There's An App for That!

WBAL TV, Baltimore, 'Great time to see dolphins': Report, find dolphin sightings in the Chesapeake Bay through new app

A new app helps people track dolphin sightings in the Chesapeake Bay. You can find out where dolphins are and even upload videos of your own sightings. "This time of year is a great time to see dolphins," said Jamie Testa, project coordinator for Chesapeake Dolphin Watch.

Ocean City isn't the only place where you can see Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. From Havre de Grace to Virginia Beach, you can keep track with an app called Chesapeake Dolphin Watch.  "They are all from opportunistic sightings. They are just out, enjoying their day on or near the water, they happen to see dolphins and they report them to us," Testa said.

The easy-to-use app was launched in 2017 from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. "If you're not fortunate enough to see bottlenose dolphins, you could use the app to explore other people's sightings," Testa said. "You can browse around, look at where the sightings are on the map, as well as images."

Testa said the information is more than just fun to have, it's used to study dolphin movement and behavior. "We're looking at where they go, how far upriver, how far downstream, which creeks they're checking out," Testa said. "Some of the behaviors that we get from the sightings, like it appears that they were feeding, or sometimes we see video footage showing mating behavior."

The app is free — all you need is a name, email and password to register.

I'll report dolphins if I see them, but I'll be damned if I put a new app on my phone to do it. 

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: The Almost Perfect Picture ready and willing to collect clicks.

Ever Forward Pilot was on His Friggin' Cellphone

Delmarva Now, Coast Guard faults pilot in ship grounding near Chesapeake Bay Bridge

A Coast Guard investigation into the grounding in March of a cargo ship in the Chesapeake Bay faulted the pilot tasked with helping the ship navigate the waterway, saying he relied too much on one piece of equipment to navigate and was on his cellphone in the runup to the grounding.

In a news release Tuesday the Coast Guard specifically cited "the pilot's failure to maintain situational awareness and attention while navigating, and inadequate bridge resource management." A more detailed report described the lead-up to the moments when the Ever Forward ran aground March 13 north of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge while it was traveling from the Port of Baltimore to Norfolk, Virginia.

It took authorities a little over a month to dislodge the Taiwan-based container ship — longer than three football fields — from the muddy bottom of the Chesapeake Bay.

In the detailed report, the Coast Guard said they didn't find mechanical issues or equipment failures but instead painted a picture of a pilot tasked with guiding the ship who was frequently on his phone in the lead-up to the grounding.

While a ship is captained by a "master," pilots are often the ones who guide ships through specific passages like a river or bay where they have knowledge of the waterways. A Maryland State Pilot was on board the Ever Forward.

According to the investigation, the pilot placed or received five phone calls from his personal phone after they left the dock, including one that lasted nearly an hour. He also sent two text messages during a "critical time period" before a turn south should have been executed.

"Had Pilot 1 refrained from drafting email correspondence, and placing and receiving personal or non-urgent professional calls, it is possible he would have maintained better situational awareness and properly executed the turn in a timely manner, avoiding the vessel grounding," according to the report.

The investigation also found that the pilot only used one piece of equipment — his Portable Pilot Unit — to navigate the vessel and did not use any of the ships charts or equipment or navigational buoys that marked the channel's southern turn. The report said that if the pilot had used "all available means to determine the ship's location, the grounding likely would not have occurred."

Oops! That was an expensive mistake. 

The grounding of the Ever Forward was one of the more interesting events in the Bay this year. The ship, drafting more the 20 ft,  clearly missed a turn on its way out of Baltimore and ran up onto a mud bank with only 12 ft of water. A video with a recreation of the accident is on this post Ever Forward Still Stuck.

Fishnets Recycled Into Cell Phones

Chesapeake Bay Mag, New Smartphones Made from Recycled Fishing Nets

Old fishing nets also add up quickly off the mid-Atlantic coast and beyond. According to a federal report, 640,000 tons of fishing nets are abandoned and discarded every year. Now, the tech company Samsung Electronics is using nets that are pulled from the water to make new cell phones.

Samsung says it has developed a material that incorporates “ghost nets” into all new Galaxy devices. Ghost nets can trap and entangle marine life, damage coral reefs and other habitats, and sometimes even end up in food and water sources.

  

The newest product lineup, revealed Feb. 9, includes three new Galaxy S22 smartphones and three Galaxy tablets. While the upcycled fishing net material is brand new, Samsung has been using recycled plastics in its products for years. Since 2009, the company says it has reused over 220,000 tons of plastic worldwide in its products.

And Samsung says it will begin using recycled ocean-bound plastic (that is, abandoned plastic waste from micro- to macro-plastics within 50km of shores) in all its products in the future, from TVs to refrigerators.

 

Says the company in its launch, “This new technological advancement marks a notable achievement in the company’s journey to deliver tangible environmental actions and protect the planet for generations to come.”

This strikes me as a gimmick. The cost of the plastic in a cell phone has to be almost negligible compared to the cost of the electronics. But as long as you're going to drag up old fishing nets and recycle them, cell phones are as good a place to do it as anywhere else. 

The Wombat has a double stuffed Rule 5 Double Scoop Sunday: W*ng D*ng Sw**t P**nt*ng running at The Other McCain.

Some Scurrilous Russiagate

A scurrilous lot today (Hey, I got the speeling right on the first try!) Front Page Mag reacts to seeing the Mueller Team Disinfects Phone Evidence En Masse

Recently disclosed DOJ documents reveal that members of the Mueller team wiped their phones clean of any and all data prior to submitting them to the IG for his investigation. In total, there were 31 phones that were wiped clean (27 phones plus mobile phones that had been reassigned).

None of these phones were set to have their data backed up, so it is believed that the information cannot be recovered from a cloud or a backup server.

ALL of the people whose phones were wiped clean claimed to have had their phones wiped "by accident."

Yes, ALL of the people whose phones were wiped clean just “coincidentally” wiped them clean after they learned that the IG was going to conduct an investigation into the roots of “Crossfire Hurricane” (the counterintelligence investigation of the alleged “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia). But they also wiped their phones clean before their phones were turned in to the Inspector General.

