Category: Cyber War

Okay – Let’s Say Donald Trump’s Presidency IS Illegitimate. What’s It Mean…?

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Former President Jimmy Carter spoke Truth several weeks back from a rare perch — as a former President Of The United States. He said unequivocally that he believes Donald Trump’s presidency is illegitimate. He said, unequivocally, that Donald Trump did NOT his election, that Russia changed the outcome of the election to make Donald Trump president.

I’m trying to recall the last time a former president called out a sitting president for being a traitor… and coming up dry.

Trump projects everything he’s guilty of out into the public sphere or onto other people. It sure makes knowing what all he’s guilty of a lot easier; assume Trump’s guilty of everything.

From the beginning, Trump has projected his illegitimacy like a fireworks show. It’s like he wants us to know he got away it. He thinks doing anything legally is for suckers. Good thing the majority of Americans have seen right through him. It’s only his base and the Main Stream Media who either refuse to see Trump for what he really is or see him for the despicable racist/misogynist/bigot/traitor he is — but just don’t care to do anything about it.

Never mind that Trump lost by at least three million popular votes, there’s ample evidence available right here in public that says Trump probably didn’t win the Electoral College either. Take Russia out of the election 2016 equation and Donald Trump does not make it through the primaries.

Russia isn’t just a Trump problem. Until I hear definitely otherwise, I feel absolutely justified in assuming that every single Republican has taken money directly from Russia (or Russian cut-outs). As far as I can tell, Russia has its hooks in every single Republican. I’m going to need THEM to provide proof they are who/what they say.

Trump’s win — and every Republican win — is tainted by the stink of corruption, conspiracy, treason. There are multiple stories by solid sources that Russia fed money to Republican candidates via the NRA and through the pension accounts of longtime Russian emigres (whose monthly pensions suddenly went from a couple thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars which they then donated to Republican candidates.

Make no mistake the active measures Russia applied against our election amount to an act of war. Cyber War is just as much war as anything else — especially if it nets you the other guy’s presidency. Imagine — taking control of our White House and a growing chunk of our government — without having to fire a shot.

I will take Donald Trump at his word. His presidency is illegitimate. It’s an illusion of a presidency that’s really a criminal enterprise. The Republican Party knew about this as early as their convention in 2016. There’s a story that was reported on at the time about a conversation the GOP’s head muckety-mucks had. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California enters. Says “I think Putin pays money to Dana Rohrbacher and Donald Trump”.

Does anyone there gasp in horror and insist they all run right to the FBI? Of course not! The opposite happens. Corrupt, spineless Speaker of The House Paul Ryan says “We’re not going to talk about that here. We’re going to keep it in the family”. Not the American electorate family, mind you, the treasonous GOP electorate family.

That same family had already denied Barack Obama — and all the Americans who elected him fairly and squarely — at least one SCOTUS seat that was his to pick and a shit-ton of other life-term judicial appointments. Earning his keep from the Koch Bros, uber-villain and destroyer of the Senate Mitch McTreasonTurtle has made it his life’s work to install permanent minority rule in America.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, permanent minority rule is not something most Americans would vote for. And while they are trying to shove it down our throats, ultimately they will fail. The numbers say they will. The burgeoning number of women running for political office say they will.

Failure will devastate the Republicans. Everything about election 2016 will have to be voided. Every single lifetime appointment — gone. all those ludicrously cruel rules & regs? Shredded.

We don’t have a choice. The Will of the People was stolen. Their choice was denied them by corruption and by corrupt players. To allow the theft to go unpunished — and the result allowed to stand — would be the equivalent of allowing the crime itself to continue — unpunished.

That can’t possibly be good for anyone.

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We’re Living Through World War THREE – And Don’t Even Know It

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Anyone who thinks you need bombs & bullets to win a war is going to lose every war they ever fight going forwards. Right now — that’s us.

We’ve been under intense Cyber attack ever since Donald Trump became part of our political process. That’s not hyperbole or conjecture — it’s material fact — contained right there in the Mueller Report. Russia didn’t just “meddle” in election 2016, they changed its outcome. They made Donald Trump the winner even though he absolutely was not.

Don’t tell me about voting machines — how if no voting machines were impacted, how can the vote be effected. That’s just as ignorant and troglodytic as thinking cyber war doesn ‘t happen. First of all, no official forensics have ever been done on any of the voting machines in Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin (that I know of). Those are three of the four states for which Paul Manafort handed over proprietary polling data to Oleg Deripaska — who then gave them to the GRU (Russian military intelligence) for weaponization. Unofficial forensics on the numbers by terrific citizen journalists like Mike Farb and Jennifer Cohen have pointed to numerous clear anomalies. Counties with the exact same percentages of Trump v Hillary vote tabulations. it doesn’t pass the “what a coincidence” smell test.

