The MAL case - records seized from Mar-a-Lago

Judge Cannon, who is overseeing the MAL case, wrote the following as part of a guide on how lawyers for both sides can instruct juries:

 

I’m not a lawyer, but I was a History major in college and have done quite a bit of independent reading in it. President Reagan’s records were the first to be stored under the 1978 Presidential Records Act (PRA). This Act held that the records that were to be stored by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) were:

any records generated during a Presidential administration documenting the constitutional, statutory or ceremonial duties of the Presidency are the property of the United States.

Note that this description includes absolutely nothing about the President having any discretion to designate any records as “personal.” The Clinton Sock Drawer case did not help matters because it held that NARA had no authority to seize records that it deemed to be official. This is why Special Counsel Smith has not pursued charges using the PRA. Nevertheless, the former National Archives litigation director Jason Baron, who is now a professor at the University of Maryland and Bradley Moss of the Mark S. Zaid law firm hold that the audiotapes that Clinton produced with historian Taylor Branch were clearly personal records as they “were in the nature of a diary or journal in recorded form.” The records seized at Mar-a-Lago, OTOH, Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton (Not a lawyer, BTW) testified to a grand jury that “shows Trump had unfettered power to designate documents as personal records outside of the reach of the National Archives.”

The piece above explains that this theory has never been tested, but the obvious problem is, if this interpretation were accurate, then in theory, if Trump were to get back into office for a second term, he could order Seal Team Six to kill the former President Biden and then designate the official communications whereby he transmitted that order as private, personal records.

Also, please note the sloppy and insecure manner in which the ex-President Trump stored records at his jazzed-up country club, Mar-a-Lago. Many empty folders were found among the records that were retrieved. Trump himself may have removed the contents. My own theory is that persons unknown rifled through the unsecured boxes, pulled out classified documents and stashed them in a shopping bag, backpack, briefcase, whatever. Classified documents are written on standard office paper where folders are made of card stock. It was simply inconvenient and unnecessary for our document thieves to carry folders with them. Of course, how many classified documents stored in folders, were simply taken wholesale, we would only know by looking a what documents are still not recovered. If records are collected by NARA, they are carefully sorted, packed up and then organized under secure conditions.

And again, giving the President the authority to arbitrarily decide whether a record was private and personal or official, that is, whether the President could store it on his own or needed to turn it over to NARA means he can simply hide records of misdeeds.

Infrmal summary - War for Ukraine Day 725

 

Yeah! Yeah! Ukraine has a simple ask. “Artillery shells and aviation. Rest we do ourselves.”

More Shahed drones and another Russian SU-34 shot down.

“20 Days In Mariupol” wins the BAFTA award for documentaries.

The US House takes a two-week vacation while Denmark sends ALL of its artillery to Ukraine! ONE of these is SERIOUS while the other is not!

Zelenskyy meets American Representatives at Munich Security Conference.

The Lithuanian Foreign Minister is gloomy about Ukraine ever getting aid from the US.

Masha Gessen’s interviewed by WNYC. Gessen notes that Putin seems obsessed by Poland. Poland appears to be his target after Ukraine is finished. The significance of the timing of Navalny’s killing. Gessen also looks at the Tucker Carlson interview. Putin’s wars are always the fault of the other side. Putin “seemed to borrow from Hitler’s speech on the annexation of Sudetenland.”

Eastern Europe is listening very carefully to what the Russian leadership is saying. Our blogger: “And they are drawing reasonable and responsible conclusions from the empirical reality they are observing and acting appropriately.”

A massive attack results in 18 destroyed Russian armored vehicles.

Russians figure they lost 16k men and around 300 armored vehicles taking Avdiivka. The official death toll of the Soviet-Afghan War (1979-1989) was only 15k.

Russian volunteer Murz documents losses from Avdiivka and probably gets himself into trouble by doing so.

An American vet serving in Ukraine pleads for more ammunition for Ukraine.

https://balloon-juice.com/2024/02/18/war-for-ukraine-day-725-the-lithuanian-minister-of-foreign-affairs-has-said-something-important/

Informal Summary of "War for Ukraine Day 724: Did I Mention that the House of Representatives Went on a Two Week Vacation?"

 

Three Russian jets shot down.

The House has scheduled an insane amount of work if they want to do anything other than a continuing resolution. Are they going to try and place a “poison pill” in the bill in order to blame the Senate/President for delaying and thereby shutting down the government? I wouldn’t put it beyond them.

Speaker Johnson appears to be taking the work of the House very, very casually. He’s just got ALL the time in the world! I’m in complete agreement with the blogger as to Biden’s legislative strategy for aid to Ukraine. It was a terrible strategy, based on an over-optimistic reading of the House majority.

Upon hearing the House was taking a two-week break, Zelenskyy reminds them “that dictators do not go on vacation.”

Zelenskyy looks back to see how Ukraine has managed to hold on for so long. He looks at the many myths that were debunked.

Czech Republic thinks it has a way to gt artillery shells to Ukraine.

The 110th separate mechanized brigade has been holding in Avdiivka for the past two years, but now that city has fallen. Ammunition had to be rationed as US aid was cut off. If the US can’t supply Ukraine, then our blogger has lost faith in the US. He doesn’t have much use for US Psychological Operations as they’re currently being conducted. “...we are incredibly bad at this in addition to being in denial that we are at war with Russia.”

