On Tuesday of this week CNN published an article about what has since come to be known as peegate*. The most damning allegation repeated in the CNN article is that Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russian intelligence:
The two-page synopsis also included allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government, according to two national security officials.
CNN took an absurd line here, claiming that the allegations were credible enough to be newsworthy, while at the same time declining to release the details of the allegations because they had not been vetted by CNN. This angle gave CNN a shield to hide behind while dishing dirt, and at the same time made it exceptionally difficult to disprove the allegations. From an early archive of the CNN article (emphasis mine):
CNN has reviewed a 35-page compilation of the memos, from which the two-page synopsis was drawn. The memos originated as opposition research, first commissioned by anti-Trump Republicans, and later by Democrats. At this point, CNN is not reporting on details of the memos, as it has not independently corroborated the specific allegations. But, in preparing this story, CNN has spoken to multiple high ranking intelligence, administration, congressional and law enforcement officials, as well as foreign officials and others in the private sector with direct knowledge of the memos.
Some of the memos were circulating as far back as last summer. What has changed since then is that US intelligence agencies have now checked out the former British intelligence operative and his vast network throughout Europe and find him and his sources to be credible enough to include some of the information in the presentations to the President and President-elect a few days ago.
Unfortunately for CNN, Buzzfeed responded to CNN’s report by publishing the 35 page memo. This gave Trump’s team something other than vague whispers to respond to, and very quickly his team was able to prove that the memo’s alleged meeting between Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen and Kremlin officials could not have taken place. The meeting was alleged to have occurred in Prague in August of 2016. From page 18 of the memo:
Cohen was able to prove that he couldn’t possibly have been in Prague when this meeting is alleged to have occurred. This is crucial, because again the most damning allegation CNN was repeating in their original article was that Trump’s team colluded with the Kremlin during the campaign.
But this is where the story gets more bizarre, and even more embarrassing for CNN. Jake Tapper, one of the original authors of the CNN story, responded to this claim being debunked by explaining that it was another Michael Cohen who was in Prague at that time. Brietbart quotes Tapper:
“It was a Michael Cohen with a passport from another country, same birth year [as Trump’s counsel], different birth date. So for Michael Cohen to dispute that he was in the Czech Republic completely confirms with our reporting.”
This cringe-worthy attempt to spin the story falling apart is even worse than Tapper’s original article. That another man named Michael Cohen was in Prague when Trump’s Cohen is accused of colluding with the Kremlin is totally irrelevant. The man being accused wasn’t there, so the accusation has been disproved. How in the world can the accusation being disproved confirm his reporting? Tapper reported that the two page summary (derived from the 35 page memo) claimed that Trump’s team was colluding with the Kremlin. Once the specifics of this alleged meeting were debunked, Tapper pretends this was not about Trump’s Cohen, but some other man by the same name, apparently with no relation to President-elect Trump.
*H/T Instapundit
This must be another example of all that FAKE NEWS we keep hearing so much about.
The fake news Trump report was originally created as fan fiction on 4Chan. The news media has lost all credibility.
Americans do not have “state owned” media like in Russia, China and the United Kingdom.
We have a few private corporate new organizations (CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and CNN) who dominate and then a bunch of online and youtube based independent “news sources”.
However these news corporations are all so polluted by corporate and political interests and money, the outcome is the same – corrupt, untrustworthy, state-run political armed news affiliates of the government parties.
This explains the overtly left-leaning story perspectives of NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN and the right-leaning flavor of perspectives from Fox News.
News stories now start with an opinion or conjecture, filled with anecdotes, biased opinionated “experts” with unsubstantiated claims.
Americans do not have access to genuine journalistic and investigative news sources anymoer.
Journalism is dead as a doornail.
Further, even if a new, genuine, investigative journalist organization were ever to rise up, seeking above all things the truth based on verified facts and verified sources, then it would still have to garner the interests of an American public that is currently in a vegetative state on their cell phones, so easily distracted and with such a low attention span.
With an American public already working two jobs, struggling to make ends meet, outraged at incessant political infighting, political deadlock, governmental waste, incompetence and corruption, it takes greater and greater sensationalism by news agencies to shake us up.
TheTrump “golden shower gate” story is a perfect ludicrious example of this. CNN is definitely being a political hack. Buzzfeed is a notorious SJW-leaning troupe. Both struggle mightily to attract and maintain viewers, readers and online clicks.
Our mistake is even expecting current American news sources for truth in the first place.
They have all been thoroughly and decisively discredited and unreliable.
Dominated and paid off by Washington political operatives and corporate advertisers, the traditional news corps are incapable of producing or manufacturing useful information and truth. They can only manufacturing sensationalism to garner markets for advertising.
Putin is a treacherous fuck. He must be loving this.
Americans do not have access to genuine journalistic and investigative news sources anymoer.
Journalism is dead as a doornail.
Actually, most people now get their news from the internet, through alternative news sites, bloggers, etc. Lots of disinformation for sure, but not as much when the corporate media would parrot any press releases from the govt. or the military/pharmaceutical industrial complex. Is is any wonder why CNN has lower ratings than the Gardening channel. In Canada we have govt. CBC. Typical left wing trash.
CNN published an article about what has since come to be known as peegate*.
“Peegate”?
Maybe I’m missing it; but what does the asterisk refer to? Is that a parenthetical footnoted explanation for the name? If so, where is it? Inquiring minds want to know.
Someone pointed out on twitter that the memo, while it is allegedly from an anonymous person who works in intelligence, much of it sounds like it was written by a college freshman who just took International Relations 101 and thinks they’re an expert on world affairs.
Good catch Deti. I added the missing asterisk to the HT to Instapundit at the bottom.
Tapper is basically falling back onto “Fake, but accurate”, the defense Dan Rather offered for the clumsy Texas Air National Guard forgeries he tried to peddle over 10 years ago. But it’s worse this time, it’s worse than Gerald Rivers opening up Al Capone’s safe on national TV. Because as Nystrom pointed out this almost certainly a whole-cloth trolling gambit out of a sub-Reddit. There’s no “there” at all, it’s a complete fabrication that took in a whole bunch of people because they wanted it to be true. The hallmark of really good trolling is to bait the suckers with what they really want to be true.
