The mayor of San Juan wants to void the $300M contract awarded to a tiny Montana company to help rebuild Puerto Rico.
Here's why: pic.twitter.com/ZSUfSDp6yC
— Splinter (@splinter_news) October 25, 2017
Disaster capitalism at its “finest”!
Here's Trump-donor-financed company that won a $300m Puerto Rico contract apparently threatening the mayor of San Juan https://t.co/LPAZAVy36G
— Scream Thielman (@samthielman) October 25, 2017
We’ve got 44 linemen rebuilding power lines in your city & 40 more men just arrived. Do you want us to send them back or keep working?
— Whitefish Energy (@WhitefishEnergy) October 25, 2017
I’m beginning to think Kay has the right idea — we need to bust these bastids on (their all-too-) common theft and graft. Even people who “don’t keep up with politics” understand Trump’s crony Zinke handing a three-million-dollar contract to the neighbor that gave his teenage kid a job last summer…
Ryan Zinke may regret having tried to screw with Lisa Murkowski over healthcare. https://t.co/34by4ajYvd
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) October 25, 2017
Which makes it cute that Zinke thought he had power over her, rather than the other way around.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) October 25, 2017
The Washington Post reports:
Puerto Rico’s financial oversight board is moving to install an emergency manager at the island’s state-owned utility amid criticism of a $300 million contract it awarded to a small Montana energy firm for work on the territory’s crippled electrical grid.
The board said Wednesday that it intends to appoint Noel Zamot, a retired Air Force colonel and member of the oversight panel, to oversee daily operations of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.
The decision comes as House and Senate Democrats called for an investigation into the utility’s agreement with Whitefish Energy. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) pledged to examine the grid-rebuilding efforts at an upcoming hearing of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which she chairs. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz on Tuesday told Yahoo News that the contract should be “voided right away.”…
Whitefish and the utility struck an agreement on Sept. 26, six days after Maria swept through, without a formal bidding process. About 80 percent of customers still have no electricity.
Under the contract, Whitefish is charging $330 an hour for a site supervisor and $227.88 an hour for a “journeyman lineman.” The cost for subcontractors, which make up the bulk of Whitefish’s workforce, is $462 per hour for a supervisor and $319.04 for a lineman.
“PREPA has made clear it is not equipped for the enormous task of quickly restoring the Island’s power,” Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-N.Y.) said in a statement, using the acronym for the utility. “The Authority’s dubious decision to contract with a small, inexperienced and obscure company further underscored the need for intervention.”House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the contract with Whitefish “highly suspect” and urged inspectors general to investigate…
And good for them, but Murkowski’s a Republican (and not a beginner at this ‘dish best served cold’ stuff).
Whitefish is charging $300+ per hour for lineman to do the work that utilities from states offered through mutual aid.
— Aaron C. Davis (@byaaroncdavis) October 24, 2017
Giveaway here is that literally all they've been hired to do is hire other companies to do the work. Classic grift. https://t.co/phjMvdzwN4
— Zedward Tweeterhands (@ZeddRebel) October 24, 2017
Here’s the Trump connection. pic.twitter.com/bOg4tD7NVc
— ptothed (@ptothed1) October 25, 2017
Puerto Rico is part of the United States. pic.twitter.com/PyJZfoVBsP
— Niels Lesniewski (@nielslesniewski) October 25, 2017
Major Major Major Major
Three hundred million.
Gin & Tonic
OT, mostly, but fuck it. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT, posted the first slide of a presentation by Twitter to RT to spend big dollars on an ad campaign around the US elections. Wonder if Jack Dorsey mentioned that to Congress.
japa21
@Major Major Major Major: Whats $297 million between friends.
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: now why the hell would I trust them about anything? Even if that slide is real it’s completely devoid of content.
Mike J
In the previous thread there was a quote from Gov Cuomo about sending 30,000 bottles of water to Puerto Rico. I’m sure it’s well intentioned, and it will be of help to the statistically insignificant number of people it will help, but I don’t think people understand the scale of this disaster. Puerto Rico needs, at a bare minimum, 260 shipments that size every single day, And then they need to get that 8,000,000 bottles of water per day out of the airport and out to the people.
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: Well, a dilemma, indeed. Who is more trustworthy, RT or Twitter? I mean, Jack told Congress that Twitter had found and deleted about 200 Russian bot accounts, so of course he’s trustworthy, right?
Um, 200?! *You* could find 200 in about 10 seconds.
MomSense
@Gin & Tonic:
Jack’s answer was insulting.
Gin & Tonic
@Gin & Tonic: So, huh, maybe RT was telling the truth?
cain
I will welcome the PR mass migration to red states as revenge and turn them all purple or blue. MIgrate to the gerrymandered district. Fuck these assholes in congress and the administration. I have never seen a time when govt has become so racist.
Gin & Tonic
@MomSense: And was intended to be. It was “I’m lying to your face and you can’t do a fucking thing about it.“
rikyrah
The Trump administration has spent $1.75 million on furniture for the executive office since his inauguration.https://t.co/aPP2rq1BZ8
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 26, 2017
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: I certainly trust an American company more than the propaganda outlet of a foreign enemy that has been fucking with our elections, but only by about 5%.
low-tech cyclist
Hey, at least they’re an energy firm. I wouldn’t have been surprised if some well-connected Montana dental floss tycoon had gotten the contract.
