[Daily Mail, Where America Gets Its News] Though it may have taken some time, Theresa May has finally woken up and seen sense. The Prime Minister had repeatedly ruled out even the possibility of calling a General Election, most recently late last month.
This was plain bonkers. It has long been obvious to anyone with a scintilla of political intelligence that a General Election was the only course of action. Indeed, I have called for just such a bold decision in these pages since the start of the year.
Now, Mrs May has the opportunity to secure for herself a personal mandate as Prime Minister. She can negotiate Brexit on her own terms. She can win the substantial parliamentary majority she desperately needs, rather than scrape by on a tiny majority that barely stretches past single figures. And she can change British politics for ever.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/20/2017 00:00 ||
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[Reuters] When President Donald Trump handed TransCanada Pipeline Co. a permit for its Keystone XL pipeline last month, he said the company could now build the long-delayed and divisive project "with efficiency and with speed." Helen and I ate the last pipeline fella that came around here.
But Trump and the firm will have to get through Nebraska farmer Art Tanderup first, along with about 90 other landowners in the path of the pipeline.
They are mostly farmers and ranchers, making a last stand against the pipeline - the fate of which now rests with an obscure state regulatory board, the Nebraska Public Service Commission.
The group is fine-tuning an economic argument it hopes will resonate better in this politically conservative state than the environmental concerns that dominated the successful push to block Keystone under former President Barack Obama.
Backed by conservation groups, the Nebraska opponents plan to cast the project as a threat to prime farming and grazing lands - vital to Nebraska's economy - and a foreign company's attempt to seize American private property.
They contend the pipeline will provide mainly temporary jobs that will vanish once construction ends, and limited tax revenues that will decline over time.
They face a considerable challenge. Supporters of the pipeline as economic development include Republican Governor, Pete Ricketts, most of the state’s senators, its labor unions and chamber of commerce. We drive our motorhome to all the anti-pipeline meetings. It's diesel. The mileage ain't too good, but I fill it up here at home to save on the fuel taxes.
"It’s depressing to start again after Obama rejected the pipeline two years ago, but we need keep our coalition energized and strong," said Tanderup, who grows rye, corn and soybeans on his 160-acre property. 160 acres? They must be selling a lot of eggs.
Now Tanderup and others are gearing up for another round of battle - on a decidedly more local stage, but with potentially international impact on energy firms and consumers.
The latest Keystone XL showdown underscores the increasingly well-organized and diverse resistance to pipelines nationwide, which now stretches well beyond the environmental movement.
Last year, North Dakota's Standing Rock Sioux, a Native American tribe, galvanized national opposition to the Energy Transfer Partners Dakota Access Pipeline. Another ETP pipeline in Louisiana has drawn protests from flood protection advocates and commercial fishermen.
The Keystone XL pipeline would cut through Tanderup's family farm, near the two-story farmhouse built in the 1920s by his wife Helen's grandfather. It'll bring in temporary jobs, tent cities, whores and strangers.
The Tanderups have plastered the walls with aerial photos of three "#NoKXL" crop art installations they staged from 2014 to 2016. Faded signs around the farm still advertise the concert Willie Nelson and Neil Young played here in 2014 to raise money for the protests.
The stakes for the energy industry are high as the Keystone XL combatants focus on Nebraska, especially for Canadian producers that have struggled for decades to move more of that nation's landlocked oil reserves to market. Keystone offers a path to get heavy crude from the Canada oil sands to refiners on the U.S. Gulf Coast equipped to handle it.
TransCanada has route approval in all of the U.S. states the line will cross except Nebraska, where the company says it has been unable to negotiate easements with landowners on about 9 percent of the 300-mile crossing. We use it to light up our new motorhome shed. Hell of a write off.
So the dispute now falls to Nebraska's five-member utility commission, an elected board with independent authority over TransCanada’s proposed route.
The commission has scheduled a public hearing in May, along with a week of testimony by pipeline supporters and opponents in August. Members face a deadline set by state law to take a vote by November.
