[Red State] General Mike Flynn’s legal team was back in US District Court on Friday and his new attorney, Sidney Powell, came loaded for bear. Rather than walk away from the plea deal, Powell wants additional discovery with the stated intention of a) obtaining sanctions against the Mueller team prosecutors who were operating under the direction of the lawless Andrew Weissmann (h/t to Will Chamberlain for the scans of Powell’s filing).
The issue is Weissmann’s goons concealing Brady material (see the explainer). This is a hot button issue with the judge in this case, Emmett Sullivan. Sullivan, by standing order, instructs prosecutors of their duty divulge exculpatory material to the defense and he his the guy who tossed Ted Stevens’s conviction because of the grotesque misconduct by the Department of Justice.
Here is sort of seems like that when the prosecutors were forced to cough up more material, there was exculpatory material included but they tried to paper over the concealment by stating the material was not covered.
#1
The problem is, there appears to be no actual penalty for withholding evidence. So it costs the prosecution nothing.
Wiki: The Brady doctrine is a pretrial discovery rule that was established by the United States Supreme Court in Brady v. Maryland (1963). The rule requires that the prosecution must turn over all exculpatory evidence to the defendant in a criminal case. Exculpatory evidence is evidence that might exonerate the defendant.
[NPR] A bomb parked under the preacher's pulpit in a mosque likely had a high-profile target: a brother of the Taliban leader. It was seen by the Taliban as a warning to stop their talks with the United States.
The bombing, on Aug. 16, was in Pakistan ‐ on the outskirts of the garrison town of Quetta, near the Afghan border. And its location spotlighted something else: the powerful and uneasy place of Pakistan in these negotiations. Quetta is widely understood to be the base of Afghanistan's Taliban leadership.
Critics have long contended that Pakistan has held some sway over the Taliban by offering them shelter, if not outright support.
Now the country is facilitating negotiations between Washington and the Taliban that will likely see a withdrawal of most foreign troops, in return for the insurgents' promise they won't let Afghanistan be a launchpad for future global terrorist attacks.
This was from a long time Human Rights Advocate and Chinese native, Chen Guangcheng.
[WashingtonPost] ...Trump is the first American president to take a call from a Taiwanese president since the United States cut off formal diplomatic ties with the island in 1979. He has placed sanctions on Chinese nationals, including a CCP official responsible for the death of a human rights activist and three people involved in trafficking fentanyl. He has met with persecuted people of a broad range of religious beliefs in the Oval Office, including Uighurs, Tibetans and Christians from independent Chinese "house churches." He said that a deal on tariff depends on China working "humanely" with Hong Kong. The NYTimes also had a pro Trump op ed two days ago by long time American policy hack
Posted by: lord garth ||
09/02/2019 01:38 ||
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[WSJ via American Thinker] Here's a Wall Street Journal report to send shivers down the spines of the old gray men ruling Beijing, emphasis mine.
More than one million people have moved from mainland China to live, work and study in Hong Kong since 1997, when the U.K. handed over the city’s sovereignty to Beijing. Many of them share the antipathy for the protesters expressed by state-media portrayals across the border. Some, like a group of immigrants from Fujian province in the city’s North Point neighborhood, even fought against the protesters, answering a call from Beijing.
But a small cohort of mainlanders have joined the demonstrations, taking extraordinary risks to support a society that offers freedoms unavailable back home.
"My understanding is that ’one country, two systems’ is a creative set of ideals," Ms. Chen said. "Now those ideals are threatened."
In more than a dozen interviews, these outliers said they value Hong Kong’s autonomy from Chinese control, especially when it comes to the city’s legal system and freedom of expression. They have joined marches, signed open online letters supporting Hong Kong and defended the movement in social-media battles against state-backed critics and misinformation.
In short, there's evidence that amid that sea of millions of Hongkongers protesting communism from China, some of them are mainland Chinese. Message: the mainland Chinese are getting ideas. The Chicoms of Beijing cannot wall them out from Hong Kong nor can they stop this.
