They All Knew It Was A Hoax...

by Undercover Huber via Threadreader

Within 4 days of the Trump Tower meeting being leaked to the media, Mueller’s FBI investigators interviewed a *key* witness who 100% backed up the account of Donald Trump Jr & other participants

No collusion or info exchanged, lasted a few mins, mostly about adoptions 🚨

The Trump Tower meeting was leaked on Jul 8 2017 & set off a media firestorm about potential “Collusion”. The media narrative was allowed to fester in the mind of the public thru 2017, 2018 (and the midterms), lasting until the 2019 Mueller report release

Less than *four days* later, Mueller’s FBI investigators knocked on the door of ANATOLI SAMOCHORNOV, the translator in the meeting (& an American citizen, who contracted for the State Dept. for years & whose wife worked there during Hillary’s time)

N.B. Here’s a May 2018 thread on Samochornov for more background on him: 

Samochornov gave the agents a full list of attendees, the topics discussed during a brief 20 minutes by the “Russians” (mainly the Magnitsky act/adoptions), that Jared Kushner left the meeting early and that Paul Manafort was fiddling with his cell phone he was so bored by it! 

“There was no discussion of the 2016 United States presidential election or Collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign” 

“There was no smoking gun...there was not a discussion about “dirt” on Hillary Clinton...did not think Hillary Clinton was mentioned by name...Veselnitskaya did not offer any materials during the meeting and no papers wree exchanged... additionally there was no follow-up”

“Samochornov was not particularly fond of Donald Trump Jr but stated [his] account of the meeting...was accurate. [He] concurred with [Trump’s] accounts of the meeting. “They” were telling the truth...would have contacted FBI if he thought the meeting was nefarious” 🚨👀 

Of course, Mueller said nothing about the avalanche of misleading media reporting claiming this was evidence of Collusion, and even investigated the Trump campaign for “Obstruction” in their response to media enquiries about something Mueller KNEW was a lie.

That Donald Trump Jr’s account of the Trump Tower meeting was independently corroborated within a few days was not mentioned in the Mueller dossier. Of course it wasn’t

SUMMARY

—Mueller could have shut down fake news about the Trump Tower meeting almost immediately. His office did so with other false reports (e.g BuzzFeed & Michael Cohen) but left this hanging for years

—Mueller dossier lacks key facts & context & is misleading. Again!

/ENDS

Source: (Part 4; Pages 50-57, FBI 302 of Samochornov)

Also worth noting that @CNN and @BuzzFeed originally filed the lawsuit that got these records released under FOIA and they’ve had them for weeks. Have they done any reporting on this? Of course not. Zip.

Compare this thread to Collusion Hoax reporters in 2018.
No correction. No apology. Just more doubling down

Great points by @Techno_Fog 

U.S. troops deployed to U.S.-Mexico border in case of refugee rush

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 10:42 AM PT — Saturday, March 7, 2020

Additional troops are reportedly being sent to the U.S.-Mexico border. According to new reports, the military has reassigned 160 troops to the ports of entry in El Paso, Texas, and San Ysidro, California.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed the troops are scheduled to be there for about two weeks, but said their stay could be extended.
The move came in response to a federal court’s decision to dismantle the ‘Remain in Mexico‘ policy in California and Arizona. The court ruled that the initiative violated U.S. and international law.
The policy has blocked asylum seekers, particularly those traveling through or from South America, from entering the U.S. until their claims have been heard in court. Since going into effect over a year ago, about 60,000 asylum seekers have begun taking refuge in Mexico while they await possible entry into the U.S.
Authorities have expressed concern the new ruling could bring a rush of asylum seekers to the border.
This week, the administration filed an appeal against the court. The Justice Department has released a statement, saying “the decision ignores the constitutional authority of Congress and the administration.”

Regardless of this, the court has pressed on and some parts of the nation have already felt the effects. Earlier this month, the same court temporarily ruled to block the policy nationwide.
Officials walked back the ruling after chaos erupted at a border bridge in El Paso, where more than 100 migrants tried to rush into the U.S.
“Let us pass,” said one bystander. “We have been waiting here for almost a year, they take away the MPP (Migrant Protection Protocols) and they do not let us pass.”

This time, the court will give officials more notice. Changes to the ruling will not go into effect until March 12th, unless the Supreme Court takes up the appeal.
Moving forward, plaintiff’s lawyers have vowed to continue on until they overturn the policy nationwide.
White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham has said the administration “remains committed to using every lawful means necessary to secure the border.”

https://www.oann.com/u-s-troops-deployed-to-u-s-mexico-border-in-case-of-refugee-rush/

Pause a minute.

Also, cover your nose and mouth when you sneeze or cough!!

Aerialist Nik Wallenda walks tightrope across one of world's most active volcanoes

Wallenda has already walked across the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls and New York City's Times Square. His walk across Nicaragua's Masaya Volcano is his highest and longest feat yet.

