A post here on process as well as substance, in Crabgrass doing a post now and then triggered by an occasional check of ZeroHedge content.

 I like the site. Today, this:

Trump Admin Floats Unfreezing Russian Assets In Big Move To Restart Talks

by Tyler Durden

Thursday, Oct 15, 2026 - 08:40 AM

President Trump appears to be busy rolling back years of entrenched Ukraine policy. Starting last week he announced the controversial diesel deal with Putin, and this week Ukraine's Zelensky is complaining that intelligence-sharing has been throttled, and possibly even cut off.

The possibility or even likelihood of this heading to another TACO moment aside, what's next? New reporting in the Financial Times gives an idea. The United States has floated a proposal that European countries unfreeze some of Russia's sovereign assets and deposit them in an entity controlled by Washington.

So, the original source given, but paywalled. The next obvious thing =

search = the zero headge headline - that is

search =Trump Admin Floats Unfreezing Russian Assets In Big Move To Restart Talks

popping up among other returns a mainstream vanilla Reuters item beginning 

BRUSSELS, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Billions of euros' worth of Russian assets frozen in Europe after the invasion of ​Ukraine should stay under the region's control, German Chancellor ‌Friedrich Merz said on Thursday, after a report that the United States may seek supervision over some.

"Those are assets that are frozen ​in Europe and they should remain frozen in Europe. ​This is our business and we are deciding over ⁠it," Merz said in Brussels ahead of an EU ​summit.

From there the outline is apparent, and the story real and of interest, but largely spelled out already.

Trump suggests easing sanctions and Merz says, "No way." And the diesel play has already been kicked around the news, the upshot appearing to be Russis's no surplus and minisucle amounts do not matter.

But that is the quick Crabgrass way of seeing something, and deciding whether and what to post that might interest readers as it has been viewed to be of interest here.

This post being intended to help readers understand Crabgrass editorial simplicity, but with good intent.

 

 

Strange things show up online. ZeroHedge posts about abusive behavior toward one's AI models.

 https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2026-10-13/be-nice-claude

The purveyors tailor their interacting AI to not be abusive to users. Why would they?

 

Fake news.

MS NOW Retracts Report That FBI Director Kash Patel Landed In Russia

by Tyler Durden

 Read that story and then tell me two things, from it, can you tell whether MSNow got faked, or this report shows ZeroHedge got faked to post it? Second, does it matter? At all, or in comparison to consumer price inflation?

 

Further worry about Tafoya's simplistic but loaded troublesome proposals.

 A screen capture from here -

 

 

 

 You have to ask what, "Disrupt Gangs Online" and "Hold Big Tech Accountable" mean, to her, or should mean to us.

Online content censoring and regulation of the Internet are complex multi-faceted questions without any sound simplistic answers; nor have they an amenability to being bent wrongly for someone's "public safety" suggestions. You cannot simply "bend it a little" without free speech and content liability of providers being impacted. There is very much need for some sensible detail of what baby will be pitched away with the bathwater in what Tafoya is saying.

Teenageer gang gun battles do endanger the general population. They are a thing that can spring out anywhere, and that means at a time and place where regular citizens may be in crossfire. Some people can obsessively worry about that, even when actual probability is near zero as we shop at Walmart.

But the problem Tafoya glides and slides on is the handgun proliferation problem. 

It is as if scared to say what really needs to be curbed and better regulated are the NRA, and firms profiting from making and selling hand-held killing devices in exceptionally profligate ways. She declines to even mention that problem, never mind having any sensible policy position she'd state. It's the classic nothing to see here, look over there, a young male Somali with two, three Somali friends. The glide and slide of ignoring the core concern and instead saying censor web use and wtf does she mean when saying hold high tech "accountable"?

That is phraseology in the "future of AI debate," not in the problem of guns in childerns' hands. 

 Tafoya's declining to address the actual heart of the problem, gets papered over with simplistic single sentence window dressing words. Do any other nations on earth allow the handgun proliferation that is permitted in the U.S.? And how does that affect immigrant integration into all social avenues of our complex Amerian value sets and beliefs?

The campaigning will be moving on from teen gunfights, but Crabgrass believes hand-held killing devices are the problem, and any so-called solution ignoring sanely regulating that for political reasons is a band-aid hoax aimed at a real problem. Or if not intended to mislead, misleading anyway.

