Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Republicans don’t trust women.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Let there be snark.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

Books are my comfort food!

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / AHEM!!!!! The National Security Agency, As Well As Other US Intelligence Agencies, Are Prohibited From Conducting Electronic and Signals Collection Inside the US. But Not In Russia

AHEM!!!!! The National Security Agency, As Well As Other US Intelligence Agencies, Are Prohibited From Conducting Electronic and Signals Collection Inside the US. But Not In Russia

by | 187 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

There are two interesting takeaways here.

The first is that anyone in the US planning further acts of low intensity warfare and political violence in the US on Parler are now going to be much, much, much, much easier for US intelligence to track. Because Parler’s now being hosted in Russia. MORONS!!!

The second is that this supports the theory that Parler was always a Russian data collection, surveillance, misinformation, and disinformation op to begin with. As this detailed Twitter thread, which I’ll excerpt, seems to suggest:

Much more at the Twitter thread. It doesn’t mean that The guy with the Russian wife, whose mother in law  who is a long time Russian government functionary, and who can’t provide a straight answer about his funding is getting his funding from Russia, but that is a question that needs to be answered.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

187Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    The National Security Agency, As Well As Other US Intelligence Agencies, Are Prohibited From Conducting Electronic and Signals Collection Inside the US. But Not In Russia

    And isn’t that the real crime here?

  2. 2.

    David Anderson

    Curiouser and Curiouser — and in 39 hours and 21 minutes (who’s counting) the US government will have a national command authority that is extremely interested in figuring out exactly what Russia is doing….

  3. 3.

    Ken

    The first is that anyone in the US planning further acts of low intensity warfare and political violence in the US on Parler are now going to be much, much, much, much easier for US intelligence to track.

    Shhh! It was going to be a surprise.

    Eh, probably still will be.  As you said, MORONS.

  4. 4.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    Didn’t Parler want a scan of your ID in order to join?

    If so, the Russian ownership would explain much about that.

  7. 7.

    Brachiator

    The first is that anyone in the US planning further acts of low intensity warfare and political violence in the US on Parler are now going to be much, much, much, much easier for US intelligence to track. Because Parler’s now being hosted in Russia. MORONS!!!

    Wait. What?  US conservatives are running to Mother Russia for aid, but Joe Biden is supposedly the communist that Americans are supposed to fear?

    And I love it that this makes it easier for US intelligence to track these dopes.

    Why are they so desperate and stupid? What is their game?

  8. 8.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud:

    Ready for incoming right wing howls and a 10,000 word Greenwald diatribe about how this is the fault of liberals.

  9. 9.

    Ken

    @Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): Yes, to join they had to provide a photo ID such as driver’s license, and also SSN.

    I didn’t see anything about mother’s maiden name, favorite pet, or street where you grew up, but that’s probably at the Platinum membership level. Or maybe they phish for that  with a “Which of Trump’s children are you most like!” popup quiz.

    And I assume they test to see if you reused another account’s password for parler. They probably provide lots of opportunities to enter a bank account or credit card number.

  10. 10.

    MisterForkbeard

    Noting the same thing all over the internet: Parler is not back up and running. There is now a website at Parler’s URL that shows essentially a fundraising message, but the service is down and can’t be used. Probably won’t be for the foreseeable future.

    They put up a webpage using a Russian hosting service that centers on white supremacists, and use some Russian security services as well.

    So we’re not at the “Russia is stealing your data” stage or the “CIA can now snoop on Parler” yet, but we’ll get there if they ever flip the switch and turn the wordpress blog back on.

  11. 11.

    PsiFighter37

    Russians need another way to funnel their money into US politics now that the NRA is broke and toxic.

  14. 14.

    Alison Rose

    Just got an email from my local indie bookshop about an online event with Edward Snowden:

    If you were convinced it was the right thing to do, how far would you go to inform your country, your fellow citizens? Would you follow your conscience? And what would you be willing to give up?

    —
    Join us for the ONLY virtual visit in the US for the new Young Readers Edition of Edward Snowden’s book, Permanent Record! Snowden will be discussing his book with Cory Doctorow followed by a short Q&A.

    Questions for Cory Doctorow and Edward Snowden can be submitted through Eventbrite during ticket purchase and they will select some to answer during the event if time allows. We will not be taking live questions.

    If my excitement could be measured, it would come up short against a Planck length. I do wonder how they managed to land the only online event in the country, though. They’re not Powell’s or anything.

  15. 15.

    Gvg

    i have long wondered if the Mercer’s are a Russian front.They always seem to do what Russia wants.

  16. 16.

    Ken

    @Wapiti: Russia is white. So Russia is their friend. Or so Russia says.

    Also Russia has a strong pro-gun, anti-government movement similar to the NRA. Or so Marina Butina says.

  17. 17.

    AnonForThis

    I’m an exec at an sfbay startup.

