[The Federalist] On Thursday, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum directing the intelligence agency heads to comply and cooperate with "a review of intelligence activities relating to the campaigns in the 2016 Presidential election." The memorandum also gave Attorney General William Barr the authority to declassify information pertaining to the investigation.
For several years, government officials from the Obama administration had alleged in anonymous leaks to friendly reporters that Trump was a traitor who had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. After nearly a year of investigation at the FBI, which included the use of wiretaps, national security letters, and overseas intelligence assets deployed against the campaign, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein launched a special counsel to further investigate the claim.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller ended his nearly two-year probe with a determination that neither Trump nor his campaign ‐ and indeed no Americans at all ‐ had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. That probe, whose overwhelmingly Democrat participants bristled at the charge they were engaged in a "witch hunt," did attempt to show that Trump’s complaints against the false smear were tantamount to "obstruction of justice," but was unable to do so.
Media who are implicated in perpetuating the false allegation that Trump was a traitor reacted poorly to the news that Barr was given authority to bring some transparency to the Russia collusion narrative that had been effective precisely because it was shrouded in secrecy.
As bizarre as it is for journalists to fight transparency ‐ MSNBC’s Trump-bruised Joe Scarborough said declassifying documents is what an "autocrat" does ‐ it matches the talking points of those inside the agencies who worry about their activities being exposed. With the implosion of the Russia collusion theory, neither the sources nor their compliant journalist buddies who promised "bombshell" after "bombshell" are covered in glory.
#1
The memorandum also gave Attorney General William Barr the authority to declassify information pertaining to the investigation.
Intelligence more than 24 hours old generally isn't worth much. The revealing of the NYT and other MSM outlets as 'leak conduits' is the real danger... for them anyway.
#3
Leaks are like protests, dissent, the cult of personality and so forth. they're bad until suddenly they're not only not bad but instead are pillars of democracy. Cripe.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/27/2019 9:31 Comments ||
Top||
[Washington Examiner] Amid investigations into potential misbehavior by intelligence officials during the 2016 presidential campaign, Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday, "It doesn't surprise me that the people we are looking at, they don't want transparency."
The South Carolina Republican told "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace he agreed with President Trump's decision to give Attorney General William Barr "full and complete authority" to work with the intelligence community in declassifying documents related to the origins of the Russia investigation and the conduct of the Justice Department and the FBI.
Barr's move has drawn strong criticism from former FBI Director James Comey, ex-CIA Director John Brennan, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Each has said the declassification process could lead agencies vulnerable to revelations about intelligence sources and methods.
But Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said it's the ex-intelligence and Justice Department officials who should be on the defensive about their conduct in the 2016 campaign and early into Trump's tenure.
"The people who are worried about this are worried about being exposed for taking the law in their own hands," said Graham, 63, without identifying specific officials.
Wallace pressed him on this, calling these government secrets "the crown jewels of the intelligence community" and saying that critics had raised questions about whether Barr can "be trusted with these secrets" and whether Barr can "be trusted not to cherry-pick the information to make a case for the president."
#1
Barr's move has drawn strong criticism from former FBI Director James Comey, ex-CIA Director John Brennan, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Clearly a confirmation that AG Barr is on the right track.
#3
What is it that said all the time - If you have nothing to hied you have nothing to worry about? Well, I'm sure you boys have nothing to worry about then. Or maybe you do...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/27/2019 9:23 Comments ||
Top||
[American Thinker] Democratic expectations of victory over Trump were dashed when Mueller absolved the President of any untoward arrangement with Russian tools of Putin. Within an hour, Mueller went from being heralded as the "most trusted man in America" to a traitor. His words had been twisted by AG Barr, they said. Mueller would come to Congress and tell them the real truth. But Mueller does not want to be grilled by crazed Democrats; one can imagine their vicious anger that would be directed his way. By noon that day, these former Mueller devotees turned their wrath upon Barr. Suddenly he was "the President's lawyer," not the AG. In short, since the day the report was released, the left's meltdown that began on election night 2016 got infinitely worse. For nearly three years they had studiously ignored the mountains of evidence that the entire fiasco was a seditious attempt at a coup, a scheme to frame and overthrow a duly-elected President. Those involved believed their plan would work. Those who were duped by the rumors and innuendo because they so hated the fact that this drain-the-swamp outsider had come to power in their backyard were left stunned.
