DL Open Thread: Thursday, September 22, 2022
Russians Turn On Putin. Who will put the poisoned needle in him? Young males head for the exits, prisoners conscripted, protestors arrested. He’s screwed, all by himself. Russia’s answer to Speaker Pete:
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a partial military mobilization Wednesday to call up as many as 300,000 reservists in a dramatic bid to reverse setbacks in his war on Ukraine, including the recent humiliating retreat from the northeastern Kharkiv region.
Putin’s blunt, uncompromising rhetoric underscored his growing international isolation. The war has dominated discussions at the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York, where world leaders condemned the violence and lamented the global hardship caused by soaring food and energy prices.
To this point, the burden of fighting has fallen mainly on contract soldiers from Russia’s most impoverished regions, many of whom joined up because of a lack of employment opportunities or to get out of debt.
Now, for the first time, the war will seriously disrupt the lives of large numbers of men in major cities, where the potential for antiwar backlash is highest.
Thousands of people protested across Russia on Wednesday despite draconian laws against public demonstrations, and more than 1,300 were arrested, according to the human rights group OVD-Info. Most of the arrests were in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In several police stations, OVD-Info said, detained protesters were handed military summonses to fight in Ukraine.
But in a sign of growing public panic, plane tickets out of Russia were selling fast Wednesday, with many flights fully booked. A recent recruitment drive failed to turn the tide of the war, underscoring the unease in the country about rising casualties.
Trump Flunky Fails To Stop Legal Freight Train Against The Donald. Where is he getting the money to pay all these lawyers? Anyway:
At his first meeting with lawyers for Trump and the Justice Department in his new role as special master, U.S. District Judge Raymond J. Dearie urged the Trump side to spell out its position on the question of roughly 100 documents marked classified that were taken by FBI agents as part of a court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8.
“We have little time to complete the tasks assigned to the court,” Dearie told the lawyers Tuesday, prodding them to quickly resolve legal questions about the high-profile national security investigation into a former president who frequently indicates he may again seek the White House. “We are going to proceed with what I call responsible dispatch.”
When Trump defense attorney James M. Trusty told Dearie that he should not be forced to disclose declarations and witness statements yet, the judge replied: “My view is you can’t have your cake and eat it” — signaling that he may not have much patience for that argument as the special master review proceeds.
A federal appeals court is allowing the Justice Department to continue looking at documents marked as classified that were seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and resort.
The emergency intervention upends a trial judge’s order over those documents that had blocked federal investigators’ work on the documents, and is a strong rebuke of the Trump team’s attempt to suggest without evidence that materials were somehow declassified. Trump’s options to block the criminal investigation are now dimming with one of his only remaining possibilities being an emergency request to the Supreme Court.The ruling was issued by a three-judge panel of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals — two of whom were nominated by Trump.
Attorney General Letitia James of New York filed a sweeping lawsuit on Wednesday that accused Donald J. Trump, his family business and three of his children of lying to lenders and insurers by fraudulently overvaluing his assets by billions of dollars.
Ms. James is seeking to bar the Trumps, including Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka, from ever running a business in the state again.
She concluded that Mr. Trump and his business violated state criminal laws and “plausibly” broke federal laws as well. Her office, which lacks authority to file criminal charges in this case, referred the findings to federal prosecutors in Manhattan. They declined to comment on whether they would investigate.
The 220-page lawsuit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, lays out in new and startling detail how Mr. Trump’s annual financial statements were a compendium of lies, according to Ms. James. The statements — yearly records that include the company’s estimated value of its holdings and debts — wildly inflated the worth of nearly every one of its marquee properties, according to the lawsuit. They include Mar-a-Lago in Florida, Trump Tower and 40 Wall Street in Manhattan.
Here’s How Trump Pays His Lawyers–Now That They Won’t Accept His Word That He Will Pay.
I Think This Lori Lightfoot Might Be, Um, Compromised. Gives Chicago land dedicated for public housing to billionaire soccer team owner:
A June story by ProPublica detailed how the land was once part of the ABLA Homes, a public housing development on the Near West Side where 3,600 families lived. After demolishing most of the ABLA buildings and displacing thousands of people, the Chicago Housing Authority promised to build more than 2,400 new homes in the area. So far, it has finished fewer than a third of them.
