Tag: Politics

Daily Check-In 02/18/2019

Monday, February 18, 2019

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

McCabe

 

Stone

The countdown to Stone getting sent to prison is on.  Judges don’t take kindly to death threats.

 

Cambridge Analytica

 

Rosenstein

We’ve talked about this before, and the timing of mid-March lines up with previous reports, but it also lines up with the rumors about part of the Mueller report being released, and Rod’s statement that he wouldn’t leave until it was released.

 

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

 

SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION & EMERGENCIES

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A INDIVIDUAL-1

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

RIGHT WING TERRORISM & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

#METOO & WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, & ECONOMY

 

STUDENT ISSUES

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTIONS

Republican Mark Harris initially appeared to have defeated Democrat Dan McCready by a razor-thin 905-vote margin on election night last November. That apparent victory was never certified, however, due to allegations that the GOP cobbled together their win through the use of absentee ballot fraud. At the center of those allegations is GOP campaign operative McCrae Dowless.

At a Monday evidentiary hearing conducted by the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE), a campaign worker employed by Dowless detailed several  aspects of the Republican campaign’s alleged efforts to steal the election for Harris in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District. The same woman also said that when the alleged scheme was discovered, Dowless instructed her to lie about their efforts.

Lisa Britt was the first witness to give testimony at the NCSBE hearing. In her opening statement, Britt admitted that she did not tell the truth to a local news station about unlawfully collecting absentee ballots in violation of state law. During this interview–which was conducted in Dowless’ kitchen–Britt said that she and others employed by Dowless did nothing illegal during the 2018 midterm election. During Monday’s hearing, Britt walked all of that back.

Britt began working for Dowless in June or July of 2018 and said that she was paid according to the number of people she registered for absentee ballot request forms–and when she picked up absentee ballots. For every 50 ballots requested or obtained, Dowless would pay Britt and others between $125-175, she said.

“I took the signed, sealed ballot,” Britt said during her testimony about one specific ballot entered into evidence. “That ballot was turned back in with the other ballots I had collected that day.”

Britt said that she and other members of the Dowless team collected several unsealed ballots and opened them to ascertain who voters had selected. When voters had left certain races blank, Britt said, she and others would fill those races in for the Republican candidate. Britt also said that she was instructed to make copies of all absentee ballot request forms and that she kept them in a folder. The original forms, she said, were given to Dowless. Additional copies were also allegedly made for Bladen County Improvement Association PAC’s Lola Wooten–who Britt says was in Dowless’ office at least once a week.

 

THINKING AHEAD

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Monday.  Tuesday’s got some interesting things happening.  I have another reason to not like Bernie Sanders, Roger Stone has a new court date, and the House Democrats release a report on the Saudi Nuclear Deals that Mike Flynn worked on.

Looks like I should really work on that Grand Bargain story to tie things together.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 02/15/2019

Friday, February 15, 2019 and the weekend.  Remember when I tempted fate yesterday that I would like to take some time off (Daily Check-In 02/14/2019)?

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Manafort

1/Yes, Manafort may have lied to Mueller because he wanted a pardon from Trump. But let me amplify what I told about why he may have been scared of the Russian Mafia.

2/Manafort’s story in some ways resembles that of Eduard Nektalov who I write about in . Manafort had a place in Trump Tower, and Nektalov lived in Trump World Tower. Nektalov was being investigated by the Treasury Dept for money-laundering…

3/Manafort was also involved in money-laundering and, among other vehicles, used a company called Lucicle that was in the name of an associate of Russian crime boss Semion Mogilevich

4/But in May 2004, word got around that Nektalov was cooperating with the feds(just as Manafort seemed to be cooperating w Mueller), and look what happened…

5/ Manafort must have known about this. Yes, he wants a pardon from Trump, but he also knows there are worse fates than spending the rest of your life in prison.

Paul Manafort is Manafucked.  On Friday, the Special Counselor’s Office recommended a sentence on the higher end of the spectrum for his lifetime of being an unrepentant criminal.  That would place his sentence in the 19.5-24 year range, at least.  This is before his sentencing in March for his tax fraud trial, where he’s looking at another 10-20 years.  The big question coming out of there is where or not that sentence will be served concurrently or consecutively.

What’s the difference?  Concurrent sentences are served at once, where the prisoner is in jail for the time of the longest sentence.  Consecutive sentences are served one after the other.

Paul Manafort is 69 years old.  Even a ten year sentence makes his odds of living to the end pretty small.  A 20 year sentence means he’s 89 years old at the end of it.  Two maximum sentences served consecutively puts Paul Manafort at 113 years old when he gets out.