Journalists, government agencies, Senators; all taken in by an obvious troll from the basement-dwelling, Peter-Pan manboy, videogame obsessed losers who are all literally Hitler.
It’s really a delicious irony, and it couldn’t have happened to more deserving individuals.
The left will troll themselves into insanity with news like this (that only convinces leftists), except that cuckservatives keep getting in the way, delaying that from happening….
What happened to that arch-NeverTrumper, Micha Elyi? He was a cuckservative, and vanished since election day…
You must listen and believe… or so I’m told.
Probably pushed ‘Golden showers’ to the most searched porn entry of all time!
What happened to that arch-NeverTrumper, Micha Elyi?
Just you wait. Trump will get up on the podium on inauguration day and announce he’s giving up in favor of Hiillary. That will prove once and for all he was just a stalking horse for Clinton.
Just you wait.
I believe that the MSM has been so corrupt over the past 50 years that even if the allegations were true and Trump loved giving golden showers to pretty prossies in Russia, no one would care and would have still voted for him. Such is the bitter taste left in the mouths of the public. Special Snowflakes exempt of course, they need a good shower after all.
I want to know what happened to Michelle Fields. Hopefully getting golden showers on camera.
The media are making a big mistake. The same one they made during the campaign. They think they can win a media war with Trump. They cannot. He will reach right around them and directly at his base, and use them to do so, just like he did during the campaign. The media are doubling down on the idea that if they just show Trump acting in a way that media insiders and highly educated elites think is outrageous, they will discredit it — basically this is doubling down on what happened during the campaign. They just really still obviously don’t understand the phenomenon. It’s quite entertaining to watch them do this, really, repeatedly not understanding what they are doing. It’s like they only have one tool, so it’s what they’re going to use, regardless of whether it’s effective or not.
In other news, very serious allegations* continue to spread of a document proving that in August 2016, CNN’s Jake Tapper hit a seven-year-old girl on a public playground, causing her to cry.
*Document has not been fact-checked by Fever Swamp Media, therefore FSM is not liable for any content that may make FSM appear unprofessional or corrupt.
there is only one thing any man of integrity need recognize about the News Media:
Social Justice Warriors ALWAYS lie.
FH, the troll story was to the effect that Trump had paid prostitutes to urinate on a bed in a hotel suite that had been occupied by Obama – and the Russian internal security service FSB had wired the suite like a movie set. So they had this video to blackmail Trump with, and then there’s the whole “Groomed for 5 years by the Russians” nonsense added on top of that.
It fails on so many levels, and one of them is indeed “Yeah, so what?”. Democrats have championed the likes of Barney Frank (male prostitution ring run out of his townhouse in DC but he “didn’t know”), Anthony Weiner (allegedly sexted teenaged girls), Bill Clinton (do I have to? really?) for so long, that even if the story was true it would be far more tame than documented actions of MSM’s pet Democrats.
But again, the best part is that it’s a total fabrication. I’ll leave to the armchair psychologists why so many liberal minded people wanted to believe this of Trump – there is a concept in psych called “projection”…
@Anon Reader
As funny as it is, the 4chan troll claim seems to be unraveling. Mediaite ran an article pointing out that the memo predates the original claim, and the WSJ has named the mysterious British spy. Perhaps the ultimate irony here is that CNN ran a story that people were likely to remember as true even after it was debunked. But the content was so bad, that it seems like it had to be a troll. Instead of this sticking to Trump, it is sticking to CNN. That may be even funnier than if 4Chan had actually trolled CNN.
@Fem Hater
The memo alleges Trump paid prostitutes to “perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him”. By modern standards, this isn’t even sex, it is performance art. If it were sex, what would matter (by modern standards) was that it was consensual, and it would be considered good and proper for a president to lie about it, even under oath. And of course, had the prostitutes peed on a Bible or a cross instead of a hotel bed, CNN would lead the charge to secure federal arts funding for the performance.
But the whole thing is so absurd that whether it was 4Chan or not it sure feels like we are being trolled. The idea that Trump would pay hookers to pee in his own bed in order to somehow get back at Obama is too ridiculous to take seriously.
CNN is now reporting that they are in possession of a Boer dossier implicating a relationship between President McKinley and a Parisian courtesan specializing in the coprophagic arts.
When I was a kid I watched “Twilight Zone”. Now I live there.
At his press conference I saw that Mr Trump was happy to take a question from the BBC. He is very trusting: the BBC is the sort of organisation that were they to announce that the Queen was dead I would feel the need before assenting to the proposition to rush up to Sandringham to check her Majesty’s pulse – oh they did make that announcement only last week followed by a hasty retraction.
The great thing for me about the News being about Fake News is that as I am sceptical about all sorts of things it will no longer be possible to dismiss me as a Conspiracy Theorist for were I to be so dismissed (which happens all the time) my response now will be that it is merely Fake News – what we used to call Lies.
Entirely off this fascinating topic where I am probably that unnamed British Agent 00pus I just wanted to mention to Dalrock that I casually today picked up my copy of F, Roger Devlin’s Sexual Utopia in Power and carefully reading the Preface see that he mentions (favourably of course) this Blog along with Patriactionary. I cannot recall drawing this to the blog’s attention before now, and think it worthy of note.
Dalrock:
Thanks for the H/T to Instapundit. I followed the links. SHows me how out of pocket I’ve been.
I…. don’t know what to say, except Peegate gets more coverage than Pizzagate?
John Podesta, the goat-head-holding tattoo-adorned woman whose name escapes me, and allegations of, for lack of a better phrase, pederasty and pedophilia among high ranking Democrat politicians and operatives — this warrants less scrutiny than far fetched allegations that a presidential candidate went behind the former iron curtain to allegedly get off on watching prostitutes urinating on a hotel room bed?
I guess I haven’t seen it all.
