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Adam L. Silverman is a consulting national security subject matter expert specializing in low intensity warfare (asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare, revolution, insurgency, terrorism), civil affairs, psychological operations, and cultural considerations for strategy and policy.

He routinely provides operational support to a number of US Army, DOD, and other US Government elements. Dr. Silverman holds a doctorate in political science and criminology from the University of Florida, as well as masters' degrees in comparative religion and international security. Full professional bio available here: https://www.balloon-juice.com/adam-silverman-bio/

Adam Silverman has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2015.

Memorial Day 2020: Memorial Day In the Time of Pandemic

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I imagine that during Memorial Day 1918 and 1919, in the midst of the swine flu pandemic that emerged from the training barracks at Fort Riley and somehow got blamed on Spain, people tried to make sense of the day and what it was supposed to symbolize and commemorate while the US was at war abroad and Americans were dying at home of communicable disease. As I wrote last year, Memorial Day has sort of evolved into a strange observance in America’s civic life and civil culture:

Memorial Day has assumed a strange place within American civic culture. It has become the Federal holiday that signals the start of summer, while at the same time, because of the changes to how Americans respond and relate to the US military, has become a de facto second Veteran’s Day. And, of course, for those that have served, or those related to them, or those who have known them as more than passing acquaintances, and those who have some civic self awareness, the holiday retains its original purpose: to commemorate America’s war dead.

All of this together is a strange civic cultural mashup.

Memorial Day 2020, and the long holiday weekend that comes with it, is even stranger than the holiday usually is. This year it has become part of the partisan, tribal attitudes and actions surrounding how Americans should be responding to SARS-CoV2 and COVID-19. We’ll know in two to three weeks just how bad the damage from this weekend’s activities is. How many who would not have become infected have become infected and how many who would not have died will have died. Further ripping at and tattering our civic culture and further poisoning the life blood of the Republic.

Eventually Americans will figure out how to recognize, commemorate, and collectively mourn those who have died as a result of COVID-19. Tens of thousands of whom would likely still be alive if the President, his senior advisors and staff, his surrogates, Senator McConnell and his Republican majority in the Senate, and Fox News, OANN, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart, and the rest of conservative news, social, and digital media didn’t approach the pandemic, and the challenges it presents to the US, as some sort of partisan game to be won.

It seems strange to focus on commemorating America’s war dead when we are approaching 100,000 Americans dead from COVID-19 and significant portions of the US seem to think that reality is somewhere between fake news and not their problem. America’s soul has been sick for a long time. Some of this goes back to the original sins of America’s founding. Some of the poison has been more recently injected. But the strange reality of Memorial Day 2020 makes America’s civic soul sickness brutally clear.

Rest well Michael, Nicole, Paula, Gregg, and Terry.

Open thread.

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The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be

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The President, Republican members of the House and the Senate, Fox News personalities and talking heads, the President’s surrogates on other broadcast and cable news shows, the conservative social, digital, and news media, and the President’s campaign officials and surrogates have been calling for the release of the email that former Assistant to the President-National Security Advisor (AP-NSA) Susan Rice sent to herself in January 2017 as a memorialization of the meeting about what the FBI’s counterintelligence officials had been discovering about LTG (ret) Flynn and his activities before he joined the President’s 2016 campaign, during the campaign, and during the transition.

This was purposefully conflated with unmasking by Congressman Nunes as part of his agitprop that President  Obama and his senior officials spied on the President’s campaign, including seeking to unmask LTG (ret) Flynn in signals intelligence collected on foreign targets. When the Trump administration declassified and released Rice’s email to herself, they only declassified and released part of it. Which, of course, led to screaming and yelling about coverups and conspiracies. Dr. Rice has long requested they declassify the whole email, as well as the transcripts of LTG (ret) Flynn’s calls with Ambassador Kislyak, as well as other Russian officials, and officials from other countries. Earlier today the Trump administration declassified and released the remainder of Dr. Rice’s email and no surprises at all, there’s nothing untoward at all in it.

The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be

As can be clearly seen from reading the email, no one involved did anything untoward, unethical, and/or illegal. As was the case with the unmasking conspiracy theory, there is no there there.

Here is Dr. Rice’s statement from this afternoon:

The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be 1 The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be 2

And while Republican elected officials* and their surrogates are trying to spin this as evidence of illegality, it isn’t. And the most amusing part of today is that Senator Graham hung his tuchas way, way, way, way out over the edge this morning expecting to turn this into a scandal that he could weaponize on behalf of the President’s, as well as his own, reelection chances.

Ooopsie!!!!!

To quickly summarize:

  1. Dr. Rice’s email to herself memorializing the 5 JAN 2017 meeting with President Obama, VP Biden, FBI Director Comey, herself, and several others clearly indicates that nothing untoward, unethical, and/or illegal took place. Rather, President Obama made it very clear that everything was to be done by the book.
  2. The release of the entire email further undercuts the Congressman Devin Nunes created agitprop and conspiracy theory that President Obama ordered the FBI to spy on the President’s 2016 campaign and he knows this because the evidence is being covered up in Dr. Rice’s email to herself, which is classified.
  3. That email is now declassified and released and once again Congressman Nunes is unmasked as a none too bright, conspiracy mongering fabulist.
  4. The declassification and release of Dr. Rice’s entire email memorializing the 5 JAN 2017 meeting undercuts Senator Graham’s plans for a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation to get to the bottom of these allegations, because the declassified email shows those allegations to be complete bullshit.

Open thread

* Obligatory:

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The Black PSYOP IX: The Unmasking of Obamagate

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When SARS-CoV2 and COVID-19 began to sweep across the globe, and became the focus in news coverage and reporting, the Black PSYOP that the President, his campaign, his elected Republican surrogates in the House and Senate, his other surrogates, and Fox News and the rest of the conservative and right wing news, digital, and social media had been pushing against Vice President Biden to excuse and justify the actions that the President was impeached for got shelved for a while. At least in terms of an attempt to promote it day to day. But now that the President has declared victory against SARS-CoV2  and COVID-19 in an attempt to reopen the US it has been reinvigorated in an attempt to change the subject.

Since Mother’s Day on Sunday, the President has been tweeting and shouting about something he calls Obamagate. This isn’t actually anything new. Back in 2017, in an attempt to divert attention from him, his campaign, and a number of his senior campaign staff and political appointees involvement with or connections to Russia, the President and his surrogates argued that President Obama had ordered the FBI to spy on his campaign. This included wildly inaccurate accusations, because the people making them didn’t understand what they were talking about or were acting as if they did, that the Obama administration spying went beyond having the FBI wiretap the campaign headquarters in Trump Tower. Specifically that Assistant to the President-National Security Advisor (APNSA) Susan Rice asked the National Security Agency (NSA) to unmask the names of Trump campaign and transition officials as part of President Obama’s and his co-conspirators nefarious plot to prevent the President from being elected. These accusations are back, but they still make no factual sense.

Acting Director of National Intelligence and Ambassador to Germany (previously a noted Internet troll and shitposter) Richard Grenell declassified and released three pages of unmasking requests made by Obama administration senior personnel between 30 NOV 2016 and 12 JAN 2017.

