MK – Page 35 – iftttwall

Even Hillary Clinton’s Former Aides are Sick of Her Incessant Bull$hit

Personally, I’m in the camp that thinks a large percentage of Trump voters didn’t support him out of personal affinity, but rather as a means to ensure that Hillary Clinton would finally shut-up and go away forever. That is not happening.

I issued a code red warning last month highlighting that I thought Hillary Clinton’s ongoing spotlight-hogging, blame deflecting, Russia fear-mongering tour is driven by a remnant burning desire to be President and the delusional dream that it could still happen. As I explained in the post, Manufacturing Resistance – The American Public is Being Manipulated Into Irrelevance:

The current environment is fertile ground for real populist movements to fight for an improvement in the lives of average Americans, but the public is being fooled into focusing all its energy on an unproven Russia collusion theory which hasn’t caused any of our very real national suffering. Our very own homegrown racketeers and thieves are to blame for that, but we’re being told to focus our attention on Russia. This isn’t an accident people, you’re being played, and played quite easily at that.

Ironically, “the resistance” is actually sucking all the air out of what should be real resistance. After spending a few months in the woods, Hillary is now actively moving to co-opt the entire movement. Why’s she doing that? I think she still covets the throne, and I think she’s power hungry and delusional enough to go for it.

Hillary’s positioning to run again, and there’s still no viable new third party. Even worse, there’s the naive and gullible Bernie Sanders still trying to “change Democrats from within,” a laughable and useless exercise. It’s unbelievably pathetic and disempowering, but it could get a lot worse. Brace yourselves for a few years of Hillary running around in leather jackets talking like a “populist” as she desperately attempts to reinvent herself. Our national nightmare is far from over.

I don’t know much, but I do know if the Democrats renominate Hillary Clinton or some other war-mongering, corporate stooge you can pretty much guarantee eight years of Donald Trump. If there’s no real choice, and we’re destined to go down in imperial flames anyway, we may as well have the reality tv guy entertain us along the way.

In fact, the “I’m awesome, but everyone else failed me tour” is getting so tiresome, even some of her aides are publicly calling her out. Let’s start with a tweet from long-time Hillary aide Patti Solis Doyle.

I ❤️ @HillaryClinton but I’m tired of hearing who/what she blames 4 loss. Want 2 hear how Ds can win in 2018, 2020 & beyond. Time 2 move on https://t.co/pww2h1lKbG

— Patti Solis Doyle (@PattiSolisDoyle) May 31, 2017

That’s nothing compared to several tweets by Andrew Therriault, who served as the DNC’s director of data science, and didn’t take kindly to Hillary’s compulsive blame-shifting ways. In since deleted tweets, he wrote (more here):

The current situation is so dire, even Michael Bloomberg recognizes the train-wreck. The Hill reports:

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks there’s a “55 percent chance” President Trump will be reelected in 2020.

Bloomberg, who politically identifies as independent, told New York Times columnist Frank Bruni that he thought Democrats didn’t have an effective message to win the 2016 election and could repeat that mistake in 2020.

“Hillary said, ‘Vote for me because I’m a woman and the other guy’s bad,’ ” Bloomberg said about 2016.

He said Democrats are still looking for issues and messages.

Are they actually looking? Doesn’t seem that way to me.

Naturally, the Democratic Party will learn zero lessons from 2016, because the Democratic leadership is really dumb. Or just really corrupt. Probably both.

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In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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Even Hillary Clinton’s Former Aides are Sick of Her Incessant Bull$hit originally appeared on Liberty Blitzkrieg on June 1, 2017.

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BATs ICO Raises $35 Million in 24 Seconds

If you’ve read my last few pieces, you’ll be aware of my recent fascination with the biggest trend in the crypto-coin world right now, ICOs, or initial coin offerings (yes, it’s a horrible name).

Since the best way to learn about stuff is to dive right in and do it for yourself, I spent much of the day yesterday getting prepared for the Basic Attention Token (BATs) sale in an attempt to participate. Considering I had very little to do with Ethereum up until that point, the learning curve was quite steep. Nevertheless, I got it all together and had an ERC20 wallet funded and ready to go for this morning’s sale. While I thought the ICO might be pretty popular, $35 million is still a decent amount of money and I didn’t foresee having any real issues with getting an allocation. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

At the end of the day, I got zero BATs and was left extremely frustrated with how the whole thing went down. While it’s undoubtably a historic moment for the nascent ICO market and an incredible achievement for an experimental browser monetization model to raise such a sum in less than 30 seconds, could this really be called a crowdsale?

