BLUF:
[Red State] While the report was not unsurprising once we knew who was leading the investigation, the response of FBI Director Christopher Wray was sickening. He went along with the whitewash, promised to create a new film to teach, presumably, senior FBI officials how to better spy on a presidential campaign with with leaving a paper trail, and, though failing to apologize to Carter Page, he said Carter Page’s case would be a case study used to improve the process.
It is pretty clear at this juncture that Wray is part of the problem and not part of the solution. He was not bound by any finding or recommendation in the FISC inquiry. His decision to protect people who deliberately broke the law because they thought they had political cover is indefensible. There were a lot of reasons why he should have been fired, this is reason why he must be fired. Emphasis added.
Quite obvious to anyone following these sordid events for what, two, three years now ?
#3
Last inauguration, Trump skipped the gala events. When he does so in January 2021, he should do this:
Executive order: The Central Intelligence Agency is hereby dissolved. No person currently or previously working for CIA will be eligible to work in any government capacity, directly or as a contractor at any point going forward. This prohibition will include running for elective office.
Executive order: The Federal Bureau of Investigation is hereby dissolved. No person currently or previously working for FBI will be eligible to work in any government capacity, directly or as a contractor at any point going forward. This prohibition will include running for elective office or working for any non federal law enforcement agency or contractor.
Executive order: The Department of Homeland Security is hereby dissolved. No person currently or previously working for DHC will be eligible to work in any government capacity, directly or as a contractor at any point going forward. This prohibition will include running for elective office or working for any non federal law enforcement agency or contractor.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/12/2020 8:59 Comments ||
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#10
The CIA seems to back the wrong horse about 50% of the time. We could pick what to do or not do on the results of high school football game coin flips every Friday night and do no worse.
At this point you really are going to argue the FBI does more good than bad?
Homeland Security was a bad idea from the get go.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/12/2020 11:00 Comments ||
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#11
Wray has been a disappointment. The house is on fire and he is p!ssing on the fire to deal with it.
[TheFederalist] So long as the world is entertaining worst-case scenarios, the media does Americans no favors in omitting that Iran-Hezbollah has for years prepared to strike in their own hometowns.
Weirdly absent from much of the professional speculation about where and how Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... Continued on Page 49
#2
BFO. What gave you that idea? It's like living in Chicago. It's now background noise. That sort of leaves you only with 'spectacular' incidents which leads us to advise you to - leave a sleeping tiger lie. Just ask the Japanese.
#4
I'm unclear with all the new gun reg noise. Do we need licenses, is there a limit or will they be like feral hogs, can we have the prominent amongst their number mounted?
[The National Interest] Key point: An iconoclastic tank in the world of heavy armor, Merkava is also a proven combat winner.
In the past forty years, just a handful of countries have proved themselves capable of building their own main battle tanks. One of these tank powers is actually one of the smallest countries in the world: Israel. Israel’s main battle tank, the Merkava series, is one of the best-designed tanks ever produced.
Israel’s independence in 1948 saw the formation of the Israeli Defense Forces, and the IDF cobbled together a modest, ramshackle tank force to repel attacks from neighboring Arab countries. By the 1956 war the situation had improved considerably, and by 1967 Israel’s Armored Corps basically won the Six-Day War with a blitz across the Sinai Peninsula and into the Golan Heights. The tanks, American M48 and British Centurion tanks, crushed the opposition and brought a quick end to the war.
Israel’s pre-emptive attack on its neighbors was not popular with some of its European allies. The United Kingdom cancelled a joint tank-development project with Israel. France embargoed further deliveries of Mirage fighter jets and missile boats. The lesson for Israel was to decrease its reliance on foreign powers for its armaments, and in 1970 the IDF began to develop a tank of its own.
The job of making an Israeli tank a reality fell to Maj. Gen. Israel Tal, former commander of the IDF Armored Corps and who led the Eighty-Fourth Armored Division to victory in the Sinai. Tal’s project was a major challenge, as Israel’s military-industrial complex was in its infancy and the country had never built a large armored vehicle before. Working from a clean sheet, Tal could build a tank from the ground up with Israel’s tank-warfare experiences baked in.
