The DOJ is trying to gain access to the personal information of the visitors to a website that organized anti-Trump protests. Uh oh.

Courtesy of DreamHost:  

For the past several months, DreamHost has been working with the Department of Justice to comply with legal process, including a Search Warrant seeking information about one of our customers’ websites. 

At the center of the requests is disruptj20.org, a website that organized participants of political protests against the current United States administration. While we have no insight into the affidavit for the search warrant (those records are sealed), the DOJ has recently asked DreamHost to provide all information available to us about this website, its owner, and, more importantly, its visitors.

DreamHost goes on to explain that, like many online service providers they receive requests from the government to help them identify criminals and other ne'er do wells quite regularly. (They also reject a number of them.)

However this is different.  

The request from the DOJ demands that DreamHost hand over 1.3 million visitor IP addresses — in addition to contact information, email content, and photos of thousands of people — in an effort to determine who simply visited the website. (Our customer has also been notified of the pending warrant on the account.) 

That information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment. That should be enough to set alarm bells off in anyone’s mind.

This is, in our opinion, a strong example of investigatory overreach and a clear abuse of government authority.

Is THIS what Jeff Sessions is dong to keep this country safe? 

Investigating people who simply visit a site that promotes peaceful protests?

How's that investigation into the White Supremacists who beat counter protesters and ran down a young woman going Mr. Attorney General?

 Or is all of your time being used up with pursuing your boss's adversaries?

Bill Moyers shares an interactive timeline of everything we know about the relationship between Russia and Donald Trump.

Reading this timeline from start to finish is a daunting task, so we’ve added tools to narrow by individual name https://t.co/zEtFiKrDyv

— BillMoyers.com (@BillMoyers) August 8, 2017

God that is a lot of information, and it absolutely proves that the Russians have been deeply involved with Trump for decades.

After you read it the fact that the Russians would help Trump steal this election almost seems inevitable. 

Boy no wonder Donald Trump loves Fox News.

"One of the things that has been lost in the politics of this situation is that the Russians collected and spread negative information.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2017

...about then candidate Trump." Catherine Herridge @FoxNews. So why doesn't Fake News report this? Witch Hunt! Purposely phony reporting.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2017

Yeah, the reason that other news outlets are not reporting this is because IT DID NOT HAPPEN!

There is a reason that MSNBC is kicking Fox's ass, and it is sycophantic bullshit like this.

The facts are the Vladimir Putin HATED and FEARED Hillary Clinton, and he was determined to keep her out of the White House.

On the other hand Vladimir Putin loves easily manipulated conceited blowhards, so he did everything he could to help Donald Trump win the White House.

Remember the email that Donald Trump Jr. received before that infamous meeting with the Russian Lawyer said this: 

This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump.

So can somebody point out this negative information that the Russians spread about Donald Trump? 

I would surely love to read that.

Donald Trump melting down on Twitter? Must be Saturday.

Okay these are really all over the place so I will just present them one at a time, since there does not seem to be a unifying theme.

Word is that @Greta Van Susteren was let go by her out of control bosses at @NBC & @Comcast because she refused to go along w/ 'Trump hate!'

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2017

Or perhaps MSNBC just insisted on journalist standards that Greta simply could not meet.

Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2017

What are they hiding? Well perhaps the personal information of their citizens, so that it cannot be weaponized against them.

How about that?

I am extremely pleased to see that @CNN has finally been exposed as #FakeNews and garbage journalism. It's about time!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2017

I have my own issues with CNN, but they most certainly have NOT been exposed as "fake news."

The only people who believe this are the extreme Right Wing who have never really watched CNN in the first place.

Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika are not bad people, but their low rated show is dominated by their NBC bosses. Too bad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2017

Yeah not "bad people," just dumb and crazy.

Considering the source they should take this as a compliment.

You know speaking of dumb apparently European intelligence agents don't have much confidence that Trump has the brain power to deal with Vladimir Putin during their upcoming meeting.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Moscow believes its leader, ex-spy master Vladimir Putin, can extract major concessions from President Donald Trump when the two meet for the first time next week, European officials tell The Daily Beast. 

