and around Bladen County swirled on Thursday, with the North Carolina Democratic Party calling for an official hearing and a flurry of affidavits surfacing involving absentee ballots.



(Lawyer for the Democratic Party) Wallace went on to say a review of public records “confirms that serious irregularities and improprieties may have occurred.” Bladen County had the highest percentage of absentee ballot requests in the state. There, 7.5 percent of registered voters requested absentee ballots. In most counties it was less than 3 percent.

An analysis by Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer suggested more aberrations.In seven of the eight counties in the 9th District, for example, McCready won a lopsided majority of the mailed-in absentee ballots. But not in Bladen County. There, Republican Mark Harris won 61 percent even though registered Republicans accounted for only 19 percent of the county’s accepted absentee ballots.

Unaffiliated voters accounted for 39 percent. Bitzer said Harris’ margin “could potentially come from all those unaffiliated voters.”“But to have each and every one of those unaffiliated voters vote Republican, that’s pretty astonishing,” he added. “If that’s the case, there’s a very concerted effort to use that method to one candidate’s advantage. . . . But at that level there’s something else beyond a concerted effort that could be at work.”


https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article222363510.html

November 27, 2018

Melania's changed her red shag carpeting Christmas trees.

November 27, 2018

There's a quiet beauty here #MarsLanding

https://twitter.com/NASAInSight/status/1067244283688669184

There’s a quiet beauty here. Looking forward to exploring my new home. #MarsLanding

November 27, 2018

Who's the Mystery Man Behind the Latest Pelosi Putsch? It's Mark Penn.

By David Dayen

A SMALL GROUP of billionaire-backed Democrats, part of the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress, has launched a last-ditch effort that threatens to derail Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s election as House speaker.They’ve framed their challenge to Pelosi, a California Democrat, in terms of good government and high-minded bipartisanship. Yet the force behind their campaign is one of the most toxic and notorious partisan warriors the Democratic Party has produced in the past three decades: political and corporate consultant Mark Penn.

The Problem Solvers Caucus is made up of 12 Democrats and 12 Republicans; nine of the Democrats have publicly committed to opposing Pelosi on the House floor if she doesn’t meet their demands for House rules changes largely aimed at legislatively empowering Republicans.

No Labels launched what it called “The Speaker Project” in this past June, proposing a sweeping set of rules changes that lawmakers should demand before agreeing to elect the next speaker, which by then was presumed to be a Democrat. The next month, the Problem Solvers Caucus embraced the plan. In September, Penn went on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News to talk up the project. “There’s a problem-solvers group that is looking to have some influence if the result is close, in terms of changing the rules and naming the speaker,” Penn said.

A lawsuit this summer by former No Labels contractors who alleged that they were bilked by the group claimed that Penn was was “calling the shots” at the organization. Penn, according to the Washington Post, has denied involvement with the operation of No Labels, and the group rejected the assertion that he was in charge. Neither No Labels nor Penn responded to The Intercept’s questions about Penn’s relationship with the group.

https://theintercept.com/2018/11/26/nancy-pelosi-speaker-no-labels-mark-penn/

November 23, 2018

Chuck Todd's an asshole

He opens his show with this:

"This is what voters apparently wanted, Trump vs Pelosi. One is massively unpopular with Americans nationwide and the other is Donald Trump."


And then he said there wasn't a blue wave. He spends the whole show pandering to Republicans.

November 23, 2018

General Michael Hayden had a stroke

https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1066039327501762560







https://twitter.com/GenMhayden/status/1064237379119136768


Mr President, Did you actually intend to misspell the Congressman’s (soon to be Chairman’s) name. Might want to make a note. You will be seeing it soon on subpoenas.

November 20, 2018

Seth Moulton compared ousting Nancy Pelosi to ousting Margaret Thatcher last night at town hall

https://twitter.com/banditelli/status/1064670630413447168

OH MY GOD SETH MOULTON JUST COMPARED OUSTING NANCY PELOSI TO OUSTING MARGARET THATCHER

November 20, 2018

Putin is about to gain control of the world's main law enforcement organization

By Vladimir Kara-Murza
DemocracyPost contributor
November 19 at 5:23 PM


On Sunday, delegates of the general assembly of Interpol — the International Criminal Police Organization, the coordinating body for law enforcement from 192 countries — met in Dubai for their 87th annual session. The most important agenda item will come on the final day: on Wednesday, delegates will elect the organization’s new president to replace Meng Hongwei, who went missing in China in October. (The Chinese authorities later announced that Meng had been arrested on “corruption charges,” and sent what was purported to be his resignation letter to the agency’s headquarters in Lyon, France.)

The leading candidate to become the next president of Interpol is Alexander Prokopchuk, a police general in the Russian Interior Ministry who has for the past seven years headed Interpol’s Russian bureau. Prokopchuk’s candidacy was kept under wraps until the last moment — and, presumably, until the Kremlin was confident of securing enough votes. The British government has determined that Prokopchuk’s victory is assured to the extent that “there is no point in trying to stop him.” A British human rights group, Fair Trials, wrote to the Interpol secretariat strongly protesting the nomination and noting that “it would not be appropriate for a country with a record of violations of Interpol’s rules (for example by frequently seeking to use its systems to disseminate politically motivated alerts) to be given a leadership role in a key oversight institution.”

“Politically motivated alerts” have been a favorite Kremlin tactic, used to legitimize its prosecution of political opponents and make their lives more difficult by limiting their movements. Despite the explicit ban in Interpol’s constitution on “any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character,” the organization happily accepted Moscow’s requests to issue “red notices” — in effect, international arrest warrants — against prominent Kremlin opponeAmong the most recent targets of Kremlin-inspired “red notices” was Bill Browder, a U.S.-born financier who has spearheaded the international campaign for targeted sanctions on corrupt officials and human rights abusers in the Russian government. Sentenced in absentia to a prison term in Russia, Browder was most recently arrested in Spain on an Interpol warrant in May of this year. (He was quickly released.) He is unable to visit several countries because of the ongoing legal risks.

With a Putin-appointed police general at the helm, the Kremlin would no longer need to abuse Interpol to pursue its goals; it would be able to place the organization at its service. One should look no further than the federal wanted list from Russia’s Interior Ministry, which includes the likes of longtime Kremlin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the Crimean Tatar leader and Ukrainian lawmaker Mustafa Dzhemilev, to guess what names could be singled out for future “red notices.” (Disclaimer: Khodorkovsky is the founder of the Open Russia movement, of which I serve as vice chairman.) Americans who helped the passage of the Magnitsky Act — and whose questioning Putin demanded from President Trump in Helsinki — are likely candidates as well.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/11/19/putin-is-about-to-gain-control-of-the-worlds-main-law-enforcement-organization/?utm_term=.ea4ccf21ce7b

November 16, 2018

Letter being circulated on Capitol Hill shows multiple incoming freshmen WILL support Pelosi

https://twitter.com/AynRandPaulRyan/status/1063552982728339456


NEW: A letter being circulated on Capitol Hill reveals multiple incoming freshmen — who were largely noncommittal on the House speaker race during their campaigns — will in fact support Nancy Pelosi https://cnn.it/2QNlKyo