Your Personal Location Data Is Being...

Matt Margolis reporting for PJMedia

Your Personal Location Data Is Being Sold to the Government, 

and 

It's Worse Than You Thought

If you thought federal law enforcement needs a warrant to track you, think again. According to Protocol, U.S. law-enforcement agencies have "signed millions of dollars worth of contracts" with a Virginia-based company called Babel Street, "after it rolled out a powerful tool that uses data from popular mobile apps to track the movement of people's cell phones."

The tool, called Locate X, "allows investigators to draw a digital fence around an address or area, pinpoint mobile devices that were within that area, and see where else those devices have traveled, going back months," according to Protocol's sources. Locate X allegedly tracks the location of devices anonymously by "using data that popular cell phone apps collect to enable features like mapping or targeted ads, or simply to sell it on to data brokers," and is only to be used for  "internal research purposes only," according to the terms of service. Law-enforcement authorities "are forbidden from using the technology as evidence — or mentioning it at all — in legal proceedings."

So, maybe it's not as anonymous as it claims?

Multiple federal agencies have contracts with Babel Street and/or have purchased Locate X, including U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Secret Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Publicly available contract information isn't clear on whether various agencies specifically bought Locate X. Some agencies, including the FBI and ATF, actually declined to purchase it after their respective agency lawyers kiboshed the idea.

Here's how Locate X could be used:

A former government official familiar with Locate X provided an example of how it could be used, referring to the aftermath of a car bombing or kidnapping. Investigators could draw what is known as a geo-fence around the site, identify mobile devices that were in the vicinity in the days before the attack, and see where else those devices had traveled in the days, weeks or months leading up to the attack, or where they traveled afterward.

"If you see a device that a month ago was in Saudi Arabia, then you know maybe Saudis were involved," this person said. "It's a lead generator. You get a data point, and from there you use your other resources to figure out if it's valid."

Product X in the hands of federal agencies does raise significant concerns over Fourth Amendment violations. The Supreme Court ruled in June 2018 in Carpenter v. United States that a warrant is required to access cell-tower location data for an individual account. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) says federal agencies are exploiting a loophole. "[T]he government is using its checkbook to try to get around Carpenter," he said. "Americans won't stand for that kind of loophole when it comes to our Fourth Amendment rights."

Babel Street claims they handle data "carefully to comply with both the law and internet terms of service," and there is no indication, according to Protocol, that they are doing anything illegal. "Although data content is freely available without restriction from thousands of vendors and suppliers, Babel Street employs a variety of measures to ensure appropriate use of the data," said Lacy Talton in a statement. "This is not required by most vendors but stems from Babel Street's ethos of proper data compliance. The company regularly ensures that the data accessed through its software is in compliance with ever-changing global privacy regulations, data use rights, and terms of service."

The big takeaway from this story is that "the sale of personal location data from commercial firms to the government is more widespread and has been going on longer than previously known."

_____

Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama's Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis

Here’s Why It Won’t Be Either Biden or Bernie

 
 Article by Stu Cvrk in "RedState":

Within a mere week, and apparently magically, the Democrat presidential primary race is down to two really old white guys (although a part-Samoan woman is still hanging on for some unknown reason since she hasn’t got a chance in hell). Except I don’t believe in magic – or coincidence, for that matter – when it comes to politics. Everything happens for a reason and, in the case of Democrats in particular, for personal or party gain (or both). Democrat operatives have been bleating the conventional wisdom throughout the Democrat-media echo chamber that Biden has “pulled off one of the most spectacular turn-arounds in presidential primary history,” but how did he manage that with a gaffe a day and the complete absence of any discernible enthusiasm for his campaign until the day after the South Carolina primary? Although Biden consistently stated that South Carolina was his firewall, the reality is much bigger, i.e., that Biden himself is the Democrat Establishment’s firewall against Bernie Sanders.

To understand the present state of the Democrat race, there are a few questions that must be answered before one can believe that either Joe Biden – the resurrected front-runner – or the Communist Bernie Sanders will obtain the Democrat nomination for president at the Democrat National Convention in Milwaukee in July.

1. Will the party that touts identity politics be sanguine with either as their standard-bearer?

2. Will the Democrats run someone years older than President Trump after snidely arguing for four years that he is “old and fat”?

3. Is either capable of uniting the Democrat Party and energizing the Democrat base?

4. Can either stand on the presidential debate stage and hold his own with a successful president with a string of accomplishments that cannot be countered by their rhetoric?

5. Can either withstand the onslaught of negative ads that will surely be broadcast against whomever gets the nomination?

Those are just a few of the questions, and the short answer to all is “no,” but when viewed as a whole, the resounding answer is “no” for both candidates. It’s possible that the Democrat Establishment could swallow hard and convince their base that questions 1 and 2 are unimportant in this particular election, but the other three questions are death for Biden and Bernie. A Biden nomination will turn off the radical Bernie bros while a Bernie nomination would move moderate Democrats to vote for President Trump.

