Sessions A Political Liability Trump Can Do Without

WaPo |  Attorney General Jeff Sessions is asking congressional leaders to undo federal medical-marijuana protections that have been in place since 2014, according to a May letter that became public Monday.

The protections, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, prohibit the Justice Department from using federal funds to prevent certain states "from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana."

In his letter, first obtained by Tom Angell of Massroots.com and verified independently by The Washington Post, Sessions argued that the amendment would "inhibit [the Justice Department's] authority to enforce the Controlled Substances Act." He continues:

I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime. The Department must be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American lives.

Sessions's citing of a "historic drug epidemic" to justify a crackdown on medical marijuana is at odds with what researchers know about current drug use and abuse in the United States. The epidemic Sessions refers to involves deadly opiate drugs, not marijuana. A growing body of research (acknowledged by the National Institute on Drug Abuse) has shown that opiate deaths and overdoses actually decrease in states with medical marijuana laws on the books.

Illinois Our First Failed State

MishTalk |  Both Powerball and Mega Millions Lotteries Will Pull Out of Illinois on June 30 due to the budget impasse.

Neither lottery would comment on the record.

Mary Pat at the Stump says Now, It’s Serious.

MP notes that while cash flow on lotteries is rising, so are admin costs.

Without a budget in place, the state is not authorized to make payments to the lotteries.

“Dear Contractor”

Illinois IOUs continue to mount and unpaid contractors have stopped work.

For details, please see Unable to Pay Bills, Illinois Sends “Dear Contractor” Letter Telling Firms to Halt Road Work on July 1

Will Powerball and Mega Millions be the force that gets Illinois to pass its first budget in three years?

Valodya The Real Reality Winner!

Tass |  According to Putin, Comey is more like a rights activist than a secret service chief. "If he continues to be persecuted in this connection, we will be ready to provide political asylum to him, he should know about that," the Russian president said.

Putin pointed out that Comey had admitted to have recorded his conversation with Trump, handing it over to the media through a friend. "This sounds strange when a secret service chief records his conversation with the commander-in-chief to hand the record to the media," Putin added.

Gatekeeping and Permitted Discourse Productions Will NEVER Promote a Militant New Negro!!!

CounterPunch |  The July 4 meeting at which The Voice appeared came in the wake of the vicious white supremacist attacks (Harrison called it a “pogrom”) on the African American community of East St. Louis, Illinois (which is twelve miles from Ferguson, Missouri). Harrison again advised “Negroes” who faced mob violence in the South and elsewhere to “supply themselves with rifles and fight if necessary, to defend their lives and property.”  According to the New York Times he received great applause when he declared that “the time had come for the Negroes [to] do what white men who were threatened did, look out for themselves, and kill rather than submit to be killed.”  He was quoted as saying: “We intend to fight if we must . . . for the things dearest to us, for our hearths and homes.”  In his talk he encouraged “Negroes” everywhere who did not enjoy the protection of the law to arm in self-defense, to hide their arms, and to learn how to use their weapons.  He also reportedly called for a collection of money to buy rifles for those who could not obtain them themselves, emphasizing that “Negroes in New York cannot afford to lie down in the face of this” because “East St. Louis touches us too nearly.” According to the Times, Harrison said it was imperative to “demand justice” and to “make our voices heard.” This call for armed self-defense and the desire to have the political voice of the militant New Negro heard were important components of Harrison’s militant “New Negro” activism.

The Voice featured Harrison’s outstanding writing and editing and it included important book review and “Poetry for the People” sections. It contributed significantly to the climate leading up to Alain LeRoy Locke’s 1925 publication The New Negro.

Beginning in August 1919 Harrison edited The New Negro: A Monthly Magazine of a Different Sort, which described itself as “A Magazine for the New Negro,” published “in the interest of the New Negro Manhood Movement,” and “intended as an organ of the international consciousness of the darker races — especially of the Negro race.”

In early 1920 Harrison assumed “the joint editorship” of the Negro World and served as principal editor of that globe-sweeping newspaper of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (which was a major component of the “New Negro Movement”).

Bill Maher Gatekeeping and Permitted Discourse Productions Promoting Transitive Victimization

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

Yep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Southern Baptist Convention and the Alt-Right

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom Cotton Destroys The Lying Absurdity That Kamala Harris Embodies

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

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

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

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

How To Write Propaganda For The New York Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fix Is In - Mueller Hired To Take Down Trump

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

Donald Trump is not the target of an FBI investigation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oliver Stone Interviews Vladimir Putin: Accept No Substitutes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Russia-Insider |  Dear NBC News Team,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the land of snitches, everyone is a leaker.

The Total Eclipse of the American Deep State?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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