Hello Don, got a new tax cut? Trump continued

[PerkingFaintly]

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3035639-Is-he-Right-Left-or-is-He-Nothing-at-All-Trump-thread-continued?pg=1

Nice work if you can get it.

"If you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina"

Just
Shut
The
Fuck
Up

Lweji

www.justsecurity.org/45567/evidence-mounts-white-house-anticipates-damaging-results-russia-investigation/

Just because it is always interesting watching crazy people peddle backwards at high speed.

Reddit's Trumpkins on the Vegas shooting, before and after they learned it was a rich old white man
boingboing.net/2017/10/03/murderous-rich-white-men.html/amp

Oh god lweji, he really does not possess a shred of humanity.

I can’t verify this and don’t understand computers enough to know if this is plausible but hopefully this is another turn of the screws. Big disclaimers with this one because I don’t know anything about the sources.

random facts girl.
random facts girl. @soychicka
Look what @ariehkovler found:
Javanka's private email host = THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION

only #SMARTech would be lulzier

medium.com/@ariehkovler/jared-and-ivankas-secret-email-addresses-are-hosted-by-the-trump-org-2da6f36a8b39

Reasons it matters:

1. Admin access to sensitive info
2. Poor security track record
3. AYFKM? Not even KushCo, but TrumpOrg? I. Can't. Even.

This means that Jared and Ivanka’s private email addresses, set up during the Transition and used in the White House, were hosted by the Trump Organization.

Obviously this raises a lot more questions about who actually made the domain name and who added the email accounts to the Trump Org’s private mailserver. It raises questions of security and privacy, because Trump Org IT staff would potentially have access to the email accounts. It raises questions of judgement and competence, given how similar this all feels to other, erm, high-profile cases involving private email servers.

They may have just opened up the entire TrumpOrg's information architecture to investigation - to ensure no nefarious admin activity 🤣🤣🤣

Renato Mariotti
Renato Mariotti @renato_mariotti
THREAD: What questions about the limits of the President's pardon power is Robert Mueller asking Michael Dreeben to look at?
1/ Today I wrote this thread about today's news that Mueller is asking Dreeben to research preemptive pardons:
2/ As I said in that thread, this suggests that Mueller is concerned that the pardon power could be used to hinder his investigation.
3/ Since then, many of you asked me what questions Mueller will be looking at. I don't know for certain, but I can make an educated guess.
4/ Before I get into the questions, it's important to know that the President's pardon power is extremely broad as to federal offenses.
5/ The only limits that are written in the Constitution are that it doesn't affect impeachment or apply to state offenses.
6/ That doesn't mean that there aren't other limits, perhaps coming from other parts of the Constitution, but any limits are untested.
7/ So if anyone tells you the President can't pardon someone for a particular reason, take it with a grain of salt.
8/ We don't know for sure because courts haven't considered these very unusual circumstances. So what are those circumstances?
9/ I discussed the first question in this piece in @thehill. Does the President have the power to pardon himself

thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/343273-should-the-president-pardon-himself-and-his-family?amp

10/ My answer was "no" but take that with a grain of salt. Another question I discussed in the piece was how pardons would impact witnesses.
11/ Pardoning a witness takes away their 5th Amendment right not to testify. So another question Mueller might have:
12/ Can the President pardon someone for a crime, and then pardon them for criminal contempt if they refuse to testify? Any limits on it?
13/ Another question he might research is whether the President can pardon a co-conspirator or someone who aided him in committing a crime?
14/ He also might ask if the President can pardon someone if the pardon would itself be part of a pattern of obstructing an investigation.
15/ I don't know for sure, but it's smart and typical for a prosecutor to anticipate legal issues and be prepared for them.
16/ What's interesting here is that Mueller anticipates pardons could be used to hinder him.
17/ I suspect Dreeben will come up with a legal strategy to limit or invalidate certain pardons, or ways to work around a pardon. /end

Seung Min Kim
Seung Min Kim @seungminkim
NEWS: Trump tells Republicans that any immigration deal must address only current DACA recipients

GOP lawmakers say Trump wants tough measures in Dreamers deal

www.politico.com/story/2017/10/03/daca-dreamers-trump-republicans-243410

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-puerto-rico-crisis-heckled-golf-trophy-hurricane-victims-a7978171.html

newrepublic.com/article/145108/biggest-kleptocrat-trump-administration?utm_content=buffer2880b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

www.buzzfeed.com/hayesbrown/the-us-voted-against-a-un-resolution-condemning-the-death?utm_term=.ag0k5D2VE#.ukxDX69Nr

Thanks Pain.

