[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

Also grilled Brussels sprouts are delicious.

Spoiler:

Especially with a rare steak.

hbi2k wrote:
Spoiler:

Especially with a rare steak.

Spoiler:

Yes. An infrequent steak is best.

Ego Man wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

You can throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts and wave your American flag."

God help me, I really want to try a meat-based beer now.

How’s this?

Rogue's version of it was AWFUL

Federal Investigators Execute Search Warrant at Rudy Giuliani’s Apartment

Prosecutors obtained the warrant as part of an investigation into whether Mr. Giuliani broke lobbying laws as President Trump’s personal lawyer.

Social media algorithms threaten democracy, experts tell senators. Facebook, Google, Twitter go up against researchers who say algorithms pose existential threats to individual thought

A Senate hearing on Tuesday pitted three powerful social media companies against researchers who testified that the algorithms used by the platforms to generate revenue by keeping users engaged pose existential threats to individual thought, and democracy itself.

The hearing before the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law featured a bipartisan approach to the issue from the new chairman, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, and ranking member, GOP Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska. Algorithms can be useful, the senators agreed, but they also amplify harmful content and may need to be regulated.

Government relations and content policy executives from Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter described for the senators how their algorithms help them identify and remove content in violation of their terms of use, including hateful or harassing speech and disinformation. And they said their algorithms have begun “downranking,” or suppressing, “borderline” content.

Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president for content policy, said it would be “self-defeating” for social media companies to direct users toward extreme content.

But Tristan Harris, a former industry executive who became a data ethicist and now runs the Center for Humane Technology, told the committee that no matter what steps the companies took, their core business would still depend on steering users into individual “rabbit holes of reality.”

“It’s almost like having the heads of Exxon, BP, and Shell here and asking about what you’re doing to responsibly stop climate change,” Harris said. “Their business model is to create a society that’s addicted, outraged, polarized, performative and disinformed.”

“While they can try to skim the major harm off the top and do what they can — and we want to celebrate that, we really do — it’s just that they are fundamentally trapped in something they cannot change,” Harris continued.

[Kids emerge as bipartisan bridge for taking on social media giants]

Joan Donovan, the research director at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said the platforms should be required to offer users a “public interest” version of their news feeds or timelines and provide robust tools to moderate content.

“We didn’t build airports overnight but tech companies are flying the planes with nowhere to land,” Donovan said. “The cost of doing nothing is nothing short of democracy’s end.”

Coons and Sasse commended the platforms for efforts to suppress harmful content and increase transparency but questioned whether they would do enough if left to their own devices. Coons noted that Facebook recently took special measures to limit misinformation and violent content ahead of the verdict in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted in the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man.

“My question for you is why wouldn’t Facebook always limit the rapid spread of content likely to violate your standards,” Coons asked Bickert.

Bickert responded that such measures, in addition to removing harmful content, might also limit the spread of “false-positive” content that would not violate the company’s policies.

“So there is a cost to taking action on that content,” Bickert said. “But in situations where we know there is extreme or finite risk, such as an election in a country experiencing unrest or in Minneapolis with the Chauvin trial, we’ll put in a temporary measure where we’ll de-emphasize content that the technology, the algorithms, say is likely to violate [company policy].”

Coons said the hearing was a learning opportunity for both him and Sasse and that he had no specific regulatory agenda but thinks the issue demands urgent attention and would consider supporting voluntary, regulatory or legislative remedies.

Sasse said the piecemeal approaches by each company were “irreconcilable” with the broad challenges described by Harris.

“He’s making a big argument and we’re hearing responses that I think are only around the margins,” Sasse said.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Federal Investigators Execute Search Warrant at Rudy Giuliani’s Apartment

Prosecutors obtained the warrant as part of an investigation into whether Mr. Giuliani broke lobbying laws as President Trump’s personal lawyer.

I can only Like this comment once? So unfair!

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Federal Investigators Execute Search Warrant at Rudy Giuliani’s Apartment

Prosecutors obtained the warrant as part of an investigation into whether Mr. Giuliani broke lobbying laws as President Trump’s personal lawyer.

