60 Minutes reports that Russia’s goal is to sow discord and division in and about our country. Ironic that they don’t credit Democrats and the media for doing Putin’s bidding.
Former FBI spy-hunter Robert Anderson says Russia’s goals today are the same as in the Soviet era: to sow discord in the U.S. and doubt about our democracy around the world.
Link: How Russian intelligence officers interfered in the 2016 election
I had forgotten all about President Obama’s White House giving polygraphs to staffers and spying on the media, to stop staffers from leaking to the media. And in James Rosen’s case, his parents too.
What reminded me was Obama’s nose-in-the-air diatribe in Illinois the other day, about how President Trump calls out Fake News. See the difference between calling them out, and, using the intelligence apparatus of the country to prosecute the ‘free press?’ But the Carnival Barker would have you believe that Trump calling out ‘Fake News’ as Fake News is abusive of the Office of the President.
In Obama’s case, weaponizing the government to target political opponents is nothing new. Mainstream media just doesn’t cover news harmful to the political Left.
Links: OBAMA, NOT TRUMP, ACTUALLY MADE STAFF TAKE LIE DETECTOR TESTS TO STOP LEAKS | Obama Returns, Gives A Speech Reminding Americans Of Why Trump Is President
The media reaction to President Trump pulling the security clearance from former CIA Director John Brennan, and considering
doing same to other key participants as well, is interesting in two areas.
John Brennan, a CNN talking head, CNN, and their soul brothers in the media call it a restriction on his freedom of speech. I haven’t noticed Brennan or the media change their use of the First Amendment, have you? In fact, Jake Tapper, Jim Sciutto, Evan Perez and Carl Bernstein won the Merriman Smith Award for their broadcast work and reporting on the dossier. The “story” did not require a tireless investigation. It was handed to CNN by DNI James Clapper. The media always covers for, and protects, their own. They do it by giving the persons whose name is in the by-line an award. In this case, appropriately so, the media chose The White House Correspondent’s Dinner to announce it. It’s their attempt to add legitimacy to a bogus story. You might remember when Dan Rather got his award for the bogus GW Bush National Guard story. A story that, like the fake dossier, also could not be verified.
The other is the direction from which they report on his motive behind his action. Paraphrasing, “He’s just doing this because they are investigating him for Russia collusion.”
Well, YEAH!
But they say his motivation is to obstruct justice. Which is also irrelevant because that has nothing to do with the ongoing investigation. It has to do with how this investigation really began over two years ago. And Brennan played a big role. (Which is why the initiating documents and related communications still have not seen the light of day.) It is not about what is going on with Mueller today.
They look at it as a threat to national security. And it is. But on the part of the former government officials, not Trump. Former officials with security clearances getting classified information from current government officials, and with that, starting the plan to destroy candidate Trump’s campaign, and then his presidency.
You can’t have people on the outside with top security clearance getting information from people on the inside with top security clearance. Realize that these are swamp dwellers, democrats and Never Trumpers I’m talking about. I don’t think for a second that Brennan not having his security clearance would have stopped Mueller, Comey, Clapper, or anyone else from leaking to the media. There’s simply no reason, as a matter of course, to take your security clearance with you when you leave your employ.
The Commander-in-Chief yanked Brennan’s security clearance to get control of national security. Not to breach it.
Links: How a senior DOJ official helped Dem researchers on Trump-Russia case | The Russia Investigations: Trump On Collision Course With National Security World | CNN Wins Award for Taking Dictation from James Clapper
In the U.K., anybody who does not follow and subscribe to the orthodoxy of the left — including open-border immigration, permitting endless streams of militant Islamists into European countries, if you oppose that — you are being categorized as “far right” and can be arrested, according to Great Britain’s laws.
Tommy Robinson not only doesn’t approve of that, he reports on the effects of that, including the trial he was covering that was about sex rings run by these immigrants. 80% of whom are Islamists. And was arrested for it.
