Congressional Democrats Connected Michael Flynn to Mike Pence -- in November 2016

This is an interesting thing I just found. I shows good forethought on the part of Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. They sent a letter about Michael Flynn and Russian money to the White House, but not to President Trump. They went it to Vice President Pence. That put the onus on V.P. Pence to inform others in the White House that Michael Flynn should not be made National Security Adviser.

Read the article!

Odds And Ends About Trump - Russia And Its Effects

There is a lot of information on the PalmerReport.com Politics webpage.


One story from that relates to Steve Bannon (of the Trump campaign) and the Brexit movement in the U.K. and Cambridge Analytica which was involved in both.

Update on the DNC Hacking!

In my previous attempt to piece things together I had taken things said by specific people who are, or may be, involved, and put them together, and then I accepted one premise made by the American Intelligence Community, that the Russians had hacked the DNC and given information to WikiLeaks. That challenged some of the content of the first post and gives anyone investigating this stuff a place to ask questions.

What am I writing in this post:

I'm going to use some information Louise Mensch had collected and written as an article to name the hackers and the connection to WikiLeaks and to the Trump campaign. This all depends upon information the Intelligence Community has found and announced, but has not made public. Ms. Mensch is a former Conservative member of Parliament in the U.K. and she writes at patribotics by Louise Mensch. The particular article which I want to use as reference is Putin's Hacker, Wikileaks Host Pyotr Chayanov, Hacked America's Vote System And the DNC | patribotics.

From the Hackers to WikiLeaks to Putin:

First, the hacker(s) was(were) Guccifer 2.0, a group working for a Russian company named Hostkey which is owned by a hacker named Pyotr Chayanov.

Second, it's not clear how the next association occurred, but Chayanov may have offered the hacked DNC data to WikiLeaks in exchange for a more substantial relationship with WikiLeaks. Shortly before the DNC data was published by WikiLeaks, they contracted with Chayanov's company (Hostkey) to host WikiLeaks. That's right, they are financially connected at the hip. Even worse, Chayanov's Hostkey was given access to WikiLeaks SSL keys (security information in network communications), which gave Hostkey access to technical network information about individuals who had read the WikiLeaks webpages or who had contributed to WikiLeaks.

Third, Hostkey and Chayanov are in the pocket of Vladimir Putin (as are most things in Russia).

Conclusion:

So, that means we have Chayanov's people hacking the DNC and working with WikiLeaks to publish the information of their choosing and gaining network information about WikiLeaks readers and contributors and presumably handing any of this to Putin which he might demand.

Connection: Putin, Alpha Bank, SCL, Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon, and the Trump Campaign:

First, Ms. Mensch's article claims, without named sources, that this hacked data was also sent to Strategic Communication Laboratories Group (SCL) and its subsidiary Cambridge Analytica.

Wikipedia tells us about Cambridge Analytica: Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a privately held company that combines data mining and data analysis with strategic communication for the electoral process. It was created in 2013 as an offshoot of its British parent company SCL Group to participate in American politics. In 2014, CA was involved in 44 U.S. political races. The company is heavily funded by the family of Robert Mercer, an American hedge-fund billionaire. The firm maintains offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., and London. In 2015 it became known as the data analysis company working initially for Ted Cruz's presidential campaign. In 2016, after Cruz's campaign had faltered, Cambridge Analytica started to work for Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The company also worked on behalf of the pro-Brexit campaign in 2016. The role and impact of the company's data analysis on those campaigns has been disputed. Cambridge Analytica is owned by SCL and SCL is heavily funded by the family of Robert Mercer.

Robert Mercer is a Libertarian who prefers little or no government and funded the campaign behind Citizens United, to remove limitations on campaign contributions of various kinds and to slander Hillary Clinton.

