Rumor Mill

Sometimes I'll talk about a story that isn't in the main stream media (MSM) yet. They might seem crazy, off the wall, a bit conspiratorial, or even flat-out, grab your tin foil hat bonkers. But some of these stories need to be reported. During 2017, there have been more than a few times when last month's rumor was today's news.

Hence, the Rumor Mill tag. These come from all sides, all places, and all people, but have not been confirmed by traditional journalists.

If you see this tag, take the news with a grain of salt.

Coming soon: The Grain-of-Salt-ometer, to identify how much salt to take with each story.

Daily Check-In 7/24/2017

Today's check-in for Monday, July 24th, 2017.

President Trump continues to berate the Keebler Nazi, Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the press for recusing himself from investigating anything related to the campaign.

This comes on the heels of news from Friday night where it was leaked that the Intelligence Community has SIGINT (Signals Intelligence, like recordings of conversations and phone calls) of Jeff talking about campaign details with then Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. The Rumor Mill's been saying these tapes existed for awhile, and that they may have been leaked to the press from inside the White House as an attempt to build a public case for Sessions' firing, allowing Trump an end-run attempt at firing Bobby Three Sticks, aka Special Counselor Robert Mueller III.

In Trump's tirades, he floated the possibility of replacing the Keebler Nazi with Rudy "Noun/Verb/9-11" Giuliani. This was shot down by Rudy himself in a CNN interview. Further, he went on to say Jeff Sessions did the right thing by recusing himself. Ouch. On top of that, according to the Rumor Mill, Rudy's up to his eyes in legal trouble, following the October FBI fiasco. More on that later.

Recusing is the legal term for removing yourself from the workflow due to a potential conflict of interest. It's very common in the legal world. If a lawyer worked for Lawfirm A, then left to become a judge, it would make sense, even be expected, that they shouldn't hear a case from an old client of theirs. In Jeff's case, he was a senior member of Trump's campaign team, and was placed into the spot where he was going to have to investigate himself.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may be on the verge of quitting. Word has it he's been upset for a while, he didn't want the job in the first place, and Trump attacking the Keebler Nazi may be the straw that broke the camels back.

Jared Kushner testified before a closed session of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. In his testimony, he identified a couple more meetings that he had with Russians that weren't previously made public. In one of those meetings, a Russian gave him a literal bag of dirt. Say what you will about them, Russian spies know how to troll.

The new White House Communications Director, Anthony Scarmucci, is warming up nicely to his new job. By that, he caused Sean Spicer to rage quit, said a few bold face lies, and then outed Trump as the source of his craziest line of the weekend "Putin said that Russians didn't hack the election cause if they did, we'd never catch them." His next appearance will be in a Used Car Sales Lot in New Jersey as he waits for Futurama royalties.

Finally, the Senate gets ready to vote on their version of the health care bill, which could take away coverage from 32 million Americans while doubling premiums for everyone. This would kill 50,000 people per year. But the Koch Brothers would get a tax write-off!

That's it for today.

Get To Know Your Government

To help explain how we ended up where we are, a lot of terminology will be used over the course of this blog, and a lot of principles and philosophical underpinnings on how and why the government functions the way it does will be used. But, since I don't know what everyone's knowledge level is at coming into this, I'm going to write a series of essays outlining how the government works, why it does what it does, and how it affects curt events.

I'm going to cover many topics from large ideas like the branches of government and separation of power down to tiny details like the Pocket Veto, and answering questions like can a President pardon themselves? (Spoiler: they can't, Nixon already asked.)

It's called "Get To Know Your Government." Any posts with the GTKYG tag will fall under this category.

Horseshoe Theory

There is a theory in political science about how the spectrum isn't a straight line, but it is actually shaped like a horseshoe.

Wiki Link Here

The short version is that when we hear about the political spectrum, left and right wing, we normally think like it looks like this…

When in reality, it functions closer to this…

In this design, the ends are closer to each other than they are to the center.

So, why is this important? And why does it matter?

Because this helps explain how and why the Bernie or Bust crowd exists in the first place, and how they were exploited to Trump's benefit.

Let's rewind a bit and take a moment to talk about the Bernie or Bust crowd. Towards the end of the 2016 Primary season, HRC was fighting against Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party nomination for President. Bernie had come out of left field, and had campaigned on a very progressive agenda which included universal health care, student loan forgiveness, free higher education, and comprehensive government reforms. He was doing a good job, but was losing. By May, it was pretty obvious that HRC would be the nominee, and that Bernie was fighting for a place at the table. HRC would pledge to adopt some of his policies, and Bernie would endorse her.

A group of Bernie Sanders voters were not happy. They viewed HRC as the enemy and refused to join her cause, no matter what. They pledged to do whatever they could to get Bernie elected President. They became the Bernie or Busters.

The Bernie or Bust crowd was not happy that HRC would win the nomination, and went apoplectic when DNC hack hit the news and it came out that the DNC preferred HRC to Bernie, and tried to help her win. (I'll put up a future post about how Trump vs. Bernie was Putin's wet dream.)

Over the next few months, as the election drew closer, most of the Bernie or Bust crowd dissipated as they examined their options. HRC, Trump, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein (more on her in the future), write in Bernie, or skip the election altogether. While most either held their noses to vote for HRC, or did a protest vote for one of the third parties, several of them jumped ship over to Trump. Some viewed this as an enemy of my enemy scenario, others espoused how his views aligned more with theirs.

Discrediting the trolls and operatives for a moment, that last sentence doesn't sound too crazy, if one takes Horseshoe Theory into account. It can be much easier to make a mental leap from one end of the spectrum to the other than to "sell out" and go to the center. The opposite positions can be seen as a reset: wipe the slate clean and start from scratch after it implodes. It's not that hard to hold positions on the extremes at the same time.

I should know. I used to be that guy.

Back in the 90's and early 00's, I held some pretty (for the time) far left social views, but at the same time held far right views on economics and trade. I believed in all kinds of gender equality and marriage rights, including gay, polygamy, and polyamory marriages, but at the same time did not see the benefits of globalization and open markets. Over time, my views have adapted to the times, and the times have also adapted to my views. In 2000, I was registered in the Reform Party, and only voted for Gore because Pat Buchanan was too far right socially for my tastes, and I don't even remember if Nader was on the ballot in PA. Even that made feel like I needed a shower.

Last year, I voted for Bernie in the primary for two reasons. I liked his policies more that HRC's, and John Fetterman was one of his delegates. This was also before Russia was in the news every day. Before looking into the Trump campaign, the DNC hacks, and finding out that HRC made Putin pee his pants once.

Horseshoe Theory doesn't explain how Trump won the presidency, but it does explain how one subset of voters could be swayed away from HRC, and possibly to Trump, if properly motivated. There are many players in this tale, and each one has a story to tell, from the trolls in Russia posting on 4Chan to the propagandists pushing stories to Facebook to the frontline soldiers in the information war to the spies on the inside and the lawyers working to bring traitors to justice.

But those are stories for another time.