So about that Stormy Daniels interview.....

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

What’s important here is the way Trump and his circle of enablers went about trying to cover up these (alleged) affairs, while Trump himself was seeking the top political office in the country. 

Trump’s personal lawyer and his allies at the National Enquirer used nondisclosure agreements to silence these women, taking a page from the corporate playbook. 

NDAs are already far too common in the business world, used to paper over a host of misdeeds, most crucially sexual harassment and discrimination. Disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein is perhaps the most egregious abuser of NDAs, which allowed him to harass and assault women for decades. 

“Donald Trump is acting like he personally owns this information, as though he can act like a king and take any measures to control the way people talk about him,” said Heidi Kitrosser, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Minnesota Law School. “You can’t do that when you’re acting with the power of the federal government.”

Now I will admit that is important to learn, but not so much because it reveals that Trump is a misogynist who controlled women with threats of lawsuits or used his wealth to buy their silence.

But what is most important about that is what Vox reported late last night: 

Stormy Daniels’ 60 Minutes interview was, in its way, fascinating. But it ultimately failed to shed light on the two most interesting questions posed by this entire imbroglio, presumably because Daniels herself doesn’t know the answer.

1. How many other sexual partners has Trump paid hush money to? 
2. How many foreign intelligences services know about one or more of those women? 

Trump has secrets that Trump regards as worth keeping. 

And while that put Daniels under pressure, it means that entities with more power and sophistication than an adult film actress can use those secrets to put pressure on Trump. The president has successfully cultivated an image as so flaky and incompetent, that his many baffling decisions on the world stage — from leaking Israeli intelligence to the Russian foreign minister to undercutting his own administration’s policy on Qatar to mysteriously leaving Japan off a list of allies exempted from steel tariffs — generally get written off as evidence that Trump is flaky and incompetent, rather than being actively manipulated by foreign actors.

Exactly!

Now I alluded to this last night in the comments section, because that is the truly relevant point that is being revealed with this interview, and the one Karen McDougal gave a few days ago.

Donald Trump's careless lifestyle has rendered him vulnerable to blackmail, and manipulation by just just about ANYBODY. And that includes foreign governments.

I am still in the first 100 pages of David Corn's book "Russian Roulette" but I have already learned that Donald Trump went to Russia a variety of times in the 80's, 90's, and 2000's, at least once at the invitation of the Kremlin.

We know that the Russian government has a habit of gathering embarrassing information on American celebrities and politicians that can be used later, yet Trump seems to have clumsily wandered into that lion's den on multiple occasions.

What's more, according to the book, Trump bragged to friends and associates that the Russian women were "without morals," which indicates to me that his interactions with them were less than dignified, and may in fact have been truly pornographic.

And of course all of this was talked about in that Christopher Steele dossier which the conservatives are so desperate to dismiss as "fake news."

So do I think there is a "pee tape?"

Hell, I think the pee tape might only be the first course in a depravity riddled sequence of DVDs which Donald Trump is desperate to see left buried until long after he has shuffled off this mortal coil.

And it was THAT probability which was driven home last night during this interview with Stormy Daniels.

P.S. By the way I would suggest that the trolls simply give up on trying to shame Stormy on social media.....

Yes, I am. Nice to meet ya! https://t.co/kUdVLRWwu0

— Stormy Daniels (@StormyDaniels) March 26, 2018

....it simply doesn't work.

Cambridge Analytica boss caught on camera offering to hire sex workers and offer bribes to compromise politicians.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed: 

The boss of Cambridge Analytica, the analytics firm at the centre of an international storm over the misuse of Facebook user data, has been caught on camera bragging about how the company could blackmail political candidates with sex workers, and telling a prospective client that it has been secretly operating around the world to campaign in elections. 

In an undercover operation by Britain's Channel 4 News, CEO Alexander Nix and two other high-ranking Cambridge Analytica staff took meetings with a reporter posing as a fixer who wanted the data firm's help getting candidates elected in Sri Lanka. 