The point is, we don’t KNOW if machines were attacked and their vote totals altered — we’ve never asked the question. It’d be easy enough to DO the forensics and put the conspiracy theories to bed. Wonder why they don’t…

If you honestly think a changed vote at the point of purchase — a voting machine — is the only way to flip an election, you will lose every election you run in going forward. That, too, is contained within the Mueller Report — how weaponized social media works — and rest assured it does. If one — ONE — single voter (their voter data stolen, weaponized and turned back on them via an ad on THEIR Facebook page) changed their vote or changed their mind about voting in the first place — that, too, is like changing their actual ballot. If you LIE them into NOT VOTING, their non-vote aids the opponent — it’s as good as a vote that’s been stolen because it directly impacts the election’s outcome.

One vote can change an election’s outcome. That means our tolerance for bullshit here can only be ONE VOTE. That is our margin for error.

Trust me on this — please — more than ONE VOTE was changed via weaponized (stolen) voter data. This virtual attack on our voting system was meant to directly alter the election’s outcome. It was meant to circumvent the will of the American people in order to put Vladimir Putin’s candidate — Donald Trump — in the White House instead.

Every word of that is true. And — it’s right there in the Mueller Report, too — Every member of the Trump Crime Family, their entourage and every member of the Republican Party knows it too. What else could you call this BUT an ACT OF WAR? If Putin shut off our power grid tomorrow — something he CAN DO apparently — we’d sue for peace immediately on whatever terms he dictated. We’d have to.

Imagine — a war fought and lost without a shot being fired.

Sound horrifyingly possible? Well, BE horrified — it’s happening. We’re living in. We are that frog slowly being boiled to death, completely unaware. Problem is, it isn’t us that’s being boiled away, it’s our Democracy.

Donald Trump knows the only thing standing between him and indictment for multiple crimes is a stupid Department of Justice rule meant to keep Spiro Agnew from pardoning Richard Nixon back during Watergate. Once out of office, Trump will be instantly indictable — and indicted. He has to fight tooth & nail to remain in office forever because the alternative will be criminal charges, prosecution and — cos he’s SO incredibly guilty — asset forfeiture. It’s a fact, being such a ginormous criminal, Trump has no incentive to leave power EVER.

It’s maddening that we’ve been so slow to see this — though Trump’s been sociopathic about it from the get-go. He’s projected every last bit of it (with remarkable candor actually) — that his presidency was totally illegitimate, that his election was “rigged”, that he is Putin’s bitch. He’s also projected from the start that he intends to stay in power forever. He’s told his followers that — and they love the idea.

Want to know the worst part of living through World War Three? It’s seeing so many Fifth Columns already fanning out (like in, say Oregon where armed militias SHUT DOWN THE STATE CAPITOL). It’s knowing that one of our broadcast networks is a propaganda wing for Trump — and therefore for Russia. What — it’s not bad enough we still have cable systems & satellite providers pumping RT into our homes? We need a “news” network propagandizing, too?

I think of our situation as being akin to the Hawaiians living at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. The Japanese attacked at 7:22 a.m. — that’s when their first airplanes arrived and began dropping bombs. But, if we visited with those people at, say, 6:45 a.m. — and asked them — “Hey, are you at war with anyone?” They would have said no. That included Japan.

Just because you don’t know you’re at war doesn’t mean you aren’t. And just because a war wasn’t formally declared — well, bullets and bombs don’t care about your semantics. They’ll kill you even if you want to call them something kinder and gentler. You can call a bullet a marshmallow but when they bust that marshmallow inside your head, you’re dead.

We Live In Remarkable Times… That’s Not A Good Thing

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

I write movies & TV shows for a living (and a book, too, which I just finished!) It’s not the most reliable way to pay the rent but when I do make a buck, I make it by making stuff up, writing it down and selling it. I take great pride in the fact that my imagination can go just about anywhere.

But no writer could possibly have made up the Time we live in. That’s not a revelation of course; I’m hardly the first person or writer to say that. But I might be the first writer to say out loud how much I resent that fact. It’s damned hard to come up with stories these days half as compelling as what’s on the news. A 240 year old experiment in self-government teeters on the brink of destruction. And we’ve got a front row seat.

