No, it isn’t. Though it is defined as a criminal conspiracy.
Criminal Conspiracy is conspiring, that is acting and advising with a group, to commit a crime, like say money laundering or election fraud.
I’ve always felt the corporatist buy in to the bowlderized “collusion” complicit but this very public abandonment of that story line of defense puzzles me. Maybe more will manifest after Manafort hits the court tomorrow.
Trump’s lawyer/spokesman Rudolph W. Giuliani appeared on Fox News’s and CNN’s morning shows on Monday to downplay the idea that colluding with the Russians would have even been illegal and to argue against strawmen.
The most notable portion of the interviews was when Giuliani rekindled the idea that collusion isn’t even a crime. Trump’s defenders have occasionally noted that the word doesn’t appear in the criminal code — which is true but misleading— but Giuliani took it a step further: He basically suggested Trump would have had to pay for Russia to interfere on his behalf.
“I don’t even know if that’s a crime — colluding with Russians,” Giuliani said on CNN. “Hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack. He didn’t pay for the hacking.”
…
He added on Fox: “I have been sitting here looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime. Collusion is not a crime.”
In case you forgot, Trump himself has been arguing for more than a year not that collusion wasn’t a crime, but that there simply was “no collusion.” Just like Trump’s legal team has taken to arguing that a president can’t legally be guilty of obstructing justice, it’s now arguing that the other side of the investigation that has to do with Trump — the collusion side — is also a bogus standard. Or at least that seems to be where this is headed.
Giuliani also seemed to offer a very narrow denial of what happened with the Trump Tower meeting. While discussing Michael Cohen’s allegation that Trump knew about the meeting, Giuliani focused his defense on arguing not necessarily that Trump didn’t know about it — but that he wasn’t physically at meetings at which information from Russians was discussed.
As fabric always cotton. As a pattern colored on the warp yarn along the weft, this usually manifests as small square checkerboard rather than a stripe (vichy).
Why would I know? Fabric is a near universal trade good (normally stores value a little better than food) and the adoption of mass production economies based on technical innovation and fashion (own a Beaver Hat?) quite historically significant.
Only acculturated values of Puritan, Victorian, and 50s gender stereotypes make my expertise the least bit remarkable.
It is still a pattern favored by mods (Paisley? You were watching U.S. TV during all the important parts of the 60s).
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Ex-Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa disappears; Medicare and Medicaid signed into law; A blast rocks Black Tom Island; The USS Indianapolis sunk; Henry Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for… reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration.
Who are these people and why do I care about them again?
R. Kelly
Oh, I don’t need any reminders about you, but just for context.
He urinated on a 14 year old girl. On videotape. He bragged about it. Thank goodness we respect fine upstanding businesspeople and politicians instead of foul mouthed Z List Reality Show Celebrities who sexually assault women in public.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Britain’s Prince Charles marries Lady Diana Spencer; Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini born; President Dwight Eisenhower signs an act creating NASA; Artist Vincent Van Gogh dies.
…I started out in journalism in the orange-fingered sunset of the Reagan era. The rise of the right, I felt back then, was the most consequential development of my lifetime, and understanding it was where I came to focus my energies.
What came to fascinate me was the paradox of the thing. Republicans had successfully inverted their historical brand-image as the party of the highborn, remaking themselves as plain-talking pals of the forgotten people who had so spurned them during the Great Depression. Republicanism’s payload, however, was the same as it had been in 1932. And just look at what conservatism proceeded to do to those average people once they welcomed it into their lives.
But understanding the perversity of rightwing populism only brought me to another mystery: the continuing failure of liberals to defeat this thing, even as its freakishness and destructiveness became apparent to everyone. My brain twirls to think that rightwing populism is still running strong in 2018 – that it’s even worse now than it was in 1988 – that the invective and the journalism and the TV shows and all the mournful books about the decline of the middle class have amounted, basically, to nothing.
We had the perfect opportunity to reverse course in 2008, after a deregulatory catastrophe sent the billionaires shrieking for handouts and ruined middle America as collateral damage. That was the perfect moment for liberals to reclaim their Rooseveltian heritage by governing forcefully on behalf of ordinary people, by warring against over-powerful corporations, by demonstrating the power of the state to build a just and humane society. But they didn’t do it.
I know the excuses: those Republicans were so clever, they wouldn’t vote for Obama’s proposals, etc. But from the long-term perspective, what really mattered was the absence of Democratic will. Instead of doing what the moment required, Democrats chose to help the banks get back on their feet and to stand by as inequality soared; they scolded their base for wanting too much and they extended their hand instead to Silicon Valley and big pharma. The task of capturing public anger was one they regarded with distaste; they left that to Tea Party demagogues and to Donald Trump.
We are going to pay for that failure for a long time. The GOP should have been ruined by the financial crisis; instead the culture wars are raging all over again, with dog whistles and fights over the flag and the persecution mania of the populist right blaring from the TV screen. We’re right back where we started. The crisis went completely to waste.
