Posts Tagged ‘Crossfire Hurricane’
Friday, May 19th, 2023
The Russian Collusion Hoax is now officially bunk, Budweiser’s self-inflicted freefall continues, blue city commercial real estate bites the moose, and a whole lot of shocked face to go around. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
John Durham finally delivers his report sinking the Russian collusion hoax.
The Department of Justice and the FBI did not have “any actual evidence of collusion” between Russian officials and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and began their Crossfire Hurricane probe of Trump’s campaign based on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” according to a report released on Monday by special prosecutor John Durham.
Durham scolded federal law enforcement and counter-intelligence officials for failing to “uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law” as part of their investigation.
He wrote that at least one FBI agent criminally fabricated language in an email that was used to obtain a FISA surveillance order. And he accused FBI leaders of displaying a “serious lack of analytical rigor” and relying significantly on “investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents,” referring to staffers and allies of Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic presidential nominee, whose campaign funded the Steele dossier through its law firm Perkins Coie.
Compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, the dossier is an unverified collection of opposition research accusing then-candidate Trump and his campaign aides of collaborating with Kremlin officials. The FBI used the dossier to secure a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page, though its central claims were subsequently disproven by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
The report notes that the FBI was quick to investigate Trump, while it proceeded cautiously with allegations against Clinton.
The 316-page report sent to Congress was nearly four years in the making. It concluded that neither federal law enforcement nor intelligence officials “appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” which the FBI “swiftly opened.”
The report accuses federal officials of acting “without appropriate objectivity or restraint.” Peter Strzok, then the FBI’s deputy assistant director for counterintelligence, opened the investigation “immediately” at the direction of Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director. “Strzok, at a minimum, had pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump,” the report states.
It states that former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith “committed a criminal offense by fabricating language in an email that was material to the FBI obtaining a FISA surveillance order.”
Durham wrote that FBI officials continued to seek FISA surveillance while acknowledging that “they did not genuinely believe there was probable cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of foreign power, or knowingly helping another person in such activities. And certain personnel disregarded significant exculpatory information that should have prompted investigative restraint and re-examination.”
“Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote.
Read the full Durham Report here.
So how many hacks are going to give back their Pulitzer Prizes?
Speaking of which:
“Media Admits They Lied About That Russia Collusion Thing But Are Totally Telling The Truth About Everything Else.”
“Gov. Newsom Announces California Budget Deficit Bigger than Projected.” Legal Insurrection has already used the “unexpectedly” here, so I’ll just note that Newsom is the far lefty a whole lot of Democratic Party power players want to substitute for Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024.
“Soros-Backed Group Pushes Chicago Mayor To Slash Funding for ‘Racist’ Police Force.” Of course they do. Chicago Democrats are going to get what they voted for, gooder and harder. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
“NIH Renews Funds for ‘Bat Coronavirus’ Research despite Energy Department, FBI’s Lab-Leak Conclusion.” That’s like catching Mrs. O’Leary’s cow after she’s burned down Chicago, strapping lit fireworks to her body and letting her loose in the dynamite factory.
“The Censorship-Industrial Complex: Top 50 Organizations To Know.”
“Man Who Assaulted Congressional Staffers Had Previously Been Let off by Soros-Funded Prosecutor.” There’s not enough shocked face in the world…
Seattle-area official defends nominating sex offender to committee that includes one of his victims. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
“New York, San Francisco Office Buildings Are Absolute Ghost Towns.”
“Things are so bad, in fact, that 26 Empire State Buildings could fit into New York City’s empty office space, as occupancy in the city is hovering around 50% of prepandemic levels.”
“In San Francisco, the downtown area is experiencing its worst office vacancy crisis on record – with 31% of space available for lease or sublease, the SF Chronicle reports.”
“DeSantis Defunds ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ Bureaucracies in Florida Public Universities.” Trump did a lot of things right as President, but he never fought social justice warrior madness with the same ferocity that DeSantis has in Florida.
Speaking of DeSantis, he’s expected to launch a 2024 Presidential campaign next week.
Also 2024 race news: Biden may not even be on the primary ballot in New Hampshire. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Bud Light finds out there’s no bottom to their tranny pander pit. “Sales volumes of Bud Light fell by 23.6 percent in the week ended on May 6, according to retail scanner numbers cited by Beer Business Daily that are based on Nielsen IQ data. That’s a drop from the 23.3 percent slide Bud Light suffered in the final week of April.”
Finnish nuclear plant coming online drops spot energy prices by 75%.
Russia’s energy revenue falls by 47%.
Child mutilation ban passes Texas House.
“24 Republican governors pledge to assist Texas in securing its border.
Republican governors released a joint statement on Tuesday pledging to assist Texas in securing its border with Mexico.
In response to Gov. Greg Abbott’s request for assistance, twenty-four Republican governors committed to helping secure the 1,254-mile-border and commended the Texas Republican for the recent actions he was forced to take due to the failures of the Biden administration’s open-border policies, according to the Washington Examiner.
“The federal government’s response handling the expiration of Title 42 has represented a complete failure of the Biden Administration,” the joint statement reads. “While the federal government has abdicated its duties, Republican governors stand ready to protect the U.S.-Mexico border and keep families safe.”
“All states have suffered from the effects of deadly illegal drugs coming across the border, and every state is a border state due to the devastating influx of drugs in our communities. Republican governors are leading the way to address the border crisis by increasing fentanyl sentencing and increasing support for law enforcement interdiction of drugs, among other measures,” they continued.
“Texas Governor Greg Abbott has exemplified leadership at a critical time, leading the way with Operation Lone Star, and deploying the Texas Tactical Border Force to prevent illegal crossings and keep the border secure. We support the efforts to secure the border led by Governor Abbott.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Abbott sent an urgent request to all of the nation’s governors asking them to band together to defeat the invasion at the US/Mexico border, something he said impacts every community in the United States.
“The flood of illegal border activity invited by the Biden Administration flows directly across the southern border into Texas communities, but this crisis does not stop in our state. Emboldened Mexican drug cartels and other transnational criminal enterprises profit off this chaos, smuggling people and dangerous drugs like fentanyl into communities nationwide,” Abbott wrote.
“In the federal government’s absence, we, as Governors, must band together to combat President Biden’s ongoing border crisis and ensure the safety and security that all Americans deserve,” he requested.
While no Democratic governors responded to the letter, twenty-four Republicans pledged to help from states which include: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
“Yes, Migrants Believe Biden Has Rolled Out A Big Welcome Mat.”
Jorge Mijares left Venezuela months ago — last November, he says. He’s been in Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, for four weeks. But he planned to cross over Thursday night, as Title 42 immigration restrictions ended.
“I have the app,” said Mijares, 54. “I’m just waiting for it to tell me when to go.”
He’s not concerned about the Biden administration’s warnings against migration. After all, he has many friends who have made it across — safely.
There’s an app that tells you how to break U.S. immigration laws. Of course there is. Silly of me to be even slightly surprised. “The street finds its own uses for things” as the now-elderly cyberpunks used to say…
Twisted Sisiter’s Dee Snider is not down with your tranny madness. You submitted this with a better “we’re not going to take it” pun.
Speaking of tranny madness: Cross-dressing serial thief Samuel Brinton arrested as a fugitive from justice.
“Toronto ‘Anti-Capitalist’ Pay-When-You-Can Cafe Shuts Down After Just One Year.”
Chutzpah: Taking a paycheck for not working for 15 years. Boss Level Chutzpah: Suing for a raise for not working.
Meet Scary Barbie, the star-shredding black hole.
“Poll: Most Democrats In Favor Of Welcoming Immigrants Into Someone Else’s Neighborhood.”
“Dad Punishes Misbehaving Son By Giving Him Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.”
Tags:2024 Presidential Race, Andrew McCabe, Biden Recession, black hole, Border Controls, Budget, Budweiser, California, Carter Page, censorship, child mutilation, Christopher Steele, Crime, Crossfire Hurricane, FBI, Finland, FISA, Florida, Gavin Newsom, George Soros, John Durham, Kevin Clinesmith, LinkSwarm, Media Watch, New York City, nuclear power, Perkins Coie LLP, Peter Strzok, Republicans, Ron DeSantis, San Francisco, Seattle, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Toronto, transexual
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, ObamaCare, Regulation, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »
Friday, September 25th, 2020
Greetings, and welcome to the first LinkSwarm of fall! Strangely enough, we’re already getting some fall in our fall in Texas, as opposed to our usual Ever So Slightly Less Hot Late Summer. This week: Still more riots, Supreme Court pick news, more ugly truths about Crossfire Hurricane, and Lebanon goes boom again. Plus a bit of news that goes to eleven.
Yet another rash of Antifa/#BlackLivesMatter riots, this one ostensibly over the return of a single non-murder charge in the Breonna Taylor killing case.
Speaking of those idiots:
“Why Amy Coney Barrett is hands-down best pick to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
Amy represents an opportunity to showcase a generationally brilliant, special intellect — who also is a mom,” says O. Carter Snead, Barrett’s longtime faculty colleague at the Notre Dame law school, where Barrett also received her law degree.
Her rare combination of hyper-intelligence and humility is a matter of bipartisan consensus. “The smartest person in the room and also the most humble” was how Snead and two other sources intimately familiar with Barrett described her, echoing each other almost verbatim.
Harvard Law School prof Noah Feldman — a liberal who testified before Congress in favor of impeaching the president — hailed her as “a truly brilliant lawyer” in a 2018 column. Feldman should know. He and Barrett were members of the same class of Supreme Court clerks in 1998.
“She was one of the two best lawyers” of the 40 clerks “and arguably the single best.” Feldman concluded: “She was legally prepared enough to go on the court 20 years ago.”
When Trump nominated Barrett to the Seventh Circuit, every single one of those 40 fellow clerks endorsed her as a “first-rate” thinker, including such vehemently anti-Trump figures as Neal Katyal, solicitor general under Team Obama. The entire Notre Dame law faculty likewise endorsed her, “and that includes people who identify as liberal,” as Snead was quick to note.
She is recognized as an expert on how judges are supposed to interpret statutes — a crucial role, as demonstrated by Justice Neil Gorsuch’s bizarre recent reading of “gender identity” into a civil rights statute enacted in the 1960s. She has also thought deeply about the relationship among the branches of government, a gnarly and seriously important area of law.