Each would be destroyed on the debate stage, but for different reasons. Who knows what would come out of the demented Biden’s mouth in a one-on-one debate with President Trump? Certainly he’d be worth a few gaffes which, in comparison with the President’s onstage presence, would sink his campaign. As for Bernie, he has no record of accomplishment in the Senate whatsoever. Zip, zero, nada pieces of Bernie-sponsored legislation that have made their way into law, and he’s never run any political entity larger than Burlington, VT (population 43,000). In addition, his inherent rage and negativism contrast very poorly with the President’s positive charisma and ability to relate to average Americans.

As for the negative ads against either that will ensue? For Biden, there are the zillion gaffes, the girl-sniffing videos, and the Ukraine corruption (about which we’ll know even more after Sen. Ron Johnson’s committee proceeds further in investigating Burisma and other Ukraine-related corruption). And there is the Chapter 3 of Peter Schweizer’s book Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite, which contains 45 pages on Biden family corruption, the center of which is Joe Biden himself. Their corruption would not have been possible without Joe Biden, the front-man, and his ability to leverage political power and taxpayer resources for 50 years.

For Bernie, his public statements in support of Fidel Castro and other Communists/dictators/anti-American regimes over the years, his anti-woman statements, and his honeymooning in the former Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War make perfect fodder for campaign ads. And Schweizer has a chapter in his book about Bernie, too. Chapter 7 contains 38 pages that detail how Sanders and his wife accumulated their multi-million-dollar net worth over the years. Even the Bernie bros will be shocked to find out those details.

The Democrat Establishment has known the preceding for a year at least – if not from even before any Democrat candidates declared for the presidency. Accordingly, they have led their voters down a primrose path that leads to a brokered convention because their Establishment will never let either of these two old white guys with a TON of baggage win the nomination in Milwaukee, for the above reasons and much more. While their strategy has shifted based on primary results and polling over the past few weeks, the objective remains the same: orchestrate a brokered convention that results in the selection of a consensus candidate whom they believe actually has a shot at defeating President Trump in November.

At first, it seemed like merely splitting the vote among the declared candidates would achieve that goal by depriving any single candidate of the 1,990 delegates necessary to win the nomination outright. But the Bernie momentum after Iowa and New Hampshire created panic among the Democrat Establishment, and that’s when things suddenly changed for Sleepy Joe Biden, as the Establishment endorsements for Biden started rolling in, concurrently with the resounding attacks by some of those same people on Bernie Sanders. It wasn’t magic that vaulted Biden to his Super Tuesday victories; rather, it was the Establishment’s fear of Bernie Sanders and a decision that he had to be stopped at all costs before gaining sufficient momentum to garner the necessary 1,990 delegates to win outright.

The Democrats’ top priority has become to stop Bernie. Here is the real reason why Bernie will never be the Democrat candidate (besides the fact that he’s not even a Democrat).

The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll spends a lot of time sussing out American voters’ views on President Donald Trump’s impeachment and the 2020 election.
….
Fifty-two percent of those polled said they viewed capitalism positively, while just 19 percent said the same about socialism. In an almost mirror flip, 18 percent had a negative view of capitalism, while 53 percent viewed socialism negatively.
The poll of 1,000 registered voters was conducted last week (and has a 3.1 percentage point margin of error).
“Democratic primary voters have a net-positive impression of socialism (40 percent positive, 23 percent negative), and Dem voters ages 18-34 view it even more favorably (51 percent to 14 percent),” reports NBC. “But key general-election groups like independents…suburban voters and swing-state voters have a much more negative impression of socialism.”

And there was evidence of that fact in Super Tuesday exit polls and selected media interviews of Democrat voters who said they “weren’t ready for socialism” (although those could have been manipulated to showcase Biden at Bernie’s expense). And the fact that the race now pits an avowed socialist versus a supposed “moderate” reflects the reality of what most Americans still think about socialism (less the Bernie bros, Justice Democrats, Indivisible, and other radical groups). And stop Bernie they shall, as the national and state polls are starting to move in Biden’s direction.

What about Biden? I am convinced that Biden’s candidacy served two purposes for the Democrats. The first and perhaps the main reason was to set up the Democrats’ first article of impeachment against President Trump. Recall that “Trump asked a foreign government for dirt on a political opponent” was their narrative throughout the impeachment farce. The second important reason was to suck enough of the oxygen out of the other declared candidates in order to preclude any of them from gaining the traction and momentum needed to get enough delegates to seal a first-ballot nomination vote in Milwaukee.

