Ever since Donald Trump came on the scene, we've seen a huge jump in manufacturing.
Manufactured news
Manufactured outrage
Manufactured protests
Manufactured violence at Trump Rallies
Manufactured scandal
Manufactured hate crimes
Manufactured patriotism
Manufactured Iran Echo Chambers
Manufactured CIFUS meetings
Manufactured charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation
Manufactured birth certificates
Manufactured investigations for Hillary
Manufactured email servers
Manufactured dossiers
Manufactured statistics in The War on Cops
Manufactured FISA warrants
Manufactured meetings with Russians
Manufactured debate questions
Manufactured nuclear weapons
Manufactured "treaties"
Manufactured Special Counsels
Manufactured Klan rallies
Manufactured campus riots
Manufactured Intelligence Findings
Manufactured leaks
Manufactured votes and voters
Manufactured Consent of the Governed
Manufactured legal standards
Manufactured wiretapping
Manufactured polling
Manufactured impeachment rationales
Manufactured judicial diktats
and
Manufactured collusion.
"It's as easy as lying. Because it is lying."
Monday, October 30, 2017
Sunday, October 29, 2017
Restoring American Democracy: President Trump's Three Percent Solution
For A Hitler, He Sure Does Follow the Laws a Awful Lot
I happened to catch a Yale professor on CNN recently. He was mans'plaining to the anchorbabe how Trump was quashing dissent by calling CNN & Co. "Fake News".
The perfesser has a prestigious job teaching kids his point of view, he wrote a book and is on CNN selling it. Trump certainly hasn't quashed his dissent.
Nor has Trump wiretapped Fox, CBS and AP reporters like Obama did. In fact, Obama wiretapped Trump, too.
Yet almost all of CNN's guests and hosts say Trump is a tyrant, destroying American Democracy. Thus proving Trump correct about "Fake News".
Despite the foam-flecked denunciations, our self-appointed betters have it exactly backwards:
At every turn, President Donald Trump is Restoring American Democracy.
Whether it is ending the Due Process-Free Zones on Kangaroo Court Campuses or promoting school choice to give parents and localities back their autonomy.
Or exiting the anti-Semitic and bloated UNESCO and having America help Christian refugees directly without the UN's thumb on the scale.
The list is lengthy:
* Exiting the phony Globalist Warming fraud, returning power and money back to America.
* Using the lawful provisions of the ACA to help small business pools and expand choice, while correctly tossing the insurance company bailouts back in CONGRESS' lap.
* Similarly, tossing the DACA debacle and SpongeBob Corker's Iran Sellout back to the peoples' representatives in CONGRESS.
* Seating judges who will honor the Actual Constitution, the one that the people actually consented to live by.
* Ending the War on Prosperity, on Business and on Coal by ending the unelected bureaucrats' assault.
* Even in small things like shrinking the First Lady's imperial staff or cancelling the wasteful and insulting $100,000 grant to Berkeley by the Obamanoid-Park Service. This was meant to honor Black Panthers, even though a Panther sits in prison for murdering a Park Ranger.
Even his early economic accomplishments are a form of democratic restoral.
Don Surber compiles the impressive list:
"The economy grew by 3% this summer despite three devastating hurricanes in September.
Home builder confidence is at a 12-year high.
Consumer spending is at a 13-year high.
Factory expansion is at a 13-year high.
Manufacturer confidence is at a 20-year high.
The Dow is at an all-time high.
New filings for unemployment are at a 44-year low.
Best of all, Hillary Rodham Clinton still is not our president.".......
Heh.
President Trump got us to 3% growth in eight months, something Obama couldn't do in eight years.
I believe there was no other candidate from last year who could have accomplished that. And if Congress can stop their vaction habit long enough to do Tax Reform and Trade Reform, we're headed to 5% growth.
In fairness, though, Obama didn't want economic growth; it hinders the imposition of Socialism.
Time after time after time, the president is restoring power, money, authority and choice to the proper owners, whether to America as a sovereign nation-state, our elected legislatures, the States, localities, private owners, businesses, families or the individual. He is Restoring American Democracy.
Our Elites keep insist he is breaking their favorite play-toy. Sorry--it was broken when he got there.
And he is fixing their shoddy handiwork, reliably mending the shredded pieces of our molested Democracy back together. No wonder they slander him so relentlessly.
But Americans know better.
I happened to catch a Yale professor on CNN recently. He was mans'plaining to the anchorbabe how Trump was quashing dissent by calling CNN & Co. "Fake News".
The perfesser has a prestigious job teaching kids his point of view, he wrote a book and is on CNN selling it. Trump certainly hasn't quashed his dissent.
Nor has Trump wiretapped Fox, CBS and AP reporters like Obama did. In fact, Obama wiretapped Trump, too.
Yet almost all of CNN's guests and hosts say Trump is a tyrant, destroying American Democracy. Thus proving Trump correct about "Fake News".
Despite the foam-flecked denunciations, our self-appointed betters have it exactly backwards:
At every turn, President Donald Trump is Restoring American Democracy.
Whether it is ending the Due Process-Free Zones on Kangaroo Court Campuses or promoting school choice to give parents and localities back their autonomy.
Or exiting the anti-Semitic and bloated UNESCO and having America help Christian refugees directly without the UN's thumb on the scale.
The list is lengthy:
* Exiting the phony Globalist Warming fraud, returning power and money back to America.
* Using the lawful provisions of the ACA to help small business pools and expand choice, while correctly tossing the insurance company bailouts back in CONGRESS' lap.
* Similarly, tossing the DACA debacle and SpongeBob Corker's Iran Sellout back to the peoples' representatives in CONGRESS.
* Seating judges who will honor the Actual Constitution, the one that the people actually consented to live by.
* Ending the War on Prosperity, on Business and on Coal by ending the unelected bureaucrats' assault.
* Even in small things like shrinking the First Lady's imperial staff or cancelling the wasteful and insulting $100,000 grant to Berkeley by the Obamanoid-Park Service. This was meant to honor Black Panthers, even though a Panther sits in prison for murdering a Park Ranger.
Even his early economic accomplishments are a form of democratic restoral.
Don Surber compiles the impressive list:
"The economy grew by 3% this summer despite three devastating hurricanes in September.
Home builder confidence is at a 12-year high.
Consumer spending is at a 13-year high.
Factory expansion is at a 13-year high.
Manufacturer confidence is at a 20-year high.
The Dow is at an all-time high.
New filings for unemployment are at a 44-year low.
Best of all, Hillary Rodham Clinton still is not our president.".......
Heh.
President Trump got us to 3% growth in eight months, something Obama couldn't do in eight years.
I believe there was no other candidate from last year who could have accomplished that. And if Congress can stop their vaction habit long enough to do Tax Reform and Trade Reform, we're headed to 5% growth.
In fairness, though, Obama didn't want economic growth; it hinders the imposition of Socialism.
Time after time after time, the president is restoring power, money, authority and choice to the proper owners, whether to America as a sovereign nation-state, our elected legislatures, the States, localities, private owners, businesses, families or the individual. He is Restoring American Democracy.
Our Elites keep insist he is breaking their favorite play-toy. Sorry--it was broken when he got there.
And he is fixing their shoddy handiwork, reliably mending the shredded pieces of our molested Democracy back together. No wonder they slander him so relentlessly.
But Americans know better.
 |
| "You're welcome." |
Saturday, October 28, 2017
Family Man
"The philosopher-historians Will and Ariel Durant called the family "the nucleus of civilization." They understood that all those aspects of civilized life that we most deeply cherish—freedom, the rule of law, economic prosperity and opportunity—that all these depend upon the strength and integrity of the family. If you think about it, you'll see that it's in the family that we must all learn the fundamental lesson of life—right and wrong, respect for others, self-discipline, the importance of knowledge, and, yes, a sense of our own self-worth. All of our lives, it's the love of our families that sustains us when times are hard. And it is perhaps above all to provide for our children that we work and save.
Some have suggested that in today's world, the family has somehow become less important. Well, I can't help thinking just the opposite: that when so much around us is whispering the little lie that we should live only for the moment and for ourselves, it's more important than ever for our families to affirm an older and more lasting set of values. Yet, for all that, in recent decades the American family has come under virtual attack. It has lost authority to government rule writers. It has seen its central role in the education of young people narrowed and distorted. And it's been forced to turn over to big government far too many of its own resources in the form of taxation.
Even so, the family today remains the fundamental unit of American life. But statistics show that it has lost ground, and I don't believe there's much doubt that the American family could be, and should be, much, much stronger."-- Pres. Ronald Reagan, Radio Address to the Nation on Family Values, December 20, 1986
Some have suggested that in today's world, the family has somehow become less important. Well, I can't help thinking just the opposite: that when so much around us is whispering the little lie that we should live only for the moment and for ourselves, it's more important than ever for our families to affirm an older and more lasting set of values. Yet, for all that, in recent decades the American family has come under virtual attack. It has lost authority to government rule writers. It has seen its central role in the education of young people narrowed and distorted. And it's been forced to turn over to big government far too many of its own resources in the form of taxation.
Even so, the family today remains the fundamental unit of American life. But statistics show that it has lost ground, and I don't believe there's much doubt that the American family could be, and should be, much, much stronger."-- Pres. Ronald Reagan, Radio Address to the Nation on Family Values, December 20, 1986
The Trump Wiretap Dossier: Mueller's Leaks 'R Us
Spin Cycle Club
"It turns out that Russia has sown distrust in the U.S. political system—aided and abetted by the Democratic Party, and perhaps the FBI. This is an about-face from the dominant media narrative of the last year, and it requires a full investigation. Strip out the middlemen, and it appears that Democrats paid for Russians to compile wild allegations about a US presidential candidate. Did someone say 'collusion'? It is no slur against Mr. Mueller's integrity to say that he lacks the critical distance to conduct a credible probe of the bureau he ran for a dozen years. He could best serve the country by resigning to prevent further political turmoil over that conflict of interest. Did the dossier trigger the FBI probe of the Trump campaign, and did Mr. Comey or his agents use it as evidence to seek wiretapping approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Trump campaign aides?"--from the Wall Street Journal's touchingly sweet editorial
Mueller's Impeccably Ethical(tm) team of crack Hillary Donors has leaked to their Fusion partners at CNN that their first indictments have been issued.
No word if Mueller is a prosecutor or a defendant, however.
Prof. Reynolds: WHICH IS WEIRD, BECAUSE THAT KIND OF LEAK IS A FEDERAL CRIME: Mueller Probe’s First Act: Leak to CNN: CNN exclusively reported Friday night that Mueller’s team had filed charges.
Weird--but somehow fitting that Mullers's first official act would be a federal crime.
This is the usual Friday afternoon leak to Control the Narrative For the Sunday Shows(tm). It's all so predictable.
Given that Rosenstein and Mueller knew all about Bribe Me-Granny's Yellowcake Bake Sale--which they both approved of beforehand and covered-up afterward--an awful lot of Narrative-Controlling is going to be needed.