    We hire senior software engineers at $165-$190 salaried, so that’s $206 to $235 a head fully loaded, running pretty lean.  Even using all the aws tech you can, it’s still hard to build high volume applications like Parler with an eng team much under 20.  Particularly when you count up (1) an ios app; (2) an android app; (3) website; (4) backend app; (5) devops; (6) qa;  (7) product; and (8) at least one if not two engineering managers.  Even outside of CA, engineers are not that heavily discounted.  My guess is that is at least a $3m burn.  Without even discussing poorly-architected high volume aws hosting, which can get very expensive very fast.  I’ve worked for quasi-similar startups spending $125k/mo on aws.

    Someone put in a lot of cash in an app that doesn’t seem to have an obvious route to earning money.  Twitter’s business is advertising, and your cpg ads do not want to appear on Parler.

  18. 18.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Gvg: Probably not, but they do have extensive interests in creating a maladjusted and impotent US Federal Government that’s friendly to money launderers and tax evaders.

    That makes them birds of a feather with the Russian government.

  19. 19.

    tom

    So Fox News floats a rumor that rightwing bete noir George Soros funds a notorious rightwing social media site. Do these guys even think these things through?

  21. 21.

    MisterForkbeard

    @AnonForThis: Very true. Though the core approach these seems to be to hire your execs and some of your core/initial team in the bay area where the expertise is, and then hire more people in Austin where it’s a bit cheaper, then start hiring in lower-cost centers in bulk.

    Once you get your core team down then incremental hiring and burnrate gets smaller.

    ETA: That said, I don’t think Parler actually had very many employees. It was kind of a shitbox through and through: services duct-taped to services to get a marginally functional piece of software.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: @David Anderson: The investment from the Mercers, while larger than that of Bongino and the Bitcoin guy, aren’t enough to actually fund Parler and its operations. Basically these investments are being used as a screen to hide whoever is really paying the bills.

  24. 24.

    rikyrah

    Naw muthaphucka , you gotta go.
    And, everyone you hired.
    The entire lot of you- GONE???

    The chief usher, hired from the Trump Hotel by @FLOTUS , is eager to stay on permanently.He has hired other staff from Trump properties but doesn't want to be seen as a loyalist and has told ppl he never met the Trumps until he came to WH. https://t.co/7hg70GnvDn— Annie Karni (@anniekarni) January 19, 2021

  25. 25.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MisterForkbeard:

  29. 29.

    Adam L Silverman

    @rikyrah: After the events of the past two weeks, plus the need to bring back members of Biden’s Secret Service details from when he was VP, which effectively demotes those agents, because of security concerns of Trump and his appointees politicizing the agency and creating an insider threat, every member of the staff that takes care of the White House, the chef and his staff, etc that was hired by the Trumps will be gone.

  31. 31.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JanieM: I looked through that earlier right after they released it. That report was clearly overseen by Stephen Miller and is not worth the paper it is printed on.

  32. 32.

    Another Scott

    One rub with the NSA hoovering up all that juicy information, though, is that they really don’t like saying in court how they got it.

    “Sources and Methods”

    Are they going to get Snack Team Six at the cost of giving up the crown jewels? No.

    Of course, this is not a new problem and they have ways to deal with those issues.

    I hope sensible people are thinking about how to do law enforcement while respecting the Constitution as the world becomes ever more interconnected with data flowing everywhere…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  33. 33.

    catclub

    @Baud: The National Security Agency, As Well As Other US Intelligence Agencies, Are Prohibited From Conducting Electronic and Signals Collection Inside the US. But Not In Russia

     

    isn’t there an important specification, ‘like US person’.

    I thought NSA can collect info on the Russian Embassy. Also, this is why we have allies who ARE collecting info within the US, with whom trades are made. What about FISA Court authorizations?

  35. 35.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Adam L Silverman: They’re fucked. They won’t be able to get the hosting hardware from Epik for any of that.

    Oracle OCI or MS Azure could do it, if AWS won’t. But they’re not working with these asshats either.

    And once they get that together, they need to actually rip out all the AWS calls and code and replace them with something else. It’s going to be a long loooooong time before they’re really operational.

    ETA: Actually, I do believe that they’d be perfectly happy with a terrible old bare metal server farm using slow and obsolete technology. It fits their MO, and they can blame the slowness on liberal oppression. They might be fine with large outages and significant amounts of bugs for the exact same reason.

  37. 37.

    Yutsano

    @Another Scott: ‏ IANAL, but from what I understand that’s what en camera sessions are for. The judge, the lawyers, and the witness in question, get to see the methods but it’s not in open court.

  41. 41.

    Gin & Tonic

    @MisterForkbeard:

    but we’ll get there if they ever flip the switch and turn the wordpress blog back on.

    Lot of work between here and there, if they built it for AWS. Plenty of non-portable stuff.

    ETA: Which you touch on in a later comment, of course.

  42. 42.

    MisterForkbeard

    @rikyrah: If I worked for Trump and then I had the chance to work for Biden I’d damn well jump at it, too.

    I think most of these guys are going to be gone, though. Like Adam says, security reasons. But I’m continually amazed at how BAD the Trump’s were. They really, REALLY needed everything to be from their own business. No real concept of looking for the best people, they just took whoever had worked for them in the past.

  43. 43.

    Splitting Image

    Off topic, it looks like the Trump baby blimp has been acquired by the Museum of London and will be part of an exhibit on the history of London protests. The blimp has its own wiki page too. I didn’t know that, but it makes me happy.