The officials say their intelligence indicates Putin thinks he can outmaneuver Trump at the G-20 summit, playing on promises of cooperation on areas like counterterrorism to win concessions like a reduction in the raft of sanctions against Russia. 

“When you meet Russia, don’t give anything away for free,” one Western official warned, echoing the fears of many European diplomats ahead of next week’s Trump-Putin meeting on the fringes of the G-20 in Germany. 

Their misgivings highlight concern that Trump’s inexperience and Putin’s ability to flatter will slowly degrade the U.S. alliance with Europe over time, and boost Moscow back to near-superpower status while extracting no changes to its aggressive, expansionist behavior.

I think it is blatantly obvious that Trump has been compromised by Putin, and I have no confidence that Trump will even bring up the fact that Russia hacked our election.

I'm just worried that by the end of the meeting Trump will have unconditionally surrendered the country to Putin.

Assuming of course that he has not already done that.

Intelligence sources reveal that Russian operatives discussed having "derogatory" information about Donald Trump during 2016 election.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Russian government officials discussed having potentially "derogatory" information about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and some of his top aides in conversations intercepted by US intelligence during the 2016 election, according to two former intelligence officials and a congressional source. 

One source described the information as financial in nature and said the discussion centered on whether the Russians had leverage over Trump's inner circle. The source said the intercepted communications suggested to US intelligence that Russians believed "they had the ability to influence the administration through the derogatory information.

"But the sources, privy to the descriptions of the communications written by US intelligence, cautioned the Russian claims to one another "could have been exaggerated or even made up" as part of a disinformation campaign that the Russians did during the election. The details of the communication shed new light on information US intelligence received about Russian claims of influence. 

The contents of the conversations made clear to US officials that Russia was considering ways to influence the election -- even if their claims turned out to be false. 

None of the sources would say which specific Trump aides were discussed. One of the officials said the intelligence report masked the American names but it was clear the conversations revolved around the Trump campaign team. Another source would not give more specifics, citing the classified nature of the information.

The sources are careful to suggest that the Russians could have been exaggerating this evidence, but considering what we have learned so far, and now seen Trump do since entering the White House, do we really think they had to exaggerate it that much?

At this point the only thing that could further indicate that Trump is Putin's little bitch is if he had that tattooed on his lower back.

And let's face it, for all we know he does.

By the way this is just more information that supports the findings in that Russian dossier which the Trump folks keep insisting is filled with false information.

Which is, as you might have guessed, exactly how they responded to THIS report from CNN: A White House spokesman told CNN: 

"This is yet another round of false and unverified claims made by anonymous sources to smear the President. The reality is, a review of the President's income from the last ten years showed he had virtually no financial ties at all. There appears to be no limit to which the President's political opponents will go to perpetuate this false narrative, including illegally leaking classified material. All this does is play into the hands of our adversaries and put our country at risk."

If this is all a "false narrative" then why is Trump now lawyering up?

Donald Trump defends sharing classified information with Russia, and now we know where he got that information.

So Erdogan you wanna hear some classified information? I know some. And I can share it cause I'm the president.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

A day after his advisers disputed a news article about the conversation, the president focused instead on justifying what he did and blaming those who disclosed it. In a series of early-morning posts on Twitter, he said he had the “absolute right” to give “facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety” to Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador. 

Asked about the conversation by reporters during a later appearance with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, Mr. Trump again did not deny providing the information, but he instead cast it as an attempt to collaborate with Russia in the war against the Islamic State. “We’re going to have a lot of great success over the coming years, and we want to get as many to fight terrorism as possible,” he said.

I don't see how he is going to "have a lot of success over the coming years" after he is removed from office.

In other news, also by the New York Times, we now know where that information that Trump spilled to those two Russian spies originated: 

The classified intelligence that President Trump disclosed in a meeting last week with Russian officials at the White House was provided by Israel, according to a current and a former American official familiar with how the United States obtained the information. The revelation adds a potential diplomatic complication to the episode. 

Israel is one of the United States’ most important allies and a major intelligence collector in the Middle East. The revelation that Mr. Trump boasted about some of Israel’s most sensitive information to the Russians could damage the relationship between the two countries. It also raises the possibility that the information could be passed to Iran, Russia’s close ally and Israel’s main threat in the Middle East.