Additionally, ALL of the phones that were wiped clean were wiped clean by the same methods: most entered the wrong password into their phones ten times. These were iPhones, which do not allow you to enter wrong passwords ten times in one sitting. You can do it a few times, and after that, you get locked out for a period of time (i.e. 45 minutes, then an hour the next time, etc.) In the interim, you get warning notifications that someone is trying to enter the wrong passcode into your phone in case it is being hacked. You always have the option of contacting your IT guy for help, but oddly, not one of the individuals in this narrative did so.
. . .
Some coincidence, huh? No Russian collusion, Mueller team prosecutions for process crimes that would never have occurred but for the investigation, and now those same prosecutors and other members of the Mueller team "accidentally" deleted the information on their phones during the same time period using the same methods. The phones still work. They aren't broken. They just have no data.

Funny how that happened, isn't it? Alex Nitzberg at JTN reports that  Judicial Watch’s Fitton calls for criminal probe into Mueller team’s wiped phones and Fox reports that Rep. Collins presses Apple for information on wiping iPhone data amid Mueller team controversy. This has all been a great ad for iPhones on How to legally obstruct justice. 

“From the events described in the DOJ-released documents, it seems to be no coincidence that so many of Mueller’s staff members’ iPhones were wiped due to a forgotten passcode right before turning them in,” Collins wrote. “If my instinct is correct—that these individuals intentionally subverted potential efforts to investigate their actions during the Mueller investigation—it leads inquiring minds to wonder: what evidence was so damning that they felt the need to destroy it?”

Peter  Strzok thinks History Will See Me as a Patriot Defending America Against a Russian Attack on Our Elections. Unfortunately, history tends to be written by the winners, then rewritten by leftists.

Speaking of coup perpetrators, Molly McCann at Da Fed. In Atlantic Profile, Alex Vindman Claims To Love The Constitution He Keeps Trying To Destroy. He thought Obama appointed him to be the director of US foreign policy to Ukraine, and he wasn't about the let the Bad Orange Man tell him differently. 

Vindman wants to argue that foreign policy should be charted by “experts” within the bureaucracy, like himself, who study and determine the best course for America and the world. That flawed philosophy was on full display in Vindman and other civil servants’ testimonies during the impeachment hearings. When Vindman wrote that Trump’s call had undermined U.S. foreign policy, he meant Trump had undermined the preferred policy of unelected bureaucrats.

An interesting post from sundance at CTH on how Recently Released FISA Court Response to DOJ Reveals Direction of Durham Probe – DOJ Requested FISC Approvals…

A very interesting release by ODNI John Ratcliffe [LINK] highlights a June 25, 2020 response from the FISA court to the DOJ. There are five issues queried by the DOJ seeking guidance from the FISC. Each issue points to a specific path being taken by the DOJ in general… and the John Durham probe specifically.

Today, the ODNI, in consultation with the Department of Justice, releases a June 25, 2020, opinion by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) evaluating and approving limited circumstances under which the Government may temporarily retain, use, or disclose information that was unlawfully acquired pursuant to a FISC order. (more)

Important note: We are looking at this in hindsight. The response from the FISC was dated June 25, 2020, so the request for opinion from the court was before June 25th.

The court opinion tells us for the first time, the DOJ is admitting/stating that ALL FOUR of the Carter Page FISA applications were corrupt upon origination. This is a big deal. In previous filing with the court (January 2020) DOJ only refuted the predication for the second and third renewal.

Within the FISC reply we see the DOJ stating all four submissions contained material omissions and violations of “the duty of candor” (ie. lying) by the FBI investigative unit and the DOJ team that assembled the application(s).

It was never about Carter Page, it was about generating a plausible excuse to spy on Trump. 

Althouse, "In recent years, the Justice Department has sometimes acted more like a trade association for federal prosecutors than the administrator of a fair system of justice based on clear and sensible legal rules.

"In case after case, we have advanced and defended hyper-aggressive extensions of the criminal law. This is wrong and we must stop doing it.... We should want a fair system with clear rules that the people can understand. It does not serve the ends of justice to advocate for fuzzy and manipulable criminal prohibitions that maximize our options as prosecutors.... Advocating for clear and defined prohibitions will sometimes mean we cannot bring charges against someone whom we believe engaged in questionable conduct. But that is what it means to have a government of laws and not of men.... If criminal statutes are endlessly manipulable, then everything becomes a potential crime. Rather than watch policy experts debate the merits or demerits of a particular policy choice, we are nowadays treated to ad na[u]seum speculation by legal pundits — often former prosecutors themselves — that some action by the President, a senior official, or a member of congress constitutes a federal felony under this or that vague federal criminal statute. This criminalization of politics is not healthy. The criminal law is supposed to be reserved for the most egregious misconduct — conduct so bad that our society has decided it requires serious punishment, up to and including being locked away in a cage. These tools are not built to resolve political disputes and it would be a decidedly bad development for us to go the way of third world nations where new administrations routinely prosecute their predecessors for various ill-defined crimes against the state. The political winners ritually prosecuting the political losers is not the stuff of a mature democracy.... Our job is to prosecute people who commit clear crimes. It is not to use vague criminal statutes to police the mores of politics or general conduct of the citizenry. Indulging fanciful legal theories may seem right in a particular case under particular circumstances with a particularly unsavory defendant—but the systemic cost to our justice system is too much to bear."

Said Attorney General William Barr at the Hillsdale College Constitution Day event yesterday.

The NYT covered Barr's speech under the headline "Barr Defends Right to Intrude in Cases as He Sees Fit/The attorney general’s remarks scanned as a rebuke of career Justice Department lawyers who have questioned his level of involvement." This article portrays the speech as a response to accusations against Barr:
. . .
The Washington Post article is "Barr accuses Justice Department of headhunting and meddling with politics." The article observes 2 points of hypocrisy. First, Trump seems to like the idea of prosecuting his political enemies:

When he was a candidate in 2016, Trump’s rallies frequently featured chants of “lock her up” in reference to his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Since he became president, the list of officials Trump has called to go to jail has expanded to include former FBI director James B. Comey, former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and others at the FBI involved with investigating his campaign....

