OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 1:40 PM PT — Tuesday, December 24, 2019
American troops in eastern Syria may be far from home, but they are
still getting to enjoy the spirit of Christmas thanks to U.S. led
coalition forces in Iraq. Soldiers received various gifts via helicopter
this week as part of a project dubbed ‘Operation Holiday Express.’
Gifts, including candies and toiletries, were donated by military
support groups, churches and charity organizations in the U.S. A
military band was even flown in, all the way from Kansas, to play
Christmas songs for service members.
“We’re here in eastern Syria visiting troops at several bases, and
these troops are here to defeat the remnants of ISIS,” stated spokesman
Col. Myles Caggins III. “They’re looking for ISIS sleeper cells and
partnering with commandos in Syria.”
While President Trump has vowed to withdraw most U.S. forces from
Syria, he has also said he’ll leave some troops in the country to
prevent a resurgence by ISIS.
Donald Trump has confessed that he is yet to get a Christmas present for his wife, Melania.
During
a Christmas Eve video conference with American military personnel
stationed overseas, the president was asked what gift he had bought for
the First Lady.
Mr Trump said he was "still working on" on a present, but had picked her "a very beautiful card".
According to the latest data stats from last weekend, Saturday holiday shopping in the U.S. was more than $34.4 billion in sales. That’s the largest single day in the history of U.S. retail sales.
Higher wages, record employment, low inflation, consumer confidence and economic security means more disposable income… boy howdy, these numbers are huge.
Keep in mind U.S. retail sales account for two-thirds of U.S. GDP growth. Wow:
(MSM-Bloomberg) Holiday shopping set records over the weekend, with Super Saturday sales reaching $34.4 billion, the biggest single day in U.S. retail history, according to Customer Growth Partners.
“Paced by the ‘Big Four’ mega-retailers — Walmart, Amazon, Costco and Target — Super Saturday was boosted by the best traffic our team has seen in years,” said Craig Johnson, president of the retail research firm.
Job growth and fatter wallets, along with stronger household finances, have put consumers in a buying mood this season, Johnson said. And more of them are shopping online. As retailers offer improved web platforms, online spending so far this season has accounted for 58% of sales growth from a year earlier, he said.
Super Saturday’s results topped Black Friday’s $31.2 billion in sales by 10%. The next biggest shopping days were Dec. 14, with $28.1 billion, and Cyber Monday, with $19.1 billion. (more)
When investigative reporter Catherine Herridge moved from Fox News to CBS, many were concerned that her great reporting and incisive investigative efforts might be stifled.
Fortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
She’s quickly becoming known for her “highlighter reports” on Twitter. On the IG report she that yes, there were “confidential human sources” who were wired deployed against the Trump team.
In her latest series of tweets, she highlights several parts of the IG report that are problematic for former FBI Director James Comey as well as potentially for others.
Herridge points out how Comey told President Donald Trump the “FBI didn’t know if Steele allegations true,” and “FBI not investigating them.”
But in fact the FBI had been investigating the allegations and they had good reason to know they likely weren’t true by January 2017. So basically, if this is true, James Comey wasn’t telling the truth to the President of the United States.
The IG report states that the FBI knew the story was unverified sometime in January 2017.
On Jan. 6 of that month, then-FBI Director James B. Comey told the president-elect about the pee tape in a Trump Tower meeting.
CNN used that meeting three days later as a news hook to report on the dossier, which it had been unable to verify.
Who was behind the push to include it?
Herridge points to the section about Andrew McCabe asking that the dossier be included in their January 2017 ICA on Russia. Why? Because Barack Obama asked for “everything relevant” to be included. Again McCabe tried to argue for its inclusion despite it being unverified, the unreliability and the fact they had reason by then to doubt it.
The FBI may have shared this salacious and debunked report with a foreign government.
So they may have smeared the President of the United States to another government with false information, thus undercutting him in the world’s eyes, while at the same time not telling him the truth? And isn’t that leaking classified information? But Strzok “doesn’t recall?” Is he kidding? How many people did they share it with? Seems that’s something one should remember and/or have notes about.
What happened to the info on Clinton?
It sounds like it was more the FBI that was pushing the inclusion, with the compromise being including it in the appendix.
But as Herridge indicated in a prior report, Durham wanted to talk to former CIA Director John Brennan and former DNI James Clapper, apparently at least over issues surrounding the start of the probe. Durham has made it clear that he believes that it started prior to July 2016. And as we reported a few days ago, Durham is looking to get getting information from Brennan, according to the New York Times.
John H. Durham, the United States attorney leading the investigation, has requested Mr. Brennan’s emails, call logs and other documents from the C.I.A., according to a person briefed on his inquiry. He wants to learn what Mr. Brennan told other officials, including the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, about his and the C.I.A.’s views of a notorious dossier of assertions about Russia and Trump associates. …
Mr. Durham is also examining whether Mr. Brennan privately contradicted his public comments, including May 2017 testimony to Congress, about both the dossier and about any debate among the intelligence agencies over their conclusions on Russia’s interference, the people said.
OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 11:23 AM PT — Tuesday, December 24, 2019
More than a dozen people are dead following an attack on an Afghan
military checkpoint. Reports said Taliban militants ambushed a
checkpoint in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, which resulted in the
deaths of at least seven soldiers. The attack also left six security
forces wounded.
