[Townhall] Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel in May 2017 in reaction to a media still gripped by near hysteria over the inexplicable defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
For nearly a year before Mueller's appointment, leaks had spread about collusion between Russia and the Donald Trump campaign that supposedly cost Clinton a sure victory.
Most of these collusion stories, as we now know, originated with Christopher Steele and his now-discredited anti-Trump opposition file.
After almost a year, Mueller has offered no evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians. Aside from former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a few minor and transitory campaign officials have been indicted or have pleaded guilty to a variety of transgressions other than collusion.
Ironically, the United States has often interfered in foreign elections to massage the result. Recently, Bill Clinton joked about his own efforts as president to collude in the 1996 Israeli election to ensure the defeat of Benjamin Netanyahu. "I tried to do it in a way that didn't overtly involve me," Clinton said.
The Obama administration did the same in 2015, when it used State Department funds to support an anti-Netanyahu political action group.
Since Mueller's investigation began, a number of top FBI and Department of Justice officials have either retired, or were reassigned or fired.
With the exception of former FBI Director James Comey, all left their jobs due to investigations of improper conduct that took place during the 2016 election cycle. Most were under a cloud of suspicion for lying, having conflicts of interest or misleading investigators.
[American Thinker] If there was any doubt that Robert Mueller's Ahab-like goal is the unseating of President Trump at all costs and by any means, it was erased by the thuggish FBI raid he orchestrated on the home and office of Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen.
Can't find any collusion between Trump and Russia? Hey, why not look for collusion between Cohen and professional whore and porn star Stormy Daniels? Was she paid to go away with campaign funds? Even so, that's an FEC violation punishable by a fine and something that does not require a SWAT team.
It certainly does not compare with money funneled by Team Hillary and the DNC though a law firm to Fusion GPS and British foreign agent Christopher Steele to put together a fake dossier on Trump using Russian sources. But where were the raids on the offices of the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and Fusion GPS?
This is the FBI of Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok, whose mission was to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House. They never raided the home and office of Cheryl Mills, did they? They never raided Hillary's house or seized the acid-washed server, did they? But Michael Cohen is a threat to our democracy warranting brute force? Why wasn't Michel Cohen offered the immunity deal given to Cheryl Mills and other Clinton cronies?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/12/2018 11:38 Comments ||
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#3
Why wasn't Michel Cohen offered the immunity deal given to Cheryl Mills and other Clinton cronies?
Cheryl Mills was also named the personal attorney for Hillary Clinton and then attorney-clint privilege was claimed to hide behind. It is no surprise Donald Trump is thoroughly pissed.
[PJ] In a startling revelation, it's just been discovered that Facebook still employs one of the two researchers responsible for the harvesting of data from tens of millions of users and selling it to Cambridge Analytica, according to reports. The researcher, Joseph Chancellor, is now working at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., as an in-house psychologist.
Prior to his Facebook employment, Chancellor was a co-director of Global Science Research (GSR) with Aleksandr Kogan. GSR is the same company that created a personality app that was purported to be academic research, but in fact, was designed to elicit personal information that was then shared with Cambridge Analytica. He began working at Facebook in late 2015, shortly after leaving GSR. By the time he left GSR, the company had acquired personal data on millions of Facebook users.
According to The Guardian, "Chancellor is working as a researcher at Facebook’s headquarters in California, where psychologists frequently conduct research and experiments using the company’s vast trove of data on more than 2 billion users."
"It is not known how much Chancellor knew of the operation to harvest the data of more than 50 million Facebook users and pass their information on to the company that went on to run data analytics for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign," The Guardian reported.
Facebook recently announced it had suspended both Kogan and Cambridge Analytica from using the platform, pending an investigation, but made no mention of Chancellor.
[Telegraph] Boris Johnson has said the the Kremlin "must give answers" after an international watchdog confirmed that Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a "high purity" strain of Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said that it had been able to "confirm" the findings of British scientists about the nerve agent.
It represents a significant boost to Theresa May, who has said that Russia was directly responsible for the attack. Mr Johnson said that only Russia has the "means, motive and record" to have carried out the attack.
He said: "We will now work tirelessly with our partners to help stamp out the grotesque use of weapons is this kind. The Kremlin must give answers. We must, as a world community, stand up for the rules based order which keeps us all safe. The use of weapons of this kind can never be justified, and must be ended."
The OPCW conducted tests on blood samples from the Skripals and also an analysis on samples of the agent found in Salisbury.
The team also took samples from Detective Sergeant Nicholas Bailey, who was poisoned after coming into contact with the agent while assisting the Skripals.
