Last Call For Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

So it turns out that the head honcho for America's Trump-era neo-Nazi terrorist group The Base is operating out of...you guessed it...Russia!

Rinaldo Nazzaro, 46, who uses the aliases "Norman Spear" and "Roman Wolf", left New York for St Petersburg less than two years ago.

The Base is a major counter terrorism focus for the FBI.

Seven alleged members were charged this month with various offences, including conspiracy to commit murder.

Court documents prepared by the FBI describe The Base as a "racially motivated violent extremist group" that "seeks to accelerate the downfall of the United States government, incite a race war, and establish a white ethno-state".

The group - founded around July 2018 - gains followers online, communicates using encrypted messaging applications, and encourages members to engage in paramilitary training.

The leader's real identity had long been a mystery.

However, multiple images and videos of Nazzaro - taken over several years in both the USA and Russia - show the man known to be The Base founder, who goes by the two aliases.

He has previously used photographs of himself when promoting the group online

Last year Nazzaro was listed as a guest at a Russian government security exhibition in Moscow, which "focused on the demonstration of the results of state policy and achievements".
A video posted online in March 2019 shows Nazzaro in Russia wearing a t-shirt bearing an image of President Vladimir Putin along with the words "Russia, absolute power".

We traced Nazzaro and his Russian wife to an upmarket property in central St Petersburg purchased in her name in July 2018 - the same month to which the FBI dates the creation of The Base.

Of course the number one white supremacist terrorist who wants to start a bloody race war that kills millions is a Putin fan and is operating safely out of St. Petersburg.

The BBC found him, no problem.  The FBI has known where he is for some time now, I guarantee.  And they know there's now way the Russians will hand him over, even if Trump himself wouldn't stop the FBI from pursuing that avenue.

To recap, Russia is openly harboring a white supremacist terrorist leader.  Trump's complete failure to act upon this is proof enough about where he stands and who his real boss is.

The plans were as sweeping as they were chilling: “Derail some trains, kill some people, and poison some water supplies.”

It was the blunt, bloody prescription for sparking a race war by a member of the Base, a white supremacist group that has come under intense scrutiny amid a series of stunning recent arrests.

Federal agents, who had secretly recorded those remarks in a bugged apartment during a domestic terrorism investigation, pounced on seven members of the group last week in advance of a rally on Monday by gun rights advocates in Richmond, Va. Three members of one cell in Maryland affiliated with the group plotted attacks at the rally, hoping to ignite wider violence that would lead to the creation of a white ethno-state, law enforcement officials said.

The “defendants did more than talk,” Robert K. Hur, the United States attorney for Maryland, said after a detention hearing on Wednesday in federal court in Greenbelt, Md. “They took steps to act and act violently on their racist views.”

The details that emerged in court and in documents from active cases in three other states — Georgia, Wisconsin and New Jersey — unveiled a disturbing new face of white supremacy.

The Base illustrates what law enforcement officials and extremism experts describe as an expanding threat, particularly from adherents who cluster in small cells organized under the auspices of a larger group that spreads violent ideology.

“We have a significant increase in racially motivated violent extremism in the United States and, I think, a growing increase in white nationalism and white supremacy extremist movements,” Jay Tabb, the head of national security for the F.B.I., said at an event in Washington last week.

Experts who have studied the Base say it seems to have followed the model of Al Qaeda and other violent Islamic groups in working to radicalize independent cells or even lone wolves who would be inspired to plot their own attacks.
They describe the Base as an “accelerationist” organization, seeking to speed the collapse of the country and give rise to a state of its own in the Pacific Northwest by killing minorities, particularly African-Americans and Jews.

Experts estimate that the Base, which was formed around July 2018, has dozens of hard-core members and tries to recruit many more online, although its approach is evolving.

No,  if anything,Trump needs Nazzaro and The Base, and Putin is happy to lend a base for The Base.  This guy, not anything Iran is up to, is the real threat to the US.

And they love Donald Trump because he's openly supporting them.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Earlier this month when the news broke that Giuliani associate Lev Parnas had tapes of his conversations with Trump regime folks about helping Rudy get rid of then US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich, I figured he had tapes of Rudy blabbing, because Rudy Giuliani is incapable of shutting the hell up when the topic comes to himself.

Oh, oh no...he almost certainly has tapes of his conversations with Rudy, but that's not the story. The story is Parnas's partner-in-crime Igor Fruman has tapes of his conversations with Donald Trump.  And Donald Trump is the one who ordered Parnas and his sidekick Fruman to "take her out".

A recording reviewed by ABC News appears to capture President Donald Trump telling associates he wanted the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch fired while speaking at a small gathering that included Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman -- two former business associates of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who have since been indicted in New York.