“As a result of this attack, seven Afghan Army soldiers died and
three others were wounded,” Afghan Defense Ministry officials said in a
statement. “Meanwhile, in this attack, three National Directorate of
Security (NDS) staff were also injured.”
Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, has officially
claimed responsibility for the attack. He said the insurgents captured
four Afghan troops.
This ambush came a day after an American soldier was killed in the
country. The Taliban took credit for the attack, which occurred during a
NATO-led combat mission in the northern Kunduz Province.
These recent killings may put strain on peace talks between the U.S.
and the Taliban. Pentagon officials said this isn’t the first time a
situation like this has conflicted with negotiations. They added it’s
“as far from good faith as you can get.”
Talks were restarted earlier this month. President Trump ended
conversations in September following a separate attack, which killed a
U.S. solider and 11 others.
As Brandon Morse wrote last Thursday, 2020 presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) defended her “present” vote on the articles of impeachment by stating that impeachment “should never come about as a culmination of a highly partisan process.”
She also told The Hill that using impeachment was a political tool was something the founding fathers warned against:
“This is something that our founding fathers warned us about,” Gabbard said.
“Making this statement, voting ‘present,’ taking a stand for the center. Standing for our democracy and really that this decision of whether to remove Donald Trump or not must be in the hands of voters,” she added. “I believe that they will make that decision.”
She later posted a video to her social media accounts, explaining her decision a little more detail, asserting both major political parties were trying to do “maximum damage to each other” for “a win”, and that it was destroying America:
My ‘present’ vote was an active protest against the zero-sum game the two opposing political sides have trapped America in. My vote and campaign is about freeing our country from this damaging mindset so we can work side-by-side to usher in a bright future for all #StandWithTulsipic.twitter.com/nmhEL5bi4Q
Gabbard’s explainers on why she decided to vote “present” were not good enough for “journalist” and prominent TDS sufferer Soledad O’Brien, who took to the Twitter machine to call Gabbard, an Iraq war veteran, an “American Coward”:
In addition to retweeting people who agreed with her about Gabbard, O’Brien doubled and tripled down on her description of the Hawaii congresswoman as a “coward”:
Twitter users let O’Brien have it:
Yours truly also weighed in:
The other war veteran she called a “coward” earlier this year was decorated war hero General James Mattis for, as Bonchie noted at the time, “refus[ing] to break his personal rule of verbally bashing presidents still in power” in his memoir.
To be sure, military veterans are not off limits from criticism if they say things others disagree with, but calling someone you disagree with who volunteered to serve in harm’s way a “coward” is not exactly what I would call a smart way of trying to prove your point.
In fact, if you haven’t volunteered to serve yourself – as is the case with O’Brien – it’s an extraordinarily stupid tactic. Then again, you shouldn’t expect too much from a partisan shill who couldn’t even cut it on a Democrat-friendly news network like CNN.
Remember when Leftists told us we couldn't say anything about that seditious
fatass Vindman or PTSD mental case McCain because they were veterans?
OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 10:53 AM PT — Tuesday, December 24, 2019
A California veteran defended his life and protected his coworker
after being robbed at gunpoint. Earlier this week at a convenience store
in Bay Point, store clerk and veteran Mark Kasprowicz allegedly shot
and killed an armed robber who attacked him.
Surveillance footage showed the robber hop over the counter,
pistol-whip Kasprowicz in the head and take the money from the register.
Kasprowicz pulled out a gun from a nearby drawer.
The robber hit him excessively before taking off towards the door.
The veteran then fired at and hit the suspect, who later died from the
gunshot wound outside of the store.
“He pistol-whipped Mark and tried to
get the money out. Mark actually took out the gun and shot at him. I’m
so glad he’s okay, he’s a good employee.” – Kamal Sandhu, Kam’s Market Owner
Kasprowicz said he acted on impulse to save himself and his
coworker’s life. The Air Force veteran was treated for cuts on his head,
but said he is thankful to be alive and ready to get back to work.
Officials said a second robber fled the scene and is still on the run.
It was all calculated political theater, and almost certainly a play that will turn sour for her party while misfire after misfire confuses her base, incenses Republicans, and alienates the rest of us.
From San Francisco to Amherst, hungover activists greeted Thursday’s mid-afternoon sun, rolling out of their waterbeds in the warm belief that Donald J. Trump was no longer president of the United States.
Of course, he is still the president. Indeed, he might not even have been constitutionally impeached yet. That’s because every chapter of this story, from accusations to investigations, charges to impeachment, has been pure political theater.
“Very sadly now… I solemnly and sadly open the debate on the impeachment,” Pelosi announced before Wednesday’s vote. “He gave us no choice,” she concluded.
“A Somber Pelosi Wields Her Impeachment Power In ‘Sadness’ — And With Ferocity,” one CNN headline reads. Dozens more papers across the country followed the speaker’s direction, although at least two of her colleagues missed the message, dancing down the halls and smiling all the way.
All these tears, we know, were the culmination of years of a deep-dive investigation of how voters would react if Democrats gave it a try.
“Throughout the 2018 midterm campaign,” New York magazine reports, “the operatives in charge of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) included a question about support for impeachment in the private national poll they ran every month to inform their strategy.”
Democrat after Democrat decided he’d have a better chance at re-election (and avoiding a primary from his left) if they went for it. It was, they claimed, their duty to the Founding Fathers. They, the politicians assured, were just like the men who fought and died in the Battle of the Bulge.
