The Trump team would like to do a federal takeover of our cell phones to "protect" us against the Chinese. Uh, no.

Oh I'll keep your phones safe alright, you can trust me.

Courtesy of Axios:  

Trump national security officials are considering an unprecedented federal takeover of a portion of the nation’s mobile network to guard against China, according to sensitive documents obtained by Axios. 

Why it matters: We’ve got our hands on a PowerPoint deck and a memo — both produced by a senior National Security Council official — which were presented recently to senior officials at other agencies in the Trump administration. 

The main points: The documents say America needs a centralized nationwide 5G network within three years. There'll be a fierce debate inside the Trump administration — and an outcry from the industry — over the next 6-8 months over how such a network is built and paid for. 

The proposal apparently offers two different plans for protecting cell phones, one involves nationalizing the industry, while the others has the cell phone companies competing with each other to provide safe, hack resistant 5G network.

However sources say option number two is really not the goal as the administration sees only a government controlled network as being "safe."

It seems clear to me that the choices are really to risk the possibility that the Chinese might hack our phones, or hand our service over to the Trump Administration and insure that the Russians will definitely hack our phones.

Keep in mind that this guy does NOT work for us.

Just take a moment to imagine the incredible Right Wing backlash that would have occurred if President Obama had even suggested something remotely similar to this.

They would STILL be screaming about it.

Russian company celebrates their leader's dominance over America's commander-in-chief by selling an incredibly expensive case for a phone nobody uses anymore.

Courtesy of The Verge: 

A Russian phone-customization company debuted its latest creation this week: a new Nokia 3310 with embedded, gold-plated portraits of US president Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin on the back. The phone is meant to commemorate the two world leaders meeting at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg. 

The middle button on the device features the G-20 Summit logo, while the phone body is made of tempered titanium. The data and location of the summit is also emblazoned across the back. This device is real and costs 149,000 rubles, or $2,500. 

Caviar writes on its website that it purposely chose to display the presidents’ side profiles. They’re looking in the same direction, too, to symbolize “the common desire for progress in US-Russian relations.” Such harmonious phone vibes.

Let's get real, they're facing the same way because Putin has Trump by the pussy and he is making him face the same way.

This story took me by complete surprise, as I did not even know that Nokia was still in business.

Who in the hell has a Nokia phone nowadays?

And if you are too broke to afford an I-Phone than how in the hell does this company expect you to be able to afford a $2,500 case?

This product is just like the Trump presidency, stuck in the past, completely impractical for our purposes, and too expensive for the consumers.

Almost half of Donald Trump's Twitter followers are fake, and he can't find anybody to be his new communications director.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

This isn't the first time someone has pointed out that a good portion of Trump's Twitter following is fake, but what's interesting is that its fakeness seems to be increasing. In January, journalist Yashar Ali ran an audit on Trump's Twitter account and found that 68 percent of his then-20 million followers were real. Now he's at 30 million followers, but only 51 percent are real, which means of 10 million followers Trump has gained since January, about 8.3 million are fake. 

In April 2016, when Trump was beginning to gain traction as a serious candidate to at least win the Republican presidential nomination, the former reality TV star had a mere 7.58 million followers, only 8 percent of which were fake, according to FiveThirtyEight. It's not surprising that as Trump's global profile has skyrocketed in the past 13 months, so too have the number of bots attached to his Twitter account—but it's astonishing how much the percentage of his followers that are fake has risen. 

So is Trump actually buying new followers? We'll probably never know, but there seems to be nothing more important to Trump than how his fame relates to that of other public figures, and it can't sit well with the president that there are currently 31 accounts with more followers than his. One of those accounts is that of Barack Obama, which boasts a whopping 89 million followers, good for third-most in the world behind Katy Perry and Justin Bieber.

I for one have no trouble believing that Trump would pay for followers so that he could look popular.

But the truth is that even when he is offering money and a job he is having trouble funding people who want to be associated with him, or his presidency.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed:

BuzzFeed News spoke with 20 Republican communicators and operatives, many of whom have worked on Capitol Hill and in presidential campaigns and some who have declined previous offers to join the Trump administration. Nearly all said they would be unwilling to accept an offer to replace Dubke, who on Tuesday announced his resignation as communications director. 