They're just trying to get Hunter's laptop back.

farley3k wrote:

Social media algorithms threaten democracy, experts tell senators. Facebook, Google, Twitter go up against researchers who say algorithms pose existential threats to individual thought

Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president for content policy, said it would be “self-defeating” for social media companies to direct users toward extreme content.

Facebook made $29 billion in *profit* in 2020, a year where it was used extensively to spread misinformation about a global pandemic, helped extremists to plot the kidnappings and executions of elected officials, organized an insurrection based on a massive lie about the 2020 election it also helped spread, and much, much more.

Ahmaud Arbery's Alleged Killers Are Now Facing Federal Hate Crime Charges

Vice News wrote:

The men accused of following and eventually killing 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through his own Georgia neighborhood last February will now face federal hate crime charges in the murder that helped set off a summer of protests decrying police brutality against Black Americans.

George McMichael, 65, his son Travis McMichael, 35, and William “Roddie” Bryan, 51, have all been charged with one count of interference with rights and one count of attempted kidnapping, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The two charges accuse the men of interfering with Arbery’s right to use a public street because he was Black.

Additionally, the two McMichaels will face one count each of using, carrying, and brandishing a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.

In addtion to the new federal charges, the McMichaels and Bryan still face the state charges of aggravated assault and murder that were brought against them by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation last May.

Weird how this has gone from local district attorney saying Arbery's murder was totes fine because of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest statute to these racist hicks getting clapped with multiple federal charges, including one for a hate crime.

A Republican senator describing the American educational system as akin to magic certainly explains some of the school curriculums they support.

OG_slinger wrote:

Ahmaud Arbery's Alleged Killers Are Now Facing Federal Hate Crime Charges

Vice News wrote:

The men accused of following and eventually killing 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through his own Georgia neighborhood last February will now face federal hate crime charges in the murder that helped set off a summer of protests decrying police brutality against Black Americans.

George McMichael, 65, his son Travis McMichael, 35, and William “Roddie” Bryan, 51, have all been charged with one count of interference with rights and one count of attempted kidnapping, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The two charges accuse the men of interfering with Arbery’s right to use a public street because he was Black.

Additionally, the two McMichaels will face one count each of using, carrying, and brandishing a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.

In addtion to the new federal charges, the McMichaels and Bryan still face the state charges of aggravated assault and murder that were brought against them by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation last May.

Weird how this has gone from local district attorney saying Arbery's murder was totes fine because of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest statute to these racist hicks getting clapped with multiple federal charges, including one for a hate crime.

I read that the corrupt as f*ck district attorney was ousted by the voters last November. She should have been disbarred and investigated.

For some reason, all these headlines reference Giuliani's apartment have me thinking about him in a sh*thole studio with a Murphy bed and a shared bathroom at the end of the hall.

His apartment is probably bigger than my last three apartments combined.

I'm aware he has a lot of money. That's just the environment that I picture him in.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Federal Investigators Execute Search Warrant at Rudy Giuliani’s Apartment

Prosecutors obtained the warrant as part of an investigation into whether Mr. Giuliani broke lobbying laws as President Trump’s personal lawyer.

Also from that article:

NYT wrote:

F.B.I. agents also executed a search warrant on Wednesday morning at the Washington-area home of Victoria Toensing, a lawyer close to Mr. Giuliani who had dealings with several Ukrainians involved in the hunt for information on the Bidens, according to people with knowledge of that warrant. The warrant was for her cellphone.

Ms. Toensing, a former Justice Department official, has also represented Dmitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch under indictment in the United States whose help Mr. Giuliani sought.

Toensing, along with her husband and law firm partner Joseph diGenova, were neck deep the the Ukrainian mess.

It was under the pretense of representing Dmitry Firtash that Toensing and diGenova deposed the former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin. Ostensibly the deposition was for Firtash's case where he was fighting extradition to the US.

But it was in that deposition that Shokin first made the claim that Biden ordered that he be fired because Biden didn't want Shokin's office to investigate Burisma and reveal something about his son, Hunter. This claim, which proved to be complete bullsh*t, was amplified by The Hill's John Solomon, who repeatedly and breathlessly reported on it.

