Breaking News: President Trump said he wanted to keep aid to Ukraine frozen until its officials helped him with investigations into Democrats, John Bolton wrote in an unpublished manuscript of a new book https://t.co/J1tJ5oPZAY
— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 26, 2020
On the outskirts of one of Europe's best preserved medieval cities is one of the world's most modern factories.The BMW group plant in Regensburg, Germany, manufactured approximately 320,000 vehicles in 2018. BMW says its use of technologies -- from robotics to 3D printing to smart data analytics -- meant it was able to cut the time needed to deploy new applications by 80% and reduce quality issues by 5%.The plant -- which was described as a "factory of the future" by the World Economic Forum -- is at the forefront of what's being called "Industry 4.0" -- a new phase in the industrial revolution that focuses heavily on interconnectivity, automation, machine learning, and real-time data.Smart factories like this one could add at least $1.5 trillion to the global economy in the next three years, according to Capgemini. And many more are coming: the consulting firm found that the manufacturers it surveyed in 2019 planned to create 40% more of these plants over the next five years.
The FOX poll has a lot of not great news for Trump. For example, the percentage of people who strongly disapprove of him is more than his combined total approval rating. pic.twitter.com/1nBlMgEX22
— Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) January 26, 2020
Rouhani, left in the dark, reportedly deflected phone calls from other world leaders because he had no answers for them, and military commanders were doing the same thing to him when he tried to reach them. When finally informed of the truth, officials close to Rouhani told the Times, the president was "livid," demanding that Tehran admit the mistake and face the consequences. Military officials reportedly argued with Rouhani -- they feared destabilizing the country. That's when Rouhani said he would resign.Eventually, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei got a message to the military, siding with Rouhani and ordering a public statement acknowledging what happened.
Today's revelation that the henchmen recorded Trump saying, "Get her (Ambassador Yovanovitch) out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it." is five things.First, it's evidence--the kind of recorded evidence of malfeasance and intent that should be heard in a Senate impeachment trial but will never be.Second, it's yet another sign that Donald Trump was engaged in a scheme to extort a foreign power by illegally abusing his power of office, and no one was going to stand in his way, including a U.S. ambassador with a sterling reputation.Third, it's a window into the coterie of [***]birds, thugs, and criminal-adjacent scum[***]s Trump dispatches to do his low bidding. When Trump sends his henchmen to Ukraine, he's not sending his best.Finally, it's a lesson to Republican backers of Trump: More shit always comes out. Nothing is ever over when it comes to revelations regarding the criminality, corruption, mendacity, and stupidity of Trumpworld. It's a feature, not a bug, and the evidence that will inevitably keep coming out will end up in the arsenal of your political opponents so long as you keep declaring his innocence and covering for his behavior. The ads write themselves.Late Friday, news broke of the new Trumpworld threat du jour: that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman should be arrested and court-martialed. After Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted out an attack on Vindman, Trump's mighty media Wurlitzer ran with it, led by Fox (natch). Sean Davis of The Federalist (or as I think of it, "Gentry Breitbart") tweeted, "Vindman deserves to be court-martialed." This kind of messaging isn't a coincidence. It's not a throwaway line. This is the president's crew showing that their opponents will "go through some things" if they don't toe the line. (P.S. MAGAts, it's Mike Flynn who's going to jail, not Alexander Vindman.)When I saw that the president's political team had threatened his own allies with the message, "Vote against the President and your head will be on a pike", my first thought was that Steve Bannon's latest batch of bathtub meth was a tad too strong, but on a moment's reflection, I realized this was just where we are now as a nation. The Republicans senators live in cringing terror of a Trump-driven primary and of hostile tweets from his mob of mouth-breathing Yokel Haram followers.
The survey, which was released Sunday and conducted as the Senate impeachment trial began in earnest, found that 50 percent of Americans think the Senate should vote to convict and remove Trump, while 44 percent believe the upper chamber should not vote to remove the president.
In a secretly recorded video of a dinner with President Donald Trump, businessmen and Rudy Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman draw a parallel between the president and the Messiah.In the video Trump can be heard telling an aide to "take out" then-United States Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch during a donor dinner in 2018 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. The video was released on Saturday by Joseph Bondy, the lawyer representing Parnas in the campaign finance violations case against the two businessmen who were part of the alleged effort at the center of the current impeachment trial to pressure the Ukraine government to announce an investigation into Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.Near the end of the 80-minute cell phone recording of the dinner reported to have been attended by donors to the America First Action Super Pac, Parnas presents to Trump what he says is a gift from "the head rabbi of Ukraine" and some rabbis in Israel. He explains that according to Jewish numerology, known as gematria, the letters in Trump's name add up to 424, which is the same total as the Messiah.