To these achievements Barrett marries a vibrant Christian faith. For the evangelicals and Catholics the president needs to turn out in November, her pro-life bona fides are on display not just in her activities and statements, but also in her own family: She is a mother of seven, including one biological child with intellectual disabilities and two adopted from Haiti.
Yes, Democrats and their media allies will attack and demonize her — viciously. But that’s no reason to nominate other candidates who have no record on life issues. As one conservative activist told me, “the left is going to burn everything down no matter whom we pick, so we might as well get the right person on the court.”
And why she’s the odds-on favorite.
Democrats worry that Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is too old and senile to handle a Supreme Court nomination fight. Of course, they put it in slightly more delicate terms:
Feinstein sometimes gets confused by reporters’ questions, or will offer different answers to the same question depending on where or when she’s asked. Her appearance is frail. And Feinstein’s genteel demeanor, which seems like it belongs to a bygone Senate era, can lead to trouble with an increasingly hard-line Democratic base uninterested in collegiality or bipartisan platitudes.
Just this week, Feinstein infuriated progressives after declaring her opposition to ending the Senate’s legislative filibuster — a top goal of party activists if Democrats win full control of the Congress and White House in November. Some on the left called on her to resign over the comments, although other Democratic moderates have expressed similar views.
It’s hard to pick which is the more interesting angle here: The hard-left planning to push for their suicidal court-packing/filibuster ending agenda, or the old guard of elderly Democrats hanging on to power ghastly Ringwraiths. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Democrats: “We have the following list of demands for this Suprem-” Republicans: “Sorry, we remember your outrageous smear job on Kavanaugh. Suck it!” Also, remember this:
There were electoral consequences, with every “incumbent Senate Democrat in battleground states who opposed the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination” losing his or her re-election bid. Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Bill Nelson of Florida were all replaced by their Republican opponents, while Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia saved his seat by backing Kavanaugh. That fall-out handed Republicans the votes they now need to push through a new nominee to the Supreme Court before Nov. 3, 2020.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Trump wants the Supreme Court at full strength to thwart any Democratic attempts to steal the election. Foresight. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“The ‘primary sub-source’ for the Steele dossier was suspected of being a possible Russian agent and a ‘threat to national security,’ according to newly declassified FBI documents.”
The goal of the Michael Flynn investigation wasn’t enhancing national security, but to get Flynn fired. “The explosive new documents support Flynn’s latest claims that Obama-era Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI officials had conspired to set him up from the beginning and that they never had any legitimate basis for investigating him.”
“Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents tasked by fired former Director James Comey to take down Donald Trump during and after the 2016 election were so concerned about the agency’s potentially illegal behavior that they purchased liability insurance to protect themselves less than two weeks before Trump was inaugurated president, previously hidden FBI text messages show.”
More on the same subject. I get the impression that there’s so much information coming out about malfeasance during Crossfire Hurricane/FISAgate that I can’t keep up with it all…
“Gov. Abbott proposes increased penalty, mandatory jail time for 6 riot-related offenses.”
It’s not just Texas: Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis just proposed similar anti-riot legislation. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
For construction workers, not just a V-shaped recovery, but a Super-V.
Hezbollah arms depot in Lebanese town of Ayn Qana blows up real good.
Follow-up: Wirecard’s business was “almost entirely fraudulent.”
Arkansas Kroger’s fires Christian employees for refusing to wear a gay rights pin.
Ratings for NBA conference finals way down.
“‘This Is Spinal Tap’ Creators Reach Settlement On Long-Running Court Battle Over Rights And Income.” Good. Studios shouldn’t screw creators out of rightfully owed money, even if it is Meathead.
Today’s market to be hit by crazy high valuations is…(spins wheel)…rare plants? Now if only it would hit science fiction first editions I would be set!
Microsoft buys Bethesda.
Boom:
Child brought down by wild pack! Oh the humanity!
Tags:2018 Election, 2020 Presidential Race, Amy Coney Barrett, Arkansas, Breonna Taylor, Christopher Steele, Crossfire Hurricane, Democrats, Dianne Feinstein, dogs, FBI, FISA, Florida, Hezbollah, Kroger's, Lebanon, Michael Flynn, Microsoft, NBA, riot, Ron DeSantis, Russia, Spinal Tap, Supreme Court, Texas, Wirecard
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Texas | No Comments »
Friday, August 21st, 2020
Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! This one may be a little short because I was busy buying books last night. This roundup is also light on Democratic National Convention news because, really, who has time to watch that garbage?
President Donald Trump is the last bulwark against the deluge:
Perhaps 70 percent of Trumpism remains a hodgepodge of Reaganism: strong defense, realist foreign policy, deregulation, smaller government, big deficits, tax cuts, energy growth, and stars-and-stripes traditionalism.
But it is the other unorthodox 30 percent that excited his base, terrified conservative apostates, and won Trump the 2016 election by energizing between 4 million and 6 million voters in swing states who had either given up on Republicans, or on elections altogether. NeverTrumpers talk of Trump’s demise and their own resurrection as Phoenixes to rebirth the GOP. They have no idea that those who despise them had ensured their Beltway-preferred candidates could rarely win; nothing has changed since.
Snip.
Most hated Trump not because he hated or ridiculed them, but because he found them useless, as we saw from the fixations of John Brennan and James Clapper to the dazed pundits of NeverTrump to the wise men of the retired military.
What created the hatred of Trump and his supporters, then, was not a rather heterodox political agenda (see below), but a style that took on the Left on its own terms, and shocked a Republican establishment—again not just by conjuring the specter of Lee Atwater, but by shrugging as irrelevant his ostracism by the traditional conservative beltway insider.
Overview of Trump economy snipped.
Joe Biden has claimed the recent historic establishment of diplomatic relationships between Israel and the United Arab Emirates was not of the Trump Administration’s own making, but the logical epilogue to years of hard Obama Administration foundational work.
Biden is right in a sense. For eight years, his Obama team sought to empower Iran—through the lifting of sanctions; through the flawed Iran Deal; through appeasement of Hezbollah, the Assads, and Hamas; through estrangement of the Arab Gulf States and Israel—all as a bizarre Persian/Shiite counterweight to the Sunni Arab world and the U.S.-Israeli special relationship.
Obama and Biden so succeeded that they drove Israel and Gulf States to seek an-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend realist partnership, whose fruition we witnessed last week.
We forget, however, when Trump entered office, that Israel was isolated. Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States were bewildered by U.S. neutrality in the Middle East. Iran was ascendant. The “jayvees” of ISIS had overrun much of Iraq with delusions of caliphate grandeur. The Ottomanizing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was supposedly our new trusted “bridge” between East and West.
Less than four years later, Iran is isolated, broke, and a veritable client of China. ISIS was bombed out of existence. Israel and much of the Arab world are more worried about Iran than they are about each other. The Palestinians are not the key to regional peace. Turkey is recognized as the rogue that it had become while relations with Greece have warmed.
The United States is energy independent of the Middle East, as is Israel—because of the expansion of fracking and horizontal drilling that a Biden-Harris Administration claims would cease upon assuming office.
Snip.
For all the hoax of “Russian collusion,” Vladimir Putin is in terrible shape and has not fooled the administration as he did with “reset” in the Obama years. In the last four years, the United States upped sanctions on Russia, crashed the world export market of natural gas and oil so dear to Moscow, beefed up NATO spending, hectored Germany about its new energy dependence on Putin, increased U.S. military capability, reached out to frontline Eastern Europe, left an asymmetrical missile deal with Russia, obliterated Russian mercenaries in Syria, sold lethal weapons to Ukraine—even as the likes of James Clapper, John Brennan, James Comey, and an array of retired generals sermonized that Trump was a Russian “asset.” Translated that means the president who contained Putin they loathed, and the Obama presidency that empowered him they idolized.
Snip.
Trump is neither a traditional conservative in the Ronald Reagan mode nor a centrist establishmentarian Republican like John McCain or Mitt Romney. But he has done more culturally for the conservative cause than any president since Calvin Coolidge. Like him or not, he has appointed more constructionist federal judges at all levels than any prior Republican president in a single term.
He likewise has been more opposed than any prior Republican to the current culture of abortion on demand. His education secretary is trying to enforce the Bill of Rights on what have become sometimes neo-fascistic college campuses, and to discourage race-based set asides and de facto discrimination on the basis of race.
He is a defender of the police while acknowledging the need for greater oversight, and opposed both violence in the streets, and the appeasement of it by blue state governors and mayors. In some sense, there are no conservatives, either by temperament or by political ability, eager to stop the summer madness of statue toppling, arson, spiraling crime, shakedowns, cancel culture and the vows of Antifa and BLM that all this is the beginning of a complete rewriting of American history and a radical recalibration of our shared futures.
Between the abyss and what goes on in Portland and the Magnificent Mile, there is for the moment nothing else but Trump standing in the breach.
No president in the history of the Republic has ever been targeted for removal by the opposition party, the permanent bureaucracy, and members of his own party, and in such an illegal and unethical manner.
There was the first impeachment effort, the Beltway punditry in early 2017 calling for his removal by coup if necessary, the voting machine suits, the Clinton-Obama-Steele subversion of the Trump campaign and transition, the Hollywood assassination chic, the effort to take out former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, the farce of the 25th Amendment that included the bathos of high federal officials contemplating wearing wires in private conservations with the president to the psychodrama of Professor Bandy Lee testifying before Congress about Trump’s mental state, the silly Emolument Clause gambit (Trump has lost over $1 billion while in office and taking no salary), the subversion of the FISA courts, the Russian hoax, Robert Mueller’s two-year long and $35 million witch hunt, the fabricated Steele dossier implanted in the bowels of the Obama government and media, the one-phone-call impeachment circus, the revolt of the retired generals, and what has rightly lately been called “coup porn,” the hysteria over Ukraine and the caricaturing of Trump in 2020 as Typhoid Mary, Herbert Hoover, and Bull Connor as the Left weaponized the contagion, quarantine, and rioting.
The Left, the media, and the NeverTrump Right rarely now any more argue all of the above was warranted or based on verifiable wrongdoing, but see the mish-mash instead as a righteous “any means necessary” tactic to achieve the noble end of destroying a president that they detest.
That Trump is still standing is an unrecognized tribute to his resilience, stamina, and willpower to fight it out to the bitter end.