It’s a strange thing to invoke the country’s founding and claim America’s honored dead while thinking instead about the next election. It’s stranger still to pretend you’re consulting the heavens when really you’re just getting updates from your pollsters.
“When we’re dancing with the angels, the question will be asked: In 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?” Pelosi quoted the late Elijah Cummings. “We did all we could, Elijah. We passed two articles of impeachment. The president is impeached.”
But Elijah was a Democrat from Baltimore, not an Old Testament prophet, and it turns out the House might not have even impeached the president at all.
At a press conference just a day after saving American democracy and sealing her place in heaven, Pelosi said she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Oh, and that she doesn’t know if or when she’ll be sending the House vote up to the Senate. This poses a problem for those left-wing activists who at least hoped the president would get an “impeached” asterisk on his Wikipedia page.
“If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president,” Harvard prat Noah Feldman wrote in a Thursday Bloomberg op-ed. “If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.”
Feldman might sound familiar because he was one of the Democrats’ own witnesses, called before Jerry Nadler’s committee to tell them all how historic and constitutional they all are. He is also known to call for the president’s impeachment with a dramatic waft of self-importance every few months(including once for saying President Barack Obama spied on his campaign).
This whole process problem would be very awkward, except Pelosi was never actually on any mission from God or for the republic. It was all calculated political theater, and almost certainly a play that will turn sour for her party while misfire after misfire confuses her base, incenses Republicans, and alienates the rest of us.
“I have a spring in my step,” she told reporters after the impeachment vote, “because of the moral courage of our caucus.”
The official parts of the impeachment began with an investigation that excluded the minority and the accused from all important aspects of the process. From there, we were treated to charges that slid and shifted from high crimes and misdemeanors down to the dubious, gaseous claims of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power. With the final act a delay or refusal to send the vote for Senate trial, it is safe to say that every aspect of Democrats’ impeachment has failed to meet even the standards of justice set by previous presidential impeachments.
The day after the vote, a Washington news outlet asked her about criticism of her decision to not hold the articles of impeachment in the House.
“Oh pfft,” the speaker replied, “waving her hand dismissively.”
As that rail and subway strike continued to paralyze travel in Paris
and across France into the third week, President Emmanuel Macron made a
Christmas appeal to his dissatisfied countrymen:
"Strike
action is justifiable and protected by the constitution, but I think
there are moments in a nation's life when it is good to observe a truce
out of respect for families and family life."
Macron's appeal has gone largely unheeded.
"The
public be damned!" seems to be the attitude of many of the workers who
are tying up transit to protest Macron's plan to reform a pension system
that consumes 14% of GDP.
Macron wants to raise to 64 the age of
eligibility for full retirement benefits. Not terribly high. And to set
an example, he is surrendering his lifetime pension that is to begin
when he becomes an ex-president.
Yet, it is worth looking more
closely at France because she appears to be at a place where the rest of
Europe and America are headed.
In France, the government collects 46% of the GDP in taxes and spends 56% of GDP, the highest figures in the Western world.
And
Paris appears to be bumping up against the limits of what democratic
voters will tolerate in higher taxes, or reductions in benefits, from
the postwar welfare states the West has created.
A year ago, when
Macron sought to raise fuel taxes to cut carbon emissions, the "yellow
vests" came out in protests that degenerated into rioting, looting,
arson, desecration of monuments and attacks on police.
Paris capitulated and canceled the tax.
How do we compare?
The
U.S. national debt is now larger than the GDP. Only in 1946, the year
after World War II, was U.S. debt a larger share of GDP than today.
In
2019, the U.S. ran a deficit just shy of $1 trillion, and the U.S.
government projects trillion-dollar deficits through the decade, which
begins next week. And we will be running these deficits not to stimulate
an economy in recession, as President Obama did, but to pile them on
top of an economy at full employment.
In short, we are beginning
to run historic deficits in a time of prosperity. Whatever the economic
theory behind this, it bears no resemblance to the limited
government-balanced budget philosophy of the party of Ronald Reagan.
The
questions the U.S. will inevitably face are the ones France faces: At
what point does government consumption of the national wealth become too
great a burden for the private sector to bear? At what point must cuts
be made in government spending that will be seen by the people, as they
are seen in France today, as intolerable?
While a Republican
Congress ran surpluses in the 1990s, when defense spending fell
following our Cold War victory, Dwight Eisenhower was the last
Republican president to run surpluses.
Opposition to new or higher taxes appears to be the one
piece of ground today on which Republicans will not yield. But if so,
where are the cuts going to come from that will be virtually mandated if
U.S. debt is not to grow beyond any sustainable level?
America's long-term problem:
Deficits are projected to run regularly in the coming decade at nearly 5% of GDP while economic growth has fallen back to 2%.
With taxes off the table, where, when and how do we cut spending?
Or does each new administration kick the can down the road?
The five principal items in the federal budget are these:
Social
Security, which consumes 25% of that budget. Yet, Social Security
outlays will reach the point this year where payroll taxes no longer
cover them. The "trust fund" will have to be raided. Translation: The
feds will have to borrow money to cover the Social Security deficit.
Medicare,
Medicaid, Obamacare, and other health programs account for another
fourth of the budget. All will need more money to stay solvent.
Defense, which used to take 9% of GDP in JFK's time and 6% in Ronald Reagan's buildup, is now down to 3.2% of GDP.