It is no coincidence that Biden declared his candidacy on 25 April 2019, which was exactly one week after the Mueller report was publicly released. The Democrats thought Mueller was going to provide the goods to impeach President Trump, and when that failed, they quickly moved to concoct the Ukraine conspiracy. Biden served that purpose (the first article would have been much weaker without the involvement of a “Trump political opponent”).

As a previously failed presidential candidate (twice over), the Democrat Establishment knew that all of the skeletons in Biden’s closet (i.e., plagiarizer, gaffe machine, girl-sniffer, and corrupto-crat) would eventually sink his candidacy. And they can’t trust him to keep his mouth shut about all he knows about Democrat corruption during the Obama years.

Neither Biden nor Bernie are electable, and the Democrat Establishment has known that from the very beginning. We have been watching a political farce play out on the big screen, so-to-speak. So how do the Democrats get the candidate that they obviously want – since they don’t want Bernie, and Biden has too many skeletons? There are several possibilities:

Option #1. Bernie wins the most delegates, but not enough to win the nomination on the first ballot. The Super Delegates weigh in on the second ballot, and a “compromise candidate” is nominated. Least likely, as the Democrat Establishment won’t risk taking the nomination away from the candidate who earned the most delegates.

Option #2. The delegates are split such that neither has enough to win on the first ballot, but Biden has a slight edge, opening the door for the Super Delegates to take over the process beginning on the second ballot to select a “compromise candidate.” Unlikely due to the potential for open violence if the Bernie bros think their guy has been cheated again.

Option #3. As the Democrat primaries conclude, Biden garners the most delegates, and Bernie caves like he did in 2016 when he was bought off with a “third house.” He’s already publicly stated that he’d withdraw if Biden has a plurality of delegates after the primaries are over, as noted here. That would lead to a first-ballot nomination by acclimation at the convention. Possible, but still unlikely to occur, which leads us to the final option.

Option #4. This is option #3 with a twist. With Bernie bowing out, Biden has the nomination in sight but suddenly withdraws because he is “on medication” for dementia or has been diagnosed with first-stage Alzheimer’s disease or some other malady. The Democrat Establishment – having the goods on his family’s corruption and knowing where all the bones are buried – would force his withdrawal announcement, opening the way for the designated outsider to swoop in and “save” the Democrat Party. Biden would play on the sympathy vote and implore Democrats (and Americans in general) to back the consensus Democrat candidate drafted during the convention. This is the most likely option.

There is no way that the Democrat Establishment will let either Bernie or Biden lead the Democrat ticket in November for the reasons cited above, and the selection of an outsider candidate in a brokered convention has been their strategy all along. Who are the possible candidates? There will be various unity candidates floated like Eric Holder, Deval Patrick, or even Michelle Obama (unlikely) representing the Obama wing of the party. Representing the Clinton wing would be someone like Terry McAuliffe … or Hillary herself.

I believe that the Clintons have been pulling the strings behind the scenes from the beginning: orchestrating the media takedown of Bernie, coalescing Establishment support behind Biden at the propitious time, and strategizing for a brokered convention that would save Hillary from having to aggressively campaign through a grueling primary this year and hide any health frailties from which she may suffer.

Two recent failed Democrat presidential candidates got ever-so-close to the Oval Office when each ran previously: John Kerry in 2004 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Both thought they should have won. In Hillary’s case, she still thinks she won! And although she has chastised Bernie Sanders in recent public statements, she has NOT endorsed Biden, which is an YUUUUGE tell. If she’s truly NOT thinking about running, there is no reason whatsoever to avoid endorsing Biden when the fate of the nomination is at stake.

Sporadic news reports continue to dribble out that both are interested (although both have “declined” but not to the point that they would turn down being drafted by the Party if offered the nomination). They would make a dream Democrat Establishment ticket. Each has a lot to gain by winning; each has a lot to lose if President Trump wins reelection.

The conventional wisdom is that it will be either Bernie or Biden since the Democrats are down to two main candidates. I’m not buying it. The Democrat Establishment will never nominate an outsider who isn’t even a Democrat, and Biden was set up as a strawman candidate from the moment he declared last April.

Neither Biden nor Bernie will be the Democrat nominee for president this year.

The end.

https://www.redstate.com/stu-in-sd/2020/03/06/here%e2%80%99s-why-it-won%e2%80%99t-be-either-biden-or-bernie/

Common Sense vs. Corruption (Again)

Robert Curry for American Greatness

Trump is once again likely to be running against a Democrat who is the very embodiment of political corruption, even the most outstanding current example we have of American political corruption, aside from the Clintons of course.

The candidates who most excited the punditocracy have quit the race. Over at National Review, Jim Geraghty observes that “Elizabeth Warren departs the race without finishing above third place in a single state. Beto O’Rourke, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand quit well before the voting.”

These media candidates, of course, were also the most amusing candidates. But the circus has left town; things just got serious. The race for the party’s nomination is now down to a Marxist hardliner who has always eschewed party membership and Joe Biden, the party hack who is the pick of the Democratic Party’s powers-that-be. Interesting.

