'Incidental Collection' explained.
[American Thinker] The genuine magnitude of the FBI spying on the Trump campaign (or Adam Schiff's getting a hold of the phone records of journalists and fellow representatives) was far greater than most people realize, reading or hearing about a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page. Many people naturally presume that an operation to trample on the rights of one man ‐ even an Annapolis graduate who served as a source for the CIA ‐ was bad, but not a major spying operation. After all, Page was not a top-level campaign adviser, but an unpaid volunteer. So what's the big deal?
Here's what the deal is, as explained by Sharyl Attkisson:
Believe it or now, intelligence agencies can use one legal wiretap to monitor as many as 25,000 people for which there was no wiretap justification.
Through a single warrant, government agents can capture phone calls, texts, emails and bank records from people "two hops" away. That means all of the suspected spy's direct contacts ‐ "one hop" ‐ and everybody who contacts those people or even visits their Facebook pages or websites ‐ two hops.
In this way, one analysis found intel agencies can use one legal wiretap to access to 25,000 people's phones. Consider at least a half dozen Trump officials were caught in the FBI surveillance dragnet, according to news reports: campaign chair Manafort, multiple "transition officials" including Lt. General Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner, and adviser Carter Page ‐ who was wiretapped over and over though never charged with anything.
Sidney Powell (former prosecutor and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn's attorney): And what most people don't understand is, they don't just get everything they want against Carter Page, they get everything they want against every person who communicated with Carter Page, and against every person who communicated with that person. So it goes out what's called two hops.
Sharyl: And that would allow them to find intelligence from someone nowhere near the original center that they went to the FISA Court about?
Sidney Powell: Exactly. They could have all kinds of banking records and personal information on tens of thousands of people by virtue of those FISA applications.
Sharyl: ‐ including Trump who was known to be one or two hops away from surveilled targets.
On top of that, at least four key anti-Trump figures have admitted in testimony and interviews accessing sensitive, protected intelligence of US citizens ‐ including Trump associates ‐ under the Obama administration. All say they were guarding national security, had no political motives, and didn't leak the information. As the 2016 campaign peaked, Obama official Samantha Power's name was on hundreds of attempts to reveal the identities of Americans caught up in secretly-gathered intelligence. Obama adviser Susan Rice also took part. And Obama officials Sally Yates and James Clapper admit having reviewed intel gathered on US political figures.
#1
Sidney Powell (former prosecutor and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn's attorney): And what most people don't understand is, they don't just get everything they want against Carter Page, they get everything they want against every person who communicated with Carter Page, and against every person who communicated with that person. So it goes out what's called two hops.
Perhaps some people "don't understand." Others recognize that Carter Page was actually an intelligence community collection platform.
#4
So, if the original warrant was so badly flawed, doesn't that render inadmissible any evidence it allowed the FBI to obtain against the likes of Manafort and Flynn? Doesn't that reverse their convictions?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/22/2019 15:01 Comments ||
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OPINION: At the heart of the logjam is not just the vagueness of the commitments in last year’s Singapore talks between Kim and Trump, but also a fundamental difference over what steps are needed to build confidence, writes Andrew Hammondhttps://t.co/oac1EdbyI8pic.twitter.com/foqhBiz70H
LONDON (Reuters) - For all the angst about trade wars, geopolitics and a sputtering and overly indebted global economy, 2019 might just be the best year investors have ever had.
The numbers are staggering. Global stocks have piled on more than $10 trillion, bonds have been on fire, oil has surged almost 25%, former crisis spots Greece and Ukraine have top-performed, and even gold has sparkled.
Wall Street .SPX and MSCI's near 50-country world index .MIWD00000PUS have both stormed to record highs after 30% and 24% leaps. Europe, Japan, China and Brazil are all up at least 20% in dollar terms too. Not exactly shoddy.
A mirror image of 2018, when almost everything fell? Perhaps. But there have been a couple of important drivers.
One was China showing it was serious about stimulus for its $14 trillion economy. The other was the screeching change of direction by the world’s top central banks, led by the Federal Reserve, which cut U.S. interest rates for the first time since the financial crisis more than a decade earlier.
