Category Archives: The Media

June 29, 2017 · 11:09 pm

More “Russian collusion” innuendo

After Trump’s “mean girl” tweet dominating the news all day, the Wall Street Journal ran a murky “Russian collusion” piece:

GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails From Hackers, Implied a Connection to Flynn

Supposedly the reporter interviewed the source, Peter W. Smith,  81, identified  as a GOP operative, who allegedly assembled a team to find Russian hackers, who might have possessed Hillary’s emails from her server.

The story states Smith, 81 died on May 14th, 10 days after the WSJ reporter interviewed Smith (that’s just a few days before Robert Mueller was hired as the special prosecutor to investigate the Russia mess).

So, the WSJ has an 81 year-old man, near death as their source for this story, a story they’ve had since the middle of May and sat on, but decided to release it today… to create a Russian collusion headline.  The story also states that Smith offered to make introductions to retired general Mike Flynn, as an inducement to recruit experts to help him in finding Hillary’s missing emails, that might be in the hands of Russian hackers.   Smith stated that he had a line of communication to Flynn.

The story has plenty of innuendo, little in the way of facts nailed down and the source was an 81 year old, who is now deceased.

Make what you will of this latest story, but as for me, I expected better from the Wall Street Journal.

Added note: I should have been clearer, Smith was the only named source… and he’s dead now.

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Filed under General Interest, Politics, The Media

June 29, 2017 · 2:07 pm

Easily manipulated or 12-dimensional chess?

Beyond the reality TV aura to Trump vs. The Media and Trump’s “mean girl” tweets is the larger issue:  AMERICA.  Every intelligence agency worth its salt has analyzed Trump’s personality and knows he’s a shallow, venal, sociopath (yes, his every action screams that).  They know how he reacts and will find ways to goad or feed his ego to advance their own interests.

I’ve stated many times that I believe the Russians didn’t just all of a sudden ramp up their information war in the 2016 election, but have been escalating them for decades and never really stopped when the Soviet Union collapsed.  I suspect a large, continuous Russian disinformation effort in our media, fueling the hyper-partisan divide.  Without rehashing all that again, you can read some of my old posts,  this,  this,  this, if you’re interested.

Twitter is a how American news is generated.  It is how the spin cycles churn up controversies to dominate the 24/7 news cycle.  Since the 90s, the Left, which includes the liberal, mainstream media, controlled the 24/7 news cycle.  Trump used Twitter to promote his brand (himself) long before 2016. It apparently is a social media format he is comfortable with and one where he feels he can fight the media without any gatekeepers.   Trump learned how to break through, by not only Twitter, but also  with having Drudge, FOX News and some big agents of influence on the Right spew Trump’s talking points, even the petty personal attacks.

Again, Trump and Hillary both used scorched earth/mass media saturation form information warfare, that the Clinton’s spinmeisters introduced into American politics with their “War Room” in the 90s:

Carville/Begala scorched earth is the military strategy of scorched earth juxtaposed to a mass media battlefield.  In information warfare, scorched earth is no holds barred character assassinations and relentless generation of memes.

Mass media saturation (spin) is the military strategy of swarming juxtaposed to a mass media battlefield

Combined, they have been ruthlessly used to divide America into hostile, warring factions.

This latest Trump tweet attack started with the escalating, ongoing information war,  on Twitter, between Trump vs. the media, Comey & friends and the Clinton/Obama/Dem hacks.

I keep a personal journal and  jot down my thoughts on everything from crafting ideas to serious geopolitical strategy.  Here are my musings in my journal on Tuesday:

The Russians or Trump forces (might be some overlap there in efforts – like Drudge), have the long knives out for McCabe at the FBI – another negative Circa story about him being under investigation for campaigning with his wife.  Trump went on a major media offensive after that WaPo story last Friday.  He didn’t wait to see what the TICK TICK Wittes tweeted about was – Trump just went full speed ahead.

They have to keep trying to come up with more and more outrageous allegations, and they’re now discrediting themselves with their outrageous lies spread by their friends in the media.   Trump has learned not to blink – no matter what they throw at him.  They’re back to recycling petty dirt tonight – Farenthold is tweeting about some fake Time cover with Trump on it that Trump has hanging in some of his clubs.  They are desperate to try to discredit Trump, but in light of this major CNN fake news & retraction, plus the big WaPo story hurt Obama way more than Trump, because it’s obvious Obama didn’t act quickly when he was informed about the Russian hacking last summer.

These recycled attacks on Trump – the penny ante crap about his foundation, the personal attacks about his lying and vanity, the same old crap about his taxes – none of those smears even resonate with anyone except those who hate Trump – the rest of America has tuned that shit out.  They overplayed the Russian collusion to the point Trump made it a joke – just like he turned that “fake news” back on them.  What is starting to be exposed is the Clinton/Obama corruption to try to get Hillary elected.  I hope all of it gets exposed – Trump’s corruption, Hillary’s corruption, Obama’s corruption and the Russian operations in America.  Tall order there on my hopes.

Notice more books on Drudge from the endless book mill – Bolling and Mark Levin.  I wonder who is really behind Drudge, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Circa, Glenn Beck and several others.  This information war is escalating and it’s even more cutthroat than the 2016 election.  Comey leaking his memos to prod for a special prosecutor was Comey retaliation and an effort to cast himself in the limelight as a “patriot”.  There’s no honor in how he covered up for the Clinton corruption and went along with Lynch’s burying that criminal investigation.  The use of arms of the US government as personal tools to attack people is extremely corrupt and alarming.

