Wednesday, February 28, 2018

You know...Maggie Haberman's tweeted responses to readers comments on her objectivity were really weird. "Partisan analysis," "fake news"...I just remembered something. Very recently, last few days I read an article that she co-authored with one or two other people, I think one other person. The article was on Trump's greatest fear, illegitimacy. Oh! It was almost certainly one of those I quoted and cited to last night, Duh! Haberman (co-) wrote that although everyone but Trump now accepts that Russia intervened on Trump's behalf in the election that Trump believes that if he gives an inch on that matter that the outcome of the election will then be called into question and Haberman et al wrote "that is not necessarily the case," it was en passant, between commas, not a separate sentence. I thought to myself when I read that, "Well, no, actually, that does throw the outcome of the election in doubt." Haberman, et fucking al, seemed to mean that the vote count could not be proven to have been altered. "That was unnecessary," was my next thought. Haberman (et al) were defending Trump's position.

Stockholm Syndrome:

"A psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them."


The Trump Washington "ecosystem" is a fucking weird place. The White House is not a "regular" White House. It is a stressful ecosystem for a journalist covering it full-time. It is both physically and mentally exhausting and stress has weird psychological consequences for some who are trapped.

#WhiteLiesMatter

Maggie Haberman‏Verified account
@maggieNYT

Hope Hicks departure is NOT about yesterday's hearing, per multiple sources. She had planned it before, had been thinking about it for  months. She had informed a very small number of people prior to Hill hearing that she planned to leave.
1:50 PM - 28 Feb 2018

Maggie Haberman‏Verified account
@maggieNYT

Hicks does NOT even have a departure date yet. This is not her being hustled out of the building.
2:04 PM - 28 Feb 2018

[She does "NOT"  have another job waiting, either.]

Maggie Haberman‏Verified account
@maggieNYT

She told colleagues she felt like she had done all she could do in the job. She had never liked Washington and never become part of its ecosystem.
2:04 PM - 28 Feb 2018

[And that "ecosystem" was not polluted with white--or non-white--lies.] 

Maggie Haberman‏Verified account
@maggieNYT

Maggie Haberman Retweeted Ari Melber

I like how you keep thinking this is a regular White House where things are done regularly

Maggie Haberman added,
Ari Melber
Verified account

@AriMelber
If a person planned to resign, and had a Russia interview scheduled, and is a messaging expert, one could imagine the person putting resignation info out before said interview.…
2:17 PM - 28 Feb 2018

Maggie Haberman‏Verified account
@maggieNYT

Maggie Haberman Retweeted Josh Marshall

The timing is clearly going to raise questions. But the fact that non-reporters believe their partisan analysis over actual reporting is a facet of the whole fake news problem in the first place

Josh Marshall‏Verified account
@joshtpm

Oh man, I don't want to be critical. But I can't believe that Haberman is actually going with this claim that Hicks departure is unrelated to yesterday, that she'd been thinking of leaving for some time and there's 'no perfect time.'
1:42 PM - 28 Feb 2018

[That is such an arrogant response by Haberman. Let us count the ways: 

[1. "non-reporters." Only reporters know. Does this reporter know what Hicks' "white lies" concerned?  No one has told us. If they don't know what the lies were about then they are just repeating Hicks' characterization of them being "white." If they don't know then they're not omniscient.  

[2. non-reporters "partisan analysis." What is "partisan" about Josh Marshall's tweet? Haberman acknowledges that "the timing is clearly going to raise questions"--like Josh Marshall's! 

[3. "over actual reporting." See #1.

[4.  "a facet of the WHOLE FAKE NEWS PROBLEM"!!!!  A "clearly" appropriate "question," a deduction, is of a sudden "partisan analysis," "FAKE NEWS," over  objective, non-partisan, omniscient reporting. MAN. Haberman needs to get out of that ecosystem. 

Wait..Who...There's a #5...