Ace: In Interviews With Congress, John Podesta and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Denied Knowing Who Paid for the Dossier
Washington politicians have promised forever "This program will pay for itself". They finally found one: the Trump Wiretap Dossier paid for itself!
Not only did Hillary pay millions; Obama kicked in a million to the same law firm at the same time.
Mark Steyn has a pretty good wrap-up of the workaday coup attempt that was and is the Obama/Deep State legacy:
"It started in April 2016, when it became clear that Trump was going to win the Republican nomination. The Hillary campaign and the DNC gave millions of dollars to Marc Elias, a Clinton lawyer, who in turn hired Fusion GPS, who in turn hired former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. Why use Mr Elias as a cutout? Because Hillary and the DNC could then itemize the expense as "legal services" rather than list payments to Mr Steele, which would be in breach of federal law.
Mr Steele used to be head of "the Russia house", to go all John le Carré on you. So he asked his contacts in Moscow to come up with some stuff on Trump, and they responded with some pretty thinnish material that Steele managed to stretch out to a total of about 33 pages. I can tell you, after six years in the fetid craphole of the District of Columbia Superior Court for the Mann vs Steyn case, that the most routine procedural motion therein runs at least three times the length. The most "salacious" (in James Comey's word) assertion of the dossier is that Trump likes getting urinated on by Russian hookers. Having met him, I regard this as most unlikely: He is a germaphobe who resents having to do all the unhygienic gladhanding required in American politics. I find it easier to imagine almost any other Republican bigshot enjoying the erotic frisson of micturition, if only from Chuck Schumer. But judge for yourself: You can read the dossier here.
At which point things took a strange and disturbing turn. Steele's dossier was passed along to the FBI. It seems a reasonable inference, to put it as blandly as possible, that the dossier was used to justify the opening of what the Feds call an "FI" (Full Investigation), which in turn was used to justify a FISA order permitting the FBI to put Trump's associates under surveillance. Indeed, it seems a reasonable inference that the dossier was created and supplied to friendly forces within the bureau in order to provide a pretext for an FI, without which surveillance of the Trump campaign would not be possible.
In October 2016, things took a stranger and more disturbing turn. Steele "reached an agreement with the FBI a few weeks before the election for the Bureau to pay him to continue his work". In other words, the permanent bureaucracy and the ruling party were collaborating to get the goods on their political opponent, by illegally paying a foreign spy to interfere with the election. Why would the most lavishly funded investigative agency on the planet need the services of a British subject and his modest consulting firm? Not just for plausible deniability but also for plausible reliability: Hey, investigating Trump would never have occurred to us, but the former head of the Russia desk at MI6 thought we ought to know about this... Which, in case you haven't noticed, is the precise equivalent of Bush crediting British intelligence as the unimpeachable source for his belief that Saddam Hussein was seeking to acquire yellowcake from Niger.
A month later, Trump did the impossible and won the election. And within twenty-four hours Mook and Podesta had begun "engineering the case" that the election "wasn't entirely on the up-and-up". On November 18th, Andrew Wood, formerly British Ambassador in Moscow, and John McCain, the Senator from Arizona and fierce Never Trumper, met at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia. Sir Andrew told Senator McCain about the dossier and said he'd known Steele when they were both on Her Majesty's service in Russia and that he was a splendid chap, very sound and awfully decent. One month after the election, on December 9th, McCain met with FBI Director Comey and handed over the dossier. It is not known if Comey replied, "Oh, this old thing? As a matter of fact, we used it as a pretext to get surveillance warrants on Trump."--'How to Steele an Election'. Read it all.
How the evidence was manufactured, via Powerline:
"In my own career, outside FBI headquarters, I only saw a handful of NSA referrals of that sort. They were mostly general in nature. They could perhaps be used to initiate a Preliminary Inquiry (PI) to gain a bit more insight into the nature of the relationship between the USPER and the foreign power or individual — if we judged that advisable based on our own knowledge and experience — meaning that typically the NSA info would not rise to the level needed in order to say that there was “reason to believe” (i.e., for practical purposes, probable cause) that the USPER was an actual agent of a foreign power. That means: no Full Investigation (FI), therefore no FISA.
But in the anti-Trump conspiracy that’s exactly what was needed: FISA coverage, “wiretaps.” There was no time to do the painstaking research on Trump and his associates–they needed FISA and they needed it NOW. They’d already been turned down at least once. The NSA info was essentially useless, because what they really wanted was to get conversations between Trump and his associates here in the US–all USPERs–not international conversations (those were either lacking or harmless). Yes, NSA probably scoops up internal US communications of USPERs, too, but to use it without a FI and without a FISA order would be illegal. Therefore, the “dossier.”".......
That would explain the rushed and risky Tarmac Summit.
"It turns out that Russia has sown distrust in the U.S. political system—aided and abetted by the Democratic Party, and perhaps the FBI. This is an about-face from the dominant media narrative of the last year, and it requires a full investigation. Strip out the middlemen, and it appears that Democrats paid for Russians to compile wild allegations about a US presidential candidate. Did someone say 'collusion'? It is no slur against Mr. Mueller's integrity to say that he lacks the critical distance to conduct a credible probe of the bureau he ran for a dozen years. He could best serve the country by resigning to prevent further political turmoil over that conflict of interest. Did the dossier trigger the FBI probe of the Trump campaign, and did Mr. Comey or his agents use it as evidence to seek wiretapping approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Trump campaign aides?"--from the Wall Street Journal's touchingly sweet editorial
 |
| The Dossier Was Manufactured to Obtain a Fraudulent FISA Wiretap on the Trumps |
No word if Mueller is a prosecutor or a defendant, however.
Prof. Reynolds: WHICH IS WEIRD, BECAUSE THAT KIND OF LEAK IS A FEDERAL CRIME: Mueller Probe’s First Act: Leak to CNN: CNN exclusively reported Friday night that Mueller’s team had filed charges.
Weird--but somehow fitting that Mullers's first official act would be a federal crime.
This is the usual Friday afternoon leak to Control the Narrative For the Sunday Shows(tm). It's all so predictable.
Given that Rosenstein and Mueller knew all about Bribe Me-Granny's Yellowcake Bake Sale--which they both approved of beforehand and covered-up afterward--an awful lot of Narrative-Controlling is going to be needed.
Ace: In Interviews With Congress, John Podesta and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Denied Knowing Who Paid for the Dossier
Washington politicians have promised forever "This program will pay for itself". They finally found one: the Trump Wiretap Dossier paid for itself!
Not only did Hillary pay millions; Obama kicked in a million to the same law firm at the same time.
Mark Steyn has a pretty good wrap-up of the workaday coup attempt that was and is the Obama/Deep State legacy:
"It started in April 2016, when it became clear that Trump was going to win the Republican nomination. The Hillary campaign and the DNC gave millions of dollars to Marc Elias, a Clinton lawyer, who in turn hired Fusion GPS, who in turn hired former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. Why use Mr Elias as a cutout? Because Hillary and the DNC could then itemize the expense as "legal services" rather than list payments to Mr Steele, which would be in breach of federal law.
Mr Steele used to be head of "the Russia house", to go all John le Carré on you. So he asked his contacts in Moscow to come up with some stuff on Trump, and they responded with some pretty thinnish material that Steele managed to stretch out to a total of about 33 pages. I can tell you, after six years in the fetid craphole of the District of Columbia Superior Court for the Mann vs Steyn case, that the most routine procedural motion therein runs at least three times the length. The most "salacious" (in James Comey's word) assertion of the dossier is that Trump likes getting urinated on by Russian hookers. Having met him, I regard this as most unlikely: He is a germaphobe who resents having to do all the unhygienic gladhanding required in American politics. I find it easier to imagine almost any other Republican bigshot enjoying the erotic frisson of micturition, if only from Chuck Schumer. But judge for yourself: You can read the dossier here.
At which point things took a strange and disturbing turn. Steele's dossier was passed along to the FBI. It seems a reasonable inference, to put it as blandly as possible, that the dossier was used to justify the opening of what the Feds call an "FI" (Full Investigation), which in turn was used to justify a FISA order permitting the FBI to put Trump's associates under surveillance. Indeed, it seems a reasonable inference that the dossier was created and supplied to friendly forces within the bureau in order to provide a pretext for an FI, without which surveillance of the Trump campaign would not be possible.
In October 2016, things took a stranger and more disturbing turn. Steele "reached an agreement with the FBI a few weeks before the election for the Bureau to pay him to continue his work". In other words, the permanent bureaucracy and the ruling party were collaborating to get the goods on their political opponent, by illegally paying a foreign spy to interfere with the election. Why would the most lavishly funded investigative agency on the planet need the services of a British subject and his modest consulting firm? Not just for plausible deniability but also for plausible reliability: Hey, investigating Trump would never have occurred to us, but the former head of the Russia desk at MI6 thought we ought to know about this... Which, in case you haven't noticed, is the precise equivalent of Bush crediting British intelligence as the unimpeachable source for his belief that Saddam Hussein was seeking to acquire yellowcake from Niger.
A month later, Trump did the impossible and won the election. And within twenty-four hours Mook and Podesta had begun "engineering the case" that the election "wasn't entirely on the up-and-up". On November 18th, Andrew Wood, formerly British Ambassador in Moscow, and John McCain, the Senator from Arizona and fierce Never Trumper, met at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia. Sir Andrew told Senator McCain about the dossier and said he'd known Steele when they were both on Her Majesty's service in Russia and that he was a splendid chap, very sound and awfully decent. One month after the election, on December 9th, McCain met with FBI Director Comey and handed over the dossier. It is not known if Comey replied, "Oh, this old thing? As a matter of fact, we used it as a pretext to get surveillance warrants on Trump."--'How to Steele an Election'. Read it all.
How the evidence was manufactured, via Powerline:
"In my own career, outside FBI headquarters, I only saw a handful of NSA referrals of that sort. They were mostly general in nature. They could perhaps be used to initiate a Preliminary Inquiry (PI) to gain a bit more insight into the nature of the relationship between the USPER and the foreign power or individual — if we judged that advisable based on our own knowledge and experience — meaning that typically the NSA info would not rise to the level needed in order to say that there was “reason to believe” (i.e., for practical purposes, probable cause) that the USPER was an actual agent of a foreign power. That means: no Full Investigation (FI), therefore no FISA.
But in the anti-Trump conspiracy that’s exactly what was needed: FISA coverage, “wiretaps.” There was no time to do the painstaking research on Trump and his associates–they needed FISA and they needed it NOW. They’d already been turned down at least once. The NSA info was essentially useless, because what they really wanted was to get conversations between Trump and his associates here in the US–all USPERs–not international conversations (those were either lacking or harmless). Yes, NSA probably scoops up internal US communications of USPERs, too, but to use it without a FI and without a FISA order would be illegal. Therefore, the “dossier.”".......
