[PJ] Remember the huge fuss the never-Trump media made out of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn's infamous December 2015 trip to Moscow? In articles written in 2016, 2017, and 2018 they suggested that the retired Army general was a "compromised" Russian stooge and that the trip bordered on treason. This has been a cornerstone of the Russia collusion narrative involving Flynn for several years now.
When Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley learned the truth in May 2017, he requested that the information be made public in fairness to Flynn, because it completely exonerated him of any wrongdoing in the affair.
"It appears the public release of this information would not pose any ongoing risk to national security. Moreover, the declassification would be in the public interest, and is in the interest of fairness to Lt. Gen. Flynn," Grassley wrote in August 2017.
A year and a half later, the truth finally has come out: "Flynn’s attendance at the RT event was disclosed in advance to the intelligence community, he took proactive steps to ensure he could not be compromised by attendees and he then came back to the United States and reported intelligence designed to benefit America," The Hill's John Solomon reported on Wednesday.
#4
"It appears the public release of this information would not pose any ongoing risk to national security. Moreover, the declassification would be in the public interest, and is in the interest of fairness to Lt. Gen. Flynn," Grassley wrote in August 2017.
Heh heh. He thinks this is about national security.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/04/2019 11:35 Comments ||
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#5
All the secret bureaucracies are merely establishment protection agencies.
Which is why they do fekc all against terrorism etc.
[Wash Times] It’s been over a year since the highly damaging text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, were revealed to the American public. The correspondence showed two senior Justice Department officials engaged in the most petty, vitriolic political diatribes while making decisions on the most sensitive investigations of the 2016 political season.
Their hatred toward then-candidate Donald Trump as well as their contempt for his supporters gave reasonable observers every reason to question whether the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the counterintelligence investigation into alleged Russian influence in the Trump campaign (Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page played key roles in both inquiries) were handled in a fair, unbiased and judicious manner.
Their behavior was so egregious that special counsel Robert Mueller removed them from his team the moment Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz told him about the text messages. Mr. Strzok was dismissed from the FBI, and further investigations are continuing.
Despite all this, defenders of the James Comey cabal and "Russia collusion" aficionados make one strong argument that seemingly debunks the spygate scandal and outrage over the upper reaches of the Obama administration’s wide-reaching surveillance operation on the campaign of the president’s rival party.
BLUF:
[Townhall] It deserved to be the lede. Text messages between Khashoggi and Maggie Mitchell Salem, an executive at Qatar Foundation International and a former State Department official during the Clinton presidency, show she "at times shaped the columns he submitted to The Washington Post, proposing topics, drafting material and prodding him to take a harder line against the Saudi government." The Post added, "Khashoggi also appears to have relied on a researcher and translator affiliated with the organization."
So Khashoggi was railing against one set of authoritarians ... with the research assistance and "drafting" and "shaping" of another set. This doesn't make his ruthless murder any less heinous. But it ought to curtail all the "Free Thinker Just Bearing Witness" rubbish.
#2
WHAT? A WaPo "Columnist" is a tool of a foreign Anti-American power? I'm shocked! Shocked"
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/04/2019 7:39 Comments ||
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#3
WAPO trying to find distance itself from Khashoggi and clean up a mess? Khashoggi operating on behalf of Qatar in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act? The op-eds published in WAPO were attempts to change U.S. policy against Saudi Arabia in favor of the Qatar-supported MB. (WAPO, the favorite outlet of a certain three-letter agency.)
The left and Dems in the U.S. sure tried to drag Trump into the Khashoggi murder mess by pushing him to act. Good that he steered clear.
[Wash Times] White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said Thursday it was "poor form" for the incoming Speaker of the House to personally attack President Trump.
Ms. Conway dismissed Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s comments on NBC’s Today Show that Mr. Trump doesn’t know how to deal with powerful women, citing the number of women he has placed in the administration.
"The incoming Speaker ‐ to come in and say to try to insult the president personally is very poor form," Ms. Conway told Fox News.
"Nothing really screams youth and energy like a 78-year-old speaker and Joe Biden running for president," she added, taking a swipe at the Democratic Party leadership.