Three attributes define a modern tank: firepower (the main gun), mobility (speed and cross-country operation) and protection (armor). Some tank-building countries emphasize one or two attributes over the other. In Israel’s case, Tal prioritized protection over all else. Israel’s small size meant that it felt even modest wartime deaths acutely, and an emphasis on protection would keep personnel losses down.
#1
Merkava is frequently translated as 'chariot' in the first chapter of Ezekiel
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/12/2020 8:06 Comments ||
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#2
Reportedly an excellent piece of equipment, but it's more than just weaponry. For Israel, failure on the battlefield equates to extinction. They have no intention of going there.
#5
They continue to make improvements on it. Some borrowed and / or exchanged with the US on the down low. Hand sets located where the infantry can use them without being cooked by the exhaust. Small auxiliary diesel generators that can be use to power the electronics with the main engine shut down and etc.
That's the first thing that jumped out at me; that and the slight raised angles of the turret, like it's designed to have shit deflect off of it instead of straight on hits. Nice...
#11
Yeah, Herb, why would we ever keep domestic production of defense instruments? What a tool
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/12/2020 11:14 Comments ||
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#12
I always loved that it has AC and a water fountain in the turret. Oh and if you remove like 40 rounds of ammo, it can carry stretcher casualties. Let's not forget the 60mm mortar it can use to flush infantry as well.
#15
The problem with creating a domestic military-industrial complex is that it demands constant wars to feed itself.
Or is a response to it when foreign manufacturers decide to boycott because of societal Jew hatred and/or surrender to the boycott threats from the Muslim world. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is sometimes true.
... when foreign manufacturers decide to boycott because of societal Jew hatred and/or surrender to the boycott threats from the Muslim world.
When one is surrounded by enemies sworn to your destruction, and means of defense are denied to you via normal channels of commerce, it makes sense to beat some of your plowshares into rolled homogeneous armor. To not do so is simply suicidal - something Mr Darwin tells us is a not a viable long-term strategy.
#17
Herb is a nice leftist example... Military Industrial Complex only exists in West, they never talk of Russian, Soviet, Chinese Military Industrial complex...
#18
Our tour in Israel recently stopped at a rest area that had a display of old tanks. Our guide, former IDF pointed out the entire engine is to the front of the unit, offering protection in the event of a hit. The Russian tank was actually a bbq when it was struck. He said in the Russian mindset, no shortage of tank crew, it’s next man up. The IDF mindset was it to Ames 18 years to “grow” a replacement crew, plus 2 years of training.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/12/2020 9:05 Comments ||
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#6
I bought a Sig P226 in the early to mid-1990s. At the time I also tried the Beretta. I have never regretted getting the Sig. Accurate and reliable right of out of the box.
#8
Won't spoil it for ya, but old Jack lived to be a very old man. Only time the USN has hoisted a flag of surrender.... Jack was picking them off the deck.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Washington has spent more than two decades fighting a global war against murderous Moslems, but has been remarkably passive in response to terrorist attacks conducted by Iran’s theocratic regime and its network of Shia proxy forces. But that may all have changed last week, when US President Donald Trump ...The man who was so stupid he beat fourteen professional politicians, a former tech CEO, and a brain surgeon for the Republican nomination in 2016, then beat The Smartest Woman in the World in the general election... ordered the Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... that killed Qassem Soleimani
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
01/12/2020 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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#1
Forty one offing years. Let that sink in. Birthday cakes for the ayatollah (Reagan), looking the other way (Bush-Clinton-Bush), outright collaboration (Zero).
For FORTY-ONE YEARS this idiocy has gone on.
Enough. 52 Pick Up now.
Another 50 to go (if you count the militia arclight-ee who was torched along with Suleimani). Keep counting.
[THEBAGHDADPOST] Needless to say, US President Donald Trump ...dictatorial for repealing some (but not all) of the diktats of his predecessor, misogynistic because he likes pretty girls, homophobic because he doesn't think gender bending should be mandatory, truly a man for all seasons...... has made a firm decision regarding to Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... since the disastrous Khomeini revolution since 1979 it means 41 years.
The snake's head stretched uncheckedly to blow the poison into the body of five Arab countries, so the US president made a sound decision to cut Iran's hand that extending beyond the borders.
