User-Supported News Commentary Hosted by Craig Crawford
Pay Attention
“Here’s your problem—it looks like you’re paying attention to what’s going on.”
Author: craigcrawford
Trail Mix Host. Lapsed journalist, author & retired pundit happily promoting nothing but the truth for Social Security checks.
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36 thoughts on “Pay Attention”
Word for the day, courtesy of the local npr network:
Hyperpartisan.
A beautiful morning glory to the trail.
As my paternal grandfather taught me years ago — “Sit-up and pay attention!” It has never left me, good hearing and posture for a lifetime. Paying attention can be excruciatingly painful for an absorber like me.
July is a hot month for Mr. Mueller, too. manafort’s first trial. Judging from their public speak of late, parscale is next for the tumble in the barrel. trump’s 2020 campaign manager made $93. million from trump during the campaign and is the key to the cyber crimes and manipulations. His call for the firing of sessions? And guiliani’s response for silence from brad? Revealing. Keep your mouth shut…Mr. Mueller is watching! gates is cooperating. And now silence from the mulberry st. dracula and brad.
ABC is making it sound like Cohen is going to flip or has already flipped – Russia be damned. (no link, they do not like ad blockers so I do not promote them) What this does to SFB is hard to guess. He may have already created the lies to cover the issue, or he is too stupid to realize what his transgressions against humanity have caused.
[…]
Cohen’s remarks, in an off-camera interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, will intensify speculation that he may be prepared to “flip” and co-operate with federal prosecutors in New York and investigators looking into Russian election interference and alleged collusion between Trump aides and Moscow.
“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen told George Stephanopoulos in the interview, which was conducted on Saturday at a hotel in New York. “I put family and country first.”
In answer to the question of whether he expected Trump to turn on him, he said: “I will not be a punching bag as part of anyone’s defense strategy. I am not a villain of this story, and I will not allow others to try to depict me that way.”
Cohen’s home and offices were raided by FBI agents in April, after a referral from Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating matters related to Russia.
Cohen has not been charged with any crime. He told ABC: “Once I understand what charges might be filed against me, if any at all, I will defer to my new counsel, Guy Petrillo, for guidance.”
[….]
Regarding Trump’s repeated claim that the Mueller investigation is a “witch-hunt”, Cohen said: “I don’t like the term witch hunt. As an American, I repudiate Russia’s or any other foreign government’s attempt to interfere or meddle in our democratic process, and I would call on all Americans to do the same.”
Trump last week tweeted that Russia “continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” The president will meet Vladimir Putin in Helsinki later this month. He told reporters on Friday he would press the Russian president about election interference.
Cohen said: “Simply accepting the denial of Mr Putin is unsustainable.”
Cohen told ABC he thought Mueller would not find evidence he colluded with Russians himself. An infamous meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 between Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, then campaign chair Paul Manafort and a group of Russians promising dirt on Hillary Clinton was, he said, ““a mistake” and “an example of poor judgment”.
Asked if he thought Donald Trump had known of that meeting in advance, Cohen said he could not comment, under the advice of his counsel.
[…]
In his ABC interview, Cohen concluded: “I want to regain my name and my reputation and my life back.”
The most telling news from ABC Stephanopoulus interview with Cohen: His new lawyer is ending the joint defense agreement with Trump’s lawyers, what Flynn did shortly before he flipped. And Cohen’s response when asked how he would respond if Trump team tries to discredit him: “I will not be a punching bag as part of anyone’s defense strategy. I am not a villain of this story, and I will not allow others to try to depict me that way.”
McClatchy:
For months, the National Rifle Association has had a stock answer to queries about an investigation into whether Russian money was funneled to the gun rights group to aid Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The NRA, which spent $30 million-plus backing Trump’s bid, has heard nothing from the FBI or any other law enforcement agency, spokesman Andrew Arulanandam reiterated in an email the other day.
Legal experts, though, say there’s an easy explanation for that. They say it would be routine for Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, who are looking at the NRA’s funding as part of a broader inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections, to secretly gain access to the NRA’s tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service.