    At least it’s something Donald can hang on to while he spends the rest of his life avoiding prosecution. He wanted to be memorialized and he will be.

  44. 44.

    Anoniminous

    Parler was strictly amateur hour

    “Parler lacked the most basic security measures that would have prevented the automated scraping of the site’s data. It even ordered its posts by number in the site’s URLs, so that anyone could have easily, programmatically downloaded the site’s millions of posts.”

    Kenneth White:  “This is like a Computer Science 101 bad homework assignment, the kind of stuff that you would do when you’re first learning how web servers work. I wouldn’t even call it a rookie mistake because, as a professional, you would never write something like this.”

    @donk_enby was able to scrap the whole site, not just the messages.  Meaning metadata, geo-location data, etc.

  46. 46.

    Bill Arnold

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Saw that list yesterday and my instant reaction, like many others, was “what the F were they doing with all those resources”?
    Maybe I don’t have a good idea of the scale involved; never had to deal with that many users.

  48. 48.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Adam L Silverman: @Gin & Tonic:

    Yeah. In addition to the AWS calls and everything else, they got dropped from several other services. Okta, twilio, more.

    Parler is basically a ton of individual services tweaked and duct-taped together. It’s a terrible design. And they have to replace all of those services.

    The “stick one thing to another thing” nature of Parler means that they need to do this a lot. It might also mean that it’s easier – with so little tech developed in house, they might just need to effectively set up a few new integration layers between services. So Parler still talks to a different middleware service that translates the calls into whatever Russian equivalent they’re using is. That’s faster than rewriting and reconnecting their entire tech stack.

    Still a bitch and a half of a job, though. And it’ll probably take them weeks if not several months.

  50. 50.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Bill Arnold: What you have to remember is that the thing is a pile of shit. Badly coded, really inefficient, and still transmitting TONS of data, much of which has to be processed in various forms or another. (There was a recent article about how Parler was using relational databases for storing messages, which is just.. no. So bad.)

    Given the shit design and their relative popularity, I can absolutely see needing a huge amount of hardware resources.

  53. 53.

    Alison Rose

    @Raven: Hmm, not sure. That was before he started working for them (and obviously well after the jug band), but he was living in either SF or Berkeley around then probably, so he might have gone down for it.

  57. 57.

    Jeffro

    @Cheryl Rofer:

     

    @David Anderson:

    Doesn’t basically everything that’s wrong with the U.S. center on a) rich people not wanting to pay taxes and/or b) rich people not wanting to pay working folks for their labor?

    I mean, Mercer owes the IRS something like $6B…

  58. 58.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MisterForkbeard:

    Parler is basically a ton of individual services tweaked and duct-taped together. It’s a terrible design. And they have to replace all of those services.

    The “stick one thing to another thing” nature of Parler means that they need to do this a lot.

    So basically Parler is the Balloon Juice of microblogging social media?//

  66. 66.

    Patricia Kayden

    After a normal Presidency the President's hair has greyed and they're looking 12 years older having had the worries and the weight of the world on their shoulders. Not with Trump. With Trump, he's the same, but everyone else in the country looks haggard and exhausted.— Bad John Brown (@BadJohnBrown) January 19, 2021

  67. 67.

    randy khan

    I guess the Russians thought it was easier to just cut out the middle men and host Parler at home rather than on the other side of the world.

  70. 70.

    Bill Arnold

    @Anoniminous:

    @donk_enby was able to scrap the whole site, not just the messages. Meaning metadata, geo-location data, etc.

    Her twitter feed is worth a look; lots of real information and pointers to git repos etc.
    https://twitter.com/donk_enby/with_replies
    (I like her twitter profile pic; the huge right pupil (and large left pupil) resembles the reverse of the David Bowie look with huge left pupil, among other little curiousities. One of the git sites has an unrelated male face.)
    My recollection from reading was that the metadata was not stripped from uploaded videos(/pictures), and that the original uploads could be obtained from amazon s3.
    See also https://git.tcp.direct/d0nk/parler-tricks – there and in twitter she says that the iOS Parler app was reverse-engineered, including with the NSA open sourced ghidra tooling. (I’m still not sure about the NSA’s motives for open-sourcing such useful tooling.)

  72. 72.

    Redshift

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Ms. and I reeeeallly wanted to drive to the Beltway exit near Andrews and moon Trump as he flies out. But we’d probably have to get up earlier than we want to, and we have more pleasant things to do on Inauguration Day than be out getting frozen buttocks.

  73. 73.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JanieM: Yep. And given what the turnitin analysis found – that large chunks are directly lifted with no citations and the sources for that material are either hard right organizations or wikipedia – this fits Miller’s MO.

  74. 74.

    Steeplejack

    Update thread from Dave Troy (January 10):

    THREAD: Now that @Amazon @awscloud has announced they will no longer host @parler_app, many have speculated that they will just “find another host.”

    Here is why that’s not so simple and what it will likely mean for the app’s future. First, let’s look at where things are …

    — Dave Troy (@davetroy) January 10, 2021

  75. 75.

    dmsilev

    Must-Not-Watch TV:

    Trump taped a farewell address at the White House on Monday in which he touted his administration’s successes over the past four years, according to a senior administration official.