The recording appears to contradict statements by President Trump and support the narrative that has been offered by Parnas during broadcast interviews in recent days. Sources familiar with the recording said the recording was made during an intimate April 30, 2018, dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Trump has said repeatedly he does not know Parnas, a Soviet-born American who has emerged as a wild card in Trump’s impeachment trial, especially in the days since Trump was impeached.

"Get rid of her!" is what the voice that appears to be President Trump’s is heard saying. "Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it."

Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Do it.

Like the mob boss he is.

On the recording, it appears the two Giuliani associates are telling President Trump that the U.S. ambassador has been bad-mouthing him, which leads directly to the apparent remarks by the President. The recording was made by Fruman, according to sources familiar with the tape. The White House did not respond to an ABC News request for comment.

During the conversation, several of the participants can be heard laughing with the president. At another point, the recording appears to capture Trump praising his new choice of secretary of state, saying emphatically: “[Mike] Pompeo is the best.” But the most striking moment comes when Parnas and the president discuss the dismissal of his ambassador to Ukraine.

Parnas appears to say: "The biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is we gotta get rid of the ambassador. She's still left over from the Clinton administration," Parnas can be heard telling Trump. "She's basically walking around telling everybody 'Wait, he's gonna get impeached, just wait." (Yovanovitch actually had served in the State Department since the Reagan administration.)
It was not until a year later that Yovanovitch was recalled from her position -- in April 2019. She said the decision was based on “unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives” that she was disloyal to Trump.

And remember:

CBS News reports that GOP Senators have been warned by Trump team: "Vote against the president, and your head will be on a pike." How is this acceptable? pic.twitter.com/19TKOn4kSq

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) January 24, 2020

This was always a mob operation.  Well, a really bad one, anyway.

Remember, Trump could have fired her at any time, according to his GOP supporters.  He didn't fire her until a year later.  No, he wanted Parnas and Fruman to "take her out".

Impeachment Reached, Con't

Democrats will need four GOP senators to side with them in order to win any vote on witnesses, so if there's going to be a fourth who breaks ranks in Trump's impeachment trial besides Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney, the smart money is on that Republican being Tennessee's Lamar Alexandar.

Three GOP senators have expressed some level of support for calling witnesses, and if they joined all Democrats, it would result in a 50-50 tie and likely be defeated. Unless Chief Justice John Roberts shocked Washington by wading in with a tie-break, Democrats need one more Republican to break ranks and upend GOP plans for a swift Trump acquittal.

That’s got both parties eagerly eyeing Alexander. He's a retiring defender of the Senate as an institution who's occasionally bucked his party, but he also counts Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a longtime ally. He's more hesitant to criticize Trump than are some other Republicans, but he also has said it was "inappropriate" for Trump to ask foreign governments to investigate his political opponents. 

A former presidential candidate, governor, Education secretary and current three-term senator and committee chairman, Alexander was a key advocate of McConnell’s proposal to wait to hold a vote on new evidence until the initial stages of the trial are done. But unlike Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah, who are open to hearing from witnesses, Alexander has expressed no indication of how he will vote next week on the most critical roll call vote yet. 

“He is very well-respected by the entire conference and is close to Mitch McConnell. I’ve found Lamar to be one of the most effective members of the entire Senate,” Collins said of Alexander. “I don’t know what his position will be. I suspect that he’s waiting until he’s heard the case presented, and the questions answered for the senators. And that’s a very logical position to take.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are holding out hope that Alexander will be their hero in the mold of the late Sen. John McCain, whose extraordinary vote derailed the GOP’s effort to repeal Obamacare. Though Alexander would never blindside McConnell the way McCain did, he is widely believed to be a Republican who could be receptive to Democrats’ message that the Senate needs to hear more evidence.

“There is an opportunity here for Sen. Alexander, who has long been a leader in crafting bipartisan resolutions to impasses, to play a significant, even a historic role,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who has spoken with Alexander about witness testimony. “He is so well-respected in his caucus that there are a number of other senators that are also looking to him.” 

Alexander is unlikely to be the 51st vote for witnesses and throw momentary control of the Senate to the Democrats. More likely, if he’s feeling the need to hear new evidence in the trial, other Republicans would join him and scramble plans on how to handle witnesses and documents. 

Yet at the moment, GOP leaders are not worried about Alexander, according to a Republican senator and aides privy to party strategy. They believe Alexander is likely to side with McConnell and help wrap up the trial. 

But publicly, Republicans are giving him plenty of leeway and refusing to predict where he will end up. And if he is signaling how he will vote, it’s likely directly to McConnell and to no one else.

The notion that Alexandar might be the key to witnesses has the White House openly issuing threats.

In opening statements, House managers examined the debunked conspiracy theories invoked by Pres. Trump.

A @POTUS confidant tells CBS News that GOP senators were warned: “vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.”

