John McCain . Last Great American Republican .

I have to admire Sen . John McCain's 30 years
of audacity .

Of ALL the Republicans Sen. John McCain was a man of principle . An old guard Republican not like the spineless Republicans we have now . His legacy is perhaps a complicated one, given the span of his life: he was a former Navy pilot, (#)>>Vietnam prisoner of war, and Republican presidential nominee, and spent 30 years as a United States senator. What made McCain stand out , apart from his fellow Republicans a video of his time on the campaign trail in 2008 resurfaced. In it (1.1)>>he defended Barack Obama, his rival for the presidency, in the face of constituents spouting racist conspiracies about the then-senator from Illinois.“I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not, um, he’s an Arab,” a woman said to McCain at a town hall meeting in Lakeville, Minnesota in October 2008.McCain grabbed the microphone from her, cutting her off. “No, ma’m,” he said. “He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that just I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what the campaign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].” If you contrasted the rest of the Republican party that was slowly being eaten up by the Tea Party movement , finally influenced by the Birth-er Movement that was initially started by President Trump . (1.2)>>Sen John McCain was not your average Republican , he stood up against his own party recently . McCain made a name for himself with a new generation of Americans by casting the deciding vote against a cruel and ill-conceived plan to strip tens of millions of Americans of their health coverage. He said at the time that the hasty, partisan process showed his beloved Senate had lost its way. In his last book, he made clear that under President Donald Trump, America, too, has lost its way. 
What I found Objectionable about Sen. McCain.

While Sen. McCain takes a Visit
in Syria , here he has a
photo Op with members
of ISIL (ISIS) . or
a group of Syrian rebels
Who were our allies trying
topple the
Assad regime .

No question McCain was a war hero , he was a not your average Republican . However Sen. McCain had a dark side that can't be best not forgotten. After September 11th  2001 , Sen McCain was was an unlikely leader of the (2)>>Senate’s pro-war caucus. He suffered in the Vietnam War, which was both mistakenly and incompetently waged. He presciently opposed President Ronald Reagan’s disastrous intervention in the Lebanese civil war, was sometimes skeptical of U.S. involvement in the Balkans, criticized turning Somalia into an exercise in nation building, and denounced the Clinton administration’s plans to invade Haiti. These positions suggested a focus on both America’s interests and its capabilities. However, in his last few decades in the Senate, he turned into one of its most ferocious advocates of military intervention, almost irrespective of circumstance. Afghanistan and Iraq Obviously every US senator (besides California’s Barbara Lee) voted to give president George W. Bush the power to invade Afghanistan following the events of September 11th. However, McCain wasn’t happy with just moving to invade Afghanistan. No, he had other targets on his mind as early as the day after the towers fell. Despite McCain’s claim in 2014 that “the Iraq war probably wouldn’t have happened” if he had won the 2000 Republican primary and then general election, this assertion seems ridiculous. On September 12th 2001, McCain appeared on MSNBC presenting a long list of countries he felt were providing a “safe harbor” to groups like al Qaeda. This list of course included Iraq and several other countries that appear later on this list .Since the dawn of the 21st century, Senator McCain has been among the most hawkish Republican political figures. That became evident in 2002 when McCain proposed that the United States openly threaten to use military force unless Pyongyang capitulates on the nuclear issue. “After first responding appropriately to North Korean violations of the [1994] agreement and refusing even to discuss with North Korea its extortion demands." Sen . John McCain was a "man of war" obviously , while he will be remembered for other things he did that were more outspoke against his own political Party the Republicans .
Further thoughts on Sen John McCain.
 We should be however be thankful that Sen. Obama defeated him to that political point in 2008.  While Sen. John McCain was not your average Republican . Perhaps his choice for a VP is best demonstrated in Sarah Palin. Here McCain drifted away from the all male inclusive club of Republicans . I honestly thought it was a sort of gimmick to get the women to vote for him . While Palin was the wrong woman , she was a great embarrassment for him  . But Palin personified a dangerous new strain. She (infamously) didn’t read much; put forth few policy positions beyond “drill, baby drill”; excelled at whipping up crowds into a frothing frenzy; and attacked Barack Obama in brazen, personal terms. Stylistically, she seemed to be almost completely at odds with McCain, a deeply conservative traditionalist who prefers military wars to cultural ones. The GOP love for Palin showed up on FOX NEWS nightly. There was no end about the Hockey moms , the sexist Piggy with the lipstick . Its hard to fathom John McCain as President , but I honestly caution that if Obama lost , we would be at war right [ really at war not joking ] now in the Middle-East .  In foreign policy, McCain would probably keep active US involvement in the Middle East, which of course will cost billions. The more democratic of the Arab Spring governments/uprisings would probably get much more American help, while the military regimes get support of they can keep the terrorists at bay. McCain also would probably strengthen ties to NATO and Taiwan. He [ McCain] would have probably had a melt down over Russian and China .  In Washington, he spent 35 years making policy. And in New Hampshire, he redefined how politicians ran for president, ensuring that more citizens got direct access to the next leader of the free world. Sen. Obama's 2008 win of the Presidency changed the course of our history . We should be glad how providence looks after the Nation . While John McCain lost . That defeat made him a much better man .

