They Shall Not Grow Old

It starts tomorrow in a number of places.

Most highly recommended.

Concord Management is, Apparently, a Front for Russian Spooks

The Special Counsel’s office said in a court filing Wednesday that 1,000 sensitive files handed over during discovery to defense lawyers for the Russian company Concord Management—which is charged with financing interference efforts in the 2016 presidential election—were subsequently altered and released online “as part of a disinformation campaign aimed (apparently) at discrediting ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the U.S. political system.” The filing comes as part of Mueller’s effort to continue to restrict access to documents in the case against Concord, which has asked the court to allow it to share thousands of sensitive digital documents with company officers in Russia.

Mueller cited an October 2018 breach of the protective order placed on the discovery process where a newly created, Russia-linked Twitter account @HackingRedstone tweeted out: “We’ve got access to the Special Counsel Mueller’s probe database as we hacked Russian server with info from the Russian troll case Concord LLC v. Mueller. You can view all the files Mueller had about the IRA and Russian collusion. Enjoy the reading!” The tweet included a link to a page that Mueller says included sensitive discovery documents that were structured in such a way that made it clear they were obtained after the Russia investigation had begun (and were not hacked before) and were not hacked from U.S. government computers. That leaves the defense team for Concord as the likely leak because the documents were only accessible under very narrow parameters, namely at the U.S. law offices of the firm representing Concord in the matter, Reed Smith LLP.

Mueller isn't accusing the defense lawyers from leaking the documents, but who else could have done it? Mueller is running the most airtight investigation in modern political history.

Unless the leak came from higher up in the DoJ, which would then implicate Matt Whatzizface, the guy Trump temporarily put in to replace Sessions.

Leaking sensitive documents does not make a judge happy. The judge already has made known her displeasure at the antics of the defense lawyers. Pissing off the judge is a high-risk move. It might create grounds for an appeal. It can also get one sanctions by the Bar.

More Heads Will Roll Soon

Directly contradicting President Donald Trump, U.S. intelligence agencies told Congress on Tuesday that North Korea is unlikely to dismantle its nuclear arsenal, that the Islamic State group remains a threat and that the Iran nuclear deal is working. The chiefs made no mention of a crisis at the U.S.-Mexican border for which Trump has considered declaring a national emergency.

Their analysis stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s almost singular focus on security gaps at the border as the biggest threat facing the United States.

Once it becomes clear to Presidente Bone Spurs that they pretty much think that he is full of shit, don't be surprised if he pushes some of them out the door.

Because to Trump, loyalty to Trump trumps the truth.

Make Your Reservations for the Last Helicopter from the American Embassy in Kabul

US and Taliban negotiators have agreed on a draft framework for a peace deal seeking to put an end to the 17-year conflict in Afghanistan, Washington's top negotiator has said.

US negotiators held six days of talks with the Taliban in Qatar last week.

The Afghan president has made a new call for direct talks with the Islamist group, but they have so far refused, dismissing the government as "puppets".

And so it goes, in a direction that has been obvious for over a decade.

The current government may last, for a time. But it will fall, eventually. If the incumbent Afghani leaders have learned the lesson of Najibullah Ahmadzai, they will not wait around to hand over the keys.

Another Wealthy Putz With No Political Experience Wants to be President

The former CEO of coffee chain Starbucks has said he is "seriously considering" running for president.

Howard Schultz, who stepped down as the firm's boss last year, says he is considering running as a centrist independent candidate in 2020.

Yeah, we've seen how well businessmen with no political experience have done as president since the dawn of the 20th Century (Hoover and Trump). The presidency is not the place to do an apprenticeship in politics.

An independent president will also have zero political clout on Capitol Hill. Such a president would have no claim of loyalty on any of the senators or representatives.

Besides that, third-party candidates have only ensured that the party candidate closer to them ideologically loses. Ross Perot cost GHW Bush his second term. Ralph Nader[1] cost Al Gore the presidency.

This is a pure vanity project by yet another ultra-rich clown.[2] If these guys are so smart, then why aren't they out finding a cure for cancer, or figuring a way to establish human settlements on Mars? Maybe he could take on desertification and deforestation.

But he won't. Those things would be hard. Schultz probably figures that all he has to do is spread a few billion around; he can hire enough people and buy enough good press to win. It worked for Trump. it worked for Bloomberg when he got the NYC Council to toss out term limits.

Schultz is a bored retiree. He should take up fly fishing or scrapbooking.
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[1] May his name forever be an obscenity.
[2] This is probably the better argument for going back to 1960s-70s level of taxation.

DJT = Slow Learner

Two days after the record-long shutdown ended, the White House made clear Sunday that President Donald Trump is prepared to shutter the government again without a border wall deal from Congress.

The shutdown that ended last Friday got Trump nothing, other than signs of Republican defections in Congress and declining poll numbers. Given that Trump has said that he's willing to shut down the government again (ie, take the mantle of), it will only be die-hard Fox News addicts who will buy that Trump won't be responsible.

The lower his polling goes, the more likely it will be that he will draw a primary challenger.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

Bell P-63 King Cobra:

Time to Ditch WhatsApp?

Facebook plans to integrate its messaging services on Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

While all three will remain stand-alone apps, at a much deeper level they will be linked so messages can travel between the different services.

I suppose that this is good for Zuckerberg and Facebleech, but it's probably not good for anyone who uses WhatsApp for secure communications.

But then again, I have little trust of FB, to the point that I suspect that the "ten year challenge" is a disguised way to improve their facial recognition algorithms.

Trump is a Pervert

Yesterday, Trump told some really sicko lies. One was a bondage fantasy straight out of some X-rated porn mag:

Human traffickers — the victims are women and children. Maybe to a lesser extent, believe or not, children. Women are tied up. They’re bound. Duct tape put around their faces, around their mouths. In many cases, they can’t even breathe. They’re put in the backs of cars or vans or trucks. They don’t go through your port of entry. They make a right turn going very quickly. They go into the desert areas, or whatever areas you can look at. And as soon as there’s no protection, they make a left or a right into the United States of America. There’s nobody to catch them. There’s nobody to find them.

They can’t come through the port, because if they come through the port, people will see four women sitting in a van with tape around their face and around their mouth. Can’t have that.

No surprise... It's not true.

“Either he’s watching action films or he’s watching some other type of movie that involves handcuffs and tape over people’s mouths. But in neither case is it based in any reality of what individuals helping trafficking victims see,” said Lori Cohen, director of the Anti-Trafficking Initiative at Sanctuary for Families, a New York service provider for sex trafficking victims.

“His depiction of human trafficking is practically unrecognizable to those of us who have spent decades in the trenches combating these abuses,” said Martina Vandenberg, president of the Human Trafficking Legal Center.

“I have never had a case where someone’s mouth was taped up and they were brought across the border in the way the president described. Could it ever happen? Of course. But I’ve worked hundreds of human trafficking cases, and what the president describes, that’s just not what my life looks like in this work,” said Bridgette Carr, director of the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School.

This is one of Trump's big lies and he keeps repeating it.

He is one sick puppy.

Caturday

"Obey you??"