Tracker

Top Russian Official Teases ‘the Next Ukraine’ in New Threat Russia’s top diplomat said the actions of Western nations could soon turn Moldova into the “next Ukraine,” according to TASS. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Moldovan President Maia Sandu of being “eager to join NATO.” Sandu, Lavrov said, is “ready to unite with Romania and in fact, to do almost anything.” Romania is a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which was created to provide collective security against Russia. Lavrov’s comments appeared to echo complaints Russian President Vladimir Putin made about Ukraine and NATO when announcing Russia’s invasion into Ukraine last year. Putin cited the expansion of the alliance and Ukraine’s interest in joining NATO as “fundamental threats” against Russia in his speech justifying invasion. “Further expansion of the NATO infrastructure... are unacceptable for us,” Putin said at the time. Lavrov’s comments come as western officials warn that Russia may be gearing up for a new offensive nearly one year into the war in Ukraine. It’s not the first time tensions have flared over whether Russia might be eyeing Moldova as an extension of the conflict in Ukraine. Moldova’s Intelligence and Security Services (SIS) has previously warned that Russia may seek to connect Russian-controlled areas in Ukraine by conducting a new offensive, and then creating a land corridor with the Russian-backed breakaway region of Transnistria in Moldova.

I believe it was PT Barnum who said, among other pithy gems, that no one ever went broke underestimating American intellgence.

Being ignored by your heroes- priceless.

Particularly since he won all those Emmys.

FBI Investigating George Santos’ Alleged Theft from Veteran’s Dying Dog FBI agents are investigating Rep. George Santos’ role in the alleged fraud of a disabled Navy veteran’s GoFundMe for his dying service dog. “Two agents contacted former service member Richard Osthoff Wednesday on behalf of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York", he told Politico. Osthoff gave the agents 2016 text messages with Santos, who he says used his plight to raise $3,000 for life-saving surgery for the pit bull mix, Sapphire – then ghosted with the funds, as first reported by Patch. Jaqueline Sweet first broke the news about Santos being accused of defrauding a disabled veteran on January 17, 2023 in Patch. “Disabled Veteran: George Santos Took $3K From Dying Dog’s GoFundMe Two New Jersey veterans say George Santos promised to raise funds for a lifesaving surgery for a service dog — then disappeared.” George Santos is accused of fraud on almost every level possible at this point: internationally, locally, campaign finances… He has more names than any other person in Congress but uses them in a way that in some ways echoes Donald Trump’s use of other names. https://www.politicususa.com/2023/02/01/fbi-investigating-george-santos-alleged-theft-from-veterans-dying-dog.html

Apparently Boris Johnson's Brexit plan is working to perfection. Britain is the only western European country to forecast a contraction in its economy for 2023. Along with the recession, a spike in unemployment and inflation are expected. A bad time to be a Tory in England as well as Manitoba.

When you rule by divine right, laws are irrelevant and do not apply to anyone but the peasants.

If you do not expect Glass Onion to be a nail-biter whodunit and accept it for a romp with borderline outrageous overacting, its fun.

Trump’s Financial Situation Is Even Shakier Than We Knew Trump’s tax returns reveal that he has far less liquidity than he’s presented—and it could explain a lot of his behavior. When Donald Trump left office in early 2021, he was apparently on much thinner financial ice than almost anyone knew. That revelation, which three accounting experts confirmed upon reviewing Trump’s 2020 tax return, may help explain some of the financial and political moves the former president has made in the intervening years. Snowballing legal fees, along with other possible legal settlements and judgments, threaten to consume the cash pile he needs to bankroll his business activity, as well as fund a lavish lifestyle and maintain his image of excess—an emperor atop a golden toilet. How big is that cash pile, exactly? Accountants caution against reading too much into tax returns of high net worth individuals like Trump—especially ones in the real estate business—because those filings can be extraordinarily complex. That said, all three tax experts interviewed for this article concurred that Trump’s stash on hand at the end of 2020 does not appear to be quite as generous as the returns might make it seem. While Trump often boasts of being a billionaire—which, in terms of assets, he is—two of the experts who reviewed his returns for this article said that as his presidency came to its tumultuous end, it appears Trump, depending on interest rates, may have had immediate access to anywhere between $30 million and $100 million, with that amount itself scattered across hundreds of entities. That bottom line was reflected in new documents filed last week by New York Attorney General Letitia James in her $250 million fraud lawsuit against Trump, three of his adult children, and his businesses. Those documents show that Trump—a billionaire on paper—only had control over about $65 million in liquid assets as he prepared to depart the White House. The cash flow discrepancy, according to three accounting experts who reviewed Trump’s 2020 tax returns, is significant, and can be chalked up to one simple fact: The vast majority of Trump’s ordinary income is reported as interest income and derived from pass-through entities. His tax returns are not intended to report if this income was actually distributed to him—they only indicate what income is attributed to him as an owner or investor. That fact is central to James’ lawsuit, which argues that these funds may not actually equate to liquidity—and that when Trump applied for loans, he played up those “restricted funds” as his own money in order to help secure the loans. In reality, the suit says, a significant portion of what Trump called “his” cash was wholly controlled by another entity—the real estate behemoth Vornado—which Trump could not unilaterally access if he, or his businesses, needed to find some funds. “Internal Trump Organization records acknowledge that cash residing in the Vornado Partnership Interests was not Mr. Trump’s to access at his whim,” the new filing reads. The filing goes on to cite those internal records, which admit that “distributions are at the discretion of Vornado” and “at this point we do not have all of the data that goes into Vornado’s decision making, thus we are attributing no distribution for these properties.” Citing Trump Organization financial statements, James points out that of the $92.7 million that Trump held in liquid assets in 2020, $28.25 million of that amount was tied up in “partnership entities Mr. Trump did not control as Mr. Trump’s own liquidity.” In some years, she said, “these restricted funds accounted for almost one-third of all the cash reported by Mr. Trump.” Mark S. Gottlieb, a forensic accountant and tax law expert in Manhattan, told The Daily Beast that if the attorney general’s premise is correct and Trump does not have access to portions of the 2020 income attributed and taxed to him, those amounts are tantamount to “phantom income.”