Currently Israel is refusing to confirm or deny that they were the source of the classified data, which of course is more or less an admission that they were.

This is especially bad news as Israel is one of America's closest allies in dealing with turmoil in the Middle East.

But hey here is national security adviser, Gen. H. R. McMaster, to explain why none of this is Trump's fault.

BREAKING: NSA McMaster: “The president wasn’t even aware of where this information came from." https://t.co/zewlw83osz

— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) May 16, 2017

Yeah how can the president be expected to keep classified information secret, if he does not even KNOW who provided that classified information?

I mean come on, what is he a mind reader?

Oh god, we are so fucked!

Donald Trump essentially confirms Washington Post story that he shared information about terrorists with the Russians. Update! s.

As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017

...to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017

Courtesy of CNN: 

Trump's tweets Tuesday notably lack any mention of whether the information he shared was classified. 

And the remarks appear to contradict statements made by his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster -- who told reporters in the wake of the report that "the story as reported is false" -- and White House deputy national security adviser for strategy, Dina Powell, who said Monday "the story is false. The President only discussed the common threats that both countries faced."

Well in his tweet Trump is essentially admitting that he discussed terrorism with the Russians which is not what the White House talking points were after the story broke.

The WaPo story revealed that Trump had shared classified "code word" information which came from a US partner, and that, though he did not share the source, the Russians would likely be able to reverse engineer to reveal the source of the information on their own.

And while Trump is technically correct that he has "the absolute right" to reveal information, whether classified or not, doing so to the Russians reinforces the idea that the Russians are controlling Trump, and that he does not respect the importance of carefully handling confidential information or the allies who provided that information.

Here is more from CNN:

The potential consequences could hardly be more serious, former CIA case officer Bob Baer told CNN's Erin Burnett Monday night. 

"The President, by revealing this to the Russians, has lost control of this information. It's going to go to the Syrians, It's going to go to the Iranians -- Russian allies," Baer said. 

"The ability to protect that source whoever he is, wherever he is has been seriously undermined ... If a CIA officer had revealed this information to the Russians, he would be fired instantly." 

Essentially this is the crux of the problem. Simply put Trump has NO idea how to handle the responsibilities of his job.

And the message for our allies (Russia is NOT an ally.) moving forward is that this president is an amateur who cannot be trusted with the kinds of sensitive information that may need to be shared to keep the world safe from terrorism.

Update: Oh I did not see this tweet earlier.

I have been asking Director Comey & others, from the beginning of my administration, to find the LEAKERS in the intelligence community.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017

Well gee, all former Director Comey had to do was come to the White House and he would have found the leaker immediately. 

The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump revealed classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador during White House visit.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said that Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State. 

The information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said. 

The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said that Trump’s decision to do so risks cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and National Security Agency. 

“This is code-word information,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”

.....

In his meeting with Lavrov, Trump seemed to be boasting about his inside knowledge of the looming threat. “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day,” the president said, according to an official with knowledge of the exchange. 

Trump went on to discuss aspects of the threat that the United States learned only through the espionage capabilities of a key partner. He did not reveal the specific intelligence-gathering method, but he described how the Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot and how much harm such an attack could cause under varying circumstances. Most alarmingly, officials said, Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat. 

The Washington Post is withholding most plot details, including the name of the city, at the urging of officials who warned that revealing them would jeopardize important intelligence capabilities.  

He was bragging about having "inside information," like a child who shows his friends that he has found the keys to his parent's liquor cabinet.

This is why the intelligence community should keep classified information out of Trump's hands.

The White House of course is vehemently denying this story, however Buzzfeed just confirmed it as well and is claiming that the information is even more sensitive than the Washington Post let on.

The New York Post also now has the story.

So we are now left to wonder if Donald Trump is simply too ignorant to understand the complexities of this job, and the importance of keeping classified information confidential, or whether he was selected by Vladimir Putin to provide just this kind of information to Russian operatives when asked to do so.

But remember, Hillary Clinton had a few emails that were later deemed classified on her private server, so clearly SHE was unfit for this job.

Right?

Just like back in the Vietnam era, Trump Administration is hiding the troop deployments from the American people.

Oh boy, I have an army of my own now too!

