Worst conspiracy theory ever.

[Rory]

IMG_20161228_132006.jpg

[seemslikeadream]

T r u m p ’ s L i e s

Many Americans have become accustomed to President Trump’s lies. But as regular as they have become, the country should not allow itself to become numb to them. So we have catalogued nearly every outright lie he has told publicly since taking the oath of office. Updated July 21: The president is still lying, so we've added to this list, and provided links to the facts in each case.

By DAVID LEONHARDT and STUART A. THOMPSON UPDATED July 21, 2017
JUMP TO STORY BELOW
JAN. 21 “I wasn't a fan of Iraq. I didn't want to go into Iraq.” (He was for an invasion before he was against it.) JAN. 21 “A reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine.” (Trump was on the cover 11 times and Nixon appeared 55 times.) JAN. 23 “Between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused me to lose the popular vote.” (There's no evidence of illegal voting.) JAN. 25 “Now, the audience was the biggest ever. But this crowd was massive. Look how far back it goes. This crowd was massive.” (Official aerial photos show Obama's 2009 inauguration was much more heavily attended.) JAN. 25 “Take a look at the Pew reports (which show voter fraud.)” (The report never mentioned voter fraud.) JAN. 25 “You had millions of people that now aren't insured anymore.” (The real number is less than 1 million, according to the Urban Institute.) JAN. 25 “So, look, when President Obama was there two weeks ago making a speech, very nice speech. Two people were shot and killed during his speech. You can't have that.” (There were no gun homicide victims in Chicago that day.) JAN. 26 “We've taken in tens of thousands of people. We know nothing about them. They can say they vet them. They didn't vet them. They have no papers. How can you vet somebody when you don't know anything about them and you have no papers? How do you vet them? You can't.” (Vetting lasts up to two years.) JAN. 26 “I cut off hundreds of millions of dollars off one particular plane, hundreds of millions of dollars in a short period of time. It wasn't like I spent, like, weeks, hours, less than hours, and many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. And the plane's going to be better.” (Most of the cuts were already planned.) JAN. 28 “The coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost has been so false and angry that the Times actually apologized to its dwindling subscribers and readers.” (It never apologized.) JAN. 29 “The Cuban-Americans, I got 84 percent of that vote.” (There is no support for this.) JAN. 30 “Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage.” (At least 746 people were detained and processed, and the Delta outage happened two days later.) FEB. 3 “Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” (There is no evidence of paid protesters.) FEB. 4 “After being forced to apologize for its bad and inaccurate coverage of me after winning the election, the FAKE NEWS @nytimes is still lost!” (It never apologized.) FEB. 5 “We had 109 people out of hundreds of thousands of travelers and all we did was vet those people very, very carefully.” (About 60,000 people were affected.) FEB. 6 “I have already saved more than $700 million when I got involved in the negotiation on the F-35.” (Much of the price drop was projected before Trump took office.) FEB. 6 “It's gotten to a point where it is not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it.” (Terrorism has been reported on, often in detail.) FEB. 6 “The failing @nytimes was forced to apologize to its subscribers for the poor reporting it did on my election win. Now they are worse!” (It didn't apologize.) FEB. 6 “And the previous administration allowed it to happen because we shouldn't have been in Iraq, but we shouldn't have gotten out the way we got out. It created a vacuum, ISIS was formed.” (The group’s origins date to 2004.) FEB. 7 “And yet the murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? Forty-seven years.” (It was higher in the 1980s and '90s.) FEB. 7 “I saved more than $600 million. I got involved in negotiation on a fighter jet, the F-35.” (The Defense Department projected this price drop before Trump took office.) FEB. 9 “Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave ‘service’ in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!” (It was part of Cuomo's first question.) FEB. 9 “Sen. Richard Blumenthal now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” (The Gorsuch comments were later corroborated.) FEB. 10 “I don’t know about it. I haven’t seen it. What report is that?” (Trump knew about Flynn's actions for weeks.) FEB. 12 “Just leaving Florida. Big crowds of enthusiastic supporters lining the road that the FAKE NEWS media refuses to mention. Very dishonest!” (The media did cover it.) FEB. 16 “We got 306 because people came out and voted like they've never seen before so that's the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan.” (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all won bigger margins in the Electoral College.) FEB. 16 “That’s the other thing that was wrong with the travel ban. You had Delta with a massive problem with their computer system at the airports.” (Delta's problems happened two days later.) FEB. 16 “Walmart announced it will create 10,000 jobs in the United States just this year because of our