They're At It Again

Yahoo News is republishing an article from The Telegraph reporting that Bashir al Assad of Syria is warning the USA to get its troops out of Syria.  According to Assad, the failure to remove US troops will result in Assad having his forces drive the Americans from the country.

That's a rather funny threat.  After all, Assad barely held on through the civil war and would have been defeated and, likely, executed but for the support of Iran, Hezbollah and Russia.  His forces are extremely weak, exhausted after years of tough combat.  Further, Assad remains the head of a government that is supported by less than 30% of Syria's people, and those same people are unlikely to accept a new battle against US forces.

The Telegraph article, however, does more than just report Assad's threat.  It gives the opinion that this is a serious threat.  As the article puts it, "Assad, who is backed by Russia and Iran, appears militarily unassailable.."

Think about that.  The Telegraph stacks up the beleaguered Syrian forces against the US military and finds that the Syrian military is "unassailable".  It's hard to write that without laughing.  Remember, in the last three months, the Israelis have taken out position after position inside Syria with missiles and jets at the cost of one plane that was shot down.  The Syrians have been unable to stop any of these air strikes.  About two months ago, Syrian, Iranian and Russian irregular forces started moving on a camp where American and Kurdish forces were located.  The advancing troops were warned to pull back, but they didn't.  As a result, the US opened up on the attacking troops.  The entire column of attackers was destroyed; there were about 600 killed or wounded among the Syrian, Iranian and Russian forces.  Oh, and there were no American or Kurdish casualties.  That's some militarily unassailable force.

One has to wonder what the point of calling the Syrian misfit army "unassailable" could be.  Is The Telegraph reporter just lobbying for the removal of American forces?  Is there some other possible reason?

It's really annoying to see such blatant #FakeNews pushed in the media.

Moving Texas

In mid-April, a poll in Texas found the race for the senate very close.  Ted Cruz was ahead of his challenger Beto O'Rourke by just 3%  - 47 to 44%.  The left-wing networks went crazy.  Texas was finally going blue!  Cruz would be toast in November!  I got at least seven fund-raising emails from Democrats and inordinate amounts of tweets recounting this poll and seeking help for Beto's campaign.  (Yes, Beto is his real name.  It used to be something else, but he changed it legally much the way Warren Wilhelm changed to Bill DeBlasio when running for office in New York.)

Now things have changed.  Since that first aberration, the polls have all moved towards Cruz.  Today a new one came out that has Cruz at 50% and Beto down to 39%.  That 11% lead is important, but even more important is that 50% support level for Ted Cruz.  It's a strong indicator that the electorate is coalescing around the idea of re-electing him as senator.

It's also worth noting that Texas governor Greg Abbott is way ahead of his Democrat challenger as well.  This too will help Cruz.

It's way to early to predict the final winner, but right now, Texas should be in the "likely Republican" column.

Right To Try

There's almost no mention of it in the mainstream media, but there was a very important law which President Trump signed yesterday.  It's called the Right To Try law.  It allows people with terminal illnesses to try drugs that have not yet been finally approved by the FDA.  It means that people with no other hope will be allowed to try new drugs that are still in the pipeline in the hopes that they will be helped. 

It will be a decision made by the individual.  Doctors still cannot prescribe the experimental drugs.  Patients can be told about them, though.  If the patient decides to take the risk of possible side effects, he or she can now go ahead and try the new drugs.

This is a way around a major problem, the slow and painstaking process that the FDA uses to approve new submissions.  The law also gives the drug company the ability to provide the experimental drug to the patient without fear of litigation if it doesn't work, or if it causes side effects.

More than anything else, this law will provide hope to a group of people who now have none.  Participation is voluntary; no one will be forced to try the new drugs.  For many people, though, this hope is a blessing.

The new law is something that is much more important than Roseanne or the Russia-Trump investigation.  Why can't the media cover it?  Oh, I forgot, they can't cover it because it makes president Trump and the Republican Congress look good.

They'll publish anything

Yahoo News deserves a shout out for the latest article that it published on Stormy Daniels.  It proves that Yahoo will publish anything so long as it mentions Stormy.  Here is a verbatim quote of the opening of the article supposedly reprinted from The Hill
:
Michael Avenatti has withdrawn his request to represent adult-film star Stormy Daniels in the case centered on the FBI raid of President TrumpDonald John TrumpHouse GOP prepares to consider Trump's billion clawback Mexico's president fires back at Trump

If there's anyone out there who can translate this mess, please do so in the comments section.  I just wonder what the editor at Yahoo News was smoking.  By the way, in case you were wondering, I checked The Hill's site and found that the story there is not accurately quoted by Yahoo News.  No surprise there.

Roseanne

Roseanne Barr tweeted something stupid.  In fact, she said about the dumbest thing possible, since it was interpreted as a racial slur.  It resulted in ABC cancelling her show.  That's it.  Nothing more, nothing less.  There's no inner meaning or special secret context.  It's just another celebrity saying something she shouldn't have said. 

The reaction by ABC seemed over the top to me especially since Roseanne apologized quickly for her tweet after explaining that it was a joke.  I mean we've had celebrities who have joked about the need to kill the President and nothing happened to them.  Big names like Colbert joked about President Trump and Vladimir Putin having gay sex, and nothing happened to him.  But the level of the response is up to the network broadcasting the shows in question.  If CBS doesn't mind gay slurs involving the President, that's up to CBS (and the viewers).  If ABC wants to fire Roseanne, that's up to ABC (and the viewers).

The strange thing, for me, is the surfeit of articles and coverage about President Trump's feelings regarding Roseanne and what happened.  Why must there be so much coverage of this?  All sorts of things are happening with North Korea, but the White House press corps is asking about Roseanne?  Really?  I don't think there's a reason for comment by the President.

 

Where The Money Goes In Gaza

There was a flurry of military action in Gaza earlier today.  First, Islamic Jihad fired dozens of mortars at Israeli communities near Gaza.  Most of the mortar shells were shot down by the Israelis' Iron Dome system, but a few got through.  The result was five Israelis were wounded.  This was the biggest attack from Gaza since the 2014 major hostilities.  The Israelis hit weapons depots, military installations and tunnels from Gaza into Israel.  It's this last item that needs some further discussion.  The tunnel that was destroyed was over 1.5 miles long.  It went from southern Gaza under the border with Egypt, under Egyptian territory, under the Egypt/Israel border and about half a mile into Israel itself.  This was no makeshift tunnel, but a major concrete installation as you can see from the picture below:

The Hamas tunnel running under Kerem Shalom was used for both smuggling and terrorism (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

 

The tunnel was built to last.  It had to have cost millions of dollars to construct, just for the concrete used alone.  Some estimates put the total cost of the tunnel as built by Hamas at over $20 million dollars.

 

Think for a moment where Hamas got the cash for the tunnel and what else could have been done with that money.  We hear in the media constantly about the terrible living conditions in Gaza.  The reports are somewhat exaggerated, but there is no question that there are a great many people in need who live in the territory.  Twenty million dollars could have fed, clothed and housed a large number of those in need.  Instead, Hamas diverted this money into construction of a tunnel that has only one purpose:  to deposit terrorists into Israeli territory so that they could attack the Israelis living there.  The tunnel would not change the strategic balance between Hamas and Israel.  The Israeli forces could still defeat Hamas in any battle.  The tunnel was just to be able to carry out terrorist attacks inside Israel.

 

It's important to understand that the almost certain source for the money that paid for the tunnel is the many millions of dollars in aid that Hamas gets in Gaza from foreign countries and the UN.  The countries that are donating aid to Gaza are not doing so to finance terror tunnels.  The use of the funds for such construction is done through the secret diversion of aid funds for this purpose.

 

Of course, the tunnel and the tens of millions it cost have now gone down the drain. The Israelis destroyed all entrances to the tunnel and are blowing up the underground portions inside Israel and Egypt as this is being written.  Hamas has just wasted tens of millions of dollars for a useless terror tunnel rather than seeing to it that Gaza residents were fed and housed.

Now That's Some Conference

Have you ever heard of the UN Conference on Disarmament?  Not many people have.  It's one of those UN organizations that don't really do much at all.  Nevertheless, it has made its way into the news now because next month, the chairmanship of the Conference will go to Syria's Assad regime.  That's right, the world's biggest user of banned chemical weapons is about to chair the UN Conference on Disarmament.  The regime responsible for killing over 400,000 of its own civilians with all sorts of weapons is going to lead the effort to do away with weapons.  One does have to wonder what will be next.  Will Iran be appointed head of global anti-terrorism efforts?  Will the Maduro regime in Venezuela head the worldwide effort to spread democracy? 