Second, Steve Bannon, one of Donald Trump's political advisers works/worked with Cambridge Analytica.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cambridge-analytica-steve-bannon-robert-rebekah-mercer-donald-trump-conflicts-of-interest-white-a7435536.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/business/dealbook/how-some-top-trump-aides-made-their-fortunes.html

Third, in 2015 and 2016 many states voter rolls were hacked and it has been assumed that was done by Russian hackers.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/russian-hackers-targeted-half-states-voter-registration-systems/story?id=42435822

It has been argued that the Russians combined this information with the DNC voter information at Cambridge Analytica and the IP addresses from WikiLeaks to create their micro-targeting campaign.

Fourth, Ms. Mensch theorizes that the Russian Alfa Bank owns the SCL Group through subsidiaries. Following linkages to determine the truth of this is beyond me.

Conclusion, if true:

It would mean Vladimir Putin controls Alpha Bank which owns SCL (with investors such as Robert Mercer) and they directed Cambridge Analytica (with assistance from Steve Bannon) to find ways to micro-target a political campaign at individuals, using their IP addresses gleaned from WikiLeaks, in critical places such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Only a handful of districts had to vote for Trump for the entire election to turn in his favor.

Icing on the Cake May Be Too Much:

Ms. Mensch completes the picture by arguing that Alpha bank could transfer this information to a computer server owned by the Trump Organization. I don't know why that would be necessary if Steve Bannon could have hand-carried the information to the Trump computers, but it is still feasible since the Trump Organization server WAS communicating with Alpha bank!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/09/politics/fbi-investigation-continues-into-odd-computer-link-between-russian-bank-and-trump-organization/

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/3/20/1645280/-Alpha-Bank-Putin-Trump-and-Betsy-DeVos-Why-the-bizarre-Russian-Trump-computer-connections

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/323303-fbi-still-investigating-computer-link-between-trump-organization-russian

Some of the information here is documented and known. Some is not. That gives investigators more precise areas to search.

Some Speculation on the Russia - WikiLeaks "connection"

The last two posts have been about public statements by people involved in the DNC hacks/leaking and disbursements of information and questions which remain to be be investigated.


One Link: Russia to WikiLeaks

In this post I merely want to look at one specific link and what it may mean. I was listening to CIA Director Pompeo (a Harvard-educated lawyer, formerly House Representative from Kansas) being interviewed today (on C-SPAN) and he specifically said that the Intelligence Community (IC) had declared in January that Russian intelligence (FSB or GRU) had passed information gained by hacking the DNC to WikiLeaks which published it and hinted of it to Roger Stone.

That is in contradiction to what Julian Assange of WikiLeaks has said, that Russia never gave them anything and their source was a DNC leaker.

It also contradicts what Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, has said about getting the information from someone (a leaker who had legal access to the information, not a hacker) at the DNC. It also implies that if Murray did not get information from a leaker, that Roger Stone could not have gotten it that way either.


What Might Have Happened

Instead, it would mean that after the Russians gave Wikileaks/Assange the information which they gained illegally, that Craig Murray (or someone) disseminated foreknowledge of its publication to Roger Stone, and that it was a lie that it had come from a DNC leaker rather than from a Russian hacker. Whether it was presented to Stone as from a leaker or a hacker is hard to determine.

I don't know if Stone would have cared about the source, so long as the information he received was accurate enough to burnish his reputation and help the Trump campaign and the Republican party. Stone is a highly partisan person (in his own words).


Other Ramifications

It would also mean Craig Murray could no longer be trusted in any national security capacity for the U.S. or the U.K. He has sometime in the past lost the U.K. government trust and his ambassadorship, so that may not change anything.

It would also mean that if there was a DNC leaker, that they may have given information to the FBI, but not to Murray, WikiLeaks, or anyone else. The mere existence of a leaker however, would have had to come to the attention of someone at WikiLeaks, so they could use them in their story to Stone (or other persons). How that may have happened is hard to say. It seems improbable.

If there never was a DNC leaker, then it means Putin and/or Julian Assange wanted the Democrats to to distrust one another.

