Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Revolution is not about laws. Revolution is about loyalty.
NASA Suomi VIIRS panchromatic image from July 12 2017, confirming the calving

July 12, 2017

A one trillion tonne iceberg (click here) – one of the biggest ever recorded - has calved away from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica. The calving occurred sometime between Monday 10th July and Wednesday 12th July 2017, when a 5,800 square km section of Larsen C finally broke away. The iceberg, which is likely to be named A68, weighs more than a trillion tonnes.  Its volume is twice that of Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes....
...The iceberg weighs more than a trillion tonnes (1,000,000,000,000 metric tonnes), but it was already floating before it calved away so has no immediate impact on sea level. The calving of this iceberg leaves the Larsen C Ice Shelf reduced in area by more than 12%, and the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula changed forever....

1 metric tonne of water = 264.17 US gallons of water. That is a lot of water volume to the oceans as well as additional weight. Water is heavy. Water weighs about 8.4 pounds per gallon.


July 12, 2017
By Chris Morris

While scientists (click here) examine the environmental impacts of the massive iceberg that has broken off of Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf, the shipping world is keeping its eye on the potential financial impact.

Should the 1 trillion ton iceberg, which is larger than Delaware and more than twice the size of Rhode Island, begin to migrate, it could be a substantial disruption to transportation. The Drake Passage, a gap between Cape Horn at the bottom of South America and Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands, is one of the world's busiest international shipping lanes.

And scientists say they're not sure what the iceberg will do, now that it has calved (science-speak for separation).

"The iceberg is one of the largest recorded and its future progress is difficult to predict," said Professor Adrian Luckman of Swansea University, lead investigator of the MIDAS project. "It may remain in one piece but is more likely to break into fragments. Some of the ice may remain in the area for decades, while parts of the iceberg may drift north into warmer waters."...
"I'll give you the United States if you give me the world."

Guilty. Quid Pro Quo. And a pretty lawyer, too. Sort of resembles Vali

July 11, 2017
By Jessica Schulbert, Paul Blumenthal

Washington - The Russian lawyer (click here) President Donald Trump’s son, son-in-law and campaign chairman met last year with the understanding she would provide damaging information the Russian government had acquired on Hillary Clinton was simultaneously leading a lobbying effort to repeal U.S. sanctions that Russian President Vladimir Putin loathes.

Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer for a powerful Russian oligarch and government official, met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort on June 9, 2016, at Trump Tower, according to emails Trump Jr. released Tuesday. Veselnitskaya never delivered the damaging information on Clinton, Trump Jr. told The New York Times. But her interests were nevertheless in sync with the Kremlin’s: She was working to repeal the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that imposed sanctions on several Russian officials and businessmen.

Moscow was “outraged” by the Magnitsky sanctions, Putin’s then-deputy foreign minister said in 2012, and the Russian government retaliated by banning Americans from adopting Russian children....

Who would ever guess they were meeting with a Russian spy?

I get it. Trump. Beautiful women. Hollywood. Sure, I can see why Putin might think it would be better if they were not seen with anyone that actually looked like a Russian spy. That is so very Russia.

But, besides the drama, that is the case in fact. Russia provides information about Clinton and among the first act by Trump is to remove the sanctions. Case closed. Treason, sedition, financial market violations. What is Sessions doing in California when his elustrius leader may be served impeachment documents?

Oh, this is what Sessions is up to. Oppression of the masses of women. What ever happened to Freedom of Speech? 

July 12, 2017
By Prachi Gupta

Prosecutors from the Department of Justice (click here) have asked a judge to uphold the jury’s “guilty” verdict against Code Pink activist Desiree Fairooz, who was arrested for laughing at Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing in January. Her sentencing is scheduled on Friday. She, along with two other Code Pink protesters, could face up to a year in prison.

Capitol Police Officer Katherine Coronado, a rookie cop with no prior experience covering Congressional hearings, arrested Fairooz after she laughed during the Jan. 10 hearing. The jury foreperson told the Huffington Post they “did not agree that she should have been removed for laughing,” but believed that Fairooz was guilty of disorderly conduct and unlawful parading for raising a protest sign and yelling after she was escorted away. “She did not get convicted for laughing. It was her actions as she was being asked to leave,” the foreperson said....

