Uncategorized

Created
Fri, 03/03/2023 - 12:00
So why bother? Kellyanne Conway as a truthful witness? Don’t make me laugh: Kellyanne Conway, who managed the final months of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign, met with prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Wednesday, the latest sign that the office is ramping up its criminal investigation into the former president. The prosecutors are scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s role in a hush money payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who has said she had an affair with him. The $130,000 payment was made by Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, in the closing days of the 2016 campaign, and Mr. Trump ultimately reimbursed him. Mr. Cohen has said that Ms. Conway played a small yet notable role in the payment: she was the person Mr. Cohen alerted after making the payment, he wrote in his 2020 memoir. “I called Trump to confirm that the transaction was completed, and the documentation all in place, but he didn’t take my call — obviously a very bad sign, in hindsight,” he wrote. Instead, he wrote, Ms. Conway “called and said she’d pass along the good news.” Ms.
Created
Fri, 03/03/2023 - 10:30
“Sheriff” DeSantis has wingnuts doing Disney oversight: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis solidified who will oversee Walt Disney World (DIS) after the politician signed a bill into law that allows him to take control of the company’s long-standing special tax district. “The corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” DeSantis said at a press conference following the bill’s signing on Monday. “There’s a new sheriff in town, and accountability will be the order of the day.” DeSantis, who rebranded the district previously known as Reedy Creek to the “Central Florida Tourism Oversight District,” hand-selected the five board members who will now oversee Disney’s municipal services. Previous board members were selected by Reedy Creek, which was fully controlled by Disney. “The good question now is what will be the impact of the new board that he appointed,” Richard Foglesong, Disney historian and author of the book “Married to the Mouse: Walt Disney World and Orlando,” told Yahoo Finance Live in an interview on Tuesday.
Created
Fri, 03/03/2023 - 01:00
And meanness? The Fuck-your-feelings crowd is all about theirs. All the time. And America, fuck, yeah. But what besides flag-waving and chest-thumping and damp-eyed singing of Lee Greenwood’s anthem does America mean to them? Created equal? Hanging together or hanging separately? E pluribus unum? Equal justice for all? “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”? Leave no team member behind? Not damned likely. It doesn’t seem MAGA holds any values more aspirational than every man for himself, cultural grievance, and not seeing white dominance slip. Their America is more about shibboleths and empty symbols, about tribes and owning the libs. In Jesus’ name. “The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs” (if you know the reference). Everyone else? Fuck ’em. I posited to two vets over lunch recently that this country holds up the military as America’s best. Service. Duty. Sacrifice. Everyone has a job. Everyone gets fed, housed and clothed, medical care. Leave no team member behind. A code of honor: you watch my back, I watch yours. But inside the fence line only.
Created
Fri, 03/03/2023 - 02:30
And won victory after victory after victory Anand Giridharadas took inspiration from his research for “The Persuaders,” and particularly from his chapter on progressive messaging authority Anat Shenker-Osorio. The left focuses so much on what it stands against that what the left stands for gets lost. It’s a habit we need to kick, she tells students. “We have to be for a thing.” “As we fight against the neo-fascist right, let us not forget what we are for,” Giridharadas tweets in harmony. In conversation this week hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library, Giridharadas explored “the possibility and the difficulty of persuasion in a time of polarization, disinformation, conspiracy theories, political violence, and more.” But we should stop putting our political adversaries at the center of the progressive narrative, Giridharadas told the audience: We are trying something hard and awesome. And at the risk of kind of mixing progressivism with patriotism, it is an awesome pursuit in history.
Created
Fri, 03/03/2023 - 04:00
Democrats are coming around: The number of Democratic voters who think President Biden should be the party’s nominee in 2024 is rising, according to a new Emerson College national survey released on Tuesday.  Seventy-one percent of Democratic voters said Biden should carry the party’s banner in the presidential election next year, up from 58 percent in last month’s Emerson College poll.  Support for Biden to run for a second term is highest among 18- to 34-year-old Democratic voters, with 85 percent of the group saying he should run again. Only 15 percent of 18 to 34-year-old Democratic voters said someone else should be the nominee, according to the survey.  Seventy-two percent of 35- to 49-year-old Democrats said Biden should be the nominee, while 28 percent said it should be someone else. Among 50- to 64-year-old Democratic voters, 61 percent said he should be the nominee, while 39 percent said it should be someone else.
Created
Fri, 03/03/2023 - 05:30
He screwed the pooch. Again. TPM reports: After days of pushback, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) finally broke his silence on the exclusive internal Jan. 6 footage access he gave to Fox News host Tucker Carlson — who spent months airing conspiracy theories about the legitimacy of the 2020 elections and the Capitol attack itself.  Responding to staunch criticism from Democrats, McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday that none of the footage will be released to Carlson’s team or be broadcasted publicly before it is screened by Capitol police to make sure it doesn’t compromise the security of the Capitol building.  “It’s many more hours of tape than we were ever told. They said at the beginning it was like 14,000 hours. There’s roughly almost 42,000 hours. We’re working through that. We work with the Capitol Police as well, so we’ll make sure security is taken care of,” McCarthy told reporters.  Carlson has had what he described on his show as “unfettered” exclusive access to more than 40,000 hours of unreleased surveillance tape for days now.
Created
Thu, 02/03/2023 - 20:20

Speaking to the No2Nato meeting on Saturday, I had the challenge of telling a packed and highly motivated audience some things that they very much instinctively disagreed with, from a very different viewpoint to much of what they had heard from some excellent speakers all day. I had to follow a really effective rabble rousing […]

The post Truth and Ukraine appeared first on Craig Murray.

Created
Thu, 02/03/2023 - 04:00
He’s Nixon There is some new polling out this week on the nascent Republican primary which shows that former president Donald Trump has gotten a little bump in the last month or so. An Emerson poll shows Trump leading Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, 55% to 25%, while the Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows him over DeSantis, 47%-39%. DeSantis had been leading Trump by 4 points last month. The GOP polling firm Echelon Insights, meanwhile, has Trump at 46% and DeSantis 31% and the big kahuna, Fox News, has Trump over the Florida governor, 43%-28%. It would appear that at the moment that despite all the DeSantis hype, Trump is still the favorite among GOP primary voters. To further illustrate that point, here’s a classic moment this week from Fox News, which is clearly trying to push DeSantis’ candidacy: It’s still not obvious to the GOP establishment, which includes the right-wing media, even after all this time that their voters really do like Donald Trump. Some obviously like him more than others. The “Always Trumpers” appear to make up about 30% of the party, a substantial bloc.