The Black PSYOP: The Unmasking of Obamagate

The Black PSYOP: The Unmasking of Obamagate 1

The Black PSYOP: The Unmasking of Obamagate 2

Despite the breathless reporting by tweet that “SCOOP @CBSNews  obtains @RichardGrenell notification to congress declassified “unmasking list” Flynn between late 2016 and January 2017 – Read 3 pages provided by NSA here”, you’ll notice the following statement at the top of the first document Grenell declassified (emphasis mine):

Each individual was an authorized recipient of the original report and the unmasking was approved through NSA’s standard process, which includes a review of the justification for the request.

And:

In this case 16 authorized individuals requested unmaskings for REDACTED # of different NSA intelligence reports for select identified principles. While the principles are identified below, we cannot confirm they saw the unmasked information.

In short: everything was done in accordance with the law and regulations within normal channels.

But it goes beyond this, because the people requesting the unmasking, from APNSA Susan Rice to Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power to VP Biden had NO WAY TO KNOW WHO THE UNIDENTIFIED AMERICAN OR AMERICANS WHOSE NAMES WERE REDACTED IN THE INTELLIGENCE REPORTS THEY WERE READING ABOUT CONTACTS WITH RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT PERSONNEL, INCLUDING AMBASSADOR KISLYAK WHO WAS RUSSIA’S PRIMARY INTELLIGENCE HANDLER IN DC AS WELL AS RUSSIA’s AMBASSADOR TO THE UN AND OFFICIALS OF OTHER GOVERNMENTS, WHEN THEY MADE THE UNMASKING REQUESTS! WHICH IS WHY THEY MADE THE REQUESTS BECAUSE WITHOUT KNOWING WHO WAS TALKING TO KISLYAK, OTHER RUSSIAN OFFICIALS, AND OFFICIALS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW WHETHER WHAT HAD BEEN COLLECTED ON THE COMMUNICATIONS – THE TRANSCRIPTS OF THE COMMUNICATIONS – REALLY POSED POTENTIAL THREATS TO THE UNITED STATES THAT AMERICANS WERE INVOLVED IN!!!! It was NOT UNTIL any of these Obama administration officials got the unmasking reports from the National Security Agency that they would have known that LTG (ret) Flynn was the unidentified American citizen speaking with Russian Ambassador Kislyak, or any other official of a foreign government, Russian or otherwise, because that information was redacted in the original reports they were being briefed on. The whole point is to minimize the risk that any American citizen could have their privacy intruded upon by including their names if they are incidentally collected on because we are collecting on the foreign national that they are either speaking with or who mentions them in communication with a third party.

This reality, however, is not the point of what Grenell has done. Grenell’s objective is to use the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Republican majority US Senate, as well as the President’s twitter feed, Fox News, other presidential surrogates, and other news networks to launder the story that Vice President Biden was involved in the plot to both prevent the President’s election and then to destroy his presidency. See!!!! His name is right there on the last line of page 3! Since the declassification of this information by Grenell, Senators Grassley and Johnson have publicly released the documentation and proceeded to act like they do not know and understand how unmasking works. They have been joined by Senator Paul who held a press conference about it this afternoon heavy on innuendo and accusation and very short on actual facts. And AG Barr has indicated that US Attorney John Durham will now include these unmasking requests in his review of the investigations into the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia.

What these gentlemen are obfuscating, or, perhaps, are really too ignorant and uninformed to understand, is that when these 16 officials, including VP Biden made these requests THEY DID NOT KNOW WHO “US INDIVIDUAL 1” was in the intelligence, which is why they asked for the unmasking. Simply, they had no way to know if it was LTG (ret) Flynn, Jared Kushner, Senator Grassley, Senator Johnson, any of the five other Republican senators and one Republican representative who spent Independence Day 2018 visiting Putin in Moscow, Senator Paul who hand carried a communique from the President to Putin in August 2018 (and don’t get me started how far outside of normal and usual that was!!!), your great aunt Petunia, or the ever loving blue eyed Thing who was talking to officials of foreign governments, Russian or otherwise. All they knew is that a US citizen was in contact with senior officials of foreign governments, including the Russian ambassadors to the US and to the UN, and the discussions were about how Russia should respond to recent US actions against Russia, how Russia should vote in an upcoming UN Security Council vote the US had called about Israel, as well as other matters that have yet to be revealed and reported on*., but that based on the dates in the materials Grenell released, were collected and reported by the National Security Agency in late November and early December 2016, which was well before Flynn’s calls with Ambassador Kislyak and Russia’s ambassador to the UN. The US citizen in all of those calls was LTG (ret) Flynn. And then there were the reports that indicated an American citizen was discussing being paid to organize and facilitate the kidnapping legal US resident Fethullah Gulen and illegally extraditing and rendering him back to Turkey so that Erdogan could execute him. That was also LTG (ret) Flynn.

The objective here is the same objective that it has always been since I first started writing about, delineating, and explaining the Black PSYOP the President and his surrogates are undertaking back in October 2019:

  1. Continue to dirty up VP Biden, which is an extension of the influence operation begun by Putin’s state controlled media in May 2014 to dirty him up in case he ran in 2016, to drive down VP Biden’s popularity to damage his chances of being elected president. This included getting Ukrainian President Zelensky to announce the opening of an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine, as well as the attempts to get China to do something similar, which is all intended to promote the suggestion that Vice President Biden misused his position to enrich his son.
  2. To get the US Federal charges dropped against Dmitro Firtash, so he could get back to Ukraine from his house arrest in Vienna and retake control of Ukraine’s petroleum industry on behalf of Putin’s objectives regarding Ukraine and the EU. This line of operation was how Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman got tied into the Rudy Giuliani’s scheme to get dirt on VP Biden from Zelensky, as well as their connection to Victoria Toensing and Joseph DiGenova, who are both Firtash’s attorneys and working with Giuliani.
  3. The ultimate goal here was to find an excuse to lift Russian sanctions, which Putin desperately wants and the President has been hellbent to do, for reasons that make no domestic political, national security, and/or geopolitical sense, but make a lot of sense as a payoff. This is only possible if the Mueller investigation, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigations into the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russians actions in that campaign, as well as the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s assessments and reports on Russian interference in 2016 could be obfuscated and undermined.
  4. The drive to come up with a way to lift US sanctions on Russia and normalize relations ties everything together. Part of dirtying up VP Biden is the promotion of a bizarre and debunked conspiracy theory that it was not the Russians, on orders from Putin, interfering in the US 2016 election to elect Trump president; including failed and aborted attempts between the Russians and the President’s campaign to actually work together. Rather the Democratic National Committee, Secretary Clinton, many of her senior campaign staff, President Obama, Vice President Biden, APNSA Rice, Ambassador Power, former DNI Clapper, former FBI Director Comey, former DCI Brennan, former FBI Director and future Special Counsel Mueller, former AG Lynch, a number of senior Obama and Biden national security staffers, and the Ukrainian government actually conspired with the mainstream news media to keep the President from being elected in 2016. And when that failed to destroy his presidency with the creation of a fake scandal – that Putin wanted Trump to be president because he was angry at Secretary Clinton from something she did in 2011, that Putin had Russia interfere in the 2016 presidential election, that Putin is still interfering in American politics, that senior officials in the Trump 2016 campaign, as well as senior outside surrogates, were attempting to make contact with Russian officials and proxies to facilitate Putin’s influence operation to elect Trump president – in order to hide the truth, their crimes, and destroy the President and his administration. Because if the actual conspirators were the Obama administration, Secretary Clinton, her campaign, and the Ukrainians, then Russia is being punished for something it didn’t do. If you believe that, I also have a bridge to sell you…
  5. The last piece of this convoluted, conspiracy driven puzzle is the prosecution of LTG (ret) Flynn. Whatever Special Counsel Mueller’s team had actually collected on LTG (ret) Flynn’s was so damning and disturbing, that Judge Sullivan told him in open court at a sentencing hearing that he had “sold out his country” and all but accused him of committing treason! But in order for the Black PSYOP to work, LTG (ret) Flynn has to be an innocent, wrongly accused, and maliciously prosecuted patriot who loves the US and the President. This is why LTG (ret) Flynn fired his attorneys and replaced them with a conspiracist who used to be a legal contributor to Fox News. And it is why AG Barr has assigned two separate US Attorneys to look into it in order to undermine the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation into the President’s 2016 campaign, Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, and all the prosecutions, including Flynn’s, that resulted from it.