In other words, if he’s lucky, he dies of old age in federal prison.

“But wait,” I hear yelled from Social Media, “What about pardons?”  Manafort is more fucked that way.  I’ve talked about pardons before at GTKYG-Pardon Limitations, but the short version is that if he gets pardoned (won’t be surprised if Trump tries it) and if it gets upheld (highly doubt it), Manafort will be charged with state charges from Virginia, New York, Illinois, and California.

 

Roger Stone’s Gag Order

This is a partial gag order, so Roger Stone gets to talk on television and the internet, but not in front of the courthouse.  This almost seems like a setup, since everything he says can be used against him in court.

Also, Mueller responded to Stone’s request to not have his case linked to the Russian hackers.

 

Roger Stone’s Russian Communications

The reason they linked Roger Stone’s case to the Russian GRU hackers was because THEY FOUND HIS TEXTS, DM’S, AND EMAILS IN THEIR ACCOUNTS!!!  That’s like getting your hands on some dude’s phone and finding your girlfriends naked selfies on it.  Kind of hard for her to deny that she isn’t talking to that douche canoe.

So, let’s recap…

During the investigation, Mueller’s team found evidence of the GRU hacking the DNC and trying to get into Hilary Clinton’s emails.  The GRU used Gmail and Hotmail accounts to communicate with people and to set up fake Twitter accounts.  While searching through that evidence, Mueller’s team found communications with Julian Assange and Wikileaks, which was used to release the mails to the world.  Mueller also found email conversations with Roger Stone.  Seeing as Roger probably doesn’t have his own mail server hosted out of his home, Mueller subpoenaed either his ISP, mail hosting service, cloud service, and/or search engine history.

Notice I didn’t say computer in that list.  Even though they could have subpoenaed it, it wasn’t necessary.  I’m pretty sure I mentioned this before, but a little forgotten fact of our modern world is that no emails truly disappear, even from services like Signal or WhatsApp.  Someone has a version of it somewhere, and that someone is usually the mail hosting company, like Google or Apple.  When a mail is sent, copies are stored on each server it touches and every device involved.  If Roger sent a mail from his iPhone to a GRU officer in Russia using a Gmail account, here’s a short list of where that mail could be found.

  • Roger’s phone.
  • Roger’s laptop.
  • Roger’s iCloud account.
  • Roger’s ISP.
  • Apple’s server farm in North Carolina.
  • Apple’s servers in Europe.
  • Google’s servers in North America.
  • Google’s servers in Europe.
  • The GRU’s Android phone.
  • The GRU’s computer cache.
  • The GRU’s ISP.
  • The GRU’s local server.

That’s 12 places at least where the mail lives.  And Roger would only know about two of them being searched.  The Internet Service Provider, cloud companies, and hosting companies are under no obligation to notify their users about a search warrant being executed for their data.  In fact, depending on the type of warrant, they are prevented from notifying the users that their data was looked at by the United States government.

This is just emails.  Add in services like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter, and the number of places a message exists grows and grows.

As far as apps that claim to delete messages once they’re read, that’s true, to a point.  If encryption is turned on between both devices AND they’re both set up to delete the messages immediately AND no backups are saved to the device AND no backups are saved to the cloud, then it would be next to impossible for law enforcement to read these messages.

Keep in mind, we’re talking about senior citizens and technology.  They probably had to ask their kids to get their computer on the internet because the “Blue E wasn’t working.”

There’s a dozen places that Robert Mueller could have found Roger Stone’s communications with the GRU.  The worst place for Roger was in the GRU’s own email accounts.  That’s exactly where they were found.

 

Welcome to SubpoenaAndInterviewLand, Population these folks…

Remember, we are always a couple months behind schedule when it comes to who is talking to Mueller and who’s been subpoenaed, but these are important for two reasons.

First, Walleye Sanders delivered the speech covering up Trump Jr.’s actions in the June 9 meeting back in July 2017.  She’s also covered up countless crimes and atrocities performed by this administration over the past year and a half as the Press Secretary.

Brittany Kaiser is the second person from Cambridge Analytica to be interviewed by Mueller’s team following Sam Patten.  Sam Patten pled guilty to FARA violations last summer. (2018 Retrospective). She was their business development manager, and was behind many of their moves coordinating with Facebook and the Trump Campaign.

Also, don’t be fooled by the claims that Cambridge Analytica has gone away.  They’ve reorganized as Emerdata.  Same shady shit, new name.

 

McCabe

Two cabinet officials back in May 2017 were on board with invoking the 25th Amendment.  My guess is Jim Mattis and John Kelly.  Mattis was SecDef and Kelly was SecDHS at the time.

