At the Guardian U.K., "EU vote confirms French far right as Macron's main opposition."
Monday, May 27, 2019
Natasha Summer Rose Bikini
She's tasty.
Drape yourself in soft, romantic hues for the sweetest looking summer 🍉 @tashoakley wears the Clovelly Bikini in Summer Rose. https://t.co/HESdTnpulg x #Summer19 #MondaySwimwear pic.twitter.com/DWOPWUCDfO
— Monday Swimwear (@MONDAYSWIMWEAR) May 13, 2019
Danielle Gersh's Memorial Day Forecast
Not the best beach weather today.
Here's the lovely Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles.
Here's the lovely Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles.
Old Row Babe
Seen on Twitter:
FAU
— Old Row Rad Chicks (@OldRowRadChicks) May 27, 2019
IG @kimplausible pic.twitter.com/jvOjccimOd
Saturday, May 25, 2019
Leftist Millenarianism and the Green New Deal
This is a great piece, a scary piece.
From David Adler, at Quillette, "Straight to Hell: Millenarianism and the Green New Deal":
From David Adler, at Quillette, "Straight to Hell: Millenarianism and the Green New Deal":
“The Green New Deal is a reminder that many Americans are desperate for salvation and that religion is no longer slaking this thirst.” https://t.co/uGxCP2aPXH
— Quillette (@Quillette) May 23, 2019
With the Green New Deal, secular apocalyptic ideas have entered the mainstream of American politics. Millenarian thinking has always been present in the US, but it was avowedly religious. Today, those warning of the imminent Apocalypse are not just cranks in sandwich boards on street corners; they are seated in Congress. The radical millenarian ideas that flourished in the Middle Ages or unstable European societies in the early twentieth century can now be found at the heart of the Democratic party.Read the whole thing --- it's very well done.
'Robert Mueller's partisan team spent 22 months and $34 million only to conclude the obvious: that Trump did not collude with Russia...'
Yep.
It's VDH, in one of the best, most succinct pieces on the left's #RussiaGate conspiracy.
At RCP, "Federal Rats Are Fleeing the Sinking Collusion Ship":
It's VDH, in one of the best, most succinct pieces on the left's #RussiaGate conspiracy.
At RCP, "Federal Rats Are Fleeing the Sinking Collusion Ship":
The entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative was always implausible.Still more.
One, the Washington swamp of fixers such as Paul Manafort and John and Tony Podesta was mostly bipartisan and predated Trump.
Two, the Trump administration's Russia policies were far tougher on Vladimir Putin than were those of Barack Obama. Trump confronted Russia in Syria, upped defense spending, increased sanctions and kept the price of oil down through massive new U.S. energy production. He did not engineer a Russian "reset" or get caught on a hot mic offering a self-interested hiatus in tensions with Russia in order to help his own re-election bid.
Three, Russia has a long history of trying to warp U.S. elections that both predated Trump and earned only prior lukewarm pushback from the Obama administration.
Three, Russia has a long history of trying to warp U.S. elections that both predated Trump and earned only prior lukewarm pushback from the Obama administration.
It's also worth remembering that President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation had been recipients of Russian and Russian-related largesse -- ostensibly because Hillary Clinton had used her influence as Secretary of State under Obama to ease resistance to Russian acquisitions of North American uranium holdings.
As far as alleged Russian collusion goes, Hillary Clinton used three firewalls -- the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm and the Fusion GPS strategic intelligence firm -- to hide her campaign's payments to British national Christopher Steele to find dirt on Trump and his campaign; in other words, to collude. Steele in turn collected his purchased Russian sources to aggregate unverified allegations against Trump. He then spread the gossip within government agencies to ensure that the smears were leaked to the media -- and with a government seal of approval.
No wonder that special counsel Robert Mueller's partisan team spent 22 months and $34 million only to conclude the obvious: that Trump did not collude with Russia.
Mueller's failure to find collusion prompts an important question. If the Steele dossier -- the basis for unfounded charges that Trump colluded with Russia -- was fraudulent, then how and why did the Clinton campaign, hand in glove with top Obama administration officials, use such silly trash and smears to unleash the powers of government against Trump's campaign, transition team and early presidency?
