Showing posts with label news outlets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news outlets. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Senator Jeanne Shaheen introduces bill to give Justice Department more power to investigate Russia language news outlet.

Courtesy of Politico:  

New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is introducing a bill that would give the Justice Department additional authority to investigate Russia's english-language news outlet RT America for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. 

The bill, called the Foreign Agents Registration Modernization and Enforcement Act, would increase the Department of Justice’s power to compel organizations to produce information about their foreign connections and the sources of their funding. 

Shaheen, a Democrat, said that the bill comes in response to a report from the Director of National Intelligence about Russian influence in the 2016 election, part of which examined RT America. That report stated that RT News was skirting disclosure requirements by using a nonprofit structure, and that RT's programming intended to advance stories that benefited Russian interests. 

“We have good reason to believe that RT News is coordinating with the Russian government to spread misinformation and undermine our democratic process,” Shaheen said in a statement. “The American public has a right to know if this is the case.”

I think this is a great idea, however I would have more confidence that it could make a difference if the DOJ was not currently under the control of Donald Trump's new Attorney General, and Keebler Elf, Jeff Sessions.

Somehow I get the idea that Sessions has NO intention of investigating any Russian language news outlets that might have had a hand in helping his boss win the presidency.

Besides currently the DOJ is up to it's ass crack in work trying to locate evidence that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.

Courtesy of CNN: 

The Department of Justice asked the chairman and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee for "additional time" to collect evidence to support President Donald Trump's accusation that the Obama administration wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower during the campaign.

Yes how could the Feds have any time left to investigate the undermining of our democracy when they are so busy going on Trump inspired wild goose chases.

Thursday, March 09, 2017

Another news outlet has essentially reached the same conclusion that I have about the Wikileaks dump of hacked CIA materials.

As most of you know I posted about this Wikileaks dump on Tuesday.

During that post I stated that it was unlikely that this leak was a coincidence, that the Russians likely did the hacking, and that Trump's supporters would use it to suggest that the CIA had hacked the DNC computers and then blamed it on the Russians.

I know, crazy right?

However this news outlet, which specializes in foreign policy, does not think it so crazy.

Courtesy of the FP Group: 

In the first place, WikiLeaks has often timed its leaks for maximum political impact. It released 20,000 stolen DNC emails just three days before the Democratic National Convention on July 25, 2016. As expected, WikiLeaks generated headlines about DNC staffers disparaging Sen. Bernie Sanders, buttressing a Trump campaign effort to prevent Clinton from consolidating Sanders supporters. DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as a result, and the Clinton campaign suffered significant public relations damage. 

In the second place, WikiLeaks, which has often leaked American but never Russian secrets, has been identified by the U.S. intelligence community as a front for Russian intelligence. In January, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified estimate that found “with high confidence that Russian military intelligence … relayed material to WikiLeaks.” This was done with a definite purpose: “Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.”

 .........

It is significant, therefore, that one of the major storylines to emerge from the latest WikiLeaks release is that the CIA supposedly has a program to reuse computer codes from foreign hackers, thus disguising CIA fingerprints on a hacking operation. Never mind that there is no evidence that the codes used to break into the DNC were part of this CIA database. Right-wing outlets are nevertheless trumpeting these revelations with headlines such as this one on Breitbart: “WikiLeaks: CIA Uses ‘Stolen’ Malware to ‘Attribute’ Cyberattacks to Nations Like Russia.” Russian-controlled Internet “bots” are also said to be playing up these claims online. 

The implication is clear. Trump was a victim of a “false flag” operation wherein CIA hackers broke into the DNC and blamed the Russians. This may be nutty, but it’s eminently believable to an audience conditioned to believe that 9/11 was an inside job and that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged — favorite tropes of the radio talk-show host Alex Jones, whose work Trump has praised. Other WikiLeaks revelations — for instance, that the CIA can use Samsung smart TVs as listening devices — lend further credence to Trump’s charge that he was secretly wiretapped. 

Quite apart from its specifics, the WikiLeaks release changes the subject after a bad few days for Trump highlighted by Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from any Kremlingate probe after he was revealed to have lied under oath when he denied meeting any Russian representatives. Last week it was Trump on the defensive. Now it’s his nemeses in the U.S. intelligence community who are answering embarrassing questions about how this leak could have occurred and the contents of the leaked information.

Yep, those are the same conclusions that I reached as well.

Trump's supporters and his fellow Republicans are looking for some reason to reject the fact that the Russians hacked various computers to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign and help Trump win the election, and this is all they need to make that to happen.  

