From my friends at Lucianne.com:
Monthly Archives: August 2018
The Piece Of The Puzzle Most Of The News Left Out
The American Thinker posted an article today about the firing of Peter Strzok. As expected, Mr. Strzok is claiming his firing was political and that it was widely undeserved. Well, it seems as if a lot of the media didn’t bother to report a lot of the story. I am sure many of you remember the smugness of Peter Strzok as he answered questions for Congress. There was a reason for that smugness. Peter Strzok was a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES)–the home of the deep state. I am sure he was convinced that his membership in the elite SES would protect him from being fired.
The article at The American Thinker quotes Sara Carter:
Former FBI special agents, some of whom worked with OPR for years, said they agree with Bodwich’s decision. They told SaraACarter.com that the system is broken and Bodwich had no other choice but to step in and fire Strzok. They say political leanings, friendships and dual systems of justice inside OPR have plagued how cases regarding FBI agents are adjudicated and handled.
“Strzok was under oath before Congress and he made statements that appeared to be false and refused to answer some questions, but he was going to get just a slap on the wrist,” said a former supervisory special agent from OPR adjudication, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the nature of their work. “There is absolutely no wiggle room when it comes to lack of candor in the FBI…unless you’re an SES (Senior Executive Service). Strzok’s firing went well beyond texting about Trump. Strzok would have also been involved in the handling of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) application to the FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court)…” The agent noted that Strzok was “well aware that he was lying by deception when they did not include the information on who paid for the dossier and (that) Bruce Ohr was back-channeling information for a discredited source.”
“Strzok knew they were not putting the application in the right context,” the former FBI supervisory special agent added. “If there was the slightest doubt if that application was not 100 percent true, then that application would not go forward.”
Any corporate organization would have fired him for his actions.
Our Justice System Is Skewed
The New York Post posted an article today about the trial of the suspects who were running the compound in New Mexico where neglected children were found. I posted an article detailing the discovery of the compound on August 9 (story here).
This is today’s update on the story:
A New Mexico judge granted bail Monday to five suspects — one the son of a controversial Brooklyn imam — who were accused of keeping kids in a filthy, heavily fortified compound.
Three women and two men, ages 35 to 40, will wear ankle monitors and be under house arrest if they can post $20,000 bond each, the judge ruled in Taos.
Deputy District Attorney Timothy Hasson told the court that the suspects were up to no good, saying, “This was not a camping trip and this was not a simple homestead of the kind that many people do in New Mexico.”
One of the suspects, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, is the son of Brooklyn cleric Siraj Wahhaj, who has been linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
We let these people out on bail and we put Paul Manafort in solitary confinement because of tax evasion??? I think we have a problem in our justice system.
The Impact Of President Trump’s Economic Policies On Working Ameicans
Yesterday The Daily Signal posted an article about the impact of President Trump’s economic policies on average Americans.
The article highlights the story of Tom Condon, a factory worker for 28 years, employed by Jamison Doors.
The article reports:
Before the election of President Donald Trump, John T. Williams, chairman and chief executive officer of Jamison Doors, said the policies of the federal government “had not been kind to us.”
“The economy has not been good to us and we’ve had a pretty rocky road,” he told The Daily Signal.
But since Trump became president, “the business climate changed in a significantly positive way.”
“Now not all of it could be attributed to the election,” Williams explained, “but the general attitude seemed to change because of the prospect of fewer regulations in tax reform and a generally positive attitude toward businesses and building the economy.”
Condon, and two other factory workers The Daily Signal spoke with, agreed.
“We got a good bonus this year,” said Condon. “We appreciate that. And the way the company talks, in the future we can look forward to those pretty regularly.”
Economic policies matter.
The article explains the impact of the tax cuts:
Because of tax reform passed by Congress and signed by Trump just before Christmas, the company is expanding, investing in new equipment and making plans to open a new factory.
Workers are personally benefiting, too. Condon, along with the rest of the company’s estimated 150 full-time employees in the United States, already has received two bonuses related to tax reform this year.
“Passage of the tax reform was important because it provided more money that could be used to grow our business and improve our business,” Williams said. To share in the benefits of that, Williams gave two special bonuses to everybody who’s on the payroll, each time equal to a week’s worth of salary.
In January, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi described those benefits as “crumbs.”
“The bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving workers to kind of put the schmooze on is so pathetic,” she said.
But for workers like Condon, those bonuses are meaningful. Married for 44 years, Condon has a son and a daughter to care for, both with cerebral palsy. Twice a year, the family goes on vacation to Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland. This year, thanks to the bonuses Condon received, he’s able to rent a bigger, nicer house, and able to extend the vacation by a few days.
The American people will decide in November whether or not they want to keep this economic growth going.
The Last To Know
It totally amazes me that the left-wing media believes that it has the right to classified information but does not believe that the American people have that right. One recent example is the FISA application to spy on Carter Page.
The Conservative Treehouse reported yesterday:
In preparation for explosive developments soon to reach critical mass CTH strongly urges everyone to think carefully about these recently discovered empirical truths:
#1) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had the full, unredacted, FISA application on Carter Page since March 17th, 2017. Think carefully about that. Think about what every member of that committee has said since March 17, 2017.
#2) With the leak of the Top Secret FISA application, by James Wolfe to Ali Watkins, Buzzfeed, The Washington Post and New York Times have had the full, unredacted, FISA application in their possession since March 17th, 2017. Again, think carefully about that. Think about all of their reporting since March 17, 2017.