The Republicans and conservatives never were able to defeat the spin cycle and Trump didn’t do this on his own.  To start, the Clinton collusion with the media to promote Trump’s “GOP Insurgency” coupled with Trump’s Reality TV stardom and celebrity status all aided his rise.  Bill Clinton’s perfect triangulation backfired, but there were so many other factors that played into Trump’s victory – Hillary being an awful candidate, her being under criminal investigation, basic last weeks campaign blunders on where to campaign, her awful Deplorable comment, her trying to hide her illness on 9/11 and along with that the massive coordinated Russian info ops to aid and abet Trump, which includes Wikileaks, but also I suspect includes front media operations like Drudge and several others.  Rupert Murdoch runs a huge propaganda front.  Sadly, the other major news organizations are really just mouthpieces for the Left.

Figuring all this out for sure is a national security imperative and then figuring out how to counter entrenched foreign information ops in America is a dilemma too.  I think that unless Americans can be inspired to put being American above rabid partisanship we are on a dangerous road.

Trump might go too far with his attacks and fuel a backlash, but I’m not sure what the tipping point is.  The Left went way too far with no evidence on the “Russian collusion” talking points attacks on Trump and everyone around him.  They didn’t offer up any facts that stuck and there were so many overhyped stories that disintegrated within 24 hours and that damaged their “Russian collusion” gambit.  Schindler looks like he’s as bad as Louise Mensch with his overblown allegations and all he backs it with is all the nameless connections he has in the IC…

Has Trump gone too far with his attack on Mika Brzezinski?

Nope!

For Trump followers, no, they will still follow him.  No one will resign in protest.  Trump was right, he could probably shoot someone on 5th Avenue and his Loyalists would still follow.  They rationalize everything with, at least Trump fights back, at least he’s winning, the Left does worse.

Twitter is where the action takes place in generating the spin cycle and that is why Trump fights there.  He effortlessly disrupts and steals the show on their spin cycles.  This Mika Brzezinski attack will resonate for days and that means that all things “Russia” won’t.

The thing America’s adversaries are taking note of is that journalists retweeting that fake Time magazine cover, that WaPo’s Farenthold’s latest “Trump is a fraud” story and Mika Brzezinski mentioning that today, goaded Trump into this latest angry, personal attack.   He lashed out at Megyn Kelly in August of 2015 over her questions about how he treats women.  He and his minions in the media launched a scorched earth attack to cast her as a conniving slut.  Trump whined about her unfair question for 8 months.

The President of the United States is that easily manipulated.

And he has an issue with women who stand up to him.

 

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Politics, The Media, Twitter Tales

June 24, 2017 · 12:54 pm

Becoming a “radical skeptic”

Matthew Continetti explains the problem with how news is reported in a very good National Review piece:

They’re Wrong About Everything

Continetti explains:

“Events are turning me into a radical skeptic. I no longer believe what I read, unless what I am reading is an empirically verifiable account of the past. I no longer have confidence in polls, because it has become impossible to separate the signal from the noise. What I have heard from the media and political class over the last several years has been so spectacularly proven wrong by events, again and again, that I sometimes wonder why I continue to read two newspapers a day before spending time following journalists on Twitter. Habit, I guess. A sense of professional obligation, I suppose. Maybe boredom.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448929/media-democrats-republicans-does-anyone-know-anything

Between the mainstream media running Dem spin, Fox News running Trump spin and Twitter being the news sausage factory, we’re stuck in a news vacuum, despite being inundated with breathless reporting.  This news dilemma seems much like the situation with TV, where we have hundreds of channels, yet nothing worth watching.

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Politics, The Media

June 10, 2017 · 12:17 am

Undercutting our American democratic institutions

 

The following is a repost of my December 13, 2016 blog post.  Sadly, I was wrong.  Hillary’s coup may have failed to prevent Donald Trump from being inaugurated, but the Left is determined to see that he is impeached.  Trump’s own behavior may end up helping them succeed.  Besides the Left’s relentless, Resist efforts, there’s a core Trump Flight 93 media attack squad too, who work just like the Left’s spinners.  These Trump mouthpieces attack anyone who isn’t on the Trump Train, working to destroy them.  They also defend Trump and make excuses for the many inexcusable things Trump says and does.  The rest of us are stuck being bombarded by their propaganda barrages every day.  This continuing 2016 Presidential Election scorched earth information war is severely damaging America, because America’s federal government looks completely dysfunctional and that is the biggest win for the Russians from the 2016 Presidential Election:

Queen Hillary’s failing coup…

wp-1481210676697-samanthas-box

Finished another plastic canvas box.

Here’s a rundown of the Clinton/Dem/Colluding Media talking points I’ve seen, being hysterically repeated on Twitter and various news sites in the last few days:

  • “Fake News” is a dire threat and only certain (Clinton colluding) media can be trusted to report “real” news.
  • Various incantations on popular vote should rule over electoral college – from the dramatically escalating popular vote total for Hillary (likely embellished) to contorted legal reasoning, to crap like Nate Silver tweeted some tripe that Hillary only lost in 4 states by 1%, so without the Russian hacking she’d likely have won – so based on a hypothetical situation, he created imaginary polling statistics, that he’s presenting as serious analysis???
  • More Comey attacks – Harry Reid claimed Comey downplayed Russian hacking.
  • Harry Reid claims Trump directly involved with Russian hacking.
  • Electoral college electors need a special CIA briefing on Russian hacking.
  • America needs a do-over election, because of Russian interference in the election.

The liberal media has shed all pretense of being objective journalists, in fact, many are little more than Democratic hacks.  The hysteria over Americans paying attention to Wikileaks over American journalists’ reporting or Democrat mouthpieces speaks not to Americans being idiots, it speaks to people TRUST Wikileaks (a likely Russian front) over American journalists and the liberal media.

Following Twitter, is an exercise in frantic, sore-loser talking points, most bogus or deeply disingenuous, being breathlessly repeated by a cadre of big name “journalists” and news organizations 24/7.  It’s like kids at summer camp, sitting in a circle around a campfire, whispering something in the next person’s ear and saying, “Pass it on!”

