[FOX] An attorney for the co-founder of opposition research firm Fusion GPS revealed during a closed-door interview this summer with congressional investigators that "somebody's already been killed" as a result of the publication of the anti-Trump dossier.
The statement was contained in a 312-page transcript of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson's August interview with committee investigators, released unilaterally Tuesday by Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
The release itself provoked controversy, with an aide to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, calling it "confounding" for Feinstein to drop the transcript in the "middle of an ongoing investigation."
Among the many revelations in the document, though, is the claim from Simpson's attorney that someone died because the dossier -- which was commissioned by Fusion GPS -- was publicly released.
"He wants to be very careful to protect his sources," attorney Josh Levy said during the Aug. 22 Senate Judiciary Committee interview of his client. "Somebody's already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work."
[DailyMail] Massive 7.6 magnitude earthquake strikes in the Caribbean: Tsunami warnings issued for Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands and more
The 7.6 magnitude earthquake occurred on Tuesday night at about 9.51pm
It struck in the Caribbean Sea just over 25 miles from the coast of Great Swan Island belonging to Honduras
The earthquake had a depth of 6.2 miles
A tsunami advisory was in effect for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
The wave could also potentially impact the coasts of Central American nations, including Jamaica, Cuba and the Cayman Islands
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said a tsunami advisory was in effect for hurricane-hit Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands after the earthquake and warned of possible waves up to 3 feet above tide level.
The wave could also potentially impact the coasts of Central American nations, including Jamaica, Cuba and the Cayman Islands.
Meanwhile the US National Weather Pacific Tsunami Warning Center warned 'hazardous tsunami waves are possible for coasts located within 1,000 kilometers of the earthquake epicenter'. It later said this threat had passed.
The quake rattled windows in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, which is roughly 323 miles to the east, but no damage was immediately reported.
It was also lightly felt in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, north of Honduras, according to Mexico's civil protection director. More at link, including maps, pictures and all the usual gory stuff.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Ministry of Defense has decided to transfer all office computers to the operating system Linux-based Astra Linux of the Moscow-based company RusBITEkh, the Izvestia newspaper reported, citing sources in the ministry.
The expanded version, Astra Linux Special Edition, with a built-in office suite will be used on the ministry's working computers, and on the next stage it will be used on smartphones and tablets, the newspaper said. If the new operating system meets military requirements, it will be installed on all computers in the ministry and will be the main one for automated control systems and workplaces, servers and on-board military equipment.
Dmitry Donskoy, Deputy CEO of RusBITEkh, confirmed the information to the newspaper. "A key feature of Astra Linux Special Edition is the unique system of information protection. The operation system is fully compatible with modern Russian-made computers. It works with high-tech domestic processors Elbrus, Baikal-T1 and Komdiv. They are the 'heart' of the last-generation supercomputers," he said.
As the publication notes, the Astra Linux system has been used by the Russian Armed Forces for several years, in particular, the information system of the Russian National Defense Control Center (NDCC). In addition, it is already used today in existing models of weapons and military equipment and in a number of promising projects.
#8
Main thing is it is free, as in , no money up front!
I suspect the issue is not the cheapness, but the fact that you get the source code and can see what is going on under the hood with your operating system.
My first IT job involved running the burster and decollater; moved up eventually to the plug boards on the card sorter. 10 years later I went to CDC and started bit banging for real.......those were the days my friend.
[PJ] The Achilles' heel of the American government is the intelligence community, known as the IC to its intimates. Not that it doesn't have first-rate people, many of whom have worked in its nooks and crannies around the world for decades. Our information-gathering capability remains first rate, our field agents largely superb in their savvy and bravery. The problem, however, comes when that information gets transmitted back to the home offices in and around Washington, D.C. And there, depending in part on who's in power at the time, lies the rub.
The intelligence business has two sides: raw information, and analysis. One hundred percent accuracy in the first is one hundred percent useless should the latter be deficient. As it happens, the primus inter pares of the IC, the Central Intelligence Agency, is expressly designed to do both. As events from the fall of the Shah, the Iranian hostage crisis, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the events of 9/11 have shown, its track record is very spotty, and its failures attributable to analysis, not information. Seeing only what you want to see in information gathered by your colleagues, and then tailoring it for superiors who make political calculations first and informed judgments only second, is a recipe for disaster.
