Archive for 2018

IS THAT BRENNAN HAD HIS SENSE OF HUMOR ABLATED AT BIRTH AND IS WILLING TO TEAR THE REPUBLIC APART OVER A JOKE?  MR. BRENNAN, YOUR CLAIMS ARE INDEED HOGWASH:  The Brennan factor.

YEAH HIS FREEDOM OF SPEECH BEING CURTAILED BY TAKING HIS CLEARANCE AWAY MAKES ABOUT AS MUCH SENSE AS THE LONG LSD TRIP THE LEFT HAS FALLEN INTO RECENTLY:  Brennan’s security clearance revoked.

STANDING UP FOR CIVIL RIGHTS: Louisiana Attorney General Denies $600 Million to Citibank, Bank of America Over Gun Control. “Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and the state’s Bond Commission denied $600 million to Citibank and Bank of America over the gun control stance adopted by both companies. Citibank and Bank of America were both to be part of a road financing plan in the state, but were omitted from the financial plan after arbitrarily placing new gun controls on banking customers. Louisiana Executive Division press secretary Ruth Wisher told Breitbart News that Landry and State Treasurer John Schroder have been working on the state’s response to corporate gun control ‘for some time.’ Omitting them from the $600 million is part of that response.”

WEIRD, WHO WAS IN CHARGE THEN? Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents.

How were the Chinese able to roll up the network?

Now, nearly eight years later, it appears that the agency botched the communication system it used to interact with its sources, according to five current and former intelligence officials. The CIA had imported the system from its Middle East operations, where the online environment was considerably less hazardous, and apparently underestimated China’s ability to penetrate it.

“The attitude was that we’ve got this, we’re untouchable,” said one of the officials who, like the others, declined to be named discussing sensitive information. The former official described the attitude of those in the agency who worked on China at the time as “invincible.”

Other factors played a role as well, including China’s alleged recruitment of former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee around the same time. Federal prosecutors indicted Lee earlier this year in connection with the affair.

So what parts of our intelligence community aren’t a clown show?

OPEN THREAD: Excelsior!

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Pearl Jam Briefly Relevant Again with Concert Poster Depicting Trump’s Dead Body.

“Now, I’m a free speech kinda guy, so I don’t have a problem with this. If you don’t like a politician and you want to depict bad things happening to him, or you want to otherwise criticize him, go right ahead,” Treacher writes. “But I also can’t help but recall some of the other times people criticized the president, and it was reported as if it were the end of the world.”

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

WHY THE INTELLECTUAL DARK WEB SHOULD STICK WITH CULTURE AND NOT SHIFT TO POLITICS:

But as [Caitlin] Flanagan of the Atlantic suggests, leftists who see everything as political know what Peterson is doing has a political dimension. The Intellectual Dark Web types reach people where they live, both in their earbuds and in their sense of enriching their lives outside “politics,” which paradoxically is the essence of successful politics. But the left fears the Intellectual Dark Web because they have no game plan (yet) for someone who isn’t a traditional political figure doing politics that isn’t “politics.”

This paradox has implications for Peterson and the Intellectual Dark Web. The recent New York Times profile of the Intellectual Dark Web — and Rubin’s appearance on the Federalist Radio Hour — raised the question of whether the Intellectual Dark Web becomes a political movement.

Becoming a political movement in the sense the question is asked would probably be the Intellectual Dark Web’s downfall at this juncture. The only political idea that should be central to the Intellectual Dark Web is the rejection of identity politics and its implicit totalitarianism. Simply re-popularizing the idea that not everything is “politics” is political enough for them for now. They will be far more effective making “politics” only one topic of conversation, thereby demonstrating that not everything is “politics.”

Read the whole thing. I remember reading interviews of Tom Wolfe from the 1970s and ‘80s in which he noted how surprised and disappointed he was that Hunter S. Thompson, whom Wolfe had championed as the star of the “New Journalism” movement of the mid-‘60s through the mid-‘70s, started writing about politics. By not tackling the minutia of Republican and Democrat day to day politics himself, Wolfe avoided being completely being dispatched to the culture war’s Siberia, which surely would have occurred if he was self-declared political conservative. Yet he was able to get plenty of conservative ideas, from pointing out the absurdity of radical chic, the anti-human characteristics of modern architecture, and the formulaic nature of modern art, to the identity politics obsessions of New Yorkers on both the top and bottom of the rungs of power into exceedingly wide circulation.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Justice Dept. Says State AGs Misunderstand Cody Wilson Settlement. “The Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it filed a brief in opposition to a preliminary injunction against a State Department agreement with 3D-printed gun pioneer Cody Wilson. The injunction was requested by a group of state attorneys general in federal court. In the brief, DOJ accused the AGs of misunderstanding the issue at hand in the settlement. It further claimed that the AGs want the Department of State to exceed the authority granted to them under current law. DOJ said the case was not about the legality of 3D-printed firearms but, rather, about the potential export of technical firearms data to foreign nationals.”

Plus: “DOJ said the AGs are concerned with potential crimes committed by those in the United States if the files published by Wilson were to be downloaded by criminals in their states. However, DOJ said, the State Department’s power to regulate the export of firearms does not allow it to ban the publication of information in the United States out of fear that domestic criminals may misuse it.”

PLUS, THE BETTER YOU LOOK, THE HAPPIER YOU MAKE THE PEOPLE YOU ENCOUNTER: Cosmetic procedures boost well-being, poll shows. I keep waiting for some economist to argue that we should tax people for being overweight, and subsidize cosmetic surgery, on the basis of externalities.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: The Hill Interview: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey explains what got Alex Jones suspended.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey isn’t sure if the timeout given to Alex Jones will convince the right-wing conspiracy theorist to “reconsider” his social media behavior.

But Dorsey, in an interview with The Hill the morning after his company handed down a seven-day suspension to Jones, says its enforcement actions are intended to promote better behavior from its users.

“We’re always trying to cultivate more of a learning mindset and help guide people back towards healthier behaviors and healthier public conversation,” the 41-year-old co-founder of Twitter said.

Related: Twitter awards Sarah Jeong a blue checkmark, and as spotted today at Small Dead Animals, suspends “Tesla Whistleblower Following Tweets About His Former Employer.”

NEW MEXICO COMPOUND TERRORIST HERE DUE TO VISA PROBLEM U.S. HASN’T FIXED SINCE 9/11: LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby has the exclusive on why that Haitian woman arrested in the New Mexico Islamic terrorist compound was able to stay undetected in this country for decades. It’s a problem the 9/11 Commission highlighted.

ANALYSIS: TRUE.