Here's @nancycordes https://t.co/LV1Y6QveIh pic.twitter.com/tLB9EpoWr8

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) January 23, 2020

Head on a pike seems right.  I can't see any Republican risking not only their Senate career and party membership but their valuable lobbyist and media sinecures as well.  Nobody would dare stand up to Trump in this party of cowards. 

So no, I don't see Alexandar's vote somehow being the magical logjam breaker any more than I see Trump being found guilty.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump is now saying he is open to earned benefit program cuts like Social Security and Medicare.
• A Saudi comedian and dissident says that the FBI stopped a plot to kidnap him on US soil by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
• Multiple US states are suing the Trump regime over blocking 3-D printing of firearms, saying it violates the Second Amendment.
• The Trump regime says it will unveil its latest Mideast peace plan next week as embattled Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu plans to visit the US.
• The latest yearly move by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock to just 100 seconds before midnight, symbolizing global nuclear war.

Last Call For Church Is State

After Wednesday's depressing US Supreme Court hearing on state funding for parochial schools, it seems the only remaining question is how far the inevitable conservative 5-4 decision will go in allowing the Trump regime to force tens of billions of dollars to be taken from public schools to give to religious institutions and homeschoolers.

In a case with potentially profound implications, the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority seemed ready to invalidate a provision of the Montana state constitution that bars aid to religious schools. A decision like that would work a sea change in constitutional law, significantly removing the longstanding high wall of separation between church and state.

The focal point of Wednesday's argument was a ruling by the Montana Supreme Court that struck down a tax subsidy for both religious and nonreligious private schools. The Montana court said that the subsidy violated a state constitutional provision barring any state aid to religious schools, whether direct or indirect.

On the steps of the Supreme Court Wednesday, Kendra Espinoza, a divorced mother of two, explained why she is challenging that ruling.

"We are a Christian family and I want those values taught at school," she said. "Our morals as a society come from the Bible. I feel we are being excluded simply because we are people of religious background."

Thirty-seven other states have no-aid state constitutional provisions similar to Montana's, and for decades conservative religious groups and school-choice advocates have sought to get rid of them. On Wednesday, though, that goal looked a lot closer.

Five of the justices at some time in their lives attended private Catholic schools, and some of them were particularly vocal. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that the history of excluding religious schools from public funding has its roots in the "religious bigotry against Catholics" in the late 1800s. He seemed to dismiss arguments made by the state's lawyer that Montana had completely rewritten its constitution in 1972, without any such bias.

Mae Nan Ellingson, one of the delegates to that convention, said afterward that there were ministers and "people of all faiths" at the convention who overwhelmingly had supported the no-aid provision.

"We didn't think that public funds should be used to support private parochial education but rather that public funds need to support public education," she said.

The justices, however, seemed uninterested in that record.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito compared the exclusion of parochial schools from taxpayer-funded aid programs to unconstitutional discrimination based on race.

That view suggested that Wednesday's case has the potential for much broader public funding of parochial schools.

It wasn't enough, for instance, that the Montana court treated all private schools the same way, whether they were religious or not. As Justice Elena Kagan put it, once the Montana court invalidated the tax subsidy for all private schools, weren't they all "in the same boat?"

No, replied lawyer Richard Komer, representing the religious parents. He maintained that the no-aid provision in the state constitution is itself a violation of the federal constitution. And he also argued that because the state constitution illegally discriminated against religious schools and families, the tax-credit program must be revived. In short, that the state has no discretion to abolish it.

"That would be a radical decision," said Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Justice Stephen Breyer wondered where the plaintiffs' equal-treatment argument would end. He noted major school systems spend billions in taxpayer money to fund the public schools. "If I decide for you," he asked, would these school systems "have to give proportionate amounts to parochial schools?"

Deputy Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, representing the Trump administration, basically answered "yes."

"You can't deny a generally available public benefit" to an otherwise qualified institution "based solely on its religious character," he said.

In June we're going to have a ruling that forces states to give billions to religious schools and in the wake of Hobby Lobby, it could be a major decision that forces states to fund churches, period.

You can thank Trump being able to appoint two justices for this one.  Should he be able to replace any of the four remaining liberals, the US becomes an autocratic theocracy overnight.

The people who see Trump as a messiah figure are getting their wish.

Water You Waiting For, Con't

The Trump regime destruction of the environment continues as the Trump EPA will finalize plans to gut the Clean Water Act and remove 2015 Obama-era protections on streams and creeks this week.

The Trump administration on Thursday will finalize a rule to strip away environmental protections for streams, wetlands and other water bodies, handing a victory to farmers, fossil fuel producers and real estate developers who said Obama-era rules had shackled them with onerous and unnecessary burdens.