NOTES AND COMMENTS:
(#)>>Vietnam prisoner of war. During the Vietnam War, McCain was held prisoner at the Hoa Lo Prison, which literally translates to "hell hole." The facility was better known as the Hanoi Hotel or the Hanoi Hilton as an ironic reference to the horrors that really occurred there. What the Arizona Senator went through in the service of his country is no secret. John McCain’s time as a POW is well-documented, thanks to accounts from McCain himself along with fellow captives.The inhumane treatment of POWs at the Hoa Lo Prison in Vietnam included solitary confinement, starvation, and outright torture in an effort to “break” prisoners. Many captives, including McCain, reached their personal breaking points, and beyond. As his captors tore at his clothes in the wake of the crash, McCain recalls realizing the extent of his injuries. When he noticed the injuries to his right leg –- which he says had fractured at the knee –- one of his captors slammed a rifle butt into his right shoulder, shattering it, the account said. He was then bayoneted in the abdomen and foot.Over the next few days, he “lapsed from conscious to unconsciousness” while the North Vietnamese interrogated him, he said. “I refused to give them anything except my name, rank, serial number and date of birth,” McCain said in the U.S. News report. “I was in such a bad shape that when they hit me it would knock me unconscious,” he said. (1)>>Sen John McCain was not your average Republican. John McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” barreled down what has become the road not taken for the Republican Party.McCain’s dramatic Senate floor thumbs-down repudiation of the Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare turned less on his antipathy to Trump and more on his disgust with a broken party-line legislative process. McCain’s 2000 bid for the GOP presidential nomination is best remembered for his irreverence in the hours he spent happily jousting with reporters on the bus while his campaign strategists abandoned any hope of controlling, much less directing, his message.After losing a long-shot attempt to defeat George W Bush for the Republican nomination in 2000, Mr McCain returned to his service in the Senate, where he became a vocal critic of the way in which Mr Bush conducted the Iraq War, and, at the same time, a staunch supporter of continued American operations in the Middle East.  (2)>>Senate’s pro-war caucus. Here are 11 countries that McCain wanted to destroy for his bosses. He recklessly promoted Georgia against Russia in those two countries’ short-lived war, advocated striking North Korea militarily, and sang about bombing Iran in a little ditty set to the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann.” He proposed creating a no-fly zone in Sudan and intervening in Nigeria against the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram. Last year, he urged the Trump administration to “choose the Kurds” over Iran and Iraq, since for decades the United States “has protected them from attacks, both from within and outside Iraq.” Ukraine was a disappointment, causing him to lament: “I do not see a military option, and that is tragic.”

The Mystery of Maria Butina .

The Mystery of Maria Butina .

Maria Butina ,  a gun toting Russian NRA
member .
Mueller's scapegoat .