various plans and initiatives.” (The jobs are a result of its investment plans announced in October 2016.) FEB. 16 “When WikiLeaks, which I had nothing to do with, comes out and happens to give, they’re not giving classified information.” (Not always. They have released classified information in the past.) FEB. 16 “We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban. But we had a bad court. Got a bad decision.” (The rollout was chaotic.) FEB. 16 “They’re giving stuff — what was said at an office about Hillary cheating on the debates. Which, by the way, nobody mentions. Nobody mentions that Hillary received the questions to the debates.” (It was widely covered.) FEB. 18 “And there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing.” (Refugees receive multiple background checks, taking up to two years.) FEB. 18 “You look at what's happening in Germany, you look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?” (Trump implied there was a terror attack in Sweden, but there was no such attack.) FEB. 24 “By the way, you folks are in here — this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks.” (There was no evidence of long lines.) FEB. 24 “ICE came and endorsed me.” (Only its union did.) FEB. 24 “Obamacare covers very few people — and remember, deduct from the number all of the people that had great health care that they loved that was taken away from them — it was taken away from them.” (Obamacare increased coverage by a net of about 20 million.) FEB. 27 “Since Obamacare went into effect, nearly half of the insurers are stopped and have stopped from participating in the Obamacare exchanges.” (Many fewer pulled out.) FEB. 27 “On one plane, on a small order of one plane, I saved $725 million. And I would say I devoted about, if I added it up, all those calls, probably about an hour. So I think that might be my highest and best use.” (Much of the price cut was already projected.) FEB. 28 “And now, based on our very strong and frank discussions, they are beginning to do just that.” (NATO countries agreed to meet defense spending requirements in 2014.) FEB. 28 “The E.P.A.’s regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands.” (There's no evidence that the Waters of the United States rule caused severe job losses.) FEB. 28 “We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption by imposing a five-year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials.” (They can't lobby their former agency but can still become lobbyists.) MARCH 3 “It is so pathetic that the Dems have still not approved my full Cabinet.” (Paperwork for the last two candidates was still not submitted to the Senate.) MARCH 4 “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” (There's no evidence of a wiretap.) MARCH 4 “How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” (There's no evidence of a wiretap.) MARCH 7 “122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!” (113 of them were released by President George W. Bush.) MARCH 13 “I saved a lot of money on those jets, didn't I? Did I do a good job? More than $725 million on them.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.) MARCH 13 “First of all, it covers very few people.” (About 20 million people gained insurance under Obamacare.) MARCH 15 “On the airplanes, I saved $725 million. Probably took me a half an hour if you added up all of the times.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.) MARCH 17 “I was in Tennessee — I was just telling the folks — and half of the state has no insurance company, and the other half is going to lose the insurance company.” (There's at least one insurer in every Tennessee county.) MARCH 20 “With just one negotiation on one set of airplanes, I saved the taxpayers of our country over $700 million.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.) MARCH 21 “To save taxpayer dollars, I’ve already begun negotiating better contracts for the federal government — saving over $700 million on just one set of airplanes of which there are many sets.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.) MARCH 22 “I make the statement, everyone goes crazy. The next day they have a massive riot, and death, and problems.” (Riots in Sweden broke out two days later and there were no deaths.) MARCH 22 “NATO, obsolete, because it doesn’t cover terrorism. They fixed that.” (It has fought terrorism since the 1980s.) MARCH 22 “Well, now, if you take a look at the votes, when I say that, I mean mostly they register wrong — in other words, for the votes, they register incorrectly and/or illegally. And they then vote. You have tremendous numbers of people.” (There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud.) MARCH 29 “Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong. Now worse!” (It didn't apologize.) MARCH 31 “We have a lot of plants going up now in Michigan that were never going to be there if I — if I didn’t win this election, those plants would never even think about going back. They were gone.” (These investments were already planned.) APRIL 2 “And I was totally opposed to the war in the Middle East which I think finally has been proven, people tried very hard to say I wasn’t but you’ve seen that it is now improving.” (He was for an invasion before he was against it.) APRIL 2 “Now, my last tweet — you know, the one that you are talking about, perhaps — was the one about being, in quotes, wiretapped, meaning