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Connecting the dots of the Russia investigation

September 5, 2018September 3, 2018 by AZ BlueMeanie

The problem average Americans have with the Special Counsel’s Russia investigation is understanding how the multifaceted bits of information publicly reported over the past two years all fit together like puzzle pieces that come together into a clear picture.

Two new efforts to connect the dots of the Russia investigation are now available.

Craig Unger, an investigative journalist and writer who was deputy editor of the New York Observer and was editor-in-chief of Boston Magazine and a contributor to Vanity Fair, and the author of previous books such as House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties (2004) and The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America’s Future (2007), is out with a new book, House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia (2018).

The Washington Post book review by Shane Harris explains (excerpts):

Based on his own reporting and the investigative work of a former federal prosecutor, Unger posits that through Bayrock, Trump was “indirectly providing Putin with a regular flow of intelligence on what the oligarchs were doing with their money in the U.S.”

Spike Lee’s ‘BlacKkKlansman’ premiers today, and just in time

August 9, 2018 by AZ BlueMeanie

Wednesday night on her primetime show The Ingraham Angle, Fox News host Laura Ingraham whitesplained that “the America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people,” she said, in the form of documented and undocumented immigrants. Laura Ingraham’s Anti-Immigrant Rant Was So Racist It Was Endorsed by Ex-KKK Leader David Duke:

Minutes later, Duke tweeted praise for Ingraham.

“One of the most important (truthful) monologues in the history of MSM,” he wrote above a clip of Ingraham’s rant. He later deleted the tweet.

* * *

Ingraham blamed the left for pushing out whites.

“From Virginia to California, we see stark examples of how radically, in some ways, the country has changed,” Ingraham said. “Now, much of this is related to both illegal and in some cases legal immigration that, of course, progressives love.”

Ingraham’s white grievances/white fears racist jeremiad is strangely perfectly timed for the premier of Spike Lee’s new film, BlacKkKlansman (opening in Tucson theaters today), a comedy based upon the true story of a black cop with the Colorado Springs Police Department in the 1970s who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan by posing as a rabid racist and anti-Semite. (The aforementioned David Duke is portrayed in the film). ‘BlacKkKlansman’ a masterful reality check from Spike Lee:

Link to Movie Trailer.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter all that much if a movie is based on a true story or has sprung fully from the imagination of the screenwriter.

But in the case of Spike Lee’s searing, electric and sometimes flat-out funny “BlacKkKlansman,” knowing we’re seeing a dramatization of real-life events definitely helps — because if this were pure fiction, it would just seem too unbelievable.

Mr. Spock voyages to the final frontier

February 27, 2015 by AZ BlueMeanie

“I have been, and always shall be, your friend.” — Spock, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan

Spock: Do not grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many, outweigh…

Kirk: The needs of the few.

Spock: Or the one.

A sad day for Trekkers. Leonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83:

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.

His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Mr. Nimoy announced that he had the disease last year, attributing it to years of smoking, a habit he had given up three decades earlier. He had been hospitalized earlier in the week.

Sony capitulates to cyber-terrorist threat from North Korea

December 18, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

With normalization of relations with Cuba, that leaves only one Communist country in the world with which the U.S. does not maintain relations: the “Hermit Kingdom” of North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).

This will be a tougher nut to crack. North Korea is a cult of personality, with its citizens required to worship Dear Leader, Li’l Kim (Kim Jong-un), as a demigod.

Pick up a copy of Without You, There Is No Us, by Suki Kim for a description of life in North Korea. This place is a seriously effed up hell hole.

It turns out that Li’l Kim and the Hermit Kingdom are sensitive to criticism. I mean really sensitive to any criticism. Remember the controversy over Team America: World Police (2004) by South Park creators Trey Parker, Matt Stone,and Pam Brady? Li’l Kim’s old man, Kim Jong-il was parodied in the film, and North Korea sought to ban the film in the Czech Republic. The Czechs told them to go pound sand.

Ten years later his son Li’l Kim apparently has ratcheted things up a notch, or two, or three.

Sony Pictures scheduled a Christmas day release of a supposed action-comedy, The Interview, in which the plot is that two producers of a popular celebrity tabloid TV show are recruited by the CIA to assassinate Kim Jong-un during an interview, after they discover the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is a fan of their show.

Yeah, assassinations are hilarious. Not at all inappropriate, especially on Christmas day.

North Korea is alleged to have hired some computer hackers to hack into Sony Pictures. The hackers call themselves the Guardians of Peace (probably because the Guardians of the Galaxy was already taken) and recently threatened violence against movie theater patrons if the movie was released.

Riiight. Somehow I can’t imagine computer hackers wanting to get their hands dirty with actual physical acts of terrorism and a risk of being captured or killed. That’s not their thing. This is the equivalent of someone phoning in a bomb threat. Nevertheless, Sony Pictures panicked and pulled the movie from release.