Courtesy of the LA Times:  

Even as the U.S. military takes on a greater role in the warfare in Iraq and Syria, the Trump administration has stopped disclosing significant information about the size and nature of the U.S. commitment, including the number of U.S. troops deployed in either country. 

Earlier this month, the Pentagon quietly dispatched 400 Marines to northern Syria to operate artillery in support of Syrian militias that are cooperating in the fight against Islamic State, according to U.S. officials. That was the first use of U.S. Marines in that country since its long civil war began. 

In Iraq, nearly 300 Army paratroopers were deployed recently to help the Iraqi military in their six-month assault on the city of Mosul, according to U.S. officials. 

Neither of those deployments was announced once they had been made, a departure from the practice of the Obama administration, which announced nearly all conventional force deployments.

The excuse for this is that Trump wants the element of surprise, as if the enemy is not aware when large numbers of American soldiers land on their shores unless they read it in the America press first.

What seems to actually be happening is that Trump is escalating conflicts all around the globe and keeping the American people out of the loop.

That is essentially the tactics used during the Vietnam era to keep us from knowing how many of our soldiers were fighting and dying in a war that we had already lost.

And you can bet your ass that if the Trump Administration is not going to tell us how many troops are being deployed, and where they are fighting, that there is no way they are going to keep us apprised of the casualties that result from those decisions.

Here let be take a moment to laugh at the people who claimed they were not voting for Hillary because she was a "war monger,"  and then further claimed that Trump was antiwar.

Fucking morons!

The House Intelligence Chairman just tipped off Donald Trump and his associates that their communications were incidentally gathered by US intelligence agencies. Update!

Courtesy of CNN: 

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes said Wednesday that President Donald Trump's personal communications may have been picked up by investigators through "incidental collection." 

Nunes said at a news conference he discovered the potential surveillance of Trump himself while reviewing intelligence reports, but said it was not related to Russia. "This is a normal, incidental collection, based on what I could collect," Nunes said. 

"This appears to be all legally collected foreign intelligence under" the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 

Nunes said he alerted House Speaker Paul Ryan about the collection and is traveling to the White House Wednesday afternoon. 

"I'm actually alarmed by it," Nunes said.

After making this statement to the press Nunes then ran over to the White House to tattle to Donald Trump that he was being surveilled, thereby tipping him, and his associates, off to the fact that they needed to be more careful and destroy any records of past communications that they may want to keep secret.

Reporter: "But, just to clarify, this is not intentional spying on Donald Trump?"
Rep. Nunes: "I have no idea." https://t.co/Okz2bwUl4f pic.twitter.com/tyt6OyigcT

— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 22, 2017

Keep in mind that his is "incidental collection" and does NOT mean that Trump himself, or members of his team, were being directly investigated.

As you might expect Twitter exploded after Nunes made an appearance outside the White House to inform the press of what he did.

Okay----real talk thread----this Nunes story is insane. In my 7 years covering the Hill, never saw something like this from Intel Chair

— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) March 22, 2017

Nunes must step down. He may have destroyed an entire investigation. Chairman of Oversight has no business alerting possible targets. Shock!

— FemaleOutrage (@FemaleOutrage) March 22, 2017

Nunes, who is supposed to be investigating Trump, is briefing him on leaked info received from undisclosed source. Did not inform Schiff.

— Impeach Donald Trump (@Impeach_D_Trump) March 22, 2017

This is very simple: @DevinNunes must resign from the House Intel Committee immediately, and surrender himself to the FBI for questioning.

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) March 22, 2017

This is story is still unfolding and I will update this post as more info becomes available.

Update: Rep. Adam Schiff weighs in.

Adam Schiff -- top Democrat on Intelligence Cmte -- releases blunt statement on what Congressman Nunes did today: pic.twitter.com/khIBihS1Jd

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) March 22, 2017

This is all fucking unbelievable.

Update 2: Schiff now saying that evidence of collusion between Trump team and Russia "no longer circumstantial."

.@AdamSchiffCA: the case against Trump of collusion with Russia is "no longer circumstantial." #nunes #TrumpRussia #theResistance pic.twitter.com/qpvvKNTSEk

— #TheResistance (@AynRandPaulRyan) March 22, 2017

Holy shit! No wonder the Trump folks are in a blind panic.