[Breitbart] Sunday on ABC’s "This Week," Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said negative statements by former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page while investigating President Donald Trump sounded "a whole lot like a coup" and added that it could even be "treason."
Cheney said, "What is crucially important to remember here is that you had Stzrok and Page who were in charge of launching this investigation and they were saying things like we must stop this president. We need an insurance policy against this president. That in my view when you have people that are in the highest echelons of the law enforcement of this nation saying things like that, that sounds an awful lot like a coup, and it could well be treason. And I think that we need to know more. What was Jim Comey’s role in all this? These people reported to him. Andy McCabe reported to him. What was Comey’s role in that, and that is what the attorney general is going to be focused on."
She added, "Think about the fact that we had people that are at the highest levels of our law enforcement in this nation saying that they were going to stop a dually elected president of the United States, saying they need an insurance policy against him. That is something that simply cannot happen. We have to have confidence in our law enforcement, and the attorney general has got to get to the bottom of what happened, how it was that those people were allowed to misuse and abuse their power that way."
#1
Demolition of the Orange Man appears to have been their assigned task. The attributing of thousands of text messages between the two to an illicit affair is probably a cover for action.
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
[NATIONALREVIEW] Theresa May said today that it was a matter of "deep regret" that she hasn’t delivered Brexit. But three years ago, it seems, a half-competent leader could have enacted a persuasive and moderate Brexit with a comfortable majority. A half-competent leader, making the kinds of mistakes Theresa May has made, would also have known when to quit. She has been entirely uncompromising on that front ‐ resigning only when forced to.
Which is why I don’t feel in the least bit sorry for the trembling ninny. As far as political obituaries go, Mrs. May is survived by the disintegrated remains of the Tories and populist drain (the Brexit party). How’s that for a legacy?
Posted by: Fred ||
05/27/2019 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11126 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"She's (politically) dead, Jim!"
It's always been amazing to me that certain individuals (such as Theresa here) have the political skills to reach the top, but are otherwise lacking in actual leadership ability or general intelligence. But of course this is a common malady among the self-described "elites" (spit).
#2
Seems to me, her problem was that she was an opponent of Brexit and did every thing she could to prevent its implementation.
Now that we are seeing a conservative (relatively speaking of course) in European politics, Brexit is potentially being left in the dust as several new governments are looking at the sinister impenetrable monolith that is EU governance.
[American Thinker] Sir Richard Dearlove, former Head of British Secret Intelligence Service MI6 warns that 99 percent of Huawei is directly owned by the Chinese Communist Party.
In ’Defending Our Data: Huawei, 5G and the Five Eyes,’ Dearlove reports that by undercutting the prices of once dominant European telecom network equipment by 18-30 percent, Huawei’s sales rose from $4.6 billion in in 2014 to $105 billion in 2018.
Although customers give high marks to Huawei for quality and reliability, the key to achieving its 41 percent global telecom network infrastructure share has been Chinese state-owned banks lending $10 billion directly to Huawei or indirectly to its customers.
With a purported a $100 billion Chinese bank credit line, Huawei was positioned to gain an even more dominant market share with the roll-out of fifth generation cellular network technology (5G), before President Trump placed Huawei Technologies, Inc. on the U.S. Commerce Department's "Entity List," that bans American companies from selling components to Huawei without a U.S. government license.
President Trump’s actions may have reduced Huawei’s potential sales by up to 60 percent, due to follow-on bans by U.S. allies in Europe, Japan, Australia, and Canada and others. But given that Huawei runs on Google Android software and gets its chips from Intel and Qualcomm, the U.S. ban may be the equivalent of a technological death sentence.
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
05/27/2019 6:20 Comments ||
Top||
#2
The 'Cone of Silence' lifted at last. Sir Richard's amazing discovery, not so very different from here or anywhere else. Stop paying taxes on it and see who owns it next.
#3
I never get tired of reading lefty tech writers wetting their pants over how Trump is dealing with this.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/27/2019 10:53 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Don't forget that Lenova (which is Chinese based) was caught with malware and spyware embedded in the operating systems of their computers a few years back.
If you are at all worried about cyber security, you should not ever buy anything manufactured in China. Their technology industry is a direct arm of their intelligence gathering machinery.