Starfish
@Mike J: New York has done more than that.
gene108
I don’t get this paragraph. Whitefish is charging the government $330/hr for a supervisor and is being billed $462/hr by subcontractors? They are losing money on this?
Just doesn’t make sense to me the way it is worded.
Also, I’d love a full blown investigation into this. I bet some money is flowing back to Trump somehow. That’s how all the world leaders he so admires work. Hand out a contract to a friend and the friend routes a portion of the profits back to you.
And honestly, if we had that level of corruption here, I’d be sort of relieved.
What irks me to death is companies buying politicians for a $50,000 donation. Company makes millions and they only had pay out $50,000. Our politicians are not just whores for corporate paymasters, they are cheap whores.
rikyrah
@Major Major Major Major:
to a company with TWO employees.
Mike in NC
Let’s all put on our shocked faces about how Trump and Zinke have figured out a way to personally profit from the misery of others. Too bad Mark Halperin isn’t on the case.
Eric U.
@gene108: the pass-through for subs is marked up to 462. That’s what they are billing the contract for those subs. Their own supervisors are being billed at 330. This is a fairly normal markup, although the amounts are ridiculous. I wonder what the people are being paid, I doubt it’s at a rate that would justify this. I imagine they have hired very few workers, so it’s almost all subs
Brachiator
This video may give some idea of the magnitude of the problem: Heartbreaking Video Shows Island-Wide Damage to Puerto Rico From Hurricane Maria
The Moar You Know
I’m a government contractor. Been my day gig for over 15 years. This award violates every rule in the book (literally) and then some.
-no past performance;
-no teaming with a larger contractor with actual experience with a job this size;
-no bid was released nor submitted;
I mean, I could go on and on. These people are staggeringly inept. The defense people at least know how to make this look plausible.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
The story also notes that the Trump administration has spent about US$250,000 more on furniture and drapery in its first eight months than the Obama administration did in eight years.
hitless
I think Republicans I know will be untroubled by this – in fact I think they’ll like that it’s a small-town company (dare I say, a rural white-owned company) that is making the money. Probably many of them will think PR is paying Whitefish, and so they’ll really dig the fact that finally minorities are getting ripped off instead of them ripping off “us”.
I would hope I’m wrong about that, but I doubt it…..
Eric U.
@Amir Khalid: probably went to a business tied to trump somehow. This administration is doing things that would make the Harding administration blush, and that’s just the stuff we know about
gene108
@Amir Khalid:
Gold plated
toiletsdrapes ain’t cheap…Amir Khalid
@The Moar You Know:
The Whitefish contract award is not ineptitude. It is straight-up corruption.
NCSteve
Whether they’re actually doing something for them money is kind of beside the point, though it would be a nice change from the way the no-bid, no company, grifters worked in Iraq under Bush. As the old saying goes, Huey Long built a hundred million dollars worth of good roads. The problem was they cost 150 million dollars.
The Moar You Know
@Eric U.: someone else who does the dance, I see. I have never seen any employee on a DoD contract billed at these kinds of rates. Agree about the markup, but as you say the amounts are ridiculous.
@Amir Khalid: It’s both. The amounts being charged and the way it was awarded are corrupt. The way in which it was done is staggeringly inept.
gene108
@hitless:
I think when Whitefish gets brought up people will conditioned to reply: “What about Solyndra? $500 million! Game, set and match Libtard, You Lose!”
rikyrah
Repeat after me…
They would sell their mother to Lucifer for those tax cuts.
……………………….
Putting aside principles, Graham says, ‘I’m trying to get taxes cut’
10/26/17 10:06 AM
By Steve Benen
In a rather dramatic speech on the Senate floor this week, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) declared, “There are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time.”
The Arizona Republican, in remarks that were intended as a rebuke to Donald Trump, added that officials’ principles and obligations “are far more important than politics…. Acting on conscience and principle is the manner in which we express our moral selves and as such, loyalty to conscience and principle should supersede loyalty to any man or party.”
As Vanity Fair noted, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) seemed sympathetic to his colleague’s concerns, but only to a point.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So the irony of the Trump administration is all the racism, treason, gay bashing, Muslim bashing, hippie punching, women bashing, near civil war, rape and attempted nuclear apocalypse,.. it’s all just a distraction from old fashion cronyism and graft.
Gin & Tonic
@low-tech cyclist: +100 for the FZ reference.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
All that tacky gold leaf isn’t cheap!
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
Even more appallingly, the American Public Power Association (the electrical utilities’ club) has a mutual-aid group, made up of utility companies who are ready to send workers to help sort out things after a disaster. If you’ve had a bad storm in your area, the mutual aid group has probably sent workers to help get the lights back on, and your power company has probably sent their crews out to help others. It’s more economical, and the crews are used to working with each other, which makes it safer.
But for some reason, even though there were utility companies ready to send crews, Whitefish got this contract. There were other means available; this wasn’t the only option, but Whitefish got this contract. I guess Secretary Zinke never heard of Secretary Fall and that Wyoming geographic feature that made him notorious. Or maybe he did, but decided IOIYAR.
Duane
multi-million $ government contract handed out to a 2 dude firm….hey its straight from the movie WAR DOGS…
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
Yep. It’s corrupt, and the corruption is inept. They aren’t even bothering to hide it.
MattF
Trump rates his administration’s response to Maria at 10 out of 10. So, he must be making money from it and screwing his enemies.
Also, there’s no obvious Russian connection… yet.
different-church-lady
84 guys? Yeah, that ought to be plenty…
Elizabelle
@gene108: Would you and hitless knock off the defeatism?
