CLUES

 I will start by admitting that I am well aware that two things which are not the same are different.

Now that that’s out of the way and there is no need to tell me one is not the other, take a look at the reich-wing response to their murder of Alex Pretti.  Note how they decided what had happened prior to watching the video or getting all the facts.  Note how they manufactured reasons that he caused the problem that had no basis in reality.  Note how him being disarmed did not stop them from shooting him.  Note how him being facedown on the ground being assaulted by multiple individuals did not stop them from shooting him in the back 10 times.

Think about the fact that in this day and age when most everyone has a camera close at hand at all times.  Think about them knowing there was video and stills from multiple angles that most anyone on the interwebs could access and that several tens of millions had accessed.  With all the direct, independent recordings of the murder seen by all those citizens, the (mis)administration and their reich-wing supporters focused on doing two things.  

They lied.  They lied about what actually happened.  They lied about the actions Pretti took.  They lied about Pretti’s intentions.  They lied about what we actually saw.  They lied.

They refused to release any bodycam footage they had (and as of 1/31/26, still haven’t).  

Those two things are what they led with, lies and obfuscation. Does that feel familiar?

While they are not the same by any stretch, if you take that mindset and behaviour pattern referenced above and apply it to the attacks on small fishing craft owned and operated by citizens of other nations, it should not be comforting.  If they are willing to lie so boldly and obviously when there are multiple video and still recordings freely available, what might they tell us when we have no access to information about the events?

Hollywood movies have conditioned us to expect a grand reveal whenever there is a criminal conspiracy.  In the real world, tenuously connected clues do a lot of the heavy lifting. In investigative circles, the Good and Pretti murders, though they are definitely crimes in their own right, would be considered a clue when looking at other actions and declarations of the criminal cabal associated with Felon47.

PAY ATTENTION DAMMITT!!

 I catch a fair amount of shit because I think words ought to be used according to their meaning.  Oh sure, if you want to use a word colloquially or as slang in an informal conversation, fine.  But for anything official and/or anything where the meaning needs to be clear and unambiguous, pick one of the first two definitions and go with that.

Back in the day I had a house with a phone mounted on the wall.  I wasn’t particularly unique in that.  Most folks who had a house had a phone or ten mounted to various walls or sitting on tables.  Pocket phones did not exist, we used those installed, hardwired, heavy, limited-range phones a lot.

Since most everyone with a house had a phone, they used to print up these large books with “white” pages that contained the phone numbers and addresses of everyone with a phone that did not request to be “unlisted”.  These days, we walk around with our phones in our pockets or purses and while not everyone does it, an awful lot of the business cards I have been handed over the last decade or so comes with that pocket phone number on them.

dox

/däks/

verbinformal

verb: dox; 3rd person present: doxes; past tense: doxed; past participle: doxed; gerund or present participle: doxing; verb: doxx; 3rd person present: doxxes; past tense: doxxed; past participle: doxxed; gerund or present participle: doxxing

• search for and publish private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the internet, typically with malicious intent.

Unless the supervisor’s of the individual that murdered Alex Pretti in Minneapolis are harboring malicious intent towards him, it would not be “doxxing” to reveal his name.  As a matter of fact, it is generally accepted that for any job that is not criminal in nature, the employer is well within reason to know their employee’s name and contact info.  As a taxpaying citizen of the USA, that murderous POS is my employee.  Unless you are admitting that the criminality was the goal from the beginning, you need to admit that revealing his info would not be doxxing.

Speaking of those particularly heinous assaults, I have been to numerous protests.  I carried signs and participated in the chants and in general, attempted to make known my displeasure at the actions of those allegedly acting on my behalf.  I was a protester.  Not everyone at the protests was.  I have seen folks who appeared to be taking the path they normally took to get where they were going and that path happened to take them through a protest that they may or may not have known was happening.  I have seen folks there because they were in opposition to the protest.  I have also seen folks who appeared to be there simply to observe.  Some might have been “professional” journalists.  Some might have been citizen journalists.  Some might have been doing opposition research or they might be there for other reasons.  My point being that not everyone at a protest qualifies as a protester.