Solomon also interviewed the prosecutor general who replaced Shokin, Yuriy Lutsenko, who talked trash about US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch because she was getting in his way of making money. Solomon also published and promoted these interviews, which became popular in conservative media. (Giuliani would use information from these interviews and his own conversations with Shokin, Lutsenko, and Solomon to put together an anonymous package of information that was sent to Secretary Pompeo and others at the White House. This was source of the campaign against Yovanovitch that ultimately got her fired.)

We would later find out that Solomon was a long-time friend and client of Toensing. We'd also find out that Toensing and her husband introduced Solomon to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who'd become business partners with Giuliani at Fraud Guarantee, saying they could help Solomon talk with Ukrainian officials about Ukraine interferring in the 2016 election and all things Biden. We'd also find out that Toensing had hired Parnas and Fruman to be handlers and translators for their work with Firtash.

So, basically, this was all a rat's nest of relationships that were driven by naked corruption and all one degree of separation from Trump.

Also in the background of these warrants was the fact that Barr repeatedly intervened when he ran the DOJ to squash any search warrants on Giuliani and that he forced U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman of the Southern District of New York to resign last summer specifically because he was trying to disrupt this investigation.

Gaetz Paid for Sex With Minor, Wingman Says

The Daily Beast wrote:

A confession letter written by Joel Greenberg in the final months of the Trump presidency claims that he and close associate Rep. Matt Gaetz paid for sex with multiple women—as well as a girl who was 17 at the time.

“On more than one occasion, this individual was involved in sexual activities with several of the other girls, the congressman from Florida’s 1st Congressional District and myself,” Greenberg wrote in reference to the 17-year-old.

“From time to time, gas money or gifts, rent or partial tuition payments were made to several of these girls, including the individual who was not yet 18. I did see the acts occur firsthand and Venmo transactions, Cash App or other payments were made to these girls on behalf of the Congressman.”

The letter, which The Daily Beast recently obtained, was written after Greenberg—who was under federal indictment—asked Roger Stone to help him secure a pardon from then-President Donald Trump.

A series of private messages starting in late 2020—also recently obtained by The Daily Beast—shows a number of exchanges between Greenberg and Stone conducted over the encrypted messaging app Signal, with communications set to disappear. However, Greenberg appears to have taken screenshots of a number of their conversations.

“If I get you $250k in Bitcoin would that help or is this not a financial matter,” Greenberg wrote to Stone, one message shows.

“I understand all of this and have taken it into consideration,” Stone replied. “I will know more in the next 24 hours I cannot push too hard because of the nonsense surrounding pardons.”

“I hope you are prepared to wire me $250,000 because I am feeling confident,” Stone wrote to Greenberg on Jan. 13.

In a text message to The Daily Beast, Stone said that Greenberg had tried to hire him to assist with a pardon, but he denied asking for or receiving payment or interceding on his behalf. He did, however, confirm he had Greenberg prepare “a document explaining his prosecution.”

In the private text messages to Stone, Greenberg described his activities with Gaetz, repeatedly referring to the Republican congressman by his initials, “MG,” or as “Matt.”

“My lawyers that I fired, know the whole story about MG’s involvement,” Greenberg wrote to Stone on Dec. 21. “They know he paid me to pay the girls and that he and I both had sex with the girl who was underage.”

As part of the effort to obtain a pardon, Greenberg wrote multiple drafts of his confession letter. The Daily Beast obtained two typed versions and an earlier handwritten one. Certified forensic document examiner and handwriting expert Wendy Carlson compared the letter to writing samples obtained through two public records requests. She said it was her professional expert opinion that the person who authored a 2019 financial disclosure for Joel Greenberg, as well as Greenberg’s 2020 Board of Elections form, was the same as the author of the letter.

“The person who authored the forms has been identified as the person who authored the letter,” Carlson said.

