All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Tami]

‘A presidency of one’: Key federal agencies increasingly compelled to benefit Trump

As the impeachment drama has unfolded over the past week, a series of disclosures has illuminated President Trump’s command over key federal agencies, revealing how he has compelled them to pursue his personal and political goals, investigate his enemies and lend legitimacy to his theories about the 2016 election.

The Justice Department has prioritized a probe that the president hopes will discredit a finding by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him win. As part of that effort, Attorney General William P. Barr has met overseas with foreign intelligence officials to enlist their aid in “investigating the investigators,” as the right’s rallying cry goes, and dig into the president’s suspicions.

The State Department, meanwhile, has been investigating the email records of as many as 130 current and former department officials who sent messages to the private email account of Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and Trump’s 2016 opponent. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defied Congress on Tuesday by attempting to block the depositions of five department employees called to testify in the impeachment inquiry.

[Malvolio]

Luckily Trump can't read, so we don't have to worry about him unleashing any Deadites.

He's hoping the Evangelicals can get him the Spear of Destiny.

[Tami]

Why On Earth Does Trump Think A DNC Server Is Hidden In Ukraine?

As he pressured Ukraine’s President to produce dirt that would discredit the Mueller investigation, Donald Trump first turned to a hobby horse that has received far less attention than his allegations against Biden: the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.

Asking for a “favor,” according to a memorandum of the July 25 call the White House released Wednesday, Trump told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, “I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike” — then, the transcript includes an ellipsis.

“I guess you have one of your wealthy people,” the record of the call continues, interrupted by another ellipsis, then: “The server, they say Ukraine has it.”

Crowdstrike is a sophisticated cybersecurity firm founded in 2011 by George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch. The memo provides only a hint at what Trump was getting at, but it’s clear it touches on a right-wing conspiracy that’s stewed for months just under the surface.

Crowdstrike, the conspiracy goes, provided the FBI with false information incriminating Russian hackers while the DNC refused to hand over the servers themselves. The theory’s proponents accuse Democrats of planting evidence that their servers were hacked during the 2016 election — a breach that, arguably, contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss that November.

This, some right-wingers strenuously assert, gave Democrats cover for the supposed murder of Seth Rich, the former DNC staffer who, conspiracists believe, was the real source of the stolen emails published by Wikileaks. (Rich’s family has repeatedly asked prominent right wingers, including via a pending lawsuit against Fox News, to stop spreading this fake story.)

[InformationGeek]

And there we go...

Secretary of State Pompeo confirms he was listening to Trump's July 25th phone call with the president of Ukraine: "I was on the phone call."
Via CNN https://t.co/E7OkOQmtGx

[Tami]

Anyone see this one yet?

Mark Meadows and the Undisclosed Dinosaur Property

Three years ago, the North Carolina congressman Mark Meadows sold a hundred-and-thirty-four-acre property in Dinosaur, Colorado. The buyer was Answers in Genesis, a Christian nonprofit based in Kentucky, which was founded by the Australian creationist Ken Ham. Answers in Genesis is dedicated to promoting young-Earth creationism, which holds that the Earth was created in six days, several thousand years ago. According to documents related to the sale, Meadows was to be paid about two hundred thousand dollars for the property, in monthly installments, the last of which was paid last year.

Neither the sale nor any such payments are noted on Meadows’s congressional financial disclosures, which he is required by law to file annually. Meadows is a founding member of the very conservative House Freedom Caucus and is one of the more prominent members of Congress; last year, Donald Trump reportedly considered making him the White House chief of staff. Why didn’t Meadows disclose the property or the sale? The congressman declined to comment for this story. In August, the Charlotte Observer reported that Meadows—who, before becoming a congressman, was a successful real-estate developer—owned land in northeastern North Carolina that he had also failed to list on his disclosure reports. It’s possible that these nondisclosures reflect a pattern of ignoring congressional reporting rules.

It’s also possible that Meadows wanted to avoid drawing attention to the Colorado property and the complicated and perhaps unflattering story behind it. The property is not an ordinary piece of land but a rich site for finding dinosaur bones, and this appears to be the primary reason that Meadows bought it. Those bones then became the subject of a long-running fight among young-Earth creationists—and they are likely the reason that Meadows sold the land, ultimately, to Answers in Genesis. Meadows’s involvement with the land may have been, in part, a moneymaking venture, but it seems chiefly to reflect his commitment to, and entanglement with, the contentious and controversial world of creationist paleontology.

[Tami]

Putin is coming to Trump's defense. Anyone surprised by that? Didn't think so.

[Tami]

The Pentagon Has Officially Taken Over the Security Clearance Process

The Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday handed off its National Background Investigations Bureau to the Defense Department, leaving the Pentagon in charge of conducting the vast majority of government’s security clearance investigations.

At midnight, NBIB officially ceased to exist, and its operations and some 2,900 employees were subsumed by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency. The agency, formerly known as the Defense Security Service, is now charged with adjudicating roughly 95% of the background investigations for the federal government.

DCSA also will be responsible for ensuring the Pentagon and its contractors don’t allow compromised technology to enter their IT ecosystems. Federal officials have grown increasingly wary of efforts by China and other adversaries to infiltrate the government through its IT supply chain, though even when threats arise, the Pentagon has historically been slow to act.