The question is not an idle one.
There may well have occurred a near coup attempt by high-ranking officials to destroy a campaign and then to remove an elected president. Likewise, top officials may have engaged in serial lying to federal investigators, perjury, the misleading of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the illegal insertion of informants into a political campaign, the leaking of classified documents and the obstruction of justice.
So, how can we tell that the former accusers are now terrified of becoming the accused? Because suddenly the usual band of former Obama officials and Trump accusers have largely given up on their allegations that Trump was or is a Russian asset.
Instead, John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe and Rod Rosenstein are now beginning to accuse each other of wrongdoing.
Even their progressive media handlers are starting to sense the desperation in their new yarns -- and the possibility that these hired-gun analysts or guests were themselves guilty of crimes and were using their media platforms to fashion their own defense.
The end of the Mueller melodrama has marked the beginning of real fear in Washington...
Nancy Pelosi Drunk Video is Preview of 2020
The video's still up.
See, "Watch: Politics Watchdog Video of Drunk Nancy Pelosi."
And at the Los Angeles Times, "A doctored video of Nancy Pelosi shows social media giants ill-prepared for 2020":
I noted yesterday that Big Tech had deep-sixed the video in search results, not only Facebook, but Twitter and YouTube as well. I had to dig around myself to find it, and that took a while.
So, a parody video that's a literally laugh riot, of a public figure who can't claim libel, because such speech is protected, gets full censorship on offer from her political allies. That's practically a political contribution, which is regulated under federal law.
It's more than antitrust as a basis for regulation of Big Tech. It's also political racketeering, influence-peddling, and campaign finance violations.
We're in a political war. And it's the left that's waging it against normal Americans. Don't ever let the leftist media tell you otherwise.
More at that top link.
See, "Watch: Politics Watchdog Video of Drunk Nancy Pelosi."
And at the Los Angeles Times, "A doctored video of Nancy Pelosi shows social media giants ill-prepared for 2020":
Hours after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressed a conference Wednesday, a distorted video of the California Democrat’s conversation began spreading across the internet.You know, who's helping who here?
The manipulated clip, slowed to make Pelosi sound as if she were slurring her words, racked up millions of views on Facebook the following day. It was posted to YouTube, and on Thursday night was given a boost on Twitter when Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer and former mayor of New York, shared a link with his 318,000 followers.
By Friday, the three social media giants were forced to respond to this viral instance of political fakery. How they dealt with the issue, three years after being blindsided by a wave of fake news and disinformation in the 2016 election cycle, may serve as a harbinger of what’s to come in 2020.
And for those who had hoped that new technology, stricter standards and the full attention of these powerful Silicon Valley companies might stem the tide of lies, the case of the Pelosi video does not bode well.
Facebook, where the clip found its largest audience, refused to take it down. A spokesperson for the company said that the video does not violate Facebook’s Community Standards, adding in a statement that “we don't have a policy that stipulates that the information you post on Facebook must be true.”
Instead, Facebook ran the video through its official fake news process, codified since the company admitted it had a problem in late 2016. It submitted the clip to a third-party fact-checking company, which rated it “false.” Following that judgment, the company drastically decreased how often the video is automatically displayed in users’ newsfeeds and appended an info box below it linking to articles that say that the clip is a fake.
“We work hard to find the right balance between encouraging free expression and promoting a safe and authentic community,” the spokesperson said. “We believe that reducing the distribution of inauthentic content strikes that balance. But just because something is allowed to be on Facebook doesn’t mean it should get distribution. In other words, we allow people to post it as a form of expression, but we're not going to show it at the top of News Feed.”
YouTube deleted all copies of the video on its site after being notified of its existence following a Washington Post report on the video. The company said in a statement that the clip violated its policies, and added that it did not “surface prominently” on the site or in search results.
The Google-owned video platform said last year that it was tweaking its algorithms to promote more authoritative news sources. The company also introduced panels similar to Facebook’s info boxes that appear below videos dealing with common conspiracy theories or produced by state-run media outlets to give viewers more context, though a Buzzfeed investigation in January found that they were inconsistently used.