Russian disinformation operation egged on firing of the Ukrainian Commander in Chief of the Army.

"The strategists advised developing “a network of Telegram channels in combination with Twitter and Facebook/Instagram” as the most effective way of penetrating Ukraine’s media space."

A look at the significance of Navalny. His death signals the collapse of any internal opposition to Putin.

"Navalny’s death came hours after Republicans in the US House of Representatives went on holiday rather than vote on aid passed by the Senate to fund Ukraine’s defence."

Ukrainians gt back stolen camera. Russians filmed themselves committing war crimes.

https://balloon-juice.com/2024/02/17/war-for-ukraine-day-724-did-i-mention-that-the-house-of-representatives-went-on-a-two-week-vacation/

Trump: “Make a deal!”

Because Donald Trump (ghost)wrote “Art of the Deal,” he’s fond of saying “(so and so) should just make a deal!” as though everything was negotiable and everything could be haggled over. But in the case of Israel after the horrifying massacre of October 7^th by the group that’s been running Gaza since during the younger George Bush Administration, that’s just what Israel needs to do. Israel doesn’t necessarily need to bargain with Hamas itself, the group that’s currently running Gaza, but they need to come up with a bargain that will satisfy the Palestinian people.

Palestinians occupy Gaza, the West Bank, areas of Jerusalem and a diaspora in neighboring countries. Many of them live as refugees as they still desire to return to the lands that are now occupied by Israelis. Problem with a demand of Palestinians, that they be granted the “Right of Return,” is that their population has greatly expanded since the “Nakba,” the “catastrophe” that caused them to lose their land in the first place. If they were to return and re-occupy lands that used to be theirs, Israelis would be, more or less, “pushed into the sea.”

Is there a “One-State Solution?” a single, democratic state where everyone could cooperate and live in peace? Hmm, maybe. If Arab states were generally democracies, that would be a more compelling promise. A “Two-State Solution?” That’s more compelling and the Biden Administration has been pressing for that. In the first years of Israel’s existence, at least until the war of 1967, Israelis feared that a Palestinian state would be the launching point for an Arab country to invade and “push them into the sea.” There’s less threat of that today, though, as Israel has proven itself militarily and has nuclear weapons. I do agree that Israel needs a defensible border, so I think it would be good for Palestinians to occupy a single chunk of Israel like, say, the whole Northern section, as opposed to the weirdly-shaped West Bank. It would have to be negotiated though, so as to prevent Israel from just claiming all of the good parts for itself and laving Palestinians with the dregs. 

 

Commentary:

Okay, the first thing to notice is that the tone is objective. We don’t get emotional or blame anyone.

Second, I start off with a particular individual and again, I take a neutral, factual tone towards him. It’s good to start with an individual because that gives readers a solid handle. It doesn’t do to get abstract right away. This view of Trump is that he’s a businessman and businessmen make deals. Once he’s served the purpose of introducing the piece, we're finished with him and do not return to him.

Even though liberals (including me) frequently gripe that a story is a “BothSides” story, this really IS just such a story. Both Israelis and Palestinians bear some share of the blame for the situation they’re both in. Notice that when I attribute any decision to either side, I can go back to my sources and show the reader that my assertion is justified. That’s what links are for. If you feel you’ve made an assertion that might be controversial, you can link back to a source that shows readers you know what you’re talking about.

The overall objective in any piece is to lead the reader to be able to see WHY an event is occurring. As much as possible, you want to lead them to the conclusion through the objective presentation of facts. You want those facts to be solidly grounded, that is, you want there to be good evidence for them. Sometimes, you really can’t draw conclusions. You want to make it clear to readers that the facts don’t allow you to make serious conclusions.

Response to Senator Mike Lee

 

We’ve known all year that government funding would run out on September 30th, and yet—even as recesses (long and short) came and went—spending bills weren’t being aggressively moved and scheduled for votes on the floor of either chamber of Congress until the last few weeks. Even then, Congress continued to recess every weekend. 

I dislike the "BothSides" approach here. The problem isn't "Congress," the problem is the Republican-controlled House which has spent all of its free time holding hearings that go nowhere. 

We could have easily had this debate months ago, but the Law Firm (currently organized as “Schumer, McConnell, McCarthy and Jeffries”) has long preferred to wait until the last minute to make an aggressive push to pass spending bills. When we approach the end of September (or any other spending deadline), The Firm then insists on writing its own legislation in secret, often revealing it to members of Congress for the first time only 48 hours before a long-scheduled shutdown window. 

I really don't think this is accurate. Republicans are in favor of less government spending and more tax breaks for the wealthy. Democrats are in favor of spending government money in order to solve problems. Not the same, even if results are similar. Who is responsible for delays this year? Yeah, let's look at the people who did fruitless investigations instead of their jobs! 

This pattern has repeated itself over and over again. It always ends the same way—avoiding a shutdown, but producing deficits in the trillions of dollars, and empowering The Firm each time it happens. This, in short, is perhaps the single biggest reason why we’re $33 trillion in debt. It has also effectively excluded most members of Congress, along with the Americans who elected them, from arguably the single most important thing Congress does each year. 

