[Post Bulletin] After 19 months, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has charged a number of targets with almost every conceivable sin ‐ except collusion with Russia to throw an election. Yet suspicion of collusion was the reason that Mueller was appointed in the first place.
President Trump’s former consigliere, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. But as part of his plea deal, Cohen also confessed to a superfluous charge of a campaign finance violation.
Cohen allegedly negotiated a nondisclosure agreement concerning a supposed past Trump liaison with porn star Stormy Daniels. Yet no one alleges that Trump used cash from his 2016 campaign account to buy Daniels’ silence.
Instead, the accusation is that Cohen and Trump used Trump’s own money, but they did not report the payout as a "contribution" to his campaign. But Trump likely would have paid off Daniels anyway to protect his marriage, family and reputation, regardless of whether he was running for office.
If you take media-sensationalized sex out of the equation, Trump, like any other American, has the right to pay anyone whatever he wishes to keep quiet about past embarrassing behavior, whether that be secretly gulping down too many Big Macs or cheating on the golf course.
Apparently, Cohen was leveraged by Mueller’s team to plead guilty to a crime that was likely not a crime. And in circular fashion, his confession was used as proof that the non-crime was actually a crime after all ‐ and thus could serve as yet another way to find something on Trump.
Retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty to giving false testimony about a "crime" that also apparently did not exist.
It was not a crime for Flynn to talk with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition. Yet the Russian diplomat was being surveilled by American intelligence, perhaps to reverse-target Flynn by getting something on him on tape.
The secret taping was green-lighted by a federal court in the midst of the hysteria created by the Christopher Steele dossier paid for in part by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Then, Flynn’s name was illegally leaked to the press.
The FBI sent two investigators to interview Flynn, apparently on the prompt of acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a holdover from the Barack Obama administration. Yates, who served as the interim attorney general for 10 days, apparently came up with the ludicrous idea that Flynn might have violated the Logan Act. That law is an ossified 219-year-old statute about meeting foreign officials that has resulted in only two indictments over the years.
Next, former FBI Director James Comey counted on the Trump administration’s inexperience and broke normal protocol by sending investigators to interrogate Flynn directly without bothering with the usual administration intermediaries. Comey’s deputy director, Andrew McCabe, misled Flynn into assuming that the interview would be a friendly chat among "allies." Flynn was told he would not need a lawyer.
Flynn complied, rightly assuming that it was not a crime for a transition administration official to talk with a foreign ambassador. He also likely was not fully aware that the FBI’s intent was to have him say something that would contradict the FBI’s secret transcripts of his talks with the Russian ambassador.
It gets worse. The FBI agents, who presumably had transcripts from Flynn’s talks with the Russian ambassador to compare to Flynn’s interview answers, expressed the belief that Flynn did not seem as if he was lying to them. Yet that conclusion was apparently overturned at some point by the FBI. To this day, the only real evidence that Flynn lied is his confession ‐ and apparently the second thoughts of the FBI investigators, who reinterpreted their initial impressions in a much later official report.
[American Thinker] Those of us who have been paying attention know that serious crimes were committed at the highest levels of government in an attempt to exonerate Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump. There was collusion between government agencies, including collusion with foreign agents, to illegally influence the 2016 Presidential election. There is enough evidence on the table to be confident of these claims.
And those of us who care about rule of law, who want to see justice done to the criminals in this conspiracy, have been waiting for years to see that happen. We hear that these serious matters are being investigated. We hear that there are whistleblowers inside the government who want to come forward and expose the corruption. We hear that there are many, many more documents which will substantiate our worst fears about one of the greatest scandals in the history of our country.
We have been assured that there are several investigations looking into the various aspect of this abuse of power. Inspector General Michael Horowitz, prosecutor John Huber, and others are looking into the corruption. Mueller is supposedly tasked with exposing foreign influence on the Presidential election.
But what if the ’investigations’ are really the cover-up? What if the investigations are carefully structured to protect criminal actions rather than expose them? What if the investigations are actually being used to hide evidence from the citizenry?
Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe and others discussed the need for an "insurance policy" in case Trump won. Was this "insurance policy" intended to protect deep-state criminals from exposure? Mueller’s role is not to investigate collusion with foreign agents, or he would be investigating Christopher Steele and his Russian sources, along with the foreigners who worked with our government to infiltrate the Trump campaign. He would investigate the illegal funding of Steele’s lies and how the lies were fed to the public by ’bad cops’ and complicit media. This is obviously not the goal of Mueller’s team.
