Aug 09 2020

The Breakfast Club (Fried)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club!

AP’s Today in History for August 9th

The U.S. drops an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan; President Richard Nixon resigns; Charles Manson cult murders actress Sharon Tate and four others; Singer Whitney Houston born; Musician Jerry Garcia dies.

Breakfast Tune We Banjo 3 – “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” (Whitney Houston)

Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below

HOW COPS CAN SECRETLY TRACK YOUR PHONE
Kim Zetter, The Intercept

SINCE MAY, AS protesters around the country have marched against police brutality and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, activists have spotted a recurring presence in the skies: mysterious planes and helicopters hovering overhead, apparently conducting surveillance on protesters. A press release from the Justice Department at the end of May revealed that the Drug Enforcement Agency and U.S. Marshals Service were asked by the Justice Department to provide unspecified support to law enforcement during protests. A few days later, a memo obtained by BuzzFeed News offered a little more insight on the matter; it revealed that shortly after protests began in various cities, the DEA had sought special authority from the Justice Department to covertly spy on Black Lives Matter protesters on behalf of law enforcement.

Although the press release and memo didn’t say what form the support and surveillance would take, it’s likely that the two agencies were being asked to assist police for a particular reason. Both the DEA and the Marshals possess airplanes outfitted with so-called stingrays or dirtboxes: powerful technologies capable of tracking mobile phones or, depending on how they’re configured, collecting data and communications from mobile phones in bulk.

Stingrays have been used on the ground and in the air by law enforcement for years but are highly controversial because they don’t just collect data from targeted phones; they collect data from any phone in the vicinity of a device. That data can be used to identify people — protesters, for example — and track their movements during and after demonstrations, as well as to identify others who associate with them. They also can inject spying software onto specific phones or direct the browser of a phone to a website where malware can be loaded onto it, though it’s not clear if any U.S. law enforcement agencies have used them for this purpose….

Something to think about over coffee prozac

U.S. Government Contractor Embedded Software in Apps to Track Phones
Byron Tau, WSJ

WASHINGTON—A small U.S. company with ties to the U.S. defense and intelligence communities has embedded its software in numerous mobile apps, allowing it to track the movements of hundreds of millions of mobile phones world-wide, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Anomaly Six LLC a Virginia-based company founded by two U.S. military veterans with a background in intelligence, said in marketing material it is able to draw location data from more than 500 mobile applications, in part through…

Aug 09 2020

Pondering the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

Pondering the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

On Sunday mornings we present a preview of the guests on the morning talk shows so you can choose which ones to watch or some do something more worth your time on a Sunday morning.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Senate Minority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY); White House Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow; ABC News chief legal analyst Dan Abrams; and Cardoza School of Law professor Kate Shaw.

The roundtable guests are: ABC News Political Analyst Matthew Dowd; Democratic Strategist Paul Begala; Fordham University Associate Professor Christina Greer; and Republican Strategist Alice Stewart.

Face the Nation: Host Margaret Brennan’s guests are: President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Charles L. Evans; Kansas city, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas (D); Gov. Ned Lamont (D-CT); Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Robert C. O’Brien; and former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on this week’s “MTP” are: White House trade advisor Peter Navarro; Sen. Dick Durban (D-IL); Thomas V. Inglesby, MD, Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Coronavirus and the classroom with Theodore Carrillo-Small; Kristin McCalry; and Jacqueline Dungey.

The panel guests are: Editor of the National Review Rich Lowry; MSNBC Anchor Joshua Johnson; and host of MSNBC’s Kasie DC, Kasie Hunt

State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tapper’s guests are: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); White House Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow; and Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH).

Aug 08 2020

Oh, My Beautiful Wickedness

What a day, what a day, what a day.

Thoughts and prayers.

Aug 08 2020

This Afternoon’s Presser

There is no reason to believe it will be any different from yesterday’s.

I had the good fortune not to watch any of it myself, but some people think it’s…

Instructive.