Ms. Conway was responding to Ms. Pelosi’s interview with NBC that aired Thursday morning, hours ahead of her expected vote to become the 63rd Speaker of the House.
"I don’t know if he [Trump] knows how to deal with women in power and women with strength, but we’ll see. Let’s hope for the best in that regard," Ms. Pelosi said.
[Free Beacon] Rep. Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) on Thursday urged Democrats in Congress and the media to "keep talking," saying their rhetoric will expose how "radical" and "out of touch" they are.
Cheney, the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, appeared on Fox News' "Special Report," where she was asked to respond to multiple clips of Democrats using violent or controversial rhetoric in the last 24 to 48 hours.
"She'll cut your head off and you won't even know you are bleeding. That's all you need to know about her," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D., Calif.) daughter said of her mother on CNN.
"Much like [Adolf] Hitler took over the Nazi party, [President Donald] Trump has taken over the Republican Party," Rep. Hank Johnson (D., Ga.) said at an NAACP event in Atlanta.
"My New Year's resolution is to make sure that the Republican Party dies," actress Jane Curtin said on television.
Ed Henry, who was filling in for regular host Bret Baier, added that Pelosi told NBC that Democrats will not give any funding for a wall on the southern border, before asking Cheney what she thought of the rhetoric.
"I think they ought to keep talking, because I think the more the American people see how radical and how out of touch the Democrats are, the more they are going to regret the fact that the Democrats are now in control of the House of Representatives," Cheney said. "We face huge challenges in this country, huge challenges from a national security perspective, and we've got this economy that's booming because President Trump put policies in place, like the tax cuts, working with us in the Republican side of the House, like regulatory reform, rolling back the strangling regulations we saw during the Obama era. We got to keep that going."
#1
"I think they ought to keep talking, because I think the more the American people see how radical and how out of touch the Democrats are...
...and to demonstrate how mentally impaired anyone is who votes for a dem. Hank Johnson, Rashida Tlaib, and Maxine Waters style daily reminders please.
I have no idea why this is not getting more exposure.
Yesterday Mitch McConnell, in his role as Senate Majority Leader, unilaterally convened a Senate Session - with himself as the sole Senator present - and he then proceed to confirm every Trump appointee who had been languishing in procedural limbo over the past 22 months or so. He did so by setting up the Senate Executive Calendar in a way that grouped the nominees into "blocs," and then confirming entire blocs via voice vote. And then - after about 17 minutes - he adjourned the Senate!
Thirty-six of them are judges, if I counted right. Also a bunch of promotions at State, several generals and other DoD types, all sorts of bureaucrats, and one treaty.
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/04/2019 8:55 Comments ||
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#6
#2 - Good catch. She has no business being reappointed
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/04/2019 8:59 Comments ||
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#7
While I am glad the idiot GOP is finally playing hardball with the left and glad these appointments have been done, I am not thrilled with the method.
The left has been playing lose with the rules for decades and Cocaine Mitch just did the same. The precedent was set for all sorts of procedural funny business years ago and in 10 more years, the demoncrats might just be doing the exact same thing.
The more the rules are bent, ignored or broken, the more the public will lose faith in the system and the easier it is for one person to take power.
#9
I'm sorry that the procedure is, shall we say, lacking in form.
But, when one side of a battle has disgarded all respect for the rule of law and/or tradition unilateral disarmament by the other is nothing more than suicide.
The Demons have to be bludgened into rejoining the USA as rule of law abiding members. I really think that this will turn bloody if that doesn't happen.
Look at what the DemSocs like Jerry Brown, AOC, Bernie Sanders, et al really want to do to us and you will see what I mean.
Another view of The Second Year of the End of the World.
[National Review] The year 2018 will be deplored by pundits as a bad year of more unpredictable Donald Trump, headlined by wild stock-market gyrations, the melodramas of the Robert Mueller investigation, and the musical-chair tenures of officials in the Trump administration.
A quarter of the government is still shut down. Talk of impeachment by the newly Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is in the air. Seemingly every day there are sensational breakthroughs, scandals, and bombshells that race through social media and the Internet ‐ only to be forgotten by the next day.
In truth, aside from the Washington hysterias, 2018 was a most successful year for Americans.