More on Dreeben.

www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2017-10-03/mueller-tasks-adviser-with-getting-ahead-of-pre-emptive-pardons

This is a fab headline: TWO WEEKS LATER
Puerto Ricans Ready as Trump Finally Makes Landfall: ‘Come See for Yourself the Devastation’.

www.thedailybeast.com/puerto-ricans-as-president-trump-arrives-come-see-for-yourself-the-devastation

More on the Constitutional right to arm yourself to the teeth.

www.newsweek.com/2015/07/24/americans-mass-shootings-assault-weapons-right-bear-arms-354203.html

Doesn't a President have a whole team to think about the 'optics'? It's almost as if he is being sabotaged.

Kyle Griffin‏Verified account @kylegriffin1

Here's a pic of Trump tossing paper towels into a crowd as he hands out supplies in Puerto Rico. (via AP/Evan Vucci)

Morning Joe on gun control.

"At Some Point, Congress Has To Say Enough"

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-gay-sex-death-penalty-un-same-sex-relations-human-rights-council-saudi-arabia-iraq-nikki-haley-a7980981.html
US votes against UN resolution condemning gay sex death penalty, joining Iraq and Saudi Arabia
Americaone of 13 countries on Human Rights Council to oppose historicvote

Keith on point as always.

(Has subtitles/closed captions for those that use)

Trump is Not Planning to Rebuild Puerto Rico | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann

GOP Congressman Met in Moscow With Kremlin-Linked Lawyer at Center of Russia Investigation

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher met in Moscow with Natalia Veselnitskaya two months before she met with Donald Trump Jr.

foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/03/gop-congressman-met-in-moscow-with-kremlin-linked-lawyer-at-center-of-russia-investigation/amp/

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher met with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya during a 2016 trip to Moscow, a previously undisclosed tête-à-tête that sheds additional light on the extent to which Moscow-based political operatives sought to influence American officials in the run-up to last year’s presidential election.

In an interview with a pro-Russian Crimean news service, Veselnitskaya said she met with Rohrabacher — a California Republican and arguably the most prominent advocate in Congress for closer relations between Washington and Moscow — in April 2016 to discuss issues surrounding the Magnitsky Act, the punitive American sanctions measure responding to Russian human rights abuses that she has lobbied against.

“We just asked to listen to us, just to listen to the alternative version,” Veselnitskaya said in the interview, seated in a futuristic-looking wingback chair set against a light purple background. She attacked the sanctions measure’s proponents and told Rohrabacher that American lawmakers had been duped.

“‘Do not let yourself be used by scammers,’” she recalled saying.

Kenneth Grubbs, a spokesman for Rohrabacher, said he believed Veselnitskaya was “among many people” Rohrabacher encountered during a congressional delegation he led to Moscow. He added that Rohrabacher “was not focused on her identity” and did not recall the meeting.

While Rohrabacher’s trip to Moscow has been widely reported, his meeting with Veselnitskaya has not.

And so on

Molly McKew
Molly McKew @MollyMcKew
I'll tell you from personal experience that Russian agents are super focused on youtube as the bridge to the younger generation.

www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2017-10-03/google-election-probe-is-said-to-focus-on-youtube-gmail

As part of a wide-ranging investigation into how Russian-linked operatives harnessed social media during the 2016 U.S. election, lawmakers are homing in on Google services including YouTube and Gmail.

The Senate has called Alphabet Inc.’s Google to testify on Nov. 1, along with executives from Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. A House panel, which is running its own probe, is focusing on any materials on Russian ad buying on Google, search engine manipulations, fake news and the potential uses of YouTube, according to two House committee members. Another target of the inquiry is Gmail, the committee members said.

Initially, Google said it found no evidence of targeted tactics like the thousands of election-related ads purchased on Facebook’s social network. Still, the online search giant has a wealth of channels that could be tapped to spread controversial political messages or sow discord online. There are advertisements that appear on search results; a gigantic ad network, which handles the placement of marketing spots on sites across the web; and Google News, which aggregates stories from various outlets and itself is grappling with ways to handle intentionally false stories. There is also Gmail, the target of high-profile hacks before the election.

Yet Google’s most vulnerable property might be YouTube. The world's largest digital-video portal is a glut of content. Russia Today, a Kremlin-tied media outlet and a focus of Congressional investigators, has YouTube channels with more than 2.5 million subscribers. Google sells the network, known as RT, in its package of premium ad inventory, which commands higher rates because of its large audience. The internet giant said on Tuesday it recently pulled RT from this program, known as Google Preferred.