Comes now the news that -- surprise! -- the U.S. seriously underestimated the speed at which the rogue Communist state of North Korea has ramped up its nuclear program; a nuclear program that, let us not forget, was made possible by the Clinton administration:
#1
Seeing only what you want to see in information gathered by your colleagues, and then tailoring it for superiors who make political calculations first and informed judgments only second, is a recipe for disaster.
#3
So the same media that ridiculed and bitch slapped the Bush administration for CIA screw ups on Saddam's WMD now realizes that the CIA screwed the pooch on Kimmie's toys???
Memo to media, this is the same intel gathering clowns that are feeding you the Russian collusion narrative that you swear up and down is the gospel truth...
As I said before if I were an S-2 or a G-2, I would have to give CIA information an A-6...reliable source, unreliable information.
#4
Ah fuck all this shit and lies they get people to leave the intel community and all the computer dorks are friends with russia and the computer dorks are fucking russia and america and loving every fucking second of it! Playing off each side and laughing their asses off like the crapto coin divide the earnings into a share of that shit and you are talking thousandths and hundreds of thousands of a cent on a dollar not even a fucking penny! If the geek block heads fuck up tidal wave of sand castles and kingdoms going down the toilet !You never hear of them fucking up only the other country did it! Who is fucking who ?
#6
I find it hard to believe that the Nork desk was taken unaware. That upper management 'wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal' ('without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters') I find very believable.
Posted by: T. Panda2560 ||
01/10/2018 20:59 Comments ||
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#7
don't feed the trolls
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/10/2018 21:34 Comments ||
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[DAWN] North Korea will send its athletes to the Winter Olympics in the South, the rivals said on Tuesday after their first formal talks in more than two years following high tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme.
The two sides also decided to hold military talks and to restore a military hotline closed since February, 2016.
Seoul and Olympic organisers have been keen for Pyongyang ‐ which boycotted the 1988 Summer Games in the South Korean capital ‐ to take part in what they repeatedly proclaimed a "peace Olympics" in Pyeongchang next month. But the North had given no indication it would do so until leader Kim Jong-Un's New Year address last week, instead pursuing its banned weapons programmes in defiance of United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... sanctions, launching missiles capable of reaching the United States and detonating its sixth and most powerful nuclear test.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/10/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
The stage is being set for South Korea to send danegeld aid to North Korea once again, thus rendering obsolete the nominally tightened sanctions.
The new US administration declared an end to strategic patience.
Kim Jong Un made the strategic decision to ignore the Trump administration's rhetoric and respond with provocative missile tests and a hydrogen bomb detonation.
Now it looks like KJU made the right decision and will we rewarded generously. This will have global consequences, all of them bad for the West.
Maybe the election of Trump was nothing more than Western civilization's final dead cat bounce.
[BBC] Japanese auto giants Toyota and Mazda have picked Alabama to build their new $1.6bn (£1.2bn) US factory, according to several reports. Graphic depicts Princeton, IN Toyota factory along US Route 41.
The firms revealed last year that they planned a US joint venture, with production scheduled to begin in 2021. At the time, President Donald Trump said the decision was "a great investment" in US manufacturing.
The choice for the factory location had reportedly been narrowed down to either Alabama or North Carolina. One US media outlet reported that North Carolina missed out because it did not offer the supply-chain logistics the two firms required.
The factory is expected to eventually produce 300,000 vehicles a year and employ about 4,000 people.
When contacted by the BBC, Toyota refused to confirm that Alabama had been selected, saying an announcement would be made "in early 2018". However US media was widely reporting a formal announcement would be made on Wednesday.
The auto industry is one area where President Trump has been pressuring overseas companies to do even more manufacturing in the US.
#1
So, an agreement between Ford and Toyota, as Ford owns Mazda.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/10/2018 15:10 Comments ||
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#2
I'm surprised they didn't pick Detroit. Lots of vacant land and a skilled motivated union labor force.. Hell, you could even get an old auto plant for cheap, although you'd prolly have raze it an rebuild from the ground up.