There’s a famous scene in a great movie called “The Third Man”. Joseph Cotton stars as a Holly Martin, writer who goes to Vienna just after WWII because he believes his friend Harry Lime has died. Vienna is a divided city with a free side and a side behind Russian control. Harry Lime may have committed a crime — which explains the mystery surrounding whether or not Harry is really dead. Turns out (Spoiler Alert!) he’s not dead — he IS a criminal and he did fake his death so that he could hide out in the Soviet sector.

Orson Welles plays Harry who finally comes out of hiding to confront Holly — and to seduce Holly into coming over to the dark side and going into the black market with him. Holly turns him down which sets up the climax later when Holly tries (working with the British authorities) to lure Harry into a trap. But, before Holly says no, Harry delivers a great monologue (written by the book & screenplay’s author, Graham Greene). Write

Chaos seems to produce greatness in addition to chaos. An argument can be made that war itself has inspired some of the greatest statements of human artistic genius. Picasso’s Guernica comes to mind…

War movies, war literature, war art, war music (Beethoven’s Eroica — written with Napoleon in mind, that dedication was later withdrawn however), war everything — it makes us look deep inside ourselves for a few thoughtful seconds before we go back to killing and wholesale slaughter.

Another argument can be made that American comedy hasn’t been this robust since Richard Nixon was president. My point — there are benefits to living in Remarkable Times. There are laughs to be had — bitter ones, perhaps but — laughs all the same. There’s that feeling of “chumminess” we all feel when we hear the latest stupider-than-stupid thing Donald Trump said on TV or via Twitter and we all think “What an asshole!” at the very same time.

I didn’t used to be a news junkie. I was a daily consumer of news product but my diet was a lot more balanced back then before Trump “won” in 2016. I used to be a regular Howard Stern listener. I was hard core. But Trump winning changed everything for me. I couldn’t listen to characters I loved anymore because they were worried about trivial shit (funny but trivial) while the world was ending around us all. I have been news 24/7 ever since.

This is not good for us but the answer isn’t sticking our heads in the sand. The 75th anniversary of D-Day brought Tom Brokaw out into the light again — and his book The Greatest Generation. I grew up in the war’s shadow; my parents were the Greatest Generation’s children. A baby boomer, I grew up in the 1960’s, part of a generation that was, in a way, the diametric opposite of the Greatest Generation. We weren’t fighting a war, we were protesting it (well, to be fair, by the time I got to college, the Vietnam war was 5 years over and done with. We were still deep into our wound-licking phase.

Baby boomers, Gen-X-ers, Millennials — we’ve all lived through interesting times but not very interesting times. Yeah, yeah, the Soviet Union died — but it didn’t die spectacularly like Nazi Germany did. Until Donald Trump ran for president — and “won” (he didn’t — fact o’ life — he lost both the popular and he absolutely lost the EC too.) That’s what Robert Mueller’s report teases us with.

The Donald Trump story — and the corrupt Republicans story — and the we’re under cyber attack right now story — these are all remarkable stories all by themselves. Lucky us for getting gang-tackled by them all. This will get far, far worse before it starts to get better. When we get to the part where ALL the shit starts flying from ALL the nooks & crannies, this will get exponentially more ugly. Never mind the awful, treasonous things the republicans have all done, when the American public get a firm grip on what this story is — how deep, dark & horrible it is — and how the republicans continue to play them for suckers and rubes — this will turn thermo-nuclear.

Bill Barr and Donald Trump have succeeded in muddying a narrative they desperately needed to muddy. The Truth will not set them free. It will however send them to prison for the rest of their lives. It may even expose them to execution — still one of the punishments for treason. And, yes — this IS treason because ARE at war. We’re at Cyber War.

Oh — but it’s “undeclared”, you say? Well, it’s just as “undeclared” as the state of war that existed in Japan’s mind when it attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Just because the Americans being bombed by the Japanese didn’t know they were at war didn’t mean the bombs didn’t kill them just as dead. You don’t have to know you’re at war to BE at war.

I used to feel a lot more certain that I knew how this would turn out. I’m a lot less certain now. The pleasures of living in remarkable times have worn thin. I suspect we all long for this to end and for something we used to call “normalcy” to replace it (and reign for a thousand years if it wants to).

There’s a Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times (in other words, may you be inundated with chaos). We’re learning — the Chinese knew what they were talking about.

Want To Know The Real Difference Between Men & Women? It’s How We Fill Silence…

~ A L Katz ~ 1 Comment

Two weeks ago, I handed my manager the revised version of a big TV pilot script & “bible”; in TV-Speak, a ‘bible” is the document that lays out all the vital details about a TV show that might not be included in its pilot script. A show’s bible contains all the characters, all their story arcs, all the show’s themes big and small starting at episode two and going through all of the next ten seasons you aspire to make and become rich off of). I’m not telling this story to bitch n moan — not at all.