In those letters, Greenberg detailed his relationship with Gaetz. He confessed to paying young women for sex. And he claimed that he, Gaetz, and others had sex with a minor they believed to be 19 at the time. Greenberg said he learned she was underage on Sept. 4, 2017, from “an anonymous tip” and quickly contacted Gaetz.

“Immediately I called the congressman and warned him to stay clear of this person and informed him she was underage,” Greenberg wrote. “He was equally shocked and disturbed by this revelation.”

Greenberg continued in the handwritten draft that he “confronted” the then-17-year-old and explained to her “how serious of a situation this was, how many people she put in danger.”

“She apologized and recognized that by lying about her age, she endangered many people,” he continued. “There was no further contact with this individual until after her 18th birthday.”

But after she reached the age of legal consent in Florida, Greenberg re-established contact. As The Daily Beast previously reported, about five months after her 18th birthday, Gaetz sent Greenberg $900 in two Venmo transactions—one titled “Test” and the other titled “hit up ___.” The blank contained a nickname for this girl, and Greenberg paid her and two other women a total of $900 about six hours later.

In his confession letter, Greenberg also admitted he facilitated Gaetz’s interactions with college students—and paid them on his behalf.

“All of the girls were in college or post college and it was not uncommon for either myself or the Congressman to help anyone [sic] of these girls financially, whether it was a car payment, a flight home to see their family or something as simple as helping pay a speeding ticket,” Greenberg wrote.

A partial record of Greenberg’s Venmo and Cash App transactions suggests that payments were usually for a lot more than “gas money.” The Daily Beast identified more than 150 Venmo payments from Greenberg to women, as well as more than 70 additional payments on the Cash App, that were generally between $300 and $500—though some exceeded $1,000. The Daily Beast also talked to 12 of the more than 40 different women who received money, and they all said they understood Greenberg was paying them at least in part for sex.

Sadly, there are people who will be more concerned about the "paid for sex' than with raping CHILDREN!!!

UpToIsomorphism wrote:

Sadly, there are people who will be more concerned about the "paid for sex' than with raping CHILDREN!!!

Even sadder is that there are people who won’t care at all because he has an “R” next to his name.

Nothing about Stone soliciting payments for pardons?

polypusher wrote:

Nothing about Stone soliciting payments for pardons?

My guess is that everyone already assumed that was happening.

I mean, when the whole table is a heaping pile of evil, does a cup of Stone being Stone evil even register?

Gremlin wrote:
polypusher wrote:

Nothing about Stone soliciting payments for pardons?

My guess is that everyone already assumed that was happening.

Yes but there is, in text messages. Do he and Trump get away scott free for selling pardons?

Stele wrote:
Gremlin wrote:
polypusher wrote:

Nothing about Stone soliciting payments for pardons?

My guess is that everyone already assumed that was happening.

Yes but there is, in text messages. Do he and Trump get away scott free for selling pardons?

Probably Trump does, unless there is more of a smoking gun indicating that he personally was aware of and complicit in these negotiations. Not that I have any doubt of it, but it tends to require evidence to make things stick in a court of law.

Stone, on the other hand... add soliciting bribes to the rest of the charges.

I guess McConnell has decided that he isn't racist/crazy enough and needs to show his true conservative bona fides ?

In a letter obtained by CNN, the Republican leader asks Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to abandon curriculum in American schools that McConnell argues tells a revisionist history of America's founding.
McConnell claims these programs such as The New York Times 1619 Project "re-orient" the view of American History "away from their intended purposes toward a politicized and divisive agenda." Politico was the first to report on the letter.
McConnell is calling on the education secretary to abandon the idea.
"Actual, trained, credentialed historians with diverse political views have debunked the project's many factual and historical errors, such as the bizarre and inaccurate notion that preserving slavery was a primary driver of the American Revolution," McConnell writes. "One renowned historian called the project 'so wrong in so many ways.' Citing this debunked advocacy confirms that your Proposed Priorities would not focus on critical thinking or accurate history, but on spoon-feeding students a slanted story."
hbi2k wrote:
Stele wrote:
Gremlin wrote:
polypusher wrote:

Nothing about Stone soliciting payments for pardons?

