Equal-BLACK LIVES MATTER-ityShiba

@[email protected] @[email protected]

[Olga Lautman 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @OlgaNYC1211]

So this is very disturbing. A Russian outlet known for publishing info for Russia’s security services (FSB) wrote a whole article speculating Patel’s upcoming visit to Moscow before election. Everything from providing him w kompromat on Dems to him serving as a back channel. They even discussed what they could get in return. Hello Congress!! Anyone home??

[auonsson @auonsson]

The yacht of Mark Zuckerberg allegedly refused repeated calls by US Coast Guard looking for ships available to rescue a small boat with 2 women, a kid and a dog.

According to a user on BSKY who was on a cruise ship that performed the rescue eventually. AIS-track fits claim.

[Jackie Singh @HackingButLegal]

Yes, Todd Blanche is in the Epstein Files.

He was in a thread discussing Epstein's chances of getting off in court all the way back in 2019 along with Sean Buckley. I believe "Ilan" refers to Ilan Graff. https://t.co/h4g3998fkh

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Has Trump’s invasion of Greenland already begun? An American oil company connected to Donald Trump is preparing to sink wells in remote Greenland despite not having received permission from the local authorities. https://t.co/12w064lknY

[Curtis Morrison @curtismorrison]

DHS takes in millions per year in fees for people adjusting or changing their status after arriving in US on nonimmigrant visas. Now, after taking their cash, they want to remove them. Basically, @DHSGenCounsel is turning DHS into a crime syndicate.

[Equal-BLACK LIVES MATTER-ityShiba @evoketolerance]

@capitolhunters The “ballroom” was planned with bathrooms tucked in weird places along the walls. When he’d decide the time to stay in the bunker arrived, dividing walls & furniture would be delivered, so that his Administration families could live there with him & his family.

[Equal-BLACK LIVES MATTER-ityShiba @evoketolerance]

@RapidResponse47 Typical of Fox News to give an inaccurate statistic, on the high side of the actual wage growth, to make the President look like a better leader than he is. The jobs report sucked. Augmenting wages with inflation results in shrinking earnings, while GDP growth is also dismal.

[John Jackson @hissgoescobra]

It’s truly incredible, no matter how many times you see it, for a White House reporter to ask Trump something like he is an even remotely normal person and to receive confirmation that nope he’s still a sociopath.

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

This afternoon, the Office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement, purporting to be from him, that announced he’s been discharged from a rehabilitation center and has returned to his home in Kentucky, where he will “maintain an intensive regimen of physical therapy during the state work period…”

It was written in the first-person and everything, as though Mr. McConnell had dictated it to staff. Philip Lewis of HuffPost helpfully posted a screenshot of the statement, and you can read the whole thing online.

For those unaware, state work periods are the official way of describing those frequent breaks Congress takes during the congressional session. Many lawmakers actually do go back to their states and their districts and do work. Some do not.

Anyway, I find that phrasing rather interesting because it carries the soft implication that Mr. McConnell will be returning to Congress. It’s a way of kinda-sorta winking: hey, I’m recuperating, and I’ll be back at it soon — but without explicitly saying that.

It was 53 days ago—June 14th—that Senator McConnell was found unconscious just before 9am in his townhouse on Capitol Hill. He was subsequently hospitalized, of course, and the American people haven’t seen him in public since.

Well, that’s not entirely true. His office did release two photos of him and his wife—former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao—that are said to be from his hospital/rehab rooms on July 12th and July 27th.

Some have claimed these are AI-generated images. I do not believe they are AI, and there’s no proof that they are AI.

However, I can’t pretend that I’m 100% convinced these photos were taken since the day he was found unconscious, but I do believe they are real images.

I realize that doesn’t make sense, and yet, given the very long pattern of bad faith words and actions on the part of Sen. McConnell and the Republican Party and Donald Trump, there remains a small part of me that wouldn’t put it past these folks to be, how shall I put it, less-than-honest on the whole nature of this thing.