And this raises the specter of what happens when they return to China, because many of these Chinese have their families there, and they will. Are these Chinese going to return back to China and spread that democracy 'virus' they passionately embraced in Hong Kong, kicking off similar protests in Chengdu, Tianjin, Harbin, Shenzhen, Wuhan and other giant cities to duplicate what the Hongkongers launched? It actually seems plausible. What's more, it will be an awakening as Chinese finally come to the realization that they deserve the same freedoms their fellow Chinese in Hong Kong have enjoyed until recently. When ten or twelve Chinese megacities start holding the kinds of protests Hong Kong is holding, Bejing's old gray rulers will have a hell of a problem on their hands. And that is their worst, their very worst, nightmare.
Such protests would signal that the Mandate of Heaven is about to fall and big changes will be in store. That would explain why China's rulers are acting so nervous about it, desperate to check cellphones of returning mainlanders and whip out the facial-recognition technology. If the Hong Kong protests spread to the mainland as a result of the regime's failure to pacify the tiny enclave, that Mandate will, ironically enough, go down into Victoria Harbour.
[National Review] In traditional political terms, there is always an alternate agenda to an incumbent president’s that reasonable voters can debate.
In Trump’s case, two massive annual budget deficits ‐ coming on top of the previous two administrations that doubled the national debt ‐ seem fair game.
Yet we hear little about such financial profligacy.
Not a word comes from Trump’s critics about the need for Social Security or Medicare reform to ensure the long-term viability of each ‐ other than the Democrats’ promises to extend such financially shaky programs to millions of new clients well beyond the current retiring Baby Boomer cohorts who are already taxing the limits of the system. Several other examples are examined, in typical VDH fashion. To counter every signature Trump issue, there is almost no rational alternative advanced. That void helps explain the bizarre, three-year litany of dreaming of impeachment, the emoluments clause, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the Mueller special-counsel investigation, Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti, Trump’s tax returns, White Supremacy!, Recession! ‐ and Lord knows what next.
The progressive party, many past presidents, the media, and Hollywood didn't need to be schooled by Donald Trump on the arts of crudity, unprofessionalism, and unethical behavior.
So what we need are not more pathetic abort-the-Trump-presidency melodramas, or ethical sermons from the abjectly unethical, or "Trump is the worst" this or that from historically ignorant pundits. Don't forget Hitler.
Instead of vague socialist bombast and promises, where is the actual detailed progressive version of the Contract with America, so voters can read it, digest it, and then decide whether it is superior or inferior to the status quo since 2017? Let us see two antithetical visions of America's future, and let the voters decide. Even the deplorables?
For those who insist that "character matters" more than policy, then, let us compare the Trump behavior in the White House since 2017 with JFK's, Lyndon Johnson's, and Bill Clinton's. Let's compare his supposed efforts to "obstruct" justice with Obama's actual record of politicizing federal justice, intelligence, tax, and investigatory agencies.
So far, all that is something that apparently no presidential candidate wishes to do.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/02/2019 10:44 ||
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Hurrah! It’s been a while since we had a Bobby!
#2
Instead of vague socialist bombast and promises, where is the actual detailed progressive version of the Contract with America, so voters can read it, digest it, and then decide whether it is superior or inferior to the status quo since 2017?
This is an easy one...Das Kapital!
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/02/2019 12:58 Comments ||
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Instead of vague socialist bombast and promises, where is the actual detailed progressive version of the Contract with America, so voters can read it, digest it, and then decide whether it is superior or inferior to the status quo since 2017?
"We need pass the bill to find out what's in it."
The left has long since given up on trying to win on the merits for the simple reason that there are no merits to their arguments.
But they still want power and perks, and the ability to push the normies' faces in shit, as well as revenge on Dad and the kids who wouldn't invite them to their parties.
So how do they get what they want without earning it on the merits?
FUD and bribing the Free Sheeit crowd and importing barbarians looking for loot.
Demanding that the left make a rational case for their program is a fool's errand.
Besides, I thought conservatives were the ones who pushed back against the Enlightenment's overweening faith in man's capacity to reason.
Why do so many "conservatives" waste time appealing to the left's better angels, when the only angel the left acknowledges is Lucifer?
head it off? Is he still talking about Kamala?
[San Francisco Chronicle] People in this town are becoming increasingly disgusted with the behavior they have to deal with on the streets.
When there is no law enforcement, even law-abiding people are going to stop being tolerant and humane. They may even take matters into their own hands.
Whether it’s someone half out of his mind on meth or a mentally ill person throwing things around in a store or going off in a Starbucks, it’s just a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt ‐ and it could be the one who’s acting out.
