Moussa Koussa. That is the name of the “classified source” in an old email from Hillary Clinton released last week by Republicans purportedly investigating the 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Under the instructions of the Benghazi committee’s chairman, Republican Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, Koussa’s name was blacked-out on the publicly… Continue reading “Benghazi biopsy: A thorough guide to a fake scandal”
Wonder what he’d think of this?
SunTrust Banks in Atlanta is laying off about 100 IT workers as it moves work offshore. But this layoff is unusual for what it is asking of the soon-to-be displaced workers: The bank’s severance agreement requires terminated employees to remain available for two years to provide help if needed, including in-person assistance, and to do so without compensation.
Many of the affected IT employees, who are now training their replacements, have years of experience and provide the highest levels of technical support. The proof of their ability may be in the severance requirement, which gives the bank a way to tap their expertise long after their departure.
The bank’s severance includes a “continuing cooperation” clause for a period of two years, where the employee agrees to “make myself reasonably available” to SunTrust “regarding matters in which I have been involved in the course of my employment with SunTrust and/or about which I have knowledge as a result of my employment at SunTrust.”
The employees were informed of their layoff at the end of September, and the last day of work for some is on Nov. 1. This is according to several of the affected employees, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
The severance is seen by affected employees as a requirement to provide ongoing technical assistance as needed. The severance agreement itself says that this assistance from former employees “will be requested at such times and in such a manner so as to not unreasonably interfere with my subsequent employment.” An employee shared the severance clause with Computerworld.
This assistance can be by telephone or in-person meetings, and provided without “additional consideration or compensation of any kind,” it says.
“How do they think this is acceptable?” said one affected IT worker about the clause. He couldn’t fathom how the bank can cut its IT staff and yet insist that former workers be available to fix problems.
Donald Trump doesn’t know the GOP talking points! I’m actually looking forward to watching this hearing. Get out the popcorn:
Returning to Congress this week to testify about Benghazi more than 30 months after she first testified about the Libyan terror attack, Hillary Clinton is being summoned to answer yet more Republican queries, many of which seem to revolve around wild conspiracies.
As the Benghazi Select Committee’s reputation continues to take on water for incompetence and run-awaypartisanship, new jousting among Republican candidates is also denting the entire Benghazi pursuit; a chase that’s been sponsored by Fox News for years.
The latest sparring features Donald Trump and Jeb Bush arguing over President George W. Bush’s responsibility for the terror attack of 9/11. “When you talk about George Bush, I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time,” Trump said last week.
Bush’s brother lashed back out at Trump, calling his claim “pathetic,” while other Republicans rushed to Bush’s side. “I think Donald Trump is totally wrong there,” Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said on Fox Radio. “That sounds like a Michael Moore talking point” said King, referencing the liberal filmmaker who documented George W. Bush’s failings. (Fox News did its best to help Jeb, too.)
“Blaming 9/11 on Mr. Bush is taboo for Republicans and has largely been off-limits for Democrats,” noted TheNew York Times. But by ignoring those Beltway protocols, Trump threw a spotlight onto the questions of accountability, George Bush’s inability to protect Americans from terror attacks on U.S. soil, and why Jeb Bush today routinely stresses that his brother kept America safe after thousands were killed on 9/11.
Trump’s attack has also inadvertently drawn back the curtain on the sweeping double standard conservatives use for holding Republican presidents accountable for terrorist attacks, and the much higher standard they use for holding President Obama and Hillary Clinton accountable for Benghazi.
CNN’s Jake Tapper raised the issue of hypocrisy with Jeb Bush on Sunday’s State of the Union, pressing the candidate to explain why if his brother wasn’t responsible for the 3,000 American deaths on 9/11, somehow Obama and Clinton are to blame for the four U.S. casualties from Benghazi.
House Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, used to get death threats in his previous line of work. But watching his Benghazi investigation get slammed by accusations that it’s a partisan assault on Hillary Clinton is actually much worse, he says.
“I would say in some ways these have been among the worst weeks of my life,” Gowdy said this weekend during a lengthy interview with POLITICO. “Attacks on your character, attacks on your motives, are 1,000-times worse than anything you can do to anybody physically — at least it is for me.”
Gowdy faces the biggest moment of his political career when he squares off with Clinton this Thursday. But as the chairman prepares for the showdown, he’s facing increasing pressure to salvage his panel’s reputation — and perhaps his own.
A bombshell White House memo has revealed for the first time details of the ‘deal in blood’ forged by Tony Blair and George Bush over the Iraq War.
The sensational leak shows that Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the conflict a year before the invasion started.
It flies in the face of the Prime Minister’s public claims at the time that he was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
He told voters: ‘We’re not proposing military action’ – in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals.