That would explain the rushed and risky Tarmac Summit.
Friday, October 27, 2017
Spengler Gets Catalonia Wrong
And the Media is Misrepresenting the Vote
They keep calling it "70 to 10". The legislature has 135 seats and most of opposition did not want to participate in an illegal vote.
That makes the real total 70 to 65, a slight majority, not the super-majority needed to form a new country. And polls show the people evenly split. Meanwhile, the Spanish Senate voted 4-to-1 to oppose secession.
Here, Spengler argues that demographics, economics and history favor independence. But this seems to me to be the relevant history:
The Economist: "Spain’s democratic constitution of 1978, which was approved by more than 90% of Catalan voters, gave wide autonomy to the regions but affirmed “the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation”. Only the Spanish parliament can change the constitution. Mr Puigdemont’s referendum is therefore illegal..."
And for a guy who recently wrote a column harshly condemning Confederate sentimentalism, Spengler seems oddly unconcerned about secessionism. But this is what made me write:
"Americans who cheered Britain for voting for Brexit and supported Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary for standing up to the European Community over mass Muslim immigration should support Catalan nationalists as well."
Catalan Nationalists and Puigemont's Far-Left party supported mass Muslim immigration, flooding the region and even converting by the thousands. Gatestone Inst.:
"Catalonian pro-independence parties have deliberately promoted immigration from Arabic-speaking Muslim countries for more than three decades, in the belief that these immigrants (unlike those from Latin America) would learn the Catalan language rather than speak Spanish.
Although some Catalans are having second thoughts about the wisdom of promoting Muslim mass immigration as a strategy to achieve Catalan independence, at least 10,000 Catalans with links to the separatist movement have actually converted to Islam in recent years.
It is believed that two out of every ten Catalan radicals who belong to the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), a far-left political party, are converts to Islam. The ERC, which now governs Catalonia, has vehemently refused to sign a cooperation agreement with the central government in Madrid to fight jihadist terrorism.".......
That's one reason there were no bollards on Las Ramblas to stop the recent vehicular terrorist attacks.
As a conservative, I oppose Far-Left Soros-style politics--and he is probably involved. I oppose a jihadi-friendly state in Europe. I oppose an ally being ripped apart by a faction. And I want constitutions to mean what they say.
¡Viva España!
State-UPDATE: State Department's Heather Nauert: “Catalonia is an integral part of Spain, and the United States supports the Spanish government’s constitutional measures to keep Spain strong and united.” Brits, France, NATO concur. As do these citizens, rallying in Barcelona for Spanish Unity:
They keep calling it "70 to 10". The legislature has 135 seats and most of opposition did not want to participate in an illegal vote.
That makes the real total 70 to 65, a slight majority, not the super-majority needed to form a new country. And polls show the people evenly split. Meanwhile, the Spanish Senate voted 4-to-1 to oppose secession.
Here, Spengler argues that demographics, economics and history favor independence. But this seems to me to be the relevant history:
The Economist: "Spain’s democratic constitution of 1978, which was approved by more than 90% of Catalan voters, gave wide autonomy to the regions but affirmed “the indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation”. Only the Spanish parliament can change the constitution. Mr Puigdemont’s referendum is therefore illegal..."
And for a guy who recently wrote a column harshly condemning Confederate sentimentalism, Spengler seems oddly unconcerned about secessionism. But this is what made me write:
"Americans who cheered Britain for voting for Brexit and supported Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary for standing up to the European Community over mass Muslim immigration should support Catalan nationalists as well."
Catalan Nationalists and Puigemont's Far-Left party supported mass Muslim immigration, flooding the region and even converting by the thousands. Gatestone Inst.:
"Catalonian pro-independence parties have deliberately promoted immigration from Arabic-speaking Muslim countries for more than three decades, in the belief that these immigrants (unlike those from Latin America) would learn the Catalan language rather than speak Spanish.
Although some Catalans are having second thoughts about the wisdom of promoting Muslim mass immigration as a strategy to achieve Catalan independence, at least 10,000 Catalans with links to the separatist movement have actually converted to Islam in recent years.
It is believed that two out of every ten Catalan radicals who belong to the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), a far-left political party, are converts to Islam. The ERC, which now governs Catalonia, has vehemently refused to sign a cooperation agreement with the central government in Madrid to fight jihadist terrorism.".......
That's one reason there were no bollards on Las Ramblas to stop the recent vehicular terrorist attacks.
As a conservative, I oppose Far-Left Soros-style politics--and he is probably involved. I oppose a jihadi-friendly state in Europe. I oppose an ally being ripped apart by a faction. And I want constitutions to mean what they say.
¡Viva España!
State-UPDATE: State Department's Heather Nauert: “Catalonia is an integral part of Spain, and the United States supports the Spanish government’s constitutional measures to keep Spain strong and united.” Brits, France, NATO concur. As do these citizens, rallying in Barcelona for Spanish Unity:
Thursday, October 26, 2017
"Six Seconds to Live" by Lt. Gen. John Kelly
Semper Fi Society of St. Louis, Nov. 13, 2010:
"Like my own two sons – who are Marines and have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan – they are also the same kids that drove their cars too fast for your liking, and played the god-awful music of their generation too loud, but have no doubt they are the finest of their generation. Like those who went before them in uniform, we owe them everything. We owe them our safety. We owe them our prosperity. We owe them our freedom. We owe them our lives.
Any one of them could have done something more self-serving with their lives, as the vast majority of their age group elected to do after high school and college. But no, they chose to serve, knowing full well a brutal war was in their future. They did not avoid the most basic and cherished responsibility of a citizen: the defense of country. They welcomed it. They are the very best this country produces, and have put every one of us ahead of themselves. All are heroes for simply stepping forward, and we as a people owe a debt we can never fully pay. Just yesterday, two were lost, and a knock on the door late last night brought their families to their knees in a grief that will never go away. Thousands more have suffered terrible wounds since it all started, but like anyone who loses life or limb while serving others – including our firefighters and law-enforcement personnel, who on 9/11 were the first casualties of this war – they are not victims; they knew what they were about, and were doing what they wanted to do. Indeed, they were in exactly the place they wanted to be: among the best men and women America produces. The chattering class and all those who doubt America’s intentions and resolve, endeavor to make them and their families out to be victims, but they are wrong. We who have served, and are serving, refuse their sympathy.
I have a story I wish to relate about the kind of people they are, about the steel in their backs, and the kind of dedication they bring to our country. When I was the commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, on April 22, 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 “The Walking Dead,” and 2/8, were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion was in the closing days of its deployment, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour.
Two Marines, Cpl. Jonathan Yale and Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines. The same ramshackle building was also home to 100 Iraqi police, our allies in the fight against terrorists in Ramadi – known at the time as the most dangerous city on earth, and owned by al-Qaeda. Yale was a dirt-poor mixed-race kid from Virginia, with a wife, a mother and a sister, who all lived with him and he supported. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle-class white kid from Long Island. They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines, they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple Americas exist simultaneously, depending on one’s race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, education level, economic status, or where you might have been born. But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible, and because of this bond they were brothers as close – or closer – than if they were born of the same woman.
The mission orders they received from their sergeant squad leader, I’m sure, went something like this: “OK, take charge of this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass. You clear?” I’m also sure Yale and Haerter rolled their eyes and said, in unison, something like, “Yes, sergeant,” with just enough attitude that made the point, without saying the words, “No kidding, sweetheart. We know what we’re doing.” They then relieved two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry-control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, al Anbar, Iraq.A few minutes later, a large blue truck turned down the alleyway – perhaps 60 to 70 yards in length – and sped its way through the serpentine concrete Jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both. Twenty-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck’s engine came to rest 200 yards away, knocking down most of a house down before it stopped. Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was caused by 2,000 pounds of explosive. Because these two young infantrymen didn’t have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers in arms.
When I read the situation report a few hours after it happened, I called the regimental commander for details. Something about this struck me as different. We expect Marines, regardless of rank or MOS, to stand their ground and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission takes. But this just seemed different. The regimental commander had just returned from the site, and he agreed, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event – just Iraqi police. If there was any chance of finding out what actually happened, and then to decorate the two Marines to acknowledge their bravery, I’d have to do it, because a combat award requires two eyewitnesses, and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the signature of a general officer.I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police, all of whom told the same story. They all said, “We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines began firing.” The Iraqi police related that some of them also fired, and then, to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion. All survived. Many were injured, some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated, and with tears welling up, said, “They’d run like any normal man would to save his life.”
What he didn’t know until then, and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal. Choking past the emotion, he said, “Sir, in the name of God, no sane man would have stood there and done what they did. They saved us all.”
What we didn’t know at the time, and only learned after I submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras recorded some of the attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated. You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives.I suppose it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. No time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “Let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time, the truck was halfway through the barriers and gaining speed. Here the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were, some running right past the Marines, who had three seconds left to live.
For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines firing their weapons nonstop. The truck’s windshield explodes into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tear into the body of the son of a bitch trying to get past them to kill their brothers – American and Iraqi – bedded down in the barracks, totally unaware that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground.Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder-width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could. They had only one second left to live, and I think they knew.
The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God. Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty. Those are the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight for you, and as amazing as this selfless act of sacrifice may seem, it is the norm.".......
Read it all.
The Good News
Leviticus 25:10
“And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.”
Heavenly Father, we thank You that we can flow with Your Spirit in this Jubilee Year of 2017 because of our Lord Jesus Christ. We rest in You, Lord Jesus and receive Your restoration, Your liberty and Your grace. In Jesus' Name we pray, Amen and amen.
“And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.”
Heavenly Father, we thank You that we can flow with Your Spirit in this Jubilee Year of 2017 because of our Lord Jesus Christ. We rest in You, Lord Jesus and receive Your restoration, Your liberty and Your grace. In Jesus' Name we pray, Amen and amen.
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Better an Iron Lady
Than the Cardboard Men
"The tacit assumption made by British and foreign governments alike was that our world role was doomed steadily to diminish. We had come to be seen by both friends and enemies as a nation which lacked the will and the capability to defend its interests in peace, let alone in war. Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went after the war, Britain's name meant something more than it had. The war also had real importance in relations between East and West: years later I was told by a Russian general that the Soviets had been firmly convinced that we would not fight for the Falklands, and that if we did fight we would lose. We proved them wrong on both counts, and they did not forget the fact. ...
I shall not forget that Wednesday evening. I was working in my room at the House of Commons when I was told that John Nott wanted an immediate meeting to discuss the Falklands. I called people together. In Peter Carrington's absence Humphrey Atkins and Richard Luce attended from the Foreign Office, with FCO and MOD officials. (The Chief of Defence Staff [Sir Terence Lewin ] was also away, in New Zealand). John was alarmed. He had just received intelligence that the Argentinian Fleet, already at sea, looked as if they were going to invade the Islands on Friday 2nd April. There was no ground to question the intelligence. John gave the MOD's view that the Falklands could not be retaken once they were seized. This was terrible, and totally unacceptable. I could not believe it: these were our people, our islands. I said instantly: "if they are invaded, we have got to get them back".