And this is why Acting DNI Grenell declassified these unmasking requests, gave them to AG Barr, and then released them to Senators Grassley, Johnson, and Paul. To launder this information – information that clearly demonstrates that nothing illegal, untoward, or even unusual was done by anyone in the Obama administration through the DOJ and the US Senate  – to both dirty up VP Biden to damage his campaign and to facilitate the other parts of the Black PSYOP ultimately leading to the lifting of US sanctions against Russia and normalization of US relations with Russia. Which the President once again discussed with Putin last week in a phone call about “the hoax”.

In May 2020, the President, AG Barr, Acting DNI Grenell, senior administration officials like Kellyanne Conway, a number of Republican senators, members of the Trump campaign, other surrogates for the President and his campaign, and a number of Fox News personalities are all actively promoting a Russian influence operation against the US targeting Americans to effect US politics and the outcome of the 2020 election. Someone should really be looking into this…

Open thread.

Update at 12:30 PM EDT

I’ve made some minor edits for clarity and added some links as in text citations. I also want to direct everyone to this twitter thread from Cheryl that she sent me late last night, which is applicable to the section with the *.

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We Can Rebuild Him… The Actual Origins of the Six Million Dollar Man

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On May 10, 1967 NASA test pilot Bruce Peterson crashed the M2-F2 lifting body, which is the footage you see recreated in the opening credits of The Six Million Dollar Man made for TV movie pilot and series.

The real “Steve Austin”, test pilot Bruce Peterson, was born in 1933 and was from Washburn, North Dakota. Peterson joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1954 through the naval cadet program and became a 2nd lieutenant. He went on to accumulate an extensive academic engineering background from the University of California (UCLA) and California Polytechnic State University. During his academic career at UCLA, Peterson also worked as an aircraft assembler for Douglas Aircraft Company. Peterson earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Cal Poly in 1960.

In August, 1960, Peterson joined NASA’s flight test program as an engineer at the Dryden Flight Test Center. In 1962, he graduated from the prestigious Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California and transferred to flight testing.

But it was his 16th test flight on May 10, 1967 in the Northrop M2-F2 that solidified Peterson’s place in pop culture history. Peterson was attempting a landing in the M2-F2 when the aircraft entered a series of side-to-side oscillations seen in the famous film of his crash.

In the intro to “The Six Million Dollar Man”, pilot Steve Austin is heard to say, “I’ve got a blowout, damper three!” Austin goes on to say in the script, “Pitch is out. I Can’t hold altitude. Correction, alpha hold is off. Trim selectors- emergency!” And then the final famous line, “Flight Com, I can’t hold it! She’s breaking up! She’s breaking…”

In real life, test pilot Peterson says just prior to the crash, “Boy, there’s some glitches…” “Get that chopper out of the way!” “That chopper’s gonna get me I’m afraid!” Peterson was concerned about the proximity of a helicopter during his landing approach and, when he entered a series of oscillations in the essentially wing-less lifting body, the aircraft became uncontrollable. After impact, the M2-F2 rolled violently six times, the dramatic visual seen in the video. The rest is a matter of aviation, and television, history.

Peterson sustained serious injuries from the crash including the eventual loss of vision in his right eye from a staph infection, but it did not stop him from continuing his successful flight test career. Even without six million dollars’ worth of bionics, Peterson went on to fly nearly 6,000 total flight hours in 70 different aircraft. He was an early flight test engineer on fly-by-wire advanced flight control systems and went on to work for Northrop on the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber program. Bruce Peterson died after a long illness on May 1, 2006 at 72.

Much more at the link.

Open thread!

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Things Are Getting Sporty In Lansing: Sauce for the Goose Edition

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The response to this is going to be very, very, very interesting!

From Kyle Kaminski at The Lansing CityPulse:

WEDNESDAY, May 6 — After a hoard of armed and angry protesters swarmed Lansing last week, State Rep. Sarah Anthony brought some extra protection on her way to the State Capitol today.

At least three African Americans carrying large rifles escorted Anthony across Capitol Avenue earlier this morning so she could safely attend committee meetings without fear of intimidation. She said she didn’t necessarily request the help, but welcomed the extra security nonetheless.

“We were all just appalled by the lack of support and lack of security that I had, that other legislators had, and the fact that a lot of the demonstrators last week were adorning many racist, anti-Semitic signage. I think it just triggered a lot of folks, especially African Americans.”

Anthony and other lawmakers met this morning for an appropriations committee meeting. The scene was quiet. Anthony’s cadre of Second Amendment advocates had no trouble entering the building. They left to quietly stand on the front steps after Anthony made it inside an elevator.

“We want to change the narrative, first of all. We want people to understand that people of color can come out here with guns just the same as anybody else can,” said Michael Lynn Jr., a black Lansing firefighter and community activist who helped organize Anthony’s security detail.

Lynn watched a video that Anthony posted to Facebook as the protest formed last week. In it, she looked on from her office across the street as protestors slowly crowded the Capitol Lawn carrying Confederate flags, Nazi symbolism, nooses and other blatantly racist forms of imagery.

After some demonstrators eventually made it inside the building last week, one maskless and gun-toting protester got so close to Anthony’s face that she could smell his breath. And lawmakers shouldn’t be scared to come into work because of armed intimidation, she said.

“The majority of the protesters were white,” Anthony said. “I’m still not exactly sure on the connection between confederate flags and Nazi symbolism. They just had no connection to the stay-at-home orders. The fact they were carrying guns openly while we voted was unnerving.”

Anthony’s concerns are largely based on a “complete failure” of the Michigan State Police to maintain adequate security, she explained. She didn’t find out until this week that police could have escorted her to her car after she left the Capitol. No other security measures were mentioned.

“It was just unnerving to me as a woman and as a person,” Anthony said, noting that Capitol sergeants otherwise do an adequate job keeping lawmakers inside safe. “These community volunteers today won’t be needed all the time, but they wanted to have a presence today.”

Because Lynn is black, he suspects that cops would’ve been a bit more cautious — and perhaps violent — had his group been as boisterous as some of the crowds last week. He wanted to prove a point that Second Amendment rights aren’t limited on the basis of race.

“I could hear the fear in her voice during that protest,” Lynn explained. “It was the visual of her being that scared to go to work. It meant we had to do something. We came out here today to make sure we could provide some protection, even if it’s only just to make her feel better.”

Much more at the link.