Calling it a ‘peaceful protest,’ Trump flouts coronavirus guidelines with golf club gathering
By Toluse Olorunnipa, Washington Post
August 8, 2020

Just before 7 p.m. Friday evening, members of President Trump’s private golf club here began streaming into a gilded ballroom by the dozens. Some carried wine glasses — few wore masks.

The happy hour scene just steps from the golf course was orchestrated by Trump, who decided late Friday to hold an impromptu news conference and invite his club members to gather indoors in defiance of state restrictions aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus.

With coronavirus cases nearing 5 million in the United States and average daily deaths topping 1,000, Trump’s retreat to the confines of his private club offered him an opportunity to create a kind of alternate reality in which his presidency is not being beset by numerous crises.

After walking into the room to the sound of applause and “Hail to the Chief” playing over a loudspeaker, Trump told the crowd that newly released job numbers showed a resurging economy, the border wall was continuing to be built and executive orders were being drawn up to circumvent an intransigent Congress.

The pandemic, he told the room, “is disappearing. It’s going to disappear.”

Many in the crowd behaved as if the pandemic had already vanished, forgoing guidelines on social distancing, face coverings and avoiding nonessential gatherings.

Playing dual roles as president and business owner, Trump seemed happy to facilitate a carefree evening for his members — despite the health risks.

In the few minutes Trump spent focusing on the health crisis, he presented misleading or incomplete statistics indicating that other countries were facing a new “surge” in infections and the United States’ position as the world’s epicenter for the coronavirus was primarily due to the large number of tests being performed, an argument health experts have continuously said is incorrect.

“We’re constantly showing cases, cases, cases, cases are up,” Trump said. “Well, the reason cases are up because we’re doing, one of the reasons, we’re doing a lot of testing.”

But health experts say it will take vigilant mitigation practices by the public — not positive spin or wishful thinking — to gain control of a virus that has killed more than 157,000 Americans.

Little of that was on display when Trump’s well-heeled golf club members began making their way into the grand ballroom under a light drizzle Friday. Some people had their temperatures checked at the door, many didn’t. The group or more than 100 mingled in one small section of the 5,000-square-foot ballroom, with mere inches between each person.

Asked by reporters if they had been tested for the coronavirus before the impromptu conference, no one in the crowd responded.

After reporters noted the lack of social distancing in the crowd, a club official just told the crowd to “spread out a little bit” because “the tweets are going out.” Masks were also handed out shortly before Trump arrived.

New Jersey guidelines limit most indoor gatherings to 25 people or 25 percent of a room’s capacity, whichever is lower. People are required to wear masks and maintain a distance of at least six feet.

The office of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) referred questions about Trump’s club event to the Bedminster police and the New Jersey attorney general’s office.

“At this time we’re not going to comment on an alleged violation,” Steven Barnes, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said Friday. The Bedminster police did not respond to a request for comment.

Asked why he was staging an event in defiance of state guidelines, Trump denied that the gathering was unlawful. He cited an exemption that allows for indoor gatherings of up to 100 people for political events or protests.

“You have an exclusion in the law. It says peaceful protest or political activity, right?” Trump said. “And you can call it political activity, but I’d call it peaceful protest because they heard you were coming up and they know the news is fake.”

The question drew boos from the crowd and Trump’s response was greeted with applause. The president walked away as his club members continued to cheer.

But as the news conference ended, it remained unclear why Trump decided to stage the unscheduled event.
…
Members in the crowd were mostly silent through the president’s remarks, a far cry from the kind of raucous rallies he held before the pandemic. At some point between Trump’s remarks on the “favored-nations clause” for pharmaceuticals and the personnel policies at the Tennessee Valley Authority, a little girl in a yellow dress took a seat on the floor.

Before the 40-minute news conference, Trump briefly stepped out to privately address some of the members of his club, which reportedly has a six-figure initiation fee. He promised a one-of-a-kind show to the group, which included men in golf shorts and gem-tone polo shirts, women in sundresses and a smattering of children in miniaturized versions of these outfits.