It would mean Putin had a direct hand in the effort to use WikiLeaks as a way to distribute information meant to damage the Clinton campaign and/or to help the Trump campaign.

It might mean Roger Stone was not disturbed to use information gathered by Russians to help his cause.


What Really Happened

A more likely description of events is that there never was a DNC leaker, that all the information came via the Russian hackers, that the FBI came to know of the hacking because the IC knew about Russian activities going back to late 2015 or early 2016. It was the FBI which told the DNC they had been hacked.


If this is true, it simplifies the picture substantially: one source of information -- the DNC, one hacker -- Russia's GRU or FSB, one distributor -- WikiLeaks.com, and individual(s) who received a heads-up about upcoming leaks -- Roger Stone being the one we know.

That's a much more straight-line arrangement and as easy to believe, if not easier. It does leave our any reasoning for why Seth Rich was killed. Maybe he was just mugged badly. Maybe someone wanted to stop him from leaking. Maybe we will never know.


A Simpler Picture of What Happened

Here is how I envision the information flow:

DNC --> Russian hackers --> WikiLeaks/WikiLeaks.com --> hints to Roger Stone

To get to this isn't very hard. It is very simple and only the idea/lie that Craig Murray (or the 'journalist' Roger Stone indicated) got the information directly from a DNC leaker has to be shown to be incorrect. Can that be done?

More on the DNC and GMail Hack/Leaks

I'd like to update the last article with a correction, observation, speculation, and important questions.

Correction:

Rudy Giuliani is supposed to have received his information from retired (or possibly active) FBI agents who were working on the Hillary Clinton e-mail case. So, the information source was distinctly different from Roger Stone's.

Observations:

If the DNC leaker wanted the information to get out they could have specifically tried to give it to the FBI, Guccifer, and WikiLeaks.

The speculation or allegation that Seth Rich was going to meet with the FBI to deliver the leaked DNC information when he was killed may hold water if that information had made its way to the FBI case on Clinton e-mails, and therefore to the same FBI agents who were helping Rudy Giuliani. If that was the DNC leaker's intent it was fulfilled, though Giuliani apparently only got hints about the information.

For their party, both Giuliani and Stone appear to simply have been devout Republicans trying to gather whatever information on the Clinton campaign they could lay their hands to, in hopes it would help the Trump campaign to win. There's certainly nothing wrong with that motive, though the idea of getting information from the FBI is unethical and probably criminal.

Speculation:

I don't know why, but from the time I first heard of Guccifer 2.0 I felt it wasn't normal, that this might not be Russian at all. Then when Guccifer 2.0 had discussed things via Twitter with Roger Stone, I felt more certain it was more of a flypaper trap set by the U.S. government to try to discover which Americans were trying to secret out information to the Russians by simply setting up Guccifer 2.0, announcing it was the Russian hacker, and then waiting for someone to contact them.

So, if Roger Stone discussed something more than the publicly known Twitter stuff, the gov't would know what he had in mind. As I said above, I suspect he was just in the market to buy information.

Important Questions:

So, who was Guccifer? The first Guccifer was probably the GRU unit which hacked the DNC on its own. I have seen discussion that they also hacked the Podesta emails, but I'm not sure that is true. That needs clarification.

Did Russia really feed any information to WikiLeaks?
Was Guccifer really Russian government activity?
Who was the DNC leaker?
Was Seth Rich killed to "plug the leak"? Who did that?
Were there really other intermediaries who remain unknown?
Who at the FBI may have hinted at information for Rudy Giuliani?
Who on the WikiLeaks side gave or sold information to Roger Stone?

Did Guccifer hack the Podesta emails?

Was Guccifer 2.0 GRU or an impostor?

And, on the Russia and Trump Collusion path I haven't discussed, did Russia hack state voter registration databases and feed the information to the Trump campaign?