Yet,
while defense's share of GDP is among the smallest since before World
War II, U.S. commitments are as great as they were during the Cold War.
We are now defending 28 NATO nations, containing Russia, and maintaining
strategic parity. We have commitments in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and
the global war on terror. We defend South Korea and Japan from a
nuclear-armed North Korea and China.
Yet another major item in the budget is interest on the debt.
And
as that U.S. debt surges with all the new deficits this decade, and
interest rates inevitably begin to rise, interest on the debt will rise
both in real terms and as a share of the budget.
The House of Representatives has voted Articles of Impeachment against President Trump and then refused to do anything else. Nothing. In a way the use of the US Constitution as a prop to try to gain transitory electoral advantage is pretty much a page out of the American left’s playbook.
Why she’s mewling about a fair trial an other obvious bullsh**, what Pelosi is really dealing with is trying to de-stick herself from this tarbaby. No matter how popular impeachment is at The Bulwark and The Dispatch and San Francisco, the issue is a total dog in key states the Democrats must win in order to defeat Donald Trump. The charges against him are certifiably bizarre. The way the impeachment inquiry was conducted would have made Roland Freisler green with envy. If the charges are summarily dismissed…or worse yet, the House “impeachment managers” are forced to present the dog’s breakfast of a case to the American people in the face of an actual defense, the Democrats are going to suffer significant political damage.
Pelosi’s only way out of this is to try to convince the public that her interjecting herself into the affairs of the Senate is appropriate, and, failing that, that there is nothing unusual about Pelosi holding onto the Articles of Impeachment.
This is where Michigan Democrat Debbie Dingell comes in. If you’ve never heard of her before this week,there is a good reason. She’s a mediocrity who won an House seat because her husband, dead Democrat John Dingell, was able to see to her succeeding him when he had to retire.
She was on Fox News Sunday, telling a huge lie and trying to gaslight you into believing that there is absolutely nothing amiss with the House Speaker sitting on Articles of Impeachment.
Chris Wallace: All right. Why is Speaker Pelosi delaying in sending the articles of impeachment over to the Senate and how long is she willing and prepared to wait?
Debbie Dingell: So, I don’t know what the timeframe will be, but I would like to remind people that when President Clinton was impeached, he was impeached on December 19th and the managers were not appointed until January 6th. The Congress doesn’t return until January 6th and was kind of referred to by Marc Short earlier. There were two resolutions at that time. One was a resolution to proceed that was passed by 100 to 0 and then there was a second resolution about who the witnesses would be.
This is a lie. The House passed Articles of Impeachment by about noon on Saturday, December 19, 1998. By 3 p.m. that same day the House had appointed impeachment managers and forwarded the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. This is from CNN on Saturday, December 19, 1998:
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, December 19) — A deeply divided House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton Saturday on charges of lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice in the Monica Lewinsky affair. The two allegations of “high crimes and misdemeanors” next go to the Senate for trial.
Enough Republicans broke ranks to defeat the two other articles of impeachment recommended one week ago by the House Judiciary Committee. Those accused Clinton of committing perjury in his deposition in the Paula Jones case and abusing his power in his efforts to cover up his sexual relationship with Lewinsky, a former White House intern.
Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, who will prosecute the case in the Senate, delivered the impeachment articles to the Secretary of the Senate at 3 p.m. ET. The trial is expected to get underway in mid-January after the 106th Congress takes office.
There was a subsequent reappointment of impeachment managers as a new House was sworn in before the Senate took up the trial and the resolution passed by the previous House had expired with it. That is not the case here.
Here’s the thing. Dingell either knew she lied on television or she’s a moron. I’m open to either scenario but I tend to believe she’s just a liar. Chris Wallace just let the lie go. I say let it go because there is nothing in his history that leads me to believe he did not know the history of the Clinton impeachment and didn’t prep for the inevitable comparisons. What is shows is that the Democrats and their minions realize what a mess this is and are trying their damnedest to find a way out of it for Pelosi. And to find that way out they will tell brazen lies because they actually think you are that stupid.
The New York Times has a curious article posited today surrounding U.S. Attorney John Durham who is doing the deep investigation into DOJ, FBI, CIA and intelligence community political espionage in the 2016 election and early Trump presidency.
CTH readers are very familiar with the granular details of what’s commonly referred to as “spygate”; the unofficial weaponization of the intelligence apparatus against candidate Donald Trump, president-elect Trump, and later President Trump.
The Times posts their article about Durham’s investigation against the backdrop of the completed inspector general report on DOJ/FBI misconduct in their FISA exploits.
While the majority of the narrative engineering is oddly irrelevant; and it doesn’t take a long review to notice the Times scribes have a motive to frame Durham’s eventual outcome as adverse to their own political interests; there is one particular paragraph that seems exceptionally curious:
[…] The inspector general’s report makes no substantive reference to Mr. Durham’s investigation. But before the report’s release, Mr. Durham got into a sharp dispute with Mr. Horowitz’s team over a footnote in a draft of the report that seemed to imply that Mr. Durham agreed with all of Mr. Horowitz’s conclusions, which he did not, according to people familiar with the matter. The footnote did not appear in the final version of the report. (link)
How would the New York Times know?
Notice the citation: “according to people familiar with the matter”, that is an overly disingenuous attribution considering such a strong declarative accusation.
Something sketchy is afoot.