Jesus fuck, who cares? Wingtards gonna go to Solyndra, but anyone gettable is going to see this for the grift it is, and that no one cares that Puerto Rico gets a reputable contractor for massive rebuilding — why not Joe’s Garage?
Why don’t we all put words in the mouths of dead Scalia and dead Ailes too?
Who gives a flying fuck what the wingnuts say? It’s what people vomit up, all the time here. Fuck them. They are horrible fucking people. They don’t deserve to live in our heads.
Concentrate on reaching and interacting with reasonable, rational people. Wingnuts — a lost cause. Fuck them.
Life in Trump’s America has been bad, no question, but a lot their schemes have gotten foiled. (Of course, it’s all the stuff going on subterranean that we don’t know about …)
catclub
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio):
The reason is that Puerto Rico is bankrupt, so the states are not at all confident they will be paid back for the workers they send.
Also, it is mostly a state-to-state compact and Puerto Rico isn’t a state. Strike two.
Incompetent Puerto Rico government is strike three.
Elizabelle
@gene108: I did not mean to personalize that so much, apologies there, but your comment is exactly why I get sick of Balloon Juice. I don’t want to whine and be scared of horrible people, all goddamn day long. Enough.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@MattF:
Someone has was mentioning that since Trump lifted the sanctions Russian steel imports are up, and hey, reconstruction takes a lot of steel. Clearly the Russians are the more professional grifter next our domestic variety.
kindness
What is especially galling is how Republicans tried for the entire duration of the Obama administration to imply Obama was corrupt and inept. Obama wasn’t. He was the cleanest administration we’ve had in many, many decades. And now this. And Republicans (and the compliant media) refuse to even look at it. It’s sickening.
kindness
@low-tech cyclist: Points for the Zappa reference.
hitless
@Elizabelle: I didn’t mean for it to sound defeatist. I’m just still routinely surprised by the things that a large number of people in the USA believe.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
Trump has shown, in business and in public office, that he sucks both at making deals and at sticking to them. And I seriously doubt that anyone in his physical shape is at all flexible, let alone extremely so.
randy khan
@Amir Khalid:
Well, they had to get rid of *everything* because T couldn’t stand the idea of any residue of Obama in the White House. (I’m only half joking here. Okay, maybe only 1/8 joking.)
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle:
Jeez, this thread is starting to be overrun with the FZ references.
Elizabelle
@Gin & Tonic: What’s FZ?
rikyrah
I enjoyed the entire article. So much I didn’t clip.
Bloomberg’s Megan McArdle Can’t Tell Me Shit About White Supremacy
Michael Harriot
Yesterday 8:35am
………………………………………….
Are there varying degrees of racism?
Different people will have different answers. Some will argue that there is a big difference between a lynching and wearing blackface. Others dismiss the idea of a sliding scale of bigotry and believe that being “a little racist” is like being “kinda pregnant.”
It is a complex debate full of nuances and caveats. As someone who has studied the intersection of race theory and economic theory for years, I cannot give a definitive answer. There is only one thing about which I am 100 percent sure:
White people do not get to decide.
On Monday I published a piece titled, “The NFL Protests Are a Perfect Study of How White Supremacy Works.” You don’t even have to click on the link and read it; I can give you the CliffsNotes version:
1. There are a lot of people who are outraged and feel it is disrespectful for black players to kneel during the national anthem.
2. Those people think the NFL or the team owners should enact rules or a form of punishment for kneeling during the anthem.
3. The number of black players who kneel during the national anthem is very small (less than 2 percent of the league’s black players kneel during the anthem).
4. The fact that fans, owners and the president of the United States are threatening to shut down these players’ protests is a microcosm of how white supremacy works to oppress people of color.
In response to the article, writer Megan McArdle wrote a piece for Bloomberg titled: “Be Careful Who You Call a White Supremacist.” In her piece, McArdle warns … ummm … me, I guess, that using the term “white supremacist” is hyperbolic and damaging to the hope of productive conversation. McArdle writes that “lexical activists” like myself (Who knew? I have an entirely different job title now! I am getting new business cards as we speak) run the risk of simultaneously neutering the power of the words and causing people to become apathetic.
McArdle somehow manages to channel the inner workings of my pitiful wittle peabrain to whitesplain how I—or people like me—think that “the idea is apparently that if we put the racial inequalities perpetuated by the criminal-justice system on the same moral plane as lynch mobs and segregated lunch counters, people will have to attack the former with the same vigor we would use against any attempt to bring back Jim Crow.”
………………………
The blurb for McArdle’s article is, “If you’ve cried wolf too many times, no one will listen when you see the real thing.”
The problem with McArdle and all of the white people throughout the history of white people is that they have never been able to see the “real thing.” They have never been able to recognize racism in real time.
They are good at seeing everything in hindsight, but their infinitely wide blind spot for white supremacy is how we got the trans-Atlantic slave trade, more than 4,000 public black lynchings between 1877 and 1950, and the deadliest war in the history of America.
…………………..
Let us be clear: I and my fellow L.A.s (that’s what we call it at the meetings of BLACC—the Brotherhood of Lexical Activists and Caucasian Complainers) do not ratchet up our language with the hope or expectation that doing so will cause people of no color to fight racism with urgency. To wit, McArdle missed a very important point in her whitesplained defense of white supremacy:
White people didn’t do a damn thing about the lynch mobs, lunch counters or Jim Crow. We did.
msdc
@Elizabelle:
A-fucking-men.
randy khan
@kindness:
Apparently not, based on the new, new investigations going on right now in Congress. (Imagine a sarcasm tag, if it’s not obvious.)