“They think they can win a media war with Trump. They cannot. He will reach right around them and directly at his base, and use them to do so, just like he did during the campaign. The media are doubling down on the idea that if they just show Trump acting in a way that media insiders and highly educated elites think is outrageous, they will discredit it — basically this is doubling down on what happened during the campaign.”
This is more or less what Ronald Reagan did during his presidency even more so than during his campaign in ’79 and ’80: Reach around and over the media and speak directly to his base, to people who voted for him, and even people who voted against him but respected him. It’s effective, but you’ve got to have the courage of your convictions and some IDGAF to do it. Reagan had it; Trump has even more of it.
The differences are that
(1) now, with social media, the internet, and the 24 hour news cycle of all news all the time, it’s much easier to speak directly to your base.
(2) The public dialogue has coarsened considerably since the 80s, so what Trump is doing is much more in-your-face and blunt than when Reagan did it.
(3) Reagan was always firm and clear, but genteel and well mannered in execution. Trump is bombastic, blunt, and quite the asshole in going about his public appeals to “the people”. But, Trump doesn’t seem to care about how he’s perceived by people who don’t like him. Reagan did seem to care a little about his overall public perception.
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@Opus
Thanks. I think he mentioned it when he contacted me offering a copy. I bought a Kindle copy instead, and did a post on it. I have an ever growing list of books I want to read, but will need to at least check out the preface today.
Reagan was always firm and clear, but genteel and well mannered in execution. Trump is bombastic, blunt, and quite the asshole in going about his public appeals to “the people”. But, Trump doesn’t seem to care about how he’s perceived by people who don’t like him. Reagan did seem to care a little about his overall public perception.
Yep. I think that also reflects a difference between the two men: Trump is kind of an asshole, whereas Reagan really wasn’t an asshole (I mean in terms of personality). Each fit their respective eras, however, very well, I think. The media doesn’t know what to do with Trump, and it’s hilarious to watch them flounder again and again, trying to play the “gotcha” game and losing again and again and again.
“Sexual Utopia in Power” is one of the truly seminal works of the manosphere. It was written long before it was published physically, and has been circulating on the internet since the mid 2000s. It’s one of the core texts, I think, of the manosphere and a critical thing to read — you all should read it.
Dalrock
As funny as it is, the 4chan troll claim seems to be unraveling. Mediaite ran an article pointing out that the memo predates the original claim, and the WSJ has named the mysterious British spy.
There’s some dispute about the accuracy of the WSJ report; I don’t have links to hand but have run across claims that the Brit in question is not employed by Mi6, is a private contractor of some sort, and may or may not have ever actually been with Mi6.
But the whole thing is so absurd that whether it was 4Chan or not it sure feels like we are being trolled. The idea that Trump would pay hookers to pee in his own bed in order to somehow get back at Obama is too ridiculous to take seriously.
Exactly. Trump may well be the sort of man who holds a grudge and will carry out some form of revenge, but not in this form. Ask Mitt Romney what it’s like to be interviewed for SecState and then told “Thanks, but no thanks” in terms of public embarassment, just to pick one example. Like something out of The Apprentice.
All of this is cementing “Fake News” in the public mind, in a way that the media organs did not intend. I’ve had friends refer to the NY TImes as the “Carlos Slim blog”, for example. Wheels are coming off of the media bus, and Trump isn’t even sworn into office yet.
Ask Mitt Romney what it’s like to be interviewed for SecState and then told “Thanks, but no thanks” in terms of public embarassment, just to pick one example. Like something out of The Apprentice.
Oh, yes. He did up Romney, and good. It seems he knew Romney couldn’t resist the dangling carrot, and the longer the charade went on, the more you kind of knew he was being done up. I think even Romney knew, but he was too enamored with even the small chance at that level of power that he couldn’t help himself. Trump exploited that weakness mercilessly.
I wish this were fake news:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/2521273/one-of-these-woman-has-had-one-lover-one-has-had-150-but-can-you-guess-whos-who/
You may as well throw out the Book of Hosea from the Bible.
Jake Tapper once somewhat respectable he was.
Presently true this is not
I wish this were fake news:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/2521273/one-of-these-woman-has-had-one-lover-one-has-had-150-but-can-you-guess-whos-who/
You may as well throw out the Book of Hosea from the Bible.
Well, we know this anyway, don’t we? The number of women with small N counts is very small. That’s well known. There aren’t that many women with 100+, though, the paper went out of its way to find them for that story. There are lots, however, with 20-35 by the time they marry in the later 20s or around 30, and then more after they divorce. 100+ is not common, though.
I did more or less guess them correctly — I figured that the blond at the left and the one second from the right had the higher ones (although wasn’t sure on the specific order), and that the one at the extreme right probably had the lowest, followed by the heavier one. Wasn’t sure about the one in the middle, and her number was in the middle, too, so I guess my instincts were right about her as well.
Good to see Yoda again it is.
@Dalrock:
4channers did provide the Russia Sex story. It’s just more complicated. Being around in the murky areas during the last few months of the campaign, a version of this document was clearly in existence.
The Document, as we have it, is at least the 3rd revision. But the 4channers didn’t write it. That was written by the ex-MI6 functionary’s company. There was a Jeb paid-for version, which would be from last year. There’s a “sell it to Hillary” version that would have the falsified Prague story and the FSB sex tape version. The last revision was recent, but that still doesn’t explain why it wasn’t brought up to basic professional standards.
Also, we need to not let this point slip: It should have taken anyone with the slightest bit of understanding of the Russian security operations to know that the information was never leaving their lips. There was no damn way *anyone* would have had that information unless it was super-high level intercepts. And that’s *before* thinking through the logic of Trump running for President because Russia was pushing him. A sex story in Moscow was going to make Trump run for President? How freaking stupid are these people? You can’t buy Billionaires. It’s career politicians that you can easily buy.
In slightly related news, if we replaced most Senators with sheep, I think the level of question asking might improve at hearings.
As a warning, Stefan put out to the 4channers to destroy ISIS. You’ll probably see weird memes making their way in certain places. It would appear the general plan is to make every search result come up with something relating to homosexuality. Truly, I have no idea what this timeline is.