Trump in Even More Legal Hot Water After Lying to Judge Former President Donald Trump appears to have lied in sworn court records, opening him up to severe sanctions by a New York judge who has already lost his patience and threatened to punish him before. Trump claimed he wasn’t the president of the Trump Organization during his four years at the White House, despite previously testifying that he was an “inactive president.” And he claimed that he didn’t have a financial stake in a partnership with the real estate company Vornado, even though he previously testified that he did. On Tuesday, the New York Attorney General’s Office asked Justice Arthur F. Engoron to intervene quickly to ensure that the former president still faces a trial later this year that could bankrupt his company. New York AG Letitia James sued the Trump family and their real estate empire for at least $250 million last year, the end result of a three-year investigation that documented how the Trumps have routinely faked property values to score better bank loans and cheat taxes. The civil lawsuit threatens to yank the company’s credentials, seize its bank accounts, and choke off its access to any banks in New York City—the global finance capital. https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-in-even-more-legal-hot-water-after-lying-to-judge-arthur-engoron?ref=home

For those who would describe themselves as atheists or agnostics, there are some interesting books out there: Forever Ours and Hello From Heaven. There are a lot of others, but these two I would recommend.

Marilyn Manson Accused Of Sexual Assault And Grooming A Minor In New Lawsuit A woman identified as Jane Doe filed a lawsuit Monday alleging Marilyn Manson groomed and repeatedly sexually assaulted her beginning when she was 16 years old. Filed in Nassau County Supreme Court in Long Island, New York, it names Nothing Records and Interscope Records as co-defendants and alleges intentional infliction of emotional distress and sexual battery by the musician, whose real name is Brian Warner. A lawyer for Manson denied the allegations, calling them a “fabricated tale.” In the filing, the plaintiff claimed Manson invited her “and one of the other younger girls” onto his tour bus when she was 16 after a 1995 concert in Dallas. He allegedly asked them how old they were before he raped the plaintiff, who was a virgin. The age of consent in Texas is 17. “After he was done, Defendant Warner laughed at her,” the filing states, adding: “Then Defendant Warner demanded Plaintiff to ‘get the **** off of my bus’ and threatened Plaintiff that, if she told anyone, he would kill her and her family.” The plaintiff alleges that one of Manson’s crew members provided her with a 1-800 number and a password so the two could be in contact. She started using drugs and alcohol to cope and continued to rely on them for years to come, according to the lawsuit.

New details on Fani Willis' potential indictment of Donald Trump revealed: report The walls may be closing in on former President Donald Trump as the investigation in Fulton County, Ga., continues to progress. According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ is moving closer toward indicting the former president in connection to his infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R). Per CREW's Brie Sparkman, "the special purpose grand jury has reportedly heard testimony from crucial witnesses, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former national security advisor Michael Flynn, Senator Lindsey Graham, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, and former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows." According to Sparkman, Trump is at the center of a string of alleged crimes that are both election-related and non-election related. Some of the potential charges include solicitation to commit election fraud, making false statements, and potential violations of Georgia’s RICO Act. Sparkman also explained the basis of the investigation and the allegations against Trump. "Trump is alleged to have repeatedly lied about the 2020 election to Georgia officials and to have used that misleading conduct, as well as intimidation and threats, to push them to change the election outcome," Sparkman wrote. "Trump may have committed the crime of false statements and improperly influencing government officials when he repeatedly told Raffensperger that he won the election as well as when he listed numerous inaccuracies and falsehoods about the election." To face charges, Sparkman pointed out that there also has to be a "'pattern' of misconduct as shown by violations of two or more specified crimes, including the false statements or improper influence crimes mentioned above." https://www.alternet.org/new-details-fani-willis-indictment/

Apparently the reason that Henry Cavill is no longer in the new season of The Witcher is that he, being an avid gamer, refused to go along with the new storyline that deviated substantially from the video game scenarios.