First, taking the declaration at face value, and ignoring the conflict the narrative engineers appear intent to create, if there is any truth to that statement – the Times is implying IG Michael Horowitz attempted to put words in the mouth of a U.S. attorney?
There’s something between the lines going on here; and if the New York Times is the tip-of-the-defensive-spear… well, that something is likely troublesome for the Coup Crew.
Article by Christopher Skeet in "The American Thinker":
In
the poker world, going "on tilt" means a player has just lost a
significant hand, or the past several hands, and is now making reckless,
overly aggressive moves to compensate for his losses. Other skilled
players immediately recognize the "on tilt" player, especially if his
body language gives him away. They in turn exploit his frustration by
"leaning" on him (i.e. betting in a manner that psychologically
disorients him), which in turn can cause him to play even more
irrationally if he is unable to get his emotions under control.
This week, the mainstream media went on full tilt.
Their
big bet was the Mueller investigation. That was supposed to be the
easy payoff. But they lost half their chips when Mueller nailed his
live audition before Congress for the lead role in Forrest Gump 2: Senility Is As Senility Does.
So, they doubled down on Ukraine and impeachment. But to their
befuddlement, not only has President Trump survived impeachment, he has
risen from its wreckage stronger, with better poll numbers among
independents in swing states, and with a House defection to the
Republicans.
Now,
the media is one bad bet away from flipping over the poker table. It's
lashing out, going all-in on trying to wrench a straight flush out of
whatever seven-two unsuited garbage its dealt. They're in full tantrum
mode, and they aren't even trying to hide it. In desperation, they're
turning again to their one overused and transparent bluff: racism!
Enter
the paint-by-numbers expose of the week. Three military cadets were
caught on camera making an "OK" symbol with their hands during their
West Point graduation ceremony.
Now,
I've never been partial to the "OK" symbol to signify my contentment
with the situation at hand. I'm more of a thumbs-up guy, often
accompanying it with wink of the eye and a tsk out the side of
my mouth to denote my pathetic sense of edginess. But I don't hold
anything against the "OK" sign, and I've never known it to mean anything
other than...well...OK.
Apparently,
this is not the case. Plumbing the depths of the Internet sewers in a
manner for which most conservatives have neither the time nor
inclination, organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and National Public Radio
have decreed the "OK" sign to be a symbol of white supremacy. I find
this amusing, because one would think virulent racists like us
conservatives would know all about what our supposed symbols are, rather
than having to be told what they are by our enlightened betters. To
date, I haven't met a single conservative (or liberal, for that matter)
who thinks the "OK" sign is a racist signal or was even aware that it
was being used in this manner by white supremacists. It's telling that
the SPLC and NPR know much more about racist symbolism than do those
they allege to be racists.
Be
that as it may, the West Point grads were immediately investigated by
their superiors. It was concluded that they were engaged in something
called the Circle Game,
in which the "OK" symbol is utilized. Player A makes the "OK" symbol
and holds it below waist level and tries to get Player B to look at it.
If Player B looks at it, Player A punches him in the arm. Asinine, to
be sure, but hardly equivalent to donning the hoods and cruising town in
a rusty pickup truck for a good ol' fashun lynchin'.
But
the media, being on full tilt as it is, had no time to wait for
anything so bourgeois as an investigation to conclude. Switching gears
into Covington mode, the Intelligencer categorized their actions as a hate crime and in the same paragraph with the El Paso shooter. Pulitzer-winning journalist David Cay demanded expulsion. Media figures from MSNBC, Huffington Post, and USA Today immediately reported that the cadets had displayed white power symbols. State Representative Mandy Powers Norrell (D-SC) jumped on the pile for good measure.
Predictably,
once the cadets were cleared of any racist intent, the talking heads
shut up. The Twitter feeds went silent or were erased. Jussie Smollett
once again felt safe meandering the streets of Chicago past midnight in
subzero weather, cautiously optimistic he wouldn't stumble upon any
noose-wielding West Point grads. As for the cadets themselves, I doubt
they're holding their collective breath waiting for any sort of apology
or admittance of a rush to judgment by the metaphorical lynch mob.
To
put things in a different perspective, consider the media's treatment
of another West Point grad, Spenser Rapone. You may remember him being
discharged from the U.S. Army for posting a picture of himself at his
graduation holding a sign saying, "Communism will win." In another
picture, he opens his military coat to reveal a Che Guevara t-shirt
underneath.
These
were not misunderstandings. These were not ambiguous symbols that
could hold multiple meanings. These were unabashed declarations of
support for a brutal totalitarianism that has held the United States of
America as its greatest enemy since its inception. Oh, and it's
directly responsible for the murder of roughly 100 million people
worldwide over the last century.
You
wouldn't know that from the media's treatment of the incident, which
was treated (if at all) in either matter-of-fact terms or in a manner
sympathetic to Rapone rather than the victims of his professed
ideology. The same USA Today which was so quick to demonize the Circle Game cadets wrote of Rapone in glowing terms
as an "idealistic" soldier who wanted to "change things from inside,"
and printed his call to "all soldiers who have a conscience" to desert
the military and join his revolution.
The
media's willingness to cover for an anti-American communist while
attempting to burn three patriots playing a locker room game is par for
the course. The same media that cheerlead for convicted traitors Bowe
Bergdahl and Bradley Manning, spent the last month demonizing Navy SEAL
Eddie Gallagher (whose "crime" was to pose for a picture with a dead
ISIS fighter, an action that would prompt most people not to clamor for
prison time, but to text "Send me a copy"). They praise Lt. Col.