surveilled. Guess what, it is turning out to be true.” (There is still no evidence.) APRIL 5 “You have many states coming up where they’re going to have no insurance company. O.K.? It’s already happened in Tennessee. It’s happening in Kentucky. Tennessee only has half coverage. Half the state is gone. They left.” (Every marketplace region in Tennessee had at least one insurer.) APRIL 6 “If you look at the kind of cost-cutting we’ve been able to achieve with the military and at the same time ordering vast amounts of equipment — saved hundreds of millions of dollars on airplanes, and really billions, because if you take that out over a period of years it’s many billions of dollars — I think we’ve had a tremendous success.” (Much of the price cuts were already projected.) APRIL 11 “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late. I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve.” (He knew Steve Bannon since 2011.) APRIL 12 “You can't do it faster, because they're obstructing. They're obstructionists. So I have people — hundreds of people that we're trying to get through. I mean you have — you see the backlog. We can't get them through.” (At this point, he had not nominated anyone for hundreds of positions.) APRIL 12 “The New York Times said the word wiretapped in the headline of the first edition. Then they took it out of there fast when they realized.” (There were separate headlines for print and web, but neither were altered.) APRIL 12 “The secretary general and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism. I complained about that a long time ago and they made a change, and now they do fight terrorism.” (NATO has been engaged in counterterrorism efforts since the 1980s.) APRIL 12 “Mosul was supposed to last for a week and now they’ve been fighting it for many months and so many more people died.” (The campaign was expected to take months.) APRIL 16 “Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday. The election is over!” (There's no evidence of paid protesters.) APRIL 18 “The fake media goes, ‘Donald Trump changed his stance on China.’ I haven’t changed my stance.” (He did.) APRIL 21 “On 90 planes I saved $725 million. It's actually a little bit more than that, but it's $725 million.” (Much of the price cuts were already projected.) APRIL 21 “When WikiLeaks came out ... never heard of WikiLeaks, never heard of it.” (He criticized it as early as 2010.) APRIL 27 “I want to help our miners while the Democrats are blocking their healthcare.” (The bill to extend health benefits for certain coal miners was introduced by a Democrat and was co-sponsored by mostly Democrats.) APRIL 28 “The trade deficit with Mexico is close to $70 billion, even with Canada it’s $17 billion trade deficit with Canada.” (The U.S. had an $8.1 billion trade surplus, not deficit, with Canada in 2016.) APRIL 28 “She's running against someone who's going to raise your taxes to the sky, destroy your health care, and he's for open borders — lots of crime.” (Those are not Jon Ossoff's positions.) APRIL 28 “The F-35 fighter jet program — it was way over budget. I’ve saved $725 million plus, just by getting involved in the negotiation.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.) APRIL 29 “As you know, I've been a big critic of China, and I've been talking about currency manipulation for a long time. But I have to tell you that during the election, number one, they stopped.” (China stopped years ago.) APRIL 29 “I've already saved more than $725 million on a simple order of F-35 planes. I got involved in the negotiation.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.) APRIL 29 “We're also getting NATO countries to finally step up and contribute their fair share. They've begun to increase their contributions by billions of dollars, but we are not going to be satisfied until everyone pays what they owe.” (The deal was struck in 2014.) APRIL 29 “When they talk about currency manipulation, and I did say I would call China, if they were, a currency manipulator, early in my tenure. And then I get there. Number one, they — as soon as I got elected, they stopped.” (China stopped in 2014.) APRIL 29 “I was negotiating to reduce the price of the big fighter jet contract, the F-35, which was totally out of control. I will save billions and billions and billions of dollars.” (Most of the cuts were planned before Trump.) APRIL 29 “I think our side's been proven very strongly. And everybody's talking about it.” (There's still no evidence Trump's phones were tapped.) MAY 1 “Well, we are protecting pre-existing conditions. And it'll be every good — bit as good on pre-existing conditions as Obamacare.” (The bill weakens protections for people with pre-existing conditions.) MAY 1 “The F-35 fighter jet — I saved — I got involved in the negotiation. It's 2,500 jets. I negotiated for 90 planes, lot 10. I got $725 million off the price.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.) MAY 1 “First of all, since I started running, they haven't increased their — you know, they have not manipulated their currency. I think that was out of respect to me and the campaign.” (China stopped years ago.) MAY 2 “I love buying those planes at a reduced price. I have been really — I have cut billions — I have to tell you this, and they can check, right, Martha? I have cut billions and billions of dollars off plane contracts sitting here.