"Hell no!” said one Republican — one of the most common type of responses BuzzFeed News got from operatives. “That would be career suicide.” 

Others brought a mix of dark humor. 

"That's like asking someone who just witnessed a horrific bungee jumping accident whether they would like to go next,” one Republican source responded in a text message. 

“It would be only a few months on the job before tapping out the ‘I want to spend more time with family’ email,” another said.

I really can't say that I blame any of these folks. After all who wants to board the Titanic after it is already taking on water?

Of course who needs a communications director when Trump has been handing out his cell phone number like a desperate barfly right before last call?

Courtesy of the AP:

President Donald Trump has been handing out his cellphone number to world leaders and urging them to call him directly, an unusual invitation that breaks diplomatic protocol and is raising concerns about the security and secrecy of the U.S. commander in chief’s communications.

So far only Canadian Prime Minister, and panty dampener, Justin Trudeau has actually called Trump,  and that was probably just to ask him if his refrigerator was running and then to tell him he better go after it.

I keep forgetting, how long do these train wrecks typically last before the fiery explosion at the end?

You undoubtedly saw this coming, White House staff may have deleted information critical to Russia collusion investigations.

Courtesy of Politico:

Unlike the White House, which is subject to federal recordkeeping requirements, campaigns aren’t bound to preserve documents. But staffers may have some emails still backed up on their phones or computers, or documents — including calendars and other records that could wind up being critical for investigators.

Trump’s campaign, said a former senior aide, didn’t do much in the way of establishing a backup plan to preserve those digital records. “You’d be giving us too much credit,” said the former staffer. “The idea of document retention did not come up. The idea of some formal structure did not come up.” 

The White House declined to comment when asked what staff have been told about preserving documents related to the ongoing investigations. In March, The Associated Press reported that White House counsel Don McGahn instructed White House staff in late February to save all materials that could potentially be relevant for investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The AP report noted that the memo also applied to materials belonging to White House staffers who worked on the campaign.

I think it is safe to predict that investigators will find that much of what they want to see is no longer available.

In fact I have little doubt that this information started to get deleted the minute that news broke with the first mention of a possible investigation.

The Trump White House is already attempting to blame any loss of data on the widespread use of apps like Confide, Signal and WhatsApp. But that seems just a little TOO convenient.

Remember back in February when Sean Spicer gathered up staff cell phones so he could check for security leaks? Do we really think any information helpful to these investigators was left untouched?

I think the only real hope that the investigators will have is that there are clearly members of Trump's staff, both campaign and White House, who are upset and frightened by what they have seen.

Those are the folks most likely to have preserved data on their devices, or uploaded it to their home computers, that would be of the most help to those involved in the Russian probes.

Spicey is snatching the phones of White House staff in order to find leakers. Can you say "paranoia?"

Courtesy of Politico:  

Last week, after Spicer became aware that information had leaked out of a planning meeting with about a dozen of his communications staffers, he reconvened the group in his office to express his frustration over the number of private conversations and meetings that were showing up in unflattering news stories, according to sources in the room. 

Upon entering Spicer’s second floor office, staffers were told to dump their phones on a table for a “phone check," to prove they had nothing to hide.

Spicer, who consulted with White House counsel Don McGahn before calling the meeting, was accompanied by White House lawyers in the room, according to multiple sources. There, he explicitly warned staffers that using texting apps like Confide -- an encrypted and screenshot-protected messaging app that automatically deletes texts after they are sent -- and Signal, another encrypted messaging system, was a violation of the Federal Records Act, according to multiple sources in the room. 

The phone checks included whatever electronics staffers were carrying when they were summoned to the unexpected follow-up meeting, including government-issued and personal cell phones.

My favorite part of this story is that it ALSO leaked out, which means that Spicey is going to lose his shit that his attempts to stop leaks was also leaked to the press.

This is really starting to feel like Hitler's final days in the bunker.

They know the end is coming and they have already started to suspect and distrust those around them.

Someday all of this is going to make a great book.

Though they will probably put it in the Fiction section since nobody will believe it could have really happened this way.

New technology will now allow anti-abortion groups to target women's phones. Gee thanks science!

Courtesy of Mother Jones:

A new investigation by Rewire, a reproductive health news service, shows that anti-abortion groups are moving beyond their time-honored approaches of picketing clinics and shouting at women: Now they're going digital, thanks to a technology known as mobile geofencing that can be used to target women through smartphones. 