#3) As a direct consequence of #1 and #2 – The media have deliberately, and with specific intent, falsified their reporting and kept the truth hidden which would undermine their false reporting. Again, think very carefully about the ramifications.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has the reputation of being the most ‘deep state’ and leakiest committee in Congress. Their actions in this matter prove that reputation to be true.
The article further notes:
Lest we forget, the IG report on how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation revealed that dozens of FBI officials were actually taking bribes from the media for information:
IG REPORT – We identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters. Attached to this report as Attachments E and F are two link charts that reflect the volume of communications that we identified between FBI employees and media representatives in April/May and October 2016. We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review.
[…] We do not believe the problem is with the FBI’s policy, which we found to be clear and unambiguous. Rather, we concluded that these leaks highlight the need to change what appears to be a cultural attitude among many in the organization. (link to pdf – page Xii of executive summary
I strongly suggest that Peter Strzok is probably not the only person in the FBI who deserves to be fired.
Where The Free Market Helps The Little Guy
Yesterday The American Thinker posted an article about the future of Uber and Lyft in New York City. New York’s socialist mayor, Bill de Blasio, has decided that on Tuesday he will move to limit the number of Ubers and Lyfts in New York. If you have ever tried to get a cab in New York City, this is not good news.
The article concludes with the real purpose of the move to limit Uber and Lyft:
What’s more, the bulletin boards of New York are rife with talk of what this really looks like, which is a bid to raise the value of taxi medallions, which the city profits from, and which well-connected political cronies get their hands on. (Such as President Trump’s now-ex lawyer, Michael Cohen, a medallion owner whose net worth should rise.) New Yorkers know that’s always been a corrupt racket.
Quite an achievement for a socialist champion of the little guy, taking away their taxis in the rain. Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg only went after their salt shakers on their diner tables. This guy goes after their transport. Which shows the rest of us again what happens under socialism.
You’ve got to hope they’ll finally get ‘woke’ and start protesting the heck against him, because obviously de Blasio has dismissed the interests of New York’s ever-stressed working class and has just handed them a s– sandwich.
The people who own the medallions will make money and the people trying to find a way to get to Brooklyn will be out of luck.
Allowing Uber and Lyft to operate freely in New York City would provide needed transportation for people as well as possibly keep cab fares from rising totally out of control. That would be the free market at work.
There Is A Certain Amount Of Irony In This
Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about a statement made by Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor of the Boston Globe editorial page.
The article reports:
We are not the enemy of the people,’’ said Marjorie Pritchard, deputy managing editor of the Boston Globe editorial page.
…The Boston Globe‘s effort calls on participating editorial boards to coordinate criticisms of Trump’s critiques of news media outlets. Approximately 70 publications have committed to the effort so far.
Pritchard described the president’s criticisms of various news media outlets and figures as an undermining of the First Amendment.
Now wait a minute. It seems to me that a coordinated effort by the media to coordinate criticism be the problem–not the solution.
The article also quotes Jim Acosta:
In April 2017, CNN’s Jim Acosta similarly framed Trump’s criticisms of his employer as a subversion of the First Amendment:
As much as people wanna beat up on CNN and go after CNN and “CNN sucks” and that sort of thing, what [Breitbart News] does, I was with Steve Bannon the other day where he referred to us as the opposition party, once again. We’re not the opposition party. We are just trying to get at the truth.
Really. On July 29, Townhall reported:
President Donald J. Trump unloaded today on the mainstream media for contributing to the dilapidated state of trust in America’s institutions and his administration, saying that 90% of the coverage was negative, which has put the lives of many at risk.
…The 90% figure is corroborated by two studies, one taken in 2017 and one taken in 2018, conducted by the Media Research Center which “studied all broadcast evening news coverage of the President from January 1 through April 30, and found 90 percent of the evaluative comments about Trump were negative — precisely the same hostile tone we documented in 2017.”
Somehow I don’t think those numbers indicate that the media is simply trying to get to the truth.
Are You Coming To America To Add To America Or Take From America?
The Washington Examiner posted an article Thursday about new rules from the Department of Homeland Security.
The article reports:
President Trump previewed the issue during a speech in Iowa last year, saying that “those seeking admission into our country must be able to support themselves financially and should not use welfare for a period of at least five years.”
We need to remember that up until 1965, there was no welfare for immigrants (or Americans) to collect. People who came to America came in search of opportunity–not handouts.
The article notes:
The authors of a 2017 study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine believed more immigration to be a good thing — and yet still found that nearly 60 percent of noncitizen, non-naturalized, immigrant-led households used some kind of welfare from 2011-2013. That’s compared to just 42 percent of homes led by native-born citizens.
A 2015 study by the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates restricting immigration, found basically the same thing only looking at data for 2012. The study said that immigrant-led households consumed double the Medicaid and food assistance benefits that native ones did. Overall, 51 percent of immigrant-led homes used “any welfare,” compared to 30 percent for native homes.
There is a school of thought that says that illegal immigrants are prevented from collecting welfare, but that is not true.
The article explains:
Under current law, if immigrants have a baby on U.S. soil, as a default citizen, he’s instantly eligible to bring in welfare for the family. Or, if one immigrant marries a citizen, the wait time for benefits shrinks from five years to three. If the immigrants have any children under 18, they’re all allowed benefits, too.
In addition to that, all refugees and asylees, 13 percent of legal residents, according to the report by the Center for Immigration Studies, are eligible for full benefits.