I will admit that I have been too angry to follow the news as closely as I normally do.  In the service of self protection, I have had to look away as much as I can.  Still, I am comfortable stating that I have not seen a single photo or a single second of video that makes me think either Good or Pretti were protesters.  They were clearly observers - whether or not they claimed the mantle of journalist.  Pretti appeared to be attempting to use his nursing training to assist those in physical distress.  Neither of them carried signs.  I have seen no video of them participating in chants.  They did not call for violence against the jack-booted government thugs.  They were citizens and they were supposed to be citizens with rights.

If you choose to do the Nazi’s work and refer to the victims using terms that provide cover for the criminals that murdered them, don’t be surprised to find your own name on the Nazi roles.  When those two in particular were murdered, they were OBSERVING not protesting.  They were murdered for observing.  They had their Constitutionally mandated rights summarily taken from them for observing.  Even if you know for a fact that they hated the shit Felon47 and his goon squad are doing, at the time of their murders they were simply observers and that is how you need to describe it.  It would have been inexcusably wrong for them to have been murdered for protesting.  It is still worse IMNSHO, that they were murdered for observing.

Do not do the Nazi’s work for them.  When Good and Pretti were murdered, they were not protesting by any understanding of the word I have seen in common usage.  Call out the Nazi lies when you see them.  Use the words as though they have meaning.  Otherwise, the Nazi’s will continue acting as though none of the words in the Constitution have any meaning.

AVERAGE DAY

 Sometimes it starts before I actually get up.  I pick up the remote and start a Belle Of The Ranch video (prior to her I watched her husband Beau Of The 5th Column).  

Once I get going good, and according to the day, I might catch up with the opening monologues of the late night talk shows.  There is a surprising amount of actual information that is disseminated as the butt of a joke.  Also, Colbert, Kimmel, Myers, Fallon and whoever is hosting The Daily Show, have shown a consistent willingness to incorporate stories that are negative - in general or about them - into their monologue.  I trust them but if I am unfamiliar with whatever story or event they reference, I use that as a jumping off point to do a touch of research on my own.

Then there is the broad panoply of Meidas Touch network contributors.  TN Brando, Brian Tyler Cohen, Farron Balanced, Ben Meiselas, generally get a daily look.  Other Meidas Touch contributors are watched frequently if sporadically.  Jesse Dollemore usually gets the time I used to spend on The Young Turks.

Next up might be Democracy Now.  Generally the headline news but sometimes a more indepth story.  Other news videos might come after that.  BBC, Al Jazeera and occasionally the major networks. I also take the time to read a morning news summary from NYT and a couple or three other “print only” reporters and commenters.

Anna from Ukraine and Artur Rehi are daily or near daily providers of news and analysis of the situation in Ukraine.  I also watch Professor Gerdes Explains and Wes O’Donnell primarily for Ukraine news but they do sometimes stray into larger subject areas. They are all very good about not sugarcoating it.  If the Russians are doing damage, that is what they report.  If Ukraine is gaining, they report that.  I have not found either of them to be casually or intentionally wrong.

For global political analysis, Black Man Spy Malcom Nance does not post daily but his insights are certainly worth considering.  Keith Olberman chimes in with his mix of sarcasm and analysis with this crew. The Bitchuation Room might be better placed with the daily podcasts but I don’t get to her every day.  Paul Warburg is a goto here.  His insights are worth paying for if you have the spare change. (not that the others aren’t)

Randy Rainbow’s and The Marsh Family’s musical treatment of current events is always worth a listen.  Trae Crowder’s Southern comedy influenced analysis is entertaining and informative.

Stratfor and Jane’s Defence are civilian intelligence platforms.  Some summaries and reports can be accessed without cost.  They have a real fiscal impetus to being right and it appears to keep them on their toes.

While I use all those listed and more to keep up with the things that are changing on the global political scene, things are changing simultaneously in a lot of other areas.  As such, I tend to read/watch a lot of science and technology reports.  Astrophysics, AI, battery development, robotics, materials science, chemistry, quantum computing and super computing are all subjects I see multiple reports on each week.