From Day 1 of his administration, President Trump vowed to repeal President Barack Obama’s “Waters of the United States” regulation, which had frustrated rural landowners. His new rule, which will be implemented in the coming weeks, is the latest step in the Trump administration’s push to repeal or weaken nearly 100 environmental rules and laws, loosening or eliminating rules on climate change, clean air, chemical pollution, coal mining, oil drilling and endangered species protections.

Mr. Trump has called the regulation “horrible,” “destructive” and “one of the worst examples of federal” overreach.

“I terminated one of the most ridiculous regulations of all: the last administration’s disastrous Waters of the United States rule,” he told the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual convention in Texas on Sunday, to rousing applause.

“That was a rule that basically took your property away from you,” added Mr. Trump, whose real estate holdings include more than a dozen golf courses. (Golf course developers were among the key opponents of the Obama rule and key backers of the new one.)

His administration had completed the first step of its demise in September with the rule’s repeal.

His replacement on Thursday will complete the process, not only rolling back 2015 rules that guaranteed protections under the 1972 Clean Water Act to certain wetlands and streams that run intermittently or run temporarily underground, but also relieves landowners of the need to seek permits that the Environmental Protection Agency had considered on a case-by-case basis before the Obama rule.

It also gives President Trump a major policy achievement to bring to his political base while his impeachment trial continues.

“Farmers coalesced against the E.P.A. being able to come onto their land, and he’s delivering,” said Jessica Flanagain, a Republican strategist in Lincoln, Neb. “This is bigger news for agricultural producers than whatever is happening with the sideshow in D.C.,” she added.

The new water rule will remove federal protections from more than half the nation’s wetlands, and hundreds of thousands of small waterways. That would for the first time in decades allow landowners and property developers to dump pollutants such as pesticides and fertilizers directly into many of those waterways, and to destroy or fill in wetlands for construction projects.

“This will be the biggest loss of clean water protection the country has ever seen,” said Blan Holman, a lawyer specializing in federal water policy at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “This puts drinking water for millions of Americans at risk of contamination from unregulated pollution. This is not just undoing the Obama rule. This is stripping away protections that were put in place in the ’70s and ’80s that Americans have relied on for their health.” 

Mr. Holman also said that the new rule exemplifies how the Trump administration has dismissed or marginalized scientific evidence. Last month, a government advisory board of scientists, many of whom were handpicked by the Trump administration, wrote that the proposed water rule “neglects established science.”

But farmers and fossil fuel groups supported the change.

“This is a big win for farmers, and this is the president delivering what he promised,” said Donald Parrish, senior director of regulatory affairs for the American Farm Bureau Federation, which had lobbied for years to weaken the Obama administration’s water rules.

If you thought for a moment that Trump voting rural farmers were going to break from the GOP after Trump's tariffs squeezed them for billions, this will more than make up for it.  Scrapping the Waters of the US rule will give Trump "Big Damn Hero" status out here in the Midwest.

Say goodbye to wetlands and clean drinking water for tens of millions of Americans.  Maybe Cleveland's rivers will catch fire again, just to remind us how far we're going backwards.

Or newly polluted rivers will catch fire, more likely.  Enjoy, America.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

The opening arguments for the impeachment case against Donald J. Trump by House Democrats was staggering, with GOP senators looking on with obvious discomfort, most likely hearing the evidence against Trump for the first time.

And on the first day, Democrats unleashed the flood.

One by one, the seven House impeachment prosecutors seeking President Donald Trump’s removal from office reconstructed a case against the president so dense — at times, head-scratchingly complex — that it was hard for senators new to the material to keep up.
After a lofty introduction by the House’s lead manager, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Democrats shed any pretense of offering a streamlined, made-for-TV version of events meant to captivate the Senate or the nation. For much of the day, they cast aside any attempt to make a narrowly tailored case to Republicans that they should support calls for additional witnesses.

Instead, they decided to hammer senators with everything they had: an all-day torrent of intricate information, peppered with screenshots of deposition transcripts, emails, text messages and about 50 video clips — nearly three times more than House Republicans used during the entirety of their arguments in the 1999 Clinton trial.

It was a presentation that seemed designed to demonstrate what Democrats have long professed: that the facts of the Ukraine scandal threatening Trump’s presidency are so overwhelming as to be almost infallible. As Republicans harangued Democrats for failing to “do their homework,” the House managers were intent to emphasize just how much “homework” they did.

“We have some very long days yet to come,” Schiff warned the Senate as he kicked off the House’s arguments on Wednesday. He added, “Over the coming days, we will present to you and to the American people the extensive evidence collected in the House's inquiry into the president’s abuse of power, overwhelming evidence ... despite his unprecedented obstruction into that misconduct.”

