Red Mosquito

On a note that feels perfectly related to Roger Stone: Buck Rogers was the 25th century.

Duck Dodgers was the 24th and a half.

Why has no one made a movie about that half century in between? All of space went from anthropomorphic animals with no pants to being dominated by humans in 50 years. There must have been a massacre.

is he a black panther?

The Republican Party is doing fine.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cass ... pitol-hill

JAMES COMEY’S REMARKABLE FIVE HOURS ON CAPITOL HILL

Just before 3:20 on Monday afternoon, Devin Nunes, the Republican head of the House Intelligence Committee, asked James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who was testifying before the committee on his agency’s investigation into Russian interference in last year’s Presidential election, a last set of questions. Earlier in the hearing, Nunes, seemingly taking his lead from a series of early–morning tweets by President Trump, had focussed his questions on the leaks of classified information that have plagued the Administration since January. Now, though, Nunes got to the crux of the matter: Comey’s public confirmation that the F.B.I. was investigating possible coördination between people associated with the Trump campaign and Russia.

Nunes asked Comey if he had evidence that anyone currently working in the Trump Administration had undisclosed ties to Russia. Comey refused to answer. Nunes tried again: What about Kellyanne Conway? “Same answer,” Comey said. Nunes didn’t pretend to be surprised. “There is a big gray cloud you have put over the people who lead this country,” he went on. “The faster you can get to the bottom of this, it’s going to be better for all Americans.”

It was a statement rather than a question, but Comey evidently felt obliged to respond. “I understand,” he said, quietly.

Thus ended a hearing the likes of which Washington hasn’t seen in many a day—if, indeed, there has ever been anything like it. It lasted five hours and twenty minutes, with just a single bathroom break, and while it began with Comey’s acknowledgement that an investigation existed, much of the rest of it was taken up with his refusals to provide any more details about the probe, or to comment on individual Trump associates whom media reports have tied to it. “I know that is extremely frustrating to some folks,” he said, in his opening statement. “I hope you and the American people can understand. The F.B.I. is very careful in how we handle information about our cases and about the people we are investigating.”

Also

Guys I don't feel like this presidency has gotten off on the right foot.

LOL @ Spicer saying Manafort "served a limited role for a very limited time" and that Flynn was a campaign "volunteer."

LOCK HER UP

Just tell leftists they are fighting evil conservatives and they'll prove the unnecessary role of government funding.

Meals on Wheels received 50 times the typical amount of daily donations on Thursday after the White House proposed cuts to some of the program's sources of funding, a spokesperson for the group said. Volunteer sign-ups also jumped, increasing by 500%, according to Jenny Bertolette, a spokeswoman for Meals on Wheels America.

BurtReynolds wrote:Just tell leftists they are fighting evil conservatives and they'll prove the unnecessary role of government funding.

Meals on Wheels received 50 times the typical amount of daily donations on Thursday after the White House proposed cuts to some of the program's sources of funding, a spokesperson for the group said. Volunteer sign-ups also jumped, increasing by 500%, according to Jenny Bertolette, a spokeswoman for Meals on Wheels America.

Or a long standing, inexpensive program that is vital to assisting low income families is gutted by assholes and people react by reaching out and supporting said program.

https://apnews.com/122ae0b5848345faa88108a03de40c5a

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics, The Associated Press has learned. The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests.

Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.

Manafort pitched the plans to Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.

"We are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success," Manafort wrote in the 2005 memo to Deripaska. The effort, Manafort wrote, "will be offering a great service that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government."

Serious question: why does no one just up and call them on this shit? Instead of couching it in questions and sounding "elite", why not just open up the press briefing with a question like, "What the hell is wrong with you?" instead of "so we see from reports that Mr. Manafort may have worked with the Russians. He worked with the Russians.

I really hope spicer writes a book one day, that shit is gonna be a crazy read.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... d-by-trump

Scott Adams, the millionaire creator of the office-humor comic strip Dilbert, saw something different. In that moment, he realized that Trump might be a kindred spirit—a fellow “Master Wizard,” Adams’s term for experts in hypnosis and persuasion.

“My predictions are based on my unique view into Trump’s toolbox of persuasion,” Adams wrote at the outset, reminding readers that he was a certified hypnotist. “I believe those tools are invisible to almost everyone but trained hypnotists and people that study the science of persuasion.”

Adams’s viral analyses of Trump introduced many people, including me, to his more unusual fixations. Between political ponderings, he blogged about fitness and seduction, posting photos of his abs and writing a series of essays on how to deploy hypnosis and persuasion for better orgasms.

bune wrote:Serious question: why does no one just up and call them on this shit? Instead of couching it in questions and sounding "elite", why not just open up the press briefing with a question like, "What the hell is wrong with you?" instead of "so we see from reports that Mr. Manafort may have worked with the Russians. He worked with the Russians.

That path leads to the dark side.

McParadigm wrote:

bune wrote:Serious question: why does no one just up and call them on this shit? Instead of couching it in questions and sounding "elite", why not just open up the press briefing with a question like, "What the hell is wrong with you?" instead of "so we see from reports that Mr. Manafort may have worked with the Russians. He worked with the Russians.

That path leads to the dark side.

Also: if there really is any dirt, they've got to allow the administration to dig a deeper hole for themselves.