#3
...oh, those Environmental statements and compliance with the clean up would just jack up the cost something frightful. Easier with untapped acreage.
#4
So, an agreement between Ford and Toyota, as Ford owns Mazda.
Posted by: ed in texas
Ford never owned more than 33.4% of Mazda (in the 1990s) and now has no interest in Mazda today since September 30, 2015, when Ford's shares had sunk to a little over 2% due to stock dilution, Ford sold its remaining shares in Mazda.
Ford-Mazda partership
[Breitbart] A new civil rights act has come into force in Switzerland that prevents residents who have been on welfare in the past three years from becoming citizens unless they pay back the money they received to the state.
The new regulations will make it impossible for asylum seekers and migrants who have lived off state handouts in the last three years to become citizens even if they have lived in Switzerland as permanent residents for the required time to make a citizenship application, Kronen Zeitung reports.
The previous law allowed migrants to apply for citizenship as long as they were not on state benefits at the time of their application.
Along with the welfare stipulation, the new act requires migrants to demonstrate a greater level of integration than before including making them prove they have a certain number of Swiss friends and acquaintances.
Language requirements vary by canton with most expecting an intermediate level of language proficiency judged on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) at the B1 or B2 level.
While Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, asylum seekers have attempted to flood into the country through the southern Italian border. While many have used Switzerland as a transit country to reach Germany, others have remained in the Alpine state.
Various cantons and cities in Switzerland have attempted to push back against the tide of migrants by making it less appealing for them to come to the country. Late last year, the city of Zurich voted to dramatically cut benefits to failed asylum seekers who were in so-called "F-status" in which they cannot be deported.
[FoxNews] A federal judge in San Francisco on Tuesday barred the Trump administration from turning back the Obama-era DACA program, which shielded more than 700,000 people from deportation, Reuters reported, citing the judge's ruling.
Trump last year ended the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He gave Congress until March to find a fix.
Starting in March, young people protected under DACA were to lose their protections under the program.
As I made very clear today, our country needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval.
‐ Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018
Trump said he was willing to be flexible in finding an agreement as Democrats warned that the lives of hundreds of thousands of immigrants hung in the balance.
"I think my positions are going to be what the people in this room come up with," Trump said during a Cabinet Room meeting with a bipartisan group of nearly two dozen lawmakers.
The Reuters report said U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that the program must stay intact during litigation.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Trump appeared optimistic that Congress could reach a decision on the program.
Trump ended DACA in September. Immigration advocates estimate that more than 100 people a day lose the protected status because they did not renew their permits before the deadline, The Journal reported.
Trump is using border security‐including a border wall-- as a bargaining chip and Democrats want to use their sway on the spending bill to protect immigrants under DACA.
The plaintiffs in the suit included, among others, attorneys general from California, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and the University of California
Xavier Becerra, California's attorney general, filed a motion seeking the preliminary injunction in November, saying that the move is in violation of the U.S. Constitution and causes "irreparable" harm to DACA recipients.
Becerra said in a statement late Tuesday that the ruling is a "huge step in the right direction."
"America is and has been home to Dreamers who courageously came forward, applied for DACA and did everything the federal government asked of them," he said. "They followed DACA's rules, they succeeded in school, at work and in business, and they have contributed in building a better America." I can't even...
Posted by: Seeking cure for ignorance ||
01/10/2018 02:26 ||
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#2
This is fucking ridiculous - an EO can be nullified by another EO. Judges should be disbarred for blocking this shit and Trump should just ignore these judges until the fight gets to the Supreme Court, just like his predecessor did on many occasions.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
01/10/2018 6:53 Comments ||
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#5
So, what are the mechanisms for dealing with situations when judges exceed their authority?
Appeal it to the Supreme Court. San Francisco is in the 9th Circuit, so odds are good it will be overruled. I’m not sure, but I think this is where the ruling will be posted.
#7
If we really had a government of checks and balances, a fair handful of judges would be before Congress explaining why they should be allowed to keep their jobs (which is not being a aristocrat sitting for life and ignoring the Constitutional separation of powers).