Soleimani did not register legal entry at Baghdad International Airport, so, he is not a legal visitor. All what Iraqis found aftermath found in his possession is a book to broadcast Iranian thought and a Russian firearm Kalashnikov that the man needs because he does not even believe in himself, so he tasted what his hands were prepared.
I will not talk much about Soleimani's crimes, as they undoubtedly need an encyclopedia of crime because of his abundant corpse count and bombing that he started with the Imamate bombing in the city of Samarra 2006 up to the countryside of Aleppo, Homs and Idlib.
The American president went to the option of killing Soleimani because he knows very well that this man is one of the most dangerous engines of terrorism in the world. He is no less dangerous than al-Zarqawi and al-Baghdadi in any case.
As a result, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps forces launched missiles late on January 8, 2020, and the White House quoted Trump as saying, according to the first estimates, that there are no casualties or damages, so the US President wavered from addressing the American people at night and went to sleep in the White House.
Until he comes out with a statement the next morning, Iran will face more humiliation and complacency when the Republican elephant's feet hit all of Iran's economic and military pillars to force devilish regime to beg in order to sit at the negotiating table if luck smiles to them a bit.
Forty years and a year is enough to eliminate the republic of oppression, fear and terror that exports subversive thought to the entire region ... The word thank you is not enough any longer because the pre-emptive work is great ... Trump had spotted the name of Soleimani on the US embassy to Baghdad so he loved to see him in the breaking news as a killed pig.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/12/2020 00:00 ||
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[11127 views]
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#1
The translation is inelegant but the IDEAS are powerful and elegant, and need to be repeated for the benefit of our stateside TDS-addled morons:
Idea #1: Trump made a firm decision regarding Iran. No other president, not even Reagan, has dealt so directly, decisively, and with devastating force against the mullahs and their gruppenfuehrer of death. No one, until Trump.
Idea #2: the above hesitance, lethargy, confusion and inaction has gone on for Forty and One Years-- nice biblical ring, that. Reminds one of a plague upon the land, or the reign of a weak and idle king. FORTY-ONE f---ing YEARS of this nonsense.
Idea #3: Yes, this is a wicked ("devilish") regime, and the only calculus it understands is that of fire and terrible swift sword. "Force devilish regime to BEG in order to sit at the negotiating TABLE": Bingo.
The Art of the Deal is based on leverage. With these shitty bastards-- deceitful, murderous, completely corrupt in every sense word-- only force can drive meaningful concessions. Not bribes. Not pallets of cash. Not ridiculous non-treaties that have no teeth and that expire anyway in a few dozen months.
This person gets it.
Obviously, he's from the region and knows better than to trust persian pseudo-holy men who line their pockets while drenching the region in their victims' blood.
#4
The Orange Man is a bit like the old donkey. You've probably heard this story before, but here it is again:
Farmer and the donkey:
A farmer was awakened in the middle of the night by the blood curdling braying of his donkey. He pulls on his trousers and boots and rushes to the barn lot to investigate. The terrible, gut wrenching braying continues but the farmer sees nothing. Further investigation reveals the old donkey has slipped and fallen into an abandoned well.
The farmer awakens his sons, goes to the barn, retrieves three shovels and heads to the old well. Well boys, not much we can do for the old fella, we'll just bury him here and head back to bed. Lots of work to do in the morning.
As they begin shoveling, the braying begins to subside. About thirty minutes into the task they take a break and peer down into the well with a flashlight. There stands the donkey looking up awaiting more dirt to tamp down. The donkey had been shaking off every shovel full and packing it down. He would soon be within reach of the top of the well.
[PRESSTV] No nation in world history posed a greater threat to humanity than the US.
It’s a menacing gangster state, masquerading as democratic, a notion it tolerates nowhere, wanting governance of, by, and for everyone equitably eliminated wherever it exists.
It plots regime change against nations it doesn’t control. None threaten US security.
An undeclared state of war exists between imperial USA and humanity worldwide.
Congress hasn’t formally declared war on another nation since December 8, 1941 ‐ in response to hostile US policies under Franklin Roosevelt that drove Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, giving FDR the war he wanted.
In asking for a congressional declaration of war on Japan, he called December 7 "a date which will live in infamy."
That designation applies to every day in US theaters of war and by other means ‐ its ruling authorities willfully inflicting mass suffering on countless millions of people in multiple countries.