 

 

MinnReformer publishes, "Noncitizens trying to vote? Vanishingly rare."

 https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/10/07/noncitizens-trying-to-vote-vanishingly-rare/

Mid-item

Consider what it took to round up these 10 cases. A recent report by ProPublica details how the Trump administration scrambled to find voter fraud in Minnesota and other states, assigning scores of agents from Homeland Security Investigations to fan out across the country and deploying a vast federal database of citizens’ personal information. The agents were so ill-informed and the database so error-prone that a federal prosecutor called the effort “dysfunctional.”

Despite this massive effort, all it produced was 10 cases of alleged fraud over two election cycles, a period when Minnesotans cast 5.8 million votes. An additional 1.3 million votes were cast during primary elections in that period. 

Moreover, these are just allegations — and court records show that most people charged with voter fraud in Minnesota are never convicted. Considering the Trump administration’s record of failed indictments — from the sandwich thrower to the reflecting pool vigilante and all the Minnesotans wrongfully detained during Operation Metro Surge — we should be skeptical that even these 10 indictments will produce convictions.

It’s really no surprise that Trump’s team could find so little voter fraud in Minnesota. In the two general elections from 2018 to 2020, Minnesotans cast roughly 6 million votes.

Court records show there were just 40 convictions for registering or voting illegally in those years. That’s just 20 convictions in each cycle — or 0.00067% of votes cast.

Why the federal DOJ money is being pissed down this rathole has little to do with importance and all to do with Trump. 

BOTTOM LINE  He lost to Biden in 2020. And, election fraud is as likely ellection error by a handfull of people among many millions of ballots cast. Trump has an inefficient focus here. But it is not his only one. 

 

Over at EmptyWheel, "Stephen Miller Desperate to Stave Off Accountability for Losing Texas"

Link

 

 

Two things. First a hat tip to Gary Gross for finding the thing. Then the thing. Hate on Somalis, something MN Repubs are experienced at. Pablam if you'd been expecting content..

Gary's post, embedding the video tweet. https://x.com/Michele_Tafoya/status/2110138240028098861

Michele Tafoya

@Michele_Tafoya

Minnesota families are tired of excuses about violence in our communities. That’s why I’m releasing a five-point plan to stop gang violence and make our state safe again. 1. Name the problem. 2. Disrupt gangs online. 3. Hold Big Tech accountable. 4. Speed up federal prosecutions. 5. Support our law enforcement. We can’t keep electing the same career politicians who created this mess.

00:00

5:38 PM · Oct 13, 2026·

16K

Views

She names the problem as Somalis.

She'd impinge on First Amendment speech, per her points 2 and 3. 

She does not know better? No need for the Constitution on the sideline?. That is worrisome. Censorship is nobody's good answer to tons of guns loose in the community because Trump and the NRA kiss back and forth and sideways.

Speeding up federal prosecutions is flipped off by the good lady as her say, they obey. 

They're busy doing Trump retribution and she knows it, but, nevermind. 10 noncitizen voting prosecutions going in MN, federal courts, DOJ, with parallel show boating BS in other federal DOJ offices. That's reality. Two million or more voters, no fraud to speak of, ten fish caught somehow, costing what,  but she is on the war path. Her priorities, not DOJ's to govern, flippintly presented. Who does she think she is, Melania? She does not call Trump's shots, Trump does. Big insight for the lady.

And who's the geek standing with her? Mr. Ameriprise? The portfolio guru? 

* * * 

10 noncitizen voting prosecutions going down in MN, with parallel show boating in other federal DOJ offices. That's reality. She's blowing that other 5 point stuff out her shorts. Probably where her $9 billion fraud number's coming from as well. Actually, a GOP prosecutor invented that number, not Tafoya.

The cops don't endorse the best and brightest. Remember, they endorsed Doug Wardlow.

Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and AOC back Flanagan. The guy next to Tafoya backs her. With her in denial mode about Trump being her leader. It is weird. Surreal. Non-MAGA.

She does not buy gas or groceries on a tight paycheck, and acts as if she's never heard of Renee Good or Alex.

Somali Fever, for a while, but she'll get over it. If she'd just leave it to the law enforcement officials who know what they are doing except when endorsing in politics where any nonsense goes.

Sorry for being a bit snotty. But it steamed me, no substantial policy - dump a load on Somalis as if there's not a good soul in the community. Not paradigms of virtue like her pro football players. But say nothing real.

Steps one, two, three and four of taking the guns away, Susie, tell me those details. Run a dragnet, via racial profiling? The way ICE handled that so well? Figure it out, readers. An empty glass.