"Flounder" Vindman for breaking his oath while burning Gen. Michael
Flynn for upholding his.
So,
don't expect the media to self-correct anytime soon, but rather exploit
it to their detriment. A good poker player who finds himself digging a
hole will not only have the emotional maturity to catch himself from
digging a deeper hole but will (gasp) actually learn something
from his mistakes in order to improve his game. But this requires a
sense of humility that our media simply does not possess. They're on
full tilt right now, and we should lean on them until election day.
Their behavior accelerates the erosion of their undeserved credibility
and could help swing the balance come November.
Article by Howard Sachs in "The American Thinker":
One
of the very many reasons I would never vote Left (Democrat) is because
of the child-like view of the world embraced by those with this
ideology. Children, or adults with childish notions, running the world
are a recipe for disaster. Would any adult with his head even modestly
screwed on really want to have a world run by the likes of this
disturbed teenager, Greta — the leftist Time Magazine's person of the
year?
This
is particularly true in the economic part of our world — a world that
deeply impacts each of our lives, every day of the year. This
childishness begins with their utterly naïve belief that government
workers and politicians are basically competent, kind, and
compassionate, hence deserving great power over each of us. It sweeps
across their foolish and destructive open borders policies, their
twisted view that American history does not live up to a utopian view of
life, the preposterous notion that a boy or girl in the womb is not a
living human being, their cosmically foolish calls to end fossil fuel
use, and their suicidal notion that disarming the good guy will help
smite evil.
This is why the normative Left calls for giving the vote to our clueless 15- and 16-year-olds like Greta. They see these young tabula rasa
kids as not very different from their 50-year-old unwise selves. They
are children in their views of every topic, particularly regarding
creating wealth, money, investments, and business. "Soak the rich,"
they say. "Free stuff for the masses." "Down with disgusting
capitalism and profit." "Redistribute income" (never distributed in the
first place). It's why, frighteningly, a large percent of Americans
now embrace socialism or communism.
The
Left's takeover of our schools and media has brainwashed a whole
generation. We've got millions of befuddled biological adults walking
about with the minds of kids, cheering on the likes of foolish teen
Greta, who should be at home practicing for her soccer meet or piano
recital. Give any of these kinderlings or their kind the reins of adult
power, and what you get is an utter economic and societal
wreckage. You get the squalor, poverty, and degradation of the
socialism of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, and now
Venezuela. You do get nice slogans and cool tee-shirts emblazoned with
"Health Care Is a Human Right" and "Medicare for All," but such things
won't put food, let alone an MRI scanner or anti-cancer drug, on the
table.
People
embracing this childish world of the Left will come into my medical
office and complain passionately about a $750 bill for an MRI
scan. They typically see it as dripping with greed, inequality,
privilege — all the woke tropes. They resonate with our first hardcore
leftist president, Mr. Obama, who denigrated our noble field of medicine
by telling the world the lie that doctors regularly do unnecessary
surgeries to fund fancy homes and ski vacations.
But,
like children, these men and women of the Left haven't a clue about
what goes into creating all the goods and services that soften and
dignify their lives. They are clueless about the hundreds of factors
that go into that MRI cost or the cost of almost anything. That's the
definition of leftism, a puerile ideology where, as the great Dr. Tom
Sowell always states, "a man never asks at what cost." They, like their
ideological kindergarten mates, think $749 of the $750 charge goes into
my pocket rather than the real adult reality of the $5–10 that actually
makes it there. Hundreds if not thousands of skilled people are
involved in producing that scan and that $750 bill. Beyond the doctor
who has spent 12 years after high school training to diagnose illness on
an MRI study; it's the multitude of engineers building and maintaining
the $1.5-million machine; the chemists producing the liquid nitrogen
cooling the magnet; the miners retrieving the copper to form the magnet;
the construction guy and architect creating the complex room to support
the machine and its high magnetic field; the technologist who uses
hundreds of computer and technical parameters to create an interpretable
image of the patient; the realtor and builder who provide the rental
space; the drug company scientists and owners who spend hundreds of
millions developing the solutions injected into the patient for his
scan; the insurance agents; the dozen administrators scheduling,
documenting, and complying with massive number of government
regulations; and on and on.
In
fact, this week, after decades of helping run my medical business, I
finally understood an important economic-business concept of
depreciation — another serious and important adult- level item that goes
into the cost of any thing we consume or service we receive. Goods and
services need capital input to be created and maintained. Someone has
to buy the $1.5-million MRI scanner before a single patient is
scanned. That money does not come from some government fantasy money
tree. It comes from ordinary American businesspeople like me and you
reaching into our pockets and writing the check. Then that vital piece
of capital, the scanner, has a shelf life. After maybe seven years, it
needs to be junked, and another $1.5 million is needed to continue the
business. Hence, the cost each year for that capital input is
about $22,000. That is depreciation. It is, by the way, only a
fraction of the service contract each year of over $100,000. Hence,
before a dime of profit from the farmer can be put in his pocket, all
the typical costs of business, including the important one of
depreciation, must be accounted for, must be subtracted from the gross
intake of money per year.
The
more I think about it, the more the $750 for the MRI feels like a
bargain — but not to our friends on the Left. It is raw greed and
injustice, that $750 bill. Obama would tell us it's for our multiple
BMWs. In the Disney World view of life of the Left, such things should
be free — given to each man from the pretend government money tree
because everyone has a "right to health care." And if not free, some
Princeton grad in gender studies working for the government should be
able to announce that a socially just price for an MRI scan should be,
what, $50? $73?