While details still seem a bit sketchy, what’s clear is that a lot of people are very pissed off and a very small number of players seem to have received a huge chunk of the offering.

Here’s what Coindesk reported:

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A Voice of Reason Speaks Regarding ‘The New Cold War’

Last week was interesting for me. I spent about half my time getting up to speed with the latest happenings in the crypto-coin world, and got really excited about a lot of what I saw. In fact, this was the first time I became totally consumed by the space in several years, going back to when I first investigated and started becoming involved with Bitcoin.

What really caught my attention is the booming ICO market, and while it’ll invariably produce its fair share of total scams, I find it nonetheless captivating. I’m attracted to its dynamic wild west spirit, as well as its capacity to function as an alternative funding mechanism for startup projects utilizing a wider participatory structure consisting of anyone with a bit of crypto currency and a high-risk tolerance. It’s an entirely new experimental ecosystem funded by crypto currencies (mostly ethereum, but also bitcoin). It’s pretty mesmerizing (for more see: A New Financial System is Being Born).

Spending so much time on this esoteric world kept me away from following U.S. politics as closely as I typically do, which was a great thing. The level of discourse from nearly all sides of the political spectrum has turned so toxic, divisive, hysterical and counterproductive, leaving that environment for several days made me feel great, as if I had taken a vacation from idiot island. As such, today I again decided to spend some time reading up on the crypto-coin space and getting further up to speed on ICOs and how they work. That said, I realize I still need to pay attention to the crazy happenings in the wider world around me, so I thought I’d share an interview with a rarity in today’s political discourse, a voice of reason.

What follows are excerpts from a Slate interview with Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton:

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Liberty Links 05/27/17

If you appreciate our work, and want to contribute to genuine, independent media, consider visiting our Support Page.

Must Reads

Google Starts Tracking Offline Shopping — What You Buy at Stores in Person (Big Google is Watching You, LA Times)

Thoughts on Tokens (Read this if you have any interest in the crypto coin space, Balaji S. Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant)

Fidelity Allows Workers to Use Bitcoin in Company Canteen (Financial Times)

Running Free in Germany’s Outdoor Preschools (I love everything about this idea, The New York Times)

Trump Goes on Iran-Bashing Tour (Al-Monitor)

How to Opt Out of Twitter’s New Privacy Settings (EFF)

U.S. Politics

See More Links »

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The Difference Between Fear and Concern

The last 24 hours were quite interesting for me, and have sparked all sorts of thoughts and tangents in my mind. I’ve been absolutely thrilled that yesterday’s post, A New Financial System is Being Born, has been so well received in the broader Bitcoin/crypto/tech world, but I also noticed a meaningful contradiction. While the post has been cheered beyond the confines of this website, within Liberty Blitzkrieg itself, it hasn’t been celebrated by anyone, at least not publicly in the comment section. In fact, if you scroll through the comment section of the post, you’ll see it’s basically 100% skepticism or dislike for Bitcoin. The reason I find this so interesting is because of what it tells me about sentiment.

I got a lot of insight from the comment section of this particular post because I know for a fact many of my readers love Bitcoin and have been involved in it for years. I know this based on private conservations I’ve had as well as many donations over the years. In a euphoric market environment, I’d expect the comment section to yesterday’s post to be filled with gloating, giddiness and “to da moon” commentary. There was absolutely none of that. In contrast, the skeptics were out in full force and totally dominated the discussion, which is fine. I want people to express different opinions and feel like they have the space to totally disagree with something I write. At the same time, it does tell me something about overall sentiment. The people who are long and sitting on gains are largely keeping their mouths shut, while the skeptics are very, very vocal. It’s not just here either, the skepticism and dislike for Bitcoin is even more prevalent within my Twitter feed. Incredibly, despite the recent enormous run, Bitcoin sentiment seems cautious-to-negative. Take that information as you see fit.

