…I’d like to say we could get it out the way because he’s gone

He said the “baton will be handed over,” saying his premiership had “unexpectedly turned out to be a relay race – they changed the rules halfway through.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/06/we-will-come-out-stronger-boris-johnson-delivers-farewell-speech-downing-street-liz-truss

…they? …this motherfucker couldn’t follow his own damn rules…& what? …he thought he was going to be the last prime minister?…I don’t know what he thinks he was saying but if you’ll pardon whatever inherent bias prevents me from having the slightest respect for the asshole in question…who also uttered the line that apparently we’ve reached a “time for politics to be over“…which I guess is consistent with being surprised to find he’s not the last to run…but is equally fucking asinine on its face…basically gussied up the most conceited bit of patting himself on the back for a job well done you can imagine despite having lost the job for doing it badly…not to mention haphazardly…styled his successor as “what the people of this country want” despite a mandate derived from less than half her own party’s MPs & around 1.75% of the general electorate…”what they need” despite every indication being that even the ones that voted for her need her like they need another hole in their head…& “what they deserve“…which I honestly can’t interpret as anything but an entirely childish suggestion that despite almost none of the “people of this country” having had a hand in ditching his ass or hastily cramming her in to replace him he considers them to have betrayed him & are going to get what’s coming to them in a fashion he rather relishes…which is probably where he thinks he was going with the classical allusion that showed up with the inevitability of the harmonica break in a dylan tune

As dictator https://t.co/lY9iR9m6aF

— Tom Holland (@holland_tom) September 6, 2022

…now the guardian probably has to worry about libel…but I’m not under the impression that enough people pay attention to anything I have to say to make it worth considering…so…I’m inclined to think the “what may have been” is conspicuously misplaced here…but

In what may have been a huge humblebrag by Johnson, Cincinnatus is said to often be held up as a paragon of civic virtue and outstanding leadership, in part because of his swift success and immediate resignation of near-absolute power as dictator after he returned to Rome from his farm.

According to Britannica:

The core of the tradition holds that in 458 Cincinnatus was appointed dictator of Rome in order to rescue a consular army that was surrounded by the Aequi on Mount Algidus. At the time of his appointment he was working a small farm. He is said to have defeated the enemy in a single day and celebrated a triumph in Rome. Cincinnatus maintained his authority only long enough to bring Rome through the emergency. He then resigned and returned to his farm.

…as deep cuts go…I’d allow that it might give some significant insight into the extent of the fundamentally conceited nature of the man that he still thinks he’s all that & a bag of chips…but…& I’d argue this is perhaps the most characteristic bit of all…the part where it’s a flattering comparison is rooted in the bits of the history that he’d like to cherry-pick…while if you ask someone who knows that kind of a thing for a living

If you are curious about Boris Johnson's reference to Cincinnatus in his goodbye speech – he was a 5th century BC Roman politician who saved the state from an invasion, then – job done – returned to his farm ('to his plough'). He was also an enemy of the people.

— mary beard (@wmarybeard) September 6, 2022

…oh, the irony…& so on & so forth…except…one last bit…because I’ll admit this connection was a surprise to me

And perhaps in a comparison that Johnson would not welcome, Cincinnatus was also the codename used by the whistleblower Edward Snowden when he first contacted the then Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald to tell his story.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/06/boris-johnson-likens-himself-to-roman-cincinnatus-who-returned-as-dictator

…but while we all brace ourselves for the continued fallout of the shit a small number of almost exclusively men have conspired as heads of state to foist upon us…& the two headline acts for the english-speaking world continue to be largely defined by the ways they’re riven by antagonistic lines of demarcation

Our country remains deeply divided. We have a Supreme Court packed with reactionaries. Many right-wingers appear comfortable with threatening violence if things don’t go their way, and a large minority of the members of Congress seems unconcerned with such talk. I continue to worry especially about political assassinations, because all that takes is one deranged person and a gun — and our country unfortunately has many of both.

And yet, for all that, I am less pessimistic than I was back then.

…c’mon…I had to throw that one in…”less pessimistic than I was“…if nothing else that seemed like it might at least feel like an unexpected plot-twist in one of these

Oddly enough, the main things that give me hope arise from former president Donald Trump’s attack on the electoral process, culminating in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. At the time I feared that the unprecedented insurrection was the beginning of a sustained war on American democracy.

