Thursday, October 1, 2020

General Flynn

 Elaine told me about Jonathan Turley's column on General Michael Flynn:


When Michael Flynn heads to court for his final sentencing hearing today, a lifetime of respected national service will hang in the balance on what is said and done. I am not talking about Flynn but of Judge Emmet Sullivan. There is no issue over the dismissal of the charge of Flynn lying to federal investigators. The only issue is whether, just before an election, Sullivan will use the hearing as a forum for injudicious commentary.

I have practiced law for years before Sullivan and praised him for his demeanor and record as a judge. He has served with distinction since 1994 in cases ranging from Guantanamo Bay detainees to the flawed prosecution of Ted Stevens to the emails of Hillary Clinton.

Then came the case of Flynn, who was charged with a single count of lying to federal investigators. Such a charge ordinarily would result in a short sentencing hearing. Flynn fought the charge but, after exhausting his assets and facing threats by prosecutors to target his son, he agreed to plead to one count. Even the uncooperative witness like Alex Van Der Zwaan received only 30 days in prison on a similar charge related to the investigation by former special counsel Robert Mueller.

Yet this is the third attempt at sentencing for Flynn, as what should have been the simple hearing two years ago was derailed by Sullivan himself. Both Flynn and the prosecutors believed they would have a perfunctory hearing and a likely sentence without jail time. After all, this was just one count, and Flynn pleaded guilty, then met with Mueller about 20 times as a cooperative witness. Furthermore, we know federal investigators at the time did not believe Flynn intentionally lied to them. Yet when Flynn went to court, he was given a scolding rather than a sentence.

Using the flag in court as a prop, Sullivan falsely accused Flynn of being an “unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the national security adviser” who sold his country out. Sullivan even suggested Flynn should have been charged with treason, then suggested he might ignore any recommendations and send Flynn to jail when he declared, “I cannot assure you that if you proceed today, you will not receive a sentence of incarceration. I am not hiding my disgust and my disdain.”

 

 General Michael Flynn needs to be able to live his life.  He was blackmailed by the U.S. government.  He was railroaded by them as well.  (The blackmail was threatening his son if he did not plead guilty.)  What the government did to him was outrageous.  And, yes, I believe former President Barack Obama and Rapist Joe Biden were a part of the railroading.


I forgot to note THIRD's "Roundtable" this week, specifically:


Jim: Ruth, you cover a lot at your website.  Among your topics -- regular topics -- would be General Michael Flynne.

 

Ruth: I believe the general was railroaded by the FBI.  POLITICO had a story last week that I did not have time for at my site where they noted that General Flynn had an FBI agent who did not feel the general was trying to cover up an involvement with Russia and that:

 

A 13-page summary of an interview with Flynn case agent William Barnett, made public in a court filing by prosecutors just before midnight Thursday, also revealed that the veteran agent harbored deep doubts and skepticism about the merits of the investigation into Flynn’s potential ties with Russia — at least in its early stages — and questioned the Mueller team’s tactics in the broader probe of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians, known as Crossfire Hurricane. 

 

 Ruth (Con't): Again, I feel the general was railroaded.  

 

Also be sure to read Ava and C.I.'s "Media: The Jane Fonda Horror Show" which is one of the best pieces all year.  I loved it. 



This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:

Thursday, October 1, 2020.  A presidential candidate reveals himself to be a fake ass and more on the debates. 


Starting in the US.  First off, Joseph Kishore.  As I note during election year, my time is valuable.  I cover you until you reveal you're a fake ass.  Then I don't have time for you.  Trina's going to be writing about Kishore tonight and I'll link to it in Friday's snapshot.  He's a fake ass.


You either do what your supposed to do or you don't.  In this case, you didn't.  I didn't create the SEP platform.  I didn't sign off on.  If their candidate cannot follow their platform, that's on them and their candidate and I don't have the damn time.  I was already wasting too much time every Friday searching wildly for anything that week -- the entire week -- that fake ass Kishore had done that we could note here to include him as one of the people running for president.


Jo Jorgensen deserves to be included in the debates.  I have argued that all should be.  But my argument gets really weak when a fake ass can't run a campaign well enough to issue at least one statement or one video a week.  People in all fifty states can vote for Jo Jorgensen.  She has her ballot access.


Equally true that she, the Green Party's Howie Hawkins and PSL's Gloria La Riva are running real campaigns.  


In 2024, if the SEP cannot get a candidate who can do a minimum of one video a week -- as opposed to Kishore one every two months? -- then they don't need to run a campaign.


And let's also be clear, you're copyrighted articles at WSWS do not count as press releases so stop linking to them as such from your inactive and lazy campaign site.