''This merger advances national defense strategy objectives to enhance our security environment and maintain lethality by protecting critical defense information from theft or disclosure,” Joseph Kernan, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, said in a statement.

NBIB was created in the wake of the 2015 OPM breach that exposed the sensitive personal information of more than 21 million current and prospective federal employees and contractors. During its brief life, the bureau drew sharp criticism as the backlog of security clearance investigations soared, topping 725,000 in early 2018.

Congress passed language in the 2018 defense authorization bill requiring the Pentagon to conduct its own clearances, which made up about 70% of all investigations, and in April, the Trump administration signed an executive order that transferred all bureau’s work to the DCSA.

Though the transfer was completed on Tuesday, senior Defense officials told reporters there remains a significant amount of work to be done. Officials said they plan to spend the next year refining the DCSA’s internal operations to meet its newly expanded mission, and they expect requirements to continue changing over time.

[Tami]

No One Can Figure Out Brexit So Morgan Stanley Let a Machine Try

To the army of strategists, economists and investors grappling with Brexit: Relax. Take a break. Morgan Stanley quants have your back.

The Wall Street bank has unleashed its computer model to map the fallout from Britain’s tortuous bid to leave the European Union, one of the most intractable issues in world finance.

The good news: The hit to assets in a no-deal exit isn’t as bad as some fear. The bad: It’s still pretty ugly, and Morgan Stanley sees a 35% chance it will happen.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Putin is coming to Trump's defense. Anyone surprised by that? Didn't think so.

Not in the slightest. Bad Vlad has to keep his orange skinned puppet safe and sound so he can continue screwing America like a five dollar whore.

[4saken1]

They'll definitely ust blame the 'liberals' and quadruple down on Trump.

Yep! It will be because of the impeachment hearings. I was thinking about the timing of this a couple of days ago. Economists have been talking about an impending recession for months from what economic indicators have told them. The uncertainty that the impeachment hearings causes investors might just be the kindling to start the fire, though.

[Tami]

Asside from the ‘Leninist’ comment, this does bring up one question. Why is Wall Street more afraid of Warren than Sanders?

Cramer: Bernie Sanders and his wealth-grabbing ‘Leninist’ agenda scarier than Elizabeth Warren

CNBC’s Jim Cramer believes Wall Street should be much more afraid of Bernie Sanders in the White House of than of Elizabeth Warren.

Vermont Sen. Sanders, who describes himself as a Democratic socialist, wants to “make people who are billionaires lower than billionaires,” Cramer said on “Squawk on the Street” on Wednesday.

Sanders is “basically doing a socialist agenda,” said Cramer. “It has a Leninist feel to it,” calling the senator’s ideas for taxing the wealthy “just wholesale redistribution.”

In making a “Leninist” comparison, Cramer was referring to Vladimir Lenin, the Russian revolutionary and leader, who created the Soviet Union and contributed to the concept and practice of a state-controlled economy.

“I’m not as fearful of Elizabeth Warren as Wall Street is,” Cramer reiterated Wednesday, a day after he said that fears of Warren among banking and corporate CEOs are “getting overblown.”

“I want to stop the fear of Sen. Warren. I really think that’s a mistake,” Cramer also said Tuesday, who last month first reported that he’s hearing the financial community saying “she’s got to be stopped.”

[Michael Watkins]

What I find weird is that about a week into the impeachment investigation, after daily insane meltdowns on twitter, with a weak economy and drowning in a swamp of scandals, there hasn't really been a dip in Trump's approval yet. He holds on to the slight improvement he saw a few months ago.

do trump supporters follow the news?

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Asside from the ‘Leninist’ comment, this does bring up one question. Why is Wall Street more afraid of Warren than Sanders?

Cramer: Bernie Sanders and his wealth-grabbing ‘Leninist’ agenda scarier than Elizabeth Warren

Because Warren’s entire progressive rep is based on her being tough on Wall Street. That’s her thing. Bernie has a more progressive bend on healthcare and foreign policy and education. Warren is good in those, but she’s been a far more effective Wall Street opponent and that scares them more.

Wall Street already took hits from Warren. They are likely more fearful of her since that’s her main issue. Cramer is also using scare tactics with socialism.

[Tendrin]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bern...ry?id=66003850

"During a campaign event yesterday evening, Sen. Sanders experienced some chest discomfort. Following medical evaluation and testing he was found to have a blockage in one artery and two stents were successfully inserted," said Sanders’ senior adviser Jeff Weaver on Wednesday in a statement.

"Sen. Sanders is conversing and in good spirits. He will be resting up over the next few days," Weaver said. "We are canceling his events and appearances until further notice, and we will continue to provide appropriate updates."

Best wishes for a speedy recovery for the Senator.

[Tendrin]

Because Warren’s entire progressive rep is based on her being tough on Wall Street. That’s her thing. Bernie has a more progressive bend on healthcare and foreign policy and education. Warren is good in those, but she’s been a far more effective Wall Street opponent and that scares them more.

Wall Street already took hits from Warren. They are likely more fearful of her since that’s her main issue. Cramer is also using scare tactics with socialism.

Really, all these guys are the best advocates for Warren's campaign.