5. Where did Haberman get this "reporters only" rock solid, lead pipe intel that the announcement today was "NOT" related to the "white lies"? "She told colleagues she felt like she had done all she could do in the job." SHE  DID NOT TELL HABERMAN. "Colleagues" of Hicks told Haberman. Hicks never told Haberman. These "colleagues" are other Trump White House employees, THEY told Haberman, "No, Reporter, this has nothing to do with yesterday, we're just not regular around here, you know that, Hope told me, whew, long time ago, months, before Rob, before her long interviews with Mueller...Or was it after? I'm not sure...She told me, I remember her exact words "Colleague, I feel like I have done all I can do in the job, I have never liked Washington and I never became part of the ecosystem, I'm going to go to a more likable ecosystem" sure that sounds all rocky and lead-y. ]

Maggie Haberman‏Verified account
@maggieNYT

Maggie Haberman Retweeted southpaw

If you want to assume that all reporters only learned what they know in the last two hours, cool
Maggie Haberman added,
southpaw

@nycsouthpaw
No one is suggesting that’s not what they’re saying, just that it isn’t credible. It was NYT reporting that broke the story of this very individual admitting to telling self-serving falsehoods just yesterday.
3:36 PM - 28 Feb 2018

[Oh my. So Haberman knew about Hicks' plans to resign some time ago and didn't report that to us. Why not? Would it have been "partisan" to have reported it when she learned of it? Was it then "partisan" to not report it? OR Are those incommensurate things, reporters are not partisan, can never be partisan because they're reporters I bet that's it. 

[Since Haberman learned of it before reporting it to us non-reporters was today's date chosen as a "hard" come-what-may date? No, it wasn't. We know this date was not chosen weeks or months ago because Hicks hasn't left yet! Jimmy Olson done already told us "Hicks does NOT have a departure date yet." So, today as the announcement date is just cuz things aren't done "regularly" in this White House I see. And the fact that Hope Hicks is/was Rob Porter's girlfriend and Porter "resigned" a few weeks ago that has nothing to do with it either you idiot partisan non-reporter.

Basically, I would like to say to Maggie Haberman, and I assure her and all of my thousands of readers today that I would say this to a male reporter, SUCK MY DICK.]

#WhiteLiesMatter

I don't know what in the hell is going on today. Hicks is gone but why is the question. The New York Times says the resignation is NOT over the "white lies"...and doesn't say what it IS over (PISS poor, Ex-Quasi's). Hicks is/was Rob Porter's friend girl, right?...Yes...Why has Hicks resigned? The Truth Must Be Told.

HOPE HICKS, TRUMP WHITE LIAR, TO RESIGN

Ms. Hicks, who told the House Intelligence Committee investigating Trump-Russia that she sometimes told "white lies" on behalf of Trump, is resigning. I read The New York Times article on the white lies and none were fleshed out (piss poor job there, ex-Quasi's, piss poor). I have no idea what she lied about, to whom she lied, and only presume that her resignation is related to the white lies.

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What?

"The Perjury Trap"

An article in Vanity Fair asks various lawyers to provide experienced speculation about a presumed Trump interview by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Should he or shouldn't he? (It is taken as a foregone conclusion that Mueller will demand such an interview.) The consensus of the experienced speculation is that such an interview is a "perjury trap." I am not down with perjury traps.

Mr. Mueller has run a leak-proof investigation. No one, no matter how experienced, can offer anything but speculation on what evidence Mueller has against Trump, of what crimes, and what Mueller's end game is.

The undersigned offers this uninformed, barely experienced, speculation: It is an insult to Robert Mueller, and to this investigation into an attack on the United States that resulted in the demise of the United States and the advent of America 2.0, something the War of 1812, the Civil War, the attack on Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks did not do, to assume even for the purposes of a journalist's question that Mueller has nothing substantive on Trump and must therefore spring a "perjury trap" on him as if this is a cousin of Kenneth Starr's Whitewater investigation that went nowhere substantively and devolved into perjury for the cumshot on Monica Lewinsky's sweater. The Senate rightly refused to convict President Clinton based upon Starr's perjury trap. Semi-informed, semi-experienced speculation: In this most serious investigation in the country's history Robert Mueller will charge Trump with obstruction of justice and with substantive crime(s).
Today is the first day of the end of your life. :)

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Huh. Wonder Why?