"Whereas a year ago the Fed was raising rates and earnings were rolling over, this year you have felt the Fed has been on your side," said James Clunie, who manages asset firm Jupiter’s Absolute Return Fund.
"They are willing to do QE4 at a stock market (record) high, which is extraordinary," he added, referring to Fed efforts to bring down a spike in money market rates that some suggest could presage a fourth round of quantitative easing asset purchases.
#1
If it weren't all built on an unsustainable (lefty worship word) mountain of debt, it might be a feel good story. The fact that economists are taking the MMT fever dream for real show there's a shit storm ahead.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/22/2019 7:27 Comments ||
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#2
How much of this translates into increasing production of physical stuff?
Posted by: James ||
12/22/2019 15:20 Comments ||
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#3
We had the inflation from the money printing, they just made sure it landed in land (and other title where corporations which often rely on patent title and copyright title cost more)
Via Daily Signal - the Heritage Foundation site
In a segment that aired Friday night, Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson made several false, outrageous, and unfounded accusations against The Heritage Foundation.
It was, therefore, incredibly disappointing to hear Tucker Carlson, whom we hold in high regard, mislead his viewers about Heritage’s work on the topics of big tech and censorship. Carlson is a former employee of Heritage who last year received our prestigious Salvatori Prize and who regularly features Heritage experts as guests on his Fox News program. In other words, he knows Heritage, our people, and our principles. Ya know, I'm getting pretty tired of these Jr. High Food fights
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/22/2019 8:36 Comments ||
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#2
This rebuttal never answered Tucker's main point, that the Heritage Foundation and others don't oppose internet companies censoring conservative viewpoints.
#3
Tucker is the best and most thoughtful voice on Fox, and the Heritage criticisms seemed reasonably focused on a troubling pattern among valued conservative sites. I for one, believe we must be introspective and honest about flaws in friends.
#8
Young gentlemen left unattended
On quarterdecks. Order offended.
"Our captains may snore! We
Are destined for glory!"
"You fired on the flagship? Oh, splendid!"
h/t Instapundit
[The American Spectator] - Much as Baskin-Robbins and Krispy Kreme dependably present a new Flavor of the Month, so it is that the Democrats reliably offer a new Impeachment of the Month. We all have tasted tidbits of each, with these remaining some of the most memorable monthly flavors ‐ among so many others ‐ to Impeach 45.
Stormy Daniels, Russian collusion, naming his son "Barron" (instead of Prince or Kaiser or Khaleesi?), emoluments, high cholesterol, 25th Amendment, tweeting tweets that Al Green later tweets that he does not approve, Michael Cohen secret tapes, allegedly referring to dung-hole polities as such (and probably never saying it), threatening nuclear holocaust by meeting with the North Korean Dough Boy to negotiate a deal before all the pieces were locked in place, ending democracy as we know it by pulling security credentials from the likes of John Brennan, who voted for the Communist Party’s presidential candidate, destroying our relationship with Europe by imposing tariffs and trade impediments on them that parallel theirs on us, upbraiding Baltimore for record-setting murder/crime/vermin mismanagement, cutting funds to sanctuary cities, Michael Avenatti television interviews on CNN declaring readiness to run for president (or to walk slowly for president instead of running, if prison-issued leg chains hamper the speed), insulting the Europeans in NATO because they are too cheap to pay their paltry 2-percent fair share, calling the media the enemy of the people, threatening world peace and nuclear holocaust by pulling out of the Iran Deal, A Week of Omarosa, insulting a sourpuss 16-year-old Swedish kid who one day will wake up to the realization that the Earth and its oceans and carbon all are just fine but that her parents’ generation indeed ruined her generation’s lives by hocking them all into inextricable debt to China, treason for the Putin press conference, destroying the American economy and causing world economic collapse by imposing tariffs on China, upbraiding California for pursuing politically correct and scientifically incorrect forestry policies that amplify the frequency