“You’ll get to meet the fake news tonight. You’ll get to see what I have to go through,” he told the group, according to CNN, which pulled the audio from a hot mic. “Who’s there? Oh all my killers are there, wow. So you’ll get to see some of the people that we deal with every day.”

But the club’s ballroom, described on a company website as “lavishly decorated” with “exquisite French doors, crystal chandeliers and sconces,” struck some as a poor choice to hold a news conference in a middle of a pandemic that has decimated the economy.

“Who decided it would look good for Trump to speak to a bunch of rich Trump club members about the need to deliver unemployed Americans relief,” Amanda Carpenter, a former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and a Trump critic who wrote a book titled “Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies To Us,” wrote on Twitter. “All this shows is that Trump isn’t in Washington, isn’t working on this with urgency, and is supported by wealthy loyalists who can’t be bothered with masks.”

As for the president, he has expressed no qualms about the optics of meeting with large groups of wealthy supporters at a time when so many are struggling. He is scheduled to hold fundraisers in the Hamptons and near the Jersey Shore this weekend before returning to Washington on Sunday.

And he is scheduled to hold another news conference — or peaceful protest — at his golf club Saturday afternoon.

So, a curtain raiser. Yesterday goes in the Greatest Hits bin.

Aug 08 2020

Cartnoon

What Makes A Sandwich A Sandwich?

Well, if you believe the myth it’s a piece of bread or two (there is considerable debate on this point) with a stuffing that you can eat without utensils while playing cards and not getting them greasy.

On a deeper level, what is anything?

Plato posited “Absolutes” which carried within them the definition of the essential elements that made some thing, say a Chair, a Chair regardless of superficial variation.

My question is- “Can you sit on it?”

Aug 08 2020

The Breakfast Club (Originality)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

President Richard Nixon says he’ll resign; Thieves stage Britain’s ‘Great Train Robbery’; Nazi saboteurs in the U.S. executed during World War II; Mexico’s Emiliano Zapata and actor Dustin Hoffman born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

Laurence J. Peter

Continue reading

Aug 07 2020

The Death Cult Rebellion

One thing I don’t quite buy into is the optimistic projection of saving 60,000 lives (that’s 20 9/11s by the way). I don’t think 95% compliance is achievable, look at traffic laws (another full disclosure, I work closely with a company that measures traffic law compliance), the numbers are pretty horrible. When was the last time you drove 55 outside of a 35 mph zone?

Aug 07 2020

Pondering the Pundits

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Jamelle Bouie: Trump and His Allies Think They Know Who Counts

But history has a way of confounding those who think they can control it.

Over the last few years, the Trump administration has fought to shape the 2020 census to its political benefit and the benefit of the Republican Party. In 2018, it sought to introduce a citizenship question on the census itself, to reduce response rates among immigrant communities. Then, after that was rebuffed by the Supreme Court, it tried to exclude unauthorized immigrants altogether, in direct conflict with the Constitution, which calls on Congress to count “the whole number of persons in each State.” Now it wants to cut the census short and deliver it uncompleted — a last-ditch effort to rig the nation’s politics for the sake of its exclusionary political vision.

The goal is to freeze political representation in place as much as possible; to keep demographic change — the growing share of Americans who are Black, Hispanic and Asian-American — from swamping the Republican Party’s ability to win national elections with a white, heavily rural minority.

The census, as Trump and his allies correctly understand, is a critical source of dynamism within the American political system. A political majority (or in Trump’s case, a minority) can try to insulate itself from demographic shifts and transformations, but the fact of mandatory reapportionment makes that difficult. New people — whether immigrants or Americans moving from place to place — will always mean new politics.

It is ironic, then, that the origin of the census lies less in principles of democratic representation, and more in the interests of slaveholders, who wanted political recognition of their slave wealth, with constitutional assurance that this peculiar interest would always weigh on future apportionment. But in a perfect example of unintended consequences, the slaveholders’ push for a census would help lay the groundwork for the end of the institution itself.

Catherine Rampell: The July jobs report sounds pretty good — until you look at this recession chart

Two cheers for the July jobs report.