At this dark moment comedy intervened. The Chief of the Naval Staff, Sir Henry Leach was in civilian dress, and on his way to the meeting had been detained by the police in the Central Lobby of the House of Commons. He had to be rescued by a whip. When he finally arrived, I asked him what we could do. He was quiet, calm and confident: "I can put together a Task Force of destroyers, frigates, landing craft, support vessels. It will be led by the aircraft carriers HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible. It can be ready to leave in forty- eight hours". He believed such a force could retake the islands. All he needed was my authority to begin to assemble it. I gave it him, and he left immediately to set the work in hand. We reserved for Cabinet the decision as to whether and when the Task Force should sail.
"Before this, I had been outraged and determined. Now my outrage and determination were matched by a sense of relief and confidence. Henry Leach had shown me that if it came to a fight the courage and professionalism of Britain's armed forces would win through. It was my job as Prime Minister to see that they got the political support they needed. But first we had to do everything possible to prevent the appalling tragedy, if it was still humanly possible to do so." ...
One particular aspect of this problem, though, does rate a mention. We decided to allow defence correspondents on the ships who reported back during the long journey. Some of them behaved more professionally than others. There were several incidents of the BBC reporting particularly sensitive military matters in ways which put our forces at risk. I was also very unhappy at the attempted "even-handedness" of some of the comment, and the chilling use of the third-person - talk of "the British" and "the Argentinians" on our news programmes.
It was also on Friday 2nd April that I received advice from the Foreign Office which summed up the flexibility of principle characteristic of that Department. I was presented with the dangers of a backlash against the British expatriates in Argentina, problems about getting support in the UN Security Council, the lack of reliance we could place on the European Community or the United States, the risk of the Soviets becoming involved, the disadvantage of being looked at as a colonial power. All the considerations were fair enough. But when you are at war you cannot allow the difficulties to dominate your thinking: you have to set out with an iron will to overcome them. And anyway what was the alternative? That a common or garden dictator should rule over the Queen's subjects and prevail by fraud and violence? Not while I was Prime Minister." --Lady Margaret Thatcher, 'The Downing Street Years'.
Mark Steyn: "That great thinker Sheryl Crow declared the other day: "War is based in greed and there are huge karmic retributions that will follow. I think war is never the answer to solving any problems. The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies."
In the Falklands, war solved a lot of problems. For 20 years, the islanders have lived in peace and freedom. So, in their own chaotic Latin fashion, have the liberated peoples of Argentina and most of the rest of the continent. If the best way to solve problems is not to have enemies, then the best way not to have enemies is to get rid of them. Thank you, Mrs. Thatcher. Rest in peace, General Galtieri, wherever you are. ...
General Galtieri spent the last 20 years telling his dwindling circle of acquaintances that it never occurred to him the British would fight back. Who can blame him? In the Seventies, the map looked very different. The Soviets held half of Europe, had neutered most of the rest, and were advancing in every corner of the globe, from Afghanistan to Ethiopia to Grenada. The West never roused itself, except occasionally to co-operate: Cuban troops were in Africa, and Pierre Trudeau's contribution to the Cold War was to allow Castro's military aircraft to refuel in Canada. America had been humbled in Vietnam and humiliated in Iran, where the smiling eunuch Carter had allowed a superpower to be turned into a laughingstock, with cocky mullahs poking the corpses of U.S. servicemen on TV.
So why would General Galtieri have had any qualms about seizing the Falklands? Yes, it was British "sovereign territory," but the American Embassy in Teheran was U.S. "sovereign territory," and all the Peanut Peacenik had done was dither helplessly and then botch an ill-thought-out rescue mission. Why would the toothless, arthritic British lion be any different? ...
Well, the sources were wrong. Mrs. Thatcher liberated not just the Falklands, but also Argentina, at least from the military. Galtieri fell and democracy returned. The "humiliating defeat" of the junta tainted all the other puffed-up bemedalled tinpots by implication. And, whatever the problems of Latin America today, no one's pining for the return of the generals. Twenty years ago, the realpolitik crowd thought a democratic South America was a fantasy and that we had to cosy up to the strutting little El Presidentes-for-Life. Today, the same stability junkies tell us we have to do the same with Boy Assad and Co. They're wrong again. They always are." .......
"The tacit assumption made by British and foreign governments alike was that our world role was doomed steadily to diminish. We had come to be seen by both friends and enemies as a nation which lacked the will and the capability to defend its interests in peace, let alone in war. Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went after the war, Britain's name meant something more than it had. The war also had real importance in relations between East and West: years later I was told by a Russian general that the Soviets had been firmly convinced that we would not fight for the Falklands, and that if we did fight we would lose. We proved them wrong on both counts, and they did not forget the fact. ...
I shall not forget that Wednesday evening. I was working in my room at the House of Commons when I was told that John Nott wanted an immediate meeting to discuss the Falklands. I called people together. In Peter Carrington's absence Humphrey Atkins and Richard Luce attended from the Foreign Office, with FCO and MOD officials. (The Chief of Defence Staff [Sir Terence Lewin ] was also away, in New Zealand). John was alarmed. He had just received intelligence that the Argentinian Fleet, already at sea, looked as if they were going to invade the Islands on Friday 2nd April. There was no ground to question the intelligence. John gave the MOD's view that the Falklands could not be retaken once they were seized. This was terrible, and totally unacceptable. I could not believe it: these were our people, our islands. I said instantly: "if they are invaded, we have got to get them back".
At this dark moment comedy intervened. The Chief of the Naval Staff, Sir Henry Leach was in civilian dress, and on his way to the meeting had been detained by the police in the Central Lobby of the House of Commons. He had to be rescued by a whip. When he finally arrived, I asked him what we could do. He was quiet, calm and confident: "I can put together a Task Force of destroyers, frigates, landing craft, support vessels. It will be led by the aircraft carriers HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible. It can be ready to leave in forty- eight hours". He believed such a force could retake the islands. All he needed was my authority to begin to assemble it. I gave it him, and he left immediately to set the work in hand. We reserved for Cabinet the decision as to whether and when the Task Force should sail.
"Before this, I had been outraged and determined. Now my outrage and determination were matched by a sense of relief and confidence. Henry Leach had shown me that if it came to a fight the courage and professionalism of Britain's armed forces would win through. It was my job as Prime Minister to see that they got the political support they needed. But first we had to do everything possible to prevent the appalling tragedy, if it was still humanly possible to do so." ...
One particular aspect of this problem, though, does rate a mention. We decided to allow defence correspondents on the ships who reported back during the long journey. Some of them behaved more professionally than others. There were several incidents of the BBC reporting particularly sensitive military matters in ways which put our forces at risk. I was also very unhappy at the attempted "even-handedness" of some of the comment, and the chilling use of the third-person - talk of "the British" and "the Argentinians" on our news programmes.
It was also on Friday 2nd April that I received advice from the Foreign Office which summed up the flexibility of principle characteristic of that Department. I was presented with the dangers of a backlash against the British expatriates in Argentina, problems about getting support in the UN Security Council, the lack of reliance we could place on the European Community or the United States, the risk of the Soviets becoming involved, the disadvantage of being looked at as a colonial power. All the considerations were fair enough. But when you are at war you cannot allow the difficulties to dominate your thinking: you have to set out with an iron will to overcome them. And anyway what was the alternative? That a common or garden dictator should rule over the Queen's subjects and prevail by fraud and violence? Not while I was Prime Minister." --Lady Margaret Thatcher, 'The Downing Street Years'.
In the Falklands, war solved a lot of problems. For 20 years, the islanders have lived in peace and freedom. So, in their own chaotic Latin fashion, have the liberated peoples of Argentina and most of the rest of the continent. If the best way to solve problems is not to have enemies, then the best way not to have enemies is to get rid of them. Thank you, Mrs. Thatcher. Rest in peace, General Galtieri, wherever you are. ...
General Galtieri spent the last 20 years telling his dwindling circle of acquaintances that it never occurred to him the British would fight back. Who can blame him? In the Seventies, the map looked very different. The Soviets held half of Europe, had neutered most of the rest, and were advancing in every corner of the globe, from Afghanistan to Ethiopia to Grenada. The West never roused itself, except occasionally to co-operate: Cuban troops were in Africa, and Pierre Trudeau's contribution to the Cold War was to allow Castro's military aircraft to refuel in Canada. America had been humbled in Vietnam and humiliated in Iran, where the smiling eunuch Carter had allowed a superpower to be turned into a laughingstock, with cocky mullahs poking the corpses of U.S. servicemen on TV.
So why would General Galtieri have had any qualms about seizing the Falklands? Yes, it was British "sovereign territory," but the American Embassy in Teheran was U.S. "sovereign territory," and all the Peanut Peacenik had done was dither helplessly and then botch an ill-thought-out rescue mission. Why would the toothless, arthritic British lion be any different? ...
Well, the sources were wrong. Mrs. Thatcher liberated not just the Falklands, but also Argentina, at least from the military. Galtieri fell and democracy returned. The "humiliating defeat" of the junta tainted all the other puffed-up bemedalled tinpots by implication. And, whatever the problems of Latin America today, no one's pining for the return of the generals. Twenty years ago, the realpolitik crowd thought a democratic South America was a fantasy and that we had to cosy up to the strutting little El Presidentes-for-Life. Today, the same stability junkies tell us we have to do the same with Boy Assad and Co. They're wrong again. They always are." .......
 |
| “Of course it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.” --Margaret Thatcher |
Get Real, Politik
"Does anybody in the world believe that a soldier says, 'My leg is nearly dropping off, but I shall go on till it drops; for after all I shall enjoy all the advantages of my government obtaining a warm-water port in the Gulf of Finland.' Can anybody suppose that a clerk turned conscript says, 'If I am gassed I shall probably die in torments, but it is a comfort to reflect that should I ever decide to become a pearl-diver in the South Seas, that career is now open to me and my countrymen.' Materialist history is the most madly incredible of all histories, or even of all romances. Whatever starts wars, the thing that sustains wars is something in the soul; that is something akin to religion. It is what men feel about life and about death. A man near to death is dealing directly with an absolute; it is nonsense to say he is concerned only with relative and remote complications that death in any case will end. If he is sustained by certain loyalties, they must be loyalties as simple as death. They are generally two ideas, which are only two sides of one idea. The first is the love of something said to be threatened, if it be only vaguely known as home; the second is dislike and defiance of some strange thing that threatens it. The first is far more philosophical than it sounds, though we need not discuss it here. A man does not want his national home destroyed or even changed, because he cannot even remember all the good things that go with it; just as he does not want his house burnt down, because he can hardly count all the things he would miss. Therefore he fights for what sounds like a hazy abstraction, but is really a house. But the negative side of it is quite as noble as well as quite as strong. Men fight hardest when they feel that the foe is at once an old enemy and an eternal stranger, that his atmosphere is alien and antagonistic, as the French feel about the Prussian or the Eastern Christians about the Turk. If we say it is a difference of religion, people will drift into dreary bickerings about sects and dogmas. We will pity them and say it is a difference about death and daylight; a difference that does really come like a dark shadow between our eyes and the day. Men can think of this difference even at the point of death; for it is a difference about the meaning of life.
