Trump requires NDAs, Obama didn't

Omarosa: You want me to what?

Donald Trump has required non-disclosure agreements from all of his staff, as revealed recently by former Trump campaign and White House aide Omarosa Manigault, and confirmed by Kellyanne Conway. Barack Obama did not require these same kinds of NDAs because his Associate White House Counsel Ian Bassin did not consider it within their capability to require NDAs of their employees. Just another illegal move by the master, T-rump. Re. all this, the media is asking...

"Why should we trust anything you say, when you are legally bound to say good things?"

The non-disclosure seems to center around the recent exposure of trump using the "N" word and MSNBC’s Katy Tur's recent question, above, to Trump 2020 spokesperson, Marc Lotter, who replied...

if he ever felt he was in a position that compromised his integrity, “then I wouldn’t work for that candidate any longer, and that’s just not something I’ve come across.”

Tur pressed further what if he was "appalled" at something and re-asked her question...answer: “if there was something that wrote to a criminal level,” his NDA wouldn’t prevent him from communicating with “the proper authorities.” One major publication reported...

that copies of Trump NDAs that have either been given or described to its reporters “lay out breathtakingly broad prohibitions on behavior and appear to be drawn heavily from similar contracts used in the past by the Trump Organization, the president’s family firm.”

Additionally...

signers promised not to ‘demean or disparage publicly’ Trump, his company or any member of his family — and also not to assist any other politician exploring a federal or state office and barred signers from sharing any information they had learned in the building,  

It would appear to almost any literate person--this of course doesn't include Trump supporters--that Donald Trump has an awful lot to hide. 

Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker a model of Karl Rove scare tactics

GOP portrayal of Democrats

You can trace Karl Rove's back-hand connivances to the George W. Bush administration with every known use of lies and dirty tricks known to the political world. He was still doing it in the 2016 New Hampshire race threatening Senate candidate Kelly Ayotte's opposition. She lost. Wisconsin's Republican Gov, Scott Walker is basically mirroring Rove in his current campaign saying things like...

“Those other things — health care, education — none of that matters unless you’re safe.” then he adds, if Democrats win, you and your family are in danger. Democrats want to let violent criminals back onto the street.

One reporter commented...

"If you were to distill the prevailing Republican campaign message for the 2018 midterm elections to one image, it would be this: a hooded figure in the shadows, machete (or knife or bladed fingers) in hand, waiting to pounce if the wrong candidate wins.

Life is a horror movie and it’s Democrats behind the hockey mask. Vote Republican."

The mostly white and uneducated supporters of Donald Trump eat this shit up with words like “Kill, Rape, Control” and absorb it like the gospel. The Republican no holds barred campaign has even added...

"Kathy Griffin holding the decapitated head of a mock Donald Trump doll, limousines burning in the street. Snoop Dogg literally shoots a Trump impersonator at the end."

Sure looks like to me the GOP is running scared. 

GUN CONTROL: Political gamble Dems must take

Students like these started it all

A confused and uninformed public has welcomed gun rights political candidates for years, but after the recent wave of shootings, has apparently at least somewhat come to their senses. Let's see now, they muse, which is best, the right of a gun nut to carry his weapons anywhere he or she wishes, or the right of innocent individuals, especially children, to live? Even the lowest double-digit IQ should have chosen the latter, but National Rifle Assn. head Wayne LaPierre has drummed the rights of these ringed-nose followers and the sacredness of the 2nd Amendment into the public for years now.

The new trend becomes obvious with the rash of mass shootings, including the killing of 17 students and staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida six months ago. Here's an example of one candidate's message, Philip Levine, in Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial primary...

“I’m running for governor because I’m a parent who will not stop at anything until we make our gun laws stronger and our children safe.”

To illustrate the difference in attitudes, the number of political candidate ads for gun control has risen from only 559 in 2014 to 18,416 in 2018, a phenomenal jump that would indicate that these contenders are no longer running scared of the NRA. In the races covered there were 57,500 anti-gun-control spots so far, mostly by Republicans. In the Senate, Democrats are picking the gun rights candidates to oppose, although that branch still leans toward gun control opposition. Two-thirds of the American public now wants stronger gun control, and with a Democratic Congress, who knows.

QAnon's strange beginnings

Ever heard of the 4chan site? I hadn't either until I also heard of QAnon, which came up in some research I was doing on Alex Jones. It is described as being "one of the most extreme message boards on the internet," and after viewing it, I would agree, but also adding, downright weird. You can post messages to its board. and people reply like any other social media site, except half of what I read I don't understand but then, I didn't really spend the time. It all started with a small-time YouTube video creator and two moderators of the 4chan website who...