    The recording is likely to be released Tuesday, according to the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

    Still, I guess we should be grateful that his grief has finally progressed to Acceptance.

  78. 78.

    Ken

    @dmsilev: Trump taped a farewell address at the White House on Monday in which he touted his administration’s successes over the past four years

    At least it’ll be brief.

    Unless… You don’t suppose he’s going to list four years of golf scores?

  85. 85.

    Percysowner

    Poor Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy, his attempt to overthrow the government has had the worst consequence ever. Bed, Bath and Beyond will no longer sell his products.WATCH: Mike Lindell whines about ‘fake people’ after Bed, Bath and Beyond drops MyPillow “Fake people” are also pressuring Macy’s, Walmart and Amazon to drop his seditious behind as well. Hit them in the pocketbook, That’s what they care about and nobody can pardon them out of public opinion. Then throw them in jail, it they can.

  89. 89.

    Yutsano

    @rikyrah: Pro: they do stay sharp a long time.

    Cons: you can’t really sharpen them (at least the one I had couldn’t be) and they can shatter.

    EDIT: here’s a ‏‍good article that might help you decide.

  92. 92.

    Mike in NC

    I believe within six months we are going to finally know how Putin installed Trump as his goddamn puppet in 2016. Republicans take note.

  93. 93.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    this both cracked me up and horrified me

    Since Jan. 6, every day has dumped more bad news on the president, including his historic second impeachment. But one person close to the president said it can be hard to predict what will bother him most and that even with all that was going on, he was particularly upset that Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Tom Hanks and other stars agreed to perform as part of Biden’s inaugural celebrations.

    cracks me up because the outgoing POTUS is still just the third-rate racist game-show host with celebrity envy, and horrifies me because such a pathetic creature damn near broke this country (from an article about Melanie which is a lot of words to let us know she still really doesn’t care)

  94. 94.

    Ken

    @Vhh: You mean that nice Maria Butina lied to all those GOP congressmen and NRA lobbyists? What a world, what a world….

  96. 96.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JanieM: amazing video, I’ve never heard of “murmurations”, I see other videos recommended, is that a phenomenon unique to starlings?

    ETA: google tells me murmuration is the term for a flock of starlings

  98. 98.

    AnonForThis

    @MisterForkbeard: I suspect the bigger challenge will be replacing the things aws provided, even if their dependences on aws-specific infra were somewhat light.

    Administering pg or cassandra/scylla at scale is far from trivial.  Building the backup tools, dealing with actual networking gear and understanding rack/tor/etc topologies is a ton of real work.  Hell, just replacing s3 with (well, there isn’t an obvious own-hardware choice) is serious work.  And then you get serious, and think about eg an active-active pg cluster.  They’ll need a group of people with actual understanding of db/network admin…

    And kafka is a wonderful piece of tech, but admining that at scale is no easy feat.

    Plus, for many companies in the valley, this is probably an indelible resume stain.

  99. 99.

    JanieM

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t know much about birds, maybe we should ask Albatrossity. But it reminds me of something I read in Jane Smiley’s book about thoroughbreds, A Year at the Races, where she talks about how herd animals run in packs and can shift direction almost instantly, somehow without colliding. They clearly have some kind of body sense that other animals don’t have. (Read the book a long time ago, that’s only the most superficial take on what she wrote.)

  103. 103.

    Ken

    @Another Scott: One of the “More Tweets” below that one:

    Anthony Scaramucci says he was invited to President Trump’s farewell ceremony Wednesday, which he takes as a sign the White House is desperate to bulk up the guest list. “Trust me, that had to be a mass email if one of them got sent to me,” he tells @InsideEdition.

  104. 104.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Jeffro:

    Doesn’t basically everything that’s wrong with the U.S. center on a) rich people not wanting to pay taxes and/or b) rich people not wanting to pay working folks for their labor?

    Most of it centers on a layer of racism so thick that the social contract has become a curse word to half the population.  Granted, Reagan hooked the haters up with the asshole rich by pointing out that giving the rich everything they want is a great way to say “fuck you” to the common good.  On the rare occasion Republicans are forced to choose between hate or money, though, they choose hate.

  105. 105.

    sdhays

    @Kristine: Buckwheat pillows changed my life. They’re all natural, very popular in Asia, and give just the right balance between softness and support. They’re kind of like what foam pillows claim to be since you can mold them to exactly the shape that you need. And because of the shape of the husks, they provide better ventilation as well. They’re on the heavier side, and they are more expensive, but damn are they worth it.

  106. 106.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Patricia Kayden: he’s the same, but everyone else in the country looks haggard and exhausted

    Well maybe not the Trump trash who’ve been living their racist, fascistic dreams for the past 4 years.

  108. 108.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Percysowner: Fake people?  So Sergei50745209, Natasha764926720 and TremendousBiglyRealAmerican8675309broskovich flooded Bed, Bath and Beyond’s Twitter account with complaints?

    Yeah – didn’t think so.

  109. 109.

