2017

Friday Night. Time for the News Dump…

AP CONFIRMS THAT RUSSIANS TRIED TO HACK VOTING SYSTEMS

From the Associated Press, we get conclusive evidence that the Russians attempted to breach the voting systems of at least 21 states were targeted during the 2016 elections in attempts to change voter rolls, software on voting machines, and possibly even the totals themselves.

From @emptywheel, as of a few hours ago, the list of identified states were as follows:

Alabama
Arizona
Colorado
Connecticut
Illinois
Iowa
Maryland
Minnesota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin

That’s 13 identified so far. We’ve had reports in the past that Texas had some weirdness going on during the election in Dallas county where long lines were caused by people disappearing from voter rolls, or having their information changed. North Carolina had some funkiness with their exit polling, as did Florida. I also heard reports of Missouri and South Carolina, where HRC was trending high a couple weeks before election night. Let’s add them to the list…

Alabama
Arizona
Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Illinois
Iowa
Maryland
Minnesota
Missouri
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin

Take a look at those states listed, what’s missing? New York, California, Massachusetts, Idaho, Oregon, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas.

The “safe” states. The states that were solidly Democratic or Republican. The states where there wasn’t a chance of voting for Hilary Clinton from a traditional Red state, or the Blue states where Trump didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell.

Why? Because the Russians had finite resources, and Cambridge Analytica told them where to focus their attack.

This report from the AP helps back up the Reality Winner story from earlier this year. Hell, even James Clapper said that the USIC’s assessment of the election is that it was illegitimate. Rep. Mike Quiqley of the House Intel Committee said that if the public knew what he knew, they’d want him to go full throttle.

WHITE HOUSE STAFFERS PREPARING TO JUMP SHIP

From Vanity Fair, here comes a report out of Washington, D.C. where many lobbyist groups, think tanks, and other agencies are getting swamped with resumes from Trump Administration staffers looking to leave the White House.

While it’s not uncommon for staffers to cash in on their experience in the White House, it usually happens after 2 years or more, not less than 1. This is indicative of people getting out while the getting is good.

FROM THE RUMOR MILL…

An article on Patribotics by Louise Mensch reported that SVB Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, was under watch from the FISA Russian Bank money laundering warrant she discussed a few days ago.

Silicon Valley Bank, located in Silicon Valley, is owned by Sberbank, one of the Russian banks under sanctions. From this report, they’re tied up in the Cambridge Analytica scandal where the state voter rolls and DNC databases were hacked and data mined.

Since SVB is owned by Sberbank, and located in the heart of Silicon Valley, it makes the bank the perfect drop-off point for data to and from Russia. Since they’re a subsidiary, communication with the home base wouldn’t be too crazy. And with them being in Silicon Valley, any tech company making hits on their system could try to claim a legit reason for it.

Cambridge Analytica, Spectrum Health, Trump Organization, Alfa Bank. Now we can add Sberbank and SVB to the list.

This is worth keeping an eye on. Like always, take this with a grain of salt.. at least until it’s confirmed by the Washington Post in a couple months.

That’s it for today. I’ll see what I can get up this weekend.

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Thank you, and have a good one.

Daily Check-In 9/21/2017

Not too bad for a Thursday…

At least relatively speaking, that is. In TrumpWorld, today felt like a slow news day. Health care, North Korea, Spicer, Facebook, Twitter, Lewandowski, Pence. Today it felt a little slow.

Compared to W or Obama, stuff is happening at breakneck speed.

Calling today a slow news day is like saying a 747 is moving slow. It’s moving at several hundred miles per hour. Might not be as fast as an F-35, but it sure is faster than a Ford Explorer.

LEWANDOWSKI SAYS MANAFORT SHOULD BE IN PRISON FOR LIFE

From The Hill, former Trump Campaign Manager, and Paul Manafort’s predecessor Corey Lewandowski, called out his successor in some harsh language, going as far as to say that he should spend the rest of his life in jail.

Corey is a blustery asshole whom I hate for completely irrational reasons that I’ll explain later, but so far he’s the only person associated with the Trump Campaign to show any level of outrage at what happened. Everyone else either shrugged it off, acted like they never heard of Paul Manafort (like Vice President Mike Pence did this morning on Fox & Friends), or tried to change the subject. To Corey’s credit, he’s calling Paul out. Not that there was any love lost between the two, and Corey is still denying that Trump ever had anything to do with Russia, at least while he was around.