…so…not to immediately burst that particular balloon…but…well…might be as in a country that feels the way it does about that whole (or, technically I guess very specifically not whole) 2nd amendment (that despite literally taking its name from an adjustment is somehow to be considered simultaneously both inviolate & yet constantly re-interpretable in order to confer broader rights under its auspices in open defiance of sense or reason) the concept of political violence is never entirely off the table…but all the same…the sustained war it’s been looking to me has been being waged against US democracy (& indeed some other places) isn’t that kind of war…to borrow a comparison from bill hicks…that would imply one side (metaphorically or otherwise) is “walking in a straight line in red coats” while the other side “they’re up in the trees going […] ‘Are they fightin’ us? We’re not even in that fuckin’ field! I guess we’re winning by default! No combat, we’re ahead!'”

Yet nothing much happened. Rather, with the executive branch crippled and the legislative branch divided, the judicial branch of the federal government held the line. Again and again, both federal and state courts rejected claims of election fraud. Now those who alleged fraud without substantial evidence are themselves being investigated. Hundreds of people who invaded the Capitol, attacked police and threatened lawmakers were tracked down and charged with crimes. It was as if the American system had been subjected to a stress test and, albeit a bit wobbly, passed.

…eh…I dunno…maybe it’s just me? …I kinda feel like “nothing much happened” belongs in the news these days about as much as that “may have been” fig-leaf the guardian bit about boris crammed in…but I want to know where the grounds for optimism show up…so

Moreover, the Capitol invaders turned out to lack the courage of their convictions. Having broken the law, they shied away from the consequences. Unlike the civil rights activists of the 1960s, they did not proudly march into jails, certain of the rightness of their cause, eager to use the moment to explain what they had done and why. They lacked the essentials that gave the civil rights movement and others sustainability: training, discipline and a strategy for the long term.

…this is some thin gruel when what’s called for is some real meat…or at least some bread & fishes if that’s how you roll…because the people that gave you the people who absent-mindedly assaulted their own nation’s legislative seat in order to try to haphazardly subvert the results of a democratic election while largely imagining themselves to be both heroically saving their nation from a terrible fate & doing nothing more than aimlessly & harmlessly going with the flow of a crowd it’s unjust to style as a mob or hold to account for its actions…that lot…the ones that stacked the supreme court deck so heavily in their favor that it put roe v wade on the chopping block & would very possibly give his fatuousness the most orange, stable genius & first of his name – the most impeached & as yet unconvicted, clearly guilty pastiche of a president – the same get out of jail card mitch & his gutless wonder of a senate majority gave him…claiming they lack a long term strategy is some kind of presumably blissful ignorance

But it is beginning to feel to me like the wave of hard right — not “conservative” — reaction has crested. As we saw in the recent vote in Kansas, the Supreme Court’s ruling against abortion has awakened many women, and some men, to the dangers of letting that court go wildly out of step with the American people.
[…]
So, while the patient is not yet healthy, I see some signs that the fever is breaking and the prognosis is improving.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/why-ive-stopped-fearing-america-is-headed-civil-war/

…hmm…reminds of something about counting chickens…I’m sure that’s just me, though…it’s not like there’s anything really obviously looking like it’s waging a war on democracy & the rule of law that’s going to leap off the page this morning, right?

A federal judge intervened on Monday in the investigation of former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of sensitive government records, ordering the appointment of an independent arbiter to review a trove of materials seized last month from Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.

The judge, Aileen M. Cannon of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, also temporarily barred the Justice Department from using the seized materials for any “investigative purpose” connected to its inquiry of Mr. Trump until the work of the arbiter, known as a special master, was completed.

The order would prevent, at least for now, federal prosecutors from using key pieces of evidence as they continue to investigate whether the former president illegally retained national defense documents at his estate, Mar-a-Lago, or obstructed the government’s repeated efforts to get them back.

…wait…so…let me get this straight…despite the alleged president’s so-callled legal team singularly failing to present any meaningful foundation for either their claim that a special master is appropriate, relevant, or even an applicable salve to a supposedly irreparable harm that they can’t articulate…nor their fervent wish that the judge they presented their suggestion to has so much as the necessary jurisdiction to grant them standing to make a case in the first place…she’s gone ahead & given them what they wanted?

While the order may ultimately serve only to delay the criminal inquiry into Mr. Trump, the scope and candor of Judge Cannon’s language and reasoning pointed to broader themes. Her ruling seemed to carve out a special exception to the normal legal process for the former president and reject the Justice Department’s implicit argument that Mr. Trump be treated like any other investigative subject.