For all their cunning, Republicans are a known quantity. Their motives are simple: they will do anything, say anything, profess faith in anything to get tax cuts, deregulation and a little help keeping workers in line. Nothing else is sacred to them. Rules, norms, traditions, deficits, the Bible, the constitution, whatever. They don’t care, and in this they have proven utterly predictable.
The Democrats, however, remain a mystery. We watch them hesitate at crucial moments, betray the movements that support them, and even try to suppress the leaders and ideas that generate any kind of populist electricity. Not only do they seem uninterested in doing their duty toward the middle class, but sometimes we suspect they don’t even want to win.
(This is more than just a suspicion, by the way. As none other than Tony Blair has said, “I wouldn’t want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.”)
Still, as we are reminded at every turn, this flawed organization is the only weapon we have against the party of Trump. And as the president’s blunders take a turn for the monumental and public alarm grows, the imperative of delivering a Democratic wave this fall grows ever more urgent.
Make no mistake: it has got to happen. Democrats simply have to take one of the houses of Congress this fall and commence holding Trump accountable. Failure at this baseline mission is unthinkable; it will mean the Democratic party has no reason for being, even on its own compromised terms.
CONGHAM, England (Reuters) – The race starter stood up and shouted: “Ready, steady, slow!” The crowd cheered, but the competitors remained stuck at the start line. Welcome to the world snail racing championship.
More than 150 snails took part in the annual event, held at a summer fete in Norfolk, eastern England on Saturday where a silver tankard stuffed with lettuce leaves was the prize.
The snails are placed on a special damp cloth marked with three concentric circles and the creatures race 13 inches (33 cm) to the outer ring.
“We take this seriously,” snail racer John McClean told Reuters.
“We have got training slopes. We look at diet, we are drug compliant as well. It is the whole thing when you look at elite sports.”
The competition has been held since the 1960s with each race lasting several minutes. Competitors are able to select a snail from the organizers’ stash or bring their own.
Jo Waterfield from the nearby village of Grimston found the eventual winner among her plants.
“I pulled him out this morning and told him if he didn’t win I would squash him,” Waterfield told Reuters.
(Writing by Patrick Johnston; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.
Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.
You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here.
It’s Summer, time to keep time in the kitchen light and easy and take advantage of the bounty of Summer produce. Here are some great recipes that do just that.
This is a batter cobbler that takes advantage of whatever fruit is available. When poured into a hot cast-iron skillet, the batter immediately crisps and swells. Serve warm with whipped cream, creme fraiche or ice cream.
Don’t have a food processor available, here’s the low-tech, more-textured version of Speedy Homemade Hummus: You start by crushing the chickpeas in a large (gallon-size) zip-top bag. To double the recipe, make a second batch in the same bag. Top with a splash of olive oil, paprika or more finely chopped garlic.
A simple chopped salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion and parsley is another appealing option, especially in summer when those things are all over the farmers market or even in your garden.
This stir-fry is a pantry-friendly way to go. Its classic ginger-garlic combination gives the dish enough flavor on its own; as soon as the green beans are warmed through, you can serve a portion as is.
This technique for cooking corn on the grill is forgiving. It produces sweet, plump ears even when you happen to forget about them while attending to other foods. Just as important to busy cooks: There’s no need to soak the ears for 30 minutes before throwing them on the grill.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Outbreak of World War One; Troops disperse ‘Bonus Army’ marchers; A U.S. Army bomber crashes into the Empire State Building; Former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and author Beatrix Potter born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.
Two weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.
The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.
Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.
Of course Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who attended the meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and others at Trump Tower in June 2016 had closer ties with Russian officials than she let on.
And of course there would now be allegations — secondhand, but credible — that President Trump himself knew that the meeting was scheduled and what it was about before it took place.
After all, denial after denial from those involved in the meeting, statement after statement, has crumbled away or been perforated with holes. The scenario that seemed at the outset to be worst for Trump politically is increasingly the one in which we seem to be headed.
It’s long been the case that giving Trump the benefit of the doubt on having not known about the meeting in advance means setting aside mounting evidence and Trump’s habit of denying things that are later proved true.
Trump said explicitly last July that he didn’t know about the meeting before it happened. But, then, that’s what his campaign said about an alleged payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal when that news broke in October 2016. A conversation between Trump and his longtime attorney and problem-solver Michael Cohen discussing that payment the prior month emerged this week.
On Thursday night, both NBC and CNN reported that Cohen, per a source close to him, was prepared to tell investigators that he was present when Trump Jr. told his father about the possibility of meeting with the Russian lawyer to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. The meeting stemmed from an email sent by a music publicist to Trump Jr. in which the Trump campaign was promised “some official documents and information” that constituted “very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
Trump Jr. famously replied: “If it’s what you say I love it.”
Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s 