He tweeted all night long

Posted on March 31, 2017 by theworstat

I guess Trump spent the night tweeting that Flynn should get immunity from prosecution because this whole Russia affair is a “witch hunt,” which only begs the question why Trump himself doesn’t ask for immunity.  Of course he hasn’t been called yet to testify, but the possibility remains.

In a way one almost feels sorry for him.  He never had a clue this investigation could or would happen.  He honestly thought that as president, all his troubles would disappear.  He thought he could wave his presidential wand and/or Uncle Putie would issue a threat to the American public, and everyone would bow to him and all “fake” news would disappear.  And in his perfect world, the only news that would be left would be Fox News, Breitbart, the National Enquirer, and the right-wing radio brigade.  There would be no one who would not dutifully cling to the official story.  Congress would grovel and be terrified of the mighty Trump and his right-wing fact-creating machine, and would cease to be any kind of threat.  And thus Trump would be able to go back to his accustomed looting and his weekend golf outings, undisturbed by facts or danger of exposure.  Heck, why not start campaigning for his second term right now?  After all, Uncle Putie’s election-eating machine is in place to make that happen (again), and it sure beats working.

But reality has struck.  Somebody tweeted last night that the former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele told some group to start cultivating Pence (who is also on the verge of some serious trouble, but that’s for another post), because Trump isn’t going to last long.  And it has nothing to do with Flynn or anyone else being given immunity and singing like a tweetie-bird.  It has to do with stubborn facts, and an intelligence community and a fourth estate that keep spewing them.

Flynn — probably because of his lawyer’s daft statement about Flynn’s need for immunity (which lined up with Trump’s) — was denied immunity by the Senate Intelligence Committee early today.  That’s one of three; we’ll see what the FBI and the disgraced House Committee do.  (Slight update: the House Committee is probably too paralyzed to do anything coherent, but Rep. Schiff did state today that he did not see the need for immunity, since no one is being prosecuted at present.)

At first I was alarmed about that, but then I realized that because of one Republican senator, the Democrats actually have a working majority on the Senate Committee.  They are not going to give Flynn immunity and then do a softball hearing with him, during which he can say anything, even claim he was the one who cut down the cherry tree, and they can’t touch him for it later.

The Committee must have smelled a rat, so they left Flynn out in the open and vulnerable.  As Rachel Maddow stated last night, they must have other ways of getting at the truth, (see video link in article) meaning Flynn is just not that important in the overall scheme — at least, he is no more important than Pence, Bannon, Tillerson, or any of the rest.  His case is not outstanding enough to give immunity, and besides, as Rep. Schiff said, no one’s being prosecuted at present, so why jump the gun?  You know, “no one asks for immunity unless they’re guilty,” (a quote from Flynn himself).  And no one tweets about it at 3:00 a.m. or whenever it was, unless they are guilty.

Worse, actual facts, (as opposed to propaganda), are as resilient a cockroaches.

As I reported last night, there was another tweet that claimed that “reliable sources” felt that Trump would resign shortly.  But as of today, when one of three entities Flynn asked for immunity has denied him, I doubt the stupid Trump still feels he’s in that much danger.  The logic seems to be that Flynn will tell some tall tale under immunity and get away with it — as will Trump and his administration — but without it, he will plead the 5th (which is probably the only amendment to the Constitution, outside of a sentence fragment of the 2nd amendment, that Trump knows).  Either way, in Trump’s view, Trump wins.

Hell, Trump’s probably thinking he should have slept last night, not spent the night tweeting like a guilty 8-year-old anticipating a morning meeting with the school principal.  Now he’ll probably happily fly to Mar A Lago and go play golf, and once again hand the taxpayers the tab, oblivious to the fact that a Flynn without immunity is more dangerous to him than a Flynn with immunity.

It would be nice if he found at the end of the weekend that he has no Presidential seat to go back to, but right now it seems like a distant dream.  It is good to know, however, that this possibility is being worked on.   However arcane the process seems, right now it looks like no one who is being investigated is going to be given a soft landing.

Congress, that is all we ask.

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And finally, the bomb

Posted on March 31, 2017 by theworstat

I’ll put responsibility for this post entirely at Bill Palmer’s feet:
Trump resigning?

