2017

Tuesday

The big story today is all North Korea. A story came out about them being able to put a nuke on a missile.

I might be having a mini panic attack if not for Rachel Maddow. The same story came out in 2013 about NK. But this time they might actually have gotten there.

Two crazy people with nuclear weapons, engaged in saber rattling.

There's a good chance this is all bluster, trying to distract from some big shit coming down the pipeline. Then again, Trump is just crazy enough to do something.

Considering everyone in the government is on vacation, I wouldn't expect anything coming from Mueller's team until Congress is back in session.

Per Bloomberg, the Trump Campaign has turned over tens of thousands of documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

North Korea is ugly. There isn't a pretty solution in my opinion. They are a nation of racist midgets. Due to sanctions that have continued for generations, malnutrition has taken a toll on them. One quarter of their men are mentally challenged to the point that they can't serve in the military. They're so short that in most countries, the average North Korean would be classified as a midget. Most of their equipment is Soviet era, and not well maintained.

North Korea is like a short, drunk guy in a bar fight. Nothing too dangerous, and pretty funny to watch, but then he pulls out a gun.

I'm going to work on the UI on this site over the next week or two. I also want to fill out the Get To Know Your Government series. Let's see how that goes.

Daily Check-In 8/7/2017

It’s Monday. I wonder what could possibly go wrong this week.

First off, get ready for something big to hit this week. Why? Donald Trump went on yet another tweetstorm where he decried all of the media as “Fake News.” It wasn’t all CAPS like his rants that occurred before the Jared Kushner bombshells and the details of the Comey leaks, but Trump did list every news organization that has wronged him at some point recently. ABC, WaPo, NYT, CNN, CBS, NBC. I’m half surprised he didn’t mention the CBN or QVC.

Also in his tweetstorm, Trump attacked Senator Blumenthal for some comments he made about Trump. Trump attacked Blumenthal’s military service when he served during Vietnam, and was once misquoted as “in” and not “during.” This from a man who received 5 draft deferments in college. 4 were for being and college, and the last was a medical deferment for bone spurs in his feet. Funny, he had the courage to play multiple varsity sports in college through the “agony” of bone spurs, but couldn’t serve his country when they called. At least Blumenthal was in the Marine Reserves.

On the propaganda front, TrumpTV hired Kayleigh McEnany from CNN to host his attempt at state run media. If anyone ever claims to be the “Real source of truth”, question everything they say. This is a classic tool used by propagandists to discredit and defame the sources of news coming against them, in an attempt to manipulate the perception of events. On top of that, she’s also landed a job with the Republican National Committee. This is some straight up Communist Party shit right here.

There’s an interesting development in the Bot War. Looks like the Russian Bot Net is setting its sights on members of the Republican Party. Within the last couple days, tweets with #ResignPaulRyan, #TrumpTV, #Magnitsky, #Fake and #ConfessYourUnpopularOpinion have skyrocketed in use, and almost completely from twitter users identified as Russian Bots. It’s interesting that Trump’s team has turned their attention towards his own party. A twitter fight, Trump’s ravings, combined with a propaganda initiative, almost sounds like they’re getting ready for something. What is that something?

Several stories and op-eds were released today, talking about how the Russian Investigation is heating up, Mueller’s team gets closer every day, and how it’s only a matter of time before the fecal matter hits the spinning mechanical air cooling device. On top of these pieces, the Washington Post released a large story about how Trump is personally profiting off of the Trump Hotel at the old Post Office Building at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington, D.C. The reporters spent six months studying the hotel, and found some very interesting back-scratching going on, like fundraisers thrown for the chairman of the congressional committee that holds the lease to the hotel and Putin’s favorite congressman, Dana Rohrbacher.

The Rumor Mill’s firing on all cylinders today. The inside staffers were talking about some unusual activity in the White House, there was a considerable amount of chatter about Russian Bots, and then there’s Claude and Louise.