One thing you have to say about the UN:  it's an organization that knows no shame.

Shake Up In North Korea's Military Forces?

Here's a tweet that just went out a few minutes ago:

Jesse Rodriguez‏Verified account @JesseRodriguez 24m24 minutes ago
Just now on @MSNBC, Korea expert @GordonGChang said South Korea media is reporting that there is a “shakeup in the North Korean army at the top. That’s an indication that Kim doesn’t actually control it.”

9:39 AM - 28 May 2018

 

There doesn't seem to be much more in the way of information about the supposed shakeup of the NK army command structure.  It could be Kim getting rid of those who he suspects might take advantage of his departure from the country for the Singapore summit to seize power.  It could be that those who support Kim are being purged as the military takes over power from Kim.  It could be something else.  Or, it could be that the report is just plain inaccurate -- which would not be unusual for MSNBC.

 

No matter what is going on, though, this is big news if there really was such a shakeup.  It may be enough by itself to delay the Trump-Kim summit.  Let's hope that when this plays out, it turns out to be good news rather than bad. 

Ignoring Victims For Political Reasons

If you follow politics at all, you have no doubt heard some Democrat or other leftist talk about how much they care about children.  The left paints Republicans as uninterested in helping the less fortunate especially children.  Democrats care, you see, or at least that is what we are told over and over again.  That's why recent events in Philadelphia are so important.

The city of Philadelphia has a crisis with regard to children who need care but who are without families to provide it.  The opioid crisis has taken a large number of parents out of the picture in Philadelphia, as has been the case around the nation.  Families have been destroyed.  Children have been left to fend for themselves.  Normally, as the children are discovered, they are placed with relatives, but if none are available, they are put in foster homes.  There are literally tens of thousands of kids in the foster system.

But here's where it gets crazy.  The single biggest agency providing foster homes in Philadelphia is Catholic.  That shouldn't be any surprise.  Something like 60% of the people in Philadelphia who identify as religious are Catholics.  Catholic relief agencies have been helping place children in foster care in the city for decades.  But now, the city government is ending all that.  That's right, the city of Philadelphia announced that starting in June, it will no longer place children in homes found by the Catholic agencies.  It's not a question of money; the Catholic agencies are charities and non-profit.  Nor is it a question of the city having too many foster homes; in fact, there is a severe shortage at the moment of such homes.  No, the problem is that the Catholic agencies are, well....Catholic.  They follow Catholic religious teaching.  They promote marriage and they discourage abortion, among other things.  Of course, these views have nothing to do with helping a child who is a victim of the opioid crisis, nothing unless you happen to be a liberal Democrat of the type that run Philadelphia.

The end result of the move by the city government in Philadelphia is that hundreds of thousands of children will no longer be able to be placed in foster care.  Just think of all these children who will be stuck in shelters rather than in homes where they have a good chance at a more normal sort of life with a family.  Clearly, the liberal Democrats who run Philadelphia don't care about the children or their fate when there's a chance to stick it to a Catholic organization.  Ideology is just so much more important than helping children in their minds.

It's worth noting that the move by the City of Philadelphia appears to violate state law in Pennsylvania.  Even that doesn't seem to matter to the city.  It's a disgrace.

What Happened to the DNC Servers?

So much of the Russia-Trump investigation/hoax began as a result of the hacking of the computer systems of the Democrat National Committee, that it is worth going back to look at that once again.  We know that just prior to the Democrat Convention in 2016, Wikileaks released a big batch of emails sent and received by the DNC.  These released emails showed that the DNC worked with Hillary Clinton's people to rig the primary/caucus contests against Bernie Sanders and in favor of Hillary Clinton.  The emails also showed things like the DNC vice chair Donna Brazile feeding Hillary, in advance, the questions for an upcoming debate between Hillary and Bernie on CNN.  The contents of the emails that were leaked were so explosive that DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was booed of the stage of a preliminary event and had to resign as Chair and skip the convention.  After the convention, Wikileaks started releasing big batches of emails from the account of John Podesta, Hillary's campaign chair.  The emails came day by day for a long period prior to the election.  These email also disclosed some rather unsavory aspects of the Clinton campaign and certainly did not help Hillary in the election. 

The response of the Clinton campaign and the DNC from the beginning of the email release was that this had been done by the Russians.  For the most part, they ignored the tawdry, and perhaps illegal, activities that were disclosed and focused instead on who it was that did the hacking.  This was the birth of the Russian interference narrative that later morphed into the Trump - Russia investigation.  Supposedly, 17 intelligence agencies concluded that it was the Russians who had done the hacking.

The problem, of course, is that not a single intelligence agency, police force, or government entity of any sort ever had the chance to examine the DNC computer system to determine who had done the hacking.  The DNC was asked to grant access to the FBI forensic personnel, but the DNC refused.  To date, no one has ever explained what reason, if any, the DNC gave for that refusal.  To date, no one has ever explained why the FBI didn't just seize the computers after getting a warrant to do so.  To date, this has been a mystery of major proportions.

Instead of examining the DNC computer servers, the FBI agreed to accept the conclusions of an outside computer firm named CrowdStrike, hired by the lawyer for the Clinton campaign to investigate the source of the hacking.  By the way, these are the same lawyers who hired Fusion GPS to create the phony Trump Dossier which also forms part of the basis for the Russia-Trump investigation.  Crowd Strike, which was founded by a notorious anti-Russian activist, concluded that it was the Russians who hacked the email servers.  No one else has ever had the chance to check the servers themselves.

The DNC says that it didn't give the servers to the FBI because no one requested access, but that is not true.  Then FBI director Comey testified that the FBI made multiple requests for access, but that the DNC denied those requests.

So here we are, more than two years after the computer system at the DNC was supposedly hacked, and no one other than a firm beholden to the DNC has ever gotten to see the computers in question.  Indeed, we don't even know if those computers still exist.  They may have been destroyed just like Hillary's private email systems were.

There have been stories that appear periodically that the DNC wasn't really hacked.  One that often appears is that a DNC staffer named Seth Rich down-loaded the material and gave it to Wikileaks.  Rich was murdered in DC in strange circumstances shortly after the leaks began.  This is most likely a conspiracy theory, but it still floats around out in cyberspace. 

I wonder what Robert Mueller's team will say was the source of the hacking.  It seems impossible that the Special Prosecutor could report on possible Russian interference with the elections without fully investigating whether or not the Russians hacked the DNC computers.  Mueller, however, never got to see the computers either.

The lack of access to the computers for law enforcement is one of the strangest aspects of this entire subject.  To put it in proper context, consider this:  Late one night, the police get a 911 call that shots have been fired at a particular house.  The cops rush to the scene and enter the house.  They find a man lying dead in the living room.  He has been shot to death.  His wife is in the home and so is the wife's lawyer.  The lawyer says that the wife called him after a thief broke into the home and shot the husband.  The lawyer then says that he has given the gun that the thief used to a crime lab that he hired and the lab says that the prints on the gun belong to Joe Smith.  The police ask to see the gun, but the lawyer and the wife refuse.  The police then just accept what the crime lab that works for the wife and the lawyer report; the cops never get to see the gun.  That's pretty much the same thing as what happened with the DNC computer systems.

It's bizarre.

Back From Caracas

Another American wrongfully held in a foreign jail has come home.  This time the hostage is Joshua Holt who went to Venezuela about two years ago to get married to a woman he had met online.  He stayed there for a while and then was arrested by the police as a spy.  They claimed that he was working for the CIA and stockpiling weapons for use by anti-Maduro rebels who wanted to stage an uprising to overthrow the government.  Holt says, however, that the police told him that unless he paid a rather large bribe, they would frame him and arrest him.  When he refused, the police planted weapons and arrested him.  Needless to say, the US government says that Holt is not and was never a spy or an agent of the CIA.

Tennessee senator Bob Corker and his staff have been working on negotiating the release of Holt for many months.  Corker actually went down to Caracas to pick up Holt and bring him and his wife (who was also arrested) back to the USA.  It seems, however, that what finally motivated the Maduro government to release their hostage was the threat by President Trump to impose more sanctions on Venezuela as a result of the sham presidential election that Maduro just held.  Only about 20% of the people came out to vote, but Maduro won overwhelmingly.  Surprise!  The threatened sanctions would ban importation of oil from Venezuela, a staggering blow to the little bit of the economy that remains in this "socialist heaven" in which the average person has lost 25 pounds due to famine in the last two years.  Maduro understands that even with his secret police, his regime will not be able to withstand much more bad news for the Venezuelans.

No matter the reason for Holt's release, it is wonderful that he is finally home.  One thing is clear:  president Obama did not bother himself with trying to get wrongfully imprisoned American citizens back home.  President Trump obviously has changed that.  No one could reasonably think that this is a bad change, not even the most strident members of the #Resistance. 

On Again?

I guess someone just had to tell Kim Jung Un "No!"

The president of South Korea had a meeting this morning with Kim Jung Un of North Korea.  The impromptu get together replaced the meeting between the two which had been scheduled for about ten days ago until Kim cancelled it.  There's also talk that US and North Korean diplomats are meeting in Singapore to make summit meeting preparations.  There were supposed to be such discussions last week, but the North Koreans failed to show up.  After that, and after some rather harsh language from Kim Jung Un's regime, President Trump cancelled his meeting with Kim.

Since the cancellation, Kim has seemed to be a different person.  No one outside North Korea knows why this is for certain.  It does seem that Trump called Kim's bluff, so Kim is back on track towards coming to some sort of deal.  Of course, we were on that track three weeks ago until Kim started playing games.

Only time will tell if the President actually meets with Kim and if anything positive comes out of that meeting.  One thing, however, has already been established:  Trump seems to understand how to deal with Kim a lot better than the so-called "experts" that the media trots out to criticize Trump whenever he does anything at all.

President Trump's Next Tweet

The President loves to troll the left on Twitter.  Maybe he should try this for his next tweet:

The spymasters of the Obama administration actually claim that they put agents into my campaign to "protect" me.  They should know that I'm having the government investigate them just to "protect" them too.

 

Adding Facts To The Debate -- Always Dangerous

There were two rulings in Paul Manafort's criminal cases yesterday.  The media played them as if they actually mean something important -- which they don't.

The first supposed big ruling came in DC federal court where the judge rules that some of the charges against Manafort would not be dismissed.  The media played this as a big win for the special prosecutor.  It wasn't.  Manafort had claimed that he was facing two different charges for the same alleged lie he told to the FBI.  He said he should only be charged once; two charges made him look guilty supposedly.  The judge held that the issue could be handled by proper jury instructions but also said that if the issue remained, Manafort could raise it again after a verdict.  In other words, the judge put the whole issue off with no final decision.  Yawn.

The second blockbuster ruling came as Manafort's trial in Virginia federal court was put off by the judge's order for two weeks.  I've actually seen analysts who said that this shows that the court is struggling with pending motions that could affect the trial.  Don't they listen?  The judge said that a family member was going to have a medical procedure at the time when the trial was supposed to go ahead.  That made the judge unavailable so he put the trial off for two weeks.  The delay had nothing to do with Manafort or Mueller or anyone outside the judge's family.  Again, yawn.

 

It's Still Hard To Believe -- Turkey Attempts To Rewrite History

In 1915, the Ottoman Empire conducted a mass genocide of Armenians under its control.  The Turks killed roughly 1.5 million Armenians at the time.  That means that in the years from 1915 to 1917, roughly half the Armenian population of Turkey was systematically killed by the government.  Until World War II when the Nazis mechanized extermination in concentration camps, this was one of the largest (if not the largest) genocide in terms of numbers killed in history.

At the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was dismantled.  The heartland of that empire became modern day Turkey.  Today's Turks, however, deny that there was any genocide directed at the Armenians.  The Turkish government says that there was no systematic slaughter of Armenian citizens.  I guess the Turks would tell the world that half of the Armenian residents of that time just happened to die in unison.  In other words, the Turks practice the equivalent of Holocaust denial on a smaller scale.

I was reminded of this today when I saw a threat that a Turkish government official had made being reported in a Middle Eastern newspaper.  The deputy prime minister of Turkey warned Israel that it had better not recognize the Armenian slaughter as a genocide or such action would "harm" Israel.  It seemed an odd message coming from a country that had just broken ties with the Israelis.  Can it really be that the modern Turks are so worried about what their ancestors did over 100 years ago?  No one is still alive who remembers the events that took place then.  How can the Turks be so concerned that they are threatening other countries that might recognize what had happened so long ago?

History should not change at the whims of those who retell it.  The Turks should recognize what happened and move on.  Denial won't change anything.

Misunderstanding Yesterday

I'm not surprised at the number of columns written by pundits in the mainstream media which "explain" that President Trump doesn't understand how international diplomacy is supposed to be handled.  The main point made is that a president should not just cancel a meeting because the person with whom he is supposed to meet is saying unfavorable things.  These pundits are lamenting Trump's cancellation of the meeting with North Korea's Kim Jung Un that Trump announced yesterday.  The pundits actually make clear that they are wedded to the failed diplomatic model used by the Obama administration, and they don't understand how a negotiation is properly handled.

Let's start with something simple.  A diplomatic negotiation is still a negotiation.  Aside from some of the formalities that get added into the mix, diplomacy is nothing more than ordinary negotiation.  No matter what these pundits say, there really is no material difference between the two.

Now let's add another basic truth of negotiating deals.  If you want to get a better deal, you must demonstrate to the other side that you are prepared to walk away unless you get what you need.  If you make clear that your goal is to get a deal rather than to get particular content for that deal, the other side comes to understand that it can get pretty much anything it wants.  That was exactly what went wrong with the Iranian nuclear deal that was negotiated by John Kerry for the USA.  The mullahs understood that Kerry and his boss Obama had the goal of making a deal rather than a goal of getting a sure method for ending the Iranian nuclear program.  As a result, the Iranians got hundreds of billions of dollars of sanctions relief and cash payments in exchange for agreeing to a deal which still gave them a path to nuclear weapons in ten years.  It was a disaster for the USA.

In this context, Trump's cancellation of the summit makes perfect sense.  For whatever reason, the President apparently decided that Kim Jung Un was testing him by doing one of Kim's crazy moves.  Kim first acknowledged that the US/South Korean military exercises were no problem and then a month later made a big stink about them going forward.  Kim first met with the South Koreans to establish good will and then cancelled the next meeting due to supposed provocations.  Kim requested the summit meeting with the President and then voiced threats that he might cancel the meeting.  Trump rejected the games Kim was playing.  He called Kim's bluff.  By cancelling the meeting, Trump made clear to Kim that the President was very different from Obama; his goal was not to get an agreement, but rather to get a good deal for the USA.

The response from Kim shows that he understands what just happened.  There were no angry outbursts.  In fact, we may still see a meeting take place sometime soon.

Someone should explain to the pundits that they really don't understand what happened.  They won't believe it (since they are all sure that they know everything.)

The Korea Summit is Off

President Trump called off the summit meeting with Kim Jung Un this morning.  Trump had a letter delivered to Kim a few hours after the NKs blew up their nuclear test site.  Trump said that in view of the angry and harsh rhetoric coming from the NK government, there seemed to be no point in having the meeting now.  He left open the possibility of a meeting in the future if the NKs desire it.

This puts the North Koreans in a tough position.  They were the ones who asked for the meeting in the first place.  Then as the meeting got close, Kim either got cold feet or he was just posturing by denouncing the US and officials like the vice president because America was saying that its would need complete denuclearization by North Korea to come to any agreement.  Failure to denuclearize would lead to the end of the Kim regime.  If the NKs don't seek a meeting in the future, then they remain in the squeeze that led to the call for a meeting in the first place.  On the other hand, if the NKs renew their call for a meeting, then they will have in essence given up their position that something less than complete denuclearization might be acceptable.

There will no doubt be an enormous number of "experts" who criticize the President for being 1) too brash; 2) not brash enough; 3) too strong; 4) not strong enough; etc.  We shall have to wait to see what happens next. 

It would have been nice to have seen a peace deal with the North Koreans.  If nothing else, however, we did get our hostages released and got to watch the North Koreans blow up their nuclear test site.

Another Sign of Change -- Kushner Gets His Security Clearance

Jared Kushner has finally gotten his security clearance.  He now has the highest level of access to classified materials and information.  It has taken almost a year and a half for the process to get to the point at which the clearance was issued.

Normally, the idea of a high White House official getting a security clearance would not be newsworthy.  Kushner's getting a clearance, however, indicates much more than the clearance itself.  It means that Kushner is not involved in any active investigations whether criminal or counter-intelligence.  Think about that for a minute.  For the last year and a half, the mainstream media has painted Kushner as some sort of shady character with Russian connections.  He was investigated by the DOJ and FBI; then the Mueller probe looked into Kushner and his activities.  And now, after all those investigations, Kushner got his security clearance.  That means that the investigations found NOTHING and the Kushner has been cleared of any claims of misconduct.

