[Townhall] No matter what your political leanings are, you should be highly concerned about how the FBI misled General Michael Flynn resulting in his taking a plea agreement with Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller for lying to the FBI. Thus, the general agreed to the fact that he committed a felony. All that is highly suspect, and every American citizen should be scared if the judge does not throw this out.
After General Flynn’s attorneys claimed that top-tier FBI personnel intentionally misled him about having legal representation present and the nature of this meeting with their personnel, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan demanded documents from Mueller’s team regarding the charges against Flynn. These are the same documents that both the FBI and Justice Department have stonewalled Congress about for over a year. Unfortunately, Mueller was given the opportunity to file the documents under seal with the Judge which would hide the truth about the behavior of our government employees in the process. Judge Sullivan should release these documents as we the people of this country deserve to know what was done.
Further damning the behavior of the FBI, fired former FBI Director James Comey was shown bragging during an interview about the way the Flynn meeting was set up without going through the White House counsel’s office as is the standard procedure. Comey stated this was "something I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more ... organized administration." The fact that someone in Comey’s position tried to "get away with" circumventing normal procedure to interview the incoming National Security Advisor should scare any U.S. citizen.
The principle argument that is made about General Flynn’s lying is that he was a long-time General and Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; thus, he should know not to lie to the FBI. But let us look at the actual situation at hand. And remember it was stated by FBI agents that they believe Flynn did not lie to them. This has since been twisted around.
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#3
we don't have all the facts here but from what we have it seems that Gen Flynn, who was getting reimbursed by Turkey for 'strategic communications advice' as late as the fall of 2016 (which was not illegal but ethically stinks) didn't note this in his interview and, in fact, said he wasn't.
He obviously had a lot on his mind during the FBI interview and he could have defended himself by saying 'I just forgot about it' but he now admits he lied.
Obviously, lying to the FBI was wrong but it wasn't lying to cover up a crime. The FBI is not guilty here of anything illegal either except wasting huge amounts of resources investigating a minor glitch in Flynn's testimony.
Crap all around.
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/30/2018 8:57 Comments ||
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#4
Taxpayer-funded crap.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/30/2018 11:05 Comments ||
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[Washington Examiner] The DoubleTree Portland has dismissed a manager and security guard for evicting a black guest who was talking on his phone in the hotel's lobby.
Jermaine Massey, 34, was booted from the Hilton-owned property last week after he refused to tell security guard Earl Meyers, 71, his room number, according to local media reports.
Massey, a Washington state resident, had returned from a concert and was in the lobby calling his mother when the security guard asked him whether he was a guest. Massey held up his key card but refused to reveal which room he was staying in, OregonLive reported.
After the guard consulted the manager, the police were called to escort Massey to his room to collect his belongings and then out of the hotel, threatening to charge him with trespassing if he did not comply. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that Massey called Meyers "racist" repeatedly.
Massey later shared on social media a video of the incident that he captured on his cellphone.
The manager and security guard were placed on leave Friday pending an external investigation before DoubleTree Portland announced Saturday that they had been fired.
"We have terminated the employment of the two men involved in the mistreatment of Mr. Massey," the hotel tweeted. "Their actions were inconsistent with our standards & values. We reiterate our sincere apology for what he endured & will work with diversity experts to ensure this never happens again."
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#1
An obvious half-measure penalty. The hotel should be raised and the earth salted as an object lesson to hotel staff and security personnel everywhere.
Follow-up legal remedies and monetary awards should then be immediately undertaken. There could be tens of thousands of similar cases which have gone unreported.
#5
Like, it would be nice to know if he actually was a guest or just pretending. Surely they must have known that detail by the time they went to print. Wrongfully tossed out versus lurking in the lobby and sassing the security provide two different pictures of events.
#7
If he had the belongings and a room then he had the right to be in the lobby. So they arrested him despite the hotel clerk and security guard being wrong? Still sounds like something is missing from the story. Most cops would find he had a room, a right to be there, and left without arresting anyone.
[Townhall] Americans are being sold the fairy tale that the whole world has a constitutional right to come here, give birth, and get a free American passport. We’re told it’s "un-American" to dare say otherwise, but the growing phenomenon of "birth tourism" is the real affront to American values.
There are, at this moment, hundreds of companies offering rich foreigners all-inclusive birth vacations to beautiful American tourist destinations. Astonishingly, pregnant jetsetters from around the world step off planes, clear customs with their tourist visas, and are whisked from airports to specialty birth tourism hospitals that exist just for this purpose.
The hotel accommodations are luxurious, the post-partum cocktails expertly mixed, but the greatest allure is provided free of charge by the U.S. government: citizenship in the greatest country on Earth. For the price of a travel package, these wealthy foreigners get lifetime membership in one of the most exclusive clubs on the planet.