    Emma

    @rikyrah: yes, but they chip pretty easily, and I’m 99.9% sure you can’t sharpen them like normal knives. I honestly don’t know if they CAN be sharpened.

  111. 111.

    MisterForkbeard

    @rikyrah: My knife aficionado friends say to stay away from them. Cant sharon, some fo them aren’t that durable, etc.

    I have a few and they’ve been fine for light use for a couple years.

  113. 113.

    Ken

    @Emma: Google says they can be sharpened, but you need the right equipment, and the equipment sounds expensive. But maybe it uses synthetic diamonds.

  116. 116.

    catclub

    OT: This Old Tony is using Argon for welding. At the end of the video he says that usually you go onto the floor to find good air in a fire, but because Argon is heavy, you should not do that.   I thought that good air in a fire is low because it is not superheated, and superheated argon will also rise.  Any thermodynamics experts about?

     

    Other possibility: the argon will cool enough after leaving the flame area that it goes back to sinking to the ground.

  117. 117.

    catclub

    @Ken: I have little diamond sharpening ‘sticks’  that work to sharpen the ceramic knife by hand. That part is not expensive.  But getting a factory good edge would take a lot of patience.

  118. 118.

    Emma

    @Yutsano: I love that one of the chefs quoted says that ceramic knives are great for bartenders. Um, am I missing something, what the heck are bartenders supposed to be slicing and dicing? Edit: oh, I see, they answered my question in the next sentence, lol. Precision work with fruit peels, okey doke.

    <a href=”#comment-8047667″>@Ken</a>:

    &nbsp; huh, not bad. Although I’m guessing most people would just throw out chipped ceramic knives.

  119. 119.

    StringOnAStick

    I found out today that a friend who did an army tour in the 1980’s was driven to therapy by the events of January 6, and that there are VA therapy groups that have formed for exactly that reason.  She and her fellow group members are having a very hard time processing the change in some military members and attitudes  since they were in uniform.  I thought everyone knew about FOX playing all the time in military installations and she had no idea about the whole Qcrap thing either.

    Maybe the attempted coup will lead to some important changes on bases now that veterans are both shocked and surprised.

  122. 122.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … Reuters:

    RICHMOND, Va. (Reuters) – Police stopped a car of Black men and confiscated two of their guns at Virginia’s annual “Lobby Day” on Monday while white gun rights activists defied local laws unimpeded in the state capital of Richmond.

    In a day with racial tensions on display, Black protesters denounced what they called a double standard in a state where people are free to openly carry firearms.

    Virginians converge on the capitol each Lobby Day to petition state legislators on issues of public interest, but the day has been dominated by gun rights activists in recent years. It coincides with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which honors the slain civil rights hero.

    Reuters witnessed the police stop of the African Americans, which stood in contrast to dozens of white pro-gun activists on foot and in hundreds of trucks that drove through Richmond’s streets flying “Guns Save Lives” flags without police interceding.

    They were stopped one block from Richmond’s memorial to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, less than an hour after a white, anti-government “boogaloo” leader boasted on a megaphone that his group was violating gun and ammunition laws.

    One of the Black men to have handguns confiscated unleashed an expletive-laden complaint, calling it a double-standard and an example of why many African Americans resent the police.

    “Everybody in the city is carrying today, and you’re only pulling us over,” yelled a Black woman who was looking on with a group of enraged bystanders. “Shoutout to Martin Luther King Day!”

    Richmond police did not immediately respond to a Reuters query about the incident and about the protesters’ allegation of discrimination. On Twitter, police said they had issued a summons to one man at that scene for possessing a concealed firearm without a permit, and had confiscated the gun.

    […]

    But only dozens of protesters assembled on Monday, compared to last year’s crowd of 22,000, as estimated by police.

    Similarly, nationwide pro-Trump demonstrations on Sunday largely fizzled after several states deployed the National Guard.

    About an hour before the Black men were pulled over, boogaloo leader Mike Dunn hoisted a megaphone alongside about 10 members of his “Last Sons of Liberty” group, all white men.

    Dunn told the assembled reporters and police that his group was openly carrying semiautomatic rifles “in pure defiance” of local laws, and “rocking mags (ammunition magazines) with double the legal limit.”

    Dunn confirmed to Reuters that his group faced no police blowback.

    […]

    Hmmm…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  123. 123.

    Patricia Kayden

    I love how Trump is going out like a punk. He's scared to do interviews. He's scared to hold a news conference. He's hella embarrassed losing to @JoeBiden. He talked all that crap only to suffer a beat down. He's a sore loser. I hope it eats at him FOREVER. He's a despicable man.— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) January 19, 2021

  125. 125.

    Another Scott

    @catclub: Interesting problem.

    But if Old Tony is using enough argon to have it accumulating on the floor, then he really should have much better ventilation. Humans need at least 19.5% oxygen in air to be safe.

    If argon and air and (acetylene if used) and CO2 from the welding are all heated, then (neglecting turbulence) then the argon is still going to sink because it’s heavier.

    tl;dr – Open the door and windows!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  127. 127.