#2
"must give answers", huh? When Boris Johnson compared the Soccer/Football World Cup in Russia to Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics (where some UK athletes gave the famous salute, if I recall correctly), that cemented the fact that he is a clown and a puke that needs to go away from the [international] stage.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/12/2018 17:21 Comments ||
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#6
They are alive because they got to a hospital that could put them in a machine that would do their breathing for them...for the few weeks it takes to clear this stuff out of nerve synapses.
I am not familiar with this agent, but my understanding from reading interviews with people who are is that unlike sarin and VX that are easily absorbed and quickly build up a high-enough concentration, this stuff is a solid that is more slowly absorbed but also hard to excrete; so it also eventually gets to a high-enough concentration to stop up the works. That is why it has little military utility and most people have never heard of it.
That difference in the timeline of symptoms gave Skripals the chance to get to a hospital and survive, whereas the Nork's brother hit with VX did not have enough time, so he died.
The fact that this was "high-purity" shows that it was produced by a sophisticated agency. The fact that they are not dead is because that sophisticated agency did not really intend to kill them. There are hundreds of better ways to really get people dead if that was what they wanted to accomplish.
[E21] President Trump’s new executive order aims to reduce poverty by encouraging able-bodied adult welfare recipients to move into the labor force. A similar initiative in the United Kingdom over the past five years has been successful in raising labor force participation.
The new executive order, signed on April 10, directs federal agencies to review and adjust their public assistance programs. The Trump administration wants the federal agencies to reduce the waivers, exemptions, and exceptions for public assistance programs as well as encourage work requirements for these programs. Additionally, the executive order aims to promote flexibility for state and local governments to meet the needs of their residents.
Previously, Seema Verma, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, had approved waivers permitting three states ‐ Arkansas, Kentucky, and Indiana‐to put in place work requirements for Medicaid, and more states have expressed interest. However, President Trump’s executive order is the first of its kind to encourage nationwide change.
During the recession, the labor force participation rate decreased while the unemployment rate skyrocketed. But nine years after recovery from the recession, the United States has seen minimal increases in the labor force participation rate despite the unemployment rate remaining steady at 4.1 percent in March and 6.3 million job vacancies reported at the end of January.
Unfortunately, the entitlement system does not support upward mobility of enrollees by assisting them and encouraging them to find work. The new executive order would make federal agencies more accountable for their ability to move people into the workforce. This, along with the addition of work requirements, should lead to fewer Americans being reliant on government support and greater participation in the labor force.
Between 2009 and 2016, the latest year comparable data are available from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, both the labor participation rates for prime-age men and women in the United States have declined by over one percentage point. In comparison, the labor force participation rate in the UK for men has increased by almost one percentage point and for women by almost two percentage points.
[Freebeacon] A new website aims to add "Steyerville" to the political lexicon as a term for once thriving communities that had their livelihoods stripped away thanks to efforts of environmentalist groups backed by liberal billionaire Tom Steyer.
The website, Steyerville.com, was launched on Thursday by Power the Future, a nonprofit dedicated to giving a voice to men and women working in the energy industry who it says are often drowned out by loud activist voices backed by Steyer's billions.
It labels places such as Boone County in West Virginia, where unemployment has doubled and 10 percent of the population moved away in just six years, as the home of Steyervilles.
The story laid out by the group is that Boone County was thriving because of the coal industry, which in 2010 employed 3,894 of its residents. Then came the Sierra Club, an environmentalist group backed by Steyer's millions, which targeted the county's coalmines with environmental lawsuits and pushed them toward bankruptcy.
[The Federalist] "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..." ‐ The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
Divorce is hard, but it’s easier than cutting the brake lines on your wife’s car. It is long past time for an amicable divorce of the United States of America. There is simply no common ground with the Left anymore. We are now the couple screaming at each other all night, every night as the kids hide in their room.
We cannot come together, but we do not have to live like this. The history of the world is nations breaking up and redrawing their borders. If we want to avoid this political divide turning into a deadly one, we should do likewise.
Stop clinging to the past and acknowledge where we are as a country, not where you want us to be, not where things were when your grandpa was storming the beaches of Normandy. Where we truly are.
We are a nation hopelessly divided. We are more divided now than we have ever been in our history. And before you start screaming at me about the Civil War, keep in mind that bloody conflict was fought over one major issue. In those days, take ten families from New York and ten families from Alabama, put them all in a room, and you’d find they mostly had the same values (and bad accents).
Now, fast-forward to today and do that same thing. Those families have virtually nothing in common. We as a nation have polarized and separated from each other.
Anyone who thinks this is a radical idea has an extremely narrow view of history. If you don’t believe me, go try to book a plane ticket to Czechoslovakia, or look at a map of Europe from the year 1600, then look at one today. See any differences? Borders move. Countries split and change hands. They do this for a myriad of reasons. Ours would be a major cultural shift toward the left and half the country refusing to go along with tyranny.