If you ever read James Bond novel  , or seen any of the Bond films  the notion of a beautiful Russian spy is stranger than fiction . The Muller investigation produced one indictment- arrest  of a Russian dual citizen ship woman named (1)>>Maria Butina. Sitting in an orange jumpsuit in a Washington courtroom, Maria Butina was either an agent of the Russian government, as federal prosecutors allege, or a just an international graduate student targeted for her nationality, as her defense contends. While DOJ announced indictments against 13 Russian nationals as part of special counsel . Only one Russian is behind bars . I suspect that she is a hostage to a political game .  Both Butina and another Russian named  (1.2)>>Veselnitskaya a Lawyer   made the List of possible "contacts" with the Trump associates ,  Veselnitskaya alleged that Donald Trump Jr. offered to push for changes to the law in exchange for damaging material on Clinton. Which I don't believe existed , its possible that the Russians were blackmailing Trump into thinking that they had damaging material on Clinton, BUT in fact have damaging material on Trump.   This arrest came as a coincidence to the  same day as  President Trump  meets with the Russia President ie Summit in Helsinki... some people try to cast a shadow over the summit... and very likely more to come... Now its "alleged" Butina’s conduct seems to have involved (2)>>socializing and attending US political events, which may not seem all that strange . In a supporting document, FBI Special Agent Kevin Helson said in a sworn statement that one of the goals Butina was attempting to accomplish was to "exploit personal connections with US person having influence in American politics in an effort to advance the interests of the Russian Federation." It notes that one of her contacts was with an "organization promoting gun rights."  But we’ve gotten hints that there’s much .  Not repeating the word "alleged "the government alleged for the first time that Butina used sex — (3)>>she dated and lived with a much older Republican political consultant, and purportedly offered another person “sex in exchange for a position with a special interest organization.” It seems a bit far fetched , but there is a lot of questions about Butina's association with  the (4)>>NRA , the Republicans . Now it gets a bit like a mystery .That’s where Republican operative and lobbyist Paul Erickson — who appears to be Butina’s most important American contact — enters the picture. Erickson has a colorful history. He’s worked for legendary conservative activist Richard Viguerie, for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign, for Lorena Bobbitt’s husband/victim, and for dictatorial Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko. More recently, he’s been on the board of the American Conservative Union, and he has close ties to the NRA’s leadership, having helped fundraise for the gun rights group. A Forbes columnist has called him “a sort of ‘secret master of the political universe’ known almost exclusively to the (4.2)>>cognoscenti.”Erickson attended the 2013 trip to Russia, and reportedly met Butina there. At some point, the two became very close. Eventually, they dated and lived together, and by 2015, they were close enough for Butina to email Erickson her proposed plan to influence American politics.

NRA Russia Money ?
If the N.R.A. as an organization turns out to be compromised, it would shake conservative politics to its foundation. And this is no longer a far-fetched possibility.  McClatchy reported that special counsel Robert Mueller was investigating whether the National Rifle Association was a conduit for money from Russia to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. In a follow-up report on Monday, the outlet indicated that a clearer (5)>>picture was emerging of possible connections.The NRA spent $30 million dollars on Trump’s campaign in 2016 and another $40 million in various efforts to lobby and help elect Republicans. Much of this spending was dark money, making it difficult to trace the source and how it was spent.The connections between Butina and the NRA are no secret — indeed, she’s been known and lauded in conservative activist circles for years. Back in 2014, TownHall’s Katie Pavlich profiled her as “the woman working with the NRA and fighting for gun rights in Russia.” The meetings between Butina and the Obama-era officials were documented by the Center for the National Interest in a report seen by Reuters, which outlined its Russia-related activites between 2013 and 2015. It describes the meetings as helping bring together “leading figures from the financial institutions of the United States and Russia.”During just the 2016 election cycle, the NRA spent $54 million in the presidential and congressional races, nearly $20 million of which went to attacking Democrat Hillary Clinton and more than $11 million to support Republican Donald Trump. In 2008 and 2012, the group had spent $18 million opposing Democrat Barack Obama and $10 million supporting Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney.  (6)>>The NRA has donated a paltry $3,533,294 to all current members of Congress since 1998, according to The Washington Post  . Question since Russian money did get funneled into the NRA , how much of that went into the coffers of the  (7)>>American Republican Party ? 

 Final Additional Thoughts on Maria Butina .

Poster for Maria . Speaking  on the
"right to bear arms"
@ the University of South Dakota
USA 2015 .

My Final thoughts in regard to Butina . Butina was detained in the US in July, she faces up to 15 years in prison. She is accused of conspiracy to work as an agent of a foreign government without registration with the US Justice Department, and also in fact by a foreign agent. Butina said in court that she was not guilty. The judge ruled to arrest the Russian woman. The next meeting on her case is scheduled for 10 September. Until August 17, Butina was kept in Washington's prison, and then she was transferred to the prison of Alexandria (near the capital).In general, to read about the conditions under which Maria is kept is even strange, the term is that she was easily a scape goatee because "evidence" that she was a agent "working" on behalf of a foreign  government ( Russia) ,while her actions are "suspicious. As we know that  Mueller investigation is turing up less evidence of Russian collusion , but has its hands full turning up  more corruption within the FBI and Trump's former attorney Cohen's big payoff of Stormy Daniels  seems to have deviated the entire investigation.  Maria Butina could possibly be a victim of Russo phobia .