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.) MAY 4 “Number two, they’re actually not a currency [manipulator]. You know, since I’ve been talking about currency manipulation with respect to them and other countries, they stopped.” (China stopped years ago.) MAY 4 “We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world.” (We're not.) MAY 4 “Nobody cares about my tax return except for the reporters.” (Polls show most Americans do care.) MAY 8 “You know we’ve gotten billions of dollars more in NATO than we’re getting. All because of me.” (The deal was struck in 2014.) MAY 8 “But when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was high — highest rating. The highest rating he’s ever had.” (Colbert's Late Show debut had nearly two million more viewers.) MAY 8 “Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows — there is ‘no evidence’ of collusion w/ Russia and Trump.” (Clapper only said he wasn't aware of an investigation.) MAY 12 “Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election.” (The F.B.I. was investigating before the election.) MAY 12 “When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?” (Clapper said he wouldn't have been told of an investigation into collusion.) MAY 13 “I'm cutting the price of airplanes with Lockheed.” (The cost cuts were planned before he became president.) MAY 26 “Just arrived in Italy for the G7. Trip has been very successful. We made and saved the USA many billions of dollars and millions of jobs.” (He's referencing an arms deal that's not enacted and other apparent deals that weren't announced on the trip.) JUNE 1 “China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020.” (The agreement doesn’t allow or disallow building coal plants.) JUNE 1 “I’ve just returned from a trip overseas where we concluded nearly $350 billion of military and economic development for the United States, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.” (Trump’s figures are inflated and premature.) JUNE 4 “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’” (The mayor was specifically talking about the enlarged police presence on the streets.) JUNE 5 “The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.” (Trump signed this version of the travel ban, not the Justice Department.) JUNE 20 “Well, the Special Elections are over and those that want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN are 5 and O!” (Republicans have won four special elections this year, while a Democrat won one.) JUNE 21 “They all say it's 'nonbinding.' Like hell it's nonbinding.” (The Paris climate agreement is nonbinding — and Trump said so in his speech announcing the withdrawal.) JUNE 21 “Right now, we are one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.” (We're not.) JUNE 21 “You have a gang called MS-13. ... We are moving them out of the country by the thousands, by the thousands.” (The real number of gang members deported is smaller.) JUNE 21 “Your insurance companies have all fled the state of Iowa.” (They haven't.) JUNE 21 “If [farmers] have a puddle in the middle of their field ... it's considered a lake and you can't touch it. ... We got rid of that one, too, O.K.?” (The Obama environmental rule to limit pollution in the country’s waters explicitly excludes puddles.) JUNE 21 “Gary Cohn just paid $200 million in tax in order to take this job, by the way.” (Cohn sold Goldman Sachs stock worth $220 million.) JUNE 21 “We’re 5 and 0.” (Republicans have won four special elections this year, while a Democrat won one.) JUNE 21 “Last week a brand-new coal mine just opened in the state of Pennsylvania, first time in decades, decades.” (Another coal mine opened in 2014.) JUNE 22 “Former Homeland Security Advisor Jeh Johnson is latest top intelligence official to state there was no grand scheme between Trump & Russia.” (Johnson, who had a different title, didn't say that.) JUNE 23 “We are 5 and 0 ... in these special elections.” (Republicans have won four special elections this year, while a Democrat won one.) JUNE 27 “Ratings way down!” (CNN's ratings were at a five-year high at the time.) JUNE 28 “Democrats purposely misstated Medicaid under new Senate bill — actually goes up.” (Senate bill would have cut the program deeply.) JUNE 29 “General Kelly and his whole group — they’ve gotten rid of 6,000 so far.” (The real number of MS-13 gang members who have been deported is smaller.) JULY 6 “As a result of this insistence, billions of dollars more have begun to pour into NATO.” (NATO countries agreed to meet defense spending requirements in 2014.) JULY 17 “We’ve signed more bills — and I’m talking about through the legislature — than any president, ever.” (Clinton, Carter, Truman, and F.D.R. had signed more at the same point.) JULY 19 “Um, the Russian investigation — it’s not an investigation, it’s not on me — you know, they’re looking at a lot of things.” (It is.) JULY 19 “I heard that Harry Truman was first, and then we beat him. These are approved by Congress. These are not just executive orders.” (Presidents Clinton, Carter, Truman, and F.D.R. each had signed more legislation than Trump at the same point in their terms.) JULY 19 “But the F.B.I. person really reports directly to the president of the United States, which is interesting.” (He reports directly to the attorney general.)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... -lies.html