In slightly related news, if we replaced most Senators with sheep, I think the level of question asking might improve at hearings.
Ah, but the questions are not intended to get at the truth, but make political points for the tape.
@Novaseeker:
I know. Sadly, I know. Still doesn’t mean they shouldn’t mostly be replaced by sheep.
Good to see Yoda again it is.
Bummed out I have been
For cast me in the new movies they will not.
For even though green I am, white sound I do.
And of course male I would be.
An unPC mix this all is
Wonder if trans-gender I would be,
cast be they would.
Hmmmm?
Clearly this report by Jake Tapper is an intentional falsehood. I wonder if there are legal remedies that Trump could opt to pursue. Either civil in the form of a slander lawsuit, or a criminal investigation conducted by the FBI, or the Justice Department or the Secret Service. I suspect this type of falsehood carries more of an aggravating factor due to the potential seriousness of it being believed. It is past time for the media to be held to account for this type of behavior.
The “Clinton News Network” has not accepted that Trump has been elected without their help, indeed with their active campaigning against him.
Unable to control him, they are therefore attempting to destroy him, even if it means they will destroy themselves in the process.
Don’t be surprised at Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer and Megyn Kelly continuing and even intensifying their campaigns.
Alpha Bad Boy throws acid in beauty queen’s face after she dumps him: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4114994/Former-Miss-Italy-contestant-lose-sight-jilted-boyfriend-throws-acid-face-leaving-model-horrifically-scarred.html
He was from Cape Verde (Africa), so perhaps he was a recently arrived migrant.
Acid attacks seem to be a thing among Muslim migrants (though I don’t know if the above attacker was Muslim):
http://freedomdaily.com/muslim-migrant-burns-five-british-teenagers-acid-one-victim-may-permanently-blinded/
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/03/21/uk-woman-sentenced-to-12-years-in-jail-for-throwing-acid-on-friend.html
@RPL:
It’s a *big* thing in the nasty parts of Muslim countries. Pathetic gammas & omegas from higher ranking families do it to women from lower families that spurn their advances.
In some advanced study of theological & philosophical “revision to the mean” I’ve been doing, I’ve come to understand just how much of Islam really is just the religion of an utterly pathetic gamma that got demon possessed. Mohammed showed all of the hallmarks of a truly pathetic Man that happened to attain power at the cost of anything good within him. It’s what makes Muslim Men that weird combination of foppish and thuggish. They’re fundamentally cowards, but that’s a learned practice from the revision of the core principles to their logical end.
(The Christian example is feeding the poor. Christians will disagree with pretty much any other core topic, but if you’re not feeding the poor, no one thinks you’re Christian. Sadly, the other “revision” is local authorities only need to know about Christians for a week before they figure out that Crosses are how you murder them. 2000 years and some Christian will be crucified this week, somewhere in the world.)
So, yeah, the acid thing is a huge red flag for Muslim.
@Vascularity777
I don’t think CNN is exposed here. All they asserted is that sources told them that the report is considered credible enough by the security services to include in a briefing handout. Clapper’s statement in response contradicts the fundamental assertion, but CNN can still argue that secret sources told them otherwise.
“The media doesn’t know what to do with Trump, and it’s hilarious to watch them flounder again and again, trying to play the “gotcha” game and losing again and again and again.”
I think this is probably because of two things. First, because of the internet and the 24 hour news cycle, everyone can filter out “news” they dont’ want to hear and restrict their consumption of political and news information to sources they “trust”. That includes journalists. So you have conservatives watching only Fox News and visiting the conservasphere (Townhall.com, Redstate.com, HotAir.com, Ace, etc.) and “progressives” watching only MSNBC and visiting the liberalsphere (DemocraticUnderground, DailyKos, LGF, etc.) and the altright visiting their pet sites, and so on.
Which leads to my second point, which is that the media is in a bubble. Everyone has their bubbles, but the media’s is more insulated than most, I think. The media cannot understand how anyone could have possibly voted for this bombastic buffoon. They are still processing the election. The current meme on “progressive” radio is that Trump didn’t really “win” the election because Hillary got 2.5 million more votes than he did; and because of voter suppression in Detroit, Philly and Milwaukee. Trump actually “lost”, the Electoral College notwithstanding. This is all coping mechanisms, but it’s also an indicator of just how insulated and impenetrable (at least up to now) the media’s bubble is.
I think this is a big reason why they can’t handle Trump. The media wasn’t prepared for this result at all. And they have never been treated like this by an incoming administration. No president elect has ever told a reporter “you’re fake news” while refusing to take a question. No president elect has ever told a reporter, basically, to STFD and STFU in such direct, confrontational terms. Oh, Nixon passive aggressively attacked Dan Rather years ago with his “only by someone I respect” comment, or something like that. But there’s nothing passive aggressive about Trump, and that’s a big part of why they are discombobulated. Trump is coming directly at them and calling them out.
“The number of women with small N counts is very small. That’s well known. There aren’t that many women with 100+, though, the paper went out of its way to find them for that story. There are lots, however, with 20-35 by the time they marry in the later 20s or around 30, and then more after they divorce. 100+ is not common, though.”
At least in my locale, I probably wouldn’t say “lots” of women have Ns in the 20-35 range. I’d say it’s probably more like 15-25 for most of them; which is also plenty high. I’d also say that the vast majority, a good 75% of women, have Ns of 10 and up. And around here I’d guess 50 and up isn’t common, and 100+ almost unheard of except among the sluttiest sluts. I know one woman with a premarital N of 60. She’s married to a guy she met in college (!) and they’ve been married since she was 23 (and did have sex with a couple of other guys while separated from her husband for a year). Note – she says she racked up that N of 60 before reaching age 23.
constrainedlocus says:
January 12, 2017 at 12:30 pm
Americans do not have “state owned” media like in Russia, China and the United Kingdom.
—
NPR is stated owned.
@thedeti:
One thing to keep in mind, and you really only think about this point if you’ve done media work long enough, is that the Media is utterly dependent. This is why they show, in mass, the same degenerative effects as a welfare recipients. They need news or they’re all out of jobs. Or at least they can’t buy an apartment in Soho. Or they’re driving 2 hours in from upstate Baltimore because there’s nothing close to D.C. they can afford.