and devastation of the state’s regular forest fires, building the Wall with discretionary military funds, serving hamburgers and fast food to college football players, causing the world to end in less than 12 years by pulling out of the Paris Climate Thingie, anti-Semitism for moving America’s Israel embassy to Jerusalem, anti-Semitism for recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, anti-Semitism for declaring Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria legal unless decided otherwise by Israel’s Supreme Court, anti-Semitism for issuing an executive order punishing anti-Semites who receive federal Title VI funds, anti-Semitism for wishing Jews in America a Happy Rosh Hashanah, anti-Semitism for having an Orthodox Jewish daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, anti-Black racism for bringing down Black unemployment numbers to the lowest since the creation of counting, anti-Black racism for giving imprisoned people a second chance at freedom via the First Step Act, anti-Hispanic racism for bringing down Hispanic unemployment numbers to the lowest since the creation of numbers, anti-Black and anti-Hispanic racism for supporting school choice for Black and Hispanic inner-city youth, anti-Black racism for supporting and increasing federal funding of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), anti-Black racism by naming Dr. Ben Carson to his cabinet, Blasey Perjury Ford, the Ukraine phone call, bribery, quid pro quo, banning Jim Acosta from press conferences, anti-Black racism by being a thousand-times-better president than Obama, and tweeting that people who hate America should go back to places of their ethnic ancestry to see what real junk is.
For December, we have two new flavors: Abuse of Congress and Obstruction of Power. Or Abuse of Obstruction and Power of Congress. Or something like that. Whatever. As the Democrats watch their Impeachment of the Month ice cream start to melt, they still salivate wistfully over future monthly impeachment flavors. The big one for next year, they hope, will be Abuse Quo of Obstruction Quid of Tax Returns Pro. They are dying for those tax returns. Oh, how they want to see those tax returns! If you have a kid who learned to read sometime between 1997 and the following decade, and if you remember how that kid would sit at the door on the Saturday mid-morning each year when the guy or woman in brown shorts from UPS would ring the bell and deliver the latest volume of Harry Potter on its official publication date, then you can picture how Al Green and Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and the Squad, all camp out every night waiting to be the first to read Trump’s tax returns when UPS delivers them.
Amid the scavenger hunt to find Trump’s tax returns, it is clear that Trump does not want to release them, and the Impeachers cannot live without them. To smoke out those returns, the Impeachers have been parading to the courts, finding friendly judges who are only too happy to accommodate them, and the president predictably has been appealing the rulings en route to the United States Supreme Court. SCOTUS is the only panel in the land where the poor guy has half a chance at getting justice in this country because it includes such open-minded jurists as Ruth Ginsburg, who publicly calls him a "faker." Nothing like a blindfolded Lady Justice to determine a matter of profound legal import: "He has no consistency about him," Ginsburg told CNN. "He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.... How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that."
...There is absolutely no way that SCOTUS wants that burden or legacy. We saw it when Chief Justice Roberts went through mental gymnastics to avoid having the Supreme Court overturn Obamacare. We saw it when the Court avoided overturning the Bush‐Gore election results during the chad era. Other than the prejudiced Ginsburg, whose mind was made up before the matter even became a court case, the other eight Supreme Court justices, despite their political proclivities, actually do care about seeming to be impartial and above personal considerations when they hand down decisions. In this particular matter, they not only have to deal with a political time bomb but they also need to hand down the decision in June, a mere five months before the presidential election. How can they avoid intermingling in the election by handing down a bombshell ruling so close to the voting? There are three simple approaches from which they can choose:
1. Hold that Trump does not have to release the tax returns. If SCOTUS holds that way, the matter remains at status quo ante ‐ no harm, no foul. Back to the election. End of story. Ho-hum.