Aside from being expensive, this is simply not acceptable. We need to go back to a time when churches and community organizations helped families on the local level. These groups knew who was in need and who was freeloading. Now we have a giant bureaucracy administering a program with the knowledge that if less people are on welfare the bureaucrats will lose their jobs. There is no incentive to actually get people off of welfare. That needs to change. New regulations will be the beginning of that change.
When The Accusations Crumble
On Thursday, The Daily Caller posted an article about Mark Coleman, a former MMA fighter who wrestled at Ohio State when Representative Jim Jordan coached there. It seems that Mr. Coleman has changed his mind about whether or not Representative Jordan know about the sexual abuse allegations against a university physician.
The article reports:
“At no time did I ever say or have any direct knowledge that Jim Jordan knew of Dr. Richard Strauss’s inappropriate behavior,” Mark Coleman, a former MMA fighter who wrestled at Ohio State when Jordan coached there, said in a statement.
“I have nothing but respect for Jim Jordan as I have known him for more than 30 years and know him to be of impeccable character.”
Coleman is the first former OSU wrestler to recant his claims that Jordan knew about sexual abuse at the hands of Dr. Richard Strauss, an OSU physician accused of molesting dozens of student-athletes.
I previously wrote about this scandal here. The two noteworthy things about the scandal are the fact that it happened twenty years ago and did not surface until there was talk of Jim Jordan as Speaker of the House and the fact that Perkins, Coie is involved. Perkins, Coie was the law firm that was used to channel funds to Christopher Steele for the dirty dossier.
I wonder how much of the mainstream media will report the fact that this man has changed his story. I also wonder if now that the damage to Jim Jordan’s reputation is done, will the story go away.
But It Sounds So Good
On Wednesday, Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial about the cost of free stuff. Yes, you read that right.
The editorial reports:
In a devastating piece that appeared on the left-of-center web site Vox (to its credit), Manhattan Institute fellow Brian Riedl went through the simple math of what free actually costs. It’s a lot.
It’s not just the free aspect, but the fact that the democratic socialists have made so many promises that must be paid for that will make it so tough to swallow for most voters.
Riedl looked at the 10-year costs of all the various promises made by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other self-described democratic socialists. He was as generous as could be in his estimates, often accepting the democratic socialists’ cost estimate even when it was patently and absurdly too low. It’s quite a laundry-list of promises with enormous costs: “Free college” ($807 billion); Social Security expansion ($188 billion); single-payer health care ($32 trillion); guaranteed jobs at $15 per hour plus benefits ($6.8 trillion); infrastructure ($1 trillion); student loan debt forgiveness ($1.4 trillion).
Net cost: about $42.5 trillion over 10 years, give or take a few hundred billion. To paraphrase the late, great Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen: “A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
I wonder if the young people who support socialism understand how much it costs.
The article reminds us that our spending is already out of control:
As it is, current federal estimates expect about $44 trillion in tax revenues over that same period, with a deficit of roughly $12.4 trillion. Remember: All this democratic socialist spending comes on top of what we’re already spending.
Please consider this when you vote. If you want the government to take less of your money, the only hope you have (although it is a small hope) is to vote Republican.
The Truth Is Slowly Coming Out
The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today about Russian involvement in the 2016 election. I strongly suggest that you follow the link and read the entire article–it is complicated. I will try to provide a few highlights here. The name to watch is Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire. Mr. Deripaska had been banned from entering the U.S. by the State Department. Christopher Steele was asking Bruce Ohr to allow Mr. Deripaska to enter the U.S. The discussion was taking place in emails from February to May (ish) of 2016 (during the time that President Trump won the Republican nomination for President).
The article reports:
In essence, Christopher Steele was interested in getting Oleg Deripaska a new VISA to enter the U.S. Steele was very persistent on this endeavor and was soliciting Bruce Ohr for any assistance. This also sets up a quid-pro-quo probability where the DOJ/FBI agrees to remove travel restrictions on Deripaska in exchange for cooperation on ‘other matters’.
Now we skip ahead a little bit to where Deripaska gained an entry visa, and one of Oleg Deripaska’s lawyers and lobbyists Adam Waldman was representing his interests in the U.S. to politicians and officials. In May of 2018, John Solomon was contacted by Adam Waldman with a story about how the FBI contacted Deripaska for help in their Trump Russia investigation in September of 2016.
Keep in mind, this is Waldman contacting Solomon with a story.
The article continues, naming some of the players:
Again, as you read the recap, remember this is Waldman contacting Solomon. Article Link Here – and my summary below:
♦In 2009 the FBI, then headed by Robert Mueller, requested the assistance of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska in an operation to retrieve former FBI officer and CIA resource Robert Levinson who was captured in Iran two years earlier. The agent assigned to engage Deripaska was Andrew McCabe; the primary FBI need was financing and operational support. Deripaska spent around $25 million and would have succeeded except the U.S. State Department, then headed by Hillary Clinton, backed out.
♦In September of 2016 Andrew McCabe is now Deputy Director of the FBI, when two FBI agents approached Deripaska in New York – again asking for his help. This time the FBI request was for Deripaska to outline Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort as a tool of the Kremlin. Deripaska once hired Manafort as a political adviser and invested money with him in a business venture that went bad. Deripaska sued Manafort, alleging he stole money. However, according to the article, despite Deripaska’s disposition toward Manafort he viewed the request as absurd. He laughed the FBI away, telling them: “You are trying to create something out of nothing.”
