Porter was the only one not to attend the hearing.  It appears Marilyn Mosby is leveraging Porter against the other five defendants; perhaps that explains Porter’s absence in court.

(Via Baltimore Sun) The six Baltimore police officers charged in Freddie Gray’s arrest and death will be tried separately over the course of the next several months, with proceedings against Officer William G. Porter starting Nov. 30.
The new timeline, which pushes the trials back from a previously scheduled date of Oct. 13, was established during a hearing in Circuit Court on Tuesday afternoon, where five of the six officers appeared before Judge Barry Williams for the first time. Porter waived his right to attend the hearing.
[…] The delay in Porter’s trial came at the request of the defense which said it needed time for further investigation. The delays in the five other officers’ trials came at the request of the state and was granted by Williams over the objections of the officers’ attorneys. (more…)

There is a particular depth of disingenuous detachment when listening to “Establishment Republicans” discuss the Donald Trump tax proposal today.

Especially when we see a pundit like George Will espousing “a profound moral hazard” within a tax proposal that removes federal tax liability from those earning less than $25,000/year.
Before giving an accurate history of the issue, please watch the 30 seconds of this video. Here is George Will on Monday.  The video is prompted to 36:15 where he opines:
https://youtu.be/wSeG-oYjPMo?t=39m15s
Ah, what a short memory, and insufferable disconnect, these “establishment” types carry.
However, the narrow-minded, and profoundly convenient history-rewriting is not limited to the professionally disingenuous. (more…)

Morning Consult has updated their latest national polling results utilizing 1,543 registered voters Sept 24th – Sept 27th.  Consult has, over time, shown to be one of the few consistently accurate polling organizations when compared to regional and state level polls of similar scope.  MC also, over time, has reflected the overall social media sentiment with accuracy.
The latest poll shows Donald Trump maintaining 30% electorate support with Ben Carson coming in second at 15%.  If this were Jeb Bush maintaining 30% (over two months) the GOPe would be demanding that all other candidates coalesce and give Jeb their immediate loyal support.  Alas, because this is not “their guy” the establishment continue to fight to tear Trump down:

The overall plan to elevate GOPe Carly Fiorina and GOPe Marco Rubio continues via extraordinary efforts in the media to push the establishment players to the top of the field.  However, while some of the electorate have been swayed by the propaganda, there’s good news – The polled support showing visible traction is not enough to accomplish the task. (more…)

The BLM movement has been well documented to include some of the most anti-social, hate-filled elements of the Occupy crowd; only BLM one comes with specific violence toward police and law enforcement.
(TPM) – Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called on Americans to focus on racial justice and expressed her support for the Black Lives Matter movement in a Sunday speech at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston.
Warren referenced the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s (D-MA) focus on civil rights issues and said, “If his life and death had a meaning, it was that we should not hate but love one another; we should use our powers not to create conditions of oppression that lead to violence, but conditions of freedom that lead to peace.”
She said that since the Civil Rights Act, the United States has not come close enough to equality.
“Fifty years later, we have made real progress toward creating the conditions of freedom — but we have not made enough progress,” she said, according to her prepared remarks. (more…)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government…

And then you have those powerful entities, the adverse interests, who seek to retain their personal benefit within the construct of a corrupted political system.

If you were to define Wall Street you would not be able to separate various entities who are operating entirely to retain power, influence and personal benefit, at any cost.
Certainly not the least among them Rupert Murdoch (Fox, Fox Business Channel, National Geographic, FX; the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, TV Guide; Barron’s and SmartMoney; book publisher HarperCollins; film production companies 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Blue Sky Studios), and the various international business interests of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, President Tom Donohue, and a host of high-finance Hedge Fund Managers who are working earnestly to control a vulgarian uprising amid the electorate.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Lobbying Efforts 2014/2015:

• Promotion of federal Common Core education standards.
• Maintain Obamacare without repeal or adjustment.
• Comprehensive immigration reform to include amnesty.
• Trans-Pacific Trade Deal Approval.

These legislative priorities are not just the goals of the self interested billionaire class of connected power brokers, Wall Street.  No, like ObamaCare, these goals are antithetical to the best interests of a nation.  Freedom is lessened as a consequence of their passage.
Both House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell have facilitated the pathway to passage for these legislative priorities.  While Wall Street purchased insurance policies by way of political representatives to aid the facilitation. (more…)

There are a few different versions of various Clinton email scandals surfacing today within the Friday news dump. 