And, second, Barr is said to have mentioned using the federal sedition law against the rioters (who are called "those committing violence amid the protest" by WaPo):

[Barr] specifically cited text having to do with opposing the government by force, one of the people [on a Justice Department conference call] said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal considerations.

WaPo signals to its readers not to go big on the drama over the mention of the sedition law: "In 2010, during the Obama administration, the Justice Department charged nine people with seditious conspiracy over an alleged plot to attack law enforcement."

What was that Obama era case? Speaking of politicized selectivity, it was against a Christian militia group. Here's the NYT article on the resolution of the case, "U.S. Judge in Michigan Acquits Militia Members of Sedition". . .

Jerry Dunleavy, WaEx, DOJ watchdog opens investigation into Roger Stone's sentencing. Well, OK then, but the AG runs the Justice Dept. 

The investigation by DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is reportedly “focused on events in February … when prosecutors for Stone have said they were told to seek a lighter sentence for Stone than they had previously considered,” according to anonymous sources cited by NBC News, with another source claiming testimony from former Stone prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky this summer “triggered” the watchdog’s office to open the inquiry.

“We welcome the review,” DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec told the Washington Examiner on Monday.

Stephanie Logan, a senior public affairs specialist with Horowitz’s office, told the Washington Examiner that “generally our practice is to not confirm or deny the existence of any ongoing investigation.”

John Solomon at JTN, Democrats had extensive contact with Ukrainian they now use for ‘red scare’ attack on GOP. Selective amnesia can be a wonderful thing. 

1) "US government memos corroborate Andrii Telizhenko was trusted by the Obama administration for many years before congressional Democrats turned on him," @jsolomonReports. Telizhenko was fine with them until he exposed their wrongdoing with Burisma. https://t.co/amRCKumKJ9

— J Michael Waller (@JMichaelWaller) September 16, 2020

Via the Wombat's In The Mailbox: 09.16.20, Don Surber: Sen. Tom Cotton Proposes Undoing What Biden Did For Red China

The billion bucks Red China gave Hunter Biden in 2014 during an official visit to Beijing by then-Vice President Joe Biden was payment for services rendered by the veep in the 1990s, who shepherded America's acceptance of trading with this enemy.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas wants to undo that multi-trillion-dollar favor Biden (and the Senate and the Bush and Clinton administrations) did for the largest communist country in the world.

Yahoo News reported, "Cotton announced Monday that he is introducing legislation to repeal permanent most favored nation trade status, a designation that guarantees equal trading opportunity among a nation’s trade partners.

Chris White at Da Caller, Liz Cheney Asks The DOJ To Investigate Whether China, Russia Are Infiltrating US Environmental Groups. Funding certainly; infiltrating? Now that would be interesting!

“Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council, whose anti-fracking agendas align with the Kremlin’s, are low-hanging fruit for Russian influence,” Cheney wrote.

“It’s crucial for the Department of Justice to determine whether these foreign adversaries are working to influence U.S. environmental and energy policies, including by infiltrating or targeting these environmental NGOs,” Cheney said in a statement to the DCNF.

From Breitbart, filed under suits I want to succeed, Alan Dershowitz Sues CNN for Defamation over Impeachment Coverage

Dershowitz, who filed suit Wednesday in a federal court in Florida, alleges that CNN and its various commentators “doctored the tape” of his comments on the Senate floor in January to portray him as a kind of “Adolf Hitler” who believed that a president can break the law at will.

John Sexton at Hot Air, Commander: Claim That Russia Paid Bounties For Killing Of US Troops ‘Has Not Been Proved’, Ace, US CENTCOM Commander: There Isn't Proof of the Democrat-Media Conspiracy's Info Op Last Month About Russians Paying Bounties to the Taliban to Kill Americans; Claim Comes from the CIA, Who Are "Very Emotional" About the Argument

I'm not kidding. I know people sometimes say these things off-handedly, but the CIA has been turned inside-out into an agency whose goal is not to defend America but to subvert and defeat it.

It must be disbanded.

Enough of these government-paid insurrectionists.
. . .
The fact that the CIA leaked this -- to Adam Schiff, no less! -- is proof that they must be disbanded.

In previous years, under previous presidents, the intelligence community was very careful about leaking claims like this.

Claims like this put the president in an impossible bind: either he can argue on behalf of Russia's innocence, or he can launch a nuclear attack on Russia.

There's really no middle path here. If Russia is killing US troops, we go to war.

So usually these things were handled secretly. Russia would be punished, but not in some high-profile way that would stir the public into demanding a nuclear retaliation on Russia.

But that's not how the Obama-ized CIA rolls, now. Now, each and every unverified suspicion they have, each bit of Hot Goss collected from Igor "Iggy" Danchenko's alcoholic friends at his local DC rum mill, is fit for immediate leaking to Adam Fucking Schiff and the whole of the GPSFusion-paid Black Ops Press.

Why, it's almost as if elements of the Deep State, with a leadership cadre infiltrated into the highest positions of the CIA, are attempting a "color revolution" coup d'etat against their own (supposed) country.

Russiagate Blowing in the Wind

I'm supposed to be fishing today, but we were delayed on account of the wind. It's supposed to let off by 10 AM though; here's hoping. 

A reminder from NYPo  how Members of Mueller’s team ‘wiped’ phones during Trump probe: DOJ  From the Epoch Times, Wiping Phones and Erasing the Public’s Trust

The 33,000 emails that Hillary had wiped from her home-brew server were entirely private, she said, having to do with yoga classes and her daughter’s wedding. Then why resort to professional data wiping software? Why pretend not to know what it means to “wipe” a computer server? (“You mean with a cloth?”) Why instruct your minions to destroy your smart phones with a hammer?