This account of the Trump administration’s reaction to Russia’s interference and policies toward Moscow is based on interviews with more than 50 current and former U.S. officials, many of whom had senior roles in the Trump campaign and transition team or have been in high-level positions at the White House or at national security agencies.
...

Current and former officials said that his daily intelligence update — known as the president’s daily brief, or PDB — is often structured to avoid upsetting him.

Russia-related intelligence that might draw Trump’s ire is in some cases included only in the written assessment and not raised orally, said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the matter. In other cases, Trump’s main briefer — a veteran CIA analyst — adjusts the order of his presentation and text, aiming to soften the impact.
...
[In May, 2017 the Senate passed new Russia sanctions, Trump was "apoplectic," but he had to sign the bill into law, it passed 98-2!]:

“Hey, here are the votes,” aides told the president, according to a second Trump adviser. “If you veto it, they’ll override you and then you’re f---ed and you look like you’re weak.”
...
The reaction from Russia was withering. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev taunted [Trump]the president in a Facebook post that echoed Trump’s style, saying that [Trump] had shown “complete impotence, in the most humiliating manner...

[I'm tellin' ya, there really is something sexual to Trump's insecurities: his hands, his "button,"--and the Russians know it. This is the button they know to push to get to Trump. Illegitimacy, political and personal; being cuckolded, politically and personally, by Russia; impotence, political and physical, humiliation, political and personal. When Sacha Baron Cohen's Ali G character succeeded in fooling Trump into agreeing to an interview Trump tweeted "I don't fall for scams"! Being fooled, deceived, "scammed" is the crux of cuckoldry, it shows you are "weak," "impotent," it is "humiliating." During the campaign Trump publicly asked the Russians to release damaging information on Hillary Clinton, his campaign was littered from top to bottom with Russian agents, from Manafort, Page, Papadopoulos, Bannon, Flynn, mini-Trump, Trump knowingly and eagerly surrounded himself with Kremlin men. Trump is so adamant in denying all of it now (he did not expect the Russian Connection to result in his "election") because to admit now what he admitted then is to admit to crime and to admit that he is illegitimate, that he had been "weak," "impotent" without Russian help, and that is "humiliating."]

“If you talk about Russia, meddling, interference — that takes the PDB off the rails,” said a second former senior U.S. intelligence official.

[Trump cannot even talk about it!]
Washington_Post_Dec_14_2017

WASHINGTON — Russia is already meddling in the midterm elections this year, the top American intelligence officials said on Tuesday, warning that Moscow is using a digital strategy to worsen the country’s political and social divisions.
...
“We expect Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false-flag personas, sympathetic spokespeople and other means of influence to try to exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States,” Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee...,testifying alongside Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director; Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director; and other leading intelligence officials.

“Throughout the entire community, we have not seen any evidence of any significant change from last year."
...
Mr. Trump has not directed his intelligence officials to specifically combat Russian interference, they said...

Russia appears eager to spread information — real and fake — that deepens political divisions. Bot armies promoted partisan causes on social media...
...
The bots have also sought to portray the F.B.I. and Justice Department as infected by partisan bias, said Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee.

“Other threats to our institutions come from right here at home,” he said. “There have been some, aided and abetted by Russian internet bots and trolls, who have attacked the basic integrity of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. This is a dangerous trend.”
...
Right now, Mr. Pompeo said, Russia is trying to focus on what are known as influence operations — using social media and other platforms to spread favorable messages — not hacking.

Mr. Coats called Moscow’s meddling “pervasive.”

“The Russians have a strategy that goes well beyond what is happening in the United States,” he said. “While they have historically tried to do these types of things, clearly in 2016 they upped their game. They took advantage, a sophisticated advantage of social media. They are doing that not only in the United States but doing it throughout Europe and perhaps elsewhere.”

White House Has Given No Orders to Counter Russian Meddling, N.S.A. Chief Says

WASHINGTON — Faced with unrelenting interference in [the U.S.] election systems...Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the departing head of the National Security Agency and the military’s Cyber Command, said that he was using the authorities he had to combat the Russian attacks. But under questioning during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he acknowledged that the White House had not asked his agencies...to find ways to counter Moscow, or granted them new authorities to do so.
...
Admiral Rogers’s testimony was the second time this month that a senior American intelligence official had said that Russia’s efforts to meddle in American elections did not end in 2016, and that the Trump administration had taken no extraordinary steps to stop them...all the intelligence chiefs said [on Feb. 13] they had not been expressly asked by the White House to find a way to punish Russia for its efforts.

