Ztolkins

Ztolkins's Journal

November 5, 2019

Kafka in Foggy Bottom: impeachment transcript reveals fear of Trump tweets

Source: The Guardian

What shines through the testimony of Marie Yovanovitch is her disorientation. She is a veteran diplomat at the peak of her career, and in one of the most challenging but important posts in US foreign policy. But she had no clue what was happening inside her own government.

On 24 April this year, she received a call from Carol Perez, the director general of the foreign service, speaking to her in cryptic tones as if Yovanovitch’s life was in danger if she remained at her ambassadorial post in Kiev. She spoke as if there was a threat too awful to describe clearly on a phone line.

“She said that there was a lot of concern for me, that I needed to be on the next plane home to Washington,” Yovanovitch recalled in her testimony to the congressional committees conducting impeachment hearings. Taken aback, the ambassador to Ukraine wanted to know what the sudden panic was about. Perez just told her: “I don’t know, but this is about your security. You need to come home immediately.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/05/impeachment-marie-yovanovitch-ukraine-transcript-reveals-fear-and-chaos-in-the-state-department

These guys weren't afraid of foreign threats, they were afraid of the president.

Makes their testimony look even better.

September 16, 2019

I was just rewatching headliners on MSNBC

The Warren episode. I did not know in 2018 that she gave out money from her campaign to other campaigns or to the DNC across the country, I think is what was said. If she ends up getting the nomination, I'm going to say that this what is one of the smartest moves she could have made before she even announced she was running for president.

I'd really like to see her win the nomination and select Harris as a VP. Or Mayor Pete.. I recommend the episode to anyone who has not seen it.

June 11, 2019

JON STEWART Goes OFF On Congress During 9/11 Hearing

Worth the whole watch. Damn, I miss him.

February 3, 2019

Parkland Dad Manuel Oliver Responds to Louis C.K. With a Brutal "Standup Set" About His Murdered Son

There’s dark humor, there’s black humor, there’s gallows humor, and then there’s this “standup set,” miles past the event horizon of some distant black hole, from Manuel Oliver, whose son Joaquin died in the Parkland mass shooting almost a year ago. Oliver didn’t appreciate his son’s death being comedic fodder for disgraced workplace masturbator Louis C.K., who has been trying out Parkland-related standup material lately; here’s C.K.’s joke about resenting the fame and attention the Parkland survivors got by calling for gun control after their classmates were shot to death in front of them, as told in a leaked set from December:

"You’re not interesting because you went to a high school where kids got shot. Why does that mean I have to listen to you? Why does that make you interesting? You didn’t get shot, you pushed some fat kid in the way, and now I gotta listen to you talking?"

After that joke—along with some really fresh material about the link between ethnicity and penis size—went over like a lead balloon, C.K. dropped it in favor of this reverse backflip in a San Jose set last month:

"If you ever need people to forget that you jerked off, what you do is you make a joke about kids that got shot."

So here’s Manuel Oliver’s response, in a promotional video for ChangeTheRef.org, a non-profit organization he and his wife founded Patricia Oliver founded in their son’s memory to fight for gun control.

[link:https://slate.com/culture/2019/02/manuel-oliver-louis-ck-joaquin-oliver-parkland-standup-change-ref.html|

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