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Chemical warfare, Turtle Island, Oceti Sakowin Camp, November, 2016. © C. Ford, all rights reserved.
New York Daily News writer Shaun King obtained audio where Energy Transfer Partners freely admitted that they worked closely with the Sheriff’s Association, and wow, did they ever. They became one and the same.
Water protectors who lived at camp can attest to ETP and law enforcement’s collusion and fraternization, but the record speaks for itself.
The Sheriffs’ Association has a $3.46 million dollar budget, according to tax forms. Some of this funding comes from corporate sources, like TigerSwan. TigerSwan maintains offices in Iraq and Afghanistan. TigerSwan’s CEO is a former adviser to the multinational private security firm, Blackwater. Blackwater was founded by Erik Prince, a Trump campaign donor and the brother of Betsy DeVos, the U.S. Secretary of Education. Besides funding the Sheriff’s Association, TigerSwan is in charge of Dakota Access intelligence and supervising overall security for the company. Tigerswan works for Dakota Access, while funding and partnering with the Sheriffs’ Association.
The Sheriff’s Association purchased military gear from the U.S. Department’s Defense Logistics Agency thanks to the Defense Department’s 1033 program. Think corporate welfare for the defense industry.
Wait, there’s more. Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren offered to reimburse North Dakota and Morton County for costs due to defending the Dakota Access Pipeline.
So why are U.S. taxpayers forking over $15 million dollars to North Dakota?
Despite the fossil fuel industry’s wishes, America is not an oil company with an army. We should not be bankrolling our own oppression.
Incidentally, the Dakota Access Pipeline is not even operational yet, and it’s already sprung a leak in South Dakota, just southwest of the Lake Traverse Reservation. End this foolishness.
Ruth Hopkins at Indian Country Today has the full story.
Tucker Viemeister.
Conservative allies are now poking and pushing the Tiny Tyrant to indulge in more firings, because naturally, the fault of the current mess lies with them! And them! Oh, and them too! One GOP operative even managed to blurt out a tiny bit of conservatruth, the importance of fear, because what good is a regime without that?
President Trump’s allies are pushing him to make drastic changes as the White House deals with persistent leaks and a communications strategy they believe has spun out of control.
There is a broad sense among Trump’s media boosters and early supporters that his staff is failing him, beginning with chief of staff Reince Priebus and extending to press secretary Sean Spicer, whose job security has been the subject of endless speculation.
Now, some of the most influential figures in conservative media are openly auditioning for Spicer’s job, calling for the ouster of communications director Mike Dubke or pushing the White House to fight back against the media by ending press briefings altogether.
Some of those measures — in particular the measure to freeze out the press — are catching on among Trump’s conservative base.
“I have always been against the White House doing daily press briefings and agree that an overhaul of how the communications team deals with the media is in order,” said Mark Meckler, cofounder of the Tea Party Patriots. “We are dealing with a media that is, by and large, hostile to conservatives, hostile to Republicans, hostile to ideas of limited government, fiscal responsibility and constitutionalism, and certainly hostile to this president. So the president and his staff should act accordingly.”
Why yes, of course, people being generally hostile to such ideas, that has nothing at all to do with ideas, no. Instead, stomping all over media and attempting to restrict information, that’s the ticket, yeah!
Hannity accused reporters of seeking publicity for themselves through public combat with the White House.
He said the White House should strike back by having reporters submit questions in writing, “giving the White House time to respond with clarity and specificity.” Following that, Spicer or deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders could then take a handful of questions from reporters on prearranged topics, Hannity said.
“If the White House follows this plan, I think the destroy-Trump propaganda media will have a much harder time misrepresenting the Trump administration positions and you, the American people, will be better served,” he said.
Oh my, just look at that radiating pile of wrong. We certainly wouldn’t want a president and spokespeople who were capable of actually thinking before talking, no, that would be bad. Instead, we’ll quash media by treating them like naughty kindergartners. Trump administration positions are not being misrepresented. They are being represented, which is why you’re all in such a stew. Can you imagine the reaction if anyone suggested such a plan with an earlier president? The cries of “Unamerican!” would roll like thunder across the land. As for being better served, count me out on being an American people.
Trump’s allies blame the uproar on a failure of Trump’s chief of staff to assert authority inside a White House bitten by daily leaks to the press that paint a chaotic and unflattering picture of the president.