That’s why they have so many problems dealing with Trump. I honestly thought they might get through the whole campaign without figuring out any way, but they did around late August. But that required them to go full propaganda-mode. They had to burn any sense of credibility to do get to even that point. Against not-Hillary, that probably wouldn’t have worked. (Granted, against not-Hillary, Trump probably doesn’t run. Bill being alive meant that Trump could never be attacked on his biggest weaknesses.)
At this point, they’re in total dejection. All but Fox is collapsing on Cable. Network TV keeps going lower and revenues keep falling across the board. And Trump still has a massive hammer to lay into them that they haven’t even thought of: new Anti-Trust rules. It’s the reason the Tech companies have fallen in line so quickly. (Amazon is clearly guilty of massive anti-trust violations, for instance.) Do not be surprised if that becomes an issue either in 2018 or after the Reps have an even bigger Senate advantage. (Considering it’s generally a Leftist point about media consolidation and the base on the Right hates the media, it’s the easiest punching bag available.)
The Media was all-in against Trump for exactly this reason. They aren’t a product; they’re a conduit of the product. Trump knows and has exploited this for decades. Because how do we know that Trump has had 100s of beautiful Women? Why, because Trump told us. And how that does image of “Billionaire Playboy” help Trump? Quite well, as we’ll note. It was late in the campaign that I realized that most of that image was something Trump constructed. He’s not a paragon of sexual continence, but he’s clearly valued a lack of relational strife for decades.
You don’t end up with 4 adjusted adult children if you’re the playboy that Trump made himself out to be in his younger years. Especially when he doesn’t drink.
Yoda @ January 12, 2017 at 9:41 pm:
“Bummed out I have been
For cast me in the new movies they will not.
For even though green I am, white sound I do.”
Find a good lawyer you must. Deep pockets they have.
…
Novaseeker @ January 12, 2017 at 7:32 pm:
“I did more or less guess them correctly”
What do you look for? I would have guessed the middle one as worst on account of short hair, sunken eyes and too much makeup, followed by Miss Piggy on her left. Women mutilate themselves to avoid the lesser men, as I understand the phenomenon, so I’d think the most self-damaged are the ones who’ve swung from the most branches.
The irony is that Trump isn’t all that conservative. He’s made deals with Democrats his whole business life. He’s certainly no bigot. He’s worked with blacks and gays and Jews and Latinos, either as employees at his casinos and/or as business partners. He employs many women. He seems to regard Ivanka as his closest confidante, rather than any of his sons. He isn’t opposed to the gay agenda, and he’s probably an insincere pro-lifer.
That the Left would emit so much hysteria over Trump, imagining him as another Hitler, would seem bizarre to me. It doesn’t, only because I’m so familiar with Left hysteria.
The irony is that Trump isn’t all that conservative. He’s made deals with Democrats his whole business life. He’s certainly no bigot. He’s worked with blacks and gays and Jews and Latinos, either as employees at his casinos and/or as business partners. He employs many women. He seems to regard Ivanka as his closest confidante, rather than any of his sons. He isn’t opposed to the gay agenda, and he’s probably an insincere pro-lifer.
Trump is loathed by them because he doesn’t kow-tow to their PC bullshit. Almost all Repubs do, but he doesn’t. Why? Basically Trump says the things that pretty much any white person who grew up in Queens in that period heard at home all the time. He never “learned to stop”, because he never had to — he’s never worked for others, he’s never had to bite his tongue to avoid getting reprimanded or fired and so on. So, he says what everybody said in those days — he never stopped speaking that way, because he never had to. They loathe him for precisely that reason — because he has been “independent” in that way all of his life, they have no power over him, at all. And he even managed to do that in the political process, thumbing his nose at pretty much every convention, acting as if he didn’t need to pay attention to the rules and conventions that others did — because, well, he didn’t, in the end. This means that they are virtually powerless over him. Even the regular Repubs pay the left’s cultural values lots of lip service — Trump doesn’t pay them any. He’s independent, he will do and say what he wants, and he doesn’t care what people think. All of their tools are powerless against a person like that, which is he poses a huge problem for them — and they know that. That’s why they loathe him.
What do you look for? I would have guessed the middle one as worst on account of short hair, sunken eyes and too much makeup, followed by Miss Piggy on her left. Women mutilate themselves to avoid the lesser men, as I understand the phenomenon, so I’d think the most self-damaged are the ones who’ve swung from the most branches.
The second from the right just looked very, very blase and jaded to me. She had a very “playerish” look to her, especially in her face and her eyes. The blonde on the far left also had a very mischievous/adventurous type of look in her eyes and face. So I figured those were probably the highest ones. The heavy one could also have had a higher count, but for some reason she didn’t have the trashy look that heavier sluts tend to have — there’s heavy slutty, and then there’s just heavy, and the latter usually don’t have big Ns. The one in the middle I wasn’t sure of — so it’s kind of appropriate that she ended up in the middle, but I really didn’t know — I would have leaned toward higher rather than lower, however, due to the hair as well. The one on the far right was the easiest for me — she had a very sincere face which suggested a moderate to low N, relative to the others at least.
You don’t end up with 4 adjusted adult children if you’re the playboy that Trump made himself out to be in his younger years. Especially when he doesn’t drink.
Yes, that’s right. This is the thing that people don’t focus on. It doesn’t add up to say that Trump is crazy, isn’t playing with a full deck, is an irresponsible abusive womanizer and so on when you step back and look at his family. Some people then say “oh, that’s just because he’s rich and the kids want the money”. Really? Look at the Kardashian Jenners? Look at the Hiltons? It’s not abnormal for rich family kids to go all kinds of bonkers with money. Not Trump’s family. His family is something he has managed very, very well — which strongly suggests that he isn’t really a crazy playboy lunatic, but rather someone who is very managed in many ways and who projects the images he wants to project, very intentionally. I think it’s clear that he has a weakness for beautiful women — you’d have to be blind to think otherwise. But the degree of actual personal vice seems likely to be very small, judged again by his family life and kids. That stuff rubs off on kids very easily, especially if they have lots of money lying around. His kids, by contrast, are not like that at all.
