Bill Maher Gatekeeping and Permitted Discourse Productions Promoting Transitive Victimization

vice |  I used to be close to 300 pounds, so a lot of what you wrote hurt to read—it took me back to a time when I wasn't fitting in airplane seats. Reading your book really made me think back to that girl and how I still end up being her, even after losing weight.Exactly. After writing this book, I realized that I want to change my body, but not in the way that you would think. I started seeing a dietician. We don't even talk about food. We talk about behaviors around food. On the first day, she was asking me about the traumas in my life. And I started to list them: "Well, I was assaulted." And then I thought about it longer and said: "Well, being fat." I just started crying because I realized, "Oh God, this is a thing that is never going to leave me." It's not about self-loathing at all. It's because of societal loathing and the ways in which people talk about our bodies and frame our bodies. I just realized that it is a trauma—and that shows how pervasive fatphobia is.

Yep.

I've told my parents many times that I'm as over being raped as I'll ever be. It's 30 years later. It's not fine, but I've dealt with it. I've gone to therapy, I have worked through those issues. But I don't know if I'll ever overcome the ways in which I was treated for daring to be fat. Honestly, I think it's one of those final frontiers of discrimination. People feel very comfortable being cruel to fat people and talking shit about fat people. Very fucking comfortable.

They think, I'm at work, I'll just fire off a tweet at some woman about how fat she is. It's hard, I think, particularly for men, to handle a woman who can't easily be made into a sexual object.

Exactly. They don't know what to do. They lose their fucking minds. They get confused. "Wait, I'm not getting a boner from you? What are you doing on this planet? You don't belong here! Get out of here!"

"The implication is that if you have a body that doesn't fit, fix your body because they're not going to fix the chair."

This sort of goes back to the idea in your book about being seen as genderless because of your weight.Being fat means you aren't desirable. So as a woman, you are basically degendered. People also often read fat bodies as male. I was just in Australia and almost every person there called me "sir." And it really drives me crazy because I have huge boobs and they are incredible. So it's like, "Come on. What are you fucking talking about?"

One part of the book that really broke my heart was hearing about the planning that you do when you visit different cities to make sure a restaurant has chairs that will accommodate you. This idea that you couldn't just show up somewhere made me so fucking mad for some reason.Well, it's either prepare or be humiliated. And I have learned to prepare. The world is not accommodating. I spend a lot my time in LA these days. All the chairs are tiny and super modern and sleek. And that's cute but my ass is not going to fit on those chairs for two hours. When a chair designer is creating a chair, they're creating it for one type of body. And it's not my kind of body. The implication is that if you have a body that doesn't fit, fix your body because they're not going to fix the chair.

By the end of the book, you emerge as this fierce being—open, raw, defiant in book and body. Did you feel that way while writing it?Partly I did. Partly I was like this is the book of no fucks given. I was terrified to write the book, but when I got to certain places, I was like, "You know what? I'm going to let it all fucking hang out."

One thing that was so interesting about this book is that you don't wrap it up in a neat bow. You don't end it with a declaration of diet or anything like that.That's exactly why I wrote the book. There is no easy answer for our bodies. There is no closure.

Southern Baptist Convention and the Alt-Right

WaPo |  The initial text of the resolution called on Southern Baptists to “reject the retrograde ideologies, xenophobic biases, and racial bigotries of the so-called ‘Alt-Right’ that seek to subvert our government, destabilize society, and infect our political system,” which was removed in the final version.

The new text of the resolution noted some of the convention’s previous actions on race, including how Southern Baptists voted in 1995 to apologize for the role that slavery played in the convention’s creation. It noted how in 2012 it elected its first black president. More than 20 percent of Southern Baptist congregations, it says, identifies as predominantly nonwhite.

“Racism and white supremacy are, sadly, not extinct but present all over the world in various white supremacist movements, sometimes known as ‘white nationalism’ or ‘alt-right,’ ” the resolution states. Southern Baptists “decry every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy, as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ” and “we denounce and repudiate white supremacy and every form of racial and ethnic hatred as of the devil.”

Moore and Steve Gaines, the president of the SBC, who worked on the revised resolution, declined to comment on the resolution before it came to a vote. But Moore said he was encouraged by the decision to revisit the resolution. “They recognize that white supremacy in this alt-right guise is dangerous and devilish and we need to say something,” Moore said.

McKissic, who wrote the original resolution, declined to speculate over why the committee didn’t bring his proposal forward. He said black Southern Baptists were disappointed by how it was handled, but it became clear on Tuesday that a large number of white Southern Baptists wanted to vote on the resolution.

“I don’t think they anticipated how white people would get upset about this and demand something be done,” McKissic said. “I’m encouraged and heartened by this. It was the white people who said, no we will not take this sitting down. We don’t want this association with the convention.”

Just before the proposal was passed, one member asked Southern Baptist leaders whether a study of the “alt right and the alt left” could be done this year. But then several Southern Baptists stood before the convention urging the convention to adopt the resolution before it passed.

The Southern Baptist Convention has a long and complicated history on race, one that has recently gotten wrapped up in many Southern Baptists’ support for Trump. Some of the committee members are affiliated with National Religious Broadcasters and First Baptist Church in Dallas, institutions that are seen as friendly to Trump. The committee considering resolutions has 10 members, one of whom is black.

Tom Cotton Destroys The Lying Absurdity That Kamala Harris Embodies

The 4th Branch Goes to War On Alex Jones and Infowars

WaPo |  The signs about Megyn Kelly’s one-on-one NBC interview with the despicable conspiracy theorist Alex Jones have been bad from the start.

First, there was their flirtatious pre-interview banter when Kelly visited Jones’s studio in Austin recently. Jones, on camera, asks Kelly when she is going to interview President Trump, and when she answers that she would use her Jones interview “as a lure,” Jones asks whether she would sit in the president’s lap.

Then there was the teaser for Kelly’s Jones interview that aired Sunday in which Kelly mildly reproves Jones, saying “that’s a dodge” when he utterly avoids her question about calling the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre of six adults and 20 children schoolchildren a hoax orchestrated by gun-control advocates. Nothing about this suggests that she held his feet to the fire.

How To Write Propaganda For The New York Times

nakedcapitalism |  This past Thursday the New York Times vomited up a hit piece on little ol’ me – a guy who has been doing stand-up comedy for nearly 20 years and thought maybe that comedy could be used to inform and inspire audiences, rather than just make fun of the differences between men and women.