President Obama has had numerous rappers at the White House. Hillary had Beyonce and Jay Z campaigning with her, but Kanye West showing up at Trump Tower this morning represents some new low in lack of seriousness about the presidency, according to the likes of Andrea Mitchell.  I thought she was traveling with Hillary’s campaign, but guess she missed seeing Beyonce and Jay Z…

I think Trump will be a disaster as President.  I believe he’s very corrupt.  However, I thought the same things about President Obama and America survived.  I believe the same things about Hillary too, so I take solace in the FACT that America is much more than our President and we are still a very blessed and fortunate people, because we are FREE.  There are millions of wonderful people in America and thankfully most of us encounter them and not these corrupt journalists and shady politicians in our everyday lives.  We still are free to go about our daily lives, to dream, to set off on new adventures and to hope and dream.   For me, needlework is a stress-reliever, so I’m stitching away… another tissue box cover – three sides done since Sunday:

wp-1481647930697.jpgwp-1481648137864.jpgwp-1481648017767.jpg

I have a feeling the Trump years will be very productive stitching years for me, lol.  Oh, the little yarn tails on the top center are just my marking the top, while I stitch, so I know which side is the top when I set my sewing down and then go back to it.

Trump worries me, but the corrupt Clinton/Dem/Media cabal scare the crap out of me.  The Russian hacking/ interference is bad, but so far there’s no evidence they tampered with ballot boxes, so the election is legitimate – end of conversation!  The Dems with this recount fiasco, pushing the propaganda that the popular vote should count and not the electoral college, and now the desperation pitch for a do-over election, ostensibly because of Russian interference are trying to supplant the constitutional process all to prop up a very corrupt woman, who will do anything to be President.  And her enablers are ready to discard The Constitution to assist her.  I would have supported legal efforts to dump Trump as the Republican candidate before the election, but the general election is THE election, according to The Constitution and that’s FINAL!

Donald Trump deserves the opportunity to take office and be the President of the United States.  The Americans who voted for him deserve that too.  And frankly, respect for The Constitution demands we follow the rules.  If he is a disaster, there are constitutional remedies for that too, but it’s ridiculous to talk about impeaching him before he’s even taken office (which some leftist loons are proposing).

Yesterday, John Podesta, who fell for a common phishing scam and gave the hackers his email password, supported a demand for a special CIA briefing on Russian hacking for electors.  One of the chief organizers of this elector effort is Nancy Pelosi’s daughter.  The electors don’t have security clearances, so anything the CIA can tell them, they can tell all of America – so cut the drama queen act and just have the CIA release the information.  My bet is neither the Obama White House nor the CIA will do this, because they’ve exaggerated the facts.

Even President Obama has gotten into the Russian hacking propaganda blitz and it’s revolting.  The Dems are demanding new investigations into Russian hacking, despite the fact there already are ongoing Congressional investigations into Russian hacking.  Prior to this election hysteria, the Obama administration tried to downplay the Russian hacking threat.

So, the administration, where widespread use of private email was common practice, including by President Obama, now wants to champion fighting cyber-threats???  Be for real, the first line of defense against cyber-attacks is good online practices… like using SECURE systems for government business.

President Obama used his private gmail account to email Hillary at her private server email address.  Huma Abedin was sure the Obama/Hillary email the FBI showed her, which was part of a classified CHAIN, had to be classified.  Let’s start by finding out what kind of information President Obama was sending via his private gmail account, before we get too excited about the Russian hacking.

The Democrats are in mass hysteria about investigations into Russian hacking, well, sure let’s find out who they hacked, how they hacked and what was done to prevent their hacking.

It’s hard not to laugh at Democratic mouthpieces hysterically demanding an email investigation as the last ditch effort to beg, borrow or steal the election for Hillary.  The clock is ticking…to December 19th.

If these people weren’t able to wield so much influence in America, I’d be laughing, because was there ever a more ridiculous leader to put forth as tough enough to take on Russian hacking, than Hillary Clinton???  She is the Democrats’ champion on facing America’s cyber-threats???

She couldn’t even keep track of her own blackberries, she had her Filipino maid printing out classified emails in the SCIF in her DC home, she and her State Dept. staff were sending classified information on her home-brew server, and she believed her private email server was secure, because the Secret Service protect her home…  If foreign intelligence agencies around the globe aren’t laughing at the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton and fools like Michael Morell, I would be shocked:

“Former CIA acting director Michael Morell called the intelligence agency’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election to help President-elect Donald Trump “the political equivalent of 9/11.”

“A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life. To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11,” Morell said in an interview posted Sunday on The Cipher Brief. “It is huge and the fact that it hasn’t gotten more attention from the Obama Administration, Congress, and the mainstream media, is just shocking to me.””

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/michael-morell-russia-us-elections-232495

Too bad these fools don’t realize that THEY and THEIR own weak policies and careless handling of information practically handed the information to the Russians.  John Podesta did hand his emails to them…

“Fake news”…. yeah, the people who sold the SPIN cycle to the American people want to lecture Americans on fake news … what a farce!

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, Culture Wars, General Interest, Hillary's Email Scandal, Politics, Public Corruption, The Media

June 2, 2017 · 8:29 pm

Another shoe dropped

Another shoe dropped.  Susan Rice, Samantha Power and John Brennan were mentioned a couple days ago, as being subpoenaed to provide information to the House Intelligence Committee on their unmasking Americans names from surveillance intelligence.

Trey Gowdy questioned John Brennan on unmasking at the May 23rd hearing.  Gowdy asked about unmasking Americans’ names on the last day an official served in office.  So, based on Gowdy’s questions and the subsequent subpoenas, it will be interesting to see which Obama hack(s) unmasked Americans’ names, who unmasked names on his or her last day in office and who has been leaking all this information to the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Gowdy’s questioning begins at 28:24 and he also has more questions for Brennan at 41:42.