What followed was a painstaking chronology of Democrats’ case that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals and obstructed Congress' investigation of the alleged scheme.

The Democrats included lengthy reconstructions of the April ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who Trump's associates viewed as an obstacle in their quest to launch the investigations. They picked apart Trump’s decision in May to cancel Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to Ukraine, which Ukraine had sought as an important gesture of support.

The House lawmakers also dissected a two-week stretch in July during which administration officials agonized over Trump’s decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine amid his call for investigations. And they recounted at length the turmoil this hold on aid provoked in the diplomatic corps in August and September.

To one Senate Republican, the firehose of evidence was an education in itself, for him and his colleagues.

“Nine out of 10 senators will tell you they haven’t read a full transcript of the proceedings in the House,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) quipped. “And the 10th senator who says he has is lying.”
Some Republicans even sounded envious of the Democrats’ use of multimedia during the trial and wished Trump’s defense team would follow suit. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of Trump’s top defenders, said Democrats have been presenting their case to the public like it's "cable news" — but lamented that the defense team’s case presented more like “an 8th grade book report.”

“Actually, no, I take that back,” he added, because an 8th grader would actually know how to use PowerPoint and iPads.

I'd like to think that the presentation given today would be the turning point in American history that would snap the hold Trump had over the jurors in his case.  In some alternate dimension, there are Republican staffers on the phone with the White House saying Trump is in dire trouble, and that his acquittal is no longer assured by any means.

Sadly, that reality is not one we inhabit currently.

Well into Schiff’s second hour of opening arguments, he moved on from discussing the first of two charges against Trump.

“Now let me turn to the second article,” Schiff said. That prompted several senators to shift in their seats and smile at each other in apparent bemusement. It also sparked a small exodus for the cloakroom, especially on the Republican side, including Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

Within the first hour, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia could be seen at his desk in the back row, leaning on his right arm with a hand covering his eyes. He stayed that way for around 20 minutes, then shifted to rest his chin in the same hand, eyes closed, for about five more minutes. Despite the late-night votes, Warner’s day had started as scheduled at a 10 a.m. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

Crow, a military veteran speaking on the impact of Trump’s holdup of military aid to Ukraine, had trouble holding the Senate’s attention. Some senators left their seats and headed to cloakrooms, stood in the back or openly yawned as he spoke. At one point during his address, more than 10 senators’ seats were empty.

Crow wondered aloud if the Senate wanted to take a recess.

No dice. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said there would be no break until dinner, more than an hour later.

Several GOP senators got up and left during Schiff's presentation.  They did so because as impressive as the Dems' opening arguments were, the outcome of this trial was preordained months ago.

StupidiNews!

• One person is dead and five injured in a shooting in downtown Seattle near a McDonald's, the gunman fled on foot and police are searching for the suspect.
• A CIA psychologist who helped design "enhanced interrogation techniques" of torture used at Gitmo defended the methods in court on Tuesday as cases for detainees are still active.
• China has now locked down the entire municipality of Wuhan as hundreds of cases of a new coronavirus strain has resulted in 17 deaths so far.
• In a first for a US chief executive, Donald J Trump will attend live and speak at the National Right To Life rally in Washington DC on Friday.
• Archaeologists have discovered evidence that the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2000 years ago was so hot that it vaporized residents of nearby Pompeii and even turned brain fluid into glass.

Last Call For Phoning It In

Voters in Seattle will be the first in the country to vote by smartphone app in 2020 for local elections, which is both really amazing and also brain-jarringly stupid.

A district encompassing Greater Seattle is set to become the first in which every voter can cast a ballot using a smartphone — a historic moment for American democracy.

The King Conservation District, a state environmental agency that encompasses Seattle and more than 30 other cities, is scheduled to detail the plan at a news conference on Wednesday. About 1.2 million eligible voters could take part.

NPR is first to report the story.

The new technology will be used for a board of supervisors election, and ballots will be accepted from Wednesday through election day on Feb. 11.

"This is the most fundamentally transformative reform you can do in democracy," said Bradley Tusk, the founder and CEO of Tusk Philanthropies, a nonprofit aimed at expanding mobile voting that is funding the King County pilot.

But the move is sure to polarize the elections community as democracy-watchers across the country debate the age-old push-and-pull between voting access and voting security.

The U.S. trails most developed democracies when it comes to its election turnout rate, and local races typically lag far behind presidential November elections.

The board of supervisors election in the King Conservation District, for example, in past years has drawn less than 1% of the eligible population to the ballot box.

Tusk says low turnout contributes to dysfunction in government because candidates aren't forced to craft positions that represent the entire population.

"If you can use technology to exponentially increase turnout, then that will ultimately dictate how politicians behave on every issue," he said.