As of today, those in the know tell us that Biden is going to come out on top.

And that means 2020 will be, in essence, a re-run of 2016.

Back in July of last year, I asked: “Is Common Sense Making a Comeback?” In that piece, I noted that Trump had run as “a common-sense conservative.” My question was: Did America, by electing Trump, take a step in the direction of returning to common sense in American political life?

That raises the question of the meaning of the 2016 election. Was the election decided by the vote for common sense conservatism or by the vote against the brazen corruption of the Clintons? If the election was decided by voters recoiling from the nauseating corruption of the Clintons, then the true test of common sense may await us in 2020.

For a replay of common sense versus political corruption, the Democrats would probably need to nominate former Vice President Joe Biden. At this point, it seems that only Biden’s political corruption approaches the corruption of the Clintons, though, as with the Clintons, the media could be counted on to conduct a cover-up and distraction campaign to protect him.

In 2016, Trump ran against someone who should have been headed to the Big House instead of running for the White House. You or I already would have been in the Big House if we had committed a tiny fraction of the rule-breaking Hillary Clinton has racked up. But in America today, members of the deep state get a pass when they break the rules; you and me, not so much.

The Democrats should have been forced to find another candidate to run against Trump in 2016 because their candidate should have been in jail. A candidate, even a Democrat, running for the Oval Office from federal prison is an innovation in American politics that America is probably not yet ready to experience.

Unfortunately for those of us drawn to the idea of a contest between common sense and the nonsense offered by the strange new Democrat Party, so unlike the party of JFK or even of Walter Mondale, it now appears a contest between common sense and its opposite is not in the offing for 2020. As in 2016, Trump is once again likely to be running against a Democrat who is the very embodiment of political corruption, even the most outstanding current example we have of American political corruption, aside from the Clintons of course. Once again, the Democratic propaganda directorate—a.k.a., the mainstream media—will do whatever it takes to shield the voters from the truth about Biden’s corruption and about Biden’s infirmity, just as they did for Hillary.

And once again, Trump’s victory would leave the same question left by the results in 2016: did the voters choose common sense over nonsense or did they simply recoil from Biden’s manifest corruption?

Still, two victories in a row by a self-declared common-sense conservative would be interesting. It would raise the possibility that common sense is making a comeback in America. We’ll see.

San Francisco Has Added a Lot of...

Christian Britschgi for Reason Magazine

San Francisco Has Added a Lot of Jobs but Not Enough Housing. 

City Voters Approved a Ballot Initiative That Cuts Back on the Jobs.

The city's voters, politicians, and activists should stop trying to dictate how exactly their city will change over the years. They’re not very good at it.

3.6.2020

(Tupungato/Dreamstime.com) 

San Francisco has created a lot more jobs than housing in recent years, helping to make it one of the most expensive places in the world to live. To fix this imbalance, city residents have voted for a ballot measure that would restrict the development of new office space until the city starts building enough affordable housing. Whenever it gets around to that.

On Super Tuesday, 55 percent of San Francisco voters ticked yes on Prop E. The complicated ballot measure would revise the city's existing cap on large office developments (set at 875,000 square feet per year) downward by the same percentage that it falls short of its affordable housing goals.

So if San Francisco builds only 90 percent of the affordable housing units it has given itself the goal of completing (which is currently about 2,000 units a year), the amount of office space that can be permitted that year will also fall by 10 percent.

"Either we're going to significantly increase our affordable housing or reduce our office development," John Elberling, the sponsor of the initiative, said to CityLab in January. "It's going to be one or the other."

It could also be neither.

Prop E doesn't appropriate any new money to build affordable housing (a technical term meaning income-restricted units that are rented out at below-market rates). Nor does it streamline permitting or remove zoning restrictions that would make it easier to build such projects.

"All [Prop E] could do is reduce future office development," notes SPUR, a Bay Area think tank, which also points out that less office development would also mean less money for affordable housing. "Reducing office development would also reduce impact fees that pay for affordable housing—precisely the opposite of the measure's goal."

Proponents made a couple of arguments for the ballot measure. One is that it boosts affordable housing production in the short run by grandfathering in several large office developments that are already in the pipeline and that come with an affordable housing component.

More broadly, Elberling has argued that linking housing and office development will give commercial developers and business interests an incentive to support more affordable housing funding in the long-run. So even if the measure itself doesn't create affordable housing, they think it could create the political will to get the job done. Four-dimensional chess by ballot measure.

It is possible that Prop E will succeed in creating this powerful pro-affordable-housing coalition, which will then go on to get the hundreds of millions of additional funding needed to build all the affordable housing the city needs, and then triumph over the NIMBYs who frequently delay these projects. But there is also—how shall I put this?—a fair chance that this won't happen.