Actually, in 2009-2010, the whole government, from the House to the Senate, to the presidency, was putting in long hours and lots of effort to pass the ACA/Obamacare. Why did Democrats feel the need to do that? Because there was a necessity to handle medical expenses for the regular citizen. There had been a need to do so since Harry Truman was the President, but the expense of health care was reaching crisis proportions under Clinton and was absolutely intolerable under the younger George Bush. Why couldn't Bush handle the problem? Republicans demonstrated during the first two years of Trump (2017-2018) that they simply didn't have any sort of practical answer as to how to handle health care without the government spending a lot of money. Private enterprise was useless. 

I’ve long said that this ugly cycle will keep repeating itself “until it no longer works” for The Firm—that is, until members stop reflexively voting for such bills, under duress and mild protest. 

As I point out above, "cycles" have nothing to do with anything. 

This could be the year when “it no longer works.” Enough members of Congress are fed up, along with those who elected them, with a corrupt system that empowers the few at the expense of the many.

Being "fed up," is fine, but Republicans simply don't have practical answers. My recommendation is to throw out useless hearings and focus on how government can actually save money.  We can also establish how much more the wealthy can pay in taxes.  

If a shutdown results from this year’s iteration of The Firm’s manipulative scheme, there will be many who will blame those who are speaking out against it. If you’re one of those people, please stop and ask yourself: “could I be blaming the wrong people?”

Well, yes! "those who are speaking out against it" simply don't have practical answers. All they have is the vague desire to "do something." 

To his credit, Speaker McCarthy has promised House Republicans that he won’t subject them to any omnibus spending package, much less the kind of rushed, abusive omnibus that The Firm has long been known to force through Congress. 

Passing a whole series of smaller bills WOULD have been a great idea, had the process started several months ago!

But promises to avoid an omnibus aren’t enough—especially if they aren’t backed up by scheduling decisions that back up the Speaker’s long-asserted desire to have a “regular order” spending process, whereby each of the twelve spending bills (organized by government function) are considered individually. 

Again, a dozen separate spending bills are a great idea, but where was the Republican House for the last nine months? Holding hearings to try and bust President Biden!

3:44 PM (Link to original piece) Sep 26, 2023

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Israel/Palestine for the last several years

 

From March 2009 to June 2021, Benjamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister of Israel. His policies can be described as continuing the policies that were in place when he came in, slowly squeezing the Palestinians in general. Gaza in particular has been under siege for 17 years. Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, Fatah/Palestinian Authority (PA) took over the West Bank at the same time. Over the years, Gaza has been controlled solidly by Hamas, the West Bank has been increasingly cut up by walls and checkpoints. PA authorities cannot travel through Israeli checkpoints at will. Their travel permits can be revoked by Israel.

Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank entails onerous physical barriers and constraints on movement, demolition of homes and other physical infrastructure, restrictions on political rights and civil liberties, and expanding Jewish settlements that are widely considered to constitute a violation of international law.

For a short time, Netanyahu was replaced by Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. In their coalition government, the United Arab List, with four seats, was able to get Bennett and Lapid’s coalition to majority status (The Knesset is 120 seats, so 61 is the magic number). The driving force behind the coalition though, was “personal animus for the Likud leader (Netanyahu) and the concern at the threat he may pose to Israeli democracy.”

One good thing that happened during Naftali Bennett’s brief tenure was that “budget money that had been approved by the previous government and earmarked for developing the economy and improving the infrastructure of Arab communities inside Israel’s Green Line borders, while combating rampant crime there.” Unfortunately, the Israeli Finance Minister under Netanyahu canceled that money.

Significantly though, the Israel-Palestinian peace process ran into a brick wall under Bennett with his “Six No’s,” which rejected BOTH a two-state solution AND a one-state solution! And of course, Bennet didn’t want to stop Israeli settlements on the West Bank. Settlements there are illegal under international law.

Israel, lacking a constitution, depends for separation of powers on informal arrangements. Netanyahu decided he wanted to remove “the power of the Supreme Court (and lower courts) to cancel government decisions deemed ‘extremely unreasonable.’" The reasonableness rule was summarily tossed out. Up to 200k Israeli citizens have been protesting on a regular basis ever since.

Some nights have turned violent – with police clashes, counter-protests and cars ramming into the crowds. It can feel like the country is unraveling.

Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly anyway.

Israel and Saudi Arabia in talks right now.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) stands with the majority of the fraternal people of Saudi Arabia in its overwhelming condemnation of the normalization efforts between the Saudi dictatorship and apartheid Israel.

One of the big events lately has been the Jenin raid. It was the most devastating strike on the Jenin refuge amp in about 20 years. Israelis say they need to “clean out” the camp regularly, otherwise terrorists gather there. Several Israelis died in the battle as well. Israelis claimed that terrorists had been living in the camp and used the civilians there as cover after committing raids in the vicinity. The camp also saw fighting back in 2002. But Israel’s response punishes every resident who’s in the vicinity, thereby again, violating international law.

As various folks have pointed out, Is Israel defending a pure and true democracy? Ehh, depends on which ethnic group you’re talking about. Israel practices apartheid, so it’s only democracy if you’re speaking of the Jewish population, not if you’re speaking of Palestinians. 

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Christian-Jewish Allies – I meet regularly with this group. We have an active mailing list on everything affecting Palestinians.

Combatants for Peace – Members of this peace group have spoken at FUMCOG a few times.

Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture – Arab arts, including writing, dancing, singing. I attended an outdoor festival with short film clips of theirs a few months ago.

