None of them get a pass. They’re all shadows and secrets but they echo Trump’s words and back him publicly and John Kelly joined the board of a company that jails children. So, yeah… they feel like more from the line of Jeff Flake, all talk, no action.
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Blood for oil, even now. We let them be ethnically cleansed and become beholden to Assad and Russia, and still some stand with us.
US Troops Working ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ With Kurds to Protect Syrian Oil Fields From ISIS
Turkey Vows to Send ISIS Militants Home
ISIS recruiters are preying on vulnerable domestic workers in Hong Kong and Singapore
U.S. will leave up to 600 troops in northeastern Syria to prevent ISIS resurgence, top general says
The death of Baghdadi isn’t the end of ISIS
Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman says US still wants to stop ISIS in Syria despite troop withdrawal
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Armored ICE Vehicle Sparks Panic In Queens During Firearms Bust
Erdogan’s bodyguards reportedly also attacked U.S. Secret Service members in 2017
Erdogan says U.S. not fulfilling pledge to remove Kurds from Syria border area
Turkish patrol kills protester amid shaky truce in Syria
Videos circulating online showed the group of protesters trying to mount one of the vehicles and then the men shouting, apparently after the man is run over
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Uh oh…hang in there RBG.
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Yes…a groundswell of Senators…but of course no R’s.
“On the long list of people that work in the Trump administration who we believe should not be there, Stephen Miller is at the top of that list,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told HuffPost.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said Miller has overseen some of President Donald Trump’s “most inhumane policies, including family separation (among undocumented immigrants). He pushes conspiracy theories to divide the American people and to distract from this administration’s failures. He should resign.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) said Miller has “used his role to impose his extreme views on policy,” especially on immigration issues.
And Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said Miller, who became a Trump loyalist during the 2016 campaign after serving on the staff of then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), should “never have been near the White House to begin with.”
The 24 senators are among a growing coalition of lawmakers and civil rights organizations pushing for Miller’s ouster. On Thursday, 107 Democratic members of the House published an open letter to Trump demanding he fire Miller. Earlier this week, over 50 major civil rights groups — including the NAACP and the Human Rights Campaign — penned their own open letter to the White House with the same demand.
Eight organizations belonging to an initiative called Jews Against White Nationalism called on Miller to quit. “As your fellow American Jews,” the organizations wrote in a petition, “we will not rest until you resign.”
The mounting pressure is the result of a series of damning reports published by the Southern Poverty Law Center documenting how Miller, while working as Sessions’ aide, sent some 900 emails to editors of the far-right website Breitbart in 2015 and 2016.
From the R’s
Of the 53 Republican senators contacted by HuffPost regarding Miller’s white nationalism, only one responded directly.
“I’m unfamiliar with the whole issue,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said. His office did not respond to subsequent HuffPost emails asking whether Cramer would bother to make himself familiar with how a white nationalist helps shape America’s immigration policy.
The office of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) did not respond to a HuffPost request for comment, even though the leaked emails show Miller holding a particular animus for the Cuban-American lawmaker.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), responding to a question from a HuffPost reporter in Washington, said he would like Miller to “more fully describe his involvement with that movement.”
“I know the president gets to choose who’s around him, but I don’t think that reflects as well as it might,” he said in the interview.
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Explosive New Report Says CIA Has Taped Recording Of Saudi Crown Prince Ordering Jamal Khashoggi’s Killing
https://news.yahoo.com/explosive-report-says-cia-taped-140835003.html
Uncertain on this one:
https://stockdailydish.com/newly-released-video-is-said-to-show-saudi-hit-team-carrying-khashoggis-body-parts-in-suitcases/
The CIA has a recording of a phone call in which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave instructions to “silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible,” Turkish news website Hurriyet Daily News said on Thursday.
It cited a prominent Turkish columnist as saying CIA director Gina Haspel had “signaled” the existence of the recording during a visit to Ankara last month.
A Turkish official contacted by Reuters said he had no information about such a recording. “There is talk of another recording,” Hurriyet newspaper journalist Abdulkadir Selvi wrote in a column, saying the purported call took place between Prince Mohammed and his brother, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington.