[Elvis]

Brazile's feels more like intentional disinformation, given the nauseatingly pervasive "Russia = USSR" campaign we're being subjected to.

"The Communists"??



Brazile should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. At the very least.

[Elvis]

Harper's reports that now 59% of Democrats believe that Russia altered vote counts in the U.S. election.

Interestingly, only 52% (still a shocking number) of Republicans believe that millions of people voted illegally.

This is a nation of fools.

[seemslikeadream]

Trump aide Michael Flynn Jnr out after 'Pizzagate' tweets
7 December 2016

Retired Lt Gen Michael Flynn at Trump Tower in New YorkImage copyrightAP

Michael Flynn Jnr (L) with his father, retired Lt Gen Michael Flynn Snr (R), at Trump Tower in New York

One of Donald Trump's aides has lost his job after fanning a conspiracy theory that climaxed at the weekend in gunfire at a pizzeria.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38231532

DONALD TRUMP
No, The National Park Service Didn't Alter Photos of Trump's Inauguration Crowd
In the days that followed, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer falsely said Trump's crowd was "the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period," and the Washington Post reported that Trump personally called Reynolds and ordered him to produce additional photos of the crowd size.
http://time.com/4834745/national-park-s ... ze-report/

[SonicG]

Well, the anti anti-Russia forces on the left can get a bit loony too. Caitlin Johnstone:

To be frank I think a lot more people on the anti-establishment right understand this need to collaborate than those on the anti-establishment left. Cernovich and I probably disagree on more things than we agree on ideologically, but where we do agree it’s absolutely stupid for us not to work together, because you can be damn sure the establishment Republicans and Democrats are working together to advance the agendas of the deep state.

She got called out on Counterpunch, with St. Clair chiming in. Of course, St. Clair, like Cockburn, is a magic bullet guy which is why CP gets listed as a "gatekeeper"...Anyhow, Johnstone's response?

The centerpiece of both articles is the fact that I cited Mike Cernovich as someone on the right I might be able to collaborate with on some issues, the primary grievance being some weird rapey remarks Cernovich has made in the past. I don’t know if Yoav Litvin or Joshua Frank have ever been victims of rape, but like many women I am a survivor of several rapes and I can say that Cernovich’s views on the matter are one of the many, many areas on which we disagree. Interacting with Mike Cernovich is not going to make me think that rape is okay or suddenly transform me into a rape culture apologist.

I'm pretty sure Cernovich thinks that rape of grown women doesn't even occur and that it is exclusively only performed by pizza-eating Demo. operatives in DC suburbs...How long before she goes full Kurt Nimmo (speaking of CP)...Even he finally came a bit to his senses recently...

Fracturing the country by burning the political landscape on both ends to fuck the middle would seem like a good strategy on the part of a hostile power looking to loosen your hegemony, some would argue. But sure, US mainstream media is just a s complicit in puffing up Trump to the level where people were able to think, sure, he can do it...They are going to have to deal with the crippling of the US political system along with everyone else...but of course, like congress, they have wonderful health coverage...

As I have said, I can see some of the points of the anti-anti-Russia - CP has published plenty of that stuff - but the hysteria about WWIII always seems to leave the Chinese out of the equation.