Latest Ukrainian Update

 First whole part of this is on conspiracy theories about the Wagner Group's Prigozhin. Pretty wild stuff. 

Second part brings to mind a German word I learned a long time ago, schwerpunkt. It means focus of effort and is often the difference between success and failure. The invasion of France in 1940 was a marvelous example of a successful application of schwerpunkt. The German army focused upon the Ardennes (it was thought that armored vehicles couldn't penetrate the thick forests, oops!) and the German army stayed together until it hit the English Channel. The German army acted as a single armored fist that succeeded rather quickly.

The Soviet Union was NOT a good example. Der Fuhrer split up the invading army into three more-or-less equal groups and focused first on this area, then on that area, until winter caused the army to stop. The Stalingrad campaign was okay, but by then the army had been weakened, the Soviet army had regained a lot and the Germans really needed to account for the winter calling a halt to everything. 

In 2022, the Russian strategy of having four axes of advance showed rather quickly that it was simply too many axes. The Kyiv and Kharkiv axes were abandoned, and the Donbas and Crimean axes met and formed a "bridge" and then tried to advance Westward. 

According to the blogger, Ukraine has left trying to re-take Bakhmut and has focused all of its efforts to Melitopol in order to break that "bridge" between the Donbas and Crimea.  This approach is very heavily guarded but promises the biggest effect on Russian forces. 

Conversation with a QAnon supporter

 To take his last question first, do I think Qanon is evil? Granted, “Q nevr divulged classified info or spoke abt violence or insurrection” So no, I just think Q and his followers are all completely devoid of any credibility.

Rocco first responded to my takedown of Tom Fitton's continued insistence that the former President Trump had every right to keep all of the documents produced by his administration with

There’s no case It’s just shh itt charges made up by leftist loo sirs in order to interfere in the elections…again The leftists will do whatever they have to in order to ensure Trump doesn’t win his 3rd straight presidential election

Guiterman asked “What if he had just given the documents back?”

To which Zag said

If he had, it would have diminished the executive power of the president to the point it was below NARA. It is the president's job, not NARA's job to determine which records are the president's. We should not elevate our librarian to have more power than the POTUS. POTUS>NARA

To which I responded:

Utterly ridiculous. The president does not have any authority to determine which records are private and personal versus which ones belong to the government. If he did, then the law that was passed after Nixon left office would have no meaning.

Rocco chimed in with

Again, I love it when condescending leftists pretend like they know what they’re talking about regarding the law…like all of a sudden we’re going 2 forget that dems don’t care that the bidens are all serial law breakers Read abt the Clinton Sock Drawer case u giant doo shh bag

I enjoy playing the role of the grown-up in the room, so I responded

I'm quite aware of the Clinton sock drawer case. It established that certain records count as the president's personal and private possession. It does NOT mean that the president can arbitrarily designate any records he pleases as being his. There's a very specific definition.

Later on, I was struck by a comment Rocco made

Don’t b distracted by their flailing They don’t care 1 bit abt the law Pay attention 2 what makes the cabal most desperate They scream the loudest when we expose their assaults on our children It’s always been abt the children

That struck me as something a follower of Qanon might say.

Yes, pedophilia was the favorite accusation of QAnon. Funny how they were completely oblivious to REAL pedos. We respect the law. When Hunter Biden was found guilty, we said "Oh, okay" and carried on. None of us made excuses, the way right-wingers have been doing for Trump.

Rocco asked

Rich, what do you mean Q & the Anons “were completely oblivious to REAL pedos”?

Me

Jeffrey Epstein and Josh Duggar were both discovered to be pedophiles during the time QAnon was well-known for accusing people of pedophilia. Both cases took them completely by surprise.

Then Rocco made it very clear where he was coming from

There’s no such thing as QAnon There’s Q & there r Anons Typical leftist dum bass…arrogant yet ignorant The cabal overlords u worship wud still b abusing, torturing, selling, sacrificing & E ting children on Epstein Island if it weren’t 4 DJT & Q like u care abt pedos

Me

Yeah, I saw a picture of Q after people tracked down who he actually was. Some skinny dweeb with glasses, no one you'd have ever heard of. Problem is, nothing he's "revealed" has ever been backed up by actual facts.

Rocco

            Sure u did Rich

I added

QAnon DID, however, baselessly accuse Wayfair Furniture of having pedos within it. This was not harmless. Real problem with that was that people who believed them clogged up the phone lines where people were trying to report REAL pedophilia.

Rocco

Baselessly? U r so clueless Wayfair was selling items for thousands of $’s that u can get for $20 down the street & the items were named after missing children At the same time secret Twitter accts had catalogs of kids 2 order as sex slaves w/the exact same names

I found a USA Today piece here and reproduced the opening paragraph.

"Last weekend, an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that online furnishings retailer Wayfair is trafficking children through listings of products with inflated prices and human names erupted on social media."

Rocco

U think the CEO of Wayfair gave up millions & resignd in disgrace b/c of these 2 weirdos? I wouldn’t believe anything in the USA Today othr than the date It’s fully ownd/operated by the Clowns In Action Rich U need 2 figure out that almost everything u think u kno is a lie

I figured that the CEO of Wayfair resigning was easy to check and, sure enough, found a Reuters piece.

It takes just a few seconds to check on things like "Did Niraj Shah actually resign?" And the answer of course, is no. Seriously dude, you're deeply embedded in a cult.

