Donald Trump gets visibly angry and ends interview after being asked for proof that Obama okayed illegal surveillance directed at him.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

President Donald Trump grew visibly angry and walked away from an interview with CBS News reporter John Dickerson after Dickerson pressed him for proof that former President Barack Obama had illegally wiretapped Trump Tower.

“He was very nice to me, but after that, we’ve had some difficulties,” said Trump. “So it doesn’t matter. You know, words are less important to me than deeds, and you saw what happened with surveillance.” 

Dickerson then asked Trump for evidence that Obama had illegally wiretapped him, but Trump wouldn’t offer any — while insisting that “our side has been proven very strongly.” 

Dickerson contradicted Trump, however, and pointed out that nothing had been proven. 

“I just wanted to find out,” Dickerson said. “You’re the president of the United States. You said [Obama] was sick and bad.” After some more attempts at getting Trump to present evidence, Trump simply said, “That’s enough, thank you,” and walked away from the interview.

I think "I don't stand by anything, you can take it the way you want" should be the take away quote from this exchange.

And good on John Dickerson for staying on it the way he did.

Trump does this pathetic double talk thing, that for some reason seems to work in a lot of situations to get him out of actually answering a question.

"Our side has been proven very strongly, and everybody's talking about it" is certainly NOT evidence of ANYTHING.

And Trump is such a baby that he simply cannot handle reporters who demand an actual answer to a question.

After reviewing the data a bipartisan group of both Democrats and Republicans have found that Susan Rice did nothing wrong. But then you knew that already, didn't you?

RICE ORDERED SPY DOCS ON TRUMP? https://t.co/bL2nZRFxk9

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) April 4, 2017

(This is what Trump retweeted on April 4th.)

Courtesy of NBC News: 

A review of the surveillance material flagged by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes shows no inappropriate action by Susan Rice or any other Obama administration official, Republican and Democratic Congressional aides who have been briefed on the matter told NBC News. 

President Donald Trump told the New York Times he believed former National Security Adviser Rice broke the law by asking for the identities of Trump aides who were mentioned in transcripts of U.S. surveillance of foreign targets. Normally, the identities of Americans are blacked out in transcripts circulated by the National Security Agency, but they may be "unmasked," if their identities are relevant to understanding the intelligence.

Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees from both parties have traveled to NSA headquarters to review the relevant intelligence reports. 

"I saw no evidence of any wrongdoing," said one U.S. official who reviewed the documents, who would not agree to be identified further. "It was all completely normal."

His assessment was shared by a senior Republican aide who had been briefed on the matter but declined to speak on the record.

So that means when Devin Nunes called those press conferences and rushed to the White House to breathlessly warn Trump that he and his associates were under surveillance, that he was simply making the whole thing up?

The House Ethics Committee is already supposedly investigating this, but I think there needs to be a full blown investigation by the FBI that looks into exactly what, or who, convinced Nunes to attempt to sabotage the House intelligence Committee investigation and to then try to pin blame on Susan Rice.

Nearly 200 theaters will be showing the movie "1984" today. Can you guess why?

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Nearly 200 movie theaters worldwide reportedly plan to screen the film version of “1984” simultaneously Tuesday in protest against President Trump. 

The demonstration, called "National Screening Day," primarily involves cinemas in the U.S. but also includes venues in Canada, Croatia, Sweden and the United Kingdom, according to Monday reports. 

Al-Jazeera said the event was created by Dylan Skolnick, co-director of the Cinema Arts Centre on Long Island, N.Y., and Adam Birnbaum, director of film programing at Connecticut’s Avon Theatre Film Centre. 

“In particular, this undermining of the concept of facts and the demonization of foreign enemies [by the Trump administration] really resonate in ‘1984,’” Skolnick said. 

The event is scheduled for April 4 as a nod to the date Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell's novel, begins resisting the Inner Party and Big Brother. 

“No one is suggesting that we’re living in Orwell’s world. But the road to that world is people just becoming disengaged and allowing their government to do whatever it wants," Skolnick said. 

“1984” depicts a totalitarian future society controlled by a single political party amid perpetual war and endless government surveillance.

Okay wait, so we're NOT living in Orwell's world yet?

Somebody needs to tell that to my blood pressure.

Donald Trump goes after Hillary Clinton and John Podesta while tripling down on the claim that he was spied on by the Obama Administration.

Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends. "Spied on before nomination." The real story.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2017

When you are desperately citing Fox and Friends as your information source, you should realize that you have lost the argument.

Was the brother of John Podesta paid big money to get the sanctions on Russia lifted? Did Hillary know?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2017

Wait, what?

Did Hillary Clinton ever apologize for receiving the answers to the debate? Just asking!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2017

Okay first off that was for a town hall, and how is any of that even relevant to what is happening today?