"banded together and plucked out of obscurity an anonymous and cryptic post from the many conspiracy theories that populated the website's [4chan] message board."

They ended up with...

"a Reddit community, a business and an entire mythology based off the 4chan posts of 'Q,' the pseudonym of a person claiming to be a high-ranking military officer."

Some think the mysterious three are doing it just for money, but others believe they are really "Q." Here is another viewpoint...

"QAnon is a convoluted conspiracy theory with no apparent foundation in reality. The heart of it asserts that for the last year the anonymous “Q” has taken to the fringe internet message boards of 4chan and 8chan to leak intelligence about Trump’s top-secret war with a cabal of criminals run by politicians like Hillary Clinton and the Hollywood elite. There is no evidence for these claims."

Read the rest of the NBC coverage here. It looks like one more of those conspiracy theories that you must decide, do I just dump it or take it for what it's worth and make it what I want to? This one does look like it could have longevity. 

Even more on QAnon and 4chan tomorrow

Tomorrow I will share some research I've done on the 4chan site which is responsible for promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey snubs gun control again

Doug Ducey, Governor of Arizona, isn't the brightest politician in the pack, and he has been considered a worse governor than Jan Brewer, if that's possible, but he made a recent move that may just cost him even more votes in November, based on recent progressive moves in Arizona. The liberals are waking up here, tired of living under the conservative mantle of a bunch of gun nuts who love their firearms more than they do the lives of their children. My gut would tell me these are the same people who drown their kids daily in backyard pools.

Ducey was invited to debate gun violence and school safety at a town hall invitation from March for Our Lives Arizona. All other gubernatorial candidates will be there. Jordan Harb, March for Our Lives Arizona director said...

"Ken Bennett [GOP candidate] clearly does not agree with anything we propose, yet he is still willing to have this conversation with our community. I think, ultimately, this shows how much of a coward Doug Ducey is."

Well, we knew how dumb our governor was, now we confirmed that he is a coward. Not sure if this is the way Harb meant it, but Ducey's cowardice stems from his connection to the National Rifle Assn. who heartily endorsed him in his 2014 run for the office. The Arizona gun nuts took it from there and helped put him in the Gov's seat. The question is, as November draws closer, and the NRA slides further into oblivion when it comes to their power, will Ducey, plus the rest of the gun nut candidates across the U.S., abandon the group for greener pastures, which really aren't there.

Is the Conspiracy theory QAnon's explosion on Internet out of control?

This question of 'who is Q" cannot be answered until we know what QAnon is, and so far that is a mystery that only Q knows. As one reporter commented, since it, “first crawled out of the Internet’s churning goo, the theory has metastasised.” In its gooey slime, it has added Donald Trump to the conundrum. Q followers, who call themselves bakers, follow a path of conspiracy theories called "breadcrumbs," basically believing "the US government has been secretly investigating Democrats and the Justice Department will soon reveal compromising information about Hillary Clinton."

The above, alone, would surely seem to associate QAnon with Donald Trump and his attacks on the Democratic establishment. The whole thing got its start on "the 4chan internet forum titled “Calm Before the Storm.” The page link here has a video of a follower that amassed a lot of information if you are willing to spend an hour with it. The narrator emphasizes that QAnon is neither religious nor political and has its followers such as Rosanne Barr and Curt Schilling. At Trump's Florida rally, signs read  “We are Q,” another “WHERE WE GO ONE WE GO ALL.”

Sarah Sanders commented...

“The president condemns and denounces any group that would incite violence against another individual and certainly doesn't support groups that would promote that type of behavior.”

It's hard to tell if she knows something we don't or this is just another of her air-head statements.

In Arizona, the home of conspiracy theories, Q falsely claimed an abandoned homeless encampment in Tucson was a child sex trafficking camp even after local authorities investigated and found no evidence to support the claim. Another incident, unexplained, in June, an armed Q follower blocked an entrance to the Hoover Dam with his vehicle. But this statement from a NY Times reporter tops them all, commenting on conspiracy theories that are usually about evil cabals manipulating world events...

QAnon, by contrast, “is a conspiracy theory in which the good guys - in this case, Trump and his allies - are in charge."

 Michelle Goldberg should just go back under her rock.

There will be more on QAnon.