#2
Lemme guess: these principled Farmers will never allow an underground pipeline across their property....unless an acceptable price is paid. Fine. Also, they should remember that their neighbors won't benefit while they remain intransigent. Perhaps when they're refused service in the local markets, gas stations, utility service, driveways' and road access blocked "for an upcoming project"...they'll stand tall
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/20/2017 8:54 Comments ||
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#3
Lemme think here, uh, eminent domain?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/20/2017 12:05 Comments ||
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#4
Pipelines are a pretty good payday. We scored a couple hundred grand for a couple of miles. Far exceeded the value of both the property and our productive use thereof (which was damaged but not destroyed).
If they're dumb enough to take this to court they'll discover that the eminent domain hearing will be in federal court where they'll receive no sympathy and will lose rather quickly and expensively.
[Breitbart] On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s "Morning Joe," New York Times White House Correspondent Glenn Thrush reported, "my inbox this morning’s been flooded by Democrats who are sort of saying Ossoff was a terrible candidate."
Thrush said, "[W]hat is interesting is my inbox this morning’s been flooded by Democrats who are sort of saying Ossoff was a terrible candidate."
Thrush added, "[H]e was not electric. He was more static electric. But I think, in general, that is an issue. Look, the other thing is, look how deep the bench was down there. There were a lot of people who wanted that seat. I think the larger issue that we’re dealing with here right now, is the fact that the Democrats just don’t have a lot of candidates, not just in Georgia, but around the country in general. There’s not a lot of people to kind of catch this Trump wave."
#2
The donks have always been about a candidate being telegenic, a B.S. artist and pushing their progressive agenda over having substance. Every now and then they slip up and pick a ringer.
#3
"Sorry, Jon. If you'd got 50%+ you'd have been the Second Coming™."
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/20/2017 9:13 Comments ||
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#4
Well, there was the guy that walked the neighboring farms to get elected. Then there were the railstops. After that came the radio then TV pitches, then soundbites. I think this last one was talking heads, twitter and webvideo sensationalism.
I really don't know how the next will compress maximum info into limited attention spans but telegenic probably isn't the path.
[Free Beacon] Two-time failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spied on her own campaign staff's emails after her first loss in 2008 to Barack Obama.
Clinton had a trusted aide access the campaign's server and download all of the emails that top staffers sent and received so they could be reviewed, the New York Post reported.
The revelation comes from a new book‐Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes‐that examines what went wrong for Clinton's 2016 presidential bid.
After Clinton lost to Obama, she wanted to see how her presidential campaign failed and pointed the finger at her staff, according to the book.
"She believed her campaign had failed her‐not the other way around‐and she wanted ’to see who was talking to who, who was leaking to who,' said a source familiar with the operation," Allen and Parnes write. "Her political director, Guy Cecil, had talked with members of the media from his campaign account. Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, was a tyrant. And far too many of her minions had fought for turf and status rather than votes."
Staffers were not aware that Clinton accessed and was reading their emails, which revealed infighting and some trying to advance their own careers rather than the campaign.
The review of staff emails in 2008 came well before the controversy surrounding Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, as well as the release of hacked emails from the accounts of top Clinton aides and Democratic National Committee employees.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/20/2017 9:14 Comments ||
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#4
...Over at the Installment, there's a post that goes into a bit more detail, but the real point is this: assuming this story is true, it blows Malificent's "I-dont-know-nothin-bout-no-computers" schtick right out of the water.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
04/20/2017 12:38 Comments ||
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#5
Hillary did women everywhere a great service! She, by her personal example, show that women can be just as despicable, corrupt and evil as men.
[GatewayPundit] In a damning report originally stemming from the Guardian, and then picked up by the American Spectator, it has been confirmed that former CIA director John Brennan colluded with British and Estonian spies who sought to both to manufacture Trump-Russia ties and bring down Trump’s candidacy as a whole. Via The American Spectator:
Seeking to retain his position as CIA director under Hillary, Brennan teamed up with British spies and Estonian spies to cripple Trump’s candidacy. He used their phony intelligence as a pretext for a multi-agency investigation into Trump, which led the FBI to probe a computer server connected to Trump Tower and gave cover to Susan Rice, among other Hillary supporters, to spy on Trump and his people.