At first when you’re the center of a smear job, you’re annoyed and frustrated. But as I read further through the piece, I realized it was a master class in how to write propaganda for one of the most “respected” news outlets in our country. I’m actually grateful it was written about me because now I can see with my own eyes exactly how the glorious chicanery is done. I count no less than 15 lies, manipulations, and false implications in this short article, a score that even our fearless prevaricator-in-chief Donald Trump would envy.

So here now is a “How To” for writing propaganda for the New York Times – using the smear piece against me as an example.

Aside From Hacking, What Other Recourse Do We Have to Access Our Government?

CounterPunch |  To sum up: The Founders were wisely concerned about the potential dangers of factions and partisanship and were aware of how previous democracies had failed. They believed that  a representative form of government would obviate the unavoidable tendencies toward partisanship and the ills to which it could lead.

Their concerns were justified. Their solution has been an utter failure! 

The very worst version of the Founders’ fear has been realized. The faction we know as the 1 percent, with the help of the Republican and Democrat partisans, currently administers government policies “adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community”, to put it lightly!

Since these partisans are responsible for our current dreadful circumstances, just as the Founders warned, how can we possibly rely upon them to correct the situation?

The representative government that was supposed to protect us from the evils of factions and partisans has collapsed. It has been subverted by the very elected representative body that the Constitution created for our protection!

Today, our two party form of government resembles a baseball game where the players of both teams are also the umpires. Having nullified voters, the parties have no independent check on their behavior or performance. Imagine that the two baseball  teams have the same owner who chooses  their players with no input from the fans (unlike the All Star game, where fans get to vote for the starting lineups). Having a common owner, all ticket sales go into the same pocket, so it doesn’t matter who wins. One nominal team must “lose”, but, still, everybody wins. So it is with the Dems and Repubs. Election wins and losses are not important, because the owners always win. Different in name only, they have no competition and are secure in their shared power. Backed by incredible corporate and private wealth, they believe they have no worries. And as long as their adversarial charade continues to fool and divide a substantial portion of the public, they do not.

We voters have effectively lost all control of our government. Our votes are managed, manipulated, gerrymandered, hacked and thrown in the trash. Our representatives avoid, disregard and disrespect us. They lie to and deceive us. They either openly show disdain , or they only pretend to be working for us. Our representative body is giving us the middle finger. What other recourse do we have to access government in our own country?

The Fix Is In - Mueller Hired To Take Down Trump

smirkingchimp |  “The Democrats are not fighting Trump over his assault on health care, his attacks on immigrants, his militaristic bullying around the world, or even his status as a minority president who can claim no mandate after losing the popular vote. Instead, they have chosen to attack Trump, the most right-wing president in US history, from the right, denouncing him as insufficiently committed to a military confrontation with Russia.”
— Patrick Martin, “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming”, World Socialist Web Site

Donald Trump is not the target of an FBI investigation.

Donald Trump has never been the target of an FBI investigation.

The FBI is not investigating Trump for collusion, improper relations with a foreign government, treason or any of the other ridiculous things he’s been falsely accused of in the fake media. In fact, the FBI is not investigating him at all.

We do not indict or impeach people for being boorish or clueless … or simply being Donald Trump.” (“James Comey’s testimony doesn’t make the case for impeachment or obstruction against Donald Trump”, USA Today)

The fact that the obstruction charge won’t stick is not going to stop Mueller from rummaging around and making Trump’s life a living Hell. Heck no. He’s going to dig through his old phone records, bank accounts, tax returns, shaky land deals, ex girl friends, whatever it takes. His prosecutorial tentacles will extend into every nook and cranny of Trump’s private life and affairs until he latches onto some particularly sordid incident or transaction he can use he can use to disgrace, discredit, and demonize Trump to the point that impeachment proceedings seem like a welcome relief. It should be obvious by now, that the deep state elites who launched this coup are not going to be satisfied until Trump is forced from office and the results of the 2016 presidential election are wiped out.

But, why? Why is Trump so hated by these people?

Trump is not being attacked because of his reactionary political agenda, but because he’s been deemed insufficiently hostile to Washington’s sworn enemy, Russia. It’s all about Russia. Trump wanted to “normalize” relations with Moscow which pitted him against the powerful US foreign policy establishment. Now Trump has to be taught a lesson. He must be crushed, humiliated and exiled. And that’s probably the way this will end.

You May Not Know It But This Man's a Spy - An Undercover Agent For the FBI...,

NationalReview | Jeff Sessions looked at the morning newspapers. Both the Times and the Post had the story. He turned on Morning Joe just in time to hear Mika Brzezinski speculate that his career as attorney general may be over.

 “Ну, дерьмо,” he sighed, as he pulled down the bottom of his cashmere sweater vest to eliminate any unwanted creases. He then calmly walked to his private Senate office and pulled a painting of some ducks and spaniels off the wall. He paused to look at the scene, as if for the first time. “Ridiculous, Americans,” he muttered to himself. “Bears. Men hunt medvedi,” he said, letting himself enjoy speaking Russian after all of these years.

EUTimes |  Need we remind each and every single one of you Demonrat schizophrenics that Jeff Sessions was a US SENATOR up until only a few days ago? He was not part of the Trump campaign. If the Demonrats manage to destroy Sessions as they did with Flynn then there will simply be no hope left.

Now top House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi demands US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions resign for “lying under oath” during his confirmation hearings. Sessions’ spokeswoman said he was speaking of Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, not of his own activities. Ohh yeah everybody is a Russian spy according to those schizophrenics.

“Jeff Sessions lied under oath during his confirmation hearing before the Senate. Under penalty of perjury, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee, ‘I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.’ We now know that statement is false,” mentally ill demonrat Pelosi wrote.

Unnamed Justice Department officials told the Washington Post on Wednesday that Sessions spoke to Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak twice last year, which would contradict statements Sessions made as US senator during Senate hearings for his confirmation to the Attorney General post.

"Comedians" Gatekeep and Control Low Attention/Information Political Discourse

slate |  But things really went off the rails in this exchange, when Stone tried very hard not to answer a yes or no question with “yes” or “no.”

Colbert: Do you like Vladimir Putin? After spending twenty hours with the guy, do you trust him?

Stone: I think you should see the film for yourself.

Colbert: I’m just asking you a question. Do you trust him after spending twenty hours with him? I’d like to see the film, I haven’t had a chance to see it yet.