And, on the other Russian tactics, were they really feeding information to RT to get it to Breitbart.com and then FOX News and on to Donald Trump himself?

What is the full story on Russian trolls (humans on the net)?

What is the full story on Russian bots (computer program based identities on the net) and their use to influence people?

Surprisingly little of this relates directly to Donald Trump or his campaign, but a lot of it is Russian activities to disrupt and discredit our Democracy.

The 2016 DNC and GMail Hacking/Leaking Scandal

For the purpose of this look at the "Russian Scandal", I'm going to make an assumption. It is that everyone, who has spoken on the matter thusfar, is simply telling the truth about their role and their actions in the scandal.


The Sources and Collectors of Information

From the information I could glean from the Internet's public sources in a few hours, I could see there were two primary collectors of information: Russia, Vladimir Putin, and WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. On the other side of the "equation" there were the sources of information: the Democratic National Committee computers (DNC) and the GMail.com email account of John Podesta (Hillary Clinton's primary campaign advisor). There were obviously others who learned of the information later, but without control of the entire content, these people were always limited to what the primary collectors wished to distribute. And, lest it be forgot, the original ex-filtrators could also have been selective to serve their own purposes. That is important because selective 'leaking' is important for shaping an image of the whole.


The Information Conveyors

Who were the inside ex-filtrators who had "legal access" to the information, as former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan and recent supporter of WikiLeaks, Craig Murray has said? He has also said the ex-filtrators of information from GMail and from the DNC are different people!

It should not be too difficult to have master lists of those who had "legal access" to these information sources. The lists may be large, but they would have to be finite.

Craig Murray has also said that he received the information from intermediaries, rather than the initial ex-filtrator. How does he know this? How does he know the information was not hacked from the DNC or GMail by the one person with whom he spoke?

Murray also said, or implied, that the death of DNC computer and information system specialist, Seth Rich, may have been done by someone who thought Rich was leaking DNC information and wanted to stop that. He hasn't said that it is clear how anyone would know about this activity, but he clearly said the motive might be to prevent damage to the Clinton campaign because so much money had been invested in its success.

It has also been said that Rich was (perhaps) on his way to the FBI for a meeting to reveal misdeeds of the Clinton campaign on the night he was murdered (at 4am on the streets of Washington, D.C.). Is it possible Rich wanted to disseminate the information to not only WikiLeaks, but the FBI? What is the evidence of that?

If it was true Rich was headed to the FBI, then there is possibly someone at the FBI who had knowledge of that and was waiting to meet him. That list may be long, but it too cannot be infinite. It is also possible there was no specific person Rich intended to meet or that this speculation was incorrect and Rich was on his way home. As he was shot and killed he was on the cell phone with his girlfriend. She should be able to clarify to some extent what he had planned to do that night.

If Rich was NOT the originating ex-filtrator, then it must have been someone within the DNC who trusted him. That list must be somewhat shorter than those who had "legal access" to DNC data.

The person who gave Craig Murray GMail information may not be known, but that too would be someone trusted by the original ex-filtrator who had "legal access" to the GMail information and that list is not infinite.


Guccifer 2.0

Possibly parallel to Murray's conveying of information to WikiLeaks is the story about Guccifer. Guccifer is a "handle" the intelligence community (IC) believes is used by individuals of the Russian military intelligence unit (the GRU). The only individual one-on-one conversation with that identity I have seen was with the long-time friend of Donald Trump and long-time political operative Roger Stone. But, that was after WikiLeaks had released information Guccifer claims to have hacked and their Twitter conversation didn't seem to indicate any other involvement of Stone. The IC which investigated the hacking of the DNC, claims there is sufficient evidence in that to point to Russian government hackers. Some other people claim it is not sufficient, and that other intelligence organizations could have done the hacking and left that trail of false evidence.