Johnstone continues:

The red-district MAGA hat-wearing poor are oppressed by the same soul-crushing Walmart economy as everyone else, however, and as long as imperialist divide-and-conquer tactics are still being used to keep the left and the right hating each other, everyone’s going to keep getting crushed by it. Conservatives might talk funny, might have some weird belief systems, might have some very odd ideas about what some of America’s problems are and how to fix them, might lack the cool factor that our Jill Stein-voting lefty friends have, but it’s impossible to fight for economic justice without fighting for them, too.

I am pretty sure the MAGA crowd love Walmart and their "weird ideas" and "very odd ideas", like I don't know, Creationism and global warming is a myth and Mexicans are all thieves and rapists...Push those aside and then start talking to them about "economic justice"? Good luck. And really, it seems to me that the majority of the MAGA crowd are not poor but rather middle class who won't come around until their health care and the economy start to really suck.

Anyhow, St. Clair ends with this:

Now, Cobb seems intent on promoting a green-brown alliance, along the lines sketched by Caitlin Johnstone, as a means of reanimating a political movement that he, more than any other single figure, has helped to emasculate from the inside-out. This is a quest for fools gold at best, something more sinister at worst.

Environmentalists have been down this road before and it didn’t end well. In the 1990s, the Sierra Club was infiltrated by a vicious band of Malthusians, who scapegoated immigrants as a primary cause of environmental degradation. This shameful episode debased the Sierra Club and elevated the profile of the xenophobes, giving them a legitimate national platform for the first time and a political foothold that eventually metastasized into the virulent forces fueling the Trump campaign.

Green/Brown...like trees and soil baby...what could go wrong...

[Project Willow]

^ We're just in that moment when the breakdown of current power systems sends people running terrified into their little corners of self defined sanity, and every person outside of the corner becomes an enemy. It's so sad to watch. Personally, I am glad Caitlin is so vocal, otherwise, the point of view she holds would be virtually disappeared, and frankly, 90% of the time, I agree with her.

I mean, come the fuck on, we have an out of control oligarchy, crony capitalists with their deep state and military servents in charge, if that can't unite people across ideological lines, then we're pretty much doomed.

Anyway, Counterpunch has always been a tool to a large extent, telling it's gone out of its way to target her.

[DrEvil]

Readable by humans without having to guess or interpret the meaning. Which I apparently just failed at.

It's a nerd joke playing on "machine-readable", meaning that it has to be formatted in a specific way for the computer to be able to parse the data and get something useful out of it.

In plain english: I fucking hate it when people can't be arsed to just spell out what they mean and instead go all vague and cryptic on people. I've found that it's usually a sign of someone trying really hard (and failing) to look smart.

I know what other people mean when they use it, but I don't know what you mean when you use it in your own special way. I'm just glad that you amuse yourself by going all vague and cryptic on your audience.

Okay, so you're smart. Happy?

Sometimes you need to read the phone book; sometimes you need to speak in riddles. It's just the way it goes. The names and numbers in the phonebook are a form of intelligence. Riddles are a way to seek wisdom.

Now you're just trolling, unless you really think that I make up my own meanings for words that are wildly different from the accepted meaning.

You also need to work on your reading comprehension. Thinking that someone is being an idiot does not equate to thinking that you are smart. But I am happy, so there's that.

Riddles are a way to entertain small children and phone books are so yesterday.

[minime]

Readable by humans without having to guess or interpret the meaning. Which I apparently just failed at.

It's a nerd joke playing on "machine-readable", meaning that it has to be formatted in a specific way for the computer to be able to parse the data and get something useful out of it.

In plain english: I fucking hate it when people can't be arsed to just spell out what they mean and instead go all vague and cryptic on people. I've found that it's usually a sign of someone trying really hard (and failing) to look smart.

I know what other people mean when they use it, but I don't know what you mean when you use it in your own special way. I'm just glad that you amuse yourself by going all vague and cryptic on your audience.

Okay, so you're smart. Happy?

Sometimes you need to read the phone book; sometimes you need to speak in riddles. It's just the way it goes. The names and numbers in the phonebook are a form of intelligence. Riddles are a way to seek wisdom.

Now you're just trolling, unless you really think that I make up my own meanings for words that are wildly different from the accepted meaning.

You also need to work on your reading comprehension. Thinking that someone is being an idiot does not equate to thinking that you are smart. But I am happy, so there's that.

Riddles are a way to entertain small children and phone books are so yesterday.

I'm glad that you're happy.

