monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I know, right? How self-aware can someone be, calling Biden “limited” while supporting a pouty little man-boy with a fifth graders vocabulary and the morals of a garbage scow rat?

Trump presents himself as a survivor of negative television coverage, persevering with almost superhuman grit in the face of hostile television coverage. The narrators of this heroic struggle are, of course, other people on television:

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And Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, a lot of people, the great Mark Levin. We have a lot of great people. Lou Dobbs, great people. You know what they said? Every one of them, plus many others, ‘There’s no other man that we’ve ever met that could have taken it.’ It’s true.

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating whether President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani broke lobbying laws in his dealings in Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the inquiry.

The investigators are examining Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to undermine the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch, one of the people said. She was recalled in the spring as part of Mr. Trump’s broader campaign to pressure Ukraine into helping his political prospects.

The investigation into Mr. Giuliani is tied to the case against two of his associates who were arrested this week on campaign finance-related charges, the people familiar with the inquiry said. The associates were charged with funneling illegal contributions to a congressman whose help they sought in removing Ms. Yovanovitch.

Looking forward to the perp walk

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said that former ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch “became overcome with emotion” and had to step out of her deposition several times on Friday.

According to the Hill, Maloney added that Yovanovitch was fired for being “a thorn in the side” of President Donald Trump and his cronies’ Ukrainian pressure campaign.

Yovanovitch declined to answer questions after the nearly 10-hour session.

If America can be said to have a foreign policy at this debased stage of the Trump administration, it mostly consists of sucking up to strongmen while betraying everyone who ever believed in America’s putative ideals. Trump has given Turkey his blessing to assault the Syrian Kurds, America’s crucial allies against ISIS. In June, he reportedly promised China that he wouldn’t speak out in favor of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, some of whom have been carrying American flags, as long as trade talks progressed.

Here in Ukraine, a country locked in a proxy war with Russia, coping with a deluge of disinformation and propaganda and struggling to transcend a history of corruption, reformers are trying to figure out what it means when the American president sides against them.

A black woman was shot dead by police through a bedroom window on Saturday morning, following a request to check on her welfare.

Atatiana Jefferson, 28, had been staying at the Fort Worth residence with her eight-year-old nephew.

A neighbour said he called a non-emergency number after becoming worried in the early hours about an open door.

Police have released body cam footage of the incident, which shows a confrontation lasting only seconds.

The clip shows officers circulating the perimeter of the residential property and spotting a figure at the window. After demanding the person put their hands up, an officer then fired a shot through the glass.

The Fort Worth Police Department said in a statement that the officer, who is a white man, had "perceived a threat" when he drew his weapon.

He has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation, officials added.

The shooting happened at about 02:30 local time (07:30 GMT) on Saturday morning.

Although it is edited, the body cam footage does not appear to show the officers identifying themselves as police.

It does not show footage from inside the property but includes images of a weapon that police say they found inside the bedroom.

It is unclear if Ms Jefferson was holding a weapon at the time, but firearm possession is legal for people aged over 18 in Texas.

Police said officers provided emergency medical care to Ms Jefferson at the scene, but she was declared dead at the property.

The 28-year-old had been playing video games with her nephew before she went to investigate the noise outside at the window, according to a lawyer representing her family.

"Her mom had recently gotten very sick, so she was home taking care of the house and loving her life," lawyer Lee Merritt said on Facebook. "There was no reason for her to be murdered. None. We must have justice."

Ms Jefferson was a university graduate who was working in pharmaceutical equipment sales, he added.

The shooting comes less than two weeks after an off-duty Dallas police officer was jailed for shooting a black man, Bothan Jean, dead in his own apartment.

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, himself from Texas, has spoken out about Ms Jefferson's death.

"As we mourn with Atatiana's loved ones, we must demand accountability and promise to fight until no family has to face a tragedy like this again," he posted on Twitter.

The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) labelled Ms Jefferson's death "unacceptable".

