Zorro
Zorro's JournalTrump, no fan of big cities and their Democratic leaders, unleashes his derision on L.A.
One of the most arresting images of Donald Trump’s inaugural address in 2017 was a grim portrait of urban America, riddled by poverty, gangs, drugs and other blight.
“Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation,” he said. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
Well over halfway through his presidency, Trump continues to portray urban America in terms of “carnage.” Baltimore, Chicago and Atlanta have each taken turns being portrayed as bastions of crime and dysfunction. His latest is Los Angeles, where he is visiting for campaign fundraisers, just a week after his administration dispatched a busload of officials to scrutinize homelessness in the city.
“We can’t let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves by allowing what’s happening,” Trump said to reporters Tuesday, referring to the number of homeless people in those cities and suggesting they were disturbing more affluent residents.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-09-17/trump-attacks-big-cities-los-angeles
Corey Lewandowski debuts his Senate campaign theme: Unbridled nastiness
Corey Lewandowski has been alternately vulgar, pugilistic and deceitful. Now he wants to run for Senate.
He’ll fit right in.
The one-time Trump 2016 campaign manager volunteered to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, not to talk about presidential obstruction of justice — he happily obeyed White House orders not to discuss such matters — but to launch his bid for the Senate seat now held by the mild-mannered Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.).
Lewandowski, now a TV commentator and consultant who trades on his influence with President Trump, used the hashtag “Senate2020” in a prehearing tweet promoting his appearance. He requested a five-minute recess in the hearing and used it to tweet: “New website just launched to help a potential Senate run. Sign up now!”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/corey-lewandowski-debuts-his-senate-campaign-theme-unbridled-nastiness/2019/09/17/c77ba71a-d995-11e9-ac63-3016711543fe_story.html
Michelle Malkin Smears Cokie Roberts: 'One of the First Guilty Culprits of Fake News'
Hours after the world learned that journalist Cokie Roberts had passed away following complications from breast cancer, right-wing provocateur Michelle Malkin took a swipe at the reporter’s legacy by calling her “one of the first guilty culprits of fake news.”
Taking part in a panel at the Paley Center on Tuesday, Malkin joined an array of liberal and conservative commentators and media figures to discuss whether the media is biased.
At one point in the discussion, Malkin—who has recently been making the media rounds hawking her latest anti-immigrant book—took aim at Roberts.
“Cokie Roberts, of course, passed away today and God bless her for an incredible career that she had but I distinctly remember that she was one of the first guilty culprits of fake news,” she declared.
https://news.yahoo.com/michelle-malkin-smears-cokie-roberts-005221546.html
Looking forward to hear public comments the day this asshole takes her dirt nap.
John Bolton Asked To Leave Condo Board Meeting After Repeatedly Advocating Bombing Isaacsons
BETHESDA, MD—Following the former Trump administration national security advisor receiving several warnings to tone down the use of violent rhetoric against other residents, John Bolton was reportedly asked Monday to leave a condo board meeting after repeatedly advocating bombing the Isaacsons.
“Mr. Bolton, we must ask that you remove yourself until you can have a calm, rational discussion about the Isaacson family’s noise or over-use of common spaces without recommending double-tapping their unit with an MQ-9 Reaper drone,” said condo board president Marcia Lewis, adding that while she understood Bolton had recently lost his job and was spending more time at his residence, there was a formal process for lodging a complaint that didn’t include any options for the use of military force against the Isaacsons, nor for selling drones to a neighboring condo association that could act as a proxy.
“We’ve done some research into your proposal, and we concluded that it would almost certainly kill the Isaacson family, including their three children, as well as cause mass casualties among the Portico’s other residents, which strikes us as a profound overreaction to Billy Isaacson hitting your car’s side mirror with his basketball the other day. And while we will look into your claim that the family is harboring pets, we have to remind you that owning a dog is not an act of aggression, Mr. Bolton. Furthermore, we have to ask you to tone down your attacks on the Sawyers, as hosting guests late, while annoying, is not a grave threat to national security. In the future, we really suggest you try sitting down with these families for a cup of coffee rather than continuing to call for an all-out aerial assault."
At press time, the condo board had issued Bolton a warning after learning that he had contacted a local demolition company in an effort to get them to knock down the condo building.
https://politics.theonion.com/john-bolton-asked-to-leave-condo-board-meeting-after-re-1838154635
With Markers and Straws, Trump's Campaign Sells Defiance as a Lifestyle
The message the president is selling to his supporters is clear.
“You don’t have any choice. You have to vote for me,” President Trump told a crowd on Monday at a rally in North Carolina, making a point he has revisited often in recent weeks. “Your way of life is under assault by these people.”
Now, would they like a straw with that?
