Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

A consequence of cucumbers

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

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Late Night Schadenfreudelicious Open Thread: Stone Cold Guilty

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The Opening Statement of David Holmes, the Career Foreign Service Officer Assigned as the Political Officer at US Embassy Kyiv

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CNN’s Manu Raju obtained the opening statement of David Holmes in his deposition before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence this afternoon. He is the career foreign service officer assigned as the Political Officer at US Embassy Kyiv. He also read the statement on air. Holmes works for Ambassador Taylor, the Acting US Ambassador to Ukraine, who testified yesterday that Holmes and one of his other foreign service officers had overhead an unsecured phone call on 26 July between US Ambassador to the EU Sondland and the President at a restaurant in Ukraine. This call took place the day after the President’s call with President Zelensky of Ukraine where the President tried to extort him Zelensky into interfering in the 2020 election.

The call that Holmes overhead WAS NOT on speaker phone. Rather, the President was so loud that he could hear him through Ambassador Sondland’s ear piece. It is important to note here, that US government issued unclassified smartphones for official use have the bluetooth deactivated as it is considered insecure. If you’re issued a US government smartphone, you get a wired earpiece as part of the equipment package. We already know that the President was speaking on his own unsecured cell phone at the White House, but Raju’s reporting of Holmes’ opening statement seems to indicate that Sondland was also using his own personal cell phone to conduct official business. Or what he and the President considered official business, but is really a crime, as well as a High Crime and Misdemeanor. We now have an eyewitness (earwitness?) to these events, which won’t actually tamp down the President’s, his surrogates’, and his supporters’ complaints even though it should, because those complaints aren’t being made in good faith.

I’m uploading a copy of Holmes’ opening statement here.

Holmes_Opening Statement

Mr. Holmes deposition is not particularly good for either the President or Ambassador Sondland who, it appears, will likely need to revise his testimony again.

Mr. Holmes is now scheduled to testify in open session next week. Tomorrow, Mark Sandy a senior career official at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will be deposed by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence ahead of what will surely be scheduled public testimony next week. Mr. Sandy was directly involved in the criminal orders that Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney gave that forced OMB to hold up the congressionally appropriated and mandated aid to Ukraine.

There is a second foreign service officer assigned to Embassy Kyiv, Suriya Jayanti, who overhead the unsecured phone call between Ambassador Sondland and the President on 26 July 2019. I haven’t seen any reporting yet as to whether she will be deposed by HPSCI.

The President’s very bad week is about to become an even worse weekend. Information from tomorrow’s depositions, for instance Mr. Sandy’s opening statement, will be released and picked over just in time for the Sunday news shows. The worst thing that could happen to the President has happened: he has lost control of the news cycle. He is unable, at least for now, to program it. And it is going to freak him out, enrage him, and drive him to commit even more self-destructive acts.

We should all hope that these self-destructive acts are limited to the political and the personal. It is going to be a long, bumpy weekend. So strap in, stay frosty, and keep your heads on a swivel!

We are off the looking glass and through the map!

Open thread.

 

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The other obstruction and witness intimidation case tied to Russia and Ukraine

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Roger Stone was convicted on all counts of obstruction, false statements and witness intimidation.

Open Thread

UPDATE 1

At least this Friday has the courtesy of news-dumping during normal business hours.

The other obstruction and witness intimidation case tied to Russia and UkrainePost + Comments (75)

House Impeachment Hearings Day 2, Part 2: Ambassador Yovanovitch Testimony Continues

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Here’s a nice, clean new post for when the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence comes back in to session after the scheduled morning votes in the House to resume hearing the testimony of Ambassador Yovanovitch.

Here’s the live feed:

House Impeachment Hearings Day 2, Part 2: Ambassador Yovanovitch Testimony ContinuesPost + Comments (209)

House Impeachment Hearings Day 2: Ambassador Yovanovitch

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The second day of the House impeachment hearings is scheduled to get started at 9:00 AM EST. Expect more of what we observed on Wednesday. The Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence focused on fact finding through Ambassador Yovanovitch’s testimony while the Republicans attempt to use the hearing as an information laundry to promote the conspiracy theories and agitprop that they want people to believe exonerates the President.

