Like how to kick start a campaign in a crowded field of candidates, things like announce that MLK III is chairing your campaign on MLK Jr. day
More than 7,000 migrants have fled Honduras for the U.S. in anticipation of a more humane welcome from Joe Biden
By Luis Echeverria @ Reuters.com, Jan. 18 (pics and video at link)
Guatemalan security forces on Sunday used sticks and tear gas to beat back a large migrant caravan bound for the United States, just days before the advent of a new U.S. administration, which urged travelers to abandon the journey.
Between 7,000 and 8,000 migrants, including families with young children, have entered Guatemala since Friday, authorities say, fleeing poverty and violence in a region hammered by the coronavirus pandemic and back-to-back hurricanes in November.
“Guatemala’s message is loud and clear: These types of illegal mass movements (of people) will not be accepted, that’s why we are working together with the neighboring nations to address this as a regional issue,” the Guatemalan president’s office said in emailed comments. A large section of the caravan clashed early on Sunday with Guatemalan security officials, some 3,000 of whom had mustered by the village of Vado Hondo, about 55 km (34 miles) from the borders of Honduras and El Salvador [....]
Even if the migrants do get past, Mexico is preparing to stop them at its southern border with hundreds of security forces, arguing it must contain the spread of the virus [....]
The first migrant caravan of the year comes less than a week before Biden takes office on Wednesday promising to adopt a more humane approach to migration than Trump. Still, a Biden transition official, speaking on background, advised people not to make for the United States. “Overcoming the challenges created by the chaotic and cruel policies of the last four years, and those presented by COVID-19, will take time,” said the official. “In the meantime, the journey to the United States remains extraordinarily dangerous, and those in the region should not believe anyone peddling the lie that our border will be open to everyone next month,” the official added [....]
MSNBC
A Pennsylvania woman accused of being one of the Capitol rioters told a former "romantic partner" she planned to steal a laptop computer from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office and sell it to Russian intelligence, court documents revealed Monday.
Riley June Williams was charged with disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds with the intent to disturb a session of Congress and other charges after her former flame turned her in.
William's ex, who was described in Special Agent Jonathan Lund's charging document as W 1 (witness one), called the FBI and told them she "intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service.”
Aleksei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, landed in Russia Sunday night five months after he was poisoned with a nerve agent.
By Anton Troianovski & Ivan Nechepurenko @ NYTimes. com, Jan. 17, Updated 5:55 p.m. ET, WITH VIDEO
MOSCOW — Aleksei A. Navalny returned to his home country Sunday, five months after a near-fatal nerve-agent attack, and was arrested at the border, a show of fearlessness by Russia’s most prominent opposition leader and of anxiety by President Vladimir V. Putin.
In hours of live-streamed drama that played out in Berlin, in the air and at two Moscow airports, Mr. Navalny careened headlong into near-certain detention after deciding to leave the relative safety of Germany, where he had been recovering from last summer’s poisoning.
Hundreds of people braved the bitter cold outside Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport to greet Mr. Navalny, but the low-cost Russian airline he was flying was diverted just before landing to a different Moscow airport. There, at passport control, Mr. Navalny was confronted by uniformed policemen in black masks.
He embraced his wife, Yuliya Navalnaya, before being led away. “I am not afraid,” Mr. Navalny told reporters just before he was detained, standing in front of a neon sign at the airport that portrayed the Kremlin. “I know that I am in the right and that all the criminal cases against me are fabricated.” [....]
..(Violence) is what is offered to the masses (by Republican far right radicals) in lieu of actual power. The result is violence that becomes almost casual . .. a politics of delusion that is acted out in the real world ... many who participated in the (Capitol) attack are having trouble grasping the legal consequences that came along with their live-streamed insurrection .. For far-right leaders today, inciting violence against the nation's "enemies" (the press, the "Deep State", Democrats, liberals, BLM) offers the fan base a pathway to political participation ...freedom has been refashioned to contain violence at its core: freedom to carry a weapon and use it at will, to infect others around you during a pandemic ...
By Sylvan Lane @ TheHill.com, Jan. 14
Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) lost her seat on the House Financial Services Committee after House Democratic leaders on Thursday rejected her request for a waiver to serve on the Financial Services panel and other committees simultaneously, two House Democratic sources told The Hill.