The article includes some very telling emails between Adam Waldman and Senator Mark Warner (Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman). Waldman was the liaison Senator Mark Warner (Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman) was using to try and set up a secret meeting with Christopher Steele.
The article continues:
Now, think about this…. Yes, with Oleg Deripaska in the picture there was indeed Russian meddling in the 2016 election; only, it wasn’t the type of meddling currently being sold. The FBI/DOJ were using Russian Deripaska to frame their Russian conspiracy narrative. It is almost a certainty that Deripaska was one of Chris Steeles sources for the dossier.
Now, put yourself in Deripaska’s shoes and think about what happens AFTER candidate Donald Trump surprisingly wins the election.
All of a sudden Deripaska the asset becomes a risk to the corrupt Scheme Team (DOJ/FBI et al); especially as the DOJ/FBI then execute the “insurance policy” effort against Donald Trump…. and eventually enlist Robert Mueller.
It is entirely possible for a Russian to be blackmailing someone, but it ain’t Trump vulnerable to blackmail; it’s the conspiracy crew within the DOJ and FBI. Deripaska now has blackmail material on Comey, McCabe and crew.
After the 2017 (first year) failure of the “insurance policy” it now seems more likely President Trump will outlive the soft coup. In May 2018, Oleg tells Waldman to call John Solomon and tell him the story from a perspective favorable to Deripaska.
The article explains how this conspiracy works:
The Russians, notorious for sewing discord, are being used as a shield from sunlight upon actions taken by U.S. own intelligence officers: James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, John Brennan, James Clapper etc.
There’s a reason why I keep emphasizing the source of the John Solomon story was Adam Waldman. Think about it from the perspective of the conspiracy group reading how Oleg instructed Waldman to present his story.
With Deripaska telling Solomon how the FBI contacted him; the background of their prior collaborative relationship; and the likelihood of Deripaska giving information to Chris Steele for the dossier; the scheme team really, really, needed to double down on the Russian conspiracy narrative in case Oleg ever did testify to congress.
By doubling down on the Russian Collusion narrative the conspirators created a ‘catch-22’ defense. They could/can claim Deripaska was/is giving disinformation in his version of events to support the interests of Russia and sewing chaos in America etc. And any Republican who would give Deripaska a platform to tell what happened in 2016 would be doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin. See how that works?
The soft coup team protects themselves by impugning the motive of Deripaska, and diminishing his credibility under the auspices of Russian disinformation.
Wow. Just wow. Get out the popcorn. Is anyone taking bets as to whether Deripaska will ever appear before the House or Senate committees involved in this mess?
Saving Money For Americans
On August 2, The Political Insider posted an article about the cost of a border wall to control immigration on our southern border. The article noted that the cost of the border wall would be approximately $18 billion. That’s a lot of money, but the article points out how much illegal immigration costs the American taxpayer.
In March 2018, The New York Post reported:
If a wall stopped just 200,000 of those future crossings, Camarota says, it would pay for itself in fiscal savings from welfare, public education, refundable tax credits and other benefits currently given to low-income, illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America.
If a wall stopped 50 percent of those expected crossings, he says, it would save American taxpayers a whopping $64 billion — almost four times the wall’s cost — to say nothing of the additional billions in federal savings from reduced federal drug interdiction and border-security enforcement.
Camarota explains that illegal border-crossers from Mexico and Central America — who account for more than 75 percent of the illegal immigrant population in the US — are overwhelmingly poor, uneducated and lack English language and other skills. In fact, the average Latino illegal immigrant has less than a 10th-grade education. That means if they work, they tend to make low wages; and as a result pay relatively little in taxes while using public services. And if they have children while in the US, they more often than not receive welfare benefits on behalf of those US-born children, who have the same welfare eligibility as any other citizen.
“A large share of the welfare used by immigrant households is received on behalf of their US-born children,” Camarota said. “This is especially true of households headed by illegal immigrants.”
Therefore, illegal border-crossers create an average fiscal burden of more than $72,000 during their lifetimes, Camarota says. Including costs for their US-born children, the fiscal drain jumps to more than $94,000.
So why is Congress blocking the wall? The Democrats are blocking it because they want to change the demographic of the American voter–they feel that flooding the country with people who do not understand the American Constitution will result in Democratic election victories. The Republicans are blocking it because their corporate donors see illegal immigration as a source of cheap labor. It should be noted that the ongoing source of cheap labor keeps all American wages down. That is why many unions are rethinking their support of the Democrat party. Meanwhile, the loser in this discussion is the American taxpayer. There are Republicans who are not owned by corporate donors. These Republicans have voted repeatedly to fund the wall. They have been blocked by fellow congressmen. It is time to review the votes of your congressman. If you want America to be a country with sound immigration policies, don’t vote for a congressman who is not willing to acknowledge that America needs to have secure borders.
The Major Media Did Tell You Part Of The Story
Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about a story that has recently been in the news.The media has been reporting that Siraj Ibn Wahhaj was training children to commit school shootings at a compound in New Mexico. The compound housed eleven hungry children in deplorable conditions.
The article includes the Associated Press report:
The father of a missing Georgia boy was training children at a New Mexico compound to commit school shootings, prosecutors said in court documents obtained Wednesday.
The documents say Siraj Ibn Wahhaj was conducting weapons training with assault rifles at the compound near the Colorado border where 11 hungry children were found in filthy conditions.