Look, any voting technology that sounds like it might be a major plot component by a villain on Mr. Robot or Black Mirror is automatically suspect in my book.  The idea is great and would massively increase turnout if people could vote from their phones, but believe me when I say there is no way on God's green, purple, chartreuse or plaid earth that the security technology is anywhere near close to being ready to secure voting done by app.

Need I remind you there's loads of evidence that voter registration information in the 2016 presidential election was compromised in all 50 states?

No, this is a technology that needs to die screaming.  It will only be hacked in the future.

Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The white supremacist domestic terrorists running around in plain sight here in America, wanting an excuse to pump bullets into black and brown bodies (and into the "race traitors" who resist their racism) have made it quite clear they want the shooting to start for real.

A hidden camera captured members of a white supremacist group expressing hope that violence at Monday’s gun-rights rally in Richmond could start a civil war, federal prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday.

Former Canadian Armed Forces reservist Patrik Jordan Mathews also videotaped himself advocating for killing people, poisoning water supplies and derailing trains, a prosecutor wrote in urging a judge in Maryland to keep Mathews and two other members of The Base detained in federal custody.

The three were arrested Thursday. A day earlier, Gov. Ralph Northam had cited safety threats in declaring a state of emergency and temporarily banning guns from Capitol Square for the rally.

Mathews, a 27-year-old Canadian national, didn’t know investigators were watching and listening when he and two other group members talked about attending the Richmond rally in the days leading up to Monday’s event, which attracted tens of thousands of people and ended without violence.

Last month, a closed-circuit television camera and microphone installed by investigators in a Delaware home captured Mathews talking about the Richmond rally as a “boundless” opportunity.

“And the thing is you’ve got tons of guys who ... should be radicalized enough to know that all you gotta do is start making things go wrong and if Virginia can spiral out to [expletive] full-blown civil war,” he said.

Mathews and fellow group member Brian Mark Lemley Jr., 33, of Elkton, Md., discussed the planning of violence at the Richmond rally, according to prosecutors. Lemley talked about using a thermal imaging scope affixed to his rifle to ambush unsuspecting civilians and police officers, prosecutors said.

“I need to claim my first victim,” Lemley said on Dec. 23, according to Tuesday’s detention memo.

“We could essentially like be literally hunting people,” Mathews said, according to prosecutors. “You could provide overwatch while I get close to do what needs to be done to certain things.”

Lemley talked about ambushing a police officer to steal the officer’s weapons and tactical gear, saying, “If there’s like a PoPo cruiser parked on the street and he doesn’t have backup, I can execute him at a whim and just take his stuff,” according to prosecutors.

FBI agents arrested Mathews, Lemley and William Garfield Bilbrough IV, 19, of Denton, Md., on Thursday as part of a broader investigation of The Base. Authorities in Georgia and Wisconsin also arrested four other men linked to the group.

Detention hearings for Mathews and Bilbrough are scheduled for Wednesday at the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Md. Their attorneys didn’t immediately respond to the memo filed Tuesday by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom.

It's only because terrorists are brutally stupid individuals who brag all the time about how they're going to kill a bunch of people (including cops!) that we haven't had a dozen guys in SWAT gear shoot up an entire town as an opening salvo in a greater war.

Yet.

Eventually one of these groups is going to show some operational discipline and a whole ot of people are going to die.  Not that we don't already have mass shootings in America.

But these guys want war.  Remember that.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

The first day of the proceedings in the Senate impeachment trial was a chaotic mess, and Mitch McConnell's plan to start at 1 PM Eastern and clog the airwaves with procedural fights long into the night, boring America into tuning out, was a total and complete success.

CBS blinked first.

After less than three hours of live coverage on Tuesday, the network of Walter Cronkite cut away from the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, yielding to daytime fare like “Dr. Phil” and “Judge Judy.”

NBC held out longer, but by 5 p.m., ABC was the last traditional broadcast network still in breaking-news mode. Die-hards could turn to cable news for their fix.

In television terms, the opening hours of Mr. Trump’s trial — only the third in American history, and the second of the mass-media era — did not exactly make for visually compelling viewing. For Republican Senate leadership, that was by design.

Senate officials rejected repeated requests to allow outside cameras into the chamber to record the trial — meaning that what viewers see and hear will be dictated by cameras and microphones controlled by Senate staff members, rather than an independent news organization. (Even C-SPAN was not allowed access.)

The result: Audiences were introduced on Tuesday to the constricted, lo-fi view of the Senate floor that will be ubiquitous on the nation’s TV screens in the coming days.

Election nights have their interactive maps and whiz-bang graphics. State of the Union coverage features high-definition reaction shots of senior government officials, generating the occasional iconic moment — think Justice Samuel Alito mouthing “Not true” when President Barack Obama criticized a Supreme Court opinion on campaign finance.