I will champion the right of people who make real runs for the office.  I will do my best to include them.  Joseph Kishore is not a real candidate.  He's another Dennis Kucinich who play acts at being a candidate and then gives delegates away in Iowa only to later whine, "The press isn't covering me."  No, they not going to.  Once you care so little about your campaign that you send your supporters over to another candidate, you're not really running for anything.  And we all have limited time so we don't have time your fake ass.


As a candidate, Joseph Kishore has now demonstrated he's a fake ass.  We'll link to Trina's piece tomorrow.  Back to the debate.  I'll grab this because I know Trina isn't planning to.  Donald Trump's taxes.


They don't matter.  Here's Jimmy Dore.



Moon of Alabama via INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE:


It essentially says:

  • Trump is a quite rich international real estate investor.
  • U.S. tax laws allow investors to minimize their reported income by claiming various kinds of deprecations and other gimmicks.
  • Tax regulations that allows investors to carry forward leftover losses to reduce taxes in future years are especially helpful.
  • Trump has good accountants and tax lawyers and has used the laws to their full extent to minimize his tax payments.

Is any of the above something we did not already knew?

What the Times story does NOT say is:

  • Trump's tax record reveal that he did something illegal.

The paper had surely hoped for more. It must have been especially bitter for its authors to write this paragraph:

By their very nature, the filings will leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled. They comprise information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.

This is a dud. It is certainly not the campaign ammunition the Democrats had hoped for.


Where's WSWS on this?


It's news -- to them -- when they aren't tops in a GOOGLE search result.  It's news -- to them -- when there are efforts to disappear them online.  The media's unfair -- they cry then.  But only for them.


We've been here for 16 years next month.  Go find the entry where I'm whining about this site.


ALTERNET delinked from us.  I did note that.  Because I publicly told them to because of their writers were bullying a young teenager.

Other than that?


Nothing up here.  Nothing about why the backup sites that I did are no longer posting.  The reason is because there was an effort to influence our GOOGLE status by referring to those.  Which is why I no longer post content there.  There have bene so many attacks and so many efforts to just shut this tie up -- including legal threats.  And I just keep going and don't try to make it about me or this site.  


I do not dislike Zach Haller.  I think he's a strong voice for the right.  If I read him, he makes me think about where I stand on the left and that's the best thing you can say about a political writer.  I have called him out only once and that was when a year after the fact he's still got a pinned Tweet (he changed in August finally) about his being censored.  Again, he's got a new pinned Tweet and thank goodness.  But what's WSWS' excuse.  They only care when it's them?


THE NEW YORK TIMES article was supposed to be an "October surprise."  It was a smear job and a hit job.  It was the media working together to determine the election.


I'm not voting for Donald Trump.  That doesn't mean I applaud organized efforts by the press to determine the outcome of the election.


Donald Trump paid very little taxes, the article argues.   But that's not illegal.  He apparently followed the tax code.  Did he create the code?  No.  He was not in the White House nor was he in Congress.  Joe Biden cannot say the same.


The only thing worse than THE NEW YORK TIMES is THE GUARDIAN.  They run with anything to undercut Trump.  They do that because they have no real reporters.  Martin Chulov got bullied by Nouri al-Maliki and was never the same -- boo hoo.

And the rest are opinion writers who often try to pass themselves off as objective news reporters.  They are not.


THE GUARDIAN offered a stupid report that's stupid on so many levels.  First off, butt the hell out of the US election.  Truly, do you see the US involving itself in whether or not this or that person becomes prime minister of the UK?


Apparently, the UK is such a tiny pond and their writers have such a case of penis envy that they have to obsess over the US.

Which is how you get the garbage 'report' of US workers who are outraged by Donald because of his taxes.


Grow the f**king hell up.  Outside of some rabid know-nothing, no one's having a fit.  Most Americans do not like paying taxes to begin with.  If Donald broke the law, people would be outraged.  He followed the law and got off via loopholes that the Congress created?


Only the politically stupid would be outraged at him over that. 


But THE GUARDIAN exist to, week after week, try to chip away at support for Donald Trump.  That's disgusting and that's disgusting if they're a US publication.  They're a foreign publication and they're vile and disgusting.  


Now they could call out US policies -- under Donald or anyone -- and that could be effective reporting.  But they won't do that, will they?


Remember, THE TIMES OF LONDON broke the news of the Downing Street Memos.  In the US, you may remember, we were outraged that our press wouldn't cover those memos.  But, reality, THE GUARDIAN never covered them either.  Nor did the rag try to stop the Iraq War.  Tony Blair was for it and, neo-liberal, NEW LABOUR organ that it is, it went right along.


There is a lot of messaging going on right now in the media.  That's why your partisan blogs read like MSM -- and vice versa -- over recent allegations about Hillary Clinton.  Even the headlines were similar.  Just by chance, right? 


No.  You've got an organized messaging system taking place right now and it'll be exposed later on just like JOURNOLIST was.  


There are real issues and Donald Trump's tax returns were never a real issue.  