“Posts circulated on social media make the claim that Niraj Shah, chief executive officer of Wayfair, resigned from the e-shopping home retailer amid child sex trafficking allegations against the company. This claim, and the trafficking claim, are both false.”

Rocco

Reuters is owned by….wait 4 it….the Rothschilds U hav prolly never seen the adverts in Wayfair, yet u already kno everything abt Q Shah wasn’t only a stooge of the Rothschilds he was a Fed Resrv board member You’re so ignorant & proud I’m sure u r beyond the point of return

Which is interesting, but kinda beside the point. So I went to the Wayfair website, drilled down a bit and within a few minutes

BTW, I checked the Wayfair website and found that the fellow identified as CEO of the company is still the CEO. Meaning your analysis of their motivations may be good, but your conclusion is half-baked. Reuters was correct. He never lost his position.

Rocco

U r a sheep U still believe what u read/see in the cabal controlled media Sad Did u kno Google, FB, twitter & othr soc media platforms were startd by the CIA funded DARPA program? 100’s of thousands of children go missing in the USA each yr Where do u think they go?

So it's pretty clear that a follower of Q can't pass the most basic fact check. They just make up whatever “facts” they think might win the argument.

Parsing J.D. Vance and his defense of Trump

 

Senator J.D. Vance defends Trump.

The question of whether Trump should have kept those documents is fundamentally a political question.

No, it isn’t. The bulk of the 37 charges are “31 counts of willful retention of classified documents.” When off-going presidents depart the White House, the on-coming president routinely grants them top-secret security clearances so that the former president can provide advice to the current president. The clearance is granted “...as a perk granted by the current president (which Biden hasn't done for Trump)."

Such access is therefore only granted at the discretion and explicit permission of a sitting president. Beyond that, as the Presidential Records Act states, "Presidential records automatically transfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office."

So yes, Trump has broken the law and it is a legal question.

Vance’s political opponents “...have taken this position: unelected bureaucrats can throw the elected president in prison...”

When a president’s term in office expires, his or her legal status is pretty much just like that of any other citizen. He gets Secret Service protection, but I’m not aware of any other official perks. Interestingly, Vance agrees that Biden is not using the legal system to prevent Trump from running again. The Justice Department is acting independently and not as a tool of the current president.

Maybe you think he should have kept the documents in a safe. Fine.

Heh! If you look at the photos of the boxes and boxes of documents, keeping them secure would have required first moving them all to a, or to multiple, commercial storage unit(s) (At the usual maximum, they come in 10’ x 30’ or 20’ x 20’). After that, had I been an adviser to Trump, I would have recommended that Trump build a separate building, perhaps the size of my one-bedroom apartment, up to SCIF standards, to hold the documents and to allow detailed sorting and indexing.

What Trump said about his legal ability to hold onto documents from his presidency, whether classified or not, is important as it shows “state of mind.” Those statements matter because they show that he was fully aware that he did NOT have the legal right to hold onto ANY of the documents that the National Archives took back.

...if the opposition can use the legal system like this with no consequence…

This contradicts Vance’s earlier statement that “unelected bureaucrats” were picking on the former president.

Number of Russian tanks in Ukraine

 

The Russian army started the war in Ukraine with 3,300 tanks. Oryx counts absolutely certain losses and comes up with about 1,500 losses, 1,000 destroyed and 500 captured and put back into service by Ukraine. The Ukrainian General Staff comes up with 3,458 because their standard is “pretty sure.” There's no indication that Russia has a large number of new models rolling off the assembly lines, so how are there any tanks left on the Russian side?

Popular Mechanics says that Russia has a thriving tank industry that refurbishes old tanks. The T-62, the model was developed in 1961, is getting rebuilt and sent to the battlefield. The British Ministry of Defense estimates 800 T-62s have been refurbished and sent to Ukraine. .

How credible is Seymour Hersh?

 

Okay, had a problem with the reporting of Seymour Hersh. He said that the Navy doesn't have to report covert ops whereas the CIA does. The language from 50 USC 3093 states:

The President may not authorize the conduct of a covert action by departments, agencies, or entities of the United States Government unless the President determines such an action is necessary to support identifiable foreign policy objectives of the United States and is important to the national security of the United States, which determination shall be set forth in a finding that shall meet each of the following conditions:…" (emphasis mine)

In other words, Hersh is wrong on that. At the very least, the "Gang of Eight" would have to be notified. Yes, Congress must be told if ANY branch of the government carries out the kind of operation that Hersh describes.

Hersh tells us what his political view is by suggesting that the war will end when Zelenskyy is tired of causing the deaths of fellow Ukrainians.

Daily Kos has taken a look at Hersh’s claims (the story begins several paragraphs and tweets down). They note that the long-time and highly reliable fact-checking site Snopes has also examined those claims. An OSINT fellow (Open Source INTelligence) pursues Hersh’s claims in detail. Sorry, but I think Hersh has just lost it.

Some budget-cutting recommendations

Senator Scott is trying to show that he and his party are not the only ones proposing dramatic changes to Social Security and Medicare. Someone discovered a clip of the current president Joe Biden arguing for serious changes to Social Security. Bit of a problem with using the clip as any sort of evidence is that people, even politicians, can change their minds. If the GOP could show that Biden continued to call for changes to Social Security, then yes, it would be appropriate to call him a hypocrite.