 

Congress

 

 

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

Inauguration

Ohh boy, New Jersey’s joining the fun.  Remember, state charges cannot be pardoned by the President.

Stormy

 

Maine

 

 

SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION & FAKE EMERGENCIES

This seems like the kind of item I’d spend hours ranting about, and in any normal universe, I would.  These are the kinds of actions that lead to authoritarianism, and will if we don’t stop it.

I’m also certain that Tangerine Tojo will fuck this up in a way that has never been seen before in the multiverse.  He already said in his declaration that “I didn’t need to do this”, then spent the first days of this emergency playing golf.

This is his last desperate attempt to get his vanity project built and keep his mouth-breathing base by his side.  Instead of making bold moves on repairing this country’s infrastructure or ending the Opioid Crisis, he’s trying to get his wall built again.

By the way, it won’t cost $7 billion.  $70 billion, maybe, but nowhere near $7 billion.  And so far there’s been no location scouting, no preliminary work, no bids for contracts, nothing that shows even the slightest bit of progress.  And with less than 2 years left in this term, there’s no way it gets completed by January 2031, let alone January 2021.

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A. INDIVIDUAL-1

 

Thin Skinned Pussy

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

CONGRESS

 

AIPAC & OMAR

 

RIGHT WING TERRORISM & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

SCOTUS & COURTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

THE ULTIMATE COCKFIGHT: BEZOS’S PECKER VS. DAVID PECKER

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, AND ECONOMY

 

STUDENT ISSUES

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

Smollett

Chicago (CNN)Two law enforcement sources with knowledge of the investigation tell CNN that Chicago Police believe actor Jussie Smollett paid two men to orchestrate an assault on him that he reported late last month.

Smollett denies playing a role in his attack, according to a statement from his attorneys.

The men, who are brothers, were arrested Wednesday but released without charges Friday after Chicago police cited the discovery of “new evidence.”

The sources told CNN the two men are now cooperating fully with law enforcement.

Smollett told authorities he was attacked early January 29 by two men who were “yelling out racial and homophobic slurs.” He said one attacker put a rope around his neck and poured an unknown chemical substance on him.

The sources told CNN there are records that show the two brothers purchased the rope found around Smollett’s neck at a hardware store in Chicago.

Smollett’s attorneys, Todd S. Pugh and Victor P. Henderson, issued a statement to CNN Saturday night saying Smollett was angry about these latest developments.

“As a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with,” the statement read. “He has now been further victimized by claims attributed to these alleged perpetrators that Jussie played a role in his own attack. Nothing is further from the truth and anyone claiming otherwise is lying.”

Smollett’s attorneys said they expect further updates from Chicago police on the investigation and will continue cooperating with authorities.

“At the present time, Jussie and his attorneys have no inclination to respond to ‘unnamed’ sources inside of the investigation, but will continue discussions through official channels,” the statement read.

Smollett identifies as gay and since 2015 has played the gay character of Jamal on the Fox TV drama “Empire.”

As far as why I hadn’t reported on any possible hoaxes surrounding Jussie Smollet, there were no credible stories backing up the hoax story that I came across until late last week. All of the articles that I saw traced back to poorly sourced stories from RWM sites like Daily Caller or Freedom Wire.

This isn’t the first time that a hoax could have occurred, and it won’t be the last. If Jussie lied about this, he’s an asshole and caused a lot of potential problems.

 

PRIESTS & RELIGION

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTIONS

 

THINKING AHEAD

Bill Weld

 

Tulsi Gabbard

 

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for the last few days.  These weekend posts get a little out of hand, but that’s what happens when I roll three days of stuff into one post.

There’s something I want to see.  I want to see reports of people in MAGA hats doing good things for once.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a report about a person wearing a MAGA hat helping old women across the street or pulling over to help someone broken down on the side of the road, or volunteering at Habitat for Humanity or at a soup kitchen.  In the nearly 3 years that this has been a thing, I’ve never once seen or heard a positive story about someone wearing a MAGA hat doing anything that Makes America Great.  I’ve definitely seen stories about people wearing those hats attacking people of color, attacking reporters, committing various crimes and spewing hate.

This is why the Red Hat is the new Klan hood, or SS uniform.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

Daily Check-In 02/14/2019

Thursday, February 14, 2019

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

McCabe

Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director and former acting director of the FBI, told CBS’s 60 Minutes that meetings were held at the Department of Justice to discuss invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump from office.

In the brief time period between former FBI Director James Comey’s firing and the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein considered wearing a wire in meetings with Trump, according to McCabe, in an interview with 60 Minutes. Upon Comey’s firing, McCabe became the acting FBI director. The New York Timesreported the same information in September 2018, which DOJ at the time said was a sarcastic suggestion.

