DL Open Thread: Friday, August 2, 2024
If you only listen to one of the Rev’s podcasts this year, make it this one.
This is why Erik Raser-Schramm is one of my favorite people of all-time. Check it out.
Biden Finalized Prisoner Swap While Withdrawing From Presidential Race. A truly great accomplishment, quite an example of compartmentalization:
For a president who pledged to bring all wrongly detained Americans home and is an outspoken cheerleader for the benefits of U.S. alliances abroad, there was a lasting impression as he watched joyful parents, siblings and friends greet the returnees.
“There’s nothing beyond our capacity when we act together,” Biden told reporters when asked if he had a message for America.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan was a go-between with hostages’ families and worked closely with CIA Director William Burns, who was back in Turkey to discuss the swap details last week, as well as U.S. hostage negotiator Roger Carstens.
An emotional Sullivan, briefing reporters at the White House, described years of twists and turns to get the Americans released and the joy of bringing good news to families of the Americans who spent so long in Russian detention. “If you hadn’t had Joe Biden sitting in the Oval Office, I don’t think this would have happened,” he said.
Yawn. Just Another Trump Scandal That Was Buried:
Five days before Donald Trump became president in January 2017, a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash.
Federal investigators learned of the withdrawal, which has not been previously reported, early in 2019. The discovery intensified a secret criminal investigation that had begun two years earlier with classified U.S. intelligence indicating that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi sought to give Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 presidential campaign, a Washington Post investigation has found.
Since receiving the intelligence about Sisi, the Justice Department had been examining whether money moved from Cairo to Trump,potentially violating federal law that bans U.S. candidates from taking foreign funds. Investigators had also sought to learn if money from Sisi might have factored into Trump’s decision in the final days of his run for the White House toinject his campaign with $10 million of his own money.
Those questions, at least in the view of several investigators on the case, would never be answered,The Post found.
Within months of learning of the withdrawal, prosecutors and FBI agents were blocked by top Justice Department officials from obtaining bank records they believed might hold critical evidence, according to interviews with people familiar with the case as well as documents and contemporaneous notes of the investigation. The case ground to a halt by the fall of 2019 as Trump’s then-attorney general, William P. Barr, raised doubts about whether there was sufficient evidence to continue the probeof Trump.
When everything you do is crooked, what’s just another corrupt grain of sand? Nothing, once Bill Barr sweeps it up and dumps it in the trash. (Yeah yeah, too many mixed metaphors wrapped up in those last two sentences. Deal with it.)
Another ‘Dog Bites Man’: JD Vance Invested In Far-Right Propaganda Platform:
(A)long with extreme comments, Vance has some extreme investments.
Vance has had a six-figure stake in Rumble, an online video platform. The company has played host to Russian propaganda and to far-right personalities like Stew Peters and Tim Pool. It has also featured even more extreme content, including explicitly neo-Nazi images and themes like this song touting the “Reich” and calling for Jews to be placed in ovens from a “dissident rapper” with a dedicated page on the site. The site features a plethora of channels and videos dedicated to the concept of “white genocide,” which is a core belief for white supremacists. It also hosts channels for explicitly white supremacist organizations including VDare and Patriot Front, which has led masked demonstrations around the country.
The stake is notable because it represents a direct financial link between Vance and a key outlet for some of the most extreme elements of the far right. Vance’s stake in Rumble was the subject of a New York Times piece during his Senate race in 2022. That story focused on Rumble hosting the Kremlin-backed propaganda network RT, but gave less attention to the extensive hate speech on the site.
BTW, guess who got a seven-figure podcast deal from the company?:
Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, signed a seven-figure podcast deal with the company last year. Trump Jr. reportedly played a “pivotal role” in persuading his father to bring Vance onto the Republican presidential ticket. Trump Jr. did not respond to questions about the extremist content on Rumble and about whether his financial relationships influenced his support for Vance.
Representatives for Vance and the Trump campaign also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Coincidence? I think not.
Carney Administration Buries Report On DOJ Embezzlement: Come to think of it, yet another ‘Dog Bites Man’ story, with all the notable omissions in the report we’ve come to expect from this misbegotten administration:
A 20-page report on Delaware’s Unemployment Insurance fund and what transpired in the months following the discovery of more than $181,000 embezzled from it was quietly released to state lawmakers on July 30.
The report from the state’s departments of Labor and Finance outlines how the embezzlement was discovered last year, and the steps Delaware has taken since to address the systemic problems with managing the nearly $350 million fund.
The report released this week outlines the sequence of events from the embezzlement discovery to present day, steps that have been taken to strengthen controls and more efforts that are underway, but it neglects to explain why the fraud was never disclosed to the public until media outlets began asking questions.
Coalition board member John Flaherty said Wednesday the report “is not satisfactory.” He said they are left wondering why the state failed to disclose the fraud sooner, and whether there are other instances they’ve failed to disclose.
“It does not address the concerns we expressed publicly about the lack of notification by the Division of Accounting and the Auditor of Accounts,” he said. “There is always a double standard – state agencies telling the public what to do. They themselves do not comply with their own rules and regulations, in this case a statute.”
BTW, lest you need more insight into the retribution that Carney exacts on those he doesn’t consider ‘team players’, go back and listen to the Rev’s interview with Erik Schramm. Carney really is the dirt worst.
What do you want to talk about?
Erik is absolutely someone of incredible integrity, a true statesman. It’s a really fantastic interview, everyone should listen.
