The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[David Andrews]

I

28 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Dave, I haven't seen the film. Maybe you can be an interpreter for  Wheeler's comments to me.

Wheeler:Keith Ellis could have released the footage day one, but then it might have been impossible to get a riot or let alone 180 or so going. 

First off, He's got the AG's name wrong. It's Ellison. He thinks if the film was released on day one, no one would have rioted?? How could that possibly be? You showed us the cellphone video that i thought was so incendiary, with a person on the street persistently telling the police that they're seriously hurting him and asking the police to  desists and let him up. I had no idea if the demonstrators had seen that at the time, but as I say, I thought at the time that was  incendiary as hell!.

Can you tell me what Wheeler he means when he says it doesn't fit the narrative? .

Wheeler: Man, the desperation. Not just here, but in Minneapolis as well. Those of you getting $23 an hour to be here are the most pathetic.

Not just here? Who here is getting the $23 an hour, he's talking about whose pathetic? I thought in Minnesota  he might be making some claim about paid protestors?

It won't be the first time I've thought his depictions were completely off the wall.Can you interpret any of this for me?

I'll take the $23/hr, if I can have complete editorial control.  Like what I do, agencies?  I can play Mark Twain here all the ding-dong day.  Use direct deposit.  No Bitcoin.

The new footage shows George Floyd using his handcuffed body to avoid being put in the patrol SUV, pleading claustrophobia.  The police respond predictably, instead of sitting him down on the pavement and giving him a moment to pull it together.  The footae just corroborates the previous print journalism.  You can get a better view of the actual murder from the bystander cellphone video.

Edited August 5, 2020 by David Andrews

[David Andrews]

10 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

The cops had a gun pulled on Floyd while he was in his car.  Before he was even arrested.  Can you imagine on suspicion of a fake twenty dollar bill?

 

The street cam video shows at least one Black pedestrian coming up to Floyd's car and communicating through an open door.  Later, when Floyd is sat down against a building in cuffs, he appears to drop a bag of white powder behind him, which the rookie cops missed.  I think the rookies had probable cause for detainment and warrantless search based on possible drug activity (on top of the counterfeit bill charge that brought them to that corner), but they blew it six ways to Sunday, and then really effed up when they let master cop Derek Chauvin show them how to subdue a suspect.

That forgery complaint is looking a bit suspect: notice how we never read in the press the particulars of where and how that went down. The press could be hiding behind the dodge that after revealing it. someone might torch that store.  But why hasn't anybody torched that store by now?...  The location should have been street knowledge already.

Edited August 5, 2020 by David Andrews

[Cliff Varnell]

22 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Can you tell me what Wheeler he means when he says it doesn't fit the narrative? .

Wheeler was triggered by Fox News.

Jason Whitlock claims leaked George Floyd footage shows early narrative of his death was a 'race hoax'

https://www.foxnews.com/media/jason-whitlock-george-floyd-death-race-hoax.amp

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

Cliff, I saw it as a caption. I saw the typical Fox News glorification of Iraq Warll darling Condoleeza Rice. 

Dave reminded me in the cellphone version of the moment Floyd's urine flowed out into the gutter as his heart stopped. No wonder after seeing both versions , MSM  Fox, AG Ellison  tape would be the "official final word"  for Wheeler..Sort of like the WCR!

And nobody knows the $23 reference?

Edited August 5, 2020 by Kirk Gallaway

[James DiEugenio]

Dave,

I just swatched the longest version I could find, almost 9 minutes and I do not see when they sat him down against a building in cuffs and him appearing to drop a bag of white powder behind him.  There were two other bystanders I saw up against a wall but they were not near Floyd.

Which version are you watching?  The one I watched was on Turkish TV.  That is the longest one I could find.

BTW in looking at it, I think they had two guns on him before they started getting him out of the car. He is clearly frightened to the point of panic.  I could not detect any time, even when they handcuffed him, where they told him what the charge was. I hope I missed that.  

[Steve Thomas]

9 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Diab said it was "unacceptable" that a shipment of ammonium nitrate estimated at 2,750 tons had been in warehouse for six years without "preventive measures" in place to protect it. The chemical compound, which is commercially available, is used widely in fertilizers and explosives.

Ammonium nitrate was Timothy McVeigh's explosive of choice.

Steve Thomas

[David Andrews]

8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Dave,

I just swatched the longest version I could find, almost 9 minutes and I do not see when they sat him down against a building in cuffs and him appearing to drop a bag of white powder behind him.  There were two other bystanders I saw up against a wall but they were not near Floyd.

Which version are you watching?  The one I watched was on Turkish TV.  That is the longest one I could find.