On the returns, the group was required to identify its so-called “dark money” donors — companies and wealthy individuals who financed $21 million of the group’s publicly disclosed pro-Trump spending, as well as its multimillion-dollar efforts to heighten voter turnout. The NRA’s nonprofit status allows it to shield those donors’ names from the public, but not the IRS.
A central question for Mueller’s office is whether any of the confidential donors’ names hold clues that could enable investigators to trace a donation camouflaged to hide its Russian origins – such as a shell company that might be the end point in a chain of offshore transactions.
It is illegal for foreign funds to be spent to influence U.S. elections.
[….long article continues…]
while they were at it, hope they also got all the tax records of the twit from the IRS.
New cartoon: History is full of rich boys like @realDonaldTrump who turn poor folks against each other. Sad!
not a fan of the f-word but this is funny
poobah, hifuckinglarious.
SFB’s biggest concern should be the four word sentence Cohen uttered – “My family comes first.”
out with the old… in with the new…
The shame on departing justice kennedy keeps coming. kennedy’s early departure before the court agrees to hear a case on federal pardons. From Laurence Tribe on twitter —
Among the first cases the Court agreed to hear the day after Kennedy announced his retirement will decide whether a Trump pardon from federal prosecution will shield someone from state prosecution even if that state retains its dual sovereignty loophole
From John Dean on twitter. wilbur ross — dems calling on SEC to investigate ross for violations of insider trading and other security laws.
Sec of Commerce Wilbur Ross has made Sec of Interior Albert Fall look like a small time operator during the Teapot Dome scandal and the first Cabinet officer to go to prison for his “work” in government. Hearings next year in the new Democratic Congress for Wilbur Ross!
The late Sen. Barry Goldwater, who had no problem with Roe, once told me any woman who approves of the government regulating her uterus is not a true conservative; rather she is a religious ideologue who doesn’t belong on any court anywhere because she can’t do justice.
Third, aside from any potential liabilities, Cohen surely has knowledge of Trump’s finances — how rich he really is, how deep in debt he is, the identity of lenders, etc. For Trump, that might be the scariest part of all.
ahhh, a true chance to really expose the deadbeat, the no-clothes emperor in all his naked ugliness. all hell to the fake nude!
more from john oliver last night on the future of the supreme court quoted by the guardian:
Oliver continued: “The consequences here will almost certainly be extremely grim.”
He did then hint at some possibly good news. “I’m happy to say here that there is actually some good news because it turns out there’s a constitutional loophole that allows Democrats to … I’m obviously lying here, there is no good news, everything is terrible now,” he said.
Ultimately, he ended with some advice for anyone worried about the news. “The only thing anyone can really do now is vote and there are two key elections that you should try and vote in: one in 2016 and one in 2014 because that is what got us into this mess,” he said.
Was there even an internet in 1975 (other than ARPANET?)
Weren’t we on the cusp of AOL?
We had no trouble communicating effectively and quickly in the military. I’ve made flash over-ride calls that freed the lines of everyone except the President. The three and four-stars were not pleased when they found themselves talking to air. The point is, the ability was there when the need warranted.
In 1983, Steve Case was a recent college grad with a home computer and modem who got a job at a company called Control Video, which sold Atari games. It collapsed shortly after he arrived. “Out of the ashes, Case crafted Quantum Computer Services,” TIME later reported. “His idea was to create an online bulletin board for owners of Commodore 64 computers. It wasn’t a sexy niche, but he thought it might have potential. From 1985 onward, Case nurtured Quantum from a few thousand members to more than 100,000.”
In 1991, Quantum was renamed America Online. By 1993, AOL introduced its own email addresses, a Windows version and access to the rest of the Internet for its users. Those moves led to some backlash—which soon became a recurring theme for the company.
And of course Wiki has an accessible summary of the history of the internet and its precursors.