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More rockets bursting in air

Posted on March 31, 2017 by theworstat

Yesterday I came across a tweet from a “White House staffer” that claimed that we should watch for Devin Nunes to recuse himself from the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation any day now, because “the knives are out” for Nunes at the White House.  As I know at least some of the White House leakers are actually minions of Bannon, I was skeptical.  It didn’t seem to make any sense.  Why would the White House be gunning for someone who was making an utter fool of himself trying to defend them?

And now, this: Strap in tight

Okay, now I get it.  (Note: Latest word has it that Nunes has denied everything and is not recusing himself.)

A few minutes later another bomb burst, this time about Flynn (who was peripherally involved in the Nunes situation, but that’s the least of his problems).  For two weeks we’ve been hearing that Flynn was about to flip.  Now it appears he has:

Flynn, WSJ

Shoes are dropping and rockets are bursting faster than I can type today, and I’m sure there’ll be more.  All I can promise is that I’ll post things as quickly as I can make sense of them and find reliable sources to refer my readers to.

P.S. for what it’s worth: White House staffer tweet

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Death of the storm chaser (no Trump for a moment)

Posted on March 31, 2017 by theworstat

I have a friend who is a storm chaser.  He is not the high-tech type of guy with a million computers and radar and fancy photographic equipment filling his “tornado tank” to the extent that he barely fits in.  He is not a scientist.  In fact, he doesn’t even use the very latest technology to find out where the tornadoes may be; he draws his own conclusions from older methods.  And he has never, ever claimed to be in it for “saving lives” (a lie about the purpose of storm chasing that started during the life of the Discovery Channel series “Storm Chasers”).

So why is he there?  For the adrenaline rush of seeing a powerful tornado sweep over an open field, not so very far off.  For the sake of videoing that tornado, and taking photos of it, and recalling it with his friends decades later.

The massive influx of newbies to the hobby/profession since 2009 (and “Storm Chasers”) has caught him off guard and made him cautious about going out.  Too many of the newbies are stupid and reckless, he says, and if they didn’t have all this modern technology they wouldn’t even be able to find a rain shower, let alone a tornado.

Two of the the TWISTEX team, on the other hand, were former cast members of the series “Storm Chasers.” Later they and one of their adult children would become, along with a newbie chaser, the first storm chasers to be killed by a tornado.

Nevertheless TWISTEX were no lightweights, nor were they among those who, as the saying goes, “seek glory in the cannon’s mouth.”  They were a serious scientific team and among the most experienced and cautious of the old guard, which included semi-pro hobby chasers like my friend as well as scientific chasers.

TWISTEX was, in fact, well-known for being cautious.  They had to be; their work involved getting in the projected path of an existing tornado, placing scientific equipment there, and getting out of the way as fast as possible.  But somehow that went awry on May 31, 2013, when they were killed by a sub-vortice of a massive, 2.5 mile wide EF3 tornado.

One would think this event would deter a lot of potential newbies, but it did not.  “It could happen to anyone,” became the new rule, and no one was scared off from chasing.  Everyone wanted their storm-chasing TV show, and some even created their own.  And so the avalanche of new chasers continued, and as a consequence, stupid behavior increased.  A whole new storm-chasing danger arose, and that was the simple act of driving.  This was what my storm-chaser friend had been saying all along.

Just after the deaths of the TWISTEX team I became aware of a new guy named Kelley Williamson.  He was an older man, in his 50’s, who started chasing after his wife was injured in a tornado-related automobile accident (I’m guessing sometime around 2011).  Right away I was struck by the fantastic amount of employees this guy seemed to have — he was on some sort of online network and was constantly talking to people who were telling him where to chase, where his partners were, and other information.  “Where did he come from all of a sudden,” I wondered; however, I found him entertaining and in subsequent years I always looked for his live stream before those of some other chasers.

Turned out a lot of people liked Kelley’s presentation, and in the last year he found himself with his own TV show on the Weather Channel.  Whether that led to what happened the other day is anybody’s guess.  And as the accident is still under investigation, perhaps I shouldn’t say much.

Suffice it to say that Williamson and his buddy were rushing toward a tornado, blew a stop sign, and took out not only themselves but also a young chaser named Corbin Lee Jaeger who happened to be at the same intersection, traveling on the crossing road.  It was a high-speed crash and all three died instantly.