As always, take everything from them with a grain of salt, but Claude reports that his source with the NYAG says that Schneiderman has impaneled a grand jury against Trump Organization for Enterprise Corruption charges. Enterprise Corruption is the state version of RICO in New York. RICO, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, is the mob breaker. These are the statutes that allow the state or federal government to charge the heads of an organization with benefiting from the crimes committed by those under their employ, even if they didn’t do the crime themselves. This has been used to take down several mob families and gangs. Claude pointed out how unusually fast the state process was moving.

For Louise, she released a story today about how Rex Tillerson is about to go up shit creek without a paddle. New York is looking at him for his “Wayne Tracker” emails. Short version: While CEO of ExxonMobil, Rex Tillerson ran a second email account under the name of Wayne Tracker that he used to harass climate scientists who were hurtin ExxonMobil. These mails, which were not originally identified as belonging to Rex, and were not handed over when originally subpoenaed. When they were handed over, many were missing. According to Louise’s article, New York is looking at him for criminal fraud charges.

Remember, State charges cannot be pardoned by the President of the United States.

The Changing Narrative

Sometimes, the hardest part of writing this site isn't getting started, but deciding what to write.

At this stage, I have about a hundred articles I'd like to write. Almost all of these will be written eventually, but that will take some time, and will need a system. Voter rolls, propaganda, and a post about why I especially hate Corey Lewandowski are incoming, but today, I want to talk about the changing narrative of the news.

One of the reasons I started this site was to explain what's going on and what's changing as time goes on. It's easy to get lost in the cacophony of the everyday news, and lose track of how we got where we are. But it is hard to keep up with the changing narrative.

That's what I'd to talk about today – the changing narrative in the news, and where I think it's headed.

Earlier this weekend, Fox News ran an article asking "Who cares if the Trump Campaign did anything illegal?" That's quite a turnaround from "There was no collusion" even a couple months ago.

Rumors about the Trump Campaign working with the Russians to sway, or possibly steal the election started back late in 2016. There were some weird moments here and there, but nothing concrete. Personally, I think the weirdest was the time he read Russian propaganda at a campaign rally. This should have been a much bigger story than it was, but it wasn't even the Disaster-du-jour. This, and other tell-tale signs of Russian interference were lost by the MSM.

After the election, the talk about the Russians died down somewhat in the MSM while they chased after the Trump Transition Team. Meanwhile, the Rumor Mill was up and running. More and more details came out regarding connections and meetings. Then, 2 big things happened; increased sanctions on Russia and the Steele Dossier.

The sanctions definitely pulled the attention of the MSM. Tightening banking restrictions on the Oligarchs and expelling diplomats is something they could get their minds around and prove. The Steele Dossier, that was a little harder to fathom. When Buzzfeed released the story broke in January, the Rumor Mill dug deep into it.

In January, as Trump took office, the MSM was still giving him a chance, while the Rumor Mill was picking up steam, getting info that the FBI was investigating the campaign. The Right Wing Media (RWM) claimed this was the Democrats being sore losers.

When details about Michael Flynn came out, the MSM was still behind on ball on collusion, but was catching up to the Rumor Mill. For their part, they were already talking about Counterintelligence Investigations and FISA warrants. The RWM claimed the actions against Flynn were a witch hunt.

If I had to pick one moment that changed the discussion across the board and changed the narrative, it was March 4 when Donald Trump claimed that Obama had tapped his phones in a crazy early morning tweet. This spurred the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee to hold a hearing with FBI Director Jim Comey to dig into these claims. This backfired spectacularly. Not only did Comey not confirm Trump's accusations of illegal wiretapping, but Jim Comey, then Director of the FBI, had confirmed that an investigation had been ongoing into the Trump Campaign's activities and connections with the Russian Government. Hole. Lee. Shit. The MSM dug into the collusion argument. The Rumor Mill was already taking about grand juries being impaneled. The RWM decried this as bubkus.

The next change in the narrative came after Devin Nunes' Midnight Ride. I'll go into detail about that later, but two talking points came out of this: Unmasking and FISA 702. The MSM continued digging into more meetings between Trump's campaign and the Russians. The Rumor Mill doubled down on grand juries and more details. The RWM talked about Susan Rice "illegally" ordering unmasking.