    Layer8Problem

    @Rokka: Jeez, Gaelic Park.  Right around the corner and down the street from me.  The things you find on an almost top 10,000 blog . . .

  133. 133.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Anya: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angella_Reid

    Angella Reid was the White House chief usher from October 2011, in the Obama Administration, until her dismissal in May 2017 under the Trump Administration. She had been the first woman to hold the position.[1]

    As White House chief usher, Reid was responsible for managing White House operations in collaboration with several organizations, including the White House Historical Association, the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the White House Curator, and the National Park Service.[2]

    Reid was recognized at the 2012 Grio Awards.[3]

    She was dismissed as chief usher in May 2017. The abrupt firing was unusual for the position, which does not typically change with administrations.[1][4]

  135. 135.

    burnspbesq

    @Another Scott:

    They’ve given any LE agency that wants to quietly pick these assholes off one at a time probable cause to get arrest and search warrants. This isn’t over.

  136. 136.

    Anya

    @rikyrah: Those assholes fired her or demoted her. Melania is as bad as he loathsome husband. I am so glad they’re out of our capital and I hope they never set foot in New York. Ever.

  137. 137.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Anya: In the future, everybody committing sedition gets to be famous for 15min …. during their perp-walk.  She’s the one who stole Pelosi’s lappie and tried to sell it to the Russkies.

    I think we should trade her in a prisoner-swap.

  139. 139.

    Chetan Murthy

    @rikyrah: FWIW, I don’t have fancy/fancy knives.  But I did get a moderately cheap sharpening stone set (3 stones) and some baby oil, and have kept the knives I -do- have pretty sharp ever since.

  140. 140.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @rikyrah:

    The time has finally come for President Trump to find a permanent space at Mar-a-Lago for his $50,000 room-size golf simulator, not to mention the 60-inch television he proudly displayed above the dining room table,

    I wanna know who paid for all that, including the TV.

  141. 141.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Anya: It’d be so great if the WH staff turned their backs like in a Klingon discommendation ceremony, as The Pustule and His Canker Consort exited.

  142. 142.

    Bill Arnold

    @catclub:
    15-20 years ago I splurged on a couple of Global knives. Very hard stainless, wicked sharp. (Be careful or lose a finger.)
    A 4 1/2 inch utility knife and a 7 in hollow ground chef knife.
    (And a long diamond hone.)
    They keep their edge for a long time, basically until someone messes up and hits the tile (now granite) counter top rather than a cutting board. Very low wear from the infrequent honings; they’d last hundreds of years at least in normal careful use. The other knives in the drawer are a pain; I keep them sharp but they don’t stay sharp very long.
    Which is to say that a knife made with a high grade of stainless steel can be very good as well.

  143. 143.

    debbie

    @Another Scott:

    The Boogaloo (they’ve dropped the Boys here) were at the State House yesterday and insisted they had come in peace and only carried their AR-15s to protect their First Amendment rights. ?

  145. 145.

    debbie

    @Anya:

    They’re talking about her because of what she’s done. She stole Pelosi’s laptop and planned to sell it to someone in Russia.

  146. 146.

    Anya

    @Chetan Murthy: That story is a bit odd. How does one just decide to do that on a whim?  Are we supposed to believe that some rando from Pennsylvania has connections to the Russian Intels?

  147. 147.

    cain

    @dmsilev:

    Let’s wait to hear what’s on the videotape. I keep thinking it’s going to be a video him dressed up as Doctor Doom and threatening all of us with MAGA forever.

  148. 148.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I am ambivalent about Brian Williams but he has been dropping some shade on the trumps tonight, comparing the Obamas’ graciousness to The Beast and its mate to their crass vulgarity toward the Bidens. Called out Melanie as a birther, too

  150. 150.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Anya:

    Are we supposed to believe that some rando from Pennsylvania has connections to the Russian Intels?

    The stupid is strong in this one.  Everything about her story stinks of “damn, how do you avoid falling off the curb into the street every morning when you leave home?”  Just really, really stupid.

  151. 151.

    cain

    @Mike in NC:

    I look forward for a lot of investigations and ex-Trump people being dragged in and then following the money and hopefully get a lot of GOP into the dragnet.

  152. 152.

    Punchy

    My FB feed is exploding with peeps that I had NO idea were so RW, and they’re in full-freakout mode about Biden’s impending Admin.  They cannot accept it.  One even told us that she’s aware that Chinese military troops are amassing in…..wait for it….Canada and are about to invade, and only Trump is aware and has the means to stop it.

    It’s actually sad how screwed up some people have become.  There are apparently no moderate Trump supporters…

  154. 154.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Punchy: it’s been pretty damn frightening to me to see so much untreated mental illness spread throughout the country

  157. 157.

    cain

    @MisterForkbeard:

    I’m always chasing after the Japanese knives. I got a good set of knives at the moment.. but another good one is cutco. I never heard of him but they are an old school company and they are guaranteed for life. They will replace any knife. Expensive, but the serrated knives I have – have been amazing.

  158. 158.

    Punchy

    @Chetan Murthy: who knew that Canadian Nice was just a cover for Communist aggression?  And if they come in thru the Boundary Waters, will they steal all the Muskie and Walleye as they advance, dontcha know?  It’s fair to middlin’, da fishin’ up there, ya see.