Representative Gaetz demonstrates in his zeal to cut spending that he hates democracy and opposes Western values.

At least Representative Greene has been spending a bit of her time actually looking through the budget so as to make specific proposals. Her budget proposals are based on going line by line through the budget and finding specific items to cut. This, in my own humble opinion, is the only way to approach this job!

Her first recommended cut is to not find a way to build better latrines. This strikes me as the proposal that only a comfortable, middle class woman who has never been outside the US, or at least has never been outside an area that’s been built to be a tourist destination. In the Navy, I’ve been to some non-tourist-type places and believe me, better latrines are a worthwhile project.

Study the emissions of wood heaters? Seems doubtful, but I’d need to see more detail before I could agree or disagree.

“Taxpayers should never be paying unelected bureaucrats to undermine our democracy.” Yeah, okay, but the budget is there as a result of legislators voting on specific projects. Bureaucrats don’t just arbitrarily come up with projects by themselves.

“Global Disinformation Index.” Is there the slightest doubt that the US and the world are awash in disinformation? There may be questions about this project and there may be a need for more oversight and close-up management, but it’s hardly controversial that something needs to be done about rampant disinformation.

Priority: “stopping ALL evil and cruel animal cruelty experiments that are funded by taxpayer dollars.” Yeah, I’ll go with that. Again, I would take a close and careful look at the projects to make sure that that’s what’s happening. The only way “gain-of-function” studies would be dangerous would be if they were carried out under non-scientifically-approved circumstances. That appears to have been the case in Wuhan, China, as the scientists there were apparently rushing through projects without taking the time or spending the money to make sure everything was being done safely.

“We must stop funding war in Ukraine and push for peace!“ Erm, Ukraine is a liberal democracy, Russia is an oppressive, authoritarian, centralized state. Is Greene suggesting that the US doesn’t have a vested interest in supporting democracies when they’re under attack? Is there any reasonable probability that either side is ready to open up peace negotiations? Ukraine wants to regain all of the territory that was lost since Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, Russia wants to rebuild the old Soviet Union, when Ukraine was a Soviet Socialist Republic under the direct control of Moscow.

“We are on the verge of defaulting our country’s debts…” Only and strictly because Republicans insist on playing dangerous games with the debt ceiling! Not because of anything that unavoidable!

Foreign aid has been an easy target since forever. The great majority of it comes immediately and directly back to the US in terms of purchases of arms, food and other types of national assistance. There may indeed be something that can be cut safely without damaging foreign relations, but I’d take a close, careful and detailed look before cutting anything.

“The past 2 yrs Democrats spent more money in history…” Yes, they did, because there was a need for it! Because Republicans have been holding back needed spending since 2011, when the GOP took control of the House and in subsequent years, when they kept control of at least one of the three branches (House, Senate or Presidency). When Democrats finally took control of all three branches, there was a big backlog of spending that needed to be done. Also, Covid required lots of spending.

“It’s easy to cut spending because for decades our government budgets have been the absurdly stuffed with stupid spending.” Ronald Reagan could make a case fo this back in 1981 because Democrats had indeed gotten fat and lazy and had permitted unnecessary spending to occur, but the days of finding “low-hanging fruit,” spending project that can be easily cut, are long gone. Greene made a good attempt, but she has failed to prove otherwise.

Peace proposals for Ukraine

Was just talking with some buddies about the war in Ukraine. They said that the US Peace Council has advocated peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. I then looked at various peace advocates. Russian diplomat Lavrov says that Russia and Ukraine were close to a deal in April, but Zelenskyy agreed with the US and Britain that the deal should not move forward. Found a very interesting paragraph (press people call this the “nut graph,” the paragraph that sums up the most important point in the piece).

Russia has repeatedly rejected Ukrainian and Western demands that it withdraw completely from Ukraine as a condition for any negotiations. US President Joe Biden has indicated he would be willing to talk with Putin if the Russian leader demonstrated that he seriously wanted to end the invasion.

It’s very difficult to see how any negotiations can even begin with Ukraine ceding any territory to Russia. That’s not a permanent or lasting peace as the war would simply continue once Russia had rebuilt its currently devastated army.

Is the possibility of nuclear war increasing? Actually, it’s decreasing. China has made it quite clear to Russia that they won’t put up with Russia using nuclear weapons. India has said the same. The US has also stated that it would respond to a nuclear launch by Russia with non-nuclear weapons.

Update: So if I were in Putin's position and wanted peace with Ukraine, how would I begin? I'd probably agree, in principle, that Russia must leave the territory of Ukraine. Russia's doing the exact opposite,  

"I think you only have to look at Putin's own words in a recent conversation with President Erdoğan of Türkiye in which he says unless and until Ukraine accepts the new territorial realities, as he put it, there's nothing to negotiate. In other words, unless and until Ukraine acknowledges and accepts the fact that the territory that Russia has seized by force, it's not getting back, there's nothing to negotiate. That of course is in and of itself a nonstarter," [Secretary of State Antony Blinken] added.

Some rather silly stuff

 

Dinesh D’Souza says some pretty silly stuff here.