Stone: He’s a head of state, he has Russian—he has his own interests in Russia. I respect him for that, I understand why he’s doing it. He’s a strong nationalist…

By the time Stone got to his monologue about how Putin refused to badmouth anyone despite being “insulted and abused,” the audience was audibly scoffing, and Colbert wasn’t above feeding off the mood of the crowd. “Anything about him negative you found?” he asked as a follow-up, to laughter and applause. “Anything? Anything? Or does he have your dog in a cage somewhere?” The final straw came when Stone suggested that Russia was a convenient scapegoat for people who didn’t like Trump. Colbert interrupted him, dropped the “some people say” pose, and spoke for himself:

Colbert: I don’t understand why our president will never say anything negative about Vladimir Putin, given that Putin is an oppressive leader of his country who suppresses the free press and arrests his enemies—that is not something that I as an American or a member of the press can respect. And I’m surprised that you do respect that.

Stone: Well, you know I’ve always been for free speech.

Colbert: Yes, and it doesn’t seem like he would be a hero of that.

Stone: Listen, no question he’s a social conservative in that way, he believes that [Audience laughter] I don’t know why you’re laughing, but it’s—he believes strongly that—

Colbert: Because it seems like a mild description of his behavior. That’s why they’re laughing.

It’s brutal. Stone does make one good point, which is that it’s ridiculous to talk about a four-hour film based on a few clips, or even two hours. “What I said is in this four-hour documentary,” he told Colbert. “I think that if you watch it patiently, you’ll see that it’s developed, it’s a film, it has a flow from 2000 all the way to 2017—we went back after the election to talk to him seriously about the election.” He also specifically mentions the pressing Putin harder in the fourth episode. It’s possible that Stone established a base of trust with Putin before hitting him with harder questions—in fact, that’s exactly what Colbert did with his ramble about how great it was to talk philosophy with “an Oliver Stone” before asking him if he’d conducted “a fawning interview with a brutal dictator.”

Oliver Stone Interviews Vladimir Putin: Accept No Substitutes

cbsnews |  Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone is known for such films as "Born on the Fourth of July," "Platoon," "Wall Street" and "JFK." He also wrote the screenplays for "Midnight Express" and "Scarface." Over his career he has also interviewed controversial figures like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

For his latest documentary, the Showtime series "The Putin Interviews," Stone was granted extensive access to the Russian president. Stone interviewed Putin more than a dozen times over two years. No topic was off limits. 

In one conversation from February 2016, Stone asked Putin about the candidates in the United States' presidential election:

Stone: "You do realize how powerful your answer could be; if you said subtly that you preferred X candidate, he would go like that [indicates nosedive] tomorrow, and if you said you didn't like Trump or something, right, what would happen? He would win. You have that amount of power in the U.S."

Putin: "Unlike many partners of ours, we never interfere within the domestic affairs of other countries. That is one of the principles we stick to in our work."

On "CBS This Morning" Monday, Stone said he first got to know Putin during production of his film about Edward Snowden, released in 2016, for which he interviewed the former NSA analyst in Moscow nine times. Stone also asked Putin about the Snowden affair and his point of view on it, "and one thing led to another."

Stone said he was invited by Putin to conduct the interviews. 

"I think he needed to be heard fairly because I'm not going to be an editor; I'm going to let him speak," Stone said. "And his point of view is not heard; you don't hear him in Russian in the West; you hear a dubbed voice, and sometimes a dubbed voice can be very harsh."

The four-part documentary series debuts on Showtime June 12.

Why Did the 4th Branch NBC Distort or Omit Putin's Responses to Megyn Kelly?

Russia-Insider |  Dear NBC News Team,

Congratulations! You have graduated from fake news to falsified news, arriving at a journalistic level that is identical to that in the Soviet Union in its heyday.

A couple of days ago, the political talk show moderated by Vladimir Soloviev on state television channel Rossiya 1 broadcast two versions of a segment from Megyn Kelly's interview with Vladimir Putin last Friday in the St Petersburg on the sidelines of the International Economic Forum.  One was the complete, uncut version that was aired on RT. The other was the cut-to-shreds version that you put on air for the American audience. 

The segment was Megyn Kelly's aggressive question to Putin, asking his response to what she said was Americans' understanding of his government, namely one that murders journalists, suppresses political opposition, is rife with corruption, etc., etc.  In the NBC version, Putin's answer has been cut to one empty introductory statement that "Russia is on its way to becoming a democracy" bracketed by an equally empty closing sentence.  In the full, uncut version , Putin responds to Kelly's allegations point by point and then turns the question around asking what right the USA and the West have to question Russia's record when they have been actively doing much worse than what was in Kelly's charges. He asks where is Occupy Wall Street today, why US and European police use billy clubs and tear gas to break up demonstrations, when Russian police do nothing of the sort, and so on.

Media's Ridiculous, Evidence-Free Claims Against Trump, Putin, Syria, et al...,

unz |  Disinformation and lies have been used to justify the wars on Syria that started in 2011.[1] But lately I’ve been amazed at the extent to which our entire public discourse now rests on disinformation and lies. This is a broader problem, but it also affects the prospects for peace in Syria, one of several places where U.S./NATO activities heighten the risk of nuclear war.[2]

I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed by it all lately, capped (most recently) by the third U.S. attack on Syria. As I put that together with President Trump’s giving the military free rein over “tactics,” it sank in that, with this delegation of authority, war-making power has now devolved from the Congress through the President to the military itself, in areas where not only Syrians but Russians, Iranians and others operate.

In the apparent absence of an organized peace movement, the concentration of so many people on opposing Trump, rather than on opposing U.S. wars, distracts attention from this problem. Otherwise under fire from all directions, Mr. Trump gets approval – across the spectrum – when he does something awful but military, like launching cruise missiles at Syria or dropping that horrific bomb in Afghanistan. Meanwhile his attempt to reset U.S. relations and reduce tension with Russia is being used to lay the groundwork for impeachment and/or charges of treason.

The lies about Syria have of course continued. First, Amnesty International issued “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison Syria,” claiming that the Syrian government executed between 5,000 and 13,000 people over a five-year period. Then another chemical weapons incident, blamed without evidence on the government, was used as the excuse for a second U.S. attack on Syria. Both of these charges were widely and uncritically reported in the major media, though neither of them is credible.[3]

But the use of disinformation has been expanded in what I now see as an attempt to destabilize the U.S. government itself, to achieve “regime change” at home as it has been practiced in many foreign countries over the last 70 years.[4] It started right after the election with the attacks on General Mike Flynn. And as it has continued, the campaign to demonize Russia and Russian president Vladimir Putin has also intensified.