Now Julian Assange is going to deny that the Russians provided him with the CIA data, just like he denied that they were behind the DNC hack and the John Podesta phishing expedition. But of course we now know that he was lying then, and so it is safe to assume that he will be lying this time.

And what is undeniably true is that he is now handing out the CIA's hacking tools to various technology companies, knowing full well they will find their way into the hands of America's enemies.

The idea presented by Assange is that this will help these technology companies patch their software therefore making it harder to hack, but it of course will also mean that the foreign agencies will now know how to block intelligence agencies from spying on them and that will likely make any further investigation into Trump's ties with Russia just that much harder to prove.

All of this will also undermine the credibility of the American intelligence agencies which will make what they DO reveal that much easier to dismiss by the public at large. 

What is that called? "Collateral damage?"

Or perhaps that was really the target all along.

P.S. It appears that Josh Marshall over at TPM has some more interesting crumbs that involve possible Trump representative Nigel Farage meeting with Assange before his big press conference today: 

During Sean Spicer's daily press briefing, an AP reporter asks Spicer about the Farage/Assange meeting and whether he carrying a message from President Trump. Spicer basically ducked the question. But when asked specifically whether Farage was "delivering a message" from Trump, Spicer replied: "I have no idea."

Hmm, curiouser and curiouser.

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

Russian media celebrates the turmoil created in America by the election of Donald Trump.

Courtesy of Politico: 

Kremlin-controlled news outlets used to root for Donald Trump’s election. Now they’re reveling in the chaos and division of his early presidency. “Sessions Scandal: ‘U.S Headed to Constitutional Crisis,’” reads a March 3 headline on the website of the Kremlin-funded English-language network RT.“Immigrants See American Dream Fade in Wake of Surge in Hate Crimes,” Sputnik News, another English language outlet bankrolled by the Kremlin, reported the same day. 

“America is in the grips of hatred,” the Russian television commentator Dmitry Kiselyov told viewers of the Rossiya 1 network on Sunday night. The popular host, appointed directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggested the political discord could lead to violence in gun-friendly America — “a dangerous combination with free-flowing firearms,” he said. 

It’s not that the Kremlin-controlled outlets which all but explicitly rooted for Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton last fall have changed their view of the New York mogul. It’s that Moscow’s main goal was always to undermine the U.S. political system, regardless of who is in the White House, experts said. 

“The Russian government is savoring the severe damage to America’s international image as a result of the tumultuous first weeks of the Trump administration’s tenure,” said Andrew Weiss, a former Clinton White House National Security Council official for Russian affairs.

The Russians knew they could never defeat us on the battlefield.

All they had to do was watch us dumb ourselves down with reality TV, and an undermined education system, until we were malleable enough to lead us by the nose right over the cliff.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

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.

Thursday, November 03, 2016

It appears that Donald Trump might already be preparing for his next career. And no not as President.

Don't worry, I have a back up plan.
Courtesy of Fox News:

Donald Trump denies he is interested in launching a new conservative news venture, but somebody sure is. 

What's being billed as an "up-and-coming conservative media network currently in development" is now scouring for hosts, reporters and right-leaning, well-spoken panelists, according to a brand new casting notice obtained Wednesday evening by Fox News. 

The notice goes on to say the on-air talent the network wants "must be knowledgeable about conservative viewpoints, current events and the presidential election," adding applicants must also "look upscale and intelligent," and should be "outspoken and energetic." 

Auditions are being held at an undisclosed New York City studio on Nov. 7, the eve of Election Day. 

While the casting call doesn't identify any specific employer, it does suggest initial programming will be streamed on the internet, infrastructure the Trump campaign has already set up through its Facebook live feed where aides have been broadcasting events and counter news programming.

I think its appropriate that this is being reported by Fox News, since they are the ones who should worry the most about this. 

Fox News, by the way, reached out to the Trump campaign and they did not deign to comment.

So it is starting to look like everybody was right that Trump does not really want to be President, but wants to use this campaign as a jumping off point for his next career as a conservative media mogul.

Hmm, maybe THAT'S why Bristol Palin and Dakota Meyer are visiting Washington, D.C..

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Sarah Palin's Freedom Summit speech the day after.

Just one of a number of SarahPAC graphics cobbled together from the few lucid moments of Palin's speech.
Now as all of you know I am certainly not new to Palin's word salad. And I have transcribed some crazy ass speechifying in my day. But last night may have been the most batshit craziest of all the batshit crazy that came before.

