Mr. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, flanked by military spouses for a photo op at the White House, said, "You guys know what this represents? Maybe it's the calm before the storm," the president said.Also, this:
Pressed on what he meant, Mr. Trump said "we have the world's great military people" in the room.
Asked yet again for an answer, Mr. Trump said "you'll find out."
Trump to Mil Brass: “Moving forward I also expect you to provide me w a broad range of military options, when needed, at a much faster pace”Remember when the Berniebots were telling us that a vote for Hillary was a vote for war?
Many believe that Trump's "calm before the storm" remark statement was pure theater -- an exercise in media manipulation, designed to distract us from the latest twists and turns in the Russia investigation (and there have been many). I believe that something more is afoot.
The Soviet Union was destroyed when Mika Brzezinski's father lured the USSR into a foolish, unwinnable war. I'm sure that Putin considers turnabout fair play: Having installed an oaf in the White House, Putin will be overjoyed if his puppet involves this country in a ruinous exercise in military folly.
I do not believe that the "storm" will involve North Korea. As noted in an earlier post, I predict that Trump will find a pretext for a military confrontation with Iran. An interruption of the flow of oil through the straits of Hormuz will benefit Russia. The confrontation will be something short of all-out war -- although these things do tend to get out of hand.
Paddock: In an earlier post, I suggested that Paddock's high financial status is hard to reconcile with his professed love for video poker, which is rigged in favor of the House. I suggested that perhaps he had shifted his affections to "real" poker, which is a game of skill. One can earn a living from that kind of poker.
Looks like I was wrong. According to the most recent information, Steve Paddock really was obsessed with video poker and had no interest in the mano-y-mano variety. Apparently, there are high-end video poker machines which most of us have never played. With these machines, the House advantage is very slight (presuming one plays perfectly), and may in fact be equalized by the comps.
Acquaintances of Paddock have said that he bragged of gambling a million a year on video poker. A 97 percent "win" rate means that he paid $30,000 annually for his habit. Apparently, he was in a financial position which allowed him to do so comfortably. How likely is it that a former-accountant-turned-landlord was able to attain such a position?
There's another possibility.
This article from 2014 describes the adventures of two men who profited from a video poker programming bug which reliably turned the advantage toward the player. Their plan fell awry for two reasons: The two friends fell out, and they played for too long at one location, thereby arousing suspicion.
Was that bug the only bug? It's possible that Paddock found another, and that he wisely did not share his discovery with anyone. None of this, of course, gets us closer to discovering his motive for mass murder.
12 comments:
I'm gonna retract, for now, my theory that Paddock was a CIA asset and drug smuggler run amok.
I'm not sure you were wrong about that. At this point, I'm not sure of ANYTHING.
(Well, I'm pretty damned sure that this was not an Antifa conspiracy.)
The thing is, we've gotten a pretty good picture of how he made money gambling. I thought he was probably getting money from drug trafficking, and laundering it through casinos. But now the simpler explanation is that he made a fortune as a high-powered accountant, and kept the fortune going with smart gambling.
Still, there's the question of why he moved around so much. And I've read reports that he hadn't been employed for nearly three decades. That still doesn't add up for me, but I need affirmative evidence of drug, let alone CIA, ties to go further with this, and none has been forthcoming, so far.
Another thing that's still puzzling me, though, is the report, carried by lots of outlets, that Paddock owned two planes. Only one has been identified. Maybe the report was a mistake -- aviation records are complicated, and you have to be versed in them to avoid basic errors. But if the report was accurate, then where is the second plane?
And yeah, the antifa stuff is bullshit, and it's alarming how an Infowars report that's patent hooey spread to Drudge Report and suffused the entire right-wing mediasphere. The right-wing propaganda machine is exerting a reality-bending force characteristic of totalitarianian systems.
I might have to reinstate my CIA/drug theory, 'cause this is very interesting.
"Las Vegas madman Stephen Paddock not only targeted innocent concertgoers — but also seemingly the hanger for the U.S. government’s super secret JANET airlines."
http://radaronline.com/celebrity-news/las-vegas-shooter-targeted-secret-government-planes/
A CIA asset might have access to a repository of "bugs" to exploit. Or the video poker thing could just be money laundering. Pretend you won the money you earned illegally, to explain where it came from.
He was a landlord? Just when I thought he couldn't be any worse. That could also be how he had the money, he was a rentier whose victims paid for his lifestyle.
Was thinking yesterday about this aviation fuel tank story, and wondering why Paddock didn't bring a couple hundred rounds of tracers. Now we know why. His dealer at the Phoenix gun show was sold out. Close call. This could have been a lot worse.
https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/the-strip/las-vegas-strip-shooter-targeted-aviation-fuel-tanks-source-says/
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/06/us/las-vegas-shooting-investigation/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Top+Stories%29
Yeah, I think it's too soon to rule out anything with Paddock, though I agree that if there was any link to Antifa, it would be all over the media by now and Trump would be bringing it up at every opportunity. There's a lot of fishyness about this latest event, that's for sure.
So what's going to be Iran or NK?
Or firing Muller?
Joseph, thanks for sticking to the Russia story in all its variants and history. Z-Big has not been forgotten there as you point out. There are so many decades of ill will that the US has engaged in.
in re: Paddock, I'm going to stick with brain tumor and money laundering, though we may never know.
Remember when the Berniebots were telling us that a vote for Hillary was a vote for war?
I remember. And I also remember Jill Stein spewing this nonsense as well.
Of course, some of these folks have gone silent, but others--like H.A. Goodman and Ron Chusid of the site "Liberal Values" have instead twisted themselves into human pretzels still claiming that Hillary would have started WW III one hour after she was inaugurated.
War with a foreign country MIGHT be what he means (Republicans always love a war, the longer and more expensive, the better), but he could also be indicating that he intends to institute martial law. Crazy? Couldn't happen? Who the hell is going to stop him? The Koch/Mercer Marionettes? Too busy spewing mealy-mouthed BS during the day and banging their mistresses at night. The Supremes? They have decide they don't want to be the the third leg of this teetering government; the Cheney-Trump appointments effectively neutralized them. The military generals? Like in, Flynn/Kelly/Mattis, those kind of generals? Yeah, could be a foreign war, with Trump taking a commission from Betsy's Bro, but, as he says, we'll see.
--tle
Post a Comment