No nation in world history has been responsible for more high crimes of war, against humanity, and genocide over a longer duration than the US.
They’ve been committed relentlessly since the 18th century, ongoing worldwide today, including at home against ordinary Americans, vulnerable millions harmed most.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... earlier explained US imperial policy in the modern era, saying:
"They come and go (in the US), but politics stays the same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy."
"When a person is elected (US president), they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones."
"These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is what happens" whenever a new US president takes office.
Names and faces change. US policies stay the same, what the scourge of imperialism is all about, waging endless hot wars and by other means for unchallenged global dominance, serving monied interests at the expense of the general welfare and world peace ‐ promoted by Big Lies and deception, supported by establishment media.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/12/2020 00:00 ||
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#1
I thought it's about MacDonald's & Burger King.
#7
So....why are the rest of you still breathing then? Or is this like the "War" on drugs, where we just sort of piddle around and slap people on the wrist?
[American Thinker] Contrary to previous belief, wolves aren’t solitary creatures that naturally roam in random packs but are rather, like most animals, familial beasts whose behaviors assume pathological characteristics when those domestic bonds are broken. That observation, reiterated with reference to other species, is the biological starting point for Mary Eberstadt’s insightful exploration of the social and political consequences of the recent and monumental disruptions in American family structure that she terms "the Great Scattering" in her book Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics.
The rise in "identity politics," therefore, is linked by Eberstadt to the social and especially familial disruptions that make answering the "Who am I?" question highly problematic. The negative consequences of the sexual revolution (primarily contraception technology plus the destigmatization of non-marital sex, abortion, single-parent homes, and, to some extent, pornography) are provided abundantly by the author. They include the clearly detrimental effects of fatherless homes ("a literature as well-known as it is stoutly ignored") and various studies that document a large increase in self-harm and loneliness, including morose statistics on elderly folks (4,000 a week in population-dwindling Japan) who die alone without relatives and are only discovered by neighbors due to the odor coming from their residences. The author links these and other sociological data to a desperate cri de coeur that amounts to a primal scream: "Who am I?"
As surrogates for the basic familial answers to that question, ethnic, erotic, racial, and sexual identities have been asserted with a vengeance, especially against those seen as oppressors. Eberstadt notes that the "first collective articulation of identity politics comes from a community [black women] where familial identity was becoming increasingly riven" and constituted "a harbinger of what would come next for everyone else." In the previous year, 1976, "the out-of-wedlock birth rate for black Americans had just ’tipped’ over the 50 percent mark."
[American Thinker] San Francisco is getting to be a hellhole and not just because crooks are having a field day, or a vast homeless army has prompted new tech 'innovations' in poop-map apps.
It's actually becoming a city with a hollowed out look, redolent of some place like Steubenville, Ohio or maybe Utica, New York, during the bad years, empty storefronts and missing young people. So much for the trope that leftwing cities, with their walkable boulevards full of food trucks, handmade crafts, knitting shops, bookstores, artisan cheese shops, gourmet restaurants, and cafes are more lively and liveable than rightwing places. For awhile, that did seem to be the story. But it's coming to an end. Sure, there's vast wealth. But despite California being in an economic boom, the place is starting to look like Venezuela.
The U.K. Guardian of all places has a haunting report:
It the beginning of this decade, one beloved block in San Francisco had a taqueria, a flower shop and a bookstore. Sparky’s diner, a favorite final hangout for night owls, queer teens and the blackout drunk, was open round the clock.
Today, this block of Church Street just south of Market has the kind of abandoned storefronts that are usually a shorthand for declining mill towns, not centers of the tech future. But all those closed shops are emblematic of today’s San Francisco, where even in upscale areas, the city’s economic boom can look surprisingly like an economic crisis.
What this represents is a strange, second-wave gentrification, in which an influx of well-heeled residents means not Blue Bottle coffee shops and Kinfolk-inspired interior design stores, but emptiness.
Nobody mentions that maybe people don't want to shop in some place where a drunk is puking in the doorway and the district attorney doesn't want to prosecute, so the pukes ... and homeless camps and other quality life issues --- affect the quality of life. In San Francisco, the well-heeled locals can always order online.
