June 30, 2017

Went to my first gay wedding yesterday

here in Ireland. A fantastic day was had by all, and I know what while some of the older people might have felt a little unsure at the start but the ceremony went movingly and respectfully, everyone had a really happy day, finished off with karaoke and disco ! All the best music of course !!!

June 26, 2017

Oh yes the irony is clearly lost on a Harvard Law Professor

accusing others of being elitist !!!

The Democratic Party are doing the best they can, and don't need this rubbish.

June 25, 2017

Theresa May and the Holy Grail

Enjoy !!!

June 22, 2017

Putting the Trump Russia Collusion together

What we believe we know (please comment if otherwise)

1 - Trump and Trump Inc has been involved with the NY Italian Mafia for decades (Casinos/Construction), and post 1989 with the NY Russian Mafia

2 - Through his Russian Mafia contacts, he was introduced to Putin allied Russian Billionaires

3 - We don't know at what point Russian Billionaires starting pumping money into Trump inc, but we do have this Donald jnr quote from 2008, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Bear in mind that his later bankruptcies in 2004 and 2009, and found it hard to get US banks to fund him.

4 - The 2014 Obama sanctions on Russia made things extremely difficult for Billionaires to get their money out of Russia. It is believed that Trump got involved in business deals with Russians (not sure how long), that were effectively money laundering operations. Trump Tower Kazakhstan is a prime example, with Russian born Mafia associate/fixer Felix Sater and Bayrock.

So, by June 2015, Trump was enveloped by Russian State actors, owing massive amounts of money to Russian billionaires, so how do we go from there to Trump winning the WH ?

OK, so what else do we know ?

Jared Kushner, the Son in Law, also in massive debt to the Chinese, currently looking to re-finance....thought to be a link between the Russians and Trump on the Data Analytics project

Paul Manafort, a Republican operative with huge Republican contacts, a dirty amoral operator who has no problem taking money from any 2 bit cut throat dictator willing to use his "services", including Putin puppets in Ukraine. Manafort who bought his apartment in Trump Tower in 2006, the same year he reportedly signed a $10 million annual contract with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian business magnate and close Putin ally, to promote Russian interests internationally, whose private jet was regularly seen flying into airports where Trump was having rallies.

Felix Sater, Russia-born —a twice-convicted one-time Mafia associate, joined Bayrock in 2002. In 2010, Sater was made a “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump” and given an office on Trump’s floor in the Trump Tower, where he worked for roughly one year. Nevertheless, Trump consistently has testified in civil cases that he barely knew Sater, barely dealt with him and “wouldn’t recognize him if he was sitting in this [deposition] room.” However, Sater, in another civil case said he would often pop his head into Trump’s office to give him updates on a Moscow hotel deal he had in the works.

Mike Flynn, sacked as Director of the Defence Intelligence Agency by Obama for his bad management, has RW views on Islamic terrorism, appears to be quite bitter over that, associates his company with Russian companies and Putin. Has to be fired as NSC Advisor. Seen as central to Trump/Russia.

On the other side

Robert & Rebekah Mercer/Steve Bannon/Kelly Anne & George Conway. The Mercers are HARD Right Wing Billionaires, hateful of "Big Government" and have been pouring massive amounts of money into conservative groups/ideas attacking not just Democrats but mainstream conservatives.
The likes of Bannon are influencers in that agenda. The Conways are longstanding Clinton haters are happy to take part.

Peter Thiel, Billionaire Co-founder of Paypal, part of Trump's Transition team ....Trump made a cryptic comment about him, "I want to start by thanking Peter because he saw something very early, maybe before we saw it," Trump said. I maintain he will be a part of this Russian investigation at some point.

Mike Pence, parachuted in by Paul Manafort (why ?), was head of the Transition Team, yet lied that he knew nothing of Flynn's ties. There's an unexplained story how the Pence is connected to Manafort.

Erik Prince/Betsy de Vos, long time RWNJ associates of Pence, question is when did he start being a go-between with Putin's reps ?

Cambridge Analytica, propagates racism and fear mongers with fake news, in every country they work in. The Mercers were alledged to own CA, but it appears that they are more a favoured client than anything else. CA is more likely to be Putin connected than Mercer owned.

RNC, supposedly had done far more on the Data Mining side than the DNC/Obama.

Would it be fair to divide this into pre June 2015, and After June 2015, when Trump announces his run ? Should it be Pre June 2015 & After Ted Cruz drops out ?