Although the portion of the interview with McCabe has not yet been released, CBS’s Scott Pelley said McCabe told him the idea of removing Trump from office “came up more than once and it was so serious that he took it to the lawyers at the FBI to discuss it.” McCabe and others at DOJ were “counting noses” in an effort to predict who in the president’s Cabinet, including Vice President Mike Pence, would vote to force Trump from office, according to Pelley.

We all knew McCabe would take aim at Trump in his book, but his contempt for Sessions is staggering. Depicts him as addled, fixated on immigrants, racist. My review of the McCabe book in WaPo

FBI was better off “when you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe, acc to McCabe. “They were drunks but at least they could be trusted.”

The book has inevitable new gem on Trump-Putin. President refused to believe intel officials that North Korea had test fired ICBM. NK didn’t have that capability, he insisted, saying he knew this “because Vladimir Putin had told him so.”

McCabe goes much farther than Comey in acknowledging the FBI liked tipped 2016 election to Trump. “As matter of policy, FBI does everything possible not to influence elections,” he writes. “In 2016, it seems we did.”

One of my takeaways from the McCabe book: Trump administration’s reputation for baseness and dysfunction has, if anything, been understated and too narrowly attributed to the president.

One of the regularly scheduled meetings with the attorney general, deputy attorney general, and some of their staff came two days later, on Friday, May 12. After the meeting, I asked the deputy, Rod Rosenstein, if he could stay behind. In part I wanted to talk with him about ground rules governing the separate investigations of the Russia case by the FBI and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Rosenstein had oversight because the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had had to recuse himself owing to his own interactions with Russians during the campaign. But my main message was this: I need you to protect the process.

After speaking to these points, Rod shifted his gaze. His eyes were focused on a point in space a few yards beyond and behind, toward the door. He started talking about the firing of Jim Comey. He was obviously upset. He said he was shocked that the White House was making it look as if Jim’s firing had been his idea. He was grasping for a way to describe the nature of his situation. One remark stands out. He said, There’s no one that I can talk to about this. There’s no one here that I can trust.

He asked for my thoughts about whether we needed a special counsel to oversee the Russia case. I said I thought it would help the investigation’s credibility. Later that day, I went to see Rosenstein again. This is the gist of what I said: I feel strongly that the investigation would be best served by having a special counsel. I’ve been thinking about the Clinton email case and how we got twisted in knots over how to announce a result that did not include bringing charges against anyone. Had we appointed a special counsel in the Clinton case, we might not be in the present situation. Unless or until you make the decision to appoint a special counsel, the FBI will be subjected to withering criticism that could destroy the credibility of both the Justice Department and the FBI.

Remember a while back when Andrew McCabe was fired?  I said something along the lines of “wait until the book comes out” to hear how much of a clusterfuck this really was.

Turns out, it was worse than we thought.  And if this accounting is true, Andrew McCabe may have saved the Republic.  After Comey was fired, there was little time for him to act, and there was a good chance that he would be fired soon as well.  His first act was to open an investigation into Donald Trump for Obstruction of Justice.  That way, he created a record of events and if someone tried and make this whole mess disappear.  His actions also gave Rod Rosenstein time to appoint Robert Mueller as the Special Counselor.

 

 

 

Good.  Let’s see what Kremlin Barbie knows.

 

SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION

Now we enter the “How much can he fuck this up” phase.

There’s two ways this whole “National Emergency” thing ends.

The most likely way is that this get shot down in the courts after everyone from California to Carlos Santana files a lawsuit against it.

The least likely way is that it is successful in starting the wall, but it ends there.  The project ends quickly, and the next person in office now has a precedent set to use the excuse of a national emergency to enact any and all actions that they couldn’t get passed through Congress.

 

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A. INDIVIDUAL-1

 

Let’s Get Physical!

 

TRAITOR TOTS

Barr

 

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

CONGRESS

 

AIPAC & OMAR

 

RIGHT WING TERRORISM & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

SCOTUS & COURTS

 

#METOO & WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

Spicy Mic: The Parkland Victims

 

  • Alyssa Alhadeff, 15
  • Martin Duque, 14
  • Nicholas Dworet, 17
  • Jaime Guttenburg, 14
  • Luke Hoyer, 15
  • Cara Loughran, 14
  • Gina Montalto, 14
  • Joaquin Oliver, 17
  • Alaina Petty, 14
  • Meadow Pollack, 18
  • Helena Ramsey, 17
  • Alex Schachter, 14
  • Carmen Schentrup, 16
  • Peter Wang, 15
  • Scott Beigel, 35
  • Aaron Feis, 37
  • Chris Hixon, 49

“… Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag…” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

The (Russian) Anti-Vaxxers

 

 

 

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, AND ECONOMY

 

STUDENT ISSUES

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

PRIESTS & RELIGION

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

THINKING AHEAD

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

VALENTINE’S DAY

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Thursday.  Friday brings us a signing to avoid a shutdown, a botched emergency announcement, and a Republican challenging Trump in 2020.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 02/12/2019

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

“Qatar started looking into how its name got involved into the deal and found out it was because of a fund it co-owned,” said one of the sources. “So QIA ultimately triggered a strategy revamp.”