Could this have happened in the old days when chasers were few and sometimes never crossed paths?  Maybe.  Would it have happened without all that modern technology making it easier to find a potentially tornadic storm?  Maybe.  Would it have happened if Williamson weren’t trying to get footage for a TV show?  Maybe.  Those are all questions that no one has a firm answer for.

But I’m thinking that perhaps my friend has a point.  Sometimes one just wonders if the good old days weren’t actually better.

My sincere condolences to the families and friends of those involved.

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Stunning

Posted on March 30, 2017 by theworstat

A moment from today’s Senate Intelligence Committee Hearing

There were more “rockets bursting in air” in this testimony, but I’ll leave further commentary for later, when it’s over.

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Chris Hayes Explains it all for you

Posted on March 30, 2017 by theworstat

Chris Hayes

This is lengthy, but worthwhile to listen to.  First it explains that Putin’s widely-reported, desperate denials of Russian involvement in our election have been for naught.  Putin apparently doesn’t understand what he’s gotten himself into because (not only does he not understand the U.S., but) that’s not the entire, or the original, reason for the investigations into Russia/Trump/the mafia.  The original reason was financial corruption — Russia’s, and by extension Trump’s.  In the end, the tie-in with our election is a consequence of everything else that happened.  So even if the election collusion can’t be proven, there’s still all this other stuff, some of which already has been proven.

Yes, financial misdoing still could take Trump out of office.  Remember what I said about Trump’s fathomless greed.  He is so amoral and consumed with avarice that he is blind to the laws governing conflicts of interest, and in the end, it might be that and not the election tampering that will take him down.

Also read the previous post in this blog; it ties in very strongly with what you’ll hear in the linked podcast.

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This sort of explains everything

Posted on March 30, 2017 by theworstat

I’m still checking up on the veracity of the site, but this article seems to be legit:

Why the FBI can’t tell all

If true, it does explain a few things, such as why Obama didn’t pressure Comey to resign after Comey basically screwed up the election by making a bogus announcement about emails…well, actually, he didn’t.  Clinton still won by nearly 3,000,000 votes, and it may have been more if there hadn’t been so much voter suppression (not voter fraud), wonky voting machines, and voter intimidation, not to speak of gerrymandering.  And she may even have won the electoral college vote had not at least 50 Republican members of the college been there illegally.

But I digress.  People are still asking why Obama didn’t put the hammer on Comey, and what’s stated in this article may be why.

Palmer Report stated yesterday that several members of the New York Bonano (sp) crime family have suddenly been arrested, and that this particular crime family has connections to Russian mobsters.  He instantly drew the conclusion that this said something about Trump.  I won’t go that far, but having read this article, I might be tempted.

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The department of scaredy-cat

Posted on March 28, 2017 by theworstat

I am writing this in the midst of a Trump Tweetstorm.  I don’t follow Trump on Twitter, but everyone’s saying that he’s trying to deflect attention from Russiagate by claiming that Hillary Clinton, (of COURSE) had her own Russia thing.  Why he isn’t also demanding an investigation of Nixon on the China story is anyone’s guess.

He did get away with this once before, almost.  That was the time he claimed Obama had personally “wiretapped” him.  And yes, his lapdogs in Congress jumped at that and wasted a lot of hearing time asking questions about it.   You know, because it’s not about the actual story, it’s about who leaked it.

That, however, was then.  This is now, after Rep. Nunes disgraced himself by running to the White House for instructions on what to say, then said it, then admitted it, then denied it.  He’s now facing this:
Complaint

And that ain’t all.  The media are after him; his fellow Congressmen/women are after him.  It doesn’t sound like it’s just going to go away.

Nunes has lost his credibility.  Whether or not he recuses himself from the investigation is no matter.  The work of his committee is now lost because of him.  Rep. Schiff or no Rep. Schiff, it’s gone.  That may be no big deal, though, because the Republicans on that committee were more fascinated with who leaked the stories about Trump than the actual stories about Trump.  It’s kind of like casually watching your house burn down, and then your one of your neighbors calls the fire department, and then when the house is in ruins you try to find out which neighbor had the nerve to call the fire department.