On Monday evening, Channel 4 broadcast undercover footage from four meetings across three months, with Nix telling the reporter that one of the services of Cambridge Analytica could be to “send some girls around to the candidate’s house”, adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well”. 

Nix also told the undercover reporter: “We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land, for instance. We’ll have the whole thing recorded. We’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the internet.”

Representatives of the company also offered to spread fake news about political opponents in order to help sway the elections.

Well gee, no wonder the Trump campaign wanted to work with these guys, they were singing the same tune.

This is what the whistle blower who outed the company's Facebook data mining operation said about this video:   

Wiley couldn’t speak as to how this relates to the firm’s work for the Trump campaign, but he went on to say “there is a perverse company culture inside of Cambridge Analytica, and as the undercover shows, they’re willing to go to extreme lengths to service their clients, and they’ll do anything that helps, whether it’s legal or not.”

Do we really believe that the Trump campaign did not utilize that skills set?

We also learned yesterday that before they started using their possibly illegal tactics to help Donald Trump, that Cambridge Analytica worked for Ted Cruz.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Before they ran shady data operations for Donald Trump’s campaign, Cambridge Analytica worked for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) during his presidential bid. Now, the Texas Republican is under fire for hiring the group amid reports that they improperly used Facebook data. 

The Dallas Morning News reported Monday that the Cruz campaign kept Cambridge Analytica on retainer six months after initial reports of the firm using illicitly-sourced Facebook data surfaced in 2015 — a fact the Texas Democratic Party touted in a news release published on Monday. 

“Ted Cruz will stop at nothing to weasel his way into power, even if it means weaponizing stolen information to manipulate people to like him,” Manny Garcia, the deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, said in a press release. “Cruz’s campaign exploited personal information to create psychological profiles on millions of Americans. All to keep lining the pockets of Cruz’s billionaire super PAC donors — like Robert Mercer, who funded this propaganda machine.”

Color me unsurprised that Cruz would resort to tactics like this, nice to see that it might end up biting him in the ass and costing him this election.

Oh, one more thing.

I appears that Cambridge Anaylytica currently has a contract with our State Department: 

Strategic Communications Laboratories, best known for its work with its offshoot and collaborator Cambridge Analytica, appears to have an open contract with the State Department. DefenseOne first noted the contract on a government contracts database, where it is listed as still open.

Well, I ma going to have to take a really hot shower after this post to get the sleaze off. 

Missouri Governor admits to affair, but not willing to admit that he blackmailed the woman involved.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R), responding to media reports, acknowledged Wednesday night that he was unfaithful to his wife “a few years ago” before being elected. But his lawyer denied sensational allegations aired by a local TV station that Greitens threatened to distribute naked photos he took of the woman with whom he was having a relationship if she ever said anything about it. 

The woman, who has not been named publicly, was Greitens’s hair stylist, according to media reports confirmed by The Washington Post with a source familiar with the situation. 

A joint statement posted Wednesday night by Greitens and his wife, Sheena, said in part that “a few years ago . . . there was a time when he was unfaithful in our marriage. This was a deeply personal mistake. Eric took responsibility, and we dealt with this together honestly and privately.”

But wait, there's more:  

The extramarital relationship itself, however, may have been the least explosive part of the story. 

More unusual was what she purportedly said in a recording made surreptitiously by the woman’s jealous ex-husband, which the station played. 

In it, she can be heard telling how Greitens invited her to his home in 2015. Once she arrived, he told her he would show her how to do pull-ups, taped her hands to exercise rings and blindfolded her, all with her consent. 

Then, to her shock, she alleged, he snapped photographs of her naked and threatened to distribute the pictures if she revealed the relationship.

Greitens is like the perfect GOP politician.  Ex-Navy Seal, worked for the Bush White House, book author, Rhodes Scholar, has a doctorate, and now he is proven to be a sexual deviant.