#3
Generally speaking, the blue states are on the east and west coasts. So, if we divided the country as this article suggests, the red states would be deprived of deep water ports. This is not acceptable. OTOH, if they want a war we have a pretty good idea who wins and who loses. The writer's claim that divorce is easier than cutting the brake lines on your wife's car is not necessarily true and she needs to know that. With the lawyers and the judges on her side, divorce is not necessarily the best option. I don't usually consider myself a war monger but I am not willing to let them have California.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/12/2018 11:52 Comments ||
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#4
Countries split and change hands. They do this for a myriad of reasons. And nearly always accompanied by mass murder and destruction.
#6
And then Eastern Washington state, California, upstate New York, and so forth and so on all seceded from the secessionists... Followed by Austin, TX going Blue and seceding... Madness.
#11
Good luck with the area around northern Idaho being part of Blue, or New Mexico being part of Red.
We're divided because we've been deliberately divided by the media and the long march through the schools over the past several decades.
Part of the solution would be to get ideology out of the schools and get back to teaching the basics, including civics and the history of western civilization. I have no idea how to accomplish that, given the current state of education, except to start over. Alternatively, get the Federal government, the teacher's union, and the textbook monopoly out of education and let the states work things out.
To raise awareness enough to accomplish that politically, something has to be done about more balance in the MSM. You'll never get an individual outlet to be balanced. That's too much to expect and has not been the case historically. The MSM was simply turned over to the left without any resistance.
What's needed is a balanced industry. The right needs to buy or start new news and media organizations which deliberately exclude leftists.
#13
I don't have any problem with us in Texas seceding. We already have one of the top 10 economies in the world. We are outta here, screw it all.
My family has been here since 1812 with original Travis Colony. Ive got papers of being a new Texan. My Mom is a member of DAR; Daughter of the American Republic, And Daughter of the Daughter of the Texas Republic.
[Daily Caller] Conservative commentator Ann Coulter had a take on whether special counsel Robert Mueller should be fired or not‐and every Trump supporter should read it.
Coulter was also a fan of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson’s take on possible military intervention in Syria.
Last night, The Daily Caller co-founder, "Overthrowing Assad’s regime in Syria would cause chaos."
"Many thousands would die and, in fact, we might likely see the genocide of one of the last remaining Christian communities in the Middle East. And we ought to care about that. Some of the dead, of course, would be American serviceman. A new war would cost us tens of billions of dollars."
#4
AH, yes. Doesn't this man have a deadline of any sort at all? And how long do we have to pay him and his crew to produce nothing?
Posted by: Tom ||
04/12/2018 11:54 Comments ||
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#5
Trump should simply pardon anyone he indicts. When they scream about it, simply respond, "Democrats can have their political witch hunter, and I'll rescue the accused witches until they tire of this game."
[Townhall] On Wednesday, Defense Secretary James Mattis confirmed to reporters that the United States and its allies are "still assessing the intelligence" about the alleged chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians this weekend.
In response to a question about whether U.S. military forces are "ready right now to conduct a retaliatory strike if ordered," Mattis added: "We stand ready to provide military options if they are appropriate as the President determines."
Mattis’s comments followed President Trump’s tweet this morning promising that missiles "will be coming" to Syria soon:
In spite of Trump’s above certainty about Assad’s culpability in the chemical attack, on Monday, the president said that American intelligence had not been able to confirm who had carried out the attack. He also expressed frustration that the area was not immediately made open to international investigators [emphasis mine]:
[YouTube] Former UK ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford tells a BBC journalist and Western audiences to use their brains and think critically before falling into the propaganda of the Islamist jihadists. This piece was posted as a comment by our own 'Vast Right Wing Conspiracy' late yesterday.
#1
The photos taken of garden hose wash downs and a child being given an asthma inhaler...might lead one to believe additional investigation should be conducted.
[Spectator] Special Report: Defending Borders Except Our Own
The same pols who say that America can’t afford Trump’s proposed wall have spent lavishly on the protection of borders outside the country. Every year they give billions of dollars to governments across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. That American largesse, combined with the astronomical costs of U.S. military protection, allow those countries to seal off their borders. Meanwhile, America’s southern border remains largely unprotected and pols pretend they lack the funds to address the crisis. As President Trump put it in his inaugural address, “We’ve defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own.”
#1
Congress is cutting medicaire, money you invested by withholdings through the years, by 30%, and a lot of retirees are talkin bout it. No worries, Congress just gave themselves a raise, paid for by the deplorable tax paying suckers, and their children and their grand children.
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.