The article also includes The Daily Caller report which actually tells the readers what is going on:
The son of a prominent Brooklyn-based imam was training children at a New Mexico compound to commit schools shootings, prosecutors said in court documents released Wednesday.
Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, 39, was training 11 children at a compound north of Taos, New Mexico, according to The Associated Press. Authorities raided the compound Friday and arrested Wahhaj, two of his siblings and two other men during a search for Wahhaj’s son, who had been abducted from Georgia late in 2017.
***
Residents in Amalia, New Mexico, near the Colorado border, had complained for months about the squalid conditions of the makeshift compound before Friday’s raid, according to news reports. Authorities recovered multiple firearms as well as an AR-15.
***
Wahhaj’s father, also named Siraj, is a controversial cleric with close ties to Muslim rights groups like the Islamic Circle of North American, the Muslim American Society and the Center for American Islamic Relations. The elder Wahhaj was also an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case. He was a character witness for Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called “Blind Sheikh.”
I suspect at least some members of the major media have children in school. Shouldn’t they at least be concerned for the safety of their own children? Keeping Americans in ignorance of the threat of Islamic supremacists does not help keep Americans safe.
Why We Need Voter Identification At The Polls
Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about the voting rolls in the 12th District of Ohio. It seems that in that district there are 170 registered voters over the age of 116. It is quite possible that some of those registered have the wrong birth year listed as a result of clerical errors or computer errors, but for the sake of argument, let’s just say half of those voters have the right birth year. That is 85 voters that are not likely currently living. Troy Balderson’s current lead in that election is 1700 votes.
The article reports:
Soros pledged $5 million to fund Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias’s efforts to fight voter ID laws in Ohio and two other states ahead of the 2016 election. Elias would file that suit in Ohio on behalf of several groups, including the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, that would have an employee sentenced to prison for voter fraud.
In 2016, liberal activist groups Demos and the ACLU filed suit against the state of Ohio in an attempt to stop its efforts to remove inaccurate voter registrations from its rolls. Soros gave 1.25 million to Demos in 2016, on top of the more than $3 million he had given in previous years. And Soros has been even more generous with the ACLU, giving over $35 million for Trump related lawsuits.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Ohio’s efforts in a 5-4 decision earlier this year.
The article concludes:
Consider that 170 registered voters listed as being over 116 years old still existed on the rolls of Ohio’s 12th Congressional when GAI accessed the data last August. That’s 10 percent of Balderson’s current margin of victory, pending provisional ballots. And 72 voters over the age of 116 who “live” in Balderson’s district cast ballots in the 2016 election.
But the Left hasn’t given up trying to create conditions favorable for voter fraud in Ohio. As former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has pointed out, “hyper-partisan liberals…have their eyes on Ohio.” Electing a Democrat as the state’s top elections official would undoubtedly roll back the hard-won safeguards Ohio has implemented. And as Blackwell points out, as goes Ohio, so goes the Presidency.
An illegal vote cancels the vote of a legal voter. We need to clean up the voter rolls in all states. I seriously doubt that 72 voters over the age of 116 voted. If they did, I want to know what their lifestyle is because evidently they are on to something!
How America Almost Lost Its Republic
Yesterday John Solomon posted the following at The Hill:
Hundreds of pages of previously unreported emails and memos provide the clearest evidence yet that a research firm, hired by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to find dirt on and defeat Donald Trump, worked early and often with the FBI, a Department of Justice (DOJ) official and the intelligence community during the 2016 presidential election and the early days of Trump’s presidency.
Fusion GPS’s work and its involvement with several FBI officials have been well reported.
But a close review of these new documents shows just how closely Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, who reported to Obama-era Deputy AG Sally Yates, maintained contact with Fusion — and, in particular, its primary source, former British spy Christopher Steele — before, during and after the election.
Yates was fired by President Trump over an unrelated political dispute. Ohr was demoted recently.
Ohr’s own notes, emails and text messages show he communicated extensively with Steele and with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. Those documents have been turned over in recent weeks to investigative bodies in Congress and the DOJ, but not reviewed outside the investigative ranks until now.
They show Ohr had contact with Steele in the days just before the FBI opened its Trump-Russia probe in summer 2016, and then engaged Steele as a “confidential human source” (CHS) assisting in that probe.
They also confirm that Ohr later became a critical conduit of continuing information from Steele after the FBI ended the Brit’s role as an informant.
I suspect you are as tired of hearing about this as I am. It is time to try some people for trying to fix an election. Mueller is investigating the wrong people, but since he is part of the problem, it would be naive to expect him to be part of the solution.
The article concludes:
Most importantly, the new memos make clear that Ohr, a man whose name was barely uttered during the first 18 months of the scandal, may have played a critical role in stitching together a Democratic opposition research project and the top echelons of the FBI and DOJ.
Representatives for the Justice Department and FBI did not return calls Tuesday seeking comment. A message left on the cell phone for Bruce and Nellie Ohr, seeking comment, was not returned.
Please follow the link to read the entire article. It includes screenshots of documents that prove its case.
Good News For American Families
The Washington Examiner posted an article today about changes made to the current federal regulations regarding healthcare insurance.
The article reports:
Last Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced a finalized rule granting consumers greater access to affordable health insurance policies. Under the new rule, people will be allowed to purchase short-term, limited-duration health insurance plans for periods as long as 12 months. Currently, the maximum period allowed is only three months. Plans can be renewed after the 12-month period, but they cannot extend beyond 36 months.