It's almost like he came from Republican politician central casting.

Now let's see if the Republicans continue to embrace this guy, or if they are finally getting the message from the #MeToo movement. 

Here is some of that absolutely incredible interview that the New York Times conducted with Donald Trump. (Including audio.)

Here are some excerpts courtesy of the New York Times:

President Trump said on Wednesday that he never would have appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions had he known Mr. Sessions would recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation that has dogged his presidency, calling the decision “very unfair to the president.”

In a remarkable public break with one of his earliest political supporters, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Sessions’s decision ultimately led to the appointment of a special counsel that should not have happened. “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Mr. Trump said.


“Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” he added. “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair — and that’s a mild word — to the president.”


Why is he talking about himself in the third person?

It should be noted here that Sessions recused himself only after it was revealed that he lied about meeting with Russians during his confirmation hearing.

The real question for Trump should be why did he choose an Attorney General with ties to Russia, and then extrapolate that out further to ask why virtually EVERYBODY working on his campaign and now within his administration have ties to Russia?

Speaking of Russia this is how Trump characterized his meeting with Putin during the G20 Summit: 

Describing a newly disclosed informal conversation he had with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia during a dinner of world leaders in Germany this month, Mr. Trump said they talked for about 15 minutes, mostly about “pleasantries.” But Mr. Trump did say that they talked “about adoption.” Mr. Putin banned American adoptions of Russian children in 2012 after the United States enacted sanctions on Russians accused of human rights abuses, an issue that remains a sore point in relations with Moscow.

Mr. Trump acknowledged that it was “interesting” that adoptions came up since his son, Donald Trump Jr., said that was the topic of a meeting he had with several Russians with ties to the Kremlin during last year’s campaign. Even though emails show that the session had been set up to pass along incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, the president said he did not need such material from Russia about Mrs. Clinton last year because he already had more than enough.

Of course as we know "adoptions" is code for "sanctions," and I am amazed that Trump is actually using Russian talking points so blatantly since everybody knows for a fact what that meeting between Junior and the Russians was all about.

It is almost as if he assumes that nobody reads.

Then the subject turned to James Comey:  

Mr. Trump recalled that a little more than two weeks before his inauguration, Mr. Comey and other intelligence officials briefed him at Trump Tower on Russian meddling. Mr. Comey afterward pulled Mr. Trump aside and told him about a dossier that had been assembled by a former British spy filled with salacious allegations against the incoming president, including supposed sexual escapades in Moscow. The F.B.I. has not corroborated the most sensational assertions in the dossier. 

In the interview, Mr. Trump said he believed Mr. Comey told him about the dossier to implicitly make clear he had something to hold over the president. “In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there,” Mr. Trump said. As leverage? “Yeah, I think so,” Mr. Trump said. “In retrospect.” 

The president dismissed the assertions in the dossier: “When he brought it to me, I said this is really made-up junk. I didn’t think about any of it. I just thought about, man, this is such a phony deal.”

Wait, did Trump just accuse the former head of the FBI with threatening to blackmail him?

He does realize that President Obama was also told about that dossier as well, right?

Trump also disputed Comey's testimony under oath that he asked people to leave the room so that they could talk in private about ending the investigation into Michael Flynn:

“I don’t remember even talking to him about any of this stuff,” Mr. Trump said. “He said I asked people to go. Look, you look at his testimony. His testimony is loaded up with lies, O.K.?” 

He expressed no second thoughts about firing Mr. Comey, saying, “I did a great thing for the American people.”

Oh, well you just know the Senate Intelligence agency is going to want to talk to about that.

Trump also went after Special Counsel Robert Mueller: 

Mr. Trump was also critical of Mr. Mueller, a former F.B.I. director, reprising some of his past complaints that lawyers in his office contributed money to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. He noted that he actually interviewed Mr. Mueller to replace Mr. Comey just before his appointment as special counsel.