Bottom line: It seems clear there is no evidence, let alone proof, that computers at the DNC were hacked at all, let alone by Russia, or that Russia tried in any way to “meddle” in the U.S. election. It has thus far made no difference that, soon after the charge of Russian interference in the last election was first made, an organization of intelligence veterans who have the expertise to know pointed out that U.S. intelligence has the capability of presenting hard evidence of any such hacking and had not done so (and, I would add, still hasn’t). Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity stated bluntly: “We have gone through the various claims about hacking. For us, it is child’s play to dismiss them. The email disclosures in question are the result of a leak, not a hack.” They then explained the difference between leaking and hacking.[5]

Counterpunch |  Vladimir Putin and Megyn Kelly had a far more interesting exchange about Syria and sarin gas at the St. Petersburg forum. NBC did not include this in the 11 minutes that aired Sunday, but RT America filmed and posted it to YouTube. In this one, Kelly echoed former UN Ambassador Samantha Power, NPR commentator Scott Simon, and other American politicians  and pundits who have characterized Bashar-al-Assad as “evil.” She noted that even his alleged co-conspirator Donald Trump called Assad an “evil guy,” as he did after the alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian army.

“Our president has said that you’re backing an evil guy there. He said Assad is an evil guy. Do you believe that?”

Putin dismissed the silly question about “evil” with a comic response, then responded that Russia is not defending Assad; it is defending the Syrian state from the fate of Libya, Somalia, and Afghanistan.

What Else Would The Former Director of America's Snitching and Extorting Agency the FBI Do?

iBankCoin |  Former CIA Director under Bill Clinton, James Woolsey, is ‘stunned’ that former FBI Directors, James Comey leaked notes of private conversations with the President of the United States to his friend and then the press.

The CNN host, Fareed Zakaria, attempted to advocate on Comey’s behalf, suggesting that since Comey was a ‘private citizen’ he had the right to leak his notes. Woolsey was having none of that horseshit and said it was ‘stunning’ that ‘he would give up the secrecy of a conversation with the President of the United States.’

In the land of snitches, everyone is a leaker.

The Total Eclipse of the American Deep State?

stockboardasset  |  Since President Donald Trump’s stunning victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, much of the press have made note of Steve Bannon’s interest in an influential book published in 1997 called, “The Fourth Turning: What Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous With Destiny.”

In this book, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe make the argument that our ideas about the nature of history, linear time, and progress are illusory, and that if we want a more accurate concept about the way that history unfolds, we would do well to study the ancient Greek concept of cyclical time. This concept views national and global historical phenomenon not as randomly occurring events, or the linear march of historical “progress,” but instead sees them as recurring archetypes placed into a larger tapestry of a greater repeating historical cycle.

According to Strauss and Howe, the relative geographic and historical isolation of the United States provides a unique opportunity to view this cycle unfolding regularly and predictably every 80 years.

This 80-year cycle can be divided into four stages or seasons, each lasting approximately twenty years:

1. High– This initial stage occurs immediately following a period of crisis. The High is characterized by strong institutions, a sense of collective destiny, and a weakness of individuality. The most recent example of this would be the period of prosperity and conformity in the U.S. immediately following the conclusion of World War II.
2. Awakening- The second stage, or turning, is a period of questioning established values and asserting one’s independence from established norms and morals, be they spiritual or political. This stage may be seen as a rebellion of the previous era’s emphasis on material wealth and conformity. The 1960’s, with the psychedelic revolution, anti-war protests, Civil Rights marches, and New Age spiritual movements can be seen as recent characteristics of this second stage, as well as Reaganomics and the mid-1980s Wall Street ethos.
3. Unraveling- The emphasis on autonomy and the questioning of spiritual, political, and individual authority in the Awakening stage eventually destabilizes society, leading to the Third Turning, in which institutions are weak and untrusted while the subjective experience of the individual is emphasized. This stage can be thought of as the inverse of the initial High stage, where collective destiny is replaced by atomization. Recent symptom of this stage would be the culture wars, corporate malfeasance, a lack of faith in government, social justice movements, and political correctness.
4. Crisis- In the Fourth Turning, a destabilizing event, usually involving warfare, leads to the destruction and reconstruction of institutions of power. In the face of destruction, Americans are forced to unite and forge a vision to restructure a disrupted society. This fourth stage can be seen as the inverse of the Awakening stage, and the authors cite World War II as the defining event of the most recent period of Crisis.

Strauss and Howe predicted that the next Crisis period that the U.S. would face would happen sometime around 2005 and end around 2025. Anyone who has been paying attention over the last decade would have a difficult time refuting this. The financial crisis of 2008 threw the planet into discord, and we are now just beginning to see some of the political ramifications of this. We may be reaching the apex of this crisis this summer, or at least we will witness a significant acceleration of it.

The institutions that once defined American stability are rapidly crumbling. Mounting debt, unsustainable consumerism, and illegal immigration are chipping away at once sturdy foundation of America.

And the robust civil discourse needed to solve these problems has been interrupted by advocates of social justice, sometimes violently. Recent small skirmishes between the two sides may be headed toward larger eruptions.

Not Upright Intrepid Crime Solvers - FBI Built On Snitching and Extortion

globalintelhub |  For those who are not drooling on their lazy-boy high on Prozac and Lays (both strong brands) know that the world is not as seen on TV.  But even in TV, on shows such as “White Collar” – the strange relationship between the ‘police’ and the ‘bandits’ can be seen and understood.  The differences in many cases between a career Special Agent and cat burglar can be thin circumstantial nuances; and they often ‘flip’ sides, most notably in the case we all know about Frank Abagnale, now a successful security and fraud consultant, working with the FBI to detect serious financial fraud.  Let’s take a step back for a moment; the “FBI” hires mostly accountants, and they pursue a number of crimes but most notably financial fraud.  They serve as the police for the CFTC, the SEC, for extreme enforcement actions, as well as investigating a number of issues – from their website:

Our Priorities
Protect the United States from terrorist attack
Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage
Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes
Combat public corruption at all levels
Protect civil rights
Combat transnational/national criminal organizations and enterprises
Combat major white-collar crime
Combat significant violent crime
Our People & Leadership
The FBI employs 35,000 people, including special agents and support professionals such as intelligence analysts, language specialists, scientists, and information technology specialists. Learn how you can join us at FBIJobs.gov. For details on our executives and organizational structure, see our Leadership & Structure webpage.

What should stick out to readers in an environment where a potentially politicized and corrupt FBI (at least, the leadership) is the “Combat public corruption at all levels” – and going back to the age old regulatory paradox, ‘who watches the watchers’ let’s take a look at the old dog who made the FBI what it is today; J. Edgar Hoover.