Continued on Page 47
[Victory Girls] I wrote earlier about my wish for 2019 ‐ to reconnect with what’s important in my life ‐ but then I started perusing the news and social media today, and I have figured out my wish for society writ large: how about for 2019, everyone stops being a whining bitch? How about that? Stop thinking that your personal likes and dislikes, your sensitivities, and anything that chafes your lavender-scented labia places any obligation on others to act in contravention of their own needs or desires, merely because you pitch a shrieking fit.
How about we stop having tantrums every time things don’t go our way?
How about we quit violating others’ rights in favor of our raging hormones and emotions?
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This week it is Bobby’s turn to share a book with us. Enjoy!
The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family's Quest to Bring Him Home
By Sally Mott Freeman
Simon & Schuster, 2017
If Herman Wouk were to write an historical novel about the Pacific War ‐ you know, where the protagonists happen to be in all the right places at the right times to give remarkable insight to the action ‐ it would be The Jersey Brothers.
Bill ‐ the author’s father (I am almost positive) - was in FDR’s Map Room (modelled after Churchill’s) early in the war and on the bridge of Admiral Turner’s island-hopping fleet thereafter. Benny was the chief gunnery officer on the Enterprise, from before Pearl Harbor to mid-war. Barton ‐ the baby of the three brothers ‐ was sent to a safe place by his older brothers "pulling stings" in the Navy. Unfortunately, that safe place was Manila as a supply officer. Even more unfortunately, he was injured in the December 8 bombing and was in the hospital when the Japanese arrived. More unfortunately than that, Mac Arthur evacuated the Army part of the hospital at the last moment but overlooked the Navy patients. Most unfortunately of all, Mac Arthur’s "yes men" stalled the liberation of Barton’s camp in a daring raid in 1944 until after the POWs had been moved.
The central theme is Barton's story, with points of view including the three brothers and their mother ‐ a New Jersey Republican (1940s, remember?) - who is not fond of FDR and blames the Navy for the capture and detention of her son. Poignant, sometimes spiteful letters from mother to the Navy, FDR, and senators (etc.) are quoted verbatim by the author, her granddaughter.
Lots of input from unpublished manuscripts and letters to and from the mother and Barton's fellow POWs, not to mention first-person accounts from her father and uncle, although the author seldom refers to them so personally. Incidentally, Bill also played a part in Truman’s decision to use the Bomb, and also suggested to JFK the use of the naval block... sorry, "naval quarantine" in 1962. All the right places at the right times.
Plenty of brutality, with a smattering of humanity, tragedy, arrogance, and stupidity, and a lot of bravery and courage in the face of unspeakable horror and long odds. Yet I found myself with tears in my eyes at the end. You shan’t be sorry.
BLUF: Ain’t gonna happen until the jihadis are defeated and the rule of law established across the land. So stop playing at pointless negotiations.
[KhaamaPress] False hopes and beautiful but artificial news cannot win the war. War can only be won by facing the reality and embracing the unavoidable risks. Afghanistan with the current complexity of the war, United States impatience to remain in the country, competing interests of the major powers and its neighbors, lack of balance of power, and its important but fragile geo-strategic location, is faced with dangerous situation ever.
Afghan government and some idealist have been beating the drums of harbinger of peace, citing the three days ceasefire in June, 2018, and the current peace efforts. But, the fact is that peace still seems too distant. On one hand Taliban ...Arabic for students... don’t have a united front, rather they are divided into various factions while on the other hand both Afghan government and International Community has been raising concerns about the presence of around 20 different terrorist groups in the country. As of now there has been conversation about starting peace negotiations with one bad boy group, i.e. the Taliban. Thus, Peace talks are not likely to yield long term result or an end to the ongoing insurgency. Terrorist groups like ISIS, hardcore Taliban, and other terrorist groups present in the country will continue fighting.
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[American Thinker] Despite the current caravan migrant privations in Tijuana, most notably the business of having to wait one's turn to file for asylum for free at the border, obviously, there has been enough in it for the caravan migrants to entice formation of a new caravan, this one bigger and probably better organized than the last one.
Here's the news:
Another migrant caravan ‐ with estimates of as many as 15,000 participants ‐ is preparing to leave Honduras on January 15, according to migrant rights advocates and Spanish-language media.
"They say they are even bigger and stronger than the last caravan," said Irma Garrido, a member of the migrant advocacy group Reactiva Tijuana Foundation.
There's also this:
Using social media sites such as WhatsApp and Facebook, people are spreading the word about another, bigger caravan planning to leave Honduras on Jan. 15, larger than the October caravan that stalled out in Tijuana in the hopes of reaching the U.S.
Karen Valladares, who works at the Foro Nacional para las Migraciones en Honduras (the National Forum for Migration in Honduras), said the caravan forming in Honduras has even more support and interest than the caravan that recently arrived in Tijuana because people saw how traveling together improves chances of survival and safety.
