As I noted in last Friday's piece, Donald Trump Finally Comes Out of the Closet, the firing of Steve Bannon represents the most significant event to occur during the Trump administration thus far. For the purposes of this piece, it's important to review some of what I wrote:

Irrespective of what you think of Bannon, him being out means Wall Street and the military-industrial complex is now 100% in control of the Trump administration. Prepare for an escalation of imperial war around the world and an expansion of brutal oligarchy.

The removal of Bannon is the end of even a facade of populism. This is now the Goldman Sachs Presidency with a thin-skinned, unthinking authoritarian as a figurehead. Meanwhile, guess who's still there in addition to the Goldman executives? Weed obsessed, civil asset forfeiture supporting Jefferson Sessions. The Trump administration just bacame ten times more dangerous than it was before. With the coup successful, Trump no longer needs to be impeached.

Here's another prediction. Watch the corporate media start to lay off Trump a bit more going forward. Rather than hysterically demonize him for every little thing, corporate media will increasingly give him more of the benefit of the doubt. After all, a Presidency run by Goldman Sachs and generals is exactly what they like. Trump finally came out of the closet as the anti-populist oligarch he is, and the results won't be pretty.

Fake news CNN hosted a panel of six Trump supporters Wednesday morning in an effort to continue to spin the Charlottesville protests into more bad press against POTUS Trump.

Unfortunately for CNN and host Alisyn Camerota, the panel completely pushed back against the CNN host, and her persistent argument that President Trump committed some sort of unforgivable sin by condemning both sides for violence in Charlottesville.

The segment was off to a bad start for Camerota when she asked how many panelists were troubled by President Donald Trump's response to Charlottesville.

A bill that will allow homes to be searched without a warrant was passed with overwhelming support by the United States Congress, and signed into law by President Trump-and it happened with no media coverage and very little fanfare.

On the surface, House Joint Resolution 76 looks harmless. The title of the bill claims that its purpose is "Granting the consent and approval of Congress for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the State of Maryland, and the District of Columbia to enter into a compact relating to the establishment of the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission."

"Whereas the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, an interstate compact agency of the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the State of Maryland, provides transportation services to millions of people each year, the safety of whom is paramount; Whereas an effective and safe Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority system is essential to the commerce and prosperity of the National Capital region; Whereas the Tri-State Oversight Committee, created by a memorandum of understanding amongst these 3 jurisdictions, has provided safety oversight of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority."

A new process, laid out in two memos circulating in the West Wing this week, is supposed to ensure Kelly vets everything that hits the Resolute desk.

Confronted with a West Wing that treated policymaking as a free-for-all, President Donald Trump's chief of staff, John Kelly, is instituting a system used by previous administrations to limit internal competition - and to make himself the last word on the material that crosses the president's desk.

It's a quiet effort to make Trump conform to White House decision-making norms he's flouted without making him feel shackled or out of the loop. In a conference call last week, Kelly initiated a new policymaking process in which just he and one other aide - White House staff secretary Rob Porter, a little-known but highly regarded Rhodes scholar who overlapped with Jared Kushner as an undergraduate at Harvard - will review all documents that cross the Resolute desk.

The new system, laid out in two memos co-authored by Kelly and Porter and distributed to Cabinet members and White House staffers in recent days, is designed to ensure that the president won't see any external policy documents, internal policy memos, agency reports and even news articles that haven't been vetted. Kelly's deputy, Kristjen Nielson, is also expected to assume an integral role.

The keystone of the new system is a "decision memo" that will - for each Trump policy - integrate the input of Cabinet agencies and policy councils and present the president with various options, as well as with the advantages and drawbacks of each one.

The Kelly-Porter reforms are in many ways a reversion to the habits of previous administrations, particularly in their attempt to ensure competing views are completely and straightforwardly presented to the president.

FBI agents suspect somebody in Congress tipped off the Awans that they would be indicted and now the criminal cases once-seemingly isolated to a group of rogue Pakistani IT specialists working for Congress suddenly has gotten much larger. And much more troubling.

Federal agents said preceding his arrest, Imran Awan acted like a man who was recently tipped off that he would be pinched and moreover, it was no coincidence Awan's wife was whisked out of the country in March after sidestepping the FBI at Dulles International Airport to flee to Pakistan. "She had cardboard boxes for luggage," one FBI agent said. "The school didn't even know she took her kids out."

Now a faction of FBI veterans believe the couple's puzzling behavior is explained by even more troubling revelations: Information about the Grand Jury convened to investigate Awan and his wife Hina Alvi for bank fraud and illicit money transfers was likely leaked to the Pakistani couple. Awan and Alvi were both former IT workers hired by Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Additionally, Imran and his wife - along with two brothers - performed IT and computer programming work for at least 18 more Democratic lawmakers in Congress. But it was Wasserman, the former chairwoman of the DNC, who kept the pair employed despite the booming criminal case.