[Red State] Former drug cartel kingpin Joaquín Guzmán, aka "El Chapo," in on trial in federal court in Brooklyn on a seventeen count indictment that will nearly inevitably in him doing life without parole in the Supermax at Florence, CO.
The charges in the indictment filed against Guzman Loera in the Eastern District of New York will be prosecuted jointly by the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in Brooklyn and Miami and the Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section of the Criminal Division.
The indictment alleges that between January 1989 and December 2014, Guzman Loera led a continuing criminal enterprise responsible for importing into the United States and distributing massive amounts of illegal narcotics and conspiring to murder persons who posed a threat to Guzman Loera’s narcotics enterprise.
Guzman Loera is also charged with using firearms in relation to his drug trafficking and money laundering relating to the bulk smuggling from the United States to Mexico of more than $14 billion in cash proceeds from narcotics sales throughout the United States and Canada. As part of this investigation, nearly 200,000 kilograms of cocaine linked to the Sinaloa Cartel have been seized. The indictment seeks forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits.
There are lots of "cooperating witnesses" an boodles of physical evidence but the fly in the ointment is that El Chapo has a history of being a customer of Eric Holder’s Justice Department. Under Holder, the only Attorney General to ever be cited for criminal contempt by the Houses of Representatives, El Chapo was allowed to buy a massive amount of firepower from gun stores in the United States using straw-buyers and using gun stores who were cooperating with the federal government under what was known as Operation Fast and Furious. Several of those weapons were recovered from El Chapo’s headquarters when he was arrested. Federal prosecutors don’t want the jury of rubes to hear about it. I say rubes because that is plainly how the federal prosecutors see the jury.
#6
This is the biggest crime nobody is talking about. The weaponization of the DOJ FBI IRS and NSA against Conservatives and Republicans, with the obedient and extremely un-curious press covering for them.
[Clarion Project] It has now emerged the Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered at the hands of the Saudis, was a Qatari asset, most likely being paid and handled by Maggie Mitchell Salem, an executive at the Qatar Foundation International.
In the days following the disappearance of Khashoggi, the Saudi native was billed as an unflinching proponent of democracy, a Washington Post journalist who ‐ to his own peril ‐ was exposing the terrible human rights abuses by the government of his native country.
While this narrative was being spun by Saudi rivals Turkey and Qatar (which we now know was working behind the scenes in the days after the murder), the Obama-era "echo chamber" was being revved up by them to undermine the stability of the Saudi government itself.
That "echo chamber," dubbed as such by Obama’s National Security Council Communications Director Ben Rhodes, was famously exploited by Rhodes to support both Obama’s engagement with the Iranians (culminating in the controversial Iran nuclear deal) as well as Obama’s shift towards the Sunni Islamists (including Egypt’s former President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood) and away from America’s former Sunni allies (most prominently, Saudi Arabia).
"When complete, the successful information operation would depict Khashoggi a heroic martyr to independent journalism and freedom, while Saudi Arabia would be the embodiment of evil and callousness," writes the Security Studies Group (SSG), an Australian think tank, which adds, "It is clear now that, not only was Khashoggi transmogrified in death into a major front in Qatar’s war on its Gulf neighbors; in life, he was Qatar’s asset in that war, as well."
As SSG notes, "American elites and policymakers have been soft targets for Qatari influence and information operations. Information operations use media and traditional tools of public relations to advance policy interests through narratives."
#1
In June 2017 Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the UAE cut ties with Qatar and have helped block its presence internationally. They have also blocked much of the activity of certain notorious Qatar charities, in particular the Qatar Charity, one of the Arab World's largest. Qatar Charity was used to funnel funds to forces arrayed against Muamar Qadafi in Libya. It is still questionable whether Clinton and Obama were tools of Qatar's al=Thani ruling family, or vice versa.
[American Thinker] Ruth Bader Ginsburg is being beatified by the media establishment of the United States, and it is getting nauseating. With Justice Ginsburg ailing and liberals fearing that the Supreme Court may soon feature a robust conservative majority, the American left is aghast at the prospect of a return to following the Constitution as written. Having achieved many of its social change goals through judicial fiat, the loss of a progressive majority able to impose its preferences on the public is downright frightening to leftists.