The last time something like this was attempted was when the Black Panthers in California exploited a loophole in California state law and carried unloaded long guns with them everywhere. Including the state capitol to peaceably assemble to petition the state governance for redress of their grievances. While a bunch of nice, white, suburban school kids were visiting on a field trip to have lunch with the recently elected Governor Ronald Reagan. The California legislature pushed significant gun control legislation through and Governor Reagan signed it into law so fast that then 18 year old Wayne LaPierre’s head nearly spun off its axis!

As I wrote up top, it will be very, very, very interesting to see the response to Mr. Lynn’s actions in protecting Representative Anthony.

Open thread!

* Just a quick technical note regarding the tweet. The rifle carried by the guy next to state Representative Anthony is an AR style pistol with a stabilizing brace carbine. So it is not only not a large rifle, but is, at best, an equivalent in size to a short barreled rifle.

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Watching the Creation of Anti-Biden Misinformation & Agitprop In Real Time: All Lines Are Open, All Reporters Are Standing By

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Last night ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik reported by twitter thread on a new allegation against Vice President Biden. This reporting included the actual debunking of the claim, but Pezenik led with the bogus, fabricated allegation in the first couple of tweets before getting to the actual facts that conclusively demonstrated that the allegations were bogus in the subsequent tweets in the thread. Buried lede by twitter thread. Here’s the factual debunking tweets:

Watching Anti-Biden Misinformation & Agitprop In Real Time: All Lines Are Open, All Reporters Are Standing By

And here’s what she has pinned to the top of her page now:

Leaving aside ABC news vetting and standards for reporting, the real problem was that she had the debunking in her reporting, she just buried it beneath a false, but new, scandalous accusation of Vice President Biden’s being sexually inappropriate around and with women. The allegations were pushed to Pezenik by Christine O’Donnell, yes the “I am not a witch” Christine O’Donnell and it involved VP Biden and her niece. As Pezenik’s own reporting, cut and pasted above demonstrates, IT NEVER HAPPENED!!!! O’Donnell is tap dancing on her Facebook page over this as fast as she can, but whatever she thought she was going to achieve for herself by promoting this, she hasn’t.

What she has done, however, with a helpful assist of Pezenik, is get the allegation out there. And that’s all that really matters in the influence operation against Vice President Biden. Tulsi Gabbard’s former deputy policy coordinator amplified it, which brought it to the attention of Rich McHugh, who broke the story of Lynda LaCasse coming forward to provide corroboration for Tara Reade. Corroboration that now appears to have been coached by Reade.

Watching Anti-Biden Misinformation & Agitprop In Real Time: All Lines Are Open, All Reporters Are Standing By 1 Watching Anti-Biden Misinformation & Agitprop In Real Time: All Lines Are Open, All Reporters Are Standing By 2 Watching Anti-Biden Misinformation & Agitprop In Real Time: All Lines Are Open, All Reporters Are Standing By 3

McHugh is also pushing for the University of Delaware archive of Vice President Biden’s personal senatorial papers be opened and accessed immediately. Which, as I explained the other night, will not actually provide any clarity to any of these issues because any personnel documents would be filed with what is now the Senate personnel office because staffers in the House and the Senate officially work for the House or the Senate, not the representative or senator they work for day to day.

It was also, of course, picked up and flogged by Ryan Grim and others who have been pushing Tara Reade’s constantly evolving and adapting allegations.

Watching Anti-Biden Misinformation & Agitprop In Real Time: All Lines Are Open, All Reporters Are Standing By 4

Allegations that have always been impossible to verify and substantiate because there is no time, day, and/or date to her allegations, nor was there ever an actual complaint filed.

What is really going on here, and it is going to accelerate and grow until or unless reporters, editors, and producers get their acts together, is a two pronged influence operation. The first part is to get misinformation about Vice President Biden out into the mainstream media as quickly as possible, Because once it is reported on, no matter how quick the debunking is, the misinformation will be seized on and promoted, while the debunking will, at best, get pointed to by people like me. Pezenik had a legit news story to break last night, but it wasn’t the story she broke. She even had all the pieces to break the real news, which was “failed Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is attempting to smear Vice President Biden with a false allegation, which we were able to debunk with two phone calls. We are continuing our investigation in an attempt to learn why O’Donnell is doing this.” That framing would have allowed Pezenik and ABC News to break the story last night. But that isn’t what they did. O’Donnell and whoever put O’Donnell up to this knows that reporters have a sweet tooth for this type of thing. And they also know that if they can get the allegation out there through a legitimate news source, they will have laundered the misinformation successfully because almost no one they’re trying to message to is going to pay attention to the debunking.

The second part of this influence operation is agitprop. It is to further the President’s, the Republican Party’s, the conservative movement’s, Fox News’s, prominent Republicans’, conservatives’, and their surrogates’ argument that the real and legitimate news sources in the US are actually fake. That they cannot be trusted to report accurately or fairly. It is to create cognitive dissonance where the false and debunked in real time accusations against Vice President Biden are accepted as true, while at the same time the argument that the news media is lying to everyone and can’t be trusted because they botched the story by reporting factually wrong information is reinforced. It is a have your cake and eat it too influence operation. It is also, exactly, what Putin has been trying to do within Russia, within the US, and around the world for well over a decade. It is the attempt to create the dynamic where because nothing is true anything and everything is possible.

Open thread!

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The Real Purpose and Objectives for the Accusations Against Vice President Biden

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I’m not writing to get into the specifics of the allegations made against Vice President Biden by Tara Reade. I will stipulate up front that I was approached about them at the beginning of the month by someone who was very concerned because of what Ms. Reade had written about Russia and Vladimir Putin and asked my professional opinion as someone with experience working on influence operations. At that point I was what allegations? I quickly got up to speed and then took a deep dive based on what was being reported at the beginning of the month – the allegations Ms. Reade is making against VP Biden, the allegations that others have made against Ms. Reade, the interviews she was doing and the reporting about the allegations, the stuff she wrote about Russia – and what has been subsequently reported. Based on that review, I have significant questions about her veracity and her objectives, which I reported back to the person who had reached out to me. Basically, I think there are a lot more questions raised by the interviews she’s done, the corroborating witnesses that have come forward, and the motivations of the biggest names promoting this.

But let’s leave that aside. What I want to focus on is what appears to be the endgame, the actual objective, of bringing the allegations. It is clearly not to seek justice through a prosecution. It’s been almost 30 years and it is a she said/he said type of situation with no physical evidence, no solid accounting of day, date, and time, and no direct witnesses. Rather the endgame, the actual strategic objective, is something else. Specifically it is to manipulate the process, including the process of political and campaign reporters and reporting in the US, and that of the campaign itself to dirty up Vice President Biden with enough voters to drive down his positives, drive up his negatives, and ensure that the President is able to eke out another narrow reelection in the Electoral College despite the outcome of the popular vote.

The people pushing Ms. Reade’s allegation are all invested in seeing Vice President Biden losing. Either being forced out as the Democratic nominee to be replaced by their own preference (Senator Sanders) or losing to the President in the general election. And whether they are dead ender supporters of Senator Sanders or alt-right supporters of the President, they all have their own reasons that don’t always align, but their objective here do overlap. One of the key elements of what they are doing is manipulating process in order to purposefully misinform people about the actual process.