The judge put a gag order on Robinson’s arrest AND a gag order on the news media from covering the trials. Nothing like protecting the perps and arresting transparency.
Great Britain has no Constitution or guaranteed right of free speech. There’s a reason the Founding Fathers believed in that basic freedom, not derived from government, but from God.
But it gets worse for Tommy Robinson. Going to prison among the Muslim prisoners will most likely be a death sentence for him. Great Britain has lost control.
Related Links:
The gun grabbers are at it again. The KOSites and fellow travelers cranked up their bots, generating faux outrage and “complaints” to companies the NRA has business agreements with, and demanding they separate themselves from them. They are also attacking the 1st Amendment by trying to get social media like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, to not carry NRA-TV’s programming.
You might like to know the companies that succumbed to this phony campaign.
Enterprise Rent-A-Car, First National Bank of Omaha, Avis Car Rental, Allied Van Lines, Budget Rent-A-Car, Chubb, Delta Airlines, Hertz Rent-A-Car, MetLife, North American Van Lines, TrueCar, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Symantec and United Airlines.
Just as the NRA had nothing to do with the Las Vegas shooting, the NRA has zero to do with the Parkland or any other shooting.
We are witness to the Dems’ normal behavior of not letting a crisis go to waste, when you can use it to advance your agenda. Blaming everything and every one except the perp. Not making the students any more safe.
Hillary Clinton’s reaction after the Las Vegas slaughter of concertgoers . . .
Our grief isn’t enough. We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA, and work together to try to stop this from happening again.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 2, 2017
Notice how Hillary attempts to inoculate herself from being political by being political with this “We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA.” Stand up to the NRA? For what? They have nothing to do with it. Using this school shooting and 17 dead bodies to go after the NRA and the 2nd Amendment should be enough to show that Democrats and Progressives don’t give a wit for those students.
What they should be asking is why the shooter wasn’t flagged for his obvious wacko mental condition when he was evaluated by mental health authorities after he assaulted someone on Jan. 17, 2017? Among other failures, this one was the only one that would have prevented the shooter from legally buying any gun. Something that the NRA happens to support. And something that everyone can agree with.
Links: BOYCOTT: Here Is the List of Companies Who Have Severed Ties with the NRA | Parkland shooter always in trouble, never expelled. Could school system have done more? | NRA Statement on Corporate Partnerships
It’s time to get a grip on what “opposition research” is, and what it is not. Take this Steele Dossier, aka the Trump Dossier for example. This is the document that the FBI used to get a FISA warrant on an American citizen in the Trump presidential campaign.
The fake news media calls this dossier opposition research on Trump. The FBI presented it to the FISA Court as legitimate intelligence from various sources.
Here’s the problem. “Opposition research” is a record of what a political opponent has done. Used mostly to embarrass or disqualify an opponent while helping your own candidate. It’s normal for campaigns to use it. It’s not opposition research if it never actually happened.
The Steele Dossier is not opposition research. It’s the DNC’s version of The Wonderful World of Disney. Totally made up political theater. James Comey referred to it as “salacious and unverified” when telling Trump about it. After having already used it to get a FISA warrant on then President-elect Trump’s New York property, where their “target” was.
Out of all their whining about the Nunes memo, you will notice that Rep. Adam Schiff has never denied that the dossier was a fraud. Ditto Sen. Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. The same bunch has never denied that the Clinton Campaign and the DNC funded the creation of the “dossier.” Admitting that much would be an admission that the dossier they presented to the FISA Judge was fake. A fraud.
Comey and others in the FBI and DOJ better lawyer up. Getting a sense that the swamp drain is about to open?
So the D’s in DC didn’t want to #ReleaseTheMemo because it would reveal “sources and methods.” And that would be dangerous.
Know what? They were right!
Sources: Obama administration officials including President Obama, top people in the Executive Branch, State Department and Sec. of State Clinton, DOJ, FBI, CIA, NSA, with some made up dossier from foreign (including Russian) sources.
