The President of Smartmatic was just indicted for bribery and fraud.
Smartmatic is a member of CISA's EISCC along with companies like Dominion voting systems and Runbeck Election Services, to name a few. Members of the EISCC are private sector companies who are the owners and... pic.twitter.com/sQyMb9zuCN
Paywalled, so you may never know... OpenedJONATHAN TURLEY: It's very frustrating for many of us who have been writing for years, that we don't understand why there was not a charge under FARA for being an unregistered foreign agent. This record is replete with contracts, so it seemed to meet the standard used in earlier cases during the Trump administration. You couldn't have an official go to Epcot without getting a FARA charge from the Justice Department. It seemed to be one of the most ubiquitous charges coming out of that department. With Hunter Biden, they have consistently ignored overwhelming evidence that he was receiving millions to influence policy. So now, after all that time, Weiss files this thing with the courts saying, oh, well, yeah, we know that he was directing this stuff because he was getting money to influence U.S. policy from this Romanian. And it left everyone scratching their heads. It's like saying we can prove auto theft because we know he used it in the kidnapping. And the question is, well, why didn't you charge him on the kidnapping?
During an impeachment inquiry, House Republicans said there may be evidence he took money in exchange for U.S. policy influence. Prosecutors say Hunter took $3 million and worked for Romanian Oligarch Gabriel Popoviciu, who faces criminal investigation in Romania. House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said "bank records don't lie."
[American Greatness] Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard may be on the watchlist of a secret domestic surveillance program designed to sniff out potential terrorists. And it may be related, in part, to her willingness to speak out about Vice President Kamala Harris's shortcomings as a leader.
Undercover DC is reporting that several Federal Air Marshal whistleblowers have come forward with information showing that Gabbard is enrolled in the TSA's Quiet Skies program which has its own compartmentalized watchlist of suspected terrorists.
Labosco said that the whistleblowers indicated that, since being placed on the watchlist, Gabbard has had two explosive detection canine teams, a transportation security explosives specialist, a plainclothes TSA supervisor, and three Federal Air Marshals on every flight she boards. For a former U.S. Representative, presidential candidate, U.S. military veteran and active member of the U.S. Army Reserve, that seems a bit much.
The whistleblowers shared the information with Sonya Labosco who is Executive Director of the Air Marshal National Council (AMNC) after Air Marshals were assigned to Gabbard on July 23, following critical remarks she made in an interview about Harris, Presiden Biden and the National Security State.
Labosco said that the whistleblowers indicated that, since being placed on the watchlist, Gabbard has had two explosive detection canine teams, a transportation security explosives specialist, a plainclothes TSA supervisor, and three Federal Air Marshals on every flight she boards. For a former U.S. Representative, presidential candidate, U.S. military veteran and active member of the U.S. Army Reserve, that seems a bit much.
Unless, of course, Gabbard's admission to the Quiet Skies program is simply a matter of political payback.
Gabbard, who became an independent in 2022, has been openly critical of Kamala Harris over the years and she has pulled no punches in her comments on exactly who Harris will be serving should she become president.
[PM] The Kamala Harris campaign, apparently trying to rehabilitate Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz’s spotty military record, claimed Thursday that Walz was the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. "Walz, who served in Congress as a Democratic representative from Minnesota, did sit on the Veterans Affairs Committee. He was even the ranking member. But he was never the chairman," Real Clear Politics reports.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris was technically correct when she called her running mate "the top Democrat on the Veterans Committee," but he was not the head of that committee and her campaign took that description a notch higher. A statement from the campaign said "after 24 years of military service, Governor Walz retired in 2005 and ran for Congress, where he chaired Veterans Affairs and was a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform — and as Vice President of the United States, he will continue to be a relentless champion for our veterans and military families."
The Harris campaign dimissed the error as "an innocent mistake" made by staffers, RCP noted. "Facts, schmacts!"
"Governor Walz was ranking member/top Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs," a spokesman for the Harris campaign said, for the 115th Congress between 2017 and 2018.
A spokesman for Illinois Republican Rep. Mike Bost, current chairman of the committee, told RCP the same, saying that "Rep. Walz was only ever ranking member and he served in that role from 2017-2019."
Republican presidential candidate J.D. Vance, a real Iraq veteran, has eviscerated Walz’s military record, which the governor has actually used to campaign on. In a recent interview, Vance referred to reports that Walz "retired" from the Army National Guard just as his battalion was shipping out to Iraq. He withdrew from the military two years before the end of a six-year reenlistment contract.
Former United States Marine Corps (USMC) enlisted man Vance did deploy to Iraq. "I mean, your job as a senior enlisted guy in a unit is to keep your people safe. That's not a job you can switch out of on a moment's notice," Vance told the Daily Mail. "So if he abandoned his troops before they went to Iraq or wherever ... absolutely shameful," he added.
Speaking of Walz’s claims of combat experience, Vance further told a reporter Wednesday that the governor should "not pretend to be something that you’re not."
"What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage," Vance said. "Do not pretend to be something that you’re not, and if he wants to criticize me for getting an Ivy League education, I’m proud of the fact that my mamaw supported me, that I was able to make something of myself."
