All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The Gospel of Donald Trump Jr.

The former president’s son told a crowd that the teachings of Jesus have “gotten us nothing.”

Donald Trump Jr. is both intensely unappealing and uninteresting. He combines in his person corruption, ineptitude, and banality. He is perpetually aggrieved; obsessed with trolling the left; a crude, one-dimensional figure who has done a remarkably good job of keeping from public view any redeeming qualities he might have.

There’s a case to be made that he’s worth ignoring, except for this: Don Jr. has been his father’s chief emissary to MAGA world; he’s one of the most popular figures in the Republican Party; and he’s influential with Republicans in positions of power. He’s also attuned to what appeals to the base of the GOP. So, from time to time, it is worth paying attention to what he has to say.

Trump spoke at a Turning Point USA gathering on December 19. He displayed seething, nearly pathological resentments; playground insults (he led the crowd in “Let’s Go, Brandon” chants); tough guy/average Joe shtick; and a pulsating sense of aggrieved victimhood and persecution, all of it coming from the elitist, extravagantly rich son of a former president.

But there was one short section of Trump’s speech that I thought was particularly revealing. Relatively early in the speech, he said, “If we get together, they cannot cancel us all. Okay? They won’t. And this will be contrary to a lot of our beliefs because—I’d love not to have to participate in cancel culture. I’d love that it didn’t exist. But as long as it does, folks, we better be playing the same game. Okay? We’ve been playing T-ball for half a century while they’re playing hardball and cheating. Right? We’ve turned the other cheek, and I understand, sort of, the biblical reference—I understand the mentality—but it’s gotten us nothing. Okay? It’s gotten us nothing while we’ve ceded ground in every major institution in our country.”

[Tami]

PG Special Report: With shadowy money, Ukraine oligarch became Cleveland's biggest landlord

For Ukraine oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, the Westin hotel in Cleveland that he owns with partners became the center of the most powerful Republican gathering in the nation during the 2016 convention.

Then-candidate Donald Trump set up his headquarters in the downtown luxury hotel. His family members and top advisers stayed in the penthouse presidential suite.

In the lobby that showcases modern, eclectic art, the future president met with a crush of reporters the morning after he delivered his acceptance speech at the convention, gushing over the local hospitality.

“The lobby of the Westin Hotel is a palace for insiders,” wrote the Washington Post.

Five years later, the 484-room facility with waterfront views is the target of a legal battle that pits the hotel owners against lenders over control of one of the last vestiges of the Ukraine power broker’s U.S. real estate empire.

The hotel is part of a portfolio — including iconic skyscrapers in Cleveland — that collapsed amid a series of stunning failures and a federal investigation of allegations that the oligarch and others stole hundreds of millions of dollars from Ukraine’s largest bank and then secretly plowed the money into U.S. real estate, including the four-star hotel.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has chronicled Mr. Kolomoisky’s foray into the U.S. steel industry and his purchases of factories from New York to Texas — most of the facilities bought with money embezzled from Ukraine’s largest financial institution, U.S. prosecutors allege.

[Tami]

German court: No appeals received over Russian's conviction

BERLIN — A Berlin court said Monday that none of the parties has appealed against the verdict in the diplomatically sensitive trial of a Russian man who was convicted earlier this month of what judges concluded was the state-ordered killing of a Chechen man.

The verdict on Dec. 15 prompted Germany's foreign minister to expel two Russian diplomats. A few days later, Russia in turn ordered two German diplomats to leave.

The brazen daylight killing in Berlin of Zelimkhan "Tornike" Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity, sparked outrage in Germany and prompted the German government to expel two other Russian diplomats at the time — a move Russia swiftly reciprocated.

Judges at Berlin's regional court convicted 56-year-old Vadim Krasikov of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Defense lawyers had asked the court to acquit their client, who claimed a case of mistaken identity. The judges said Krasikov bore "particularly grave responsibility" for the slaying, meaning he won't be entitled to the automatic parole after 15 years that is customary in Germany.