They are the main actors, but the crucial ingredients

Data on 198m voters including home addresses, birthdates, and phone numbers, the records include advanced sentiment analyses used by political groups to predict where individual voters fall on hot-button issues such as gun ownership, stem cell research, and the right to abortion, as well as suspected religious affiliation and ethnicity. The data was amassed from a variety of sources.

https://medium.com/startup-grind/how-the-trump-campaign-built-an-identity-database-and-used-facebook-ads-to-win-the-election-4ff7d24269ac

Constructing the Project Alamo Database

Under the guidance of Jared Kushner, a senior campaign advisor and son-in-law of President-Elect Trump, Parscale quietly began building his own list of Trump supporters. Trump’s revolutionary database, named Project Alamo, contains the identities of 220 million people in the United States, and approximately 4,000 to 5,000 individual data points about the online and offline life of each person. Funded entirely by the Trump campaign, this database is owned by Trump and continues to exist.

Trump’s Project Alamo database was also fed vast quantities of external data, including voter registration records, gun ownership records, credit card purchase histories, and internet account identities. The Trump campaign purchased this data from certified Facebook marketing partners Experian PLC, Datalogix, Epsilon, and Acxiom Corporation. (Read here for instructions on how to remove your information from the databases of these consumer data brokers.)

Another critical supplier of data for the Trump campaign and Project Alamo was Cambridge Analytica, LLC, a data-science firm known for its psychological profiles of voters. As described by BusinessWeek, “Cambridge Analytica’s statistical models isolated likely supporters whom Parscale bombarded with ads on Facebook, while the campaign bought up e-mail lists from the likes of Gingrich and Tea Party groups to prospect for others.”

Statistical models from Cambridge Analytica also dictated Trump’s travel itinerary. The locations of Trump’s campaign rallies, the centerpiece of his media-centric candidacy, were chosen by a Cambridge Analytica algorithm that ranked places in a state with the largest clusters of persuadable voters.

“I wouldn’t have come aboard, even for Trump, if I hadn’t known they were building this massive Facebook and data engine,” says the Trump campaign Chairman Steve Bannon. (Bannon is also a Board Member of Cambridge Analytica.) “Facebook is what propelled Breitbart to a massive audience. We know its power.”


Also,

Russian State hackers attacking US State Election offices to get the Voter Rolls, possibly passing that data back to Trump Tower by that Alfa Bank server that was connected to the Trump servers.
https://gizmodo.com/gop-data-firm-accidentally-leaks-personal-details-of-ne-1796211612

The BIG question is were those married together ? Think about it, with all the Trump data, you know all the (likely) Democratic voters, but if you could like that with the Hacked Voter Rolls, you know who are actually registered to vote, and you can
target them with tailored hard hitting ads depending on ethnicity/sex/age, to depress Democrat turnout in key swing counties, saving lots of money.

As well as that, there's a suggestion that Voter Rolls may have been changed, so that when Democrat voter John Smith turns up to vote, he shows his driving licence and the official discovers that his date of birth does not match what they have.

So the mystery is who came up with the idea to do what they did, and who was involved ? Kushner ? Preibus ? Mercers ?

June 18, 2017

Watergate : The Criminal Presidency

Currently on MSNBC with Ari Melber. Bizarrely, Roger Stone is on (!) and referencing that a FISA court "spanked" the Obama administration over unmasking .... If I was in his position and had done what he did, I'd be hiding far far away. Some neck for a small headed man.

June 17, 2017

Frankie Boyle's New World Order (Ep 2)

For those of you who haven't seen Frankie before, he doesn't hold back on anything ! Enjoy.

June 16, 2017

Why don't MSM push the Republicans to explain exactly what they NOW mean by

wanting to "Reform Healthcare", seeing as the last iteration of their Super Dooper Trump Healthcare means 23m people who had Healthcare under the ACA, will lose it under Trumpcare ?

Why don't they push them, or at least paint a picture, to accept that whatever they come up with, that Trumpcare should be an improvement on the ACA, and not one American left behind ?

Whenever I see Reps asked about this, they trot out the usual "we want to Reform Healthcare", but they're never pushed for commitments on what that means. Obviously that is a tactic from the Reps, but it's disappointing they get away with it.

June 16, 2017

Rachel Brand - No 3 at DOJ and likely new boss of Bob Mueller. Fun & Boring facts.

In light of Rob Rosenstein's bizarre statement last night, his recusal is looking highly likely much sooner than later. IF/When that happens, Bob Mueller would then report to the No 3 at the DOJ, Rachel Brand. So, what do know about Brand ? Here are some facts to help us/make us concerned

Rachel Lee Brand (born May 1, 1973) is an American lawyer, academic, and government official. She was sworn in as the United States Associate Attorney General on May 22, 2017, after being nominated to the position by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the United States Senate. Brand is the first woman to serve as Associate Attorney General.[1] She served as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy in the George W. Bush administration and was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Prior to becoming Associate Attorney General, Brand was an associate professor at Antonin Scalia Law School.