“He was up here and he wanted the job,” Mr. Trump said. After he was named special counsel, “I said, ‘What the hell is this all about?’ Talk about conflicts. But he was interviewing for the job. There were many other conflicts that I haven’t said, but I will at some point.”

And then there was this thinly veiled threat:

Asked if Mr. Mueller’s investigation would cross a red line if it expanded to look at his family’s finances beyond any relationship to Russia, Mr. Trump said, “I would say yes.” He would not say what he would do about it. “I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia.”

Holy shit!

So to be clear in this one interview Trump has admitted that he would not have hired Jeff Sessions if he knew he would not protect him from these Russian investigations, suggested that the former FBI chief was threatening to blackmail him, and insinuated that the Special Counsel might lose his job if he investigates the Trump family finances.

That is in only ONE interview.

Damn, no wonder Trump hates the media.

They keep reporting on the things that he says and does, so that people know about them.

Must be so frustrating. 

Nancy Pelosi calls for an investigation to find out if the Russians are blackmailing Donald Trump.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) on Sunday reiterated her demand that the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe President Trump’s ties to Russia. 

She made the call one day after Trump downplayed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s human rights record by questioning whether the United States, which has a long record of extrajudicial killings, is pure on the matter. 

“I want to know what the Russians have on Donald Trump. I think we have to have an investigation by the FBI into his financial, personal and political connections to Russia and we want to see his tax returns so we can have truth in the relationship [with] Putin, whom he admires,” Pelosi said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” 

Pelosi made the same demand on Jan. 13 after a closed-door briefing by U.S. intelligence officials about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The CIA has concluded that Russian intelligence tried to swing the election in Trump’s favor. 

Trump’s relationship with Putin has come under scrutiny again after he told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly on Saturday that he respects the Russian president, who has cracked down on political opposition, non-government advocacy groups and domestic critics.

I think that this absolutely HAS to be done.

However the problem is that James Comey heads the FBI and we all know that he has NO intention of investigating the guy that he endangered his career to help to win the election.

UNLESS of course he received enough pressure from both the Democratic and Republican politicians in Washington.

The BBC refutes the idea that the fabled Russian dossier on Donald Trump can be dismissed as "fake news."

Courtesy of the BBC: 

The opposition research firm that commissioned the report had worked first for an anti-Trump superpac - political action committee - during the Republican primaries. 

Then during the general election, it was funded by an anonymous Democratic Party supporter. But these are not political hacks - their usual line of work is country analysis and commercial risk assessment, similar to the former MI6 agent's consultancy. He, apparently, gave his dossier to the FBI against the firm's advice.

And the former MI6 agent is not the only source for the claim about Russian kompromat on the president-elect. Back in August, a retired spy told me he had been informed of its existence by "the head of an East European intelligence agency". 

Later, I used an intermediary to pass some questions to active duty CIA officers dealing with the case file - they would not speak to me directly. I got a message back that there was "more than one tape", "audio and video", on "more than one date", in "more than one place" - in the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and also in St Petersburg - and that the material was "of a sexual nature".

The claims of Russian kompromat on Mr Trump were "credible", the CIA believed. That is why - according to the New York Times and Washington Post - these claims ended up on President Barack Obama's desk last week, a briefing document also given to Congressional leaders and to Mr Trump himself. 

Mr Trump did visit Moscow in November 2013, the date the main tape is supposed to have been made. There is TV footage of him at the Miss Universe contest. Any visitor to a grand hotel in Moscow would be wise to assume that their room comes equipped with hidden cameras and microphones as well as a mini-bar.

It appears that the Trump team push back, and support from Right Wing news outlets labeling this "fake news," have been successful enough for the American press to have dropped it, however that really does not mean it is not credible.