Shortly after Ms. Reade made her allegations, the Senate personnel office indicated they had no documentation indicating that she’d made a complaint of any sort against Vice President Biden back in 1993. This had led to a call for Vice President Biden to allow the University of Delaware, which is the official archive for his professional papers from his time in the US Senate; to waive the agreement that keeps that archive sealed until two years after he ceases to be a public figure so that investigative journalists can search for Ms. Reade’s complaint in those archived documents. This is being done under a call for transparency from people who supported candidates who were the least transparent candidates in 2016 and again in 2020. That small inconsistency aside, there are two major problems here. The first is that these types of complaints would not have been forwarded to the person alleged to have committed the harassment or assault. They would have been kept with the Senate personnel office to protect Ms. Reade as the person making the allegation while any investigation was undertaken. So there will not be anything in Vice President Biden’s senatorial archive to find. And this leads to the second problem, which we can see in this screen grab of a now deleted tweet from Katie Halper from this morning:

A Brief Post On The Endgame for the Accusations Against Vice President Biden

Notice the goalpost moving. Because the archive is currently still being curated and won’t be complete until 2021 and because this type of document is highly unlikely to be there, even if Vice President Biden were to allow a search of the archive, when nothing is found it will be proof of a conspiracy to protect Vice President Biden and to claim that Ms. Reade’s allegations don’t hold up. Does anyone doubt for a minute that if there was anything on file at the Senate personnel office that would harm Vice President Biden’s electoral chances against the President, that Senator McConnell would not have ensured it had been leaked to the news media already?

This is the same type of bad faith argument that is still being made that somehow the Democratic National Committee, which DOES NOT control how each state runs its primaries or caucuses, and which, to be honest, couldn’t organize a one car funeral if you spotted the DNC the hearse, the driver, the deceased, the mourners, the pallbearers, the eulogist, and the grave diggers, has somehow been manipulating things to ensure that Vice President Biden would become the nominee, including forcing Senator Sanders to endorse him. These are the same people who promote the idea that the Democratic establishment, comprised of neo-liberal elites, somehow fixed all the primaries Vice President Biden won; rather than the reality of significant African American support and turnout. The point of these bad faith arguments are to both abuse the process by lying about what it actually is/how things actually work and to get these lies picked up by others who don’t actually understand how American politics – from campaigns to governing/governance – works and therefore believe these conspiracy theories.

This goalpost moving is also tied to adjustments in those supporting Ms. Reade’s allegation. Just as Katie Halper, who did the big interview with Ms. Reade in March that really got traction for the allegations against Vice President Biden, is now deleting tweets that give away her game, so too do deleted tweets by Nathan J Robinson, who is the Editor of Current Affairs, a major supporter of Senator Sanders, and Briahna Joy Gray’s boss when the latter isn’t working as Senator Sanders’ campaign spokeswoman:

A Brief Post On The Endgame for the Accusations Against Vice President Biden 1

I’m not surprised that Robinson deleted these tweets given that he’s revealed he helped Ms. Reade’s brother adjust his recollection corroborating her allegations. Here too we have an attempt, seemingly successful, to manipulate the reporting process about what Ms. Reade’s brother was actually told in 1993.

One final example: Ms. Reade’s formal complaint filed with the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department. The DC Metropolitan Police Department has moved the case to inactive status and closed their investigation after a little more than two weeks. This has been taken by Ms. Reade’s supporters that the DC police are trying to cover up for Vice President Biden. Which followed on them pointing to her filing the formal complaint as evidence that her allegation against Vice President Biden meant that the assault actually happened in 1993. The reality is much simpler, Ms. Reade refused to name Vice President Biden in her complaint. By not doing so, the Metropolitan Police had little choice but to quickly complete their process and inactivate the investigation. But filing the formal complaint was itself an attempt to abuse the process. Filing the complaint was never intended to achieve some form of justice after all these years, but to abuse the process to harm Vice President Biden’s electoral chances. Filing a false police report is itself a crime. By not naming Vice President Biden in her complaint, Ms. Reade cannot be accused of, nor charged with filing a false police report against him if it turns out she is making the allegation up because he is not actually named in the report. The report was a means to and end, but that end wasn’t for Ms. Reade to get justice, it was to get all the major newspapers and the broadcast and cable networks to report that a formal criminal complaint alleging sexual assault and rape had been filed against Vice President Biden. The reality is that such a complaint was not filed against Vice President Biden. It was filed against “Subject-2”.

Regardless of what happened between Vice President Biden and Ms. Reade in 1993, and, to be honest, there is almost no way for anyone to actually ever be sure what, if anything, happened other than Vice President Biden and Ms. Reade, the purposes of the allegation, how that allegation has been brought to light, and how those pushing the allegation the hardest indicates that the objective is not justice for Tara Reade. Rather, the objective is to abuse calls for transparency, abuse law enforcement process, manipulate the process of political and campaign reporters, and manipulate partisans who do not really understand how any of these processes work to dirty up Vice President Biden. Either to try to get him removed as the Democratic nominee or, should that fail, to ensure that his negatives are driven up among key constituencies so that it is possible for the President to once again lose the popular vote while eking out a narrow reelection victory through the Electoral College.

From beginning to end, this is an influence operation similar to the Uranium-1 allegations, the other allegations from the garbage faux investigative book Clinton Cash, allegations that there were nefarious promises to wealthy malefactors in Secretary Clinton’s speech transcripts, and allegations about her emails from 2016. This influence operation relies on abusing calls for transparency and actual transparency to allow for fishing expeditions to find that one thing that would prove the allegations. And when that one thing is never found, because it never existed to begin with, the absence of evidence will be promoted as proof of both a coverup and a conspiracy to coverup. Ms. Reade’s allegation does not appear to be a search for justice long overdue. Rather it has been weaponized for another purpose: to damage Vice President Biden’s electoral chances. As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about influence operations for my professional work, what I would really like to know is who is really driving it and who is really funding it.

Open thread.

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The Senate Select Committee On Intelligence Has Validated the Intelligence Communities Sources, Methods, and Findings That Russia Interfered In the 2016 Election To Help Elect Trump President

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The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has issued the fourth volume of its bipartisan report examining Russian interference in the 2016 elections. This fourth volume specifically focused on reviewing the US Intelligence Community’s (IC) assessment of that interference. The SSCI, in this fourth volume, has validated the IC’s sources, methods, and findings. They also found that multiple intelligence disciplines were used to attribute the hacking to Russia, which debunks the conspiracy theory that someone created the computer evidence to frame Russia. In short, the US IC had multiple sources and used multiple methods to come to this conclusion. The SSCI found that the investigation was properly predicated and undertaken and that there was no political pressure placed on the analysts. The SSCI report noted that the Steele Dossier was not used by the IC as source material for its analysis and assessment and that it is only included in an annex because the FBI insisted it had to be based on the directive the FBI received to conduct its part of the investigation. Finally, and just as importantly, the SSCI has concluded that not only did Russia interfere in the 2016 election, they did so specifically to elect Trump president.

This report undercuts Attorney General Barr’s repeated lies about the investigation into Russian efforts in the 2016 campaign and its efforts to both support the President’s 2016 campaign to ensure his election and to make contacts with the campaign to do so. It also undercuts the basis that AG Barr has provided to US Attorney John Durham as the predicate for his investigation into whether senior Obama administration officials, including Director of National Intelligence Clapper, Director of Central Intelligence Brennan, and Director of the FBI Comey, as well as other senior officials such as Deputy Director McCabe, acted illegally in an attempt to prevent Trump from being elected president. The SSCI’s findings all confirm DOJ IG Horowitz’s own findings, which AG Barr has both misrepresented and ignored. I do not think that this will stop the bogus investigation that AG Barr has tasked US Attorney Durham with conducting.