The Financial Services Committee is one of five House panels deemed “exclusive” by Democratic leaders under caucus rules adopted in July 2020.
Democrats on exclusive committees are barred by caucus rules from serving on any other committee without a waiver from the party’s steering committee, a panel of several dozen lawmakers chaired by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that determines committee assignments.
Porter, a former financial law professor known for dressing down administration officials and executives in hearings, was appointed to the Financial Services Committee and received a waiver to serve on the House Oversight and Reform Committee during her first term.
In a Nov. 30 letter to Pelosi, Porter asked to be considered for seats on the Oversight and Reform, Natural Resources, and Financial Services committees — in that order — in the new Congress that began on Jan. 3.
Porter also asked Pelosi to “prioritize” her spot on the Oversight Committee and asked to rejoin the Financial Services Committee on a waiver [....]
This is a bit more conservative than likely the taste of many Dagbloggers. However, it's a pretty accurate portrayal of the declining communities that may not have bankrolled and funded the rise of Trump, but certainly yelled, smashed things and voted on his behalf.
There is an analogy made in the conversation to life on Indian reservations and I would go so far as to say the schizophrenia and nonsense nature of MAGA had a whole lot to do with the contrast of people who on one hand were taught that they are privileged and that being poor was for brown people and a lifestyle and situation that puts them where the people they once (and perhaps still) looked down upon once were.
By Ellen Nakashima @ WashingtonPost.com, Jan. 16
Acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller ordered the director of the National Security Agency to install on Saturday a former GOP political operative as the NSA’s top lawyer, according to four individuals familiar with the matter.
It is unclear what the NSA will do. The agency and the Pentagon declined to comment.
In November, Pentagon General Counsel Paul C. Ney Jr. named Michael Ellis, then a White House official, to the position of general counsel at the NSA, a career civilian post at the government’s largest and most technologically advanced spy agency, The Post reported. He was selected after a competitive civil service competition. He has not taken up the job, however, as he needed to complete administrative procedures, including taking a polygraph test.
Reached by phone Saturday, Ellis said, “I don’t talk to the press, thank you,” and hung up.
NSA Director Paul Nakasone was not in favor of Ellis’s selection and has sought to delay his installation, according to several people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. [....]
According to researchers who study the real-life effects of the QAnon movement, the false belief in a secret plan for Jan. 20 is irking militant pro-Trump and anti-government groups.
By Ben Collins @ NBCnews.com, Jan. 15
Online far-right movements are splintering in the wake of last week’s Capitol riot, as some radical anti-government movements show signs of disillusionment with the relatively hands-off approach of some QAnon conspiracy theorists amid warnings of future violence.
Users on forums that openly helped coordinate the Jan. 6 riot and called for insurrection, including 4chan and TheDonald, have become increasingly agitated with QAnon supporters, who are largely still in denial that President Donald Trump will no longer be in the Oval Office after Jan. 20.
QAnon adherents, who believe Trump is secretly saving the world from a cabal of child-eating Satanists, have identified Inauguration Day as a last stand, and falsely think he will force a 10-day, countrywide blackout that ends in the mass execution of his political enemies and a second Trump term. Several QAnon supporters were arrested after storming the Capitol last week, including Jacob Chansley, whose lawyer said his client believed he was “answering the call of our president.”
QAnon believers have spent the last week forwarding chain letters on Facebook and via text message, often removing the conspiracy theory’s QAnon origins, in an effort to prepare friends and family for what they believe to be the upcoming judgment day.
According to researchers who study the real-life effects of the QAnon movement, the false belief in a secret plan for Jan. 20 is irking militant pro-Trump and anti-government groups, who believe the magical thinking is counterproductive to future insurrections [....]
As 20,000_heavily armed National Guard secure the our Capitol:
"Trump is undecided on whether he will pen a letter to Biden to leave in the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. Some of his advisers have encouraged him to think about continuing the tradition. Early in his presidency, Trump liked to show off to visitors the letter he received from President Barack Obama, which included the now-prescient line:
"Regardless of the push and pull of daily politics, it's up to us to leave those instruments of our democracy at least as strong as we found them."