My guess is that everyone already assumed that was happening.

Yes but there is, in text messages. Do he and Trump get away scott free for selling pardons?

Probably Trump does, unless there is more of a smoking gun indicating that he personally was aware of and complicit in these negotiations. Not that I have any doubt of it, but it tends to require evidence to make things stick in a court of law.

Stone, on the other hand... add soliciting bribes to the rest of the charges.

My understanding is that since there's no restrictions on who the president can pardon, Trump could have taken out a full page ad in the New York Times inviting people to pay him for pardons and no one could do anything about it (other than impeachment).

As hbi2k says, Stone may be in a different position. Though since I'm not sure that it's technically illegal to bribe the president to get a pardon, though, so it might just be a moral failure but technically legal. It'd be interesting to have a definitive answer.

JC wrote:

I guess McConnell has decided that he isn't racist/crazy enough and needs to turn up the volume?

In a letter obtained by CNN, the Republican leader asks Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to abandon curriculum in American schools that McConnell argues tells a revisionist history of America's founding.
McConnell claims these programs such as The New York Times 1619 Project "re-orient" the view of American History "away from their intended purposes toward a politicized and divisive agenda." Politico was the first to report on the letter.
McConnell is calling on the education secretary to abandon the idea.
"Actual, trained, credentialed historians with diverse political views have debunked the project's many factual and historical errors, such as the bizarre and inaccurate notion that preserving slavery was a primary driver of the American Revolution," McConnell writes. "One renowned historian called the project 'so wrong in so many ways.' Citing this debunked advocacy confirms that your Proposed Priorities would not focus on critical thinking or accurate history, but on spoon-feeding students a slanted story."

The source for the "so wrong in so many ways" comment came from, of all things, an interview with Gordon Wood published on the World Socialist Website.

It turns out that the World Socialist Website published many articles and interviews critiquing the 1619 Project over the course of several years, all of them written by Thomas Mackaman, a site contributor and an Assistant Professor of History at King’s College in Pennsylvania.

So you gotta wonder what bug got up Mackaman's ass that he's dedicated so much of his time to tear down the 1619 Project and how proud he must be that all of his work is being used by people on the right--who absolutely despise his political beliefs--to attack the premise of the 1619 Project, which is that race and slavery is baked into the very foundation of our country.

RE: 1619 Project...

What the f*ck is McConnell talking about? Does it actually say that we split from the British because we wanted slavery to stay alive and well? Unless I am woefully ignorant, I wasn't aware that is a thing?

JC wrote:

I guess McConnell has decided that he isn't racist/crazy enough and needs to show his true conservative bona fides ?

In a letter obtained by CNN, the Republican leader asks Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to abandon curriculum in American schools that McConnell argues tells a revisionist history of America's founding.
McConnell claims these programs such as The New York Times 1619 Project "re-orient" the view of American History "away from their intended purposes toward a politicized and divisive agenda." Politico was the first to report on the letter.
McConnell is calling on the education secretary to abandon the idea.
"Actual, trained, credentialed historians with diverse political views have debunked the project's many factual and historical errors, such as the bizarre and inaccurate notion that preserving slavery was a primary driver of the American Revolution," McConnell writes. "One renowned historian called the project 'so wrong in so many ways.' Citing this debunked advocacy confirms that your Proposed Priorities would not focus on critical thinking or accurate history, but on spoon-feeding students a slanted story."

I hope he tossed that letter right in the trash.

Gremlin wrote:

My understanding is that since there's no restrictions on who the president can pardon, Trump could have taken out a full page ad in the New York Times inviting people to pay him for pardons and no one could do anything about it (other than impeachment).

The Opening Arguments podcast has been over this a few times, but in short, the federal bribery statute says, in part:

Whoever, being a public official or person selected to be a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for:
being influenced in the performance of any official act.

Basically, it is still federal bribery if the evidence proves corrupt intent.

So it looks like Lin Wood (the guy Republicans pinned the hopes of overturning the election on) has bombshell evidence that Biden is dead and Trump is really running the White House.