In case you have not, and are interested in this topic, take a weekend and read this must read book about the FBI: J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets – why bother reading about a figure who is long gone and has no surviving heirs?  Because in order to understand where we are today, with the situation with the FBI and Trump, we need to understand where we came from.  Certainly the FBI has transformed since 1972; however the power, scope, size, methods, political leanings, and other elements of the FBI still remain as established by Hoover.

Let’s dismantle some of the false images many have about the FBI.  The FBI doesn’t ‘solve crimes’ as on popular TV shows like “CSI” – although they do have excellent forensics labs, this rarely (but sometimes) leads to a conviction.  Primarily, the FBI relies on informants, “Confidential Informants” (CIs), tips, and ‘turning’ – a technique popularized by Hoover and used to this day.  Global Intel Hub interviewed several anonymous sources to confirm this information.  Here’s how it works.  The FBI will arrest a petty low level criminal and get him to ‘turn’ on his boss; they will threaten him with life in prison, maybe poke his eyes a little or something, and get him to become a witness in court.  Also they will want a full blueprint of the organization – and in exchange they will get into the Witness Protection Program – yes this program really exists and there are literally thousands of people in this program:

Ice Cube Calls Out Bill Maher's Gatekeeping and Line-Crossing (Not The First Time)

Mandingo Rebellions Need Grass Roots Support

thenation |  The truth is ugly as sin. The NFL is denying Colin Kaepernick employment not because he isn’t “good enough” but because he is being shut out for the crime of using his platform to protest the killing of black kids by police. This makes the league’s right-wing billionaire owners’ silk boxers bunch up. 

NFL owners don’t make pariahs out of players who beat women or face accusations of murder. As dutifully printed and tweeted without commentary by Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, New York Giants owner John Mara said that he had received “letters” (letters that no one at Sports Illustrated has seen) showing that fan reaction makes signing Kaepernick impossible. He said this a year after he signed his kicker Josh Brown to a multiyear deal despite seeing detailed and horrific reports about how Brown beat his wife, but Kaepernick’s taking a knee during the anthem was a bridge too far. 

Kaepernick’s pariah status is about sending a shot across the bow at every political athlete—particularly black athletes—that they better toe the line. The owners are again sending the message—just like when they tried to “influence” research on the effects of brain injuries in the sport—that the lives of players simply do not matter to the National Football League. 

The big mystery is whether what is happening is an old-school “blackballing” or if this is a conscious and coordinated campaign. Former NFL player Eric Davis implied strongly that he thought that the NFL had contacted the Seahawks and told them not to sign Kaepernick. If this turns out to be true, we are no longer in the realm of blackballing. We are talking about collusion. That could mean lawsuits. Not just ordinary lawsuits, but nine-figure lawsuits. Major League Baseball had to pay out $280 million in 1990, when it was found guilty of collusion, and anytime you’re dealing with the closed market of professional sports leagues, with their myriad antitrust provisions, collusion penalties can cost a fortune. 

But I don’t think that Colin Kaepernick is going to go the litigation route. At least not now. He loves this sport and he wants to play. Only two questions remain: Will he get signed by a team when a quarterback inevitably goes down to injury, and will his name, until he’s on a roster, become synonymous with the silencing of the political athlete?

Is Brer Rabbit Whitlock Caping Up For Kaepernick or Jerry Jones, or Both?

.@WhitlockJason explains why the Cowboys are the perfect landing spot for Colin Kaepernick pic.twitter.com/exj1qAAbUx

— Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) June 9, 2017

dallasnews |  Whitlock, on the Herd with Colin Cowherd Friday, said Kaepernick is a good fit, "As far as someone on the roster who can back up Dak Prescott, who can play behind that offensive line that provides plenty of protection, who would be playing for the perfect owner, the guy whose brand has been about second chances for athletes." 

Whitlock said Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is the perfect guy to give Kaepernick a second chance. 

"Whether you like him or not -- and he's the poster boy for all these alleged conservative bigoted NFL owners who voted for Trump and hate black people -- yeah, Jerry Jones, he's that guy," 

Whitlock said. "The guy that gave Greg Hardy a second chance. The guy that stood by Michael Irvin during his playing career and after his playing career and has helped Michael Irvin become a better person and someone who has been able to take care of his family and friends. Jerry Jones the conservative alleged bigot has been tremendous with black athletes. The social justice warrior class won't tell you these things because they're lying to you. That all these NFL owners, they're just so out of control with their bigotry and they hate these black quarterbacks.

Did Colin Kaepernick's Protest Fail?

theatlantic |  Colin Kaepernick won’t stand for the national anthem because of what he sees as systemic racism in American society. But in the days that followed the San Francisco 49ers quarterback’s protest, the national debate hasn’t been about his motivation for sitting, but the method of sitting.

Critics have called his actions unpatriotic and disrespectful. Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has even chimed in, saying Kaepernick “should find a country that works better for him.”

The wide array of criticism not only comes from political figures (Hillary Clinton hasn’t addressed the incident, while White House officials called his perspective “objectionable”), he’s also facing pushback from his own colleagues in the NFL.

Players have been widely quoted as saying they disagree with what they say is disrespect toward the American flag. Drew Brees, the New Orleans Saints quarterback, said Kaepernick “can speak out about a very important issue,” but it shouldn’t “involve being disrespectful to the American flag.” He told ESPN on Monday:

Like, it’s an oxymoron that you’re sitting down, disrespecting that flag that has given you the freedom to speak out.

What if Jackie Robinson had sat during the national anthem during the 1947 World Series, as the baseball great wished he had 25 years later, knowing “that I am a black man in a white world?”

But if the discussion, for the most part, centers on whether sitting for the national anthem is an appropriate means of protest, did Kaepernick fail? He sat because of what he perceives is racial injustice and police brutality in the United States. That’s not what his colleagues or politicians or even the media are talking about four days after the incident.

Or did others fail in this debate? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA legend and activist, wrote in The Washington Post:

What should horrify Americans is not Kaepernick’s choice to remain seated during the national anthem, but that nearly 50 years after [Muhammad] Ali was banned from boxing for his stance and Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s raised fists caused public ostracization and numerous death threats, we still need to call attention to the same racial inequities. Failure to fix this problem is what’s really un-American here.

Kaepernick sat for the national anthem to spark a debate on racial injustice, but he sparked a debate about how we should protest in this country.

The Cathedral Bought All The Bass In Black Political Voices

Now, I been saying this for a minute. 