Americans should be very concerned when intelligence is used for partisan political attacks on American citizens by high officials entrusted to protect The Constitution.

“Russian influence” operates the same way.  The Russians excel at smear campaigns, vicious character assassinations, using ill-gotten information to advance their political agendas using mass media to disseminate their messaging.  The Democrats relentless, hysterical “Russian influence” spin is as destructive as Trump’s endless spin and misdirections.  And both might be more destructive than any influence operations the Russians could dream up.

Who needs foreign enemies, when domestic partisans are tearing the very fabric of our republic to shreds?  Hillary has come out of the woods and with the help of much of the mainstream media, she is ready to refight the 2016 information war, in hopes of destroying Trump.  Trump is rumored to be considering bringing his “GOP Insurgent” scorched earth talking points street-brawler, Corey Lewandowski, into the White House to help fight the Clinton/Obama/Dem/media machines who are colluding to destroy Trump’s presidency (the Resistance).

Putin really doesn’t have to exert much effort to destroy Americans’ trust in their own government, when we’ve got the two most vile, corrupt, narcissistic sociopaths still engaged in take no prisoners, scorched earth information warfare.

Who knows what will be left when Drumpfzilla and the Witch of Chappaqua get done fighting.  It’s a safe bet that America will be worse off for enduring Trump vs. Hillary.

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Politics, Public Corruption, ThatWitch2016, The Media

May 27, 2017 · 9:10 am

The Ben Jacobs assault “audio”

I listened to that audio clip of the Ben Jacobs/Greg Gianforte incident, from Wednesday, May 23rd, several more times. Gianforte sounds calm and polite when he tells Jacobs to “please” speak to Shane.  Then there’s scuffling noises, which I assume Jacobs’ phone picked up.  Then, after a few seconds, Gianforte yells that he’s sick and tired of “you guys” and yells “the last time you came in here you did the same thing” and then he tells Jacobs to “get the hell out of here”.

I wonder what Jacobs did with his cell phone and what Gianforte was referring to as “the same thing” and I wonder what those scuffling sounds are that precede Gianforte yelling.

Without a doubt Gianforte should not have body-slammed a reporter, but what bothers me is within a few hours the media generated a spin cycle on Twitter with this incident based on Jacobs’ tweets and an audio video.

Gianforte was tried and convicted in the court of public opinion based on a tweetstorm among the media.  These tweetstorms are now an integral part of how journalists generate their news stories – retweeting each other’s tweets, not by hitting the pavement independently investigating stories or asking questions.

The assault charge resulted from witness statements and I wonder if Alicia Acuna is one of the key eye-witnesses.  She’s now the liberal media’s only FOX  News heroine, with her story  the next day, May 24th, relating that Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck.  In that story, it appears that FOX news used Jacobs’ audio recording.  Later, that day Acuna walked back much of her account in an interview with Laura Ingraham.

Gianforte came out and apologized for his conduct.

The fall-out or perhaps partisan political fault lines were drawn in this incident, where the media and Dems sided up to condemn, not only Gianforte, but many tried to blame Trump for Gianforte’s behavior.   Some floated that Gianforte should not be seated in Congress with an assault charge pending.  On the right, some pundits cheered Gianforte’s body-slamming a reporter and dismissed the incident as the reporter had it coming.

My issue is I still am not sure about the facts of what exactly happened and I find that judging based on one side’s audio clip from a cell-phone, that could easily be altered, a reporter who walked back much of her lurid account and a media tweetstorm seems a poor way to do investigative journalism.  And once again, Acuna recounted that she, a field producer and a photographer had arrived early to set-up, but not a single photo or video of the incident from a professional photographer???

Gianforte will probably try to settle this assault charge quickly, but this incident will follow him for his political future.

Jacobs is a now a media darling among journalists and “victim” the Left will throw out at every opportunity to paint Republicans as barbarians.

This is justice served cold via lazy journalists who make and destroy people with spin cycles they create on Twitter.

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May 25, 2017 · 7:32 pm

Inquiring minds or something like that

The media went nuts last night about a Republican Congressional candidate, Greg Gianforte, from Montana body-slamming a reporter to the floor.  The reporter, Ben Jacobs, from The Guardian, went right on Twitter to report the attack and quickly put an audio recording of the attack online.

I happened to be on Twitter at the time and I follow 800 or so reporters on Twitter, so I can watch the spin cycles erupt and watch how those tweetstorms generate the news that gets reported.

Today on Twitter, several reporters were hailing Alicia Acuna, from FOX News, who reported on the attack.  The report doesn’t make sense to me.

“As part of our preparation for a story about Thursday’s special election to air on “Special Report with Bret Baier,” we arranged interviews with the top two candidates, Republican Greg Gianforte and Democrat Rob Quist. On Wednesday, I joined field producer Faith Mangan and photographer Keith Railey in Bozeman for our scheduled interview with Gianforte, which was to take place at the Gianforte for Congress Bozeman Headquarters.

Faith, Keith and I arrived early to set up for the interview in a room adjacent to another room where a volunteer BBQ was to take place. As the time for the interview neared, Gianforte came into the room. We exchanged pleasantries and made small talk about restaurants and Bozeman.

During that conversation, another man — who we now know is Ben Jacobs of The Guardian — walked into the room with a voice recorder, put it up to Gianforte’s face and began asking if he had a response to the newly released Congressional Budget Office report on the American Health Care Act. Gianforte told him he would get to him later. Jacobs persisted with his question. Gianforte told him to talk to his press guy, Shane Scanlon.”

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/05/24/greg-gianforte-fox-news-team-witnesses-gop-house-candidate-body-slam-reporter.html

The article has an audio clip of the altercation between Jacobs and Gianforte.

Acuna reported that Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck, but later she walked that back in an interview:

“”You know, and I’m the one who said that,” Acuna told Laura Ingraham about the neck grab claim. “I saw both his hands go up, not around his neck in a strangling type of way, but more just on each side of his neck, just grabbed him and I guess it could’ve been on his clothes, I don’t know.””