Was there an internet before 1983? Depends on what the scope of the WAN you had access to and whether it talked with other WANS. Certainly in the military (in 1975 when it acquired ARPANET), but not outside it.
I got my first PC around 1985 – at the time only dial up was available to access anything – and I can’t remember ever using it to access anything that even remotely resembled the internet. I have a vague recollection of using the modem, but for the life of me I can’t remember what I was using it for – probably to access the course materials for the computer science class I was taking then. I have some vague recognition of having something akin to email within that context – but it was limited to the students in the class – but that may be a false memory. What I can recall is that Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw were not up and running while I was in law school – which I graduated from in 1992, and Google didn’t exist until 1998 – so really, without google was there really anything that could be called an internet – at least with a straight face. Kidding – Archie arose in 1990 and Alta Vista shortly after that and the first internet shopping site arose in 1994. Now THAT’S when teh internet really began.
p.s., Flatus, glad to see you’re back with your spunkiness intact.
Thanks, Pogo, I’m glad I’m able to be here.
The point of where we were in the 70s and 80s. We were thrilled with what we had because we had no idea of what we were being deprived.
Pogo – the year 1992 is important because that is when the Internet was opened for individual use. That usually meant corporate (com), organizations (org) and networks (net), but also individuals. Most of that was for AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe which provided portals and virtual websites. Machines were useful due to lots of RAM and processor speed. The move from different flavors of DOS to Windows was underway. But, true graphics based operating systems were years in the future. The portals worked because they had less impact on operating speeds compared to Windows. Apple was in the same boat, but had fewer users. DOS was still king of the O/S.
At the time I was a beta tester for MS Windows and shortly later I became a beta test for IBM. It was interesting times.
Flatus, I didn’t have access to the military systems you did – I truly had no idea that I was deprived of anything.
BB, that 1992 date comports with what I perceived and the superficial research I’ve done – I’d say that in about 1998 I thought getting a computer to work on things from home would be a good idea – it didn’t work out for several years after that – I can’t remember just when I got my first at home high speed access through Coax, but I’m thinking it was around 2002. Before that, dial up – (aka frustratingly slow). And 1995 was a huge shift – it’s when Internet Explorer was available in Windows.
drip drip drip
tpm:
During the special counsel’s Russia investigation, Konstantin Kilimnik has been described as a fixer, translator or office manager to President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
But Kilimnik, an elusive figure now indicted alongside Manafort on witness tampering charges, was far more involved in formulating pro-Russia political strategy with Manafort than previously known, according to internal memos and other business records obtained by the AP.
The records include a rare 2006 photograph of Kilimnik, a Ukrainian native, in an office setting with Manafort and other key players in Manafort’s consulting firm at the time. Some of the documents were later independently obtained by U.S. government investigators.
More than a decade before Russia was accused of surreptitiously trying to tilt the presidential election toward Trump, Manafort and Kilimnik pondered the risks to Russia if the country did not hone its efforts to influence global politics, the records show.
“The West is just a little more skillful at playing the modern game, where perception by the world public opinion and the spin is more important than what is actually going on,” Kilimnik wrote to Manafort in a December 2004 memo analyzing Russia’s bungled efforts to manipulate political events in former Soviet states. “Russia is ultimately going to lose if they do not learn how to play this game.”
Kilimnik — who special counsel Robert Mueller believes is currently in Russia and has ties to Russian intelligence — helped formulate Manafort’s pitches to clients in Russia and Ukraine, according to the records. Among Manafort’s clients were Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and other mega-wealthy Russians with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
[….]
Even after Manafort lost his campaign job and was indicted by Mueller on charges related to his foreign lobbying work, U.S. prosecutors alleged, Kilimnik helped ghost-write an op-ed defending Manafort under the name of Oleg Voloshyn, a former Ukrainian government official. Manafort also faces bank fraud and tax evasion charges in Virginia.
Other Manafort associates — including his deputy Rick Gates — have not shown the same steadfastness toward Manafort as Kilimnik. Gates has pleaded guilty to helping Manafort launder millions of dollars through bank accounts in Cyprus.