Limbaugh is a crony, too. What is more important, Limbaugh or Freedom of Speech.

July 12, 2017
By Luke Dolan


The Department of Justice (DoJ) (click here) has refused to explain why a meeting with an anti-gay group undertaken by Attorney General Jeff Sessions was held behind closed doors. 
Sessions, a key ally of US President Donald Trump, met members of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) at a closed event in Orange County, California, supposedly to discuss religious liberty. 
The news was first broken by Buzzfeed journalist Dominic Holden, who said on Twitter the DoJ declined to comment on the meeting. 
The ADF is involved in a landmark Supreme Court case on same-sex marriage, centring on a Christian baker in Colorado, Jack Phillips, who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. The group has backed Phillips in his case....
Justice won't confirm or deny the meeting Sessions spoke in with Anti-LGBT White Supremacists.

And where is the US Justice Department? Be afraid, be very afraid.

July 11, 2017

Attorney General Jeff Sessions (click here) reportedly will be delivering a speech to the 
anti-LGBT hate group Alliance Defending Freedom at 5.30 PM PDT today, July 11, 
at ADF’s Summit on Religious Liberty in California.

The event is closed to the press, and no venue information has been released.

Civil rights and Department of Justice reporter at Buzzfeed Dominic Holden Tweeted about the scheduled remarks. According to his Twitter feed, he asked the DOJ why Sessions was speaking at this anti-LGBT event and whether it signaled a new Department of Justice position in court. The DOJ declined to comment....

These are Sessions' cronies. I don't know about Sessions' speaking to White Supremacists, but, he was in California yesterday.

He wants to revitalize D.A.R.E. I didn't know it was ever gone off the radar. (click here)


The first Muslims graduated from D.A.R.E. I guess. I have a difficult time believing there were no other Muslims that graduated from D.A.R.E. But, if this is the first, then congratulations for realizing there have existed Muslim students in the USA for decades.

Launched in 1983, (click here) D.A.R.E. is a comprehensive K-12 education program taught in thousands of schools in America and 52 other countries. D.A.R.E. curricula address drugs, violence, bullying, internet safety, and other high risk circumstances that today are too often a part of students’ lives.

The opioid epidemic is a safe place for AG Sessions to focus given the issues facing the White House.

Then there is stacking the deck.

July 12, 2017
By Ellen Nakashima and Karoun Demirjan

Christopher A. Wray, (click here) President Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, told a Senate panel that if the president tried improperly to get him to drop an investigation, he would first try to talk him out of it-- and if that failed, resign.

He also testified that no one has asked him for any loyalty oath as part of his nomination. “And I sure as heck didn’t offer one,” he said.

Wray, a low-key former senior Justice Department official, was nominated after Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James B. Comey in May amid a bureau investigation into potential collusion between Trump associates and the Kremlin to interfere in last year’s presidential election.

His remarks at his confirmation hearing underscored the concerns senators have about his ability to be an independent leader, resistant to political pressures — including from the White House.

In his opening remarks, he said he would never allow the bureau’s work to be driven by “by anything other than the law, the facts and the impartial pursuit of justice.”...

No one is going to tell me Comey was fired for good cause. Not by Trump. If Clinton were in the White House having lost innumerable down ballot races, I would say there is reason for his firing, but, not Trump. Comey effected the election. He simply did. There is no reason for Trump to fire him, nor was there a valid reason given.

There is something here. Trump is manipulating his way out of something. He is creating VULNERABILITY FOR THE USA to prevent a personal tragedy. That is what Comey's firing was. It was creating a vulnerability for the USA that lessens the focus on him as a potential treasonist.

I am sure Christopher Wray is very qualified, but, given the problems the FBI is now facing it is far more ethical to advance from within the agency. There should be long term employees brought in to the Director's office. And forget McCabe, he is the Acting Director, but, is under investigation himself.

Ask Former Ambassador Joe Wilson. Ask him to head the FBI for the interim.

Yes, there is a double standard, "The Trump Standard" and the one for the rest of us. The majority Republicans in the House and Senate are afraid of Trump.

22 March 2017
By Jim Stinson

Washington, D.C. has reversed its thinking (click here) on the seriousness of federal government leaks with President Donald Trump in the White House.