Last month the U.S. economy added 1.8 million jobs. On the one hand, this number — at least in isolation — sounds pretty big! Until quite recently, we’d never even had a monthly job growth number in the seven figures. On the other hand, it’s a big slowdown from the 4.8 million jobs added in June. More important, you also have to consider how many more jobs were lost in the spring, which was an eight-digit figure (nearly 21 million positions were axed in April alone).

Then you realize that even with the recent growth, the country is still very much in the red.

Total non-farm payrolls are down by a net of 8.4 percent, the equivalent of nearly 13 million jobs, since the recession officially began in February. The U.S. unemployment rate is 10.2 percent, still higher than it ever was during the Great Recession. If you also include workers who are involuntary part-timers, people who have given up looking for work, and those who are still being accidentally misclassified as employed despite being temporarily laid off, the underemployment rate would be closer to 17.5 percent.

Amanda Marcotte: N.Y. attorney general is doing conservatives a favor by going after NRA: They’re its victims

NRA executives ran an apparent con game on conservatives for years — but the right can never admit it’s been had

On Thursday, New York State Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the National Rifle Association, on the grounds that it’s functioning as a massive grift and not, as it bills itself, a “civil rights” organization for gun owners. There’s no way to know how this will play out — the NRA still wields political power, largely because it’s been so useful to Republicans — but the evidence marshaled by James and independent journalists is overwhelming.

As James said in her statement, the NRA “went unchecked for decades while top executives funneled millions into their own pockets,” and the degree of corruption was so broad and deep that the scheme has “basically destroyed all the assets of the NRA.” [..]

Unsurprisingly, conservatives reacted to the announcement by James with outrage. The most typical talking point was misdirection, with conservatives whining “what about Planned Parenthood?” in such numbers that “Planned Parenthood” started to trend on Twitter.

The answer to this “what about,” of course, is simple: Planned Parenthood is not a fraudulent organization run by grifters who redirect millions in donor contributions into their own pockets. It’s a legitimate medical organization and reproductive rights advocacy group. Comparing the two is a little like saying that if Jeffrey Dahmer had to go to prison as a serial killer,  George R.R. Martin should go to prison for being a serial storyteller. It’s not the same thing!

Heather Digby Parton:  Will Trump face real consequences for his crimes? The answer will haunt America’s future

What will we tell future generations — and future Republican presidents — if Trump gets away with everything?

If the nation manages to oust Donald Trump from the presidency in November — and he actually agrees to leave in January — the new administration and the Congress will have its hands full just trying to keep the country from falling even deeper into a depression and halting the death toll from the pandemic. Foreign policy will have to be dealt with immediately, as will the assessment of the damage to the administrative state. Our failed public health response to the coronavirus is a deadly wakeup call: The federal government has atrophied under the insane fiscal and political priorities inflicted upon it over the past couple of decades by nihilist Republicans and impotent Democrats. And that’s just for starters.

But one of the most important priorities must be to re-establish democratic and ethical norms in the wake of Trump’s brazen corruption. Congress can make new laws and the president can create executive orders, but if they want to get the job done there must be some accountability for this crime spree.

It’s hard to know where to start, but as you may recall there’s a report that lays out in great detail Donald Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice in the Russia investigation. It even makes a very strong case that he can be prosecuted after he leaves office for committing these crimes.

Greg Sargent: The Trump fiasco just got worse. That gives Biden a hidden opening.

As our public health and economic crises grow more dire, due in part to President Trump’s depraved incompetence, this deterioration has increased pressure on Joe Biden to rise to this distressing national moment. He has responded by projecting his intention to function as an ambitious president in the mould of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

But what does it mean to speak to the nation about these challenges in an FDR-like fashion? What should that entail for the presumptive Democratic nominee in concrete and rhetorical terms?

Two new developments — the release of a comprehensive blueprint on our economic future from the Roosevelt Institute, and the increasing odds that Congress’ economic rescue package will fall far short — provide an occasion to look at those questions. [..]