BTW in looking at it, I think they had two guns on him before they started getting him out of the car. He is clearly frightened to the point of panic.  I could not detect any time, even when they handcuffed him, where they told him what the charge was. I hope I missed that.  

You have to look at the "Camera 02" footage from the restaurant behind Floyd's car and across the street.  I can't find a complete version, but here's one, shorter version of the long shot that I saw and describe below:

As seen by me in a longer cut of this footage, the reason the passenger door is open is that, before this footage starts, the man wearing red had gotten in, and a third man in dark clothes walked up and conversed with him through the open door.  I'm thinking the man in red sold drugs to Floyd, and the third man was looking to score also.  The door was left open because the man in red had planned to book out of there after the hand-to-hand.

Here's one of a couple available Camera 02 close-ups showing handcuffed Floyd dropping a white, square object on the sidewalk as he sits, an object resembling street drugs in a tiny, zip-loc pouch.  You can see the pouch drop in the NBC long shot also:

Now, keep in mind that I don't care what laws Floyd was breaking, we do not pay policemen to murder unarmed or non-lethally armed suspects who are resisting arrest over non-violent crimes.

What I'm saying is that, if the cops were called by a storeowner over a counterfeit $20 bill, what they saw when they pulled up might have resembled drug activity.  None of the officers in any of the sound video clearly states a legal charge to Floyd.

I think one of the mistakes here was the two officers taking the two suspects out of the car.  They should have held them inside until assisted by back-up, and then searched them once four officers put them against the car.  Even with Chauvin involved, four officers plus evidence might have made it all go differently.  (Chauvin and his partner were watching from their vehicle during the arrest, but did not exit until Floyd resisted getting in the first two officers' SUV.  But it was more important to let the rookies make the collar, and then for Chauvin to show them how to cop.)

Edited August 5, 2020 by David Andrews

[Steve Thomas]

Trump bickers with himself about coronavirus.

https://boingboing.net/2020/08/05/hilarious-video-edit-poses-tru.html

Steve Thomas

[Ron Ecker]

59 minutes ago, Kathy Beckett said:

Well, I don't know about you guys, but I will be glad to see a mediocre, mundane, and boring presidency. I'd love to have a dull news cycle, so we can all start to worry less while our ulcers heal.  We can have folk over for tea while we hash out and repair the problems in this country. I won't have to turn on Morning Joe to find out what "he who must not be named" said last night or which right of ours is in jeopardy today, or who got fired and which inept replacement was chosen. I'm so tired of  smugness of leaders and their cohorts. And if it is Obama 2.0, I'd welcome it, after all this  ****.  

 

 

Well said. And why most Americans don't feel this way is sad and hard to fathom. Or maybe it's not hard to fathom in a country where people pull guns or have fist fights over simple mitigation, or get together like sardines in a can to party, during a pandemic. We live in a selfish and surprisingly ignorant society.

 

 

 

 

[David Andrews]

Good news: political groundhog predicts only five more months of Trump:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-will-beat-trump-says-historian-who-predicted-every-presidential-race-since-1984/ar-BB17BoGd?li=BBorjTa

[David Andrews]

34 minutes ago, Robert Wheeler said:

 

FYI, that's why a crappy 15 barrels of ANFO couldn't have blown the face off the Murrah Bldg., much less collapsed it as intended.

Beirut was the damage from 2,750 metric tonnes (each almost 100kg heavier than a US ton):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/05/visual-guide-how-explosion-caused-mass-casualties-and-devastation-across-beirut

Edited August 5, 2020 by David Andrews

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, David Andrews said:

FYI, that's why a crappy 15 barrels of ANFO couldn't have blown the face off the Murrah Bldg., much less collapsed it as intended.

Murrah Building 1995

Khobar Towers 1996

Edited August 5, 2020 by Cliff Varnell

[David Andrews]

Khobar Towers (Wiki):

"The truck itself shaped the charge by directing the blast toward the building. Moreover, the relatively high clearance between the truck and the ground gave it the more lethal characteristics of an air burst.^[7]

"It was originally estimated by U.S. authorities to have contained 3,000 to 5,000 pounds (1,400 to 2,300 kg) of explosives. Later the General Downing report on the incident suggested that the explosion contained the equivalent of 20,000 to 30,000 pounds (9,100 to 13,600 kg) of TNT. The attackers prepared for the attack by hiding large amounts of explosive materials and timing devices in paint cans and 50-kilogram (110 lb) bags underground in Qatif, a city near Khobar. The bomb was a mixture of petrol and explosive powder placed in the tank of a sewage tanker truck.^[8]

"The force of the explosion was enormous. The size of the explosion created an intense dust storm as the forces of the high pressure blast wave and the subsequent vacuum forces caused considerable damage in their own right. Several military vehicles parked to the left side of building #131 suffered no direct impact from debris, but were heavily damaged by the sheer intensity of the shock wave.