Lightfoot offered the ABLA site to the Fire late last year, and the CHA board signed off on the plan this spring. It is one of a series of deals the CHA has made to sell, lease or give away its land for nonhousing uses, including Target stores, a private tennis facility and a school running track and turf field. The Fire are owned by Joe Mansueto, founder of the investment research firm Morningstar.
State Trooper/Indian River BOE President Uses Racial Slurs Against Visiting Football Coaches. Anybody think this is the first time this crew-cut storm trooper has used racial epithets?:
Hodgson assistant football coaches Darrell Lockhart, Jason Bassette and Kyle Taylor were atop a press box at Sussex Central High School in Georgetown last Saturday night when a Hodgson player made an interception just before halftime. The three coaches, located above the press box on the Sussex Central side of the stadium, erupted into cheers.
This upset school board president Rodney Layfield, who was in the bleachers below wearing a jersey with his name on it, according to Bassette. Layfield, who is also a captain with the Delaware State Police, demanded the coaches stop cheering, and when one of them used profanity, said he would throw them out of the game. Audio of the exchange was captured during a live stream of the football game, though neither the coaches nor Layfield can be seen in the video.
“You ain’t from around these parts, boy,” Layfield said.
Lockhart, one of the coaches, said he was shocked.
“Knowing history and where I was at, in southern Delaware, I just felt like it was a threat,” he said.
What do you want to talk about?
Rodney Layfield, the racist football fan in the last item, is PRESIDENT of the Indian River school board and a CAPTAIN in the Delaware State Police. This is not some low-level yahoo — this is a supposed community leader. He is being investigated by both.
SuxCo at its finest.
Likely conclusions:
From the school district: the superintendent will conclude that it has no authority over the school board president because the school board oversees the district administration, not the other way around.
From the state police: Layfield cannot be disciplined because he was in the stands as a fan, not performing any official state police duties.
Boy
As a long ago parent in the IR District let me give yoi a detailed list og the 10 actions that will be taken:
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You have to love Hannity when TFG said he declassified everything by thinking about it. you could almost see hannity cream himself thinking “brilliant”.
plus, not only can you declassify things by thinking about them, you can make secret laws to call up 1mm soldiers without their knowledge or consent as Putin did. Seems their one mind thinks the same way
I was a real pain the ass fan for Newark teams that my nephew played on.
I remember one notable experience at the riverfront stadium for the championship baseball game against one of the Catholic schools. I was doing my thing from the stands – try to throw off the pitcher etc. – and irritating the ef out of the opponent supporters.
After a while, a group of them approached and sat down in the empty seats surrounded me so to drown me out. That was funny. This fuckwad using racial ephithets is not.
I happened to be watching the livestream of the game on Saturday night. At first, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but then I remembered this was a high school football game. Lots of knuckleheads and knuckle-draggers always in attendance. You couldn’t see the stands (and the camera was zoomed out so far you could barely see the players), so I had no idea who was yelling this stuff, and he threatened to throw the coach out of the game for using profanity. He also repeatedly told him he wasn’t in New Castle County, and that “You ain’t from around these parts, boy.”
His brother, of course, is the principal of Sussex Central High School who just lost the GOP primary for RD4.
Rodney Layfield was cleared in a 2008 fatal shooting (as all police in Delaware are), and his name came up more recently in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a female colleague. The female officer reported inappropriate comments made to her by her male colleagues, and Layfield told her she needed to have thicker skin.
We’ll never know the outcome of the internal affairs investigation thanks to the General Assembly’s absolute refusal to reform police accountability.
The audio is still up if anyone wants to listen: https://youtu.be/nLyJlhPvLec?t=5194
Thought he might be related to the primary loser, since the (Br)other Layfield was endorsed by both the Delaware State Troopers’ Association and the Delaware Correctional Officers’ Association. Which seemed kinda unusual for a career educator.
That audio clip is amazing. Layfield sounds unhinged.
Hmmm… Under Trump’s theory of Ex-Presidential, telepathic trans-classification, Clinton and Obama can declassify stuff by thinking about them. I hope they use that power for good instead of evil.