Might her initials be S. K.? If so, her story has leaked out already.

Heatly should have been and was held criminally accountable. Still, a singular lapse in good judgement is different from a repeated pattern of criminal behaviour, and it is particularly heinous because it was a muscular, much larger male beating three different vulnerable women. The probability is that Bobby Hull witnessed violence in his family of origin, but ultimately he chose to repeat it. Not all boys who are exposed to such repeat the sins of the father, but sadly, about 2/3 of girls from those same homes wind up in abusive relationships.

In my business, it was an axiom that almost all addictions, process or substance are driven by traumatic life events. To put it another way, hurt people hurt people. What started as an emotional anaesthetic becomes physically and emotionally addictive as the sufferer comes to believe that she cannot cope with life without their magic potion. And there is a great distinction between a one-time event and a behavioural pattern.

And because it is easy to allow the race of the officers to distract us from the deeper issues embedded in policing, I offer this observation. Yes, the five Black cops are being treated more harshly than in most cases of police abuse that we get to see. That doesn't ever mean treat them more like white cops. It means lobbying for more white cops to be treated like these five Black cops. (They could start with Preston Hemphill, the white officer who allegedly tased Tyre Nichols but hasn't been given the same attention as his cohorts.) Treat cops like cops, period, and we never have to have this conversation. But under no circumstance should we come remotely close to defending this gang of Memphis thugs against the racism they signed on to implement and sustain. Upon hearing that Tyre Nichols was, among other things, a fan of photography, I was reminded of the science behind aperture. Camera lenses have diaphragms, and depending on how open or closed that diaphragm is determines how sharp or blurry a photo is. Not the whole picture, but the background behind whatever is closest to the lens. If the aperture is set low, lens opened wide, then the background is blurry. As you adjust the aperture to higher settings, the background comes into sharper focus. Imagine Tyre Nichols that night. See him beaten by a gang of policemen in the dark. If you are someone who refuses to watch the video, just know that however you imagine that violence is just about right. In fact, all you can see is the violence that would eventually end his life. In that moment, there is no skateboard, no waiting child, no photography class. All of that is in the background somewhere, turned to smoke and dappled ghosts. We do not see any of those facets of Tyre in the face of such brutality. All we see are swinging limbs and fists, the holding up of a body that has no wind left in it, still being bludgeoned. That is what most of us saw in our minds when we first heard about this incident, sans video. All of our apertures regarding police violence are set low, but as some of us receive more information, the lens tightens and aspects of his life snap into focus. He becomes less of a target and more of a person. By contrast, the aperture of the policemen who killed Tyre Nichols was set to the most myopic level possible. In fact, they had no higher setting, focused only on the body in front of them, not as a person, but as a thing to tenderize into submission. We so rarely see police officers stop during the commission of violence, or stop another officer in the act of violence, because they are incapable of seeing the subject of their abuse as a person. Once police of any stripe have decided to harm you, you have no background, no context, no history. You become the object of whatever their biases may be. Being Black, you understand that those biases are almost always rooted in fear, guilt, or insecurity. Being Black doesn’t protect you from Black police; it exacerbates such confrontations. That the officers were Black just means they can skip the part where you as a Black target see them for what they are: power drunk hands of a value-compromised state. Then it’s just a question of whether or not they see themselves in you or above you, and if they feel the need to prove it that day. https://www.levelman.com/tyre-nichols-video-reaction/ BTW: a sixth police officer (white, I believe) who attended the scene has been suspended, as were two EMTs who apparently changed their incident reports due to pressure from police to omit details that would incriminate the charged officers. It was reported that this is a common practice in these sort of events.

There is reason to believe that during examination for discovery segment, Trump's lawyers justification will be found to be so unsupportable that the case can be judged as "without merit" and dismissed. But its all theatre. “Going for the kill”: Legal experts say Trump could face 4 years in prison amid new grand jury probe The Manhattan district attorney's office on Monday began presenting evidence to a new grand jury about former President Donald Trump's role in hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign, according to The New York Times. The grand jury was recently impaneled and District Attorney Alvin Bragg appears to be "laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against the former president in the coming months," sources told the outlet. David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer who helped broker the deal with Daniels, was seen entering the building where the grand jury is sitting on Monday. Former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payment "in coordination with, and at the direction of" Trump in 2018, has said he has repeatedly spoken with prosecutors. Prosecutors also intend to interview former National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard and Trump Organization employees Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff — who helped arrange for Cohen to be reimbursed the $130,000 he paid to Daniels, according to the report. Prosecutors are also expected to meet with former Daniels attorney Keith Davidson. Prosecutors have also contacted former 2016 Trump campaign officials and subpoenaed phone records and other documents in a sign prosecutors are seeking to corroborate witness accounts. https://www.salon.com/2023/01/31/going-for-the-kill-legal-experts-say-could-face-4-years-in-amid-new-grand-jury-probe/

There is a legal maneuver in the US called a "strategically leveraged lawsuit" which is intended not to be won, but to intimidate and deter the defendant who would have to amass staggering legal costs to defend.