Children
like this can talk about price all they want. The adult world, the
anti-Leftist world, recognizes the fact that things cost money and that
most of those costs are hidden from or not apparent to the
consumer. Adults, versus Leftists, recognize that things cost money;
good and important things cost lots of money, and a man must pay for
them. They also understand that it is capitalism, not government, that
best can bring us such things in abundance and excellence and at the
lowest cost. That is because with capitalism there are true costs
accounted for, true vibrant competition, the energizing effects of the
profit motive, and true free choice by the producer and consumer to
exchange money for services and goods.
Demanding
that government step in and give us "free stuff" is clinging to a
childish vision of life. It is always a guaranteed recipe for waste,
high costs, rationing, and low quality. So yes, indeed, Bernie and
Elizabeth and Mayor Pete, I say, grow up; get a job; run a donut shop;
pay some light bills and employee salaries and some depreciation and
service contracts before you leap on that stage and spout your foolish,
utterly childish notions about all this free stuff you kind,
compassionate woke folks of government are going to give us. It's just a
Disney fantasy, and most American adults still have the sense to change
the channel. They changed that channel in 2016 and hopefully will do
it again in 2020.
Joe diGenova radio interview discussing his perspective on revelations that former NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers has been working with U.S. Attorney John Durham:
BACKGROUND – With research files on the ’15, ’16 and ’17 political surveillance program; including information from the Mueller report and information from the IG Horowitz report; in combination with the Obama-era DOJ “secret research project” (their words, not mine); we are able to overlay the Obama-era domestic IC operations and gain a full understanding of how political surveillance was conducted over a period of approximately four to six years.
Working with a timeline, but also referencing origination material in 2015/2016 – CTH hopes to show how the program(s) interacted and operated. A full review explains an evolution from The IRS Files in 2010 to the FISA Files in 2016.
More importantly, the assembly of government reports and public records now indicates a political exploitation of the NSA database, for weaponized intelligence surveillance of politicians, began mid 2012.
The FISA-702 database extraction process, and utilization of the protections within the smaller intelligence community, became the primary process. We start by reviewing the established record from the 99-page FISC opinionrendered by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on April 26th, 2017; and explain the details within the FISC opinion.
I would strongly urge everyone to read the FISC report (full pdf below) because Judge Collyer outlines how the DOJ, which includes the FBI, had an “institutional lack of candor” in responses to the FISA court. In essence, the Obama administration was continually lying to the court about their activity, and the rate of fourth amendment violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons’ private information for multiple years.
Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology Judge Collyer’s brief and ruling is not an easy read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA processes outlined. The complexity also helps the media avoid discussing, and as a result most Americans have no idea the scale and scope of the issues. So we’ll try to break down the language.
For the sake of brevity and common understanding CTH will highlight the most pertinent segments showing just how systemic and troublesome the unlawful electronic surveillance was.
Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) “About” queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.
The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.
While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option, and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016 (keep these dates in mind).
Here are some significant segments:
The key takeaway from these first paragraphs is how the search query results were exported from the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were conducting searches and then removing, or ‘exporting’, the results. Later on, the FBI said all of the exported material was deleted.
Searching the highly classified NSA database is essentially a function of filling out search boxes to identify the user-initiated search parameter and get a return on the search result.
FISA-702(16) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (“702”); and the “16” is a check box to initiate a search based on “To and From“. Example, if you put in a date and a phone number and check “16” as the search parameter the user will get the returns on everything “To and From” that identified phone number for the specific date. Calls, texts, contacts etc. Including results for the inbound and outbound contacts.
FISA-702(17) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (702); and the “17” is a check box to initiate a search based on everything “About” the search qualifier. Example, if you put a date and a phone number and check “17” as the search parameter the user will get the returns of everything about that phone. Calls, texts, contacts, geolocation (or gps results), account information, user, service provider etc. As a result, 702(17) can actually be used to locate where the phone (and user) was located on a specific date or sequentially over a specific period of time which is simply a matter of changing the date parameters.
And that’s just from a phone number.
Search an ip address “about” and read all data into that server; put in an email address and gain everything about that account. Or use the electronic address of a GPS enabled vehicle (about) and you can withdraw more electronic data and monitor in real time. Search a credit card number and get everything about the account including what was purchased, where, when, etc. Search a bank account number, get everything about transactions and electronic records etc. Just about anything and everything can be electronically searched; everything has an electronic ‘identifier’.
The search parameter is only limited by the originating field filled out. Names, places, numbers, addresses, etc. By using the “About” parameter there may be thousands or millions of returns. Imagine if you put “@realdonaldtrump” into the search parameter? You could extract all following accounts who interacted on Twitter, or Facebook etc. You are only limited by your imagination and the scale of the electronic connectivity.
As you can see below, on March 9th, 2016, internal auditors noted the FBI was sharing “raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information”.
In plain English the raw search returns were being shared with unknown entities without any attempt to “minimize” or redact the results. The person(s) attached to the results were named and obvious. There was no effort to hide their identity or protect their 4th amendment rights of privacy:
But what’s the scale here? This is where the story really lies.
Read this next excerpt carefully.