John Oliver comes up with perfect way to troll, and educate, Donald Trump.

Courtesy of NBC News: 

Comedian John Oliver's politically-charged HBO series "Last Week Tonight" returned to the airwaves for the first time this year on Sunday night — and the show seems to have discovered a creative new way to troll President Donald Trump.

On the show, Oliver highlighted just how much the president appears to absorb and parrot information he gets from early morning cable news broadcasts, and other, even less reliable sources. 

So Oliver and his staff came up with a potential way to capture the president's attention (since, the host conceded, Trump doesn't watch "Last Week Tonight," which has been on hiatus since the Sunday after the election). 

They bought ads, in the style and tone of medical catheter commercials which frequently air on networks like Fox News, meant to "educate" the president on crucial issues like the nuclear triad.

"And that little fellow there is what we call the clitoris."

Damn did I miss this show!

And this idea of the ads is perfect, because not only do we KNOW for a fact that Trump will see them, but he might actually learn something which might help to keep us all safe.

Donald Trump on Russian hacking, "And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation."

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Speaking to a handful of reporters outside his Palm Beach, Fla., club, Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump cast his declarations of doubt as an effort to seek the truth. 

“I just want them to be sure because it’s a pretty serious charge,” Mr. Trump said of the intelligence agencies. “If you look at the weapons of mass destruction, that was a disaster, and they were wrong,” he added, referring to intelligence cited by the George W. Bush administration to support its march to war in 2003. “So I want them to be sure,” the president-elect said. “I think it’s unfair if they don’t know.” 

He added: “And I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.” 

When asked what he knew that others did not, Mr. Trump demurred, saying only, “You’ll find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”

WTF?

So is Trump saying that he has information that the intelligence agencies do not have?

And who gave him this information, his buddy Vlad?

Well then instead of giving him briefings perhaps the intelligence agencies should plop his fat ass in a chair and interrogate him until he gives up his information. After all the integrity of our democracy is as stake here.

Later in the Q and A Trump said this:

“I don’t care what they say, no computer is safe,” he added. “I have a boy who’s 10 years old; he can do anything with a computer. You want something to really go without detection, write it out and have it sent by courier.”

Yes because in the history of mankind nobody has ever murdered or kidnapped a courier to get information, right moron?

So according to Tangerine Hitler he has information that questions the validity of what the intelligence agencies are reporting and thinks all of us should eschew technology and go back to communicating through carrier pigeon.

Good job deplorables! What a great choice you made.

A visual aid to help avoid fake news sites.

I think it is a little simplistic but basically on point.

For those wondering where IM would fit on that graphic I would think we were somewhere between Skews Liberal and Hyper-Partisan Liberal.

I make no apologies for being a proud liberal but I do work hard to present the facts to back up my point of view.

Actor Michael Sheen abandons his profession, and his life, to fight fascism full time. And in doing so shames us all.

Courtesy of the Independent:  

Michael Sheen is so disturbed by the rise of far-right populism he is quitting acting to become an activist, and says he does not know if his relationship with Sarah Silverman will survive. 

Sheen will leave Silverman, his partner of two years, and family in Los Angeles and move to Port Talbot in south Wales to combat the wave of “demagogic, fascistic” politics he believes has engulfed the West in the past decade. 

He told The Times: “In the same way as the Nazis had to be stopped in Germany in the Thirties, this thing that is on the rise has to be stopped. 

 “It’s not going to look like this in 10 years’ time. Everything has shifted. The dice are being rolled again.” 

His steel-making hometown, population 37,000, voted for Brexit and the Welsh actor says his frustration at this has formed, in part, the impetus for his decision to begin his activism back where he began. His fears were exacerbated by the ascension of Donald Trump and the tensions stoked by his divisive rhetoric. 

You know I would like to think that the hours that I put in on this blog have some meaning, and that I am doing my part to fight the good fight and push back on the fascism that we see invading our country. (And let's not bother lying to ourselves to say that fascism is not coming, because we are already seeing it in North Carolina.)

But truth be told I am not sacrificing nearly as much as I should, and neither are most of us.

Make no mistake, despite interference by James Comey, and hacking by the Russians, American voters are ultimately responsible for casting the votes that helped Trump win the electoral college.