One response is to enshrine Justice Ginsburg as some kind of holy person, someone whose decisions must be honored as sacred. The idea of the Senate confirming a justice who might disagree with Ginsburg must become anathema. Having failed to derail Justice Kavanaugh's appointment with scurrilous accusations unsupported by any evidence, my guess is that in their place, the strategy will switch to shaming any deviations from her legacy as somehow unworthy.
One facet of this campaign is the production of a movie about Justice Ginsburg's early days in the 1950s as a lawyer fighting sex discrimination ‐ in court and in her life. Although I have not seen the film, I do suspect that she is portrayed as heroic and as a victim who had much to overcome. The film was written by her nephew, in his first ever screenwriting credit.
The film, entitled On the Basis of Sex, debuted at the AFI Fest last month and went into theatrical release on Christmas Day. Its viewer rating on IMDB is a very mediocre 5.3, which is unusual for a film that would automatically have many left-leaning viewers rating it highly.
As part of its publicity tour, CNN's Brooke Baldwin interviewed the film's star, British actress Felicity Jones, who played young Ginsburg. She replaced Natalie Portman, according to IMBD, who left the project during the four years it was stuck in what is called "development hell" in Hollywood. The reason for going foreign in the casting does not appear to be an uncanny physical resemblance to the justice:
[Patreon] For thousands of years "control" of humans, both at the micro individual and macro collective level, was obvious and institutionalized. It was the way the world worked, with pharaohs, chiefs, kings and queens, along with their sycophant and supporting courts, wielding power and control at the top. Arrayed along the bottom were the slaves, serfs and peons of various rank and stature, while scattered about the thin middle were the skilled tradesmen, shopkeepers and professionals such as they were.
It was the most effective social order of all millennium; a control system based upon claimed mutual benefit through the collective sharing of resources and defense, though never fairly or just. With disease, pestilence, hunger and death always lurking around the corner, it just made good sense to gather in groups and subsist as best we could. The pecking order quickly sorted out, with sociopaths and ruthless killers quickly rising to the top.
Of course, things are very different these days...right?
#1
This is why the elites don't care for freedom of speech or the right to self defense, as those are distinctly individual rights. Of course, other items in the bill of rights like freedom of association and protection against self incrimination are also individual rights, but at the moment when you, as an individual, open your mouth or defend yourself, you are demonstrating in unequivocal terms that you exist outside of any collective.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/27/2018 7:51 Comments ||
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#2
With disease, pestilence, hunger and death always lurking around the corner left out are invasions, brigandry and riots.
[Breitbart] Never Trumper John Podhoretz, a contributing editor for the now-defunct Never Trump magazine the Weekly Standard, tweeted on Wednesday that he wondered whether the U.S. economy tanking would lead to President Donald Trump losing enough support from Republicans in Congress that he would be removed from office.
Podhoretz is a top Never Trumper who has frequently criticized the president and attacked readers of this website, as Breitbart News has reported many times before.
To remove a sitting president via the impeachment process, a majority in the House must vote for articles of impeachment to bring charges against a president, then a two-thirds super-majority in the Senate must approve them, thereby convicting the president with 67 or more votes.
#3
While they might win over the E-GOP, the rank and file know better. If the economy tanks now, it'll be suspected that it was engineered to tank to fulfill the needs of the wanna be slave masters. And they will rightly earn the ire of normal conservatives. We aren't falling for it anymore.
[Breitbart] Monday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh urged President Donald Trump to not back down on funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall despite the current government shutdown.
Limbaugh said the Democrats owned the shutdown, even though the media suggest otherwise. According to Limbaugh, the media have improperly concluded it can separate Trump from his base.
"The shutdown is obviously a top priority subject," Limbaugh said at the beginning of his Monday show. "I just need to reiterate some things about it. We’re hearing that it’s not going to be resolved until the new year. The Democrats have no incentive, really, to solve this until they take control of the House of Representatives on, I think, January 3. But I want the president to hold firm on this."
#2
In the past year, I have lost 3 family members to illegal immigrant semi drivers. One was a doctor, one was a vet and one was just 18. Two years ago, one exited an expressway and the trailer creased my rear window post. My daughter was in the back holding her infant son. The driver presented his Mexican license which was strange because he was driving a well known semi and pulling a well known business trailer. E-verify is needed!
Posted by: CC Reader ||
12/27/2018 13:37 Comments ||
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#3
My sympathies, CC Reader. Much is needed — may it soon be done.
