After testing the winds of public opinion, weighing all of the various pros and cons, and taking a full day to analyze the financial cost of the decision, CNN has decided to fire Kathy Griffin for advocating the beheading of President Donald Trump.

The delay clearly shows the decision had less to do with the jaw-dropping scope of the expressed violent behavior, and more to do with the financial considerations of the relationship.

NEW YORK – CNN has booted Kathy Griffin from its New Year’s Eve coverage for her disturbing photoshoot holding up a faux severed and bloody head of President Trump.

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• Remember the media’s apoplectic outrage when Sarah Palin was accused of using “targets” on congressional districts?  Oh, the outrage over optical violence.
• Remember the media’s collective angst when the Rodeo clown was driven out of a job for wearing a Barack Obama Halloween mask?  Oh, the outrage.
• Remember all the media accusations and protestations about Donald Trump supporters being violent?  Oh, the outrage… etc.

Well:  This is CNN !!

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Related:  Hollywood Box Office Has Worst Memorial Day weekend in Two Decades

Reminder: Politics might be downstream from Hollywood’s pop culture, but Hollywood’s pop culture is downstream from economics.

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This interview is really quite funny.  Former Governor John Sununu, a vocal 2016 critic of the Trump campaign for the presidency, appears on CNN and completely takes apart the nothingburger narrative surrounding the ‘Vast-Russian-Conspiracy’ theory.

On one hand it’s refreshing and, well, quite funny to see someone pointing out the absurdity of the nonsense.  However, on the other hand the entire narrative has become so ridiculous it’s destroying the legacy media itself; we really don’t want to see the media drop the nonsense because their tenuous grip on it actually helps marginalize them.

Hi John!  Governor Sununu is correct albeit under-emphasized in some points.  John Brennan (CIA) and James Clapper (ODNI) have thrown the entire hot mess into the lap of former FBI Director James Comey.

Funny Watch:  “How Much Crow Are You Going To Eat?“…

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Camerota and CNN are fully immersed in Baghdad Bob level absurdity.

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Quick, to the fainting couches. T-Rex’s State Department is offending the delicate sensibilities of Andrea Mitchell.

The offenses?

• Not enough advanced notice of press briefings; and, wait for it, O.M.G, the horror, • Secretary Tillerson had the audacity to ride his motorcycle and never asked permission from State Department Correspondents.

This Must Not Stand !!

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President Trump’s EU strategy is swimmingly effective. Truly, President Trump’s multinational approach is jaw-droppingly transparent (they’ve obviously never read any of Trump’s books), and today France’s Emmanuel Macron showed just how thoroughly disconnected he is from understanding his own position.

Wunderkind Emmanuel Macron, following the exact same advisory recommendations which planted egg on Obama’s face, threatens Vladimir Putin and Bashir Assad with a red-line of military action if chemical weapons are used in Syria:

“Any use of chemical weapons would results in reprisals and an immediate riposte, at least where France is concerned,” Macron said, standing next to Putin in the Versailles palace outside of Paris.  (link)

Emmanuel Macron threatening unilateral action if Syria’s Bashar Assad uses chemical weapons? Hilarious, if it wasn’t so substantively dangerous.

The orbit of influence surrounding the wunderkind (all caviar liberal socialists) have convinced Macron that now is the time to project a strong EU image to compensate for President Trump’s bold stance pointing out the EU need to step out from behind the skirt of NATO and provide for their own defense.  Politically, Macron’s yapping might play well with a domestic or EU centric audience…. (more…)

President Trump’s political opposition, including Most Swamp Media (MSM), have claimed he went too far in calling out NATO members for their lack of funding their own military and security apparatus.

During President Trump’s latest trip to NATO he stated publicly they needed to improve and do it quickly.  The media expressed a position that President Trump was too direct; however, what the media never shows is how far out of balance the entire financial system is for NATO.

The members of NATO agreed to spend at least 2% of their GDP on their own internal defense and security.   Most people are probably familiar with a graphic such as below which appears on CNN website explaining the dynamic:

However, what is rarely added to the discussion is the scope of the U.S. GDP in comparison to other nation states.  For us to spend 3.61% of our massive GDP ($18.5 Trillion) is actually $670,344,000,000  That represents 76.11% of the entire NATO budget.

In the graphic below I’ve added the GDP and extended the math to show how much the United States actually pays in whole dollars in comparison to the top 10 NATO member nations:

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Those who followed the 2016 presidential campaign might remember when Senator Ted Cruz was discovered to have hidden $1.3 million in campaign “loans” from Goldman Sachs and Citibank during his 2012 campaign for the senate.

At the heart of the issue was a failure of Ted and Heidi Cruz to list Wall Street “loans” on the required Federal Election Commission financial reports.

Beyond the financing was the most likely reality that Goldman Sachs insiders were actually financing Senator Cruz and using “loans” as a tool to skirt campaign finance laws.

During the heat of the 2016 primary campaign the Cruz Team, and the legions of supporters therein, vociferously defended the revelations and stated there was no issue with their campaign filings.

In response to the issue the Ted Cruz campaign said they’ll go through the enforcement mechanism of the FEC instead of the compliance division for resolution.

By going through the “enforcement division” (took over a year) they would delay any damaging information from discovery until after the 2016 Presidential Election.

Well, the enforcement division of the FEC finally made a decision as to the entire construct of the dubious campaign financing: (more…)

Reuters/Washington Post Puts a Slice of Kushner Cheese on Russian Nothingburger and simultaneously prove the Obama Administration was spying on the Trump campaign.

The extent of the U.S. media’s straw-grasping is boundless, but this one is going to backfire. HOPEFULLY.  For the most recent example consider the Washington Post and Reuters claiming President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner participating in a proposal to set up a back-channel with Russia for communication after the November 8th election.

Firstly, Reuters and The Washington Post are idiots in their claimed “exclusive” bombast, etc.  UPI reported on the nothingburger back-channel Russian construct on April 3rd.  This “breaking” news is old news, and old nothingburger news at that.

Of course President-elect Trump’s staff would consider a back-channel set up for communications with Russian government officials in November and December 2016, just about everyone with a tinge of common sense was saying that exact construct was needed.

Why?

Well, you must remember the atmosphere after the November 8th election during the time period being discussed.  President Obama, in close coordination with his U.S. media allies, was filling the airwaves with toxic anti-Russian narratives in an explicit attempt to make any structural positive relationship between the pending Trump administration and Russia impossible.

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Too funny.  Um, I don’t think the political opinion writers at ABC are “writing” that headline with the same perspective as voters “reading” it.  [Story Here]

Republican candidate Greg Gianforte easily won his election bid for congress.   The media are apoplectic about the brazen victory – without even considering the possibility that Gianforte is less angry with national media than the voters who elected him.

Like a boss.  President Trump throws the irony into hyper-drive telling the entire group of NATO socialists: it’s time to pay their fair share.

[Transcript] 4:39 P.M. CEST – PRESIDENT TRUMP:  Thank you very much, Secretary General Stoltenberg.  Chancellor Merkel, thank you very much.  Other heads of state and government, I am honored to be here with members of an alliance that has promoted safety and peace across the world.

Prime Minister May, all of the nations here today grieve with you and stand with you.  I would like to ask that we now observe a moment of silence for the victims and families of the savage attack which took place in Manchester.  (A moment of silence is observed.)  Thank you.  Terrible thing.

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