2. Force the prejudiced Ginsburg to recuse from the matter because she opened her big mouth when she should have shut up as any dignified Supreme Court justice would have grasped. By having blurted out and having disclosed her pre-judicial expectation that Trump needs to release his taxes, even before legal arguments were placed before her, she disqualified herself from this matter. It is hard to think back to a legal matter in the past century in which a recusal was more obviously required because, in this one, she blurted it out to a media outlet like CNN, and it was all over the place. Once she is recused, that leaves a SCOTUS that can go either 6-2 or 5-3 against releasing taxes or 4-4. A 4-4 would be tricky because, on the one hand, it would leave the appellate decisions standing, but that pending tie if they are not 6-2 or 5-3 against releasing could persuade the court to go to option 3:
3. All the court has to do is what it so often does: It can point to one or more fine points of law that it feels the lower courts did not adequately evaluate when they reached their decisions and simply send the matter back down the pipeline for further findings and a new adjudication considering the previously overlooked or unconsidered point of law. That sends it down to Obama and Clinton judges, who again will rule against the president anyway. BUT ... But it then means that the second-generation lower-court rulings, when they are appealed to the Supreme Court, will not be on the court’s docket for a final decision until after the November 2020 elections. In that way, even if the court were to order Trump to release his tax returns, the November 2020 voting already would be history.
#1
Given that the Obama IRS had 8 years to go over the Trump tax returns, its nothing short of a fishing expedition trying to over turn the 2016 election.
Let's follow the Constitutional line that all are equal before the law. Make everybody's tax returns public! If we didn't have corrupt legacy infotainment enterprises, what should be a question of all the aspirants at these Donk debates circus sideshows.
#2
One can only hope Justice Ginsburg is forced to recuse herself and the Court kicks the can back down to the lower courts, perhaps avoiding a civil war.
And a oh-by-the-way - Justice Ginsburg passes quietly in her sleep, after being forced to recuse herself from the Trump tax case. Happy New Year!
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/22/2019 12:21 Comments ||
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#3
Ref #2: No more 'in her sleep' in-line teasers Bobby. I spend nearly 30 minutes on Gurgle attempting to validate...*(#&@@!!!
Da Tech Guy via Instapundit
Finger pointed forever.
"He just got impeached. He’ll be impeached forever. No matter what the Senate does. He’s impeached forever because he violated our Constitution," she said.
Trump doesn’t care about the stigma of impeachment. He knew they were planning it before the election and, once he got elected, it was on.
Some of them even said so in public on Inauguration Day.
So, after the Mueller investigation came up empty, President Trump goaded them into doing it; he was the one who made sure that the second Ukraine call got into the hands of the "whistle-blower." I theorized about this weeks ago.
He did it so that there would be a trial and, of course, during the trial, all eyes will be watching. That’s when all the things that our government has been doing to us will come out and those things will come out of the mouth of the President of the United States.
That’s when we’ll find out the height, weight, breadth and time length of all the graft and money-laundering that has been going on in the US government at least for the last 50 years, perpetrated by all three branches of government and by both parties.
Pelosi knows this and it’s why she’s holding up progress. The House voted in favor of impeachment and then promptly departed for Christmas break without sending the articles of impeachment to the senate, as is necessary for a true impeachment to occur.
She didn’t want the impeachment at all for this very reason. But her caucus is much dumber and more vocal than she is, so she had no choice. So, now she’ll play the role of Grand Impeacher of Trump and avoid sending the articles of impeachment to the senate for as long as she can. She knows it won’t last, but she’ll play Trump-slayer ‐ figuratively speaking ‐ while she can.
Her caucus and her constituency will buy this because they, too, care more about looking tough against Trump, even while barely knowing anything about how the process is supposed to go. Fun fact: many Democrats thought that the House impeachment meant that President Trump was supposed to be immediately thrown out of office.
So, Pelosi will bask in the sunlight as Anti-Trump Champion while she can because she knows it will end soon.
How could she not know what’s coming? Thomas Wictor has been pointing out for months that President Trump plans to be the lone witness for the defense during the senate trial and once you see that and listen to what the president says about it, you’ll discover that he has warned the Democrats over and over again that this is what he will do.
But they are blind and deaf to their own error.
And here’s something interesting: the State of the Union address is coming up in February. On her way out the door for Christmas break, Speaker Pelosi invited President Trump to the House to give it, as if everything is normal.