Everything takes time. I am but one of many clients my manager has. He apologized profusely this morning for having not gotten to it yet.

While I would prefer if he had read it already, also I acknowledge that getting anyone to read anything these days is a massive chore — mostly because everyone I know is so overwhelmed by what’s already on their plates. I happily threw the waiting time into other projects — using the “I don’t know where I stand” dynamic to compel myself to get other work done — because I might have to.

Pro Life Hack: Always have Plans “B”, “C” & “D” within easy reach.

But I was beginning to get a little worried. I was beginning to assume that there was a “message” lurking in my manager’s silence. There wasn’t, of course. There was just “The Silence”.

Oh, the S I L E N C E . . .

Silence terrifies most humans. Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman made a whole career out of movies about “cosmic silence”. Being stuck in a moment of silence is almost as unsettling a prospect to the average person as farting in public — and getting caught.

Put a man and a woman in a car together (let’s let the man drive cos he’ll probably insist). They drive along on a beautiful day. In silence.

The woman doesn’t just “hear” the silence between them, she feels it. Feels it in her bones and in their very relationship. Her partner’s silence is loaded with dark intent and worry. The guy meanwhile? He hasn’t even thought about it. All he’s thinking is how nice the car feels this morning… must have been the more expensive oil he opted for last oil change… He hasn’t a clue his relationship is about to come at him like a shark with a vendetta.

Just Because You Don’t Know You’re At War, Doesn’t Mean You AREN’T At War. Ask The Folks Who Lived At Pearl Harbor…

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Ever been cheated on in a relationship? Ever discover the cheating was going on practically forever? What hurts most about it is the deception, right? YOU thought your relationship was one thing but, in fact, your relationship was something else entirely: YOU were the dummy.

Just because you didn’t know you were living a lie doesn’t mean you weren’t.

I honestly believe that, when we get a chance to see our times with some perspective (if we ever get to), we’ll come to see that we’ve been living through a literal World War Three this whole time. Russia (but also Saudi Arabia, The UAE, Israel, Turkey, Iran and China) have all been engaged in an ongoing Information War against the United States. They have weaponized our own mass media against us. Russia especially.

Think of it, as the title suggests, from the point of view of the folks living at Pearl Harbor the morning of December 7, 1941. You’re sleeping soundly in your bed in Paradise. You have no idea that an armada is steaming your way hellbent on attacking you. Killing you. YOU don’t know it but the Japanese sure do — a State Of War exists.

America didn’t officially “declare” a formal State of War until Franklin Roosevelt went before Congress the next day, December 8. But Roosevelt said that even as he declared a State of War, it already existed because of what Japan had done. America — Americans — were just the last to know is all.

Japan was breaking up with us. Had broken up with us already. You know how it is.

How Failure Of Imagination Kills…

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

When the forensics get done on our Time — and the Big Question gets asked — “How in the world did Americans let such an obvious criminal & traitor 1) get elected & 2) remain in power so long?

The answer will complicated with lots of moving parts (requiring actual calculus to figure out). One of the biggest moving parts will be the Republican Party itself and the monstrosity of its actions here. But the fact that they were complicit — in ways that even predated Trump’s takeover of their party (think Mitch McConnell & his refusal to even talk to Merrick Garland) goes right back to the heart of my premise. We “didn’t see it”.

In real time, Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans did something no other Senate had ever done before — held a President’s SCOTUS pick hostage. Mitch’s excuse was so phony it should have physically hurt every ear that heard it. It was Bullshit On Steroids: “The American People should get to decide who the next SCOTUS judge is”. The American People in that equation are the ones who VOTED FOR BARACK OBAMA and made him POTUS — the guy charged with doing that very thing.

Yet here we are. No Merrick Garland. Neil Gorsuch instead. Funny how the rules work when you make em up as you go along — AND GET AWAY WITH IT.

With all this press going at this story like sperms going at an egg — you’d think someone would have gotten through already and “fertilized” that egg. And yet — with a mountain RANGE of evidence staring them in the face, the Press seems blind to it. It’s there — they kinda know it is — and yet they can’t bring themselves to go and report it. It’s like they just can’t “trust” themselves and what they’re thinking. What they “know”.

This is how “FAILURE OF IMAGINATION” works. Under normal circumstances where everything’s normal — failing to think with imagination won’t hurt you (not much anyway). You can always muddle along in your mediocrity enjoying the status quo until you don’t.