But it goes well beyond that. The city has chased out its poor people. And it's happening worst in disproportionately blue states. Taxes, minimum-wage hikes, greenie regulations, freezes on new construction, rent control, all supposedly to help 'working families' have all had one unintended consequence - hitting the poor as hard as possible, driving them to move out.
After all, anyone with a six- or seven-figure salary in some lawyer or tech job has no problem buying or renting a house in San Francisco. But these aren't the people who going to be manning the cash registers in some low-margin business on the first floor. Housing costs have been driven so high by leftist taxes, environmental regulations, and NIMBY-ism that the low-margin shops, the startups, and poor are the ones who in the end bear the brunt of all the 'reforms.'
There's no place for the working poor in a blue city whose entire economic model is premised on taxing 'the rich.' New Yorkers have told me that this empty storefront effect was first seen in Michael Bloomberg's New York, by the way, home to similar unintended consequences from the same supposedly help-the-poor policies.
#1
Wonder if the council persons ever played those computer city building games just to understand fundamentals and basics of what they're engaged in. Nah, its all about feelings and keeping some people's property values up.
#6
Too many aging Nancy Pelosi types are renting out the available SanFran properties. You young whipper snapper liberals need to keep living in your vans like they did when they were your age.
[Sultan Knish] - Last year, Jane Fonda sold her "eco-conscious" Beverly Hills mansion, with its 7,102 square feet on a 36,000 square foot lot enclosing a his and her master suite, a glass elevator, 5 bathrooms, glass walls, fireplaces, a fountain, a meditation garden, a fully stocked gym, a pavilion with heat lamps, and a huge pool for $8.5 million after she found no takers at its original $13 million sale price.
"This was the first time in my 79 years," Fonda enunciates with the deep pathos of an orphan finally getting a full meal as the camera zooms through the cavernous interior of a walk-in closet the size of some people’s homes , "that I have had a closet that you could walk in and see everything you have."
As Gaia is my witness, If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill, I’ll never go without a walk-in closet again.
[Breitbart] U.S. Women’s soccer star and outspoken Trump critic Megan Rapinoe, slammed the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decision to warning against political protests at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. "Your 15 minutes are up"
In an Instagram posted on Friday, Rapinoe said that she and her fellow athlete protesters "will not be silenced."
"So much being done about the protests," Rapinoe wrote. "So little being done about what we are protesting about.
"We will not be silenced."
Rapinoe’s post comes after IOC President Thomas Bach made it clear that all participants and support staff at the games are banned from protesting on the field of play, at the opening or closing ceremonies, at the Olympic Village, or on the medal podium.
"If this political neutrality is not respected, then the Olympic Games will divide, and not unite, the world," Bach explained.
The IOC is specifically outlawing kneeling, hand gestures, and signs, of a political nature.
Much of the impetus for the new rule is due to a pair of incidents at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru. In which, fencer Race Imboden knelt on the medal podium and hammer thrower Gwen Berry raised a fist.
#5
in other words from the IOC: nobody wants to hear the bullshit
Posted by: Chris ||
01/12/2020 9:56 Comments ||
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#6
It's sad how the Left has taken the Olympics from something that unite and uplift all of humanity and changed it into a soapbox for their petty political grievances.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
01/12/2020 10:39 Comments ||
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Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/12/2020 18:28 Comments ||
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#9
Seriously the way to deal with it is any behavior violating the rule results in loss of medal, lifetime ban from the Olympics and a ban from all international competitions.
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.
[The National Interest] Key point: An iconoclastic tank in the world of heavy armor, Merkava is also a proven combat winner.
Took place over near Paris, in Henry County. You might enjoy this book Skid, if you've not already read it. 
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
Recovered SIG-226 would indicate Soleimoni had good taste in handguns. 
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
[American Thinker] Contrary to previous belief, wolves aren’t solitary creatures that naturally roam in random packs but are rather, like most animals, familial beasts whose behaviors assume pathological characteristics when those domestic bonds are broken. That observation, reiterated with reference to other species, is the biological starting point for Mary Eberstadt’s insightful exploration of the social and political consequences of the recent and monumental disruptions in American family structure that she terms "the Great Scattering" in her book Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics.
I'm afraid no additional evidence is needed. 
[Breitbart] U.S. Women’s soccer star and outspoken Trump critic Megan Rapinoe, slammed the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decision to warning against political protests at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