Days after Gates’ guilty plea, prosecutors said Kilimnik attempted to tamper with a witness by reaching out to a person connected with Manafort’s lobbying work.
And as recently as April, Kilimnik contacted two witnesses in the Mueller investigation on behalf of Manafort, according to court filings.
“Hey. This is Konstantin,” Kilimnik wrote via the WhatsApp messenger, according to the filings. “My friend is looking for ways to connect to you to pass you several messages. Can we arrange that?”
I’m paying attention but I am trying not to stay in a state of outrage –not good for my health
People all over the country are raising money to bail out mothers separated from the children
and now the feds are saying no bail will be allowed — there are no words to describe the decay which must lie at the center of the people carrying out this hideous policy
BB-Pogo: I missed all the beta stuff…before 1998 I only used dedicated computers for work stuff. We got our first home PC in 1998, a special deal from work, from Dell. Later, I figured it was a conspiracy to sell off year-old office computers to suckers like me. It was expensive as hell, and try as I may, it took me two years to figure a way to cease the constant porn pop-ups. Whoever had it before was a raunchy porn freak…it was disgusting, but finally I got it off the drive. I remember it was a customer-based help site dude who told me how to erase that crap. After several Dells, I now use an “all-in-one” HP desktop and an Android tablet. To save the planet, we recycled the damn printer…do not need it. Happy Patriotism Day, aka Independence Day. Mark Twain on patriotism: In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
– Notebook, 1904
Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood of his hands and works for “the universal brotherhood of man”- with his mouth.
– “The Lowest Animal”
Mr Dexter,
Ah, the raunchy porn tsunamis. Yikes. Heaven know where they came from, but erase one and suddenly a dozen more stack up. I got to shutting down and pulling the power plug out of the wall. After ten or fifteen minutes I’d try to boot up again. That mostly worked – for an hour or two. Then they’d find me again. It was worst from 2 – 4 AM. That’s The Hour of the Wolf, only I wasn’t very wolvish.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” – Dr. Saml. Johnson
Word for the day, courtesy of the local npr network:
Hyperpartisan.
A beautiful morning glory to the trail.
As my paternal grandfather taught me years ago — “Sit-up and pay attention!” It has never left me, good hearing and posture for a lifetime. Paying attention can be excruciatingly painful for an absorber like me.
July is a hot month for Mr. Mueller, too. manafort’s first trial. Judging from their public speak of late, parscale is next for the tumble in the barrel. trump’s 2020 campaign manager made $93. million from trump during the campaign and is the key to the cyber crimes and manipulations. His call for the firing of sessions? And guiliani’s response for silence from brad? Revealing. Keep your mouth shut…Mr. Mueller is watching! gates is cooperating. And now silence from the mulberry st. dracula and brad.
ABC is making it sound like Cohen is going to flip or has already flipped – Russia be damned. (no link, they do not like ad blockers so I do not promote them) What this does to SFB is hard to guess. He may have already created the lies to cover the issue, or he is too stupid to realize what his transgressions against humanity have caused.
the guardian:
[…]
Cohen’s remarks, in an off-camera interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, will intensify speculation that he may be prepared to “flip” and co-operate with federal prosecutors in New York and investigators looking into Russian election interference and alleged collusion between Trump aides and Moscow.
“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen told George Stephanopoulos in the interview, which was conducted on Saturday at a hotel in New York. “I put family and country first.”
In answer to the question of whether he expected Trump to turn on him, he said: “I will not be a punching bag as part of anyone’s defense strategy. I am not a villain of this story, and I will not allow others to try to depict me that way.”
Cohen’s home and offices were raided by FBI agents in April, after a referral from Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating matters related to Russia.
Cohen has not been charged with any crime. He told ABC: “Once I understand what charges might be filed against me, if any at all, I will defer to my new counsel, Guy Petrillo, for guidance.”
[….]