Men are moved in these things by something far higher and holier than policy; by hatred. When men hung on in the darkest days of the Great War, suffering either in their bodies or in their souls for those they loved, they were long past caring about details of diplomatic objects as motives for their refusal to surrender. Of myself and those I knew best I can answer for the vision that made surrender impossible. It was the vision of the German Emperor's face as he rode into Paris. This is not the sentiment which some of my idealistic friends describe as Love. I am quite content to call it hatred; the hatred of hell and all its works, and to agree that as they do not believe in hell they need not believe in hatred. But in the face of this prevalent prejudice, this long introduction has been unfortunately necessary, to ensure an understanding of what is meant by a religious war. There is a religious war when two worlds meet; that is when two visions of the world meet; or in more modern language when two moral atmospheres meet. What is the one man's breath is the other man's poison; and it is vain to talk of giving a pestilence a place in the sun. And this is what we must understand, even at the expense of digression, if we would see what really happened in the Mediterranean; when right athwart the rising of the Republic on the Tiber, a thing overtopping and disdaining it, dark with all the riddles of Asia and trailing all the tribes and dependencies of imperialism, came Carthage riding on the sea." -- G.K. Chesterton, 'The Everlasting Man'
Swampocalypse Now: To Sum It Up
It is not illegal to hire someone to write Dossier fiction about your opponent and spoonfeed it to your lapdog press.
But it is if you arrange a Tarmac Meeting to spoonfeed it to a FISA Court to wiretap your opponents and subvert an election.
As for the Uranium Deal, the Clintons solicited and took bribes.
Mueller, Rosenstein and Comey knew all about the bribes. Holder and Lynch, too.
But Obama didn't do the Uranium Deal for the Clintons' bank account.
He wanted Putin's help in pulling off the Iran Deal. Providing Iran with uranium, anti-aircraft guns, heavy water transfers, political cover--Obama traded our uranium for Putin's help in giving nukes to the Ayatollah.
And the rats are feeling cornered.
 |
| "Noooooooo!" |
The Bonfire of the Insanities
This One's Got It All
There was a story in the news recently that summed up many of the pathologies of our political life. It was a minor story, barely a blip on the screen--but that's sorta' how the first World Trade Center Bombing was viewed by many, as a manageable local crime story. Until Sept. 11, 2001.
But first, let's go back to Charlottesville.
It is my belief that Charlottesville was a staged Agit-Prop event, probably run out of the Obama's spare bedroom and staged in nearby Virginia under Clinton, Inc.employee Terry MacAuliffe's watchful, if weasely, eye. The organizer was a life-long Obama fan-boy who went from writing love letters to Harry Reid and Joe Biden to developing a sudden urgent interest in staging Klan rallies. Right.
Regardless, in the wake of Charlottesville, Congress did what Congress does best; grandstanding and passing a useless bill, one that outlawed what was already outlawed. You see, President Trump had said two true things; that there were good people on both sides of the statues controversy and that violent neo-Nazis and violent neo-Commies were both evil.
To punish him for telling the truth in Washington DC, the Congress passed a bill requiring Cabinet officers to monitor terrorism. You know, because nobody was doing that already. It was worded to maximize the threat of Klansmen, even if there aren't enough to fill a good-sized trailer park, and to minimize or ignore the threat of leftist terrorists such as the Democrat Ballfield Shooter, Antifa Nightriders and Sen. Tim Kaine's son throwing bombs at Trump voters.
I'm all for prosecuting Nazis; but I'm against half-assed political stunts. Trump signed their childish and stupid one-sided "gotcha" bill anyway.
Now here's the minor story that you would have missed if you blinked;
The Free Beacon:
"The Free Beacon revealed last month that the Park Service gave roughly $100,000 to the University of California, Berkeley for a research project on the Marxist extremist group to "memorialize a history that brought meaning to lives far beyond the San Francisco Bay Area."
"Committed to truthfully honoring the legacy of [Black Panther Party] BPP activists and the San Francisco Bay Area communities they served, the project seeks to document the lives of activists and elders and the landscapes that shaped the movement," the National Park Service stated in the grant awarded for the project.
A captain in the Black Panther Party murdered National Park Service ranger Kenneth Patrick while he was on patrol near San Francisco in 1973. Patrick was shot three times by Veronza Leon Curtis Bowers Jr., who is currently serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. Patrick left behind a widow and three children.
The Fraternal Order of Police, the largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers with over 330,000 members, sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week expressing "outrage and shock" that the National Park Service would fund a project honoring the legacy of the Black Panther Party.
"Mr. President, as far as we are concerned the only meaning they brought to any lives was grief to the families of their victims," wrote Chuck Canterbury, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police. "According to our research, members of this militant anti-American group murdered 16 law enforcement officers over the course of their history. Among their victims was U.S. Park Ranger Kenneth C. Patrick. He was murdered in cold blood by three members of the Black Panther Party on 5 August 1973. His killer, who remains behind bars, still considers himself a Black Panther and a ‘political prisoner.'"
"It is appalling that the National Park Service, Ranger Patrick's own agency, now proposes to partner with [Berkeley] and two active members of this violent and repugnant organization," Canterbury said.
The FBI labels the Black Panther Party as advocates for "the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government."
"At a time when many in our nation feel strongly that memorials to aspects of the darker times in our history be removed from public lands, why would the NPS seek to commemorate the activities of an extremist separatist group that advocated the use of violence against our country—a country they perceived as their enemy?" Canterbury asked. "This is a despicable irony and we hope you can bring it to an end by halting [the grant] immediately."
Jeremy Barnum, a spokesman for the National Park Service, confirmed to the Free Beacon that the project would not receive funding from the agency.".......
Jazz Shaw:
"The acting head of the NPS, Michael T. Reynolds, is an Obama holdover, but he reports to Ryan Zinke at Interior. ...
Thanks to the exposure by the Free Beacon, the Fraternal Order of Police published a letter they sent to President Trump expressing their “outrage and shock” over this “appalling” decision. Along with other dismayed voices in the conservative press, the news quickly made its way into the President’s ear.
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when Zinke was (probably) called in to talk to Trump about this one. Here they’ve been busy allocating funds and resources to bolster the police in their efforts to fight gang violence and the NPS was about to write a nice, fat check to Berkeley for this. But the end result serves as a reminder, if only on a small level, of the value of a vigilant press which is actually interested in doing grinding, investigative work rather than simply playing politics. I realize that we’re “only” talking about $100K here, which isn’t even a drop in the federal bucket, but without someone doing the legwork to go through all of those budget line items, this likely never would have been exposed.
Hats off to the Free Beacon for not only exposing the news but prompting the government to action.".......
A hundred grand is not even a rounding error of a rounding error in the Feddle Budget, but it shows the utter contempt of the Blobocracy for any fiscal restraint whatsoever. How many little towns across America could have use that money to provide basic services to real Americans instead of glorifying murderers? Not to mention the man-hours wasted in writing the grant.
As was said, this also shows what it could be like if we had a real press corps and not a one-sided Professional Liars Guild.
It also points out that someone at Berkeley asked for the money. They think their own personal politics are synonymous with "higher education".
As Ace wrote about a professor who only calls on minorities in class,
"This woman is a "Queer disabled feminst," according to her own description (and yes, she gives her credentials as "Queer disabled feminist" before mentioning her professional credentials of being a grad student in History at U Penn. Her identity comes first -- and let's face it, her identity is her actual credential.".......
Yes--and the syllabus is her lifestyle.
Attend Eve Ensler Film Festival. Hitting on Cute Freshmen Girls. Going Home to Apartment Full of Cats--and "Cats" Memorabilia. Rage at Daddy. She would be doing all these things even if she worked at a grocery store. Why are we compelled to call this "higher education"
And doesn't Bubba McBillyBob then deserve credentials, too? Why isn't he also granted tenure to "teach" his lifestyle?
Bass Fishin' with a Forged License. How To Make a 1999 Mazda Look Like Burt Reynold's Black Trans-Am. How to Ask Out Becky's Sister When Becky Said No Without Gunplay by Her Pa. Duct-Tape Origami.
Is your children learning? If not, they need Prof. Bubba's "Redneck Studies".
I'm quite serious. Education is funded by taxpayers of all political stripes, yet reflects only the coerced viewpoints of Leftists.
As I said, this has all the pathologies on parade:
an arrogant and extremist Permanent Bureaucracy, wasteful spending, the War on Cops, the failure of a Free Press despite this one success, the dead-end of identity politics and the corruption of our schools and universities, to name but a few.
But since it is the wisdom and the will of Congress that cabinet secretaries be apprised of hate groups, I HEREBY REPORT;
Sec. Zinke: The radical Obama holdovers at the Park Service attempted to honor terrorists.
Sec. DeVos: The faculty at Berkeley is teaching the promotion of terrorists.
Sec. Mnuchin: Federal monies were being spent on Hate.
Atty. Gen. Sessions: The Park Service wanted to honor the killers of its own law enforcement officers.
Sincerely,
a citizen.
You're welcome, Congress.
ps; Where are my manners? Cancelling this federally-funded hate-fest by the Obama-Blob was yet another blow for Restoring American Democracy.
Thank you, President Trump.
There was a story in the news recently that summed up many of the pathologies of our political life. It was a minor story, barely a blip on the screen--but that's sorta' how the first World Trade Center Bombing was viewed by many, as a manageable local crime story. Until Sept. 11, 2001.
But first, let's go back to Charlottesville.
It is my belief that Charlottesville was a staged Agit-Prop event, probably run out of the Obama's spare bedroom and staged in nearby Virginia under Clinton, Inc.employee Terry MacAuliffe's watchful, if weasely, eye. The organizer was a life-long Obama fan-boy who went from writing love letters to Harry Reid and Joe Biden to developing a sudden urgent interest in staging Klan rallies. Right.
Regardless, in the wake of Charlottesville, Congress did what Congress does best; grandstanding and passing a useless bill, one that outlawed what was already outlawed. You see, President Trump had said two true things; that there were good people on both sides of the statues controversy and that violent neo-Nazis and violent neo-Commies were both evil.
To punish him for telling the truth in Washington DC, the Congress passed a bill requiring Cabinet officers to monitor terrorism. You know, because nobody was doing that already. It was worded to maximize the threat of Klansmen, even if there aren't enough to fill a good-sized trailer park, and to minimize or ignore the threat of leftist terrorists such as the Democrat Ballfield Shooter, Antifa Nightriders and Sen. Tim Kaine's son throwing bombs at Trump voters.