My guess is that people at MSNBC and CNN are considering self-immolation.  These are people who made a career for the last year of bad-mouthing Kushner and, by extension, the President.  How could their hero Bob Mueller have let them down so.  Reality, however, has triumphed.  Kushner has gotten his clearance.  Pity poor Rachel Maddow.

Right-Sizing The University

It's a little noticed phenomenon, but there are a batch of colleges and universities that are shedding departments (or parts of departments) in the hopes of cutting costs.  Particularly hard hit are departments like history, some sociology, and some foreign languages.  At some schools there are also moves to cut some departments like Women's Studies and others with highly politically correct curriculum.

It may be that schools are hearing from graduates with degrees in women's studies that they are not qualified for any particular job.  That certainly has been a problem with graduates with degrees in history.  In the latest year, there were roughly three times the number of history degrees as there were job openings for people with that qualification. 

The cost of a university education has been rising rapidly and without stop for many decades.  It seems as if the schools without the enormous endowments have finally started to hit the wall.  As costs rise but enrollments don't (or worse yet, they fall), schools will have to cut somewhere.  For the first time in a long time, university professors who usually deride the market as some sort of fiction are learning first hand exactly how the markets work.  A professor with tenure in the history department of a third rate college will still be unemployed if that department gets shuttered.

This is a situation which needs to be closely watched.  No doubt, the next step from the college professors will be to try to mount government bailouts of the schools that have been moving towards these cutbacks. 

Just a Few Important Questions

With the disclosure that the Obama FBI and CIA were spying on the Trump campaign in 2016, there are a few important questions that will need to be answered before final conclusions can be reached.  Here are just a few of the important ones:

1.  We now know that in the spring of 2016, there was a meeting of the National Security Council in the White House which was attended by president Obama and all the senior security officials.  At that meeting, there was a briefing of those present as to the possibility that the Russians were trying to infiltrate the Trump campaign.  According to people like then DNI Clapper and CIA director Brennan, it was after this meeting that the spies were placed into the Trump campaign to protect Trump from the Russians and not to spy on him.  It sounds ridiculous, but it gives rise to a very major question.  If president Obama and the NSC thought that the Russians might be trying to infiltrate the Trump campaign, why didn't they tell Donald Trump?  Seriously, if one of the two major candidates for president was under assault by foreign agents, why didn't the Obamacrats warn him?

The most likely answer is the simplest one, namely, that the Obamacrats were trying to entrap Trump, not to protect him.  They wanted to get whatever dirt they could on Trump so that they could use it later in the campaign.  Russians actually had very little, if anything, to do with the entire matter.

2.  Jim Comey has twice said that he did not tell then president-elect Trump that the Trump Dossier had been created at the behest of the DNC and the Clinton campaign at a cost of over  $13 million dollars because "it was not part of [his] assignment."  What assignment, and who gave it to him?  Was it DNI Clapper?  Who else knew about the assignment?

These are not idle questions.  We know that as soon as Comey left his meeting with Trump in January of 2017, he called Clapper to report on the meeting.  Comey then spoke to CNN which followed up by reporting a story that Trump had been briefed about the Dossier.  That CNN story broke 3 or 4 days later.  During those 3 days, however, Andrew McCabe who was then the number 2 guy in the FBI sent emails to deputy attorney general Sally Yates and others warning them that the story was about to break on CNN.  That means that he knew about Comey's meeting and what was said there.  How big was the cabal that decided to plant the story with CNN?

3.  Is there even one piece of evidence that was not manufactured by the CIA or FBI or other Obamacrats that points to collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign?  And how many attempts can we find which show that the Obamacrats tried to "create" phony evidence.

It's like that Dan Rather story during the 2004 campaign that relied on fraudulent documents.  After the fraud came out and Rather was disgraced, he still called the story something like "fake but accurate".  Is the entire Russia-Trump investigation built on the basis of planted evidence put in place by the Obamacrats?

 

Stormy's Lawyer has a Storm Of His Own

The lawyer for Stormy Daniels who has been all over the TV for weeks got hit today with a ten million dollar judgment in bankruptcy court in Los Angeles.  It seems that his law firm (of which he is the principal partner) settled a claim by a lawyer who used to work at the firm for cheating that attorney out of the fees he had earned.  The settlement required a payment by Stormy's lawyer of two million dollars, a payment he failed to make.  The judge then awarded the entire amount as due now and entered judgment against both the firm and Stormy's lawyer.

There's also news from the same court that Stormy's lawyer is in arrears to the IRS for something like half a million buck owed for payroll taxes his firm collected but never gave to the government.

One thing is certain, we can now understand the air of desperation that Stormy's lawyer always seemed to have in his interviews.  Nothing could ever happen fast enough for him.  No wonder; he was trying to come up with some sort of way to raise all that money to pay both the IRS and the other lawyer cheated out of his fees.

Here's the article that sets for the whole story.

It Just Keeps Coming -- Won't They Ever Learn?

The mainstream media seems never to tire of attacking President Trump.  This morning, I was in my car and heard CBS News on the hour.  The news reader gave a report on today's meeting between President Trump and the leader of South Korea in preparation for the upcoming meeting between Kim Jung Un of North Korea and President Trump.  At the end of the piece, the broadcaster had to add that "expert" analysts are concerned that President Trump is too interested in having the meeting occur and that he has not prepared for the detailed negotiation that will take place at that meeting.
Get it?  Trump doesn't focus on the important stuff.  He's a buffoon who will mess up this key negotiation.  It's the same BS that the media has been pumping out since Trump won the election in 2016.

Think about it for a moment.  For decades, these "experts" were never able to bring North Korea to the table except for instances in which the North Koreans fooled the American "expert" negotiators.  President Trump changed the way that the USA approached the North Koreans and, in about a year, Kim Jung Un changed his tune.  Sure, there's no way of knowing if this is another attempt at North Korean deception, but that should become clear as things move forward (if they do). Trump is successful, but the "experts" can't stand the idea that he was right and they were wrong, so they tell us that Trump isn't ready for the negotiation.  He's not doing it the way they did (which didn't work at all).  All of this leads to one question:  who cares what these "experts" think?

The Bombshell We've Been Expecting

The most insightful person who writes about the whole Russia-Trump mess has to be Andy McCarthy.  He is a former prosecutor and is fully aware of all the internal FBI lingo and practices that permeate many of the relevant documents.  He is also tireless in ferreting out bits of information from an avalanche of documents.  Just the other day, he came out with information that can only be called a true bombshell.  Here's what it is:

In the summer of 2016, the FBI began its counter-intelligence probe of the Russian intervention in the election and the suspected collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign.  We know that there was no such collusion, or at least that after looking for almost two years there has been no evidence of such collusion found.  We also know that the Obama FBI and CIA planted a spy or spies inside the Trump campaign to secretly gather information about what the campaign officials were doing.  Well, Andy McCarthy went back to one of the gold mines of this whole story, the text messages between Peter Strzok a senior agent of the FBI and his mistress Lisa Page, an attorney who worked for FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.  When the counter-intelligence investigation began, Strzok was sent immediately to London to meet with someone whose name is redacted from the text messages.  When Strzok got back there was a big meeting as some sort of kick off for the whole investigation.  Strzok was there and he told Page about it.  Here's how McCarthy describes that exchange:

Finally, after some back-and-forth over who should be invited to a major meeting about the new case, a meeting was held. In the aftermath, at about 4:30 p.m., Strzok and Page had the following exchange:

Strzok: And hi. Went well, best we could have expected. Other than [REDACTED] quote: “the White House is running this.” My answer, “well, maybe for you they are.” And of course, I was planning on telling this guy, thanks for coming, we’ve got an hour, but with Bill [Priestap] there, I’ve got no control….
Page: Yeah, whatever (re the WH comment). We’ve got the emails that say otherwise.

Think about that for a moment.  At the big meeting to kick off the investigation into Russia-Trump the FBI senior agents involved are told, THE WHITE HOUSE IS RUNNING THIS"!!!!!!!  Strzok undoubtedly went to London to meet with Stefan Halper, the Oxford professor who was then inserted into the Trump campaign so as to spy for the Obama FBI/CIA.  That's right, a spy is put into place to inform on the Trump campaign when we know that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing by that campaign, and it was THE WHITE HOUSE that was running the whole thing.   THE WHITE HOUSE!!!!!!!  Amazing!