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/05/25/fox_reporter_alicia_acuna_walks_back_story_that_montana_congressional_candidate_gianforte_grabbed_reporters_neck.html

What bothers me about Acuna’s reporting is it doesn’t make sense to me.  She reports she arrived early with a field producer and a photographer to set up early.  So, why on earth aren’t there photos or a video of the incident that lasted  over a minute?  The audio recording is 46 seconds.  What kind of professional photographer misses an entire incident like this?

This reminds me of the Lewandowsky/Fields incident where I watched that video over and over and never saw the events transpire as Fields recounted it.  I strongly suspect that incident was staged by Fields.

I am not sure what exactly happened with this altercation last night, but an incident like this where the media jumps into hysteria mode, the Dems jump into virtue signalling about terrible, mean Republicans and then lambasted other Republicans in Congress to condemn Gianforte – all based on an audio recording and tweetstorm smells suspect to me. The timing, the day before an election, is quite amazing.

I am highly skeptical of these sensationalized media stories.

Why didn’t that photographer, who arrived to set up early, get any photos or video?

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Filed under General Interest, Politics, The Media

May 24, 2017 · 2:04 pm

Information Warfare, both foreign and domestic

The other day, I mentioned that the timing of the Seth Rich conspiratorial story, that alleged Rich leaked the DNC  emails to Wikileaks, smelled like more Russian influence efforts to get the Right latching onto this and cast doubt on the Trump/Russian collusion stories.  Assuredly, the mainstream media and Dems have way overplayed and sensationalized the Trump/Russian connections too, but the timing of the Rich story was odd.  The story originated with a FOX news affiliate and the entire story fell apart under closer examination, but when the story broke, The Drudge Report had that headline emblazoned across the top all day.  Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh believed and hyped the story, without any fact-checking.  Hannity clung to the story, even when it was obvious the story has no factual basis.

So, the story was intended to get Trump, his mouthpieces and the Right frothing against, not only Democrats, but also to distrust the FBI and American intelligence agencies… again.

Here’s what I suspect is going on and yes, it’s a conspiracy theory too:

Remembering timelines is important and adding new information into the timeline, as you come across it and remembering that timelines don’t end – the story always continues.  The Russians aren’t idly sitting on their hands now or declaring victory with Trump’s election, they are still busy with their information warfare efforts in America – to create chaos, to undermine the American political system, to damage America’s image in the world and to destroy the American people’s trust in their own government.

I suspect FOX News has been a tool the Russians exploited for Russian influence operations since it opened shop in America.  I suspect the same thing with The Drudge Report, which came onto the scene with breaking the Lewinsky scandal.  The Drudge Report has never invested in creating an appealing website.  Really, it’s a visually unappealing site, but it’s caché comes with what stories get highlighted at the top.   That America’s political class and media take The Drudge Report so seriously is why that site garners so much attention and has so much influence.  In recent years, The Drudge Report has worked to mainstream conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones and his “InfoWars” as a “news” source.   That Donald Trump, a believer in Alex Jones type “reporting” is now president is a boon to the Russian information war effort.

The rest of this post is all a repeat on what I term  a mass media saturation strategy, which came into being with the Clinton “war room” in the 1992 presidential election, so feel free to skip it if you’re tired of my repetitive messaging;-)

I believe this media messaging strategy is really information warfare ( a military swarming strategy juxtaposed to an information battlefield).  Since the Clinton impeachment scandal in 1998, I strongly suspect there is a strong, hostile foreign intelligence influence involved in manipulating American politicians, the American media and the American punditry circles.  The Clintons launched an all-out scorched earth information war to keep President Clinton from being removed from office.  To repeat, ad nauseam, here again are the components:

Here are the components:

  • Talking points and buzz word messaging, which are relentlessly repeated by both political operatives and the media. (mass brainwashing)
  • Mass media domination of the messaging, to control the 24/7 NEWS cycle, which requires mass media collusion.
  • Relentless repetition of polling data by both the political operatives and media, to facilitate the manufacture of opinion cascades (winning in all the polls)

It can NOT work without that media collusion.

Until Trump, with the help of FOX News collusion & Wikileaks leaks, only Democrats had successfully used this strategy.  The mainstream media colludes with the Democrats and political Left in America.

I’ve cover all of this many times before, so here are some interesting bits and pieces in this ongoing information war.  American partisans have blinders on and when it comes to “Russian influence”, they want to pin the Russian influence on their American political opponents.  Republicans will accuse the Dems of emboldening the Russians, because the Obama administration kowtowed to the Russians and Iranians, to secure the Iran deal and because President Obama did not take an assertive American posture in dealing with America’s adversaries.

Trump, although it’s doubtful he was actively “colluding” with the Russians, he assuredly welcomed the Russian influence efforts, because they were benefitting him.  Trump also took a hostile approach toward American intelligence agencies and the FBI, who were working to thwart and expose the Russian influence efforts.  If there is actual Russian collusion within the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, I would expect the Russians to operate using third-party intermediaries, so they can maintain complete deniability and to mask their collusion.  In fact, I would not be surprised if the intermediaries were not even aware they were being manipulated to promote the Russian information warfare memes and messaging.

Like I said the other day, the Russians are many things, but being stupid enough to entrust a loose cannon, like Trump, who blurts and tweets everything based on whims,  with the knowledge of Russian operatives identities, seems very unlikely.  Anyone who trusts Trump is a fool, the same is true of Hillary Clinton, who would even sell Bill Clinton down the river to save herself… if he didn’t know where all the bodies are buried… so to speak.

Against this history of information warfare, which I wrote about on the Excite politics message boards during the Clinton impeachment scandal, when Trump entered the 2016 presidential race and the media started repeating he was the “GOP Insurgent”, immediately my “information warfare” antennae went up.