Regarding Trump’s repeated claim that the Mueller investigation is a “witch-hunt”, Cohen said: “I don’t like the term witch hunt. As an American, I repudiate Russia’s or any other foreign government’s attempt to interfere or meddle in our democratic process, and I would call on all Americans to do the same.”
Trump last week tweeted that Russia “continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!” The president will meet Vladimir Putin in Helsinki later this month. He told reporters on Friday he would press the Russian president about election interference.
Cohen said: “Simply accepting the denial of Mr Putin is unsustainable.”
Cohen told ABC he thought Mueller would not find evidence he colluded with Russians himself. An infamous meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 between Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, then campaign chair Paul Manafort and a group of Russians promising dirt on Hillary Clinton was, he said, ““a mistake” and “an example of poor judgment”.
Asked if he thought Donald Trump had known of that meeting in advance, Cohen said he could not comment, under the advice of his counsel.
[…]
In his ABC interview, Cohen concluded: “I want to regain my name and my reputation and my life back.”
The most telling news from ABC Stephanopoulus interview with Cohen: His new lawyer is ending the joint defense agreement with Trump’s lawyers, what Flynn did shortly before he flipped. And Cohen’s response when asked how he would respond if Trump team tries to discredit him: “I will not be a punching bag as part of anyone’s defense strategy. I am not a villain of this story, and I will not allow others to try to depict me that way.”
George’s report here on his interview.
McClatchy:
For months, the National Rifle Association has had a stock answer to queries about an investigation into whether Russian money was funneled to the gun rights group to aid Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The NRA, which spent $30 million-plus backing Trump’s bid, has heard nothing from the FBI or any other law enforcement agency, spokesman Andrew Arulanandam reiterated in an email the other day.
Legal experts, though, say there’s an easy explanation for that. They say it would be routine for Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, who are looking at the NRA’s funding as part of a broader inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections, to secretly gain access to the NRA’s tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service.
On the returns, the group was required to identify its so-called “dark money” donors — companies and wealthy individuals who financed $21 million of the group’s publicly disclosed pro-Trump spending, as well as its multimillion-dollar efforts to heighten voter turnout. The NRA’s nonprofit status allows it to shield those donors’ names from the public, but not the IRS.
A central question for Mueller’s office is whether any of the confidential donors’ names hold clues that could enable investigators to trace a donation camouflaged to hide its Russian origins – such as a shell company that might be the end point in a chain of offshore transactions.
It is illegal for foreign funds to be spent to influence U.S. elections.
[….long article continues…]
while they were at it, hope they also got all the tax records of the twit from the IRS.
Andy MarletteVerified account @AndyMarlette
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New cartoon: History is full of rich boys like
@realDonaldTrump who turn poor folks against each other. Sad!not a fan of the f-word but this is funny
poobah, hifuckinglarious.
SFB’s biggest concern should be the four word sentence Cohen uttered – “My family comes first.”
out with the old… in with the new…
The shame on departing justice kennedy keeps coming. kennedy’s early departure before the court agrees to hear a case on federal pardons. From Laurence Tribe on twitter —
Among the first cases the Court agreed to hear the day after Kennedy announced his retirement will decide whether a Trump pardon from federal prosecution will shield someone from state prosecution even if that state retains its dual sovereignty loophole
Here is the link to tribelaw tweet.
From John Dean on twitter. wilbur ross — dems calling on SEC to investigate ross for violations of insider trading and other security laws.
Sec of Commerce Wilbur Ross has made Sec of Interior Albert Fall look like a small time operator during the Teapot Dome scandal and the first Cabinet officer to go to prison for his “work” in government. Hearings next year in the new Democratic Congress for Wilbur Ross!
One more from John Dean and his quote from Barry Goldwater regarding roe vs. wade.