Of course that’s only one lapdog down; there are many more in Congress.  It’s just that Nunes was a big one.  Plus, the always-obtuse Paul Ryan expressed his support of Nunes today.  Ryan…you know, the guy who the White House just tried to throw under the bus when the Republican anti-healthcare bill died.  Ryan, the guy everyone hates.  I guess because both he and Nunes are said to be at least peripherally involved in Russiagate, Ryan’s thought is that if he stays quiet about Nunes, the nervous, hiccuping Nunes won’t burp up any secrets about him.

That’s the problem: when the Trump administration finally falls, it’s set to take several ranking members of Congress and possibly the entire Republican party with it.  So who among them is really going to investigate anything?

This brings me to another, slightly unrelated point.  Keep in mind always that just about everyone in the Trump administration has been implicated in Russiagate.  This includes Mike Pence.  If Pence manages to weasel his way into the Oval Office, his stay there won’t be comfortable and he’ll spend whatever time is left to him in office fighting off scandal rather than passing every anti-gay bill he can possibly lay his hands on.  The guy’s a walking scandal-bomb.  He’s certainly no better than Trump, but the point is, he’s no worse.

Also keep in mind what I said earlier: many Republican Congressional members are also possibly involved.  This includes number 2 in the line of succession to the president’s seat once Trump is gone.  That, my friends, is Paul Ryan.

I bring this up because even now I keep hearing and reading whiny articles and posts and comments saying, “if Trump is gone we get Pence, and he’s worse!”  And then when you rule Pence out, they jump to, “but then we get Ryan!”

Uh…people…do you really want to keep Trump for four years because you’re afraid of Pence and Ryan?  That’s assinine.

Even if Trump is deposed somehow (and I don’t believe it will be via impeachment, but I’m still having a hard time believing he will resign, so I don’t know how this will happen), and Pence takes the office, remember that Pence is compromised.  If Pence is removed, the chance of the embattled Ryan still being there to take his place looks like a shaky premise right now.  After all, the Trump administration is trying very, very hard to throw him under the bus and even had the gall to demand he resign as Speaker of the House.  Also, he’s implicated in the Russiagate thing.

But what if he becomes President?  This: nothing.  He’s about as popular as anthrax, even among his own party, and is ineffective to boot.  The only guarantee with Ryan as president is a landslide for the Democrats in the Congressional elections of 2018.  And after that he’ll be paralyzed and unable to do anything, not that he does much anyway.

All that said, let’s get back back to Trump’s Tweetstorm going on tonight.  It’s earlier than usual (it’s only halfway through the evening as I write), and on a Monday (somehow I tend to believe that most of his Tweetstorms happen later in the week).  What’s this about?  Nunes canceled the House Intelligence Committee’s meeting, which was supposed to have been this afternoon.  Can’t be that.  Might be the Senate Intelligence Committee’s meeting on Thursday.  That could mean a long week of Tweetstorms ahead.

It also could mean some major shit is going to hit the fan before Thursday, and Trump knows about it and is nervously trying to deflect.  Never mind that one of his lapdogs has been disgraced, and he’s publicly shamed Ryan, so that’s two down among his sworn secret-keepers.  He probably hasn’t factored that in, anyway; he’s too dumb.  And you’d think it would occur to him at some point that the reaction of an innocent man would be to swear to get to the bottom of this supposed hoax (Russiagate), or to carry on quietly and with dignity (knowing the truth will come out), rather than Tweet like mad to try to deflect interest elsewhere, but no…again, he’s too dumb.

No, something caused this Tweetstorm that hit too close to the truth for him to stay quiet.  I can’t wait to find out what it is.

Filed under: bricks shy of a load, caffeinated squirrels, cry wolf, loose nuts, loose screws, lost marbles, porch lights out, Trump, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Comments Off on The department of scaredy-cat

Making sense of nonsense

Posted on March 26, 2017 by theworstat

Here’s a great analysis of how Trump managed to back himself into this corner and take the rest of us with him.  That he’s a flimflam man is something almost no one — except about 20% of the U.S. population — doubts, and it still baffles me why even that many people can’t see through him.

But the article in the following link doesn’t address that.  What it does is offer a unified theory of why Trump has done what he has done, and it all comes down to just one thing: bottomless greed, greed so fathomless that it drove him to deal with loan sharks since his only other major feature is that he has no talent for anything at all and must keep borrowing (and going bankrupt) to survive.  The author of this piece feels that this has led him to become a walking money-laundering machine for Russian oligarchs, which is how we ended up where we are today — with him as president, ultimately failing.