SOCIAL MEDIA, CONGRESS, AND THE SPECIAL COUNSELOR ALL GETTING ON THE SAME PAGE

Earlier today, reports came out that both Facebook and Twitter have agreed to work with the Senate committees, and that they are both fully cooperating with Special Counselor Mueller. Twitter is handing over the information they’ve collected on Russian bots, while Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced several sweeping changes with Facebook, including policing ads more for political content, forcing advertisers to disclose themselves in the ad, and sharing the suspected Russian ads with Congress.

These aren’t some magnanimous or altruistic move on their part, this is straight-up CYA. Cover. Your. Ass.

If they don’t cooperate with the investigations, they’re screwed, and could possibly go down as accomplices. If they don’t take proactive actions, they could piss off Congress enough to get classified as utilities. That might still happen, but at least if they start taking swift action, they’re less likely to be completely screwed.

‘THE NOTEBOOK 2″ TO STAR SEAN SPICER, ROBERT MUELLER, DONALD TRUMP

SHOUTY SPICE IS BACK, BITCHES! After rage quitting the White House when he was passed over for his dream job, Sean Spicer is back in the news, and not for being affable on late night television.

According to GQ Magazine , the Special Counselor is very interested Sean Spicer. He’s interested in hearing his side of the story of the Comey firing press statement. He’s interested in hearing his side of the story of the press statements he made before Comey was fired. He’s interested in hearing his side of the story about all of the times he addressed the nation and spouted obvious lies to the American people.

Unlike everyone else in this organization, Sean won’t have a problem remembering details.

Why?

He took notes. Lots of notes. Of EVERYTHING.

Spicer has many reputations, but one of them is being an studious note taker. He took notes in meetings, about meetings, notes about what he was doing each day, whom he was meeting with, what they discussed, wha the other person discussed, and who was where. One of the stories about him was that staffers would tease him, saying he was taking notes so he could write a tell-all book.

Well, he’s gonna tell all…to Bobby Three Sticks.

I called Spicer flipping like a gymnast months ago. He’s a lying, hypocritical jerk, and a toadie, but he wouldn’t take the fall for Trump. Sean Spicer struck me as being the guy that gets close to his dream job, one step away from it, and knows that he’s got to eat a shit sandwich every now and then, but he didn’t think it would be as bad as it was. Being ridiculed, humiliated, abused, treated like dirt, and that was just his boss. That doesn’t include being a laughing stock for America.

But when Trump decided to bring his Jewish children to meet the Pope instead of Sean Spicer, a devout Catholic. Meeting the Pope was a lifelong dream of his. When Trump did that, he lost Spicer. Doing this for him would have cost Trump very little, but would have kept Spicer’s loyalty for life. To quote Frank Underwood “It requires very little of me, and it means the world to him.”

The final straw for Spicer was when Trump hired Anthony Scarmucci to be the next White House Communications Director instead of him. I heard rumors that when he found out, Spicer legitimately rage quit.

This also shows how bad Donald Trump is at what he does. He demands loyalty of everyone, but does not return it to his subordinates. In crime organizations, loyalty can be kept with threats of violence. With wealth, loyalty can be bought, as long as the cash flows. But in Washington, D.C., loyalty is temporary, and power can shift on a dime. By treating Sean Spicer so bad for so long, he created an enemy. An enemy who kept notes, and shared them with the Special Counselor.

IN OTHER NEWS

NORTH KOREA’S KIM JONG UN CALLS TRUMP DERANGED, WORLD SADLY AGREES

Yep, this story again. It’s almost like every time Trump needs a distraction, North Korea does something. And, yes, North Korea and Russia have some interesting ties. Earlier this year, two North Korean spies suffered Russian Heart Attacks, when they were found dead in their luggage after being shot.

It won’t be too long before it comes out that Putin is pulling North Korea’s strings as well, and that they’re the reason why North Korea can put a nuke on a missile.

SENATE REPUBLICANS CONTINUE PUSH ON OBAMACARE REPEAL BEFORE END OF FISCAL YEAR ON SEPTEMBER 30

This doesn’t deal much with the Russian Investigation, but this could cost at least 25 million Americans their health care, and is a terrible idea.