[liminalOyster]

Jill Stein looped into widening investigation of Russia and Trump Jr. connections

Third party candidate Jill Stein was a surprising addition this week to investigators casting an increasingly wide net in the congressional probe into Russian interference in the election.

Stein’s name was included in a Senate Judiciary Committee letter requesting all communication between President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and a number of others, including Russian officials and other members of Trump’s presidential campaign.

Stein ran for president as the Green Party candidate in 2016. A Green Party spokesman called the inclusion of her name “vengeance against Dr. Stein for running as a third-party candidate for the White House.”

The Senate panel wants documents relating to a recently revealed meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian attorney, among others. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner were also at the meeting.

But investigators seem to be casting a wider net by asking Trump Jr. for “all communication to, from or copied to you relating to” a long list of individuals that include Stein.

Stein called the request “laughable” in a tweet this week.

“The whole thing is an obvious smear,” she wrote.

“Smears against the Green Party for participating in elections are nothing new, but raising the smears to the level of McCarthyism is a recent wrinkle,” Scott McLarty, media director for the Green Party, told The Hill.

The only known connection between Stein and the investigation into Russian officials is a dinner she attended in 2015 where former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian President Vladimir Putin were both present. Stein has said her interaction was minimal.

Flynn resigned in February after misleading Vice President Pence regarding conversations he had with a top Russian diplomat during the presidential campaign. The dinner came out as part of those revelations.

The Senate panel is investigating both Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Flynn is part of that investigation.

The Senate Judiciary Committee and the office of its chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa), did not respond to a request to clarify their inclusion of Stein in the request for communication from Trump Jr.

“We expect that you have already taken care to preserve relevant documents in light of investigations into Russian interference being conducted by Congress and federal law enforcement and counterintelligence agencies,” the leadership of the committee wrote in the letter dated July 19.

The letter asks for the documents by Aug. 2.

[SonicG]

^ We're just in that moment when the breakdown of current power systems sends people running terrified into their little corners of self defined sanity, and every person outside of the corner becomes an enemy. It's so sad to watch. Personally, I am glad Caitlin is so vocal, otherwise, the point of view she holds would be virtually disappeared, and frankly, 90% of the time, I agree with her.

I mean, come the fuck on, we have an out of control oligarchy, crony capitalists with their deep state and military servents in charge, if that can't unite people across ideological lines, then we're pretty much doomed.

Anyway, Counterpunch has always been a tool to a large extent, telling it's gone out of its way to target her.

Indeed, there is a massive fracturing occurring on various levels...About that long OT exchange about "truth" and "facts" here...Just remember that it is objectively impossible to argue that there is even a shred of a possibility of "globalism" being scaled back by humans at this point. Excepting a massive catastrophic event, which needn't even be humanly fatal - such as a global EMP burst that does nothing to organic life-, globalism will and, for capitalism, must continue onward.

I guess I just believe that the only way to unite across ideological lines is going to be by shredding ideology...Nonetheless, I think it is very easy to see the outcome of all this being massive rallies and marches in the USA. But I see that mostly in the face of, say, Trump trying to fire Mueller and pardons, etc. If Trump gets run out of office after some pretty damning incontrovertible evidence is displayed, forcing the GOP to dump him...well then, I'm afraid the US will be in for some tremendous domestic terrorist backlash that might keep me returning to my native country for decades...

Not to sound too negative, because, who knows, such mass demonstrations could lead to a situation where real populist demands could be included in, say, a platform of national reconciliation...Then again, another possible situation, is the AI Borg decides, at some time, that it's very survival requires it to shut down for a while and let humans figure out how to save Planetship Earth...

[seemslikeadream]

DONALD TRUMP
No, The National Park Service Didn't Alter Photos of Trump's Inauguration Crowd
In the days that followed, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer falsely said Trump's crowd was "the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period," and the Washington Post reported that Trump personally called Reynolds and ordered him to produce additional photos of the crowd size.
http://time.com/4834745/national-park-s ... ze-report/

Trump inauguration crowd photos were edited after he intervened

Exclusive: documents released to Guardian reveal government photographer cropped space ‘where crowd ended’

Jon SwaineLast modified on Thu 6 Sep 2018 15.23 EDT
A government photographer edited official pictures of Donald Trump’s inauguration to make the crowd appear bigger following a personal intervention from the president, according to newly released documents.