Initially, throughout most of the GOP primary all the cable news networks spent a great deal of time promoting the “GOP Insurgent” and they gave him millions of dollars in free media, in addition to endless coverage in their punditry air time.  In early 2016, a shift took place, as it became obvious Trump had the GOP nomination locked up.  CNN, MSNBC and major news outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post went “full fascist” mode, painting Trump as a dangerous fascist, while FOX news dug in on a 24/7 Trumpathon.

President Trump assures that the Left will stay in full-throated Trump Derangement Syndrome mode, that much of the Right will discount everything they say and that Trump, who truly is a LOOSE CANNON, will flail about and create chaos and mayhem in his wake.  Hillary Clinton would have been the same chaos, albeit in a less flamboyant way.  The Russians have the dirt on the Clinton Foundation money-laundering and assuredly they are sitting on all the emails from her home-brew server, which they would have wielded to blackmail her or leak to create political damage and hamstring her presidency.  There was no better choice between Trump and Hillary.

So, watch closely how FOX News has dismantled its Trump chorus, first with ousting Roger Ailes, now their star, Bill O’Reilly and it seems obvious Sean Hannity is on the chopping block too.  FOX News is now not leading the cable prime time.  I suspect there will be more critical reporting on Trump at FOX  in the near future, because the Russians want the Trump presidency to be an endless Reality TV, scandal-plagued nightmare, that makes America the laughingstock of the world.

The Russians don’t want a successful American president, who unites America.  We have had nothing but very extreme partisanship and a complete disintegration of shared American ideals since the 1960s counter-culture revolution, with a short lull during the early Reagan years, and then a downhill slide since the early 90s.

The mass media saturation strategy continues, as does the information warfare, both foreign and domestic.

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, Culture Wars, Foreign Policy, General Interest, Hillary's Email Scandal, Politics, The Media

May 23, 2017 · 6:50 am

Monica’s reinvention of herself and history

Monica Lewinsky vented  about Roger Ailes and Fox News in a recent, scathing op-ed piece in the New York Times .  The entire sensationalized news is not a problem only at Fox News, it’s a problem at CNN, MSNBC, even in the revered New York Times too.  The difference is Fox News sensationalizes stories about the Left and Democrats, while the mainstream media downplays those stories.  The mainstream media sensationalizes stories to destroy conservatives, Republicans and the Right.

Lewinsky writes:

“My family and I huddled at home, worried about my going to jail — I was the original target of Kenneth Starr’s investigation, threatened with 27 years for having been accused of signing a false affidavit and other alleged crimes — or worse, me taking my own life. Meantime, Mr. Ailes huddled with his employees at Fox News, dictating a lineup of talking heads to best exploit this personal and national tragedy.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/opinion/monica-lewinsky-roger-ailess-dream-was-my-nightmare.html?_r=0

The person Lewinsky never blames for her predicament is former president, Bill Clinton, who abused his position and had an affair with her, when she was a young intern and it was he and his minions who had her sign a false affidavit.  The mainstream media, pushing the “right-wing witch hunt” Clinton whitewash spin since 1999, has completely altered the public perception of what actually happened during the Clinton impeachment:

IntroductionPursuant to Section 595(c) of Title 28, the Office of Independent Counsel (OIC) hereby submits substantial and credible information that President Clinton obstructed justice during the Jones v. Clinton sexual harassment lawsuit by lying under oath and concealing evidence of his relationship with a young White House intern and federal employee, Monica Lewinsky. After a federal criminal investigation of the President’s actions began in January 1998, the President lied under oath to the grand jury and obstructed justice during the grand jury investigation. There also is substantial and credible information that the President’s actions with respect to Monica Lewinsky constitute an abuse of authority inconsistent with the President’s constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws.

There is substantial and credible information supporting the following eleven possible grounds for impeachment:

1. President Clinton lied under oath in his civil case when he denied a sexual affair, a sexual relationship, or sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.

2. President Clinton lied under oath to the grand jury about his sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky.

3. In his civil deposition, to support his false statement about the sexual relationship, President Clinton also lied under oath about being alone with Ms. Lewinsky and about the many gifts exchanged between Ms. Lewinsky and him.

4. President Clinton lied under oath in his civil deposition about his discussions with Ms. Lewinsky concerning her involvement in the Jones case.

5. During the Jones case, the President obstructed justice and had an understanding with Ms. Lewinsky to jointly conceal the truth about their relationship by concealing gifts subpoenaed by Ms. Jones’s attorneys.

6. During the Jones case, the President obstructed justice and had an understanding with Ms. Lewinsky to jointly conceal the truth of their relationship from the judicial process by a scheme that included the following means: (i) Both the President and Ms. Lewinsky understood that they would lie under oath in the Jones case about their sexual relationship; (ii) the President suggested to Ms. Lewinsky that she prepare an affidavit that, for the President’s purposes, would memorialize her testimony under oath and could be used to prevent questioning of both of them about their relationship; (iii) Ms. Lewinsky signed and filed the false affidavit; (iv) the President used Ms. Lewinsky’s false affidavit at his deposition in an attempt to head off questions about Ms. Lewinsky; and (v) when that failed, the President lied under oath at his civil deposition about the relationship with Ms. Lewinsky.

7. President Clinton endeavored to obstruct justice by helping Ms. Lewinsky obtain a job in New York at a time when she would have been a witness harmful to him were she to tell the truth in the Jones case.

8. President Clinton lied under oath in his civil deposition about his discussions with Vernon Jordan concerning Ms. Lewinsky’s involvement in the Jones case.

9. The President improperly tampered with a potential witness by attempting to corruptly influence the testimony of his personal secretary, Betty Currie, in the days after his civil deposition.

10. President Clinton endeavored to obstruct justice during the grand jury investigation by refusing to testify for seven months and lying to senior White House aides with knowledge that they would relay the President’s false statements to the grand jury — and did thereby deceive, obstruct, and impede the grand jury.