Will that be the grand collision of powers? Will President Trump decide to spill the beans then?
This SOTU address will be an all-eyes-on-Trump affair, too, and I suspect that there will be a lot of misbehavior by the audience-in-attendance during that speech. The Speaker may be setting the President up for that, but I bet his set-up for her and for the rest of the Democrats will be grander, not to mention more effective than, say, Rashida Tlaib leading a screeching chorus of "IMPEACHED MOTHERF*CKER!!" (I hope they try that. Heh.)
Speaker Pelosi is correct in observing that President Trump will have the distinction that only two other presidents have. But I bet he will also have the distinction of showing the entire world how crooked those who claim to lead us and represent us have been for decades. If he does that, he’ll be by himself in history.
I think that he’ll do it and so does Madame Speaker, as do many of the other beak-wetters, past and present.
#1
Um, sweetheart? You haven't really impeached him yet because there has to be a, um, trial in the Senate. You lying disgusting play-acting sack of shit.
However, civility is now a thing of the past. The Uniparty can play the game of faux civility. A party in opposition that controls the house but not the executive, will not.
Such is the price of concentrating too much power. Above all things, men lust for power.
The article is intended for Israeli audience - so it covers stuff familiar to everyone in 'Burg
[JPost] - The US House of Representatives voted on Wednesday evening to impeach President Donald Trump for "abuse of power" and "obstruction of Congress."
This didn’t come as a surprise to anyone, least of all Republicans. The outcome, like the whole undue process itself, was predetermined. Most Democrats were unable to accept Trump’s election in the first place, going so far as to say that he hadn’t really won, because he garnered a majority of Electoral College votes, rather than popular ones.
That the Electoral College determines presidential victories was of no interest to those who wished to argue otherwise. This is why they admitted openly from the get-go ‐ as soon as Trump was sworn in and entered the White House in January 2017 ‐ that the effort to remove him from office was underway. Since then, they have been engaged in that pursuit with a vengeance.
Their delight at taking back the House following the 2018 midterm Congressional elections not only knew no bounds; it also gave them the false sense that ousting their nemesis, even well before the end of his first four-year term, would be an easy task.
The veteran Dems who had been around the block ‐ and on the Hill ‐ for a lot longer than the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan ‐ were a little more cautious in their assessment. They understood, though didn’t say so aloud, that the sitting president’s party almost always loses seats in the midterms.
...The farcical hearings and debates went ahead nonetheless, and achieved the never-Trumpers’ desired goal. But it was a Pyrrhic victory.
In the first place, just as it was clear that the Democratic-majority House was going to vote to impeach the president, it is now equally certain that the Republican-dominated Senate will not convict him of the "crimes and misdemeanors" that the House’s kangaroo court determined he committed.
Secondly, the five senators currently vying to become the Democratic nominee for president succeeded in putting themselves in a tough spot. If and when the impeachment goes to the Senate for trial, Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont), Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) will have to be present throughout the proceedings, which could drag on for weeks, if not months. From their perspective, this means losing a lot of precious time away from the campaign trail.
As for former senator and current Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden: Though he stands to gain by having the above contenders tied up for a while, his predicament isn’t pretty. A trial in the Senate would enable the Republicans to place his son’s dubious business dealings in Ukraine on the table in a way that the Democrats previously prevented.
Third, and most important, is the fact that Americans of all political stripes either lost interest in the whole spectacle or were disgusted by it. According to recent polls, many independents and even some Democrats have come to consider it a political witch hunt, rather than an ethical endeavor to uphold the Constitution, causing a rise in Trump’s approval ratings.
...Partisanship aside, incumbents rarely are defeated. This is particularly, though not exclusively, true during periods of prosperity. And the American economy, under Trump, has been booming, in spite of what "progressives" ‐ especially the wealthy ones in Congress, Hollywood and the media ‐ have been trying to persuade the less affluent members of the public to believe.
