Puppet Masters
The first happened Wednesday, when Democrats blocked the Senate from considering a bill on police reform by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC).
Scott, who is African American, has been working on the issue for years. He had the full support of the rest of the Republican caucus. He also agreed to consider whatever amendments Democrats offered.
They still used the filibuster to block the bill from even being debated.
The episode showed that Democrats do not actually care about police reform. Nor do they want to unite the nation behind any sort of bipartisan compromise. They simply want to use the issue in the elections, which they hope will give them the House, the Senate, and the presidency. Then they can get rid of the filibuster and pass whatever they want.

Ali Alghasi-Mehr • US President Donald Trump
The names of the suspects in the high-profile murder of Iran's elite Quds Force commander have been relayed to Interpol by Tehran's chief prosecutor Ali Alghasi-Mehr, Iranian media said on Monday. The official called the killing a "murder" and a "terrorist act."
"President Donald Trump is at the top of the list, and his prosecution will be pursued even after his term is over."
Comment: Interpol has refused, saying it can't act the on Iranian request due to 'rules and collaboration protocols'.
The Lyon-based organization [Interpol] told RIA Novosti if it receives a request to arrest Trump, its own rules will not allow it to act on it. Interpol acts as a liaison between law enforcement organizations in member states, helping them to collaborate with each other in solving crimes and arresting suspects trying to flee justice in a different jurisdiction.This is a smart ruse by the Ayatollah, assuming he colluded with the Trump administration to off a dangerous political rival.
Interpol maintains political neutrality and is barred by its charter from getting involved in activities of a political, military, religious, or racial nature, a spokesperson for the organization said.
This failure could be seen as highly prejudicial and therefore present another opportunity for the defence to lodge a challenge to the extradition request.
The indictment
On 24 June, the DoJ released a statement accusing Assange of conspiring with "Anonymous" affiliated hackers, among others. A 49-page document accompanying that statement provides further details. According to Shadowproof's Kevin Gosztola, the document, one-third of which merely reiterates the original 18 charges, significantly:
"expands the [original] conspiracy to commit computer intrusion charge and accuses Assange of conspiring with "hackers" affiliated with "Anonymous," "LulzSec," "AntiSec," and "Gnosis."The computer crime charge is not limited to March 2010 anymore. It covers conduct that allegedly occurred between 2009 and 2015.
Comment: We shall see if procedural irregularities and the above-mentioned flaws in the US case against Assange make a difference. Man against machine...hopefully he has a chance.
"We need, in this coming defense bill, which we are debating this week, tough sanctions against Russia," Schumer told journalists, emphatically gesturing to drive home the point.
The reason for the "tough sanctions" is a report by the New York Times that cites "interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals," and accuses Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, of literally offering bounties to the Taliban for every US soldier killed in Afghanistan.
Comment: Same debunked arguments, same mind lock, different year.
See also:
One more time! MSNBC asks Bolton if Trump's 'too afraid' to take on Putin because he helped him get elected