The comments by Admiral Rogers on Tuesday reflected what appears to be a widening gap between President Trump and the intelligence agencies he runs. While [Trump] has mocked the notion of Russian meddling in the election he won, American intelligence officials are convinced of it, and they believe Russia is now looking to interfere in the midterm elections in November.
...
Asked during the [Feb. 13] hearing whether he had the authority and the ability to disrupt the Russian attacks “where they originate,” Admiral Rogers replied, “I don’t have the day-to-day authority to do that.”
...
“Have you been directed to do so?” Mr. Reed added.

“No, I have not,” Admiral Rogers said.


NSA Chief Says Trump Hasn’t Ordered Agency to Disrupt Russian Hacking


Adm. Mike Rogers tells Senate panel agency isn’t targeting ‘the origin of these attacks’


Trump hasn’t ordered Russian meddling stopped at source

WASHINGTON — A top intelligence official says President Donald Trump has not ordered the U.S. Cyber Command to disrupt Russian cyber threats where they originate.

Director Mike Rogers, who directs both the cyber command and the National Security Agency, told lawmakers on Tuesday that the president or defense secretary would need to give him the authority to disrupt the threats at their source.
Washington_Post_today

Iowa named best state in America by U.S. News

-USAToday


Cuck Kushner Loses Top Secret Security Clearance: Shhh!

Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.

...
Officials in the White House were concerned that Kushner was “naive and being tricked” in conversations with foreign officials, some of whom said they wanted to deal only with Kushner directly and not more experienced personnel, said one former White House official. 

Sunday, February 25, 2018


Oh hell I didn't realize it was that big. Opened up the front page after the last post and it looked like I had spilled orange marmalade all over it. Une momento por favor....There.

The Wind is in the East

How the heck did he pull that off? I am surprised. Hell, the formerly quasi-official New York Times called it a "surprise move." Xi is passive-appearing, obviously appearances are deceiving!, inscrutable,




I could never get a handle on that face. I would have thought that annoying, hyperactive guy who was his predecessor, the one at the Beijing Olympics, what was hi...Hu...Hu Jintao?, Hu something, I would have pegged Hu for a power move like this, hell, total power. Very surprised at this. The only thing the Quasis advanced for a reason was to keep party control over a modernizing society. That sounds (if it's true, with China you never know) like the "bubbling cauldron" thesis. Certainly the move itself seems, reversing decades of power limitation, like paranoia, not desperation, China is not desperate, paranoia.

Remember this, friends and enemies: the soul of China is survival and in the Party's eyes the Party is China. Their skin is very sensitive to the slightest breath of wind of change.

Ci, Xi

The CPC has done away with "presidential" term limits. The term limits were a prophylactic to prevent a return to a Maoie cult of personality. Xi Jinping, the incumbent, a relatively young man, is now "president" for life. Emperor Cixi.
Piers Morgan‏Verified account
@piersmorgan
More Piers Morgan Retweeted Erron Gordon

Will either be very joyful or extremely angst-ridden - depending on the next 4 hours.

Piers Morgan‏Verified account
@piersmorgan

Defiance before probable disaster. @mrjakedwood @thedavidseaman #Wembley #CarabaoCupFinal #afc












Piers Morgan‏Verified account 
@piersmorgan

Well, this is going just as badly as I feared.

Getting Callouses Patting Myself on Back

 Earlier today my Arsenal friend sent this (Caribou Cup Final) prediction:

2-1 city arsenal score first and city tie it soon after and win it at the death.


My response:

I am not following it and will not note it but my prediction is more comfortable than 2-1 at the death, City are PISSED re Wigan, Arsenal doesn't have much, Cech is shaky, I say 3-0...Wait, but Bravo is in goal, right? 3-1.

I kept my pledge until my son texted me at 2:25 pm:

Oh wow. We won the league cup today. Didn't realize haha. YAY!