The QIA declined to comment.

Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management Inc bailed out 666 Fifth Avenue via its real estate unit Brookfield Property Partners, in which the QIA acquired a 9 percent stake five years ago. Both parent and unit declined to comment.

The QIA’s strategic shift was made late last year, according to the sources. It offers a rare insight into the thinking of one of the world’s most secretive sovereign wealth funds.

The revamp could have significant implications for the global investment scene because the QIA is one of the world’s largest state investors, with more than $320 billion under management.

So let me get this straight…

The Qataris, after being approached by the Kushner family for a loan on 666 Fifth Ave and turned it down and had their country blockaded until they worked out a deal for the building, ACCIDENTALLY lent $1.3 billion for a 99 year lease on a building?

Are you fucking kidding me?  Giving out over a billion dollars isn’t something one accidentally does.  I’ve accidentally left my wallet at home, or accidentally said those inside voices on the outside, but I’ve never accidentally paid off a billion dollar loan to remove an extortion racket.

But the next question is, why now?  Why would Qatar Investment Authority make this announcement now?  Why announce that this transaction was a mistake right after it’s completed?  Why wait until the mystery company’s case heads to the Supreme Court.

I think that’s why.  There’s some news about the mystery case coming down the pipeline, and QIA is neck deep in the whole thing.

 

“If we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia,” said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in an interview with CBS News last week.

Burr was careful to note that more facts may yet be uncovered, but he also made clear that the investigation was nearing an end.

“We know we’re getting to the bottom of the barrel because there’re not new questions that we’re searching for answers to,” Burr said.

On Tuesday, Burr doubled down, telling NBC News, “There is no factual evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D.-Va., ranking member of the committee, told reporters in the Capitol Tuesday that he disagrees with the way Burr characterized the evidence about collusion, but he declined to offer his own assessment.

“I’m not going to get into any conclusions I have,” he said, before adding that “there’s never been a campaign in American history … that people affiliated with the campaign had as many ties with Russia as the Trump campaign did.”

Democratic Senate investigators who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity did not dispute Burr’s characterizations, but said they lacked context.

“We were never going to find a contract signed in blood saying, ‘Hey Vlad, we’re going to collude,'” one Democratic aide said.

Are you fucking kidding me?

I’ll wait until the final report from them, but something’s up.  I’m not sure what, but something’s up.

 

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A. INDIVIDUAL-1

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

CONGRESS

 

SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION

 

El Paso

 

RIGHT WING TERRORISM & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

El Paso Violence

 

DEALING WITH RACISM

 

#METOO & WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

There is a very easy way to stunt the growth of tools and networks currently being used to destroy democracy.

Step 1: Require notification to individuals via email every time details of that person are transferred to a “partner”, “affiliate”, “subsidiary”, or similar entity.

Step 2: Make the penalties for violating that rule hurt like a motherfucker. Meaning in terms of both financial consequences and personal freedom (i.e. Put executives in prison for repeat violations. Yes, it is that serious.)

The simple requirement of forcing companies to send an email saying “Hey, here I am, sharin’ yer datas with these shady d00ds over here!” will put a stop to much of it.

 

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, AND ECONOMY

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

If the Climate Change conversation was framed more like “A giant meteor is going to hit and cause a series of terrible things in 12 years if we don’t stop it” I have a feeling GND would look more like it was the bare minimum required and less like a radical pipe-dream

But that is the reality. We hit seemingly impossible goals, or we suffer the consequences of a world that is fundamentally different that we won’t be able to fix. Its up to us to decide.

Scientists have been warning about this for 30 years now. Blame the people who chose to ignore the warnings. We wouldn’t need to meet such impossible expectations had anyone done their jobs this entire time.

 

 

ELECTIONS

 

THINKING AHEAD

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

Are we not doing phasing anymore?  How is that not a thing?

 

That’s it for Tuesday.  In the next few weeks, things are going to happen.  Too many events line up for the end of the month for nothing to happen.  I’m not guaranteeing anything, but don’t be surprised, either.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur