By JASON HOWERTON
There was blood “everywhere” in the hallway of an apartment building
in Oswego, Illinois, as a man allegedly attacked a victim with a knife
on Monday.
Dave Thomas witnessed the attack unfolding and knew he had to do something.
“I poked my head out the door. There was a pool of blood, blood was
everywhere in the hall. There was still a confrontation going on, there
were about three or four people involved at this point,” he recalled to WGN 9.
Thomas said he ran back to his home and grabbed his AR-15 rifle. Moments later, he was ordering the knife-wielding attacker to stop.
And he did.
“I grabbed the AR-15 over my handgun — bigger gun, I think a little
more of an intimidation factor. Definitely played a part in him actually
stopping,” Thomas added.
The suspect fled the scene but was eventually apprehended and arrested. The stabbing victim was reportedly taken to a hospital.
Thomas, a law-abiding gun owner with a concealed carry permit, said
after the incident that the AR-15 is his “weapon of choice for home
protection.”
“It's light, it's maneuverable. If you train and know how to use it
properly, it's not dangerous,” he continued. "And this is just a perfect
example of good guy with an AR-15 stopped a bad guy with a knife. And
there were no lives taken, so, all in all, it was a good day.”
The incident comes amid a fiery debate over semi-automatic rifles in the wake of the Parkland high school shooting that left 17 people dead. Gun control advocates are currently making a strong push to ban rifles like the AR-15.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Sunday, February 25, 2018
Slave or Citizen?
By Jim Campbell
The vast majority of people seem confused about violence on both practical and idealogical grounds.
Practically, it is impossible to remove the *ability* for human beings to inflict harm upon one another. Deprived of a rifle, a human intending harm will simply find other means: a knife, a pipe, a pressure cooker, a truck, acid, even sticks and stones, and, if necessary, fists and feet.
This is an unfortunate, yet undeniable fact of the universe. Humans can be incredibly creative in their efforts to harm each other.
The one thing that seems to give predatory humans pause is the possibility of defense in the form of violent counterattack. Everywhere in the Animal Kingdom, predation occurs primarily on the weak and defenseless. Only a desperate predator will risk attack on a strong target that can defend itself. Humans are no different.
Most people supporting “gun control” measures, and now “knife control” measures in the UK, are living in childish denial of this basic reality of the human condition. (A smaller group are not in denial of anything, but seek to turn the population into defenseless subjects.)
Before discussing the solution, an important clarification is necessary:
Not all violence is morally equal or even practically unacceptable.
The kind of violence that should be of concern to decent people is called AGGRESSION. Aggression is violence directed toward an innocent person who is minding their own business. Defensive violence is not a problem. In fact, even those who most staunchly oppose people’s right to arm themselves accept that defensive violence is required to deal with aggression. These people simply believe that defensive violence should only be allowed by a small group of people, typically the police. I will discuss this position later when I address the ideological misunderstandings on this subject. For now, all that is necessary is to see that nearly all people make a distinction between aggressive violence and defensive violence. The problem decent people face is aggression, not violence. The problem is not “gun violence” or even “gun aggression”. The problem is aggressive violence, by whatever means. Many people with a specific political goal deliberately confuse this point.
If we accept the obvious reality that a human being dedicated to harming others will find a way, then what can be done?
The only thing that can be done is to make ourselves and other decent human beings stronger. We must be rational adults and accept that predators can not be made safe by depriving them of the MEANS to harm, because an intelligent human dedicated to harming another person will ALWAYS be able to find means in some form. That is to say, we can not rid the world of aggression. Instead, we must accept radical responsibility for our own safety and the safety of other decent, innocent, people around us.
Technology provides decent people with the means to become stronger. With modest effort, even the physically smallest and weakest person can become quite strong, and a threat to deliver overwhelming defensive violence, making them very unattractive to human predators. This technology, of course, is the firearm. Study after study shows that when decent people are armed, or may be armed, then aggressive violence drops. A population where a small but significant number of people MAY be armed, but it is unknown to an assailant whether a particular individual is armed, as is the case in jurisdictions with “concealed carry” laws, see the highest reduction in violent crime. These are established facts.
In the 1800’s, the Colt Single-Action Army Pistol was called “The Equalizer”, because equipped with this technology, an otherwise physically weaker or slower person was equal to their bigger, stronger, faster aggressor. Women, who on average are about half the strength of a man, should give this some special consideration.
Consider that when only one nation possessed nuclear weapons, they were used. Since there has been the threat of overwhelming defensive violence, so-called “mutually assured destruction”, they have not. Many geopolitical strategists are concerned that one nation may develop the technical capability to launch a successful first attack that destroys the target nation’s ability to respond. This is called “nuclear primacy”. It is a concern because it removes the threat of defensive violence. It is exactly this concern of counter attack that has protected humanity for fifty years.
This, then, is the practical solution for dealing with aggressive violence:
1. Accept that it is impossible to eliminate the means to inflict harm.
2. Accept that some people will seek to harm others.
3. Create in yourself and other decent people the ability to respond to predators with overwhelming counter violence.
History shows us that when people do not have the means to defend themselves, they will eventually suffer atrocities.
The moral argument is more cut and dried:
A human being is the absolute owner and sovereign over [his] body. As such, [humans] have an absolute and inalienable right to defend themselves from aggression by others, by ANY means available or necessary, as long as those means do not harm other innocent people around them.
Any attempt to deprive [human beings] of the right to defend themselves is to deny tho[se persons] ownership and sovereignty over their own body.
As a sovereign individual, a human being has the absolute right to make mutually-voluntary agreements (contracts) with other human beings, to keep the products of their labor and justly-acquired property, whether obtained from labor or contract.
Depriving a human being of the right to keep the fruit of [his] labor is called “slavery”. Taking a person’s justly-acquired property by force is called “theft”. Both are aggressions against the person’s self-ownership and self-determination.
[H]uman being[s ha[ve] the absolute right to voluntarily disarm themselves. They do not have the right to forcefully disarm others, interfere with their voluntary relationships with others, take their property, or engage in any other aggression against another person, either directly or by proxy.
Any government which restricts or removes the means for innocent people to defend themselves no longer recognizes those people as free moral agents. It regards them as subjects, and rejects their most fundamental rights as owners of their own bodies. Any such government is de facto a tyranny and illegitimate.
The absolute right to defend one’s self and property is indistinguishable from and synonymous with the existence of the individual as a free moral agent.
Disarmed, we are subjects. Armed, we are citizens. As decent citizens, we have the moral duty to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and other innocent people from those who would harm us.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
The vast majority of people seem confused about violence on both practical and idealogical grounds.
Practically, it is impossible to remove the *ability* for human beings to inflict harm upon one another. Deprived of a rifle, a human intending harm will simply find other means: a knife, a pipe, a pressure cooker, a truck, acid, even sticks and stones, and, if necessary, fists and feet.
This is an unfortunate, yet undeniable fact of the universe. Humans can be incredibly creative in their efforts to harm each other.
The one thing that seems to give predatory humans pause is the possibility of defense in the form of violent counterattack. Everywhere in the Animal Kingdom, predation occurs primarily on the weak and defenseless. Only a desperate predator will risk attack on a strong target that can defend itself. Humans are no different.
Most people supporting “gun control” measures, and now “knife control” measures in the UK, are living in childish denial of this basic reality of the human condition. (A smaller group are not in denial of anything, but seek to turn the population into defenseless subjects.)
Before discussing the solution, an important clarification is necessary:
Not all violence is morally equal or even practically unacceptable.
The kind of violence that should be of concern to decent people is called AGGRESSION. Aggression is violence directed toward an innocent person who is minding their own business. Defensive violence is not a problem. In fact, even those who most staunchly oppose people’s right to arm themselves accept that defensive violence is required to deal with aggression. These people simply believe that defensive violence should only be allowed by a small group of people, typically the police. I will discuss this position later when I address the ideological misunderstandings on this subject. For now, all that is necessary is to see that nearly all people make a distinction between aggressive violence and defensive violence. The problem decent people face is aggression, not violence. The problem is not “gun violence” or even “gun aggression”. The problem is aggressive violence, by whatever means. Many people with a specific political goal deliberately confuse this point.
If we accept the obvious reality that a human being dedicated to harming others will find a way, then what can be done?
The only thing that can be done is to make ourselves and other decent human beings stronger. We must be rational adults and accept that predators can not be made safe by depriving them of the MEANS to harm, because an intelligent human dedicated to harming another person will ALWAYS be able to find means in some form. That is to say, we can not rid the world of aggression. Instead, we must accept radical responsibility for our own safety and the safety of other decent, innocent, people around us.
Technology provides decent people with the means to become stronger. With modest effort, even the physically smallest and weakest person can become quite strong, and a threat to deliver overwhelming defensive violence, making them very unattractive to human predators. This technology, of course, is the firearm. Study after study shows that when decent people are armed, or may be armed, then aggressive violence drops. A population where a small but significant number of people MAY be armed, but it is unknown to an assailant whether a particular individual is armed, as is the case in jurisdictions with “concealed carry” laws, see the highest reduction in violent crime. These are established facts.
In the 1800’s, the Colt Single-Action Army Pistol was called “The Equalizer”, because equipped with this technology, an otherwise physically weaker or slower person was equal to their bigger, stronger, faster aggressor. Women, who on average are about half the strength of a man, should give this some special consideration.
Consider that when only one nation possessed nuclear weapons, they were used. Since there has been the threat of overwhelming defensive violence, so-called “mutually assured destruction”, they have not. Many geopolitical strategists are concerned that one nation may develop the technical capability to launch a successful first attack that destroys the target nation’s ability to respond. This is called “nuclear primacy”. It is a concern because it removes the threat of defensive violence. It is exactly this concern of counter attack that has protected humanity for fifty years.
This, then, is the practical solution for dealing with aggressive violence:
1. Accept that it is impossible to eliminate the means to inflict harm.
2. Accept that some people will seek to harm others.
3. Create in yourself and other decent people the ability to respond to predators with overwhelming counter violence.
History shows us that when people do not have the means to defend themselves, they will eventually suffer atrocities.
The moral argument is more cut and dried:
A human being is the absolute owner and sovereign over [his] body. As such, [humans] have an absolute and inalienable right to defend themselves from aggression by others, by ANY means available or necessary, as long as those means do not harm other innocent people around them.
Any attempt to deprive [human beings] of the right to defend themselves is to deny tho[se persons] ownership and sovereignty over their own body.
As a sovereign individual, a human being has the absolute right to make mutually-voluntary agreements (contracts) with other human beings, to keep the products of their labor and justly-acquired property, whether obtained from labor or contract.
Depriving a human being of the right to keep the fruit of [his] labor is called “slavery”. Taking a person’s justly-acquired property by force is called “theft”. Both are aggressions against the person’s self-ownership and self-determination.
[H]uman being[s ha[ve] the absolute right to voluntarily disarm themselves. They do not have the right to forcefully disarm others, interfere with their voluntary relationships with others, take their property, or engage in any other aggression against another person, either directly or by proxy.
Any government which restricts or removes the means for innocent people to defend themselves no longer recognizes those people as free moral agents. It regards them as subjects, and rejects their most fundamental rights as owners of their own bodies. Any such government is de facto a tyranny and illegitimate.
The absolute right to defend one’s self and property is indistinguishable from and synonymous with the existence of the individual as a free moral agent.
Disarmed, we are subjects. Armed, we are citizens. As decent citizens, we have the moral duty to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and other innocent people from those who would harm us.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Saturday, February 24, 2018
More Leftist "Logic"
By Thomas DiLorenzo
Five Broward County cops cowardly hid behind their cop cars while seventeen students and faculty were being murdered and scores of others injured just feet away inside that Coral Springs, Florida school.
You know, those black-and-white cars that say “To Serve and Protect” on the side. (As of this writing only one of them has “resigned”). The county sheriff, one Scott Israel, has the chutzpah to have gone on national television to advocate more gun control laws that would disarm the law abiding, and greater reliance on his cowardly bureaucrats instead for school “protection.” They’re very good, after all, at “forming a perimeter” around buildings while murderers are spraying people with bullets inside.
Meanwhile, the Lunatic Left acts as though Donald Trump himself pulled the trigger of that AR15. Disarming the law abiding would of course guarantee an increase in mass shootings in schools and elsewhere. Dial 911 and die.
The cops are essentially crime historians. They show up after a crime has been committed, then they write up a report about the crime to be used to beg the legislature for more money for higher police salaries and for hiring more cops to increase police union dues revenues.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Five Broward County cops cowardly hid behind their cop cars while seventeen students and faculty were being murdered and scores of others injured just feet away inside that Coral Springs, Florida school.
You know, those black-and-white cars that say “To Serve and Protect” on the side. (As of this writing only one of them has “resigned”). The county sheriff, one Scott Israel, has the chutzpah to have gone on national television to advocate more gun control laws that would disarm the law abiding, and greater reliance on his cowardly bureaucrats instead for school “protection.” They’re very good, after all, at “forming a perimeter” around buildings while murderers are spraying people with bullets inside.
Meanwhile, the Lunatic Left acts as though Donald Trump himself pulled the trigger of that AR15. Disarming the law abiding would of course guarantee an increase in mass shootings in schools and elsewhere. Dial 911 and die.
The cops are essentially crime historians. They show up after a crime has been committed, then they write up a report about the crime to be used to beg the legislature for more money for higher police salaries and for hiring more cops to increase police union dues revenues.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Friday, February 23, 2018
"Heroes" Only "Minutes Away"
It turns out that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students were murdered on Valentine’s Day last week, did have an armed and uniformed school resource officer from the Broward County Sheriff’s Department. What was the Hero in Blue, a one Scot Peterson, doing during the shooting? Video shows that he heard gunfire inside the school, approached the school building, but never entered the building during the shooting.
“I am devastated,” [Broward Sheriff Scott] Israel said. “Sick to my stomach. He never went in. [He should have] [w]ent [sic] in. Addressed the killer. Killed the killer.”
This is the same Sheriff Israel who appeared at last Wednesday night’s CNN anti-gun rally, er, “Town Hall,” advocating new gun controls. More revelations about what the Broward County Sheriff’s Office did not do to stop the Parkland massacre:
Broward Sheriff’s deputies had multiple warnings that the 19-year-old was a potential school shooter, according to records released Thursday [today].
In November, a tipster called BSO [Broward Sheriff’s Office] to say Cruz “could be a school shooter in the making” but deputies did not write up a report on it. That came just weeks after a relative called asking BSO to seize his weapons. Two years ago, according to a timeline of interactions with Cruz’s family, a deputy investigated a report that Cruz “planned to shoot up the school” – intelligence forwarded to the campus deputy, with no apparent result.
His "backup" arrived just in time to have the school's
Disgusting.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Thursday, February 22, 2018
Lies, Damn Lies and Government Statistics
By James Delingpole
If you believe NOAA’s charts, there was nothing particularly unusual about this winter’s cold weather which caused sharks to freeze in the ocean and iguanas to drop out of trees.
Here is NOAA’s January 2018 chart for Northeast U.S. – an area which includes New England along with NY, PA, NJ, DE and MD.
You’d never guess from it that those regions had just experienced record-breaking cold, would you?
That’s because, as Paul Homewood has discovered, NOAA has been cooking the books. Yet again – presumably for reasons more to do with ideology than meteorology – NOAA has adjusted past temperatures to look colder than they were and recent temperatures to look warmer than they were.
We’re not talking fractions of a degree, here. The adjustments amount to a whopping 3.1 degrees F. This takes us well beyond the regions of error margins or innocent mistakes and deep into the realm of fiction and political propaganda.
Homewood first smelt a rat when he examined the New York data sets.
He was particularly puzzled at NOAA’s treatment of the especially cold winter that ravaged New York in 2013/14, which he describes here:
Homewood compared the local records for January 1943 and January 2014 – months which, according to NOAA’s charts, had very similar average temperatures.
What he found was that NOAA’s charts were deeply inaccurate. The 2014 local temperatures had been adjusted upwards by NOAA and the 1943 local temperatures downwards.
He concludes:
Yet again, he has found that NOAA’s arbitrary adjustments tell a lie. They claim that January 2018 was warmer in the New York region than January 1943, when the raw data from local stations tells us this just isn’t true.
One excuse NOAA’s apologists make is that weather stations are subject to changing environmental conditions. For example, when the station sited at Syracuse in 1929 was located at what was originally just a sparse aerodrome. Since then, however, as Homewood notes, it has grown into a large international airport with two runways servicing two million passengers a year. Its weather station readings therefore will certainly have been corrupted by the Urban Heat Island effect: that is, its temperature readings will have been artificially elevated by the warmth from the surrounding development and aircraft engines.
So you’d think, wouldn’t you, that to compensate for this NOAA would adjust the recent temperatures downwards. Instead, for no obvious reasons, it has adjusted them upwards.
This is a scandal. NOAA’s climate gatekeepers are political activists not honest scientists and the U.S. taxpayer has no business funding their propaganda.
Drain the swamp!
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has yet again been caught exaggerating ‘global warming’ by fiddling with the raw temperature data.
This time, that data concerns the recent record-breaking cold across the northeastern U.S. which NOAA is trying to erase from history.If you believe NOAA’s charts, there was nothing particularly unusual about this winter’s cold weather which caused sharks to freeze in the ocean and iguanas to drop out of trees.
Here is NOAA’s January 2018 chart for Northeast U.S. – an area which includes New England along with NY, PA, NJ, DE and MD.
That’s because, as Paul Homewood has discovered, NOAA has been cooking the books. Yet again – presumably for reasons more to do with ideology than meteorology – NOAA has adjusted past temperatures to look colder than they were and recent temperatures to look warmer than they were.
We’re not talking fractions of a degree, here. The adjustments amount to a whopping 3.1 degrees F. This takes us well beyond the regions of error margins or innocent mistakes and deep into the realm of fiction and political propaganda.
Homewood first smelt a rat when he examined the New York data sets.
He was particularly puzzled at NOAA’s treatment of the especially cold winter that ravaged New York in 2013/14, which he describes here:
The cold weather really began on Jan 2nd, when an Arctic front descended across much of the country, and extended well into March.So why, he wondered, did NOAA have this marked down as only the 30th coldest winter (since 1895) on its New York State charts, with a mean temperature of 16.9F?
The NWS wrote at the end of the winter:
The winter of 2013-14 finished as one of the coldest winters in recent memory for New York State. Snowfall across Western and North Central New York was above normal for many areas, and in some locations well above normal. This winter comes on the heels of two previous mild winters, making the cold and snow this winter feel that much harsher.
Temperatures this winter finished below normal every month, and the January through March timeframe finished at least 4 degrees below normal for the two primary climate stations of Western New York (Buffalo and Rochester)…..
Relentless cold continued through the month of January across the region.
Homewood compared the local records for January 1943 and January 2014 – months which, according to NOAA’s charts, had very similar average temperatures.
What he found was that NOAA’s charts were deeply inaccurate. The 2014 local temperatures had been adjusted upwards by NOAA and the 1943 local temperatures downwards.
On average the mean temperatures in Jan 2014 were 2.7F less than in 1943. Yet, according to NOAA, the difference was only 0.9F.Now, Homewood has given the same treatment to the most recent Big Freeze – the winter of 2017/2018.
Somehow, NOAA has adjusted past temperatures down, relatively, by 1.8F.
Yet again, he has found that NOAA’s arbitrary adjustments tell a lie. They claim that January 2018 was warmer in the New York region than January 1943, when the raw data from local stations tells us this just isn’t true.
So at the three sites of Ithaca, Auburn and Geneva, we find that January 2018 was colder than January 1943 by 1.0, 1.7 and 1.3F respectively.He concludes:
Yet NOAA say that the division was 2.1F warmer last month. NOAA’s figure makes last month at least 3.1F warmer in comparison with 1943 than the actual station data warrants.
Clearly NOAA’s highly homogenised and adjusted version of the Central Lakes temperature record bears no resemblance at all the the actual station data.Well indeed. The key point here is that while NOAA frequently makes these adjustments to the raw data, it has never offered a convincing explanation as to why they are necessary. Nor yet, how exactly their adjusted data provides a more accurate version of the truth than the original data.
And if this one division is so badly in error, what confidence can there be that the rest of the US is any better?
One excuse NOAA’s apologists make is that weather stations are subject to changing environmental conditions. For example, when the station sited at Syracuse in 1929 was located at what was originally just a sparse aerodrome. Since then, however, as Homewood notes, it has grown into a large international airport with two runways servicing two million passengers a year. Its weather station readings therefore will certainly have been corrupted by the Urban Heat Island effect: that is, its temperature readings will have been artificially elevated by the warmth from the surrounding development and aircraft engines.
So you’d think, wouldn’t you, that to compensate for this NOAA would adjust the recent temperatures downwards. Instead, for no obvious reasons, it has adjusted them upwards.
This is a scandal. NOAA’s climate gatekeepers are political activists not honest scientists and the U.S. taxpayer has no business funding their propaganda.
Drain the swamp!
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Blood Theatre in Florida
By Thomas DiLorenzo
That would be Tallahassee today. I had the misfortune of being stuck in a doctor’s office with CNN blaring for about a half hour. Here’s what I learned: The Democrat Party paid for a bunch of buses to take hundreds of school kids to Tallahassee to “protest” in favor of more gun-control laws — you know, like the ones that made their school a “gun-free zone.” (Looks like your typical George Soros-funded “community organizing” left-wing mini-riot). They then were given long-winded scripts written by Democrat Party operatives denouncing Trump, the NRA, and all the Republicans in Tallahassee while praising all of the Democrats in Tallahassee to the treetops. While I was watching, not one of these little brain-numbed political pawns said anything other than banning the AR15 could “save” them from future mass shootings. The state legislature voted against banning “assault rifles,” after which CNN put on the screen a hysterically crying little girl who threw a tantrum over this. Stalinist/East German Cold War brainwashing has nothing over the Democrat Party and its Florida sideshow.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
That would be Tallahassee today. I had the misfortune of being stuck in a doctor’s office with CNN blaring for about a half hour. Here’s what I learned: The Democrat Party paid for a bunch of buses to take hundreds of school kids to Tallahassee to “protest” in favor of more gun-control laws — you know, like the ones that made their school a “gun-free zone.” (Looks like your typical George Soros-funded “community organizing” left-wing mini-riot). They then were given long-winded scripts written by Democrat Party operatives denouncing Trump, the NRA, and all the Republicans in Tallahassee while praising all of the Democrats in Tallahassee to the treetops. While I was watching, not one of these little brain-numbed political pawns said anything other than banning the AR15 could “save” them from future mass shootings. The state legislature voted against banning “assault rifles,” after which CNN put on the screen a hysterically crying little girl who threw a tantrum over this. Stalinist/East German Cold War brainwashing has nothing over the Democrat Party and its Florida sideshow.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
The Gun Grabbers "Logic"?
By Jack Kerwick
To the activities of raping, murdering, and the like, we attach the harshest of penalties. Yet still, people continue to rape and murder. The Gun-Controller would have us think that a person, like Nikolas Cruz, who resolved months in advance to become a “professional school shooter,” as he revealed on social media, would have been deterred from mowing down innocents if only, somehow, there was that one law that prevented him from legally obtaining a firearm.
That is, the Gun-Controller maintains that though Cruz was not deterred by the threat of either serving the remainder of his natural existence in a prison cell or being executed for the crime of mass murder, he would have been deterred from following through with his plans if only it was illegal for him to purchase the weaponry that he wanted to use.
Now, if you still don’t see the imbecility in this logic, or if you pretend not to see it, then you must be among those who shout for more “gun-control” whenever a mass shooting assumes center-stage in the news cycle.
Read the entire article
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
To the activities of raping, murdering, and the like, we attach the harshest of penalties. Yet still, people continue to rape and murder. The Gun-Controller would have us think that a person, like Nikolas Cruz, who resolved months in advance to become a “professional school shooter,” as he revealed on social media, would have been deterred from mowing down innocents if only, somehow, there was that one law that prevented him from legally obtaining a firearm.
That is, the Gun-Controller maintains that though Cruz was not deterred by the threat of either serving the remainder of his natural existence in a prison cell or being executed for the crime of mass murder, he would have been deterred from following through with his plans if only it was illegal for him to purchase the weaponry that he wanted to use.
Now, if you still don’t see the imbecility in this logic, or if you pretend not to see it, then you must be among those who shout for more “gun-control” whenever a mass shooting assumes center-stage in the news cycle.
Read the entire article
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Monday, February 19, 2018
Predictable as The Sunrise
By Thomas DiLorenzo
There’s a big pro-gun-control event in a nearby town where sheeple are “protesting” over the recent incident where another mass shooting occurred at a gun-controlled, “gun-free zone” at a Florida school. Here’s their “logic”:
Meanwhile, the already-brainwashed little girls were obviously not aware of the fact that the shooting took place in a “gun-free zone” where everyone was unarmed and defenseless, having adopted the standard public school guns-are-scary ideology of the gun-grabbing Left. And although congressional offices, the White House, and other government buildings are guarded by heavily-armed security guards, snipers, and missile launchers, there are members of Congress from Florida who support forcing everyone to remain unarmed and defenseless in the government schools.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
There’s a big pro-gun-control event in a nearby town where sheeple are “protesting” over the recent incident where another mass shooting occurred at a gun-controlled, “gun-free zone” at a Florida school. Here’s their “logic”:
- Every one of these mass shootings at a public school has been at a school that is a “gun-free zone,” usually by law.
- Everyone knows this.
- Therefore, to deter such tragedies in the future we need more gun-free-zones at schools, just like the one in Florida where the most recent mass shooting occurred.
Meanwhile, the already-brainwashed little girls were obviously not aware of the fact that the shooting took place in a “gun-free zone” where everyone was unarmed and defenseless, having adopted the standard public school guns-are-scary ideology of the gun-grabbing Left. And although congressional offices, the White House, and other government buildings are guarded by heavily-armed security guards, snipers, and missile launchers, there are members of Congress from Florida who support forcing everyone to remain unarmed and defenseless in the government schools.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Sunday, February 18, 2018
Tick Tok Tick Tok
By Judge Andrew Napolitano
I am not speaking of Amazon or Google or Exxon Mobil or Apple. They deliver products that appeal to consumers and investors. They deal in copious amounts of money because they sell what hundreds of millions of people want to purchase and they do it so efficiently that hundreds of thousands want to invest in them. If they fail to persuade consumers to purchase their products and investors to purchase their financial instruments, they will go out of business.
My analogy about all that cash in your kitchen sink that just keeps coming is not about voluntary commercial transactions, which you are free to accept or reject. It is about the government's spending what it doesn’t have, the consequences of which you are not free to reject.
Government produces no products that consumers are willing to pay for voluntarily, and it doesn’t sell shares of stock in its assets. It doesn’t generate wealth; it seizes it. And when it can no longer politically get away with seizing, it borrows. It borrows a great deal of money -- money that it rolls over, by borrowing trillions to pay back trillions to prior lenders, and thus its debt never goes away.
Last week, after eight years of publicly complaining that then-President Barack Obama was borrowing more than $1 trillion a year to fund the government -- borrowing that the Republicans silently consented to -- congressional Republicans, now in control of Congress and with a friend in the Oval Office, voted to spend and hence borrow between $5 trillion and $6 trillion more than tax revenue will produce in the next three years; that’s a few trillion more than they complained about in the Obama years.
That’s borrowing $1 million a minute.
Obviously, no business or household or bank can survive very long by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Yet the federal government, no matter which party controls Congress or the presidency, engages in staggering borrowing -- borrowing that will cripple future generations by forcing them to pay for goods and services that were consumed before they were born.
The government has often borrowed to meet critical emergency needs, typically during wartime. Indeed, the country was born in debt when Alexander Hamilton, the father of big government, offered the idea that the new federal government created by the Constitution could purchase the fidelity of the states by assuming their Revolutionary War debts.
But those debts were paid back using inflation, gold and tax dollars, and the country enjoyed sporadic periods of nearly debt-free government. Then three unhappy events coincided about 100 years ago: Woodrow Wilson -- the father of modern-day big government -- was elected president, and he brought us into the useless battle over national borders among old European royalty called the Great War, and he financed American participation in that first world war using the new printing presses owned by the new Federal Reserve System.
The $30 billion President Wilson borrowed from the Federal Reserve and others has been rolled over and over and has never been repaid. The federal government still owes the $30 billion principal, and for that it has paid more than $15 billion in interest. Who in his right mind would pay 50 percent interest on a 100-year-old debt? Only the government.
Wilson’s $30 billion debt 100 years ago has ballooned to $20.6 trillion today. At the end of President Donald Trump’s present term -- because of the Republican budget signed into law last week -- the government’s debt will be about $27 trillion.
That amount is a debt bomb waiting to explode. Here’s why. Every year, the federal government collects about $2.5 trillion in revenue and spends it all. It borrows another $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion and spends it all. To avoid paying back any of the $27 trillion it will owe, the federal government will need to spend about $1 trillion a year in interest payments.
That $1 trillion is 40 percent of the revenue collected by the federal government; that’s 40 cents on every dollar in tax revenue going to interest on old debts -- interest payments that are legally unavoidable by taxpayers and voters.
Will the taxpaying public tolerate this much longer? What would happen if taxpayers stopped paying taxes because 40 percent of what they've been paying has produced nothing for them? Would investors stop lending money to the government because of fear that the government could not pay them back? The Constitution requires the government to pay its debts. Would the government’s creditors acquire control of the government’s fiscal policy in order to pay themselves back? The government’s biggest creditor is one of its biggest menaces -- the government of China.
Borrowing money at $1 million a minute is digging a hole out of which we will never peacefully climb. President Obama’s and President Trump’s own military and intelligence chiefs have argued that the national debt -- not the Russians or the Islamic State group or the North Koreans -- is the greatest threat to freedom and security that we face today.
Why are Congress and President Trump not listening?
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Imagine you open the faucet of your kitchen sink
expecting water and instead out comes cash. Now imagine that it comes
out at the rate of $1 million a minute. You call your plumber, who
thinks you’re crazy. To get you off the phone, he opines that it is your
sink and therefore must be your money. So you spend it wildly. Then you
realize that the money wasn’t yours and you owe it back.
Now imagine that this happens every
minute of every day for the next three years. At the end of the three
years, you owe back more than $6 trillion. So you borrow $6 trillion to
pay back the $6 trillion you owe.
Is this unending spigot of cash reality or fantasy?I am not speaking of Amazon or Google or Exxon Mobil or Apple. They deliver products that appeal to consumers and investors. They deal in copious amounts of money because they sell what hundreds of millions of people want to purchase and they do it so efficiently that hundreds of thousands want to invest in them. If they fail to persuade consumers to purchase their products and investors to purchase their financial instruments, they will go out of business.
My analogy about all that cash in your kitchen sink that just keeps coming is not about voluntary commercial transactions, which you are free to accept or reject. It is about the government's spending what it doesn’t have, the consequences of which you are not free to reject.
Government produces no products that consumers are willing to pay for voluntarily, and it doesn’t sell shares of stock in its assets. It doesn’t generate wealth; it seizes it. And when it can no longer politically get away with seizing, it borrows. It borrows a great deal of money -- money that it rolls over, by borrowing trillions to pay back trillions to prior lenders, and thus its debt never goes away.
Last week, after eight years of publicly complaining that then-President Barack Obama was borrowing more than $1 trillion a year to fund the government -- borrowing that the Republicans silently consented to -- congressional Republicans, now in control of Congress and with a friend in the Oval Office, voted to spend and hence borrow between $5 trillion and $6 trillion more than tax revenue will produce in the next three years; that’s a few trillion more than they complained about in the Obama years.
That’s borrowing $1 million a minute.
Obviously, no business or household or bank can survive very long by borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Yet the federal government, no matter which party controls Congress or the presidency, engages in staggering borrowing -- borrowing that will cripple future generations by forcing them to pay for goods and services that were consumed before they were born.
The government has often borrowed to meet critical emergency needs, typically during wartime. Indeed, the country was born in debt when Alexander Hamilton, the father of big government, offered the idea that the new federal government created by the Constitution could purchase the fidelity of the states by assuming their Revolutionary War debts.
But those debts were paid back using inflation, gold and tax dollars, and the country enjoyed sporadic periods of nearly debt-free government. Then three unhappy events coincided about 100 years ago: Woodrow Wilson -- the father of modern-day big government -- was elected president, and he brought us into the useless battle over national borders among old European royalty called the Great War, and he financed American participation in that first world war using the new printing presses owned by the new Federal Reserve System.
The $30 billion President Wilson borrowed from the Federal Reserve and others has been rolled over and over and has never been repaid. The federal government still owes the $30 billion principal, and for that it has paid more than $15 billion in interest. Who in his right mind would pay 50 percent interest on a 100-year-old debt? Only the government.
Wilson’s $30 billion debt 100 years ago has ballooned to $20.6 trillion today. At the end of President Donald Trump’s present term -- because of the Republican budget signed into law last week -- the government’s debt will be about $27 trillion.
That amount is a debt bomb waiting to explode. Here’s why. Every year, the federal government collects about $2.5 trillion in revenue and spends it all. It borrows another $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion and spends it all. To avoid paying back any of the $27 trillion it will owe, the federal government will need to spend about $1 trillion a year in interest payments.
That $1 trillion is 40 percent of the revenue collected by the federal government; that’s 40 cents on every dollar in tax revenue going to interest on old debts -- interest payments that are legally unavoidable by taxpayers and voters.
Will the taxpaying public tolerate this much longer? What would happen if taxpayers stopped paying taxes because 40 percent of what they've been paying has produced nothing for them? Would investors stop lending money to the government because of fear that the government could not pay them back? The Constitution requires the government to pay its debts. Would the government’s creditors acquire control of the government’s fiscal policy in order to pay themselves back? The government’s biggest creditor is one of its biggest menaces -- the government of China.
Borrowing money at $1 million a minute is digging a hole out of which we will never peacefully climb. President Obama’s and President Trump’s own military and intelligence chiefs have argued that the national debt -- not the Russians or the Islamic State group or the North Koreans -- is the greatest threat to freedom and security that we face today.
Why are Congress and President Trump not listening?
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
With a Straight Face and Not even A Chuckle...
...The Special Counsel Robert Mueller
has a grand jury hand down indictments against a dozen + “Russian individuals and entities” for what amounts to publishing insulting statements and comments about the criminal Clinton gang. We have it on good authority that in this instance the proverbial “ham sandwich” escaped the wrath of his witch hunt.
The alleged purpose driving these evil Russians was to influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. Imagine that! There is as yet no word on any possible prosecution of CNN and the Democrat Party for attempting to overturn the result of said election. Apparently it is a criminal/prosecutable offense to oppose a nominated empress selected by the deep state ruling class notwithstanding the US’ history of “medeling in the internal affairs of sovereign foreign nations e.g. the short list just since 1948:
It would appear that the socalled "Deep State" lacks a sense of irony.
By ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
has a grand jury hand down indictments against a dozen + “Russian individuals and entities” for what amounts to publishing insulting statements and comments about the criminal Clinton gang. We have it on good authority that in this instance the proverbial “ham sandwich” escaped the wrath of his witch hunt.
The alleged purpose driving these evil Russians was to influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election. Imagine that! There is as yet no word on any possible prosecution of CNN and the Democrat Party for attempting to overturn the result of said election. Apparently it is a criminal/prosecutable offense to oppose a nominated empress selected by the deep state ruling class notwithstanding the US’ history of “medeling in the internal affairs of sovereign foreign nations e.g. the short list just since 1948:
2016: UK (verbal intervention against Brexit)
2014: Afghanistan (effectively re-writing Afghan constitution)
2014: UK (verbal intervention against Scottish independence)
2011: Libya (providing support to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi)
2009: Honduras (ousting President Zelaya)
2006: Palestine (providing support to oust Prime Minister Haniyeh)
2005: Syria (providing support against President al-Assad)
2003: Iran (providing support against President Khatami)-
2003: Iraq (ousting of President Hussein)
2002: Venezuela (providing support to attempt an overthrow of President Chavez)
1999: Yugoslavia (removing Yugoslav forces from Kosovo)
1994: Iraq (attempted overthrow of President Hussein)
1991: Haiti (ousting President Aristide)
1991: Kuwait (removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait)
1989: Panama (ousting General Noriega)
1983: Grenada (ousting General Austin's Marxist forces)
1982: Nicaragua (providing support
1971: Chile (ousting President Allende)
1967: Indonesia (ousting President Sukarno)
1964: Brazil (ousting President Goulart)
1964: Chile (providing support against Salvador Allende)
1961: Congo (assassination of leader Lumumba)
1958: Lebanon (providing support to Christian political parties)
1954: Guatemala (ousting President Arbenz)
1953: Iran (ousting Prime Minister Mossadegh)
1953: Philippines (providing support to the President Magsaysay campaign)
1948: Italy (providing support to the Christian Democrats campaign)
It would appear that the socalled "Deep State" lacks a sense of irony.
By ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Friday, February 16, 2018
Public School Control Now!
The murder of 17 innocent high school students in
Parkland, Florida reminds us that public schools are dangerous. Too
dangerous for children.
When was the last time you heard of a mass execution of students in a private school? The next time will be the first.
When did anyone hear of a dozen or more corpses lying on the floor of a homeschool co-op?
The facts are inescapable. Students in public schools are at risk. Terrible risk. Unacceptable risk. There is no excuse for this any longer. None. The statistics are clear. Students get gunned down only in public schools.
Yet defenders of public schools never cease spouting their slogans about a constitutional right to taxpayer-funded education [no such right]. They claim that this is guaranteed by the Constitution's general welfare clause. This is preposterous. There were no taxpayer-funded day schools in 1788, not even a military academy. There wasn't even a school at West Point. It was a fort. West Point was where Benedict Arnold had been in charge.
We need to organize . . . now. We need to go to the voters . . . now. We need to tell them what they already know but refuse to say in public: it is time to ban public schools once and for all. No more excuses. No more gradualism. Gradualism kills! In every town, every city, every county, every state, and in Congress, our voices must be heard. "Shut them down! All of them!"
There should be a school building buy-back program. Any school board that is willing to turn in its schools to the local police department should be paid. The empty schools can be then sold to private schools or even turned into business complexes. The police department should be allowed to keep the profits. We want our men in blue behind this.
County schools can be sold by the local sheriff's office. Same arrangement. "Support your local sheriff. Turn in your schools."
What will the students do? They can stay home and sign up for the Khan Academy. It's online. It's free. There would soon be a market for similar programs. Churches can create them. Retired teachers can create them. Service organizations can create them. If Salman Khan can do it, others can do it. There is a working model. This isn't rocket science.
What about the children of mothers who work outside the home? No problem! A city or county can pay profit-seeking charter schools to enroll students. Tax support involves coercion, but it's better to have private charter schools with armed guards than what we have now. There have been no mass shootings in charter schools. There have not been any gang-related murders, either.
What about today's student-to-teacher ratio of 16 students per teacher. Double it to where it was in my day. Each student will sit at a carrel that touches a wall. The carrels will be in a U-formation. Each student will use a cheap Chromebook computer. The student will wear headphones to listen to online lectures and audio-visual presentations. A teacher will walk around to monitor the students from behind. The students will not know if the teacher is monitoring them. There will be few behavior problems.
What if a student gets stuck? He will raise his hand. The teacher will come over and ask what's wrong. The student will say: "I don't understand this." The teacher will say: "Google it. That's how you will learn everything as soon as you get out of school. Get a head start."
"But," you may say, "if that's all a teacher had to do, then a low-paid worker could do the job. The high school could hire two or three $100,000-a-year teachers for one-time emergency instruction sessions, and the rest would be paid whatever a starting teacher is paid today." Wrong. A teacher would be paid no more than 70% of what a starting teacher is paid today. There would be lots of applicants with B.A. degrees in education. They would be trained in college mainly in Googling.
What about hoodlums and gang members? Expel them.
What about disruptive students? Expel them.
What about teachers' union members? Expel them. (OK, I'm just kidding. No charter school would hire them in the first place.)
Academic performance will improve. U.S. News and World Report ranks the best academic high schools in the USA. The top three schools in America are run by the same charter school company in Arizona: BASIS. So is the number-five school. The ranking is here. I am sure BASIS can meet the demand.
If BASIS doesn't want to set up schools in high-crime neighborhoods, then local entrepreneurs can do it. Cities can set up voucher programs. With no school buildings to heat, cool, and repair, no teachers' union to placate, and no liability insurance to buy, taxes can be lowered.
I see a market for private security services for charter schools. "We pack. Kids learn." They can hire ex-football coaches. I can see the recruiting brochure. "You're big. You're loud. You're ready."
This program is practical. We must close the public schools forever . . . for the sake of the children.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Beyond Bizarro
By Becky Akers
In the People’s Democratic Republic of New York City, the owner of a building covered in graffiti must pay the “artists” who trespassed on and defaced his property because he whitewashed their “work,” a clown in a federal gown has decreed. And he must pay a lot: $6.7 million.
The clown fulminates in his ruling about “the formidable works of aerosol art”—oh, brother—and mourns that the building “would have been a wonderful tribute for the artists that they richly deserved” had its owner not acted as if he owned the place. We might credit the clown as a superb satirist– except that communists have no sense of humor.
Lest you smirk that such blatant Marxism confines itself to the PDR of NYC, consider that the “law” giving this dung its legal cover is a federal one, the “Visual Rights Act.” Ergo, you, too, could forfeit your property should thugs appropriate it with spray-paint—excuse me, “aerosol art.”
Meanwhile, I suspect His Dishonor is penalizing the owner more for thumbing his nose at the court than anything else–because, yes, in the PDR of NYC, anyone infringing on someone else’s land can sue and tie him up for years as the judiciary deliberates over how the guy with the deed and liability may dispose of his property. Indeed, the legal war over this building has been raging for at least five years. And all the while, the City that has denied the owner his rights has nonetheless been taxing the property.
No wonder the owner forged ahead with his plans to turn a derelict heap into housing. And taking his own matters into his own hands is what actually teed off the gowned clown: “If he did not destroy [the building] until he received his permits and demolished it 10 months later, the Court would not have found that he had acted willfully.”
The unforgivable sin in the People’s Democratic Republic: “acting willfully,” without Our Rulers’ permission.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
In the People’s Democratic Republic of New York City, the owner of a building covered in graffiti must pay the “artists” who trespassed on and defaced his property because he whitewashed their “work,” a clown in a federal gown has decreed. And he must pay a lot: $6.7 million.
The clown fulminates in his ruling about “the formidable works of aerosol art”—oh, brother—and mourns that the building “would have been a wonderful tribute for the artists that they richly deserved” had its owner not acted as if he owned the place. We might credit the clown as a superb satirist– except that communists have no sense of humor.
Lest you smirk that such blatant Marxism confines itself to the PDR of NYC, consider that the “law” giving this dung its legal cover is a federal one, the “Visual Rights Act.” Ergo, you, too, could forfeit your property should thugs appropriate it with spray-paint—excuse me, “aerosol art.”
Meanwhile, I suspect His Dishonor is penalizing the owner more for thumbing his nose at the court than anything else–because, yes, in the PDR of NYC, anyone infringing on someone else’s land can sue and tie him up for years as the judiciary deliberates over how the guy with the deed and liability may dispose of his property. Indeed, the legal war over this building has been raging for at least five years. And all the while, the City that has denied the owner his rights has nonetheless been taxing the property.
No wonder the owner forged ahead with his plans to turn a derelict heap into housing. And taking his own matters into his own hands is what actually teed off the gowned clown: “If he did not destroy [the building] until he received his permits and demolished it 10 months later, the Court would not have found that he had acted willfully.”
The unforgivable sin in the People’s Democratic Republic: “acting willfully,” without Our Rulers’ permission.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Overdue!!
By Dr Thomas Woods
Well done.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
I was critical of Rand Paul during the presidential campaign.
I didn't like the messaging, the energy level, or the personnel choices. I didn't see any benefit to being a yes man, so I voiced my concerns.
But I'm glad to give credit where it's due, and these days it's really due.
We know Rand has been good on the budget. But he's done other things that deserve to be known.
For one thing, he's opposing the nomination of Marvin Goodfriend to the Federal Reserve Board. These are the kind of nominations that normally sail through. Mike Lee is now saying he's "undecided" about the nomination.
No way Mike Lee was going to stick his neck out had Rand not first staked his ground.
Goodfriend, by the way, has floated kooky ideas about negative interest rates that would seriously deform the economy. He should be opposed. But in D.C., people like him never are.
So good for Rand.
But I also like the way he responded to the President's call for a military parade.
An excerpt:
I propose we declare victory in Afghanistan, bring home our 14,000 troops and hold a victory parade.
We defeated the enemy in Afghanistan. We killed or captured the terrorists who planned, plotted, or aided in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. We killed the ringleader, Usama bin Laden. We disrupted the terrorists’ camps where they plotted and trained. We dislodged the Taliban government that aided and abetted bin Laden.
We just don’t know how to appreciate a good thing. A big part of our foreign policy failures is not knowing when and how to declare victory. So, why not a parade? Bring the troops home and declare the victory that should have been declared years ago.
The only reason victory is elusive in Afghanistan is that presidents continue to have an impossible definition of victory. If victory is creating a nation where no real nation has ever existed, then no victory will ever occur.
If victory requires the disparate tribes and regional factions of Afghanistan to have more allegiance to a regime in Kabul than to their local tribal leaders, then victory will never come.
I didn't like the messaging, the energy level, or the personnel choices. I didn't see any benefit to being a yes man, so I voiced my concerns.
But I'm glad to give credit where it's due, and these days it's really due.
We know Rand has been good on the budget. But he's done other things that deserve to be known.
For one thing, he's opposing the nomination of Marvin Goodfriend to the Federal Reserve Board. These are the kind of nominations that normally sail through. Mike Lee is now saying he's "undecided" about the nomination.
No way Mike Lee was going to stick his neck out had Rand not first staked his ground.
Goodfriend, by the way, has floated kooky ideas about negative interest rates that would seriously deform the economy. He should be opposed. But in D.C., people like him never are.
So good for Rand.
But I also like the way he responded to the President's call for a military parade.
An excerpt:
I propose we declare victory in Afghanistan, bring home our 14,000 troops and hold a victory parade.
We defeated the enemy in Afghanistan. We killed or captured the terrorists who planned, plotted, or aided in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. We killed the ringleader, Usama bin Laden. We disrupted the terrorists’ camps where they plotted and trained. We dislodged the Taliban government that aided and abetted bin Laden.
We just don’t know how to appreciate a good thing. A big part of our foreign policy failures is not knowing when and how to declare victory. So, why not a parade? Bring the troops home and declare the victory that should have been declared years ago.
The only reason victory is elusive in Afghanistan is that presidents continue to have an impossible definition of victory. If victory is creating a nation where no real nation has ever existed, then no victory will ever occur.
If victory requires the disparate tribes and regional factions of Afghanistan to have more allegiance to a regime in Kabul than to their local tribal leaders, then victory will never come.
Well done.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Monday, February 12, 2018
Democrat Politics for Dummies
A Statement of FACTS By Tom Del Beccaro, Author of The Divided Era
1. 2007. Hillary Clinton wanted to be President. Hillary’s ambitions to be president started long ago. She ran for President in the 2008 cycle. In 2009, after losing to Obama, Hillary became Obama’s Secretary of State. She stayed in that post until 2013.
2. March 2015. The Hillary email scandal breaks. Hillary was using an unapproved/unsecured server and devices to communicate. She was using a private email account. Classified information was being sent through that email, server and devices – including when Hillary was abroad.
All of that is illegal. As 2015 unfolds, it becomes clear to the FBI and the DOJ that President Barack Obama was communicating with Hillary using her non-state department email. Obama was using an email and a name that masked who he was.
That had to be known to authorities long before March of 2015 given that it occurred prior to 2013.
As Andrew McCarthy points out in his recent article, there was no chance that the DOJ was going to indict Hillary because that would have required implicating President Obama. That was never going to happen. From thereafter, DOJ officials acted with that understanding, however illegal, in mind.
3. June 2015. Donald Trump announces his Presidential run.
4. March 2016. Trump has enough delegates to claim the nomination.
5. April 10, 2016. Obama makes clear he does not want Hillary indicted. Obama, on TV, indicates Hillary did not intend to harm national security. However, intent is not an element of the crime she committed. At the time of that statement – made by a sitting President and in plain view of the Nation and more importantly his FBI/DOJ appointments – many witnesses had yet to be interviewed, including Hillary.
6. April 2016. Hillary campaign and DNC begin funding infamous Trump dossier. To conceal payments for the dossier, Hillary’s campaign gives money to attorneys who then pay for the dossier – a clear campaign law violation. If that campaign payment had been properly disclosed, the payment for the dossier, and likely the dossier, would have been exposed in the summer of 2016. That disclosure likely would have hurt Hillary’s campaign and LIKELY PREVENT THE USE OF THE DOSSIER to get FISA warrant on Carter Page, which led to other spying and ultimately the Mueller investigation.
7. May 2, 2016. Ted Cruz drops out of Presidential race. Cruz’ departure confirms Trump will be the Republican nominee.
8. May 2016. Peter Strzok and Lisa Page make it clear they need to end the Hillary Investigation.
Peter Strzok is the FBI agent in charge of the Hillary investigation, which is dubbed Mid-Year Exam. He is having an affair with FBI lawyer Lisa Page. In a text exchange, Page informs Strzok that Cruz dropped out. Strzok responds:
“What?!?!?!?!” Strzok later states: “Now the pressure really starts to finish the MYE.”
That is evidence of and the motive for much to come.
9. May 2016. FBI draft memo about Hillary started. Long before Hillary and other key witnesses are interviewed, James Comey starts drafting a memo with respect to the proposed conclusion of the Hillary investigation.
The original memo stated: “There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified information.”
The grossly negligent language is sufficient to charge Hillary with a crime.
10. May 2016. Hillary staffers Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin mislead the FBI on what they know about Hillary’s email practices. In fact, they knew of the use long before the timeframe they gave the FBI. They are never charged with lying to the FBI.
Eventually, five Clinton associates, including Mills, are granted immunity and, incredibly, evidence is destroyed by the FBI as part of the immunity deals. There is never a good reason for a law enforcement agency to destroy evidence during an investigation.
11. June 20, 2016. Peter Strzok, who was opposed to Trump becoming president, as his texts reveal, changes the “grossly negligent” language in the Comey memo to “extremely careless.” The change all but ensures Hillary will not be charged with a crime.
12. June 27, 2016. Bill Clinton meets Loretta Lynch on the tarmac. They claim they were talking about grandchildren. When information related to the meeting is leaked, the FBI goes on a desperate search to determine who leaked the information. There is no corresponding urgent effort to expose the content of the very inappropriate meeting between the former president/husband of a target who just happened to appoint Lynch to office years ago.
13. July 1, 2016. It is announced that Attorney General Loretta Lynch will accept FBI “determination and findings” as to the Hillary investigation – an abrogation of her duties not authorized by law. Strzok paramour Lisa Page then sarcastically texts to Strzok that: “It’s a real profile in courage, since she knows no charges will be brought.”
Obviously, the determination to not charge Hillary had already been made, even though . . .
14. July 2, 2016. Hillary interviewed by the FBI. Hillary is finally interviewed by the FBI but she is not put under oath and there is no transcript (thereby making it all but impossible to charge her with lying to the FBI). She is interviewed for just over 3 hours – that is an hour less than Angelina Jolie was interviewed about Brad Pitt’s treatment of her children on a plane.
Hillary is allowed to have Cheryl Mills (a witness to the email crimes) in the room during the interview to act as Clinton’s attorney. Mills, of course, had been granted immunity by then.
15. July 5, 2016. Comey goes on TV, lays out case against Hillary, claims no intent therefore no prosecution. Comey’s presentation makes clear Hillary skirted the law but Comey applies Obama’s nationally announced, non-existent, “intent” standard and states no prosecutor would indict her. Of course, it is legally not the job of the FBI director to decide who gets prosecuted. To the contrary, their job is fact finding and to report to the DOJ. Comey never should have gone on TV to announce anything.
16. Summer of 2016. FBI official Andrew McCabe is aware of more Clinton emails/Delays review of them. Hillary Clinton emails are recovered from Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Weiner is the husband of close Clinton staffer Huma Abedin. To have the emails residing on Weiner’s laptop is a clear violation of law. Huma Abedin is never prosecuted for the violation nor is Weiner let alone Hillary. FBI official Andrew McCabe, whose wife benefitted from campaign help (some say the arrangement netted over $700,000 for her campaign) from Clinton Ally Terry McAuliffe, delays review of the new discovered emails into the Fall.
17. July 2016. Carter Page goes to Moscow. Carter Page is a tangential, volunteer Trump campaign advisor with long-time ties to Russia. Carter Page had been under surveillance in 2013 (not clear for how long ) by the FBI. Such surveillance must be based on a claim that Carter could be an agent for a foreign government. Cater Page clearly is a Russian sympathizer with a desire to continue doing business in Russia. The Trump campaign is aware of his Russian trip but not that he had been under surveillance.
** Now, as the campaigns head to the Fall, the focus changes away from the exonerated Hillary to Donald Trump’s campaign.
18. Summer of 2016. Comey’s first attempt to get FISA Warrant against Trump campaign official is denied. Comey sought a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page – again, under the theory that he could be an agent of a foreign government.
19. Late July 2016. FBI starts “counter intelligence” investigation based on drunk statement by George Papdopoulos that Russia has dirt on Hillary Clinton. Papdopoulos is another tangential, volunteer, Trump campaign advisor.
Given Hillary’s unprotected use of email servers and blackberrys, including on foreign soil, it can be no surprise Russia could have such information. There is no factual connection between Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
20. September of 2016. Carter Page leaves Trump campaign. Press stories allege contacts between Page and Russian officials resulting in pressure for Page to leave the campaign – so he leaves.
21. September/October 2016. DOJ Official Bruce Ohr’s wife goes to work for Fusion GPS (the firm that was the conduit between the Hillary Campaign and dossier author ex-British spy Christopher Steele). Ohr later funnels information from his wife to the FBI.
22. October of 2016. Second Comey FISA request relying on the Steele Dossier – FISA Warrant Issued to spy on Carter Page. Andrew McCabe, in time, makes it clear that without the dossier, there would have been no FISA warrant.
The dossier has never been verified – to this day. Comey told Trump in January of 2017 that the dossier was “unverified.”
Yet, Comey represented to the FISA Court that the dossier was credible – in part, by citing a Yahoo news story on the matter. However, Comey knew that that story was planted by the dossier author Christopher Steele. In other words, it was not an independent verification of the dossier.
All in all, Comey swore under oath that the Court should consider the dossier credible evidence so that the FBI could spy on Trump campaign official Carter Page – even though Page had already left the campaign. Given that it was known that Page already left the campaign, it could well be that Carter Page was the fall guy excuse to begin domestic spying on others.
Without question, Comey misled the FISA Court by submitting and vouching for the unverified dossier and pushing the Yahoo News story. Those were not the only questionable acts, misrepresentations nor omissions of Comey.
The FBI and DOJ, at the time they made the original FISA application, also were aware of the following – ALL OF WHICH WAS HIDDEN FROM THE FISA COURT:
a) Hillary’s campaign and the DNC paid for the dossier – a fact which, if known, would give rise to judicial questions of potential evidentiary bias.
b) Christopher Steele tells a DOJ official Bruce Ohr that Steele was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” Another fact that, if known, would give rise to judicial questions of potential evidentiary bias. c) The FBI was willing to pay Christopher Steele for more research but rescinded its offer when the FBI found out Steele had briefed reporters on the content of his dossier – a violation of FBI rules. Any Judge or jury would want to know if someone offering evidence otherwise was breaking rules. It bears on whether the witness can be trusted.
d) Carter Page was not considered by the Russians as a credible businessmen and/or figure. Many believe Carter Page was an insignificant player. Again, this raises the question of whether surveillance of him was really an attempt to get at others.
e) A DOJ official’s wife was working for the outfit commissioning the dossier. Another potentially biased individual.
** Keep in mind, by this time, the FBI is aware that the Hillary campaign paid lawyers, to give money to Fusion GPS, who gave money to a foreign agent (Christopher Steele), who got information from Russian informants. Yet, the FBI counter intelligence effort was being run on the Trump campaign not the Clinton campaign.
23. October 2016. Comey announces the reopening of email review and then, before the election, clears Hillary again.
24. November 2016. Trump wins the Presidency.
25. November 2016, Hillary campaign immediately blames Russian interference and that narrative is maintained for months.
26. December of 2016. Obama Administration begins process to relax rules on sharing intelligence about Americans. The rules previously provided that if an American was speaking to a foreigner who was being surveilled, the American’s name would be masked in the intelligence documents. Obama made it easier to share the actual names – which so happened to be Trump transition officials trying to do their job.
27. 90 days renewals. Three times thereafter, the FBI and the DOJ reapplied for a FISA warrant and never apprised the Court of their prior misrepresentations and/or omissions. The existing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who currently oversees the Mueller investigation, was one of the officials who made a FISA warrant reapplication. It has also been said that Rosenstein, on January 10, threatened House Members with legal proceedings if they continue to push oversight of this matter.
Conclusions:
So what conclusions are to be drawn in all of this?
1. Obviously, the Obama Administration DOJ officials were never going to charge Hillary Clinton with a crime related to the emails. To make that come true, their officials went easy on Hillary (as the Strzok/Page texts expressly suggest should be done). They altered procedure, they granted multiple immunity deals, they allowed for the destruction of evidence, they gave her an easy interview, they delayed the review of documents, they altered the characterization of Hillary’s offense from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless” to exonerate her from liability, and more. Their conduct amount to obstruction of justice – a crime.
2. The race between Hillary and Trump pushed the FBI/DOJ to alter the Hillary email investigation timeline for election purposes. They weren’t following the evidence, they were keeping to a deadline. They pushed to end the investigation and to exonerate her so that she would not be burdened with the investigation as the race moved into the Fall.
Yes, it is true that Comey made a terrible (if not illegal) decision to publicly announce reopening the email investigation days before the election. In truth, however, because it would implicate Obama, no charges were ever going to be brought.
3. It is obvious that the FBI/DOJ officials hastened the end of the Hillary email investigation and then immediately began an investigation of Donald Trump. The timing of the July 5, 2016 Comey exoneration speech and the late July counter intelligence investigation related to a tangential Trump advisor should not be viewed as just a coincidence. It was, as Strzok said, an insurance policy against the election of Trump.
4. Does Comey’s original draft and his announcements related to Hillary not demonstrate he was not biased against her? Maybe. The fact that Comey made inconsistent and stupid decisions does not mean the FBI and the DOJ weren’t giving Hillary a free pass. Also, there is no doubt, that Comey stole documents from the FBI and illegally leaked such documents. Those are crimes. Beyond that . . .
5. FBI/DOJ officials knowingly concealed evidence and misled the FISA Court. They, including Comey, knew the law. They are senior law enforcement officials. They knew they had been turned down before and therefore had to bring more to the table.
So what did they bring? The dossier. The unverified dossier. They asserted to the Court, however, that it was credible.
They also omitted information that likely would have resulted in the Court denying the application. It was October of 2016, however, and they wanted information right then and there. After all, it was less than a month before the election.
6. Based on those lies in the FISA applications, all the evidence that was gathered as the fruit of that warrant, unless it can be shown the evidence was clearly not gathered from that warrant, could be ruled inadmissible in any criminal case. Look for Paul Manafort to make that argument.
7. Without the FISA warrant, would there have been an Independent Counsel? We shall never know – but it appears rather unlikely.
8. Mueller. He had to know of the facts above. Why hasn’t he blown the whistle on the bad cops?
9. It is right to say that this episode is the worst abuse of political power in American history related to elections. Watergate is nothing by comparison. That involved people not employed by the government. Later it involved a cover-up in which Nixon participated.
Watergate did not involve the DOJ and the FBI – two institutions which must be non-partisans for this Republic of ours.
This case does involve the FBI and DOJ. It also is foolish not to assume that Loretta Lynch and President Obama were ignorant of the goings on – if not involved in them.
Finally, the dishonest investigation of Hillary who committed actual crimes should not be acceptable. Nor should FBI or DOJ officials be allowed to alter events and Court proceedings for political purposes.
If we let this go, and people are not brought to justice, we will have forever damaged our Republic and the World’s view of us as a nation of laws.
~~~
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
1. 2007. Hillary Clinton wanted to be President. Hillary’s ambitions to be president started long ago. She ran for President in the 2008 cycle. In 2009, after losing to Obama, Hillary became Obama’s Secretary of State. She stayed in that post until 2013.
2. March 2015. The Hillary email scandal breaks. Hillary was using an unapproved/unsecured server and devices to communicate. She was using a private email account. Classified information was being sent through that email, server and devices – including when Hillary was abroad.
All of that is illegal. As 2015 unfolds, it becomes clear to the FBI and the DOJ that President Barack Obama was communicating with Hillary using her non-state department email. Obama was using an email and a name that masked who he was.
That had to be known to authorities long before March of 2015 given that it occurred prior to 2013.
As Andrew McCarthy points out in his recent article, there was no chance that the DOJ was going to indict Hillary because that would have required implicating President Obama. That was never going to happen. From thereafter, DOJ officials acted with that understanding, however illegal, in mind.
3. June 2015. Donald Trump announces his Presidential run.
4. March 2016. Trump has enough delegates to claim the nomination.
5. April 10, 2016. Obama makes clear he does not want Hillary indicted. Obama, on TV, indicates Hillary did not intend to harm national security. However, intent is not an element of the crime she committed. At the time of that statement – made by a sitting President and in plain view of the Nation and more importantly his FBI/DOJ appointments – many witnesses had yet to be interviewed, including Hillary.
6. April 2016. Hillary campaign and DNC begin funding infamous Trump dossier. To conceal payments for the dossier, Hillary’s campaign gives money to attorneys who then pay for the dossier – a clear campaign law violation. If that campaign payment had been properly disclosed, the payment for the dossier, and likely the dossier, would have been exposed in the summer of 2016. That disclosure likely would have hurt Hillary’s campaign and LIKELY PREVENT THE USE OF THE DOSSIER to get FISA warrant on Carter Page, which led to other spying and ultimately the Mueller investigation.
7. May 2, 2016. Ted Cruz drops out of Presidential race. Cruz’ departure confirms Trump will be the Republican nominee.
8. May 2016. Peter Strzok and Lisa Page make it clear they need to end the Hillary Investigation.
Peter Strzok is the FBI agent in charge of the Hillary investigation, which is dubbed Mid-Year Exam. He is having an affair with FBI lawyer Lisa Page. In a text exchange, Page informs Strzok that Cruz dropped out. Strzok responds:
“What?!?!?!?!” Strzok later states: “Now the pressure really starts to finish the MYE.”
That is evidence of and the motive for much to come.
9. May 2016. FBI draft memo about Hillary started. Long before Hillary and other key witnesses are interviewed, James Comey starts drafting a memo with respect to the proposed conclusion of the Hillary investigation.
The original memo stated: “There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified information.”
The grossly negligent language is sufficient to charge Hillary with a crime.
10. May 2016. Hillary staffers Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin mislead the FBI on what they know about Hillary’s email practices. In fact, they knew of the use long before the timeframe they gave the FBI. They are never charged with lying to the FBI.
Eventually, five Clinton associates, including Mills, are granted immunity and, incredibly, evidence is destroyed by the FBI as part of the immunity deals. There is never a good reason for a law enforcement agency to destroy evidence during an investigation.
11. June 20, 2016. Peter Strzok, who was opposed to Trump becoming president, as his texts reveal, changes the “grossly negligent” language in the Comey memo to “extremely careless.” The change all but ensures Hillary will not be charged with a crime.
12. June 27, 2016. Bill Clinton meets Loretta Lynch on the tarmac. They claim they were talking about grandchildren. When information related to the meeting is leaked, the FBI goes on a desperate search to determine who leaked the information. There is no corresponding urgent effort to expose the content of the very inappropriate meeting between the former president/husband of a target who just happened to appoint Lynch to office years ago.
13. July 1, 2016. It is announced that Attorney General Loretta Lynch will accept FBI “determination and findings” as to the Hillary investigation – an abrogation of her duties not authorized by law. Strzok paramour Lisa Page then sarcastically texts to Strzok that: “It’s a real profile in courage, since she knows no charges will be brought.”
Obviously, the determination to not charge Hillary had already been made, even though . . .
14. July 2, 2016. Hillary interviewed by the FBI. Hillary is finally interviewed by the FBI but she is not put under oath and there is no transcript (thereby making it all but impossible to charge her with lying to the FBI). She is interviewed for just over 3 hours – that is an hour less than Angelina Jolie was interviewed about Brad Pitt’s treatment of her children on a plane.
Hillary is allowed to have Cheryl Mills (a witness to the email crimes) in the room during the interview to act as Clinton’s attorney. Mills, of course, had been granted immunity by then.
15. July 5, 2016. Comey goes on TV, lays out case against Hillary, claims no intent therefore no prosecution. Comey’s presentation makes clear Hillary skirted the law but Comey applies Obama’s nationally announced, non-existent, “intent” standard and states no prosecutor would indict her. Of course, it is legally not the job of the FBI director to decide who gets prosecuted. To the contrary, their job is fact finding and to report to the DOJ. Comey never should have gone on TV to announce anything.
16. Summer of 2016. FBI official Andrew McCabe is aware of more Clinton emails/Delays review of them. Hillary Clinton emails are recovered from Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Weiner is the husband of close Clinton staffer Huma Abedin. To have the emails residing on Weiner’s laptop is a clear violation of law. Huma Abedin is never prosecuted for the violation nor is Weiner let alone Hillary. FBI official Andrew McCabe, whose wife benefitted from campaign help (some say the arrangement netted over $700,000 for her campaign) from Clinton Ally Terry McAuliffe, delays review of the new discovered emails into the Fall.
17. July 2016. Carter Page goes to Moscow. Carter Page is a tangential, volunteer Trump campaign advisor with long-time ties to Russia. Carter Page had been under surveillance in 2013 (not clear for how long ) by the FBI. Such surveillance must be based on a claim that Carter could be an agent for a foreign government. Cater Page clearly is a Russian sympathizer with a desire to continue doing business in Russia. The Trump campaign is aware of his Russian trip but not that he had been under surveillance.
** Now, as the campaigns head to the Fall, the focus changes away from the exonerated Hillary to Donald Trump’s campaign.
18. Summer of 2016. Comey’s first attempt to get FISA Warrant against Trump campaign official is denied. Comey sought a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page – again, under the theory that he could be an agent of a foreign government.
19. Late July 2016. FBI starts “counter intelligence” investigation based on drunk statement by George Papdopoulos that Russia has dirt on Hillary Clinton. Papdopoulos is another tangential, volunteer, Trump campaign advisor.
Given Hillary’s unprotected use of email servers and blackberrys, including on foreign soil, it can be no surprise Russia could have such information. There is no factual connection between Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
20. September of 2016. Carter Page leaves Trump campaign. Press stories allege contacts between Page and Russian officials resulting in pressure for Page to leave the campaign – so he leaves.
21. September/October 2016. DOJ Official Bruce Ohr’s wife goes to work for Fusion GPS (the firm that was the conduit between the Hillary Campaign and dossier author ex-British spy Christopher Steele). Ohr later funnels information from his wife to the FBI.
22. October of 2016. Second Comey FISA request relying on the Steele Dossier – FISA Warrant Issued to spy on Carter Page. Andrew McCabe, in time, makes it clear that without the dossier, there would have been no FISA warrant.
The dossier has never been verified – to this day. Comey told Trump in January of 2017 that the dossier was “unverified.”
Yet, Comey represented to the FISA Court that the dossier was credible – in part, by citing a Yahoo news story on the matter. However, Comey knew that that story was planted by the dossier author Christopher Steele. In other words, it was not an independent verification of the dossier.
All in all, Comey swore under oath that the Court should consider the dossier credible evidence so that the FBI could spy on Trump campaign official Carter Page – even though Page had already left the campaign. Given that it was known that Page already left the campaign, it could well be that Carter Page was the fall guy excuse to begin domestic spying on others.
Without question, Comey misled the FISA Court by submitting and vouching for the unverified dossier and pushing the Yahoo News story. Those were not the only questionable acts, misrepresentations nor omissions of Comey.
The FBI and DOJ, at the time they made the original FISA application, also were aware of the following – ALL OF WHICH WAS HIDDEN FROM THE FISA COURT:
a) Hillary’s campaign and the DNC paid for the dossier – a fact which, if known, would give rise to judicial questions of potential evidentiary bias.
b) Christopher Steele tells a DOJ official Bruce Ohr that Steele was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.” Another fact that, if known, would give rise to judicial questions of potential evidentiary bias. c) The FBI was willing to pay Christopher Steele for more research but rescinded its offer when the FBI found out Steele had briefed reporters on the content of his dossier – a violation of FBI rules. Any Judge or jury would want to know if someone offering evidence otherwise was breaking rules. It bears on whether the witness can be trusted.
d) Carter Page was not considered by the Russians as a credible businessmen and/or figure. Many believe Carter Page was an insignificant player. Again, this raises the question of whether surveillance of him was really an attempt to get at others.
e) A DOJ official’s wife was working for the outfit commissioning the dossier. Another potentially biased individual.
** Keep in mind, by this time, the FBI is aware that the Hillary campaign paid lawyers, to give money to Fusion GPS, who gave money to a foreign agent (Christopher Steele), who got information from Russian informants. Yet, the FBI counter intelligence effort was being run on the Trump campaign not the Clinton campaign.
23. October 2016. Comey announces the reopening of email review and then, before the election, clears Hillary again.
24. November 2016. Trump wins the Presidency.
25. November 2016, Hillary campaign immediately blames Russian interference and that narrative is maintained for months.
26. December of 2016. Obama Administration begins process to relax rules on sharing intelligence about Americans. The rules previously provided that if an American was speaking to a foreigner who was being surveilled, the American’s name would be masked in the intelligence documents. Obama made it easier to share the actual names – which so happened to be Trump transition officials trying to do their job.
27. 90 days renewals. Three times thereafter, the FBI and the DOJ reapplied for a FISA warrant and never apprised the Court of their prior misrepresentations and/or omissions. The existing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who currently oversees the Mueller investigation, was one of the officials who made a FISA warrant reapplication. It has also been said that Rosenstein, on January 10, threatened House Members with legal proceedings if they continue to push oversight of this matter.
Conclusions:
So what conclusions are to be drawn in all of this?
1. Obviously, the Obama Administration DOJ officials were never going to charge Hillary Clinton with a crime related to the emails. To make that come true, their officials went easy on Hillary (as the Strzok/Page texts expressly suggest should be done). They altered procedure, they granted multiple immunity deals, they allowed for the destruction of evidence, they gave her an easy interview, they delayed the review of documents, they altered the characterization of Hillary’s offense from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless” to exonerate her from liability, and more. Their conduct amount to obstruction of justice – a crime.
2. The race between Hillary and Trump pushed the FBI/DOJ to alter the Hillary email investigation timeline for election purposes. They weren’t following the evidence, they were keeping to a deadline. They pushed to end the investigation and to exonerate her so that she would not be burdened with the investigation as the race moved into the Fall.
Yes, it is true that Comey made a terrible (if not illegal) decision to publicly announce reopening the email investigation days before the election. In truth, however, because it would implicate Obama, no charges were ever going to be brought.
3. It is obvious that the FBI/DOJ officials hastened the end of the Hillary email investigation and then immediately began an investigation of Donald Trump. The timing of the July 5, 2016 Comey exoneration speech and the late July counter intelligence investigation related to a tangential Trump advisor should not be viewed as just a coincidence. It was, as Strzok said, an insurance policy against the election of Trump.
4. Does Comey’s original draft and his announcements related to Hillary not demonstrate he was not biased against her? Maybe. The fact that Comey made inconsistent and stupid decisions does not mean the FBI and the DOJ weren’t giving Hillary a free pass. Also, there is no doubt, that Comey stole documents from the FBI and illegally leaked such documents. Those are crimes. Beyond that . . .
5. FBI/DOJ officials knowingly concealed evidence and misled the FISA Court. They, including Comey, knew the law. They are senior law enforcement officials. They knew they had been turned down before and therefore had to bring more to the table.
So what did they bring? The dossier. The unverified dossier. They asserted to the Court, however, that it was credible.
They also omitted information that likely would have resulted in the Court denying the application. It was October of 2016, however, and they wanted information right then and there. After all, it was less than a month before the election.
6. Based on those lies in the FISA applications, all the evidence that was gathered as the fruit of that warrant, unless it can be shown the evidence was clearly not gathered from that warrant, could be ruled inadmissible in any criminal case. Look for Paul Manafort to make that argument.
7. Without the FISA warrant, would there have been an Independent Counsel? We shall never know – but it appears rather unlikely.
8. Mueller. He had to know of the facts above. Why hasn’t he blown the whistle on the bad cops?
9. It is right to say that this episode is the worst abuse of political power in American history related to elections. Watergate is nothing by comparison. That involved people not employed by the government. Later it involved a cover-up in which Nixon participated.
Watergate did not involve the DOJ and the FBI – two institutions which must be non-partisans for this Republic of ours.
This case does involve the FBI and DOJ. It also is foolish not to assume that Loretta Lynch and President Obama were ignorant of the goings on – if not involved in them.
Finally, the dishonest investigation of Hillary who committed actual crimes should not be acceptable. Nor should FBI or DOJ officials be allowed to alter events and Court proceedings for political purposes.
If we let this go, and people are not brought to justice, we will have forever damaged our Republic and the World’s view of us as a nation of laws.
~~~
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Sunday, February 11, 2018
War Clouds Gathering
By Michael Rozeff
The nature of the war in Syria is changing. Israel is attacking Syria more frequently and openly. Today, an Israeli jet was shot down. The U.S. is attacking Syria more openly and forcefully too. The risks of worse warfare to come in Syria are elevating.
The U.S. makes the ridiculous claim that it recently acted in self-defense: “It was self-defense. Obviously, we are not getting engaged in the Syrian civil war,” Secretary of Defense Mattis said.
Mattis lies. The lie is evident because the U.S. got engaged years ago by embedding its “advisors” with Syrian rebel forces. Underscoring its intrusion and presence in Syria, the U.S. declared an “open-ended military presence in Syria”. Syria condemned this border force in strong terms.
The U.S. intervened in the Syrian Civil War within Syrian territory. The U.S. cannot now claim self-defense, the reason being that it has intentionally placed its military personnel in harm’s way without being invited by Syria. That’s an act of war. The only thing that Mattis can possibly claim is that the U.S. has not yet launched a full-scale attack on Syria and isn’t mobilizing forces to do so. But the U.S. retains the option at any time of launching massive attacks from the air whenever it chooses to invoke the justification of “self-defense” for rebel forces or raise the issue of chemical weapons; and it has now launched several of these attacks.
The U.S. has inserted itself into a complex political-military situation involving Israel, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Russia, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Jordan, Arabs, Kurds, rebels, jihadists plus other religious and tribal components.
A number of the possible moves and counter-moves by the parties involved risk escalating the hostilities even further. The situation is fluid, unpredictable and dangerous. Syria, Iran and Hezbollah want control. The U.S. and Israel want regime change. Russia and Turkey have their own objectives. Armed Muslim extremists are a factor.
Escalation can occur in any number of ways. Different sides can declare no-fly zones and install air defense systems. Direct aerial combat between opposing sides can occur. Accidents and intentional provocations can occur as can false-flag attacks. What will happen if the U.S. shoots down a Syrian jet or vice versa, or if a Russian missile shoots down a U.S. jet? What if a number of U.S. soldiers are killed? The weaponry can be escalated that can shoot down airplanes and hit tanks. Infiltration can occur. New forces can be brought in. Political charges and counter-charges can be elevated at the U.N. Threats, declarations and ultimatums can all be invoked. As long as there are no clear victors and no political settlements, these risks continue and they are now being elevated.
The more that Syria wins in its battles, it seems the more that Israel is intent on bombing against Hezbollah and Iran, and the more that the U.S. attempts to break off and hold Syrian oil wells and other Syrian territory. This war has entered a new and dangerous phase.
Posted byΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
The nature of the war in Syria is changing. Israel is attacking Syria more frequently and openly. Today, an Israeli jet was shot down. The U.S. is attacking Syria more openly and forcefully too. The risks of worse warfare to come in Syria are elevating.
The U.S. makes the ridiculous claim that it recently acted in self-defense: “It was self-defense. Obviously, we are not getting engaged in the Syrian civil war,” Secretary of Defense Mattis said.
Mattis lies. The lie is evident because the U.S. got engaged years ago by embedding its “advisors” with Syrian rebel forces. Underscoring its intrusion and presence in Syria, the U.S. declared an “open-ended military presence in Syria”. Syria condemned this border force in strong terms.
The U.S. intervened in the Syrian Civil War within Syrian territory. The U.S. cannot now claim self-defense, the reason being that it has intentionally placed its military personnel in harm’s way without being invited by Syria. That’s an act of war. The only thing that Mattis can possibly claim is that the U.S. has not yet launched a full-scale attack on Syria and isn’t mobilizing forces to do so. But the U.S. retains the option at any time of launching massive attacks from the air whenever it chooses to invoke the justification of “self-defense” for rebel forces or raise the issue of chemical weapons; and it has now launched several of these attacks.
The U.S. has inserted itself into a complex political-military situation involving Israel, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Russia, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Jordan, Arabs, Kurds, rebels, jihadists plus other religious and tribal components.
A number of the possible moves and counter-moves by the parties involved risk escalating the hostilities even further. The situation is fluid, unpredictable and dangerous. Syria, Iran and Hezbollah want control. The U.S. and Israel want regime change. Russia and Turkey have their own objectives. Armed Muslim extremists are a factor.
Escalation can occur in any number of ways. Different sides can declare no-fly zones and install air defense systems. Direct aerial combat between opposing sides can occur. Accidents and intentional provocations can occur as can false-flag attacks. What will happen if the U.S. shoots down a Syrian jet or vice versa, or if a Russian missile shoots down a U.S. jet? What if a number of U.S. soldiers are killed? The weaponry can be escalated that can shoot down airplanes and hit tanks. Infiltration can occur. New forces can be brought in. Political charges and counter-charges can be elevated at the U.N. Threats, declarations and ultimatums can all be invoked. As long as there are no clear victors and no political settlements, these risks continue and they are now being elevated.
The more that Syria wins in its battles, it seems the more that Israel is intent on bombing against Hezbollah and Iran, and the more that the U.S. attempts to break off and hold Syrian oil wells and other Syrian territory. This war has entered a new and dangerous phase.
Posted byΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Wednesday, February 07, 2018
What Constitutional Crisis?
By Michael Rozeff
What’s all this loose talk about a constitutional crisis? One source is John Brennan, the same John Brennan who was the top man in the CIA for 4 years. Forget his credentials. He has an axe to grind. Credentials of government officials do not coincide with wisdom, accuracy, truth and understanding. Brennan has joined NBCNews where he can be paid for spouting all sorts of gibberish and anti-Trump ramblings.
Don’t believe this guy. On the issue at hand, which is intel agencies interfering in the 2016 election, he’s way off track. He has accused Nunes of abusing his power. He’s blasted Republicans for releasing the House memo on the FBI dereliction of duty and interference in the election process. He’s said that the House GOP could be complicit in obstruction of justice. He’d rather have the intel agencies obstructing justice, it appears.
Brennan is going to these extremes because he holds so dear the impervious shield around these agencies so that they can supposedly buy us ordinary folk “national security”. What he doesn’t say is that such a shield goes against and itself undermines the American form of government. It builds up unaccountable power centers that can be used in unaccountable ways by those in Congress and the Executive. They turn government into a police state, a surveillance state, a national security state, and a state prone to war. These agencies form a government segment that may exercise great power over citizens.
Any state is designed from the get-go to hold, promote and expand power. Its dedication to justice, rights and property is the least possible that it can display in order to maintain enough legitimacy so that it can tend to its central nature, which revolves entirely around power and its growth. By aligning with powerful intel agencies, Brennan is on the side of the state. He is not on the side of justice, even within the election process.
Brennan wants Republicans to lay off. Brennan says “I think we are going to be in a very serious Constitutional crisis. I wonder when the Republican leadership in the Congress is going to come to their senses.” He’s simply defending the intel agencies by attacking any openness from Republicans. He’d prefer to see the whole 2016 election investigation go away or be buried forever.
Can we be crystal clear about what is going on? For a long, long time, the Congress has created powerful agencies and delegated powers to them. The Supreme Court has found them to be constitutional. We libertarians know that they are no damn good, but they are there. These agencies all have high agency costs, meaning Congress has a lot of trouble controlling their creations and we the people are left out in the cold as the agencies constantly misuse their powers.
Now, in the last election, a number of officials in these agencies are implicated in activities that are illegal. Furthermore, the trail leads back to Obama and Hillary Clinton. Congressional investigations haven’t gone there yet, but they have gone to persons in the agencies, especially the FBI. All that’s happening is that one part of Congress, mainly the Republican part, and not even all of that part, is attempting to exercise some control over its creations, these intel agencies, and right now specifically the FBI. There is no crisis of the Constitution involved at all.
Why are these Republicans bothering to investigate? It’s because the Democrats made a bid to end the oligopoly of two-party rule and turn it into a monopoly of Democratic rule. If Hillary had been elected and re-elected 4 years later, it would have meant establishing a Democratic majority that might be in power for decades more. It could do this by immigration methods that tip the balance to their side, or by other methods.
This is a squabble or power struggle within the federal government. The Republican contingent, or some of it, is up in arms because the Democratic contingent stepped over the line in the 2016 election in an attempt to win the election. They Republicans cannot let this go unaddressed if they want their party to survive. The Democrats, sure of their constituency and media dominance, do not seem to be worried about the American people losing faith in the whole system or in them. Therefore, they are continuing their obstruction and anti-Trump campaign.
Brennan is aligning himself with the Democrats in all of his criticisms and in crying wolf. This is because he is fully aligned with the intel agencies and not with their current most open critics, who are Republican. Years ago, he expressed himself similarly: “In February 2010, he claimed on Meet the Press that he was tired of Republican lawmakers using national security issues as political footballs, and making allegations where they did not know the facts.”
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
What’s all this loose talk about a constitutional crisis? One source is John Brennan, the same John Brennan who was the top man in the CIA for 4 years. Forget his credentials. He has an axe to grind. Credentials of government officials do not coincide with wisdom, accuracy, truth and understanding. Brennan has joined NBCNews where he can be paid for spouting all sorts of gibberish and anti-Trump ramblings.
Don’t believe this guy. On the issue at hand, which is intel agencies interfering in the 2016 election, he’s way off track. He has accused Nunes of abusing his power. He’s blasted Republicans for releasing the House memo on the FBI dereliction of duty and interference in the election process. He’s said that the House GOP could be complicit in obstruction of justice. He’d rather have the intel agencies obstructing justice, it appears.
Brennan is going to these extremes because he holds so dear the impervious shield around these agencies so that they can supposedly buy us ordinary folk “national security”. What he doesn’t say is that such a shield goes against and itself undermines the American form of government. It builds up unaccountable power centers that can be used in unaccountable ways by those in Congress and the Executive. They turn government into a police state, a surveillance state, a national security state, and a state prone to war. These agencies form a government segment that may exercise great power over citizens.
Any state is designed from the get-go to hold, promote and expand power. Its dedication to justice, rights and property is the least possible that it can display in order to maintain enough legitimacy so that it can tend to its central nature, which revolves entirely around power and its growth. By aligning with powerful intel agencies, Brennan is on the side of the state. He is not on the side of justice, even within the election process.
Brennan wants Republicans to lay off. Brennan says “I think we are going to be in a very serious Constitutional crisis. I wonder when the Republican leadership in the Congress is going to come to their senses.” He’s simply defending the intel agencies by attacking any openness from Republicans. He’d prefer to see the whole 2016 election investigation go away or be buried forever.
Can we be crystal clear about what is going on? For a long, long time, the Congress has created powerful agencies and delegated powers to them. The Supreme Court has found them to be constitutional. We libertarians know that they are no damn good, but they are there. These agencies all have high agency costs, meaning Congress has a lot of trouble controlling their creations and we the people are left out in the cold as the agencies constantly misuse their powers.
Now, in the last election, a number of officials in these agencies are implicated in activities that are illegal. Furthermore, the trail leads back to Obama and Hillary Clinton. Congressional investigations haven’t gone there yet, but they have gone to persons in the agencies, especially the FBI. All that’s happening is that one part of Congress, mainly the Republican part, and not even all of that part, is attempting to exercise some control over its creations, these intel agencies, and right now specifically the FBI. There is no crisis of the Constitution involved at all.
Why are these Republicans bothering to investigate? It’s because the Democrats made a bid to end the oligopoly of two-party rule and turn it into a monopoly of Democratic rule. If Hillary had been elected and re-elected 4 years later, it would have meant establishing a Democratic majority that might be in power for decades more. It could do this by immigration methods that tip the balance to their side, or by other methods.
This is a squabble or power struggle within the federal government. The Republican contingent, or some of it, is up in arms because the Democratic contingent stepped over the line in the 2016 election in an attempt to win the election. They Republicans cannot let this go unaddressed if they want their party to survive. The Democrats, sure of their constituency and media dominance, do not seem to be worried about the American people losing faith in the whole system or in them. Therefore, they are continuing their obstruction and anti-Trump campaign.
Brennan is aligning himself with the Democrats in all of his criticisms and in crying wolf. This is because he is fully aligned with the intel agencies and not with their current most open critics, who are Republican. Years ago, he expressed himself similarly: “In February 2010, he claimed on Meet the Press that he was tired of Republican lawmakers using national security issues as political footballs, and making allegations where they did not know the facts.”
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Tuesday, February 06, 2018
In Case You Hadn't Noticed
By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com
The ideological war between the opposing forces of globalization and constitutional nationalism continues to escalate. Specifically, in the United States, the battle lines were recently redefined by the four-page House Intelligence Committee memo that was unveiled on Groundhog’s Day, February 2, 2018. History repeated, once again, as groundhogs exited their holes all over America, squinted into the sunlight, and saw shadows of ever-expanding government corruption.
The memo, in essence, transmuted the alleged conspiracy of Donald Trump’s and Russia’s overturning of the 2016 Presidential Election into actual collusion between former president Obama’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DoJ), with Hillary Clinton’s Campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to illegally preempt said election. The revelations from the Groundhog Day Memo describe specific actions (and omissions) committed by officials in the Obama administration that have resulted in the illicit subversion of Donald J. Trump, the constitutionally elected President of the United States.
Stated in simpler terms, the Groundhog Day Memo has transitioned the Russiagate investigation into Obamagate.
As expected, members of the unelected administrative deep state, the military industrial complex, the corporate mainstream media, Democratic Party hacks, Senator John McCain, and the liberal political punditry from coast-to-coast, have chosen to double-down on their collective obfuscation and outright lies.
The American Leftists are not concerned about the illegal omissions of material facts by top FBI and DoJ officials in their pursuit of a FISA warrant on low-hanging fruit, Carter Page, who was involved with Trump’s campaign in 2016. They see no problem with high-ranking justice department official Bruce Ohr’s secret collaboration with his wife Nellie, who worked for Fusion GPS, the firm behind the now infamous Russian Dossier against Trump. The very same dossier that was funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC which, according to the memo, was cited as the reason for the surveillance warrant on Page.
On the contrary, the Political Left and the lying liberals in mainstream media are defending the crimes described in the Groundhog Day Memo with feigned technicalities, contrived nuance, manufactured misrepresentations, and levels of political spin not seen since former U.S. President, William Jefferson Clinton, questioned the definition of what “is” is. First they all fought the release of the memo and now are daily attempting to discredit its revelations.
They do so because they are the political establishment. They are the swamp.
Let’s review what we now know:
Beginning in 2016, Democrat President Obama, on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, weaponized the FBI and DoJ against Republican presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump. Upon Trump’s defeat of his Republican primary opponents in early 2016, Operation Russiagate was launched. The investigation was thinly predicated upon the drunken claims, in a London bar, by a member of Trump’s foreign policy advisory panel, George Papadopoulos. Eventually, Carter Page, who was another one of Trump’s foreign policy advisors, was targeted as well. It has been reported Page was surveilled in 2013 because of his contacts in Russia.
However, the alleged misdeeds of Page and Papadopoulos were not enough to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in order to spy on the Trump campaign. As reporter, Louise Mensch, for the news website Heat Street, indicated in the Fall of 2016 (in an article since scrubbed from the internet), the first Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) request was declined in June, 2016, but was later approved in October, 2016. The claims were also confirmed in the New York Times, on January 20, 2017.
Strangely, the very same month the original FISC request was denied, the now infamous snakes on a plane meeting took place between Former President Bill Clinton and Obama’s then Attorney General, Loretta Lynch. They both claimed to have discussed their grandchildren only on that airport tarmac in Phoenix. What else could they have talked about?
We may never know.
But now, because of the Groundhog Day Memo, we do know the Hillary Clinton and DNC financed Russian Dossier, according to former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, was used to finally obtain the FISA warrant required to spy on Team Trump. The 90-day surveillance warrant on Carter Page was then renewed three times. It appears this was done in order to dig up political dirt and diminish Trump’s chances of winning the 2016 Presidential Election and, later, to undermine his presidency. At the same time, the culprits specifically named in the memo (i.e. James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr) seemingly conspired to bury the multifarious crimes of Hillary Clinton.
The first views, if you will, of multiple shadows growing in succession.
After Trump won the election, the phony Russian conspiracy was then utilized:
1.) By online social networks to censor the alternative media
2.) By President Obama to sign into law the “Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act” on December 23, 2016
3.) By Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, to feloniously unmask Trump administration officials
4.) By Democrats and the Media to pressure the new president’s National Security Advisor to resign and the nation’s new Attorney General to recuse himself from the Russia investigation
5.) By deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, to appoint his trusted, dear friend and collaborator, Robert Mueller, as Special Counsel to investigate President Trump’s non-existent collusion with Russia
6.) By Robert Mueller to obtain minor process crimes on Paul Manafort (Trump’s former campaign chairman), Rick Gates (business associate of Manafort), George Papadopoulos (Trump’s former foreign policy advisor) and Michael Flynn (Trump’s former national security advisor)
7.) By Robert Mueller to transition the imaginary Russiagate Collusion into a bogus Obstruction of Justice investigation against Trump for firing former FBI Director, James Comey
Paradoxically, regarding shadow # 7 above: Trump, in his termination letter to Comey, stated he was acting upon the recommendations of Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, and Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein. Furthermore, according to the Groundhog Day Memo, we now know that Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller to be special counsel, signed off on at least one of the misrepresented, and therefore illegal, FISA applications on Trump.
Of course no one is talking about these points of fact.
But wait. There’s more.
While reports of Trump’s fictitious collusion with the Russians continue to dominate the Lamestream Media’s talking points, the actual sale of twenty-percent of America’s uranium deposits to Russia, which resulted in the Uranium One payments to the Clinton Foundation, remains, predictably, under-reported. This, even though it was confirmed by the New York Times in 2015.
Moreover, Obama’s FBI and DoJ were fully aware of the crimes committed:
Who was the Director of the FBI at that time?
Robert Mueller.
Who was Secretary of State when the State Department and the agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States sold the Canadian mining company, Uranium One, one-fifth of American’s uranium for Uranium One’s sale to Russia?
Hillary Clinton.
Who was an Obama administration official that joined Hillary Clinton on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States at the time the Uranium One deal was approved?
Eric Holder.
Regardless, in spite of nine separate shareholders of Uranium One donating more than $145 million to the Clinton Foundation BEFORE the transfer, Hillary Clinton denied any wrongdoing.
Guess who led the investigation into the Uranium One sale?
Robert Mueller, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Rod Rosenstein, Andrew McCabe, and, yes, James Comey. These are the shadows of corruption we now face.
Quite familiar, isn’t it?
Indeed, the hits just keep on coming. No surprises. It all just repeats like a broken record; or Bill Murray’s character in the 1993 movie, “Groundhog Day”.
But to those in the Lamestream Media, the Groundhog Day Memo is a dud. It is nothing. It is, in fact, a nothing-burger:
Talk about collusion. The collective criminality and insanity of the political left and the mainstream media has reached epic proportions.
And the irony is striking.
We have a Hollywood movie now in theaters about the Washington Post’s noble fight to release the Pentagon Papers while, at the same time, that very newspaper has advocated against the release of information revealing illegal FISA spying on a presidential candidate, potentially, by a sitting president. It’s true, democracy dies in the darkness.
We recently witnessed Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein’s unilateral release of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson’s summer 2017 testimony. Yet, she is “stunned and dismayed” by the release of the Groundhog Day Memo.
Last week, the Lamestream Media was obsessing over Robert Mueller’s investigation of White House Communications Director, Hope Hicks, and her alleged obstruction of justice for burying non-existent emails between Donald Trump Jr. and the Russians. Yet, they never desired to address Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 lost emails, or the Uranium One scandal, did they?
It is obvious the Trump-haters are now in the process of doubling-down in their conspiracy to overturn his presidency.
They have seen their shadows and, like groundhogs, have returned into their dark holes in a vain attempt to survive the winter of this Fourth Turning’s discontent.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
The ideological war between the opposing forces of globalization and constitutional nationalism continues to escalate. Specifically, in the United States, the battle lines were recently redefined by the four-page House Intelligence Committee memo that was unveiled on Groundhog’s Day, February 2, 2018. History repeated, once again, as groundhogs exited their holes all over America, squinted into the sunlight, and saw shadows of ever-expanding government corruption.
The memo, in essence, transmuted the alleged conspiracy of Donald Trump’s and Russia’s overturning of the 2016 Presidential Election into actual collusion between former president Obama’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DoJ), with Hillary Clinton’s Campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to illegally preempt said election. The revelations from the Groundhog Day Memo describe specific actions (and omissions) committed by officials in the Obama administration that have resulted in the illicit subversion of Donald J. Trump, the constitutionally elected President of the United States.
As expected, members of the unelected administrative deep state, the military industrial complex, the corporate mainstream media, Democratic Party hacks, Senator John McCain, and the liberal political punditry from coast-to-coast, have chosen to double-down on their collective obfuscation and outright lies.
The American Leftists are not concerned about the illegal omissions of material facts by top FBI and DoJ officials in their pursuit of a FISA warrant on low-hanging fruit, Carter Page, who was involved with Trump’s campaign in 2016. They see no problem with high-ranking justice department official Bruce Ohr’s secret collaboration with his wife Nellie, who worked for Fusion GPS, the firm behind the now infamous Russian Dossier against Trump. The very same dossier that was funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC which, according to the memo, was cited as the reason for the surveillance warrant on Page.
On the contrary, the Political Left and the lying liberals in mainstream media are defending the crimes described in the Groundhog Day Memo with feigned technicalities, contrived nuance, manufactured misrepresentations, and levels of political spin not seen since former U.S. President, William Jefferson Clinton, questioned the definition of what “is” is. First they all fought the release of the memo and now are daily attempting to discredit its revelations.
They do so because they are the political establishment. They are the swamp.
Let’s review what we now know:
Beginning in 2016, Democrat President Obama, on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, weaponized the FBI and DoJ against Republican presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump. Upon Trump’s defeat of his Republican primary opponents in early 2016, Operation Russiagate was launched. The investigation was thinly predicated upon the drunken claims, in a London bar, by a member of Trump’s foreign policy advisory panel, George Papadopoulos. Eventually, Carter Page, who was another one of Trump’s foreign policy advisors, was targeted as well. It has been reported Page was surveilled in 2013 because of his contacts in Russia.
However, the alleged misdeeds of Page and Papadopoulos were not enough to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in order to spy on the Trump campaign. As reporter, Louise Mensch, for the news website Heat Street, indicated in the Fall of 2016 (in an article since scrubbed from the internet), the first Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) request was declined in June, 2016, but was later approved in October, 2016. The claims were also confirmed in the New York Times, on January 20, 2017.
Strangely, the very same month the original FISC request was denied, the now infamous snakes on a plane meeting took place between Former President Bill Clinton and Obama’s then Attorney General, Loretta Lynch. They both claimed to have discussed their grandchildren only on that airport tarmac in Phoenix. What else could they have talked about?
We may never know.
But now, because of the Groundhog Day Memo, we do know the Hillary Clinton and DNC financed Russian Dossier, according to former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, was used to finally obtain the FISA warrant required to spy on Team Trump. The 90-day surveillance warrant on Carter Page was then renewed three times. It appears this was done in order to dig up political dirt and diminish Trump’s chances of winning the 2016 Presidential Election and, later, to undermine his presidency. At the same time, the culprits specifically named in the memo (i.e. James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr) seemingly conspired to bury the multifarious crimes of Hillary Clinton.
After Trump won the election, the phony Russian conspiracy was then utilized:
1.) By online social networks to censor the alternative media
2.) By President Obama to sign into law the “Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act” on December 23, 2016
3.) By Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, to feloniously unmask Trump administration officials
4.) By Democrats and the Media to pressure the new president’s National Security Advisor to resign and the nation’s new Attorney General to recuse himself from the Russia investigation
5.) By deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, to appoint his trusted, dear friend and collaborator, Robert Mueller, as Special Counsel to investigate President Trump’s non-existent collusion with Russia
6.) By Robert Mueller to obtain minor process crimes on Paul Manafort (Trump’s former campaign chairman), Rick Gates (business associate of Manafort), George Papadopoulos (Trump’s former foreign policy advisor) and Michael Flynn (Trump’s former national security advisor)
7.) By Robert Mueller to transition the imaginary Russiagate Collusion into a bogus Obstruction of Justice investigation against Trump for firing former FBI Director, James Comey
Paradoxically, regarding shadow # 7 above: Trump, in his termination letter to Comey, stated he was acting upon the recommendations of Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, and Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein. Furthermore, according to the Groundhog Day Memo, we now know that Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller to be special counsel, signed off on at least one of the misrepresented, and therefore illegal, FISA applications on Trump.
Of course no one is talking about these points of fact.
But wait. There’s more.
While reports of Trump’s fictitious collusion with the Russians continue to dominate the Lamestream Media’s talking points, the actual sale of twenty-percent of America’s uranium deposits to Russia, which resulted in the Uranium One payments to the Clinton Foundation, remains, predictably, under-reported. This, even though it was confirmed by the New York Times in 2015.
Moreover, Obama’s FBI and DoJ were fully aware of the crimes committed:
Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.
They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill. The FBI Uncovered Evidence that Russian Money Was Funneled to the Clinton Foundation
Who was the Director of the FBI at that time?
Robert Mueller.
Who was Secretary of State when the State Department and the agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States sold the Canadian mining company, Uranium One, one-fifth of American’s uranium for Uranium One’s sale to Russia?
Hillary Clinton.
Who was an Obama administration official that joined Hillary Clinton on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States at the time the Uranium One deal was approved?
Eric Holder.
Regardless, in spite of nine separate shareholders of Uranium One donating more than $145 million to the Clinton Foundation BEFORE the transfer, Hillary Clinton denied any wrongdoing.
Guess who led the investigation into the Uranium One sale?
The investigation was ultimately supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, an Obama appointee who now serves as President Trump’s deputy attorney general, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now the [former] deputy FBI director under Trump, Justice Department documents show.
Robert Mueller, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Rod Rosenstein, Andrew McCabe, and, yes, James Comey. These are the shadows of corruption we now face.
Quite familiar, isn’t it?
Indeed, the hits just keep on coming. No surprises. It all just repeats like a broken record; or Bill Murray’s character in the 1993 movie, “Groundhog Day”.
But to those in the Lamestream Media, the Groundhog Day Memo is a dud. It is nothing. It is, in fact, a nothing-burger:
Talk about collusion. The collective criminality and insanity of the political left and the mainstream media has reached epic proportions.
And the irony is striking.
We have a Hollywood movie now in theaters about the Washington Post’s noble fight to release the Pentagon Papers while, at the same time, that very newspaper has advocated against the release of information revealing illegal FISA spying on a presidential candidate, potentially, by a sitting president. It’s true, democracy dies in the darkness.
We recently witnessed Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein’s unilateral release of Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson’s summer 2017 testimony. Yet, she is “stunned and dismayed” by the release of the Groundhog Day Memo.
Last week, the Lamestream Media was obsessing over Robert Mueller’s investigation of White House Communications Director, Hope Hicks, and her alleged obstruction of justice for burying non-existent emails between Donald Trump Jr. and the Russians. Yet, they never desired to address Hillary Clinton’s 30,000 lost emails, or the Uranium One scandal, did they?
It is obvious the Trump-haters are now in the process of doubling-down in their conspiracy to overturn his presidency.
They have seen their shadows and, like groundhogs, have returned into their dark holes in a vain attempt to survive the winter of this Fourth Turning’s discontent.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
Sunday, February 04, 2018
US Surrogate Group Shoots Down Russian Jet, Murders Pilot
Breaking: US-Backed Free Syrian Army Group Shoots Down Russian Jet, Kills Pilot
Saturday February 3, 2018
The Jaysh al-Nasr rebel group in Syria, part of the US-backed Free Syrian Army, has posted footage of its fighters celebrating the shoot-down of a Russian Suhkoi-25 jet fighter in the Idlib province of Syria. It is the first time a Russian fighter has been shot down by Syrian rebels attempting to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
The plane was apparently brought down by a man-portable air defense system (ManPADS) surface-to-air missile. According to press reports, the pilot ejected from the plane safely but was killed by the Syrian rebels on the ground.
The 2017 US military spending bill provided authorization for the Department of Defense to arm the rebels with shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles or ManPADS. At the time, the Russians vigorously objected to the dramatic US move to provide sophisticated weaponry to the rebels, claiming (rightfully it turns out) that "[t]he relevant decision also poses a direct threat to aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces..."
The scenario where a US-backed, US-supplied jihadist group in Syria uses US weapons to shoot down a Russian plane and then murders the pilot on the ground should be seen as a near-nightmare escalation, drawing the US and Russia terrifyingly closer to direct conflict.
Copyright © 2018 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
Saturday, February 03, 2018
Swamp Rats in Deep Denial
By Michael S. Rozeff
The anti-Trump press frantically denies reality. One panelist claims there is no such thing as a deep state. Another claims the 4-page memo is the product of a conspiracy theory.
The anti-Trump political faction is fighting the evidence of FBI complicity in a political plot against Trump. Schumer wrote a letter demanding that Rep. Nunes be removed as chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. When’s the last time a senator made such an absurd demand? Pelosi also seeks his ouster.
The memo is actually MILD, very MILD in comparison to everything that went on in 2016 that is known to those who followed this closely, but is not yet known by the general public because the anti-Trump media covered it up and joined in the anti-Trump cacophony. Therefore, it shows total panic by the anti-Trump faction when Pelosi lashes out with huge falsehoods:
“President Trump has surrendered his constitutional responsibility as Commander-in-Chief by releasing highly classified and distorted intelligence.”
This is a total falsehood. There is absolutely nothing in this memo that remotely resembles truely material intelligence or even any lower degree of intelligence that affects national security via revelations to an enemy or purported enemy. Classification of it in the first place is a farce. This stuff is important in showing an FBI captured by anti-Trump forces, but not important with respect to compromising the U.S. vis-a-vis any foreign country or internal domestic threat.
Therefore, it’s even more outrageous for Pelosi to claim that Trump is collaborating with Russia:
“By not protecting intelligence sources and methods, he just sent his friend Putin a bouquet.”
There is zip in this memo that reveals anything about U.S. sources and methods that many other intelligence services in this world already know, not only by dint of covert spying but by access to open-source documents. A great deal can be found out merely by closely following a subject, keeping records, examining what people say, and connecting the dots.
“Democrats blasted the move as a ‘shameful’ attempt to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and parallel congressional probes, while Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the memo’s ‘attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests — no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s.’
McCain is a Republican?? He’s in Democratic-denial too.
As for Mueller’s investigation, its purpose is not a “Russia investigation” as the NBC news article says. Clearly, Mueller is attempting to bring down Trump. Russia is an excuse to catch Trump’s aides or Trump himself fumbling the balls tossed their way by Mueller’s investigation itself. There has been no Russia crime or dereliction of duty by Trump, and so Mueller is going for “obstruction of justice”. That is, if there is no Trump crime, then attempt to create a crime by peripheral legal interactions. There are innumerable traps that can be set by Mueller and his anti-Trump gang of legal hoods, and they’re setting them.
Is it a crime for Trump to have considered shutting down Mueller? Why not? Who’s running the show, Trump or Mueller? Who was elected, Trump or Mueller? Who’s the chief executive, Trump or Mueller? “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Mueller’s boss is Trump. Why shouldn’t Trump be mulling over and considering firing a man or a group that’s intent on subverting a constitutional process? His oath demands nothing less. The power to fire subordinates is within the executive Power.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
The anti-Trump press frantically denies reality. One panelist claims there is no such thing as a deep state. Another claims the 4-page memo is the product of a conspiracy theory.
The anti-Trump political faction is fighting the evidence of FBI complicity in a political plot against Trump. Schumer wrote a letter demanding that Rep. Nunes be removed as chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. When’s the last time a senator made such an absurd demand? Pelosi also seeks his ouster.
The memo is actually MILD, very MILD in comparison to everything that went on in 2016 that is known to those who followed this closely, but is not yet known by the general public because the anti-Trump media covered it up and joined in the anti-Trump cacophony. Therefore, it shows total panic by the anti-Trump faction when Pelosi lashes out with huge falsehoods:
“President Trump has surrendered his constitutional responsibility as Commander-in-Chief by releasing highly classified and distorted intelligence.”
This is a total falsehood. There is absolutely nothing in this memo that remotely resembles truely material intelligence or even any lower degree of intelligence that affects national security via revelations to an enemy or purported enemy. Classification of it in the first place is a farce. This stuff is important in showing an FBI captured by anti-Trump forces, but not important with respect to compromising the U.S. vis-a-vis any foreign country or internal domestic threat.
Therefore, it’s even more outrageous for Pelosi to claim that Trump is collaborating with Russia:
“By not protecting intelligence sources and methods, he just sent his friend Putin a bouquet.”
There is zip in this memo that reveals anything about U.S. sources and methods that many other intelligence services in this world already know, not only by dint of covert spying but by access to open-source documents. A great deal can be found out merely by closely following a subject, keeping records, examining what people say, and connecting the dots.
“Democrats blasted the move as a ‘shameful’ attempt to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and parallel congressional probes, while Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the memo’s ‘attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests — no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s.’
McCain is a Republican?? He’s in Democratic-denial too.
As for Mueller’s investigation, its purpose is not a “Russia investigation” as the NBC news article says. Clearly, Mueller is attempting to bring down Trump. Russia is an excuse to catch Trump’s aides or Trump himself fumbling the balls tossed their way by Mueller’s investigation itself. There has been no Russia crime or dereliction of duty by Trump, and so Mueller is going for “obstruction of justice”. That is, if there is no Trump crime, then attempt to create a crime by peripheral legal interactions. There are innumerable traps that can be set by Mueller and his anti-Trump gang of legal hoods, and they’re setting them.
Is it a crime for Trump to have considered shutting down Mueller? Why not? Who’s running the show, Trump or Mueller? Who was elected, Trump or Mueller? Who’s the chief executive, Trump or Mueller? “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Mueller’s boss is Trump. Why shouldn’t Trump be mulling over and considering firing a man or a group that’s intent on subverting a constitutional process? His oath demands nothing less. The power to fire subordinates is within the executive Power.
Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ
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