I then checked the score.
Jean Sibelius, the Andante festivo. Oh. Sooo beautiful. Go to 1:25 and 2:40 to hear my favorite parts of this piece, it sounds like the sun coming up. 1925 It sounds like a hymn, at the end is the "amen," but, as the title indicates, it was originally composed as festival music, festival!, to celebrate...a...sawmill works.Sibelius redid it at the request of a New York Times music critic as "Finland's greeting to the world to celebrate the new year" on January 1, 1939. 1939: the darkest year in the twentieth century. Sibelius redid it as a prayer. He definitely slowed it down but the 1925 version was already too slow to be festive. This is too slow to be a hymn! Sibelius conducted this recording himself. January_1_1939

"Bucs" Beat Swine Chelsea at Ray Jay 2-1

They regain second place from Liverpool "Red Sox."

Viva Vegas

The North American National Hockey League (NHL) plays an 82 game season. Three-quarters, 60-62 games, of that season are over and an expansion team, a club cobbled together from others' surplus-to-needs, is second best in the 31 team league. The Vegas Golden Knights are the second best team in the NHL. Blink. Close mouth. Type. Vegas is only one point out from being the best team in the best hockey league in the world and they have a game in hand. Return to earth, end.

Saturday, February 24, 2018

#BoycottNRA

The kids at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School raised hell in several venues after the February 14 mass murder: in Tallahassee, the capital of the Asshole State, in a town hall meeting with politicians, including Marco Rubio who caught particular hell, at the BB&T Center in Sunrise, Broward County, in a YouTube video which seems to have been the spark, in protests around the county and state, and in the #BoycottNRA project.

Alamo Rent a Car

Avis

Allied Van Lines

Bestwestern

Budget

Chubb Insurance

Delta Air Lines

Enterprise Rent-a-Car

First National Bank of Omaha

Hertz

MetLife

North American Van Lines

Paramount Rx

SimpliSafe

Symantec

TrueCar

Sixteen companies in ten days are not going to moderate LaPierre, his dick still doesn't work and he's pissed about it but sixteen companies when there has never been one major corporation boycott the NRA, that's not nothing. The boycott movement has gotten the attention of the NRA who released one of their typical screeds accusing the companies of political correctness.

Why has #BoycottNRA gotten the NRA's attention? I suggest because it makes the association and their members look like pariahs. The NRA has cultivated this image of hunters, patriots, crime fighters not criminals, rugged individualists, family men who only want to protect their families and so on--generally all-American, White, of course. Now they're being boycotted all-'Murican companies like they're Black, Gay, Democrat, Socialist, Criminals. That's why. Wayne LaPierre, impotent cuckold, gave a speech at C-PAC, the Cuckold Political Action Committee, predicting a "socialist wave" or a something socialist.

More important than whatever the boycott numbers grow to be, the kids at Douglas High and their calls for gun control are in a position unassailable by the NRA: they are kids, victims, survivors; They are all-American. The make LaPierre and NRA members look like the Nativist Russian Association.

The kids at Douglas High started this wave on their own and in only ten days they have done something that has never been done before: they have moved the needle of the gun laws debate. 
Fake Bo Pelini
@FauxPelini

as a punishment for what

Crain's Chicago
@CrainsChicago

What do you think about the idea for a train that would whisk you from Chicago to Cleveland in 28 minutes? (link: http://cra.in/MsCqFyO) cra.in/MsCqFyO
Chicago to Cleveland
Fake Bo Pelini
@Fauxpelini

if you find him in Iowa pls send him back




Hi.

I like Saturdays.

I kiss and hug and make love to Saturdays I like Saturdays so much.

I am old. I have been working like a man half my age with half my blood alcohol level. This violates the laws of man and of God. Were it not for my assiduous fidelity to the health regime of alcohol and no exercise I could not have borne it.

Therefore, I am on strike. I order a moratorium on new crime. And old crime. All crime. Do not commit crime. I am on strike. I will not work defending crime today. Thank you.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Drink alcohol and exercise less to live longer, study says


Tremoundous week for studies, tremendous studies week.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Guido Argentini, Redux

I tell you I fucking love this man's work.






The shadows add something. The figure painted in shiny silver is abstract enough but then to take it one step beyond real he gives us a shadow.