The late Sen. Barry Goldwater, who had no problem with Roe, once told me any woman who approves of the government regulating her uterus is not a true conservative; rather she is a religious ideologue who doesn’t belong on any court anywhere because she can’t do justice.
j rubin’s conclusion in today’s wapo column:
Third, aside from any potential liabilities, Cohen surely has knowledge of Trump’s finances — how rich he really is, how deep in debt he is, the identity of lenders, etc. For Trump, that might be the scariest part of all.
ahhh, a true chance to really expose the deadbeat, the no-clothes emperor in all his naked ugliness. all hell to the fake nude!
more from john oliver last night on the future of the supreme court quoted by the guardian:
Oliver continued: “The consequences here will almost certainly be extremely grim.”
He did then hint at some possibly good news. “I’m happy to say here that there is actually some good news because it turns out there’s a constitutional loophole that allows Democrats to … I’m obviously lying here, there is no good news, everything is terrible now,” he said.
Ultimately, he ended with some advice for anyone worried about the news. “The only thing anyone can really do now is vote and there are two key elections that you should try and vote in: one in 2016 and one in 2014 because that is what got us into this mess,” he said.
Draft proposal would allow Trump to ignore key WTO principles https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/01/politics/trump-world-trade-organization-tariffs/index.html
Mickey C, hurry up & flip already.
(Let’s see if they can keep the June job numbers from Twit.)
When was Mr Dean granted Internet rights?
What’s Trump’s favorite lubricant/massage oil. Coconut? Whale? Soybean?
Was there even an internet in 1975 (other than ARPANET?)
Weren’t we on the cusp of AOL?
We had no trouble communicating effectively and quickly in the military. I’ve made flash over-ride calls that freed the lines of everyone except the President. The three and four-stars were not pleased when they found themselves talking to air. The point is, the ability was there when the need warranted.
The internet as we know it didn’t really get rocking and rolling until the early 90s. This kind of puts AOL and the internet into perspective:
And of course Wiki has an accessible summary of the history of the internet and its precursors.
Was there an internet before 1983? Depends on what the scope of the WAN you had access to and whether it talked with other WANS. Certainly in the military (in 1975 when it acquired ARPANET), but not outside it.
I got my first PC around 1985 – at the time only dial up was available to access anything – and I can’t remember ever using it to access anything that even remotely resembled the internet. I have a vague recollection of using the modem, but for the life of me I can’t remember what I was using it for – probably to access the course materials for the computer science class I was taking then. I have some vague recognition of having something akin to email within that context – but it was limited to the students in the class – but that may be a false memory. What I can recall is that Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw were not up and running while I was in law school – which I graduated from in 1992, and Google didn’t exist until 1998 – so really, without google was there really anything that could be called an internet – at least with a straight face. Kidding – Archie arose in 1990 and Alta Vista shortly after that and the first internet shopping site arose in 1994. Now THAT’S when teh internet really began.
p.s., Flatus, glad to see you’re back with your spunkiness intact.
Thanks, Pogo, I’m glad I’m able to be here.
The point of where we were in the 70s and 80s. We were thrilled with what we had because we had no idea of what we were being deprived.
Pogo – the year 1992 is important because that is when the Internet was opened for individual use. That usually meant corporate (com), organizations (org) and networks (net), but also individuals. Most of that was for AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe which provided portals and virtual websites. Machines were useful due to lots of RAM and processor speed. The move from different flavors of DOS to Windows was underway. But, true graphics based operating systems were years in the future. The portals worked because they had less impact on operating speeds compared to Windows. Apple was in the same boat, but had fewer users. DOS was still king of the O/S.
At the time I was a beta tester for MS Windows and shortly later I became a beta test for IBM. It was interesting times.
Flatus, I didn’t have access to the military systems you did – I truly had no idea that I was deprived of anything.
BB, that 1992 date comports with what I perceived and the superficial research I’ve done – I’d say that in about 1998 I thought getting a computer to work on things from home would be a good idea – it didn’t work out for several years after that – I can’t remember just when I got my first at home high speed access through Coax, but I’m thinking it was around 2002. Before that, dial up – (aka frustratingly slow). And 1995 was a huge shift – it’s when Internet Explorer was available in Windows.
drip drip drip
tpm:
During the special counsel’s Russia investigation, Konstantin Kilimnik has been described as a fixer, translator or office manager to President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
But Kilimnik, an elusive figure now indicted alongside Manafort on witness tampering charges, was far more involved in formulating pro-Russia political strategy with Manafort than previously known, according to internal memos and other business records obtained by the AP.