I put blame on Citizens United. As long as unlimited money from corporations is allowed in campaigns, elected officials are beholden to the will of large money donors like the Mercers and Koch’s. The Koch Brothers even said that they will only donate $400 Million in next year’s midterm elections if, and only if, Obamacare is repealed and tax cuts are passed.

But why the sudden push? September 30th is the end of the fiscal year for the Federal Government. The parliamentary trick that Mitch McConnell used on health care, called Reconciliation, can be used on one bill or package per year, has to meet certain financial requirements, and can bypass cloture.

That last part, cloture, is part of how filibusters work. While a simple majority is all that is technically required to pass any bill in the Senate, a filibuster can be called by any senator, for any reason. Cloture is the number of votes required to break a filibuster. That number, 60, is part of why it’s so hard to get things done in the Senate, but is also what protects this country from rampant partisanship.

So, Mitch has one last shot to pass a health care repeal before September 30th. After that, we’re back to the sixty vote threshold.

FROM THE RUMOR MILL….

Nothing too new has come from the Rumor Mill on Twitter recently, except for confirming stories hitting the press and giving details that fill in the gaps.

One thing I found interesting was something Louise said in a tweet about Mike Pence showing up on Fox and Friends. Earlier this summer, she wrote an article detailing how Fox News as a corporation, and a few individuals in particular, were under investigation by the FBI for their role in spreading Russian propaganda during the election, and after. One name she dropped was Sean Hannity.

Earlier today, she mentioned that the cast and crew of Fox & Friends was included in that investigation. I’ve mentioned before in Fox & Friends – 10 Minutes Is Enough how that program hit all of the checkboxes of a state run propaganda operation. It wouldn’t surprise me at all that they were under investigation by the USIC, FVEY, and every other agency at this point.

Once again, this is just a rumor, take it with a grain of salt.

That’s about it for tonight. I’m working on an idea for a new section on the home page, focusing on crimes. If I’m right about what’s coming on the horizon, there’s gonna be a lot of talk about FISA, Money Laundering, Obstruction of Justice, and lots of fraud and tax evasion. I’m going to add a new section devoted just to the crimes, and how the actors in this macabre play line up with each crime. Criminal definitions don’t necessarily fall under “Get To Know Your Government”, and I plan to right enough of these to justify their own section.

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda”

– Katy Tur

Thank you, and have a good one.

Daily Check-In 9/20/2017

HSIOW. Holy Shit, it’s Only Wednesday.

Warning: The language is a little harsh today.

Today, I’m doing things a little different. Instead of talking about 5 or 6 different stories, I’ll talk about one story, with several new details.

It’s the biggest story of our lifetime.

How Donald Trump committed treason, and how our government reacted.

Today, several stories dropped from WaPo, NYT, CNN, CNBC, Time, Vox, and a couple other places about how fucked Paul Manafort truly is.

There should be a new word to describe how fucked he is. How about … Manafucked.

To truly be Manafucked, one must be suspected by the USIC of being a foreign agent, get caught doing spy shit, have a money trail tying you to mass murderers and war criminals, get caught spying using a presidential campaign email address, have your assets frozen so you can’t pay back millions of dollars to the Russian mob, have the IRS Criminal Investigation unit look into you for tax fraud, have the FinCEN Death Robot of Death track your money laundering operation, have not one but TWO FISA warrants issued for you in three years, get the FBI to execute a no-knock raid on your home at 02:fucking early, have your wife patted down for a gun while in bed, and have the Special Counselor tell you, to your face, that he’s gonna indict yo ass, and all of your phone calls, texts, web searches, browsing, and texts are now the property of the United States Government, including calls you’ve made to the President. And you’re STILL facing war crimes in Ukraine.

That’s Manafucked.

And he’ll likely be indicted by October 15th. CNN brought up a very good point that the Statute of Limitations runs out on his 2011 taxes that day.

According to the Washington Post he offered Oleg Deripaska daily briefings from his Trump for President email address, and attempted to collect on money he was owed while he was the campaign chairman. I’m not an expert in election law, but this sounds… what’s the term I’m looking for? Oh, right, FUCKING ILLEGAL AS FUCK!

On top of all of this, he talked with EVERYONE in the campaign. Trump, the other Trump, the other-other Trump, the Not-Trump, the lawyers, Mike Fucking Pence, who was Manafort’s pick for Vice President.

And all of it has been in the hands of the FBI, and Special Counselor Robert Mueller for months.