And look at this. From another artist, Jean Pierre Augier:
Three antelope-like animals, googling it, perhaps the Gemsbox Oryx, in running flight, highly stylized, the lines symmetrical, to render just the essentials.



There be some talented mother-fuckers out there. And I ain't one of 'em.

DRINKING ALCOHOL TIED TO LONG LIFE IN NEW STUDY

(Newsweek)

I endorse this study.

Monday, February 19, 2018

Bitcoin Is All About the People (?)

BTC is at $11,360 as I type. Within the last two months it cracked $20,000 for a nanosecond on some exchange and got under $6,000 on some. Why? The people?

These are some very interesting people. As varied as human behavior is, it is not unpredictable. Hell, even human criminal behavior is predictable. Human behavior is not random. The behavior of homo sapiens economicus has been intently studied for a long, long time. The rational investor? Uh, no. Some guy just won the econ Nobel for debunking the rational investor model. I have followed Bitcoin's ups and downs for a year and a half now. I have never been able to find a rational reason for said ups and downs. Neither have brighter econ homos than me. Warren Buffett, pretty bright bulb, no?, Warren Buffett was quoted around Christmas as predicting that where we then were was the beginning of the end for BTC. Hel-lo Tulip Bulbs. One pub quoted a Wall Street type in December as predicting it would go beneath $10,000 by the end of the year--which it did--, the same pub was constrained to point out that when they consulted this oracle a few months prior he had predicted $40,000 by the end of the year. I am convinced that nobody knows shit. And that's not the way it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be somebody knows shit.

This evening I wanted to know how BTC people compared with S&P 500 people. BTC price graph, all-time (July, 2010-present):
                                                   Coindesk



Now, I'll be a sonabitch if I thought the Standard and Poor's graph for the same period was going to look like that.

And it didn't. And I'm not a sonofabitch.

Cannot figger out these Bitcoin people...just canNOT figure them out. Piers, I need you.

The Making of a Clown

Doesn't it all make sense now?

How a socialist was able to press the Democrat for the Democratic nomination?(1)

How a first-timer, a Clown, who had been a Democrat, and an Independent, was able to best more than a dozen Republicans for the Republican nomination? (2)

How that Clown became president?

Didn't it feel weird in the beginning? What? Bernie Sanders? What? Donald Trump? Yes, it felt very weird. What is going on?

It all makes sense now. The Russian attack on America began at least as early as 2014. Putin released his stealth twitter bombers...



...just as surely as an earlier generation of Russians had released its air force.



Putin's attack was to destroy the American democracy, to sow the seeds of his authoritarian, racist nationalism in soil he knew was fertile for it.(3) And to his gleeful surprise(4) a hideous orange plant with all the right genetic characteristics(5) burst through the soil, took root, and planted the Russian flag.




Now? Doesn't it all make sense now? Hasn't it all made sense since the summer of 2016? It has. The hiring of Manafort, the use of Page, the use and hiring of Flynn, of Bannon, so many I've forgotten all of them, the weird un-American sounding campaign rhetoric, the warning that summer that Trump was "an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation,"(6) the compliments by Putin, the compliments of Putin by Trump, the business interests(7) we knew all of that.

We, the public, know more now, certainly, Don, Jr.'s meeting with Russian agents, Trump writing the cover-up statement, Kushner's business interests, his vulnerability (background check stalled, will never be cleared. Trump will give him top secret security clearance anyhow), the firings, the firing of James Comey in particular, the resignations, indictments, the refusal to extend the Russia sanctions, the denial, the stone-walling and name-calling of the Mueller investigation, so much more I have forgotten all of it (Was Kushner at the Trump Tower meeting?), but my God, we knew enough back then, and my God, hasn't all we know now been so predictable? It has. It is decidedly not "weird"(8) that Trump denies it all with frantic rhetoric. He knows he's toast, he knows he is illegitimate.(9)

What we know now, President Obama knew then, when we didn't know all. And Obama knew what was at stake, "The fate of the republic rests on your shoulders.The fate of the world is teetering", but did not tell us until six days before the catastrophe, when the cake was already baked.(10) The fate of the republic rested upon Barack Obama's shoulders, not ours, he swore an oath that he would "to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." He didn't.