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

 (1)>>Maria Butina. Maria (sometimes spelled “Mariia”) Butina, who’s said she’s originally from Siberia. She says she moved to Moscow around 2010 in hopes of starting a furniture business, and then an advertising agency. The exact sequence of events is unclear, but at some point soon afterward, two things happened: She founded a Russian gun rights group called Right to Bear Arms, and she started working for Alexander Torshin as his special assistant. (It’s unclear whether the group was a front all along.)Citing a shared interest in gun rights, Torshin and Butina were introduced to top NRA officials, began regularly attending the NRA’s conventions in the United States, and became “life members” of the group. They also began to reciprocate with their own invitations to NRA bigwigs to visit Moscow for Right to Bear Arms events — the first of which, it seems, took place in November 2013 and featured a “concealed carry fashion show.” That’s where Republican operative and lobbyist Paul Erickson — who appears to be Butina’s most important American contact — enters the picture. (He is reportedly “US Person 1” in government charging documents.)  (1.2)>>Veselnitskaya. Lets explain ...There is every reason to believe that Butina is in prison because a lawyer by the name of Veselnitskaya is at large. These two Russians are not connected by their Russian origin or their suspicious (and suspiciously successful) activities in America. They are connected because of the inexplicable desire of the Obama administration to see both of them on American soil...It looks as though both Veselnitskaya and Butina worked not for Russian intelligence, but rather for American intelligence, which, under Obama's leadership, organized full-scale surveillance of his political opposition during the 2016 election campaign.Of course, they were kept in the dark. Veselnitskaya and Butina had no idea what kind of work they were doing on behalf of the Obama administration. Their potential handlers in Moscow also suspected nothing. As a result, Obama's FBI used Veselnitskaya and Butina to the greatest extent possible. By the way, it should be noted here that U.S. intelligence services, which for many decades lagged behind their British, Russian, and Israeli counterparts, still managed to learn a lot. They advanced in both professionalism and corruption.After the 2016 elections, political power in America had changed, and Trump's FBI arrested Butina. However, embarrassingly for the FBI, Veselnitskaya managed to leave the U.S. in time.The game in which these two Russians were involved is much more serious than the Magnitsky Act (Veselnitskaya's primary activity) or the right to bear arms in Russia (Butina's primary business). We are talking about Obama's widespread usage of the state intelligence apparatus to spy on political opponents. This scandal – Obamagate – is thousands of times bigger than Watergate.    (2)>>socializing and attending US political events. Her crime? Conspiring "to have a 'friendship dinner' at Bistro Bis with a group of Americans and Russians to discuss foreign relations between the two countries." They are charging her with violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act. statement from the DOJ reads. "This Russian official was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control in April 2018." It adds that the 29-year-old "undertook her activities without officially disclosing the fact that she was acting as an agent of Russian government" and that the international relations student tried to build relationships with people in the Washington, DC, area while working at the behest of a former Russian lawmaker who went on to become a central bank official.(3)>>she dated and lived with a much older Republican political consultant. The meetings, disclosed by several people familiar with the sessions and a report prepared by a Washington think tank that arranged them, involved Stanley Fischer, then Federal Reserve vice chairman, and Nathan Sheets, then Treasury undersecretary for international affairs.  Fischer, and Israeli-American economist, served as governor of the Bank of Israel from 2005 – 2013 before President Obama nominated him to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in January, 2014. In April, 2015, Fischer and Sheets met with Butina and Alexander Torshin – then the Russian Central Bank deputy governor, where they participated in separate meetings with Fischer and Sheets to discuss US-Russian economic relations during President Obama’s administration. (4)>>NRA , the Republicans . The love affair between the NRA and the Republican Party is perfectly understandable. As the "republican base" of angry white lower middle class men gradually ages and dies out, the Party is desperate to hold onto as many reliable voters as they can. It seems Republicans have been coalescing in greater numbers around the NRA ever since -- though particularly in the Obama years -- partly driven by our country's increased political polarization.   As you can see from the chart above, Democrats disagree with Republicans on the NRA wholeheartedly. And they are moving in the other direction.That partisan split could provide a hint as to why Republicans are so united today behind the NRA. Some of America's biggest social-issue shifts have been driven by motives other than ideology; young people regardless of party have buoyed America's increasing tolerance of same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization, for example.Gun rights, by contrast, have magnetized Americans toward the political poles. So Republicans might be naturally lining up with the more conservative factions in their party on everything from gun rights to immigration(4.2)>>cognoscenti.. persons who have superior knowledge and understanding of a particular field, especially in the fine arts, literature, and world of fashion.Italian, Latinized variant of conoscente (present participle of conoscere to know)  (5)>>picture was emerging of possible connections. The National Rifle Association has accepted contributions from about 23 Russians, or Americans living in Russia, since 2015, the gun rights group acknowledged to Congress.The NRA said in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., unveiled on Wednesday, that the sum it received from those people was just over $2,500 and most of that was "routine payments" for membership dues or magazine subscriptions.About $525 of that figure was from "two individuals who made contributions to the NRA." Here are the  U.S. senators and House members who have benefited the most from the NRA’s ad buys, according to (see Federal Election Commission )  records.  (6)>>The NRA has donated.  Database in a way to make it easy for readers to search for how much their representative or senator received from the NRA. That means the database won’t allow searches for NRA donations to previous members of Congress who were serving for a portion of that almost 20-year period. If you include these members, the amount of contributions increases substantially.     See:     [https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=d000000082 ]     (7)>>American Republican Party ?     A  number of top Republican leaders. Buried in the campaign finance reports available to the public are some troubling connections between a group of wealthy donors with ties to Russia and their political contributions to President Donald Trump . While "alleged" I use here cautionary, Russian money made it right into the GOP coffers , perhaps influenced the GOPs nomination of Donald Trump over the other Republican candidates . Amid a raft of congressional and law enforcement probes into Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential election, it’s still unclear whether members of Trump’s campaign actively colluded with Moscow. Forty-eight percent of Republicans, meanwhile,think Don Jr. was right to take the meeting. During the campaign, as operatives linked to Russian intelligence dumped hacked emails onto the internet, few Republicans stood on principle, like Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and condemned their provenance. “I will not discuss any issue that has become public solely on the basis of WikiLeaks,” Rubio said at the time. And he issued a stark warning to members of his party who were looking to take advantage of Clinton’s misfortune: “Today it is the Democrats. Tomorrow it could be us.”