This sets the stage for the key part of this post which relates to the difference between fear and concern. One of these is a largely unproductive emotional state, while the other is a rational response to potential or real trouble. The reason Bitcoin sparked my interest in the topic is because I’ve witnessed a lot of people miss the Bitcoin run due to irrational fear, as opposed to reasoned concern. This isn’t to gloat about Bitcoin, or predict its future price. Pretty much everyone involved in this space for more than a few days understands that its price could completely collapse any minute and, despite all its advances, Bitcoin remains an experimental project that could end up worthless. I knew that back in 2012 when I first became involved and I know it now, yet I got involved anyway. Why did I do that?

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A New Financial System is Being Born

If Bitcoin blew you away when you first discovered it, and continues to do so to this day, Spiral Dynamics can help explain why. Bitcoin was an expression in the physical world of the newly emergent leading-edge integral level consciousness. It drew lessons from history and attempted to take the best of orange and green worldviews and incorporate them into an entirely new form of money. We see the clear presence of free markets and individualism, as well as the intentional separation of the system from dominator hierarchies (bureaucratic government meddling), which had corrupted all money before it. Its greenness is evident in the fact that by design no individual or company controls the network. Global, decentralized, revolutionary technology. This is perhaps the perfect example of integral consciousness operating on our planet at this time from an economics standpoint, and why it has captured the imagination of so many, while at the same time being violently rejected by so many others.

From February’s post: Why Increased Consciousness is the Only Path Forward

Although I had heard about it much earlier, I didn’t truly start investigating Bitcoin until the summer of 2012. The more I learned the more my mind was blown away, and for a while I couldn’t think about anything else. What truly solidified its real world usefulness to me was when I discovered it had been used by Wikileaks to accept payments in the midst of a financial services blockade against the renegade publisher. This realization inspired my first Bitcoin related post in August 2012 titled, Bitcoin: A Way to Fight Back Against the Financial Terrorists?

In that piece, I linked to a Forbes article that detailed the revolutionary events taking place. We learned:

Following a massive release of secret U.S. diplomatic cables in November 2010, donations to WikiLeaks were blocked by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union on December 7th, 2010. Although private companies certainly have a right to select which transactions to process or not, the political environment produced less than a fair and objective decision. It was coordinated pressure exerted in a politicized climate by the U.S. government and it won’t be the last time that we see this type of pressure.

Fortunately, there is way around this and other financial blockades with a global payment method immune to political pressure and monetary censorship.

On its public bitcoin address, Wikileaks has taken in over $32,000 equivalent in more than 1,100 separate bitcoin donations throughout the blockade (1BTC = $10.00). But these amounts may be significantly higher, because it does not even include the individually-generated bitcoin addresses that WikiLeaks provides for donors upon request.

I knew right then and there that Bitcoin had the potential to change the world. My passion for Bitcoin was always framed by my ten years working in the financial industry. Many of us who lived through the 2008 crisis knew the financial system was dead. We knew it was corrupt, archaic and terminal, so many of us began bracing for what might come next. We did what we thought made sense at the time, which included buying precious metals like gold and silver given their historic track record of protecting wealth in periods of paradigm-shifting financial disruption. Others took more extreme measures to protect themselves from the end of the financial system, but a small group forward thinking geeks decided to do something much better. They decided to build an alternative.

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Meet JK2 Westminster L.L.C. – The Kushner Family Real Estate Subsidiary Preying on Poor People

Cox stopped cooking for herself and her son, not wanting food near the sink. A judge allowed her reduced rent for one month. When she moved out soon afterward, Westminster Management sent her a $600 invoice for a new carpet and other repairs. Cox, who is now working as a battery-test engineer and about to buy her first home, was unaware who was behind the company that had put her through such an ordeal. When I told her of Kushner’s involvement, there was a silence as she took it in.

Very few of the complex residents I met, even ones who had been pursued at length in court by JK2 Westminster, had any idea that their rent and late fees were going to the family company of the president’s son-in-law. “That Jared Kushner?” Danny Jackson, a plumber in his 15th year living at Harbor Point Estates, exclaimed. “Oh, my God. And I thought he was the good one.”

At the Carroll Park complex, I met Mike McHargue, a private investigator, and his girlfriend, Patricia Howell. “They’re nothing but slumlords,” Howell told me of Westminster Management. “They take everyone’s money.” When I asked if they knew who was behind the company, they said they did not. “Oh, really?” Howell said when I mentioned Kushner’s name. “Oh, really. And I’m a Trump supporter.”