Meanwhile, Prop E comes with some pretty concrete costs. Given the city's chronic inability to meet its affordable housing goals, City Controller Ben Rosenfield found that Prop E would have reduced allowable office space development by a cumulative 5.6 million, and net tax revenues by $4–7 million per year, had it been in place for the last decade. Alternatively, the city would have had to spend $200–500 million more each year over the same time period to meet its affordable housing goals, and thus avoid any reduction in allowable office space development.

Opponents of Prop E argue it would reduce impact fees paid by office space developers by $600–900 million over the next 20 years. A reportfrom the city's chief economist estimates that city GDP will be 8.5 percent lower by 2040 than it would have been without Prop E.

Artificially capping the amount of new office space that can be built would also likely raise office rents, pushing out smaller businesses that can't outbid deeper-pocketed corporations for existing space. After all, that's what supply constraints have done to the city's housing market.

The city is still counting mail-in ballots from Tuesday's election, so Prop E's victory isn't official yet. But "barring unforeseen lunacy", as Mission Local put it, the measure will easily pass.

That really is a shame. San Francisco has continually tried to plan itself out of its housing affordability problems through limits on the "wrong" kinds of development, whether that's buildings that are too big, too luxurious, or now, come with too many jobs. These efforts have failed to work. San Francisco voters, politicians, and activists should stop trying to dictate how exactly their city will change over the years. They're not very good at it.

Coast Guard Veteran Turns 100th birthday Nevins served participated Coast Guards during World War II

Martin Nevins, a #USCG veteran, dedicated almost half of his life to the military. He recently turned 100!

Hear his story 

A Biden candidacy –What’s the plan? There is always a plan

 
Article by Patricia McCarthy in "The American Thinker":

Why, when Joe Biden’s mental decline is so obvious, are so many former Obamaphiles pledging their spurious support for the man?  Something’s up.  It is beyond clear that Biden is not up to the job.  This fact cannot escape the notice of Susan Rice, James Comey, John Brennan, et. al., all those conspirators who tried so treasonously hard to destroy Donald Trump.  They surely know better than most that Biden is a dead man walking. So why the all-out campaign to support his candidacy?  Hmmm.  They must have a plan.  Is their plan to submarine Joe before the convention, admit he is incapacitated and put up a heretofore  untested candidate at a brokered convention?  Or do they have a plan to appoint a VP candidate they assume will become president in short order? Perhaps, as Joel Gilbert speculated here yesterday, the plan is to install Hillary as the candidate to run against President Trump in a last-ditch effort to derail his fabulously successful presidency.  They certainly have some devious scheme to replace Biden by hook or crook for his dementia cannot possibly have escaped their notice.

The now-available Hillary documentary for all to see is probably meant to prime the public for her potential last-minute candidacy. It is not very likely to be successful.  She is the kind of harridan who makes Elizabeth Warren seem kind and gentle!  Hillary is also a narcissist of the worst order, the kind who never takes responsibility for the havoc she has wrought on the lives of others, let alone her country.  She is in fact one of the most corrupt politicians ever to  prevail for so many years, to become fabulously wealthy for her many deceits and crimes.  She has been a blight upon the U.S. since she gained power as the wife of the governor of Arkansas.  She spent forty years covering up for her husband’s crimes against women and has somehow lived to tell no tales.  Her fans are certifiable morons, susceptible to any and all of the propaganda the left propels into the mainstream media.  She has yet to endorse Biden.  To support his candidacy is to deny his indisputable advancing dementia.

Credit to the voters of South Carolina is due for sure; they understand the horror an American-hating communist would perpetrate upon this great nation.  A Bernie Sanders presidency would be the end of America as founded.  Those who support him are either tragically ignorant of the genocidal reality of socialism wherever tried or they hate their own nation so much they are willing to suffer the monstrous consequences of electing a communist president.  Make no mistake, Bernie Sanders intends to be a communist president if elected.  Like Castro, Maduro, Chavez, Lenin and all the dictators he so admires, he would be a tyrant.  For nearly fifty years he has wanted to punish those who fend for themselves and succeed.  A man who admires Fidel Castro must never come to power in America.  Never.  Bless those voters in South Carolina who know this.  Sadly Joe Biden was their only other choice.  Chances are those same voters will vote for President Trump in November.  They were savvy enough to know Sanders would be a disaster; they are shrewd enough to know Joe Biden is senile.  Most of us of a certain age recognize advancing senility when we see it because we have seen it ourselves; we know the heartbreak.  Joe is done.  So what is their plan?