His critics say 2020 is not 2016. This time the polls are right on, not rigged by the sort who trafficked in absurd Russian hoaxes or were mesmerized by Michael Avanetti. The silent Trump voters no longer exist, they add. The suburban mom, we are told, fears Trump’s temper more than Antifa. The fence-sitter is bothered more by tweeting than Biden’s ever-longer moments of confused silence. And on and on.
Perhaps.
But Americans at some point empathize with an underdog fighter on behalf of what they fear may be a fading America, even someone they are not always fond of, but who does not give up when bullied and subjected to a level of unwarranted abuse that they themselves know they could never endure. The Left never wished to beat Trump at the polls (indeed they feared such an ordeal); they instead wanted to destroy his person, his family, and everyone who followed him.
That Trump withstood such illegal, unconstitutional, and unethical venom also says something about those who dished it out—and, in the end, did so viciously and yet so impotently.
“I think the Democrats want Trump to win“:
One of the more perplexing things was the DNC giving a speaking slot to former Ohio governor and noted mailman’s son John Kasich. Kasich brings slightly less excitement than dryer lint to any gathering he graces but what was most amusing was that during the somnambulant lead-up to the DNC, the Democrats were acting like Kasich was a real big get for them.
He’s a milquetoast squish Republican whom no Republicans like anymore, so he tucked tail and went begging for attention crumbs from the Democrats, which is the way of the spineless squishes. After backstabbing his own party to score points with the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the media, Kasich then — as Matt details at Townhall — crapped all over his hosts by disparaging Bartender of the Year Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Speaking of the Russian collusion hoax, Kevin Clinesmith, the now Ex-FBI lawyer near the center of Crossfire Hurricane, just pled guilty, “admitting that he altered an email that he used to apply for a FISA warrant against former Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page…The guilty plea marks the first conviction in the probe of the Russia investigation led by U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham.”
A bit more Clinesmith background:
Of all of the Obama administration loyalists who contributed to the Russia collusion hoax, Clinesmith is the one most obviously guilty of a felony: he altered an email he received from the CIA to say that Carter Page was NOT a CIA source, when in fact the email said Page WAS a CIA source, and submitted that fake document to the federal court in order to obtain a FISA warrant. That is worth five years in prison and, of course, the end of his legal career. Clinesmith’s guilty plea is significant, in part, because he may be willing to implicate others who are higher in the DOJ chain of command.
Soon:
Ninth Circuit Court rules that magazine limit bans are an unconstitutional infringement of the Second Amendment. “It should be noted that this will likely go to a full hearing of the 9th Circuit, but it also should be noted that the court is now majority Republican-appointed. If a full hearing brings the same result, then this all but forces Chief Justice John Roberts to stop being a coward and to take this up.” Flipping the Ninth is a huge achievement for the Trump Administration.
The Supreme Court declines to stop construction of the border wall.
“The Hint is ‘GET _ _ _ _ GO _ _ _ _ _.’ “Nike Suffers $790 Million Loss, CEO Confirms Layoffs.”
Goodyear goes full Social Justice Warrior, allows #BlackLivesMatter, bans Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter. Now swears it was all a mistake.
Democrats remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. How long until they cut the “flag,” “republic,” “one nation,” and “liberty” parts out as well and just pledge directly to Social Justice? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Democratic big money donor Ed Buck hit with four more felony charges.
Wait, the government can secretly plant cameras on your property as long as they’re outside?
Scott “I ordered my cops to let Parkland kids die” Israel defeated in his attempt to win his old job back.
Microsoft put off a Day Zero fix for two years.
A thread on how lack of concrete engineering know-how in the third world has led to numerous deaths. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Heh:
True dat:
Boom:
“Democratic Convention Viewer Wishing They Would Just Get To The Part About All The Free Stuff”
“Brilliant Trump Puts Himself On All Postage Stamps, Forcing Democrats To Push For Abolishing USPS.”
Presumably an Acme piano:
Repeat: “DNC Crowd Erupts As Kermit Gosnell Gives Surprise Speech From Prison.”
“Might I suggest the Faceripper 9000?”
“I am Mark Zuckerberg. I am human just like you.” (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Smart dog:
Tags:2020 Presidential Race, 9th Circuit Court, antifa, Babylon Bee, Border Controls, border fence, Crime, Crossfire Hurricane, data security, Democratic National Convention, Democrats, Donald Trump, Ed Buck, Foreign Policy, Goodyear, Guns, Iran, Israel, Joe Biden, John Durham, John Kasich, Kermit Gosnell, Kevin Clinesmith, LinkSwarm, Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft, Nike, Republicans, Scott Israel, Second Amendment, Supreme Court, USPS, Victor Davis Hanson
Posted in Border Control, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Republicans, Supreme Court | 1 Comment »
Friday, July 31st, 2020
Idiot rioters and their identifying tattoos, more elected Democrats behaving badly, and a higher than usual helping of cute animals. Enjoy your Friday LinkSwarm!
Borepatch points out that U.S. Wuhan coronavirus deaths hit post-March lows. Also, all U.S. deaths are now far below the norms.
This was not just a bad flu. The data are crystal clear on that.
However, the data did not justify shutting down the economy. The data did not justify preventing you from saying goodbye to Grandma on her deathbed. The data did not justify prohibiting public gatherings at funerals. The data did not justify shutting down Sunday church. The data did not justify shutting down the schools. The data don’t justify mandatory mask wearing. The data don’t justify the hype.
Did Sweden’s herd immunity gambit work?
Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and onetime Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain dies of Wuhan coronavirus.
DC Circuit court decides to have an en banc hearing to consider whether it wants to continue screwing General Flynn.
George Soros-backed St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner, who charged Mark and Patricia McCloskey with felonies for using guns to protect their homes, illegally took several trips took several trips paid for by activist groups that she failed to disclose. Fair and Just Prosecution is the name of the activist group in question.
Tennessee Democratic state senator Katrina Robinson was charged with swindling $600,000 in federal funds to pay for her wedding and a lavish lifestyle.
Why did Breonna Taylor die? Partially because of a police raid gone wrong, and partially because she was a drug-dealer’s ex-girlfriend:
“Say Her Name” is one of the slogans that activists have connected to this Louisville shooting, but if we want to understand why police shot Breonna Taylor, there is another name that needs to be said — Jamarcus Glover.
Glover is a 30-year-old narcotics trafficker who police say was dealing crack cocaine and marijuana out of a “trap house” on Elliott Avenue in Louisville’s west side. According to a police affidavit, detectives had Glover and his accomplice Adrian Walker under surveillance, and had seen their car — a red Dodge Charger with Mississippi plates — “make frequent trips” from the Elliott Avenue “trap house” to an apartment 10 miles away on Springfield Drive. Detective Joshua Jaynes wrote in the affidavit that Glover was using the Springfield Drive apartment as his mailing address; Jaynes said he had witnessed Glover pick up a postal package at the apartment; and, citing his “training and experience,” Jaynes stated his belief that Glover “may be keeping narcotics and/or proceeds from the sale of narcotics” at the Springfield Drive apartment. All of this was stated in an application for a search warrant of the Springfield Drive apartment where Breonna Taylor lived.
You see, Jamarcus Glover was Breonna Taylor’s ex-boyfriend. They broke up a couple years ago, according to a lawyer for Taylor’s family who said she maintained a “passive friendship” with Glover. This “friendship” apparently included allowing Glover to receive his mail at her apartment, and, although there is no evidence that Taylor was ever involved in Glover’s drug operation, the “training and experience” of Detective Jaynes led him to believe there must be some connection. This was convincing enough for Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Mary Shaw, who approved the so-called “no-knock” warrant for Taylor’s apartment, and also approved nearly identical warrants for the four other addresses linked to Glover’s drug operation, including the Elliott Avenue “trap house.”
Louisville police served all five warrants almost simultaneously, shortly after midnight on March 13. Glover was arrested at the Elliott Avenue address, but the raid on Taylor’s apartment went horribly wrong. Police Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who was part of the five-man squad assigned to serve the warrant on the Springfield Drive address, said the squad was told in a preliminary briefing that this was a “soft target” because Taylor was believed to be alone in the apartment. Therefore, Sgt. Mattingly said, the decision was made for officers to knock on the door and announce themselves as police, despite the authorization for a “no-knock” entry. Sgt. Mattingly knocked for about a minute, he said, before the supervising lieutenant ordered them to “hit it,” using a battering ram to breach the door.
Inside the apartment, however, Breonna Taylor was not alone. She had a new boyfriend visiting her, and they were watching a movie in her bedroom. The boyfriend, Kenneth Walker (no relation to Glover’s accomplice Adrian Walker) had a legally owned pistol, and when he heard somebody pounding on the front door, he grabbed his weapon. Why? Because he was “scared to death,” believing that the person pounding on the door might be Taylor’s drug-dealer ex-boyfriend. Walker and Taylor emerged from the bedroom into the hallway of the apartment and, Walker said, Taylor called out, “Who is it?”
The next thing that happened, in Walker’s description of the incident, is the door “comes off its hinges” — the police are busting in, but he doesn’t know it’s the police. If you’re dating a drug dealer’s ex-girlfriend and somebody busts through your door at 12:30 in the morning, what do you do?
Walker fired a shot, hitting Sgt. Mattingly in the thigh, and Sgt. Mattingly immediately returned fire, getting off six shots. Two other officers also opened fire. In total, police fired at least 22 shots, none of which hit Walker, but Taylor was struck eight times and died on the scene. Although a grand jury indicted Walker on a charge of attempted murder of a police officer, that charge was dismissed in May at the request of Commonwealth’s Attorney Tom Wine.
Slogans are no replacement for facts.
“1-in-5 mail-in ballots tossed out in tight Congressional primary race.”
Trader Joe’s changes its mind, refuses to kowtow to cancel culture.
Lest people think I always follow President Trump’s policy position, here’s another one I differ on: Russia shouldn’t be let back into the G7 as long as they’re occupying parts of Ukraine.
U.S. withdrawing 12,000 troops from Germany.
Idaho becomes first state to ban men from competing in woman’s sports.
Oopsie! Alleged police car arsonist Timothy O’Donnell identified by his neck tattoo. (Hat tip: John Richardson.)
Speaking of super-genius rioters and tattoos, Edward Thomas Schinzing was arrested on federal arson charges in Portland thanks to the fact he was shirtless and had his own name tattooed across his back.