Here are the findings (bold dashes indicate redacted materials – the big black bars didn’t copy and paste):

I. (U) INTRODUCTION

(U) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence acknowledges the impressive accomplishment in drafting and coordinating the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which was completed as a “Memorandum for the President” on December 30, 2016, – and a declassified version dated January 6, 2017, and made available to the public on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) website. The Committee’s review focused on the highly compartmented “Memorandum to the President.”

II. (U) FINDINGS

1. (U) The Committee found the ICA presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidentialelection. On the analytic lines of the ICA, the Committee concludes that all lines are supported with all-source intelligence, although with varying substantiation. The Committee did not discover any significant analytic tradecraft issues in the preparation or final presentation of the ICA.

(U) The ICA reflects proper analytic tradecraft despite being tasked and completed within a compressed time frame. The compact time frame was a contributing factor for not conducting formal analysis of competing hypotheses.

(U) The differing confidence levels on one analytic judgment are justified and properly represented. Those in disagreement all stated that they had the opportunity to express differing points of view. The decision regarding the presentation of differing confidence levels was the responsibility of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Brennan and the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) Admiral Michael Rogers, both of whom independently expressed to the Committee that they reached the final wording openly and with sufficient exchanges of views.

(U) Multiple intelligence disciplines are used and identified throughout the ICA. Where the Committee noted concerns about the use of specific sources, in no case did the Committee conclude any analytic line was compromised as a result.

(U) In all the interviews of those who drafted and prepared the ICA, the Committee heard consistently that analysts were under no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions. All analysts expressed that they were free to debate, object to content, and assess confidence levels, as is normal and proper for the analytic process.

2. (U) The Committee found that the agencies responsible for the !CA-CIA, NSA, and FBI, under the aegis of ODNI-met the primary tasking as directed by President Obama, which was to assemble a product that reflected the intelligence available to the Intelligence Community (IC) regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.

3. (U) The Committee found that the ICA provides a proper representation of the intelligence collected by CIA, NSA, and FBI on Russian interference in 2016, and this body of evidence supports the substance and judgments of the ICA.

– Regarding FBI, the ICA states, in its “Scope and Sourcing” introduction, that “[w]e also do not include information from ongoing investigations.” – The Committee found that the information provided by Christopher Steele to FBI was not used in the body of the ICA or to support any of its analytic judgments. However, a summary of this material was included in Annex A as a compromise to FBI’s insistence that the information was responsive to the presidential tasking.

4. (U) The Committee found the ICA makes a clear argument that the manner and aggressiveness of the Russian interference was historically unprecedented. However, the ICA and its sources do not provide a substantial representation of Russian interference in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, as the Committee understands was part of the President’s original tasking.
5. (U . . – ) The Committee found that the ICA did not provide a set of policy rec~ations on how to respond to future Russian active measures, which was part of the tasking the President conveyed to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper. The ICA did include, in the compartmented version, an unclassified section independently produced by OHS, FBI, and the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), “OHS/FBI/NIST Recommendations : Options to Protect and Defend US Election Infrastructure and US Political Parties.”

(U) The absence of policy recommendations was deliberate, due to the well-established norm that the IC provides insight and warning to policy makers, but does not itself make policy.

6. (U) The Committee found the ICA would benefit from a more comprehensive presentation of how Russian propaganda-as generated by Russia’s multiple state-owned platforms-was used to complement the full Russian influence campaign.

(U) Open source collection is a long-standing discipline for CIA and other elements of the IC, and open source reporting is used throughout the ICA to support specific analytic assertions. However, open source reporting on RT and Sputnik’s coverage of WikiLeaks releases of Democratic National Committee (DNC) information would have strengthened the ICA’s examination of Russia’s use of propaganda. On this point, the Committee finds that Annex – of the ICA — “Open Source Center Analysis: Russia: Kremlin’s TV Seeks to Influence Politics, Fuel Discontent in US,” published December 12, 2012-should have been updated to provide a summary of Kremlin propaganda in 2016, thereby making a more relevant contribution to the ICA. An update to this assessment was not produced by the Open Source Enterprise until after the publication of the ICA.

7. ———————————————————————————————————————————————– The role of social media has been a significant focus by the Committee and is discussed in a separate volume of this report.

Someone is going to need to do a welfare check on GG and the Intercept crowd. Whomever it is should demand both hazard and danger pay!

Open thread!

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Breaking! CNN Reports that Kim Jong Un In Grave Danger After Surgery

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Public Service Announcement: Ignore the National Polls 2

Jim Sciutto at CNN has just reported that Kim Jong Un is in grave danger after surgery.

The US is monitoring intelligence that North Korea’s leader, is in grave danger after a surgery, according to a US official with direct knowledge.

Kim recently missed the celebration of his grandfather’s birthday on April 15, which raised speculation about his well-being. He had been seen four days before that at a government meeting.

CNN has reached out to the CIA, National Security Council and the State Department for comment. CNN has also sought comment from the South Koreans.

Gathering intelligence out of North Korea is notoriously difficult — one of the most challenging targets for US intelligence.

North Korea tightly controls any information surrounding its leader, who is treated almost like a deity within the country. His absences from official state media often spark speculation and rumors about his health.

North Korea has no free press and is often a black hole when it comes to the country’s leadership. Analysts are heavily reliant on scanning state media dispatches and watching propaganda videos for any semblance of a clue.

Kim last appeared in North Korean state media on April 11. April 15 — North Korea’s most important holiday, the anniversary of the birth of the country’s founding father, Kim Il Sung — came and went without any official mention of Kim Jong Un’s movements.

Experts are unsure of what to make of Kim’s absence from any festivities celebrating his grandfather. When North Korean leaders have not shown up to these important celebrations in the past, it has portended major developments. But it has also turned out to be nothing.

Kim Jong Il’s absence from a parade celebrating North Korea’s 60th anniversary in 2008 was followed by rumblings that he was in poor health. It was later revealed he had a stroke, after which his health continued to decline until his death in 2011.

Kim Jong Un disappeared from the public eye for more than a month in 2014, which also prompted speculation about his health. He returned sporting a cane, and days later South Korean intelligence said that he had a cyst removed from his ankle.

“It’s easy to be wrong on this one,” said John Delury, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

Sciutto’s reporting follows up on reporting from earlier today by Reuters that was a lot less alarming.

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is receiving treatment after undergoing a cardiovascular procedure early this month, a South Korean media report said, amid speculation over Kim’s health following his absence from a key anniversary event.

North Korea marked the anniversary of the birthday of its founding father and Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, as a national holiday on April 15, but Kim was not seen in attendance.

Daily NK, a speciality website run mostly by North Korean defectors, cited unidentified sources inside the isolated state saying Kim is recovering at a villa in the Mount Kumgang resort county of Hyangsan on the east coast after getting the procedure on April 12 at a hospital there.

Reporting from inside North Korea is notoriously difficult, especially on matters concerning the country’s leadership, given tight controls on information.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, declined to comment on the report.

Kim’s health has deteriorated in recent months due to heavy smoking, obesity and overwork, the Daily NK report said.

“My understanding is that he had been struggling (with cardiovascular problems) since last August but it worsened after repeated visits to Mount Paektu,” a source was quoted as saying, referring to the country’s sacred mountain.

Kim left for the hospital after presiding over a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party’s politburo on April 11, where Kim was publicly last seen, the report said.