Neighbour James Smith, 62, said he had checked the property himself before calling police, but failed to spot movement inside.

"I'm shaken. I'm mad. I'm upset. And I feel it's partly my fault," Mr Smith told the Star Telegram newspaper about requesting the welfare check. "If I had never dialled the police department, she'd still be alive."

Hundreds of foreigners affiliated with the Islamic State group (IS) have escaped from a camp in northern Syria amid a Turkish offensive, Kurdish officials say.

They say detainees attacked gates at the Ain Issa displacement camp as fighting raged nearby.

Turkey launched an assault last week aimed at driving Kurdish-led forces from the region.

The UN says 130,000 people have fled their homes, and the figure may rise.

Details of the escape are still emerging - a monitoring group put the number who fled at 100, but Kurdish authorities say almost 800 relatives of foreign IS members have escaped.

Ain Issa holds about 12,000 displaced people, including nearly 1,000 foreign women and children with jihadist links. The Kurdish administration says the camp is "now without guards".

BBC Arab affairs editor Sebastian Usher says that amid the chaos of the latest conflict, it's unclear where they might have gone if their escape is confirmed.

But it gives new force to the Kurds' exasperated threat that they cannot guarantee the security of the thousands of IS suspects they hold in the face of the Turkish offensive, our correspondent adds.

"Whoever cares about the secure detention of the prisoners, they are welcome to come and find a solution," senior official Redur Xelil said, warning the Turkish operation was opening the way for IS to regroup.
The SDF says it is currently holding more than 12,000 suspected IS members in seven prisons, and at least 4,000 of them are foreign nationals. The exact locations have not been revealed, but some are reportedly close to the Turkish border.

IS has claimed recent car bombings and on Saturday declared a new campaign in Syria, which it said was to avenge its members' detention in Kurdish-run prisons.

Elizabeth Warren is buying ads on Facebook that falsely claim Mark Zuckerberg has endorsed President Donald Trump — a ploy used to showcase that ads posted by politicians need to be fact-checked.

The Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign sponsored the posts that were blasted into the feeds of U.S. users of the social network, pushing back against Facebook’s policy to exempt politicians’ ads from its third-party fact-checking program.

The ad begins with a lie: Facebook’s chief executive officer “just endorsed” Trump for re-election. It quickly backtracks to the truth. “You’re probably shocked. And you might be thinking, ‘how could this possibly be true?” the ad said. “Well, it’s not.”

Facebook’s fact-checking policy allowed Trump’s team to share ads on the social network that allege former Vice President Joe Biden promised Ukraine $1 billion for firing a prosecutor. Biden’s campaign has dismissed Trump’s allegations as a smear.

“What Zuckerberg ‘has’ done is given Donald Trump free rein to lie on his platform – and then to pay Facebook gobs of money to push out their lies to American voters,” Warren said in the ad.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Gordon Sondland reportedly plans to testify that President Donald Trump ordered him to send the infamous text denying that there was any quid pro quo between Trump and the Ukrainian government over military aid.

The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday night that Sondland will distance himself from Trump’s claims that there was no quid pro quo when he withheld congressionally approved military aid from Ukraine while pushing the Ukrainian president to dig up dirt on 2020 candidate Joe Biden.

Sam Stein
@samstein
It truly does defy everything we know about politics that the president of the United States is publicly defending a policy that allowed hundreds of ISIS supporters to escape.

George Conway
@gtconway3d
But it doesn’t defy anything we know about narcissistic sociopathy.

Holy mackerals, Andy

Quote:

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Gordon Sondland reportedly plans to testify that President Donald Trump ordered him to send the infamous text denying that there was any quid pro quo between Trump and the Ukrainian government over military aid.

The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday night that Sondland will distance himself from Trump’s claims that there was no quid pro quo when he withheld congressionally approved military aid from Ukraine while pushing the Ukrainian president to dig up dirt on 2020 candidate Joe Biden.

TPM


We'll see how this actually turns out, but if as described...