#5
So where can I buy a computer that is NOT Made in China?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/27/2019 14:19 Comments ||
Top||
#6
I mean, I have a Samsung tablet that was made in Korea but the OS is Google's Android and it sucks. I've thrown myself at this device trying to figure out how to get anything useful out of it. It works with bluetooth keyboard and mouse but even so the Android OS is more of a child's toy than a useful tool for grownups.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/27/2019 14:23 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Abu Uluque: I build my own PC's (and will help if you want, I have some spare parts). I try to restrict my purchases to Korean (Samsung) and Taiwanese (Coolermaster, Gigabyte, Asrock) manufactured components. There is a USA made power supply, but likely has hybrid origins. That covers everything except CPU's; you never know there, but AMD's Ryzen's are supposed to be made in Taiwan. Nvidia is a USA company that uses TSMC, a Taiwanese company, for their fabs to make their GPU's. So buy an Nvidia card from Gigabyte and avoid the PRC. Mostly. Many components and chips will be made in the PRC. This wasn't true before, but it is now.
You can get a computer from Supermicro and spec it for no PRC parts, but I can't swear to full compliance, and it will be crazy pricey as you are specifying something that will be audited to the component level throughout the build. My only Mac is a Mac Pro that was supposed to be made in the USA. I know all the parts are not.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
05/27/2019 17:20 Comments ||
Top||
[Hot Air] Call it the last of the red-hot overhangs. Earlier this week, NPR’s Scott Horsley took note of a curious and counter-intuitive trend in disability claims. For the first time in decades ‐ and a few years after a sharp spike ‐ the number of Americans declaring themselves unable to work have started falling. It’s the last piece of a recovery puzzle that stumped a lot of people who should have known better:
During and after the Great Recession, people turned to disability rolls in large numbers to make ends meet. This accelerated what had been going on for a generation, as the federal government’s disability insurance program saw steady growth.
But now, for the first time in decades, the disability rolls are shrinking. More people with disabilities are returning to work and holding on to their jobs. With unemployment at a nearly 50-year low, companies are struggling to find workers. And that means people who had trouble finding a job in the past are suddenly in demand. That includes people with disabilities. ...
It’s still unusual for people to leave the disability program and return to work. Less than 1% of recipients do so each year. But the numbers have been growing as the job market has improved. In 2017 more than 51,000 people traded disability checks for paychecks, up from about 32,000 four years earlier.
It’s not like the inflation of disability rolls were a mystery, and yet nearly everyone seemed to forget about them. It began in earnest as the extended unemployment insurance payments began to run out in 2011-12. After a few years of the recovery, economists claimed that the US economy had reached "full employment" based on the U-3 unemployment rate. Yet wages remained flat and personal economies showed little sign of improvement. The same economists began claiming that the normal labor-market wage mechanisms of supply and demand had stopped working and that government intervention on compensation would be required to resolve the problem.
#4
Now let's stop telling out of work Journolistas to learn how to code. We have more than enough bad programming as it is and they'd probably be hired by the gov't and screw things up to a fair-thee-well.
#5
I used to ride shotgun with a disabilities fraud investigator. Saw people doing roofing, changing out a transmission on a pickup in the driveway, golfing and so forth. Would you be surprised to learn union members and gummint employees are the most frequent offenders?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/27/2019 10:46 Comments ||
Top||
#6
So Trump is forcing the disabled to work to survive?
#7
Could the increased grants to development of assisted technologies also have something to do with this ? I also remember Trump awarding the Congressional Medal to Steve Gleason for something to do with assisted tech for disabled people.
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.
[NATIONALREVIEW] Theresa May said today that it was a matter of "deep regret" that she hasn’t delivered Brexit. But three years ago, it seems, a half-competent leader could have enacted a persuasive and moderate Brexit with a comfortable majority. A half-competent leader, making the kinds of mistakes Theresa May has made, would also have known when to quit. She has been entirely uncompromising on that front ‐ resigning only when forced to.
[American Thinker] Sir Richard Dearlove, former Head of British Secret Intelligence Service MI6 warns that 99 percent of Huawei is directly owned by the Chinese Communist Party.
[Hot Air] Call it the last of the red-hot overhangs. Earlier this week, NPR’s Scott Horsley took note of a curious and counter-intuitive trend in disability claims. For the first time in decades ‐ and a few years after a sharp spike ‐ the number of Americans declaring themselves unable to work have started falling. It’s the last piece of a recovery puzzle that stumped a lot of people who should have known better:
