Category: politics

Wireless Emergency Alert Paranoia!

Mike Rothschild2 Comments

On Friday, the tinfoil hats of both far right and far left conspiracy theorists got just a bit tighter with the announcement from FEMA that the agency would run its first test of the cell phone Presidential Alert system.

First laid out in the WARN Act of 2006 and launched in 2012, the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system is the logical extension of the Emergency Alert System, the national network of warning messages that can be sent out in the event of catastrophic events.

Such a national alert system has existed since CONELRAD came online in 1951. The systems have evolved through the years, and took on the duties of warning about local civil emergencies, such as severe weather, as well as oncoming nuclear horror. They all test weekly on the radio and on TV.

So there’s nothing new or novel about a national alert system sending test messages, nor is there anything surprising about a system being set up to reach people using the dominant technology of the day – cell phones.

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Relax – Trump Can’t Declare Martial Law and He Can’t Suspend the Election

Mike Rothschild3 Comments

The mysterious closure of an observatory in New Mexico – by the FBI, no less. Anecdotal stories of massive military exercises featuring tanks, attack helicopters, and artillery in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, rural Michigan, Cape Cod, and elsewhere. A series of gas line explosions and fires in Massachusetts, blowing up dozens of houses – and bearing the hallmarks of a Russian cyberattack.

It could be the first stirrings of “The Storm,” the great unsealing of indictments against Democrats and pedophiles that mysterious Trump insider Q has been hinting at for a year.

But what if the exercises and explosions are actually the first strands in a spider’s web being woven by President Trump and his cronies to stay in power and crack down on non-believers?

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Was John McCain Executed for Treason?

Mike Rothschild34 Comments

John McCain’s memorial service saw Republicans and Democrats alike praise his candor and heroic service in the Vietnam War, while rebuking how Donald Trump’s brutish simple-mindedness has taken over the Republican Party.

Afterwards, Ohio governor John Kasich (himself an ardent Trump foe) appeared on CNN to talk about how the spirit of the memorial hasn’t carried over to the contentious Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings going on at the same time.

The media hit would have gone totally unnoticed except for a rather odd slip of the tongue by Kasich, where he clearly said that it had been 24 hours since John McCain was “put to death.”

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The Great Disappointments

Mike Rothschild11 Comments

“TREASON?”

In any other time, a president openly wondering if someone in his administration was committing the most heinous crime a person can commit against their own country would be earth-shattering news, leading to hearings and controversy for months.

But in the time when Donald Trump is president, such a statement is no more or less worrisome than anything else the president has said in the last weeks or months.

Welcome to life in These United States. Treason? It must be Wednesday.

But to the conspiracy theorists blindly marching under the banner of #QAnon, the president’s “TREASON?” tweet was something else: a sign that “the storm,” the massive purge of deep state Democrats and Hollywood pedophiles that Q has been forecasting for a year, was about to begin.

And Q-believers were having every part of it.

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Does it Actually Matter Who QAnon Is?

Mike Rothschild

The subject of whether conspiracy theory avatar QAnon is actually a Trump administration insider, a naughty prankster, or something else has consumed the right wing infotainment sphere.

While liberals debate whether or not QAnon should be given oxygen (and I think we need to, if nothing else, to debunk it), conservative personalities are doing their best to simultaneously inflame and shoot down the whole thing.

On one side, you’ve got prominent conservative personalities who are absolutely sure Q is a live action roleplaying game that’s snared a massive amount of suckers. On the other side, you’ve got Q devotes who are utterly convinced that Q is real, and that the others are delusional.

They’re arguing a lot on Twitter and reddit, but it’s likely that where a conservative media personality falls regarding Q rests entirely on the makeup of their audience – more mainstream infotainters will be skeptical, while those on the fringes will shift their allegiance depending on what their followers want.

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