Elizabelle
@hitless: They believe in ghosts and angels too.
We aren’t discussing that shit all day. Buck up, pals. Don’t make the worst among us your reference points.
Look for the helpers, and stay strong.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Gin & Tonic:
“Not true”, mouthed Sam Alito when Obama excoriated SCOTUS for opening up US elections to malign influence via Citizens United.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid: The Grahamese translator, at your service:
Extremely flexible means “this man has no principles. None. Not a one.”
But — tax cuts for the wealthy. Woo hoo.
Eric U.
I have heard of a political philosophy that says all politicians are crooks, so one should vote to elect the stupidest crook, because they are most likely to be caught. Accomplishment achieved!
Elizabelle
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Ooh. That should be a gif.
This stuff did not happen in a vacuum. And if the Supreme Court lives in fantasy land — and Kennedy apparently thought there was a whole layer of disclosure that does not exist. It gave him cover for his horrible decision on Citizens United.
Gin & Tonic
@Elizabelle: Frank Zappa. One of his albums was called “Joe’s Garage” and I thought you were referencing that, since low-tech cyclist referenced Montana dental floss.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore:
Ah, well actually…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Elizabelle:
Wingnuts get their way by screaming and pouting, then we need to shout more. Waiting for the moderates to make up their minds won’t work, they’ve been condition to have an opinion is the act of a brut and thug.
One will note; for all the pearl clutching over the incivility of ANFITA they’ve have defiantly made it a lot harder to be a neo-Nazi.
That’s very much my thought, that we’re over thinking these clowns, that their schemes aren’t big policies to change society like we work for, but petty garbage like this Puerto Rico contractor scheme.
It’s certainly telling Trump flounders with Health care, Foreign Affairs and pretty much everything which is policy, but he is as smooth as silk when it’s a tax cut for him and his friends.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@catclub: There are already some crews at work under mutual aid.
Even if mutual aid wasn’t applicable, or couldn’t cover it all, I’d expect to see bids.
SiubhanDuinne
@randy khan:
I believe the fraction you want is 3/5.
lgerard
@Eric U.:
All the pictures in their twitter feed seem to be employees of Florida public utilities, particularly Kissimmee
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: For all the consternation about tax cuts, that has nothing to do with Trump. Any Republican president would do the same thing (and probably more effectively).
different-church-lady
$300 millon / 84 workers = about $3,571,428.57 per worker… yeah, seems legit.
Baud
AP, via Reddit
MattF
@Roger Moore: And… the thing about marble is that keeping marble looking good is labor-intensive and expensive. Marble is soft and interacts chemically with common household substances. This means it starts looking stained and dull soon after installation. Kind of like… the various less-than shining stars of a certain administration. Surprised?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Is this the Ossoff election?
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Yes.
rikyrah
Did I miss this being Frontpaged?
Scott Brown: more complaints surface over behaviour of US ambassador to New Zealand
Ambassador said to have been ‘culturally insensitive’ at party in Samoa and is alleged by one woman to have stared at her breasts
It was a balmy 32 degrees when the US ambassador to New Zealand, Scott Brown, touched down in Apia, the capital of the South Pacific island nation of Samoa.
Brown had flown in with his wife, Gail Huff, in July for a party to celebrate 50 years of the peace corps in the country. It was his inaugural visit to Samoa – of which he is also the official US representative – and one he was looking forward to.
The party was intended as the climax of the ambassador’s trip, a night of celebration. People were in high spirits. They were offered beer, wine, champagne and local hors d’oeuvres, including slices of taro topped with palusami, spring rolls and chicken skewers.
But something went wrong that night. As one attendee describes it, something was “off” and the party is now at the centre of a US state department investigation over the ambassador’s conduct toward two women.
Brown admitted on Wednesday that he was being investigated by officials who had flown to Wellington to interview him.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Uh huh
Uh huh
The Moar You Know
@Baud: I was involved (as an expert witness) in a legal case that involved wiping of servers after service of suit. Interestingly, this is not a crime. It is a sanctionable offense, meaning that the judge can (not MUST) impose sanctions on the offender. Which historically has been all over the map. In many cases, nothing. In some cases, a ruling that said “anything the plaintiff alleges you must treat as true”.
It all depends on the judge overseeing the case, and that is not a good place to be.
patrick II
Keep them for a month at 3/4 pay, 1/4 pay to the Puerto Rican they are training to take their job. After a month, make it a Puerto Rican company worked by Puerto Rico. Keep the money on island.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know: interesting. Would destroying more tangible evidence be viewed the same way?
Matt McIrvin
Nobody who complains about Puerto Rico being a bunch of whiners should get to fear-monger about how one North Korean EMP bomb will destroy our civilization by taking out the electrical grid.
Kay
@Baud:
I’m more worried about election integrity in the age of Trump than I have ever been before. It’s like a perfect storm/nightmare.
People have to be proactive. They have to check their own registration well prior to voting so there’s time to contest or remedy suppression efforts. Be your own regulatory body- check, because election day is too late. They have to think of it as something that is at risk.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: Bqhatevwr could the trouble be?
Baud
@The Moar You Know: Agreed.
@Kay: Agreed.