The Making of the President, 2016, The Making of a Clown, The Un-Making of America.


1. "Sanders’s 2016 campaign — along with Trump’s — was named in Friday’s indictment as one that the Russian nationals used to sow discord in the election system and buoy criticism of then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton." Feel_the_Burn:Sanders_Used
2. "President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated."
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/opinion/campaign-stops/i-ran-the-cia-now-im-endorsing-hillary-clinton.html
3. The Authoritarian Personality, Theodore W. Adorno (1950). "'F scale' (F for fascist). The personality type...can be defined by nine traits...These traits include conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intellectualism, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotypy, power and "toughness", destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and exaggerated concerns over sex.".American_Authoritarian_Personality
4. Russians_Toast_Trump's_Victory
5. "Trump's personality] traits include his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law." https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/opinion/campaign-stops/i-ran-the-cia-now-im-endorsing-hillary-clinton.html
6. "Mr. Trump has also taken policy positions consistent with Russian, not American, interests — endorsing Russian espionage against the United States, supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea and giving a green light to a possible Russian invasion of the Baltic States. In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." Unwitting_Russian_Agent_Trump
7. Donald Trump, Jr."the executive vice president of Development and Acquisitions for the Trump Organization," in 2008: "In Russia, I really prefer Moscow [for high end real estate investment] over all cities in the world...Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." https://www.eturbonews.com/9788/executive-talk-donald-trump-jr-bullish-russia-and-few-emerging-ma
8. "Sanders went on to call Trump’s continued opposition to the Russia investigation “one of the weirdest things in modern American history.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-denies-collusion-again-tweets-sparks-concerns-among-lawmakers-n849181
9. “The president has been very adamant to say that he didn’t collude. He’s very frustrated that people seem to accuse the fact that the only reason he’s president is because of some sort of Russian collusion. But I would say the clear message here is Russia did mean to interfere in our election.”-Senator James Lankford, R-Oklahoma.
 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-denies-collusion-again-tweets-sparks-concerns-among-lawmakers-n849181
10. Fate_of_the_Republic
Mr. Trump...has said little to publicly acknowledge a threat to American democracy that even one of his top aides called “incontrovertible”...
...
[Trump] has repeatedly seized on the fact that the efforts started before he became a candidate, but has glossed over the conclusion that they evolved toward supporting his candidacy. 


The indictment says that while the Russians began their scheme in 2014 with the goal of undermining the American democratic system, they eventually shifted their focus to trying to help elect Mr. Trump and disparage his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
...
Yet he has repeatedly denied that Russia was behind any meddling, even going so far in November as to suggest that he believed President Vladimir V. Putin’s denials of interference over the conclusions of American intelligence agencies.

“Every time he sees me he says, ‘I didn’t do that,’ and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it,” Mr. Trump said at the time, calling questions about Moscow’s meddling a politically motivated “hit job.”

Mr. Trump has long fought the idea that Moscow’s efforts might have influenced the election, viewing it as a threat to his legitimacy. He has made little if any public effort to rally the nation to confront the Russians for their intrusion.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

"Get on, my lad!"




Bleak House. Charles Dickens. What a story teller. What a writer.

There are so many memorable scenes, characters, too many characters were I honest and I shan't be, not now, another time. This is a time to marvel, not to quibble. 

That is an economical memorable line. I had forgotten about it. I have read this book several times, parts at a time. Have dog-eared it and post noted it. I had forgotten about this line. It is economical, understated drama. Det. Bucket and Esther Summerson are making a late, desperate attempt to find Lady Honoria Dedlock before it is too late. Det. Bucket has already discovered her suicide note and is an hour or more behind her, and he knows not whence she is. He takes Esther, Lady Dedlock's illegitimate daughter, with him to soften the visual if Lady Dedlock were to see a lone detective frantic after her.