Update at 9:10 AM EST

News broke late last night that one of the senior career civil servants at the Office of Management and Budget assigned to the White House with firsthand information of the illegal orders to hold up the congressionally mandated and appropriated aid for Ukraine will give a closed door deposition if subpoenaed. We now know the officials name, that he has been subpoenaed, and that he’ll likely sit for that deposition tomorrow.

The President is going to have a very, very, very, very bad weekend. As is Mick Mulvaney. And several others.

Here’s the live feed:

Open thread!

House Impeachment Hearings Day 2: Ambassador YovanovitchPost + Comments (191)

T-12: The House Impeachment Hearings Begin Tomorrow AM, Here’s What to Expect

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We are just under 24 hours out from the first of the publicly facing House impeachment hearings. The first hearing begins tomorrow at 10:00 AM EST and if we have a functional blog, I’ll have a live feed up for you all.

Tomorrow’s hearings are Ambassador William Taylor, the Acting US Ambassador to Ukraine, at 10:00 AM and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in the afternoon. The next day of public hearings will be Friday when Ambassador Yovanavitch, the former US Ambassador to Ukraine will be testifying.

Next week’s schedule was released earlier today.

The procedure for these hearings will be that the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Congressman Schiff, and the ranking member, Congressman Nunes, will each make an opening statement. Each session’s witness will then be given a chance to make an opening statement if they so desire. Questioning will begin with a forty-five minute round of questioning for the committee chair and ranking member, rather than the 5 minute rounds we’ve become accustomed to over the past several years. It has already announced that Congressman Schiff’s time will be taken by the majority (Committee) counsel, Dan Goldman, a former Federal prosecutor and former NBC/MSNBC legal analyst who was specifically hired by Congressman Schiff back in February to oversee this investigation. It is not clear yet whether Congressman Nunes will do the questioning himself, have his counsel conduct the questioning, or some combination thereof. It is important to remember that Congressman Schiff is, himself, a former Federal prosecutor and one of the few who has successfully prosecuted a case involving a US official engaged in spying for a hostile foreign power. Goldman was involved in very high profile prosecutions of Genovese crime organization members. Congressman Nunes has a degree in agriculture, states his occupation as farmer, but his family farm is now in Iowa, not in his congressional district in California. So expect more of the conspiracy theory laundering that Congressman Nunes has been doing throughout the closed door depositions when he could be bothered to actually show up to them.

After that, the questioning will devolve back to the alternating five minute blocks of questioning for each of the remaining Democratic and Republican members of the committee. I fully expect that the Republican members, like they do for every hearing, will have a coordinated a list of questions intended to derail and sidetrack the hearings into conspiracy theory territory so they can launder their misinformation, disinformation, and agitprop through the hearings. And since Congressman Jordan (R-Men’s Showers) has been temporarily placed on the committee so he can do his jacket off, sleeves rolled up, rapid fire, staccato badgering of witnesses, I fully expect a lot of the Republican questioning time will be yielded back to him so he can badger at will as we’ve seen in House Oversight Committee hearings earlier this year. The Democratic members of the committee, unlike their Republican counterparts, are largely former Federal and state prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and staff judge advocates in the US military so their questions will at least be on topic and germane even if they’re not coordinated. And they really should be coordinated, but I’m not counting on that type of message discipline in strategic communication.

Congressman Schiff has established the rules so that all of the various points of order and personal privilege and parliamentary procedure will be dealt with at the end of each hearing day to avoid the Republican members of the committee from grinding the hearing to a halt for up to an hour as soon as it begins as they’ve done with other high profile televised hearings over the past 10 months.

I have no idea what time the ritual bodily ejection of Congressman Gaetz (R-DUI) from the committee chambers is scheduled for. You’ll just have to watch the whole thing. Personally, I’m hoping Congressman Schiff has a Gaetz sized trebuchet installed so they can really go for distance! (that was sarcasm, lest anyone think I’m advocating for violence against Congressman Gaetz).