.@FoxNews from multiple sources: "There was electronic surveillance of Trump, and people close to Trump. This is unprecedented." @FBI

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2017

Also untrue.

Clearly Trump is losing his mind over this investigation into possible collusion with Russia, and is throwing everything that he can think of out there to distract and obfuscate.

He is like a toddler who gets caught smearing feces on the wall and quickly points out that he saw the dog pee in the hallway last week.

Kellyanne Conway has a theory as to how Obama surveilled Donald Trump.

"Microwaves that turn into cameras?"

Nice to know that Trump surrounds himself with such intellectual powerhouses.

Amid an ongoing back and forth between Donald Trump and American intelligence agencies, Wikileaks releases documents from CIA hack.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

WikiLeaks on Tuesday released thousands of documents that it said described sophisticated software tools used by the Central Intelligence Agency to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions. 

If the documents are authentic, as appeared likely at first review, the release would be the latest coup for the anti-secrecy organization and a serious blow to the C.I.A., which maintains its own hacking capabilities to be used for espionage. 

The initial release, which WikiLeaks said was only the first part of the document collection, included 7,818 web pages with 943 attachments, the group said. The entire archive of C.I.A. material consists of several hundred million lines of computer code, it said.

Now Wikileaks offers up some obfuscation to camouflage the source of this hack but if you are not already convinced that it is the Russians than you have simply not been paying attention.

Currently Trump is reeling from one anonymous tip after another showing that his White House is in turmoil, his ties to Russia are multiplying exponentially, and his mental health is in question.

Much of this Trump is blaming on intelligence sources, and as of yesterday those same intelligence sources threw cold water on his claim that President Obama tapped his phones.

In a word he is pissed!

So then we come to today and lo and behold Wikileaks, the same group who released information hacked from the DNC and other sources to help Trump win the election, have suddenly released a treasure trove of information concerning HOW the CIA conducts espionage and gains access to electronic devices.

What a coinky dink.

So how does this help Trump you might ask?

Well besides offering an irresistible distraction to the media, there are tidbits like this:

Another program described in the documents, named Umbrage, is a voluminous library of cyberattack techniques that the C.I.A. has collected from malware produced by other countries, including Russia. According to the WikiLeaks release, the large number of techniques allows the C.I.A. to mask the origin of some of its cyberattacks and confuse forensic investigators.

Now just let that digest a little. And then imagine what Trump supporters will make of that revelation.

Well here let me just tell you, because they are already doing it.

What this Umbrage program suggests is that the CIA could hack into a computer and then leave behind false data that will confuse investigators into believing that the hack came from another source.

So if you are a Trump supporter who does not want to accept the fact that the Russians hacked computers in America in order to help hand the election to your candidate, well now you don't have to accept that fact.  

You can simply convince yourself that the CIA hacked the DNC, State Department, Clinton Campaign, White House, and apparently themselves, and then blamed the whole thing on poor, blameless Vladimir Putin.

And if you don't think they are dumb enough to do this, well like I said you have not been paying attention.

Speaking of Putin and Russia, I would like to bring something else to your attention.

According to the New York Times this material was apparently hacked between 2013 and 2016.

This means that whoever had it in their possession (The Russians) has had all of those CIA tricks in their tool kit for as long as three years.

That means that they could have been using that stolen data to gain access to any number of computers, televisions, and smart phones in the possession of diplomats, reporters, politicians, you name it.

If you then remember that the Russians are famous for using blackmail to force powerful people to bend to their will, well then at this point I think some things might be starting to fall into place.

Now do you remember what else happened in 2013?

That is the year that Edward Snowden flew to Russia after stealing the global surveillance blueprints from the NSA.

As @wikileaks are revealing how the CIA hack, let's ask why they never leak anything about SORM. pic.twitter.com/QHanK2dth3

— Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) March 7, 2017

And once again the picture starts to become a little bit clearer.

While at Fox News Roger Ailes spied on other reporters, and even had at least one female staffer date them to gather information.

Courtesy of Media Matters:

BRIAN STELTER: In terms of the money, this is Gabriel Sherman's reporting in New York magazine. He's been a leader on this story, wrote a book about Roger Ailes a number of years ago. A lot of what he's reporting I think reporters have suspected for a while. I'll give you an example. About ten years ago I had a crush on a woman at Fox News. She was a low level staffer. I was in college at the time. So I was going out on what I thought were dates. Chris, I thought these were dates. These were not dates. She was actually reporting back to Fox News about me. She was reporting back about what I thought of her and about CNN and MSNBC and Fox. Because I was a reporter on the beat, they were actually spying on me that way. Now I didn't think that was a big deal at the time. I thought it was the way Fox operates. Fox is a political organization. But now we know they were actually sending out private investigators. They were tailing other reporters. 