I'm all for prosecuting Nazis; but I'm against half-assed political stunts. Trump signed their childish and stupid one-sided "gotcha" bill anyway.
Now here's the minor story that you would have missed if you blinked;
The Free Beacon:
"The Free Beacon revealed last month that the Park Service gave roughly $100,000 to the University of California, Berkeley for a research project on the Marxist extremist group to "memorialize a history that brought meaning to lives far beyond the San Francisco Bay Area."
"Committed to truthfully honoring the legacy of [Black Panther Party] BPP activists and the San Francisco Bay Area communities they served, the project seeks to document the lives of activists and elders and the landscapes that shaped the movement," the National Park Service stated in the grant awarded for the project.
A captain in the Black Panther Party murdered National Park Service ranger Kenneth Patrick while he was on patrol near San Francisco in 1973. Patrick was shot three times by Veronza Leon Curtis Bowers Jr., who is currently serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. Patrick left behind a widow and three children.
The Fraternal Order of Police, the largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers with over 330,000 members, sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week expressing "outrage and shock" that the National Park Service would fund a project honoring the legacy of the Black Panther Party.
"Mr. President, as far as we are concerned the only meaning they brought to any lives was grief to the families of their victims," wrote Chuck Canterbury, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police. "According to our research, members of this militant anti-American group murdered 16 law enforcement officers over the course of their history. Among their victims was U.S. Park Ranger Kenneth C. Patrick. He was murdered in cold blood by three members of the Black Panther Party on 5 August 1973. His killer, who remains behind bars, still considers himself a Black Panther and a ‘political prisoner.'"
"It is appalling that the National Park Service, Ranger Patrick's own agency, now proposes to partner with [Berkeley] and two active members of this violent and repugnant organization," Canterbury said.
The FBI labels the Black Panther Party as advocates for "the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government."
"At a time when many in our nation feel strongly that memorials to aspects of the darker times in our history be removed from public lands, why would the NPS seek to commemorate the activities of an extremist separatist group that advocated the use of violence against our country—a country they perceived as their enemy?" Canterbury asked. "This is a despicable irony and we hope you can bring it to an end by halting [the grant] immediately."
Jeremy Barnum, a spokesman for the National Park Service, confirmed to the Free Beacon that the project would not receive funding from the agency.".......
Jazz Shaw:
"The acting head of the NPS, Michael T. Reynolds, is an Obama holdover, but he reports to Ryan Zinke at Interior. ...
Thanks to the exposure by the Free Beacon, the Fraternal Order of Police published a letter they sent to President Trump expressing their “outrage and shock” over this “appalling” decision. Along with other dismayed voices in the conservative press, the news quickly made its way into the President’s ear.
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when Zinke was (probably) called in to talk to Trump about this one. Here they’ve been busy allocating funds and resources to bolster the police in their efforts to fight gang violence and the NPS was about to write a nice, fat check to Berkeley for this. But the end result serves as a reminder, if only on a small level, of the value of a vigilant press which is actually interested in doing grinding, investigative work rather than simply playing politics. I realize that we’re “only” talking about $100K here, which isn’t even a drop in the federal bucket, but without someone doing the legwork to go through all of those budget line items, this likely never would have been exposed.
Hats off to the Free Beacon for not only exposing the news but prompting the government to action.".......
A hundred grand is not even a rounding error of a rounding error in the Feddle Budget, but it shows the utter contempt of the Blobocracy for any fiscal restraint whatsoever. How many little towns across America could have use that money to provide basic services to real Americans instead of glorifying murderers? Not to mention the man-hours wasted in writing the grant.
As was said, this also shows what it could be like if we had a real press corps and not a one-sided Professional Liars Guild.
It also points out that someone at Berkeley asked for the money. They think their own personal politics are synonymous with "higher education".
As Ace wrote about a professor who only calls on minorities in class,
"This woman is a "Queer disabled feminst," according to her own description (and yes, she gives her credentials as "Queer disabled feminist" before mentioning her professional credentials of being a grad student in History at U Penn. Her identity comes first -- and let's face it, her identity is her actual credential.".......
Yes--and the syllabus is her lifestyle.
Attend Eve Ensler Film Festival. Hitting on Cute Freshmen Girls. Going Home to Apartment Full of Cats--and "Cats" Memorabilia. Rage at Daddy. She would be doing all these things even if she worked at a grocery store. Why are we compelled to call this "higher education"
And doesn't Bubba McBillyBob then deserve credentials, too? Why isn't he also granted tenure to "teach" his lifestyle?
Bass Fishin' with a Forged License. How To Make a 1999 Mazda Look Like Burt Reynold's Black Trans-Am. How to Ask Out Becky's Sister When Becky Said No Without Gunplay by Her Pa. Duct-Tape Origami.
Is your children learning? If not, they need Prof. Bubba's "Redneck Studies".
I'm quite serious. Education is funded by taxpayers of all political stripes, yet reflects only the coerced viewpoints of Leftists.
As I said, this has all the pathologies on parade:
an arrogant and extremist Permanent Bureaucracy, wasteful spending, the War on Cops, the failure of a Free Press despite this one success, the dead-end of identity politics and the corruption of our schools and universities, to name but a few.
But since it is the wisdom and the will of Congress that cabinet secretaries be apprised of hate groups, I HEREBY REPORT;
Sec. Zinke: The radical Obama holdovers at the Park Service attempted to honor terrorists.
Sec. DeVos: The faculty at Berkeley is teaching the promotion of terrorists.
Sec. Mnuchin: Federal monies were being spent on Hate.
Atty. Gen. Sessions: The Park Service wanted to honor the killers of its own law enforcement officers.
Sincerely,
a citizen.
You're welcome, Congress.
ps; Where are my manners? Cancelling this federally-funded hate-fest by the Obama-Blob was yet another blow for Restoring American Democracy.
Thank you, President Trump.
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Great. Just Great.
Again
"Donald Trump’s presidential victory broke many things. It broke the illusion of the infallible statisticians. It broke the two most prominent political dynasties in America by defeating both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. It broke the very unspoken maxims of decorum thought necessary to become president. It may even break his own party (it’s already changed it). But of all the things that it broke, none has been more remarkable or resounding than the shattering of modern liberalism. It’s not just his win, but the new culture it has created.
In the 1980s under Reagan, a phrase was coined: “Everything that is supposed to be going up is going up and everything that is supposed to be going down is going down.” Once again, that phrase is resonating. Meanwhile, power is shifting from the corrupt liberal media to the ethical conservative media.
The reality is that if there was a time where the ideals of liberalism were the true aim of the activist Left, that time is long past. Classical liberalism as an ideology — and if the trend continues — will be remembered as just another archaic philosophy consigned to history classes; that is, if the militant Left will permit it to be taught. Otherwise, like Soviet communism, it too will join the ash heap of history."
--Historian Craig Shirley, from We’re Winning, They’re Losing, Here’s Why
"Donald Trump’s presidential victory broke many things. It broke the illusion of the infallible statisticians. It broke the two most prominent political dynasties in America by defeating both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. It broke the very unspoken maxims of decorum thought necessary to become president. It may even break his own party (it’s already changed it). But of all the things that it broke, none has been more remarkable or resounding than the shattering of modern liberalism. It’s not just his win, but the new culture it has created.
In the 1980s under Reagan, a phrase was coined: “Everything that is supposed to be going up is going up and everything that is supposed to be going down is going down.” Once again, that phrase is resonating. Meanwhile, power is shifting from the corrupt liberal media to the ethical conservative media.
The reality is that if there was a time where the ideals of liberalism were the true aim of the activist Left, that time is long past. Classical liberalism as an ideology — and if the trend continues — will be remembered as just another archaic philosophy consigned to history classes; that is, if the militant Left will permit it to be taught. Otherwise, like Soviet communism, it too will join the ash heap of history."
--Historian Craig Shirley, from We’re Winning, They’re Losing, Here’s Why
 |
| Winning! Lift-off-UPDATE: Don Surber: "President Trump hosted Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore today, as Loong signed a $13.8 billion deal with Boeing to buy 39 airplanes for Singapore International Airlines. That means 70,000 jobs for the United States. ... Remember what Obama said about manufacturing: “Cuz some of those jobs of the past are just not gonna come back. And when somebody says, like the person you just mentioned, I’m not gonna advertise for. That he’s gonna bring all of these jobs back. Well how exactly you gonna do that? What are you gonna do? There’s no answer to it. He just says, ‘Well, I’m gonna negotiate a better deal. How exactly are you gonna negotiate that? What magic wand do you have. And usually the answer is, he doesn’t have an answer.” Evidently, Trump had a plan."....... |
Rosenstein Shouldn't Be Naming Special Counsels; He Should Get One of His Own
Mueller, Rosenstein, Holder, Lynch, Comey, the Clintons and Obama Were All In On The Uranium Bribery Cover-Up
Former Prosecutor Andy McCarthy lays it all out in detail:
The Obama Administration’s Uranium One Scandal
"The Uranium One scandal is not only, or even principally, a Clinton scandal. It is an Obama-administration scandal. The Clintons were just doing what the Clintons do: cashing in on their “public service.” The Obama administration, with Secretary Clinton at the forefront but hardly alone, was knowingly compromising American national-security interests. The administration green-lighted the transfer of control over one-fifth of American uranium-mining capacity to Russia, a hostile regime — and specifically to Russia’s state-controlled nuclear-energy conglomerate, Rosatom. Worse, at the time the administration approved the transfer, it knew that Rosatom’s American subsidiary was engaged in a lucrative racketeering enterprise that had already committed felony extortion, fraud, and money-laundering offenses. ...
When(Rosatom/Tenam's Vadim)Mikerin solicited him in 2009, the lobbyist was uncomfortable, worried that the proposal would land him on the wrong side of the law. So he contacted the FBI and revealed what he knew. From then on, the Bureau and Justice Department permitted him to participate in the Russian racketeering scheme as a “confidential source” — and he is thus known as “CS-1” in affidavits the government, years later, presented to federal court in order to obtain search and arrest warrants. At the time this unidentified man became an informant, the FBI was led by director Robert Mueller, who is now the special counsel investigating whether Trump colluded with Russia. The investigation was centered in Maryland (Tenam’s home base). There, the U.S. attorney was Obama appointee Rod Rosenstein — now President Trump’s deputy attorney general, and the man who appointed Mueller as special counsel to investigate Trump. Because of CS-1, the FBI was able to understand and monitor the racketeering enterprise almost from the start. ...