Brand, the daughter and granddaughter of Dutch dairy farmers, grew up in a small town in Iowa. A graduate of the University of Minnesota Morris and Harvard Law School, Brand clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice Charles Fried. Following her clerkships, Brand worked at the firm Cooper, Carvin, & Rosenthal, now known as Cooper & Kirk.

Brand served as an Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy in the George W. Bush administration and was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Brand served as Chief Counsel for Regulatory Litigation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Brand is the chairman of the Federalist Society's Litigation Practice Group and co-chair of the American Bar Association Administrative Law Section's Government Information and Right to Privacy Committee

On February 1, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Brand to be United States Associate Attorney General. Her appointment was confirmed 52–46 by the U.S. Senate on May 18, 2017

Wife of Jonathan Cohn, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General at DOJ

Source : Wikipedia

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/former-bush-official-rachel-brand-takes-over-no-3-position-at-justice-dept/2017/05/25/75e3aa80-40bb-11e7-8c25-44d09ff5a4a8_story.html?utm_term=.2b63ecb0fa33

Before Brand arrived, Attorney General Jeff Sessions had already sparked controversy with his actions on civil rights issues. He has begun to undo the Justice Department’s policy toward transgender students in public schools; unsuccessfully tried to pull back from a sweeping reform agreement the department has with the Baltimore Police Department; ordered officials to review other reform agreements with troubled police forces nationwide; and reversed the Justice Department’s position on a voting rights law in Texas that a federal court has found intentionally discriminatory.

snip

“The challenge of her job is that she is responsible for oversight of some of the most politically difficult issues,” said Jamie Gorelick (Hillary Clinton 2016 Supporter who is currently Jared Kushner's Personal Lawyer !!!), who served as deputy attorney general under Attorney General Janet Reno and worked with Brand at the Wilmer Hale law firm. “All of the main places where there are differences between Republicans and Democrats reside in the civil litigation divisions. I think Rachel is well prepared — she’s very smart and very thoughtful — but that’s going to be a very hard job.”

Snip

Brand then worked for the firm Cooper, Carvin & Rosenthal (now Cooper & Kirk), which is led by former Reagan administration Justice Department official Charles Cooper. Brand tinkered in politics on Elizabeth Dole’s presidential campaign, and when Bush became president, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales hired Brand to work for him. She moved over to the Justice Department as Bush’s assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Policy, which develops and implements the department’s significant policy initiatives. In that position, she led the “murder boards,” sessions to prepare John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. for their Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Brand left the Justice Department in 2007, spent three years at Wilmer Hale and then became the vice president and chief counsel for regulatory litigation for the U.S. Chamber Litigation Center — a job that drew criticism from Democrats during her confirmation hearing.

“She carries a heavily skewed, pro-corporate agenda that would do further harm to the Justice Department and its independence,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Brand “has extensive experience, years of experience, fighting on behalf of the biggest and richest companies in the world.”

In response to a question about her work at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), Brand said she had spent most of her career in public service.

“When I was at the Chamber of Commerce, I had a client, the Chamber of Commerce, and, as a litigator there, my job was to file lawsuits and file amicus briefs on behalf of that client,” Brand said. “If I’m confirmed to this position, of course, I’ll have a very different role. . . . My client will be the United States, and my role will be to serve the public interest and the interest of justice, representing that client as best I can.”

On the Positive Side......

President Barack Obama appointed Brand in 2012 to be a member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent, bipartisan agency within the White House that advised the president on the privacy and civil liberties implications of the government’s surveillance programs.

“She’s a top-notch analytic lawyer and really good at figuring out what is the art of the possible,” said Neal Katyal, former acting solicitor general in the Obama administration who worked with Brand when she was at the Chamber. “But the big issue for everyone at the Justice Department right now is how rigorously they’re going to police the rule of law.”

June 9, 2017

MJ rips into Mark Halperin for being the Trump toadie that he is.

Scarborough ridiculed Halperin for his support of Trump "Trump didn't have a bad day at all", and laid into Comey for leaking the memo. Scarborough countered by saying everyone does that, even Halperin himself ! Halperin countered by saying he was the FBI Director and shouldn't have done it that way.....the pity is that no one jumped on that to say that, in fact, Comey was NO LONGER FBI Director at that stage.