Key differences between Trump and Biden storage of classified docs: 1. Mar-a-Lago is secure b/c it’s under Secret Service protection; Biden’s think tank is not

We went over this when it was first discovered that Trump had numerous government documents that he wasn’t authorized to have in his possession and when Trump was visited by con artists and politically-embarrassing racists. The Secret Service is responsible for seeing to the personal safety of Trump and his family members, period. They are not there to take on the function of secretaries or staff members. They aren’t there to make Mar-a-Lago secure against anything but threats to the physical safety of the former president and his family members.

2. Biden Center is heavily subsidized with Chinese government money

Hard to see what the relevance of this talking point is.

3. Trump had the power to declassify; Biden did not

Declassification is a lengthy process that involves checking with the originating agency to see whether or not a document can be safely declassified. It involves crossing out classification markings. It involves going into databases to change the status of a document. None of that was done in the case of the document that were taken to Mar-a-Lago.

Also, Trump’s ability to legitimately review classified documents ended when his presidency ended. He hasn’t had a security clearance since his term ended.

Has Trump been careful with handling classified data? Actually, no. In 2019, there was a Iranian attempt to launch a satellite into space. The launch failed. A picture of the damaged launcher was shown to President Trump. He tweeted out the picture.

Some officials worried that Trump’s decision to release the image compromised a key U.S. spy capability, potentially giving Iran a leg up in concealing its nuclear and missile programs.

The rest of the piece makes it very clear that the intelligence community was very upset with Trump for releasing the classified image without getting the approval of the intelligence agencies.

Funny stuff

So this is kind of hilarious. In his first two Twitter Files, Elon Musk put out what he thought were two really dread, awful scandals. In the first, the Biden campaign asked Twitter if the company could take some posts down because they appeared to violate Twitter policies. Twitter agreed that they violated policy and took them down. Musk was absolutely flabbergasted that no one was impressed that two private entities agreed between themselves to, y’know, “violate the First Amendment.” But no such violation had occurred.

The second case was where the Arizona Secretary of State did the same thing. She pointed out to Twitter that some posts that her political opponent had put up violated Twitter policies. Twitter agreed and removed those posts. As there were no threats of any kind, simply a notification to Twitter, again, there was no story, no violation.

So I was commenting on a similar case, where lawyers weren’t quite sure that a First Amendment violation had occurred, but where they wanted to conduct a “fishing expedition” to make sure.

Gotta love it! The guy just pulls these “laws” or “rules” out of thin air and just defends them as though they’re actual rules!

 

 

 

 

Trump's suitability for office

So, on Twitter, I responded that Trump and Putin are, of course, good buddies who completely agree and so that's why World War III didn't happen on Trump's watch. Had Putin said “I'm going to take Ukraine,” Trump would have responded “Why, sure thing, good buddy! Hey, can I wash your car, too?”

Someone responded “Trump and Putin were such good buddies that he told Germany and Europe to get off Russian oil bcs they were too reliant on it ...”

I looked it up, and sure enough, Trump was very critical of Europe for being dependent on Russian oil. “'So we’re supposed to protect you against Russia and you pay billions of dollars to Russia and I think that’s very inappropriate,' Trump said at the residence of the U.S. ambassador in Brussels.”

So okay. Trump had moments when he was thinking clearly and had good insight. Problem is, he never followed up this insight with any policy answer or solution. Clinton, Obama or Biden would have followed up by saying “What can we do to encourage Europe to reject Russian oil? Can the US provide an alternative to Russian oil?” There's no indication Trump ever paid attention to the issue after concluding that Europe was wrong and that he was right.

My solution, of course, would be to encourage Europe to adopt green, alternative energy. The problem with Puerto Rico's energy wasn't that Hurricane Maria had damaged any power plants, but that it tore down miles and miles of heavy cables that carried electricity all over the island. A wind, solar and battery combination is an enormously flexible power solution, It can be scaled from a single household to a small town, without lengthy, heavy cables!

Our dependence on fossil fuels means that we'll always be involved in getting energy from the Middle East and/or Russia. Once we build wind farms off our coasts and set up solar panels over parking lots, we don't have to worry about what Saudi Arabia thinks. We'd be able to, for instance, object to and stop a war on Yemen.

Should we have government control of social media companies?

I haven’t finished reading this interview “Fiona Hill: ‘Elon Musk Is Transmitting a Message for Putin’”, but it answers the objection of the “tankies” quite well. This tanky doesn’t use the Trumpian term “Deep State,” but she means something quite similar. The US is run by people who want to centralize the media under Washington DC’s control. Elon Musk is a brave, brave hero who dares to resist the Deep State that wants everyone united against Russia.

As Fiona Hill makes clear, Musk is just repeating, word for word, the line that Putin wants him to put out there. Seriously, does anyone believe Musk put any time and effort into studying the relationship between Russia and Crimea? Or is Musk simply responding to Putin appealing to Musk’s ego?

A big problem is that Musk doesn’t really appear to understand how social media platforms work. That’s why he wants to cut 75% of Twitter’s work force! He doesn’t have an appreciation as to how society at large versus a social media platform work, how the First Amendment is insufficient to content regulation online. As Regulatory Review puts it:

As they currently stand, social networks are self-regulated. Because of private content moderation, most social media platforms employ a combination of algorithmic and human action to determine what kinds of content to eject from their sites.

This is clearly not a sustainable state of affairs. As social media sites are not simply “The Press,” but are instead sites where abuses need regulation. Content moderation is something Musk just doesn’t appear to understand.