In 2005, former President Clinton helped his Canadian billionaire friend and benefactor, Frank Giustra, obtain coveted uranium-mining rights from Kazakhstan’s dictator. The Kazakh deal enabled Giustra’s company (Ur-Asia Energy) to merge into Uranium One (a South African company), a $3.5 billion windfall. Giustra and his partners thereafter contributed tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Besides the valuable Kazakh reserves, Uranium One also controlled about a fifth of the uranium stock in the United States. Alas, Putin, the neighborhood bully, also wanted the Kazakh uranium. He leaned on Kazakhstan’s dictator, who promptly arrested the official responsible for selling the uranium-mining rights to Giustra’s company. This put Uranium One’s stake in jeopardy of being seized by the Kazakh government. As Uranium One’s stock plunged, its panicked executives turned to the State Department, where their friend Hillary Clinton was now in charge. State sprung into action, convening emergency meetings with the Kazakh regime. A few days later, it was announced that the crisis was resolved (translation: the shakedown was complete). Russia’s energy giant, Rosatom, would purchase 17 percent of Uranium One, and the Kazakh threat would disappear — and with it, the threat to the value of the Clinton donors’ holdings. For Putin, though, that was just a start. He didn’t want a minority stake in Uranium One, he wanted control of the uranium. For that, Rosatom would need a controlling interest in Uranium One. That would be a tall order — not because of the Kazakh mining rights but because acquisition of Uranium One’s American reserves required U.S. government approval. ...
The Obama administration needed to make this case go away — without a public trial if at all possible. Think about this: The investigation of Russian racketeering in the American energy sector was the kind of spectacular success over which the FBI and Justice Department typically do a bells-n-whistles victory lap — the big self-congratulatory press conference followed by the media-intensive prosecutions . . . and, of course, more press conferences. Here . . . crickets. As the Hill reports, the Justice Department and FBI had little to say when Mikerin and his co-conspirators were arrested. They quietly negotiated guilty pleas that were announced with no fanfare just before Labor Day. It was arranged that Mikerin would be sentenced just before Christmas. All under the radar. How desperate was the Obama Justice Department to plead the case out? Here, Rosenstein and Holder will have some explaining to do. Mikerin was arrested on a complaint describing a racketeering scheme that stretched back to 2004 and included extortion, fraud, and money laundering. Yet he was permitted to plead guilty to a single count of money-laundering conspiracy. Except it was not really money-laundering conspiracy. Under federal law, that crime (at section 1956 of the penal code) carries a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment — not only for conspiracy but for each act of money laundering. But Mikerin was not made to plead guilty to this charge. He was permitted to plead guilty to an offense charged under the catch-all federal conspiracy provision (section 371) that criminalizes agreements to commit any crime against the United States. Section 371 prescribes a sentence of zero to five years’ imprisonment. The Justice Department instructs prosecutors that when Congress has given a federal offense its own conspiracy provision with a heightened punishment (as it has for money laundering, racketeering, narcotics trafficking, and other serious crimes), they may not charge a section 371 conspiracy. Section 371 is for less serious conspiracy cases. Using it for money laundering — which caps the sentence way below Congress’s intent for that behavior — subverts federal law and signals to the court that the prosecutor does not regard the offense as major. Yet, that is exactly what Rosenstein’s office did, in a plea agreement his prosecutors co-signed with attorneys from the Justice Department’s Fraud Section. (See in the Hill’s report, the third document embedded at the bottom, titled “Mikerin Plea Deal.”) No RICO, no extortion, no fraud — and the plea agreement is careful not to mention any of the extortions in 2009 and 2010, before CFIUS approved Rosatom’s acquisition of U.S. uranium stock. Mikerin just had to plead guilty to a nominal “money laundering” conspiracy charge. This insulated him from a real money-laundering sentence. Thus, he got a term of just four years’ incarceration for a major national-security crime — which, of course, is why he took the plea deal and waived his right to appeal, sparing the Obama administration a full public airing of the facts. Interestingly, as the plea agreement shows, the Obama DOJ’s Fraud Section was then run by Andrew Weissmann, who is now one of the top prosecutors in Robert Mueller’s ongoing special-counsel investigation of suspected Trump collusion with Russia.".......
And the FBI is threatening their confidential informant if he talks to Congress. Stinking corrupt rats. They are investigating Trump's non-existent Russian Collusion out of self-defense, trying cover-up their own actual Russian Collusion.
Much is made of Bill's half millon-dollar speech in Moscow. But his personal best was actually the speech he gave to Ericsson, the Swedish Telecom giant. They wanted Iran Sanctions Relief from the State Dept. and suddenly developed an irresistible urge to pay Bill Clinton $750,000 for a speech. They got their relief--and the Mullahs got their cellphone tracking technology to spy on the Iranian people. Because #TheResistance!
Like Harvey Weinstein in Hollywood, nobody in this Company Town, including our Heroic Media, wants to Speak Truth to Power, even today. Have you ever heard a reporter ask either Clinton or Obama the simple question of why it was such a great idea to approve giving Russia control over American uranium?
Hillary has tried to hide behind the bureaucracy, claiming that the deal was approved by the Bureau of Weights and Measures, HUD, the Census Bureau and the night janitor at State. It's a farce, but it only proves Andy MacCarthy's point--the entire sock-puppet Obama Administration was neck-deep in this debacle.
But why?
The Clintons and Obama are both politically and financially corrupt. But the Clintons lean more towards financial corruption, whereas Obama worships corrupt political power. And the final word was Obama's.
She wanted her precious money, but Obama needed Russia's help in building Iran's nuke plants, providing the uranium and the anti-aircraft defenses and most importantly, providing the political cover Obama needed to pass his Pre-Emptive Unconditional Surrender.
She got what she wanted, he got what he wanted.
As did Putin and the Ayatollah.
And Mueller, Rosenstein and Comey helped cover it all up. These are the people your Founding Fathers warned you about.
Roger Simon: "Virtually whatever Mueller has to say about his involvement or non-involvement in this metastasizing scandal, he must recuse himself immediately for the most obvious reasons of propriety and appearance. Frankly, it's outrageous that he, Rod Rosenstein, or anyone who even touched the Uranium One investigation now be involved with the current probe -- unless the real name of the FBI is actually the NKVD. This is not how a democracy is supposed to work, even remotely. ...
For starters, Mueller must step down. We cannot have an investigation of this magnitude that half the country will completely disrespect -- and for increasingly good reason. History will mock it, also for good reason. On top of that, with our country as split as it is, the results could be catastrophic.
Equally important, the reputation of the FBI must be resuscitated. Speaking entirely as a private citizen, I do no trust the FBI anymore. To be honest, it scares me. And I am certain I am not alone. It feels like an often-biased organization so bent on self-preservation that it hides evidence and lets the powerful off the hook. That's the royal road to totalitarianism. No, it's not the NKVD yet. No one that I know of is being hauled off in the middle of the night. But very few of us know what it is really up to, how it makes its frequently dubious decisions, or whether it is working for the good of the citizenry at all. Almost everything we learn of its investigations is so heavily redacted, no one but one of the myriad leakers seems to know what it means -- and they're usually lying. This, as they say, will not end well.".......
 |
| #$till $he Per$i$ted! |
The Obama Administration’s Uranium One Scandal
"The Uranium One scandal is not only, or even principally, a Clinton scandal. It is an Obama-administration scandal. The Clintons were just doing what the Clintons do: cashing in on their “public service.” The Obama administration, with Secretary Clinton at the forefront but hardly alone, was knowingly compromising American national-security interests. The administration green-lighted the transfer of control over one-fifth of American uranium-mining capacity to Russia, a hostile regime — and specifically to Russia’s state-controlled nuclear-energy conglomerate, Rosatom. Worse, at the time the administration approved the transfer, it knew that Rosatom’s American subsidiary was engaged in a lucrative racketeering enterprise that had already committed felony extortion, fraud, and money-laundering offenses. ...
When(Rosatom/Tenam's Vadim)Mikerin solicited him in 2009, the lobbyist was uncomfortable, worried that the proposal would land him on the wrong side of the law. So he contacted the FBI and revealed what he knew. From then on, the Bureau and Justice Department permitted him to participate in the Russian racketeering scheme as a “confidential source” — and he is thus known as “CS-1” in affidavits the government, years later, presented to federal court in order to obtain search and arrest warrants. At the time this unidentified man became an informant, the FBI was led by director Robert Mueller, who is now the special counsel investigating whether Trump colluded with Russia. The investigation was centered in Maryland (Tenam’s home base). There, the U.S. attorney was Obama appointee Rod Rosenstein — now President Trump’s deputy attorney general, and the man who appointed Mueller as special counsel to investigate Trump. Because of CS-1, the FBI was able to understand and monitor the racketeering enterprise almost from the start. ...
In 2005, former President Clinton helped his Canadian billionaire friend and benefactor, Frank Giustra, obtain coveted uranium-mining rights from Kazakhstan’s dictator. The Kazakh deal enabled Giustra’s company (Ur-Asia Energy) to merge into Uranium One (a South African company), a $3.5 billion windfall. Giustra and his partners thereafter contributed tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Besides the valuable Kazakh reserves, Uranium One also controlled about a fifth of the uranium stock in the United States. Alas, Putin, the neighborhood bully, also wanted the Kazakh uranium. He leaned on Kazakhstan’s dictator, who promptly arrested the official responsible for selling the uranium-mining rights to Giustra’s company. This put Uranium One’s stake in jeopardy of being seized by the Kazakh government. As Uranium One’s stock plunged, its panicked executives turned to the State Department, where their friend Hillary Clinton was now in charge. State sprung into action, convening emergency meetings with the Kazakh regime. A few days later, it was announced that the crisis was resolved (translation: the shakedown was complete). Russia’s energy giant, Rosatom, would purchase 17 percent of Uranium One, and the Kazakh threat would disappear — and with it, the threat to the value of the Clinton donors’ holdings. For Putin, though, that was just a start. He didn’t want a minority stake in Uranium One, he wanted control of the uranium. For that, Rosatom would need a controlling interest in Uranium One. That would be a tall order — not because of the Kazakh mining rights but because acquisition of Uranium One’s American reserves required U.S. government approval. ...