  160. 160.

    dmsilev

    @Punchy: So all those wealthy Chinese ex-pats buying up Vancouver real estate were just the initial staging party for the invasion?

    I guess if we had to have neo-Nazis, resurrecting Yellow Peril paranoia from the same era makes a certain thematic sense.

  161. 161.

    cain

    @Punchy:

    They are ready to believe any news – some scrap of hope that they can cheat the country out of an election.

    They are deeply deeply in the shit and we need to figure out how to unprogram all these people. Destroy fox and we can fix not just the U.S. but the UK as well…

  162. 162.

    cain

    @Yutsano:

    oh yeah.. interestingly enough, I don’t have one of those. I might have to get one.. but I’m already full up on knives. I need to give up some of these cheap 15 dollar chef knives that I have. Too many of them.

  163. 163.

    danielx

    @Frankensteinbeck: 

    On the rare occasion Republicans are forced to choose between hate or money, though, they choose hate.

    Qualified agreement. My own general observation is that the characteristic varies by income group and personality (surprise!). Lower end, it’s about racism and power. Above that, it varies. i can’t put it in an equation, but some people will take money above all else. If hatred helps to make them richer, they will use that. I read it phrased as “if you have to choose between money and friends, always take the money. you can use it to buy new friends.”. But people who will make decisions like that are almost if not more dangerous than those who are out and out racists and public about it.

    Thought trailing off in the general direction of the Republican party being more likely to attract sociopathic personalities and then thinking duh, that’s why various assorted scribes are writing about the crackup of the Republican party…

  164. 164.

    Ruckus

    @catclub:

    Argon is not flammable which is why it’s used in tig welding as a shielding agent around the couple of thousand degree welding arc.

  166. 166.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: he was particularly upset that Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Tom Hanks and other stars agreed to perform as part of Biden’s inaugural celebrations.

    Someone tell Dump that he’ll be remembered as a traitorous, Soviet shitpile, mobster conman LOOOOONNNNGGGGG after all of these stars are LOOOOONNNGGG forgotten.

  167. 167.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Punchy: One even told us that she’s aware that Chinese military troops are amassing in…..wait for it….Canada and are about to invade

    THAT is the most batshit crazy thing I’ve EVER heard!  And I’ve been paying attention to this shitshow for the past four years!

  169. 169.

    Nobody in particular

    @Jeffro:

    The first Love it or Leave it Letter. On Christmas, no less. Some things never change, eh?

    Adam may like this. Ben Franklin. AOC reminds me of the Good Doctor. Ben had two slaves he manumitted long before the Revolution. He named them King and George. Guy was a card, a full deck.

    Scroll down at the link:

    https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-41-02-0231

    The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable, the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see in some Resolutions of Town-Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take as they call it, the People’s Money out of their Pockets tho’ only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money justly due from the People is their Creditors’ Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell’d to pay by some Law. All Property indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man for the Conservation of the Individual & the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who by their Laws have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire & live among Savages.— He can have no right to the Benefits of Society who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.

  170. 170.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    @Alison Rose: Cory Doctro would be revolted by all things Trump. he actually wrote an entire novel that was anti-fah aligned.  “little brother”  and I have seen nothing that would tell me otherwise.

  171. 171.

    Punchy

    @mrmoshpotato: And it’s delivered with a “cant believe you morons just ignore this” FB screed attitude, blaming (or course) Big Media for all its cover-upness and fakery.  These peeps I used to know have gone batshit.

  172. 172.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    @Anya: Can’t say with specifics, but Russians have been courting right wing evangelicals an 2nd amendment nuts for at least 20 years.

  173. 173.

    Darkrose

    @rikyrah: There’s so much to loathe about these people, but the fact that trophy wife #3 can’t even perform the simple courtesy of hosting Dr. Jill at the White House, like EVERY OTHER FIRST LADY, infuriates me.

  174. 174.

    Sloane Ranger

    @tom: I think the argument is that Parler was set up as kind of honey trap operation. A place where ‘patriots’ can be corralled, monitored, identified and, eventually, rounded up by the Deep State.

  175. 175.

    Warren Lorente

    @Adam L Silverman: All along I thought this was a disappearing act, but it was really just a Parler trick!

    These folks are fine examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and thank heavens for that.

  177. 177.

    Nobody in particular

    @sab: For over 20 years I have been trying to tell Americans who’ve been fed these false narratives that:

    1. Both Jefferson and Franklin were enamored with indigenous peoples (in their writing) and our system owes as much to the Iroquois Confederacy as it does to Montesquieu AND the Greeks, Plato and Athens and Sparta.
    2. Jefferson loved the free press – until he spent 4 years in the oval. Then newspapers ended up with banks as the two things he feared/reviled most. I’ll spare you a list of exemplars from before and after. It’s really quite illuminating. They were fallible humans wrestling with vanity – like we all do.
    3. TJ would become violent at torturous sophistry and semantic drift of constructions like the “Death Tax”

      At the first session of our legislature after the Declaration of Independance, we passed a law abolishing entails. And this was followed by one abolishing the privilege of Primogeniture, and dividing the lands of intestates equally among all their children, or other representatives. These laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the root of Pseudoaristocracy. And had another which I prepared been adopted by the legislature, our work would have been compleat. It was a Bill for the more general diffusion of learning. This proposed to divide every county into wards of 5. or 6. miles square, like your townships; to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools who might receive at the public expense a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects to be compleated at an University, where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and compleatly prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts.

