In the news

US based news. Cop kills fellow cop when the latter came to his house to collect a car.

https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/cop-who-threatened-kill-protesters-shoots-kills-colleague-who-knocked-door-affidavit-says/BMAXC27P7FA7LMIAXFQUJAHZJE/

Have we had the Trump admin routing all the info that was going to the CDC to the Whitehouse instead? Certainly one way to make the number of deaths go down.

Amazing work by Grayling on not getting elected to lead the Intelligence and Security Committee after the election was rigged to have five loyal Tories on the nine person voting panel making him the nailed on favourite to get the job.

It's amazing how Grayling even causes failure to think in observers, proving his value as a distraction. The failure here is not his but Boris Johnson's, so let's say that clearly. Grayling is just a stooge to Johnson, who in turn is a stooge to corrupt interests. Yes, he's evidently incompetent, but so are many other members of Johnson's government, including Johnson himself.

It's a thing of beauty, right?

Love that they've booted him from the party too. Just what they should be doing to keep him onside and make sure that pesky Russia report doesn't get released.

How does a government with a majority this large still end up fucking literally everything up.

Malcolm Rifkind on R4 Today at about 7.30am is worth a listen.

In about 20 seconds he basically accuses: Johnson of corruptly influencing the committee, against the statute; whoever advises him (DommyC) of being incompetent and Grayling of being infinitely less competent that Julian Lewis.

I was in stitches.

I'm sure Lewis has an agenda in respect of the subversion of the Tory party by all those with links to Russia (and, in turn, international oligarchy), but in most matters he'll happily vote with the Tories, being a card-carrying right-winger.

I started with the view that this is all a backlash against Bojo and DomC trying to bully boy their influence onto the committee but that doesn’t fit with the Grayling makes a mess of everything he touches narrative.

Dominic Grieve was absolutely fuming on Newsnight. Seems like a fair bit of backbench anger.

As Oliver says, Lewis is still going to vote with the Tories for the most part, but it starts to plant seeds of rebellion against Gove/Johnson/Cummings.

Julian Lewis statement is a corker

Russia report is coming out before parliament rises for summer

source? or speculation?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/16/julian-lewis-attempt-to-impose-grayling-was-improper-request

says it in this article

And, by coincidence, today Raab says that Russia interfered in 2019 - to help Corbyn. Meoow, thud, boing.

Russia also accused of thing to hack and steal covid 19 vaccine research.

What I don't understand is why that could ever be a story. Surely everyone's sharing all of their research into a vaccine with everyone anyway? Why wouldn't they?

Pharma patents and money.

Sadly true. You'd think when it's something that stops people even being outside we could all pull together.

https://twitter.com/smolrobots/status/1282619172405547009

And, by coincidence, today Raab says that Russia interfered in 2019 - to help Corbyn.

You'd expect them to be, I dunno, a bit better at the helping.

Pretty much straight out of the Trump playbook. Russia did meddle, but to help the Democrats.

Russia interfered in 2019 - to help Corbyn

At his allotment? Little evidence any helped him with anything else.

Feels like a strategy to get a few "look how Russia interferes" stories out there before a much more damaging one.

Is that Stan Lee on the right?