Simone Biles at the Olympics:
““I love my black job 🖤”
You mean Carney is a self-privileging fuck…
Trump is glad Biden brought the hostages home. Because if he got elected he wasn’t going to lift a finger to donit
If you want an illustration of why agencies shouldn’t investigate themselves, read the DOL report to the GA.
Favorite passage:
“That said, the former UI Administrator occupied the key position in the agency responsible for addressing and remediating the weaknesses and deficiencies that were identified between 2019 and 2023. With the benefit of hindsight, the former UI Administrator, as a leader within UI, was provided a high level of autonomy and trust as part of his job responsibilities, which included day-to-day operations, oversight, and continuous improvement of ECO. We cannot confidently assess the degree to which the former UI Administrator contributed to the lack of progress or inhibited efforts toward resolving known accounting and control deficiencies.”
It’s all the dead guy’s fault!
I thought everyone already knew that Carney punishes people who don’t play ball.
I hope he gets his ass handed to him by Velda.
I’m voting for Velda and I know a lot of other people who are too. I don’t know if it’s enough to call a “silent majority” but there’s definitely a silent group of us who are going in and voting against Carney. With his shameless performance for BHL, he didn’t give me any choice.
But I think him winning will be punishment in its own way. Meyer will be Governor and he’s not going to let that lazy son of a bitch do ANYTHING. He can finish out his career fucking up things like fixing potholes and managing dog shit cleanup and he can have lots of time to spend at Rooney’s and the Y.
It’s very funny that the Governor before him lives in a palace in Rome.
I have spent some time canvassing for Velda in the Highlands where you would expect not much love. Wrong, voters were receptive and interested we even engaged a couple voters that had Carny signs in the yard and they were friendly with no hostility. Smart voters know a screw up when they see one. I will not predict but i am very optimistic.
Enjoy it now. Y’all will get your comeuppance once she’s in office.
I’ll take that over Carney 24/7 x365
Go ahead. All yours. Simple question: Do you trust her? Really?
I wish there was another option than the corrupt sleazebag with delusions of adequacy and the incompetent governor with a do-nothing complex.
The Democratic Party couldn’t find anyone – anyone?? – else to run?
Lotta knowledge of o “corrupt skeazebag” from 90 miles down the road. The casual hate towards Velda will energize this black city!
C’mon. That whole family has used office to enrich themselves.
Says something about Delaware that we have such crappy choices for these offices. Top to bottom, you look at this team and in any kind of tournament they aren’t making it out of round-robin play.
I’m reminded of the explanation a colleague at the News Journal gave in 1972 for why he would vote for the Democrat in a key New Castle County election. Paraphrasing, “he’ll give us better copy for the next four years.” Sure enough, he won, and he wound up in jail.
Given a choice between Carney and Velda, there’s no doubt who will provide better copy, and we’ll have to wait and see whether history repeats.
So if you were at the NJ in ‘72 you would remember that Ralph Moyed was a Republican operative for a couple years then returned to journalism. One of his stories was pulling the fuses at 4pm at a polling place in Richardson Park to blunt the D vote, I’m guessing the 72 candidate was Mel😎
Give me an example other than a music festival or contractor dispute? What actual charges were pursued in either of those? What else ya got? I can go all day on BHL. Carney is more acceptable because he screws the tax paying citizens with horrendous policy after horrendous policy? Politicians are all imperfect in different ways to different degrees.
You’re right about Mel. I’m well aware of Ralph Moyed’s career path, though his work with the GOP is before my time.
On Velda, go back to her disastrous primary run against Chip Flowers, her “consulting” work for the city, her battles with her cousin Dennis.
That said, my point about Velda is that she will make better copy. Show me anything Carney has done in the last eight years, or 16 years, or 20 years, that generated any excitement.
‘Other than’? As if they don’t matter?
Not to mention all of Charles Potter’s Delaware Way dealings.
I’d vote for Velda, but let’s not ignore the facts.
It’s pretty sad when hatred of one candidate makes you overlook what a terrible candidate the other one is.
It’s one thing to hold your nose and vote for her. To actually expect anything but chaos in her wake is self-delusion.
Agree about Eric. Having a platform minded leadership was clearly a game changer. As for Bethany. 31% is (sadly) going to be enough to win it.
I think her support is gonna plummet. Really.
Shit’s not going away.
Winning campaigns don’t have their campaign manager and finance director leave 40 days out from an election. I’m not sure why people think she has any shot at winning. I don’t think her own people really believe that at this point. I’ve never seen a worse campaign and candidate in my life. Her supporters are just gaslighting themselves at this point.
She has a shot at winning because hers is the only name with any recognition – most resident of NCCo couldn’t name the county exec if you spotted them his initials – and because she’s one woman running against two men. She also has a dedicated following of crooked fucks in the unions, including the fuckfaces at the DSEA.
If O’Mara doesn’t get out of the race she could easily win it.
“She has a shot at winning because hers is the only name with any recognition – most resident of NCCo couldn’t name the county exec if you spotted them his initials –”
Ok but how many residents of DE can name the lt Gov? Omara in the race does give BHL a shot. But I would argue more people in NCC know their County exec than know who the LT Gov is.
You mean the Lt. Gov. whose name has been in the public sphere for 20 years? I guarantee you it’s higher than Meyer’s, especially downstate. So go ahead and argue, you’re still wrong.
You want to like Meyer, go ahead, but pretending he’s got her name recognition isn’t going to help him.
Alby, I’m not sure that her name recognition is as high in Sussex as you think it is. She’s lived out of the area for decades and the Democratic population base has shifted rather dramatically from Indian River farmland to the northern coastal area. That said, Meyer hasn’t been actively winning friends in Sussex, either.
How does the math work on that?