Whatever it is, it cannot be good for the American people…the left never considers the American people, they never give a thought to their constituents.  They are always and only about power and their continued access to the wealth that power provides for them.  They are certain of their own superiority, their due privilege to lead and control the rest of us.  The fact that Mike Bloomberg actually thought he could step in and purchase the presidency with his billions is proof of the left’s mindset.  His failure to succeed was delicious; the American people cannot be bought.  Some of them can be fooled for awhile but in the end, their good sense prevails.  That is how we elected the best President in decades, Donald Trump.  They will re-elect him in November despite the left and left media’s never-ending attempts to destroy his presidency. When the history of the left’s wholesale assault on America, its founding principles and values from the 1960s on is written, it  will prove that the nation was under constant assault by the anti-American left.  The left has successfully indoctrinated two generations of university students to  loath their country.  They have successfully made race, class and gender the defining characteristics of every person, who must be a designated member of a victim group or an oppressor.  They give no credence to the value of the individual or to any individual’s character.  MLK is rolling over in his grave. 

All of those leftists coming out of the woodwork to support Joe Biden know only too well that he is an intellectual lightweight, “wrong on every foreign policy issue for forty years,” (Robert Gates), a mean-spirited bastard who delighted in destroying Robert Bork and humiliating the great Clarence Thomas.  He is as corrupt a politician as there ever was, who absolutely is guilty and compromised by his efforts to enrich his ne’er-do-well son, his brother, sister and daughter. The thought of this man even becoming close to the presidency is abhorrent.  Whatever his pseudo-supporters have in mind, it is not good for the American people; not one bit.  We will soon learn what their plan is. Chances are it won’t be pretty and chances are the American people will not fall for it.

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/a_biden_candidacy_whats_the_plan_there_is_always_a_plan.html#ixzz6G0q2ayCd

Conservative Woman Decimates Never Trump Folks Like Bill Kristol in a Great Thread

Nick Arama reporting for RedState (hat tip AuntiE)

We’ve seen pretty hot takes from Never Trump people when it comes to the election, those folks who claim they are “conserving” conservatism.

We’ve seen former Republican candidate Joe Walsh who claimed he wanted to get Republican votes, drop out and then say he would support socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) over President Donald Trump.

We’ve seen Bill Kristol declare he was now a Democrat and push for Joe Biden.

Like I’ve said before, it’s one thing not to vote for Trump. It’s a whole other ball game when you are voting for declared socialists and others like Joe Biden who support abortion on demand and want to take away our fundamental Second Amendment rights.

Exactly what are you “conserving” when you do that?

Conservative woman Gracie, who has always voted Republican, took them on in a great thread, as our friends over at Twitchy noted. 

She saw reality and was honest enough to admit it, unlike some in Never Trump. Judges, economy, immigration, and more, he’s accomplished more than some of the prior alleged “conservatives,” despite being under constant unprecedented attack.

Because they think they have the right to dictate to us, not unlike Democrats. Despite being constantly wrong.

Amen. You go, Gracie.

Yesterday's Coronavirus Task Force Update – Grand Princess Cruise Ship Has 21 Testing Positive

Earlier today Vice President Mike Pence and the COVID-19 task force held a press briefing to update the media on the latest developments. VP Pence notes tests delivered to the cruise ship “Grand Princess”, anchored and holding off the coast of California, have resulted in 21 persons testing positive (19 were crew members).

Additionally, in a private-public contract agreement, private medical testing companies Quest Diagnostics and Lab-Corp will be assisting the government with rapid test manufacture and distribution.  [CDC Website Here]

The White House Coronavirus Task Force includes: Vice President Mike Pence; Ambassador Debbie Brix, White House Corona Virus Response Coordinator; Secretary Alex Azar, Department of Health and Human Services; Dr. Robert Redfield, Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Dr. Anne Schuchat, Principal Deputy Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Dr. Stephen Hahn, Commissioner of Food and Drugs, Food and Drug Administration; Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Standing Strong on the Constitution

 
 Article by Deana Chadwell in "The American Thinker":

America, in both its ideal and in its actuality, stands on two feet.

Under those feet is a foundation of Biblical wisdom and a knowledge of history that taught the founders what worked and what didn’t. With enormous care, those great men designed a nation with a stable underpinning of a constitutional rule of law and the right of each individual to have a say in how that rule would be implemented –- in other words, the right to vote. We’ve all been busy hooplaing over the impeaching of a president, hyperventilating over the coronavirus, and watching the Democratic frontrunners stumble all over each other that we forget what’s really being attacked here.

All this fuss-and-bother isn’t just about winning the 2020 elections.  That will be one step, for sure, but that isn’t the end game. The left isn’t at all interested in continuing the grand experiment that is America. The left is about ending it entirely, and they are involved up to their skinny necks and wobbling dentures in pulling those two stable feet of the commonwealth right out from under us. They are trying to eviscerate the Constitution by attacking every one the of Bill of Rights, and they are undermining the individual vote -- local, state, and national.

