Do You Enjoy a Good Conspiracy?

There is this guy, Bill Palmer, who has his own website -- the Palmer Report -- dedicated to posting stories that are politically left-leaning. His stories are apparently well-sourced, frequently correct, but he typically inserts opinions as a blogger would. There's nothing wrong with good "shade" and I rather love it, but his site would gather far more support, credence, and readers if he lessened the shade and stuck to what he's discovered.

As far as conspiracy stories go, he's got some really good ones. The biggest conspiracy of them all: RUSSIA.

Conspiracy, here, does not necessarily carry the negative connotation of people running around with tin foil hats, but rather, that a lot of the stories he's breaking involve a group of people conspiring to do bad things. It's still not clear that Russia and the Trump campaign conspired, but the ties are far deeper, wider, and involve criminal activity outside of the campaign.

Journalists are rarely right on all of the facts; likewise, Palmer probably has gotten things wrong. Nonetheless, he seems to be connecting a lot of dots that even some journalists are connecting, leading some news outlets to start pointing links to his site and his stories. He's gained enough cred to at least warrant some attention.

Right now, the thing that is worth tracking is the rumors about why Jason Chaffetz pre-announced that he won't be running for re-election and might quit altogether before his term is up. It's odd that, just months into his new term, he's decided to ambiguously call it quits. There are apparently five reasons: (1) He had a multi-year affair; (2) The Russians have kompromat on his affair and were blackmailing him; (3) The Russians have kompromat on money laundering and were blackmailing him; (4) He's being investigated for campaign finance fraud; (5) Trump wrote him a $10M check for leaking "the Comey letter".

I will state that the only thing that seems plausible is that he cheated on his wife. Chaffetz's excuse -- "spending time with my family" -- is usually code for "I was caught cheating on my wife and now I need to save my marriage and my legacy". Coming from a very religious state, Utah, Chaffetz would imperil his seat, were information about an affair to leak out just before the midterm election. The other stuff is too fanciful for my taste.