Methods: The weaponization of government resources. Using a made-up dossier, paid for by the DNC (that Hillary was running at the time), to lie to a FISA court judge to get permission to spy on the Trump campaign and candidate Trump, then President elect Trump, then President Trump, with no focus, boundaries or limitations. In this case, since they failed to stop Trump to get Hillary elected, they had to take him out by some other means. And this is it.
And it is dangerous, in so many ways.
Funny how the only Russian collusion anyone knows about is that between the Clinton campaign and the DNC, with an assist by the FBI, and the creation of that phony, DNC paid for, dossier.
Below is the memo that was unclassified today.
[scribd id=370598711 key=key-Mj3PhoeUfdPZNIAeaNQk mode=scroll]
What should happen now? The whole investigation should end since the start of it was a fraud in the first place. A new special council should be created to investigate the investigators, and, all those who had a part in weaponizing the government for political purposes. From Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton on down. Paul Manifort and Gen. Flynn should have their charges dropped, and be reimbursed for their legal expenses, and an apology given.
It took almost a year, with no charges brought against anyone in the Trump organization for what was the purpose of the investigation, Russian collusion to rig the election. Yet two citizens have been ruined in the process. Trump can’t prove a negative. He can’t prove there was no collusion. The government is supposed to prove that there was. And they are no closer now than they were last year.
Bottom line, but for that bogus dossier, FISA warrants would never have been issued, and the country would have been spared all the pain that the sore losers put our country and our institutions through.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) was in The White House for a meeting to make an immigration policy that benefits Americans. At that meeting, chain immigration necessarily came up.
It’s not that Durbin doesn’t know what chain migration is, because in 2010, he knew exactly what it was when he was advocating for the Dream Act. He ostensibly worked to end “chain migration.”
“The DREAM Act would not allow what is known as chain migration,” Durbin said. “In fact, DREAM Act students would have very limited ability to sponsor their family members for legal status.” [Emphasis added]
What’s different today? His political heritage has swelled to the point that now “chain” has only one meaning. For him, a chain is for enslaving Black people. The first, and only, meeting attendee to feel a need to tell the media what he wanted them to know about a private meeting with the president, Durbin said . . .
“When it came to the issue of “chain migration” I said to the President: “Do you realize how painful that term is to so many people? African Americans believe that they migrated to America in chains. And when you speak about ‘chain migration’ it hurts them personally.” He said: “Oh, that’s a good line.”
And of course, the media ate it up. It didn’t have to make any sense because it fit their narrative.
https://youtu.be/w_2CzhrB48Y
I do like Trump’s response, “Oh, that’s a good line.” Translation: typical race card BS, stick with that and 2018 will be even easier.
For Dick Durbin to tell anyone, let alone the President of the United States, that “chain migration” means slavery migration to African-Americans, he wins the Lunch Counter’s Most Ridiculous Item Of The Day (M.R.I.O.T.D.) Award.
Missed by the media, of course, and everyone else but Patterico,
let’s focus on a different aspect of Durbin’s statement — because it shows his ability to be absurdly sanctimonious with a straight face. Namely, he claims that he told the President that “chain migration” is offensive to black people, because they came here in chains. Yes, he really said that.
Democrats have spent their total existence dominating Black people. Since the Lyndon Johnson administration, the plantation is in thought and identity politics, and the chains have been replaced with an ideology that will keep them there.
The more President Trump accomplishes for the country, the more irrational his detractors, the media, and the Washington 
establishment become.
The garbage thrown at Trump started before his inauguration. From Russian collusion alleged in a phony document that was used as intelligence, used to spy on his campaign and his administration. To obstruction of justice over same. To now, he’s crazy and should be removed from office.
Lets see who’s crazy.
Iran: One president breaks laws to get billions of dollars flown illegally, pallets of cash into the hands of the people who run the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, Iran, and they export it. And th
is president does everything he can to get them hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. This same country to whom we gave this cash is committed to creating a nuclear arsenal delivered by ICBMs, all of which are known to be under development because this president enabled them to move forward on their research.