I think the administration saw this Manafort stuff coming, since a few days ago they started to hit on a talking point that he had a "very limited" role in the campaign. They can now do verbal gymnastics and say, "Well, we said no campaign official had ties like that to Russia, and we weren't including Paul in that group because he played such a limited role yada yada yada."

McParadigm wrote:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-22/how-dilbert-s-scott-adams-got-hypnotized-by-trump

Scott Adams, the millionaire creator of the office-humor comic strip Dilbert, saw something different. In that moment, he realized that Trump might be a kindred spirit—a fellow “Master Wizard,” Adams’s term for experts in hypnosis and persuasion.

“My predictions are based on my unique view into Trump’s toolbox of persuasion,” Adams wrote at the outset, reminding readers that he was a certified hypnotist. “I believe those tools are invisible to almost everyone but trained hypnotists and people that study the science of persuasion.”

Adams’s viral analyses of Trump introduced many people, including me, to his more unusual fixations. Between political ponderings, he blogged about fitness and seduction, posting photos of his abs and writing a series of essays on how to deploy hypnosis and persuasion for better orgasms.

I am sad that I can no longer read Dilbert.

McParadigm wrote:

bune wrote:Serious question: why does no one just up and call them on this shit? Instead of couching it in questions and sounding "elite", why not just open up the press briefing with a question like, "What the hell is wrong with you?" instead of "so we see from reports that Mr. Manafort may have worked with the Russians. He worked with the Russians.

That path leads to the dark side.

Sigh. I know, I need to find a center.

Simple Torture wrote:

McParadigm wrote:

bune wrote:Serious question: why does no one just up and call them on this shit? Instead of couching it in questions and sounding "elite", why not just open up the press briefing with a question like, "What the hell is wrong with you?" instead of "so we see from reports that Mr. Manafort may have worked with the Russians. He worked with the Russians.

That path leads to the dark side.

Also: if there really is any dirt, they've got to allow the administration to dig a deeper hole for themselves.

I think the administration saw this Manafort stuff coming, since a few days ago they started to hit on a talking point that he had a "very limited" role in the campaign. They can now do verbal gymnastics and say, "Well, we said no campaign official had ties like that to Russia, and we weren't including Paul in that group because he played such a limited role yada yada yada."

I have a theory about all this, based on a theft case in Iowa.

Without a lot of boring details, it involved employees potentially stealing materials from their employer in one state, in order to begin funding/establishing their own rival business in another.

The FBI was involved, and their attitude was very adamantly “The Bureau does not like getting involved in financial/corporate arguments unless things can be explained in simple, simple terms…because otherwise we consider those to be losing cases.” In other words, the attitude was “We can see that a crime was probably committed, but people don’t understand this, so we don’t want to go to trial.”

My small part was in creating a “high school level” presentation for the organization. The FBI wanted a demonstration that this messy event could be presented so simply, so thoroughly A+B=C, that even a jury of people from the Midwest could understand it. The phrase that I remember was “most jurors see financial evidence as only slightly more convincing than no evidence…and sometimes less.”

So now, the financial evidence is incredibly convoluted, and the scope is transnational. Worse, the “jury” is the entire American public.

I think the leaks are that “high school level” presentation. They are the case being made in simple terms, to prove to the FBI that it can be won. They’ve been transparently breadcrumby. A new piece of the puzzle is dropped, they wait for the news media to “sell” and explain it to the public, then they drop the next.

McParadigm wrote:

Simple Torture wrote:

McParadigm wrote:

bune wrote:Serious question: why does no one just up and call them on this shit? Instead of couching it in questions and sounding "elite", why not just open up the press briefing with a question like, "What the hell is wrong with you?" instead of "so we see from reports that Mr. Manafort may have worked with the Russians. He worked with the Russians.

That path leads to the dark side.

Also: if there really is any dirt, they've got to allow the administration to dig a deeper hole for themselves.

I think the administration saw this Manafort stuff coming, since a few days ago they started to hit on a talking point that he had a "very limited" role in the campaign. They can now do verbal gymnastics and say, "Well, we said no campaign official had ties like that to Russia, and we weren't including Paul in that group because he played such a limited role yada yada yada."

I have a theory about all this, based on a theft case in Iowa.

Without a lot of boring details, it involved employees potentially stealing materials from their employer in one state, in order to begin funding/establishing their own rival business in another.

The FBI was involved, and their attitude was very adamantly “The Bureau does not like getting involved in financial/corporate arguments unless things can be explained in simple, simple terms…because otherwise we consider those to be losing cases.” In other words, the attitude was “We can see that a crime was probably committed, but people don’t understand this, so we don’t want to go to trial.”

My small part was in creating a “high school level” presentation for the organization. The FBI wanted a demonstration that this messy event could be presented so simply, so thoroughly A+B=C, that even a jury of people from the Midwest could understand it. The phrase that I remember was “most jurors see financial evidence as only slightly more convincing than no evidence…and sometimes less.”

So now, the financial evidence is incredibly convoluted, and the scope is transnational. Worse, the “jury” is the entire American public.

I think the leaks are that “high school level” presentation. They are the case being made in simple terms, to prove to the FBI that it can be won. They’ve been transparently breadcrumby. A new piece of the puzzle is dropped, they wait for the news media to “sell” and explain it to the public, then they drop the next.

Does it end up with trump in handcuffs or putins army enslaving us all?

All I will say is that Burt won't not be made our supreme leader