But in the current context, it gives rise to the report’s other core idea — that our crises have exposed deeper systemic problems and injustices in our political economy, ones that predated the virus and are baked into our market rules, ones that we created and that we can change.

Paul Waldman: Another impasse on the rescue package. Imagine if the president were a dealmaker.

The country faces an economic crisis on top of a public health crisis, and Congress is at an impasse in negotiations over a rescue package. Democratic leaders said on Friday that in the latest round, they offered to reduce their proposal by $1 trillion if Republicans would add $1 trillion to their far smaller proposal, but Republicans rejected it.

Meanwhile, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told Republicans the biggest sticking point is the money Democrats want to give to state and local governments to help deal with their budget crises, which are already causing mass layoffs and service cuts.

What this deadlock needs is a master negotiator, someone whose extraordinary skills can break through the parties’ differences and craft a deal both sides can live with, giving Americans the help they need.

Someone like President Trump, the man who wrote “The Art of the Deal”!

You’re laughing, I know. But think about how extraordinary that is: During a difficult and complex negotiation, with incredibly high stakes for the country, we take it as a given that not only would the president of the United States much rather be off playing golf; it’s also probably best for everyone if he isn’t involved at all, because he’d only make things worse.

Aug 07 2020

The Real Purpose for Sally Yates’ Testimony: Propaganda to Elect Trump

You remember Sally Yates, who served as Acting Attorney General for 10 days in the fledgling Trump Crime Regime before the unindicted co-conspirator fired her for refusing to back his Muslim ban. She was back testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Senator Lyndsey Graham (R-SC). Ms. Yates blew the GOP conspiracy theories undercutting the legitimacy of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election out of the water:

Former deputy attorney general Sally Yates provided as definitive an account as you are going to get regarding former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the Russia investigation and the politicization of the Justice Department during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Republicans have been so immersed in a false account of events and in conspiracy-mongering for a failed president that they seemed startled when Yates corrected them again and again.

Yates’s testimony boiled down to seven points: 1) The Trump transition team was not being surveilled, nor was Flynn. While she could not say why because of national security concerns, it was obvious that then-Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak was the one being monitored. Flynn wound up being recorded when he spoke with Kislyak; 2) Flynn was attempting to undercut sanctions (per Yates’s testimony: “General Flynn had essentially neutered the U.S. government’s message of deterrence”); 3) Flynn lied to the vice president about his calls; 4) The FBI’s investigation was a counterintelligence — not criminal — investigation; 5) The investigation was not closed on Jan. 4 precisely because the FBI learned of Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak; 6) Flynn’s lying to the FBI was material and indeed at the core of the counterintelligence investigation, contrary to Attorney General William P. Barr’s assertion in trying to undo Flynn’s guilty plea by dismissing the case; and 7) It was highly abnormal and unprecedented for the attorney general to step in to rescue a friend of the president in this way, an action that damages the Justice Department’s credibility. [..]

Yates batted down a number of popular Republican lies. No, no one in the Obama administration tried to steer the investigation; to the contrary, they warned against it. (During a meeting on the topic, then-Vice President Joe Biden did not say much of anything.) No, Yates did not know of the inaccuracies in the FISA application to monitor Trump campaign adviser Carter Page at the time she signed off on it. No, the Trump campaign was not treated differently — because it was the only campaign that the Russians approached and helped.

These attempts by the Senate and House GOP to somehow discredit the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump is nothing more that a Psychological Operation. As Adam L. Silverman explained in an article in Balloon Juice just prior to Trump’s impeachment, the short definition of Psychological Operations, popularly known as PSYOP, is the weaponization of information for effect.

The effect being to influence the targeted population, whether a group, an organization, a society, an element within a society, or a government, to either undertake an action or to prevent an action from being taken. Black PSYOP refers to the attempts to launder the influence operation through a legitimate third party that is not connected to those conducting the influence operation.