Heck, his biggest vice is McDonald’s. If Trump is really out of touch with everyone and a complete fraud when he says he feels some solidarity with the working class, then why does he have aides bring him McDonald’s for dinner …. on his private jet?
People aren’t looking closely enough, or they are deliberately ignoring things about Trump that don’t fit their narrative of him, really.
Dalrock
CNN can still argue that secret sources told them otherwise.
Probably that whole “secret sources” thing was very impressive back in the 1970’s.
But it was “secret sources” that provided Dan Rather with clumsy, college-dorm quality forged documents in the Texas Air National Guard attack on GW Bush. It was “secret sources” that supposedly told the Clinton State department that the Libyan attack in Benghazi was due to some YouTube quality movie made by a guy in L.A. “Secret sources” also insisted that all the Arab countries were yearning to become liberal democracies. “Secret sources” have been pretty unreliable for a while, Dalrock.
For the last 20 years at least, time after time “secret sources” have turned out to be utter garbage.
Substitute “the Varsity Cheerleaders” or “The Cool KIds” or “The Mean Girls” or “Baghdad Bob” or “my Magic 8-Ball” for “secret sources” in any “news” story and see how it reads. The accuracy won’t be affected one bit either way, but your perception of accuracy might be.
thedeti @ 8:37 am:
“I think this is a big reason why they can’t handle Trump. The media wasn’t prepared for this result at all. And they have never been treated like this by an incoming administration.”
Yep, 70 years of zero opposition are coming to an end. Soon they’ll quit telling people what to think and go back to their domestic terrorism playbooks. Good morning, BLM!
…
Red Pill Latecomer @ 10:18 am:
“That the Left would emit so much hysteria over Trump, imagining him as another Hitler, would seem bizarre to me.”
It isn’t about Trump, it’s about the Oval Office. Obama had the Presidency fully weaponized to destroy & rebuild the U.S. when a not-a-team-player barged in at their moment of Crash-the-System triumph. It’s interesting that the lie they chose to tell about him, being in league with the Russians, has the side effect of justifying the war with Russia they were intending to start anyway. CNN is trying to Rebuild the Mound.
Why the hate for Russia? I’d guess it’s because Russia is a *previously* Communist nation. They’re off the plantation. Declaring martial law on America while making a nuclear object lesson of Russia is win-win, if you’d rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
So the anti-Semite (not) Trump has a lawyer named Cohen go (not) to Prague to stitch up the US elections?
This story still needs some work.
@Gunner Q:
Much of the political establishment seems to think re-running the Red Scare is a winning move. Some actually seem to still think that Russia is run by Soviets.
But the biggest reason: Saudi Arabia & Qatar have bought off much of Washington and Russia is a strategic adversary to them. Weirdly, they’re also bought of heavily by China, which explains a lot of their cognitive dissonance.
The secondary reasons as that Russia was easy (as their cyber-attack infrastructure is strong) and they’ve been eating Obama’s lunch for 8 years. Obama will go down as the 2nd worst President for Foreign Policy in American history. (People are still dying today due to Woodrow Wilson’s folly, so he’s got 1st cemented for a long, long time.) And I have no idea, at this point, whether its because of simply his own incompetence or the fact that Hillary so badly compromised all of our information systems that we’re talking Enigma/Purple-level insights. That was the true danger in the “Email Server” issue: any discussion of the damage and Hillary is looking at Treason charges.
Or, maybe, it’s just as simple as Putin is 10x the leader as anyone in the Obama administration, so they’ve projected their own sense of failure on Russia as an easy target. Putin is still an autocrat, make no mistake about that, but he’s the best Russian leader in probably 3 centuries and he’s made D.C. look like fools for a decade.
@Novaseeker:
I’m pretty attuned to the Media War, and it took me right up until the end of the campaign to actually notice it. Ivanka was a constant campaigner for Trump. You don’t have that good of relationships with your children if you’re that much of a playboy. You also don’t have a son with 5 children and a daughter with 3, all before age 35, if you’re a normal New York money man.
Though the funny bit is his two oldest sons look like they’re from New York, whereas Donald really doesn’t.
Another reason the left hates Russia is that the Russian regime is trad friendly and openly hostile to/critical of Western cultural values. Especially the sexual values. Russia is basically saying “The West is morally corrupt, look at its crazy inverted sexual mores — it has no moral authority to lead. Do the rest of you around the world really want to turn into the West?”. That’s aimed directly at the left.
“Another reason the left hates Russia is that the Russian regime is trad friendly and openly hostile to/critical of Western cultural values. Especially the sexual values. Russia is basically saying “The West is morally corrupt, look at its crazy inverted sexual mores — it has no moral authority to lead. Do the rest of you around the world really want to turn into the West?”. That’s aimed directly at the left.”
I think you’re right about this. I am just savoring the delicious irony that, if Russia were still the USSR, they’d be totally in bed with communists, socialists and leftists, because that’s what the left is. The American Left are kindred spirits with Marxists, Stalinists, communists and socialists. Hell, Russia is still pretty totalitarian. It still has the cultural aversion to risk and need for self protection that drove it into the Bolsheviks’ arms 100 years ago. Putin is essentially a dictator/strongman — an effective, popular one, but still a dictator nonetheless. Hell, he’s former KGB.
It’s so funny that the Left now demonizes Putin, when if he were Comrade Putin, if he were the General Secretary of the USSR Communist Party, and attending Politburo meetings, they’d be literally fellating him.
Another reason the left hates Russia is that the Russian regime is trad friendly and openly hostile to/critical of Western cultural values.
This is a traditional Russian position. Russian history has many cases of tug-of-war between those who want to Westernize because of the perceived benefits, and those who want Russia to go its own way. Tzar Peter built a city in a swamp to get a “window” to the west; St. Petersburg (not Leningrad anymore) has been more Western from the beginning. I won’t even go into the “Third Rome” theory, it’s out there on the web. Suffice that Russia has seen itself as a unique part of the Christian world for 300 years or so, and has been in the process of reverting to that norm since 1991.
