Interests and irritations to a guy on a red horse.
Quotes
"Fascism and communism both promise "social welfare," "social justice," and "fairness" to justify authoritarian means and extensive arbitrary and discretionary governmental powers." - F. A. Hayek"
"Life is a Bungling process and in no way educational." in James M. Cain
Jean Giraudoux who first said, “Only the mediocre are always at their best.”
If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. Sir Winston Churchill
"summum ius summa iniuria" ("More laws, more injustice.") Cicero
As Christopher Hitchens once put it, “The essence of tyranny is not iron law; it is capricious law.”
"Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." Ronald Reagan
"Law is where you buy it." Raymond Chandler
"Why did God make so many damn fools and Democrats?" Clarence Day
"If I feel like feeding squirrels to the nuts, this is the place for it." - Cluny Brown
"Oh, pshaw! When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have." Owen Wister "The Virginian"
Oscar Wilde said about the death scene in Little Nell, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.
Thomas More's definition of government as "a conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of a commonwealth.” ~ Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples
“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.” ~ Jonathon Swift
By Christian Toto - Special to The Washington Times - -
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Climate change got its close-up in 2017. A gaggle of films either name-checked Al Gore’s biggest fear or built their narratives around it.
The
timing, in theory, couldn’t be better for Hollywood bean counters:
Three major hurricanes. Massive fires in the West. Record-setting
chills. Media reports routinely connected the disasters with a warming
planet.
Yet audiences stayed away from films influenced by eco-concerns. Far, far away.
Think
“Blade Runner 2049,” “Geostorm,” “Downsizing,” “An Inconvenient Sequel:
Truth to Power” and “mother!” They all flopped, some in spectacular
fashion. Mr. Gore’s sequel to his documentary smash “An Inconvenient Truth” paid the most attention to climate change, of course. ...
I remember when a couple
friends of mine mentioned they didn't eat meat. I had made a suggestion
for a dish to try as we checked out the menu, and they simply responded
with their dietary choices. That was the entirety of that particular
exchange. After all, what do I care what they eat as long as it's not
people?
However, it seems my
friends are unusual in that regard. I keep hearing of vegans and
vegetarians who simply can't handle the idea that someone else makes
different choices.
The most recent example comes from a report
published by anti-livestock farming Farm Animal Investment Risk and
Return (FAIRR), which suggests taxing meat like we tax cigarettes.
After citing a number of environmental concerns up to and including climate change, the report asks:
Could taxation of meat products be a way to mitigate these global
challenges? The pathway to taxation typically starts when there is
global consensus that an activity or product harms society. This leads
to an assessment of their financial costs to the public, which in turn
results in support for some form of additional taxation. Taxes on
tobacco, carbon and sugar have followed this playbook.
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Does record breaking winter cold
cast doubt on climate predictions of milder winters? Could ANY weather
or climate shift cast doubt on the dominance of that wicked little trace
molecule? Apparently not, according to leading climate explainers.
It’s cold outside, but that doesn’t mean climate change isn’t real
Sammy Roth, USA TODAY Published 5:13 p.m. ET Dec. 28, 2017
This week’s cold snap has brought record-low temperatures, freezing rain and heavy snow
to much of the United States. But 2017 is still on track to be the
second- or third-hottest year ever recorded globally — and scientists
say climate change is to blame.
…
Even this week’s cold weather is probably being caused at least in
part by global warming, said Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at
the University of Michigan.
The Arctic is warming much faster than most of the planet, leading to
a dramatic decline in the amount of sea ice that covers the region each
winter. That loss of ice has allowed more heat to transfer from the
ocean to the atmosphere, causing a weakening of the polar vortex winds
over the Arctic. Those winds usually “insulate the rest of the Northern
Hemisphere” from freezing Arctic temperatures, Overpeck said. But as the
winds have weakened, it’s gotten easier for freezing Arctic air to swoop further south, he said.
“That is due to the warming of the Arctic, which in turn is due to
human emissions of greenhouse gases and primarily burning of fossil
fuels,” Overpeck said in an interview.
Arctic warming may also be contributing to the long-term drying of the U.S. Southwest, although the science on that front is less certain,
Overpeck said. Unlike most of the rest of North America, the Southwest
is warmer than usual right now, and 2017 will “without a doubt” go down
as one of the region’s hottest years ever measured, Overpeck said.
“This is contributing to our record wildfires in California, and the drying out of vegetation that’s leading to those wildfires, and the drying out of the Southwest’s water,” he said.
…
So what happens if global temperatures take a real plunge for a
sustained period? Don’t worry, the explainers have that one covered as
well – James Hansen, former NASA GISS Director, published a paper which suggests global warming will trigger a short ice age in the near future (see the graph at the top of the page).
On Christmas Eve, California governor Jerry Brown issued 132 pardons and 19 commutations,
the latest in the 1,059 pardons and 37 commutations he has granted
since regaining office in 2011. Brown thus surpasses the 404 pardons and
one commutation during his previous terms as governor (1975 to 1983),
and far exceeds the combined 15 pardons and 14 commutations from 1991
through 2010 under governors Pete Wilson, Gray Davis and Arnold
Schwarzenegger. Jerry Brown ran for president in 1976, 1980, and 1992
but came up a loser every time. The pardon binge doubtless helps the
recurring governor feel the power but there’s more to his story. In an
axis with the illegal lobby, Brown seeks to return those already
deported to the United States, even those guilty of gun violence.
Hector Barajas entered the country illegally and served in U.S. Army
from 1995-2001. After discharge, he developed a “substance abuse”
problem and was convicted of shooting at an inhabited vehicle,
serving more than a year in prison. Deported in 2004, Barajas reentered
the USA illegally and was deported again in 2010. From Mexico, Barajas
applied for executive clemency in the form of a gubernatorial pardon,
which Brown granted this year, claiming that since jail Barajas has
“lived an honest and upright life, exhibited good moral character and
conducted himself as a law-abiding citizen.”
This year Jerry
Brown signed a package of stringent new gun laws, including restrictions
on ammunition. On the other hand, the governor looked the other way at
the Mexican national’s use of a firearm in the commission of a crime. As
it happens, this is not a new development for Brown. ...
Kwanzaa, celebrated exclusively by white liberals, is a fake holiday invented in 1966 by black radical/FBI stooge Ron Karenga—aka Dr. Maulana Karenga, founder of United Slaves,
the violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. Liberals have
become so mesmerized by multicultural gibberish that they have forgotten
the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga’s United Slaves.
In what was ultimately a foolish gambit,
during the madness of the ’60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme
black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the
left. The more preposterous the group, the better. (It’s the same
function MSNBC and CNN serve today.)
By that criterion, Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect.
Despite modern perceptions that blend all
the black activists of the ’60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites.
Although some of their most high-profile leaders were drug dealers and murderers, they did not seek armed revolution.
Those were the precepts of Karenga’s United Slaves.
For his first media interview since departing office in January,
former President Barack Obama spoke with Prince Harry who was guest
hosting the BBC Radio 4 program.
Obama talked about the importance of remaining optimistic about the
world, his life after the White House, and how leaders need to be
careful of what they say online.
The interview was recorded in September in Toronto, Canada, around the time Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama attended the Invictus games, a sporting tournament for injured veterans and service members.
The
charges against the former Trump campaign boss appear to have been only
an opening salvo in a legal barrage on the president’s confidants,
informed observers say.
From its inception, two things about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation
were clear: first, the White House’s biggest concern was that Mueller
would follow the money; and second, Mueller is following the money.
It’s been seven months since Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein ordered Bob Mueller
to take over the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into possible links
between the Kremlin and people associated with the Trump campaign.
Trump’s lawyers have long said they expected the probe to stay focused
and end quickly. Instead, Mueller has assembled a team of prosecutors
with expertise in handling financial investigations and white-collar
crime, and obtained guilty pleas for crimes that weren’t committed
during the election year.
And, most importantly, he’s sent a
thinly veiled warning to the White House: No one’s finances are off
limits. If 2017 had the president’s inner circle sweating, 2018 could
feel like a sauna.
President Trump will need to act seriously on what he and Amb. Haley said last week.
There is never enough time or space to mock the
United Nations adequately. Almost since the moment it was created the
UN’s principal purpose has been to provide a forum for the dictators,
despots, rogues, and terrorists to bash the United States, to vote to
condemn America or Israel — or both — without fear of even the most
modest reprisal.
After last week, that may change because
President Trump and Ambassador Nikki Haley have threatened to cut
foreign aid to those nations that voted against us last week. They may
also cut our annual funding of the UN. It’s high time for us to do so.
Preparing to write my book about the UN, Inside the Asylum,
I interviewed British historian Paul Johnson. He told me, “The UN is
now a central problem for the world because we take too much notice of
it.” Since we spoke, it has only gotten worse.
The United Nations
is a decaying house of cards kept standing by the roughly $8 billion the
United States pays in every year. Many, if not most, of its 192 other
members receive some U.S. funding every year.
It has been revealed he was a total incompetent as FBI Director and continues to be a partisan and bias, unjust 'special council' who is actual a person with mental imbalance. m/r
Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) joined Fox News
Tuesday, revealing FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s two recent
testimonies before House members on anti-Trump bias at the bureau,
contained conflicts with the way special counsel Robert Mueller
‘remembered things.’ Gohmert did not elaborate on what those
discrepancies are.
Gohmert then lamented Mueller’s mission to take out President Trump or advisors in his inner circle.
“We’re in some dangerous waters,” Gohmert warned.
Congressman Louie Gohmert said he believes special
counsel Robert Mueller is “out for a scalp,” and that he personally had
that premonition when the former FBI director was appointed to the
investigation into President Trump.
“I have said since day one, since he was appointed, he’s bad news,” Gohmert (R-Texas) said. “He’s out for a scalp.”
Gohmert said Mueller would “love to get Trump’s scalp” and become a “hero of the left.”
He said Mueller’s determination will continue no matter how many
associates in his investigation of the president are discredited or
demoted.
“He can’t go fast enough,” Gohmert said of McCabe. ...
Americans of all income levels, feeling flush, boosted their holiday spending
By Suzanne Kapner Updated Dec. 25, 2017 6:33 p.m. ET
Retailers are enjoying some extra Christmas cheer.
Fueled by high consumer confidence and a robust job market, U.S.
retail sales in the holiday period rose at their best pace since 2011,
according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks both online and
in-store spending.
Sales, excluding automobiles, rose 4.9% from Nov. 1 through
Christmas Eve, compared with a 3.7% gain in the same period last year,
according to the
Mastercard Inc.
MA 0.21%
unit, which tracks all forms of payment. E-commerce continued to drive the gains, rising 18.1%.
“It started with a bang in the week leading up to Black Friday,”
said
Sarah Quinlan,
a senior vice president of marketing insights at Mastercard. She
added that retailers benefited this year from Christmas Day falling on a
Monday, giving shoppers a full weekend to scoop up last-minute purchases. Dec. 23 ranked next to Black Friday in terms of spending, according to Mastercard.
“Overall, this year was a big win for retail,” Ms. Quinlan said.
A passenger on a flight from Houston to Washington D.C. has accused
United Airlines of giving her first-class seat to U.S. Rep. Sheila
Jackson Lee. D-Houston, and then threatening to remove her from the
plane for complaining and snapping a photo of the Houston congresswoman.
"It was just so completely humiliating," said Jean-Marie
Simon, a 63-year-old attorney and private school teacher who used
140,000 miles on Dec. 3 to purchase the first-class tickets to take her
from Washington D.C. to Guatemala and back home.
When it came time to board the last leg of her flight
home from George Bush Intercontinental Airport on Dec. 18, after a
roughly hour-long weather delay, Simon said the gate attendant scanned
her paper ticket and told her it was not in the system.
Did you cancel your flight?, the attendant asked.
"No," she said she replied. "I just want to go home."
Her seat, 1A, was taken, she was told. Simon was given a $500 voucher and reseated in row 11, Economy Plus.
Patriotic actor James Woods dropped a truth bomb about “Muslim” Barack HUSSEIN Obama this weekend.
James Woods said what we are all thinking about Obama! “He’s a Muslim”.
Woods responded to someone who tweeted, “Obama targeted Christian
Churches and Conservative Charities with the IRS, but ordered
investigations into Hezbollah to be stopped. Let that sink in.”
James Woods came in with a truth bomb!
“He is a Muslim. He can deny it, his apologists in the media can
refute it, and his enablers can promote a narrative that he is a
Christian. It’s a pack of lies. Obama is a Muslim and that is where his
allegiance lies. Always has. Always will.”
As I reported here at PJ Media on Friday night,
multiple law enforcement agencies were investigating a series of
shooting targeting police in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's state capital,
Friday afternoon by 51-year-old Ahmed Amin El-Mofty.
One Pennsylvania State Trooper
was injured during one of the shootings, and El-Mofty was later killed
during a shootout with police.
Now a Department of Homeland
Security official has confirmed that the shootings targeting police by
El-Mofty were an act of terrorism.
Last night, Acting DHS Press Secretary Tyler Houlton posted a statement on Twitter
not only confirming Friday's incident was a terror attack, but also
identifying that El-Mofty's naturalization as a U.S. citizen came
through chain migration. ...
Next to Walter Cronkite, Brokaw was the biggest network shill for the left with an unfortunate captive audience in the days of three networks. He stuck his name on terrible book that had a great title only. It was a disjointed bunch of paragraphs, apparently writing by has various staffers. It is filled with disjointed tales that he tried to connect to his ideal of a leftwing elitist view that he thinks America should be (as viewed from a Manhattan penthouse). m/r
In an exchange with "Morning
Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC Thursday morning, former NBC
anchor Tom Brokaw accused Fox News of launching a "jihad" in defense of
President Donald Trump and against American "institutions."
"Fox
News, after Shepard Smith in the late afternoon, is on a jihad right
now on the whole question about whether there’s a fairness about this or
not, the transfer of uranium, for example, to Iran," Brokaw told
Brzezinski.
He suggested
that Fox anchor Shepard Smith represents the last reasonable voice on
Fox News, and that after his show the network engages in this "jihad."
"The
whole assault is on the institutions," Brokaw charged. "Newt Gingrich
looking in the camera and saying the FBI is a corrupt organization.
Three months earlier he said Bob Mueller is one of the great
distinguished public servants that we have."
Brokaw concluded, "So we're at, you know, we're at war here and it's going to be sorted out in the final analysis."
They are Illegal Aliens, deport them! Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas) is a swamp creature who is full of it! Allowing 800,000 registered DACA beneficiaries to stay means 8,000,000 aliens coming in with our ridiculous "chain migration". m/r
WASHINGTON – Rep. Bill Flores
(R-Texas) said he is willing to vote for a pathway to citizenship for
DREAMers if it’s tied to additional border security measures and visa
reform.
“We’ve heard several
discussions about the struggles that are faced by DREAMers. I think
it’s important to remember that the DREAMers didn’t put themselves into
the situation they find themselves in today; that happened because of
the actions of others and because we have a set of laws that really
doesn’t fit their situation very well, so we as Congress need to address
that,” he said on a recent conference call with Christian DREAMers and
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program beneficiaries organized
by the National Immigration Forum and the Evangelical Immigration Table.
“On
one hand, the policy goal that President Obama put forth when he
implemented the DACA program probably made sense, but the real challenge
was it didn’t fit the Constitution. Under Article 1, Section 8 of the
Constitution, it clearly says all actions related to immigration belong
to Congress, so I think President Trump made a good decision when he
said that the DACA program would have an end date,” he added.
Trump
set a March deadline for the phase-out of DACA to give lawmakers a
chance to pass a fix that would protect 800,000 registered DACA
beneficiaries from deportation. Congressional negotiations have been
bumped to next year.
In his ongoing campaign against the commercialization of the
Christian feast of the Nativity, Pope Francis is calling on Christians
to liberate Christmas, saying it has been taken “hostage” by
worldliness.
“Let us free Christmas from the worldliness that has taken it
hostage!” the pope said in a tweet Friday. “The true spirit of Christmas
is the beauty of being loved by God”...
With the passage of the GOP tax bill this week, the Trump
administration has scored 81 major achievements in its first year,
making good on campaign promises to provide significant tax cuts, boost
U.S. energy production, and restore respect to the United States,
according to the White House.
And along the way, President Trump even outdid his own expectations
and slashed at least 11 major legacy items of former President Barack
Obama, including cracking down on the open border, slowing recognition
of communist Cuba and effectively killing Obamacare by ending the
mandate that everyone have health insurance or face a tax.
According
to the White House, the 81 accomplishments are in 12 major categories
and include well over 100 other minor achievements.
The unofficial list helps to counter the impression in the mainstream
media and among congressional Democrats that outside the approval of
Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch and passage of the tax reform bill little was
done.
Administrations typically tout their achievements broadly at the end
of each year, but Trump plans to list jobs added, regulations killed,
foreign policy victories won, and moves to help veterans and even drug
addicts.
Papa John's founder
John Schnatter wasn't just the CEO of the company, but also its face. He
was a staple of the commercials for the company that bears his name.
While it will continue to bear his name, the pizza chain won't be bearing him any further after Schnatter resigned yesterday. From The Daily Caller:
The founder of Papa Johns pizza announced he would be resigning in
January, months after he publicly criticized the National Football
League for the way it dealt with players protesting the national anthem.
Papa Johns announced
Wednesday that founder and CEO John Schnatter would be resigning from
his position as CEO and replaced by chief operating officer Steve
Ritchie Jan. 1, the Associated Press reports.
The announcement comes two months after Schnatter blasted the
NFL and the league’s “poor leadership” after the company’s future sales
predictions significantly sunk from 4 percent to 1.5 percent.
Schnatter's comments criticized the NFL for allowing players to kneel during the National Anthem.
If you trust the major
headlines, the big news out of the United Nations is that the UN General
Assembly just voted overwhelmingly to reprimand the U.S. over President
Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and
move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. "U.N. Vote Rebukes U.S. for Jerusalem Move," reports the Wall Street Journal. "Defying Trump, U.N. General Assembly Condemns U.S. Decree on Jerusalem," reports the New York Times.
As
bean-counting goes, that's an accurate depiction of Thursday's
UN-as-usual vote, to which these headlines refer. But I'd say they've
missed the real story. There's nothing novel about the thug-heavy
majority of the UN's 193 member states ganging up on the U.S and Israel.
The thunderbolt event here is the U.S. response, in which Ambassador
Nikki Haley, with the clear backing of President Trump, delivered a
brilliant and clarifying rebuke to the sententious bigots of the UN.
Let's
start with some background on this showdown, which President Reagan's
formidable first ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, would have
recognized as the 21st-century spawn of the scene she described in a
1989 article in Commentary magazine, titled "How the PLO Was
Legitimized" ("through international diplomacy -- reinforced by murder,"
wrote Kirkpatrick). In that article, Kirkpatrick detailed how Yasser
Arafat and his terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization were peddling
an ideology "that integrates the Arab nationalist struggle against
Israel with the struggle against 'colonialism,' 'imperialism,' and
'racism,' and in this fashion extends and exacerbates the conflict by
involving countries in it that are remote from the Middle East."
As
Kirkpatrick explained in her article, these various causes were
anchored in voting blocs at the United Nations, such as the Non-Aligned
Movement, thus eliminating "the need for individual governments to make
their own decisions on issues" and delivering automatic UN majorities
"against some targeted country or cause -- such as Israel."
As a pure DC incompetent insider will never resign. He identifies with the swamp and will never willingly give up his worthless position, no matter how biased and incomplete he has been shown to be. m/r
Nearly a
year into the Trump presidency, Univision anchor Jorge Ramos says he’s
experiencing “the worst moment I’ve had in the 34 years I’ve been living
in the United States.”
“With Donald Trump there, I have never been treated so badly. I have
never been insulted so much. We’ve never been attacked so much. They
have never tried to run us out as much as now,” Ramos vented in an
interview with the Spanish radio network Cadena SER.
Ramos, who proclaimed himself “if not an enemy, an opponent” of Trump
in the interview, complained about the massive blowback he has received
since deciding to use his media platforms to openly oppose the choice
of over 62 million American voters in last year’s U.S. presidential
election.
“Now the social media networks are terrible,” Ramos told his Spanish
radio interviewer, Javier del Pino. “Before if someone wanted to insult
you, they had to do it in person or by sending you an anonymous letter.
Now they do it through the social media networks and the daily insults –
you can enter my Facebook or Twitter – and they are there all the
time,” lamented Ramos.
In the interview, Ramos continues to contend that Trump “was speaking
about me” “he insulted me” along with the entire immigrant community in
the U.S. on June 16, 2015 when during his presidential campaign
announcement speech Trump slammed the lax border security that had
permitted criminal elements from Mexico and other countries to illegally
enter the United States.
Obama actually thinks as a Communist dictator where all things flow from his inept, incompetent government regulating thought process. He's a retard! m/r
Flanked by a towering 185,000 pages representing the federal regulatory code now and
a short pile of 20,000 pages — the code’s length a half-century ago —
President Trump pledged last week to return us to the days of fewer
regulations. Pointing to the colossal pile, which would take some three
years to even read, the president reiterated what Americans know first
hand, that “every unnecessary page” means that “projects never get off
the ground.”
Trump claims he’s already eliminated 22 rules for every new one imposed this past year.
His critics dispute how many he’s actually scrapped, but no one denies
he’s brought the steady stream of new rules nearly to a halt. This
regulatory pause is buoying business optimism and the stock market.
What’s
coming next? Rolling back rules on mining, manufacturing, oil
exploration, banking, you name it. Even better, both the Trump
administration and some Democrats in Congress want to relocate federal agencies from inside the D.C. beltway to cities in the nation’s heartland. Getting Washington out of Washington.
Imagine regulators having to rub elbows with the people being regulated.
According to their accusers, the alleged
Malevolent Seven are powerful pervs and creeps who’ve been running wild
at NPR and PBS for decades, sponsored and subsidized by taxpayers and
corporate donors.
In August, award-winning broadcast and radio host John Hockenberry
departed from his public radio program “The Takeaway” on New York
City’s NPR affiliate, which garnered a peak audience of nearly 3 million
weekly listeners on more than 270 stations. Female producers and
interns accused him of harassment and bullying before and after he
deployed his golden parachute. Hockenberry says he’s “horrified” by the
allegations.
In October, NPR’s former editorial director and senior vice president of news, Michael Oreskes,
was ousted from his perch after several women claimed he forcibly
kissed them in the 1990s while seeking jobs at his previous employer, The New York Times.
That same month, NPR launched an investigation of veteran Minnesota Public Radio host Garrison Keillor, creator of “A Prairie Home Companion.”
On Monday evening Mark joined Tucker Carlson on Fox News to discuss the
latest developments in Robert Mueller's "Russia investigation". Click
below to watch:
Get your he'd out of you ass Philadelphia, the Bullet Resisting Plexiglass is in place because of bad black behavior, which is now, obviously, sanctions by the damn fools on the City Council. The brave people who open and work the retail shops in black neighborhoods do so at high risk to their safety. Hey the Philadelphia City Council is offended by a glass safety measure taken by the store's owners. The store owners would be prudent in closing up, going elsewhere, where their lives are not so much in jeopardy and telling the Philadelphia "Community" what it can go due with itself! m/r
You’ve seen them: at bodegas, convenience marts and ratty Chinese
takeout places all across our finer urban areas, a thick layer of
Plexiglass (or whatever the bulletproof material is) separates the
customer from the cashier.
It’s ugly, to be sure. The idea is to prevent the all-to-common stickup.
But Councilwoman Cindy Bass, who is black, takes offense. It hurts
black feelings to do business through the Plexiglass, because it reminds
black people of the fact that they commit most of the stick-ups.
Never mind that the store owners are trying to save their own lives. ...
White
House lawyers are expected to meet with special counsel Robert S.
Mueller III’s office late this week seeking good news: that his
sprawling investigation’s focus on President Trump will soon end and
their client will be cleared.
But people familiar with the probe
say that such assurances are unlikely and that the meeting could trigger
a new, more contentious phase between the special counsel and a
frustrated president, according to administration officials and advisers
close to Trump.
People with knowledge of the investigation said
it could last at least another year — pointing to ongoing cooperation
from witnesses such as former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos
and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, as well as a
possible trial of two former Trump campaign officials. The special
counsel’s office has continued to request new documents related to the
campaign, and members of Mueller’s team have told others they expect to
be working through much of 2018, at a minimum. The
dynamic threatens to intensify the already inflamed political
atmosphere enveloping the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the
2016 election. Even as White House lawyers have pledged to cooperate
with Mueller, Trump and his allies have accused the Justice Department and FBI of bias and overreach.
ByLauren MeltzerCBS NewsDecember 18, 2017 DUPONT, Wash. -- An Amtrak train derailed on an
overpass in Washington state Monday morning, with some of the 14 train
cars careening onto vehicles on a highway below. The crash resulted in
at least three confirmed fatalities and numerous injuries, and
authorities are still combing through the wreckage to find victims.
At this time, all southbound lanes of traffic remain closed on Interstate 5.
"Today's
tragic incident in Pierce County is a serious and ongoing emergency,"
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee wrote in a statement. "Trudi and I are
holding in our hearts everyone on board, and are praying for the many
injured. They are our top priority, and I know first responders are
doing everything to ensure everyone has the care they need."
The Washington State Department of Transportation tweeted a photo of the derailment, urging motorists to avoid the area.
The assembled Trump probe team has a history of crossing ethical lines to get their man
from By David Keene -
The Washington Times -
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
President Trump’s advisers and defenders in trying to undermine former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s alleged pre-election “collusion” with Vladimir Putin’s Russia are pointing out that Mr. Mueller
and another former FBI director, James Comey, are longtime buddies.
Moreover, many members of the Mueller team are Democratic contributors,
they say, and that within days of being appointed special counsel to
head the investigation, Mr. Mueller began expanding its scope.
Valid
as these points may be, none of them are likely to derail or seriously
weaken what looks more and more to be morphing into an anti-Trump jihad
and should not be the White House’s major concern. The real problem
facing Trumpworld came over the weekend in reports that prosecutors are
searching for unrelated charges they might use to indict former Trump
campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr. Mueller’s
team includes mad dog prosecutors with a record of crossing ethical
lines in their attempt to “get” whoever they go after. Chief among these
is Mr. Mueller’s
friend and former FBI general counsel during his time there, Andrew
Weissmann. Mr. Weissmann, according to press reports following his
appointment earlier this summer, is best known for his skill at
“turning” witnesses — getting friends, business associates and others to
testify against those in his sights.
Before being appointed head
of the Fraud Section at the Department of Justice during the Obama
years, Mr. Weissmann had been part of a task force that targeted
organized crime figures in New York. He was also head prosecutor in the
Enron investigation, as well as the man who destroyed Arthur Andersen LLP,
putting the firm’s 85,000 employees out of work. It turns out that many
of those indicted, convicted or forced to plead guilty as a result of
Mr. Weissmann’s no-holds-barred approach to his job had their sentences
reversed or their cases tossed out by appeals courts that didn’t share
his disdain for due process.
Imagine yourself stuck behind a bunch of sanctimonious Prius drivers all going 25 mph. All of them stopping at yellow lights .... Then you discover there is no human driver involved, except you. Is is perfectly justifiable to take a crowbar to that Prius to get it off the road as a giant nuisance? m/r
Officials of President Trump's transition team plan to ask Special
Counsel Robert Mueller to return "many tens of thousands" of transition
emails they contend were unlawfully provided to him. But the
prosecutor's office says emails being used in the investigation were
properly obtained.
What's new: A source close to Trump's
transition, which still exists as a legal entity so it can shut down
what was once a 1,000-person operation, said the transition will send a
letter to Mueller informing him that some of the emails are privileged,
and asking for their return. The transition says it is willing to
provide Mueller with vetted emails.
The source told me: "What they did is totally illegal, and they need to fix it." But Peter Carr, spokesman
for the Special Counsel's Office, told Axios early this morning: "When
we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal
investigation, we have secured either the account owner's consent or
appropriate criminal process."
This is encouraging news:
The Trump administration will reverse course from previous Obama
administration policy, eliminating climate change from a list of
national security threats. The National Security Strategy to be released
on Monday will emphasize the importance of balancing energy security
with economic development and environmental protection, according to a
source who has seen the document and shared excerpts of a late draft.
“Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system,” a
draft of the National Security Strategy slated to be released on Monday
said. “U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth,
energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security
interests. Given future global energy demand, much of the developing
world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to
power their economies and lift their people out of poverty.”
…
President Obama made climate change, and the burdensome regulations
that accompany its focus, a primary focus of his administration,
including in his National Security Strategy released in 2015.
“[W]e are working toward an ambitious new global climate change
agreement to shape standards for prevention, preparedness, and response
over the next decade,” that report said.
“In some ways, [climate change] is akin to the problem of terrorism and ISIL,” Obama said at climate talks in Paris in 2015. During a weekly address, Obama said “Today, there is no greater threat to our planet than climate change.”
If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis
of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror;
virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is
powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible
justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in
itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy,
applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie [homeland, fatherland].
On Thursday night I joined Tucker Carlson on Fox News to discuss the latest developments in what The New York Post calls the ongoing Pervnado, which is now ending not only careers but lives. Mediaite was struck by this moment:
"I think occasionally, 'Do I really want to be alone
with a female employee now?'" Steyn declared, leading Fox News host
Tucker Carlson to utter "I think that all the time."
While we're at it - wtf would be the concern 30 years
later if u had a normal meeting w/ a woman alone? U would know if u did
something off limits.
With respect, it's not about off-limits or on-limits: A doctor has a
third party with him in the examination room not because he's feeling
randy but for self-protection. That's the world we're moving towards in
other fields of employment.
Heigh-ho. At this year's office Christmas party I'm going to stand in
the far corner and hit on myself until everybody's gone home. Click
below to watch the full segment:
By Stephen Dinan -
The Washington Times -
Friday, December 15, 2017
"Border? We don got no stinkin border"
Illegal immigration across the Southwest border has surged back to
Obama-era levels, according to the latest data released Friday that
suggests the gains President Trump made early in his tenure have worn
off.
Nearly 40,000 illegal immigrants were nabbed attempting to
jump the border in November, which was up about 12 percent compared to
October, and more than twice the monthly numbers from March and April,
when Mr. Trump touted his early accomplishments.
Perhaps just as
worrisome for officials is the rise in families traveling together,
which surged 45 percent last month, and unaccompanied minors traveling
without parents, which rose 26 percent in November.
Mueller, he's the ultimate insiders' insider! He's totally inept, he's been responsible for the ruin of the countless accountants from Arthur Young, botched bomber and anthrax investigations. Mueller is a worthless, incompetent who is unrepentant and worthless. This is who is investigating the President! And Jeff Sessions is an insider weenie too! m/r
Ten quick thoughts on the hideously corrupted "Russia investigation".
1) Let me start with an immigrant's observation: My sweetly naïve
understanding of an "independent counsel" is that he should be
"independent". For example, even in the presently desiccated condition
of the Commonwealth, it's generally understood that, when you've got a
problem and you want someone independent to investigate it,
"independent" means outsider. Three examples off the top of my head:
~Twenty years ago, after the Good Friday Agreement, some
guy was supposed to be appointed to supervise the decommissioning of
weapons by paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. Obviously, if he'd
been some hoity-toity English civil servant, the IRA would have said
nuts to that. Likewise, if he'd been some Papist republican from Derry
Town Council, the UVF would have told 'em to shove it. So they appointed
a Canadian general, John de Chastelain ...because he was an outsider,
and thus independent of the competing interests.
~Likewise, in 2003, when various factions in the Solomon Islands
risked tearing the joint apart, the guy brought in to sort it out was
Australia's Nick Warner (who steps down this weekend as head of
Canberra's Secret Intelligence Service) ...because he was independent of
those factions.
~And in 2009, when the Government of the Turks and Caicos Islands was
suspended for corruption, it was after an investigation by the English
judge Sir Robin Auld ...because he was entirely independent of the
various local sleazebags.
I appreciate that all the above is easier to do in the remnants of
empire than it is in the American system. But there isn't even the
figleaf of "independence" when you appoint a career swamp-dweller like
Robert Mueller, a man who has relationships with every player in
Washington going back decades. The parade of hacks infesting the cable
shows to inform us solemnly that they've known Mueller for years and
he's the very apotheosis of a straight shooter is, in fact, the
strongest evidence of why he should never have been appointed:
he's the insiders' insider. When Mueller decided to stage his pre-dawn
swoop on Paul Manafort's bedroom, for example, he was raiding the home
of a longtime client of his own law firm, WilmerHale.
Climate change got its close-up in 2017. A gaggle of films either name-checked Al Gore’s biggest fear or built their narratives around it.