But the trial of a sitting president? On Tuesday, the small-screen vista was limited to artless shots of House impeachment managers and Mr. Trump’s lawyers at their lecterns, with an occasional overhead glimpse of the chamber thrown in.

Squint, and you may have been able to make out an individual senator or two.

The anchor Chris Wallace, commenting as part of Fox News’s analyst team, pointed out what viewers were missing.

“Because these are the government set of controlled cameras, we are only able to see the podium and who is speaking,” Mr. Wallace said on Tuesday. “We are not able to see what is the emotion, what is the state of consciousness of the members of the Senate as all this goes on at considerable length.”

MSNBC, whose prime-time opinion shows are a gathering space for liberals, acknowledged the restricted views with some subtle trolling. Attentive viewers might have noticed a graphic in the upper-left corner of the MSNBC screen, noting that the trial footage was provided by “Capitol Hill Senate TV”: the government, not a news outlet.

No drama, no emotion, no excitement, means no coverage, and the Senate GOP can then get away with no evidence, no witnesses, and basically no trial.   For their part, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats fought tooth and nail, bringing up amendment after amendment to admit new evidence and to subpoena witnesses, but every one was defeated on the same 53-47 party line vote.

No evidence of any GOP senator being concerned about the cover-up at all.

Our country is being smothered in the middle of the night.

StupidiNews!

• As the death toll from China's Wuhan coronavirus continues to rise, the CDC is confirming that the first case has appeared in the US.
• Music legend Ozzy Osbourne has revealed he is battling Parkinson's disease, but he plans to continue on tour later this year.
• Toyota is recalling 3.4 million vehicles worldwide over faulty airbags that may not deploy correctly or deploy at all in event of a crash.
• India's highest court is expected to hear on Wednesday challenges to the Modi government's new citizenship law which denies full rights to Muslims. 
• Boeing now says the software and design fixes to the troubled 737 MAX won't be ready until at least June as the aircraft manufacturer is expected to lose billions in 2020.

Last Call For The Crown Prince Of Cyber Crime

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman apparently had Washington Post and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos's phone hacked months before Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi was butchered at MBS's orders.

The Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone “hacked” in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp message that had apparently been sent from the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, sources have told the Guardian.

The encrypted message from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman is believed to have included a malicious file that infiltrated the phone of the world’s richest man, according to the results of a digital forensic analysis.

This analysis found it “highly probable” that the intrusion into the phone was triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of the Saudi heir to Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post.

The two men had been having a seemingly friendly WhatsApp exchange when, on 1 May of that year, the unsolicited file was sent, according to sources who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity.

Large amounts of data were exfiltrated from Bezos’s phone within hours, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Guardian has no knowledge of what was taken from the phone or how it was used.

The extraordinary revelation that the future king of Saudi Arabia may have had a personal involvement in the targeting of the American founder of Amazon will send shockwaves from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.

It could also undermine efforts by “MBS” – as the crown prince is known – to lure more western investors to Saudi Arabia, where he has vowed to economically transform the kingdom even as he has overseen a crackdown on his critics and rivals.

The disclosure is likely to raise difficult questions for the kingdom about the circumstances around how US tabloid the National Enquirer came to publish intimate details about Bezos’s private life – including text messages – nine months later.

It may also lead to renewed scrutiny about what the crown prince and his inner circle were doing in the months prior to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist who was killed in October 2018 – five months after the alleged “hack” of the newspaper’s owner.

Now that second bold paragraph stating The Guardian doesn't know what was taken from Bezos's phone may be true, but we know part of what happened after the hack: Bezos's extramarital affair was exposed by Trump's favorite tabloid, the National Enquirer, which led to Bezos's costly divorce from his now ex-wife MacKenzie.

Bezos responded by flat out naming National Enquirer publisher David Pecker as the man behind his hacked phone, and last March he named MBS as the person who the operation was funded by.  This story today isn't news, what is news is the method, using WhatsApp and a nasty picture file that hid the back door.

Let's not forget that Bezos, as much of a billionaire villain that he is, has made mortal enemies of both Donald Trump and MBS.  Frankly, watching them battle it out is great.

Pressed The Meat, Con't

My issues with The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald are legendary, his role in helping Dudebro Defector damage the US and allowing Russia to steal the US crown intelligence jewels can't be underestimated.  Without the information Russia undoubtedly got from Snowden, would they have been able to compromise the US as much during the 2016 election cycle?  There are  lot of hard question that I think Greenwald has to answer.

However in his current home of Brazil, he has gotten under the skin of autocratic and homophobic President Jair Bolsonaro once too often, and now Greenwald faces what are certainly trumped-up criminal conspiracy charges against him for his reporting on Bolsonaro's corrupt regime.