“It all comes back to the chief of staff,” said one GOP operative with close ties to the White House.
“Nobody respects him; nobody is afraid of him,” the operative said of Priebus. “You need someone in there who makes people feel their career in Washington would be ruined by running afoul of the president.”
Ah, and there we have it, the core attitude of the Plutocrat Party™. Fear! Fear is the key. Sounds Regime to me.
ParaphernaliaNoun plural but singular or plural in construction.
1. The separate real or personal property of a married woman that she can dispose of by will and sometimes according to common law during her life.
2. Personal belongings.
3. a: Articles of equipment. b: Accessory items.
[Origin: Medieval Latin, ultimately from Greek parapherna, bride’s property beyond her dowry, from para + phernē dowry, from pherein to bear.]
(1651)
“Timothy Poe was not at 101 MacDougal Street, but a vast array of drug paraphernalia was. Unfortunately for him, it was more than enough to raise the eyebrows of even the most jaded of Mulvaney’s men: a stash of opium, a bottle of Bayer’s heroin, some cocaine toothdrops, and a dozen hypodermic needles of the type that had pricked Detective Marwin. Though it was not illegal to possess any of these items, it was frowned upon by polite society – and their discovery would do Poe no good.” – A Curtain Falls, Stefanie Pintoff.
Tulip! From rq, click for full size.
© rq, all rights reserved.
Ash, the rescue rat who started it all in 2006. In the first photo, Ash was busy working on thieving my ring. He was successful in pulling it off, and immediately scampered off to Rat HQ to stash his lovely ring. I recovered it later, after distracting Ash with Jaffa Wars (breaking out my precious supply of London Jaffa Cakes, and getting into a ferocious tug o’ Jaffa cake war with Ash.) The ring I still have. Wish I still had Ash.
© C. Ford.
Click for full size!
© C. Ford.
Harris’s Sparrow. Aren’t they beauties? These are large sparrows, 17 to 20 cm (6.7 to 7.9 in). This is probably a non-breeding adult, but my sparrow identification skills suck. I’m always glad to see them, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
In yet another article about the Tiny Tyrant turning sour and dark, and turning on everyone, including the beloved prince, Kushner, this was noted by aides:
Along with sources decrying the president’s temperament, the report also suggests that some aides believe Trump doesn’t understand his intel well enough to have leaked anything serious to the two Russian officials he met with in the Oval Office last week.
“In private, three administration officials conceded that they could not publicly articulate their most compelling — and honest — defense of the president: that Mr. Trump, a hasty and indifferent reader of printed briefing materials, simply did not possess the interest or knowledge of the granular details of intelligence gathering to leak specific sources and methods of intelligence gathering that would do harm to United States allies,” the report claimed.
I certainly don’t find that remotely difficult to believe; however, incompetency does not necessarily rule out leaking something of great value to others. I honestly can’t decide if this makes things better, worse, or simply more surreal. Surreality is grand and great in art. In every day life, not so much. I do think there is a great wellspring of malice in Trump, which is bubbling and frothing right now, as he seeks convenient people and places to blame for all and sundry. I don’t think malicious narcissism combined with incompetency is going to make anything better, and it worries me, along with the spreading idea that Trump is simply so incompetent he’s harmless. I’m afraid of people becoming complacent, considering him to be nothing more than a bumbling fool, and finding reasons to handwave his behaviour and actions. I don’t think we can afford to do that.
Curtis Ellis, screengrab.
The Tiny Tyrant is more than a little too fond of Curtis Ellis, a former writer for that bastion of batshit, WorldNetDaily. Ellis is now being considered to head up the Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs. [Bloomberg].
“The little-known deputy undersecretary position at ILAB is considered an essential piece of the White House push to restore U.S. manufacturing jobs by cracking down on labor abuses overseas,” Penn writes. “Ellis is currently part of the Labor Department’s beachhead team and is overseeing the department’s trade policy. He has already been attending ILAB meetings and representing the bureau to foreign governments as a temporary political appointee.”
This is a serious problem for all the regular reasons, but in the case of Ellis, there’s so much more. He is convinced that multinational elites are out to run the world, installing a small, hidden, anonymous cabal of elites. All these nefarious elites, of course, are in turn run by … Lucifer! This is just so old anymore. They need a new villain.
