may be rude

??????

the forecast is a 4 foot sea rise by the century's end, meaning 30% of bangladesh submerged. not sure to what extent this forecast encorporates acceleration from feedback loops such as melting sea ice revealing dark blue water, and melting permafrost releasing greenhouse gases. civilizational collapse may result from disregard of climate destabilization. abandoned coastal cities, migrated populations, disrupted infrastructure, economic depression, increased super-storms and droughts. it will be amazing if this is not a global catastrophe. we didn't even foresee fossile fuel interests aligning with putin, trump, the gop, and wall street to poison the information supply.

it's soft

meet the press this week was a special episode on disinfo. here are a couple segments.

people need to take putin seriously. he overthrew democracy in his country. his life depends on keeping the oil revenue of his oligarchs healthy. he is a murdering thug with spy skills. the annexation of crimea was the first hostile acquisition of land in europe since world war 2. putin has the russian military at war with neighbor ukraine because he is afraid of the threat that democracy and justice pose to his hold on power. putin came up as a kgb agent in east berlin. the soviet union he served is the one that allied with hitler until hitler turned on them. he wants to drill the arctic and the rapidly melting ice works in his favor. this is the dude that trump and the gop have teamed up with.

soundlab20 is great

the disinfo is a massive problem. entire states are cooked in fox news fantasyland and it is baked in. people do not appreciate what has been done to the US by the alliance of right-wing-media/putin's military intelligence/cambridge analytica/shill GOP congress members. the broader political issue is no longer as much about opinions, nuances of view, etc. the bigger factor is the widescale propaganda successfully deceiving whole states. people parrot manufactured, false, strategic messaging as though it is their opinion and it is difficult to save them from the illusions. i'm dumbfounded at GOP congress members mouth-piecing putin propaganda that covers up the 2016 GRU hacking of the DNC and how these GOP members feel immune to accountability. they are confident in their ability to deceive their constituencies. trump extorted an ally to cover up an attack on the US by putin, the GOP are helping him get away with it, and half the country is brainwashed.

sounds like you're getting info from right wing media. they've been slinging shit at dems for manipulation purposes. by making people hate dems, they don't need them to like trump. asking a country to announce politically beneficial investigations is a corruption of the elections and a threat to democracy. even with no quid pro quo this would be impeachable. trump does not believe in democracy. he exhibits authoritarian intent. do you care about that, @Salvatorin? conditioning a white house meeting on the request just makes it worse, making it abuse of power, soliciting a bribe, and extortion. not only that, but the country is fighting russia and badly needed the white house meeting for strength in negotiations. trump, bizarrely, really weakened an important ally in a crititcal way - a way which, coincidentally, was the exact place where putin would really appreciate some help. conditioning the aid on the request just makes it worse, compounding the criminal and constitutional offense. it would be a dereliction of duty for congress not to enact the check intended to protect the country from this type of threat to the country. as the GOP are doing. but fox news won't tell you that.

By doing that he puts the Senate on the chopping block in November. It would be cleansed by voters. They are sweating. Pelosi played this well.

regarding the senate, there are more shoes that may drop. this is serious nat sec shit and a lot of very serious people are very seriously working. even if no new evidence is revealed, the needle is more likely to move toward supporting impeachment. but there is reason to expect one or more pieces of significant evidence to become public, further harming any rationale for GOP support of Trump. the GOP are already tugging their collars. a lot is in play. today, in fact, prosecutors revealed RUSSIAN OLIGARCH FIRTASH was the one who gave indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas a million dollars, which Parnas failed to inform the FBI about. Note that Parnas gave Giuliani a half million.

that wasn't the vote. they haven't voted yet. they're still debating.

that letter is nuts, nebraska. today the house debates impeachment. i'm wondering if it may be good. a lot of politicians like cheap shots. they see a camera and a microphone and they act really tough, but with a human debating in real time they disappear in a puff of smoke. that's how a lot of the hearings have played out, GOP members use their time to deposit rhetoric to befuddled, uncomfortable, tired witnesses. there's a "tell your mom to pass the salt" vibe. today will be different because the parties will be engaging each other. this happened in the committee last week, when they debated all day, and it was kind of good, at times. you see the blood pressure and hear the voice of the human individuals as they earnestly address each-other. today will be like that but the full house, i think. some are anticipating the debate to go into the night. here's the stream. starting soon.

