Daily Check-in 10/25/2017

HSIOW. Holy Shit, It’s Only Wednesday.

KASPERSKY LABS GETS HANDS ON NSA SOFTWARE FROM US PC, SAYS IT WAS AN ACCIDENT

Here’s another reminder.  IF YOU HAVE KASPERSKY LABS ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE INSTALLED, GET RID OF THAT SHIT NOW!!!

They ended up with copies of NSA software in their system.

That ain’t right.  That ain’t even close to right.  That’s across the river from right.  Ain’t nowhere near right.

Their “excuse” is that they accidentally uploaded them.  But they deleted them right away, so no bad.

Right?

Kaspersky has some serious ties with the Russian FSB, their main Intelligence group.  Several Kaspersky employees were arrested last year for espionage against Russia, who were believed to have been spies for the U.S., U.K., Germany, and France, among others.

It’s also been heavily speculated on the Rumor Mill that Edward Snowden has been working with them since he fled the United States and was granted asylum in Russia.

HEAD OF CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA TRIED TO GET HRC EMAILS FROM JULIAN ASSANGE

Alexander Nix, head of Cambridge Analytica, the data company behind the demographic microtargeting of voters during the 2016 election, reached out to Julian Assange of Wikileaks in an attempt to get Hilary Clinton’s missing emails.  This is not the first story of someone “outside” the campaign tried to get these mails.  Peter Smith, of Arkansas Troopergate Fame from the 90’s also tried, and even set up an LLC with the tacit acknowledgment that this was condoned by Mike Flynn, KellyAnne Conway, and others in the campaign.This story about Barbara Leeden, an aide to both Mike Flynn and Chuck Grassley, came out less than two weeks ago.

After the article was published, the author received comment from Julian Assange, and he said that he was contacted by Nix, but did not hand any information over.  Of course, we always believe the paragon of virtue that he is.

If this were Reddit, that last sentence would have a /s after it to indicate sarcasm.  Personally, I prefer using hypertags for sarcasm, like <Sarcasm> and </Sarcasm>, but then again, I grew up having to actually write code to make programs work.

MANAFORT IS MANAFUCKED, PART 395

Yep. Another article on how Manafort is Manafucked.  It’s not every day that the former Director of the FBI tells you that you’re about to be indicted.  Or that a fuckton of cash from an Oligarch on the Magnitsky Sanctions list connects you, them, and multiple banks under investigation for money laundering, including one which was partly owned by a member of the Cabinet. (Wilbur Ross, former number 2 at the Bank of Cyprus).

Plus, the Ukrainians want him for war crimes.  Part of me wants to say that they would at least have a trial before his public execution, but that’s me being optimistic.

MICHEAL COHEN MADE A LOT OF MONEY ON SHADY REAL ESTATE DEALS

Who would have thought that Michael Cohen read my Article on Money Laundering, traveled back in time, and followed it like a how-to guide?

Oh, he didn’t time travel?  He’s just a slimy, criminal who did this on his own?  That makes more sense.

Michael Cohen is Trump’s personal lawyer.  He orchestrated 4 cash real estate deals with Herbert Chaves of the Chaves and Perlowitz Law Firm on 4 properties Cohen owned, which cost him about $2 million each.  Cohen sold them on deals to Chaves for LLC’s with hidden partners for many times what they were appraised at, around $10 million each.

I need to find out if there was ever a lawsuit between these two.  Not that I don’t think something shady happened, but lawsuits can be used as a way to launder money.  I’m thinking Chaves might sue Cohen, Cohen puts money into an escrow account, then they settle out of court for an undisclosed sum.  That money, after sitting in escrow, goes to Chaves, who then takes his cut and sends it to his clients.

CONGRESS CUTS OFF ROHRBACHER’S TRAVEL ACCOUNT

This is from a couple days, but it got lost in the shuffle.  Congress has cut off funding for Dana Rohrbacher’s trips under fear that he may be committing espionage.  He has been the most outspoken supporter of Putin and Russia in Washington, and that includes the Russian Embassy.  This man suggested that Alaska be returned to Russia, if they voted to leave.

His latest stunt was to fly to London and meet with Julian Assange with Chuck Johnson, and is trying to organize a pardon for Assange in exchange for his “proof” that Wikileaks did not receive the DNC emails from the Russians.

As of this writing, Assange is still sitting in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid prosecution by any of a dozen countries for crimes ranging from sexual assault to espionage.

HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE IS A CLUSTERFUCK

There are 13 Republican Members of the HIC. Only 3 are showing up to the hearings.  Meanwhile, they would rather keep investigating Hilary Clinton instead of asking “Did the President commit Treason and a bunch of other illegal stuff?”

TRUMP’S TWITTER FOLLOWERS ARE MOSTLY NON-EXISTENT

Here’s an article with a breakdown of how few people actually follow Donald Trump on Twitter.  It’s a great breakdown of the various numbers and stats, but I included quite possibly the most important part.

Key Trump follower figures:

    21.2 percent: Trump followers who have tweeted five times or fewer

    25.3 to 25.5 percent: Trump followers who have never tweeted

    33 percent: Trump followers that are “egg accounts”

    37.7 percent: Trump followers who created Twitter accounts since the election

    46 percent: Trump followers who haven’t tweeted in the past year

    56.7 percent: Trump followers who created accounts since candidacy announcement

    66 percent: Trump followers who haven’t tweeted in the past 90 days

    74 percent: Trump followers with fewer than 50 followers

Trump’s following also includes 13.7 million “egg accounts,” or inactive accounts with no profile pictures—a clear indication of a bot, or fake follower, Kharly Stauber, SocialRank’s head of content and accounts, told the Daily Dot. The number of these kinds of accounts following him has increased by 2.2 million over the past two months. This summer, SocialRank found that only 11.1 million people following Trump as of September were active.

Stripped away of the egg accounts, Trump is left with roughly 27.5 million followers, a far cry from the 41.1 million he boasted as of Tuesday evening. When you factor in the number of accounts that have not tweeted in the past year—18.9 million, according to SocialRank—and the 27.1 million accounts that have not shared content in the past 90 days, the number of active and engaged followers of @realDonaldTrump plummets considerably.

Both Social Rank and Trump or False compiled their data as of early October.

Let’s do the math.  41.1 million followers.  13.4 million of them are likely bots.  That leaves approximately 27.5 million followers.  Out of those, 27.1 million have not shared any content in the last 3 months.

That leaves 400,000 active users.  Out of 41.4 million.  Or, 0.966% of his users are involved.  Less than 1 percent.

Another stat was the breakdown of number of tweets by user.  Almost 60% of all of Trump’s followers have fewer than 20 tweets in their history.  20 tweets!  I’ve done more than that in an hour.  I can punch out 20 likes, retweets, quotes, and reply tweets during a good coffee break.  Hell, I think I’ve insulted Trump to his account more than 20 times.  One of my bonus goals on Twitter is to get blocked by Donald Trump, without getting banned.

Anyway, most of his followers aren’t real people.

BILL BROWDER, CANADA, RUSSIA, INTERPOL, AND ISIS

Canada gave Russia a middle finger yesterday when they told Interpol that they’ll decide who can or can’t enter Canada, not Russia.

Here’s the short version.  Bill Browder, the investment banker turned political activist behind the Magnitsky Act, has an Interpol warrant issued for his arrest by the Russians.  They claim that Browder killed Sergei Magnitsky.  While he was exiled from the country and Sergei was in a Russian Prison.

Last year, while the rest of the world was distracted by the Trump Shitshow, the Interpol leadership body was taken over by Russians and Chinese members.  So far this year, both of those countries have abused this by issuing Red Notices on their critics outside of their borders.  A Red Notice is a type of arrest warrant issued by Interpol.

This is the fifth time since 2010 that Russia has tried to use Interpol to arrest Bill Browder.  The previous four times, the warrants were dismissed within a couple days as being politically motivated, but this time, it’s been in the system for over a week.

JEFF SESSIONS AND THE BIRMINGHAM COAL BRIBERY CASE

Alabama is weird.  There’s been an ongoing scandal down there that’s already taken down a politician or two.  A coal company has been fighting against having to clean up the North Birmingham area, which they screwed up, and they were caught bribing several state officials.  This case should be going to Federal Court.

One of the people that this coal company donated money to is Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General who will get to decide whether or not to bring this case to court.

Can you say “Conflict of Interest”?

That’s it for today.  At least, that’s all I pulled together for the day.  The rest of the news was catching up on stories from the last couple of days, like the HRC paying for part of the Steele Dossier, the Niger Ambush, or that the Nimitz Carrier Group is now in the Pacific along with the Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Regan Carrier Groups.  North Korea is still talking about doing a nuclear test over the Pacific Ocean.  I don’t know how this ends without being  a complete and total cock-up.

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Thank you, and have a good one