#8
On March 24, 1999, Alsup was nominated by President Bill Clinton to a seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California vacated by Thelton Henderson.[4] Alsup was confirmed by the United States Senate on July 30, 1999, and received his commission on August 17, 1999.
So, rule of law means little to him
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/10/2018 9:00 Comments ||
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#9
Another black robed tyrant decreeing what the law should be from the bench.
Long past time to start to treat them as dictators and lawless fucks and act accordingly.
#10
They are traitors and should be publically treated as such. Heck, send them to Gitmo and then vanish them into some nice place like Saudi where they can really enjoy their stay.
Five lawsuits were filed in U.S. District Court for Northern California to reinstate DACA, with the lead case brought ironically by none other than Napolitano, who is now the president of the University of California. The cases were assigned to Judge William Alsup, a liberal Clinton-appointed judge who formerly clerked for the Supreme Court and served in the Clinton-era DOJ.
Alsup originally issued extraordinarily broad and invasive discovery orders to force the federal government—even the White House—to disclose a broad range of sensitive documents on DACA discussions, possibly including communications with President Trump that would be protected by executive privilege.
When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco did not rein in Alsup, Sessions’ top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General Noel Francisco, went straight to the Supreme Court, which rejected Alsup’s order in a unanimous opinion.
Back in the federal trial court, Alsup’s latest decision rejected DOJ’s motion to dismiss the five lawsuits. Instead, he issued a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration, ordering the Trump administration, “pending final judgment herein or other order, to maintain the DACA program on a nationwide basis on the same terms and conditions that were in effect before the rescission on September 5, 2017.” The San Francisco-based district court further ordered the federal government to begin renewing work permits for DACA recipients.
DOJ can now take these cases back to the Ninth Circuit on an expedited basis, and request a stay of the district court’s reinstatement order while the appeal is ongoing. If the Ninth Circuit declines again to do so, then DOJ can immediately return to the Supreme Court and ask Justice Anthony Kennedy—who has jurisdiction over the Ninth Circuit—to issue a stay that will last until a final decision is rendered in the appeal.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/10/2018 12:26 Comments ||
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#14
Just disband the 9th and set up about 3 new courts and make all the judges re-apply to be members of the new courts.
No different than layoffs when a company is diced and sliced by others in a non-chapt 11 situation.
#15
So, what are the mechanisms for dealing with situations when judges exceed their authority?
Something about lampposts, rope and assembly comes to mind.
[Variety] Steve Bannon is stepping down as executive chairman of Breitbart News Network, in the wake of the furor over quotes he made in Michael Wolff’s book "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House."
In an announcement, the site said that "Bannon and Breitbart will work together on a smooth and orderly transition."
"I’m proud of what the Breitbart team has accomplished in so short a period of time in building out a world-class news platform," Bannon said in a statement.
Larry Solov, Breitbart CEO, said, "Steve is a valued part of our legacy, and we will always be grateful for his contributions, and what he has helped us to accomplish."
#1
'Stepping down' is the polite way of saying 'tossed out on your ass'. The only thing missing is the obligatory 'we're going in a different direction' / 'wants to spend more time with his family'.
h/t Instapundit
More than 100 women signed an open letter Tuesday arguing against the #MeToo movement.
The letter, signed by renowned French actress Catherine Deneuve as well as writers, historians, journalists and entertainers, was published in Le Monde to "we defend freedom to importune, indispensable to sexual freedom."
"Rape is a crime, but trying to seduce someone, even persistently or back-handedly, is not ‐ nor is men being gentlemanly a macho attack," the letter said.
"Men have been punished summarily, forced out of their jobs when all they did was touch someone’s knee or try to steal a kiss."
[Free Beacon] The State Department waited nearly one year before standing up an independent investigative panel, known as an Accountability Review Board, to probe the unexplained attacks on U.S. personnel working in Cuba and their family members.
U.S. law requires the secretary of state to convene an ARB within 60 days after an incident of "serious injury" occurs to U.S. personnel serving abroad, which can be extended to 120 days if the secretary of state deems more time is needed.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson convened the board Dec. 11 and will formally notify Congress about its creation soon, Francisco Palmieri, the acting assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, told senators Tuesday during a Foreign Relations Committee oversight hearing on the attacks that on diplomats and other U.S. personnel in Cuba.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), who led the hearing, repeatedly criticized the State Department for failing to form the ARB until December when the first symptoms that diplomats had been harmed in Cuba occurred in late 2016.