Short-term health insurance plans are significantly cheaper than most Obamacare plans because they don’t include many of the costly essential health benefits mandated under federal law and because they are sold for a limited duration. These plans do not provide comprehensive coverage, but they are an excellent option for people who are relatively healthy but can’t afford to pay for an outrageously priced Obamacare plan.
This means that a family whose insured member is changing jobs or between jobs can get coverage at a reasonable price. The plans cannot extend for more than three years, but hopefully Congress will find its backbone and totally repeal ObamaCare by then.
The article further states that although premiums under ObamaCare have risen drastically, that is not the entire problem:
Premiums are not the most important cost to consider, however, because some people who purchase health plans through an Obamacare exchange receive large subsidies to help offset their plan’s high premiums. A much more important factor is the high cost of deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs. The average family enrolled in a Silver Plan will pay a maximum of $13,725 for out-of-pocket expenses, with Silver Plan deductibles increasing by 13 percent in just the past year alone.
Working families can’t afford to pay more than $13,000 to cover out-of-pocket expenses. In fact, health insurance this expensive is virtually useless.
The high costs associated with an Obamacare plan are a big reason why the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services predicts about 600,000 Americans will sign up for a new short-term health insurance plan next year. By 2022, CMS expects 1.6 million to be enrolled in a short-term plan.
The article concludes:
The healthcare system is failing, and has been for decades. Despite the promises made by former President Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats who passed Obamacare into law, the legislation has only made things worse. Congress needs to pass a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. But since that has yet to occur, the Trump administration is doing everything it can to help young people and working families gain affordable coverage. It’s great to finally have a presidential administration that’s truly committed to reducing health insurance costs rather than appeasing far-left activists in the Democratic Party.
True.
When You Neglect The Obvious
The following is a December 2017 News Release from the U.S.D.A.:
VALLEJO, Calif., December 11, 2017 – The USDA Forest Service today announced that an additional 27 million trees, mostly conifers, died throughout California since November 2016, bringing the total number of trees that have died due to drought and bark beetles to an historic 129 million on 8.9 million acres. The dead trees continue to pose a hazard to people and critical infrastructure, mostly centered in the central and southern Sierra Nevada region of the state.
“The number of dead and dying trees has co ntinued to rise, along with the risks to communities and firefighters if a wildfire breaks out in these areas,” said Randy Moore, Regional Forester of the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Region. “It is apparent from our survey flights this year that California’s trees have not yet recovered from the drought, and remain vulnerable to beetle attacks and increased wildfire threat. The USDA Forest Service will continue to focus on mitigating hazard trees and thinning overly dense forests so they are heal thier and better able to survive stressors like this in the future.”
Moore continued, “To increase the pace and scale of this important work, we need to fix how fire suppression is funded. Last year fire management alone consumed 56 percent of the USDA For est Service’s national budget. As fire suppression costs continue to grow as a percentage of the USDA Forest Service’s budget, funding is shrinking for non- fire programs that protect watersheds and restore forests, making them more resilient to wildfire an d drought.”
Though California received record -breaking rains in the winter of 2016-2017, the effects of five consecutive years of severe drought in California, a dramatic rise in bark beetle infestation and rising temperatures have led to historic levels of tree die-off. The Tree Mortality Task Force (TMTF), with support from the Governor’s office and comprised of more than 80 local, state and federal agencies and private utility companies, continues to remove hazardous dead trees. To date, the TMTF members have collectively felled or removed over 1 million dead trees; this includes over 480,000 dead trees felled or removed by the USDA Forest Service.
The TMTF members are using a triage approach to this tree mortality crisis, first focusing on public safety by removing dead and dying trees in high hazard areas. To further improve forest health, the USDA Forest Service and CAL FIRE have increased their pace and scale of prescribed fire. The USDA Forest Service has treated over 55,000 acres and CAL FIRE has com pleted over 33,000 acres in fuel treatment projects. By combining tree removal with prescribed fire, crews will be able to decrease overly dense stands of trees, reduce greenhouse gases, and protect communities across the state.
“Tree mortality at this magnitude takes on- going cooperation between public, non- profit and private entities,” said Chief Ken Pimlott, CAL FIRE director and California’s state forester. “California’s forests are a critical part of the State’s strategy to address climate change. By working together and using all the resources at our disposal we will be able to make more progress towards our common goal of healthier, more resilient forests that benefit all Californians.”
With record breaking levels of tree die-off, the TMTF has used t his event as an opportunity to collaborate on several fronts: from public workshops about reforestation, public outreach in urban and rural areas, and awarding over $21 million in grants aimed to protect watersheds, remove dead trees and restore our forest s. The TMTF continues to collaborate on the efficient use of resources to protect public safety and build consensus around long -term management strategies for California’s forest lands.
“The Tree Mortality Task force has provided an essential venue for co ordination of response efforts, exchange of ideas, reporting, and accountability for the ongoing statewide response to this incident,” said Supervisor Nathan Magsig of Fresno County. “Leadership from the Governor’s Office, CAL FIRE and Office of Emergency Services has helped to ensure county issues are heard and addressed. Monthly coordination of the 10 most impacted counties has resulted in a more effective use of resources and has allowed counties to share ideas and successes.”
With a staggering 129 mil lion dead trees in the state, the work of the task force is far from over. The strong foundation built will continue to be an advantage as the TMTF continues to address tree mortality and its impacts.
