Clearing Tabs
FYI: George Papadopoulos’s ‘professor’ is Ivan Nikolaevich Timofeev, a program director at the Russian International Affairs Council in London. He probably works for the SVR [Russian CIA equivalent], rather than the GRU [Russian military intelligence].
George Papadopoulos is the name of the leader of the Junta that ruled Greece when I was a frequent visitor to Athens. The government was referred to as “the Colonels”. The leader of Spain at the time was Francisco Franco, so I know what it is like living under fascist governments, if only as a visitor.
Robert Mercer, who is a prominent conservative donor and a financial backer of Steve Bannon’s website, Breitbart, announced he would step down from his hedge fund. He gave Brietbart to his daughters who are just as “conservative” as he is and unfortunately look like him. That could twist anyone.
Mr. Mercer may want to spend more time with his tax accountants and lawyer over the matter of about $ 7 billion that the IRS wants.
On a lighter note, The Register reports: Birds are pecking apart Australia’s national broadband network. I thing the author is being a bit over dramatic: “Everything in Australia wants to kill you and if they can’t find flesh, telco cabling will do.”
I admit I did keep my brother’s macaw for an extended period while he was in the Middle East, and Felipe went through at least one of the hardwood closet rods that I used for perches every week. Felipe ate Brazil nuts, so his beak was a nasty piece of work, and easily capable of slicing through fiber, coax, or twisted-pair cables.
35 comments
I want to see George Papadopoulos interviewed by George Stephanopoulos with color commentary by my friend Spiros Triantafyllopoulos just to see the ticker at the bottom of the screen that identifies the talking heads who are talking explode to take up the entire screen :). The Greeks have hella long last names!
You could just replace the -opoulos with -son, the meaning of the suffix, to shorten them. The first O in the suffix is long [like ‘over’]. You pick up all kinds of facts while traveling.
I just call my friend “Spiros” and leave it at that :).
Hi guy’s. I saw that from Le Reg! I did laugh… because it’s true! I tweeted it when I saw it. 😀
Yeah… I had Greek friends & school & over the years, worked in security for a Greek brothers that I knew from a the son of 1 I went to School with. They certainly knew how to make a ton of money! They were both accountants/financiers. Owned a bunch of clubs around Aus. I managed security for them. Ohhhh… the stories! When I get tired of breathing, I’ll spill the beans! I seemed to have a knack for working for questionable org’s & people. Hmmmm.
Some of us just aren’t drawn to the stability of being a chartered accountant.
Some of *us* are just trouble magnet’s & gluttons for punishment I reckon m8! 🙄 😏😕
Here, must be time for another laugh @ 45!
The internet has nominated the Twitter employee who shut down Trump’s account for a Nobel Peace Prize
😂👍🏾🍿🍾
The Intel Board should shut down that Twitter account for national security reasons.
Twitter itself should shut down that Twitter account for national security reasons.
I mean, they’re a private business. They can choose who they wish to be their customer — or not. If Twitter’s CEO were a true patriot, he’d have shut down that account the moment Trump gained access to classified information and started leaking it…
Even worse! Twitter just extended the tweet character count to 280!! 45 will be beside himself with joy! We are so doomed!😩😭
Twitter wants the traffic and the clicks to jack up its ad rate. I don’t use Twitter, but I assume they use ads to generate revenue.
It is a private corporation apparently with a significant Russian presence among its stockholders. Something of a conflict of interest when it comes to banning.
Twitter doesn’t make much, if any, money from Trump’s tweets. Nobody comes to Twitter just for Trump’s tweets. It’s not dollars and cents that keeps Hair Twitler on Twitter. ..
There are a lot of media outlets, foreign and domestic, who have joined Twitter to monitor Drumpf, and then the thousands of Russian trolls to support him. Same with Facebook, although not as much exposure because it is too complicated for him to use without Barron’s help.