Want to talk about the tax code and Congress?  Let's cover that.  Real issue.  


But the press working overtime to take down Donald Trump is not a reflection on Donald, it's a sign of how corrupt they are and how much disregard that they have for the public.


Remember that Katha Pollitt is a whore.  She's a racist whore, yes.  But she's a whore.  She saw Sarah Palin speak at the GOP convention and took to JOURNOLIST to complain about how effective she felt Sarah was and how she felt Sarah was connecting with voters.  


Now Katha's paid to share her opinions with readers of THE NATION.  But that opinion never made it into print.  Instead, she whored and attacked.  We know what she really thought because JOURNOLIST got leaked.  But if THE NATION was a credible outlet, they would have immediately fired her when the JOURNOLIST was exposed because how can they -- or their readers -- trust someone who they now knew lied in an opinion piece?


Now she's a racist.  African-American writers have always known that.  Alice Walker is not the only one Katha's attacked in a NYT review.  She's a racist.  That's why, when at the start of the '00s, the NAACP was rightly calling out the lack of people of color on TV programs, Katha, in her racist huff, felt the need to lecture the NAACP and tell them that there were more important matters.


She's an ugly person and she's still got a job.  She's useless and she's ugly and THE NATION keeps her on the payroll while a small group of White feminists rally round her like she's Edna Garrett and they're THE FACTS OF LIFE gals.


The press is corrupt and it always has been.  Katha's been a racist for years.  She signed off on that racist letter this year and, even then, notice she wasn't called out.


Supposedly, on the left, we care so much about racism.  We want to end it.  But we're too scared to even call out an elderly, fat White woman for her long history of racism.


The debate coverage goes to the corruption of the press.  Ruth's "It was the Dog Faced Pony Boy that started the interruptions" went up.  She's right.  It was Joe Biden who first started interrupting and cutting off Donald Trump.  But how the press has painted Senile Joe as the victim.


And when this happens, go watch the debate again, moderator Chris Wallace encourages it.


The debate failed to cover serious issues.  War was not on the table.  Though Joe did try to self-servingly bring up his dead son again.  Trump cut him off, thankfully.  Beau serving -- briefly -- in the Iraq War does not mitigate your role in the Iraq War.  You stifled debate, you attacked people who were against the Iraq War, you voted for it and then, long after you knew better, you continued to support the war.  In April 2008, you noted that Nouri al-Maliki was a thug (without using the term -- only Hillary Clinton had the guts to call him that with that term in April of 2008) and you noted that his government had no support among the Iraqi people and that US troops were being used to keep him in place.  Those were solid observations.  However, two years later, you didn't care about any of that.  The Iraqi people voted Nouri out in the 2010 elections.  He refused to step down -- as US Gen Ray Odierno warned could happen.  Instead of backing the winner and ensuring that Iraqis had trust in this new voting system (that was imposed on them, not created by them) and that democracy could flourish in Iraq, Joe overturned that vote with The Erbil Agreement.  


What Beau did or didn't do -- this is where I could float some truths about Beau but won't -- is not pertinent.  What is pertinent is what Joe Biden did.


And if he wants to talk about support for the troops, I'm sorry Senator Tammy Duckworth, where's your critique?  Candidate Wheezy?  She's slammed Donald Trump for not serving in Vietnam.  Joe didn't.  Despite playing baseball and football in high school and college, he was too 'sickly' from asthma to serve in Vietnam.  And then he got those deferments -- I mean children.  Saint Joe did not father children to stay out of the war, no one ever did, right? 


I didn't support the war on Vietnam and don't feel anyone should have been sent there.  But Joe did -- after the fact, after it was over and his cowardly ass couldn't be sent there.  


Throughout the debate, Chris Wallace offered opinions that he passed off as facts -- he did that with Joe and with Donald.  It was disgusting.  "I guess I'm debating you and not him," Donald said at one point and he was right.  The moderator is not running for president, the moderator's opinions are not important or necessary.  


The questions?  We could have had more if Chris wasn't so enthralled at the sound of his own voice.  Where was gender in the debate?  Old White Man Chris asked Old White Men Joe and Donald a ton of questions.  He didn't ask about assault -- because both Joe and Donald have been accused of it? -- and he didn't ask about domestic violence.  Poverty and healthcare are issues that overwhelming effect women -- especially single mothers -- but there was nothing that indicated that in the debate.  Healthcare was reduced to pre-existing conditions.  


Candidates may choose to run issue-less campaigns and stand for nothing.  That's no excuse for the media to go along with it.  The moderator needed real questions and offered none.


In Iraq, the war continues.  Margaret Griffis (ANTIWAR.COM):

During September at least 104 people were killed across Iraq, and 114 more were wounded. A mass grave also gave up 21 victims. The toll from August was 102 dead and 134 wounded.



Rebecca's "nora barrows-friedman" just went up.  In addition, the following sites updated:











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