Putin is an autocrat but he has common sense as was shown when he re-legitimized the Russian Orthodox church. Sure, it’s good statecraft in a Machiavellian sense, and it’s not new: even Stalin paused the persecution of Christians, Jews and Moslems in the summer of 1941 when national unity was needed to fight the Nazi invaders. The point is, Putin is more in the mold of any of the more competent Russian Tzars than any Bolshevik. He’s a nationalist leader who has chosen to defend a certain cultural set of norms that go back centuries, which makes him the “defender of Mother Russia”, a powerful meme even now. He’s all about protecting “his” people and of course himself, no matter what outsiders may desire or demand. Look at his behavior that way and it makes a lot of sense, however one may disagree with the means.
Ironically, if Putin wanted to deliberately provoke the modern trans-national Davos elite and all their little perpetually aggrieved SJW puppets, he would pick a course of action almost exactly the same.
Oh, this is a bit of side point, but it also explains a lot of the behind the scenes shenanigans. I fully expect the Russians were having fun hacking most of our political process, as we pretty much unleashed our banks on their currency. Putin has a long enough memory to get revenge for that stunt. We’ve just been seeing it play out. But it’s also aimed at the Globalist Elites, rather than any specific country or its normal people.
How much of a super hacker does it take to break into a Gmail account where the password is:
“password”?
That’s what Clinton campaign honcho Podesta chose for his password, and apparently he was trivially spearphished to give that away. This is not some kind of Jason Bourne movie, it’s more like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Political Machine.
Boris & Tadeuz, you mean!
Another reason the left hates Russia is that the Russian regime is trad friendly and openly hostile to/critical of Western cultural values. Especially the sexual values.
On the other hand, the Left doesn’t hate China or Saudi Arabia for doing exactly the same thing, so the real reason is probably more complicated than that. I suppose the main source of their hatred is that they assume Russia to be ripe for potential Westernization, but that tyrant Putin is standing in the way. They sort of see Russians as semi-cultured white Europeans, and think they can potentially be seduced or coerced into adopting a liberal, secular system, one that is subservient to Western hegemony. (Nobody has the same illusions about China or the Arab monarchies.) This isn’t entirely groundless, because Russia hasn’t been immune from Western cultural forces.
I guess they’re completely ignorant of that fact that the West is still in the process of fully adopting their leftist liberal dogma, whereas Russia has already been subjected to the full extent of this nonsense a long time ago, roughly between 1918 and Stalin’s Great Purge, when the remnants of the bolshevik “Old Guard” have been eliminated. Family instability, no-fault divorce, sexual liberalization, secularization, the normalization of homosexuality etc. – the Russians have seen it all already. This was obviously a memorable social trauma for them, so there’s simply no way they’ll go back to that.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1926/07/the-russian-effort-to-abolish-marriage/306295/
Which leads to my second point, which is that the media is in a bubble. Everyone has their bubbles, but the media’s is more insulated than most, I think. The media cannot understand how anyone could have possibly voted for this bombastic buffoon. They are still processing the election.
I’d say one reason for their cluelessness is that their sense of political identity is sort of schizophrenic, because it has two contradictory tenets. On one hand, they see themselves as an outnumbered, intellectually superior political vanguard, an underdog battling the mighty dark forces of reaction, racism, religious fanaticism etc. On the other hand, they see themselves as those on the right side of history, those who will inexorably triumph, whose enemies are growing weaker everyday and will rightfully perish. To maintain their beliefs, they have to believe that they are both strong and weak, both the underdog and the hegemon. This is a recipe for madness, but they nevertheless cling to it, and the only way to cling to it is to block reality out, either fully or partially.
As funny as it is, the 4chan troll claim seems to be unraveling. Mediaite ran an article pointing out that the memo predates the original claim, and the WSJ has named the mysterious British spy.
I didn’t bother to follow this whole Pissgate thing, but I suppose a plausible explanation is that someone, or a group, also active on 4chan, came up with this fake persona of a former British spy, faked a memo back in the summer of 2016, and kept leaking updated versions of it.
@hollenhund:
4chan trolls came up with the Russia Sex story and a few others. It got worked into an outside “intelligence” group’s work product. The argument that “4chan didn’t write it!” was brought up to deflect from no one on 4chan ever claiming they wrote the report. They produced much more convincing documents than that worthless pile of “research”.
@RedPill Latecomer
HH “On the other hand, the Left doesn’t hate China or Saudi Arabia for doing exactly the same thing, so the real reason is probably more complicated than that.”
The left didn’t really seem to have animosity toward Russia until quite recently. Remember the Romney/Obama debates about the “cold war calling” and “wanting its foreign policy back”, and all that. This was just six or so short years ago:
“To maintain their beliefs, they have to believe that they are both strong and weak, both the underdog and the hegemon. This is a recipe for madness, but they nevertheless cling to it, and the only way to cling to it is to block reality out, either fully or partially.”
Well, yes. But….Consider in their long march the progressives have targeted the CIA, FBI, NSA, Homeland, and State Department. Those agencies, in great part due to enforced “progressive” hiring policies, are now heavily staffed with progressives. There’s certainly a “strength” there even as the underling ideologically blind masses are dispensable (and largely unarmed…but I repeat myself).
From the Mediaite article:
But the notion that 4chan was the source for the memo or any of the information in it is more than just baseless– it’s easily disproved.
The supposed “proof” for the 4chan genesis theory was a November 1 post on 4chan’s /pol/ board in which an anonymous user claimed he gave Republican “Never Trump” operative Rick Wilson a fake story about Trump and Russian spies.
That’s certainly vague to begin with, but note the date: November 1. Mother Jones was reporting on the memo as early as October 30. In a tweet, MJ’s David Corn confirmed that the memo published by Buzzfeed was the same one he received… before the supposed trolling.