…& sure…this might just be one of those times when I’m wrong & @butcherbakertoiletrymaker gets to say I-told-ya-so…but

Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2020, granted the special master wide-ranging authority to review the more than 11,000 documents carted away from Mar-a-Lago by the F.B.I. on Aug. 8, some of which bore markings labeling them as highly classified. Her ruling permitted whoever is appointed to the job to evaluate the documents not only for those protected by attorney-client privilege, a relatively common measure, but also for those potentially shielded by executive privilege, which typically protects confidential internal executive branch deliberations.

…it’s still conspicuously bullshit from the ground up…& seems like it ought to serve mostly to inscribe cannon’s name in the co-defendant section of that RICO-riddled obstruction of justice case I’m still hoping might one day show up…I imagine it’d be hard to miss since the sheer number of chickens due to come home to roost would be like a total eclipse at this point

“Even if any assertion of executive privilege by plaintiff ultimately fails in this context, that possibility, even if likely, does not negate a former president’s ability to raise the privilege as an initial matter,” she wrote.

In her order, Judge Cannon evinced concern that Mr. Trump might suffer “reputational harm” from a search that was not conducted properly — or, as she added, from “a future indictment” that was based even in part on “property that ought to be returned.”

…look…they claimed that they’d conducted a thorough search of all the shit he took from the white house on the basis of which they literally swore that he didn’t have anything left that he should have given back (or indeed never have taken in the first place)…which turned out to be so entirely untrue that the stuff the FBI removed was literally riddled with the shit they said wasn’t there…but their argument is that they have literally no idea what was seized except for being quite certain that bits of it might reasonably be assumed to contain evidence that would do immense & irreparable damage to their client’s reputation & fortune…they even use the word escutcheon at one point

…except…in this case…she didn’t make the good call…maybe she just wants a pony

Donald Trump once tried to pay a lawyer he owed $2m with a deed to a horse.

The bizarre scene is described in Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump and the Corruption of Justice, a book by David Enrich of the New York Times that will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Enrich reports that “once he regained the capacity for speech”, the lawyer to whom Trump offered a stallion supposedly worth $5m “stammered … ‘This isn’t the 1800s. You can’t pay me with a horse.’”

…although I would pay to see him attempt to ride a horse…well…let’s be realistic…try to get on a…no…wait…stay in the saddle once some kind of crane arrangement had lowered his has-trouble-with-ramps ass into place…anyway

Accounts of Trump refusing to pay legal and other bills are legion. In New York, his business and tax affairs are the subject of civil and criminal investigations.
[…]
Enrich’s book places particular focus on Trump’s relationship with Jones Day, a giant US law firm, and the role played by Donald McGahn, a partner, in Trump’s 2016 campaign and then in the White House.
[…]
McGahn was Trump’s first White House counsel. A member of the rightwing Federalist Society, he worked with the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, on an unprecedented stacking of the federal judiciary with conservative hardliners, which ultimately included three supreme court picks.

…& what’s different about jones day? …well, for a start this seems like it says a whole lot

Enrich describes Trump’s “reputation for short-changing his lawyers (and banks and contractors and customers)” but says that in the case of Jones Day, “against all odds, Trump paid and paid again”.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/05/donald-trump-tried-pay-lawyer-horse-book-david-enrich-servants-of-the-damned

…anyway…getting back to that ruling about giving them their special master…& how entirely that flies in the face of what the law actually seems to say about that idea

Judge Aileen Cannon Thinks 64 Tax and Medical Records No Investigator Has Read are More Important than 11,282 Stolen Government Documents

…only…that doesn’t really do it justice…if you’ll pardon the pun

Here Cannon takes Bratt's statement that no one involved in the investigation had leaked to the press, and uses it to claim that DOJ had leaked to the press, which is how she gets to irreparable harm. pic.twitter.com/uCIMkIEeiJ

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) September 5, 2022

JFC. Trusty raises “conflict of interest” concerns because one of the filter team guys works in the same DoJ unit as Bratt, but then suggests HIMSELF as special master. 27/ pic.twitter.com/aYLZOTShfX

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) September 3, 2022

is privileged. Archivist says it is “not a close” question
2. Judge enjoins the entire investigation because some of the material might be subject to Executive Privilege. But Executive Priv isn’t some post-presidential privilege that allows Presidents to keep documents after …

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) September 5, 2022

6. She tries to enjoin the Exec Branch from using these materials in an investigation, but the govt has already reviewed all the materials. It makes no sense.

