Today's News (2020/1/30)
Jan. 30th, 2020 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdNew Audio Appears to Show Ex-Giuliani Pal Lev Parnas at Dinner With Trump
A second audio recording released by Lev Parnas’s attorney purportedly shows the former Giuliani fixer socializing at a 2018 Republican fundraising event.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-audio-appears-to-show-ex-giuliani-pal-lev-parnas-at-dinner-with-trump
New audio released Thursday by Lev Parnas’ lawyer Joseph A. Bondy appears to show former Rudy Giuliani associates Parnas and Igor Fruman attending an April 2018 fundraising dinner with President Donald Trump along with former Republican Rep. Pete Sessions.
The recording marks the second substantial release of audio showing Parnas interacting with the president at a fundraising event.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Parnas in October 2019, alongside his business partners Fruman, David Correia, and Andrey Kukushkin, with conspiring to make illegal campaign contributions on behalf of a foreign donor. Parnas and his associates have all pleaded not guilty.
Trump has downplayed his association with Parnas and told reporters, “I don’t know who this man is.”
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Trump suggests the US should form a state-run, global news network to counter CNN's 'unfair' coverage
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-suggests-us-should-form-state-run-global-news-network-2018-11
President Donald Trump on Monday suggested the US should form a state-run, global news network to counter what he called "unfair" coverage from CNN.
"While CNN doesn’t do great in the United States based on ratings, outside of the U.S. they have very little competition," Trump said via Twitter. "Throughout the world, CNN has a powerful voice portraying the United States in an unfair and false way."
The president added, "Something has to be done, including the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!"
-----
Paul and Storm
twitter.com/paulandstorm
[S, 1/x] Yesterday I was arrested for civil disobedience as part of an effort to draw attention to the importance of the Senate calling witnesses in the impeachment trial. Without witnesses, the Senate’s proceedings will have proved to be a sham.
https://twitter.com/paulandstorm/status/1222893795290832896
-----
Portion of US border wall in California falls over in high winds and lands on Mexican side
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/29/politics/us-border-wall-falls-over-high-winds/index.html
Newly installed panels from the US border wall fell over in high winds Wednesday, landing on trees on the Mexican side of the border.
The area is part of an ongoing construction project to improve existing sections of the wall.
Agent Carlos Pitones of the Customs and Border Protection sector in El Centro, California, told CNN that the sections that gave way had recently been set in a new concrete foundation in Calexico, California. The concrete had not yet cured, according to Pitones, and the wall panels were unable to withstand the windy conditions.
-----
Health-Records Company Pushed Opioids to Doctors in Secret Deal With Drugmaker
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-29/health-records-company-pushed-opioids-to-doctors-in-secret-deal
To doctors opening patients’ electronic records across the U.S., the alert would have looked innocuous enough.
A pop-up would appear, asking about a patient’s level of pain. Then, a drop-down menu would list treatments ranging from a referral to a pain specialist to a prescription for an opioid painkiller.
Click a button, and the program would create a treatment plan. From 2016 to spring 2019, the alert went off about 230 million times.
The tool existed thanks to a secret deal. Its maker, a software company called Practice Fusion, was paid by a major opioid manufacturer to design it in an effort to boost prescriptions for addictive pain pills -- even though overdose deaths had almost tripled during the prior 15 years, creating a public-health disaster. The software was used by tens of thousands of doctors’ offices.
Its existence was revealed this week thanks to a government investigation. Practice Fusion agreed to pay $145 million to resolve civil and criminal cases, according to documents filed in a Vermont federal court. Practice Fusion admitted to the scheme with an unnamed opioid maker, though the details of the government case closely match a public research partnership between Practice Fusion and Purdue Pharma Inc., which makes OxyContin.
-----
Rand Paul to 'insist' on whistleblower question blocked by John Roberts
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/480699-rand-paul-to-insist-on-whistleblower-question-blocked-by-john-roberts
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday will try to force Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to read out loud a question regarding the anonymous whistleblower at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
Paul’s strategy, outlined on Twitter by his spokesman, will escalate a standoff between the two men on the Senate floor after much behind-the-scenes haggling.