The recent North Beach incident in which a truffle store owner’s son came to his defense with a baseball bat after the father scuffled with a man he said was causing a disturbance could easily have ended in tragedy.
I don’t recommend using a bat, but there are times on the street when I would have felt safer if I’d had one.
Superior Court Judge Ross Moody did the right thing the other day when he ordered Austin James Vincent to remain in custody while awaiting trial on false imprisonment, battery and attempted robbery charges. Vincent is the man who was arrested in the attack on a woman trying to enter her Embarcadero condo building after a night out with friends. She says her assailant told her he was trying to protect her from robots.
[Bus Insider] The 64th anniversary of the U-2 spy plane's historic, and accidental, first flight came in early August.
While much about the Dragon Lady has changed in the past six decades ‐ most of the 30 or so in use now were built in the 1980s, and they no longer do overflights of hostile territory, like the 1960 flight on which Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union ‐ the U-2 is still at the front of the military's intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance mission, lurking off coastlines and above battlefields.
The U-2 is probably most famous for what pilots call "the optical bar camera," Maj. Travis "Lefty" Patterson, a U-2 pilot, said at an Air Force event in New York City in May.
#2
...The current versions of the U-2 haven't overflown 'hostile' territory in decades; their utility comes from being able to get high enough to see the curvature of the Earth from outside the bad guys' boundaries. For instance, they operate from Osan AB, Korea - just about a 45 minute drive from the DMZ - on a regular basis, and Round Boy can't do a thing about it.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/02/2019 6:03 Comments ||
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Re #2, reminds me of the hot air balloons from the Civil War.
#4
Configurability, taskability and turn around time. Three things satellites just don't have.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/02/2019 14:24 Comments ||
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The Chinese used the U2s given them by the CIA in the 60s to great effect, surveying the entire mainland, Taiwanese territory, all up to Honshu island, Japan. They flew from Taoyun airbase in Taiwan.
In the late 70s, when the UN's romance with the KuoMintang ended, they could not use the Taiwan bases or planes again. They relied on radio, old maps and surveys until some indigenous version of the Martin's 57D was made, of course by modifying the commercially available model. Two of these were subsequently crashed. One in Nepal and another in the sea.
By the 80s, china was stealing tech from America, Canada and Japan and had 'reverse engineers' working to reproduce materials and hardware like crazy to produce their own versions of UAVs, reportedly being tested in Irvine and another in Tampa. But they were blind for want of a decent 'eye in the sky' for a long while.
It was the Dragon Lady that granted America and allies to dominate the international intelligence game far into east Asia till the late 90s.
[Babylon Bee] Popular fact-checking site Snopes.com confirmed Wednesday they are debuting a new "Factually inaccurate but morally right" fact check result for claims they don't want to debunk because they coincide with Snopes editors' worldview.
The fact-checking website will now label inaccurate claims that they deem "morally right" with the new label, giving public figures whose hearts are in the right place a pass.
"We were often running into situations were a truth claim was absolutely absurd, but it supported progressive causes," said one Snopes editor. "So sometimes we just called it a 'Mixture,' but then people might get the idea that our favorite politicians are being slightly dishonest sometimes."
The editor then said that upon hearing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's recent statement that many people are more concerned with being factually accurate than morally right, the Snopes fact-checking team suddenly had an idea: they could label things as being morally laudable even though the facts upon which they were based are totally erroneous.
"So like, if someone says communism is the most humane political and economic system, like, there are facts that contradict with that, sure," said one writer. "But the person is obviously compassionate for wanting people to share and stuff. So we'll just slap the new 'factually wrong but morally great' label on the claim, and then people won't feel like they have to disregard the entirely false claim."
The new label has been used 17 times on Snopes today alone.
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/02/2019 10:32 ||
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The Bee reporting what Snopes (or others) won't
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
09/02/2019 11:35 Comments ||
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Those poor people at Snopes had such good intentions when they started out...
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NPR] A bomb parked under the preacher's pulpit in a mosque likely had a high-profile target: a brother of the Taliban leader. It was seen by the Taliban as a warning to stop their talks with the United States.
To counter every signature Trump issue, there is almost no rational alternative advanced. That void helps explain the bizarre, three-year litany of dreaming of impeachment, the emoluments clause, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the Mueller special-counsel investigation, Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti, Trump’s tax returns, White Supremacy!, Recession! ‐ and Lord knows what next.