Because what we need right now is an unstable DPRK!

Open thread!

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I Thought I’d Share an Alain Story: Sourdough Edition

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A number of you all indicated you loved the stories Alain would tell in his posts and his comments. And before I go any farther, I was in touch with Carol today and what you all wrote in your comments to Cole’s post, as well as mine last night and today really made her load a little lighter.

On the 6th I was texting with Alain – I had asked him about upgrading to a new 4k AppleTV as I’ve been running my old one and as a result was unable to watch my superhero cartoons and movies adapted from comic books in glorious 4K Dolbyvision – and I wanted his opinion on whether it was worth it. Yes, I asked a tech guy who was also a tech gear guy if I should upgrade my tech. Silly me!

After establishing that I should upgrade, which I have done (hence the HDMI cable references yesterday), he asked if I wanted some sourdough starter. Before we go any further, while I love sourdough bread, I don’t eat very much of it because I don’t do well with refined carbohydrates and refined sugar. So I largely avoid bread and all the other things I love that are made of refined carbohydrates and include refined sugar. He lulled me in on the sourdough by asking about a candy store in Tallahassee and then segued into the sourdough. Here’s what happened:

(ETA: When I first entered Alain’s information into my phone, I entered it based on how it sounded when he pronounced his last name or how I thought it sounded, so Chamot wound up as Chailmont – don’t judge, I’m tone deaf…)

Alain Chailmont: Look up Lofty Pursuits or Pd.net. Public displays of confection. I’m so jealous you can drive there.

Adam L Silverman: Ok

Alain Chailmont: Just amazing craft and addictive watching. Candy making.

(Adam here: at this point I’m looking up Lofty Pursuits to try to figure out where they are so I can determine how long it will take me to get there)

Adam L Silverman: Ok. That’s a six hour drive depending on traffic. So I could drive there, but I could also drive to Atlanta

Alain Chailmont: Yeah. But it’s a fuck closer for you than me! lol

Adam L Silverman: Yes, but…

Alain Chailmont: You won’t be stopping by, I dig.

Adam L Silverman: Not any time soon. Also, statewide and county wide shelter in place order

Alain Chailmont: Neither will I. I don’t expect business to take me to Tallahassee Which is why I ordered a week and a half ago from them. Can’t wait to get my order.

Adam L Silverman: Gotcha. Enjoy! Time for me to walk the dogs!

Alain Chailmont: Careful of the 🐊

Adam L Silverman:

Floriduh! Man Never Takes a Day Off! Even During a Pandemic!

Alain Chailmont: I showed Carol that earlier, she figured some folk would finally listen because that’s a relatable distance. Lol. Any interest in some Sourdough starter? My new batch is almost ready to dry and I’d be happy to send you a sample.

Adam L Silverman: Passover starts this week so no bread and I also can’t tolerate refined carbohydrates, so I generally avoid bread. But I appreciate the offer. I’m sure TaMara would appreciate a batch!

Alain Chailmont: Just for thought – my primary usage is sourdough pancakes. When the starter is cultivated well, they are so complex. The fermented flour is usually easy on digestion for those with issues.

I’ll send her one!

Adam L Silverman: Okay, send me one. I’ll find a use for it

Alain Chailmont: Shall do. Hott Stuff Sourdough is my brand 😂 it’ll await your efforts indefinitely as long as you keep it dry and in the dark.

Adam L Silverman: Not a problem. Thanks!

By now you’ve noticed that 1) I didn’t actually want any sourdough starter, but…, 2) I threw both Passover and TaMara at him as a distraction, neither of which worked, and 3) when that didn’t work I gave in. What you can’t see in those texts is that I gave in because I could feel through the texts that I wasn’t being a good friend. That the sourdough starter was important to him, so I’d take some and find a use for it because that would make him happy. And because it was an easy thing to do to make him happy. And it did make him happy.

Two days later, feeling the need to extract a bit of payment for knuckling on the sourdough starter, I had this conversation with Alain:

Adam L Silverman: You got Popehat in trouble

Alain Chailmont: Haha lol

Adam L Silverman: Do we need to schedule an intervention?

Alain Chailmont: I. Am. So. Cool. For once.

Adam L Silverman: Don’t let it go to your head

The next day, while kibbitzing about Passover seders, or in my case the lack thereof, Alain returned to sourdough starter:

Alain Chailmont: My new batch dries tomorrow and so i begin shipping again Saturday lol

Adam L Silverman: Just so you know, you can’t sell that stuff within 500 feet of a school or a playground!

And that’s my Alain sourdough story. I didn’t want any, I could feel through the texts on my phone that not wanting any was upsetting him, so I said I’d take some. I’m sure there’s a packet en route in the mail, and I’m going to put it to damn good use in his memory!

By the way, Gretchen Koch an amazing graphic artist with a PhD in religion, she did this on the fly for Popehat:

I Thought I'd Share an Alain Story: Sourdough Edition 1

 

Open thread!

PS – I’ve got a baking/confecting post I’ll put up tomorrow night. I made chocolate coated peanut butter truffles earlier sweetened only with agave. They’re setting up right now in the fridge.

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In Memoriam for Alain Chamot: May His Memory Be a Blessing!

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In Memoriam for Alain Chamot: May His Memory Be a Blessing!

(G. Alain Chamot: 5 February 1971 – 14 April 2020)

I cannot express how sorry I am to have to write this post and inform all of you that Alain passed away sometime in the early morning hours between last night and this morning. He simply did not wake up and efforts to resuscitate him failed. His fiancé Carol has indicated that, as of now, they don’t know what happened. She has let both John and I know that as more information comes in, she’ll update us. And I’ll update you.

Most of you here knew Alain as the guy who kept the (old) site together with spit, baling wire, rubber bands, and a combination of hope and determination that he could stay one step ahead of whatever might stop working next. And that’s how I knew him, and had largely been interacting with him, until something tragic happened: his mom took ill and then died. We were friendly – I’m not sure Alain could be anything other than gregariously friendly – but I wouldn’t have said we were good friends. When his mother became ill, I stepped up communication to check on him. When she died I did what everyone from my religious community does when someone we know has someone pass away: I sent him food. Specifically a batch of brownies. I got his address from John, baked the brownies, and overnighted them too him once cool and set the next day. And with that I had transformed a friendly acquaintance into a friend for life. He called me up after the brownies arrived to thank me and until today, we’ve been in regular touch ever since.

Some of you may know that Alain struggled with his mother’s passing; they were very close. What got him through was his fiancé Carol’s support, his cats, his other hobbies and pursuits, and this place. No matter how frustrated Alain might have gotten with trying to keep the site up or running, he loved this place and everyone here. Just as I know he loved Carol and his cats. And his other passions like fishing, mushrooming, freemasonry, cooking, and baking. Last week I finally succumbed, despite not eating bread – even when it isn’t Passover – and told him to go ahead and send me some of his sourdough starter. I told him I’d find something to use it for and then I’d do a post about it for him. There was just no saying no to his infectious enthusiasm.

Alain and I talked about once a month on the phone, but we texted far more often. He was always excited about something. A fishing trip he was planning – the pandemic put that one on hold. Or the house hunting and then house purchase that he and Carol spent most of last year doing. Or some new cooking project he was working on. Or, more recently, now that he and Carol had finally found their house, bought it, and moved in, getting to work on the wedding plans.