“Senator Paul will insist on his question being asked during today’s trial. Uncertain of what will occur on the Senate floor, but American people deserve to know how this all came about,” Sergio Gor, a spokesman for Paul, tweeted.
-----
Jamie Dupree
twitter.com/jamiedupree
https://twitter.com/jamiedupree/status/1222947646027059200
Sen Paul reads reporters his question. It names the whistleblower and a staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, accusing them of plotting together to impeach the President.
[thread]
-----
[I don't normally include myself in this, but I am this time, in sharable twitter form. I'll probably write up a version of this for here, too, but here's the Twitter thread that was the first draft.]
https://twitter.com/solarbirdy/status/1222978553433620480
Briefly, because I have a lot to do:
As this GOP cover-up winds down, they're banking (with good reason) on most people forgetting what actually happened, right? Spinning an "alternative facts" narrative that sticks.
And for a lot of people, it'll work.
Don't let it work.
[THREAD]
-----
Here’s What Trump Has Been Up to While Americans Have Been Distracted by Impeachment
While public attention is focused on the Senate, the president is making controversial policy moves.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/all-things-trump-doing-under-cover-impeachment/605383/
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff, said days after Barack Obama was elected in 2008. Emanuel’s point was that a moment of cataclysm meant a chance for big structural reforms that wouldn’t be possible in moments of calm.
But there are other ways to take advantage of a crisis, as the Trump administration is demonstrating right now. Even as the president’s impeachment trial moves forward, the White House is acting aggressively on a range of policy proposals that are politically, legally, or morally suspect, wagering—probably correctly—that the press and the people will mostly overlook them amid the drama in the Senate.
It isn’t, as has sometimes been claimed, that Trump wanted to be impeached, or that the impeachment is somehow a brilliant Machiavellian distraction he has orchestrated. The president has made clear that he wants the trial over as quickly as possible. But as long as it’s going on, the White House is using the crisis as best as it can.
-----
Aaron Rupar
twitter.com/atrupar
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1222994689466544150
This is supposed to be an official White House event, not a campaign rally, but Trump doesn't care. He's giving a rally speech to workers in Michigan anyway.
Legalities like that don't matter anymore because Trump has figured out that nobody will stop him.
-----
[For context: the "LGB alliance" is an anti-trans sockpuppet project in the UK. It presents itself as a pro-gay-lesbian-bisexual group that excludes trans people, and is a TERF organisation. Like many other anti-trans groups, it is closely allied with fundamentalist organisations, and is part of their "ditch the T" movement intended to shatter the lgbt/etc (queer) coalition, starting with the most vulnerable group. The intent is to "ditch the T," then "ditch the B," then strangle what's left with infighting until they can roll back all the progress we've made. And I'm not afraid to say any of that because every word of it is true.]
David Paisley
twitter.com/DavidPaisley
https://twitter.com/DavidPaisley/status/1222999786749558789
Who are LGB Alliance?
Are they an LGB rights organisation, or are they an anti-trans organisation?
Can they be both?
I did some analysis of their followers to find out.
A THREAD
[THREAD]
-----
What the Fuck Just Happened Today, Day 1105.
1/ Trump’s legal team contradicted Trump’s Justice Department, making the opposite argument in court on the same day. In federal court, a Justice Department attorney argued that a possible remedy for an administration defying congressional subpoenas is impeachment. Meanwhile, during Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, his legal team argued that Trump was lawfully protecting the executive branch in a dispute with Congress over documents and testimony when he ordered his aides to defy subpoenas. House manager Adam Schiff later addressed the contradiction in the Senate, saying: “We’ve been debating whether a president can be impeached for essentially bogus claims of privilege for attempting to use the courts to cover up misconduct. [And] The judge says if the Congress can’t enforce its subpoenas in court, then what remedy is there? And the Justice Department lawyer’s response is impeachment. Impeachment.” Members of the Senate laughed. “You can’t make this up,” Schiff continued. “I mean, what more evidence do we need of the bad faith of this effort to cover up?”