Omarosa “Unhinged".

Omarosa  “Unhinged".

On Aug. 14, Gallery Books is releasing “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House” by Omarosa Manigault Newman.  Another tell all book  about how bad the Trump administration is . We have read Comey , we have read Wolff , and now Newman .  Its a real circus for gossipers.  While the book is already being touted as a juicy tell-all of Manigault-Newman’s brief tenure working with the Trump administration, (1)>>the bombshell recording is said to be extremely revealing.While WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange dumped thousands of pages of documents for the public to make sense of, Manigault Newman — who in an MSNBC interview on Tuesday called herself a whistleblower — is dribbling out bits and pieces in building her case against Trump, cherry-picking the evidence to bolster her own argument and not delivering a full picture. She reiterated that she had witnessed "corruption" during her time in the White House, but when asked for the specifics of what she saw, she replied that "there are things I'm going to save to share when the time is right."  Rumors of a tape of Trump saying the n-word have existed for years, but were recently reignited,  then the host of The Apprentice, was caught on a mic using the epithet “multiple times.” Earlier this week, CBS News also obtained a recording from Manigault-Newman in which several Trump campaign staffers can be heard discussing the potential fallout of such a tape, although they stop short of actually confirming that one exists.  Trump himself issued a fiery statement upon the book's release Tuesday morning, calling his former adviser and "The Apprentice" star "a crazed, crying lowlife" and a "dog." "When you give a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I guess it just didn’t work out. Good work by General Kelly for quickly firing that dog!" he wrote on Twitter.   Even more so Omarosa's tell all sounds more like a tabloid with some of the most outrageous stuff ever leaked out of the Trump White House. Here are the main takeaways from Omarosa – who, despite her villainous reputation from NBC’s "The Apprentice," where she first met Trump in 2003, portrays herself as a voice of reason and sanity in chaotic Trumpworld: She now believes the president to whom she was loyal for 14 years is “a racist, a bigot and a misogynist.” His biggest personality flaw is a complete lack of empathy for others, she writes. She believes the president is in “mental decline” and physically unwell. (2)>>She believes Vice President Mike Pence (a “Stepford Vee”) and his team “are simply biding their time until Trump is impeached or resigns.”  She believes a deeply unhappy first lady Melania Trump “is counting every minute until (her husband) is out of office and she can divorce him.” It gets crazier , now there are videos A source “with direct knowledge of the records” told the AP that (3)>>Newman also has a “stash of video, emails, text messages and other documentation” that support the many eye-opening claims she makes in the book. Later Thursday, a lawyer for the Trump campaign sent a letter to Simon and Schuster, the publisher of Manigault Newman's book, alleging she was in violation of an agreement she had signed with the Trump campaign and saying that the publisher and others would face claims should it proceed with selling the book. Simon and Schuster responded by saying it was proceeding and was acting "well within its rights." After all, if it’s strictly Manigault-Newman herself claiming to be a witness, and there was no one else to corroborate it, then it’s strictly a he-said-she-said and there’s no way to know for sure.But often people who tell tall tales can’t resist the temptation to make them taller, and that’s where they tend to get in trouble.    In a PBS interview earlier in the week, Manigault Newman had said, “I have a significant amount, in fact, a treasure trove, of multimedia backup for everything that’s not only in “Unhinged,” but everything that I assert about Donald Trump.” UNLESS we hear and see the tapes these are just allegations . Bringing down Donald Trump is going to take a lot more than writing a book , going on TV and making money as much as it is a publicity stunt for the marketing of books with alleged accusations . Like the Comey tell all book for example , that book while it focused on Trump , it really was a public image disaster for the FBI . The FBI's own credibility too took a dive in another direction in  the Mueller investigation . So with this new book with all the shocking details that Manigault Newman "claims" she still has to present the burden of proof using a proper legal channel and not the American tabloid media..