11. President Clinton abused his constitutional authority by (i) lying to the public and the Congress in January 1998 about his relationship with Ms. Lewinsky; (ii) promising at that time to cooperate fully with the grand jury investigation; (iii) later refusing six invitations to testify voluntarily to the grand jury; (iv) invoking Executive Privilege; (v) lying to the grand jury in August 1998; and (vi) lying again to the public and Congress on August 17, 1998 — all as part of an effort to hinder, impede, and deflect possible inquiry by the Congress of the United States.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/multimedia/timeline/9809/starr.report/grounds/g1.htm

Lewinsky is busily trying to recreate her public image as a crusader against “cyber-bullying”, by casting herself as one of the first victims of it.   Assuredly, the overly salacious coverage at Fox News deserves criticism, but the real person to blame for the horrors Lewinsky faced was President Bill Clinton.   Granted, having details of their affair splashed across the news was a traumatic experience for her, but Lewinsky always completely skips over the details.  She skips details, like how Sid Blumenthal, Clinton White House aide and part of Hillary Clinton’s bimbo eruption clean-up squad, planted false stories about her being a stalker and that the president was a victim of her sexual advances.

Fox News didn’t put Lewinsky in legal jeopardy, Bill Clinton did that.

Blumenthal is still busy carrying water for the Clintons, like when he ran his lengthy hit piece on Donald Trump in the London Review of Books in February 2017, which included a racist video purported to be a decades old Fred Trump campaign ad.  The mainstream media went crazy retweeting that video, which turned out to be fake news…

Deplorable journalism isn’t exclusive to Fox News and conservative news venues.  Much of it leads right to the Clintons’ door-step.

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Politics, ThatWitch2016, The Media

May 23, 2017 · 12:06 am

We need to understand how we got here

“My fervent hope is that both Hillary and Trump get fired  – she  to face charges and he as a total lying, conniving fraud, but of course, due to the state of America and the worship of celebrity, my hope rests as, at best, a forlorn one.  She will not be held to account for jeopardizing national security on an epic scale and Trump, a TV clown act, who definitely does not possess the integrity, intellectual heft, work ethic or frankly good manners to be President, just might insult his way into the White House.”

– Drumpfzilla vs. the Witch of Chappaqua, April 19, 2016

Before we can move on, we need to understand how we got here and truthfully we need answers about the 2016 presidential corruption, as well as uncovering and understanding the extent of the Russian influence operations.  There was plenty of extreme corruption underway before Trump even entered the race.  Podesta and the Clintons had their Pied Piper strategy mapped out, which was detailed in a leaked Podesta email, from April 23, 2015.  That strategy, like all the mass media saturation information warfare the Clintons engage in only works because of mass media collusion, that saturates the media with their talking points and spin (LIES).   Bill Clinton called Donald Trump weeks before Trump entered the race, so it’s reasonable to wonder if Bill Clinton encouraged Trump to enter the race…  Trump was supposed to be the easiest candidate for Hillary to beat.

Donald J. Trump, whining, shady, puffed-up windbag Reality TV star is the President of the United States.  Any attempts to gloss over his glaring character deficits is a wasted effort.  Early on in 2015, when he entered the race plenty of people, myself included, wrote extensively about his lack of character and just like the extremely corrupt Clintons, he corrupts everyone and everything within his orbit.

There were his staunch defenders proclaiming he was a victim of unfair media, that it didn’t matter if he didn’t understand policy (or even the basics on our constitutional republic) or that the stench of corruption clings to him as tightly as dirt and filth cling to the Peanuts character, Pig-Pen.   Trump defenders proclaimed that none of that mattered, because once Trump was president, he could hire the “best” people to guide him and in regards to Hillary Clinton’s corruption, Trump wasn’t so bad.

Frankly, very few of the “best” Republicans or conservatives  will work for a “loose cannon” like Trump.  The Clintons had an easier time getting Democrats and liberals to carry water for them, because most of the political Left in Americav values politics above integrity or character.  President Trump is anything but an organized and competent leader of the executive branch, but he was legally elected President of the United States.

Unless and until real evidence shows otherwise, there are no grounds to impeach him.  The Democrats and many in the mainstream media, with their highly corrupt “Resist” effort are working feverishly to destroy President Trump and remove him from office, by any means necessary.  Their relentless scorched earth information war against President Trump is making America look more like a banana republic than Trump’s ineptness.  The constant stream of anonymous leaks of classified information, from within the US government and by former Obama officials are felonies being committed, not whistleblowing.  And due to President Trump’s shameless playing his own staff members against each other, there are plenty of leaks of classified information coming from within the White House too.  Trump does not create an environment of trust and loyalty among his staff.

The Democrats, mainstream media and twitterdom pundits rail daily about Russian collusion and allege nefarious, corrupt and inept actions that President Donald Trump is guilty of committing.  And yet so far, there is no “there” there in the allegations, despite the breathless, breaking news tag-team efforts of the New York Times and the Washington Post ranting about Trump/Russian collusion.   With this backdrop, it’s time for a retrospective of the loose ends from the 2016 presidential election that were never satisfactorily explained.

There are plenty of leaked DNC and John Podesta emails, in addition to released Hillary Clinton emails and FBI Notes to conclude conclusively that many journalists in the mainstream media actively colluded with the Clinton campaign to advance the Clinton campaign talking points and media strategy.

In fact, that is how Trump waged his “GOP Insurgency”, with millions of dollars in free media being given to Trump during the GOP primary.

Who really was behind the “GOP Insurgency”?

Who were the real Trump advisors during the GOP primary, who advised Trump on talking points, how to spin and who colluded with the mainstream media, especially news outlets like CNN, MSNBC and FOX, to give Trump 24/7 free media during the GOP primary?