ChrisS
@The Moar You Know:
I just lost a ~$35k bid for some work at an old AF plant. Prior to submitting the bid, our firm was vetted and on a list of approved vendors and we held an overarching contract with the AF. Our proposal was 56 pages long and detailed the people who would be working on the project, their resumes and qualifications, all of our subcontractor’s resumes and qualifications, as well as our insurance certs for professional and personal liability. Each year, all of the employees in our company (~750) have to complete a anti-kickback and bribery training seminar and swear to god that we’re telling the truth and will never ever bribe a government employee. The hoops we have to jump through because the GOP is very serious about eliminating fraud waste and abuse in government contracting …
Very serious.
Boatboy_srq
@The Moar You Know: Not inept; brazen. Absolutely all about Soak The Taxpayers. I can’t deciden whether they’re merely dropping the pretense of responsible bidding because they think they can, or they’ve bought into their own propaganda that Dummocrats Do This All The Time So It Must Be Easy©.
lgerard
@patrick II:
Perhaps Puerto Rico should pull a trump
After the job is completed tell them it sucks and refuse to pay them
Jeffro
How intriguing: Mueller Will Deliver by Thanksgiving (jesus, I hope he wasn’t holding out for tax cuts first, too! LOL)
I’m not making any more bets after thinking for some time that we’d see indictments in September. But like everyone else, I can’t wait to indictments to start dropping and the rats to start abandoning ship…
Mike in NC
There was no logical reason why a couple of battalions of Navy Seabees couldn’t have landed on Puerto Rico the day after the hurricane passed through. But no private sector profits to be made there.
rikyrah
Lindsey Graham Trades Principle for Influence
by Martin Longman
October 26, 2017
………………………….
I can only imagine how Bannon feels about seeing neoconservative stalwart Lindsey Graham positioning himself to have the ear of the president:
…………………………….
Graham recently injected himself into the health care debate, which is an area where he has previously shown little interest and less expertise. And it’s true that these recent calls pertained to health care and not foreign policy. But Graham is establishing trust and a working relationship which he will attempt to use in foreign policy going forward.
SatanicPanic
@rikyrah: Whoa that’s good.
QFT
rikyrah
A Coordinated Attack on the FBI Has Begun
by Nancy LeTourneau October 26, 2017
……………………………..
In the tweet above, the president basically insinuated that the FBI had colluded with the Russians and the Democrats to produce the dossier, and so I’ve suggested that it is very likely that they will be the next target. Take a look at how that was affirmed when Tucker Carlson interviewed Rep. Nunes (who has reversed his recusal from the Russia investigation) last night.
Their conversation focused completely on the role of the FBI with the Steele dossier, and is loaded with distortions and lies. Carlson even went so far as to ask, “So is there anything more terrifying than the prospect of an armed rogue agency?” Think about that. An interviewer refers to the FBI as “an armed rogue agency” and a member of Congress simply nods in agreement. Apparently the long knives have come out.
At the root of all of this is the assertion made in Trump’s tweet that the FBI paid for the Steele dossier (they considered doing so, but didn’t) and whether they actually investigated its assertions (gasp!) One thing that has been missing from most of the discussion about all of this is that when the dossier was shared with Sen. John McCain last December, he immediately turned in over to the FBI. As Martin has written, they already had it because it had been given to them by Christopher Steele. But the point is that it wasn’t just Democrats and the FBI who were concerned about what he was finding.
These attacks on the FBI, along with John Solomon’s lies and distortions about the fact that they investigated a racketeering scheme involving a Russian nuclear official, are designed to undermine the agency that was initially involved in investigating the Trump/Russia connection as well as Robert Mueller, who has taken it over as the independent prosecutor.
What we are witnessing is not only a president who is actively assisting an adversary (Russia) in their attack against us, but a willingness to tear down any person or institution that is attempting to stop him. He is being aided in that process by members of congress like Devin Nunes, as well as the entire right wing media (with occasional assists from the Washington Post and the New York Times).
As with much of Trump’s behavior, I only expect this situation to get worse. Other than that, I won’t make any predictions about what happens next. But based on my read of things, our democracy is in peril unless/until this president is stopped.
Timurid
@rikyrah:
The Moar You Know
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t know. Not a lawyer, just a computer guy.
I can tell you this: the legal system is so unable to deal with anything technological it should scare the shit out of everyone. Everything, of course, is done on computers now. And judges, attorneys, everyone, don’t want to deal with it and don’t want to learn how. This has horrendous implications for criminal cases (they take the word of law enforcement as Holy Writ) and even worse implications for civil cases. Most people think of civil cases as “my neighbor fell on my sidewalk and is suing me”, but the voting rights cases, for example, are all civil.
ETA: no experience quite like a $700/hr lawyer turning to you and asking “how are we going to try this case?” Damn, bro, thought that was your job.
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: yes, Ossof election
MattF
@rikyrah: RW attacks on the FBI (!) are, at the least, indications that we’re getting closer to crunch-time. But the actual timing is uncertain– And given the certainty of lies, plus a hurricane of bullshit and stonewalling in response from the Trumpistas, I’m willing to wait for the investigators to get it right.
gene108
@Elizabelle:
Huh?
I’m just thinking out loud.
I fully expect Solyndra to make a come back as a wingnut talking point. I could be wrong. Maybe right-wing media, in an attempt to distract people from the inept corruption of the Whitefish deal may try something else.
But given their current use of “Democrats/DNC/Hillary paid for the Steele dossier, therefore ignore it”, I am thinking right-wing media would go for a similar sort of distraction regarding Whitefish. And Solyndra popped to mind as something the right-wing base is already primed to think of as a corrupt Obama give away.
As pressure mounts to figure out how a two man company got such a big contract, right-wing media will have to kick into gear to either directly defend Trump’s actions, which may not be possible, when facts are overwhelmingly against them or find a way to deflect attention onto something “equivalent” Democrats did.
I’m going with deflect.
catclub
@patrick II:
Problem is there isn’t any money on the island.
I bet that contract is being paid by the Federal government -either directly or indirectly.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud: granted, by my point was Trump was actually engaged on the tax cuts, unlike with Health Care.
Cacti
$300 million for only 44 guys on the ground?
That seems a bit steep.
LurkerNoLonger
@Elizabelle:
I’ve been meaning to say this for a while, not to anyone specific but just in general, thanks for saying it better than I could.
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I’m sure he cares more because he benefits, but I hadn’t noticed that much engagement. It’s not like his administration has led with their own plan.
SatanicPanic
Now that we’ve found out that Mark Halperin is a creeper we can start asking questions about how much Clinton hate in the media was driven by misogyny. I suggest every time someone says something negative about Kamala Harris or Lis Warren going forward we ask start inquiring with their employers if they’ve harassed anyone.
randy khan
@SiubhanDuinne:
Hard to argue with that fraction. (I was trying to think of a way of saying something along those lines that would be an obvious allusion and not offensive, and failed. Your comment was perfect.)
MattF
@SatanicPanic: Hillary-hatred has always been based on intense misogyny. And I expect that Warren and Harris are well aware of that. If you’re a guy who actually likes women, the depth of RW hatred towards women is just mind-boggling.
Aleta
The whitefish twitter reads a lot like Ivanka’s. No substance in the reports, but lots of exclamation marks and cool photos. Which means to me that the 300 mil is paying handsome PR salaries to create a glossy twitter-magazine about nothing much getting done. And the details in the progress reports (screen capped) might be normal in the biz, I don’t know, but to me they look like someone is filling space with words for effect.
They’ve had the contract around a month by now–where are the concrete details of their accomplishments?
Also, isn’t the army core of engineers doing a lot of the work putting up power poles?
LurkerNoLonger
@Baud:
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching Forensic Files, other than how to properly dispose of a body, it’s that nothing is ever “wiped clean” when it comes to computers/hard drives or servers. The info is always there you just have to dig a little deeper.
Lapassionara
@Baud: ho-lee sh*#! That is some bald-faced spoliation.
Elizabelle
@SatanicPanic: It could be a marker, no?
And insightful re Bill Clinton. They rag on him so badly, because he seems more a philanderer than a sexual harrasser. The relationship with Monica was totally consensual. Stupid and ill advised, but not forced by Bill.
Sexual appeal vs. show of power and taking advantage of weakness. Remember when they tried to make Monica into some young innocent? Not quite. Naive, maybe, but cynical from her previous life. That relationship was not forced upon her. Actually, she wanted a fuller one.
Whereas, Bill O’Reilly and Ailes, etc were marauding around with women who did not welcome their advances.
And it’s said there were women who found Harvey Weinstein appealing (I know, I know), but he went after those who did not return his advances. I think Candace Bushnell wrote an article to that effect. She had a friend who was thrilled at the attention from HW. Which did not amount to much, maybe because she was not a challenge.
I am glad a line is being drawn on sexual harrassment. Get this one out into the light.
Elizabelle
@LurkerNoLonger: I hope that will be the case with that server.
And we get a paper trail on who wiped it, and why.
It seems they were not able to recover much from Adam Lanza’s drive — did he destroy it? And not much yet re the Las Vegas shooter, Paddington.
Boatboy_srq
@SiubhanDuinne: Internetz won for the month of October [passes baton].
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
Lindsay Graham had principles to trade? That’s news to me.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@rikyrah:
No wonder she’s nicknamed “McBurble”. Lynch mobs and segregated lunch counters were legal back in the day. I suppose it’s arguable if these Driving While Black shootings are being driven by a systematic program of stealth apartheid or simply that crappy police forces are filled with crappy, racists white cops who can’t cut it in a real police force, but in practice it’s the same thing.
Aleta
Reporters must be closing in on another damaging story– JFK documents just put on line.
Ajabu
Preach It!!
And we’ll do it again. But, I’m getting tired. How many times do we have to fight the same damn fight? It’s getting old now…
SatanicPanic
@Elizabelle: A couple weeks ago Woody Allen of all people was complaining that this might turn into a witch hunt. I say, WITCH HUNT AWAY! Seriously, it’s about time. From now on when I hear someone complaining about a powerful woman I’m going to ask “do you have a problem with women in power? How do you treat the women around you?” This should be a thing.
Cacti
@MattF:
I wish it was just or even mostly a right wing problem. The 2016 election was quite an eye opener for me as to how many ostensibly liberal men reflexively went “that bitch can’t tell me what to do” with respect to the Democratic candidate.
Kay
Maybe we’ll get better pundits to replace the gropers. Does anyone have anything on Ed Rendell? He’s gotta be retired.
Kay
@rikyrah:
McCardle admitted she was wrong about school vouchers. I’m not linking because in the last paragraph she says she wasn’t wrong but she ALMOST got there :)
Babysteps.