However, it is clear that after Guccifer 2.0 announced they had done the hacking (6/15/16) and published some of the DNC documents, Seth Rich was killed (7/10/16) and WikiLeaks published 19,000 DNC emails (7/22/16). Did Guccifer 2.0 pass the information to WikiLeaks? Julian Assange said the Russians are NOT sources for the information WikiLeaks has published. Continuing my blind belief they are telling the truth, I can only say that if the information Guccifer published does not overlap with what WikiLeaks published, it may be quite easy to believe WikiLeaks was simply getting information from their source at the DNC (via Craig Murray and other intermediaries). That means that probably Guccifer did hack the DNC and did publish some documents, but that what they did with the other documents isn't known. If they were a GRU outfit, they passed them on through the Russian government for whatever purposes Vladimir Putin had in mind.

Perhaps incidental and not very importantly, Roger Stone had his contact with Guccifer 2.0 and claims to have had "communications" with Julian Assange via a Libertarian-leaning journalist who frequently traveled between America and the U.K. He won't reveal that person because Stone doesn't want to lose them as an information source. Was that "journalist" Craig Murray? Could there have been someone else Murray informed about the information he was conveying to WikiLeaks? The list of journalists living in America, but frequently traveling to the U.K. during the time period in question should not be very long.


Who Else Was Told?

This raises a question of whether someone who knew of the leaking of information to WikiLeaks was also selling information and/or a description of the contents of that information to Stone or others without telling Julian Assange. It may help us to also understand how former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was informed about information to be released which would hurt the Clinton campaign. Whether he received knowledge of the leaks from Murray, a journalist, Stone, or someone else Stone told, isn't known. But, the list of these Republicans who were close to both the Trump campaign and Stone or to Murray would be a relatively short list. It has to also be noted that Stone was in the past a business partner of Paul Manafort who for a few months was the Trump campaign manager. It is hard to imagine that Stone would know something useful to that campaign and would not have told (perhaps sold) that knowledge to Paul Manafort and the campaign. It fits with the history of Stone's career that he traffics in information and so-called "dirty tricks" to assist Republican campaigns (going back all the way to Richard Nixon's presidential campaigns).


Other Sides of this Story

How did the Russians use the information they got from the DNC hack?

Which American state voter databases were hacked (perhaps by Russians) and how was the information used?

Did the Trump campaign (run by Paul Manafort or others) with some aid from Cambridge Analytics have access to the voter database information and use it to target voters in key states?

This is not a simple two-dimensional scandal!

What is America?

This is a question we sometimes ask and political groups give their own answers. Today the Democrats and Republicans not only have different answers, but their answers are in conflict. This is not because they/we are stupid or evil, but because of the natural instincts of two of the most fundamental things in our society. It may even be human nature and therefore common in all places of the world. It is causing us severe problems and many who are watching closely are afraid of what may result if this dynamic does not change.

I'll give two examples from our history: at the nation's founding and at the time of the Civil War.

When this nation was founded and the Constitution was written (admittedly not on the same day) there were two groups of people who were in conflict about whether the Constitution should be explicit about certain Rights. Some wanted the Constitution to be simple and complete without being very explicit. They felt that to be explicit might turn those Rights which were not mentioned into second-class Rights or leave them ignored altogether. Others worried the Constitution didn't make explicit enough and that it was only by adding some specificity and we could depend upon the Supreme Court to protect anything as a Right. Those prefering explicit rights won that fight and got the Bill of Rights, the first ten (10) amendments.

It could be said, on the one hand, that Article five (5) of the Constitution enabling the amending of our Constitutional law, allowed those who favor explicit law and adding things to have an edge in the 'fight' between those who preferred no change and those who preferred more and more explicit language. But, on the other hand, it can be said those who favor simplicity and an unchanging Constitutional document have succeeded because the ability to change the Constitution by amendment has tended to become more and more difficult as our society has accepted the existing amendments and has not changed so radically as to require more (in their opinion).