But this here ain’t “normal”. Not even remotely. Gawd, I hope that’s not a revelation. Laws weren’t written to deal with our particular situation. This wasn’t “imagined” by the Constitution’s framers — a flat out treasonous POTUS and the flat out treasonous political party supporting him (the framers didn’t even want political parties; they happened because we’re human and tribal by nature). See how our problem is “outside the box”?

The solution to our problem will have to come from “outside the box” too. Part of our problem is — the criminals are using our rules to undermine them — as part of the whole Cyber War they’ve been waging against us as we sleep. We’re miles behind — in large part because we’ve been so damned slow to SEE what was happening.

Not slow to SEE, so much, really, as GRASP. We saw all this happening — but failed to grasp what it meant — and how it was playing out in all its terrible detail RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. That, too, is failure of imagination.

FAILURE OF IMAGINATION is how McConnell got away with circumventing the will of the American People to deliberately remake the judiciary as conservative when the people CLEARLY want it progressive?

HOW has Donald Trump gotten away with HIS shit for as long as he has? How did we ever let him get past “Mexicans are rapists” or “Pussy Grabbing” or every stinking lie he’s told from the moment he became OUR EMPLOYEE? How have we not been able to stop this — or even report this accurately?

I’ll let you fill in the blank — with an “Amen!” chaser.

But it isn’t just OUR failure of imagination — as citizens. We rely on our Press (as per the First Amendment) to be the final check on power. To do that they need to IMAGINE the worst — because you can’t report all the possible reasons things happen if you don’t include that. For one, you’re not being accurate.

But — strangely — watch enough news, and of all the possible answers to The Biggest Question Facing Us — Why Does Donald Trump Act Like Vladimir Putin Owns Him? The American Press STILL refuses to answer the question: “BECAUSE VLADIMIR PUTIN OWNS HIM”.

It seems bizarre that one can’t “imagine” the thing that’s not just “staring you in the face” but stabbing you there, too.

Dear MSM: You Screwed Up Reporting Trump-Russia. OWN IT!

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

A very real day of reckoning is coming for America’s Main Stream News Media: They helped perpetuate the False Narrative that nearly destroyed our Democracy. How many kazillion times has a TV News Talking Heads round table collectively nodded, “Yeah – THAT’S why!” when one of them explained away Trump by saying “Well, the American People voted for him…”?

It’s BULLSHIT. We didn’t. The MAJORITY of Americans (who were allowed to vote and whose votes were counted) voted AGAINST Donald Trump & everything Republican. The only reason Trump is POTUS is because he ‘won’ the EC. Let’s put aside the fact that the Electoral College is a vestige of slavery appeasement. Let’s put aside that the Electoral College is an example of indirect representation.

Let’s put aside the fact that 10 days before the election, Paul Manafort returned to the campaign from banishment (after his Russia ties were revealed) and told them all to focus everything on PENNSYLVANIA, WISCONSIN & MICHIGAN. As of this writing, no one has asked Manafort on the record (as far as we know — Team Mueller surely already has) what exactly he meant by that. Considering that those three states came in for Trump with less than 80,000 votes COMBINED — and their machines were never officially given a forensics exam (where you open up the machine and gaze at its code) — and considering where we are in our knowledge of what all Donald Trump, the republican party and Russia did together — to blithely believe that Trump’s EC win reflects “winning” is absurd.

Yet, all those arguments ended there with the rest of the talking heads nodding “Yeah — weird — whattaya gonna do about it?”

Thus was the False Narrative born and regularly strengthened. As crazy as it all seemed — as disconnected from what Americans really seemed to want (Trump’s base are not America — they may be 30% of us but the other 70% want nothing to do with them!) all that illogic could get shrugged off cos “That’s what America voted for”.

What, I wonder, will all those pundits with all those “Well, America voted for him!” replies on their resumes say when, it turns out, they were flat out wrong. Trump didn’t win the EC either. He was never the legitimate POTUS. He lost, in fact, and Hillary Clinton won. If HRC won, you understand, it screws up the whole narrative that she lost — and lost because she was a bad candidate. If in fact Hillary Clinton DIDN’T lose — and, in fact, won — then she WASN’T a bad candidate.

Our whole False Narrative just got caught out nekkid.

Oops! Now what will the pundits say? Actually — if we were doing this right, we wouldn’t care what those pundits said cos they’d be gone. They’ve all got exactly ten seconds to explain themselves and their lack of journalistic skepticism. Even if they didn’t quit and find other employment, those of us who watch the news would have to watch them knowing this about them: they suck at their jobs.

False Narrative’s bunk mate is “Both Sides Do It”. Don’t get me started on that SOB…