Without a doubt, we will hear over and over again in the next weeks and months that no one in the Obama White House knew anything about putting a spy into the Trump campaign.  The problem is that Peter Strzok's need to fill in his mistress about what happened at the meeting has just ruined that defense.  We can't know for certain from this that president Obama knew the details of what was happening, but it certainly seems likely.  We do now know that White House personnel were in charge of the operation.

Someone really needs to go to jail for this.

How's This For Another Morsel?

It is now being reported that just a few weeks prior to the 2016 election, the Obama administration paid Stefan Halper over a quarter of a million dollars in connection with a supposed "study".  Of course, there is no public record of that study or its contents.  Halper, of course, is the man who has been identified as the spy planted by the Obama CIA/FBI in the Trump campaign.  At least we know now what the modern equivalent is of thirty pieces of silver.

The Blinders Come Off

The recent trajectory of the Russia-Trump story pushed by the media and the Democrats has been amazing.  We went from (1) multiple daily stories from unnamed sources that trumpet the latest "smoking gun" in the investigation, to (2) fewer such smoking guns accompanied by some unhappy revelations like Hillary and the DNC paying for the Trump Dossier on which the investigation began, to (3) a continuing trail of stories about how the Obama administration got a FISA warrant illegally on an associate of the Trump campaign and then illegally unmasked those with whom the fellow spoke so as to get details of what the campaign was doing, to (4) news that the intelligence agencies were spying on the Trump campaign (which the Democrats and media all denied and even derided), to (5) confirmation that the Obama CIA/FBI worked together to plant a spy inside the Trump campaign along with publishing the details of who the spy is and how he worked inside the campaign.  In other words, the media/Democrat cabal went from attacking the President on all fronts on a non-stop basis to faltering in that attack and now, to having their (criminal?) misdeeds uncovered for the world to see.  It is a dramatic and incredible fall for the old Obama folks and their allies in the Clinton campaign and the media.

What is going to be the impact of all this?  Especially in November's elections, what effect will the collapse of the Russia-Trump hoax and the uncovering of the media/Democrat conspiracy have on the average voter?

To answer this question, we need to divide the voters into a few subgroups.

First, the rabidly anti-Trump Democrats won't care.  They are voting for the Democrat no matter what.  They still get their daily dose of Russia - Trump from CNN or MSNBC and they don't believe the stories revealing what actually happened.  In other words, given a choice between what the media tells them and their own "lying eyes", these folks believe the media.

Second, we have the opposite group, the people who strongly support the President no matter what happens.  These people will vote for the Republicans in November no matter what gets said. 

Third, we have the people who are not invested in either side, the folks who voted in 2016 for Trump or for Hillary but who don't really have a strong view that ties them to one side or the other.  This is the swing group.  For the last year, these people have been told that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign.  At first, they accepted that as a possibility.  Then, when no proof was put forward to support that claim, they began to tune it out.  As one smoking gun after another came to nothing, this group came to realize that there really wasn't much, if anything, to the whole Russia - Trump story.  They focused more on the economy (good for Trump), North Korea (good for Trump), trade (good for Trump), and jobs (good for Trump).  On the other side, these same people focused on Trump's behavior which is constantly derided as non-Presidential, on school shootings, on race relations and on immigration.  Each of these cut through the group in different ways that are still playing out.  Nevertheless, in 2018, it has been clear that the general movement of the electorate has been towards Trump and the GOP and away from the Democrats.  It has been a slow and steady movement that shows up in the President's job approval numbers and the results of the generic Congressional polls.

Now, however, we have a new addition to the mix.  It is not a usual occurrence for the country to learn that the party in power (the Obama Democrats) used the CIA and FBI to plant a spy or spies into the campaign of the opposition party (the Trump campaign).  This is the sort of police state tactic that one may see in movies but which one thinks could never actually happen in the USA. (Except it did).  We still don't know where this new strain of the story will go, but it seems a safe bet that no matter what we find, it will not be helpful to the Democrats.  Oh, it could turn out not to help the GOP much, but for the Democrats there seem to be only two possible outcomes:  (a)not so bad or (b) disaster.  The people in the middle are going to get the news of what the Obamacrats did in 2016 and since then.  It cannot be hidden no matter how hard the media allies of the Democrats try to accomplish such a result. 

It will be ironic if the long strident charge of the Democrats and media in the Russia-Trump hoax ends up being the impetus for the Republicans to keep the House and Senate in 2018.  The so called Blue Wave will become the Blue Wash Out.  People are finding out the truth and that cannot help the Democrats.

Monday Morning And The Markets Are Telling Us A Lot

It's just before the opening bell on Wall Street as I write this.  The Dow futures are up about 240 points.  In the commodities markets, there is a meteoric rise in soybeans.  The best way to say this is that the markets are very pleased with the outcome of the latest talks between China and the USA.

Think about it.  Six months ago, there were no real restrictions on Chinese good and services and no special tariffs on them either.  President Trump and his administration announced since then a series of proposed tariffs and major restrictions on some Chinese businesses because of Chinese theft of American intellectual property.  Democrats like Chuck Schumer went berserk when that happened and warned that the President was starting a trade war.  Schumer kept saying that President Trump did not understand trade and would lead us to economic ruin with his moves.  Now, the tariffs are on hold on both sides, China has agreed to buy something like an extra $200 billion in US goods this year and into the future, and the President is "considering" whether or not to reduce but not eliminate the sanctions on one major Chinese telecom company.  Schumer is now outraged at the "weakness" shown by the President in considering reduced sanctions on that company.  You have to admire Schumer's "flexibility".  First, it was a terrible thing to put the sanctions on the Chinese company, and just a few months later it's a terrible thing to consider relaxing the same sanctions.  The only thing consistent in those views is that Schumer opposes whatever Trump does without giving the matter much thought.

We were also told by other Democrats that the American farmer was going to pay the price for Trumps tariffs.  The focus was on soybean growers and hog farmers.  Those also happen to be two areas in which the Chinese are going to vastly INCREASE purchases from US sources now.  Looks like it worked out ok in the end.

The media won't say it, but this is a great result for the USA.  We have to listen to the markets for confirmation.

The Next Chapter

Here is a tweet from the President this afternoon:

 

I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!

 

This is the start of the next chapter.  It's the chapter that most likely ends with Brennan, Clapper and maybe Comey indicted.  Who knows who else was caught up in this criminal conspiracy?  Maybe Loretta Lynch?  This has to be the biggest political turnabout I've ever seen.  The Democrats spend nearly two years on a phony Russia-Trump collusion story, and in the end they become the ones indicted.

 

I know it is premature to say all that, but it certainly seems as if that is exactly where all this is going.

 

 

The Instant Gun Control Outrage

The shooting at the high school in Santa Fe, Texas has brought out, once again, the instant gun control outrage brigade in full force.  For example, senator Chris Murphy of my own state of Connecticut has been tweeting non-stop about the shooting and about the need for gun control.  He claims to be outraged, but that's nothing new.  If you follow Murphy on Twitter, you soon realize that being outraged is his natural state, or at least that is what he says.

But let's take a deeper look at what we know so far about Santa Fe.

1.  The shooter wasn't on anyone's radar as a possible threat.  This is not like the Parkland shooting where the shooter had been reported to local police 40 times and the police did nothing.  The kid who shot up the Santa Fe school was just another student in the high school there.  There was nothing that indicated that he might become a mass murderer.

2.  The shooter didn't use anything that might be described as an assault weapon.  He had a hand gun and a shotgun, nothing more in the way of firearms.  He did build some bombs, but they never were set off.  That means that an assault weapons' ban or a ban on bump stocks or large magazines would have had no effect of preventing this tragedy.

3.  The guns the shooter used were not obtained by him legally.  They weren't his weapons; they belonged to his father.  The kid took them from his family home (it's not yet clear how he got them.)  The father, however, had purchased the guns legally.  He went through background checks and all the other stuff that is required for the purchase.  This means that no strengthening of background checks or other preliminaries to a gun purchase would have made any difference in Santa Fe.

4.  There are no proposed gun control measures, short of confiscating all guns, that would have had any chance at all of preventing the massacre in Santa Fe.

When you consider the actual facts, you realize that today's gun control debate is based upon a phony premise.  Nothing under discussion would have made any difference for those kids in Santa Fe.  The idea that "something has to be done" is not enough unless and until the people who chant that mantra tell the rest of us what exactly should be done.  Then we need to have a rational and calm discussion, not the nonsense that passes for debate in which each side screams at the other and the facts get ignored.