At the time before the Civil War, America was growing and spreading across the continent. Some political leaders felt it was time to put a halt to slavery before it was allowed to also spread across the continent. The issue had not been resolved at the time of the Constitutional Convention to the satisfaction of either the southern slave holders or the northerners who favored abolition. This was one of the key issues which resulted in the conflict.

As so often happens in the world, there are conflicts which involve long-held beliefs and territorial or financial interests and they cannot easily be resolved by peaceful dispute resolution. As a people we have become better at this and our attempt to assist the world with the creation of the United Nations still stands as a great, if somewhat muted, achievement. Unfortunately there are still wars and other kinds of violence when resolution is not successful. The (seemingly perpetual) Palestinian-Israeli conflict is one of those.

Today it would seem the differences are not so large, but I fear something has recently (during the last fifty years) changed in the makeup of the Republican Party constituency and this has exacerbated the problem. From the time of Franklin Roosevelt until Lyndon Johnson the Democratic Party was in the ascendancy and the Republicans could only field presidents like Dwight Eisenhower (who was so centrist that both major political parties wanted him to run on their ticket), and Richard Nixon (who was personally quite Conservative, but as president was quite pragmatic). After Johnson and during the Nixon administration there began the "Southern Strategy" which was to reform the voting bases of the two parties as Conservative southerners moved from the Democratic to the Republican Party. At the end of the administration of Jimmy Carter many Jews (who felt betrayed by Carter's efforts in the Middle East) also shifted toward the Republican Party and this gave the Republicans a strong majority in the nation. Their next president, Ronald Reagan, won his first term narrowly, but won a huge landslide victory for his second term. The Republicans were jubilant and felt they would win forever with that voter base. They also courted the religious Conservatives and their leaders who wanted to counter the religious voters who had supported Pres. Carter. Success breeds success and where they had the support of the super rich before, it became much stronger thereafter. But, the Democrats began to win with presidents who knew how to campaign and govern well. Also, the nation's demographics were changing, pulling the voter base advantage out from under the Republicans. Slowly but surely the blacks, latinos, asians, the young, and even the American Jews began to vote more for Democrats. Successful presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama encouraged them and the balance between the parties was reestablished.

But, the Right felt they were losing!

The reason is that the (seemingly) inexorable piling up of Law had not changed. Their primary goal of retaining the America they knew and accepted had not been achieved.

The first thing they did was move the party Rightward and to demand more of their politicians or the politicians would risk "being primaried" (challenged in the next primary election by another Republican who was even more aligned with the radical voters). As they moved to the Right they were also expected to fulfill much more of the agenda and for many that was difficult or impossible. It seems that this "taking back of America" is far from the mainstream and is simply difficult to achieve.

Then the rich radical Conservatives began founding organizations such as think tanks and Political Action Committees and even Conservative legal organizations like the Federalist Society.

I don't know whose idea prevailed, but along the way I believe the radical Conservatives decided that they would not be entirely able to roll back Law using only the Legislative and Executive branches. It may have been after they supported Republican presidents George H. W. Bush and his son George W. Bush who didn't satisfy their goals. They began to formulate plans to "pack the Court" and use Justices of the Supreme Court to overturn laws they disapproved.

One of their key ideas was to prevent Democratic presidents from sitting in office (so they impeached and tried to remove Bill Clinton) and they began during the Obama administration to simply not confirm nominees to the Court (the federal court judgeships). The most recent power play in this plan was to deny Pres. Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland a hearing and vote and to delay confirming an appointee until they could get a nominee from a Republican president. They even went so far as to say that it wouldn't matter if, after Obama, another Democratic president were elected. They simply would not confirm a Liberal nominee. It is unclear at this time how many times in a row they felt they could do this, but I suspect they had some number or percentage of the bench they wished to seat before they would be satisfied. The number of silent filibusters of Obama nominees had never been seen before in the history of this nation. The refusal to hear or vote on the nomination of a Supreme Court nominee had never before occurred in America's long history.