NOTES AND COMMENTS:

(1)>>the bombshell recording .Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," which aired a tape the former star of "The Apprentice" recorded in the Situation Room of White House chief of staff John Kelly talking to her about "leaving" her role in the Trump administration. The tape has raised concerns that Manigault Newman breached national security protocol by taking a recording device into what is supposed to be among the most secure parts of the presidential complex.(2)>>She believes Vice President Mike Pence (a “Stepford Veep”) Staging a political coup is vary easy , VP Mike Pence is waiting for the opportunity to fill in Trump's shoes as soon as Trump gets into serious trouble [ see my past post on Mike Pence https://theun-politics.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-curious-silence-of-mike-pence.html ] Vice President Mike Pence is one of the most odd ball figures in ever so dwindling Trump administration cabinet .  Pence is often seen in the background silent and mysterious part of Trump's administration . AS I wrote about my suspicions are that Mike Pence is really the Power behind Trump's oxymoron lack of political experience , perhaps his peer coach to "act like a President" . While Trump's Apprentice style White House antics are wild , gives the Media & Press its food , makes Trump a complete embarrassment to Mike Pence who is straight faced. (3)>>Newman also has a “stash of video, emails, text messages and other documentation”Shortly after the election, actor Tom Arnold claimed to have some sort of compromising footage of Trump in his possession, but that footage was never released. Arnold is currently promoting Viceland’s The Hunt for the Trump Tapes, a TV series premiering in September.attention to the alleged Trump n-word tape earlier in August, when the Guardian reported that the ex-White House aide’s new book referred to the president as a “racist” who used the term repeatedly.

They Day they Banned Alex Jones " AGAIN!"

Alex Jones may have crossed
the line of speech regarding
Sandy Hook . But Censorship
is at work attacking Jones Again!

(1)>>Alex Jones may have put his foot into his mouth this time . While I admire his voice on giving an alternative theory to news , information , subsequent speculation .    Honestly I think Jones blew it on this one , while paying lip service to the most extreme gun buffs [NRA] he pounced out that the Sandy Hook mass shooting was a false flag , with crisis actors . When I heard that I was vary upset on what he said. I thought "really" , with all this gun madness that engulfs the nation a hoax? It made no sense why he said that, since the mass shootings in America do involve the fact that there is a serious issue with guns .  Jones proliferated the theory that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, which left 20 children and six adults dead, never happened and that child actors played the roles of the school-aged victims. In November, he clarified his stance, stating, “I don’t know what the truth is. All I know is that the official story of Sandy Hook has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.” Here Jones is playing a bit of a jerk, he wasn't in court this past  Wednesday as his attorneys argued that the "Infowars" host who has called the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a hoax didn't defame one victim's parents who say they've been tormented by his followers and forced to move seven times.The hearing included more than a half-hour of an Infowars episode played for a Texas judge, who at one point told onlookers to remain silent after some gasped when a lawyer for the parents said Infowars showed maps to the home of Veronique De La Rosa and Leonard Pozner.Jones’ legal arguments remain embroiled in the nuances of free speech: Specifically, what kind of platform constitutes a serious media institution, and what kind of actions signify a public figure. While it’s hard to sympathize with a man who spent years haranguing the parents of a murdered first grader, in a time when the modes and impacts of speech are being redesigned and renegotiated with every software update and platform policy, these are pressing questions. 
Is it CENSORSHIP? 

 Facebook and (2)>>YouTube shut down accounts Monday run by radio host Alex Jones, saying his charged rhetoric violated their policies and were detracting from their efforts to spawn a civil conversation. Alex Jones has been doing the same thing every day for well over a decade, but Facebook, YouTube, and Apple all decide within hours that he suddenly violates their (2.2)>>"community guidelines." ????  Mr. Jones is just one Facebook user out of 2.2 billion, but he had become symbolic of tech platforms’ inconsistency and reluctance to engage in a misinformation war The (2.3) >>pressure on Facebook to do something about him had intensified after executives gave a series of vague and confusing answers to lawmakers and reporters about the company’s policies. Misinformation was allowed to stay on the platform, they said, but hate speech wasn’t. So users dug up and reported old Infowars posts, asking for their removal on the grounds that they glorified violence and contained dehumanizing language against Muslims, immigrants, and trans gender people. This bring up the  question of free speech and just why the First Amendment is under attack , while I don't care hear any "dehumanizing language" against anyone , there is a double standard in our media circus.  Censorship doesn’t work; it boomerangs back to bite us all. Even beyond that, we should be concerned to see social media companies wading into this murky territory. When internet monoliths start deciding which thought is acceptable in the name of "hate speech," it puts us down a problematic path that’s sure to be abused. Anyone can call anything they disagree with hateful — will Facebook start banning pages for the National Rifle Association or Planned Parenthood? If you offend too many minorities they well do everything to silence you .But no matter how despicable Jones' commentary is, we should all be dismayed to see him censored on social media. Facebook, YouTube and others are private companies, so they aren’t violating Jones' First Amendment rights. Nonetheless, they are stifling the spirit of free speech and — perhaps most important — censorship will only make Alex Jones a martyr among his fan base.This blatant act of censorship of political ideas is a perfect example why we need decentralized, censorship-resistant media, and why we simply cannot trust our media to an elite handful of social media oligarchs.

NOTES AND COMMENTS: 