Learn more about tree mortality and the work to restore our forests in California at the USDA Forest Service ‘s web page Our Changing Forests . To learn about how to be prepared and protect your home against wildfire and your trees against bark beetle attacks visit CAL FIRE’s web page Ready for Wildfire.
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Media Notes:
Tree Mortality Website
2017 Tree Mortality Aerial Detection Survey Results
Tree Mortality Combined Map, 2014- 2017
Tree Mortality Progression Map, 2014- 2017
Animated Tree Mortality Progression Map, 2014- 2017
Tree Mortality Project Pictures
CAL FIRE Prescribed Fire Video B -Roll
CAL FIRE Tree Removal Video B-Roll
If you follow the link to the original article, there are multiple links in the Press Release.
Cleaning up the forests is one way to help control forest fires which can begin for a number of reasons. Some are man-made and some are the result of lightning strikes. Even in drought conditions, if the forest has been properly cleared of dead wood and potential fuel, a fire will be much more easily contained. The fires in California are tragic and the loss of property is enormous, but some of this disaster could have been avoided had the State of California cleaned some of the forests during the winter months.
This was an avoidable disaster.
Even People You May Not Agree With Have The Right To Speak
One of the really positive aspects of the Internet is that it allows voters to bypass the mainstream media and find their own news sources. That is a serious threat to the mainstream media and those who control it.
In 2012, the following charts appeared at Business Insider:
I have no reason to believe that things have changed significantly since then.
It is an open secret that Google and Facebook largely support the political left. Google tracks your searches. That is one of many reasons I use ‘DuckDuckGo.com.’
The Gateway Pundit is reporting today:
On Monday Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify banned Infowars and Alex Jones from their platforms in a coordinated attack.
Meanwhile, actual hate groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter freely post on Facebook. This is called censorship. It is happening because the political left is losing control of the dialog and is trying to regain control. Whether or not you support Alex Jones, he has the right to voice his views.
Yesterday The Gateway Pundit reported:
The InfoWars official app surged in popularity Monday evening, and surpassed CNN, following the Orwellian deplatforming of the outlet by multiple tech giants.
The app was already beating the New York Times, ABC, BBC, WSJ, NPR, CNBC, CBS, USA Today, Reuters, Bloomberg, MSNBC, Huffington Post, and the Washington Post before they bounded ahead of CNN on Tuesday evening.
Losing a monopoly is hard. Gaining freedom of the press for the American people through the Internet is wonderful.
Much Ado About Nothing (As Usual)
The let’s-trap-Trump major media is getting old. The memes on Facebook are having a ball with some of the reporting. One meme stated that Trump should come out against the wall so that Democrats would support it. Things have gotten that bad. Last weekend there was a hair-on-fire story that totally illustrated how weird things have become.
Byron York posted an article at The Washington Examiner on Monday about the latest effort by the mainstream media to get Trump. I don’t know how the average voter reacted to the excited reports by the mainstream media, but to an informed voter, the reports were pathetic.
The reporting had to do with a Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump, Jr., and Russian-born American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin; Irakly Kaveladze, a Russian associate of the businessman Aras Agalarov, who was involved in the 2013 Miss Universe pageant with the Trumps; British music promoter Rob Goldstone; Russian-born American translator Anatoli Samochornov; and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya (who gave written answers).
The article reports that:
…the Senate Judiciary Committee… also interviewed Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson, who did not attend the meeting but who met with Veselnitskaya both before and after the meeting and who prepared some of the material that Veselnitskaya presented.
Are you getting the feeling that this was a set up?
Donald Trump, Jr., was lured to the meeting on the premise that Veselnitskaya had incriminating information on Hillary Clinton. When he got there, the meeting was about Russian adoptions.
The article reports:
But when the meeting took place, the “information that would incriminate Hillary” was nowhere to be found. Veselnitskaya, who was connected to the Kremlin and at the same time working with Fusion GPS, spoke briefly and vaguely about some sort of distantly-Clinton-related tax matters in Russia — none of the Americans had any idea what she meant — and then quickly moved to the issue of adoption. When Russians like Veselnitskaya talk about adoption, they’re not really talking about adoption. They’re talking about the Magnitsky Act, the U.S. law placing sanctions on Russia. In retaliation for the Act, Russian President Vladimir Putin cut off American adoptions of Russian children. So from a Russian standpoint, the adoption battle is really about the Magnitsky Act, and the Magnitsky Act is about U.S. sanctions on Russia. Several participants told the Senate Judiciary Committee that much of the meeting was about adoption. Start off with Akhmetshin.
“How did you introduce yourself?” a Senate investigator asked Akhmetshin. “Do you remember?”
Akhmetshin said he told the Trump team: “‘I am Rinat Akhmetshin. I work for this organization in Washington that is trying to restart adoptions.”
Classic bait and switch. But I have one question. Why is the media so upset about Donald Trump, Jr.’s meeting but not upset about the collusion with the Russians by the Clinton campaign involving the Russian dossier? Also, does anyone else think it odd that Glenn Simpson met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya both before and after the meeting. Remember the connection between Fusion GPS and Bruce Ohr. Seems like a bit of a double standard.
Unintended Consequences Are Sometimes Great
In recent years, other than sports cars, most American cars have automatic transmissions. As a result of this, our young people no longer have the joy of stalling out on a hill or revving up the engine at a stop light. But there is also another side effect–cars with stick shifts are less likely to be stolen.