Word is getting out that all you have to do is come here, and either await your zero-cost asylum application as the Mexicans house, feed, and medically treat you or else cross over illegally, sometimes with the aid of a Democratic congressperson, for instant customer service, turning yourself in to the Border Patrol, and then soon become free to walk around the country. No need to worry about that criminal record or those diseases you may be spreading to citizens; U.S. law says that what you want is paramount and your interests come above the interests of the citizens. And if you manage to insult your Mexican hosts and make them angry, heck, you're in the States, dining in a chic Dallas restaurant, ahead of the others, scot-free.
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[Foreign Policy] n a world with fewer rules, the only truly effective one is knowing what you can get away with. The answer today, it turns out, is: quite a lot.
As the era of largely uncontested U.S. primacy fades, the international order has been thrown into turmoil. More leaders are tempted more often to test limits, jostle for power, and seek to bolster their influence‐or diminish that of their rivals‐by meddling in foreign conflicts. Multilateralism and its constraints are under siege, challenged by more transactional, zero-sum politics.Multilateralism and its constraints are under siege, challenged by more transactional, zero-sum politics. Instruments of collective action, such as the United Nations Security Council, are paralyzed; those of collective accountability, including the International Criminal Court, are ignored and disparaged.
Nostalgia can be deceptive. Too fond a portrayal of the era of Western hegemony would be misleading. Iraq’s chemical weapons use against Iran in the 1980s; the 1990s bloodletting in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia; the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; Sri Lanka’s brutal 2009 campaign against the Tamils; and the collapse of Libya and South Sudan: all these happened at a time of‐in some cases because of‐U.S. dominance and a reasonably coherent West. A liberal and nominally rules-based order hardly stopped those setting the rules from discarding them when they saw fit. The erosion of Western influence, in short, looks different from Moscow, Beijing, and the developing world than it does from Brussels, London, or Washington.
Still, for better and for worse, U.S. power and alliances have for years shaped international affairs, set limits, and structured regional orders. As the West’s influence declines, accelerated by U.S. President Donald Trump’s contempt for traditional allies and Europe’s struggles with Brexit and nativism, leaders across the world are probing and prodding to see how far they can go.
In their domestic policies, many of those leaders embrace a noxious brew of nationalism and authoritarianism. The mix varies from place to place but typically entails rejection of international institutions and rules. There is little new in the critique of an unjust global order. But if once that critique tended to be rooted in international solidarity, today it stems chiefly from an inward-looking populism that celebrates narrow social and political identity, vilifies minorities and migrants, assails the rule of law and independence of the press, and elevates national sovereignty above all else.
Trump may be the most visible of the genre, but he is far from the most extreme. The wind is in the sails of strongmen worldwide. They realize, at times perhaps to their surprise, that constraints are crumbling, and the behavior that results often fuels violence or crises.The wind is in the sails of strongmen worldwide. They realize, at times perhaps to their surprise, that constraints are crumbling, and the behavior that results often fuels violence or crises. Myanmar’s mass expulsion of 700,000 Rohingya, the Syrian regime’s brutal suppression of a popular uprising, the Cameroonian government’s apparent determination to crush an Anglophone insurgency rather than tackle the grievances fueling it, the Venezuelan government’s economic warfare against its own people, and the silencing of dissent in Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere are but a few examples. All are motivated in part by what leaders perceive as a yellow light where they used to see solid red.
Continued on Page 47
#3
" the Cameroonian government’s apparent determination to crush an Anglophone insurgency rather than tackle the grievances fueling it"
The unelected US government’s apparent determination to crush a working class insurgency rather than tackle the grievances fueling it.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
12/30/2018 13:47 Comments ||
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#4
#3 - WTF?
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/30/2018 16:58 Comments ||
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#5
Unenthused by linguistic disunion,
Revolting Black Irishman Clooney:
"Yon swamp is so deep
That its crocodiles weep
At the state of John Q. Cameroonian!"
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.
[Townhall] No matter what your political leanings are, you should be highly concerned about how the FBI misled General Michael Flynn resulting in his taking a plea agreement with Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller for lying to the FBI. Thus, the general agreed to the fact that he committed a felony. All that is highly suspect, and every American citizen should be scared if the judge does not throw this out.
[Victory Girls] I wrote earlier about my wish for 2019 ‐ to reconnect with what’s important in my life ‐ but then I started perusing the news and social media today, and I have figured out my wish for society writ large: how about for 2019, everyone stops being a whining bitch? How about that? Stop thinking that your personal likes and dislikes, your sensitivities, and anything that chafes your lavender-scented labia places any obligation on others to act in contravention of their own needs or desires, merely because you pitch a shrieking fit.
[American Thinker] Despite the current caravan migrant privations in Tijuana, most notably the business of having to wait one's turn to file for asylum for free at the border, obviously, there has been enough in it for the caravan migrants to entice formation of a new caravan, this one bigger and probably better organized than the last one.