A second audio recording released by Lev Parnas’s attorney purportedly shows the former Giuliani fixer socializing at a 2018 Republican fundraising event.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-audio-appears-to-show-ex-giuliani-pal-lev-parnas-at-dinner-with-trump
New audio released Thursday by Lev Parnas’ lawyer Joseph A. Bondy appears to show former Rudy Giuliani associates Parnas and Igor Fruman attending an April 2018 fundraising dinner with President Donald Trump along with former Republican Rep. Pete Sessions.
The recording marks the second substantial release of audio showing Parnas interacting with the president at a fundraising event.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Parnas in October 2019, alongside his business partners Fruman, David Correia, and Andrey Kukushkin, with conspiring to make illegal campaign contributions on behalf of a foreign donor. Parnas and his associates have all pleaded not guilty.
Trump has downplayed his association with Parnas and told reporters, “I don’t know who this man is.”
-----
Trump suggests the US should form a state-run, global news network to counter CNN's 'unfair' coverage
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-suggests-us-should-form-state-run-global-news-network-2018-11
President Donald Trump on Monday suggested the US should form a state-run, global news network to counter what he called "unfair" coverage from CNN.
"While CNN doesn’t do great in the United States based on ratings, outside of the U.S. they have very little competition," Trump said via Twitter. "Throughout the world, CNN has a powerful voice portraying the United States in an unfair and false way."
The president added, "Something has to be done, including the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!"
-----
Paul and Storm
twitter.com/paulandstorm
[S, 1/x] Yesterday I was arrested for civil disobedience as part of an effort to draw attention to the importance of the Senate calling witnesses in the impeachment trial. Without witnesses, the Senate’s proceedings will have proved to be a sham.
https://twitter.com/paulandstorm/status/1222893795290832896
-----
Portion of US border wall in California falls over in high winds and lands on Mexican side
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/29/politics/us-border-wall-falls-over-high-winds/index.html
Newly installed panels from the US border wall fell over in high winds Wednesday, landing on trees on the Mexican side of the border.
The area is part of an ongoing construction project to improve existing sections of the wall.
Agent Carlos Pitones of the Customs and Border Protection sector in El Centro, California, told CNN that the sections that gave way had recently been set in a new concrete foundation in Calexico, California. The concrete had not yet cured, according to Pitones, and the wall panels were unable to withstand the windy conditions.
-----
Health-Records Company Pushed Opioids to Doctors in Secret Deal With Drugmaker
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-29/health-records-company-pushed-opioids-to-doctors-in-secret-deal
To doctors opening patients’ electronic records across the U.S., the alert would have looked innocuous enough.
A pop-up would appear, asking about a patient’s level of pain. Then, a drop-down menu would list treatments ranging from a referral to a pain specialist to a prescription for an opioid painkiller.
Click a button, and the program would create a treatment plan. From 2016 to spring 2019, the alert went off about 230 million times.
The tool existed thanks to a secret deal. Its maker, a software company called Practice Fusion, was paid by a major opioid manufacturer to design it in an effort to boost prescriptions for addictive pain pills -- even though overdose deaths had almost tripled during the prior 15 years, creating a public-health disaster. The software was used by tens of thousands of doctors’ offices.
Its existence was revealed this week thanks to a government investigation. Practice Fusion agreed to pay $145 million to resolve civil and criminal cases, according to documents filed in a Vermont federal court. Practice Fusion admitted to the scheme with an unnamed opioid maker, though the details of the government case closely match a public research partnership between Practice Fusion and Purdue Pharma Inc., which makes OxyContin.
-----
Rand Paul to 'insist' on whistleblower question blocked by John Roberts
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/480699-rand-paul-to-insist-on-whistleblower-question-blocked-by-john-roberts
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday will try to force Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to read out loud a question regarding the anonymous whistleblower at the center of the impeachment inquiry.
Paul’s strategy, outlined on Twitter by his spokesman, will escalate a standoff between the two men on the Senate floor after much behind-the-scenes haggling.