The damning memo, from Secretary of State Colin Powell to President George Bush, was written on March 28, 2002, a week before Bush’s famous summit with Blair at his Crawford ranch in Texas.
In it, Powell tells Bush that Blair ‘will be with us’ on military action. Powell assures the President: ‘The UK will follow our lead’.
The disclosure is certain to lead for calls for Sir John Chilcot to reopen his inquiry into the Iraq War if, as is believed, he has not seen the Powell memo.A second explosive memo from the same cache also reveals how Bush used ‘spies’ in the Labour Party to help him to manipulate British public opinion in favour of the war.
The documents, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, are part of a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton which U.S. courts have forced her to reveal.
In a just world there would be criminal investigations for this. Constitutional scholars would know better than I what repercussions might legitimately arise from this knowledge, but the moral hazard will be tremendous if there are no consequences.
As a side note, one wonders if Republicans might be rethinking their partisan obsession with the Clinton “email scandal.” Between this and the revelations about the Benghazi “investigation,” the news has not been good for them lately.
Scientists have detected a disproportionate number of methane bubble plumes off the Washington and Oregon coast. The warming Pacific ocean may be triggering the release of this powerful greenhouse gas, which has remained frozen beneath the seafloor for thousands of years.
The new study, which has been accepted for publication in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, details over 160 bubble plumes observed over the past 10 years. An inordinate number of these plumes were observed at a critical depth where frozen methane “ice”, or hydrate, decomposes on account of warmer ocean temperatures. Lead researcher H. Paul Johnson from the University of Washington says these plumes are probably not coming from the seafloor sediments, but rather from decomposing frozen methane.
The downstream effects of this leaking methane aren’t entirely clear, though historically, methane has contributed to sudden and dramatic swings in the Earth’s climate. Once in the Earth’s atmosphere, methane acts as a powerful greenhouse gas. On a related note, warming-related methane emissions have also been detected in Arctic permafrost and off the Atlantic coast.
This map shows the locations of the 168 bubble plumes included in the study. (Credit: University of Washington)
It’s also not clear how much methane gas is actually getting to the surface. The researchers say that most of the deep-sea methane is getting gobbled up by marine microbes during the journey up. These microbes convert the methane into carbon dioxide, which results in low-oxygen and acidic conditions in deeper offshore waters. From there, this tainted water trickles along the coast and makes its way into coastal waterways.
“Current environmental changes in Washington and Oregon are already impacting local biology and fisheries, and these changes would be amplified by the further release of methane,” noted Johnson in an AGU statement.
Good, because there are a handful of gun dealers in this country who account for the majority of guns used in crimes:
A Milwaukee jury on Tuesday handed a rare legal defeat to the gun industry, awarding $6 million to two police officers who were shot by a handgun acquired at a local gun store that they said was negligent in screening the buyer.
Milwaukee police officer Bryan Norberg and now retired officer Graham Kunisch sued Badger Guns in 2010 in Milwaukee County court. The lawsuit said the shop ignored several warning signs that the gun used to shoot the officers was being sold to a straw buyer who was illegally purchasing the weapon for someone else.
“It’s important to be able to take a gun dealer to task,” said attorney Patrick Dunphy, who represented the officers. Jurors awarded about $5 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.
Julius Burton, who was too young at the time to purchase a firearm, paid Jacob Collins $40 to buy a .40-caliber handgun at Badger Guns in May 2009, the lawsuit said.
During the purchase, Collins initially checked “no” on a federal firearms transaction form that asked whether he was the actual buyer of the weapon but a gun store employee told him to change his answer to “yes,” the lawsuit said.
Burton shot Norberg and Kunisch on June 9, 2009, when they attempted to apprehend him.
Burton later pleaded guilty to attempted homicide. Collins pleaded guilty to federal charges for the straw purchase.
The gun shop’s attorneys denied wrongdoing. They said the owner of the store at the time of the gun sale, Adam Allan, couldn’t be held financially responsible for crimes connected to a weapon sold at his shop and that the clerk who sold the weapon didn’t intentionally commit a crime. Rather, they said Collins and Burton went out of their way to deceive the salesman.
Badger Guns, previously known as Badger Outdoors, has since closed and been replaced by a gun shop called Brew City Shooters Supply. All three entities have been run by Allan family members.
Authorities have said more than 500 firearms recovered from crime scenes have been traced to Badger Guns and Badger Outdoors, making it the “No. 1 crime gun dealer in America,” according to a 2005 charging document from an unrelated case.
Norberg and Kunisch cited that detail in their lawsuit, saying it showed a history of negligence.