“It is being said that CIA chief Gina Haspel indicated this during her visit to Turkey,” he wrote, adding that they had discussed Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdom’s de facto ruler.
“It is being said the crown prince gave orders to ‘silence Jamal Khashoggi as soon as possible’,” in a call which was monitored by the U.S. agency, he said.
A day earlier, Turkish news site Haberturk released what it said was quotes from a tape of the Saudi dissident journalist’s last moments.
Also Thursday, Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, said after talks with Turkey’s foreign minister that a transparent and credible investigation into the killing of Khashoggi has not yet been completed.
Khashoggi, a critic of the kingdom’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Riyadh has said it was seeking the death penalty for five suspects in the case.
Speaking at a joint news conference with EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara, Mogherini said she was completely against any application of the death penalty.
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A 12-post thread from Nancy Pelosi’s team showcasing headlines from papers across the country about the response to the impeachment hearings.
I never saw this story from 2018.
I am also not surprised by it at all.
Putin: Maybe Jews or minorities behind US election interference
Putin was speaking with NBC News’ Megyn Kelly as she repeatedly asked him about Russian involvement in the election. Last month, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for allegedly meddling in the 2016 presidential election, charging them with conspiracy to defraud the United States.
At one point, Putin suggested that other ethnic groups may have been involved.
“Maybe they’re not even Russians,” he said. “Maybe they’re Ukrainians, Tatars, Jews, just with Russian citizenship. Even that needs to be checked. Maybe they have dual citizenship. Or maybe a green card. Maybe it was the Americans who paid them for this work. How do you know? I don’t know.”
Putin’s comment caught the attention of the Anti-Defamation League.
So, anti-Semitic, attacking minorities in his nation, invoking the dual loyalty canard, and suggesting we may have attacked ourselves.
Far-right group warning of Islamist infiltration to hold banquet at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club
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Yay…our fighter has emerged back to health.
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Here comes some very damning evidence of T’s after-the-fact deliberations to clear up the Ukraine withholding military funds…should be interesting to review.
A confidential White House review of President Trump’s decision to place a hold on military aid to Ukraine has turned up hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification for the decision and a debate over whether the delay was legal, according to three people familiar with the records.
The research by the White House Counsel’s Office, which was triggered by a congressional impeachment inquiry announced in September, includes early August email exchanges between acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House budget officials seeking to provide an explanation for withholding the funds after President Trump had already ordered a hold in mid-July on the nearly $400 million in security assistance, according to the three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations.
One person briefed on the records examination said White House lawyers are expressing concern that the review has turned up some unflattering exchanges and facts that could at a minimum embarrass the president. It’s unclear if the Mulvaney discussions or other records pose any legal problems for Trump in the impeachment inquiry, but some fear they could pose political problems if revealed publicly.
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Reposted…over to Who left the WH.
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The Trump administration is withholding more than $100 million in U.S. military assistance to Lebanon that has been approved by Congress and is favored by his national security team, an assertion of executive control of foreign aid that is similar to the delay in support for Ukraine at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday congratulated Lebanon as the country marked its independence day but made no mention of the hold-up in aid that State Department and Pentagon officials have complained about for weeks.
It came up in impeachment testimony by David Hale, the No. 3 official in the State Department, according to the transcript of the closed-door hearing released this week. He described growing consternation among diplomats as the administration would neither release the aid nor provide an explanation for the hold.
“People started asking: What’s the problem?” Hale told the impeachment investigators.
…
The $105 million in Foreign Military Funding for the Lebanese Armed Forces has languished for months, awaiting approval from the Office of Management and Budget despite congressional approval, an early September notification to lawmakers that it would be spent and overwhelming support for it from the Pentagon, State Department and National Security Council.As with the Ukraine assistance, OMB has not explained the reason for the delay.
"… the FMF should resume quickly and publicly: both because of the program’s merit in terms of improving the LAF’s counterterrorism performance but also to undermine the Hezbollah-Iranian-Syrian-Russian narrative that the U.S. is unreliable,” [Jeffrey Feltman, a former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon] told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.Hale told the impeachment inquiry there were parallels between the Lebanon and Ukraine aid in that the White House refused to offer an explanation for the delays.
He said inquiries into the Lebanon assistance since June have been met with silence.