Did this journo consider the possibility that this 4chan user “leaked” this fake memo sometime in the summer, and then revealed this on /pol/ only on Nov 1?
Russia must be an interesting place to live right now.
When you implement your 2016 budget assuming a $50/barrel price for oil against the market reality of $30/barrel, well, you’re gonna have a bad time.
That’s before we even get to Russia’s $13 billion dollar trade deficit with the US (2016), and a worthless currency that no sane person wants to hold. Oil and gas prices are not going to recover, and if Trump and his cohorts in the US get their way on offshore oil exploration and production over the next 2 years (it’s increasingly likely they will), then prices will fall even further and damage the Russian economy.
Russia has immense natural resources, and no environmental protection laws of merit to stop their extraction. But it does little good when you must operate a nation-wide economic infrastructure that resembles the United States….from 1963. Putin has given the double-birds to political and structural economic reforms that would help Russia improve efficiencies and compete.
I’m in the camp that says the US should be greater friends with Russia, trade with Russia, continue science and exploration and exchange with them, push for political and economic reforms, and ask for their help in fighting Islamic terrorism. There is no one else even close, aside from the tiny Israelis, who have the caliber of military and intelligence capabilities and geographic advantage to fight the war effectively. A decisive alliance between US and Russian military and intelligence forces would be devastating to ISIS and any attempted future derivatives thereof.
For Russia and the US the currently reality is this: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
constrainedlocus,
Not only do the Russians lack environmental laws, but they essentially ignore the “laws of war” that most civilized nations observe. One of the reasons they get things done despite their large but (with few exceptions) pathetic military is that they don’t shy away from cracking heads the way we do.
@hollenhund:
Earliest direct comment on it is from October, and they chatter was about trolling Rick Wilson. Granted, the word from the guy that created it is that he made up what looked like fake FBI documents and sent it around. It’s actually possible someone he thought hadn’t responded ended up sending it around. I’d have to track down the infographic (so much stuff flies past now), but I’m pretty sure the first reference to the guy saying Wilson took it was October 26th. But this was done early in the year, actually.
Also, the story had a clear shot at Wilson (or his son, not sure on that) writing something about a piss fetish some years ago. It was found when Wilson insulted the 4channers on one of the cable channels.
But I do very specifically remember the chatter that they had trolled Wilson with fake intel from one of the many banned Twitter accounts. (People forget about the mass bannings that happened during the election.) Some separate 4channers managed send the Clinton staff on a wild goose chase about a tape of Trump making racist statements. Apparently it got the Oppo Research staff running in circles for a couple of weeks. Though the ability to prove that is impossible now. (The election of a Troll’s dream scenario, really.)
Last point: FBIanon was legit. Or someone really well connected.
Russia has simply shifted back to a pre-Soviet era “Great Powers” approach. They are our strategic adversaries, but that doesn’t mean we need open conflict. Neither side will ever, nor should, trust each other. But there’s a big difference between pushing for WW3 and having “decent” relations with them.
Hilariously, at the start of the Obama administration, they attempted to get really cozy. They found out the hard way that Putin wasn’t playing that game. W got taken by Putin for a few years because he thought they could work together. (Putin’s a former KGB operative. Guy is slick as ice.) Progressives just lack the capacity to understand there’s a place between open warfare and sharing a cup of sugar.
@Damn Crackers
They say, do they not, that one should double (or even treble) a woman’s N-count and halve or third a man’s to come to the correct figure. I do not necessarily believe that the women pictured (who surely in any case come from central casting – at least their frocks, which I am sure I have seen featured previously in the Daily Mail, do) had the number of sexual partners that they claim to have had for I do not believe that a woman with a high N-count is likely to have kept tabs and those with a small N-count will go out of their way to make the most of their alleged chasteness. Britain is you must know a world leader in sluts many of whom effortlessly have passed the Olympic qualifying standard in their chosen event – I’d guess many have N’s greatly in excess of 100. Certainly, with men, those who claim high N’s are usually in reality in single digits: real players never talk about these things nor do they read the gurus of Game.
One of the subtler give-aways in the article is the location of the women: we begin with Laura from Uxbridge who claims just one; I used to date a woman from Uxbridge (which is west London) who claimed just three. Alesha (isn’t that a porn star name?) comes from Stockwell which is the Detroit of London so predictably a high figure of 150; Anne Marie who is thirty-seven and divorced for five years claims twenty-five since then and is thus what she looks like: a MILF cum-dump. She lives in the County of Berkshire and is thus presumably middle class and in reduced circumstances following her Divorce; Hattie has the thousand cock stare and so her 100+ is not surprising especially as she works in Marketing (herself?) and Watford where she lives is fairly middle class; and finally Kyesha (another porn name?) comes from North West London and is vague about location but if it was up-market she would have said and thus she isn’t and is surely lieing when she claims just three especially as she has that cheeky ‘I’m-not-telling-the-truth’ grin’ and wears the most revealing costume out of the five contestants.
No woman in the history of the world has ever been proud of her N-number but at the same time does not wish to be thought a prude or even worse, frigid. I once received a phone call from a woman who had been escorted wined-and-dined and on numerous occasions by an acquaintance, she, screaming down the phone at me that she was NOT frigid. This woman by-the-way was that rarity a solid 9 and certainly did not put it about because she did not need to and had no intention of giving it up for my acquaintance whom she had assigned to the friend zone – my suggestion ()of her inability) which had got back to her somehow having been made for the purpose of soothing his bruised ego. A very bad and sad case of one-itis – never did anything for me – she, the solid 9, being a pain in the posterior.
Reblogged this on Afro Futurism.
There is one error in Sexual Utopia in Power. I had hoped that when being reprinted in book form it would have been silently corrected, but it is still there. It occurs in the last complete paragraph on Page 16. The fourth sentence reads “So women experience fewer, shorter and worse marriages and ‘relationships’ with men.” Fewer and shorter and worse are all in the same direction and thus it is easy to see how the mistake occurred but what Devlin surely meant to write was ” So women experience more, shorter and worse marriages…&c”.
I have corrected my copy, but can one so easily deal with Kindle?
Hahaha!