From Black Power to Black Studies

How the Ford Foundation Created Multiculturalism

Educating Americans in the Subtle Art of Imperial Domination

How Corporate Power Converted Wealth Into Philanthropy for Social Control

Once seen, the nature of this usurpation cannot be unseen. Black DOS (descendants of slaves) had a singularly potent claim under law against the American government. Some would argue the 2nd amendment to the Constitution, for sure the 14th amendment to the Constitution, Brown vs. Board, Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing Act - are all signifiers of precisely how potent a claim that we Black DOS have had and continue to have - if we properly assert and actively resist efforts to denature our specific priority as claimants with unique standing under law to pursue our claims.

Intersectionality, beginning with;

1. The replacement negroe program under which 70 million immigrants have been brought into America to denature our hard fought political-economic standing
2. The cognitive infiltration of feminism into black politics  which saw white women overwhelmingly supplanting Black DOS as the overwhelming beneficiaries of affirmative action intended principally as an economic redress for legally ostracized Black descendants of slaves (Shockley and the 70's eugenics revival was a concrete specific political backlash against affirmative action) 
3. All the way up to gay marriage and transgender bathrooms 

is the bane and singularly potent antidote for the dilution of our singular legal claims.

Under the Cathedral and its permitted discourse insistence upon "intersectionality" - everybody and their cousin has a more "legitimate" and substantive political economic claim against the American government than Black DOS. Despite the indisputable fact that we comprise an exclusive historical phenomenon driving the evolution of citizen rights in the U.S., we find ourselves profoundly and paradoxically Left Behind the curve of the hard won gains we have made under law, but which we have lost in fact due to political gatekeeping and the complicity of "go along to get along" leadership.

This is where we stand at this particular moment in time. It's not a good look, but the long arc of history is far from complete, and as I've long asserted, As goes Blackness, so goes America. Fist tap MHicks.

Comey and Mueller: Pretty Much Just Head Snowflakes in Charge

Counterpunch |  Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they describe former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law enforcement figures. Perhaps if they included J. Edgar Hoover, such fulsome praise could be put into proper perspective.

Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the investigation of President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable character by much of Official Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration (Mueller as FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided over post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited plain vanilla incompetence.

Long before he became FBI Director, serious questions existed about Mueller’s role as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively enabling decades of corruption and covering up of the FBI’s illicit deals with mobster Whitey Bulger and other “top echelon” informants who committed numerous murders and crimes. When the truth was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang.

Current media applause omits the fact that former FBI Director Mueller was the top official in charge of the Anthrax terror fiasco investigation into those 2001 murders, which targeted an innocent man (Steven Hatfill) whose lawsuit eventually forced the FBI to pay $5 million in compensation. Mueller’s FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of “national security letters” to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating “terrorism.”

For his part, Deputy Attorney General James Comey, too, went along with the abuses of Bush and Cheney after 9/11 and signed off on a number of highly illegal programs including warrantless surveillance of Americans and torture of captives. Comey also defended the Bush Administration’s three-year-long detention of an American citizen without charges or right to counsel.

Miss Lindsey! Come Get Your Boy McStain!!!

jezebel |  During former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings on Thursday, Sen. John McCain embarked on a line of questioning so vague and meandering, so slurring and incomprehensible that the public only had two questions for him: 1) Da f*ck? and 2) May I have the phone number of your prescription pill dealer?

From what I could glean, McCain attempted to tie the Hillary Clinton email investigation to the Russian hacking investigation. But he was also so sleepy that he could easily have been dreaming and sleep talking about something completely separate.

Fired FBI Director Testimony Starting To Go Sideways...,

dailycaller |  Loretta Lynch, the former attorney general under Barack Obama, pressured former FBI Director James Comey to downplay the Clinton email server investigation and only refer to it as a “matter,” Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.

Comey said that when he asked Lynch if she was going to authorize him to confirm the existence of the Clinton email investigation, her answer was, “Yes but don’t call it that. Call it a matter.” When Comey asked why, he said, Lynch wouldn’t give him an explanation. “Just call it a matter,” she said.

Comey added later that he was concerned about that direction as it was false. He was further concerned because it aligned with the Clinton campaign’s spin on the investigation.

Lynch’s order, Comey said, “concerned me because that language tracked the way the campaign was talking about the FBI’s work and that’s concerning.”

 

“I don’t know whether it was intentional or not but it gave the impression that the attorney general [Lynch] was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way the political campaign was describing the same activity, which was inaccurate,” Comey added.

Comey complied, in his words, because it “wasn’t a hill worth dying on.” In February 2016, the FBI confirmed in a letter that the agency was “working on matters related to former Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server.”

rotflmbao..., Snowflakes Fitna Be Extra-Salty Tonite

iBankCoin |  Constitutional expert and famed Harvard law Professor, Alan Dershowitz, took on Jeffrey Toobin to discuss the ongoing Trump-Comey saga, saying in no uncertain terms that “this is not obstruction of justice.”

He explains, “That is his constitutional power. He has the right to say, ‘You will not investigate Flynn.’ The best proof of that is he could have simply said to Comey, ‘Stop the investigation, I’ve just pardoned Flynn.’”

To back up his assertions, Dershowitz reminded viewers of when Bush I pardoned Casper Weinberger the night before trial. After doing so, no one cried ‘obstruction’ because it was within the rights of the President of the United States to do so.

“That’s what President Bush did,” Dershowitz said, citing the case of Caspar Weinberger. “You cannot have obstruction of justice when the president exercises his constitutional authority to pardon, his constitutional authority to fire the director of the FBI, or his constitutional authority to tell the director of the FBI who to prosecute and who not to prosecute.”

He made the point that impeachment and obstruction are two entirely different things, which reduced Jeffrey Toobin to look like an 11th grade history student learning the constitution for the first time. The President can be impeached for all manners of things, but not for firing Comey and/or asking him to stop investigating Flynn — because it is his right to do so.

Once You See The Mechanism Of Political Control, You Can't Unsee It

Tonight: Stephen read through James Comey's pre-written testimony, and found some pretty weird stuff. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/XUWcabcyul

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) June 8, 2017

dailybeast |  Colbert relished imagining just how President Trump informed Comey that he “had not been involved with hookers in Russia.” As the host joked, “Comey replied, I understand Mr. President, but I just asked what you had for breakfast.”

On their unexpectedly private dinner, which took place a few weeks later, Colbert said, “Oh, c’mon, that’s the oldest trick in the book. You invite your FBI director over for a movie, saying it’s going to be a ‘group thing.’ When he shows up, it’s just the two of you. Can’t make Netflix word so, you know… so you obstruct justice.”