I have to admit that while I listened to a good portion of it before putting together my last post of the day yesterday, kind of skipped ahead at certain points just to get the general idea and did not listen to the entire thirty five minutes until this morning, and I have to admit I kind of wish I never had.

But don't take my word for it, just take a gander at what other news outlets had to say.

First the Daily Mail felt certain that Palin's teleprompter had frozen, and that it was to blame for her incoherence: 

Republican firebrand Sarah Palin is rarely at a loss for words but became unmoored on Saturday in Iowa after her teleprompter froze and left her without portions of her prepared speech. 

The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee flipped through a binder of notes and strung together a series of one-liners – and some of them made little sense. 

'The man can only ride you when your back is bent,' she said, as audience members looked at each other quizzically. 

'So strengthen it! Then the man can't ride you, America won't get taken for a ride, because so much is at stake.' 

Addressing the controversy over the virtues of the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle and the 'American Sniper' film that tells his life story, she shouted: “Screw the left in Hollywood!' 

Others claimed that her teleprompter was workign just fine, with Palin supporters stomping their feet and screaming that she was not using a teleprompter, because their heroine doesn't fucking need them!

Right Wing Watch took Palin's word salad at face value and called her out over her unmitigated attacks on the Left: 

Palin said that Republicans need to prepare for attacks from the liberal media, which seeks to “crucify” conservatives, warning that liberals use Saul Alinsky-inspired political tactics, such as charges of “racism” and “sexism.” 

Republicans should reject these “Orwellian” and “disgusting charges from the left,” Palin said, before calling on conservatives to label liberals as the real racists and sexists: “Reverse them, for it is they who point a finger not realizing that they have triple that amount of fingers pointing right back at them revealing that they are the ones who really discriminate and divide on color and class and sex. We call them out. We don’t let them get away with it.” 

She urged conservatives to expose the “real war on women with truth because we can handle the truth,” explaining: “It is they who defeat women, they shackle them to the good old boys running Washington, pimping this promise that they have to provide for these little ladies’ every need, because ‘there, there, a woman is just not capable.’” 

Oh yeah, that's pure Palin. 

And while others, like Crooks and Liars took note that Palin went out of her way to call the President a "boy," the Des Moines Register tried to polish the mooseturd up a little for public consumption: 

Beyond the Iowa references, Palin's 35-minute speech was a free-form reflection on Republican presidential strategy, Democratic dishonesty, personal slights, the glory of the United States and its military, and several other subjects.

Nice try, but we know excrement when we see it.

Other news outlets were not so charitable, and decided to post their observations unvarnished.

From Hot Air: 

The order of speakers got juggled around too, and led to a strange up-and-down effect at the end. Sarah Palin, who was supposed to be the keynote speaker, gave a crowd-pleasing but stream-of-consciousness address. She offered support for King for his part in the revolt against Boehner, which got a large round of applause. However, her speech seemed to run out of gas after a few minutes, and the audience responses thinned out notably. 

What in the hell is she talking about?
 Politico was even more blunt:  

Sarah Palin, who has been teasing the press with hints she might actually run for president, appeared to end much hope of that Saturday by delivering a 33-minute speech of such incoherence that even veteran Palin-watchers were puzzled. 

Some sample lines from Palin: 

“Screw the left and Hollywood!” 

“Coronation, rinse, repeat.” 

Obama “is so over it. America, he’s just not that into you.” 

“The man can only ride you when your back is bent.” 

I would provide some context, but there wasn’t any. It is possible she was improperly inflated.

However it was another reporter from the Des Moine Register who summarized it best: 

Sarah Palin's speech was like passing a burning wreck surrounded by ambulances on the highway. You know you should just keep driving, but you can't help slowing down to look. If she had ambitions for 2016, she should pursue them somewhere besides Iowa.

The Democratic Party's response to the speech was both short and sweet:


You know way back in 2009 I predicted that someday Sarah Palin would have destroyed herself so completely that she would be reduced to late night one liners and $200 questions on Jeopardy.

I think that after this performance that would actually be more than she could possibly hope for. 

Personally I cannot help but find it ironic that on the weekend during which Palin has tried so hard to create buzz about a possible 2016 presidential run in order to convince news outlets to start taking her seriously again, that she ends up giving them all the ammunition they could possibly need to continue painting her as a laughingstock and an embarrassment to the Republican party and to the country at large.

Though to be honest I can't say I am surprised.