It turns out that Mr. Trump’s message of outright defiance — against Democrats, against the news media and, often, against facts — can exist in tchotchke form. The president’s campaign, which is relying on small-dollar donors to bolster his re-election effort, is also courting supporters willing to pay a little bit more for reminders of that message.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/us/politics/donald-trump-2020-campaign.html
$823k in Trump straw sales? A fool and their money...
Exclusive: Russia carried out a 'stunning' breach of FBI communications system
Source: Yahoo News
escalating the spy game on U.S. soil.
On Dec. 29, 2016, the Obama administration announced that it was giving nearly three dozen Russian diplomats just 72 hours to leave the United States and was seizing two rural East Coast estates owned by the Russian government. As the Russians burned papers and scrambled to pack their bags, the Kremlin protested the treatment of its diplomats, and denied that those compounds -- sometimes known as the "dachas" -- were anything more than vacation spots for their personnel.
The Obama administration's public rationale for the expulsions and closures -- the harshest U.S. diplomatic reprisals taken against Russia in several decades -- was to retaliate for Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. But there was another critical, and secret, reason why those locations and diplomats were targeted.
Both compounds, and at least some of the expelled diplomats, played key roles in a brazen Russian counterintelligence operation that stretched from the Bay Area to the heart of the nation's capital, according to former U.S. officials. The operation, which targeted FBI communications, hampered the bureau's ability to track Russian spies on U.S. soil at a time of increasing tension with Moscow, forced the FBI and CIA to cease contact with some of their Russian assets, and prompted tighter security procedures at key U.S. national security facilities in the Washington area and elsewhere, according to former U.S. officials. It even raised concerns among some U.S. officials about a Russian mole within the U.S. intelligence community.
"It was a very broad effort to try and penetrate our most sensitive operations," said a former senior CIA official.
Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-russia-carried-out-a-stunning-breach-of-fbi-communications-system-escalating-the-spy-game-on-us-soil-090024212.html
Ohio gamer sentenced to 15 months prison in 'swatting' case
An Ohio gamer upset about a $1.50 bet while playing Call of Duty: WWII online was sentenced Friday to 15 months in prison for recruiting a prankster to make a bogus emergency call that resulted in the fatal shooting of a Kansas man by police.
Casey Viner, 19, of North College Hill, Ohio, also is restricted from gaming activity for two years while he is on supervised release after serving his prison term, U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren said in announcing the sentence.
Viner repeatedly gulped and appeared crestfallen as the judge announced his sentencing decision. He glanced into the courtroom gallery where his parents were seated. His tearful mother got up and left the courtroom. His father, an Ohio law enforcement officer, put his head into his hands.
Viner pleaded guilty in April to felony charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice in the hope that he would not be sentenced to prison. Viner admitted trying to hide his involvement in the 2017 incident when he realized the antic had gotten someone killed.
https://news.yahoo.com/ohio-gamer-sentenced-15-months-200355303.html
IMO 15 months is too light a sentence for the gravity of his crime.
The Desert Soil That Could Save Lives
Staring out across the desolate landscape of Valle de la Luna, the idea seems counter-intuitive.
What could the world’s driest desert, home to some of the most extreme levels of ultraviolet radiation on Earth, have to do with fighting disease? But as Michael Goodfellow, a microbiologist at Newcastle University, explains, the Atacama Desert’s inhospitality is exactly what could make it useful to us.
“The premise was that since the conditions are so harsh in the Atacama Desert, organisms become adapted to those conditions,” he says. Goodfellow hoped that if bacteria had managed to survive in such a hostile environment, they would likely produce novel chemical structures which could have important medical applications.
In 2008, he was handed a soil sample taken from the desert’s hyper-arid core, parts of which are thought to have experienced virtually no rainfall for millions of years and were once considered beyond the dry limit for life. “Quite frankly, we didn’t expect to isolate anything,” Goodfellow admits. But to his surprise, he was able to grow a diverse population of bacteria from the sample, sparking a decade of research into the desert’s microbial fauna.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190912-the-desert-soil-that-could-fight-superbug-bacteria
Notre-Dame's Toxic Fallout
The April fire that engulfed Notre-Dame contaminated the cathedral site with clouds of toxic dust and exposed nearby schools, day care centers, public parks and other parts of Paris to alarming levels of lead.
The lead came from the cathedral’s incinerated roof and spire, and it created a public health threat that stirred increasing anxiety in Paris throughout the summer.
Five months after the fire, the French authorities have refused to fully disclose the results of their testing for lead contamination, sowing public confusion, while issuing reassuring statements intended to play down the risks.
Their delays and denials have opened the authorities to accusations that they put reconstruction of the cathedral — which President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to complete in five years — ahead of the health of thousands of people.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/14/world/europe/notre-dame-fire-lead.html
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