Trump’s “bombshell” at that particular meeting was telling Comey, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” In response, Comey says, “I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed.” “Basically, Comey treated Trump like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park,” Colbert said. “It makes sense, they both have the same sized hands.”

Among the “weird stuff” in Comey’s remarks, Colbert said, was the fact that Trump repeatedly referred to his Russia scandal as “the cloud” over his administration. “Mr. President, that’s not a cloud,” Colbert told Trump. “Meteorologists call that a shitstorm.”

Snowflake Pandering Not Comedy: "And Now, The End Is Near; And So I Face The Final Curtain."

dailywire |  When you get fired by Squatty Potty, things are going badly.

Squatty Potty is a little plastic stool you put under your feet when taking a No. 2. The stool helps "mimic a perfect squat" while also having an "ideal foot position for maximum comfort." Now available in Slim Teak ($59.99) and Tao Bamboo ($69.99).

Yes, that was Kathy Griffin's only sponsor. And we're not saying that the 56-year-old whose career imploded after she released a picture of herself holding a bloody severed head modeled after President Trump isn't perhaps the perfect spokesman for Squatty Potty. We're just noting that SquaPa decided to give Griffin her walking (toilet) papers.

So, that's everyone. CNN (after waiting nearly a day) decided to can Griffin from her annual New Year's Eve appearance (where she flips people the bird and makes Anderson Cooper giggle like a school girl). And every single one of her upcoming gigs for her comedy show has been canceled. Every. Single. One.

"Kathy Griffin's Celebrity Run-Ins Tour" (hilarious!) had planned seven stops, a few in California, a few more around New York City, and one in New Mexico. 

Her gig at the St. George Theatre in Staten Island on November 2 was 86'ed first, then her show at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "Ms. Griffin’s recent actions have severely inhibited our ability to fulfill our mission as a non-profit theatre serving the Staten Island community," said the theater.

Route 66 Casino in Albuquerque canceled her show Wednesday and the California venues followed suit. That left Bergen Performing Arts Center in New Jersey as the only surviving gig.

But not anymore. "After very careful consideration, bergenPAC has decided to no longer move forward with the scheduled performance of Kathy Griffin on 11/4/17," they tweeted out over the weekend.

Racial Politics and Millionaire Newsreaders

People |  Multiple sources tell PEOPLE that Hall was equal parts furious, hurt and offended that she was essentially losing her highest profile role to Kelly, with nothing being offered in its place. Hall saw the move as a “demotion” and she wasn’t alone. The National Association of Black Journalists decried NBC’s decision to trade Hall and Roker’s show for the staunch conservative stylings of a high-profile Fox News alum as “whitewashing.” (A rep for the network countered: “NBC News has a long and proven history as an industry leader in newsroom diversity.” The network later agreed to meet with representatives of NABJ to discuss the matter.)

Black Politics and the Democratic Party

Townhall |  Today, Democrats use diplomacy to hoodwink blacks. They tell blacks to be against those -- such as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos -- who are for school vouchers that enable black parents to get their children out of rotten schools run by Democrats at the National Education Association. Democrats are using black congressmen to go after Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who is a high-profile conservative, champion of law and order, and supporter of President Donald Trump. They view Clarke as a threat to Democratic Party interests. Indeed, if Democrats lost just 25 percent of the black vote, they would be in deep political trouble.

By the way, none of what I've said should be taken as an argument that blacks should rush to become Republicans. I'd like to see the black community acting the way most Japanese and Chinese communities do -- not getting into a tizzy over which political party is in power.

OY VEY, Diz Schvartze Sees Us Gatekeeping and Controlling Black Politics!!!

alternet |  As the Obama era sputters to an end, new social movements are erupting in rebellion against a bankrupted bipartisan order that has doomed Americans to record levels of economic inequality, warehoused black bodies in a rapidly privatizing prison system, torn thousands of migrant families apart, outsourced unionized jobs to China and spread a dystopian assassination program across the far reaches of the globe. Activists confronting militarization on the US-Mexico border and organizers protesting lethal police violence under the banner of Black Lives Matter are sharing tactics with their counterparts from the Palestinian-led BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions) movement challenging Israeli apartheid on university campuses. The personal and intellectual cross-pollination between these variegated struggles is producing the most exciting surge of grassroots mobilization I have witnessed in my adult life. Not everyone is happy about it, however, and it’s not hard to understand why.

The structure under-girding movements like Black Lives Matter is intentionally non-hierarchical, making them difficult for institutional liberal political entities to co-opt or control. Organizers eschew a programmatic agenda that demands alliances of convenience with entrenched power, resorting instead to divestment drives, civil disobedience and Situationist-style urban disruptions. With their populist sensibility, they are capturing the sense of betrayal that is mounting among millenials, and they show little appetite for electoral contests that fail to answer the crisis. “I decided it is possible I’ll never vote for another American president for as long as I live,” the Ferguson-based rapper and activist Tef Poe has said about his past support for Obama.

Organized with little regard for the imperatives of the Democratic Party, and often aligned against them, the wave of grassroots mobilization is increasingly viewed as a wild beast that must be tamed. The condescending rants delivered against Black Lives Matter activists by Oprah Winfrey and Al Sharpton are salutary examples of the irritation spreading within established Democratic circles.

Few public intellectuals have positioned themselves at the nexus of these emerging movements as firmly Cornel West has. Earlier this month, I joined him on a panel at Princeton University to support a group of students and faculty seeking to pressure the school into divesting from companies involved in human rights abuses in occupied Palestinian territory. His presence boosted the morale of the young student activists who had suddenly fallen under attack by powerful pro-Israel forces. Days later, West joined veteran human rights activist Larry Hamm at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark for a discussion on local efforts against police brutality. It was in places like this, away from the national limelight, where West gathered his vital energy and his righteous anger.

WTF Kind of Timeline is This?!?!?!

zerohedge |  May 5th - the date the leaked document was allegedly created, detailing what the NSA claims are the results of an investigation into Russian election hacking based on new information received in April. The report is weak sauce - spend 5 minutes and read it... There is zero evidence of Russian hacking or influence - only a thinly supported narrative about an alleged spear phishing campaign and it's potential victims.

On May 9th, four days later - Winner printed, removed, and snail mailed this top secret classified intel which offerings absolutely zero proof to support its claims to The Intercept.

 

May 30th - The Intercept contacts a 'government agency' to let them know about the documents mailed to them by the rogue NSA contractor.  The online magazine then proceeds to throw Winner under the bus by giving the NSA / FBI information which they used to easily identify her. 

June 4th -  Suddenly retiring rising star family man) Jason Chaffetz says he wants to see leakers 'in handcuffs.'