Nothing happened to Hillary because she occupies a zone of privilege even more exalted than that occupied by Speaker Pelosi.

What about Robert Mueller’s Merry Band of Pranksters and their repristinated phones? What happens to them? Sidney Powell, the indefatigable attorney for Michael Flynn, has charged that their actions constitute “obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence of the worst sort.” That of course is for a court to say.

But the optics, I think we can agree, are not good.

Pretty much evidence of consciousness of guilt. John Sexton at Hot Air Catherine Herridge: Memo Indicates Peter Strzok Approved His Own Draft To Open The Crossfire Hurricane Investigation 

Catherine Herridge obtained an Electronic Communication (EC) via Judicial Watch which announced the launch of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The memo was drafted by Trump-hating FBI agent Peter Strzok and also states it was approved by Strzok. Herridge suggests that may be a problem.

“Former senior FBI agent tells @CBSNews that same person drafting + signing off on an ‘EC’ is unusual + may violate the ‘DIOG’ or Domestic Investigations Operations Guide which is the roadmap/rule book for FBI agents. Based on “DIOG, Crossfire Hurricane appears to fall under ‘Sensitive Investigative Matter’ because it involved a political candidate/organization – DIOG states these cases should be brought to attention ‘FBI HQ + other DOJ officials’

According to the IG report, Strzok's immediate boss, Bill Priestap authorized the investigation . . .

That seems straightforward enough but if Priestap approved the investigation why isn’t his name on the EC? Isn’t that what the “approved by” line is there for? Maybe there’s a perfectly reasonable answer to that question based on how the FBI normally does its paperwork, but given the significance of this document it’s worth asking. The document really does make it look as if Strzok approved his own draft.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that both AG Barr and John Durham said last December that they had disagreements with IG Horowitz on exactly this point, i.e whether or not the opening of the investigation was properly predicated:

And from the Dept of About Damned Time, Chuck Ross at Da Caller Reports  GOP Senate Chairman Seeks Subpoena For ‘Spygate’ Professor

Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is seeking authority to subpoena Stefan Halper, the former Cambridge professor who worked as an FBI confidential source during the Trump-Russia probe.

The Senate panel will hold a vote Wednesday regarding subpoenas for 41 witnesses Johnson wants to interview as part of a broad review of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and other intelligence-gathering activities regarding Trump associates.

The committee voted along party lines in June to authorize subpoenas to compel testimony from 35 witnesses. Politico published an updated list on Monday of witnesses Johnson’s wants to subpoena.

The list includes Halper and his FBI handling agent, Steven Somma. Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the committee, wrote in a letter to Johnson on Monday that he opposes granting the subpoenas.

Republicans have questioned the FBI’s relationship with Halper, who has worked for four Republican administrations.

The FBI tapped Halper to meet with and secretly record three Trump campaign advisers: Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis.

Sundance at CTH is irate but not surprised as  Blazing Sunlight – Senate Intel Committee Refuses to Give GOP Senators Documents From Russia Investigation…. He's pretty well convince the SSCI was in on it all, and he may well be right.

Also, Ric Grenell Explains “The Big Ugly” – Outsider Trump is an Existential Threat…

 

Remember, if you hate Ric Grenell, it's because you're homophobic.

John Solomon at JTN, State Department reported Burisma paid bribe while Hunter Biden served on board, memos show. Hell, Hunter being on the board was a bribe. 

The National Pulse, EXCLUSIVE: Obama Lawyers Fund ‘Transition Integrity’ Group Which Claims To Be ‘Non-Partisan’, Tied To Hunter Biden

The critical connection comes through President Obama’s former associate White House Counsel, Ian Bassin, who heads the anti-Trump litigation efforts Protect Democracy Project and United to Protect Democracy.

Bassin previously headed the far-left Avaaz network, founded in turn by the leftist MoveOn.org group, as well as the Truman National Security Project, which has featured lead Joe Biden policy advisor Jake Sullivan and Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden on its board.

The revelations destroy the Transition Integrity Project’s central tenet: that it is a non-partisan and independent organization that simply seeks to secure the fair results of the upcoming election.

The group has previously attempted to claim that it “takes no position on how Americans should cast their votes, or on the likely winner of the upcoming election.”

Abuse of non-profits is wide spread, and bipartisan, but it's only bad when Republicans do it. 

Some Sunday Morning Russiagate

Not much new on this Sunday morning, but a fair amount of older issues still being rehashed. For example, McEnany calls out White House press corps for lack of interest in Mueller team wiping phones "'They simply don't care,' press secretary tells Sean Hannity"  (Fox).

"Now we learn what Mueller's team was doing," she said. "Several dozens, think about that, several dozens of devices returned damaged, wiped clean, some of them intentionally so. One of those devices was Andrew Weissmann's ... who was rebuked 9-0 by the Supreme Court for prosecutorial overreach and misconduct -- and Lisa Page too, among these offenders.

"Muller is saying, 'We'll prosecute you for process, while we, several dozens of us, are engaging in the same kind of obstruction.' That is uncalled for."

She's such a meanie. Certainly, the WaPoo hasn't published anything about it, and I suspect you would find the same thing if you could search the NYT archives. On Da Hill, Tal Axelrod deigns to take note that Johnson asks DOJ watchdog to investigate Mueller team phones over erased information

From Matt Vespa at Town Hall, Are There Durham Indictments Coming? Fox News Reporter's DOJ Source Told Him to Set His Alarm Clock I certainly hope so. Strzok and Comey are my first choices. 

Remember when I said, wake me when there are indictments and or arrests? Well, a solid DOJ source just told me to "set my alarm clock."
I said, I'll believe it when I see it.#DurhamReport

— Kevin Corke (@kevincorke) September 11, 2020

John Solomon at JTN on the Flynn story Ex-judge reviewing Flynn cases urges guilty plea be upheld.