 BILL CARTER: They were following reporters around. We knew covering Fox you'd have to deal with that. You'd get a call from them saying, "You better be right on this story" or the implication was, "We'll dig into your past, we'll dig into your private life." 

STELTER: So we sort of knew but now we know much much more. Because these reports, like from Gabriel Sherman, saying that money, that Ailes was using Fox News money, for his own private spending.

I found out a year later, after she left Fox. No hard feelings. I don't think it was even an "effective" operation https://t.co/QD46s1G2uh

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 9, 2016

Damn that is some Mata Hari shit right there.

Now I'm wondering about who else the Fox News lady spies were sent out to keep tabs on.

I would call this Nixonian, but in reality I don't think that even Tricky Dick went to these extremes. 

So Russia just signed massive new surveillance measures into law. Wait, didn't those already exist?

Courtesy of The Washington Times:

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed legislation Thursday compelling telephone companies and internet providers to save and store the private communications of its customers, notwithstanding concerns raised by human rights advocates and big business alike. 

Included within a package of amendments proposed as antiterrorism measures, the law will require telecoms to collect and keep copies of customers’ phone calls, text messages and emails for six months, as well as maintain metadata concerning those communications for up to three years. 

Other provisions effectively outlaw the use of digital encryption within Russia and introduce new penalties for individuals accused of inciting terrorism through social media.

Wondering how Edward Snowden is handling this news? Not very well actually.

#Putin has signed a repressive new law that violates not only human rights, but common sense. Dark day for #Russia. https://t.co/J4I2SQ9VCe

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2016

Signing the #BigBrother law must be condemned. Beyond political and constitution consequences, it is also a $33b+ tax on Russia's internet.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 7, 2016

Personally I think that most of these measures have already been in place for quite some time, and for whatever reason Putin just now decided to make it public.

After all the idea that Russia has a less intrusive domestic spying program than the United States is simply ridiculous.

While we're on the subject is anybody else essentially no longer worrying about privacy and government surveillance in light of the number of terror attacks that have occurred here and in other places around the world?

It just seems to me that every time there is an attack everybody complains that law enforcement did not keep close enough tabs on the suspect, and rarely do I hear anybody challenging the idea of the government keeping tabs on people.

Or maybe it just seems that way to me.

John Oliver's interview with Edward Snowden.

I am simply going to present this to you with no comment, except to say that I think Oliver did a great job.

I should also warn you that it is over half an hour long, but trust me you will be entertained. 

Another brilliant idea by the Teabaggers. "Let's shoot down the drones!"

Courtesy of The Daily Caller: 

The tiny town of Deer Trail, Colo. — barely more than a wide spot on Interstate 70 about 55 miles east of Denver, population 546 — is considering an ordinance that would authorize licensed bounty hunters to shoot down unmanned aircraft violating its “sovereign airspace.” 

A six-page petition circulated by a resident says that the threat of surveillance from drones — regardless of who is piloting them — is a threat to “traditional American ideas of Liberty and Freedom” enjoyed by Deer Trail’s “ranchers, farmers, cowboys and Indians, as well as contemporary citizens.” 

Therefore, drone incursions are to be seen as acts of war. 

According to the proposed ordinance, which will be considered by the town council at its next meeting on Aug. 6, prospective bounty hunters can get a one-year drone-hunting license for $25. 

Proposed bounties will be $25 for those turning in the wings or fuselage of downed aircraft and $100 for mostly intact vehicles. To collect the bounty, the wreckage must have “markings, and configuration … consistent with those used by the United States federal government.” 

Such “trophies” then become the property of Deer Trail. 

It would seem to me that it is only a hop, skip, and a jump from  firing on unmanned drones to firing upon Federal agents investigating crime in your town. I mean what would these "licensed bounty hunters" do if the Feds came to arrest them for destroying government property?

Now I am not sure what kind of drones the government might use domestically, but the 10 MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft that we use overseas costs over 12 million dollars.

Somehow I think the Federal government would not take kindly to having one shot out of the sky by a bunch of morons looking to collect a $25.00 bounty. Nor by the way do I think that is likely possible.

This is just another example of rednecks believing that their little popguns can stand up to the might of the Federal government, when in fact if they were to engage in an act of aggression they be overwhelmed and locked away before they could even say "Obama's a Muslim Socialist."

(P.S. By the way it is blogger etiquette to link to the Daily Caller because that is where I got this article, but do not feel you need to give them any clicks. I cut and pasted the interesting part, and besides, they're are Right Wing assholes.)

Security cameras are designed to catch illegal activities, but sometimes they see so much more.

Coca-Cola recently compiled security footage from all over the world, but not the things you usually see on the news. 

Just when you think the world is going to hell in a hand basket, a reminder of just how wonderfully human, humans can be.