BANDCAMP footbook 3 hours!

a secret vote is possible but it would take 51 votes to enact it. that means 4 GOP senators vote with dems.

articles of impeachment were sent from the judiciary committee to the full house. floor vote scheduled wednesday and expected to pass. in january mcconnell and graham will try to smother america in a senate trial and we will see if america gets out of bed and kicks their ass.

the 2019 Arctic Report Card, a major federal assessment of climate change trends and impacts throughout the Arctic region, shows the arctic is possibly already a net emitter of atmospheric carbon comparable to the country of japan, due to thawing permafrost, accelerating climate change. the rate of greenhouse gas emission from melting permafrost will only increase, forming an accelerating feedback loop. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/12/10/arctic-may-have-crossed-key-threshold-emitting-billions-tons-carbon-into-air-long-dreaded-climate-feedback/

2 articles of impeachment. abuse of power obstruction of congress draft form but i don't think they will change. they will probably vote them to the senate in the next week or two. the dems have their sights on the correct place, red state voters. they're keeping it simple for messaging. this gives dems a way to pressure the GOPs through their voters. the case for the ukraine articles can be made clearly and with lots of substantiation, and it's hard to muddy, even for some people living in fox news land. it also helps GOP constitutent support so they get freed up to do the right thing.

i thought it would result in people actually reading the thread, which is interesting. the secret ballot in the senate would free senators to vote yes. making the vote secret only requires a simple majority, 51 senators. GOP has 53 in the senate so dems need 4 in order to win procedural votes. it would only take 4 GOP senators to trigger it. that would be a huge jump. right now dems need 20 GOP to vote to remove in the senate because that vote is super majority - 67. public GOP support for removal is almost nonexistant, but there are cracks. key word there is "public." recently retired Jeff Flake and others say that GOP would vote to remove if the vote were secret. it's just their team-playing that prevents them from voting for removal.

vortrack sounding huge. i like where this is going.

yeah. i've been spending way too much time following this stuff and even to me there is a lot of information to keep track of. GOP efforts to distract and mislead multiply the complexity. zelensky didn't want to bend. that's why trump needed to undertake a prolonged push to get him to do the corrupt behavior trump was seeking. zelensky was a comedian who ran for president on an anti-corruption platform. he expressed concerns to US officials, in early may, in a US embassy. the concerns were relayed to ambassador marie yovanovich, who testified to their content: zelensky said he was feeling pressure from the Trump administration to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. early may is also when ambassador yovanovich was suddenly dismissed. i think that's why trump brought the stuff up on the jul 25 call, with state and defense officials on the call. he was trying to make it seem less shady to zelensky. see? there's a state department guy on the call. ukraine struggles with significant corruption issues. it's former soviet union. russia tries to keep it corrupt, as a military objective. ousted ukrainan president yanukovych, who was chased from the capital and fled to moscow in 2015, (this is the guy manafort worked for), was a putin proxy. his successor, poroshenko, went down in a scandal involving russian-linked corruption. it doesn't surprise me that a group of ukrainian legislators have decided to do this. it seems like something putin would like. it's heartening to see that zelensky was saved from giving the cnn interview announcing investigations, by 2 days, because the IC IG alerted congress that the whistleblower complaint was being withheld and the white house released the aid. the truth got out. zelensky seems to have fought valiantly to resist putin/trump corruption. even as he seemed to have given in, arranging a cnn interview to announce investigations, he seems to have left himself a door to retain integrity. with the leveraged request from the US graced with state/defense dept legitimacy, he chose to use words like “assurances to run a fully transparent investigation” and "turn over every stone". that sounds like he was trying to leave himself the ability for the investigations to be begun but not to be unfair. that this is all dragged into the light is a profound illustration for humanity on the trajectory of civilization. look at putin. whenever you see him he is acting, he is trying to look like people who are admirable and have integrity. they are the people fighting him. putin is demonstrating the lie of the corrupt path. putin is a hollow shell, lying, cheating, stealing, and killing to maintain his facade, sapping the vitality of his country's people. this is what obama was talking about when he cut down this ethos at the funeral of elijah cummings. he landed a blow to the core of trump's being. it is interesting to see how this is playing out. the courts and the congress are establishing new patterns and precedents regarding these checks and balances between branches of government. the fbi has been required to handle grave and challenging investigations involving the system they exist within, which mueller, mccabe and others demonstrated how to navigate, both adhering to the constitution and protecting the fbi itself. a lot of talented and virtuous people have been activated and are fighting. accumulated human technology means we no longer need to fight over resources. the corrupt, deceptive, gangster mindstate is archaic, out-dated, and doomed. it seems that the scale of the climate crisis has collided with the scale of big oil power to result in this dialed-up manifestation of the human struggle for justice: the most extreme example of corrupt oil interests, a nuclear superpower mafia state primarily dependent on oil power, seeks to disrupt the democratic world so it won't disrupt its oil power. but yeah this will be used by certain right-wing elements to falsely say burisma is a high-prioriy corruption issue in ukraine.