James Clapper called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated. Made up, phony facts.Too bad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2017

.@CNN is in a total meltdown with their FAKE NEWS because their ratings are tanking since election and their credibility will soon be gone!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2017

And remember this fits in nicely with the pattern of Russian support and influence over Donald Trump that we have witnessed for ourselves this last year.

Now I personally have no means for determining if this story is valid or not, but if it is that simply reinforces what we already suspected, and that is that Trump is Putin's puppet.

In Senate hearing FBI's James Comey reiterates that the Republicans WERE hacked, but that their information was not released by the Russians. Update: Trump warned that Russians have compromising information about him

Courtesy of CNN: 

FBI director James Comey told a Senate panel that there was "penetration on the Republican side of the aisle and old Republican National Committee domains" no longer in use. 

He later added that "there was evidence of hacking directed at state-level organizations, state-level campaigns, and the RNC, but old domains of the RNC, meaning old emails they weren't using. None of that was released." 

Comey said there was no sign "that the Trump campaign or the current RNC was successfully hacked." 

Asked by Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, whether the hacker had the ability to selectively leak that old information, Comey indicated that they did. 

Comey also assesssed that "they got far deeper and wider into the (Democratic National Committee) than the RNC," adding that "similar techniques were used in both cases." 

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate committee, examining the cyber breaches, that the intelligence community concluded with "high confidence" that Russia hacked the election to "denigrate" Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and contrast her unfavorably to Republican Donald Trump.

So older Republican e-mail accounts WERE hacked, but not the current RNC or the Trump campaign. Hmm.

Does ANYBODY not think that those older GOP e-mail accounts would have yielded a treasure trove of useful data?

Depending on how old they are they could contain information about the John McCain campaign, the lead up to the Iraq War, evidence of corruption among lawmakers, possible inter office affairs, the possibilities are endless.

And why would the Russians even bother hacking into the current Republican e-mails or the Trump campaign when everything was already going according to plan?

Earlier in the hearing there was also this exchange:

Comey refused to comment on whether the FBI is investigating connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. 

But Sen. Angus King of Maine, an Independent, alluded tartly to Comey's very public statements about investigations into Clinton during the election campaign -- "the irony of you making that statement I cannot avoid." 

Comey said that there was a difference between open and closed investigations. He pushed back on King, saying, "You asked me if you have any pending investigations and we're not going to talk about that."

That's funny because we were told repeatedly that the Clinton investigation was not entirely closed before Comey sent that letter which played such a large part in costing Hillary the presidency.

And to my mind by saying that he cannot comment on any investigations that might be ongoing concerning Trump, that means there are ongoing investigations concerning Trump.

I think THAT should be announced to the American people BEFORE he gets sworn into office.

I am not the only one who thinks that.

I suspect this big news will not get full coverage: intel committee member says Comey should tell public what FBI knows of Trump-Russia ties

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) January 10, 2017

And there also clearly needs to be an independent non-partisan commission to investigate Russia's influence on this election, and the ties between them and the Trump campaign.

We also need to stop saying that the hacks had no impact on the outcome of the election when Donald Trump cited information leaked by Wikileaks over 100 times.

He did that because he knew it would have an impact, the only question left unanswered is when did he know he was citing information obtained by Russian hackers?

Update: Well as it turns out Trump himself may very well have been hacked by the Russians.

Courtesy of CNN:  

Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN. 

The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.

The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials. 

Sources tell CNN that these same allegations about communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians, mentioned in classified briefings for congressional leaders last year, prompted then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to send a letter to FBI Director Comey in October, in which he wrote, "It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government -- a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States." 

CNN has confirmed that the synopsis was included in the documents that were presented to Mr. Trump but cannot confirm if it was discussed in his meeting with the intelligence chiefs. 

The Trump transition team declined repeated requests for comment.

Okay help me out here, is this the right time to say "We told you so?"

Well I think we now know why the Russians worked so hard to get Trump elected.

"Not a puppet, not a puppet."