THERE ARE other reasons for Trump’s increasing popularity, of course. Among these is his unwavering support for the Israel, which he has exhibited in word and deed to such an extent that even many American Jews who never vote Republican grudgingly acknowledge that he’s been good on that score. In this category are Jewish Democrats concerned with the growing antisemitism in the party that they’ve always supported and wish to continue doing so.
...Still, even all 7.5 million US Jews put together make up only 2% of the total population, and a far smaller proportion of the electorate. Conservative Christians do count, however, demographically and electorally. As it happens, they overwhelmingly appreciate Trump’s pro-Israel policies, which include moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, defunding UNRWA and declaring that Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria are not illegal.
These are the people whose Christian values, symbols and rituals have been under assault by the Left. They are the citizens who want to hang the American flag on their lawns, sing the national anthem at sports events, have their kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance at school assemblies, and bask proudly in the glow of the great country that they’re fortunate to inhabit.
Trump restored their faith in those desires by replacing derision with respect, and by poking fun at the political correctness that’s been shoved down their throats for years. It’s no wonder that he fills every arena to the rafters with cheering crowds.
More mysterious is the degree to which the Democrats are out of touch with the above reality. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t allow their party to be taken over by radicals who not only ridicule and delegitimize everything that has made America the most coveted address in the world, but promote policies that lead to decline and despotism wherever implemented. Take the former Soviet Union, for example. Or the present situation in Venezuela.
Moving too far leftward is a crime whose punishment is electoral defeat, as was illustrated last week in the stinging blow that was dealt to the British Labour Party and its socialist, antisemitic leader, Jeremy Corbin.
...Britons were not simply rejecting Corbin’s extremism; they were asserting superiority over a worldview and accompanying culture that is hostile to their healthy, upwardly mobile aspirations and patriotism. In this respect, Johnson has something crucial in common with Trump, other than being the butt of jokes about his hair. What the two men share is an optimistic view of the nation each has been entrusted to steer, and the ability to convey and instill confidence.
Which brings us back to the grave error made by House Democrats on Wednesday and during the weeks before. They thought that they were criminalizing the president’s alleged quid pro quo with Ukraine. What they actually were doing, however, was impeaching the character and credibility of anyone who cast a ballot for him in 2016, and of all those intending to do so in 2020.
Proof that this will lead to a landslide for Trump in November lies in the packed stadiums of exuberant voters who’ve been lining up to let him know they’re on his side, and to hear from him that the commitment is mutual.
Israel, the U.K... Bibi and Boris J... once again, we have to look overseas to find sane people who recognize the utter madness of our own political class in calling Trump the Antichrist.
OrangeMan is actually saving this country from those malicious clowns.
#4
Trump WILL be re-elected. That Will happen. THEN where will the Democrats be? Who will they blame? Not themselves.
They are bankrupt of Ideas and credibility.
Let just stand here and watch, its their blood not ours, Smell it?
Stupid doesn't live to be old.
#11
Capitalism is at heart removing implicit and explicit subsidies and globalism is about exploiting some quite stealthy implicit subsidies as well as some foreign aid explicit corruption.
[NJ.com] The Sierra Club has come out in support of the impeachment and removal of President Trump from office. We have never before called for the impeachment or removal of a sitting President, but Trump’s abuse of power and disregard for the law has undermined our democracy.
He has violated his oath of office and his behavior when it comes to the environment is even more reckless ‐ he has deliberately ignored laws and trying to destroy important environmental institutions. President Trump has declared war on the environment. He unilaterally pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord, called climate change a hoax, and has muzzled scientists while trying to compromise 50 years of environmental progress.
He is exploiting our public lands while attempting to roll back 85 environmental regulations including the Environmental Species Act and lightbulb standards, and is allowing banned toxic chemicals and pesticides back on the market. He has stacked government agencies with industry lobbyists like EPA’s Andrew Wheeler. Trump’s lawlessness and disregard for institutions is putting our environment and safety at risk.
#1
IMO, professional environmentalists - who been recruiting donations with imaginary disasters since 1970es - should be impaleable (on a short, blunt stake).