The number of eyes matter in advertising …
The calls for Twitter to add an editing feature for Tweets is growing. So I started a movement to say “NO! BAD idea!” Imagine if morons like 45 & the RWNJ’s could edit their tweets! He’d be spending all day saying “I never said that!” whilst pointing to the edited tweet! Amazing how fast that’s dawning on twitters! 😆 As I also pointed out, when he deletes a tweet where he’s accused of some crap, we know he really tweeted it! And someone usually has a screen-grab anyway. Much rather a permanent, unalterable record! It’s worth putting up with typo’s & autocorrect stupidity IMNSHO! 😆
Just read an update on the Niger Mission where Sgt. La David Johnson was killed on. It was a typical FUBAR poorly planned mission.
‘He died fighting for his brothers,’ Niger ambush survivor says of fallen US soldier
A mission like that earned me a bullet & the death of my best friend @ the time. Piss poor tasking always ends in useless deaths.
Trump’s tweets are official public records and have to be preserved as they first appeared. If you want to make changes after publication, you have to refer to the earlier version and then provide the changes. Those are the rules for US Federal office holders and Florida state officials.
We both know that he would edit the weather if he knew how and it showed he was lying again.
That’s even worst than I had assumed. Being out that long is never good. If they suspected a a major opposition leader was in the neighborhood, you would have to assume that he brought help with him.
When the supporting unit couldn’t meet they should have cancelled the mission and returned to base. Losing 4 NCOs in a single battle is a major blow to a unit. We don’t know the casualties of the Niger troops or the French troops who choppered in to evacuate people. With a third of the force dead and two more wounded, someone should be fired for the cock up. Special Forces can’t tolerate casualties like that for any sustained period.
Civilians truly have no clue. most think it’s like Rambo or whatever.
It will take ages & cost a fortune to replace each of those men. The successful candidate rate is typically 10-20%. Then, depending on specialization, up to 2 years training. They can’t be replaces overnight. Sure, SF personnel can die on a well planned & executed mission, but that’s typically due to some unexpected/unplanned for eventuality or just bad luck. It happens. But far fewer die on well planned missions than piss poor tasked missions like that one! I’m frankly amazed any of them made it back & I’m in a position to know what I’m talking about!
On a mission, every conceivable option is looked @ and planned for! And every step of the mission is rehearsed! They don’t just get woken up & stuck on a chopper or vehicle & sent off to kill the bad guy’s! That ONLY ever happens in movies! A 2-4 hour mission takes several day’s of planning & preparation! Every extra 10-15 minutes add’s complexity & uncertainty. And that get’s them killed. Every piece of gear is stripped & double checked, by a specialist armorer & the squad member. Every bullet is checked! One bad round can ruin a precision mission. An SF team trusts no-one and takes nothing for granted!
My team was pulled back more than once when our forward scouts reported that something wasn’t according to plan (usually for a sniper team that the target wasn’t where he was supposed to be or security had changed in their favor etc.)
The most important part however, is good real reliable & actual Intel! Anything unverified is NEVER actionable! So whoever the idiot commander was that got these men killed, should face a firing squad!
I presume that if Twitter ever implemented an edit function it would work like the Facebook edit function. In Facebook, if you edit your message it gets the word “Edited” beside it. You can click on that word and see all the prior versions. I.e., nothing ever *truly* gets edited, it just loses visibility to the newer version.
Well, Kryten you had three deleted and the last one marked as spam. I recovered your first comment.
Those lost were all airborne qualified and two Green Berets. The WMD school is a minimum of a year in the class room before the on-the-job training. They had combat experience and secondary skills over and above their primary jobs.
The US has drones, recce aircraft, satellites, all kinds of tech to provide cover for the ground troops, but nothing seems to be attached to Africa Command. Where was the forward air controller to direct the support aircraft? Are the radios and frequencies compatible? Who the hell is in charge? If they don’t have the resources for the mission, don’t attempt the mission.
I can accept that form of editing, Badtux, with version control and access to earlier versions the record preservation would be met.
I try a short comment. Seen this?