The New York Times sure loves them some UFOs.
How the press is willfully ignoring the Obamagate spying scandal:
The Washington press corps seems engaged in a collective demonstration of the legal concept of willful blindness, or deliberately ignoring the facts, following the release of yet another declassified document which directly refutes prior statements about the investigation into Russia collusion. The document shows that FBI officials used a national security briefing of then candidate Donald Trump and his top aides to gather possible evidence for Crossfire Hurricane, its code name for the Russia investigation.
It is astonishing that the media refuses to see what is one of the biggest stories in decades. The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false evidence. The media covered Obama administration officials ridiculing the suggestions of spying on the Trump campaign and of improper conduct with the Russia investigation. When Attorney General William Barr told the Senate last year that he believed spying did occur, he was lambasted in the media, including by James Comey and others involved in that investigation. The mocking “wow” response of the fired FBI director received extensive coverage.
The new document shows that, in summer 2016, FBI agent Joe Pientka briefed Trump campaign advisers Michael Flynn and Chris Christie over national security issues, standard practice ahead of the election. It had a discussion of Russian interference. But this was different. The document detailing the questions asked by Trump and his aides and their reactions was filed several days after that meeting under Crossfire Hurricane and Crossfire Razor, the FBI investigation of Flynn. The two FBI officials listed who approved the report are Kevin Clinesmith and Peter Strzok.
Clinesmith is the former FBI lawyer responsible for the FISA surveillance conducted on members of the Trump campaign. He opposed Trump and sent an email after the election declaring “viva the resistance.” He is now under review for possible criminal charges for altering a FISA court filing. The FBI used Trump adviser Carter Page as the basis for the original FISA application, due to his contacts with Russians. After that surveillance was approved, however, federal officials discredited the collusion allegations and noted that Page was a CIA asset. Clinesmith had allegedly changed the information to state that Page was not working for the CIA.
Meet the source for all the most salacious claims in the debunked Steele dossier: Russian-born habitual drunk Igor Danchenko, who used to work for the Brookings Institution.
Why no riots in Detroit? Detroit Police Chief James Craig: “We don’t retreat.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Weird or menacing? “People Are Receiving Mysterious Unsolicited Packages Of Seeds In The Mail From China.”
From the “facts pulled out of our ass” department:
Stupid questions asked: “Why aren’t you gun owners defending antifa from the government?”
Well, every single gun nut in America has spent their entire adult life being continually mocked, insulted, and belittled by the left. You’ve done nothing but paint us as the bad guys.
In Hollywood, we’re always evil, stupid, violent, malicious, redneck, racist, murderers. That’s so ingrained in the liberal religion that when “ally” Harvey Weinstein was trying to get out of being a sleazy rapist, his repentance consisted of promising to make more movies about how the NRA is bad.
In the news, everything is always our fault. If there is a mass murder, we can always count on the vultures to swoop in and blame America’s gun culture. They flog it for weeks on end, 24/7 coverage, hoping for gun control. And if the identity of the shooter doesn’t fit the narrative, it drops off the news in mere hours.
And then at the local, state, and federal level, legally speaking, the left fucks us at every opportunity. You ban everything you can get away with. You ban things that literally make no sense. You ban shit just out of spite.
When we fight back against gun control laws, you declare we are stupid because only the police should have guns (hey, aren’t those the guys you are protesting right now?)
“Stupid racist rednecks! We live in a civilized society! Don’t you realize the police will protect us?” until when your democrat cities are on fire, and you call 911 and the operator tells you sorry, the police can’t come to your house right now, please try not to get murdered… How is that strict gun control working out for you?
Then you did everything in your power to chase gun owners out of your sainted liberal strongholds. You passed laws. You banned everything we like. Forced all the shooting ranges to close. Forced most of the gun stores to close. And just generally let us know that our kind is not welcome there.
But now you’ve started some shit, YOU want US to go into democrat cities, with democrat mayors, and democrat police chiefs enforcing democrat policies which cause strife among democrats, in order to get into gun fights on your behalf?
How fucking gullible do you think we are? 😀 Like holy shit. Damn dude!
Because we all know that literally 30 seconds after a gun nut blows away a government employee on your behalf, then all the national media coverage of the riots will instantly cease (sorta like the Corona Virus coverage did) and it’ll be back to the news breathlessly reporting about right wing extremist gun nuts, and all you useless fucks would go back to whining for more dumb ass gun control.
You’ve already thrown the black community under the bus, cheering as their neighborhoods get burned and yours are safe. Seriously, white liberals are the shittiest “allies” in history, and your moral foundation has the consistency of Play-Doh. Your moral compass is a wind sock.
Newly promoted Chicago deputy chief Dion Boyd dead in apparent suicide.
Chinese immigrant student sues Fordham University for sanctioning him over a social media post showing him holding a gun on the anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square massacre. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Antifa Member Lectures D-Day Veteran On How To Fight Fascism.”
“‘The Violent Riots Are A Myth,’ Says Rep. Nadler As Antifa Sets Fire To Congressional Hearing Room.”
“Portland Police Raise Millions By Letting Citizens Throw Tear Gas At Antifa For $5 A Pop.”
“Orcs March On Minas Tirith In Mostly Peaceful Protest.”
I LOLed:
Video game or not, this is pretty impressive:
Squirrel Ninja Warrior.
In restless dreams I walked alone…
“I’ll have the full massage, please.”
Tags:antifa, Breonna Taylor, Brookings Institute, Chicago, China, Christopher Steele, coronavirus, Crime, Crossfire Hurricane, deer, Democrats, Detroit, Dion Boyd, dogs, Donald Trump, Edward Thomas Schinzing, FISA, Fordham, George Soros, Germany, Guns, Herman Cain, Idaho, Igor Danchenko, Jamarcus Glover, James Comey, Joe Pientka, Jonathan Mattingly, Katrina Robinson, Kevin Clinesmith, Kim Gardner, LinkSwarm, Lord of the Rings, Media Watch, Michael Flynn, NATO, Obamagate, police, Portland, Richmond (Virginia), Russia, Simon & Garfunkel, Social Justice Warriors, Sweden, Tennessee, Timothy O’Donnell, Trader Joe's, transexual, UFO, Ukraine, Wuhan
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Media Watch, Obama Scandals, Social Justice Warriors | No Comments »
Friday, May 15th, 2020
Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Today’s theme is Democratic Governor’s ignoring the constitution to keep their precious lockdowns going, Obamagate, spying (domestic and foreign), a bit about aircraft, and funny animals. Dig in!
The economy: is the worst over? Let’s hope.
Remember how Georgia lifting the lockdown and opening the economy was going to kill everyone’s granny? Yeah, not so much: “Georgia Records Lowest Number of Coronavirus Patients in over a Month.”
More medical hope:
Ever since President Trump expressed optimism about the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, the mere mention of that drug can elicit instantaneous, strident, and finger-wagging condemnation by the mainstream media and all those who are pulling for the pandemic to lay waste to the economy and pave the way for a fundamental progressive transformation of America. Despite its use by health-care providers across the country and around the world to successfully treat COVID-19, you will be mocked as either a fool or a snake oil salesman if you approvingly utter the word “hydroxychloroquine” or even express hope that it can be used to save lives. The word is simply not to be tolerated in polite, progressive society.
Well, it appears that the list of forbidden words is about to get longer. The new additions include “corticosteroids” and “Methylprednisolone.”
What do these widely available and relatively inexpensive drugs with known safety profiles have in common with hydroxychloroquine? Leading physicians are using them in addition to hydroxychloroquine to successfully treat COVID-19. And they are doing so without waiting two or three years for the results of randomized clinical trials.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
“Wuhan Virus Watch: Over Half of All U.S. Deaths Have Occurred in Just Five States.” “New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan and Pennsylvania. New York remains the hardest-hit state of any in the country by far, having logged nearly 27,000 deaths as of Saturday afternoon. The next-hardest-hit state, New Jersey, had recorded over 9,100.”
Speaking of Michigan:
It is difficult to describe, and impossible to exaggerate, just how badly Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID-19 response has been, and it has been a catastrophe from the very beginning. In early March, when the country was already becoming concerned about the spread of the virus, Whitmer did not cancel the Democratic presidential primary, and indeed, there was record turnout for the March 10 primary, which turned into a “super spreader” event in metropolitan Detroit. She has since bungled practically every aspect of the pandemic, including her deliberately punitive and irrational lockdown policy. Now she would have us believe that she is the real victim of all this:
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said Wednesday that the lockdown protests are “racist and misogynistic” and called on those with a platform to discourage the demonstrators.
Whitmer told ABC’s “The View” that the protests are “really political” as demonstrators have brought nooses, Confederate flags and Nazi symbolism.
“This is not appropriate in a global pandemic,” she said. “But it’s certainly not an exercise of democratic principles where we have free speech. This is calls to violence. This is racist and misogynistic.”
I have no idea who brought nooses, etc., to these protests, although I suspect these were false-flag agents provocateurs — leftists pretending to be part of the protest and acting in ways intended to discredit Whitmer’s opponents. None of this, however, justifies her policies.
Just in case you thought there was an end to her awful policies: “Michigan state Rep. Leslie Love (D-Detroit) is blasting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D) policy of returning coronavirus patients to nursing homes, making the Detroit lawmaker the second Democrat to criticize the governor publicly in less than a month.”
Speaking of which: “NY officials allowed COVID-positive workers to stay on the job at nursing homes — the facilities account for 25% of deaths in the state.” More of that brilliant one-party Democratic rule…
“Media Lies: Democrat Governors Doing Great Jobs Despite Higher Wuhan Death Rates.”
Continuing the theme (click to expand image):
Wisconsin Governor and bureaucracy: “Screw your rights. Stay at home.” Wisconsin Supreme Court: “Unconstitutional.” Wisconsin Governor and bureaucracy the very same day: “Oh yeah? Then screw your religion! No meetings for you God weirdos!” Every. Knee. Must. Bend.
That crap doesn’t fly in Texas:
Dallas County Commissioner Judge Clay Jenkins has repeatedly tried to act as the ruler of Dallas County by attempting to force his will on everyone within it and each time he’s been put back in his place by everyone from the citizens of Dallas County to his own fellow commissioners.