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) September 5, 2022

8. Her analysis of standing is terrible. Trump wouldn’t own these docs anyway, so why does he get a Master over them? If there is some marginal claim to some attorney client docs, that handful of material can be separately dealt with–you don’t enjoin the entire investig for that

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) September 5, 2022

That’s just a few of many more problems. Frankly, any of my first year law students would have written a better opinion.

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) September 5, 2022

…seek & ye shall find

The man calling himself “Mason” told The Washington Post that he was not, in fact, affiliated with Patriot Front or its leader; he was an anti-racism activist posing as a member to out possible sympathizers. He said he recorded his dealings with Lamond, but shelved the exchanges when it appeared the police lieutenant didn’t reveal secrets or admit to allegiances with the far-right.

But then in February, D.C.’s police chief put Lamond on leave amid an FBI investigation into his contacts with a different extremist group, the Proud Boys, and their leader, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio. The activist revisited his conversations with the purported Patriot Front member.
[…]
The recordings show a police officer trying to cultivate a relationship, and at times appearing friendly to a racist group. But experts say it is hard to assess whether they show Lamond crossing a line and getting too close with extremists — or simply working sources for information that he could use to keep people safe. Some of the contacts seem entirely legitimate, and the activist himself could face criticism for spurring police to focus efforts on him.
[…]
The nature and scope of the FBI investigation involving Lamond’s alleged contacts remains unknown, but D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said in February the inquiry is in part about “investigations involving January 6.”
[…]
As the discussion continued, Lamond messaged: “If you prefer to call me so nothing is in writing that’s cool.”

Shane Sims, a former FBI agent and CEO of the cybersecurity firm Kivu Consulting, who reviewed the exchanges between Lamond and Mason for The Washington Post, noted several possible “red flags” in the conversations.

Those include Lamond agreeing to take conversations offline, and his suggestion he would “collaborate” with Mason at a rally.
[…]
Sims said those phrases could pique the interest of federal law enforcement. But Sims also said it is important to know if Lamond followed proper protocols during his interactions with the person he thought was the Patriot Front leader or its representative. He said best practice is for intel officers to pair with a colleague and document every contact to ensure nothing is misconstrued. He said that “being untruthful is okay” to earn someone’s trust.

“Ultimately, this comes down to whether or not he was documenting things properly, in accordance with department’s policies and procedures,” Sims said. “If not, the red flags become a deeper state of red.”
[…]
In a recent court filing, Hassan described Lamond as the police department’s “point of contact” with Tarrio, and noted the lieutenant and others were concerned that the Proud Boys planned to eschew wearing their signature colors on Jan. 6 so they could not easily be identified.

Tarrio was arrested two days before the insurrection on charges that he burned a Black Lives Matter banner stolen from a historic African American D.C. church during a violent Proud Boys march the previous month. He was set free the next day to await trial, but barred from the District, keeping him out of the nation’s capital on Jan. 6.

As he left the city, he met in an underground parking garage with Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the extremist group Oath Keepers, and others. In a 22-minute video that captured part of that meeting, he told a participant that he knew of his pending arrest as he flew into a D.C.-area airport.

“In the air is when I knew they signed the warrant,” Tarrio said, without explaining how or by whom. He added, “They texted me from the air.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/03/patriot-front-dc-police-conversations/

…or something

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/05/texas-phone-company-conservative-takeover-schools

…seems like a lot of things are up in the air, really

This is a great primer on my 20 year journey with Erik Prince, but
With the Tom Barrack trial or plea deal imminent –
I will look for a forum for a deep dive into Erik Prince, the UAE, MBz, TBz, Nader, mercenaries, contractors, money laundering and all around FUCKERY https://t.co/uBbu2tzNkD

— Gregg Smith (@RanchHand0351) September 5, 2022

…many of them positively pie-in-the-sky, even

In the weeks leading to Twitter’s launch of a fact-checking program to combat misinformation, experts at the company warned managers that the project could be easily exploited by conspiracy theorists.

Those warnings — which went unheeded — almost came true. The night before the invitation-only project, called Birdwatch, launched, in 2021, engineers and managers learned that they had inadvertently accepted a proponent of the violent conspiracy theory QAnon into the program — which would have enabled them to publicly annotate news-related tweets to help people determine their veracity.

The details of Twitter’s near-miss with Birdwatch came to light as part of an explosive whistleblower complaint filed in July by the platform’s former head of security, Peiter Zatko. He had commissioned an external audit of Twitter’s capabilities to fight misinformation and it was included in his complaint. The Washington Post obtained the audit and the complaint from congressional staff.