Expect a lot of what we already know from the now released deposition transcripts to be publicly confirmed. Expect the committee Republicans, their staff, and Congressman Gaetz to be disruptive and try to turn the hearings into a circus. And, provided the blog is actually up, running, and functioning with the change over to the new site, expect that I’ll have a live stream of the proceedings up as soon as I can get access.

Open thread.

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Black PSYOP Part II: The Republicans Are Trying To Turn the US Congress Into an Information Laundry for Misinformation, Disinformation, and Information for Provocation,

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On October 25th I went over what a Black PSYOP is and how the President’s attempt to extort Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election on his behalf by having newly elected President Zelensky go on CNN and announce his government was opening investigations into the Bidens and Ukraine’s conspiracy with the Democrats to fix the 2016 election for Secretary Clinton and frame Russia for doing it (NEITHER OF THESE THINGS IS TRUE!) is a Black PSYOP. But they form the basis of the conspiracy theories, rooted in Russian disinformation planted in late Spring 2014 about the Bidens and during the 2016 election via Paul Manafort, that are at the center of the President’s animosity to Ukraine and Attorney General Barr’s, and the House and Senate Republican caucus’s, attempts to validate these conspiracy theories to protect and please the President.

To briefly recap:

Psychological Operations, popularly known as PSYOP, are the weaponization of information for effect. The effect being to influence the targeted population, whether a group, an organization, a society, an element within a society, or a government, to either undertake an action or to prevent an action from being taken. Black PSYOP refers to the attempts to launder the influence operation through a legitimate third party that is not connected to those conducting the influence operation.

Before we go further, let’s just get the documentation of why the two different conspiracy theories that the President and his surrogates have internalized and are pushing, are completely made up out of whole cloth. The accusation against the Bidens was first planted in Russian state backed media in April of 2014: to muddy the waters around Putin scarfing up Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine, as well as dirty up VP Biden and Secretary Kerry who were considered two potential candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2016.

The conspiracy theory that Ukraine conspired with the Democratic Party to fix the 2016 election for Secretary Clinton and to frame Russia for it was created by Russian military intelligence (GRU) and pushed to Paul Manafort via his GRU handler Konstantin Kilimnik. Manafort started pushing this conspiracy theory on the President in 2016. The purpose of this conspiracy was, of course, to create a plausible reason for the President to lift the sanctions that President Obama had placed on Russia because Russia, according to this conspiracy theory, are innocent victims of those scheming, malevolent Democrats and Ukrainians. This is, of course, a lie.

In my 25th October post I delineated the three domestic lines of effort of the Black PSYOP the President, AG Barr, and his surrogates were undertaking. Over the past two weeks we’ve seen the opening up of a fourth domestic line of effort, by Republican members of the House of Representatives. This fourth domestic line of effort in the Black PSYOP is to use the impeachment hearings and eventual trial in the Senate – from the behind closed doors depositions to the public hearings set to start tomorrow to whatever Senator Graham and AG Barr are cooking up in their meetings about AG Barr’s line of effort in the Black PSYOP – to launder both the conspiracy theories through the US Congress. This is why the Republican members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and their staffers, including the minority counsel, keep asking questions of witnesses like Fiona Hill and LTC Vindman about Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine, Ukraine’s conspiring with the Democrats to steal the 2016 elections and frame the Russians and the Trump campaign for doing so, and trying to get the name of the person they believe to be the whistleblower into the transcripts that will be released publicly. All of this is being done to launder these conspiracy theories, misinformation, disinformation, and information for provocation into the Congressional Record and through the House impeachment hearings into the mainstream media. From there, like every other good Black PSYOP, once the information has been laundered through legitimate sources, in this case the US Congress, the broadcast networks, the mainstream cable news networks (CNN and MSNBC), and the mainstream print and digital news media, the laundered conspiracy theories, misinformation, disinformation, and information for provocation can then be effectively weaponized in support of the President’s reelection efforts in 2020, as well as other Republican and conservative movement efforts.

Forewarned is, hopefully, forearmed.

Open thread!

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