In December, the United States reached a staggering level of oil production, pumping some 11.6 million barrels per day. For the first time since 1973, America is now the world’s largest oil producer
Since Trump took office, the U.S. has increased its oil production by nearly 3 million barrels per day, largely as the result of fewer regulations, more federal leasing, and the continuing brilliance of American frackers and horizontal drillers. It appears that there is still far more oil beneath U.S. soil than has ever been taken out. American production could even soar higher in the months ahead.
In addition, the United States remains the largest producer of natural gas and the second-greatest producer of coal. The scary old energy-related phraseology of the last half-century ‐ "energy crisis," "peak oil," "oil embargo" ‐ no longer exists.
Near-total energy self-sufficiency means that the U.S. is no longer strategically manipulated by the Middle East, forced to pay exorbitant political prices to guarantee access to imported oil, or threatened by gasoline prices of $4 to $5 a gallon.
The American economy grew by 4.2 percent in the second quarter of 2018, and by 3.4 percent in the third quarter. American GDP is nearly $1.7 trillion larger than in January 2017, and nearly $8 trillion larger than the GDP of China. For all the talk of the Chinese juggernaut, three Chinese workers produce about 60 percent of the goods and services produced by one American worker.
In 2018, unemployment fell to a near-record peacetime low of 3.7 percent. That’s the lowest U.S. unemployment rate since 1969. Black unemployment hit an all-time low in 2018. For the first time in memory, employers are seeking out entry-level workers rather than vice versa.
The poverty rate is also near a historic low, and household income increased. There are about 8 million fewer Americans living below the poverty line than there were eight years ago. Since January 2017, more than 3 million Americans have gone off so-called food stamps.
Abroad, lots of bad things that were supposed to happen simply did not.
After withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, the U.S. exceeded the annual percentage of carbon reductions of most countries that are part of the agreement.
North Korea and the U.S. did not go to war. Instead, North Korea has stopped its provocative nuclear testing and its launching of ballistic missiles over the territory of its neighbors.
Despite all the Trump bluster, NATO and NAFTA did not quite implode. Rather, allies and partners agreed to renegotiate past commitments and agreements on terms more favorable to the U.S.
The United States ‐ and increasingly most of the world ‐ is at last addressing the systematic commercial cheating, technological appropriation, overt espionage, intellectual-property theft, cyber intrusions, and mercantilism of the Chinese government.
The Middle East is still chaotic, but it is a mess that is now far less important to the U.S. for a variety of reasons. Energy-wise, America is not dependent on oil imports from corrupt Gulf monarchies or hostile Islamic states. Strategy-wise, the new fault lines are not Arab and Islamic cultures versus Israel or the United States. Instead, it is internecine strife within the Islamic world, mostly with Iran and its Shiite satellites opposing the Sunni Arab monarchies and the more moderate Middle Eastern regimes.
For all the pro- and anti-Trump invective and media hysteria, the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation circus, and the bitter midterm elections, the U.S. was relatively calm in 2018 compared with the rest of the world. There was none of the mass rioting, demonstrations, and street violence that occurred recently in France, and none of the existential and unsolvable divides over globalization and Brexit that we saw in Europe
Europe’s three most powerful leaders ‐ Angela Merkel of Germany, Emmanuel Macron of France, and Theresa May of the United Kingdom ‐ have worse approval ratings than the embattled Donald Trump.
In sum, the more media pundits claimed that America was on the brink of disaster in 2018, the more Americans became prosperous and secure.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/04/2019 09:58 ||
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Link ||
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#1
Shhhh! Don't tell anybody.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/04/2019 11:37 Comments ||
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h/t Instapundit
Is the social justice movement that’s sweeping British and American universities a secular religion? The core beliefs of the members of this cult certainly seem to play the same psychological role as the central tenets of the world’s major religions. They furnish their adherents with rituals and blasphemy laws, a way of distinguishing between the sacred and the profane, a vision of what it is to be a good person and live in a good society, and they enable them to engage in tribal sorting, dividing people between members of the in-group and the out-group. No doubt the same could be said of most political ideologies, but there’s one aspect of left-wing identity politics in which it reveals itself as more cult-like than other belief systems. I’m thinking of its magical component.