AP tries to keep the "Russia, Russia!" narrative alive with Biden audio first shared by ‘Russian agent’ thrives online, desperately trying to conceal the fact that Biden threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine if they did not fire a prosecutor looking into the company that Hunter Biden was on the board of. There are lots of weasel words.

From sundance at CTH, Tucker Carlson Questions DOJ Aggression Toward Julian Assange….

 

Assange is an odd case. I can see nothing he did that seems other than as an investigative reporter of sorts. We don't prosecute reporters who publish classified data that they get from other sources. Otherwise, the entire Washington press corps would be in jail. Obama pardoned his partner in crime, Bradley aka  Chelsea Manning, the  US Army soldier who actually sent the classified data to Assange. Why does DOJ have such a hard on for him?

Tyler O'Neil at PJ Media on CNN's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

2. Chris Cuomo and Stormy Daniels

On Wednesday, Carlson released another tape. This time, the recording concerned a conversation between Cohen and CNN host Chris Cuomo. Carlson condemned Cuomo for manufacturing a “scripted drama, written for the Democratic Party” by preparing Trump’s lawyer to give an interview on the network regarding Trump’s alleged hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.

“I think the way this conversation goes is almost exactly the way we’re having it right now. Which is, where I say, ‘This looks shady,’ and you say, ‘It looks shady to you because you’re coming in with a specific intention,'” Carlson said, quoting Cuomo.

Cuomo instructed Cohen on how to dodge questions about a shell corporation he had allegedly used to make the Daniels payments.

“Quote: ‘I’m not being shady,’ Cuomo instructed Cohen to say. ‘I was being legal, and I did it my right way. You’re wrong about the LLC. I’ve used it for other things. I have tons of LLCs. I did not form it just to do this. And even if I had, my whole point would have been to keep it quiet. But that happens to just not be true.’ End quote,” Carlson read.

The Fox News host also reported that Cuomo actually advised Trump’s lawyer to threaten Cuomo on air with a defamation lawsuit if he “speculated” that he was “paid back by Trump or the campaign” for the alleged payments.

The recording also included Cuomo informing Cohen he’ll make “some phone calls” to make sure the questions he would ask wouldn’t put him in legal trouble.

Matt Taibi,  Tape shows: ethically, CNN chief a little shaky "A conversation between Jeff Zucker and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen removes all doubt: our hated president is a beloved commodity to network executives"

Russiagate: Mueller Phone Scandal Resonates

The finding by IG Horowitz, and revealed by a FOIA request fro Judicial Watch that the lawyers and creeps (but I redundate) on the Mueller probe somehow managed to 'accidentally' erase or lock up all the data on their phones prior to turning them over to the IG is still a thing, although, as far as I can see, the WaPoo is still studiously avoiding the issue, taking the space instead to publish a letter from the Chinese government defending their Uighuar policy. Somehow I managed to misplace Sundance's at CTH's first take, Records Show Weissmann Special Counsel Team Erased 15 Phones After IG Requested Review…

As we have previously mentioned the two-year Weissmann/Mueller special counsel, May 2017 through April 2019, was a continuum of the corrupt DOJ and FBI efforts that originated prior to the 2016 election. Many of the internal FBI and DOJ officials just transferred from the Clinton email investigation, into the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, and then into the Weissmann/Mueller special counsel investigation.

The corrupt activity within the special counsel tenure was actually worse than the corrupt activity that preceded it.

and quotes Tom Fitton: “There Needs to be A Criminal Investigation of the Special Counsel”… (video at link). Twitchy, DAMNING –> Sean Davis’ thread about Mueller team ‘accidentally’ wiping at LEAST 15 (!) phones before DOJ could examine them a must-read

What are the actual probabilities of more than a dozen top Mueller officials all "accidentally" nuking their phones or accidentally putting them in airplane mode, locking them, and "forgetting" their passwords so the DOJ OIG couldn't access and examine them? Negative 100,000%?

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 10, 2020

Insty, CONSCIOUSNESS OF GUILT: Records released by the Justice Department this week suggest top Mueller aides erased records from at least 15 phones. They all need to be wrung through the process of prosecution for obstruction of justice. See how it feels.

Via Wombat's In The Mailbox: 09.11.20 (Evening Edition), Nice Deb at American Greatness reports that  Sen. Grassley Demands Answers From DOJ, FBI Regarding Mueller Team’s Deleted Phone Records, and provides this little tidbit:

Although it’s technically possible to accidentally wipe a phone clean by entering too many incorrect passwords, it’s actually pretty hard to do it in practice.

“After the 5th failed attempt, iOS requires a 1-minute timeout before you can try again. During this timeout the only thing you can do is place an emergency call to 911. After the 6th attempt, you get a 5-minute timeout. After the 7th, 15 minutes. These timeouts escalate such that it would take over 3 hours to enter 10 incorrect passcodes.”

To reinforce that message, via sundance,

 

while Politico reluctantly reports that Sen. Johnson seeks IG probe of wiped Mueller team phones.

In another branch of news, from the Hartford Courant, Nora Dannehy, Connecticut prosecutor who was top aide to John Durham’s Trump-Russia investigation, resigns amid concern about pressure from Attorney General William Barr. Note that the concern about pressure from Barr comes from outside, Nora herself made no such comments, although it would not be shocking:

Dannehy, a highly regarded prosecutor who has worked with or for Durham for decades, informed colleagues in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Haven of her resignation from the Department of Justice by email Thursday evening. The short email was a brief farewell message and said nothing about political pressure, her work for Durham or what the Durham team has produced, according to people who received it.

Durham, who has never even acknowledged that Dannehy was in Washington working for him, had no immediate comment on the resignation.. . . Colleagues said Dannehy is not a supporter of President Trump and has been concerned in recent weeks by what she believed was pressure from Barr, who appointed Durham, to produce results before the election. They said she has been considering resigning for weeks, conflicted by loyalty to Durham and concern about politics.