Jenkins has now awakened the wrath of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who issued a warning to him and other officials in other Texas counties who are trying to illegally prevent Texans from living doing things such as attending church.
According to Paxton’s office, a warning was issued to three county judges and two mayors telling them to back off their make-believe thrones, or else there will be consequences:
Attorney General Ken Paxton today issued letters to three Texas counties (Dallas, Bexar, and Travis) and two mayors (San Antonio and Austin), warning that some requirements in their local public health orders are unlawful and can confuse law-abiding citizens. These unlawful and unenforceable requirements include strict and unconstitutional demands for houses of worship, unnecessary and onerous restrictions on allowing essential services to operate, such as tracking customers who visit certain restaurants, penalties for not wearing masks, shelter-in-place demands, criminal penalties for violating state or local health orders, and failing to differentiate between recommendations and mandates.
The curve Democrats really want to flatten:
The government-imposed lockdown needs to end. But lot’s of people have (properly) set their own lockdown standards:
Many of the most important mitigation strategies are unknown to the general public because they’ve taken place behind closed doors on the initiative of employers, not bureaucrats, and have little or nothing to do with legal mandates (which are themselves, as I can attest is the case here in Canada, a contradictory, hastily-conceived patchwork of federal and provincial directives and advisories). To give but one example I happen to be familiar with: Many of the men and women you see driving delivery trucks and construction vehicles are now governed by all sorts of rules, at pickup and drop-off, that allow them to perform their functions without coming within six feet of others. In some cases, they’ve been enabled with apps on their phones or dash-mounted tablets that permit them to coordinate these functions without any direct on-site human interaction whatsoever. Or they might be subject to thermometer-gun screenings to determine if they have a fever. Having implemented these lockdown-lite policies at great cost and inconvenience, employers aren’t going to dump them the moment the government gives them permission to do so, even though these procedures have increased costs and decreased output.
Many employers I speak to are actually far more constricted by the concerns of their own employees than by the law itself. At one workplace that I know of, the boss announced that loosened provincial restrictions mean that everyone can come back to work this month. To his surprise, his employees announced that they’d voted on the issue through Facebook, and, no, they would not be coming back, at least not yet. And in Quebec, which is starting to let elementary-school students come back to class this month, thousands of parents—a majority at some schools—have decided to keep their children home. I am told by reliable sources within my own family that some of these parents are even pressuring their neighbours to do likewise, and are shaming dissenters on social media as bad parents. It’s lockdown by mob.
To some extent, I find this attitude of populist hyper-vigilance to be exasperating, because sending your young kids to school is now generally safe (and, selfishly, because I think my own seven-year-old could benefit from getting back to a structured education environment). But we got into this mess by letting our guard down, and so it’s not surprising that many ordinary people want to err on the other side of the equation for a month or three. Whatever your views, though, if you’re all in a fuss about lockdown policy, please remember that the real lockdown was never imposed by government. It turns out that it was inside each and every one of us all along.
Devin Nunes thinks that the entire Trump transition team was under surveillance by the Obama Administration. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Don Surber asked a question back in 2017 that we ought to take a fresh look at: Was Obama using the NSA to spy on Romney during the 2012 election? Given what we know of Crossfire Hurricane, would anyone put it past him?
Related:
Russia, Russia, Russia!
Oh, lovely. Crowdstrike admits that there was no evidence that Russia hacked the DNC server.
Lives better for the living:
Mexico’s president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador would like to know the truth behind Obama’s Fast and Furious illegal gun running program. A lot of us would like to know the same thing…
EU and German courts (strangely two different things in this story) are having a pissing match over whose gavel is bigger.
Canadian Broadcasting Company can’t decide just how it wants to lie about The Epoch Times and its reporting on the Chinese Communist Party’s culpability in the Wuhan Coronavirus. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
TSMC to build chip foundry in Arizona. This is a pretty big deal, as TSMC currently has the best fab tech in the world, and this will be their first ground-up American foundry (they currently have (I think) two other American fabs as the result of acquisitions from WaferTech and TI).
“Arkansas Professor Arrested For Concealing Communist Chinese Funding.”
An engineering professor at the University of Arkansas has been arrested by the FBI and faces up to 20 years in prison for allegedly hiding funding that he received from the communist Chinese government.
The New York Times reports that “Simon Ang of the University of Arkansas, was arrested on Friday and charged on Monday with wire fraud.”
“He worked for and received funding from Chinese companies and from the Thousand Talents program, which awards grants to scientists to encourage relationships with the Chinese government,” the report notes, adding that “he warned an associate to keep his affiliation with the program quiet.”
The report explains that Ang’s alleged hiding of the funding enabled him to also get US government subsidies, specifically from NASA, to the tune of more than $5 million.
“Chinese Government Lays Off Entire Propaganda Team As American Media Doing Their Job For Them.
“CNN Replaces President Trump’s Press Briefings With President Xi’s.”
Capitalist fungus. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
“Billy doesn’t respond well to pressure.”
“Why we at $FAMOUS_COMPANY Switched to $HYPED_TECHNOLOGY.”
Important safety tip: Don’t stand on an active airport runway. This was Austin, so odds are it was an adler.
For Rich:
The Los Angeles Rams uniforms are horrible garbage.
“Democratic States Deploy Greta Thunberg Drones To Lecture People Who Go Outside.”
Water sausage eats breakfast:
Goat rodeo:
This dog is on my wavelength:
Tags:2020 Presidential Race, aircraft, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Andrew Cuomo, Arkansas, Austin, Babylon Bee, Brian Stelter, China, Clay Jenkins, coronavirus, corticosteroids, Crossfire Hurricane, Crowdstrike, Democrats, Devin Nunes, dogs, EU, fraud, Georgia, Germany, goats, Greta Thunberg, Gretchen Whitmer, homeless, hydroxychloroquine, Ken Paxton, Leslie Love, Los Angeles Rams, Massachusetts, Media Watch, Methylprednisolone, Mexico, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, NFL, Obamagate, otters, Pennsylvania, Regulation, Ron DeSantis, Ronald Shurer, Semiconductors, Simon Ang, spying, Texas, TSMC, Wisconsin, World War II, Wuhan, Xi Jinping
Posted in Austin, Democrats, Economics, Media Watch, Obama Scandals, Regulation, Texas, Waste and Fraud | 2 Comments »
Monday, May 11th, 2020
Still more evidence that Tara Reade complained about Biden surfaces, plus stories of just how extensively Beijing Joe pandered to China. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!
Remember all those polls showing Biden up big over Trump? Fugitaboutit. “According to an extensive survey by the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government released in late April, only 34 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 say they have a favorable view of the former vice president, with just 8 percent saying they have a “very favorable” opinion of Biden. In the same survey, 47 percent of young people said they have an unfavorable view of Biden.”
Some Democrats are already gunning to dump Biden.
The advantages for the Democrats in swapping in a different candidate should be obvious. While many, like DNC Chair Tom Perez, seem to be immune to embarrassment and can blithely ignore charges of hypocrisy, the public isn’t going to be so easily deceived. Holding Biden to the same standard that Brett Kavanaugh was (or at least giving the impression of doing that) would at least make them consistent.
But there’s more to the story than that. Without intending to do so, Tara Reade could wind up providing a plausible cover story for removing a candidate that has a lot more problems than one sexual assault allegation. The fact that Uncle Joe has been locked up in his basement by the pandemic is probably the only thing stopping his campaign from turning into even more of a trainwreck. The few live interviews he’s done recently have ranged from being mild and uninteresting to downright alarming when his mind appears to wander, he stumbles over his words and careens from one topic to another.
It just seems to be increasingly obvious that Joe Biden is well past his Best Sell By Date. And this is the guy that will have to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump on the debate stage sooner or later. Swapping him out for someone younger, sharper, and preferably without a sexual assault scandal dogging their heels would probably pay big benefits.
(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
“1996 court document confirms Tara Reade told of harassment in Biden’s office.”
More on the same subject. “By now, it can’t genuinely be disputed that Reade told others about being sexually harassed while working for Biden. And although the husband didn’t mention assault or Biden himself, others have said that Reade alleged assault by Biden.”
Reade says she didn’t use “sexual harassment” (or “rape”) in the original announcement because she “chickened out.”
Megyn Kelly did a a 42 minute interview with Tara Reade.
Remember how New York unilaterally cancelled it’s Democratic presidential primary? A federal judge says “Not so fast.”
Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang challenged New York’s decision to cancel its Democratic primary, scheduled for June 23. The state chose to do so because it’s obvious former Vice President Joe Biden will win the nomination and the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, which has ravaged the state.
Judge Analise Torres ruled that New York must have its Democratic primary, finding the cancellation unconstitutional, and it must include “all qualified candidates.”
New York removed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) because he suspended his campaign in April. He wanted to stay on the remaining ballots to gain delegates as a way to pressure the Democratic Party to bend its platform to his radical ideas.
Weekend at Biden’s:
Tara Reade claims to be a loyal Democrat, and she might be doing her party a huge favor. Her accusation that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993 gives Democrats a plausible excuse to ditch the former vice president as their 2020 presidential nominee, thus sparing themselves a likely disaster in the fall campaign. To put it as bluntly as possible, Biden’s mental decline is so obvious as to be an embarrassment, as he stumbles in every interview, even with the most friendly journalists. Democrats and their friends in the media attempting to push Biden’s candidacy forward resemble nothing so much as the cast of the 1989 comedy Weekend at Bernie’s, hauling around their dead boss’s corpse and trying to pretend he’s still alive.
Many Democrats, of course, claim that Biden’s mind is unimpaired, or at least not bad enough to prevent him from defeating President Trump in November. Such Democrats apparently believe that Trump is so unpopular that doubts about Biden’s mental acuity will make no difference. This attitude is part of what can be called the “referendum” perspective on the fall campaign. Rather than seeing the election as a choice between two candidates, instead these Democrats expect voters to go to the polls to vote against the incumbent. The success of Democrats in the 2018 midterm election encourages this view, which was the subject of an Associated Press article over the weekend, reporting that “Biden campaign aides say they are bullish on the prospects of winning states Trump carried in 2016.”
Maybe so, but maybe these Biden campaign aides are just blowing smoke. It is impossible to believe they haven’t noticed that their candidate is a few fries short of a Happy Meal. Every TV interview provides further evidence that the 77-year-old Biden is non compos mentis.