While Zatko’s allegations of Twitter’s security failures, first reported last month by The Post and CNN, have received widespread attention, the audit on misinformation has gone largely unreported. Yet it underscores a fundamental conundrum for the 16-year-old social media service: despite its role hosting the opinions of some the world’s most important political leaders, business executives and journalists, Twitter has been unable to build safeguards commensurate with the platform’s outsize societal influence. It has never generated the level of profit needed to do so, and its leadership never demonstrated the will.
[…]
Former employees have said that privacy, security, and user safety from harmful content were long seen as afterthoughts for the company’s leadership. Then-CEO Jack Dorsey even questioned his most senior deputies’ decision to permanently suspend Trump’s account after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, calling silencing the president a mistake.
[…]
The report described severe staffing challenges that included large numbers of unfilled positions on its Site Integrity team, one of three business units responsible for policing misinformation. It also highlighted a lack of language capabilities so severe that many content moderators resorted to Google Translate to fill the gaps. In one of the most startling parts of the report, a head count chart said Site Integrity had just two full-time people working on misinformation in 2021, and four working full-time to counter foreign influence operations from operatives based in places like Iran, Russia and China.

The report validates the frustrations of outside disinformation experts who have labored to help Twitter identify and reduce campaigns that have poisoned political conversations in India, Brazil, the United States and elsewhere, at times fueling violence.
[…]
The report also exposed slapdash technological workarounds that left experts using five different types of software to label a single tweet as misinformation.
[…]
“Organizational siloing, a lack of investment in critical resources, and reactive policies and processes have driven Twitter to operate in a constant state of crisis that does not support the company’s broader mission of protecting authentic conversation,” it found.
[…]
Twitter is vastly smaller, in terms of revenue, users, and head count, than the other social media services it’s compared to, and its ability to combat threats is proportionally smaller as well. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, for example, has 2.8 billion users logging in daily — more than 12 times the size of Twitter’s user base. Meta has 83,000 employees; Twitter has 7,000. Meta earned $28 billion in revenue last quarter; Twitter earned $1.2 billion.

[…speaking of meta…they just got another fine that would be huge if…you know…they weren’t making orders of magnitude more money so it looks like a rounding error rather than an actual imposition]

But some of the issues confronting Twitter are worse than Facebook and YouTube, because the platform traffics in immediacy and because people on Twitter can face broad attacks from a public mob, said Leigh Honeywell, chief executive of Tall Poppy, a company that works with corporations to mitigate online abuse of their employees. She added that Twitter users can’t delete negative comments about them, while YouTube video providers and Facebook and Instagram page administrators can remove statements there.
[…]
For example, the report said that Twitter delayed responding to the rise of QAnon and the Pizzagate conspiracy theory — which falsely alleged that a Democrat-run pedophile ring operated out of a pizza shop in Northwest Washington — because “the company could not figure out how to categorize” it.

Executives felt QAnon didn’t fall under the purview of the disinformation team because the movement wasn’t seeded by a foreign actor, and they determined that the conspiracy wasn’t a child exploitation issue because it included false instances of child trafficking. They did not deem it to be a spam issue despite the aggressive, spam-like promotion of the theory by its proponents, the report said. Many companies, including Facebook, faced similar challenges in addressing QAnon, The Post has previously reported.
[…]
Rebekah Tromble, director of the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics at George Washington University, noted in an interview that because of the public and political nature of the Twitter platform, operatives see it as ideal for sowing disinformation campaigns.

“Though Twitter has a minuscule number of users compared to YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok, because it is such as public platform, those who seek to spread misinformation and undermine democracy know that Twitter is one of the best places to increase the likelihood of their messages spreading widely,” she said. “The folks that they hire are good, and earnest, and really want to make a difference — but Twitter is just an under-resourced company compared to the outsize impact they have on the larger information ecosystem.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/04/twitter-mudge-alethea-resources/

…so…yeah…this is late, still missing more than it contains…& was run off in a hurry with my mind mostly on something else…but it’s arguably still more coherent than that ruling awarding the special master…but like with the twitter thing…it turns out if you put a lightweight at the crux of the mechanism for dealing with some heavy shit…things don’t go so great

[…there will be tunes…but there must be coffee]

…&…if only for the pretty heartfelt bit at the end…although I have a soft spot for chester p so I like the part between there & the beginning plenty, too