    4. Republicanism, the ideology, is more closely related to socialism than anything: A basic tenet is relative equality of property – in “land.” Not chattel, the root term for cattle. They refuse to believe it. Their meta-narrative and myth America is pure bullshit and false, if you attempt to suggest this contentious lot were ever in full agreement on anything, and the truth, facts that don’t fit, just do not compute. Socialism predates the birth of Karl Marx. Google Robert Owen and learn about all the acting and former Presidents who came to hear him speak. Marx was still in diapers.

    The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) – as well as the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams.[43] His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement.[20][19]

    ::: Steps down off John Cole’s and Adam’s soapbox :::

     

    Winded

  178. 178.

    Nobody in particular

    @sab: For over 20 years I have been trying to tell American’s who’ve been fed these false narratives that:

    1. Both Jefferson and Franklin were enamored with indigenous peoples (in writing) and our system owes as much to the Iroquois Confederacy as it does to Montesquieu AND the Greeks, Plato and Athens and Sparta. Jefferson loved the free press – until he spent 4 years in the oval. Then newspapers ended up with banks as the two things he feared/reviled most. I’ll spare you a list of exemplars from before and after. It’s really quite illuminating. They were fallible humans wrestling with vanity like we all do.

    2. TJ would become violent at torturous sophistry and semantic drift of constructions like the “Death Tax”            At the first session of our legislature after the Declaration of Independance, we passed a law abolishing entails. And this was followed by one abolishing the privilege of Primogeniture, and dividing the lands of intestates equally among all their children, or other representatives. These laws, drawn by myself, laid the axe to the root of Pseudoaristocracy. And had another which I prepared been adopted by the legislature, our work would have been compleat. It was a Bill for the more general diffusion of learning. This proposed to divide every county into wards of 5. or 6. miles square, like your townships; to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools who might receive at the public expense a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects to be compleated at an University, where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and compleatly prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts.

    3. Republicanism, the ideology, is more closely related to socialism than anything: A basic tenet is relative equality of property – in “land.” Not chattel, the root term for cattle. They refuse to believe it. Their meta-narrative and myth America is pure bullshit and false and the truth just does not compute. Socialism predates the birth of Karl Marx. Google Robert Owen. And learn about the acting and former Presidents who came to hear him speak. Marx was still in diapers.

    The audience for his ideas included three former U.S. presidents – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison) – as well as the outgoing US President James Monroe, and the President-elect, John Quincy Adams.[43] His meetings were perhaps the first discussions of socialism in the Americas; they were certainly a big step towards discussion of it in the United States. Owenism, among the first socialist ideologies active in the United States, can be seen as an instigator of the later socialist movement.[20][19]

    ::: Steps down off John Cole’s and Adam’s soapbox :::

     

    Winded

  179. 179.

    Nobody in particular

    @sab:

    You’d be surprised – like you were. The Jefferson-Adams correspondence is a treasure trove. I had a long post that got eaten but let’s just say that some Historians are “broad gauge gossips.” And if you have clowns like Newt Gingrich teaching it at the university level, it’s probably mostly bullshit.

  180. 180.

    greenergood

    @Rokka:  I had to look it up – I went to an Allmann Bros gig at Gaelic Park, but it ended up it was in the summer of ’72. I was 15, went with my friends and their older sister who could drive (though getting home was probably a bit hairy …) and had never knowingly listened to a Grateful Dead album. Towards the end of the night, the crowd went absolutely insane, and it ended up that Garcia and Weir came on stage and joined the Bros for the last long set. I told this to my Dead-Head friends here in Scotland many years later and they were outraged that I couldn’t remember much about that night. So imagine my delight to find out that the intertubes know EVERYTHING, and I have found the playlist for the gig, complete with music! https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-allman-brothers-band/1972/gaelic-park-the-bronx-ny-1bdd8db0.html

  181. 181.

    bluefoot

    @Anya: I think it would be pretty hilarious if Trump and Melania tried to set foot in NYC.  Can you imagine the reception they would get?  If he feels like a loser now….

  183. 183.

    Mike G

    @tom:

    So Fox News floats a rumor that rightwing bete noir George Soros funds a notorious rightwing social media site. Do these guys even think these things through?

    Fox’s interest is in suppressing any other media competitors for the right-wing audience, so of course they are going to try to discredit Parler. Smearing them as a Soros front is their typical lizard-brain stuff; the fact that it makes no logical sense has never stopped them before.

  184. 184.

    The Pale Scot

    @rikyrah:

    The chief usher, hired from the Trump Hotel by @FLOTUS , is eager to stay on permanently

    That will be the funniest thing I see today. Until right before bed when I peruse Paul Bronk’s website

Comments are closed.