Exclusive: China Syndrome – Xi and Putin Partnered in U.S. Election Interference
I’m pretty busy trying to help the refugees from warzones our criminal Government decided to imprison on Manus (PNG).
It looks like you aren’t going to have a ‘Turnball’ to kick around much longer. He seems dead is set on starting a pissing match with Bill Shorten over dual nationality status and has pretty much annoyed major players in the Coalition. Looks like elections in the New Year, because no one will tolerate elections during the Christmas buying season.
Xi-Putin is shaping up to look more like Mao-Stalin that Mao-Khrushchev, a state of mutually acceptable distrust. They will work together for their mutual advantage as long as neither claims supremacy.
Good luck with your project. Politician are great at starting wars, but don’t have the courage to deal with the aftermath.
here’s a good article on the whole trump impeachment *thing* and why it isn’t happening, thanks entirely to one man.
Impeaching Trump is all about Bob
It’s written by Dr. Dena Grayson, the wife of Rep. Alan Grayson.
On Twitter, she added this summary:
Until today, only 3 of the 4 Congressional committees responsible for proper oversight over #TrumpRussia have launched investigations:
✅Senate Judiciary
✅Senate Intelligence
✅House Intelligence
❌House Judiciary
It only takes one committee chair to bring any process to a halt in Congress. If a committee chair refuses to schedule something for discussion, it doesn’t exist. The Republicans can’t get anything done because all they know how to do is obstruct.
The Senate isn’t ready to convict Trump.We will have to wait for the 2018 elections to scare the crap out of the Congresscritters and force them to realize voters want to see some action.
I know.
Trump tweeted about the mass shooting in CA. But he forgot to change the location on the template he was given. @ 8:34 PM, 14-Nov-2017, he tweeted:
“May God be with the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas. The FBI and Law Enforcement has arrived.”
Which was exactly what he tweeted on 05-Nov-2017. The tweet was deleted, but several people too screen cap’s and they are all over the ‘net now.
I think my favorite comment was:
Seems Russia is having a good laugh & is putting the boot in now:
Russia’s state TV host asks former Ambassador Kislyak to name all Trump admin officials with whom he communicated or held meetings. He refused, saying: “the list is too long to mention all of them in 20 minutes.”
Also, a few GOP mega-donors are pulling funds & advertising from anything Bannon is associated with. I said he’d be toast when he was kicked out. 😆
And… this:
Three reasons why Sean Hannity issued Roy Moore an ultimatum
Another day… *shrug*
Oh! Meant to add this:
There is an amazing 10 YO known on Twitter as @LittleMissFlint (Mari Copeny). She’s an activist trying to get Flint clean water. She got Obama to travel there, though I don’t know if that achieved anything. Anyway, she has a GoFundMe page & is trying to raise funds if anyone wants to help. She’s almost reached her goal. I kicked in what I could spare.
Help Mari Continue Her Activism
Her group is also selling clothing to help raise funds:
Don’t Forget Flint
I hope you don’t mind, I don’t normally do this. But i said I’d help get the word out to my American friends. I also said that I thought she was far more adult than many adults!
Mass shootings have become so common that they don’t even make front page news anymore. In fact, the San Jose Mercury-News’s coverage was on page B-3. Not even in the front section of the paper!
I got used to seeing that kind of thing at concerts, when the singer would look at his palm where he had written the name of the town for the “Hello [insert name here]! Are you ready to rock & roll!!!” speech that proceeded the music. Of course, Trump would slur “insert name here” with out figuring out why it was there.
I think you need to hit double digits to make it to the front page in any major market, or be a Muslim 👿
Yes, Kryten, the purpose is to disrupt, so now they are in troll mode. Part of it is to remind Trump who is in control. Putin has to have something major on Trump.
I am so impressed by Mari! She’s a real tornado of energy! Don’t know how she does it. 😆
She raised over $10,000 recently to get water trucked into Flynt. At least the water/transport companies are making money off Flynt’s tragedy. 4 Years!! That’s longer than some African villages go without clean water until the charities do something.