The Obama administration needed to make this case go away — without a public trial if at all possible. Think about this: The investigation of Russian racketeering in the American energy sector was the kind of spectacular success over which the FBI and Justice Department typically do a bells-n-whistles victory lap — the big self-congratulatory press conference followed by the media-intensive prosecutions . . . and, of course, more press conferences. Here . . . crickets. As the Hill reports, the Justice Department and FBI had little to say when Mikerin and his co-conspirators were arrested. They quietly negotiated guilty pleas that were announced with no fanfare just before Labor Day. It was arranged that Mikerin would be sentenced just before Christmas. All under the radar. How desperate was the Obama Justice Department to plead the case out? Here, Rosenstein and Holder will have some explaining to do. Mikerin was arrested on a complaint describing a racketeering scheme that stretched back to 2004 and included extortion, fraud, and money laundering. Yet he was permitted to plead guilty to a single count of money-laundering conspiracy. Except it was not really money-laundering conspiracy. Under federal law, that crime (at section 1956 of the penal code) carries a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment — not only for conspiracy but for each act of money laundering. But Mikerin was not made to plead guilty to this charge. He was permitted to plead guilty to an offense charged under the catch-all federal conspiracy provision (section 371) that criminalizes agreements to commit any crime against the United States. Section 371 prescribes a sentence of zero to five years’ imprisonment. The Justice Department instructs prosecutors that when Congress has given a federal offense its own conspiracy provision with a heightened punishment (as it has for money laundering, racketeering, narcotics trafficking, and other serious crimes), they may not charge a section 371 conspiracy. Section 371 is for less serious conspiracy cases. Using it for money laundering — which caps the sentence way below Congress’s intent for that behavior — subverts federal law and signals to the court that the prosecutor does not regard the offense as major. Yet, that is exactly what Rosenstein’s office did, in a plea agreement his prosecutors co-signed with attorneys from the Justice Department’s Fraud Section. (See in the Hill’s report, the third document embedded at the bottom, titled “Mikerin Plea Deal.”) No RICO, no extortion, no fraud — and the plea agreement is careful not to mention any of the extortions in 2009 and 2010, before CFIUS approved Rosatom’s acquisition of U.S. uranium stock. Mikerin just had to plead guilty to a nominal “money laundering” conspiracy charge. This insulated him from a real money-laundering sentence. Thus, he got a term of just four years’ incarceration for a major national-security crime — which, of course, is why he took the plea deal and waived his right to appeal, sparing the Obama administration a full public airing of the facts. Interestingly, as the plea agreement shows, the Obama DOJ’s Fraud Section was then run by Andrew Weissmann, who is now one of the top prosecutors in Robert Mueller’s ongoing special-counsel investigation of suspected Trump collusion with Russia.".......
And the FBI is threatening their confidential informant if he talks to Congress. Stinking corrupt rats. They are investigating Trump's non-existent Russian Collusion out of self-defense, trying cover-up their own actual Russian Collusion.
 |
| "...a promise Secretary Clinton herself made to Russian leaders to round up support in America’s Silicon Valley for then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s dream for a new high-tech hub outside Moscow known as Skolkovo. A team of venture capitalists had been dispatched to Moscow just a few weeks before Bill Clinton landed his payday, records show."We have 40,000 Russians living in Silicon Valley in California. We would be thrilled if 40,000 Russians were working in whatever the Russian equivalent of Silicon Valley is, providing global economic competition, taking the internet and technology to the next level,” Hillary Clinton said at the time...But as the informant gathered evidence of the bribery scheme in early 2010, he began to hear a familiar name crop up in conversations. The Russians kept talking about ways they could win access to or favor with the Clintons, and the informant kept reporting it back to his FBI handlers." --The Hill |
Like Harvey Weinstein in Hollywood, nobody in this Company Town, including our Heroic Media, wants to Speak Truth to Power, even today. Have you ever heard a reporter ask either Clinton or Obama the simple question of why it was such a great idea to approve giving Russia control over American uranium?
Hillary has tried to hide behind the bureaucracy, claiming that the deal was approved by the Bureau of Weights and Measures, HUD, the Census Bureau and the night janitor at State. It's a farce, but it only proves Andy MacCarthy's point--the entire sock-puppet Obama Administration was neck-deep in this debacle.
But why?
The Clintons and Obama are both politically and financially corrupt. But the Clintons lean more towards financial corruption, whereas Obama worships corrupt political power. And the final word was Obama's.
She wanted her precious money, but Obama needed Russia's help in building Iran's nuke plants, providing the uranium and the anti-aircraft defenses and most importantly, providing the political cover Obama needed to pass his Pre-Emptive Unconditional Surrender.
She got what she wanted, he got what he wanted.
As did Putin and the Ayatollah.
And Mueller, Rosenstein and Comey helped cover it all up. These are the people your Founding Fathers warned you about.
For starters, Mueller must step down. We cannot have an investigation of this magnitude that half the country will completely disrespect -- and for increasingly good reason. History will mock it, also for good reason. On top of that, with our country as split as it is, the results could be catastrophic.
Equally important, the reputation of the FBI must be resuscitated. Speaking entirely as a private citizen, I do no trust the FBI anymore. To be honest, it scares me. And I am certain I am not alone. It feels like an often-biased organization so bent on self-preservation that it hides evidence and lets the powerful off the hook. That's the royal road to totalitarianism. No, it's not the NKVD yet. No one that I know of is being hauled off in the middle of the night. But very few of us know what it is really up to, how it makes its frequently dubious decisions, or whether it is working for the good of the citizenry at all. Almost everything we learn of its investigations is so heavily redacted, no one but one of the myriad leakers seems to know what it means -- and they're usually lying. This, as they say, will not end well.".......
Friday, October 20, 2017
TRUMP DEFEATS ISIS!
...WHILE THE #FAKENEWS BLACK-OUT CONTINUES!
From IBD's Op-Ed Trump Defeats ISIS In Months — After Years Of Excuses From Obama:
"Nine months after President Trump promised to defeat ISIS "quickly and effectively," U.S.-backed forces captured Raqqa, which until Tuesday had served as the ISIS capital.
"It had to do with the people I put in and it had to do with rules of engagement," Trump said in a radio interview.
Obama insisted that a quick and decisive victory against ISIS was all but impossible.
After belittling ISIS as a "JV" team and then being surprised by its advances, Obama finally got around to announcing a strategy to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the militant Islamic group.
As his strategy dragged on and seemed to go nowhere, Obama kept telling the country that this was just the nature of the beast.
"It will take time to eradicate a cancer like (ISIS). It will take time to root them out."
"This is a long-term and extremely complex challenge."
"This will not be quick."
"There will be setbacks and there will be successes."
"We must be patient and flexible in our efforts; this is a multiyear fight and there will be challenges along the way."
And he kept insisting that winning the war against ISIS has as much to do with public relations as it did weapons. "This broader challenge of countering extremism is not simply a military effort. Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas."
What Obama didn't say is that reason defeating ISIS was taking so long was of how he was fighting it.
A former senior military commander in the region told the Washington Examiner that the Obama White House was micromanaging the war "to the degree that it was just as bad, if not worse, than during the Johnson administration." Johnson, you will recall, once bragged that "they can't bomb an outhouse in Vietnam without my permission."
Contrast this with Trump. Rather than talk endlessly about how long and hard the fight would be, Trump said during his campaign that, if elected, he would convene his "top generals and give them a simple instruction. They will have 30 days to submit to the Oval Office a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS."
Once in office, Trump made several changes in the way the war was fought, the most important of which were to loosen the rules of engagement and give more decision-making authority to battlefield commanders.
Joshua Keating, writing in the liberal commentary site Slate, noted that Trump had "instructed the Pentagon to loosen the rules of engagement for airstrikes to the minimum required by international law, eliminated White House oversight procedures meant to protect civilians, and ordered the CIA to resume covert targeted killing missions." (He meant it as a criticism.)
The result of this shift seems pretty obvious. In July, ISIS was booted from Mosul, and this week Raqqa was liberated. For all intents and purposes, ISIS has been defeated. Trump did in nine months what Obama couldn't in the previous three years.
Trump's critics will insist that victory was inevitable, given that Obama had severely degraded ISIS over the previous years, and that all Trump did was continue Obama's strategy.
But the bottom line is that while Obama preached patience, Trump promised a swift end to ISIS, and then delivered on it.".......
They mocked the President ruthlessly, saying he was wrong, stupid, hopelessly naïve and doomed to fail.
Today, ISIS' Caliphate is gone, the world is safer and the #FakeNews babbles on about Melania's body double ( Double-Mint twins? Cool! And refreshing!).
Our Special Forces were finally unleashed and did their jobs magnificently. Pilots, sailors and others, too. Thank you, patriots.
Since the #ProfessionalLiars won't say it, I will:
Congratulations, Mr. President. You kept your word.
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| Women, Children Spared; Narrative Hardest Hit, However |
"Nine months after President Trump promised to defeat ISIS "quickly and effectively," U.S.-backed forces captured Raqqa, which until Tuesday had served as the ISIS capital.
"It had to do with the people I put in and it had to do with rules of engagement," Trump said in a radio interview.
Obama insisted that a quick and decisive victory against ISIS was all but impossible.
After belittling ISIS as a "JV" team and then being surprised by its advances, Obama finally got around to announcing a strategy to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the militant Islamic group.
As his strategy dragged on and seemed to go nowhere, Obama kept telling the country that this was just the nature of the beast.
"It will take time to eradicate a cancer like (ISIS). It will take time to root them out."
"This is a long-term and extremely complex challenge."
"This will not be quick."
"There will be setbacks and there will be successes."
"We must be patient and flexible in our efforts; this is a multiyear fight and there will be challenges along the way."
And he kept insisting that winning the war against ISIS has as much to do with public relations as it did weapons. "This broader challenge of countering extremism is not simply a military effort. Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas."
What Obama didn't say is that reason defeating ISIS was taking so long was of how he was fighting it.
A former senior military commander in the region told the Washington Examiner that the Obama White House was micromanaging the war "to the degree that it was just as bad, if not worse, than during the Johnson administration." Johnson, you will recall, once bragged that "they can't bomb an outhouse in Vietnam without my permission."
Contrast this with Trump. Rather than talk endlessly about how long and hard the fight would be, Trump said during his campaign that, if elected, he would convene his "top generals and give them a simple instruction. They will have 30 days to submit to the Oval Office a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS."
Once in office, Trump made several changes in the way the war was fought, the most important of which were to loosen the rules of engagement and give more decision-making authority to battlefield commanders.
Joshua Keating, writing in the liberal commentary site Slate, noted that Trump had "instructed the Pentagon to loosen the rules of engagement for airstrikes to the minimum required by international law, eliminated White House oversight procedures meant to protect civilians, and ordered the CIA to resume covert targeted killing missions." (He meant it as a criticism.)
The result of this shift seems pretty obvious. In July, ISIS was booted from Mosul, and this week Raqqa was liberated. For all intents and purposes, ISIS has been defeated. Trump did in nine months what Obama couldn't in the previous three years.
Trump's critics will insist that victory was inevitable, given that Obama had severely degraded ISIS over the previous years, and that all Trump did was continue Obama's strategy.
But the bottom line is that while Obama preached patience, Trump promised a swift end to ISIS, and then delivered on it.".......
They mocked the President ruthlessly, saying he was wrong, stupid, hopelessly naïve and doomed to fail.
Today, ISIS' Caliphate is gone, the world is safer and the #FakeNews babbles on about Melania's body double ( Double-Mint twins? Cool! And refreshing!).
Our Special Forces were finally unleashed and did their jobs magnificently. Pilots, sailors and others, too. Thank you, patriots.
Since the #ProfessionalLiars won't say it, I will:
Congratulations, Mr. President. You kept your word.
 |
| Again. |