Of course, by the process of "jounolism" WaPoo reports it as  Prosecutor resigns from U.S. attorney’s investigation into origins of Trump-Russia probe

The departure of Nora Dannehy, a well-respected former federal prosecutor in Connecticut who rejoined the government in early 2019 to help Durham with the investigation, is likely to raise fresh questions among Democrats about whether Attorney General William P. Barr is pushing the case toward a public announcement to benefit President Trump ahead of November’s election. They have long accused Barr of having political motives in his decision-making surrounding the Durham probe.

Sundance, Durham DC Investigative “Functionary” Returns to Private Sector Work… 

Unbeknownst to Ms. Dannehy, we met, we crossed paths in DC. It was an serendipitous outcome of putting my physical presence in a position to interact. From our encounter Ms. Dannehy seemed to be a functionary of the investigative process; located in DC as an outcome of her task assignment.

Dannehy, very familiar with the DC national security networks; and carrying a top-secret clearance level; had a role to play where she reached into compartmented silos, retrieved information, conducted interviews and then sent the raw data along with summaries back up the investigative pipeline. Ergo, she seemed to be an investigative “functionary.”

Although she was/is obviously a badge carrying member of the Orange-Man-Bad committee (most of them cannot hide that inherent disposition), she seemed competent and detached emotionally from the work. That said, obviously this ‘Durham’ investigation touches on several ‘third-rails’ that could negatively impact the financial prospects of any DC insider if their assigned role undermined the position of the administrative state that functions to pay the network. Did that play a role? If I were a betting man….

♦ Here’s the way it looks to me. The Durham probe, actually more like the Aldenberg probe, has slightly shifted direction. Additional inquires are now being made into the Weissmann/Mueller special counsel conduct. That explains why the ‘Woods File’ story surfaced; and that explains why the iPhone scrubbing FOIA info was produced; it’s an insiders control-game and it continues.

And some "progress," if you can call it that, in the Flynn persecution. The Lawfare aligned 'amicus' appointed by Judge Sullivan to prosecute Flynn in the absence of DOJ willingness to continue the proscution has filed his brief with Sullivan.  WaPoo, Court-appointed adviser in Michael Flynn case says Justice Dept. yielded to corrupt ‘pressure campaign’ led by Trump

A retired federal judge accused the Justice Department on Friday of yielding to a pressure campaign led by President Trump in its bid to dismiss the prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to federal investigators.

In a 30-page court filing in Washington, former New York federal judge John Gleeson called Attorney General William P. Barr’s request to drop Flynn’s case a “corrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system.”

“In the United States, Presidents do not orchestrate pressure campaigns to get the Justice Department to drop charges against defendants who have pleaded guilty — twice, before two different judges — and whose guilt is obvious,” said Gleeson, who was appointed by the court to argue against the government’s request to dismiss the case.

Gleeson’s filing set the stage for a potentially dramatic courtroom confrontation Sept. 29 with the Justice Department and Flynn’s defense over the fate of the highest-ranking Trump adviser to plead guilty in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation. Friday’s filings echo earlier arguments from Gleeson, who called the Justice Department’s attempt to undo Flynn’s conviction a politically motivated and “a gross abuse of prosecutorial power.” 
. . .
Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell on Friday called Gleeson’s filing “predictable and meaningless,” saying again that Flynn’s investigation was “corrupt from its inception.”

Sundance, Flynn Update – Judge Sullivan Appointed Amicus, John Gleeson, Files His Reply to Motion for Dismissal…

The amicus filing itself is based on the severe anti-Flynn sentiment carried by the Lawfare community and their allies in the DC network. Accordingly, Gleeson having presented himself as a member of this resistance effort, pontificates shallow conspiracy theories about the DOJ bending to political pressure in their decision to drop the case.

As defense attorney Sidney Powell previously shared: …”The defense and the government have agreed we will file no further briefs at all after amicus files whatever diatribe he plans to file. The only document that matters is the government’s motion to dismiss, which stands on its own and must be granted under ALL precedent. Everything amicus files is improper and should even be stricken–were the law being followed.”

It is unknown what Judge Sullivan plans to do with this amicus brief; however, the scheduled hearing for oral argument before the court is September 29th. 

Fox,  Graham hints at release of more bombshell information related to Russia probe: 'Stay tuned'

'We'll talk in about 10 or 12 days and we'll see if there is something else you can get mad about,' Graham tells 'Hannity'

And Woodward findings the media won't promote?  RCP, Woodward: No Evidence Of Trump-Russia Collusion, I Searched For Two Years (from 2018). 

From Breitbart, Lying piece o'shit Peter Strzok: Text to ‘Stop’ Trump ‘Was an Off the Cuff Comment Made Outside of Any Work Context Whatsoever’. His redemption/book sales tour continues.

Mitchell Nemeth at Medium claims The Trump-Russia Collusion Story Backfired on the Obama Administration.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and links.

Tuesday's Temptations

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Summertime 2D Girls up and running as per normal.

Millennials Have No Likes for Stress

It's OK. I like you!

3 In 5 Millennials Say Life More Stressful Now Than Ever Before

Smartphones and digital technology are supposed to make our lives easier, but for young adults, it seems that things may only be getting tougher — and for a slew of reasons. According to one recent survey, about 3 out of 5 millennials (58%) feel life is more stressful right now than ever before.

In fact, the survey of 2,000 American millennials, commissioned by CBD oil company Endoca, reveals that one-third of millennials believe their lives are more stressful than the average person’s life.

It's kind of irrational when you consider that the poorest among them probably live better lives that the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, let along the poor Cro-Magnon man contesting his living quarters with a Cave Bear.

The survey also pointed to numerous causes of the frustration for this young segment. Many feel their overall stress level is caused by the accumulation of daily micro-stressors — seemingly trivial experiences — such as being stuck in traffic, waiting for appointments, or various smartphone issues.

For example, although losing one’s wallet or credit card ranked as the top source of stress for respondents, 1 in 5 say they’d be even more apoplectic if their smartphone screen broke. For more than 2 in 5 millennials (41%), a damaged phone screen is worse than seeing their “check engine” light flash on in the car.