Keep in mind that I am also interested in other subjects.  Sometimes it is stuff that stands no chance of having any significant impact on the world. Dogs, cars, air guns, motorcycles, gadgets, bicycling, etc etc etc.  Of course, even those things that I think are not impactful sometimes alter how I think about things that are impactful.  The world is a complex place.

I probably don’t need to point out that I am retired.  With no job I must go to, with no spouse to find ways to keep me busy, with no children to rescue or guide, I have the time to read/watch all of that stuff I listed.  Honesty requires me to admit that I also use it as positive procrastination.  I tell myself I should be learning guitar or learning to code Python but instead I procrastinate.  Since I am learning things and gaining fodder for my political analysis, I cut myself some slack.

Why do I mention all of this?  Roughly a billion gazillion times I have been told some version of “Well, that is your opinion.  My opinion is just as good and I disagree.”  If you were to ask the people who say that sort of thing whether they prefer to take their car to a trained mechanic or just some rando that thinks he can figure it out because it is a simple machine and they are fairly smart, not many of them are gonna choose the rando.  They understand intrinsically that knowing more about a subject is better when it is their money on the line.  Still, they are willing to dismiss my history in the USN.  They assign no consequence to my daily study of things political.  They admit to not being interested right before they offer an opinion based primarily on that lack of interest and a commensurate lack of knowledge.  They may or may not accuse me of looking at them as though they are idiots.  (I don’t generally hide it well but, you know, blind squirrel, acorn etc etc)

It is generally agreed that the Founders assumed an educated and involved electorate.  Life though, has some stuff to say about that.  There are days when this spouseless, childless, retired person does not have sufficient time to get it all done.  When it is time to choose what gets left undone, things with no immediate impact are easiest to walk away from.  

To summarize, I spend a lot of my time studying the things that I opine on in writing and/or in person.  If you are a person who does not study or who gets their opinions straight from Rupert Murdoch”s colon - or that of his toadies, yes, you have a right to your opinion.  That does not make your opinion right.  

Tissue Paper Armor

 On various social media sites and during inperson conversations, I have suggested that the violence against immigrants and minorities was just the beginning.  I suggested that if all the darker skinned or otherwise physically different from the "majority" were to suddenly disappear, then they would quickly find something they did not like about any of the groups of white folks.

While no one has laughed or screamed that I was wrong, most folks appeared to tolerate my claims rather than embracing them.  I suspect they believed I was being hyperbolic.  I understand that.  For them the armor of whiteness had never failed to protect them.

In Minneapolis today, a 37 year old white woman who was observing ICE operations was murdered by an ICE officer with his firearm.  Her whiteness was no protection against Nazi psychopaths.

You might be of the opinion that as long as you don't put yourself geographically in their proximity, you are safe.  If you do think that you might be an idiot.  ICE agents appear to be poorly trained and poorly conditioned.  They are very well paid but that is not likely to be much comfort to your survivors.

I hate to agree with the reich-wingers on anything but I am starting to think that every citizen needs to arm themselves and be ready to violently protect themselves from government goons.  There is no sure way to not be a target.  Loyalty only flows one direction where Felon47 is concerned.  

Unless you figure out a way to die before he and his Nazi goons come after you, your turn is coming and it doesn't matter who you are or what you do.  If you don't look out of the mirror at him and your name is not Ivanka, your turn is coming.  Your whiteness will work like armor made of single ply tissue paper.  

Simple, Easy, Unlikely

 First there was 1 million.  Then an additional 5 million were found.  Obviously there is no way to release those documents without risking damage to those already abused by Melania's pimp and Jizzlane Maxwell.

Unless, there is.

So here is my suggestion.  The DOJ develops a simple set of rules.  Something like: 

No victim identity revealing information unless the victim is still alive, of sound mind, and agrees to the revelation on video with witnesses.

No editing for clarity.

Stamp every page top and bottom with a bright red "ALLEGED".

There might be a few other rules that would make sense but once the rules are established, then allow any of Epstein's victims who so desire to be hired to review the documents and release the documents once they meet the set rules.  Instead of hiring lawyers, first offer the jobs to the victims. If too few of them are willing, then hire from outside that group.  The victims who are hired get to release the documents at whatever speed they are comfortable with.