So yes, it’s good that Musk will continue the Starlink service for Ukraine, but yes, the US needs to seriously look at whether large social media platforms like Twitter can remain unregulated. Musk is currently putting up $44 billion to buy Twitter. There appear to be some foreign investors that are contributing to that.

Amnesty Internation & Ukraine

 Reuters:

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International's secretary general...called on the Ukrainian government to ensure that its forces were located away from populated areas or for all civilians to be evacuated from those areas first.

I dunno, that seems pretty difficult. Recall that Russia attacked Ukraine from several directions in February and that they’ve fired missiles so that they land all over the country. A real problem with the Amnesty report is that Russians hits civilian targets all the time. 

Balloon Juice blog:

Ukraine responds strongly to criticisms by Amnesty International.

Russian abuse of civilian populations (example: Bucha) means many Ukrainian civilians feel more secure being close to their military.

Amnesty deliberately ignored the opinions of their Ukrainian staff.

The Secretary General of Amnesty International gives a very highly defensive reaction to being criticized.

President Zelenskyy takes very strong issue with Amnesty’s claim. 

And also:  

Russians distributing weapons and ammunition among civilians in the city of Kherson, in violation of the laws of war.

 

The BJ piece also looks at: 

Russian spies look for missile targets in Ukraine.

Brittney Griner’s fate.

Thoughts on Supreme Court decision on abortion

 Recently had a lengthy discussion on Twitter about pregnancy choice. The initial entry was all about how much a pregnancy costs. Nothing went particularly wrong with the pregnancy, the baby s fine and the mother is happy. A fellow who claimed to be a neutral centrist but who kept making clearly anti-choice comments, asked a question. I responded. During the course of the conversation, we focused on a particular page taken from Supreme Court Justice Alito's anti-Roe decision. Here are what I regard as the two most critical sentences:

These legitimate interests include respect for and preservation of prenatal life at all stages of development. … The protection of maternal health and safety.

To me, these describe the priorities of the Supreme Court majority in this opinion.

As to the 10-year old girl in Ohio who was raped and found herself very close to the mark of when Ohio did not permit abortions, there's no question that Ohio was seeing to it that they were showing “respect for and preservation of prenatal life”. Would her giving birth have proven fatal or very unhealthy? Doubtful.

The "bodily harm" doesnt even apply because a 10 year old can give birth safely to a child. So the answer to my original question is no there is not an exception that would allow this abortion to take place in Ohio.

So this was not a case of unintended consequences or of things going sideways into unforeseen circumstances. Alito and the rest of the Supreme Court majority had only seen ft to account for the girl's “health and safety.” Once that was satisfied, they had no problem with seeing to it that she would be required to give birth. In fact, the National Right to Life organization made it quite clear that:

“She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child,” Bopp said in a phone interview on Thursday.

Is Alito himself troubled at all by the obvious problems with the decision as it's currently formulated? Not so you'd know it. He appeared for a speech and didn't appear to be even slightly troubled by problems with the decision.

So when anti-choicers ask you “Why do people hate us?” Well, there's a good reason for that.

Update: The Biden Administration has put out an instruction that women who are suffering complications and might die without an abortion, must receive abortions, regardless of what local and state laws may say. Texas Republicans object to this. They argue that saving the life of a woman via an abortion might put her at risk of being found guilty under Texas law. 

Motivations for the Ukraine war

 

A buddy of mine sent me a lengthy talk radio piece of almost an hour and a half. I took a pass on that as I can listen to clips of a few minutes, but not to something that lengthy and visually boring.

So I looked around and saw the CPUSA had published a piece on Ukraine. Very typically for the really hard-core peaceniks today, NATO is accused of aggressively expanding over the past three decades. What the piece doesn't look at is how the situation appears from the point of view of countries that have joined NATO and of countries like Finland and Georgia that are favorably inclined towards joining it. As I pointed out here, there are strong reasons not to want to be allied to Russia (and Good Heavens, you do NOT want to be in their army!) and there are positive incentives to join the EU. The journalist Julia Ioffe talks about this phenomenon working in real time, right now, as Finland, Sweden and Bosnia have all suddenly developed a interest in joining NATO.

1, “Therefore, we also call on Russia to withdraw troops.”

There is absolutely zero prospect of that happening. The only way that serious peace talks can happen is if Russia feels they’re losing.

2. “ All sanctions must be ended and borders secured and respected.”

Which would make peace talks even LESS likely!

3. “Agreements reached in 2014…”

Were signed at the point of a gun. They were forced onto Ukraine in the wake of the occupation of Crimea. The Ukrainian army was far too weak and riven with corruption to resist.

The reason Biden has been cited as having worked to push out a Ukrainian prosecutor is that Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor, was highly corrupt.

Why was Ukraine corrupt in 2014? Same reason many African countries were run by dictators in the 70s and 80s. It takes time to move from a dictatorial regime to a fully inclusive and democratic one. It takes time for internal checks and balances to begin to work.

From The Black Agenda report:

To secure the interests of the Russian and Ukrainian people, there must be good faith negotiations between the Russian Federation, representatives of the peoples of Donbas, the Ukrainian state, and the U.S.  The EU and the U.S. must end their continuous shipments of arms and other “lethal aid” to Ukraine.

Again, how is this going to happen without serious Russian reversals on the battlefield? This looks like just serious wishful thinking.