The operators were searching “U.S Persons”. The review of November 1, 2015, to May 1, 2016, showed “eighty-five percent of those queries” were unlawful or “non compliant”.
85% !! “representing [redacted number]”.
We can tell from the space of the redaction the number of searches were between 1,000 and 9,999 [five digits]. If we take the middle number of 5,000 – that means 4,250 unlawful searches out of 5,000.
The [five digit] amount (more than 1,000, less than 10,000), and 85% error rate, was captured in a six month period, November 2015 to April 2016.
Also notice this very important quote: “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” This tells us the system users were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic “identifier”, or people, repeatedly over different dates.
Specific people were being tracked/monitored.
Additionally, notice the last quote: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of” these non lawful searches “since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 coincided with an unusually high error rate”.
That means the 85% unlawful FISA-702(16)(17) database abuse has likely been happening since 2012.
2012 is an important date in this database abuse because a network of specific interests is assembled that also shows up in 2016/2017:
Who was 2012 FBI Director? Robert Mueller, who was selected by the FBI group to become special prosecutor in 2017.
Who was Mueller’ chief-of-staff? Aaron Zebley, who became one of the lead lawyers on the Mueller special counsel.
Who was 2012 CIA Director? John Brennan (remember the ouster of Gen Petraeus)
Who was ODNI? James Clapper.
Remember, the NSA is inside the Pentagon (Defense Dept) command structure. Who was Defense Secretary? Ash Carter
Who wanted NSA Director Mike Rogers fired? Brennan, Clapper and Carter.
And finally, who wrote and signed-off-on the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment and then lied about the use of the Steele Dossier? John Brennan, James Clapper
Tens of thousands of searches over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal. The results were extracted for?…. (I believe this is all political opposition use; and I’ll explain why momentarily.)
OK, that’s the stunning scale; but who was involved?
Private contractors with access to “raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI’s requests“:
And as noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.
[Coincidentally (or not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the next day on April 19th, 2016.]
None of this is conspiracy theory.
All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“:
This specific footnote, if declassified, would be key. Note the phrase: “([redacted] access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into [redacted])”, this sentence has the potential to expose an internal decision; withheld from congress and the FISA court by the Obama administration; that outlines a process for access and distribution of surveillance data.
Note: “no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016“, that is important.
Summary of this aspect: The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.
The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation; and we are not the only one to think that’s what this system is being used for.
Back in 2017 when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was working to reauthorize the FISA legislation, Nunes wrote a letter to ODNI Dan Coats about this specific issue:
SIDEBAR: To solve the issue, well, actually attempt to ensure it never happened again, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers eventually took away the “About” query option permanently in 2017. NSA Director Rogers said the abuse was so inherent there was no way to stop it except to remove the process completely. [SEE HERE] Additionally, the NSA database operates as a function of the Pentagon, so the Trump administration went one step further. On his last day as NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers -together with ODNI Dan Coats- put U.S. cyber-command, the database steward, fully into the U.S. military as a full combatant command. [SEE HERE] Unfortunately it didn’t work as shown by the 2018 FISC opinion rendered by FISC Judge James Boasberg [SEE HERE]
There is little doubt the FISA-702(16)(17) database system was used by Obama-era officials, from 2012 through April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition.
Quite simply there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of database abuse that was taking place; and keep in mind these searches were all ruled to be unlawful. Searches for repeated persons over a period time that were not authorized.
When we reconcile what was taking place and who was involved, then the actions of the exact same principle participants take on a jaw-dropping amount of clarity.
All of the action taken by CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, ODNI Clapper and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter make sense. Including their effort to get NSA Director Mike Rogers fired.
Everything after March 9th, 2016, had a dual purpose: (1) done to cover up the weaponization of the FISA database. [Explained Here] Spygate, Russia-Gate, the Steele Dossier, and even the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment(drawn from the dossier and signed by the above) were needed to create a cover-story and protect themselves from discovery of this four year weaponization, political surveillance and unlawful spying. Even the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel makes sense; he was FBI Director when this began. (2) They needed to keep surveillance ongoing.
The beginning decision to use FISA(702) as a domestic surveillance and political spy mechanism appears to have started in/around 2012. Perhaps sometime shortly before the 2012 presidential election and before John Brennan left the White House and moved to CIA. However, there was an earlier version of data assembly that preceded this effort.
Political spying 1.0 was actually the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:
The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)
Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.
The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.
Lesson Learned – It would appear the Obama administration learned a lesson from attempting to gather a large opposition research database operation inside a functioning organization large enough to have some good people that might blow the whistle.
The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database. If our hunch is correct, that is what will be visible in footnote #69:
How this all comes together in 2019
Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign, and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database.
However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post factojustification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.
That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, were so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content.
The Steele Dossier, an outcome of the Fusion contract, contains two purposes: (1) the cover-story and justification for the pre-existing surveillance operation (protect Obama); and (2) facilitate the FBI counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign (assist Clinton).
An insurance policy would be needed. The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as the delivery method and injected it into Carter Page. The FBI already knew Carter Page; essentially Carter Page was irrelevant, what they needed was the FISA warrant and the Dossier in the system {Go Deep}.
Fusion GPS was not only hired to research Trump, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification for already existing surveillance and spy operations.
Fusion-GPS gave them the justification they needed for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier. Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier is so important; without it, the DOJ and FBI would be naked with their FISA-702 abuse as outlined by John Ratcliffe.