The technology is typically used by advertisers who want to hone in on a target audience in a specific location. Have you ever gotten an ad for Lyft or Uber right after landing at an airport in a new city? That's an example of mobile geofencing in action. 

 A Boston advertising executive named John Flynn realized the technology could be used to target women seeking an abortion, and to send information on crisis pregnancy centers and adoption agencies straight to their smartphones. Rewire reports that Flynn began marketing his presentations on the technology to anti-abortion groups such as RealOptions, a Northern California crisis pregnancy center network, and Bethany Christian Services, an evangelical adoption agency, and they quickly saw the potential. 

Flynn's technology allows a geofence to be built around Planned Parenthood clinics and other abortion facilities, so anti-abortion messages may be sent to smartphones in clinic waiting rooms.

So if this technology targets women (How do they know it's women?) that are approaching these Planned Parenthood clinics that obviously means that a number of women who are going there for birth control or a cancer screening are going to receive this spam on their phones, telling them not to abort their non-existent fetuses.

This seems incredibly intrusive especially since these "crisis pregnancy" centers are notoriously full of misinformation about abortion, birth control, and even sex itself.

I think there should be a law against this.

Maybe when Hillary Clinton is President she will pass one. (Sorry couldn't resist.)

Company develops guns that looks just like a smartphone. What could possibly go wrong?

Courtesy of Phys Org:  

Americans will soon be able to buy a smartphone-shaped gun that can hold two bullets and easily slip into a pocket. 

The Minnesota-based company Ideal Conceal says it will sell the new weapon from mid-2016. 

"Ingeniously designed to resemble a smartphone, yet with one click of the safety it opens and is ready to fire," the company says on its website. 

"Smartphones are everywhere, so your new pistol will easily blend in with today's environment," it adds. "In its locked position it will be virtually undetectable because it hides in plain sight." 

The gun is a double-barrelled .380 caliber folding pistol that will sell for $395, the company says. 

At this point one has to wonder if these gun manufacturers are TRYING to kill our children.

It is bad enough that there are all of these guns lying around that look like guns, now we are going to have guns lying around that look like cell phones.  

Not only that but exactly how do we keep these off of airplanes and out of places like schools, US Capitols, and other gun free zones?

 I see no practical reason for this product to exist, and it clearly demonstrates a clear and present danger to the American people. 

The not yet arrested Oregon protesters are upset that the FBI is blocking their cell phones and internet access.

LaVoy Finicum, martyr or moron?

Courtesy of OPB: 

OPB spoke with the remaining occupiers inside the refuge Sunday by cellphone. They say federal authorities have locked down their ability to make or receive calls. 

David Fry, one of the four remaining militants, said the FBI made it so the occupiers can’t make outgoing calls on their cellphones. Fry said he can receive incoming calls, but that the other three in the refuge appear unable to receive calls on their cellphones. The militants also said they’ve lost access to the internet.

Wait, no phone calls and no access to internet porn?

The feds are playing hardball now.

On the other hand none of these yahoos have been arrested or shot dead by the side of the road, so you know there's that.

Speaking of being shot by the side of the road, as expected the death of  LaVoy Finicum at the hands of law enforcement encouraged some sympathizers to form something called a "rolling protest" on Saturday.

It also inspired a truly horrible tribute song called, I kid you not, the Ballad of LaVoy Finicum (Cowboy's Stand for Freedom).

Let me say once again that if this had been a group of brown skinned Muslims taking over this building that the bodies would already be piled up to the sky and there would be no tribute songs or rolling protests to mark their passing. 

White House aide arrested for assault after taking police officer boyfriend's gun and firing it in his direction.

Courtesy of CNN: 

A White House staffer was arrested Friday on charges of assault and reckless endangerment after allegedly threatening and shooting at a Capitol Hill police officer with whom she had been having sex, according to arrest records. 

Barvetta Singletary, a special assistant to the President and House legislative affairs liaison, has been placed on unpaid leave and had her access to the White House revoked, a White House spokesperson told CNN on Monday. 

Singletary was released Monday from jail in Prince George's County, Maryland, after posting a $75,000 bond, according to spokesman John Erzen of Maryland's state's attorney's office. 