If the verdict against the gun store survives possible appeals, it would be the first of its kind since Congress in 2005 approved a law making gun manufacturers and suppliers largely immune to lawsuits.
One of the law’s exceptions is in cases in which a gun store knowingly violates a state or federal law by facilitating a buyer’s purchase of a weapon for someone who is not legally allowed to buy one.
You know, I’ve had a couple of stressful weeks, but I read this and I think, “At least I’m not Denny Hastert!”
Federal prosecutors in Chicago want former House Speaker Dennis Hastert to serve prison time to resolve a criminal indictment charging he violated federal banking law when he withdrew about $900,000 in cash to pay to an unnamed associate as part of an effort to cover up past misconduct, sources said.
Defense attorneys and prosecutors are negotiating a plea deal that they will take before U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin, according to sources close to the case. The deal, details of which are still emerging, would likely call for Hastert to spend more than a year behind bars, one source said.
A hearing on the case is set for Thursday morning in federal court in Chicago. Hastert, who has been in seclusion since pleading not guilty to the charges, is not expected to appear or enter a plea at that session.
Both sides in the case confirmed late last month that they were in plea talks, but signs of a deal became more concrete Tuesday when — despite a court deadline — defense lawyers did not file motions challenging the case.
[…] Hastert, who retired from the House in 2007, was indicted in May on charges of structuring bank withdrawals to avoid federal reporting requirements and lying to the FBI about what he did with the money. The indictment said that from 2012 to 2014 Hastert withdrew $952,000 in increments of less than $10,000 after a bank official warned him that larger amounts would be reported to federal authorities. The federal charges said the money was part of $1.7 million the former speaker paid and a total of $3.5 million he promised to pay to compensate for “past misconduct” against a longtime acquaintance and to compensate for that misconduct.
Guess he’s paying for molesting that kid and maybe even more, even though he’s not being charged. Seems like they want to hush up the scandal of the former GOP Speaker of the House being a pedophile.
I was just talking to one of my friends about this. Even my most feminist friends admit to occasionally using certain tactics to “handle” their husbands, which is an easier way to get what you want without pissing anyone off (except you, getting mad at yourself for the subterfuge). But I have to think that if most men understood the extent to which women feel compelled to manipulate them, and how resentful they feel about feeling forced to resort to it, they would be shocked. After all, who really wants to be infantilized as some sit-com joker?
One of the things I like about middle age is, personally, I just don’t give a fuck anymore. Oh, you don’t like me telling you what I think? That’s so sad. (As in, sad that your ego is so very fragile.) I was thinking about this after reading an essay by a black activist about how much the idea of white fragility dominates their thinking when dealing with white allies. Isn’t that crazy? I wish we could all just talk to each other. But to do that, we all have to be willing to give up whatever power and position we’ve carved out for ourselves:
In a powerful essay for Lenny Letter, a new email newsletter from Lena Dunham andGirls producer Jenni Konner, Lawrence writes about how frustrated she was to learn that her male American Hustle co-stars were making more than her.
But Lawrence doesn’t just rail against Sony; she rails against the systemic sexism that made her afraid to speak up in the first place:
When the Sony hack happened and I found out how much less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks, I didn’t get mad at Sony. I got mad at myself. I failed as a negotiator because I gave up early. I didn’t want to keep fighting over millions of dollars that, frankly, due to two franchises, I don’t need.
…But if I’m honest with myself, I would be lying if I didn’t say there was an element of wanting to be liked that influenced my decision to close the deal without a real fight. I didn’t want to seem “difficult” or “spoiled.” At the time, that seemed like a fine idea, until I saw the payroll on the Internet and realized every man I was working with definitely didn’t worry about being “difficult” or “spoiled.”
She goes on to detail how her need to be “likable” taps into years of social conditioning for women, who are often punished for being more aggressive in work situations — especially when it comes to negotiating for higher pay:
A few weeks ago at work, I spoke my mind and gave my opinion in a clear and no-bullshit way; no aggression, just blunt. The man I was working with (actually, he was working for me) said, “Whoa! We’re all on the same team here!” As if I was yelling at him. I was so shocked because nothing that I said was personal, offensive, or, to be honest, wrong. All I hear and see all day are men speaking their opinions, and I give mine in the same exact manner, and you would have thought I had said something offensive.
And finally, Lawrence says she’s had enough of trying to maintain her “likable” reputation while pursuing equal treatment:
I’m over trying to find the “adorable” way to state my opinion and still be likable! Fuck that.
You see what I’m getting at here? Tons of research validates this: A woman can say the exact same thing, the exact same way as a man — but when it comes from a woman, it’s a declaration of war. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just talk to each other?