Today with a Republican president they looked at a list of candidates selected by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, two Conservative organizations, and picked one who is smart, experienced, Conservative, and able to keep his mouth shut (as judge Roberts had done before). The only question remaining about this nominee is whether they will crush a filibuster with a rules change to end the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees. It would fit this plan I am suggesting.

What will all this mean for America? Whose lives will be harmed? Surely in this plan, there is nobody who will truly benefit except the rich. Even the social Conservatives do not seek gain, only a more comfortable mind, knowing the America they think they prefer is at hand. But, even they will suffer from the rollback of many of these laws they say they oppose. It has been suggested the last forty (40) years of law is oppressive or undesirable to them.

Suppose the voter base continues to change and the Democrats regain the upper hand and win Congress and the White House. What kind of war would ensue if all their laws are simply overturned by the Supreme Court? How long would such a situation exist, considering the longevity of the federal Appeals Court judges who could continue to rule in favor of corporations and give them the economic advantages which would inspire the rich to continue to fund Republican candidacies? What would this do to America?

You may ask, why did the Republican politicians NOT fulfill the wishes of their radical Conservative voters and funders when they clearly had the upper hand? Why were the radicals NOT satisfied? I believe the politicians used the radicals for their votes and the rich for their money, but otherwise didn't want to do the radical things which they knew would hurt America. Only when some of their voter base and their funding had begun to disappear, did they choose to change their policies and tactics. I mentioned above that the nation's demographics were changing and the Republican campaign operatives could see that and begin to devise another approach. And, only when the religous Right ceased their full support with funding, did they have to seek out more less religious billionaires (such as Sheldon Adelson and [I speculate] perhaps Vladimir Putin and the other Russian oligarchs). Those rich supporters weren't necessarily supporters of the radical Conservative political agenda. But, there were some radical Conservative billionaires: the Mercers, the DeVos's and likely others I don't know. The presence of the party's policies tells me they have backers demanding it.

What I find hard to reconcile is how any policies Russian president Putin might desire could sit well with the radical Conservatives or the religious Right or even the traditional Republicans. It's a bad fit and it can't last long. Of course, it is also dangerous to America, so it can't be allowed to continue now that it is known. The Republicans, if they were receiving financial support from Putin, will be more than ever in a frenzied search for other funding which they cannot get from American billionaires, corporations, or ordinary citizens. The Religious Right isn't especially interested in the radical Conservative "taking back America" agenda, but if the Republicans aggressively try to impose the Religious Right agenda, America will have the worst of all worlds (short of war). A radical Conservative "taking back America" agenda to roll back law and the Religious Right agenda to inflict their bad policies on Americans who do not want them.

America may be in for some very hard times.

Ghost in the Shell Review

I have just seen Ghost in the Shell with Scarlett Johansson in 3D and this is my review.

It was terrific. It was the first 3D movie I had ever seen and it was a good one to start. The story was terrific. The cityscape images were very much in the tradition of the anime. The characters were true to form and personality. The story was as good as any of the others I've seen. They did us all a service by not using too many 'spider tanks'. In the anime movies those were annoying and to my mind out of place. I liked the special effects related to Major's (Johansson's character) cyborgness. It was a very well made movie and I enjoyed everything except having to wear the 3D glasses over my regular eyeglasses.

If I have a complaint it is a personal one: the script hacked up the English language the way everyone does today, so I hope that is a misrepresentation of what the future holds for us. I doubt this is something 999 out of 1000 viewers would notice or care to report.

I recommend the movie for anyone who likes sci-fi and intellectual or action movies (there was plenty of both). For fans of the anime Ghost in the Shell this is not a let-down in any way.

April Fool's Day OR not?

Today, for another 18 minutes is April Fool's Day. I hate practical jokes, but take a look at this article and see if you can decide whether the speaker who is quoted is pulling your leg or entirely serious.

The Wagner Minimum

Enjoy!