Right now my cell phone has a cracked cover sheet (not the screen), but we gave away the car with the "check engine" light issue. But I'm OK.

Meanwhile, getting into an argument with a partner was the second greatest source of stress for participants overall, but nearly 1 in 5 agreed that getting zero “likes” on a social media post is a more stress-inducing experience. One-third feel that having their phone die is a more miserable scenario than seeing a fraudulent charge on their credit card bill. (For good measure, the researchers found that the average remaining-battery percentage for when millennials begin to feel stress is 23%.)

And while gridlock was the third most common cause of stress for young adults, 30% of those surveyed agreed that slow WiFi was even more stressful than slow traffic.

My own theory is that human beings tend toward a constant amount of stress, irregardless of whether the stressor is hungry saber-toothed cat or a dearth of likes on Instagram.

Hard Time for Weiner

Anthony Weiner gets hard time

It’s hard time for Anthony Weiner.

The disgraced ex-congressman broke down crying as he was sentenced to 21 months in prison Monday for convincing a high school student to undress and touch herself via Skype in 2016.

“This was a serious crime. It’s a serious crime that deserves serious punishment,” Manhattan federal Judge Denise Cote said as the convicted sext fiend dropped his head into his hand and wept.

After the courtroom cleared, Weiner sat crying in his chair with his lawyers patting him on the back. His mom also sat crying on the bench behind him, sitting next to Weiner’s brother Jason and Weiner’s dad.

The serial sexter’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Huma Abedin, was nowhere to be seen.

In addition to his prison stint, Weiner was sentenced to pay a $10,000 fine for his crime, participate in sex offender outpatient treatment and spend three years on supervised release once his sentence is up.

He will have to surrender to his designated facility by Nov. 6 — his lawyer put in a request for Schuylkill Federal Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania, or another low-security prison near New York.
. . .
The feds said the latest and most insidious chapter of Weiner’s sexting problem began on the evening of Jan. 23, 2016, when a high school student messaged him on Twitter, prompting a flurry of “provocative” responses from the former public servant, who knew the teen was in high school, court papers show.

“As January turned to February, their intermittent exchanges grew more lascivious,” Manhattan federal prosecutors told the judge in court filings.

By the end of February, Weiner — who by this time knew the girl was only 15 — was video-chatting with her via Skype and using “graphics and obscene language” to ask her to “display her naked body and touch herself,” the feds said.

It's amazing how the article manages to recite the fact that he was a former Congressman without mentioning his party affiliation until the 13th paragraph. We know that would have been prominent in the first paragraph had he been Republican. They also skirt right around how his sexting led to the FBI investigation that found a shitload of Hillary Clinton's emails, including some classified ones, on the laptop he shared with Huma (Hillary's consigliere).

The man clearly has issues.

Selfie Nation

Wombat-socho has the giant "Rule 5 Sunday: Blue Shirt Double-Dip Edition"  ready at The Other McCain.

Can Cellphones Save California?

In the news this week has been a few articles about a cellphone app that acts like a seismometer, and reports earthquake motions to users and scientists.

Scientists develop new app that uses your cellphone to detect earthquakes

UC Berkeley scientists are hoping to capture that sharing impulse in a massive science experiment: Using cellphones to detect earthquakes as soon as they start. They hope that by turning mobile phones into vast data collection points, they can quickly glean information about the quakes and warn those farther away from the epicenter that shaking is on the way.

On Friday, scientists unveiled an app that will test this idea with anyone around the world who wants to participate. Named MyShake, the free app, available on Google Android phones and at myshake.berkeley.edu, uses smartphone sensors to detect movement caused by an earthquake.

Users who download the app will be sending data to scientists when an earthquake as small as a magnitude 5 hits.

By harvesting information from hundreds of phones closest to the earthquake, scientists will be able to test a computer system that could, in the future, dispatch early warnings that shaking is seconds or minutes away to people farther away from the earthquake’s origin. For instance, if a quake started in San Bernardino, cell phones there could register the quake and quickly help send warnings to smartphone users in Los Angeles.

“This is a citizen science project,” said Richard Allen, director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory at UC Berkeley. “This is an app that provides information, education, motivation — to the people who’ve downloaded it — to get ready for earthquakes. Those same people are contributing to our further understanding of earthquakes, because they’re collecting data that will help us better understand the earthquake process.”

This looks like a really good way to overload and shut down the cell phone network in the event of a major earthquake to me.

I would suggest that this indicates that a dispersed network of connected seismographs should be rather cheap and easy to institute.

More Good Advice from Stacy

Don’t Do This, Ever

So-called “sexting” is such a disastrously bad idea that I shouldn’t even have to explain why it’s a bad idea. Here is the thing: The “sexting” participant provides his or her partner with evidence — a permanent digital record of text messages and images — that the partner can then use as he or she pleases. Any young woman who sends nude selfies to a guy can just presume that he will immediately show the photos to all his friends. They always do. That’s why guys ask for nude photos from girls, in order to display them to their buddies as trophies. Any guy who asks for a nude photo is a creep, and any girl who sends a nude photo is a fool. The fact that we now have laws against so-called “revenge porn” (i.e., the unauthorized distribution of nude photos and/or videos, typically as revenge against an ex-girlfriend) does not change the reality that only a fool would ever send a nude photo of herself to a guy, and it is not “victim-blaming” to say so, no matter what any feminist tries to tell you.

“But Stacy, all the kids are doing it!”

No, they are not, and that kind of peer-pressure excuse is part of the problem. Responsible adults do not endorse foolish behavior simply because it is common behavior, and “sexting” is foolish behavior. Even if you did want to engage in reckless promiscuity, it would be foolish to create a permanent digital record of such behavior.
. . .
Professor Glenn Reynolds comments: “They’re too young to consent to naked pictures, but not too young to have their lives ruined for doing so.” Such is the libertarian reaction, but this is one of those instances (like the Kaitlyn Hunt case) where my social conservative impulse overrides every other concern. At first glance, the prosecution of teenagers for such behavior may seem unnecessarily draconian, yet we have to consider the alternative. What would be the consequences of a libertarian laissez-faireattitude toward minors producing what is, as a matter of law, illegal child pornography?