Yes, yes you are.

Update 2: Trump r

FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017

Well since just about everything this guy says is a lie, you make the call.

Is Donald Trump blackmailing Fox News? Maybe.

Courtesy of New York Magazine: 

It was also thanks to some information he had gathered that Trump was able to do something that no other Republican has done before: take on Fox News. An odd bit of coincidence had given him a card to play against Fox founder Roger Ailes. In 2014, I published a biography of Ailes, which upset the famously paranoid executive. Several months before it landed in stores, Ailes fired his longtime PR adviser Brian Lewis, accusing him of being a source. During Lewis’s severance negotiations, Lewis hired Judd Burstein, a powerhouse litigator, and claimed he had “bombs” that would destroy Ailes and Fox News. That’s when Trump got involved. 

“When Roger was having problems, he didn’t call 97 people, he called me,” Trump said. Burstein, it turned out, had worked for Trump briefly in the ’90s, and Ailes asked Trump to mediate. Trump ran the negotiations out of his office at Trump Tower. “Roger had lawyers, very expensive lawyers, and they couldn’t do anything. I solved the problem.” Fox paid Lewis millions to go away quietly, and Trump, I’m told, learned everything Lewis had planned to leak. If Ailes ever truly went to war against Trump, Trump would have the arsenal to launch a retaliatory strike.

The above was written in the New York Magazine article by Gabriel Sherman who wrote the book "The Loudest Voice in the Room" about Roger Ailes back in 2014.

 I read that book but I have to admit that I did not remember this passage, which seems to suggest that Trump may have Roger Ailes in a very ticklish position.

If accurate it not only reinforces the kind of prick Donald Trump is when dealing with people who might stand in his way, but it could also open him up to all kinds of legal problems if it came to light that he was overtly threatening Ailes.

I swear I have NEVER in my life seen anything like this 2016 presidential race in all of my years following politics.

So good news for Bristol, apparently there is a chance that Dakota Meyer is used to having his ass kicked by women.

"Me and Rowan." Not sure who Rowan is.

I have been sent a lot of articles and pictures concerning Dakota Meyer in the last few days (Including the picture up above.) but one of them really caught my attention.

This is courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader concerning a drunken brawl in 2012 that found Dakota being badly injured: 

Kanissa'ai Thompson is charged with second-degree assault for allegedly inflicting serious injury on Meyer, 24, during an early-morning fight Dec. 9, but Thompson said he never touched Meyer. 

"I never got involved," he told the Lexington Herald-Leader in an interview Friday. 

Meyer received medical treatment for the injuries he received at a party held in a Columbia business commonly called the Red Barn. 

According to a female friend of Meyer he required  three staples to close a head wound but she never got a good look at who struck him.

Meyer identified this man.

However he claims it was not him, but a female at the party: 

The 18-year-old farm worker charged with assaulting Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer claims he never touched the high-profile Marine veteran and puts the blame on an unidentified young woman. 

Now as it turns out Meyer did not know who hit him either, and claims to have identified Thompson based on eyewitness accounts, even though the female friend of Meyer said that she heard differing accounts of who threw the punches, some of which hit her as well.

Now here is the truly messed up part:  

Thompson said he believed Meyer had identified him as the assailant because of the potential embarrassment of being hit by a woman (Boy that has a ring of truth to it doesn't it?), but Meyer disputed that contention during a phone conversation he had with Thompson on Friday. 

Meyer called Thompson while he was being interviewed by the Herald-Leader, and Thompson allowed a reporter to listen to the conversation. 

Meyer said he did not identify Thompson as the person who kicked him while he was down. Other witnesses gave statements about who assaulted him, Meyer said during the call. 

Thompson had called Meyer earlier in the week to talk about the incident, and Meyer called back Friday to see if Thompson was serious about wanting to join the military, which they had discussed earlier. 

If so, Meyer said, he would drop the assault charge so it would not ruin the 18-year-old's chances to join the service. 