John Brennan’s CIA operated like a branch office of the Hillary campaign, leaking out mentions of this bogus investigation to the press in the hopes of inflicting maximum political damage on Trump. An official in the intelligence community tells TAS that Brennan’s retinue of political radicals didn’t even bother to hide their activism, decorating offices with "Hillary for president cups" and other campaign paraphernalia.
The Guardian says that British spy head Robert Hannigan "passed material in summer 2016 to the CIA chief, John Brennan." To ensure that these flaky tips leaked out, Brennan disseminated them on Capitol Hill. In August and September of 2016, he gave briefings to the "Gang of Eight" about them, which then turned up on the front page of the New York Times.
[…]
Were the media not so completely in the tank for Obama and Hillary, all of this political mischief would make for a compelling 2016 version of All the President’s Men. Instead, the public gets a steady stream of Orwellian propaganda about the sudden propriety of political espionage. The headline writers at Pravda couldn’t improve on this week’s official lie, tweeted out by the Maggie Habermans: "Susan Rice Did Nothing Wrong, Say Both Dem and Republican House Aides."
Wow...just wow. Brennan and Soetoro were doing everything in their power to ensure a Clinton win. It simply wasn't enough.
#1
John Brennan was the American progenitor of political espionage aimed at defeating Donald Trump. One side did collude with foreign powers to tip the election — Hillary’s.
Brennan is a snake. Despite his snakiness, Hillary still lost. Why? Because she sucked as a candidate and a decent human bean.
#2
No matter how they tried the psychopathy showed. Most people probably didn't know what it was or even think about it very much. But there is a subtle, general, creepy feeling you get from Hillary that she has the personality of a reptile.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/20/2017 12:17 Comments ||
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#5
I am convinced that ValJar is somewhere in this chain of events and passage of information. Equally troubling is the recent meeting in Fiji (?)on Geffen's super yacht (454 ft) of Oprah, Geffen, Tom Hanks and the Obama's, as the next presidential candidacy is contemplated to further the Obama era through Oprah as a surrogate? I laughed when I learned of it, but the more I thought about how the Media/Hollywood/MoveOn.org/Soros complex is stirring things up, the more it seemed possible?
[San Diego Union-Tribune] A proposal in Congress would impose a new $2,400 fee on troops who want to sign up to get the GI Bill after discharge.
The idea is being considered by the House Veterans Affairs Committee next Wednesday at a hearing. The nation’s veterans groups appear to be steaming about the proposed change.
"We are still a nation at war. We have troops actively engaged in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and now in Syria," said leader of Veterans of Foreign Wars, Brian Duffy, in an issued statement. 'Nothing is too good for the soldier, and that's what he usually gets.'
#2
Piddly stuff. Go after the billions of untaxed college and university endowments. You go where the real money is, but its easier to kick the little guy than confront the special interest groups hiding big money.
#3
Taxing the troops for the GI Bill is a bad & stupid idea. Congress going to fight the wars? I doubt this legislation has a snowball's chance in hell.
#4
I think they changed it a bit from the early 90s when I was in, but troops have always had to pay for it.
It was $1,000 charged $100 a month for the first year, but after that you had full access to the $25,000 for school. You had to sign up that first year or you couldn't get it. I think they have changed it that you can sign up anytime you are enlisted.
The only thing this is doing is giving discharged soldiers the ability to buy it when they get out.
#1
The most notorious case of misconduct was the EPA official who earned $120,000 and performance bonuses after being caught watching 'dirty movies'* for up to six hours a day.
Unless its in a specific contract, no 'bonuses' for anyone, period. They're not bonuses if they're expected or considered an entitlement which they have become in practice. You'll go elsewhere? Fine. We can begin the down sizing the government needs.
#2
The geologist in the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation downloaded over 7,000 pr0nographic files on an agency server and admitted to mast*rbating at work. He received paid leave for nearly two years after being caught
"He justified it by saying he has always been a hands-on employee"
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/20/2017 9:10 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Breitbart] On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s "Morning Joe," New York Times White House Correspondent Glenn Thrush reported, "my inbox this morning’s been flooded by Democrats who are sort of saying Ossoff was a terrible candidate."
[Free Beacon] Two-time failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spied on her own campaign staff's emails after her first loss in 2008 to Barack Obama.