Twitter declined to comment on the Pelosi clip in particular and has not taken formal action...
I noted yesterday that Big Tech had deep-sixed the video in search results, not only Facebook, but Twitter and YouTube as well. I had to dig around myself to find it, and that took a while.
So, a parody video that's a literally laugh riot, of a public figure who can't claim libel, because such speech is protected, gets full censorship on offer from her political allies. That's practically a political contribution, which is regulated under federal law.
It's more than antitrust as a basis for regulation of Big Tech. It's also political racketeering, influence-peddling, and campaign finance violations.
We're in a political war. And it's the left that's waging it against normal Americans. Don't ever let the leftist media tell you otherwise.
More at that top link.
Friday, May 24, 2019
Why U.S. Intelligence Agencies Must Adapt or Fail
From Amy Zegart and Michael Morell, at Foreign Affairs, "Spies, Lies, and Algorithms":
“The U.S. intelligence community can develop the best strategy for intelligence in a new technological era, but if it ever loses its reputation for objectivity, nonpartisanship, and professionalism, it will lose its value to the nation.”https://t.co/mJb3jaXcO5— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) May 21, 2019
For U.S. intelligence agencies, the twenty-first century began with a shock, when 19 al Qaeda operatives hijacked four planes and perpetrated the deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil. In the wake of the attack, the intelligence community mobilized with one overriding goal: preventing another 9/11. The CIA, the National Security Agency, and the 15 other components of the U.S. intelligence community restructured, reformed, and retooled. Congress appropriated billions of dollars to support the transformation.Keep reading.
That effort paid off. In the nearly two decades that U.S. intelligence agencies have been focused on fighting terrorists, they have foiled numerous plots to attack the U.S. homeland, tracked down Osama bin Laden, helped eliminate the Islamic State’s caliphate, and found terrorists hiding everywhere from Afghan caves to Brussels apartment complexes. This has arguably been one of the most successful periods in the history of American intelligence.
But today, confronted with new threats that go well beyond terrorism, U.S. intelligence agencies face another moment of reckoning. From biotechnology and nanotechnology to quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI), rapid technological change is giving U.S. adversaries new capabilities and eroding traditional U.S. intelligence advantages. The U.S. intelligence community must adapt to these shifts or risk failure as the nation’s first line of defense.
Although U.S. intelligence agencies have taken initial steps in the right direction, they are not moving fast enough. In fact, the first intelligence breakdown of this new era has already come: the failure to quickly identify and fully grasp the magnitude of Russia’s use of social media to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. That breakdown should serve as a wake-up call. The trends it reflects warrant a wholesale reimagining of how the intelligence community operates. Getting there will require capitalizing on the United States’ unique strengths, making tough organizational changes, and rebuilding trust with U.S. technology companies.
A WARNING SIGN
Russia’s multifaceted “active measures” campaign ahead of the 2016 election was designed to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, sow divisions in American society, and boost public support for one presidential candidate over another. Much of this effort did not go undetected for long. Almost immediately, U.S. intelligence agencies noticed Russian cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the sharing of stolen information with platforms such as WikiLeaks, and attempts to penetrate state and local voting systems. Pointing to these events, intelligence officials warned President Barack Obama well before the election that the United States was under attack.
Yet the intelligence agencies missed Russia’s most important tool: the weaponization of social media. Studies commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of a Russian “troll farm” show that the social media operation designed to undermine the U.S. electoral process may have begun as early as 2012 and was well under way by 2014. But although U.S. intelligence officials knew that Russia had used social media as a propaganda tool against its own citizens and its neighbors, particularly Ukraine, it took them at least two years to realize that similar efforts were being made in the United States. This lapse deprived the president of valuable time to fully understand Moscow’s intentions and develop policy options before the election ever began.
In October 2016, one month before the election, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, and Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, took the unusual step of issuing a public statement about Russia’s interference in the election. Even then, the full extent of the Russian effort eluded U.S. intelligence; the statement did not mention social media at all. Johnson later stated that Russia’s social media operation “was something . . . that we were just beginning to see.” Likewise, Clapper wrote in his memoir that “in the summer of 2015, it would never have occurred to us that low-level Russian intelligence operatives might be posing as Americans on social media.” Indeed, the intelligence community did not understand the magnitude of the attack, which reached more than 120 million U.S. citizens, until well after the election. The Senate Intelligence Committee noted in 2018 that its own bipartisan investigation “exposed a far more extensive Russian effort to manipulate social media outlets to sow discord and to interfere in the 2016 election and American society” than the U.S. intelligence community had found even as late as 2017.