"Don't you be alarmed, Miss Summerson, on account of our coming down here...I only want to have everything in train and to know that it is in train by looking after it my self. Get on, my lad!"
...
[The next page]
"...whenever he took his seat upon the box again, his face resumed its watchul steady look, and he always said to the driver in the same business tone, "Get on, my lad!"
...
[Nine pages later]
"All this time, kept fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in which he was engaged, he was up and down at every house we came to;...yet never seeming to lose time, and always mounting to the box again with his watchful, steady face, and his business-like "Get on, my lad!"

[It is totally authentic as the intensity of a detective who is literally on the scent.]

..."But whatever you do, don't you fall a-crying my dear; and don't worry yourself no more than you can help. Get on, my lad!"

[Next page]
"He always gave me a reassuring beck of his finger, and lift of his eyelid, as he got upon the box again; but he seemed perplexed now, when he said "Get on, my lad!"

[He is off the trail and he knows it and he is worried. Two pages later at the close of the chapter "A Wintry Day and Night":]

"...I knew by his yet graver face, as he stood watching the ostler, that he had heard nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I leaned back in my seat, he looked in,...an excited and quite different man.

"What is it?" said I, staring. "Is she here?"

"No, no...Nobody's here. But I've got it!"

..."Four horses out there for the next stage up! Quick!"

"There was a commotion in the yard."

"Look alive here with them horses. Send a man for'ard in the saddle to the next stage, and let him send another for'ard again, and order four on, up, right through."

"These orders, and the way in which he ran about the yard, urging them, caused a general excitement...[A] mounted man galloped away to order the relays, and our horses were put to with great speed."

"My dear...you keep up as good a heart as you can, and you rely upon me for standing by you...Now are you right there?"

"All right, sir!"

"Off she goes, then. And get on, my lads!"

I gave me chills. It is just as powerful on my mind as the trip up Shooters Hill in Tale of Two Cities. Not as evocative of scene. I can see the horses struggle, the vapor expelled strenuously from their nostrils, the creeping gray mist working up the hill from the valley engulfing the riders, the danger when the stage approaches, their driver reaching for his blunderbuss. Oh, a remarkable scene that. But here, in Bleak House, we have an early example, perhaps the first example, of a character we have become familiar with, the driven detective investigator. "We are vertebrates," said Vladimir Nabokov in his Cornell lectures on Bleak House. "We feel that tingle down our spine for we are vertebrates tipped at the head by a divine flame." Charles Dickens had the divine flame and he was singular in creating in us, his readers, the tingle down our vertebrate's spine.

Good night.

"We no longer recognize our America."

"As a German, I know that without the United States I would not have grown up in a peaceful and democratic situation. The liberal order after the Second World War is the product of the United States.

"Maybe this can explain why we Germans in particular are so perturbed when we look across the Atlantic — because we no longer recognize our America. Is it deeds, is it words, is it tweets we should look at to measure America?"

-German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel  at the Munich Security Conference today. So sad.

Trump’s National Security Chief Calls Russian Interference ‘Incontrovertible’-NYT

MUNICH — Just hours after the Justice Department indicted 13 Russians in what it charged was a broad conspiracy to alter the 2016 election, President Trump’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, accused Moscow of engaging in a campaign of “disinformation, subversion and espionage” that he said Washington would continue to expose.

The evidence of a Russian effort to interfere in the election “is now incontrovertible,” General McMaster said at the Munich Security Conference, an annual meeting of European and American diplomats and security experts, including several senior Russian officials.
...
The comments highlighted a sharp division inside the administration about how to talk about the Russian covert efforts, with only Mr. Trump and a few of his close advisers holding back from acknowledging the Russian role or talking about a larger strategy to deter future attacks.

The indictment characterized the cyberattacks and social media fraud as part of a larger effort by Russia to undermine the United States. A senior administration official called the effort to confront Russia “a significant point of contention” within the administration.
IllegiTrump

Crime Blotter


Those wild and crazy "Baggies" failed to deliver the "performance" their guardian Alan "Curfew" Pardew wanted. West Brom, dead last in the Premier League, lost an FA Cup match at home against Southampton today 2-1. Only two of the "Taxi Four," seen here in their group booking photo,

 started today and they were booed. Frowny face.

Friday, February 16, 2018

A Pakistani homo. Chances are.

Pakistan
51
United States
8
France
3
Russia
2
China
1
Poland
1