And now Puerto Rico! Unbelievable.
So much for America caring all about American’s as the RWNJ’s often claim! That was why Dotard Donny was supposedly elected! Obviously, NOT! I REALLY despise hypocrites!
Still, some Americans are really trying to help. But without serious Gov support, it’s an uphill battle!
The local water sources were all polluted by manufacturing, the majority involved in the auto industry, then the car companies left and nothing was done to clean up their mess. Repubs consider polluting the environment to be the cost for having jobs.
The jobs left, and the tax base left with them so there is no money to fix anything, because no one wants to create new jobs in the US when it is more profitable to do everything in Mexico or China, et al.
Mari is giving it her all and overcoming the hopelessness of the majority in the Rust Belt. Drumpf is just going to make matters worse by promising jobs that he doesn’t know how to create.
And in my Facebook feed, the Hillbots and Bernie Bros are going at it tooth and nail *again*. Sigh. So I’ve taken to posting the following when they do their crud:
Благодарю вас за распространение нашего агитпропа, товарищ. — Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации
(Well, that’s what Google Translate gave me. It translates back to what I expect when I go the other way, so.)
If you were going for “Thank you for the dispersal of our agitprop, comrades – Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation” you succeeded.
What is wrong with these people? Can’t Democrats ever just sit back and eat their popcorn while the GOPers are having one of their meltdowns. They really should go for some tranks if they can’t behave.
Hey Bryan… This was posted on Twitter…
I know you despair as most of us do over what passes for “Law Enforcement” in the USA & elsewhere (here even), & that most Department have gone beyond the scraping of the bottom of the swamp, but this has to rate as a pair of the dumbest Cop’s anywhere! (YouTube news vid source):
Los Angeles Police Officers Caught Planting Cocaine on Suspect During Traffic Stop
I didn’t know whether to just shake my head or laugh!
Even the NYT is publishing an expose of the treatment of refugees on Manus.
It’s actually better than most coverage I’ve seen from the Australian MSM. Hardly surprising.
NYT sent journalists into a contested detention camp in Papua New Guinea to investigate Australia’s refugee policy, and the resistance rising against it.
If the morons had read the operating manual they would know that the cameras are working all the time, but don’t record until you press on. Included in the recording is the 30 seconds of video that was in the temporary buffer before you started recording.
When you hire cops who are dumber than criminals, your closure rate drops into the loo.
The SCROTUS uses the Australian system as a model of what he wants to do, which means the US media is going to check out what Australia does. Being muckrakers by nature, if there is controversy they will highlight and report it. The Manus center has been been a problem and a PR disaster since it opened.
Conditions in the private prisons that ICE runs here in the United States for “undeportables” aren’t much better than Manus. I saw an expose of conditions there once. The inmates (because that’s what they are) are crammed into wire-fenced unheated dog pens without even enough room to lie down. Inmates regularly die due to lack of medical care. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that they can’t sue the U.S. government for their mistreatment because it’s a contractor, not the government, mistreating them.
Regarding the corrupt cops, the LAPD Chief of Police chimed in two days after that video to say it doesn’t prove that the cops planted the cocaine on the perp, despite the evidence of our lyin’ eyes. Err. yeah. I have no idea why black people might not trust the police in Los Angeles. It appears that they’re corrupt from top to bottom. SIGH.
There should be no ‘private prisons’ because holding people against their will is something the Government must do or it is kidnapping. You can’t delegate certain powers to private companies, some things are restricted to the government. If the prisons have the powers of the police, they are part of the police. With the power comes the responsibility. This is the basic problem I have with many of the privatization efforts – the government can’t delegate its power to private companies.
The LAPD has gotten a lot of good press over the years that was undeserved. The department benefited from connections in the media that prevented a real look at what they were doing. Jack Webb was responsible for a lot of the false impressions of the LAPD. People know what they saw, and denying reality isn’t going to hack it anymore.