Neither Sen. McConnell nor his office have released any videos of him talking about his health status or the business of the U.S. Senate or any national security matters (like that whole War in Iran thing we got going on) or even the recent, unexpected death of his longtime colleague, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.

And that’s very curious because not a week has gone by—literally—without someone in the Republican Party or the world of conservative media claiming to have had long phone calls with Senator McConnell.

But no videos. Not one. He’s healthy enough to chat with all sorts of folks in his orbit over the phone and temporarily pose for pictures with Secretary Chao.

But no videos. No cable news interviews from his hospital/rehab room, which might be rather endearing and immediately end all speculation.

No phone calls with any Democrats, including Gov. Andy Beshear, the man who leads Mr. McConnell’s state and is charged with ensuring his constituents are represented capably in Congress.

No phone calls with any actual legacy media journalists, not conservative pundits pretending to be journalists.

No phone calls at all with anyone outside of Mr. McConnell’s tight ideological circle.

His office has released three press statements total in all that time, all of which are written in the first-person — again, as though Mr. McConnell had dictated them directly to staff. And that’s not including quotes claimed to be directly from Mr. McConnell given by his staff to reporters.

Then came today’s news. The move from rehab to home to “recover” and do “physical therapy” and “continue to engage with my staff and colleagues on important Senate business.”

It’s a strange thing, though.

There are no photos of Mitch McConnell leaving the rehab center. There are none of him arriving at the airport to depart for Kentucky. There are none of him arriving at his destination airport in Kentucky. There are none of him arriving at his Kentucky home.

None whatsoever. Just the statement and legacy media reporters giving a quick salute and dutifully reporting the update. No questions asked.

It’s especially strange given that Mr. McConnell continues to make votes.

Oh, yes! You read that right. As reported this afternoon by Tyler Spence of NOTUS, Senator McConnell was able to cast tie-breaking votes today in the Senate Agriculture Committee.

How is that possible?

Because the Committee’s rules permit an absent senator to allow a colleague to cast a vote on their behalf (“by proxy”) in their absence.

This time it was Agriculture Chairman John Boozman of Arkansas, who claims to have chatted with Mr. McConnell last night (you guessed it: over the phone) and received direct approval to vote on his behalf.

A man who has not been seen in public or any publicly released videos since June 14th has somehow written and/or approved all his press releases and seems to be on the phone quite a lot with a small, tight-knit group of people (but not the governor of his state) and continues to cast committee votes through his colleagues.

I don’t pretend to know exactly what’s going on with Senator McConnell.

I don’t know if he’s dead or incapacitated or if this is the most bizarre and irresponsible and selfish communications strategy ever undertaken by an incumbent Senate Majority Leader, who, by the way, has a rather important national security obligation while our country is at war.

Here’s what I do know:

There are thousands of media professionals with congressional credentials and hundreds of them have Congress as their main beat.

There are 100 Senate offices and about 5,000 Senate staffers.

There are tens of thousands of political professionals in D.C. with regular contact with those two groups.

It’s pretty crazy that in the most gossipy town in America—full of ravenously ambitious people always talking to other ravenously ambitious people, where influence is about knowing things firsthand—no journalists know for sure what’s going on with Mitch McConnell after 53 days.

And yet, legacy media continues to report his press releases as straightforward.

What are the odds?

That’s all to say that I want to be the first to congratulate the reporter(s) who are feverishly gathering intel on Mitch McConnell’s status right now that will be withheld and published in a bestselling, tell-all book in about a year.

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Link to full essay available here for easier sharing: https://t.co/v40OGgZVFo

[Rep. Rob Menendez @RepMenendez]

ICE changed its policies to hide deaths of detained individuals and keep the number of publicly-reported fatalities as low as possible.

By "releasing" people from their custody right before they die, ICE avoids having to report or investigate these deaths - and they hide the truth from the public.