Jim Comey was fired in Mid-May. The word of the day now became Obstruction of Justice. As details leaked, it became obvious that something was rotten in Denmark. When Robert Mueller was named as the Special Counselor a week later, things seemed to settle down, for a moment. Everyone, including the RWM, agreed with the Mueller announcement.

That was, until, news came out that Jared Kushner met with the Russians in Trump Tower, and that the FBI was interested. From late May to early June, the MSM narrative changed from "was there collusion?" to "how much?" The Rumor Mill was a few weeks ahead, talking about details of meetings that were forthcoming and how New York was advancing with their RICO investigation into Trump. The RWM, for the first time, stopped denying that collusion took place and started asking "is collusion illegal?"

More and more details have come out since, but once everyone lawyered up, things got interesting. I also noticed a pattern in Trump's tweets and the stories coming from the RWM. If Trump tweeted "FAKE NEWS" in all caps, and mentioned a news outlet by name, expect that organization to release a bombshell soon. The more vicious the attack, the worse the news would be for Trump. It's almost like he's rage tweeting after they reached out to him for comment.

There's been one exception to this has been "the big one" that the Rumor Mill claims is being delayed on purpose, by request from Robert Mueller.

Following Don Jr.'s email release, the MSM narrative changed from questioning whether there was collusion to now accepting, beyond a shadow of a doubt that something illicit happened. Even the RWM can no longer deny that something stinks.

In a span of 6 months, we went from "there was no collusion" to "so what if he broke the law?" Just 6 months.

So, where do we go from here?

The MSM will continue to follow the breadcrumbs and lead to more, worse details, leading all the way to an argument about the definition of treason. Plus, New York has something to say.

The RWM will continue swinging wild, calling for Robert Mueller's firing, hoping that will end the investigation. (Spoiler: it won't.)

The Rumor Mill is pulling on some dark threads. They're digging in to the specifics of how the election was stolen, and how much Vice President Pence knew, and when. There are rumblings that New York and California are investigating money laundering, embezzlement, and human trafficking. As always, I advise taking all of this with a grain of salt.

Daily Check-In 8/4/2017

It's Friday. Let's see what happened today …

The DOJ is trying to crackdown on the White House leakers, and have even threatened to subpoena journalists to give up their sources. Nixon tried the same thing, it didn't work.

Speaking of the Nixon Speed Run, rumor has it that the Trump Administration wants to administer lie detector tests to the staff. Once again, Nixon tried this, but much further along.

This one came out late last night, but Michael Flynn updated his employment disclosure form with two very important entries, Cambridge Analytica, and their parent company SCL. CA was the data mining company that micro targeted voters for propaganda and, allegedly, modified hacked voter rolls provided by Russian agents. SCL is owned by Rebekah Mercer, GOP billionaire donor and conspiracy theorist, and has Steve Bannon as a board member. Both companies were also involved with Brexit. This ties Mercer money to nefarious activities.

Speaking of money, the Dallas News just broke a story about Len Blavatnik, a Ukrainian National with close ties to Putin and the Oligarchs (cool band name by the way) and who is also a dual U.S. and U.K. citizen, donated $7.5 million to Trump and several GOP senators last year. More details here.

International diplomats are laughing at Trump… again. Following the release of transcripts of his conversations with foreign leaders was leaked to the press, several Mexican diplomats were seen talking and laughing about Donald Trump. "The opposite of Teddy Roosevelt. He talks loudly and carries a small stick." Ouch.

Mike Pence finally released all of his official work emails he had worked from his AOL mail account. Except for the personal ones. Yes, not only did Pence do the same thing aaa HRC's Buttery Mails, but he still has an AOL mail.

There's a power struggle going on in the White House with McMaster against Bannon and Seb Gorka. By a completely unrelated coincidence, there has been a 5300% increase in #FireMcMaster by Russian trolls and bots.

I hope to have "How Trump Won the 2016 GOP Primary" up by tonight.

Finally, I have two corrections to address.

A couple days ago, I said the amount of money designated to fight Russian propaganda was $80 billion. It's actually $80 million. Still a lot, but not three orders of magnitude larger.

Yesterday, I kept spelling impaneled wrong. It's with an I, not an E.