The Constitution endured leftist attacks during most of the 20^th century starting with Woodrow Wilson and still it held strong. Toward the end of last century we started hearing silly statements like, “The Constitution is a living document,” which, if true, would have rendered it useless -- of what good is a malleable contract? Recently, and especially in Virginia, both the 1^st and 2^nd Amendments are being pounded; I’m grateful the Virginians are standing up to the onslaught. The 3^rd Amendment -- one that prohibits the stationing of soldiers in the homes of private citizens -- received a glancing blow when Portland, Oregon, proposed a law requiring new businesses to include in their buildings room to house the homeless –- far worse than soldiers.

As the impeachment fiasco unfolded, we saw that the House Democrats had chopped up the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th Amendments. The rights allotted the common criminal were denied Donald Trump during the entire “investigation” in the House. Trump never had the opportunity to face down his accusers, yet he was never charged with an actual crime. His accusers won’t even accept the acquittal. We now know that his campaign was spied on, that foreign governments were brought in to conspire against him, that the left has not only broken actual laws, but ignored constitutional prohibitions as well.  Our Constitution must be reeling under the blows.

Meanwhile, back in the voting booth, nothing is going well. The Democrat leadership obviously wants this pesky voting thing to go away, or at least become so fragile as to become pointless. Just look at the different fronts in this war:

1. Voter fraud is rampant. Daily we see evidence of fraudulent voting -- states and municipalities carrying thousands of dead people on their voter registration rolls. Fictitious names of nonexistent folk are also registered. They “harvest” votes; ballots turn up in car trunks; absentee ballots fail to arrive on time. And voter ID is not required in most states, so anyone can show up to cast a ballot.
2. Which brings up illegal immigration, which is totally an effort to erase the American vote.  The more illegal votes, the less the American vote matters. The more illegals counted in the census, the more seats a state gets in the House, thereby skewing the vote. Democrats are thoroughly aware of that and thoroughly aware how vulnerable these shadow-people are and how cheaply they can buy those votes.
3. New methods of casting our votes are suspect as well. We know that computerized voting machines can be programmed to change votes. We all remember the “hanging chad” fiasco of the 2000 election. In my state, Oregon, we no longer go to the polls -- we mail in our ballots -- I have no confidence that my vote is ever counted. Seattle is considering a vote-by-cell-phone scheme. It’s hard to imagine that no one sees the potential problems there.
4. Ever since 2016 we’ve been hearing the whining of the left about the Electoral College.  A purely popular vote would make the process of stealing an election -- especially with electronic voting -- as easy as riding a tricycle. It would also disenfranchise completely anyone living in flyover states -- Los Angeles and New York would run the country. This has gone so far that some states have declared that their electoral delegates will go entirely to whoever wins the majority vote.
5. People are choosing -- with self-righteous pride -- not to vote, not realizing that choosing not to vote is still choosing. It’s like a toddler holding his breath to get his way. Silly and dangerous.
6. Another attack is happening as we vote people into office while counting on them to carry out their promises to voters, only to have them turn around and do whatever they want. We watch that in Oregon often. We saw it being tried in Virginia over gun control. We see it in Congress as well. The people were not interested in impeachment, but the House held up all other issues in order to carry it out.
7. Just look at the mess the DNC made out of the Iowa caucuses. We still don’t know what happened, but we do know that the votes of those participating were thoroughly disrespected, and if we’ve reached a stage of chaotic dissolution so bad that we can’t even count a handful of votes in a fairly small state, how in the world are we going to hold a presidential election?
8. And now we’ve watched the DNC maneuver candidate bailouts so that Biden is now on top -- Biden, who doesn’t even know where he is. We’re supposed to believe this is what the average Democrat wants?

The two feet we stand on -- the Constitution and our vote -- are staggering under the consistent blows dealt them by a small number of people on one side of the aisle. Every bumbling move they make is designed to pull those legs out from under the wonder that is this country. Now they’re mumbling about impeaching Trump all over again, so it’s obvious they have a wider agenda. We know, if we’ve been paying attention, that part of it is their fear of being found out, of having their nefarious, illegal activities end in indictments and jail time. But under all that is a fundamental dislike of the American voter. Pelosi, Nadler, and Schiff have all recently expressed concerns about leaving serious election issues up to the voters – as if we’re all ignoramuses incapable of fulfilling our citizenship duties.
 
This all sounds a little alarmist and glum, but it is here I need to point out that these legs we stand on have support; we are braced against the evil of tyranny by God Himself -- God, who chose to insert our founding fathers into history when and where He did; God, who provided the keys to good governance in the ways He guided Israel; God who has seen this nation through horrendous wars and terrible disasters is still, in His infinite grace, stabilizing us. He has placed in positions of leadership astounding and unusual leaders and he is holding them up as well.

We just need to be aware, note the patterns, and vote and pray accordingly. May we learn from the mistakes we’ve made in the last century. May we right the wrongs we’ve committed, and may we all learn to love America again.

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/standing_strong_on_the_constitution.html#ixzz6G0jIjeLf