Friday, January 11, 2019
Headlines for Jan. 11, 2018
Click here to listen to this week's segment on Loud & Clear Radio.
Headlines with an * are the ones we managed to fit in in our allotted time slot.
‘No different from my original statements’: Trump denies changes to Syria exit plan
Stop putting Trump's lies in the headline without rebuttal!!! Proper headline: "'No different from my original statements': Trump lies about changes to Syria exit plan"
Not until the 5th paragraph do we read: “Both his comments and Trump’s conflict with officials’ initial statements following the president’s unexpected Dec. 19 announcement that all troops would come home in short order.”
Not until the 5th paragraph do we read: “Both his comments and Trump’s conflict with officials’ initial statements following the president’s unexpected Dec. 19 announcement that all troops would come home in short order.”
[Article revised: now in the 3rd paragraph: Last month, Trump declared the Islamic State defeated in Syria and said troops would be “coming back now.”]
‘I been eatin like a boss’: Federal prisoners served steak by unpaid guards during shutdown
For the first 12 hours online, this article was accompanied by a picture of a high-end restaurant steak on fine china! Aside from the absurd portrayal of prisoners living high off the hog, the story buries the real lede — unpaid guards having to take second jobs just to be able to afford gas money to get to their first job! And, get ready — “prisoners in Minnesota got chicken wings on New Year’s Day.” Whoa, chicken wings! What do they normally get, gizzards? Needless to say, no mention of the paltry amounts spent per prisoner per day on food in federal prisons, which would upset the story line. Also worth noting: the quote in the headline comes from an email allegedly sent by an inmate, read by prison guards and forwarded to their union President who made it public by revealing it to a reporter, a gross violation of the prisoner’s privacy.
Paul Manafort shared 2016 polling data with Russian associate, according to court filing
Mueller Thinks Paul Manafort Shared Trump Polling Data With Russian Operative
Trump’s Campaign Manager Gave Polling Data to Russian Agent (by Jonathan Chait)
"Manafort, who served as Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence agent."
Kilimnik was a translator for the Soviet Army *more than 30 years ago*. There is ZERO EVIDENCE he is a "Russian intelligence agent". Maybe he is, but there is no publicly known information which would suggest that. And, by the way, the MI/WI polling data Manafort allegedly shared with Kilimnik to allegedly share with Derepaska to allegedly share with Putin? It couldn’t have been very effective, because the IRA spent less than $3000 on ads targeted on MI and WI, and almost all of that was spent during the primary season, and none of it mentioned Trump! [https://www.burr.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Chairman's%20SFR.pdf]
This is exactly what collusion looks like
Headline you didn’t expect to see in the WaPo:
That sophisticated, specific Russian 2016 voter targeting effort doesn’t seem to exist
The WaPo finally discussing what was in the Burr report (see link above) from Nov. *2017* — the idea that the IRA campaign was aimed at the election, much less at electing Trump, is a joke, totally unsupported by the data. Using actual data (imagine that!) to prove there was no targeting effort aimed at electing Trump. “The black bars indicate campaigns that ran in October 2016 or in the first eight days of November; that is, until Election Day. You’ll notice that two of the states where the most ads ran were Texas and New York — neither of which was considered close in the final weeks of the campaign. States that Trump won narrowly — specifically Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — saw very few campaigns and, per our count, were seen by fewer than 1,000 people in the last five weeks before the election.”
Could a Chinese-made Metro car spy on us? Many experts say yes.
Oy vey.
“The warnings sound like the plot of a Hollywood spy thriller: The Chinese hide malware in a Metro rail car’s security camera system that allows surveillance of Pentagon or White House officials as they ride the Blue Line — sending images back to Beijing. Or sensors on the train secretly record the officials’ conversations. Or a flaw in the software that controls the train — inserted during the manufacturing process — allows it to be hacked by foreign agents or terrorists to cause a crash.”
“China’s attack on our rail system is insidious and ingenious,” retired Army Brig. Gen. John Adams wrote. By “attack” he means their desire to sell products they make. By the way, any government official who is discussing sensitive information while riding the Metro should be fired for gross stupidity in the first place. Also by the way, I don’t know if these new train cars have WiFi available for passengers, but if they do, that would be a lot more of concern then the security cameras or “hidden sensors”, and it would apply to a a lot more than just hypothetical Chinese spying.
Veselnitskaya, Russian in Trump Tower Meeting, Is Charged in Case That Shows Kremlin Ties
Not just "ties", but "close ties" according to the article. The Kremlin? She talked with a Russian prosecutor. That's hardly the same as "the Kremlin", much less "close ties".
Trump administration officials admit mistakes while trying to tie terrorism to southern border
Those were not "mistakes", they were intentional lies to mislead the public. Why give them the cover of pretending they were "mistakes"?
Rashida Tlaib’s Expletive-Laden Cry to Impeach Trump Upends Democrats’ Talking Points
Since when does one expletive become “expletive-laden”? And the whole framing is ridiculous anyway; various Democrats (not the leadership) have been talking about impeachment since practically Day 1 of Trump’s Presidency; Brad Sherman has filed articles of impeachment. How did Tlaib’s comment “upend Democrat talking points”?