In that article Dr. Silverman explained how Attorney General William Barr strategically leaked information of his criminal investigation under US Attorney John H. Durham of how the Russian investigation began under the Obama administration. In his lasted post at Balloon Juice, he demonstrates how the Senate has now become an arm of the Black PSYOP to reelect  Trump:

Since the President’s acquittal in the Senate back in January, several key senators have been working to turn their committee’s oversight functions into both an information laundry as part of the Black PSYOP against Vice President Biden and an oppo research and distribution arm of the President’s reelection campaign. These efforts are being led by Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee; Senator Charles Grassley, who chairs the Finance Committee; and Senator Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Judiciary Committee and are intended to do one thing and one thing only: dirty up Vice President Biden ahead of his election, as well as a number of his senior advisors who would be expect to have senior appointments in a Biden administration should he win in November. Should he indeed win, expect the Senate Republicans to use these hearings to either deny, should they hold their majority, or try to derail and deny, should they be in the minority, the Senate confirmation for these senior Biden aides and advisors. In this way the Black PSYOP campaign against VP Biden has metastasized in a new ugly way: to not just try to make him unelectable, but to damage many of his most senior and trusted aides and advisors so that they would be unconfirmable should he be elected and appoint them to the most senior positions in his administration.

Senator Graham kicked off the next phase of the Black PSYOP today with hearings into how the counterintelligence investigation into the connections between the President’s 2016 campaign and a variety of Russian nationals who all link back to Vladimir Putin, which is being referred to by Republicans and conservatives as Obamagate, was started and conducted. The focus of today’s hearing was on former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. You can see this whole hearing at the video below:

As you can imagine, Senator Graham, as well as the other Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee were functioning in the closed epistemological bubble of conspiracies about the 2016 election.

Since the President’s acquittal in the Senate back in January, several key senators have been working to turn their committee’s oversight functions into both an information laundry as part of the Black PSYOP against Vice President Biden and an oppo research and distribution arm of the President’s reelection campaign. These efforts are being led by Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee; Senator Charles Grassley, who chairs the Finance Committee; and Senator Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Judiciary Committee and are intended to do one thing and one thing only: dirty up Vice President Biden ahead of his election, as well as a number of his senior advisors who would be expect to have senior appointments in a Biden administration should he win in November. Should he indeed win, expect the Senate Republicans to use these hearings to either deny, should they hold their majority, or try to derail and deny, should they be in the minority, the Senate confirmation for these senior Biden aides and advisors. In this way the Black PSYOP campaign against VP Biden has metastasized in a new ugly way: to not just try to make him unelectable, but to damage many of his most senior and trusted aides and advisors so that they would be unconfirmable should he be elected and appoint them to the most senior positions in his administration.

Senator Graham kicked off the next phase of the Black PSYOP today with hearings into how the counterintelligence investigation into the connections between the President’s 2016 campaign and a variety of Russian nationals who all link back to Vladimir Putin, which is being referred to by Republicans and conservatives as Obamagate, was started and conducted. The focus of today’s hearing was on former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. You can see this whole hearing at the video below:

As you can imagine, Senator Graham, as well as the other Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee were functioning in the closed epistemological bubble of conspiracies about the 2016 election.

The short version of these conspiracies are that it was not Russia interfering in the election, nor was it the President’s campaign, campaign officials, members of the President’s family, and official and unofficial surrogates all either conspiring to and working with various elements of Russian intelligence or trying to, but being so inept they failed to actually do so. Rather, the Clinton campaign successfully conspired with both the Obama administration, especially senior Department of Justice and FBI officials like Director Comey, and the Ukrainian government of Petro Poroshenko to subvert the will of the American people and rig the 2016 election and by creating a false flag that Russia was in fact interfering in the election on behalf of the President’s campaign. [..]

The origin of the conspiracy theory that the Senate Republicans, the President, other Republicans, and conservatives are pushing was actually created by Konstantin Kilimnik and pushed to Paul Manafort who then laundered it through his criminal defense. It was also laundered through Politico by a discredited Ukrainian junior foreign service officer. And before you ask, yes the Politico reporter was Ken Vogel who has continued to try to peddle this made up garbage at The New York Times.

Former Acting Attorney General Yates did a very effective job of pushing back and knocking down the conspiracies that the Republican senators on the committee kept asking her about or suggesting happened. [..]