...What’s distinctive about members of the social justice left is not that they don’t believe in magic ‐ they clearly do ‐ but that the supernatural forces that govern their universe are all malevolent. Theirs is a religion bereft of a divine being. There are only white Devils.
[The Federalist] Walt Heyer knows firsthand what it’s like to undergo sex change surgery and then regret it. After living as a woman for nearly a decade, he decided to accept his biological sex and de-transition back to male. By then, Walt had received intensive cognitive therapy that helped him recognize early childhood trauma he had experienced.
The trauma resulted in a mental condition known as dissociative identity disorder (DID). In the clarity of that realization, his gender dysphoria simply vanished. His life as a "woman" all amounted to an attempt to escape reality. Sadly, too few people consider the possibility that gender dysphoria can manifest as a byproduct or symptom of other mental conditions, and most certainly of DID. (More on that below.)
Walt suffered huge waves of regret as a result of following through with his urge to be a woman. He had eagerly taken the bait of politicized medical practitioners, who hurried him along in the transition. He not only regretted what he had done to his body, he also grieved over the estrangement from his wife and children caused by his drastic change in identity.
There was collateral damage to other personal relationships as well. He also regretted the lost decade of his life in which he lived in the persona of a woman.
HEYER’S NEW BOOK SHINES LIGHT ON TRANS LIFE SURVIVORS
Heyer has written several books on transgender regret, but his sixth and newest book, "Trans Life Survivors," is not his personal story. It’s a compilation of the stories of many others caught up in today’s "transmania." They specifically sought out Walt to get some much-needed support. They’ve shared their lonely, surreal experiences falling down the trans rabbit hole, hoping to escape as he did.
Radical environmentalists have really been taking it on the chin at the multiplex. They are perfect villains for our times: well-intended enough to often seem somewhat reasonable, but meddlesome busybodies whose hopes and dreams are to radically reduce standards of living in order to effect some utopian scheme or another that will return the world ‐ or worlds ‐ to an unsullied Eden.
There’s a reason France convulsed in recent weeks, as middle-class protesters angered by taxes pushed for by environmentalists took to the streets.
Thanos, the villain (and protagonist, really) of the $2 billion-grossing megahit, "Avengers: Infinity War," was basically an omni-powered Paul Ehrlich. Whereas the comic book version of Thanos sought to kill half of the universe in order to prove his love for an anthropomorphized Death, the film version was driven insane by his home planet’s self-immolation after a series of resource wars. Determined to eliminate suffering over food and land, over clean water and clean air, Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet not to create abundance of each but to kill half of all living things.
Again, this is Ehrlichian in its madness: The author of "The Population Bomb" argued for years that the planet is overpopulated and that famines will wipe out a significant portion of humanity. It could still happen, I suppose ‐ global warming could inspire an "Interstellar"-style blight; the skies could go dry ‐ but, frustratingly for the doomsayers, life on Earth keeps getting better despite the "overpopulation" our precious blue orb continues to shoulder.
Continued on Page 49
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.
[PJ] Remember the huge fuss the never-Trump media made out of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn's infamous December 2015 trip to Moscow? In articles written in 2016, 2017, and 2018 they suggested that the retired Army general was a "compromised" Russian stooge and that the trip bordered on treason. This has been a cornerstone of the Russia collusion narrative involving Flynn for several years now.
[Wash Times] It’s been over a year since the highly damaging text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, were revealed to the American public. The correspondence showed two senior Justice Department officials engaged in the most petty, vitriolic political diatribes while making decisions on the most sensitive investigations of the 2016 political season.
[Wash Times] White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said Thursday it was "poor form" for the incoming Speaker of the House to personally attack President Trump.
Ms. Conway was responding to Ms. Pelosi’s interview with NBC that aired Thursday morning, hours ahead of her expected vote to become the 63rd Speaker of the House.
I have no idea why this is not getting more exposure.
After withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, the U.S. exceeded the annual percentage of carbon reductions of most countries that are part of the agreement.
The United States ‐ and increasingly most of the world ‐ is at last addressing the systematic commercial cheating, technological appropriation, overt espionage, intellectual-property theft, cyber intrusions, and mercantilism of the Chinese government.