Fox News reported today:
About an hour later they approached another woman in a Kroger parking lot in the city’s Hillsboro neighborhood, grabbed the keys out of her hand, got into her vehicle and were gone in less than 60 seconds.
Not with the car, but on foot. Police said the car had a stick shift and the juveniles didn’t know how to use it, so they gave up.
It’s not an unusual scenario anymore as only about 3 percent of cars are sold with manual transmissions today, according to Edmunds, while a recent U.S. News and World Report study found that less than 18 percent of Americans can drive them.
The Nashville teens didn’t make a clean getaway. Police spotted and arrested them soon after the incident and charged with robbery/carjacking, theft of property, and attempted theft of a vehicle.
All we have to do to stop the younger generation from stealing cars is to buy stick shift cars! We can also use cursive writing as a code since many of our young people can’t read it!
When You Don’t Understand The Problem, You Won’t Find The Right Solution
Breitbart posted a story today about high knife crime rates in Britain.
The article reports:
Trauma surgeons have warned that Britain’s knife crime “epidemic” is putting the National Health Service (NHS) under strain, as figures revealed the number of incidents reached a record high of more than 40,000 last year.
The Daily Telegraph reported the 40,147 knife offences recorded in England and Wales — the highest figure since records began in 2011 — marked a 57 per cent increase from the figure for 2014.
Knife crime has risen for four consecutive years since 2014, when then Home Secretary Theresa May curbed the use of stop and search — a policing tactic officers insist saves lives but which is branded “racist” by campaigns that globalist financier George Soros’s international grantmaking organisation Open Society Foundations has bragged about funding.
…”It’s across our urban centres, not just London. It’s a disease we need to work closely together to try to control as best we can,” said Adam Brooks, a consultant surgeon based in Nottingham, where the audience heard his major trauma centre had treated as many young knife crime victims aged 15-25 in the past five months as it had in the whole of 2017.
Generally speaking, British citizens do not own guns. Generally speaking, British policemen do not carry guns. Because guns are scarce in Britain, criminals have used knives. The problem is obviously not the weapon–it is the criminal intent on committing a crime. Banning guns has not helped to protect citizens, it has simply limited their ability to defend themselves.
It should also be noted that the change in the law had a negative impact on public safety. Calling people ‘racist’ to intimidate them might get results, but the results are not in the best interest of the public.
A Truly Sad Statistic
Yesterday Breitbart posted an article with the following title:
Report: Abortion Accounts for 61% of Black Deaths in America
Regardless of how you feel about abortion, that is a sad and scary statistic.
The article includes the following picture:
Is that really where we want to be?
The article reports:
A report Thursday analyzed research using data from the latest year for which all the pertinent information is available (2009) and found that induced abortion was responsible for 1.152 million deaths, making it the number one cause of death in the U.S. at nearly twice the number of deaths from heart disease (599,413) and cancer (567,628).
While abortion accounted for nearly a third of all U.S. deaths in 2009 (32.1 percent), more troubling still, it made up 61.1 percent of African American deaths, according to the study published in the Open Journal of Preventive Medicine (June 2016).
The ongoing disparity of black deaths through abortion has led one leading black pastor to recently decry the “black genocide” taking place in the United States at the hands of the abortion industry.
We need to remember that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood (the major abortion provider in America) was a supporter of eugenics [defined as the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics)].
At some point, America will wake up to the genocide against minorities that is being carried out by Planned Parenthood. Hopefully by then, the government will have stopped funding them.
From my friends at Power Line Blog:
The Law Of Unintended Consequences At Work
Hot Air posted an article today about the environmental impact of ethanol. Remember that using ethanol (and even increasing the percentage of ethanol in gasoline) was supposed to have a positive impact on the environment. Well, not so fast.
The article reports:
One of the chief claims of the corn lobby is that ethanol is a more “green” type of energy because it’s renewable. From there, the argument is extended to claim that it’s better for the environment all the way around. But the conclusions of a study underlying the latest EPA report on the environmental impact of ethanol (seven years in the making, dating back well into the Obama administration) concludes that the opposite is true. Ethanol produces significant negative impacts on the environment, in some cases worse than the gasoline it’s supposed to be replacing. (Public News Service)
The article explains:
A long-delayed report from the Environmental Protection Agency finds that requiring ethanol made from corn and soybeans to be part of the nation’s gas supply is causing serious environmental harm.
Federal law requires the EPA to assess the environmental impact of the fuel standard every three years, but the new report, issued in July, was four years overdue. According to David DeGennaro with the National Wildlife Federation, the report documents millions of acres of wildlife habitat lost to ethanol crop production, increased nutrient pollution in waterways and air emissions and side effects worse than the gasoline the ethanol is replacing.
“In finding that the Renewable Fuel Standard is having negative consequences to a whole suite of environmental indicators,” DeGennaro said, “the report is a red flag warning us that we need to reconsider the mandate’s scope and its focus on first-generation fuels made from food crops.”
…The bigger surprise is the fact that ethanol production and combustion significantly increases the production of nitrous oxides (Nox). This combines with oxygen in the atmosphere when exposed to sunlight, producing ozone.
The article concludes:
The Renewable Fuel Standard needs to be scaled back (preferably eliminated), not expanded. And if basic considerations of the damage it does to marine equipment and small engines, on top of burning too hot and producing less energy by volume than gas isn’t a good enough reason, perhaps the damage to the environment will convince you.
The corn lobby is not going to like this report. This is what happens when you jump on the environmental bandwagon before you completely understand the consequences of what you are doing.