This is a blatant attempt to evade accountability for inhumane conditions, and it will cost more lives.

[CantStopPoppin @CantStopPoppin]

Zero Warrant, Zero Jurisdiction... West Texas Border Patrol Snatches Keys from US Citizen Presenting a Passport

He handed over a valid US passport at a West Texas Border Patrol checkpoint... so the federal agent reached through the window and snatched his ignition keys.

Once citizenship is verified at an inland checkpoint, their investigative jurisdiction is legally over. Reaching across the threshold of a vehicle to seize personal property without a warrant or probable cause is an outright Fourth Amendment violation.

They rely on the tactical vest and the badge to make people forget where their legal authority ends but know your rights when they reach inside your car in Texas or anywhere else.

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service consistently overstated its savings, taking credit for lease cancellations initiated before the group existed, a government watchdog found.

DOGE also claimed contracts were terminated that had not been, the report said. https://t.co/Oe9hyGO7z4

[Moe Davis (U.S. Air Force, Retired) @ColMoeDavis]

Well, here’s a headline that surprised no sane person.

As expected, Elon’s “Department of Government Efficiency” turned out to be the “Department of Gross Exaggeration.” Instead of cutting $2 trillion dollars from the budget as promised, the Trump administration has added $3.7 trillion to the national debt in just 18 months.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[Jessica Tillipman @JTillipman]

I’m pretty sure this is as close as GAO gets to dunking on something.

-DOGE did not use its stated methodology to calculate the majority of savings associated with the contracts reported as terminated.

-108 of the 264 leases identified for termination on the Wall of Receipts, about $15.3 million of the total $53.5 million in savings, were already in process for termination when DOGE was established.

-DOGE reported all contracts on the Wall of Receipts as terminated, but our analysis of FPDS data shows that almost 2,000 contracts were not terminated.

-basic math errors: $113 million in reported savings for the 264 leases was inaccurate. The information on the Wall of Receipts actually summed to $53.5 million.

-$1.7 billion Defense Health Agency IT contract where DOGE agreed after meeting with DOD that no action should be taken and the Wall of Receipts kept reporting $1.7 billion in savings.

And my favorite example: DOGE reported more than $28 million in savings on an Air Force contract awarded on behalf of the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency for financial management modernization. Air Force descoped work and cut $28 million from the contract value, then extended it six months and awarded a $27.4 million sole-source follow-on to the same contractor for the same work.

[Jessica Tillipman @JTillipman]

Full report https://t.co/CnW6H4zExo

[Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @ReichlinMelnick]

WOW. According to @RepMenendez, the EXACT scenario I laid out below, where ICE "releases" someone having a medical emergency solely so their death won't be recorded as occurring while in custody, happened last month at the infamous Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, NJ.

[Ted Lieu @tedlieu]

The Pentagon conducts war games all the time. How is it possible the Pentagon didn’t see the US would run out of munitions?

Pre War: US had about 452 THAAD and 2,700 Patriot missiles.

Iran had about 3,000 ballistic missiles and over 50,000 drones.

The imbalance was obvious.

[Equal-BLACK LIVES MATTER-ityShiba @evoketolerance]

@David_J_Bier I’m visiting Chicago next week & the expensive admission to the Field Museum will be free to IL residents on Wednesday. Such a museum takes public funds; yet, I will pay & residents won’t, so we are used to this, are we not?

[Equal-BLACK LIVES MATTER-ityShiba @evoketolerance]

@CNN Admission that there is, and never was, an exit plan to this war of choice. What the US needs, is to preserve our munitions stockpile.

[Equal-BLACK LIVES MATTER-ityShiba @evoketolerance]

@CostelloWilliam The car description and plates aren’t on my Uber app, when I can verify in the timing of the Uber arriving, that it’s legit. If the driver were nefarious and took my cell away from me, it could be an arranged rape vehicle. I’d raise daughters to screen for this type, & say “No”.