youtube and twitter have taken some action, at least. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/300-trump-ads-taken-down-by-google-youtube-60-minutes-2019-12-01/

user data can be a rather dangerous tool in the hands of authoritarians. zeynep tufekci is an excellent speaker on the topic

you're the man

some are saying it's looking like trump is throwing rudy under the bus, which could make it easier for giuliani to flip on trump. trump's been asked about giuliani's instructions to others regarding ukraine and trump responded "you have to talk to rudy about that." that's exactly what he said when people asked him about the criminal charges that cohen was facing, and trump's involvement, before cohen went to prison for them - "you have to speak with michael about that." sondland, the EU ambassador, in the wake of the ukraine ambassador's abrupt, dishonest dismissal, testified trump instructed him to go to rudy, with regard to instructions for ukraine. trump seems to have tried to use rudy like a condom, as a layer behind which he could hide. some of the other state/defense people who testified also established that rudy was the guy trump delegated regarding ukraine "diplomacy." trump in recent days has been denying that he instructed rudy to push for a biden investigation. this sounds a lot like trump putting it on rudy, as though he was somehow rogue. rudy has been saying that he has insurance against trump, in case he is thrown under the bus. he even specified where, his safe, to make sure the fbi will include it in any warrants. he has suggested he has recordings of trump going back decades. the next year is going to be a historic shit show. the house intelligence committee is continuing their investigation of the ukraine scandal even as they hand off their report to the judiciary committee for impeachment articles because there are still a lot of threads to follow and there is a lot of evidence pending, but already they have a case that's strong enough to establish impeachable offenses. the mueller evidence, including grand jury evidence and mcgahn testimony, is likely to become available in january or february, based on court scheduling. tax info is bound to hit congress/the public any day now, likely including further crimes and suspect links to foreign actors. the fbi, who arrested rudy's accomplices lev parnas and igor fruman as they were trying to flee the country the night before their scheduled congressional testimony, seem to be looking very hard at giuliani and, honestly, him being indicted looks not unlikely. at first people were asking who was paying rudy - trump or the us gov? then it came out that it was neither. lev parnas was paying giuliani at least a half million dollars. this is the guy who started the company "fraud guaruntee" to try to wash search results of pages describing his previous fraud activity. his partner, igor fruman, owns a club in ukraine named "mafia rave." lev parnas seems to be cooperating, he has been cooperating with congressional investigations, which means he either is or wants to cooperate with the feds, too. he gave congress recordings he took of giuliani. but at the same time, there's bill barr, burrowing around in the justice department, cooking up off-the-books investigations into by-the-books fbi investigations. and there's trump, threatening and firing law enforcement officals who cross him and engaging in regular obstruction of justice. and there's the GOP-congress/right-wing-media information blob, thwarting the faculty of reason in america, so that pro-climate-change powers can maintain control and abortions can be illegal. top this with an election system in disrepair, a president welcoming hostile election interference, and this president being a cornered animal who can reasonably expect prison time after leaving office. it will be a good year to have cable.