Kay
We could have all female pundits. BY LAW :)
schrodingers_cat
BTW on TPM, John Judis has interviewed George Borjas a known immigration restrictionist as a neutral party. What gives?
ETA: In the interview Borjas reiterates T’s position as does Judis going on and on about unrestricted mass immigration of the last 20 years.
SatanicPanic
@Kay: That would be a huge improvement!
SatanicPanic
@schrodingers_cat: Judis is a known idiot
Elizabelle
@Kay: I thought of Ed Rendell this morning too. Yuppers.
schrodingers_cat
@SatanicPanic: Why is Josh Marshall giving him a platform?
Miss Bianca
@MattF: Ahem. There’s a pretty astonishing amount of hatred – or at least, pointed disdain – towards women among so-called “progressives”, as well. Misogyny is not just a right-wing phenomenon, sadly. If it were, we might have a Predient Clinton in the White House right now.
@Cacti: Or, you know, what you said.
Aleta
-Wapo
The Moar You Know
@LurkerNoLonger: TV fails once again. This is simply not correct.
Just One More Canuck
@The Moar You Know: I do expert witness work on economic losses (commercial and personal injury) and get the same kind of questions from lawyers. It amazes me that some of these guys graduated from high school, let alone law school
Just One More Canuck
@LurkerNoLonger: other than how to properly dispose of a body,
SatanicPanic
@schrodingers_cat: I dunno. he’s always writing crap about listening to white working class people. like that Sean Illing numbskull over at Vox.
The Moar You Know
@Just One More Canuck: When it came to the law and how to handle the courtroom, this guy was worth every cent, but I flat-out had to write the forensics part of the case for him.
One of us was underpaid or overpaid, I know that much.
Glad I’m not alone in having this sort of experience.
The Moar You Know
@LurkerNoLonger: Because it’s one of my fields of expertise, I should qualify: it’s EASY to wipe a machine so that absolutely nothing can be recovered from it. Even a moron can do it. Morons usually do. What is pretty much impossible is to wipe a machine and make it appear as though nothing has been tampered with on it. Not completely impossible, but practically so.
catclub
@LurkerNoLonger: OTOH there are utilities like BCwipe that make recovery of information VERY hard – if not impossible.
It overwrites the sectors with random data – repeatedly. Typical remove file just removes the entry for that file in the file table – but all the data is in whatever sectors is was left on.
d58826
Sigh!!!! We have just become so cynical about things. It is perfectly obvious that if you are the governor of PR you have Whitefish power on speed dial just on the off chance that a cat 5 hurricane flattens your power grid. Whitefish is famous in story and song for their amazing achievements. It’s a little know fact but it was an ancestor of the current CEO by the name of Moses who parted the Red Sea one step ahead of the Egyptians. They also had the maintenance contract on the Colossus of Rhodes.
So I’m sure that Sec. of Interior Stinky is getting a bum rap here.
tybee
http://www.ajc.com/news/national-govt–politics/apnewsbreak-georgia-election-server-wiped-after-suit-filed/NKPIa0GfYq5Mq8Tmf5ettI/
“…It could still be possible to recover relevant information from the server.
The FBI is known to have made an exact data image of the server in March when it investigated the security hole. The email that disclosed the server wipe said the state attorney general’s office was “reaching out to the FBI to determine whether they still have the image.”…”
O. Felix Culpa
@SiubhanDuinne: Win.
No Drought No More
Putin should offer to re-build Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico should accept his offer. Who could blame our fellow Americans if they did? Not me.
schrodingers_cat
@SatanicPanic: Judis and Borjas are scaremongering about immigration calling it “massive immigration” of the last 20 years, in that piece. They do not sound that much different than Bannon and Miller. Borjas is completely on board with Cotton-Perdue.
different-church-lady
@tybee: Just ask the NSA. I was told repeatedly they have all data ever created.
Just One More Canuck
@The Moar You Know: When I work with a good lawyer, it’s like watching an artist paint, but sadly, that’s not always the case
In your case, you were definitely underpaid
BruceFromOhio
Exactly no one should be surprised at the graft and the threats, it is SOP for these two-bit ratfuck soulless criminals.
Please, Sen. Murkowski, take no prisoners.
patrick II
@catclub:
That is the point. Let some federal money go to Puerto Ricans.
SgrAstar
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: ahem. They do have big objectives to overhaul society, and they are definitely carrying them out. EPA? Gutted. Public lands? On the chopping block. Consumer financial protections? Ditto. Federal funding of basic research? Kiss it goodbye. American diplomacy? Thing of the past. Net neutrality? Centralization of corporate power? The trump admin is dismantling core government functions. Do. Not. Underestimate. Them.
The Moar You Know
@tybee: the State Attorney’s office knows damn well the FBI, like any other forensic investigator, deletes images once an investigation is complete. The FBI does not have said image and the State of Georgia knows it. They’re simply going to try to shift blame to the FBI, and the gullible press is already buying it.
The state wiped the server and then, one month later, wiped all the backup servers. That data is gone.
Elizabelle
@The Moar You Know: Do we know the FBI’s investigation is complete?
Maybe they didn’t delete, because they’re looking into election fraud on a large scale, and not just in this locality.
Could be part of a larger pattern. And there are still some good agents, who may know how to get around their own agency’s political appointees.
NR
$300 million seems really excessive, even for 84 linemen and associated mamagement/support. Looks fishy to me.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
Feature, not a bug, with Republicans.