June 5th - The Intercept publishes a report 'confirming' Russia hacked the election.

* * *

An hour after The Intercept publishes - the FBI arrests Winner

Let's look at what Winner's 'leak' accomplishes:

• Shifts the 'Russian Hacking' narrative away from the alleged DNC server breach and the report by 'tainted' cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. It allows the 'deep state' to maintain the assertion that Russia literally 'meddled in the election' with an actual hack via phishing scam.
• The leak addresses the growing credibility problem with 'anonymous sources.'
• Conservatives are tearing Reality Winner apart; from her SJW online footprint to her tattoos to her autographed Anderson Cooper photo - the right is showing no mercy, and the MSM will likely spin this as the 'hypocritical and abusive right denigrates Bernie Sanders supporting leaker.'
• Perhaps by design, Trump supporters may turning Winner a hero to the left - legitimizing her leak in the process.
• Seth who? Rising nationalism in response to terrorism where?

Remember Boys and Girls - If You Wanna Be a Reality Winner - Don't Be a Technology Loser!

WaPo | Winner was arrested Saturday. When FBI agents questioned her at her home, she admitted “removing the classified intelligence reporting from her office space, retaining it, and mailing it from Augusta, Georgia, to the news outlet,” court documents read. She remains in jail pending a detention hearing. Her lawyer declined to comment on the charges.

After the charges were announced Monday, some cybersecurity experts remarked on the apparent ease with which investigators were able to trace the leak back to Winner. Some went so far as to say the Intercept had “outed” her by posting copies of the document online. The Intercept said the materials were submitted anonymously.

According to Rob Graham, who writes for the blog Errata Security, the Intercept’s scanned images of the intelligence report contained tracking dots — small, barely visible yellow dots that show “exactly when and where documents, any document, is printed.” Nearly all modern color printers feature such tracking markers, which are used to identify a printer’s serial number and the date and time a page was printed.

“Because the NSA logs all printing jobs on its printers, it can use this to match up precisely who printed the document,” Graham wrote Monday.

Graham’s post gave a step-by-step demonstration of how investigators could have easily done just that. Using a tracking dot decoding tool from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, he said he determined that he document “was from a printer with model number 54, serial number 29535218″ on May 9, 2017, at 6:20 a.m.

“The NSA almost certainly has a record of who used the printer at that time,” Graham wrote.

Others picked up on the same point.

“Just a reminder, colour printers spy on you,” tweeted data analyst Tim Bennett. “This one embedded the exact time a U.S. government employee printed a subsequently leaked doc.”

Speaking of Professional Ass Clowns Reality Winners This Morning

VanityFair |  In a letter to the bank signed by Representative Maxine Waters and four other Democratic members of the committee, the lawmakers write:

“We [are] seeking information relating to two internal reviews reportedly conducted by Deutsche Bank (“Bank”): one regarding its 2011 Russian mirror trading scandal and the other regarding its review of the personal accounts of President Donald Trump and his family members held at the Bank. What is troubling is that the Bank to our knowledge has thus far refused to disclose or publicly comment on the results of either of its internal reviews. As a result, there is no transparency regarding who participated in, or benefited from, the Russian mirror trading scheme that allowed $10 billion to flow out of Russia. Likewise, Congress remains in the dark on whether loans Deutsche Bank made to President Trump were guaranteed by the Russian Government, or were in any way connected to Russia. It is critical that you provide this Committee with the information necessary to assess the scope, findings and conclusions of your internal reviews.

The letter goes on to question why, unlike most other financial institutions who refused to lend money to Trump due to his numerous bankruptcies, “Deustche Bank continued to do so—even after the President sued the bank and defaulted on a prior loan from the bank—to the point where his companies now owe [Deutsche Bank] an estimated $340 million.” It seems like a fair question!

Waters and Co. later cite numerous examples of the bank’s “pattern of regulatory compliance failures and disregard for U.S. law,” which doesn’t seem like the best way to convince a group of people to help you out. And, unfortunately, the request is simply a request—the members can’t compel Deutsche Bank to turn over anything, or even respond with a curt “Got your note, thx.” The committee could subpoena the German lender for the documents, but that would require cooperation from Republican members of the Financial Services Committee. Given that not a single one of them signed it—and that committee chair Jeb Hensarling would lay down in traffic for a financial institution—a team-effort subpoena seems unlikely.

Serious Scholar Clowns 4th Branch Attack on Trump

Slate |  Stephen F. Cohen has long been one of the leading scholars of Russia and the Soviet Union. He wrote a biography of the Bolshevik revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin and is a contributing editor at the Nation, which his wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, edits and publishes. In recent years, Cohen has emerged as a more ideologically dexterous figure, ripping those he thinks are pursuing a “new Cold War” with Russia and calling for President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to form “an alliance against international terrorism.” Cohen has gone so far as to describe the investigations into the Trump campaign and Russia “the No. 1 threat to the United States today.”

Cohen has been criticized by many people, myself included, for his defenses of Putin. (He once said the Ukraine crisis had been “imposed on [Putin] and he had no choice but to react.”) He scolded President Barack Obama for sending retired gay athletes to Sochi and recently went on Fox News to speak up for Trump’s war against leakers.

I spoke by phone with Cohen, who is also a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton and the author of Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War. During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed why Cohen won’t concede that the Democratic National Committee was hacked, whether it’s fair to call Putin a murderer, and why we may be entering an era much more dangerous than the Cold War.

Megyn Kelly vs. Vladimir Putin: Teenaged Girl Schooled by Grown-Assed Man

latimes |  On “Sunday Night,” Kelly came out of the gate in a much more forceful manner than she had with Trump, and asked much harder questions. But it was a poorly planned match in which to make an impressive launch for her series. She has to win over a wider audience than she had at Fox, and Putin ranks as one of the world’s toughest interview subjects, a proven master of deception.

The interview took place in St. Petersburg over the weekend, after Kelly had moderated the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, “Putin’s signature event.”

Clips were played from the event that showed Kelly asking Putin in front of 4,000 guests about Russia’s role in the hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Did Russia hack the U.S. election, she asked, pointing out that U.S. intelligence agencies had found ample evidence, “fingerprints,” that it had meddled.

“What fingerprints, hoof prints, horn prints?,” he answered dismissively. “What are you talking about? … It could come from your home IP address, as if your daughter carried out the attack.”

The setup was a recipe for failure, especially for Kelly, who was hired for $15 million to $20 million by NBC last year after leaving Fox News, the conservative news outlet that had launched and propelled her career.