Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion from Ukraine, prosecutor fired; Trump withheld $250 million, demanded investigation; both lose this round….--Dems talk more openly about impeachment, using this dubious episode while downplaying proven criminal behavior
--Politico’s legal writer thinks Trump did a bad, bad thing, but says don’t call it bribery or extortion
--with max bravado, Biden says Trump is smearing him because he’s afraid that Biden “will beat him like a drum”
--at ConsortiumNews, Ray McGovern opines that this could be the end for Biden
--most media outlets defend Biden without much explanation, or call critics of his intervention in Ukraine “conspiracy theorists”
--the yellow-ist example of this sort of yellow journalism is The Intercept’s defense of Biden, perhaps ghosted by Pierre Omidyar
--listicle-rich Buzzfeed tries to keep up
--Scott Ritter calls it an abuse of the whistleblower law, and more interference in politics by the Intel community
--Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, is our guest for in-depth interview podcast, where he connects some dots to ask if Smolenkov was a double agent
--UN General Assembly meets in NY, led off by scolding from Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg
--Trump deserves a little credit for not attacking Iran yet, but he ordered US troops and more Patriot batteries to Saudi
--Iran’s Rouhani demands that western nations leave the Gulf region
--John Kiriakou has cogent comments on Saudi Arabia, where he was first posted as a CIA agent
--more violent protests in Hong Kong over the weekend, as Egypt moves to snuff out small demonstration demanding dictator’s resignation
--India’s prime minister Modi held a rally in Houston, and co-hosted with Trump
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