[CaptainEurope]

German court: No appeals received over Russian's conviction

Very proud of how my new foreign minister dealt with that on her first week on the job.

[CaptainEurope]

Capitol panel to investigate Trump call to Willard hotel in hours before attack

The chairman said the select committee intended to scrutinize the phone call – revealed last month by the Guardian – should they prevail in their legal effort to obtain Trump White House records over the former president’s objections of executive privilege.

“That’s right,” Thompson said when asked by the Guardian whether the select committee would look into Trump’s phone call, and suggested House investigators had already started to consider ways to investigate Trump’s demand that Biden not be certified as president on 6 January.

Thompson said the select committee could not ask the National Archives for records about specific calls, but noted “if we say we want all White House calls made on January 5 and 6, if he made it on a White House phone, then obviously we would look at it there.”

Unfortunately, he likely made the call on his infamously unsecured personal cellphone.

[Tami]

Belgian anti-vaxxer kickboxing champion known as The Undertaker who refused to acknowledge he had Covid and discharged himself from hospital to treat 'the little virus' at home with oxygen dies aged 41

An anti-vaxx kickboxing champion who was known as The Undertaker has died aged 41 after denying he had Covid-19 and discharging himself from hospital to treat 'the little virus' with oxygen.

Frederic Sinistra died of complications relating to the virus in Ciney, Belgium, weeks after discharging himself from a hospital in Liege and telling followers he would treat his symptoms from home.

The three-time world champion was admitted to hospital in late November after being forced to seek medical help by his coach and posted pictures of himself lying in bed in an intensive care ward with an oxygen tube in his nose.

Sinistra also posted a video on Facebook in which he appeared to be struggling to breathe and wrote in an accompanying caption that he had 'no time to waste with lazy people'.

He railed against government restrictions to contain Covid-19, dismissed the virus and said the 'little virus' would not stop him in social media posts while in hospital.

Sinistra was active online until December 13 but he died after going into cardiac arrest on December 15. His partner announced his passing the next day.

[Mister Mets]

There goes that liberal media again.......

How does this disprove the notion of the American media leaning left?

[Kirby101]

“It is a well known fact that reality has liberal bias.”
Stephen Colbert

[Tami]

“It is a well known fact that reality has liberal bias.”
Stephen Colbert

It's also reality that facts have a liberal bias.

[Mister Mets]

“It is a well known fact that reality has liberal bias.”
Stephen Colbert

So Biden only has a low approval rating because the media puts its thumb on the scale against him?

[The Cool Thatguy]

So Biden only has a low approval rating because the media puts its thumb on the scale against him?

The media has only a slight liberal bias, but a large sensationalist bias.

Covid is dragging on because of anti-Vaxxers supported by GOP crazies who want to weaponize the damage against Biden.

More than that, 50 Republicans are refusing to even consider Biden's BBB agenda, putting all the weight on the Democrats.

Yet who catches all the shade for it?

[Tendrin]

Individual reporters may be liberal. There are some prominent liberals out there on television. 'the media', in so far as political jounralism is concerned as a collective, absolutely doesn't. Let's not forget the same people who put CNN on the air also fund One America News Network.

[AnakinFlair]

Belgian anti-vaxxer kickboxing champion known as The Undertaker who refused to acknowledge he had Covid and discharged himself from hospital to treat 'the little virus' at home with oxygen dies aged 41

Well, I certainly hope he Rests... In... Peace.

[4saken1]

So Biden only has a low approval rating because the media puts its thumb on the scale against him?

If they are as liberal as those on the right seem to think, why report it at all? Just do like many right wing media sources do and ignore news that doesn't advance their narrative.

[CaptainEurope]

So Biden only has a low approval rating because the media puts its thumb on the scale against him?

The media always has a negativity bias. So with Trump driving the US towards fascism, their usual reporting did not feel unusual to casual viewers. The media is not wrong to see as its role criticizing those in power. But their hesitancy to call people in high positions liars and fascists means that their negatively biased reporting on Biden now makes it feel to viewers like nothing much has changed. When a lot has changed.