The Kremlin’s Man

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The Fake News Wars

Posted on March 25, 2017 by theworstat

I’m in a lot of anti-Trump Facebook groups.  A lot of them.  And something I’ve noticed recently is people who, without bothering to research, shout “fake news!” when someone posts a news or opinion article to one of those groups.

It’s been happening quite a bit lately.  I even had it happen when I posted an article from a House member’s Capitol Hill site, and the guy who made the accusation would not back down.  Not only that, he used the juvenile and snarky, “I’m sorry, but this is fake,” which with me is like waving a red flag in front of the proverbial bull.

Luckily for him the group moderator stepped in and backed me up (otherwise it would have ended badly) and someone else took the liberty of saying the “fake news” claimer was “FOS.”  Sorry, but that’s true.

The point is, don’t claim “fake news” without doing your own research first.  It doesn’t make you look smart, discerning, or well-informed.  And don’t confuse news sites with opinion sites, hard as that may be in the era or MSNBC and Fox News.

While right-wing groups thrive on fake news and exist only because of it, among middle and left-leaning groups, posting fake news has become something of a minor felony.  It’s a very serious charge. Someone tried to soothe my ruffled feathers by saying that shouting “fake news” has become a game for some just to get a reaction, but to me that’s like shouting “fire” in a crowded theater (which is illegal).

Plus it’s bullying, not discourse.  To put it simply, it’s something trolls do.

Anyway with that in mind, I’d like to post a short list of often-cited “news” sites that do post fake news, or at least misleading and inflammatory headlines.  The first four are my additions to the list provided by Wikipedia, and then there’s a link to the Wikipedia article and (4/27 addition) yet another unbiased list of sites I just found.

learn progress
realtimepolitics
bipartisanreport
progresstribune
Wikipedia list of fake news sites

another list of fake/misleading/satirical sites I found recently

Another thing that you may want to watch out for is any news article posted by someone with an unlikely-sounding name (you know, like “Mortimer Guessalov” or “”Fatima McHenry,” or something like that), and if on Facebook, if their profile is filled with nothing but stock photos (and they appear to have almost literally been born yesterday in FB terms).  You might also look at the URL of the “news” they are offering to see if the URL reads something like, “mybackyardpool.com.”  It’s almost a dead giveaway that both the article and the “person” who posted it are fake, and if you click on that site, someone may be gathering info on you.

(BTW, almost any URL that includes “lo” is a satire site.  That is to say, by definition the articles they publish are not true, but make fun of the truth.  An amazing number of people seem to be unable to distinguish between satire and actual news these days — almost as many as can’t distinguish between fake news and real news, or real news and commentary.  Do not be one of them.)

Also, these bots/trolls often post articles with inflammatory headlines, from never-before-heard-of sites, without commenting…or with a brief pro-Trump comment or something else equally weird if you’re in an anti-Trump group.

In addition, watch out for any article that has a headline written in all caps or that includes exclamation points.  If you click on a tantalizing headline and find out that the article underneath has little or nothing to do with it, that’s another red flag.  Realtimepolitics and bipartisanreport are often guilty of that, and especially for bipartisanreport, which actually does contain good info once in a while, it cuts into their credibility.  (I have never seen anything worthwhile in realtimepolitics, Learn Progress, or progresstribune.)

Before anyone snarks that this blog is itself “fake news,” please read the disclaimer page at the top of the screen (“How this blog got here, and a word to the wise”).  I’ve never claimed this is a news site.  What’s written here is just my understanding of what’s going on.  If I may pat myself on the back, I sometimes latch on to minutia just a bit before it becomes national news.  But no, I do not have my own private sources, nor do I seek them out.  My sources are like yours: national news, and some opinion blogs.

That said, the role of this blog in the foreseeable future will be to become a sort of one-stop shop for those overwhelmed by Russiagate news and related matters.  I’ll try my damnedest to pull it all together for you into a coherent story.  But I’m not guaranteeing anything, because this story is anything but coherent.

Filed under: bricks shy of a load, caffeinated squirrels, cry wolf, Trump, wingnuts | Tagged: , , | Comments Off on The Fake News Wars

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