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/09/2024 07:58 ||
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Link ||
[11130 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#1
Just assume everything they or the media says about these two is a lie.
[Breitbart] The Biden-Harris administration, fearing spiking Medicare Part D premiums, is using billions of dollars to bail out health insurers and placate seniors 100 days before presidential the election.
The Paragon Health Institute released a report noting that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) added a three-year “premium stabilization” demonstration for stand-alone prescription drug plans in Medicare Part D. The institute’s Jackson Hammond contended that the move represents a massive bailout after the Biden-Harris’s Inflation Reduction Act move to cap out-of-pocket costs for the Part D program.
Essentially, the IRA set a $2,000 per year cap for the Part D program, which “significantly” increases insurers’ financial liabilities:
What do insurers do when the costs of their plans go up? They raise premiums, of course. We don’t know yet what premiums will be in Part D but, we do know they will jump because the average bid submitted by plans for stand-alone PDPs has skyrocketed from $64.28 in 2024 to $179.45 in 2025 – and roughly 25 percent of the increase will be borne by beneficiaries and 75 percent borne by taxpayers.
…
This could have been avoided with a higher out-of-pocket cap. The original bipartisan Part D redesign had a cost cap of $3,100, which would have limited both premium increases and taxpayers’ liability. It’s worth noting that former CBO director Doug Holtz-Eakin estimates that less than three percent of Medicare beneficiaries were facing out-of-pocket costs greater than $2,000. So instead under the partisan IRA, Part D premiums have been driven much higher.
“CMS has yet to release any cost estimates, but some back-of-the-envelope math puts the cost over three years well in excess of $10 billion for a demonstration,” Hammond wrote.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote this week:
This was a back-door way for Democrats to ration access to costly drugs while shifting the political blame for doing so to insurers.
The gambit backfired as insurers are raising premiums. CMS’s intervention is another example of how the IRA will cost far more than Democrats claimed. Nobody knows how much more since CMS isn’t doing a normal rule-making that requires a cost analysis.
Joe Grogan, who served as a domestic policy adviser to Trump, wrote an op-ed for RealClearPolicy about how the Biden-Harris administration is trying to bail out its failed health policies right before the pivotal election season:
Announcing huge premium increases for seniors going into the Democratic Convention would have spoiled the party. The Premium Stabilization Demonstration means that bids will need to be recalculated, delaying publication of premiums until mid-September, when they will be more reasonable due to the demonstration’s taxpayer subsidy. As a political bonus, the delay in the premium announcement gives the Administration a week and a half to tout “savings” from the IRA’s drug price setting component, scheduled to be announced September 1st.
Grogan added, “After the election, policymakers will be left with unpalatable choices: if the demonstration expires, Part D will become too expensive for enough seniors to buy coverage and the program will die. Or taxpayers can be asked to stomach more spending. Either way, Part D’s success is destroyed.”
[Breitbart] Vice President Kamala Harris is using the same speech over and over again on the campaign trail, adding fuel to criticism that she is unable to speak without a script prepared by her handlers.
Politicians frequently have refrains that they use as part of their “stump speeches.” Former President Donald Trump closes his speeches with similar conclusions every time, leading up to the “make America great again” refrain.
The difference is that most of Trump’s speeches are ad libbed, and Kamala Harris will not stray from the script — nor will she hold press conferences, or sit down for interviews. She gives the impression of being entirely scripted.
Elon wins that one. Expect another attack, probably by next week, certainly before the election.
[BusinessInsider] The advertising trade group The World Federation of Advertisers told its members on Thursday that it was "discontinuing" activities for its Global Alliance for Responsible Media initiative following an antitrust lawsuit filed by Elon Musk's X against the company earlier this week.
Stephan Loerke, the CEO of the WFA, wrote in an email to members, seen by Business Insider, that the decision was "not made lightly" but that GARM is a not-for-profit organization with limited resources.
Loerke said that the WFA and GARM intended to contest the allegations in X's suit in court and were confident the outcome of the case would "demonstrate our full adherence to competition rules in all our activities." "But discovery is such a bitch"
The news came just two days after X filed an antitrust suit in a Texas court, which alleged that GARM's members illegally colluded to "collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue" from Twitter, now known as X. GARM members Unilever, Mars, CVS, and Xrsted are also named defendants.
Representatives for the WFA and GARM didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino posted to X shortly after this article was published: "No small group should be able to monopolize what gets monetized. This is an important acknowledgement and a necessary step in the right direction. I am hopeful that it means ecosystem-wide reform is coming."
[JPost] Bluff called. Pulling her kicking and screaming from her basement cocoon or proving she's a coward as well as incompetent
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Thursday that he had agreed to three presidential debates in September and was awaiting a response from Democrat Kamala Harris' campaign.
"We've agreed with Fox on a date of September 4th, we've agreed with NBC ... on September 10th, and we've agreed with ABC on September 25th," Trump told a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
"I hope she agrees," Trump added.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/09/2024 00:00 ||
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[11133 views]
Top|| File under: Commies
#3
There will likely be no second or third debate. I suspect he will have her coming unglued within the first 15 minutes. I cannot see this ending well.
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.
[Federalist, HT HotAir]
[JPost] 