Senator Warner Gets The Talking Points Mixed Up on CBS

On Face The Nation this morning, Virginia Democrat senator Warner get his talking points mixed up.  He went on at length about how outrageous it was that the President and the Republicans wanted to disclose the name of the CIA/FBI asset who was embedded into the Trump campaign by the Obamacrats in 2016.  That was so yesterday!

Remember, when news of the spy planted by the CIA/FBI in the Trump campaign first broke, it was then confirmed by the New York Times and the Washington Post.  The papers, however, refused to disclose the name (Stefan Halper) because they claimed it might endanger his life.  The papers already knew the name because sources at the FBI and/or CIA had leaked that name to them.  The position, however, led to a surge of Democrat/media complaints that the GOP was seeking to "out" an American espionage agent.  Of course, the WaPo did mention that the guy was someone with dual UK/US citizenship who was an Oxford professor and who had worked in three Republican administrations.  Anyone with access to Google could figure out the guy's name in under a minute, but they were "protecting" him from the evil Republicans.  Warner, in his appearance today, continued with this silly position.

There were two problems with Warner's gambit, however.  First, the name of the guy has been plastered all over the place in the media.  Even the Washington Post now discloses the name.  It's a little late for outrage, particularly since Warner had no basis to claim that the name came from congressional Republicans or the White House.  Second, Warner started his discussion by denying that he had any knowledge of any fact that would lead him to conclude that the Obama CIA/FBI planted an informant into the Trump campaign.  Get it?  Warner has no reason to believe that there was a spy for the Obamacrats illegally placed in the Trump campaign, but he's outraged, outraged to learn that Republicans want to make the spy's name public.  Huh?

The reality of the moment is that Obama and the leadership of the intelligence agencies under Obama have been caught violating the law and using the powers of the federal intelligence agencies for spying on an opposition political campaign.  It's a heinous crime.  There are no talking points that will change this.  The Obamacrats well know this, but they are still trying to lessen the disaster they now face.  It won't work.  In particular, it really won't work if the fools in the senate like senator Warner can't even keep their talking points straight.

I surely hope that those like Brennan, Clapper and Comey get what they so richly deserve.  America's intelligence agencies should never again be used to spy on opponents for political advantage.

Reminds Me Of The Definition Of "Is"

During the Lewinsky days of president Bill Clinton, he tried to justify something that he said by quibbling about the definition of the word "is".  It was one of his lowest moments because it showed him desperately trying to cover up a lie, and the whole nation could see it for what it was.  Now we have a similar situation with the disclosure that the Obama FBI and CIA planted an informant inside the Trump campaign in 2016 without there being any evidence of wrongdoing by those in the campaign.  Indeed, it appears that the Obama intelligence agencies planted a mole in the Trump campaign to spy illegally on the Republicans and even to plant information inside that campaign.  Today the new "is" comes from the New York Times which has been the cheerleader for nearly two years in the Russia-Trump collusion story.  Embarrassed by the disclosure of the illegal activities by the leadership of the CIA and FBI as well as the Director of National Intelligence under Obama, the Times now says that the person or people that were planted inside the Trump campaign were there to "investigate" and not to "spy" on that campaign. 

Think about it.  The New York Times is actually trying to justify this mess by saying the FBI/CIA was investigating and not spying.  Is that correct?  Investigate has about 20 words listed as synonyms on thesaurus.com, and guess what, one of them is "spy".  "Investigate" is defined as to carry out research to discover facts or information about something.  "Spy" is defined as to secretly try to get information about something, usually for a government.  In other words, to spy is to investigate secretly.  So, was Stefan Halper, the Obama CIA/FBI plant inside the Trump campaign there secretly?  Of course he was.  It has taken a year and a half for word of the spy to come out.  For the last week, the New York Times has been arguing vigorously that his name had to be kept SECRET because identifying by name might endanger him.  Certainly, no one told the Trump campaign that there was a mole placed inside of it by president Obama and his intelligence agencies.  IT WAS A SECRET.  So the silly distinction by the NY Times of investigating rather than spying is wrong.

One would normally think that the Times would be embarrassed to make this ridiculous argument.  Surely, the editors of the Times understand that this guy was a spy.  So why are they doing this?  Again, the answer is clear:  they have no other justification to offer for Obama's domestic spying on political opponents.  What else could they say?  Obama's DNI Clapper came up with the crazy statement that it was a good thing that the FBI and CIA planted an informant in the opposition political party's campaign.  That is never going to fly.  Americans recognize what is best described as new secret police with a political agenda as something alien to basic American values.  What the Obama CIA/FBI did is more akin to something coming from the KGB or the Gestapo than the American government.  It's an outrage that threatens people's basic rights; it's not a good thing.  There's no other excuse.  The Times is going with denial.

But here's the real news for the Times.  It isn't going to work.

A Big Boost IN Chinese Purchases from the USA

Remember where things were just a few months ago?  The mainstream media, the Democrats and the "experts" were telling us that trade war with China would be the result of President Trump's trade policies.  That would be followed, or so we were told, by a world-wide recession as the two largest economies contracted as a result.  They were wrong it seems.

It is being reported that the USA and China have reached an initial agreement to reduce the US trade deficit with China.  All that we know for certain is that the Chinese will dramatically increase their purchses of agricultural product and energy from the USA.  Numbers haven't been announced, but the figure of $200 billion per year has leaked.

Think about that for a minute.  If China buys an extra $200 billion from the USA over the next 12 months, that will increase the US GDP by more than 1%.  That will mean something like a million new jobs.  It will mean greater prosperity for America's farmers and energy producers as well as for the countless firms that support these industries.  In short, it's a big, big deal. 

We don't know yet what, if anything, the USA is giving to China in return.  It may be that the sanctions on the Chinese telecom firm ZTE will be reduced as President Trump is considering.  It may also be that something else will be swapped.  We will have to wait and see what the deal actually consists of. 

It seems that what actually happened here is that Trump was correct.  It's a lot easier to win a trade war when you have a huge trade deficit.  China's companies risked losing a huge market for their goods.  For American companies, there would have been pain, but it would have been next to nothing compared to what the Chinese would have had to endure.

Once again, the "experts" were just wrong.  I bet they're getting tired of losing.

It's Hard To Believe, But The Democrats Are Nominating Ned Lamont For Governor

Remember Ned Lamont?  He's the guy who got the Democrat nomination for senator in 2006 when Joe Lieberman was the incumbent and then lost to Lieberman in the general election when Joe ran as an independent.  Lamont followed up that loss with an attempt to be nominated as governor in 2010.  In that race, Lamont was trounced by the current incumbent Dan Malloy.  It seems, however, that two rather crushing losses are not enough to keep Lamont out of the political races.  He is now about to be nominated for governor by the Democrats.  It's an astounding choice.

The choice of Lamont as the Democrats' nominee presents a rather perplexing question:  Isn't there someone new who might actually make a positive difference as governor in the Democrat party?  Are the Democrats so stuck in the past that they have to turn to a loser who made his name by opposing the Iraq War and who hasn't done much of anything since then?  It sure seems as if that is the case.  The main opposition to Lamont came from Susan Bycewicz who then dropped out to become the candidate for Lieutenant Governor on the Lamont ticket.  If you don't remember Susan, let me remind you that she was a candidate for Attorney General until she was struck from the ballot because she did not have the legal experience necessary to hold the office of Attorney General.  She's another non-entity electoral failure.

Right now, the state of Connecticut is in terrible shape.  Our people are leaving.  The economy in the state is stagnant.  Job growth in the state is among the lowest in the nation.  There is a looming long term budget shortfall that requires either much higher taxes or lower expenditures.  Governor Malloy has gone for eight years during which his answer to every problem has been simple:  tax more, spend more.  The concept of spending more wisely has not even been seriously discussed during Malloy's time in office.  If nothing changes, the state will go past the tipping point.  Connecticut, which has one of the highest levels of personal income in the nation will start to fall dramatically.  Malloy's plans would just spend us all into poverty.

The answer is surely not Ned Lamont.  I've looked at his campaign web site.  His election to governor would be like replacing Malloy with another Malloy who uses a different name. 

The people of Connecticut have to work together to put our state back on track.  In other words, Lamont has got to be defeated.

Stefan Halper It Is -- According to the Daily Caller

The Daily Caller has identified one of the persons who the FBI used to infiltrate the Trump campaign in 2016.  It's a man named Stefan Halper.  He's someone who has dual US/UK citizenship.  He worked in a bunch of Republican administrations.  His father was a major figure in the CIA.  He also has worked for US intelligence according to the Daily Caller.