…
“It’s beyond the pale,” said one official. “This is people at the NSC and OMB trying to insert their own personal ideologies into something that most everyone else supports as a national security interest.”
Who benefits from the military aid being withheld? Russia for one. This is creating instability and a power vacuum in Lebanon where Russia can step in – just as they did in Syria.
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I apparently attracted a Saudi troll attack in response to the story about the MBS recordings on Twitter. All of these were in response to the only one of the posts I made that had MBS’s full name. Interesting.
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Some Hong Kong election results in…and clearly so far, the pro Hong Kong position to not kowtow to Beijing demands.
Figures compiled by the South China Morning Post newspaper show pro-democracy parties winning 108 seats and pro-Beijing parties just 12 out of a total of 452, with many swinging to the pro-democracy camp. The results appear to be an indictment of Hong Kong’s political leaders and an endorsement of the protest movement
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China allegedly approached an Australian to serve as their spy in Parliament. He sounded the alarm and was later found dead.
This sounds like a plot straight out of a John Le Carré novel. But Australians are taking it seriously – as they should. Could a foreign government try the same thing here? Mmmm… 
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison says allegations of a plot to plant a Chinese spy in Canberra’s parliament are “deeply disturbing”.
The allegations - first aired by local network Nine - assert that a suspected Chinese espionage ring approached a Chinese-Australian man to run as an MP.
The 32-year-old man has since died in unexplained circumstances.
China has denied the allegations, which Australia’s domestic spy agency has confirmed it is investigating.
In a rare public statement, the agency said it was taking the allegations seriously.
Mr Morrison said he found the reports troubling, but warned against “leaping to conclusions”.
What are the allegations?
On Sunday, Nine’s 60 Minutes programme reported that suspected Chinese agents approached a luxury car dealer, Nick Zhao, ahead of Australia’s general election - which took place in May.
They allegedly offered him A$1m (£520,000; $680,000) to fund his run for a Melbourne seat as a candidate for the ruling Liberal Party, of which Mr Zhao was already a member.
Mr Zhao gave information about the alleged approach to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) last year, Nine reported.
He was found dead in a hotel room in Melbourne in March. Police have not been able to establish how or why he died, and his death has prompted a coroner’s inquiry.
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David Pecker, the head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, has spoken with prosecutors with the New York district attorney’s office as part of its investigation into the Trump Organization’s handling of hush money payments to women who alleged affairs with President Donald Trump, sources with knowledge of the meeting tell CNN.
The America Media Inc. chairman’s late October meeting with prosecutors from the major economic crimes bureau could provide key details on discussions that took place involving Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who allegedly had an affair with Trump, and agreements that were made with former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, the sources said.
Cohen is cooperating with the investigation. Pecker is expected to continue talking with prosecutors, sources said.
The meeting between Pecker and the local prosecutors shows that investigators are still trying to connect the dots between Trump and the hush money payments. The meeting could result in Pecker being a potential critical witness down the road in any legal action against Trump or the Trump Organization.
Prosecutors are investigating whether any state laws were broken, such as whether the Trump Organization falsified any business records relating to the Daniels payment.
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How North Korea Soured on Donald Trump
Kim Jong Un only wanted to engage with the president. Now he’s turning on him.
As 2019 draws to a close, North Korea seems to be letting another opportunity with the Trump regime pass by,
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Trump has a long history of appointing administrators who undermine the agencies they lead. That strategy of sabotaging our government continues unabated:
As Homer Simpson might say, “It’s Opposite Land!”
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You and I know these grand statements from T are just his 2020 campaign talking points. This is not an agreement amongst all the parties…
President Trump’s confident assertion that the Taliban is ready and even eager for a cease-fire demanded by the United States in Afghanistan’s 18-year-old war may be more wishful thinking than reality.
Declaring that the U.S.-Taliban talks he abruptly canceled in September are back in motion, Trump said during a Thanksgiving Day visit to troops in Afghanistan that the Taliban “wants to make a deal. And we’re meeting with them, and we’re saying it has to be a cease-fire.”
“They didn’t want to do a cease-fire, but now they do want to do a cease-fire,” Trump said of the militants. “It will probably work out that way. . . . We’ve made tremendous progress,” he added.
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