The other president is working to stop all of this. The other president is working to unwind this insane deal and do what he can to prevent this state sponsor of terrorism from getting nuclear weapons. Now, who’s the smart one and who’s the dumb one?
Health Care: One president went out there and literally seized one-sixth of the U.S. economy and lied to the American people in doing it. 
He promised the American people if we would just entrust our health care to him, somebody who doesn’t know anything about it beyond being a theoretician in the academic lounge. Somebody who’s never run a hospital, who’s never talked to anybody who’s run a hospital, who’s never had the slightest interest in running a hospital took over one-sixth of the U.S. economy along with the rest of his party, lied to the American people to do it, claiming that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, and if you like your insurance plan, you can keep that.
The other president is doing everything he can to unwind that and deregulate as much of the Obama health care takeover as he can. Who’s the smart one, who’s the dumb one?
ISIS: A brutally inhumane, militaristic gang which one president said, “We’re doing everything we can. There’s not much we can do. Get used to it. They’re here.” Destabilizing the Middle East, destabilizing a victory in Iraq, leading to terror attacks around the world.
The other president has systematically wiped out this organization in under a year. Surrendering in Iraq. Who is the smart one and who’s the stupid one? Who’s the dangerous one and with whom are we in safer hands?
The Swamp: One president spies on his political opponents. One president knowingly takes opposition research from the presidential 
candidate of his party, knowingly allows it to be used as legitimate intelligence, when it’s lies and made-up BS, allows his Justice Department to get a FISA warrant to surveil and spy on the presidential candidate of the opposite party. The other president, in the midst of an entire effort by all of Washington to destroy him with this phony dossier, exposes this.
Who is it that’s unraveling? Was it the Obama team? Was it the Hillary team? Was it the Democrat Party? Is it the Washington establishment unraveling, or is it Donald Trump perhaps getting rid of the filth and the dirt and giving this country a working chance again?
The Economy: One president micromanages the economy into the ground and tells the American people that our better days are 
behind us. And, “you didn’t build that.” Government did. He says the great days of America’s past were not really legitimate. They were built on phony policies, trickle-down economics from the Reagan administration. The United States is not exceptional or deserving of superpower status. We now must manage the decline. And I, Barack Hussein Obama, am the smartest guy in the world to manage the decline of the United States and its economy.
His replacement liberates the economy, to the point in under a year it is growing at twice the rate it ever grew under Barack Obama. The reason is 
not just his taking the regulation shackles off of business and industries, introducing tax laws that allow us to compete in the world economy, but on curbing illegal immigration. And the beneficiaries of that where jobs are concerned are the poor, of all races. The less illegals taking American jobs means jobs available for our own citizens. Which is clear by the fact that unemployment for Blacks and Hispanics are at all time lows. And yet we’re told Obama is brilliant, he’s so smart, we can’t even stay in the same room with him. Donald Trump is silly. He’s insane. He’s obsessed. His unfit. We need psychiatrists examining him. We need the 25th Amendment.
Who’s the nutcase, who’s the dangerous one, and who is, in under a 
year, unraveling all of the mistakes borne of the either poor ideology or just blatant stupidity of the previous administration? Or both?
h/t: Rush Limbaugh
In response to President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, the U.N. voted to negate that decision.
The meaningless vote didn’t serve them well. Trump followed through with his, and Amb. Nikki Haley’s, earlier statements about cutting funding from the corrupt and biased world body.
“We will no longer let the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of,” the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, said, adding that the “inefficiency and overspending” of the organization was well-known.
This time by $285 million. That amounts to 23.75% of our operating cost contribution ($1.2 B), not counting the cost of peacekeeping operations.
It’s a good start.
On another note, look how ABC uses this picture in their story on the same subject.
Links: Guardian: US to make at least $285m cut to UN budget after vote on Jerusalem | ABC: US says it negotiated $285M cut in United Nations budget | NYT: Defying Trump, U.N. General Assembly Condemns U.S. Decree on Jerusalem
