[Washington Examiner] The recently released transcript of Department of Justice lawyer Bruce Ohr’s congressional testimony confirms what conservatives have long been saying: The DOJ and FBI abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process to obtain a court order to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Page served as a volunteer foreign policy adviser for then-presidential candidate Trump from March 2016 until he stepped away from the Trump campaign in late-September 2016, following a Yahoo News report that U.S. intelligence officials were investigating alleged meetings between Page and senior Russian officials. Shortly after Isikoff’s article ran, the DOJ and FBI filed the first of four FISA applications, seeking court approval to surveil Page. The FISA court granted all four surveillance requests.
While the FISA applications remained sealed before the secret FISA court, in early February 2018, then-House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes, R-Calif., released a four-page memo detailing abuse by the DOJ and FBI in seeking to surveil Page. Then-House Intelligence Ranking Member Adam Schiff, D-Calif., soon countered with his own memo, which did nothing to dispel concerns. Later, the four FISA applications themselves were released which, though heavily redacted, added to the mosaic of abuse.
#1
I am on Trumps mailing list that sends email to Trumps supporters. An email today was a survey of if it is time for Trump to shut down Mueller's investigation.
[American Thinker] After Brenton Tarrant murdered 50 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, he told police that his motive was to avenge "the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by foreign invaders in European lands throughout history, [and] the enslavement of millions of Europeans taken from their lands by the Islamic slavers."
Tarrant's statement was an attempt to justify his homicidal attack. But are his words consistent with the history of the last 500 years? The record shows that it was population dynamics and intra-European conflicts that played the key roles in the struggle between the West and the rest.
Between 1492 and 1915, Europe ‐ despite constant warfare, epidemics, and emigration ‐ increased from 50 million people to 500 million, growing to 27 percent of the world's population. This skyrocketing birth rate provided the millions of soldiers and settlers who made it possible for the Occident to conquer quite a lot of the Earth.
Tarrant denounces "Islamic slavers," but the fact that European and Western societies are now a third of their former 27 percent of the global population is, at best, only indirectly due to Muslims. Between 1900 and 2018, they increased by a factor of 12 from 150 million to 1.8 billion people and reached an awe-inspiring 23 percent of the world's population.
The demographically rampant Europeans of the Age of Imperialism feared, above all, other Europeans. Between 1914 and 1945 alone, they killed around 70 million of their peers through wars, Gulags, and genocides. Muslim deaths after 1945 were also mostly victims of fellow believers due to even more vigorous birth rates. This applies to 80 to 90 percent of the approximately twelve million who perished by violence.
A small percentage of these Muslim deaths occurred in the various attempts to destroy Israel. In this series of wars, Muslim states lost some 65,000 men, about half a percent ‐ or five out of a thousand ‐ of the total number of Muslim casualties after 1945.
WASHINGTON (AP) ‐ President Donald Trump says the economy would have grown much faster last year if the Federal Reserve had not been tightening credit last year.
In a broadcast interview, Trump said without the Fed’s rate hikes last year and moves to trim its bond holdings, the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, would have grown by over 4 percent.
The GDP on an annualized basis grew by a solid 2.9 percent last year and when measured from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the fourth quarter of 2018, growth was an even stronger 3.1 percent.
Trump’s comments came in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Thursday. The network released excerpts and the interview will be broadcast Friday.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday cut its expectations for future rate hikes from two this year to none and also announced a plan to end shrinking its balance sheet in September.
Asked if he felt he had an impact on these decisions, Trump said he had been right but whether his criticism had been a factor in the Fed’s decision "it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if I influenced or not."
#1
Personally I'd say the economy grew OK with the Fed's actions.
It just didn't grow as much as stated during the fed's insane bail out the super-rich at taxpayer-expense years. i.e. during the 0bama regime (although this is a uniparty problem).
#2
The way I understand it there is a legitimate fear the economy could grow too fast and overheat after running in low gear so long. I think the FED has mostly been doing alright.
This morning, Fox News Chas. Payne highlighted the impact the left is making on business. He offered the JP Morgan website and topics at the link as evidence of the shift. Check out the site topics.
[Huffpoo] Veteran journalist Dan Rather delivered a scathing assessment of Fox News’ close ties to President Donald Trump’s administration in a new interview published Friday.
The former CBS news anchor told The Daily Beast he believes the widely watched conservative cable network is "not that far off" from becoming "a state-run, state-sponsored, straight-up propaganda outlet" for the Trump White House.
And that, he said, is "something we have to worry about."
"There are some good journalists working at Fox ‐ Chris Wallace comes to mind ― but if you look at it on the whole, particularly their primetime programming, you have the beginnings of a state-run media," Rather said.
"By any objective analysis, this is by far the closest we’ve come to Radio Moscow," he added, referring to the official state-run international broadcasting station of the former Soviet Union. Radio Moscow spread pro-Soviet propaganda and fake news in multiple languages throughout the Cold War, muddying the waters in several countries around issues as serious and life-threatening as the AIDS epidemic.
Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham regularly stump for Trump on their respective shows. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer detailed the symbiotic relationship between Fox News and the Trump White House in a deeply researched essay published earlier this month.
#2
The former CBS news anchor told The Daily Beast he believes the widely watched conservative cable network is "not that far off" from becoming "a state-run, state-sponsored, straight-up propaganda outlet" for the Trump White House.
I guess Dan doesn't get out much these days. Whatever the case, it's better than the MSM which is run by the deep state.
#3
And the reason he didn't chastise CNN, MSNBC, CBS, CNBC, and ABC for the same thing with Obama is because they had so many jostling to service him that none of them got special attention.
[The Hill] Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller has warned Pentagon leaders that President Trump’s deployment of active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and transferring Defense Department funds to support the administration’s border security efforts is creating "unacceptable risk" to the service’s combat readiness.
Neller's is the strongest warning yet from a military leader about the dangers Trump’s border security efforts pose to military readiness.
In two memos sent March 18 and March 19, first obtained by the Los Angeles Times, Neller said that he has canceled or reduced planned military training in at least five countries as well as delayed badly needed base repairs due to Trump’s "unplanned/unbudgeted" border deployment last fall and emergency declaration funding efforts.
The Marine Corps will not be able to participate in planned training exercises in Indonesia, Scotland and Mongolia, and will reduce participation in joint Australian and South Korean exercises, Neller wrote to Navy Secretary Richard Spencer and acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.
#6
Does seem it could provide an excellant training opportunity for creative leadership. Oh, and bust the drug mules and anyone involved in sex trafficking and put them in Guantanimo for awhile as possible spies/terrorists and we'll see a massive drop off in the crossings.
#11
Poppycock. At the individual, platoon company and even battalion staff level that are a wide range of individual and collective tasks that can be exercised and honed doing border security, perimeter defense planning, patrolling and small unit tactics. This is myopic and reflects an unwillingness to disconnect from prior and large scale commitments. The President, the Commander in Chief, has stated, in his assessment that this is a National Emergency. That should be all you need to know General to pull your head out of your ass and move out to the objective!
#14
General, either you Salute and Execute (the orders), or resign. A swamp denizen or Obama holdover for CMC - time for him to be cashiered out if he doesn't retire on his own.
[National Review] Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) on Thursday praised New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern for immediately banning military-style semi-automatic weapons in response to the Christchurch mosque shootings, and suggested the executive action should serve as a blueprint for the U.S.
The ban, which applies to semi-automatic rifles and shotguns that can be equipped with detachable magazines capable of holding more than five rounds, went into immediate effect Thursday to prevent stockpiling, and legislation codifying it is expected to pass Parliament in the coming days. Once the bill passes, New Zealanders will be granted a buyback period, after which they will be fined and jailed for up to three years if found in possession of a banned weapon.
"On 15 March, our history changed forever. Now, our laws will, too," Ardern said Thursday. "We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place."
Gun ownership is popular in New Zealand but there is no right to self defense codified in the country’s laws.
The announcement comes just six days after a 28-year-old Australian man killed 50 people and injured 40 others while rampaging through two mosques in Christchurch. The second shooting, at the Linwood mosque, was interrupted after one congregant retrieved his firearm from his house and returned to confront the attacker.
#4
Gun control is magical thinking:
People do bad things with guns.
If we get rid of guns,
people will stop doing bad things.
There is no question that guns are handy tools for shooting people, whether yourself or others.
But humans are resourceful and determined. How naive do you have to be to think that without guns people won't find alternate means to snuff themselves or commit mass murder. Knives, cars, bombs, cast iron fry pans... it's simply a matter of convenience and what's at hand.
Want evidence? Look at the incredible rise of knife crime in Britain. Getting rid of guns has not damped demand for violence and mayhem.
[Babylon Bee] Once again showing his colors as a callous, tone-deaf bigot, Vice President Mike Pence is still stubbornly refusing to apologize for making Jussie Smollett fake an attack on himself earlier this year.
Celebrities like Ellen Page pointed to the hateful, anti-LGBT rhetoric of Mike Pence and bigots like him as the primary cause of Smollett's attack. But despite ranting about him and then suddenly being silent when the attack was revealed to be a hoax, Pence hasn't so much as groveled at the feet of the left to ask for forgiveness.
"This is exactly what we've come to expect from the right," Page said in a tearful interview in between sobs. "We point out their bigotry, we point out their hatred. It's so bad that we are now being forced to attack ourselves in the streets. And despite all of our crying on late-night shows, they still refuse to acknowledge that they are the root cause of gay people attacking themselves."
"This is Trump's America," she added before screaming at the sky.
At publishing time, Pence was still refusing to apologize and even said he would continue to treat LGBT people with respect like some kind of monster.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/22/2019 06:43 ||
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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.
[National Review] Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) on Thursday praised New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern for immediately banning military-style semi-automatic weapons in response to the Christchurch mosque shootings, and suggested the executive action should serve as a blueprint for the U.S.