It was with good reason that the intelligence agencies did not have their collection systems trained on social media content within the United States, but Russia’s social media attack was carried out by Russian nationals operating on Russian soil. They were assisted by several Russian intelligence operatives sent to the United States in 2014, with the express goal of studying how to make Moscow’s social media campaign more effective. Whether the Kremlin tipped the balance in a close presidential race will never be known. What is clear, however, is that Russia’s nefarious use of social media went undetected by U.S. intelligence for too long and that this failure is just a preview of what lies ahead if the intelligence community doesn’t adapt to today’s rapid technological breakthroughs...
Watch: Politics Watchdog Video of Drunk Nancy Pelosi
Neither Google nor Facebook will let you search for this video. I had to go in and find Politics Watchdog and scroll down.
And people wonder why the fury at leftist social media and tech?
Watch, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on President Trump walking out infrastructure meeting: 'It was very, very, very strange'."
Who knows how long this will be available. Leftist media outlets are in a rage, raging to have Facebook take it down.
At the Guardian U.K., via Memorandum, "Facebook refuses to delete fake Pelosi video spread by Trump supporters."
And at WaPo, "Pelosi videos manipulated to make her appear drunk are being shared on social media."
She does sound drunk, lol. What a freakin' masterpiece!
And people wonder why the fury at leftist social media and tech?
Watch, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on President Trump walking out infrastructure meeting: 'It was very, very, very strange'."
Who knows how long this will be available. Leftist media outlets are in a rage, raging to have Facebook take it down.
At the Guardian U.K., via Memorandum, "Facebook refuses to delete fake Pelosi video spread by Trump supporters."
And at WaPo, "Pelosi videos manipulated to make her appear drunk are being shared on social media."
She does sound drunk, lol. What a freakin' masterpiece!
President Trump Gives Attorney General Authority to Declassify Information About Origins of Russia Probe
At the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Trump Gives Attorney General Sweeping Power in Review of 2016 Campaign Inquiry."
I love this, heh.
I love this, heh.
Media that in lockstep spent years publishing and legitimizing false accusations of their shared political enemy being a traitor who colluded with Russia now appear to be discovering the seriousness of the charge they peddled. https://t.co/yH9SWX09B5
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) May 23, 2019
LOL. Our media, which are fully implicated in the dangerous conspiracy theory of treasonous collusion with Russia, are upset that some adults recognized immediately the problems with using law enforcement and intel to destroy political opponents. https://t.co/xuAU0bd3x5— Mollie (@MZHemingway) May 24, 2019
these people spent years falsely accusing Trump of *treasonous collusion with Russia* and are upset that the term might be uttered in conjunction with those who willfully and dangerously perpetuated the false accusation/Russia hoax against the nation’s duly elected president. https://t.co/dzYndopfvE— Mollie (@MZHemingway) May 24, 2019
So no need for media and others to worry in the slightest about an investigation into how probe started, and why some contacts with targets preceded that start date! https://t.co/lg0IHoSuM6— Mollie (@MZHemingway) May 24, 2019
Britain's Watershed Moment (VIDEO)
Following-up, "Theresa May Resigns (VIDEO)."
Pat Condell is so astonishing spot-on it's ridiculous.
Watch:
Pat Condell is so astonishing spot-on it's ridiculous.
Watch:
Theresa May Resigns (VIDEO)
Well, maybe that #TheresaMayResign hashtag pushed her over the edge.
At the Guardian U.K., "Theresa May announces she will resign on 7 June."
And the full video of her speech is here, "Prime minister Theresa May’s resignation speech in full."
At the Guardian U.K., "Theresa May announces she will resign on 7 June."
And the full video of her speech is here, "Prime minister Theresa May’s resignation speech in full."
Thursday, May 23, 2019
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