#1
If it was the Mignonette or French shallot vinaigrette, it may have taken a while to get things in order. Multiple dining rooms, three kitchens and service pantries, etc. No small task.
If I wasn't such a suspicious sort, I'd kind of get the impression the whole gist of this crap is 'divide and conquer'.
[ZeroHedge] A math education professor at Brooklyn College contends in a recent academic article that "meritocracy" in math classes is a "tool of whiteness."
Laurie Rubel implicates both meritocracy and "color-blindness" as ideological precepts that hold back racial minorities from succeeding in math classes in an article for the peer-reviewed Journal of Urban Mathematics Education. By now, this is 'same shit, different day' for most of us, so I just did a few 'graphs.
#2
Why don't we just take everyone who believes this and put them together somewhere and watch them take care of themselves. For example, put them to work in sales in Silicon Valley . . . .
#10
The classic science fiction story by H. Beam Piper Omnilingual(1957) has the humans investigating an alien city. The Rosetta Stone they use to understand is science, the Universal Language, a concept that this person does not grasp.
#12
Her research interests include probabilistic thinking, teacher education, diversity and equity in mathematics education, and the use of real-world urban contexts in the teaching of mathematics. In 2002-03, Rubel was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as part of the Diversity in Mathematics Education Center for Learning and Teaching.
She pretty much checked all the usual boxes, except "Competent"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/10/2018 13:56 Comments ||
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#13
The real issue purposely ignored by the tenured liberal university endoctrination professors is that their public school liberal counterparts do a crappy job of teaching.
Posted by: Bill Cleretle2363 ||
01/10/2018 14:22 Comments ||
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Jack O’Banion, Vice President of Strategy and Customer Requirements, Advanced Development Programs for Lockheed Martin, at a presentation said that the SR72 could not have been made without digital transformation. This seems to indicate that a hypersonic vehicle has been built.
The SR72 is a mach 6+ hypersonic precision bomber that can also act as a spyplane.
Posted by: C. Ebbealet4244 ||
01/10/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
There have been wild-eyed guesses about a "above supersonic" methane-fueled spy plane, like the hypothetical SR-75 Aurora, percolating for a decade. It will be interesting to see what is actually behind the smokescreen.
#2
digital transformation means the danged thing wouldn't fly and was aerodynamically unstable and unflyable without a bunch of computers working their asses off to keep it going in one direction and in one piece...much like the dear departed F-119
#3
Let's not forget the $100 billion/per plane price tag. Hell, we can nuke anyone we want to spy on out of existence for less than the cost of alot of these programs.
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.
[FOX] An attorney for the co-founder of opposition research firm Fusion GPS revealed during a closed-door interview this summer with congressional investigators that "somebody's already been killed" as a result of the publication of the anti-Trump dossier. 
[DailyMail] Massive 7.6 magnitude earthquake strikes in the Caribbean: Tsunami warnings issued for Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands and more
[PJ] The Achilles' heel of the American government is the intelligence community, known as the IC to its intimates. Not that it doesn't have first-rate people, many of whom have worked in its nooks and crannies around the world for decades. Our information-gathering capability remains first rate, our field agents largely superb in their savvy and bravery. The problem, however, comes when that information gets transmitted back to the home offices in and around Washington, D.C. And there, depending in part on who's in power at the time, lies the rub.
North Korea
[Breitbart] A new civil rights act has come into force in Switzerland that prevents residents who have been on welfare in the past three years from becoming citizens unless they pay back the money they received to the state.
[FoxNews] A federal judge in San Francisco on Tuesday barred the Trump administration from turning back the Obama-era DACA program, which shielded more than 700,000 people from deportation, Reuters reported, citing the judge's ruling.
Jack O’Banion, Vice President of Strategy and Customer Requirements, Advanced Development Programs for Lockheed Martin, at a presentation said that the SR72 could not have been made without digital transformation. This seems to indicate that a hypersonic vehicle has been built.