Even if we assume that some voting machines were hacked the election still has to be close enough for that to matter.

So We the People are ultimately responsible for helping to usher in fascism and for defying the will of the Founding Fathers.

To rectify that, to save what is left of our republic, we need to rise up and fight.

No, I am not suggesting that we start shooting each other in the streets, or plan assaults against Washington, I am suggesting that we fight back with the same tools used to cripple us in the first place.

If fake news and Right Wing propaganda got us here in 2016 then real information and Left Wing fact checkers can steer us back to where we need to be in 2017.

For starters if you are a Facebook fan of this blog then promote it to all of your friends and family every single day. Or if you are more comfortable with Twitter than by all means use that.

And no not just this blog, but every blog and news site that is working to get information out to the masses.

If we want to make real change, if we want to rescue this nation that we love so much, we must be ready to irritate, frustrate, and ultimately educate the people we love until they see the reality of what is happening in the world.

We should present a deafening roar of facts and figures, a cacophony containing compilations of vital statistics, a constant drumbeat that shatters any illusion that this is business as usual and awakens people to the danger we face as a nation.

I know we cannot all just up and quit our jobs to make activism a full time occupation, but I also know we can always do more.

And truly what ultimately is more important than our future, the future of our families, and the future of this great country?

Just a reminder to my fellow Alaskans before this upcoming election.

How to vote in Alaska: 

The deadline to register is in 42 days, on Oct. 9. 

You can vote by mail, early or on Election Day, Nov. 8. Early voting begins Oct. 24 and ends Nov. 8. 

When you go to vote, bring your identification. This ID does not have to include a photo.


This might seem silly, but you would be surprised at how many people do not know these dates or the pertinent information.

 

I thought I made myself pretty clear.

You may remember that I wrote a post where I cautioned Bristol against going after the Johnstons for talking to me.

Yeah well some people simply cannot take a hint.

Remember this?

Here is the rest that I originally was not going to post.

And trust me this attitude is nothing new.

I also learned during my many talks with Levi and Sunny that when Levi first talked about the new love in his life, and expressed a desire to have her meet his son, that Bristol responded by threatening to get a restraining order against Sunny to keep her away from Tripp.

And this happened even though Sunny was working as a pre-school teacher.

It didn't matter. All that mattered was that Bristol still had the power to keep Levi from seeing his son, and if he did not kiss her ass and do what she wanted she would make sure that never happened.

And it has been pretty much downhill from there. 

So without going into too much detail, after my last post on this topic there was a deal offered to Levi if he could get me to shut up.

Levi really wanted to pursue that deal and asked me if I could cool it.

Believe me when I say that I in no way wanted to play ball with Bristol and her new husband. (Oh yeah, Dakota is now officially a player in this little melodrama as well. In fact if you check Court View you can see that it was his lawyer, Kimberlee Colbo, who submitted the latest filings.) But this is their life after all and so I do not feel I have the right to stand in the way of any kind of arrangement which might make their situation better.

So I grudgingly agreed. Temporarily. (For those who were wondering why I was not posting about the Johnstons, well now you know.)

Since you are reading this it should be pretty obvious that the deal fell through. (Actually I am of the opinion that there was no real deal on the table and that those were simply attempts to delay the inevitable.)

Not only that but due to some strong arm tactics I am now released from my earlier promise to keep certain things quiet.

In other words kids, somebody better put the Maytag repairman on speed dial because there are some appliances which will desperately require his services any minute now.

P.S. By the way those texts up top are nothing compared to what's coming.

Russian government hacks DNC computers.

Wait, they got what?

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach. 

The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials and the security experts. 

The intrusion into the DNC was one of several targeting American political organizations. The networks of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were also targeted by Russian spies, as were the computers of some GOP political action committees, U.S. officials said. But details on those cases were not available. A Russian Embassy spokesman said he had no knowledge of such intrusions. 

The DNC said that no financial, donor or personal information appears to have been accessed or taken, suggesting that the breach was traditional espionage, not the work of criminal hackers. 

So I guess the question that needs to be asked is whether a story like this undermines charges that Hillary Clinton's personal server was less secure than the ones used by the State Department, which was also hacked several years ago, or of every other agency operating in Washington?