Twitter and Facebook haven’t stopped Russia-backed RT from advertising on their websites

www.recode.net/platform/amp/2017/10/3/16405096/twitter-facebook-russia-today-rt-congress-investigation-presidential-election

Twitter has continued to allow a Russian government-supported news network to advertise on its platform, even though the tech company sounded alarms about its ads to lawmakers investigating the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In a meeting with House and Senate investigators last week, Twitter executives shared more than 1,800 promoted tweets from Russia Today, known as RT, and its three main accounts on the site. Some of the ads, valued in total at about $274,000, sought to promote RT’s own stories, including those that sharply attacked Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Twitter’s decision to share that information with Congress followed a report by the U.S. government’s top intelligence agencies, which slammed RT in January as the “Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet.” Despite those concerns, though, the news network’s three Twitter accounts -- @RTcom, @RTAmerica and @ActualidadRT — remain fully operational. And Twitter has not banned RT from advertising, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Facebook, meanwhile, similarly has not shut down RT’s official pages, one of which boasts more than 4.5 million followers. Nor has Facebook targeted any new advertising restrictions against the news network, a spokesman for the social giant told Recode, before adding they are monitoring the situation. Facebook nonetheless finds itself in congressional crosshairs for Russian-sponsored misinformation circulated in posts and advertisements before Election Day.

Researchers Are Upset That Twitter Is Dismissing Their Work On Election Interference

“I think it's dangerous that companies like Twitter are discrediting academic studies in the reckless way they are,” professor David Carroll told BuzzFeed News.

www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/charliewarzel/researchers-are-upset-that-twitter-is-dismissing-their-work

An excerpt:

Last week, the Oxford Internet Institute published a timely paper suggesting that polarizing, sensational, or outright fake political news and information was shared disproportionately in the U.S. immediately before and after the 2016 presidential election in key battleground states. The study’s conclusion — based on an analysis of over 7 million tweets collected between November 1–11 — suggested a coordinated effort to target crucial voters. It was quickly picked up by major news outlets as the latest in a string of revelations about the role social media played in the spread of false information in 2016.

Twitter, however, attempted to discredit the research. The Washington Post reported that, in response to the paper — which the company received ahead of publication — Twitter “complained about the limits of research conducted using publicly available sets of tweets, as Oxford’s was, through a function called the Twitter search API, which allows developers and researchers to get certain public data from company servers.” Twitter went on to note that “Research conducted by third parties through our search API about the impact of bots and misinformation on Twitter is almost always inaccurate and methodologically flawed.” (One of Twitter’s legitimate claims is that the study was not peer reviewed.)

Later that day, Twitter reiterated that argument in a blog post summarizing its closed testimony before the joint House and Senate intelligence committees about the role it may have played in Russian interference with the 2016 election. ”Studies of the impact of bots and automation on Twitter necessarily and systematically under-represent our enforcement actions because these defensive actions are not visible via our API,” Twitter said.

Twitter’s comment was a clear and pointed warning: Third-party academic research about its platform is limited in scope and shouldn’t always be trusted. Kris Shaffer, a professor and data scientist at the University of Mary Washington who has studied bots and misinformation on Twitter, summed it up this way: “You can only trust Twitter to tell you what's really going on on Twitter.”

Russia-Linked Facebook Pages Pushed Divisions After Election, Including on Charlottesville

Messages posted as recently as August called for killing Muslims and labeled immigrants ‘rapists, murderers, child molesters’

www.wsj.com/amp/articles/russia-linked-facebook-pages-pushed-divisive-views-through-august-1507051387

Small ray of hope;

Ari Berman
Ari Berman @AriBerman
SCOTUS could finally be ready to outlaw extreme partisan gerrymandering. My story on big voting rights case today

Anthony Kennedy’s Questioning Suggests Extreme Partisan Gerrymandering Could Be in Danger

A ruling against Wisconsin’s GOP maps would have huge national significance.

www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/10/anthony-kennedys-questioning-suggests-extreme-partisan-gerrymandering-could-be-in-danger/

A lesson to the Trumps - you can't buy class.

Michelle Obama Reflects on White House "Standard of Ethics," Urges Women to "Speak Up"

Towards the end of the discussion, Obama was surprised by a special recorded message by her husband to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.

“Your strength, grace, determination honesty, and the fact that you look so good doing all of this, it’s remarkable. It’s no wonder that as people got to know you as I got to know you, that they fell in love,” her husband said. “It’s truly the best decision I ever made to be persistent enough to ask you out on a date that you finally gave in and I hope you feel the same way.”

www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/news/michelle-obama-shonda-rhimes-pennsylvania-conference-women-1045311

Sorry that should be for the Trumps

That BoingBoing excerpt was illuminating about the current thought processes of Trumpsters, Bigly. They are quite confused. I picture their minds as being full of drunk bees.