The impossible dream: Making Joe Biden go viral (for reasons other than his Senior Moments). His team’s solution? Pure pablum. It’s the strategy that combines the honesty of a bank’s email laying out its Covid-19 strategy with the homespun forthrightness of an insurance company email announcing its Covid-19 strategy…
Hey hey ho, rapey Joe has got to go!
Is it any wonder that Democrats are starting to wonder if they’ve bought a pig in a poke, and just how to pawn him off on somebody else?
Just as bad for the Dems on the electability issue, a new poll shows that young voters — a key party constituency — just aren’t that into the 77-year-old who first ran for president before any of them were born. The Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Institute of Politics poll shows that “only 34 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 say they have a favorable view of the former vice president,” with just 8 percent at “very favorable.” Nearly half — 47 percent — said they have an unfavorable view of the former Veep.
Trump voters might skew older, but they’ll crawl over broken glass to vote for POTUS in November. A recent Emerson poll found that Trump has a 19-point advantage in the enthusiasm gap, 64%-45%.
After New York canceled its primary vote last week, we learned that while it would be both risky and difficult, it is still possible for Democrats to nominate someone other than Biden:
As of April 27, the former vice president has 1,305 of the 1,991 delegates needed to clinch a first-round coronation at the party’s convention. New York offered 320 delegates up for grabs, 274 pledged to the primary winner; a prize that would have brought Biden closer to the nomination.
If New York’s decision triggers other states to cancel their own primaries, it is entirely possible that Biden could arrive at the Democratic convention without a guarantee of the nomination.
Larger states with upcoming primary votes include Georgia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, plus a few medium-size states like Maryland, Indiana, Kentucky, and Louisiana. Pennsylvania and Indiana have already delayed their votes, but if they and a few others like them decide instead to cancel as New York did, then that would be a clear indication that the DNC has decided to shove Biden out onto an ice floe for an ignominious retirement from presidential politics.
“Biden Has Become an Albatross for the Democrats.”
Biden was winning the nomination largely because he was not the socialist Bernie Sanders, who terrified the Democratic establishment.
Biden was also not Michael Bloomberg. The multibillionaire former New York City mayor jumped into the race when Biden faltered and Sanders seemed unstoppable. But Bloomberg spent $1 billion only to confirm that he was haughty, a poor debater, and an even worse campaigner. He often appeared to be an apologist for China and seemed clueless about the interior of the United States.
The least offensive candidate left standing was Biden. Many Democratic primary voters initially had written him off as an inept retread, a blowhard, and an impediment to the leftward, identity-politics trajectory of the newly progressive Democratic party.
On the campaign trail, Biden insulted several voters, using insults such as “fat,” “damn liar,” and, weirdly, “lying dog-faced pony soldier.”
Long ago he spun tall tales about how in his youth he had taken on a Delaware street gang with a 6-foot chain or slammed a bully’s face into a store counter. More recently, he taunted President Trump with tough-guy boasts about taking him behind the proverbial gym and beating him up.
Biden has been unable to keep his hands off women. Even his supporters cringed when he was seen sniffing the hair, rubbing the shoulders or whispering into the ears of unsuspecting females, some of them minors. Stranger still, Biden waxed on about his commitment to the #MeToo movement. The handsy Biden has insisted that women who made accusations of sexual harassment must be believed.
The more House Democrats attacked Donald Trump for supposedly pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden’s wheeler-dealer son Hunter, the more Biden’s own suspect dealings with Ukraine surfaced. Such scrutiny followed from Biden’s boast, caught on video, that he had leveraged Ukraine by threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees unless a Ukrainian prosecutor was fired. That prosecutor had wanted to investigate the Ukrainian company for which Hunter Biden worked.
During the year-long rise, fall, and rise of his campaign, the 77-year-old Biden often appeared confused. He was occasionally unable to remember names, places, or dates. Biden would try to speak extempore but seemingly forget what he was trying to say.
The coronavirus epidemic and subsequent lockdown seemed to offer rest for Biden. But the more he recuperated from campaigning and sent out video communiques from his basement, the more he appeared to confirm that his problem was not simple exhaustion or age but real cognitive impairment.
With the Democratic nomination a lock, Biden assumed liberal reporters would allow him to campaign as a virtual candidate. They would forget his lapses and ignore prior controversies, including the sexual assault allegations by Tara Reade, a former aide.
At first, the media complied — as it always had with Biden’s troublesome habit of violating the personal space of women, his bizarre put-downs on the campaign trail, his exaggerated he-man stories, his mental lapses, and his dealings with Ukraine. Again, to the Democratic establishment, Biden was far preferable to Sanders. Had the socialist Sanders won the nomination, he likely would have wrecked the Democratic Party in 2020.
But Biden misjudged the liberal media. Reporters were at first willing to overlook his liabilities. But the more Reade persisted in her accusations and the more the media ignored them, the more embarrassing the media’s utter hypocrisy became. Journalists had torn apart Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh over allegations of sexual assault, after all.
So suddenly the press decided that Biden was no longer worth shielding. Yet the change of heart was not entirely for fear of appearing hypocritical. Rather, the media seems terrified of Biden’s increasingly obvious cognitive decline.
In other words, the media was most certainly not going to be degraded on behalf of a nominee who may no longer seem viable.
(Hat tip: Cut Jib News on Ace of Spades HQ.)
Meanwhile, Lisa Bloom says she believes Tara Reade but is voting for Biden anyway. “Shut up and vote for the rapist!”
Reade, at this point, has more people who she told around the time of the assault than Ford has had ever. She has more credibility than Ford ever had.
What is remarkable is not the leftwing pundits and Democrats who deny this. It is expected that the very Democrats who condemned Kavanaugh would try to obfuscate on this. What is remarkable is the media. Where is Ronan Farrow or the New Yorker or Jane Meyer or NBC News or the rest of them? The only prominent talking head who currently has a justification for silence is Michael Avenatti and that’s because he is in jail. The very people who tried to bring down Kavanaugh hiding behind the veneer of objective reporters are now no where to be found or are trying to throw up Potemkin Villages of obfuscation to avoid having to deal with Reade’s allegations.
If you realize that Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Joe Biden, and the laundry list of others were never about #metoo or sexual harassment or assault, but over whether or not people should be able to murder babies, you’ll understand the double standard. The Brett Kavanaugh attacks and Joe Biden defenses have never been about the patriarchy or power. They have always been about preserving the right to kill kids.
Democrats should see themselves in the mirror when they see Trump supporters. So long as their guy can beat the right, they’ll embrace whatever it is. They’ll never admit it, but they’ll know it is true even as they try to distinguish.
Was Biden in on Crossfire Hurricane?
On January 5, 2017, a meeting was held in the Obama White House in the Oval Office. Both President Obama and Vice President Biden attended. This meeting, it turns out, was critical to the anti-Trump operation by the Obama administration, reports Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist. “It was at this meeting that Obama gave guidance to key officials who would be tasked with protecting his administration’s utilization of secretly funded Clinton campaign research, which alleged Trump was involved in a treasonous plot to collude with Russia, from being discovered or stopped by the incoming administration,” she wrote.
Also in attendance at this meeting was then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, then-national security adviser Susan Rice, then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and other members of the national security council.
It was at this meeting that Barack Obama spoke with Yates and Comey about wiretapped conversations of Trump’s incoming National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the Trump transition, indicating that President Obama was directly knowledgeable of the efforts to surveil the Trump campaign and undermine the incoming administration.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
China Joe brags about his Beijing connections:
More on the same theme: “Biden Sold Out America to China While Working for Hollywood.”
It was 2012 and Joe was thinking about his future. A year earlier his best friend, Senator Chris Dodd, had left the Senate to run the MPAA. The MPAA was Hollywood’s trade association and the movie industry, reading its own writing on the wall, wanted into China, and was willing to sell its soul to make a deal.
Biden wanted Hollywood cash for a future presidential campaign.
Dodd had been one of the sleaziest figures in the Senate, even by the low standards of the era, eager to do favors for any well-heeled industry from finance to entertainment. His friendship with Biden gave him a direct pipeline into the Obama administration. And Dodd gave Biden a pipeline into Hollywood.
“Joe was our champion inside the White House,” Dodd later said.
Two years later, in 2014, Biden began an address to the MPAA by joking, “there have been the rumors all those years when Chris and I served in the Senate that although I was chairman, he controlled me.”
“We’ve just given new life to those rumors,” he continued, describing how he had left a meeting with Obama and Chancellor Merkel, telling Obama that he had to address the MPAA.
“There is no question that you’ve got the right guy with the right influence,” Biden concluded.
And that’s exactly what Biden had been proving in Los Angeles as he surrounded Xi with Hollywood tycoons, especially Jeffrey Katzenberg, a major donor to his 2020 campaign, and cut a deal with the Chinese thug to increase the quota of Hollywood movies allowed in by the Chinese Communist regime.
Funny how the sleaziest Democrats have such lucrative employment after they leave office. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Once again, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is saying there seems to be some smoke in the Reade allegations. 🤔 (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Pick me, pick me, yeah. Everyone is hollow…
Politico pushes Kamala Harris as veep pick.
Remember, Scott Adams pegged Harris as the veep pick back in December, despite the fact that “Adams thinks Harris is the worst candidate to ever be in any presidential race.”
Michigan Democratic Governor Grethen “Obergruperfuhrer” Whitmer says she’s “quite comfortable” in believing that Joe Biden is innocent because “he has a (D) after his name.” (I may be paraphrasing a tad…)
Nebraska is still voting in their Democratic primary tomorrow.
Say what?
Yep:
This is evidently a real thing:
Words fail me…
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Tags:2020 Presidential Race, Andrew Yang, China, Chris Dodd, Crossfire Hurricane, Democrats, Elections, Gretchen Whitmer, Hollywood, James Comey, Joe Biden, John Brennan, Kamala Harris, Megyn Kelly, Nebraska, New York, Obama, rape, Robert Stacy McCain, Sally Yates, Stephen Green, Tara Reade
Posted in Democrats, Elections | No Comments »
Friday, May 8th, 2020
The lockdowns are finally ending for Americans (at least in states without Democratic governors), and the lockdown also ended for Michael Flynn, who was finally freed from his Kafkaesque prosecution:
Finally! Justice prevails for Michael Flynn:
The Justice Department has moved to withdraw its case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, citing “newly discovered and disclosed information,” according to a new court filing.