Leaks of classified federal information are now treated as not a big deal — so long as they are damaging to Trump. Damaging leaks of classified information seem to be the preferred way to pry information from Trump, a Republican, no matter the slippery slope that federal workers head down when they unleash the documents.

A transcript of the president’s call to a foreign leader? No problem. Unmasking the name of an American citizen as he spoke to the Russian ambassador? That sounds fine to many. So long as it zings Trump....

...On July 14, 2003, columnist Robert Novak revealed that an Iraq War critic, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had traveled to Africa in February 2002 to look into claims Iraq was buying yellowcake uranium from Niger....

...David Corn, a left-wing journalist now with Mother Jones, insisted the law had been broken in the leak to Novak. The political drumbeat began, the CIA asked for action, and in September 2003, President Bush and his attorney general named a prosecutor....

...And Lawrence O'Donnell, now with MSNBC, made an infamous whiff of a prediction: "[A]t least three high-level Bush Administration personnel indicted and possibly one or more very high level unindicted co-conspirators."

But no one was indicted for the leak itself. Scooter Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted for misleading federal investigators in 2007. Perhaps realizing the political nature of the case, President Bush commuted Libby's sentence....

...The seriousness of the leaks involving Flynn helped build tremendous disappointment on Monday, when FBI Director James Comey, acting oddly as usual, said he could not even confirm an investigation into the leaks....

...What if, the former intel operative wondered, the Bush administration's National Security Council had received incidental collection on the Obama campaign in late 2008, and not informed the congressional oversight committees?

There would be hell to pay, he said.

So what is the media doing in 2017? They are asking for more leaks of classified documents. Some newspapers have even set up anonymous online "dropboxes."

And the Democrats? They are nowhere to be seen on the issue.

Any Democratic silence on this is standard. No one ever hears from a single Republican in the throws of an investigation.

What is more interesting is the longevity of the apparent relationship between the Trump Organization, Russia and the Trump Campaign.

The first time that relationship was known was with the 'dark web' computer connection between the Trump Organization and Russia after sanctions were levied. I would think Former Director Mueller already has a timeline to initial contact and continued interference by Russia.

July 11, 2017
By Jo Becker, Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo

The June 3, 2016, (click here) email sent to Donald Trump Jr. could hardly have been more explicit: One of his father’s former Russian business partners had been contacted by a senior Russian government official and was offering to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton.

The documents “would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,” read the email, written by a trusted intermediary, who added, “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

If the future president’s eldest son was surprised or disturbed by the provenance of the promised material — or the notion that it was part of a continuing effort by the Russian government to aid his father’s campaign — he gave no indication.

He replied within minutes: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

Four days later, after a flurry of emails, the intermediary wrote back, proposing a meeting in New York on Thursday with a “Russian government attorney.”...  

Besides the 'dark web,' there is Paul Manafort in Ukraine. This was NOT haphazard by the Trump Organization. It was a growing and sustained relationship for some time now. That is troubling. It is more troubling to realize this organization has violated Russian sanctions and proceeded with a relationships completely outlawed by the USA.

Manafort was in Ukraine because he couldn't be in Russia. Russia was off limits to the USA for any economic development so he worked with the next best thing, Ukraine's President. Right, Viktor?

This is a sustained relationship. It is corrupt. It completely exonerated from wrong doing when Donald Trump decided the only way this could be handled was to become President and write pardons for everyone concerned. The problem is that conviction has to precede a pardon. Right, Don?

Who was that governor? There was a man elected governor (the details escape me) of a state, after he was sworn in this first and only act as governor was to pardon his business partner or someone close to him. He then promptly resigned as governor.

This entire mess has the appearance of "Oops, save everyone from prison and get elected to the White House"

There is the "Slate" dark-net to Russia connection from the Trump Organization, there is the Trump Jr. thing, there is the Kushner family taking China be storm with American government money in exchange for a double digit millions of Chinese Yen and there is also the Jared Kushner 'savior plan' for Israel and now... (...questions are also beginning to swirl around the involvement of another Trump family member who was present for the rendezvous: Jared Kushner.... (click here).

Trump's relationship with Russia is grossly out of step with allies, US policy and the previous administration.

May 15, 2017
By Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe

President Trump (click here) revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.


The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said....


If I had the last name of Trump right now, I would be consulting with an attorney regarding racketeering. Absolutely.

This is what we know. Imagine what we don't know.