To put U.S. military spending in context, it is useful to compare what it spends to that of others. In fiscal 2018, the Defense Department's budget of $649 billion -- not even counting the contingency fund -- was larger than the combined spending of the next seven largest militaries: $609 billion (China, Saudi Arabia, India, France, Russia, UK, Germany).As large as the DOD budget is, the total amount spent by the United States on national security is actually much higher. The largest chunk outside DOD is spent by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which cares for former troops injured in past conflicts and funds the pensions of military retirees. The VA spent $201 billion in 2019, topping $200 million for the first time but not the last; the 2020 request was $220.2 billion. Adding the VA's budget brings total national-security spending to $887 billion.America's nuclear weapons and naval reactors are maintained not by the Pentagon by the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, which also works to counter proliferation and nuclear terrorism. Adding NNSA's $15.2 billion makes the total $902.2 billion.It would be remiss not to include the intelligence community, or IC, though this can be a little complicated. The Director of National Intelligence makes public the combined unclassified budgets of the 17 agencies that make up the community. In 2019, that was $81.7 billion. This figure includes $21.5 billion for the Military Intelligence Program (funded by DOD and therefore not added to our burgeoning tally) and $60.2 billion for the National Intelligence Program, which covers non-military organizations such as the CIA. We don't know how much the Pentagon kicks in for the National Intelligence Program; it could be up to $60.2 billion.Therefore, America's true total spending on national security in 2019, when including the DoD, VA, NNSA, and some portion of the IC's non-military intelligence program, is probably between $902.2 and $962.4 billion. And yet this total does not include domestic security elements such as the Department of Homeland Security (2019: $72.3 billion) or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
At the last General Conference in March 2019, delegates rejected two proposals, one permitting LGBT+ weddings and clergy for the entire Church and the other allowing each conference (the Methodist equivalent of a Catholic or Anglican diocese) to decide for itself. Instead they approved the "Traditional Plan." This not only upheld the UMC's longstanding ban on gay marriage and clergy, but also threatened to defrock any clergy who defied it.So if the traditionalists are in the majority, why is it that they will have to throw out their UMC stationary? And why is the UMC so often labeled as part of the American liberal mainline? The answer to the first question, according to Ryan Danker, a professor of Methodist Studies at Wesley Theological Seminary, is that the traditionalists "want a flexible and non-bureaucratic movement" and are eager to ditch the UMC's "top-heavy" bureaucracy. The answer to the second is that the UMC is not an entirely American denomination. Liberal Methodism is indeed dominant in America, but over the last two decades, Methodism--along with other forms of Christianity--has been growing explosively in Africa. In 2010, the American Spectator estimated that, while the American UMC conferences were losing 1,000 members a week, the theologically conservative overseas conferences were set to contribute 40 percent of the delegates at the 2012 General Conference. The American Methodists introduced a proposal that would have sidelined the Africans from voting on matters that would have affected the American conferences, but it was rejected.Dr. Danker told me that he estimates the new traditionalist denomination will probably be made up of "2 to 2.5 million" Americans, "[t]ogether with about six million" members from overseas, leaving between 3.5 and 4 million American Methodists to fill the pews of the diminished and diminishing UMC. The pro-gay faction has saved a withered fig tree by hacking off every branch that bore fruit.As long as the American liberal wing of the UMC maintained its safe majority, it was content to allow the rules enshrining traditional Christian sexual ethics to remain on the books. The anti-gay provisions of the Book of Discipline weren't worth arguing over when they could just as easily be ignored. But by the time the liberals realized their majority was slipping away, it was too late. A coalition of African Methodists and the traditionalist American minority carried the day.
WISCONSIN
— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) January 26, 2020
Generic Dem 48% (+14)
Donald Trump 34%
MICHIGAN
Generic Dem 47% (+13)
Donald Trump 34%
PENNSYLVANIA
Generic Dem 47% (+10)
Donald Trump 37%
OHIO
Generic Dem 44% (+5)
Donald Trump 39%@BaldwinWallace/@oaklandu/@ohionorthern 1/8-20https://t.co/E5n4jhmqvA