Elite.
noun
1. (often used with a plural verb) the choice or best of anything considered collectively, as of a group or class of persons.
2. (used with a plural verb) persons of the highest class: Only the elite were there.
3. a group of persons exercising the major share of authority or influence within a larger group: the power elite of a major political party.
It’s beyond me, the constant talk of elites among the religious reich, and uber-conservatives. How do they manage to forget they have the major share of wealth and power? They are the elite, alright, the elite baddies.
Along with WorldNetDaily, Ellis also has ties to Breitbart, the outlet formerly run by Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon.
In an interview last year with “Trunews” host Rick Wiles, Ellis reflected many of Bannon’s ultranationalist views and Trump’s love of Vladimir Putin, and expressed his view that a group of satanic elites is intent on gaining world domination.
Multinational elites, Ellis said, want to create “global tyranny where a small cabal of anonymous, hidden elites rule the world.”
Ellis added that this secret global cabal is a “Luciferian” and “satanic” group that elevates materialism over the spiritual world, pointing to the installation of a replica of the Arch of Baal, which was destroyed by ISIS, in New York.
“ISIS, they did destroy the archway to the temple of Baal,” Wiles said. “I guess if there’s any redeeming value to ISIS, I guess you can credit them for bringing down the Temple of Baal.”
Oh yes, Baal, the godthorn in the side of the psychopathic Yahweh. Lots of people in the bible died because they preferred Baal, God of Ekron, over Yahweh, and that bloodthirsty shit didn’t like competition, no. So not only does this idiot believe in one god of the bible, he believes in one of the other ones, too. Great.
BW® DIY F450 4-Axis RC QuadCopter MultiCopter Frame Airframe Kit.
The latest MAKE newsletter has a good rundown of the top 5 affordable quadcopter kits. Drones are fun, but they are also on the spendy side, so it’s good to know exactly how to spend your money.
Drones have become so popular that lately it seems everyone has one. Why wouldn’t they? Today’s models are practically flying on their own, creating breathtaking images and videos, and offering a fun way to get away from your daily tasks and problems.
However, since you are reading this, I guess you are not here to talk about the ready-to-fly (RTF) drones, right? You are more of a DIY kind of a person who would rather spend your hard earned free time messing with the parts and tools, and customizing your bird to be a unique reflection of your personality.
This hobby, as you probably already know, tends to go hard on your budget, and demands a certain level of understanding of the subject. This is exactly why I decided to help out and talk about the affordable quadcopter kits that will not make you rob a bank in order to afford them.
Before I get to the actual kits, you need to know how to find the one most suitable for your needs.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Susan Walsh.
By now, most people are aware that the Tiny Tyrant divulged classified information to the visiting Russians, and Mr. Tweet has had a whirlwind of justifications over it all, he can do whatever the fuck he wants because president! Yeah. The whole mess, and the tweets, are detailed at Think Progress, along with the standard problems in what passes for thought in Trump. The Fucking Idiot not only undercut all his aides by admitting to leaking all over the place, he’s been bragging about it, even to the point of referring to said leakage as humanitarian. Trump wouldn’t know humanitarian if it jumped up and gnawed his face off. Why on earth anyone would be surprised by this, I don’t know. It’s all too standard behaviour on the Tiny Tyrant’s part. Nathan also has a good piece on the leaking of classified material.
Of more concern, I would say, is the journalistic rush to report that rethuglicans are pulling away from the wannabe dictator now, but unfortunately, that is not so, and this is no time to become complacent, and think they are going to kick his plush arse to the curb.
Source: NYT.
“Questions and concerns” do not mean jack shit when it comes to rethuglicans. It’s a handy, shopworn phrase tossed out to make them sound like they have the same concerns as all us peons, but they don’t. They are interested in two things: covering their asses, and more importantly, protecting their wallet and the various things which feed it. Think Progress has a breakdown of the actual sentiment right now.
And, Politico reports on the shambolic mess that is Trump House, where people are running about like chickens with heads cut off, not having the slightest idea of what is going to happen. Also per usual, Trump is like a cat jumping in a box, furiously digging in an attempt to cover up stinking shit, spraying sand and shit particles all over the place. There will be a shake up! There will be a reorganization! Oh hey, we have a trip coming up, and everyone will forget about Comey and leakage, you betcha!