[Washington Examiner] An outgoing Republican lawmaker warned Wednesday the country's current political climate could produce a figure like Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler
"I want to be clear and explicit that I am not likening Trump to Hitler, but the forces at play could lead to a future Hitler-like character if we don’t watch out. It must be remembered that another thing that Benjamin Franklin said was that he who trades his freedom for security, deserves neither. Indeed, how true," Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., wrote in a Facebook post, also referring to one of the nation's Founding Fathers.
The comments were supposed to be included in a farewell speech Sanford was due to deliver on the House floor last Thursday before lawmakers were called to deal with an imminent partial government shutdown and President Trump announcing his intention to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. Sanford's parting message was one of thanks and caution, signaling that the country was headed toward "a shipwreck if we don’t change course."
#1
...If Mark Sanford told me at high noon that the sun was shining, I'd send three people out to check. Fu@king idiot, and the people who voted for him after he returned from Argentina are worse.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/27/2018 4:49 Comments ||
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#2
Retiring GOP congressman: Trump era 'could lead to a future Hitler-like character' in the US
Do the Donk reaction will to be to vote in Occasional-Cortex?
#7
His message was garbled between brain and mouth by an over-tight belt and pants
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/27/2018 8:54 Comments ||
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#8
Sanford was criticized by President Donald Trump via Twitter for being "very unhelpful," and "nothing but trouble" hours before polls closed on the day of the June 12th Republican primary
#11
If it happens, it will be because Deep State shenanigans caused people to lose faith that "normal channels" will work.
When we see Mueller and judges doing their best to reverse the verdict of 2016, we may see a critical mass of normies throw up their hands and say:
"OK, we tried following the rules by dutifully voting in primaries and the general. And you clowns are sending a message that our decisions will be ignored or undermined. Now we'll just let it all burn."
[Townhall] And this year ends with our loser ruling class shedding any pretense of legitimacy in its quest to reclaim the power we took back from it in 2016. The reaction to Donald Trump by our alleged betters - SPOILER: They are much, much worse than us - is instructive. They have abandoned all the principles they once claimed to support - democracy, civil rights, due process, and equality. None of those principles help them to keep or regain power anymore, so they are expendable. As are you. To paraphrase Recep, "principles are like the bus - you ride them as far as they'll take you"
...The fascist regimes on our college campuses are not an aberration but a model - if they get their way, all America will be one giant university, with an overpaid parasite class overseeing the indoctrination of us Normals and carefully controlling our speech, if not our thoughts.
...And equality - have you noticed how the super-rich are almost exclusively liberal Democrats? If you haven’t, you’ve been in a coma. Lucky you, because it's been horrible to watch the mutation of our country from one with a great, prosperous middle class into a country made up of the rich and the perpetual supplicants. The death of the middle class is no coincidence; it’s the result of enemy action. After all, the people in the middle class get uppity. They have expectations beyond a few scraps distributed by the government. The middle class expects to have a say, and that just will not do.
#3
Progressivism is neo feudalism writ large. The only tangible difference that in original feudalism the elites periodically donned armor and had to deal with and guys face to face.
The DNC trades income stream protection at all costs for broken glass voting and money skimmed from public sector union dues. They are the mercenaries of the magic paychecks.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
12/27/2018 11:33 Comments ||
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[American Spectator] And now the Left media are consumed by Canine Spongiform Encephalopathy ‐ Mad Dog Disease. It seems that everyone at CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the CBS-NBC-ABC cabal all madly love outgoing Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis. The SPCA has come to D.C. It is fascinating that these liberals, who always denigrate the military and prefer to manipulate the armed forces into serving as their laboratory for transgender social experiments (Yes, Zer!), suddenly are singing paeans to Gen. Mattis. It is ridiculous. They have no shame.
They adore a great patriotic general? Gimme a break. Six months ago, Secretary Mattis was being grilled on why we had not yet left Afghanistan. They want to close down ICE. Not the border ‐ that may remain wide open ‐ but they want to close down ICE because Immigration and Customs Enforcement is run by "Nazis." They express empathy and sympatico for extremist elements like "Black Lives Matter" when the BLM crowd oppose the police and march in streets calling for police deaths. All manifestations of defending our safety and security, at home and abroad, are evil for them. All first responders are pounded with contumely. Even Gen. David Petraeus would get heckled when he set foot on a campus to lecture.