From The New York Times Magazine article: Jared Kushner’s Other Real Estate Empire

Yesterday, The New York Times Magazine published a deeply disturbing story about a Kushner family real estate subsidiary with a consistent pattern of aggressive and questionable collection practices aimed at lower income people who can’t defend themselves properly.

Excerpts from the piece are below, but it should really be read in full.

Warren sent a letter reporting the problem to the complex’s property manager, a company called Sawyer Realty Holdings. When there was no response, she decided to move out. In January 2010, she submitted the requisite form giving two months’ notice that she was transferring her Section 8 voucher — the federal low-income subsidy that helped her pay the rent — elsewhere. The complex’s on-site manager signed the form a week later, checking the line that read “The tenant gave notice in accordance with the lease.”

So Warren was startled in January 2013, three years later, when she received a summons from a private process server informing her that she was being sued for $3,014.08 by the owner of Cove Village. The lawsuit, filed in Maryland District Court, was doubly bewildering. It claimed she owed the money for having left in advance of her lease’s expiration, though she had received written permission to leave. And the company suing her was not Sawyer, but one whose name she didn’t recognize: JK2 Westminster L.L.C.

Warren was raising three children alone while taking classes for a bachelor’s degree in health care administration, and she disregarded the summons at first. But JK2 Westminster’s lawyers persisted; two more summonses followed. In April 2014, she appeared without a lawyer at a district-court hearing. She told the judge about the approval for her move, but she did not have a copy of the form the manager had signed. The judge ruled against Warren, awarding JK2 Westminster the full sum it was seeking, plus court costs, attorney’s fees and interest that brought the judgment to nearly $5,000. There was no way Warren, who was working as a home health aide, was going to be able to pay such a sum. “I was so desperate,” she said.

If the case was confounding to Warren, it was not unique. Hundreds like it have been filed over the last five years by JK2 Westminster and affiliated businesses in the state of Maryland alone, where the company owns some 8,000 apartments and townhouses. Nor was JK2 Westminster quite as anonymous as its opaque name suggested. It was a subsidiary of a large New York real estate firm called Kushner Companies, which was led by a young man whose initials happened to be J.K.: Jared Kushner.

continue reading

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Did Several Democratic IT Staffers Under Investigation Just Flee to Pakistan?

Today’s post is a little different than most, and highlights the very strange case of a few Democratic IT Staffers who have apparently fled to Pakistan while under investigation. If what The Daily Caller reported yesterday is accurate, it’s certainly something to keep your eye on.

First a little background. Politico reported the following back in March.

Two House Democrats this week fired technology staffers linked to an ongoing criminal investigation, more than a month after the couple in question was barred from House computer networks.

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) confirmed to Politico that Hina Alvi’s last day as an IT support staffer in his office was Tuesday. Her husband, Imran Awan, was working for Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) as of Tuesday evening, but a spokeswoman for Fudge said midday Wednesday that Awan was no longer an employee.

As of Wednesday, Awan was still working as a technology adviser for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), although he’s been blocked from accessing the House computer system since early February.

Alvi, Awan and three other House aides, including Abid Awan and Jamal Awan, relatives of Imran Awan, and Rao Abbas, are all linked to the criminal investigation being conducted by the U.S. Capitol Police.

continue reading

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America Has Become a Total Joke

I’ve stopped calling what our government has done a cover-up. Cover-up suggests a passive activity. What they’re doing now I call aggressive deception.

– Former Senator Bob Graham, co-chair of Congress’s 9/11 Joint Inquiry

This country is becoming a total joke and it’s not merely because of Donald Trump. While he’s certainly becoming a key player in our national embarrassment, this country’s decent into a reckless Banana Republic has been a long time coming.

Let’s take stock of where things stand in mid-2017. Our opposition Democratic Party (Hillary in a leather jacket yelling about Russia) is a joke. Our corporate media is a joke. Our foreign policy is a joke. Our economy is a joke. Our justice system is a joke. It’s all a joke, and it might even be somewhat humorous if it wasn’t so incredibly dangerous.

Today’s post will focus on Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, a revolting spectacle which I could barely bring myself to follow. It all started Saturday morning as I tried to enjoy a beautiful day with my growing family and parents who were in town for a visit. My day was more or less ruined upon witnessing the appalling spectacle of Trump and his top advisors dancing with the rulers of the terrorist sponsoring state of Saudi Arabia while clutching swords. I’m sorry for doing this to you, but in case you missed it.

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