These days I really think they’re just going to keep pushing this kind of blatant corruption until they start getting killed over it. Nothing less is going to stop them.
louc
Off topic, but I thought I’d share. This really riles me. . A freaking 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsey who just had gall bladder surgery. Well done, Trump SSers.
The thing is she lives in Laredo. I’ve visited Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. The border is (or was) extremely fluid there and people had families on both sides of the Rio Grande.
gvg
Semi off topic, but I just received and email from my Democratic Senator, that a disaster relief funding bill has passed. Florida senator sought aid for all 3 regions impacted, tried to get more for Florida’s agriculture he says but he also made a big point that it includes a lot for Puerto Rico, which I appreciate hearing. Needs the Presidents signature so I think it passed both houses.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
Problem is there are a lot of them. And they get to vote.
One or both need to be corrected. Post Haste.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
@catclub:
Last time I got rid of an old computer I wanted of course to wipe the drive. Found many ways to do this, all the way from “deleting files,” which really, really doesn’t as you said, to overwriting every bit of the drive multiple times, and everything inbetween. One takes minutes, the other much longer. But other than the time it takes, a complete wipe is easy. I think a lot of people do a one pass wipe and think that everything is gone. But recovery from a multiple pass wipe with decent software? Yeah, you aren’t getting that back.
ruemara
@TenguPhule: I agree, sadly. I don’t think the left and the middle can organize, unite and stand firm long enough for it happen differently.
@The Moar You Know: I blame the people who keep letting republicans control their local government.
schrodingers_cat
@louc: I posted about this last night. One commenter suggested that she be deported and her mother charged for the medical expenses. Thankfully, the said commenter was shut down by others.
The poor little girl, just wants her mother and she doesn’t understand what is happening. Thanks Republicans.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Baud: If the actual HDs are given to computer forensics, they should be able to reconstruct a lot of that data.
polyorchnid octopunch
@LurkerNoLonger: That’s not quite true. If they gave the actual physical HDs the hammer treatment, the data is gone.
LurkerNoLonger
@catclub: Well if they went to that much trouble there’s definitely something they want hid.
rikyrah
‘Can’t wait to stab your neck’: Racist Trump supporter terrorizes CNN’s Don Lemon with death threats
Roxanne Cooper ROXANNE COOPER
26 OCT 2017 AT 04:56 ET
Doon Lemon received multiple messages from a self-proclaimed white nationalist who threatened the CNN host with racist and disturbing tweets, according to a story filed by TMZ.
Lemon has contacted the NYPD about the disturbing tweets and, as TMZ also notes, an investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made.
One message the host received read, “Fuck you n***** can’t wait to stab your neck,” while another said, “U r a pile of rotting Dogshit,racist,communist, socialist, Liberal moron asshole,i will find u U will pay.ill see u real soon…”
The alleged tweeter is also a vehement Trump supporter.
rikyrah
in moderation, please help.
rikyrah
US attorney general says people should just ‘say no’ to opioids
Reuters REUTERS
26 OCT 2017 AT 13:29 ET
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Thursday that the first step to combating the country’s opioid crisis is to get people to just “say no” to drugs, and he warned that marijuana could be serving as a gateway to the problem.
“We’ve got to re-establish first the view that you should say no. People should say no to drug use. They have got to protect themselves first,” he said, during a question-and-answer session at the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/us-attorney-general-says-people-should-just-say-no-to-opioids/
chopper
@rikyrah:
wow, how utterly original. sure to work this time.
TEL
@rikyrah: That’s a hell of a good article.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: this guy is so full of shit, the whites of his eyes have turned brown. Wasn’t it Cole who was just citing the inconenient fact the other week that opioid use is actually *dropping* in states where cannabis has been legalized? Jesus, I can’t, I just can’t, anymore, with the level of toxic bullshit these monsters are spewing.
ETA: “You know what? Those losers coming out of surgery? Those wankers injured in those factory ‘accidents’ the liberals keep meeping about? They should just say no. That’s it. Just say NO!’
PVDMichael
Here’s a little Solyndra trivia most people don’t know: the program that funded Solyndra turned a profit for the federal government… even despite the Solyndra loss.
Sister Golden Bear
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Who says it’s either/or.
Why it’s both, suck that Libtards!
(And not really a distraction if you’re a member of any of aforementioned groups.)
Emma
@TenguPhule: Actually if we could get even 30% of all the “they’re all alike, why should I bother to vote” crowd off their arses, we would not need them.
Yeah. Daydreaming much?
SFAW
@Mike in NC:
Actually, I AM shocked …
… that it took so long. I expected shit like this to have happened (in other areas) months ago. (Yeah, I realize there’s been some “judicious” routing of contracts already, before anyone knew of any hurricane.)
Gin & Tonic
@Miss Bianca: I would have had a very difficult time (well, more difficult than it was) in my last ER visit if I hadn’t had fentanyl. Saying “no” wasn’t in my universe of options.
Kifaru1
@gene108: In Kenya back in the 1980s there was a Minister named Biwott who was known as Mr. 15%. Wonder what Trump’s % is….
J R in WV
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Segregated lunch counters weren’t legal, they were legally required. But Lynch Mobs were never legal, anywhere, under any circumstances. They were acceptable, and law enforcement didn’t ever (so far as I know) attempt to indict and try anyone, ever, for participating in a lynching.
There were postcards sold with despicable crowds gathered around pathetic corpses, mostly black men, sometimes jewish men. Hard to believe, but there were so many documented cases. But never legal, technically. Just customary.