"The explosion heavily damaged or destroyed six high rise apartment buildings in the complex. Windows were shattered in virtually every other building in the compound and in surrounding buildings up to a mile (1.6 km) away. A very large crater, 85 feet (26 m) wide and 35 feet (11 m) deep, was left where the truck had been."

+++

The OKC bomb relied on a non-structrual shape charge (no strengthening of the flimsy box truck).  Experts suggest that the main force of the blast followed the path of least resistance and blew out through the loose rear doors of the Ryder truck, which is why the rear axle with the VIN number on it was found two blocks to the rear of the truck.  The truck was a smaller capacity vehicle than the Khobar tank truck, and the volume of explosives may have been smaller. 

(From Wiki:)

"On April 17–18, 1995, McVeigh and Nichols removed the bomb supplies from their storage unit in Herington, Kansas, where Nichols lived, and loaded them into the Ryder rental truck.^[53] They then drove to Geary Lake State Park, where they nailed boards onto the floor of the truck to hold the 13 barrels in place and mixed the chemicals using plastic buckets and a bathroom scale.^[54] Each filled barrel weighed nearly 500 pounds (230 kg).^[55] McVeigh added more explosives to the driver's side of the cargo bay, which he could ignite (killing himself in the process) at close range with his Glock 21 pistol in case the primary fuses failed.^[56] During McVeigh's trial, Lori Fortier (the wife of Michael Fortier) stated that McVeigh claimed to have arranged the barrels in order to form a shaped charge.^[42] This was achieved by tamping the aluminum side panel of the truck with bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to direct the blast laterally towards the building.^[57] Specifically, McVeigh arranged the barrels in the shape of a backwards J."

 

 

Edited August 6, 2020 by David Andrews

[Douglas Caddy]

Trump’s Bank Was Subpoenaed by N.Y. Prosecutors in Criminal Inquiry

The subpoena, sent to Deutsche Bank, suggests that the inquiry into President Trump’s business practices is more wide-ranging than previously known.

 

President Trump has been locked in a yearlong battle with the Manhattan district attorney over releasing his tax records to criminal investigators. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By David Enrich, Ben Protess, William K. Rashbaum and Benjamin Weiser

• Aug. 5, 2020Updated 7:07 p.m. ET
• The New York Times
  •  
  •  

The New York prosecutors who are seeking President Trump’s tax records have also subpoenaed his longtime lender, a sign that their criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s business practices is more wide-ranging than previously known.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office issued the subpoena last year to Deutsche Bank, which has been Mr. Trump’s primary lender since the late 1990s, seeking financial records that he and his company provided to the bank, according to four people familiar with the inquiry.

The criminal investigation initially appeared to be focused on hush-money payments made in 2016 to two women who have said they had affairs with Mr. Trump.

But in a court filing this week, prosecutors with the district attorney’s office cited “public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization” and suggested that they were also investigating possible crimes involving bank and insurance fraud.

 

Because of its longstanding and multifaceted relationship with Mr. Trump, Deutsche Bank has been a frequent target of regulators and lawmakers digging into the president’s opaque finances. But the subpoena from the office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., appears to be the first instance of a criminal inquiry involving Mr. Trump and his dealings with the German bank, which lent him and his company more than $2 billion over the past two decades.

Deutsche Bank complied with the subpoena. Over a period of months last year, it provided Mr. Vance’s office with detailed records, including financial statements and other materials that Mr. Trump had provided to the bank as he sought loans, according to two of the people familiar with the inquiry.

The bank’s response to the subpoena reinforces the seriousness of the legal threat the district attorney’s investigation poses for Mr. Trump, his family and his company, which in recent years have faced — and for the most part fended off — an onslaught of regulatory, congressional and criminal inquiries.

But while the subpoena of Deutsche Bank indicates the breadth of Mr. Vance’s investigation, his inquiry is still at an early stage, a person briefed on the matter said.

The district attorney’s office has spent the past year trying to obtain Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, and the Supreme Court last month upheld prosecutors’ rights to seek the documents. But legal wrangling continues, and Mr. Vance’s office has said that its investigation will be hamstrung unless prosecutors get the tax returns.

 

Mr. Trump and his company have denied wrongdoing and have sought to dismiss the inquiry by Mr. Vance, a Democrat, as a politically motivated fishing expedition. Mr. Trump’s representatives have accused his former lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, of lying when he told Congress that Mr. Trump exaggerated the value of his real estate assets as he sought loans and in dealings with his insurance company.