We never met in person. Every time I was scheduled to go to DC for meetings, like last month, something came up. And when I was informed last August I was moving to the DC area for work, Alain was, if possible, more excited than I was and he had plenty of suggestions for what I thought would be my relocation. That assignment didn’t happen. And it is to my now everlasting regret that I never made it to the DC area over the past four years so we could meet in person.

Just yesterday we were texting about something completely trivial – HDMI cables. His last text to me, when I informed him the right cable had arrived by delivery, was “Excelsior!”. I almost called him today, about a 1/2 hour before John sent me the bad news. I had a stupid tech issue I was trying to fix for my mom, but decided it was so trivial there was no reason to bother him – I could look it up online. Alain never failed to make time when my mom needed tech help beyond my basic abilities. He never met her, I think he spoke to her once on FaceTime while he was walking me through troubleshooting whatever was the problem on her computer. But he was always there if I needed help.

And I don’t know a better way to sum him up: he was always there if I needed help. He was always infectiously gregarious. And he was always excited about something: Carol, his cats, freemasonry, opera, his other hobbies, and just life.

Let’s all keep his fiancé Carol in our thoughts. And for those of you who do such things, our prayers as well.

 

In Memoriam for Alain Chamot: May His Memory Be a Blessing!

G. Alain Chamot: 5 February 1971 – 14 April 2020.

May his memory be a blessing.

Open thread!

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Breaking: Jill Karofsky Has Defeated Scott Walker Appointed Incumbent Dan Kelly!

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Wisconsin Needs Our Help

(Iron Brigade Forward – The 2nd Wisconsin Infantry Leg by Major General John Reynolds at Gettysburg painting by Mark Maritato)

We have some really good news out of Wisconsin this evening! Jill Karofsky, the liberal challenger, has defeated the Scott Walker appointed incumbent on the Wisconsin state supreme court!

Dan Kelly wasn’t just a conservative judge, whatever that actually means any more given what we’ve seen over the past several years, he was an unapologetic racist too.

The Wisconsin supreme court still has a conservative majority with 4 conservative justices to what will be 3 liberal justices once Justice-elect Karofsky is sworn in. Which is definitely better than the 5-2 conservative majority should soon to be former Justice Kelly been reelected to a ten year term.

For all the Wisconsites that braved the bad weather and potential exposure to COVID-19, well done!!!!

Open thread!

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Floriduh! Woman Does Easter If You Know What I Mean & I Think You Do…

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Like Floriduh! Man, Floriduh! Woman is can’t be bargained with. She can’t be reasoned with. She doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And she absolutely will not stop, ever…

From the Flagler, County Sheriff’s Office:

Woman Arrested for Putting Easter Eggs with Explicit Content in Mailboxes

Since Sunday, April 5, 2020, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) has received numerous calls from local residents throughout Flagler County stating that they found a plastic Easter egg in their mailbox that contained pornographic images, non-threatening references to local churches and county buildings, and other miscellaneous items.

On Wednesday evening, FCSO received multiple calls from residents reporting that a female was once again placing plastic eggs in mailboxes, this time on Hernandez Avenue. Corporal Jacob had previously identified the suspect vehicle as a 2004 silver Honda Civic. FCSO’s Problem Area Crime Enforcement (PACE) Unit began to search areas where the reports were coming from. At 11:19 p.m., PACE located the vehicle traveling north on Belle Terre Parkway at Whiteview Parkway and a traffic stop was conducted.

During the investigation, 42-year-old Abril Cestoni (DOB 4/10/1977) admitted to placing the items in the mailboxes stating that she was educating people. There was a bag full of pornographic material inside the vehicle and she told deputies that she had distributed over 400 pamphlets in the past few days throughout Flagler County. Cestoni did not have any symptoms of COVID-19.

“Our team did a great job in tracking this deranged offender down and taking her into custody,” Sheriff Rick Staly said. “Thankfully she did not appear to be sick with COVID-19 symptoms, but she certainly needs some help. This again proves that ‘see something, say something’ works and we thank the community for being part of our guardianship policing philosophy.”

Cestoni was arrested and charged with 11 counts of Distributing Obscene Material. It was also determined that Cestoni did not have a valid driver’s license. She was additionally charged with Driving with a Suspended License and Violating Executive Order 20-91 for conducting travel not related to essential activity. She was booked into the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility and is being held on a $7,000.00 bond.

Cestoni has previously been arrested in Flagler County for Driving with a Suspended License, Writ of Bodily Attachment, and Failure to Appear for a Traffic Summons.

Additional charges may be pending as the investigation continues.

Easter is named for a fertility goddess after all.

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Floriduh! Woman Does Easter If You Know What I Mean & I Think You Do…Post + Comments (63)

Floriduh! Man Never Takes a Day Off! Even During a Pandemic!

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From WPTV Channel 5 in West Palm Beach:

Florida authorities tracking a stolen car also discovered heroin, cocaine, guns and a baby alligator when they went to make an arrest.

Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma announced details of the bust at a news conference Friday.

He said a deputy ran the plates on a car, learned it was stolen and followed it to a Lake Mary house.

That’s where deputies found the drugs and a baby alligator that was being kept as a pet.

Since it is Floriduh!, I can pretty much guarantee that the baby alligator will be charged and tried as an adult!

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Wisconsin Needs Our Help

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Wisconsin Needs Our Help

(Iron Brigade Forward – 2nd Wisconsin Infantry Led By General John Reynolds – Battle Of Gettysburg painting by Mark Maritato)

Earlier today the US Supreme Court, which has cancelled oral arguments for the first time since the 1918 FT Riley flu pandemic and can’t figure out how to use Zoom, Google hangouts, or the secure system that the Intel Community is using to telework, ruled 5-4 that Wisconsin would not be allowed to extend the deadline for absentee/vote by mail votes to be returned. The 5 Republican appointed justices overruled two lower Federal court rulings. In conjunction with the partisan 4-2 ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court that Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers does not have the power to unilaterally move tomorrow’s presidential primary, as well as state judicial, other state and local elections, this means that Wisconsin’s elections will go on as schedule tomorrow. No matter how deadly that may be. And no matter how many voters might be disenfranchised because they are either too scared to go out and risk infection to vote or because election officials have had to close the vast majority of Wisconsin’s polling places.

Wiscon needs our help. Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party has been doing yeoman’s work for months to prevent the created by an egregious partisan gerrymander Republican majority state legislature and state Supreme Court from screwing around with the elections for Republican partisan purposes. Both the presidential primary and state and local elections tomorrow and the general election in November. Wikler has put out an appeal for help. And you don’t have to live in Wisconsin to heed his call.

So if you have some time tomorrow and are willing to make some calls or texts, go to the links below and help out. The earlier the better would probably be most helpful.

This shouldn’t be partisan, but the Wisconsin Republican majority state legislature, the Republican state supreme court justices, and the Republican appointees on the US Supreme Court have decided that they, to quote President Lincoln from his Cooper Union speech, are only interest in ruling or ruining.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

To make phone calls, use this link.

To send texts, use this link.

What Wikler wants everyone to do who can make calls and/or texts is to tell Wisconsin voters:

If you have an absentee ballot in Wisconsin, you have to either put it in the mail so that it’s postmarked tomorrow, Tuesday 4/7, or drop it off in person by 8pm at your clerk’s office. It must arrive by Monday, 4/13.

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Wisconsin Needs Our HelpPost + Comments (81)