While I lean to Dr. Reynolds point of view (I believe laws could be written intelligently to distinguish between sexting between teens and underage porn) it's probably too much to ask of our politicians.

In the meantime, teens would be wise to heed Stacy's advice, and just not do it. But then, teens are not noted for their wisdom.

You do have to wonder about the circumstances of cases where this is actually brought to the courts; what did that particular teen do to become the target of a case important enough for police to pursue, and prosecutors to take seriously.

About 10 Years Too Late. . .

50 is the new 42: technology is making brains of middle-aged younger

50 is the new 42, scientists have concluded, after discovering that the brains of middle-aged people are getting sharper and younger to keep up with the demands of modern technology.

People over age 50 are scoring increasingly better on tests of cognitive function and researchers believe it is because of the increased mental stimulation of computers and mobile phones.

Although experts have previously worried that technology was causing people to stop thinking, in fact, it appears that the mental skills needed to operate increasingly complex gadgets are making people smarter.

The average person now needs to remember 10 passwords a day to access work computers, open email, use internet banking, pay online bills or log on to social networks.

Now where did I leave that book of passwords?

I guess this means I should give in and buy a smart phone?

Fishing with an Old Friend

 I was down on the docks this afternoon taking care of boat business when I ran into an old friend, Onefish (who also goes by Ron).  Business done, he invited me out, so I called home to notify Georgia of my imminent disappearance, and went out with him on his very nice Cobia center console, with his jacket and his gear.

Fishing was hot and cold, on and off. I caught somewhere near 20 fish, mostly 20+ inches, and Ron about the same but we both caught these larger fish on consecutive casts. The boat next to use caught one the same size in the same area around the same time.

Walleye Pete was down there at "Location X" with a charter, and according to Pete's Facebook page, they've been doing pretty well, too.








We left right around sunset.  I apologize for the lousy photos; due to the impulsive nature of the trip, I didn't have my fishing camera, and had to rely on my "dumb phone" camera. Actually, it worked better than I expected.

PSA: Don't Knife Your Phone

There's a lot of chemical energy stored up in a lithium ion battery, and it come come out violently if damaged or overcharged. More here: The Risk of Exploding Lithium Ion Batteries

Cell Phones Don't Give You Cancer, But They Can Tell If You're Depressed

Cellphones Do Not Give You Brain Cancer - It's an old hypothesis, with some evidence of support but . . .

. . .There is, however, a simple way to settle this debate. If this group is correct about the size of the effect of cellphones on brain cancer, brain tumor rates should have been dramatically increasing since the introduction of the mobile phone. A study in the U.S. published in 2012 evaluated this possibility by comparing observed rates of glioma to projected rates from two studies for the period from 1997 to 2008. It found that brain tumor rates are pretty much unchanged since mobile phones arrived. If the Swedish team is right about the size of the cellphone effect, tumor rates would be 40 percent higher than they are. There is virtually no way its results are correct.

In the end, it is simply extremely unlikely that there is any link between cellphones and brain tumors. We can, perhaps, put this debate to rest and focus on the actual danger of cellphones: using them while driving.

It's a good thing this is Fivethirtyeight and not Vox, so we can have some confidence in its validity.

But the new smart phones can be trained to tell whether their user is experiencing depression:

The Ginger.io app is one of a new generation of health-surveillance technologies that doctors, hospitals and health insurers are starting to use. Where fitness trackers like FitBit record jogging distance and calories burned, newer apps and other tools measure text-message volume, vocal tone and other behaviors to peer into patients’ psychological well-being, which doctors say can have a high correlation with physical health. Health insurer Aetna Inc., for instance, says it uses voice-analysis software on some telephone calls to get people who receive short-term disability benefits back to work sooner.
. . .
Ginger.io’s app, called Ginger.io, is being used by 30 medical centers, including Kaiser Permanente and the University of California, San Francisco, the company says. The National Institutes of Health has given a $2.42 million grant to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health to develop a smartphone app that will analyze factors including when patients lock and unlock their phones to determine sleep patterns in people with psychiatric disorders. Researchers at the University of Michigan are developing a smartphone app that records and analyzes patients’ vocal patterns during telephone calls to predict if someone is on the verge of depression or mania.

My sort of moronic phone isn't likely to report me to the authorities.

Finally, according to the Obama FBI, you have no expectation of not having your cell phone conversation hacked by the government: FBI says search warrants not needed to use “stingrays” in public places

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is taking the position that court warrants are not required when deploying cell-site simulators in public places. Nicknamed "stingrays," the devices are decoy cell towers that capture locations and identities of mobile phone users and can intercept calls and texts.

The FBI made its position known during private briefings with staff members of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). In response, the two lawmakers wrote Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson, maintaining they were "concerned about whether the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have adequately considered the privacy interests" of Americans.

And how do they know the conversations they are recording were sent from "public" spaces, and not "private" ones?  They don't, of course. But that won't matter:

Baltimore authorities cited a non-disclosure agreement to a judge in November as their grounds for refusing to say how they tracked a suspect's mobile phone. They eventually dropped charges rather than disclose their techniques. Further, sometimes the authorities simply lie to judges about their use or undertake other underhanded methods to prevent the public from knowing that the cell-site simulators are being used.

Real vs. Fake at 240 FPS

A follow up from the iPhone "ad" from last week.



I had no idea. . .

And now "Eine kleine Nachtmusik":



Wombat-socho has the weekly "Rule 5 Sunday: Shadows Of The Night" up at The Other McCain.

Best iPhone 6 Ad

Slow motion capabilities of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus:



Mildly warm woman gives a review of iPhone 6 Plus



She doesn't seem to be a fan.

Wombat-socho's "Rule 5 Sunday: The Cheerleaders Of October" is up at The Other McCain.

The Security Features of the New IPhone