(1)>>Alex Jones . Jones began his career in Austin with a live, call-in format public-access cable television program. In 1996, Jones switched format to radio, hosting a show named The Final Edition on KJFK (98.9 FM). Ron Paul was running for Congress and was a guest on his show several times. When the Oklahoma City bombing happened in 1995 Jones began accusing the government of being responsible, saying, "I understood there’s a kleptocracy working with psychopathic governments — clutches of evil that know the tricks of control”. In 1998, he released his first film, America Destroyed By Design. By 2013, he had built a media empire: web, radio, subscription video, and DVD and T-shirt sales. At the time, Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald estimated that Jones was pulling in as much as $10 million a year between subscriptions, web and radio advertising, and sales.  The Bush years were a ripe time for Jones and his message of government deceit. The lies leading to the invasion of Iraq and the complicity of the media were plain for all to see. By the time Jones produced his 9/11 film Loose Change, he was no longer a lonely voice in the media wilderness, but the founding father of a growing national movement. Charlie Sheen suggested he organize a 9/11 Truth conference in Los Angeles, and Jones appeared in Link­later’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s dystopian novel A Scanner Darkly. “Alex’s mind is a turbocharged research and information processor,” Link­later has said. Sharing the credits with Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr., Jones once again played himself as a street prophet. His scene ends when plainclothes agents haul him into an unmarked police van for ranting publicly about government drug dealing.  (2)>>YouTube. Jones has 80 million hits on his YouTube channel, and his fringe views have slowly begun to infiltrate more mainstream outlets. Many of his fans, in fact, believe that Glenn Beck routinely rips off Jones, stealing his ideas and then watering them down for broader consumption. “People inside his company tell me Beck follows what we do closely,” says Jones. “It’s frustrating that I’ve never sold out, yet I’m being gobbled up by this giant Pac-Man who puts my work through his corporate-media assembly line. He takes information from me about secret combines and elites and then spins it against big government, but he ignores big business. He says George Soros is at the top of the New World Order power pyramid? Give me a break. I have no love for Soros. But I don’t trust Beck. Ninety-eight percent of my audience hates him. New listeners tell me I’m a Beck wanna-be. I’m like, ‘No, it’s the other way around.'”  (2.2)>>"community guidelines." ???? .  3 years ago there was another censorship issue with Clementine Ford, a columnist for Australia’s Daily Life, was banned from Facebook for 30-days on Friday after telling an internet troll, who allegedly called her a “diseased whore”, to "f**k off".  criticized Facebook for double standards after she was banned from the social network for confronting an internet troll, yet a meme she reported depicting domestic violence did not qualify to be removed. Well, there are plenty of Facebook pages that attack others based on “religion and national origin”. I’m guessing that Facebook doesn’t really care and only acts when someone complains.   (2.3) >>pressure on Facebook.  The double standard is obvious on FACEBOOK while now its playing the role of the NET NANNY.Whenever the social media company has been pressed to explain its decision-making, it has referred to its community standards, a public document that outlines Facebook’s rules for users. The company has outright bans against violent content, nudity and terrorist recruitment propaganda. The rules on other types of content, including hate speech and false news, are more ambiguous. Facebook content still contains the same violent content, nudity and terrorist recruitment propaganda. 
ADDITIONAL NOTES :
 With censoring what is called hate speech  . Defining hate speech , separating protesting has always been a thin line between the First Amendment rights. Burning the American flag has always been one of the most shocking and controversial means of protest, from hippies in the 1960s to today, with an anti-Trump flag-burning demonstration outside the Republican National Convention. While I must concur that flag burning is not my way of expression of not agreeing with my government  ,  its a issue not on its own a American one , world protesters sometimes burn their nations flag , not so uncommon .  What has this to do with Alex Jones ?  Here is a good example  : A man whose case set Supreme Court precedent over the constitutionality of burning the American flag -- and whose flag-burning activities led to his arrest during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland -- is suing Cleveland for what he said are his violated free-speech rights. Gregory "Joey" Johnson is also suing the conspiracy website InfoWars and its operator, Alex Jones. Joseph Biggs, a former InfoWars employee, and Jordan Salkin, who still works at the site, are also named as defendants in the suit. They were listed as victims in the documents that charged Johnson with a crime. Johnson's suit says the pair lied about their injuries, and pointed to a YouTube video Biggs made that said he was an aggressor, not a victim. The big question here is inciting violence.  Facebook did give a reason for banning Jones, though, and it's a fairly weak and ill-defined one. "As a result of reports we received, last week, we removed four videos on four Facebook Pages for violating our hate speech and bullying policies," the company explained. The problem was not that Jones was lying, or engaged in libel, or spreading fake news. The problem was hate speech. But we don't know which statements he made were deemed hateful, or why. We don't know if Jones is being singled out, or if anyone who said the things he said would be banned. We don't know if a statement has to be targeted at a particular person to count as bullying, or whether generic trutherism could fit the bill. When Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress in April, Sen. Ben Sasse (R­-Neb.) grilled him on how Facebook defined hate speech. It was an interesting exchange. Zuckerberg was straightforwardly uncertain about how the site would handle such accusations moving forward.  Alex Jones was certainly the easy target of "reverse hate" .The legitimacy or illegitimacy of 'Hate speech' is subjective, depending upon the perspective of the observer. 

Censorship & the Media .

Apple, Facebook, Spotify and YouTube’s ban turned Jones into a martyr for the far-right and fringe communities looking for a new man to stand behind as they push their own agendas. But it’s not a freedom of speech issue, nor one of censorship. The First Amendment, which gives American citizens the freedom of speech, states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  Other popular right-wing YouTubers, including Glenn Beck, Secureteam10 and Daily Wire editor-in-chief, Ben Shapiro, echoed Jones’ rhetoric. Shapiro and Beck both said while they disagree with Jones’ views, YouTube’s move set a dangerous precedent. Beck referred to platforms removing Jones’ content as a “very sad day for freedom of speech.”

The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.

Tommy Smothers