#3
Time to end tax exempt status for all organizations. Thanks for crapping in the pool. Only religious organizations that have a 100 year history can be grandfathered to make sure of your 'separation of church and state'.
#4
In the early 90s the Sierra Club fought to have toilets removed from the trails in Glacier Park. Now all the animals have intestinal disease after some sick guy went outside in it got into the watershed.
It’s been years since I last looked at the offerings of the Friday Times — it wasn’t nearly as much fun when they made it impossible to copy the Nuggets From The Urdu Press, which now has a new editor and has become actually boring. But this piece, although long (grab a cup of coffee and your baked carbohydrate of choice before starting, dear Reader), provides food for thought, especially if you are a much more complex thinker than I.
[FridayTimes] Khaled Ahmed reviews a revelatory book on Pakistain’s relationship with America and recent happenings.
Shuja Nawaz, currently a distinguished fellow, South Asia Centre at the well-known bipartisan think tank, the Atlantic Council, Washington, DC, has revealed additional secrets about the killing of the late Osama bin Laden ...... who is now beyond all cares and woe...... in his book The Battle for Pakistain: The Bitter US Friendship and a Tough Neighbourhood (Liberty Publishing Lahore). Pakistain has always wondered about who sneaked on our friend Osama living peacefully in Abbottabad
Continued on Page 49
#1
The first shocker came when the Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist Seymour Hersh made it public that a former Pakistani intelligence official had actually informed the Americans about the Abbottabad hideout of Osama bin Laden and that a former ISI official had provided the information about his hideout for $25 million in addition to US citizenship “with a new identity.” Who was the bloke?
Shocker? We've been saying UBL was 'sold' at the Burg for years, we were just unsure of the price! Nobody flies (undetected) to and from a city like Abbottabad. That's just crazy talk.
In the 2006 to 2012 timeframe, if a small US Tigershark drone came anywhere near the AFG-Paki border the Paki's became apoplectic. Their entire border is laced with overlapping fans of Russian radar systems. Multi-lifts flying in, one crashing, conducting a shootout, cross-loading, all in less than an hour totally undetected, no casualties.... the stuff of Hollywood movies.
#2
What's shocking to me is that America continues to believe the State of Pakistain had nothing to do with Ossama's getaway from Afghanistan and his stay in Abbotabad.
Whether a greedy officer told on him or the Pakistani's wished to extinguish America's revenge-momentum in the WOT with his blood is not the mystery.
The real mystery is, how Pakistain escaped action from an all-avenging west and managed to keep the WOT focus diverted to the tribal hellhole next door. How the CIA continued to rely on ISI intel, allowed them to 'set up negotiations' with taliban, strut along the durand line like deputized sheriffs. The ridiculous amounts of US taxpayer money sent to them for 'fighting terrorism'.
#3
What's shocking to me is that America continues to believe the State of Pakistain had nothing to do with Ossama's getaway from Afghanistan and his stay in Abbotabad.
Does America believe that? We here at Rantburg watched it happen in real time — check the archives — and some number of us were then active military and perhaps other things. The frustration since that time has been that the bad guys — trained, supplied, and under the orders of the ISI —could retreat to the safety of the Pakistan side of the Durand Line between expeditions, just as in an earlier generation the Viet Cong were able to retreat to safe havens across the border in, if I recall correctly, Cambodia. Similar things were happening with Al Qaeda in Iraq running across the border into Syria.
Sadly, by the time the Taliban were driven out and Saddam Hussein was off his golden throne, the Democrats in Congress had chosen to forget that wars have to be won as well as fought; they refused to allow President George W. Bush any more latitude, and he was not the kind of old-style politico to hold their feet to the fire, while President Obama was happy to manage all sorts of declines.
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.
LONDON (Reuters) - For all the angst about trade wars, geopolitics and a sputtering and overly indebted global economy, 2019 might just be the best year investors have ever had.
[NJ.com] The Sierra Club has come out in support of the impeachment and removal of President Trump from office. We have never before called for the impeachment or removal of a sitting President, but Trump’s abuse of power and disregard for the law has undermined our democracy.