It's no big deal that the Daily Caller identified him.  Until now, the media has kept his name "secret" although any intelligence agency around the world would have known it was he.  After all, he was described as a professor at a particular UK college who was a US and UK citizen and who had worked in previous Republican administrations.  That's hardly a description that covers too many people.  Most of the US media also knew his name, so the agents who work for the Washington Post or New York Times would have had it.  The distraction of determining the name of the spy is over, now, though.

For me, the news that the Obama FBI and CIA worked together to plant an informant inside the Trump campaign even though there was no evidence of any crime of any sort is as bad as the news that the Trump Dossier which was used to obtain a FISA warrant and to attack President Trump was actually paid for by the Democrat National Committee and the Clinton campaign.  These are heinous and truly un-American actions that are unforgiveable.  They show just how deep the authoritarian tendencies of the Obama administration truly were.  It means also that the Democrats constant attacks on Republicans as deplorable and the like are attacks that they truly believe.  The leadership of the party actually engaged in these activities to try to prevent the deplorables from taking over power.  The ends justified the means in their minds.  These are dangerous people, truly dangerous.  America dodged a bullet by keeping Hillary out of the White House and watching Obama leave.  Until the Democrats get over their crazy and dangerous views, they should be kept on the sidelines.

How Can This Be?

There's a strange anomaly in the perceptions of the American people.  Despite the way the mainstream media is pushing things, the people seem to see the actual facts.  A good example came in a poll that Rasmussen released today.  Fifty one percent of American voters favor the move by President Trump of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  Only twenty-nine percent think the move was not a good idea.  Rasmussen also polled the same issue last December when the move was first announced, the split was 40 to 36%.  The media must wonder how can this be.

Since the embassy move was announced, there have been many pieces in the mainstream media denouncing the move a "dangerous"  or "foolish".  The move, we were told, was going to cause massive violence to erupt all across the Arab world.  We were also told that Americans would be attack in all corners of the Muslim world due to this move.  Of course, none of this happened.  The only real violence came at the border between Israel and Gaza and it was not really linked to the embassy move; it was instead linked to the 70th anniversary of the establishment of Israel.

Just because the media "experts" and the Democrats were all wrong, it must still surprise them that the American people didn't buy their lies.  Remember, it was only late in 2017 that the Democrats and the media convinced a large majority of American voters that the GOP tax cut bill would actually raise their taxes.  People like Nancy Pelosi called the tax cut bill a harbinger of the end of the world.  Disaster was coming, or so we were told.  Then the bill passed and was signed into law by the President.  By February, most Americans saw an increase in their paychecks due to new lower tax levels.  Indeed, the realization that the Democrats and the media had been lying may be the reason why recent polling has shown the races for the 2018 Congressional elections are now extremely close, a big change from the blue wave that was forecast in December.

The reality is that eventually, the truth comes out.  The capital of Israel is Jerusalem.  Congress knew it when it passed a law in 1994 requiring that the embassy be moved to that city.  President Trump knew it when he became the first president with the courage to recognize reality and move the embassy.  The American people also know it, and it doesn't matter what lies they push on CNN or MSNBC.

Getting The Credit For Nothing

There were some huge explosions today at the airport in Hama, Syria.  According to reports, eleven soldiers of the Assad forces were killed in the blasts.  Pictures of huge plumes of smoke rising outside the city are available on the internet.  The strange thing is that no one seems to know for certain what happened.  The Assad regime has yet to announce the news.  Sky News in Saudi Arabia is reporting that Israeli jets struck a supply depot for missiles used in the Iranian anti-aircraft missile systems.  Some other news sources claim that the Sunni rebels who were recently ousted from the area by the Assad forces left behind booby traps that got tripped and which then set off secondary explosions.  Still other sources report that missiles malfunctioned as they were being transferred and that they then exploded.  It's really strange.  The Assad forces suffer a major blow with significant loss of life, but no one seems to have any real idea how that came to happen.

What Is The Sound Of One Clapper Yapping?

The former Director of National Intelligence, Mr. Clapper, was on CNN last night and he told the audience that it was a good thing that the FBI had a spy or spies in the Trump campaign.  In that way, Clapper confirmed (wittingly or not) that there indeed was a spy placed in the Republican presidential campaign by the Obama administration intelligence agencies.  It's a chilling thought.  It's one thing to speculate as to whether or not Obama was spying on the GOP.  It's something else entirely to have the former DNI proudly confirm that it happened and to claim it was a good thing.  It's even worse when the DNI bases that claim on something that didn't happen, namely, any Russian involvement with the Trump campaign.

In 2020, will Clapper think it a good idea if the Trump FBI spies on the campaign of Elizabeth Warren to see if there is undue influence being exerted on that campaign by the Cherokee Nation?  Will he think it a good idea if the Trump FBI surreptitiously places and agent in the campaign of Kamala Harris looking for the activities of the Chinese government?  What about looking for Iranian involvement in the Kerry campaign?  The point is that in none of these circumstances would it be a good thing to place an agent into a campaign unless there were actual proof of foreign infiltration, something that did not exist with Trump in 2016.  Political campaigns by opposition parties have to be allowed to proceed without government surveillance.  It's a basic part of what it means to be an American.  There needs to be severe and quick justice handed out to everyone involved in putting an agent into the Trump campaign.  If that means that the heads of the FBI and CIA under Obama as well as DNI Clapper have to go to jail, then let's get them there quickly.  This is the most serious threat to the political freedom of Americans that I can recall.

The Idiocy of the Professoriat

Do you remember Marc Lamont Hill?  He used to be a regular liberal guest on the old Bill O'Reilly show on Fox.  Now he comes on CNN sometimes.  He's a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia.  He's also a moron.  I say that after reading his latest article entitled "Seven Myths About the Palestinian - Israeli Conflict".  It's amazing just how dumb this piece is.

Hill (or is it Lamont-Hill?) starts with the "myth" that "these people have been fighting forever."  Here's what he says:  "This is one of the most often repeated and inaccurate comments on the conflict. The truth is that Arabs and Jews have not been fighting forever. Rather, it can be dated to the end of the 20th century or, more acutely, the beginning of the post-World War I British Mandatory period."

Amazing!  He puts the start of fighting back to the end of the 20th century.  That's just 18 years ago.  In the same sentence he also dates it to the start of the British Palestine Mandate which began 100 years ago.  So which is it?  18 years or 100 years?  Apparently, the professor doesn't know.  And if it is 100 years, isn't that tantamount to fighting forever, a proverbial 100 years war?  So what's the "myth"?  Is it that college professors know what they are talking about?

Another example:  the professor says that myth 2 is "this is a religious conflict."  According to Hill, the Palestinians include some Christians and they all used to live in peace with Jews.  (I guess that was prior to 100 years ago when the conflict started.)  Now for the reality.  Israel is the ultimate manifestation of a basic tenet of Judaism:  God gave the land of Canaan (which is now Israel) to the Jews.  It's part of every Jewish religious service.  It's really hard to say that it's not religious on the Jewish side.  Meanwhile on the Arab side, there's a major focus on the possession of Jerusalem, called the third holiest place in Islam.  And for those Christian Arabs, Jerusalem and The Holy Land are of religious importance.  Maybe the professor never heard of the Crusades.  I guess he thinks that the Crusades were just a nationalistic manifestation of the European patriarchy rather than a highly religious attempt to take back the Holy Land.  Simply put, the professor's statement that this is not a religious conflict is one of the dumbest things I've ever read.  It may be more than just a religious conflict, but it is certainly still a religious conflict.

And how about the professor's myth 6, namely "Israel has a right to exist"?  That's a myth?  Israel doesn't have a right to exist?  That's what Hill says; people have a right to exist, but countries don't.  In the period since the end of World War II, a main international narrative has been that colonialism is a bad thing and has to be ended.  Peoples of the world have a right to have their own nation states.  The Poles deserve to have Poland.  The Indians deserve to have India.  During the Vietnam War, the professor's leftist predecessors chattered incessantly about the right of the Vietnamese people to rule their own country Vietnam.  National liberation movements are based on the right of peoples to have their own country.  Well, Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jews.  They have a right to their own country.  And remember, the idea that Israel has a right to exist is actually a counter-statement to the constant claims by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and many other Arab countries that Israel must be destroyed and the Jewish citizens either expelled or killed.  The professor thinks it a myth that Israel has a right to exist?  He's a moron.

I often read things on the internet which make me wonder how they were ever published.  This latest one from the professor, however, takes the cake.  It has to be the single most ignorant thing I've seen in years.

Haspell Cofirmed

It looks like the Dems lost again.  Gina Haspel was just confirmed to be Director of the CIA.  She's the first woman to lead the agency.  She's also a career employee at the CIA and an extremely well respected one at that.  She has bravely served the country for decades and done a great job.

None of that mattered to the Democrats, however.  Haspel worked at a site where three terrorists were water-boarded in the early 2000's.  That action supposedly made her a supporter of "torture" and unfit for the postion if you listen to people like Chuck Schumer and other senate Democrats.  It's actually rather strange.  The last CIA Director under Obama, John Brennan, was high up in the agency when the water-boarding was done.  He helped design that program to extract information from the terrorists.  When Obama nominated him to lead the CIA, however, none of the Democrats who vigorously opposed Haspel this year said anything about Brennan's direct involvement in setting up that program.  Instead, they waited until now and used the argument against a woman who wasn't even there when the water-boarding first began, and who did not have the authority to stop it.

It's called hypocrisy, and Chuck Schumer and his friends are the ultimate hypocrites.

Haspel deserves our congratulations.  Schumer and the Senate Democrats, however, can also have a cheer, a Bronx cheer that is.

And Now, Direct From Mbandaka.....

I keep hearing about Americans who are going to Africa as tourists.  It's the new hot place to visit, or so I am told.  And then I hear the news from the city of Mbandaka.  For those of you who are not up on your geography, Mbandaka is a city of just about 1 million people in central Africa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  And for those of you who are not up on your news, Mbandaka is also the site of the first cases in years of the Ebola virus in Africa in an urban setting.  When Ebola outbreaks occur in the villages in the countryside, they are easier to contain.  Ebola is spread by direct contact with fluids containing the virus.  In a village, the number of people exposed to the virus is much easier to control.  Once the virus gets into a city, it is particularly hard to keep those affected isolated from others.  That makes the cases just found in Mbandaka a very dangerous thing indeed.

The Republic of Congo is supposedly "deciding" whether or not to declare this an emergency.  It's not a very hard decision to make.  If the Ebola spreads to more than a few households in the city, it could grow to hit thousands or even tens of thousands of victims.  A pandemic of this sort could leak to mass death.  So let me clue in the government of the Congo:  IT"S AN EMERGENCY!!!!!

The USA needs to help contain this outbreak just as we did when Ebola hit the nations on the West African coast a few years ago.  Oh, and if you're planning on going to Africa as a tourist, you might want to postpone that visit until the situation clears.

This Is Going To Bite Them In The Behind

Yesterday, President Trump was meeting with a group when one the people asked him about the MS-13 gang and what could be done to deal with them.  Trump responded by denouncing the gang as the monsters that they are.  He said of MS-13 that "these are not people, they are animals."

Right after Trump made that statement, the media rushed to report it as Trump denouncing all immigrants as less than human, just animals.  The AP tweeted this out.  Other media ran with the story "reported" by the AP.  Then the politicians jumped into the fray.  Chuck Schumer said that Trump had forgotten that we are all immigrants.  Calling current illegals "animals" was like saying that about our great-grandparents, according to Schumer.  Nancy Pelosi told a press conference that calling people "animals" denied the "spark of divinity" in each person and was reprehensible.  None of the media or politicians, however, mentioned that President Trump was talking about the MS-13 gang which has been killing people and committing other crimes across the country.

I think that this is going to bite the Dems in the behind.  Picture an ad in which the MS-13 gang and its crimes are described.  Then Trump denounces MS-13 by name as "animals".  Then you run video of Pelosi stating that Trump calling these people animals is reprehensible.  At that point, the announcer says, "Do you want the nation run by people like the President who think that criminal gang members are animals who must be stopped or by Democrats in Congress like Nancy Pelosi who want to defend these criminal gang members from deportation?"  Next:  "I'm _____________ and I approved this message because in Congress, I will support the deportation of criminal gang members here illegally and will fight the efforts by the Democrats like Pelosi to keep these thugs here."

So Where's The Outrage?

Let me ask you a question.  Suppose that you learn that in preparation for the November election, the Trump administration embeds informants in the senate campaigns of five senate candidates:  Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, John Tester of Montana and Joe Manchin or West Virginia.  In addition to the informants being put in place, the FBI issues national security letters which the FBI then uses to tap the phones and read the email from those senators and their campaign staffs.  The information that these informants and wiretaps produce all gets sent back to the White House.  How do you think the media or the Democrats would react?

That's right, how would the media or the Democrats react if they learned that the Trump administration was planting informants and wiretapping five Democrat senators up for re-election in November?  The answer is simple.  The media would go into non-stop coverage of the news.  The Democrats would announce that there is a grave threat to freedom in the USA.  There would be constant comparisons to Watergate.  There would also be calls for indictments and impeachment of the President.  This all goes without saying.

But this is what was done to Donald Trump and his campaign under president Obama.  We now know that the FBI planted at least one informant and probably more inside the Trump campaign in 2016.  We also know that the FBI used national security letters to get the email and phone conversations of various members of the Trump campaign.  We also know that these actions were taken without there being any evidence of any crime having been committed by the Trump campaign and its members.

And what is the media/Democrat reaction to this news?  A yawn.  That's right, just a yawn.  The New York Times acts as if this criminal action by the Obama FBI, Justice Department and White House is perfectly normal.  It's not.

We now know that in 2016, the DNC and the Clinton campaign spent $13 million to have a phony dossier written to accuse President Trump of all manner of sleazy and criminal actions.  Then they had the dossier distributed to the media and they even got John McCain and others to give it to the FBI.  Meanwhile, the Obama White House had the FBI implant informants into the Trump campaign to spy on it from the inside.  There were also national security letters issued so that the FBI could wiretap and read the email of those in the campaign.  Don't be misled, a national security letter is something the FBI itself can issue.  It does not take a court order.  As for court orders, we also know that the Obama FBI and DOJ then used the bogus dossier illegally to get a FISA warrant from the FISA court.  An application for a FISA warrant is required by law only to contain information that has been verified as true by the FBI.  That didn't happen; instead, the FBI and DOJ submitted the dossier that they knew to be unverified (and phony) and they kept that info from the court.  They also didn't tell the court that the dossier had been paid for by the DNC and Hillary Clinton.  In short, we now know that in 2016, the Democrats and President Obama used the national security apparatus of the USA to try to undermine and destroy the Republican candidate for president.  That is a crime of major proportions.  It is a crime for which people should go to prison.  Indeed, it is proof that the Democrats are incredibly corrupt and have no regard for the law.  America should be outraged.

Unbelievable -- the Leak Of Michael Cohen's Financial Records

Not long ago, certain confidential financial records of Michael Cohen were leaked to the media.  It was a really terrible sort of leak.  These are private records of a private citizen that the government got through legal process which requires confidentiality be maintained.  The Treasury Department Inspector General began an investigation to determine who the leaker is and how the leak happened.  Now, according to the New Yorker, the leaker has spoken with that magazine and given his reasons for the leak, and they are really both amazing and awful at the same time.  Here's how the New Yorker puts it:
That source, a law-enforcement official, is speaking publicly for the first time, to The New Yorker, to explain the motivation: the official had grown alarmed after being unable to find two important reports on Cohen’s financial activity in a government database. The official, worried that the information was being withheld from law enforcement, released the remaining documents.

You need a bit of background to understand what this leaker has told the New Yorker.

1.  The leaker says that the information was being withheld from law enforcement.  Think about that for a moment.  The leaker is "a law-enforcement official" who had the records already.  That really undercuts the idea that the information was being withheld from law enforcement.  It's roughly the equivalent of President Trump leaking something to the press on the grounds that the information was being withheld from the White House.  It's ridiculous on its face.

2.  The leaker couldn't find the documents in a particular government data base used by law enforcement.  The leaker, however, does not know why that was so.  It's possible that access to the documents was restricted to a particular group of investigators who were working on the Cohen case.  It's also possible that the entry of documents into the data base was not yet complete.  It's also possible that the documents were actually in the data base but filed under a different designation than the one for which the leaker searched.  Under no explanation, however, is it possible that the bank involved or Michael Cohen did not turn over the records to the government under a promise (and legal obligation) of confidentiality.  The leaker's supposed complaint has to do with how the investigators filed the documents once received.  In short, the leaker's own story is that he broke the law, violated an individual's privacy rights and potentially undermined any prosecution of Michael Cohen in the future because he didn't like the government's filing system.  That's moronic.

I don't know who the leaker is.  When his or her identity is determined, however, the leaker should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  It's the wages of stupidity.