This stuff breaking is just the press finding out about it today. Mueller’s team has run a tight ship, and most of the information coming out is from defense sources, like Manafort’s lawyers.

But the weirdest thing coming out of the Manafucking is this strange attempt at saying that Donald Trump is now vindicated from his claims that Obama wiretapped him. Let me walk through the mental gymnastics required to make this leap.

Donald Trump, being someone who suffers from NPD, and is incapable of identifying his own faults, has recorded conversations with Paul Manafort while he’s under surveillance, and was caught in incidental collection. Ipso, facto, Trump was right.

Gimme a Fucking Break.

Imagine for a moment that Chief Wiggum is tailing Fat Tony, when Fat Tony meets with Mayor Quimby. They proceed to discuss tearing down the retirement home, and they’ll split the profits from selling the land.

Trump is Quimby.

OTHER NEWS TODAY

JEFF SESSIONS TO TESTIFY PUBLICLY BEFORE THE SENATE NEXT MONTH

ROSENSTEIN DID NOT RECUSE, MET WITH MUELLER AND HIS TEAM.

RUSSIA GOING AROUND SANCTIONS TO FUEL NORTH KOREA

That’s it for today. Except For this. Includes a list of Bobby Three Sticks wants.

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Thank you, and have a good one.

Daily Check-In 9/19/2017

Tuesday. What could happen on a Tuesday?

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE HAS PAID $230,000 TO TRUMP LAWYERS

Per Politico a couple minutes ago, the RNC has paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars for Donald Trump’s criminal attorneys. More legal fees were also paid by his presidential campaign.

This is ridiculous, outrageous, but not illegal. Private campaign funds can, and have been used for legal expenses since 2008 when Obama eschewed public financing. Usually, these fees are for recounts, random lawsuits from vendors, little things like that. Trump is the first president to use campaign funds to pay for lawyers in a criminal investigation.

The part that should upset every person in this country is that a purported multibillionaire won’t pay his own legal fees.

The part that should piss off every Republican is using party money to pay for these lawyers. Money that could be used to finance a congressional race is instead paying for a traitor’s lawyers.

FEC MEMBER RECEIVED DEATH THREATS FOR PROPOSING ONLINE CAMPAIGN RESTRICTIONS

From Quartz, a Federal Election Commission member spoke out in 2014 about applying the same disclosure restrictions to online ads as television and print. That ended in her leaving the FEC, and receiving multiple death threats.

Ann Ravel predicted the Russian interference in 2014, and even used them as the primary reason why these restrictions should be put in place. The vote was 3-3 along party lines. All the Democrats voted for the restrictions. The Republicans voted against it.

COHEN SCREWED UP, WILL BE TESTIFYING BEFORE SENATE IN PUBLIC

When the Senate Intelligence Committee tells you to STFU, you STFU.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s long time personal lawyer, released a press statement about his planned testimony to the SIC behind closed doors. They didn’t like that.

The SIC canceled their scheduled meeting today, and told Cohen that they’ll see him in public testimony. He can either show up willingly, or they can subpoena him. His choice.

DONNIE JR. WANTS TO GET RID OF SECRET SERVICE PROTECTION

In other news, Don Jr. wants to get rid of his Secret Service protection. He claims that it’s so he can get some privacy.

If this were a D&D game, I’d be making a sense motive/bullshit check right now.

Don’t be surprised if he tries to flee the country. Don’t also be surprised if he tries, and gets picked up almost immediately.

These people aren’t bright.

There’s a very good chance that every Intelligence agency around the world has eyes on all the kids. Australia knows when Eric drops a deuce. France knows when its Tiffany’s time of the month. Germany knows that DJ is planning to flee, and will know before either Donald Trump will know, and one of them will be the guy running.

TRUMP MAKES AN IDIOT OUT OF HIMSELF IN UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY.

HUCKABEE-SANDERS COULD BE GUILTY OF OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE, PER SENATOR.

FACEBOOK TO TESTIFY PUBLICLY BEFORE SENATE.

HURRICANE MARIA IS A CATEGORY FIE HEADED FOR PUERTO RICO

7.1 MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE HITS MEXICO CITY

I had an idea about writing an article about money laundering. I have a feeling it’ll be pretty important to understand the basics. Call it a hunch.

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Thank you, and have a good one.