Meyer told Thompson he knew he was "a good kid." "I want to do whatever to help you out," Meyer said. 

"If you're going to go to the military and there's no charges pressed on me from anybody, then I'll tell you ... me and you'll go together is what we'll do, and it'll all end." 

So to be clear Meyer is not sure that Thompson is the guy who hit him, but he is willing to let the young man off the hook IF he agrees to enlist in the military. 

Does that sound like blackmail to anybody else?

Well I think this might be a match made in heaven, since as we know from the Throwdown at the Hoedown Bristol really likes to punch men in the face.

For those who just want to get right to Bristol's drunken testimony from that night, here is the famous Thonghazi from our pal Kenny Pick.

Yeah, I think that Levi REALLY needs to fight hard to keep Tripp here in Alaska with him, and for both shared physical and legal custody to protect his son from the drunken fights that you just know lie ahead for this couple.

Former Mitt Romney intern arrested for trying to use nude photos to blackmail women into sending him more.

Well of course he worked for THIS guy!

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

A former intern for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was arrested Tuesday over an alleged sexual extortion scheme.

 In a press release, the FBI said 21-year-old Adam Savader allegedly stalked 15 different women from three states between May 2012 and this past February. 

The New York Daily News reported that Savader was a political science major at SUNY Farmingdale. He had worked on the political campaigns of Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and Romney. 

Savader claimed to have nude photos of the women, and threatened to release the photos unless they sent him more. He demanded that one woman answer “a series of personal questions, relating to sexual preferences, positions, etc.,” according to a FBI complaint. He also informed at least two women that he was masturbating to their stolen pictures. 

“I swear on all that is holy. If you fuck with me again I will send these to your parents. I have no problem sending them to ur [sic] parents, friends and sorority sisters unless you cooperate by answering me,” he allegedly told one woman. 

Some of the victims attended the same high school as Savader, according to the complaint. 

One of his victims contacted the Ann Arbor Police Department, who referred the case to the FBI. Savader used Google Voice to keep his identity a secret, but the FBI was able to track him down via his IP address. 

FBI agents arrested Savader at his home in New York. He was charged with Internet extortion and cyberstalking. Savader faces up to five years in prison if convicted.

This guy was doing this WHILE Romney was running for office. And apparently there are tons of pictures of him with all kinds of GOP headliners. (And yes that also includes you-know-who.)

Boy did Mittens dodge a bullet with this one!

Gee I wonder what kind of job this guy would have had if Romney HAD won the 2012 election?

Secretary in charge of those "Binders full of women" perhaps?

MSNBC covers the David Letterman scandal.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I think that they handled this in a, dare I say it, " fair and balanced" manner.

There has been a lot of discussion here, and in other places, about the morality of what Letterman did. As I have said before, I don't judge people on their morality unless they are out and out hypocrites, or they injure others through their actions.

Do I think that dating people you work with is wrong? In my case it may have been, because my ex-wife was my previous boss and at least three of my other failed relationships started on the job. But hey that is just me.

However what I think we can ALL agree on is that this Robert "Joe" Halderman guy is completely in the wrong. It is one thing to talk about the inappropriateness of a person's sex life, or in a celebrities case, even talk to a tabloid about it. But this guy tried to extort 2 million dollars from David Letterman.! That is completely disgusting, not to mention criminal.

For instance, the things I learned about Sarah Palin a few months back are worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to her if I were to keep quiet.

But it never even crossed my mind to blackmail her. Instead I took, what only I knew at the time, and divulged it to some of my closest blogger buddies. And then I set about finding the proper venue for getting the truth out to the American people. And if this were just about Palin's personal life, and had no bearing on Alaska or the country at large, then I doubt I would have cared all that much about it.

But it is far bigger than that. And for those who come here to criticize me for going after Sarah Palin, all I have to say is that YOU my friend, are missing the big picture.