One of the most important issues that President Trump needs to address is the astronomical financial costs of the U.S. Intelligence Community and the security of the American people. The fact that many of the directors of the 17 branches of intelligence have little or no experience in intelligence is of concern.

The "intelligence community" is a runaway train, an avalanche of over indulgence that runs itself, regardless of who is posturing as its director. This so called "community" is at the very heart of the deep state.

The spy industry is drowning in data. In this case less is more. What I mean by that is that gathering intelligence is the primary concern of all U.S spy agencies. In times past, most Intel was gathered by case officers and their informants. It was the job of the case officer to determine if information any informant offered was of any value.

Based on the particular operational needs, the case officer would send the best Intel up through his chain of command to be further gleaned and graded. But with the advances in technology, the powers that be decided that it would be better to gather all the information, all of the time, from all available sources in a continuous nonstop feeding frenzy. The weak link in this model is that the ability of any of the spy agencies to analyze the billions of bits of data is a tiny fraction of what it collects. Picture if you will a football field filled from the grass to the tallest seats with documents of every conceivable subject all to be read and reported on by only one single person! You get the picture.

Energy Transfer Partners, the corporation behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, has sued Greenpeace and other environmental groups for "eco-terrorism" over their protests against the controversial pipeline.

According to the Dakota Access Pipeline company, environmental groups launched an "eco-terrorism campaign"against the pipeline, and engaged in "acts of terrorism," including soliciting donations and interfering with construction, damaging its "critical business and financial relationships," Reuters reports.

In a 231-page lawsuit filed Tuesday, ETP claims the protests and negative publicity for the pipeline cost the company millions of dollars. It is seeking triple damages, which could come to $1 billion, along with further punitive damages, the Grand Forks Herald reports. The lawsuit also seeks a court order to prevent the groups from conducting more protests.

Russian long-range strategic bombers have carried out scheduled flights over neutral waters of the Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Japan, and the Yellow and East China Seas. Tensions are high in the region, with South Korea and the US joint drills blasted by Pyongyang.

Tu-95MS strategic bombers were accompanied by Su-35S fighters and A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft, during the routine flights, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday.

"During parts of the route, Russian strategic bombers were escorted by South Korean and Japanese military jets," the ministry added.

The ministry also said that in accordance with an approved plan, Russian long-range aircraft routinely fly over neutral waters of the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Arctic and the Black Sea, both from bases and operational aerodromes.

"All flights are carried out in strict accordance with the International Rules for the Use of Airspace over Neutral Waters, without violating the boundaries of other states," the Russian Defense Ministry noted.

After being absent from the divided Libyan political landscape for months, Moscow again made headlines by hosting Gen. Khalifa Hifter for a three-day visit earlier this month, meeting with the foreign and defense ministers, his usual Russian interlocutors. Once again, the general's visit had experts debating exactly what role Russia plays in mentoring Hifter and whether Russia really sees him as its "point-man" in Libya.

The focus of Hifter's visit resembled that of his previous trips to the Russian capital, touching on the security situation in Libya. The general reiterated his request for Russian military aid to his Libyan National Army, despite countless previous rejections. His request remains unfulfilled. Speaking to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Hifter expressed the hope that Russia would become involved in the process of national reconciliation in Libya. All in all, it would have been a routine visit, absent any remarkable developments, had it not been for the context in which the trip took place.

Hifter, who leads one of the sides vying for control of the Libyan government in Tobruk, was greeted at the airport by the Libyan ambassador to Russia, who represents the interests of the other side, the UN-backed so-called unity government in Tripoli, led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj. It was not an effort by Sarraj to reach out, but Russia's attempt to generate a dialogue between the two sides. The Tripoli government formally took over the Libyan Embassy in Moscow in early August, with Russia's consent, and representatives of the Tobruk-based authorities followed soon thereafter to claim space of its own.

Details of an alleged CIA project that allows the agency to secretly extract biometric data from liaison services such as the NSA, the DHS and the FBI have been published by WikiLeaks.

Documents from the CIA's 'ExpressLane' project were released by the whistleblowing organization as part of its ongoing 'Vault 7' series on the intelligence agency's alleged hacking capabilities.

A branch within the CIA - known as Office of Technical Services (OTS) - provides a biometric collection system to liaison services around the world "with the expectation for sharing of the biometric takes collected on the systems," according to a file released by WikiLeaks.

ExpressLane, however, suggests the system has inadequacies as it was developed as a covert information collection tool to secretly exfiltrate data collections from such systems provided to liaison services.