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.
"Do you think that the president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did help him win the election and he doesn't want to make him mad for 2020?" Chuck Todd asked of John Bolton in a Meet the Press interview on Sunday.
Comment: The last 6000 times this question was insinuated, the answer was emphatically 'NO'. Even miserable John Bolton could not answer 'yes'. We can't even say Chuck Todd was 'beating a dead horse'...there was no horse!
Dismissing almost all the defence applications to the court for new evidence and witnesses, prosecutor Ferdinandusse* (lead image, right) said: "We do not see any reasonable grounds for accusing the prosecution of not being objective" (June 26 hearing, Min 9:17).
[*] Ferdinandusse has a first name but this will not be reported. The reason is that Ferdinandusse repeatedly shows his animus towards the defendant, Oleg Pulatov, by refusing to use the conventional honorific "Mister". This is so customary in Anglo-American court practice that the Dutch refusal to observe it makes a display of prejudice towards the defendant. That this is exceptional Ferdinandusse revealed himself as he read his script. Twice he read out the name as "Mr Pulatov" -- at Min. 53:37 and 55:35. Ferdinandusse had typed the honorific in his script, but read it out by mistake; this is the exception that proves his prejudice. Ferdinandusse's practice is also in violation of the Dutch criminal code requiring the defendant in an indictment and in trial to be considered innocent until proven guilty. In court Pulatov is as much a Mister as Steenhuis the judge.The trick the prosecution has asked the court to accept is that apart from the Ukrainian government's say-so, there is no chain of custody for the evidence of the weapon alleged to have been fired by the accused to destroy the aircraft and kill its occupants on July 17, 2014. If the Russian government says the Ukrainian government is lying, planting the evidence and fabricating the chain of custody, the prosecution has told the court to ignore the Russians - believe the Ukrainians. Presented in court last Friday, this chain of custody argument has transformed the trial into a Ukrainian war operation conducted by Dutch proxies, and mercenaries.
For there to be the trial of a crime there must be evidence; for there to be evidence there must be a chain of custody. Except in The Netherlands.
Comment: See also:
- Russian Maj. Gen. Konashenkov to be called for MH17 trial for the defense
- Dutch lawyers put up strawman defense in MH17 trial, allow prosecutors and judge to proceed to conviction without evidence
- Dutch prosecution have rigged outcome of MH17 trial on charge that requires no proof
Trump's White House has experienced a dizzying amount of staffing changes that began following his impeachment acquittal and seemed to accelerate with the arrival of new chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Trump has presided over a record amount of turnover in the Cabinet and senior levels of his administration, demonstrating a penchant for removing and replacing top officials as well as swapping existing staff into new roles.
But the recent staffing shake-ups have been striking particularly because of the proximity to the 2020 presidential election. Officials working in past administrations have been informally urged to hold off on leaving their roles in an election year until the ballots are cast in November.

The New York Times Building in New York ; US soldiers listen to a briefing at forward operating base Gamberi in Afghanistan
As news reporting goes, the New York Times article alleging that a top-secret unit within Russian military intelligence, or GRU, had offered a bounty to the Taliban for every US soldier killed in Afghanistan, was dynamite. The story was quickly "confirmed" by the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers, and went on to take social media by storm. Twitter was on fire with angry pundits, former officials, and anti-Trump politicians (and their respective armies of followers) denouncing President Trump as a "traitor" and demanding immediate action against Russia.
There was just one problem — nothing in the New York Times could be corroborated. Indeed, there is no difference between the original reporting conducted by the New York Times, and the "confirming" reports published by the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. All of the reports contain caveats such as "if confirmed" and "if true," while providing no analysis into the potential veracity of the information used to sustain the report — alleged debriefs of Afghan criminals and militants — or the underpinning logic, or lack thereof, of the information itself.

François Fillon (right) and his wife, Penelope Fillon, were found guilty of fraud after a trial heard he paid her and two of their children for non-existent jobs.
A court found the couple guilty of fraud after a trial heard he had paid her and two of the couple's children about €1m for non-existent jobs as his parliamentary assistants.
In a scathing verdict, the judge said Fillon, 66, who was prime minister under the centre-right president Nicolas Sarkozy, had eroded trust in France's political class.
The court said Mrs Fillon, 64, was paid "the maximum possible" and that the sums were "out of proportion to her activities".
Comment: One does wonder, since this kind of scam happens all the time by those in power, what did Fillion do to make the establishment turn on him? Did he pose a threat to Macron's rise to power?
"Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or VP," Trump tweeted last night. "Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!"
Earlier in the evening, National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot told the Washington Examiner that Trump had not been briefed because of a lack of consensus within the intelligence community, adding that "the veracity of the underlying allegations continues to be evaluated."
MULTIPLE REPORTS: While Trump singled out the New York Times, the story was quickly matched by other major news organizations, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and Fox News.
In fact, Trump's tweet was in response to one by his reliable supporter, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who himself was reacting to a Fox News report. "Imperative Congress get to the bottom of recent media reports that Russian GRU units in Afghanistan have offered to pay the Taliban to kill American soldiers with the goal of pushing America out of the region," Graham tweeted.
Comment: Soulless hacks like Graham know that just repeating the allegation is enough - damage done. They know the reports are fake. They just use them for cheap but effective propaganda purposes.
Comment: One possible motivation, aside for your usual run-of-the-mill Putin Derangement Syndrome:
"It is clear that there are forces in the US which don't want to withdraw from Afghanistan, (and) want a justification for their own failures. This is what it's all about," Zamir Kabulov, Russia's presidential envoy to Afghanistan, told news agency RIA Novosti.
"We really shouldn't waste time commenting on an obvious lie," he added.











Comment: Another example of Democrats doing what they are not good at.