The incident began early Friday morning after Singletary texted the officer "asking him to come to her residence...for sexual intercourse," according to charging documents, which classified the incident as domestic violence. 

After "a brief sexual encounter," Singletary began asking the officer about another woman he was dating and tried to access his cell phones. 

Singletary then grabbed the officer's service weapon from a bag and pointed it at him, before firing one round toward him, documents say.

Oh yeah the last thing you want to do is discuss the other woman with a loaded gun within reach of the woman with whom you just had sex. That is Not Getting Shot 101.

Apparently Singletary tried to destroy the evidence by wiping down the gun, and is currently not allowed on White House grounds. Which I think is clearly the right call.

I would assume that ultimately she will lose her job, and if that police officer has a brain in his head, her boyfriend as well.

Worst cell phone case design ever!

Courtesy of Liberal America: 

There are some things in life that humans create that are just plain stupid and dangerous. Underwear embedded with fireworks, glass motorcycle helmets, and the current Republican Party — just to name a few. 

But this new brilliantly stupid invention may just win this year’s Darwin Award. Someone’s created an iPhone case that looks like a handgun.

I would NOT suggest purchasing this cell phone case, which was designed to look like a firearm. #BeSmart #BeSafe pic.twitter.com/swsWzD1sdY

— NYPD 112th Precinct (@NYPD112Pct) June 30, 2015

Courtesy of the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office Facebook page:   

Please folks - this cell phone case is not a cool product or a good idea. A police officers job is hard enough, without having to make a split second decision in the dark of night when someone decides without thinking to pull this out while stopped for a motor vehicle violation. What do you think?

I am actually split on this issue.

On the one hand if you are stupid enough to purchase this cell phone case then you should probably be removed from the gene pool before you procreate. Chalk one up for Darwin.

On the other hand it would most likely be young people who would buy this, and ignorance, unlike stupidity, can be temporary.

Forget Nostradamus, the real prognosticator was Nikola Tesla.

Nikola Tesla 1926:  

"When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket." 

Almost ninety years ago this man predicted the future we are living today, including cell phones and the internet.

Tesla is one of my daughter's all time heroes, along with his contemporary counterpart Elon Musk.

What can I say? I raised her right. 

May become my favorite picture of President Obama ever!

This is the ACTUAL moment when President Obama received the call from Mitt Romney conceding the race.

That was the moment when the whole country was able to breathe a sigh of relief.

(More great pictures over at the Obama Diary.)

Could this be the cellphone election?

Courtesy of National Memo:

The first and most profound way cellphones are changing American politics is through polling. 

“We think the polls this year seriously underestimate the Obama vote,” legendary pollster Stan Greenberg said in a video posted on The Carville-Greenberg Report Monday. 

“A majority of Hispanics are cellphone-only; 4 out of 10 African-Americans are cellphone-only. Young people, of course, are mostly cellphone only,” Greenberg explained. This greatly complicates polling since only live pollsters call cellphones. 

“You know, if you’re reached on a cellphone, you’re 11 points more likely to be voting for President Obama,” Greenberg said. 

Greenberg isn’t the only one who has observed the president’s mobile advantage. The New York Times’ poll guru Nate Silver has noted the same phenomenon and suggests that polls that include cellphones tend to be much higher quality. 

A second way cellphones are changing the political landscape is through donation by text. 

President Obama’s campaign was the first ever to accept donations by text. Governor Romney’s campaign joined him shortly thereafter. Though carriers capped the amount of donations an individual could give through this method, it proved to be highly effective for the president. 

Early estimates suggest that Obama outraised Romney by a 500-to-1 ratio via text message. This helped the president catch up with the Republicans on fundraising and presents a unique opportunity.

You know reading that, and I have posted similar information about cellphones before, should give all of us a lot of hope that even as the Republicans are attempting every dirty trick in the book to steal this election, that the numbers, just like in 2008, will be too much much for them to overcome.

By the way I have to give a big ole hat tip to my pal Dennis Zaki who was the first person, and this is going way back to the beginning of the year, to tell me not to trust the polls and that they will not reflect reality so long as they leave out cell phones. He has said over and over again, that nobody seems to be aware of just how many people in this country are cell phone only users.

And do you know what? I think he is most likely right on target.