Who colluded with the mainstream media to sit on Trump dirt during the primary?

There was a string of orchestrated protests and media reporting in early 2016, that led to Trump being painted as a “fascist”.  Admittedly, Trump aided in his own fascist caricaturization by his “strong-man” talk and antics, especially, his campaign rally where he read a loyalty pledge and had rally participants raise their right hand and repeat the pledge.  Who on earth thought up that pledge rally and organized it?  The media immediately was prepared with the Nuremberg rally imagery comparison… almost like it was a set-up.

Who came up with the phrase “GOP Insurgency”?

By May of 2016, when it was a certainty that Trump would be the GOP candidate, the Washington Post had 20 reporters working full-time to dig up dirt on Trump.  20…  And dig they did, pouring into every aspect of his life and assuredly many of them are still hard at work on the Russian collusion smear campaign.  Yes, the breathless reporting on “Russian collusion” with endless “anonymous sources” leaking classified information ( that’s a felony btw) is part of a concerted information war against Donald Trump.  It is the continuation of the Clinton scorched earth campaign effort.   You’d think with all the people working to expose Trump/Russian collusion, that by now they’d have smoking gun evidence, if it really happened.

Trump really is so thin-skinned and emotionally-stunted that if someone says nice stuff about him, he thinks they love him and if they criticize him, he considers them mortal enemies.  He reacts in a catty teenage girl manner, hysterics included, and when Putin praised him, Trump thought Putin really likes him.  Trump is that easy to play.

The Russians can be called many things, but stupid isn’t one of them.  They assessed Trump’s personality and bio and they already know Hillary Clinton inside out, so they have played their own information war, playing American partisans against each other.  I don’t believe that Putin and the Russians would ever trust Trump with details of any of their plans, so I doubt actual collusion exists.  Instead, I believe the Russians continue to manipulate Trump, agitate both Left and Right,  along with fueling paranoia and wild conspiracy theories among the American political fringes.

The Wikileaks leaked DNC and Podesta emails clearly show media collusion with the DNC and Clinton campaign.  The mainstream media, instead of admitting to the corrupt media collusion, rails against Wikileaks as a source not to be trusted.  Except the leaked emails, despite being stolen,  appear to be legit.

“Never underestimate the Clintons when it comes to underhandedness.”

–  August 5, 2015 blog post, Buyer Beware

Now, back to Hillary’s emails server scandal, which James Comey declared was “extremely careless”, but not criminal and he asserted there was “no intent” on Hillary Clinton’s part to mishandle highly classified information.  This despite copious evidence to the contrary.  So, let’s look at the loose threads from her email server scandal.

David Kendall, the long-time Clinton friend and attorney, handled the sorting process of the emails on the infamous home-brew server, which was referred to as Hillary’s email server.  His office decided which emails to return to the State Department, as official records and which were personal. However, that server was really Bill Clinton’s personal email server, which he had set-up in his home for his Clinton Foundation business.

David Kendall’s office had the email server and according to media reports, his office turned over official State Department business emails and a thumb drive to the FBI.  This thumb drive was mentioned in a House Oversight Committee hearing when Patrick Kennedy, the State Department official doing damage control for Hillary, was asked about the thumb drive of the emails and he stated he believed the FBI had the thumb drive.  The FBI was reported to have Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson’s laptop computers too.  Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson worked with David Kendall to sort Hillary’s emails on her server and to collude with Platte River Networks to destroy the Clinton emails they had on their server.

So, when the email investigation was reopened in October 2016, the leaks came pouring out of the FBI about ongoing investigations in several states into Clinton Foundation corruption and information that the FBI did not destroy Mills and Samuelson’s laptops per the Obama Justice Department’s shady agreement.

Who has the thumb drive of the Hillary server emails?

Who ordered the destruction of the emails?  David Kendall had the server, Hillary claimed she did not order anyone to destroy any emails, so that leaves Bill Clinton as the real owner of the server, which housed his Clinton Foundation emails (a Clinton Foundation which was reported to be under FBI investigation for corruption in several states)…  It seems very improbable that David Kendall would take it upon himself to decide to destroy tens of thousands of the Clintons’ emails without consulting one or both of the Clintons.

At the time Kendall’s office destroyed “Hillary’s personal emails”, those emails were under subpoena.  Destroying information under subpoena is clearly obstruction of justice.  Heather Samuelson, one of Kendall’s team that worked to sort the server emails, refused to tell the FBI what keywords were used in the sorting process of those emails.  Why did James Comey go to such efforts to exonerate Hillary Clinton in regards to her “intent” in using a private, unsecured email server and jeopardizing highly classified information, during his July 5, 2016 statement and while testifying to Congress, when he knew blatant obstruction of justice had occurred?  Comey knew tens of thousands of emails from her server had been destroyed and he knew that server housed not only her yoga schedules, wedding plans and her State Department emails, but also Bill Clinton’s foundation emails… a foundation reportedly under criminal FBI investigation is several states.

While the media twitters about Trump’s handing classified information to the Russians in the Oval Office, it’s important to investigate that, but it’s also important to continue investigating the extent of  Hillary’s reckless handling of classified information.  And while they’re investigating Hillary’s emails, perhaps they can find the approximately 1,000 missing emails between General David Petraeus and Hillary Clinton.

What ever happened with these reported ongoing FBI criminal investigations of the Clinton Foundation in several states?

So many unanswered questions about the corruption in the 2016 Presidential election and all the media fixates on is Trump/Russian collusion.  The corruption of both candidates and the American media created a culture that made it easy for Russian influence operations to flourish.  The greater threat to America comes from home-grown public corruption, because that is tearing apart the framework that supports our constitutional republic.

You won’t see American partisans on either side wanting to root out the public corruption within their own political parties.  It’s easier to blame the Russians for all our problems.

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, General Interest, Hillary's Email Scandal, Politics, Public Corruption, The Media