The move, first reported by The Associated Press, comes less than an hour after the top prosecutor on the case, Brandon Van Grack, submitted his withdrawal from the case. The decision said that the White House interview Flynn gave to the FBI, which ultimately led to his guilty plea, was “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis.”
“The Government is not persuaded that the January 24, 2017 interview was conducted with a legitimate investigative basis and therefore does not believe that Mr. Flynn’s statements were material even if untrue,” the decision states, citing Flynn’s 2017 guilty plea of lying to federal investigators. “Moreover, we do not believe that the Government can prove either the relevant false statements or their materiality beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney tasked by Attorney General Bill Barr in February to reviewing the case, recommended that it be dropped. Flynn moved to withdraw his guilty plea in January, saying he “never lied” to FBI agents over his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
“Through the course of my review of General Flynn’s case, I concluded the proper and just course was to dismiss the case,” Jensen said in a statement. “I briefed Attorney General Barr on my findings, advised him on these conclusions, and he agreed.” The DOJ’s filing states that Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak “were entirely appropriate on their face.”
In recent weeks, additional information released in the case has shed scrutiny on the way the case was conducted. Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell claimed last month in a court filing that Van Grack had made a “side deal” with Flynn’s former defense team that was withheld from the retired Army general, citing heavily-redacted emails that show Flynn’s former lawyers discussing why the deal needed to be “kept secret,” implying that Flynn would be used to testify in further criminal cases.
Further documents released last week showed handwritten notes from an FBI official questioning the goal of Flynn’s White House interview with FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka, suggesting the intent was “to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired.”
Another release revealed that Flynn had been the subject of a spinoff surveillance operation under the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” probe of the 2016 Trump campaign.
Given all the dirt that has come out about Crossfire Hurricane, AKA the Russian Collusion Hoax, AKA The Plot Against the President, this is not the last we’re going to hear about that conspiracy…
The Wuhan coronavirus is the disaster that bankrupt blue cities and states have been waiting for:
The people running states like New Jersey and cities like Chicago know they’re broke. Ridiculously generous public employee pensions – concocted by elected officials and union leaders who had to have understood that they were writing checks their taxpayers couldn’t cover – are bleeding them dry, with no political solution in sight.
They also know that they have only two possible outs: bankruptcy, or some form of federal bailout. Since the former means a disgraceful end to local political careers while the latter requires some kind of massive crisis to push Washington into a place where a multi-trillion dollar state/city bailout is the least bad option, it’s safe to assume that mayors and governors – along with public sector union leaders – have been hoping for such a crisis to save their bacon.
And this year they got their wish. The country is on lockdown, unemployment is skyrocketing and mayors and governors now have a plausible way to rebrand their criminal mismanagement as a “natural disaster” deserving of outside help.
Hate the continuing lockdowns? Blame Democrats:
Early estimates of the COVID-19 death rate, cited to justify the lockdowns, have proven far too pessimistic. In March, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated a 3.4 percent fatality rate and Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated that the fatality rate of the coronavirus was about 2 percent. As PJ Media’s Matt Margolis reported, at least five studies have placed the death rate below 1 percent, confirming President Donald Trump’s hunch.
Recent studies have found that far more people than expected have COVID-19 antibodies — meaning the virus has spread faster than previously thought, but also proving that it is far less deadly than previously thought.
Furthermore, a recent study showed that Democratic governors were three times more likely than Republican governors to impose a lockdown. This would make sense, given the Democratic control over many population centers experiencing large outbreaks: New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., for example. However, the study found that “counterintuitively, the percentage of the state’s population infected with COVID-19 had the weakest effect on the governors’ decisions of all the four variables.”
The study found that the three most significant variables were political affiliation (a heavy slant toward Democrats), “social learning” (governors of states afflicted by COVID-19 later acted much faster than governors of states who were afflicted early on), and “mini-cascades” (the actions of some governors sparked multiple other governors to order lockdowns in the next three days).
Both social learning and mini-cascades shine a light on how news of the coronavirus’ danger spread. As states with coronavirus hot spots reacted, other states followed suit, preparing for outbreaks of their own.
Yet the political slant is also extremely significant, especially considering the different ways state and local officials have carried out their lockdowns. Greenville, Miss. Mayor Errick Simmons notoriously defended his ban on drive-in church services that led to parishioners facing $500 fines. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio threatened to “permanently” close churches and synagogues unless they comply with his orders — and he issued a disgusting threat to the Jewish community in particular. Andy Berke, mayor of Chattanooga, Tenn., banned drive-in church services even though Tennessee’s governor permitted them. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear dispatched the State Police against a church hosting a drive-in service. Police in Virginia threatened a pastor with a year in jail for hosting a socially-distanced church service, enacting Gov. Ralph Northam’s order.
All these political leaders belong to the same party: the Democratic Party. Not all of the onerous coronavirus restrictions that violate religious freedom have been issued by Democrats, but there is a disturbing correlation between the left-wing party and crisis orders that single out churches, synagogues, and mosques. It seems one party is more likely than the other to think of religion as less than “essential,” and much of that animus traces back to the mistaken idea that religion (Christianity in particular) and science are in conflict.
We’re finally getting better Kung-Flu data and weekly peak deaths are falling.
Michigan’s Democratic Obergrupenfuhrer Gretchen Whitmer extended the state of emergency (and the lockdown) through May 28, despite lacking authority from the legislature to do so.
“Maine Yanks Licenses From Restaurateur Who Defied Lockdown, Went On Tucker To Castigate Governor.”
The outrageous tyranny of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and her heavy-handed, illogical, and irresponsible Wuhan coronavirus edicts have finally been outdone by another Democrat governor, this time on the east coast.
Maine governor Janet Mills jumped on the one-size-fits all Wuhan coronavirus bandwagon, and forced a state-wide shutdown order, including in counties that have tiny numbers of infections and zero deaths.
“[Of] the five Upper Midwestern states…Minnesota has both the highest unemployment rate and the worst COVID-19 death rate in the region. Heckuva job, Timmy!” That would be Minnesota’s Democratic governor Tim Walz.
Science 1, Social Justice 0:
As I write this, I am surrounded by silence: not only the silence of a small university town on lockdown but, also, the silence of the feminists and postmodernists as the COVID-19 pandemic has taken over.
Where are the usual attacks on white male-dominated science? Where’s the “standpoint epistemology” to tell us how different is the knowledge intersectionally-appropriate feminist scientists would bring to this crucial problem? How many of those labs fiercely trying to find a treatment, a vaccine, a path forward, have a demographically appropriate number of women researchers? Not to mention racially and sexually “diverse” ones? What can possibly explain the lack of attention to this terrible problem of marginalization of the already oppressed?
On a women’s studies listserve I subscribe to, activity has been almost at a standstill for weeks. You’d think with the endless attention paid to the virus there would be vigorous debate about the need to bring feminist, queer, trans, and other such perspectives to bear, and heated discussions of how to convey this to students via distance learning. Or, at the very least, that criticisms would be voiced of the data showing that men are more vulnerable to the virus than women. If one is “assigned” the category of male or female at birth—by now a routine formulation aped even by medical organizations– how could an uncaring virus ever make such a distinction?
Can anything positive come out of the current crisis? Or, is it strictly a negative to be reminded that reality – the actual physical world, in all its threatening materiality – is not a social construction, and that solutions to a virus must engage with that material world, and not merely attack the rhetoric of disease and the identity of those researching it.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Hydroxychloroquine helps some but not all:
Part of the frustration in dealing with a really bad situation is a ravenous hunger for magic bullet solutions. One reader wrote in, contending that hydroxychloroquine is effective 100 percent of the time if it’s administered early enough, so why not reopen society and give everyone a prescription for hydroxychloroquine at the first sign of the virus?
Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine actually slow down parts of a patient’s immune system by “interfere with lysosomal activity and autophagy, interact with membrane stability and alter signalling pathways and transcriptional activity, which can result in inhibition of cytokine production and modulation of certain co-stimulatory molecules” — which is a jargon-heavy way of saying it makes your immune system’s cells not work as well together.
People might wonder why anyone would want to take a drug that weakens their immune system. Hydroxychloroquine can be an effective drug for lupus, because with lupus, the body’s immune system becomes overactive and starts attacking healthy, normal cells. It is also used to treat arthritis, because in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, their immune system attacks the lining of their joints. With patients suffering from malaria, the parasite actually can send out “messages” that distract the body’s immune system, causing it to attack healthy red blood cells and ignore the real threat: “While the immune system is busy defending the organism against fake danger, the real infection proceeds inside red blood cells, allowing the parasite to multiply unhindered at dizzying speed. By the time the immune system discovers its mistake, precious time has been lost, and the infection is much more difficult to contain.” Hydroxychloroquine effectively calms down the immune system and along the way binds to the malaria parasite, breaking it apart.
The coronavirus identified as SARS-CoV-2 can generate a “cytokine storm” — when the body’s immune system kicks into overdrive and starts attacking healthy cells in important organs. Dr. Randy Cron, an expert on cytokine storms at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told the New York Times last month that in about 15 percent of coronavirus patients, the body’s defense mechanism of cytokines fight off the invading virus, but then attack multiple organs including the lungs and liver, and may eventually lead to death. As the patient’s body fights its own lungs, fluid gets into the lungs, and the patient dies of acute respiratory distress syndrome.
From this, you can get a sense of how and why hydroxychloroquine might be effective in some circumstances and not others. If the patient’s immune system is strong enough to fight off the coronavirus, but is at risk of going into overdrive and setting off a cytotkine storm, administering the right amount of hydroxychloroquine might put their immune system back in the Goldilocks zone — strong enough to fight off and defeat the virus, but not so strong that it starts attacking vital organs by mistake. It’s also easy to see why we would only want people taking this drug under a doctor’s recommendation and possibly supervision — take the drug too early, and you suppress the body’s immune system just when it needs that system functioning well to fight off the invading virus. Take the drug too late, and the damage to the vital organs can’t be overcome.
“FDA Pulls Approval for Dozens of Mask Makers in China.” They’re garbage that doesn’t meet spec. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Hey media: Do you think you could stop publishing the same #NeverTrump piece over and over again?
Media outlets treat conservative Americans as second-class citizens whose arguments don’t need to be listened to or engaged with. Instead, they take the vanishingly small number of column inches or pundit panel seats they have and give the “conservative” slots to people who repeatedly disparage conservative elected officials, their voters, and their policies.
In some cases, the supposed “conservatives” have long ago renounced their conservatism. The Washington Post’s Max Boot, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, and Twitter’s Bill Kristol receive a great deal of mockery for their boring obsession with Orange Man Bad, an obsession that has led them to renounce every one of the policy positions they once held.
Even as their positions change in response to whatever Trump has said, NeverTrump is known for writing the same column over and over again. It’s usually headlined something like “Why Trump And His Voters Are So Awful That They Forced Me To Leave the GOP But Also Remember To Please Continue Calling Me A Republican To Preserve The TV/Column Gigs That Depend On Me Claiming I’m On The Right Even Though I Am Now Aligned With Democrats, Write Columns About How I Vote For Them, And Generally Work To Help Them Gain More Political Power.”
“Democrat On Committee To Oversee Coronavirus Stimulus Payouts Broke Federal Law By Failing To Report Stock Sales.” That would be Florida Representative (and former Clinton Administration official) Donna Shalala.
“Illinois governor says churches may not fully reopen for a year or more because of coronavirus.” I don’t think the constitution is going to agree with you there, sport… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Good Samaritan health care workers: I will go to New York to help out with the crush of Wuhan coronavirus cases! Andrew Cuomo: Fark you, have some more taxes.
Twitter decides to Big Brother harder.
The Supreme Court unanimously bitch-slapped the Ninth Circuit for ruling that a federal statue that makes it illegal to encourage illegal aliens to come to the U.S. was unconstitutional. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg delivered the opinion.
“I’m going to eat at these places even harder now. Thanks a lot, #Karen.”
Friend-of-the-blog Karl Rehn offers up Ammo 101.
As if we didn’t have enough deadly Asian intruders this year, say hello to Murder Hornets.
Tengujo, the thinnest paper in the world. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
Florida South Carolina woman grabs gator. It turns out exactly how you would expect. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
Surprise!
I’m going to try to get to the Shelly Luther and Project Veritas stories this weekend.
Tags:9th Circuit Court, Andrew Cuomo, Bill Barr, Border Controls, Brandon Van Grack, China, Communism, coronavirus, Crossfire Hurricane, Democrats, dogs, Donna Shalala, Economics, FISA, Gretchen Whitmer, Guns, hydroxychloroquine, Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, Janet Mills, Joe Pientka, Karl Rehn, LinkSwarm, Maine, Michael Flynn, Michigan, Minnesota, Murder Hornets, pandemic, Peter Strzok, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sidney Powell, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court, Tim Walz, Twitter, Wuhan
Posted in Border Control, Budget, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Guns, Social Justice Warriors, Supreme Court | No Comments »
Monday, May 21st, 2018
(I’ve always wanted to do a post that portentously starts out “It begins!”)
President Donald Trump may have signaled that the endgame on the Clinton/Obama/FBI/CIA/FISA/campaign spying scandal may finally be at hand:
This comes on the heels of the revelation that the FBI had an “informant” (read spy) inside the Trump campaign:
A Cambridge professor with deep ties to American and British intelligence has been outed as an agent who snooped on the Trump presidential campaign for the FBI.
Multiple media outlets have named Stefan Halper, 73, as the secret informant who met with Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos starting in the summer of 2016. The American-born academic previously served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations.
The revelation, stemming from recent reports in which FBI sources admitted sending an agent to snoop on the Trump camp, heightens suspicions that the FBI was seeking to entrap Trump campaign aides. Papodopoulous has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, while Page was the subject of a federal surveillance warrant.
“If the FBI or DOJ was infiltrating a campaign for the benefit of another campaign, that is a really big deal,” President Trump tweeted Saturday, calling for the FBI to release additional documents to Congress.
The Halper revelation also shows the Obama administration’s FBI began prying into the opposing party’s presidential nominee earlier than it previously admitted.
Halper’s sit-downs with Page reportedly started in early July 2016, undermining fired FBI Director James Comey’s previous claim that the bureau’s investigation into the Trump campaign began at the end of that month.
Halper made his first overture when he met with Page at a British symposium. The two remained in regular contact for more than a year, meeting at Halper’s Virginia farm and in Washington, DC, as well as exchanging emails.
The professor met with Trump campaign co-chair Sam Clovis in late August, offering his services as a foreign-policy adviser, The Washington Post reported Friday, without naming the academic.
Clovis did not see the conversation as suspicious, his attorney told the paper — but is now “unsettled” that “the professor” never mentioned he’d struck up a relationship with Page.
Days later, Halper contacted Papadopoulos by e-mail. The professor offered the young and inexperienced campaign aide $3,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to London, ostensibly to write a paper about energy in the eastern Mediterranean region.
“George, you know about hacking the e-mails from Russia, right?” the professor pressed Papadopoulos when they met, according to reports — a reference to Trump’s campaign-trail riffs about Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server.
Sources close to Papadopoulos told NBC News that he now believes Halper was working for an intelligence agency.
Highly detailed descriptions of the FBI informant in Friday reports in The New York Times and Washington Post pegged Halper in all but name. Outlets including NBC and Fox News subsequently connected the dots. The revelation confirms a March report in the Daily Caller that outlined Halper’s repeated meetings with Papadopoulos and Page.
Indeed, conservative media has been constantly ahead of MSM outlets like New York Times on the scandal, mainly because those outlets function as extensions of the Democratic Party. As National Review puts it:
What the Times story makes explicit, with studious understatement, is that the Obama administration used its counterintelligence powers to investigate the opposition party’s presidential campaign.
That is, there was no criminal predicate to justify an investigation of any Trump-campaign official. So, the FBI did not open a criminal investigation. Instead, the bureau opened a counterintelligence investigation and hoped that evidence of crimes committed by Trump officials would emerge. But it is an abuse of power to use counterintelligence powers, including spying and electronic surveillance, to conduct what is actually a criminal investigation.
The Times barely mentions the word counterintelligence in its saga. That’s not an accident. The paper is crafting the media-Democrat narrative. Here is how things are to be spun: The FBI was very public about the Clinton-emails investigation, even making disclosures about it on the eve of the election. Yet it kept the Trump-Russia investigation tightly under wraps, despite intelligence showing that the Kremlin was sabotaging the election for Trump’s benefit. This effectively destroyed Clinton’s candidacy and handed the presidency to Trump.
It’s a gas, gas, gas!
It’s also bunk. Just because the two FBI cases are both referred to as “investigations” does not make them the same kind of thing.
The Clinton case was a criminal investigation that was predicated on a mountain of incriminating evidence. Mrs. Clinton does have one legitimate beef against the FBI: Then-director James Comey went public with some (but by no means all) of the proof against her. It is not proper for law-enforcement officials to publicize evidence from a criminal investigation unless formal charges are brought.
In the scheme of things, though, this was a minor infraction. The scandal here is that Mrs. Clinton was not charged. She likes to blame Comey for her defeat; but she had a chance to win only because the Obama Justice Department and the FBI tanked the case against her — in exactly the manner President Obama encouraged them to do in public commentary.
By contrast, the Trump case is a counterintelligence investigation. Unlike criminal cases, counterintelligence matters are classified. If agents had made public disclosures about them, they would have been committing crimes and violating solemn agreements with foreign intelligence services — agreements without which those services would not share information that U.S. national-security officials need in order to protect our country.
In the scheme of things, though, the problem is not that the FBI honored its confidentiality obligations in the Trump case while violating them in the Clinton case. The scandal is that the FBI, lacking the incriminating evidence needed to justify opening a criminal investigation of the Trump campaign, decided to open a counterintelligence investigation. With the blessing of the Obama White House, they took the powers that enable our government to spy on foreign adversaries and used them to spy on Americans — Americans who just happened to be their political adversaries.
The timing of Halper’s payments is particularly important:
Again, the name is Stefan Halper, who, as I wrote here last week, was paid a substantial sum by the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment.
If it was for this work – and it suspiciously looks like it because the payments were made in July and September of 2016 when he was weaseling his way into the campaign – then we know we have the DNI, CIA, DOJ, FBI, Dept. of State and the Defense Department working for Hillary’s election and to smear and create a basis for further spying on Trump and his campaign.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The general shape of Hillary’s attempt to “Steele” the election has been known for a while:
The intensity of the media’s attacks on a Republican is always in proportion to the degree to which he is impeding one of its causes. The doggedness of Nunes — his refusal to let a politicized FBI and Justice Department stonewall his committee — has thrown considerable light on the real scandal of 2016: not that Trump colluded with the Russians to win but that the Obama administration colluded with Hillary to defeat him.
One government most certainly did meddle in the election — ours. In desperate denial mode, the media will talk about everything but the fact that the United States government was spying on one campaign by using opposition research from the other, all while hoodwinking FISA court judges and leaking to the press about its politicized investigation.
The more that the probe is put under the microscope, the more outrageous it appears, with Hillary partisans and Trump haters figuring into it at every crucial turn. Hillary didn’t need a campaign headquarters in Brooklyn; she already had one in Washington, D.C. John Brennan, auditioning to be her CIA director, laid the groundwork for the Trump-Russia probe by hyping bogus intelligence; Trump hater Peter Strzok formally opened the probe at the FBI just weeks after whitewashing Hillary’s mishandling of emails; the slop of Christopher Steele, Hillary’s opposition researcher, served as the basis for spying on all of Carter Page’s communications with the Trump campaign, while the spouse of a Justice Department official involved in the probe shoveled more of the slop to her husband.
(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
Quoting President Donald Trump yet again:
Indeed. Use of the federal national security state to spy on political opponents dwarfs the Nixon reelection campaign’s dirty tricks department using bumbling outsiders to plant bugs.
At this point, the only question is: How high in the Obama Administration did the orders to conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign come?
Further reading:
Director Blue’s Timeline of Treason.
The Conservative Treehouse has been all over this story from the beginning.
Tags:2016 Presidential Race, Christopher Steele, Crime, Crossfire Hurricane, Democrats, Devin Nunes, Donald Trump, Elections, FBI, FISA, George Papadopoulos, James Comey, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, Sam Clovis, Stefan Halper
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Elections | 1 Comment »