Here’s the first:
(Via Reuters) The U.S. Defense Department has found an email chain that Hillary Clinton did not give to the State Department, the State Department said on Friday, despite her saying she had provided all work emails from her time as secretary of state.
The correspondence with General David Petraeus, who was commander of U.S. Central Command at the time, started shortly before she entered office and continued during her first days as the top U.S. diplomat in January and February of 2009.
The Defense Department provided the emails to the State Department in “the last several days,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. (more…)

Anyone who is viewing the battle between Donald Trump and Fox News as a representative battle of thin-skinned ego is entirely missing the point.

Trump is not just taking on the construct of progressive ideology that has undermined the essence of American exceptionalism; Trump is not just exposing the immense number of faux-conservatives in media and political punditry;  Trump is not just allowing us to see the scope of anti-American interest; no, he’s taking on the very selfish foundation they’ve used to sell out our country. Heck, he’s taking on all the “Decepticons” simultaneously.
In many ways Fox’s Roger Ailes and Republican Mitch McConnell carry the same ideological character trait, deception. For McConnell his deceptive ways allow him to retain power inside the DC construct. For Roger Ailes manipulation benefits his media dominance and political interests.
Neither McConnell nor Ailes can actually be trusted.  However, we are only just beginning to understand the enormity and scope of the previously hidden betrayal.
It all boils down to a very familiar problem. Would you rather rid yourself of the schemer, manipulator and deceiver who claims to be your friend – and as a consequence face a visible enemy in their stead. Or do you chose to be associated within the camp of a person you can never fully trust. (more…)

The Charge of The Vulgarians Continues

The latest Quinnipiac Poll is released today (full pdf format below).  Despite a well coordinated RNC/GOPe strategy, “Operation Hummingbird“, Donald Trump continues to maintain a sizable lead.
Obviously the non-Trump coalition of Establishment Republican Party insiders will seek to parse the polled results and internals continually seeking to diminish the risk represented by Trump to their grip on power.  However, Donald Trump is in the perfect position to eliminate the well planned RNC/GOPe road map to nominate Jeb Bush.

Governor Bobby Jindal had launched the most vitriolic of attacks against Donald Trump and now is polling at ZERO.  Governor George Pataki joined Jindal in his pre and post debate attacks against Trump, and finds himself joining hands with Jindal around a similar tent, ZERO. Over the past month Senator Rand Paul was the third most vitriolic attack dog, and has now dropped to 1%. (more…)

It was September of 2007 when George W Bush sat behind his oval office desk and signed into law the Fiscal Year 2008 Federal Budget. Exactly eight years ago.
It has now been eight consecutive years without a federal budget. Eight consecutive years of debt ceiling increases, continuing resolutions to fund government, threats of shut-downs and the insufferable back-and-forth blame.

But this year is different. You see for this budgetary year (constructed in ’15 for fiscal year 2016) the Republicans hold significant majorities in both the House and the Senate. And for those of you who don’t pay as close attention to these things, the fiscal year starts on October 1st.

Yeah, exactly a week from now !

… and yet we have NO BUDGET. Why?
Well, the honest answer to that question is what scares the hell out of the Professional Republican party. We have no federal budget this year, because, just like the Democrat party, the GOP doesn’t want a federal budget. (more…)

Jill Kelly is a woman who became entangled in the General Petraeus / Paula Broadwell affair story which exploded immediately following the Benghazi attacks in 2012.  Many believe the Petraeus affair was used by the White House to remove the CIA risk.

BACKSTORY BEFORE UPDATE – Jill Kelly was threatened by Paula Broadwell during Broadwell’s affair with Petraeus. Once the affair was exposed, the media outed Jill Kelly as the original source to the FBI who uncovered the sordid affair.
Kelly then filed a lawsuit against the FBI for releasing her identity to the public via the media. The source of that media leak was, in essence, traced to then pentagon attorney Jeh Johnson, who later became DHS Secretary.
Last September (2014) we noted that the lawsuit by Jill Kelly would carry some very interesting possibilities via judicial discovery. In July (2015) a federal judge postponed DHS Head Jeh Johnson being compelled to testify in the ongoing lawsuit. (more…)