The subpoena to Deutsche Bank sought documents on various topics related to Mr. Trump and his company, including any materials that might point to possible fraud, according to two people briefed on the subpoena’s contents.

The bank’s cooperation with Mr. Vance’s office is significant because other investigations that have sought Mr. Trump’s financial records have been stymied by legal challenges from the president and his family.

Last month, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to congressional investigations into the president’s finances when it ordered lower courts to reconsider whether Deutsche Bank and Mazars USA, Mr. Trump’s accounting firm, had to comply with congressional subpoenas seeking his records. The ruling meant that the subpoenas would not be enforced until after the presidential election in November, if at all.

Mr. Vance’s office declined to comment.

Whatever records the Manhattan prosecutors obtain are subject to grand jury secrecy rules and might never become public unless the district attorney’s office brings charges and introduces the documents as evidence at a trial.

Even if investigators uncover what they think is evidence of fraud, criminal charges could be hard to prove. Valuing real estate assets involves subjective estimates and other assumptions, making it difficult to prove that someone intended to commit fraud. The New York Times reported previously that some Deutsche Bank officials viewed Mr. Trump’s financial statements as based on wildly optimistic assumptions and, in some cases, reduced his estimates of his assets’ values by up to 70 percent.

Some of the insurance and bank issues that have drawn scrutiny from reporters are also too old to be the focus of a criminal case.

 

Tax returns can be crucial evidence for proving that a defendant misstated the value of assets, said Daniel R. Alonso, who was Mr. Vance’s top deputy from 2010 to 2014 and is now in private practice. “Tax returns are an obvious place to look because of the precision required by tax authorities,” he said.

The district attorney’s investigation has been proceeding in fits and starts since it began in the summer of 2018. Almost immediately, Mr. Vance paused the inquiry at the request of the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, which had prosecuted Mr. Cohen and was investigating whether others at the Trump Organization had committed crimes in the course of arranging the hush-money payments.

In early 2019, Mr. Cohen testified on Capitol Hill that Mr. Trump had inflated the value of his assets in order at times to obtain financing from Deutsche Bank, including in 2014 when he bid unsuccessfully for the Buffalo Bills football team. Mr. Cohen also told federal prosecutors in Manhattan about insurance claims the Trump Organization had filed that he believed had been inflated.

Last summer, after federal prosecutors concluded their investigation of the hush-money payments without bringing additional charges, Mr. Vance’s office resumed its inquiry. In August 2019, the office served a subpoena on Mazars, seeking the president’s tax returns and other financial records going back to 2011.

Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit last September seeking to block Mazars from complying. The case is still being litigated nearly a year later, even after the Supreme Court’s ruling last month affirming Mr. Vance’s right to criminally investigate the president. The justices said that Mr. Trump could go back to the lower court, where he first sued, and raise other objections to the subpoena.

Shortly after Mr. Trump filed his suit last year, Mr. Vance’s office provided the judge who has been overseeing the case, Victor Marrero, a two-page summary of its secret grand jury investigation, which was not made available to the public or to Mr. Trump. Days later, at a hearing in federal court in Manhattan, Judge Marrero said the inquiry “clearly is very complex” and “involves a lot of parties, extends over many, many years.”

While Deutsche Bank has been cooperating with prosecutors, Mr. Vance’s office made it clear to Judge Marrero last month that its inquiry had been stalled without the tax returns.

 

“It’s been nearly a year since we served our subpoena,” Carey R. Dunne, a senior prosecutor under Mr. Vance, told the judge, “and this lawsuit’s been very successful since then in delaying our ability to gather the central evidence.”

That delay, Mr. Dunne added, made it “ever more likely that the grand jury will be prevented from evaluating the evidence before the statutes of limitation expire.”

[Douglas Caddy]

New York attorney general to deliver 'major national announcement'

by Haley Victory Smith, Breaking News Reporter

 | August 05, 2020 08:10 PM

Washington Examiner

 

New York State Attorney General Letitia James said she will deliver a "major national announcement" on Thursday.

A statement released Wednesday evening said the announcement will happen at her office at 11:30 a.m.

The subject of the announcement was not immediately clear.

Late last month, James "asked a federal judge to consider a possible inquiry into false statements from the Trump administration that led the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office to retract arguments in defense of a policy to exclude New York from federal programs intended to expedite international travel," according to the New York Law Journal.

James, a Democrat, has filed lawsuits against the president and his administration over a number of issues since she took the attorney general job at the beginning of 2019.