Even if it turns out that she was hacked, how could you possibly suggest that she was more careless than the DNC, Donald Trump, or the State Department?

Apparently Sarah Palin does not know the difference between Facebook memes and actual news.

If it's on Facebook it must be true. Right?

Courtesy of the Moosenugget Moron's Facebook page:  

Want a great summary of memes and reports to keep you up to speed on a myriad of news topics? If you only read one thing throughout the day, THIS IS IT. Hat tip to my Minnesota buddy Mike who is always on top of the issues for all of us, and he's allowed me to share his email address so you can receive his email report, too! To be added to his list just shoot Mike an email. mpdecker2003@yahoo.com (Oh yeah, I think we should totally shoot this Mike guy an e-mail. I'll bet by the end of the day he will be SO happy that Palin shared his e-mail address.)

(Purveyors of imperative info like this are the type of guys I pal around with!)

(Actually I think we knew that already.)


Here's a sample of yesterday's email from this true American patriot who's fed up with politics-as-usual, and he's doing something about it!

Here is an example of the kind of "imperative info" that this Mike guy provides.

You may recognize it as yet another failed attempt by the Right Wing to get Americans outraged over something that Obama did that every other President has also done before him.

We simply cannot have a US President appear in a Communist country in front of image of a murderous revolutionary pic.twitter.com/0EojdnVRMG

— Peter Ubertaccio (@ProfessorU) March 21, 2016

Now see dammit I KNEW that Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush were secretly communists!

Can't say I'm surprised that Sarah Palin is bragging that she gets her "information" from the same place that your Aunt Ethel gets her proof positive that Michelle Obama is a pre-op transsexual and the President is her gay love slave. After all we've read her posts, where else would be be getting it?

However I take it as real evidence that she really does not have a full time advisor on staff who would surely have told her that this was a really stupid thing to do.

BTW Sarah we are still waiting for more information about Todd's accident. Remember, pics or it never happened.

Bernie Sanders, who is vying for the Democratic nomination, is suing the DNC for an incident that happened months ago.

Courtesy of TPM: 

The campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) officially served the Democratic National Committee on Thursday with a lawsuit over the decision to suspend the campaign's access to voter data after a staffer viewed confidential information back in December. 

A source told The Hill the move was "very procedural" as Thursday was the deadline to file paperwork given to the campaign by a federal judge. 

The DNC temporarily revoked the campaign's access in mid-December to all voter information after a staffer inappropriately accessed voter data compiled by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Of course the Sanders campaign DID regain access to the data, and one of their staffers was fired, which sort of illustrates that there was wrongdoing on the part of the campaign. Though of course nobody is accusing Sanders himself of doing anything unethical.

However I find myself a little confused as to why an incident since resolved would inspire the Sanders campaign to file a lawsuit simply because time is running out for them to do so.

I mean I confess to not having any legal training which might make this seem reasonable, but from a purely public relations point of view this seems like something that just makes it easier to point out that Sanders is NOT a Democrat and that he does not always respect or support the Democratic party.

John Oliver attempts to make us feel a "small amount of sympathy" for the IRS. Good luck.

Courtesy of Mediaite:

 John Oliver already knows that Americans have a hate-hate relationship with the IRS: “Dealing with them is obligatory, it often functions badly, and it combines the two things that everyone hates the most: someone taking their money, and math.” But, he argues, the IRS deserves our grudging respect. 

First, it’s really not the IRS’s fault, and it certainly doesn’t help that they’re loathed and undercut at every turn. Isn’t it bad that people call them Nazis and attack them and give them so much hate? Isn’t it bad that the employees — the “human version of Ambien” — have to do some boring, boring work? And isn’t it bad that the reason that the IRS has to go after you, is because Congress is literally telling them how to do it, and then slashed their funding by 20%? (Let’s not even talk about their old backwards-ass tax data, stored on actual magnetic tapes.)

Okay, I admit it, I did feel a little sorry for them. 

And what's even more impressive he kind of made me like Michale Bolton a little bit as well. Which, for the record, is a much harder sell.

Besides in my opinion any agency that the conservatives attack as often as they do the IRS, must be doing SOMETHING right.