Senator Graham’s efforts in the Senate Judiciary Committee are not, however, the only Republican efforts to turn the US Senate and its oversight functions into an information laundry against Vice President Biden. Senators Johnson and Grassley are running the other part of the Black PSYOP, which is receiving information from some of Putin’s assets in Ukraine, who are working with the President’s private attorney Rudy Giuliani, to dirty up Vice President Biden ahead of the election. [..]

The four Ukrainians working to launder this information through Senators Johnson and Grassley are not in very good standing back in Ukraine and their information has been widely debunked and discredited. [..]

Senators Johnson and Grassley are, of course, undaunted and are both pushing ahead with their efforts and pushing back on the criticism they are receiving.

Note what Senators Johnson and Grassley have done in their letter. Despite the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s extensively documented multi-part report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of the President, Senators Johnson and Grassley call this a “the false ‘Russian disinformation’ narrative”. They also deny that they are using Russian disinformation, despite having previously stated that they were in receipt of that information:

Spokespersons for Johnson and Senate Finance Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, who is aiding Johnson in the Biden probe, defended their inquiry and use of information from Telizhenko and other Ukrainians.

In a written response to questions, the senators told BuzzFeed News: “As with any inquiry, you get answers by asking questions. Those who restrict themselves from reviewing matters associated with ‘people of ill repute’ won’t have much luck uncovering wrongdoing or improving accountability.”

We know that these accusations against Vice President Biden and his son Hunter Biden are part of a Russian disinformation campaign that began in April 2014 and was intended to dirty up three potential candidates for president in 2016, VP Biden, Secretary Kerry, and VP Cheney, by insinuating that they were facilitating and benefiting from unethical behavior engaged in by their children. [..]

Senators Graham, Grassley, and Johnson are all twisting the Senate’s oversight function in order to launder this six year old Russian disinformation through the Senate and through the news media to damage Vice President Biden and harm his electoral chances in November and to dirty up a number of his most senior aides and advisors to harm their chances for Senate confirmation should Biden win and nominate them for senior positions in his administration. They are aided and abetted in this by conservative news, digital news, and social media. [..]

What Senators Graham, Johnson, and Grassley are doing is not intended to produce new legislation to prevent foreign interference in US elections, to require campaigns to immediately notify the FBI if members of the campaign are approached by foreign actors or agents of foreign powers, or protect the integrity of the 2020 elections – presidential, congressional, state, and local. Rather what they are doing is intended to produce disinformation and agitprop that will be laundered through conservative news media, conservative digital news media, and conservative social media to damage Vice President Biden, his campaign, and his senior aides and advisors. The laundering of this information through these sources is intended to force the mainstream news media to cover it as news that has to be reported and then fact checked, which will then push it into mainstream digital news and social media, furthering the reach of the disinformation and agitprop. Especially as most, if not all of these mainstream news sites are paywalled, which restricts the ability to access the fact checking and the debunking. Thanks to the efforts of Senators Graham, Johnson, and Grassley, the Senate is the laundry used to wash this disinformation and agitprop, disinformation and agitprop that is documented as originating in Russian state backed news media in 2014 and that has been thoroughly debunked.

If we stipulate that Senators Graham, Grassley, and Johnson are not Russian assets or under Russian influence, the question is what would they be doing differently if they were? And the answer is nothing!

Dr. Silverman’s other articles on the BlaclPSYOP of  the GOP to discredit Democrats and especially, Vice President Biden can all be read at Balloon Juice, no pay walls or membership required.

Black PSYOP, l’Affaire Ukraine, AG Barr’s Investigation, and the Impeachment Inquiry of the President

Black PSYOP Part II: The Republicans Are Trying To Turn the US Congress Into an Information Laundry for Misinformation, Disinformation, and Information for Provocation,

 

Aug 07 2020

Cartnoon

More about Freemasonry than Doggies actually. I suppose for disclosure’s sake you should know I was Master of a Lodge, but I’ve already told you that.

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