The photographer cropped out empty space “where the crowd ended” for a new set of pictures requested by Trump on the first morning of his presidency, after he was angered by images showing his audience was smaller than Barack Obama’s in 2009.

The detail was revealed in investigative reports released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act by the inspector general of the US interior department. They shed new light on the first self-inflicted crisis of Trump’s presidency, when his White House falsely claimed he had attracted the biggest ever inauguration audience.

The records detail a scramble within the National Park Service (NPS) on 21 January 2017 after an early-morning phone call between Trump and the acting NPS director, Michael Reynolds. They also state that Sean Spicer, then White House press secretary, called NPS officials repeatedly that day in pursuit of the more flattering photographs.

It was not clear from the records which photographs were edited and whether they were released publicly.

The newly disclosed details were not included in the inspector general’s office’s final report on its inquiry into the saga, which was published in June last year and gave a different account of the NPS photographer’s actions.

By the time Trump spoke on the telephone with Reynolds on the morning after the inauguration, then-and-now pictures of the national mall were circulating online showing that Trump’s crowd fell short of Obama’s. A reporter’s tweet containing one such pair of images was retweeted by the official NPS Twitter account.

An NPS communications official, whose name was redacted in the released files, told investigators that Reynolds called her after speaking with the president and said Trump wanted pictures from the inauguration. She said “she got the impression that President Trump wanted to see pictures that appeared to depict more spectators in the crowd”, and that the images released so far showed “a lot of empty areas”.


Sean Spicer delivers a statement on 21 January 2017 while a television screen shows a picture of Trump’s inauguration. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

The communications official said she “assumed” the photographs Trump was requesting “needed to be cropped”, but that Reynolds did not ask for this specifically. She then contacted the NPS photographer who had covered the event the day before.

A second official, from the NPS public affairs department, told investigators that Spicer called her office on the morning of 21 January and asked for pictures that “accurately represented the inauguration crowd size”.

In this official’s view, Spicer’s request amounted to “a request for NPS to provide photographs in which it appeared the inauguration crowd filled the majority of the space in the photograph”. She told investigators that she, too, contacted the NPS photographer to ask for additional shots.

The NPS photographer, whose name was also redacted, told investigators he was contacted by an unidentified official who asked for “any photographs that showed the inauguration crowd sizes”. Having filed 25 photographs on inauguration day, he was asked to go back to his office and “edit a few more” for a second submission.

“He said he edited the inauguration photographs to make them look more symmetrical by cropping out the sky and cropping out the bottom where the crowd ended,” the investigators reported, adding: “He said he did so to show that there had been more of a crowd.”

The investigators said the photographer believed the cropping was what the official “had wanted him to do”, but that the official “had not specifically asked him to crop the photographs to show more of a crowd”.

A summary in the inspector general’s final report said the photographer told investigators “he selected a number of photos, based on his professional judgment, that concentrated on the area of the national mall where most of the crowd was standing”.

Asked to account for the discrepancy, Nancy DiPaolo, a spokeswoman for the inspector general, said the cropping was not mentioned in the final report because the photographer told investigators this was his “standard artistic practice”. But investigators did not note this in the write-up of their interview.

The newly released files said Spicer was closely involved in the effort to obtain more favourable photographs. He called Reynolds immediately after the acting director spoke with Trump and then again at 3pm shortly before the new set of photographs was sent to the White House, investigators heard. Another official reported being called by Spicer.

Trump press secretary Sean Spicer slams ‘dishonest’ media for inaugural coverage
At about 5.40pm that day, Spicer began a now notorious press briefing at the White House in which he falsely stated: “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period.” A spokeswoman for Spicer did not respond to a request for comment.

The inspector general’s inquiry was prompted by a February 2017 complaint through the office’s website, alleging NPS officials tried to undermine Trump and leaked details of Trump’s call with Reynolds to the Washington Post, where it was first reported. The inspector general found no evidence to substantiate the allegations.

The Guardian asked in its June 2017 freedom of information request for the identity of the complainant who sparked the inspector general’s inquiry. But this, and the entire complaint, was redacted in the released documents.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... tos-edited