But, now that President Trump has accepted Secretary Mattis’s resignation, oh how those Leftists love their Mad Dog! Listen to Don Lemon and Chris Matthews and Chris Cuomo as they pathetically yelp: Woof, woof! How every American liberal salivates Pavlovian merely upon hearing those sweet two syllables: Mad Dog!
Baloney. Or, as they say in the Land of Canine: Grrrrrrrrr!
If Trump Derangement Syndrome has evolved into a full-fledged malady impacting half the American population, it now seems to have spawned a new ailment: Mad Dog Disease. The basic symptoms are the inexplicable sorrow being expressed by anti-war activists, flower-bearing peaceniks, who incomprehensibly cannot sleep, eat, or otherwise function now that James "Mad Dog" Mattis no longer is our Secretary of Defense. They can’t handle it: Who will protect us, if not our sweet beloved Mad Dog? It is a thing.
For those who have learned American subjects in school beside Identity Studies, the United States in fact is led by a civilian commander-in-chief whom the public elects. It is presumed that the President is too busy to do everything by himself, so he appoints aides, advisors, and surrounds himself with a cabinet. But in the end, they all serve at the pleasure of the President whom the people elected. That is how it should be. No one elected James Mattis to be in charge of America’s defense strategy. For that matter, no one elected Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, Morning Joe & Mika, Al Sharpton, or anyone else to that role ‐ and none of them has television ratings to suggest that they reflect the views of more than a pittance among the population, most of whom get stuck watching CNN while at the airport awaiting their delayed flight or while standing at the dry cleaner.
Pentagon insiders say that he rubbed civilian officials the wrong way – not because he went all “mad dog,” which is his public image, and the view at the White House, but rather because he pushed the civilians so hard on considering the second- and third-order consequences of military action against Iran. Some of those questions apparently were uncomfortable. Like, what do you do with Iran once the nuclear issue is resolved and it remains a foe? What do you do if Iran then develops conventional capabilities that could make it hazardous for U.S. Navy ships to operate in the Persian Gulf? He kept saying, “And then what?”"
#4
Yes, always remember, "the cult of personality" is a bad thing. Except when it isn't...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/27/2018 7:55 Comments ||
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#5
I will back Trump, not because he is a fine man, but because he is an effective necessary Leader and the Left DIS likes him intensely. I regard General Matthis as a fine soldier and an upright courageous man.
I regret Trump needs Yes men ( but under his present harassment it seems necessary ) and Matthis isn''t one of those even on Kiss my Butt day. Matthis is what I wish Trump were, but he isn't.
Schumer is my choice for Kiss my Butt day. And Nancy Pelosi is a dried up Cow. No milk even on a good day.
General Matthis still HAS all his talents. He always will. Men like Matthis will always BE truly Matthis.
Trump will be gone someday. But until Trump is gone, General Matthis is still good for future backup. We may need General Matthis again someday.
He isn't going to go away, he's too valuable. And he stands out to other men who know what a Man should be. Men like Matthis don't back down. They are actually real, and they are what I would call "righteous men."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Post Bulletin] After 19 months, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has charged a number of targets with almost every conceivable sin ‐ except collusion with Russia to throw an election. Yet suspicion of collusion was the reason that Mueller was appointed in the first place.
[Red State] Former drug cartel kingpin Joaquín Guzmán, aka "El Chapo," in on trial in federal court in Brooklyn on a seventeen count indictment that will nearly inevitably in him doing life without parole in the Supermax at Florence, CO.
[American Thinker] Ruth Bader Ginsburg is being beatified by the media establishment of the United States, and it is getting nauseating. With Justice Ginsburg ailing and liberals fearing that the Supreme Court may soon feature a robust conservative majority, the American left is aghast at the prospect of a return to following the Constitution as written. Having achieved many of its social change goals through judicial fiat, the loss of a progressive majority able to impose its preferences on the public is downright frightening to leftists.
[Patreon] For thousands of years "control" of humans, both at the micro individual and macro collective level, was obvious and institutionalized. It was the way the world worked, with pharaohs, chiefs, kings and queens, along with their sycophant and supporting courts, wielding power and control at the top. Arrayed along the bottom were the slaves, serfs and peons of various rank and stature, while scattered about the thin middle were the skilled tradesmen, shopkeepers and professionals such as they were.
[Washington Examiner] An outgoing Republican lawmaker warned Wednesday the country's current political climate could produce a figure like Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler
