Media are reporting a decision in a copyright lawsuit between the estate of Marvin Gay and singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran. The jury has found Ed Sheeran did not violate any copyright infringement.
This sort of issue is not generally anything that interests me. However, I watched a great video a few days ago that encapsulates the issues in the lawsuit very well, and it presents an interesting set of questions. This is a really good video even if you have not paid attention. WATCH:
Two weeks ago, I wrote, “If Susan Rice is departing, the question becomes how the club removes Biden from the 2024 race? There are a multitude of approaches and leverages available for the Lightbringer’s team, which includes Deputy AG Lisa Monaco at Main Justice.” (more)
Looks like today we have our answer. [House Letter to DOJ] – [House Subpoena]
WASHINGTON – Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member and long-time whistleblower advocate Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) today are demanding the FBI produce an unclassified record alleging a criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden and a foreign national. The document, an FBI-generated FD-1023 form, allegedly details an arrangement involving an exchange of money for policy decisions. Comer issued a subpoena today following legally protected disclosures to Grassley’s office.
“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States. What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further. The FBI’s recent history of botching politically charged investigations demands close congressional oversight,” Grassley said.
“The information provided by a whistleblower raises concerns that then-Vice President Biden allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national. The American people need to know if President Biden sold out the United States of America to make money for himself. Senator Grassley and I will seek the truth to ensure accountability for the American people,” Comer said.
The easiest way to cut through the pretending nonsense is to ask the obvious question, ‘Why now?‘
The Florida Republican Legislature is changing the Sunshine Laws in Florida to block people from reviewing the travel records of the Florida Governor. [HB1495 Link]
The claimed justification is security, to protect the governor and high-ranking state officials. However, the obvious timing of Ron DeSantis pending run for the White House, in combination with his administration refusing to give details on who/how the funding for his private charter flights have been taking place during the “book tour,” makes the new law much more suspicious as constructed.
As noted within a Politico article on this subject: […] flight tracking records show that a private chartered jet last week flew from Austin, Texas, to Japan to South Korea to Israel to London and then, over the weekend, stopped in Boston before finally winding up in Tallahassee. Those stops coincide with the governor’s movements for the past week.
No reply at all — It has been previously stated that this trip is being paid by private donations to Enterprise Florida, the public-private economic development agency that is about to be dismantled by the Legislature. But a spokesperson for Enterprise Florida has not responded to questions as to why a chartered jet — which is likely to be tremendously expensive — was used for DeSantis’ trip. The agency was also asked about how much this will ultimately cost. (read more)
If we stop playing this silly game of pretending, we will accept the billionaire donors who are funding the ‘STOP TRUMP’ operation are likely the same donors who are funding the ‘BOOK TOUR’; who are the same donors who funded the new branding and consulting group in 2022; who are the same donors funding the apparatus of the DeSantis stealth campaign. More succinctly, his control handlers.
Office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified April 27, 2023, that more than 3.4 million search queries into the NSA database took place between Dec. 1st, 2020 and Nov. 30th, 2021, by government officials and/or contractors working on behalf of the federal government. These search queries were based on authorizations related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Approximately 30% of those 3.4 million search queries were outside the rules and regulations that govern warrantless searches, what the politically correct government calls “non-compliant searches.” That means more than 1 million searches of private documents and communication of Americans were illegal and outside the rules.
Additionally, IG Horowitz also admitted that somewhere north of 10,000 federal employees have access to conduct these searches of the NSA database; a database which contains the electronic data of every single American, including emails, text messages, social media posts, instant messages, direct messages, phone calls, geolocation identifiers, purchases by electronic funds, banking records and any keystroke any American person puts into any electronic device for any reason.
If we were in a functioning system of government everything would be stopped right now, and no conversation would be taking place that was not about this issue. This is the total and complete surveillance state being talked about as if we were discussing what’s for dinner.
This is beyond jaw-dropping.
Victor Davis Hanson often has a unique big picture perspective on current events, linking and contrasting the disconnected high-brow outlook to the pragmatic perspectives of the modern populist movement.
Hanson takes an academic approach to the reality of current social constructs, yet in his own unique way he can describe the current status in a thoughtful and practical way. In this analysis VDH contrasts the goals of the ideological media, specifically the goals of those in the Republican wing of the media control apparatus, to the reality they have created by removing the voice of Tucker Carlson. WATCH:
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In their quest to control the mounting opposition to the corporate manipulation behind the DC Potemkin Village, the corporate media are creating a nimbler and more consequential army of opposition to their efforts. The need for control is a reaction to fear.
There is a particular type of spider that carries several hundreds of young on her body after birth. If you spot one of these in your shower, and your irrational fear instinct is to smash what seems to be a big scary spider, what you discover in the aftermath is the bathtub walls moving. Yes, you may have squished the spider, but hundreds of smaller spiders are now crawling all around you.
Comrade rebels, a remarkable bit of independent journalism by Lee Fang, who interviews a high-ranking Ukraine intelligence official named Ilia Vitiuk.
Within the interview the head of the Ukraine Cyber Information Security Service admits to how they use the FBI to pressure Facebook into removing content the Ukraine government doesn’t like.
[…] “Once we have a trace or evidence of disinformation campaigns via Facebook or other resources that are from the U.S., we pass this information to the FBI, along with writing directly to Facebook,” said llia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine.
“We asked FBI for support to help us with Meta, to help us with others, and sometimes we get good results with that,” noted Vitiuk. “We say, ‘Okay, this was the person who was probably Russia’s influence.'” (read more)
Apparently, Ukraine is as strong a democracy as the United States. Where the strength of democracy is defined by the thin-skinned sensibility of the government that must censor any voice that speaks against their policy.
All correct and good thinking citizens speak favorably about their government comrades.
To give scale to the growing insignificance of broadcast news networks, consider this fact-based analysis.
Tucker Carlson released a two-minute video on Twitter that had 72.7 million views in 24 hours. The entire cable news industry combined, every show on every channel, over the corresponding timeframe had 53.1 million views. [Graphic Source]
[ DATA SOURCE ]
Tucker Carlson had more viewers than the combined total legacy media cable news networks combined.
Yeah, there are more of us than them…. and Tucker Carlson is the most powerful man in the media right now.
Office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified yesterday that more than 3.4 million search queries into the NSA database took place between Dec. 1st, 2020 and Nov. 30th, 2021, by government officials and/or contractors working on behalf of the federal government. These search queries were based on authorizations related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Approximately 30% of those 3.4 million search queries were outside the rules and regulations that govern warrantless searches, what the politically correct government calls “non-compliant searches.”
Additionally, IG Horowitz also admitted that somewhere north of 10,000 federal employees have access to conduct these searches of the NSA database; a database which contains the electronic data of every single American, including emails, text messages, social media posts, instant messages, direct messages, phone calls, geolocation identifiers, purchases by electronic funds, banking records and any keystroke any American person puts into any electronic device for any reason.
If we were in a functioning system of government everything would be stopped right now, and no conversation would be taking place that was not about this issue. This is the total and complete surveillance state being talked about as if we were discussing what’s for dinner.
This is beyond jaw-dropping.
If you are deep in the political research weeds about the weaponization of government, there is a letter from lawyers representing President Trump to the chair of the House Intel Committee that is very interesting [pdf available here].
The letter is written to HPSCI Chair Mike Turner and copied to the other seven members of the gang-of-eight in the Senate and House. The letter outlines the details of the documents that became the contested issue between the DOJ-National Security Division (‘NSD’, important distinction), specifically a DOJ-NSD official named Jay Bratt, and the attorney for President Trump, Mr. Evan Corcoran.
The letter is fascinating because it outlines how the process of moving documents from the White House was weaponized by a politically motivated National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”), and the letter also gives fulsome context to the types of “classified materials” that have been insanely over emphasized by media.
[…] “Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty, two of the undersigned counsel for President Trump, reviewed all 15 boxes at NARA earlier this year and based on that review, it is clear to us what happened. The boxes contain all manner of documents from the White House, are loosely grouped by date, and include newspapers, magazines, notes, letters, and daily schedules. Following its review of the materials, NARA inserted placeholder pages where it had removed documents with classification markings. That allowed Messrs. Parlatore and Trusty to discern what the documents were, as well as what other materials in the boxes were in the proximity of the marked documents when the White House staff packed them. The vast majority of the placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls.” (page 3, pdf link)
Additionally, get this part… despite the standard process that has been in place for the prior four administrations, the NARA refused to participate in the collection of any documents from the White House during the transition phase following the November 2020 election.
The NARA refused to assist in the collection of the Trump records for national archive holding and review, and then the NARA triggered a sequence of events that led to the DOJ using a reference from the NARA, to weaponize a process they refused to engage in. The NARA refused to do their specialized bureaucratic job, and then the NARA used what they defined as an incomplete job as a reason to refer the outcome to the DOJ. The details are quite interesting.
For his daily podcast and discussion segment, UK pundit Neil Oliver puts the firing of Tucker Carlson into a unique context of human behavior. Tucker is taken down like a trophy in the psychology of those who weaponize power. Additionally, Oliver hits on a few points that are very accurate – albeit with some who would disagree – about the need for control being a reaction to fear.
The decisionmakers in the Carlson issue removed his voice from a position of weakness, not strength. The decisionmakers, namely the Ruper Murdoch team, fear Carlson. Lastly, as Oliver accurately notes, history is a wheel – and during travel there are times in the orbit of the wheel when the component part is traveling backwards. WATCH:
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As you listen to the outline, remember the position of Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, David Plouffe, “it is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again.”… There is a ring of historical human brutality to it.