Federal prosecutors in Brazil on Tuesday charged the American journalist Glenn Greenwald with cybercrimes for his role in the spreading of cellphone messages that have embarrassed prosecutors and tarnished the image of an anti-corruption task force.

In a criminal complaint made public on Tuesday, prosecutors in the capital, Brasília, accused Mr. Greenwald of being part of a “criminal organization” that hacked into the cellphones of several prosecutors and other public officials last year.

Mr. Greenwald could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Intercept Brasil, a news organization Mr. Greenwald co-founded, has published several articles based on a trove of leaked messages he said he received last year.

In a 95-page criminal complaint, prosecutors say Mr. Greenwald did more than merely receive the hacked messages and oversee the publication of newsworthy information.

Citing intercepted messages between Mr. Greenwald and the hackers, prosecutors say the journalist played a “clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime.”

For instance, prosecutors contend that Mr. Greenwald encouraged the hackers to delete archives that had already been shared with The Intercept Brasil, in order to cover their tracks.

Prosecutors also say that Mr. Greenwald was communicating with the hackers while they were actively monitoring private chats on Telegram, a messaging app.

Mr. Greenwald moved to Brazil in 2005 after meeting David Miranda, a Brazilian man he later married and who became a federal congressman last year.

It's a terrible situation that Greenwald discovered too late that there are far worse people in reality than the villainous version of Barack Obama that lived inside his head.  Practically everything he accused Obama of doing, Bolsanaro is doing right now, including throwing journalists like Greenwald in jail.

Greenwald also looked the other way on the kinds of abuses Russia did to journalists, including imprisonment and hey, outright murder.  But you know what? Not even Greenwald deserves this.  No journalist does.

There's a certain amount of irony here, considering Greenwald does things like "Go on Tucker Carlson's White Power Hour and trash the Democrats as fascists" but it's also a journalist being jailed for telling the truth.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

As the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump is scheduled to begin deliberations on ground rules this afternoon, the White House and the Senate GOP are doing everything they can to stifle evidence, prevent any witnesses, and end the trial by this time next week.

President Trump’s legal defense team and Senate GOP allies are quietly gaming out contingency plans should Democrats win enough votes to force witnesses to testify in the impeachment trial, including an effort to keep former national security adviser John Bolton from the spotlight, according to multiple officials familiar with the discussions.

While Republicans continue to express confidence that Democrats will fail to persuade four GOP lawmakers to break ranks with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has opposed calling any witnesses in the trial, they are readying a Plan B just in case — underscoring how uncertain they are about prevailing in a showdown over witnesses and Bolton’s possible testimony.

One option being discussed, according to a senior administration official, would be to move Bolton’s testimony to a classified setting because of national security concerns, ensuring that it is not public.

To receive the testimony in a classified session, Trump’s attorneys would have to request such a step, according to one official, adding that it would probably need the approval of 51 senators.

But that proposal, discussed among some Senate Republicans in recent days, is seen as a final tool against Bolton becoming an explosive figure in the trial. First, Republicans involved in the discussions said, would come a fierce battle in the courts.

Trump’s trial begins in earnest Tuesday on the two impeachment charges: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. They center on the allegation that Trump withheld military aid and a White House meeting to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, including former vice president and 2020 candidate Joe Biden. The Trump administration stonewalled the House impeachment probe, denying witnesses and documents.

In an organizing resolution released Monday and authored by McConnell and his team, the rules would allow either the president’s defense team or the House impeachment managers to subpoena witnesses if the Senate agrees, but any witnesses would first have to be deposed. “No testimony shall be admissible in the Senate unless the parties have had an opportunity to depose such witnesses,” the resolution says.

Blocking witnesses such as Bolton — or shielding the testimony from view — could carry political risks for Republicans. Bolton has said he would testify if subpoenaed by the Senate.

“Democrats will ask, ‘Don’t the American people deserve to know the truth?’ ” said William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution. “On the other hand, they may well calculate that public testimony would create uncertainties that they’re willing to go to considerable lengths to avoid.”

Republicans don't want a court fight, they don't want evidence, and they certainly don't want witnesses.  The trial resolution that Mitch McConnell plans to vote on today basically limits both sides to 24 hours over 2 days, with each day not starting until 1 PM, meaning that Dems will be going long into the night with nobody watching while the GOP could simply rest its case as soon as possible after making whatever crapass arguments and go straight to the Q&A period to Chief Justice Roberts.

It's very possible that the entire trial could be over by this time next week.  In case of any deviation from this track, the Senate GOP will take it immediately to court, and who knows what happens then.  Again, Trump doesn't want this, so I would expect GOP senators to be browbeaten within in inch or two of their political lives until they all follow the script.

We'll see what happens, but it would take a miracle to avoid the scenario where Trump isn't acquitted by the end of the month.