“Senator Paul will insist on his question being asked during today’s trial. Uncertain of what will occur on the Senate floor, but American people deserve to know how this all came about,” Sergio Gor, a spokesman for Paul, tweeted.
-----
Jamie Dupree
twitter.com/jamiedupree
https://twitter.com/jamiedupree/status/1222947646027059200
Sen Paul reads reporters his question. It names the whistleblower and a staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, accusing them of plotting together to impeach the President.
[thread]
-----
[I don't normally include myself in this, but I am this time, in sharable twitter form. I'll probably write up a version of this for here, too, but here's the Twitter thread that was the first draft.]
https://twitter.com/solarbirdy/status/1222978553433620480
Briefly, because I have a lot to do:
As this GOP cover-up winds down, they're banking (with good reason) on most people forgetting what actually happened, right? Spinning an "alternative facts" narrative that sticks.
And for a lot of people, it'll work.
Don't let it work.
[THREAD]
-----
Here’s What Trump Has Been Up to While Americans Have Been Distracted by Impeachment
While public attention is focused on the Senate, the president is making controversial policy moves.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/all-things-trump-doing-under-cover-impeachment/605383/
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff, said days after Barack Obama was elected in 2008. Emanuel’s point was that a moment of cataclysm meant a chance for big structural reforms that wouldn’t be possible in moments of calm.
But there are other ways to take advantage of a crisis, as the Trump administration is demonstrating right now. Even as the president’s impeachment trial moves forward, the White House is acting aggressively on a range of policy proposals that are politically, legally, or morally suspect, wagering—probably correctly—that the press and the people will mostly overlook them amid the drama in the Senate.
It isn’t, as has sometimes been claimed, that Trump wanted to be impeached, or that the impeachment is somehow a brilliant Machiavellian distraction he has orchestrated. The president has made clear that he wants the trial over as quickly as possible. But as long as it’s going on, the White House is using the crisis as best as it can.
-----
Aaron Rupar
twitter.com/atrupar
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1222994689466544150
This is supposed to be an official White House event, not a campaign rally, but Trump doesn't care. He's giving a rally speech to workers in Michigan anyway.
Legalities like that don't matter anymore because Trump has figured out that nobody will stop him.
-----
[For context: the "LGB alliance" is an anti-trans sockpuppet project in the UK. It presents itself as a pro-gay-lesbian-bisexual group that excludes trans people, and is a TERF organisation. Like many other anti-trans groups, it is closely allied with fundamentalist organisations, and is part of their "ditch the T" movement intended to shatter the lgbt/etc (queer) coalition, starting with the most vulnerable group. The intent is to "ditch the T," then "ditch the B," then strangle what's left with infighting until they can roll back all the progress we've made. And I'm not afraid to say any of that because every word of it is true.]
David Paisley
twitter.com/DavidPaisley
https://twitter.com/DavidPaisley/status/1222999786749558789
Who are LGB Alliance?
Are they an LGB rights organisation, or are they an anti-trans organisation?
Can they be both?
I did some analysis of their followers to find out.
A THREAD
[THREAD]
-----
What the Fuck Just Happened Today, Day 1105.
1/ Trump’s legal team contradicted Trump’s Justice Department, making the opposite argument in court on the same day. In federal court, a Justice Department attorney argued that a possible remedy for an administration defying congressional subpoenas is impeachment. Meanwhile, during Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, his legal team argued that Trump was lawfully protecting the executive branch in a dispute with Congress over documents and testimony when he ordered his aides to defy subpoenas. House manager Adam Schiff later addressed the contradiction in the Senate, saying: “We’ve been debating whether a president can be impeached for essentially bogus claims of privilege for attempting to use the courts to cover up misconduct. [And] The judge says if the Congress can’t enforce its subpoenas in court, then what remedy is there? And the Justice Department lawyer’s response is impeachment. Impeachment.” Members of the Senate laughed. “You can’t make this up,” Schiff continued. “I mean, what more evidence do we need of the bad faith of this effort to cover up?”