The records include a rare 2006 photograph of Kilimnik, a Ukrainian native, in an office setting with Manafort and other key players in Manafort’s consulting firm at the time. Some of the documents were later independently obtained by U.S. government investigators.
More than a decade before Russia was accused of surreptitiously trying to tilt the presidential election toward Trump, Manafort and Kilimnik pondered the risks to Russia if the country did not hone its efforts to influence global politics, the records show.
“The West is just a little more skillful at playing the modern game, where perception by the world public opinion and the spin is more important than what is actually going on,” Kilimnik wrote to Manafort in a December 2004 memo analyzing Russia’s bungled efforts to manipulate political events in former Soviet states. “Russia is ultimately going to lose if they do not learn how to play this game.”
Kilimnik — who special counsel Robert Mueller believes is currently in Russia and has ties to Russian intelligence — helped formulate Manafort’s pitches to clients in Russia and Ukraine, according to the records. Among Manafort’s clients were Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and other mega-wealthy Russians with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
[….]
Even after Manafort lost his campaign job and was indicted by Mueller on charges related to his foreign lobbying work, U.S. prosecutors alleged, Kilimnik helped ghost-write an op-ed defending Manafort under the name of Oleg Voloshyn, a former Ukrainian government official. Manafort also faces bank fraud and tax evasion charges in Virginia.
Other Manafort associates — including his deputy Rick Gates — have not shown the same steadfastness toward Manafort as Kilimnik. Gates has pleaded guilty to helping Manafort launder millions of dollars through bank accounts in Cyprus.
Days after Gates’ guilty plea, prosecutors said Kilimnik attempted to tamper with a witness by reaching out to a person connected with Manafort’s lobbying work.
And as recently as April, Kilimnik contacted two witnesses in the Mueller investigation on behalf of Manafort, according to court filings.
“Hey. This is Konstantin,” Kilimnik wrote via the WhatsApp messenger, according to the filings. “My friend is looking for ways to connect to you to pass you several messages. Can we arrange that?”
oy dial-up yikes
New York, Virginia require mental health education in schools https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/02/health/mental-health-schools-bn/index.html
I’m paying attention but I am trying not to stay in a state of outrage –not good for my health
People all over the country are raising money to bail out mothers separated from the children
and now the feds are saying no bail will be allowed — there are no words to describe the decay which must lie at the center of the people carrying out this hideous policy
BB-Pogo: I missed all the beta stuff…before 1998 I only used dedicated computers for work stuff. We got our first home PC in 1998, a special deal from work, from Dell. Later, I figured it was a conspiracy to sell off year-old office computers to suckers like me. It was expensive as hell, and try as I may, it took me two years to figure a way to cease the constant porn pop-ups. Whoever had it before was a raunchy porn freak…it was disgusting, but finally I got it off the drive. I remember it was a customer-based help site dude who told me how to erase that crap. After several Dells, I now use an “all-in-one” HP desktop and an Android tablet. To save the planet, we recycled the damn printer…do not need it. Happy Patriotism Day, aka Independence Day. Mark Twain on patriotism: In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
– Notebook, 1904
Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood of his hands and works for “the universal brotherhood of man”- with his mouth.
– “The Lowest Animal”
Mr Dexter,
Ah, the raunchy porn tsunamis. Yikes. Heaven know where they came from, but erase one and suddenly a dozen more stack up. I got to shutting down and pulling the power plug out of the wall. After ten or fifteen minutes I’d try to boot up again. That mostly worked – for an hour or two. Then they’d find me again. It was worst from 2 – 4 AM. That’s The Hour of the Wolf, only I wasn’t very wolvish.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” – Dr. Saml. Johnson